Talk:Wikipedia/Archive 9

message: Anyone have any information on who funds Wikipedia and how much Wikipedia generally receives?  Part of it is probably anonymous public donations--I would like to know how much that is too.  
I want to include this information in the main article.  I think it is important because it would shed light on the impartiality of the site.
It's run by the non-profit organization wikimedia, which I believe is heavily donation-based. Sc7 03:41, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Funding

message: I read somewhere a estimated amount of time for a page to remain vandalized on Wikipedia before someone found and reverted it, but I can't remember where. Does someone know this estimate?
The Digital Pioneer 18:02, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For some reason '8 minutes' has stuck itself in my head, but don't quote me on this! Philipwhiuk 18:00, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is five minutes, see Wikipedia:Vandalism. Iolakana|T 18:17, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism timespan 

message: :Microsoft Encarta has started to solicit comments from readers in attempt to improve the accuracy and timeliness of its encyclopedia. Encarta Feedback allows any user to propose revisions for review by their staff."Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-04-11/Encarta editing", Wikipedia, April 11, 2005.
The above paragraph does not seem to have any place either in this article, or in the Coverage section in which it originated. If it is not properly related to the article or section somewhere, then I think it should be deleted.--Susurrus 05:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I think so. Perhaps add it to the Encarta article? Iolakana|T 18:18, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rogue Paragraph 

message: Third paragraph: "under which notable perspectives are purportedly summarized without an attempt to determine an objective truth"
I think "without" should be "with", but I didn't change it because I know this is a popular wiki and it would have been found already.
24.154.173.50 21:47, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neatral POV sentence 

message: I think that something that would add a lot of value to wikipedia would be to have a stub filter in the Random article navigation option. That way, you wouldn't have to fall on a two-liner on some random person in Wisconsin or something while navigating. You should be able to filter off stubs, or select only random articles who are FAs.
What do you think?
Guitar George 23:39, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello! This isn't the appropriate place for suggestions about Wikipedia; this is the talk page to discuss and improve the article Wikipedia. The Village Pump is more appropriate for proposals. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 01:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you, I'm new and I'm trying to get used to the atmosphere. I have used wikipedia for a while and now I've decided I might as well start helping the community. Cheers! 201.14.110.252 14:22, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Random Articles 

message: ????? Why is the title wikipedia is communism? can someone explain? 209.74.4.2 15:44, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just vandalism.  It has been fixed.  Jkelly 15:56, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Title

message: Since the page is protected, can an admin remove the graffiti in the first line under "Characteristics"?  Thanks, NawlinWiki 18:21, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing that out.  Jkelly 18:24, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Graffiti 

message: Please see here to comment. Thanks in advance, - Glen Stollery 21:09, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Talk:Portmanteau#Wikipedia_not_a_portmanteau.3F|Wikipedia ''not'' a portmanteau?]] 

message: Added cool external link above picture of multilingual portal. --Chuck Marean 06:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Another user removed that link, as it was "unnecessary", to which I agree.  --  Zanimum 13:34, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  multilingual portal 

message: Coke gets slammed on Wikipedia<BR>
MSNBC - USA
By Ryan Mahoney. If you want to learn about The Coca-Cola Co., don't expect
to find The Real Thing on Wikipedia. As recently as June ...<BR>
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13269186/
See all stories on this topic:<BR>
http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&hl=en&client=google&ncl=http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13269186/
<BR><BR>
Is a Wikipedia priesthood attempting to erase history?
Email Battles - Bettendorf,IA,USA
... This forced the keepers of the Wikipedia flame to trim editing down
to only those self-serving individuals who had declared themselves judge,
jury and ...<BR>
http://www.trimmail.com/news/elsewhere/data/1150147374.71/<BR>
<BR>
--G-Spot 13:46, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who News? 

