Wikipedia talk:Tip of the day

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Shortcut: WP:TIP WT:TOTD
WikiGnomes are welcome here. Please proofread our tips!

[edit] This is the tip of the day project

To display the tip of the day on your user page, read this Tip of the day tip.

To browse the tip collection, see the complete list of tips.

This project is responsible for developing and maintaining the tip of the day templates which are displayed throughout Wikipedia, and the collection of tips that are displayed by those templates. The tip of the day appears on Wikipedia's Help page, on the Wikipedia:Community Portal, and on many user pages too.

[edit] Project procedures

Here is how this works:

Those who would like to participate in this project should place the {{totd-tomorrow}} on their user page, which is a template that displays tomorrow's tip of the day (for monitoring purposes) as well as this project's task list (announcement box).
Submit new entries on this page, below.
Please help prepare the new entries below by proofreading and editing the tips for factual accuracy, clarity, readability, and proper formatting.
The goal of this project is to provide tips and advice for making Wikipedia easier to use, and to help users participate in Wikipedia more effectively.We shall make power users of them all!
Toward this end, we collect useful wikitips wherever we can find them. Do you know an expert on some aspect of Wikipedia's operations? Please ask them to record their favorite techniques on this page (below).
On the adjacent project page is a list of links to subpages, titled by date. Each subpage has a tip stored in it. The entries with a double-hyphen (--) are old tips (the same ones that were displayed last year). They need to be updated, or replaced with new tips.
This project has several templates that automatically display the contents of the subpage with the current date. (Templates are pages that get displayed on other pages, duplicated like boilerplate.) The tip of the day is displayed on Help:Contents and Wikipedia:Community Portal.
When you believe an entry is polished and ready, move it up to the ready to post section, for somebody else to post to the subpages.
Move entries from the ready to post section (that you actually agree are ready to post) to the tip schedule. To do this, you may replace any tip on the schedule that has a double-hyphen between the date and the tip's title. When you do, change the double-hyphen to a single hyphen.
If you feel an entry in Ready to post is not ready, move it back down to New entries. Do not post to subpages the entries that you placed in the Ready to post section (unless you are a veteran of this project and have a feel for what makes a good tip). This ensures that each entry is given final approval by at least two editors.
Entries that are not worthy of this project get moved down to not suitable. Generally, this means that the subject matter doesn't fit here, or the tip is complete nonsense. Include a little message as to why, and your sig.
If you see an entry under "not suitable" that you agree is not worthy of this project (due to inappropriate subject matter), then delete it from this page. But please do not delete entries that you placed there. This again ensures that at least 2 editors are involved in the decision.
Keep an eye on the tip schedule. Proofread tips in the queue before they become today's tip! On the schedule, tips with a double-hyphen haven't been proofread since they appeared the previous year. If you think a tip should run again this year, proofread it to make sure it is still accurate, and then change the double-hyphen to a single-hyphen.

Longtime veterans of this project sometimes add tips directly to the tip schedule. Don't get alarmed, they (RichardF, and The Transhumanist) know what they are doing.

Annual maintenance: at the end of the year, all the tips on the tip schedule need to be copied to the tip archive. First, create a page to display the list of tips displayed the previous year, copy the tip schedule to it, and add a link to it on the tip schedule page. Second, create 365 tip pages, by date, and copy the corresponding tip from the scheduled set to each one as you create them. Third, on the schedule page, change the single-hyphens between the date and the tip titles to left-arrows (←).

Note: The page title of each tip in the archive is a date that includes the year. In contrast, the tip pages in the schedule don't include the year -- this is a failsafe to ensure tips get displayed even if new ones aren't created on time (all the TOTD templates display the yearless tips only).

[edit] User boxes

User boxes for Wikipedian tipsters.

This user is a Wikipedia tipster.

[edit] Required formatting

Formatting required for entries: see the Wikipedia:Tip of the day/February 21 entry for the format. In order to allow users with table-formatted user pages to display the tip of the day template without it messing up their page, please do not include headings in the tips. Instead, we'll have to do this the old-fashioned way with <center><big>'''Tip title'''</big></center>. Each entry should also include a link for users to be able to read more about the topic, if such a link exists. And of course don't forget the tip itself, which should take just a paragraph, or two at the most. (These are tips, not treatises). The best tips are one sentence long.

