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[[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]]

Summarised sections

This is a list of discussions that have been summarised and moved to an appropriate place. This list gets deleted occasionally to make room for newer entries. Please note that all comments relating to the new software have been moved to Wikipedia:Mediawiki 1.3


Edits from before the crash are there... but not shown?

I made a few edits on things like James Bond and Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing that don't show up on the main page. Then if I look at history, my changes are there. I compare the current (mine) to the one before, and it shows mine. If I hit 'edit' trying to put the changes back, they are already there! Ideas? I've cleared my browser caches and Squid caches. Not only my stuff - example, I went to add a new link to the end of Google for GoogleWhack.com and somebody already did, but it doesn't show up on the main article page. --Revragnarok 11:11, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I just had this happen at Talk:Luckenbach, Texas (history). --Smack 23:27, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Seems to work now...?--Revragnarok 00:32, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia now imposes its will on its readers?

Why has Wikipedia overridden readers’ default font and highlighting selections? Do you really think ‘you’ know better than all your readers? I used to enjoy reading Wikipedia articles; they are now in a font that is painful to read—and every linked term now has a forced, ugly, and distracting underline.

(And please do not suggest that readers should edit their .css file on every Wiki they use; that is impractical. A separate profile for every web site is not sustainable!)   quota

Yes, Wikipedia is a malicious entity, run by some kind of secretive organization of web designers who aim to make things difficult on everyone.
Seriously, though, any good browser will let you override site-specified fonts, and for that matter, practically every other visual attribute of site presentation. That's the nice thing about CSS! You may want to join in the discussion of MediaWiki comments and bug reports, layout design, the monobook skin, and skins in general, among others; participating in the existing discussion on these issues is more likely to bring about change than simply complaining about it. -- Wapcaplet 19:39, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
You can use one stylesheet across all wikis by dropping @import url(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:You/Monobook.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css); in the secondary wiki's Monobook.css. Then you only have to edit the en version. -- Gabriel Wicke 11:48, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I think the fans of the new cutesy-but-less-readable font are missing the point. The experts can change CSS stuff any time they want. It's the ordinary folks who don't invest major portions of their lives to learn all the intracacies of the latest browser styling fads that are left to squint at this unannounced, unvoted-upon, fait-accompli change. (I won't even dignify the idea that one should change one's default browser fonts just to make Wikipedia look nice with an indignant response. Or have I just?) ☺ -- Jeff Q 04:33, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

terms for administrative assembly

Does it make sense to make a list or a category various terms that denote gatherings for council, management, etc., both nation-specific and international ones: kurultai, ting, Loya jirga, veche, parliament, Congress of Soviets, etc.? Or are these belong to a list of forms of government (absent from it now)? Mikkalai 05:57, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'd suggest that they would be a great addition to forms of government but that they are more of a 'related group' than something you would work through as a list. imho, anyway. --VampWillow 11:41, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Pictures, Categories, and so forth

I am crossposting this comment to Wikipedia:Village Pump and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.

I have been advised that the manual of style says unambiguously that articles with single pictures must have the picture at the very top of the article, aligned to the right. I have no particular problem with this as a general guideline. At the moment, however, when this is done to article with categories, it results in an extremely ugly article. I have been advised that this will probably be corrected at some point in the near future (although have seen no evidence that this is the case, aside from Raul654's assertion that Mr. Starling will "doubtless" do this.) In many cases, it is perfectly easy to move the picture down so that it is even with the second paragraph of the article. In most of these cases, this looks perfectly fine. It also means that we don't have absolutely hideous articles until whenever it is that the problem with categories gets fixed. For moving the pictures in several articles down a few lines, I have been accused of doing "serious damage" to wikipedia, because now people will have to "fix" all these articles so that they don't contain the ultimate indignity of having pictures slightly lower in the article than the manual of style says they should be. My feeling is that this is insane pedantry, but what is the general feeling on this? john k 06:06, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I am quite sure this problem is solved soon - it's not only the pictures which create that problem, but also the very popular Infoboxes. Instead of temporarily moving down the pic/infobox or move the pic to the left we can also abstain from adding the category temporarily until the glitches of the new software version are fixed - this also gives some time to think about what categories we want to add. andy 08:01, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
There is a user CSS fix to this problem currently listed on the Meta bug report/comment list. It's under [1]. blankfaze | ?? 16:12, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This shouldn't be a problem now that categories have moved to the bottom of articles rather than being in the way of images at the top. Angela. 00:06, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I tried to fix a typo on a page without logging in, but could not find the "Minor edit" option. Wasn't it supposed to be there ? Jay 07:19, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No, minor edit is for looged-in users only. It's to prevent vandalism. Wyllium 08:39, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Some people choose to hide minor edits from recent changes, so preventing anons (who are the most likely vandals) marking edits as minor means their vandalism is less likely to go unnoticed. Angela. 18:45, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This looks like a very weak logic for blocking vandalism. A lot many edits (the majority I would say) of anon users are minor. Also a lot many users do not have the "hide minor edits" option set, which means vandalism will continue to be reverted. If anon users are being equated with vandalism, stop the facility to anon users. Jay 17:18, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It's not blocking (or even directly preventing) vandalism, it's just making it harder to hide, so that the wonderful contributors who keep an eye on unregistered user contributions can more quickly see the bad stuff and jump on it. Jay, you can probably save time (and do it quite safely if you have full control of your computer) by checking the box below the login button so that in future you are always logged in as soon as you come along. (A copy of that last sentence is going to your Talk page.) Robin Patterson 03:29, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Some points to mull about.
  1. Minor edits are minor edits. Period. Don't mix it up with fighting vandalism.
  2. A vandal who uses minor edits to vandalize is an intelligent vandal who knows the workings of Wikipedia. Such vandals are few and no amount of tactics will help fight such a user except patience.
  3. An anon user who uses the Minor edit is an intelligent user who knows the workings of Wikipedia. He has most probably made a useful edit.
  4. A lot many people do not have the "hide minor edits" option set, so I don't buy the "minor edit-anon user-vandalism" connection logic.
Thanks Robin for the logging in tip. Jay 04:57, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Minor edit, and the links at the top of that page such as Anons can no longer make minor edits, Minor edits and anonymous log-in. It's been discussed before, but the consensus was always to keep anons from using the minor edit checkbox. Angela. 00:28, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the references, I've copied the discussion to over there. Jay 07:52, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Range block

