WikiAlpha:Community portal

WikiAlpha's community portal archives

• Archive 1 (July 2011 – June 2021)

Please do not replace this content. The sandbox for practice and experimentation is at WikiAlpha:Sandbox

Basic rules, please follow

1. Make sure you capitalize names properly, use proper spacing, and use proper punctuation. Do not use ALL CAPS. Capitalize people's last names. Ali Khan should not be Ali khan or ALI KHAN.
2. Do not create duplicate pages. For example, create only one page for Ali Khan, not two pages for Ali khan and ALI KHAN. This does not help with SEO and creates unnecessary workload for volunteer editors working to maintain WikiAlpha.
3. Do not completely replace existing pages and templates with your own test content, whether they are Bangladeshi Instagram stars or Indian marketing companies. Experiment using your own user page or talk page.
4. Do not blank pages that others have created without explaining why.
5. Be respectful of server capacities. Do not make too many small edits to one page, or since they take up storage space and bandwidth when each unique historical version is saved. Do not upload too many large photos, and make sure they are your own work. This is because the bills are completely paid for by volunteers with no commercial interests, such as Richard.

Notability on WikiAlpha is not an issue, but please be neat and meticulous. Enjoy editing WikiAlpha.

WritingSnowman (talk) 16:23, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

User:WritingSnowman, you make several excellent points here. Thanks for taking the time to draft this section! Geo Swan (talk) 02:18, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

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Need help urgently

I created the page of Andre L. Henry the infobox is showing some vulgar language, I have checked the code, as well as the editing history. There seems to be no issue with them. Please help Menzi Holmes(talk) 21:43, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

As I have looked at other profiles, each and every infobox is having this issue. Menzi Holmes(talk) 21:59, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Attracting editors with non-commercial interests

As of now, it appears that the only users here on WikiAlpha who regularly create articles on non-commercial topics are User:Geo Swan, User:Mathewignash, and me.

Paid commercial topics are not a problem at all, since the founding principle of WikiAlpha is its universal inclusion policy. Many of the companies and entrepreneurs mentioned on here are quite interesting, but they would have been speedily deleted on Wikipedia. Curiously, more than half of them are Bangladeshi social media influencers.

However, to be more rounded, wiki encyclopedias should have both commercial and non-commercial interests to balance each other out, in order to maintain a certain level of diversity. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive.

What can we do to attract more editors who tend to have non-commercial interests? WritingSnowman (talk) 05:49, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

WritingSnowman, I too would like to encourage more contributions of independent articles. No ideas as to how to do so come to mind. Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 22:21, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

And don't forget about me too! GnosticScribe (talk) 08:34, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

It would be labor intensive, but if anyone has an account on Wikipedia, they could invite users with deletion notices to bring their content here.PhilippMichelReichold (talk) 10:48, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Of course, the toxic, "not here to build WikiALpha" behavior has the opposite effect.PhilippMichelReichold (talk) 13:46, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

WikiAlpha celebrates 10 years

Congratulations to WikiAlpha for successfully being online for 10 years! While Wikipedia celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, we are celebrating our 10th. In an online world where websites appear and disappear all within a few years, this is an impressive achievement. Kudos to Richard for consistently maintaining WikiAlpha, to Govind for helping it get started, MathewWignash and Geo Swan for continually and consistently updating and maintaining WikiAlpha, and all the editors on this wiki who have made us who we are today.

As a friendly, inclusive online space that radically departs from Wikipedia's environment, we will remain committed to being radically free, uncensored, and open. Keep on editing folks! WritingSnowman (talk) 16:33, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

P.S. WikiAlpha has recently had a lot of new articles on Bangladeshi entertainers. This trend started sometime in late 2019 or 2020. Wonder how this had happened! Sooner or later, we might have to rename ourselves WikiBangla. WritingSnowman (talk) 16:33, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Alexa Site Info shows that nearly 50% of WikiAlpha's site traffic comes from Bangladesh, and just over 80% is from South Asia. WritingSnowman (talk) 20:47, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

@User:WritingSnowman that is because some people started writing articles in exchange for money as a marketing businees. They are running paid advertisements for this on Facebook for that. Ref: [Facebook Ad post Link]. WyseMan (talk) 11:55, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

That's OK as long as they don't mess up the site by doing things like copying and pasting into Template:Recent pages and doing things that would cause bandwidth problems, like copying and pasting unnecessarily large chunks of text. And oftentimes, their writing is semi-legible at best. WritingSnowman (talk) 19:30, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

What's up with the active users list?

