Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:41, 18 December 2012

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Feedback tool (again)

As I have expressed before, I am not a fan of our Article Feedback tool. I think it’s an unnecessary alternative to talk pages that does nothing to bring about improvement to the project. That said, if we’re going to have it, our registered users ought to know how to deal with it. I became a bit concerned earlier when I noticed that this comment from the article Barack Obama:

I would like to see the section about Barack Obama's personal life expanded a bit more -- as well as learn more about his family.

had been flagged as "abuse" by no less than five of our registered users. I could be wrong, but I personally don’t see even the faintest hint of anything that could reasonably be called "abuse" in that comment. Do we have a policy or guideline for what constitutes "abuse" of the feedback tool? If so, could anyone elaborate on how this particular comment meets the criteria? This is just one example of many I could have cited. Evanh2008  03:27, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

The "feedback" tool is a morass of worthlessness that was foisted upon Misplaced Pages to make it more like Facebook and other blog sites with "comments" sections. It was a misguided attempt to remove idle chatter from the article talk pages and as a result we now get a second place we need to keep track of (which doesn't show up on watch lists normally) to see what changes people would like to see in articles. Ideally, things like this should be openly discussed on the article's Talk: page, but it isn't. It's a shame, because there's lots of good stuff that probably gets missed on the feedback tool if only because it is largely redundant to talk pages, and inexperienced readers don't know the distinction between the two. Hell, I'm a very experienced editor and I'm not always clear on the distinction between them. It seems like one of those "seemed like a good idea at the time" things that has turned into something which (in my singular opinion) doesn't actually provide any net benefit to Misplaced Pages in terms of helping improve article content.</rant> --Jayron32 04:16, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Without commenting on your conclusions about the quality of the tool (I don't know really since I haven't personally used or reviewed it), I can say that your bad faith accusations about the purpose of it land very wide from the mark. "to make it more like Facebook" is not a goal that anyone has ever articulated anywhere, as far as I know, and certainly in discussions I've had with staff and community about this, there is no one who has regarded that as a valid goal. Why would it be? Nor was it a "misguided attempt to remove idle chatter from the article talk pages". Anyway, to get to the substance of your critique, I think your points are largely valid, but they are not related to your misunderstandings about the goal of the tool!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:57, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Just as a note, I never said anything about bad faith, I have no doubt that the tool was installed with the intent of, in the mind those that make these decisions, improving Misplaced Pages. I think that, whatever the actual justification is for its existence or purpose, it is poorly executed and of marginal utility towards improving the articles. Feedback for article content should be posted to article talk pages, where said feedback can be read and acted upon in improving the article. We have a means for readers to provide feedback for articles, so I am simply left to guess as to what the Article Feedback Tool's raison d'etre is. If it isn't obvious what use it has, then perhaps it isn't all that useful for the end goal of Misplaced Pages in the first place. Again, no accusations of bad faith, so I'm not sure how you read that into my comments, just bad execution. --Jayron32 18:11, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Here are diffs of changes that I made just yesterday to articles solely because of AFT5 feedback comments: . I hope that you will agree with me that these kinds of changes do not indicate "marginal utility towards improving the articles" or a sign that the feedback cannott be "read and acted upon in improving the article". WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:12, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not saying you couldn't use the feedback from the Article Feedback Tool to improve articles. There's nothing stopping you from doing so. However, if the same comments which led to your corrections had instead been made on the article talk pages, you would have had the same opportunity to act on them. So I'm still not sure where a redundant tool is helpful. Sure, occasionally an editor such as yourself does find a comment on the AFT which leads them to improve an article. That doesn't invalidate my point that the talk page would be the better venue for those comments. Someone other than you can see them then. --Jayron32 07:37, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

The feedback pages aren't secret. You can see the comments, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:07, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Obviously. But why have two pages serving the exact same purpose? If they don't have the exact same purpose as talk pages, what are their purpose? --Jayron32 03:52, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

