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Banning Plautus satire
When will the images return?
Line 449: Line 449:
"Images uploaded between January 24 and January 28 are currently not available due to a hardware problem with one of the web servers. We should have the files recovered sooner or later, but feel free to re-upload anything you uploaded in that period to restore it immediately."<BR>
"Images uploaded between January 24 and January 28 are currently not available due to a hardware problem with one of the web servers. We should have the files recovered sooner or later, but feel free to re-upload anything you uploaded in that period to restore it immediately."<BR>
When will this problem be over? -- [[user:zanimum]]
When will this problem be over? -- [[user:zanimum]]

Afaik the server's hd is pretty broken, but should be physically accessible soon (Jason plans to get the old servers today). Attempts to recover the data should be much easier with physical access. -- [[User:Gwicke|Gabriel Wicke]] 23:58, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)


==Edit and Revert wars getting out of hand==
==Edit and Revert wars getting out of hand==

Revision as of 23:58, 13 February 2004

Village pump sections
post, watch, search
Discuss existing and proposed policies
post, watch, search
Discuss technical issues about Wikipedia
post, watch, search
Discuss new proposals that are not policy-related
post, watch, search
Incubate new ideas before formally proposing them
post, watch, search
Discuss issues involving the Wikimedia Foundation
post, watch, search
Post messages that do not fit into any other category
View all village pump sections at once
Other help and discussion locations
I want... Then go to...
...help using or editing Wikipedia Teahouse (for newer users) or Help desk (for experienced users)
...to find my way around Wikipedia Department directory
...specific facts (e.g. Who was the first pope?) Reference desk
...constructive criticism from others for a specific article Peer review
...help resolving a specific article edit dispute Requests for comment
...to comment on a specific article Article's talk page
...to view and discuss other Wikimedia projects Wikimedia Meta-Wiki
...to learn about citing Wikipedia in a bibliography Citing Wikipedia
...to report sites that copy Wikipedia content Mirrors and forks
...to ask questions or make comments Questions

[[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]]

Template:Communitypage

Moved discussion

Questions and answers, after a period of inactivity, will be moved to other relevant sections of the wikipedia (such as the FAQ pages), placed in the Wikipedia:Village pump archive (if it is of general interest), or deleted (if it has no long-term value).


See the archive for older moved discussion links. For the most recent moved discussion see Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 1

Requests for help and comments

  1. Sennheiser has created a WikiProject Space and he would like to invite Astronomy and Space Exploration enthusiasts to join his new project.
  2. TUF-KAT has created Wikipedia talk:Infobox for all taxobox/infobox discussion to be centralized
  3. Belizian is willing to take photos of plants and animals in the jungle for wikipedia, he requests your help in identifying species at Plants and animals of Belize
  4. For those who enjoy writing and editing: Wikipedia:Articles requested for over two years, Wikipedia:RC patrol
  5. The Wikipedia:Office of Members' Advocates is an intra-Wikipedia voluntary association looking for new members interested in helping members to understand and effectively participate in the Wikipedia:conflict resolution process.
  6. If you voted to remove an article to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates but have not raised a formal objection to it, please do so now. Bmills
  7. Wikipedians are encouraged to make use of this public domain site, see Wikipedia talk:Porting Vectorsite articles
  8. Multilingual? Or need a foreign-language wikipedia article translated into English? Check out the newly created Wikipedia:Translation

help (write to any sailor)

--> Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 1

Most Wanted Articles

--> Wikipedia talk:Most Wanted Articles

Can't Get My Password Back (fixed)

There was an email backlog, now fixed. --> Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 1

100k "images"

--> Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 1

some helpful advice about vandals

--> Wikipedia talk:Dealing with vandalism

Heads up, Virus on mailinglist!!?

--> Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 1

Page without content: wiki/Internet_slang

--> Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 1

The "deadly Wikipedia virus"

--> Wikipedia talk:Confessed Wikipediholics

Wikipedia and Google

I was checking how my article Sangharakshita rated on Google today and found something interesting. Most of the licenced users of Wikipedia's text rate better than Wikipedia itself.

--> Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 1

Need help on Dior (fixed)

--> Talk:Dior

Download entire section?

I was wondering is it possible to download the whole mathematics section?

See: Wikipedia:Database download. (you will download other sections but its all in a nice package) --Sennheiser! 17:27, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Soldiers on the Plains of Abraham

--> Wikipedia:Reference desk

Have I been squidded?

(fixed)

-->m:Cache bugs

Printed Dictionary

--> Wikipedia:Reference desk

Translation

Multilingual? Or need a foreign-language wikipedia article translated into English? Check out the newly created Wikipedia:Translation

--> Wikipedia talk:Translation

Messed up characters

--> User talk:Raul654

Heads up on "Ethnic Groups"

For anyone who may care, because I know this was a controversial project when we first launched a month ago, we now have an attempted template for writing about ethnic groups, nations (in the sense of peoples, not states), tribes, etc. It's further discussed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups, which also points to 5 examples of applying the template. Some of the articles that we've tried reworking this way were not so great to begin with, and of course applying a template doesn't solve all of their problems, but I, for one, think it is an improvement in every case. Comments eagerly solicited; my current plan is to until 15 Feb 04 for comments, then (barring unforeseen serious objections) supersede the 5 articles currently in the wikipedia (nothing significant is dropped, just added), and take the notice off of the template that warns that it is "only a draft." -- Jmabel 02:27, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Captions for fair use book covers?

As a side note to the earlier discussion of book covers and fair use (see Talk:Fair use): I'd like some input on how to caption the covers. Just for expediency's sake, I would caption them with the title of the book. (See Lord of the Flies or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone or examples). Fabiform suggested publisher, date. I'd like to know if anyone else has suggestions. →Raul654 08:06, Feb 8, 2004 (UTC)

Adding publisher & date would be nice, at least on the image page if not in the article. -- Jmabel 18:28, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Advice and opinion needed on place naming conventions

I'd be grateful for advice on an issue regarding place naming conventions in Kosovo (i.e. whether we follow international practice or one or the other practices of the rival national communities, which present POV problems). I've posted an appeal for advice on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places)#Disputed place names - advice needed about a week ago but haven't had any responses yet. If anyone could offer some assistance, it would be much appreciated. -- ChrisO 10:49, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

--> Wikipedia talk:Copyrights

Liquid crystal sheet

--> Wikipedia:Reference desk

Fix required: Talk page moved to article page

I erroneously moved Talk:World War II atrocities to World War II atrocities in Poland. Sorry for screwing up.

The folloiwng should be undone by an admin: Talk:World War II atrocities must be restored, and World War II atrocities in Poland/Talk:World War II atrocities in Poland deleted.

BTW, could it be a good idea to forbid such kind of page move? Mikkalai 21:17, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Compare versions ("&" breaks it)

--> Wikipedia talk:Page history

Need help with image restore

--> Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 1

I'd love to vandalize a page

Ever felt like vandalising a page, adding joke content etc?

--> Wikipedia talk:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense

Not sure what to do

I've come across this article - Oxford Revelation Rock-Gospel Choir but I'm not sure what to do with it, It looks like an advert rather than an encyclopedia article, should it be put on VFD G-Man 23:16, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think you should. A choir formed in 2002 is unlikely to be notable enough yet. Bmills 12:15, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Vandalbot

We had a vandalbot attack today on meta. No big deal, just a couple of minutes worth of cleanup. But I wanted to make sure people know what to do when this happens. So I created a meta page on the subject, m:Vandalbot. -- Tim Starling 00:12, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

Is there a reason why links to Media:Nosuchmedium don't appear red? See User:TUF-KAT/Samples of music from the United States -- not all of those clips have been uploaded yet, and I have no way of knowing whether or not the links are working. I've had to change a few in between when I made the list and the clips got uploaded (the program I used to convert from mp3 to ogg and select a clip couldn't handle accents in titles, for example), but I may have missed some and have no way to tell without clicking on each link. Tuf-Kat 05:23, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

Map of Wikipedia?

Does anybody know of an attempt to "map" the Wikipedia similar to say:

http://research.lumeta.com/ches/map/

the Internet mapping project?

