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Summarised sections

This section was last removed on September 10. The links below indicate the page to which the relevant discussion has been moved. They are removed every few days. Discussions that have not moved (such as announcements of new policy) can be removed completely, or summarised in this section. Bug reports and feature requests are replaced with a reminder that MediaZilla: should be used for these. If you want discussions to last more than a few days, start them elsewhere and just link to them here. Questions can be moved to the user talk page of the person who asked them without a link from this section. An example format for this section is
*Section header as it was before removal --> [[title of page the related discussion is on or has moved to]].


I've asked this in about 3 places with no answers--does anyone know who to ask for help or where to go to get these fixed? (trying for over a month; have an agreement that this makes sense, no disagreement, no info on who ya gonna call)

  • The link at the bottom of articles of the form Categories:categoryName. Clicking Categories takes you to Special:Categories, which is useless. It needs to go either to Wikipedia:Category for an explanation or else to the top-level browsing hierarchical category, probably Wikipedia:Browse by category.
  • The Special:Categories page needs an explanatory intro that helps you to get someplace useful from there--but there's no editable template for that page, so I can't do anything about it.

Elf | Talk 15:11, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree that Special:Categories is pretty useless (what, are there like 500,000,000 categories?). Finding a category via that link is almost impossible. It needs an alphabetized index, just like the Main page got recently. Though perhaps the Category link shouldn't go there, it needs to be easily accessible so one can find if particular category exists. — Frecklefoot | Talk 18:40, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Complete e-mail in article: is it encyclopedic, copyvio, fair use ?

A person created an article whose content was basically someone's email. (Please see John Carmack describes the fight for Doom 3 and its talk.) I raised my doubts on whether this is encyclopedic and fair use. What's the policy here? Wikipedia goes lengths about images, but I didn't find much indications on this issue. Mikkalai 16:08, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Just a legal question here, not specifically about wikipedia: Are emails copyrighted, and if so, who owns the copyright and what defines fair use of the emails? Darksun 16:59, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Contents of e-mails and even newsgroup posts are (by default) copyrighted by their author, just like the contents of a website. Private e-mails in particular have legal privacy concerns attached to them, making permission especially important. To qualify for fair use, it has to be clear the author intended it to be exposed publically, and no more must be quoted than is necessary for the discussion. Paraphrasing is much safer.
Moreover, if they excessively quoted another author, such as by top-posting, then this probably violates fair use, and so the quoted author's permission is required as well (if this portion is not snipped - yes, this means top-posting is technically illegal).
I'm not sure if the content is encyclopedic, but it should probably be incorporated into the Doom 3 article. I am not a lawyer. Derrick Coetzee 17:03, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
FYI, the content in question is NOT an email message. It is a .plan file, which is public, and accessed by a common unix utility called "finger". It is rarely used and has a couple of security loopholes (which is why no one uses it) but it is definitely public, and in use around 2000. From what I remember, allegations like this has been floating around for a while, and never substantiated. Of course, .plan messages are probably copyright as well.
This, of course, begs the question of copyrights of email messages, and Derrick is right in that the copyright is assigned to the WRITER of the email message, the receiver has no rights to it. -Vina 19:50, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Similarly (and with more legal precedent), snail mail letters are copyright of the writer but (usually) owned by the recipient. The second becomes relevant when someone wants to auction the correspondence they received from someone famous, and the first when someone else wants to include the text of the letters in a biography or the like. -- Solipsist 18:16, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Speedy deletions?

Hello. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I think somebody's been speedy deleting my articles. I stubbed Christopher Street, Manhattan and East 8th Street, Manhattan last week, and both were gone the next day—I figured it was a bug in Wikipedia, so I rewrote them and they've been fine since then. This morning I stubbed Spaghetti strap, half-jokingly, and was gratified later on to see someone else come along and expand it into a decent article. But I checked again just now, and suddenly it's gone! What's going on? I don't think any of these were speedy deletion candidates... are these disappearances actually a bug? Am I seeing a conspiracy where there is none? T-bomb 17:23, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Replying to myself—after digging around on WP:SD, I found Wikipedia:Deletion_log, and it looks like all three of my articles were in fact deleted (by User:Jimfbleak). I disagree with the deletions (jeez, man, can't you at least let them sit for a day or two?) but at least now I know what was going on. Carry on... T-bomb 17:31, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I believe these are not speedy deletion candidates, and so the deleter is in fact violating policy. On the other hand, they may very well be candidates for the ordinary deletion process, due to the relative insignificance of the topics (we don't usually have articles on individual streets unless they have some wide significance, like Wall Street.) Derrick Coetzee 17:49, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
In Wikipedia:Deletion policy, the only rule for speedy deletions that might possibly have applied to these articles was: "Very short articles with little or no definition or context (e.g., "He is a funny man that has created Factory and the Hacienda. And, by the way, his wife is great."). Turning such pages into relevent redirects may sometimes be appropriate." Which, in fact, doesn't sound like all that great a match. So I agree that the deleter was a bit over-zealous. Elf | Talk 18:12, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The original Spaghetti strap that you created was probably a candidate for SD, I was considering adding the delete tag, or possibly putting it on VfD, until is was edited into a valid substub. I don't believe that the substub was a candidate for speedy deletion. Darksun 18:19, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

BTW, I would certainly argue that Christopher Street, Manhattan and East 8th Street, Manhattan are of sufficient significance to merit articles, for exactly the same reason we include Brick Lane. Each has been the defining center of a neighborhood and a subculture. Christopher Street is the center of the West Village gay community and East 8th, or more precisely St. Mark's Place, has been a countercultural center at least since hippie times. -- Jmabel 19:06, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for backing me up. I have to admit, though, even as the author of the stubs, I can understand why someone unfamiliar with the city could consider them candidates for deletion—they're “just” streets, after all, right? Anyway, I started these articles in the hope that others can develop them further... there's far more history to these streets than any single person can possibly know. I'm looking forward to learning more myself. T-bomb 19:18, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Well, Christopher Street is pretty darned famous, but I'd ask that a street be famous outside of the city. Christopher Street is. The Bowery is (both the lane and the district). Park Ave., Broadway, 7th Ave. as the Fashion District, 42nd St., 5th Ave., all famous to people outside the city. On the other hand, every street has some major history to it, so we've got to think long and hard about them. After all, 86th and 53rd have major historical persons associated with them, all the streets in Alphabet City have things associated with them, etc. I.e. I think E. 8th probably doesn't make it. It isn't just that it has historical claims, but that it is known by a potential user of the project. At least that's my stance. Geogre 00:57, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Some streets may be notable, but do we really need articles on every street in Manhattan, as this article's red-links seems to imply? 23rd_Street,_Manhattan#Intersections Niteowlneils 20:09, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In such cases a good idea to put all streets into a common article, kind of Manhattan streets, eventually separating streets wilh lots of info into separate articles. It is a common-sense approach in wikipedia for all "listable" topics. Mikkalai 20:27, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
That's a reasonable approach--don't make break-out articles until the parent gets too weighty. Niteowlneils 21:15, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Why not? Not like it's polluting the namespace, and it's not like it's self-promotion. --Golbez 20:14, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)
Huh? Thousands of cities have a Second Avenue. Some are one-way, some two-way. Who cares? Niteowlneils 21:15, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
That's nice of you; the only streets mentioned here are Christopher Street, Manhattan and East 8th Street, Manhattan. You notice the little ", Manhattan" bit there? Yet you then pull Second Avenue out of your hat, which I didn't know exists and I wasn't justifying its existence. Bravo. For the record, I think these should be redirects to a possible Streets of Manhattan article. Keep info there til it grows too big for its britches. --Golbez 00:25, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
Sorry, I wasn't intentionally sandbagging you--Second Avenue is the second active link in the list at 23rd_Street,_Manhattan#Intersections that I cited, but I regret that the way I presented it came across like a set-up. Streets of Manhattan, until it needs to be split up sounds like a great solution/compromise/whatever. Niteowlneils 01:46, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In any case, all three of these articles should've been sent to WP:VFD, not WP:SD. • Benc • 20:34, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have no argument with that. Niteowlneils 21:15, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Could someone look into Jimfbleaks extreme deletionistism *wrings tongue*. A few days ago he deleted a perfectly valid article CMUCL which I have since replaced and expanded slightly. Ludraman 22:52, 8 Sep 2004 [signature originally omitted]
Huh. Ironically, the first one I've checked that I can't think of a speedy case for is content="Abuses of power occur whenever a postion of power created. Infringements can range from the petty, (stealing staples from the office) to the outrageous (waging war on a country in order to line your own pockets)." That said, there are quite a few admins that regularly delete things that I don't know what case applies. However, most of it isn't even worthy of VfD, so I see the problem more in the speedy definitions--too many are too vague, there should be more examples, and they even sometimes seem to contradict each other. I have been collecting samples to try and get this issue clarified. The ones I have so far are at User:Niteowlneils/csdornot/. Some are actual examples (with tweaks to obscure source) and some are facsimilies, but all represent articles I've seen get speedy deleted--most I think rightly, but most I don't know on what basis. As for your specific CMUCL, "CMUCL is a Common Lisp implementation" would probably be speedied by 1/3 to 1/2 of the admins, from what I've seen--it's awfully minimal. Some others would have made it a redir, as has happened. Niteowlneils 02:45, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Is there really a substantial amount of data on these two streets? Wouldn't they be better suited as a section in the city article? I question if even the more significant west coast counterparts to these subjects(Haight-Ashbury and The Castro)might be better served as sections in San Francisco.Cavebear42 23:05, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I agree. Putting small snippets of dicussion into a suitable large article is far nicer (and it won't get deleted as merely a piece of litter of interest to no-one). Then make redirect pages. I think the problem is that creating numerous small, annoying stubs is so much easier for some. You never have to worry about how to fit the material into another article or about about some other editor tromping on your work because they think it is messing up that editor's article. Maybe the answer to stub littering is indeed to speedy delete them when they don't tell you anything that anyone looking up the topic would care to know and just get in the way of the real information when someone is searching in Google and gets Wikipedia mirror after Wikipedia mirror of the same two-sentence non-information, supposed articles that on their own topic correspond to "Christopher Columbus was an explorer who discovered America in 1492." Articles of that kind normally do not help those searching for information and are usually worse than nothing for anyone searching on the web. Jallan 18:31, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Cleaning up a cut-and-paste move

Hi, even though I'm an admin, I have no idea how to fix this: someone did a cut-and-paste move that left the history of International Labour Organization at International Labor Organization. The former is apparently the correct name of the group, so it's where things should presumably end up. I'd also appreciate knowing:

  • could I somehow have fixed this myself?
  • if not, where would have been the most appropriate place to request the fix?

