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Post a question now if you don't want to wait for the whole page to be loaded. But consider skimming to see if your question was already asked. Also, do not push the "save page" button multiple times when posting this way! The server is overloaded but it will usually respond eventually and add your question to the page multiple times!

Quick reference on server status

  • The database server / web server for the other wikis ("pliny") is online
    • Motherboard and CPUs have been replaced (2003-10-14), which hopefully will eliminate the frequent crashes we've had
  • The regular webserver for the English-language Wikipedia ("larousse") is online.
    • Back online 2003-10-14, running on older, slower processor temporarily
    • Faster processors and memory are being tested now (2003-10-17) and should be put back in soon if all is well
  • The new database monster has been ordered.
    • fund raising resulted in enough money to buy a new bigger and faster database server
    • pliny and larousse will share the webserver load once the new box is online

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Moved discussion

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


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

Mythology Stubs

I have noticed that there are a lot of one-sentence stubs for mythological figures, especially non-Greek myths (but even then there are a lot). Shouldn't they be merged into the respective mythology articles? Limu, for example. Limu is listed on Polynesian mythology, but it seems to me that it would make more sense to write about him on the mythology page. Adam Bishop 07:20, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't think so because, eventually, these will be expanded. Nikola 07:51, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
And if you merged them people would be less likely to think to expand them. Stubs are a Good Thing. CGS 09:41, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC).
What if there is just nothing more to add to them? I tried to find more for Limu before posting it here, but all I can find is that he is a god of the dead. I guess that is probably because every other website has copied from Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Mythica, which both only have the one line. I know stubs are good, but what if they don't have the possibility of being expanded? Adam Bishop 16:56, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I ran into a similar problem with characters in the Bible, especially but not only from the Old Testament. Many of them will never be more than stubs IMO, we just don't know any more than two or three sentences about them. So, I'm now thinking seriously of creating some articles along the lines of Minor characters in the book of Judges (and another for Samuel, probably put Kings and Chronicles together as there's so much overlap, similarly Ezra and Nehemiah). I'd then make the names themselves redirects to these, or disambiguation pages where necessary. This is a similar approach to what is already recommended for fictional characters (I'm not suggesting that these are or are not fictional characters, that would be POV either way, just that the same format seems likely to work). Other opinions very welcome, it's very early days in my thinking on this.
If we do find more material on any of these later, then nothing is lost, they can and should become an article then.
Anyway, a similar approach would be a Minor characters in Greek mythology article. Andrewa 20:08, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
There surely is much more to say about a god of any culture, it's just that the information isn't online. Nikola 08:32, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Tensions resurfaced at Islam

We have been receiving more complaints than usual at Islam and I would to take the opportunity to request for detailed analysis and assessment of this article or possibly related ones as well. Besides neutrality in dispute, we have an exterior link also disputed. The website 'fruitofislam' was removed, reinstated and later removed again. The site URL is available through the history page and was introduced: 19:37, 31 Oct 2003 by 24.96.57.18 The contributor who implemented this peculiar site also made some questionable edits. Is the site NPOV and should it be an exterior link for the Wiki article Islam? Please discuss at Talk:Islam. Take care. Usedbook 11:55, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The situation came to a head and he appears to have given up for now. See also Talk:Islam. silsor 04:37, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)


Editing One's Subsequent Editors (and a proposal for "locking in" mature entries)

There's a fine line between obnoxiously restoring one's "golden prose" after it's been subequently edited...and honestly improving an article that's been degraded by reintroducing legitimately better commentary...which happens to be one's own previously posted material!

Where do Wikipedians stand on this call? Firmly against persistent "ping ponging" (i.e. post it once and let it go forever)? An anarchic "go ahead" shrug? Simply use one's judgement?

This is a facet of a larger issue which I perceive as Wikipedia biggest fault: past a certain point, articles don't get better, they just get different (or, just as easily, worse). As a given entry ages to a certain point where' it's been worked over by many participants, might it not be intelligent to introduce a "vote to seal" feature, where viewers who think the entry is at a really good point can temporarily freeze edits and call for a vote to permanently seal the entry (or at least a vote to impede subsequent editing, e.g. by requiring additions to be approved by vote)? Otherwise, absolutely terrific entries can and will be degraded and washed away like sand castles in the tide.

I realize that many entries are temporal in various ways and therefore benefit from unended editing. Obviously, they should stay ever open.

