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[[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]]

Template:Communitypage

Moved discussion

Questions and answers, after a period 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).

(New questions from JB82 moved to bottom of the page)


-->Wikipedia talk:Copyrights

I've also posted a question in the above talk page. -- Jrdioko 05:46, Apr 4, 2004 (UTC)

Image Cache Problem?

Clear your cache

Alfred hunt engineer in nigeria

See Nigerian scam.

English Versions

-->Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

Accessibility

I ran the wikipedia main page in [Bobby] which checks web pages for accessiblity issues.

  • It failed!!

I strongly feel that Wikipedia software writers should help make pages more accesibility friendly so that 'challenged people' should not have a problem. What do you think? Nichalp


Try the text-only version. Mkweise 20:40, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

For the record, I checked our main page for w3c compliance, and it failed. see here →Raul654 19:32, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)

HTML Tags

-->m:MediaWiki feature request and bug report discussion

Skins

Hope Wiki guys can provide us more skins

Nichalp

It is rumored that there are people testing out new skins at the wikipedia test platform — Sverdrup 14:24, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Try http://wiki.aulinx.de/ for example. The skin itself is xhtml/css based, the output of the content area wiki->html parser isn't validationg though. This skin is in the wikimedia cvs, needs more testing and (browser)bug fixing. -- Gabriel Wicke 16:23, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

User:666

-->User talk:666

Hungarian Counties

There is a new WikiProject called Wikipedia:WikiProject Historical Hungarian counties. This is similar to the historical Swedish provinces project. Anyone who wants to join may do so.

--Dagestan

Okay, here's the first one so far: Bihar

Uhhhhhh.....anyone?

Don't be disheartened. After all, one would reasonably expect many (most?) of the folks interested in Hungarian Counties to be Hungarians, and thus (generally) located in Hungaria (sic), and consequently tucked up, warm and snug, in bed. I'd give it a day or two (oh, and you should probably crosspost on the hungarian wikipedia's village pump too). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:44, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There is the chance that you may be the only contributor for that project for some time. I have experienced the same when I started a project on the provinces of Thailand, where I finally had to create all the articles myself - that was no problem, it only took longer to finish them. But you will experience at least one part of the wiki principle - spelling or grammar errors will be fixed, even if it's a more exotic topic. But don't let this stop you from pursuing with that project, quite the contrary - and maybe the already finished articles may attract new contributors later. andy 11:46, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I do not really get why do they need a "project", since they already have got an article? --grin

Wikipedia on CD-rom

Is there a way to get a (snapshot of) Wikipedia on CD-rom? I know this is against the interactive nature of Wikipedia, but I would like to have it for my students without internet access. Anybody knows how it can be done? -- Kjetil Halvorsen

Kjetil, we don't have a great solution, but there are two schemes for static dumps, both described at Wikipedia:Database download. You might like to try the "terodump" thing, although I can't personally vouch for it. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:51, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)


Kobe Bryant's Accuser

There is now a page entitled Kobe Bryant's accuser. It does not currently include a name. I hope that we can have a debate about whether or not to include the woman's name at Talk:Kobe Bryant's accuser. moink 01:15, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

By copying and pasting rather than moving the page you have removed the history information and infringed the copyright of the contributors. Update: I see the history has been copied to the discussion page. Good enough. anthony (this comment is a work in progress and may change without prior notice) 01:19, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
FWIW, I found the name of the accuser in a matter of seconds through Google. Her name is already in the open, so why continue to hide it? — Jor (Talk) 12:32, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Possibly due to legal reasons in the US, but IANAL and I am not sure. Pfortuny 13:44, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There was much discussion on VfD on this issue. - IMSoP 14:59, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
And there is currently much discussion on Talk:Kobe Bryant's accuser. If you have an opinion, please come post it there. moink 17:36, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

-->Wikipedia talk:Copyrights

The film of the book

When a book is adapted into a film should there be one article for the book and one for the film? Sometimes on Wikipedia theres one page for the film and one for the book (Trainspotting (movie) and Trainspotting (novel)). Sometimes there both covered in the same article (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). Is there a policy on this? My own personal view is that they should be in the same article unless theres a very big difference between them (although I admit that thats a very subjective question). Saul Taylor 06:37, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree with that. It of course depends on how faithful the film is to the book, and if differences can be addressed without taking over the entire article. — Jor (Talk) 12:31, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wiki as Language Learning

I might have asked this before, but I don't remember receiving an answer--is there any special program for using Wikipedia as a way of learning foreign languages? (I am thinking specifically as a way of learning several languages simultaneously). Mjklin 15:04, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No, but there are several language textbooks in progress at Wikibooks. Tuf-Kat 17:27, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)

Im looking for an athelte

Question answered at http://www.prayb4uplay.com/sd_tf1.htm

Image Authorization

-->Wikipedia talk:Copyrights

Log-in problems?

A couple times already today I found I was logged-out for no apparent reason. Did anything change on the Wikipedia end (in other words, is this affecting more people)? — Jor (Talk) 16:49, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

  • It was happening (often) to me, so I finally used the 'remember across sessions' checkbox so it's not happening any more. Niteowlneils 23:09, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia jabber chat room.

New chatroom at [email protected]. See Wikipedia talk:IRC channels.

Searching

Is the text search of Wikipedia permeanently disabled? Every single time I go to use it, it says:

"Sorry! Full text search has been disabled temporarily, for performance reasons. In the meantime, you can use the Google or Yahoo! searches below. Note that their copies of Wikipedia content may be out of date."

Or am I doing something wrong? LUDRAMAN | T 17:31, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It was disabled prior to the arrival of the new (fast) servers, but has not been re-enabled. — Jor (Talk) 17:37, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
More specifically, (as I understand it) the search was intended to use the one server which wasn't replaced, and is still awaiting return from repairs. - IMSoP 01:19, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Rumour has it the old server is repaired and will be installed on Saturday. I don't think this guarantees the search will be back on though. Angela. 21:03, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
Update: that server still has problems. See the Geoffrin woes thread on Wikitech-l. Angela. 18:11, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

Table tutorial

Recently, someone came up with the brilliant idea of the Wikipedia:Picture_tutorial. Could someone do the same for tables? I'm totally confused here, and I'm sure there are many other Wikipedians who would appreciate one as well. LUDRAMAN | T 20:03, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

see m:Wiki markup tables. IMHO the image tutorial should be moved to meta too. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:09, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
oops, m:MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:58, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Well, it' good to hear that someone liked my picture tutorial :) →Raul654 20:47, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)
IMO all the tutorials inc. the picture and table tutorials should be put on the Wikipedia:Tutorial so you have one main tutorial instead of lots of scattered ones. What do other users think? LUDRAMAN | T 21:13, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That's Isomorphic's baby - I know from talking to him (in the flesh) that he's the tutorial master. But I made sure he is aware of the picture tutorial. →Raul654 06:18, Mar 30, 2004 (UTC)
BTW there is a tutorial at How_to_use_tables. -- User:Docu

Who can nominate for deletion?

-->Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy


Yate article

-->Talk:Yate

Adjectives

There should be an official guideline that adjectives redirect to nouns. (If there isn't one already).

For example: Renal should redirect to kidney. Happy should redirect to happiness.


I can't think of many cases where this should not occur (perhaps only if the adjective is ambiguous). Bensaccount 16:33, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This was actually supposed to be a question. Bensaccount 04:03, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes. - IMSoP 22:35, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
(Oh, alright then, I'll put a proper answer rather than just a joke - I think this is a good idea, and would fit in well with our existing policy on plural vs singular nouns (and no, I can't be bothered to link the page, you'll have to find it yourself :-D))

Delete history page?

New - and hense foolishly edited the entry in window with repeated "saves". Ugh. Is there any way to erase the history page? Alex [email protected]

Not readily, and no big problem, happens all the time. A sysop could, in theory, fix it, but they've generally got better things to do. Don't sweat it, just know about it for the future. -- Jmabel 23:36, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Sysops can not (currently) delete individual revisions of an article. Developers can if it's really necessary, but for something like this, just don't worry as Jmabel says. The show preview button is useful for ensuring this doesn't happen. Angela. 21:00, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)


What should i do with images i dont want to write an article about?

i have lots of images i've taken recently , like Picture of lillebælt , this would apply to this article: Small_Belt however i have lots more that i couldnt possibly be bothered to write an article about this, What is the proper way to handle this? i've seen some people put them on their User: pages saying anyone can use them under the GFDL, should i do this? --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 09:34, 2004 Mar 31 (UTC)

Upload the pics, display them on your user page (or better a subpage of your user page) and link to that page from Wikipedia:Images with missing articles. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:00, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
P.S. forgot to mention before: THanks! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:02, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
You may want to add a few descriptive and wikified words to the image's description page. This way it's more likely someone will find the image with "What links here". The names for the Plants and animals of Belize were added by other Wikipedians after they were uploaded. -- User:Docu

Petitions in Wikipedia

I found a couple of pages with external links to an online petition. I deleted the links, as I didn't think them appropriate for Wikipedia. Any comments? --Auximines 10:53, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Very unlikely to be relevant to the article page. Possibly ok on the talk page depending on the context. Note it is common for dubious external links to get added to articles (probably by the external site webmaster seeking traffic) and equally common for them to get removed pretty quick. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:00, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Totally agree, except in very unusual circumstances. (Trying to think of any that would be appropriate. Umm, maybe if there were an article specifically about the effect that a particular online petition had had. But I'm stretching here). --ALargeElk 11:03, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments. I'm pretty new here, and the advice is very welcome. --Auximines 11:46, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Leopold II quote in French? "Un pays que ouvre..."...