The Active Users list has no members, and says it's a cached version of the page from six years ago. Any reason why? Metroplex (talk) 07:40, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

There seemed to have been a problem with the creation of new articles...

There was an outage of about 10-20 hours, about ten days ago. When the system came back up there was something wrong with putting the name of an article that did not yet exist into the search box. Normally, once you clicked search, one of your option would be to edit the file.

Okay, it is working again. Yah!

During the time it was out I see a couple of contributors got around this by editing articles I wrote: Zaky Mallah and Barbara Foss, then rewriting them into brand new articles, on new topics, discarding the content I had worked hard on. They then gave those articles new names, reflecting the new content. Geo Swan (talk) 00:13, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

It might be because WikiAlpha is getting a lot more traffic. Please see my message on your talk page. WritingSnowman (talk) 09:47, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Recent outages

There was an outage, of approximately 20 hours, about a month ago. I don't know what caused it.

There was another outage, from March 10th to March 16th. I don't know what caused it, either.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 16:53, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Exceeding bandwidth or server failures? Please ask Richard about it. That's why I had voiced my concerns about the long-term future of this wiki; do we have enough resources to maintain a rapidly growing project? WritingSnowman (talk) 18:55, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Vandalism and disruptive editing from a particular user

Barkatofficial (talk • contribs) is consistently involved in disruptive editing. They're consistently blanking a biography page. I tried to create it under another name but they blanked that page too. Is there a policy on WikiAlpha to ban editors involved in this kind of edit warring/disruptive editing?

I would request to please look into this.

Thanks

Which article? I am assuming Tyler King? Also, please sign your name with four tildes (~~~~). WritingSnowman (talk) 20:24, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

There has been a lot of recent vandalism

There has been a lot of recent vandalism. I wonder why? Geo Swan (talk) 01:38, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Does the CSD copyright paragraph apply to articles ported from wikipedia, where the wikipedia contributors were not acknowledged...

I am {{ping}}ing User:Richard, User:Mathewignash and User:WritingSnowman, but others opinions are welcome too.

I used to rely on the Save Article button to take care of putting a list of wikipedia contributors on the talk pages of articles I ported. This feature doesn't work anymore, or, at least, it doesn't work, for me. So I manually copy that information when I port an article.

I am not a lawyer, but I think that, technically, it is a legal obligation on the person doing the copying, to acknowledge contributions made under GPL, Creative Commons, etc.

While working on cleaning up the recent vandal I have come across articles that had clearly been copied from the wikipedia, where no effort had been made to acknowledge the wikipedia contributors, and which were missing the {{wp-cca}} tag.

What, if anything, should we do about articles ported from the wikipedia, without proper attribution? Does CSD's paragraph on copyright violations apply to those articles?

I can see an argument being made that obligation to acknowledge the original wikipedia contributors lay on the person who ported the content, so I should "let sleeping dogs lie". Alternatively, it could be argued that recognition of missing acknowledgements should be seen as a serious concern, but not one requiring speedy deletion. Since the people who copied the material were newbies, who honestly didn't understand the licensing requirements, they should be given a longish grace period between when a note is left on their user talk page, and when the unacknowledged port is deleted. A month? Three months?

If I thought I could figure out why the bot that put the wikipedia contributors was no longer working, I'd volunteer to try to fix it. But, I don't know how to do that.

If the savearticlebot could be fixed, maybe it could be modified to work, retroactively? If it were handed the URLs of the wikipedia version of an article, and the wikialpha version, could it copy the revision history from the wikipedia - but stop at the date of creation of the wikialpha version?

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 01:38, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

I would personally err on the side of caution and apply the CC license to CSD articles. WritingSnowman (talk) 14:05, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

About 15 months of contributionss to this page, Wikialpha:Community portal, lost due to vandalism, and a bug

A vandal moved this page, Wikialpha:Community portal to a nonsense name. That left the new Wikialpha:Community portal as just a one revision redirect. I deleted it first. Then I moved the nonsense name, with the full revision history back to Wikialpha:Community portal. I wasn't sufficiently paranoid about bugs, and, when it said "a redirect already exists, delete it?" I told it to go ahead. What it seems to have done was do the deletion it thought I authorized, and the move, in the wrong order. The result of that ended in the unrecoverable deletion of all the good revisions.