I suspect my solution can/will be picked to death...but the problem I'm raising is a serious one, and there may be more intelligent/effective ways to address it. Or maybe I'm just being unwikipedian....? O. Pen Sauce 08:09, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that's the eternal debate, which has been (is being) discussed as the Sifter project, "1.0" or in many other forms. The discussion flares up regularly with no clear answer. So people keep chugging along. :) --Fuzheado
I'm very interested in previous discussion of this 'Sifter project', where would I find it? I've found Jimbo's 1.0 discussion page. Andrewa 13:42, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
O Pen is absolutely right, and Fuz is also right to say this issue has been raised before, even in the short time I have been contributing. And it will go on being raised, because it should be obvious that this is indeed WP's crucial weakness, much as I love it. At the moment WP's primary role is as a playpen for writers and editors and pedants and know-it-alls (like me), and not as a service to readers. At the moment if WP tells me that the capital of X is Y, and my Funk & Wagnalls tells me it is Z, I will believe F&W, and so will most other people.
My view is that once the groups of genuine contributors to an article (as opposed to vandals and propagandists) are satisfied that it is as good as it is going to get, then it should be declared complete, and after that it can only be edited with the approval of the original authors or some panel of editors or reviewers. For 90% of articles, this won't be a problem. Turtles of the Upper Orinoco will be declared complete without fuss. The remaining 5% (God and Zionism and George W Bush is Evil Incarnate can be fought over for a few months, and then some sort of arbitration process can take place. I know this is all very un-Wiki-ish, but at the moment process is being privilges over product, and in the long run this will not produce an encyclopaedia. Adam 09:54, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I suppose it comes down to a question of the ultimate goal of Wikipedia: creation or creating? To produce an encyclopedia, or to produce the production of an encyclopedia?
An idealist might say that since perfection is unattainable, there's no reason not to endlessly refine in more and more subtle strokes. However Wikipedia has no mechanism to ensure or even encourage increasing subtlety as an entry ripens and matures. The credo is "be bold!", period. So over the lifetime of Wikipedia, great encyclopedias may arise and disappear. This will be nothing more than an amazingly ambitious and intelligent grafitti wall.
And the revisions archive will be too huge and noisy for even a collaborative network to make use of.
Someone (or some group or some function) must watch the zillion typing monkeys, lest Hamlet, The Secret of Life, and The Grand Unifying Theory of Everything be discarded underfoot along with the mountain of randomness. --O. Pen Sauce 18:16, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The reason why evolution creates better things is because advantageous mutations are retained, while disadvantageous mutations are removed. The wiki process that creates an article is somewhat analogous, so there is little danger that articles of true quality will disappear entirely, although they may undergo superficial alterations. It's not quite as bad as all that. -- Cyan 19:35, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

An idealist speaks! :)
The monkey analogy is imprecise, and was added mostly to be amusing. The graffitti wall is a much more apt analogy. Human creativity always involves a destructive impulse, that is patently clear from any look at our history. Also, to preserve quality one must appreciate quality. Such appreciation is by NO means a given. I think you're wrong on this, Cyan. --O. Pen Sauce 20:23, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)


No, appreciation of quality is not a given. It is however an observed fact. In my evaluation at least; and I personally would like to believe I appreciate quality. Who are those in the "majority" which in your opinion do not appreciate quality. I just don't see it. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 14:50, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)
I'm with the idealist, Wikilover POV. From my point of view Wikipedia is an ecology of ideas. I sympathise with the desire of you Encylopediasts, but I think [Wikipedia 1.0] will serve your needs in the long run, so don't worry.
Can anyone direct me to a major article that people have cared about which has detioriorated over the long term? Say three months. I would be interested :ChrisG 14:08, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Despite what I wrote just above your message, I think some rare examples of such articles might be found (see Wikipedia:Dark side of Wikipedia). Some subjects just inhabit a Lorentz-attractor type of existence within Library-space.

-- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 05:31, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

A plain and simple question

Has anyone tried to delete the deletion log page? Does it just create itself again? Poor Yorick

It should recreate itself, although without the header text. IIRC I tried this recently with the block log, which shares the same code. -- Tim Starling 11:26, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)

Bug?

I can't seem to establish the article R.J. Rummel at that place and a redirect from Rudolph J. Rummel to R.J. Rummel. Edits I do at one of those seem to be duplicated at the other. As can be seen in the Recent Changes, I only edited one of them with the summary "what is going on here?". But that summary appears in the histories of both! --Wik 06:19, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, it's weird. I deleted R.J. Rummel and redid the redirect. It seems to work now. --Jiang

Now the history seems to be lost. Also, I have this double entry in my watchlist: 

(diff) (hist) . . R.J. Rummel; 07:27 . . Wik (Talk) 
(diff) (hist) . . R.J. Rummel; 07:27 . . Wik (Talk)

Clicking on either of the (diff)s gives an error. --Wik 06:35, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

Somehow or other we've ended up with two entries in the database with the name 'R.J. Rummel'. This confuses some things; I'll clear one out. --Brion 06:38, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Found and fixed the bug. --Brion 09:36, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I just found a very similar bug, however not related to moving. According to the User contributions there were two edits on Aachtopf, however the history of the only shows one. And for admins the older one even shows the "rollback" button, so I guess there are two database entries for this article as well. andy 12:01, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Also: Special:Contributions/212.72.200.242 shows duplicate entries, and Special:Newpages shows the Lines page twice:
# 10:35, Nov 4, 2003 Lines (804 bytes) . . 212.72.200.242
# 10:33, Nov 4, 2003 Lines (808 bytes) . . 212.72.200.242
Angela

Protest of Zofia Kossak-Szczucka is a duplicate as well. And before the it was added the second time I could not see the first instance of that article, that polish text only showed up on when the second instance was created. Another side note - the above mentioned Achtopf also misses one article which links to it, probably because the database links that one to the first instance. And still more pages with this problem: Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, Cynthia Horner

Those articles which were not fully created at first and haven't been resubmitted then create the following error message: 

The database did not find the text of a page that it should have found, named "Miguel Bosé".
This is usually caused by following an outdated diff or history link to a page that has been deleted.
If this is not the case, you may have found a bug in the software. Please report this to an administrator, making note of the URL.

andy 16:18, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

There are a variety of longstanding bugs that can produce double entries, but last night's changes (which backport things long in the development branch) do seem to have aggravated it. I've disabled the change and am cleaning up the affected articles. --Brion 19:58, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Naming policy

I find it somewhat inconsistent. E.g. Some insist that Danzig should be used instead of Polish Gdansk whenever majority of population was German or when city was part of German states. OTOH, trhoughout the encyclopedia only Vilnius is used instead of Wilno. The same is with L'viv and Lviv used almost consitently instead of Lwow or Lwów. Did that means that policy is to use German names whenever possible and local names in other cases????!? szopen