The beginning of the quote is "Un pays que[qui] ouvre sur la mer..." -- and goes on from there. [could also be "Un pays qu'ouvre sur la mer..."

I do research for a living, and have googled the entire web on this phrase, portions of the phrase, "leopold II" -- and come up with NOTHING. I need the full original quote IN FRENCH and am asking for help from any of your wizards.

Many thanks! Merci beaucoup et gros bisous!

Avril

“Un pays baigné par la mer n’est jamais petit” ? or ask it in fr:wikipédia:le bistro. Greudin

Error on "Ibuprofen" stub

Hello The structure on the ibuprofen stub article is entirely incorrect - the branches extend from the wrong place on the benzene ring and one of the groups themselves is wrong - it should feature an OH group, not a single bonded oxygen mid-branch.

I cannot discuss the article as it does not exist yet. I would be more than happy to write the article when I have finished my current paper, however I wondered whether it was in some way possible to correct or remove the erroneous information before then.

Many thanks strych 16:28, 31 Mar 2004

You can discuss the article by clicking on the "Discuss this page" link. Though it doesn't exist yet, as you note, just by inserting some text you will create the page. There is no stigma attached to creating a page—it is one of the best things about wiki-ing! You can also edit the Ibuprofen article yourself. I hope this helped. :-) —Frecklefoot 15:32, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
Fixed Rick Boatright 05:52, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedians by age

Because it came up elsewhere (and I was already curious), I have created m:Wikipedians by age - yet another social organization grouping ;) →Raul654 17:59, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

Um, I hope it doesn't became a harvesting ground for pedophiles. —Frecklefoot 18:06, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
Curiousity killed the cat. (anon)

April Fools' jokes

See examples at Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense

Brazilian Portuguese

Hi,

I've been surfing the site and found that the Portuguese version of Wikipedia is on Portugal's Portuguese. This is most inconvenient for Brazilian users, for, even though we speak Portuguese, it's different enough to prevent integration on the same site-version. Can this be changed? Can a "Brazilian Portuguese" version be created? Help!

Thanks,

Helen

You can create a Brazilian Wikipedia (I'm surprised there isn't one already). Go to Wikipedia:Create a new language in Wikipedia as a place to start. LUDRAMAN | T 20:02, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
From what I understand of w:pt's policy, both spelling systems are perfectly acceptable, in the same way that we allow both US and UK spellings here. Don't you think it'd be terribly sad to start a new version over minor differences such as "correto" vs. "correcto"? Are the two versions really "different enough to prevent integration"? Wouldn't it be better to start lots and lots of new articles in Brazilian Portuguese and redress the balance? –Hajor 20:09, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Just a comment: Some language learning courses (such as Linguaphone) offer both Brazilian and Portuguese. Wouldn't this signify a reasonable difference. LUDRAMAN | T 20:19, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC) (PS I am indifferent to the creation of a Brazilian Wikipedia)
We've got an article on it. I would hope that the differences are not insurmountable, but isn't this really a matter for the Portuguese speakers on their Village Pump? –Hajor 20:44, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)


Unicode question

Should the English Wikipedia use Unicode? Continued at Wikipedia:Unicode.

Current time?

See m:Variables

Meta pages

Should meta pages (wikipedia:) be used for discussion?

ie. Wikipedia:Unencyclopedic Bensaccount 23:03, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It depends, but for the most part no. One should use the Wikipedia talk: pages instead, unless the Wikipedia: page was designed for some specific discussion such as Wikipedia:Requests for adminship or Wikipedia:Quickpolls. That page does not seem to have been well designed. I have no idea what's supposed to take place in there. Dori | Talk 23:07, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
I think this page should be a redirect to Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. The discussion content would have to be moved to Wikipedia talk: What Wikipedia is not.

The reasons for this move seem obvious to me so I left them out but if you want me to state them I will.

I wont copy and paste the content, and therefore am powerless. Help? Bensaccount 23:52, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

For the most part, meta (i.e. Wikipedia:) pages seem to act as polished pages, in the same way as articles do, with their corresponding discussion pages. Contrast this, however, to pages on meta (that is, the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki) which function in a more wiki-like way, with discussion simply being refactored into content as appropriate. This is mainly because the meta-wiki isn't really big enough to require the full features (discussion pages, watch-lists...) that the software provides.
Sorry, this is drifting towards a different topic. It's also rather hard to follow all this meta:meta:meta at this time of night, so I'm going to bed. - IMSoP 23:54, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Ahh, just seen this. See my prior discussion with Ben on this point at user talk:MyRedDice. Cheers. Martin 19:32, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
See Wikipedia: Wikipedia-namespace Bensaccount 00:29, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Which would be better called Wikipedia:Wikipedia namespace, without the hyphen; so I moved it. Oh, and I'm not keen on having redirects from the article namespace to the Wikipedia: one, but I guess that's another discussion. - IMSoP 00:42, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
...and then spent 5 minutes following you around fixing all your redirects, accidentally spamming my own watchlist in the process! D'oh! - IMSoP 00:48, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia: Namespace is not a redirect. Bensaccount 00:52, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Huh? Who said it was? - IMSoP 00:58, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You said "I'm not keen on having redirects from the article namespace to the Wikipedia: one"

This namespace stuff is confusing. I think maybe namespace should be reserved to the definition on the page Wikipedia:namespace and the definition for Wikipedia-namespace on that page should be changed to Meta page (and ditch the Wikipedia-namespace term. Bensaccount 01:06, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Done. (I could have tried to explain what a namespace was for hours with the old version). Bensaccount 01:14, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't follow you; those two usages of the word are identical. There are several namespaces, one of which is the Wikipedia namespace. The article namespace is the one with no identifier (a synonym for main namespace) and some of the redirects you created went from one to the other - e.g. Wikipedia-namespace. This is not a very good idea, since the main namespace should ideally consist entirely of encyclopedia articles, and be copyable directly by any of our numerous mirrors and forks.
As for "meta page", I think my earlier comments in this section (and on meta:meta:meta) demonstrate why we should avoid that term wherever possible. Oh, and now you've broken all your redirects again, but I'm not going to fix them this time, because I prefer the old name :-p IMSoP 01:20, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC) (via edit conflict!)

I dont follow the meta:meta:meta phenomenon. Is it similar to the Wikipedia namespace:Wikipedia:namespace:Wikipedia: Wikipedia namespace phenomenon? (A wikipedia namespace page on wikipedia namespace that defines the wikipedia namespace and the wikipedia wikipedia namespace)Bensaccount 01:27, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The term "meta" is used for multiple purposes - a "meta page" is different from a "page on meta". The latter is a page on a completely different project (kind of a non-language language); the former is the pages beginning Wikipedia: that we're discussing here. More specifically, the software defines a project-specific prefix (namespace) to such "meta pages", which on Wikipedia is Wikipedia:, but on meta is Meta:. With the result that a "meta page" on meta has a name beginning meta:.
Confused? Good, because that's my whole point. Can I have my "Wikipedia namespace" back now ;-) - IMSoP 01:38, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I follow,

Heres are the relevant pages: Wikipedia:Glossary, Wikipedia:Namespace, Wikipedia:Meta page, Wikipedia: Wikipedia namespace.

The way I see it, namespace defines things such as the Main-namespace, the talk-namespace, etc. Meta pages have their own namespace (not to be conbfused with Meta-Wikimedia.) Meta page namespace is used to provide information on wikipedia. I think this is clear, agreed? Bensaccount 01:42, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes; but since "meta pages" (on Wikipedia) begin with Wikipedia:, whereas meta:foo will create a link to Meta-Wikimedia, it seems to me that it would be less confusing if we referred to it as the "Wikipedia namespace", and tried to cut down on our use of the word "meta" in this context; this also matches the "talk namespace" (not the "discussion page namespace"), the "image namespace" (not the "image description page namespace") etc. - IMSoP 01:54, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I see what you mean, but using Wikipedia namespace is just as bad. The wikipedia term is also overused. Any namespace on wikipedia could be referred to as a wikipedia namespace (as opposed to a namespace).

I propose we create a new term for meta page namespace aka wikipedia wikipedia namespace. Bensaccount 02:01, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, now I see what you mean! My head hurts. Is anyone else actually awake who might fancy having an opinion on this? - IMSoP 02:07, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I see no reason to stop calling it the Wikipedia namespace. Angela. 18:24, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

Regarding the Milosevic entry & killing of Stambolic'

The addition of some substantiation or at least a reference to the agency or entity, or literature which proves the allegation that Milosevic' had Stambolic' murdered would improve the article. Can anyone add to this aspect of the history/biography? I think it's probably true, but what I'm asking is for some more rigorous historical writing.

Thank you, and best wishes to all, John-Peter Creighton, Tattnall County, Georgia, USA

John-Peter: Try adding your request to the Talk page of the entry you are speaking of. To do this, go to the article, then click on the link that says "Discuss this page" in the list on the left. Then post your request on that discussion page instead. Garrett Albright 02:40, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

speak and type?

does anyone know a good program that will type into a text program the words you speak into a mic? Kingturtle 02:09, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)~

I've heard that IBM's ViaVoice is supposed to be good. There's a Speech Recognition HOWTO if you happen to use Linux. -- Wapcaplet 02:29, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Vote Announcement at Talk:Fascism

Hello all. In the interest of getting the article unprotected, I've called for a vote/poll at Talk:Fascism on the question of whether the Soviet Union and other communist regimes should be listed as fascist states on that page. Please come and express your opinion. john 04:54, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Lists and photos

I got two concerns, number one a couple of lists have been rounding my mind: Look at Women's boxing and see the small list of female boxers we have there. Should we change the name of List of boxers to List of male boxers, take out the list of female boxers in the article about women's boxing and make a List of female boxers?. There are about 100 more or less known women boxers, and we already have a precedent anyways, look at List of actors and List of actresses. On that same line I was also thinking about a list of teen-idols.

