Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 10:37, 18 May 2003

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NOTE - questions and answers will not remain on this page indefinitely (otherwise it would very soon become too long to be editable). After a period of time with no further activity, information will be moved to other relevant sections of the wikipedia (such as the FAQ pages) or placed in the Wikipedia:Village pump archive if it is of general interest, or deleted. Please consider dating and titling your discussions so as to facilitate this.

Moved discussion

See the archive for older moved discussion links.

"Turk" disamb -> Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation
Zoe image mass edits discussion -> Wikipedia:Village pump/May 2003 archive
'Years in sport' talk moved to Talk:List of sports events
List of artists talk moved to Talk:List of artists
Titling of September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack moved to Talk:September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack
Updating Ammunitionand related pages moved to Talk:Ammunition
IE and images talk moved to archive
"Smart" quotes, hearts and diamonds talk moved to Most wanted Iraqi playing cards
Tomaz Pisanski titling problem moved to Talk:Tomaz Pisanski
Miscellaneous moved to Wikipedia:Village pump/May 2003 archive 2
Kanji talk moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chinese characters
Image size discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:How to keep image file sizes as small as possible
Discussion on our Daniel's article moved to Talk:Daniel C. Boyer
TeX caching error -> Wikipedia talk:TeX markup
Other users' contributions -> Wikipedia:User contributions

There isn't a page titled E=mc^2 (or some variant). shouldn't there be? Are = signs not allowed in titles or is there another reason why this isn't so? -- lommer 04:48 16 May 2003 (UTC) (moved by Cgs to the bottom of the page, it was at the top for some reason)

The policy of putting new text at the bottom does seem counterintuitive. Pizza Puzzle

Yes, because most texts read from bottom to top :) Cgs

"=" doesn't seem to be a legal character: the PHP script says the legal characters are "-,.()' &;%!?_0-9A-Za-z\\/:\\xA0-\\xFF". We do have a nice discussion of E=mc² at special relativity. -- Tim Starling 01:52 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Is there some way to automatically insert your user name and a time stamp into an article? I see people with things like lommer 04:48 16 May 2003 (UTC), and it's always the same format, so I guess there is something, but I've had a good search and I can't see any reference to such a tool. Cgs

Three tildes in a row thus: ~~~ will give a link to your user page thus: Camembert. Four tildes in a row will add the date stamp as well (it's covered in Wikipedia:How to edit a page, by the way, though isn't easy to find among everything else). --Camembert 18:36 16 May 2003 (UTC)

Thanks CGS 21:13 16 May 2003 (UTC)

An oddity I've noticed... In the history of The Conservative Party (UK) [1] there are two edits from earlier today by User:Realpolitik; however, the link under the name "Realpolitik" is not to his/her (empty) user page, but to his/her contributions [2], as if "Realpolitik" were an anon IP address. Curiously, there are no contributions listed there, not even the edits to The Conservative Party (UK). I'm getting the "contributions" link in my watchlist as well, and saw it on Recent Changes earlier, and see it whether I'm logged in or not. Do other people see this behaviour? Can anybody explain it to me? --rbrwr

This is a known bug that seems to be related to some change in the server configuration. Haven't yet had a chance to figure out the exact cause, but it seems to be triggered when a user who was logged in but no longer is (logged out? timeout?) makes additional edits. The edit is incorrectly marked with the last-used username, but still not with the user ID, leading to the buggy contribs links. --Brion 22:22 16 May 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, Brion. --rbrwr

What is the policy on blocking vandals? Why should they be unblocked? MB 22:53 16 May 2003 (UTC)

We can't block vandals, only IP addresses or login names. Many IP addresses are dynamic, meaning they are reassigned frequently to different customers of some ISP, or belong to public terminals or proxy servers which may serve many different people over a long period of time. As such, long-term IP bans are in general not a useful solution: they often wouldn't catch the same person coming back later, and often will hit legitimate users who had nothing to do with the vandalism. IP bans are only a short-term tool, and should not be left in place over a long period of time. --Brion 22:59 16 May 2003 (UTC)

