Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals pages, or – for assistance – at the help desk, rather than here, if at all appropriate. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Wikipedia contracts with Comic-Con

I would like to know about the contracts Wikipedia has with Comic-Con. I realised that in articles about stars almost always pictures of them at Comic-Con are prefered (even if there are much better ones), mostly with the logo visible and a link to Comic-Con (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Lawrence). So there are thousands of links from Wikipedia articles to Comic-Con (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/San_Diego_Comic-Con_International). So obviously there is some kind of "collaboration" between Wikipedia and Comic-Con, but I couldn't find anything about it. --188.101.3.198 (talk) 11:39, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia has no link to Comic-Con. Wikipedia requires that pictures are properly licensed, and that all but requires that the photographer who takes the picture agrees to release said pictures under the correct license (CC-BY-SA and GFDL). That means that a volunteer needs to take a photograph of someone (usually in a public place) and release it. What often happens is one volunteer photographer attends a major event, like Comic Con, but also like SXSW or major movie premiers, or things like that, and takes a bunch of pictures of a bunch of different people. If you find multiple pictures of people at Comic Con, that is only because it's a convenient public place to take pictures of people. That's all. Also, the fact that other articles link to Comic Con doesn't mean anything. While I count about 1800 other articles that link to Comic Con, I also find that about 11,000 articles link to Roman Empire. That is not evidence that the Roman Empire has contracted with Wikipedia. --Jayron32 12:31, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

WHAT?!? Wikipedia doesn't have a contract agreement with the Roman Empire?!? There goes my aspiration of rising to the rank of Caesar... — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 12:56, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

You can't seriously compare Comic-Con to Roman Empire, the latter is known to everybody. And it can't be just coincidence that when a lot of pictures of a person exist (e.g. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jennifer_Lawrence) in most cases the ones at Comic-Con are chosen for prominent placement. And in cases like Jennifer_Lawrence where even a cropped version without logo exists (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jennifer_Lawrence_by_Gage_Skidmore_%28cropped%29.jpg) there is still the version with Comic-Con logo used. I looked at quite a lot of Wikipedia articles in recent time, and it is much too obvious that Comic-Con pictures are prefered to others at Wikimedia Commons. --188.101.3.198 (talk) 12:59, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons is a separate entity from the English Wikipedia in most respects; though they share the same parent organization (the Wikimedia Foundation), the two groups have different goals and policies. That said, Commons will accept just about any photograph that is uploaded with an appropriate license. (Whether that image is useful or not, and whether that image is similar to another on Commons or not.) There is very little pruning of their collection. If there are lots of Comic-Con photographs hosted on Commons, it is because there were lots of photographers at Comic-Con who uploaded their work (or a few photographers who took lots of photos!)—not because of some special arrangement with Commons. (And photos taken at Comic-Con tend to have Comic-Con logos in them because, well, Comic-Con knows their marketing and branding, and puts logos everywhere.)

Looking specifically at the Jennifer Lawrence photo you've linked, it's technically problematic. It was obviously a relatively difficult shot for the photographer to get at all (long distance, iffy lighting), as the original image used a very long lens, stopped wide open, at high ISO. It's very obvious that the focus is just a touch off if you look closely at the original image. Cropping the image magnifies the defects, and poor Jennifer's face becomes conspicuously unsharp. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:37, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Jayron32 is right. Though there are a number of Comic-Con photos on Wikipedia, it doesn't mean we have any type of agreement with them. All Wikipedia content is added by volunteers. Comic-Con is just a convenient public gathering to snap photos of celebrities. Contrast it with the Oscars Red Carpet, where only professional press is allowed. — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 13:03, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

I didn't say that Wikimedia Commons only has pictures of Comic-Con, but that of the sometimes very many pictures that Wikimedia Commons has of a person in most cases the ones at Comic-Con are chosen. --188.101.3.198 (talk) 13:07, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

