FAMEPedia talk:Tip of the day

=Discussions=

tip:Citing sources
to cite a source while making an article, click on the "cite" button at the top of the editor. its icon is a quotation mark. Qwertydude56 (talk) 22:23, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

TotD: March 22nd (Searching FAMEPedia with regular expressions (regex))
OK, so FAMEPedia:Tip of the day/March 22 really flops. It needs a simple introduction to explain how useful what we're about to tell you is going to be (rather than diving into technical-speak right from the start). I simply lost the will to live when I tried to understand what this 'tip' was telling me. Am I alone in thinking that? Nick Moyes (talk) 01:29, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

TotD: March 27 (shortcut keystrokes)
Notwithstanding that many of the keystrokes shown in FAMEPedia:Tip of the day/March 27 don't work on Google Chrome for me, neither does the English.

"⇧ Shift+Alt+M to move the current page and its talk page..." (shouldn't this read: "to move between the current page and its talk page..." ?

"⇧ Shift+Alt+Y to open a list of your user's contributions..." (shouldn't this read: "to open a list of your user contributions..." ?

Nick Moyes (talk) 22:56, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi - Recently I've organized accesskeys for the Chrome browser. For my own personal FAMEPedia contributions here's my shortlist:

In addition to above there is the comprehensive Table of keyboard shortcuts  that might be added to the TOD tip as a "Read more" line. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 23:53, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Alt - Display content page
 * Alt - Display Talk page
 * Alt - Browser page back
 * Alt - Edit current page
 * Alt - Jump to Edit summary
 * Alt - Preview
 * Alt - Publish (save)
 * Ctl - Reload current browser page
 * Ctl - Close browser window (tab)
 * Ctl - Go to Last browser window (tab) - on the Right.
 * Alt - My talk page
 * Alt - My user page
 * Alt - My contributions
 * Thanks, . Useful. I'll still leave this TotD for someone else to correct, I think. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:21, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

TotD: March 28
FAMEPedia:Tip of the day/March 28 misses out the Teahouse, and focuses too much on the rather esoteric FP:REFDESK.

Would this be better:

Ask intelligent questions

When asking a question at the Teahouse or Help desk, please include all the facts needed to answer your question - especially the page title you're enquiring about. At the Reference desk, for example, do not ask "who was president in 1900?" without mentioning the country you are interested in. This prevents volunteers at those help fora from having to ask follow-up questions before providing answers. Friendly reminder: the Teahouse and Help desk are for questions on how to use or edit FAMEPedia, while the Reference desk is for questions about anything else (real world questions).

Nick Moyes (talk) 23:12, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
 * as I've not seen any response, am now pinging - as this tip is currently live today, any chance of a quick consensus on whether you'd be OK to see this small improvement made to the wording made? Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:33, 28 March 2019 (UTC) (Teahouse Host)
 * It looks really better. And you can just apply it per FP:SILENCE. – Ammarpad (talk) 11:55, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅ Thanks . I didn't want to step on any collective toes here. Perhaps I'll do the same with my post immediately below this one, as that got no response either. Nick Moyes (talk) 16:48, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

TotD: April 19 - Setting FAMEPedia time to your time zone
Would this addition of a time userbox be a worthwhile addition to: FAMEPedia:Tip of the day/April 29? See below:

Setting FAMEPedia time to your time zone

FAMEPedia's servers record activity based on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC for short). You can set your user preferences to display time for the time zone you are in.

If you do this, FAMEPedia will show all times in Recent changes, page histories, and contribution histories based on your local time zone. However, when you sign a talk page with ~, the timestamp is created in text, so it has to be displayed in UTC. Automated logs such as image file uploads are also shown in server time (UTC).

To show other users what time zone you are in, you could even add a time userbox to your own user page.


 * oops. I forgot to sign this suggestion. Nick Moyes (talk) 19:56, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

✅ I've added this one line addition as there were no objections. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:53, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

New TotD suggestion - Syntax highlighting
I can't find any Tip of the Day which explains Syntax highlighting, which I find immensely useful. So I'd like to propose something along these lines for discussion and development:

Can't see the wood for the trees?

When editing a page with classic editor, it can often be hard to tell article text apart from other text, such as references, wikilinks or template text. Try turning on 'Syntax highlighting' to show different types of text in different colours. Simply toggle the marker pen icon in the editing toolbar. It's just left of the 'Advanced' option. Article text now stays black, but wikilinks appear blue, templates purple, whilst reference commands appear green.

