Civility, Maturity, Responsibility
What to Do With Wikipedia?
A study published at the University of Minnesota found out that one-tenth of 1 percent of editors account for nearly half of Wikipedia's content value.[1]
But... what happened to the other 99.9%?
Do your part. Increase knowledge.
If a new driver were encouraged to start without any instruction or preparation, simply getting into the driver's seat and setting off into the traffic as soon as he had worked out how to start the car, he would certainly find the highway an unfriendly place, with people hooting, flashing and yelling at him and police flagging him down and issuing warnings and threats. A Wikipedia newbie is in very much this position, and it is no wonder that many newbies' talk pages contain strings of notices and warnings. Making constructive edits to an encyclopedia is not a simple task. — JohnCD
Wikipedia is not a dumping ground for random information Wikipedia is not a message board or blog service Wikipedia is not for unsourced material Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy Wikipedia is not a soapbox Wikipedia is not censored Wikipedia is not a democracy Wikipedia is not a free advertising space Wikipedia is not a place to publish your opinions Wikipedia is not a place to publish your new ideas  Wikipedia aims to be a neutral compilation of verifiable, established facts. WIKIPEDIA IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA
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Aditya Kabir (talk · contribs · count · logs · page moves · block log)
Reach me by email (here)
My userspace | My user-talk space
Good research is | |||||||
eh!
Veropediae • WikiInfo • Conservapedia • Citizendium
Sandbox 01 Sandbox 02 Sandbox 3
Y
es, Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia that anyone, anyone at all, anyone from your 2-year-old cousin to your 78-year-old Harvard professor has full editorial authority over. Yes, anyone includes that guy who stands on the street corner with the big sign that says, "REPENT!" and it includes that woman who constantly rants and raves in the lunch room about how anyone who believes in God hasn't got a brain, and it includes the teenager with a can of spray paint who just improved your car with an image of his middle finger. It includes the person who can't spell, the person who thinks they are always right, and the person who is always right. It includes people who know what they are talking about and people who don't, and people who can make anything sound good, regardless of the truth or lack thereof in the statement. Anyone can edit. See a typo? Fix it! Out of date? Not for long! Error? Fix it! Poorly organized? Not once you're done! False info? Remove it! Missing info? Add it! Needs a picture? Take one! Needs a diagram? Draw one! Wrote an article but don't know everything about the subject? Wait a while, someone will add to it. Made a spelling error and didn't notice? It'll get fixed! Anyone can edit, and it's awesome! Anyone can edit. That guy who improved your car? He just improved your article the same way. Mr. Street Corner and Ms. Lunch Room are having at it on the article about the Second Coming. Your 2-year old cousin replaced the text of General Relativity with "wonnfeo hfor frfhibher frfrufh4 oerv04vr vr fu". And the Harvard professor has had it up to his neck with someone who absolutely demands proof that the moon is not made out of green cheese.
Wikipedians who made a difference to me AA (talk · contribs · count) • Anetode (talk · contribs · count) • Amartyabag (talk · contribs · count) Angr (talk · contribs · count) • Armanaziz (talk · contribs · count) • Bakasuprman (talk · contribs · count) • DaveG12345 (talk · contribs · count) • DGG (talk · contribs · count) • Dwaipayanc (talk · contribs · count) • Elaragirl (talk · contribs · count) • Fowler&fowler (talk · contribs · count) • Gamesmasterg9 (talk · contribs · count) • JamesBWatson (talk · contribs · count) • Keeper76 (talk · contribs · count) • KFP (talk · contribs · count) • Kmzayeem (talk · contribs · count) • Kyoko (talk · contribs · count) • Mike Young (talk · contribs · count) • Pedro (talk · contribs · count) • Ragib (talk · contribs · count) • Rama's Arrow (talk · contribs · count) • Tanvir Ahmmed (talk · contribs · count) • Tarif Ezaz (talk · contribs · count) • Yamla (talk · contribs · count) • Zora (talk · contribs · count) • |
Using Encyclopaedia Britannica
1911 Brittanica {{1911}} Wikipedia:1911
 I