Range blocking ability appears to be disabled. Does anyone know why and how long for? DJ Clayworth 17:56, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This is the same for Korean, Latin, Simple and Meta. I expect it may have been accidentally turned off when the software was upgraded because I haven't heard anything about it being officially switched off for any reason. I'll leave a message for Tim Starling about it as he was the one who implemented it in the first place, so might know what's going on. Angela. 18:42, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This should be fixed now. -- Tim Starling 02:52, Jun 2, 2004 (UTC)
Thank you. On an entirely related note, our anonymous bot (?) is back making bizarre changes to Star Trek characters. I'm going to give him an unlimited ban, since 90 days didn't stop him. DJ Clayworth 14:53, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)


Why is it gone? I want it back. --Jiang 05:04, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It's at the top, I agree that the my contribs and it should be in the toolbox instead (/me waits for someone to mention the custom stylesheet). Dori | Talk 05:07, Jun 2, 2004 (UTC)
You can do it with a custom style sheet ;-). You are told how at m:User styles. I am loving the new flexibility. Pcb21| Pete 07:20, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Ditto. Plus these hotkeys are a godsend. I'm at least 53% more efficient. --Chopchopwhitey 07:23, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
A godsend, yes... but slightly annoying, since some conflict with IE's menus. In particular, Alt-E (Edit in WP, Edit Menu in IE) and Alt-A (View Article in WP, Favorites Menu in IE). Also, while they automatically perform their function in Firefox (For Linux, at least), IE just moves the focus to the proper button; i.e. I have to hit Alt-L and then enter to view the Watchlist. Also, one more issue - hitting Alt-E to do something in the Edit menu has destroyed some of my edits in Firefox, thanks to the site automatically reloading the Edit page. Perhaps some alt-links like Alt-E should be disabled on the edit page? --Golbez 20:00, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Disambiguation Problem

Currently, the Abercrombie page is an article about a horse named Abercrombie, with a link to Abercrombie (disambiguation). Shouldn't the disambig page be the main one? Can a moderator please move the Abercrombie article to Abercrombie (horse), and move the disambig page to Abercrombie? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 14:30, Jun 2, 2004 (UTC)

The horse is the only item actually called "Abercrombie", the others are just have that word in that name. It's probably best as is. Pcb21| Pete 14:52, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
There are two locations on that page named "Abercrombie", so each one could be referred to as Abercrombie. Also, the popular clothing brand Abercrombie & Fitch is commonly referred to in vernacular as just Abercrombie, and I'm sure that the Google test* search for Abercrombie would show that the most common usage is for the clothing brand. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 15:00, Jun 2, 2004 (UTC)
  • - yes... i know the google test is not wiki-god, but it's still significant
Ummm... So how should I go about this? Is there a place I can get a vote on this? It's not really a vfd issue, is it? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 16:17, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
I'm afraid I agree with Pcb21/Pete. Leave things as they are; let horsey enjoy the limelight. –Hajor 16:49, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Heck, don't worry about it too much. In any sensible layout, such as the one you suggested, (or indeed the one I would've kept, I inhumbly submit) people will find what they are looking for. No vfd required here thank goodness! 217.159.40.49 22:44, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
That IP address is me. Pcb21| Pete 22:53, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

RSS/Atom feed?

I could have sworn I saw a link to an RSS or Atom feed in the "toolbox" while on some page earlier today. Though it could have been on meta.wikipedia.org. Either way, I can't find again what page I saw that on, and so haven't had the chance to see what it was an RSS feed of! -- protactin 19:50, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Special:Recentchanges -- Cyrius|✎ 20:05, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Any chance we could RSS-ify or Atomize other pages? It may be interesting to have a newsfeed for Template:Did you know, or the day's featured article, or Special:Randompage. - jredmond 00:54, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Nupedia attribution

Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Nupedia_and_Wikipedia . In reviewing Nupedia sourced articles from the list kept there, I don't see any uniformity of attribution style for this requirement. I also see that the links to the original Nupedia articles are now deadends. Is there a simple phrase that would suffice to meet the requirement? - Bevo 19:54, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedians with reference works

I may start a page called Wikipedia:Wikipedians with reference works for anybody who wants to to list the reference works they own in case there is a question. I have quite a few books on subjects I'm not very interested in, but I'd be glad to look something up if there is an issue. Since these aren't topics I care about, no relevant pages are on my watchlist and I'd never notice a debate. So, if I created such a page, would anybody else be willing to add their own reference works to it? Tuf-Kat 20:27, Jun 2, 2004 (UTC)

There already is such a page: Wikipedia:Research resources.--Eloquence*

Official Wikipedia song (redux)

Since the original discussion (currently archived in Wikipedia:Village pump/May 2004 archive 2), I've been tossing and turning all night just *knowing* that the right song was only a moment away. It finally struck me in a dream last night--and the lyrics were right here all the time. They just needed a wee bit of updating and correction--OK, a whole bunch of changes--for our particular situation. Using the specifications in that original discussion, I present for your comments The Web Encyclopedia Song. Elf | Talk 22:58, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

  • No, no, it should be based on Ko-Ko's song in The Mikado, "I've Got a Little List" :-) Seriously, very apropos. Nice! The funny thing is that it was just the other day that I was noting, in the article on Caratacus, that it can also be spelled Caractacus and that it's a version of the name Caradoc. (A Caradoc, a Caradoc, a most ingenious Caradoc...) And, of course, in VfD we were just discussing making Quadranomial expansion a redirect to Multinomial formula... Dpbsmith 19:13, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
    • Caractacus gets around. (ingenious Caradoc... boo... (a play on "A paradox..." from another G&S operetta)) I now remember a song from childhood about "The ladies of the harem of the court of King Caractacus..." but I always thought it was a made-up name. Wikipedia enlightens me again! Glad we've got multiple Gilbert and Sullivan fans here, although I'm afraid that it won't translate well into other Wikis--has G&S ever been successfully translated into other languages? There's so much word play. Elf | Talk 19:37, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thoughts on new-page-creation notice text

