Community Portal

Welcome to the Community Portal. This is the place to find out what's happening on Wikipedia. Learn what tasks need to be done, what groups there are to join, and get or post news about recent events or current activities taking place on Wikipedia.

Community bulletin board

Post your Wikipedia-related news and announcements here!

Volume 3, Issue 39 — 24 September 2007 From the editor: Survey results Wikimedia announces plans to move office to San Francisco WikiWorld comic: "Ambigram" News and notes: Times archives, conferences, milestones Features and admins Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News The Report on Lengthy Litigation Archives·Newsroom·Tip line·Single-page·Subscribe Piotrus Interview 20 September 2007 Episode 30 Witty Lama talks with Piotr Konieczny about whether there is a cabal? Are Polish Wikipedians different? How to encourage civility and cooperation, and how to use WP in the classroom to benefit both the student and the project. Digital Citizenship Interview 13 September 2007 Episode 29 Witty Lama talks to Tamsin Jane about her thesis on "Digital Citizenship" in Wikipedia. Wikimedians came together for a purpose, and founded a society along the way... Onsite · Offsite Subscription · Feedback

Notices

• The article message boxes project has now changed and standardised the styles for most of the message boxes that go on article pages. Next step is to change the protection templates to have a matching look when on article pages. See the talk page if you want to comment or help out.
• A new essay, What Wikipedia should be, needs work and help. Follow the link in order to begin work on the essay.

New project pages seeking contributors

Discussions

Discussions in the following areas have requested wider attention:

See also

Wikizine · In the media · News · Announcements · Mailing lists

Help out

Wikipedia is, by number of articles, the largest encyclopedia ever to exist. However, many articles are stubs, or otherwise need attention. If you like, go ahead, be bold, and jump right in. If you aren't ready to fly solo, you can participate in a Collaboration.

Things to do

• Respond to a request for comment, Wikiquette alert or provide a third opinion.
• Give a requested editor review.
• Can you draw or take pictures? Make a requested image.
• Peer review or give feedback on some articles.
• Make recommendations on articles listed at Good article review.
• Respond to the Reward board or Bounty board.
• Are you good at photo editing? Then try cleaning up some of these images, or helping out at the Graphics Lab.
• Can you use GIS tools? Help make requested maps.
• Can you communicate in another language? There are articles that need translation into English. You can also proofread a finished translation.
• Let SuggestBot suggest pages for you to improve.
• Update pages with old (ref or note template) citations to the new references format.

Fix-up projects

Here are some tasks you can do:

• Wikify: Axe Valley Community College, Goldenplec, Chola-Chalukya wars, Robin Gibson (footballer), Der Löwe, Backlog...
• Cleanup: Kalikesam, Rockgol, Augoeides, The Damn Personals, History of child sexual abuse as a social problem, Backlog...
• Stubs: Roy A. Tucker, Farra d'Isonzo, Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll, Frank B. Zoltowski, Phyllanthaceae, Haute-Marne, More...
• Verify: History of Transylvania, Inbetweener (song), José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Car and Driver, Tim Noah, Backlog...
• Update: Use of capital punishment by nation, Foreign relations of Tajikistan, Tonight Show Band, Maria Sutherland, More...
• Neutrality: Abdullah Khan, Abd Al Razzaq Abdallah Ibrahim Al Tamini, 268 (bus), Abdul Al Salam Al Hilal, Ain’t, Backlog...
• Copyedit: Julfa, Azerbaijan (city), Koguis, Presentation management, Principality of Zeta, Reform War, Nüwa, More...
• Merge: Corn and pellet stoves and furnaces, List of people from Little Rock, Paramount Home Entertainment, Kehaar, Backlog...
• Style: A Dream Too Late, .localhost, 2006 NFL season, Adult Hockey Association, 100-Mile Diet, .invalid, More...
• Expand: Abaaba National Park, 1930 (album), Aileen Hull, 4koma Manga Kingdom, Aidik, Adirondack Trailways, Guido Adler, More...
• Requests: Steven Drowne, Tentative trust, 1979 in NASCAR, Lateral aperture, Strongly dependent, Shō Tai, More...
• Mediation Cabal: help mediate an open case!
• Cleanup backlogs - Review recent overhauls - Active fixup projects - Maintenance projects - Maintenance COTW: be merged

Not sure where to report a certain type of problem with article content? If it exists, it's probably listed at Wikipedia:Maintenance.

Collaborations

To improve the quality of articles that are short or lacking in detail, Wikipedia's community organizes collaborations to expand articles.

Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive

The Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive works on an article that needs a lot of help to reach featured-article standard. The subject of this week's article improvement drive is Parliament House, Canberra:

Parliament House is the meeting place of the Parliament of Australia. It is located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. It was opened in 1988. Its construction cost was over $1.1 billion. Prior to 1988, the Parliament of Australia met in the Provisional Parliament House, which is now known as "Old Parliament House".

