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Stealing from Wikipedia?

This site seems to be stealing articles directly from Wikipedia and not giving any credit. Is that allowed?

It seems to have most of the articles, and they must update every so often.

So is that legal? Stealing information from a website, without giving them any credit? 69.68.63.96 01:06, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

They indicate that the articles are from Wikipedia on http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/copyright.html The GFDL, under which Wikipedia is distributed, permits reproducing Wikipedia content under its terms. Nohat 01:39, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ah, didn't see that page. Thanks for pointing it out. Actually, the page seems very obvious right now. Sorry for not looking into things and jumping to conclusions. 69.68.63.96 02:42, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No worries. You're not the first to have made that mistake. It ought to be in the FAQ. Nohat 06:04, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC) See also Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks Nohat 06:07, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Heh! I'm amused that looking at their page for British English they've replaced the link to Cockney with [[Censored page]]! I wonder why that could be... (though they're quite happy with "Cockney" in the text without a link). -- Arwel 17:02, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
They probably don't like Scunthorpe much either then! Dunc_Harris|☺ 11:33, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
'Clitheroe' is in so it's sexist. they have censored Cockerel, Cockermouth and cockle but not Bowdlerization. Anything word contain the substr 'cock'. Not really a very informed approach, you'd think they could manage an exeptions list.--Jirate 15:20, 2004 Oct 16 (UTC)
kids.net.au has censored the entry on felching. Some weeks ago, it was unrestricted and caused some laughs in the #wikipedia channel, since their slogan is: Kids.net.au — Search engine for kids, children, educators and teachers — Searching sites designed for kids that are child safe and clean. — David Remahl 19:06, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Religion

Although Meta contains List of Wikipedians by religion, little is said of religions specific to Wikipedia. I've written a brief article about the role of religion in the Wikipedian community, which can be found at Religion and Wikipedia. --[[User:Eequor|η♀υωρ]] 07:19, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Uh, Ninjas? -- Solitude 06:49, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)
LOL! This is extremely funny! :) func(talk) 02:33, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Yes it is! Can we start a list of Wikipedians by these religions? I want to sign up as an Inclusionist. Spalding 11:45, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)

Soylent Green conumdrum

Wikipedia's article on Soylent Green primarily discusses the 1963 film. However the most common use of the term 'Soylent Green' today is in reference to the fictional product which is the main reveal at the end of the film. As such the lead paragraph of the article should mention both the film and the product, but I can't think of a way to do that without violating the spoiler warning. -- Solipsist 18:32, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Like, don't you want to discuss this on the article's talk page? — Frecklefoot | Talk 19:15, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)
Possibly, but the problem isn't article specific. Its more about the spoiler tag and self reference. -- Solipsist 21:08, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Stick the spoiler tag at the very top. Or come to think of it, before the spoiler you can say just what you said here: "the most common use of the term 'Soylent Green' today is in reference to the fictional product which is the main reveal at the end of the film." -- Jmabel 22:01, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)
Doh! You're right. Sometimes just phrasing a question carefully can show the answer. -- Solipsist 16:25, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Year articles

At Talk:1, there are a few Wikipedians who think that a better choice for articles 50 and less is for the number articles to be titled the number alone 20 and the year articles to be titled something like 20 A.D., as opposed to 20 (number) and 20. Does anyone have any comments?? (Please note that this is for 1 to 50 only, not 51 and above, which is where years should have no suffix and numbers should have the (number) suffix as agreed by everyone.) 66.245.114.60 20:28, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think 20 A.D., etc. should redirect, but an awful lot of articles are already in existence and a lot of editors are already in the habit of doing it the way it is. If someone wants to change rather than just add, it's going to mean a commitment to go through existing articles (maybe bot-assisted) and make a lot of changes. -- Jmabel 22:05, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)
20 A.D., 20 AD, 20 C.E. and 20 CE should all redirect. There was an idea to have cross references to other date systems - did anything ever happen there? The Recycling Troll 23:23, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I don't think redirects are needed, after all, there's not much links to the examples you provided. zoney ♣ talk 23:39, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It wouldn't because of redirects, but so that people searching would be redirected, rather than getting the impression that the article does not exist. I think that 20AD is probably a more common way of saying year 20 than simply 20, it seems reasonable to redirect common ways of writing the dates. The Recycling Troll 17:25, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There's already a redirect from AD 20. Remember that AD goes before the year. (Putting "AD" after the year is not only less correct, but less common: compare for example Google for "54 AD" Nero with Google for "AD 54" Nero.) Gdr 11:35, 2004 Oct 12 (UTC)

"Unmistakable message from God"

Didn't seem right to post this on images for deletion but I couldn't think of where else it could be mentioned. Image:GODvsBUSH.gif seems to be too pro-God, too anti-Bush and way too POV to have a place on here. It's not linked to by any articles in the main namespace as far as I am aware, though some people seem to have linked to from their user/talk pages.