I'd like to see the new-page-creation notice—the one that begins "You are at a page that does not exist yet"—include something short and pithy along the lines of "Please do not create an article about yourself, or an article whose main purpose is to promote a product or business." If interested, please discuss this at Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion#Thoughts_on_new-page-creation_notice_text (not here). Dpbsmith 23:36, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Respect and Decency

I am appalled at the material that has been submitted to this encyclopedia by users. I have attempted to remove material, specifically from articles about Jennifer Love Hewitt, Cary Grant, Drew Barrymore, Kylie Minogue and Angelina Jolie. Having read many thousands of legitimate articles in such publications as Encyclopedia Brittanica, I am quite familiar with the standards that they apply to their work, and these are in no way consistent with what is being allowed in Wikipedia.

In an additional ironic twist, the articles that I have written about Negro League Baseball players were materially altered by various fellow users, one in such a way that I consider to be racist. If anyone at anytime may alter another contributor's articles, even in offensive ways, then it seems to me that my "censorship" of the articles of others amounts to no more than the editing done by every other user of Wikipedia.

To state my reasons for editing the above articles, I will say that stating that a private area of the body of a serious actress are her best-known feature and providing a link to a crazed website that focuses on the woman's anatomy is extremely sexist, vulgar and classless. I also think that making reference to a certain supposed incident in Cary Grant's adolescence is highly unneccessary and unprofessional. Furthermore, listing an actresses's "measurements" is demeaning and an invasion of privacy, as well as being completely unnecessary to the content of the article. When the same writer adds his tabloid-based opinion about her sexual orientation, the debasement is complete. I think, too, that most would agree with editing an article with three paragraphs focusing primarily on a private area of a female singer's body and accompanied by a photograph that brings to mind the worst sexist images in rap and hard rock music videos. I also made an innocent change to an article on an actress that implied that her looks are more responsible for her success than her talent, something that I know to be entirely false.

I assumed that I was perfectly free to make such changes as I wished, since my articles had been terribly butchered and since the disclaimer below what I am typing right now says that articles may be "mercilessly" edited. Yet a certain overbearing webmaster (and he knows who he is) has said that I am committing "vandalism" and orders me to stop what I am doing or lose my membership with this site. Okay, then would he please tell others to stop vandalizing the social message of my articles?

I would like to request that a higher standard of respect, particularly for women and their privacy, be upheld on this site. I do not believe that anyone reading this would want such things said or shown of their sister. I am not asking to remove legitimate biological and psychological discussions of human sexuality, merely to prevent a pornographic mindset from seeping into what should be a serious educational tool. I encourage feedback so long as it is not of a threatening or accusative nature. Thank you. (Felix F. Bruyns)

The page diffs in questions are:
Jennifer Love Hewitt]
It appears to me that you were removing legitimate information from the articles because it is politically incorrect, which (in my book) is not a valid reason. →Raul654 00:24, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
Raul, Felix F. Bruyns is a troll who appeared here a couple of days ago as User:168.103.232.64. When asked about copyvio regarding his baseball player entries, he did not reply but changed his name. Unfortunately, his copyvio entries remain. Moriori 00:40, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Felix, I had a look at those. Some I agree with - the paragraph you removed from Jennifer Love Hewitt shouldn't really have been there. Others I don't - the swathe of material you removed from Kylie Minogue was a perfectly fair summary of a part of her career. Angelina Jolie and Drew Barrymore I have edited in an attempt to find a compromise that might be acceptable to both you and the people who have been reverting you. Cary Grant I'm leaving alone since I have no idea whether the incident in question is idle gossip or well-known fact. --Stormie 00:44, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)

Well I disagree with Stormie. None of the material should be culled. Just because other encyclopedias are too worried about appearing prurient doesn't mean Wikipedia has to be. I have restored all the censored material including the Cary Grant story for which I found a reference. Paul Beardsell 01:15, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Paul, the only thing I thought should be culled was the line "References to her breasts cropped up in almost all of her print interviews, and even inspired the creation of a website devoted solely to them [2]" in Jennifer Love Hewitt. Reason being: the website linked to is 404, so obviously that half of the sentence needs to be lopped out, leaving only "References to her breasts cropped up in almost all of her print interviews" which is a terrible, vague, meaningless, unverified (and probably unverifiable) mess of a sentence. I have no problem with someone writing something about the fame of her breasts - but that sentence is terrible. The other articles, my "compromise" edits all involved adding material for clarity or balance, not culling anything. Oh, and the reference you found for the Cary Grant story is fantastic, keep up the good work! --Stormie 01:23, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant to say I disagreed with you in that respect only. I did not follow the link. It has also been pointed out I have used the word prurient incorrectly. Now fixed, kind of. Paul Beardsell 01:29, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
While "Felix F. Bruyns"'s deletions were excessive, I agree with a couple of them. Specifically, an external link that gives a 404 error should not be in WP, and an actress' measurements should not be included. Why? 1) it is POV to list female measurements, but not male. 2) inherently unverifiable--unless you have a tape measure, and access to the person. 3) variable--just because the measurements might be true today, who knows about tomorrow.
I would not have removed the 'bisexual' reference from Ms. Barrymore's article, but I would argue that it is also POV to cite bisexual people, unless sexual orientation is referenced in all biographical articles. Niteowlneils 16:04, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It isn't POV if the person in question self-identifies as such, and its POV to try to hide the information. I don't have a problem with the edit Felix made to the Jennifer Love Hewitt article, it was silly, but I'm very worried about censorship, and will revert if Felix gets carried away with this "decency" fixation. Moriori, have you listed the supposed Copyvios on WIkipedia:Copyright problems? RickK 19:06, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)

Japanese word "haron"

