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2010-05-24 News and notes: New puzzle globe, feature for admins, Israel's "Wikipedia Bill", unsourced bios declining WikiProject report: WikiProject Saints Features and admins: Approved this week Arbitration report: The Report on Lengthy Litigation About·Archives·Single-page·Newsroom·Suggestions

Notices

• Please comment on the new strategic priorities.

Project pages seeking contributors

Discussions

Discussions in the following areas have requested wider attention:

Help out

Wikipedia is, by number of articles, the largest encyclopedia ever to exist. However, many articles are stubs, or otherwise need attention. If you like, go ahead, be bold, and jump right in. If you are not ready to fly solo, you can participate in a Collaboration.

Things to do

General tasks

• Patrol new pages and help improving new articles.
• Category:Wikipedia backlog always needs attention.
• Assess articles by quality or by importance – pick a topic of interest and grade according to that WikiProject's scale. (See links from article talk pages.)
• Adopt a basic topic list (Outline), to help develop and maintain a table of contents to a major subject on Wikipedia.
• Let SuggestBot suggest pages for you to improve.
• Update pages with old (ref or note template) citations to the new references format.
• Do you have a historical perspective? Articles slanted towards recent events might need to be looked at with a new eye.

Commenting

• Respond to a request for comment, Wikiquette alert or provide a third opinion.
• Give a requested editor review.
• Peer review or give feedback on some articles.
• Comment at Featured portal candidates and Portals at peer review.
• Make recommendations on articles listed at Good article reassessment.
• Respond to the Reward board or Bounty board.

Special skills

• Can you draw or take pictures? Make a requested image.
• Are you good at photo editing? Then try cleaning up some of these images, or helping out at the Graphics Lab.
• Can you use GIS tools? Help make requested maps.
• Can you communicate in another language? There are articles that need translation into English. You can also proofread a translation.

Fix-up projects

Open tasks

Here are some tasks you can do:

• Wikify: Schaffner Holding, IBM Master Inventor, Heart is..., Chak No.2NB, Avon Lake City Schools, More...
• Copyedit: Waitrose, Anant Laxman Kanhere, Global Policy Institute, St. Stephen's Church (Kombuthurai), Mind Opener, More...
• Update: Joanne W. Bowie, Eelam War IV, TuVisión, Restricted Service Licence, Arthur Guinness, More...
• Style: So Dear to My Heart, The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat, Boiling water reactor, Allal, Audio bit depth, More...
• Translation: Kuwait Television, Sokodé, Basketball in Greece, Transport in São Paulo, 33rd Army (Soviet Union), More...
• Cleanup: Kiyoshi Ikenaga, The Diamond Head Game, The Wooster Group, Hiroko Ōta, KFAC (defunct), More...
• Verify: CASA CN-235, Westminster, Massachusetts, Surrendered Enemy Personnel, Space elevator economics, Spizaetus, More...
• Neutrality: Red Terror (Spain), Monte Vista High School (Danville, California), Commission on Presidential Debates, Hekhsher Tzedek, Sanatan Singh Sabha, More...
• Original research: Effeminacy, Fateless (film), The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution, John G. Wilson, B. R. Ambedkar, More...
• Merge: First-Year Student Orientation, Phantom Entertainment, Phantom Lapboard, The Phantom (game system), Anonymous peer review, More...
• Split: Lone Wolf and Cub, The Color of Money, Prometheus, Closed-circuit television, Incantation, More...
• Stubs: Mahmoud Abdel Moghny, Viktor Pavičić, John Kramer (darts player), Rachel Grady, Amsale Aberra, More...
• Expand: Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park, Allied submarines in the Pacific War, Frank Piasecki, Peter Pohl, Y.E.S. 93.3FM, More...
• Article deletion discussions: Businesspeople, Allen Goodman, Hawaii Vice, Novotel Nathan Road Kowloon Hong Kong, Relocate America, More...
• Article Requests: Geology of Singapore, Geronima Pecson, Egg khesh, Sizakele Zuma, List of lakes in Brazil, More...
• Image Requests: Kampira Falls Frog, Quaker Tapestry, Octavin, Knife-edge effect, Mount Ingino Christmas Tree, More...
• Mediation Cabal: French phonology, 9/11 conspiracy theories, Murder of Meredith Kercher, Jat people, Israel and the apartheid analogy, London Victory Parade of 1946, Košice, Network TwentyOne, Communist Party of India (Marxist), East Africa, or Help mediate an open case!

Not sure where to report a certain type of problem with article content? If it exists, it is probably listed at Wikipedia:Maintenance.

Purge

Collaborations

To improve the quality of articles that are short or lacking in detail, Wikipedia's community organizes collaborations to expand articles.

Collaborations by topic

Other collaborations

Active improvement teams

• Countering systemic bias
• Version 1.0
• Spam fighting team
• Categorization projects
• Spotlight

WikiProjects

WikiProjects are ongoing team efforts to improve articles having to do with a particular subject, and to manage the logistics of that topic. Hundreds exist—examine the master list to find one that interests you.

Language translation

Wikipedia is not just in English. Versions exist in many different languages. To fill in some of the English Wikipedia's gaps, we translate articles from other languages into English. You can view a list of articles that need translation from any language, or, in a few cases, by only one language (this is only available for the more popular languages).

Guidelines, help & resources

Wikipedia has many help pages, policies, and departments. Here are some of the most general. For a comprehensive list of Wikipedia's departments, see the Wikipedia department directory.

Help

• Wikipedia help contents – Browse help pages
• Help desk
• Where to ask questions

Editing

• The Manual of Style guidelines and tutorial
• How to edit a page
• Contributing
• How to write a great article
• A list of free online resources for research
• A list of template messages
• What special pages are
• Tools for editing
• Request newspapers or magazines

Policies and guidelines

Wikipedia has many established policies, guidelines, conventions, and traditions. This is a very brief sampling of some of the most important; for more information, see the main policies and guidelines page. Policies and guidelines apply to both articles and how to work with fellow editors. For easy access, the shortcuts to the pages are also listed.

Article standards

Working with others

Resources

New user information

Introduction · Sandbox · Help · Adoption · What Wikipedia is not · Glossary · Account benefits · Planning school assignments · New contributors' help page · FAQ

Ways to communicate

Contact (overview) · Discussion pages · Mailing lists · IRC chat · Meetups · User pages · Requests for comment · Public watchlists · Regional notice boards · Administrators' noticeboard · Requests for article feedback · Local Embassy

Community support groups and programs

Welcoming committee · Editor assistance · Wiki-adoption · Birthday Committee · Harmonious editing club · Wikipedia awards program · Dept. of Fun · Missing encyclopedic articles

Common procedures

Featured content · Good articles · Requests for feedback · Deleting a page (full policy) · Moving a page (naming policies) · Protecting a page (full policy) · Reverting a page · Administrator nominations (summaries) · Category-based access

How to resolve conflicts

Stay cool! · Be nice to newcomers · Alert others · Dispute resolution · Arbitration policy

Community information

About Wikipedia · Goings-on · About Wikimedia · Wikipedians · Wiki-adoption · Donations · Merchandise · Administrators · Babel · Culture · Games · Humor · Mottoes

Related communities

Tip of the day

Being the gateway to the encyclopedia - The Main Page is our most frequently visited page. The main page is always protected and can only be edited by admins, but most of the content is piped in each day from various departments, via templates. Anybody can edit the pages that feed into the templates (up until the day they are displayed on the Main Page), and we encourage you to help.

Just remember to follow the guidelines, as the procedure for each template works differently.

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