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::Yes, it should be done hierarchically. Those who don't grasp that Florida is a state will be enlightened when they click on it. It seems illogical not to mention the country explicity — the "US state" proposal does it in a slightly roundabout way. Most articles on places give the country in the form "'''Dortmund''' is a city in [[Germany]]". The county and state need including so "'''Somewhere''' is a city in [[Somewhere County, Alabama|Somewhere County]], [[Alabama]], [[United States|USA]]." should do fine. — [[User:Trilobite|Trilobite]] [[User_talk:Trilobite|(Talk)]] 04:21, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
::Yes, it should be done hierarchically. Those who don't grasp that Florida is a state will be enlightened when they click on it. It seems illogical not to mention the country explicity — the "US state" proposal does it in a slightly roundabout way. Most articles on places give the country in the form "'''Dortmund''' is a city in [[Germany]]". The county and state need including so "'''Somewhere''' is a city in [[Somewhere County, Alabama|Somewhere County]], [[Alabama]], [[United States|USA]]." should do fine. — [[User:Trilobite|Trilobite]] [[User_talk:Trilobite|(Talk)]] 04:21, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

::I second Trilobite. I like "'''Somewhere''' is a city in [[Somewhere County, Alabama|Somewhere County]], [[Alabama]], [[United States|USA]]." Also, KevinBot uses Regular expressions so if the standard format is not in the article (it's been edited since) then the article will get skipped. [[User:Kevin Rector|Kevin Rector]] 13:58, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)


== [[Abbreviation]] ==
== [[Abbreviation]] ==

Revision as of 13:58, 19 August 2004

Village pump sections
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[[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]] [[he:ויקיפדיה:מז%D7%25A0ון]]

Summarised sections

Convention for Lists of Office-Holders

Wiki forums? I found this page: http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?WikiWikiClones  ; is there a forum for use by wikinauts? Any comments on these accesory pages?

I would like to get some consensus on the format of lists of incumbents.

I have been working on standardised format for Heads of State and Heads of Government. However my work is regularly being reverted to a previous, more cluttered, less detailed and inaccurate version.

A case in point is List of Presidents of Benin where clearly very few of the listed incumbents were actually 'president'.

My version, which is now located at User:JohnArmagh/Heads of State of Benin clarifies the office of the imcumbent and details the political party of the incumbent whilst uncluttering the format.

It appears though, that I am not allowed to use it. The reason behind this is that it is duplication (or, as it has been called, quote:stupid duplication) of the List of Presidents of Benin. However whilst the names of the incumbents are essentially the same, the latter includes a description that is specific to the post of President, whilst including non-presidential incumbents in the list.

So it currently appears that lists of Heads of State which include at least one President must be titled Presidents of Xxxx, which can only serve to render the information held in the Wikipedia as amateurish.

If this is an enshrined policy of Wikipedia then the phrase You are encouraged to create, expand, and improve upon articles on the edit page should be removed as it is clearly untrue.

--JohnArmagh 16:45, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There is no such policy (Presidents of Xxxx instead of Heads of State of Xxxx), AFAIK. It's just one user, probably. Personally, I would prefer your format, except for the explanation of the abbreviations at the top. Move that to the bottom, and I would be completely happy with it. Only User:Gzornenplatz knows what his objections to your format are; have you tried asking him, on his talk page or on Talk:List of Presidents of Benin? About the name: I prefer the (simpler) name "List of Presidents", but only if it is accurate. In this case, "List of Heads of State" would be my preference. Eugene van der Pijll 17:52, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)


Thanks for this Eugene - most welcome. I have discussed this on User:Gzornenplatz' talk-page, and his suggestion was to post it here for a consensus.
I am concerned that there is some kind of standardisation of the lists without making the detail at variance with the title.
There is no wikiwide standardisation. But it seems that the objection on User talk:Gzornenplatz' was about duplication: one article named "Heads of State", and one named "List of Presidents". That would be bad, and one of those should probably be made into a redirect. Of course, because of the lack of standardization, this kind of duplication will happen from time to time.
In this case, you could move the "List of Presidents" to "List of Heads of State". Or you could wait for a few more opinions, if you want.
I have been in two minds about the placing of the abbreviations at the foot of the list rather than the top. I can see that it detracts from the list of incumbents if it appears before it (especially if the listing is short), but then again if the abbreviations appear at the end of a long list of incumbents then it takes a lot of scrolling down to. I could put it on a separate page, but I don't really want the reader to have to go back-&-forth between pages. I think the remedy is to put a link above the list the abbreviations at the foot of the list - but I haven't tried it yet to see how well it works.
regards --JohnArmagh 18:09, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
With the title of the page, you promise a list of presidents; it would be best if the reader sees that list as soon as possible, preferrably on the first screen. Perhaps put the list of parties at the bottom, and add "See below" to the heading of the "Affiliations" column. A separate page would be really bad, although a separate article on political parties in Benin would be great. Eugene van der Pijll 18:50, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)


I do agree with you, and User:Siroxo has provided assistance at User:JohnArmagh/Heads of State of Benin in making the Affiliation heading into a link to the list at the bottom of the page, which I like.
I had moved the page List of Presidents of Benin to Heads of State of Benin but User:Gzornenplatz didn't like it and as a measure of his disgust, reverted the data to the previous list and renamed the Head of State of.... page back to President of...
--JohnArmagh 19:01, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Selected anniversaries

I edit at 0000-0200 hrs Indian Standard Time (+5:30 GMT). Each time I log in to the wikipedia home page, in the selected anniversaries, the previous day's anniversaries are perpetually shown. (I have no problem with cookies etc.) I request the people responsible for maintaining that section edit it a day in advance so that the server dishes out the correct anniversary, as midnight ticks over, for us editing at that hour. [[User:Nichalp|¶ nichalp | Talk]] 20:15, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

This is currently not possible on Wikipedia. The main page system uses the system clock (which is timezone UTC) to automatically include the correct anniversiaries for today's date. Currently, it is not possible for it to use any user-specified timezone.[[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 01:03, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Main Page is on GMT so if it's midnight in India, it's about 7 PM GMT, so you have to wait until about 5 AM Indian ST for the anniversaries to move over. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 15:58, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Naming conventions for programming languages

For those interested in such things, many of the programming language articles have recently been moved to nonstandard titles, and we are talking about this at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages). Stan 20:55, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

1911 Britannica : Old but interesting articles

I have a hard copy of the 1911 Britannica. There are some articles that are outdated, yet still very interesting. The "Calculating Machines" article for example is about the state of the art in computers in 1911. Theres very little useful information there to incorporate into Wikipedia, but it is still fascinating to glimpse what was happening in computers at the time.

Any thoughts on how this would incorporate, if at all, into Wikipedia, or perhaps a diffrent Wiki project? Stbalbach 21:43, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

My thoughts are that surely you shouldn't need to worry about whether or not to add such topics when there are extensive Wikipedia articles on entirely fictional universes. I mean, there's actually a Klingon Wikipedia! So obscure facts are, I assume, the least of people's worries. zoney ███ talk 22:19, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Read Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica if you haven't already. I think the bottom line is, as long as it is still relevant, even if only as a historical record, by all means do so. Just remember to note {{subst:1911}} as a reference. In the specific case you raised, History of computing hardware would probably be the place to add stuff from "Calculating Machines", if it's not already there. In general, biographies would have their own articles, but most general science, technical, etc. topics would probably be best in =History= sections of related articles, if you can find a place to work it into the natural flow, but you should also check if there's already a "History of..." type article, and add it there if anything's missing. If you can't make it flow naturally in a related existing article, make a new article, but make logical links to it from relevant topics--no point in creating orphans. Also, Wikipedians are generally encouraged to be bold with their contributions. For example, wherever you put this content, if there's a better place, it will eventually get there, but it can't if it's not entered somewhere in the first place. Niteowlneils 23:09, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Isaac Newton (in depth) was taken from the 1911 Britannica, but the scanned copy online was incomplete, missing a section or two at the end. It's been on my mind ever since, it would be really great if we could fill in the gap. -- Tim Starling 00:10, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)
Ok I'll put Newton on the list of things to look into. Stbalbach 00:32, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The 1911 Britannica is great. I have a hard copy of it, too, and I browse it for pleasure. The online version, in addition to being grotesquely full of scanning errors, is missing all the pictures. I also have the three-volume supplement that was added in 1922 and brings it up to date with all the latest advances in aviation from the Great War. There is plenty of stuff in it that is just fine. And a lot of things that give context and depth (it's very odd to read an article about nutrition that doesn't mention vitamins, for example!). [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 00:54, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
yeah I picked it up for $150 from a local book seller, it's been a cheap entertainment investment and theres nothing like dealing with huge old tombs of leather books that weigh 7 pounds a piece and smell like a grandfathers smoke room, it reminds you of how diffrent electronic versus real books are.. it's like the diffrence between grape "drink" and a bottle of good wine, we are missing somthing for all the benefits of electronica.
They're probably only tombs if you happen to be buried under a pile of them. On a shelf, they are (probably :o) just tomes. Incidently - man that's annoying - I wish my local bookshops had such items for such cheap prices. I'm guessing 1911 EB would be at least twice the amount here in Ireland (but probably a lot more!). But then again, when one can pay €3/$3.50 (or more) for a cappucino here, it's not too surprising. Bah! Stupid indigeneous economic jungle cats. zoney ███ talk 11:51, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Tim Starling the Newton updates are done, it is the complete article. Stbalbach 07:29, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There are __so many__ mistakes, particularly with dates, in the online scanned edition that I am tempted to believe they are deliberate. After all 1911encyclopedia.org goes into great detail about how it is against their terms of service to copy the public domain text. I can't help but find that site a bit of an insult to the original! Pcb21| Pete 08:15, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
And I've found, without trying, a couple of items in Wikipedia that reproduced errors. Fixed them, of course. Without doubt there are others. Can anything be done to prevent these liftings? Dandrake 23:04, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)

Art articles?