I was trying to get the alt text of an image on my user page to be the url where the original could be found, so I tried the following as the wiki link [[Image:Mbeckerhawaii1.jpg|<nowiki>http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~mdb29/images/hawaii1.jpg]]</nowiki> and this is the html that the pedia shot out: <a href="/wiki/Image:Mbeckerhawaii1.jpg" class='image' title="http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~mdb29/images/hawaii1.jpg"><img border=0 src="/upload/b/b0/Mbeckerhawaii1.jpg" alt="3iyZiyA7iMwg5rhxP0Dcc9oTnj8qD1jm1Sfv4"></a>.
How come the alt tag for the image is "3iyZiyA7iMwg5rhxP0Dcc9oTnj8qD1jm1Sfv4"? How come what I expected to be the alt tag " http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~mdb29/images/hawaii1.jpg" ended up being the title tag? Is this a bug? MB 23:23 16 May 2003 (UTC)

hmmm, there is is again. When I type http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~mdb29/images/hawaii1.jpg the wiki outputs "3iyZiyA7iMwg5rhxP0Dcc9oTnj8qD1jm1Sfv4". Please see the wiki source (i.e. edit this page) to see what I mean. MB 23:26 16 May 2003 (UTC)

WOW! When I typed "3iyZiyA7iMwg5rhxP0Dcc9oTnj8qD1jm1Sfv4"? look what it outputed! " http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~mdb29/images/hawaii1.jpg"? Hehe I can't display it with <wiki>" http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~mdb29/images/hawaii1.jpg"?</nowiki> I bet! This is really wierd. I bet this is a parsing problem. What can I say, I am good at breaking things :) MB 23:32 16 May 2003 (UTC)

Known bug. Don't put 'nowiki' text inside a link. --Brion 23:35 16 May 2003 (UTC)

Alright, I found a sutable alternative User:Mbecker. MB 23:43 16 May 2003 (UTC)

Is there a page which details progress so far in this project? -- 195.137.39.195 04:20 17 May 2003 (UTC)

See:

Wikipedia
Wikipedia:Statistics and related pages

Some articles are long enough but just plain bad, viz. French Revolution. It's short on facts, and stylistically worthy of a fifteen-year-old. There is a talk: entry calling for it to be rewritten, and detailing various and sundry problems. That entry was written no later than March, but apparently nothing substantial has been done.

Here's an idea that could force the rewriting of the article. Just delete the entire text, place a link to the article in its former state, and a note kindly asking history buffs to step forward and whip up a new article.

as poor as this article is, I believe it is more informative than a blank sheet of paper. Martin 13:13 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, but that's what the helpful link to the prior revision is for. Smack

This was brought up at Talk:Main Page. It seems the article counter on the Main Page and Special:Statistics is stuck at 120701 articles. Does this have something to do with the recent webserver/database reconfiguration? -- Minesweeper 11:10 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Nicknames

For some reason none of my emails to the list are getting through (you guys fed up with me or something? ;) So here's my ideas for the current nicknames debate:

In itself, the nickname function is fine. Lee can sign "LDC", Mav "Mav". Like many things, if it's used *responsibly* there isn't a problem.

Three options:

remove the function (ie, exercise "dev power" and remove it for all the well-behaved people)
allow sysops / devs to edit the nicknames of users who are abusing (sysop power)
suggest that anyone feel free to edit an instance of a signature that obscures the real user name, just by editing the wiki text. (people power)

I'd say go with 3. -- Tarquin 14:45 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Yup: 3 is good. Tannin

I've been doing #3 already, as and when I run into old Kanji signatures and the like. Martin

help! i dove into where i shouldn't have dove. i thought it would be easy to change September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack to September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks....but there are toooooo many other pages that are effected, and I want to switch them back. Could someone do me a favor and ROLL BACK everything i did from 22:10 17 May 2003 until 22:25 17 May 2003....i would be much obliged. Kingturtle 22:48 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Man, I sure learned that lesson the hard way. Once something gets named it gets so entrenched into wikipedia that changing an article title can be a real nightmare. And changing it back is the best thing to do. Turns out, the ROLL BACK feature doesn't work for MOVING BACK articles to original names. alas. I think I put everything back where it was before I made my attempts. sigh. I was sweating like a pig about it. Kingturtle 00:16 18 May 2003 (UTC)