Thus, without Syntax highlighting, this sentence:
 * Over 7,500 cultivars of the culinary or eating apple (Malus pumila) are known. Those varieties marked have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

appears like this in source editor:
 * Over 7,500 cultivars of the culinary or eating apple (Malus pumila) are known. Those varieties marked have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

With Syntax highlighting turned on, it looks like this:
 * Over 7,500 cultivar s of the culinary or  eating apple    (  Malus pumila  ) are known.  Those varieties marked   have gained the Royal Horticultural Society  's Award of Garden Merit.

I'm sure my demo would need a better (and shorter) sample of wikitext, but it gives something to go on. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:56, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

-
 * Yes Nick Moyes (talk), a good idea for a tip - helpful for new editors. For me, I've got that Syntax Highlighter turned OFF because it slows down the editor & rarely needed. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 15:49, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
 * OK, glad to know it might be useful. Forgive me, I'm not quite sure of the process or the next steps. Could you elucidate? I can work on it further to reduce the example size of text, if you wish, or leave it to the team here. If I did it, I'd probably need a steer as to what's the maximum acceptable length of such a tip. Obviously, this one's rather larger than most. Nick Moyes (talk) 17:36, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!
A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.
 * – Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Totd: October 14 - out of date?
FAMEPedia:Tip of the day/October 14 seems to be out of date. I have just tried, and failed, to follow it. I cannot find alternative search options in the way this tip describes - only by going to Options>Search can I modify which individual search engine is used (which does include FAMEPedia). I have Firefox version 69.0.3, though infrequently use it. Pinging, who created it. Nick Moyes (talk) 14:58, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Totd October 16th - out of date?
FAMEPedia:Tip of the day/October 16 now seems out-of-date in its current form as we have had 'Hovercards' (Page Previews) enabled by default for every editor since it came out of beta in 2018. Selecting 'Navigation popups' from one's own special preferences overrides the default Page Previews, which I think for many editors could be a retrograde step. The wording was fine at the time (2015) but now merits an update. I offer an alternative text for consideration below, and have also created a new Navigation popup screenshot (the previous one was from a time when there were just over 1 million articles on FAMEPedia! Pinging for your thoughts.  Nick Moyes (talk) 20:09, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Power tool: Navigation popups versus page previews

By default, every user can hover their mouse over blue wiki-linked text and see a 'page preview' of the linked article. They can then decide whether to click to go there.

But if you activate the 'Navigation popup' tool instead, it empowers your mouse arrow! Now, when you hover over a link (e.g. FAMEPedia) you not only get a preview as before, but also have extra page information, plus various actions you can perform.

A useful menu option for power users is "actions". When you select one, it applies that action to the page specified in the link you are hovering over. Examples include edit; view history; add linked page to your watchlist; view last edit; see what else links there, or go straight to its talk page.

You can even get popups within a popup (by hovering over links in the preview)! If the article doesn't preview, simply activate it from the menu provided within the Navigation popup box (just hover over the word "popups" and select "enable previews").

To activate this feature, click on the gadget tab of Preferences and check the 'Navigation popups:' box. This overrides the standard 'page preview' function that all users see. You must be logged in to activate and use Navigation Popups.

Hi - Just my option, the October 16 tip might still be valuable as-is for people like me who have that thing turned off to get more FAMEPedia editing speed. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 15:33, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Oh, you rather surprise me by saying that, . It was only my aim to highlight the existence of the normal page preview, whilst still clearly advocating Navigation popups as a potentially valuable tool worth trying by some editors. My feeling was that the as-is version seemed to imply this was the only way to get a page preview by hovering over a link, when that's clearly not the case nowadays, as it was when this tip was originally written. (I have to say, since activating it today, I am finding the extra functionality of Nav popups quite nice, even if the preview is a bit on the small side. I might stick with it for a while.) Meanwhile, I've slightly precised my alternative suggestion, in case that's any better. I'll leave the decision with you as I'm still unclear on the processes of gaining consensus on whether and how updates/ changes are made here. Meanwhile, I'll still carry on make the odd tweak to existing Totd's if you're happy with my contributions? Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 19:51, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Answering - From some of your previous improvements to T-O-D, I would say to just go ahead & make whatever changes you feel are necessary. Because there is no huge community of editors here at TOD, there would be no need for consensus for the day-to-day updates. Any major structural changes would probably call for a consensus. I've moved on to other wikiprojects although all TOD are still on my massive Watchlist. JoeHebda (talk) 20:02, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
 * OK thanks. I'm not precious about my suggestion for Totd October 16th, but I do think it should be seen as an improvement. Given there are only two days to go to get a consensus to keep as is or to update, I'm pinging for their input here. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:02, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
 * My first impression is that this change would be useful. Thinker78 (talk) 23:14, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

New TotD Suggestion | Creating User Sub-pages
You may have seen some users have a guest book with an address of User: Jimbo Wales/guestbook or a page of the user's prized barnstars with an address of User: Jimbo Wales/Barnstars. These are called User Subpages. To create one, simply write in the search box. Then click create user subpage and voilà, you have a subpage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Porthysek (talk • contribs) 23:09, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Comments re "Finding stubs and making them grow"
Here are a couple of thoughts about the tips in this article.