Please let me know if this is not the right place, thanks. :)

I remember reading somewhere on the site that Wikipedia has a few gaps in knowledge, and one of them was art. After looking through the site a little while, it does seem like fine art is a little neglected. I'd love to create articles in this subject area, since it is my career and all! But I'm still a little new, so I need to ask questions here first. Has this been discussed before?

I'd like to create separate articles for individual works of art. Not all of them, of course! Just major works that are important (in an art history sense) or well-known (in other words, ones whose articles will be longer than stubs). I'd also like to list as many works as possible on the artist's article, as well. However, I haven't seen many articles on individual artworks. Is this because we shouldn't do it, or only because not many people have an interest in doing it?

Thanks for reading! Miss Puffskein 22:09, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

"I haven't seen many articles on individual artworks. Is this because we shouldn't do it, or only because not many people have an interest in doing it?" ::It is absolutely the latter - art is a definite weak spot, and if you want to create articles on individual works, go right ahead. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them (you can ask on my talk page). Oh, and as for copyright issues, you might want to read up on the Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ. →Raul654 22:18, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)
I'm no expert, but I don't see a problem with that - we already have individual articles on famous novels (eg. Nineteen Eighty-Four) and pictorial art should be treated no different. If people may type it in the searchbox, you should create an article about it...--Fangz 22:25, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Considering we have articles on individual songs, individual theorems, and individual video games, I think articles on individual pieces of fine art, even not-so-famous ones, would be more than welcome. I also encourage you to add articles on their creators if necessary, and make lots of links. It would also be especially nice if you can acquire, or encourage other Wikipedians to acquire, images of the works which are in the public domain or under the GFDL. I'm not a lawyer, but I think if you go into a museum and photograph a piece created by an artist who's been dead for a while (90 years?) that you can do anything you like with the photo. Derrick Coetzee 23:41, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes, please create the articles! Derrick Coetzee: I think any direct reproduction of an image of an artist that is dead for at least 90 years can be used as public domain, since the photographer/scanner did not hold the original copyright. -- Chris 73 | Talk 23:44, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
We have some, listed at List of artworks. More and better is encouraged! Cheers, -- Infrogmation 23:52, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Be bold. Just go ahead. Just do something reasonable. As long you can write three or four decent, sensible paragraphs about an individual work of art, by all means create an article about it. The only objection would be single-sentence articles that would be better structured as a list. As long as each individual article is OK, don't fret about the organization. When there are a lot of article you or other people may have ideas about how best to organize them, but that can be done later.
As you do this, you should try to educate yourself about copyright issues. (Don't ask me, I don't know). But read all the Wikipedia article you can find on image policy and so forth. The problem is that even though old works of art are in the public domain, a) nobody is really 100% sure whether a museum, publisher, etc. can claim that their specific reproduction is copyrighted, and b) lots of them do make that claim. But don't let that stop you from getting started. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 23:54, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Very glad to have more people adding articles on the arts - Welcome. I suspect the only reason we don't have too many articles on individual works of art, is that they can be a little harder to write than the biographies of artists. There can be copyright problems on showing images of particular works of art, but this shouldn't be much of a issue with artists who died pre-1930 or so, where their work should be in the public domain now. I can also imagine that a tricky article naming problem might crop up when discussing some modern works. I've been to shows where every painting has been 'Untitled (1968)' or 'Untitled (1969)' - goodness knows how you talk about them. -- Solipsist 12:53, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes! Please! more art and artists! If you have anything to add to Art car, about decorated and transformed vehicles-as-works-of-art, please dive right in. I haven't had the time I thought I would to work on it.Pedant 18:12, 2004 Aug 18 (UTC)

Page move collided with existing Talk page

Can an admin that knows how to fix this condition fix Epicurean paradox/Epicurian paradox? Obviously I need to learn how to do it myself, but I'm worried that if I leave it in this state while doing the research, something may be done to it that makes it harder to cleanup. Niteowlneils 22:51, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Could you specify exactly what you wish to have done, or has it been taken care of already? -- Infrogmation 23:56, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I got it fixed. The essential error here is that the talk page was not moved with the article; there should be a checkbox to do this when you perform a move. The way to fix it was to go to the old talk page and move it separately to the talk page of the new article. You may then want to put the old talk page, and possibly the old article up for deletion (they would go on Wikipedia: Redirects for deletion, since move replaces the old page with a redirect). Derrick Coetzee 23:57, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I had the checkbox checked, this just happened to be the first time the Talk page I was moving to already had content (apparently, as I had never seen this particular message--previous times it's told me it hadn't moved the Talk page was because one didn't exist for the location I was moving from), so it told me it couldn't move it. Thanks for the walk-through. Ironically, moving pages turns out to be the 'tip of the day' on the community portal. :/ Niteowlneils 01:24, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

help from an admin if poss.

Could an admin please have a look at the 20:48, 16 Aug 2004 revision of 2004 Summer Olympics medal count and explain why another admin User:Davodd made changes quoting "coded out, expanded comments to fit accepted WP format". The details on that revision were discussed at length on Talk:2004 Summer Olympics medal count and were purely there to help the smooth running of the olympic pages whilst the games are on. The sentences that he has removed would obviously be removed once the games have finished. I have requested an explanation of his actions on his talk page but he appears to have logged off and the quick rectification of this problem would be of great help. Especially if that user may not return for a few days. many thanks in advance to anyone who can help.Scraggy4

Wikipedia:How to edit a page says that instructions to future editors should be placed in <!-- --> style comments. These comments won't be visible to the casual reader, but when someone edits the page, they'll immediately see these instructions in the edit box. I don't see a problem with this, and agree with User:Davodd that this is generally Wikipedia's style for such things. --Diberri | Talk 23:16, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)
May I just point out that this has nothing to do with Davodd being an admin, nor should the appeal to an admin be necessary - admins are just ordinary editors, just like you. If you really wanted to change it (though I don't suggest you do, for the reasons Diberri gave you above), you can do so yourself. Don't feel intimidated that just because an admin edited something, that you can't touch it. Dysprosia 23:25, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It just seems petty to remove temporary instructions that are there to help on what is a page under work. We surely don't go round corrected every page that has a slight mistake that is still obviously being worked on. It would not have hurt Davodd to discuss this on the talk page first as it appears his only contribution to the olympic games pages so far I can't see how he could really tell what the purpose of the sentences were. It did include a link to another page that I don't know how to include in the  ???
It is not petty, doing so is designed to keep the articles looking presentable, whilst keeping the instruction that was placed there. Coincidentally, we surely do go around correcting mistakes on Wikipedia - every little edit helps! Wikipedia articles should look as presentable as possible, especially for a potentially high traffic article set such as for the Olympics. Note that putting messages to editors in HTML comments is not generally controversial, so Davodd was not really going out of his way to do this. If you disagree strongly with it, perhaps bring it up on Wikipedia talk:How to edit a page. Dysprosia 23:46, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Apologies I didn't mean correcting mistakes which is obviously a very good thing to do but when pages are under construction would the correct thing be to take off anything that does not look correct even though it is apparrent the offending style conflict will be changed very shortly. Just a thought but isn't the disambig message an instruction to users about that particular page. I will now shut up as I usually try at all times to avoid discussions on Wiki.Scraggy4 23:56, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Actually I find this policy somewhat controversial. A clear omission is every bit as jarring as a note to editors. I think in some cases in-articles notes could really improve the reading experience, if only to say, please be patient, we're still working on this part. Maybe we should fire up a debate at the suggested location. Derrick Coetzee 00:07, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
That seems like a pretty good compromise for this type of case. It could a) explain the instructions are a temporary measure to 'ensure the accuracy of Wikipedia' (turning lemons into lemonade), b) give said instructions, c) re-add the convenience of the link to the other template, and d) assure the reader it will be removed once it has outlived its usefulness. Niteowlneils 02:12, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Alternatively, we could have a template in the page which simply says "This part of this page is currently in development. Edit this page for details.", and then include the HTML comments in the wiki with details. This could reduce clutter on the main article view. Derrick Coetzee 02:42, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The messages are not "taken off", they are made invisible until you go to edit the page. The disambig message and inline comments are two different things. The disambig is a message to the reader, whilst the inline comment is a message to the editor. Messages to the editor should not be visible to the reader. Dysprosia 02:41, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Btw, the page is in violation of Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. As I'm not directly involved in editing the page, thought I'd let those interested know. Johnleemk | Talk 08:51, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Sorry for causing such a ruckus. The instructions originally made are still there verbatim - I even added another - with a link on how to use tables in wiki format. If you absolutely feel that it is required for a direct link to be put on the article page for potential editors, I suggest link to the a sub-section on the talk page with a link from the article page directly to that sub-section via link like this: [[Talk:2004_Summer_Olympics_medal_count#Notes_to_editors_updating_this_article | How to edit this article]]. That edit link should probably be removed after the last medal is awarded and recorded, though. - Davodd 20:05, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)

