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Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

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Moved discussion

Questions and answers, after a period of time 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 archive#November 2003 moved discussion.

See User:Daniel Quinlan/redirects if you want to help out with fixing thousands of broken links prepared by Brion and Daniel.

RobBot on fr: and interwiki missing on en:

Hello,

I ran the RobBot on the french wikipedia for the last 4 days. It generated logs for a lot of interwiki missing on all wikipedia. I am wondering if someone on en: might please use the data to update the en: wikipedia ? Maybe you already know people able to take care of this on other wikipedia ?

The logs are available at:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LinksFR.20031109.zip

Hashar 23:37, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This sounds like something many people (including myself) would be interested in helping with. But I think some better explanation is needed for this to happen.
I've downloaded the ZIP file from the above link, and extracted the 39 logs it contains, and I'm a little the wiser. It seems that these show missing links between various language Wikipedias, for example logs.en.txt shows links missing from the English Wikipedia to the French.
I'm already worked out that there is a standard software-supported way of linking to articles in other Wikipedias, but I don't know where this is documented.
I'm guessing that these logs are not reliable enough to generate these links automatically, and that what is therefore needed is someone with knowledge of both languages to verify each, and then create the missing link(s). This sounds like something that software tools could help with, for example showing both articles in some sort of split screen and providing a button to approve the links. I don't know whether any such tools already exist, or what the basis is for compiling these lists, ie what does an entry actually mean? Knowing this would help me a great deal.
For the links in logs.en.txt my French is probably up to the job, if my guesses are correct.
But could someone check my understanding above, or perhaps provide a better explanation, or even wikify some of the text to point to existing explanations? TIA.
Perhaps we should also come up with a way of dividing the log between those interested. It could be quite time-consuming, and frustrating if it turns out that large numbers of the links have been created since the list was compiled. Andrewa 19:17, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The software that produced this, and can be used for automated link-adding, can be found at http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/pywikipediabot/pywikipedia/.
The list has been created by going through the French Wikipedia, checking language links, language links from those, etcetera, and when no problem occurred (a problem being two pages from the same language, or an fr: link to a page that does not exist), all pages found that way were added to fr:, and any other lacking links between these pages were written on the log. So for example: "WARNING:en:[[.NET Messenger Service]]does not link to[[fr:MSN Messenger]]" means that the French page links to the English, but there is no link back, "WARNING:en:[[Émile Zola]]does not link to[[da:Emile Zola]]" means that there is a French page that links to both pages, but the English page does not link to the Danish one, and "WARNING:en:[[Émile Zola]]does not link to[[fr:Émile Zola]]but to[[fr:Emile Zola]]" means that the English page links to "Emile Zola" on fr:, but "Emile Zola" either does not exist or is a redirect page, while "Émile Zola" on fr: links to the English page. If wanted, the entries can be added automated or semi-automated. Andre Engels 14:22, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thanks Andre Engels, you are way better than me when it comes to explaining things :p Hashar 15:32, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Idea to add table to day page articles

See Talk:Historical anniversaries/Example. --mav 10:00, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

Posters

Can I use posters of movies here? --FallingInLoveWithPitoc 11:52, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, if: you own the copyright to the poster; or it is in the public domain; or you obtained permission of the copyright holder (in a verifiable manner). Otherwise, no.
(Note this is not an official Wikipedia answer, and may be wrong. orthogonal is not a representative, official or unofficial, of Wikipedia. Note that this is not legal advice. orthogonal is not a lawyer. If you need legal advice, you should contact a lawyer.) orthogonal 17:57, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
What Orthogonal said. Martin 19:40, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
orthogonal prefers "orthogonal" to "Orthogonal". orthogonal 19:53, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Oh, I thought all the posters can be used without permission, since they're used everywhere on the Internet. I think adding a poster to the movie topics would be a good idea, but since it's so troublesome... give up. --FallingInLoveWithPitoc 05:28, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Log In

How can I stay logged in for longer than (whatever the default) is? I'm finding that I'm editing articles only to later notice I'm not logged in. I dislike this because it makes me less accountable. orthogonal 17:53, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If you aren't already, and you are using a private computer, ask it to remember your password. Κσυπ Cyp 18:02, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but won't that just make logging in a bit easier? That's not what I want, exactly; I want not to be logged out in the first place. orthogonal 18:11, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It'll make login automatic, not just easier. It will appear as if you never get logged out. (Under the covers, you'll get logged out, but then when you visit any WP page, it'll automatically log you back in.) It should work just like you want it to. Axlrosen 19:51, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)