Sorry everybody. Geo Swan (talk) 06:12, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

New language versions for WikiAlpha?

I think it would be a great idea to create new subdomains for different language versions of WikiAlpha. The most common languages I've seen on WikiAlpha are Bengali and Vietnamese. The interface can be in English unless we have someone who can help with localization, but the article contents can be in the target language.

We can try these subdomains:

• https://bn.wikialpha.org/ (Bengali)
• https://vi.wikialpha.org/ (Vietnamese)

WritingSnowman (talk) 22:24, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Recently certainly psycho wikipedia freak vandalized italian pages here... link to rules on wha tlanguange can be used must be clarified!!! BoxingWear (talk) 06:46, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Sandbox

The sandbox for practice and experimentation is at WikiAlpha:Sandbox Thanks.PhilippMichelReichold (talk) 08:08, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Category:Candidates for speedy deletion

Seems a mite backlogged, but why my Personal Digitization in Johnathan Strahan's Godlike Machines shows up there is beyond me.PhilippMichelReichold (talk) 15:56, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Template:Wp-cca

links to Creative Commons 3.0. Wikipedia now licenses under Creative Commons 4.0.PhilippMichelReichold (talk) 22:06, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Upwork and paid editing

Searching for something else, I got a web hit extoling the virtues of WikiAlpha over Wikipedia for posting one's vanity artspam. "Wikiapha confers a huge advantage . . . ."PhilippMichelReichold (talk) 10:54, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

WikiAlpha is not Wikipedia. We deal with copyediting and copyright issues, not paid editing. Please don't bring Wikipedia issues onto WikiAlpha. WritingSnowman (talk) 14:40, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, so not a concern. Thanks again.PhilippMichelReichold (talk) 14:42, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Absolutely, Geo Swan and I and everyone else agree that paid editing is not an issue at all. WritingSnowman (talk) 14:44, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Instead, the main issue here is that sloppy editors, primarily from Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Iran, constantly do not capitalize page titles properly no matter how many times I warn them. Some of them have more than 10 warnings over improper capitalization usage (Template:Welcome c) on their user pages, and they still don't get it. If you can help out, then that would be highly appreciated. WritingSnowman (talk) 14:51, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I shall do my best.PhilippMichelReichold (talk) 15:09, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Rules?

Do what you will is the whole of the rules.PhilippMichelReichold (talk) 15:43, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I do not know who are administrators here.. but attention geo Swan et al.... ARTICLES PROTECTION FEETURE IS NEEDED IMMEDIATELY!!!

First of all your email system is not working... And I need to inform you of XXBlackburnXx super vandal aka cat aka ddead et a... associate of wikipedia fake, censored "encyclopedia", the evil triumvirate of antandrus (real name david), javaHurricane, XXBlackbnurnXx pro stalinists and anti katynists, firefangledfeathers, SHB2000, ferien, fehufanga, minorax operator873 jason howard official wikipedia stooge, vermont chris gates, bsadowski1 brian sadowski high school dropout... https://archive.is/I9azf

https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=De-Stalinization&action=history

THIS IS XXBlackburnXx aka cat aka ddead et al BUTTHURT WIKIPEDIA LTA INFUSION AND ESSENCE OF TRASH & UTMOST WIKIPEDIA STUPIDITY rosyjskieabc.blogspot.com/2015/09/system-edukacji-w-polsce-rosji-i.html?showComment=1709139137310#c1889231391674185177

This trash has no life except loves to vandalize... we should have a feature where our work is locked.. especially on our space, this way garbage like him will not destroy it...

Looks to me like they don't much care. just sayin'.PhilippMichelReichold (talk) 02:12, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

The Save Feature

How does it work, how is it associated with other wikis as on wikipedia nothing is certain...

Many books confirm it, including fine Threelogy/Trilogy"

books.google.com/books?id=typSAgAAQBAJ

ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/wikipedia-has-a-long-history-of-problems/ AND GROWING EXPONENTIALLY EVERY DAY, ESPECIALLY ITS WIKICULTURE OF UTMOST WIKIGNORANCE, WIKIARROGANCE, WIKISTUPIDITY, WIKIHYPOCRISY, WIKICONTRADICTION AKA WIKI DOUBLE EDGED SWORDS!!!