There's been a lot of discussion of this issue on one of the mailing lists recently, do a search on "Polish" in the Wikipedia-l archive for October and you'll get some of it. It seems it is a recurring subject, but doesn't yet have a page of its own. Perhaps we should have one in the Meta? Andrewa 14:17, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). We use what the place is best known as in English. It isn't an issue of whether it's a German or Polish or whatever name. Angela
This is exactly problem with what is "English" name. Germans keep saying that German name is "English" name. Also, few have insisted on inserting German names into places e.g. Warsaw which were temporarily under German government. I am not talking this is right or wrong. DOn't care much in fact. But i want consistency. If such policy is adpoted, then Brandenburg would have to include also name Brenna, Vilnius WIlno, L'viv Lwow etc. szopen
I don't think there is a problem. The "English" name is what the majority of English-speakers use, not what people want English speakers to use. Daniel Quinlan 23:51, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)
Well, it is a problem if it is hard to determine what English speakers currently use. Maybe Danzig/Gdansk is a good example, maybe not, but in any case: Danzig is the form of the name you encounter when you read books on World War II, where disputes over Danzig and a Danzig corridor ultimately ignited the war in Europe. In a historical context the town is mostly not re-named to its Polish equivalent Gdansk. On the other hand, the Solidarność movement was of course ignited in Gdansk - not in Danzig.
But usually, the issue of what's English usage is rather uncontroversial, and it is more an issue of courtesy or political correctness if names in other languages should be listed as more or less equal alternatives. In hot spots, as currently on Polish wikipedia pages, this easily leads to long lists of names on half a dozen different languages.
--Ruhrjung 03:18, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

FWIW, this isn't only a Polish issue either. Ukrainians want to use Kyiv as the name of the city usually known in English as Kiev, considering the latter, as a transliteration from Russian, to be an offensive relic of Russian imperialism. However, Kiev is by far the more common English name, so there is disagreement over whether "common, but possibly offensive" or "official, but very uncommon" should take precedence. See also Talk:Kolkata for previous discussion of Calcutta vs. Kolkata and related. --Delirium 23:57, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

Exactly. Those are Kiev and Calcutta. The preferred local names can and should be noted, but the articles should be placed where common English usage dictates — we cannot please everyone, so common is safer (and much more friendly to users) than figuring out what is least offensive to everyone. Note that English usage often does eventually change to conform to the whims of other countries. For example, Peking became Beijing (although that was an issue of transliteration, perhaps not imperialism, although some might interpret Peking as being an imperialist name too). Daniel Quinlan 00:37, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)
Well, since that article is located at Kolkata, this is currently somewhat inconsistent. That one's a little more tricky though, because it is called Kolkata commonly in India, which has English as an official language (and ~200m English-speakers). --Delirium 01:53, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)
Good point! Kolkata is perhaps more correct as per Wikipedia:Manual of Style. I think India counts as an English-speaking nation. Daniel Quinlan 07:25, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

Diacritics

I'm sure this comes up regularly - but where to start looking for answers? I want to use extended character sets to display diacritics for Sanskrit and Pali terms. Things like 7747 = ṃ (an m with a dot underneath = anusvara). Trouble is that it degrades to a square gliph without specifying a unicode font. I can get vowels with macrons OK, but it's the retroflex consonants and the anusvara that are problematic. Is it possible/desirable to specify fonts in Wikipedia? I think it's important to have the diacritics, although some general works leave them out, but without them the words are different! Mahaabaala 12:40, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think it just depends on individual people's browsers. I can see the m with a dot thing in Mozilla, but it is a square in IE. Angela 12:57, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)
fyi, it works okay in Opera 7 and konqueror, but (naturally) shows up as m- in links(cygwin) and lynx(cygwin), and I imagine visitors with screenreaders will hear a rude noise. So one shouldn't rely on it. -- Finlay McWalter 13:45, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

VfD vs Cleanup

Having been contributing to Wikipedia:Cleanup for a bit more than a week, I have come to value it. Much to my amazement, I have seen a few miserable-looking stubs (which I would have voted to delete on VfD) blossom into real articles, and it has given me renewed appreciation of the way WP works. Listing pages on Cleanup gives newbies a chance to improve stubby articles they've submitted, without fear of the axe, as well as stimulating others to help out.

However, I am slightly disappointed to see that several articles are now listed in both Cleanup and VfD, meaning the two pages are working to some degree at cross-purposes. There also seems to be more activity at VfD, but that is not surprising since it has been around a lot longer, and, obviously, it is much easier to simply vote on an article than actually roll up one's sleeves and improve it.

Is there anyway we could improve the coordination between the two pages? I think it would be desirable if all questionable articles were first parked on Cleanup for a week or two, and if they don't improve only then moved to VfD for a potential coup de grâce. This would probably require some kind of date stamping on Cleanup, which it doesn't as yet have.

Anway, I hope more people lend a hand at Cleanup; there is lots to do. -- Viajero 14:43, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Please don't take offence, but I don't understand why, if you percieve lots to do, you don't just get on and do some of it rather than writing about it at Cleanup and here? Surely that is the point of a Wiki system? Time spent voting and "coordinating" is time not spent improving articles. GrahamN 20:34, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Perhaps because this is a collaborative project and this is a way of encouraging others to collaborate? Angela
These "others" of whom you speak. Who are they? Why are they here, if not to participate? GrahamN 23:37, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Coordination helps groups of people work more efficiently. -- Tim Starling 23:46, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)
What I met by coordination was not increasing the bureaucracy here but simply arranging things so articles aren't listed on both pages simultaneously. Doesn't this seem like a good idea? -- Viajero 10:00, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Personally I think that is a logical next step, now that Cleanup is mostly starting to lose its "babylegs" and starting to stride with more confidence. Of course the culture of Cleanup and its format and such should be continually improved too. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 10:14, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)
I think Cleanup is an excellent step, and is already saving us time and users, but that's just a guess really. See my nightmare story in the following entry "Wikipedia punishes...". Andrewa 16:01, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia punishes users who do large edits

I just finished editing Islam and fixing some of the dozens of typos and nonsensical sentences that permeate that article. When I submitted my changes, I was informed that someone had made an edit in the meantime, forcing me to spend another five minutes laboriously scrolling up and down, adding in my changes again. I submitted the new changes and found that someone had wiped out an entire section of the original article in the meantime. I gave up and lost all my edits.