Second concern: I have obtained many, many copyright guarantees for photos t be used in airline articles. While most photographers have accepted our policy of not giving credit under the photo itself, a couple of them lately have expressed as a requisite that I do credit them under the photo. Can I do this? I know that many wikipedians dont like that, and that its basically a rule not to credit the photographer under the photo, But I was wondering if I could put a note under the photo, a note that would look integrated to the article.

Thanks and God bless!

Antonio Cannabilistic Martin

your opinion on the matter here (hehe!):

Some Wikipedians may not like it but moral rights outside the US makes that unimportant, since it may be a legal right the photographers have, independent of copyright status. In any case, it's polite to give credit. Please do, though in a reduced size font so it isn't unduly prominent. If there's any actual policy on this, please let me know. If there's not, we might as well create one and say that it's polite and should normally be done, though as a courtesy. Jamesday 07:25, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but - since Wikipedia is wholly located in the US (which, as I understand it, does not recognize moral rights) - what legal weight do those moral rights carry? →Raul654 07:31, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
Non-US jurisdictions may choose to say that a work published in their language is intended for their people and may apply their law. Since the contributors in many languages are within those jurisdictions, it's also helpful to those contributors to make their life easy by accepting attribution requests. Say we print a German edition for distribution in Germany, or ship an English version for deliberate distribution in Germany. How would we be able to avoid following German law and moral rights requirements for that German publication? It helps contributors to stay nice and safe according to their local laws. Still, politeness is perhaps a greater reason for doing it, though we don't actually want to encourage Wikipedia contributors themselves to do this for their own contributions, just third parties. Jamesday 07:50, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Call me paranoid but - let's say we go the whole 9 yards, put it in our manual of style that photographs should be attributed, etc. When we (inevitably) forget to attribute one, and should wikipedia (or one of our contributors) be brought into court as a result, couldn't our desire to attribute photos be used as an implicit admission of culpability for infringement on their moral rights? →Raul654 08:03, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
We probably don't want to make it a requirement - many of our contributors don't requre it, some may not even want it for their own contributions. We just need to accept it and suggest how it should be done so that someone in a moral rights jurisdiction can follow the laws they are subject to. There are also good arguments in favor of the view that moral rights to attribution are morally good - they are certainly well accepted academically worldwide, including in the US. If someone objects, there's nothing to prevent them from trying to find an image with fewer requirements and then replacing the existing image with that more free version; remembering that with moral rights, that means an image from a non-moral rights jurisdiction, which in turn effectively requires a US image, since it's the only really significant jurisdiction without many moral rights. I don't think that this increases risk. We can't really dodge the vicarious liability in print anyway - print isn't covered by the really nice protection of the CDA and its online equivalents elsewhere. For print, we might end up setting a precedent for this type of work having the same protection. Might. It is what happened online in some US online decisions before the CDA was passed but it's currently unknowable whether it applies to the Wikipedia in print, even if it is likely to be part of any Wikipedia argument in court. Jamesday 01:32, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia is meant to be a free encyclopedia, but 95% of the world's population can't legally copy it. That's starting to annoy me. -- Tim Starling 07:53, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)


Intellectual property law is nothing if not inconsistent.:) We don't even have versions of the GFDL which are vetted to be legally valid in most jurisdictions. We need filtering for things like selecting print articles and other subset editions and that also helps tremendously with IP issues, so if you'd like to try to think of some really neat tagging and filtering solutions so we can easily produce custom subsets on demand based on individual user profiles...:) Jamesday 01:32, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Antonio, you asked if a credit notice could go in with the caption. In my opinion this would be regrettable as WP policy because
- it looks ugly
- it distracts the readers attention away from the caption itself
- it makes the caption one line longer
- and I'm fairly sure the print encyclopedias do not have credit notices attached to their pics
I will upload the next set of your airliner pics real soon (do I have a list?), Best Wishes, Adrian.
Adrian Pingstone 08:17, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I think it is fine to credit a photographer if they wish, certainly it is much better than having no photo at all. Your first three points are about ugliness. I disagree - see e.g. Sperm Whale where the artist asked for a credit, and we give it in a subtle but effective way. At least some print encyclopedias give credits next to the photo itself - for instance the Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals certainly does this. All of this does not conflict with the GDFL. Thus Antonio, if you think the article would look good, go for it. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:03, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I don't think it looks ugly, when done in suitably subdued text, such as the small which I think has been agreed on for captions, perhaps modified to be of lower contrast for attributions. Such things are very well accepted, appearing in most print publications. Of course, we don't want them to be unduly prominent. Seeking permission to use without attribution is good, but it's not worth refusing to use an image because of it. IMO. When you're the one seeking the permissions, it's up to you whether you do want to choose not to accept them - you're the one doing the work and deciding what you're after. Jamesday 01:32, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Many print books list photo credits separately. The info page on the photo could be a place to put it, along with any other information about the image. Mark Richards 20:06, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Test to try to help Google

Several people are trying a test which may help Google to find new articles quickly. User and user talk pages are very highly ranked by Google because they have lots of links to them. The test is to include {{msg:newpagelinks}} at the top of your user and/or talk page. As the test progresses we'll possibly tweak the message to see if we can find a combination which helps Google the most. This came about after Dori noticed that articles linked from his sandbox appeared in the Google index very quickly. Jamesday 07:37, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sweet. So we're googlebombing our own database. →Raul654 07:42, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
I'm in. Meelar 21:09, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Fundamentalism

The link Talk:Fundamentalism is broken. It was too large and I archieved a lot. The archive is at Talk:Fundamentalism/Archive1 and functions well.

I would appreciate it if someone was able to make the talk page function again and, explain what went wrong. GerardM 07:53, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It has fixed itself after 5 minutes. I am puzzled. GerardM 08:02, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Seconds in RC

In response to a request by Seth Ilys, I've put seconds in the timestamps on RC. What do you think? -- Tim Starling 14:42, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)

I think it looks a bit cluttered (but I expect I'll get used to it) and I don't quite see the point (but if others do, that's fine). --Camembert
I don't see it? Dysprosia 12:20, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
It appears to have been turned off again. fabiform | talk 12:26, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Preference, maybe? (I know the developers seem to hate adding prefs) — Sverdrup 20:47, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

They are Trying to Use Our Name

Sombody is trying to sell a domain with the name, "wikpedia.org". Are they allowed to?Barbara Shack 16:36, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

(IANAL) - Sounds to me like a classic case of cybersquatting. →Raul654 16:38, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
(IANAL) - Unfortunately, it probably isn't, unless they are trying to sell to wikipedia, or to deny its use to wikipedia. A borderline case, if the name would only be used to divert people to (for example) a search page, trading on careless typing. If Wikipedia were a registered trademark, there might be an action for "confusion" or "passing off" depending on how the domain name was used. Cecropia 16:45, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
It's unlikely that such a registration could be "in good faith", so if it becamse significant, Wikipedia could well prevail in a UDRP move to gain control of the domain name, after which the Wikipedia would have to pay the domain renewal fees or accept someone else registering the domain. Jamesday 01:53, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Comment: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. - Woodrow 05:27, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia in March: a month in stats

I've been perusing the en.wikipedia stats for the last month's trends. Here's the headline figures:

  • 115,080,901 hits
  • 952,395,093 Kb transferred
  • Daily average: 3,712,287 hits/day

10 most popular items (excluding Main Page, Current Events, Special pages, admin pages):

  1. 100px-Beowulf.firstpage.jpeg - does anyone know why??
    • appears to be empty, or am I missing something? --Phil | Talk 16:42, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
    I think that was a conflation of a URL and an image link; I've corrected it, but the actual image page is Image:Beowulf.firstpage.jpeg. Marnanel 17:04, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
    • My suspicion is that somebody has been leeching this - including it inline in something other than a Wikipedia article (a manuscript as a forum avatar?). A hunt through the logs for the referer on requests for it would soon confirm that, and tell us who the culprit is. Either that, or its a pretty weird bug in the log analyser. - IMSoP 12:06, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC) (oh dear, must resist the urge to tidy up leeching and disambig avatar properly: too much work to do...)
      • In fact, looking at the most popular referer stats, I'd say it was someone on this messageboard here - IMSoP 12:13, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
        • Hmm. That site really doesn't have anything to do with Beowulf. I'm guessing few if any of the people featured are spear-danes (although I believe I did see Grendel's Mother) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:38, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
          • Um, I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but given that I haven't time to put any decent info on avatar, I'll explain briefly for anyone who is confused. People will put any image that they think looks cool into their preferences for a messageboard, just to make them stand out from the crowd. I notice one member there has a (badly squashed) image of a bank-note, for instance. You'll note that the image in question is a thumbnail, not the original - perfect size for such a use. This kind of leeching can actually be a real nuisance for smaller websites, because of the huge amount of bandwidth it eats - a friend of mine almost had to pay his host for excess use because someone liked his b3ta submission, but didn't even scale it down! It's perhaps not such a big deal for Wikipedia, but if its still happening, it might be worth tracking down the user responsible (through, as I say, the referer logs) and politely asking them to host the image themselves.
          • If, on the other hand, you were making a subtle comment about the somwhat adult content of that messageboard, I apologise - I meant to warn readers when I realised, but became ensnared in other matters. - IMSoP 22:10, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
            • Yes, I was trying to be a smart-alec, but only those who've followed the link (which hopefully is no-one) will get it. I have to go wash my eyeballs out now... -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:24, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
              • Oh, come on, it's not that bad - it's not like it's some kind of goatse fan forum or something (if you don't know, you don't want to, trust me). In fact I glanced at their FAQ or whatever, and they seemed to have pretty decent rules, considering. - IMSoP 22:29, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
                • Seriously, that's pretty damn tame. I was expecting a whole lot worse ;) →Raul654 22:33, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)
  1. Seven dirty words
  2. United States
  3. World War II
  4. Goatse.cx
  5. March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks
  6. List of sex positions
  7. Wiki
  8. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
  9. Mathematics

10 most popular search terms:

  1. wikipedia
  2. wiki
  3. the answer to life the universe and everything
  4. encyclopedia
  5. penthouse
  6. saddam hussein
  7. ahmed yassin
  8. sheikh ahmed yassin
  9. sexual intercourse
  10. free encyclopedia

More at http://en.wikipedia.org/stats/usage_200403.html .

