Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

Village pump sections

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Incubate new ideas before formally proposing them

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Discuss issues involving the Wikimedia Foundation

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[[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]]

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]].

NPOV resources --> Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view
jpgs in Internet Explorer --> Talk:Internet Explorer
Template help --> Template talk:Nuremberg Trial judges
Category:Move to Wiktionary. Does anyone monitor this? (No replies)
VfD Madness. When should a page be delisted from Vfd? Who should be allowed to delist it? What is VfD for? Should we suspend it altogether? Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#VfD Madness and Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion#Proposal - suspension of VfD.
The "Edit Conflict" screen. If you hate the edit conflict screen, please see meta:Edit conflict handling suggestion
Timeouts on editing articles. Reported bug
clean up Swanscombe! --> Talk:Swanscombe
Worth adding or unencyclopedic nonsense? --> Talk:Does exactly what it says on the tin
Side-by-side diffs too wide. MediaZilla: should be used for feature requests.
Increasing exposure to sister projects --> Wikipedia talk:Sister projects and talk page.
Categories?? --> Wikipedia talk:Categorization
Undoc'd Bug or Feature in Edit-Conflict handling? --> Wikipedia talk:Edit conflicts
Vote is now open on deleting user subpages (proposed policy)
"Categories for deletion" needs admin attention. Please help with the backlog at WP:CFD
GFDL Question. Summarized answer: Wikipedia does not allow invariant sections. See Wikipedia:Copyrights for details.
Removing visible editor instruction notes --> talk:MoS
Category heading cut-off. MediaZilla: should be used for feature requests.
Quick question (about how many hits an article has had). See stats (warning: that page is 38MB)
Cleanup hits 139 KB. Help needed to clean up the page. More on Wikipedia talk:Cleanup
Date information, western bias --> Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (calendar dates)
Odd stealth log-outs. MediaZilla: should be used for bug reports.
Wikipedia and child protection? New debate about what child protection policy might be appropriate at m:talk:Draft privacy policy
Good Press. See newsobserver and BBC.
Edit tool bar. You can remove this in Special:Preferences

Category footer and Special:Categories need fixing

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)

You can also just use the K Desktop enviroment which has spellchecking for over 50 languages through aspell. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 08:14, 2004 Sep 14 (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: —siro χ o 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)

OK, I added it there. Thanks, Chocolateboy. Oh, and I took dramatic's advice and called it a spelling checker. Spalding 23:45, Sep 12, 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

moved to Wikipedia talk:Votes_for_deletion/Precedents

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)

In case anyone hasn't been watching, Ivan is now about 50/50 to hit the Florida panhandle and is very unlikely to hit Tampa. anthony (see warning) 14:11, 13 Sep 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)

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: [3] 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: [4] 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[5]. If I get to Amazon via known 'associate' dilbert.com, I get something more like [6]. 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. —Guan aco 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. Guan aco 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. Guan aco 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)

Is this comment in support of this idea or in opposition to it? It's my impression that this page wouldn't be used for deletion debate, but for attempting to find the information needed to tag the image. anthony (see warning) 14:09, 13 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

Does the table look better with the thinner border? (Example of the other kind: US Congressional Delegations from Alabama)
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

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 encyclopadeia 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)
  - Yes, it's the rest of the Main page I have a problem with. Filiocht 08:04, 13 Sep 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)

I love it. That said, VfD is about as small as it can get. If we want it smaller, we're going to have to expand speedy deletes, shorten the amount of time for voting, or encourage people to write better articles. Geogre 01:02, 14 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)

Copyright and the GFDL

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 [7] used "1.1 or any later version". Guan aco 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:

Wikipedia:MediaWiki namespace, which has links to:
- "PHP, without links", which actually displays a page named "All system messages" (which is really Special:Allmessages)
- "with view links", which appears to take me to exactly the same place (although I can see there's a parameter on the URL)
- "with edit links", which actually displays a page named "Wikipedia: All system messages", which looks like the same list *again* but with a different display format (the subtleties of these 3 variants are lost on me despite labels)
- Wikipedia:Unprotected MediaWiki messages, which is an apparently random selection of messages whose only commonality is that you can edit them (?)
- Wikipedia:All pages in the MediaWiki namespace, which takes you to a page titled "Wikipedia:All pages in the MediaWiki and Template namespace", which I would assume has everything on it, but wikiquote isn't there, either; this page has links to:
  - "MediaWiki interface messages", which goes back to Wikipedia:All system messages
  - "Template messages", which goes to Wikipedia:Template messages, which seems to be repeat of some of the other page contents, but in any event this page says it has been moved to "Template namespace", which goes to Wikipedia:Template namespace, which has links to:
    - Wikipedia:Template messages", which seems to be circular
    - Wikipedia:Navigational templates
    - Wikipedia:All pages in the MediaWiki namespace which see above
  - Wikipedia:Navigational templates, which also doesn't have wikiquote

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.

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?
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)

I've just had MediaWiki installed on the intranet at my school. I'm trying to encourage teachers from other departments to get into adding their own articles, and have some of the kids working on it too. Obviously, however, I can't allow just anyone to edit - even people that register would need to go through an authentication (and acceptance) process. Now I'm not sure if MediaWiki is capable of what I'm wanting but seeing as I'm used to using it here and that it's already installed I'd like to be able to stick with it. I've had a look through the documentation on the MediaWiki site but it doesn't seem complete and I can't quite find what I'm looking for. Anyone able to help? My talk page would love suggestions! violet/riga (t) 11:11, 13 Sep 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)

About (red) links to non-existent articles

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)

Surely a red link means that an article is nonexistent as yet and is intended to encourage an editor to create it? A perfectly praiseworthy aim, I would have thought. Dieter Simon 23:22, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It is a praiseworthy aim. Having an aim is one thing, it is quite another to assume it has been achieved.

What is the effect on readability of having too many links (non-existent and live)?
What is the effect on the impression of the encyclopedia of having 'under construction' artefacts.?
Are there limits to our willingness to expose all our readers to the unfulfilled ambitions of past editors?
Are there any guide lines that a current editor can use to remove a link created by a previous editor?
How many non-existent links are on Wikipedia?
What is the proportion of non-existent links to live links?
How long does it take for a non-existent link to become live?
What is the proportion of non-existent links that do not become live within 6 months (or any other time period) of creation?
How many articles are created because somebody saw a non-existent link?
What is the opportunity cost i.e. if an article is created as a result, is it merely diverting editor effort from other useful work?
Is 95 % of links in a prose article should be live a reasonable guideline to put in the Manual of style.
Am I the only one that questions the issue?

Perhaps we should take this debate to the Manual of style talk page Bobblewik (talk) 10:59, 13 Sep 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 *

Having read the history of the Foreskin fetish article would it not be fair to expect you to explain here and on the articles discussion page why you reacted the way you did to a seemingly trivial comment about "skin freaks". It would be appreciated if you would take the time to clear the air on this matter as your aggression may well have served to polarize attitudes and thus undermine the NPOV process. - Friends of Robert 23:36, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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. Guan aco 23:56, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

User:Kockica

Could someone look at the contribution of User:Kockica [8]. 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  and it's just about putting in what they want to put in  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  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)

I see all kinds of articles that I could give help to, sometimes with comments on the talk pages, sometimes years old. I can't get to a fraction of them quickly. There's too much that needs fixing. And I'm the kind of person who wants to fix things correctly, which sometimes means new articles to back up information in another article or to take some of the information from another article. I'd rather spend three or four hours and get the thing done right than slapdash a quick fix (which is sometimes wrong because I haven't remembered something properly).

Sometimes I see an erroneous information added to an article that I've worked on. But I'm working on other matters which I consider of equal importance or more importance. And sometimes that misinformation vanishes without my having to take a hand, sometimes removed by the same person.

Sometimes also, fixing an article means making related changed in other articles, sometimes adding or changing links or correcting related information or adding related information. I usually get into one of the other articles, make the change, and get out. I may spot other things that could be fixed in that article, but at the moment that is not the task I'm concerned with. And I often don't even look at the talk page in such cases. If I have twenty article that need slapdash fixes of this kind I am likely not to read in full even the section of the article that I am editing. Just remove or change the erroneous information or add a small reference and get out and on to the next article. In some cases the article as a whole may look very poor to me, but one thing at a time. I've got a hundred or so articles already in my mind that I know could use improvement. I am quite reasonably in such cases only concerned with my own edits.

But I don't want "official" parentage of any article and I certainly don't want to have to deal with an "official" parent of any article. And I generally don't put articles on my watch list, even when I've made a great number of changes to them or when they are mostly or entirely my work. I don't consider anything here to be "my" article. Change something if you think the change would be better. Or discuss on my talk page. But I've swooped down and blown away and chewed up other people's work without permssion and don't mind if that's done to my work if it improves an article. I don't feel I "own" any articles.

Jallan 15:40, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Currently, we surely have lots of de facto "parents" of articles -- people who review and check every single edit made to articles. This is a good thing. One problem is that it is entirely implicit -- there's no reliable way to tell whether the article you are currently reading is being overseen like this. Someone recently suggested that the number of people having the article on their watchlists be published, as a rough heuristic for how "well-maintained" it is; this might be useful. But even better is Wapcaplet's suggestion of signing "I've adopted this article" onto the Talk: page — this wouldn't mean that the "parent" had any official responsibility or accountability or ownership for that article. It would merely be a useful explicit statement of what already occurs implicitly. — Matt 16:08, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Jallan, by what you wrote I can see you have the right attitude. If everybody did as you described, we wouldn't have a problem. But this is not the case, and unfortunately your attitude is becoming more of an exception. I know that this system I've proposed is not ideal, but the English version of the Website is pushing towards 400 thousand articles, with thousands or registered users and who knows how many sporadic anon contributors. Without something like that system (maybe someone could come up with something better), I'm afraid the project will get stuck in a vicious circle. The idea, however, is not that everybody would be forced to parent one or more articles, rather this would be voluntary, so that those who wish it can remain as "rogue contributors" (I'm making this nomenclature up as I go along...), but as Wapcaplet pointed out, the "adoption" of articles by users is effectively already happening, as people tend to pay special attention to certain articles (that they created or contributed heavily to), and as he also said, there would be no exclusivity in this, several users could "adopt" an article. Furthermore, it would not be the case of having to "deal" with official article parents. Everybody would still be able to contribute freely, the "parent" would just be in charge of making sure that chaos doesn't set in  or if it does, it would be up to the "parent" to put an end to it; a sort of "microadmin". The bottom line is: the project has grown past the point where it could be expected to develop smoothly on its own. It's history repeating itself: in the 19th century, a true liberal would find it preposterous that governments could identify people by numbers (social security) or that people would be forced to file early reports informing the government about every dime they've earned and spent (tax return). But now those things are normal and widely accepted, and that's because they are necessary, without such a system society just wouldn't be able to function properly. I'm afraid we at Wikipedia have reached that point. So far, we can still manage, but not for long. Regards, Redux 16:23, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This all reminds me of m:Article validation. --[[User:Eequor|ηυωρ]] 16:32, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the reference. I was not aware that such an effort was already underway, and it has already reached levels of technical complexity that I had not dared to dream. It's not exactly what I had proposed though, especially since I feel that this idea might be less complex to implement and maybe less polemical. But I've also come to the conclusion that it is not going to happen. Maybe I'm too skeptical, but I've been doing some thinking and I guess nothing is going to get done until we have indeed reached a point where there will just be no way but to implement some kind of system. Realistically speaking, all this talking I've been doing here will have been for nothing, unless I managed to convince someone like Mr. Wales. And even so it would be quite unlikely that something might actually happen, since Wikipedia aims at being as democratic as possible (which is good), and such a large scale, uncontrolled Democracy usually works reacting rather then anticipating  so as I said, nothing will happen until complete chaos sets in. Regards, Redux 23:42, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it'd be necessary to institute any official system or policy to handle this. Most of the policies we do have are quite loose and informal; to be otherwise would to my mind run counter to the philosophy that has built Wikipedia. You're not alone in predicting that a burgeoning article population will eventually lead to previously unanticipated problems, but to date the very nature of the wiki has helped us adapt to our own success. It's hard to know where Wikipedia is going--AFAIK, no experiment in productive, democratic anarchy has ever had such scope and growth potential. Maybe some day the creation of new articles will plateau--when the supply of new encyclopedic things to write about becomes smaller than those things already written about, if that is even possible--or when the technical capability and body of contributors stabilizes to something better equipped to handle the enormous amount of content we have. I often wonder if the sheer amount of time and energy that is expended on dealing with the internal politics of Wikipedia would be better used in simply making better articles, or if the politics that have developed are a necessary component of that very effort of improvement. Considering what we've created in the not-quite four short years since inception, I think Wikipedia has already defied all odds. I think it will continue to do so. -- Wapcaplet 04:15, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

And parenting can be as bad as it is good. One encounters the editor who insists an article or part of an article must contain a particular POV or particular information and will fight to the death to maintain it. Sometimes the person takes over an article mostly written by someone else, adding only a few changes to maintain a particular point of few. Then the person fights. This becomes that editor's turf. And, with so many problems in so many articles, so much else that needs doing, it is easy enough for people to defend such turf, right or wrong, by making any attempt to fix the article non-productive. After spending two days of fuitless debate while other articles that are in equally bad shape could have been fixed, why continue? And they can hold their turf forever, as long as they don't pull this nonsense much with too many people too rudely. Errors in articles and POV in articles are sometimes the direct result of parenting. Jallan 14:01, 14 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)

Copyright question

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)

- Theresa, would you be so kind as to state any possible conflict of interest in the issues relating to circumcision you may have? Thanks. - Friends of Robert 23:05, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

- - Sure! I don't have any conflict of interests. I originally went to the circumscision page because of a call for help from regular wikipedians as there was a revert wat going on. I came across Robert Brookes there and tried to talk to him about the way things are done around here. Talking, compromise, consensus. He has accused me of being a anticurmcumcsion activist but that is not true. I am English, I've never even met a man who is circumcised (to the best of my knowledge) and have no strong opinion on the matter. I am most certainly not a member of any group either for or against. After trying to reason with RB on a number of articles related to circumcision I gave up,started a rfc on him, and decided simply to work on the articles a best as i could. I took an interest in the smegma article, was someone surprised that an articles with so many edits in the history had so little information on the pag and decided to try and expand it. I've been searching the web and adding to it since. In the course of that search i've come across a large number of websites, both for and against. My personal opinion of circumcision has only formed in the past few days becasue of that web search. I simply never thought on it before. Anyway the opinion i have formed so far is that the 'debate' is a lot of fuss over nothing. Personally i wouldn't get my own son circumcised (if I had one) but I feel that all this talk of "mutilation" is OTT. I've been a wikipedian since it's first year. My interests a varied, certainly not restricted to circumcision related articles. (check my edit history). I hope this answers your question. feel free to ask me anything. Oh and i forgot to say ealier -Welcome to wikipedia! :-) Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 23:27, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    - Thank you for placing that here for posterity. I noted Robert's comment about the build up of the lysozyme theme on the Smegma article. It remains of interest where you sourced your information from in this regard. What was your primary source of information? Lastly, just an innocent question to help me come to terms with what Robert alleges as to your possible agenda. Why does it appear you spent so much time reverting Robert's edits and so little from those with an obvious POV? Take truthbomber for example, he seems to have taken advantage of Robert's banning to carryout wholesale edits of certain articles. I hope you agree that it is absolutely necessary that those with administrator status are squeaky clean and totally transparent. I hope you don't see this as the type of Salem trial Robert was subjected to? Let’s hope not. I hope you will find the time to respond. - Friends of Robert 23:55, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
      - I can't really remember i was searching the web amd i got snippets from all over the place. As for truthbomber - which articles? I'll take a look tomorrow (I'm going to bed now) Why did i evert Robert? Because he wouldn't compromise, and he wouldn't discuss. What you've got to remember is this site works by people getting together and talking things through and coming up with a version that everyone can live with. If someone comes along and starts sticking dubious tags on without specifying what it is that is dubious on the talk page, then there is nothing that we can do to address the problem. Robert called the text "mumbo jumbo" Now how am I supposed to adress that? Dubious tags in Wikipedia have to be actionable. As for truthbomber, i did revert some of his stuff but I only did partial reverts because i was happy with some of what he wrote. Thus my edits after truthbomber don't say "reverted to last version by" they say what I actually did for example this was a partial revert #Anyway I've got to go to sleep now. I talk to you tomorrow. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 00:19, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
        Sleep well. I do hope that you will remember to answer the question tomorrow. - Friends of Robert 16:28, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
      - Are you a sock puppet of User:Robert Brookes? You seem to be doing everything in your power to make yourself look like one by arguing on his behalf. In particular, "Salem trial" was his wording for what the rest of us call requests for comment. RfC is the first step in conflict resolution and as such is an important part of Wikipedia policy. Robert didn't feel the need to take seriously, but that doesn't mean that you have to denigrate it, too. --Ardonik.talk() 00:13, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)
        Robert was singled out unfairly. He was set upon by the pack. Wikipedia has nothing to be proud of in this respect considering the onslaught of anti-circumcision POV you seemingly are unable to counter. Robert was criticised for posting only to circumcision related articles there are three, four, five such others who are plugging away at pushing their anti-circumcision POV with little or no attention from wikipedians. Now that you are aware that "truthbomber" is having a field day, I will watch with great interest what gets done about it. I'm sure you will do the right thing. - Friends of Robert 16:28, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Robert wasn't banned, he was blocked for 24 hours. Please don't exaggerate in order to make your dubious case for a "vast anti-circumcision conspiracy." Rhobite 00:15, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

How would he have known that? The poor man was set upon and savaged. This while a handfull of true believers are able to edit the articles at will. It has been mentioned before how they do it. It is the old two steps forward and one step back routine. It works like this. Major POV edit done ( - two steps forward). Along comes a tame admin and does a small timid edit ( - one step back). The cycle is repeated until the truth and NPOV are lost in the haze of POV in the articles. Game, set and match? - Friends of Robert 16:28, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The best way to counter this is for the pro circ people to edit the articles instead of the village pump. To say that RB was set upon and savaged is nonsense. It beggers belief. Your own POV is influencing your assement of the situation.Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 08:50, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Guys let's assume "good faith". I'm satisfied the above use is a freind of Robert Brooks but even if he is a sockpuppet of RB himself so what? He is arguing his case politely so he is welcome here as far as i'm concerned. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 00:22, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Especially given Theresa's interaction with Robert Brookes, I can only say that her patience and willingness to listen to anyone being polite -- even if that might be Brookes himself -- should be an example to us all. I'd award her a barnstar if I didn't think I'd be being presumptuous. ;) -- orthogonal 00:27, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks :-) Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 08:52, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ironically, you're demonstrating exactly the sort of all-embracing openness that prompted Robert to liken us to hobbits in the past. --Ardonik.talk() 17:59, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

True but who cares? In some ways we are a bit like hobbits. Wikipedia is open, we do embrace everyone. We welcome all sorts of people with open arms, the more diverse the better as it ultimately leads to better articles. We do believe the wikipedishire is the best place on middle earth ( sorry I meant the web) But we are not weak, we outnumber troublemakers hundreds to one. We don't need anyone to fight our battles for us. We are building the best encyclopedia the world has ever seen and no POV pusher will prevent me from accomplishing that task. And I am only one of thousands like me. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 19:21, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Good stuff Theresa. Two points though. It is because Wikipedia is becoming a "recognised resource" that it becomes a target for POV pushing by special interest groups (thereafter the laws of physics take over - "for every force there is an equal and opposite reaction"). Robert was correct in stating that the early opportunity was seized and anti-circumcision POV quickly filled the circumcision related articles. Second his point was the allegation of bias among some sysop/admin here. I believe there is some merit in this. Sadly. Surely it is simple, in that wikipedians who have strong POV about a certain subject should "recuse" themselves from involvement in those articles? Perhaps a mechanism should be put in place whereby those who stray into the no-go area of POV can be gently nuged back into line? - Friends of Robert 01:09, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We already have mechanisms in place. Please read our policies. As for biased admins you keep saying this is the case yet you haven't presented any evidence. If you truly believe admins have behaved unfairly your first step should be going to their talk page and present them with the evidence involved, so that they can explain themselves. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 08:12, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Military equipment naming convention

Is there currently 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)

I added a redirect to the current article title. Rmhermen 13:06, Sep 13, 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

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference Desk#Research Instrument Destroying the Research Object by Ilyanep

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. --rbrwr ˆ 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)

thefreedictionary is not following the GFDL, though. anthony (see warning) 16:47, 13 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)
    - Yes please do this. It's a violation of the GFDL to move articles using copy and paste because part of the license is that contributors (who after all still hold the copyright to their work) have to be given credit, and Wikipedia achieves this by means of the edit history, which is lost when someone copies and pastes. — Trilobite (Talk) 02:41, 13 Sep 2004 (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: [9], [10], [11], [12]. 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)

Not to mention updating with more recent data. -- User:Docu

I've continued to format and wikify these, finding more small things in need of improvement along the way. Currently I'm concentrating on the "Geography by..." articles. In those, "sq km" should become "km²" with a wikilink to square kilometre. "m" and "nm" should become wikilinks. There are probably a dozen other recurring phrases that could become wikilinks, but I haven't bothered with them. I've added Category:Geography by country to those I find without it. My changes haven't been completely consistent from article to article, but if you want to see what I'm doing, look at my contribs. Help on this would be greatly appreciated :-) -- Wapcaplet 02:07, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Question on user pages

For one's own user page...

Is there a difference between your user page and any other wiki page?
Can you create sub-pages?
Can you make your own user pages unviewable by others, or uneditable by others?
Is there any difference between User:name and User talk:name?

answering.

Yes, you have moral control over your own user page, whereas the rest of the wiki is owned by everyone.
Yes. To create a subpage use a forward slash, e.g. User:Duncharris/Alan Harris images
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
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)

Sorry to go off on a tangent here, but: 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... To clarify, the "you have new messages" deal currently does not work for subpages in your user talk space. This makes user talk subpages much less useful. I have submitted a feature request to amend this, however. • Benc • 22:57, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What a good idea! Andrewa 13:01, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

For general info on user pages see: Wikipedia:User page. Paul August 00:39, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

monobook.css header

The header comment on the monobook.css editing is wrong: pressing CTRL+F5 on Opera does not reload from cache, but reloads all opened pages. The correct reload key combination is either CTRL+R or F5 only. I have not been able to find out what template holds the text, so I am posting it here. [[User:Anárion| (Anárion)]] 22:23, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The template is MediaWiki:Usercssjs and I've made this change now. Angela . 14:22, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

You should probably update MediaWiki:Clearyourcache as well. - 14:28, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

Thank you! [[User:Anárion| (Anárion)]] 14:29, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

AAH!!!

I just finished a fresh install of Windows and don't have any browser other than IE so far (sux, don't it?). Why is my User sig green (the part that says Ilyanep in random greek letters)? It's supposed to be grey-ish. Is this a web-safe color violation or something? Or did monobook.css change recently? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:43, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Looks grey-ish even in ~~MSIE~~ my mistake: I forgot I had changed the app path of iexplore.exe to Firething with an IE skin. Have you checked your videocard drivers? [[User:Anárion| (Anárion)]] 22:45, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's green on my computer but if you change the color in the font tag from "grey" to "gray" it should show up as gray. --Chessphoon 22:46, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I use MSIE 6 (no SP1 yet tho, I'm crazy aren't I?) and it does look green to me. BTW, my drivers are fine (Catalyst 3.8, however I am going to download 4 soon). Thanks for the advice, Chessphoon. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:49, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

How's this look? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:50, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC) Normal

It's gray again! I'm on SP2 by the way. --Chessphoon 22:53, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Your sig has always looked bright green to me (MSIE 6.0 on XP). Now that you've switched from color="grey" to color="gray", it's properly grey. :-)

Apparently some versions of MSIE aren't aware of American and British English differences, and when it sees a color name it doesn't recognize, it looks for a substring match (grey → green). • Benc • 23:21, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The correct HTML color keyword is "gray". "Grey", as far as a browser is concerned, is not even a word, so they can treat it however they want. I imagine many of them work around the problem by making "grey" == "gray" (they get to choose what "grey" is, as it's not defined). —Rory ☺ 12:12, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Please, for the sake of doing what is best for humanity and its posterity, stop using Microsoft products!!! ;-) func(talk) 00:36, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Func is joking but in all seriousness since I switched to firefox I've never looked back. It is a much better browser.It's small, fast, free, and runs on windows. Well worth giving it a go Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 08:18, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As is Opera, of course! Apwoolrich 08:43, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It depends on your needs. Some people want a Swiss army knife. Others want a knife where you can add/remove extra stuff as necessary. If you're of the latter group, Firefox [13] will suit you fine. If you're not, Opera or the Mozilla Suite's your best bet. But as a webmaster, I can state that MSIE users are holding the web back, because MS only supports CSS 1, which is annoying when CSS 2 can even replace Javascript in some places. Johnleemk | Talk 08:47, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

AFAIK, no browser supports full CSS2 (not even Amaya), although MSIE for Mac was the first to achieve better than 99% support for CSS1. Recent versions of MSIE are just a little bit worse in their CSS2 support than competing browsers (though admittedly, the things MSIE fails to support are frequently important). -- Wapcaplet 18:35, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Amaya has less support for CSS2 than most browsers actually. Opera 7.5 supports most of CSS2, and all of the current CSS2.1 CR. (Although there remain a few bugs.) [[User:Anárion|Åℕάℛℹℴη]] 20:13, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Finally got Firefox 0.9.3 — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 01:33, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Safari for the Mac!!! Oh... um, what was the question? ;-) func(talk) 05:01, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As long as it's not IE (I don't even remember how the discussion got to browsers...) — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 05:48, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've recently switched to Mozilla (not Firefox) from IE, entirely because I needed a break from the perenial problems Wikipedia gave on both IE5 and IE6. It's working well but I'm not at all comfortable with the decision. I'm guessing that most of our readers use IE, and that many of them have no real choice. IMO our default skin should support IE well. It doesn't, and IMO one of the reasons it doesn't is that so many of our movers and shakers use other browsers, and now I've joined them. Now if I wreck the articles I edit so far as IE users go, I won't even notice. Food for thought? Andrewa 12:37, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In principle, I agree: Wikipedia shouldn't become a participant in the lingering Browser Wars, but on the other hand, every concession made to IE is another step backwards for Internet technology: MS simply doesn't choose to move forward on any technology until they are absolutely forced to by competition. If websites had followed the notion of always supporting the absolute least common denominator, we wouldn't even have animated gifs today, let alone CSS2. func(talk) 16:36, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Old polls

Wikipedia has some polls that started months ago. The voting virtually stops at some point but is never formally closed and then, months later, someone comes across the page and adds a vote. Like Wikipedia talk:Fame and importance which started more than 7 months ago, received about 70 votes back then, with an inconclusive outcome. Now, it is still getting one or two more votes a month.

Is that right? Polls should have a certain end date. Could we have all polls formally closed after at most a month, with a clear message put on the page? Andris 23:13, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Technically the poll is invalid if it has no end date. Johnleemk | Talk 07:56, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Depends on the type of poll. I don't see a problem with leaving a poll like the fame and importance one open, as it is one of those global issues that doesn't really change in its fundamental nature. Remember that polls are essentially meaningless anyway. They're just rough indicators of how users feel on an issue. anthony (see warning) 16:45, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Typically, you can say that the poll is useless if not the interpretation of the outcome is decided before the poll starts. [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 19:05, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikimedia meetup 2005

Preliminary musings have begun at m:Wikimedia meetup 2005. Those interested in attending are invited to review the current proposals, make new ones, and discuss logistics. Austin Hair 00:50, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Copyrighted Art

Which tag is preferable for images of copyrighted works of visual art? I'm not very good with legalese, so I would also like a very plain explanation of what would be involved in using such a license? I would also like to know if there are any special stipulations for photographs of sculptures and buildings? Justin Foote 01:34, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

James and I wrote the Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ to give people a basic understanding of copyright law. It's a bit confusing in this case -- basically, pictures of 2D works old enough to be in the public domain (created before 1922) are also public domain, regardless of when the picture was taken (because a picture of a public domain picture is still public domain, according to the Bridgeman case). However, for 3d objects such as statues, taking a picture (which involves deciding what angle, among other things) involves creative input. This creative input is large enough to warrant a new copyright. Thus, picture of 3D objects are copyrighted. →Raul654 03:06, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

First thing to say is that if the work of art is sufficiently old it will have passed into the public domain (q.v. that article for the details of what "sufficiently old" means). As for works of art that actually are copyrighted, the same goes as for any other image — the copyright holder has to license them for use, and then on the image description page you need to state this license. As for your other question, displaying a photo of a sculpture or building doesn't violate the "copyright" of that sculpture or building. (Warning, entirely irrelevant fact: in North Korea if you take a picture of a statue it has to be from the front and include the entire body in the frame). If you took the photo you can choose to license it as you see fit. Are there any particular scenarios you have in mind that prompted you to ask the question? If you give the details someone may be able to offer better advice. Thanks. — Trilobite (Talk) 02:54, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We're generally not interested in images of copyrighted works of visual art. If the copyright holder has decided to release those copyrighted works under a free license, then you'd tag the image with the tag for that license. Otherwise, we don't want it. anthony (see warning) 13:49, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Can anyone do a little image fix?

File:Hywel Francis.JPG

For an image of Hywel Francis (see right), I'd like to take the white backround off. Can someone do this for me? Thanks. :) [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 05:08, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Do you want it (the grey background) cropped out (which IMHO would look very dumb) or do you want the grey background erased (IE, turned white)? →Raul654 05:17, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Erased is what I meant. "Cropped" wasn't the right word to use. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 05:18, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Done. →Raul654 05:21, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Category help

I've got a question with categories. We have Category:Montreal Expo players, but we also have Category:Los Angeles Dodgers players. Since the teams themselves are almost always referred to in a plural form (i.e. Montreal Expos) shouldn't the teams, when named in category, reflect this? It seems very inconsistent. Anybody want to take a stab? Rhymeless 05:31, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Formatting help

There is a formatting problem with List of countries with mains power plugs, voltages & frequencies.

It displays fine on Xp, but not on all other systems according to User:Darrien (my Linux machine is screwed, so I can't check this at the moment). The fix he proposes (align="left") breaks the display on everything except Internet Explorer. Any clues as to how to fix this for all? Chameleon 13:20, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Continued on article's talk page

Downloading images

The images tarball (available here) hasn't been updated since July 2. Can someone do this? anthony (see warning) 14:16, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You might get a faster response if you ask this in #mediawiki since it needs a developer. Alternatively, there is the non-development tasks for developers page, but I don't know how often they check that. Angela . 14:27, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Major Minor

Did the m for minor become M for minor, on Recent changes? Or am I hallucinating? Assuming I'm not, let me express my view that m is more appropriate for minor than is M. --Tagishsimon

****. They're back to m again. <checks into the priory> --Tagishsimon

It's a software problem. Can't be helped, sadly. Johnleemk | Talk 14:49, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Apparantly M is the software standard, so when there is a problem loading the custom m, it automatically replaces it with the upper case M. I posted this on the Village Pump a few days ago. Darksun 19:42, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

TV Naming conventions.

I have instigated a new poll on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television). I am hoping that this poll will properly allow all users who have an interest in the subject to express their views fairly before we come to a consensus. I have scrapped the poll that was previously in place on that page, which was to endorse a unilaterally declared policy and had just had its deadline extended, because I believe that it was part of an unfair procedure that was going against the majority view, which was generally against thatpolicy. I am appealing to all users who contribute to that page to approve my actions. I would appreciate it if users could take the time and trouble to read the page carefully and express an opinion and vote as they see fit. I am hoping that the page you see after reading this still contains the poll that I am instigating, as the disruptive user who unilaterally created the policy has been reverting it. Mintguy (T) 17:06, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Let me see if I understand you: there was a poll already in place, you decided that existing poll was "unfair" and "going against the majority view", so you replaced it with your own version of the poll? -- orthogonal 19:14, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

And engaged in a revert war in order to get your replacement poll on the page, and won that revert war by using your sysop powers to block your opponent in the revert war? How exactly do you think this upholds anything Wikipedia is about? Why not just vote "oppose" on the exiting "unfair" poll and open your new poll on another page? -- orthogonal 19:19, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No the old poll was a poll to endorse a unilaterally defined policy. That poll had reached its deadline with a majority of people voting to not endorse the policy. The dealine was then artificially extended by the same user who instigated it. I am instigating a new poll which allows people to choose from a range of options rather than just to approve an option which has already been voted down twice. Mintguy (T) 00:14, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The poll specified that in the case of less than 2/3 majority, it would be extended a week. The vote was Yes=4, No=7 (and one unsigned) - which last I checked was less than 2/3 majority. Everyone who signed the poll agreed to the written conditions. -- Netoholic @ 02:28, 2004 Sep 14 (UTC)

I chose to abstain from voting as the instigation of your poll was invalid to start with. But even by the criterion that you unilaterally instigated there were 8 votes to 4 == 2/3 majority. User:Mackerm forgot to sign but his vote still counts, don't you think? Mintguy (T) 02:36, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I guarantee that if one of the Yes votes had not signed, you'd have complained and pulled the vote... Oh wait, you did that unilaterally anyway. I really do wish you'd keep these little conversations of ours in one place. It would make responding so much easier. -- Netoholic @ 03:22, 2004 Sep 14 (UTC)

Well, as always you mis-judge me. Anyway last word - I did not come to this page to converse, but to let people know what was going on. Mintguy (T)

Chinese language translation issues

I've just noticed that the Chang Jiang (Yangtze) is literally the "long river" and that the Huang He is literally the "yellow river". Since they seem to share no character in common, are there multiple Chinese characters that are all best translated as river in English or are we just fudging the translations somewhat... in which case the qualification of said translations as "literal" is inappropiate. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 17:14, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Jiang and He both mean river. - Nat Kraus e 17:51, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Jiang in general, is bigger than He. (At least, when it enters the ocean.) The problem is that in these two particular instances, historical naming takes precedence. Huang He was settled around Xi'an and Xiangyang (btw, why does Xi'an have that '?) at which point the river is not quite wide enough to be called a Jiang. On the other hand, the Yangtze was settled more in the east (Shanghai area), where it was wider. So it rated a Jiang. At least, that's how it was explained to me. -Vina 06:07, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure under which category to request an article

I would like to request an article about Jasper Holmes but can't decide which heading to put him under on the request page. Just before the WW11 Battle of Midway, the US had no cryptographic way of determining Japan's code name for Midway. They had cracked Japan's JN-25 code and knew the target was AF, but didn't know where AF was located. Holmes, a young US naval officer, very cunningly tricked the Japanese into revealing that AF was Midway. Anyone got a suggestion on what category to use? (When I say category I don't mean category. Moriori 22:09, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

History I guess...but you seem to know enough about him to write an article yourself (or at least a stub). Adam Bishop 00:11, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I guess you're right. Stub it is. Cheers. Moriori 00:18, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

This information, including the offcer's name, is already at Battle of Midway#US Intelligence, I suppose you are aware of that. Andrewa 12:19, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Of course. But if any codebreaker deserves his own page, it is Holmes. His lateral thinking did much to win the naval war in the Pacific. I'm looking for material. E-mailed the US Navy yesterday, but no reply yet. Cheers. Moriori 20:27, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Categories and Press releases

As stated on the talk page, Monday Night Football is referred to at http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=list/mondaynight . There is a category (or maybe template) that had pages that was linked to by the press or media or some such thing. and I can't find it. How do I go about finding things like that? (especially during times when search is disabled...) - Vina 23:53, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Press Coverage Rmhermen 01:57, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Offline database

Is there a step by step guide to setting up a database for private SQL queries? --Sgeo | Talk 00:09, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Yes,

1. Download the database dump at http://download.wikipedia.org

2. read all about how to load it, query it and so forward on http://dev.mysql.com/doc/ -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 08:19, 2004 Sep 14 (UTC)

How do I reform Wikipedia?

In my time at Wikipedia I've noticed several broken aspects of Wikipedia policy (for details, see User:AaronSw/Policy_comments). As a key example, take the deletion mechanism. There is apparently no good reason to delete pages on a Wiki (assuming a minor software fix to treat empty pages as deleted for purposes of link color and such), but yet Wikipedia continues deleting pages.

This has actively harmful consequences: Content gets deleted. People leave Wikipedia. (It's very close to getting me to leave Wikipedia and when I griped about this to a friend, he responded that he left Wikipedia after a page he worked on was deleted.) And so on.

So is there any way to get rid of the current deletion policy, or other disagreeable parts of Wikipedia? Do I just need to convince Jimbo? Take a vote? Build consensus here? What do I do? AaronSw 01:03, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There have been many proposed theories about how to reform the deletion policy, but none (to my knowledge) have ever proposed not deleting pages at all. Some reasons for why some articles have to be deleted are explained at Wikipedia:Deletion policy and Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion, both of which I suggest you read. [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 01:51, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There will always be a need to delete articles as we aim to be an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, nor a cookbook nor a blog nor a random collection of random ramblings of random contributors. Rmhermen 01:54, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

The idea of displaying links to blank pages in the same way as links to non-existent pages has been suggested before, see m:Pure wiki deletion system (proposal). There is a camp which is in opposition to the idea. To effect change on Wikipedia, you need to have an understanding of the politics and power here. You need to convince the majority of the users, and it helps to get a few influential people on board, such as Jimbo. You have to understand the nature of the developer roadblock, or else you'll be frustrated. Most developers are averse to controversy, they generally won't write something likely to be controversial even if they agree with it. The easiest way to get around this in my opinion is to learn how to program. -- Tim Starling 02:22, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

I comment only on User:AaronSw/Policy comments#Deleting pages. Do you honestly feel that no page, no matter how ridiculous its content, ought to be truly deleted from this collaborative work? I ask this because your opinion echoes that of a number of Wikipedians who have become disgusted with VfD in recent weeks. The protests against VfD have manifested themselves in various ways; some users have removed subst:vfd from articles while they were being deliberated upon, while others have unlisted articles there without seeking consensus. Still others regularly chastize those who do not vote to keep, gleefully lecturing them on what they should have done instead; one even proposed an "autokeep" template for people who would like to unconditionally keep all articles listed on VfD without further deliberation. So I find it hard to read your proposal to never delete any page, regardless of its content, as anything but another attempt to subvert VfD. (Or, rather, I can see that VfD would clearly become a casualty of war if such a proposal were implemented.)
We all know that VfD has its flaws. It's bulky, it's confrontational, many articles that are put on there shouldn't be. But for all its flaws, VfD works, and results in the cleanup or wholesale removal of hundreds of articles each month. I'm new to the internal politics around here, having only joined your ranks in June, but I am impressed with the process.
I see much of the objection to the present deletion policy as part of the inevitable holy war between Meta:Inclusionism and Meta:Deletionism. I find it healthy, and as such, I don't see anything drastic enough to warrant a change in any policy. Nobody ever wins a holy war. Time spent trying to reform a functional deletion policy would be better spent trying to invigorate WP:CU and WP:PNA so they could churn out high-quality articles at a faster rate than WP:VFD excised the lowest-quality ones. I am guilty as charged on this front--I've only formally cleaned up one article so far, but I've voted for or against the deletion of hundreds. But the regular cadre of volunteers at VfD mean well. They--and I--just want to make this a work that we can all be proud of. --Ardonik.talk() 03:00, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

I hate to be blunt and rude, but I personally feel that anyone foolish enough to believe that there is no point in deleting an article from Wikipedia needs to take a break and spend a decade or two in the real world. Johnleemk | Talk 08:33, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Just a hunch, but this odd "no good reason to delete pages on a Wiki" rant might not be unconnected with the current VfDing of List of left-wing organizations in the USA, started and tended by Aaron. Most voters appear to think it is a POV mishmash of groups that neo-cons hate, or groups that liberals love. Many voters appear to think the premise of the article is just very very stupid indeed. That, I guess, would be one reason why things like this get deleted. That seems healthy to me; I find the POV in the article offensive and think it reflects very badly on Wikipedia. Sooner it is gone the better. --Tagishsimon

I think there may be a distinction being lost here between deletion of certain content (blanking pages, removing certain content) and deleting pages (deleting their history). It does seem there could be a case for this. Intrigue 17:35, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Million-article press release distribution

For everyone who is planning to help distribute the press release, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has asked that we delay the official announcement until Monday, September 20. This will allow us to work on translating the Foundation's website into other languages, to take advantage of the publicity.

In the meantime, please plan ahead in terms of where you want to send the press release. This would be a good time to start contacting media organizations so that you can determine the right contact person to send the press release to. --Michael Snow 04:37, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Gender neutral pronouns

Discussion moved to: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Gender-neutral pronouns

User:Vapier is going around changing instances of "he or she" to "he" with edit summaries of the gender neutral form in English is "he". This is something that is somewhat controversial, so I was surprised to find nothing in the Manual of Style discussing this. Is there anywhere where what we do in this case has been discussed? —Morven 04:39, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

So is User:Smrits; I've invited him or her over here to join the chat. --Ardonik.talk() 18:37, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

I'm going to make a prediction that not enough people would agree with Vapier's changes for consensus within the WP community, so she or he shouldn't be doing it. func(talk) 04:46, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I am OK with either "he" or "he or she" -- but I reserve the right to chop off the fingers of anyone using singular-they or (shudder) sie/hir ;) →Raul654 05:00, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Why? It is perfectly acceptable. There was an attempt by 18th century prescriptive grammarians to ban it, but they failed. I doubt you are any more likely to succeed. Filiocht 07:49, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's "he" or, if you want to be PC about it, "they". Simple enough. :-)

James F. (talk) 05:16, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Exactly. [[User:Anárion|Åℕάℛℹℴη]] 08:58, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is an important hole to fill in the Manual of Style, I think. I've moved the discussion above to the MoS talk page; please add additional comments there. • Benc • 05:51, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I suggest the use of singular they; it's been in use for a long long time, and is unambiguously part of the English language. Usually not confused with they (plural) because of context, and even so, a small price to pay for not interrupting the flow of an article with coarsely applied PC. zoney ▓ ▒ talk 12:40, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Actually, "he" is technically still the indeterminate gender. However, usage always determines meaning, and so it is safe to say that it is only technically the indeterminate gender pronoun. Therefore, the best solution, far and away, is a compound form "he or she" and "she or he," as there is no number or orthographic disjunction. "They" is not a proper solution, as it violates number. "S/he" (or the flippant "S/h/it") is a grapheme and not a phoneme (you can't say the word). Feigned rediscovery of Anglo-Saxon hasn't support and would confuse readers (and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, rather than an advocacy journal). Using "the" is acceptable, although it can make the prose rigid. Geogre 12:49, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have no basis for this speculation, so please correct me if I'm off the mark, but wasn't "you" also at one time a plural pronoun (and violate number when used in the singular)? I'll admit I kind of like using "they" in a singular context, though there are times when it's definitely inappropriate (e.g. The doctor is out; they went to lunch). T-bomb 14:43, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Indeed it was, although also used as formal second person singular (as French vous/ Spanish usted). The informal form was thou. Languages change over time or they die. Filiocht 14:58, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I never understood why people are ashamed of using the word it, which is the gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun. 80.58.23.107 14:47, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It is not gender free in the sense of not distinguishing between nouns that have gender. It is gender free in the sense of standing for nouns that have no gender, a common enough group in English. 'The doctor is out; it went to lunch.' is nonsense. 'The car is here; it's waiting outside.' is unexceptional. 'Someone called when you were out. They said they'd ring back.' is also unexceptional IMHO. Filiocht 14:59, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

So my prediction has come true, there is no consensus, so Vapier shouldn't be going around and implemting a global change to articles he has no edit history with. func(talk) 15:28, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, they shouldn't be doing that :-) zoney ▓ ▒ talk 15:35, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

English names

I'm a bit confused on the naming policy. We are supposed to use the names most familiar in the English world, yes? Which is why the article is at Germany, not Deutschland. Okay. But when DO we use the local names? For example, the article for the city is at Havana, but the article for the province surrounding the city is at La Habana Province. But, another province (actually, a special municipality) of Cuba, is at Isle of Youth, instead of the local form, Isla de la Juventud. Is there a rhyme or reason to this that I'm missing at 4am? Is it because the city of Havana is well-known to us gringos, but the province is not? I'm not suggesting we start renaming things (And I do think provinces and the like should retain local name, unless horribly ingrained in English), I'm just trying to figure out what the threshhold is! And the island, being a geologic feature, gets the standard English name? (which is why Mt. Fuji instead of Fujiyama, but Mont Blanc instead of White Mountain) Or is it simply more well known as the Isle of Youth? Any comments? (and no, this is not the time to discuss Kiev, Calcutta or Bombay. :P) --Golbez 08:42, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Often there is no real sense, especially when names are known by an English from and a native form. One test is to use Google. Set it to search in English only, then search on both forms of the name. Sometimes searches of the type "Montreal -Montréal" and "Montréal -Montreal" are best as they find only pages that have either one form or the other, not both. The hyphen tells Google to omit hits of pages that contain the form following the hyphen. Sometimes you need to add other keywords (such as the name of the country) to avoid getting references to the same name not applied to the particular place you are concerned with.

The resulting count alone sometimes makes it obvious which is by far the most common form used in English. If the counts are close to being equal (which I have not seen happen much), check the kinds of articles that come up. Does one spelling seem to occur more often in older literary references and the other more often in current news stories? If there is nothing to really break the tie, then either can be justified as the name of an article. In that case, I would tend to go with more official and pedantic usage, to use the local name, with the English name as a redirect. And within articles one should probably often use both forms on first mention, putting one form in brackets or in quotation marks if it is the normal English translation of a non-English form.

Jallan 14:25, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Rambot articles: completely useless?

I've been using Random page as a timewaster for the past few days, and I've found a lot of interesting articles. There is an immense list of articles which appear to be completely useless, however: the various Rambot articles about USA towns. They come up almost one in five today. Take for example Ladera Heights, California: I learn nothing from the article about the town itself, only some census data. There is no info on the origin of the town, the layout, the history, etc.. I honestly do not see what is gained by the inclusion of these articles other than a huge article number. And that's not even mentioning the lack of wikification they suffer from, and that they assume a USA audience: apparently everyone should know Cobb County, Georgia is in the USA State Georgia, and not in the Caucasus country of Georgia. [[User:Anárion|Ⓐℕάℛℹℴɴ]] 14:14, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In the case of the two Georgias, the answer is in the naming convention. X,Y indicates the US addressing convention. So long as it's "Tiblisi, Georgia" and not "Tiblisi," it's a subunit in the US. That includes Memphis, Tennessee vs. Memphis. Geogre 14:51, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Everyone hates Rambot. Thing is, Rambot has its uses. First, the stuff manages to cover the US. That there isn't one for Australia or England is something actually that we should regret (see below). I don't exactly enjoy reading an article about a town of 300 in Montana, either. No one does. However, I think they do no harm. First, like "Gamamiel was a character in Return of the King and he was awesome" gets defended on VfD every time with the logic that "someone will make a real article of it," the Rambot articles can similarly be improved. Secondly, when you are writing about Battle of Bull Run, it's nice to be able to say it occurred in Manassas, Virginia and know that that's going to be a blue link that will, in fact, tell someone where and what that town is. The biggest reason I like Rambot (even if I don't like any of its articles) is that these are NPOV articles. They're brainless, and that means they're without POV. Think about what would happen if locals wrote their town articles only when motivated to do so. For an example, look, indeed, at the coverage of villages in England and Scotland or small towns in Australia. They're fragmentary. They're incomplete. They include irrelevancies. They include inaccuracies. Again, I'm not saying that I enjoy any Rambot articles. I was sincere when I said that everyone hates Rambot. I hate Rambot, too, but I like what Rambot does, and I think Rambot is very, very valuable to us. Geogre 14:46, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

These articles aren't NPOV. Rambot collects information from an old-fashioned and biased source which has a limited understanding of ethnicity or gender. Each original Rambot article is a throwback to the 1950s and hopelessly POV. --[[User:Eequor|η

υωρ]] 21:15, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Oh, one more on that: Rambot prevents some of the kiddie slams that come with towns. On New Pages patrol, I've had to speedy delete quite a few "Bumfsford is a stupid little town with wankers living in it" kinds of things. Rambot does us a favor by getting there first and preventing some of the juvenile high spirits by intimidating the would-be vandal. Geogre 14:51, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Damn you deletionist! The Bumfsford Wankers are our football team here in Bumfsford! -- orthogonal 17:49, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The population figure of 300 is interesting, because there are high schools with that many students, and trailer parks with considerably more than that many people, yet high schools and trailer parks are often placed onto VfD. func(talk) 15:23, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As they should be. What has relative population to do with it? Stephen King is a person of one, but that doesn't mean he is not more notable than a country club with 1,000 members. Sherlock Holmes is not even real. A village with a population of 300 is more notable and encyclopedic than an apartment building with a population of 1,000. Would you argue for inclusion in Wikipedia for an article on every apartment building in the world with over 300 apartments? The rambot articles, despite their ugliness, at least provide solid information that is of use to some people. The articles on high schools and trailer parks that get put onto VfD, if retained in Wikipedia, mostly get in the way of anyone looking for genuine information on the high school or trailer park, just annoying and uninformative stubs, coming up on mirror after mirror. Jallan 19:42, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's extremely silly to compare people as being equivalent to cities. Relative population does not apply to individual people; most everyone is no more populous than anyone else. --[[User:Eequor|η

υωρ]] 21:15, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Not everyone hates Rambot. I love the little bugger.
If there's not enough information, add one. Consider most Rambot articles geo-stubs and get to work. Though I agree we could live with a little less census info, though I have found racial distribution and income info (particularly for Killington, New Hampshire interesting.
I want there to be Rambots for every country. Every frickin municipality on this ball should be on here. And work down from there.
As for some trailer parks and high schools having more people, yes, but high schools and trailer parks are still part of a municipality. And I'm not much of a deletionist, so. --Golbez 17:06, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Rambot is cool - sure, many of the articles could do with more info, but they are a great start. Intrigue 17:15, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't hate the Rambot. (I actually named the Rambot, back in the day). The Rambot gives us a place to start. Here, from my user page are some of my additions to Rambot (including those controversial Georgia counties). I assume many others have done the same:

Above and beyond the rambot: I coined the word and also added substantially to the articles on Newton, Massachusetts, my home, Valdosta, Georgia, my home town and the high school football capital of the world, Moody Air Force Base, where I mention the beloved Miss Peaches and her immortal "Callin' Moody Field"; and Cedar Key, Florida, where I stayed overnight and was served gruel for breakfast; identified the namesake of Deaf Smith County, Texas;Habersham County, Georgia and Hall County, Georgia, wherein I quote Sidney Lanier's "Song of the Chattahoochee", about the river that starts there:

OUT of the hills of Habersham,

Down the valleys of Hall,

I hurry amain to reach the plain,

Run the rapid and leap the fall,

Split at the rock and together again

On to the musical history of Macon, Georgia and West Memphis, Arkansas; more poetry, why lovely villages on plains are named Auburn; Whitehall, Michigan; Magoffin County, Kentucky, birthplace of Larry Flynt; Lebanon, Pennsylvania; Waltham, Massachusetts; Erick, Oklahoma, my prize catch so far; Oregon City, Oregon; Ferriday, Louisiana, three piano-playing fools from there; Florence, Alabama; Orange Park, Florida, where my father was born and his father went broke; Winslow, Arizona (guess what); Enterprise, Alabama and its boll weevil statue; Lithonia, Georgia, birthplace of Brenda Lee; Stone Mountain, Georgia, the next little town over, home of Stone Mountain; Del Rio, Texas, home of XERF; Canton, Mississippi; Bogalusa, Louisiana; Zanesville, Ohio, hometown of Zane Grey;, and more tomorrow. Ortolan88 17:54, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That's very impressive, but do you really need a bot to create the articles for you? Surely you aren't helpless to produce original articles. --[[User:Eequor|η

υωρ]] 21:15, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I remember when I first started contributing to Wikipedia, somewhere close to half our total articles were Rambot city-census-data articles. "Random page" then led to even more tiresome results; I've been random-browsing recently, as well, and have come across far (relatively) fewer than I used to. Unfortunately, still about half the randomly-selected articles tend to be sub-stubs, which is probably the bigger problem right now. At any rate, I think the Rambot stuff is good! Consistent, factual NPOV information, spanning what is likely the largest article category we have. Users visiting those pages might notice "Hey, none of the really interesting things about this city are mentioned," and add some info, feeling probably more comfortable in contributing knowing that the article already has some solid information. They are an ideal stub, beginning with a solid foundation and leaving plenty of room for improvement. -- Wapcaplet 18:49, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedians (particularly the Rambot whiners) should do their own home town, the town they live in, the town they went to college in, every town they know something about, and, when in the course of life they come across some information about a town, they can pretty much count on the Rambot having put it in the Wikipedia and can go there and add something to an already existing article. A book I'm reading says the Gypsy moth was introduced in Medford, Massachusetts. The current article doesn't mention that (or Tufts University, not even Jumbo!), so I'll go add them in, and so on and so on, and shooby dooby do, as the Rambot improves the Wikipedia. Ortolan88 19:04, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC) PS - I guess it is interesting that users of the Random page function, presumably among the more devoted Wikiites, are also the main complainers about the Rambot. No one else knows there's a "problem" or would even consider it such.

You left out the most important fact about Medford: it is the location of the first Krispy Kreme in Massachusetts. Opened last fall, I believe. Mmmm, mmmm, Krispy Kremes! I think I better go add that to the article right now, as soon as I stop drooling. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 20:23, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Holy Prepuce

~~On the main page, why does the Holy Prepuce look like the planet Saturn?~~ func(talk) 15:16, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Er... it just disappeared. func(talk) 15:17, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I can't help but think, "Holy Prepuce, Batman!" -- orthogonal 15:36, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I take it that you have read the article. The reference to Saturn occurs in the 'Allegorical importance' section. I think someone expressed some copyright concerns over what was the lead image in the article, which might explain the brief appearance of Saturn on the front page -- Solipsist 17:51, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Encylopedia that Slashdot Built Awards

A periodic award given to pairs of articles that typify this acusation. This month we have two art related articles:

. Mona Lisa (often described as the most famous work in art history) - our article is 2255 words (excluding links) with two pictures.
. OS-tan a (small internet phenomenon on Futaba Channel) we give 2706 words and 19 pictures. Admitedly, this article describes a number of individual works.

This is a Slashdot Ratio of 1.2, not a startlingly high ratio, but an interesting reflection on our art history coverage! Mark Richards 17:51, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Mark, could it be that some art pages suffer because some wikipedians are being overly cautious? I pondered adding a second pic to Michelangelo's David, because the current illustration does not illustrate scale/proportion, although it is a truly superb photo. I have a pic I took myself that does illustrate the very large scale of the work, because there are people in it, but it's of slightly lower quality. Be(ing) Bold around here lately has caused little except hassles, so I decided to give it a miss. I can just imagine having to justify having two similar-ish pics in the same article, or, to justify using only my photo because it is the better illustration. Oh my. Moriori 21:12, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Please, I think you should be bold on this! I think a famous artwork like that could do with two pictures! Mark Richards 21:29, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

User:SimonArlott's indiscriminate edits

User:SimonArlott unleashed himself on Wikipedia today and went around turning any link or reference remotely British into reference to United Kingdom. He stopped a while back. Here are examples of his mistake: [British Empire to United kingdom] and another (reverted) from [Boer War to United Kingdom]

How can all of this be undone? Left as it is, it will take a lot of time before it is corrected. Just take a look at his edits. There are so many of them that I even thought he was running a bot. --Ankur 19:05, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, if you've got the patience, you can go through his user contributions and find all of these. If we can get a solid consensus that this is enough of a problem to merit rolling back all of work he did in a particular period, it's relatively easy for an administrator to do that to any articles that have not had subsequent edits. I'm not willing to do that on one person's say-so, and would be a little hesitant to do it on a consensus that does not include Simon himself. -- Jmabel 21:38, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

I take back my demand of full revert. I talked with Simon. Some of his edits were correct. While those that I pointed and maybe more are wrong. I am afraid I can not go through all of them. Hopefully wrong ones will be corrected over time. --Ankur 21:46, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Problem pictures

Certain articles contain pictures that are causing problems. These pictures not only wont load, but also stop all other pictures on other pages from loading after the problem picture has failed to load.

There is one on Earth. (The second picture down I think). Now I have gone there and I can't load any pictures (even outside of Wikipedia). If I reboot I will be able to again. Bensaccount 19:59, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I am not having the same problem. What's your browser and connection? (Mine's Mozilla 1.7.2 on Win2K on an SDSL line behind a NAT/firewall.) - jredmond 20:10, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Maybe a browser problem? I've never experienced anything like this (Firething), though I occasionally encounter an invisible image, or one that won't display (usually just a missing thumbnail); the Earth page all loads fine for me. -- Wapcaplet 20:15, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia format changes

Today I've noticed that there are some formatting changes that have been taking place around Wikipedia and they keep appearing and then going away. For example, under the article title, instead of saying "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" it has said just "From Wikipedia" or, as it is right now, nothing at all. On the recent changes page, instead of a lower case "m" to indicate a minor change, it's been showing a capital "M" sometimes. And the "Search results" page that comes up when you enter an article name that doesn't exist in the search box and press Go no longer has a link to create the article. What's going on?? --Chessphoon 21:17, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is an ongoing problem with the way messages are handled. Sometimes the MediaWiki: namespace messages (e.g. MediaWiki:Minoreditletter) are not used, and the software defaults are used instead (which in this case is a captial M). Angela . (based on an earlier reply by Kate) 21:52, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)