So what are my options here? Either I can submit my changes every thirty seconds, filling up the article history with inane trivia, or wonder why Wiki isn't smart enough to combine simple changes. It could at least have some feature to save the endless scrolling up and down while reinserting my changes. -- silsor 00:16, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is too stupid to merge changes because we don't have enough developers to have them spending time on this sort of thing. So for the time being you will have to put up with it. I should note that sometimes it is easier to merge the other person's edits into your text than to merge your edits into their text. -- Tim Starling 00:32, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)
D'oh, I should have thought of that! From looking at the page history it looks like the other changes were just part of the edit war over a couple of links. I'll try to redo all my edits at home tonight. -- silsor
Of course it would still require some developer work, but might the merging code from an open source project like CVS be usable as a drop-in module? If it merges okay, then use the merged version; if not, then still report the edit conflict as usual. This would at least remove edit conflicts in the cases where two people are simultaneously editing completely different sections of the document. --Delirium 03:43, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)
Merging code is similar to merging wikitext -- there are some conflicts which no computer could ever merge, specifically whenever two people edit the same thing. One difference is that CVS does a line-by-line diff, and we usually do a character-by-character (LCS-based) diff. But by all means, submit it to feature requests, if it's not already there. -- Tim Starling 04:54, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)
There's something to be said for doing changes in more incremental steps. This makes the changelog rather easier to read and the deltas rather easier to understand (providing you do the changes in a logically partitioned fashion). So one change to fix links, another to fix grammar, another to reorder paragraphs, another to rewrite bad grammar in paragraph one - that makes (for me at least) a more legible changelog than a single megadelta that makes tweaks to every single bit of the article. -- Finlay McWalter 00:49, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Finlay's advice is good. However, if you work this way, please add summaries to each of your changes so that other users can understand what you have done. And also, saving incremental changes shouldn't be a substitute for using the Preview button. There are some users who, for whatever reason, make ten, twenty edits at a time without summaries and just clog up the article history. BTW, Edit conflicts are indeed a royal PITA but they don't happen that often. Except for a few very busy pages (new and/or controversial), you should find you have most pages to yourself. -- Viajero 13:36, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Nearly all of the edit conflicts I have had have been within the first ten minutes or less of the creation of a new article. It seems to be part of the current culture to make spelling corrections, add stub warnings, change formats etc etc etc in this timescale.
This can be a problem. In one recent case a newbie was making his third contribution, the first two had been good minor corrections to articles about which he was well qualified to comment, one was for his country of residence for example. His third contribution was to create a new article, again in a field of his expertise, which he wrote offline. Owing to our performance problems of the time he had trouble saving it, and on his third attempt saved instead just an external link to an information source, which is of course a sub-stub and an innocent mistake. He intended to put up the whole article as soon as he could, he'd already written it after all. Six minutes later the sub-stub was deleted. He gave up.
I have contacted this user by email and he says he will be back, fortunately he had also created a user page with an email address. The sub-stub was undeleted on someone else's protest, and is now an excellent article, but the original creator has taken no futher part in editing it, so presumably the text he wrote was wasted. The above is from his account to me, and also my perusal of article history and votes for undeletion at the time. He sees it as quite funny. But I see a problem here, which I have raised before.
Everybody acted properly and in good faith. The sub-stub met the criteria for instant deletion. Food for thought? Andrewa 15:50, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Being a sub-stub alone shouldn't be sufficient to qualify for instant deletion (or VfD). Being a sub-stub that's several days old should be, naturally, as would blank, offensive, and nonsense ones, as now. To avoid our forgetting about these guys, it should be fairly simply to cook up a SQL query that selects all articles which are more than three days old and that have fewer than say 40 characters in their body. -- Finlay McWalter 17:32, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It seems to me that some delay should precede action on any recently-changed page unless the edit is vandalism of some sort. Yes, a query is an excellent idea. What about an alternative version of Recent changes that only lists pages unchanged for the last 60 minutes? Keep the existing one too for the moment, although I suspect that even many vandals would be better handled using the delay.
The vast majority of the edit conflicts I have personally encountered would not even have occurred under this rule. Personally I doubt there is any really good solution to edit conflicts, so reducing their number seems a good idea. It saves the time not only of the person originally working on the article, but also of the copy-editor, sysop or whoever else currently jumps in as soon as you hit "save page".
I'm about to go away for a few days (not avoiding Wikipedia, another project). I may be ready for a go at updating the current Wikipedia:Deletion policy and some related areas when I get back, to address these issues. Or maybe someone else wants to attend to it sooner? Andrewa 00:21, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
You can't make changes to the deletion policy based on things like saying articles have to wait an hour or whatever before they can be deleted. Recent changes does not work this way. Unless you can come up with a solution to that, nonsense has to be deleted when it is found, which is going to be within the first few minutes of its creation. Further comments on this should go to Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy. Angela
There are several possible technical solutions, one of them I described above. An hour is modest, someone else suggested several days. The more challenging problem is the culture shift required. Please note by culture shift I don't mean challenging the underlying goals. I just mean challenging some current practices (such as the instant deletion of sub-stubs, and things that cause unnecessary edit conflicts) that perhaps don't support those goals as well as they might.
Please feel free to move this discussion to wherever it belongs. Andrewa 21:16, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
What I do in a case as Silsor describes, where I have been editing at several places in a page, and then got an edit conflict, is to copy-and-paste my version into the edit box, add a warning about edit conflicts in the summary, and hit save. Then afterward I check what the other person has changed, and I will encorporate his/her changes on the page again. If you have done edits at many places, such a 'reverse merge' is usually easier than a standard one. Andre Engels 21:13, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

