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Archive 1

Opening text

This page contains some questions and answers (sometimes) which are not ready for the FAQ.

How do I get my own wiki?

Q. How do I get my own wiki? For example for my own web site or business or family discussions or maybe a church group or some other organisation?

A. See the [UseMod:UseModWiki UseModWiki home page] to download the software used to build this site. (Note that the Wikipedia version is slightly different than the official release, but it is mostly the same.) --CliffordAdams

A2. Also, I am probably willing to hook you up with a wiki of your own at http://www.wikicities.com Someday this may be a full service, for now it is ad hoc. --Jimbo Wales

How should I make passing references?

Q. What's the Wikipedia convention on referencing (not quoting from) outside Web and traditional-media sources? What's the line between referencing, "I think _Foobar For Lusers_ is a great source", and shamelessly plugging something?

A. I'd say it's a matter of stating the facts from the neutral point of view.

Can I base articles on copyrighted work?

Q. Perhaps this question is stupid or perhaps this is not the right place to ask it, but I want to be absolutely sure before committing any blunder that could hurt Wikipedia: I would like to write an article about Julian the Apostate (Roman emperor), which I would like to base on an essay I prepared for a high school course some two years ago. This essay relies heavily on a number of books. It is not cut-and-paste work and it contains just a few verbatim quotations, but nevertheless I "used copyrighted work" to write it, because I read the books and got most of the factual information from them. I guess it is not a problem to publish this essay on Wikipedia (including a bibliography, of course), or is it?

A. First, see fair use. Excerpts for comment and criticism generally fall under those guidelines. The fact that your paper was done for school adds additional protection in that context that doesn't apply to the Wikipedia context, so it is possible that excerpts that would be considered fair use for a school paper might be more problematical when placed in Wikipedia, even though we might be able to claim that this is an "educational" project. But if they are small excerpts clearly identified as such, collected and used for comment and criticism, I don't think there will be a problem. The worst thing that could happen is that one of the authors requests us to remove it; we either capitulate and suffer no consequences, or else we argue fair use if we think using the material is important enough. --LDC

How do I know what links to an article (page?)?

Q. How can I find a list of all pages linked from a given page?

A. At the top of each page there is a button, Links to This Page which provides two lists. The first is a list of links to the page but to which the page does not have a link. The second is pages with which the current page has a mutual link arrangement. The links embedded in the page are not provided ..... probably because viewed as redundant.

Q. Why are some links preceded by a slash?

A. The slash indicates that the linked page is or will be a subpage of another. If there is no target specified, the page will be a subpage of the page you are currently on, unless you are on a subpage already. (There can only be one level of subpages. For instance, a link to /Newpage from Algeria/Economy would make the page Algeria/Newpage, not Algeria/Economy/Newpage.) Users can also specify which page the link should be a subpage of, for instance: Poker/High-low split.

There is an ongoing debate on Wikipedia about the usefulness and limits of subpages, with the debate centering around the contextualization and implied hierarchy of them.. See Larry Sanger/Why I am suspicious of subpages and Larry Sanger/The case against subpages for most (all?) of the debate. But it seems everyone agrees that subpages are useful for commentary, debate, and strictly personal pages such as To-Do lists.

----
Yeah, the very case insensitivity whose lack is causing your contributors huge headaches (and causing untold numbers of duplication of effort and redirections) will cause problems when it is implemented. Lots of articles will need renaming to the new standards.
On the other hand, its the type of problem that gets worse the longer it is ignored. Since you must (probably) go down for a piece while the upgrade is done, anyway, some additional time will be required to automatically convert all article names to the canonical form and detect and somehow handle those article names whose canonical names are the same. The longer you wait, the greater will be this time and the more manual intervention will be required.
If we had some data on the basics of how Wikipedia was set up (platform, how the articles are stored, etc) someone (perhaps I) might be able to offer some help in this matter. And no, I am not about to download and study the source code to find out. The payoff (for me) is not high enough.
--Buz Cory

Should Wikipedia promote or prevent linking to Amazon (unresolved)?

Q: There is a problem with linking to books. Some pages link to Amazon. You probably all know why you shouldn't do it. What should be done with such links? Should we choose some "official" books eshop ISBNs link to?

A: Some are concerned that editors should not be restricted. There is nothing to prevent editors linking to Amazon, but others believe that the wikipedia shouldn't promote this.

Should Wikipedia use the Library of Congress instead?

A2: Why link to a bookstore anyway? There's a wonderful system called interlibrary loan in place. In a matter of days, you can get pretty much any book ever printed delivered to your local library. Why not simply link to the entry in the Library of Congress catalog: it has all the information you need about the book, should you want to buy or borrow it. --AxelBoldt

What about non-US countries?

subQ: Does it also work in Europe ? A: Possibly. For the UK, at least, see the British Library (founded on a collection started in 1753 by the British Museum; possibly the basis for the library of congress) for a list of all books published in that country. See also here for useful search terms for finding out about some of the protocols used in UK inter-library loans.

