Wikipedia:Simple talk

Simple talk
	This is the place to ask any questions you have about the Simple English Wikipedia. Any general discussions or anything of community interest is also appropriate here. You might also find an answer on Wikipedia:Useful, a listing of helpful pages. You may reply to any section below by clicking the "change this page" link, or add a new discussion section to this page. Please sign and date your post (by typing ~~~~). Please add new topics to the bottom of this page. Please note that old discussions on this page are archived periodically. If you do not find a discussion here, please look in the archives. Note that you should not change the archives, so if something that has been archived needs discussing, please start a new discussion on this page. Some of the language used on this page can be complicated. This is because it is used by editors to talk to one another, so sometimes we forget. Please leave us a note if you are finding what we are saying too hard to read.
Are you in the right place? See WP:AN to speak to an administrator. See WP:RFCU for CheckUser requests. See WP:OS for oversight. See WP:RFRB to request the rollback feature (which administrators can grant). See WP:VIP to report vandalism. Add this page to your list of watched pages —    change

I need some guidance...

I'm wobbly... The last time I edited Wikipedia constructively was 2 and a half years ago. I didn't get that long during this account... Can I suggest somewhere to help me? :/ Ezekiel53746 (talk)

learning english

I would like to inform you that i am learning English and share with other which is improve or not — This unsigned comment was added by Shah Azizur Rahman Chowdhury (talk • changes).

Don't want to rush to Demote VGA, but Tropical Storm Barry (2007) is on the main page and has serious problems

Tropical Storm Barry (2007) is now on the main page and at least 25 of the 36 references are dead links. I first noted this in January 2012 and the situation has gotten worse rather than better. I'd rather not propose Demote VGA, but don't have the time, or the interest in tropical storms, to fix this. Go to demote, or is anyone committed to keeping this VGA? Thanks, Gotanda (talk) 12:35, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Dead links wouldn't demote a VGA. Remember references don't have to be online. -DJSasso (talk) 12:36, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Really? An article that has that few correct references would still make VGA? If an article was proposed with 2/3 of the references incorrect, I don't see how it would make it through based on proposed VGAs I've seen. What do you mean by "Remember references don't have to be online."? Gotanda (talk) 12:44, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Dead links doesn't mean the references aren't correct. What I mean by that comment is references can be in books and newspapers and they can be sitting in backups of the companies that originally had them on websites etc. We don't require references to be immediately accessible to people reading the article. As long as the information about the reference is on the article then everything is good still. (ie publisher, author, title etc.) The references just had to exist somewhere at some point. Obviously it would be better if they could be replaced but if they can't it doesn't invalidate them. -DJSasso (talk) 12:47, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

For example, some of the data released by the National Hurricane Center were mirrored by the Florida State University (FSU) Meteorology Department, and we cited FSU's copy of the data, which they have since taken offline. The reference was valid and correct at the time the article was written; however, as with all things on the Internet, they may eventually disappear after some time. I have updated those refs with the corresponding location on the NHC's archives. Chenzw  Talk  12:54, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Chenz for fixing some of those. That helps. DJ, I understand the references may not be available online if they are in books, newspapers, etc. But a listed online reference that may have been accessible but is no longer is not much of a reference. One, how would later editors know it had actually been accessible? Two, there is no way for a current reader to verify information (the main purpose of a reference). Three, references lead readers to deeper exploration-more information. If they are broken, they don't serve this purpose very well. Four, it sure looks pretty sloppy for a VGA and sets a poor example. Aren't the VGAs there on the Main Page as an example of the best of SEWP? Should we approve a proposed VGA with dead links just because an editor said they were once functional? A reference no reader can refer to seems meaningless. Thanks, Gotanda (talk) 22:46, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

┌─────────────┘
The relevant section of the policy is WP:DEADREF, which gives six steps for repairing or removing dead links. I've fixed a few more of the links (although I'm a bit late and the Main Page has moved onto another rotation now), so there are now seven dead links remaining. A dead web-only source can be considered unverifiable if you can't find another copy, but almost all of the dead links remaining are media sources (and therefore, the links are probably "convenience links" to online copies of newspaper articles). If there are no other copies or replacements, you can just remove the link. Osiris (talk) 03:17, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the link to the relevant policy on En and for the clean up. I'll confess that I'm slow at fixing those things. Many of the refs in the other VGA weather articles are in a similar state of disrepair. I guess the lesson for the future is to make sure the links are more durable as explained in the policy when articles are first proposed. Thanks, Gotanda (talk) 03:26, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Yeah for things like newspaper articles I always suggest using sites like webcite to archive the page. -DJSasso (talk) 11:55, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Webcite --Peterdownunder (talk) 12:07, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata phase 2 (infoboxes) coming to this Wikipedia

Sorry for writing in English. I hope someone can translate this. If you understand German better than English you can have a look at the announcement on de:Wikipedia:Kurier.