From what I've seen of most major cons (or hell, any place where you can take pics of celebs, like red carpet events), the organizers usually put the celebs in front of a backdrop that features at least their logo, if not their sponsors, repeated enough that you're going to get a pic of the logo somewhere in the photo. Leaving the Comic-Con logo in there also provides some reasonable evidence that the photo was indeed taken there. Ian.thomson (talk) 13:25, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Are the other images better? Looking at the alternatives for Jennifer Lawrence, most of the other images are relatively poor with her looking away from the camera, poor lighting, blurry, or lots of people in the background. File:Jennifer Lawrence at the 83rd Academy Awards crop.jpg is probably the only other really good one (and is the 2nd image in the article), but it's 2 years older than the Comic-Con image. "Chosen" simply means that someone decided to put the image in the article. There is often no discussion, people are just being bold because they think a particular image is better. Mr.Z-man 14:01, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

In this case there actually was discussion at Talk:Jennifer Lawrence#Which image to use? PrimeHunter (talk) 16:28, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

It is one of 224 photos from the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con uploaded by the same user in two days.[1] I guess a lot of them have found their way to Wikipedia articles. And commons:User:Gage indicates the user has been attending and taking photos since 2007. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:43, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

The most likely explanation is that a good photographer and Wikipedia volunteer was in the right time and place. Any other con, or event, could have had the same happen - if not for the fact that there are very few people taking photos for Wikipedia in the first place. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:10, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

If you look a bit wider you will find a lot of our actor/TV personality/celebrity pics are taken at conventions. Its on of the few times that such people and geeks who care about free content licenses are in the same place at the same time. If they are giving talks talks or the like they tend to be pretty stationary which makes their easier to photograph. Comic con just happens to be convention must likely to get A-list speakers so is the one you are most likely to run across pics from.©Geni (talk) 17:12, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Capitalization of theorem titles

I realize most page titles just capitalize the first letter, but I just notices pages for mathematical theorems, lemmas, etc. seem to follow this pattern also. See: Schreier refinement theorem, Zassenhaus lemma. These are names of significant theorems, etc. and each word should be capitalized. What's the best way to fix this? --Yoda of Borg (talk) 02:19, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

My opinion is that they shouldn't be, especially for theorems that do not include the names of any people or places. For example, we do not usually capitalize divergence theorem or fundamental theorem of calculus when referring to them in-line.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:05, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

WP:NAMECAPS and (later on the same page) Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Science and mathematics seem very clear on this to me. According to them, we should only capitalize the person's name, not the other parts of the title. There are some exceptions; for instance "abelian" is never capitalized despite being a form of a person's name. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:09, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

What David said. I'm not aware of any consensus on whether "noetherian" is capitalized or not (ditto for artinian, etc). -- Taku (talk) 12:46, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

We've been following this convention for more than a decade and this probably involves more than five-thousand titles. It is true that many writers in contexts other than Wikipedia use capitals in things like Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, etc. Maybe some day we'll have software with which we could seek out and suitably edit five-thousand articles whose titles follow this convention and a hundred-thousand occurrences in the bodies of other articles, including links to them. Michael Hardy (talk) 14:51, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

David, thanks for the link to the manual. I still don't know how to find all that stuff and likely won't ever have the time to be as fluent in Wiki as I'd like. I don't however, believe it's as clear as you claim. It calls out concepts, and we don't capitalize concepts like continuous, connected, and isomorphic. Even when used as nouns such as continuity or continuous function, these are common nouns. Names of theorems reference unique entities and are proper nouns. Disagreeing with Jasper, I would capitalize Mean Value Theorem, First Isomorphism Theorem, etc. inline. --Yoda of Borg (✉) 02:25, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

You're free to an opinion on how it should be done, of course, but here the convention is to not capitalize any of those things. Changing that would be a lot of work, as Michael Hardy points out above, and I don't see a lot of benefit to be gained by it. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:59, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

