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Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Tarquin (talk | contribs) at 12:23, 25 February 2003. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
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Moved discussion

See the archive for older moved discussion links.

The split between Spanish 'pedia and la Enciclopedia Libre

What exactly caused the split between Spanish 'pedia and its daughter project that came to be la Enciclopedia Libre? Unresolvably different objectives? If so, what are the differences? It seems rather illogical to divert manpower into two separate projects that could've been one combinedly better one. --Menchi 20:04 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

See m:User:Maveric49/The Wikipedia Family and also the history section of Wikipedia. --mav

I see how you can edit a page (like this one). But how do you create a new entry in the encyclopedia? I see that if you click on a link that does not have an entry this creates an new page. Is there another way? --66.47.86.47 20:39 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, type the new article name directly in the address bar, like http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/____. Replace "____" with the desired new article name. --Menchi 20:43 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)
It isn't simple to make an article that is not linked to in another, to discourage "orphans" that aren't linked to. It is best to find a related article and make a link, perhaps in a see also format. Orphans are bad, though, so try not to make them often except redirects and such. Tuf-Kat
That does make the creation of redirects difficult though: it'd be nice to have a quick way to create one or more redirecs to a page. Martin
Edit a page, any page. Add links to your new redirects. Don't save, click SHOW PREVIEW. Take those links. When finished, throw away your previewed page. Tannin

If you edit a page, I don't see the changes because my broswer doesn't refresh and get the new version. How can I change that? Im using IE6 Susan Mason

Ctrl + F5. --Menchi 00:54 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

If I find a page that says "Not Wikified." what does that mean? --Mahongue 00:34 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Wikify = Make cross-reference, by linking, to other Wikipedia pages, as described in wikipedia:how to edit a page --Menchi 00:52 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
The Wikipedia:Glossary explains many Wikipedia terms. -- Stephen Gilbert 17:14 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Bot discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Bots


I would like to add the abreviation DEC to the database. It stands for the drug diethylcarbamazine. There is already a DEC, which redirects to Digital Equipment Corporation. What do you do when there is one name for two different entries. Can someone help me with this? --Mahongue 09:37 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Actually this kind of thing happens a lot at Wikipedia, see Disambiguation. In your case, I suggest you use the full name of the drug as the title of the article and turn DEC into an disambiguation page. --Lorenzarius 10:07 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
"DEC" is the abreviation for many things. Ideally a disambiguation page would be created at DEC but in this case DEC probably means Digital Equipment Corporation almost all the time when it is linked. So your article should be at drug diethylcarbamazine. --mav
Surely you mean it should be at diethylcarbamazine (which is where it is already). --Zundark 10:17 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
Opps! You are right. --mav

I think this would be an easy disambiguation page to write as DEC is currently just a redirect itself. As Zundark mentioned, I have created a diethylcarbamazine entry already. Does anyone have a problem with me creating a disambiguation page for DEC? --Mahongue 10:28 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Just make sure to fix all the misdirected links to DEC and then list it on the disambiguation links page. --mav
Maveric, what does it mean to "fix all the misdirected links to DEC"? Does that mean to find the links and have them point directly to Digital Equipment Corporation (instead of to the newly created disambiguation entry)? --Mahongue 11:05 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
Yes, you need to change every [[DEC]] to [[Digital Equipment Corporation|DEC]]. You should do this before creating the disambiguation page, so that nothing is broken, even temporarily. --Zundark 11:18 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
Or is it better to put the disambiguation page at DEC (disambiguation)? There're a lot of article linking to DEC and all of them are referring to the Corporation. --Lorenzarius 10:42 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Ok, its done. And what is great is that if anyone is unhappy, it is very easy to reverse what I did. I (1) changed every DEC link to point to Digital Equipment Corporation (I think someone was helping me, thank you!) and (2) created a very simple disambiguation entry (please check it out and change it if you would like). --66.47.86.47 11:47 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

How do I delete "Older Version" entries in my Profile? Because my computer has a fault and crashes regularly I have to save my typing very frequently so my "Older Version" list is much too long. Go to User:Arpingstone and then to "Older Version" to see what I mean. I only need the latest entry.Can I do it or can an Admin? Thanks Arpingstone 09:53 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

I can do it for you - just say when. --mav
Please clear out my profiles Older Versions (except the very latest, of course!) whenever it suits you. Thanks -- Arpingstone 10:36 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
Will do. --mav

