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File:Village pump yellow.png

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Moved discussion

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

See the archive for older moved discussion links. For the most recent moved discussion, see Wikipedia:Village pump archive#September 2003 moved discussion.

Contributions page when logged in/out

I am trying to develop a mini-application to keep track of my Wikipedia edit count. I noticed that the data I got from using the unix "curl" command was giving me a substantially higher count than the source that I copied out of my web browser. I finally realized that the issue at hand is that the Contributions page for some reason shows less contributions when I am logged in vs. when I am logged out! What is the reason for this and can I fix it? Ed Cormany 03:53, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

en2.wikipedia.org

Oh, en2.wikipedia.org is so fast! Every article is loaded just like ordinary web pages. Amazing. This shows how much wikipedia is heavily loaded. Anyway, thank you for setting up this. I only hope this lasts for long time. -- Taku 04:39, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Please frogive my ignorance, but what is en2.wikipedia.org? Does it mirror www.wikipedia.org contents? Is it the additional server we've been hearing about? Do contributions there make it to the original 'pedia? WIll it eventually be merged with the main 'pedia? Do we need to create a new account for en2? Should we use it over the old 'pedia (to lighten its load)? Sorry for all the questions, but I just started hearing about it and have no idea what it actually is. But visiting it I've seen that it is substantially faster. —Frecklefoot 14:31, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Announcements - en2 is [pliny] is the database server is the server for all the non-english wikipedias. And it is fast :-) andy 15:06, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)
It's only fast because the vast, vast majority of hits are going to poor beleagered larousse on www.wikipedia.org and we've turned off a lot of features that hit the database. :( The big cpu upgrades should be coming next week... --Brion 15:14, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Since September 24th. Contributions make it to the original wiki. You will not need to create another account. But I'm thinking, unless you have a mild connection, you won't be able to truly appreciate en2. I'm on 37.2 kbps... finally my connection is worth something. :0} Usedbook 15:17, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)
It appears www.wikipedia.org is now fast while en2 is incrediblly slow. Taku 23:18, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)
The move to en2 is a minus when going between wiki's (for example when one is working on interwiki links) - when I come in on www I am not logged in; if I login, I do so on en2. The effect is that each time I follow an Interwiki link to en:, I am not logged in, and have to go to en2 by hand to see the page as a logged-in user. Andre Engels 22:40, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I've just realised what has been annoying me when I've been reading en2 -- the dates are in the wrong format for my liking, and on investigation I've discovered that the date preferences options have disappeared! Can someone put them back, please? Arwel 19:16, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
So-called the www/en2 dichotomy is really annoying everyone. I don't blame administraters of the sever gvien the heavy load of wikipedia.org, we don't have other choices. From what I heard, hoepfully the new sever to be intrdouced next week solves this problem. -- Taku

Images uploaded and now broken

I'm confused. I uploaded two images earlier this afternoon, for whom the pages still exist (and the pictures WORKED earlier today), but the links are broken now if I try to inline the image. They are: media:Dealey-plaza-annotated-thumbnail.png and media:Dealey-plaza-annotated.png. Am I missing something? Was something done to them?


(I don't know the proper way to actually put in a link to an image 'information' page rather than inserting the whole dang thing in - I used 'media' to do what I just did; but in any case, I'm sure this gets the idea across).

Skybunny 05:30, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Announcements. --Brion 05:34, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Ah, thanks - another page I wasn't familiar with. Till now. Does explain the speediness today though. :) Skybunny 05:38, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I know. Im back to all my old trouble causing tricks. First talk bubbles, now this. When the wiki is using the google engine, why not have the search automatically go there -- rather than first making one confirm that they actually want to search? In fact, why not always use the google engine (at least until the server issues are resolved) -- my problems seem to usually go away as soon as the switch to google is made. (well, not really -- i still get lots of lag) LirQ

Nupedia.com/Nupedia.org are gone, please bring it back

It appears that http://nupedia.org and http://nupedia.com are both gone, which is a great pity because I was trying to port across some of the articles in process, see Wikipedia:Nupedia and Wikipedia. There was no mention that this site was going to disappear, no announcement that it was about to go. Most unceremonius.