See MeatBall:MergingAutomatically. Martin 20:38, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I have experienced a few times the frustration of doing complicated edits only to find out I have to piece it all together again. So now when I am doing a large edit, I will first add to the top of the article "Please do not edit this page for the next 10 minutes because I am doing a large edit," then save it, and then do my large edit. It seems to work.

New Feature suggestion: selective hiding of TOC

I would like to suggest an augmentation of the TOC to allow sub-headings to be hidden whilst leaving higher-level headings visible (at the moment the only option is to have the TOC visible or not; some are very long with meny levels and it would be good to be able to reduce the number of choices visible without hiding it totally; Characters in the Wheel of Time series is a relatively brief example). Each TOC has a [hide] link next to the caption. I would suggest having further links ([1], [2], ... up to the maximum level visible) to hide all but the selected heading. Is this the proper forum to discuss my suggestion? Am I the first to suggest such a thing? Phil 09:34, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

Feaure requests can be made at sourceforge.
Thank you. I snaffled the link from further up the page. However there doesn't seem to be much capacity for discussion on SourceForge (or am I missing something again?) and I wanted to wave my suggestion under more knowledgeable noses before bothering the code-monkeys. Phil 09:50, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)
No violent outbursts of negativity having manifested, I have submitted it on SourceForge: 237 Open Items as of when I clicked "SUBMIT". Maybe I should learn PHP, help cut that queue down. (I'm feeling whimsical because I'm just about to send off the results of a particularly horrible job and I now have some respite before it comes back and bites me :-) Phil 17:45, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

Strange behaviour of link -- bug?

Could someone help me there? I feel really puzzled what is going on. Steps to reproduce:

  • Go to List of political parties in Poland
  • Find string Unia Wolności (in section alphabetical list of parties)
  • Click this link
  • Observe that edit page is opening, even though this page contains properly done redirect. <-- Strange behaviour

What went wrong there? Przepla 23:34, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's not a legal link; use a plain "s" in links on this wiki. --Brion 23:36, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I didn't made that link. I just carelessly click on it and later created a redirect (Thanks User:Wik for speedy correction). It seems that I wrongly created a broken page Unia Wolno. I am adding it to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. Przepla 23:53, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Is it documented somewhere which characters are allowed and which aren't? Our article on Jean Chrétien is there, for example (with the accent mark), not at Jean Chretien (which is just a redirect). --Delirium 02:20, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)
This wiki, and most of the western european language ones too, are encoded in ISO 8859-1. Characters not in that range won't work in titles here. --Brion 03:09, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)


Wikipedia unbelievably fast

Wikipedia is now unbelievably fast, and it's all thanks to Brion. Some pages are served from pliny, some are served from larousse, and no-one should notice the difference, except for the blindingly fast response. -- Tim Starling 03:47, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Yee-haa! Daniel Quinlan 03:48, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Except that I'm having an odd problem where when I click on some links (not even most of them), I just get a blank page unless I Refresh. RickK 03:56, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Some people are never satisfied. You want fast response, which we give you, and now you want it to serve non-blank pages as well! ;) Which pages? When you click "view source" in your browser, what comes up? -- Tim Starling 04:05, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

I'll let you know if it happens again. RickK 04:09, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

That happens to me too, most often to the Recent Changes page, but it has happened in the past as well (I don't know when, specifically...). I just refresh the page and it's fine. Adam Bishop 04:37, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I can't seem to stay logged in. I know, I know, report it to Sourceforge. -- Cyan (65.92.245.155 04:41, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC))

Me too, just log in, and then automatically log out. :( --218.19.141.3 04:45, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Your browsers might be having trouble with the new multi-domain cookies. Which browser are you using? Does reducing security/privacy settings temporarily fix the problem? -- Tim Starling 04:48, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)
No trouble logging in, but an accidental log-out between edits. Mozilla 1.0.2. (Mozilla/5.0) on a Mac -- Someone else 04:52, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm using Opera 6.0, settings are wide open, I think... doesn't work from IE v5.5 either. --Cyan (65.92.245.155 04:55, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC))

Just checking, when you logged in, you did remember to click Remember password between sessions, now didn't you? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 05:00, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)
Do i have to? it doesn't work on both IE and Opera. --218.19.141.3 05:02, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It's vaguely possible that the old cookie is somehow interfering with the new cookie (but it shouldn't be). Clear out any cookies you may have set on 'en.wikipedia.org' or 'en2.wikipedia.org' and try again. --Brion 05:04, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It works for Opera, but it doesn't seem to work for IE. --218.19.141.3 05:16, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It doesn't even work for Opera now?? --218.19.141.3 05:19, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'm using Opera 7.11 and it works for me. Evil saltine 05:21, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I mean it works if i click the Remember password between sessions, but i don't like to do that. --218.19.141.3 05:27, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I cleared out my cookies. No dice. I can't get at my preferences, since I log out instantly. -- Cyan (65.92.240.192 05:38, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC))