A while ago the first phase of Wikidata was enabled on this Wikipedia. This means you are getting the language links in each article from Wikidata. It is soon time to enable the second phase of Wikidata (infoboxes) here. We have already done this on the [first 11 Wikipedias] (it, he, hu, ru, tr, uk, uz, hr, bs, sr, sh) and things are looking good. The next step is English Wikipedia. This is planned for April 8. If everything works out fine we will deploy on all remaining Wikipedias on April 10. I will update this part of the FAQ if there are any issues forcing us to change this date. I will also sent another note to this village pump once the deployment is finished.

What will happen once we have phase 2 enabled here? Once it is enabled in a few days you will be able to make use of the structured data that is available on Wikidata in your articles/infoboxes. It includes things like the symbol for a chemical element, the ISBN for a book or the top level domain of a country. (None of this will happen automatically. Someone will have to change the article or infobox template for this to happen!)

How will this work? There are two ways to access the data:

• Use a parser function like {{#property:p169}} in the wiki text of the article on Yahoo!. This will return “Marissa Mayer” as she is the chief executive officer of the company.
• For more complicated things you can use Lua. The documentation for this is here.

We are working on expanding the parser function so you can for example use {{#property:chief executive officer}} instead of {{#property:p169}}. The complete plan for this is here.

Where can I test this? You can already test it on test2.

Where can I find more information and ask questions? We have collected the main questions in an FAQ for this deployment. Please ask questions you might have on the FAQ’s discussion page.

I want to be kept up to date about Wikidata To stay up-to-date on everything happening around Wikidata please subscribe to the newsletter that is delivered weekly to subscribed user’s talk pages.

--Lydia Pintscher 17:11, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Distributed via Global message delivery. (Wrong page? Fix here.)

T:TDYK backlogged

As some of you might be aware, T:TDYK is severely backlogged with approximately 40 pending nominations. Please do drop by that page to contribute a review or two. There are some nominations that were made in February, more than 1 month ago. Chenzw  Talk  07:41, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Maybe the two editors who keep adding more could slow down. If we could limit it to 5 or so active nominations per editor, it would be easier to keep up with. --Auntof6 (talk) 13:33, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

At the time of this writing, there are 51 nominations, seven of them are marked as accepted. If we cannot bring the number down, would it make sense to "categorise" them somewhat (proposed cateogries: people, music/performing arts, animals/nature/natural phenomena,language/literature, drugs/diseases/medicine, others) and to limit the number of proposals per category to 5? - Other option would be to remove hooks that haven't been acted on after two weeks of inactivity. Of course these are just suggestions.--Eptalon (talk) 09:59, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I think categorizing would be a great idea (I think better categories would be people, music/arts, animals/nature/natural phenomena, literature/history (social sciences), science, others...). Two weeks for inactivity is probably a bit too little, leave it to one month? --Snow Blizzard 10:06, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd be OK with categorizing, with the hope that editors don't feel pressured/challenged to have a nomination in each category! The higher-level the category, the better. --Auntof6 (talk) 15:10, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

A category system is fine, and I think editors should not be taking T:TDYK as a competition of sorts to "see who contributes the most hooks". I am quite concerned that it seems to be headed in this direction presently. Furthermore, contribution of hooks is good, but I think we should also be expecting contributors to review the hooks of others. Chenzw  Talk  15:19, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Municipality categories

Currently, we use these categories for any kind of populated place (cities, towns, etc.). However, in some countries, the term municipality (or municipio) has a more specific meaning. That makes these categories unclear. For the municipality categories that are used for the more general meaning, I would like to change them from municipalities to populated places. Comments? --Auntof6 (talk) 13:06, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

