Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 

• Table of contents
• First discussion
• End of page
• New post

The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please try to post within policy, technical, proposals or assistance rather than here. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

« Archives, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80

Articles with notability questions - Help by Wikiprojects wanted

Wikipedia currently contains more than 15.000 articles with topics of unclear notability, tagged with notability concerns during the past 10 months. WikiProject Notability is working to clean up this massive backlog, and to sort out what should be done with those articles.

Many of these 15.000 articles fall into the scope of one or more WikiProjects; and subject matter experts, or speakers of foreign languages, can often provide valuable input as to whether a topic is notable: Sources may not be available in English, or merge options may not be apparent to the non-expert reader.

I have therefore prepared a list of those articles, ordered by their assigned WikiProjects. It is based on a database snapshot of March 12. I'd like to encourage all members of a WikiProject to look through "their" articles, and see whether e.g. articles can be merged, whether sources can be added, etc. All help is appreciated.

For further information on notability sorting, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Notability.

Many thanks, --B. Wolterding (talk) 20:53, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

This must have been a mammoth task. You have my heartfealt admiration and sympathy (in having to deal with this back log). As to what to do with these articles... Obviously, the goal is to improve the articles, but there comes a point where waiting for someone to come along and actually do so is futile. I would say that any article that has not been worked on for two months after being tagged for lack of notability (an arbitrary time frame, but one that I think is realistic) should be deleted without prejudice (ie the article can be recreated at a later date by someone who might write a better article that actually establishes notability). Blueboar (talk) 01:14, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I would have to strongly disagree with deletion of non-notable articles based on this criteria alone. I have seen articles that have languished for as long as six months (or longer) before somebody picked up the ball and started to really move with the article... even when the article was a stub. I have also heard from numerous places that have explicitly griped about how some overzealous admin here on Wikipedia is on a non-notable rampage deleting fairly notable articles simply because they are completely unfamiliar with the topic.

I know this gets into the inclusionists vs. deletionists debates here (and I'll admit that I tend to hang in the inclusionists camp), so I'll leave this where it lay. All this said, I admire this attempt to try and sort through the nominated non-notable articles by wikiproject, as perhaps a method of getting those with knowledge of those topics to help scan through the nominations for relevance. --Robert Horning (talk) 16:05, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Trying to move this away from the inclusionist vs. deletionist debate (I actually fall in the middle in that debate, generally agreeing with the inclusionists when talking abstractly, but frequently agreeing with deletionists when it comes to specific articles)... perhaps I misspoke. I don't think these articles should be summarily deleted... but I do think they should be nominated at AfD. The reason I suggest nominating such articles is that the threat of deletion often sparks a flury of work on the article... as editors who normally would not bother to work on the article, but who like it and want it included, shift their priorities in an attempt to earn a "keep" result. I know this isn't the purpose of AfD... but it is a very common occurance. We can use that to our advantage. Granted, there are many things we should do before nominating... It is a last step in a long process... but if it will help to achieve our goal (having someone work on the article) we should not rule it out. Blueboar (talk) 16:19, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

This seem a very strange way to develop a project- distracting an editor working on a well thought out schedule, from the important to work on the urgent. If deletion is not the intention then to suggest that it is, is neither open or honest, and ultimately totally non productive. ClemRutter (talk) 20:54, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I strongly suggest that deletion should only be called into play if the topic is patently non-notable. If the subject may be merged into a larger topic, redirection is much better than deletion (as other articles may link to the non-notable topic, and redirection is cheap); this also allows for recovery of the history and recreation of the content should someone come at a later time to edit it. --MASEM 21:04, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

It would be nice if the relevant WikiProjects were notified (e.g., posting on their talk pages, such as Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Business and Economics. Perhaps you could request a bot to help. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:22, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

That's a good idea, I'll do that at least for the larger projects. Unfortunately, there's some limit to automation here: What I can find automatically is the project banners - that's how the lists are generated - but there seems to be no easy automated way of finding the associated project. --B. Wolterding (talk) 10:59, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

There's a simple automation answer: Have a bot get rid of all the Notability tag boxes. If nobody cares enough to actually take a look at the article, then the article is not a problem; leave it alone until it gets AFD'd, improved, or merged.

The fact that this notability system is such a ridiculous mess shows that the system doesn't work - it should be abandoned. Spend your time improving or creating articles, not polluting wikipedia with swaths of pointless labels. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 12:40, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, hiding the problem doesn't contribute much to solving it, I'd say. --B. Wolterding (talk) 13:28, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Because it's not a problem! (But we veer alarmingly close to the inclusion/deletion argument, so I'll shut up). - DavidWBrooks (talk) 13:30, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Citations - Buzzards versus Santas

The Problem: Editors are currently free to swoop down into any article, drop some variety of unsourced tag, and then circle like buzzards waiting for the article to die. I am speaking hypothetically of course, no WP editor would ever behave this way. The Solution: It seems that one possible solution to the massive number of unsourced tags is to have other editors play Santa. By this I mean an editor who finds (by chance or design) a good RS should be able to fly in, drop a gift in the form of a citation template, and then dash away all. "Santas" would not create inline references but merely provide the citation and let the primary editor(s) of the article determine how best to use it. A {{SantaWasHere}} template might be nice to add so that primary editors would know a gift needs opening. Low Sea (talk) 18:40, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