Hmmm, what I thought you meant was a map of Wikipedia as a navigational tool. Some libraries are doing this as a way to help people find information quickly and easily and as an alternative to the traditional catalogue search. As Wikipedia grows and expands, this could be a very useful tool. Anyone know anything about this? Exploding Boy 08:58, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

Random Observations

I've spent most of today clicking Random page and have seen a (random, naturally) sample of a couple of hundred articles. Excluding the U. S. places from the census, the following are just a few observations/questions that spring to mind. All comments welcome.

  1. there are a lot of stubs without {{SUBST:stub}} on them.
  2. there are a lot of oldstubs.
  3. given 1 and 2,what is the value of adding {{SUBST:stub}}? (I ask because I did this a lot today).
  4. if my sample is good, we have a lot of articles on people who have had their 15 minutes of fame,and very few in the area of "high culture" (the arts, I suppose). What, if anything, can be done to redress this? Or am I worrying about nothing?
  5. how can the biographical articles of living people be kept up-to-date?

Bmills 16:30, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

well, the stub boilerplate points to the stub page, and so (in theory) someone can hit "what links here" on that page and they'll get a list of stubs. I don't know if anyone actually does this, however. With regard to your biography question, perhaps we could have the same thing - perhaps have a wikiproject biography, add a "this is the wikiproject biography" boilerplate on each biography's talk page, and then one can get the list of biographies from "what links here". Moreover, with that tag present a fairly simple SQL query could be constructed, saying something like "give me a list of biographies of living people which haven't been updated in the last XXX months". -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:59, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Re: hitting what links here from the stub page, I do this. :) On occasion, anyhow: I believe that proposed changes by developers will make it possible to "surf" the What Links Here section, meaning stub boilerplate will serve an even more useful purpose. I like Finlay's suggested bio-boiler, but am not in WikiProject:Biographies, so I don't know how they would like the idea. Jwrosenzweig 22:52, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Another very useful function of the stub boilerplate is to annoy people like me, who have the strange idea that they are to decide for themselves which Wikipedia articles to edit. I hate those things. Andre Engels 03:49, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)~

Wikimedia's first press release Fundraising paragraph

m:Wikimedia's first press release was written mostly in August of 2003, before $30,000 dollars were raised for new hardware. As such it includes the following paragraph:

Some Wikipedia versions may consider omitting this paragraph
The continuing surge in development and interest especially in the Wikipedia project has, however, strained the server and software resources of Wikimedia. The Wikimedia Foundation, therefore, is starting a week long fundraising drive today and will use those funds to help ensure continued performance. Please visit wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising for more information. Wikimedia is also calling for volunteer programmers to help improve the performance, user friendliness, and capabilities of the software, now called MediaWiki (mediawiki.org), behind the various Wikimedia projects.

Should this paragraph be:

  1. Left as is?
  2. Removed entirely?
  3. Rewritten to modify the thrust from requesting money to requesting editors and programmers?
  4. Other?

I personally think that option 1 is silly considering that there is nolonger any proposed use for the money and over $30,000 dollars have already been raised. However, option 1 is currently going to happen unless there is a decision to change it in the next week or two before article 500,000 hits. Jrincayc 17:13, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I dont think that you should change a press release that has already been released. If you want to release a new press release, mabye that should be done instead. --Ed Senft! 17:41, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It will not be officially released until Wikipedia gets 500,000 articles. This will probably not happen for about two more weeks. At that point we would be in the situation of releasing a press release (a.k.a. something that is supposed to be news that contains lots of things that were news 6 months ago.). Jrincayc 17:53, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is simply the best!

Above all, if one needs mathematical or scientific information, Wikipedia is simply the best, which brought the Web out in the last years. There are to some extent understandable, clear and extensive explanations to (nearly) each topic. Still to it the whole is free. It is fascinating that also in the today's Spam and garbage and troll contaminated Web still another project instructed on voluntariness, self-check and co-operation survive can.

Further so, Wikipedia!

