Help desk
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Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
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May 2

Starting a new page

How do I make a new page on wikipedia? <email removed> Dalton1016 01:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Help:Starting a new page. The answer is also in the Very Frequently Asked Questions list which is linked at the top of this page. Dismas|^(talk) 01:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't be in a rush. You would be wise to do some reading first. Start with the above pages, then use the links in the welcome template on your talk page. Adrian M. H. 13:01, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your contributions show only one edit (this Help desk question). Did you edit extensively on Wikipedia before you created your account? If you have little experience editing on Wikipedia, any new articles you create right now would probably be at risk of getting deleted, because Wikipedia has complicated requirements for articles which tend to baffle new users. Wikipedia is probably unlike anything you have used before, and most new users start off with misconceptions about how Wikipedia works, and what sort of content Wikipedia wants. Wikipedia deletes about 2,000 articles per day, many of them from new users with little editing experience. See Wikipedia:Why was my article deleted?. A more prudent approach is to spend some time making small edits to existing articles which interest you, and start reading everything under Help:Contents. Read the Wikipedia:Tip of the day each day, and read the Help desk as well to see what sort of problems other users are having, and the solutions. After you have 100 edits or so, and you have read some of the manuals, you will be much better equipped to create new articles that "stick." --Teratornis 15:07, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Links

How can you find out how many links there are to a particular article? Clarityfiend 01:30, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Go to the article, then click on the "What links here" link in the toolbox on the left side of the page. Then count. Dismas|^(talk) 01:33, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Checkuser

Hi, I discovered an edit on "my contributions" that I honestly can't see how could be mine. It's not vandalism or even a mainspace edit. It's this edit. Would it be okay for me to ask for a checkuser action to be performed on my own account, and could this help me discover if any ip address unfamiliar to me was used for the edit? Could this be a database error, or has someone been using my account? In advance, thanks for your time. Delta Tango • Talk 02:13, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For a single, non-vandalism edit, I'd say no. The valid reasons for requesting a checkuser can be found on the requests page at WP:RCU. You might be able to file a request under code G, but I doubt it would be approved. Checkuser is intended to be a last resort for troublesome cases only. I recommend you be more careful about where you log in and ensuring that you successfully log out when you use shared computers. Even if you don't think that's the problem, some browsers hold onto session cookies a little longer than you intend them to, and grant people access to accounts they shouldn't. Hersfold ^(talk/work) 02:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Userpage syntax

After discovering the ribbons page tonight, I copied the three ribbons to which I was entitled, along with the journeyman award. However, now that I have those stacked on the left and my userboxes on the right, the actual text of my userbox doesn't begin until several lines down. Any idea on how to fix it? If you know for sure how to do it, feel free to change my page: I don't care who edits it as long as it looks like what I want :-) Nyttend 03:44, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How's your CSS? You need to create some divs for each section in order to influence its position. I might have some time to help you out with it later today or tomorrow. Leave me a message if you get really stuck. Adrian M. H. 12:57, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No license on Commons image

What can be done about this image? It's on the Commons but I don't see a license, copyright info, source, etc. for it. Should it be tagged with something? Dismas|^(talk) 04:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I notified the owner and they placed a licence there. I'm not sure what the Commons procedure for untagged images is, but they have a Help desk over there.--Commander Keane 05:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Website

I was wondering if it is ok to write a wikipedia about a website that I own. I don't want to promote it I just want to put it out there. Can I do this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Savagemania (talk • contribs) 05:19, 2 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Wikipedia strongly discourages, though does not bar, writing about something in which you have a financial stake (or any other stake)--see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. It is generally better to wait for someone else to write the article than to do it yourself. Also note WP:WEB, Wikipedia's notability guidelines for webpages. If your site does not meet these requirements (which focus on the existence of independent, reliable sources covering the site) then any article about it is likely to be deleted. Calliopejen1 05:46, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

give me a it

Give a anwere On a definition of a symphony Nowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww? --124.187.144.21 06:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How old are you? Can you make better sense? Definition of "symphony":

wiktionary:symphony

Article on "symphony":

symphony.