@Yoda of Borg: (Wikipedia:Don't abbreviate Wikipedia as Wiki) Not really. My calculus textbooks do not concur (none of any of the ones I have), and nor does my physics textbook. My reasoning would be that the name of the theorem is a modifier of the common noun "theorem"; you would not capitalize "Fred's Car" but instead write "Fred's car". Likewise, you do not usually capitalize concepts in general, for example, "physics" is not capitalized in-line as a common noun.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:15, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

@Jasper Deng: <-- 1. Neat way to call someone's attention to an updated conversation. Do I have to type out the {{ping|name}} tag every time, or is there a shorthand tag that will get converted on the page save the way ~~~~ gets converted to the signature?

2. I wasn't abbreviating Wikipedia. I was simultaneously referring to the Wiki markup language, and all Wikis (including Wikipedia) that use the Wikimedia Foundation's markup language.

3. My experience is the opposite. I rarely find named theorems, lemmas, etc. that don't use title case. In fact I would say Wikipedia is one of the few exceptions to the convention. I searched Google for "the fundamental theorem of calculus". On the first page, Wikipedia and Khan's Academy were the only ones that used sentence case, the other 8 (including 4 universities and Wolfram MathWorld) used title case. As a conceptual title (not the formal statement, the title at the top) you would write "Theorem: Integrals and derivatives undo each other", but as a named theorem you would write "The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus". True you wouldn't capitalize "Fred's car", but if his car were named "the great flying wombat", you would write it "The Great Flying Wombat". As I said in my 25 April post above, the name of a theorem is not the same as a concept, and thus Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Science and mathematics doesn't adequately address the topic at hand. I'm pragmatic enough to see that those who care enough to chime in, wouldn't support a proposal to clarify and fix the policy, so I'm willing to move on. --Yoda of Borg (✉) 05:44, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

One remark I will make. Boxes containing statements of the theorem itself are an exception in my textbooks. It is when we refer to the theorems that they become lower-case. My books are introductory college-level books on multivariable calculus and physics, if it helps. By the way, Wolfram Mathworld isn't actually a reliable source if I recall correctly, as assessed by editors. You might want to bring this up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics (oh, {{ping}} is necessary every time to give a notification) (you seem to love capitalizing, to the point of capitalizing the common noun wiki!).--Jasper Deng (talk) 05:54, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Technically, it isn't necessary to use {{ping}} to trigger a notification, any link to a user's page will do. For example: Jasper Deng. The ping template and related templates are just convenient. Novusuna ^talk 06:01, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

WP mentioned today on BBC Radio 4

On tonight's The World Tonight they were talking to someone from the Liverpool Echo about this:Shocking Hillsborough insults added on Wikipedia from Government computers. Fairly unremarkable vandalism by Wikipedia's standards, so could perhaps have done with someone familiar with WP that and how easily it's dealt with. Don't know if it's of wider interest or will see any more press coverage (the Echo is a local paper though well known nationally).--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 22:30, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Discussed in more detail at Talk:Hillsborough disaster, and more specifically at the subsection Talk:Hillsborough disaster#Any other pages involved?. --Arxiloxos (talk) 17:00, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Almost to 4.5 million articles

We're approaching a milestone: 4,500,000 (4 and a half million) articles on the English Wikipedia. The current count is at 4,499,966. It shouldn't be long, maybe two hours... --Jakob (talk) (Please comment on my editor review.) 03:00, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Here you go. I am a bit bored (and created it), but that was 4.5 million by my count. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:50, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Cool! --Jakob (talk) (Please comment on my editor review.) 11:45, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Think of all the trees we've saved. bd2412 T 16:49, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations to us! :-) Sumana Harihareswara 22:17, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wiki-Hell

This has been sitting in my userspace for a while, and since it already had a WP redirect, I figured I'd just make it official. It is now a Wikipedia-space essay. While I was at it, I did the same with Wikipedia:Neoplorgismanteau. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:33, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Very nice! Johnuniq (talk) 00:17, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Account with blank password

