Wikipedia

Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Anthony (talk | contribs) at 14:09, 29 August 2004 (→A sneaky idea for page rank). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
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]]

Summarised sections

London talk

Angela and Jimbo are giving a talk about Wikipedia at Oyster, 1 Naoroji Street, London WC1X 0JD on Tuesday August 31. This free event starts at 19:10 (BST). See minty.org for details. Around 40 people have signed up so far.

Template:Wrongtitle2

SimonP has set to systematically changing the scheme used to indicate improper page titles (due to software limitations) in a manner I, for one, think is unwise. (See iPod for an example.) Try as I might, I can find no consensus for this of any size, anywhere, and invite your comments at Template talk:Wrongtitle2. Austin Hair 05:25, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

Turin or Torino?

I've always heard this city called Turin by English-speakers, but since the city was awarded the Olympics, even American broadcasters have started calling it Torino. Is it time to move it? RickK 07:17, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

The official logo for those winter games uses "Torino 2006", but the IOC still refers to it as Turin. See here. The name of the city is still "Turin" in English; this is just a marketing gimmick to emphasise the fact that the city it Italian. It would be like using "Firenze" instead of Florence, or "Toscana" instead of Tuscany. So I feel the article should remain at Turin, until it becomes more clear closer to the time of the games whether the apparent name change is a result of a marketing campaign or actual changing usage in the English-speaking population. - Mark 07:41, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Got to agree with Mark here. They've thrown "Torino" against the wall, let's wait and see if it sticks before we start moving stuff around. -- Cyrius|✎ 13:11, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I've just gotta compliment that image. :P --Golbez 16:13, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If "Torino" becomes roughly as or more common than "Turin" in English, a move would be a good idea. While "Turin" is still overwhelmingly the more common name in English, leave the en wikipedia article there. -- Infrogmation 16:08, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)


I would really, really like to add a photo to Cornelis Vreeswijk (Swedish singer-songwriter, deceased in 1987), but I know there isn't a hope in hell of getting one under GFDL. It just might be possible to get more limited permission, though. I have talked with the Swedish Cornelis Vreeswijk Society, whose website has a few nice pics, and it turns out they have the photographers' permission for free, but only for their own use — the copyright is retained by the photographer. I think it might be worth contacting one or two of these photographers and asking for the same kind of permission for Wikipedia. They're professionals, they live by selling the rights to their images, and Cornelis Vreeswijk portraits are in limited supply (Cornelis being more famous and popular now than in his lifetime), so forget GFDL. But since they weren't averse to having their work shown for free by the Cornelis Vreeswijk Society, why not Wikipedia, too? That's what I think, but I have two questions:

1. Is this kind of limited permission any use to Wikipedia? I could have sworn I'd seen a reluctant admission in some policy document that occasionally this was the best we could do and in such a case it was acceptable to use images with those conditions attached. But I can't find it again.
2. If it is any use, how should I ask the copyright holders? (Boilerplate request for permission, anyone?) I've been trying to formulate a request in my head, but the harder I try, the more it sounds like something shady. ;-( (I should preferably ask in Swedish, too, which always makes any request sound a little shadier. But if I had a template to work with, I could deal with translation issues.)--Bishonen 14:34, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
1. Limited permission is definitely second best. Ask the photographer for GFDL if possible.
2. See Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission. Gdr 14:59, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)
Thanks for replying, but my problem is that it's not possible. Or, well, it's possible to ask, but I think it's impolitic to lead with a request that's bound to be refused. It's not that I don't realize that GFDL is totally the recommended option, infinitely preferrable, etc. I do realize it. Also, I only see the familiar boilerplate requests for permission under GDFL at the link you give (am I missing something?). Sounds as if the answer is no to both, then. I've been roaming Wikipedia for weeks looking for a solution to this, but, well, I guess the reason I couldn't find it is that it doesn't exist. :-( Thanks for trying, Gdr.--Bishonen 15:41, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't think it will hurt to ask for GFDL even if you think it likely that you won't get it. If refused, you can ask for a more limited license. Gdr 15:50, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)

Sorry to throw cold water on the idea, but because Wikipedia is committed to providing open content, we can't accept images if our only basis for using them is a non-free license such as this. Jimbo Wales has stated that images restricted to noncommercial use only, or with permission specific to Wikipedia only, are not allowed.

I think what you're referring to with "a reluctant admission in some policy document that occasionally this was the best we could do" is our policy on fair use images. See Wikipedia:Fair use. Currently we do allow images if we can make a good case for fair use and have little prospect of obtaining a truly free substitute.

So the answer is, if you believe the image can be justified as fair use, it may be acceptable. Fair use is not based on permission, but of course it would still be useful to obtain whatever permission you can from the copyright holder, even though with fair use you are claiming permission is not needed. --Michael Snow 16:33, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Right. I understand the concept of fair use, and, no, that wasn't what I was talking about. It was something different, that would have fitted this case ... well, I must have dreamt it, or else it was obsolete. I certainly couldn't in good faith claim fair use, since there aren't any PD photos of Vreeswijk out there. I'll forget the whole thing, then, and not trouble those copyright holders. I do understand that we need a transparent policy, rather than a jungle of exceptions, and thank you both for your prompt replies. Bishonen 18:57, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've often wondered, in cases such as this, where all of the available photography of a subject is unlikely to be GFDL-compatible, if it would be helpful for some talented sketch-artist Wikipedians to produce an "artist's rendering" of a subject based on one or more photographs. Such a sketch would certainly constitute original work, and could then be licensed as GFDL or public domain. -- Wapcaplet 01:19, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Template:Notenglish

The template "Notenglish" is very biased.

This article needs translation. If the article is not rewritten in English within the next two weeks, it will be listed for deletion.

Deleted?!? That's just too extreme. That just suggest that Wikipedia is an English only Encyclopedia, as opposed to a community of editors who speak various languages. The notenglish template is a good idea, but I think it needs to be toned down to something like: "This page has been listed on the List of Pages to be Translated to English. Please help Wikipedia by translating this entry into English so that it can be easily translated into other languages."

See Template_talk:Notenglish for discussion.

-- Allyunion 14:55, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

But, um... this IS an english-only encyclopedia. Hence the little "en" at the top of the screen, in the addressbarthingy. I would presume that es, jp, de, etc. would have similar policies. --Golbez 15:59, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As an occasional supporter of "native" terms, I do however, suggest that this template is perfectly warranted. Any non-English article content should either be translated, or if no-one's doing so, deleted. One should perhaps first check if it has come from the appropriate language wiki, if not, copy it there first. That step should maybe be added to the template. (If it's French, stick it on fr: if not there already. If it's nonsense, the fr: editors should pick it up) zoney ▓█▒ talk 16:50, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Zoney. Why is anyone loading an article not in English into the English Wikipedia or an article not in French into the French Wikipedia and so on? Possibly by mistake ... that is the editor works on more than one Wikipedia and accidently inserted an article into the wrong language version. Possibly it is a kind of vandalism, dropping down an article incomprehensible to most readers just for the fun of minor disturbance. Possibly an editor copied something from another language Wikipedia and intended to translate and never got around to it.
So just move such an article to the corresponding language Wikipedia when one exists instead of leaving it here. Always add "-en" to the article name and move it to an appropriate cleanup list in the target Wikipedia because there is something odd about a non-English article appearing in the English language Wikipedia and so such an article should be made visible. (It may duplicate an article already on the target Wikipedia. Then forget about it. If the language is incorrectly identified, it will still probably have been sent to a Wikipedia using a closely related language and the editors there will likely be able to properly identify the language and forward it correctly or possibly translate it themselves if there is no Wikipedia for the actual language of the article.
Jallan 00:19, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I was thinking it should read as something along the lines of "This article needs translation. If the article is not rewritten in English within the next two weeks, it will be moved to the approprate language version of Wikipedia." Just because we can't read it, doesn't mean it has to be deleted. Maybe the person intended originally to put it into one of the other language Wikipedias. I think a contribution is still a contribution, even if it is in the wrong place... just move it to the right place, and make sure it's worthy. - Allyunion 09:15, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This stuff is mostly handled at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English. There are about a dozen of us quite active in trying to handle things like this appropriately case-by-case. Wikipedia talk:Pages needing translation into English would probably be the best place to propose any changes in policy, but I'd suggest that you first familiarize yourself with what we currently do. Yes, if something looks encyclopedic and the relevant language lacks an article we put it there, but there are a lot of other possible dispositions of non-English content in en.wikipedia. I don't think the template is the place to fully discuss policy, and it already points to the page that does. -- Jmabel 02:28, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

I would think the articles would be transwikied before being deleted. But maybe that is supposed to be implied? anthony (see warning) 00:30, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Thumbnailing craze

To me, the 300 pixel size was a good idea for photos that seems to have gone by the board. It is an ideal size to add visual impact to an article, without overwhelming browsers or slow connections.

The glory of Wikipedia, I thought, was that, as a non "dead tree" publication, we could "waste" a few electrons, and make the articles really live. Our layout options are somewhat limited by the format, but good pictures can make some articles real gems.

But a bunch of people have, in my opinion, been running amuk, thumbnailing everything. Why!?

There is a place for thumbnails; I use them myself. But many articles that were greatly enhanced by an appropriate photo, are now degraded by unintelligible thumbnails that require an additional step, and the viewing of more info that often has no relevance to the article.

On a few occasions I have reverted thumbnails. I've been tempted far more times. I am aware that not all my photos are brilliant, and sometimes have just let it go, but I find my enthusiam to contribute photos is declining. Naturally I keep best track of my own photos, but I would think this to be true for other photographers as well.

I think Wikipedians should establish some guidelines. At least one full sized image that adds to an article should NOT be thumbnailed. And many images that "go to pieces" cannot be thumbnailed. Non-photographers need to be especially cautious about thumbnailing, as they may not have the "eye" for good photos or layout. Some thumbnailing should not be so bold, but should be done only by consensus.

At any rate, I toss these ideas out for discussion. How about some policy specifications? Pollinator 16:36, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

  • Actually, you'll hate me then. When there's no need to resize an image, I like to use the "frame" option to add a frame and caption. It just looks so neat and tidy and pretty. zoney ▓█▒ talk 16:42, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • The main reason I use them is to avoid having to upload separate "large" and "small" versions. I can see why it would be a problem if the thumbnails were too small to be intelligible, but that's a bad choice of sizing and/or poor image design (too much complexity, too-small details, or other things that are lost in size-reduction), not a result of thumbnailing. Thumbnailing lets us have a greatly detailed, near print-quality image and, if the image is designed with thumbnailing in mind, a perfectly intelligible thumbnail-sized image all in one. It also gives article editors far more flexibility iin deciding what an appropriate image size is, rather than assuming that 300px is going to be okay for all situations. -- Wapcaplet 18:49, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I use thumbnail, but with a 250px (or whatever) parameter ... seems the best of all worlds to me. I venture to suggest the problem is not marauding thumbnailers, but marauding thumbnailers unaware that you can define the image size, and with little eye for page composition. --Tagishsimon
  • As a matter of aesthetics, some images should not be thumbnailed, especially diagrams and screenshots, especially ones that are already small (see older versions of The Legend of Zelda). In many cases, a specifically constructed smaller version, such as by cropping, shrinking, and sharpening, looks a lot better. This is common practice on many art webpages. In this case the smaller version's image page should link to the larger version. On the other hand, for many images simply shrinking them works fine and eliminates work for everyone. Should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Derrick Coetzee 19:13, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • The struggle between least-common-denominator and good-looking goes on - I think eventually the sizing calculations will have to be under less manual control, for print purposes and the like - 300px is kind of wide for screens, distorts formatting around it, but would be too small for most printed works. So I don't spend a lot of time worrying about image sizes; more important to get them in there, so they're available to use (maybe not even in the article you anticipated), and also to discourage uploading of images with undesirable licenses. I think it's safe to say there will be several more rounds of image markup tinkering before it really stabilizes at something we all like, while properly-licensed images will become more valuable as the dubious ones get scrubbed out. Stan 19:26, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Pollinator, can you give some examples of photos that have been treated badly by thumbnailing? I'm not sure I understand your criticism yet. Large pictures are important when they are the subject of the article (for example Mona Lisa needs a large picture), but when used as illustrations a large picture can take over the article, distort formatting, and leave little room for text (a good size for the Mona Lisa article would not be so good for the Leonardo da Vinci article, where it has to share the space with other illustrations). I see that you carefully size your pictures to fit the article context you have in mind; perhaps this is why you are unhappy when others resize them. You might do better to upload the biggest image you have, let the software scale it, and not worry too much that its not perfect. That's what I do. I know the thumbnail software isn't very good at the moment but it will get better — and when it gets better every big picture will benefit automatically. Think ahead to the hypothetical print version... Gdr 23:40, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)
    • Ah, I see that you don't want to upload the original image because you don't want to license it under the GFDL. But on the other hand you are annoyed when someone resizes your carefully prepared reduction. Maybe you just can't have it both ways? Gdr 23:40, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)
      • Perhaps a concrete example would help. One of Pollinator's striking photographs (full frame) can be found at Windpump. Judge for yourself whether the page layout works, or whether some thumbnailing would help. -- Solipsist 08:14, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • Example: Niagara Falls was thumbnailed. I reverted that one.Pollinator 14:15, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
        • Is is acceptable like this? [1] Gdr 16:32, 2004 Aug 25 (UTC)
      • Yup, that one almost certainly better full frame. Have you tried the 'frame' option that Zoney was mentioning. It would help separate the image from the horizontal rule and gives a cleaner caption.... Hang on Gdr got there before I had finnished typing. -- Solipsist 16:34, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
        • The Niagra Falls one is a good size. Too much detail lost if that particular photo is smaller. But each of the photos in Windpump is larger than the article itself--almost as tall as a smaller screen--and there's no important detail to be seen. They could both be half as high/wide or even smaller and not affect the info they're conveying in the article. Elf | Talk 22:05, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
          • I think the first photo on the Windpump article is a good size. The second doesn't fit, though, but the best solution would be to add text until it does. Right now, before there's more text, there's really no good solution. anthony (see warning) 00:27, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • As I've mentioned on the pump afew weeks ago, I think we should not give pixels for images unless there's a specific reason. Why? Because what looks great on my screen (in my browser) will look horrible in yours. I suggested a setting (small/medium/large) in the user settings, so everyone can set to see the thumbs accordingly. Of course, there will be always reasons to specify the size of an image exactly. I hope that these settings will be implemented one day. Kokiri 16:38, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • That's a good point; many times, a more fuzzy setting such as small/medium/large would be perfectly adequate. Though I'm a bit hazy - do you mean that instead of specifying "200px" in the image thumbnail, we'd say "small", etc.? That alone seems fairly pointless, since "small" is just going to translate into some predetermined number of pixels anyway. Having such an item as a user preference (i.e., "Image thumbnail quality: ()small ()medium ()large") might be handy, and could help with bandwidth issues too (modem users could stick with small thumbnails - though, this would also mean they'd more frequently need to view the full version, since a smaller thumbnail may not be clear enough) but it seems like extra work for already taxed servers; three differently-sized thumbnails would need to be generated for each image, for each sizing that is used in any article, and roughly tripling the disk usage for thumbnail images. The ability to specify pixel-widths in image syntax is of vital importance in many thumbnails; for instance, when I do a large, high-res diagram for some article, I choose the thumbnail size carefully so that most of the relevant detail is still visible - that there are still enough pixels to show the detail. If all I had to go on was "medium," that would be far less flexible. -- Wapcaplet 21:32, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Infobox craze