magine you're a vegan. Or maybe you are a vegan, in which case you don't have to imagine it. Now imagine you hear about an event coming up in your area billed as The Vegan Potluck Dinner Anyone Can Contribute To. You make up a batch of your favorite couscous salad recipe and go to the dinner. When you walk in, the first thing you notice on the table is a large platter of fried chicken. You say to the host, "I thought this was a vegan potluck?" The host answers, "Well, it is, but everyone has agreed to allow some animal-based foods under certain restricted circumstances." "Under certain restricted circumstances? Like what? Why is there fried chicken here?" you ask. "Well, even though there are many good meat analogues available, for things like hamburgers and sausages, there's no meat analogue for fried chicken. It's simply not replaceable with a vegan equivalent," the host replies. You pick up a bowl, walk resolutely past the chicken, and help yourself to some minestrone. You proclaim it delicious, and the person who made it says, "Thanks! I made it with beef stock, but there's so little meat in there you hardly notice it, do you?" You quickly put down the minestrone, pick up a plate, and take some corn on the cob. You bite in and discover that it has been coated not with margarine but with real butter. You turn to the host in disbelief and say, "This isn't so little that I don't notice, I noticed instantly! And you can't say butter isn't replaceable with margarine. Why does this corn have butter on it?" And the host replies, "Well, some people just feel butter is higher-quality than margarine." So you put down the corn, pick up a clean plate, and head for the desserts. There you see a large chocolate cake. You take a piece, bite into it, and are delighted! You ask the person who made it how he got it so light and fluffy. "I've never managed to get a cake this texture using tofu and soy milk." "Well, I used eggs and cow's milk. You said yourself, you just can't get the right consistency with vegan ingredients. Besides, don't be so paranoid – eating meat and other animal products isn't illegal; no one is going to sue us!" As you stand there sputtering in disbelief, the host says, "I know how you feel, but you have to understand: We have two goals at this vegan dinner: to be vegan, and to be a dinner. And those goals sometimes conflict with each other, so we have to find a middle ground between them. Of course we prefer vegan dishes whenever they're practical – did you try the couscous salad someone brought? – but surely you concede it isn't possible to have a really high-quality dinner without any animal products at all." Finally in exasperation you cry, "What on earth is the matter with you people? What does fear of getting sued have to do with anything? And where did you get the idea that a meal's being vegan is conflict with its being a high-quality dinner? And if you were going to have animal-based foods here, why the hell did you advertise it as a vegan potluck dinner? Vegan means no animal products of any kind! Ever!" There is a stunned silence for a moment. Then you hear a few people call you an "extremist". One person calls you a "wacko".
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Editor assistance
Editor's Door 
Reader's Door 
 Debates on AfD lack guidance and become very hard to establish consensus.
Every article is to be judged on its own merit, not in comparison to other articles.
Clear notability guidelines can make AFD processes more easy to work through, and can simultaneously improve the article in question. The AFD process should center around the presentation and discussion of EVIDENCE.
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Autobiography of an average Wikipedian  This editor is a Grandmaster Editor First-Class and is entitled to display this Mithril Editor Star with the Neutronium Superstar hologram.
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 These quotes give insight on how deletionism looks to the external world, for whose people who think that "deleting first, ask questions later" is a way to improve our image. New York Review of Books: "a lot of good work—verifiable, informative, brain-leapingly strange—is being cast out of this paperless, infinitely expandable accordion folder by people who have a narrow, almost grade-schoolish notion of what sort of curiosity an online encyclopedia will be able to satisfy in the years to come...There are some people on Wikipedia now who are just bullies, who take pleasure in wrecking and mocking peoples' work"[1]The Economist: "The behaviour of Wikipedia's self-appointed deletionist guardians, who excise anything that does not meet their standards, justifying their actions with a blizzard of acronyms, is now known as “wiki-lawyering”.[2] The Guardian: "And then self-promoted leaf-pile guards appeared, doubters and deprecators who would look askance at your proffered handful and shake their heads, saying that your leaves were too crumpled or too slimy or too common, throwing them to the side."[3] The Telegraph "The rise of the deletionists is threatening the hitherto peaceful growth of the world's most popular information source. It's on the discussion pages of articles nominated for deletion that anger creeps in. Policy documents are referred to only by abbreviations...the favourite of the deletionists WP:NOTE (notability)...The notability debate has spread across the discussions like a rash."[4] PC Pro magazine: "For an example of the dark side running out of control, though, check out Wikipedia...It seems Wikipedia has completed the journey by arriving at an online equivalent of the midnight door-knock and the book bonfire" Los Angeles Times"...if even a small number of useful articles are being deleted in the name of keeping Wikipedia clean, isn't that like allowing a few innocent men to hang in favor of a lower crime rate?...Wikipedia's community has become so rushed, so immediatist, that it is not willing to allow embryonic articles even a tiny modicum of time to incubate"[5] The Telegraph:"Wikipedia should delete the deletionists"[6] "Wikipedia: A Quantiative Analysis", PHD: "the Wikipedia community needs to rein in so-called deletionists -- editors who shoot first and ask questions later."[7] [...] |
