Talk:Wikipedia

Full Protection edit request on 22 June 2015

Perhaps full protection is an order or anything higher? — 24.2.133.105 (talk) 23:03, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps that would go against the goal of Wikipedia, allowing only admins to edit info about themselves etc? Eddowii (talk) 11:41, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Andrew Lih and the future of Wikipedia

Andrew Lih is an expert on Wikipedia and he fears a threat to Wikipedia's future. I put Lih's opinion onto the article making it clear it's his opinion. Below is what I wrote. This needs to be in the open.

This is an opinion and should not be included. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.28.126.18 (talk) 20:46, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Editing with mobile phones

Andrew Lih maintains editing Wikipedia with smart phones is difficult and this discourages new potential contributors. Lih claims several years running the number of Wikipedia editors has been falling and alleges there is serious disagreement among existing contributors how to resolve this. Andrew Lih fears these two situations could imperil Wikipedia’s long term future.

Proxima Centauri (talk) 20:00, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/25/wikipedia-editors-dying-breed-mobile-smartphone-technology-online-encyclopedia New article. QuackGuru (talk) 05:35, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 July 2015

please add Category:2001 introductions because it was created in 2001.--216.186.185.230 (talk) 21:57, 7 July 2015 (UTC) 216.186.185.230 (talk) 21:57, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Question: This is a general question that's more for other passing editors. This page is already in Category:Internet properties established in 2001, which is a sub-category of Category:2001 establishments. How does "establishments" differ from "introductions", and would it be redundant to include both categories? Mz7 (talk) 04:50, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

It would be great if we could say that "introductions" might take place months or even years before something (a sports event, a political entity, and so on) becomes "established"; however, looking at the Category:2001 introductions vs. Category:2001 establishments, it is difficult to see anything but redundancy and the need to merge them. I could be wrong. – Paine  15:16, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Not done: I agree with Mz7's suggestion that it would be redundant. Bazj (talk) 14:25, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject Wikipedia scope change

FYI, see a proposal at WT:WikiProject Wikipedia to change its scope -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 06:52, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Russian ban of the website

http://fortune.com/2015/08/25/russias-ban-on-wikipedia-ends-as-abruptly-as-it-started/

What do you think of including this? The Russian government stopped access to all Wikipedia sites yesterday but reversed the block after a day. Sandra opposed to terrorism (talk) 16:13, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Since it was only one day I don't think that it is necessary to add.--76.65.43.144 (talk) 05:34, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Governance section

I was looking over the section on Governance and was troubled by the lack of 1) comprehensive information about the various formal roles which exist on Wikipedia and 2) criticism of the system as it currently exists. Hoping to fill that in a bit, I drew up this mock draft of a new Governance section, but I thought it best to submit it for review and revision before making any significant changes myself. Feel free to comment and modify as you see fit! Bonjourleworld (talk) 01:54, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Are there any objections to gently integrating some (or all) of this language/content into the article. I want to make sure I won't be stepping on anyone's toes here! Bonjourleworld (talk) 20:08, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Intro

In principle, Wikipedia’s system of government operates off of a base of equal and open access, as well as consensus-driven democratic decision-making. Conventional managerial systems often seen in the worlds of business and politics are absent. However, a collection of "formal roles" fulfilling certain functions and providing general oversight have led some to speak of a "parahierarchy" within the community. Three primary roles exist—each one with a greater level of permissions than the last—, as well as several other permissions sets assigned automatically to Stewards and selectively to Bureaucrats and Administrators. Criticism against this system have been leveled by academics and community members alike. These have principally targeted "lack of clarity" concerning governance structures and the concentration of power in the hands of an emerging elite.

Primary Roles

Stewards

At the top of this organizational structure are the stewards. As of February 2015, they are 37 stewards active across all Wikimedia projects. Elections for new stewards are held on an annual or bi-annual basis and users from across the entire Wikimedia community are eligible to vote. Prospective stewards must obtain an 80% approval rating in order to be selected.

Candidates for stewardship must be administrators on at least one Wikimedia project and are generally expected to have had a history of inter-project work and experience holding positions of trust. Name visibility is a significant asset, as is multilingualism and fluency in English. Of 37 stewards, only one is monolingual in English.