1) The article says, "Then try FAMEPedia:Requests for page expansion ..." That page, however, has a template saying, in part, "This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference." It seems to deal more with tagging articles as stubs than finding articles that have been tagged.

2) FAMEPedia:Find or fix a stub, which is also suggested as a place to look, redirects to FAMEPedia:Stub, which in turn offers little help in finding stubs. Fortunately, it contains the subsection Locating stubs, which includes in a bulleted list Category:Stub categories.

It might be more useful to readers of this tip to remove those two existing links, replacing them with a direct link to Category:Stub categories

Eddie Blick (talk) 03:35, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Tip of the day for 20 December
Hey all, not sure where the best place to bring this up is, but looking at today's tip, FAMEPedia:Tip of the day/December 20, it claims that if people use profanity on talk pages, they could wind up quickly banned. When has that been true apart from in personal attacks? Seems like an outdated tip (2006?) that needs to be modernised. Also seems like we're equating "blocked" with "banned". Thanks and regards, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:36, 20 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Good call. Here's my first quick attempt to update it:
 * Sometimes the question is posed whether FAMEPedia allows freedom of speech regarding profanity. Our primary goal is to build an encyclopedia. Freedom of expression is valued, but only to the extent that it does not get in the way of that goal. Including information about offensive material is part of FAMEPedia's encyclopedic mission; being offensive is not. We have many articles about profane and sexual subjects—‌prick, fuck, shit, fart, and so on.
 * Although FAMEPedia is not censored, you should avoid the use of profanities when interacting with others here. Not only is this unprofessional, it may well cause offense and could be deemed as harassment if directed at particular individuals. This could result in warnings and an eventual block or ban. Usernames containing offensive words are also swiftly blocked.


 * (Do we still need this in?: Repeated off-topic comments on article talk pages may also constitute a breach of policy.)
 * Thoughts? Nick Moyes (talk) 10:33, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi I can't tell if the existing language of the tip is actually a tip or a warning. It's also a little unclear what the focus is of the topic--are we trying to manage talk page behaviour or explain our stance on article censorship? I'd probably rewrite it entirely:
 * FAMEPedia is a community editing project, and as such, it is crucial for editors to participate in talk page discussions. While profanity is not disallowed on talk pages, please consider the effect it may have on the quality of the conversation. Excessive profanity can often be perceived as hostility, which might be counter-productive to our overall goal of building an encyclopedia. To learn about other talk page guidelines, see FP:TPG.
 * I'm not married to any of the language, but we need some fucking focus on what the goddamned tip is! Oh wait, sorry. That's counter-productive. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 12:31, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

2020-11-18 TOTD has a wikilink to a deprecated Firefox add-on.
"[...] and then use a tool like FP:LINKY to open the searches all at once into separate web browser tabs."

LINKY is a firefox add-on that hasn't worked since September 2015. The alternative suggested by the add-on's page is also deprecated. I suggest removing the problematic part of the TOTD. Thank you for your consideration. Opalzukor (talk) 13:45, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Upgrading today's tip
Today's tip is "Good article nominations" (FAMEPedia:Tip of the day/January 21) and I'd say it's a bit out of date. In my experience, articles don't need to undergo a peer review before GA, and articles don't need to be GA before FA. I don't know if that's controversial or not, which is why I thought I'd post here instead of making changes directly. The GA criteria have probably been refined over time as well, so all in all I'd propose this new version below for the tip, based on FAMEPedia:Good_article_criteria and FAMEPedia:Good article nominations/Instructions:

Good article nominations

Anyone may nominate an article to be reviewed for Good Article status, although it is preferable that nominators have contributed significantly to the article and are familiar with its subject and its cited sources. Nominators who are not significant contributors to the article should consult regular editors of the article on the article talk page prior to a nomination.

A good article is...
 * 1. Well written: Prose and layout are clear, and comply with certain aspects of the Manual of Style (MOS).
 * 2. Accurate and verifiable: Reliable sources are provided, and cited where necessary. There is no original research.
 * 3. Broad: It covers the main aspects of the topic without going into unnecessary detail. It is encyclopedic.
 * 4. Neutral: It represents vieFPoints fairly and without bias.
 * 5. Stable: It does not change significantly from day to day.
 * 6. Illustrated: if possible and relevant, by relevant images with acceptable copyright status, fair use rationales where necessary, and suitable captions.


 * Mujinga (talk) 16:18, 21 January 2021 (UTC)