• If you wish to add citations, that's very welcome. Apart from that, the solution is just to assume good faith. --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:47, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Others have disagreed with you and stated that general reference citations not integrated (via inline references) are meaningless. Low Sea (talk) 20:55, 29 March 2008 (UTC))
    • Not sure why that's considered "meaningless"... Where an article does not have sources, but I find substantial coverage, I often add a citation to the article, even if the current article content is not directly based on this source. It would go into the "References" section or, better even, into a "Further reading" section, such as here. That doesn't make a first class article, but it's sufficient to establish notability, I think. And it keeps the article from "dying", as you can see from the history. --B. Wolterding (talk) 11:48, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
      • I tend to agree with that perspective but note the following[1]. I am not sure what the right view is on this matter and so I started this discussion to see if there was support for my idea. I am good at finding citations, but not so good at integrating them so I would like to play Santa myself (and see others with skills like mine do the same). Low Sea (talk) 03:34, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
        • Well, as far as I can see the citation was not discarded as useless, it was just moved to a different section. Sources fulfill two purposes on Wikipedia: First, they are used to verify the content of the article. Second, they establish notability. For the first purpose, of course inline citations are better. For the second, a mentioning in the "external links" or "further reading" section would suffice; it's a good base on which editors can later expand the article. If everything else fails, just post a message on the talk page saying, "the article might be expanded using the following sources". Hardly anyone will object, whether it's Christmas time or not. --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:32, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
          • (RantModeOn) I would sure like to think so too, and maybe my experience with one editor has left me a little singed around the edges, but as I said I do not know what the right view is on this matter. In the 2 cases where I played Santa I found my contributions dismissed as unacceptable due to format, the unsourced tags restored, and to put a cherry on the top I was called "lazy" for suggesting that someone more qualified than myself should integrate the quotations. Put simply I feel editors like myself ought to be able to offer citation sources without being criticized and called lazy if we feel the citation can be best fitted into the text by a subject expert. I guess I am trying to ask is there any support in existing policy or precedent to say being a "Santa" is OK? What ground do I stand on the next time my gift is rejected? If the ground is not there then why should I or others bother -- for the "fun" of having sand thrown in our faces? (RantModeOff) Low Sea 06:09, 1 April 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Low Sea (talk • contribs)
• As someone who spends most of their time at AfD, one of the things I see a lot is people not even bothering to put unsourced tags, instead just going straight to trying to get it deleted. Personally, I'd rather see this buzzard-like behavior from editors than simply throwing it right into the proverbial fire of AfD. One excellent example was the recent AfD nomination of Nomophobia. The nominator assaulted the article as a neologism and for its lack of sources, I went on ProQuest, pulled a few out of the list, put them into the article, and it was all good. AfD wasn't the place for this. I'd like to see something like this. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 18:31, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

• Having a "santa" process certainly seems, at first glance, to counter balance the "buzzard" process outlined by Low Sea. There are a few different benefits:
  • Division of labor. As mentioned, there are editors that are very good as sourcing and editors that are very good and writing/synthesizing. So, this would allow the tasks to fall toward those that have more appropriate skill sets/interests, thus maximizing their efficiency.
  • A yang to the yin of buzzard behavior (though the word "buzzard" works as a description in this analogy, I don't think it is a good word generally as it goes against WP:AGF).
  • Possible reduction in AfDs. The efforts that go into AfD are very valuable, but they are a big stick. Any article that could avoid AfD helps the encyclopedia by both its own improvement and by reducing the work load at AfD.

- Gwguffey (talk) 21:22, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it needs a new process - anybody is welcome to go ahead and add sources at any time. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup. --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:37, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

The proliferation of tags is cluttering Wikipedia - can we do anything about it? Can't fix them all!

It's starting to be my experience that I can barely go to an article without there being some tag on it, like neutrality, references, etc., and often there are many tags on one article. This clutter bothers me as a user since it reminds me of that often seen parody of news channels like MSNBC, CNN, etc., where you can barely see the newsreaders because of all the banner graphics. Part of it could be due to the dual nature of Wikipedia; the tags are not so bad when read as an editor, but annoying when read as a user, although the argument can be made that they alert the user to any possible deficiencies in the article. But the user is likely to come away skeptical that anything in Wikipedia is up to standards. Any ideas? I should say that while I enjoy the collaborative aspects of these tags, since engaging in discussion before making changes is good, I am often left with a bad taste thinking, whether rightly or wrongly, that the tag applying editors are just lazy and critical. I picture them zipping though Wikipedia applying their critiques, instead of just fixing the problem. Just my impression. Spalding (talk) 12:13, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Yup, the tags are generally a substitute for editing, rather than a spur to it. Lazy, careless and pointless. My evidence for this claim: I kill most of the ones I see - at least 100 now; just delete the damn thing and move on - and almost never does anybody complain or replace them. Obviously nobody cares, they're visual blight. (Check the dates on them, it's not uncommon to have a tag be 6-9-12 or more months old.)

So kill them, kill them, kill them. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 12:46, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Or, here's a thought, maybe actually edit the article to correct the problem the tag is addressing? Corvus cornix_talk 21:06, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm visualizing two editors, one going through Wikipedia, adding tags, thinking that's the best way to contribute to the project, and a second, going through Wikipedia, deleting tags, thinking that's a good way to improve Wikipedia. With neither, or course, actually adding to or improving the text that makes up the article.

Tags at the top that indicate an article has no sources are important - they alert readers that the article needs to be read with an even larger grain of salt. NPOV tags alert readers to the fact that an article may be a PR piece, an attack piece, or disputed territory. If the tags are valid, it seems somewhat clear (to me, at least) that they ought to stay in place. (It's also been my experience that NPOV tags without any related comment on the talk/discussion page should be removed; I then note in the edit summary about the lack of information, and sometimes a gratuitous "we're not mind-readers here").

Finally, I have no problem making an exception for "expand" tags - to me they are virtually useless (d'oh - a short article or section should be expanded!?!). And I'm no fan of tags on sections that indicate a lack of sources - a reader can see the lack of footnotes or embedded links. (By contrast, a tag at the top serves as a high-level, one-time warning of the problem). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:12, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

NPOV tags make sense because they are warnings to the reader - having them prominent is reasonable. All the rest (including the staggeringly obvious "this article doesn't have citations") are comments to editors, which means that they belong on the Talk page where they don't interfere with the use of wikipedia (remember, being used by readers is the point of wikipedia). So they're never valid.

