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Wikipedia:Village pump/Archive AJ

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Small tag

Why are the <small></small> tags not working properly in tables. For instance, Minnesota#Colleges and universities. I have seen this problem on several of the state pages. I just took out the small's from the first couple. Rmhermen 03:22, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC)

I suspect it has something to do with the 'html tidy' thing I've seen mentioned somewhere. Several Seattle tables had <small> at the top, and </small> at the bottom, making the whole table small. 1.3 broke this--only the top row would be small, because if you View Source, the </small> has been moved to the first row, I suspect because it is probably more proper html. Niteowlneils 03:34, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Inline elements can't include blocklevel ones, so tidy does the right thing. You can use style="font-size:small" on the table instead. -- Gabriel Wicke 15:38, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the tip. In hindsight, I wish I had said "changed" instead of "broke"--in general I support trying to conform to HTML standards. Um, except, it doesn't seem to work (or I don't know where to put it). If I change Seattle's Bodies of water to <table style="font-size:small"><tr><td valign=top> it doesn't make them small. Niteowlneils 04:46, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It works in one browser, but not in the other. -- User:Docu
Um, the text in the Seattle:Bodies of water table looks the same size as the paragraphs above and below (using Opera/monobook, Firefox/monobook, Mozilla/monobook, Netscape/monobook, IE/monobook, and IE/standard) to me. Niteowlneils 04:23, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ok, added a class 'small' to the styles that scales table cells (tds don't inherit from table unfortunately). Example: 

{| class="small"
small 1 small 2

You'll have to reload the styles to see the effect of this rule. I would propose to add more rules styling content, things like column-wise or alternating-row table colouring aren't too hard to do in css. -- Gabriel Wicke 09:39, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Co-writing (again)

Anyone willing to help me write a human-written section of Carol Stream, Illinois? I live there, but I can't find any historical facts, and seeing as Ram-bot created it, we're stuck with it :). Ilyanep 02:05, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This may sound obvious, but have you tried checking out the local library? I'm sure they have some good historical records about the town. A quick googling provided a lot of additional data and the official site of Carol Stream, including an historical review with a few factoids. I suspect that thorough research on it would involve non-google sources, however :-) -- Wapcaplet 02:54, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Heh heh heh. I tried searching google and couldn't find anything, guess you're more diligent than me. And I guess living in walking distance from the library is gonna help now. Ilyanep 14:01, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Simple English collaboration

I've recently started working at the Simple English WP, and from what I've seen over the past few weeks, growth there is very sloooooow. This WP is in a unique position to help its little cousin, though. I believe that anyone who edits at this WP has the potential to edit at Simple: of course, writing in Simple English isn't that easy straight off, but at least it's the same language! It seems that Simple is often relegated as "just another language I don't know", as its listed amongst all the non-English languages most of us here wouldn't have a clue about; hiding at the bottom of the Main Page. I really think there could be a strong collaboration set up between these two WPs, seeing as they're only different shades of the same language, and not something like English compared to Swahili!

Although I don't have any carefully thought-out proposals on how to do all this, I do have some ideas, and hopefully others do too.

  • For example, there could be a Wikipedia:Simple English collaboration page created and linked to from the Community Portal. This could include a list of the most desperately needed pages and open tasks at Simple, among other things. Of course, it would have to be prominently stated that Simple English is not exactly the same as the English here, so a crash-course in writing Simply would be needed at the very least. But the idea is to show that it's not some alien language after all, so the more accessable, the better.
  • How about a message related to new pages/editing pages, which asks the editor, if it's not too much trouble, to please create at least a stub of their new/edited article over at Simple, with a link to the equivalent (probably non-existant) page over there. It would need the same link to the above-mentioned intro to Simple, but again need to be easy enough that people will actually do it.
  • An article of the week style page where established articles here that don't have much, (if anything) yet over there, could be nominated for simplification and "translation".
  • I'm sure there are other things that could be done to help Simple. I think it's a valuable resource as a "step up" to this WP for people who are learning the language, as well as being a handy "Wikipedia for Kids". It is of little use though at its present stage. The help would be appreciated.

(As a reference, the Simple Community Portal contains the open tasks list. Also: Simple Requested articles).

TPK 06:58, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC) (Talk, My Simple user page)

Regional conversions

Would it be possible to have an auto-conversion for American/British spellings and measurements within an article?

I was thinking along the lines of using a List of some-sorts which has a column for American spelling of a word and a column for British spelling. When the user clicks an article (if they have auto-convert enabled) it will replace all words within the article for the regional preference.

For measurements, I was thinking of something like having to label 35ft as ((35:feet)). This would then display as the same value in meters for those of us who prefer SI. Oberiko 15:50, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

**DOUBLING STARTS HERE**

SECTIONS BELOW THIS LINE ARE REPEATED FROM ABOVE 

**********************************************************

**DOUBLING STARTS HERE**

SECTIONS BELOW THIS LINE ARE REPEATED FROM ABOVE 

**********************************************************

at least until "Annoying blue..."







stuff below this may not be exactly the same as above...merging will be needed

"Preview" in "Login Successful" screen page title

The page title for the screen confirming a successful login has the word "preview" in it. I assume this is a hangover from some development phase and should now be removed. If not, what is it previewing?? :) --Nevilley 21:41, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Supply and Demand question

In Supply and Demand#Elasticity, it says "So, if the price moves from $1.00 to $1.05, and the quantity supplied goes from 100 pens to 102 pens, the slope is -2/-0.05 or 38 pens per dollar. Since the elasticity depends on the percentages, the quantity of pens increased by 2%, and the price increased by 5%, so the elasticity is 2/5 or 0.4." Could someone explain this better?

The price for what exactly? for 102 pens, or for individual pens? How does it become 38 pens in a dollar? I'm totally confused!!! - Ta bu shi da yu 12:23, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Simple English collaboration

I've recently started working at the Simple English WP, and from what I've seen over the past few weeks, growth there is very sloooooow. This WP is in a unique position to help its little cousin, though. I believe that anyone who edits at this WP has the potential to edit at Simple: of course, writing in Simple English isn't that easy straight off, but at least it's the same language! It seems that Simple is often relegated as "just another language I don't know", as its listed amongst all the non-English languages most of us here wouldn't have a clue about; hiding at the bottom of the Main Page. I really think there could be a strong collaboration set up between these two WPs, seeing as they're only different shades of the same language, and not something like English compared to Swahili!

Although I don't have any carefully thought-out proposals on how to do all this, I do have some ideas, and hopefully others do too.

  • For example, there could be a Wikipedia:Simple English collaboration page created and linked to from the Community Portal. This could include a list of the most desperately needed pages and open tasks at Simple, among other things. Of course, it would have to be prominently stated that Simple English is not exactly the same as the English here, so a crash-course in writing Simply would be needed at the very least. But the idea is to show that it's not some alien language after all, so the more accessable, the better.
  • How about a message related to new pages/editing pages, which asks the editor, if it's not too much trouble, to please create at least a stub of their new/edited article over at Simple, with a link to the equivalent (probably non-existant) page over there. It would need the same link to the above-mentioned intro to Simple, but again need to be easy enough that people will actually do it.
  • An article of the week style page where established articles here that don't have much, (if anything) yet over there, could be nominated for simplification and "translation".
  • I'm sure there are other things that could be done to help Simple. I think it's a valuable resource as a "step up" to this WP for people who are learning the language, as well as being a handy "Wikipedia for Kids". It is of little use though at its present stage. The help would be appreciated.

(As a reference, the Simple Community Portal contains the open tasks list. Also: Simple Requested articles).

TPK 06:58, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC) (Talk, My Simple user page)

Is there a good introduction or tutorial anywhere, to guide us through what is expected and what should be avoided in attempting to write sufficiently "simple" English? —Stormie 04:13, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)
I've contributed to Simple, but I've often wondered if anyone actually reads it, or is it just a bunch of native English speakers writing in simple English for... no good reason? Exploding Boy 04:18, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)

Naming convention for maiden and married women

What is Wikipedia convention for redirecting pages for the following scenarios :

  1. Unmarried girl gets married and changes to her married name. The media begins referring to her by her new name.
  2. Unmarried girl gets married and changes to her married name. The media continues referring to her maiden name because thats too popular to be changed.

I couldn't find any pointers in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). Jay 09:47, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The more redirects the better. --Jiang 10:37, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Both cases call for a redirect. The actual article should probably be at the most popular moniker. -- ke4roh 11:16, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Both names should be redirected to each other......just for fun Slizor 12:06, 2004 Jun 27 (UTC)
Standard Wikipedia naming convention rules should be followed. The article should be at the most common name in general use. All other variants should redirect to it. So we should, in contentious cases, look through real world usage to see what's actually done. The introductory paragraph should give both name versions (bolded). —Morven 12:22, Jun 27, 2004 (UTC)
How do we find the most common usage ? Google test ? Jay 13:48, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Import monobook.css from another Wikipedia

Hi. I have read a page talking about importing user monobook.css and monobook.js from another Wikipedia, but I can't find it gain.

I understood I have to write, in my en: CSS : 

@import url(http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Utilisateur:Ma%27ame_Michu/monobook.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css

and the same way for importing monobook.js (writing etc. in my en: JS). Is there someone to show me the URI of the page talking about this? Ma'ame Michu 08:00, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It's at the top of m:Talk:User styles :). - 11:34, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

What links where?

When you go to "What links here" on Eric Schlosser, the only things that show up are Super Size Me, User:Meelar, and Eric Schlosser itself. Yet if you go to Fast Food Nation, the link is red--however, if you click on it, you get an edit window, with all the text currently in the Schlosser article. What's happening? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 14:24, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It's a database problem - sometimes the link table does not receive the update it needs, and then other pages don't know of the existance of the new article. Sometimes it works again when you edit the article. It seems like this problem shows more often when the system is under some kind of stress. andy 15:02, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Scripts

Can anyone help me learn to write some simple text manipulation scripts that would work with Wikipedia articles (such as turning an article backwards or making some text l33t)? What tools would I need to do so? I'm really good with computers so this would be a breeze. I don't intend to vandalize anything...just have a little clean fun in the sandbox and play a few tricks on april 1st :) Ilyanep (Talk) 20:13, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Whilst I'm sure you are beyond reproach the same may not necessarily apply to anyone else who reads this page. So, it would be even sillier to inform people how they can do such things than it would be to have an article on how to commit a felony. Oh bugger. --bodnotbod 00:42, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC)
I know it's not policy, but can someone tell me at my email address (there's that 'email this user' at my user page). Also, I want to know how to keep the articles linked correctly. And if anything...can someone reccomend a language (nothing 'smart' like "English") to write it in? Ilyanep (Talk) 01:23, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'd suggest Perl, only for reason that it's pretty easy to do some textual manipulations with it. For example if you want to change all the occurences of "teh" to "the", the Perl one-liner while(<>){ s/teh/the/; print; } will do it (acting as a filter). Dysprosia 09:48, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
How do you get it to read the Wikipedia article? And also, how do people read their contributions to make contributions graphs? (BTW, how do I get a Perl Interpreter?) Ilyanep (Talk) 19:29, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Try user:Perl. →Raul654 19:38, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC)
PS - that was a joke. Laugh, it's funny.
Umm...ha, ha...? Ilyanep (Talk) 19:44, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
1. Mozex (get it from the Extensions site if you're using Firefox 0.9). 2. If you have access to Unix-style filters, copy a slab of your contributions into a file (call it contribs), then "cat contribs | sed -e '/^[^0-9]*//'|cut -d':' -f1 | sort | uniq -c" will get the right data for you 3. CPAN - pick your OS Dysprosia 00:22, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Oh, I don't have Firefox. I do have Perl 5.8.4 (Win32) and a Python Interpreter. I also have Linux 9.2 but it won't connect to the internet. Ilyanep (Talk) 20:42, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Could you send me this Linux 9.2 you speak of? Alas, i only have 2.6.5 and would both like to get your version and information on whatever time-warping wormhole it came from. Regards, --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 21:25, 2004 Jul 3 (UTC)
Mozex works with Mozilla too, and there's a Win32 Perl version as well Dysprosia 01:13, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Copyright issue

(moved from VfD by Dante Alighieri | Talk)

ATTENTION:

PISSED OFF WITH CRAP!, this I can understand, but I MUST draw attention to the FACT that I have spent some time today trying to remove a good artice (I am the soul contributor) to an article and its history, because it violates a former copyright. Admittedly when I realised this I set about attempting to remove it without trying to waist administator time, but some one or some software will not let me completely remove the article from its embedded history saves, although these are open access files to. As the only and original contributor, it is my intention to ensure all my materal (AVAILABLE VIA Faedra 15:06, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC) HOME PAGE) CONFORMS TO wikipolicy ON COPYRIGHT. If I am prevented from doing this I DEMAND THE REMOVAL OF ALL OF MY ORIGINAL WORK.) PS I like wikipedia, but do not intend for my own original work to suffer because I hold this view, all my contributions contain an history, each page has improved, subsequent upon further work by myself, but at the end of the day, UNTIL I CONCLUDE MY CONTRIBUTION, it should be understood that the statement on my home page stands. Faedra 15:06, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Suspected copyright violations should be reported, in the usual fashion, on Wikipedia:Copyright problems. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:16, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Faedra, could you please restate this calmly? I honestly can't wade through what you wrote here to work out what you are saying. -- Jmabel 19:20, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)
He's caught his own copyvio and no one else has edited the article. It seems in that case, if explained calmly on the appropriate page, a speedy deletion could be made. &#151;Ed Cormany 23:49, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I should thank you all for your desire to keep several items I wanted removed. I am relativly new to wikipedia, and got the wrong end of the stick when I was misinformed about copyright. Just so long as it is understood that my original work remains my real objective I am happy to continue with my contributions, even some of the more obscure occult ones, that seem to cause wide disbelief amongst the general community. I am happy with critism, it help me improve my effort, and the final output will be further modified elsewhere later, and may one day be sold, and if so I will gladly promote wikipedia into the bargain, but it does disturb me that some people think I should give up all rights to my work, which whilst incomplete has taken some years to compile. The original work contains some copyvios and this it what I was geting at, ok. Faedra 15:44, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC) I am still reading the basic tutorials and help pages. The arguement is concluded unless anyone wishes to say anything else, please remove this item to make more space.

Which Unicode characters can/should we use?

I started a few weeks ago changing various Greek language entries (e.g. see the top line of Jesus) to display the proper accent marks. This displays fine in Mozilla. But when I try to display the same pages in Microsoft Internet Explorer all I get is little squares not Greek letters.