Why was "furlong" katakanized as "haron" rather than as "faaron" or something like that? Juuitchan 07:27, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, in most circumstances, katakana doesn't have the option of using the "fa" syllable - "f" exists only before "u". If you take a look at the chart in the katakana article, you'll note that there's only "fu", and no "fa", "fi", "fo", or "fe". It's technically possible in modern katakana to create "fa", but use of these modern extensions is (I think) fairly rare. But I'm not an expert. -- Vardion 09:25, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The modern norm is to katakanise as 'fa' ('fu' followed by a little 'a'), as in 'fan' or 'fashon' (fashion). Which page are you referring to? --Auximines 10:31, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The Japanese Wikipedia page titled "haron" (in katakana) is what I was talking about. Also, the Japanese word for "foot" (the unit of length) is "fiito".
I suspect furlong is katakanised the "old" way (ハロン - haron) because it's a somewhat antiquated word - as the article says, it's only really used in horse racing - so it hasn't been modernised. Compare, for example, the word "fork". It used to be katakanized "hook" (ホーク), but nowadays is always written "fook" (フォーク). --Auximines 11:56, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Help Wanted - mis-spelled links needing fixed

Howdy. I've been running some analyses of links to non-existant articles and have hit a problem - too many things for me to fix!

There's a (I believe very high quality) list of over 1000 mis-spelled links available here - each entry also lists what the link should probably be. If anyone has an hour or two to spare, grab yourself a hundred items from the list to check and fix please.

- TB 15:10, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I just did all the H's. It quite relaxing, really, I might grab another letter this afternoon. :-) —Stormie 00:25, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

Article with missing history

Dunno if this is a software bug or what, but imagine my surprise on seeing my watchlist report that Ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy has been changed by an anon, then clicking on the diff only to find that it's a new article! Of course, without history, there's only my word that it's not new, but then how did it get on my watchlist? Stan 16:21, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It is possible to add article to your watchlist which don't exist yet. Another possiblity is that you added the article to your watchlist, it was deleted and now recreated. However I cannot see any deleted revisions of that article either, so this must have happened before the last purge of the deleted articles. Or it may of course be a database glitch which made the database forget the previous edits. andy 16:26, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
However as that article didn't show up on Special:Newpages, a database problem becomes more likely. andy 20:12, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
No, the article definitely existed previously, that's why I was watching it. Presumably the history has to be restored from backups somehow? Is there any way to know if more than the one article was affected? Stan 21:52, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
According to the history of Ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy, it was created on June 3. However, thefreedictionary.com have this article, and their copy appears to be older than June 3 as they don't have a copy of HNMS Jacob van Heemskerk which was created March 29th. There have been other weird things going on with page histories on wikitech-l. I don't know if this is related. Angela. 00:55, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Is anyone familiar enuf with the Amazon "affiliate" program to know if the external links being created here[3] are 'for-profit'? If I find the albums from the amazon.com home page, the links are QUITE different. I am assuming using WP for profit is frowned upon, but I don't remember ever coming across an article that explicitly states that as a policy or guideline. Niteowlneils 19:27, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Links to book (etc.) retailers should use the ISBN syntax, allowing visitors to chose from whom they buy. So even if they don't contain affiliate links we should still change 'em. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:36, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
As the links are about music the ISBN magic doesn't apply here. I don't think a link to amazon for CDs is really needed, and if I am not totally mistaken they are for an affiliate with the ID 968160d-20. So either we should remove those links directly, exchange the affiliate-ID with wikipedia08-20 (the one registered for wikimedia, or exchange them with an empty ID. I'd vote for the first - users should be smart enough to buy CDs by artist and title, and we don't prefer any online shop here - and I am already doing that. And if I see it correctly those articles are about CD singles as well and just contain a track listing - not really worth keeping IMHO. andy 19:51, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
For now, remove direct links that benefit any affiliate ID, even ones that would benefit Wikimedia. The indirect ISBN links were controversial enough, and any further steps in the this direction would require explicit approval of the community. Pcb21| Pete 21:47, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I know those were controversial, and as I don't see much point in amazon links for CDs I removed them completely. And I left a warning on the user's talk page. Anyone want to nominate the articles like Complicated on VfD - not much point to have the track listings of a CD single. andy 22:15, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Looks like a merge job to me. Pcb21| Pete 08:44, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Agreed and merged. Angela. 06:27, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Copyright_problems

Help! I screwed up this page [4] somehow (edit conflict or bad section edit or something) and am not sure exactly how to fix it. anthony (see warning) 01:42, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

  • Fixed. I will also report it as a bug. I do not know what happened but I have seen this at least once before on a different article. Andris 03:55, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

Hiding bot edits on watchlist?

Since my watchlist has been flooded by Template namespace initialisation script edits [5], is there any way to disable bots from being visible on this page, similar to how they can be blocked on recent changes? I've tried &hidebots=1 (or &showbots=0, whatever it was), but no luck. Chuq 03:01, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't these edits should be marked 'minor'? If they were we could opt to ignore minor edits in the watchlist. --Chopchopwhitey 03:37, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Marking the edits as minor won't help. The watchlist works by querying the cur table, there's no way to check for edits further back in history. It's not really practical to change this with the current schema. I could filter out bot edits, but you would still not be able to see edits to articles which occurred before the bot's. And it's not really a bot, it's a script. -- Tim Starling 03:53, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)
Point by point: Marking the edits as minor will help - I can exclude minor edits from showing up. And, of course, the edit is rightly of a minor nature so there is no problem there. There is a way - it is just not implemented! What is really not practical is screwing up the watchlist: It is only through the vigilence of countless editors that useless / poor / bad / inaccurate / vanadalistic edits are discovered. The primary tool for that is the watchlist. Frankly, I can't be bothered to scan the 100's of articles I now watch because the bot / script / macro / program doesn't mark the edits as minor. But better would be an option to exclude the edits of any one bot / user. I am most appreciative of all your highly valuable work - all that is being suggested is an improvement to Wikimedia. And the suggestion is being made to a person with the opportunity and the skill set to implement the improvement. Paul Beardsell 15:55, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Submitted this feature months ago, with no success but I am still interested in the issue. Greudin

Login timeouts

About the automatic log-off:

  • What is the time-out period?
  • Has it been shortened recently, or is it just my impression?
  • Could it be made into a user profile option (say, up to 6 hrs)?