The Neutrality Project • The Notability Project
WikiStats 01 • WikiStats 02 • WikiStats 03 • WikiStats 03
S
ome time ago, I discovered a link at a user page to a certain website caught my attention. The sharp criticism of Wikipedia that I saw at that webpage didn't surprise me in the least; we are all rather used to the rants against our project and our community that seem to flourish in the web these days. However, there was a particular phrase that caught my attention immediately, and while I really didn't care much about the other accusations, incredibly enough, this one was actually able to hurt me: Wikipedia is not a place for happy people. No matter how much I try to push this idea out of my mind, every now and then, I find myself thinking about it. Sometimes I gain enough trust in ourselves to push it far to the bottom of my mind. Other moments, like now, I simply can't. While we're all human, and may (and do) give in to anger, bad mood and hurting speech from time to time, I can hardly think that the reason why we all ended up editing this encyclopedia was to unleash our frustration unto others. And if somebody did, well... the choice of a place to do such thing is odd, to say the least. Since I joined Wikipedia a couple of months ago, I must tell that never, ever, I've felt diminished nor discriminated in any way by another user; yet I know that it is in my personality to choose dialogue and a friendly approach, and that's simply not the way we're all made - it's in our human nature to be different from each other, and that makes none of us any better than the other. However, I did see, and continue to witness almost everyday, the misjudgments, the unfairness, the elitism, the hurting irony that comes from the mouths of brilliant people towards their peers - or worse, against the newcomers who try in good faith to be heard. I have no intention to judge any members of our community - reprehensible as it is, fighting fire with fire is a natural human instinct, and nobody's free of sin. And that's where we all have the chance to make a small, yet decisive difference: Love - or in our case, Wikilove. Just a little bit of it can make a valuable contributor, a great person, a knowledgeable editor reconsider his/her decision of leaving for good after an edit war or a failed RfA. Just 30 seconds of translating that smile and that hug that you wish you could give in person into a simple edit, can make a big change... in the quality of our encyclopedia. Just an hour ago, I received an email from somebody who basically told me to shove my attempt of cheering him up in a dark and moist place of my anatomy... on St. Valentine's day... the irony! I feel discouraged - how could I possibly feel otherwise? Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you simply want to dismiss any future attempts of sending a kind word, or a smile to someone who's obviously down? That's exactly how I feel now - but I won't do such a thing. I may be down, but I'm not dead - and my heart's alive and well, and I won't let it bleed for long. I do not take the Internet so seriously as to make me cry, so whatever this gentleman's intentions were, I'm sorry - he failed. But as long as I'm a member of Wikipedia, I will believe in Wikilove; and as long as my heart beats, I will continue to believe in Love. Now that, I do take seriously. And no member of our community, no matter how respected he is, will ever dissuade me... because I want to believe that Wikipedia can be a place for happy people. Sharon - Feb. 14, 2006
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⊗ ¡Dang!
WIKIOPOLY
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Tales from the WMF Labs
I guess this gives a clear picture of our stand on "offensive material" (this "our" includes you and I both :D). Please, remember, we refused to remove the images of Prophet Muhammad, though a large number of Muslims were offended very vocally. |
Articles I have started or contributed significantly to
Featured article/list 
: Good Article 
Featured at Did You Know 
Former featured article 
Former good article
- Organizations
