Community Portal

Welcome to the Community Portal. This page is the central place to find out what's happening on Wikipedia. Learn what tasks need to be done, what groups can be joined, and get or post news about recent events or current activities.

Community bulletin board

Post your Wikipedia-related news and announcements here!

New portals, collaborations, and wikiprojects seeking contributors. New initiatives, proposals, or article drives, and current maintenance backlogs.

Notices

• Community enforceable mediation has entered a 90 day experimental phase. This new dispute resolution option allows editors to resolve conflicts with binding agreements. To request a case visit this page.
• Good article candidates continues to have a large backlog (approximately 150 articles!). Although Good Articles has just reached a new milestone with its 2,000th article, reviewers are still needed to help eliminate the backlog. If you are new to reviewing, see the GA criteria and the instructions on the candidates page. If just a hundred reviewers look at one article each, the backlog can quickly be eliminated and allow for a smaller time period in waiting for articles to be reviewed. Any assistance is appreciated!
• WikiProject Vandalism studies has completed Study 1 that analyzed 100 random articles' total 668 edits during the months of November 2004, 2005, and 2006. The salient findings suggest that in a given month approximately 5% of edits are vandalism and 97% of that vandalism is done by anonymous editors. Further discussion is happening for Study 1 and Study 2 is being planned out right now.
• An essay, Wikipedia:We aren't Citizendium, has been written in response to a recent blog post by Larry Sanger. Please make appropriate changes and place feedback on the talk page.
• Messedrocker's Contest, which is centered around the improvement of articles to Good Article status, has begun.
• Following statements by Jimbo Wales, there is a new discussion about whether there was a consensus to merge Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research into Wikipedia:Attribution.
• The new lesson at the Virtual classroom is Yuser, on fighting linkspam.

New project pages seeking contributors

See also

Wikizine · In the media · News · Announcements · E-mail list summary service

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 aren't ready to fly solo, you can participate in a Collaboration.

Things to do

• Respond to a request for comment.
• Give a requested editor review.
• Can you draw or take pictures? Make a requested image.
• Peer review or give feedback on some articles.
• Respond to the Reward board or Bounty board.
• Are you good at photo editing? Then try cleaning up some of these images.
• Offer your thoughts and ideas on proposed policies.
• Help create the XML based format for Wikis, WML.
• Can you use GIS tools? Help make requested maps.
• Can you communicate in another language? There are articles that need translation into English.
• Respond to other requests?
• Comment on the wisdom of new bot proposals.
• Can you code? Code a useful bot or update an offline report.
• Proofread a finished translation.
• Let SuggestBot suggest pages for you to improve.
• Update pages with old (ref or note template) citations to the new references format.

Fix-up projects

Here are some tasks you can do:

• Wikify: Mor-Taxan, General Placido Vega y Daza, Timothy Morss, Backlog...
• Cleanup: Special:Whatlinkshere/Category:Cleanup from July 2005, Albany Movement, Special:Search/Cleanup from July 2005, Backlog...
• Stubs: Roy A. Tucker, Santa Cruz de Tenerife (province), Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll, Spectral class, Sportscaster, Krško, More...
• Verify: Hipster (1990s subculture), Banu (Arabic), IMBEWU, Al Sharpton, Excitatism, Suzlon Energy, Backlog...
• Update: List of United States House committees, Non-Manufacturing Business Activity Index, Armenian Power, SIDPERS, AmBX, More...
• Neutrality: Iraqi Security Forces, Kristin Nelson, Adam Beattie, Bobby Bland, Martha Chávez, Jewish Bolshevism, VKB, Backlog...
• Copyedit: Kandahar, Pearse Jordan, History of Baku, Aziz Abdul Naji, Chocolate City Records, Teachings of Falun Gong, More...
• Merge: Steady state theory, Faculty of Forestry and Geomatics of Université Laval, Univision.com, Military of Iraq, Pi, Backlog...
• Style: Sarkar (film), Sting and Lex Luger, Newsbreak Magazine, Production logo, Peer exchange, More...
• Expand: Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple, The Curse of Yig (short story), Erotica, Harivamsa, More...
• Requests: Lam ploen, Amenable set, Literature by region, Top-coded, Nattura, Bidding function, Transient evidence More...
• Mediation Cabal: Robert Gray, Joie de Vivre, anarchy battlefield, Almeda University, Global warming, More...
• Cleanup backlogs - Review recent overhauls - Active fixup projects - Maintenance projects - Maintenance COTW: be merged