message: This newer edit was a good edit: . People or programs that revert pages without even looking at the page itself are not helping Wikipedia. Automatic reverts are against the purpose of open editing. The reverters comments don't seem to know what the edit was.--Chuck Marean 21:15, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Chuck, I am fully aware of what your edits were. (I commented that it wasn't the proper place for such a link in my edit summary when I reverted it, and I pasted of copy of your edit to your talk page with an explanation.) I recognize that you are trying to improve pages in good faith, but as has been pointed out to you before, your methods can be disruptive at times. In this particular case, the Wikipedia page is using a standard website infobox template , common to most articles about a website. The top of that template is meant to be the name of the website. Changing that to a hyperlink, and adding different text is a significant change to the way the template is supposed to be used (and alters the way the page has existed for months). As suggested to you already, such changes should be discussed first. Again, please read Wikipedia:Discuss and draft graphical layout overhauls. I hope you are taking the time to read the comments and policies suggested for you. Please feel free to ask me for any help. --mtz206 (talk) 21:31, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

text: I left the name in the original edit , but somebody anonomously reverted to before the edit. Also, my mention of the edit was somehow deleted from the history of the talk page.  That thread could have been where the edit was discussed, but it was removed.--Chuck Marean 23:47, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Then I suppose the writer ment "entry-points to Wikipedia content."  Also, I've decided not to respond to angry messages.  I could just explain an edit on the talk page. --Chuck Marean 15:57, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  automatic reverts 

message: Moved url from screenshot to websitename of Wikipedia infobox because explanation that appeared was confusing. 
--Chuck Marean 16:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I reverted your edit because (a) it has already been explained various times/ways that changing the website tempate in such a way in unconstructive, and (b) you also deleted various vandal and edit warnings within the code. Finally, Chuck, your note above about not responding to "angry" messages seems out of place and a tad uncivil since, IMO, there haven't been any "angry" messages left for you. Further, I encourage you to continue engaging in the discussions on your talk page (rather than deleting them). Please let me know if I can help. --mtz206 (talk) 17:16, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In my opinion, I've received several tense, needlessly critical messages. I was following the template the best I knew how. After looking at the history list, the vandal message seemed to me to incourage editing wars by reverting.  In fact, some reverts seemed to be by surfers just for fun, having learned what reverting is.  I'm being careful.  The fact is, the URL appearing when putting the pointer on the picture was confusing to me. It looked like the picture was a link to the search engine shown, yet it was not.--Chuck Marean 04:54, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia infobox 

message: What does wikipedia run on? is it a gigantic server or what? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.58.31.86 (talk • contribs) 21:32, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Information on the Wikimedia Foundation's hardware can be found here. —chair lunch dinner™ (talk) 03:22, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What does wikipedia run on? 

message: The question of whether Wikipedia is the world's most up-to-date encyclopaedia (see Archive 8 of this discussion) merits further attention.It is certainly true that both The Gadget Show and the magazine Focus, in comparisons with other online encyclopaedias, have found Wikipedia to be very up-to-date, the former through its comparison with Online Encyclopaedi and Wikidedia's entries on Tony Blair, the latter through its comparisons of entries on bird flu in Encarta, Infoplease, Encyclopaedia Brittanica online and Wikipedia. However, it seems that Wikipedia does less well here with articles on academic theories than it does with articles pertaining to news stories or popular and media culture. As of June 2006, compare the article on the psyhcological theory of attitude change termed cognitive dissonance, an academic theory advanced by Festinger, with those on the more recently media-hot topics of Bill Gates and Microsoft. The former could still do with updating, as many academic psychologists will surely acknowledge; the latter have ensured up-to-date coverage of news stories that happened just last week pertaining to Microsoft. I do think that this is another example of how Wikipedia is helping to transcend the boundaries between newspapers and encyclopaedias. ACEO 19:05, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:   Revisiting Questions on How up-to-date Online Encyclopaedias Are 