I'm oblivious to the actual way this all works, but it seems plausible that if you do relatively frequently "Show Preview" clicks, your login "timer" will be refreshed on the server. A server sysop can probably confirm or correct this assumption. - Marshman 18:29, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It's vaguely possible that the old cookie is somehow interfering with the new cookie (but it shouldn't be). Clear out any cookies you may have set on 'en.wikipedia.org' or 'en2.wikipedia.org' and try again. Check your cookies for one named "enwikiSession" set for the domain ".wikipedia.org". Have you got one, and what's the expiration date look like? It should be ~an hour in the future. Could anyone with cookie problems check the date & timezone settings on your computer? If it's off (for instance a daylight saving time glitch) that could expire the cookie early. If that's totally off base, I'd like to be able to strike it off my list of things to check. --Brion 05:47, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Where is that? I am using Windows XP, and only found 3 files in my \cookie, one is called "administrator@wikipedia[2].txt" which is modified 3 mins ago. :? --218.19.141.3 05:56, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
If you open that file in wordpad (not notepad! notepad gets confused) you'll see some gobbledegook inside; looks like the expiry times aren't in human-readable format though, unless you understand seconds since January 1, 1970... I've changed the cookie to expire at the end of the browser session instead of at a time offset. Does this help? --Brion 05:57, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It works now!! Thanks! --Samuel 05:59, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Awesome! (By any chance, can you check that your computer's clock and timezone are set correctly?) --Brion 06:03, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Right then. Any chance the cookie expiration could be set to, say +12 rather than +1 hours? orthogonal 19:45, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Don't know why are having this problem. WP never logs me out, even after I reboot. -- Viajero 20:16, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Also be aware that some internet privacy programs, browsers' privacy options, or privacy and ad-blocking software (such as Zonealarm) have options that either block wikipedia's cookie altogether or expire it prematurely. It should be possible to configure whatever it is you might be using to cut wikipedia.org more slack than you would doubleclick.net, for example. -- Finlay McWalter 23:04, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
That was routinely done: all three cookie blockers in my chain admit Wikipedia's cookies. (although javscript cookies are still blocked.) orthogonal 11:26, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)






anonymous edit statistics

If anyone is interrested, I did an analysis of all the anonymous edits in half a day to see what proportion were vandalisms, and what proportion of those were not corrected. Have a look at my user page (under "Stats on anon editors"). --snoyes 18:10, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Very interesting. The thing that most caught my eye is your conclusion that "a quarter of anonymous edits are counterproductive". Does means three quarters are productive? Given that if they weren't anonymously editing, many perhaps most vandals would just be setting up glove-puppets to get at us anyway, that doesn't seem too bad at all to me.
The observation about the bad edits that were missed is also interesting. This brings us back to approval mechanisms. Andrewa 18:52, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
interesting, though the conclusion that 16 were missed goes too far, IMO, because people like me catch vandalism by looking at watchlists. If I find vandalism on anything I'm watching, I take care of all vandalism by that IP. A followup study of those 16 unreverted edits two weeks later would be interesting. JamesDay 15:48, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

New user question

As a newbie, I'm not sure of the procedure for adding pages to votes for deletion, so I'm moving this here from there:

Ben & Mo's seems slightly POV, somewhat like an ad, and a bit ephemeral and local for an encyclopedia. Apparently, it was created by someone who also creates Easter Bradford entries. Similarly Omega D.C., Chesapeake Bay Bears, Staccatto. Note that I think these entries would be appropriate and indeed useful in a Wiki guide to Washington DC night-life, or a Wiki guide to gay Washington D.C. The Dupont Circle entry does seem appropriate, although I'd emphasize the park, and de-emphasize the gay themes -- in the last five or so years the Dupont area has gentrified and yuppie-fied. (Note, it is locally spelled Dupont, not DuPont, despite memoralizing Admiral Samual Francis DuPont.) orthogonal 11:48, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)


Is it possible to link to a non http external link? I want to link to
rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/news/olmedia/n5ctrl/events03/uk_pol/cons/leadership/nb_newsnightiv.rm
(a video clip) but the Wiki parser doesn't like it... Evercat 02:01, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

  • My two cents: linking directly to a video will perturb people who click on the link, thinking it's a page, and immediately find they're downloading a video. (As in my case, wheree I intentionally got rid of all software able to play RealMedia files). It's also likely to perturb whomever hosts that link, and many sites use the "referer" (sic) HTTP header to refuse to serve linked files except from requests via their own pages. It's probably better all areound to link to the page that links to the video. orthogonal 17:13, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Legitimate page that looks like nonsense

It's interesting...the article on the Dogon, at first glance, looks like blatant nonsense. People named the Dogon, whose religion involves Sirius the Dog Star? And their neighbors are the Bozo? Trash it!

But a little googling reveals that there is indeed such a tribe living in Mali, with that religion and those neighbors. Thousands of pages found.

Goes to show...