Check your cookies for one named "enwikiSession" set for the domain ".wikipedia.org". Have you got one, and what's the expiration date look like? It should be ~an hour in the future. --Brion 05:43, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Could anyone with cookie problems check the date & timezone settings on your computer? If it's off (for instance a daylight saving time glitch) that could expire the cookie early. If that's totally off base, I'd like to be able to strike it off my list of things to check. --Brion 05:47, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Where is that? I am using Windows XP, and only found 3 files in my \cookie, one is called "administrator@wikipedia[2].txt" which is modified 3 mins ago. :? --218.19.141.3 05:56, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
If you open that file in wordpad (not notepad! notepad gets confused) you'll see some gobbledegook inside; looks like the expiry times aren't in human-readable format though, unless you understand seconds since January 1, 1970... --Brion
I've changed the cookie to expire at the end of the browser session instead of at a time offset. Does this help? --Brion 05:57, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It works now!! Thanks! --Samuel 05:59, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Awesome! (By any chance, can you check that your computer's clock and timezone are set correctly?) --Brion 06:03, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Brion was kind enough to prepare me some listings of articles and broken links and I wrote a program to find broken links that appear to be related to an already existing article. It's not 100% accurate and there are some conflicts, so humans are needed to figure out what's valid and what's not. I found some 1678 articles that could be linked from 2073 different broken links. When done with this list, I believe a good 500 broken links will be turned into valid and useful redirects. (Ha, everyone who said I was a rabid deletionist is proven wrong!)

Right now, the list is just based on middle names which I have noticed to be a frequent cause of broken links. However, I'll probably write some more complicated programs to find other near-matches if this turns out well.

Anyway, I could use some help. The lists (it's broken into two sub-pages now) is located at User:Daniel Quinlan/redirects. Please follow the convention for noting when a broken link cannot be connected to an article (other than that, the page shouldn't really need to be edited aside from questions, notes, etc.) and have fun. I've already done about 70 or so, but need to sleep now. Daniel Quinlan 06:46, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Cool idea. I've already finished the Q's! (OK, there was only one, but still...) Jimbreed 14:09, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

I need help in the Catalan version

We have lots of vandalism from Spanish nacionalists and others. We need ban them, but how? I have the password that let me to delete pages. ¿Is the same that let ban de people? Have I to request another password or I have to visit an other page with the same password? Thanks. Llull 10:12, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Llull, please see UseMod:AdminFeatures for documentation on the admin system on the old wikis. --Brion 21:39, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)


Is it possible to rename an article I created?

Bmills 12:14, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

yes, use the Move this page command on the left of the screen. Only works if name is not already in use. BTW, if you add User:Bmills\ as a prefix to the filename, it is copied to your private namespace. Useful for drafts, etc. To copy it back to the main article space, just delete it using Move.-- Viajero 12:21, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Yes: See wikipedia:move.

Images on UseModWikipedias

Quite some time ago I stumbled upon images uploaded by User:Renato Caniatti, when I noticed that all of them are orphans here. Later I found that those images aren't real orphans, but are used in the italian wikipedia included with html, not the image links I know here. I asked Renato about it, and today he answered that it is not possible to upload images on the italian wikipedia, and thus he uses the english one for storage. As I had no interaction with the old software - is that true? I don't think that the way he includes images to it: is a good one as it will break when someone checks the orphan images here, or once the policy of not using external images in wikicode is enforced, but what is the better way? Wait with images till it: gets converted to MediaWiki? andy 21:49, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes it is true. I do the same with Simple - just link to photos that exist here. I'm aware they might break but I don't think it's a huge issue as they will be replaced once we get the new software and a broken image link is hardly the end of the world. Angela 21:53, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

William Crowther

This William Crowther page is all wonky. It seems like it might be a legit topic, if it lost the BBS tone, but I don't know enough about net history or spelunking to dare an edit. Not sure what do about it, so came here.

Yeah, the page should go on cleanup. Crowther is encyclopedic (I think, anyway) as co-author of Adventure, the first computer adventure type game. We already have a decent page for his co-author, Don Woods -- Finlay McWalter 01:02, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

press image of wikipedia

Hi, how can I get in touch with the appropriate person for image rights and clearance. We're interested in featuring the wikipedia story in a book and international touring exhbition - in the section devoted to info/software. Please advise asap. Thank you! 

Jennifer
416-260-5777 x234
[email protected]
Jim Wales is the man in charge, and is reachable directly at [email protected]. Being an Open Content project, permission tends to be very easy to get. -- Jake 02:01, 2003 Nov 7 (UTC)
Permission to reproduce is easy, living with the ensuing GFDL conditions is harder. Fuzheado
Jimbo doesn't own the articles, the individual contributors do. Either you stay within the license limitations, or you obtain permission from everyone who has contributed to the article in question. -- Tim Starling 05:05, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)
I'm not a lawyer of course, but I think you will find that the authors don't own the articles. Once they have posted them to Wikipedia then Wikipedia owns them and they are released under GFDL. You may find that even the author (whoever that is in an article more than a few edits old) can't reproduce under another form of copyright. Having said that, unless the questioner wants to reproduce most of Wikipedia they should be able to quote chunks of it without permission under 'fair use' law, just a like a reviewer can quote passages of a book. DJ Clayworth 15:32, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
If I were entitled to royalties on everything I've written -- even just professionally -- I wouldn't be renting in Harlem. --Calieber 20:29, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)
Also NAL, but please note that posters do not assign copyright to Wikipedia (rather, the Wikimedia Foundation), and they may reproduce their own contributions under other licenses if they like (but most articles contain material contributed by several or many different people). Wikimedia owns only the contributions of Jimbo Wales and his employees who have worked on Wikipedia. Fair use of course may apply. --Brion 02:20, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