Misc. Feature questions

1) Any chance of getting RSS into page histories and watchlists? Not everybody's interested in keeping track of every single item here!  :)

2) I just downloaded the Wikimedia software...Really incredible...Thank you developers! Are there any plans to allow email notification, either integrated within the pages to opt for this and/or tied to the watchlist (say even as an add-on module if for some reason it is not considered desirable at Wikipedia)?

3) Any Wikimedia WYSIWYG client software (without the limitations of the HTML text box such as to highlight text and simply make them into links) out there yet that can interface with Wikimedia software? That would seem to expand greatly the pool contributing (in every sense) if it could be done.

4) Any chance of getting categories assignable to specific sections and then having individuals sections be summonable alone by a special URL? (i.e., to just retrieve and show one section out of the page). This could also be used in combination with allowing sections to be reused without duplicating. For example, if there was a page on the influence of Gandhi on Dr. Martin Luther King, this section could be referenced between both of them on their own pages without having to duplicate content. One could also reference the link to the section alone if that was the sole item of interest. I really think this could enhance the possibilities of organization a great deal....Especially if this could be combined with tables....

5) And how about the ability to see whether an edit was a section edit or a whole page edit...People could thus just monitor a section of a page. And if sections could be combined into tables (see #4), then we could really go to town as one could add in monitoring recent changes to a particular row, column, or cell as well as the whole table. This is is somewhat of a replacement or workaround for (or complementary to) the frames idea (see the frames section above on the idea to try to find a workaround for enabling frames to be generated within Wikipedia).

6) How about the ability to have in the edit window two pop-up menus (HTML or perhaps Javascript to allow for hierarchical data), one for categories and the other for templates...these could be used to pull up a pre-existing category or template without one having to navigate through them first; the choice would then be assigned to the document (or section if for a section edit). This could ideally be selected multiple times to be able to assign multiple categories or templates to a document (and then rearrange the code if necessary).


Thanks very much! [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 08:07, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm not a developer, so don't take these as set in stone:
  1. I don't know – sounds feasible, but not something that's going to be done in the near future.
  2. Not AFAIK.
  3. Not AFAIK.
  4. Too CPU-expensive for now.
  5. Usually edit summaries already mention this.
  6. I think there are just too many categories and templates to make this feasible in the near future.
Johnleemk | Talk 11:07, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
First of all, I don't understand what somebody would do with an RSS feed. Can somebody please explain to me?

Basically, they are much more basic than HTML but can show you what has been recently to a website. They are used for news websites. You can see the RSS for Wikipedia's recent changes at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss or go to Special:RecentChanges and then click RSS at the top. As you can see, it is not that fancy, but when you use a nice feeder (you can get them to show up in a menu bar, in windows, etc.), you can combine your searches together to see everything that is now. Also, many of these programs not only check this for you, but they can notify you in different ways when changes have been made (such as by showing the number of unread items in a menu bar). Go to a place like http://versiontracker.com and find a free RSS feed reader to try it out (search for RSS). If you're a mac user, the next major version of Macintosh will have an RSS feeder right in the web browser Safari (I don't know about PC's).

Second of all, what's 'AFAIK'?
As far as I know, it's "As Far as I Know"  :)
Third of all, I have an idea myself; how about a wikipedia stand-alone client program, that let's you browse and edit wikipedia too, from a nice interface
Yes, that's what I was suggesting in no. 3
(and it'll be real-time on things that have to do with your talk page, and you can have your watchlist update every 5 seconds in another pane on the left),
These are excellent ideas, I think. In the meantime, for the first item, you could add a link at your talk page to an online chat service (it'd be nice to see in watchlists, etc. if so-and-so who edited an article was online to do this too)... But since Wikipedia's server is already overworked, having people constantly refreshing their Watchlist would probably be a burden. However, if they could implement my RSS idea for watchlists (no. 1), this would be just like the same thing, but even better as the newly added items could fit into a smaller space in say a sidebar on your web browser.
I'm not a programmer (or that is, a very good one; I'm only 13) but is there anyway/one that can get it done? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 16:05, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
We discussed a stand-alone wiki editor not too long ago here. I even started writing one (called WikiEdit), but no one seemed interested at the time, so I abandoned the project. You could type in wiki-markup on a pane on the left and it would show up rendered in the right pane as you typed in real-time. Or you could edit with word-processor keystrokes in the right pane and the wiki-markup would show up on the left (also in realtime). It would show up rendered just as the wiki-software would do it, so you could hone your wiki-markup to make your article just the way you wanted it before posting it. But, like I said, no one really cared, so I stopped development on it.
Well, that is a real, real shame you didn't get any feedback. People pay good money to get Dreamweaver to do that for HTML.... Maybe people here are just used to using the code, but I'm sure there would be a lot more people (including people here when they see it in action), who'd be very interested. If there could be the option to not even see the wiki code, I think that would take the cake. I'd be more than happy to help beta test if you decide to restart it! [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 21:10, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It isn't that I didn't get any feedback, but the feedback I got was "Why bother?" Personally, I'm used to the Wikimarkup syntax, but seeing it WYSIWYG seemed like a real boon. Since Wikipedia was so slow at times, using "Show preview" could take forever. Plus often I lost big sets of edits when Wikipedia barfed (I think a fix has been implemented to fix this problem, but it was a big problem back when I was developing this tool). It also had other features, such as holding down <Ctrl>+left clicking on a word would automatically create a wikilink, etc.
The outcome of the last discussion was that their is an editor that can help with wiki-editing. I think it's called Firefox? Not sure about this, but I don't think it is WYSIWYG. I think it just has syntax highlighting for wiki-markup. — Frecklefoot | Talk 18:56, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)
I didn't see this option at Mozilla's Firefox browser if that's what you were doing about.
Like I said, I wasn't sure what it was called. There's an archive of the discussion somewhere, I'm sure. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:11, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)
Can't help you there. In any case, if you're interested, start learning HTML, PHP, and (My)SQL now (there are of course plenty of 13-year olds who can run circles around their elders) so you can then join the development team and put into practice all your good ideas as you like.  :) [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 18:02, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)


Freedictionary has improved very nicely on the Wikipedia software. If you go to Their Richard Stallman page you will note that all wiki links in the article have tool-tip text of the first several sentences of the linked article. This is very handy for a reader; you get the basic on linked subjects without leaving your main article of interest. I wonder if the Wikipedia could add this feature to the cached pages served to anonymous users. Tom 15:26, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That is a real nice option to have, though I could see it being annoying to some people. Hopefully! [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 21:10, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
That's easy for them to do because their database is static since they aren't a wiki like us (if I'm not mistaken). They only need to check for an update in the database whenever they've uploaded more material from Wikipedia, which is a one-time job (until the next load of info). However, on Wikipedia, our articles are always changing. Therefore, every wikilink would add extra heavy cost in CPU cycles, because the software would need to check the linked articles every time the page was loaded. Until recently we couldn't even get better than average uptime. I don't think this is a feature for the near future, though as I said, I'm not a developer of Wikimedia, so my only qualifications are those as an amateur PHP/SQL programmer. Johnleemk | Talk 08:32, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

On 4: I think the Summary style idea makes this unneccessary. Articles are built by building blocks, but not of what ever shape; text and facs have to be shaped (i.e. well written) in a form and style that suits the topic. The sections you think of to be included in many articles should instead by articles by themselves, and referenced as main articles by the articles using them.