In discussion with Jimbo and Mav, see Wikipedia talk:Nupedia and Wikipedia it appears that I could port the old articles in progress under the GFDL, further, there were actually at least one officially posted article that hadn't been transferred at all. Not mention all the attribution links for the source material, history of Nupedia, etc. that are now gone and old contributors to Nupedia might be a little miffed about this. Can we get it back please (at very least the content of the database so I can continue the port)? I certainly hope something like this doesn't happen to wikipedia some day. --Lexor 11:24, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The server which hosted Nupedia died a couple of weeks ago. It's been restored to life, but not all hosted sites are back online yet. --Brion 18:12, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Qs

How about allowing a user who uses Watchlist to make use of the <diff> function seen in recent Changes? Also, my account has a habit of logging me out. LirQ

See wikipedia:bug reports to request new features
See wikipedia:how to log in for advice on login problems.
hth. hand. Martin 13:11, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

How are feature requests akin to bug reports? LirQ

Because both are done through Sourceforge, and the instructions for doing this are on the wikipedia:bug reports page. Angela 17:01, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Ustashe

User known as Mir Harven warned on talk page of Ustashe that "This page will be completely changed in near future, say, two weeks". I ask that some of experienced users put the page on their watchlists, as it is excellent NPOV. You suceeded in making two Serbs and two Croats to agree on this topic :) and I would hate to see it completely changed, especially by someone like MH (and don't intend allowing that anyway). Nikola 07:28, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Unilaterally revamping an article completely without other writer's willing inputs is not how Wiki works. I hope that's not what he meant by "will be completely changed" (although I see no other interpreation). --Menchi 08:15, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Seems entirely wiki in spirit to me. be bold in completely rewriting entire articles, if you think it will result in a better article, and a better encyclopedia. If people didn't want their text edited mercilessly, they should have submitted it some place else.
Might be best to wait until Mir actually makes any changes (if sie does). When sie does, you can drop it on wikipedia:peer review to get more eyeballs - but only if you think that's necessary. In any case, often by carefully merging an original with a bold rewrite, one can acquire an article that is better than either alone. Martin 11:20, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Uploads

All of a sudden, the upload file page is giving me this error message: "Sorry, uploads have been disabled on this server." Anyone know anything about this? Tannin 10:35, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It still seems to work on en2. -- Tim Starling 11:07, Sep 27, 2003 (UTC)
You'll want http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload . It's one of the consequences of the www/en2 dichotomy. Martin 11:21, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)


Thankyou, gentlemen. Obviously, I missed an anouncement somewhere. (Gahhh - this life thing: it's obviously not leaving me enough time to keep up with the 'pedia. Have to give it up if I'm going to get any quality editing time.) Would it not be a good idea to update the "upload file" links in the stylesheet, then? Tannin 12:30, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Should now redirect your automatically. Of course, if you're not logged in yet on en2 it'll complain at you. --Brion 19:08, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Could someone give us a little more detail on this disabled upload, please.
Has the www.wikipedia.org Upload Page been permanently disabled or will it come back when an upgrade is done next week? Thanks,
Adrian Pingstone 12:38, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Uploaded files are stored as files on the disk, not in the database, and so far we don't have a networked filesystem set up between the two servers. So, each has a copy, and uploads are only enabled on one, and the other one is periodically refreshed. It wouldn't be safe to let them both try to deal with uploads when they have separate copies; they'd get very confused when it comes to moving around files when they are replaced, for instance. On top of this, en2 is where all logins are directed; if you're logged in on www it's only because you left a "remember my password" cookie there.
This is not intended as a permanent situation; it's a temporary way to let contributors access the site through the server that's less congested without flooding it with all the traffic from random visitors. The upgrades, hopefully, will bring larousse's (www.wikipedia.org) performance up to reasonable levels and en2 won't be needed. Once we get a separate database server (perhaps a bit further off) we can then use both pliny and larousse as front-end web servers for all languages which could split the traffic between each other randomly (a round-robin DNS entry, for instance, could send each request to one or the other server), but to make it transparent we'd have to get them to share the uploads and session data on a networked filesystem, which we'd have to make sure is not a security problem. --Brion 19:08, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

wiki-L

I tried to post on wiki-L; but to to avail -- it is clogged with logo spam. When I go "offsite", perhaps by google search perhaps by viewing a mailing list -- I am then logged out. When I return to the login page I am autologged in...but first I have to return there -- why am I not continuously logged in? LirQ