While I agree with your position entirely, I just want to make it clear that my present concern is with how the tool is being utilized, and not with the tool itself. I would rather it not exist, but if it's going to exist, Id like it to be used properly. Evanh2008  23:16, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

I think AFTv5 was a good idea and a bad implementation. David1217 03:18, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

This comment:

A timeline would be great

has now been flagged by five users. The comment I mentioned previously is up to six. Evanh2008  12:46, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Possibly the single most helpful feedback comment I have ever seen:

The wikipedia on Stanley Ann Durham states that she moved to Indonesia in 1975. It states Dunham completed her coursework at the University of Hawaii for a M.A. in anthropology in December 1974, and after having spent three years in Hawaii, Dunham, accompanied by her daughter Maya, returned to Indonesia in 1975 to do anthropological field work. The wikipedia for Barak Obama states "Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972, remaining there until 1977 when she went back to Indonesia to work as an anthropological field worker. " Stanley Ann Durham was in Indonesia in 1976 to 1994, except in May-Nov, 1986 and Aug-Nov, 1987. Please fix this discrepancy.

has been flagged four times. Am I seriously the only one concerned about this? Evanh2008  12:53, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi talk:Evanh2008, thanks for bringing up the issue related to the 'Flag as abuse' feature. We are now adjusting the moderation tools to avoid these types of issues, so your observations are very helpful and timely. I also would like to clarify our primary objective for Article Feedback v5, to expand on Jimbo's thoughtful clarifications. Our main goal for this new editor engagement tool is to encourage more participation from readers -- by giving them a voice, then inviting them to sign up as registered users, and ultimately new editors. In our experience, most readers do not participate on talk pages, which are generally found confusing by new users. Hence the need for a simpler on-ramp to engage readers to participate on Misplaced Pages, which is one of the five priorities in our movement's strategic plan. Our research so far suggests that article feedback addresses that need effectively. We are now focusing our attention on making the moderation tools more effective as well, and surfacing good feedback while reducing the editor workload for this new user engagement tool. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Might be worth to also paste this at https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia_talk:Article_feedback where it's more likely to be seen by AFT developers. --Malyacko (talk) 13:54, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

We can see it here :). We really need to do some research into whether anonymous moderation lines up with what registered users consider useful - this is on my to-do list. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:50, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I checked the Obama post you mentioned above, and it seems clear that it was only flagged as abuse by anonymous ip numbers. That's not helpful, of course. But neither is it true to say that "registered users" are doing this. (If they were, we could tell them to knock it off.) I think what would be helpful here would be to figure out why people are doing this, and how to encourage them to do something more useful. For example, if you flag something as abuse, should you be required to give a reason *why* you think it is abuse?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:57, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

On the "personal life expanded a bit more" comment, I see that no registered editors flagged it as abuse, but 2 marked it as unhelpful; MathewTownsend and AConservapediaEditor (a blocked sock). On the "timeline" one, the unhelpful flags are from JayJasper and the only abuse flag is today from Johnbod, which I presume was a mistaken attempt to list the abuse flags, something I almost clicked on. This is a very ugly and clunky interface; if somewhere on the Internets there's a flip-side of Clients From Hell to post up bad implementations, this would be a good submission. Tarc (talk) 16:27, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Ah. Well, sorry for the confusion. I was under the impression that only registered users could flag comments. In that case, I’m not sure I can say a lot on the topic that would be helpful, given my opposition to both anonymous editing and the existence of the feedback tool. Evanh2008  23:01, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Is it possible to view Feedback Activity Log for specific IP user? I tried but it's not working.--В и к и T 18:50, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Hmn; I'll poke the dev :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:50, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Good catch, Wikiwind! I just filed this bug to address this issue. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I will say that this tool is absolutely useless for tween/teen oriented pop-culture articles. It's used much like Wikia article comments — expressing what they think should happen on a particular Nick/Disney show, or even trying to talk to the stars (like Justin Bieber or Selena Gomez) themselves. – Confession0791 23:19, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Confession0791, thanks for your valid point. We have also observed that reader feedback is less useful on high-traffic, controversial pages than on low-traffic pages. To address this issue, we now provide a feature that lets administrators restrict feedback from certain user groups on controversial pages, by extending the page protection feature available on semi-protected and protected pages. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