--70.179.170.119 07:18, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

clear=none

I was just wondering what this parameter does. A response on my talk page or to let me know you've responded would be greatly appreicated! Thank you!100110100 07:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think you must mean the style declaration clear:none; See http://www.devx.com/projectcool/Article/20061. Adrian M. H. 12:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you are talking about HTML in wikitext and you refer to the <br> tag, evidently the clear=none property does nothing. --Teratornis 14:53, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The site's newsletter: the Wikipedia Signpost, has been missing an article.

Where is the Technology Report? Why haven't I seen it for weeks now? Will it come back? Once it does, will the missing past editions of the Technology Report become retroactively placed on the old Signpost issues as well? I loved reading the new technological updates about Wikipedia so if it's somewhere else, please give me a link. Thanks. --70.179.170.119 07:23, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think the problem's that nobody's written one (which can sometimes be a problem on a wiki!) When the next one is written, I suppose it'll be up to whoever writes it as to whether it's retroactive (all the information would be likely to be included together in one new issue). In the meantime, this link gives a list of all bugs that were fixed in the last week (which should provide even more information about technological updates, but which does show all the bugs, not just the relevant one). Fixed bugs are in black, and new features are in grey; note that a lot of the effort is in translation of new languages. (You can change the 7d in the URL to increase how long ago a bug can have been fixed and show up on the list.) Hope that helps! --ais523 08:17, 2 May 2007 (U T C)

user page

I jus wanna edit my user page. I would like to ask is there any pre designed templates to use for our user pages. Cause my user page looks horrible. Or is there any tutorial about editing our user page. Please help me thanks--Frans Adiesha 09:37, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:User Page Design Center. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:58, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Have a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject User Page Help/Trading Spaces. Adrian M. H. 12:38, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How to delete your contribution?

I doubled-send my contribution with different headline. How to delete your first contribution? Thank you. Please reply to my account <chel_mike>—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Chel mike (talk • contribs) 09:58, 2 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

You could've tagged the page with {{db-owner}}. Someone redirected it for you, but I deleted it, because it seems unlikely someone will type that in. Bracketed modifiers are only needed when there may be confusion between more things with the same name. Also, make sure you watch the capitalization in your article titles. "2006 Koreon Drama Series" should've been "2006 Korean drama series". - Mgm|^(talk) 10:53, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Color in writing

I notice that a lot of users sign their posts in a nice format. I would like to do the same, but I don't know how to. Could someone please tell me? Robbsi 10:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Signatures#Customizing your signature. PrimeHunter 10:45, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Differentiation

≈218.248.65.66 13:24, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps one of the links from Differentiation might be useful. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Chihuahua

Hi I have a Chihuahua (dog) that had pups 4wks ago she was fine during the birth and is great with the pups over the past couple pF days she seems to get a high temp and has a bit of a turn i am wondering if she might have a milk diease i sponge her with water when her temp is up then she seems to be fine can i take the pups away from her and bottle feed ? she was crossed with a pom queen_of_angels

It sounds like you don't need the Help desk; you need a veterinarian. --Teratornis 14:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See the Reference Desk. Scottydude _talk 16:10, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mediation cabal

Hi does anyone know how long it takes someone from the mediation cabal to arrive? I put in a request for one yesterday and no-one has appeared (yes, I know they are busy people). A couple of people have come to the article I have been editing and are removing bits and putting in lots of citation tags and a POV tag, which are absolutely not justified as the article is neutrally written and full of appropriate references. They won't discuss anything calmly with me or point out anything they consider POV and unfortunately there is no-one else around, so I am waiting anxiously for a mediator.Staug73 14:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that takes a cabal, necessarily. A request for comment should be enough at this stage. Can you provide a link to the article? I'd be willing to at least take a look at it and give you my opinion. Adrian M. H. 14:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Special:Contributions/Staug73. As the mediator's response on Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-05-01 Electroconvulsive therapy points out, it's helpful if you tell us the article you are talking about: Electroconvulsive Therapy. --Teratornis 14:45, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks everyone. My mistakes. I have only just realized you have to click on request. My mediator was there all along and I just hadn't worked out to find them (and was complaining about them being slow. Oh dear). And I thought the article came up automatically. I'm learning. Yes, comments would be appreciated. Where will comments appear?Staug73 14:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That depends on what sort of comments you are seeking. When I respond to posts at WP:3O, I comment publicly on the article's talk page for both parties to see, and may make comments on users' talk pages if appropriate. If I take a look this particular article, I will respond on your talk page. Adrian M. H. 15:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I just want to be able to find them! Staug73 15:09, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Selfridge Field