In Spanish it seems to be more or less a civil parish, which can regroup several localities,es. in rural areas. The question really is do we need it finer grained, to be able to say that hamlets A, B and C are in essence the same "village"? - As an example: en:Cuxhaven (district) has roughly 200.000 people, on 800 square miles. These live in 50 such municipalities; en:Stinstedt is one of these, 531 people live there. In addition to the main settlement there are others, e.g. Sankt Joost. Do we really need to be able to list them separately, or can we live with the fact that we list them with the main entity? --Eptalon (talk) 14:47, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow you. The way I'm thinking, municipalities would not be under "populated places", just as counties aren't. I don't understand civil parishes, so I don't know about those, but I'm thinking those wouldn't be included, either. As long as we have articles about hamlets, I would include those. Am I close to understanding your points? --Auntof6 (talk) 15:01, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

You have a "village", which is spread along the end of a valley. There is a main settlement A, then some road, and then a smaller settlement B. Both A and B make up village V, which is governed by mayor M. Under normal circumstances, we have an article about the village V, and don't have separate ones for A and B. --Eptalon (talk) 15:09, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

This is probably a good idea. In my country, the term "municipality" is officially a type of local government area, but it's actually only applied to a few of the populated places. And the usage of the term differs according to jurisdiction: Municipality of Woollahra is a part of Sydney, but Municipality of West Coast in Tasmania covers many towns over a large area. South Africa also has more than one kind of municipality, so the usage of the term by itself might be confusing in that case. Osiris (talk) 16:22, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Just found en:Municipium which seems to be the base of modern-day "municipalities", as we are discussing them here... --Eptalon (talk) 17:19, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Populated place is a Federally defined term in the United States. Most US localities are distinctly not populated places by US law.

• Populated Place: Place or area with clustered or scattered buildings and a permanent human population (city, settlement, town, village). A populated place is usually not incorporated and by definition has no legal boundaries. However, a populated place may have a corresponding "civil" record, the legal boundaries of which may or may not coincide with the perceived populated place. Distinct from Census and Civil classes.
• Civil: A political division formed for administrative purposes (borough, county, incorporated place, municipio, parish, town, township). Distinct from Census and Populated Place.
• Census covers counties, parishes, etc

While it lists city, settlement, town, village under Populated Place, the unincorporated and no legal boundaries is the key part. City is defined at the state level and ,as such, means different things in each state. Pretty much every city has an incorporation requirement, but that is not a 100% rule throughout the states. For the federal level, what counts as a city is not always what a state says is one. Most notable US cities and such fall under civil in that they are administrative subdivisions (ie. they have a local government; mayor, city council, city planner, what have you) while Populated places do not have a local government.

Settlements would be a better choice for a grouping term as there is no legal definition of the term, but there is the possible issue with ambiguity: Human settlement vs legal settlement. It is not likely the ambiguity would be an issue, and it is better than using a term that distinctly does not apply the 3rd largest populated area (315m people, most of which would be improperly categorized.) --Creol(talk) 18:05, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Good information, thanks! How about "human settlements"? --Auntof6 (talk) 18:33, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I would go with "Category:Settlements in <place>" format. As I stated, I don't really think the ambiguity would be a issue and keeping the names of the categories a bit shorter would probably be better. Just in case, we could add a template to the categories stating "This category is for human settlements in <place>" just in case of ambiguity issues. Also, there are a host of Municipalities of <place> categories, these should be shift from of to in to follow the naming guideline. --Creol(talk) 20:27, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Oppose: I'm not sure I understand the thrust of this discussionbut. It suggests bad consequences in a Asian context. This was the subject of discussions in February 2013 here and in March 2012 here.

We need to avoid the predictable controversies which follow from changing municipalities to populated places. This is not a reasonable step. --Jinki (talk) 14:46, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Please be specific about the potential bad consequences and predictable controversies. My thinking here is to change only the high-level categories that include different kinds of settlements. to use a generic term that isn't ambiguous. The categories for specific types of settlements (cities, towns, etc.) would stay the same. --Auntof6 (talk) 15:18, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

@Auntof6 -- Have we not learned in this venue that it is best not to respond on-wiki to every question?

In very general terms, Chenzw may not have anticipated anything specific when South China Sea was first created in 2008 here. The first draft of the stub included these sentences:

"There are hundreds of minute South China Sea Islands, collectively an archipelago. The sea and its mostly uninhabited islands are subject to several competing claims of sovereignty by neighboring nations."

