Community portal

Welcome to the community portal. This is the place to find out what is happening on Wikipedia. Learn what tasks need to be done, what groups there are to join, and get or post news about recent events or current activities taking place on Wikipedia.

Community bulletin board

Post your Wikipedia-related news and announcements here!

Volume 4, Issue 33 — 2008-08-11 Study: Wikipedia's growth may indicate unlimited potential Board of Trustees fills Nominating Committee for new members Greenspun illustration project moves to first phase WikiWorld: "George Stroumboulopoulos" News and notes: Wikipedian dies Dispatches: Reviewing free images Features and admins Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News The Report on Lengthy Litigation Archives·Newsroom·Tip line·Single-page·Subscribe Wikimania Interviews Corpus Linguistics Comparing our writing quality to a PhD level. Diplopedia, Sue Gardner, Wikiversity Wikimania Daily shows Pre-conf., Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Post-conf.+Jimbo Subscription · Feedback · Talk to us on skype! not|the|wikipedia|weekly Next Skypecast: A Panel with Newyorkbrad... Sign Up! (details/sign up) Latest: Episode 31 21st August 2008 - A conversation with User:Newyorkbrad WikiUpdate Episode 7: We're back Host: RedThunder Wikiproject: Tropical Cyclones Jeffpw tribute 2.5 million articles! Request for interviewees

Notices

• Wikipedia:Coordinators - is a proposal to make this essay an official guideline.
• Wikipedia:Good topics - A proposed process to highlight topics where all articles are of WP:GA quality or higher. A straw poll is taking place at Wikipedia talk:Good topics#Straw poll which will end on August 24.
• The fabulous Interwiki Link Checker, which has helped to create hundreds of thousands of interwiki links between different language editions of Wikipedia, is now back online. Users are needed to help start the process of matching articles.
• The creation of an Editorial Council to resolve content disputes has been proposed. Please go to the relevant talk page and contribute to the ongoing discussion!
• The 2008 Summer Olympics are finally upon us! Please help populate our pages with results over the next few weeks, but be sure to reference past games and go to the Olympics WikiProject if in doubt of your edits! Let's also update Portal:Olympics.

New project pages seeking contributors

Discussions

Discussions in the following areas have requested wider attention:

See also

Wikizine · In the media · News · Announcements · Mailing lists · Meetups

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

• Respond to a request for comment, Wikiquette alert or provide a third opinion.
• Adopt a basic topic list, to help develop and maintain a table of contents to a major subject on Wikipedia.
• Give a requested editor review.
• Can you draw or take pictures? Make a requested image.
• Peer review or give feedback on some articles.
• Make recommendations on articles listed at Good article reassessment.
• Respond to the Reward board or Bounty board.
• 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.
• Let SuggestBot suggest pages for you to improve.
• Update pages with old (ref or note template) citations to the new references format.
• Patrol new pages and help improving new articles.
• Frequent IRC user, or a wikignome? Visit WikiProject Spotlight to join in on their latest collaboration.

Fix-up projects

Here are some tasks you can do:

• Wikify: Roger Chao, Malaria vaccine, Keyascii, Inje University, Superhero fiction, Ainu music, Dzata ruins, Promethians, Queers & Allies, More..
• Cleanup: Tommy Franks, Excite, Turkmen People's Party, Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi, Yoruba twins, Sichuan invasion, Rastafarian movement in the United States, More...
• Stubs: Orphan structure, Groove Family Cyco, Lexical density, International Organization, EZCorp, More...
• Verify: Phosphorylase, Łan, Johannite, Mystery (fiction), Bechtel, Peugeot 605, Tong Seal, More..
• Update: Communications in Spain, Employment in Hong Kong, United States v. Emerson, Internet in Chile, Incidents during the Hajj, Economy of Costa Rica, Gun politics in Finland, More...
• Neutrality: American Free Press, Implications of nanotechnology, Mursi, Johann Friedrich Struensee, Race and crime, Vulnerability (computing), Christian Hebraist, Barnsdall Art Park, More...
• Copyedit: Szczebrzeszyn, House of Siracusa, Spheres (TV series), Os Lusíadas, Treaty of Shimoda, Slava Polunin, Savage Dragon, Trauma surgery, More...
• Merge: Unicode scripts, Music of Cuba, Gardiner's Sign List, Chronology of PlayStation games, Jewish population, Scanner art, List of compositions for piano and orchestra, More...
• Style: Mississippi Highway Patrol, Valivitta Thevar, Nuke (gaming), Digital ticket, The Eyes of the Overworld, Renewable energy development, Moravian mission at Shekomeko, More...
• Expand: Toyota Canada Inc., Auburn Lull, Gabriel Barletta, Literary adaptation, Ophiel, Simon Kimbangu, Piety, Elective surgery, Maoricrater explorata, Muhammad Ayyub, Panzano Observatory, Akasen, More...
• Requests: You Make Me Feel Brand New, Marcus Tregoning, Zebes, Distomatosis, Abgar VI bar Ma'nu, Tsukuhara syndrome, Christiane Mercelis, Octacalcium phosphate, Lepus tibetanus, Cameloid, More...
• Articles to be split: Differential GPS post-processing, Confidence trick, University of Leicester, MV Abegweit, List of characters from Family Guy, More...
• Mediation Cabal: or Help mediate an open case!

Not sure where to report a certain type of problem with article content? If it exists, it is 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.

Core Topics Collaboration

The Amazon River flowing through the rainforest

The Core Topics Collaboration works to improve essential Wikipedia topics. The current collaboration is Amazon rainforest.

The Amazon Rainforest (Brazilian Portuguese: Floresta Amazônica or Amazônia; Spanish: Selva Amazónica or Amazonía) is a moist broadleaf forest in the Amazon Basin of South America. The area, also known as Amazonia, the Amazon jungle or the Amazon Basin, encompasses seven million square kilometers (1.7 billion acres), though the forest itself occupies some 5.5 million square kilometers (1.4 billion acres), located within nine nations: Brazil (with 60 percent of the rainforest), Peru (with 13 percent of the rainforest, second after Brazil), Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. States or departments in four nations bear the name Amazonas after it. The Amazon represents over half of the planet's remaining rainforests and comprises the largest and most species-rich tract of tropical rainforest in the world.

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 into 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 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 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 · Sandbox · Help · Adoption · What Wikipedia is not · Glossary · Account benefits · Planning school assignments

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 · 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 · 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...

To add a link to a category in an article (as opposed to adding the article to a category) create a normal link to the category page but place a colon at the beginning of it, just after the double opening square brackets. Here's an example:

To provide a link to Category:Animals (just like this one), add the text [[:Category:Animals]] where you want the link to appear. (Notice the extra colon at the beginning of the link).

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