Is there an official Wikipedia policy on which Unicode characters we should and should not use? m.e. 10:58, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I can see a few question marks in between the aramaeic spelling, and I have the rather complete MS Arial Unicode font installed. The different display in Mozilla or IE might be a font selection problem, maybe you have set your Mozilla to use a different default font? I am not aware on any official policy on unicode, only that we should limit ourself to the original and the english spelling, as there is not much point in having the Cyrillic spelling of someplace in Greece. If it displays better in most cases you can try it without the accent marks, maybe put the correct version enclosed in a HTML comment behind it. andy 11:33, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The Mozilla is on Linux and the MSIE is on XP, so I'm not surprised to get different results. I know that some users will be reading Wikipedia using Mosaic on Windows 1.0 and some will have the complete Unicode everything installed. I'm not sure how to strike a compromise in between. m.e. 12:02, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
IE displays a subset of the characters Mozilla displays of unicode on the same machine with the same operating system and the same font. I think this is because Mozilla has a better developed character code mapping table (its had three years' more development). Mr. Jones 14:07, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
You might find this page on meta useful. theresa knott 14:02, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)   — thank you, Theresa, I've read it now; I have been creating the characters using &#xffff;, I was wondering which characters I should and should not use. m.e. 10:45, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I suggest that MS Arial Unicode is perhaps the worst font for page compatibility tests because, although it is probably the most complete Unicode font commonly available, it is limited to only those who have a Microsoft product like MS Office 2000 or later installed on their MS Windows IBM-compatible computer. Even though this probably includes more than half the computer user population of the world, it leaves out a huge minority as well. (Personally, I've never gone beyond Office 97, having no compelling reason to pay the huge expense.) Microsoft doesn't seem to offer it as a separately downloadable font, even for a price. (Just another of the thousands of little ways it encourages everyone to buy its major software products.) -- Jeff Q 21:09, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Are there any good alternative fonts that are more widely available? Also, is the En wiki ever going to go UTF-8 like all the others? -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 21:13, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Alan Wood's Unicode Resources page is an excellent resource for Unicode font issues. His "Introduction" section includes a set of links in the line reading: "Lists of fonts for Windows, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X 10 and Unix, with the Unicode ranges they support, and where to obtain them." -- Jeff Q 11:22, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
On the basis of this, it appears that IE is rendering Greek but not Extended Greek. According to the Alanwood pages that you referred to, Arial Unicode MS should render both Greek and Extended Greek correctly. Does the Wikipedia CSS force IE to another font that does not have Extended Greek? Also, I notice that Wikipedia pages have charset=iso-8859-1 in the header, but I presume this doesn't matter as I am coding my characters as &#x0000; codes rather than directly inserting the characters themselves.
I suppose this means we need a rule that says only use the characters supported by Arial???? m.e. 10:03, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Font rendering is an incredibly complex, multidimensional problem that is far from being adequately solved, especially for a global Web resource like Wikipedia. You can't really speak of what IE will render; you've got to specify what version it is, what platform you're running on, what fonts you have installed (by manufacturer name, not style), how your browser is configured to render certain types of fonts, what language it's set to, and so on. (I can see that you, m.e., know much of this already, but I state it here explicitly for other folks reading this.) Most of these settings are done very differently for different browsers and even between versions of the same browser. Frankly, I don't understand a good bit of it myself. Just when I think I've got everything configured properly for my Opera browser, something weird happens and I have to delve back into this confusion. From what little I've seen, MSIE is simpler to configure but more difficult to customize properly. One thing to keep in mind is that simply finding a font that renders your desired characters isn't sufficient, since you can't expect anybody to have done this for their browsers. Any Wikipedia page that displays nicely in your customized browser will be useless to the vast majority. I have no good answer for this annoyance. It seems to require a commitment to robust Unicode font inclusion in browser installations and preconfigurations AND cooperation between the mercilessly-competitive platform, browser, and font vendors that just doesn't exist yet. -- Jeff Q 14:47, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I suppose someone should jump in and write a policy that says which characters one should and should not use? Where would it go? Who should write it? Would it go through some sort of acceptance test before it reaches 'production'? I'd think it would be a bit contextual; in some (more specialised) contexts you might go for the 'real' characters, and accept that they might not display for evveryone.

Also, could we solve this by using the TeX option? Can we use the TeX display mode, normally used for mathematics, for displaying non-Latin characters?... TeX mode doesn't seem to work for this, as it throws you straight into math mode, and it seems only to recognise a limited subset of TeX commands; is this true/ m.e. 09:22, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I think the policy should be use any Unicode characters you think right for the article. Writing excellent encyclopedia articles is more important than worrying too much about browser and operating system capabilities. Browsers and operating systems will catch up (some are pretty good already). To cater for people who can't see some characters, the right thing to do is to present the same information in several forms. For example many articles give pronunciation indications in both IPA and ASCII-IPA. Gdr 19:12, 2004 Jul 3 (UTC) — that's a point, I suppose we should work on the principle that Wikipedia will still be around in 10n years and we should write for then as well as for now. m.e. 09:53, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Image being broken by autothumbnailing

The image Image:TeX lion.png displays fine, but the autothumb in the TeX article displays as all-black. The browser is IE6 SP1 on Windows 98. (Build number 6.0.2800.1106.) While I'm aware that IE's PNG support is munged (broken?) at best, the autothumbnailing should be utterly transparent---that is, shouldn't be making anything worse. A SourceForge bug report is being composed. grendel|khan 01:57, 2004 Jun 24 (UTC)

Mozilla 1.7 shows it perfectly fine - yet with IE I see it broken, too. However it seems like something is strange in the source PNG already, as even Pain Shop Pro displays it as black-only. I have created a new version of it by doing a screenshot of what Mozilla displays, and uploaded that one. It now works, and as I reduced it to 256 colors it's only half size now. andy 08:03, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
IE6 PNG support is incomplete, but not problematic in any way that I've encountered. Mr. Jones 14:12, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Something's broken with the thumbnail feature. It's returning blank screens when "Preview" or "Edit" are pressed. It's happened to me and others on #wikipedia, including Raul654. -- Slowking Man 05:25, Jun 30, 2004 (UTC)

IRC problems

strange. i cannot get into freenode today. anyone else having problems? Kingturtle 00:50, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Categories on Wikipedia

I'm still somewhat new to Wikipedia and I'm trying to understand the system of categorization being used, placing articles in particular categories. Is there somewhere I can go to read (step-by-step directions and a short summary about proper use of categories) about how to create categories, add sub-categories to categories, etc? I'm not particularly content with the information I found under the article on Wikipedia categories. It may be that I'm just stupid but I'm still confused. Gerald Farinas 20:12, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm.... never mind? I'll keep reading it till I find what I need. Gerald Farinas 20:22, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Easy approach: pick a category of your choice, press the "Edit this page" link - then you will see how this category becomes a subcategory of another category. The pick an article with a category and edit it - then you will see how this article came into the category. To create a new one: just add it into an article. The technique is actually rather simple, the difficult part is to find a categorization scheme both usable, with categories not too big to handle nor too finely granulated to be worthless. andy 20:29, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Ahhh!! Now I get it!! Thanks. :) Gerald Farinas 20:33, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Britannica vs Wikipedia: Detail and NPOV

Some anecdotal Britannica-bashing (sorry): my university has recently been trialling electronic access to the Encyclopedia Britannica, so I've been having a nose around. It is (of course) uniformly well-written, something Wikipedia will never be, I suspect. What struck me, though, is how little detailed information is provided on some topics; I'm used to Wikipedia's "Wikipedia is not paper" approach. In addition, I was also surprised at the the non-neutrality of their "Pornography" article; I give an excerpt below:

Perhaps the lowest level of artistic or literary endeavor, pornography may be defined as the presentation of sexual behavior in books, pictures, or films solely to cause sexual excitement...Closely related, and in legal terms virtually identical, isobscenity, which is behavior or material that is immoral and designed to produce lust. (sic "isobscenity")

While I happen to agree with Britannica's judgments, I would feel the urge to rewrite them for NPOV if they were on Wikipedia. Notice, also, that on Britannica I cannot correct the "isobscenity" spacing mistake. Their full text search feature is quite useful, though ;-) I guess my point is that I was expecting great things from the online Britannica, but I found it was merely good, and that Wikipedia has every chance of rendering it redundant at some point. (Actually, to sound like an Intellectual Property fanatic, sometimes I wonder if the true "lowest level of literary endeavor" is that which is tightly controlled by copyright law and cannot be edited, read or reused freely by others, but I'm sounding a little zealous, here...) — Matt 12:30, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

  • I think what this shows is that Wikipedia goes too far on the NPOV business. The Encyclopedia Britannica has always been opinionated. Britannica reads like The New Yorker or The Atlantic Monthly or perhaps one of the weekly newsmagazines; highly factual but not by any means devoid of personality or point-of-view; written by intelligent adults for intelligent adults. This is even more true in the 1911 edition, which ("many believe"/"some feel"/"is frequently deemed"/oh, hell, obviously IS) the best encyclopedia ever written. Sometimes Wikipedia seems to be trying to be like the World Book (or like a contemporary high-school textbooks; in the 1950s the McCarthy scare made every textbook publisher duck and run from anything "controversial," and the Texas school book committee has made sure they stay that way). Sometimes the Britannica gets a little comical, though; I don't know if this is still true in the Britannica 3 and its descendants, but one of the music contributors to the 1911 edition had an animus against Meyerbeer and would slang him whenever possible: "The reality of his talent has been recognized throughout all Europe; and his name will live so long as intensity of passion and power of dramatic treatment are regarded as indispensable characteristics of dramatic music. But his work shows that these qualities, with the aid of an experienced stage-writer, may be entirely independent of genuine musical insight." "Any outbreak of vulgarity or sentimentality can with impunity claim descent from Beethoven, though its ancestry may be no higher than Meyerbeer," etc. Dpbsmith 12:58, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
    • Nice quotes ;-) I'd dispute your linking of NPOV with lack of controversy, though. NPOV means that some very controversial minority opinions get a mention (such as legalising child porn might lower instances of (futher) sexual abuse — Child pornography). I guess it's OK for Britannica to be POV, but since nearly everyone has a minority opinion on something, and I think NPOV makes Wikipedia a unique (and arguably better) resource for it. — Matt 13:30, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
    • Dpbsmith, I kind-of agree with you, kind-of don't. Whilst I think it is vital that the WP try to be opinionless and not endorse any particular viewpoints, I think that sometimes WP can sacrifice content for neutrality. Errr. I dunno what else to say. blankfaze | ?? 17:40, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I want to remind everyone: NPOV does not mean that the articles should not contain opinion. What it means is that opinions should not be expressed in the narrative voice of the article, but appropriately sourced to someone (preferably clearly expert) who has expressed them in some other forum. In some ways, this is very close to our prohibition against publishing original research. -- Jmabel 18:59, Jun 23, 2004 (UTC)

  • I have elsewhere described this technique as NPOV 101 - it is obviously important and everyone needs to understand it. However it is not the be all and end all - it is sometimes inappropriate to assign an (overwhelming) majority opinion to a single expert. For instance with this formula you should end up writing articles that say "Dave Gorman, President of the Flat Earth society, says that the earth is flat and always will be. Professor Round, chair in Big Sky Science at Smartville University, Arizona, however, says that that the earth is plainly a sphere." We should prefer "The Earth is a sphere. There are a very small minority of people who mistaken believe the earth is flat," even though in some sense we are offering an "opinion" that the earth is spherical by doing so. Pcb21| Pete 11:13, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I prefer "it is widely believed..." or "mosts scientist are of the opinion that...", etc. This can lead on to a discussion of why the assertion is believed, and what the consequences of that belief are. Mr. Jones 13:56, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

  • Yeah sometimes that is necessary, but when the "..." is plainly true, it seems to be a use of weasal words where none are necessary. Pcb21| Pete 15:55, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
    • Note however, not all weasel words (1)are weasel word s (2). If there are too many sources or too many people presenting an opinion or if the sources go too far back in time and are therefore untraceable, generalizations, and so on, are perfectly legitimate. Dieter Simon 23:21, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
      • Sometimes people have removed a bit of colour from my language. That is to say, I have written on something uncontroversial but put some life into the phrasing. I realise one person's colour is another person's... well, what-have-you? Flowery poofiness? Nondescript bilge? Convoluted wankerdom? But, you know, I pride myself on my writing so I'm referring here, of course, to things of grace and beauty. When they get removed I'm miffed, but I already know why they've done it and if I started spending time trying to argue about any bit of lost flair I'd never get the real work done. But it is a shame that some people seem to think NPOV does mean dryly written. --bodnotbod 00:32, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC)

compliments...

I am a newcomer to wikipedia; although I have been aware of it and used it on occasion for quite a while, I have only recently realised the depth of this resource, and discovered the mechanics behind it.

this project is fantastic! the number of articles and the amount of information in them is truly amazing, even articles on topics so obscure I thought there would be no chance they would exist. the band biographies, for example, seem to have more detailed information and useful links than any official band website I have seen.

also, the articles are articulately written and unbiased, and the links between articles are very well done (though perhaps I have whiled away too many hours in school reading article after article as a consequence of this). wikipedia has become the primary internet resource for me (with the possible exception of news websites), and I really think that it is a credit to everyone who works on it, and indeed to human nature itself! this may seem like a sweeping statement, but it is hard to believe that something so incredible could be produced entirely voluntarily by people in their spare time. and, at the same time, would-be spoilers are repelled; I have never seen an incorrect piece of information or any 'graffiti'. good show!

anyway, I'm sure plenty of people have said this before, but just thought I would congratulate everyone who works on here, and say hi. I'm jack by the way, and I live in north wales. I shall try to contibute as much as possible (so far all I have done is added a sentence about john peel going to school in colwyn bay)!

hope everyone is well, love jack (Musichastherighttochildren)

Well, I for one certainly learned something I never know before about JP. Go for it, Jack... Though I warn you - contributing to the Wikipedia is even more addictive than consulting it! (We are all blushing at the effulgence of your praise, BTW...) -- Jac-y-do/Picapica 22:55, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks! I've added your compliments to Wikipedia:Testimonials.--Eloquence*
Ah, Jack sounds just like me 2 months ago.... --bodnotbod 00:18, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC)
Try current events and you may never need a news portal again either. Glad to hear you're enjoying it. &#151;Ed Cormany 23:34, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

More wrong redlinks

I added four bios in the last few days to List of Heavyweight Champions as follows:

On List of Heavyweight Champions page if you click on some, they open to the edit page while another opens to a "create an article" blank. Elsewhere, some links work, some don't.

There is the same problem with List of famous cemeteries re Canada = Halifax, Nova Scotia ... JillandJack 17:46, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yes, there seems to be something odd with the way the database is storing links - it even affected the article on Wikipedia the other day. Have you tried doing some trivial edits to the pages in question (sometimes this causes the software to recheck the links)? See also (possibly) Bug #802814 and Bug #964858. As Brion commented in the former of those, bit rot seems to have set in! - IMSoP 18:25, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I tried edits, pasting good title etc. Nothing works. Maybe it's just a "work to rule" campaign by a "bit" wanting better pay, or at least a little appreciation. JillandJack 18:56, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Okay, how did this get duplicated ??? It happened the other day to me on List of Jews.

It's a software bug which I triggered discussing a software bug, and which seems to have triggered another software bug that's stopping me cleaning up after myself! d'OH!! - IMSoP 19:06, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Namespace in Korean Wikipedia

In Korean Wikipedia, we have used "위키백과:"("%EC%9C%84%ED%82%A4%EB%B0%B1%EA%B3%BC:" in UTF-8) for "Wikipedia:" namespace. But it seems that all pages under the Korean namespace have changed title into "Wikipedia:" namespace during the innovation about a day ago. Is there the way of restoring them? And how to have namespaces of lingua's own, so that later automatic changes wouldn't affect? --PuzzletChung 11:34, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The Korean Wikipedia seems to be fixed now, though this did cause some pages in the Korean Wiktionary to be lost which Tim Starling has been trying to resolve. Angela. 21:30, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Edit this page

Big thanks to whoever restored that text on monobook skin. Would still like the tabs to have initial caps, and to default to top and bottom, but at least the consistent verbage makes documentation easier. Niteowlneils 07:23, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That would be Guanaco: [1]. Any sysop can do this, see Wikipedia:All system messages for a list. -- Tim Starling 08:40, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)
Unfortunately this makes this IE rendering bug more likely. -- Gabriel Wicke 15:46, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Watchlist

Hi kids! My watchlist has decided to stop showing up. When I click "My watchlist", I get a blank page. This problem has been persisting for a few hours. Before I submit it as a bug, I'd like to check that I'm not doing something really weird that's causing the problem. Any ideas? Thanks! --Puffy jacket 04:04, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

My child - our developers are aware of the problem. Now go, and sin no more. →Raul654 04:05, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)
Thank you, Father. ;) --Puffy jacket 04:06, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Works for me, but recently I have seen blank pages elsewhere. Niteowlneils 07:23, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Is anyone selling copies of Wikipedia at this time?

Hello everyone! The GFDL says that a person who copies WP "may accept compensation in exchange for copies" (Section 2). Is anyone selling copies at present? If so that's great, if not, that's great too. I searched the wikien-l archive and did a general web search but I couldn't find any info one way or the other. Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this topic. Regards & happy editing, Wile E. Heresiarch 00:57, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

WikiReaders are selections of Wikipedia articles on a particular subtopic; these are being sold: http://shop.wikipedia.org/ — Matt 01:00, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Look at Wikipedia:WikiReader, which is our english version of a project at german wikipedia that has come much further: The german wikipedia are currently selling printed "Readers" on single Topics taken from German Wikipedia articles! Wikipedia-shop is currently only in German and sells these two items. ✏ Sverdrup 01:04, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
You can also look at the vision of a Wikipedia 1.0 ✏ Sverdrup 01:04, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Editing conflict prevention doesn't seem to be working right

See history of Mazda 929. A user made an edit after I started editting it (removed "msg:"), but when I hit Save, I was not told about the conflict, but got a MySQL error, something about 'lock wait timeout'. I tried saving again, and it wrote my changes despite the conflict. Niteowlneils 00:45, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Huh. Must be more specific, as I was unable to repro doing the basic steps. I did see this message earlier today, but not sure if the same cause. Niteowlneils 07:23, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Provocative use of Arabic script

A user called Elyaqim has visited the pages for three Bollywood movie stars (Bollywood = Mumbai movie industry) and added an Arabic script version of the stars' names immediately after the English rendering.