But the problem with this is that a person has to keep clicking to get to new content, whereas some people prefer to scroll down a larger document. Why not leave the decision up to the user? [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 21:10, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
the 'typical user' would rather click than scroll 'below the horizon' according to PC magazine last year some time... so clicking to subpages is not that bad.Pedant 18:28, 2004 Aug 18 (UTC)


On 6: I think it would be nice to have a visual navigation of a category tree, in sort of a side window or frame. Ideally, articles could be recategorised by renaming of categories or drag-and-drop. (Just a dream right now. Think of doing 500 edits in one drag! ;-) [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 16:54, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That is a nice idea too [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 21:10, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Minor edit indication on Special:Recentchanges

Why does RC suddenly display a capital "M" for minor edits, despite MediaWiki:Minoreditletter being a lower-case "m"? I thought we had decided quite some while ago that it should be "m", not "M". Lupo 10:57, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hm. Seems to be already fixed now. Lupo 11:16, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This has happened occasionally over the last couple of months, on the watchlist as well. It seems harmless and goes away after a little while. Rhymeless 19:02, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

VfD Subpages - Don't link to the article being discussed

VfD has improved out of all recognition with the introduction of sub-pages, such as, to take one at random, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/North of the Border. There is IMO one shortcoming, which is that the system for setting up the sub-page does not ensure that there's a link from the subpage to the page being discussed. So, in the above example, there is no link to North of the Border. If I pick up on a VfD dicussion from Recent Changes, I get taken into the subpage and have to cludge around going up to the main VfD page, or cut & paste the title of the subpage, in order to see the page under discussion. All of which is the sort of faffing around I'd hope computers would take away from me :) --Tagishsimon 15:21, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If the sub-page has exactly the same name as the page discussed then it'll be automatically linked to from the page via the vfd template. In those cases you can use "what links here" to get back the page (e.g. Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/North of the Border). Doesn't always work, though. - 16:21, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

Hi. I'm interested in creating a 'bot for detecting link rot. As I see it at present, I'd get the bot to download a random page once per suitable time period. The bot would then extract external links from the page, and check the pages pointed to by these links to see if they are still there. Links which remain inaccessible for (say) a number of days would then be listed on a web page. Humans could then occasionally check a page (on my server) to find a list of dead links, and the wikipedia pages that they're on, and could go and have a look.

Comments? If I did this, I would write the program myself and host the bot here (University of Westminster, UK).

Ross-c 15:29, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's certainly worth doing, although I think you'd need a degree of manual verification of each apparently successful link (that is, you couldn't say a successful HTTP request necessarily meant the exlink was still valid). One thing you don't need to do is to check against an online copy of wikipedia. It'll be much faster, easier, and less server-mangling, if you download a copy of mediawiki and a recent cur database drop, and run the bot on an offline copy. You also don't have to write all of the bot yourself - there's already a python framework for bots which interact with wikipedia. I believe this is what User:Topbanana uses for compiling Wikipedia:Offline reports. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:54, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The offline reports are generated by from periodic database dumps (See [1]). External link validation sounds like a worthy project - if helpful I can generate a list of all external links for you (suggest comma-separated list of "article title,external link", one per line?). - TB 08:10, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)


Hmmm. I see the point of using an offline database rather than downloading from wikipedia. A list of links would be most of the work, and the rest of the programming would be easy. For the kind of thing I'm thinking of, it'd probably be easier for me to write a bot from scratch, rather than use the framework. However, I'm worried about how much space all the data would take up. I was thinking of running this on one of my servers that only has a few gig free space. The list of links would surely not be that big, no? I was thinking of doing verification based on the http error code (using wget so that temporarily moved links are resolved). More careful verification of the contents of the page the link points at would wait for version 2.0. - Ross-c 20:41, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

RE: policy on formatting

Valençay SOE Memorial - This article is about the memorial and the memorial was created for one reason only: to honor the names of SOE agents listed on it. The list of names here is singular and integral to the article – the names are not another topic to be linked to because the monument and the names engraved on it are one and the same. Because they are integral to the article, they don’t fit into "See also" lists, "Compare" lists, "Related topics" lists, or "Reference" lists. However, User:Ta bu shi da yu removed the list of names and created a separate list: List of people on Valençay SOE Memorial's Roll of Honour. If we are to do separate lists, then the related Special Operations Executive (SOE) article needs a separate list of names. If we use this format for articles, then in all author biographys should there be a separate list for his/her books, or separate lists for actor films? For both conformity with many other such Wikipedia articles and ease of reading access, it seems to me that it detracts from the article to create a seaparate list for the names. User:Ta bu shi da yu reversed my reversal saying: I took this out and put it into a list for a reason. Reverting. My question is: What reason? Following User:Ta bu shi da yu's format, should we then reverse User:Jiang and User:TUF-KAT's REDIRECT from List of Presidents of the United States by removing the list of Presidents names in the Presidents of the United States article and relinking back to the list? Which is the right way? Without much effort, I can add Hollywood Walk of Fame and dozens more such articles that include a list integral to the article. Separate lists make sense where there are several categories of length such as the Wimbledon Championships winners. In these cases it deals with distinct and multiple matters: winners vs losers, male vs female lists, doubles vs singles etc. But when the list of names carries a singular relationship to the article, do we follow the existing setup for "President of the United States" or change it and other such articles to conform to User:Ta bu shi da yu’s separate list system? Thanks for the input. JillandJack 16:32, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well. Regardless of the "general" policy, I don't think for this specific article the list should be removed. It's a short article! There's one paragraph above the list, and nothing below the list. I don't see why there's a problem keeping the introduction and list together. I mean, it's not really more than what most lists have as an introduction anyways! zoney ███ talk 20:26, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Rambot

Is there any convenient way to find out what percentage of the Rambot location articles have been edited by a human contributor? Rhymeless 18:59, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You could start out with all those changed by KevinBot these days.. -- User:Docu
KevinBot only changes Rambot pages that have been previously edited by a human? Rhymeless 19:31, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
No. KevinBot will change most (if not all) of the Rambot pages. Kevin Rector 23:01, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)

Votes for deletion

Related to the above, there is a proposal at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/User:Rambot regarding articles created by Rambot. Are the articles created by Rambot suitable for Wikipedia? If some are not encyclopedic, which should be kept? --Eequor 22:27, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See also

google not showing article

The article "Constantin Brunner" is not showing up on google searches, despite having been posted many months ago. Any idea why this would be?

Barrett Pashak

Um, the Google bots have not found it yet? How many wikilinks does it have? — Frecklefoot | Talk 21:10, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)
See also section 45 Search for a discussion of a similar ongoing problem with the internal search. It may not be related.
Bobblewik 21:17, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Google's algorithm is secret, strange, and ever-changing. Some observations about the Brunner article:
  • It's not very well connected with the rest of wikipedia - its only links are Yehudi Menuhin and Jewish philosophy (and a category)
  • of those, Menuhin's connection to Brunner is weak (google will likely form some loose idea that Menuhin is about "music", whereas Brunner is about philosophy).
  • Menuhin isn't google's fave either - it last crawled it nearly a month ago (so it's likely that google thinks menuhin is already at the "importance cutoff" of its descent tree. It's not a terribly detailed article about him, and there will be numerous better (from google's algorithm's perspective) on the internet. On google you are only as popular as those who link to you.
  • curiously, Jewish philosphy isn't in google's cache at all (I'm less sure I understand why that is)
So, it appears the article is connected only to two articles that google's arcane algorithm doesn't consider to be terribly important in their own right, and as the algorithm runs largely by importance-by-association, Brunner (which indeed isn't in the google cache at all) has fallen off the radar.
Now, Brunner himself isn't very popular with google, getting only 780 odd links over the whole internet. So google might well consider his name too arcane for it to bother much about storing. It's perhaps ironic that one of those google has stored is a wikipedia mirror's version of the very Brunner page ([2]) - note that some of the mirrors deliberately (and more often than not falsely) interlink their articles and have more (fairly meaningless) indices - which may increase google's willingness to traverse their site, when compared with ours.
Executive summary: google is weird. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:19, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. Excellent answer. It really helps me understand Google better. It was the fact that Google does show the mirrors that prompted me to ask the question. Barrett Pashak | Talk 21:25, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
That is the koan of google - you cannot understand it. You can only understand that you can not understand. That's as enlightened as you're gonna get :) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:32, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Use of Mediawiki Software and Content