[edit] Some good places to find ideas for tips

Help:Contents
- Help:Contents/Site map--124.7.174.13 (talk) 07:29, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Community Portal
Wikipedia:Department directory
Wikipedia:Directory

And one last tip for you tipsters:Have fun! The Transhumanist 04:23, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ready to post - individual tips

Use your userpage

Use your User page to do stuff you can't normally do on Wikipedia. Try out techniques, have userboxes, try out your template skills, and make a user page worthy of Wikipedia!

Editing

If you are stumped on what to edit next, try using User:SuggestBot. They, however, need to know what you've edited previously. For other ideas on what you can contribute, check out Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia.

"Am I logged in?" Don't be confused.

Do you sometimes make edits, without realising that you weren't logged in? There is an easy way to avoid this. Log in, go to preferences, and choose a different skin. Or change the quickbar so it is on a different part of the page. That way, it's obvious straight away whether you are logged in or not. E.g. you may wish to use the Cologne Blue skin.

If another Wikipedian uses the same computer and likes the same skin, one of you could place the quickbar on the right hand side so that it's obvious who is logged in.

Read more: Wikipedia:Customisation#Skins

Omniwiki!

With this trick you can look up any Wikipedia article directly from any web page by merely highlighting the word you want to know more about and clicking a button! Use the javascript below as a link on your browser toolbar. Make sure you get it all on one line, a simple Copy/Paste will probably only get the first line:

javascript:q = %22%22 + (window.getSelection ? window.getSelection() : document.getSelection ? document.getSelection() : document.selection.createRange().text); if (!q) q = prompt(%22Enter a Wikipedia topic:%22, %22%22); /* if (q!=null) { location=%22http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22 + escape(q).replace(/ /g, %22+%22);} void 0; */ if (q!=null) { WindowObjectReference = window.open(%22http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22 + escape(q).replace(/ /g, %22+%22), %22DescriptiveWindowName%22, %22resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes%22); } void 0;

Now, when you highlight any word on a webpage and click this link, a new window will open up with the Wikipedia article for that word! You can also change the URL and have the link take you to Wiktionary definitions, or even perform a Google search on the term (put in "http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=") So there it is, have fun with it!

You Got Your Sig Together?

At some point after you open an account with Wikipedia you'll probably want to "fancify" your signature, make it more "unique". And Wiki allows for a lot of creativity on your part. Read about that at Customizing your signature.

Here's a tip! You might decide to put a space in your sig, perhaps between your Username link and your Talk-page link. Unless you want your sig to "break in two" at the end of a line, don't just hit the space-bar key, use one of Wiki's "non-breaking space" options. It's real easy, and that way all of your sig will completely wrap around to the next line. Now that's keeping your sig together!

Read more about it here: Non-breaking_space
and also here: Wikipedia:Line_break_handling

To the administrator: The perfect form?

This Tip Is Lineboggling!

There might be times when you want to use lines as separators on your pages. Wikipedia gives you the Wiki four-hyphen code, like this: ---- and you can also use the HTML <hr> tag. Watch this...

---- renders as a line all the way across...

<hr> gives the same line...

<hr width=50%> renders...

<hr width=30%> yields...

and so on. So ENJOY!

[edit] New entries

Please add new (fresh) tips to the top of this section (the old tips which are being recycled are at the end).

Contractions aren´t suitable

When writing in their computer, people often make use of contractions. Contractions like "IDK", "lag", "lol", "u" (slang) are obviously not suitable to use in article namespace, however, even common things like: "aren´t", "it's", "should´ve" and others, are neither suposed to be part of an article text, so when writing an article, keep in mind to avoid contractions and other informal writing. Also avoid:

The use of scrolling lists in article prose
Using images to display text
Such phrases as "remember that..." and "note that...", which address readers directly in an unencyclopedic tone

Read more:WP:CONTRACTION, Manual of style, Internet slang

-- Damërung ^{...ÏìíÏ...}_{__Ξ_} . -- 18:09, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Orphans

An important aspect of Wikipedia is how well articles can be reached from other articles by means of linking. An article that has fewer than three links to it in other articles, however, is called an "orphan," and should be dealt with in a number of ways:

Tag the article as an orphan using the {{Orphan}} template.
Create necessary links on other articles to the orphaned article (but make sure they're relevant).
Remove the {{Orphan}} template from the article when there are three or more links to it.

Keep in mind that links from disambiguation pages, redirects, lists, soft redirects, talk pages, and Wikipedia pages outside of article space do NOT count towards the three links to a given article.

Also, keep in mind some of the ways to avoid creating orphaned articles...like browsing the templates with red links page when considering making a new article.