In the context of Indian politics, this is extremely provocative. It seems like an attempt to point out that the three top male stars

are all of North Indian-Muslim descent.

I contacted the user with regard to the Aamir Khan article (the only one I noticed at first) and asked him to either delete the Arabic script, or add a Devanagari script version too. He responded somewhat curtly that the star was Muslim, his forbears were Muslims, and that his name should be written as an Urdu name. Since then I've had no reply from this user.

North Indian dialects are a mixture of Hindi and Persian and Arabic loan words. If the tilt is heavily towards the loan words, the language is called Urdu and written in Arabic script. If the tilt is towards Hindi, the script used is Devanagari. Choosing to write a name in Arabic rather than Devanagari script is tantamount to saying "He's Muslim".

Most Indian movies are careful to show film titles in English, Devanagari script, and Arabic. If we're going to add Arabic script versions of the stars' names, we ought to add Devanagari too.

But I can't write Devanagari.

I asked the user to supply Devanagari versions and he said he didn't know Devanagari.

I would like to just delete the Arabic script but I don't want to get into an edit war.

Please advise.

I suggest that you move the arabic script to the appropriate talk page, and add a note similar to the above to explain the removal of it from the article text. Tannin 23:45, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Surreptitious POV vandalism

Please see my revert to H. R. Haldeman, and note the sneaky under-the-Wiki-radar used to white wash this criminal's career:

Here's the version prior to the white-washing (and what it's currently reverted to by me): http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=H._R._Haldeman&oldid=1272207

Here's the end result of the white-washing, before subsequent edits: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=H._R._Haldeman&oldid=1351158

Here's the diff of those two versions: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=H._R._Haldeman&diff=1351158&oldid=1272207

Here's the white-washing after other, presumably honest and well-intentioned edits, showing that the white-washing has largely been accepted as true by subsequent editors: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=H._R._Haldeman&oldid=4175302

Here's the diff between what was current before my revert and the wqhite-washing, showing almost all the white-washing was accepted as true: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=H._R._Haldeman&diff=4175302&oldid=1351158

Here's the user page of the user who did the white-washing; note that this user is anonymous and only ever edited the HR Haldeman page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=208.180.47.191

Wiki needs to be on guard against this sort of subtle re-writing of history; while not as obvious as vandalism, it's far more pernicious because of its believability. orthogonal 02:47, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

You have stumbled onto the very reason that User:Michael was banned and is automatically reverted every time he contributes. He was known for adding subtly incorrect information to what he wrote. →Raul654 08:43, Jun 20, 2004 (UTC)

Hello all, I am having similar problems with User Humus at Media_coverage_of_the_Israeli-Palestinian_conflict. Please see discussion and advise, I have reported the article in a couple of places but I guess the administrators are not up and around yet. Simonides 09:38, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Administrators do not play any special role in disputes over article content, other than having the ability to protect a page to stop an edit war if they are not personally involved with it. See Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. Angela. 23:33, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Alive: plane crash

I have an article naming conundrum. I've just been looking for an article on the 1972 plane crash in the Andes following which the survivors turned to cannibalism in order to live. Wikipedia, has references to the event at 1972, in Cannibalism and for the film Alive: The Miracle of the Andes. There is also a good external reference at [2].

Now it seems to me, there should be an article for this event in and of itself - but what should it be titled? I can only think of Plane crash Chile (1972), which isn't brilliant. --Solipsist 08:27, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

For commercial airliner crashes, the standard seems to be "<Airline name> Flight <flight number>", for example Air New Zealand Flight 901 (see List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners grouped by location). Since this was a Uruguayan air force plane, and I can't find a flight number, I might suggest Uruguayan Air Force Fairchild FH-227D if that's not too obscure! -- Arwel 10:43, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I have always found the standard odd, because it does not mention that it is about a crash. Also, the Uruguayan Air Force may have other planes of type Fairchild FH-227D.--Patrick 11:09, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Personally I think the article should be named by what the incident is most commonly known as. I do note that in the United States it is common to call air disaster after the flight number. But in other parts of the world it is not. Example while US people refer to Pan Am Flight 103 people in the UK refer to it as the Lockerbie disaster. Now getting back to original question. There doesn't seem to be a common name. Andies disaster has been used by some media, but there have also been other crashes in the Andies. -- Popsracer 11:23, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I suspect the Airline Flight 001 naming standard comes from general air incident investigations, the majority of which don't end in a crash. I'm not sure that Uruguayan Air Force Fairchild FH-227D works, because it sounds like it would be about a type of plane in the Uruguayan Air Force. So now I'm leaning towards Andes Flight Disaster (1972) or Uruguayan Air Force Flight (1972). An analogous problem occurs with the 1994 crash of a Chinook helicopter on the Mull of Kintyre, killing several top UK anti-terrorism experts. It seems to mostly be refered to as The Chinook Helicopter Crash/Disaster, even though I would have thought it was not the only Chinook to crash. -- Solipsist 12:23, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Categorization Naming Conventions

I was wondering what people thought of the current categorization scheme. Most of the categories seem to be created (Somewhere) (Something). I think it looks better and is more formal to use (Something) of/in (Somewhere). Ie. Canadian Banks vs Banks of Canada. Burgundavia 11:40, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)

On an unrelated note, I saw you inserting Category:Banks of the People's Republic of China and similarly titled articles. I would prefer it be Category:Banks of mainland China as that would be more politically neutral. It's clearer to keep Hong Kong and Macau separate and won't cause NPOV issues on whether to include Taiwan. --Jiang 11:44, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Jiang, while I see your point about trying to keep it NPOV as far as Taiwan is concerned, I don't feel like this change is needed. When someone comes along (like that'll ever happen) looking for info on Banks in Taiwan, they're going to look in Category:Banks of Taiwan or something of the like, not Category:Banks of the People's Republic of China. I understand your concern, but I really don't think we should but Taiwanese banks under Category:Banks of the People's Republic of China. blankfaze | •• 12:55, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
As for the thing about China, that is a landmine I am not going to step on. Do you have examples for your idea? As for Hong Kong and Macau, they ARE part of the People's Republic. Just as Puerto Rico and the Bermuda are part of the US and the UK respectively, a dependent, not an independent country. Any, the issue at hand is that of naming conventions regarding about order, not countries and NPOV. Burgundavia 12:37, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)

I'm well aware that HK and Macau are part of the PRC. However, Hong Kong and Macau are governed under a distinctly different economic systems than the mainland. When it comes to banks and companies, it really helps the reader to keep these regions separate. They're considered separate countries for economic purposes (APEC, WTO, etc). Economic topics for separate economies deserve separate categories.

We use the combinations Mainland China/Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau for neutrality when politics is not the subject so the territorial claims are left ambiguous. see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese). While there is little room for confusion (other than using political labels that are rarely used in economics), it's not NPOV to assert that there are two countries each consisting of their current jurisdictions. I know this is really the case, but saying so is making a politcal statement. I don't see what's wrong with using non-political titles. --Jiang 13:04, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

From naming conventions (chinese) In particular, the word "China" should not be used to be synonymously with areas under the current administration of the People's Republic of China or with Mainland China. Similarly, the word "Taiwan" should not be used if the term "Republic of China" is more accurate. What in my naming scheme conflicts with this? There is a note in the Category:Airports of the Republic of China and Category:Airports of the People's Republic of China about the other. Burgundavia 13:12, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)
I can add a note to the bank articles on a similar line, as I think that would help. Burgundavia 13:17, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)

Neither you nor I am proposing a Category:Banks of China to cover only the PRC. We didn't even propose Category:Banks of China at all. In this case, "Republic of China" is not more accurate. It's only more accurate in a political context ("President of the Republic of China" vs. "President of Taiwan"). We're now implying that the ROC and PRC are separate countries limited to their current jurisdictions. Instead, I cite The term "Mainland China" is a term which can used when a comparison is to be made with Taiwan for non-political purposes. Hong Kong and Macau are generally not considered part of Mainland China, but are under the jurisdiction of the PRC. Thus, it is appropriate to write "many tourists from Hong Kong and Taiwan are visiting Mainland China." A non-political subject deserves a non-political description. Yes, a description within the category helps, but still... And why not separate the economies when people would like to see them separate? --Jiang 14:24, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Should templates be used to add articles to categories?

There are a number of templates that are inserted into articles that need some kind of special attension. Specifically:

I have proposed adding these templates to appropriate categories, which will slowly cause the articles they are inserted into to join the categories, as the articles are edited. As with everything wiki, there is disagreement.

Pros:

  • This will cause an alphabetical list (category) to be automatically generated which does not need direct maintenance of all the articles with the template.
  • The category format is better than the format in What links here and lists all articles, rather than just the first several.
  • Pages renamed would be updated in the category list. Redirects don't always stay pointing to the correct article.
  • If the template is removed from the article, the page is instantly removed from the category, and won't linger until someone discovers it.
  • There are a lot of lingering stubs in wikipedia. Perhaps if there was a somewhat unified list in an easily browsable form, people would pick more of them off and expand more articles.

Cons:

  • This duplicates the functionality of What links here which could be enhanced.
  • "It is not the point of categories and is just plain silly." --Maximus Rex
  • It is bad to mix things which are in the encyclopedia with maintaince material
  • The categories could get huge and the category system might not be ready for that.
  • Adds the stub message twice, first the template text, then a tall line with Cat:Stub.

Apparently there are technical performance issues with modifying the template that is included in so many articles, so this should be decided once, and not unilaterally decided by one or two people. I would appreciate it if anyone could add to the arguments above (pro or con!). Perhaps we could have a vote or something later. --ssd 04:41, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I think the Cons are very strong, and not matched with the pros. My preferred solution is "This duplicates the functionality of What links here which could be enhanced". ✏ Sverdrup 12:47, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'm not really much in favor of using temporary categories like Category:cleanup or category:stub on articles. See category talk:stub for alternatives for stubs. In regards to Category:disambig see my comment further up on (here on Village pump). -- User:Docu
However, does it work? Does including a cat: on a template cause all pages to which it is added to belong to the category also? This is of course useful for maintaining other pages with categories.
It may be a good thing, to present a back-link to other pages needing cleanup prominently on the page, but it may be redundant to go about this through means of a category, however.
I don't know... Dysprosia
Yes, it works, but I think a page has to be purged/touched before the cat shows up. ✏ Sverdrup 13:28, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

User:Docu has suggested several alternatives to categories, but none of them work. I will list them on category talk:stub. --ssd 04:36, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC) them

Alternatives to using Category:stub that is. Did you try? I'm much in favor of adding Category:Disambiguation to Template:Disambig. -- User:Docu
I agree, but Disambig is scary. The best alternative to it is a huge list in a page that takes forever to load even on my high speed connection. Do people actually edit that list or is it automatically maintained already?? If the category is added to the disambig page, I think it might eventually force implementation of the one-letter-per-page breakup of category pages that are huge... --ssd 04:21, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It has to be manually maintained. I did a bit of work on that a few months back, and it's a bit of a pain; I'd love to see some method of automating it developed, either by categories or by fixing "what links here" to show all the pages that link there (currently it cuts off after a few thousand or so). Bryan 18:17, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I just discovered the vfd link above. (and others) Great idea, I really like browsing the deletable articles this way. --ssd 15:06, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I note that 6 out of 7 of these templates include categories now. I'm sure that more of them out there do not (but I have not found them). This in itself is sort of a consensus. The question remaining is if it should be added to the remining templates. --ssd 02:37, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This experiment is progressing with the largest of these, Category:Stub. Concerns have been raised that the size of the category may impair server performance, although I have not noticed this--does a large category slow down wikipedia significantly more than an equivalently large article would? Can a developer comment on this? Probably we should wait and see how it works out with this category before adding it to the much larger disambiguation template. --ssd 17:57, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I like the idea of templates linking to Categories for maintenence. Kevin Rector 15:47, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I (the author of said "analysis") don't really like it being on VP, I hadn't intended it to be widely read; it was just something I wrote whilst bored one day. Please don't think I'm going around shouting about how Wikipedia is doomed and a plague of locusts will eat the articles etc. etc. I've added a disclaimer at the start to that effect. —Lady Lysiŋe Ikiŋsile | Talk 20:00, 2004 Jul 7 (UTC)

The funny thing is, I've been systematically going through Wikipedia using the allpages feature, e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Allpages&from=Chapel_Hill
(No, I did not start at A. I believe I started somewhere around Bu.... No, I don't read them all. I get a page with about 200 entries and I scan them, looking for a) subjects in which I might be able to contribute something, and b) "suspicious" subjects that might be problematical. I may look at one or two out of each group of 200).
Despite what you might think from looking at VfD, or reading the wikien-l mailing list, or even looking at the new pages, the overall quality of the articles is amazingly high. And quite a lot of the articles are interesting. It is relatively rare that I find one to which I can make any significant contribution.
When I am on the Web because I actually want to find something out, I'll try my usual lateral-thinking Google searches, but nowadays I will also search Wikipedia, and quite often the Wikipedia article tells me exactly what I want to know.
I cannot predict whether the number of problem users and vandals will scale at a different proportion than the useful contributors. My own guess, but of course it's just a guess, is that things will stay in proportion. I think the saving grace is that vandalizing Wikipedia is not much fun. It's no challenge, the damage is easily undone (it's a lot easier to revert an article than to scrub spray paint off concrete). The typical casual vandalism experience is that the page simply gets reverted within hours. There's no positive reinforcement for the vandal. Vandalbots will be harder to deal with, though. Dpbsmith 00:19, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Why Wikipedia is doomed to failure

This analysis discusses the three problems that really threaten Wikipedia's success. Well worth reading. Nafnaf 19:09, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

-sigh- --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 20:08, 2004 Jul 6 (UTC)

Then you really ought to go elsewhere, then, hm? RickK 20:35, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)

Bah. Just another of the many naysayers over the years who have consistently been proven wrong. Nothing gets the job done so well as allegations of impossibility. -- Wapcaplet 23:01, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Replies to common objections? Personally, I think "Why Wikipedia is doomed to put Britannica out of business a little later than planned" would be a better title for the essay...— Matt 23:12, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • As long as I've been here, I've never posted to the Village Pump before now, but I don't think this will be the last time. Personally, I'm having fun. Great fun. This may never be a perfect work, but what is? There are policies I'd like to see changed, but it will come in time. - Lucky 6.9 23:43, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Cannot work while logged in.

I have been plagued by a problem which I haven't seen mentioned by anyone else: Ever since the new software, when I log in I can't work. If I don't log in, I can read, edit, etc with no problems at all. But after I log in all pages refuse to load. This has been going on for quite a while already.

Does anyone have any idea why this might be so? Thanx in advance, Dovi.

