Talk:Wikipedia/Archive 12

message: Trying as hard as I could, I see no pages for the wikipedia/media budget for 2006 or for 2007. Could someone point me in the right direction or include it in the article? Thanks so much ! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.240.20.149 (talk) 07:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Budget 2006/07 

message: The page should have a trivia section, and one of the items in that section should be the name of the very first article on Wikipedia. If it's impossible to know what was the first, then that itself is an interesting bit of trivia. Who knows the answers? I don't. Interlingua  talk email 15:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections in articles. Trivia sections are undesirable. Also see History of Wikipedia#Beginnings of a new project and Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles for some answers.--Pethr 16:36, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Triva and First Article on Wikipedia

message: is this correct ? afaik the idea was about flagging content, the article says it is about flagging people. 
"Wales also talked about creating "stable" or "static" pages for entries that are considered complete, to help people who want to cite them in published works. The plan being tested in Germany appears designed to root out mischief, as opposed to inaccuracies that may be harder to detect."
--source: linuxworld, first google hit after 10min of searching on wikipedias pages...-- ExpImptalkcon 01:43, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Future directions for authoring content 

message: i have just registered with wikipedia and i am surprised that people are given so much freedom to edit stuff.
you can edit almost every page of this website.i could go and edit the text above into rubbish and no one would care.
can someone tell me what this is all about???
Electron8 21:25, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia works because there are many more people who are good editors than bad editors. There is also a lot that goes on behind the scenes to combat vandalism. Wikipedia is constantly vandalized, but most vandalism is reverted within minutes (or within seconds for User:AntiVandalBot). --h2g2bob 21:38, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  An explanation of the behind the scenes stuff, if you're interested. There are many people using their watchlist to keep an eye on pages they have an interest in. Volunteers at recent changes patrol and bots keep an eye on the most recent edits to Wikipedia. In some cases, users can be blocked from editing for a while, or pages protected to prevent vandalism, but these are really a last resort. --h2g2bob 21:48, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Actually, if you add rubbish to an article, some people will get annoyed and find it to be disruptive. However, it it easy for most editors to simply change it back without much difficulty. Users only get blocked if they repeatedly vandalize articles, and this is usually only temporary. The purpose of Wikipedia is to allow many editors to contribute to articles so that another piece of valid knowledge is added. I've heard that the goal of Wikipedia is to compile human knowledge and give free knowledge to the whole planet. Unfortunately, Wikipedia will never be actually completed, because to complete Wikipedia is to complete global human knowledge, which is impossible. Good editors are usually welcomed. BTW Antivandalbot doesn't read all articles, and sometimes makes errors. I've reverted people's edits many times without the help of Antivandalbot. It doesn't catch everything. AstroHurricane001(Talk+Contribs+Ubx) 22:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  wikipedia 

message: We now have two large lists of statistics. One shows the amount of articles, and the other shows the amount of words. I have two problems with this: firstly, this causes readers to have to draw conclusions of their own. We should find some news articles that also highlight these two lists and explain more about it rather than just indiscriminately giving information and hoping that the reader will "figure it out". Secondly, why have two lists when you can have one table? I bet that there are bots that are constantly updating these lists, so perhaps some of the bots' owners could change them to put these statistics in one table? It really is not necessary to have two lists at this point. function msikma(const U, T : Float) : Float { to my page. } ; 07:08, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia statistics 

message: On second thought, I feel that we do not need yet another list of wikis, this time sorted by number of words. It seems like it's an inaccurate way of measuring wiki size, and it also seems a bit verbose to the reader. For example, Dutch is a slightly longer language than English, since we have more words and colloquialisms to say all kinds of things. I design websites, and when I need to make a multi-language site, I always seem to notice the Dutch texts being about 1.4x as long as the English ones, which can at least partially be attributed to a different amount of words. Anyway, if anyone really, really, really liked the listing of wikis by number of words, then just revert my change, but please discuss it here as well. msikma (user, talk) 22:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed wiki listing by number of words 

message: remove or set aside that banner:
You can give the gift of knowledge by donating to the Wikimedia Foundation!
Wikimedia   ...
Tax-deductibility of donations | FAQ | Financial statements | Live list of donations 
its really shame to beg donations in top of every page —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.41.72.100 (talk) 10:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Have you tried the "dismiss" link?  I did, and it worked like a charm to dismiss that banner. -- Jeff G. 11:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: He likely knows how to dismiss the banner, and is mentioning this because he feels it's not a good idea for all the visitors that stumble upon this site. Those visitors may not know how to click the dismiss link, or they simply don't want to see such an advertisement at all. And quite frankly, I agree. This fundraiser has gone on long enough, and Wikipedia isn't in any financial problems. msikma (user, talk) 13:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  remove that begging donation request 