Tualha 02:46, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Yes this is common as there are so many cultures in the world and so many interests represented by different editors. That's why I usually ask here at the pump if an article looks suspicious to me. The talk page of an article is also a good place but it may not get as much attention. Dori 04:43, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Accuracy dispute banners

Daniel Quinlan is adding loads of "Accuracy disputes without explanation. I think he is using an automated script because of the speed - is this vandalism? -- 213.122.126.91 09:32, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

He's noting that those are the works of this person, who is now banned: User:Khranus. --Menchi 09:36, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Oh, I've been found out! Seriously, though, I'm adding accuracy disputes to selected articles edited by Khranus (see User:Khranus/ban for more information which should explain why I felt the need to add the banners). Some of them may be okay, but I am not an expert in all areas so when I was not sure whether a Khranus addition was okay, I added the banner. I felt it was better to err on the side of caution. Perhaps I should add something to the talk pages as promised. Daniel Quinlan 09:42, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

If Khranus has been banned for posting ridiculous articles, doesn't it follow that those articles should now be deleted? Does anyone really think that Reptilian humanoid can be turned into a useful article? Delete the lot, I say. Adam 10:05, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The Dogon is a valid concept, take a look at the above header. Khranus contributed a lot of material to the page. It should not be thus blindly deleted. If there is issues with the content, it should be discussed and offending material removed. That is the process here Dysprosia 10:08, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I think something interesting could come of it - perhaps an examination of the role that reptilians play in some peoples belief systems. I'm personally interested in the 'reptilians as jews' idea - there are large similarities between the two sets of conspiracies. Secretlondon 10:13, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
Er. I don't want to appear to be defending kookery, but I note that pages such as Reptilian humanoid are at least somewhat self-coherent (as oppossed to a completely unintelligible ranmblings, and as opposed to any coherence with any objectice reality). As such, they usefully document these unlikely conspiracy theories. Perhaps they could be carefully marked as examples of, and moved to subpages of/links from, a Conspiracy Theories page? orthogonal 10:16, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I think the reptilian article can be NPOVed (it's being tried right now) and it may offer some insight, perhaps into the phenomenology of mental illness (or whatever one likes to categorize these beliefs). And once it's NPOV it might help in debunking some particularly nutty ideas when they come up again. Kosebamse 10:23, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Compass on Canadian Cities, can it be made dynamic

Does anybody know how I can use a generic flash file on pages and load links off the page. Check out Caledon, Ontario to see the textual one, but what I wan't is to make that into a flash movie that can be placed on every page, and then place the 4+ links on each page that flash will load. This will help clean the mess of html code so people can more easily copy and past it and change the names of the north, east, west, south, and city name texts


I thought people already generally agreed that the "compasses" were not really helpful and that they did not add encyclopedic value beyond the hassle, size, and ugliness. I really don't like them myself. Daniel Quinlan 18:15, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
Flash is big no-no in my book. I stay away from pages with flash and I have it disabled in my browsers. Although I am sure Flash could be put to good use, currently it is used for ads most of the time and you can't turn it off. It's funny, if you right click on a flash page it often has the options to disable the play and/or the loop, but those options never work. I really hate flash and it usually turns me off to sites that won't work without it. I would hate for Wikipedia to become like that and I am sure other people feel the same. That's just my opinion. Dori 18:34, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
Agreed. As an off-topic aside, I didn't enable flash until I found the Mozilla "click to play Flash animation" extension. Basically, it supresses the flash unless you click on the flash animation to start it. Prior to getting that, I just avoided flash pages. orthogonal 22:37, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I didn't even know such an extension was available. I was waiting for bug 94035 to get fixed. Thanks for the tip. Is it this one? Dori 23:45, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
Yup. orthogonal 00:00, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Is there a policy for Flash content in Wikipedia? I personally think the articles should just contain text and images, but I've never encountered this before. If there isn't a policy, it seems like there should be one. —Frecklefoot 19:21, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I would second that (for the most part), as flash editing is not available to me [and probably some others]. If it's not "editedable" by the vast majority of editors/readers ... should it be included as a navigation element? what if the structure of the pages change? I could see where static content where things like flash would be good [demonstrations of a pendulum, mabey] ... but not as a nav element ... but that is only IMO ... sincerely, reddi

I didn't think it was all that difficult to fix those tables, when I made them smaller a couple of days ago (actually, that was Vancouverguy's idea, I just implemented them). You can just copy the whole thing and replace the city names, they are pretty obvious within all the HTML. I'm not sure how that would work with Flash because I don't know how Flash works in the first place, and whether or not the tables are really necessary is another story, I suppose. Adam Bishop 07:09, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Protected Pages

Hi, all. I was just browsing the Mother Teresa talk page and noticed a bit somewhere in the middle about Cimon Avaro missing the 'protected page' blurb and accidentally editing the article page when it was protected and then being quite embarressed to have broken the 'don't edit a page when it's protected' guideline. This is something I can have sympathy with as I've made this mistake myself in the past. When you're in the cycle of rushing through articles clicking 'edit this page' and scrolling straight to where you think you want to edit it's easy to not concentrate on the text at the top.

I think one of the two following ideas may help avoid these errors, either put an extra page between the article and being able to eidt it, a 'are you sure you want to edit this protected page, if so click here' page (similar to when deleting a page), or I think my preferred option of changing the 'edit this page' link at the top to say 'Protected Page (edit)' (or something similar) in bold face.