When should one use a redirect and when should separate articles be written?

Q: What is the ruling on cross-referencing entries? I wrote an entry for Tasmania, but then created a separate entry for Van Diemen's Land. This seemed natural, the old term still occurs in historical documents and folk songs prior to the 1850s, and Brittanica has a similar entry. But then I wondered if it was strictly necessary, due to the search engine. Have a look and give me some stylistic pointers.

A: It also occurs as late as the mid 80s on a U2 album.  :-)

  1. MHO is that if the two entries are substantially different then write an entry on both, but if they are just two ways of expressing the same thing then the less common one deserves a redirect to the more common one. This is only my opinion, and may not be shared by others. You can make a #REDIRECT page by typing #REDIRECT at the far left (no leading space, all caps) and then following it with [[the name of the page you'd like to link to]]. --Koyaanis Qatsi

Searching

Why aren't I taken to articles I've typed the name of? (Unanswered)

Q. Why doesn't Wikipedia's search look at titles of pages? Sometimes, I want to go directly to a specific page title.

How frequently is Wikipedia indexed? (Unanswered)

Q. How long does it take for new pages to show up in Wikipedia's index?

How obscure can articles be?

Q. Should Wikipedia include topics which are very, very specialized? (I'm thinking about an article on my home town, population 200; or an article about my late grandmother, who could not have been called "famous"; or an article about the history of an old one-room schoolhouse near my house.)

A. I can think of no reason why not. However, if your grandmother's name was Margaret Thatcher or Whitney Houston, don't be shocked if someone moves your homage to make room for what most readers would be looking for.

One of the great things about Wikipedia is that it doesn't really matter how obscure a topic is. Maybe no one will ever read your article. Or, perhaps they will. It doesn't matter. Britannica can't afford the time, money, or page space to have an article about your hometown. Wikipedia can, if you want to write it.

The only provisos are that the article is complete enough and the subject broad enought that it can't just be a section of another article. It must also be Neutral point of View. The exception to this is bot-generated articles, such as US locations, as bots are too dumb to know if articles should be merged into others.

A2. One reason why not is that minutiae would clutter up the search engine. This was the old objection to doing this; now that the search engine looks at article titles rather than complete texts this may not be as significant.

This objection still holds for Google at present, and that is the search engine for Wikipedia for much of the time. Perhaps some nifty work with robots.txt? How finely grained can control over spider-bots be?

Can I really download the entire database?

Q. A stupid question, probably. I saw a link *Download Data* in the *Help* page and clicked it to download all the data to my computer. But there was no permission to access the download folder. Is it available only to priviledged users?

A. There is some discussion in the mailing list archives (links above and on main page footer I think) of maintaining a very flat "Democratic" hiearchy consisting of sysops, knowledgable community users, and new users. Basically the new users would have a couple of minor restrictions to protect the site from initial errors by novices learning the Wiki(pedia) Way or local ropes. I notice that my download button has also gone away so perhaps this mechanism has been added or the download was loading the system to badly or nonfunctional. It would seem reasonable to avoid accidental massive downloads by beginners and casual users so perhaps it has been relocated.

How do I know the wikipedia will always exist?

Q. A related question, is a business plan or organizational charter for Wikipedia.com intended to be published at some point such that its contributors can be confident it will always be available free to the public at large?

A. This is under discussion at http://meta.wikipedia.com/ which is an associated space setup for people interested in working on the site and community infrastructure. This preserves Wikipedia.com scholarly atmosphere and focus on improving and adding content to Wikipedia.com articles.

Is the wikipedia source code Open Source/Free Software?

Q. Is the wikipedia code going to be released under a free or open license? The reason I ask is that it seems to me that the information in the wiki entries is greatly diminished if one cannot access the related wiki links and track to more detailed or general information on the subject of interest.

A. From browsing email list archives it appears there has long been an informal understanding among the wikipedia community of developers that while wikipedia.com is a commercial venture the source to operate the site would be open or free. Browsing the wikitech-L archives reveals that this has been now formally documented and finalized by inclusion of the GPL text into the CVS tree on the 14 Feb 2002.

How is wikipedia backed up? Are there off-site mirrors?

Q. I am concerned about the backing up of data, however and would like to know more about that. How about wiki-mirrors? I wonder how many giga-bytes just the current versions of all the articles take up. --User:maveric149

A. One developer on the wikitech-L list stated that for testing purposes he had a "old" download snapshot of 21000 plus articles that was 30 MB and provided a link for developers interested in stress testing. I am unclear whether this included previous versions and attribution data as seen on the history page. user:mirwin

Some Unclear Questions

Q. Is the complete database (all data required to efficiently setup a mirror or free fork of the site)download functionality currently available or will it be extended at some point in the future for free (as in beer) or for fee?"