Since I edit wikipedia as a background activity to other tasks (it beats playing mahjongg!), I often get logged out while editing an article -- which means my edit is either rejected or stamped as anonymous. Now, I am the only user of this machine, so security is not a problem; and I can't see how an inactive logged-in user could have a significant cost for Wikipedia....
Jorge Stolfi 03:57, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

    • Ditto — I agree, but from what I have seen of web server configurations, it could be difficult to arrange as a user profile option. Perhaps just increasing the default session close interval to ~ 1 hour would be enough. -- Solipsist 19:47, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

New servers

Are we still waiting for new servers? Wikipedia speed seems to be getting worse instead of better. RickK 07:01, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

The #wikipedia topic says "Wiki is slow because of ongoing template conversion". So fingers crossed it will be better after that. Pcb21| Pete 08:49, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Where does the ordinary, non-technical but vaguely interested citizen find info on this stuff? If for example I want to know what all this template business is and why watchlists have gone bonkers, etc etc, where is this kind of announcement made? What I mean by this is a plain language announcement that says We are doing X because Y and its effect is Z rather than one that says We are reconfiguring the axiom-thrust particle disproportionators in order to improve flange density followed by 19 pages of argument about why this is right, wrong, or would be better with m-dashes! :) Thanks, --Nevilley 09:17, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Using m-dashes to reconfigure the axiom-thrust particle disproportionators would be the height of stupidity... Duh! Tuf-Kat 14:15, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)
Additionally, one apache server (will) is down to due overheating problems (might be a hardware problem), and the new db server (ariel) is not currently doing anything. Putting those two in use should also help things. Dori | Talk 14:23, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

Possible database corruption

I was adding section headers to the page "Talk:List of sets of unrelated songs with identical titles". After doing a "Show preview", I attempted a "Save page". I got the following error:

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-new/includes/OutputPage.php on line 223

After trying it several times, I also tried "Cancel" and got the same error. Same thing if I entered the page title directly just to read it. Checking "My watchlist", I found the page was listed as updated by me. Clicking on the link, I again got the error. I logged out and anonymously fetched the page successfully. The current page, however, is NOT updated, even though its Page history says otherwise. Looks like database corruption to me. How does one address this problem? I want to make some more updates, but I'm afraid to do anything to it now. -- Jeff Q 11:36, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I just checked on the page again. Now it shows my recent update and is therefore in sync with its "Page history". Maybe that error is what happens when the database is out of sync? I don't know. But the problem appears to be gone. As Emily Latella would say... "Never mind." -- Jeff Q 17:41, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Old page was cached? Grandma, take your dentures out. Paul Beardsell 17:46, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This was just a bug in MediaWiki which happened all over the place for a few minutes, before Gabriel fixed it. The problem was rendering and caching, it's very unlikely there was any data loss. -- Tim Starling 05:22, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)
OK, Jeff, your dentures are out, sorry. Paul Beardsell 06:40, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Is it possible to switch off underlined links in the Monobook style? I can't, the radio box on my prefs doesn't seem to do anything, on other styles it works. Thanks, Mark Richards 18:36, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ongoing discussion at MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css#Underlining links. Dori | Talk 19:06, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

regardless of the bug in the userprefs, you can fix it without learning css coz I'll tell you how. Just insert the code below at this page: User:Mark Richards/monobook.css. 

/* remove the ugly, recently-reinstated link underlines */
a { text-decoration: none; }
a:hover { text-decoration: underline; }

Pi

What's up at article π ? When did the title start displaying as π ? - Bevo 20:27, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

wow, that's lame. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 20:35, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)
lame indeed! blankfaze | •­• 00:03, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I moved π to Pi. It can be moved back once this is fixed. Guanaco 02:08, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I asked on IRC and Brion says that we'd need to move to UTF-8 to fix this. Apparently a bug in 1.2 allowed this sort of thing to work before, and now the bug has been fixed :) Dori | Talk 02:30, Jun 6, 2004 (UTC)

In the same vein, the Polish 'L' Ł as in Lucasiewicz of Polish Notation fame is not rendering. Ancheta Wis 02:20, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

New article text, and draft of guide

I've just changed the new article text—the text that appears when you edit a page that doesn't yet exist. It now reads:

You are at a page that does not exist yet. To create an article on this topic, type in the box below (see the help page for more info). If you are here by mistake, just click your browser's back button. Your addition to the encyclopedia will be visible immediately, so if you just want to test how things work, please do that in the sandbox.
Please do not create an encyclopedia article about yourself, or an article whose main purpose is to promote a product or business. See What Wikipedia is not for more guidance. Articles in serious violation of Wikipedia's policies may be removed without notice.

I've also create a rough draft of a simpler guide to use instead of What Wikipedia is not—one which concentrates on the most common reasons why things end up on VfD.

Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion#Discussion of new article text and proposed guide, not here. Dpbsmith 23:58, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC))

Weird thing with categories

I'm not sure whether this is a bug or a user error, so I'm asking here first. (I've cleared my cache and restarted Netscape, to forestall those questions!) From Category:Dogs, click Category:Dog types. The category exists, has content, has an article assigned to it. Click Sheepdog. It is assigned to the category Dog types, but the link shows as if it doesn't exist and, sure enough, when I click it, I get an edit page rather than a display of the category page--but it doesn't say it doesn't exist, it actually shows the content of the page! Why does it think it doesn't exist at the same time that it knows that it does? Elf | Talk 00:32, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Cache issue, nonetheless. Just clearing your cache isn't sufficient - you need to send a message actively to tell intermediate caches (certainly wikimedia's squids, and possibly your ISPs too) to clear their caches. Ctrl-f5 on the specific page does this, but telling your browser to purge its own cache doesn't. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:39, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

There seem to be wild cache issues with wikipedia right now, and especially with categories. Anyone know what the deal is? john k 02:13, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Template Sandbox

How is someone supposed to test a template if template:Sandbox is protected and template:Test is already in use? --Ankur Oops, just noticed actually template:Sandbox too is in use and protected. Well, I guess then I'll try the "Be Bold" idea now. But it would help to have a template sandbox too that would work with the wikipedia:Sandbox.

