Community bulletin board

2010-11-08 Fundraiser: November 15 launch, emphasis on banner optimization and community involvement News and notes: Second Wikipedian in Residence, {{citation needed}} for sanity In the news: WP prose praised, Public Policy update, education debate, WP documentary WikiProject report: WikiProject California Features and admins: No, not science fiction—real science Election report: The countdown begins Arbitration report: No cases this week; Date delinking sanctions reduced for one party; History ban extended Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News About·Archives·Single-page·Newsroom·Suggestions Centralized discussion A proposal to create a user right allowing non-admins to edit fully protected pages Follow-up to October's straw poll on creating a RevisionDelete noticeboard. Wide-ranging Discussion on adminship and RFA. A proposed guideline/policy to summarize the key norms and expectations about the community itself for the benefit of newcomers. A proposal to make the link to the general disclaimer more prominent in the standard Vector skin by putting it into the sidebar. We're discussing the backlog of unsourced biographies of living persons and the progress made in clearing it. Straw poll: should lifespans be expressed in years alone at the top of a bio article, where the days/months appear in the body of the article and are not significant per se. RfC: Follow-up to various Sept+Oct RFCs on handling of 'meatpuppetry' in policy. Includes proposal to cover external canvassing with internal canvassing on one page and promote latter to policy. RfC: Proposal to change the icons used for user talk deletion notices. Talk page proposal to refine the WP:V policy section describing best practices in using scholarly and media sources.

Notices

• The Public Policy Initiative is recruiting Wikipedians for an assessment testing team, to help test out our trial assessment system (a more detailed rating system compatible with the standard Wikipedia 1.0 system). Team members will test the consistency of the metric and look for discrepancies between Wikipedian assessment and subject matter expert assessment. This work will play a crucial role in the evaluation of the public policy project and could lead to valuable insight as the foundation and community begin to work toward improving assessment within Wikipedia. Please check out the project assessment page or contact ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) for more info.

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 improve 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: List of compilation albums by The Fall, The Fourth Estate (painting), Trevor Averre-Beeson, Stacey B. Day, Kipley J. Lytel, More...
• Copyedit: The Ferro Alloys Corporation Limited, Dang Phuong Nam, Milton Margai College of Education and Technology, Montería, VKV Dibrugarh, More...
• Update: Vodka war, Washington and Lee Mock Convention, Rikbaktsa, Tama-chan, The Wedge (Australian TV series), More...
• Style: The Club Dumas, British television science fiction, Mike Eman, Bubble dance, Peter Ndlovu, More...
• Translation: Prekmurians, Eliseyev Emporium (Saint Petersburg), Church of Our Lady the Merciful, 2 Rossi Street, Museum of Optical Technologies, More...
• Cleanup: Dassault Mirage 5, Masculinity, Nanakramguda temple, Slingsby T.25 Gull 4, Basile Boli, More...
• Verify: Alfred Kinsey, Ruhollah Khomeini, Theme (literature), Max, North Dakota, Ravi Zacharias, More...
• Neutrality: List of Chinese Americans, Hukbalahap, Port-du-Salut cheese, Bear Mountain (resort), United States Railroad Administration, More...
• Original research: Vijay Kumar Mishra, Berkeley Barb, Sherlock Holmes speculation, Trauma team, Height discrimination, More...
• Merge: Mr. Happy and the Wizard, Little Miss Splendid and the Princess, Gensing, East Sussex, Textile processing, Taft family, More...
• Split: Haratin, General Services Administration, Fleet vehicle, Geology of North America, Tabloid, More...
• Stubs: Canton of Croisilles, The Big Hits Big Four, Remi Van den Broeck, Piz Zupò, University of Northern California, Lorenzo Patiño School of Law, More...
• Expand: Wendy Winstead, Interstate 595 (Florida), Jaime Alejandro Bravo Jeffery, Fives, Corporation for Enterprise Development, More...
• Article Incubator: Make My Heart, Fandangle, Overdrive (band), Dhoom 3, Vijai S. Shankar, More...
• Article deletion discussions: People, Albums and songs, Sports, Actors and filmmakers, Television, More...
• Article Requests: Mayo scissors, Flora of Argentina, Parliament of Chechnya, Chambeshi Bridge, Joseph Bosisto, More...
• Image Requests: Leaf-nosed Lizard, Qatar National Bank Tower, DNA origami, Nanga (instrument), Jig (jewellery), More...
• Mediation Cabal: Chiropractic, Genetic algorithms, Eulsa Treaty, History of ancient Israel and Judah, Senkaku Islands, Premakeerthi de Alwis, Ganas, 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

Wikipedia is part of the Wikimedia family. See Wikipedia's sister projects.

To explore other wikis, see Wikipedia's List of wikis and Wikimedia's InterWiki map.

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