Do others think this might be a good idea or should some of us just be a bit more leisurely with our edits!? -- Ams80 15:12, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Done it myself too. I think a slighly bolder header in a different color might be enough. --Viajero 17:26, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Good idea. It's far too easy for a sysop to overlook that a page is protected. We just need something to stand out and make us think "that's different!". -- Arwel 00:38, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

A simple thing that I think would be really effective would be to move the "Edit this page" link. If it's taken off the top/front of the list, and inserted, say, between "Unprotect this page" and "Discuss this page", then inadvertent editing of protected pages would be impossible... I think. If the idea appeals to all and sundry, I'll submit it to sourceforge. -- Cyan 03:04, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Redirect to headers not allowed?

Am I right in thinking that you can't REDIRECT to a Header within a page? I'm sure I read this somewhere shortly after discovering Wikipedia but I can't find where I might have seen it. I'm asking because I want to know how difficult it might be to combine several pages into one, one section per, and have each of the old pages REDIRECT to the appropriate header. How mad am I? (Serious answers only please :-) Phil 17:09, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

not that I know that it's "legal" to or not ... but wouldn't "#REDIRECT [[main article#heading]]" work? more later [mabey] reddi
Yes, Reddi is correct that will work. I tried it once and was immediately reverted with the comment that it was not a good idea because headers change or are easily changed, rendering the redirect impotent w/o the the person redoing the header knowing a problem was created. I guess I'd consider why you want to combine several articles. If each is rather small by themselves then the redirect to the combined page should not really need directs directly to a header; if there is that need for clarity, consider just keeping the pages separate. The way things link together around here (hypertext) the need to have a subject all laid out on a single outlined page is not so great as in a printed doc - Marshman 17:30, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
On that "header change" thing, it should (?) defualt to the top of the page (when the anchor isn't found) ... and I haven't found any other info on this =-\ ... reddi
Well I found a clue lying around under my desk, seeing as I was too lazy to go out and buy one :-), and I tested this with a couple of Subpages off my User Page. And it appears not to work. If you go to the REDIRECT page and click on the link it says it REDIRECTs to, it goes straight to the correct header. If you actuate the REDIRECT, it doesn't, it just goes to the top of the correct page. What I don't know is whether this is conclusive since it might be the fact that I'm doing it in a User page, and it's quite obvious that they work differently since I don't get a TOC. I'm rather loath to play around anywhere else (and possibly mess something up) just to satisfy my curiosity if someone who actually knows can tell me. Just because it might be a stupid question doesn't mean I'm too embarassed to ask. And no, that doesn't mean I'm not embarassed :-) Phil 17:30, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
It does not work. I have put in a feature request, but the feature request will only get filled if a developer finds it an interesting project. If anybody good at snazzy web design can think of a way to emulate this with javascript, that would be very cool. DanKeshet 18:44, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia Application Program

Hi2all,

I'm quite fascinated with Wikipedia, but I thought it would be useful if there is a (easy to use) application using Wikipedia Data to have a easy offline way to search for stuff. I know there is a Palm/PDA Version for this, but I didn't find any PC form of such a program. Is there such a program in development? Is there an interset in programming such a program?? Ska1do 18:59, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

  • An offline web browser tool may be the most useful. Plucker is a tool to convert web pages into electronic books of several formats, most employing compresion of some sort. Alternately, one could just download some subset of pages of interest, and browse the local copy with your HTML browser of choice. More ambitious would be to request a dump of the Wikipedi database, and mirror it locally; as the wikipedi's based on open source software, you could have your "own" wikipedia. Also, though I don't know what Palm/PDA version you refer to, most Palm readers have PCs versoiosn as well. orthogonal 22:31, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
    • Theoretically all one needs to do is crawl through every possible page, save the generated html and images, and convert the links to be localized. Then all that is needed is a browser. Of course, this will be a big load on the 'pedia so it might need to be done on someone's own setup with a recent dump. If you had a listing of all the pages, you could do this very simply with a script or java program. The biggest effort would be in setting up a machine and getting the list of all pages. It doesn't seem that bad if someone (other than me) wants to do it :) Dori 23:39, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
  • Did some digging, and found http://download.wikipedia.org/. I hope this is what you need. -- Cyan 23:52, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
See old discussion at meta:Wikipedia Client and elsewhere. There are several static HTML dump generation scripts floating around somewhere. Magnus Manske has been working on a MediaWiki-compatible wiki parser which can be used as a CGI with a lightweight web server for a local browsable copy with a local web browser or HTML viewer; code is in our CVS on sourceforge[1], module "Waikiki". Demo versions with Windows binary: English Wikipedia ~160megs, German Wikipedia ~30megs. --Brion 00:46, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Automatically generated logs

I just stumbled upon the Wikipedia:Protection log and I was wondering if there is a list of all the automatically generated logs somewhere. I am asking about this because I couldn't figure out where/if such a log exists in the other language 'pedias (specifially http://sq.wikipedia.org that I translated). I know of Wikipedia:List_of_articles_in_the_Wikipedia_namespace but it does not seem to be complete. thanks, Dori 00:17, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

That should be it that's log pages. --Brion 00:39, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Oh, OK. For some reason I thought there'd be more. thanks Dori 03:16, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)
Not quite the same thing, but there's also the Blocked users log. Angela

