Glossary of Terms

Well, I am an E1000+ if you count my contributions, so apparently I'm some kind of Wikipedia guru. But I feel like a babe in the woods most of the time on Wikipedia. I keep imagining that one day I will finally figure out a whole load of things that have been mysteries to me for the past few years. Every time I turn around someone seems to be complaining about something I've done (although I am not clear about exactly what it is), been unable to edit content because I cannot fathom what a template is doing (and every edit I do to it breaks the page), and I never seem to be able to find out the answer (the Help pages never seem to have the answer to my question).

I saw a comment somewhere about whether people felt they are members of the Wikipedia/Wikimedia community. After a number of years, I never have. Partly because (until I stumbled on this page this morning) I never found anywhere I could talk to anyone, and talking is surely the basis for community. Has there been a place to talk that I never found before?

Kerry Raymond01:42, 12 March 2011

For example, why is my username showing on this page in red (it means it doesn't exist)? It seems to exist when I login.

Kerry Raymond01:47, 12 March 2011

Kerry,

It's because this actually a separate site, just like the various language versions of Wikipedia are actually separate websites each running similar versions of the same software. The Wikimedia "single user login" system automatically created an account for you here since you were logged in on your home wiki, but it is a new account with a new user page has yet to be created. That's why it's a redlink. Make sense?

Steven Walling at work01:57, 12 March 2011
 

Kerry, Your name in red refers to your userpage (rather cryptically, I agree). If you click on it, and then leave content about yourself on that page, you'll see it turn into a blue link.

~Philippe (WMF)01:58, 12 March 2011

Philippe, I do have content on my user page. I think Steve's explanation may be correct. This is a wikimedia page not a wikipedia page, but if the Wikimedia single user login is smart enough to still know who I am, why isn't it smart enough to have the link back to my Wikipedia user page? Or for that matter, why not have single sign-on across all the WikiMedia projects and a single user page? Still, thank you for your answers to something that has been bugging me for some time.

Kerry Raymond02:07, 12 March 2011

I'm sorry, Kerry- your userpage on this wiki, and not on the English Wikipedia.

Your userpage on this wiki is at: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kerry_Raymond On the english wikipedia, it's at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kerry_Raymond

You'll note that the addresses are different - they're different sites, linked with a single login, as Steven said.

The reason that we don't have it automatically pull your userpage from one wiki is that many people operate in several different languages, and they'll have different userpages for each of those languages or functions.

~Philippe (WMF)02:09, 12 March 2011
 

Kerry, you're right on your first idea. What the single user login should be doing is automagically displaying links to each of your other user pages. If nothing else, that would help other people track you down if they wanted to post a message where you would be likely to read it. Since that's not happening, you probably should add the link yourself. :-)

Flatterworld07:06, 12 March 2011

And here is a +1 on this "feature" for single log in. Link to User page, or even choosing in your SUL preferences the "default user page" you'd like to use on new wikis, great idea.

Delphine (notafish)03:10, 13 March 2011
 
 
 

I believe the red name means you haven't created a user page - on this particular (strategy) wiki; you may well have one on e.g. english wikipedia.

Kobnach01:58, 12 March 2011