May I suggest BJAODN? -- Graham ☺ | Talk 15:41, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Makes you think though... Mark Richards 17:20, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Might be funnier if it were true. However... --jpgordon 23:50, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
What makes this Snopes article really interesting is that the descriptive links for the 3 hurricanes point back here to Wikipedia :-) --Phil | Talk 12:43, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)
Interesting. Agree it's not in any way related to building an encyclopedia! But Wikipedia:Images for deletion reads This page is only for listing images which are duplicates or otherwise unneeded. For cases of (possible) fair use, see Wikipedia:Fair use. For copyright infringements, use Wikipedia:Copyright problems. For licensing issues that are not copyright infringements, use Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images so there doesn't seem any way of dealing with this. And is there really any need to? Is it doing any harm? As long as anyone wants to use it on their user page and no article uses it, I say leave it alone.
If you really want to delete it, I guess you need to orphan it, which means negotiating with the user (I only see one now) who has linked to it. Once it's orphaned it can then be listed as an image for deletion. Andrewa 00:04, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It's linked to by User:The bellman/random stuff and User:Ta bu shi da yu. As it's A) horrendously POV and B) been proven false I don't see how it should be allowed, even if it's not linked to from the main namespace. violet/riga (t) 17:46, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Why? There are lots of pictures that are only linked to from user pages. Either they are all OK or they should all be removed. I think we are kind of allowed to be a little POV on our user pages, aren't we? func(talk) 17:02, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia taboos?

Why is certain information taboo on Wikipedia? Shouldn't Wikipedia strive to be as complete as possible? I am specifically referring to things like the name of Kobe Bryant's accuser and the details of secret ceremonies. Taco Deposit | Talk-o Deposit 00:23, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)

In such cases as this, it's not that we can't find out, especially in the former case. Maybe it's to avoid unnecessary propagation of such information on other forks of Wikipedia? [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 06:07, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)

The talk pages make it clear what issues are/were involved. There was even a vote with regard to the sports guy thing. Individual editors who care about those particular artices make decisions regarding them. If you have a problem with them, you should participate on the talk pages, and if you feel you aren't getting any where then you can recommend the page be sent to Peer Review, Clean Up, Requests for Comment, etc. I don't see the issues of these three articles you've brought up as being related. func(talk) 10:01, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

VP section colouring

Being bold, but hopefully not going too far, I've colouring the header section of this (misc) section of the VP. With the sections combined (as I tend to view it) it makes it difficult to scroll down and spot the change of section. With colours for each section (perhaps even colour-coded slightly) I reckon it looks a bit better. Sorry if anyone doesn't like it - it should be easy enough to change back. If it is liked it could then be done for the other sections. violet/riga (t) 09:41, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Incidentally, the village pump menu template doesn't seem to show, though it didn't before. Is this a limit to the number of inclusions or a mistake in the code somewhere? violet/riga (t) 09:46, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The first thing you said. MediaWiki allows the same template to be transcluded at most five times. (See: m:Help:Template#Multiple inclusion of the same template in a page.) HTH, • Benc • 10:43, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Looks fine. Incidentally, this is one comment perhaps appropriate for the Wikipedia talk:Village pump page. I still think we'd get a much more managable no./distribution of comments if we scrapped the miscellaneous section and added one or two more clearly defined headings. zoney ♣ talk 23:53, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Text alignment: left-aligned or fully justified

I have just noticed that paragraphs in articles are fully justified rather than merely left-aligned ('ragged right'). I don't know if this is a recent change to the Wikipedia general style or if I did not notice it before. Does anybody else think it is not as good as left aligned?

As it is part of the preferences everyone can set it the way he wants. However I earlier also had a aligned article, and after doing a Shift-Reload it showed ragged-right as it should according to my preferences. Might be that caching does not remember if it saved a aligned or a non-aligned version. andy 13:33, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Ah. Good clue. I tinkered with a few things and rebooted. I now see that it is gone back to ragged right. I don't know what the problem was but it is fixed now. That was before I found the preference setting for 'Justify paragraphs. It is unchecked, as it should be. If it happens again, I will look there first. Thanks.

FAC protected?