It's another side-effect of the www/en2 dichotomy. Martin 13:37, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)
When you want to return to the site type "en2.wikipedia.org" not "www.wikipedia.org" at the address bar and you should stay logged in all the time. Pete 17:12, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

edit summaries

Please remember to write a brief summary when you do your edits. This makes life a lot easier for all of us when we look at page histories and recent changes. thanks! Kingturtle 19:02, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

favicon.ico

Having just switched to en2, I've noticed that the bookmark icon (also used in Mozilla et al. for tabs) differs between the servers; which one is intended - en2's or www's?
James F. 22:59, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

They look the same to me. Angela 23:02, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Really? www's is (or at least appears as on my machine) a globe with a black 'w'; en2's is a white square with a 'w' on it.
James F. 23:23, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Try clearing your cache. Angela 23:31, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Ah. Oops.
*feel embarassed*
When was the icon changed, then?
James F. 23:49, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I might have brought it into line with all the other Wiki*edia sites while rearranging files on September 9, but I have no memory of doing so. Hooray for the death of the old ugly icon! Now somebody'll probably make us replace it with some gaudy multicolored sphere-let or something. :P --Brion 00:19, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Privatisation

Would somebody please protect privatization. There is an edit war. LirQ

Please could you try and discuss this with 172 and Punkche before it gets as far as needing protection? Angela 22:31, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)
172 will not discuss with me. Punkche appears to agree with me, but 172 will doubtless revert it back, soon enough. LirQ
Have you tried discussing it with him? Angela
Yes. He will not discuss with me. LirQ
I'm not going to bother. Discussing anything with Adam is futile; and I simply don't care enough about the article to bother wasting hours, days, and weeks at war with Adam over a few sentences. Other users have engaged in edit wars with him many times a day, over periods as long as several weeks (usually stopping when his latest identity is banned), over a single word; so I have no reason to be optimistic about reasoning with him about something even as trivial as a few factual sentences. Look, this person is just downright anal. He will never get it through his head that a piece of information or two is important if he doesn't understand its importance prior to reading it the first time. The introduction that states that privitization has been catching on in the past couple of decades, a trend counter to the one of the preceeding era, which saw a wave of nationalization throughout all regions of the world, is better in that it offers more information. If other people don't realize this right away, I don't have the energy to bother with it. 172 00:42, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Lirq, please review Wikipedia:Staying cool when the editing gets hot. Kingturtle 08:47, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Personally I feel that if you can't be bothered to explain and discuss your edits, then you shouldn't be bothered to engage in edit war over them. Jaw-jaw is better than war war. Martin 17:09, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)


User name

How do I change my User name without losing continuity of my homepage etc? I am beginning to think that constantly citing myself as "Dr Adam Carr" looks rather formal and pretentious. Could someone who knows how to do this change me to just "Adam Carr"? Thanx. 210.10.32.12 08:36, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC) Oops that should be Dr Adam Carr 08:41, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC) (I am STILL getting logged out when I press "Save Page" and I know I am not alone in this problem).