Tables are fun to play with, and effective at conveying tables of data. But when a table takes over the screen in order to list a handful of facts that merely duplicate the opening sentence of the article, then that table is junk. In particular, a table is not required to give the title of a book, its author, and the date of publication. You can use a "sentence" to convey the same information in a smaller space, saving room to actually write the rest of the article. See [2] for a truly horrible example. Gdr 23:15, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)

Redundant infobox : Check.
Horrid pink box in the middle of the page to act as a "spoiler warning", despite book being a classic (We'll be putting them in Shakespeare next) Check.
I read the article on Macbeth before I was finished reading the play and it told me how Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. Just totally spoiled it for me. Now I'm reading the Bible and I'm not going to read any Wikipedia articles about the Bible until I get to the end and know how it turns out.
Categorized in an extremely small category. Check. (Though admittedly this category could and will be expanded).

The novel infobox is a product of Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Novels, though several people there seem not to like it, but it has survived anyhow. The pink spoiler box is a product of Template:Spoiler, home of several pink box fans (though they can't explain why they like it). Pcb21| Pete 00:03, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Though I suspect you already know it, I'm compelled to point out that we already "thoughtfully" include spoiler warnings on much of Shakespeare (e.g. King Lear, Romeo and Juliet), and that we equally "thoughtfully" often provide the warning that "plot details are revealed" right after the heading "Plot". - Nunh-huh 05:08, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Heh, there are spoiler warnings for Richard III and Henry VI part I, but not for Richard II and Henry V. I guess we have a policy somewhere on interpreting how much Shakespeare had to make up before his histories deserve spoiler warnings. Pcb21| Pete 07:29, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Worse yet, we give away the fact that King Lear is a tragedy in the first sentence, well before our spoiler warning! Perhaps we need a rule that we must insert "spoiler space" before the body of each article that might contain information.... - Nunh-huh 21:19, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes. Stop marking texts with these silly boxes and templates. Does every article about a ruler of a territory need an enormous centered box at the bottom giving predecessor and successor. I agree that information is good to have. I'd be happier standardizing on always including that information as a final single-paragraph sentence. Jallan 00:35, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Does every article about a ruler... need a ... box at the bottom giving successor and predecessor? Yes. Yes it does. --Golbez 02:21, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Rulers aren't really my bag, but I do like seeing succesor and predecessor on them when I somehow end up looking at one. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 02:35, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
I totally agree with having predecessor and successor information in such articles. I've added such information myself to some articles before these big box templates started turning up everywhere. No-one here has claimed that the information that appears in boxes and templates should not appear, but that boxes are overused and make the presentation of the material worse rather than better. For succession information, a short standard summary sentence in each article would would do as well, something like: "In #### YYYY succeeded XXXX to the throne of AAAAA, reigned for ## years, and in #### died/abdicated/vanished/was exiled and was succeeded by ZZZZ". Make it a standard that it is a separate paragraph to appear under the lead paragraph or the last sentence in the lead paragraph. Problem solved without need of a big, honking box that doesn't give as much information. And odd variations like intermediate exile during a reign or succession to more than one territory during a rule can be flexibly incorporated. Neither a box or a template is needed. Jallan 18:09, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't agree, I'm afraid. I like the boxes at the bottom giving the predecessors and successors in official posts. It avoids cluttering the article with the information. -- Necrothesp 21:41, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I sooooo loathe having those things interpolated into a novel. If Moll Flanders gets a table, it just makes it look fluffy, IMO. To me, all these graphical objects make serious works of literature look like infobytes that one finds plastered in USA Today and crawling along the bottom of CNN. They take away the seriousness. When I wrote (pretty much) Moll Flanders, I wove tiny incidents of the plot into a discussion of Defoe's career, interests, and genre. Then, -boing!-, a salmon colored Spoiler box was shoved incongruously in there. Ick. No, I didn't revert it or cut it out. I figured that someone thought he was making the article better, and I didn't want to offend, but I don't read for plot, and plot is the least important thing in 18th century novels. (Thanks guys, I feel better having gotten that off my chest.) Geogre 02:15, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The execrable "spoiler warning" is under discussion at Template talk:Spoiler. - Nunh-huh 02:33, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

We should have these warnings on science articles too - it is horrible to find the results of an experiment plastered on a page here, it removes all of the joy and suspense of reading the paper. Likewise news, when I see the front page, the news for the day is ruined for me.

:). The economists don't need spoiler warnings on their articles though - they haven't got a clue what's going on. Pcb21| Pete 09:36, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I edited The Man Who Was Thursday into shape: compare before [3] and after [4]. Gdr 13:51, 2004 Aug 25 (UTC)

An incredible amount of Wikitime is used in tinkering...and tinkering...and tinkering with the format of taxoboxes. I don't understand it, and I don't have a lot of time to spend on Wikipedia, so I generally ignore it. But I've often wondered if the time could have been better spent improving content.Pollinator 14:19, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

A yes, the mythical wiki-man-month. I think that most contributors are only contributing to something because they're legitimately interested in it. If someone is interested in taxoboxes or spoiler warnings and is going to improve it that's fine. I doubt that they would drop that interest and start researching dinosaurs or something random instead. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 14:48, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Infoboxes are eeeevil... I hate it when inappropriate articles get them. They're concise, but ugly. Infoboxes are a necessary evil for articles about countries or leaders, though. But still...it drives me mad to see an inappropriate article getting such a table, or even worse, crowding it with data. Johnleemk | Talk 16:29, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Just curious, how do you feel about the infobox at Lowe's Motor Speedway, et.al.? (the list of races may seem redundant but that's because few minor leagues race at Lowe's. I need to go back and work on that anyway. ) --Golbez 17:00, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Even if overused, infoboxes have their place. For example, music album articles benefit from them, as many audiophiles desire quick, organized access to such information. However I agree that some, if not most of them get clogged with excessive data, and this should be kept to a minimum. I also agree that most books have no need of an infobox, although their ISBNs should be given somewhere near the bottom of the article!
On the other hand, navigational templates (including the "predecessor/succesor" boxes) are almost always a good thing, as they make the encyclopedia easier to navigate for those perusing articles. Perhaps some of the negatve feeling against all boxes is that most of them are ugly. Many have those age-old, pseudo-3D html borders that everybody loves to hate. If a one pixel medium gray border were used everywhere instead, it would look much nicer. Given all the tools we are, we might as well use them to help make Wikipedia as easy to use as possible, even if it bends the traditions of former encyclopedias.[[User:Siroxo|Here is a schmancy new signature and a line of text that is long enough to show how it might look when there is some stuff coming before it. Please take a look at it to bask it in all of its radiant glory

—siroχo

—siroχo 



#627562



#7b967b

#4d6c94]] 22:18, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Which is what I've been trying to say. Try to make things noticeable but subtle rather than big and ugly. Jallan 00:32, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There's some work being done on the succession info boxes in my sandbox and Adam Bishop's. Please have a look and comment. —Michael Z. 19:10, 2004 Aug 28 (UTC)

Bloody algebra I hate it

Would mathematicians/Physicists go to Roche Limit and check the derivation. I've stopped near the end because I can see I'm going to be out by a factor of 8. I can't see what I'm doing wrong (editing very late at night is a bad idea. I'm stupid enough when I'm awake). Thanks. Theresa Knott 00:57, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The numbers seem to be right, but the initial assumption is flawed i think. You handle the smaller body as two spheres with radius s, distance 2s. According to World of Physics, they assume only one smaller body, and take one arbitrary mass u on the surface of the smaller body. Next they balance the gravitational pull on this mass toward the smaller body (G*m*u/(2*r^2)) with the pull toward the larger body (G*M*u/(2*d^2)) (where d is tehcnically the distance from the center of the larger body to the surface of the smaller body). I am crunching numbers right now. -- Chris 73 Talk 02:02, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
I fixed it, but as Chris 73 said, if you keep the (2s)^2 in the denominator you end up with an extra 4 so you don't get the right answer. Wuzzeb 02:38, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I fixed it, too. Wuzzeb beat me by a few minutes. I actually replaced Wuzzeb's edit with mine, since mine was more detailed and had a more consistent nomenclature (i think). Hope this is OK. I also removed the image, since it no longer explained the used variables.-- Chris 73 Talk 02:44, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, your version is cleaner and better worded. I fixed the image and put it back on the page as well. Wuzzeb 03:41, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. Isn't collaborative editing great! I love Wikipedia Theresa Knott 08:37, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
But you should love Wikipedia and algebra! You've only won half the battle. Dysprosia 09:53, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You've seen how badly i type? My maths is just as bad. (Whoops I put a plus instead of a minus, whoops I lost a power on the way, etc). I'll never love algebra for that reason. Programming is even worse. I remember spending hours at university trying to find out why a qbasic program wouldn't run in my "introduction to programming" course. I couldn't spot the error and neither could my instructor. Eventually he came back the following week and told me I'd typed x where I should have typed X. Grrrr Theresa Knott (Hot net streak!) 19:54, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As Donald Norman would say, don't blame yourself for a bad design - real programming languages produce an error in this case. Derrick Coetzee 21:25, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Server problems?