A.  ?

Q. Specifically is the attribution data necessary to comply with the specified FSF license contributors submit under by clicking submit on change or article submission part of the primary schema of the content database or a separate shema processed by the GPL source code that runs the site.

A. ?

Is it clear to newcomers...

What the wikimedia foundation is planning to do?

What intentions the communty agrees on?

Q. Are the casual dropins from the recent publicity drives and recruiting efforts given a misleading impression by the front page? In other words, is (there?) any work in progress to adequately (by who's standards?) define organizational and business models such that "Wikipedia: The Free Enclycopedia" can explain what its precise intended committments to Wikipedia.com users and contributers are and how it plans to fullfill them?

A. This is a complex issue, and it is not at all well-agreed or well-understood exactly what the problem is in the first place. It requires some discussion to find solutions acceptable to Wikipedia contributers and users. Some people are under the mistaken impression (or are conveying such an impression, anyway) that the leadership of the project--Jimbo Wales and Larry Sanger--regard Wikipedia as a "commercial venture," which is just false. They have been discussing ways of making the project entirely nonprofit for many months now. Please join us on Wikipedia-L or on http://meta.wikipedia.com/ if you wish to assist the Wikipedia community with clarifying these questions and articulating well-informed answers.

:-( I liked having the FAQ all on one page. --LMS

  • Perhaps both means could be utilized? Keep the present sub-sections and index to them, but also have the full text in the main document? -- April


Good idea! What if we create or hopefully restore the previous version with the "mini menu" at the top as you suggest and make it clear at the top via a Please ask New Quesions here linked to the talk. Then the users can browse as they please and hopefully we can still manage the multiple pages efficiently. If some people chime agreement in I can tackle this within a couple of days, got a recruiting drive in progress that I am setting up for.

Starting to violate the edit boldly essence here. Perhaps we can do as you suggest and reevaluate if any new problems emerge? user:mirwin

Incidentally, this was asked for anonymously. The page was getting long to load. Beginners spend a lot of time there initially, or hit it frequently anyway.

Augh! My eyes!  :-) Please change it back to the way it was, or make the headings much smaller. --LMS

(ensuing discussion moved to Ben Finney/Wikipedia markup. I think this issue is important to resolve for Wikipedia; if you do too, please continue discussing there. -- Bignose)

Wow, what a huge improvement to the FAQ! Thanks a lot, Hornlo! --LMS

Older discussion

I want to expand and re-organize the FAQ into subsections.One reason is to make it easier to incorporate questions and answers from Wikipedia:Village pump. Here are the categories to begin with:

  • General: general questions about wikis and Wikipedia
  • Using Wikipedia: directed at our readers
  • Contributing to Wikipedia: questions of interest to current or potential Wikipedians
  • Administration: who decides policy, what are sysops, etc.
  • Technical: software, server, etc.
  • Problems, criticisms and suspicions: forks, how do I know you won't do some evil things with my work, etc.
  • Misc: everything else

Many of the questions will already have entire pages devoted to the answer; in these cases, it's simply a matter of writing a short answer and a link to the appropriate page.

Comments, suggestions and (especially) help are requested. --Stephen Gilbert 02:35 Sep 26, 2002 (UTC)

I like your suggestion. This is something that needs to be done - the FAQ is unusably long. --mav


Excellent idea! I suggest you be bold, put those categories in and we'll start rearranging the questions to fit! Perhaps "Newcomers" or "Basics" or "Overview" instead of "General"? -- Tarquin


There's a 2nd FAQ page at Wikipedia:Other frequent questions. We should perhaps reorganize these two pages to be (1) General FAQ for newcomers, and (2) FAQ for people who have decided to join the project. -- Tarquin

Toby, I notice that over on Wikipedia:FAQ you changed the "Using Wikipedia" link to "Reading", noting that you get something out of contributing, too. I called it "Using" to cover questions a little broader than simply looking up topics; I was thinking about how people could use material from Wikipedia in their own projects, etc. Are you terribly opposed to the word "Using"? :) --Stephen Gilbert

I see your point as to why "Reading" is not the best term either. So now I don't like either of them ^_^. I guess that "Using" is probably the better one, but I'll still try to think of something better still before you get around to creating that page. — Toby 05:14 Sep 30, 2002 (UTC)

Wait, how about this?:

Since it's only natural that the readers of an encyclopædia do more than just reading — they use its material in their projects, etc. The downside is that it implies a division between readers and contributors, but we just have to remember that all of us wear different hats at different times. — Toby 05:19 Sep 30, 2002 (UTC)