All these meta-feedback mechanisms ("mark as helpful", "mark as unhelpful" and "flag as abuse") are quite chaotically employed in general. My experience is that most of the chaos comes from anon users who are just as clueless in using these features as in using the whole tool in general. We also get the opposite thing – the tool will let people mark even their own comments as "helpful", so we often end up with blatantly vandalistic comments that allegedly "100% found helpful". As others have noted, other false markings can occur through mistaken attempts at fixing things. This has happened to me before: there appears to be some way of de-flagging an abusively flagged, good comment (at least I've seen such entries in logs); while searching for a way of doing just that, it has happened to me that I inadvertently added another "abuse" flag to a perfectly good comment. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:24, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Future Perfect, it should no longer be possible to mark your own comment as helpful. Please let us know if you encounter this issue again and we'll file a bug for it. See my other response below on how to unflag comments. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

How exactly does one de-flag a comment? If I figured that out I could, of course, take care of it myself without bugging everyone about it here. Evanh2008  23:46, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I still have no idea how it's done. I only think it's possible because I'm pretty sure I've seen log entries in the activity history of some comments implying that abuse flags were removed. Never could figure out how to do it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:51, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Hey, Future Perfect, thanks for your thoughtful comments! There are two ways that you can un-flag a comment: 1) if you flagged the comment yourself, simply click on the same link again, and that will unflag it; and 2) if you are looking to clear all flags from other users, you can click on 'Feature this post', which will unflag them all (you can then 'unfeature this post' if you don't think it should be featured). This is a temporary solution while we finalize our moderation tools. Stay tuned for more ... Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

If I can make a suggestion, maybe feedback comments should automatically enter the talk page. A simple interface, like the one used at WP:Teahouse, would make feedback easy and help editors respond. -- ypnypn (talk) 04:00, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

FWIW, I as a simpleton, part time editor, do see the point to the feedback feature. It is useful as a place to leave quick suggestions for those who don't edit, although abuse of it is obviously an issue. For those who introduced it; just be wary of making the Misplaced Pages interface too complicated. It might end up discouraging new editors, although in the case of many IPs that might be a desirable outcome;)1812ahill (talk) 02:31, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

New editors making huge edits

There seem to be a growing number of new editors who start editing by making huge edits, usually simply wiping out the article as it is and replacing it with a large bulk of text made all by themselves. For instance, Affectional bond, was changed into this. Now this new version was so blatantly erroneous that I felt it was warranted to simply revert everything back, but sometimes it is not that easy. Sometimes the addition is actually improving the article, but at the same time full of mistakes, and it is not much fun to spend hours cleaning up. But not cleaning up and leaving the article with lots of mistakes, increases the risk that the next new editor continues making the same kind of mistakes. Any thoughts about this? Lova Falk talk 20:35, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Template:2c In that specific case (at least from my quick look at it), it appears that the new edit, which I concur wasn't perfect, did add some new references, which are definitely useful. I like to deal with things like this on a case-by-case basis; for example, for this I would have grabbed the refs. In another one, perhaps an image. Spending a few — 15? — minutes to clean up the edit might make the difference between a one-contribber and our next steward. —Theopolisme 22:18, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Gotta love the edit summary of the next edit "Added more content for a class assignment with APS". The article previously only had 234 words and now has 2,155. Apteva (talk) 03:29, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

We've had a "discussion" previously with a teacher involved with the ASP. Though I love the idea of using for educational purposes, I think/feel that this way we are being "used" to do someone else's job. Some better instruction for students might be needed. Joshua Jonathan (talk) 06:02, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

I do spend a lot of time cleaning up after newcomers and encouraging them. But there are limits. Since I wrote this text, the article has improved tremendously, and I am very happy with this. When it looks like this, I don't mind spending the twelve minutes I needed for some lower cases, punctuation and references. But when it is too much work... I'm not only keen on keeping new editors, I am also keen on keeping my own pleasure in editing. Lova Falk talk 10:00, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