I got this on Special:Randompage a couple of times, then, er, I got it when I tried to get onto the Village pump! Now I'm here, so here's the server error I saw:

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-new/includes/LoadBalancer.php on line 107

Yours, -山道子 (Sewing) - talk 01:19, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've been getting this about a third of the time I try to update Recent Changes, so it's not just you--also everything seems to be stuck in mud today. Time to do something else for a while, LOL. Antandrus 01:35, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How to correctly use Wikipedia content on my website

I understand how important abiding by the GNU FDL from what I've read on these posts so I want to make sure that I correctly use content from Wikipedia on my own website. I would like to take snippets of Wikipedia articles to use as descriptions for certain animals and plants on my website. Does this mean that the page on which that Wikipedia content exists on my site completely becomes under the FDL? Or can I say that this text snippet is under the FDL and the rest is copyrighted by me? Am I allowed to display my own copyright on the page? Thanks. --psyphyre 01:56, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

You might want to check out the sites listed on Wikipedia:Copies of Wikipedia content (high degree of compliance). Basically, we want a sentence saying (a) that you are using content from Wikipedia (and you have to link to either the main page, or (preferably) the article itself) and (b) that it is available under the terms of the GFDL (and you have to link to the GFDL). As to your other questions, I'm not sure. →Raul654 01:58, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
If you're taking small sections, you don't need to comply with the GFDL at all; just quote it and indicate the source (preferably including a link) and this is fair use. If you're taking larger sections, I don't think the GFDL has the "infectious" property of the GPL, but you would have to clearly delineate which sections are Wikipedia-based and place those under the GFDL, with a credit to Wikipedia and a link to the page, and explicitly reserve all rights to other sections, just to be careful. Derrick Coetzee 14:11, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Someone who knows what they are talking about ought to write a clear, easily accessible page on these matters. Wikipedia is "the free encyclopedia" so we should be very happy to oblige people who want to use our content. An FAQ explaining all the relevant information would be very helpful for anyone wanting to make use of what have created here. — Trilobite (Talk) 22:59, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A measure of Wikipedia's spread

Apropos of the last entry, I just did a medium edit on Ambrose Bierce. In the course of working on it, I did a Google search on "bierce mckinley assassination hearst" and got 267 returns. I clicked around and noticed most hits read the same, and, in fact, were the same Wikipedia article on William McKinley. I did another search on "bierce mckinley assassination hearst -wikipedia" and got only 68 hits, meaning the McKinley article or a variant was appearing in 199 places. That is, 75 per cent of the web sites discussing Bierce's part in the McKinley assasination are relying on Wikipedia Ortolan88 03:07, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Another interesting way to measure is searching for Michaelisms... there are incorrect dates for Punk groups all over the net. AdmN 03:25, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, often now I want to get more information on a topic, only to discover that the first set of Google hits are for copies of a Wikipedia article on the topic that I edited—in other words, the hits are for something that will not provide me with any more information than I already have! So -wikipedia has become part of my Google vocabulary as well.... -Sewing (山道子) - talk 14:02, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I created a script that uses minus wikipedia to search for copyright violations. To my dismay it discovered a lot more noncompliant mirrors than it did copyright vios, or else sites where Google never got to the notice at the bottom of a long page. Your 75% estimate is probably entirely too low. Derrick Coetzee 14:16, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Maybe Google should ignore copies of Wikipedia articles and just give the source of the duplicate articles, Wikipedia itself. If there are a lot of duplicate articles, it'll just "rank" Wikipedia higher. Who wants a bunch of duplicate articles? Just give Wikipedia and ignore the mirrors and forks. Just MHO. — Frecklefoot | Talk 17:27, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Google wouldn't ignore copies so simply. We just have to enforce the GFDL, threaten to sue if need be. If everyone complied with the GFDL, Wikipedia would have the highest page-rank over its copies and should appear first. [[User:Siroxo|Here is a schmancy new signature and a line of text that is long enough to show how it might look when there is some stuff coming before it. Please take a look at it to bask it in all of its radiant glory

—siroχo

—siroχo 



#627562



#7b967b

#4d6c94]] 20:09, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

I had an x-ray of my teeth a while ago, I need my wisdoms out :(

I was wondering who owns the copyright on the x-ray?

I know the guy who did the x-ray (although i don't know if it was him or a student who pushed the button), so he could give me GFDL permission if he had copyright. The problem is that it was done at a Dental School, so do they have copyright over everything their employees produce?

It's my health information, so I own the 'information' (whatever that is), but the film is owned by the Dent School.

I'd appreciate others thoughts/facts on this T 04:57, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If X-ray photography follows the conventions of other professional photography, the person taking the picture has the copyright unless you agree otherwise with them. I do not know whether this is the case though.

This is an interesting case. UK and European data protection laws say that you have some control over the image, but this is primarly what is *not* done with it, rather than what *is* done with it (for example, the person who took the x-ray couldn't post it on wikipedia without your permission - even if he owns the copyright). I'd contact the dental school and ask them for permission, just to be sure though. Darksun 10:04, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is a problem of privacy rather than ownership of the image. The doctor cannot publish your photo (x-ray, etc.) without your consent in the same way as he cannot publish your clinical data without your consent. He owns the x-ray in the same way as the person who takes a photo of you owns the negative. Pfortuny 15:55, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If someone takes your photograph, sie owns the (copy)rights to it. In some juristictions, there are limitations to how it can be used, and that is especially true for clinical data, I believe. However, the person who took the photo definitely owns more than the negative. — David Remahl 19:00, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In the U.S., for a work to be protected by copyright, there needs to be some creativity involved. A purely scientific photograph, that simply documents objectively is probably not elligible for copyright protection. Granted, not a lot is required for a work to be considered creative, but putting a piece of film at a fixed position in your mouth and pushing a button is almost certainly not enough. In my opinion, the x-ray is public domain. — David Remahl 19:00, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Imagine this thought experiment. A professional photographer takes your photograph. He owns the copyright. If you step into a photo-me boothe, put your dollar in, and get the photo, who owns it? You, or the company that owns the boothe? I think you do. But what if there is a person opperating the booth - let's say loading the film and making sure you are sqaure to the camera, then pressing the button, in much the same way the X-ray technician does. Who owns it?

I've asked my friend to make a copy for me, and i'll try to get a nice digital photo of it. I think the best bet is to ask the dental school, although I don't think they'll actually care. It's unlikely that they'll ever want to publish my boring x-ray in any other source.

In terms of privacy, I always thought a doctor/dentist/etc could use the photos without my permission, as long as I was not identifiable. It'll be quite cool to have my dental records on wikipedia, just in case i ever go missing. :-) I'll try to get a copy of the post-wisdom teeth removal if i can too. T 05:15, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Proposed Tutorial Video for Wikipedia (comments sought; not a dispute)

(I've also added this section to Wikipedia:Requests for comment, but since it is time-sensitive, I wanted to bring it to your attention here as well, to whatever extent others may wish to help and participate.)

I have temporarily added a tentative instructional video script for Wikipedia as a subpage of my user page. I hope to put together the video within the next week. It is to be mostly for beginners (though it might showcase some more advanced but common interest features of use) on how to use and contribute to Wikipedia.

I am actually preparing this for the purposes of an unrelated conference, and since this conference is to be next week (I leave September 2 and plan to wrap up the "filming" of screen-videos by Monday August 30 if not earlier), I do not have much time, at least for this version, so I would be most grateful for any prompt feedback.

I am mostly concerned now about making sure everything is accurate, although people are free to make comments on clarity, organization, content, etc., and suggest their own alterations or adds, as I'd like to do what I can to make it better all around. You can still make comments after the date as well, though I'm not absolutely sure I will have the energy and time to make revisions at that point.

However, as I would like to make this script (and any videos I can create off of these scripts) under the GNU free documentation license (can videos fall under this license as well as text?) and if possible make this available from Wikipedia (Wikimedia could use this or add to it as they like as well) at least as a link if not hosted here, anyone else would be subsequently welcome to modify the script as they pleased (translating, adding, deleting, whatever).

In the meantime, the tenative script is at User:Brettz9/videoscript. Feel free to add comments to its Talk page.

Best wishes, [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 05:30, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have now added one more small introductory section at the beginning ) now just called "Background"... Thanks... [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 21:46, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Duplicate article

When I type in 'duplicate article' in the search box, the top 10 results are:

  1. Calvin and Hobbes (47603 bytes)
  2. Cache (5566 bytes)
  3. Database management system (17245 bytes)
  4. Ecstasy (16397 bytes)
  5. James Bond (31113 bytes)
  6. Jargon File (7547 bytes)
  7. Josiah Wedgwood (4987 bytes)
  8. Logarithm (13778 bytes)
  9. Media bias (11223 bytes)
  10. Open Directory Project (29022 bytes)

Where can I learn more about how searching wikipedia works, since I am clearly missing something... Thanks 213.206.33.82 06:27, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

For details on searching Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Searching. I'm not sure what you were intending to search for, but there is a list of duplicate articles at Wikipedia:Duplicate articles. --Diberri | Talk 09:24, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! I was looking for the list of duplicate articles. I was surprised that the search engine threw out so many apparently completely unrelated hits.

By default, the search engine searches only the article namespace (that is, the blank namespace). This is typically the desired behavior, as there's giant piles of Wikipedia: and Talk: pages that the average searcher doesn't want to get pointed at. Logged-in users can change the default behavior in their preferences, and anyone can change the namespaces searched on the actual search page (when it's turned on...). -- Cyrius|✎ 09:43, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What would cause it to throw out Calvin and Hobbes and James Bond though?

  • Calvin's duplicator, of course! I have no idea about James Bond, though.Ðåñηÿßôý | Talk 04:47, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Permission letters

I have come across articles that use privately owned material (especially images) after the contributor wrote to the owner via e-mail and received permission.

On the one hand, I think it is great that contributors are taking the copyright issues seriously and getting permission. On the other hand, I have a question: Is there (or should there be) any place on wikipedia for recording/storing such permission letters so that there will be a public record of them?Dovi 08:23, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know of a public place for storing permission letters. (Would copying someone else's e-mail without express permission constitute a copyright violation?) Personally, I keep a record at User:Diberri/Work in progress of all the copyright-related issues I've handled, and keep a backup of correspondence on my PC. --Diberri | Talk 09:20, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
I think copies of both (request and permission) the emails should go on the image description page, so that it is clear exactly what was asked and what was agreed to. I don't think this would violate copyright, If this wasn't "fair use" i don't know what would be. Theresa Knott 10:50, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Non-commercial images

Just the other day someone was emphasising a recent change in the non-acceptability of uploading 'non-commercal use' images - ie. we just want PD and GFDL images. But now I can't find it, and no reference on Wikipedia:Image use policy. Can anyone point me to the new policy. -- Solipsist 08:27, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Jimbo declared it in a mailing list post. See Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ for a discussion and a link to Jimbo's declaration. →Raul654 15:45, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, it was the link to Jimbo's declaration that I was looking for.
It might be an idea to update the Wikipedia:Image_use_policy to mention the new policy. I think its the first page we direct new editors to when they want to upload an image - and I can't see an obvious path of links to Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ. The next page you are likely to look at is Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags (both from here and Special:Upload) which still includes non-commercial licence tags under the Creative-Commons section. -- Solipsist 16:27, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

HTML -> Wiki Table Conversion?

Is there a online script that converts HTML tables into the Wikimedia table markup (with pipes)? I've only found Düsentrieb's csv2wiki... Kokiri 15:37, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There's one here :) - 15:42, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
I also have one at http://www.wackyboy.com/ConvertHtmlTableToWikiTable.html Kevin Rector 21:58, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
Man, everyone's got one of these things :-) [5] --Diberri | Talk 22:08, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

Project for the terminally bored: A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature by John W. Cousin

Convert this to a whole bunch of usable Wikipedia articles. A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, by John W. Cousin (1910) - one-paragraph listings on a huge number of authors. Just released by Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders - David Gerard 15:53, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • And I quote, -clears throat - "The primary aim of this book is to give as much information about English authors, including under this designation American and Colonial writers, as the prescribed limits will admit of. At the same time an attempt has been made, where materials exist for it, to enhance the interest by introducing such details as tend to illustrate the characters and circumstances of the respective writers and the manner in which they passed through the world"...
  • ...ah, they don't write 'em like that any more, do they? Thank Heavens... --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 18:52, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
  • Like this? I copied the footnote style from Template:1911, I couldn't think of a snappy name to give it if I made it a template itself. —Stormie 03:38, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

In house search not working?

The in-house search has not been working for me for a while. I have not seen any mention of a problem. Is it just me?
Bobblewik  (talk) 17:35, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If I understand the question correctly, I've been seeing it flip-flop between real-time search and the google/yahoo cache search several times a day, for at least the past few days. Niteowlneils 19:26, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Maybe two times per day, not several. The behaviour can be summed up with the following: 

$tmarray = getdate(time());
$hour = $tmarray['hours'];
if ( $hour >= 7 && $hour < 23 ) {
   $wgDisableTextSearch = true;
}

In other words it's disabled between 07:00 and 23:00 UTC. We have more database hardware on order, which hopefully will allow us to enable it all the time without causing problems for site-wide performance. -- Tim Starling 02:29, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

Is it ever possible to ban troublesome but non-malicious users?

If you have a user who does not appear to be malicious, but repeatedly inserts misleading and nonsensical material, is it ever possible to ban them? I'm thinking of a particular user who (for at least a year) has been editing physics topics to insert either garbled gibberish (which is merely embarrassing for Wikipedia) and/or to give misleading prominence to extreme fringe viewpoints or even stating them as fact. Worse, he usually fights tooth and nail any attempts to edit the material into a more mainstream form. Worse, he often comes back at a much later time and re-inserts similar or identical problematic material on another page.

I'm not naming names at this point...I just want to know if it's worth even bothering to complain about users who do more harm than good?

—Steven G. Johnson 17:48, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

PS. I have no problem with including fringe science viewpoints, as long as they are clearly stated as such and as long as they are not given a prominence out of proportion to their acceptance... especially when they have not even been published in mainstream peer-reviewed journals.