Wikipedia:Cleanup

I read the intro by Stevertigo about Wikipedia:Cleanup and I'm still not quite sure how it exactly differ from Wikipedia:Pages needing attention and VfD. It seems to, judging from the items listed there, be a mixture of both. But leaning more toward Wikipedia:Pages needing attention (need-NPOV, need-Wikifcation), with also some new VfD-type items (delete-this-nonsense) and ancient VfD-items (no-concensus-reached). But it seems Cleanup is not redundant, because people do use it. Its use frequency is between Wikipedia:Pages needing attention and VfD, but seems to be used by least of amount of people (i.e., the same people repeatedly use Cleanup religiously). Please clarify, thanks. --Menchi 04:05, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wellll I use it to put stuff that maybe need a bit of work to become decent but can't do it myself or don't feel up to doing, or if there's something I don't know about or can't decipher and needs work I put it there. Its quite useful to see if there's anything that needs work that slips past RC. Dysprosia 05:58, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
But isn't that the already-established Wikipedia:Pages needing attention's job? --Menchi 06:31, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Cleanup seems to be more a dynamic sort of system, sort of like a Recent Changes of Not-so-good Articles...
It seems to be also a method of averting people who will go straight to VfD with things that could be patched up, or people listing things on VfD for the intention of having them patched up, to a specialized place, taking some of the stress of VfD
Of course, that's only my interpretation of it :) Dysprosia 07:27, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

"Dear Readers"

What is that thing at the top of Local Church about? Is it just some rant or legitimate comment? Even if it's comment, shouldn't it be in Talk? --Menchi 05:52, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think that the standard NPOV (and maybe factual accuracy) warnings should replace this personalized message, which in turn should be moved to the talk page. I'll do it tomorrow unless I am preempted or hear dissenting opinions. -- Cyan 06:00, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
You have been preempted. Daniel Quinlan 07:59, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Israel security wall

As far as I know, there is not yet an article describing the Israel security wall. I was going to add something to Wikipedia:Requested articles, but I don't know what to call the article...

Should it be Israel or Israeli in the title?
Is it a wall? partition? fence? barrier?

Suggestions? Kingturtle 08:00, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I would suggest Israel-Palestine Barrier, because all of wall, partition and fence are also barriers. CGS 08:25, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC).
What's wrong with Israel security wall? The current events page already has a missing link to it. My general feeling on article naming is that if it's the first thing that comes to mind then it's proabably the best name. We can make all kinds of redirects and discuss the "proper" name later, but start it with a "good enough" name and at least the article will get started instead of being stalled in committee. -- Merphant 08:41, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This is the kind of thing I love trying. I wrote a perl script to find most common 2 and 3 word combinations on news.google.com and google.com using the top 100 hits using the search terms Israel and wall OR fence OR barrier OR partition OR divider OR enclosure OR fortification OR palisade.

  • Most common 1 word terms in title:
    • 132 barrier
    • 117 wall
    • 107 fence (next only had 3 hits)
  • Most common 1 word terms anywhere:
    • 98 wall
    • 61 fence
    • 58 barrier (next only had 8 hits)

Based on that, I'd say "wall", "fence", or "barrier".

  • Most common 2 word terms in title:
    • 22 security fence
    • 18 security barrier (next only had 12 hits)
  • Most common 2 word terms anywhere:
    • 11 security fence
    • 8 israel wall
    • 7 israel's wall
    • 7 berlin wall
    • 6 security wall
    • 5 security barrier
    • 5 israel's barrier


"Israel security fence" looks good. "Israel security wall" might be best by single word frequency. I guess "Israel-Palestine" wall might be okay for the first part, but I don't see that often. Palestine ain't building the wall, so tht would not be my inclination. Daniel Quinlan 08:46, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Great stats.
I'd say Israel security wall or Israel security wall. Wall gives me a concrete or earth feeling, but fence has hole in them, like in prison. I'm not sure what's the material of the Israeli one. --Menchi 08:50, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'd go for "Israel security fence". From the pictures I've see of it, it's a few block on the ground with a chain link fence about 10-15 ft high ... here's some pic of it [2] [3] ... reddi
Some bits are wall and some bits are fence. The more contested the area the stronger the barrier. From what I can tell the Israelis call it a fence and the Palestianians call it a wall. One lot of spin is that it is a security fence, the other that it is a partitioning wall akin to the Berlin wall. Have fun with your article. :) Secretlondon 13:37, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)
Of course both sides will produce appropriate pictures ;) Secretlondon 13:39, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)
Heres the isreali's site on it Israel security fence. reddi
I'd say "barrier". In some places it's a fence, in some places a concrete wall. And there's more to it than just the physical wall - it's a system, with some depth - there are gates (which are a bit like airport security checkpoints married to bus terminii) and in many places a levelled strip. "Barrier" seems to me to capture that a bit better than either wall or fence (but then all the same things could be said about the Berlin Wall, and no-one called it the Berlin Barrier.) -- Finlay McWalter 13:44, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Yea, barrier may be better ... "Israel security barrier" with redirect of Israel security wall and Israel security fence ... it's officially (by the il.gov) called the "Seam Zone project". reddi
Israelis tend to call it "security fence", whereas Palestinians call it a seperation wall (note: seperation, not "security wall") or, in some cases, apartheid wall. I don't think there's any way to use either term without seeming POV. Better would be to redirect, then to explain the different names in the first sentence. "barrier" is a good fudge, but I wouldn't even mind using the official name, because nobody actually uses it. DanKeshet