message: What The heck is The ??? language? You know how you get the page that asks you for the language that you speak? Well, the ??? language is on there. And all letters are ? marks. Um... whats the deal with that? Fatandlazy11 01:04, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The question marks are showing up most likely because your browser doesn't support the characters that are being used. Certain configurations don't support languages with complex scripts, like Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Thai, and Urdu. —chair lunch dinner™ (talk) 01:48, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unknown language 

message: The Wikipedia "foundation principles" don't seem to be explicitly mentioned as such on this page (I could be being unobservant though). Any views on whether they should feature here? SP-KP 19:21, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improvement suggestion 

message: Does anyone know where the name "Wikipedia" came from? - User:Sasuke-kun27 14:15, 24 June 2006
As explained in wikipedia's entry on wikipedia itself, the word is a portamentau of "wiki" (meaning a web page open to consumer editing) and "encyclopedia". Elysium 845 11:35, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What about the Use of Creative Capitalization? Isopropyl 04:42, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of the name 

message: The criticism section has several weasel words in vague sentences that need citations.
*"Proponents contend that open editing improves quality over time" - Who are the proponents?
*"Some argue that allowing anyone to edit makes Wikipedia an unreliable work"
*"Some critics have suggested that Wikipedia cannot justifiably be called an "encyclopedia", a term which (it is claimed) implies a high degree of reliability and authority that Wikipedia, due to its open editorial policies, may not be able to maintain."
*"Wikipedia has been praised for making it possible for articles to be updated or created in response to current events." - Vague. Who praised Wikipedia? Anything can be updated/created in response to an event; is Wikipedia praised because the articles are created and updated quickly after the event? The following example about the earthquake isn't cited either and doesn't really illustrate this statement. I'd suggest removing the example as it would be difficult to cite all the press sources.
*"Critics of Wikipedia have also viewed it as an oligarchy which is controlled primarily by its administrators, stewards, and bureaucrats, or simply by a small number of its contributors."
I don't like how the praise of Wikipedia is lumped in with the criticism. There's no "praise" section in the article, and I'd prefer to see them in separate sections. There's more criticism than praise in this article, and where the good qualities of Wikipedia are mentioned, they are not obvious to the reader or are not explained in enough detail. Perhaps some of the information from Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia is so great could be adapted into this article. SCHZMO ✍ 15:51, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that references should be added for the "proponents", "critics" and "some people" as this currently reads as innuendo.  I also agree that the praise could be put under a separate section. Peter Campbell Talk! 08:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weasel words/Unsourced statements 

message: The aforementioned content dispute shouldn't be mentioned in this article, for several reasons:
* The editor who introduced the dispute into this article is one of the participants.  This article is not a place to grind your axe; if you have an issue that can't be resolved on the talk page, take it to WP:RFC.
* Said content dispute has not been covered in any external source that I'm aware of.  
* Said content dispute appears to be over minutiae (is the F14 an "air superiority" fighter?); and there are conflicting sources on the matter.  To claim that one position (being advanced by an agressive editor, apparently) somehow makes Wikipedia look bad is quite seriously begging the question.
* Content disputes are a known issue on Wikipedia, and already covered here and on Criticism of Wikipedia.  Mention of the F-14 debate does little to further improve this article.
Reverted.
--EngineerScotty 22:56, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The content dispute on [[F-14 Tomcat]] 

message: The following articles, which are breakout articles of this article, have been nominated for deletion:
* 
See also:
* 
Uncle G 14:55, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  AFD nominations 

message: All around Wikipedia, there has been much discussion of what could from a collaboration between Wikipedia & Google, listing lots of possible pros and cons, and how it could benefit both companies. While a partnership is all up to executives of the Wikimedia Foundation & Google Inc., I propose the creation of an article where Wikipedians could explore the issue. There are dozens of articles dedicated to defining different parts of both internet companies, and lots of talk about their relationship, so a entire article dedicated to the possibilities might be beneficial. I could create the article myself, but I would like feedback to see if its appropriate or not. I'm not positive if it fits into Wikipedia's policies, so I step cautiously. I don't want anyone to shoot me down for this proposal, even if it turns out to be a bad one, I just want to explore an idea.--Wikiphilia 23:58, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A seperate 'page' isn't really necessary unless it is to document known information concerning a colloboration, at which the associated talk page would be the perfect place to dicuss it. Wikipedia's articles are not discussion points - thats the talk page's job. However as far as I know (not much admittedly ;) ) no such page exists. If you fins enough information from reliable sources of such a colloboration then create the page. Otherwise the alternative is to use this section (and a link at Google's talk page, to ensure that everyone who wishes to make a comment knows where to look. Thanks for being cautious. Philipwhiuk 18:18, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia & Google 