I just found an account with a blank pasword. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-02-06/Password security. Is there anything that needs to be done? Any way the account has 0 contribs. -- Fauzan^{✆ talk} _{✉ email} 11:32, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Report it to the Administrators' noticeboard. It's better that we shut these down then allow them to be used for spam, vandalism or worse. — SMUconlaw (talk) 12:31, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

OK, so I emailed Callanec. -- Fauzan^{✆ talk} _{✉ email} 18:25, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Page rename request, how long does it take

How long after I've requested (on its Talk page) that a page be renamed, when it's obvious from the content that it does need renaming, does someone typically come along and fix it? I don't know whether I'm being too impatient. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SpringFwd (talk • contribs) 17:36, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

If the request is only on the talk page and entered as a text request without the template, it will depend on how trafficked the article, is and may take weeks. If it is listed at Wikipedia:Requested moves, which should be automatic if using the template, it should only take a few days, especially if non-controversial.--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:33, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Based on your contributions, you must be talking about Climate Action Plan. I moved it to Boulder Climate Action Plan and converted the original to a DAB page about climate action plans that have articles. GB fan 18:44, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Talk pages refresh

Is this how the talkpges on wikipedia are going to be in the future? -- Fauzan^{✆ talk} _{✉ email} 18:24, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

No. That's mw:LiquidThreads, which is not capable of handling discussions on something the size of the English Wikipedia. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:34, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Anyway, I read somewhere on wikipedia that the custom signatures would be disabled, and a new talkpage format would be implemented... yes got it, Wikipedia:Flow. -- Fauzan^{✆ talk} _{✉ email} 04:23, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

@Fauzan: Yup, that's the ongoing project. It's still in fairly early stages, and has a large feature planning list, so what you see now at the various early-adopter locations is not the final product by any means. More feedback is appreciated, over the short and long terms. You can test it at Wikipedia talk:Flow/Developer test page or mw:Talk:Sandbox (as always, MediaWiki has a one-week-newer version). The busiest location using it for non-Flow-related purposes, is currently mw:Talk:Beta Features/Hovercards. There's a large overhaul to the front-end coming soon, and they'll be looking for more wikiprojects to volunteer to help trial the software, once that is live. HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:03, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Fauzan^{✆ talk} _{✉ email} 23:57, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Invitation to discussion

Please join the merge discussion in Talk:Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople. Thanks. --Why should I have a User Name? (talk) 20:29, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Dataset of popular stub-class articles

I have gathered a dataset of 6,140 stubs that in February were more popular than the average Featured Article and posted it on User:Nettrom/datasets/March 2014 popular stubs. The articles come from the March 4, 2014 dump and were identified using a combination of computer classification and article assessments, as well as viewership data from Wiki ViewStats. A more detailed description of our method is found at the bottom of the dataset page.

Would love to know what others think of this dataset. Is it useful? Are these articles you'd like to work on improving? Given their popularity and current low quality, they should be prime candidates for improvement, right? Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 20:30, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