I don't think this is the case for most people, so if you are not using an unusual browser, I can only imagine that it is a problem with cookies. If you can find your web browser's cookies, you might try deleting any that relate to Wikipedia -- Solipsist 19:45, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This is happening to me as well. I was trying to edit the see also section on the Inca Empire page. I tried it from two computers using three browsers (safari, camino, and IE 6.0 Win XP). I'm new to wiki, so I don't really know the best way to escalate this. And I can't be logged in while I report it, for obvious reasons. -nep
'I'm new to wiki' - Ahh this might be the clue. I believe there have recently been some changes to limit or slow down editing by new users, as a defense against a vandalbot that has been causing trouble (see Wikipedia talk:Vandalbot log entries and look for Vandalbot above on this page). Your editing problems might be related, but of course I could be off base -- Solipsist 11:24, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The problem is still there. I tried a different username and the same thing happens. What is the correct address for technical problems of this sort? -- Dovi

All bugs like this should be reported to sourceforge. Angela. 12:35, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Urgent request for review of an article

Jimbo hopes on his talk page that a "lot of people" will look at Khalid bin Mahfouz and Talk:Khalid bin Mahfouz. Lawyers apparently acting for the Sheikh have contacted Jimbo about inaccuracies in the article. I thought it sensible therefore to post this message to request urgent review of the article. Pcb21| Pete 18:21, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sultanate of Sulu had a timeline

As I encountered it in November 2003, Sultanate of Sulu was an unwikified timeline dating back to at least 1457. Now it is a stub dating from May 2004. What happened to the data in this article? How could it have disappeared? 169.207.112.239 05:36, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Here is a plausible explanation: A timeline was copied to the article, then noticed as a probable copy violation, then deleted. 169.207.112.239 05:49, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
According to the Wikipedia:deletion log, Maximus Rex deleted this on 19 May 2004 as it had been listed on Wikipedia:Copyright problems for over 7 days with no opposition to deletion. Angela. 12:35, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

VfD messed up again (duplicated items), ISO admin to fix it

Hello everybody! I just protected vfd because it's messed up with duplicated sections again. Someone just needs to edit out the duplicated bits. I'd do it but I can't edit vfd very effectively (slow connection). Can another admin take a look? Thanks for your help! Btw I guess the edit-conflict resolution algorithm has a bug in it, perhaps; I guess I'll go report a bug at Sourceforge. Regards & happy editing, Wile E. Heresiarch 20:42, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Next time you lock vfd can you put a notice on the top of the page? Usually someone puts up a red template warning that says something about admin overhauling. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 20:45, Jun 28, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, a notice would be good, but the dup'd page was so huge that I'm afraid of messing things up worse by editing it... Fwiw this problem has been noted before, it is bug # 949323 in the SF bug log. If anybody has specific info that can help track it down, maybe they could post a comment on that bug. Regards, Wile E. Heresiarch 21:09, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Not sure if this belongs here..

I made a little template for the occupations of politicians (and other people) you can see at the bottom of many pages. It's at Template:Occubox (didn't came up with a better name), and a little example can be seen at the bottom of my Sandbox. There's also a bug, as the president-link does not work. I don't have a clue why.. I'd like to hear other opinions about this and I'm not sure where to ask, so I'm doing it here. Move my comment if necessary. --Conti|✉ 15:43, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

  • I went and had a fiddle with it. From what I can see, templates don't like having | characters as part of the data that is passed to them. See my Sandbox for what happens if I change one of the other entries to have a different visible name than target name. I don't know if there is any way around this, but it is definitely the | that is causing your problems. SkArcher 16:25, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
    • Right, it's one missing feature for the templates, the pipe character is always interpreted as the delimiter between two parameters. There should something like masking, e.g. a double pipe (||) being interpreted as a single pipe inside the parameter. This problem is already listed at sourceforge, hopefully a MediaWiki developer will take a look at it because IMHO that one is one of the biggest missing features of template. andy 16:28, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
      • Another thing that I discovered was that I can't make a Template which contains just part of a table, for example "{| {{tablestuff}} |}" - where {{tablestuff}} is "|hello world" - does not work. --Conti|✉ 16:39, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
      • Is there any other use for a double pipe? I've thought of one ... another kind of pipe trick.;Bear 15:49, 2004 Jul 9 (UTC)

A good place to go for things like this in the future is Wikipedia:Help desk. Wikipedia Help Desk--not just for newcomers. This message brought to you by Wikipedians for helpfulness. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:31, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

  • Thanks! :-) --Conti|✉ 16:39, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Mention of wiki in articles

Anyone knows what Wikipedia:Mention of wiki in articles page is talking about. Page created by anon user and been dormant since June 2003. Jay 11:31, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

A head-scratcher, for sure. I've VfD'd it. - DavidWBrooks 12:56, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
It seems to be a guideline aimed at avoiding systematic bias in favour of the "wiki way" POV within articles. I think this a guideline worth keeping - for instance if we have a systematic bias about anything it is probably a pro-open source bias. Pcb21| Pete 16:29, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Insular headlines

Is it me, or are most of the "In The News" headlines inevitably Americocentric? There has to be a lot that is much more important than the fact Moore's documentary has attracted a lot of attention in the States, and that's not the only example; only a couple of days ago we were reading about the Jeri Ryan "scandal". The general policy of only putting up headlines that link to comprehensive articles induces a closed circle of options, in my opinion: comprehensive news-related articles are often focused on American interests or written from an Anglo-American perspective, so putting up a link to, say, the Darfur conflict in Sudan, or the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, means linking to a semi-complete article which will sooner or later be pulled down because it does not show Wiki in its best colours (the articles I linked to the ICC/Congo and the Kashmir dispute yesterday were promptly pulled down.) This also means that articles that need work stay relatively neglected. The possibility of attracting new users with specialised interests who may be able to improve those articles and round out Wikipedia also diminishes. Could we at least change the latter policy, ie link headlines to incomplete articles? We do admit to being an open-content encyclopedia after all. -- Simonides 13:32, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yes, this is a problem, and the Senate scandal was an egregious example. However, keep in mind that events with regard to the U.S. often do have high international significance because the U.S. government is quite powerful and has its hands in places all over the globe. Fahrenheit 9/11 is an example of this, although not the most powerful one. This is a film being viewed by a record-setting number of people and may have a significant influence on the presidential election, which I hope I need not say is of tremendous influence in the world. Note also that it was the winner of the Palme d'Or international film award. It is recieving "top story" news coverage internationally. It is currently listed as a "Top Story" on the BBC website, it is a top story on the websites of the Guardian and of the Times (UK), it is on the front page of the websites of the Telegraph, the CBC, the Globe and Mail, and al Jazeera. In fact, at the moment it has higher billing on non-U.S. websites than sites such as the NY Times, the Washington Post, and CNN.
So, this particular item is appropriate, and generally U.S.-centered news stories often have international importance simply because of the balance of power in the world. - Centrx 18:16, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thank you for the reply Centrx, but I think you just offered an example of Americocentrism. Not that such a thing is inherently bad - the majority of people see the world filtered through the politics and culture of their immediate environment - but the point, when working on an international site, is to control it as much as possible. While I'm pleased to hear that long known political facts are finally being popularised enough to reach a broad audience in America, I personally think the conflicts in Sudan and Congo, which have resulted in many thousands of deaths, are at least as important as Moore's box office record. -- Simonides 19:59, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Huh. How large a problem is this really? Right now, for example, the front page shows two American stories (both with strong international implications), and two clearly non-American stories. That's probably as good as you're going to get, given that this is the English Wikipedia, and a rather considerable portion of the world's native English-speakers live in America. (And America really is the most important nation. Bow down before our might, ye petty vassals! ::grin::) Or does this indicate a shift since this thread started, or is it simply non-normative? -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 20:33, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It is a problem. Simonides brings up exactly what I brought up when the new front page was unveiled for the first time earlier this year -- the impact it has on newcomers and casual browsers. English does not equal American. English is a language, and it has increasingly become the common language of the world. As such, our front page should be very conscious to have global views. This is the risk of the new design, that passersby will simply dismiss Wikipedia has some Ameri-centric project. That would be a shame, because only half the articles in the entire Wikipedia are English, and additionally not all English contributors are American. Remember, the URL we give out to the press or to friends is www.wikipedia.org. That lands at the English Wikipedia. That means the English Wikipedians have an extra responsibility to make sure the "news" page has as inclusive a set of articles as possible. (It's no secret my desire is to reduce the "newspaper" design of the front page because of this, but that's another battle) Fuzheado | Talk 23:54, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Well, I wasn't claiming that America *should* be disproportionately represented, just that realistically there's probably going to be some of that. But to be clear--you're saying that our current set of headlines, one about the Supreme Court ruling on detention at Guantanamo, one on a new beheading, one on the transfer of power in Iraq, one on Serbia, and one on Pakistan, is too "Ameri-centric"? -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 00:00, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Firstly, all English speaking non/Americans who think English is restricted to the US and UK should get this straight: English has official or special status in at least seventy five countries with a total population of over two billion - just in case someone wanted to bring up the lame argument that since mostly Americans speak English, it's what we should focus on. Secondly, would we would be reading about (the US Supreme Court ruling at) Guantanamo Bay, or (the US transfer of power in) Iraq, even if the US hadn't shoved its foot down a few thousand throats in those places? That reminds me of a message board I used to post on, which had members from all the world - they were discussing Kabul. This was sometime in August 2001. An American poster asked what Kabul was. Less than a month later, not only did most Americans know what Kabul was, they more or less knew where it was too. I'm not saying that American poster was representative of Americans in general - but I hope it does illustrate my point that even foreign news can be Americocentric. -- Simonides 01:17, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
(BTW, I don't at all disagree with the proposition that Ameri-centrism is bad; I'm just playing devil's advocate in the interest of clarity) Now, while I'm well aware that English is spoken in all sorts of places, I'm still guessing that most of the users on the English Wikipedia are going to be American. (Some of the reasons for this are, of course, more sinister than others.) And this is simply going to produce an imbalance of interest that's going to remain as a functional reality, methinks. I'm saying de facto, not de jure. Wikipedia has to grow organically out of the interests of its users, and I think to say that, "We have American news, so we won't attract non-American users," is reversing things. Perhaps we should be discussing strategies for the active recruitment of a broader user base, so that we don't have to artificially correct our public face.
Now, your second claim is completely irrelevant--the US's quasi-imperialistic practices (and I am happy to call them that) may indicate an Ameri-Centrist policy stance. In fact, I think that's pretty clear. But nonetheless, they're news to everybody. I'm all about making America less interesting, particularly in areas involving lots of death, but the fact is, it is. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 02:32, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Kukkurovaca, I know and agree that Americocentrism is a natural outcome of having a majority of Americans here on an American-created and hosted site and that it will probably remain a functional reality. My point is - so what? If this is going to be an encylopedia which pretends to neutrality and professionalism then we necessarily have to acknowledge a skewed perspective and work against it when and where possible. Yes, articles will grow out of the interests of their users. Does that make every single perspective, or some kind of ethnocentrism valid? No. So is what you call "artificial correction" necessary? Yes. At every step. That is part of what editors do at Wikipedia - point out NPOV, make articles inclusive of little known perspectives & info, and so on. We should be discussing strategies, true, but are you? I have already suggested that we change the rule about linking to comprehensive articles; I don't notice any response to that possible strategy so far.
My second claim is entirely in keeping with my first, but you failed to understand it. In pretending to provide "international news" you are simply linking to international news that is important to Americans, which confirms Americocentrism. Today, again, we have another example: a Marine has been killed in Iraq by militants. Well, of course that's depressing, but what about the Iraqi civilians who are dying daily because of the American invasion? How come that doesn't crop up on the Template either? Why isn't that "news to everybody" too? What about the daily murders in other conflict-ridden areas in Asia, Africa and South America where even important personalities on those continents don't often make it to the Template simply because they are not well known among Americans? I welcome Devil's Advocates, but you need to have a defensible argument in the first place; Americocentrism on an international encyclopedia is not defensible and it needs correction rather than compliant apathy. I would change it everyday, but 1) last time I tried, most of the stuff disappeared pronto; 2) I can't do it everyday. So more people need to be aware and active about it. -- Simonides 21:04, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

As I've said before on Talk:Main Page, North American editors need to make a more conscious effort to seek out news topics outside North America so they get adequately represented. And adding lots of Iraq-related stories that have great significance to the US is not enough. We have, or used to have, a guideline for In the news that no more than one story should be centric to any particular country. What happened to it? --Michael Snow 21:20, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I've found that telling other people they need to act better is rarely effective; it's hard to get other people to do things. I would say, rather, that those who are concerned about Americo-centrism should find more/better foreign news items. Realistically, it's the only way to fight this. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 23:38, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
True Meelar, but 1) one can't do all the News editing oneself; 2) tweaking current policies would help to alleviate the issue. Can we at least do the latter, ie include a note in the guidelines saying a) no more than one item per country & b) headlines may be linked to incomplete articles? -- Simonides 00:34, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Well, I would certainly object to policy number a) right off the start, and as I always say, why is that all of you anti-Americans always want us Americans to change? If you think there need to be more non-American news items, then, do something about it and quit trying to tell OTHER people to fix something that YOU think needs to be dealt with. Oh, but no, you're too busy. Well, guess what? Then bugger off. RickK 05:20, Jun 30, 2004 (UTC)
Congratulations on your recently acquired rhetorical skills, but 1) criticising Americocentrism does not equate to anti-Americanism; 2) everytime I change the articles (as I did today as well) they are changed back to the usual articles within a couple of hours, something I mentioned earlier. Now, the reasons for removal may be legitimate, but I do wonder why the same headlines that were removed have to be put back on - perhaps it's laziness; 3) if you object to policy a), you could tell us why. Try to construct an argument. Or would you prefer some delicate suggestions on what you too could be doing with your time? -- Simonides 06:51, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Don't worry about Rick. If you look at his wider contributions, its clear he means well. It took me a while to figure what his hysterical over-reactions ("All you anti-Americans...", "Is this an attempt to stop us from deleting ANYTHING?", "You are all happy for trolls to overrun the 'pedia" - paraphrasing a little) reminded me of.. then it hit me ... Rick is the Daily Mail of Wikipedia. It is probably good to have that sort of person around as well those lefty, liberal, anti-censorship, open sourcey types. Allows us to get all POVs in the creation process of the pedia, as well as in the content. Pcb21| Pete 12:03, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This may be peripheral to the main point, but I've thought for some time that "In the News", as it currently exists, does not fit on Wikipedia at all. There are any number of well-edited, professionally-vetted news sources out there and the Wiki cooperative approach does not lend itself well to breaking news -- there have been several instances of factual errors going uncorrected in "In the News". I also have a problem with "instant articles" trying to cover breaking news stories, but at least these are not on the main page. I think "In the News", if anything, ought to consist of bare links to people, places, etc. that are currently part of the news so folks getting news elsewhere can come here for context and background. Jgm 00:36, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

"Suspected" Copyright Violation policy

The vast majority of pages that get listed on Wikipedia:Copyright problems are quite straight-forward: somebody has found a page with identical content, slaps the {{copyvio}} template on the offending article, and the only question is "was it copied with permission?"

But what is to be done in the case of an article that "smells funny", but no source can be found from which it has been copied? Earlier today, Staniukovich was flagged as a copyright violation with the source listed as "Unknown, but smells of one." Which caused considerable offence to the new editor who had created the page.

What does anyone think should be done in this case? It seems to me that there needs to be some way of notifying people of the possibility of a problem without the article being blanked and replaced by a scary "Attention! The content of this page has been removed" message.

Perhaps we need a "copyright query" tag, much like the {{cleanup}} and {{disputed}} tags, which can be used to put a note at the top of the page without removing the text. That, combined with a comment on the discussion page, and a listing for attention on Wikipedia:Copyright problems, would alert other editors to see if they can find evidence that the article has indeed been copied.

Reasonable idea? Or daft? —Stormie 00:22, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

A less offensive/rude template may not be the answer.
I have read the Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, if they would have been followed this would not be an issue. If the copyright template is used the page in question is essentially deleted, therefore the Wikipedia:Deletion policy takes place and it clearly states "If in doubt... don't delete!". If a copyright infringement is merely suspected then the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution kicks in and the issue should be brought up on the articles talk page first. Well that is my understanding of how it should be handled.
Perhaps pasting the statement "If in doubt... don't delete!" into the key policy's and prominently placed in Wikipedia:Copyright problems page, might avoid future embarrassments and conflicts. IMHO Buster 07:08, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

If you can't identify the source being copied, but suspect there is one, perhaps it would be best to contact the contributor first? Then, if they're nonresponsive or evasive, you could go ahead with the procedures of Wikipedia:Copyright problems. --Michael Snow 16:49, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Absolutely. The trickiest situation is the thing that "smells like plagiarism" and is by an anonymous user. The second trickiest is the one that is effectively plagiarism, but is still legal, because the plagiarized, uncredited source was public domain. -- Jmabel 16:58, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)
I agree that the anon contributor is the trickiest situation. You can always try to ask them about the source of their work, but if they're not on a static IP address they may never see your question.
Is it a problem is someone copies a public domain source without credit? I mean, obviously it's not a legal problem, but do you see it as any sort of problem? It's bad manners, I think, but anything more than that? —Stormie 04:20, Jul 2, 2004 (UTC)

What's the most common, usual, easily understood metric equivalent for "acres?"