If you want to change your actual user name, a developer needs to do it. Normally Tim does them but he is away until 5 October. If you leave the request here another developer may deal with it but there's no guarantee. You could also try Brion's to-do list on Meta. The alternative is just to change the name you sign with. You can set this in your preferences. This means that when you sign, whatever name you choose will show up, but Dr Adam Carr will still show up in the history of the page etc. Angela 08:43, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Angela thankyou, that is a good solution, I didn't realise I could do that.
Could you direct the bugs committee or whoever to the "getting logged out when pressing 'Save Page'" problem? Others have told me they have the same problem. Adam 08:55, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
The bugs committee may be found at Sourceforge. Bug reports has instructions. Angela 08:58, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Do you check the box "Remember my password across sessions" when you log in? If not, you should. It solved my problem with that feature. BL 17:00, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)



Watchlist

How can I set my watchlist to always check over the past day, rather than the past hour? LirQ

I think the only way is to bookmark this link and use that instead of the normal Special:Watchlist link. Either that or trim your watchlist down to less than 250 pages. Angela 16:40, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yah, Ive got it bookmarked. But now Im wondering why I have to have it bookmarked. It didnt use to be that way. LirQ

Yeah, it used to show a day's worth of edits by default, but it was changed to be less of a strain on the server, I believe. --Camembert
Performance issues, unfortunately. Keep posting a link to Wikipedia:Donations whenever it seems appropiate and donate yourself if you can, and we'll get that third server. Pete 16:50, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Ending a neutrality dispute

Newbie question, but what's the best way to go about determining whether there is enough consensus to end a neutrality dispute?

I'm thinking in particular of Argument from Ignorance, where the dispute was over the examples used. I think that I've put things into a state which deals with the objections raised in the talk page.

Should I be posting directly to the user talk pages of everyone involved, or is it sufficient just to leave a comment on the talk page for the article and remove the NPOV marker if nobody has objected after a few days? Or is there some kind of defined process for this that I've missed?

-- Onebyone 20:13, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be general guidelines for this situation. I think a reasonable thing to do would be to remove the notice and leave a note on the Talk page saying something along the lines of, "If anyone disagrees, put the notice back." This question is also discussed at Wikipedia talk:NPOV dispute#How_is_a_page_de-NPOV'd? -- Cyan 21:21, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Image license on site using wikipedia content

www.4reference.net is using wikipedia contents. They also use wikipedia images, but they don't provide any link to the Image: page. IMO a serious issue as they don't provide any license information for picture.

Some pics are GFDL like on : http://www.4reference.net/encyclopedias/wikipedia/Nice_Observatory.html

but other aren't like on : http://www.4reference.net/encyclopedias/wikipedia/Tank_history.html

what's your advice ? Ericd 20:58, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The second example is bad since it actually lists a source and the photo is probably public domain since it was taken before 1923. Their site is also some kind of encyclopedia and therefore would have as much Fair use on the images as we do.BL 21:04, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Fair use isn't GFDL there's no warning about image, this is misleading the reader. Ericd 21:10, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Also, by not linking to the image page they are failing to provide author details - isn't that a requirement of the GFDL? Actually, as far as I can see they are not doing this for the text either - the link only goes to the main page. As I understand it they should give a link back to the original article. -- sannse 21:48, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Is e-mail this user broken?

I type my e-mail address in most times I have to login (for what ever reason). I have never typed an invalid address into the field or actively blanked it. Nor have I checked the box that says "do not contact me by email". And yet someone couldn't reach me by email. I also tried to e-mail him, going straight from a login where I added my e-mail address into the appropriate field, and then went to send him an e-mail...

It told me I hadn't specified a valid return address, so it wouldn't even allow me to start editing an e-mail. I went to preferences, typed my e-mail address again, and returned. This time I was allowed to start typing the letter. But after finishing it and clicking "send", I only got the same error message telling me I hadn't specified a valid return address. Is this one of the side-effects of the "server-dichotomy", is there a cookie-problem in my end, or is the E-mail a user function broken? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick

Putting in your e-mail address when you log in does nothing whatsoever. That's only used when creating a new account.
If you allow your browser to save form contents on the login form, it may damage the preferences form and cause your e-mail address to be deleted when you save preferences unless you add it manually to the preferences form every time or tell the browser to clear the saved login form. (Mozilla-based browsers are known to do this.)
It's also suspicious that your above note was submitted while not logged in. Are you having cookie/mysterious logout problems?
I just sent you an e-mail through the form (on en2). Did you get it? --Brion 22:08, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes, and yes. But I didn't think the logging out was anything other than an epiphenomenon of the new server arrangements. Maybe I have to see to my mozilla settings... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 23:58, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

What to do about User:80:225 (if anything at all)?