The user is recognizable even to a non-physicist. I agree that this is a big problem, particularly on scientific articles...or rather articles that ought to be scientific. But it seems that if an advocate for phlogiston insists, every sentence in the "combustion" article must adapt itself to his liking. It would be good to have a mechanism for dealing with this, but the short answer seems to be that we have no mechanism for dealing with this (other than continued tooth-and-nail defense of sanity in each article) and no one has ever been kicked off (or asked nicely to leave) for advocating nutball theories...though some have been kicked off because they were obnoxious while advocating nutball theories. - Nunh-huh 18:11, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
User:Mr-Natural-Health is now serving a 3 month ban after being very forthright about complementary and alternative medicine. There's no doubt he was being obnoxious. see [6]
I think if you have around 3 people who are confident in their knowledge of a technical or difficult subject you can be pretty firm in marginalising or even erasing any content you feel is out there as you will have a consensus between you. All the user with more, shall we say, challenging ideas can do then is to reinsert what you've moved or deleted, and if they continue to do that in the face of a different person moving/erasing each time they can be identified as a problem user.
You can always ask for references in support of the worrying material too. That can be quite revealing: seeing what the sources are ;o)
If it really has got to a tooth and nail stage, that implies to me that an edit war is in progress and there are definitely procedures to deal with that. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 18:46, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
(a) With any particular page, eventually a number of users have been able to come to bear against this particular individual. (At least until the user comes back and re-inserts a few weeks or months later when the other users have stopped paying attention.) But when a user inserts things in tens and hundreds of pages, it becomes a full-time job to keep up with him. Why should Wikipedia be forced to repeatedly repair the damage caused by one user?
(b) When it comes to historical sequence of arguments and evidence about particular experiments, good sources often aren't available online and most people don't know the history well enough to tell fact from fiction offhand. Moreover, if a person doesn't care about accuracy it is easy to insert claims ("such-and-such experiment was inaccurate") that take substantial effort to refute definitively by someone who does care about accuracy. Why should Wikipedians be saddled with the effort of laboriously refuting the writings of someone who repeatedly slips in inaccuracies?
(c) Outright edit-wars (repeated reversions) can be stopped. But what about when every time you fix a a page, the user inserts some of the old material, or the old material in new words, or changes a sentence here and there...you get in a "two-steps-forward, one-step-back" situation that is a full-time job to keep up with. That's what I mean by "tooth-and-nail". Why should Wikipedia tolerate this?
In any open-source project, if one programmer persistently and unrepentantly inserted buggy code, he would be kicked out. Why should Wikipedia be different? —Steven G. Johnson 19:35, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

Why not start down the dispute process? Start a request for comments on this user. Theresa Knott (Hot net streak!) 19:42, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Are you saying that a user can certainly be banned for the kind of behavior I described, assuming it is demonstrated clearly? —Steven G. Johnson 21:39, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
You're going to have a very difficult time trying to get Reddi banned. Doppelgänger 20:07, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Steven, I hesitate to comment too much (as an arbitrator, I'm still trying to figure out how much I should say about problems and conflicts that are not yet in my purview, lest I make myself into a standing recusal), but I have a few thoughts for you. Let us suppose (and I won't trust our Doppel-friend's guess here, as I don't have any idea who is being discussed) that the user in question is not verbally abusive when confronted. Even so, if they consistently disregard Wikipedia:NPOV after it has been clearly demonstrated to them, and if they appear to be contributing in bad faith, the arbitration committee, I think, would be willing to consider sanctions (though a ban might be unlikely unless the pattern of behavior was significant). Obviously, if the user in question was sanctioned and continued to disregard policy, bans would be very much more on the table. The difficulty is demonstrating to a 3rd party's satisfaction that a user is not merely possessed of unusual opinions (or opinions almost universally considered incorrect), but that the user is somehow violating the principles and policies of this site in the advocating of their positions. I would suggest you go to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration and consider the case now in arbitration concerning Lyndon LaRouche. I believe many of the issues in that case might be more broadly applicable to the situation you describe. The short answer is that we often do have to put up with fringe opinion here, even when it seems to be making our articles "bad" -- or rather, we cannot simply ban someone for inserting their beliefs. We can seek to correct the articles, inform the user, and ensure policy is upheld. If a user, for example, reinserts said information again and again, after consensus obviously opposes its inclusion, then you have a more clearcut case that may well deserve banning, or censure at the least. I'm sorry this is so vague and long-winded, but I hope it helps to know the opinion of at least one of the members of the oft-maligned AC. If you wish to discuss this with me further, please feel free to drop a note on my talk page or to email me (address available at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee). And please know that anything you do to make Wikipedia a calmer, more rational place, and a more reliable and authoritative source of information is more than appreciated by me, to say nothing of the many others who would agree. Jwrosenzweig 23:45, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Jwrosenzweig, thanks for your comments. It's good to know that there is a process by which such behavior can be dealt with collectively, instead of forcing individuals to chase down one edit after another. I can see that it will take some effort, and probably a fair amount of time, to put together a convincing rationale for sanctions, and it's a painful course that I do not enter lightly, but I'll look into it. —Steven G. Johnson 00:30, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
The AC can't do anything. The most they would do (and I must emphasize that this is highly unlikely) is deliberate for a month and then declare a light penalty, like a ban for a couple of months. Reddi is a calm, patient guy, he would probably take such a sentence in his stride. Just keep at him until you are sick of it, and hope that there is someone else to take your place when you give up. -- Tim Starling 02:46, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

The trouble with this is that science is not a cut and dried business with a 'right' and 'wrong' answer. All of the more interesting areas are disputed, with heated debate between scientists. To gang up on one user because they don't agree with you is jsut narrow minded and biggotted.

Transcluding pages (including special pages like WhatLinksHere, etc.) into a page

Is there a way (for Mediawiki software in general if it is not enabled on Wikipedia too) to get a webpage transcluded into a page (besides templates which I know can be transcluded)? How about "WhatLinksHere" or other Special command pages specifically? Other wiki software has this, and it can be very useful, especially if one can control the paramaters (e.g., how many items to show, etc.). Thanks. [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 20:31, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I know in particular that Special:Whatlinkshere/Frog works, for example. I'm not sure if this is special or if other generated pages allow to specify a parameter. I also don't know how to specify multiple parameters. Derrick Coetzee 01:20, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks...By transclusion, I meant that these links could be included inside of another page. For example, if someone on the Frog page wanted to show also on that same page everything that linked to that page (without needing to click "What links here"), some code could be inserted inside the Frog page to include that information. [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 20:12, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Nationalism Issue.

Dear Wikipedians,

I'd like to ask your advice how to deal with the aggressive nationalism.

The problem with aggressive nationalists is that they reject the common knowledge. They accept only invented terms and invented events that are not shared by most scholars. It makes article to look non-encyclopedic (because other encyclopedias use a scientific terms) and, what is even worse, the articles became incomprehensible to the common public.

If you prevent them from making extremely biased contributions, they start to vandalize user pages and to make different accusations. I don't care too much, even Angela's page is often vandalized too, but I'd like to ask those who have the experience in dealing agressive nationalism. Please, share your experience!

And also, maybe we should elaborate a bit more precise regulations related to nationalism and common use? Or I missed something, and it is done already?

Dr Bug  (Volodymyr V. Medeiko) 22:25, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia will always be better than the alternatives in this regard - because even if there's nationalist editors, there's enough of a variety that articles here are a lot less likely to be biased than in any deadwood encyclopaedia. History for example, will be attacked by such a variety of viewpoints, it will never look like the biased version that we are familiar with in our respective countries. So the only downside to it all, is that people will occasionally fail to work out an NPOV version. (Well, perhaps a bit more than occasionally - but it seems by and large to work in the end) zoney ▓█▒ talk 22:43, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I sympathize very much with your concern. (I defined the wiktionary term for "nationist" at Wiktionary's neologisms page to create a term as strong as racist to refer to nationalism in an inherently bad sense.) Maybe you could tactfully find a way to point out that distortions actually make the group they are representing look worse rather than better. You might also try to draw out of them a sense that it is not us vs. them but that their group is a valued part of our world culture. If they are religious, it may help to draw attention to the fact that the Deity recognized by their religious tradition does not see the world according to the piece of dirt people are born on. You should also be sure that your own prejudices as we all have are not missing some grain of truth in their own arguments. [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 03:47, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Winter Olympic Games page...

Has been vandalised. I'm going to edit out the language in a minute - but because I'm new here, what's the protocol? Is there a saved version of a proper article that has been deleted? Or does it start from scratch again?

Sorry if this is the wrong place to put this...

Edit: Sorry - someone was on top of it, obviously. Is fixed now.  :)

No worries! :-) In the future, know that you can always click the link to the page's history (for most of us, that's the tab marked "history" at the top of the page) to view previous versions. When the list comes up, click on the time/date stamp of any previous version to bring up the old saved version. Now, while that old version is displayed, simply click on "edit" and then save the page -- essentially, you're writing over the current version of the article with the content of the old version. So, when a vandal comes through and writes "penis" all over a page, just open the history and select the last version of the page before the vandal's arrival and save it, thereby erasing the vandalism. Be warned, though -- if you do this (it's called a "revert" or a "reversion") to erase any edit except clear vandalism, it can be very controversial. If the edit you're looking at is biased but does add some information to the article, try not to revert, but rather to edit the page so as to retain the additional information and eliminate the bias. Jwrosenzweig 23:51, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Language Disambiguation

Out of curiosity, how is disambiguation achieved with different languages? Sometimes a concept may be divided into two in another language or vice versa. Is there a special meta domain for such (bilingual) disambiguation or would people just add in links to multiple language pages if a page corresponds to two or more in another language? [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 23:55, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Most commonly, one just links to the most appropriate article in the other language; if there is another closely related meaning, you assume the articles will be linked within the other language's wikipedia. Is there a specific case you have in mind where this hasn't worked well, or is this really just "out of curiosity"? -- Jmabel 00:14, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it's just out of curiosity. But I imagine it could be a common issue. Sometimes a concept might not even occur to another language speaker as having the multiple connotations discussed on the page. (Even individual sections might require their own link...) [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 00:27, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Gmail invites

I have loads of Gmail invites if anyone wants one. Just drop a note on my talk page. blankfaze | (беседа!) 00:09, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Rargh. I've had Gmail ages and only just got 1 invite. Someone who got their account 2 weeks after me has had 5. Does it depend on how much you recieve or something? Darksun 08:12, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Activity seems to be what it depends on. [[User:Anárion|File:Anarion.png]] 10:02, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I have WikiEN-l, Wikipedia-l and the WikiEN-l admin emails all flowing into my Gmail, and only just got 4 invitations after having none for ages. I only got one after signing up. So I think it might be kind of random, really. Incidentally, I have 4 invites left now, as it seems my numbers have been replenished. If anyone wants one, leave me a message on my talk page. - Mark 16:00, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I got 6 invites to give immediately after sign up. Perhaps it's due to the activity of the user who invited me? zoney ▓█▒ talk 01:43, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I have a few to give out too. Email me or drop a note on my talk page. First come first served and all. —Morven 08:05, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)
Weird, I signed up and I have no invites. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 18:27, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There's nothing on the GMAIL article about invites. What are they?

The image at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Common_clownfish.jpg is used in the article Clownfish, yet the way it does so (within a table) somehow precludes discovering that fact via the usual automated "What links here" mechanisms. Can this be fixed? - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 02:47, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I doubt it's the table that's the problem. I suspect it's the template. The article doesn't actually contain a link to the image until the template is expanded. Note that Perciform, which is linked to in the same manner, also doesn't show Clownfish in its "What links here". -- Cyrius|✎ 03:53, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's aknown bug with templates, see Bug #48. andy 07:33, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As a workaround I've created the page Clownfish/template items. - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 22:21, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Moved to talk:Clownfish/template items since non-articles shouldn't be in the main namespace. Angela. 22:36, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks! - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 22:39, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

New policy proposal

Just so everyone knows, I'm proposing a new policy at Wikipedia:Administrators/Administrator Accountability Policy. Please, everyone, take this seriously. Discussion on this proposal shall last until 00:00 UTC on 29 August 2004, at which time voting will commence. Please do not edit this proposal, or vote before voting officially begins.

Feel free to discuss the policy, and suggest changes that you think should be made, but do not please edit the proposal itself. blankfaze | (беседа!) 03:06, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion phrases

I just wrote up a quick page, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion phrases that might be useful to include in the VfD template and as a link from VfD, to explain to new users why these phrases are used, and that they're not intended to be mean. I think this might go a long way towards helping newcomers understand Wikipedia better, especially since VfD can seem so hostile. I'm only a semi-regular of VfD, so others should look at it before we launch. [[User:Siroxo|Here is a schmancy new signature and a line of text that is long enough to show how it might look when there is some stuff coming before it. Please take a look at it to bask it in all of its radiant glory —siroχo

—siroχo 



#627562



#7b967b

#4d6c94]] 03:08, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
I think this is an excellent idea, and you've made a great start. I don't have time to look at it in much detail tonight, but if I have any comments tomorrow I'll leave them on it's Talk page. Niteowlneils 03:39, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Agree. Good stuff. Andrewa 19:32, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fiddling with template not working

I would like to make the TOC and the Template:MusicTimeline display right next to each other on pages like Timeline of trends in music (1920-1929). I aligned the template right and that gives the TOC plenty of room to move up, but it doesn't move up all the way and looks all squished. Can someone fix it? Is it my browser? (Mozilla 1.6/Mac OSX) Tuf-Kat 04:41, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

Mark your template as: <div style="float:right">[[Template:MusicTimeline]]</div>

Question about Argentine economic recession

Is there an article on the 2000 Argentine economic reccession? If not, Id be more than glad to, at least, begin a page about it.

Thanks and God bless you! Sincerely yours, "Antonio Senseless but not sexless Martin"

Untagged images - please help!