Looks like User:Raul654 has locked the wp:fac page. There's an {inuse} tag put at the top but that was hours ago and there's no mention of why it's still locked down. Any pending changes/problems I'm not aware of or did he just forget to unprotect it? violet/riga (t) 12:59, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Fixed by User:Lord Emsworth. violet/riga (t) 13:26, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Clusty search engine for Wikipedia

I saw a blurb about a new search engine on Slashdot. It included an encyclopaedia search, and I immediately suspected that they were reusing Wikipedia material. They were, but not like most other reusers. Instead, they have simply indexed the database in a clever way, and provide a very smart search that clusters search results in categories. Try for example: a search for "cat". It identifies categories such as "cartoon", "breed", "team/league" etc. The actual search result items are links directly to the master Wikipedia server, so there are no issues with their database being out of date. — David Remahl 14:17, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Cool! Mark Richards 15:14, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps I don't understand exactly what this means technically, but if "The actual search result items are links directly to the master Wikipedia server" does that mean they are making massive hits on our site? -- Jmabel 02:14, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
I should have expressed myself more clearly...The database the results are based on may not be _entirely_ up-to-date, but seems to be updated at least daily. When a user searches, the links to the articles go to en.wikipedia.org. So yes, they're drawing traffic / hits to Wikipedia, which is a good thing (btw, did you see that Wikipedia has broken 300 in Alexa rank the last few days?). — David Remahl 02:24, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I was trying to edit Nautical, but find that clicking on it goes automatically to Wiktionary. How do I edit this page to add content? Thanks, Mark Richards 15:49, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Go to the edit page for any other article, and replace the title in the URL with the redirect you want to edit. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Nautical&action=edit Goplat 18:00, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I've turned it into a "soft redirect". It now just links to Wiktionary rather than going to it. [[User:Norm|Norm]] 20:23, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sanity check

Before I make a faux pas on VfD, are things like SNES Screenshot Gallery and Sega Master System Screenshot Gallery generally considered encyclopedic enuf to be included? Niteowlneils 04:22, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, encyclopedias do have galleries and Wikipedia has many of them. Most of the video game galleries seem to have been created by Tyan23, so you may want to discuss things with him. [[User:Norm|Norm]] 12:37, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"Somewhat of a..."

Moved to Wikipedia_talk:Manual of Style#"Somewhat of a...". Reuben 18:33, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Could use help please!!!

-> Wikipedia:Reference desk#Supermarket headquarters in Spain [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 16:16, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

Sicne I began visiting Wikipedia, I've noticed what seemed to me bias against the government in several articles related to Malaysia, notably Mahathir bin Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim. At first I thought it was just me, but a discussion on the relevant Talk pages recently has revealed that others seem to think so too; however, to date, little has been accomplished. To me, the article on Mahathir gets all the facts right, but twists them into making it appear like he was almost as bad as Hitler; Anwar's article also got the facts right, but omitted other significant contextual facts, leading again to a false impression. Recently, concerns of bias have appeared on a few other articles: Bumiputra and Malaysian New Economic Policy. Can a non-Malaysian please voice his/her opinion(s) of these articles' (N)POVness? I tried WP:RFC a couple of times already, but it's absolutely frustrating over there. Johnleemk | Talk 14:51, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)


Theophilus II article needs edit

There is an error in the article Theophilus II namely that he is not the "II" at all. I feel a little reluctant to make the change myself because it means changing all the links to the page, and I am not sure how to find them all. If someone could either do this or tell me how I would appreciate it. 

Barrett Pashak | Talk 15:55:51 , 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Use the "What links here" on the left side of the screen. It looks like there is a Theophilus II, grandson of Theophilus who claimed the throne in 867 after his father was assassinated. That one is not on our List of Byzantine Emperors. Theophilus II will need to be moved to Theophilus (emperor). Rmhermen 18:13, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
Indeed - there is also a Theophilus (aka Theophilus of Antioch, an early church patriarch), and Theophilus I of Alexandria (another patriarch, I think). Which is the most notable? Presumably a disambiguation page wouls be a good idea too. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:30, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Okay, but how do I change the name of the article from Theophilus II to Theophilus (emperor)? Barrett Pashak 20:03, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

On the left side of the page there is a link labelled "Move this page." Click it. Type in the new name of the article. If nothing else is at that namespace, it will move the article and all its history & it's Talk page. — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:06, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