And again, I point to the fact that the person who placed the tags almost never notices when they are removed - which shows that they don't work anyway. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:43, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I have a very similar problem: The articles I am thinking of were not created by myself, and I (because of my academic background that emphasizes appropriate citations and referencing) and others know that they are in great need of being improved. However, in one case I have tried to edit in the past: Smallthorne, every sentence in some sections have just been tagged with the "citation needed" tag, and in another article I have edited: Great Sankey, the same editor yesterday added a swathe of citation needed and "original research" tags whilst I was editing at one point (I had forgot to add the "inuse" template) to material I hadn't edited. Finally, the editor changed the name of one section and asked for it to be expanded to fit the greater scope it then had after the name change. Now, I have absolutely no quibble with the fact that the article was poorly referenced and needs improving, but the speed and extent to which the tags are added is disheartening to editors who currently are trying to improve them, and I think an alternative means of notifying deficiencies (say by a message on the talk page) would suffice (and, indeed, on Great Sankey there is such a message.) This particular editor is unlikely, given the actions on Great Sankey, to ignore just a simple removal of the tags. It is easy to add these tags, but it is time-consuming to fulfil the requests they place on interested editors, and I suggest that the people who excessively tag articles that have not been formally put forward for assessment for Grade B, Grade A GA or FA status might be better served by being less enthusiastic in tagging and more enthusiastic in finding the appropriate references themselves!  DDStretch  (talk) 10:53, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: Moratorium on some tags for articles

In another forum I have seen that 15,000 WP:Notability tags have been added in just the past 10 months. With tags having dates it is inevitable that sooner or later the backlog will cause articles to die without ever having been reviewed. In short, the flood of tags has altered the practical definition of waiting a reasonable amount of time. To that end I think it is time that we closed the floodgates to new tags until the backlog is cleaned up. This will not of course in any way prevent AfD related activities, with the proviso that age of existing tags needs to be a non-valid reason for deletion. See also a related discussion on this matter at the Village Pump[2]. Low Sea 16:30, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I put notability tags on articles because they fail to prove that the subject is notable. What a concept. I could just tag them for speedy deletion or AfD, but it's my HOPE when I put the tag on that somebody who knows something about the subject will go in and provide notability. If you don't like the tag, I'll just AfD everything I've been tagging instead. Corvus cornix_talk 17:21, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Or you could actually improve some articles instead of just tagging them. But then, that's a lot of work and doesn't boost the total of edits. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 18:36, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't care about my edit count. I have no idea what my edit count is, and I don't keep track of it. When I use a notable tag, in my case, at least, I'm basically saying, "This should probably be deleted for lack of notability, but I'm going to try to give somebody a chance to improve it." Fine, I'll just stop using the notable tag and start nominating all of these iffy articles for deletion. No problem. Corvus cornix_talk 20:21, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Why not try improving an article or two, instead of just tagging them? That's how wikipedia grows and gets better. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 12:15, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: Reductions and Additions Balance

• If you have read everything I just said above I now think I have a much better idea so forget I said "moratorium" and read on...

After reflection it seems to me the core problem is that it is easier to take away from than to add to WP. Far too many editors are "improving" WP by taking away and not adding back. To that end perhaps an automated counter could be implemented that tracks activities that remove content and activities that add content and would block editors from being excessive on the former. Adding tags that could trigger deletion (needs cite, unsourced, AfD, etc) would be considered reductions, and adding article text, citations, etc would be considered additions. I think perhaps an 80/20 rule would be good (for every 8 reductions you must provide 2 additions). Again, this idea needs work but what do you think in general? Low Sea 16:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

• • One addition to this idea is that if a reduction action results in an addition you would get your counter adjusted. Examples:

1. 1. User puts citation needed and citation becomes added by another .. user gets reductions counter adjusted by -1.
   2. User puts AfD and consensus is to delete. This added value so user gets reductions -1.

Low Sea 17:08, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

No way. Corvus cornix_talk 17:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

From a purely technical standpoint, that sounds like a very difficult and complicated proposal to implement. From a philosophical standpoint, the notion that adding length is always an improvement is a rather persistent and unfortunate perspective. Allow me to borrow from a comment I made a few months ago on a related issue:

Michelangelo was a hack.

Sinze whne was editting not a a valuble nd usefull contrbushun? A good editor ads valu by improoving teh clearity ad acesibility of our content. By the same measure, Michelangelo was a terrible contributor; he took tons of perfectly good marble and threw most of it away. Tsk. How wasteful. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:42, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

On many – not all, but many – articles, we have no shortage of individuals willing to contribute raw material. These articles are full of redundancy and duplication. They usually have bullet-point lists of trivia that dwarf the remainder of the text. References are missing or broken. Grammar is poor; organization is nonexistent. All too many editors seem unfamiliar with the use of basic structural elements like paragraph breaks.