My stats were of news sites via news.google.com, and that included a good number of (English web) Arabic news sites. I still think Israel security wall or Israel security fence are best, but I could live with Israel security barrier since barrier was also a relatively common word used to describe the structure. Daniel Quinlan 21:32, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

wikipedia talk:image use policy/copyright

When searching for public domain images, I often find the note: "All images on this page are believed to be public domain." Would you consider such a note as sufficient to include the images in Wikipedia, or should I regard the word "believed" as a warning not to touch these images? Example: [4]. -- Baldhur 08:17, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think that note means: "I like the image, so I took it from another website without checking or asking the owner. If you are his or her lawyer, please don't suit me. I mean, please!!! I am ignorant, I said "I believe", didn't I? I didn't say "I know"!"
I wouldn't use them, I don't know about others. --Menchi 08:43, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)


I think you need to go on an image by image (and site by site) basis. A lot of sites just copy images from anywhere without regard for copyright. Some sites are better than others and you can still ask the site what criteria they use for images. There are some initial/skeleton guidelines on Wikipedia:Copyright. Daniel Quinlan 08:51, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for your answers, Menchi and Daniel!! I did not use these images up to now, and I won't do in the future. -- Baldhur 14:29, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Whatever you decide to do, say what you did on the wikipedia:image description page. Personally, I would have no real qualms about using such images, provided I made the uncertainties explicit in the image description page, unless I had some reason to doubt that they were in fact public domain. Martin 18:20, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Copyvio?

Is a summary based on a web page considered a copyvio? An example could be Alternative metal and http://www.bobsmusicindex.com/Alternative-Metal.html . TopCamel 13:41, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

No, it is not a copyvio, that one would be if you copy it word by word. However it is good style to add the source of your text as well, e.g. in a References list, both for giving the author of the original source their credit, as well as to allow others to check the information in that article. andy 13:58, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Andyis correct. You can even copy a sentence from something without violating copyright.(unless that sentence is a one of a kind pasterpiece) ALWAYS INCLUDE SOURCES NO MATTER WHAT!!! Sincerly yours, Alexandros 14:06, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Exactly! You can certainly quote people, pages, web pages, etc. if indicated as a quote and cited from what/where. If you want to take something from a web site not as a quote, but as information, then reword it to your own words but still give credit to the source, as a listing in "References" at the bottom of the article. Knowledge is something you mostly gain from others. Your duty here is to reword what you read and credit where you learned -- Marshman 03:26, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Diff inconsistency

I've noticed sometimes a page diff will have unnecessarily narrow columns (about 1/4 page wide), while other times the columns are too wide (about 2/3 of the page each, forcing one to scroll). Why does it vary? Is there anything I can do about it?
Tualha 16:14, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

The Nov 14, 2003 (Tualha) "last" diff for Scheme programming language illustrates some other problems with the diff generator. Inserting a blank line after a section header caused synchronization to fail in the "Advantages of Scheme" section. In the "Examples" section, two added lines are not shown in red. It would be nice if corresponding lines were lined up, too.
Tualha 16:28, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Is there some standard page for reporting wiki code bugs, wishlist items, ideas, etc? Tualha 16:29, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia is what you're looking for. A better place though would probably be the tech mailing list. --snoyes 17:14, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Thanks! - Tualha 18:11, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

"SHYSTER"- ethnic slur?

I am not sure that i am in the right place, but I used the word "shyster" and i was referred to "List of ethnic slurs-Wikipedia." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs. I am not sure how wikipedia works, but i believe the intended word was "shylock." I have checked several dictionaries and none of them list "shyster" as an etnic slur. If anyone can clarify this, please e-mail me at [email protected].

It isn't an ethnic slur, it's just a slur. I'm pretty sure you found http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=shyster ; that's the normal usage. DJ Clayworth 17:22, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's a slur. Sheister - Jews - Like a shyster lawyer. One who carries on any business, especially legal business, in a mean and dishonest way. [5] reddi

Not according to my dictionary 

 Main Entry: shy·ster 
 Pronunciation: 'shIs-t&r
 Function: noun
 Etymology: probably from German Scheisser, literally, defecator
 Date: 1844
 : one who is professionally unscrupulous especially in the practice of law or politics

-- Maximus Rex 18:14, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

notice the German origin ... may be historical relic which has a more general meaning now ... reddi