The thing about Template:Sandbox is that it is the template that is used on Wikipedia:Sandbox, and not a sandbox for templates. if you really want somwhere to play around freely, there's always the test server, although there's no guarantees that it'll be acting exactly the same as everything else at any given time. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:13, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
You can also use subpages of your user page, see m:template. Also there is Template:Template sandbox.--Patrick 12:05, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Oh, Thanks booth of you. I never knew about test.wikipedia.org its a cool place sort of like google labs. --Ankur

Wikipedia talk:Vandalism in progress

Please see Wikipedia talk:Vandalism in progress. I'm going to wait until Sunday evening and if there are no objections, I will delete all Vandalism in progress alerts more than one month old. RickK 05:09, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)

Moving Category pages

I am being told I am unable to move Category:Australian MHRs to the correct form, Category: Australian federal MPs. Is there a rule against moving Category pages? If so, what is one supposed to do with a wrongly-titled page? If not, what is the problem? Adam 13:45, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

try it without the space before "Australian". Also, note you can refer to a catagory without making the current page a member of it, by putting another colon in front of it, like this Category:Australian MHRs -- Finlay McWalter | Talk
It doesn't work with or without the space. I still want to know whether there is something preventing moving or otherwise renaming Category pages. Adam 07:49, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I think it is a known problem with Categories. You probably can't delete a Category either. Until the problem is fixed you can ask an administrator to move or delete the Category. There is further discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Categorization -- Solipsist 14:47, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Why is Queenstown, New Zealand not listed under "The following pages link to this image:" on image Media:Queenstown - Remarkables 1.jpg ? - Bevo 18:55, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Many, if not all, pre-1.3 image pages have this problem. SourceForge bug #963763, being worked on presently. (Bug #966936 points out that editing, then re-saving the page, is a work-around.) Niteowlneils 19:06, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the workaround. I did a trivial edit to Queenstown, New Zealand and now it shows in the list of linked articles to that image. - Bevo 19:20, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The What links here on image pages is still broken, though. Lupin 08:06, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
'What links here' will not show pages that use an image inline, period.
Currently, the list of pages using an image is also broken since that data wasn't restored with the rest of the database. It'll be regenerated later. --Brion 08:12, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Editing of main page by anons

I fixed some things in an article from Template:Feature and noticed that is was edited by anon users. Since it shows on the main page, is it a good idea to allow anons to edit it? (BTW, bye to all unitil July 27)Mikkalai 23:21, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

(As the one who just reverted those changes) - I have argued consistently that the featured article should be protected, and I still think it should be. However, 'In the News' is kept very, very up to date because it is not - we had news of Reagan's death within moments of it being broadcast. However, ITN has been vandalized before. →Raul654 23:24, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)
If I remember correctly with the introduction of MediaWiki 1.3 changes in templates (MediaWiki or template namespace) get into the articles directly, whereas before it took some time till the cache became emptied. While I doubt that the normal newby vandal would ever find the templates used on the main page, long-time vandals or trolls would have it easier to deface the main page now. Thus if I remember correctly :-) those template should be protected, with the same rationale as the mainpage itself. andy 23:31, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Vandalism of the main page is very rare. Lots of pages are vandalised more regularly. I don't believe that the cost of protection can be justified in terms of preventing these rare and rapidly corrected events. -- Tim Starling 01:50, Jun 6, 2004 (UTC)
I strongly agree with Tim. Protected pages are considered harmful. We're a wiki - you need to expect a bit of vandalism. It's really not a big issue. Most other wikis don't even have a protected page option, or never make use of it if they do. There is no reason to start closing down pages just because they are prominent. Angela. 06:32, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Indeed, people have a little bit too much paranoia at times, put some more faith in the wikisystem:) --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 22:05, 2004 Jun 8 (UTC)

Math bug?

In the page Barycentric subdivision, several formulas are replaced by the message

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): F_0,F_1,F_2,F_3

Is this my fault, or a software bug?
Jorge Stolfi 04:00, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It's not you, I just tried it myself. Equations that have already been rendered are displaying, but new ones are not. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:52, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This is fixed now. -- Tim Starling 03:05, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

An edit I made

...seems to have vanished (here's the dif[6]--it's to George Bush presidential library. What causes this? I'm fairly sure it's not a cache thing--I did cntrl-F5, and cleared out my cookies and history. Meelar 05:25, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It is a cache thing, your edit is there, and in one piece. I've been seeing this happen, but mostly with page moves. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:49, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Renaming images

Does anyone know whether it's possible to rename an image, eg. by renaming its description page. I can't find anything on the subject, though I would expect a solution other than uploading the image anew just to change the name. Aliter 11:41, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No, there is currently no other solution than re-uploading the image. If the old name is very bad/inconvenient, reupload the image, and request the old one to be deleted. If it is a trivial name change, you can just as well let it be. ✏ Sverdrup 11:56, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This is a very good question. We should have it in the FAQ. Yes, there's no equivalent of "moving article" for images. --Menchi 11:47, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Strewth

I am not a wikiholic... I am not a wikiholic... urrggg... wow I'm glad that's over. Is there any summary of what happened anywhere?

Wikipedia:Announcements which links to Wikipedia Status here and details here -Wikibob | Talk 03:52, 2004 Jun 8 (UTC)
... need ... wikipedia ... need ... Edit ... this ... page ... (Chris 73)
Yea, it hurt not being able update wiki for a full 24 hours ;) →Raul654 03:58, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)
commendations for to the technical warriers that got things back without any data loss... who are probably catching up on their sleep (or down the pub). I was a little surprised that even the read only version was not available. Erich 04:46, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)