Thank you! :) --mav 11:07, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

History of ALCO POWER

made the change --denny vrandečić 21:50, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

images from awesome university website

I would like to use the images from this awesome university website. Would I be violating copyright? --Ed Senft! 21:48, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes, you would most likely be violating copyright unless you have permission from the creater of the images. Jrincayc 22:40, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ordinal vs Cardinal

Some of the number pages (like five hundred) have "ordinal" and "cardinal" confused. Please fix this. Ordinal means 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.; cardinal means one, two, three (how many), etc. --Juuitchan

You are allowed to fix it yourself, you know? --Phil 11:35, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

Lumpenproletariat, lumpen proletariat or lumpen-proletariat?

Don't know if Lumpenproletariat should be moved to lumpen ploletariat Lumpen proletariat. Need help from whatever that language is (German?). Discuss at Talk:Lumpenproletariat please. --Maio 22:22, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

Lumpenproletariat has now been fixed, and yes it is correct (one Word) --Dieter Simon 23:37, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Most edited articles?

Where do you find a list of the most edited articles in the wiki? Tried Specialpages and didn't see anything that yelled "most edited" at me.... :) alerante 23:01, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There's a Wikipedia:Most-edited talk pages. If that's possible, you could probably bug one of the developers into making an articlespace version. Tuf-Kat 03:29, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)
That'll work for me. The developers don't need to be bugged. :) alerante 22:02, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Is pumpie a possible problem? Sennheiser ponders this perplexity

He keeps creating articles with basically no content. I don't know if I want to add him to Conflicts between users(im afraid of hurting his fealings), but this little bugger is getting on my nerves. It seems as if he is a 6-8 year old with an overactive imagination (the kind of child who gets pummelled in the school yard). I don't know if he understands how to login. (he usually edits as 67.60.27.122. He also keeps asking to be an admin, and has this misconecption that he will become one soon as long as he keeps pestering others and promises to create "en.wiktionary.org" and bots that translate things. He seems to be a problem at wiktionary(i don't contribute there so I cant say). Pumpie also keeps creating articles about HMS's which have basically no content. He has repeatedly been asked to include a stub message, but he seems unable to grasp the simple concept. Look at the article HMS Hermione, for an example of the kind of articles he creates. (this was created today and he wasn't even logged in) (notice it says "HMS Amazon" instead of Hermione). As I said, I am weary about adding him to the conflict page, but I don't know what else to do. --Ed Senft! 23:22, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

He does that on the Latin wikipedia as well. I can't expect people to communicate in English there, of course, but when I've tried he doesn't seem to understand what he's doing at all. Adam Bishop 04:09, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I note the image at HMS Hermione has no provinence. Doubt he took it himself, but no documentation as to source is provided, which could be worrisome - Marshman 05:37, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I added that image. It was taken around 1910 I believe. --Ed Senft! 12:40, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Dashes

--> Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (biographies)

DNS problem

Umm, I tried to load the main page via my usual link, and got this: "If you've gotten here, you're either having DNS trouble or you've followed some sort of invalid link.

Please see wikimedia.org for links to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

Note that the address for www.wikipedia.org should be 130.94.122.199. This server is 130.94.122.197. If you thought you were coming to www.wikipedia.org, you're in the wrong place!"

Is this really my fault?" Surely www.wikipedia.org should get me to wikipedia!!! Graham 10:14, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It's not just you, I get the same message. Just change www to en2 (en2.wikipedia.org) and you can probably get in.
Adrian Pingstone 10:56, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)
en.wikipedia.org works OK as well.
Adrian Pingstone 11:02, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

rice field price

--> Wikipedia:Reference desk

Is wiki a good P2P application?

With the hardware upgrade still fresh in everyone's mind it seems that moving Wikipedia to some sort of P2P network configuration might be a good idea. This way volunteers could host some articles and as the Wikipedia's user base grows so to does the processing power. Of course there would have to be many redundant copies of each article but that would give lots of bandwidth and fault tolerance. Articles in different languages could actually be hosted in their country or origin which would reduce bandwidth? It would also give P2P networks a legitimate use.