Read more: Orphans, WikiProject Orphanage

ARTICHOKE-BOY (Talk) 15:45, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussions in other user´s talk pages

In the talk page of an article´s section, wikipedia section or portal section (amog others), if you post a question or comment, you will get your reply in that same section. However, some users will reply comments in your talk page instead of their own. This makes reading back a conversation quite cumbersome; having to switch talk pages back and forth in order to make sense of the conversation, something even worse when the discussion involves more than two users. This is why is suggested as a tip to answer a message in the same section it was created.

For this matter, templates such as {{Talkback}}, {{Usertalkback}} and {{Shoutbox}} became useful:

{{Usertalkback}} - To post the message of this hint in your talk page.
{{Talkback}} or {{tb}} - To notify other user that you have already replied.
{{Shoutbox}} - To make smaller coments (avoiding to create a whole new section for that) and even place the {{Talkback}} template inside.

Read more:Talkback, Talk back note, Shoutbox

-- Damërung ^{...ÏìíÏ...}_{__Ξ_} . -- 08:42, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

When Speedy Deletions are not Speedy

Occasionally, there are times where a long backlog for speedy deletions exists. Thus, don't panic if a speedy tag you placed on an article isn't acted upon immediately. Other times, a speedy tag may linger for a while because no admin is willing to accept or decline it. Consider taking the article to Articles for Deletion if it is such a case.

ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 05:12, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Get rid of the stress

Bored or tired a bit of writing tons of articles and sections? You can always find funny ways of relaxing here on wikipedia:

Customize your page or signature
Sign other guest books (or make your own)
Search secret pages among other users (some may give you an award)
Give out some barnstars, or hunt 'em
Spend some time in the department of fun
Participate in the Wiki-cup
Vote or nominate specific things like pictures or articles
Welcome the newbies
Join to specific discussions (perhaps in projects, perhaps to arbitrate or give neutral point of view...)

Just remember, wikipedia is not a forum or a blog, so just don´t move too away from wikipedia´s goal and scope.

Read more:WP:NOT, Wikipedia:Department of Fun

-- Damërung ^{...ÏìíÏ...}_{__Ξ_} . -- 08:03, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Proper citations - an easy way

You need to have installed:

Firefox free open source browser (or Netscape Navigator or Flock)
Zotero free open source citation manager

Zotero can capture citation data from web pages, including library catalogs (WorldCat) and bibliographic indexes and export them in Wikipedia citation format.

Set Zotero:Actions(cog):Preferences to export Wikipedia citation template.

To cite:

Show the web page with citation information in your browser
Click the Zotero icon on the right of address line to capture the bibliographic data to a Zotero item
Highlight the bibliographic item in the Zotero window
Use Zotero Quick Copy (Ctrl-alt-C or Cmd-shift-C)
Click the Wikipedia <ref/ref> button to insert a reference.
Paste citation into the reference

Voila! A properly contructed wikipedia citation in a few seconds.

--Blouis79 (talk) 23:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Avoid Double Redirects

Always try to avoid adding Double Redirects. Redirects are special pages that automatically causes the text of another page to be dispalyed in its place. A redirect which leads to another redirect is a double redirect. Wikipedia will not follow the second redirect making it unpleasant for readers.

Read more: Wikipedia:Double redirects

Juthani1 17:58, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Barnstars

You can always appreciate another user, and you can always show it with a barnstar! Barnstars are are little award-like templates that have stars and messages in them! They can cheer up someone´s day and encourage that person to keep doing constructive edits on wikipedia (and staying in wikipedia). Barnstars are a joyful way to show recognition to the work of a wikipedian. You don't have to be an admin, in fact you don't have to be logged in! Anyone can hand them out, and remember, if you appreciate others, and you show it, then you can get a barnstar too. (you can also customize them, instead of the usual-given barnstar)

[edit] Not suitable

Stubs

If you want everyone to come and help you with your article, just add {{stub}} This puts it onto a page where everyone can see that your article needs expanding.

[edit] General discussion

Archives
Discussion Archive 1 Discussion Archive 2 Discussion Archive 3

[edit] I'm not sure how this works

Something like two months ago, I wrote up a potential TotD here, and never heard anything further.Does that mean that it was considered lame and ignored, or did it move into some other process? The workflow from the intial proposal of a draft TotD, to discussion, cleanup and eventual use at a TotD or rejection isn't very clear to me. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 10:33, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

No, nothing like that. It's just that the project isn't in a hurry, because tips have already been scheduled to the end of the year. But it's all very flexible. Some tips on the schedule (listed on the project page) are repeats. So we can replace those with new tips, for instance. I'll be happy to have a look at your tip submission. The Transhumanist 12:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The tip is a bit long, can you edit down a bit? The Transhumanist 03:06, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. How's that? — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 15:45, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I put a barnstar TotD up above a long time ago and hasn't been touched since. Or did it get moved tom the top and just have to wait another year? What is it? —Coastergeekperson 04^{'s talk}@Feb/14/08 00:38

[edit] General TOTD encyclopaedia article?