message: I'm looking for precise technical informations and ressource pages about Wikipedia. I know that the content is free, but is there some sort of way to get the articles in a computer processible form? Like a giant file that has all the article contents in plain UTF-8 in it or something like that? How large would such a file be? 130.83.73.251 15:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You can find all the informations you need on Wikipedia:Database download. Have fun! (I am copying this message on your user talk since I move it at the bottom of the page) -- lucasbfr talk 15:59, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Technical Help? 

message: Have they come up with the list of stuff/ servers they plan to buy with the donation(s) ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kumarrrr (talk • contribs) 13:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see Fundraising - Wikimedia Foundation. -- Jeff G. 18:03, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Equipment WikiMedia Plans To Buy ? 

message: The Nature investigation wasn't a study, so I changed that.  I did a cursory check of other "studies" and it seems one was done by a defunct website and the other wasn't published in a peer-reviewed journal.  This should most definitely be noted and repeatedly calling them "scientific studies" when they aren't peer reviewed is biased, since it's leaving it up to the Wikipedia editors as to whether or not it's scientific.
And of course, as stated in the todo/priority list (which hasn't seem to have been addressed yet), there's an obvious pro-Wikipedia bias in the Criticisms section.  It basically attempts to debunk the minimal formal criticism listed.
Also, there is this: "However, it was also found that Wikipedia articles were generally of greater length (2.6 times as long as the Britannica equivalents, on average), and that thus its error per word ratio is lower."
This seems to have been quoted from the Wikinews article that was linked to.  Who found this?  If it was found by the person who wrote the Wikinews article, that's essentially original research.  Wikimedia should never self-reference as a source for research.  Nathan J. Yoder 07:03, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia  "studies" 

message: Do we know the average age of wikipedia users in en.wikipedia? Likewise for editors? Likewise for countries of provenance? Thanks. Politis 17:18, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: more study and statistics

message: Given that this site has been rated in the top 15 in terms of web traffic of all the websites in the world, the advertisement revenue potential for wikipedia is immense, and yet they choose not to post any ads.If the revenue would be by far enough that they would never need donations, why does the site choose not to sell ad space?is it just integrity?Rodrigue 17:43, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Its adspace appears to be reserved for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation. -- Jeff G. 18:09, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Oh, get out of here. I and all the other contributors write the articles on this site. Not Jimbo Wales. Jimbo can't even respond to his own talk page comments. Founder of the site he may be, but he really doesn't care enough to write articles. Why should his organization get anything other than donation money to keep itself running? —msikma (user, talk) 07:05, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Jimbo's own talk page is at User talk:Jimbo Wales. -- Jeff G. (talk|contribs|links|watch|logs) 17:28, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Regarding adverts on wikipedia and profits: it has a .org address and they are non-profit sites. Otherwise, it would have been a .com. Politis 22:55, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Popularity 

message: Could this be it? And if not so, what is it?
:I think George W. Bush is the top winner. Hbdragon88 09:15, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Most vandalized page 

message: Way too many cites in this article are to wikipedia or other 'official' Wiki sites. Is this ok because of the nature of the article? It seems a bit odd to me. dreddnott 09:34, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Is that a joke? — Omegatron 03:15, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Original Research

message: Surely this is just self promotion? I have seen othger articles about websites be delted as they are regarded as self-promotion. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Randomjack (talk • contribs).
: The article tries to be balanced and neutral, and provide facts about the project and a summary of criticism directed at it without prejudice. How well it achieves this is of course open to interpretation – Qxz 02:59, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm very surprised that anyone would think Wikipedia should not have an article on itself. Imagine that someone wants to read a summary of this project. How would they do it? They would have to go through thousands of help pages, which is impossible. So they can come to this article and have the project explained in one place. The article has to be unbiassed of course and point out the flaws of the project as well as the strengths. As someone said elsewhere, you would surely expect to find the word "dictionary" in a dictionary so I would expect to find Wikipedia in Wikipedia! - Adrian Pingstone 10:18, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Self Promotion 