The links to it will be automatically redirected, and can be fixed at your (or someone elses) leisure. Mark Richards 21:46, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Curious, I'd already got a note on trying to sort out the references to Theophilus (without and numeral), for which I've noted three different people:
  • 1911 Britannica = East Roman emperor (829-842), the second of the " Phrygian " dynasty.
  • Modern Britannica = 12th Century Benedictine Monk, metalurgist, and armourer
  • Wikipedia/ A Dictionary of Christian Biography Patriarch of Antioch c.180
Which shows there are plenty of disambig problems associated with this name. -- Solipsist 22:11, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The 12th century monk was Theophilus Presbyter, "probable pseudonym of Roger Of Helmarshausen". We don't seem to have an article under any name for him. I moved Theophilus to Theophilus of Antioch but I didn't have time to change the links so we could use Theophilus as a disambig. page. Otherwise we could use Theophilus (disambiguation), I suppose. Rmhermen 22:43, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

That's pretty weird, lots of people have worked on the list of emperors, I'm surprised we never noticed that before. For what it's worth, the original article came from the 1911 EB, but the original anonymous author (or importer) must have followed the link from the list page itself, which was created (with the Theophilus II link) back in 2001 by a user who hasn't been around for three years. Anyway, Theophilus (emperor) would be a good place for this, there are other emperor articles like that already. Adam Bishop 04:50, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Lyndon LaRouche founded Wikipedia

Oy, Anyway, this is being discussed in blogoland on BoingBoing Xeni is looking for comments from Wikipedia. I know there was some historical problem with the LaRouche article and things but I don't know the details. Someone should probably email her. They also get info from the suggestion link pretty fast. - [[User:Cohesion|cohesion ☎]] 18:44, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)


Wikifun

we should create a free contest for users like a scavenger hunt, quiz or something along those lines. even combining them to create wikilympics perhaps! there doesn't have to be prizes the real reward is just plain old fun. who wants to do it we should vote.

Don't vote - just do it on a subpage and invite people. Mark Richards 23:40, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Disambiguating GFDL

moved to Talk:GFDL

Matthew Shepard in selected anniversaries

Re: Template:October 6 selected anniversaries, today is the anniversary of the attack on Matthew Shepard. I'm worried that our write-up is needlessly wordy and sensational. It reads "1998 - Gay-bashing & Hate crimes: University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard was viciously and fatally attacked for being gay." I think there is one too many adverbs and one too many categories. We should remove either "gay-bashing" or "hate crimes," and also remove the sensational word "viciously." Rhobite 02:54, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Since it only gets a day of coverage and I'm going to bed, I'm going to go ahead and make these edits. This is just a style nitpick, please nobody accuse me of homophobia until I've had my morning coffee. Rhobite 04:51, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
I changed the wording to "murdered" because "fatally attacked" just sounded REALLY weird. Mike H 06:59, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
He died on that 12th so murdered is flat out wrong. Click, click ; fixed. --mav 07:31, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Need help talking with a potential GFDL releaser

I wrote an email to Keith Stanley, a photographer with a cool website, about releasing some of his material under the GFDL: 

Dear Mr. Stanley:
I am an editor of the Wikipedia (wikipedia.org), a multilingual
project to create a complete, accurate, and open-content encyclopedia.
Volunteers from around the world collaboratively edit Wikipedia, which
is one of many projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation
(wikimediafoundation.org). We depend on photography to clearly
illustrate our articles.

I enjoyed your excellent photographs at your website (kestan.com).
However, we can only use your material if you are willing to grant
permission for it to be used under terms of the GNU Free Documentation
License (GNU-FDL, or GFDL for short). This means that although you
retain the copyright and authorship of your own work, you are granting
permission for others to use, copy, and share your materials freely,
and even potentially use them commercially, so long as they do not try
to claim the copyright themselves, or try to prevent others from using
or copying them freely (e.g., "share-alike"). You can read this
license in full at wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text of the GFDL).
Please do note that your contributions may not remain intact as
submitted; this license, as well as the collaborative nature of our
project, also entitles others to edit, alter, and update them at will,
i.e., to keep up with new information, or suit the text to a different
purpose.  However, the license also expressly protects authors "from
being considered responsible for modifications made by others" –
ensuring that you get credit for their work.

If you do agree to grant permission for use, we will credit you for
your work, stating it was based on your work and is used with your
permission, and by providing a link back to your website.

You are obviously an expert photographer. I hope you will consider
accepting our request.

Warmest regards,
(real name)

He wrote back to me with several questions. How can I best answer these? 