There are lists of untagged images at User:Yann/Untagged Images. Please help with tagging these, and remove any tagged ones from the lists. All images that are not tagged will not be included in the planned Mandrakelinux distribution (see m:Wikimedia and Mandrakesoft). Please see Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for details of how to tag images. Based on a sample of 277 untagged images, at least 1 in 5 should have been tagged GFDL. Therefore, there are 10,000 GFDL images that won't be distributed unless they are tagged. Angela.

I'm afraid I don't understand. How can we know how to tag an image if we don't know where it came from? — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:39, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
Often the uploader has written something on the page like "my own photo" or GFDL, but hasn't added the GFDL tag. If it's their own photo and they clicked the box to say "I affirm that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license it under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright", you can assume it's GFDL. Other images have a link to a source. If this source is a *.gov site, you can add {{PD-USGov}}. If it's a logo or album cover, you can generally assume it's {{fairuse}}. If the date is on the image description page, and it is before 1923, you can add {{PS-US}}. A lot of the time the image description page tells you what the licence is, but doesn't use a tag. To allow automatic filtering, we need the tags. Angela. 18:19, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
If you're really keen, you can also drop a few notes on user_talk pages to find locations for specific - remember there will be a lot of people around who uploaded images before tags existed, and have forgotten that they uploaded those images - and thus haven't gone back to tag them. User_talk messages might help jog the memory. Pcb21| Pete 18:27, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Minor clarification on what Angela wrote about *.gov websites. Works of the U.S. federal government are public domain. The same is not true for most U.S. state governments. Also, *.gov can host copyrighted material three random examples: the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center states "Some of the resources, or portions of them, are protected by copyright", the U.S. Geological Survey states that "Information presented on this website is considered public information (unless otherwise noted) and may be distributed or copied", and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service states "not all the information on our site is in the public domain". Be careful and happy tagging. Doppelgänger 22:36, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Is this the first time that the Wikipedia will be available in a way that off-line access is possible? - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 15:46, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

On a related matter I have just come across this, which concerns me somewhat. The welcome note says, misleadingly, that "most images taken from another website" can be tagged as fair use. The user then uploaded a photo (Image:Gibbs_nascar.jpg), was asked on his talk page to tag it, and promptly follwed the advice he had been given by tagging it as fair use, when it looks like a straightforward copyvio from [7]. We really do need to be much more careful about liberally slapping fair use notices on things. I know the discussion about whether such images are more trouble than they're worth and don't belong here is an old one, but if they are to be included we must at least have a decent verification system, whereby someone who knows what they are doing can go through and cull copyvios unless the uploader has provided a good solid rationale for tagging their image as fair use. — Trilobite (Talk) 01:03, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Geo-stub

The template:geo-stub has been added for geographical locations, landmarks, cities, etc. I have not added it to the list of templates, however I have begun changing several stub pages to use the geo-stub template. - Allyunion 10:54, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Still growning... now marked 24 articles in this category. - Allyunion 23:15, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Amazing... 16 more articles have been added... this time not by me ^^;; -- Allyunion 06:41, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Template for weather?

Just wondering... would some kind of template to link to a weather forecast be useful? --Allyunion 12:31, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Huh, you know, that might not be a bad thing. And since it's a template, it's not like we'd be editing the page constantly. Not quite sure where it'd belong, though. I'm enjoying your improvements, I think the Mapquest template could come into some good use.
As far as geo-stub, hm. Could be useful too, since the Stub category is woefully overcrowded. Still, not sure... --Golbez 15:36, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The Geography already has picked up 16 pages, based on looking at the Wikipedia:Most_wanted_stubs page. 16 pages - some are cities, but that already makes it very notable, if that were to grow, of course. -- Allyunion 21:41, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Weather template created here: Template:Weather; A few test runs should be conducted before listing it on the template page. The search is conducted using Yahoo! Weather, as I found that Weather.com costs money, but Yahoo! Weather does not. Anyway, the syntax is simple, however apparently picky as I've discovered so far. Example:

Part of a series on
Weather
Temperate and polar seasons
Tropical seasons
Storms
Precipitation
Topics
Glossaries
  Weather portal

is required. Perhaps adding a second parameter would be better suited to make the text look nicer. -- Allyunion 07:03, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Aum Shinrikyo

I would invite anyone interested to take a look at the entry on Aum Shinrikyo. The current version seems pretty tendentious, in a pro-Aum sort of way, although I just made some edits to try to improve it. I'm mentioning it here because I couldn't figure out which of several Wikipedia:collaboration pages would be best to use. Cleanup? Articles needing attention? Peer review? Requests for comment? Appreciate any advice. - Nat Krause 14:44, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'd suggest peer review. RFC is for article disputes (in other words, edit/revert wars). Cleanup is for articles which have good content but need to be formatted correctly per the manual of style. Johnleemk | Talk 18:36, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Vandals at work

Where I work, someone is blanking pages... --Sgeo | Talk 18:59, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia: Vandalism in progress. Derrick Coetzee 19:27, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Requests for summaries

Is Wikipedia:Requests for summaries watched by anyone who is likely to fill requests? There seems to have been practically no activity for most of a year, and no completed requests. The page seems well-intended but poorly executed. --Eequor 22:12, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I didn't even know it existed. :-) I'd say, if it is determined that it can serve a useful function, it needs someone to "captain" it and make it functional. Most projects here don't survive without that. Right now....I can't make heads or tails of it. Does anyone know what it was intended to do? Jwrosenzweig 23:16, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps move to Wikipedia:Peer review? [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 23:17, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

Adult content warning template?

Should there be an adult content warning template? In fact, would there be a need for it for any entry in the wikipedia? There might be some articles which border that line, but I'm just wondering if we should include a warning template to be on the safe side. However, this does open Pandora's box of suggestive articles that may not be wanted on the wikipedia. Just some thoughts. - Allyunion 23:35, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No. Never. Nowhere. RickK 23:39, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Content disclaimer should be enough of a warning. --Eequor 23:53, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Allyunion, I think you're right to suggest it would open Pandora's box. Many people are uncomfortable with some of the more risque content here, and I think dredging it up in their faces with such a discussion could actually lose us a few good editors. Anyone whose child isn't old enough to make up their own mind should supervise their child's Internet use, and anyone who's old enough not to be a child should know to avoid sex-related articles if it bothers them. It's not as though we give detailed pictures of sadomasochism in the middle of the article on kittens. :-) Any adult content here should always be a simple neutral description of an act or thing and its effects on society/culture -- certainly it can occasionally be words that we might not prefer a 7 year old to read unsupervised (though of course opinion is divided there), but I don't think we have anything requiring a warning. And if we do, it would be wise to discuss on that article's talk page the utility of the shocking content -- encyclopedias should never _seek_ to shock, but rather to report the truth in an unbiased manner (and if the truth shocks, so be it). That's my opinion. Jwrosenzweig 00:00, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Only if the template has an extremely pornographic icon on it. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:04, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You could use my naked tits picture if you want (see my user page under the red Warning sign) Theresa Knott (Hot net streak!) 01:05, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Nice looking pair of tits! Thanks for sharing.  ;-) pstudier 04:58, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
No. Adding such a label to (for example) list of sex positions will inevitably lead to non-explicit articles like homosexuality or perineum receiving the label because any sexuality-related content will offend someone. Wikipedia is neither babysitter nor censorware.
(Alternately, yes, but only if Cyrius' and Theresa's suggestions are followed.) -Sean Curtin 01:21, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)
I expect such a template would fairly quickly end up on BJAODN, so it may as well never exist. You ought eliminate the middleperson and add it to BJAODN directly. --Eequor 01:40, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Censorship of encyclopaedias is an interesting topic. Diderot's Encyclopedie had several explicit plates illustrating midwifry and hermaphrodism. Rees's Cyclopaedia (1802-1819) has a detailed article on midwifry by Bland, the leading expert of the time, the plates for which, after being engraved, were suppressed and never printed. Other parts of Rees needed very sensitive handling by the editors due to the anti-Jacobin feeling then rife in England. Parts of the article 'Generation' (aka reproduction) are in Latin. And then there is the Soviet Encyclopaedia, where pages were re-ussued as people and topics fell out of favour with Stalin. Having begun this train of thought I will add this topic to the main Encyclopaedia page and hope that others can add to it. Apwoolrich 06:48, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Sure, add the template. It would make it so much easier for everyone, kids included, to find all the "good parts" of Wikipedia. ;-) Jallan 14:05, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think it might be better to approach this from the opposite angle. Rather than flagging adult content pages, why not flag G-rated pages? This might be more acceptable to the many who protest at any suggestion of censorship, and also a lot easier to do. Andrewa 16:15, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If we did that, is there a possibility that mischievous users and/or users with an agenda would systematically apply that flag to every page? Either by using a bot, or by doing it manually, raunchiest pages first? Could that happen here in Wikipedia? Did I just ask some rhetorical questions? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 16:21, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It is certainly possible, and I'd say very likely. But whether this would be a significant problem, or even a show-stopper, I find it impossible to guess.
One of the reasons Wikipedia works is that nearly everyone wants most of it to be accurate. Even those who want to use Wikipedia to promote a software product, a political viewpoint or a career in showbiz all want the rest of Wikipedia to be as high-class, encyclopedic, NPOV and accurate as possible.
In fact that's a basic requirement for abusing Wikipedia in this way. It's only such a potentially useful platform for these causes if its reputation is high. Or to put it another way, if we accepted every vanity article, every micronation and every crackpot theory, there's every chance we'd get far fewer of these articles and edits, because such content then wouldn't fool anyone. It's only because the quality of Wikipedia articles is known to be surprisingly high that it's worthwhile trying to infiltrate them with lower quality information such as advertising, propaganda, and even jokes and pranks.
Personally, I hope we will eventually have a software supported, version-based approval mechanism, and I've previously described one of the several ways it could work. But I think this could be a very interesting interim solution. That doesn't mean it would work. I don't know, and I'd be very interested to find out whether it would, and how exactly it failed if not. Andrewa 15:36, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Achieving consensus

For all those stuck in endless disputes or attempts to achieve compromise (e.g. Talk:Georgia) I just thought I'd offer this quote:

"It is better to debate a question without settling it, than to settle a question without debating it - Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)

I came across it in John Gribbin's book, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat (see Schrödinger's Kittens).

zoney ▓█▒ talk 00:55, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

New WikiAwards Project

Hi, I'm trying to create a new project. Please read the introduction and see the History category as an example.

This project has caused some opposition and controversy and I would like to know if anyone supports my idea. Please answer here. Tks--05:02, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)Gameiro Pais

Please sign your posts (four tildes: ~~~~). Trilobite (Talk) 04:49, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I know. Sorry... Just forgot... By the way, what do you think of the project?--Gameiro Pais 05:02, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Admin, need merge on Filmfare Award and Filmfare award

I wrote a whole new article on Filmfare Award without being aware that Filmfare award already existed. These articles should be merged and perhaps a redirect put in place. Also, to avoid making such mistakes in the future, I'd like to know what the policy is on caps in article titles. Did I make a mistake in capitalizing Award? Also, should I have done a search before starting to write? Is that a recommended procedure?

Also, I wonder if it would be possible to have a utility that warned people that they were about to duplicate an article, if there already existed an article that differed only in capitalization. Zora 04:55, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:duplicate articles and Wikipedia:naming conventions. I think your version was at the correct title. I've merged in the additional information from Filmfare award to Filmfare Award but haven't merged the page histories since they overlap slightly. Filmfare award is now a redirect. Angela. 05:14, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure there's a page for this, but I can't find it

Can someone update Wikipedia:Most-edited talk pages, preferably removing the main page and any of its subpages from the list? Tuf-Kat 05:40, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

What is the sort order in the search results?

