Wikipedia talk:Help desk/Archive 3

message: Old talk has been archived. Isopropyl 05:02, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Archiving

message: Hello this is John Smith an IT student at Onkaparinga TAFE Mount 
Barker, Australia. What I was looking for was to interview a Help Desk 
Manager at an organisation of my choice. This will be the basis of my 
assessment task.
I would really appreciate it if anyone could answer any of the following 
questions:
a.	How fault details are collected (what are the sources)?
b.	How are network changes identified in the organisation?
c.	How are network changes reviewed against current and future business 
requirements?
d.	How is training organised to meet the training needs of clients in using 
the changes?
e.	How are the changes implemented?
f.	How is the effectiveness of the changes evaluated?
g.	What are the standard and procedures for logging the change request?
h.	What are the Change Categories?
Thank you very much for your time.--143.92.1.33 06:31, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think Wikipedia is probably not the sort of organisation you should be asking at, for a couple of reasons: (1) Your TAFE lecturer is probably thinking more of a commercial organisation, not a free online community like Wikipedia, (2) the Wikipedia Help Desk is staffed (if that's even the right word) by any user who wants to help, whenever they want to, and as such there is no manager. I'd suggest finding a local company that uses a Help Desk, such as a bank or a technological company (eg. Optus, Microsoft, etc.) Confusing Manifestation 11:17, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Alirght, i've done the assignment now anyway.--203.39.81.10 04:18, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help 

message: I some ideas for what we could change page name to: 
*Wikipedia:Wikipedia Help
*Wikipedia:Wikipedia Help Forum
*Wikipedia:Help with Wikipedia
*Wikipedia:Something that has the word "Wikipedia" in it so that there can be no ambiguity--Max  Talk [ (add)] 15:02, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For reference, there was some discussion about this at Wikipedia_talk:Help_desk/Archive_2#Time_for_a_name_change.3F -- Natalya 15:59, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name change 

message: I stumbled across Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance) and saw that it apparently serves the same purpose as this page.  The only difference is there were no Reference Desk questions.--Max  Talk [ (add)] 22:53, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not really a duplicate page, the village pump is for more technical questions, such as how to fix a glitch, add special article features, JavaScript, CSS, and other concerns often relating more to the development side of contributing to the encyclopedia. The Help Desk is for questions relating directly to reading or editing the encyclopedia, and generally deals with more basic questions. While I suppose the questions actually asked on these pages often overlap, the difference in purpose is there. --Hetar 23:02, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another duplicate page 

message: #Seems like this page needs to differentiate itself from Wikipedia:New_contributors%27_help_page, by including the link to that at the top prominently. Presumably, this page is more for those of us who have been around a while.
#Strikes me that having the link Wikipedia:FAQ would be another good idea.
Best regards, <B>Fra</B>nkB 15:34, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some Standardization Needed? 

message: It seems like almost every second question to the help desk is "I made an article, and it doesn't show up on search! Why?" Should we add this to make a 4th most common question, or bump off one of the others, or something else? Confusing Manifestation 23:23, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that there should be more than three most commonly asked questions as there are many other ones that get the same response tieme and time again. Some of these include the one above and how to create a new page. I'd reword it to say "some of the most common questions of newcomers include:" of something like that. Harryboyles 07:08, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

text: *Whilst I completely agree that this has become an FAQ, the problem with FAQ lists is that people rarely read them before asking anyway — on a site this large and complex it's even worse, as they're not even likely to find it.  Simply put, many people are lazy, and FAQs need to be somehow right in their face for them to read them.  Only a very few people will spend an hour reading FAQs before they spend 30 seconds asking a question.  Many people can't even be bothered with prepositions or complete sentences... what hope do we have?  I'm not trying to be down here, just realistic. I welcome a suggestion to make the FAQs more obvious on the page, I think that would be the most effective solution. — Estarriol talk 08:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

