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This essay, WP:Alert, lists many ways to get alerts, news, and answers about Wikipedia issues. Almost any question imaginable has already been answered by someone, at sometime, in Wikipedia's thousands of project-space pages (named as in "Wikipedia:xxxx"). Search below (using the browser menu "Find" option) for various details: about Wikipedia system news, about help pages, about surveys or polls, about wiki-technology & servers, about wiki-software updates, about Wikipedia size and users, about Contacting admins, or about MediaWiki markup language.
[edit] Wikipedia as neophyte with uneven qualityAlthough the Wikipedia project has existed since 2001, many aspects have remained at a neophyte, or novice, level. The problems of uneven quality are critical to understand: there have been large gaps in Wikipedia's collaboration procedures, and in various fields of study, some major topics went years without being covered in an article. Some of the subjects which have lagged the most are: legal terms, financial topics, and African studies. While there are over 800,000 articles about sports, there might be only limited articles on other subjects. Also, although some Wikipedia policies are very thorough, as written, many active users make decisions while still unaware of the actual policy details, and some imagine that Wikipedia "invents all rules" regardless of the real world. On the contrary, Wikipedia does, indeed, follow many mainstream ideas, and articles must be verifiable against the real-world sources. However, the neophyte aspects and uneven quality help to answer why Wikipedia has many hollow areas, either overlooked or purposely hindered by some users acting outside policy controls. Some aspects of Wikipedia might seem shocking due to those long-term neophyte issues. [edit] Wikipedia Project newsMany wiki-related news events are described, briefly, in part of the monthly WP:Signpost document, under subpages for "news and notes", such as:
Note that the publication dates vary, and the news is not updated every week, but rather every several days, with no definite schedule. Those pages are NOT part of Wikinews, which is instead about general world events. [edit] Wikipedia technology and serversThe wiki-technology is described, briefly, in part of the monthly WP:Signpost document, under subpages for various publication dates, such as: Topics include the computers used as wiki-servers plus the MediaWiki software that stores pages, processes templates, formats wikitables and displays the wiki-images. [edit] Wikipedia MediaWiki software updatesThe MediaWiki updates are described, in brief tech jargon, in part of the monthly WP:Signpost document, under subpages for various publication dates, such as:
Each Technology_report lists bug fixes or changes, such as:
In January 2008 (over a year ago), the MediaWiki software was upgraded with a major change to the parser (which reads Wikipedia files) for faster formatting: the new software allows almost unlimited page-size, and huge templates, by using a recursive descent parser. Formerly, large templates could only be used a few hundred times per article, such as when a template contained the help-text documentation or several HTML comments. However, now any documentation text can be skipped by using "<noinclude>" at the sections to skip. [edit] Wikipedia surveys and pollsA few surveys have been conducted over the past 6 years, for the English Wikipedia and the German Wikipedia, to determine reader opinions about WP content and performance. About wiki surveys:
[edit] Wikipedia style guides or manualsThe main manual is the "Wikipedia:Manual of Style" (WP:MOS), with another document describing typical article-format, under "WP:Guide to layout". There are periodic updates, described (for 2 years) in update-news pages, such as:
Unless a month is already finished, the related update-news page, typically, will NOT exist yet, only after the month has ended. The main person writing update-news has been administrator Dank. [edit] Help pagesThe Wikipedia help pages (at WP:HELP), which cover many wiki aspects, also link to the MediaWiki help pages (under META:HELP) about the underlying software and database servers that store the Wikipedia data. Also consider:
There are many thousands of other WP project pages to consider, as well. [edit] Wikipedia size and users
The size of English Wikipedia and the user base is as follows:
The count of users is the registered users (not IP addresses). Pages can access those size statistics by using specific variable-names[1] (see: mw:Help:Magic_words): for example, the total articles is {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} and total-users is in the variable: {{NUMBEROFUSERS}}. For calculations, use the raw-data form ":R" (such as {{NUMBEROFARTICLES:R}}). In early 2009, the user base increased at the rate of 8,900 new registered users per day (from 9,025,765 to 9,061,316 during February 23–27, 2009). On 2 July 2009, the total of registered users exceeded 10 million. Since then, the new-user rate is currently: -37773 per day, computed hourly (current hour as 05). The total number of articles (currently 3,143,719), in the English Wikipedia, was predicted to exceed a total of 3 million by mid-August 2009 (actual date: 17Aug09). Since 1 April 2009, the new-article rate is currently: -3584 per day, computed hourly (current hour: 05), with the rate typically 15% lower during the Spring months, but higher in August. For detailed discussions of the size of Wikipedia, see the essay pages: WP:Size of Wikipedia, or WP:Modelling Wikipedia's growth, or WP:Modelling Wikipedia extended growth. [edit] Reducing edit-conflictsThere are many methods to avoid edit-conflicts. Users can request control of editing by saving a tag-template, when finishing an edit, to alert future readers:
However, realize the tag is only a request. Instead, if only 1 SAVE is made (by pre-combining all changes), then other editors will only be alerted to check that page when your entire edit is done. In the event of overlooked typos, it might be safer to visit another page for editing, and return after an hour when other users are done editing the page (they might also fix those typos). However, once a page is saved, other editors might update it every 3 minutes, because many will change a word and save, change a word & save, even though they know it's sloppy: the fear of losing multiple changes makes some people SAVE after every tiny change. Those people should learn to request control by {{inuse}}, even if only for 1 hour. See essay: WP:Advanced article editing. When a user tries to save an edit that a prior editor has meanwhile updated, the entire page is rejected, during "edit conflict". To avoid losing data, before a SAVE, the edit-buffer should be copied (Ctrl-A/Ctrl-C) into another window, or edit-previewed to save the back-window, and then parts of that text could be restored during a later re-edit. Also, editing just 1 section, at an "[edit]" tab, can reduce some types of edit-conflict. See essay: WP:Pruning article revisions. [edit] Contacting admins about help, deletions, abuseGenerally, the admins should NOT be contacted directly, unless they request your input. Wikipedia has the help desk to answer most questions, beginning at WP:HELP or WP:FAQ. Also, there are several queueing systems to post user-requests to get various services, and some admins take turns in responding to the requests in each queue. New page deletions, requested by edit-tagging each page, are handled in several page-category queues linked by inserting, at the top of a new-article page, the template line "{{db|1=my reason for deletion}}". A user's private copy of an article can be delete-flagged, by that user, inserting the line "{{db-u1}}" at the top of a page. Older articles must be debated with other concerned users at: "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion". The queues for reporting abuse are explained, at each link below, in the following table of Wikipedia policy topics, focused around the active list in the Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard. Each type of problem has a separate noticeboard.
If multiple editors argue too much about some articles, the official ruling might not be a clear-cut decision of right/wrong, but instead, all of those editors might be banned from editing those articles for 6 months (or longer). Escalating a confrontation usually hurts the good guys the most, because their time is wasted as much as those who actively invent trouble. Avoiding the troublemakers tends to be a good method to reduce abuse. [edit] Template coding and infoboxesWikipedia pages are written in the MediaWiki markup language, which supports some HTML coding, and which also allows special coding for wikitables, infoboxes, navboxes, and templates (see: HELP:Template or Help:A quick guide to templates). Any page can contain live calculations using the parser-function "#expr" as follows:
The expression will be evaluated and displayed on the page. As of June 2009, local variables are still NOT allowed: For more about the MediaWiki markup language, such as catching invalid calculations (with
Some of the 20 parser functions can format commas, pad to align, or convert lowercase:
The web functions include:
[edit] Mathematics articles and formattingMany articles about mathematics are monitored by WP:WikiProject Mathematics for very precise formatting standards. The Portal:Mathematics is a extensive featured portal. The formatting of most mathematical formulas uses special TeX markup in the HTML tags: <math>...</math> (see HELP:Math). However, there is also a Template:Math (using different coding) to typeset formulas within a line of text, such as: y = ax2+bx+c - √2, coded by using template "math" as:
Greek letters can also be generated by using the standard HTML font face "symbol" (with the English alphabet) as in the Greek text: ABGD-abgd-OPR-opr-XYZ-xyz, generated by using:
For more, see: HELP:Math. [edit] Finding geographic mapsIn the past, Wikipedia has avoided the use of detailed maps or road maps, in favor of limited, blank maps containing mostly shaded areas to indicate general borders, counties or provinces. Meanwhile, the Wikimedia Commons area contains many maps for all nations or territories, in the form of the "Wikiatlas" pages, covered with numerous maps, such as in: Each Atlas page can vary slightly, but each contains multiple maps, such as a general map, blank-outline map, terrain map (elevation map), a precipitation map, a cities map, population map, earth-quake fault lines, and others. Also see: Wikiatlas, for a common map of Europe, map of USA, map of Italy, map of England, map of Germany, etc. [edit] See also[edit] Notes[ The following are footnotes for the text above.]
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