I'll be leaving #3 on the list, Ted Thorpe (footballer born 1910), which supposedly had 180K views in 3 days in February, but has now had 43 views over the last 30 days. #1 .45 (film) had 384K views in Feb, over a week, but only 2k in the last 30 days, and #2 Kong (dog toy) 300K and 1K. #4, Stratton Oakmont is the subject behind The Wolf of Wall Street with views now falling off. At the top of the list, all you are doing is capturing things that are topical (or something). None of the top 10 except Stratton Oakmont would even be on the list if you repeated the excercise now - # 11 Nærøyfjord is also a flash in the pan, but would make it in low down. The Sochi Winter Olympics will have hugely distorted the list - right at the bottom of the list, Eric Lesser got an "average" 128 views per day (actually very concentrated round his win); now he's getting that a month. If you repeated the excercise for say May, and combined or averaged the views, more useful data would result. None of #1,2, & 4 are actually stubs, but we know that a huge proportion of "stubs" have out of date ratings. Some articles, like Chelsea bun, are short and might be called stubs (would be by most graders), but actually give you as much as you are likely to need, and should be a "C" in my book. Pappardelle, consistently over 200 views per day, probably does deserve a bit more more than 2 lines, likewise Salad Niçoise. Food dishes are common on the list - I suspect many if not most hits want recipes. Herbaceous plant does the job, and is not a stub, but could be longer. Most graders look purely at the length & number of references, disregarding totally the scale of the topic, which is not what they are supposed to do. Not that I want to discourage you, of course. Lists sorted by project would be the most helpful. Johnbod (talk) 21:38, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

@Johnbod: Thank you so much for such detailed feedback, I appreciate it tremendously! You bring up a good point with the issue of popularity changing so much, I was worried about that but at the same time hoping that averaging over the whole month would mitigate the issue somewhat. Given that some topics see so much popularity over a short time period I will look into ways of measuring and reporting that in a way that can be more helpful.

I am also thankful for your feedback on to what extent the stub rating is fitting for the article. A lot of my research is about quality in communities like Wikipedia. While I know that there's often a lag in article assessments being updated, the issue of what rating is right for an article is also important. Is an article really a stub if it covers the subject well although it is short? One of my current takes on the situation is a variation of Zawinski's law of software envelopment : "Every Wikipedia article will expand until it is capable of becoming a Good Article. Those which cannot will be merged into those who can." I've already seen that there's a lot of confusion between some of the middle-quality classes (Start, C, B), not sure if that's good or if something can be done about it, but I'll keep it in mind as I think the issue of what rating is fitting for an article is an interesting problem.

Lastly, thanks for the suggestion for getting the list sorted by project. I've added that to my todo and will try to get that done as quickly as possible, shouldn't be much of a problem given the software I've written. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 13:12, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Turns out that these articles are covered by some 800 WikiProjects. I'll spend some time on figuring out how to condense it down to a manageable number of projects, it'll take a few days. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 18:43, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

UCLA grad students looking for input on WEF assignments

I am the Wiki Education Foundation campus ambassador for a grad school class studying the atmospheric boundary layer at UCLA. I pinged WikiProject Meteorology more than a week ago to no avail. I have eight grad students that are working in their sandboxes and are eager for your input. Chris Troutman (talk) 03:12, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately there isn't a lot of feedback to provide: the articles are all in a relatively undeveloped state. All I can suggest is to read the Wikipedia:Article development process, try and follow the WP:Manual of Style during article development, and, ideally, aim to achieve Wikipedia:Good articles status. When the articles are well developed, you could try WP:PR for detailed feedback. Praemonitus (talk) 05:18, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

.wiki

Three new top level domain name registries have asked ICANN to allow them to register two character domain names under their TLDs. New TLD registries aren’t allowed to offer two character second level domain names per their agreements with ICANN, but I expect this to change in coming years. The requests are very different.... .Wiki applicant Top Level Design has asked for two character domains with the support of Wikimedia Foundation, the group behind Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation wants to register two letter second level domain names to forward to matching wikipedia.org domains, e.g. fr.wiki to redirect to fr.wikipedia.org and en.wiki to en.wikipedia.org.