I think "tip of the day" should be an actual article, discussing the use of TOTD as a supplementary form of online help in (primarily Microsoft?) GUI applications. I was a little surprised to see it redirect to this meta-type page. 86.138.65.206 16:52, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

See Tip of the day. Needs to be expanded. The Transhumanist 19:50, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] April 3 TOTD

The TOTD for April 3rd is about Esperanza. Since the project no longer exists, it might be a good idea to replace it. -- MarcoTolo 04:55, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The TOTD for May 17 is also about Esperanza. --Smokizzy ^{Review Me! (Please!)} 01:31, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jimbo tip?

Today (or yesterday) I saw 'spam Jimbo Wales', presumably for April Fools' Day - but I cannot find it anywhere. Link, anyone? If it was not, it should be BJAODNed.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 04:10, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Found it.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 04:14, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pardon

This has nothing to do with Today's tip. It is regarding the automatic message that is on the Log In page. Make sure to have a secure password. Out of curiosity, has there been a recent admin who's password was discovered? Send a message to my talk page. -Yancyfry 02:22, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Internet Explorer advocacy

Today's tip advocates Internet Explorer. I've nothing against IE, but did you really mean to do that? --SueHay 02:38, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A metaphor for a metaphor?

"Village pump" can't be a metaphor for "community watering hole." A metaphor can only be a symbol of something real, not a symbol of yet another symbol. The village pump on Wikipedia is the real online gathering place the metaphor is supposed to indicate, but "community watering hole" is just an alternative metaphor. I suggest saying something such as "The Village Pump is a metaphor for a community crossroads or meetingplace where news and ideas are exchanged." Preston McConkie 20:31, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] typo in popups tip

Power tool: Navigation popups
... you can activate it form the popups menu ...
A minor quibble also, empowers?
When you install this nifty wikitool, it empowers your mouse arrow.
I love the tip of moment template, thanks to all concerned. Cygnis insignis 05:50, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Five Pillars - Not the same pillars!

Today's TOTD on the Five Pillars - that is, TOTD for October 20 - lists slightly different pillars to to Five Pillars page that it links to.

In WP:PILLARS, it lists "Wikipedia works by consensus" as one of the pillars (next to the yellow icon).

In Wikipedia:Tip of the day/October 20, "Wikipedia is free content" appears next to the yellow icon rather than the green icon, and instead, "Wikipedia has a neutral point of view" is listed next to the green icon.

What's going on here? DonkeyKong64 (Mathematician in training) 06:31, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

The edit leading to version 169225058 of the Five pillars article changed the points to be consistent with the tip. According to the edit summary, it was a revert. Brian Jason Drake 08:51, 14 January 2008 (UTC) [edited Brian Jason Drake 08:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)]

[edit] barnstars rule

Barnstars make good editors feel appreciated. Try to give one to every editor you think is good. --1bookfan 02:48, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Archives

The 2007 archive only has links to some of the days, and some of those pages don't work (in particular, the prior/next day links don't work on any of the February pages on the list - they have error messages instead - and February 2-4 don't have any tip). Brian Jason Drake 08:37, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How to Use this template on Other Lrnguage wikis?

Hi, I contribute in gu@wiki and hi@wiki, and visit en@wiki for timeto time as well. I am even one of the Administrator for gu.wiki and would like to use this template on my user page at gu@User:Dsvyas, can anyone tell me how can I do that? or can give me the basic code for template to import the tips from en.wiki here??--Dsvyas (talk) 16:10, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hillary Clinton

Today's totd includes a Hillary Clinton box. It was probably added by one of her supporters and it needs removing. I can't find it in the totd text. George D. Watson (Dendodge).Talk^Help 17:07, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

It was added to the template {{totd}} by someone who seems to be a new user; he added the same template to over 10 templates - I have reverted his insertions and left a note on his talk page. --Gurubrahma (talk) 18:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Feed

Tip of the Day could really use an RSS feed, I imagine this would boost readership significantly. --Padraic 18:50, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

As I understand it, the display templates update using the magic words {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} and {{CURRENTDAY}}, which are in UTC. So we can setup a script off-site that, each day at 00:00 UTC, checks the relevant tip page and uses that to update a feed. If somebody reminds me in a week or two I will try to make one, don't have the resources at the minute. --_{tiny plastic} Grey Knight ⊖ 17:06, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Pronounciation of words

Up to now, I never found an audio-option to hear the correct pronounciation of the words that are explained. Would it be possible to offer such a feature? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.120.169.118 (talk) 08:12, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Big blooper: December 2

Um ... did anyone bother to check the major change in the style guides (MOSNUM, MoS, MOSLINK, CONTEXT) concerning date autoformatting? How embarrassing. If there's a way of substituting today's Tip to stop WP looking like a bunch of fools, that would be great. Tony (talk) 12:57, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

So is anyone going to remove this now-wrong "tip" from the cycle? Tony (talk) 09:09, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

It's been fixed: fine. Tony (talk) 09:26, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Main page push

With all the usability grants and work ahead, simply pushing this TOTD to Wikipedias Main Page would do a great job.--Kozuch (talk) 13:25, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Who updates the tip of the day?

Tip of the day for March 5,2009 "Reserve your username on the sister projects, before it gets taken" seems very out of date.

"Therefore, create an account identical to your Wikipedia account on each of the Wikimedia projects before someone else chooses your name as their own. Even if you never need those accounts, they'll be ready and waiting in case you ever do.

The upcoming unified login will mean that registering a username reserves it everywhere."

Unified login is has been in place for quite some time now. I am not sure of the process to up date the tip of the day, but this one sure needs updating. Dbiel ^(Talk) 02:50, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Today's tip of the day is broken!

Wannabe Kate's counter stopped working last January. I would recommend replacement with User:Soxred93's very nice Edit Counter here. Any other suggestions are welcome, too. Cheers,
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 01:32, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Now repaired..thank you, ⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 15:46, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Question

How come the project didn't operate in 2005? -- œ ^™ 12:25, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, I think the project procedures above need to be updated.. specifically #6 -- œ ^™ 12:36, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

It got shut down. The guy running it stopped, and removed it from everywhere. One day it just disappeared.

That was before I joined, so I didn't even know it had existed. I discovered it in 2006 when I was redesigning the Community Portal. So I resurrected the project, put together a team of people, and we created enough tips to run all year long! We re-established the tip of the day to the Community Portal, and we added it to the main help page as well.

Eventually, RichardF created the "yearless year", and the tips get repeated year after year. The template just starts over at the beginning each year.

They are also available in the tips library at WP:TIPS.

Since the tip display runs automatically, I've practically forgotten about this project.

I'll try to pop in more often.

The Transhumanist 20:46, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: The tip schedule needs work - it needs to be archived to 2008, and more tips replaced for 2009.

[edit] Repetition tips

What if someone (without knowing it) post a tip a little similar, similar or very similar to other existing tip? (since there are plenty of them). - Damërung ^{...ÏìíÏ...}_{__Ξ_} . -- 02:32, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

If the tip is especially important, it may be repeated several times throughout the year. As you'll see in the schedule, certain tips are repeated, and they are worded differently each time for added impact. For example, one of the most important tips for beginners is to sign their message posts with 4 tildes (~~~~). That tip is scheduled to display about once per month.

If the tip is important enough to be repeated, then no worries. If not, replace one of the versions with a different tip.

Now that the tip schedule is full, we need to displace old tips with new tips. Try to replace obsolete tips or tips that are marginally useful.

The important thing is to improve the quality of the tip collection.

Once completed, each tip should also be added to the tip library at WP:TIPS.

The Transhumanist 19:57, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh i see... And how often does the tips are recycled? - Damërung ^{...ÏìíÏ...}_{__Ξ_} . -- 14:51, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Tips are replaced as fast as people replace them. It's been pretty slow over the past couple of years. Editors have been correcting errors as they spot them, such as when a tip has grown out-of-date and is no longer accurate. In most cases, the tip is simply updated.

To be on the safe side, we have a template that shows the tip-of-the-day one day in advance, so that errors can be spotted before the tips are displayed to the whole community: {{Totd-tomorrow}}.

There's another one that shows a random tip: {{Totd-random}}

(It also has space for this project's announcements).

For other tip-displaying templates, see Wikipedia:Tip of the day/July 21 (the "tip-of-the-day tip").

The Transhumanist 15:57, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Tip_of_the_day"

Categories: Wikipedian tipsters