text: That's awesome - it should be easy to add anything else to it if more common questions come up.  I could see it going right under the "Where to ask other kinds of questions" part - any thoughts?  -- Natalya 19:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a short bulleted list of very, very frequently asked questions visible (but not very prominent) right there at the top of this page. I think updating it and making it more prominent might be a good idea. · rodii · 20:28, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's sort of what I was thinking of - "Why isn't my article in the search?" seems to be the vvfaq of the month or something. Confusing Manifestation 02:29, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think [m]any people see the current "Very, very frequently asked questions" right now, and it seems easier to make a link to a page a lot more noticable than making a set of questions more noticable without the questions making things cluttered. -- Natalya 17:22, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another FAQ needed? 

message: Any reason why the link to 'Frequently Asked Questions' (Just after 'Please read the following before asking your questions') doesn't link to Wikipedia:FAQ, but to Wikipedia:Questions instead? 4u1e 07:00, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: After checking the history, the link appears to have been correct up until the FAQs were moved to their own page in March 2006. I will change the link here to point to the new FAQ page. Road Wizard 00:33, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  LInk to FAQ 

message: I'm sorry if this is the wrong place or I am overlooking something.
Up until now, when a spoiler is being posted, people post Spoilers Ahead or some other simplistic text. This blends in and is not easily noticed. What's worse is finding Spoilers end here (if it is even done) while trying not to read the spoiler parts of the article. It just doesn't work well. The easiest current option is for everyone to use bold colored text to indicate where thye start and end, but that may look tacky and since everyone has a different style and articles constantly change, it would not work.
If there is not already one and I just do not know about it, I would like to propose a specific type of spoiler tag to be added. The best option would be a tab that hides the text the same way some forum software hides boards inside of each category (Example URL - Click the minus image at the far right of any category header). Another option would be to put a faint shadow behind the text with a box surrounding (similar to unformatted text) and a note at the top indicating spoilers. A third option could be mouseover or highlight boxes, but I am not in favor of either because they feel clumsy with large amounts of text.
Thank you for your time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CobraWiki (talk • contribs) 
:You're probably better off bringing this up at the Village pump or at Wikipedia:Spoiler warning. -- Natalya 20:18, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also see Wikipedia talk:Spoiler warning/RfC. Be aware that as things stand the very existence of spoiler warnings is a highly controversial issue and so any proposal to make them more prominent is unlikely to get very far. --Daduzi talk 21:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm not sure if this had been moved to another discussion, but for my two cents I would point out that those little minus things are generally controlled by javascript which not everyone has or uses.  It would be fine for something to turn on in your preferences, but I don't think it would be employable on the site as a whole.  —Keakealani •Poke Me•contribs• 22:55, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spoiler Options Needed 

message: Crypticbot has been broken for almost half a month now, should we bring in User:Werdnabot to archive Help Desk? --WinHunter (talk) 16:07, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As soon as possible. It is quite big, and troublesome for people like me (with slow internet connection) to access. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 16:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Archive question

message: I awarded a Barnstar to a user only to have this user behave, within a short period of time, in a terrily inappropriate manner, completely oppposite of behavior that I believed merited a barn star,and that behavior has persisted despite my several cordial attempt to warn him, etc. Can I take back a barnstar? Ptmccain 19:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You'd be best off posting this at the Help desk, this page is for a discussion of the help desk. I've copied your question there for your convenience: Wikipedia: Help desk#Taking Back A Barnstar. — QuantumEleven 09:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Taking Back A Barnstar 