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

Collaborations

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

Article Creation and Improvement Drive

The Article Creation and Improvement Drive works on an article that needs a lot of help to reach featured-article standard. The subject of this week's article improvement drive is Winston Churchill:

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC (Can) (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was an English statesman, soldier, and author, best known as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Well-known as an orator, strategist, and politician, Churchill was one of the most important leaders in modern British and world history. He won the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature for his many books on English and world history. Sir Winston Churchill was voted the greatest-ever Briton in the 2002 BBC poll the 100 Greatest Britons.

You can still help with last week's article, Vladimir Lenin, or help pick next week's article.

Good Article Collaboration of the week

The Good Article Collaboration of the week works to polish already good articles to the highest of standards.

This week's improvement drive is Massively multiplayer online role-playing game:

MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) is a genre of online computer role-playing games (RPGs) in which a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world. As in all RPGs, players assume the role of a fictional character (most commonly in a fantasy setting) and take control over many of that character's actions. MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player RPGs by the number of players, and by the game's persistent world, usually hosted by the game's publisher, which continues to exist and evolve while the player is away from the game.

MMORPGs are very popular throughout the world, with combined global memberships in subscription and non-subscription games exceeding 15 million as of 2006. Worldwide revenues for MMORPGs exceeded half a billion dollars in 2005, and Western revenues exceeded $1bn in 2006.

You can still help pick next week's article.

Core Topics Collaboration

The Core Topics Collaboration of the Fortnight works to polish essential Wikipedia topics. The current collaboration is Matter.

Matter is commonly defined as the substance of which physical objects are composed. It constitutes the observable Universe. In physics the distinction is difficult to enforce — according to the theory of relativity matter and energy can be converted to one another.

In Aristotle's philosophy, matter constitutes the substratum of all things, which endures through changes form. Other philosophers preferred the atomic theory, which has existed for millennia. For Descartes, matter is principally characterized by extension, ie. the occupancy of space.

You can help pick the next Core Topic collaboration article.

Collaborations by topic

Other collaborations

Active improvement teams

Maintenance

Help clear up the backlog of articles to be merged! Merging is the process combining two (or sometimes more) articles in to a new article, or adding the content of one article to another. You'll need to be familiar with the associated templates. Before you begin, you need to know the details of merging and moving pages. After you read that, you're ready to begin consolidating and improving articles!

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. They are separate from, though may work with, Collaborations.

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 from any language, or, in a few cases, by only one language (this is only available for the more popular languages).

Guidelines, help, and 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 - Browse help pages
• Where to ask questions

Editing

• The Manual of Style guidelines and tutorial
• How to edit a page
• Contributing
• How to improve articles
• How to write a great article
• Where to find information for articles
• 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 both to 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 · Sandbox · Help · New user log · Adoption · What Wikipedia is not · Glossary · Account benefits

Ways to communicate

Contact (overview) · Discussion pages · Mailing lists · IRC chat · Instant Messaging · Meetups · User pages · Surveys · Public watchlists · Regional notice boards · Administrators' noticeboard · Requests for article feedback · Local Embassy

Community support groups and programs

Welcoming committee · Members' Advocates · Wiki-adoption · Birthday Committee · Harmonious editing club · Kindness Campaign · Reach out · Stress alerts · Wikipedia awards program · Dept. of Fun · One featured article per quarter · 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 · Request assistance from a members' advocate · Dispute resolution · Arbitration policy

Community information

About Wikipedia · Goings-on · About Wikimedia · Wikipedians · Wiki-adoption · Donations · Administrators · Babel · Culture · Games · Humor · Mottoes

Related communities

Tip of the day

Just as Google can be used to supplement Wikipedia's searchbox, your browser's toolbar can be used to supplement Wikipedia's navigation aids and the Main Page. Use it to create alternate access points to Wikipedia, and as your own customized navigation bar. To do this, bookmark the pages in Wikipedia you wish fast access to, saving each bookmark in the toolbar folder. Each one will immediately be available on the toolbar.

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