What is the sort order in the search results? My home pc search results are any of the following ascending/descending orders:

  • Alphabetical
  • Date last modified
  • Size

But the Wikipedia in-house search appears to be none of these. I can't work it out. Does anybody know what it is and why? Bobblewik  (talk) 11:35, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's, theoretically, by relevence. Unfortunately it's a rather terrible search and doesn't always give relevent results. Perhaps the Wikimedia Foundation should purchase a Google Search Appliance? Derrick Coetzee 16:14, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. I am not sure how they work relevance with single word searches. To use a specific example: a search for the one word 'tonga' produces:
  • Article matches:
    • 1. Tonga (13812 bytes)
    • 2. History … (2459 bytes)
    • 3. Geography … (3105 bytes)
    • 4. Demographics … (3056 bytes)
    • 5. Politics … (7671 bytes)
    • 6. Tonga/Economy (30 bytes)
    • 7. Communications … (614 bytes)
    • 8. Transportation … (788 bytes)
    • 9. Tonga Defence … (937 bytes)
    • 10. Economy … (5953 bytes)
  • Page matches:
    • 1. Archipelago (3457 bytes)
    • 2. Demographics … (1892 bytes)
    • 3. Abel … (3542 bytes)
    • 4. Asian … (4199 bytes)
    • 5. Bat (11538 bytes)
    • 6. British … (42112 bytes)
    • 7. List … (24431 bytes)
    • 8. Convention on Biological … (4138 bytes)
    • 9. Convention on Fishing … (1442 bytes)
    • 10. Convention on the … (1784 bytes)
Not alphabetical order, not size order, not date modified order, and not relevance order (that I can see). Weird. Bobblewik  (talk) 21:22, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
"Perhaps the Wikimedia Foundation should purchase a Google Search Appliance?". Yes, but they cost $32000 for two years (ouch). Perhaps the Wikimedia Foundation should instead ask Google to lease us one for free. We are, after all, a "worthy cause"; perhaps a job for the nascent Google Foundation? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:37, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps once other sites which need decent search capabilities start using MediaWiki, we might see some improvements to the internal search engine. I think $32000 could be better spent. Angela. 22:30, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)
Agree. The original Google remains available of course. Having previously expressed the opinion that we didn't need our own internal search engine at all for the online version, I'm now finding ours very useful when it's available. Of course any offline version needs it, so that might be another incentive to develop or acquire a better one. Andrewa 15:44, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

BR

What's the advantage of/reason to change <br> into <br /> that I occasionally see on some pages? I know XML requires a closing tag in that fashion, but is that the reason? -- Golbez

Yes. Tags without a closing tag must close themselves with the trailing slash for XML (and thus XHTML) conformance. -- Cyrius|✎ 14:33, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's not necessary here, MediaWiki automatically puts it there if it isn't there already. Goplat 15:10, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Some us have a lot of occasion (outside wiki-land) to hand-write XML (including XHTML). Someone (including me) might be editing for other purposes and change <br> to <br /> almost by reflex. -- Jmabel 21:26, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

Vandalism threat

I originally tagged Intelivand Technologies Inc for speedy deletion, but it seems worth mentioning it here. I still think it should be speedied, as obvious vandalism, but perhaps one or two of the admins should be aware of the (probably idle) threats first. --195.11.216.59 14:41, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Deleted as vandalism. A copy still exists at User:216.148.246.134 for anyone who wants to see. -- Cyrius|✎ 15:11, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Templates stop after 5 iterations

I recently designed Template:OMIM to rapidly create links to the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man database (the McKusick catalogue). On porphyria, however, I discovered that if I link to the template more than five times, it is not processed by the wiki but replaced with Template:OMIM. Why is this, and how can I make sure the code is still processed? (Replies on my talk page please...) JFW | T@lk 16:09, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This will be fixed in 1.4 -- Tim Starling 16:52, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

Michael/Mike Garcia

Is there a reason that banned user Michael is being allowed to edit Wikipedia? The note on his user page from Jimbo suggests that nothing has changed, and I see now he's adding a lot of info to various album pages, which as I recall was the behavior that precipitated banning in the first place. I don't see an open apology anywhere, or any other indication that he's satisfied any requirements which would allow him to return, and in the absence of a proclamation by Jimbo or the AC (and frankly, as a member of the AC, I don't even know if _we_ could end his ban), shouldn't this user account be banned like all the rest? Can anyone help me understand what's going on? Jwrosenzweig 17:01, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

According to the Block log, it seems that whenever Michael is blocked, Guanaco unblocks him. Example:
23:27, 24 Aug 2004 Guanaco unblocked "User:Mike Garcia" (Please don't block this account. Michael can create as many accounts as he wants whenever he wants. Contact me personally if you really feel the need to block him.)
I suggest you take the matter up with Guanaco. There is supposedly a way to deal with rogue sysops. Doppelgänger 20:15, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The only advantage I see to unblocking the account is this: if Michael edits only as Mike Garcia, the nonsense he writes will at least be collected in one place, rather than scattered between any number of AOL proxies and sockpuppets. Thus his errors can be corrected, reverted, flagged as such, or deleted with relative ease. However, Mike Garcia is editing fast (64 edits today, around 150 yesterday) and little is being done about the reams of false information he must have inserted by now. —No-One Jones 20:31, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Earlier I picked one of the new Michael articles by chance, and it had a wrong release date - I believe amazon more than Michael. Thus he does all the same as he did before Jimbo banned him long time ago - inserting wrong information all over again and again. And I cannot see any excuse to all those users and admins he insulted, annoyed, kept off from productive work with his vandalism while being banned. While I cannot believe why this guy does not understand he is not wanted here even though being shown him for one-and-a-half year already - allowing him doing the same harm on the credibility of wikipedia as he did before is inacceptable. And Jimbo's word that he is still banned should answer all questions. andy 20:41, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
[8] -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:50, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The AC has the power to unban permanently banned users after a year. The e-mail sent by Jimbo Wales confirming Michael's ban status was sent in May 2003. Guanaco 01:25, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Some comments on Michael. For two years, people have attempted to block Michael. It hasn't worked. Period. It has been going on for two years. Meanwhile, everytime he is blocked, I am blocked too. Why? Because Michael uses AOL, and I happen to use AOL. Wi will not get into an argument with anyone about whether I should be using AOL or not. That is no one's business. The fact is that I do, as do many millions of people around the US. Are we going to ban them all to deal with one user, Michael? I would hope not, especially since we have seen that banning him has not worked for two years. So, what do we do about Michael? Over the past week, I have contacted him. He is currently in discussion with Jimbo, so that we can find a way to possibly incorporate his edits in some manner in Wikipedia. From what we have been told, Michael is 14. That means, this all began when he was 12. He is a kid, and he was a kid then. Personally, I want to believe Michael is trying to reform. I think he has a lot to learn, and a lot of growing up to do. No, I do not think we are a babysitting service. On the other hand, I do think we have a problem, we have had this problem for a very long time (more than most users have even been around), and none of the attempted solutions has worked so far. Let's try another way. There are many compromises I can think of. Put a notice over articles that Michael edits, which will be removed once his edits have been verified. Allow him to make a limited amount of edits a day. Allow him to edit in his user space. Have him get his edits verified by a trusted user. Just continuing this blocking spree is not working, it ends up hurting established users (including myself--I had to unblock myself to make this edit), making it impossible for a large group of potential new editors to come on board, and infuriating Michael and potentially resulting with him going on a new vandalism spree. Since it hasnt helped yet, I doubt it will help now. The zero-result is certainly not worth the cost. Spending an afternoon deleting edits, even after other users have verified them or edited them, is certainly not worth the cost. Banning a 14 year old for the rest of his life is not worth the cost. Frankly, I am very annoyed. Danny 23:12, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

He seems to intentionally put the wrong release date on albums - I just fixed a couple of his errors on Social Distortion. I think with his history here, it's safe to say that he is still a bad faith editor. Keep him banned. Rhobite 23:53, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

It's not our call. This is the only editor that Jimbo has specifically hard banned. He does not want him here. And he should not be allowed to put one word on a page until he apologizes to all concerned, ESPECIALLY to Zoe and Hephaestos. RickK 23:55, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

I completely agree with Rick. Micheal is banned. The problems that Danny is having are caused by people trying to block michael. (I've been guilty of this in the past) I agree that blocking him does more harm than good and fully support Guanaco's unblocking. What we should be doing is reverting micheal. Reverting everything he touches is the only way to deal with him because he writes far too much for us to keep up with him if we check everything for accuracy.And anyway he is banned, so none of his edits should be allowed to stand. Theresa Knott (The token star) 00:03, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
And I completely agree with Theresa. There are far more of us than there are of Michael, so I believe that we can keep up with the task of reverting all of his edits without too much problem. I'm hoping, hoping, hoping that soon Wikipedia will get some sort of per-article banning capability so that banning Michael from editing album articles won't affect everyone else on AOL so much. Bryan 00:41, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It is impossible to keep up with his edits unless he edits with an account. And he won't edit with an account if we use it as a way to easily revert all his edits. The amount of edits he makes is much too large to keep track of if he edits anonymously from AOL proxies, and we can't block all of AOL, so the only option is to come to a compromise. Danny has suggested several very good ways we could work with Michael.
Our goal is to build an accurate and neutral encyclopedia. That is why we're here, and that is why Michael is banned. That is now why Michael should be conditionally unbanned. Guanaco 01:21, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Michael typically edits quickly, often from IP addresses, and has entered IRC in the past declaring himself explicitly to be "The Wikipedia vandal." He is not reforming. He is not reformable. He wants to destroy Wikipedia, and has admitted as much. He is destructive. He is very hard to track - he edits music articles, which is a very broad base, and about 50% of his information is accurate, making it prone to passing a sniff test. Keeping up with him and fact-checking his material is time-consuming in the extreme.

I'm sorry if it screws over some AOL users. But I'm very, very hesitant to accept a solution that lets such an active and destructive force remain unchecked. Snowspinner 01:01, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

The solutions that have been proposed would not leave Michael unchecked. They are designed to make him want to make accurate edits, and he would know that he would risk being rebanned if he were to violate those terms. Guanaco 01:21, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
So, wait, let me get this straight. Because banning Michael was ineffective and he could get around it, we should let him back because the threat of a ban is going to be meaningful to him? You've already said the ban is ineffective - and Michael knows it as well. The threat of being rebanned is meaningless.
Furthermore, I don't understand why Michael is being given some kind of "chance." He has declared his intent to vandalize and disrupt Wikipedia. He has demonstrated his intent to vandalize and disrupt Wikipedia.
Some people do not come to Wikipedia with any intention of helping build an encyclopedia. Some people get their kicks disrupting and vandalizing other people's projects. Michael is one of those people. We should not waste our time giving him chances. We shouldn't have to waste our time reverting him either, but sadly, we do. Snowspinner 02:17, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)
It's a question of values. Guanaco wants to find a solution that allows WP to work and lets Danny and who knows how many other AOL users to contribute (and some of my best friends are AOL users!). You apparently are more concerned with punishing Michael than with finding a solution that helps WP function.
Again, it's a matter of values: some philosophers would agree with you that punishment, even punishment that "destroys the village in order to save it", is worthwhile because it enforces moral absolutes. Others would argue for utility. Or even for reform rather than punishment. It's all a matter of values; and de gustibus non est disputantum, your values are as legitimate as anyone else's. Contrawise, their values are as legitimate as yours too. -- orthogonal 03:41, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I do not respond to posts by this user Snowspinner
The threat of being rebanned is not meaningless, because he does not like when his articles are deleted and his edits are reverted. He wants his edits to be kept. If we keep him banned, he'll make over 100 edits per day and we'll revert/delete about half ot those. If he's unbanned, he'll only as many edits as we let him, and we'll verify all of them.
The identity of "Michael" in the IRC channel has not been confirmed. It was from AOL, but there are a lot of people from AOL. Anyway, since then, he has apologized for what he has done and Mike Garcia has offered explanations and apologies about inaccuracies when questioned.
Michael wants to contribute, or he would not have created so many articles. There are serious problems with what he does, and he has played jokes in articles in the past, but no one has suggested that he not be watched. Giving him a chance could waste some of our time, but it would waste a lot less than constant reversion. Guanaco 03:45, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC) (edit conflict)
I think it's just incredibly foolish to offer any degree of trust to Michael. He's a solidly clever vandal. That's been proven. But trusting him is asking for trouble. He's hard banned, and he's hard banned for a reason. He's sufficiently hard banned that Jimbo has said he should be reverted even on Jimbo's user talk page. And that was quite recently. Unless Jimbo feels like reversing that ban, which, recently, he's shown no evidence that he does, I think that Michael is hard banned, and that he should be reverted on sight. Snowspinner 16:53, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

It seems to me that blocking him is not working; people have alleged that the article 2004 in music has been damaged by his anonymous edits, for instance. So I would say the rational thing is to let him have his new account, and we can be sure that people will be very wary of his edits and check to verify them. Otherwise, people don't know any particular article has been edited by Michael and they may just assume good faith. Certainly I am not prone to fact-checking every little thing an anonymous contributor adds to an article, as long as the edit looks generally legit. But if I saw Mike Garcia had made the edit, I definitely would check. Everyking 01:23, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Have you read Jimbo's comments on User:Mike Garcia? This is the only person Jimbo has specifically banned. Who made Danny and Guanaco God that they can make this decision unilaterally? And how dare Guanaco list me on Vandalism in progress for reverting Michael's additions, in following what is the only consensus standard for Michael's behavior? And how dare he threaten me with blocking for doing so? RickK 04:29, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

So here is a proposal: blocks on IP addresses should (1) prevent anons at those addresses from editing, (2) prevent new account creation from those addresses. IP blocks should not prevent people logging into existing accounts and editing. Thus, all of AOL's IP space can be blocked if necessary and Danny can still work. If Michael tries to use an account that he has already created, that will be noticed and the account will be blocked. Finally he will be unable to edit without going outside AOL. --Zero 07:05, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'll try to bring some fresh eyes to the problem. Wikipedia:List of banned users includes several users who have been banned by Jimbo, so Michael is not a special case. Regarding blocking User:Michael, Wikipedia:Banning policy states: Account blocks: The primary account of any banned user, if they have one, is blocked for the duration of the ban. If the banned user creates "sock puppet" accounts to evade the ban, these may also be blocked (the times can vary). It seems clear from that statement than any admin can block Michael or Mike Garcia at any time. However, it also says we need to try to avoid inconvenience or aggravation of any victims of mistaken identity. So, if banning Michael causes us to block all users from AOL, than we've serously tipped the scale in the direction of inconvenience for innocent victims. Allowing established logged in users from AOL to edit while hindering new accounts or annon edits is also bad, as we've cut off a potentially huge pool of new editors.
Appeals for bans are possible, however, the ArbCom can not innitiate such an appeal. The policy states: Users who have been permanently banned may, if they wish, appeal to the arbitration committee or Jimbo Wales after one year. That clearly places the responsibility to start the process on the banned user. Until Michael asks the Arbitration Committee to overturn his ban, they have no authority to do so, and neither do individual arbitrators. I do not know if Michael has asked the committee to commute his sentence, but clearly Jimbo has not lifted the ban. At this point, Michael remains banned, users (including sysops and arbitrators) should not be inviting him to edit, and all his edits may be reverted by any user without discussion. However, when dealing with Michael, or any banned user for that matter, it is best to be polite; no one bennefits from hasty words typed in anger or frustration. Try to immagine how you would feel if you were the banned user.
The above is the opinion of Gentgeen, who is solely responsible for it's content. 07:48, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think we are confusing two issues here.