Elegant, well-crafted, concise, thoroughly-referenced text is our ultimate goal. Some of our articles resemble deep rainforest—rich with content, but virtually impenetrable to anyone not willing to expend a great deal of time and effort. We strive instead to produce a botanical garden, wherein every element has its place. A vast but neat collection: organized, labelled, navigable—but with no less depth and breadth than the jungle. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:31, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

• • Agreed, new users need to create better articles, but my problem is it seems too many so called "editors" are little more than agressive "taggers" (interesting how that is a synonym for graffiti vandal). Real and helpful editors need to try and fix the problems rather than just point fingers at those who are still learning. WP will be greatly improved if editors find a reason to become mentors and help others to do it right instead of skipping thru fields of text dropping cow patties as saying "This will help WP to grow." :) Low Sea 18:11, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
    • Criticizing editors for adding maintenance tags seems a bit like killing the messenger. Hiding the problem doesn't solve it. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:51, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
      • I don't think this complicated scheme would work, but it probably couldn't be implemented anyway. As for criticizing the messengers, I agree that one shouldn't really do this, but if messengers arrived at your home with a message, and shouted down a conversation one was having with others, insisting on yelling in your ear at full volume, I think some criticism of their actions might result. This is the correct analogy in the cases I was involved in: no one denies that unverified material should, ideally, not be added at all, but if it is there, it should be rectified in some way. However, it is the manner by which they are flagged up which is the issue I have: tagging every single sentence in two sections of an article (which I had not edited, by the way) was not a particularly advisable way of helping ensure that people would be more likely to try to find appropriate sources, in my opinion. Section tagging and/or messages left on talk pages (which editors rather than casual readers would tend to see) might have been a better way. The production of edit conflicts when trying to address the concerns brought about by taggers immediately adding new tags to articles being actively edited in response to previous tagging was a related problem (sometimes in the section being edited, sometimes in different places.)  DDStretch  (talk) 19:05, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: BREAK 1 - Reductions and Additions Balance

I am open to any crazy ideas on how we "motivate" editors to be more than taggers? Right now that is the easiest (Dare I say "laziest"? No, I won't say that.) way to contribute but in and of itself is not actually constructive, only critical. I'll start with one below but please let's brainstorm this. Low Sea 19:41, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

• CRAZY IDEA #1: How about a "monthly budget" say 30 cite tags per month per user? After you run out of tags then you can go around using your time cleaning up articles by actually adding sources and such ... aka editing. Low Sea 19:57, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

• Comment - Disagree that "all others" are pointless for readers. A reader may well wish to be aware of matters that may affect how to interpret an article. Part of the cost of communal editorship is more disclosure of issues may be needed. Many tags come down to similar things though - sourcing scope/quality, neutrality and balance, writing quality, etc. Don't forget that our #1 source of editors and improvements is members of the public who read an article and realize they can edit it to improve it. We aren't putting up a static site; these tags warn readers and they also are the #1 way readers from the general public get to be aware of a given kind of fix, that there are improvements possible, and that it would be intriguing and helpful. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 09:43, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

• RIDICULOUSLY FOOLISH IDEA: Make a tag hide the rest of the article and ask the editor to please go and fix the problem instead. [/ridiculousness] ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 03:49, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

What's with the wikipedia acronyms?

I don't contribute to wikipedia that much, so I find it hard to understand discussions on talk pages with all these acronyms floating about. Like AfD and COI etc. When there's a link e.g. WP:COI and I put my cursor over the link, a yellow tag pops up that I assume is meant to be helpful, but it isn't. It just repeats the text already in the link. It would be a whole lot easier if I put the cursor over WP:COI and it said "WP: Conflict of Interest". At least then It would be easier to follow some discussions around here.203.206.9.131 (talk) 13:15, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

You might try this acronym: WP:POPUPS. It's a tool which gives you previews of Wikipedia articles in popup windows, including full titles. --B. Wolterding (talk) 13:30, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

You will have to create an account, though, because anonymous don't have monobook.js. It is not possible to update redirects like acronyms, since they change and page content are static (polling redirects would only hit site performance). -- ReyBrujo (talk) 19:58, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

RayBrujo's suggestion is best, but if (for some reason) you don't want to register and implement popups (via the Gadgets tab at "my preferences"), you might want to bookmark the page Wikipedia:List of shortcuts. Then all you need to do is search that page for the acronym (e.g., "COI" or "AfD") via Ctrl-F or whatever works on your browser. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:59, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Glossary may also be helpful for learning common acronyms. Dar-Ape 08:15, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Page size – affects dial-up users and overall quality of Wikipedia

Large articles are an inconvenience to dial-up users.

But this may be a "miner's canary" effect.

I complained on the talk page for the Earth article about the size of that page. In creating the table at the end of that discussion, it became apparent that the problem is much more widespread.

Articles that try to be all things to all people probably duplicate the efforts in other pages which are more focused in scope. This means that the effort of knowledgeable editors may be wasted by diffusion (editing multiple pages) or obscurity (some other Wikipedia article ranks higher in a search engine).

Articles that try to touch on every conceivable aspect of a topic create a haystack of information. Visitors are being inconvenienced by being forced to sift through a haystack to find a needle. The visitor sought a needle via a search engine. Wikipedia might give them a haystack: a page containing more than they ever wanted to know about the subject.

Visitors who want to print out an article may generate several pages of waste paper around the topic that was of interest to them. This is bad for the environment.

I will hesitate to put an article on my watch list if it tries to cover too many aspects of a topic. Only the last change appears in a watch list. If fifty-eleven topics are being addressed by the article, it is most likely that any alert on my watch list is going to be about something other than my narrow interest the topic. So why watch it?

Just because we can, doesn't mean that we must. Bits are cheap. We can put lots of them in one page.

Improvements in hardware have led to all manner of sloppiness in procedures and software. Things have "progressed" to the point where it now takes a ridiculously powerful machine to write a memo using a popular word processor. Ideally, machines are left to sort out the sloppiness in a way that is transparent to the user.

You could always cite the guideline Wikipedia:Article size. The problem is that while people may not strongly disagree with you, that doesn't mean anyone is going to actually do the work to cleanup up and/or spinoff parts of the article.