Hello Mr. (real name),

I like Wikipedia and its ideal of open collaboration.  You've asked about using some of my images 
(photos) and mentioned the GFDL, which I briefly looked over.  I am willing to make some (many) of 
my images available, case by case, but am concerned about giving blanket permission for use of (all 
of) my images under the GFDL (as I understand it).  My primary concern is on unpaid COMMERCIAL use.  
As it is, those who wish to make commercial use (for example, in printed advertising media or 
online) often (sometimes) will pay a licensing fee to do so.  I'd rather not forego the income I 
earn from that source, and, of course, if someone finds one of my images on my site and wishes to 
license use, everything is fine (as it is).  

I'd like to be sure I have a clear understanding of the GFDL concerning the circumstances under 
which a commercial user might use my images download from Wikipedia.  Clause 2 of the GFDL says:
"You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, 
provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License
applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions 
whatsoever to those of this License. If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also 
follow the conditions in section 3." 

This seems to be saying that anyone downloading one of my images from Wikipedia for use would, as a 
condition of legal use, have to, with each image published, state that use was subject to the GDFL, 
publish the GFDL license, in full, and also mention my copyright interest.  Not only would the user 
have to comply with these conditions, but, I presume, so would subsequent users who acquired use of 
the image from the first user.  Am I correct in my understanding?  If so, I would not feel 
particularly threatened re my potential to earning licensing income, since most commercial users 
would probably not be willing to willing to print the GDFL with each copy.  

If my understanding above is correct, I like, if I may, to ask a few more questions:
(1)  How would I go about granting you permission to use my images under the terms of the GFDL?  To 
whom would I be granting permisson?  Wikipedia?  Any employee of Wikipedia?  Any contributor to 
Wikipedia?  
(2) Would I be granting permission for use of particular requested images?  Would I have any notice 
of which images are being used?  Or would I simply be granting blanket permission to use any 
enumerated image in Wikipedia as per the GFDL?
(3) Do you already have particular uses for particular images in mind?  Or are you asking  
permission for potential later, as yet undetermined, use (such that, for example, you might make the 
images part of a database or record of images potentially available for use)?
I want to thank you, in advance, for taking the time to address my questions.  Thanks.

Sincerely,
Keith Stanley
www.kestan.com
[email protected]

So, can y'll help me? If we can get Mr. Stanley's permission, we could have some great GFDL images! [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 03:14, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

One of the big issues with the GFDL is that, even for small amounts of material, you do have to reproduce the license. It's a problem. Intrigue 16:17, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The author is concerned about commercial re-use of his images under the GFDL. From his standpoint, the situation is even better than he thinks — if someone want to use one of his photos in a magazine under the GFDL, then the entire magazine may well be a derived work of the photo under US copyright law, and thus the entire magazine would have to be distributed under the GFDL. Most magazines would not be willing to license their entire text under the GFDL, and thus they will want to pay the author to use the image under alternate terms. (This is exactly the same principle as the GPL for software, and why Trolltech for example can distribute Qt under the GPL and still charge proprietary users: if you want to use my GPLed code in your program, your entire program must be GPLed, or you must pay me for an alternate license.) Alternatively, if the magazine is just a collection of independent photos etc., so that they fall under section 7 of the GFDL, then they still have to not only include the text of the GFDL, but they must also provide a machine-readable copy of the image under section 3 of the GFDL ... again, not something that most magazines will be willing to do. —Steven G. Johnson 22:15, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

No jury or judge would find that a whole magazine is suddenly a derivative work of Keith's photos because they included one GFDL'ed photo in the magazine. Keith's GFDL'ed photo would not "poison" the whole magazine as Microsoft would have you believe about the GPL. Also, I doubt Keith's statement that it seems unlikely his photo would be used commercially because of the need to print the required texts. It will be used commercially in some way.
My advice, Neutrality, is: (a) It sounds to me like Keith isn't ready for this; (b) you shouldn't give him legal advice on what the GFDL does and doesn't do, when he asks for clarification of whether his understanding of the GFDL is correct - he should consult a lawyer if he has questions; (c) because of (a) and (b), probably the best answer to his numbered questions is that you should pick one or two photos you'd like to start with and go from there, if he is willing to experiment. Tempshill 01:34, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Erm, IANAL, but how do you know that 'no jury or judge would find [this]'? Seems pretty dubious advice in the absence of any case law on this... Mark Richards 21:50, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Article Xoxo

This article was created a few days ago - it obviously isn't the correct name for the article, so rather than delete it, I marked it for cleanup. However, no-one seems to have picked up on it yet, probably for the same reason I haven't done it myself - I'm not sure what to do with it! What name should it go under?

