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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#October 2003 moved discussion.

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 Ā, ā is ā. The codes for letters with dots above them are in Unicode Latin Extended Additional: Ṅ is Ṅ, ṅ is ṅ. You can also "make" these characters using the Unicode Combining Diacritical Marks: ā is ā ṅ is ṅ
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)

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 [1] butI don't know of any actual Wikipedia policies on the issue. See also [2]. Angela 04:38, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Singular they is fine, but everytime so-called gender-neutral pronouns are mentioned on wiki, most people (and it includes me) feel like throwing up. They have all the linguistic beauty and attractiveness of a large fart and make many on wiki want to throw up. Please, please don't use those appalling linguistic bastardisations. FearÉIREANN 01:42, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

BTW - so-called gender-neutral pronouns are also largely un-used by most english speakers worldwide and so even from the point of view of comprehendability should never be used on wiki.

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)
I did something similar for Gornji Milanovac, but with some explanations and links about roads. Each of the roads would, when finished, list all the cities/villages it passes through. Nikola 12:16, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The ideal is a map that one can click on. But it maybe too complicated for most editors to use. -wshun 04:44, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

---

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 [3]. 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)

If nobody catches it right away, blanked pages will show up approximately weekly when Wikipedia:List of blank pages is updated, so someone will catch them then. --Delirium 05:51, Oct 4, 2003 (UTC)

Internet-Encyclopedia

I just discovered another online encyclopedia, http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/ that looks a lot like Wikipedia. They must have even copied the source code. But it also looks inferior. My concern is that if everyone starts their own encyclopedia, will that somehow cast a dark shadow on these sites that could spill over to Wikipedia? I know that eBay had a lot of copycats but survived and is still the number one auction site. But they are a for-profit company and have the resources to excel. How can Wikipedia protect itself from these clones? - Fernkes 01:30, Oct 2, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is free as in GFDL, meaning anyone has the right to fork. See Internet-Encyclopedia. -- Cyan 01:49, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Well you certainly set me straight with that Fork article. - Fernkes 02:19, Oct 2, 2003 (UTC)
Perhaps we need an article that explains that the reason Wikipedia is free, and that we are happy with clones, people using our content, that sort of thing. This seems to pop up quite a lot from newbs (no offense, Fernkes), who don't understand the license. CGS 11:03, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC).
I don't think a separate article is needed but something more could be added to the existing Wikipedia article. Angela 13:58, Oct 2, 2003 (UTC)

Special consultants

This idea came to my mind: We should have special consultants for specific topics. For example, if an administrator is a lawyer or a law connseur, every article that has to do with law should be sent to that person for revision..what do you guys think? -- Antonio Who's that girl? Quien es esa nina, senorita presumida? Martin

Interesting idea, not least because a special consultant would have a good idea of what other articles and lists need a link to the new article. It's also trivial to implement, the simplest I can think being a discussion page per topic on which the self-declared consultants list new articles as they appear along with comments ranging from "looks fine to me" through "we should lobby to have this user banned" ;-). The danger is if consultants start to feel possessive about their topics, or if they feel they are the definitive Wikipedia authority on the subject. It's not much more of a danger than there is already, since anyone who chooses can already decide to police a particular topic. Pick one topic and do it, see if it flies. -- Onebyone 13:50, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps this could be done through the wikiprojects. For example, there could be a WikiProject Law where such articles could be listed. Angela 13:58, Oct 2, 2003 (UTC)
Never met a law "connseur" (or connoisseur?) but I thought the list of legal topics was the way to get a handle on topics in this area. I am not sure what a Wikipedia:WikiProject regarding law could accomplish because there are so many areas of law and no general way to discuss any particular topic or even deal with fundamental differences between legal cultures. What I do is try to add articles to that list as found (I am still finding them though the list is much more comprehensive [approx. 500 articles] that in was when I got here about 6 months ago [150 articles])or just add the names of proposed articles to the list. Still that is just the tip of the iceberg of legal topics that could have detailed general interest articles. (And let's not talk about legal encyclopedias for example NY Jurisprudence 2nd ed. shows how much can be written in this area. It is an introduction to NY State law and it is over 120 bound volumes! When I get a chance I check the related changes and try and add something to every stub I come across. I try to add and edit stuff when others add stuff (I don't just want to write articles myself, that is why I am volunteering here) but there is still a lot of work to do and a lot of the focus just depends on what other legal beagles (there are a few of us here) are interested in and have time to achieve. regarding other subjects I was assuming that the same approach is done by regular editors in their area(s) of expertise and that is why there is a list of lists. I for one am against giving volunteers lots of offices or titles, sysop and developer are already too many categories. Alex756 15:02, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Agreed. We don't need landed wiki-baronets and wiki-duchies. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 22:59, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

TeX niggles?