Should Michael be hard banned?

This is a matter for Jimbo. Guanaco and some others above seem to be questioning this, and some of their actions seem to circumvent the ban. This worries me a great deal.

How should the ban be enforced?

This is something I'm happy to see debated here, and I can support the actions and arguments of Guanaco and others in trying to make the ban effective. Andrewa 16:00, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Andrewa. Michael is banned by Jimbo's authority, and only Jimbo and/or the Wikimedia Board of Trustees have the authority to reverse that ban. However, ban is not the same thing as block. Blocks are a technological means used for, among other things, enforcing formal bans. Danny makes a good argument for why we should not use blocks to enforce the ban on Michael. For a long time we blocked all of Halifax, Nova Scotia to deal with a banned user, and I don't think that was a good idea either.
However, Michael is still banned, and I believe the essential aspect of a ban is that he is not allowed to contribute to Wikipedia. So regardless of whether we try to block his accounts, all of his edits, especially to articles, can and should be reverted, with no further justification necessary. --Michael Snow 23:19, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Renaming VfD and wordsmithing the article tag

Nothing will make VfD pleasant for the contributor of an article, but I really do believe that the current way in which Votes for Deletion is named and presented is inducing misunderstandings, unnecessarily contentious behavior, and hurt feelings in some well-meaning newbies unfamiliar with our process. A discussion of possible new names for the page and new wording for the tag is taking place at Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion. An example of one proposal is that the page be named "Article inclusion debates" and that the tag look something like this:

Those interested, please join in at Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 17:11, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm usually against hypocritical political correctness - but this I like. Quite smooth-talking - a lot less in your face. I also like the inclusion of a "guide" link, as behaviour on VfD needs to correspondingly change, or this solution will simply be hypocritical PC nonsense. zoney ▓█▒ talk 21:39, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Request for comments

I've written a proposal for m:Automatic unit conversion including what I feel are the most important points. It can be found at http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=235. Please indicate your opinions regarding this proposal. --Eequor 18:57, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

m:Automatic unit conversion doesn't exist. It is possible to vote for this proposal if you support it, but this does not guarantee the developers will work on it any more than on one with no votes. See Wikipedia:MediaZilla for more info. Angela. 22:56, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

National Monuments

Can someone with knowledge confirm that the buildings mentioned in Columbus, Indiana as National Historic Landmarks are National Monuments? Dunc_Harris|☺ 19:26, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

According to http://www.cr.nps.gov/nhl/designations/listsofNHLs.htm ,yes, it's true. RickK 20:04, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw that but I think they're privately owned which might make them illegible, but instead a National Historic Site. Dunc_Harris|☺ 20:40, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

They are just National Historic Landmarks, not Monuments or Historic Sites. The only National Memorial in Indiana is the Lincoln Boyhood Memorial and there are no National Historic Sites as Appendix B on the list says. Rmhermen 00:22, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)
I assume you mean ineligible? They are perfectly legible AFAIK. Andrewa 01:02, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators/Administrator Accountability Policy

Due to concerns from multiple users, the period allotted for discussion on this proposal has been extended by 48 hours. Voting will now begin at 00:00 UTC, 31 August 2004 and last until 00:00 UTC, 7 September 2004. Thanks. blankfaze | (беседа!) 21:41, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

New Stubs to Use

I'm sorting out the stubs, and as I go around sorting, I'm creating several broad stub categories to use to sort stubs. Please be advised before using {{stub}} to check the stub categories before marking your pages as a simple stub. Thanks! - Allyunion 23:40, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Alternatively, check at Wikipedia:Template messages#Stubs (hint, hint) ;) - 23:49, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
Stub categories are updated more frequently than Wikipedia:Template messages#Stubs. (That's because, I end up having to updating both myself.) -- Allyunion 11:29, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, but ideally, Wikipedia:Template messages should be a quick one-stop shop for (almost) everybody's templating needs. So it's important to try and keep it up to date. - 17:52, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
Isn't there a category for list-stubs? LISTDEV? LISTSTUB. Vaguely remember that these exist... --Tagishsimon
Try Wikipedia:Template messages#Lists. ;) - 17:52, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

Suffixes in the Wikipedia

I think the following articles should be moved to the Wiktionary, but I don't want to get anyone mad or have revision wars over the fact. Please see the following articles: -cide, -cycle, -cracy, -ic, -ism, -ist, -ography, -oid, -ology, -omics, -onomy, -onym, -philia, -phobia, -scope, -stan, -ware

Found while stub sorting. -- Allyunion 00:11, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Look like Wiktionary articles to me. --Tagishsimon

They do provide useful lists of words that use the suffixes though, and those are pretty much Wikipedia material. The lists at least should be left. (perhaps each moved to some better name). I agreee that the definitions parts are Wiktionary material. —siroχo 00:22, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Siroxo that the lists are encyclopedic and/or an almanac-like list, which is included in Wikipedia--can't get such a list from m-w.com. Of the ones I've checked, -ography seems to be the best example of the potential these articles have to be 'pedia-worthy (oh, even better is -ology and -ism). If we're going to have a list anyway, I think some prose at the top to set context is reasonable. As for the articles they link to, I think they would need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis--take a look at biography--hardly a dicdef. On the other hand, -stan and especially (at least the current contents) -ware have a bit of a "what doesn't belong in this set" flavor to them. If you check the histories, -ism, -ology, and -phobia have had contributions from dozens of Wikipedians, and the rest average almost eight different contributors. Also, the 17 articles in this series were started by at least 8 or 9 different Wikipedians. Finally, at least two have inter-wiki links from other language Wikipedias. Wholesale transfer to Wiktionary doesn't seem appropriate to me. Some of the articles are certainly less developed than others, but that can be said about most any category of articles on Wikipedia. Niteowlneils 21:17, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Even so, if the entry is still looking like a definition, it can moved to the Wiktionary then redirected back to the Wikipedia. As it stands, a lot of the features in the Wiktionary don't exist like the features in Wikipedia -- just because the Wiktionary is new. Perhaps using a basic definition in Wiktionary would be useful then putting a "See also" to point to the Wikipedia for any words on that list. Normally, suffixes are in a dictionary, as opposed to a encyclopedia. It just seems so... out of place to me. -- Allyunion 11:21, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Downloading log files?

Does anybody know where I can download a few days worth of Wikipedia hit log files? I'd like to do some analysis on them, but I can't figure out where they're kept.

Thanks, --William Pietri 00:30, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

We don't have daily log files. We have log files for the current month, updated nightly. If you take the difference from one nightly log file to the next, you can calculate the day's hits. →Raul654 00:37, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)
Ah, I was looking for the raw log files, with Referer information. I was curious do some analysis on Wikipedia usage patterns, including how people come in via search engines and what they do after that point. But I gather you're saying that raw hit logs just aren't collected on a regular basis? In that case, are there older ones around, perhaps collected during an optimization run? --William Pietri 00:44, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The raw logs are available only to wikimedia's developers. Publishing them would be a major issue, as in general we view people's IPs, the sites and pages they visit, and what they do here to be private information. A lot of people would be very pissed off if the raw logs were available to the casual visitor. I suppose if there were such a thing as a decent unified logfile sanitiser (which removed/abstracted IP information) then publishing that would be an option. But if I were running such a sanitiser, I'd surely have it purge the referrer information too, as (occasionally) there's juicy info in the referring URL (particularly when the referrer is an email in a webmail service, and sometimes a search query). That said, there doesn't seem to be such a program anyway (I guess I don't know what it would be called, so it's rather hard to google for it). The problem of examining the log files is compounded by wikimedia's server setup - most pages are served ex-cache by one of the frontline squid servers; so we'd need to publish a number of the (huge) squid logs too. It would indeed be a very interesting exercise to run some analyses of the logs, as there's all kinds of things we don't know about how visitors and search engines enter, move around, and leave the site. If we could figure out an acceptable way to do things then there is much value to be mined. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:58, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Right, logs are private. You can find some statistics extracted from log files, including a list of referrers, on the Webalizer stats page. -- Tim Starling 01:28, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

Reproduction fees/copyrights/public domain

In view of the discussions in various places about image copyrights, I have written a piece about reproduction fees. Apwoolrich 08:27, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia: "outrageous," "repugnant" and "dangerous"

So tell us something we didn't know :) Nice story on BoingBoing] --Tagishsimon

Well, people should doubt Wikipedia, and everything else too. pstudier 21:58, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fasoldt's column is here and here; Techdirt's reply is here. Marnanel 22:39, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Baggies; baggies. Noisy 22:45, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Susan Stagnitta of the Liverpool High School library claims that "there is no editorial review of the content." I'd just like to document here and now that that is patently false. While level of editorial review can be argued, it certainly exists as any Wikipedian knows. That said, many believe that it now exists at level higher than most encyclopedias. —siroχo 23:20, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)
I've heard there's no editorial control of Liverpool High School publications. Or, at least, I deduce that's the case since they, as Wikipedia, do not employ an Editor. --Tagishsimon
I wrote this letter to Al Fasoldt, feel free to use all or part of it to e-mail him yourself. —siroχo 00:10, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

Shrug it off. Don't spend too much effort trying to convert people who have made up their minds, other than correcting outright errors of fact. Wikipedia is what it is. Wikipedia say "edit this page" on every page, so it's not as if Wikipedia were pretending to be anything other than it is. People will make their judgements of what they trust and believe in the same ways they make their judgements about anything else they trust and believe in. As Wikipedia becomes better known we will see more of this. The very idea is going to drive some people bananas; the only reason we haven't seen more of this is that Wikipedia isn't really that well known yet. Just wait until Microsoft sees Wikipedia having an effect on Encarta! And just wait until the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute decides to take at look at Wikipedia. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 10:30, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Copyweird

The Habanero-tan article contains some text from this page (the original version was almost entirely excerpted from that page). I asked the author of that page if he was the contributor, and got this reply:

Actually, I didn't submit this article to Wikipedia myself, but it seems as though someone did. Since the Wikipedia article links back to the "Ask John" article on the AnimeNation site, we have no complaints.

My question is, is that enough? I kinda don't think so, but how should I follow up? — Gwalla | Talk 03:57, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

My view is that is quite enough. Note it on the Talk page of the article. Permission has been given, albeit implicitely; and, better, you've taken the trouble to raise your concern with them: they've said they have no concern. An all round good result. Award yourself a nice refreshing cup of tea and cease your needless worrying. --Tagishsimon
This could potentially be taken as a conditional permission. I would carefully mark the link they speak of to discourage other editors from removing it, and try to get more unconditional permission, or better, convert it to a quote, in which case it becomes fair use. Derrick Coetzee 20:38, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Lymeswold Cheese Effect

Don't know if this has been observed a hundred times before but if you do a Google search for "Lymeswold cheese" the 3rd hit takes you to a Wikipedia edit screen (we don't have an article for it yet). I'm not some freaky cheese person who goes around looking up solid milk, I was merely looking at List of major flops and noticed the red link. It was all perfectly innocent. And, anyway, I am a consenting adult. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 17:16, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

See Robots.txt#Don't index vs don't spider. Doppelgänger 17:24, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Oh those pesky red links. Perhaps now that a stub exists, at Google’s next run the edit link will be removed by a real link… (Someone from the UK should check the article, it’s extremely difficult to find info on this and I am not certain I have my facts straight.) [[User:Anárion|File:Anarion.png]] 21:48, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

All your Wikipedia are belong to us

Look! We've been collectively enslaved by IBM: "Also in the R&D bag of tricks were new Wiki tools that would rationalize the creation, exiting, posting and tracking of group knowledge. Researchers showed off IBM's Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia, as fruit of that research." - CMPNet Asia. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 19:38, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

I wrote a snotty email about that to CMPNet the day after it appeared, but they haven't had the grace to reply... -- Arwel 20:42, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I bet it was a journalist cockup rather than a IBM one though. These things almost always are. Pcb21| Pete 20:59, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Weird. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 21:01, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I just wrote an e-mail to the editor ofCMPnetAsia.com. Hopefully they'll get around to correcting the mistake. —siroχo 22:22, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)
We should document this somewhere to quote the next time a journalist suggests that Wikipedia suffers from poor information quality... (;-> Andrewa 22:52, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hear, hear. Andrewa has a very fine point. When I read the CMPNet article I looked all over for the "edit page" button but couldn't find it... Antandrus 23:27, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Finding the content of some long-deleted pages

I was looking through my watchlist and discovered a couple of pages that had been deleted, and that furthermore were so deleted that I didn't even get a "view or restore deleted edits" link. They're administrative pages and probably don't need to be restored, but I would like to get ahold of the text that was in some of them since it may be relevant at some point in the future. Does anyone have suggestions on how I might go about finding this? Bryan 19:45, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Talk to one of the programmers, they have access to the logs. RickK 23:19, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

Deleting user pages - Proposal almost ready

There is a new proposed policy at Wikipedia:deletion of user subpages. In a nutshell the proposal is in future to use a new section of requests for comment instead of VfD to propose deletion of pages in the user namespace.

