Wikipedia talk:Reference desk

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User:Shantavira

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I have read most of his answers are not perfect but he is eager to answer everywhere. He reminds me similar to SinisterLefty or Sturat.

His answers and replies are not friendly and welcoming like other people in Reference Desk. 42.108.156.209 (talk) 02:27, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Strange post. You didn't courtesy ping Shantavira and his posts here are absolutely fine. There are very few, if any, troublemakers on this board nowadays and he is definitely not one of them. --Viennese Waltz 06:43, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Stu Rat didn't get the credit he richly deserved for setting an pioneering example of civility to all of us including me....When the reference desk first began, not only were the answers incorrect, they were often obnoxious, snotty or condescending, or at least flippant. Stu Rat gave a lot of good answers and was one of those who was tenacious in remaining civil and friendly. People criticize him now for occasionally incorrect answers, but the civil discussion is more important. incorrect answers can be corrected with further discussion, and people can learn from thinking thru the logic errors of others , and of themselves. Some of the people who complained about Stu Rat have brought down the level of civility, at least somewhat.Rich (talk) 05:01, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
See StuRat's behaviour on the Reference Desks. Looking through that discussion, it's pretty clear why he was banned from the ref desks. As for civility or the lack of it, I don't know what you're talking about. There is no problem with lack of civility on the ref desks these days. --Viennese Waltz 06:33, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
StuRat, I cannot ping you because you are excommunicated i.e in Wikipedia terms "blocked indefinitely", but I hope you see the meritorious report above by Rich. The invitation by Viennese Waltz to review the treatment StuRat received is timely because with cooler heads we may reach a conclusion different from that reached in november 2017. A worrying question in the closing admin's sentence "[Sturat] can appeal the [total ban from the desks] sanction...after a year [when] the community will evaluate their contributions in other areas during this time." is just what inspection of StuRat's private life outside Wikipedia desks did the admin @SpacemanSpiff: envisage? Some 16 of 3242 users that admin has blocked are now unblocked so one may wonder what principle for unblocking StuRat, if any, he has in mind. I actually understand what talking about an "example of civility" means and so do users who addressed this important quality at User_talk:StuRat. They (e.g. @Lomn:, @SemanticMantis:) write; "..you are great at largely remaining civil,.." and "..thanks for all the spectacular work I see you do quite often at the Reference Desks."
If condemning StuRat to Damnatio memoriae in 2017 was an experiment to test whether the Reference Desks would improve in his forced absence then I think it time to declare that experiment failed. If StuRat wishes to contribute to the reference desks again then I see no good reason not to welcome him back as a valuable contributor again, and I would do so without imposing any humbling prerequisite such as a "penance and apology" for alleged previous errors. Furthermore, when after necessary reconciliations StuRat is free to post here he can answer the insinuation by single-purpose IP User 42.108.156.209 that StuRat is or isn't Shantavira, and I shall believe the answer. Philvoids (talk) 15:13, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please explain, with diffs, why you believe the ref desks have got worse since StuRat was banned from here. And by the way, maybe you're not aware, but StuRat is indefinitely banned sitewide for sockpuppetry, so he's not going to be making a reappearance around here any time soon. --Viennese Waltz 19:26, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are 7 reference desks and my recorded contributions show zero - 0 - engagement ever in some 4 or 5 of them. From this one may (correctly) conclude that I judge desk activity with my bias towards STEM subjects (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). I allow my opinion that Wikipedia has built a formidable reputation as a go-to reference in these fields and that the greater part of that work was done in the years when StuRat was influential before he was silenced in 2017 on the sockpuppet pretext you mentioned. I decline to be drawn into debate whether the act of indefinitely banning StuRat was a mistake that worsened or chilled the ref. desk climate. I am neither StuRat's confidant nor am I here to bury nor to avenge his treatment. It is evident that 7 years have passed, that there is no voice claiming that Wikipedia or users gain from anti-StuRat policing of the ref.desks and that there has emerged a sizeable group of past or present friends of StuRat named already in this thread. I am pinging each so they may express an opinion about a collective call to rehabilitate StuRat. Philvoids (talk) 22:33, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Once upon a time there was a gang of problematic reference-desk regulars, who got banned one by one except for one, who was so adept at wikilawyering that he managed to hang on. This was why I eventually decided, mid June 2008, to no longer visit the reference desk. I only returned in late January 2020 when I saw that he too was, finally, banned. Should he be unbanned, I'll refocus my attention again.  ​‑‑Lambiam 18:03, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I do not understand the complaint about Shantavira, who in my experience is no less helpful and polite than anyone else. Show us the diffs.  ​‑‑Lambiam 18:07, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not to be understood, and you won't be getting a reply from Philvoids, who's been banned. —scs (talk) 00:15, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Archive bot not working