  • X, O and XO make references to kisses and hugs, but no link to a relevant article.
  • Love letter and Love notes don't exist.
  • Kiss and Hug don't have any mention of it.
  • Ox redirets to Cattle :)
  • OX and Xo don't exist.

Any other suggestions? -- Chuq 04:49, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In order that the article isn't deleted, I'm going ahead and moving it to Hugs and Kisses as this is mentioned immediately as the appropriate term in the article itself. If you have a better idea, feel free to move it again. I'm keeping the capital K as it is discussed as a concept "Hugs and Kisses", but it may be more appropriate to use Hugs and kisses as the location. Incidentally, I'll add it to the see also in Kiss and Hug. zoney ♣ talk 19:54, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

the origin of the name October

Here's a curious question: If the latin prefix "octo" means eight, then where in the world did we come up with the name October which is the TENth month?

The Julian Calendar year started in March. :) It was later adoption of the Gregorian Calendar that changed it to January. August (the 8th month) used to be known as Sextilus, which your Latin education will tell you contains the root for "Six". --Golbez 05:26, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
Same for September (7), November (9), and December (10). --mav 07:27, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

October? ;) violet/riga (t) 12:03, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hence also why the signs of the zodiac go from Aries (March/April) to Pisces (Feb/March) Dainamo 20:01, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Some of the answers above are misleading or downright wrong. The ancient Roman calendar of 304 days had ten months running from Martius to December. A reform in the 8th century BC added Januarius and Februarius to the end of the calendar (plus the intercalary month Mercedony in leap years). But because consuls were chosen in January, and because years were named in written records after the consuls who served in that year, January became the de facto beginning of the year. Julius Caesar introduced the Julian calendar in 45 BC with the new year deemed to begin on 1 January, making that date de jure.

The traditional date of 25 March for the start of the year in Britain derives from the ecclesiastical calendar, in which it is the date of the feast of the Annunciation. Hence the name Annunciation Style for the system of years starting on 25 March. It is a coincidence that the ancient Roman calendar also started in March (but on 1 March). I see that our article on the New Year is wrong; I will correct it. Gdr 17:14, 2004 Oct 12 (UTC)

question about neutrality

Hello, I am very new here. I have come across an article which I think is not only not neutral in it's view point, but also contains an extended commentary about the topic (also, hardly neutral). What can I or should I do about this?

You could add {{POV}} to the top of the page. It adds this text: "The neutrality of this article is disputed. See the article's talk page? for more information." Then please state your reasoning on the talk page. Or you could just jump in and rewrite the article. Wikipedia:Be Bold Rmhermen 13:59, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

cross-continent countries territory measurement & other issues

There are some countries that lie on two continents: in Europe/Asia (see http://www.therfcc.org/european-1411.html, now I see that this is likely copy-pasted from Wikipedia - search for "Europe" and you will get a very similar page):

  • Russia
  • Turkey
  • Kazakhstan
  • Georgia
  • Azerbaidjan
in Asia/Africa
  • Egypt
in North America/South America
  • Panama

can someone calculate the area on each continent separatly, for example: "Russia has xxx sq.km territory west of the Ural mountains and north of the main watershed of the Caucasus and also another xxx sq.km territory east of the Ural mountains and south of the main watershed of the Caucasus"

this sentences should be added to the "Geography" section in the descriptions of these countries and maybe also in the table with basic facts the section "Area" should have three lines: "total", "in xxx continent", "in yyy continent"

search for "Asia" and in the table with countries Cyprus is missing (maybe becouse it is island) - this should be fixed (maybe with a note that it also is regareded as european country for xxx reasons - see link at the top of this message) in the same table - area for Turkey mentions the whole area of Turkey, including european part. Maybe this should change or at least be noted. Other cross-continent countries have similar ommissions maybe? Egypt is also missing from asian countries. I have not tried Panama, but I guess the lists of South American/North American countries should be corrected too.

at the bottom of the Vatican City page (and maybe other pages) there is a link-list "countries of europe" - but this list does not correspond to the correct list (link at the top of this message) - Kazakhstan is missing, but Turkey and Russia are there (all three are geographicaly cross-continent); Cyprus is there, but Armenia is missing (both are geographicaly asian and politicaly european)

also more about what can be considered "european" - in the list of dependencies Greenland is missing (it is clearly a "North American island", but politicaly it is as much european as Armenia and maybe Cyprus - so it should be added in the appropriate lists with a note - just like Armenia and/or Cyprus)