Although I understand that modified code to Mediawiki software must remain open source (right?) and that content at Wikipedia must remain public (right?), can one use Mediawiki software for a commercial purpose (e.g., post advertisements on one's own Mediawiki system)? Could the content of Wikipedia be downloaded by a company who then puts their own version back on the web but includes web advertisements on their system? (I'm possibly interested in doing the former, but just curious about the latter) [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 20:57, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sure, mediawiki is GPL, so you can use it for anything you want. Some of wikipedia's mirrors even run mediawiki (and do half-assed things to hide the edit interface) 'cos they can't figure out how to generate a static version. And they run ads for all kinds of stuff. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:24, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I was gonna say (Finlay beat me by like 1 minute). The latter is basically what all of our mirrors do, and you can do the former because the source code for MediaWiki is GPL and Wikipedia chooses to be GPL, but your site's content doesn't have to be — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ, cοηtrιbs, DWΑΟΛ) 21:27, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You'd have got in first if the server hadn't been struggling to parse your byzantine signature :) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:30, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Siggy stuff

I have a really long user signature...It'd be awesome if we could make a template system where some thing like {{User sig:Ilyanep}} would show up in the markup and your siggy appeared in the page. That'd make a very much cleaner wikimarkup. I'm gonna go submit that at sourceforge~ — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ, cοηtrιbs, DWΑΟΛ) 21:23, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Done Here is the tracking page. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ, cοηtrιbs, DWΑΟΛ) 21:23, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ouf, that's a horrible sig to look at in the edit view. Ya now, it alreay is possible, just that templates are only included 5 times per page... so the feature you should push for is either a separated sig system, included endlessly, or a general extension of those five instances of a template per page. [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 22:46, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wow...nice blinky. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ, cοηtrιbs, DWΑΟΛ) 13:53, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't think we should encourage large sigs. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:56, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't really like sigs that use images (they look worse on the page in most cases). — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ, cοηtrιbs, DWΑΟΛ) 13:53, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yeah but they're fun. [[User:Theresa knott|]] 17:12, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Quite! [[User:Anárion|File:Anarion.png]] 18:22, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Oh dear - I'm sorry. That earlier Sig Escalation question looks like it backfired... I only have myself to blame. -- Solipsist 18:53, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC) (shakes head and shuffles off mumbling to himself)
Dunno bout all the pic ppl, but I use genuine unicode :P (take a look at my sig, I made it a template). [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] 13:09, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Alternatively, one can use unicode characters that not everyone can see. It's possibly less annoying. zoney ███ talk 23:06, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Just where could one find a big list of unicode characters and how to implement them? I'm feeling rather behind-the-times. Rhymeless 03:38, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Just use any big Unicode list, and type them with &0123; for decimal references, and &x0123; for hex references (default U+0123 form). With Opera 7.5 and up, just type the hex references, select it, and press ctrl+x: 0123 -> ģ! Couldn't be easier to ✍ them. [[User:Anárion|File:Anarion.png]] 07:29, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There's I nice site I found for getting the unicode values of various greek letters (and more) (which I use for my sig) -- "http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/help/reference/html-tags/characters.html" [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] 13:09, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

NPOV tag

Division_of_Korea has been tagged NPOV by an anonymous user. Can anyone please check whether this tag should be there? I have been too involved in the article to judge this. Thanks in advance. Kokiri 22:23, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps you should ask the user who did it.
Acegikmo1 00:53, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Grammar and complete sentences

At Talk:Kahan Commission, User:El C and I have been having a spirited conversation about the use of complete sentences in the 'pedia. He contends that

Formally, the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut.

is a complete sentence, but I disagree. I tried to correct the sentence fragment [3] in accordance with Wikipedia:How to start a page#General principles and Wikipedia:How to copyedit, but was promptly reverted. This is a very minor dispute, but I was hoping that some more seasoned Wikipedians could lend me their guidance. (Of course, if I'm wrong about the above example being a sentence fragment, then please let me know.) Thanks in advance, Diberri | Talk 00:37, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)

This is, of course, a sentence fragment (a noun phrase in fact); it tells me nothing about said Commission (try tacking "doesn't exist" onto the end to see what I mean). Also, it makes vicious overuse of capitalization. At most, only Beirut and Commission of Inquiry should be capitalized. I'd say rewrite anything this person wrote from scratch, and tell me if they keep reverting it. Derrick Coetzee 00:50, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The noun phrase would be fine as a parenthetical aside after the common name, but it is not complete enough for the first sentence of an article. And the uncommon name shouldn't lead anyway (2700 hits to 190). I'd use (the Israeli gov site doesn't use so many caps):
The Kahan Commission (וועדת כאהן), formally, the Commission of Inquiry into the events at the refugee camps in Beirut (וועדת חקירה לחקירת האירועים במחנות הפליטים בביירות), was established by the Israeli government on 28 September, 1982, to investigate the Sabra and Shatila Massacre (16-18 September, 1982).
And actually, I'm not convinced that is the formal name (in the usual sense of the word), and instead of "formally" would say "also known as". Niteowlneils 02:10, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
---
Formally, the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut.
If that's a complete sentence, then... :-)
chocolateboy 02:30, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

And actually, I'm not convinced that is the formal name

Would the official Report convince you? I provide both an online and print sources to it in the article (I caution you, though, this will involve expending 10 seconds of your time, in the usual sense of the word).

To sum up, the unwritten rule: the newcomer is always wrong, and damn the written rules. You learn (not-so) new things everyday! El_C

I don't care who is the newcomer (I didn't check your history, or Diberri's--yours could go back to 2002, or whenever Wikipedia was created, and my comments would be the same)-- 1) I believe the common name should lead. 2) my doubting of whether that is a formal name is largely due to the usage at www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign+Relations/ Israels+Foreign+Relations+since+1947/1982-1984/ 104%20Report%20of%20the%20Commission%20of%20Inquiry%20into%20the%20events at the refugee camps in Beirut (which at the moment times out) (which I believe is one of the sources you provide in the article)--the fact they capitalize few words leads me to believe it is, at most, a formal description of a "Commission of Inquiry", rather than a formal title of one. Also, I err on the side of caution--clearly the 12-word title is one of the ways that report is known. Whether or not it is a "formal" title is not clear--maybe, maybe not, short of a phone call to the Israeli government, thus my preference for 'also known as'. I spent at least 15-20 minutes researching this issue before logging my reply--I am not the sort that quickly dashes out my 'gut reaction'. Niteowlneils 14:17, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'd say rewrite anything this person wrote from scratch, and tell me if they keep reverting it. Derrick Coetzee

I'd say, actually read what I have written. Derrick Coetzee, you easily qualify as the single-handedly most discourtious, outright rude in fact, wikipedian I have yet to had the displeasure to interact with. Shame on you for trying to discourage new contributors on a whim. It seems that, to you, besmirching and insulting newcomers is easy prey due to your seniority status (of course, it means you can make sweeping negative generalizations with respect to my entire reputation and abilities here without inconviniencing yourself to examine the facts). Anything. Does that include abuse? El_C

Addendum:

Derrick Coetzee has written to me that the above passage was stated in jest. I appreciate the clarification and I retract my comments directly above.

I request that any further comments regarding the Kahan Commission article be directed towards Talk:Kahan Commission. Thanks. El_C

Alias (television)

What is the general consensus about this article? Having procreated a separate article for each episode of the television series, each article looks slightly peculiar.
There have been three seasons so far, each season having 22 episodes and each episode has a separate article in Wikipedia, with a premise which gives a resume of the action, as well as the cast of guest actors and their characters, director and writers. Not being seemingly very worldly-wise, am I being paranoic about this? Or am I being a spoilsport if I imagine this being slightly exagerated as a treatment for a television series? Or is it so super a programme that it is absolutely necessary to go into detail with a separated article like that? Am I wrong? Dieter Simon 01:02, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A common thing newcomers seem to like to do is to "make structure" first, in the hope that it can be filled out later. But really wiki grows by refactoring, not by "fleshing out". So I'd say put everything in the series article, including characters, metaplot, actors, and individual episodes in one big article. If the article grows so much (by dint of there being a comitted userbase who have put in the effort of writing decent content for it) then split it into three our four articles (say one main one, and one per season). Only when that solution has outgrown convenience do we really need one article per episode. It's not that more episodes take up more room (they do, but that's trivial), it's that information chopped up into such little bits is too hard for the reader to find. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:13, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I remember asking myself the same question a few months ago. I noticed that the body of the episode articles seemed to be a copyright violation, but I wasn't sure. Can you check into this? If it is, then the articles on individual episodes should probably be deleted, which would solve your problem. Acegikmo1 01:38, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If they were just the paragraph plot summaries, I'd agree merge, but since they have so many other details that are episode-specific (director, writer, guest cast, notes), it would end up being about 130K, which does qualify for breakouts. Even doing one article per season would be over 40K, still well over the recommended 30K limit. For the record, in general, given a choice I would rather have breakout articles for episodes, rather than for every regular and recurring fictional character and object, as I think the episode articles are more encyclopedic, expandable, and comprehensive--they can not only include the things these are starting with, but also ratings, controversies or other notable response to the episode, etc. That being said, Unveiled (Alias episode) and Almost 30 Years (Alias episode) may be copyvios, as they appear to use the same text as several other sites, perhaps from tvtome.com or www.episodelist.com. On the other hand, since tvtome is using it, it may be from a press release, which, by definition, doesn't seem like it could be protected by copyright. If they are copyvios, it gets worse, because Truth be Told (Alias episode) does NOT appear to be a copyvio, so each one would have to be evaluated separately. (this is all based on my scanning those three named articles--if they are not valid samples, please suggest ones that are.)Niteowlneils 02:46, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Off-Wikipedia discussion board