Stewards are granted the capacity to "perform any task that any other user group can" and at their own discretion. However, they are obliged to follow Wikipedia policy in doing so. Their permissions extend across all Wikipedia language versions and Wikimedia projects. As stewards are expected to act as an independent voice representing the entire Wikimedia community, they are restricted from employing their enhanced editing rights on their project of origin.

Because of their high-profile role and extensive permissions, Stewards are required to provide proof of identity and documentation demonstrating they exceed the age of 18 to the Wikimedia Foundation to obtain their position.

Bureaucrats

Bureaucrats are administrators tasked with the power to alter user permissions and usernames. Their primary role is to assign administrative permissions to users approved through the RfA process for administrator status. Bureaucrats are not entitled to use their own discretion in assigning enhanced user rights, but rather are required to bow to community consensus as expressed through voting procedure. While they play an important role in the internal workings of the Wikipedia community, their job tends to be simplistic.

Even in major projects, the number of bureaucrats tends to be small, the only exception being the English version on which there are 32 as of September 2015. Candidates for bureaucrat-ship are elected according to the same 80% support benchmark as for stewards. Because bureaucrats do not fill a time or labor-intensive function, each project only requires so many bureaucrats. As a result, the number of applications to RfB and the number selected have been in decline for some time.

Administrators

Administrators are the front lines of Wikipedia governance. They are comprised of "experienced users" whose job it is to monitor and regulate community activity; this applies to both article editing and behind-the-scenes interaction. Administrators have the ability, among others, to ban/block users, rollback edits, and apply protections to articles. Candidates for higher levels of responsibility are drawn from this pool of users.

Any registered user has the right to request adminship through the RfA voting process. However, successful applications almost always meet certain expectations. Applicants are traditionally users with good standing in the community who have a diverse background in vandalism control, article contribution, and Wikipedia policy formation. The number of edits the prospective administrator has made also weighs heavily on the selection process, being the most common reason for an unsuccessful request.

Administrators perform a very broad range of jobs across a single Wikipedia project. As a result, the number which each project has does not tend to reach a de facto cap as there’s always more administrative work to be done. That being said, the number of new applications for adminship has declined so significantly in past years that the phenomenon has attracted the attention of major news outlets and information science researchers alike.

Specialized Functions

Checkusers & Oversighters

CheckUsers are members of the Wikipedia community with the ability to view the IP addresses of users. Their job is to determine whether or not a single individual is editing on multiple accounts, typically to better identify and deter article vandalism.

Oversighters are granted the power to conceal past edits and the usernames associated with them in an article’s revision history. Once done, concealed edits can only be viewed by other oversighters and stewards (who automatically are granted oversight permissions). The process by which an oversighter expunges a past revision is referred to as "suppression" and may only be used under a select and enumerated set of circumstances. Accountability is ensured by other oversighters and the Arbitration Committee.

Although no formal rule requires it, checkusers and oversighters are by tradition administrators. However, not all administrators are checkusers or oversighters. To whom these responsibilities are assigned is determined by the Arbitration Committee. By virtue of their access to sensitive information and the consequent need for discretion, users with these permissions are required—like stewards—to provide evidence of their identity and age to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Rollbackers

After registered users, rollbackers are the first rung upwards in the Wikipedia governance system. These are users entrusted with the ability to roll back a page to an original version with the click of a button. Rollbackers’ number one priority is to identify and reverse vandalism in a timely manner. As such, projects tend to have a large number of users with this permission and expected qualifications are not high. Rollbackers are not appointed by consensus but by administrators who themselves have rollback abilities.

Criticism

Most criticisms of Wikipedia management target problems stemming from the project’s ostensibly-structureless governance system. Wikipedia hosts a vast archive of information and an equally massive community of editors constantly adding to, modifying, and removing from it. When combined with a lack of clarity about who controls what, one critic asserts that the need for regulation simply outstrips the ability of administrators to provide it.