I read the pages linked above, but what's left unclear is why this happened. Anyone have an explanation for the not technically-apt? Meelar 05:35, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Basically, the database was corrupted which meant a new backup had to be made. This took a long time because the database slave server (one which keeps an up-to-date backup) was not in sync, so there wasn't a backup immediately available. There were other problems with new database server Ariel crashing which I think prevented the read-only version being up consistenly. Angela. 07:41, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

new message message

I can't get rid of the "you have new message" message, even though I have edited and unedited my Talk page. RickK 05:51, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

ditto. -- Chris 73 | Talk 05:56, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I think this is fixed now (at least it isn't happening to me anymore). Is anyone else still having problems with it? Angela. 06:37, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it seems to be fixed. RickK 06:40, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)
Well, it required me to log off first. \Mikez 06:55, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

thumbnails not right-aligned

Why are the thumbnails on River Weaver and Buttermere not right-aligned? Am I using the wrong markup? Lupin 08:08, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I know not why, but adding a caption to the pictures fixed the problem. →Raul654 08:13, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)
Fixed (by adding overflow:auto to the outer div). Please reload to get the new css. -- Gabriel Wicke 11:33, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Current Sports Events

On the eve of the French Open and Stanley Cup happenings, I was wondering if we could make a Current Sports News page, different from the 2004 in sports page that we already have, to cover major events that otherwise might not be covered by Sports in 2004. I watch Sportscenter a lot, I could manage the page well. We could put it on Main Page beat where Current Events and Recenth deaths are at. Antonio Long One Martin

This was recently discussed on Talk:Current events (I forget the conclusion). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 09:44, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I don't particularyly care for the idea. The main is already full (too full, in some people's opinions), and I'd rather have the 4 sections we already have rather than sports. →Raul654 09:45, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)
It would probably be possible to do United States current events, United Kingdom current events and perhaps others too for those events that aren't quite worthy of a global audience. I doubt any of them would deserve main page links though. Pcb21| Pete 10:59, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I support Antonio's suggestion. It'd reduce the load on Current Events, and "More news | Recent deaths | Sports news" would fit quite happily in the ITN box on the Main Page (and, if it's decided that that's not the case), it could be usefully linked from Current Events). The Olympics and EuroFooty are just round the corner, too. –Hajor 19:17, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I like the idea. I was going to add a bit about Smarty Jones losing @ Belmont to Current Events last weekend, but (a) I wasn't sure if I was even allowed, and (b) I wasn't sure if people would think it "important" enough. I don't think we need a whole 'nother box, just a link by recent deaths like User:Hajor suggested. blankfaze | •­• 22:34, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I have no problems with a link as suggested by Hajor. But I think an extra box on the front page is too much, and I am personally not interested at all in sport news. -- Chris 73 | Talk 22:50, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I support extra link. Andris 22:53, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

Sharing with other sites

On another topic, I wondered if I could ask the sites I have written about to spread the word about us. Ive tried hard to get my doctor, my pharmacist, my pastor, a cop, a boxing trainer, a former Marine and a pastor to be to help us. The only one who has been hired by me out of those is the former Marine my dad.

By asking some sites I visit and have written about, we might increase traffic, although two of these sites, Projectvoyeur.com and Purepanties.com are of dubious material.

Put your opinions down here, hehe: Antonio Porn Addict Martin

Dude, some things are best kept to yourself. Pcb21| Pete 08:56, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The question is shall we do that or not? Besides everyone here knows Im the Madonna of wikipedia! Antonio Wikidonna Martin
If you think the webmaster of a site called purepanties.com can help improve the coverage of our articles on clothing, go ahead and ask. Without having visited the site however, I fear we would be more likely to attract spam than anything else! Pcb21| Pete 10:57, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Uh...I don't know. Are the people from "Project Voyeur" the spam-type?? --Menchi 11:44, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Fix Upload page

The Special:Upload page still says {{msg:PD}}, even though the "msg" part is no longer required. Can someone please fix the page (apparently the script can't do it)?

Done. Morwen 11:00, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Template problem

I wanted to make a little Template for the Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress page, replacing the not so nice looking *([[User:a.b.c.d]] | [[User talk:a.b.c.d|talk]] | [[Special:contributions/a.b.c.d|contributions]]) part with {{Vip|user:a.b.c.d}}, but somehow the outcome isn't what I expected. What did I do wrong? --Conti 12:12, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hrm.... I was going to say you did nothing wrong, but it does look like template have a problem linking into the User namespace:

UtherSRG (talk · contribs)

- UtherSRG 12:43, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

ah.. I made a mistake while testing it, foolish me. But now there's another problem with templates. Can someone fix this? :-) --Conti 13:10, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure why it thinks the pages don't exist, but it works ok if you use the full URL in the template instead. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=user:{{{user}}} User:{{{user}}}] | [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=user_talk:{{{user}}} talk] | [[Special:contributions/{{{user}}}|contributions]]) <br/>
Angela. 13:23, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Gonna use that version as long as my does not work. --Conti 13:40, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

New pages?

Under the cologne blue skin, there was a taskbar link directly to new pages, now the book skin doesn't have it. Why? -- user:zanimum

The standard skin didn't have it either. The reason has to do with space probably. Dori | Talk 14:33, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

REDIRECTs now disallow any extra text?

I was trying to add a Category to a REDIRECT page (don't ask rude questions and I won't tell you where to stick them :-). However when I tried to save the change, not only did the Category not get saved, the Edit History wasn't even updated! I have just tested it in my Sandbox and it seems that whereas it used to be possible to append text to a REDIRECT, to explain why it was there, for example, such as "Common mis-spelling", this would seem now to have been forbidden. The edit seems to be simply ignored, but there is no message saying that this has occurred. Was this a planned feature of the MediaWiki 1.3 upgrade? --Phil | Talk 14:57, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know why in this particular instance, but ISTM that to have a category on the redirect wouldn't work anyway as in the category page linking to it when you click that link you'd be redirected through to the actual target page anyway, thus it would be an unusable link. Categories should only be on target (valid) pages. --VampWillow 15:17, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I know that now! (wishing I could recall from whence that is a quote). Well actually I had figured it all along but I wanted to see if it were possible or whether MediaWiki would tell me I was doing something unwise. When the edit was just silently rejected I dug a bit more. It turns out that something which is reasonable and was allowed before—i.e. adding extra explanatory text after a REDIRECT—has now been forbidden for no apparent reason and without any message to explain why MediaWiki is throwing the edit away. --Phil | Talk 15:50, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

I just created Abdul Rahman, Tuanku and it seems to work. There is some sort of char-conversion bug affecting them though. -- User:Docu