I have wondered whether a cluster-type solution would be a good idea. Maybe if we could move towards hosting different languages on separate machines, we could eventually end up where those machines didn't all have to be in the same room, or even country, and then we could have what you're talking about. Unfortunately I don't know enough about how MySQL works, or how Mediawiki drives it, to know how feasible this sort of thing might be. --Phil 17:02, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)
There's a whole page somewhere with loads of weird and wonderful proposed server architectures, involving various degrees of distributedness. Can't for the life of me remember how I got there though - it wasn't here, on meta, or even on OpenFacts, but I drifted there while stuff was down once. Ooh, here we go, I found it: http://www.aulinx.de/oss/code/wikipedia/ (linked to from m:Cache_strategy, which may also have relevant discussion). Enjoy :-/ IMSoP 18:45, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)
That was on a wikipedia server error message I believe. --Ed Senft! 00:24, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Personally, I would love to see wikipedia is more decentralized. Imagine you create a new article and it is simply stored in your local drive. As time goes, it spreads among other computers. In other words, there is no special thing like submitting articles. You may wonder what's nice about this? As wikipedia grows, I am quite confident that it cannot be sustained by the central scheme we have now. Edit conflicts become more common thus annoying. It would become normal that the same problem is resolved in different places in different ways. Those diversation may sound the deteriment of coherence but it also guarantees articles to be more durable because vundalism can be difficult and disputes can be reduced.
Well, this sounds more like P2P-based Internet idea. But this is what I think the future of wikipedia is. -- Taku 00:42, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)
I see a big probleme in the loss of coherence. If wikipedia is distributed, everyone can have their own true version of a disputed article -- but there would be no need to discuss and converge into one "peer-reviewed" article. That wikipedia is centralized (or at least: that the edit function and every db transaction following this has to be sort of centralized) seems to me the only possible topology, if you don't want to mess around with cached edit conflicts (X on distributed Wikipedia Server A changes article #123, Y on distributed server B does the same, and only five days later in some move upwards the net the different versions of #123 meet and clash. And now?). Wikipedia has to be centralized (but can be mirrored) for the same reasons that the DNS-hierarchy and Sourceforge are in a way centralized. -- till we *) 18:37, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates

Who is supposed to move approved candidates from Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates into Wikipedia:Featured pictures ? Bevo 17:12, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If you follow the instructions on that page, I believe the answer is "anyone". :-) Be bold! Jwrosenzweig 19:38, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

--> Wikipedia talk:Copyrights

--> Wikipedia talk:Copyrights

Use of Citations

Over at Operation Downfall, I added a section on casualities. It draws very heavily from a couple passages in John Skates' Invasion of Japan. If this were an academic paper, I'd most definitely cite it. What is the wiki policy on citations? →Raul654 19:01, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

Cite it under a References section I would say. Dori | Talk 19:33, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)
I concur. More people should cite their references, it would make this all much more useful. Jmabel 01:06, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Extremely Silly Question

Who is the wikipedian who has a hysterical picture of a kitten stuck in a drinking glass on their user page? I stumbled across that and haven't been able to get it out my head and want to show it my friend LouLou. Thanks. jengod 21:25, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

Raul654. The image is Media:Image:Cat in pint.jpg --No-One Jones 21:37, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)
☺ →Raul654 21:33, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

Did the kitten ever get over its hangover? Dieter Simon 00:02, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Geography sites question

- - I rememember seeing something when I first came on board about the geographical site names being first done by robot, using some(?) almanac. Someone please bring me up to speed on this; I don't know where to find the information. A lot of place names were missed. Is there any way to find the information for these place names - and obtain it without retyping? There are some that I'd like to work on, but it would be nice to have a similar format for all. Pollinator 01:28, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