The last paragraph on the page for "Selfridge Field" erroneously states, "STARBASE, an acronym for Science and Technology Academies Reinforcing Basic Aviation and Space Exploration, engages in activity-based science and math lessons." STARBASE is not an acronym. It should simply read, "STARBASE engages in activity-based science and math lessons." As a co-creator of STARBASE, the acronym was only initially provided to congress when they were drawing up federal legislation. Since all upper-case words in governmental or military "speak" typically deonte an acronym, they asked that we assign one to it. We did so only to appease legislators. In fact, it was done in a rather hysterical brainstorming session. Shortly after passing legislation, the acronym was removed, and the program is simply known as STARBASE (contrary to what others may suggest). Again, as a co-creator, I can guarantee it's not an acronym. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.82.9.66 (talk) 17:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

But can it be verified? If you can provide a source, or the existing statement is unsourced, then I suggest being bold and editing it yourself. Adrian M. H. 17:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reverts

how do i revert vandalism? is there a button or something?The juggsd86 19:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is a lot of different ways to do so. One would be to go to the history - find the revision - click diff (diff) - find undo - click it - save. There are many scripts to do that. If you want one I suggest using Lupin's popups. «razorclaw» 19:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Irc

The link in question is: irc://irc.freenode.net/wikipedia-bootcamp

The Error I'm getting is: Firefox doesn't know how to open this address, because the protocol (irc) isn't associated with any program.

I would like to: I be able to access all irc channels but can't. How can I do so? «razorclaw» 19:28, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You should download a free IRC client such as [www.mirc.com mIRC] and make sure it is specified in Firefox's settings for handling irc:// protocols. Hersfold ^(talk/work) 19:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's a special firefox extension that can handle IRC you can use called ChatZilla. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Internal use of wikipedia and linking to network shares

Were trying to create a link to a file stored on a network share. The wikipedia page is for internal use so we should be able to include this link. You would think the following would work: [\\fileshare\testfolder\1.doc]

But this does not work. Any suggestions? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 159.140.254.10 (talk) 20:25, 2 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Try Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing. The HD is all about editing Wikipedia. Adrian M. H. 20:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the clause:

The wikipedia page is for internal use

makes no sense, because pages on Wikipedia are visible to everyone, even your user pages. Either you misunderstand how Wikipedia works, or you are not talking about Wikipedia at all, but instead your own wiki (such as a corporate wiki).

If you are really talking about a page on a corporate wiki and not Wikipedia itself, then maybe you should set up another corporate wiki that runs on TWiki, which I think has more features for linking to files on arbitrary filesystems than MediaWiki does. While MediaWiki is great for corporate wikis in many ways, it lacks a number of features a typical corporation probably wants (such as easy ways to link to existing content in corporate databases and file servers). MediaWiki is designed for the needs of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects, and Wikipedia doesn't need to link to existing piles of content in numerous file formats, because Wikipedia has tens of thousands of active users who are happy to type content in. --Teratornis 02:12, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Submitted article yesterday, do not see.

