Community bulletin board

24 April 2022   News and notes: Double trouble In the media: The battlegrounds outside and inside Wikipedia Special report: Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war Eyewitness Wikimedian – Vinnytsia, Ukraine: War diary (Part 2) Technology report: 8-year-old attribution issues in Media Viewer Featured content: Wikipedia's best content from March In focus: Editing difficulties on Russian Wikipedia Gallery: A voyage around the world with WLM winners Interview: On a war and a map Serendipity: Wikipedia loves photographs, but hates photographers Traffic report: Justice Jackson, the Smiths, and an invasion Recent research: Student edits as "civic engagement"; how Wikipedia readers interact with images News from the WMF: How Smart is the SMART Copyright Act? Essay: The problem with elegant variation Humour: Really huge message boxes From the archives: Wales resigned WMF board chair in 2006 reorganization Single page Front page About Subscribe Suggestions Archives This week's article for improvement is: Food court Previous selections: Mountain pass · Astrid Lindgren · Broadband This week's backlog of the week is: Category:All articles with dead external links Active Wiki Fixup Projects Article Rescue Squadron Bluelink patrol Broken section links Check Wikipedia Cleanup Dead-end pages Disambig pages w/ links Fix common mistakes Free images to Commons Geo-coordinates Missing articles Most-wanted articles Notability Orphaned articles Red Link Recovery Reliability Requested articles Single editor Spell check Stubsensor Articles for improvement Uncategorised articles Unreferenced articles Wikification needed Main · Inactive · Mini

General notices

• Do you have need for a specialized script that doesn't exist yet, or have an idea for a cool new script or gadget? Post requests and ideas at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests.

Projects seeking help

Also consider posting WikiProject, Task Force, and Collaboration news at the Signpost's WikiProject Report page.

• WikiProject Albums' backlog elimination drive is an attempt to reduce Category:Album infoboxes lacking a cover, which currently has 24,000 entries. Participation welcome!
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Idaho - Bringing it back to life; maybe the Portal:Idaho also. Mjquinn_id (talk) 20:45, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Zoo - Reviving this, any help is appreciated. -- PaleoMatt (talk) 17:10, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Merseyside - Trying to revive this; If you would like to help make sure you check here to sign up or to get suggestions of where to help --- 𝓙𝓪𝓭𝓮 ^(Talk) • 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓎/𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓂 22:22, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles is trying to get all Beatles albums to at least GA status (currently we’re working on Please Please Me). If you want to chip in, please announce your involvement on the talk page.

WikiProjects and Task Forces

• WikiProject Go, announces a new portal for the game of Go.
• The Wikipedia Help Project seeks assistance expanding and improving the Task Center and other pages within the Help namespace.

Technical news

Group efforts and monthly projects

Monthly projects

• Guild of Copy Editors' editing drive . The May 2022 backlog drive is a one-month-long effort of the Guild of Copy Editors to reduce the backlog of articles that require copy editing; those carrying the {{copy edit}} tag (also {{awkward}}, {{copy edit section}}, {{inappropriate person}}, and {{copy edit inline}} and their redirects) or listed on the GOCE Requests page. It begins on 1 May 2022, 00:00 (UTC), and ends on 31 May 2022, 23:59 (UTC).

Ongoing group efforts

• The 100,000 Challenge. The quest to bring about 100,000 article improvements and creations globally through a series of 50,000/10,000/1000 Challenges for different regions and countries. This is a loose challenge, a list will not be maintained here, but the components will function independently on each of the subpages. Will be updated every week or two.
  • The 50,000 Destubbing Challenge is a long term challenge to destub 50,000 articles on English Wikipedia for every country and topic. It may take decades to accomplish, it may take ten years, it all depends on how many people actively contribute.