'pointlessly detailed' award

I just stumbled on the infinitely tedious collection of articles about Gundam, an anime series. Somebody is creating detailed, albeit not very coherent, plot synopses about every single series: It could swamp the server all by itself ... (Not that I think anything can be done about it, since editing them all into coherence would be an inhuman task. I just wanted to spout.) -- DavidWBrooks 01:27, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I dunno. It's no more pointlessly detailed than the interminable stuff we have about Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings etc. While a bunch of the articles aren't wikied (yet), a bunch are. I suspect untold legions of gundammers will spring from the wiki and polish those to the same degree. -- Finlay McWalter 01:56, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Gundam is more accurately a series of series, and is often tedious and incoherent itself. There's a lot of info (I think there are 14 series or so... most a season long, some longer), but hardly server-swamping. I could list a lot of TV series, books, etc, with much more detailed and tedious descriptions. Just ignore it unless you're in a position to improve it. -- Jake 02:01, 2003 Nov 7 (UTC)
One person's pointlessly detailed is another person's heaven. m:Wiki is not paper memory is cheap, so there is no reason for Wikipedia not go into detail about everything and have the limits of existing encyclopedias: ChrisG 02:26, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'm prepared to tolerate such indulgence, mainly because achieving consensus for deletion is impossible. But what really annoys me is when they branch the article out into dozens of short subpages. Some hard-working wikipedian usually comes along and adds context to each article "in the Gundam Anime series...", but the practice still pollutes the namespace and makes it hard for fans to gather significant amounts information. Ruthless merging is often necessary. If you ever see one of these articles with all the characters, all the concepts and all the places linked to as-yet non-existent articles, defuse the timebomb and remove the links before it is too late. -- Tim Starling 08:46, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

See also: wikipedia:check your fiction

Can't find "Post a Comment"

I must be stupid, but I can't seem to find the "Post a comment" feature on talk pages. All I see are the usual "Main Page|Recent changes|Edit this page|..." links in the header, as well as "Edit this page|View article|..." links in the footer, as well as the sidebar links. "Edit this page" never shows me a "Subject/headline" box, just the text area, Summary box, "Minor edit" and "Watch this page" checkboxes, and Save and Preview buttons. What am I doing wrong? Tjunier 12:48, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Nothing. You are probably using a non-default skin. Certainly the blue and yellow skin I use doesn't have the "Post a comment" button. Pete 12:51, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Ok I set my skin to "Standard" and I'll see what happens. Thanks anyway. Tjunier 13:38, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

In the Standard skin it's in the navagation page on the left of the screen just under Edit this page. Bmills 12:53, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Well one weird thing (IMHO) is that the navigation page seems to randomly disappear (e.g. when I log in), only to reappear in some mysterious circumstances. Thanks anyway. Tjunier 13:38, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

- I had something like this the other day. I went playing with my preferences and eventually went back to set Standard as the skin, but found I had no navagation pane. I went back to Preferences and found that the skin had reverted. It took three or four attempts before it would stick with Standard, but when it did the pane was there alright. Bmills 13:42, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Well finally it was a matter of preferences (unfortunately I had some trouble just finding the prefs page, since the link wasn't there :-). Now everything seems to be working. Thanks for your time! Tjunier 13:40, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Recent Changes

I've (sigh) grown used to Wikipedia timing out just when I've reached the peak of boredom, but now I'm finding every page I try to go to is fine except Recent changes. Is that sort of situation common? The text box here is also responding quite slowly; SimpleText isn't. I'm not demanding someone fix this, I'm just trying to see if there's an explanation. --Calieber 20:29, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

The sluggishness is probably just length -- now that I'm just editing in this section rather than the whole page it's fine. --Calieber 20:31, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

The reason recent changes was not accessible while some other pages were is because the en server was down whilst en2 was still up, owing to Apache being stuck in some weird state where it wouldn't restart cleanly apparently. It should be working now that Brion's restarted Apache. Angela 22:09, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)
Again, I didn't mean to come off like I was complaining, I understand computers sometimes go down; I guess I was just trying to get a glimpse of the underlying structure as displayed by this particular issue. I wqas merely motivated by curiosity (else I'd probably have gone to Bug reports. --Charles L. 02:17, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC)
Curiosity. The seed of Wikipedia! I think it is, as you mentioned, because the length of the page. RecentChanges is quite large, compared to most articles. It's been like that -- slow -- for a long time now. But then once it finishes loading, you get all sorts of surprises and weird articles to read and to copyedit. Like waiting for a gift to be unwrapped. Except there's no Christmas tree and blinking lightbulbs. --Menchi 02:25, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Comma usage

Without mentioning names, does anyone agree or disagree that these sentences are incorrect grammar and punctuation?

  • "The British could be removed from the sentence, and it would remain accurate."
  • "The Germans invested more heavily, in the development of science and pure research, than the British."
  • "The Germans invested more heavily, in the development of science."
  • "The Germans invested more heavily, than the British, in the development of science and pure research."