As you may have noticed, I took it upon myself to get rid of gratuitous references to Horace Donisthorpe over the last couple of days from someone who was making a bunch of wacky and obnoxious edits (see Vandalism in progress). I (foolishly) thought I was "successful," but now User:80.255 (the same person who posted as User:80.225.79.69, User:80.225.73.197, and User:80.225.16.87) and is doing a more subtle (and admittedly less annoying) set of edits, and is still creating a few stubby pages that just seem to refer to each other for the most part...

So here's my question: I'm still pretty new, and am not sure how much I'm being helpful, just being a stubborn geek, if I'm alienating (more or less) a valuable member of the Wikipedia community or if I'm just encouraging someone's trolling. Should I just ignore this person (forever? for a week?) or should I allow my righteous indignation to lead me onward in the struggle against petty vandalism? Thanks in advance for your advice, -- Bcorr 03:24, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

P.S. Here's what I mean: User_talk:80.255 -- Bcorr 03:26, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I'm for easing up on 80.225, at least for a while. He/she seems to be improving, which is the goal after all. I've found I can revert about 50 edits per minute if necessary, by myself, so there's no danger of permanent damage even if the user regresses to original form. (Donisthorpe is a legit person, after all, albeit apparently very obscure; on the other hand we should remember the maxim "write about what you know.") - Hephaestos 03:31, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick response. I appreciate the advice and have let up and will try not to pay attention for a day or so, but I noticed that Someone else had deleted a new page in the interim and pointed them to this exchange. and I think that 80.225 is backsliding:
'What links here' for Horace Donisthorpe
User:80.225's contributions
-- Bcorr 04:45, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I wasn't watching 80.225 in particular, but I noticed that 82.34.176.94 had just repaired the Neo-Nazism page: (here's the edit), which was noted as "replaced sneakily removed *The British National Party" -- Bcorr 18:00, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

problem with photo

Could someone look at Herschel Grynszpan and tell me why my photo is not appearing? Adam

OK it is working now. Thanx. Adam

At the moment there is a somewhat awkward split between access to the wiki via www.wikipedia.org and an alternate server en2.wikipedia.org. Logins and uploads are redirected to en2.wikipedia.org ("pliny"), which is the faster server and holds the database and serves all the other Wikimedia wikis, while www.wikipedia.org ("larousse") serves only web pages for the English-language Wikipedia -- but is sorely overloaded. Any new files uploaded to en2 are copied onto www on the hour, so if you were looking at the article from www.wikipedia.org during the half hour between uploading it and the next refresh, you wouldn't have seen the photo (but you would have seen it looking at the article on en2.wikipedia.org).
In the near future we hope to upgrade both servers (was to be done last week but parts are delayed) and set up some more transparent load balancing between the two. For now it's a bit annoying, I know. --Brion 05:24, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Chemical Structure Program

Can anyone recommend a decent free program that draws chemical structures. One that's not too hard and runs under Windows or Linux would be great. ThereIsNoSteve 05:29, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

One program is xymtex, that someone has used to do the steroid hormones. e.g. Image:Testosterone.png. I've never used it, so i can't tell you anything about it. I guess it's similar to Latex etc. (haven't used that either) Tristanb 06:04, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I searched around for a while and the best I could come up with was ChemSketch; it's freeware for Windows, but not open source. In the long run, we need (and will certainly get) something like our wikipedia:TeX markup feature which would allow you to specify a molecule structure in TeX and it's typeset automatically. AxelBoldt 16:47, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I agree about the TeX. There a whole lot of (La)Tex packages out there that support typesetting technical things like chemical structures, syntax trees, mathematical plots, Feynman diagrams, phonetic symbols, Karnaugh maps, etc, that would otherwise have to just be made by hand and uploaded as an images. The downside of this is that there is nothing ensuring consistency in style of the diagrams, and modifying the bitmaps is non-ideal. Being able to edit the TeX source, while not extraordinarily easy, would be more in keeping with wiki style. Plus, if we get really clever, we could generate higher-resolution versions for print pages. Before I got sucked in to the whole logo-debate and modifications, I was working in the background on modifying the TeX support in MediaWiki to support phonetic symbols, but it seems abstracting it to support a variety of packages would be the best solution. On the other hand, SVG images for a lot of this stuff would probably be better. -- Nohat 18:05, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Pictures side by side