Jmabel 19:01, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

(As you apparently suspected, in this case it does require an admin.)
Have you read Wikipedia:How to fix cut and paste moves?
That section's "A troublesome case" section seems to apply here; however, IMO that section makes too strong a statement. (I think i should add a description of my solution to the problem it refers to, whose results you can see at Talk:Ernst Herrera Legorreta.)
--Jerzy(t) 20:17, 2004 Sep 8 (UTC)

Thanks. Done. -- Jmabel 21:44, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)


Irish wikipedians' notice board

User:Ludraman has hosted this for a number of months (even while he wasn't around, creepy), but it's become rather popular with us Irish here recently. So it can now be found at Wikipedia:Irish wikipedians' notice board. So to all Irish wikipedians out there, or those interested in Irish topics (it's not just for the Irish!), your involvement would be welcome! We have a to do list and everything! zoney ▓   ▒ talk 22:21, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In fact its become more of an Irish-related articles do stuff board (which isn't at all a bad thing). Hey, we might even be boosting Irish tourism :-) LUDRAMAN | T 22:47, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
It's a really useful resource and I hope it develops in all kinds of directions. Filiocht 09:18, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Spell Checking

I think it would be really useful to include a spell check feature in the editor to automatically spell check new articles and edits before they are posted. Also, has anyone tried running a spell checking script through the wikipedia database to spell check all of the current articles? Or maybe even a grammar checker? Just an idea. --Chessphoon 01:15, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There are some spell checking bots that involve user interaction (I believe that pywikipediabot was it, correct me if I'm wrong), but I think an auto spell checker would be more of a pain to most people. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 01:18, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

http://iespell.com is an excellent on demand spell checker for browser text boxes, but unfortunately is available only for IE. It can just put a button on the IE toolbar for quick easy access. Spalding 01:52, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

For the 'fox, there's SpellBound.
chocolateboy 03:27, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Accurate spelling is certainly desirable, although since Wikipedia has articles in multiple forms of English (American, British, etc.), depending on the context, it is probably impossible to do it in the database, or on a wide scale, without user intervention. To give you some ideas about what various Wikipedians are trying to do regarding spelling, you might want to look at:
User:Topbanana/Reports/This_article_may_contain_a_mis-spelled_word actually, there's a lot of cool stuff at User:Topbanana/Reports
Wikipedia:Typo
Wikipedia:List_of_common_misspellings
Niteowlneils 02:00, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Harry Potter may have use for a spell checker, but I think that Wikipedians would benefit more from a spelling checker.
dramatic 02:12, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC), lamenting the demise of the Gerund in North America.
Hah! That's a good quote quotation about gerunds; I'll have to file that one away. • Benc • 02:19, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Don't you mean a "spellings checker?" Austin Hair 02:37, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
I had to D: —siroχo 02:42, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
Not necessarily a bot to make spelling corrections, but perhaps just a "Spelling" button on the editing pages that would let you run your edits through a spell checker before saving the page would be useful. Sort of similar to IESpell but not something you have to install in your browser. --Chessphoon 02:52, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I find more of my spelling mistakes get through when I write directly on the WP editing page. It might be more of a legibility problem with the script used there, especially the spacings at punctuation. I normally wrote new stuff on Notetab Pro which has a built-in spell check, and then paste that into the WP editing page for final tweaking at the preview stage. Apwoolrich 09:31, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I don't think it's a bad idea, but I think there are much more pressing things that need to be coded first. Let's fix the bugs first before we start adding new features like this. If you've already got it coded, on the other hand... anthony (see warning) 12:51, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I agree we don't want the developers to spend a lot of time on this, even tho' it would be handy. This out-of-the-box spelling checker[1][2] seems like a good fit (from the list of features, not from any particular experience with it), and is only $60. If a developer would be willing to install it on test.wikipedia.org for a quick, basic compatibility/usability test, then on the production servers for a trial period to make sure there's no performance hit, etc., I'd be willing to donate the money to buy it (altho' someone else should do the actual purchase, since I'm in CA, and would have to pay an extra $5-6 sales tax). Niteowlneils 21:01, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Would it be appropriate to add an article titled ieSpell? I think it would. There are many other articles on companies or products here. I'm not sure this is the case, but if the manufacturer spells it with a lower case, should an article then not capitalize it, even though capitalization is the standard here, (I think)? I guess I can check k.d. lang or e.e. cummings for an example. Edit - sorry, found the answer, it needs a capital due to technical limitations, as it says under K.d. lang Spalding 12:15, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Here might be a good place to add it, rather than devoting a whole article to it.
chocolateboy 15:51, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Slow Wikipedia

I've noticed wikipedia is very slow today, it's taking 5 minutes to load articles and pages in some cases. Are there any technical problems, something going on with the servers, or is it just heavy useage? Am I the only one being affected by this? Darksun 13:14, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You're not the only one: Wikipedia is extremely slow for me. [[User:Anárion|File:Anarion.png]] 13:19, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Same here. Filiocht 13:37, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

WikiCommons

Wikimedia Commons has been started at http://commons.wikimedia.org/. At the moment it is just a place where one can deposit images and other files; I hope in the near future to be able to say it is a place where pictures can be found as well, and in the not so far future that the excellent plans for direct uploading and using Wikimedia Commons in Wikipedia will be installed. However, anyone who has pictures that might be usable for Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects is very much invited to upload them to WikiCommons. - Andre Engels 13:31, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Precedents

I was going to list this on VfD, but to avoid the accusation that I am somehow "trolling" I'll bring it up here first. This page is completely useless. It tries to make broad reaching precedents based on single examples with a small number of voters. This fallacious reasoning (proof by a single example) takes a decision such as to keep Affectional orientation, which had 1430 google hits, and attempts to say that this creates a precedent that "article[s] with 1430 Google hits merit inclusion". I modified this to at least at the word "could", indicating that not all articles with 1430 Google hits merit inclusion, but that makes this example rather useless as a precedent. Further, as the number of VfD entries increases, the breadth of opinion on a single VfD article becomes very thin. The proper way to set such precedents, if anything, is to take the broader issue (does a certain number of google hits merit inclusion) and discuss it directly.

I think this page should be deleted. If not it needs to be seriously reworked. anthony (see warning) 14:30, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There is no need for precedent in wikipedia deletion policy, each article should be judged based on its own merit. Darksun 14:41, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Certainly not in current Wikipedia deletion policy, in which the actual reasons for the decision are rarely articulated. Even if this part of the policy were fixed, I'm not sure we should have precedent set in a situation where a quorum of 50% of eligible voters is not reached. There are just far too few votes in a typical VfD vote to be binding on future decisions of Wikipedia in any way. anthony (see warning) 14:51, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I hate the Google test! Here's an article whose subject had 2 Google hits at the time it was written, but who clearly merited inclusion. She now has 347, thanks mainly to the Wikipedia entry! A lot of knowledge resides off the Internet, even still and using Google hits as a measure of worth is just not always valid. That's that off my chest. Filiocht 14:47, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Google test works in most cases, but not all. It should be applied in conjunction with other reasons for deletion, but should never be used as a stand-alone reason for deleting. Johnleemk | Talk 16:30, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Hear! Hear! One of Wikipedia's strengths is that we have contributors with expertise in subjects not yet well covered on the World Wide Web, if they are covered at all. Naturally, some articles they write will fail the Google test.
I've been thinking for some time that we need to provide some more help for people making their first listing on VfD. This is one thing it should point out. Another possibility is a gentle suggestion that it's good to list only one article per week for your first few attempts. Some newcomers list several articles only to see them all fail to get consensus and there is ill feeling generated all around. Andrewa 20:59, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
That page should have a note in the lead paragraph indicating that none of the precedents are generally considered binding just because they are precedents, especially as arguments given in discussion for retention or deletion do not necessarily reflect all or even any of the reasoning used by other individuals in casting their votes. Something like that should neutralize it. However, since no-one ever seems to cite this particular page on VfD, it seems actually quite neutralized and harmless as it is. It is not unhelpful to have a compendium of old discussions. The Google example cited by Anthony is indeed rather strange since I know there have been a number of retentions with less hits. Another one, besides the one Filiocht mentioned, had only 11 Google hits and is discussed at [3]. Google tests are usually reasonably evaluated by commentators. Most people can see when apples are being compared to oranges and when relative Google hits are very relevant and when they don't matter very much. Jallan 18:14, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I created this page and I do think it is important to recognize that VfD largely operates on precedent, whether you like it or not. For instance this time last year about every second VfD nomination was a list of obscure trivia, the first such being List of songs whose title does not appear in the lyrics. After several close votes it was determined that such lists are encyclopedic. Today these lists are an accepted part of Wikipedia, pages like list of films by gory death scene rarely appear on VfD. When they do the votes are overwhelmingly to keep, with even RickK supporting their inclusion (e.g. Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of song titles phrased as questions). This policy on list of trivia is nowhere written down, but is based on the long debates of a year ago. Similar consensuses have developed for 9/11 victims, misspelled redirects, surnames, towns with under ten people and many other areas. In the future I am certain that similar unwritten rules concerning high schools, micronations and conlangs will evolve. The vast majority of these precedents are only recorded in the memory of longtime users. This helps make VfD accessible to only a minority of experienced Wikipedians. VfD Precedents is an attempt to preserve early and trend setting debates that clearly affect a whole class of articles so that these precedent setting cases can be easily found and read by those without a long history of reading VfD. - SimonP 20:13, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
I've just looked at this article and I think the information in it is quite useful. Paul August 21:37, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

I think it has potential. So far, the selection of cases is too much the work of one person, but I think that it would be useful to build up a body of "case law" to complement our equivalent of "statute law". -- Jmabel 22:56, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

The concept of "case law" doesn't extend well to situations where 4 or 5 of the 100,000 interested persons express their opinion on a matter. At the most a VfD vote should set a precedent for a single article. To require someone interested in voting on a broad issue to vote on hundreds of individual articles is ludicrous. anthony (see warning) 15:04, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Small numbers of people voting is exactly how case law works. In the real world one, or at most a handful, of judges makes a decision that affects every subsequent decision. - SimonP 17:24, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
The problem isn't the small numbers of voters. The problem is the miniscule number of voters compared to the number of eligible voters. To bring the analogy to the "real world" you would have to have panels of unpaid self-appointed judges deciding whatever cases they feel like. When John's five friends decide that John was only doing 75 in a 55 and doesn't deserve a ticket that would then be a precedent when Mary does 72 and five friends of the cops show up to judge the case. anthony (see warning) 01:42, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Bogus. The real world of VfD is a free vote outside of any case law. There is no case law here. A legislative body or corporate board of directors is similarly not bound by past decisions except insofar as individuals knowingly allow themselves to bound and to the extent that previous practice may weigh with individual voters. But the body may choose to totally reverse themselves or to be inconsistant with past practice, may vote for something unprecedented. No vote by itself establishes a precedent that must later be followed unless that is what the vote is about. And even then such a rule can be reversed. I see what Anthony is getting at. It looks like a single sysop is setting up rules which gives him an excuse to ignore consensus if consensus doesn't agree with the particular rules he (but not necessarily anyone else) thinks are binding, to attempt to claim that some results of consenus would be illegal and therefore should be ignored. But I am aware of no policy that voters on VfD or elsewhere in Wikipedia cannot vote against past precedent and no policy that if consensus is against any supposed past precedent, a resulting consensus can be overruled on those grounds alone. If suddenly all articles on minor individual fictional characters in any book or television show or comic book and so forth were accepted on VfD when submitted, regardless of how trivial that character was, that does not mean that a year from now, having seen the results of that, one might not find almost all articles of that kind being rejected regardless of what was being done in the previous year, and that many of the same articles that had been accepted placed again on VfD and rejected. People change their minds. Organizations change their group minds. Precedents on VfD may be cited as argument one way or the other, but they aren't law. Jallan 22:02, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Absolutely. Case law evloves over time, and we have no equivalent of a Supreme Court. But it is very useful to track things like this over time and see if we can identify a consensus over time on certain issues. Like the records of trial courts, it will show many conflicting decisions, but over time it will presumably help us evolve toward consensus policies. If, for example, we can see that certain types of things always get deleted, we may have a new criterion to add to what may be speedy-deleted. -- Jmabel 01:56, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Poll

Wikipedia:Dealing with disruptive or antisocial editors/poll2 has begun. anthony (see warning) 14:51, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hurricane Ivan

Is Wikipedia set up to deal with Ivan the Terrible (now a Cat 5 blow)? I know we'd all hate to see all our work blown away (of course we're also all concerned about everyone down there too). Anyone know? — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:00, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

After Charley and Frances, do you really think a hurricane will destroy Wikipedia? Maybe Tampa's other Web servers are more prepared than Wikipedia's? [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 19:33, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
Charley missed Tampa completely and Frances was a tropical storm by the time it hit us. If Ivan hits it'll be a lot worse than either. But that's a big if. At this point there's something like a 300 mile margin of error on each side of us.
Either way the server is housed in a colocation facility which in theory should be able to withstand Ivan. Better safe than sorry, of course. We should have some sort of offsite backup, even if it's just getting someone to download the backup files. I'd volunteer, but I live in Tampa :). anthony (see warning) 01:22, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Backups and Contingency plans are being made. Angela. 02:32, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Aaah!

I was on Special:Recent changes, saw ice cube go by and thought I'd put in a request on Wikipedia:Image requests. While there, I noticed a request for Diplomacy (game), which I own, so I stopped by. They already had their picture, but I read the article and noted that it was the favorite game of Henry Kissinger and John F. Kennedy, so I read Kissinger's article, wondering if the two might have played. While I was there, I thought, I might as well add a few links...

Wikipedia 1, Psych homework 0.

[[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:36, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

Maybe you need to make a date at the Wikipediholics Anonymous? :-) andy 19:17, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Need help with tables

Can someone adjust the width of the table at Caprivi? Thanks. :) [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 17:16, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

User:Goplat shrunk it some. A >br< after 'south african' (in the Time Zone row) would bring it down some more--not sure why the lower flag isn't centering properly. Niteowlneils 17:54, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I have re-written it wiki-style. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 18:21, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC) See my user page for demo code. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 18:28, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

GFDL violation

A series of moves between VTOL and Vertical Take-Off and Landing has erased the edit history of that article. The only thing that exists on either history page now is the record of a move to the other name. Since the names of the authors which contributed to the page are no longer recorded, I believe this consititutes a violation of the gfdl. I'm not sure who should be notified to try and fix this, so I'm posting it here to see if anyone can help out. --Aqua 18:08, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

  • Looks OK to me. Did someone already fix it? -- Wapcaplet 19:05, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • Ok, this is pretty weird, when I click that link or the history link in the article, it only shows one edit, "(cur) (last) 10:41, Sep 9, 2004 Eequor (VTOL moved to Vertical Take-Off and Landing)". Reloading doesn't change anything. The limit seems to be set at 50. However, if I click on any of the limit links, the other edits show up. I don't see anything in my preferences that would cause this. I'm not sure what's going on now. --Aqua 19:22, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
      • Well when I click on "history" I get entries going back to 2001. -- Arwel 13:08, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
        • History doesn't automatically update immediately after a page move. You need to reload the page using ctrl and F5 or similar. Angela. 02:35, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • It's working ok for me now. Like I said, clicking the reload button didn't change anything at that time. This is the first time that this has happened. Well, now I know what it is. Thanks everyone. --Aqua 18:39, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Adding Biographies to the Main Page Browse section

Just a proposal I'd like to make. The recent revision of the Main Page put a Browse section at the top of the page with seven broad categories of subjects: Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Mathematics, Nature, and Technology. I think we should add an eighth, Biographies, with a link to Lists of people. A lot of people are going to come here looking for information about a specific person. We should have a convenient access for this on the Main Page. MK 18:32, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

MK, I may be wrong, but I believe all biographies are included under the scope of the category "Humanity". Is there a reason to have two links that will get people to the same place? My impression was that the 7 categories are the major "parent categories" that encompass most of the articles now categorized. I guess I would support keeping it that way, rather than having 7 category links and one link to Lists of people, which doesn't make as much sense to me, organizationally. Jwrosenzweig 20:01, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
When I read "humanity", I assumed it meant the humanities. If what you say is true, it should probably made more explicit. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 21:16, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
Much of the humanities are covered in Culture, another of the big 7 links. Culture is parented by Category:Human (which is where the Humanity link goes to), as is Politics, another of the 7 links. I suggest, then, that Humanity be replaced by a link entitled People, which aims at Category:People. Any thoughts? Or should this end up on Talk:Main Page? I never know. Jwrosenzweig 21:37, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
The Humanity link goes to a category page. This page has categories like Anthropology, Human Appearance, Organization, Child, City, etc. There is a prominent link to People, but this only goes to another category page, where a seeker might try the link to Celebrities (which has three entries; Jeremy Clarkson, Adam Curry, and Jeffrey A. Sachs) or to People by Last Name (which has five entries; Bauer, Collins, Eponymous people, Farmer, and Fischer). By this point, the seeker, who only wanted to look up some information on Jessica Simpson, might have decided that the Wikipedia is a complete waste of time.
Admittedly, there is a link to Lists of People farther down on the Humanity page. But it's subtle enough I had missed it myself the first few times I was looking for it. As I said above, I think an area as large as biographies should have a prominent link on the front page.
My suggestion for a direct link to Lists of People was only one possible idea. A link to a Category:People page might be another. MK 22:03, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Obviously the category system has a few holes. :-) I have to say, I am still almost completely confused by the categorization system, which I have rarely used. Obviously, though, the people category needs some serious work. Maybe the Lists of people idea is the best, unless there is a good way to "bot" a category together -- that would require agreeing on labels, though, something Wikipedians are notoriously bad at. :-) Jwrosenzweig 22:42, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have to say that the first time I saw it, I assumed that the Humanity link would take me to the humanities and was confused when it didn't. I still find it a less than useful link and would support either a Biographies category or something based on the list of people to replace it. Filiocht 07:42, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I doubt it was a result of this discussion, but I see the list of the "big seven" has now been reduced to the "big five" - Nature, Culture, Society, Humanity, and Technology. MK 05:23, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)


anyone with an interest in Vietnamese royalty...

There is a new user, Tran Van Ba, who appears to have taken up the banner of User:Celindgren to promote the Vietnamese Constitutional Monarchist League and is writing articles on various members and associates of the Vietnamese imperial family, including himself. Like Celindgren, he is apparently employed by the VCML. Unlike Celindgren, he's not engaging in link-spamming, but his contributions are rather POV, not to mention in serious need of copyediting. I mention this here instead of in WP:RFC because I really have no desire to argue with Mr. Tran, whose knowledge may well be useful here; but I think involvement in these articles by others with knowledge of the subject matter would be helpful, and might meet with better response than further edits by me (since I have a previous history of disagreements with Celindgren, who stopped editing here shortly before Tran Van Ba showed up). ←Hob 18:52, 2004 Sep 9 (UTC)

Ordnance Survey maps

If we go to http://www.getamap.co.uk we can under their licence, we can have a maximum of 10 images of OS maps. I propose that we locate examples of such maps, illustrating at different scales, and upload them.

Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.

I then propose to add the following:

Note under this licence, we are limited to a maximum of 10 such images. Please do not upload images without discussion (and pointer to appropriate talk page)

We can do this with an image copyright tag, say Template:Copyrigh Ordnance Survey

Problems with this are that it is not released under the GFDL, so it falls under "only used with permission". However, given the nature of such images, i.e. we are not going to get permission or alternate, I think this is okay.

We need to try to maximise the potential of the ten, so identifying those which show particular features, e.g. churches, etc, and those of different scales. What do other people think of this? Dunc_Harris|☺ 20:31, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Did someone contact them and see if they would be willing to forgo the limit for this project? You might be suprised. Cavebear42 22:29, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Categories

I think categorization has gotten out of hand. We are now getting categories for all years and even for years of birth and death. Conceivably, one could categorize articles in innumerable ways—people who died on Sundays in December of 1921?—but what's the use in it? I think we should limit ourselves to relatively broad, reasonably useful categories, and not just categorize every way we can think of. Everyking 20:42, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Categorizations of that kind can be useful for a number of things. Its a useful way to group related items. Many of these will just be sub-categories of the larger, broader categories you mention. We're not paper and very specific categories are better than, say, making an article which is just a list.
But there are too many categories to easily traverse. What we really need is an alphabetized list of categories so one can find specific categories easily. Just my $.02... — Frecklefoot | Talk 21:25, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
There is an alpabetized list. Just click on 'Categories' at the top of any page which is categorized. However ... there are more than 20,000 entries. That'll take you some time to traverse!! [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 22:48, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
People devote their entire lives to studying categorizating...I have friends in library science whose heads would probably explode if they saw these. It's kind of ridiculous, but that's what we get for allowing non experts to do anything :) Adam Bishop 21:28, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
That's an excellent point. There's a lot of expertise out there, and there's no point our reinventing the wheel. In fact we are possibly wasting a lot of time trying to do just that. How do we tap into this expertise? Or have we already done so? Andrewa 17:34, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm all for having multiple independent or overlapping schemes of categorization. Yes, right now it's a little out of control. Yes, we probably need a WikiProject to look for anomalies and try to fix them; I've already fixed a few myself.

I think they are potentially far more useful to readers of Wikipedia than any other form of organization. You can traverse from an article that interests you to the category that looks most likely to you, then up and down the hierarchy category looking for other related material. I like it. I use it.

I don't find "year of birth" particularly useful, but I don't find the overwhelming tendency to link every year mentioned in an article particularly useful, either. Apparently someone likes it, or it wouldn't be there. It's easy enough to ignore a category you don't care about. -- Jmabel 23:09, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

As an aside having nothing to do with categorization, I have been doing some of the year-linking you mention. When I first started editing here, I asked what the accepted practice was on the manual of style for dates and numbers, and a Wikipedian responded that we should always link dates so that user preferences can change them. I was not aware that there was opposition to this practice. --Ardonik.talk() 00:07, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
Well, years (1977) aren't dates (May 12, 1977). AFAIK there are no preferences for years. Dates should always be wikied (my opinion, but I'm not aware of any opposition). For years this is not as clear, see Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context. anthony (see warning) 01:32, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Korea

It seems such contributors as Egon and Kokiri have all but abandoned English Wikipedia. I am all alone editing Korea-related articles, and it is too much for me to handle...in fact, I'd like to scale down all my Wikipedia activity if at all possible. If anyone as any interest in Korean matters, please check out Korea, South Korea, North Korea, and List of Korea-related topics, and contribute any way you can. -Sewing - talk 21:23, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Dude, take a deep breath & chill. The Korea articles don't need to be written now, or this month, or this year, or even this decade. They'll come when they come. I diagnose severe wikistress and prescribe a few days off to get a sense of perspective. --Tagishsimon

I've got a cousin who was a PCV in Korea, speaks the language - even co-authored a Korean/English/Korean dictionary. I'll send this to him and see what, if anything, he does. Unless of course you or either of those other folks IS my cousin, in which case all bets are off Carptrash 00:26, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for both your replies. I was suffering from a severe case of Wikiburnout yesterday. I am going to force myself to take a three-day break. -Sewing - talk 15:25, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Linking to Amazon, affiliate tags

Hi, I'm new on this page but have been hanging about on Wikipedia for some time.

Anyway, recently I noticed that on some articles, links to related literature at Amazon have been provided. While I don't wish to debate the pros and cons of this particular retailer, I'd like to point out that it seems some contributors have been adding their own affiliate IDs to these links. I'm not too familiar with the format of Amazon links but I've been removing these IDs when I come across them as I don't see this as a legitimate method for individuals to profit from Wikipedia. Depending on context I've inserted the Wiki ISBN link, or a "neutral" link to Amazon.

Is there some policy on this, and am I doing the "right thing"?

An example (uncorrected) is here: Marilyn Monroe - last link on page for the book "The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe" - the inktomi-bkasin-20 looks like an affiliate ID to me.

For reference, a google link for digging up Amazon links: [4] Ianb 22:44, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is not as it should be. All that should be there is the ISBN or ASIN, which gives a page offering numerous library and retail options. Kill these when you find them, replace with our usual method of including an ISBN. -- Jmabel 23:13, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
and never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. I suspect most people merely cut & paste the URL they see when they browse Amazon ... what you call their affiliate ID is merely the URL when logged in. --Tagishsimon
I believe the Amazon references on a previous version of Thomas_Merton: [5] are not down to stupidity. Ianb 07:20, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Amazon on wikipedia should be either a large river in South America or a woman in comfortable shoes. That's it. The tags gotta go. Carptrash 00:18, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've simplified links in the past, as well. If I sign in, I get a link like this[6]. If I get to Amazon via known 'associate' dilbert.com, I get something more like [7]. I believe that any amazon.com URL with "ASIN" in the path (as does that MM link), will be credited to the associate affiliated with the values of the next two data points in the URL. Niteowlneils 00:45, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I do not think that ASIN denotes an affiliate tag. I have not tracked down exactly what it does mean, but it looks like an Amazon specific reference number for the book (or whatever product) to me - vide http://hacks.oreilly.com/pub/h/387 --Tagishsimon
OK, I may have guessed at the wrong commonality. The dilbert.com affiliate link has /dilbertcom-20/, which is very similar to the 'inktomi-bkasin-20' in the MM link, and there is nothing similar in my logged in link. Niteowlneils 01:52, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I've looked into the matter: ASIN is documented here, who'd have thought it ;-) Ianb 07:20, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

XIII

The disambiguation page for "XIII" explains several options, but gives links to none on them. Is there a way to fix this?

TheGrza [email protected]

  • not sure what your problem is. I see a live link to the Belgian comic, and a red link (meaning there is no article) to the Playstation game. The Roman numeral doesn't really merit an article. -- Jmabel 23:24, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
    • I wikified the disambig page right before you viewed it. Gentgeen 23:49, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Gentgeen, that's all I needed. TheGrza

New image copyright deletion page

Wikipedia has a huge number of {{unverified}}, {{unknown}} and non-commercial use only images that need to be dealt with. They can't be dealt with through Wikipedia:Copyright problems and they can't go through Wikipedia:Images for deletion unless they're unused and unwanted.

I propose that we create a new page to list these images. They would be listed for 30 days, giving people plenty of time to look for their source and copyright status, or in the case of NC-only images, to contact the copyright holder. A maximum of five images uploaded before the page's creation could be listed per UTC day, but an indefinite number of images uploaded after that point could be listed immediately regardless of the number of previous listings.

Images on the deletion page would not be orphaned until immediately before their deletion, and a boilerplate notice would be added to their image pages. —Guanaco 01:07, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I support this idea. I've been working on tagging a decent number of images, and there are some problematic images that I don't know what to do with. Since they're quite possibly GFDL, or in many other cases fairuse, I don't want to put them on Wikipedia:Images for deletion, nor Wikipedia:Copyright problems. A page to list such edge cases and gather community input would be a nice way to deal with the problem. It is also very bad that still today some images are uploaded without proper tags. Even GFDL images. In half a year, when they are noticed, the Wikipedian and copyright holder may very well have left the project, so it is better to act fast. — David Remahl 01:20, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
For now they're supposed to be dealt with on Wikipedia:Copyright problems. That was the reason the name was changed from Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements. anthony (see warning) 01:25, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

But the new page will have a time limit of 30 days, as in Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. As one of the threads on this page shows, the time limit may be part of the reason that Votes for deletion is so popular. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 01:32, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

Are there any good ideas for a name for this page? I can't think of anything that isn't either very long or very ambiguous. Guanaco 01:37, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Images needing attention? anthony (see warning) 01:44, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Maybe we could remove the image from the article during the last week or so, to lessen the chance someone isn't going to notice until it's too late. Or maybe a tag can be put on any article which contains one of these images. Maybe both. It seems too likely that a page like this is going to be ignored until it's too late, and my understanding is that undeletion of images is somewhere between really hard and impossible. anthony (see warning) 01:57, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is a really good idea, maybe call it Wikipedia:Possible image copyright violations? Filiocht 07:37, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I support the idea. As one who has carefully GFDLd all the images I have used, I've been offended to see images that have copyright problems often used on featured articles. But I also preach caution. Remember, once an image is deleted, it can't be undeleted. Andrewa 10:00, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Most of these are definitively not copyright violations (for instance non-commercial images). They're not acceptable because they're not free, and Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia. anthony (see warning) 14:53, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
another "support" vote. Like User:Andrewa I will not use a image that I'm not sure of, and if fact have a couple of articles on hold, waiting to hear from folks who might never get back to me. And surely any image that gets deleted can be uploaded again? Even if it requires a slightly different name? So, if it is a usable image it is not lost forever. Carptrash 16:33, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
It can be uploaded again if you have a copy of it, or it can probably be restored from a backup if you can interest a developer in doing this. However, in the case of the images I'm scanning from old books, I suspect that there are not too many hard copies left in the world, and the others may not be accessible to us. If we delete similar images scanned in good faith by people who weren't aware of the GFDL requirements, we may be losing something useful.
The other thing to be aware of is that Wikimedia commons will hopefully replace all this in time. Perhaps some of this effort would be better spent on that project? Andrewa 16:53, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I thought of a name: Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images. Guanaco 20:14, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think time would be better spent tagging the images rather than debating whether to delete them. There are still over 40,000 untagged ones at User:Yann/Untagged Images that can not be distributed in the upcoming Mandrake release. Angela. 02:21, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

since I am new here I'm not sure about just "doing things; ie deleting pictures. I was reading about Cecil Fielder last night and there were two photos, both of which seemed to have been tagged, or at least not properly credited. i thought, "Well I have a couple of shots of Cecil that I could just exchange for the two questionable ones, but is that fair to the person who first uploaded the ones without proper credit, or should I be . . .une belle dame sans merci and just chop them? Carptrash 14:54, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
It's always preferable to have images we know for sure we are entitled to use. If your images are better than or of similar quality to the current ones I recommend just replacing them anyway. If they are worse they might still be preferable becuase of their confirmed source, but in this case I would advise asking the uploader of the original images to provide license information first, and if none is forthcoming go ahead and replace. — Trilobite (Talk) 00:40, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Validity check?

Where do I go to ask about the validity of an article? I have some doubts about Zero-sum fallacy

The talk page is the primary place. Here and/or Wikipedia:Pages needing attention can be used in situations where the talk page isn't enough. And then, there's always IRC. If the problem is small relative to the rest of the article, and it's especially dubious (probably false) you might want to move the dubious text to the talk page. But that's really only for extreme cases (and when no one is likely to disagree with you). anthony (see warning) 01:47, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Agreed. Use the talk page first, and if that doesn't work out or no information is forthcoming, add the {{disputed}} template to the article text and list the reason for doing so on the talk page. --Ardonik.talk() 02:23, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
I've had a go at this one. Agree, first try the talk page in general. If an article seems to justify it, you can jump straight to cleanup or pages needing attention. In this case I'd have been tempted to go straight to VfD, but in general use the slowest escalation that's consistent with protecting Wikipedia's reputation, and be prepared for some criticism whenever you jump a step (criticism is not the end of the world). Andrewa 16:33, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

English to Hebrew?

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk. Trilobite (Talk) 03:06, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

New request for opinion

For all the fans of my tables (... right, well, anyway), I've just popped a new House of Reps one up on US Congressional Delegations from Missouri. Questions

  1. Does the table look better with the thinner border? (Example of the other kind: US Congressional Delegations from Alabama)
  2. The previous opinion call told me that people wanted the passages information inline; i.e. it should say in the table when someone resigned, etc. But for a house table, particularly a crowded one like Missouri's or, god forbid, California's, that would add unneeded bloat to the table, IMO. Does anyone have any opinions on how best to do this? Or stick with in-line? Or abandon altogether and leave that to the individual articles?

Thanks! --Golbez 03:03, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

Re 1) I like the thinner border -- fairly subtle difference, but nicer. Re 2), How about footnotes -- I only had a slight preference for the inline notes -- if people really want to know why a term ended early, they can scroll down for the note or look in the article. [[User:Bkonrad|older≠wiser]] 03:18, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I like that; and if they really want to know why and when the term ended, they can go to the individual person's article. --Golbez 03:28, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
Absolutely lovely tables; if I were in control of the CSS, I'd add a table td, table th { font-size: smaller; } rule and all of your width problems would be solved once and for all. But your congressional tables are outstanding. I think the "block" layout is intuitive and superior to "inlining" dates of office. The scrolling is a small price to pay, in my opinion.
Footnotes like Bkonrad suggested are a good idea for irregular terms--one idea is to have them all link to the same #notes section in the manner of Saddam Hussein#Notes. --Ardonik.talk() 04:12, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

Looks nice, though I'd suggest filling in those nonexistent table cells somehow, so the unenlightened (such as me) know why there isn't anything there. Aside from that, it's clear and intuitive! And I agree, scrolling is a small price to pay. -- Wapcaplet 04:31, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • You mean the ones where there were fewer districts than max? Hm. Not sure what I'd put there... thanks for the compliment. :) --Golbez 05:08, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
    • Perhaps just an extra cell, spanning all the empty columns, saying something like "District not active at this time." It might also be good to add additional district-number headings periodically throughout the table (maybe every 10th Congress or so), so it's not necessary to scroll all the way to the top to see district numbers. Another thing to consider is having a separate article for a large, detailed table, while keeping a smaller, less-detailed one in the main article (compare Periodic table with Periodic table (huge), for example). -- Wapcaplet 16:32, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
      • Except "Huge" has more information in the table. I can't really think of what info I'd remove... or do you mean the other way around? Have this be the "basic" table and then add all the info into a "huge" table? I don't think there's enough demand for the information to be at the fingertips for something like that, as opposed to the periodic table.. and yeah, I've thought of doing that congress thing too; unfortunately, it would break up the longer terms. Someone who's in congress for 40 years would end up having at least four blocks instead of one large one, somewhat dulling his influence (Or perhaps exemplifying it, since you'd easily be able to see someone dominating a single 10 year block?) What do you think?--Golbez 21:11, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
    • True, I wasn't sure whether there was additional information that could be added. If not, there's probably no point to have multiple table-sizes in different articles. Extra headings would indeed break up the longer terms; I'm not sure how to handle that. I don't think having multiple blocks for someone would disrupt the flow very much; it may even make it more readable, since users would not have to scroll around as much to see who's occupying that big block. At the very least, an extra heading at the very bottom of the table would help. It's tables like this that almost make me wish CSS would let us print text sideways! Maybe in the next version. -- Wapcaplet 22:45, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)


I can't see a difference on the classic skin. I've played around with the <font size=-1>fred</font> command (which produces fred), but it looks as if it has to be applied to every individual cell, rather than as a block command around the whole table. Bummer. Perhaps you could just apply it to the Congress column to make it shorter.

On the House of Representatives table, why don't you set the column widths, rather than relying on <br>? Like this

!width=50|1st!!width=50|2nd!!width=50|3rd!!width=50|4th!!width=50|5th
!width=50|6th!!width=50|7th!!width=50|8th!!width=50|9th!!width=50|10th
!width=50|11th!!width=50|12th!!width=50|13th!!width=50|14th!!width=50|15th
!width=50|16th

Anything wider than 50 pixels will force the column wider; wrapping will be enforced. (In District 8, you needed a space before 'Independent' to fix the width problem for that column.) I've made the changes on US Congressional Delegations from Missouri - just revert it back if you don't like it. (I haven't eliminated all the unnecessary breaks, though.) [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 10:02, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I like it. It widens the table if it's so squished that the columns get unbearably thin. As for the extra >br<s, I only use those to set apart third parties. In fact, I should have had one before the Independent deal, just left it out in my fatigue. I should probably remove that mention altogether, it was more of a future reminder to me. Thanks, I like this idea. :) Probably works best on states with more than, oh, 8 or so districts. Or maybe I should force it on all states, though Alaska would start looking unnaturally cramped. --Golbez 15:18, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
If you are looking for a way to make the font smaller, add a style to the first line of your table (see below). Also instead of trying to repeat the district numbers inside the table you could put vertical lines between columns. For example to have a thick divider after every fourth column you might do this:
{| border=1 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0 align=center style="font-size:smaller;"
!rowspan="2" width="15%"|Congress
!colspan="19"|District
|-
!width=50|1st!!width=50|2nd!!width=50|3rd!!width=50|4th
!rowspan=123 width=1 bgcolor=#000000| !!width=50|5th!!width=50|6th!!width=50|7th!!width=50|8th
!rowspan=123 width=1 bgcolor=#000000| !!width=50|9th!!width=50|10th!!width=50|11th!!width=50|12th
!rowspan=123 width=1 bgcolor=#000000| !!width=50|13th!!width=50|14th!!width=50|15th!!width=50|16th
One further note: you don't need to sprinkle align=center throughout the table as it is currently. If you change the style in the first line of the table (shown above) to style="font-size:smaller; text-align:center;" it has the same effect. —Mike 02:54, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Main Page+VfD

i. Wikipedia Main page reads like a newspaper, should an encyclopedia mimic a newspaper? I am not complaining, but observe the point, hoping the main page might be used to further assist in providing a better understanding of the rest of the project. (Faedra 07:41, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)) Also paragraph below...

  • I do think that all the fantastic design work done on the Main page in recent months have tended to move it further and further away from an encyc;opadeia front page, on the whole. I've been looking at Wikiquote today, and I think the Main page there is a lot more functional (note: high functionality = good design). The one thing I'd hate to lose from our current Main page is the rotating Featured article. Filiocht 14:03, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • I agree with that. The Featured article is a very good thing for an online encyclopedia. Spalding 16:51, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

ii. VfD page is uwieldy, I've said it before, and repeat it now because slower pc find it difficult to broswe. A maximum size should be allocated to all pages in an encyclopedia, so that everyone can enjoy its content.

  • Just wondering who could possibly enjoy the content of VfD. Filiocht 12:06, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • It's like watching a car crash. [[User:Anárion|АПА́ДІОП]] 15:26, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Proposed alterations to the Arbitration policy

I've knocked up a few proposed alterations to the Arbitration policy - thoughts?
James F. (talk) 03:21, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As a body reporting to the Wikimedia Foundation Board, which has the ability to direct the Committee to reach a verdict or otherwise act in a particular way, the Committee has no jurisdiction over the members of the Board.

This sentence is somewhat confusing. I also disagree with the implication. The Committee reports to the board as a whole. This doesn't imply that the board has no jurisdiction over the individual members. If this is a way the Committee wishes to limit itself, it should set such a limitation directly, not try to claim that it follows naturally.

Presumably this is a result of the attempts to arbitrate against Jimmy Wales. I think that is a significantly different scenario than an attempt to arbitrate against other board members, as Jimmy Wales has individual veto power over the Committee, not merely collective veto power through the board. anthony (see warning) 12:29, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would agree with Anthony. Furthermore, I think ArbCom would be ruling on their behavior as Wikipedia editors, not their behavior as Board members. Zocky 12:50, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Arbitrators will reject a case if one week has passed without this occurring AND four or more Arbitrators have voted not to hear it. to The Arbitrators will reject a case if four or more Arbitrators have voted not to hear it.

What is the purpose of this change? I don't think cases should sit in Arbitration limbo potentially forever. anthony (see warning) 12:33, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think you misread it. As I read it, the new wording says that a case can be rejected in less than a week, nothing else.
Yep, you're right. anthony (see warning) 13:23, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Hmm. I notice Wikimedia doesn't require users to transfer copyright upon submission. At the same time, the GFDL has some serious flaws, especially when it comes to programming manuals, because example code cannot be used in GPL or proprietary programs. So if a better license comes along, say GFDL 2, Wikipedia and its relatives are stuck with the original GFDL, right? Isn't this a serious issue? --hN (10 Sept.)

Yes, it's a serious issue, but to fix it would require getting permission from nearly all the authors. It's probably too late. anthony (see warning) 14:49, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What about this?

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.

[[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 16:08, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If and when GFDL 2 does come along, this will be one of the big issues it addresses, so there is no hurry. If we can do this now (and I can't see any great problem but IANAL) we can do it quite as easily when GFDL 2 does come along. Andrewa 21:20, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Wikipedia copyright notice uses, and, as far as I know, has always used "1.x or any later version". The first revision of Wikipedia:Copyrights [8] used "1.1 or any later version". Guanaco 01:04, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Good point! Andrewa 13:31, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Arrogancy

I get anything done anymore because much of the time is spent arguing. Having trouble with Nazi 25-point program. Mihnea Tudoreanu, AndyL, Rorro, keep on deleting this paragraph:

This program is the synthesis of Pan-Germanism, collectivism, egalitarianism and pseudo-liberal currents. Moreover, this program was anti-Habsburg, anti-monarchical, anti-clerical, and anti-feudal. In demanding plebiscites for all important decisions, it showed itself to be nominally democratic. The plan attacks all hierarchies; capital, clergy and hierarchic nobility. The Jews were especially singled out because they were seen as the "rising aristocracy of capital" (Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, founder of the Pan-European movement, repeatedly called them this.). As in all levelling tendencies, all "elites" and hierarchies were to be done away with.

This is a paraphrase from a book by an Austrian German who was born there, and as an understanding of all the political currents of his own country. What I am to be led to beleive that these people, Mihnea Tudeoreanu, AndyL, Rorro, know more about Austrian National Socialism's 25-point program than a political science scholar and an Austrian to boot that came up with the referenceing of the orginal program in the first place.

They delete without putting forward any references no modern scholarship and yet want me to defend the material after I done quoted from a book? Who the hell are these people? Where do these people get their arrogance from? I am just flabergasted at the arrogance. I am tired of arguing with these people.WHEELER 15:37, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Why don't you try adding it back with the phrasing "According to X, an Austrian German scholar who was born there, ..."? It seems to me that when you remember to cite sources, a lot of NPOV disputes (and correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be the problem here) just go away. T-bomb 16:49, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Hi WHEELER, please get your details right before doing bulk reversals. There is no Czechoslovakia any more, so the formulation "modern Czech Republic" must stay. -- Pjacobi 17:04, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Units for speed (for Hurricane data)

There is a discussion in the "Hurricane watching community" about the best way to write down the units for speed (see Talk:Hurricane Ivan (2004)), given by the National Hurricane Center. We are thinking of following their lead: miles per hour = "mph", and kilometers per hour = "km/hr". Any input? — Awolf002 15:44, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've never seen "hr" before. Why not use h as in mph? Km/h is much preferred to me (European) [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 16:05, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The current format, by the way, is "mi/h" and "km/h". I support continuing this, but lots of people like "mph", and yes, that is the most familiar form in the States. I guess the question is, if we change "mi/h" to "mph," do we change "km/h" to "kph"? And should the change occur? Ahh, the small details that we discuss here. --Golbez 16:21, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with using "mph" and "km/h" side by side. T-bomb 16:52, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I'd never seen mi/h before I saw it in these hurricane pages. Americans certainly use mph for everything and mi/h would need translation. Elf | Talk 17:05, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Please do not use 'kph', 'km/hr', or even 'Km/h'. The official form is 'km/h'. It is all lower case. Even all the American car speedometers that I have seen use that form. One of the sucesses of metric units is that symbols are standardised in all countries and all languages. The symbols don't have to match local language and that is why they are not called abbreviations, just as 'Hg' is the symbol for mercury even in English. So there is no need for editor to debate whether to use 'kph' 'kmph', 'km/hr', or 'kms/hr' in English, and 'ch/o', 'cao', or 'calo' in Italian etc. This debate probably belongs in the Manual of style talk pages. Any time you are wondering about metric symbols, just look it up at the official SI website. The information is also right here on Wikipedia. Bobblewik  (talk) 17:09, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

So, km/h remains km/h. That's settled. Perhaps we should change mi/h to mph, then. Though I still think we should do everything in cubits. --Golbez 17:21, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

Right, I just noticed Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and it's clearly "km/h". Sorry for missing that. Still, "mph" would be okay? Awolf002 17:45, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Should use km/h and mph. It doesn't matter if the latter isn't so official as that system isn't so... precise anyways... (don't hit me!) Seriously though, anything but mph looks odd. zoney ▓   ▒ talk 17:59, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I agree mph is what people actually use in practise. So we should use it. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 21:23, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Nah, maxims per centon… oh felgercarb, what is the fracking conversion? [[User:Anárion|АПА́ДІОП]] 22:16, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Since Hurricanes spend most of their life at sea, perhaps the non-SI unit should be knots, although given the number of times I see people referring to knots per hour, maybe that isn't such a good idea :-) dramatic 23:05, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the input! Awolf002 01:49, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Lost in wikipedia features again

I see that the template {{wikiquote}} inserted into an article (e.g., Diana, Princess of Wales) puts a nice infobox that there are quotes by this article title in wikiquotes. I'm trying to find where this template is defined--I wanted to see whether it was parameterizable (i.e., add a person's name to insert xref in another topic where the person had a quote ABOUT the topic), but I can't find it, and I'm going in circles. I tried:

In Wikipedia:Template namespace, there's a search URL that you're suppoesd to be able to use to find any item anywhere in the template namespace, but I plugged in wikiquote and it didn't find anything.

I am going in circles and getting nowhere.

  1. Is there any reason that we have to have this plethora of circular lists of references to mostly identical lists of messages? Can someone clean this stuff up please?
  2. Where else is there to look for things like {{wikiquote}}</nowki> to find what's available, what they do, how to use them, etc.? (I have to say that, with labels that don't match where you're going, and the going in circles, and the inconsistent descriptions of going to the same places, if this set of pages & links were a user interface design, it would flunk. But that's the frustration speaking.) ~~~~
Are you looking for Template:Wikiquote? I didn't look too closely there for info about how to use it, but there's a discussion page and a history page so you could contact contributors directly if no one responds on the discussion page. [[User:Bkonrad|older≠wiser]] 17:16, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Yup, that's what I was looking for. Thanks. I guess the hint should be listed somewhere to "try Template:nameofthingie" if it's not in any of the lists--I just didn't think about doing that and assumed it would be in one of the lists. Elf | Talk 17:23, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
The current development version of MediaWiki gives you a list of all templates used on a page when you edit it.--Eloquence* 19:38, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

Setting up your own wiki

I have a website witch i only have access thru FTP. Is there a way to set up a personal wiki over there?

In fact I am not even trying to set up a real open wiki, but a personal wiki, to use the potential of ease of creating and maintanig pages..

Alexandre van de Sande 10 set 18:22 gmt-4

Alexandre, one person to ask is Anthony DiPierro, who has run his own wiki for some time. I know a number of others here do also, but I can't recall specifics right now (hopefully they identify themselves here or someone else remembers who it is and lists them). I imagine it will get pretty complicated, and it's probably best to discuss it in a talk page (yours or theirs) rather than here. Good luck! Jwrosenzweig 21:28, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Different Wiki software can be found on the article wiki software. Your website will need to support scripting languages for them to work. There is also MediaWiki, the Wiki that Wikipedia uses. I sometimes use it myself. Norm 23:21, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
If you want something that isn't as complicated as MediaWiki (which requires some SQL administration experience), try OddMuse. (Note to self: write article on OddMuse!) OddMuse supports free linking (i.e., [[article link]] instead of ArticleLink) and most other aspects of the MediaWiki syntax; it's just a giant Perl script, so it's simple to set up; it's mature and the EmacsWiki runs on it. One interesting application is disabling edits for non-priveleged users and then making yourself the only priveleged user. A little CSS to make the editing tools invisible and voila! A website that looks like a website, but is edited as a Wiki.
The website is http://www.oddmuse.org. If I ever run my website as a Wiki, that's what I'm going to use. --Ardonik.talk() 00:57, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
There is a section at Wikibooks on how to start a wiki that you might find helpful. Angela. 02:26, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Why not Soundex searches?

As I was trawling through a chunk of All Pages, I noticed yet again the large number of redirects such as Cheeleaders, Chem Trails, Chaykovsky, etc. that seem intended to help with misspellings or variant spellings. Although there are many such entries, they are unsystematic and don't even come close to covering the range of reasonable possibilities. For example, we have Cheeleaders but not Cheerleaders, Chem Trails but not Chem trails, Chaykovsky and Chaikovski but not Tchaikofsky or Tchaikovski or Tchaikowski, or Tchaikowsky, etc. We don't have Neitzsche or Nietsche or Nietszche.

It seems to me that it would really be helpful to have some kind of fuzzy matching capability, particularly on the Go command.

Why not Soundex lookups, for example? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 00:44, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Not a good idea; every homonym would map to the same article (e.g. poor, pore.) Maybe an extra "sounds like" link in the search results would be best--it's not like the soundex algorithm would tax the MediaWiki servers. However, the real problem is what to do for non-english languages. --Ardonik.talk() 02:31, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
And Soundex is a rather poor algorithm with too many collisions. -- orthogonal 04:23, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
"Sounds like" searching wouldn't be a bad idea, and there are several alternatives to the Soundex algortihm that aren't quite so English-biased. The New York State Identification and Intelligence System (NYSIIS) code was developed in 1970 or so to cope with just that problem, and produces a computable and storable result, unlike string-comparison algorithms (e.g. Jaro-Winkler and Levenshtein distance). Such codes could be stored with the article itself and searched for, just like any other term. It sure beats the heck out of polluting an encyclopedia with typographic error redirect pages. (Oh, and Cheerleaders now exists, created by User:Golbez yesterday :-) ) RossPatterson 17:03, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Although redirects are necessary for variant spellings, having a redirect for every misspelling is a bit ridiculous. I have to wonder if the redirect for Cheeleaders wasn't just a typo by the person who created it. —Mike 01:47, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
MediaWiki already has a feature for searching for a "fuzzy search" on titles using Levenshtein distance, but it was disabled on the live site because it was too slow. -- Tim Starling 15:28, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

As of CURRENTYEAR?

Jamie Bulger#Appeal_and_release has As of {{CURRENTYEAR}}. I'm not fully sure that that's acceptable, but what would I do? Replace it with [[As of 2004]]? [[As of {{CURRENTYEAR}}]]? --Sgeo | Talk 00:53, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Replace with As of 2004. —Morven 01:29, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
I'd rather have As of 2004 as well. If it sounds dated, it can always be updated, but having "as of curent year" precede any dated information leads to inaccuracy. --Ardonik.talk() 01:55, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

What if it's already out of date? (not saying it is, though) --Sgeo | Talk 03:05, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

As of 2003, As of 2002--whatever year applies. Niteowlneils 10:58, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I'm not sure which applies. What I'm saying though, is that if having CURRENTYEAR let it become out of date, what year is it from? --Sgeo | Talk 18:45, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
I see two options: 1. Look at the editing history to see when the fact in question ("no publication... has come to pass") was added. 2. Do some homework and find out whether that information is still correct; if so, put 2004. ←Hob 18:56, 2004 Sep 11 (UTC)

Why does clicking on red links bring you to the edit page? --Sgeo | Talk 01:05, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Because red links go to pages that don't exist (except when the database is confused). -- Cyrius|✎ 01:07, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Woudn't it be better though to send the user to something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adslkjfuwr? -Sgeo | Talk 01:13, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
Or even better, make it a user preference --Sgeo | Talk 01:14, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
I think that you [or anyone] wil get used to the red pretty quickly. Don't worry about it and it won't bother you. Carptrash 01:37, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Which leads me to another question: what is the current consensus on red links, anyway? It seems like when I first got here red links for potential article subjects were encouraged as placeholders and a way to draw people into editing and creating articles. More recently I've seen lots of articles "cleaned up" of red links, even when this creates some inconsistency in what is linked and what isn't (such as when some albums but not others by a given group have articles). Of course if an article is created later the implication is that all these articles are now lacking links and have to be located and updated. Jgm 01:46, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I think red links make articles harder to read. I also think it has a negative effect on the reader impression of Wikipedia, just as the text "more detail to be added here" makes the encyclopedia look worse. Well-intentioned editors may believe that other people should write particular articles, but it does not mean that they will. Even if they do, the title may differ. Some people assert that they encourage article writing. It is difficult to find out whether there is any significant net benefit. Having the number of persistent red links that we do seems a high price to pay. Bobblewik  (talk) 23:29, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Some guidelines: Links to non-existent articles should only be added when the articles in question are supposed to be written. For example, you should not link a person's name unless that person is notable enough to deserve an encyclopedia article. Avoid links on things like individual works (books, albums, etc.) unless you are absolutely certain that the work deserves a separate article of its own, and the main article is already well-developed. Also avoid links on minor fictional characters and in general try to synthesize fiction articles as much as reasonably possible.--Eloquence*

See Wikipedia:Wikiproject Albums. There is not really much consensus on the specific issue of albums, but common practice indicates that major bands get an article per album (rule of thumb: if people who don't like the genre, much less the band, have often heard of them, each album can have an article; particularly major bands who non-afficionados are probably unfamiliar with can also have an article per album). Ultimately, each issue is separate -- no single guideline can work in all subjects at all times. I recommend abundant linking if you are not sure -- after all, if you do not know whether or not a term needs an article or not, it probably needs, if nothing else, a redirect, and a red link makes that more likely. I suppose the only real answer is to do whatever floats your boat until you have become well-enough versed in Wikipedia to decide based on whatever criteria seems most useful; as long as you don't start any edit wars or anything, disagreements can usually be amicably resolved.
I am probably at the other end of the scale to you then. I recommend that a link should not be created unless an article exists. Links to non-existent articles are not helpful to readers, and may make the experience worse. Could we at least have a guideline that within a single article, the number of links to non-existant articles should not usually exceed 5% of the links on the page? Bobblewik  (talk) 20:41, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sorry for the lack of a concise rule on the subject... Tuf-Kat 07:35, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Circumcision discussions and Robert Brookes

It should be noted that an Rfc/Robert Brookes is underway:

The Salem trials were never this good. I came to wikipedia as a result of a rallying cry, I came across (from an anti-circumcision list) to prevent the deletion of the genital integrity article. To my horror I noted that each and every circumcision related article had been hijacked by the anti-circumcision activists and filled with their POV and links. Of interest was that this demonstrable garbage had somehow been sold as NPOV and was now being protected as such by those resident wikipedians who share their peculiar interest in the foreskin. Their tenacity and commitment to this purpose has been self evident. There is no way that these articles will ever approach NPOV as long as genuine wikipedians remain ignorant as to the key issues relating to the anti-circumcision debate. The first rule, (which I don’t expect any genuine wikipedian to acknowledge now, but may reflect upon later), is that you cannot negotiate with monomaniacal fanatics and no purpose is served being “nice” to them as it is interpreted as “weakness”. Their posting tactic of “two steps forward and one step back” serves their agenda well and has no counter from among the “Hobbits” of wikipedia. I am all for NPOV. I wish for nothing more than NPOV articles and am outraged at the blatant hi-jacking of wikipedia by these fanatics. I must state that I am also outraged at the naivety of the genuine wikipedians who seem so inept in countering this obvious POV. So have your Salem trial. Burn your “witch” then. But after the smoke has cleared two facts will still remain. The monomaniacal anti-circumcision fanatics will still be here pushing their POV and the wikipedians will still be too gutless to stand up to prevent it. - Robert Brookes 01:54, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Can you at least reply to the message I left you on your talk page? --Ardonik.talk() 01:56, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
Note that Robert has systematically removed scientific information from circumcision-related articles when a paper, digitized in full, was so much as hosted on a website against circumcision (CIRP.org). He has also made interesting edits like this one, and is currently listed on Wikipedia:Requests for comments for his insulting behavior towards other users. Virtually all his edits have been to circumcision-related articles. If you look at User talk:Robert Brookes, you will find a long message from me to him in which I kindly explained to him the problems with his behavior. He never responded.
Wikipedia is a ridiculously democratic/anarchistic place, to the extent that trolls and POV pushers are tolerated for months on end until our dispute resolution mechanisms kick into gear, and even then consequences are mild because of the way committees work (lowest common denominator). Heck, one of our most persistent vandals/trolls who has insulted dozens of users, inserted huge amounts of inaccurate information and created tons of fake identities has been unblocked because blocking him affected too many other users on AOL. To speak of the happenings on Wikipedia as a witchhunt is like equating a heated discussion in a bingo club with Stalin's Great Purges. The Salem witches weren't burned, by the way, they were hanged. See Salem witch trials for more information.--Eloquence*
Well, are they referred to as "skin freaks"? I don't know, but it doesn't seem unlikely, and he did say that it's an "unkindly" usage. -- orthogonal 04:15, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
This was not a usage description. There is a big difference between "are unkindly known as ..." and "are unkindly referred to as ... by ...". How does "Christians are unkindly known as Jesus freaks" sound to you? That term gets" 22000 hits, can we add it to Christianity? "Skin freaks" in this context gets 42 Google hits, the first one being Wikipedia.
Even with proper NPOV language, this does not belong in an encyclopedia article. There's a difference between encyclopedic knowledge - e.g. "the views with regard to this fetish are shar

ply divided among the adherents of pro- and anti-circumcision views" (please don't add this without some actual evidence) - and slur words that are merely inserted to push a particular point of view. Only in a context of a long history of discrimination (e.g. homosexuality), such information may be of interest.

I find it seriously disturbing that I have to explain this to you.--Eloquence*

How to Wikify

How would I wikify Brian Howe in the Mary Bell article? --Sgeo | Talk 02:19, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Your last edit did wikify it, assuming you mean you just wanted to link to it? If not, could you explain your question please? Angela. 02:29, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
It links to the wrong Brian Howe. --Sgeo | Talk 02:36, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
I think you want this syntax: [[page you want to link to|text you want to display]]. For example, [[cat|dog]] produces the underlined word dog, which links to the article "Cat." Ðåñηÿßôý | Talk 03:05, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I'm not asking about syntax. I'm asking if I should link it to something like Brian Howe (murder)? --Sgeo | Talk 03:07, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
A disambig parenthesis should be descriptive of the person, not the relevant act etc.; I'd suggest [[Brian Howe (murder victim)]]. Radagast 04:15, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
A nice little touch which can safe time in editing is that if you link to [[something (disambiguated)|]] it will automatically expand this to [[something (disambiguated)|something]]. [[User:Anárion|Ана́рыён]] 13:35, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the tip. I knew that if you do [[Namespace:Title|]] that it would expand it to [[Namespace:Title|Title]]. —Mike 01:35, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Multiple users editing?

Sorry to ask a silly question, but I can't seem to find a satisfactory answer anywhere. My question is: what happens if multiple users simultaneously edit an article? How does wikipedia handle this? -- FirstPrinciples 06:00, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Edit conflicts. Hope that helps, and don't worry about asking--it's appreciated. Best wishes, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 06:07, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
Outdated, see m:Help:Edit conflict, particularly the last paragraph. Help pages in the Wikipedia: namespaces are deprecated and will be replaced with auto-imported help pages that are maintained on Meta. The reason being that there is more than just Wikipedia, so we don't want to maintain all the help files in several places.--Eloquence*
Hmmm, maybe we should wait until the replacement feature is written before we declare the old one deprecated. -- Tim Starling 15:30, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks guys, that's exactly the information I was looking for. -- FirstPrinciples 08:58, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Getting rid of custom CSS

How do I get rid of my monobook.css and monobook.js pages? --Sgeo | Talk 16:31, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

put speedy {delet) tags on them, specifying why--an admin should delete them. Niteowlneils 19:14, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Just blank them or comment everything out. Guanaco 23:56, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

User:Kockica

Could someone look at the contribution of User:Kockica [9]. They seem to be uploading a number of large PDF files that are chapters of a several books in some Slavic language. Are they of any use to Wikipedia, or can they be speedy deleted as patent nonsense as well as theft of Wikipedia bandwidth and disk space for private purposes. - SimonP 16:48, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Cannot read the language, but it looks deletable to me. The files are pretty big, too. It is possible that the user is just using the disk space for outside wikipedia purposes. Either speedy delete or put on Wikipedia:Images for deletion -- Chris 73 Talk 17:38, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
It's Croatian, I think. -- Arwel 19:38, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I have deleted them all but Image:7. Organizovanost privrede u opstini, strana 315-318.pdf, for which i got an error. I see no way how these files could contribute to the english wikipedia, and based on the edit history of the user i am doubtful if his/her contributions are donein good faih. -- Chris 73 Talk 08:12, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Need a little image fix

Can someone touch up Image:Barnstar3.png so it looks like Image:Barnstar2.png, except yellow? [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 21:57, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • I got this one. -- Wapcaplet 22:31, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Diff, Last

When one is looking at a user contributions page, why is there no diff or last link, like one gets when looking at a page's history? Is it because it would place too much of a strain on the server? Typically one wants to see the specific changes that were made, so it's frustrating to only have the hist link. func(talk) 23:25, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly the reason, but the current development version of MediaWiki fixes the problem by only calculating the revision numbers when you actually request a diff, hence causing less of a strain on the database. Credit for this goes to User:JeLuF. MediaWiki 1.4 should be released within the next few weeks and the live site will then be upgraded accordingly. --Eloquence*

Fewer and fewer people pay attention

I had seen that this was a recurring problem here at Wikipedia, but just now I came accross something that really tipped my boat. It appears that more and more users are so concerned with leaving their own mark in articles that they don't even pay any attention to what is happening around them, as long as it doesn't involve their own edits. Or even worse, they don't care. Before I go on, I'd like to make it clear that this is in no way directed to all users, we all know that there are quite a few people who spend a lot of time cleaning up other users's mess. Here is what happened: I was reading the article on the Concorde, and as I usually do, I also read the Talk page. There, at the bottom of the page, Fabiform made a note to something rather disturbing: two Wikipedia articles giving conflicting information about the same fact. That should had been fixed right away, but I was surprised to see that his remark was dated 21st of January 2004 - and I just found it, checked the facts and corrected the article that had the wrong data, almost eight months later! When I checked the article's history, however, I was even more surprised to see that the article had been edited quite frequently (the last edit had been only three days ago). So I wonder why the people who contribute to the article didn't catch the problem and fix it sooner. The conclusion I come to is that they simply are not concerned with anything other than their own edits. I mean, if someone had erased something they wrote, odds are they'd react immediately, but as long as that doesn't happen... and that's not about the people involved with the Concorde article, since, as I said before, this is a recurring problem, with all articles. Now, I'm sorry if I might have offended someone, but it concerns me that Wikipedia is becoming more and more a vehicle for people's vanity (again, this is NOT directed at all users, but the shoe should fit in quite a few people). Regards, Redux 02:41, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You're absolutely right, we need a better methodology for systematically checking the consistency of related articles. Maybe it's possible to combine that with the "to do" template system that is already used on many talk pages.--Eloquence*
Perhaps we need a centralised place where people can record they are dubious about a fact recorded in an article or set of articles. Those people who are interested in that sort of thing could then check this information and amend the article and talk page as necessary. What we really need is a way of adding the query to the talk page of the article and automatically generating the same question in the centralised repository. Perhaps it could be picked up by Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_Check :ChrisG 08:04, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
When editing a small part of an article a person shouldn't have to go through the entire thing to check the facts, or, sometimes, even the section edited. Though it would be beneficial if people could it must surely be better that people are encouraged to do minor edits than to moan at people that don't background check every detail of things they haven't added. violet/riga (t) 08:58, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That's exactly the point. If you are going to contribute to an article, one would expect the contributor to have read it (at least the first time) and, of course, that he understands something about the topic at hand. And by "read" I also mean the Talk page and even the History page of any given article, otherwise we can easily get chaotic editing, which can entail edit wars and compromise the quality of the article. If people are so eager to edit that they don't even take the time to know what exactly is that they are editing &#150; and it's just about putting in what they want to put in &#150; it will likely lead to poor writing in articles (who hasn't read an article where the text just didn't work as a whole, or where certain passages looked like they were just shoved in there - because they were - ?) and, in some cases, even to a situation like that in the Concorde article I mentioned. And there's an even worse scenario: people actually do that but they just don't care, because, as I said, it's not their own edits. And in the example I gave, someone had pointed out the problem, spelled it out, so either no one saw it because they just didn't read or they saw it but chose to ignore it. Either one, the result was the same: an inconsistency that makes all of us, Wikipedians, look bad (one word: credibility. If we can't get our facts straight, why should people believe what they read on Wikipedia? Understand, the occasional visitor neither knows nor cares that we function in cliques, or that some users are more dedicated than others). In short, if one can take the time to edit, one can take the time to read. Regards, Redux 15:49, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • I have to agree that this is a problem, especially the apparent fact that many contributors don't read an article before editing it; thus we end up with out-of-place factoids, errant paragraphs and other things that break up the continuity. I usually notice it with pages on my watchlist, most especially ones I've contributed heavily to. This edit, for instance, I caught and fixed just a few minutes later. In another article, a contribution was well-intentioned and mostly useful, but since I had written much of that article, as well as a related one, I had a better idea of where the information should go. When things like this occur to articles that I in some way consider "my" articles, I try to tidy it up and incorporate whatever was added, but sometimes a simple reversion is in order because an editor didn't read the whole article, or related articles, before putting in redundant information. Perhaps we could have some kind of informal "adopt-an-article" system, whereby we can each keep an eye on an article that's important to us? With so many regular contributors, each with their own watchlist, I'm sure this effectively happens already, but it might be handy to know who has adopted various articles, and which articles are neglected orphans. Perhaps just a note in the talk page - "I've adopted this article" with signature. And of course, being broad-minded people, we believe it's okay for an article to have many foster parents :-) -- Wapcaplet 16:45, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You have read my mind! That's exactly what I was thinking of as a means of solving the problem, at least partially. But I would go a little further. Once someone has adopted an article, I believe that person should be "held accountable" for some stuff that just can't happen, such as allowing wrong information to be online for eight months! Especially when someone else was good enough to write on the article's talk page to let you know of the problem. I mean, usually when you check the History page, you easily identify those who regularly contribute to the article, which means that those people visit it regularly and have it on their watchlists, which makes them fully aware of any edit to the article or its talk page. And it's not only about problems. For instance,on quite a few instances, I've visited articles and had ideas that might help improve them, either in terms of content or layout, so I wrote them as suggestions on the talk pages. In most cases, I had no answer and it has been months &#150; and I mean any answer. I don't expect people to agree and accept what I propose, but since I took the time and an interest to try to help, it would be nice to have some feedback, even if to tell me that I couldn't be more wrong. Sure I could leave messages on anyone's user talk page, but really, if that person didn't care about what I had to say on the article's talk page, why would it be any different when I speak it up on the personal talk page? In the end, you end up with a clash of egos, which only contributes for nothing to get done. When I say "accountable", I'm not proposing a whitch hunt, that we set up the "Wikipedia Inquisition", but just that a relapse "article parent" get a note not from any individual user, but from the community, which would certainly add to the impact. As an extreme measure, the user could loose the condition of "parent" of that particular article, but no one would get banned, branded or anything like that. A similar procedure could be adopted in regards to people who make it a habbit to edit without paying any attention (in that case, we'd need clear rules and parameters to determine the existence of a pattern, that is, someone who always edits without thinking first). Maybe this would inspire more responsibility and less vanity-driven edits. Regards, Redux 19:12, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

ESP/PDF to SVG conversion

We could use some help over at Talk:George W. Bush military service controversy#Graphical timeline - can we get it into SVG? to convert a quite nicely done timeline () into SVG from either PDF or EPS. Does anyone here have the necessary tools? There's a proprietary PDF2SVG program and probably many others, but the free software solutions I tried didn't work.--Eloquence*

  • FreeSVG, a free online PDF-SVG converter, has worked well for me in the past. -- Wapcaplet 16:49, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Some copyright images at Wikipedia are obtained with permission for non-commercial use with link to the provider. Can these images be modified? --Ankur 07:34, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I wouldn't have thought so. Working on the principle that all rights are reserved unless otherwise stated, it seems that if the copyright holder has explicitly granted only non-commercial use on the condition that a link is provided, there can be no assumption that they've granted the right to create derivative works. That said, if all it involves is compressing a huge file or something like that they are unlikely to even notice. Cropping a photo might be a different matter. You could try asking the copyright holder but this seems quite an effort to go to for images which are in any case likely to be deleted some time in the next few months. — Trilobite (Talk) 08:11, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Looking for someone who can help translating Dutch into English

Hello,

I hope this question belongs to the Village pump. I have some articles and information, mainly on different reptiles (e.g. on Phelsuma), amphibians and terraria etc, which I wrote some years ago. Most of them were never finished or published. Although these texts would complement some other articles which I started here on Wikipedia, they are written in Dutch. Unfortunately, I haven't much time to translate them or rewrite them for the Dutch Wikipedia. So I am looking for someone who is willing to help me translating those texts into English and add them to the existing Wikipedia articles.

Cheers,

Jurriaan 08:44, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Go to Wikipedia:Translation_into_English#Dutch-to-English and list the articles there. Dunc_Harris|☺ 08:49, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

POV and the circumcision articles

It has been noted that since Robert Brookes' banning wholesale reverts have been made to article to restore the anti-circumcision POV. What is the mechanism within Wikipedia to prevent this or at least to set up a mechanism to monitor this activity? Sadly it is also apparent that the administrative Wikipedians who were so keen to get involved in the censure of Robert Brookes either are "not neutral" or just don't care so one needs to look elsewhere for guidance towards NPOV. Perhaps as a suggestion the applicable articles be "frozen" at the point they were when Brookes was banned so as to allow for a special "talk" page to be set up to debate how the matter of control over editing of circumcision articles can be established. - Friends of Robert 08:56, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment is probably best, he may already have a page if he is a persistent POVver. Dunc_Harris|☺ 09:03, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
yep, see Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Robert_Brookes, and feel free to make any suitable comments. Dunc_Harris|☺ 09:04, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If you see anticircumcision activists inserting POV into pages then the best thing to do is argue the case on the relavent article talk pages. A one of the "administrative Wikipedians who were so keen to get involved in the censure of Robert Brookes" I can assure you that his rfc was started becasue of his abrasive attitude and refusal to work cooperativly with others. Not because of his POV. It is not true to say that admins here are not neutral or don't care about POV warriers from the other side of the argument. Their edits are being watched and neutralised by a number of regular wikipedians. We don't in general "freeze" pages. It's against the idea of a wiki, but all articles already have special talk pages where you can argue your points. In the efvent of POV warriors from either side of the debate refusing to come to a reasonable compromise we already have procedures in place to deal with it. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 20:42, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Military equipment namign convention

Is there cutrrently any convention on which of the many names of various bits of military equipment to use?

For instance we currently have a page on 88mm gun referring to the family of models of that cailbre used by Germany in World War II. However, Anti-aircraft lists the same things as [[8.8 cm Flak 18]].

Is there or should there be a policy on which of various alternative names to use and help stop different contributors missing one anothers' work with slightly different names?

Just £0.02.

Good question. I noticed that anomaly and would be interested in clearing it up. The convention today is certainly to use mm rather than cm. For example, see 30 mm (note the recommended space between the digits and the unit symbol). There are examples of people at the time talking about 'eighty eights'. It is possible that cm values were valid in some way in the past. It might even be that both terms were in parallel use. A brief Google frequency search does not have a persuasive majority for either. I use mm by default unless there is a strong case for cm. Bobblewik  (talk) 10:55, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Naming convention for TV shows and series

A poll is running asking whether to adopt the naming convention, written at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television), is due to end very shortly.

Please take a look at the proposed standard and vote on the talk page.


As a side note, I'm the one that originally authored the convention, based on much original discussion. I'd invite everyone to take a look at it, and vote on its merits and your preference. -- 14:36, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It appears this has turned into an unmitigated disaster - perhaps some experienced Wikipedians could lend a hand, though personally, I haven't a clue where to begin. zoney ▓   ▒ talk 15:17, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Yes, a bit. I think some people are voting "no", not because they dislike the convention, but rather because they think everyone else wants more discussion about every single point (see Abilene paradox. -- Netoholic @ 16:29, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

research instrument destroying the research object

--213.216.223.13 16:30, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)[email protected] I' ve heard about a paradox that if we study very small of difficult particulars of "things", they are so delicate that the instrument meant to study them destroy them. Where can I find more information on this issue?

Yours, cordially Yrjö Mikkonen, Oulu, Finland [email protected]


Perhaps Uncertainty principle - stating that the act of measuring changes the condition of the thing being measured? -- Netoholic @ 16:49, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Some text on differint encyclopedias?

I was searching for more info on Programmer's Day when I stumbled upon this page: Programmer's Day

It's a page from another (obviously inferior because infested with ads) online encyclopedia that uses the exact same description for "Programmer's Day" as Wikipedia does. Is this normal? Isn't this copyright infringement (or something)?

That site did indeed copy data from Wikipedia, but notice that it gives us credit on the bottom of the page. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 16:58, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
...see Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks for more. --rbrwrˆ 17:00, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

All contents on Wikipedia is released under the GFDL, which means they can be copied, edited, and used in certain ways. Darksun 18:08, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Unified Web search page

Just as we have a facility for ISBNs, I created a prototype template page to facilitate Web searching and to eliminate the bias of using Google.

The template is non-functional, but it uses two variables:

  • ARTICLETEXT - name of the article; underscores are replaced by spaces
  • ARTICLETEXTURL - URL-escaped name of the article; underscores and spaces are replaced by "%20"

Discuss. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 16:50, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Now you've mentioned ISBNs, I wonder whether that will still work after 1-1-2007, when the size of the ISBN is being increased to 13 digits. -- Arwel 18:27, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Renaming an article

How do I go about suggesting that an article be renamed? I believe that Pokemon/Stats (a subpage) should be renamed to the article Pokémon statistics. --Chessphoon 18:37, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Looks like someone already fixed this for you, but to generalize on your question for the benefit of anyone who may have a similar question: this is what "Move" is for. If the article is not much edited and not much linked to, you can do this about as casually as any other edit. If there has been a lot of activity on the article, you should probably first post a note on the talk page and se if there are objections to the move. If there is a lot of "What links here" -- especially if the move will create double redirects -- you need to clean up afterwards. -- Jmabel 19:21, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
    • Thanks, I didn't notice that link before. --Chessphoon 19:25, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
      • Amazing! I have been done things the hard way (create new article and copy everything across). The 'Move' option will make it a lot easier. Thanks very much for pointing it out. Bobblewik  (talk) 19:30, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
        • Using move maintains the edit history too. violet/riga (t) 19:39, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
        • Right, If you can post a list of articles you used copy'n'paste on, an admin can help restore the articles Edit history. -- Netoholic @ 19:44, 2004 Sep 12 (UTC)

Articles in need of formatting

User:Guanabot has made some automated fixes recently that brought some formatting issues to my attention, most of which were due to some old automated-conversion imports back in February 2002. The articles in question are the "Communications in...", "Politics of...", "Geography of..." sort. I don't know how many of these there are, but the old versions all suffer from some poor formatting. If anyone could pitch in to help reformat these, that'd be splendid. For examples of how I think they should be formatted: [10], [11], [12], [13]. Most of these could use some additional wikification, i.e. links on km and m, headings stating what the article is about, more correct degree/min/sec on the geographical coordinates, etc. I've been following in the trail of Guanabot, to make these articles easier to find. -- Wapcaplet 19:12, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

P.S. - See also Transportation by country. -- Wapcaplet 19:28, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Question on user pages

  • For one's own user page...
  1. Is there a difference between your user page and any other wiki page?
  2. Can you create sub-pages?
  3. Can you make your own user pages unviewable by others, or uneditable by others?
  4. Is there any difference between User:name and User talk:name?

answering.

  1. Yes, you have moral control over your own user page, whereas the rest of the wiki is owned by everyone.
  2. Yes. To create a subpage use a forward slash, e.g. User:Duncharris/Alan Harris images
  3. Everyone can view your user page. Keep your private details on your hard drive! You can request the page to be protected to stop other from vandalising them if you wish see Wikipedia:protected page
  4. Your user talk name is for messages. when someone posts a message, you get a note saying "You have new messages" so that you are notified. Your user page is to describe yourself, what you like, contain useful links, etc.

Hope that helps. Dunc_Harris|☺ 20:39, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Duncharris beat me by a second. You can easily make sub-pages. Just create/type a link e.g. [[User:Ihavenolife/Subpage]], and you will get an edit window with a sub page User:Ihavenolife/Subpage. For example I have a sub page User:Chris 73/Images. Every page (User, Image, Article...) in wikipedia has a talk/discussion page. The (empty) talk page for my images would be User talk:Chris 73/Images. You cannot make pages unviewable. You cannot make pages uneditable by others, except for admins which can protect pages, and then only admins can edit protected pages. However, it is very rude to edit other peoples user pages (except talk pages). BTW, you can sign your comments by typing four tildes ~~~~, which automatically turns into your name and date. Hope this helps. -- Chris 73 Talk 20:42, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
You can also just type [[/Subpage]] on your userpage and that will link to the subpage, e.g. /Subpage (on this page) is the same as Wikipedia:Village pump/Subpage. - 20:53, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
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