Please do not answer unless you are a native of a region in which the metric system (systeme internationale) is commonly used in everyday life. Consider the following three sentences:

  • The area of Central Park in New York city is 843 acres or _________________
  • Boston's Logan International Airport occupies 2,400 acres or _____________
  • The Emory family had a 640-acre ( ______________ ) farm in Grant County, Wisconsin.

Suppose that the blanks were to be filled in with an equivalent, using a metric unit of area. What unit of area would you expect to see used? What unit is most familiar, understandable, useful, comfortable to you? Dpbsmith 12:07, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

For those sizes of area, hectares. Arwel 12:54, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Shouldn't this discussion be at Wikipedia:Measurements Debate? Small areas (for example, size of carpets) are in m²; large areas (for example, size of countries) are in km². Gdr 13:24, 2004 Jul 4 (UTC)
hectares is correct, but I confess (since i'm not a farmer) I sometimes find square metres or even square kilometres (for huge areas) easier to mentally picture. Erich 14:01, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
exactly what Erich said. Marnanel 15:29, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Square meter feels best for me -- Chris 73 | Talk 16:07, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
For those sizes, definitely km2. Fredrik | talk 16:38, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Absolutely not. In NZ usage, hectares would be used for all three examples given above. Even our largest farming units are always described in hectares (100,000 Ha+). In addition, the average person has a sense of how big the classic NZ "1/4 acre" section is, and can usually relate to a hectare being 10 of those, whereas a sq km is much harder to visualize. dramatic 11:39, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Hectares are the commonest units for areas less than 1 km² and greater then 10 000 m². There are a million m² in a km², hectares fill the middle of this range quite usefully. But note that the are and the hectare are not proper SI units, they are tolerated but not encouraged. - Chris Jefferies 19:55, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I totally agree with Erich. Perhaps fifty or a hundred years ago, when the majority of people were much more informed in matters of land and farming, hectares would have been instantly understood by Europeans. Today, we don't have this immediate everyday connection to the unit (nor really to any other area unit larger than m², the measure of our houses and apartments). Most(?) people will know from school how large a hectare is, though, so they can picture the size if they give it some thinking effort. Given that the numbers for the examples given would be a bit monstrous in either m² or km², hectares might just be the best compromise – but m² would be more readily understood. -- Jao 13:15, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
843 acres ≈ 3.4 km², 2,400 acres ≈ 10 km², 640 acres ≈ 2.6 km². How are these "monstrous"? Fredrik | talk 21:02, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
They are not. I should have thought twice about the figures. :) -- Jao 11:33, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

BIG MATCH

TODAY! Big match!! Our Lady of Fatima, featuring the three little shepherds, VS the Olympian bunch! May the best deity win! Muriel, the proud portuguese, who will remain proud whatever the result

Moving articles across namespaces

I want to move an article from wikipedia to metawiki. I can't find any discussion about how to do it. The help for "move" says that the talk page might have to be moved manually if you're moving across namespaces, but I can't find info on how to do that, either, and it doesn't say anything about moving the article itself. I tried moving to "m:articlename" but it tells me I can't do that. Are there instructions anywhere? Elf | Talk 04:25, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

m:Transwiki. Meta is not a namespace, it is a completely different site. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:33, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Renaming categories

Is there a way to rename a Category? "Move" doesn't work. Do we have to delete the Category, create a new one, then go to every article linked to the original Category and add them to the new one and delete them from the old one? RickK 18:52, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

Yep, that's pretty much what you've got to do. Pain in the butt, ain't it? -- Cyrius|✎ 19:07, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It's a real killer. I had to change 50 of my own entries once. That was a fun evening. I suppose you can attempt to look on the bright side: it ought to stop people from making categories without a fair amount of consideration as to whether it's the best name. Although, um, I still seem to make them without really thinking about it for too long... er, um, ah... --bodnotbod 23:28, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

Annoying light blue tint on certain pages?

Recently, as viewed by me with Safari 1.2.2, the text on certain pages, including this one, has acquired an annoying light-blue background tint. I find this quite irritating. I work quite hard to get all the monitors I use set for a pleasing-to-me color temperature of 5500 degrees, and I do not want Wikipedia undoing this by adding bluish casts to my nicely-tuned white. It reminds me of a magazine I read as a kid called "Children's Digest"—does it still exists\?—which was printed on a sort of light-snot-colored paper that they insisted was "eye-ease paper." How can I turn this off? Dpbsmith 11:16, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

you can change how your browser displays pages by editing your cascading style sheet at User:Dpbsmith/monobook.css. Guides to making changes can be found at meta at m:User styles. Gentgeen 11:32, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
It still looks awfully bad, especially when there are images on the project page. What is the CSS in question to eliminate this you say--?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason 20:49, 2004 Jul 5 (UTC)
The color change also break my custom stylesheet (only works properly with non-article pages ATM), and I haven't figured out how to work around it yet :/ -- Fredrik | talk 21:05, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I hadn't noticed, since I already had my custom stylesheet set to light blue for non-articles, but I'd presume it's a result of the voting that took place a while back, the consensus of which was to use a light blue background for non-article pages. -- Wapcaplet 15:32, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Potential edit war in Coca-Cola

Recently User:Drbalaji_md posted a comment on my talk in response to a comment I made to him as an anon to notify him why I was rolling back an edit of his on Coca-Cola. I responded to him at his talk page. Then, he made some probably POV edits to the introductory paragraph of Coca-Cola, and generalised all Americans who view Coke as synonymous with the U.S. as nationalists (note: I am not American; I've never set foot outside Asia/Australasia). He made a gesture for opening dialogue at the article's Talk and I responded. I do not like edit wars; I am hoping this does not become one. To that end, can somebody help us resolve this? This is the first time I've been involved in a controversial edit that could be an edit war, sdo I'm not sure on the exact protocol. Thanks for any and all help in mediating. Johnleemk | Talk 14:58, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Btw, this article is on WP:FAC so resolving edit wars becomes even more important as all objections to the article in the past few days have been resolved. Johnleemk | Talk 15:02, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

BC vs. BCE for dates?

There's a debate over on Talk:Centuries about the use of BCE/CE in place of BC/AD. While not as well known among the general public (especially outside the USA), the "Common Era" nomenclature has basically become the international standard in academic circles. Detractors argue that it's simply Political Correctness, an annoying Americanism, or a fad. I think it's arguable that the connections to Christianity implied by BC/AD are inappropriate (if not offensive) when applied to historic events from other cultures.

The debate is also mentioned in the article for Anno Domini as well, in the section entitled "Alternative nomenclature for the same era".

I suggest that we rename all the BC date pages so that they're at their BCE equivalents, and create redirects. Authors of individual articles can decide for themselves how they want to label the dates, but I think the "official" versions should use the more generic term.--Wclark 21:55, 2004 Jul 10 (UTC)

It's absurd. As a non-Christian, I find it vaguely annoying that years are in BC and AD, but using exactly the same system but using different abbreviations is totally pointless and changes nothing. The French Revolution had the right idea: they reckoned years from a new point, changed the names of the months... If there was a serious proposal to do that now, it would be kind o' cool, but just changing the abbreviations is utterly silly. Calling Anno Domini the Common Era is just plain denial about what our era is based on.
Now that I mention names of months, how about January, March, etc., named after Janus, Mars and other Roman gods I don't believe in. How about Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...? Maybe I find it offensive to worship the Moon, Tiw and Woden. Should we go hyper-politically correct and call them Firstday, Secondday, etc. as in Portuguese and Chinese? — Chameleon My page/My talk 22:47, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I completely agree. As a "radical atheist" (with thanks to Douglas Adams), I find it deeply offensive to suggest that I'm so stupid as to (a) be annoyed by the reality that most of the development of modern culture, and especially that of the last millennium or so, has been driven by a Christian-dominated world, and (b) not recognise this for the hollow, vile, ridiculous joke of re-branding what is still a Christian-dominated calender, rendered no different by some lame attempt at hiding this.
James F. (talk) 23:12, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The point isn't whether "BCE" accomplishes the task of white-washing history (I tend to think it's a bit misguided too) but whether it should be accepted as the standard or not. It makes no difference why BCE is being used, just that it's being used. The academic/scientific community seem to be gradually adopting BCE as the standard, and I'm just suggesting Wikipedia honor that convention (whether we agree with the motivation behind it or not).--Wclark 01:22, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)
If you think you have the stamina to make at least 3000 moves and redirects, you have my admiration. I rather have BC, because i do think ACE its an annoying political correctness. And flawed: common era? common to who? i blieve the jews, muslims, chineses, and Ancient Romans, for what matters, have a different opinion of what is common. Muriel G 01:17, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The People's Republic of China uses the Western AD/BC calendar almost exclusively, and they call it gongyuan which translates as "common era". I suspect the western calendar is common to all sorts of people when they are speaking in English and want other people to know what year they are talking about. - Nat Krause 02:50, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Perl scripts have the stamina to do whatever I tell them to do. Your (or my) POV on the BC vs. BCE debate is irrelevant. CE is sometimes taken to stand for "Christian Era" (which is probably better than either "Year of our Lord" or "Common Era"). In any event, it's certainly common in the sense that it's used as the international standard (yes, even by Jews, Muslims, Chinese, etc.).--Wclark 01:26, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)

Could we make it a user preference, like month day vs day month? We should be already doing [[404 BC]] — couldn't we have an option to render it as 404 BCE? Myself. I prefer BCE/CE,as not religion/culture specific, but arguably we should go with the most common option as the default. m.e. 01:51, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I like the idea of having the date display as a preference -- but that doesn't solve the problem of what names to use for the date pages themselves. Also, I don't agree that we should always go with the most common option in situations like this. If there is a scientific or academic standard involved, I'd argue that that takes priority.--Wclark 02:30, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)
There are lots of terms that academics use that most people wouldn't have a clue what it meant. BCE/CE are like that. I'll bet that your original statment is correct, most people know what BC/AD means. Why on earth go to something obscure, when we're trying to provide accessible information, not obfuscate it? Elf | Talk 03:55, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
BCE/CE are hardly obscure. Anyone who has taken a university history class in the past decade (or two) is almost certainly familiar with this usage. I don't see how obfuscation is really an issue here, since redirects would be put in place to make sure that 300 BC still took you to the same page it always did (even though that page would now be named "300 BCE"). Article authors would still be able to present the date however they deem most appopriate. Display preferences could even be added so that the user sees whichever usage they prefer. All we're talking about is whether the BCE pages redirect to the BC versions, or vice versa. Since BCE is the more generic term, and an academic/scholarly standard, I still think it should be the main page and the BC versions should be redirects.--Wclark 04:40, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)

If I were the type of person who would use the phrase "political correctness", this would be an example of it gone amok. Leave the damn dates where they are. People who know what BCE means, will also understand BC, but people who don't know what it means will be completely confused. RickK 05:59, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

That's not a good reason to choose BC over BCE for the Wikipedia. All we should care about are what the standards are, not why the standards are what they are, or whether people are aware of the standards (isn't part of our jobs to make them aware?). Most people have no idea what AD stands for, yet that doesn't prevent us from making AD a redirect to Anno Domini rather than After Death. The only good argument I've seen so far for why the Wikipedia should stick with BC as the de facto standard is that it's the more common usage among laypeople. BCE is the standard among academics, so the issue is really whether we go with the more popular usage, or the scholarly one.--Wclark 06:10, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)

isn't part of our jobs to make them aware? - no, it's to make sure they don't leave in frustration. Hey, we could write it all in Spanish too, so that they'd have to learn how to read Spanish, but our job isn't to drive them away. Wikipedia policy is to use the most common naming convention. Are we writing an encyclopedia for academics, or for a general reader? RickK 06:14, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

I said part of our jobs. There's a balance. Like I said, we don't treat AD as if it stood for "After Death", even though the majority of people probably think that's what it stands for (it's a pet peeve of mine, and I correct people on it more frequently than you'd probably believe). More importantly, it's not Wikipedia policy to adopt popular naming conventions over scholarly ones -- at least not consistent policy (and if I'm mistaken here, please point me at the appropriate policy page). Maybe it should be. That's the real problem here: do we use the popular convention (BC) or the academic one (BCE)? Should there be a general policy for making these kinds of determinations in the future?--Wclark 06:24, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)

Summarised sections

What's worth covering?

When is a topic not worth covering at Wikipedia? For example: -When does a location become too small to write an article on it? -What policy exists on which websites can have an article? -When is an event too minor to deserve an article or a mention on a timeline? -When is a business to small to not be covered by an article? -When is a person not important enough to deserve an article? -When is something so boring or so uninteresting that it really doesn't deserve any coverage at Wikipedia? I can't quite work out what is acceptable to publish, and when something becomes so uninteresting that it stops becoming a contribution and starts becoming spam. User:Icurite

"my watchlist" no longer working

Clicking on "my watchlist" no longer works. It kicks back an SQL error about too many rows in the SELECT statement.

Presumably the solution is to edit the watchlist to reduce the number of pages watched. To do so, you click a link on the watchlist page... except the watchlist page won't come up anymore, so you can't get to the link to click on it!

To get around this it's necessary to go directly to the "edit watchlist" page at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Watchlist&magic=yes

It's really stupid that the SQL error page leaves you with no way to recover.

What's the new limit on the number of pages watched, anyway?

-- Curps 07:54, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Moved article disappears

Help. I just moved Hugh Sykes Davis to Hugh Sykes Davies and now the page does not exist! Bmills 07:40, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Your move shows up in "Recent changes":
  07:35:49 Talk:Hugh Sykes Davis moved to Talk:Hugh Sykes Davies (diff; hist) . . Bmills (Talk)
  07:35:48 Hugh Sykes Davis moved to Hugh Sykes Davies (diff; hist) . . Bmills (Talk)
Oddly enough, on the "Recent changes" page, "Hugh Sykes Davies" appears as a blue link! But if you click on it from there, you still get the "no article on this topic" error.

Could this have anything to do with the new server? I'd like to get the page back, even to the old name. Bmills 08:07, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Can anyone suggest an appropriate fix? Bmills 11:10, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hectares

A debate on the use of the unit, hectares, is occurring at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Additionaly input is welcome. Rmhermen 19:55, Jun 30, 2004 (UTC)

New WikiReader

I have started a new WikiReader project, about William Shakespeare. Everybody that want to help are welome with ideas, categorisation, copyediting and expansion.

I'd also like to draw a little attention to out other WikiReaders, and the fact that the Wikipedianer at the German Wikipedia have so far printed and sold two WikiReaders, while we still haven't printed any. ✏ Sverdrup 17:47, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

NEH grant

There is a very large potential grant available from the National Endowment for the Humanities that Wikimedia may well qualify for. The deadline for application submission is July 15, and more information about the grant can be found at meta at m:NEH grant. Any help would be appriciated. Gentgeen 22:22, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Communism in practice

I think the first discussion "Does wikipedia represent the world" is a discussion about the main page and it deserves to be there, atleast until a sufficient body of opinion is formed. And moving it to a location without specifying it in the main page discussion (not in the history), is not appropriate. It is exactly the same technique handled by communist comrades to silence the media (not my POV, but fact). I would suggest atleast placing a small note in the body of the main page discussion. Again, I know it is dictatorship here and my suggestions will be of no use :) (And I hope my views will be endorsed) --Drbalaji md 23:50, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

VFD duplication

Looks like (only?) a doubling of VfD in last hour or so. Someone with a faster pipe than mine would be better to remedy it. --Jerzy(t) 01:36, 2004 Jul 7 (UTC)

Borderline Fair Use

OK, so I understand the fair use policy (I mean, I've been adding hundreds of fair use logos to Wikipedia), but I've got a situation I wanted to ask about. I just picked up three old books - one on helicopters since 1907 and two on World War II aircraft. They are definitely copyrighted works, but they contain good illustrations of aircraft, many that could be for articles that don't have any pictures at all (example). Plus, there are a number that have pictures with questionable or no copyright information already (example).