You might try asking the folks at the relevant WikiProject (see the top of the talk/discussion page) to help out; there may be a group of editors there who are willing, as a group, to take on such a challenge. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:48, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately it is all too easy to reach the 32K limit, and this cap can easily conflict with the FA requirement for comprehensiveness. Also I'm not at all sure that certain articles would benefit from being chopped up, especially when they are summary-style articles on a big topic. So it's important to reach a consensus before proceeding.—RJH (talk) 15:25, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't have an axe to grind concerning the Earth article in particular. It's just the one that I encountered while I was in a don't-overwhelm-me mood. I gather that reaching "featured article" status is an accomplishment. For someone to start throwing rocks at it has to be unwelcome. My apologies, but my observations give me pause in thinking about whether my contributions in a well-focused article might be overshadowed in a search engine by some mega-article. If my edits are so subject to obscurity by that means, my enthusiasm to help could be diminished.

Other articles might be a better focus for this discussion. But the Earth article is a reasonable focus for this discussion because it was one of the most popular 150 articles in February (out of 2,314,249 articles in English). The examples for good (as a featured article) and otherwise (as a diffusion of effort) influence many vistiors and editors.

From what I see in the "summary style" example, the long sections on each topic in the Earth article seem to be beyond the scope of a "summary style" article. The discussion about summary style also says:

• "To keep articles synchronized, editors should first add any new material to the appropriate places in the main article, and if appropriate, summarize the material in the summary article." The sizes of the sections in the Earth article may not encourage giving such priority to the main articles.
• "There is no need to repeat all the references for the subtopics in the main 'Summary style' article, unless they are required to support a specific point." That there are 126 footnotes in the Earth article seems at odds with this recommendation.

Again, I have no specific beef with the Earth article. Rather, I am put off by my perception that Wikipedia has become infected with the "modern" mindset where it is usual to "need" a multi-megabyte program file to accomplish the simplest of tasks, which could have been done in a few kilobytes under DOS. As a reader of Wikipedia, I am opposed to having my wet-ware (and my dial-up connection) burdened by haystacks of data that is totally unrelated to my search. -Ac44ck (talk) 23:10, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

But the human mechanism for sifting data has not kept pace with advances in computer hardware. Huge pages are nice repositories of information (which is a function of books), but they are less effective as accessible tools (which is a function of an encyclopedia article). -Ac44ck (talk) 22:59, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Note also that the 32k suggested limit used to apply to prose, and is from a time when referencing was much less extensive than today. Much of the data that affects dial-up is in the references and the images. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:05, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Because of inline references, it's often nearly impossible to measure the data in readable prose only. I think that the 10 printed pages of readable prose rule of thumb on WP:Article size is considerably more useful and ought to be emphasized a bit more. It's certainly not exact (different font sizes change things drastically, for example), but it's only a rule of thumb anyway. ASHill (talk) 16:11, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

schulz@michelangelo 1:37am [~] links -dump http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth | head -1097|wc
    1097    7956   58021

About 55 KB, but needs some manual work... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:40, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:SIZE is quite well-enforced. What few pages we have that are more than 100KB in size are almost all lists, and the rest are aggressively de-bloated on a regular basis. I don't think it's reasonable to insist that we should only have, say, a 4-page article on a subject as broad and important as Earth. There's a balance between having a comprehensive-but-not-excessively-detailed article on such broad subjects, versus turning overview articles into little more than indexes for other pages. If I read an article on Earth, I expect to learn a little bit about everything. Four paragraphs on each of the most important subtopics is hardly excessive.

Frankly, I think we get the balance just right, and your complaint surprises me.--Father Goose (talk) 04:52, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Just a thought: some articles, especially the very complex like geography, history, etc, can't be kept within the WP:SIZE limit. Splitting an article is not that helpful: a dial-up user would have to (fictional example) load a 32kb page, click on "History of Earth" link, load a 16kb page, click on "History of Life in Earth", then load a 20kb page, click on "History of life threatening dangers in Earth", etc, etc, etc. I think the English Wikipedia should focus on completeness. Maybe Simple English Wikipedia could be used to fulfill the requirement for dial-up users? -- ReyBrujo (talk) 05:38, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

To play devil's advocate, having to load each of the chunks like "History of Earth" then "History of Life in Earth" separately could actually improve the experience for users that are looking for specific pieces of the content and reduce overall server load. While more clicks would required, the ratio of relevant data downloaded to irrelevant data downloaded is much higher...they aren't having to download the entire content just to get the specific portion they desire. -- Gwguffey (talk) 14:16, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Traffic to Output Disconnect?

I was just skimming our Alexa traffic results and was surprised to find that 17% of visitors go to es.wikipedia.org, second only to en (53%), and far above fr (5%), de (3%), pl (3%), ja (3%), etc. Now right off the bat there isn't a direct connection between % of visitors and relative size of the projects, othewise the English Wikipedia would be much bigger than it currently is. But are there any explanations for why the Spanish project is still so much smaller than the other big ones, which themselves attract less than a 1/3 the number of visitors compared with es.wikipedia.org? I understand we had the early defection over the advertisment rumors, but that's been years. Just to note, I'm purposely ignoring the % of visitors by country, because those numbers could be skewed by second language speakers, expats, etc. Joshdboz (talk) 00:35, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

That's a very interesting question and I'm not going to pretend to have the answer to this, but I'll throw some thoughts at your question anyway in case it leads to something useful. I suppose Enciclopedia Libre probably doesn't have much to to with it. Other things to consider are that readership and contribution are not necessarily in high correlation: perhaps people don't contribute because they don't have the knowledge to do so (either technical or topical), or maybe online resources in Spanish are not as good comparatively as in some of the other languages you mentioned, so a larger proportion of internet knowledge seekers end up on Wikipedia, without significantly increasing the number of people who desire to edit. None of these particularly make sense, even to me, but perhaps I have sparked a thought that makes more sense? I look forward to more comments on this. Dar-Ape 08:36, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

What is Wiccan?