Can I say "I told you so" now, or would that not be an appropriate expression of WikiLove? ;-) Martin

I thought you could just create a new page called "...attacks," move all the source code into it, and turn the old page into a redirect. Smack

I thought so too...but there are also:

You don't have to change all the links; that's why we have redirects. Moving a page automatically creates a redirect from the old title to the new title, so anyone following a link to the old title is automatically brought to the new one. The one thing you do have to do is make sure that any redirects to the old title are updated, since the wiki refuses to automatically forward a chain of redirects in order to avoid potential infinite loops. You can find the redirect pages from the "what links here" list: September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, September 11 Terrorist Attack, September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks, September 11 terrorist attack, September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, September 11th, Nine-eleven, Nine eleven, 9/11, September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Bush September 14, 2001 speech, Michael Carroll, Peter Carroll, September 11, 2001, 9-11, September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks. Yeah, it's a few, but it's not a gajillion, and it's not too hard to find where the links are in them. :) --Brion 10:37 18 May 2003 (UTC)

When detailing Swedish subjects I have run into the problem that I don't know how or when to translate names. For example, say I want to write about Gyllene Tider which is a Swedish pop music band. Since there is AFAIK no official English translation to that name should I make up one on my own. Golden Times? Or Falukorv which is a trademark and the closest english translation I can think of is "Falu Wurst" which isnt that accurate.

Just use the Swedish name if there is no English translation. I'd say use Gyllene Tider for the pop band. -- Tarquin 23:06 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Regarding the news on the front page, users may click a link and ask themselves, "Why is this in the news?". IE: Why is EU in the news? I suggest that links have a "Purpose" clause. When you hover over a link, this text should be shown after the article name in the word bubble. And when you click the link the Purpose clause should also appear above the article text highlighted. Example: [ [ European_Union|EU|On April 16, 2003 the treaty of Accession was signed by the 10 new members and the 15 old ones in Athens. ] ] 24.198.144.163

@@ Line 114: / Line 114: @@
 ::I thought so too...but there are also:
 [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Aftermath]] -- [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Timeline September 11]] -- [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Hijackers]] -- [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Celebrations]] -- [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Casualties]] -- [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Plane casualties]] -- [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/City of New York casualties]] -- [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Pentagon casualties]] -- [[Timeline of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack]] -- [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Donations]] -- [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Non-American casualties]] -- [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Back history]] -- [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Closings and Cancellations]] -- [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Footer template]] -- [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Memorials and services]] -- And that isn't even a quarter of them. I realized I was in over my head and that I'd do more harm than good over changing just one little letter. And what if I missed a few? It is too complex a set of pages. [[User:Kingturtle|Kingturtle]] 09:49 18 May 2003 (UTC)
+:You don't ''have'' to change all the links; that's why we have [[Wikipedia:How to use redirect pages|redirects]]. [[Wikipedia:How to rename a page|Moving]] a page automatically creates a redirect from the old title to the new title, so anyone following a link to the old title is automatically brought to the new one. The one thing you do have to do is make sure that any redirects to the ''old'' title are updated, since the wiki refuses to automatically forward a chain of redirects in order to avoid potential infinite loops. You can find the redirect pages from the "what links here" list: [[September 11, 2001 terrorist attack]], [[September 11 Terrorist Attack]], [[September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks]], [[September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks]], [[September 11 terrorist attack]], [[September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks]], [[September 11th]], [[Nine-eleven]], [[Nine eleven]], [[9/11]], [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Bush September 14, 2001 speech]], [[Michael Carroll]], [[Peter Carroll]], [[September 11, 2001]], [[9-11]], [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks]]. Yeah, it's a few, but it's not a gajillion, and it's not too hard to find where the links are in them. :) --[[User:Brion VIBBER|Brion]] 10:37 18 May 2003 (UTC)
 ----
 When detailing Swedish subjects I have run into the problem that I don't know how or when to translate names. For example, say I want to write about Gyllene Tider which is a Swedish pop music band. Since there is AFAIK no official English translation to that name should I make up one on my own. Golden Times? Or [[Falukorv]] which is a trademark and the closest english translation I can think of is "Falu Wurst" which isnt that accurate.