This has been for several years, and continues to be, a huge problem. It is being discussed at WP:ENB, with a proposal there now to force student edits to be sandboxed. It's a lot to read, but there's no point in re-typing everything in two places. Discussion starts here. The notion that students and student editing is no different than any other newbie, and we shouldn't BITE, misses the point in a number of ways, and the burden on established editors to clean up largely unsalvageable walls of text is much too large. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:40, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you SandyGeorgia for saying it is a huge problem. Thank you for referring to the discussion. I do feel burdened by unsalvageable walls of text. I am eleven days behind on my watchlist and unless I spend the whole day here, this is only growing. At the same time, editing is no fun if I'm just checking without "diving" into articles, which is the interesting but time consuming part... Lova Falk talk 09:21, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

There used to be a tutorial on editing WP, which for some reason I can no longer find. Normally students in say architecture are not asked to participate in the design of a new skyscraper as a student project, but instead simply make paper models that no one else sees. Some of wikipedia is simple enough that any 10 year old can contribute meaningfully to it, and some is so complex that only a post doc can correctly edit. I do not know if the desire to have students as a student project edit wikipedia is an honest attempt to improve wikipedia or as a novel way of making paper models. If the latter, it is of little use, if the former, hopefully a large percentage of the students who go through the tutorial that I can not find and learn to edit wikipedia will go on to continue to contribute to wikipedia for the rest of their life - contributions that may never have happened had it not been due to the forced introduction to editing wikipedia. Would it be too much to ask anyone taking a class and editing as a class assignment to include an edit summary that included "student edit" or something to that effect in every edit, as was done in the first student edit to Affectional bond? Apteva (talk) 23:55, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually, yes, it would be too much. It is hard enough as it is to make some students stick to the Misplaced Pages guidelines - and I guess that those of them who wouldn't be bothered to include "student edit" into their summary, are just the ones that need most superveillance... Lova Falk talk 19:45, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Təngərud

When there are multiple translations for a name, do we usually prefer siting the article at one of the standard english script versions? Tangarud or Tengerud? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:36, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Latin script is used in Azerbaijan for the Talysh and Azerbaijani languages (according to their articles) so there should be no transcription needed and we should simply use the native spelling. According to the Azerbaijani Misplaced Pages article that is Təngərüd in Azerbaijani, but I don't know if it would be the same in Talysh, or whether our naming guidelines would prefer the local or the national language if they differ. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:40, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

The 2012 Arbitration Committee Election is closing today

The 2012 Arbitration Committee Election is closing today (in about 8 hours). Until then, users may review the election page to learn more about the election and determine if they are eligible to vote.

Voters are encouraged to review the candidate statements prior to voting. Voter are also encouraged to review the candidate guide. Voters can review questions asked of each candidate, which are linked at the bottom of their statement, and participate in discussion regarding the candidates.

Voters can cast their ballot by visiting Special:SecurePoll/vote/259.

Voters can ask questions regarding the election at this page.

For the Electoral Commission. MBisanz 15:10, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

If my watch is right the voting is closed. Apteva (talk) 04:48, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I want to take an article (any article) to GA

Hi, I've been editing WP for a while, but I've never participated in the enhancement of an article to take it to GA status. I'd like to have this experience.

I don't really care what article it is, I just want to collaborate with other users and take an article (any article) to GA status.

Where can I find other users looking to collaborate to take an article to GA? I'm sure if I see a few articles that people want to take to GA status, I'll be interested in at least one of them and become involved.

Also, if any of you reading this has an article that you're interested in taking to GA status, let me know and perhaps we can work on it together.