I'd just like to give the obligatory plug for the autoupdating web links I wrote:
  • [/media/stats/en.wikipedia.org/url_{{CURRENTYEAR}}{{CURRENTMONTH}}.html Current month's hits]
  • [/media/stats/en.wikipedia.org/usage_{{CURRENTYEAR}}{{CURRENTMONTH}}.html Current month's webalizer]
  • [http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/{{CURRENTYEAR}}-{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}/date.html Autoupdating link to the mailing list]
→Raul654 16:21, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
It would be really good if we could change the header of each page so that it says $PAGENAME - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - BROWSER SPECIFIC TAG at the top toolbar instead of just $PAGENAME - Wikipedia - BROWSER SPECIFIC TAG... it would be nice not to have such a low google rank for "encyclopedia" - and this might help a notch. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 16:27, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I don't think this would be an improvement, i expect the opposite. Using just the title as the html title (without wikipedia) should increase our relevance for the searches mathching the title. No need to get a higher ranking for the search phrase 'wikipedia', there's nothing better than #1. Including 'Encyclopedia' in the title of the main page and/or in default keywords in the header of each page could help to improve the ranking for that search term though. A small skin hack could do this. -- Gabriel Wicke 13:33, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Your more refined approach sounds good. A specialized hack for the main page sounds like really good because "Main Page - Wikipedia" is awful. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 13:52, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Watchlist broken?

Something weird--clicking My watchlis in left menu bar gives:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an illegal search query (see Searching Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: SELECT cur_namespace,cur_title,cur_comment, cur_id, cur_user,cur_user_text,cur_timestamp,cur_minor_edit,cur_is_new FROM watchlist,cur USE INDEX (name_title_timestamp) WHERE wl_user=40082 AND (wl_namespace=cur_namespace OR wl_namespace+1=cur_namespace) AND wl_title=cur_title AND cur_timestamp > '20040329180705' ORDER BY cur_timestamp DESC from within function "wfSpecialWatchlist". MySQL returned error "1030: Got error 28 from table handler". Elf | Talk 18:08, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I also had that, but it's just been fixed. — Jor (Talk) 18:11, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Disk on suda was full once more. -- Gabriel Wicke 01:11, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Vandal?

User:Michael3 has been going around making edits. However, they've all been valid wikifications--I would agree with keeping them. The edit summary, invariably, is "ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!!!". What's up with this? Is he a reincarnation? If so, of who? Meelar 22:54, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It's either User:Michael or a bad April Fools joke. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 22:56, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)

WikiExperiment

-->User talk:Michael3

list of {msg:}s?

Is there a list anywhere of the various {msg:} codes? --User Talk:Lukobe

Check out Wikipedia:MediaWiki namespace. Dysprosia 23:47, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)


Moved to Wikipedia talk:Redirect. See also Wikipedia:Redirects with possibilities

Annual convention

Will there be a Wikipedia annual convention this year? Bird 04:04, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Meetup. Angela. 05:10, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

Automatic relinking

I would like to change all links pointing to Tour de France into links pointing to Tour de France (cycling competition). How can achieve that?

Can't be done automatically by MediaWiki, although several users have written scripts to automate the process of going through them individually. Note that in this case, the cycling competition is in the wrong place, it should have priority and be at Tour de France. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:37, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Do you think so? I expected that many people would like an article on the Compagnons (which existed long before cycling). Ok, I'll relink accordingly. David.Monniaux 08:41, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
[via edit conflict] I've moved the page. In terms of significance for today's english speakers, the cycle event easily takes precedence, surely? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:44, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Sorry, reading your comment a little more slowly - Yes there is certainly scope for an article on the Compagnons but this is probably best at Compagnons du Tour de France which doesn't conflict with having the cycle race at Tour de France. Both can be mentioned at the disambig page. (I fixed the mess I made of the talk pages, btw). Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:53, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The Hindu, one of India's leading English daily newspapers had around a half a page feature today [1] on wikis from The Guardian( I think). There was a one para write-up on Wikipedia which was referred to as the impressive Wikipedia:-).KRS 08:47, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

An erstwhile newspaper. This should be added to Wikipedia:Press coverage. -- Itai 15:24, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
It's an erstwhile newspaper? I thought it was still publishing. Marnanel 22:06, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)
I copiously randomize my adjectives. Mostly, people don't notice. -- Itai 17:22, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
And your adverbs, too, by the looks of it ;-) - IMSoP 19:40, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Bashshar al-Asad

There's an odd redirect at Bashshar al-Asad. On one hand, it looks like a type. On the other hand, I can't read Arabic, and it may well be that the letter standing for "sh" appears twice in Mr. Asad's first name. Any suggestions? -- Itai 15:19, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

RFA discussion

There is a comment that I posted on Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship which I would like you to reply to. Perl 15:20, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)



Wikipedia:Requests for comment/141

Is there some arcane place to list this information of which I am not aware? My understanding was that the place to list ban requests was Rfc... I've done that, but there have been precious few comments thus far, and the 24 hour emergency ban is going to be over sooner or later and User:141 is likely going to continue his/her/its rampage. Anyone care to point me to the place where this can get more publicity... other than here of course. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 16:41, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

WikiResistance

-->User talk:Apt Repsonse

Images

Just getting my facts straight – if an image was created before 1922, it's automatically public domain? --Alex S 20:54, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Usually, though not always. Copyright term extensions can keep some work under copyright indefinitely. See public domain. -- Wapcaplet 21:03, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
P.S. - see also Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which says that works created in 1923 will enter the public domain in 2019 unless their copyright is renewed. -- Wapcaplet 21:07, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
To answer the above user's question - yes, all works published before 1922 have lapsed into the public domain. However, derivatives of such works do get a new copyright. Determing what constitutes a derivative is a bit murky. →Raul654 21:29, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)


I think that the upload form is a bit misleading in that respect. It asks "I affirm that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license it under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright." but this is not relevant when the image is in the public domain (say, it's a scan of a 19th century drawing or photograph), since there is no copyright holder (and the former holder is long dead now). David.Monniaux 22:34, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
OK. Thanks! --Alex S 16:52, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Recommendations for good UK broadband ISP?

I'm currently looking around for a reliable and not-too-expensive UK broadband ISP, and thought I'd ask fellow Wikipedians what they would recommend. Support for Linux would be advantageous but not wholly essential (I'm running a dual boot Red Hat 9 / Win 98 environment). Anyone got any suggestions? -- ChrisO 23:16, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

(this should probably be on Reference Desk) Don't get cable (well, don't get NTL). They give you an ethernet based modem (good, surely, aber nein) but it needs a (windows only) dialup program to make it work, and it inhibits any other network ports under NT/XP so you can't use your PC as a router. I'm guessing their linux support is consequently zero. For DSL, BT seems fine, as does Pipex. Let's face it, whoever sells you the DSL is only partly important - it's still BT's copperloop, BT's DSLAM, BT's SS7/ATM backbone. I'm a firm believer in an external firewall/router for anyone techie enough to set one up. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:38, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
At risk of encouraging wikipedia to turn into a general chat-site: ADSL Guide should be your first stop. As for "Linux support", unless you go with a cable provider (only really worth it if you're going to get other services in the same package, e.g. cable TV) this shouldn't be an issue. Either get a modem that acts as a stand-alone router (connected via ethernet) or source your own USB modem with good Linux support, such as the latest incarnation of the Speedtouch. Personally, I've used Zen (bit odd with the billing) and now freedom2surf (not nearly as dodgy as the name makes them sound; no problems so far).
As for how this can be turned into something that "will benefit Wikipedia as a project": maybe you could write some articles, like ADSL Guide and Speedtouch; and I wonder how much info we have on ADSL in general... And, of course, you having a decent Internet connection will allow you to make lots and lots of good contributions to the site, I 'm sure! :-D - IMSoP 23:48, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC) (via edit conflict; and yes, I've heard nothing but bad experiences with NTL in any form)

i need your help

hello sir , compliment of the season to you sir ,my main reason mailing you is just because i want to study in abroad just to stsndardise my education ilook up all over the world and i believe you the only person that can help me. 