Hello, I submitted my first article on a boxer by the name of Pete Ranzany. I created a user name & password, wrote the article, then hit save. It doesn't appear anything was saved. I read somewhere that it might take up to 30 hours, However, this was longer than 30 hours ago. Is there a way to retrieve what I wrote on my account? Will this article I wrote ultimately appear? what do you think? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Reye611 (talk • contribs) 20:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

You contribs show that you have not yet created any article. Adrian M. H. 21:13, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It never takes more than a couple of seconds for a newly created article to appear. Usually it looks instantaneous. If it didn't show up then you most likely didn't do it right. By the way, I see that you have successfully created the article since asking the question. Cool. :-) Tugbug 23:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My password is supposedly incorrect!

On April 27, 2007, I tried to log in to my Wikipedia account as sw2442, but for some reason, when I tried to enter my password, it said "incorrect password." I had been able the day before (April 26,) to enter my user and password info with no problem. Have I been deleted or removed because of a mistake I made, or did some other user change my password without my knowledge? Thanks for your help. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 63.168.104.2 (talk) 20:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

By any chance, was your password the same as your username? Because the developers (or someone else, I forget who) blocked all access to accounts whose usernames are the same as their passwords for security reasons. If you have email enabled you can request a new password--VectorPotential^Talk 20:57, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I did have my user and password the same. I knew I should have created a unique password. How do I request a new password, especially since I'm not sure Wiki has my email address. Every time I ask to change my password it says it has no e-mail address for the user name. Thanks.

You'll need to disregard that account and create a new one then. And register an e-mail address in case you ever get locked out again. Adrian M. H. 21:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to all for your help. I will create a new account. I just hop the info I added this last year doesn't disappear. Thanks again.

Good article indication

It might sound a bit stupid, but how come Good Articles aren't indicated with a symbol at the top right corner, like Featured Articles, or semi-protected pages? It seems like an easy way of spotting them while browsing, at least to me. —May the Edit be with you, always. (T-borg) ^{(drop me a line)} 21:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't sound stupid at all. There used to be such a symbol which was placed on Good Articles. See here for the deletion debate regarding that. Garion96 (talk) 21:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wish they still used it. Adrian M. H. 21:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see. Thanks, I really hadn't thought about those points. —May the Edit be with you, always. (T-borg) ^{(drop me a line)} 21:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Lots of WikiProjects tag the talk pages of articles with article status indicators. People who like the idea of article ratings would probably want to see the expansion of WikiProjects to the point that every article falls under the scope of at least one WikiProject. --Teratornis 00:15, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Guide to editing

Is there a laments terms guide to editing Wikipedia pages? The syntax is different from anything and the help system sucks. the idea behind Wikipedia is incredible but it's been made so hard to accomplish the task of writing down what you know so other people will know it too. Everything is so scattered and unorganized, how do I navigate through editing a page ? When I click on the 'edit' link to update the references section of a page, how come there are no other references there that you can clearly see ? What happens if I write something in there, does it erase everything already in there ? How come you couldn't just use one of the umpteen billion languages already available to allow this site to grow. Is it only designed for people with knowledge who also have coding experience ? Thats not very fair, that leaves many people with a plethora of knowledge, and very basic editing skills, out of the loop. What do I do here I get more frustrated every second that I'm in the editing mode because nothing makes any sense.