message: I changed these links to be external links, because they referenced Wikipedia:-space. (The point is that the links would otherwise be broken in many Wikipedia mirrors, but they add enough to the article that they should appear here; this is explained in the header of WP:ASR.) However, I was reverted. Could someone explain why the links should be internal? --ais523 09:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you. The links should be external, as in any other article. -- Ec5618 09:43, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I must disagree. To my mind that means that in any article that references the Wikipedia space (eg Spam or AWB would require this change. We are not here to provide for mirrors and you could say that all links should be external as the mirror may not have all of Wikipedia. I think though that this would be better discussed at Wikipedia talk:External links or Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style as this has an impact on multiple articles and not just this. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 14:15, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Both of those examples are  tagged so they will be removed in Wikipedia mirrors. In the case of Wikipedia, however, removing the links would harm the article, so they have to be written as external instead. If you disagree with the style guidline, why not debate it on Wikipedia_talk:Avoid_self-references? --ais523 15:10, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Further Reading links 

message: I find Wikipedia such a wonderful resource that I am spoiled.  Despite all the obvious effort that has gone into many otherwise terrific Wikipedia articles on geography, they overwhelmingly stink, for one reason:   they are almost without exception incomprehensibly weak in establishing geographical context for political regions: Where is the region in question located on the globe, on its continent, relative to something bigger than itself ???  It is rarely any help at all to go to another article.  For a totally typical example, try figuring out where Mauritius is, relative to something else big, like Africa.  (I don't doubt that with all the info in Wikipedia, this can be done -- but how hard is it for the average user?)  You go to the Mauritius article and it is almost entirely lacking larger context.  It says its geography article is part of a larger, African Geography article.  But that article astonishingly does not bother to convey where countries in or near Africa are located, for the most part, and if it offers another, better option, one clearly has to work pretty hard to find it, since I was unable to.  This is, unfortunately, a very familiar scenario.
How can the typical Geography of Continent X not convey where the countries of Continent X are located and positioned on this contintent?
Could it be because of a fear and loathing of artificial political boundaries?  Or just massive cluelessness?  Stay tuned.Daqu 04:37, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Out of curiosity I just went and had a look at Mauritius and one of the first images seen was this one.  Is that the sort of thing you're talking about?  How is that not good? -- Francs2000  07:26, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I find the position of Mauritius on that map to be a question of a) guesswork and b) eagle-eyed vision.  My response to your question is:  How is that good?Daqu 00:54, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I looked at the Mauritius page and the 1st sentence says that the island "is about 900 kilometres (560 mi) east of Madagascar and about 3,943 kilometers (2,450 mi) southwest of India." I'm afraid I can't see what the weakness in geography is. Could you clarify please?--Planetary 01:18, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Weakness of Wikipedia Geography Articles vis-à-vis Political Regions

message: In this article's very early history, it used the phrase "over a round number" articles. Then, in mid-2003, someone used the NUMBEROFARTICLES template in this article. I'm trying to find out when in history the "Do not change this to NUMBEROFARTICLES" HTML comment was first added. Georgia guy 23:56, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Using the NUMBEROFARTICLES template 