Going back to an earlier comment regarding the USA census results, I have in fact added some colour to a few towns. Unfortunately, as a Brit who has spent a total of 10 days in the USA in Florida, I am probably the least qualified person to do this. I haven't seen anyone else adding anything, so it would be reassuring to know if any American contributors were building o the bare statistical facts as well.jimfbleak 12:07 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Sure, see Topeka, Kansas amoung others. Many people do their home towns, and as I get tired of working on the Baha'i subjects, I'm doing eastern Kansas. It will be a while, there are a lot of towns in eastern KS and not a lot of wikipeidans. Did you do YOUR hometown? Not many Brit towns are in the database. Rick Boatright 17:16 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)~
I've added info to dozens of towns, and I know others have been doing the same. --Infrogmation

Hi, Please help if you can... How can get Wikipedia to work offline? Have downloaded the database cur_table.sql and the database program cygwin-1.3.9-1 but cannot get it to work. I'm using Windows 98. Would like to use Wiki offline because my cost per hour online is high.

If can get this to work others might find it useful. Maybe we could set up a link (that I have been unable to find)...

Peter - Bangkok

See (if you have not already) Wikipedia:Readers' FAQ, question "Can I get Wikipedia on CD, or download it for offline use?"

searching for worcester

I'd like an easy way to search for articles containing the text "worcester" that do not link to Worcester, England, Worcester, Worcestershire, etc, so that I can link them properly (if relevant, of course). Is there any way to do this? Martin 18:45 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

What I do in such a case is change my preferences for "Lines to show per hit:" (under "Search result settings:") from the default 5 (I think it is) to something like 150. This means it will return every hit in the first 150 lines of the article, instead of the first 5 lines. Unfortunately this preference has a rather unintuitive name. You'd think that if there were 5 hits in an article, then it would display all of them in the default setting, but rather it only returns the ones in the first 5 lines. It is then easy to read whether the text "worcester" is part of a link or not. I don't know whether this taxes the server too much, but maybe someone in the know would like to comment. --snoyes 22:33 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
snoyes, you are a star. Thanks! Martin

Why can't newbies understand the concept of the 'Show Preview' button? It's getting really annoying seeing 10 edits of (for instance) Shawn Mullins in a two-minute span. -- Goatasaur 19:03 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Be kind to us newbies, we will learn the ropes (I have been at this only two days, for example). Is there a way you could contact him (is this what the Talk link is for?)? If it were me, I would appreciate an old hand showing me a tip I hadn't known before. I think I too must be guilty of what you were talking about. I wasn't aware of the concept of the 'Show Preview' button. Now I know. One more newbie on the road to becoming an oldie. --Mahongue 05:27 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Am I right that we shouldn't have sub-pages for articles? I'm looking at Godsmack/Self-Titled, Godsmack/Awake and similar. Should they be moved to Godsmack (album), Awake (album) and so on? sannse 19:43 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

You're right. I didn't make the pages, but I do know that every subpage I've worked on has been moved. If you want to move them I have no objections. -- Goatasaur
OK, thanks - job done -- sannse 20:03 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

An RSS feed?

Could someone code a simple script that would convert Special:Newpages (maybe some parametrisation e.g. exclude new articles under 100 bytes) into an RSS feed. I think that this would interest lots of people, and wouldn't consume very much bandwith. -Tzuhou 19:57 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

See m:RDF spool. --Brion 20:02 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

I have a copyright question at Talk:List_of_miscellaneous_poker_variants. --GGano


What is the proper bibliographical citation for Wikipedia? There's no real "author," so would it be a combination of work without author, encyclopedia, and Internet resource? I'm guessing:

"Old English", "Middle English", "English Language", and linked articles. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia (2003). Available online: < http://www.wikipedia.org/ >.

I'm doing a project on the evolution of English; I used some linked pages for more information. And would it be better to give it as three separate sources, or with three URLs? -Geoffrey

Particulars depend on the style specified (by a school or publishing enterprise), but for a reference so changable as Wikipedia it is important to include the date and time accessed and the complete URL. In most instances, each page used will require a separate URL entry in the bibliography. -- Someone else 23:24 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks. My teacher says use "proper" citation style - that is, pick one standard. I'm using Author. Title. City: Publisher (Year). OK, I'll use the full date and time. Also, her source requirements won't accept multiple pages from one web site as separate sources towards the requirement of five, hence the reason for my including all pages in one citation. But if I separate them into tree, there'd be no place for articles like Indo-European language or Satem that I may have picked up a few facts from; therefore, I thought this might work better. For the date and time, should I try using the &oldid= attribute to /w/wiki.phtml to ensure others will get the same revision I got?
There's a page on applying the Chicago Manual of Style to internet sources at <http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/cite7.html > (though it doesn't sound like your teacher is going to be too picky.) Your idea for using the oldid attribute is good, but you should include date/time outside the address just to be complete. -- Someone else 01:23 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Linking Chinese Article to the English Article

I've already asked the following Q once, but it apparently seems to be deleted! I visited the Archives and didn't find it. Why is it delete?