                                                             THANKS SIR.
I am sorry to inform you that this is an encyclopedia project, in no way connected to any scholarship program. We are all volunteers here, and have no funds to help you with (which is what I think you are asking for), but we hope the Wikipedia will be a source of information for your education. I wish you good fortune in working on educating yourself, and would suggest you type "scholarship" or other education-related search terms at http://www.google.com to find organizations that can help you. Jwrosenzweig 23:50, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

synonyms and british vs. american english

Do I fill and article with phrases like also known as? Do I make a translation table? I'm concerned about the spectacles article in general but I'm sure this applies to many other pages as well Gbleem 03:43, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I would make a joke about British vs American english, but it's just too easy. Anyway, our policy is that you can use one, or the another, as long as each given article is consistent. →Raul654 03:45, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)
Note that if an article topic is deomonstrably British, e.g. Tony Blair, then British spelling is used, and likewise for American topics. Meelar 03:46, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Terrist

Terrist was deleted and re-created so I deleted it again. If it is really a term only known on wikipedia, then please orphan it. Refer to its talk page for further discussion. --Jiang 04:52, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)


White Australia policy

this isn't a dispute per se nor does it exactly require arbitration... I'd like to know where I can request that someone look over this article. I find it highly POV (for reasons I left at the bottom of its talk page), and one user simply stopped communication after a very brief (and somewhat snippy on both sides) exchange. Is there somewhere I can place the article for someone to look at at? Besides here, I mean, for the express perpose of scanning it for POV-ness? :) Ensiform 00:48, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You can list it on Wikipedia:Cleanup. Angela. 05:39, Apr 4, 2004 (UTC)
Agree there are still POV problems, although the article has developed really well compared to some of its earlier versions. This article is always likely to be a magnet for racism, both deliberate and accidental, and for other political POV as well. It's not nearly as bad as I was fearing.
I don't think there is a better place than here for the sort of request you have in mind. As Angela suggested, it could be listed on cleanup. To list it as an NPOV dispute you'd need to have a specific disagreement with another editor, and you already recognise that's not what is happening here (good). To request peer review you'd need to first fix the article yourself, it's for requesting review of your own work, and read that page carefully before setting your heart on getting help there.
And there is the talk page, which is the first place to try but you already have some good discussions going there. I'd encourage you to perservere with these, and also to take a rest from it whenever it gets upsetting. One of the rules of mental health is never take responsibility for anything you cannot control. On Wikipedia, there is very little any of us can individually control. But there are some important things we can, and the other rule is always take responsibility for things you can control.
And in each of these places you will also find the problem which I think we are finding here: So much to do, so few to do it. I hope you do get the help you need soon, it won't be from me for a while but I may eventually have a go. Agree more work is required. Hang in there. Andrewa 05:54, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Permablock

What's this permablock business? Can any 18year old get a license to block anybody whose edits they don't like? Is there somewhere Wikipedia's policies are explained, or do people just make them up as they go?

Any 18 year old, anyone of any age, who are trusted editors in the community can block users who vandalize or abuse the Wikipedia according to Wikipedia guidelines. See Wikipedia:Bans and blocks, Wikipedia:Administrators. Dysprosia 08:37, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
As I explained on Wikipedia:Quickpolls, I permanently blocked User:Bird for using lists of proxies to avoid blocks by many sysops and repeatedly vandalize Wikipedia. See the block log archive for details. silsor 08:53, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)
Has Bird (i.e. the person or persons controlling the account) been hard banned? The account itself hasn't vandalised (much), nor was it vandalising at the time it was blocked. And aren't hard bans based on behavior anyhow? i.e., if the infamous Michael came back, but made accurate, helpful edits, then his account wouldn't be blocked. At least, that's my understanding of how the banning process works. —69.156.205.32 08:59, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
No, Jimbo and the arbitration committee did not issue a ban for Bird, it was unilateral. You can request a review of my actions if you feel I've abused blocking. silsor 09:00, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)
Someone (not me) already has. —Not a Bird, just concerned.

Edit toolbar should fully work in Mozilla now

If you're using Mozilla or one of its derivatives (Netscape 6+, Firefox, Galeon, Kmeleon ..), you may want to try the option "Show edit toolbar" in your user preferences. While it previously would only show an infobox for Mozilla, you can now also use it in the way it is intended: select text, click one of the toolbar buttons, and it is formatted accordingly. If you do not select text, you will still get an example text.--Eloquence* 09:24, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC) (signed using toolbar)

Haven't tried it but congrats, anyway and thanks for your work. Pfortuny 13:54, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)


Ooh, it really does work this time, too! (Once I'd force-reloaded to get an ancient version out of my cache...) Excellent!
The one thought that occurred to me seeing the old and new ones in quick succession like that, is that perhaps the example-in-a-box (like the old version had) could be used when nothing is selected, rather than inserting stuff like Italic text and Link title directly. We might end up with fewer bits of nonsense lying around - especially since undo seems to have no effect after using the toolbar. Please consider this a suggestion rather than a criticism, though, and I've no idea whether it's even possible - I wouldn't know where to begin to get it doing what it does do. (ooh, that's funky, it trims the trailing space when you select a word!)
In short, well done and thanks indeed for your hard work! --IMSoP 14:21, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I'm on Netscape 7.02 and it still doesn't do anything for me. Is there some preference that I need to set other than displaying the toolbar? Or something in the browser or plug-in that's needed? Elf | Talk 22:16, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Well, I had to do a hard-refresh because I'd once tried the old version (Ctrl-R should do it I think); the blue box that the examples appear in should disappear. Other than that, I can only say that it works for me under both Mozilla 1.7b and Firefox 0.8. - IMSoP 22:27, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Counting User Contributions

I see that to participate in certain activities on Wikipedia(i.e. voting for certain community decisions) requires a set number of contributions(500, IIRC). How can I count the contributions I(or any other user for that matter) have made? Thanks. --Johnleemk 09:42, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You can easily count in 500s by clicking "My contributions" link and clicking the "View next ... results" link several times. Similarly you can count other user's contribution: if you open a user's page (other tnan yours; e.g., mine, then you will see the "User contributions" link. Mikkalai 21:20, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I find thiskind of an od ruling this 500. For instance on the Dutch wiki I have way over a 1.000 edits (over 300 articles started). On the English wiki I barely have over a 100. Then there are some other wikis on which I have between 10 and a 100 edits. So this means that if there is someting on the en Wiki that I am really interested in, I could not vote about it, nor would my opinion be heard?? Waerth 12:38, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Jeez somehow I had thought someone would answer my concern. Waerth 12:06, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
It's very rare that you need 500 edits in order to vote. The Arbitration policy ratification vote is the only one I know of. Other votes, such as the International logo vote, have required just 10 edits. You could raise the issue at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration policy ratification vote. Angela. 18:50, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

Friedrich Karl von Hessen

I wonder about the usage of German names and their English "translations".

I've always believed that German Hessen was "Hesse" of English, but it seems to me as the Wikipedia is becoming increasingly international. Does that mean that local names are better to use than more English sounding?

/Tuomas

Diana, Princess of Wales - NPOV query on 'Conspiracy Theories'

So, I've been editing - with the help of others - Diana, Princess of Wales and trying to separate the facts about her death from the conspiracy theories, as well as adding more facts about her life. Here [2] is how it was before the recent round of changes.

So I'm coming back to it every couple of weeks to do a little more research and add a few more facts, if I can find them.

But each time I come back, I find that all references to 'conspiracy theories' and 'conspiracy theorists' have been excised, and replaced with suggestive phrases like 'Accident or Murder?' and phrases like 'deliberately murdered'.

The reason given by the people making these edits is that 'conspiracy theory' isn't NPOV - ie it implies that these theories about her death are untrue.

I can see their point of view on this, but I think that references to murder are much less neutral. This seems to me to be particularly the case because there's no doubt that the death was actually an accident - the facts of the death (that it was a car crash) are uncontested. No-one's suggesting (afaik) that she was (for example) shot or poisoned - the conspiracy theories center around the cause of the accident, and possible cover-ups for that cause.

I looked through Wikipedia for some kind of precedent, and I found that the JFK pages use the phrase 'conspiracy theories' without a problem.

I'd also argue that 'conspiracy theories' is a factual description - these are theories about a possible conspiracy. Although I accept that doesn't mean it isn't a loaded term.

There's also a second problem with the same page: some time ago there was a phone poll in the Daily Express which found that 85% of respondants believed that Diana's death was a conspiracy (or 'murder' if you like). But this was a phone poll, ie the paper advertised the phone number and people phoned in if they wanted to. This means it wasn't representative of the UK population. But each time I come back to the Diana page, I find it's been edited back to something along the lines of '85% of the UK population believe Diana was murdered' - which just isn't factually true.

So, I'd like to request a couple of things, if anyone has time:

- Could one or two people keep an eye on this page? Only I don't have enough time in my life (or frankly enough interest) to keep coming back to it. There's a risk here that the view she was 'murdered' will prevail just because those in favour of it have more time on their hands.

- Can anyone provide guidance on whether 'conspiracy theories' is NPOV? How about 'Accident or Murder?' ?

Best, --257.47b.9½.-19 11:42, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It might be better to list this at Wikipedia:Requests for comment rather than here. Angela. 18:51, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

Language template files - LanguageXX.php

I wonder after editing the language file, is there a way to put it online in order to reflect the changes? If you have a look at the [3], its side bar and standard links are still in english. I want to convert the whole thing in Urdu but even after giving the languageur.php file a little edit, I can't see any change. Any help in this regard?

