Talk:Wikipedia

Formatting and Linking

When traveling around on Wikipedia, I sometimes find myself on the Meta-Wikipedia with no obvious way to get back. I see the small link to Wikipedia Main Page on the Meta-Wikipedia Main Page, but it can be quite confusing when I didn't explicitly realize I was not already there.

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Specifically, I see a problem in that the Meta-Wikipedia has a logo called "Wikipedia", but that logo links to "Meta-Wikipedia". Either the logo should link to the Wikipedia itself, or the logo should say "Meta-Wikipedia: discussion about the Free Encyclopedia".

this is a good idea, which we should take into account when setting the new logo

I'd also suggest that the left-side menu include a link to "Wikipedia Main Page" to help hapless wanderers get back to their xyzzy room. 129.33.49.251 13:22, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

this is not such a good idea, because meta is not only for the english wikipedia, and a unique link could only lead to a single wikipedia.

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A related problem is that of the HTML Titles on pages in the various Wikis. For example if I pull down the "Back" menu on my browser right now, there are two entries for Main Page - Wikipedia. I happen to know that the most recent is the Meta-Wiki main page and the previous is the "ordinary" main page, but this does not help if I have a window open for each, both with the same title. I think Meta-Wiki pages should be enTitled ... Meta-Wikipedia to make the difference more obvious. PhilBoswell 12:09, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

This is meta-wikimedia. The only reason it is still at the wikipedia.org domain is that a developer has not gotten around to moving it yet. Which reminds me that I need to work on localizing meta's language.php file. --Maveric149 18:57, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Noted. However I just noticed that the title of this page as I'm looking at it has - Wikipedia - firmly ensconsed in the middle. Also the subtitle of this very article reads Meta-Wikipedia: Discussion about Wikimedia projects. Is it any wonder that the more easily bewildered of us get confused? (I firmly include myself in there BTW :-) PhilBoswell 13:47, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

WikiProject Community

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I've opened w:Wikipedia:WikiProject_Community. Although it's aimed at 'rank and file' Wikipedians, ya'll Wikimedians are welcome to come in and play, too, if ya wanna, I reckon ;)

Quinobi 02:09, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

China

Can we put some information on here about attemtps by the Chinese government to block access to Wikipedia? Brianjd 03:58, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)

I don't think it is a good idea. How do you think to put a link to a specific page which describes PRC blocks? --Aphaia | WQ2翻訳中 | talk 06:30, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I know about the poll regarding the launching of a Chinese Wikinews. I know about the article describing the PRC blocks. What I don't know is if and when they were lifted. Brianjd 06:52, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)

[I'm referring to the external article linked to from Wikinews/China. Brianjd 06:53, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)]

English Wikipedia doesn't work

The English Wikipedia had worked fine a day ago, but now I can't get onto it from either IE 6.0 or Mozilla Firefox 1.5. On Firefox the page stops loading with the status "Read en.wikipedia.org". On IE, the page stops with "Opening page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page". All the other Wikipedias are working. -- 71.109.220.68 18:23, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

commonPrint.css Discussion

I would like to start (or join) a discussion about commonPrint.css , the CSS file used for printing pages in various wikipedias. Where is the right place for this discussion (most probably not here)? (wikipedia.de user bernd.vdb) --84.189.156.38 15:00, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Russian Wikipedia quite close to becoming a 100,000+ wikipedia

The Russian Wikipedia is quite close to the 100,000 mark. It has about 97,000 articles as of August 7th 2006, and on June 8th, 2006, the Russian Wikipedia apparently had about 85,000 articles (source: Russian Wikipedia article on Wikipedia). That means that if the current growth rate of the Russian Wikipedia persists, than the Russian Wikipedia will hit the 100,000 article mark sometime this month, so I think we should be on our toes ready to place the Russian Wikipedia in the 100,000+ category. --FreshFruitsRule 20:59, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

WikiEvents

I have submitted an idea to promote Wikinews on Wikipedia. Please have a look and tell me what you think. I understand that I should have contacted this page first, but this involves both Wikinews and Wikipedia, so I had this chicken and egg problem. I hope you don't mind. MadIce 15:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