they were added by a robot (I forget which one) using US Census data. So (with a number of exceptions) a missing "place" generally means that that place isn't a unit as identified by the US census. Oh, surely nothing was missed - it seems to have added every barnyard in Minnesota where two cows stood too close together ;) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 02:04, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. I noticed that. But some significant cities (such as Batavia, New York, site of the Holland Land Office, which sold most of NY lands west of the Genesee River, are missing. And some towns are listed in more than one county, which is certainly confusing.Pollinator 03:20, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
It was the controversial Rambot. See its "user" page and Talk page for details. --Menchi 02:08, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Thank you. I'll look into it.Pollinator 03:20, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Interestingly that city isn't really missing - actually it is existing twice. For whatever reason only known to the census office it have both a Batavia (town), New York and Batavia (city), New York, which are not identical. Seems like "town" refers to the rural area around the city, while "city" is only the actual urban area. For almost all the apparently missing rambot entries something like this applies. If you know the county then you can usually find these articles with the "What links here" function. I already raised the question what to do with these case some months ago, but received no real answer. The preferred solution would probably to merge the two articles into one, but that'd be a lot of manual work. Or create a tiny disambiguation page linking both. Or make a redirect to the more important one of the two, and add a "see also" at the bottom. Lately I did the second when I stumbled upon such a missing city. But if someone needs a tedious task without much editing enjoyment, just go through all the county articles and make redirect for the missing links. andy 09:00, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Anthony and Wik

After an edit war between Anthony DiPierro and Wik over VfD, that page was protected. Apparently recognising the inconvenience of an edit war on VfD, or the protection of this extremely heavily edited page, they both made comments suggesting the acceptability of a temporary mutual ban. Wik said in an edit summary:

ban Anthony, or, if you can't tell a serious contributor from a troll, ban both of us, but this can't continue

And Anthony said on IRC:

<anthony> as long as he gets banned as long as i do i'm fine with it
...
<anthony> i didn't volunteer to be banned
<AdamBishop> but you said you'd be happy as long as Wik was banned with you, and Wik asked to be banned
<anthony> wik asked to be banned?
<anthony> well, if that's true, let's do it

So I did it, and unprotected VfD. -- Tim Starling 02:38, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)

That explains why my watchlist isn't filled with (rv) for once. Jor 19:26, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
So that's why it's so quiet tonight ;) →Raul654 02:46, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)
So both Wik and Anthony are banned? :D --Ed Senft!
Just to be fair, while Wik can be (very, very) hard to work with sometimes, I think he is a very good contributor. If he were to reform and be more cooperative, I would have support making him an admin. →Raul654 03:33, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)
PLEASE tell me you're joking. He requested admin status on Requests for adminship and was roundly voted down. RickK 05:00, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I'm not joking. If he were cut down the number of edit wars and used the discussion pages in a rational manner, I think he could be a good admin. You can't deny his experience. →Raul654 05:04, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)
If hell freezes over it'd be a nice place to stay. While I am grateful for all the spelling and grammar fixes Wik did to my sometimes broken writings before, his annoying behaviour once someone disagrees with him is not acceptable, and I doubt it'd ever change. However a determined editor like Wik with a lot more social competence would make a great admin, and I guess that's what Raul meant. andy 10:38, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I have not had many experiences with Wik, but most of his contributions seem to have the caption of (rv). --Ed Senft! 13:12, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Math formulae question

Hi. I hope this belongs here. If not, please move elsewhere. My question is whether it is possible to modify the following math formula in such a way that the equations in each row are left-aligned:

Thanks for any help. -- Timwi 13:52, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well, the original author (not you?) has used a load of spacing ("\ " and "\qquad") to force it to be right-aligned (it goes to the centre otherwise), so to put it on the left, you need to move that spacing to after rather than before the text:
I suspect there's a better way of doing this though - for one thing, this isn't really a matrix, so probably shouldn't be marked up as one - but I don't know much about TeX, I'm afraid. Also, doesn't the last line equal the second one, rather than equalling the left-hand side, as implied? But I'm going outside the scope of your question now. - IMSoP 16:15, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle \begin{align*} \log_2(n!) &= \log_2(n) + \log_2(n-1) + \log_2(n-2) + ... + \log_2(1) \\ &< \log_2(n) + \log_2(n) + \log_2(n) + ... + \log_2(n) \\ &= n log_2(n) \end{align*} }
IMSoP wishes to note that the above was added by "Recentchanges", presumably as a suggested solution to the problem. Also, "Theresa knott" "suggested" replacing "..." with "\cdots". Initially, both users decided to edit other people's comments, and I reverted them as I feel this is a breach of etiquette. - IMSoP 16:54, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Using matrices to align multiline equations is standard TeX practice, AFAIK. See Wikipedia:TeX markup for details. As for getting them to align to the left, why not use "&"?
Not perfect, but a little closer to what you want... -- Wapcaplet 19:32, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for all your suggestions, although I'm afraid to say I find none of them satisfactory. I didn't add those "\ "s and "\qquad"s; when I inserted the formula, it was all centered. Thanks for your help anyway. -- Timwi 22:29, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I added the \'s (i accidently added the spaces to the wrong side). Sorry about that. I think thats the only way to do what you want, however. --Ed Senft! 22:43, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Most unlikely edit war?