Centre for Policy Dialogue • Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh • The Daily Star (Bangladesh) • Local Government Engineering Department • Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies • Islamic Foundation Bangladesh • Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication • National Heritage Foundation of Bangladesh • Eastern Housing Limited • Raipur Fish Hatchery and Training Centre • Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industry Corporation • Christian Commission for Development in Bangladesh • Bangladesh Short Film Forum • Jiraz Art Gallery • Katabon Mosque • Institute of Modern Languages • Institute of Cost & Management Accountants • Central Public Library (Dhaka) • Dhaka Club • All India Muslim Education Conference • Ekhanei.com • Mask Associates
- Grameen enterprises
Muhammad Yunus () • List of awards received by Muhammad Yunus • Grameen Bank () • Grameen family of organizations (Grameen Telecom • Grameen Communications • Grameen Shakti • Grameen Trust • Grameen Motsho • Grameen Shikkha • Grameen Baybosa Bikash • Grameen Knitwear Limited) • Grameen Fund
- Education
Education in Bangladesh • List of universities in Bangladesh () • Universities in Bangladesh • Viqarunnisa Noon School • Viqarunnisa Noon College • Institute of Marine Sciences and Fisheries
- Universities
Islamic University of Bangladesh • Atish Dipankar University of Science and Technology • University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh • Royal University of Dhaka • Prime Asia University • University of Information Technology & Sciences • Presidency University • Southern University, Bangladesh • Green University of Bangladesh • Rajshahi University • Viqarunnisa University • Bangladesh University of Professionals
- History
Ghiyasuddin Mahmud Shah • Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah • Alauddin Ali Shah • Somapura Mahavihara • Bangladesh Liberation War • Bengal Assam Railway • 1971 Bangladesh atrocities • Mukti Bahini • Bengali Language Movement () • Artistic depictions of the Language Movement • Armenian community of Dhaka ()
- Dhaka Nawab Family
Dhaka Nawab Family • Khwaja Alimullah • Khwaja Abdul Ghani • Khwaja Ahsanullah • Khwaja Salimullah • Khwaja Habibullah
- Aviation
History of aviation in Bangladesh () • Biman Bangladesh Airlines ()() • Pakistan Air Force • No. 6 Squadron, Indian Air Force • No. 4 Squadron, Indian Air Force • No. 8 Squadron, Indian Air Force • No. 9 Squadron, Indian Air Force • Biman Bangladesh Airlines subsidiaries
- Geography
Dhaka () • Shishu Park • Gulshan Thana • Bailey Road • Sholakia () • Abhaynagar Upazila • Sitakunda Upazila () () • Sitakunda Town • Haor • List of cities and towns in Bangladesh • Halda River • North Bengal • Barind Tract • Sundarbans • Bangladesh–India border • South Asia • Bandarban District • Keokradong • List of mountains of Bangladesh • Shahbag () • Mustang District • Dauki fault • Haflong Thrust
- People
Sri Anandamoyi Ma • Mazharul Islam • Hakim Habibur Rahman () • Ganguly family (films) • Silk Smitha • Shakeela • Sirajul Islam • Mohammad Ruhul Amin • Rounaq Jahan • A. K. Faezul Huq • Dewan Mohammad Azraf • Riya Sen ()• Nethra Raghuraman • Dabboo Ratnani • N. Chandra • Sara Zaker • Kalamandalam Ramankutty Nair • M.G. Radhakrishnan • Shyam Mukherjee (filmmaker) • List of Indian film clans • Wax Dey • Isa Ali Pantami
- Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield () • Promises! Promises! • Too Hot to Handle (1960 film) • Miklós Hargitay • Jayne Marie Mansfield • Jayne Mansfield: Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky & Me • Jayne Mansfield in popular culture () • Dwight Hooker • Jorge Guinle • Works of Jayne Mansfield • Jayne Mansfield's Pink Palace • Nelson Sardelli • May Mann • Martha Saxton • The Tropicana Holiday • The House of Love (show) • Enrico Bomba • James Robert Parish • Andrew Nelson (author) • Jayne Mansfield Busts Up Las Vegas • Fairview Cemetery (Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania) • Jayne Mansfield-Sophia Loren photo
- Environment
Ecologically Critical Area • Bangladesh Environment Conservation Act
- Plants
Excoecaria agallocha • Bambusa balcooa • Bambusa vulgaris • Bambusa tulda • Bambusa longispiculata
- Fish
Taenioides cirratus • Scomberomorus commerson • Acanthopagrus latus • Eleutheronema tetradactylum • Gudusia chapra • Pangasius pangasius • Arius nenga • Etroplus suratensis • Raiamas bola • Liza parsia • Glossogobius giuris • Labeo gonius • Tenualosa toli
- Language and literature
Banglapedia () • Macavity • Indosphere
- Art and entertainment
The Bates • Warfaze • Catsuits and bodysuits in popular media • Gazzetta del Popolo • Il Giornale d'Italia • CRACK International Art Camp • Bandura
- Bikini
Bikini • History of bikini () • Bikini variants • Monokini • Tankini • Bikini waxing • Bikini in popular culture • Princess Leia's metal bikini • Jayne Mansfield's leopard spot bikini • Fur bikini of Raquel Welch • Thong (clothing) • Social impact of the thong • Whale tail () • Micheline Bernardini
- Movies
Ananthabhadram () () • Thommanum Makkalum • Rajamanickam • Kannappanunni • Palattu Koman • Akash Ar Mati • Layanam
- Miscellaneous
Section 144 • Jute trade • Panta bhat • Boli Khela • Greater Bangladesh • Buttock cleavage • Cleavage (breasts) • Blonde bombshell • Intermammary cleft • Kasundi • Dhaka topi