Authors

I thought that it might be a good idea to have a special page for each articles titled "Authors" or similar. All it would do is give a simple list of users/IPs that had ever contributed to said article. Firstly it would give contributors the credit that they are due. A similar thing is already being done in "page history", but is not present anymore when an article is moved, for example. Also, the "authors" page would be much simpler than having to wade through "page history". WDYT? --snoyes 17:09, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Plus it could be ordered by % contribution? (but that may cause over verboss articles Archivist 18:29, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)
I'd like that feature. % contribution would be cool too, but what if someone deleted a whole huge segment of an article? Would that + or - his percentage? —Frecklefoot 19:31, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It's an interesting idea, but probably not trivial to implement. Most of all the diff needs to be smarter to notice moving of text inside the article without loosing the credit for that text. BTW: If an article is moved the edit history is moved together with the article, it is only lost when the article is moved by copying the contents. But the credit will be lost for sure if articles are merged or split. andy 20:20, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Suppose instead the page history gave a number of lines added/deleted/edited. That would give a fair idea of who had made significant contributions. DJ Clayworth 20:59, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I don't see how it would work. If someone vandalises an article by blanking it and I revert them, thereby adding 1000 words, it's going to look like I've made a huge contribution, when all I've done is pressed the rollback button. Angela 21:03, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
IBM had technology to solve that problem. I can't remember the link. Martin 21:20, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I guess you mean IBM History flow but I'm still not sure that would solve it. Angela 21:32, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
They're not going to share the technology with us, are they... --Menchi 00:12, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Not all articles are the target of vandalism. It seems that most of articles are primaly written by one or a few authors and many other people copyedit it. Givning credits is always a good way to recognize hard-work. The one of wikipedia's harsness is that good works are rather not given good attention while only heated debate receives public attention. This I believe make contributors feel as if they were not valuable or their works were not welcomed. The most of cases is that one or a very few of your works are controversial but the hudernreds of rest are completely welcomed. I mean so I strongly support this idea. -- Taku 23:53, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Brevity is the soul of wit; let's order the list by the amount of text removed by editors. orthogonal 22:27, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't think it would work out too well. There are many issues with how the authors' works will be cited/listed and in the end it will probably end up something like the history page. This might also attract more trolls and vandals, or simply people who want their name in the list and simply make unnecessary changes. I would think most of us edit on the Wikipedia because it's fun and because it's something that will be useful to others, and not for getting our names in a list. Still, no one wants their work to be credited to someone else and we like to be recognized, but that is what the history page is for (well, among other things :). Some people list their major contributions on their own pages, so that's another outlet. That's my opinion anyway. Dori 00:02, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)

Revertion wars

The rule of three: Do not revert the same page thrice in the same day

Words to wiki by. See Wikipedia talk:How to revert a page to an earlier version. Martin 21:19, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Perfect stub article

On the Wikipedia:Perfect stub article, the first suggested guideline is to add a link to your stub from Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub. However, when you get to Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub, there is no place there to do so. Something has to be changed. But I don't know what. Kingturtle 04:46, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps it's supposed to be a link from your stub to [[Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub.? Adding the stubnote certainly does this Dysprosia 04:48, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Beat me to it, but I changed the involved text :) Dori 04:51, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)
Kingturtle, it's actually a link to Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub so that if you click What links here from within Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub you get a list of the stub pages. Dori 05:04, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)

WikiProject Chemistry

I know it's fun editing articles about Macedonia, the Catholic and Mormon churches, and maybe tomorrow we can have some fun arguing over spelling Mother Teresa's name... but, I think it's time to resurrect Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry. I only spend about 10% of my time on classic sciences (originally I was a biochemistry/cell biology major), but I know you real scientists (and I don't mean computer, I'm one of those) are out there.

To start, I've added some information about the hard-to-find Inorganic table information to the project page. Is there a similar Organic table information somewhere? If not, we need to get one created and rationalize the two tables.

Once we get that done, maybe we can prioritize a list of compounds to be fixed up, etc. Daniel Quinlan 04:56, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)

No, there are no organic tables that I'm aware of. See Talk:Inorganic table information. The excel spreadsheet and template used to create the inorganic tables can be found here. -- Tim Starling 05:58, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)

Nupedia

What's up with Nupedia? Google has the text: "Unfortunately, Nupedia is unavailable due to some server problems" shown when you search for "nupedia", which means it must have beend own for a while. On Nupedia, the external link says "temporarily offline due to server troubles". According to the page history that change was made on September 26th! There is some talk on Talk:Nupedia but nothing current. I'm inclined to believe that it is truly dead. I mean how can they keep web traffic and editors if the site has been down for almost 2 months? dave 05:59, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I noticed on a recent edit to World Wide Web by Mav that his summary stated:

DO NOT sublink external links under body prose; use wiki refs or the external links section

yet I encounter this technique of embedded links regularly, like in this short article which has seven (!) such links in the body text:

Pijnacker-Nootdorp

Is there any kind of concensus about this? -- Viajero 13:39, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'd copyedit it ... mv'ing the links to a external link area (if needed) ... and mabey a ref to "see below" (as needed) ... don't know what the std nor concensus is though. Other than that you can always do a brackets notation citations (ala. [1]; how events does it), puttin' the link inline with the cited text.reddi
I have done the latter now, that is sometimes more convenient for the reader than links in the External Links section. Patrick 22:45, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I always delete inline links when I encounter them and move them to an External Links section. If they're kept inline, it's hard to tell that they're references to non-Wikipedia sites. Putting them in the External Links section makes that clear. RickK 19:58, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Recording Wikipedia Content

Hi, I was wondering how this works with the license.