— 3 new domain registries ask ICANN for two character domain names, Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 29 April 2014

A) If this is true, why has there been no public announcement of it by WMF?
B) Likewise, if this is true, the plan is to engrave the common mistake of referring to Wikipedia as just "Wiki" in DNS forever? That's just great.
C) Is this related to strategy:Proposal:.WIKI. and .WK. top level domains, a proposal from 2009 that appeared until now to have gone nowhere? — Scott • talk 14:15, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia certainly isn't the only organization that would use a .wiki TLD, so I really don't understand the point of question B. It makes perfect sense to use en.wiki as a redirect to en.wikipedia.org if the domain names will be available. Particularly given that if the foundation doesn't claim those names, someone else will. Resolute 14:36, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

• I think the source has misinterpreted what the foundation wants because I've seen nothing of that sort discussed on the mailing list.--Jasper Deng (talk) 16:45, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Same feeling. For the original poster, the mailing list thread is here. (Note that I don't know anything more than what's written in that thread, and I'm not involved in that area.) --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:36, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
• Regarding B: calling Wikipedia "Wiki" (or the/The Wiki) is analogous to people calling New York City "The City" - everyone in the general area knows what you're talking about, even though it's not the only one. I honestly don't see why everyone thinks it's such a big deal. 206.117.89.4 (talk) 02:36, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Bare transclusions of Template:Infobox

There is a list at User:Pigsonthewing/Direct calls to Infobox of 2398 articles which use {{Infobox}} directly. While that's not prohibited, of course, there's often a more suitable template to use, such as in this edit. Some are simply frames for images. Please feel free to strike through items in that list if you convert them (or if you check and nothing needs to be done; in which case, please leave a comment there also). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:56, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Umepedia Challenge

Competition time: Write new and improve existing articles out of a list of subjects related to Umeå. Exclusive prizes. The challenge carries on from 1 May to 31 May. Read more at meta. --Jan Ainali (WMSE) (talk) 22:45, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Watch out. The last time someone tried this, the community rose up in arms and tried to ban Gibraltar from Wikipedia. Still never figured out why. But for some reason, encouraging people to make Wikipedia better causes resentment towards geographic regions. Good luck though! I think it's a good idea. The community, for some reason, didn't think it was when someone did this for Gibraltar. Let's hope they're more reasonable today. --Jayron32 23:34, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Well I shouldn't worry too much, @Jayron32. I'm pleased to see you have said what the dozens of volunteers involved also said. However Gibraltar had 1,000 new articles and ~3,000 new images with lots of stuff in both Africa and Spain including putting Ceuta "on the map" which now has lots of articles too. I think this is possibly the second most successful GLAM project in terms of new articles generated. Since Gibraltarpedia there have been successes for Joburgpedia. We have a QRpedia code on Mahatma Gandhi's house. Praguepedia locations have been on the front page lots of times as has Bremenpedia and Freopedia. I hav'n't mentioned all the wikitowns. A new Australian town will be announced in the next few days. .... Victuallers (talk) 15:26, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Hiding an article against deletion

I noted what seemed an odd addition to Plumpy'nut; the editor was apparently trying to find a citation, but apparently found one on his own. Now there appears to be legal baggage attached to his finding. I tagged it with a cn. Are there policies for allegations, similar to BLP, but for NGOs, organizations like Doctors without borders? Do I mean Wikimedia? For what it's worth, I simply moved the addition to its own article. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 06:40, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

No, there is nothing like BLP for companies (although a recent discussion at User talk:Jimbo Wales#Legal persons and BLP (permalink) proposes one—I have only skimmed that discussion but the proposal has very little chance of success as it completely misunderstands the purpose of BLP). However, WP:NPOV applies and from a very quick look at the article it seems someone wanted to claim that a company did some bad thing, and that claim is utterly bogus and inappropriate (they killed "millions of children"!). Re Citadel spread: please examine WP:CWW which says that if material is copied from page A to page B, the edit summary adding the material to B must contain a link to A indicating that A is the source. That article currently contains a cut-down version of the extravagant claim about the company—I don't have any spare energy at the moment or I would try to get that page deleted or at least pruned. I do not understand the wording in the section header. Johnuniq (talk) 10:47, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

What do you think of Media Viewer?

Media Viewer lets you browse larger images on Wikipedia.

Hi folks: we'd love to hear what you think about Media Viewer, a new tool that aims to improve the viewing experience on Wikipedia and its sister sites.