Please can a Wikipedian who is good at picture code-writing go to EasyJet and put the two pics side by side, I don't know how to. If I just put the two sets of code one below the other I get the pics one below the other which looks clumsy. Thanks.

Adrian Pingstone 19:23, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I put the smaller photo in the upper right-hand corner of the article and the other one I left at the bottom of the article, on the left. This seems to be a pretty standard arrangement of photos on Wikipedia pages. -- Nohat 20:50, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Have a look at the Mandolin article, where I've attempted to put two pictures side by side. Does this work for your browser? It does on mine, but I'm interested, because if it doesn't work on others I'll need to try something else. Andrewa 22:15, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Unjustified ban

"Discussion" on the ban of EntmootofTrolls moved to User talk:EntmootsOfTrolls/ban

I've proposed an alteration to our (rather sketchy and underdefined) banning procedures at Wikipedia:Bans and blocks, to mirror a similar, highly successful, h2g2 policy. I beg for feedback on the relevant talk page. Martin 23:35, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

beg??? Martin, a chara, since when do you beg? :-) FearÉIREANN 00:11, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

logged out

I keep getting logged out, depsite checking the remember my password between sessions thing. Anyone having similar trouble? Mintguy 21:56, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It's probably the www/en2 thing: you'll be logged out every time you go to a www. URL. Martin 22:02, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I was having that problem after googling and occasionally at other times. I found that generally I'm on en2.wikipedia.org, but after using google get sent to www.wikipedia.org, and that one cookie wipes out the other -- so you can't be logged into both at the same time. Try changing the URL by hand back and forth and see if that's the problem. -- Bcorr 22:12, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Requested articles "week"

According to recent changes, it has been Requested articles week for quite some time... LirQ

There's been a suggestion that it should become permanent rather than rotating with "fix a stub week". See Wikipedia talk:Recentchanges for a bit of discussion on this. --Camembert

Formatting Source Code

How do I add add syntax/source highlighting into my edits? I have looked around but cannot seem to locate the correct reference.

Wikipedia:how do I edit a page

"Unencyclopedic"

When describing material on VfD, is this term useful or useless? Express your opinion at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Unencyclopedic. -- Cyan 07:53, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

File size

I'm sure this has a very simple answer. I'm deciding whether to split an article. How can I find the size of the article? (it's not a new page). jimfbleak 11:12, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Pending a better answer, you can copy and paste the source text to a simple txt file, save it, and then look at its properties to see how big the file is. Hth Pete 11:19, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
If you edit the article and it's over 32K, you get a warning about "some browsers", which states the size of the article. -- Onebyone 12:03, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

or count each letter one by one to see the approx byte size. ;-) -fonzy

Great idea, but do you count new-lines as one or two bytes? Κσυπ Cyp 15:04, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Special Characters

How can I make an a with a dash above it, or an n with a dot above it? Lirath Q. Pynnor

Well there is an ã and a ñ, but I don't see any a's with "dashes" over them or n's with "dots." Are they standard foreign language characters? See wikipedia:Special characters. —Frecklefoot 14:10, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I believe they are used in the anglicization of Sanskrit. Lirath Q. Pynnor

These characters are not part of the Latin-1 encoding, so if you want to use them on the English Wikipedia, you'll have to use the HTML numeric entities. The codes for letters with macrons (dashes above) are in the Unicode Latin Extended-A code table: Ā is &#256;, ā is &#257;. The codes for letters with dots above them are in Unicode Latin Extended Additional: Ṅ is &#7748;, ṅ is &#7749;. You can also "make" these characters using the Unicode Combining Diacritical Marks: ā is a&#772; ṅ is n&#775;
If you use these characters, be aware that some users, (maybe even you) won't have supported fonts installed and won't be able to view the characters. It is recommended if you use characters from outside Latin-1 that you include Latin-1 only versions as well (i.e. without the macrons and dots). See wikipedia:Special characters, especially the introduction and section 5, on Unicode, for more information. Also see Unicode and HTML and Unicode character charts -- Nohat 14:55, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Article over "Edit wars" needed?