You used a template message and appended it to the end of the REDIRECT: if you put your extra text on a new line it gets wiped! A little testing in my Sandbox proves it, and also that the history totally fails to register even the attempt at editing. --Phil | Talk 17:25, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC) ... and just to add a little spice to the mix, putting the Category directive on the same line does allow you to specify a category for a REDIRECT (see Category:Test which has members if no actual text). Which has to make some kind of twisted sense if I can just twist my mind enough ... --Phil | Talk 17:34, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

MonoBook

Uhh, my mono book skin just stopped working, I was seeing the pages raw. I switched to Cologne and everything is fine. Is someone working on the monobook css right now? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 17:54, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

Today, I've seen image rendering problems with both Monobook and the Standard skin. Especially at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates - Bevo 19:44, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
All seems to be working fine for me (NS 7.1/XP). blankfaze | •­• 22:26, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It seems to be an inconsistency with the Mozilla Firefox browser. I just tried IE 6, and it renders OK with that browser. With Firefox, I'm getting some of the images chopped off (renders left-side only) in the thumbnailed presentation. - Bevo 22:46, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Ditto. See ongoing thread at m:MediaWiki_1.3_comments_and_bug_reports#Layout_of_tables.2C_images -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:50, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What is the policy for dealing with PageRank vandalism?

What should be the policy for dealing with articles like Protocol Analyzer (see history)? Right now, we list them as copy vios, and link to the site that they plagiarize. However, due to Wikipedia's high page rank and the many number of sites that clone wikipedia data, this will still allow these vandals of achieving their goal of increasing page rank. It would be more effective to make these speedy deletion candidates. What do you guys think? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 18:06, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

I have no problem with that. Or with some approach where we build the VFD notice without an actual HTML link, so that it doesn't have this effect. -- Jmabel 07:40, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)
Not a hard thing to fix. Just have people to put the website into the edit summary when marking it as a copyvio, and have the copyvio template tell readers to look at the page history. →Raul654 07:47, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)

Press kits

While browsing the official web site of the Cassini space probe (that will arrive at Saturn in three weeks), I downloaded the press kit, which is a 400 kb PDF file. In my opinion, this sort of thing is a goldmine for Wikipedia articles: it lists each and every detail about the probe, the planet and its moons in a plain language, designed for journalists who aren't experts on the subject. It includes lots of pretty pictures that are also very informative (in this case, the orbit layout, the planet interior, the ring structure, the probe schematic, and so on). The press kit has no copyright statement on it. Coming from the JPL, I suspect it's public domain. So wouldn't be a good idea to harvest press kits from the various gov. organization that are trying to show off? What's the actual copyright status on them? What could be a proper WikiProject procedure? This press kit is so well done that it could be splitted into two articles: Saturn and the Cassini probe, that could be almost wikified and left that way. Would others be the same? Alfio 18:51, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The JPL is a division of Nasa - NASA images generally are not copyrighted. You may use NASA imagery, video and audio material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits and Internet Web pages. - http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html →Raul654 18:59, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

"generally" is correct, but you do find some images with non-NASA copyright notices on the NASA websites. For example: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_166.html
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/58496main_image_feature_166_jwfull.jpg - Bevo 19:43, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
JPL is not a division of NASA, it is a division of Caltech, and therefore does not strictly fall under the standard NASA/government "everything's public domain" policy. Be careful. [7] -- Cyrius|✎ 22:15, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
JPL images are "pretty close" to public domain. In most cases, only a credit is required. See JPL Image Policy -- Curps 22:42, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Trouble editing template namespace

For some reason, trying to save a change to Template:Album gets an error message, but saving anything else works fine. Can anybody else edit the template namespace? Tuf-Kat 23:05, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry- we have a problem... The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to your request. To get information on what's going on you can visit #wikipedia. An "offsite" status page is hosted on OpenFacts. Generated Tue, 08 Jun 2004 23:03:51 GMT by wikipedia.org (squid/2.5.STABLE4-20040219)

Invitation Letter

Last weekend, I went to a number of places where there were guided tours, and that got me thinking...it would be nice if this person could contribute their knowledge of this place to Wikipedia...

I think there should be a standard letter to invite people to share their knowledge with Wikipedia, for when you come across someone who knows a lot about something.

Or does a simlar thing already exist? What do you think? RealGrouchy 00:03, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea. There's some sample solicitation letters linked from Wikipedia:Building Wikipedia membership. — Matt 02:02, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Also Known As

Is it possible for Wikipedia to have some kind of AKA tag akin to categories? Alot of the articles I work on have many names and instead of putting in the article "Also called x,y, and z" I'd rather if there were simply a {{AKA: x,y,z}} feature. Oberiko 00:51, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

sorting on category page

I cant figure out the sorting of articles on category pages. On category:North American rivers the Yadkin rivers was sorted to C and I changed the link to Yadkin river. So now it is sorted to Y. OK. (Ok, now its a north carolina river)

Then I looked at Pecos River, which is already sorted to P. But there the category is also only category:North American rivers. How does it work? --141.53.194.251 07:54, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Eequor noticed that it's probably sorting on the C in Category, and filed it on the meta page. Dysprosia 08:10, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Missing images

I notice that some articles (at least Maui and Haleakala) are missing images. The server seems to be trying to download them; my browser says from this "file": en.wikipedia.org/style/monobook/headbg.jpg No idea what "headbg.jpg" is (not one of the four missing images) or why the download is not working or where the images went. Anybody notice similar problems? - Marshman 08:12, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

How to get images permission?

I could see many people easily get permission to use photos. I want to know if there is any letter templates for that. Why I'm asking is my English is poor and I wanted to use [8] in the article Sari but couldn't even get response. I think, it needs bit diplomacy. Experienced people can share. TIA. --Rrjanbiah 08:46, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, my advice on the matter - don't bother. Getting permission is a *HUGE* pain the ass. At best, maybe 1 in 3 requests get answered. I guess I've had some bad experiences. The best advice I can give is - find an alternative to whatever image you have. Government (.gov) pages are a goldmine of good, public domain pictures. →Raul654 08:56, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)
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