I recently came across a dispute between rlandmann and greyengine5 and tried to go see what it was about. I searched several talk pages about the topic. And finally found that the discussion of the Wikiproject is being carried off-Wikipedia on a bulletin board. [4] I find this disturbing. Do we have any policy about this? Rmhermen 04:52, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)

To view the actual forum, rather than just one topic, see [5]
You can read some of the discussion leading up to this development here. In short, a number of the more active participants in WikiProject Aircraft feel Wikipedia talk pages not conducive to long and detailed discussions.
As for it being "disturbing", I'll just repeat a comment I made before the trial started -"there's nothing more "sinister" about wikipedians using an external forum to discuss aspects of a project than if we were exchanging private email, or chatting via IRC or any other IM network (or meeting in person over a cup of coffee). In fact, a web forum ensures a transparency and accountability that none of those other modes of communication do."
Finally, from the beginning, this has been described as a "trial". If there are objections from the broader community (on the basis of policy or otherwise), then we'd like to know about them. Anyone with doubts as to why some of us have felt a need for a different way of talking about the project is free to try and make sense of the dog's breakfast that is the archived talk pages of WikiProject Aircraft. --Rlandmann 05:25, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
IRC and IM provide something which Wikipedia does not - realtime communication. When decisions are made over IRC or IM, the log files are usually posted on the talk pages to allow others to catch up and voice objections. Talk pages are Wikipedia's non-realtime discussion feature. If you don't want to use them, you should have good reasons not to. By using an external forum, you lose 1) watchlist notification of discussions on a particular article, 2) discussions showing up in RC, 3) clear track record of all discussions associated with a particular page, 4) refactoring, 5) licensing of discussions as being part of the Wikimedia text corpus, 6) ability to post under your name without re-registration, 7) wiki-markup in comments (including image markup). ...
Not everyone who works on articles which are part of a WikiProject's scope is a member of a WikiProject or interested in becoming one. Hence, many people who will edit these articles will be confused as to what is going on and why certain decisions are made. Transparency of the decision-making process is key on Wikipedia.
But the biggest problem is the risk of the discussions being lost. Conversations on talk pages are automatically backed up together with the rest of the DB and will exist as long as Wikipedia itself exists. What happens to the forum you set up if you lose interest, or if the server harddisk crashes?
Talk pages certainly take a while to get used to, and there is room for improvement in terms of usability. However, when properly handled, they are superior to a forum. That's because you can take a discussion that went over 30 pages and summarize it down to three essential paragraphs. You can use all the functionality of the wiki in your posts. You can create any type of poll with any voting system you want. When someone comments on a page in your watchlist, you will be notified. You can allow other people to edit and improve your comments (as I do).
For all the reasons above, I strongly recommend not to use an external forum. Not being actively involved in the pages of this WikiProject, I will leave it at that. But if a single person who is actively involved does not want to participate in this forum, that should be reason enough to close it down.--Eloquence*
Related discussion on Wikipedia talk:Village pump as to whether the village pump should be moved to a forum. Angela. 11:31, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)
I am concerned about not only the lack of record of discussion but the lack of advertisment of its existence or of the poll being taken. But announcing polls is always a weak point. I think we need to use Wikipedia:Community_Portal and Wikipedia:Current surveys more. Rmhermen 14:11, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you're talking about. It's clearly displayed at the top of Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Aircraft.
As for it being 'disturbing' - how so? It's open for everyone to read. Registration is not required. It's a functional system for viewing posts, rather than a cobbled-together mishmash like the wikipedia talk pages. IRC and IM have no tangible or permanent logs, while this forum cannot be edited or deleted at someone's whim. If a similar system was integrated into the mediawiki, would you call it disturbing then?
As far as user:Rmhermen's concerns, I've not seen him as an active participant of the project either on the talk pages or off. The forum will remain online indefinitely, as the server has daily backups and the forum will remain there whether i retain my interest in wikipedia or not. Having seen the absurdly high level of bickering, infighting, resistance to change, and pointless discussion which goes on, that interest is in fact already beginning to wane. -eric 19:21, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)

I have no problems with users discussing things off-Wikipedia. But I have a MAJOR problem when they come back with a policy change based on discussion that occurred, for example, on IRC. That's unacceptable. RickK 22:39, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons

The Wikimedia Commons is to be a repository for all the images, and other files, used on Wikipedia, and also for files that would be useful in a free repository but are not currently used on Wikipedia. Open Media is a similar project, due to be launched next month. For people interested in this, please see meta:Wikimedia Commons/Collaboration with Open Media to help with ideas as to how we might collaborate with them. Angela. 11:31, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)

Public Domain Image Tag

I have proposed a minor change to this tag at Template_talk:PD. I am bringing it up here to try and elicit a response, so have a look and see if you think it's a reasonable suggestion. — Trilobite (Talk) 13:20, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

SAVE THE HEBREW WIKIPEDIA!!!

The Hebrew Wikipedia is ruled by dictator named David Shay!!! He and his "friends" (Ben Teva) use Wikipedia only to premote their political point or views and someone with a different opnion will be banned (e.g. They deleted articles that where translated word by word from the English Wikipedia because they "don't found it important" or without giving any reason!!!!). They are ignoring the decision of the majority. I hope you will do something about it. I dont know if its the right place to post it but this is the only place I found to complain about the Hebrew Wikipedia.

Talk to a MediaWiki Steward, such as Angela. --Slowking Man 19:05, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)