So, anyways, the question is, could this qualify as fair use or not? It seems close, but I think you could justify these images as historically significant, informational and, of course, they would be reasonably small and at a low resolution. Anyone else have an opinion? RADICALBENDER★ 00:57, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Non-credited mirrors

Lately, any Google search returns wikipedia and its mirrors in the top searches, so when one wants to find information on the web to corroborate claims in wikipedia articles, it's necessary to add "-wikipedia" to your search. But this also finds you some interesting websites:

  • breakpt.org carries wikipedia's articles and credits wikipedia with a gif file, so the text "from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" shows up, but search engines don't know that the text is from wikipedia. The additional effect is that if you copy and paste just the text of the article, there is no trace of the article being from Wikipedia. Weird and cheeky, but probably acceptable.
  • smartpedia.com is much more interesting. It carries all the content without mentioning wikipedia once. If you search their site for wikipedia, all you get are 3 error messages containing wikipedia's url. If you enter wikipedia manually into their url, you get a copy of Wikipedia, with every instance of wikipedia changed to smartpedia. Their only acknowledgment of the wikipedia is a link saying just "SOURCE" at the bottom of their pages which mostly leads to appropriate wikipedia pages, but the one on their main page is broken.

These are more or less link farms really. I wonder what our policy is on this? Zocky 23:33, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Copyrights - it looks like both of your examples are OK. But the corroboration problem is still an issue for any article that has been around for a while (and thus is copied by thousands of websites). --mav 05:04, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I like it. smartpedia/Wikipedia says "Smartpedia (www.smartpedia.com) is a copyleft encyclopedia that is collaboratively developed using wiki software. Smartpedia is managed and operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation." --Henrygb 18:43, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
And then there's http://www.chat11.com , which doesn't seem to mention Wikipedia or the GFDL at all. It doesn't seem to be compliant at all.
And re Smartpedia: You'd think that, if they're going to claim that they're a freely editable wiki, then they should make sure they're actually a freely editable wiki... Lucky Wizard 23:17, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Page content being doubled

Hi,

Very recently, the whole of the village pump was accidentally duplicated by a user. I've noticed several instances in which a user inadvertently creates an extra copy of all the content of a page when he or she edits it. This happens most often at VfD (where it really creates a mess) and FAC, although I've seen it at RFA and on talk pages too. Is there any way to protect against this, such as warning a user when his or her edits will increase the size of the page by more than 150%?

Acegikmo1 17:03, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This must be related to the edit conflict resolving code added in MediaWiki 1.3, and as such it only shows when previously an edit conflict would have shown. It is already noted at MediaWiki 1.3 bug reports, so hopefully a developer can trace and fix this annoying bug soon. andy 18:49, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I've had another issue where i've been blanking pages, i edit a section, make some changes, save it, and the whole article is blanked after i save. This happened at Kernel (Computer science) for example. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:58, 2004 Jul 6 (UTC)

Fictional Characters vs. Living, Breathing People

There's a (humorous, in my opinion) dispute with the Harry Kim article that I think should seriously spin-off a Wikipedia policy. At issue is that there are two Harry Kims: the Star Trek character and an actual elected mayor of Hawai'i County. One person objected to creating a disambiguation page out of the main Harry Kim space and redirect to two separate articles, as others like myself would like to do. One for Harry Kim (fictional) and Harry Kim (politician). Another person suggested that the living, breathing Harry Kim take precedence over a fictional character and therefore should have the main space while redirecting to Harry Kim (fictional). On the otherhand, some have argued that the fictional character takes precedence over the actual person because the fictional Harry Kim is more widely known and therefore deserves the main space while the actual person gets a mere redirect.

There are basically two camps. One camp believes an actual person gets precedence over a fictional character anytime, despite the current Wikipedia policy of giving the main space to the more widely known subject. The other camp stands by that current policy. I think we need clarification on this issue. --Gerald Farinas 16:44, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Well I'll just jump in with both feet as usual and express my opinion that Wikipedia should reflect the real world. If therefore there is more than one "Harry Kim", then Wikipedia should reflect this and the "main" Harry Kim article should say so. In other words it should be a disambiguation page pointing to Harry Kim (Star Trek) (note the subtle difference in approach) and Harry Kim (politician). I believe that this is not an uncommon name (Googling for "Harry Kim" seems to show a couple of candidates), and there might well prove to be further entries required. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 17:12, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)
Phil Boswell's approach is the same I used at Jack Ryan (Senate Candidate) and Jack Ryan (fictional character) (he's from Tom Clancy, in case you were wondering). I think this approach is fine. Certainly, a relatively obscure politician should not bump out the Star Trek usage; but then, the Star Trek character was no Spock or Captain Kirk, either. Disambig works well here. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 17:16, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The more well known one should obviously get the main article, regardless of whether they actually exist or not, otherwise we'll end up with Sherlock Holmes (fictional) just because a real-world Sherlock Holmes has done something minor that someone feels merits a stub in Wikipedia. Proteus (Talk) 19:24, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The judgement should be based on both criteria: renown and existence. In other words, we should use common sense. In the case of "Harry Kim", the real guy should get the main article. In the case of Sherlock Holmes, the fictional character should get the main article, despite any minor real people, unless the next President of the USA (e.g.) is called Sherlock Holmes, in which case the made-up one should be relegated. — Chameleon My page/My talk 18:20, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Supply and Demand question

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference Desk. --Jerzy(t) 01:51, 2004 Jul 7 (UTC)

On naming an article

I've been toiling heavily in the articles related to the French Revolution. Right now we have a lot of links (which I mostly made) to The_Legislative_Assembly_and_the_fall_of_the_French_monarchy#The_10th_of_August, enough that I'm inclined to refactor this section into an article of its own. However, I don't know what to call that article. People writing about the French Revolution almost always just call it "The 10th of August" (sort of like recently with "September 11"). Is it OK to call an article The 10th of August or does anyone have other reasonable suggestions? We do already have some articles (such as 18 Brumaire and 9 Thermidor named for dates in the French Revolutionary Calendar, but those dates are unlikely to arise in any other context. -- Jmabel 03:37, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)

"The 10th of August (French Revolution)" ? m.e. 09:20, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
"10th of August (French Revolution)" ? Article names probably shouldn't start with The unless absolutely necessary, though a few of them do. jallan 14:07, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC) ok yes m.e. 08:07, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll go with that when I get to this. -- Jmabel 16:30, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)

New York Subway needs Category

The articles with all include (New York Subway) in the title need to be condensed into a category, with a menu bar to help move around them easier. This is a HUGE task, though (as there SEEMS to be articles on most of the stations -- a huge number). Any ideas on the best way to go about this? --Wolf530 03:30, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)

Sounds like you are more talking about the creation of a template than a category. -- Jmabel 04:52, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)
I don't understand exactly what you're asking, but you might be interested in looking at what we've done for Melbourne railway stations as an example for organising such things. Ambivalenthysteria 04:56, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Likewise, I suggest looking at Washington Metro and its associated pages. I'll look around the New York pages and see what I can do. --Golbez 19:57, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Bird reincarnation?

Check out User:Golden Dreams. I've blocked him on reincarnation grounds, but people should be on the lookout. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 00:29, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Then why has his page been redirected to User:Lir? I know all trolls look alike, but still ... RickK 20:39, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)

Apparently it was actually Michael, see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Lir. Of our banned users, Michael in particular seems to like creating confusion by impersonating his compatriots. --Michael Snow 20:37, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

"Preview" in "Login Successful" screen page title

The page title - I don't know if that's the correct term but I mean the wording used in a browser's title bar - for the screen confirming a successful login has the word "preview" in it. I assume this is a hangover from some development phase and should now be removed. If not, what is it previewing?? I apologise for reposting this but it's had no reply here and no reply in the 1.3 bug reports yet so I assume it's overlooked. --Nevilley 23:56, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I don't know where this could be fixed, but the actual text consits of:
Login successful - Preview - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dori | Talk 15:21, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying that. I suspect that it may be easily fixable, but is caught between (a) not being doable by admins but (b) being a low priority for programmers, since it is irritating but not actually broken. Oh well. --Nevilley 09:57, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Proposed changes to Sandbox and interface messages

I've proposed a major change to Template:Sandbox and a minor change to Mediawiki:Newarticletext on Template talk:Sandbox and Mediawiki talk:Newarticletext. Please post any comments/suggestions there. Thanks!  – Jrdioko (Talk) 23:54, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

doubled again

Looks like the pump was doubled again. I appear to have repaired it, including merging comments that were not in the first copy of the duplicated section. (Compare window in emacs does wonders. This is the first time I wish I had a web browser working in emacs. Working on it.)

Anyway, fixed, nothing should have been lost. --ssd 23:50, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Photos

I think that adding a photo to an article or biography is beneficial, but isn't eight (8) of them in Madonna (singer) a bit over the top? Jill

Longer articles can support more images. In the Madonna article, the images are numerous but widely spaced. I don't see an aesthetic problem with it. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:30, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
If you want to see the counterexample - Tiger Temple has "only" six photos, but needs much more text to make the article look less crowded. andy 20:42, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

On pages where we are blessed with too many pictures, the excess pictures should be put on the talk page in a queue until the text is expanded to allow for them all. Someone pioneered this neat idea at one the Bryce Canyon pages. Pcb21| Pete 22:54, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Theatre/Theater

User:Naryathegreat seems to think that we should change the spelling of all the articles about World War II to US spelling. He has created a new category: World War II Campaigns and Theaters as part of this, and is moving articles from Category:World War II campaigns and theatres. There is an ongoing discussion at Talk:World War II. Please feel free to contribute. DJ Clayworth 18:14, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Not much to debate. Just an enthustiastic new contributor hasn't learnt the ropes of one of our most successful policies (handling spelling differences) yet. Pcb21| Pete 21:10, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

that sheep

by the way... is it just me or does anybody else find the sheep in village pump image a bit pejorative? I normaly have a good sense of humor... i think... Erich 15:22, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I've always wondered why this isn't agora, or forum, instead of village pump. [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 15:30, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
There has to be a you can lead a sheep to water joke in there somewhere. I've always assumed that village pump is the US equivalent to what we Irish call the parish pump, which is the mythical location where politicans swing deals of a not entirely uncorrupt nature so as to retain the goodwill of local voters. A much more pejorative image than the humble sheep! Bmills 15:37, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I don't think it is implying that Wikipedians are "sheep," I thought it was just a photo with a water pump in it. The sheep are just there to get a drink like everyone else. As far as the cultural reference, the village pump is where people would gather around and gab about this and that. I think it is pretty illustrative of what goes on here. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:13, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)
Before he left, Optim suggested changing it to Agora, but it was decided that the word was too obscure :) Adam Bishop 18:15, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The previous disciussion was at Wikipedia talk:Village pump/Agora. Angela. 20:46, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Metrics for entries on wikipedia

Hello,

I am searching currently for metrics / quantitative indicators for evaluating the content and usage of a wiki. Some examples - like the comma metric - are mentioned by Lars Aronsson in his paper about snusnig.nu (please go to the end of the section)

This article also mentions that wikipedia will develop a new metric (Cite: Wikipedia is currently these metrics further). However, I was not able to find out about this new metrics while searching in wikipedia (tried the FAQ and search for "wiki metric" and like).

Furthermore, I found something about potential metrics in the indices in meatball. Unfortunately, the wikipedia metric - if there is any - could not be found there.

Does anybody know more about this wikipedia "metric"? Since the article is from 2002, I guess it should be available.

Thanks in advance

Björn

Standard reference: Wikipedia:What is an article [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 15:25, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks again, that link helped!

Simple English collaboration

I've recently started working at the Simple English WP, and from what I've seen over the past few weeks, growth there is very sloooooow. This WP is in a unique position to help its little cousin, though. I believe that anyone who edits at this WP has the potential to edit at Simple: of course, writing in Simple English isn't that easy straight off, but at least it's the same language! It seems that Simple is often relegated as "just another language I don't know", as its listed amongst all the non-English languages most of us here wouldn't have a clue about; hiding at the bottom of the Main Page. I really think there could be a strong collaboration set up between these two WPs, seeing as they're only different shades of the same language, and not something like English compared to !

Although I don't have any carefully thought-out proposals on how to do all this, I do have some ideas, and hopefully others do too.

  • For example, there could be a Wikipedia:Simple English collaboration page created and linked to from the Community Portal. This could include a list of the most desperately needed pages and open tasks at Simple, among other things. Of course, it would have to be prominently stated that Simple English is not exactly the same as the English here, so a crash-course in writing Simply would be needed at the very least. But the idea is to show that it's not some alien language after all, so the more accessable, the better.
  • How about a message related to new pages/editing pages, which asks the editor, if it's not too much trouble, to please create at least a stub of their new/edited article over at Simple, with a link to the equivalent (probably non-existant) page over there. It would need the same link to the above-mentioned intro to Simple, but again need to be easy enough that people will actually do it.
  • An article of the week style page where established articles here that don't have much, (if anything) yet over there, could be nominated for simplification and "translation".
  • I'm sure there are other things that could be done to help Simple. I think it's a valuable resource as a "step up" to this WP for people who are learning the language, as well as being a handy "Wikipedia for Kids". It is of little use though at its present stage. The help would be appreciated.

(As a reference, the Simple Community Portal contains the open tasks list. Also: Simple Requested articles).

TPK 06:58, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC) (Talk, My Simple user page)

Is there a good introduction or tutorial anywhere, to guide us through what is expected and what should be avoided in attempting to write sufficiently "simple" English? —Stormie 04:13, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)
I've contributed to Simple, but I've often wondered if anyone actually reads it, or is it just a bunch of native English speakers writing in simple English for... no good reason? Exploding Boy 04:18, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)
There is a FAQ/introduction to writing Simply at How to write simple English articles; it can do with some expansion though, but it gives you the idea. As for whether anyone reads it, I'm sure they will once there's a decent amount to read. The English WP wasn't as popular when it was in its infancy as it is now, now was it? I still think it's worth the effort. TPK 11:42, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
simple:Saddam Hussein needs to be simplified and updated. It has the potential to be a very informative but simple article. Guanaco 20:12, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Recent Changes no longer enough

I was reading through Wikipedia:replies and noticed that the primary method it seems to think that exists to keep out vandalism is Recent Changes. That may have been true when Wikipedia was first started, but now there are around 300,000 edits a month. That works out to around 7 edits a minute, giving our intrepid RC watcher less than 9 seconds to examine each edit, assuming that they work night and day. Not likely. The problem is that some vandalism slips by, for example, this May 2 edit, that was not fixed until June 3, after getting noticed by a Virgina Pilot news reporter, who wrote about it in the paper (see Wikipedia:Press coverage). I am certain that there are other vandalism that occurs and is missed in recent changes (I certainly have found more in the past year in my watchlists than I used to). So, in conclusion, recent changes can no longer be regarded as a reliable method to find vandalism.

I would like to propose two possible ways to improve finding vandalism (and feel free to discuss more). First of all, watchlists are probably finding the majority of vandalism now adays. But, not all articles are being watched. However, right now, there is no way to find the changes that are not being seen in somebodies watchlist. I propose that first of all, there should be a "info" link from each article. It could list the number of people (but not who is watching it) who have it on their watchlist, and also break it down by the last login time (#logined-in in the past day, week, month). As well, there needs to be a way to find non-watched changes. I would suggest that Recent Changes should have a utility to find changes that are not in any "active" editor's watchlist. For example, the utility could give a list of changes that are not in any watchlist of anyone who has viewed their watchlist in the past two days. This would give edits that are less likely to be found by another editor a higher chance of being looked at.

My second proposal is that edits should be able to be commented on. I would propose that each edit has a dropdown like Approve, Neutral, Needs Work, Disapprove and also a little summary field to add a text comment. Each logged in user of wikipedia could then add comments to any edit made by any user. Then, the recent changes page could have a utilitiy to find edits that have been commented on by less than N users. As well, in the history page, there should be a link to all the comments for each edit. This effectively makes sure that there is less duplication of looking at recent changes, and allows more edits to be thouroghly reviewed.