message: :Moved here from Help desk talk page.
----
The header section of the help and reference desks feel too long in my opinion: if you were posting a question here, would you bother reading through all of the guidelines first? Obviously we need some sort of instruction set, but I feel that "streamlining" them may actually help stop the mistakes made by posters such as posting their email addresses or becoming impatient whilst waiting for a response: if there's less to read, people are more likely to read it and follow it.
Any other thoughts here?
EVOCATIVEINTRIGUE TALKTOME | EMAILME | IMPROVEME 13:50, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Seconded. I particularly hate the tip of the day, which adds a near-screenful of fairly useless information. The refdesk icons waste a lot of vertical space too. I understand the logic of making the type in the top box large, but the rest of it pushes the content way down below the fold. How about a redesign contest? · rodii · 16:57, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree, but only to a point.  Right now (I'm not sure when it changed), the header is rather massive.  There used to be a smaller version of the current header, which was actually rather adventageous; it stoped many Reference Desk questions from coming here.  Compared to when the header was tiny, it feels like there are fewer questions that don't belong here.  Of course there are always some, but when the header changed, they seemed to lessen in number.  Right now, though, it seems a bit over the top - any chance of returning the header to it's prior state? -- Natalya 22:26, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Follow up: If you take a look at Wikipedia:Help desk/Header, it looks like it changed recently in order to incorporate the newest Reference Desk section.  If we can format it to fit like it did before, it would probably work much better. -- Natalya 22:31, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I also agree we should streamline the header. Do we really need links to all the various Reference desk sections? A single prominent icon/link to the reference desk should be enough to pave the way for our knowledge-seeking posters. I also believe that the tip of the day should be removed. I think there's a point where there's too much text and readers just gloss over it, looking for the "Post your question" button. If we reduce this to a fair amount of text, the vast majority will probably abide by the instructions. Cheers, Tangotango 07:08, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Header/intro 

message: I've made a searchable repository of questions (and answers) frequently asked by newcomers to Wikipedia. It's available at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/nubio/. It currently has 70 entries (many of the entries have been scraped off WP:FAQ and the various related pages, and some answers to the Help desk). If possible, I'd like to receive some feedback on the project, and see what people think. I'm open to suggestions on how to improve it and where to link to it. Cheers, Tangotango 09:45, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That could be very handy. You should put it somewhere visible. ViridaeTalk 09:56, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's really, really lovely!  *applaudes* -- Natalya 12:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

text: This is a great repository. But I am not clear on how this will work. If we want to guide a newbie, should we tell him to search the above link or is it for our own referencing or is the link going to be displayed at the top of the help desk? -- Lost(talk) 12:56, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Both, actually. I'm hoping that we can include a link to this somewhere, maybe the Help desk header, so that newcomers can search it, and after that ask any questions if they didn't find an answer to their query. If a question covered by the FAQ does come up, we can copy and paste the answer from the relevant entry (the light green box on each entry contains the wiki-text). Cheers, Tangotango 13:14, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I just tried it. Its really cool. I anyway copy and paste many times from the FAQ page. This goes a step ahead. It gives me readymade text and links to copy and paste. Great stuff. The link to it should go right at the top. -- Lost(talk) 13:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Tangotango, can you add a question about disambiguation guidelines to the searchable FAQs please? I couldnt find one there -- Lost(talk) 19:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Disambiguation is added now.--Commander Keane 02:05, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you Commander Keane -- Lost(talk) 04:24, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Searchable Wikipedia FAQ 

message: For some reason the Daily header doesn't seem to be put in for the past few days. Harryboyles 07:13, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you mean the Tip of the day? I removed that a few days ago, given the discussion above about the unnecessary length of the header. You can read the daily Tip of the day at Help:Contents.--Commander Keane 08:05, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I mean that the date header (August 7, August 9, etc) for some dates are missing. Harryboyles 10:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The date headers are currently being added manually.  Please feel free to add any that are missing. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:05, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Header

message: Is it OK to erase comments on talk pages that are unsigned? When people don't sign their comments I find it causes a lot of confusion. Plus, I find it annoying when I click on talk pages only to find that they are cluttered up with unsigned comments. SilentWind 20:02, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it is not ok to erase unsigned messages. (See WP:TPG). Instead, you should use the  template to append their user name after their comments. --ZimZalaBim (talk) 20:17, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't forget to subst the  template.  =)  Powers T 15:30, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Per WP:TPG, it is best not to erase or edit other people's comments on your talk page, with the exception of vandalism or personal attacks. If your talk page is getting too long, consider archiving it (but none of this seems to be the case with your talk page). -ZimZalaBim (talk) 02:38, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