Is it sure that "Walvis Bay" is integrated into Nambia in 1994? AmiGlobe 2002 and 1998 show it as South African enclave??

that is for now :)

I have never heard Panama called South American. For the Asia/Europe ones I remember we had polls and edit wars over what went in the list. Check some of the talk pages. I don't remember where it was exactly. Rmhermen 00:53, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)
As for Walvis Bay, the Walvis Bay City Council page states "In 1994, Walvis Bay was re-integrated into Namibia after being a part of South Africa’s former Cape Province for many years." So I would say AmiGlobe are somewhat behind the times. --Roisterer 02:24, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You should also take into account France which lies at the same time in Europe, Africa, America and Oceania, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which lies in Europe and America, and Spain, which lies in Europe and Africa. (As concerns Madeira I have a little doubt, but it seems to me that Portugal also lies in Europe and Africa). Some of these assertions can be challenged, but some make no doubt, especially as concerns Spain, whose territory includes Canary Islands with no room for even a tiny doubt. --French Tourist 18:54, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Spain also includes Ceuta and Melilla. zoney ♣ talk 10:03, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Credits and merging articles

One question: If you merge an article (A) into an article (B), do you have to credit all those who participated in the edition of article (A)? --Logariasmo 03:48, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't know that a good answer has been developed to this. If you leave article (A) as a redirect and mention the name of article (A) in the edit summary when you merge text into article (B) at least the authors can be tracked. Rmhermen 04:01, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

GNU licenses who owns copyright?

I have to write some documentation for my MSc to calculate a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, from some data, and I want to under the GNU General Public License. I want to include documentation with it, which will be released under the GNU Free Document License, and I want to borrow, with certain alterations, Wikipedia's article.

My question is who owns the copyright once I have altered it? Me but I can only release it GFDL, so that restriction implies the original author, but how do I credit them, do I say (c) Duncan Harris 2004, except for the bits that were adapted from Wikipedia?

It's not majorly important, it probably won't find its way onto the web anyhow, I just want to give it a professional looking license and documentation. Dunc_Harris|☺ 12:48, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You own the copyright on your work. But you are forced to release it under GFDL if you used GFDL material as the basis of your work. I believe you should credit the 5 main authors of the article. — David Remahl 16:24, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
See the first paragraph in Wikipedia:Copyrights. Also I remember readin a recommended way to credit Wikipedia in the bibliography but I can't seem to find the page. As Chmod007 said, you own the copyright on your work - in this case, on your alterations ot the original article. Tempshill 16:26, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Also be aware that you may not be in a possition to assign the copyright: many universities assert copyright over any work you do as a part of your studies with them, and make you sign a declaration as such. May not be important, but it's something to think about. -- DrBob 17:40, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Information about crediting Wikipedia in a bibliography is at Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. Some people say that copyright of a Wikipedia article is owned jointly by all the authors, but that may be jurisdiction-dependent. In any case you don't just say "(c) Duncan Harris 2004", you need to follow the GFDL. Section 4, titled "modifications", is particularly relevant. -- Tim Starling 17:47, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia was the page I was thinking of, thanks. I'll sneakily insert links to it in a few more places so it's easier to find. Tempshill 17:39, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
You need to credit the author, not Wikipedia. Mark Richards 19:30, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Right, so the main authors are User:Jfitzg, User:AxelBoldt, and UserUser:Trontonian (though how one is supposed to determine this for longer articles, I don't know). So how do I do that? Cite their username? Dunc_Harris|☺ 20:04, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It depends what contact information they have given - if you only have their username, then yes, Wikipedia user Trontonian is probably the best you can do. Mark Richards 23:55, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia referenced by BBC

Check this out! Mark Richards 19:30, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There's also this article about Wikipedia. I am particularly proud of that article because it has a screenshot of a page that I have worked on. [[User:Norm|Norm]] 23:52, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Washington state archives online

The government archives of Washington state, all the way back to the first election in Washington Territory, have been put online (news article). The website is http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/. Surely there's information here we can slide in to our 'pedia, at the very least, election and office holder records, perhaps even detailed census information. Just mentioning this here in case people didn't see it. --Golbez 21:07, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Systemic bias section opened

After much wrangling, the beta version of Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias has opened.--Xed 23:28, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have a question about the ambiguous nature of the LLNL copyright status (it should, in theory be public domain, but the statement on the site implies otherwise) in the disclaimer here: http://www.llnl.gov/disclaimer.html. This came up on Talk:Protein structure, so it may be useful to followup there. Thanks --Lexor|Talk 02:28, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

I have been tagging images, but I was wondering whether the following types of images are public domain or not. First off, stamps. U.S. stamps are public domain, but I don't know about other countries (e.g. this image.) Can we safely use non-U.S. stamp images? Second, how about coats of arms (e.g. this image)? Are they public domain? Thanks, – Quadell (talk) (help)[[]] 14:37, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

(By the way, it seems to me there ought to be a "copyright" section of the Village pump.)