Any reason why TeX has been stuffing up recently? Some probably valid TeX isn't rendering properly; only the alt text is showing up (the TeX code)...

The TeX code makes rather naive assumptions about its image cache and breaks horribly when you try to use separate web servers with one database. They'll get cleaned up later. --Brion
Seems to me that it "stuffs up" on anything with curly braces. Other than those that are already cached, like pretty much anything on Wikipedia:TeX markup, so far. Good example at divergence. -- John Owens 10:30, 2003 Oct 3 (UTC)

Quotes and foreign language words

I remember having seen guidelines and/or discussions relative to:

  • Quotes should be avoided as the opening pararaph(s) of an article, but rather be placed below in the article body or at the end.
  • Foreign language words should be italicized. What about places' and people's names? What about titles? What about the translation/transliteration/original wording of the title in a foreign language within the definition paragraph?

With the multiplication of guideline and talk pages, I cannot find these references. Could anyone help me spotting them? If no such discussion/guideline really exist, where should they be started? Thanks. olivier 13:36, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

So far as I know from the books, loan words in English should be printed in italicized while underlined when handwriting. Since we can do nothing about the titles ( can we change the style of titles? ) I think it's alright for titles not to be italicized. But inside the articals, all foreign words should be in italicized, be they definition or anything ( it maybe troublesome, but makes them look more standard ). Like the people's names or places' names from foreign languages ( like from Chinese or other ) should be in italicized. --Gboy 14:37, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The trouble is some foreign words are so adapted that they are treated like English words like kamikaze, tyhoon, samurai and so on. -- Taku

For titles: ==Titles <i>can be italicized</i>== or in text:'''''Italicized'''''. Alex756 15:27, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think Olivier means the title of the page. --Gboy 16:00, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I think you might be looking for the Wikipedia:Manual of style. --Camembert

Google problems

Anyone know what's up with Google? It seems to have been down for ages (for me anyway). Not having it available is certainly showing how much I rely upon it. Mintguy 11:06, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Works for me. Try using a different one, like co.uk instead of .com if you're still having problems. Angela 12:11, Oct 3, 2003 (UTC)

i have no probelms either (with ".com" or ".co.uk"). -fonzy

Hm.. seems to be a DNS problem. My PC is trying to find gooogle on 207.44.220.31, which times out before I ping it and an IP lookup show it to be ns1.sitething.net. Looking up www.google.com on http://www.dns-tools.com/ gives me 216.239.51.99

Turns out I had a virus, a trojan called QHost-1 to be precise, which created a host file redirecting google and some other heavily used pages. Mintguy 19:32, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I just wanted to writhe the same - see [4] for a description of this troyan. andy 19:37, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

photos again

Could someone look at Parliament House, Canberra and tell me what I am doing wrong with my photos? Thanx Adam 13:33, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

You had "width:188px" in there for all the photos which is why they were looking squashed. I moved the old parliament one up a bit so it didn't overlap the bottom one, and added in "margin:0 0 1em 1em" to the bottom one to stop it touching the text. Hope that helps. Angela 13:43, Oct 3, 2003 (UTC)
Yes it does thanx. Obviously I need to learn what all those codes mean rather than just cut-n-pasting them from one article to the next :) Adam 13:48, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Service Temporarily Unavailable

The new message attached with the Service Temporarily Unavailable message:

Due to heavy load on the server, connections may be temporarily blocked from locations that fetch an unusually high number of pages. If you've just been heavily browsing, go get a cup of coffee and come back and reload in a minute. :)