This multimedia browser displays images in larger size and with less clutter, providing a more immersive user experience, as described here. It was developed in collaboration with many community members -- including over 12,000 beta users here on English Wikipedia, who have been testing it since November 2013. The current plan is to release this tool gradually in coming weeks: it is already enabled by default on over a dozen sites (including the Dutch, French and Polish Wikipedia), and will be deployed more widely throughout May, as described in this release plan.

Can you share your feedback about this tool, to help address any critical issues before its May 15 release on the English Wikipedia? To try it out, please log in and click on the small 'Beta' link next to 'Preferences' in your personal menu. Then check the box next to 'Media Viewer' in the Beta Features section of your user preferences — and click 'Save'. You can now click on any thumbnail image on this site to see it in larger size in the Media Viewer. For more info, check out these testing tips or this Help page.

Once you've tried the tool, please share your feedback in this discussion, to help improve this feature. You're also welcome to take this quick survey -- or join this in-depth discussion on MediaWiki.org, as you prefer. Thanks for sharing your insights! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 00:29, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

The arrest of Gerry Adams isn't front page news according to Wikipedia

I originally posted this to the Main Page, but unsurprisingly, it's beind censored from their by the people who I am complaining about, on the technicality that it's not directly related to the Main Page. This seems to be the closest place I can find here to a complaints page, so, I'm going to put it here instead. if anything, I'm just extremely interested to see what excuse they will find to remove it from here to. Apparently they find it extremely uncomfortable to talk about this at all. Strange attitude for a website which likes to present itself as an open collboration.

Here it is:

If you want to know why, read the Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates page. There you will find all sorts of uninformed, illogical, and downright dishonest claims about the UK legal system and the way the British press works. You will also see the quite idiotic claim that, by ignoring this news, Wikipedia is somehow defending Adam's from defamation - something apparently the rest of the world's media (and indeed Wikipedia's own article on Adams), isn't apparently all that concerned about. If like me, you think this is contemptible, and want to challenge it - then you will just have complain to your congressman I guess, because it has become clear to me today at Wikipedia talk:In the news that the people at Wikipedia who make those sort of arguments, will absolutely, positively, not answer any questions at all about it - and others will apparently defend their rights to do so, by closing down such discussions. Apparently it's 'disruptive' to question the logic that goes into faulty Wikipedia decision making like this. As always, if you want to know what's going on the world, consult the other 'old media' outlets who, for all their faults, still make it their job to report on the news in a serious and credible manner. Only come to Wikipedia if you want to know about video games and other stuff nobody really gives a crap about. Lokie Dokie (talk) 13:25, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