Thanks, Azylber (talk) 08:59, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Why not Dominion of New England? dci | TALK 03:55, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I maintain a list of articles which I intend to take to featured status in the future here. A few of them are GA already, I think, but you might find something you like. Evanh2008  04:05, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I expanded the lead of Adrienne Shelley last night specifically in preparation for taking it to WP:GAN. I think all it really needs is the career section expanded. Everything else is well developed.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:35, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

You might consider joining a WP:WikiProject. A few of them have active "collaboration of the month" programs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:49, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

700,000 sources to avoid

Books generated by automated generation systems:

• "Patented Book Writing System Creates, Sells Hundreds Of Thousands Of Books On Amazon". SingularityHub. David J. Hill, December 13, 2012.

Examples listed:

Webster’s Slovak – English Thesaurus Dictionary for $28.95

The 2007-2012 World Outlook for Wood Toilet Seats for $795

The World Market for Rubber Sheath Contraceptives (Condoms): A 2007 Global Trade Perspective for $325

Ellis-van Creveld Syndrome – A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients, and Genome Researchers for $28.95

Webster’s English to Haitian Creole Crossword Puzzles: Level 1 for $14.95

I expect very careful study of the frontispiece will be required. Of course, quoted content which is cited within these works should be fine, unless it was also autogenerated. --Lexein (talk) 11:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

* Groan * I'll bet you a lot of the content of the books will come from Misplaced Pages itself. — Cheers, JackLee 12:10, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

The default message for undoing edits

When I undo an edit, it says "If you are undoing an edit that is not vandalism, explain the reason in the edit summary. Do not use the default message only." I doubt this wording is ideal. I just made this edit, where I reverted a bad edit that removed a ref tag (it probably would not have qualified as vandalism, I'm not an expert on that definition). But because editing Misplaced Pages is not compulsory, doesn't it contradict that advice when we tell volunteers to do or not do something in an edit summary? Also, it seems too user-unfriendly, if I have gotten an article up to "good" status but I am unsure as to what this exactly means. Is there a better place for me to go raise this issue? Biosthmors (talk) 19:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree it should be changed. Perhaps to something like "if undoing an edit that is not vandalism or an obvious error, please replace the default message with an explanation." No demands and more leniency. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 21:23, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

That sounds much better, thanks. How do we make the change? Biosthmors (talk) 21:38, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

An administrator would have to edit MediaWiki:Undo-success. Discussion should be at or linked from MediaWiki talk:Undo-success. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:41, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Copied conversation to MediaWiki_talk:Undo-success#Edit_request. Best. Biosthmors (talk) 02:48, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I disagree. All organized volunteer work has do's and don't do's. We can't tell people that they have to revert mistakes, but if they do, then do explain why and don't be uncivil. Lova Falk talk 10:24, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes it is useful in instructions to slightly overstate the situation, so that people will make the right choice. Also, the simpler the language, the easier for English-language learners to understand it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:51, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

An IP address question:

2602:306:CE3C:50E0:F8EA:4EB8:BC87:5CD1

What on earth kind of IP is this? HalfShadow 01:35, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

IPv6. Legoktm (talk) 01:37, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Huh. Never seen an address like that before. HalfShadow 01:40, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

no real reason you should have. IPv6 is only really just starting to be used although it should become far more common over the next decade.©Geni 18:10, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

You're not the first person; see here for a big discussion about it. Here at Misplaced Pages, we first enabled them on 6 June; I'm not quite sure what the enabling process entailed. Some websites haven't yet; for example, if I edit Misplaced Pages anonymously through a computer at my university, I'll generally have an IPv6 address, but I can turn right around and download a document from JSTOR a few seconds later, and it will tell me that my address is a typical numbers-only one. Nyttend (talk) 23:46, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

If you think those are too ugly for words, try adding the following to your common.js, vector.js, or whatever.js:

jQuery(document).ready(function() {
 $('a').each( function(){
  if( $(this).attr('href').match('^/Special:Contributions/2({1,4}:){7}{1,4}$') ){
     if ( $(this).text().match('^') ) {
         $(this).attr('title',$(this).text()).html( '<span style="color:green;font-style:italic">' + $(this).text().substr(0,16).trim(':') + '</span>' );
     }
  }
 });
});