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Archiving is not working on Misc reference desk. 22nd April posts are still present on page. Pablothepenguin (talk) 16:09, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like something went wacko on the 14th inst. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:22, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, there's been a problem with Scsbot on the Miscellaneous desk since May 7. I reported it on Scs's talk page, and he says he's working on it. I looked into archiving stuff by hand, but the process seemed complicated enough that I was afraid of bollixing it up. Deor (talk) 22:03, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I guess the same goes for this talk page? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:52, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think there's anything wrong with the archiving of this talk page. The archiving parameters for this page (which is archived by a completely different bot) contain
minthreadsleft = 4
algo = old(7d)
which I take it to mean that a thread is archived when it's 7 days old and there are more than 4 threads on the page. (But since there are currently just 4 threads on this page, some remain even though they're well over 7 days old.) —scs (talk) 11:51, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Taken care of. —scs (talk) 01:05, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Brgy election 2025

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Brgy election 2025 on going December 122.54.223.207 (talk) 07:54, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Were you looking for 2025 Philippine barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections?-Gadfium (talk) 09:10, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why?

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After an issue with a linux mint package, I got interested in q&a sites and discovered this. I tried to look around and see how this work. With all due respect, What q&a site would Ever order it's content like this!? Imagine looking 'Google' up on wikipedia, only to be bombarded with countless "month-articles" that contain the word 'google' in it, and trying to figure out where the original article you're looking for by the arbitrary month it was created, only to, again, look for it between who knows how many articles were made in November 2004? I would love to use this as my standard q&a site, but the way that this is made is ridiculous. Is there any way this could change? Kind regards Ambrionix (talk) 21:47, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is an encyclopedia, and the reference desks are a small part of it, constrained by using software not designed for a q&a site. The reference desk regulars use their skills in searching for information to help answer queries, but it cannot match the much more popular q&a sites of old with vast numbers of forums and great expertise in arcane matters in at least some of them (I'm specifically thinking of Stack Exchange). However, there are some questions we are very good at answering, such as those on obscure pieces of history. The rise of LLMs has substantially reduced the demand for Stack Exchange, and perhaps other q&a sites, and our own reference desk has lower traffic than it once did, and has lost some valuable contributors.-Gadfium (talk) 01:00, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Ambrionix:-Gadfium (talk) 01:01, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you do not like the wikipedia.org Web site, do not return to the wikipedia.org site. 130.74.58.73 (talk) 19:10, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's my advice to you. That's all I can offer. I hope that God will help you. The wikipedia.org site and its contents are offered 'as is', and articles are not written to order. Again, I hope that God will help you. 130.74.58.73 (talk) 19:11, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I understand your problem. If you want to read about Google, all you do is enter "Google" into the search bar and a small menu of possible results come up, the first of which is the single word Google, and if you click Enter, up comes the Wikipedia article called Google, in its current version. If you want to look at any or all of the versions of the article since its creation in 2004, you click on the Page tab at the top of the page, then click on History and there they all are.
If, however, you want to read any questions about Google that have ever been asked at the Wikipedia Reference Desks, that's going to require a bit of dedication. There might have been many such questions asked over the past quarter of a century, and they could have been asked at any of the 7 sub-desks, which are all archived separately.
Further, questions are indexed according to the Header of the question, which is normally supplied by the questioner. The header for a question about Google will not necessarily include the word "Google". It may be something like "Searching issue", or "Computer problems", or "Just wondering", or just the single word "Question". (Yes, many people do actually put that as a Header, as if they were somehow unaware that every single one of the zillions of the questions that have ever been asked here is, well, a question.) We do try to intervene sometimes by editing the header to make searching for question topics that little bit easier.
You can search the Archives by using the "Search the Archives" @ Wikipedia:Reference desk. That will search across all sub-desks. If you want to restrict your search to just the Humanities desk, say, go to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities and use "Search humanities archives". Once you've got some options, it will require a visual scan to see which results are more or less likely to be what you're after. Sometimes it's pretty obvious and the process is very quick. That would be the case with a search for "Uruguayan xylophone player", for example. Sadly, due to the ubiquity of Google in our world, questions about Google are going to take dedication to identify. I can't see how any software could ever simplify that. Knowing the rough time period in which the question was asked would be an enormous advantage. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 21:40, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Although this is not a criticism against Wikipedia whatsoever, I found it helpful to Google "Wikipedia [keyword]" and it frequently find redirects/archived discussions I was looking for. The wonders of market competition, (the willingness to spend vastly on fancy machine learning technologies and hiring researchers,) I guess.
I think we may put a note somewhere / link to an essay about how to search - and mentioning the 'Googling / Binging DuckDuckGoing Ask.coming Braving Yandexing Youing Wikipedia' method there. Might save newer users (like the OP) some time.
Edit: I Googled for "wikipedia archive discussions reference desk intel core i7" off the top of my head just to verify my idea, and these two turns up. [1] [2] Turns out Google can find threads even when keyword is absent from the title. 海盐沙冰 / aka irisChronomia / Talk 04:23, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]