message: I've put this section into summary style and split out the details of assessment of Wikipedia and findings of studies which have examined this (as opposed to simple criticisms) to a new article, Reliability of Wikipedia.
This section was a bit of a mess, with the various edit disputes of the past leaving a mix of studies, assessments, quotes and editorialising on the subject, that didn't seem very helpful. I've tried to make a start on cleaning  some of this up, but it really needs to be done collaboratively. 
Main edits:
# Fork off Reliability of Wikipedia, as a neutral article assessing reliability (although the line is not always clear between an assessment and a criticism)
# Clean up criticism subsections -- Authors was not in fact a criticism section but a description of the process, much of Coverage was studies on reliability, some of Reliability was generic "I don't like/trust it" about the wiki process, and so on.
# Split out network reliability issues from article reliability issues
# Wikify some links, add :category:Collaboration
# Finally, put the criticisms section into summary style, summarising findings rather than repeating them. (More could probably still be done on this, on both articles; it's still too messy)
Hopefully this gives a slightly better article. Where else should the "Reliability" article be linked from?
FT2 (Talk | email) 19:47, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reliability and criticisms section 

message: Google Search Trends is a service provided by Google. It shows: 
*The volume of how much something is searched on Google
*What cities search for it the most
*What countries search for it the most
*What languages its search for in the most.
I was wondering if some information from Wikipedia's Trend could be displayed on this page?
--Alan Frize 21:23, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Google search trends. 

message: The proper way to demonstrate exponential growth is generate a plot where the abscissa is linear time and the ordinate is a logarithm of the dependent varabile (in this case, article count). For exponential growth, you should then have a straight line.  If you do not have a straight line, then you have something else. Also, the chart is out-of-date. Please update it in any case. -- 64.175.42.148 02:20, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Exponential growth 

message: # This article has a lot of reference links that would appear to go against WP:ASR. Is the Wikipedia article exempt?
# What outside source can/is cited somewhere for the first reference link of http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/PlotsPngUsageVisits.htm? Is it also WP:ASR...?
# "Midway through 2006, Wikipedia had more than 4,600,000 articles in many languages, including more than 1,200,000 in the English-language version." There is no outside source link for this under WP:V. rootology 19:36, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is not quite self-reference as it is a reasonable topic for any modern encyclopedia. It could reasonably be mirrored elsewhere, though rather oddly it is not at  but something similar is at . --Henrygb 16:41, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  3 simple questions, mild confusion 

message: Does anyone have an explaination for the growth spurt in October 2003? The article count seems to have almost doubled in the third week of October 2003. -- 75.26.7.168 21:42, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you mean October 2002, perhaps? Johntex\talk 21:48, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

text: FYI History of Wikipedia article states 'In October 2002, Derek Ramsey ("Ram-Man") started to use a "bot", or program, to add a large number of articles about United States towns; these articles were automatically generated from U.S. census data. Occasionally, similar bots had been used before for other topics. These articles were generally well received, but some users criticized them for their uniformity and generally machine-like writing style (for example, see this version of a town article).'
This is probably the explanation for the growth spurt. Tom 23:16, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  October 2003 growth spurt 

message: Many articles (Skype being an example) have milestones and developments sections. I think this article needs one as well, bvut I'm not familiar enough with its history to add it.
A section of this kind should list major innovations in versioning and capabilities (or point to the mediawiki software for this information), as well as milestones for wikipedia itself. 
Can someone research and add? FT2 (Talk | email) 02:13, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Milestones 

message: You know, the one that shows two guys partaking in oral sex? FireSpike 19:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry for the slow response to vandalism.  -- Coneslayer 19:19, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is that picture supposed to be there? 