Admin list

• Geo Swan (Talk | contribs)‏‎ (bureaucrat, check user, administrator) (Created on 5 June 2012 at 17:17)
• Govind (Talk | contribs)‏‎ (bureaucrat, check user, administrator) (Created on 18 June 2011 at 09:54)
• Mathewignash (Talk | contribs)‏‎ (bureaucrat, check user, administrator) (Created on 2 July 2011 at 18:25)
• Richard (Talk | contribs)‏‎ (bureaucrat, check user, nuke, administrator) (Created on 18 June 2011 at 09:52)
• Sysop (Talk | contribs)‏‎ (bureaucrat, check user, administrator) (Created on 18 June 2011 at 07:39)

--PhilippMichelReichold (talk) 10:45, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I have a great deal to contribute but only one administrator has his email public and he is not replying... and there are wikipedia fake ceonsored "encyclopedia" archive.is/Y0BB archive.is/XSEXQ freaks here who love to vandalize and call good articles as "spam" just to kill them or make them look invalid... administrators here are too easy.. such behavior drives away good editors and why email sys is not working... that's a big turn off!!! BoxingWear (talk) 05:36, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

1. Do not use caps locks. 2. Do not create duplicate pages.

There are some stubborn users, primarily from Bangladesh and Nigeria, who have been warned 5 times or 10 times over and over again, but would not heed these warnings:

1. Do not use caps locks. Capitalize last names please.
2. Do not create duplicate pages. That means do not create more than one page with the same, or reworded, content.
3. Do not capitalize the titles of generic topics.
4. Do not use your online alias unless it is an artist name that is more commonly used than your real name.
5. Do not use nonsensical, inaccurate page names. The page title and infobox must match with the main topic of the page's contents.
6. Do not copy and paste Wikipedia content without proper attribution.

These are very simple common sense rules.

I have spent hundreds of hours cleaning up this mess so that the encyclopedia would not devolve into a nonsensical cesspool of unreadable, unsearchable content.

Again, and again, you must follow these rules. Do not be disruptive by making a mess and ignoring warnings over and over again. Extreme cases of non-compliance may result in editing privileges being revoked.

To remind everyone:

Capitalization rules - please follow

Welcome to WikiAlpha! Please note that on WikiAlpha, you are required to capitalize names properly, use proper spacing, and use proper punctuation. This is so that the encyclopedia can be organized, searchable, and accurate. Here are some rules that you must follow. Please do not ignore these rules. Do not use ALL CAPS. For example, Ali Khan should not be ALI KHAN. Capitalize people's last names. For example, Ali Khan should not be Ali khan. Spaces must be put in between words. For example, Ali Khan should not be Alikhan. In addition, please use the actual name of the person or organization, not an online alias or social media ID. For example, Ali Khan should not be Alikhan1234. Thank you.

Please do not capitalize the titles of generic topics

For generic articles, please do not capitalize the second word or any words after that. Web hosting is a generic topic. Web Hosting should only be for the name of a specific company. Proper nouns should be capitalized. Generic entities should not. MAX LED Panel should be capitalized. Why? Because it is a name of a specific company, rather than a general type of LED panel. However, LED panel should just be LED panel, unless you are talking about the name of a specific company called, for example, LED Panel Corp.

Please do not create duplicate pages

Welcome to WikiAlpha! Please note that you should use redirects (code: #REDIRECT [[Page name]]). Do not create duplicate pages by copying and pasting. Please create one page per topic, instead of multiple pages for the same topic. For example, please create only one page for Ali Khan, not two pages for Ali khan and ALI KHAN. Creating duplicate pages will not help with search engine rankings and creates unnecessary additional workload for WikiAlpha volunteers. Thank you.

Page title rules - please follow

Welcome to WikiAlpha! Please note that on WikiAlpha, you are required to use page titles that make sense. This is so that the encyclopedia can be organized, searchable, and accurate. Please use the actual name of the person or organization, not an online alias or social media ID, unless the alias is an artist name that is used much more often than the person's birth name. For example, Ali Khan should not be Alikhan1234. Thank you.

Page titles must be accurate

Welcome to WikiAlpha! Please note that on WikiAlpha, you are required to use page titles that are accurate. This is so that the encyclopedia can be organized, searchable, and accurate. For example, please do not create a page with a title such as Ali Khan when the content (i.e., the text inside the page) is actually about another person such as John Smith. Thank you.

WritingSnowman (talk) 11:27, 6 May 2024 (UTC)