No idea if this efficient or anything; I just copied it from someone else. --jpgordon 19:42, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

What does it do? — Cheers, JackLee 20:26, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

It turns, for example, this: 2001:558:6008:20:146E:AC26:1874:BD65 into this: 2001:558:6008:20. Not sure about the theory, but it does declutter. --jpgordon 21:16, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation employee salaries

Feel free to join the discussion here. Nirvana2013 (talk) 12:30, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

If you don't want to bother clicking through, I'd summarize this conversation as Nirvana proposing that the total compensation (salary, insurance, employer taxes, etc.) for the average Wikimedia Foundation staff member should be less than the U.S. federal minimum wage for salaried employees, because it's a non-profit and they should be so glad to work for The Cause™ that being able to support themselves, much less a family, in one of the most expensive cities in the world should be unimportant to them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:56, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Tagging

One question, please. Can we tag talk pages in articles of Serbian Ortodox churches with {{WPSERBIA}} if those are not located in Republic of Serbia, but some other neighboring countries? Thanks! --WhiteWriter 11:36, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I think that should be all right, as they relate to Serbia. You might find it helpful to leave a message at "Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Serbia" as the editors working on that project are probably more familiar with Serbian-related topics. — Cheers, JackLee 20:29, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

WP:PROJGUIDE#OWN. It's up to the members of the project. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

You're missing the Balkans aspect of the story. The articles in question are locations and territories recently fought-over in the Yugoslav wars. More specifically, Serbian insurgents were fighting to break them away and merge them with Serbia (to put it simply). A couple Serbian users have now gotten together and began tagging such articles en masse as part of WP:WikiProject Serbia, whereas the stated scope of the project there explicitly makes it clear that it concerns "Serbia and Serbians", that is to say, not Serbs in general - but residents of Serbia ("Serbians", see wikilink). Literally dozens of such articles were tagged in rapid successions, with little or no improvements therein; surely there's a line to be crossed here? To me, this seems little more than baiting.

I'd also like to draw attention to the fact that WhiteWriter neglected to mention any of this, as well as neglected to inform any of the four opposing users of this thread. After being stalled, the user attempted to change the scope of WP Serbia on its talkpage. Seeing as how that's stalled too, the user also started threads here and at WT:COUNCIL.-- Director (talk) 00:42, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

To put it simply this recent wars occurred twenty years ago so that your racist attempt to connect all of us just because we are Serbs with this wars is disgusting (you know, I have 19 years). Also, that "Balkans" aspect has nothing to do with this what we are talking. None of us in this way advocating any radical ideology, we just think that editors from WP Serbia may be interested in these articles (such as Serbian Orthodox Secondary School, Association for Serbian language and literature in the Republic of Croatia, Serb National Council, Zagreb Orthodox Cathedral, Republika Srpska...). If we were doing political propaganda don't you think we will change articles content because readers really only watch that, and not talk pages at which WP are placed to help other editors? The only nationalist here are you since you're asking for disrespect of Misplaced Pages policy and that WP Croatia (my first project where I am active member for a long time) owns that articles just because they are on the territory of present-day Croatia.--MirkoS18 (talk) 02:08, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Direktor, it just doesn't matter. A WikiProject is a group of volunteers. That group is free to work on any articles it wants. It is free to tag any articles that the group chooses to support. If WikiProject Serbia wants to tag Moon and Cancer, then that's just fine with us. The WP:PROJGUIDE explicitly says that "WikiProjects are allowed to have strange, arbitrary, or unpredictable scopes". When we say that they may tag any article that the group wants to support, we really do mean any article, not just articles that seem sensible or sensitive. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:41, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Blacklisted websites

Why are some websites blacklisted? In the years I've been on here, I encountered the warning for the first time when trying to cite a source from Examiner.com. Simply south...... walking into bells for just 6 years 20:46, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Mostly, we blacklist things to stop spammers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

thanks for letting me join your great site merry xmas john n — Preceding unsigned comment added by John fredrick n (talk • contribs) 00:53, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

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