Good idea, Toby. And I'm not sure what else we can call "people who browse but don't edit" other than "readers". "browsers" seems a bit rude; implies they're either casual or related to Internet Explorer. Besides, the "readers' FAQ" can emphasise that readers can become contributors... at the drop of a hat, as it were ;-) -- Tarquin
I take offense at the notion that "browser" and Internet Explorer are somehow synonymous. There are many browsers other than IE. BTW, "reader" gets my vote too. --mav (on Konqueror 2.2.2)
Internet Explorer is a browser. A person who browses is a browser. Thus, they are in the "browser" family and are related. In other words, it was a joke. Lighten up, mav. :) --Stephen Gilbert (on Galeon 1.25)
It was a joke, and I use Mozilla & encourage people to switch from IE to anything at every turn. :-) -- Tarquin
It sounds good to me. I don't think it draws too hard a line between reading and contributing; it's just a division of convenience. If we want to get pedantic, the Technical FAQ could go under contributing, since doing software work is contributing to the project too. :) --Stephen Gilbert 01:18 Oct 1, 2002 (UTC)


Great job so far! I've moved all the "Other Frequent Questions" into "Miscellaneous", so everything falls under a common scheme of pages. The "Miscellaneous" page will need sorting; plenty of those can fit under one of the categories. -- Tarquin 23:17 Oct 3, 2002 (UTC)
I've been sorting through them and moving them to the appropriate categories. This is going to take some time; I've been checking all the pages that the FAQ(s) link to, and most of them need some heavy refactoring. It's turning into a complete Wikipedia documentation upgrade :) --Stephen Gilbert 01:28 Oct 7, 2002 (UTC)


It's been needed for some time! I'm treating Wikipedia:Utilities as a hub of sorts; I gave that a clean a few weeks ago. -- Tarquin

Here are other pages that need to be incorporated (for my own reference, mostly):

--Stephen Gilbert 12:00 Oct 7, 2002 (UTC)

Personally, I think having one large index of FAQs that points to various pages would be more useful than the current set of different FAQs, where it's often difficult to guess in which FAQ a particular information is placed, and where you have to search different ones to see if a question is already covered before adding it. It only gets too long if we put the answers on the same page, which we shouldn't do anyway (just a max. two-sentence answer with a link). --Eloquence 03:40 Feb 17, 2003 (UTC)

"These documents refer primarily to the English Wikipedia; the Wikipedias in other languages may have their own specific FAQs."

Well why should it be any different between the English Wikipedia and other Wikipedias? The FAQ would need to be translated but shouldn't the content be the same?

Brianjd 09:43, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, this is quite pointless, but I just have to ask... do you really say "two hundred and ten thousand" in English (as opposed to "ten thousand and two hundred")?

LjL 22:13, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

How to pronounce Wikipedia?

I think that this is an unanswered FAQ. -- ChongDae 07:07, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

popularity

Is Wikipedia the most popular Wiki? --SuperDude 22:14, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I think so. Everyone uses it.  — Invisible Robot Fish! 18:48, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Recent negative publicity of Wikipedia

What has been the impact of the recent bad press that wikipedia has had, or is having, on popularity, usefulness etc here?

Length

Is there a max length to a page??? -—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.109.206.88 (talk)

answered at user page. -Quiddity 23:37, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Image

How do you change the image in the top-left corner? Tampo 00:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I got it to work but the part that says,

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is double and it looks messy. If you want to see for yourself, paste this:

#p-logo a { background: url(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b3/Gold-Wikipedia.png/146px-Gold-Wikipedia.png) 35% 50% no-repeat !important; }


into your monobook.css. Tampo 00:50, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Permanent content

Is there a way to add permanent content at the top? Because everybody keeps removing that line and on HRWiki they have permanent content at the top.  — Invisible Robot Fish! 01:41, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Taking Back a Barnstar Awarded

I awarded a user a Barnstar but his behavior shortly after receiving the Barnstar completely contradicted the reason for the award. Can I take back the Barnstar? Ptmccain 15:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:Help desk may be a better place to ask. Zarniwoot 17:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Major-ish renaming scheme, good idea?

It would be handy for using search engines if the page naming scheme for the FAQs used subpages, eg calling Wikipedia:Technical_FAQ something like Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical instead. Then we could use a page specific search more easily, eg searching for site:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ How do I report a bug? at Google would actually work. Are there any downsides/problems with the renaming scheme?--Commander Keane 02:50, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, wish I'd seen it so I could support it when people may have been paying attention.
Equazcion •✗/C • 14:36, 12/21/2007
I think it is a great idea. I see no downside. We could have a link to a site-specific search in Google. I plan to do this after reorganizing the FAQ to have VFAQ at the top, and then have the current FAQ as FAQ/Index. See #Requested move. Sbowers3 (talk) 12:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

How about an FAQ page for each Wikipedia Page ?