It currently redirects to Wicca but the article doesn't quite say what it is. Shouldn't the link be turned into a disambiguation page? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 01:47, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Wiccan is basically the adjective form of Wicca. A behavior that practicioners of Wicca follow would be called a Wiccan behavior. It can also be a noun used to describe such a person; a Wiccan practices Wicca (though some prefer other labels instead). Notice that the term is used in the second paragraph of the lead of the article. Dansiman (talk|Contribs) 05:05, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see. But shouldn't the link become a disambiguation page, like Indian, American, Brazilian, German, etc.? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 05:10, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

It could go to Wicca (disambiguation), which does contain a link to Wiccan (comics) as well as Wicca.--Father Goose (talk) 08:47, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll do that now. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 16:01, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Rubenstein Public Relations

I have had contact with this PR firm, one of the most influential and largest in the United States, since I worked with them at the Tribeca Film Festival last year (and will again this year). Like any good PR firm, they would like to work with Wikipedia. They realize they should not edit nor change articles to suit their clients interests, but they would like to know what they can do to contribute to Wikipedia. For instance, my work with them at TFF creates for us a lot of GFDL images of celebrities. They would like to forge a closer relationship with the Wikipedia community, and I have gone to a few lunches to discuss with them some ideas. A collaboration with PR agencies can create a wealth of opportunities for Wikipedians in the English-speaking world (such as attending film festivals), put us closer in touch with their clients' perspectives (which would help with some of our BLP issues), and improve the site as a whole. If anyone is interested in discussing the possibilities we might be able to have working with them, or have suggestions of things we would like, please leave it on my talk page. Dave --David Shankbone 17:06, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Systematic Portal to Wikipedia

Knowledge 2008: Encyclopedic Portal [3] is a systematic portal to Wikipedia. It is part of Knowledge 2008 [4]. Knowledge 2008 is an ongoing R&D project aimed at mapping human knowledge and facilitating efficient information searching. It is based on theoretical and empirical studies. Currently, the project is composed of six parts: Map of Human Knowledge [5], Portal to Human Knowledge [6], Smart Search [7], Encyclopedic Portal [8], Overview [9], and Academic Forum [10]. Please feel free to reflect. Chaim Zins, researcher & developer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.1.215.156 (talk) 11:38, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Is there a question here? Corvus cornix_talk 20:34, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

2007 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

In the article about the 2007 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament why does it list an asterisk by 3 teams and 2 asterisks by 1 team? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pookietoo (talk • contribs) 15:52, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

This is exactly the kind of question to post on the discussion/talk page of the article. The editors who really care about asterisks are far, far more likely to read that page than to read this one. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:50, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Plagiarism/GFDL violation?

I know that there is Wikipedia:GFDL Compliance but this is the first time I've ever heard of what appears to me to be a published book with some content violating the GFDL of wikipedia. In particular this part of this book, is awfully similar in at least one section to our article Islamic terrorism (at least as it was a while ago). To me, it looks like this part of it violates the GFDL. There may be more, I haven't looked into it. At the very least, it appears to be plagiarism since I don't think wikipedia is referenced (I don't have the book but I can't find anything from a brief look through and search via Google). It's possible we copied from the book, this was what I originally thought but the book was published in October 2007 Amazon, ours is from June 2007 (probably earlier, I didn't look that hard). More significantly perhaps, while some parts are missing, other parts have been there since at least February 2006. Of course, it's still possible that either it was contributed completely by the author of the book to wikipedia, the author got the permission of all the authors or the author came up with it independently. But the first two seem unlikely to me based on the fact that this appears to have been worked over quite a long period and it's a very busy article, meaning it likely has a large number of authors. The third thing seems unlikely to me since the wording is far to close, even ignoring the quotations. Of course the final possibility is we copyvioed from one or multiple sources, which were also used by the author but I have no idea on this since I haven't looked into it. Nil Einne (talk) 21:08, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

It's actually a bit more then I thought, I can't help wondering if you search for the right version you may find that part of it is a complete copy of our article. It's unfortunate the pages between the index and the part I'm looking at are missing, perhaps it does say 'the following is copied from wikipedia and is released under the GFDL'. But this seems unlikely to me since it switches from material that looks like it's copied from us to the next paragraph about being indebted to someone without any divider Nil Einne (talk) 21:18, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Censorship of article discussion pages

I have experienced censorship on a discussion page of an attempt to talk about a proposed addition to the article. The editor did this twice thought I tried to explain on the edit summary and it seemed self-explanatory to me. Rather than start a revert war, I called for a third party who pumped on exactly why was I pursuing this line of discussion? That is, as an editor, I had to "clear" my topic of discussion with the discussion page "owner." There was no assumption of good faith on my part, but in fact, the automatic presumption of good faith on the censor! Is there a policy related to the censorship of discussion pages? I've seen vandalism and scrawls of children reverted and was happy to see them go. My entry definitely did not fall into either category. We need a policy to refer to, or, in lieu of that, a WikiPolicy discussion page to continue the discussion with the editor and the third party to determine exactly who has the right to censor discussion articles and why. Thanks. Student7 (talk) 00:51, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

No one "owns" article discussion pages. Having said that, there are inappropriate topics. For example (and I've not looked at your edits), suppose you start a section about an internet rumor that X is (well, whatever - a cocaine abuser, a pedophile, you name it). You propose to discuss (on the article talk page) whether such rumors should be included in the article. But the discussion itself is a WP:BLP violation; you really have the burden of proof of coming up with at least one reliable source to even be able to legitimately start the discussion. (Google includes article talk pages in its search results, for example; even discussing something on a talk page gives it some credence.)