When linking a Chinese article to its corresponding English one (adding the interlanguage link [[zh:___]] after "Other languages: " at the top of the Edit Page), do I link the traditional Chinese version or do I have to link to the simplified version? I just linked the traditional version to overseas Chinese because that's the original version I wrote. --Menchi 00:48 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

As a test I linked to both. That works, but you can not see which is which, except that the numerical code that pops up is different. One solution is to have two Chinese wikipedias, another is to have the two links in fixed order for all articles, a third solution would be some software change, for example showing the Chinese characters in the popup, or just an indication for traditional/simplified. - Patrick 10:35 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Anyone speak Greek? I need to know for a wiki article if 'αρπαστον' would equate to 'pheninda' ? Mintguy

I think I've found that it equates to 'episkyros', but could 'pheninda' be a Romanisation of this?

Two questions: How do you add the comments that appear in black on the "recent changes" page? Second, I don't see a link to the village pump on the main page. Is there one I am not seeing? If there is not, can we consider adding one? --Mahongue 05:30 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

For the comments, just fill in the Summary box. Have fun! Danny 05:36 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

So obvious, I never saw it. Thanks, Danny. --Mahongue 05:38 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

I see someone just added the "village pump" link to the main page (or I just now see it). Thank you. --66.47.86.47 12:36 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Daniel MacKay writes: I get the feeling that there is an enormous and interesting discussion and lots of info about contributing going on in the Wikipedia: "hierarchy". Is this true, and is there a guide to it? Or are there only a few articles?

Wikipedia:Utilities is a good start - the Related Changes button will give a reasonable impression of Recent Changes for the wikipedia hierarchy Martin

I have had some trouble logging in. This is probably a browser problem for Safari users (Safari has problems with this site!). Too bad for us Safari users. --66.47.86.47 13:52 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Safari is based on the Konqueror HTML rendering engine, I don't know whethter that encompases such things as login/cookie management, but everything works fine under Konqueror - maybe you could describe your problems more acurately. --snoyes 15:04 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Here's a more indepth description: When I go to the login page and type in my user name and password and click "login", red lettered words inform me that my user name does not exist. At other times I can login with no problem. --66.47.86.47 15:59 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

see Wikipedia:Browser notes & leave a note there -- Tarquin 15:06 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Could someone who has privillege put 最近更新したページ (Japanese for RecentChanges) to RecentChanges? -- Taku 01:04 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

Done. --Brion 01:28 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Can you do it for chinese 最近更改 (Chinese for RecentChnages) -- Taku 01:49 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

Done. --Brion 01:59 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you. Sorry but can do me a favor again? Put this to main page. [[af:HomePage]][[ar:HomePage]][[da:Forside]][[de:Hauptseite]][[en:Main Page]][[eo:%C4%88efpa%C4%9Do]][[es:Portada]][[fr:Accueil]][[it:HomePage]][[ko:대문]][[nl:Hoofdpagina]][[pl:Strona główna]][[ru:Main_Page]][[su:HomePage]][[zh:首页]] I found this list in ja wikipedia, which seems more comprehensive than current one. -- Taku 03:43 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

There already is a comprehensive list on the Main Page under the In Other Languages area. Some of the links you've listed are to wikis that don't even have a Main Page. --mav

Aside from Sudan, all of them have homepage I think. And it is quite convinient and normal to have language links. -- Taku 05:24 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

If we include some of the smaller wikis as interlanguage links on the Main Page then it would only be fair to include all of them. That would mean that people at 800 x 600 screen resolutions will be greeted not by content on the Main Page but by a screen full of language links. --mav

I'm pretty sure I already know the answer, since I've already looked at the UNICODE and HTML pages, but I'm asking. Is there any consistant way to indicate dot-under characters in the wiki and in html in general? I know, dot-under's are not part of ISO-Latin-1, but they're an important part of transliterating Persian. It's not uncommon to ignore them, and that's what I have done, but I've tried _hard_ to get the orthography correct on the various Bahá'í stuff I've done, and the lack of the dot-under's is annoying to me. -- thanks in advance (and yes, I know that sometimes the answer is "no". Rick Boatright 05:05 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

The dot under characters are mostly in the "Latin Extended Additional" area of Unicode. Using number codes should do the trick. They fall in the hex range, 1E00-1EFF. Thus Hex 1EA1 = Decimal 7841 gives "&#7841", Hex 1E05 = 7685 gives "&#7685", etc. Eclecticology 07:49 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

WIKIPEDIA DELETION AND LINKING TO OLD VERSIONS 2/24/03 Are previous versions of Wikipedia pages eventually deleted? Could someone theoretically choose to link to a previous version (in case newer versions insistently omitted the data)?