It's be nice to have a place where folks could ASK question about a SPECIFIC Wikipedia ENTRY/Page/Topic and have folks in the Wikipedia community answer it - there in the FAQ section for the specific topi POO

No doubt, some of these questions might make their way onto the main entry page for the topic, and others might be good for discussion ABOUT what should be added to or deleted from the page, but others are just Frequently (or infrequently) asked questions on the topic, and would be nice to be addressed. No doubt, some folks might also want to browse the FAQ page after reading the main entry page for a given topic, but it'd be nice to give folks that alternative ...

Any thoughts on this ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.229.208.33 (talk • contribs).

It sounds like an interesting idea, I quite like it. I'm not sure if it is in keeping with being an encyclopaedia though (our main goal). Anyhow, the place to bring up ideas like this is Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), you may garner more responses there.--Commander Keane 06:18, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Adding Fixya as tech support resource

Dear all, Fixya is a notable community based site providing solutions to troubleshooting and tech support problems. I believe that the information found there is unique and highly relevant for owners of electronic appliances. Due to original user based content, most of the questions asked in Fixya can not be found anywhere else on the web. Since the edits I placed were deleted I was told to approach the community in order to understand how I may make Fixya's content available in Wikipedia. Your comments are highly appreciated. Yaniv.bl 08:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Please note that the first name of Fixya's CEO is Yaniv. AlistairMcMillan 14:22, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
It's a different Yaniv. Give me enough credit to change my first name if I wanted to remain anonymous...Yaniv.bl 21:05, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
It seems that this is likely go anywhere; can you understand why observers might be skeptical? --Aarktica 21:14, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Skeptical about what? My identity? If so, I have no way of really proving anything except the fact that my initials (bl) are not those of the CEO. Is there a place where I can fax my ID? I will do that... I really can't think of anything else (it's so difficult to prove you don't have a sister). But let's put this aside.
My aim is to add relevant content to Wikipedia, which I think I can, using Fixya's content. I would like to know how I may do so in a compliant way. Notice that other related sites have posted their links all over wikipedia and have not taken the open discussion road as I have. Under no circumstances will I spam wikipedia, but I believe I deserve a fair chance to use information I have to improve it. What is so wrong with that?
Thanks againYaniv.bl 05:41, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
You may get more help with this query at the Help desk. As I understand it you want to add links to Fixya.com in the external links section of relevant articles. I suppose the general feeling about this is, if you have a possible conflict of interest (eg you are in the Fixya community) it is best to avoid adding the external links - let the links be made by others organically. If Fixya.com has good links, no doubt they will find their way into Wikipedia.--Commander Keane 06:22, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

New Message Indicator

How do I get rid of a New Message Indicator? 67.188.172.165 16:59, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

In the short term, click on it to read the new message. To prevent irrelevant new messages, you're best off creating an account. Petros471 17:04, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

HEEEELLLOOOOO ME — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.176.228.7 (talk) 11:52, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Rambot

In the reader's FAQ, it has a question specifically refering to Rambot. Is that still relevant, 5 years and 1,600,000 or so articles later? Maybe a more general question and answer would do better. Atropos 17:24, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

No longer the case that one gets those articles so often with Special:Random. Please remove or update the question, and any others you see that are outdated. --Aude (talk) 17:31, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

This page should be protected

Shouldn't this really important page be edit protected? I was looking for some info and found it was blanked for the past 2 hours. All these lost newbies... --DoSiDo 04:56, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

what events/conditions lead to the rise in populism?

—hi im a 15 year old girl who is desperate to figure out the answer to this question please help me anyone ?(4.249.111.196 (talk) 17:47, 6 January 2008 (UTC))

This isn't really the place to ask a question like that. You should post this at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science. They'll be much more likely to help you with this. Equazcion •✗/C • 17:50, 6 Jan 2008 (UTC)
Or try the article on populism: populism. Equazcion •✗/C • 17:53, 6 Jan 2008 (UTC)

FAQ reorg

Anyone who spends much time at WP:Help desk or other help pages, knows that users frequently ask questions that are answered in the various FAQ pages. Either they aren't bothering to read the FAQ or they are giving up before they find their question and answer. If it is the former - if they aren't even looking at the FAQ - we can't do anything about that here on the FAQ pages.

If the problem is that people are going to the FAQ, not quickly finding their question and giving up, then I think we can do better by slightly rearranging two of the FAQ pages. The main WP:FAQ page doesn't actually have any questions on it; it is an index to other pages that have questions. The WP:VFAQ page has questions and answers. I propose to rearrange these two pages so that the top FAQ page has the most frequently asked questions, then directs people to the FAQ index page if they don't find their question on the top page.