message: I think this page should be under selective user editing for obvious reasons. It gets annoying when you have to revert edits every other minute.Gagueci 22:26, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Lol, I just laughed at the truth in the statement. Yea, I also think that the selective user should be one that has been a member for atleast a couple of days. So as to limit the vandals. Monkey Brain 22:31, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

text: You might want to see this -- Lost 18:08, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: I think it should be pointed out in the article that Wikipedia as a whole has a bias against traditional values of the Democratic party. 75.2.253.161 20:14, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If there exists a reliable source that has made such a criticism, that might be eligible for inclusion.  Jkelly 20:45, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I think it would be easier to find proof of bias against the Republican party, but either way a verifiable source is needed. Johntex\talk 06:03, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This probably doesn't qualify, but touches upon it.  Jkelly 19:33, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That actually says Wikipedia is bias for Democratic views, not against them. Konman72 21:50, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It doesn't even say that, but note that I was replying to Johntex.  Jkelly 21:52, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Jkelly - thank you for providing that link.  I've only had a chance to skim it, but it looks very interesting.  Best, Johntex\talk 22:07, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, that depends.  Was his version better?  Was his version more NPOV? Johntex\talk 00:44, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Cox's case is that he edited Keith Olbermann and Countdown with Keith Olbermann and that he revert-warred until he got blocked. Decide for yourself how NPOV his edits are; they're in this section; but that's  not a defense for an editor who makes five exact reversions in 24 hours. Septentrionalis 01:57, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias against values of U.S. Democratic political party 

message: --Slgr@ndson (page - messages - contribs) 20:14, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: [[The New Yorker]] 

message: "(rv cut and paste merge. consensus was to merge in wikimedia page, not the wikipedia one)"
The Wikimedia page still contains no reference to that article. Also that article is titled "WikiPedia in..." not "Wikimedia in...". If that was the consensus then why hasn't anything changed? Duh -- "Wikimedia in pop culture", not "Wikimedia" --JCipriani 04:51, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pop culture merge. 

message: nevada is origans cuba —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.28.250.225 (talk • contribs) 18:45, 1 August 2006  (UTC)
:Um, what? Picaroon9288|ta co 03:21, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  origan 

message: I am very interested in this because I am an Admin on the Psychology Wiki, and 90% of psychology students are female.  If anyone thinks they actually know, or has a good estimation, please could they leave a message on my user page :)
Tom Michael - Mostly Zen  (talk) 16:26, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Heh define wikipedian. You could check the relivant userboxes but that would only get you so far.Geni 02:27, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And that won't be too reliable, I noticed in Guild Wars a lot of female players, and I was surprised. Then I found that my three sons sometimes play as female characters - and it appears to be a normal thing. --Brat32 02:36, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Does anyone know what proportion of Wikipedians are female?

message: "Given enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow" -- as given in the article. The very recent article in the Atlantic Monthly gave this as "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". Correct version please?
And should the recent articles on Wikipedia, in the Atlantic Monthly and the New Republic [I think] be added to the references? --Dumarest 15:28, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Jimmy Wales reference 46 

message: If this is ever going to be taken seriously or trusted by "non-believers" and the non "cult-believers" 
then System Administrators should be called fact checkers and the ista-deleters called bots should 
stopped.  Some mindless program can't have the sense god gave the common bovine.
--G-Spot 13:14, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Administrators.... 

message: Since it is much disputed to call Larry the "co-founder" of Wikipedia, this article should not do so.  As is well known, I strongly contest this characterization of Larry's role.  I think it is an insult to the people who really created the site, the early contributors who shaped policy in opposition to Larry and made Wikipedia the success it is today.--Jimbo Wales 18:06, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, there is a difference between founding and making successful of course. If Larry Sanger co-founded the project and then did whatever and left because of disagreements (I don't know the story), he does not cease to be the co-founder. "The early contributors who shaped policy in opposition to Larry" were there only *after* the project was founded. If reality is an insult to them, we should still write about reality. In any case, he should not simply be removed as co-founder, but the text should be rewritten to explain what happened. The article currently says very little about this. Piet 09:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think he should be removed as a founder but perhaps more emphasis can be placed on his early abandonment of the project. Unless there is some major evidence showing that he wasn't a founder it would be POV to not include him. Konman72 09:36, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV 