This is all terribly fascinating but many items don't gather enough consensus to be posted at ITN, it's just the way it goes. You're in a mini-rage because this particular item didn't make it (and will almost certainly be a non-story as Adams is released in due course) and we can all see that. Sorry that you've been disappointed by the outcome. But forum shopping for sympathy doesn't tend to have the outcome desired by the shopper. YMMV. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:54, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Wow. Well at least you didn't try to censor this complaint. Progress I guess. Yes, I'm angry at how that went. And I'm not really interested in any more patronising guff from people who will apparently say or do anything at all, except justify the decision in a mature, logical, manner. You keep calling this consensus, but I wonder if you've even looked up what that's supposed to mean here. Because talking utter crap, such as this ludicrous claim that this will be a non-story if (no, let's get it right, as you just claimed - when) he gets released, is not it. If that's what yuo really believe, you're either a liar, or deluded, or both. Nobody is in the slightest bit interested in whether you personally think it shouldn't be news, that process is only apparently supposed to be about whether it was actually news. Which it undoubtedly was. Big news. The issue here though is not that it didn't go the way I wanted because that place seems to operate to different rules than most normal people would understand, the story here now is why you closed down my complaints about that at Wikipedia talk:In the news in very short order, with the completley useless 'more heat less light' comment (the irony of you referring to light, given you've apparently got nothing insightful to say about why it was rejected at all (beyond of course the banally obvious point that 'sometimes stuff doesn't succeed'. As I said there, your actions seem to be nothing more than a transparent attempt to avoid all discussion of why that happened. Soemthing which only usually happens when people are so utterly embarassed and ashamed by what they've done, they'll do anything to just make it go away. Sort of what you'd expect to happen in a cult. But not really what you're usually led to believe happens at Wikipedia. Lokie Dokie (talk) 14:26, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Again, sorry it didn't work out the way you wanted it to. That often happens to me, but you just shrug your shoulders and get on with it. I'm sure if Adams is charged we can have this delightful tete-a-tete all over Wikipedia all over again. One word of advice, reduce your verbiage. Most often less is more, especially so in this case. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:30, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm sure all sorts of things don't happen here the way you want - that will happen if you're trying to enforce your personal views of what's newsworthy onto Wikipedia. Unfortunately, for Wikipedia's reputation at least, you seem to be more succesful at it than others probably imagine. If he is charged, yes, I'm sure all sorts of rubbish will be said about how that is newsworthy now, but wasn't these last few days. Which is obviously utter crap. More importantly though, we'll probably not see anyone admitting that the level of news coverage that news will get in the real world will be exactly the same as the arrest got these last few days, and if, as is likely, he won't have said a word to the police, the actual facts of the matter won't have changed one bit. Nobody will be seen explaining why Wikipedia waited. The decision processes used by this particular part of Wikipedia, which you laughingly like to claim is consensus in action, will look as stupid and dishonest then, as it does now. If only someone had tried to figure out why this happened, by asking questions about precisely these things, at, say, a place like Wikipedia talk:In the news. Lokie Dokie (talk) 14:50, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Again, there's no issue here other than your clear disappointment that a news item you wanted to see on Wikipedia's front page didn't get anywhere near enough support. Never mind, as I said, try again when he gets charged or better still, when he gets convicted. If you want to contribute to a news ticker, by the way, try Wikinews! The Rambling Man (talk) 14:52, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Um, no. That's how you would like people to interpret this complaint. If people want to know what my actual issues are with the way this was defeated, they need only to look at the section I started at Wikipedia talk:In the news. Obviously, thanks to your wise and thoughtful intervention, if anyone has anything to respond to that, by way of an actual explanation - something a little more thought out than what you're offering here - they can't. But thankfully at least your actions didn't extend to completely removing it from view, as you've done elsewhere. They can at least see what sort of complaint strikes the fear of God into you, and makes you want to completely shut it down, lest you have to, y'know, explain/justify/respond at all. It's obviously really threatening to you to have the logic employed in that section questioned at all. Better to just ignore it, forcefully shut it down, and then hope the complainent goes away. Mabye even issue them with some bogus threats, if that's not enough to shut them up. Try and act the big man. Welcome to Wikipedia everyone! The cult of all cults. Say whatever the hell you like - if you really don't want something to be on the main page, just make up a reason, it will be taken into account, no matter how divorced from reality, no matter how indefensible. This is the democratic way. This is the wiki way. Throw out all that old media, this is the future. Lokie Dokie (talk) 15:15, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

And oh wow. User:Doktorbuk just tried to close this section too. I'm sure that had absolutely nothing to do with the fact he is a regular commenter in the discussions there, and he was actually one of the people I criticised for their comments in the LA Clippers section, in the section I started on Adams at Wikipedia talk:In the news. I'm sure he thought nobody here would have realised that, and maybe might have assumed he had no hand in this dispute whatsoever. Circling the wagons really does seem to be a big part of the lives of the folks who like to decide what happens over there. What on Earth can be so scary about having their logic questioned, that they need to go to these extraordinary lengths to shut me up? Lokie Dokie (talk) 15:54, 2 May 2014 (UTC)