You can still help with last week's article, Geography of New Jersey, or help pick next week's article.

Good Article Collaboration of the week

The Good Article Collaboration of the week works to polish already good articles to the highest of standards.

This week's improvement drive is Elvis Presley:

Elvis Aaron Presley began his career as one of the first performers of rockabilly, an uptempo fusion of country and rhythm and blues with a strong back beat. His novel versions of existing songs, mixing "black" and "white" sounds, made him popular—and controversial—as did his uninhibited stage and television performances. He recorded songs in the rock and roll genre, with tracks like "Hound Dog" and "Jailhouse Rock" later embodying the style. Presley had a versatile voice and had unusually wide success encompassing other genres, including gospel, blues, ballads and pop. To date, he is the only performer to have been inducted into four separate music halls of fame. You can still help pick next week's article.

Core Topics Collaboration

The Core Topics Collaboration of the Fortnight works to improve essential Wikipedia topics. The current collaboration is Fuel.

Fuel barrels

Fuel is any material that is capable of releasing energy when its chemical or physical structure is altered. Fuel releases its energy either through chemical means, such as combustion, or nuclear means, such as nuclear fission or nuclear fusion. An important property of a useful fuel is that its energy can be stored to be released only when needed, and that the release is controlled in such a way that the energy can be harnessed to produce work..

You can help pick the next Core Topic collaboration article.

Collaborations by topic

Other collaborations

Active improvement teams

Maintenance

Help clear up the backlog of articles to be merged! Merging is the process combining two (or sometimes more) articles in to a new article, or adding the content of one article to another. You'll need to be familiar with the associated templates. Before you begin, you need to know the details of merging and moving pages. After you read that, you're ready to begin consolidating and improving articles!

WikiProjects

WikiProjects are ongoing team efforts to improve articles having to do with a particular subject, and to manage the logistics of that topic. Hundreds exist — examine the master list to find one that interests you. They are separate from, though may work with, Collaborations.

Language translation

Wikipedia is not just in English! Versions exist in many different languages. To fill in some of the English Wikipedia's gaps, we translate articles from other languages into English. You can view a list of articles that need translation from any language, or, in a few cases, by only one language (this is only available for the more popular languages).

Guidelines, help, and resources

Wikipedia has many help pages, policies, and departments. Here are some of the most general. For a comprehensive list of Wikipedia's departments, see the Wikipedia department directory.

Help

• Wikipedia help - Browse help pages
• Where to ask questions

Editing

• The Manual of Style guidelines and tutorial
• How to edit a page
• Contributing
• How to write a great article
• Where to find information for articles
• A list of template messages
• What special pages are
• Tools for editing
• Request newspapers or magazines

Policies and guidelines

Wikipedia has many established policies, guidelines, conventions, and traditions. This is a very brief sampling of some of the most important; for more information, see the main policies and guidelines page. Policies and guidelines apply both to articles and how to work with fellow editors. For easy access, the shortcuts to the pages are also listed.

Article standards

Working with others

Resources

New user information

Introduction · Sandbox · Help · New user log · Adoption · What Wikipedia is not · Glossary · Account benefits

Ways to communicate

Contact (overview) · Discussion pages · Mailing lists · IRC chat · Meetups · User pages · Requests for comment · Public watchlists · Regional notice boards · Administrators' noticeboard · Requests for article feedback · Local Embassy

Community support groups and programs

Welcoming committee · Editor assistance · Wiki-adoption · Birthday Committee · Harmonious editing club · Kindness Campaign · Reach out · Stress alerts · Wikipedia awards program · Dept. of Fun · One featured article per quarter · Missing encyclopedic articles

Common procedures

Featured content · Good articles · Requests for feedback · Deleting a page (full policy) · Moving a page (naming policies) · Protecting a page (full policy) · Reverting a page · Administrator nominations (summaries) · Category-based access

How to resolve conflicts

Stay cool! · Be nice to newcomers · Alert others · Dispute resolution · Arbitration policy

Community information

About Wikipedia · Goings-on · About Wikimedia · Wikipedians · Wiki-adoption · Donations · Administrators · Babel · Culture · Games · Humor · Mottoes

Related communities

Tip of the day

Let's say you are writing an article and you want to create a link to the definition of a word the understanding of which is crucial to understanding the article. But in this hypothetical situation, you don't want to link to the Wikipedia article for that word because it would be overkill. Wikipedia has a sister project that presents hundreds of thousands of definitions. It's called Wiktionary. Here's how you would provide a link to the definition of "understanding":

both [[wiktionary:understanding|]] and [[wikt:understanding|]] will look like this:

understanding

and link to the definition of the word "understanding".

Notice that the "pipe trick" (|) was used in the links above.

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