I want to make recordings of some of the content on Wikipedia, and I want to do it legally. My intention (if possible) is to make Compact Discs containing some of the text in spoken form, together with other text I have produced personally.

It is not my intention to make money out of Wikipedia content, but I am obviously free to charge for that proportion of the CD that is made from my own personal content.

I am very happy to reference the source of the Wikipedia in the manner outlined on the license (I could obviously not hyperlink), and the proposed cost of the CDs isn't going to be a great deal more that of the raw materials.

Can anyone advise on what I should do. Many thanks.

Not a lawyer so don't know the issues intimately, but my understanding is that you can use the works and even charge for them as long as you attribute correctly and you make available any derivative works from the wikipedia. See the GFDL for more specific information. Dori 16:20, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)
(Also not a lawyer) Yes I think Dori has it right. Any materials you prepare deriving from Wikipedia content (and I think a spoken word version of articles counts in this respect) and then redistribute, would have to be available under the same licence. It would be brilliant if they could be available on the web and our pages could say "a spoken version of this article is available for download at ...." Pete 22:21, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia logo policy

I'm wondering what the policy is for adding corporate logos to pages is (ex. CN). I've seen a few and am wondering if they should be removed. Vancouverguy 18:08, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't know if there is a common policy but I have my own: DELETE! I think it makes a article look like its been sponsored or something. -- Viajero 00:09, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Longest article title?

I just came across MrsFalafel's Ale, Mustard and Winter Vegetable Pie. I was curious if, at about 50 characters long, it was the longest article title in Wikipedia. Turns out, I made a few that are longer (how embarassing, really):

Well, I'm curious to find out, what is the longest article title? Kingturtle 18:14, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

What about Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (69). Longest place with an article may be Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (but that's just a redirect.) -- Morwen 18:17, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
List of localities in Britain where rare ant species had previously been recorded but are no longer considered to be present (104) is also a redirect. Angela 18:35, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit (188) is a redirect to Bangkok. Jay 19:54, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Google/Wikipedia search engine problems

I have a question about the current Google/Wikipedia search engine, or comment. Namely, it seems to produce very inconsistent, incomplete, or paradoxical responses to inquiries. A few examples:

  • Oftentimes, I will read an article, and then do a search on the title of that article (EXACTLY as it is in the title, verbatim, down to caps even) and it fails to be found by Google to be on wikipedia. I find this very strange. Sometimes, nothing is found; other times, other articles, that only very indirectly link to the article, are produced. For instance, if one does a search on "Modular group" or even "Modular group Gamma", one doesn't get a link to the article entitled "Modular group Gamma", instead one gets a link to a user page, where "Modular group Gamma" is listed among several hundred pages created and/or edited by the user. What is going on here?
  • Another example: If you do a search on "Gauss" (or even "Carl Gauss"), then you won't get the article on Gauss the person for at least a couple pages (if that, I gave up after a while), you get lots of articles with "Gauss" as a keyword, or linking to "Gauss", but not to the article on Gauss himself. This seems very strange.
  • Many times, when looking for a specific article, (to see if it's there) I do a search and get absolutely nothing. But then, I say, "well, Google has failed me in the past, let me try directly" and I type in the actual URL of what should be the article page, and up in comes!! There it is!

This is what I find most disconcerting about the search engine. Someone will look something up, not get any results, and just assume that it is not present in the wikipedia. They won't know the little tricks about following other search results, going to more "meta-" pages (e.g. in math, going to major mathematical pages and looking around), or typing in URLs directly. This doesn't give a bad impression to newcomers, but it certainly fails to take advantage of everything that IS here. And it's a major inconvenience to people who use the wiki.

I would like to know if I am the only user that this happens to. I only bring it up in the village pump because it has been a common, persistent, recurring problem for me ever since I started (or ever since the Google/wikipedia page came up). It's not just an isolated incident with a few searches. Revolver 15 Nov 2003

I think this is because google is confused about www.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org, and en2.wikipedia.org. I suspect it will settle down some in the following weeks. Also, google will often (some say always) be inconsistent on results for a website that (like this) changes often - different search servers at google (all which _appear_ to be www.google.com) are looking at subtly different sets of crawl-data. So sometimes (especially during the "googledance", when they progressively update these database-copies) two identical queries will produce different results. And as to the "right link being way down the search", that's a function of google's (secret, and utterly arcane) pagerank algoritm - there's not much we can do about that, as manipulating google's rankings (for good or ill) is notoriously difficult. -- Finlay McWalter 20:51, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
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