In my year watching Wikipedia I thought I'd seen all variations of edit wars - at religion articles, science/pseudoscience articles, history/politics articles, etc. - but for the last day or so an edit war has been raging at, of all things, Curse of the Bambino! (This is a jokey reference to the inability of Boston's baseball team to win a title.) That's like watching a fistfight over whether Twinkies are tastier than Ho-Hos (if I may be forgiven a USA-centric junk-food joke)

I'm curious: Has anybody else encountered a real, mean-spirited, you-revert-me-so-I-revert-you edit war over a less likely topic? DavidWBrooks 15:38, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I liked the one about wether Leland Stanford need a stub message. Gentgeen 15:45, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
For the record, the activity you are referring to is not an edit war over content, but a thwarting of recurring vandals. Kingturtle 15:46, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Well it amused me to see Wik and Anthony squabbling on WWJD yesterday, not over religion, but the placement of hyphens and the correct formatting of a South Park reference. The irony. fabiform | talk 17:07, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
IIRC, the first edit war I ever witnessed was at Talk:List of famous Canadians -- of course, that was User:DW, and he has since been banned... Tuf-Kat

When will the images return?

As we all know:
"Images uploaded between January 24 and January 28 are currently not available due to a hardware problem with one of the web servers. We should have the files recovered sooner or later, but feel free to re-upload anything you uploaded in that period to restore it immediately."
When will this problem be over? -- user:zanimum

Afaik the server's hd is pretty broken, but should be physically accessible soon (Jason plans to get the old servers today). Attempts to recover the data should be much easier with physical access. -- Gabriel Wicke 23:58, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Edit and Revert wars getting out of hand

I propose that a new policy be implemented to deal with the short-term impact of edit and revert wars. The protecting pages does not seem to work as the conflict soon spreads to other pages, and we can't be protecting all the pages. I am almost inclined to support a policy whereby sysops are allowed to temp-ban participants until the Mediation/Arbitration committees are done reviewing the issue. This is a pessimistic rather than optimistic approach to doing things, but this constant flux of warring does not look good. Ideas, opinions, solutions? I think we need to have a discussion on this, and I don't trust the mailing lists for this issue which concerns many more Wikipedians than participate there. Dori | Talk 17:12, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)