Please use the + tab to make a new section - I have added a heading for you. Also, please sign posts with four tildes. Navigate to Help:Contents and you should find links that take you through the basics, such as Help:Editing and Wikipedia:How to edit a page. Adrian M. H. 21:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As regards the "empty" references section, see Wikipedia:Footnotes. Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 22:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the markup is very easy to understand. I have no HTML experience, or any other for that matter and I learned very quickly. The most important markup keys you really need to know to edit Wikipedia is internal linking, external linking, and formatting texts. You can see these here. I'll give a quick explanation: to link text in an article to another article or page on wikipedia simply place two brackets (like this [[Wikipedia]]) around the title of the article you would like to link to. It will produce this: Wikipedia. To link a word that is not the title of the page to a page type this: [[Pleasant Grove, Alabama|text you want to bluelink]] this will produce this: text you want to bluelink which sends you too Pleasant Grove, Alabama. To italicize text place two apostrophes around the text (''Italicized text'') which will produce Italicized text. To bold text use three apostrophes, and to 'bold and italicize' use four apostrophes. If you need anymore help or have anyquestions please ask here or place {{helpme}} on your talk page. The brackets, {{...}} transduce another page or template from the Wikipedia server onto another page. So the template {{helpme}} will be viewed from your talk page. Happy editing Scottydude _talk 23:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One more comment: One thing that's great about wikipedia is if you don't want to learn the syntax, it's not that big a deal. Just do your best and as long as another editor can see what you were trying to do, someone will eventually clean up after you. Because of the wiki format, a rough draft is good enough. Calliopejen1 23:24, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I read somewhere in the endless WYSIWYG-vs.-markup language debate that a site like Wikipedia doesn't necessarily want to make editing too easy and intuitive for new users. Requiring all new users to learn a new markup language functions something like an IQ test, immediately screening out large numbers of people who find the markup language difficult to learn. While I don't have hard data to support it, I strongly suspect that if we divided the world's people into two groups (those who find wikitext easy to learn, and those who find it difficult), the group that finds it easy to learn would probably contain a much higher proportion of people who can also learn Wikipedia's goals and contribute constructively. Of course this is not fair to the (I suspect) exceptional people who are able to contribute constructively but nevertheless have some sort of mental block against learning wikitext markup, but what can you do? No one system can be perfect for everybody. Wikipedia has 6,930,423 articles in English, so plenty of people are able to figure out how to edit here. If enough people hate wikitext and want to build their own encyclopedia some other way, they can do that.

There isn't a huge incentive for established Wikipedians to change the markup language that they themselves were able to learn easily enough, and generally find convenient to use, any more than, say, English-speakers want to clean up irregular verbs and non-phonemic spellings to make English easier for non-native speakers to learn. If only one percent of the world's population is able to figure out how to edit here, that is more than enough contributors to build the world's largest and highest-quality encyclopedia, particularly if that one percent comes disproportionately from the intellectual upper layer of society (and it certainly seems to). In some sense, Wikipedia is like a playground for smart people, where smart people can hang out with other smart people and try to impress each other with how smart they are. On real-world playgrounds where people play games such as basketball, you have to have some ability to play the relevant games if you want to fit in comfortably there.

In a corporate wiki it may be a different story, however, because a corporate wiki needs a large percentage of employees at a company to contribute. If nobody at a company knows wikitext markup, and few employees are technically inclined, it may be hard to get a corporate wiki started. Employees won't have much incentive to learn to use it until a critical mass of employees are using it. --Teratornis 00:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm obviously not from the upper layer of society, but can anyone tell me where to find that upright line that you use in links when you want to link a word that is not the title of the page. Is it on the keyboard?Staug73 15:43, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright permission into OTRS

I have obtained permission releasing an image, and would like to upload it. But how can I store the email into OTRS to prove it? Wooyi^{Talk, Editor review} 23:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming the permission is compatible with our licencing requirements (i.e. permission to release under GFDL or CC-BY/CC-BY-SA, without non-commercial restrictions), you need to forward the email to permissions@wikimedia.org. --YFB ¿ 00:24, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

permanent semi-protection

About 90% of the edits to the article American football are cases of vandalism by anonymous IPs.

Occasionally, the article will be semi-protected for a few days, at which point the vandalism stops. Then someone removes the semi-protection, and it picks up again.

How can I get the page to be permanently semi-protected, like George W. Bush? -- Mwalcoff 23:37, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