text: It depends what you mean by very nasty comments. If it is simply an insult then it's probably OK to delete it but if it's criticism of something you've done (however nasty) you generally shouldn't. --Cherry blossom tree 23:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Talk Pages 

message: is this the proper place to ask for help? - Patrickjsanford 00:20, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No.  The best place for your question depends on what kind of help you want.  —Tamfang 03:37, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For  general questions about using and  editing Wikipedia, ask on the  help desk itself. For other questions, see Wikipedia:Where to ask a question.--24.20.69.240 00:09, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: help

message: Isnt Werdnabot running any more? The last it ran was three days ago. We have more than 220 questions already -- Lost(talk) 10:48, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archive? 

message: Is there a mechanism for reporting Users who have engaged in vandalism? Ordinary Person 16:27, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It depends what you mean. There is no central register of all users who have ever vandalised but if a user continues to vandalise despite being repeatedly warned then you can post at Administrator intervention against vandalism, which will notify administrators to intervene against the vandalism, generally by blocking. --Cherry blossom tree 16:36, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reporting vandalism

message: <<oops, moved to the actual help desk, my bad>>
*clears throat* Fastnaturedude 04:32, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language policy for talk pages? 

message: I think the header should link to WP:VFAQ and not to Nubio. A typical user with a short attention span is much more likely to look for an answer in the VFAQ (which is short, and the answers appear immediately in the page) than in Nubio (which is excellent for more serious users, but for many users it will be confusing because it is an external page, and cumbersome because it contains much more information and the answers don't appear right before their eyes). -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 16:32, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But it does link to VFAQ right at the top and then again just below. Are we looking at different places? -- Lost(talk) 16:47, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm not so sure about that. If the VFAQ is the most prominent link in the header, people with questions not covered by the VFAQ but still common enough to be in Nubio will likely ask these questions on the Help desk. While this is not inherently a bad thing, it means less time spent answering questions that actually require thought, rather than a template answer. I do, however, agree with your belief that the question-answer format of the VFAQ is easier to read than a full-blown FAQ interface. If there's anything I can do to improve the Nubio interface, please feel free to contact me, and I will do my best to incorporate any changes. Cheers, Tangotango 16:47, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vfaq 

message: The Help Desk as a whole is an extremely bulky page, and nearly every time I run into an edit conflict (which gives the whole page and not just a section to edit) my browser crashes or freezes.  I don't know if this is happening to anyone else, but I don't really know why we need to have such a long backlog of questions that haven't been archived yet.  Is it possible to modify the archiving bot to archive more frequently (i.e. only leaving questions from the past day or so in the Help Desk) so that the page isn't so huge?  It's not a huge deal, but it is quite an inconvenience to run into an edit conflict and have a crashed browser.  Let me know if this is totally implausible! —Keakealani 04:50, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I second this suggestion; it's quite unwieldy at the moment. --ais523 12:24, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Awesome...I guess a couple more responses couldn't hurt, but we'll see.  As it were, I don't know how to change the archiving system technically, since I think it's being done automatically by a bot.  So, if anyone knows how to fiddle with that aspect, that would also be good.  Thanks for your response! —Keakealani 18:35, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've sped up Werdnabot by a factor of 1/4 with regards to the help desk: . Feel free to make it even faster (I don't think we should go any faster than 2-day-old messages being archived). --ais523 07:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I think that's a lot better - I agree that archiving too frequently is also a bad thing, but this really does help speed things up and prevent browser crashes.  Thank you so much! —Keakealani 20:21, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archiving more frequently? 

message: I've added date headers for the last few days and deleted some old empty sections that only had wikilinked date headers (no content). These empty sections had been bot archived but the header remained. There were a few other sections that had been partially archived which I removed and will sort out and properly archive in the next day or so.  --hydnjo talk 15:45, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Date headers and archiving