KevinBot & RamBot

I have privately (to Kevin Rector) suggested that KevinBot should change all RamBot articles that they state that the place was actually in the USA. It currently goes X is a city located in Y-County, Z-State., and it'd be nice if you could add in the USA after that... I think this would be a bit more NPOV. Kevin Rector suggested that I bring up this on the pump for comments. Kokiri 13:43, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is a good suggestion. I have been giving a bit of thought as to how Rambot articles can be improved and I agree this is a welcome change. — Trilobite (Talk) 14:31, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As a U.S. citizen, I emphatically agree that each U.S. town article should include "in the United States". (I prefer that to an abbreviation. These articles are essentially automatically-generated starting points — why not use the proper term from the start?) A quick check shows that Paris, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires, all large and famous cities, clearly indicate their country, though such information is no surprise to most. Should we expect less of U.S. locales, just because many people might be expected to recognize the second part of their article titles as U.S. states? — Jeff Q 14:40, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
"in the United States" sounds good to me. I expect you could even find some people in the U.S. who didn't recoginze all 50 states. Rmhermen 14:51, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)
I would prefer the formulation as X is a city located in Y-County in the U.S. state of Z-state. I'd argue that the U.S. state article is more relevant to anyone interested in what Z-state was than the main United States article. [[User:Bkonrad|older≠wiser]] 14:56, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Even if you do recognize all 50 states, Athens is a city in Georgia is unclear, as there is both a US state and a country by that name. DenisMoskowitz
A reference to the country definitely should be added. I don't think the "in the..." is needed: why not just "<comma, country>?" My preference would be just to add ", [[United States|USA]]" after the state name, but some people don't like the abbreviation: ", [[United States]]" then. –Hajor 15:02, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I can already see trouble brewing here over the old controversy of whether United States or its abbreviation US is the best way of refering to the United States of America. My proposal is to have something along the lines of: '''Somewhere''' is a city located in [[State]], [[United States|USA]]. This avoids people complaining about US or United States because no one will object (hopefully) to the country being referred to by what is by far its most common abbreviation. — Trilobite (Talk) 15:12, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Something like that. Discreet, to the point, and links to both the state and the country (said in reply to Bkonrad, above). –Hajor
Also a US citizen, I very much want Wikipedia to not be US-centric, so I definately support identifying the country. I would prefer "USA" or "United States of America", as there is more than one "United States of ____". I would be happy with any of the following: Sunnyvale is a city located in Santa Clara County, California, USA. Santa Clara, founded in 1852, is a city located in Santa Clara County, in the U.S. state of California. Mountain View is a city located in Santa Clara County, in the U.S. state of California, USA. I like the latter two because they give the reader the most options to get further information, but can appreciate the arguement of succinctness of the first one. Niteowlneils 18:35, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If anyone actually writes a bot to do this, they will need to be somewhat careful. While the vast majority of the Rambot location descriptions do match the form: X is a city located in Y-County, Z-State, there are many situations with variations on this. Besides the obvious city/town/township/village variants, sometimes the county is not given, presumably because Rambot was not able to manage ambiguous cases where a city spans multiple counties. Also many of the entries have already been manually updated so that the Rambot text may not be recognizable. Basically, I think any such bot would need fairly close human supervision.
FWIW, I'm still partial to the form X is a city located in Y-County in the U.S. state of Z-state. The other forms presume readers understand the comma separated hierarchy of U.S. place names. For those unfamiliar with the U.S federal structure, saying "in the U.S. state of Z-state" makes it clear what Z-state is. I personally don't like appending USA or United States of America, though I could live with appending simply United States. [[User:Bkonrad|older≠wiser]] 20:07, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Is there anybody who would understand the expression "U.S. state" without understanding the significance of "Z-state, USA"? ☺ I must admit an ignorance of how the rest of the world thinks of the U.S. and its states, which might be different from how they think of political divisions from other countries not their own. Whereas I would not expect many to be familiar with the région and département system of France, I expect the individual states of the U.S. seem to have much more world notoriety. (Of course, California is no doubt much better known than, say, Rhode Island, but how many French régions or Japanese prefectures can your average Wikipedia reader name? I just don't have a good perspective on this.) In any case, some form of "United States" belongs in the initial identification. As long as it's clear, it's not as important what form, especially since people are expected to improve upon the articles. — Jeff Q 00:07, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Well, my wife is German, although she's lived here for many years, and in discussions with her friends and relatives there, it's clear to me that for the most part they only have a very vague notion of U.S. states beyond travel destinations such as Florida or California. They may have heard the names of the states, but may not really know where they are and are about as mystified by the relationship between the states and federal government as I am about how the German states and independent cities relate to each other and to the whole. What I'm trying to say is that for all practical purposes they understand that Michigan is in the U.S. in much the same way that they might understand that Chicago or the Grand Canyon is in the U.S. Simply writing "Michigan, USA" does not provide any cues as to what Michigan is in the same way that "U.S. state of Michigan" does. [[User:Bkonrad|older≠wiser]] 01:07, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I've heard stories of European tourists on the east coast wanting to rent a car for a weekend trip to the west coast, and similar. Completely aprochryphal friend-of-a-friend type thing though. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:26, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
While it's true that Mexico is formally Estados Unidos Mexicanos, in Mexico itself the phrase Estados Unidos almost always refers to the United States of America, and the English form should certainly be seen as unambiguous—it is in international usage, anyway, as we see in the Olympics. For my money, I prefer the form "California, US," with or without the periods, making use of the most common English-language abbreviation as standardized by the ISO. Austin Hair 10:58, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)
Also, while I agree that the country should be explicitly stated in the article, it should be noted that US states are not mere subdivisions, but autonomous entities, all of which have enjoyed varying levels of sovereignty in the past (states must be organized before admission to the Union, if only as territories). The 13 founding colonies existed as de facto nations within a loose confederation prior to the ratification of the Constitution; Vermont, California, Texas, and Hawaii were all independent republics before being annexed. As for significance, one could easily argue that Rhode Island is no more obscure than Azerbaijan, whose economy is easily exceeded by the former, our smallest state. Just something to think about. Austin Hair 11:32, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)
I would dispute that US is the most common English-language abbreviation. I'm quite prepared to believe it's the most common in that country, but in the rest of the English-speaking world it would only be heard as part of phrases like "US Air Force" or "the US embassy". USA is far more common. — Trilobite (Talk) 11:52, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

My proposal: Exampletown is a city located in in the U.S. state of Examplestate. Neutrality 03:13, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I like the "in Florida, USA" or "in Florida in the United States" versions much better (I prefer the first). [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 03:19, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it should be done hierarchically. Those who don't grasp that Florida is a state will be enlightened when they click on it. It seems illogical not to mention the country explicity — the "US state" proposal does it in a slightly roundabout way. Most articles on places give the country in the form "Dortmund is a city in Germany". The county and state need including so "Somewhere is a city in Somewhere County, Alabama, USA." should do fine. — Trilobite (Talk) 04:21, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I second Trilobite. I like "Somewhere is a city in Somewhere County, Alabama, USA." Also, KevinBot uses Regular expressions so if the standard format is not in the article (it's been edited since) then the article will get skipped. Kevin Rector 13:58, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)

Abbreviation

I understand that I'm supposed to discuss a specific article on its Talk page, but I just haven't had any success with the Abbreviation article. I left a note on the Talk page six days ago, with suggestions for deleting most of the 1911 Britannica material, but haven't had any response so far. (I guess nobody's watching the page. Well, it's not John Kerry.) I don't feel right about deleting all that stuff without input from anybody else. Does anybody have a soft spot for abbreviations out there? Incidentally, if you do, and know more linguistics than me, which wouldn't be hard, I'd really appreciate it if you'd take a look at my HomO article. I wrote it mostly because the word (the short form for the Swedish ombudsman against discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation) is a cool, and to me amusing, uh, fake abbreviation. Well, maybe you had to be there. But, anyway, I don't think I do justice to the word itself in the article about the institution, and any input would be appreciated. If you think this posting is inappropriate, please tell me so, that would also be useful. Bishonen 16:55, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well bringing it here is likely to garner the article some attention so hopefully that helps (its not my field, unfortunately). Wikipedia works on a system of massive numbers of incremental improvements. If no-one other than you is currently interested in an article, you have carte blanche to your best in improving it, doing whatever you think is right. Maybe you can't make it perfect, but it will be in a better state for the next person who comes along. Pcb21| Pete 19:59, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Be bold. Discussing a major change on the talk page is only a courtesy to people who care about the article, and those people would be watching. Also, all changes are reversible, so if someone comes back from vacation and finds their page "devastated", they'll revert and flame you then. I for one favour your suggestion, but I might suggest moving them to a list of "archaic abbreviations." Derrick Coetzee 20:59, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and removed the lists - they were too long to keep inline in the page. I've also added sections. The article actually looks sensible and nice now. Not sure what to do about current examples, does list of acronyms and initialisms cover this (I suspect the line is blurred). Discuss on Talk:Abbreviation. zoney ███ talk 01:29, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Not all abbreviations are acronyms: acronyms can be pronounced as if they were a word. NATO is an acronym, QED is not. [[User:Anárion|File:Anarion.png]] 07:38, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Untrue. According to Merriam-Webster's Online, an acronym is "a word (as NATO, radar, or snafu) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term; also : an abbreviation (as FBI) formed from initial letters". QED is an acronym in the second sense (and even the first, depending on how you define "word"). Wikipedia's own article on acronyms is even clearer on this point. The essential difference is that NATO is pronounced "NAY-toe", whereas "QED" is pronounced "KYOO EE DEE". — Jeff Q 09:45, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)


Nope - by any definition QED is not an acronym - it is always spelled out and never pronounced kwed. --JohnArmagh 10:01, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
But all acronyms are abbreviations? I.e. are acronyms a subset of abbreviations? Are initialisms also abbreviations? zoney ███ talk 12:23, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
"By any definition?" Clearly, by at least one definition—the one Jeff cites above—it is indeed one. The artificial acronym/initialism distinction has always irked me, and I suppose you're going to be chiding me for splitting infinitives next. Austin Hair 12:51, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)
Seconded. QED is not an acronym, since it is not pronounced as a word, but as three individual letters. All acronyms are abbreviations, yes.
From the OED: "Initialism: The use of initials; a significative group of initial letters. Now spec. a group of initial letters used as an abbreviation for a name or expression, each letter or part being pronounced separately (contrasted with ACRONYM)."
Sounds fairly unequivocable. -- Necrothesp 13:00, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Could you remove the "wiki/" from URLs?

Could you remove the "wiki/" from URLs? Reason: To remove redundancy and to make the URLs shorter and easier to type.