According to the current protection policy page, only special pages are indefinitely protected. For articles in the name space, this only includes frequently recreated deleted pages and the main page. Other protected pages are protected with the idea that after a certain "cooling off period" the frequency of vandalism will drop off. For W's page, that will probably be some time after he leaves office. Perhaps you should mention this cycle of events on the next protection request, or on the talk to come with an idea to prevent vandalism. I'd imagine that vandalism would jump up during football season and other big events important to the game. —Mitaphane _?|! 00:07, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On the contrary, vandalism at the page has not dropped off with the end of football season. Thanks for the suggestion, though. -- Mwalcoff 00:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's a topic that needs to be revisited. I am personally totally in favour of anon IP editing, however, I feel that with some articles, retaining completely open editing is an unnecessary burden on the goodwill of good-faith editors (by putting it on them to keep reverting vandalism). I think that for no other reason than trying to retain good-faith editors who can get frustrated and burnt out constantly reverting vandalism in the same articles, some of those articles should be - at the very least - semiprotected for substantial periods. Anchoress 02:01, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How about: every successive instance of unregistered user vandalism causes a page to be semiprotected for a time period that increases by a constant factor, minus an adjustment for vandalism-free days following the end of semi-protection? For example, the semiprotection period could double with each instance of unregistered user vandalism, subtracting one day off the next semiprotection period for every two days in which no vandalism occurs after the last spell of semi-protection ends. Articles that attract relentless vandalism would soon build up very long periods of semi-protection. When a heavily-vandalized article's current period of semi-protection ends, the article would essentially be on probation with respect to further vandalism. The article would have to go a very long time (twice the length of its previous spell of semi-protection) to restore its "virgin" state, so to speak.

Personally, I am skeptical about the unsubstantiated arguments in favor of allowing unregistered users to edit. I question whether allowing anyone to edit almost anything makes Wikipedia more "welcoming;" rather, I suggest that makes Wikipedia more misleading, to the tune of 2,000 article deletions per day. Do all the new users who get suckered into spending hours editing new articles only to have their work deleted for violating the incredibly complex guidelines and policies feel "welcomed"? The act of "welcoming" someone requires the active intervention of some sort of intelligence, and at the moment that kind of intelligence cannot be built into software. Nobody feels "welcomed" by a machine (yet), and to pretend otherwise borders on delusion. Welcoming requires actual humans to greet the newcomers, identify their goals, and interpret the complex rules of Wikipedia for each of them. Currently there is nothing that insures new arrivals get that kind of help, unless they are resourceful enough to figure out how to ask for it before they plunge in and do all sorts of futile editing. And note that registering makes it easier for new users to get help, because then they have user talk pages and some sort of identity for experienced users to address.

I also don't buy the claim that just because unregistered users make a number of constructive edits, requiring them to register would deprive Wikipedia of all those edits. For all we know, some number of "anonymous" editors actually do have accounts, and simply forget to log in before editing, because the system does not require it. Another group might be perfectly willing to register accounts, but haven't bothered yet because it isn't required. How many constructive edits would we really lose if unregistered users were blocked from editing? The only way to find out is to actually require editors to have accounts for a while. If after, say, three months of requiring editors to have accounts, if the loss of constructive edits outweighs the benefits of reduced vandalism, then we could switch back to the present policy. I don't understand how a project supposedly based on objectivism and sourcing all our claims would refuse to subject a questionable policy to any sort of empirical test, to see if all the faith in it has any basis in reality. --Teratornis 03:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I should point out that the whole business of deleting articles amounts to poor ergonomics, because most users who have never used a wiki before probably expect a "Save" button to actually save something. Most computer users have been conditioned through years of experience to interpret the word "save" to have a particular meaning, and the "Save" button on Wikipedia means something very different than that. With virtually all application software a visitor is likely to have used before, a "Save" command implies a certain level of persistence: something that a user "saves" generally persists until the user decides to delete it, or there is a hardware malfunction. "Save" on Wikipedia only means "save to the article's history," and even that won't be visible to most visitors if the article gets deleted. Nothing in the user interface of Wikipedia really conveys to the naive new user the quite possibly low probability that a given edit will really be "saved" in the way the new user tends to expect. Of course, if new users were actually welcomed, by having experienced users interact intelligently with them before turning them loose to edit whatever they please, new users would have a better idea of how the word "Save" on Wikipedia differs from the normal meaning. --Teratornis 03:46, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

hi . i was just wondering when is supposed the topic about coldplay band in Georgian language to be added to the language list in the topic of the same band on english wikipedia? Rustavizauri 14:11, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]