Wouldn't it be a good idea to have an Wikipedia:Edit war article, of course redirected from Edit war and Edit wars, which could be used when warning newbies for engaging in such activities?
--Ruhrjung 16:04, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

In general edit wars tend to break out just as frequently between oldbies (*looks pointedly at mirror*) as newbies. I think our advice on wikipedia:staying cool when the editing gets hot is useful here, though it could be improved. Martin 18:51, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Banned users

I am familiar with the process of banning a user. What is the process to un-ban a user? And are un-banned users on in sort of probationary period? Kingturtle 23:24, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

[Note: I don't know everything, and I might be wrong about this] Well, just as Jimbo is the only person with authority to ban users (egregious vandalism excepted), so he is the only one with authority to unban them. Unbanning is rare indeed (I think it's only happened once), but the process as it stands is that the banned user writes to Jimbo and tries to convince him to let him back in. Jimbo's a reasonable bloke, so if other users were to flood him with requests that a banned user be unbanned or something like that, I'm sure he'd take heed of them, but that hasn't ever come up as far as I know. There's no general rule for what happens when somebody is unbanned, because as I say, it's only happened once - in that case, Jimbo said that the user was not back under any particular conditions, and would be treated like a normal, never-banned user. There's some discussion of alternatives to all this afoot at Wikipedia talk:Bans and blocks, though, so you might want to have a look in there. --Camembert 23:39, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Maybe Jimbo could post a statement. Or maybe someone could post a statement Jimbo may have made already. I was offline for about 6 weeks this summer, and I may have missed comments pertaining to this. Kingturtle 23:44, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
A statement about what exactly? If you mean on the process in general, about all that can be said in general is at Wikipedia:Bans and blocks. If you mean on the recent case of unbanning, see the mailing list posts at [1] and [2]. If you mean something else, you'll probably need to email Jimbo, because I don't think he keeps an eye on this page. --Camembert
Thanks. Those links answer my questions. I do have some questions for Jimbo, though. What is his email address? Kingturtle 00:33, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)
It is jwales at bomis dot com (it's on his user page for future reference). --Camembert
Ah, thanks. I did a quick eye-scan for an "@" on Jimbo's user page and didn't see one. So that explains that one. Again, thanks. Kingturtle 00:48, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC) P.S. Just out of curiosity, why can't emails be written out here in their regular format?
They can, of course, but many people have the habit of breaking up e-mail addresses to make it harder for spammers' webcrawlers to harvest addresses. --Brion 00:51, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

asdfjkl

Does "asdfjkl" mean anything? -SV

See http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=asdfjkl%3B. Angela 01:06, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)
It's the output from the middle row of a standard typewriter (or computer if you must) keyboard with the G and H keys broken. Is this question some sort of linguistic Rorschach test? --Camembert
Or a better explanation -- it's just the keys underneath the "home position" of hands when typing. Probably the fastest "word" one can type. Fuzheado
Well, in the context of Wikipedia:Cleanup--see box of terms.--戴&#30505sv 01:28, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Monster logo download

The English Wikipedia's new logo has got a problem: it's 33.75kb, which means it takes a lonngg time to load on slower connections. Crusadeonilliteracy 01:44, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It' only temporary until the new versions are finalised. Angela 01:51, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

English Syntax

Should the encyclopedia be consistent in noun-pronoun relationships, and if so, what should be the accepted practice? For example: In "A musician plays his instrument" or "A musician plays her instrument" the noun and pronoun agree, but people might be offended by the perceived exclusion of one sex (assuming of course that we don't know who the musician is.) "A musician plays their instrument" is a construct often seen today, but one which grates on some people. "Musicians play their instruments" meets both objections, but isn't always a possible formation.