Vandalism control, in particular, has represented a major problem for the project. To combat it, various policing measures have been established over its lifetime which, in turn, leave a great deal of discretion to administrators and rollbackers. Some critics have noted this allows for the disproportionate "accumulation of power in one section of the Wikipedia community." They go on to say that administrators have consequently become not only "enforcers of policy," but have also begun to make "‘moral’ decisions about user behavior."

Researchers have observed that members of the community at several different levels share outside critics’ concerns about Wikipedia’s system of control. One unregistered user was cited as saying that founder Jimmy Wales created the "structureless of tyranny," another comments on the relative lack of permission-holder accountability systems.

A culture of technocracy has been labeled a developing problem for the Wikipedia community. According to one researcher, the complex system of rules and regulations, in addition to the concentration of power in the hands of those who best understand them, creates an environment in which "editors are dominating the process, to the detriment of the more expert contributors of articles, and growth has stopped.

References

Conflict of interest?

Doesn't the existence of this article contradict Wikipedia's policies on conflicts of interest? Is it all possible to contribute to this article without having a "close connection with the subject"? Finsternish (talk) 09:16, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Going back through the archives, I can tell this subject has been beaten to death. In fact, I'm quite sure that you're going to receive a comment to the effect of "Look back through the archives, we've already agreed this is fine." However, I've done some pretty extensive searching and I'm inclined to agree with your objection, despite the many arguments that have been raised to support the existence of this article. Some users have cited the lack of financial incentive motivating bias. Yet, such a motive is not required by Wikipedia's own conflict of interest rules for a COI to exist. Others have asserted that, given Wikipedia's size and importance, failing to provide an article about it would also be self-reference. Ok, but self-reference and conflict of interest are not precisely the same issue. Still others have claimed the Wikipedia community is the most reliable source of information on itself. By that argument, COI's are non-issues as those most closely connected with the subject at hand (i.e. those with COI's) should be the ones writing about them. The most convincing argument I came across was that a COI does not exist because the interest of Wikipedia contributors (i.e. to create accurate, unbiased content) align with the creation of an accurate, unbiased article on Wikipedia itself. However, that position neglects the extremely high likelihood that contributors would have other interests, namely to project the best possible image of the project to the world at the cost of omitting information about its less rosy qualities. I'm not necessarily opposed to a Wikipedia page on Wikipedia myself, but I think this topic needs to be more critically addressed, preferably with an essay or other statement of policy making an argument more convincing and better-reasoned than those provided thus far. I've seen at least one user claim that, if bias was a problem with this article, one would see more discussion of it on this page. However, I believe the very fact that this discussion reemerges time and time again is evidence of precisely that. Dismissing further discussion on this topic by saying its an issue that's already been decided starts to resemble dogma, something which I think most Wikipedians would agree is contrary to the project's aspirations and values. --Bonjourleworld (talk) 21:29, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Agreed completely. I am not inherently opposed to a Wikipedia article on Wikipedia either, but if it will remain then the policy on conflicts of interest should be revised in such a way that it treats every subject equally. The same rules should apply to everything; otherwise you end up with a glaring defect at the very heart of Wikipedia: it claims neutrality while practicing the exact opposite. This is about the integrity of the project. Finsternish (talk) 16:52, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

This has been beaten to death multiple times. Nobody with any financial interest in Wikipedia is supposed to edit the article, nor is there, really, any evidence that any supposed 'COI' has had any negative effect on the balance of the article. In fact the article includes criticism of Wikipedia pretty much to a fault. And if, even so, there was a major problem with it somewhere (where?), even if it was being deliberately excluded from Wikipedia, news of this would appear in the press pretty soon. Wikipedia is sufficiently high profile journalists would publish; they love that kind of thing.GliderMaven (talk) 18:40, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

The most obvious effect that this conflict of interest has is that it makes it obvious that Wikipedia cannot subject articles about itself to the same level of scrutiny that it subjects every other article to. Which points to a broader lack of neutrality: there is nothing at all neutral about treating high-profile subjects by different standards than low-profile subjects, especially when that high-profile subject is yourself. There is nothing more obviously indicative of a conflict of interest than the fact that this article, and this article alone, is allowed to violate Wikipedia's policies. This would, of course, be a very boring subject for the press... the press would rather report that Wikipedia had done something blatantly sinister. It's not about what you can or cannot get away with, though; it's about integrity. Finsternish (talk) 19:28, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

What qualifies something to have its own Wikipedia article?