-rizwan

Rizwanrafique 13:36, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You have to ask for it to be loaded up -- see the meta page of Language files to be updated. Note that it may take a some time for these to be actioned, as they seem to be done in batches, and I think only Brion Vibber does it, so it depends on his availability and what else he's doing! If you have sysop access, you may like to take a look at all messages in MediaWiki, changes to which take priority over the LanguageXX.php file. Good luck! -- Arwel 13:59, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Something loosely related: The Thai wikipedia has problems with the interwiki links to bulgarian and alsatian - they show like normal links. If I read those language.php on meta correctly, the language table is included into the language.php, so maybe just that include file is out of date. It'd be nice if someone could fix it - someone already created an article [[als:Chimie]] on th: in error. andy 20:33, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Is there a limit to how many pages show up on "What links here"? I just noticed that Natural History (album) links to Record producer but it wasn't listed on the WLH page (at least not for me). I also tried linking from the sandbox, but that didn't show up either. - Lee (talk) 16:01, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

  • I believe it cuts off at 500. Gentgeen 16:03, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    • That's a little bit frustrating. - Lee (talk) 16:09, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Name of the article about a nationality: singular or plural

Please join the disusion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions. Mikkalai 21:14, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Spartacus Educational

Is Spartacus Educational public domain? It is listed on the Wikipedia:Public domain resources page but there is nothing on http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ to say that it is public domain. Deus Ex 21:25, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This is an excellent site which has a lot of useful information, but it is not in the public domain. On http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWtitle.html it states - The narrative text on this website is copyright. This means that any school which copies the site for local use onto a school cache is in breach of copyright. If your school wishes to copy the site in this way, there is a tariff of charges. Please contact Spartacus Educational [email protected] for details. Mintguy (T) 21:36, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Proposed new stubs utility

We need a new article to deal with stubs. Currently all of our stub lists are automatically generated. There is thus no measure taken of the importance of the article. Pages like Stuffed animal and Medieval warfare are weighted equally with stubs such as Layer 4 router and International Motor Racing Research Center.

Since there is nowhere to point out especially important stubs, these are frequently posted to Pages Needing Attention and Cleanup, both of which are already too long and overburdened. I thus propose creating Wikipedia:Requests for page expansion. This new page would reduce congestion on those other two pages by providing a home for the two or three percent of stubs that users believe are especially important, very similar to what Requested Articles does for red links. - SimonP 23:31, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)

IRC channel user cloaks

OK, I've been chatting on Freenode with lilo, their local head of staff, and I've got myself set up as a contact for the Wikipedia project. That means that those who use #wikipedia and related channels who would like an IRC user cloak can contact me and I can get it set up. But before this begins to happen in earnest, I'd like suggestions and comments on the proposed cloak scheme on the relevant talk page. - Fennec 23:26, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

New idea: WikiChess

With Arvindn's new system, it is now possible to have a running chess game! Click on the "d" in my signature! Comments? - Woodrow 05:30, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The WikiTeX stuff at Wikisophia looks neat too and seems to be easier to use, but it enforces long algebraic notation which isn't so standard... Dysprosia 06:29, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Personally, I find Arvindn's idea easier to understand. Also, think of the space that'd be saved with the deletion of dozens of old chess diagrams! - Woodrow 06:35, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Neat idea. I'm sorry to tell you, that you aren't the first one to do wiki-chess![4] [5] :-) — Sverdrup 10:42, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
First in English! - Woodrow 17:56, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it's a nice idea, but at the moment it's too verbose to be completely wonderful. If people want to make new diagrams in this way, I've no problem with that, but please don't delete old ones until the syntax is tightened up somehow (judging from User talk:Arvindn/Chess, this may be about to happen). And, I hate to be a spoilsport, but the Wikipedia really isn't the place to play chess. There are lots and lots of other websites for that. --Camembert

It most certainly is! - Woodrow 20:13, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I think it's close to the line at least. All Wikipedia pages are there to support the goal of building an encyclopedia. Any other use is abuse. Now, I don't want to be a spoilsport either, and there are things such as BJAODN that support this effort by building our community. Maybe chess is like that too. Or, maybe it's helping us learn how to use the software, that's valid too. But, I think the participants should bear in mind that they are pushing the envelope IMO (and it seems I'm not alone in this). Andrewa 10:11, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Excuses:

  1. Wikipediholism consumes me. As I find myself spending every spare minute on Wikipedia, this adds a little more meaning to my life.
  2. It's helpful in learning to use the code.
  3. It helps us relieve stress after hours of watching Recent Changes like hawks.
  4. It will expand our minds and thus, our encyclopedia-building powers.
  5. It creates a better overall feeling of WikiLove.
  6. It's being done on user pages.

Wow, once again I've managed to convince myself that an idea of mine is good! It is close to the line, but I feel we should be allowed to do with our user pages as we please, within reason. Of course, it's ultimately up to Jimbo Wales whether we may keep up this hobby here... - Woodrow 20:08, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This is definitely not appropriate for the English Wikipedia. You might have more of a chance of getting away with it on meta, but really, you should find a separate wiki to play chess on. Angela. 18:53, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
Or on wikibooks, where old chess games could be used as example games in a chess strategy guide. Gentgeen 19:09, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Google search on multiple files

How do I do for search multiple files int google (e.g. PDF, PS & DOC)? I know that if I type *einstein filetype:pdf* I´ll get .PDF files with *einstein* string. but I wanted ps & doc files too.

You could perform multiple searches. - Woodrow 07:21, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
filetype:pdf OR filetype:doc *einstein works for me -- chris_73 09:27, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Gdansk vs. Danzig

Hey, I haven't been following the Gdansk vs. Danzig debate all that closely, so I don't know if there is still any debate over what to call the current city, but I did some research that might be of some interest to the community. I looked at all the Sun Media newspapers that I am able to search electronically for instances of both words...so this isn't a definitive survey, it just shows what has been printed in a few Canadian newspapers, going back to 1989 at the earliest.

(To save space, I've moved it to User:Adam Bishop/Gdansk vs. Danzig) Adam Bishop 18:14, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I certainly haven't been following the Gdansk vs. Danzig debate either, but while browsing the Recent Changes the other day, I saw the funniest Gdansk vs. Danzig edit EVAR! Stormie 02:27, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)
Think we should tell Glenn his name is being disputed by the Poles? -- Jmabel 04:47, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptian eschatology

It seems that Ancient Egyptian eschatology is a copy of [6]. I am not sure where to report this ? It is not the whole page, but it is a copy of the Egyptian portion. Wizzy

Suspected copyright violations should be listed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems. - Lee (talk) 13:30, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

How can I get the source for previous versions?

On 00:49, 31 Oct 2003, User:217.148.40.110 erased enormous chunks of the Politics of France page. How can I get the original source to revert these changes? David.Monniaux 15:52, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Goto the page history of the page, and click the date link corresponding to the old version you are interested in. Then click Edit this page, and you are brought the wikitext of the old version. — Sverdrup 15:58, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Since in this case all you want to do is revert, once you've done what Sverdup describes, you just have to click "save page". You could of course also edit that text first if you wanted to. fabiform | talk 16:04, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Trolling War?

Apparently, the article Gay Nigger Association of America is now the front lines of a war between two troll groups. What's going on with this? Meelar 18:02, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Should be redirected to Slashdot trolling phenomena, I would think. Adam Bishop 18:04, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Blank Map tracings from copyrighted maps?

On March 27 I saw User:Brion mention tracing over a map on Wikipedia_talk:Image_use_policy/copyright in the from village pump section, and would like to know whether it's acceptable to make Wikipedia:Blank maps for maps very difficult to find otherwise? For example I save a copyrighted image, trace by hand over the coastal and land borders and fill the land with solid white, and the sea solid blue. All other details and shading would be removed, and the map would not be particularly accurate. But, if this is Ok, would it then be in order to place a credit to the original map stating it was used as inspiration? -Wikibob | Talk 19:31, 2004 Apr 4 (UTC)

I think that it is perfectly OK, and IIRC that way Morwen created all those country subdivision maps - however from the already copyright free CIA maps. But depending on which country you want to cover with your map, maybe I can help you as well. Is use the freeware PanMap as a simple GIS tool, and it has many vector data for PanMap, including coastlines, countries and country subdivision. However sadly the last one is a bit outdated (must be from around 1995). andy 20:35, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
(Obligatory IANAL) - I don't know, this seems kind of sketchy (no pun intended). In particular, it sounds to me like the maps you create by sketching copyrighted maps would be derivative works. →Raul654 20:38, Apr 4, 2004 (UTC)
Territorial boundaries can't be copyrighted. - Woodrow 20:49, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Well, it's the Falkland Islands, specifically East Falkland from San Carlos down to Goose Green and then east to Port Stanley that I need. The CIA Factbook map is too small, and details are lost. I have access to an Ordnance Survey map and I used that and another detailed map to hand-draw a small portion. I'm hoping that changing the cropping and scale as well as accuracy I can avoid any derivative claim.-Wikibob | Talk 01:19, 2004 Apr 5 (UTC)
Giving people copyright over derivative works is to prevent things like Lemony Snicket publishing the next Harry Potter book or any Harry Potter merchandise, like those Harry Potter journals. I'm sure no one will come after you for basing a map on theirs. Of course, before they can decide whether or not you're infringing on their copyright, they'll have to happen to find a map on Wikipedia that they'll have to realise looks remarkably like one they made once. - Woodrow 01:54, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Shouldn't all the maps look alike? :D - Fennec 02:33, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
If you just need the coastline, then I will do one for you tonight, that's no big deal. And yes, all maps should look alike, that's why we have the WikiProject Maps, to have one standard palette used in our maps. andy 11:35, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
You may think it unlikely that someone will spot it, but look at the trouble the designers of the euro notes got into when an unpaid cartographer/designer spotted their own imaginary set of islands appearing on the map of Europe on each note! Not that that seems likely from tracing an Ordnance Survey map, but a cautionary tale, nonetheless... - IMSoP 11:43, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I have recently traced a map using macromedia (Palestine). I had the same questions (Is tracing maps allowed, should all maps look alike). My opinion would be that outlines of physical areas arent copyrightable. I also think there should be a standard format for maps. Bensaccount 02:47, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

City names and foreign equivalent

Which is the best when writing a city name and its equivalent in another language: e.g. Namur (Dutch: Namen) or Namur (Namen in Dutch)? Thanks. - Edcolins 20:07, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I'd probably do the former, just because it's shorter. Imagine you were doing this for a city in a country with 3 official languages: Place (Lang1: blah; Lang2: foo; Lang3: lalala). It's more compact. I don't know if there's an entry in the manual of style for this though. fabiform | talk 21:35, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I concur. I've done a lot on multilingual topics, and that is the style I use, although I use commas rather than semicolons. -- Jmabel 04:53, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia Bookmarklets

Mendel has created some new Wikipedia bookmarklets at here. See Wikipedia:Bookmarklets for discussion.

