A guide to the Korean Wikipedia

This is a guide to the Korean Wikipedia for non-native speakers of Korean. Most of the contents can of course be applied to other Korean projects.

Where to ask questions and get help

There are currently two places for someone to ask a question or help, or make an announcement.

ko:위키백과:질문방. (Help desk)
ko:위키백과:사랑방　(Viliage Pump-Index) (ko:위키백과:사랑방 (일반) (Village Pump - Miscellaneuos) / ko:위키백과:사랑방 (기술) Village Punp - Technical) / ko:위키백과:사랑방 (정책) (Village Pump - Policy))

If you need administrator's help, go:

~~ko:위키백과:관리자 요청 (general requests)~~ This is no longer operated and merged to ko:위키백과:관리자 알림판 (Administrators' Noticeboard))
ko:위키백과:문서 관리 요청 (page protection or undeletion)
ko:위키백과:문서 이동 요청 (page move)
ko:위키백과:사용자 관리 요청 (block/unblock)

When you request bureaucrats' assistance:

Bot status requests should be placed on ko:위키백과:봇/등록 신청

Often, these request pages have certain formatting and procedural requirements. So your request might be moved or re-formatted by others at times.

Additional information

Image fair use is NOT allowed in Korean Wikipedia. Don't upload image or copy text from other websites without permission.
Automated translation tools are also NOT allowed. They cause not only copyright problems but also serious misunderstandings. Automated translation's quality is always not good enough for encyclopedia, but that of Korean is especially poor.
Running bot without bot flag is permitted: so don't hurry to ask it. (Sometimes bureaucrat even asks you to test your bot for a while.) But make sure not to flood Recent Changes : It might be blocked if you flood them.

Browser issues

Fonts

Some browsers are known to cause problems because they cannot handle Japanese text properly. The error could happen because of the URL address or body text of the page.

Instructions on how to fix this have been provided in the English Wikipedia Help namespace.

Basic conventions

Stubs

Pages with only interwiki links are not welcome at Korean Wikipedia.
Pages with less than a definition of the subject may be requested for a speedy deletion. (Speedy deletion is requested by template. If you disagree, just detach it and fix article.)

Page titles

In general, formal titles take precedence over less formal ones.
Except for some words, imported words written in Hangul are preferred to those in Latin character.

Redirects

Generally, redirects in a foreign script including the Latin alphabet are not welcomed unless it has a high potential to be accessed.

User page

In general, we do not edit other users' "user pages" without permission. But user page including personal attack or copyright violation would be modified or speedily deleted.

Logged-on users vs. anonymous users

Anonymous users are restricted in their right to deal with some community issues, including votes for deletion, requests for adminship and blocking.

Language

Emoticons

Some emoticons may be unfamiliar to English-speaking users.

(^^), (^_^) - friendly and cheerful/happy smiles.
(^^;) - admission of embarrassment or mild surprise.
-_-, ㅡㅡ - annoyed.
- abashed or confused.

Activity-specific tips

Interwiki linking

Interlang links to the Korean Wikipedia are described as [[ko:XXX]].
Sometimes you may find you need to install Korean fonts to display Korean Wikipedia properly.
There are no strict rules about how and where to put interlanguage links, but most users put interlanguage links at the page bottom, following categories and sort them alphabetically by language code.

Asking for opinions

Feel free to leave your comments on talk pages of articles, user talk pages, or communication-oriented pages. Almost all the interfaces are localized into Korean as below:

Talk = 토론 (which is read as "toron", meaning "discussion"), thus [[토론:article]]
User talk = 사용자토론 ("사용자sayongja" means user), thus [[사용자토론:Username]]

Though most of the namespaces are localized, you can still use unlocalized English namespace too. For example, If you create a link as [[User:Username]], it will be automatically converted into a localized name like the above, when it is invoked.

IRC

You can also contact active users via #wikipedia-ko^connect

Another recommended way to clarify something is to put your question on the talk page you are interested in. The most commonly understood languages on the Korean Wikipedia except Korean is English and Japanese, but some Korean Wikipedians understand German, French, Spanish, and so on-check their user page for Babel.