Hi Ive been using Wikipedia for a long time but Ive just newly created my first page on Solus Linux. I`m wondering what are the main criteria for qualifying a place, person, organization, historical event, etc... for its own Wiki page. For example there`s a very small business, a bodega as they are called, in my city Waterbury, CT. I feel making a page on the bodega (shop) and the history of it`s owners would be a cool page to have to link from the Waterbury Connecticut Wiki article. If I were to interview the shop owners, take photos, etc, would that qualify for a Wikipedia article?UnitedStatesCentralIntelligenceAgency (talk) 20:01, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Notability is the main criteria. But you interviewing and taking pictures would be original research which is not allowed. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 20:04, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 September 2015

Could you change the external link for (http://wikipedia.org) to internal link (en.wikipedia.org)?
Or possibly

Languages

• English
• ...

114.240.194.132 (talk) 00:41, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

 Not done Please see the discussion in the archive here. Inomyabcs (talk) 08:47, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 October 2015

wikipedia INFORMATION NETWORKING SITE.. 59.99.68.225 (talk) 13:36, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

 Not done. There is nothing meaningful about what you have written. Deli nk (talk) 13:57, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

CHINESE POTATO

KOORKA (CELEUS OR CHINESE POTATO) LOWERS CHOLESTEROL

These days koorka (Malayalam) is available in plenty. I like it very much. It can be cooked easily, by boiling in a cooker and then mixed with oil and kept in pan over a low flame. It lowers cholesterol and can be taken by diabetic patients, as starch value is less than 20%. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.64.44.35 (talk) 06:05, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Citation link needs correction

---

Hi folks. Reading about this I found this.

1-- In section "Scientific use":

"(...) In particular, it commonly serves as a target knowledge base for the entity linking problem, which is then called "wikification",[343]..."

The link for this citation opens citation no. 343 correctly, but the PDF link is wrong.

Old link http://www.cs.unt.edu/~rada/papers/mihalcea.cikm07.pdf

New link http://www.cse.unt.edu/~tarau/teaching/NLP/papers/Mihalcea-2007-Wikify-Linking_Documents_to_Encyclopedic.pdf

 Done Finished #1, working on #2

Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 20:09, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

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2-- Also the link references Citation no. 349 which doesn't exist (points to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#cite_note-wikify-349), even though it does open Cit. 343.

Cheers--NachoLibre2013 (talk) 19:43, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

NachoLibre2013, I believe I was able to fix issue #1. Please verify. There are 347 references in the reference list, plus there are are 6 ref notes, for a total of 353. ProveIt reports 351 refs. Many of them uneditable with the ProveIt tool. reFILL finds no ref errors. Citation Bot finds no ref errors. I'm not spotting anything.

Can you elaborate on the issue a bit more? For now, I am vexed. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 05:27, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your edit! Please excuse my lack of knowledge about the way Wiki counts citations, I thought there was meant to be a 1 to 1 correspondence between the hover text no. and the actual citation no., hence my 2nd suggestion, but I infer from your response that this is not the case. I'll learn about the Wiki citations system next time :o). Have a great day!--NachoLibre2013 (talk) 01:37, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

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Semi-protected edit request on 25 October 2015

Good day ! :-) Please consider changing the name "Wikipedia" to mean something relevent and goodItalic text, in the language in the particular page ?!

14.97.64.110 (talk) 09:48, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Cannolis (talk) 09:50, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Maps

I like to use Wikipedia to research lots of history but my biggest complaint is the lack of maps. When I want to read about, for example, Moldavia, the first thing I'd like to see is where I'm reading about! Unfortunately, most of the Wikipedia sites don't even have maps or if they do they are buried deep in the article. Solri89 (talk) 00:59, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 November 2015

wikipedia has a new logo please see the top its has a banner saying 5,000,000 articles 65.175.243.206 (talk) 13:00, 1 November 2015 (UTC)