Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 December 5

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

December 5

advertisement template help

hi everybody, i want to place a template on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama#Tourism

i don´t know the name of the template, but i think it says something like this:

this section (or article) looks written like a advertisement. ........

i don´t remember what i follows next

Thanks, Pancho507 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pancho507 (talk • contribs)

Two things:

1. This page is for questions about general knowledge type things outside of Wikipedia. For help regarding how to edit Wikipedia, those questions belong at the Help Desk.
2. I believe the template that you're looking for Template:Advert. Dismas|^(talk) 17:52, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Management, policies and editing

I would like to ask who decides the policies on Wikipedia. Why are they seemingly anonymous and above all uncontactable??

T A F — Preceding unsigned comment added by T A Francis (talk • contribs) 23:08, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

This question would be better on the Help Desk. However, see WP:PG, WP:VPP and Wikimedia Foundation. Tevildo (talk) 23:16, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

• @T A Francis: Nearly all policies are negotiated by consensus among the Wikipedia community. Who is the Wikipedia community? The entire population of Earth. Being a living, breathing human means you are equivalent at Wikipedia as every other living breathing human. There are a limited number of policies which have been put in place by the Wikimedia Foundation for mostly legal reasons (that is, they could get into a lot of trouble if they allowed users to violate such policies), but almost everything else has evolved over time through negotiation among "the community", which is anyone who shows up and wants to help out. See Wikipedia:Consensus which is the primary mode of governance at Wikipedia. --Jayron32 23:28, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

The people involved aren't all anonymous and uncontactable - although some are. The policies are always discussed at some length and a "consensus" is reached before making any changes. That discussion typically happens on the "Talk" page associated with the policy - or at least somewhere linked from a notification on that page. When you look at the discussion, you'll generally find that most contributors to policy-making have Wikipedia accounts - and whether they do or do not, you can go to their talk pages to discuss those policies. Obviously you can't guarantee that they'll always answer you - but most people try to be communicative when genuine concerns are clearly and politely expressed. For some contributors (myself and Jayron32 - for example) - you can even go to their user page (linked at the end of every post) - and see an "Email this user" link in the left-side menu that'll allow you to send a personal email to that person.\

So, I strongly disagree with your assertions. You're incorrect about them being "seemingly anonymous" - most of them are not - and "above all uncontactable" is absolutely, 100% untrue - you can contact every single person who contributed to every single decision that was ever made here...except (as Jayron points out) a very, VERY few that are forced upon us by the laws in those places where the WikiMedia Foundations servers reside - and even in those cases, it's generally quite easy to figure out who made the decision and how to contact them.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:54, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

• There's no point in bickering over this here. It's been answered and further comments belong at the help desk μηδείς (talk)

|}