Before February of 2001 the software we had did delete older versions and only kept newer versions. But all versions since have been stored so nothing since then can be permanently lost. --mav
I think it was 2002, not 2001. --Zundark 11:06 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

Under our current software, old revisions of pages are not deleted (unless the page itself is deleted). They should remain forever for future data archaeologists to examine. :) However, there is not yet a reliable way of linking to a particular revision; this is currently under discussion on the wikitech-l developers' mailing list. --Brion 19:43 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

OPINIONS ON WIKIPEDIA 2/24/03 Also, someone mentioned I could not express opinions on Wikipedia (e.g., looking for feedback on my dream file/web browser concept), even on the "Discuss this page" item. Is this true? It seems to me Wikipedia would otherwise (if it did allow opinions at least on the DiscussThisPage pages) to be a potentially incredible way to store discussions in that it would not get in the way of the "facts" which would be limited to the main documents (though obviously "facts" can be opinions too, it's largely about the tone in which they're worded), but they would have the advantage of being automatically categorized and allow people familiar and interested in a certain subject to know exactly where to look (like Usenet groups, but more accessible to anyone and even more hierarchically specifiable).

Feel free to express opinions on talk pages and on your user page - there is no rule against that. But articles must be NPOV. ---mav
Thanks, the npov article was helpful...By talk pages I assume you mean the pages under "DiscussThisPage"?
Is there a place to navigate only the discussion pages?
No. Should there be?
So are user pages are totally unrestricted then as to content?
No. You should still consider wikipetiquette, make no personal attacks, and avoid breaching copyright or the law. But they are less restrictive.
Also, I was just wondering, can people post advertisements in the talk pages? (e.g., under the computer OS page, could Microsoft theoretically be allowed to point out under "DiscussThisPage" that they can purchase the newest Windows software at their website)
Personally, I would remove such adverts on sight.

Hey everyone... is there some blindingly obvious way to link to wikionary articles that I'm missing? I tried the obvious... Wiktionary:Beer parlour archive, but that doesn't seem to do it.

Try wiktionary:dog wiktionary:Rain cats and dogs or wiktionary:Wiktionary:Beer parlour --mav

When I search for Panzer VI, I don't directly find it. Susan Mason

Double and triple redirects seem to have been confusing the software. I've fixed them, and Panzer VI is appearing on searches now. --Camembert

Edit Disappeared

I discovered that my edit to the article "Three People's Principles" on Feb 16, 2003 is gone. It took me some research and wasn't a really minor edit (it contains 4 or 5 new sentences, if I remember correctly), so the disappearance is quite disappointing. The edit was more info on "San min chu i", the Taiwanese national anthem. I also remember that another edit of the same article in December 2002 also disappeared and I had to redo it again, but at the time I thought it was just me forgetting to save the work.

What's going on? Can the disappearance be restored? --Menchi 03:24 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

Server logs show your IP opening the page for editing at 06:59 on Feb 17 (10:59pm on Feb 16 in PST), but have no record of it being saved (or previewd) that I can find... Hmm, around that time I was running a backup of the server; the wiki would have been in read-only mode for a few minutes. If you saved it at that time though, you should have received a message telling you that the wiki was in read-only mode... --Brion 05:31 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)


I notice that 10 January is available as a redirect to January 10, which is really really convenient for articles on military topics, but it seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Is there any reason not to create all the others? Stan Shebs 04:32 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

The only problem I can see is it would be likely to decrease the conformity of dates across Wikipedia, which might be a problem in, for example, biographies. Anyone using 13 February at the moment gets an empty link and can see immediately that that's not the standard way of formatting the date. But this is a small thing, and conformity in date formats might not be important enough to negate the convenience of having the redirects. -- sannse 07:29 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

My vote? I'd prefer all the dates to be uniform throughout the Wikipedia. -- Anon.

I don't understand -- why do military topics need the "10 January" format? --Eloquence

Accounts of military doings tend to have lots of dates, and they standardized on "10 January 1952" long ago; it looks pretty old-fashioned to read "January 10, 1952". Thinking to find an explanation for the difference, I consulted my Bible, 13th edition, and it says (8.36) "The University of Chicago press prefers that in all text, including notes and bibliographies, exact dates be written in the sequence day-month-year, without internal punctuation", which goes a long way towards explaining why most (though not all) of my recently-published history books have been using the "military" style for all their dates. :-) Stan Shebs 11:44 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

Fowler also says "10 January". I had assumed "January 10" was the US style, but if Fowler & Chicago agree I think we have to consider changing our own Manual of Style policy -- Tarquin 12:23 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)
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