It's not clear what you did to get the opinion of "a third party", but you might ask for one more opinion at WP:EA. And if an experienced editor there tells you that you're out of line, please listen. (On the other hand, if you're not out of line, you'll probably get assistance.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:48, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

No, they (finally) agreed that my topic was reasonable, but I had no idea that discussion pages were so rigorously censored. I did have a legitimate reference which also got deleted second time around. I just had no idea you had to fight to discuss something. I have a few edits under my belt and watch a few pages. This is a brand new experience for me. So you have to get at least one person on your side before entering a new topic on the discussion page? Most discussion topics I've seen are questions from newbies trying to get information in order to understand the article. Articles are not usually written by "professionals in the field" but by people learning "on the fly." These newbie questions are not generally censored later. Up to half the discussion is usually people arguing with each other over changes. They are not usually censored later. So, Wikipedia is jake with discussion censorship. Who knew?

More importantly, you have to get "permission" to enter into the discussion on the page if you are a newbie? I hadn't realized that.

"Permission to speak, sir?" = my new motto! Student7 (talk) 02:51, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Your edit here appears to be the start of this issue; frankly, looking at the edit, it is nothing more than a statement, and has no indication that you intend to add anything to the article on that topic. Your edit summary here states that you intended to seek references, but the statement includes nothing about seeking out references. Your next edit to that page claims censorship, despite an explanation in the edit summary that removed the section here indicating that the section was discussion unrelated to improving the article, as interpreted by Mdsummermsw (talk · contribs). Calling this censorship is rather incorrect; it's a case of trying to avoid soapboxing on the talk page. I would suggest that you lay off the "censorship" claims and continue the discussion of developing the section collaboratively. Tony Fox (arf!) 03:35, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

The talk page of articles is intended solely for discussion into way to improve an article. They are specifically NOT intended for discussions of the subjects of articles, or any other such general discussion. Therefore if you want to discuss something other then ways to improve an article, then you will definitely have to fight to discuss it, and you will almost definitely lose. There are plenty of places on the internet you are entitled to discuss whatever you want, wikipedia isn't one of them. The only things we discuss on wikipedia on the whole, are ways to improve wikipedia. I agree with Tony above, you really should lay of these censorship claims and work on trying to improve the article Nil Einne (talk) 05:55, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

And I have to say, given the amount of OT crap in that talk page, I'm not surprised editors take a hard line Nil Einne (talk) 06:55, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

All discussion pages I am monitoring (800 or so) have most of the discussion wide of the mark. When they get too far off, other editors ask them to stop. I've never seen a post deleted before, except errant nonsense. As you suggest, I was their first "hit." Student7 (talk) 13:12, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I've deleted dozens (or more) of "wikchat" postings on article talk pages; I did one this morning, for example. (I'd do more if I spent more time editing articles, I'm sure.) Leaving such stuff in place simply encourages others to post the same sort of irrelevant material, clogging up article talk pages and setting off false alarms with those who monitor articles and related talk pages for changes. Per What Wikipedia is not, Wikipedia isn't a soapbox. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:15, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

In low traffic talk pages, it's fairly common that some leeway is allowed. However particularly on high traffic talk pages, off topic discussions are deleted all the time. If you check out something like Talk:Evolution or Talk:Global warming or simply some very high traffic ITN item (like a school shooting). As you can from this discussion, it's relatively uncontroversial (at least amongst those who understand policy in this regards) since our talk page policy is clear, and is there for a reason. I personally don't encourage it much, since it can just make things worse, it's often better to just allow someone to say something OT then to get into a long but often extremely silly 'censorship' argument with someone who doesn't understand policy and it does no real harm anyway (except on/relating to BLPs where off-topic posts should usually be deleted with a vengence). But I won't object when it occurs and it is definitely sometimes necessary and from the look of the Communism talk page, it was necessary there. Presuming yours was really the first post to be deleted, then all I can say is they had to start somewhere. There is a lot of OT discussion on both sides already there so I don't see anything one-sided about the behaviour there. Nil Einne (talk) 20:24, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm rather notorious around here for being a fervent advocate of free speech and opponent of elements in Wikipedia that like to censor things, but I think in this case the people opposing your talk-page comments have a point you should heed. The talk pages are for discussing the article, and how it can be improved, and not for making points of your own about the article subject. People are constantly, and correctly, removing comments from the talk pages of pop-star articles saying things like "Pop Star X rules!!!!!" or "Pop Star X sucks!!!!!", or "I'm Pop Star X's #1 fan!!!!!". Similarly, the talk page of "Communism" is not a place to make one's original-research theories about how communism can't possibly work, or alternatively to propound one's beliefs about how communism is the only reasonable way to organize a society. If you write such potentially contentious things in the discussion page, the burden is on you to explain clearly how the point is actually relevant to the article, such as by presenting reliable sources that have made such points and thus arguing that some mention of that point in the article would be justified. *Dan T.* (talk) 16:45, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Google providing its own article summaries

This is interesting. I just noticed this today. Searching Google for Marcus Aurelius, Wikipedia's article was at the top (naturally!), but instead of the usual page excerpt, the text beneath was, "Illustrated biography of the emperor in this online encyclopedia."

They do it for a few other sites as well ("Full text of the twelve books, from the MIT Internet Classics Archive."; "Offers a brief biography, drawn from three encyclopedias."): [11]. And they do it for some of our articles: "Open-source encyclopedia article provides personal, business and political information about the President, his policies, and public perceptions and ..." (George W. Bush), but not others (such as Microsoft).