In this context, State Council of the People's Republic of China approved the establishment of Sansha City in 2012. This municipality was created to govern the disputed Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

Please assist me in developing stub articles for Sansha City and the redlinks in this diff. In the process of working together, questions may answer themselves. In order to better understand List of cities in the People's Republic of China#Hainan Province, perhaps it may help to scan a short New York Times article "China Sends Troops to Disputed Islands"? --Jinki (talk) 18:20, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

If anyone understands Jinki's point here, please explain it to me. As far as I can see, it doesn't relate to the discussion. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:19, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

@Auntof6 -- You asked for specifics, and the example above is very specific. There are red flags in your proposal. The proposal's implied strategy doesn't anticipate consequences like the ones highlighted above. --Jinki (talk) 19:37, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it is a specific example. I just don't see how it relates to this discussion. I'm not seeing what it has to do with changing the term we use for naming categories that group different kinds of settlements. Things that are legally called municipalities will still be called municipalities. Things that are legally called cities will still be called cities. You seem to be talking about terms used in articles. I'm not proposing changing any article text, just category names. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:43, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

And not all the categories, just the ones for all human settlements collectively in a given area. i.e. every place in Japan (or Germany, Canada, Pakistan, etc) where people live. What defines a city, town, ward, what have you (as shown in the 2013 an 2012 links) has no relevance on the topic under discussion at all. All that matters is "What is the general name we chose to use for any permanent (or semi-permanent) human settlement world-wide?"--Creol(talk) 19:54, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Not only do I not understand the relevance of Jinki's example to this discussion, I also don't like the way in which an article I created in 2008 is being used here to further an irrelevant point. Please don't derail the discussion. It doesn't matter whether you intended to do it or not, what matters is that other people cannot understand you properly. Chenzw  Talk  08:29, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

This thread is about a hasty generalization. The proposal of Auntof6 is an informal fallacy of generalisation. It appears to come from decision-making based on too little evidence or without recognizing all of the variables.

My objections now in 2013 anticipated consequences which may play out in the future. The specific example pointed to an NPOV sentence written in 2008. From that perspective of five years ago, the PRC actions in 2012 were an on-point example of unanticipated future consequences.

Please reconsider and review this thread in the ways suggested by the graphic posted at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. My brief diffs resist easy trivialising. My words are constructive

• by refuting the central point
• by finding the mistake and explaining why its mistaken using quotes
• by contradicting and then backing it up with reasoning and supporting evidence

In contrast, the responsive diffs may be fairly described as

• contradiction (states the opposing case with little or no supporting evidence)
• responding to tone (criticizes the tone of the writing without addressing the substance of the argument)
• ad hominem (attacks the characteristics or authority of the writer without addressing the substance of the argument)

This subject has had my active attention for the past year. My objections to this proposed change are informed and reasonable. This is not a good change. --Jinki (talk) 16:09, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that your comments make no sense and seem to have no bearing on what is being discussed. They are not understandable. If they aren't understandable they are likely not reasonable as it seems you either don't understand what is being discussed or you are just derailing the discussion. -DJSasso (talk) 16:13, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
So, Jinki, may I request the following: Please lay out again in very basic terms the following, if you will be so kind. I'm not trying to be patronizing; on the contrary, I want to make sure you get a fair hearing. So:

1. What change do you think is being proposed?
2. What about this change troubles you?
3. What, exactly, would be the unintended consequence; how could you illustrate that in concrete terms?
4. In the 2008 case, what was the problem then, and how did it play out?

Frankly, I am having a hard time understanding your concerns. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:30, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

@StevenJ81 -- Thank you for asking questions in a way which establishes a format for responding:

1. The change proposed is to create categories about populated places as if this were equivalent with municipalities or with municipalities as a sub-set, yes?
2. Three things are troubling: (a) Municipality ≠ populated place; and (b) Category:Municipality is is not a controversial label in itself -- a specific controversial municipality such as Sansha City can be the subject of an NPOV article with reliable source support; (c) Category:Populated places is a endlessly controversial term in itself and it has exacerbated rather than mitigated problems in our work creating a reliable Simple English Wikipedia, yes?
3. There is every good reason to avoid adding fuel to a fire; and some question call for cautious on-wiki restraint. We read newspapers, and what we read causes us to appreciate that red flags are not irrelevant, yes?
4. In the 2008 sentence, the "mostly uninhabited islands" of the South China Sea were neutrally identified. If the proposed category were in place pre-2008, and if it were to have continued in use up through June 2012, the category would not have helped mitigate problems in parsing the ensuing disputes with Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and the United States. The term "municipality" allows the work of article creation to go forward to a degree and then to stop without getting caught up in a Gordian knot. The term "populated places" when used in conjunction with the uninhabited islands of the South China Sea does not suggest a way to avert a knotty dead end discussion. Instead, an undue focus on "populated places" may tend to validate an endless back-and-forth which cannot be resolved in our unique Wikipedia context, yes?

In this limited context, our joint-goal should be averting an array of problems, difficulties, arguments, disputes which do not help our project move forward. Some can't be avoided, but is this one of those times?

We agree that the work of Auntof6 is invaluable to our project. It is largely intuitive, and mostly the results are elegant. However, this is one of the rare instances in which a hasty generalization does not serve us well. --Ansei (talk) 19:14, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Jinki may want to keep striking on his initial statement. The consequences alluded to absolutely do not apply to an "Asian context". They only seem to apply to a single country. In the People's Republic of China, Republic of China and South Korea, the term municipality has a given inference which does not apply in the way our categories use it. Many Asian countries use the term to refer to the administrative division known as a . PRoc has Direct-controlled municipalities, RoC has Special municipalities, both Koreas have special cities, Vietnam has Centrally governed cities. Similar DCM's exist in Laos, Mongolia and Cambodia. In Korea, City is at the municipal level, but town is not (it is sub-municipal). Listing a Korean town as a municipality is not correct.

In Japan, Municipality is completely correct. The 3rd level of administration is labeled "Municipal". It is correct to call them municipalities under the applicable law, with the exception of Tokyo which is not a city or a municipality but a Metropolis (prefecture) even though it is widely thought of as a city. In most other Asian countries, this is not true. Multiple editors have stated that Municipality is an incorrect term for their country as well in their reply to this attempt by Auntof6 to use a consistent naming policy. In this, we need to take a global view on the subject on not a local view (in this case, Japan-centric while claiming Asian-centric). Names should be eliminated as they have a local POV issue (Municipality does not work in some European and many Asian countries, Populated place does not apply in the US, etc). They should not argued for because "that's the term we use so everyone should." A term that is correct for one place but means something totally different somewhere else needs to be dealt with rather than forced where it does not apply. --Creol(talk) 17:59, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Possible partnerships with smaller language Wikipedias?

Has the Simple English Wikipedia considered establishing associations with smaller language Wikipedias? This could especially be useful in countries where the official language is English, but large numbers of the population do not know English. If in that language it is extremely difficult to write about a scientific topic perhaps users may be directed to the Simple English Wikipedia. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:36, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

As for ideas on possibilities for partnership, here is a listing of indigenous languages in countries with English as a second language, with Wikipedias:

• South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka): Assamese (AS), Bengali/Bangla (BN), Gujarati (GU), Hindi (HI), Kannada (KN), Kashmiri (KS), Malayalam (ML), Marathi (MR), Nepali (NE), Oriya (OR), Eastern Punjabi (PA), Western Punjabi (PNB), Pashto (PS), Sanskrit (SA), Sindhi (SD), Sinhala (SI), Tamil (TA), Telugu (TE), Urdu (UR)
  • Angika (ANP), Balochi (BCC), Balti (BFT), Brahui (BRH), Bodo (BRX), Burushaski (BSK), Dogri (DGO), Garhwali (GBM), Gujari (GJU), Konkani (GOM), Hazaragi (HAZ), Hindko (HND), Chhattisgarhi (HNE), Kutchi/Cutchi (KFR), Kumaoni (KFY), Khasi (KHA), Khowar/Chitrali (KHW), Kalash (KLS), Mizo (LUS), Maithili (MAI), Meitei/Manipuri (MNI), Palula (PHL), Dari (PRS), Rajasthani (RAJ), Santali (SAT), Shina (SCL), Saraiki (SKR), Tulu (TCY), and Kokborok/Borok (TRP) are in language testing
• Sub-Saharan Africa: Afrikaans (AF), Akan (AK)/Twi (TW), Ewe (EE), Fula/Fulfulde (FF), Hausa (HA), Herero (HZ), Igbo (IG), Kikuyu/Gikuyu (KI), Khoekhoe (NAQ), Northern Sotho (NSO), Oromo (OM), Kinyarwanda (RW), Shona (SN), Somali (SO), Sotho/Sesotho (ST), Swahili (SW), Swazi/Swati (SS), Setswana/Tswana (TN), Tsonga (TS), Venda (VE), Wolof (WO), Xhosa (XH), Yoruba (YO), and Zulu (ZU)
  • Adangme (ADA), Ga (GAA), Krio (KRI), Lozi/Silozi (LOZ), Luo Dialect (LUO), Northern Ndebele (ND), and Southern Ndebele (NR) are in language testing
  • AFAIK Afrikaans is based on Dutch so it may be easy to write about scientific topics in that languages.
• Philippines: Tagalog (TL) is co-official with English. Others: Bikol Central (BCL), Zamboangueño Chavacano (CBK-ZAM), Cebuano (CEB), Ilocano (ILO), Pangasinan (PAG), Kapampangan (PAM), and Waray-Waray (WAR)
  • In testing: Pandan Bikol/Northern Catanduanes Bicolano (CTS), Hiligaynon (HIL), Kinaray-a (KRJ), Maranao (MRW), and Tausug (TSG)
• Papua New Guinea: Tok Pisin (TPI)
  • In testing: Hiri Motu (HO)

Not all of these languages may have difficulty with scientific topics or need to partner with the Simple English Wikipedia. Check with them to see if they do. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:12, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

On the other hand, there is also a lot of work about entries in the Simple nebula in the past but no more available inside it such as http://fr.aleatexte.wikia.com/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt or even (translation needed) http://fr.aleatexte.wikia.com/wiki/Vaticoin ONaNcle (talk) 15:35, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

What would a cooperation look like? - SEWP being the basis for translations has already been the case. The big question though is how is a person of these wikis contributing here? - What incentivve would they have? --Eptalon (talk) 15:58, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

The concept I have is that they could link to topics within their language edition articles, and direct readers to the simple and standard English Wikipedias. For instance, if editors found they were unable to satisfactorily write about "CONCEPT" in say, Hausa or Kapampangan, they could within the text direct readers to the Simple or English Wikipedias. Such as: "Text text text CONCEPT ([[:en:CONCEPT|EN]], [[:simple:CONCEPT|SIMPLE EN]])" or "She is well known for developing CONCEPT ([[:en:CONCEPT|EN]], [[:simple:CONCEPT|SIMPLE]])" - Perhaps in site notices they could also encourage editors contributing to those language editions to also improving the Simple English Wikipedia to serve speakers of those languages who are learning English or have poor English skills. For indigenous languages also spoken in Francophone countries (such as Yoruba, Wolof, etc.) it would look like ([[:en:CONCEPT|EN]], [[:fr:CONCEPT|FR]], [[:simple:CONCEPT|SIMPLE EN]], [[:simple-fr:CONCEPT|SIMPLE FR]]) and for indigenous languages only spoken in Francophone countries, ([[:fr:CONCEPT|FR]], [[:simple-fr:CONCEPT|SIMPLE FR]])WhisperToMe (talk) 23:17, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

This sort of thing happens anyway in smaller Wikipedias. In the Ladino Wikipedia, for example, you often find links to Spanish, English and Hebrew. (Could be that simple would be a better target than en, but that's a different issue.) StevenJ81 (talk) 00:35, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

On some larger ones, it's done too - In the Russian Wikipedia some topics not yet in Russian link to English ones. But Simple may be a better target because many speakers of those languages may not have adequate English skills. Also it could be a systematic effort to reach out to people in South Asia and Anglophone Africa by partnering with the respective Wikipedias. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:49, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

It's difficult for us to replace links to the English Wikipedia, at least on large wikis like the Russian Wikipedia, which has 5 times the number of articles we have. Osiris (talk) 07:22, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

True. Probably need to start from the bottom, size-wise, and work our way up. Ladino wouldn't be much of a problem. Russian, I'm sure, would be. Then, again, that's why you partner: See if people on Russian Wikipedia would help. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:32, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Help

Please help me change my usernameHouseMouse82 (talk) 01:54, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Responded on your talk page. Osiris (talk) 02:25, 16 April 2013 (UTC)