Wikipedia is being used more and more as a reference. It is being seen by more and more people. Some of them are finding too many errors and vandalism. Wikipedia needs more powerful ways of finding vandalism and errors, if we wish to truthfully reply to our critics. Jrincayc 02:43, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I tend to agree that something needs to be done. I've been meaning to raise my concern that the increased churn in Recent Changes has also affected the number of new pages being reviewed. Based on my overall impression after many hours of New Pages Patrol (which seems to be done by many fewer people than RC patrol), plus a more rigorous review of 100 new pages from a list I loaded 4 days earlier, I would estimate that at least 1/4 to 1/3 of new pages go in without any review by an experienced Wikipedian. I had thot that just having more people doing new pages patrol would be enuf, but now I'm not sure. Niteowlneils 04:08, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps Wikipedia could modify its script to allow only new pages to show up in the recent changes, or, even better, move this functionality to a new but similar page (perhaps called "Recently Created Pages"). [[User:Poccil|Poccil (Talk)]] 05:12, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)
You mean like Special:Newpages? -- Cyrius|✎ 05:34, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I would like to see this Special:Newpages page in the navigation bar! I didn't know it existed, and I think I am not the only one in this situation! --Alexandre 20:55, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
It is on Special:Specialpages however i agree with you on the point that it should be more visible.
About that Chesapeake, Virginia article, i think one way to defend against this is to actually have real articles, not pointless crap made by bots. The way we defend against such things is that it shows up on alot of watchlists. so that article is not a fair example. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 20:34, 2004 Jul 6 (UTC)
My feeling is that more vandalism/poor editing slips through when the wiki is slooow. RC or New Pages patrol is much harder when you have timeouts etc, and I guess I am not alone in giving up trying when that is the case. However creation of a long but poor new page is affected much less by slowness. Happily we are getting dramatically better speeds at the moment, so we can get back on our game a bit.
However RC watching will have to change. As I've said before we now really need some mechanism by which edits can be marked as "checked". This would result in a massive increase in RC-watch productivity as duplication would be dramatically reduced. Anyone fancy joining me in getting a bounty together to offer to a developer to create this feature? Pcb21| Pete
I feel as if I'm out of touch with the editors on en these days. Wikipedia is a different place now to when I got most of my editing experience. I have trouble working out what people think are the most important features. So I have decided to run a poll: User:Tim Starling/Feature poll. I'm interested in overall directions for MediaWiki development, rather than specific features, at the current time. But your comments and feature suggestions would also be welcome, on that page or elsewhere. -- Tim Starling 08:53, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)
I agree there needs to be some mechanism by which edits can be marked as checked. I think that it needs to have some way to add a comment as to why the edit is being checked or reject, otherwise we have just created a new way to bite the newcomers since it is incredibly frustrating to have an edit rejected without a reason given. It also should have a way to say good edit, needs more work (like spelling, grammar etc.) What where you thinking in the way of a bounty? Jrincayc 13:14, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I can't spend any more time on Wikipedia than I already do, there are no more hours left in the week. I already work on it solidly through the weekend, and some weeknights too. I'm not setting a price for my work but I do accept donations via paypal, see my user page. -- Tim Starling 01:36, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)
Know what I do? I just set the Recent Changes page to hide logged in users. Most vandalism comes from anonymous users. Usually if it comes from logged in ones, the chances of detection are higher because logged in users are more likely to get involved with the community; I think most vandalism from logged in users comes from users involved in edit wars (though I could be wrong). So, I monitor recent changes made by anons only, which makes tracking down vandalism a lot more easier. I'd like to see a way to also view edits of logged in users who have less than a hundred edits to their name, though. Johnleemk | Talk 15:11, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
What do you think the "hide logged in users" link does?
Below are the last 50 changes in the last 3 days.
Show last 50 | 100 | 250 | 500 changes in last 1 | 3 | 7 | 14 | 30 days
hide minor edits | show bots | hide logged in users
Show new changes starting from 01:25, Jul 6, 2004
After I implemented it, people told me that it wasn't as useful as they thought it would be, since it doesn't show which edits have already been reverted, corrected or checked. As for users with less than 100 edits, well you could try [3]. I don't think these simple ad-hoc features are sufficient. -- Tim Starling 01:36, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)
There is brainstorming going on at Wikipedia:Checked edits brainstorming on how to do the checked edits. Jrincayc 16:23, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Maybe Recent changes should be broken up by catagories, so that someone can look at only changes in some catagory and the subcatagories of that catagory. Jrincayc 19:39, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Bad interwiki?

Southern Ocean has what appears to be a properly formatted interwiki, [[minnan:Lâm-ke̍k-iûⁿ]], but it's showing up in the main text of the page. It still acts as an interwiki link, taking you to minnan.wikipedia.org, so that part's not broken. It's just showing up in the wrong part of the page. --Golbez 01:02, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This is a known bug and has been reported at sourceforge. Angela. 20:40, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Victoria Cross project

A very interesting project started up recently. The WikiProject Victoria Cross Reference Migration project involves the transfer of information from http://www.victoriacross.net/ to Wikipedia. I am not involved in this project, but I think it is of great interest and worthy of mention in any proposed press releases for when we hit 300,000 articles. Mintguy (T) 00:02, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Wow - that's great news. We're making friends in the world :) →Raul654 00:11, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)

How many redirects for a same article?

I am a newcomer, so I prefer to ask the question here rather than post an inappropriate VfD... I was flipping through the "recent changes" page and found out a new article about Shotaro Morikubo. I don't know if an anime/video games voice actor really deserves an article in an encyclopedia, but this is not the main problem. What I find a bit over-the-top is that, according to its What links here page, there are at least 15 (!) other entries redirecting to this article, each one with a slightly different spelling. Does that make sense? --Alexandre 08:53, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It's a Japanese name, so you get a lot of redirects based on the various different rules for romanizing Japanese. Then you get a duplicate set based on the name/surname order reversal between Japanese and English. Given that it's unlikely that anyone will link to any of the variations without meaning this guy, it doesn't hurt anything to have them. -- Cyrius|✎ 09:13, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The redirects were probably created by User:WhisperToMe. They don't cause any harm (except for making the "What Links Here" a bit harder to use) and they are better than that user's previous practice of including all possible romanizations in the first sentence of every article on a Japanese subject. See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style for Japan-related articles for very extensive discussion of this issue. Gdr 12:44, 2004 Jul 4 (UTC)

Followup on "The database did not find the text of a page that it should have found...."

The error msg in the heading has been dealt with. I sort of left hanging something that made me sound, to me, like i was wearing a tinfoil hat, as i put it. I'll post something about it on my talk page as soon as i can get the old stuff there archive, in the next few days.

In the mean time:

Jerzy removes his hat, and starts to fold it and put it in a drawer. He hesitates, holds it up to the light, sniffs it, and finally cuts off a corner of it. He holds the tiny snippet in a flame, notes the color, and consults a reference. He closes the drawer, completely unfolds the hat, makes a sandwich, wraps the sandwich in the unfolded hat, and puts in into his lunch box. [blush]

--Jerzy(t) 02:03, 2004 Jul 4 (UTC)

Image help

Any help converting the bmp and gif files to jpgs, as well as assisting in formatting, is appreciated at the Calvin and Hobbes article. Thanks! Neutrality 00:55, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

dealing with trolls

See Wikipedia:Dealing with trolls for a poll on whether sysops should be permitted to ban obvious trolls. Martin 21:23, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC) or see Wikipedia talk:Dealing with disruptive or antisocial editors for an ongoing attempt to formulate a fairer, clearer, more accountable (but more complicated) system. Erich 06:33, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

What is Going On

There used to be a link to page(s) that explained system status problems with Wikipedia like the current lack of images. I can no longer find that link. Does anyone have it, or is such information on system status just not provided anymore? Also, should not there be something on the main page to explain to users the fact (and why) articles no longer show images, evemn if temporary? - Marshman 17:43, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Are you really saying no articles show their images? I've looked at a random selection of 20 of the articles I've illustrated and all show their pictures entirely normally. I use IE6 on Windows XP - Adrian Pingstone 18:11, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Do you mean Wikipedia:Requested pictures? Dori | Talk 18:19, Jul 3, 2004 (UTC)
Or Wikipedia:Goings-on ? Marshman, what browser are you using and have you disabled images ? Jay 18:39, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Yes all images except the main page thumbs. Happened also a little over 2 weeks ago; went away after several days. My computer shows none of the article images or the image page images. Only happens with Wikipedia, not other web sites (as far as I know-need to test further); so a browser problem? Maybe (My browser IE won't tell me the version)! Problem develops slowly over a short period, with some articles showing perhaps one of several images, then none. Presently I see no images except logo and Main Page. Ooops. Now they are all back after being "off" for about 12 hours. I assume has something to do with server, but I could be wrong if others not having the problem. - Marshman 19:03, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Good to know its back. Why won't your IE tell you the version. What does Help -> About Internet Explorer say ? Check your available disk space in the C: drive, maybe the browser finds no space to store images temporarily. Jay 21:06, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I have a 40 gig C: drive; showing almost 20 gigs filled. When I went to About, the table was vanilla with lines like "Version:" but with no info filled in. I opened a new window and the "About" for that had Microsoft logo and stuff (version: 6.0.2600.0000 etc). Also, imaghes reappeared. Sounds like my software is "fading". Which is why we need a better link to the "Current System Status". I generally assume it is a Wikipedia Server problem (usually is); but with a maintained status link, I could see if there is a reported problem. - Marshman 03:41, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
You could have viewed the site in Mozilla to check at what end the problem was. — Chameleon My page/My talk 10:11, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Bad rendering

The source at Cypherpunk anonymous remailer should not produce the text that is being displayed. It has been duplicated here.

Bizarre. I've fixed it. It appears that typing in RFC 1000 produces a link to the document for that RFC on faqs.org. Placing this in a wikilink screws things up. Morwen - Talk 11:22, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
RFCs autolink the same way ISBNs do (e.g., ISBN 1234567890). I filed a bug report (either on meta or on sf, or both) about this, but apparently it's not yet fixed, as [[RFC 1000]] makes RFC 1000. grendel|khan 06:34, 2004 Jul 8 (UTC)

Related changes

From where do I get more information regarding the "Related changes" functionality, what it does and how it works ? Wikipedia:Related changes is just a two line discussion. Jay 10:49, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

m:Help:Related changes--Patrick 20:29, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. Maybe I'll put that info on Wikipedia:Related changes. Jay 21:06, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Hey you've redirected it. thnx. Jay 21:09, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Link colours

Yay, the blue, red and brown link colours are back ! Thanks to whoever made the change. The world is beautiful again ! Jay 10:40, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I agree. At first they were a bit startling, but I think the new distinction between a:link and a:visited is much needed. Acegikmo1 17:52, Jul 3, 2004 (UTC)

Arbitrary background colours in articles

So, whilst browsing random page, I can across Francisco S. Carvajal. This article has a table with background colour of #FAEBD7; problem is, my link colour is #FFFFC0 [4]. Spot the difference. I imagine this problem is duplicated in many articles containing such tables, with similar effect. Could these colours somehow be moved into CSS, perhaps with a protected MediaWiki template page containing CSS which articles use, and which could then be overridden in a user's own monobook.css or myskin.css? This problem really significantly reduces the use of allowing users to use their own skins. —Lady Lysiŋe Ikiŋsile | Talk 19:55, 2004 Jul 2 (UTC)

This is irrelevant to your suggestion of standard CSS options for tables, but I can't help it. Black text and yellow links on a medium gray background? Ewww. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:22, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Associated Press citation

I was just reading an Associated Press (AP) article provided through Yahoo! News entitled "Library Clock Has 'IIII' Instead of 'IV'". In it was the first citation of a Wikipedia article that I've seen from a major news agency:

Wikipedia.org, an Internet encyclopedia, says that manuscripts from the 1300s are inconsistent on the use of IV and IIII to denote the number four. It also suggests that a Roman ruler at some point ordered the change to IIII, and it has come down through history as a tradition.

It's nice to see that Wikipedia is being taken seriously as a reference. -- Jeff Q 19:40, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I guess Roman numeral is the article. However clock face gives the alternate explanation of visual symmetry of the numbers.Jay 15:14, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The Horological Institute says that it may be that the Romans avoided the common four in favor of IIII because I and V are the first two letters of the Latin spelling of the name for the Roman God Jupiter. Hmm. I wonder whether there was any overlap between the existence of the modern clockface design with twelve equal hours, and any belief in Jupiter. Marnanel 15:53, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Other language Wikipedia links on the Main Page

I found (I forget exactly how, but in a very indirect way) an Ido Wikipedia at io.wikipedia.org -- but Ido is not one of the languages listed on the Main Page. Shouldn't there be some way that when a new language Wikipedia is started, it gets added to the Main Page list? -- BRG 19:09, Jul 2, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I've added Ido to the main page. The relevant template is Template:Wikipedialang, which can be edited by anyone. I'm not sure exactly what the criteria are for being listed there, however. -- Vardion 03:27, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Racism policy

There is clearly a demand for some tidying up in relation to racism on the whole of Wikipedia. The pages directly concerning the different concepts of the theory of separate human races obviously nead re-editing (not least the article race).
The United States have a special view of the term race (see Race (U.S. census)) that is controversial and abnormal in most of the world and it should not be given that this view is to be accepted by the Wikipedia community (and stand unchalenged in the articles).
Furthermore some places in the U.S. are, for some reason, noted down with a population of 0.00% of one or more "races" (f.ex. Lima, Rock County, Wisconsin). Moravice 20:00, 02 July 2004 (UTC) I agree we should be reasonably careful, but let's not confuse the reader by trying too hard to be politically correct. Perhaps we can appologize in the text to persons who feel that clarity is less important than tact. Neil

AskMyTutor

New copier listed on Wikipedia:Copies of Wikipedia content (low degree of compliance): AskMyTutor. They don't claim copyright, probably just need to be reminded of the requirements. Tualha 00:05, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

A question of Wikiquette.

Is it considered a breach of Wikiquette or a faux pas to strike out comments of others, even if no longer they no longer apply? For example, on the Featured article candidates page: if a Wikipedian has an objection and it is addressed, is it bad form to strike out the comment without their permission? Neutrality 19:41, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

In that circumstance, I'd say it is OK as it's an indication that the objection has been addressed. Of course the original objector may want to re-raise it, if he thinks it hasn't been! -- Arwel 19:47, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I struggled with that very same moral tussle on the very same page recently. In the end I decided it was too risky to strike out others' comments even though that would've neatened the page. Even though you have impeccable credentials, there are other editors that don't, so if you go round striking things out perfectly reasonably, it is only a matter of time before they start striking things unreasonably. I prefered to dodge this issue and simply reply directly underneath the original comment making it clear I see the objection as resolved. Then any third party reading the page is left in doubt what the situation is. (i.e. waiting for the original complainant to agree). Pcb21| Pete 00:25, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

If I have made errors, I hope someone will correct them. We do need to be reasonably sure we are not creating reader problems by deleting, and not replacing an error with a different error. I would like to see examples instead of generalities. Neil

Personally, I (mildly!) dislike it when others strike out what I've written on WP:FAC, even when I agree that the objection has been resolved — it is a bit daft, but I do find it slightly irksome...what one person thinks is a fix might not be satisfactory to another, so I think a safer way to indicate that the objection has been addressed is to simply add a reply to that effect. That way you can avoid presuming someone else's opinion, but still document the fix. Having said that, I think it's fine to provisionally change the article back to "uncontested" (if appropriate), to raise the visibility of the article to other editors. — Matt 14:54, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Disappearing page history

Hi,

The page history for the public defender article has changed at least twice. Changes that have been made are no longer listed in the history. There were once four entries in the page history; there are now two. This is really puzzling. Does anyone know what's going on?

Thanks,

Acegikmo1 14:19, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

I noticed a similar thing happening last night: the old edits sometimes disappear from the page history when newer ones are made, though they are still reflected in the article. In time, the old edits do reappear in the history, so there are no lasting problems (at least where ordinary edits are concerned - I don't know what might happen with page moves or deletions), but it's obviously rather confusing. When I asked about this on the IRC channel, there seemed to be a feeling that the problem may be caused by us now using two database servers. A bug report has been filed [5]. --Camembert
Have a look at the entry 'Missing edits from History' further up the page - it explains what is happening and why. It is a known bug to do with the paired database servers. SkArcher 14:59, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I've been seeing this since 1.3 was installed, well before the second db server was put into rotation. -- Cyrius|✎ 06:05, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ah, then I'm not crazy. Thanks for your responses. Acegikmo1 15:27, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I experienced that too. I thought it was an automatated anti-flooding control. :o) Well, so long as the changes are still all there. --Menchi 00:32, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

What content should we have here?