I had a similar idea Dori, more watered-down though. It would be to 24-hour block both participants of an ongoing edit war, without immediate resort to the committee. However a history of being blocked numerous times could be used as rationale for taking it to committee later on. (And it would of course entail remembering to unblock after 24 hours.) - Hephæstos|§ 17:28, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Re: unblocking. Couldn't a cron job be set up which would check a file and unblock any users found there? --WormRunner 17:34, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I think it would probably be an easy code change to have blocks of user handles expire automatically after 24 hours as blocks on IPs do now. I'm not sure what other ramifications that would have in regard to currently-standing long-term bans though. - Hephæstos|§ 17:41, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
My first reaction to this is that the mediation and arbitration committees might quickly find themselves overburdened. I also don't like giving sysops the leave to suspend users in edit wars for extended periods of time, because often, the folks provide valuable contributions elsewhere. Bottom line, I don't like banning as a first defense because there's too much ambiguity. Perhaps the solution is to create an "probationary" status for users who become embroiled in edit wars... to say, you can continue to edit, but you're on notice, and if you get involved in an edit/revert war in the next, say... week, that's an automatic 30-day ban. - Seth Ilys 17:35, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea. (temporarily banning a participant in an edit war.) I don't see any reason why a user would get into an edit war. If two users have different opinions over an issue, why dont they just discuss it. --Ed Senft! 18:22, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Some users (Wik, to name one) refuse to discuss something, and will continue reverting anything they do not like, violating the three reverts rule. Just banning someone who finds himself in an edit war is not a good idea, there should be some checking as to what each participant is doing. If one is doing his best to add or edit information, and the other is just reverting, I think it's rather obvious who if anyone should be banned. Jor 18:44, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Yes, I agree. I think that users who create problems in articles by continually reverting, should at least be looked into by the arbitration comittee with the possibility of its deciding to ban the user, regardless of whether or not the problem user makes a constructive edit once and a while, or even the majority of the time. --Ed Senft! 18:57, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I am not saying that sysops should be able to block people indefinitely. Only for a short period until the issue is resolved. It's true that often one side is to blame, and the other side is trying to fix things. The problem is that this cannot be easily discerned objectively. It would be sufficient to tag the article with one of the neutrality or factualy disclaimers. The issue can then be studied and resolved through mediation/arbitration without a clog of reversions. If people are fearful that they will be blocked, they will be less likely to to get involved in the edit warring. If someone takes advantage of this void, making POV edits, they will be taken care of by the committees. In the short time, articles will be in a bad shape, and that is a drawback. Perhaps, if a person renders several articles in a state of near-reversion, they could be temp-blocked too. So for example someone could post on the talk page saying, I would be reverting this except for the temp-block policy, and if different editors, post the same messages about the same editors this way, that editor can be identified as a trouble-maker and temp blocked. Or we could have straw polls to temp-block users until mediation/arbitration has decided. I just think we need a speedier way to resolve things than mediation/arbitration, and I don't like revert/edit wars. Dori | Talk 19:11, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)
One problem with that is, sometimes it is quite easy to determine who is right and who is wrong: look at the numerous edit wars just today between Snoyes and 65.125.10.66; the latter's edits -- to white supremacy, monism, cosmotheism, National Alliance, etc. -- were nothing but POV and vandalism, and since he thought anyone who disagreed with him was pushing "Marxist-PC propaganda", discussion would not have been fruitful. --No-One Jones 19:23, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I am not discussing cases of clear-cut vandalism here. There already is a policy for that here: Wikipedia:Dealing_with_vandalism#Blocking_vandals. I am talking about users that also make useful edits, and whose contributions are not clear cases of vandalism. Dori | Talk 19:34, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)
what is the problem with users doing the same thing without the proposed temporary ban policy? I think that editors should be held responsible for any reversion wars that they engage in. --Ed Senft! 19:25, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Questions

I wanted information about a pediatric nurse. I 'm going to a health career school but I'm not sure what a pediatric nurse does I want to do something that has to do with taking care of infants and toddlers in the hospitol's Could you please send me information on what type of nurse that it?

Well, that might be kinda hard since you didn't provide any kind of address. —Frecklefoot 20:33, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
What's the address needed for since any answers can be put here! But the person should have said which country the info is needed for.
Adrian Pingstone 22:51, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Chances that person will actually stop back to check the response: 0.00001%. →Raul654 23:11, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)

Full-text search

Will the Wikipedia full-text search feature be re-enabled, now that the new servers are being installed? Google is amazing, but it's not as good as the full-text search feature was. Dpbsmith 23:15, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Project Gutenberg vs. Wikibooks

What is the relation between PG & WB (and other e-text projects)? (mutual copying, referncing, cooperation, etc.) BTW, it would be useful for the latter list to mention something about "access rules" for each listed digital library: using, copying, licensing. Mikkalai 23:37, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Banning Plautus satire

Since policy decisions are all amok right now, I'd like clarification - I'm not sure if this is the place to talk about this though. User:Plautus satire needs to be banned. In the ~10 hours he's been here, he's made 3 good edits (his first 3), lots of bad ones, lots of reverts, started 3 edit wars, and gotten 3 out of the 4 pages he's "contributed" to protected. I would do it myself, but I'm involved in the conflicts. →Raul654 23:46, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)

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