What I propose to do is Move the current FAQ page to "FAQ index", then Move VFAQ to FAQ. Then there will be some tweaking of the wording due to the new page names and structure. It's fairly straightforward and should not mess up any pages that link to the FAQ.

I'll wait a few days for feedback, then if there are no objections I'll go ahead and make the changes. Sbowers3 (talk) 23:16, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Intravenous solutions

How long can intarvenous solutions hang? I was taught any solution was good for 24 hours with the exceptions of some critical care drips. Our policy agrees. The new director of nursing told me she thought it was 72 hours and maybe up to 96 hours. That does not make any sense to me,and she had no data to back it up.Any info with back up data would be appreciated Thank you.Sweetnurse91 (talk) 13:49, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Try asking at Wikipedia:Reference desk. They specialize in factual questions. This page is for discussing how to improve the FAQ page. Sbowers3 (talk) 14:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

As mentioned above (in FAQ reorg) the current FAQ does not actually contain any "frequently asked questions". It is an index to other articles that contain FAQs. I propose to move the current FAQ to "FAQ Index", then move the current WP:VFAQ to FAQ.

When users come to the (reorganized) FAQ they will immediately see frequently asked questions. If their question is not there, they can go to the Index to locate other FAQ articles.

Existing links to FAQ will continue to work: They will go to a page that has FAQs on it. Existing links to VFAQ will still work via a redirect to the new FAQ (i.e. what was the VFAQ). The {{WikipediaFAQ}} which appears at the top of all FAQ pages will be modified to have links to FAQ and Index instead of to FAQ and VFAQ.

Everything will still work okay but there is a good chance that users will find their question on the first page they see and won't give up and ask their question at the Help desk.

To summarize:

I don't think this is controversial but the page is Move protected.

Sbowers3 (talk) 00:26, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Makes sense. Also per your comments at Wikipedia talk:FAQ#FAQ reorg. (I'll help out if I get time later, but, don't forget to check the most common incoming redirects and templates for double-redirects; fix them before the bots come along and confuse everything ;) -- Quiddity (talk) 00:07, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I think it's now in good shape. I've moved the topic FAQs to be subpages. I've relinked from WP:FAQ Index to the moved names. All the places that linked to FAQ will be okay - they'll just see something more useful than they used to see. The places that linked to VFAQ will now redirect to FAQ and I'll change some/most of them. I haven't checked to see how many places linked directly to subtopic pages, but I changed the header template to link directly instead of to redirects. We just have to wait a while for Google to reindex, then the Search FAQ will work. Sbowers3 (talk) 00:29, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

SHortcut overload

Why do we have all these shortcuts for questions? - They seems unecessary. LeeVJ (talk) 22:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I was going to ask the same thing, is it ok if we remove them?--Commander Keane (talk) 23:33, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
The addition of shortcuts was discussed at User talk:Manors#Task suggestion and User talk:Teratornis/2008 January through June#Shortcuts. The shortcuts make it easier to make section links to the questions, for example from the help desk. And the shortcut links remain valid if the question (and therefore the section heading) is later reformulated. But I suppose the shortcut box can be a little distracting for readers. Manors is retired. I have notified Teratornis. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:35, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
Thankyou I can see why now, maybe we could just hide them or reduce their visibility, hmm maybe just put them in brackets after the title for example? LeeVJ (talk) 00:48, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't find the design too distracting, I just didn't think the shortcuts were being used.--Commander Keane (talk) 00:53, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

(undent) I wrote this big reply before the last two comments, then I got an edit conflict, but it's too much to just throw away:

Thanks for the notification. See WP:NOT for an example of section shortcuts on a highly linked-to page (that was the page where I first learned about section shortcuts, and realized their usefulness; for example, WP:NOTDIRECTORY). According to WP:CREEP:
  • The fundamental fallacy of instruction creep is thinking that people read instructions.
I happen to disagree with that claim at face value, and Wikipedia could hardly exist if it were true, but the statement contains a grain of truth. Namely, the new users at whom we aim pages like Wikipedia:FAQ are the least likely to find the parts they need on their own. Once they find what they need, they will generally read it, but they often need someone more skilled to point them to what they need. I do a lot of such pointing on the Help desk and occasionally elsewhere such as on talk pages and in edit summaries. When knowledgeable users share their knowledge, most have a strong tendency to extemporaneously render what they recall, a habit we form in meatspace. This is harmful on Wikipedia for these reasons:
  • Humans have imperfect recall. Someone may make subtle errors or omissions when reciting from memory.
  • Wikipedia constantly changes. What we recall about some policy or guideline may not reflect the current state of it.
  • "We are smarter than me" - a collaboratively-edited document that describes some policy or guideline is likely to be a better example of writing than what most people can write as a first draft on demand.
  • "Give them a fishing pole, not a fish." When someone asks a question on Wikipedia, their real problem is not what they are asking about. Rather, their real problem is that they don't yet know how to find the answers that are already in writing. There are so many questions one must answer on the way to becoming a competent Wikipedia editor that nobody can expect to have other users spoon-feed everything to them. Everyone must clue up fast and learn how to look up what they need. (Edit: this is how Wikipedia avoids falling victim to Brooks' law. Wikipedia does not become less efficient as it grows, in contradiction to most traditional organizations that rely primarily on spoken communication. When new users join the project, they can start pulling their own weight very quickly, without burdening the more experienced users, because new users can self-educate by looking up answers on their own.) Thus it is always better to answer a question with a link that not only answers the immediate question, but more importantly illustrates that we have resources to answer the next N questions the user will assuredly have. Answering questions with shortcut links teaches the new user that we have developed an elaborate system to answer questions efficiently and with repeatable accuracy. For this reason I now think it is better to answer questions with shortcut links than with substituted standard response templates (which tend to obscure their workings). When someone follows a shortcut link to a FAQ entry, they cannot help but see that we have a FAQ.
  • Answering questions with shortcuts makes them easier to answer. In theory, making questions easier to answer might make experienced users more willing to answer questions, and thus help the newer users (or the experienced users who are new to a certain area).
Having said all that, I'll admit I more often use shortcuts from the Editor's index when I reply to questions. But I do use FAQ section shortcuts now and then. Consider, which of these two links is easier to edit, not to mention read:
Those are my arguments in favor of keeping the FAQ section shortcuts. I'm not sure I understand what the arguments would be against them. Please elaborate - what do the shortcut boxes harm? If necessary, we could add an entry to the FAQ that explains why the FAQ has shortcut links. If it's unobvious I think it's important to make it obvious, as the explanation above illustrates something important about the nature of Wikipedia and the difficult challenge of learning it. --Teratornis (talk) 01:18, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
Note: it may be possible to shrink the shortcuts by making separate redirects for every FAQ entry, but we used the section-anchor method instead because it's very tedious to create lots of redirects by hand. With the current method, we only need one redirect per FAQ page. That also makes the shortcuts easier to maintain if someone rearranges the FAQ pages. --Teratornis (talk) 01:23, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
Certainly, I retract the 'are they needed'! The reason I originally asked was that recently I have been trying to look at the help system fom a new user's view with the view to easing the learning curve. If a user with a question follows instructions from various areas of WP (oh if only they did!) then soon end up at questions or contents or some help system, which all pointedly say to read the FAQ before asking. It was just with this mindset that the amount of shortcut boxes suddenly appearing was more than usually found and in the case of very new users many more, so with the goal of answering new users questions and pointing them in the right direction asap, and reducing the learning curve of WP thought they'd be a distraction. I am not saying this IS the case, just a possibility and worth a thought. I guess the question really is - are they a distraction and if so could we reduce their visibility without affecting their useability ? LeeVJ (talk) 01:38, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
Teratornis your comments are too long :P If the shortcuts are used I think they are fine. On the main FAQ I can see their use, but on Wikipedia:FAQ/Contributing, for example, no useful links using the shortcuts have ever been made. Having said that, I don't really mind them being there, I probably won't create new shortcuts when I make new FAQ entries though (I suppose if the shortcuts are useful someone else can make them). Actually personally I prefer to use a full text link so people know where the link is taking them, eg this instead of that.--Commander Keane (talk) 01:57, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
To LeeVJ: do you have any specific complaints from new users that the shortcut boxes are "a distraction"? On Wikipedia we generally do not directly observe the users we are trying to help. According to Jakob Nielsen, the only way to reliably test the usability of a Web site or other computer system is to actually observe users as they try to use it, recording their eye movements, mistakes, how long they take to reach some goal, etc. Without these kinds of usability studies, we can only guess how users are doing. Our guesses will reflect our own personal biases, and the various factors that filter the information new users might convey to us. I'm also not sure what you mean by "reducing the learning curve." Wikipedia is inherently complex. There is no way with current technology to magically erase the complexity, as long as Wikipedia remains a Do it yourself system. In the real world, people hide complexity by hiring human experts to deal with the complexity for them. We don't have that luxury on Wikipedia - that's the cost of being "free." I distinctly remember running into shortcuts on Wikipedia as soon as I started looking at talk pages and history pages. A Wikipedia user isn't going to get very far without learning about shortcuts, so I can't see any value in trying to make this information harder for the user to figure out. Note that the {{Shortcut}} template displays a box that is self-documenting, which is better than most of the unlinked abbreviations and shortcuts many Wikipedia users sloppily use on talk pages and edit summaries. I.e., with the shortcuts on the FAQ pages, a curious user can see how they work.