There have been no objections to this idea since it was proposed at Wikipedia talk:votes for deletion#deleting user subpages some time ago. I think I've now done all I need to do before having a vote on it, which is proposed to start in another week, although I'll continue to make minor clarifications as they occur to me. Have a look at it in that time, those interested, as I propose to freeze it for the purpose of the vote in a week's time. Andrewa 20:01, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Does it really make any sense to "delete" user pages? As I understand it, no pages are being removed from the database, so the claim of using Wikipedia as a free server is totally baseless. Wikipedia continues to act as a server; the pages are simply invisible to most users. It strains credibility to claim that any material on any user page can be objectionable; nobody is forced to read a user page while reading an encyclopedia article. --Eequor 07:20, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Too many mirrors of Wikipedia content?

I was looking at the Wikipedia article on Four-character idioms, so I decided to go onto Google to see whether there were other websites that elaborated on this topic, but when I typed the query "four-character idiom" into Google, all of the hits that came back turned out to be just carbon copies of the Wikipedia article, and I'm concerned that all of the independent websites that elaborate on the topic I was looking for have been squeezed out by all of the Wikipedia-copying sites, so no further information can be found on this topic over the Web, even though many people are interested in such a topic. I'm thinking that there should be a limit to the number of websites that directly copy Wikipedia's articles, so we could indeed find more information to put into the Wikipedia articles. Denelson83 22:42, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • Ah, but then Wikipedia would no longer be GFDL. That would definitely be Bad. I think it's a good thing that so many sites are using our content, though I do wish some of them would give attribution a little more prominently, rather than having a tiny footnote, buried in a paragraph of seemingly unrelated text, stating that the content comes from Wikipedia. But one of our goals is to promulgate knowledge, and these sites are certainly helping with that. Also, the more mirrors there are, the less (we hope) demand there will be on Wikipedia's servers. -- Wapcaplet 23:06, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Not only bad, but probably not even possible. To change Wikipedia's licence at this point would require all of the holders of copyrights to its content to agree to it. I doubt anyone would be able to even find 90% of them, let alone get them to agree on anything like this. I think this proliferation of mirrors is a problem for Google to sort out, not Wikipedia. It's their responsibility to make their search engine useable, not ours. Bryan 23:11, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I doubt it would help (even if the problems already raised could be somehow overcome), in fact it might be counterproductive by reducing the incentive for mirrors and other content users to comply with the GFDL. What might help would be to clarify our interpretation of the GFDL to require or at least request complying content users on the Web to have the word "Wikipedia" in text on the page rather than just as a logo, as some of them now do.
Have you tried excluding "Wikipedia" from your searches? That still eliminates most of the copies for the moment. I do this so often I'm thinking of setting up a hotkey to do it! Andrewa 23:16, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Tried, and failed. Still got too many carbon copies. Even tried excluding "GNU", "FDL", and "GFDL" from my search, but that too didn't work. I don't see anything wrong with other sites copying Wikipedia's content verbatim, but it's an issue if the number of sites that do goes into overkill. Denelson83 23:27, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Try excluding "destroy all cooking utensils" from your searches. That reduces the number of hits I get from about 30,000 to about 467. Eugene van der Pijll 23:51, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This issue comes up a lot. There are some discussion pages dedicated to it (see elsewhere on this page). I think the only real solution is to mandate that the Wikipedia credit message and source link are conspicuously shown at the top of mirror pages. Besides just keeping people coming to the main, up-to-date, editable site, it would also make "-wikipedia" more effective, since Google excludes keywords beyond a certain point in a page. Then, anyone else coming up would be noncompliant, and so subject to legal action. Derrick Coetzee 23:54, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As noted above, Wikipedia is GFDL. Anybody else can use Wikipedia content however they wish, as long as they freely provide copies in some form. We can't mandate anything for mirrors. --Eequor 00:01, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
GFDL is not public domain; we are allowed to and in fact do make a number of significant requirements on those using our content, and many people illegally violate these or comply as minimally as possible. The GPL has similar requirements for giving credit to the original authors of software like Linux and Emacs. Derrick Coetzee 00:45, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
That page contains only one legally binding requirement: follow the GFDL. The main problem is that the current license specifies "no invariant sections", so Wikipedia can't mandate any particular notice. --Eequor 01:01, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
What is the position where a clone messes up a format on a Wikipdia page? I have been looking at a piece I wrote on Portsmouth Block Mills and find that www.pedia.nodeworks.com has it, but has changed the format so the headings are misplaced and all the references run on as a block. It looks a mess, and I don't know I would want my name associated with it. Does this conflict with our licence? Apwoolrich 05:46, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
No; the GFDL permits anybody to make any changes whatsoever to the content, even if they're ugly. --Eequor 07:08, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
On the other hand www.omniknow.com has it right and has a sentence asking readers to make donations to Wikipedia to continue the work! I wish there were more like that! Both these sites have pages listing all the topics in Wikipedia. Needless-to-say my original article is not yet noticed by Google!! Apwoolrich 05:46, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Here's an Idea

Currently the contrib list is in ascending order, perhaps it would be nice to do a descending order? This way it would be easier to find what my xth edit is (for this page) — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 00:09, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A sneaky idea for page rank

Ok, this is sneaky, this is awesome. Everyone's been complaining for various reasons about how many wikipedia mirrors do not link back to wikipedia's articles properly. One of the most upsetting features of this is that other websites get higher google page ranks than us.

How about this sneaky way of avoiding that. Why not automatically embed a link back to the article, somewhere in the article? It could be an automatic thing without the arrow. Most mirrors won't take the time to remove it from each article, and we'll have the link we want for the page rank. Its not at all dishonest, after all, they are required to link back.

Anyways, I just thought I'd throw it out there.

—siroχo 00:24, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

You could set a piece of code in the article that when it's viewed from en.wikipedia.org it doesn't show it. Or in some other way to not be intrusive upon our readers but still "fool" the page rank. Overall, it's a nice idea. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 00:30, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Before we do this, has anyone tried emailing Google? --Golbez 00:30, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)
I bet someone has. I mean, it'd be like if we were looking for a phone and nobody tried looking on the hook. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 00:46, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  1. There is no requirement to link back in the GFDL.
  2. Google doesn't get involved in these kinds of politics.
  3. If this is going to be done, it has to go into the DB, and it has to go into every single row of the cur table. That's the only way it's going to get incorporated into the forks.
  4. If the message is so intrusive that we must set a piece of code to hide it in en, then you should expect forks to do the same.
anthony (see warning) 00:52, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Re "google doesn't get involved in these kinds of politics" - Oh, really? Then why do they have selected providers for dictionary definitions? Why can't the same consideration be given to providers of encyclopedia entries as well? --Golbez 01:15, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)
Somehow I doubt google would give a free link to an encyclopedia which can be edited by anyone in the same way they gave the link to a dictionary definition provider, which most likely cost a good deal of money. But go ahead and ask. anthony (see warning) 13:57, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There's not a requirement to link back in the GFDL, per se, but there are few practical alternatives, since they have to give credit to all original authors. I agree that Google shouldn't be involved in this at all. The message should be added to every article when the downloadable dumps are created. And if you think that they'll go out of their way to remove all these messages, especially considering it saves them the trouble of adding stuff to comply with the license, I think you underestimate the laziness of forks. Derrick Coetzee 00:57, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Linking back does not give credit to the original authors. I for one consider merely linking back to be a violation of my copyright. As for my estimation of the laziness of forks, I run a fork, and I'm not going to insert any links beyond what I already have, unless Wikipedia does the same. It's not fair to put forks on a different playing field. Wikipedia doesn't own the copyright, the individual authors do. anthony (see warning) 14:01, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm not privy to the intricacies of the PageRank system, but I wonder if a self-terminating anchor (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo" title="Wikipedia: Foo" />) in each article would do it. If not, perhaps the usual syntax with null text (<a &#x85;></a>) would. It's something to consider, anyway. Austin Hair 01:19, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

I think this is a bad idea all around. Why is it such a big deal that the higher-ranked Google hits are Wikipedia content on some other site, rather than marginally more up-to-date Wikipedia content on Wikipedia itself? It's not like we profit from users coming here rather than our mirrors (aside from the influx of new contributors - and interested potential contributors will likely find their way here anyway). Tricking search engines merely to achieve a higher page ranking is sneaky and dishonest, and I don't think Wikipedia should participate in such tactics. If we do make alterations to various meta tags, it should be to help people get relevant search results, not just to win a race to #1 Google Hit. -- Wapcaplet 02:10, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The entire point is not about page rank, the sites are supposed to link back to the articles anyway, or find some other way to provide credit to the authors. Its certainly not dishonest to encourage mirrors to follow copyright law. —siroχo 02:15, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)
First of all, the sites are not supposed to link back. That's not a requirement under the GFDL. Secondly, if we want the mirrors to follow copyright law, we need to follow it ourselves. A link is fine, so long as it is a link which is paletable enough for Wikipedia to put in its own pages. A link which is meant to be added only to the forks and not to Wikipedia is not fine. anthony (see warning) 14:05, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I have no view on the validity of the scheme, but my first thought is that whatever one tries to do it would not be too difficult to strip it out in an automated way, using some kind of find and replace process, though without replacing with anything. But I'm not technical, so perhaps I overestimate what can be done. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 02:30, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)
Anything we do is technically alterable, but given the fact that few of our pseudo-mirrors are competent enough to even disable page editing effectively, it doesn't seem likely that they'll circumvent this—especially if the result is effected by some Mediawiki keyword present in the database but transparently filtered in editing. This is not to say that I support the idea, but I don't think it would be difficult to implement. Austin Hair 02:45, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)
The mirrors which don't even disable page editing by and large are the ones which do not have a good page rank. The mirrors Wikipedia should be working with are the better ones which do take the time to create a good image. These are the mirrors which Wikipedia should want to be associated with in the first place. But these mirrors are probably also the ones who would object to being pawns in some googlebombing scheme. anthony (see warning) 14:09, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Marginally up to date? I've seen mirrors with my userpage from June or July of 2003 and with vandalism preserved for a looooong time (still there, BTW...do a google search on "Adey Chaplin"). So, I'd like to know your definition of Marginally. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 05:54, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

apologies if i am wiki'ing poorly. anyway, there are several ways to make the self-link invisible to humans. and it doesn't matter if even 75% of the illegit forks stripped it, since the other 25% would be enough to put you at #1. please implement this suggestion. i ran into this problem today actually and did not appreciate the illegitimate mirror.

Police the licence

I LOVE the idea of a self-linking link in each article - put it in the bit that says "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia"! Irregardless of the Google issue, it REALLY helps with ensuring mirrors have a link to attribution of authors (necessary for not violating GFDL/p*ssing us all off). Plus, it helps the Google ranking issue (big time I suspect - probably will ensure we are always no. 1). And we do need to be no. 1, for all those non-cautious people who click "I'm feeling lucky". It's a lot preferable for people to go here rather than a static or slowly updated mirror. Any "snapshop" of Wikipedia can conceivably (and probably does) have "trapped" vandalism (that is probably going to be fixed right after) - even possibly on major articles. Such things bring Wikipedia into disrepute. zoney ▓█▒ talk 13:06, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

US Navy Sea Bees

I'm trying to find out more information about the SeaBees and the different units. I have found the page that shows the emblem but I'm looking for more. My uncle and father were both with the SeaBees. My uncle was stationed with the Marines during WWII and my father was in the Aleutian Islands. I have the units where my uncle was stationed. They were the 25th and the 53rd Naval construction Battalion. My father was with the 12 NCB, 2 NC Brigade, 7th NC Regiment and the 112th NC Battalion.

Can anyone help me?

[email protected]

Question posted to Wikipedia:Reference desk#US Navy Sea Bees —siroχo 03:14, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

Do everyone see the same thing that I see: there is no more WP logo on en: ? -aka-demia 07:07, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Logo fully visible here, on XP with IE6, with the old skin. - Adrian Pingstone 08:31, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Invisible with "my" monobook (with no changes), but no problem on other Wikipedias (fr:, de:, etc.) | -aka-demia 09:14, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I can't connect... not that I've tried...

What the heck has been going recently with edit previews bringing up a "not getting a response from the server" type message? See my comments at MediaWiki talk:Noconnect. Note that my main objection is the incredibly brief time it takes for this message to come up, as if it's not even waiting for a response. - dcljr 12:33, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_archive_2004-09-26&oldid=5519552"