Regularly, items appear on VfD or QD with a reason of "DicDef"; that the article is nothing more than a dictionary-style definition of the word. Lately though I've been watching the <300 byte rash of 'articles' which could be "GazDef" as they are like gazeteer listings: "XXX is a town in YYYY area of ZZZZ county" with no added value. Is it time therefore to either relax the existence of DicDefs in the hope that they will get expanded, or should we start removing entries that are solely a GazDef and have nothing else in their favour? I'm not sure either type of entry presently supply the general reader with useful information --VampWillow 10:53, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Granted, I don't like GazDef stubs either, but IMHO they are more valuable than DictDefs. Just add the population, maybe a map, and you already have a good article which could be found in a (cheap) encyclopedia already. However as we have no space limitations here, even for a rather unimportant town at least one screen full with text should be possible to be reached. When I exchanged the redirect Sondheim with an article as it was a bit misleading, I didn't expect that so much can be written about a village of 1000 citizens, all without ever being there. andy 12:04, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
A "Dicdef" is a very concise, accurate entry on a subject. They are ideal articles and should not be deleted. Bensaccount 15:00, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
If the article has encyclopedic potential. Otherwise, it belongs in the Wiktionary. All "gazeteer" items have encyclopedia potential, that's the relevant difference. -- Jmabel 17:08, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)
I think the split into Wiktionary and Wikipedia has proved less than ideal. Although having Wiktionary has a separate project has allowed its style to flourish, in particular in its multilingual nature, what we haven't established is an easy and free-flowing passage of information from one project to the other. This flow was regarded as the absolute key to deciding to have no dicdefs on Wikipedia back in 2002. We virtually never link to wiktionary on wikipedia, and dicdefs are routinely deleted because "that's policy" without really much thought about how best to provide our readers with information. I propose we join up the two projects much more:
In particular I propose we make much greater use of "soft redirects". Suppose ickyflobble is a word that we can only write a dicdef about, not an encyclopedia article. Then at ickyflobble we write For a definition of ickyflobble, see our sister project Wiktionary's article: .... This will be useful to our readers. It will be useful to our editors who can now link any sufficiently non-obvious word/topic without having to worry about whether it is a 'pedia topic or a 'tionary topic. It will promote Wiktionary, which is getting better all that time and it will cut back on the mindless arguments about dicdefs on vfd. What do you think? Pcb21| Pete 18:30, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I've set up an example at flagrante delicto. Pcb21| Pete 18:41, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
And User:Patrick has taken it to the next logical step by using the PAGENAME magic word and a template on that page. Pcb21| Pete 22:55, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

....mmm wouldn't it be nice if media wiki automatically created a link? 'you are are on a page that doesn't exist yet, but here is the dictdef, feel free to add an encyclopedia entry or expand the dictionary entry' or something like that... Erich 19:28, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ooooh, I really like the idea that nonexisting articles do that automatically AND that existing articles automatically include a note/link at the bottom, too, "For a short definition of this word, see______." Elf | Talk 20:22, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
These (and dictionary definitions which haven't yet been expanded) are fine. Google and other search engines can find a stub and attract someone who knows a little about a subject here, where they may be tempted to improve it. That can't happen without having the stubby article in the first place. If it's somewhat stubby and it bothers you, Please use your favorite search engine and add another sentence. It's less work than a VfD listing and in the usual wiki way slowly improves the article. Jamesday 11:52, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

LaTeX rasterizer

On Lp space, the first three displayed LaTeX forumlae keep on looking different to me -- sometimes some forumlas come out "thinner" than others (look at the rendering of the variable x in particular -- sometimes it's really thin) but sometimes when I refresh I get thicker versions. Lately the second forumla's too thin and the first and third look OK. How can I get the thin forumlas regenerated with the thicker rasterizer? Lupin 09:19, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I want "thick" back too, but I'm pretty sure you can't control which is rendered as which. TeX images are cached - you are probably viewing the images created using "thick", and the newer images are created with the newer "thin". Dysprosia 04:09, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia Hall of Fame page

Hi! It ocurred to me that we should have a special, Hall of Fame page where we could induct some people every year based on their contributions and help to the site.

Some rules would apply, such as "do not nominate yourself", "do not nominate banned users", etc. The page would be protected so that only administrators can change it, and we could all have it under "my watchlist" to watch out for sudden changes.

What do you guys think?

Antonio Play by the (Osbourne) Rules Martin

I like the idea, but -- once a year? You don't think that's a little... sparse? →Raul654 07:24, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)
We already have something a bit like it - the much-neglected Wikipedia:Great editing in progress. As that one doesn't get it's attention, I double a "Hall of fame" would do better. But don't forget there are always the direct ways to say "thanks" for great editings - a simple note on the talk page of the user, or by rewarding the user with a Image:Barnstar.png. andy 07:43, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Why not have annual awards for deserving Wikipedians? We could have the Larry Sanger Award for Community Leadership, or the Mangus Manske Award for Software Development. They could be presented on Wikipedia Day each year. - SimonP 17:06, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

Don't forget the lifetime TINC award, given to people to honor their cabalist achievements. →Raul654 18:36, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

adding semantic to hyperlinks

Hyperlinks between articles are a central Wikipedia feature. But it could be more usefull. Take the "What's link here" functionnality: it lists many links, but it doesn't tell you why the articles are linked. I would like to be able to add an information (a predefined label) on each hyperlink. This information could then be used to comment links in the "What's link here" and even allow semantic requests like "give me the list of people born in this city". The only missing information to reach this semantic Web nirvana is hyperlink label, like that: Mozart ([[January 27:birthdate]], [[1756:birthdate]] - [[December 5:deathdate]], [[1791:deathdate]]) was born in [[Salzburg:birthplace]]. Marc Mongenet 23:26, 2004 Jun 30 (UTC)

This is one of those ideas that sounds really cool, but would be hell to implement. You'd need to develop some kind of RDF-like vocabulary and then actually get people to use it. And the wikipedia engine would need to be updated to use it. What would be cooler would be a series of templates for entering biographical data, etc, and have the engine reverse-populate links to those templated pages with metadata from them. But again, someone would need to make it happen. And in any case, this is just one guy's opinion, and you know what opinions are like. adamrice
Yes, the vocabulary would be the most controversial part. But I think it would still be easier, better and much more useful than present categories. Templates are far less general and have many constraints. They would be very usefull (necessary?) to achieve a standard presentation, but not much more. Anyway, as you conclude, it is first the people coding the application, then (maybe) the people writing articles that will decide. Marc Mongenet 02:18, 2004 Jul 3 (UTC)

Citing legal sources

How do we do this? I can't find much info on Wikipedia about this and there are several articles that need proper referencing. - Ta bu shi da yu 12:45, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

How is it done in print? And online? Is there an issue with Wikipedia copying what is done elsewhere? Citing science papers is the same on WP as anywhere else. You could also ask User:Alex756 - he is a lawyer so may have an opinion. Pcb21| Pete 20:26, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
You might want to take a look at Brown v. Board for an example. -- Jmabel
In the citation of Supreme Court cases, it is sufficient to name them by their case titles alone. For example, Brown v. Board of Education is sufficient. There is no need to add case numbers, etc. For Congressional documents, it is sufficient to cite them by their formal names. For example, Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. It can also be referenced as their official legislative file numbers. For example, the Hawai'i Overthrow Apology Resolution passed by a joint session of Congress can be referenced as United States Public Law 103-150. Statutes of individual states and charter amendments of individual municipalities and counties should be referenced in the same way. Gerald Farinas 15:02, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I want to nominate something for the main page

I was looking at the new articles and Central Arizona Project Aqueduct seemed so cool. The picture was somehow forlorn yet amazing. Anyway that's my 2 bits. Mackerm 05:14, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The featured articles on the main page are choosen (by me) from our list of featured articles - see Wikipedia:Featured articles. Potential featured articles are voted on at the Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. →Raul654 05:28, Jun 30, 2004 (UTC)
Same for the "did you know" section? Mackerm 05:35, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
See Template talk:Did you know for the rules of the Did you know? section. -- Cyrius|✎ 06:16, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Can we place the entries directly on Template:Did you know or there is a discussion page somewhere for the entries. Jay 09:27, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
You can. Although DYK is the domain of User:Jengod to a certain extent, it is not as tightly managed as the featured article section. If you spot an interesting new article (new is the key point) then go ahead an add it in the same style. Pcb21| Pete 11:52, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Pejorative labels

I seem to be drawn to these. The latest one I'd want to make is pseudoscience, but I know that I'll then be a sort of Troll Mecca. I figured it might be best to at least qualify it a bit. Maybe something like topics in skepticism, but perhaps that's too weasel wordy.

I figure a lot of possible categories are going to be controversial, probably on articles that are already the battlefield for multiple edit wars. Anyone got any thoughts on my specific proposed category, or the broader problem? --bodnotbod 23:34, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

But what indeed is wrong with ?pseudoscience?, Botnotbot? The following dictionaries and encyclopaedias all have articles or items on it:
  • Dictionaries:
  • Merriam-Webster?s Online Dictionary
  • Encarta World English Dictionary
  • Cambridge International Dictionary of English
  • The Wordsmyth English Dictionary
  • The American Heritage Dictionary
  • Infoplease Dictionary
  • Dictionary.com
  • Ultralingua English Dictionary
  • Encyclopedias:
  • Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience
  • Bartleby.com (The New Dictionary if Cultural Literacy)

They can't all be misled into ill-using the English language? (;-). I think the word is well-established. Dieter Simon 00:12, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I think what he means is that if he had to expound on pseudo-science he would need to mention "controversial" topics , ex. Creationism, which would attract trolls and know-nothings. -- Simonides 00:34, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)


Sorry for my wrong-end-of-the-stick bit. The "pejorative label" thing threw me a little, you know, the "unfortunate connotation in a name"? I wish you luck with the category and can see it fill up nicely, having only just recently witnessed the back-and-forth thrust of "Alternative medicine" and its talk section. Dieter Simon 21:39, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Swedish spellings are being changed to Finish. Can sysops help?

(was: I need the sysops, how can one find them?)

Recently, an ambitious and surely well-intending Helsinki-editor has made a couple of changes[6] to articles related to Finland's history. There are some examples of practices which I think is not quite optimal at Wikipedia, including cut-and-paste instead of using the move-feature, and some examples of changes that may be considered sensitive. However, Wikipedia does literally ask newcommers to be bold in their editing, and so this editor has been.

One of this editor's ambitions seems to be the purification of Finland's history from dishonourable traces of foreign supremacy through the exchange of Swedish spellings for Finnish spellings of phenomena from the times (before 1892 that is) when Swedish was the preeminent language. That question has parallells in the long strife over the use of the name Danzig in historical contexts. I do not expect such an issue to give reason to much of conflicts here, since the number of emotionally involved writers with Swedish and Finnish mothertongue at Wikipedia is far too limited, but I guess our ambition is some kind of consistency within Wikipedia.

I would wish that someone with more experience of Wikipedia editing, than I have, could take a look. Preferably someone with administrator privileges. Why that? For two reasons. First of all since one possible outcome would be a total roll-back of this contributor's edits, including some possible deletions. I do not say that this is the expected outcome, but that posibility will colour any exchange of thoughts with the editor in question, regardless of how much of wikiquette and wikilove is put in. The other reason is that newcomers most probably expect a more meassured behaviour from someone in responsible position.

Maybe a discussion with someone neither Finnish, nor Swedish or Russian, would give the contributor the right impression of the idea behind an English-language Wikipedia. As far as possible, one would wish not to import century-long strifes with nationalist undertones into Wikipedia.

So, now to my question: How do I come in contact with currently active and present administrators? /Tuomas 12:49, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Administrators are everywhere, but they have no more role in solving editorial disputes than any other user. A total rollback of all edits is unlikely in the extreme. You can request deletions on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. You just have to revert, discuss and compromise, in an attempt to form an article which both sides can agree with. It may be true that many administrators are experienced with these conflicts, but they don't have any more authority. -- Tim Starling 13:22, Jun 28, 2004 (UTC)
Well. I've seen some of the debates on Talk:Danzig, Talk:Stettin and similar articles, and I don't want to get involved in such a fights without sufficient knowledge of what actually is Wikipedia practice and policy, ...and there I must confess to have some problems. If there only had been a clear policy statement to direct this user to.
Now, I let the user do his renaming game. It irks me, as it in my opinion makes my fatherland's history less available to an international public. — But the user in question seems sufficiently stuborn to continue his quest of making historical wrongs right by name changes. /Tuomas 00:27, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Summarised sections

Comment: Could you guys move this to the pump, this talk page is for discussions and suggestions about the Main Page, not for random polls and questions, thats what the pump is for.

Thank you --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 23:35, 2004 Jul 12 (UTC)

  • 2 — Chameleon My page/My talk 10:33, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • 6. First of all Wikipedia owned by a non-profit foundation, the Wikimedia foundation, so 5 is invalid. But there are "questionable" sites such as Smartpedia which mirror wikipedia content surrounded by advertisements. 4 is extremley unlikely, since Wikipedia is open and can be fixed by anyone. There are over 80,000 users from all over the world that make over 10,000 improvements to it everyday. People have been claiming wikipedia will fail since it started, but so far it has not. Wikipedia will last as long as the Wikipedia community works together improving articles, rather than posting pessimistic polls. Krik 12:07, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC).
  • 1 I've been using Wikipedia for 6 months now and its grown by 50% in that time. I imagine it's growth rate will start to slow eventually (There is surely a finite limit to the number of topics) but not for a while yet. I can see it reaching 1 million articles in english sooner than we could imagine. And its been catching on as a reference source: try searching for "wikipedia" in Google news and you'll turn up a ton of articles saying "according to wikipedia..." The main danger I see is intergration - we need to keep things cross-referenced. And perhaps, when you try to start a new article, search a bit more to see whats there alread. Wikipedia, or much of it's content at least, will live on in some form forever. Seabhcan 12:42, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • 2. Nothing lasts forever, but I think it will last a long time. i would have voted ten years if that was an option. Kevin Baas 16:29, 2004 Jul 12 (UTC)
  • 4. --Drbalaji md 17:37, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC) (I do think it can be saved)
  • 3. And my view is to stop high school kids from assuming key roles. May be we can start "wikijuniorpedia", where they can play. --ganesh 19:21, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • 6--not forever, but at least for the foreseeable future. And ganesh, that's a pretty asinine thing to say. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 23:30, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • 2. Wikipedia is much too popular to fall apart after one year, but I think eventually, enough people will lose interest in being very dedicated editors that the vandalism and misinformation will overwhelm those keeping entropy at bay. In response to the above comment, yes, there are some people (both high-schoolers and older) who are either too immature or not knowledgable enough to make meaningful contributions to Wikipedia. But this doesn't mean there should be an age or education limit on who can participate. Wikipedia should be a meritocracy; due to the nature of the Internet, we have no choice but to be blind to people's age and formal education (and that's a good thing!) Sayeth 22:30, Jul 12, 2004 (UTC)
  • 6. The content will survive forever, but if the process dies the content becomes very uninteresting relative to, say, Britannica. The process won't last forever, it will only survive as long as people see things are getting better. The two huge threats at present are a lack of money, and insufficient means to police the myriad ways in which articles are made worse. I suspect Wikipedia is resilient enough to patch the current process problems, and probably future ones as well. Money, however, is a less tractable problem and just as deadly. We find money, or Wikipedia dies. --Fritzlein 00:05, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • 2 It will last a long time. I can forsee changes, for example, forbidding anonymous edits, approving editors, etc. I wouldn't mind seeing some non-obnoxious ads, but I realize that this is a major policy change. pstudier 00:37, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

What is the future of Wikipedia? An experimental poll

  1. It will last for ever
  2. It will last for at least five more years
  3. It will last for at least a year from now
  4. Hopeless — already seeing its downfall
  5. It will become a commercial site after someone buys it
  6. My own view is...

Please take this on-line poll by typing your responses :) Please don't forget to sign. It is with your sign that we can all count the number of votes! --Drbalaji md 17:29, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

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