• Wikipedia:WikiCup. The WikiCup is a championship that has taken place every year on Wikipedia since 2007. The Cup is played and won by skill of editing. The purpose of the Cup is to encourage content creation and improvement and make editing on Wikipedia more fun. There is a new round every month, until the current contest ends; below are the details.
  • May 1 to June 28 – 32 contestants left.
  • July 1 to August 29 – 16 contestants left.
  • September 1 to October 31 – 8 finalists left, the contestant with the highest score will win!
• The Core Contest is a recurring six-week contest. Its purpose is to give a boost to Wikipedia's most important articles, especially those that start out in a bad shape. The 2022 contest will start on April 15.
• Monthly contest, WikiProject Military history. The contest department of the Military history WikiProject aims to motivate increased quality in military history articles by offering a form of friendly competition for project members making improvements to them. The primary contest available is a simple rolling competition that awards points for improving articles. The contest runs from the first to last day of each month.
• WikiProject Medicine Collaboration of the Month. Every month, a topic will be selected from this page that will be the focus of editing for some members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine. The article may or may not yet exist. Topics may either relate to medical basic sciences (anatomy, biochemistry, and so on), or clinical medicine (illnesses, surgical procedures, and so on).

Upcoming Remote Events, Discussions, and Conferences via electronic formats

Discussions and collaborations

Discussions in the following areas have requested wider attention via Requests for comment:

• Biographies
• Economy and trade
• History and geography
• Language and linguistics
• Media, the arts, and architecture
• Politics, government, and law
• Religion and philosophy
• Science and mathematics
• Society, sports, and culture
• Wikipedia policies and guidelines
• Wikipedia style and naming
• WikiProjects and collaborations
• Wikipedia technical issues and templates
• Wikipedia proposals
• Unsorted

See also

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 are not ready to fly solo, you can participate in a Collaboration.

Things to do

General tasks

• Patrol new pages and help improve new articles.
• Category:Wikipedia backlog always needs attention.
• Short popular vital articles may be the most time-effective to work on.
• Assess articles by quality or by importance—pick a topic of interest and grade according to that WikiProject's scale. (See links from article talk pages.)
• Adopt an Outline, to help develop and maintain a table of contents to a major subject on Wikipedia.
• Let SuggestBot suggest pages for you to improve.
• Update pages with old (ref or note template) citations to the new references format.
• Do you have a historical perspective? Articles slanted towards recent events might need to be looked at with a new eye.

Commenting

• Respond to a request for comment or Wikiquette alert, or provide a third opinion.
• Give a requested editor review.
• Peer review or give feedback on some articles.
• Comment at Featured portal candidates and Portals at peer review.
• Make recommendations on articles listed at Good article reassessment.
• Respond to the Reward board or Bounty board.
• Discuss which articles should be deleted and review proposed deletions.

Special skills

• Can you draw or take pictures? Make a requested image.
• 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 translation.
• Are you a budding journalist? Summarise Wikipedia-related news and events for the Signpost.

Fix-up projects

Open tasks

You can help improve the articles listed below! This list updates frequently, so check back here for more tasks to try. (See Wikipedia:Task Center for brief guides.)

Help counter systemic bias by creating new articles on important women.

Help improve popular pages, especially those of low quality.

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

Purge the cache of the list above

Collaborations

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

Other collaborations

Active improvement teams

• Countering systemic bias
• Version 1.0
• Spam fighting team
• Categorization projects
• Spotlight

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.

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, organized by language.

Guidelines, help & 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 contents – Browse help pages
• Help desk
• Where to ask questions

Editing

• The Manual of Style guidelines and tutorial
• How to edit a page
• Contributing
• How to write a great article
• A list of free online resources for research
• 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 to both 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 · Tutorial · Sandbox · Help · Adoption · What Wikipedia is not · Glossary · Account benefits · Planning school assignments · New contributors' help page · FAQ

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 · Wikipedia awards program · Dept. of Fun · 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 · Merchandise · Administrators · Babel · Culture · Games · Humor · Mottoes

Related communities

Tip of the day

ProveIt is a user script (and gadget) that makes it easy to find, edit, add, and cite references in Wikipedia articles.

It provides a graphical interface for editing, adding, and citing references. The ProveIt toolbar displays at the bottom of the Wikipedia text editor (for articles only).