Wikipedia namespace titles too long - such that it makes it makes them rather silly or useless

Why does this (and so many other policy/civics articles) have titles that are uselessly long? Add to this target links... like this SeewhatImean?-SV(talk) 02:07, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I was also unsure about that title. It seems to be more a page about reversions in general than a how-to. I would suggest moving it. (Do you think you know what the wikipedia Wikipedia:namespace is?) Bensaccount 03:04, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, the whole namespace is uber-verbose (apart from being incredibly hard to refer to unambiguously :-D). I suppose they have been named so as to be unambiguous and uncontroversial, but I think we could do with a really good set of "aliases" - that is, redirects whose titles are listed on the page they redirect to, so people know they can use them. Perhaps this could use/include the really short names in the WP: pseudo-namespace. - IMSoP 12:03, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The problem is that the page title is long, as well as the header it references to, making a VERY long page URL; the page title, however, is simple (Wikipedia:How to revert a page). Redirects, in this case, would be useful (maybe Wikipedia:The three revert guideline), but redirects to #whatever don't work. [ alerante 14:01, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC) ]

Block problem?

See the following excerpt from the block log:

  • 21:36, 4 Apr 2004, RickK blocked 63.193.192.144 (expires 21:36, 5 Apr 2004) (contribs) (unblock) (didn\'t I block you?)
  • 21:33, 4 Apr 2004, RickK blocked 63.193.192.144 (expires 21:33, 5 Apr 2004) (contribs) (unblock) (vandalism)

If I blocked this user at 21:33, why was he still making edits at 21:34? RickK | Talk 04:39, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I had the same problem with one of the Jor impersonators. Tim Starling says that it may be a memcached problem and that you have to block again. Dori | Talk 04:50, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)

There are several links of the form [[Hadrians Wall|Hadrian's Wall]]. I'm wondering why this is, since there are others that just say [[Hadrian's Wall]] that work fine. I'd like to change this because as it is the hoverbox shows the misspelled version. Any comments? Fpahl 07:36, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There is no reason at all why they should be done that way - it looks like the content was originally filed under "Hadrians Wall", and that when the better-titled "Hadrian's Wall" page was created (and "Hadrians Wall" became a mere redirect), not all the links were updated. I'd say "yes, change away!" except for one small factor - I just changed them all. :-) --Stormie 10:37, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)
Long, long ago apostrophes weren't supported in page titles, but they are now. Fix them up where you see them still floating around. --Brion 05:26, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

msg:compactTOC

Hi guys, The problem is that in UrduWikipedia I cant display the compact Table of Contents using the usualy msg:compactTOC method. Even if I copy the english versiobn of a page as it is (without translating) and then view the page. it display the msg:compactTOC tag as <msg:compactTOC> on page and the table of contents display as normal content lists. any suggession? Rizwanrafique 09:58, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

msg:compactTOC fetches and includes the page at MediaWiki:compactTOC. See to it so that you have that MediaWiki element at the Urdu Wikipedia (that is, the content at ur:MediaWiki:compactTOC should match the content at MediaWiki:compactTOC). — Sverdrup 10:26, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
A couple of things just occurred to me:
  • you might want to name it something in Urdu rather than English (there's nothing magic about the name compactTOC; in fact, I don't even like it much in English myself!)
  • will the headers all that often be in Latin script? Perhaps you'd be better off creating your own version based on ours - or perhaps have both, under different names?
Well, up to you, anyway; just thought I'd point out that there's nothing stopping you doing any of the above. - IMSoP 12:13, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Censors

Is the content of Wikipedia censored and are there censors who have an authority to establish the meaning of a term in Wikipedia?

Paul Beardsell wrote at Talk:Artificial_consciousness (revision at [[7]]) on 5 Apr 2004 "I want to use the term artificial consciousness in the same way I might one day have to use natural consciousness to distinguish it from the artificial variety and as a separate subset of consciousness. You must not be allowed to impose some other meaning on the term than what it literally does now mean."

Tkorrovi 12:08, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This seems to be a common question among newcomers, and the short answer is "No.". The basic philosophy here is to try and achieve consensus on any controversial issue, and any user's opinion is theoretically equally important in reaching such consensuses. However, by their very nature controversial issues often lead individuals to become rather defensive, and thus try to assert their opinion as though it were something more. So in the example you give above "you must not" is just the linguistic equivalent of Paul raising his voice out of frustration - it is probably best considered equivalent to "I don't want you to". - IMSoP 12:23, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Paul Beardsell wants to start a new edit war by classifying artificial consciousness to be "real", "not real", "less real" etc with only a variety proposed by him being "real". This is obvious nonsense because artificial consciousness, as artificial intelligence, may be (and mostly is) a computer program, and every computer program is real. There is field of study called "artificial consciousness" with many papers published. What sense would make to change this article to nonsense by sole discretion of Paul Beardsell? People are afraid to edit this article because of the frequent conflicts caused. I started this article, but it is very hard to reach agreement with Paul Beardsell (not with anybody else), I almost succeeded to do this by agreement compromise of listing different views separately, but sysop Ugen64 changed that structure, in spite that I begged him not to do that. What should I do? Tkorrovi 16:00, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Well, ask Ugen64 why he did that and see if you find his reason convincing. He might not realise that he's upset a delicate balance, or he might disagree with you on the issue, I don't know. The bottom line is that it doesn't matter that Ugen64 is a sysop, when it comes to editing articles he has the same status as you and Paul Beardsell. So, start a discussion on the article talk page about it, or leave a message on Ugen64's talk page.  :) fabiform | talk 18:04, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

NPOV page

Just an idea - how about creating a page along the lines of Wikipedia:Featured_articles that highlights the best of NPOV prose? LUDRAMAN | T 19:35, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Maybe a section of Wikipedia:Featured articles would be better than a whole new page? Angela. 19:05, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

I read your new article Star's Edge. It's awful and useless because it has no external links!!! Your encyclopedia is useless without external links. Please include at least 10 external links for every article you write. Thanks, Uri.

Well, first off, this is a collabourative project, and you are welcome to improve it - if you know of an external link that would really enhance our Star's Edge article, please feel free to add it. However, note my careful choice of words there - we don't tend to encourage links just for their own sake: Wikipedia is not a web directory, so 10 external links for every article in the project (of which, by the way, there are currently 7,001,628) seems a bit over the top.
Furthermore, most articles should ideally contain all the information you'd want - or internal links to it; for the example you cite, it might be useful to have a link to some "official website", if such exists, but it seems to me that as a source of information the article is exactly how you would expect an article in a print encyclopedia. As for an encyclopedia being "useless" without external links, perhaps you should read up on the history of encyclopedias - they predate the Internet by a long way, and at risk of being patronising, I would suggest that they got along just fine without having "external links" of any kind. - IMSoP 20:13, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Uri, I just added one. Really, it only took a second with Google. Most subjects don't have that many relevant external links. Some don't even have any. When there are some, they are welcome additions to any article. But it doesn't do the 'pedia any good to have links just for the sake of links. Only relevant and non-redundant links are useful. In case you can't tell, I'm agreeing with IMSoP here. —Frecklefoot 20:14, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)
What IMSop and Frecklefoot said. Many articles (though certainly not all) merit external links. However, they certainly only need one or a few external links. There are only a very select few that warrant as many as ten external links, such as:
  • Homestar Runner -- since there is relevant information that is nearly impossible to convey in an encyclopedia, the 10+ external links are merited.
  • Israel-Palestine conflict -- 10+ external links there since the subject is controversial.
Note, however, that the two examples are exceptional cases; also, one is about a popular website, and the other is about a very well-known topic (so there's got to be that name-recognition factor going on there too). Very few articles require 10. Having said that, I'll point out that, in the specific case here, an external link or three are warranted since the article is about a company with a website. However, not all articles require external links; for example, why does an article on a specific skateboarding trick or the Logical conjunction article need an external link? Also see Wikipedia:External link.
And even if an article deserves an external link, the lack of an external link does not make it awful and useless, since your case contained good info even without external links. The lack of an external link is not a tragic flaw, just a minor one.
Also, do you realize that, when you made the first of three comments about not having external links, you directly edited the article? LuckyWizard 21:33, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I agree with everything that IMSoP said. I just wanted to point out that the article you chose to comment on was only started, as a new user's first ever article, just over 24 hours ago. For such a new article, it's great, better than most new articles. Our best articles often had very humble beginnings.  :) You might be interested to read Replies to common objections. Perhaps you'll be inspired to add something to Wikipedia too.  :) fabiform | talk 21:08, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Uri does not even supply an internal link with his comment, let alone any external links. Why should we even bother to answer on such useless (and badly formulated) comments? Erik Zachte

References in the broader sense (newspapers, book, journal articles..) are often more useful than plain external links, which easily found anyway. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 21:57, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

How do I add comments to a page history?