How long has Google been doing this? Have I just not noticed?--Father Goose (talk) 08:58, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Accoridng to what I just heard on IRC, they've been doing it for a few months for a 2 reasons: It prevents vandalism of high-traffic articles showing up google searches, they're all high traffic articles, and in thier opinion it sounds less boring...--Phoenix-wiki 11:59, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

The information is from the Open Directory Project, I believe. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes and I'm pretty sure it's been going on for a lot longer then two months. How long I don't know but possibly a year or more... Nil Einne (talk) 20:11, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Today's DYK

Just a comment... Today's "Did you know" says... "...that Manitoba Provincial Road 373 became famous after a band from Norway House won an award for an album named after the highway?" No mention of who the band was, or what the award was. No mention in the article, either! Fortunately it has a link to a website that provides the answer. Even so, I found it strange that such a vague reference should be the highlight of the text of a DYK. Perhaps the article's editors were afraid to spell out the details, in case they were flagged as non-notable, but I think both band and award should be okay to talk about at Wikipedia, especially since the band received the award. Maybe this was a test to see if we're paying attention. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 01:16, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Battlestar Galactica spoiler

Who the FRAK posted the identity of the final cylon?!? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.210.157.45 (talk) 10:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I noticed that too! --Pdgator29 (talk) 16:43, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, WP:SPOILER... ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 03:59, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Biography subjects

Hello all. This is a gentle reminder that when an article subject apparently edits their own article, we need to approach the situation with care and tact. While it is perfectly possible that some people may be trying to whitewash their articles, we have an ever-increasing number of biography subjects who have tried to fix factual inaccuracies or attacks in their articles and been reverted and insulted. Yes, WP:COI and WP:AUTO are guidance, and it's fair to point people towards them, but it's also very important that we ensure we don't stand in the way of fixing genuine problems. My personal advice to article subjects is to register an account, identify via WP:OTRS (send mail to info-en (at) wikimedia (dot) org) to avoid impersonators, be open about who they are, engage on the discussion page, and not to edit the article directly other than to correct unambiguous errors of fact. Anybody who attacks or taunts an article subject on a talk page is liable to end up in some very deep trouble, so please restrain the impulse to bite, even if they are (as they may be) obnoxious. If an article subject is obnoxious, it may be the result of genuine hurt caused by issues with their article. If they keep being obnoxious, please keep being pleasant, and summon aid from the admin community via a polite and neutrally worded note ("X is expressing difficulties with his article, but the content is well-sourced and X is becoming agitated", that kind of thing). If we are very careful to be beyond reproach in how we handle article subjects when they arrive, it makes any subsequent dealings via OTRS and - in extreme cases - lawyers, very much simpler. Your co-operation would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Guy (Help!) 20:57, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Possible GFDL violation

Hi everybody ! I was searching on the web information about "Print Servers" and I found these two pages :

• Print Server, here
• Print Sever, on networkdictionary.com

Both texts are identical (except the second one has less formating). I didn't find any license information on networkdictionary.

I'm not sure who copied who, can anybody have a look ? Thanks. --Escherichia coli (talk) 11:01, 7 April 2008 (UTC) (if I am not on the correct page for that, let me know)

You might want to take a look at Wikipedia:Spotting possible copyright violations; it has advice at the bottom about where to report problems. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:39, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Brian Peppers

Please forgive my ignorance, but can anyone with more background on this explain why Brian Peppers is protected against re-creation? Sarah Lynne Nashif (talk) 21:51, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

There's a consensus not to have the article because of notability policies and biographies of living persons policies.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:53, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, OK. I suppose there is no way for the page to inform people of that? The thing is, normally when you try to create an article, it gives you the deletion summary for why it was deleted; but if it's protected against re-creation, apparently you don't see that. Sarah Lynne Nashif (talk) 22:02, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

That shouldn't be the case. You should see the logs. For a better sense of the the article as Wikipedia Drama of the Week (for several weeks), see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-02-26/Peppers pickle. - BanyanTree 09:13, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Signature Books

Are signature books allowed? Do people like them? Are they useless? Do people get annoyed by them? SwirlBoy39 22:20, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Please also respond on my talk page. SwirlBoy39 22:23, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Autograph books for some opinions on the matter. To the extent that they encourage users to add markup to their signatures so they take up several lines in the edit window, forcing other users to strain to find actual content when scanning the window, I think they are a detriment to communication. - BanyanTree 09:04, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Request from a new Wikipedian

Hello Wikipedians! Please consider taking a few moments to respond to my research study on the past/present/future of Wikipedia. My thesis is based on Jimmy Wales' assertion that Wikipedia is a work in progress which continues to improve. I am comparing this statement to the theory that Wikipedia is a utopian idea that is bound to fail in the long run. I would be very grateful if you would visit my User page for more details. And please, spread the word. Many thanks. -AMQ815(talk) AMQ815 22:47, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Googles summary for Wikipedia

The little blurb below the Google result for the entire of wikipedia reads:

The biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. Over 7 million articles in over 200 languages, and still growing.

How can this be updated to be correct (wikipedia now has over 10 million articles)? I know it can be done. -Icewedge (talk) 05:30, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

http://www.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/apply.cgi?where=Computers%2FSoftware%2FGroupware%2FWiki%2FTopics apparently.--Father Goose (talk) 08:47, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Groupware/Wiki/Topics/ is the page with the actual listing. I've clicked the "update listing" link on that page, and submitted a correction. -- John Broughton (♫♫)

Documentary on Wikipedia and Web 2.0

Hi, I just wanted to share this with you: There was a very good documentary on dutch television recently called "Wiki's Truth" (orig. Wiki's Waarheid) in which the pros and cons of Wikipedia as well as other Web 2.0 websites are discussed by Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger, Andrew Keen (writer), Charles Leadbeater (writer) and Robert McHenry (former editor-in-chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica). It's a dutch documentary, but in fact only the voice-over is in dutch, so all of the very interesting interviews, etc. are in English. If you want to watch it press this link (this will start the video right away). Freestyle 11:31, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

There's a version on youtube with an English voice-over here. 212.123.186.64 (talk) 13:01, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh noes!

OMG! I read that Jimbo Wales used his credit card to steal all of Wikipedia's money and then beat up his Canadian reporter girlfriend. If he goes to jail, what happens to Wikipedia!? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.15.162.88 (talk) 21:03, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

People with a real sense of humor start posting? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:08, 9 April 2008 (UTC)