Is much better than the previous message used. I had thought that the Unavailability was because of something wrong with wikipedia; turns out, it was because of something *I* was doing. When I am in the mood to do proofreading, I use the "Random Page" feature. Sometimes, while scanning words, I will click on "Random Page" 3 or 4 times in the span of 10 or 15 seconds. Now I know that I have to slow my "Random Page" rate down. My question is...What is the fastest rate I can use the "Random Page" feature without losing service temporarily? Or is this information held secret because a spider-author might read this? In any case, props to whomever wrote the new message. It is much more informative to users. Kingturtle 15:32, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The limit was originally 20 hits in 60 seconds, but I pointed out to Brion that that much coffee was not good me and he raised it to 50 hits in 100 seconds. But then, due to high server load, it was reduced again. I'm not sure what to, but probably the original 20 hits per minute. Remember that editing counts as two hits. Brion's advice on the mailing list yesterday was to "read the pages between clicks". :) See also: Original message introducing the limit. Angela 15:52, Oct 3, 2003 (UTC)
Okay, should be back to 50 in 100. Special:Randompage also counts as two, since it works by redirect. --Brion 19:20, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I presume it must be all related to the server problems, but I find I can no longer be logged on to pages I worked on just earlier today (although I remain logged on to other pages), whuich tells me it is not my cookie problem - Marshman 22:48, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Lists of postal and zip codes of the world?

To VfD

Image problem

I'm having trouble getting Grouse.JPG, as well as a number of other pictures to display. Vancouverguy 00:57, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I don't know what your problem is since you give no details, but note that the image upload situation is now reversed from where it was recently; uploads go to www.wikipedia.org. New uploads may not have yet been copied to en2.wikipedia.org, which will probably soon be taken out of service as unnecessary with the faster reborn larousse. --Brion 01:14, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It's probably the situation discribed earlier in the page.Vancouverguy 01:15, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Here is a topic

Problem with the w-list

Has something happened to the wiki-list? I have received no email on it since 1 October. If anyone knows what is happening could they please tell me, and put me back on the list? Please. (I need my wiki-list fix badly!!!) :-) FearÉIREANN 01:48, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The subscription list says your account is disabled, probably because it's getting too many bounced-backs. Maybe your mailbox is too full.
An alternative: Try newsgroup-like format if you have an email client. --Menchi 02:07, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)


Thanks Menchi. I did a clearout of some old messages but I double checked back in the trash to see if I had inadvertently deleted an important page, and nothing came up. I was away for some days and got spammed with piles of junk. That may have been the problem. I have applied under a new email account that is almost empty (and so far spamless!) lol . FearÉIREANN 02:17, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yep. Just get a new account! The beauty of free e-mail accounts! They spam us, we spoil them.
Try the archive for old Wikilist messages you missed. --Menchi 02:27, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Hi JT-- I was wondering where you were - you can do some catching up here (or here sorted by date) (good luck-- there have been 107K of messages in four days--there were 240K in all of September, just to give you an idea! ) -戴&#30505sv 03:09, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Page moves

deleted - done

Could some sysop delete the existing redirect pages Réunion and Supercentenarian so that La Réunion and Super-centenarian can be moved there? Thanks. --Wik 03:26, Oct 4, 2003 (UTC)

Should be done now. I merged the histories so you might need to revert to an earlier version. Angela 03:35, Oct 4, 2003 (UTC)

Larousse dead again

If you're here, you've probably already noticed that www.wikipedia.org is down while en2.wikipedia.org is up. Larousse is down, don't know why. Jason's trying to reboot it now. --Brion 04:52, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, can't get to links at www.wikipedia.org/wiki/XXX. --Samuel 05:19, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Don't Google hits/ links lead to the latest version of a Wikipedia article? I added a lot of info to a page yesterday since it was in the first page of Google hits. But today when I followed the Google link to the page it was in the same state as before my editing- though the address bar in IE is the same for both direct Wikipedia and link from Google.KRS 05:34, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Read Wikipedia:Searching#Google_search_of_Wikipedia. Martin 13:16, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)
actually, that's not answered your question. My apologies. Martin 13:45, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

How do I get a Go button with Cologne Blue

to be deleted

With the standard skin, there is always a Go button that will take me directly to an article. With the Cologne Blue skin, there is only a find entry with an OK button. This is annoying, especially when it says that searches can't be run due to high server load.

Is there a way to get a Go button to appear with Cologne Blue ? Olathe 4 Oct 2003

Only developer can add that function. (I personally use Nostalgia -- it's ugly like Standard, but it's wide!). --Menchi 07:21, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Personally I would prefer the look of Cologne Blue and use it even without a go button, but why oh why does the font have to be something you need a microscope to read? Even one point bigger would be a major improvement. (my 2 ¢) -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 08:27, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

See wikipedia:bug reports to report bugs and request features. Martin 13:15, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

  • math markup problems - see "TeX niggles" above

Uploading images disabled?

When I click an 'Upload image' link it tells me the feature is disabled. Will it be enabled any time soon?

Why is the photo upload not working?
Why does Wikipedia go offline every afternoon?
Adam 12:19, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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