I see that some people leave comments on the page history when they edit an article; things like (corrected spelling mistakes) or (added biographical information). How do you do this? MK 20:50, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That's what the text box labelled "Summary:" that is between the article text box and the other controls is for. -- Cyrius|&#9998 20:58, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)
You just did it. :-) - Woodrow 20:59, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Okay, I have it now. Thanks. MK 21:58, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Edit summary for further instructions. Angela.

How to make starch from frosted potatoes

There an entry How to make starch from frosted potatoes that I'm not sure what to do with. The main useful bit is apparently from the '1881 Household Cyclopedia', with the language modernized. It would seem that Wikisource would be the appropriate place to put this (assuming it is genuine), but I'm not sure, so I thought I'd post here, to get some feedback about it.

Silverfish 00:18, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

What links here answers the question. It's an article on its own because it is referenced both as a how-to article and as part of the starch article. If it wasn't part of the how to series it would have been a good candidate for merging with the Starch article. Starch is currently still short enough that it might be worth doing that, as one example of a starch production process. Jamesday 07:04, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Try Wikibooks Cookbook. Angela. 17:58, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

Privacy

What's your privacy policy and what information your HTTP cookies store? Privacy is good 01:03, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

meta:draft privacy policy. Martin 01:07, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Wislawa Szymborska

It's me complaining again. I'm a big fan of this poet, but this page is very NPOV. The POV happens to be my own, as far as I know about it, but I don't think this gushing tribute is not an enclycopedia article. Anyone wanna take a look? Ensiform 02:15, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I see what you mean. Perhaps everything below the list of her works should be deleted. I'm not sure one could rewrite it to be neutral.uncutsaniflush 02:23, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I tried to do a little cleaning, but you may be right about a mass delete. What I left is both jarringly bare-bones and still uncyclopedic in tone with respect to subject. Ensiform 02:39, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
You have cleaned it up a bit. But I agree with you on your assessment. The more I read the article the less I like it. I think it needs to be completely rewritten. I think I could do an effective rewrite but I don't have the time tonight. Plus, as a newbie here, I'm not sure how comfortable I am doing a complete rewrite of an existing article. uncutsaniflush 02:53, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Agreed. The stuff below the work list sounds like some fan chatting about her over the phone. --Menchi 02:55, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
It took me about 30 seconds to do a small edit to make it WP-style!
Adrian Pingstone 06:49, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

translation

I was curious how you would write the female name of Jordan in aramaic. Or the initials J L L would also be sufficient. Thank You.

any wikipedia entry in any language should have links to the same entry in other languages

advantage: this would make it to a very useful dictionary too, and animate growth of good quality entries in other languages


I just was e.g. searching the term "Legacy system" and found exactly what I was looking for.

BUT:

Actually I need (now as I understand what it is) the German word or German definition or entry. Direct translation to German makes no sense since it is a specific professional definition. As well I need related words in that environment.

Because I was missing it: I suggest for every wikipedia entry a link to the same entry in other languages (indicating if there is an entry and/ or suggesting to write an translation of it in their own language). Those persons searching a very specifi definition may have a high competence to be able and willing to do some free translation work ...and growing their native language WIKIPEDIA

Only specialists know the specific definitions in their field of profession.

regards Edgar Munich, Germany

I am not fully sure what is your point. If you just need a dictionary like translation that'd better fit into a multilingual Wiktionary. For the Wikipedia interwiki links, they should link to articles covering the same topic. However this does not need to be a direct 1:1 translation of the article title - sometimes the article in one WP is split into several related articles, while in the other language it is all covered in one (as in that language it does not have enough text to allow to split it); sometimes the two wikipedias have different naming conventions. And if the article doesn't exist in one language yet, then there will be no interwiki link - while sometimes it may be useful if the original author already prepared it if he knows the translation(s) and they are non-trivial, so it can be activated as soon as the article in the other language is created. However this doesn't work automatically, currently the only way to achieve this is to add a interwiki link in a html comment (like a <!--[[de:Feuersalamander]]--> in the article about the Fire Salamander) and remove the comments manually when the other language article shows up. andy 11:03, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

the 10 most active Wikipedians of the day

Someone in Chinese WP suggests to create a the 10 most active Wikipedians of the day (top 10 Wikipedians of the day) and update it everyday. what do u guys think? --Yacht 09:25, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

  • interesting. Could be scary. (PS: for some reason I always read your name as "Yakt" instead of "Yot") Exploding Boy 09:38, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
  • This will encourage people to game the system to get on the list. I don't think that's a good thing. -- Cyrius|&#9998 13:05, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
  • Such a page would probably be best titled "Today's Revert Wars". Better to laud the people that make exactly one edit of a new, fully-formed and wikified article. — mendel ☎ 13:31, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
    • I think you're right there. The feature I've always wanted (I'm not serious here, BTW) is a tick box to say "this is a major edit" - sometimes I spend ages developing or reworking a page, and am sad to see it go unnoticed. But that's certainly the kind of edit I'd want credit for, if credit were to come my way. - IMSoP 14:58, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
      • I would like to see a count of the number of changed characters in the edit history of an article by each edit. Bevo 17:46, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
        • Nice though that would be, it's not really possible with the current diff functions: moving a paragraph appears in the diff as deleting that much text from one place and adding it in another. More powerful diff tools do exist, but seeing as it's not particularly important, it doesn't seem worth putting much effort into. - IMSoP 19:53, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • I think (as the above users have pointed out) that while this sounds good in theory, in practice it would be an unmitigated disaster. It would only encourage people to make meaningless edits, and the people who are in prepetual revert wars would always be at the top. Nope, sorry - this is not a good idea. →Raul654 17:13, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
    • Should I put Wikipedia:Wikipedians by number of edits on VfD, then? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 17:17, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
      • No - first, it's not updated all that often, and it's cumulative, so it rewards longtime contributors rather than participants in the edit-war-dejour. Plus, most people don't really know about it, so there's not much incentive to artificially inflate the numbers. →Raul654 17:20, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

Custom footers - how much is too much?

The custom footers for countries seem to be proliferating. I don't really see how having so many adds to the articles. For example, see New Zealand. As of today, there are four separate footers. Has there been discussion about these somewhere? I just don't see how displaying all those lists at the bottom helps anymore than a link to the lists. One footer for the primary region I think I could abide, but is a footer for APEC or OECD or even the Commonwealth really helpful? I think having so many footers is ugly and detracts from the article. Bkonrad | Talk 13:20, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

IMHO one is enough already, making a custom footer for every supra-national organization quickly becomes nonsense. The geographical one is IMHO the most appropiate one. Especially for those organization which cover all (or nearly all) countries of a region (e.g. EU or APEC) or covering way too many countries (UN, Commonwealth) it is rediculous. andy 13:25, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Agreed. On New Zealand the APEC and OECD lists are way over the top and should be removed (but I'm not brave enough to do it!)
Adrian Pingstone 13:39, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Looks like somebody else was [8]; I also agree that too many footers detract rather than adding to the article. Probably one is enough in most cases, I'd propose a maximum of 2, given their average size. - IMSoP 14:52, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Well obviously (value of contributor) is proportional to (amount of text added to pages), thus if you want to feel valuable create some {{msg}}s. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 16:46, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ia & Wikipedia

Hi all,

I'm just impressed by the content... Just amazing. I just wonder if someone have heard if some there is some utilisation of the Wikipedia(text articles) as an "common sens" package brick for IA projects? Just curious...
Frano
Franosub_NOSPAM<_>transcribeworld.com

Frano, do you mean as "raw knowledge" for AI projects? I'd have thought that such inputs would have to be expressed in a significantly more formal language that wikipedia uses, which is really only a bit more structured than HTML. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:22, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Actually, somebody else has suggested this, although it's not clear exactly how it could be done - see meta:Wikipedia Virtual Mind - IMSoP 16:52, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Who are the coders?

Are the programmers that create the software that Wikipedia uses also contributors to the content? Who are they? - Bevo 17:49, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Almost certainly missing someone out, for which I sincerely apologize in advance, they include User:Brion VIBBER, User:Tim Starling, User:Gwicke, User:Eloquence, User:Magnus Manske and User:EvanProdromou. According to her user page, User:Angela has contributed one line to the code base. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 18:08, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There is a list of those with certain access levels at m:developer, but others have contributed code without having any access so are not listed there (me, silsor and Timwi for example). Angela. 18:14, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

Extended filmographies

I edit a lot of entries on actors and actresses and I've noticed a disturbing trend: some fans add complete filmographies for these celelbrities. While this isn't much of an issue for actors who have starred in just a few movies, for actors with long careers, the filmography can span several scores of entries. While Wikipedia is not paper, it is an encyclopedia and I think the lists should be trimmed to include just their notable films. After all, the IMDb has every actor's complete filmography for those interested (and I always include the link if it is missing). A list with hundreds of entries is almost worse than no list at all.

Is there a page that discusses how to make an entry on an actor/actress? I think including a note to not include an overly long filmography plus always including the IMDb entry would be useful. —Frecklefoot 18:41, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Filmographies and Discographies and its talk page, where a suggestion is made to have lists on a separate page when they become too long. Angela. 19:12, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
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