Example: Change http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump to http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Village_pump . Rajasekaran Deepak 17:49, 2004 Aug 18 (UTC)

Um, why are you typing complete URLs? I've been here almost six months and have never found a need to do so. Also, for what it's worth, that would break all the links from google, etc., into Wikipedia, at least temporarily, so the need to make such a drastic change would probably have to be more compelling than this seems to be. Niteowlneils 18:38, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Not that I'm an expert on MediaWiki, but I'm betting there are other directories on the server besides the wiki/ directory. It would probably require some hack to automatically search in wiki/ unless a different pathname is given. I don't know if this is possible or not; you'd have to talk to a developer. Nite, I don't think this would break links, because the wiki/ directory would still be there. --Slowking Man 19:09, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)
I'm with Rajasekaran on this one. Years back, I used to contribute to whatis.com, in the days when you could use a URL like whatis.com/computer to get their defintion of a computer. The site was sold to some oragsniation or other, which replaced the URLs with some awful whatis.com/893265486346324244t32t3t47t24 kind of arrangement. It would be cool, no less, to be able to type in en.wikipedia.org/battersea and have it return the battersea definition. Sure, so it needs some redirection at the server level; that's what software is for. And no, no reason why it should be mutually exclusive with /wiki/whatever, for Google's benefit. --Tagishsimon
There are directories at the top level that coincide with articles, such as math/math, style/style, and upload/upload, and they need room to add more in the future. I'm all for shorter links, but come on - it's only five characters. Derrick Coetzee 20:08, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia Utilities (CSV conversion tool)

Hello all. As it seems, there is no page in the en:wp with a collection of wikipedia-related tools. As I known from the de:wp, there are quite a lot of such tools (see de:Wikipedia:Helferlein), including Scripts to generate lists of articles, discovery copyright-violations, integrating a wikipedia-search into the browser, syntax-highliting for different editors, a reference to the PyBot, etc.a.n. So wouldn't it be good to create such a page? I would even be willing to translate the german page and privide it here. But where would I put it? Wikipedia:Utilities is something else. So, maybe Wikipedia:Tools? Where should that page be linked?

BTW: I stumbeled across this problem because I would like to share with the world a nice little program I devised: it's a PHP-based tool for converting tables from CSV-format to wikimedia-table-syntax. That allowes you to import tables from spread sheet applications like Excel, from databases, or from statistics programs like SPSS into the wikipedia, without having to do much typing and formating. Have a look at de:Benutzer:Duesentrieb/csv2wp (en) and try it out. Now, where do I put this to make it available to more people? thanks -- 84.128.104.197 19:16, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC) (that's de:Benutzer:Duesentrieb).

Hey cool! Someone (Sj) actually created Wikipedia:Tools as I suggested on the IRC while i wrote the above message. So, would anyone like to contribute? -- 84.128.104.197 19:56, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Articles for every olympic competitor

I've posted a question on the 2004 Summer Olympics talk page here [6] about how far we should go with articles about olympic athletes.. just medal winners? All of them? Please continue discussion on that page! -- Chuq 06:18, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Auto Unit Conversion

Since Wikipedia has an international audience, I thought it would be really cool if this worked:

Surround a number, along with its corresponding unit (for example, "22km") with triple round brackets: 

(((22km)))

Then, the Wikipedia software could automatically look at the text in the brackets, run it through a unit conversion (similar to the Google calculator), and present it in the preferred unit of the reader.

What do you think?

Would be cool, but also hard on the server I think. [[User:Anárion|File:Anarion.png]] 07:31, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
And also results in precise imprecision. It's about 20km from here would become It's about 12.43 miles from here. See also overzealous newspapers: She said, "I feel like a million dollars (£548,845.83)". -- Avaragado 08:11, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You could however present the converted quantity as a tool-tip. I assume. Don't ask me how, my brain hasn't kicked in yet today :-) --Phil | Talk 08:52, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)
Any number that can be converted can be done so with appropriate precision, simply by having the "calculator" determine the number of significant digits. It could even be clever enough to recognize that "20." has two significant digits, where "20" has only one, or even adopt a more flexible scheme that would reflect common use, translating "20km" into "12mi". However, the server load still seems to be an open question. I would hope this could be done with a JavaScript bookmarklet that would put the load on the client, where it belongs. — Jeff Q 09:58, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Server load would be low -- this is just some extra parsing at page save. [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 13:45, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Uh...no. Let me spell it out:
  1. We click the button to save the page.
  2. The units are converted per...whose preferences I don't know.
  3. The page is saved.
  4. A user views it.
  5. Now what the heck happens?
I think what the suggester originally meant is:
  1. We click the button to save the page.
  2. The page is saved.
  3. A user views it.
  4. The page is parsed for the conversion to the unit of the viewer's choice.
  5. The new page is sent to the viewer.
However, that is more CPU-expensive. Johnleemk | Talk 13:52, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Reporting a search problem

There was a previous section about search problems. This was about false positives and misses. For example a search for "600 mps" has been reporting Jungle Carbine as a false positive match since 27 June. A search for 'eden cumbria north west' misses Eden, Cumbria even though it has been a match for 7 weeks. There are others.

I am grateful for the advice to report this as a bug. However, I was unable to do so. I went to the bug web site which required me to register. I succeeded in doing this but then it told me that bugs were now being handled elsewhere. So I went there and that site also required me to register. However when I registered, it did not send me a login. If anyone is already registered for bug reporting, would they be so kind as to report the bug?
Bobblewik 09:37, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Images in by-lines

Lately, I have noticed some people putting images in their signatures (~~~~). I don't mind people putting ornamental Unicode characters in their sigs (but changing colours using <font> is borderline IMHO). However, using scaled-down images is just a waste of server resources. For some examples, scroll through WP:VFD. Right now, I see three different images: The EU flag, The Italian flag and a bulldog. Apart from using bandwidth, database and other server resources, the images attract unnecessary attention to the signatures that use them. — David Remahl 11:47, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

And it's slightly annoying. I think font color and unicode is okay as long as it's text only (or I'd put an American flag, A russian flag, a Latvian flag, and my pic :D) [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] 13:13, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Relevance of policies

What is the relevance of the "no personal attack" policy?

Any arbitrator, sysop, and editor might consider whatever does not suit her personal humor, particular day in the monthly cycle, and so on, as a personal attack. Moreover, whatever some say is a personal attack others say it's only attention, care and indeed Wikilove. Who says what is what and what is not what in Wiki? Take my case study for instance: I had a six month assignment in commiting quality medical articles for Wiki. Well, six months later, half of my contributions have been deleted without a trace by people crying wolf while severly insulting, libelling and slandering me (by the expert opinion of my lawyers). In one instance, Theresa and Jwros felt personally attacked by me calling them "baby" while I should not consider them calling me a "nutcase" as a personal attack (by the enlightened ukaz of arbitrators). In a word, people, why don't you wake up and come to your senses. And while you are doing so, and in the process of arousal, why don't you ask yourself quies custodiet ipsos custodes. In conclusion, here I offer a minitext in order for you to help answering me with at least some sensible NON-PERSONAL, principial, relevant and creative stuff:

Positive diagnosis of censorship on Wiki and proposed cure for Wikicensors

One of my previous questions here has been deleted, en bloc, complete with evidence. More than HALF of my text contributed to Wiki has been deleted without a trace under the "personal attack" banner, doctrine, fallacy or whatever. So here is this interesting case for disfunctioning in my Wikicensors, which perhaps merits some qualified medical attention. Quoting from a famous textbook treating censorship as an institutional disease:

There is a serious problem of "institutional impotence" for many bodies -- with many others operating under prison-like constraints, if only conceptually. Of course some form of "conceptual masturbation" -- perhaps characteristic of many conferences -- may provide a short-term satisfactory substitute. Or, as Dave Barry humorously indicates: "To the rest of America, making policy is a form of institutional masturbation; to Washingtonians, it is productive work. They love to make policy."
At the other extreme, a rare form of erectile dysfunction is the permanent erection (priapism). By comparison, the concern has been expressed, notably by Cynthia Mahmood, that US policies with regard to terrorism could lead to a world where the United States is in a permanent state of "military arousal", perpetually fighting an ill-defined and elusive enemy. This could then be suitably named as "priapic warfare". Given US military admiration for Roman imperial endeavours, this suggests a line for further research (see Amly Richlin. The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humour, 1983)
Non-sexually related spontaneous erections happen often, especially in young men. These may perhaps be compared to the momentary enthusiastic responses of the young to social challenges. Premature ejaculation is often confused with erectile dysfunction. It is a condition in which the entire process of arousal, erection, ejaculation, and climax occur very rapidly, leaving the partner unsatisfied. This might usefully be compared to premature human responses to the challenges of the planet.

Rest assured, my office is still open for more individual medical and psychological attention for the diseased censors here. Sincerely, irismeister 11:33, 2004 Aug 19 (UTC)

RE: Proposed institutional treatment for Wikicensors who see personal attacks wherever they can't argue using aristotelic or boolean logic :O)
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