Any ideas or guidance on this? --User:Dolbier October 1, 2003.

I think that the use of gender-neutral pronouns and the singular they are generally preferred. There was some stuff about it on the mailing list a few months ago [3] butI don't know of any actual Wikipedia policies on the issue. See also [4]. Angela 04:38, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

something about the "Table of contents"

I found this idea is great when the table is short, but quite annoying when there is a long alphabet list in some pages, which makes the whole page look .... My suggestion is, could we have more styles of that table, in some pages, like a list according to alphabet, we can use a style called 'ALPHABET_TABLE' instead of that style (automatically creat a table like that in List of Hong Kong-related topics). And a 'HORIZONTAL_TABLE' (good for List of colleges and universities by country). --Gboy 05:51, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Compass construct?

An IP user User:64.230.131.102 has put a four-way compass navigation at the bottom of various Canadian city articles, such as Montreal, Quebec and Toronto, Ontario. While I actually find it kind of interesting to find out about other geographically close cities, is there a precedent for doing it this way? Pros/cons? Fuzheado 05:59, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think that table is very pleasing to the eye, but I do think it is a very good idea! Perhaps it would be nice for someone to figure out a pretty/functional way to do it and create a new guidline. (Would this quiet the anti-Rambot debate as many articles would now be useful simply based on these tables? Hmmm.) -- Paige 06:14, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)
It's a good idea, but it should be implemented on map rather than the Wikipedia pages .. isn't there are project to do this somewhere on Meta? -- User:Docu
m:Maps and m:Map generator. Angela
I have been doing something very similar for towns in Hawai'i. I have simply placed links in the text under subheading Geography (see for example Kaneohe, Hawaii). These links go to the surrounding nearest towns. I think this practice provides a very interesting way to explore places and, as pointed out, make use of the thousands of town "stubs". I'm not thrilled about the looks of the "compass" as presented at Toronto, Ontario, but I very much agree with the intent. - Marshman 22:23, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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Server overloads?

Why do I get so many 'server overloads' when I try searching for any article? It would seem to me that the problem may be lack of bandwidth. If that is the problem then why is it not being dealt with?

The 'go' function will take you to a page if it finds an exact match, but text search is disabled entirely pending server upgrades. --Brion 11:24, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)
"If that is the problem then why is it not being dealt with?" People can't pull new servers out of thin air. If you want to contribute got to [5]. CGS 14:14, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC).

Red links to existing article

While working through the Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles I found the article St. Patrick's Day Parade with a wrong title which made it an orphan. After moving it to the right place it still was an orphan, even though History of New York City links there. Some minutes later that article showed up on the What links here list - but the link in History of New York stays red. But when I press it I get to the right article, in edit mode of course. I had a similar case yesterday with the Rambot article O'Hara Township, Pennsylvania, where the link in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania is red as well - the only similarity I can find is that both have a ' in the title. And yes, I cleared my cache several times already. Any idea what this bug can be. Will it fix itself with a database integrity run? andy 12:14, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

OK, I found how to fix it. A single edit of the article fixes the links. User:Patrick edited something in St. Patrick's Day Parade, and after I removed one space in O'Hara Township, Pennsylvania that has no more red links anymore as well. But it's still a strange bug. andy 12:42, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Also, Wikipedia:Clear your cache. CGS, not logged in.
I know, but I definitely did clear it (even changed browser), and I could prove it disappeared seconds after I applied the workaround. andy 14:12, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Warning when whole text is being deleted?

Hi. All text in Francis Drake was deleted today by User:212.81.200.14 (I reverted that change). It might have been an accident; can there be (or is there already?) some warning when you are about to do this? Also, maybe some special mark for such edits could be placed in the "Recent changes" list, so that people can notice and check easily.Colin Marquardt 13:16, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

how to submit a article

I am want to know how to submit a new page.

Please read Wikipedia:How to start a page to find your question answered. You should also read Wikipedia:How to edit a page and Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers. -- Cordyph 14:58, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)
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