message: WillowW, it looks like you're going after point 4 of the to-do list, or something along those lines... which is great, especially as I just added it. Problem with removing subsections from the "criticism and controversy" section, though, is that they're about criticism, and responses to said criticism, and as such don't really belong elsewhere in the article. Also I'm not sure I like the look of the table-of-contents now that there are ten new sub-sections and sub-sub-sections. Perhaps it could be restructured into four or five? Any more than that and I think the article will start to get bloated again; the criticism section was too large before (it only needs to be a summary because of the much more detailed Criticism of Wikipedia, and I've spent the last couple of days trimming it down. It's still a little on the big side, but I think it's better) – Qxz 12:08, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, why don't you move back the criticism parts (like the "Reliability sources"?) and I'll work on condensing the subsubsubsections into something less profligate.  I should say, I'm not married to the text; it's just a skeleton draft onto which others should add things. Thanks for being patient with me! :) Willow 12:13, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, anything's better than nothing. "Quality as an encyclopedia" seems a bit of an awkward name for a section, though. I'd suggest "Characteristics", but that already seems to be taken. Perhaps the section structure as a whole needs re-thinking? – Qxz 12:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

text:  Another thought: Having spent a day summarizing the somewhat bloated "Reliability" section into three paragraphs, it's now growing again – back up to three sections already. I'm assuming that once there was just a single paragraph of text there, and it grew and grew and got so big it had to be split off into Reliability of Wikipedia, which is now an entire article in itself. Unfortunately once stuff is split off like that, the section from which it came inevitably starts to grow again. Would some of the new (or even old) material there be better off in Reliability of Wikipedia? (To be honest, that article needs some work itself, so there may not be much place for it at the moment) – Qxz 12:25, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hmm... now there are TWO "reliabilty" sections, each of three paragraphs! I'm not sure whether that's better or worse. Though it may lead to the same sort of problems as having separate a Reliability of Wikipedia article and the "Reliability" section under Criticism – stuff tends to get duplicated – Qxz 12:29, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New sections 

message: The Wikipedia article about Wikipedia is suffering from bias in the section about bias in Wikipedia. Figure that one out if you can – Qxz 16:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not so bad now. (Actually, it wasn't so bad before, I just wanted to say that) – Qxz 19:52, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias 

message: A good standard of fairness for this article seems to me the "NPR test".  Can National Public Radio talk about itself with objectivity?  If so, does it have to say only negative things about itself?  My answers would be "yes" and "no", but others might think differently. 
For this reason, I think it's fair to state that some people find it admirable that anonymous Wikipedians labor for no tangible reward.  if I can find a reference, may I re-introduce that? I'd also like to include the Middlemarch quote, which expresses the sentiment better than we can, although I would defer to well-justified counter-arguments.  Thanks! Willow 04:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You can include pretty much whatever you like if you can find a citation for it (provided it's relevant and addresses an aspect not already covered by existing material, obviously). Citations are the key, though. As for the bit with the quote, it didn't really seem to fit with the rest of the article (it's good, just out of place). And I am a little worried that the size of the article has jumped from 68Kb to 83Kb, and looks to be getting larger still. It's not excessively long, but bear in mind that four of the sections (listed in the To-do box above) actually have sub-articles of their own which were split off from the main article in order to keep the size down. After each split the main article inevitably grew back to its previous size, and the initially short sub-article grew much longer. The state that those four pages are in shows one of the disadvantages of this; I wouldn't want to see yet another article split off, but at the same time the article has to present things concisely, and avoid having the reader get bored and wander off before they've reached the end. We have some guidelines on this sort of thing at Wikipedia:Summary style – Qxz 04:29, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I've rewritten the Criticism section to be more of a summary; everything in it is covered in more detail at Criticism of Wikipedia. Unfortunately, at the moment it's not always covered very clearly, and the article isn't particularly well-organized. One thing at a time, though; that is one of the many things on the to-do list. This gives things a bit more room — your new section deserves a lot more space, since it doesn't have its own sub-article. So quotes are fine, if they fit with the article. You're introducing most of the new material at the moment, so we'd be stuck without you — I don't want to put you off – Qxz 09:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The NPR test

message: Could be interesting don't cha think? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tonich03 (talk • contribs).
:This article is supposed to provide a neutral, balanced overview of Wikipedia. We shouldn't misuse the fact that we are Wikipedia in the article. We have project pages for that sort of thing — if people want to see what's going on, they can read them; several of the most important ones are referenced in the article already – Qxz 05:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikipedia "behind the scene" section/article