German Wikipedia

Here since I am low-skilled when it is up to grammar in German, the German Wikipedia is suffering spelling and grammar problems and I think it covers nearly 20% of the total articles, but around 80% are okay including something. When some articles are restored, all of its spelling and grammar when it goes back on will be corrected and never be corrected, in order to not to repeat the grammar problems again or all articles being restored will have their grammar corrected, the harder to log in in which it now requires skills including grammar needs to be in effect and the log-in in all projects and in other languages all at once also needs to be in effect in which it saves time. Around mid-December, the Spellcheck system will be in place and all grammar written in Green as in Word Document on Microsoft must be corrected in order to end this dispute, another thing, the yellow or blue line recognizing a word or a name that is used in other languages to be in place that is a grammar or a name in order to avoid grammar confusion. This will also be in effect in all Wikimedia projects that are the hardest languages in the world. My German has been improving, one reason looking at other websites that are in the German language. Pumpie 00:38, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

There is some sentences that are too long, most of them will have to be shortened in order to make the German language Wikipedia correctable even with the new spellchecker on Wikimedia. The grammar improvements will correct every article on the German Wikipedia. Pumpie 00:55, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

The largest cleanup in Wikimedia history will begin somewhere in a week or two (after December 14 or 16) so that untidied articles will be corrected with a new Spellchecker that incorrections will never appear again even from unskilled editors and the harder-to-log in to be implemented, after this, the login system has to change, the next update, users will be logged in to all projects and languages and not just one and a NEW note when logged in on some Wikimedias including the German Wikipedia needs a certification or a test on grammar that spelling problems will never be tolerated and will be only to be used once when a checker and on the special Spellcheck section in which it will appear on the grammar test of around thirty to hundred words ONLY on unskilled users, the user will correct the grammar and those who pass will be logged in to Wikimedia, those who do not will have to study other languages that are difficult in Grammar, this will improve the German Wikimedia on almost everything as well as several other languages as well. Pumpie 17:04, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

No more anonymous edits and spelling errors fixed

No more anonymous edits on all Wikimedia projects, one reason is no more vandalism, no more spelling errors. It should work on its entirety, and on Edit this page sections on all Wikimedia projects, the editing features not to show on all pages and to read User not logged in and on the bottom, You must be logged in in order to edit articles. Spelling errors should be taken care of. If there is some spelling errors on Wikimedia, if they do it for the second time, they will have to wait for a month to edit and they have to be tested in order to properly edit on all Wikimedia projects, these vandalisms and spelling errors have been declining. Pumpie 01:48, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Keeping the left section deunderlied when not logged and logged in

On the left side which features links including Featured Content, Community Portal, Help, Contact Wikipedia and Cite this article, will you keep it deunderlined and never underlined when logged in and make this better, okay, thank you. Keep all links underlined even when not logged in or else put it in the Preference sections if you do not want the link to be underlined, set it at deunderlined even when logged in, if you want the link to be underlined, select underlined even when not logged in, thank you. Do not change it on Wikisource and will be underlined there when checked at the Special:Preferences section when clicked on underlined at the Links section. Pumpie 00:22, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

On the bottom of the editing section, when clicking on letters, never underline those, they look better when they are not underlined when logged in, thank you. Pumpie 00:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Very frustrating Chinese

I find the chinese wikipedias very frustrating. Somehow, they have a trad/simp and regional names converter but then there are some other chinese wikipedias in separate subdomains such as Cantonese/Classical.

For example, Driver :

• Taiwan (PUTONGHUA) shi1fu3
• Hong Kong (Cantonese) si1kei1
• China (PUTONGHUA) shi1fu3
• China (Cantonese) si1fu2

Could anyone get them to:

1. . split them up into regionals and use CH for simp, ZH for trad
   (ch-cn, zh-tw, zh-hk, ch-sg, zh-yue, zh-classical...) or
2. split them up into just CH and ZH (and leave the regional names into TW and CN) or
3. merge them all into one big packet and have it's own converting system (convert regional names first, then separate characters, not the other way round)?

(203.218.88.126 12:40, 26 November 2007 (UTC))

1. I strongly oppose "CH" (it's not Chinese) and your "ZH" proposal (ISO and BCP47 agree that "zh" is the recommended form which means "zh-hans" (and even "cmn-hans", i.e. Madarin in the Simplified script).
2. Not needed: "zh" is enough as a locale (MediaWiki already supports "zh-hant" and "zh-hans" as "variants" with transliterators not requiring any duplication, and has deprecated per-country variants (which do not designate true language distinctions).
   Note that wikis are not localized per country but per language (indepenantly of where it is spoken).
3. The big packet already exists, it is simply "zh" in MediaWiki (where you can still choose your prefered transliteration variant between "zh-hans" and "zh-hant"). No more country/region barriers ! It is no longer possible to create separate translations for variants of Chinese (which are supported automatically) and the same applies as well to Serbian "sr" (for its two script variants, whose "wiki codes" are still non-standard "sr-ec" and "sr-el" instead of BCP47 confrming codes "sr-latn" and "sr-cyrl").
   However Classical Chinese / Litterary Chinese "lzh" is NOT Cantonese "yue" (and Cantonese is a separate language (in the past it was encoded "zh-yue", now it is "yue"; this has been stadnardized by ISO and confirmed in BCP47 that aliased "zh-yue" as a "grandfathered" code remapped to "yue").