  • As a side note, sometimes directing new users to "read the FAQ" (without a link to a specific section) is not the most helpful approach. I wish we had some real data showing the success rate that new users have when they try to look up their own answers in the FAQ. Hierarchical drill-down is tough when you don't know the hierarchy. Search tools can often work better. For example, searching the Help desk archives is very often productive, because the archives contain many synonyms that different people have used when they didn't know the official Wikipedia jargon. New users rarely use the "correct" terminology, which they need to know to find something in the FAQ. Instead of asking how to create a new article, some might say "enter a profile". If a new user's mind has locked onto the word "profile," they won't find it the FAQ table of contents, but they can find such terms in the Help desk archive (try it: search the Help desk for: How do I make my company profile?). Search is not always better than hierarchical drill-down, but it may be better for some users at some times. Every Wikipedia user will have to figure out the methods they prefer. A lot of users won't figure it out, which is why edit count follows a Pareto distribution. (That's something to keep in mind with new users: most won't stick around here for long, and there's little we can do to change that. Wikipedia is not for everyone. If a new user gives up and quits, we did not "fail" - that user did.)
To Commander Keane:
  • What do you mean by "too long"? Did I write something which was untrue, or irrelevant to the situation we are discussing? If so, please point it out. It's hard for me to tell which parts of the underlying complexity are already obvious when I am writing to strangers, so my inclination is to explain everything in one go rather than spill it out in numerous volleys. What we are discussing is not simple - we are trying to figure out how to do something that nobody in the world does very well, namely to train new users to grasp a baffling new system without any face-to-face instruction. The vast majority of people do not learn well on their own, which is why civilization relies on formal schooling. If Wikipedia wants to become accessible to more than just the techno-genius minority, Wikipedia must figure out how to do something that nobody else has done before - educate the masses without schools. If nobody else has done something before, it's probably because the problem is complex, and anyone who writes accurately about will therefore not be brief.
  • Addressing the point that nobody has made any useful shortcut links to a particular FAQ page, why not be the first to make some? The Wikipedia Help desk has too few links to the FAQ pages, whether in shortcut form or long form. You (or anyone else) can add value to the Help desk by providing links to FAQ sections wherever other volunteers have neglected to do so. Is your position that it would not be beneficial to make useful shortcut links to the FAQ, or simply that nobody has realized the usefulness yet? Every day on Wikipedia I discover useful ways to contribute that nobody else has gotten to yet. There is a lot of unfinished business here. There are some FAQ pages to which people make shortcut links, for example: Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:BFAQ appears to have hundreds, if I'm looking at that correctly (someone seems to have put the shortcut link on a welcome template, I'm not sure how you'd count that). Perhaps it is a matter of time before people begin linking to the less popular (?) FAQ pages.
  • I cannot quite understand this sentence:
  • "Actually personally I prefer to use a full text link so people know where the link is taking them, eg this instead of that."
Do you mean that you would actually show the link as "this" instead of "that"? I don't see how a link destination becomes clearer when the link text is a pronoun with no specific meaning. You seem to be undermining your own point there. When I look at "this" I don't see anything clearer than "that", until I do some extra unnecessary work to uncover what you hid for no reason I can fathom.
  • As to whether it is harmful to show the poor delicate new user a shortcut, my view is that the new user is going to see a lot of shortcuts, and the sooner they get used to them the sooner they will become productive on Wikipedia. The scarce resource on Wikipedia is not the supply of new users. We have thousands of new users piling in every day (Wikipedia is like the American Idol tryouts). The vast majority of new users will not stick, and that is not our fault - we already put everything a new user needs into the friendly manuals. If people expect to master Wikipedia without reading the manuals, they have bigger problems than you or I can fix. Rather, the scarce resource here is the comparatively small number of users who have spent hundreds of hours reading the friendly manuals and making thousands of edits. Shortcuts improve the efficiency of expert users, thereby conserving the scarcest and most valuable resource on Wikipedia. The cool thing is, the users who invented shortcuts don't have to agree with the users who see no need for shortcuts. Wikipedia is flexible enough to accommodate both preferences.
  • I recognize the amusing incongruity of my liking for shortcuts and my propensity to write gargantuan essays for fun. Unfortunately, there is not yet any shortcut to everything I wrote above. If there was, I would just link to it.
--Teratornis (talk) 03:23, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
  • No direct request - just indirect from the various misplaced questions which seem to me to mostly indicate confusion, sometimes 'can't be botherdness' admittedly but my thought's where that if they have come to the faq looking for heir answer to 'what is wikipedia' it would be best to just present them with an answer rather than causing another question Maybe the funding directed toward attaing new editors might provide us a study of the kind you ask! note I'm looking at accessing the FAQ from top level like 'questions' or 'about' which are very early on so a direct to a section is not applicable. LeeVJ (talk) 21:15, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
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