I contend all four are only made correct by removing each and every comma. Daniel Quinlan 02:03, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC) (Oops, I should add that the third sentence is missing a "than something", so it is doubly ungrammatical. Daniel Quinlan 02:08, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC))

Agreed, especially the last three sentences. Btw, I think this is better at Wikipedia:Reference desk. --Menchi 02:07, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I agree for the last three. The first one is not incorrect, I believe, since the two parts of the sentence are independent clauses connected by a ", and". However, when one of the two independent clauses is short, the comma does not have to be included. So, all four would be correct without the commas. The first one is the only one that could pass as correct with the commas. -- Minesweeper 03:52, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I think the commas due to dividing the the sentences especially the second and fourth into seperate logical parts are useful.
I think the commas, due to dividing the the sentences, especially the second and fourth, into seperate logical parts, are useful.
The commas in the first and third seem a bit redundant, however. Instead of commas, maybe a different form of punctuation, including brackets, labels, goto commands, and things like that, would be more consise. Κσυπ Cyp 09:13, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I agree they all should be removed. But I am sympathetic with the author as I tend to overuse commas as well. Fernkes 13:46, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC)

Second skin titles

How should I deal with these two articles: Second Skin && Second skin, the content are different, but the titles are alike! :O --FallingInLoveWithPitoc 03:01, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's fine, since both link to each other, but you may want to put some sort of See also thing on Second skin up the top of Second skin. Dysprosia 03:03, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Parallels exist, e.g., Quantum Leap & Quantum leap. Dysprosia is probably referring to the disambiguation block at the bottom of that page, which can redirect the reader if they get to the wrong page. --Menchi 03:05, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
No, I'm thinking of something along the lines of John Neumann and John von Neumann :) Maybe try this? Dysprosia 03:09, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Do I need to creat a disambiguation page? I mean the movie Second Skin can be written like Second skin too! :O --FallingInLoveWithPitoc 03:08, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
A block is enough. It's impossible tell if one should create [Second Skin (disambiguation)] or [Second skin (disambiguation)] anyway. --Menchi 03:13, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Writing on subjects close to your heart

Hey folks, I just wanted to ask for the community's help on this. I'm intimately involved with the Diebold issue, as a co-plaintiff in the EFF's lawsuit, and a founding member of the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons which was one of the first student pages to host the memos. I'd like to expand the Diebold article to reflect the recent events that my friends and I have been involved in, and I'd like to fill out the "wishful thinking" link to an SCDC article that I found on that page. However, I want to be careful about stepping over the line of writing about myself and rehashing the Boyer controversy. Could people look at the sources and tell me whether either of these actions would be a good idea? I've read Wikipedia:Auto-biography, and I think the first case falls under the acceptable category of "writing on subjects close to your heart", and I think that filling in the empty link to an SCDC article may be borderline acceptable as I found the link already in existence, but I would like some feedback. --Nelson 04:45, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It sounds like you are very involved, well beyond it being something close to your heart — I mean, you're a co-plaintiff. I would personally recommend not adding any first-person information and stick to just making simple corrections (that do not rely on first-person information) to obvious mistakes. If you want to add something more, mention it on the talk page and let someone else do the work. Daniel Quinlan 05:25, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC)
Hm, it is indeed true that I am super-close to the issue, and that suggesting changes on the talk page may be the best way to go. However, if you look at Wikipedia:Auto-biography, the example they give for something "close to your heart" and acceptable is an athlete or official actually involved in the Olympic Games writing about them. At what point does it cross the line from being close to your heart to being actually about you? The athletes and officials sound pretty close to the Games. It would seem to me to be the difference between an event that involves you and an event that IS you. So, maybe it might be OK to write about a march on Washingon that you helped organize, but not all about how your latest scientific discovery saves the world. Or am I missing the point? What is the reason for the Auto-biography policy again? --Nelson 07:55, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'm quite certain that if you happen to have made the "latest scientific discovery saves the world", there'll be tons -- and I mean tons -- of Wikipedians rushing to describe that discovery for you. Some of the most exciting news have became articles that way, as I've found thru Current events. Auto-biographies and the likes easily lead to POV, no matter now hard you try not to. Hey, it's brain. We don't know why it works that way! (I mean, I don't.) --Menchi 08:02, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
N.B. But I agree with Daniel's advice. Talk about it on the Talk page (mm.. the pun), and somebody who knows enough about the matter can go on and do something with it. Good method indeed. --Menchi 08:05, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Also, as a co-plaintiff, Wikipedia policies aside, you might want to think carefully before you comment on the issue. IANAL though. -- Pakaran 05:29, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Good point. It seems that simple statements of fact should not be an issue, but thank you for reminding me to think about that. --Nelson 07:55, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Formatting country templates

Can someone reduce the width of the United Kingdom and Niue tables to be like the rest of them? --Jiang

I narrowed Niue, but UK looks already narrow on my computer. So I wouldn't narrow if what I'd do is working or not: a break code for a long line. --Menchi 09:23, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Warnings

I was wondering if there was a standard adult warning for article links? should editors just put in "Warning, contains adult material" after the link? and what about offensive content (which some may view adultcontent as)? any feed back would be appreciated .. reddi

"Offensive" is impossibly POV. CGS 01:31, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC).

Help me name this article idea

I want to make an article that lists songs that tribute other musicians by referencing those musicians. For example:

  • "All the Young Dudes" says "Oh man I need TV when I got T Rex" and "My brother's back at home with his Beatles and his Stones"
  • "Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes" says "Old Jerry Lee and Charlie And old Go Cat Go still echoes through the years"
  • "Sir Duke" says "there’s basie, miller, satchmo and the king of all sir duke; and with a voice like ella’s ringing out there’s no way the band can lose"

But what I need is a solid name for the article...something like List of songs that tribute other musicians by referencing those musicians....but something that will leave no doubt what it is about while not be overly complicated.

thanks Kingturtle 01:20, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hm. List of songs containing overt reference to real musicians might do if you are satisfied with categorising into tributes and non-tributes within the article itself. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 01:38, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)

Why does this not make a bolded italic? Also, either break this page into smaller sections, or start adding new stuff to the top so people don't have to load the whole page in order to add something. Please respond on my talk page, this page is not something I can access easily. Lirath Q. Pynnor

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