"lzh" exists just like there is "fro" for Old French (for some ambiguous old "dialects" spoken in France before French was standardized... Old French is in fact a common ancestor for standard French "fr" and Occitan "oc" and it is difficult to read/write by modern speakers .

The same applies to Classical Chinese which is difficult to read by speakers of modern Mandarin, or Cantonese, or Wu...) and many forms in modern Chinese would be unacceptable in Classical Chinese

Also Classical Chinese cannot be written safely in the modern "Simplified Han" script, and not even in the "Traditional Han" script used by modern Mandarin (transliterators do not work like between "Simplified Han" script="hans" and "Traditional Han" script="hant")

Classical Chinese uses the "Classical Han" script, mapped to the code "Hani", which is also used for some old forms still in use in Japanese (Kanji), Korean (Hanzi) or Vietnamese (Chunom); the script codes "Hans" and "Hant" are specific to modern Chinese (where they interoperate); in modern Cantonese or modern Wu, or modern Minnan, only "Hant" should be used (if not using the modern Latin or Bopomofo scripts).

verdy_p (talk) 12:21, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

In Other Language sections and imaging the left section

The label that reads Languages on the bottom left section should read again In Other Languages. Also you may please to put when another MediaWiki is added, all language links to be written in the ISO-693 codes rather than the language names which makes it easier over alphabet difficulty on computers that have downloaded foreign texts. It also have up and down arrows to make room for the bottom section to fit in one window. Several plans I have created years ago could image the left section of the page and possibly the top on the next upgrade. One including Current Events may have its name on an image as well as their coloured language links that I have described a few months ago. I am not sure the top section will be imaged. Pumpie 18:01, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Update on Wikipedia.org

Could someone update "Vietnamese Wikipedia belong to the group of 1 000 000+" (Tiếng Việt) on [Wikipedia.org]. Thanks.--Cheers! (talk) 10:32, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

User control for Animations

Please give users control over whether there are animations within an article and when the animations will run. It is very difficult to concentrate trying to read a page while there are animations moving on the page, and currently there is no way to turn them off. Even trying to change the window-width so that they will be hidden from view is impossible.

eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

I believe there should be a requirement for all animations to be disabled by default or at least give the user the ability to stop them so they can read an article without distractions. It's like trying to read a book in a library while there is a flashing neon sign on the same table as my book.

Similarly, there are now skeuomorphic animations in the menus, and during window size transitions the text flows and jiggles into place. This is distracting and adds nothing meaningful to Wikipedia as an information resource. I believe that static design elements are to be preferred over animated design elements, being simpler and more direct, and therefore more user-friendly and less expensive for the Wikimedia team to create and maintain. Even as I type there is a keyboard icon appearing and disappearing in the bottom right of this box, which I find entirely distracting, and I have no idea why it should need to appear and disappear. If it offers a function, I would expect it to be available to me to offer that function whether I am typing or not.

Some animations, such as the text-flow jiggle, are skeuomorphic, and as even Wikipedia's own article on skeuomorphism points out, there are many cons to using skeuomorphic elements in UI design.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph

Meta-meta question

Is there any specific way that Talk:Wikipedia works? Is there any preferable way/place to ask questions about Wikipedia here?

Thanks! Oeoi (talk) 20:05, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

English-Wikipedia-only link

The "Wikipedia" link under See also goes to the English Wikipedia even in the translated versions of this page.

Can translators be able to set it to their local Wikipedia?

Thanks, Eduardogobi (talk) 07:31, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion, as well as the "Wikipedia" link in this page points to the main page of en.wiki, it is best if the link points to the main page of pt.wiki in portuguese translation of this page, the main page of it.wiki in italian translation, etc. --Antonio1952 (talk) 12:52, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

How many wikipedias are there?

Just wondering. Artix Kreiger (talk) 13:51, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Hello @Artix Kreiger: the page Wikipedia says "As of August 2017, there are 299 language editions of Wikipedia". The page List of Wikipedias shows tables with the 299 language editions. Regards --NicoScribe (talk) 20:20, 20 September 2017 (UTC)