message: I need help! On soem pages there's an info box and there are lots of different types, tv show infobox, buffyverse caharcter infobox, but I wanna know how to make a new infobox! please, please help me!!!
I wonder who decides what is non-notable and what is notable. I attempted to run a few entry on some unknown but interest persons who are only notable to people in a rather specialized field, but who may have been of interest to general readers. My article were deleted on the basis of "non-notable." And yet, wikipedia chooses to run articles on such august personages as MR. METHANE and BALLS MAHONEY. MR. METHANE AND BALLS MAHONEY!!!! Let me ask, if these two individuals deserve articles, who doesn't?
Bob Guedel IV
--Fugabutacus 18:30, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox 

message: There's a little bit of ambiguity here. Did the title originally mean free as in liberated, or free as in free of charge? The French version titled L’encyclopédie libresuggests it is the former, as opposed to the latter which would be L’encyclopédie gratuit. Apologies for the dumb observation...
:It has always been both, but this does cause problems for translations. But free as in freedom is the most important than the free as in free beer.--Clawed 23:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a bit more at Wikipedia:Main Page FAQ#Why is the word "free" mistranslated in the names of other language editions? - BT 11:55, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To the best of my knowledge, The "Free" in the Wikipedia title, as being a free encyclopedia, refers to it as being free content, and free editing - basically, the content on here is free to use and redistribute under the GFDL, and the editors are free to edit absolutely anything they wish. Therefore, I would go with the French original, as specified, "L'encyclopédie libre", suggesting an open and liberated encyclopedia. Thor Malmjursson 12:25, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The 'Free' Encyclopedia 

message: A giant hand comes out of the monitor and slaps you in the face for looking up wikipedia on wikipedia...
Seriously though do they need to be told the URL of wikipedia under neath the picture on the right side?
* Wikipedia is mirrored by many other places, and finds itself at locations other than en.wikpedia.org.  We treat Wikipedia like any other article on a notable website.  So, yes.  --EngineerScotty 00:34, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion 

message: Increase the table will may be better
platform        	website                   	function	advantage	disadvantage	???
wikipedia       	http://en.wikipedia.org   	???     	???      	???         	
Yahoo!+         	http://answers.yahoo.com/
http://tw.knowledge.yahoo.com/	???     	???      	???         	
Google Answers  	http://answers.google.com/	???     	???      	???         	
Windows Live QnA	http://qna.live.com/      	???     	???      	???         	
Ask Yahoo       	http://ask.yahoo.com/     	???     	???      	???         	
Baidu           	http://zhidao.baidu.com/  	???     	???      	???         	
-- Why do you want to compare it to portals that are not encyclopedias? --62.168.125.219 21:19, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Compare with other platform 

message: I saw in :Category:Wikipedias by language that there are 52 articles on Wikipedias in different languages. Some of these Wikipedias are small having less that 2000 articles. What Wikipedias are considered notable enough to have their own article here. GizzaChat © 12:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedias of non-English languages 

message: I can't find anything on this page regarding an estimate of the combined size of all the articles for any particular language Wikipedia. I think that such a statistic would be useful for this page. I know Wikimedia keeps stats at this page, but I don't think it's linked to on the page. 80.47.241.46 16:57, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Size of Wikipedia 

message: The English Wikipedia is very good, but the Arabic version is not. It is biased and religious (Islamist). The Arabic version is also not professional.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikipedia"
--—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.33.106.4 (talk • contribs) .
Not being able to read Arabic, I'm unable to comment on that claim.  However, it has been noted by many that different language editions of Wikipedia often offer different points of view on the same topic; an example which has been noted on an admin's homepage for now is the Falkland Islands; the English-language Wikipedia tends to support England's claims to the place; the Spanish-language article (es:Islas Malvinas tends to support the Argentine claim.  Both articles do attempt to be NPOV (and aren't flagrantly biased), yet can lead the reader to different conclusions.
If an external commentator of note were to document this, we could include it in the article.  My comments here, and others on the Wikipedia, however, aren't acceptable sources to support such a claim.
--EngineerScotty 16:07, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabic Wikipedia is Islamist!  

message: Substituted at 21:01, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment