text:
Thomas F. Wilson

Thomas Francis Wilson Jr. (born April 15, 1959) is an American actor, stand-up comedian, musician, podcaster and YouTuber. He is best known for playing Biff Tannen, Griff Tannen, and Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen in the Back to the Future film trilogy (1985–1990). He also played coach Ben Fredricks in the comedy series Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000) and voices various characters, mainly villains, on the animated series SpongeBob SquarePants (2001–present).

Early life
Thomas Francis Wilson Jr. was born in Philadelphia on April 15, 1959, and grew up in nearby Wayne. While attending Radnor High School, he was involved in dramatic arts, served as president of the debate team (where his partner was future New York Times columnist David Brooks), played the tuba in the high school band, and was the drum major of the school marching band. He studied international politics at Arizona State University and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. In 1979, he got his first significant stage experience as a comedian.

Career
In 1981, Wilson moved to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career. He shared an apartment with fellow aspiring comedians Andrew Dice Clay and Yakov Smirnoff, and later joked that he "taught them both about America". He had a small role in the second season of NBC's Knight Rider in an episode titled "A Knight In Shining Armor".

Wilson's breakthrough role was as the bully Biff Tannen in the 1985 film Back to the Future. He returned in the sequels Back to the Future Part II and Back to the Future Part III to not only reprise his role as Biff, but to also play Biff's grandson Griff Tannen and great-grandfather Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen. In each Back to the Future film, his character ends up in a pile of manure after trying to kill or hurt Michael J. Fox's character Marty McFly. He reprised his role as Biff and voiced various Tannen relatives in the animated series. Wilson did not reprise his role as Biff in the initial versions of Telltale's Back to the Future: The Game released in 2011, being replaced by Kid Beyond. When the game was ported to the PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One in 2015 in commemoration of the original film's 30th anniversary, Wilson returned to provide Biff's voice in these newer versions. Wilson found the car scene in the first Back to the Future, in which he molests Lea Thompson's character, Lorraine the most difficult scene he shot. In between takes Wilson whispered to Thompson "I'm so sorry, Lea." to which Thompson replied with "It's just acting, Tom."

In 1992, he voiced gangster Tony Zucco in Batman: The Animated Series and police detective Matt Bluestone in the animated series Gargoyles. He later went to co-star with Mark Hamill in the video game Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger. It was the third chapter in the Wing Commander series, but the first to feature live action and was extremely popular at the time. The character played by Wilson was Major Todd "Maniac" Marshall, a fellow starfighter pilot to Hamill's character. Wilson also starred in the sequels Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (1995) and Wing Commander: Prophecy (1997) and contributed his voice to the animated series Wing Commander Academy (1996) in the same role. He also guest starred in an episode of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in 1997.

Wilson played McKinley High School's Coach Ben Fredricks in the 1999–2000 NBC comedy drama Freaks and Geeks. In 1994, Wilson was briefly reunited with his Back to the Future co-star Christopher Lloyd in the film Camp Nowhere.

Wilson has done voice-over work for the Nickelodeon television series SpongeBob SquarePants. He has voiced many villainous characters that are physically strong and menacing, such as Flats the Flounder in the third-season episode "The Bully", The Tattletale Strangler in "SpongeBob Meets the Strangler", and the non-villainous character Reg the Club Bouncer in "No Weenies Allowed". In 2005, he played Coach Phelps in the TV series Zoey 101.

In 2009, he released his first stand-up comedy special and second comedy album, Tom Wilson: Bigger Than You.

He hosted a podcast, Big Pop Fun, on the Nerdist Network from 2011 to 2014. The podcast featured Tom sharing stories of his career, as well as informal chats with show business friends including Samm Levine, Blake Clark, Steve Oedekerk and "Weird Al" Yankovic.

Wilson currently maintains a YouTube channel, where he regularly vlogs. As of March 2023, his channel has over 36,100 subscribers.

Personal life
Wilson married Caroline Thomas on July 6, 1985. They have four children, and live in Los Angeles, California.

Wilson is a devout Catholic and released a contemporary Christian album in 2000 called In the Name of the Father. He is also a painter in his spare time, and many of his paintings focus on classic children's toys. In 2006, he was selected to join the California Featured Artist Series at Disneyland.

With the rise in popularity of the Back to the Future series, many people began to ask Wilson questions about his experiences making the films. He found the repetitive nature of the questions to be both hilarious and frustrating, and wrote a song about them titled "Biff's Question Song" which he includes in his stand-up routine.

Discography

 * Tom Wilson is Funny! (2005)
 * Tom Wilson: Bigger Than You (2009)

Books

 * Self published.

title: Thomas F. Wilson


text:
Wikipedia talk:Researching Wikipedia

Untitled
Moved from Village pump

Coverage
So, this is kind of a weird question, but I've been thinking about ways to model Wikipedia coverage. By this I mean, if you consider the range of possible subjects we consider worth including in Wikipedia, how many of those subjects already have articles? I know that that's a really abstract idea, but I think it's probably a better measure of how "good" Wikipedia is than just raw number of articles.

One way to think of it is to imagine some kind of endpoint in the future where we've got all the information we think Wikipedia-worthy in the system. Then, we all get to sit back, and just add new articles as new people, events, countries, awards ceremonies, species, albums, books, and planets come into being. How close are we to getting there? How many of the articles in that imagined encyclopedia do we already have?

Some ways I've been thinking of measuring this:

 * Of the entries in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, how many have corresponding Wikipedia articles? (Totally crude, but if we were back in 1911, wouldn't we want to have at least as much knowledge as the EB? Close to it?)
 * What percentage of Wikipedia searches come up empty? (This would measure what percentage of things Wikipedia readers think should be in the system are already there.)
 * Of the internal links inside Wikipedia, what percentage point nowhere? How many have non-stub articles at the endpoint? (This would measure what percentage of things Wikipedia authors think should be in the system are already there.)

Yes, it's probably kind of silly to think of the range of Wikipedia-worthy subjects as a finite set, and even if we had an article for every one of those subjects, the individual facts, figures, interpretations, explanations and opinions worth putting in each article is also close to infinite. But I'd like to think we're closing in on the goal of being a good, reliable encyclopedia, and I think coverage is one way to measure that. I'm just wondering if it can be modeled in any reasonable way. -- ESP 05:03 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * First some data: The number of links to non-existent pages is currently 527137. The number of links to existent pages is 2583574. That only about 17% of all links point to non-existent pages may be surprising, but note that this includes the signatures on talk pages and similar stuff (not the navigational links, though). It's possible to exclude these from the count, but that would tax the database server substantially.

 * Maybe I'll use the SQL dumps to build an off-line server for doing this. That'd lower the effect it would have on the DB server. -- ESP 15:46 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * As for comparing Wikipedia, I'm not sure the 1911 encyclopedia is such a good idea. A lot has changed in the last 92 years, making many articles obsolete, and many others would now be considered irrelevant by all but the most specialized readers. Wikipedia by now probably reflects better what most people care about than other encyclopedias -- we have very detailed articles about music festivals and groups, about actors and actresses, about fictional characters, about sex positions; stuff that you will, for the most part, not find in traditional encyclopedias, but that is nevertheless searched for a lot.

 * I agree that Wikipedia is not the Encyclopedia Britannica. But I find it hard to imagine subjects that were considered worthy of encyclopediizing at the turn of the century and are no longer worth encyclopediizing, at least in a historical context. Yes, the EB is racist, sexist, imperialist, and paternalistic, but that's more about the content of the entries, not the subject.

 * Anyways, this would be a crude measurement, agreed. If I were going to think of it as a Venn diagram, I'd say that there's a set of articles worthy of Wikipedia W and a set of articles in Encyclopedia Britannica E. E may not be a proper subset of W, but I'd posit that the difference between E and the intersection of E and W would be negligibly small. Counting articles we share with EB would show us what our coverage is in that intersection area, and might give us an rough estimate of our coverage in the part of W that's not in the intersection of W and E. -- ESP 15:38 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * We do lack articles about specialized knowledge areas that are nevertheless of cultural importance. A good indication to see where we do not have enough motivated Wikipedians is to check out Special:Ancientpages. Mostly it's stuff about "obscure" countries that get neglected -- but if you lived in such a country, you would be very disappointed not to find that information.

 * A systematic comparison would take a reasonably large random sample (say, 500 articles) from modern encyclopedias and compare their articles with the respective Wikipedia articles, if any; and to do the same in the other direction as well. That way you could develop a quality rating: Wikipedia's coverage of Encarta's sample is xyz better/worse than Encarta's coverage; Encarta's coverage of Wikipedia's sample is xyz better/worse than Wikipedia's coverage (where xyz would be some points/rating system).

 * I like this method. I think it would be reasonable to take a selection by alphabetic sorting -- like, say, a single volume of a multi-volume encyclopedia. It wouldn't be strictly random, of course, and some work on Wikipedia has be done in alphabetical order -- starting with A, etc. -- but it would be pretty random across topics. With five people on it doing searches, and counting hits, I think it would take less than a week of people's spare time.

 * The nice thing about the 1911 EB is that it'd be kind of automatable -- although the electronic versions available are kind of hard to work with -- whereas this would not. -- ESP 19:55 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * This is a big project, but it can be done collaboratively. I would definitely be willing to review a few Britannica/Encarta (German) articles. To assure non-bias, these should be assigned by the person running the project. Feel free to start State of Wikipedia. --Eloquence 06:28 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

"Edit Zero" is a terrible name. How about Alephpedia: the for all practical purposes infinite encyclopedia in Jorge Luis Borges' library?

 * I like the idea of "Edit Zero" -- like t0 -- the edit someone makes in a mythical future that "completes" Wikipedia up to that point in time. I don't understand the idea of Alephpedia, so I wouldn't use it. Can you explain it? -- ESP 15:42 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

EB1911
Of the entries in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, how many have corresponding Wikipedia articles?
 * Wikipedia Signpost/2006-02-27/News and notes: Integration of 1911 Britannica finished

--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 06:55, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

List of resources
Note: this list of resources was generated in early February 2007. It may be possible to semi-automatically update the pages here with [http://www.math.ucla.edu/~aoleg/wp/lists/lists.pl.cgi? this tool], but it is not working as expected. Please manually update this page with new research or tools.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 18:42, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Survey to add

 * —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Piotrus (talk • contribs) 06:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC).

Statistics lead
The leading paragraphs are original research, and out-of-date. If I remember to do it, I'm going to remove this section in a little while.Wjhonson (talk) 23:14, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

 * WP:Original research is only prohibited in articles. This is not an article.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:38, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

 * Indeed, this project page itself encourages original research of Wikipedia. It may be out-of-date but still it shouldn't be removed, either update it or mark it as out of date. -- œ ™ 09:12, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:RW" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:RW. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 July 7 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. LittlePuppers (talk) 02:45, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wikipedia talk:Researching Wikipedia


text:
Wobble board

The wobble board is a musical instrument invented and popularized by Australian musician and artist Rolf Harris, and is featured in his best-known song "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport". A wobble board, like some other musical instruments, can be ornately decorated because its large surface area can act as a canvas without detracting from its musical capability.

The instrument is played by holding the board lengthwise with the hands holding the edges and flicking the board outward, thereby making a characteristic "whoop-whoop" noise. The angle at which the board is held, and the way the board is "flicked", can alter the timbre of the sound produced. It is similar to the thunder sheet, a metal instrument used to imitate the sound of thunder in 18th century theatre.

History
According to an interview he gave to Tony Barrell for The Sunday Times Magazine in 2001, Harris discovered the musical properties of hardboard by chance in 1959, when he was about to paint a portrait of the conjurer Robert Harbin. Before his subject arrived, Harris prepared the background, covering a large piece of hardboard with Prussian blue oil paint mixed with turpentine. But the surface refused to dry. "It was all sticky and nasty. He was due to arrive in about half an hour." In desperation, Harris propped the board over a paraffin heater. When he touched it later, it was so hot it burned his finger. "So I propped it between the palms of my hands and shook it to cool it down. And ... I thought, 'What a marvellous sound.

Rolf Harris said:

My first Wobble Board was made of 2-foot-by-3-foot $1/10$-inch-thick hardboard, although they can be made slightly smaller. There is a slight indentation in the middle of each of the short side so the hands don't slip when playing. This needs to be as wide as the hand and about quarter inch deep. It is played, not by gripping the board with the fingers, but by propping it between the palms of the hands and bouncing it, accenting every second rhythm, don't try to play every one. I've found tempered hardboard works best, or MDF board but it must be really thin, or it's too hard to bounce! Good Luck!

Official Rolf Harris wobble boards were sold commercially for a time in the 1970s but most were made by the player. Almost any large, springy and flexible sheet of material can be used as an impromptu wobble board, although some materials are markedly better than others. Harris's instrument was originally made from a type of wood composite known as hardboard (Masonite in the United States and Australia).

Two wobble boards donated by Harris were part of the National Museum of Australia collection before they were removed in the light of his arrest for indecent assault in 2013.

title: Wobble board


text:
Talk:Suzanne Somers

Gay Icon Project
In my effort to merge the now-deleted list from the article Gay icon to the Gay icons category, I have added this page to the category. I engaged in this effort as a "human script", adding everyone from the list to the category, bypassing the fact-checking stage. That is what I am relying on you to do. Please check the article Gay icon and make a judgment as to whether this person or group fits the category. By distributing this task from the regular editors of one article to the regular editors of several articles, I believe that the task of fact-checking this information can be expedited. Thank you very much. Philwelch 22:15, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * What does Gay icon have to do with Suzanne Somers? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.28.143.83 (talk) 05:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Gikon?
Perhaps because of her over the top public/stage image and her problems in life. Cherie Currie...Liza Minnelli...need I go on?

My real question: Why no mention on Suzanne's part in the Canadian show Mantrap?JBDay (talk) 22:47, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

So-called
The statement "so=called Wiley Protocol" is negative and reveals bias. The Wiley Protocol is a registered trademark. Please remove the "so=called." I cannot, I am COI. Neil Raden (talk) 23:50, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 13:21, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

The American Cancer Society is concerned: Dr. Otis Brawley, the organization's chief medical officer says "We use current treatments because they've been proven to prolong life". This is a total LIE. The ACS and the NCI use methods that shrink tumors PERIOD. They base ALL cancer treatments on whether or not the shrink tumors NOT on extended life or quality of life. Do a search on Ralph Moss for the straight truth. Note also that the ACS and NCI have vested interests in the drug companies that are vehemently opposed to any cure or treatment that they cannot patent. Don't believe me, check both the ACS and NCI sites. You won't find one good word about any alternative cancer treatments. It took an act of congress to force the NCI to start looking into these alternatives. And the extension of life by the conventional, a month tops? Really? where as alternatives show years but by keeping their eyes, funding wallets and peer reviewed journals tightly closed, they BigMed reality dictators(and wikipidia) call this "science fact" because something has not been proven even though has not been unproven by demonstrating a scientific method that repeatedly fails. This is not science at all! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.228.72.177 (talk) 23:37, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Suzanne Somers and fluoride

 * This is copied from RS/N.

An IP has added the following to her article:

 * "Suzanne Somers is opposed to water fluoridation. The Malibu Times http://www.malibutimes.com/articles/2007/12/19/editorial/opinion/opinion1.txt

This information isn't surprising considering her attitude toward pseudoscience and fringe subjects. The question for this board is whether we can allow use of this source, which is a posting by her on a public internet forum under "editorial / opinion". It's probably her, but anyone could have written that. Shouldn't we find a better source documenting her attitude on the subject? I suspect we can. -- Brangifer (talk) 22:44, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

 * Her blog contains similar anti-fluoridation sentiments: http://www.suzannesomers.com/Blog/post/Water-Fluoridation-Get-the-Facts.aspx If I understand correctly, her blog is a RS for her own article, but nowhere else. Could we use this source instead? -- Brangifer (talk) 22:47, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

 * Her book has got to be a RS for her opinion. -- Brangifer (talk) 22:49, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

 * Done. -- Brangifer (talk) 22:56, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Deleted
I deleted the sentence "Thighmaster was one of the first products responsible for launching the infomercial concept.[citation needed]" since it had no citation and I don't think it is factual. I did a search on Infomercials and Thighmaster and infomercials have been around since the early 80's and she was doing these Thighmaster commercials after that.Mylittlezach (talk) 17:05, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I seem to recall those "Thighmaster" commercials. --Nosehair2200 (talk) 01:07, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Arrested/Criminal history
I was wondering if there was a reason for no mention of her arrest in her younger days for check bouncing?

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/celebrity/television/suzanne-somers — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:2C7:101:83A9:F0D5:9C76:ADF6:A5B7 (talk) 09:31, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:UNDUE.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 22:18, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Pay dispute
Fired for dsring to ask for a raise huh? Thats one waay of looking at it, the other is "Wanted more money per episode than she was currently getting per year" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.75.12.0 (talk) 06:15, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Casting couch
This might be a reliable source for expanding this article.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 07:58, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

 * https://books.google.com/books?id=bm_QuZUPP9IC&pg=PA102&dq=Suzanne+Somers
 * Tales from the Casting Couch
 * Phoenix Books, Inc.
 * ISBN 1597776424 9781597776424
 * 2601:646:201:57F0:358:38E8:C571:6D18 (talk) 20:42, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 21:46, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Suzanne Somers in Ina Soltani (2).jpg

Badly Written
Really, this Suzanne Somers article is dreadfully written: "... gives extra discussion to one specific approach, the "Wiley Protocol". Somers and T. S. Wiley, the originator of the Wiley Protocol, have been criticized for their advocacy of the Wiley Protocol. It really could use a rewrite, preferably by someone who can write. I'd do it myself if I was interested enough in the subject. Surely someone out there is? --Untold Millions (talk) 17:49, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Age
Is there a reason this article omits any mention of Somers' birthdate? It's information that's usually included in biographical articles.

I found other references that give her birthdate as October 16, 1946. Is there a dispute over this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:96D0:DF40:2899:6D25:DF6F:DEA1 (talk) 04:44, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Not sure why this was removed—I have restored her birthdate and added several reputable sources to corroborate it. --Drown Soda (talk) 14:53, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

 * , Thank you for adding citations when you restored the date of birth. I was the one who removed the then-unsourced date based on WP:DOB. Without a citation, there is no indication to a reader that the date of birth has been published by reliable sources. Eddie Blick (talk) 16:14, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Suzzane Somers died at age 77, not age 76. It is a subtle legal concept. You always attain your nexy year of age the day BEFORE your birthday, because that is the 365th day (or 366th day in a leap year) of that year of your life. Since she passed the day before her birthday, she lived a full 77 years. 2600:1700:9090:8CC0:542:764C:605B:CF4E (talk) 16:47, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Cancer
As of Oct. 16, 2023 the article *claims* her cancer returned in July and she died in October. She'll be missed. But it is patently NOT TRUE that the cancer was absent in June and suddenly (re)appeared in July. I don't want to change the article now, but after a respectful period it should be corrected to say the return (or reappearance) of cancer was discovered or announced (which ever it was) in July. (very few cancers, probably none, are so aggressively growing that they kill the patient in 3 months (between the first cancerous cell and death, as contrasted with the *discovery* of various cancers and the patients succumbing - which is far more common (since some cancers are hard or nearly impossible to detect until they've reached late stage growth. This is especially true with patients over 65. Cancer is more aggressive and grows faster, usually, in younger patients, but I digress.)98.17.44.45 (talk) 08:01, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

 * Until proven otherwise, the article should stay as it is: she died in October; her cancer returned in July. No sources as of yet connect the two. Everyone's cancer treatments are different – some people die from treatment and yet their deaths are attributed to the disease. Who knows what actually caused her death? Wikipedia only reports what is made known, not speculations.  Wylie pedia  @ 12:59, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Agree. Would need expert commentary. Bon courage (talk) 14:13, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Filmography items removed due to lack of citations
If anyone is interested in recovering any of these removed items by finding a source and adding the item plus a citation back into the article, here's the list:

Television

 * Mantrap (1971–1973)
 * Match Game (1977/PM) (1977)
 * Tattletales (1977)
 * Goodbye Charlie (1985)
 * The Simpsons – The Day the Violence Died (1996)
 * The Darklings (1999)
 * ShopNBC

Films

 * Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977) as Party Girl
 * Totally Minnie (1988, TV movie) as Director
 * The Nutty Professor (1996) as Thighmaster Lady on TV (uncredited)

also removed some verbiage about 1990 television stuff, but it didn't seem particularly necessary and it's pretty out of place, but I think it's possible that some of it could be reworked into a better introduction of the Step by Step material.

Daniel Quinlan (talk) 03:38, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Suzanne Somers


text:
Christian left

The Christian left is a range of Christian political and social movements that largely embrace social justice principles and uphold a social doctrine or social gospel based on their interpretation of the teachings of Christianity. Given the inherent diversity in international political thought, the term Christian left can have different meanings and applications in different countries. While there is much overlap, the Christian left is distinct from liberal Christianity, meaning not all Christian leftists are liberal Christians and vice versa.

In the United States, the Christian left usually aligns with modern liberalism and progressivism, using the social gospel to achieve better social and economic equality. Christian anarchism, Christian communism, and Christian socialism are subsets of the socialist Christian left. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of the Communist Manifesto, both had Christian upbringings; however, neither were devout Christians.

Terminology
As with any section within the left–right political spectrum, a label such as Christian left represents an approximation, including within it groups and persons holding many diverse viewpoints. The term left-wing might encompass a number of values, some of which may or may not be held by different Christian movements and individuals. As the unofficial title of a loose association of believers, it provides a clear distinction from the more commonly known Christian right, or religious right, and from its key leaders and political views. The Christian left does not hold the notion that left-leaning policies, whether economic or social, stand in apparent contrast to Christian beliefs.

The most common religious viewpoint that might be described as left-wing is social justice, or care for impoverished and oppressed minority groups. Supporters of this trend might encourage universal health care, welfare provisions, subsidized education, foreign aid, and affirmative action for improving the conditions of the disadvantaged. With values stemming from egalitarianism, adherents of the Christian left consider it part of their religious duty to take actions on behalf of the oppressed. Matthew 25:31–46, among other verses, is often cited to support this view. As nearly all major religions contain some kind of requirement to help others, adherents of various religions have cited social justice as a movement in line with their faith. The term social justice was coined in the 1840s by Luigi Taparelli, an Italian Catholic scholar of the Society of Jesus, who was inspired by the writings of Thomas Aquinas. The Christian left holds that social justice, renunciation of power, humility, forgiveness, and private observation of prayer (as in ) as opposed to publicly mandated prayer, are mandated by the Gospel. The Bible contains accounts of Jesus repeatedly advocating for the poor and outcast over the wealthy, powerful, and religious. The Christian left maintains that such a stance is relevant and important. Adhering to the standard of "turning the other cheek", which they believe supersedes the Old Testament law of "an eye for an eye", the Christian left sometimes hearkens towards pacifism in opposition to policies advancing militarism.

The medieval Waldensians sect had a leftist character. Some among the Christian left, as well as some non-religious socialists, find support for anarchism, communism, and socialism in the Gospels, for example Mikhail Gorbachev citing Jesus as "the first socialist". The Christian left is a broad category that includes Christian socialism, as well as Christians who would not identify themselves as socialists.

Early years
For much of the early history of anti-establishment leftist movements, such as socialism and communism, which was highly anti-clerical in the 19th century, some established churches were led by clergy who saw revolution as a threat to their status and power. The church was sometimes seen as part of the establishment. Revolutions in the United States, France and Russia were in part directed against the established churches, or rather their leading clergy, and instituted a separation of church and state.

In the 19th century, some writers and activists developed the school of thought of Christian socialism, which infused socialist principles into Christian theology and praxis. Early socialist thinkers such as Robert Owen, Henri de Saint-Simon based their theories of socialism upon Christian principles. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels reacted against these theories by formulating a secular theory of socialism in The Communist Manifesto.

Alliance of the left and Christianity
Starting in the late 19th century and early 20th century, some began to take on the view that genuine Christianity had much in common with a leftist perspective. From St. Augustine of Hippo's City of God through St. Thomas More's Utopia, major Christian writers had expounded upon views that socialists found agreeable. Of major interest was the extremely strong thread of egalitarianism in the New Testament. Other common leftist concerns such as pacifism, social justice, racial equality, human rights, and the rejection of excessive wealth are also expressed strongly in the Bible. In the late 19th century, the Social Gospel movement arose (particularly among some Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and Baptists in North America and Britain,) which attempted to integrate progressive and socialist thought with Christianity to produce a faith-based social activism, promoted by movements such as Christian socialism. In the United States during this period, Episcopalians and Congregationalists generally tended to be the most liberal, both in theological interpretation and in their adherence to the Social Gospel. In Canada, a coalition of liberal Congregationalists, Methodists, and Presbyterians founded the United Church of Canada, one of the first true Christian left denominations. Later in the 20th century, liberation theology was championed by such writers as Gustavo Gutierrez and Matthew Fox.

Christians and workers
To a significant degree, the Christian left developed out of the experiences of clergy who went to do pastoral work among the working class, often beginning without any social philosophy but simply a pastoral and evangelistic concern for workers. This was particularly true among the Methodists and Anglo-Catholics in England, Father Adolph Kolping in Germany and Joseph Cardijn in Belgium.

Christian left and campaigns for peace and human rights
Some Christian groups were closely associated with the peace movements against the Vietnam War as well as the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Religious leaders in many countries have also been on the forefront of criticizing any cuts to social welfare programs. In addition, many prominent civil rights activists were religious figures.

In the United States
In the United States, members of the Christian Left come from a spectrum of denominations: Peace churches, elements of the Protestant mainline churches, Catholicism, and some evangelicals.

Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesman and leader in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. Inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi, he led targeted, nonviolent resistance against Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination. In 1957, King and other civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group was created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct nonviolent protests in the service of civil rights reform. The group was inspired by the crusades of evangelist Billy Graham, who befriended King, as well as the national organizing of the group in Friendship, founded by King allies Stanley Levison and Ella Baker. King led the SCLC until his death. As a Christian minister, King's main influence was Jesus Christ and the Christian gospels, which he would almost always quote in his religious meetings, speeches at church, and in public discourses. King's faith was strongly based in Jesus' commandment of loving your neighbor as yourself, loving God above all, and loving your enemies, praying for them and blessing them. His nonviolent thought was also based in the injunction to turn the other cheek in the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus' teaching of putting the sword back into its place (Matthew 26:52). In his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail", King urged action consistent with what he describes as Jesus' "extremist" love, and also quoted numerous other Christian pacifist authors, which was very usual for him. In another sermon, he stated:"Before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the Gospel. This was my first calling and it still remains my greatest commitment. You know, actually all that I do in civil rights I do because I consider it a part of my ministry. I have no other ambitions in life but to achieve excellence in the Christian ministry. I don't plan to run for any political office. I don't plan to do anything but remain a preacher. And what I'm doing in this struggle, along with many others, grows out of my feeling that the preacher must be concerned about the whole man."

Jimmy Carter
From a young age, 39th U.S. president Jimmy Carter showed a deep commitment to Christianity. In 1942, Carter became a deacon and teaches Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia. At a private inauguration worship service, the preacher was Nelson Price, the pastor of Roswell Street Baptist Church of Marietta, Georgia. During his 1966 and 1970 Georgia gubernatorial campaigns, as well as his 1976 presidential campaign, Carter appealed largely to conservative Christian and rural voters. As president, Carter prayed several times a day, and professed that Jesus was the driving force in his life. Carter had been greatly influenced by a sermon he had heard as a young man. It asked, "If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?" In 2000, Carter severed his membership with the Southern Baptist Convention, saying the group's doctrines did not align with his Christian beliefs, while still a member of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. In 2007, together with former President Clinton, he founded the New Baptist Covenant organization for social justice.

Homosexuality
The Christian left generally approaches homosexuality differently from some other Christian political groups. This approach can be driven by focusing on issues differently despite holding similar religious views, or by holding different religious ideas. Those in the Christian left who have similar ideas as other Christian political groups but a different focus may view Christian teachings on certain issues, such as the Bible's prohibitions against killing or criticisms of concentrations of wealth, as far more politically important than Christian teachings on social issues emphasized by the religious right, such as opposition to homosexuality. Others in the Christian left have not only a different focus on issues from other Christian political groups, but different religious ideas as well.

For example, some members of the Christian left may consider discrimination and bigotry against homosexuals to be immoral, but they differ on their views towards homosexual sex. Some believe homosexual sex to be immoral but unimportant compared with issues relating to social justice, or even matters of sexual morality involving heterosexual sex. Others assert that some homosexual practices are compatible with the Christian life. Such members believe common biblical arguments used to condemn homosexuality are misinterpreted, and that biblical prohibitions of homosexual practices are actually against a specific type of homosexual sex act, i.e. pederasty, the sodomizing of young boys by older men. Thus, they hold biblical prohibitions to be irrelevant when considering modern same-sex relationships.

Consistent life ethic
A related strain of thought is the (Catholic and progressive evangelical) consistent life ethic, which sees opposition to capital punishment, militarism, euthanasia, abortion and the global unequal distribution of wealth as being related. It is an idea with certain concepts shared by Abrahamic religions as well as some Buddhists, Hindus, and members of other religions. The late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago developed the idea for the consistent life ethic in 1983. Sojourners is particularly associated with this strand of thought.

Liberation theology
Liberation theology is a theological tradition that emerged in the developing world, primarily in Latin America. Since the 1960s, Catholic thinkers have integrated left-wing thought and Catholicism, giving rise to Liberation theology. It arose at a time when Catholic thinkers who opposed the despotic leaders in Southern and Central America allied themselves with the communist opposition. However, it developed independently of and roughly simultaneously with Black theology in the U.S. and should not be confused with it. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith decided that while liberation theology is partially compatible with Catholic social teaching, certain Marxist elements of it, such as the doctrine of perpetual class struggle, are against Church teachings.

Political parties

 * Democratic Party (Italy) (Christian left factions)
 * Democratic Centre (Italy)
 * Christian Democracy (Greece)
 * Christian Social Party (Switzerland) (Catholic)
 * Political Party of Radicals and Evangelical People's Party (merged into the Dutch GroenLinks)
 * Christian Democratic Party (Uruguay)
 * Christian Democratic Party (Chile)
 * Citizen Left Party (Chile)
 * Sandinista National Liberation Front (Nicaragua)
 * Labour Party (UK) (Christians on the Left faction, formerly the Christian Socialist Movement)
 * Socialdemocrats for Faith and Solidarity (a Swedish religious organization in the Social Democrats)
 * Solidary Democracy (Italy)
 * Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (merged into New Democratic Party of Canada)
 * American Solidarity Party (economic left)
 * Prohibition Party (economic left)
 * Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland (agrarian and nationalist Christian left)
 * Humanist Democratic Centre (had a Christian Left faction)

Early Christianity

 * Christian anarchism
 * Christian communism

Movements
A number of movements of the past had similarities to today's Christian left:
 * Anabaptists
 * Fifth Monarchists, Diggers, Quakers
 * Heretical movements such as the Cathars
 * Liberation theology
 * Lollard
 * Peace churches
 * German Peasants' War
 * Role of Christians in the Peasants' Revolt in England, see Lollard priest John Ball
 * Waldenses
 * Jesus movement
 * Unitarianism
 * Universalism

Groups

 * Catholic Worker Movement
 * Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
 * Congregationalists
 * Emergent Church
 * Episcopal Church (United States)
 * Progressive National Baptist Convention
 * United Church of Christ
 * Seventh-day Adventist Church

Other

 * Christian democracy
 * Christian libertarianism
 * Christian pacifism
 * Christian politics
 * Christian socialism
 * Evangelical left
 * Homosexuality and Christianity
 * International League of Religious Socialists
 * Jewish left
 * Left-wing populism
 * Liberal Christianity
 * Pacifism
 * Political Catholicism
 * Progressive Christianity
 * Progressive Muslim vote
 * Religion and abortion
 * Religious communism
 * Religious socialism
 * Religious Society of Friends
 * Social Gospel
 * Spiritual left

title: Christian left


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Communist Party of Spain

The Communist Party of Spain (Partido Comunista de España; PCE) is a communist party that, since 1986, has been part of the United Left coalition, which is currently part of Sumar. Two of its politicians are Spanish government ministers: Yolanda Díaz (Minister of Labour and Social Economy) and Sira Rego (Minister of Youth and Children).

The PCE was founded by 1921, after a split in the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español; PSOE). The PCE was founded by those who opposed the social democratic wing of the PSOE, because the social democrat wing did not support the PSOE's integration in the Communist International founded by Vladimir Lenin two years prior. The PCE was a merger of the Spanish Communist Party (Partido Comunista Español) and the Spanish Communist Workers' Party (Partido Comunista Obrero Español). The PCE was first legalized after the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in April 1931. The republic was the first democratic regime in the history of Spain. The PCE gained much support in the months before the Spanish coup of July 1936, which marked the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, and it was a major force during the war as well. The Republicans lost, and Franco established a military dictatorship, under which the PCE was one of the most heavily repressed parties, with specific laws banning communist parties, among others.

Under the dictatorship, the PCE was the main opposition to the Francoist dictatorship. In the early years of the dictatorship, many PCE members joined the Spanish Maquis, a group of guerrillas who fought against the regime. Years later, the Maquis' power declined, and the PCE abandoned the military strategy. Instead, it chose to interfere in the only legal syndicate (which was part of the Francoist apparatus), the Vertical Syndicate.

Franco died on 20 November 1975, and two days later, Juan Carlos I was crowned. Juan Carlos I would lead the Spanish transition to democracy, a time when the PCE became also extremely relevant, due to Franco's anti-communist legacy. Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez legalized the PCE on 9 April 1977, a decision which was particularly controversial, but ended peacefully. The PCE largely contributed to the restoration of democracy in Spain during the lead of Secretary-General Santiago Carrillo.

Since 1986, it is part of the United Left coalition. In its statutes, the PCE defines its goals as "democratically participate in a revolutionary transformation of society and its political structures, overcoming the capitalist system and constructing socialism in the Spanish State, as a contribution to the transition to socialism worldwide, with our goals set in the realization of the emancipating ideal of communism". It defines itself as revolutionary, internationalist, solidarity, republican, feminist, and secularist, specifically, of the laïcité variety.

The youth organization of PCE is the Communist Youth Union of Spain. PCE publishes Mundo Obrero (Workers World) monthly.

Establishment and pre-republican era
The PCE was the result of a merger between two organizations: the original Spanish Communist Party (Partido Comunista Español or PCE) and the Spanish Communist Workers' Party (Partido Comunista Obrero Español or PCOE). The former was created in April 1920 from portions of the Socialists' youth organization (Federación de Juventudes Socialistas or FJS) while the latter had been formed from a union of dissident Socialists (terceristas) and members of the General Union of Workers (Unión General de Trabajadores or UGT) who regarded the original PCE as not properly representative of the working class.

The two parties joined in the new Partido Comunista de España on 14 November 1921. The unified PCE became a member of the Third International and held its first congress in Sevilla in March 1922. In May, Jules Humbert-Droz, the top Comintern official in Western Europe, arrived in Spain to supervise the still fractious party and would continue to do so until the establishment of the republic.

By the end of 1922, the party had approximately 5,000 members. The PCE's left-wing engaged in political violence, especially in Bilbao, largely directed against other leftists. A party leader's bodyguard shot and killed a Socialist in November 1922 and organized party militants attempted a general strike in August 1923 that ended in a shootout at the barricaded party headquarters, resulting in twenty communists dead or injured and another seventy arrested.

With the advent of the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera in September 1923, political parties, including the PCE, were repressed and rendered largely powerless though not dissolved. The party continued to publish its weekly newspaper La Antorcha until 1927. In November 1925, PCE leaders joined with Comintern officials and leaders of the Catalan-separatist Estat Català in endorsing a revolutionary program calling for the following:
 * Abolition of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship and of the monarchy,
 * Creation of a república federativa popular (federal popular republic),
 * Recognition of independence for Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Morocco,
 * Total freedom of association,
 * Expropriation of large estates and distribution of land to peasants,
 * Organization of workers' councils in industry,
 * Formation of a central committee for revolution consisting of representatives from several parties as well as a military committee, and
 * A planned insurrection in Madrid.

However, Moscow urged a cautious approach, and the CNT and Basque nationalists were reluctant to cooperate with communists, so the plans were never carried out. The PCE continued to suffer from repression and dissension. The party's second secretary general, José Bullejos, purged the party of politically suspect members, and was himself arrested in 1928. In 1930, the arguments over doctrine led the Catalan-Balearic Communist Federation (FCCB) to break from the party and associate with the International Right Opposition. Amid this infighting, Comintern official Dmitry Manuilsky reportedly stated that, while Spain had "an excellent proletariat", it had only "a few little groups, but not a communist party".

Thus, the PCE was in a very debilitated state when the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed in 1931. On 3 December 1933 the first PCE parliamentarian, Cayetano Bolívar Escribano, was elected. Bolívar was jailed at the time of elections and left imprisonment to occupy his post in the parliament.

Popular Front and Civil War
PCE was a small party during the initial years of the Republic, until it began to grow due to the victory of the Popular Front (of which the Communists had been a constituent part) in February 1936 and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in July of that year. The PCE, directed by José Díaz and Dolores Ibárruri (known popularly as La Pasionaria), worked consistently for the victory of the Republican forces and the Popular Front government, but was wary of the social revolution that was being waged by Spanish workers. The PCE leadership judged that while progressive laws could be passed, an attempt at a full-scale socialist revolution would needlessly divide the forces of the Republic. It would cause massive conflict behind republican lines, thus diverting military forces from the battle against Franco and driving many democratic republicans who were prepared to fight against the rebels into the arms of the rebels.

Being a well-knit and highly disciplined organization, the PCE could in spite of its numerical weakness play an important part in the war. In the first five months of the war, PCE grew from 30,000 members to 100,000. It also founded a Spanish branch of the International Red Aid, which assisted the Republican cause considerably.

In 1936, due to the special political situation in Catalonia, Partit Comunista de Catalunya (the Catalan branch of PCE) was separated from the party to fuse with other socialists to form Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya. Since then the PCE does not have an organization in Catalonia, but relies on a regional referent party. This set-up has been imitated by many of the communist splinter groups in Spain.

Resistance and reorientation
After the Republican defeat in April 1939, the PCE was persecuted by the Nationales of caudillo Francisco Franco (1939–1975), although maintained the best organization among the opposition parties inside Spain. During the initial years of the Francoist State, PCE organized guerrilla struggles in some parts of the country.

A large part of the party membership was forced into exile. Some PCE members went to the Soviet Union and fought as volunteers for the Red Army during the Second World War, such as General Enrique Líster. A large section of PCE members were based in France, where a major party organization was set up. During the later half of the Franco years, PCE changed its strategy and started organizing Workers' Commissions (CC.OO.) within the official trade union apparatus. CC.OO. and PCE gained strength and became the backbone of the opposition forces in the country.

Dolores Ibárruri, "La Pasionaria", a dedicated follower of consequent Comintern policies, replaced Jose Diaz as General Secretary in 1944, and held the position until 1960. Santiago Carrillo was General Secretary from 1960 to 1982. In 1963, after the Communist Party of Spain abandoned the armed struggle, hard-line Communists, led by Julio Álvarez del Vayo, founded the Spanish National Liberation Front (FELN), a small splinter group.

Carrillo put the party on a eurocommunist course, distancing it from its Leninist origins. Carrillo accepted concessions to the "bourgeoisie", accepting the restoration of a liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy. This was regarded by many Party members as treason, for these concessions were made to classes the Party's doctrine called "exploiters".

Communists played a fundamental role in the 1962 miners' strike, the first large-scale social movement since the end of the civil war, by putting their informal networks at its service, but also by involving their exiled activists to organize international solidarity. At the peak of the mobilization, more than 60,000 workers stopped work. A first breach in the edifice of Franco's dictatorship, which had ruled the country for more than twenty years.

Transition to democracy
The Party was legalized after the January 1977 Atocha massacre, on 9 April 1977, as one of the last steps in the Spanish transition to democracy. Only weeks after the legalization, PCE had over 200,000 card-holding members. But the concessions made by Carrillo (labelled "revisionist" by his orthodox communist opponents) and the social democratization of the party under his leadership provoked dissent amongst party ranks. Several party members left the party. Enrique Líster broke away in 1973 and formed the Partido Comunista Obrero Español. Other more radical left-wing groups that broke away were Partido Comunista de los Trabajadores (formed by the Left Opposition of PCE in 1977) and PCE (VIII-IX Congresos) (formed in 1971).

In the first elections after the transition in 1977, the PCE obtained 9% of the votes, and in 1979 it increased its vote share to 11%. By this time, however, the party had become increasingly divided into three currents. Carrillo's supporters were squeezed between, on the one hand, pro-soviet communists who had remained within the party and felt his Eurocommunist course took the party too far on a social democratic path and, on the other hand, "renovators" who advocated for democratizing the party and opening it up towards more collaboration with other groups on the left. In the midst of successive waves of expulsions of members who belonged to the minority currents, the PCE suffered an electoral defeat in 1982, getting just 4% of the vote.

Divisions in the party, collaboration with other groups in the United Left
After the 1982 elections, Carrillo was removed as general secretary, and the new party leader Gerardo Iglesias pursued a strategy of leftist convergence and collaboration with non-communist parties and social movements. Over the objections of Carrillo, who was expelled in 1985 and went on to found a new party and warn that supporting IU was tantamount to "burying communism", the PCE developed the "United Left" alliance Izquierda Unida (IU). This broad coalition initially encompassed parties ranging from the pro-Soviet PCPE to the socialist PASOC, the Progressive Federation, and the Carlist Party.

Despite its role in the anti-NATO protests of 1986, IU fared weakly in the 1986 elections, and by 1988, the Communist Party elected Julio Anguita as new General Secretary, which he remained until 1998. Under Anguita, the party took a turn towards the left and fundamental opposition to both PSOE and PP, and many of the members who had previously been expelled for pro-Soviet views returned to the party. By 1991, the party had 70,000 members, and IU rebounded in the 1989 elections, winning 9.1% of the vote that year and slightly increasing it to 9.6% in 1993 and 10.5% in 1996.

Notably, PSUC, the Catalan referent of PCE, did not reverse its eurocommunist course in the late 1980s, as the PCE had done, and gradually, PSUC and PCE grew apart. Finally, PSUC decided to dissolve itself into Iniciativa per Catalunya, and cease to function as a communist party. This provoked a 45% minority to break-away and form PSUC viu (Living PSUC). Since 1998, PSUC viu (United and Alternative Left) is the referent of PCE in Catalonia. After Anguita's retirement, and succession by Francisco Frutos, the PCE again modified its course. Frutos led IU into the election of 2000, after signing an electoral pact with PSOE, only to see the IU vote halved to 4%. He was then himself defeated when running to become the new IU coordinator by Gaspar Llamazares, who pursued a course of further rapprochement with PSOE. Tensions within IU grew when Llamazares was re-elected as IU coordinator in 2004 with a plurality of the vote against the candidate who was supported by the PCE leadership, Enrique Santiago. He again defeated a PCE candidate in an IU leadership primary in 2007. The alliance suffered more disappointing election results (4-5% in 2004 and 2008). By 2009, PCE membership was down to 20,000.

After the 2008 election, Llamazares resigned as IU coordinator, and later that year, PCE politician Cayo Lara was elected to replace him on the platform "For an anti-capitalist, republican, federal, and alternative United Left". IU shifted back towards a more confrontational attitude towards the PSOE, and José Luis Centella succeeded Frutos as PCE general secretary the next year. For the 2015 elections, IU joined up with further partners in the Popular Unity (UP) alliance, led by PCE politician Alberto Garzón. It received 4% of the vote, and was eclipsed by the new left-wing party Podemos. UP subsequently joined with Podemos in the Unidos Podemos alliance, which received 21% of the vote in the 2016 election. The PCE, meanwhile, moved in its XX Congress in 2017 to explicitly embrace Marxism–Leninism again, marking a break with the previous forty years.

Federations of the PCE
The PCE consists of 15 federations:
 * Communist Party of Andalusia
 * Communist Party of Aragon
 * Communist Party of Asturias
 * Communist Party of the Balearic Islands
 * Communist Party of the Canaries
 * Communist Party of Cantabria
 * Communist Party of Castile-La Mancha
 * Communist Party of Castile-León
 * Communist Party of the Basque Country
 * Communist Party of Extremadura
 * Communist Party of Galicia
 * Communist Party of Madrid
 * Communist Party of the Region of Murcia
 * Communist Party of La Rioja
 * Communist Party of the Valencian Country

PSUC viu participates in PCE congresses, etc., as a PCE federation.

title: Communist Party of Spain


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Talk:ITU-R

I have absouloutly no idea what this is? -fonzy

 * A little better? -- sannse 16:23 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes it is, thankyou :-). -fonzy

CCIR Doesn't CCIR stand for "Comité consultatif international des radiocommunications" instead of "Comité consultatif international pour la radio"? See French Wikipedia article.

What to the letters "BT" stand for in the "recommendation"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.62.172.170 (talk) 04:39, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

title: Talk:ITU-R


text:
Wikipedia:Researching Wikipedia

Researching Wikipedia (formerly known as State of Wikipedia) discusses some ways to quantitatively measure various aspects of Wikipedia project as well as covers research done in that area. The subject is difficult, as there are different goals that Wikipedia may have, and different ways of measuring achievement of those goals.

Raw numbers
A hard way of measuring success is to count the number of articles in Wikipedia. This information can be found on the Statistics page. A problem with just counting the number of articles is, what is an "article"? A large percentage of our "articles" may be extremely short stubs, or even just consist of uncaught vandalism. mergeing stubby articles leads to fewer, better articles, without losing any content. A more accurate measure of the size of Wikipedia is the number of characters or words in articles. Wikipedia as of October 2006 had 1.4 million articles with an average length of 3,300 characters.

Such a measurement gives no indication of the quality of content. It is much more difficult to estimate the number of good, useful, accurate, or balanced articles in Wikipedia. For this, we may only take into account articles that have been in some way assessed, either as "featured", "good", "A-" or "B-Class" articles. As of February 2007, one in ca. 550 articles on Wikipedia is either "featured" or "good".

One way to think about the Statistics page is to consider it a measure of Wikipedia's success as a project rather than as a reference work. Since it is a project for producing a reference work (with community building being a side effect, not a secondary goal), assessment of success of the project will be directly tied to assessment of the reference work.

Relevance to the Web
Another way to consider Wikipedia success is to ask how relevant Wikipedia's information is to the World Wide Web. How many hits per day does the Wikipedia site receive? How many readers come from Google? Which pages have high Google PageRank?

A measure of Wikipedia's popularity is provided by its entry on Alexa which shows its web traffic rankings.

One measure that's valuable, but difficult to automate, is to consider Top 10 Google hits. Of the subjects already in Wikipedia, how many are good enough references that they get high page ranking at Google?

Yet another measurement might involve the number of, or degree to which, other sites use Wikipedia's content. The fact that a number of other sites trust the accuracy of Wikipedia's content is a strong indicator of its success.

Coverage
Another axis to consider is Wikipedia coverage. Coverage is a measure of how much of the information we need in Wikipedia is already there. How well does Wikipedia "cover" the range of knowledge that it should?

One way to think of coverage is to imagine some kind of "endpoint" in the future – Edit Zero – where all the information that's Wikipedia-worthy is in the system. At that point, the work of Wikipedians will change from writing about existing subjects, to adding articles about new subjects as new people, events, countries, awards ceremonies, species, albums, books, and planets come into being. A measure of Wikipedia's current coverage would be to measure how many of the articles in that imagined encyclopedia already exist in some useful form.

This is, in most ways, an immeasurable metric. We don't know how many articles will be in Wikipedia at Edit Zero, so we can't know what percentage of those we already have. The best we can hope to do is approximate the "real" coverage metric with some ad hoc measurements.

Some proposed approximations:

 * Of the entries in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, how many have corresponding Wikipedia articles? (Totally crude, but if we were back in 1911, wouldn't we want to have at least as much knowledge as the EB? Close to it?)
 * What percentage of Wikipedia searches come up empty? (This would measure what percentage of things Wikipedia readers think should be in the system are already there.)
 * Of the internal links inside Wikipedia, what percentage point nowhere? How many have non-stub articles at the endpoint? (This would measure what percentage of things Wikipedia authors think should be in the system are already there.)

Note that the Edit Zero model is simplistic in expecting the number of Wikipedia-worthy articles to converge at some point in the future.

List of conducted studies and other resources
Wikipedia (primarily) and other Wikimedia projects are increasingly generating research concerned with studying phenomena responsible for their functioning. Some of that research has been published in professional academic journals, or presented at conferences: see Academic studies of Wikipedia.

However a significant number of other inquiries are not published in such journals, and as a result, Wikipedia namespace on Wikipedia, as well as some pages on our Meta wiki and likely on other projects has been increasingly filled with such short research papers, essays and other resources. meta:Research is the place where such research is supposed to be coordinated, but in fact majority of tools and papers can be found on English Wikipedia. Below is a guide to those resources.

Category:Wikipedia statistics
Note 1: Most interesting and more-or-less up-to-date projects are bolded.

Note 2: Graphs, charts and such should be added to Category:Wikipedia charts

Keywords:
 * Editors: about editors
 * Users: about users
 * Articles: about articles
 * Technical: technical aspects of the projects (software, code...)

Category:Wikipedia resources for researchers
Category description:

This category aims to include resources for researchers in two capacities: We are interested in the 2nd subcategory which surprisingly has very few pages.
 * 1) . Using Wikipedia as a research tool (see Researching with Wikipedia)
 * 2) . About Wikipedia as a research subject (see Research)

Category:Wikipedia tools
The following tools are useful for research/stats analysis of Wikipedia and related projects.

title: Wikipedia:Researching Wikipedia


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Talk:Bidirectional text

vertical
What about mixing top/bottom and l/r or r/l on the same page? Somewhere, I think I remember reading something about this... does anyone know the details?

 * CJK are the only languages I know that can be written vertically. CJK are traditionally written in columns from right to left. This vertical writing is not a requirement, so they are often display horizontally from left to right.
 * When you purchase CJK fonts, most fonts come w/a vertical variation (name of the vertical variation would start with @ symbol). They are the same glyphs but rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise.  It is not meant to be read on screen, because you will have to tilt your head 90 degrees to read it.  These rotated fonts are for printing.  When you print, the text will come out vertically.
 * I know there are better implimentation of this in CSS for screen display, but I haven't seen any site using it except for demonstartion. --Voidvector 08:40, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

 * Yokogaki and tategaki touches on the subject of vertical and horizontal writing in CJK (but mostly J). —Tokek 06:37, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

What tools Wiki provide for bi-directional text ?
I am very interested to know what tools are there for making the edit pages bi-directional. That is to provide a facility in the form of a button, so the user can choose which direction he/she is going to write. Any one knows where or how this can be done? Mehrdad 03:29, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

 * As far as I know, bi-directional support is handled by the browser (client-side), not wiki server (server-side). If your browser supports bi-directional text, then the text would be displayed correctly, otherwise, no luck.--Voidvector 19:29, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

 * The statement about the Hebrew text rendering wrong in some browsers seems like incorrect "Original Research" to me. The ordering issue isn't about characters, but text orientation and text within controls.  ABC encapsulated in P tags isn't going to render CBA, but is it [ABC  ] or [  ABC].  Whether it is CBA is about whether or not you typed CBA or ABC.  Secondly within input boxes and others it is about whether when I hit A it goes: [A     ] or [     A] and when I hit B does it go [AB    ] or [    BA].  This: http://www.i18nguy.com/markup/right-to-left.html is a good explanation completed by this: http://www.i18nguy.com/MiddleEastUI.html.  Reboot (talk) 19:09, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

"Bidi" as printing term
This article mentions the term 'bidi' for bidirectional (of texts that include multiple scripts written in more than one direction). It is also (perhaps only historically now) a term for e.g. dot-matrix printers that can print more quickly by placing ink onto the page whichever way the print head is moving (i.e. not just printing left to right and then "inklessly" moving back to the left-hand side). Since "bidi" redirects here, should there be some sort of disambiguation page dealing with this sense? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.131.102.65 (talk) 21:38, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Unicode logical store vs presentational rendering
The article says, "In Unicode encoding, all non-punctuation characters are stored in writing order." This is not true: text in the Indic ranges is stored in pronunciation order, with the rendering system responsible for rearranging glyphs as the orthography demands.

Section 9.1 of the Unicode Standard 4.0 says:

The orthographic syllable is built up of alphabetic pieces, the actual letters of the Devanagari script. These pieces consist of three distinct character types: consonant letters, independent vowels, and dependent vowel signs. In a text sequence, these characters are stored in logical (phonetic) order. (page 220)

Additionally, a few Devanagari characters cause a change in the order of the displayed characters. This reordering is not commonly seen in non-Indic scripts and occurs independently of any bidirectional character reordering that might be required. (page 220)

The greatest variation among different Indic scripts is found in the way that the dependent vowels are applied to base letterforms. Devanagari has a collection of nonspacing dependent vowel signs that may appear above or below a consonant letter, as well as spacing dependent vowel signs that may occur to the right or to the left of a consonant letter or consonant cluster. Other Indic scripts generally have one or more of these forms, but what is a nonspacing mark in one script may be a spacing mark in another. Also, some of the Indic scripts have single dependent vowels that are indicated by two or more glyph components—and those glyph components may surround a consonant letter both to the left and right or may occur both above and below it. The Devanagari script has only one character denoting a left-side dependent vowel sign: U+093F DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN I. Other Indic scripts either have no such vowel signs (Telugu and Kannada) or include as many as three of these signs (Bengali, Tamil, and Malayalam). (page 220)

Because Devanagari and other Indic scripts have some dependent vowels that must be depicted to the left side of their consonant letter, the software that renders the Indic scripts must be able to reorder elements in mapping from the logical (character) store to the presentational (glyph) rendering. For example, if Cn denotes the nominal form of consonant C, and Vvs denotes a left-side dependent vowel sign form of vowel V, then a reordering of glyphs with respect to encoded characters occurs as just shown. (page 228)

Anyone want to edit the article to allow for the above without straying from the scope of the article? Christian Campbell (talk) 01:57, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

҉
The section “҉” is not about that Unicode code point. It's about a sort of parlour trick where invisible Unicode characters make text display backwards. It deserves perhaps one sentence in this article, if an actual reference can be found. —Michael Z. 2008-05-29 00:54 z

 * And should we delete the entire article about bi-directional text because no suitable references have yet been found? Your indiscriminate attitude towards this article (and the previous article ҉ ) is detrimental to Wikipedia as a whole. We should encourage the citation of proper references, not the deletion of anything and everything that dare encroach on your "territory" that you deem unimportant. StarburstCreator (talk) 11:45, 29 May 2008 (UTC)StarburstCreator

 * Would please explain why this is important? That it "it slipped out into the World of Warcraft messageboards, after which it exploded, so to speak" doesn't make it notable.  I have never heard of this, apart from your addition to Wikipedia.  Since you are taking credit for popularizing this "meme", you appear to be a one-issue editor tooting your own horn (see WP:SOAP).

 * We should delete trivia with no notability and unsupported by verifiable references in reliable sources. —Michael Z. 2008-05-29 15:15 z

 * You have never heard of this? Is that now the sole criteria for what does and does not belong in Wikipedia? The majority of article you have contributed to or created are subjects that I have never heard of, and after a quick scan, a large number of them do not cite their sources either. And yet, I am not arrogant enough to assume that because I have no interest in the subject, that it is not notable enough Wikipedia.

 * And as for being a "one-issue editor", every editor starts out as a one-issue editor. Your clique-ish, discriminatory view towards editors who do not contribute the same vast volumes that you do is detrimental to Wikipedia. As I have stated multiple times, the correct attitude is to improve on articles that need citation, not delete every article that you don't find engrossing. Otherwise, Wikipedia would consist solely of Cyrillic miscellanea. StarburstCreator (talk) 17:25, 29 May 2008 (UTC)StarburstCreator

 * The Internet meme thing is possibly of relevance to articles on internet memes or possibly some modernization of ASCII_Art#Unicode. It just isn't of great relevance to an article about bidirection text.  It depends on how widespread it is.  (Which I cannot say).  I can say with great authority it is not in at least 99.99999% of all bidirection text printed or electronic.  Therefore it is irrelevant to this article on both policy and logical grounds.  There really should be a master article on electronic text art and references to unicode art and ascii art and ebdic art or whatever and links down from there.  Perhaps you can contribute it in those places?  Reboot (talk) 19:57, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Strong vs Weak characters
The article confuses 'weak' (numbers, mainly) with 'neutral' (punctuation and symbols) characters. The specification is here: http://unicode.org/reports/tr9/

Weak characters are sequenced together, but don't affect neutrals and can be embedded in runs of strong characters without breaking those runs. Neutral characters are sequenced within runs according to the direction of that run, or by the overall document order when they sit on the edge of a run. Iamcal (talk) 22:36, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Unicode for "TM" seems wrong
The Unicode U+8482 for symbol TM as mentioned seems wrong.

I convert it to decimal (3392), and use "&#3392 ;" in a html file, then it display an unknow symbol (ീ) in my browser.

AFAIK, both U+E150 and U+E143 are for TM symbol.

For example, H E150 == D 57680, and "&#57680 ;" display as: .--Lovelywcm (talk) 00:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

 * 8482 is the correct decimal code for TM, hexa being 2122. E143 and E150 are in a 'private use' section, meaning that there is no guarantee that these would display this sign in all situation. Clpda (talk) 20:02, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Top-Heavy article
This article is quite good in terms of content. Thank you to all those involved in writing it. But it is a bit top-heavy. Most of the content is in the introductory paragraph, before the table of contents. The opposite should be true. Introductory sections are important, for example for mobile platforms such as cell phones and PDAs where the rest of the article might not be loaded until explicitly requested. But they should be a few paragraph long rather than an entire screen. May I recommend then to summarize the current content into a couple of paragraphs and move the rest under the Table of Content, possibly breaking it down in a couple of subsections? -- manu3d (talk) 12:08, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

category for languages written in right-to-left scripta
see 000745. Best regards ·לערי ריינהארט·T·m:Th·T·email me· 22:31, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

TM-example not convincing
The Tm-example (trade mark sign) is not convincing, since the single character wil not change an 'order' with vs. without the formatting character. -DePiep (talk) 08:53, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Web standards
In analogy to the Unicode section, there should be a Web standards section. AFAIK there are the CSS  and   properties, the HTML   attribute and the HTML   and   elements.--88.73.48.106 (talk) 12:51, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal: RLM into LRM
Proposed: merge bidi Right-to-left mark (RLM) into LRM article. See: Talk:Left-to-right mark. -DePiep (talk) 21:45, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Eastern Arabic Numerals
Editor BIL added the line, Eastern Arabic numerals are written left-to-right, and if they are considered part of Arabic script, then Arabic script can written in both directions. The problem with this statement is the hidden Western bias in assuming that numbers written in the decimal system are "properly" read from the element with the highest order of magnitude to the one with the lowest. There's no particular mathematical reason for this convention, and in fact the linked article on Eastern Arabic numerals explicitly states, ''Numbers are traditionally read with the smallest element first (e.g., "four-and-twenty" instead of "twenty-four"). Written numerals are arranged with their lowest-value digit to the right, with higher value positions added to the left. This is identical to the arrangement used by Western texts using Western Arabic numerals, even though Arabic script is read from right to left.'' Thus this is not an example of bidirectional text, and I have accordingly removed it from the article. JudahH (talk) 14:18, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * One can read (speak) "four-and-twenty", and still write "24" (in Eastern Arabic: ٢٤, correct?). In bidi text, the writing is what it is about. So, since the numeric value "24" is written →"24" or →"٢٤", (presenting the numeric decimal value 24), it is a L-to-R direction. In surrounding Arabic regular text (R-to-L), this an alteration, and therefor is bi-directional writing. The text could be back in then. -DePiep (talk) 23:39, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * What makes you say that the numeric value "24" is written →"24"? Is there something about the number that implies an order? Using "24" to denote "two tens and four ones" (or "four ones and two tens") implies a correlation between "left/right" and "larger order of magnitude/smaller order of magnitude"; neither of these inherently implies anything about "first/second". JudahH (talk) 00:59, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Since we are talking EA numerals, well that is what the article (and its picture) says: "Written numerals are arranged with their lowest-value digit to the right" (i.e. the four in 24). So, it is the decimal-radix system we know well, only the individual digit faces (glyphs) are changed: 2=٢. From there on: of course within a decimal number the order is important. It says which is the tenners (2) and the one'rs (4). The counted value of "24 sheep" would change if it is reversed. In Unicode this is shown by the character properties "Numeric type" and "numeric value", which is "Decimal" and "2" in both examples. (If it were a fancy numerical system like Roman Numerals, they would not be "Decimal"). So far about the numbering system.
 * Now there could be a EA numbers writing rule that says: "write the sequence R-to-L" to describe our 24 sheep: ٢٤←. If this rule exists, I would be wrong: because then between Arabic text the number does not change diretionality of the text, the whole would be single-directonality. I have not found this rule, and the article doesn'says different.
 * Now there is one big confusing aspect that makes bidi writing so difficult to understand: it is not about the "speaking direction". That does not exist: a radio transmitting say in Arabic and then in German will produce one single "direction" (time sequence): second 1 to 2 to 10 for each language. Even browser technology uses, confusingly, "Arabic language" to get a R-to-L effect, instead of "Arabic script". To add to this confusion ;-) Your example of spoken language translates nicely into German: "Es gibs vier-und-zwanzig (24) Schafe". So the pronounciation says "four" first, while the actual number is not changed in translation (we are still looking at the same flock of sheep). And the "vier" and "zwanzig" are written in straight L-to-R order (no bidi in German then, all is L-to-R). -DePiep (talk) 10:05, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * [O]f course within a decimal number the order is important. It says which is the tenners (2) and the one'rs (4):
 * With all due respect, I think you're missing my point, DePiep. Within a decimal number, left-right orientation is important, saying which place is the tens, which is the ones, etc. I'm saying that left-right orientation is not the same thing as "order". In "24", the rightmost digit stands for the ones' place, the next-to-rightmost digit stands for the tens' place. Which of those digits is written first? Well, that depends on whether you're writing from right to left or from left to right, doesn't it?

 * Here's what I think the key question is: would an Arabic writer setting down the number "24" (or "٢٤") naturally switch the direction of his writing to write the number from left to right, setting down the 2 first, or would he continue going from right to left, setting down the 4 first? Not being an Arabic speaker, I don't know the answer to that, but I don't see a reason to assume that he would change directions when he got to numerals.

 * You and BIL have mentioned text editors and Unicode, which may be a different story. If most (or all?) text editors using Unicode treat (Eastern) Arabic numerals as having a left-to-right orientation, I can see how that might be worth adding to the article, but in that case, I think it should be made clear that we're talking about text that's treated as bidirectional in a standard text editor, as opposed to something that's inherent in Arabic script. JudahH (talk) 16:21, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, so it is about entering sequence (typing sequence). I don't do R-to-L scripts (Hebrew, Arab), but if I'm correct this is how it works in a modern browser: of one enters Arabic text, andthen starts typing a (decimal) number, one types →24 and the browser puts them in the right order. So in the process, one sees the "4" being put in place between the earlier text and the (already present) "2". Then entering a space and more regular Arabic text, this is added to the left of the "24". I do not think that one has to reorder the sequence yourself, nor change any direction. The browser does that for you. The same can be said about entering telephone numbers, right? One spells, reads, phone-typing-enters, and writes telephone numbers always in one same sequence. Even in handwriting. Since they are decimal numbers (could be EA?), the browser knows how to handle that. -DePiep (talk) 17:07, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Your last point here: I am not that sure about reentering the text in the page (don't know if it is in the right context and the 2nd part is dubious), but I do think it is correct. -DePiep (talk) 17:07, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
 * This is mainly a technical article, not so much a lingustic one. If the Eastern Arabic numerals are entered through keyboard and stored left-to-right, then they are considered left-to-right from technical point of view. In my editor, an arabic text with an Eastern Arabic number in it is stepped through right-to-left, except that the number is stepped through left-to-right. --BIL (talk) 11:06, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

 * Agree, bidi text is a technical topic. Although the page title does not say so, bidi writing is mainly an Unicode issue, which browsers use as a standard. Unicode describes & defines it in UAX#9 "Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm". One of the first things to know: the logical sequence of characters, aka memory representation, is allways L-to-R and does not change (most likely that is also the sequence of entering characters, and the sequence that is saved in a file). The browser does this: it adds a presentation sequence of characters parallel to that memory sequence. In that sequence, all the bidi-rules are applied (e.g. an Arab text string is inversed, R-to-L). Then this presentation sequence is fed to the screen for showing. Still, the memory sequence is unchanged.
 * I thought I was supporting part of your edit (although I cannot understand or support the part that says "Arabic text may be L-to-R too").
 * If you mean to say "keyboard entering sequence can be L-to-R", this is confusing (and wrong): the entering sequence is a time sequence (and is put directly in the memory sequence I mentioned). Just think of what you would type with your eyes closed, or when spelling it through a telephone: would you have to care about direction? No. As for your what you see in your edit screen: that is the browser (or text editor) at work: it already has done its job getting the presentation sequence right, and shows it. -DePiep (talk) 11:30, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Correct. This is called endianness, and is an important part of computer science. While Arabic numerals always have the big side on the left, the endianness depends on the direction of reading.Scientus (talk) 18:23, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Article title
Wikipedia has an article entitled "Bidirectional" with no hyphen, and that spelling seems consistent with predominant usage. Should the title of this article be modified accordingly? Matchups 14:18, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Agree. Both Unicode and W3C (following Unicode)  do not use the hyphen (and no capital either, btw). These two are the major standards for electronic text processing. -DePiep (talk) 15:24, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

weak part is incorrect
Firefox on Linux doesn't work the way the text describes (and probably ever other OS): "حج6341" does not show the year as "1436". The text is just completely WRONG to current implementations, and could never be implemented as written as it would contradict current practice.Scientus (talk) 18:24, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

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Requested move 16 October 2019

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Bidirectional text per WP:NCCPT. Those who favor the hyphen are free to start a new RM, but the original proposal did not include it, and a move to Bi-directional text has been disputed. No such user (talk) 11:44, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Bidirectional Text → Bidirectional text – This is not a proper noun. — Eru·tuon 16:58, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Speedy move per WP:NCCPT.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 19:42, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Speedy move, was also moved from "Bi-directional text" in July. – Thjarkur (talk) 16:45, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅ Special:Diff/922306095, I had this in my mind to request a technical move to change "Text" → "text", but I forgot it 😕😓. I think the old title is completely correct and there is no need to change at all, see also: these search results. -- Editor-1 (talk) 09:18, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but just to be clear, I requested a move to "Bidirectional text" without the hyphen. That's the spelling used most often in documents on the Unicode website. "Bi-directional text" gets fewer results, many from the late 90s. — Eru·tuon 19:41, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

 * unicode.org is not the main criterion! both spelling are common, see these search results as just one example. -- Editor-1 (talk) 08:34, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

For what it's worth, the hyphenless variant is much more common in our titles 16:3. No such user (talk) 11:44, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Front-to-back text and numbers
When vehicles are inscribed with front-to-back text in both sides, Arabic numbers are left-to-right from what I see in the pictures. Is it always so? --Error (talk) 12:54, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Bidirectional text


text:
President of Costa Rica

The president of the Republic of Costa Rica is the head of state and head of government of Costa Rica. The president is currently elected in direct elections for a period of four years, which is not immediately renewable. Two vice presidents are elected in the same ticket with the president. The president appoints the Council of Ministers. Due to the abolition of the military of Costa Rica in 1948, the president is not a commander-in-chief, unlike the norm in most other countries, although the Constitution does describe him as commander-in-chief of the civil defense public forces.

From 1969 to 2005, the president was barred from seeking reelection. After the amendment banning reelection was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2005, an incumbent president became eligible to run again after waiting for at least eight years after leaving office.

Election
The President of Costa Rica is elected using a modified [two-round system] in which a candidate must receive at least 40% of the vote to win in the first round; if no candidate wins in the first round, a runoff is held between the two candidates with the largest number of votes.

Qualifications
According to Article 131 of the Constitution, The following is required to be president or vice president of the Republic:

"# To be Costa Rican by birth and a citizen in exercise;
 * 1) To have secular status;
 * 2) To be older than thirty years."

Attributes and duties
According to article 139 of the Constitution of Costa Rica, the following powers are exclusive attributes of the president:

"# To freely appoint and remove the ministers of government;
 * 1) To represent the Nation in the acts of official character;
 * 2) To exercise the supreme command of the public force;
 * 3) To present to the Legislative Assembly, at the initiation of the first annual period of sessions, a written message relative to the various matters of the Administration and the political state of the Republic and in which he must, additionally, propose the measures that he judges important for the good functioning of the Government and the progress and well-being of the Nation;
 * 4) To previously communicate to the Legislative Assembly, when he intends to leave the country, the motives for his trip."

Article 140 gives the president the following duties alongside the respective minister:

"# To freely appoint and to remove the members of the public force, the employees and functionaries who serve offices of confidence, and the others that, in very qualified cases, the Law of [the] Civil Service determines;
 * 1) To appoint and to remove, subject to the requirements provided by the Law of [the] Civil Service, the rest of the [public] servants of their dependency;
 * 2) To sanction and promulgate the laws, regulate them, execute them, and see to their exact fulfillment;
 * 3) In the recesses of the Legislative Assembly, to decree the suspension of [the] rights and guarantees that paragraph 7) of Article 121 refers to[,] in the same cases and with the same limitations established there[,] and immediately give account to the Assembly. The decree of suspension of guarantees is equivalent, ipso facto, to the convocation of the Assembly to sessions, which must meet within the following forty-eight hours. If the Assembly does not confirm the measure by two-thirds of the votes of the totality of its members, the guarantees will be considered restored. If because of lack of quorum the Assembly cannot meet, it will do so the next day with any number of Deputies. In this case, the decree of the Executive Power needs to be approved by [a] vote of no less than the two-thirds part of those present;
 * 4) To exercise the initiative in the formation of the laws, and the right of veto;
 * 5) To maintain the order and the tranquility of the Nation, to take the necessary measures [providencias] for the guarding of the public liberties;
 * 6) To provide for the collection and the investment of the national incomes in accordance with the laws;
 * 7) To see to the good functioning of the administrative services and dependencies;
 * 8) To execute and to have fulfilled all that decided [on] or provided [for] in the matters of their competence [by] the tribunals of Justice and the electoral organs, at the solicitation of the same;
 * 9) To celebrate agreements, public treaties, and concordats, to promulgate them, and execute them once approved by the Legislative Assembly or by a Constituent Assembly when that approval is required by this Constitution. The protocols derived from those public treaties or international agreements that do not require legislative approval will enter into force once promulgated by the Executive Power.
 * 10) To render to the Legislative Assembly the reports that it solicits from them is the use of its attributions;
 * 11) To direct the international relations of the Republic;
 * 12) To receive the Heads of State as well as the diplomatic representatives, and to admit the Consuls of other nations;
 * 13) To convoke the Legislative Assembly to ordinary and extraordinary sessions;
 * 14) To send to the Legislative Assembly the bill of National Budget at the time and with the requirements determined in this Constitution;
 * 15) To dispose of the public force to preserve the order, defense, and security of the country;
 * 16) To issue navigation licenses;
 * 17) To give themselves the appropriate regulations for the internal regime of their offices and to issue the other regulations and ordinances necessary for the prompt execution of the laws;
 * 18) To subscribe the administrative contracts not included in paragraph 14) of Article 121 of this Constitution, under reserve of submitting them to the approval of the Legislative Assembly when they stipulate [the] exemption of taxes or rates, or [when] they have for their object the exploitation of public services, natural resources or wealth of the State.
 * 19) The legislative approval of these contracts will not give them character of laws nor will exempt them from their administrative juridical regime. That provided in this paragraph will not be applicable to the loans or other similar agreements, referred to in paragraph 15) of Article 121, which will be governed by their special norms;
 * 20) To fulfill the other duties and to exercise the other attributions that this Constitution and the laws confer to them."

Limitations
The Constitution also establishes limitations on the president's powers which can be prosecuted if broken.

Article 148.

"The President of the Republic will be responsible for the use he makes of those attributions that according to this Constitution correspond to him in an exclusive form. Each Minister of Government will be jointly responsible with the President[,] in respect to the exercise of the attributions that this Constitution grants to both of them. The responsibility for the acts of the Council of Government will extend to all those who concurred with their vote to adopt the respective agreement."

Article 149

"The President of the Republic and the Minister of Government who had participated in the acts indicated as follows will also be jointly responsible:
 * 1) When they compromise in any form the freedom, the political independence, or the territorial integrity of the Republic;
 * 2) When they impede or obstruct directly or indirectly the popular elections, or infringe upon the principles of alternation in the exercise of the Presidency or of free presidential succession, or against the freedom, order, or purity of the suffrage;
 * 3) When they impede or obstruct the functions that are specific to the Legislative Assembly or restrict its freedom and independence;
 * 4) When they refuse to publish or execute the laws or other legislative acts;
 * 5) When they impede or obstruct the functions specific to the Judicial Power, or [when they] restrict the freedom with which the Tribunals must judge the causes submitted to their decision, or when they obstruct in some form the functions that correspond to the electoral organs or the municipalities;
 * 6) For all the other cases in which the Executive Power by action or omission violates some expressed law."

title: President of Costa Rica