It depends on the country and the stamp. A useful project might be to chart the copyright regimes of the rest of the world's governments (someone has probably done this already). Intrigue 17:34, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If anyone knows for sure, I'd be much obliged. – Quadell (talk) (help)[[]] 18:46, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)
AFAIK US Stamps are not necessarily public domain. "The intent of section 105 [this section] is to restrict the prohibition against Government copyright to works written by employees of the United States Government within the scope of their official duties. In accordance with the objectives of the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 [Pub. L. 91-375, which enacted title 39, Postal Service], this section does not apply to works created by employees of the United States Postal Service." [1] anthony (see warning) 16:01, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

A coat of arms is described by a heraldic blazon; i.e., words, not an image. One could, with the necessary knowhow, create a coat of arms anew given a blazon. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 20:58, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

Help on Exxon Mobil

An anonymous user continues to revert Exxon Mobil, removing factually accurate paragraphs which are critical of the company. He agrees that the facts are correct but is removing them simply because he doesn't like them. I've reverted three times, some help please? BTW this is the same anon who created FahrenHYPE 9/11 and promptly listed it for deletion. Theresa Knott has warned him about changing people's votes on VfD. Rhobite 16:04, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

this user/users have been up to mischief for the last month, along with an occasional good edit. Exxon Mobil is not the only page they have been screwing with. They have been listed on the vandalism page and I notified two admins, I think the following accounts are related.;
Duk 02:32, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

66.144.5.25 isn't me, the other one is(besides it's first edit) Chuck F 13:20, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Merging articles

While the information of two (duplicate) articles is being merged into one, it is likely that people unknowingly continue to contribute to both articles. The merge process is then complicated even further, as the information has to be moved from one article into the other one.

In order to avoid this, I thought the following message might be a solution:

This article is in the process of being merged into (article name), and may be outdated.

Comments? If you think this template message should be added, should be modified, or not added at all, please let me know.--Logariasmo 00:41, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have added the template(with minor changes), as suggested. I will be waiting for more comments before I make any additional changes.--Logariasmo 03:59, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
We have the {{inuse}} template for such situations. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 05:12, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is being pirated!

Hello! Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but after wandering about for a while was the best place I found, so advanced aplologies...

This is just to say that a commercial site is using wiki content (straight, including formating) without any acknowledgment: http://www.wordiq.com/. They disguise themselves as some sort of meta-search engine, but I tried a few times and all results came from Wikipedia, again without any link or acknowledgment. Is there anything to be done about this? Cheers, and keep doing this amazing work!

Mario.

If you go into a Wikpedia article from this site, at the bottom of each page is the correct Wikipedia citation and licensing info. I would agree, though, it would have been polite for them to have had something about us on their opening page. Apwoolrich 10:59, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks for the full list of websites like wordiq. Many credit Wikipedia as their source and also have the link to the original page, others "forget" about that or do it in so small letters noone will notice it. Note that it's perfectly legal to copy Wikipedia contents if the credits are given. andy 18:48, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Sorry all, went there and saw the small text indicating the source. My fault. Even though, I agree with Apwoolrich: insofar a lot of their contenc came from Wikepedia it would be fairer to place a bigger/more visible link to Wikipedia. Mario.


indications about bibliographic item(s) (see Catalog)

See also: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)# meta name="KEYWORDS" content="..."

  • Dear friends, looking at different xx.wikipedias I realize over and over again that many articles about persons do not have indications about how to find them in catalogues. It mainly relates to persons living in Middle age, coming from other cultural societies and it is not obvious how to find their work: names as Erasmus, Arabic names with abu or ibn, Icelandic names ...
  • Most of the medieval names are used differently in many languages as Copernicus, Juan Luís Vives ... Should there be a link to a new biblio.wikipedia.org where these variants could be listed?
  • I can imagine that some work has been done at international level so far. We should reference to it or to the actual (evolving) state.
  • I am aware, that this is a meta issue. Please let me know where to find more details about this subject and how it is handled in wikipedia. Regards Gangleri 23:15, 2004 Oct 9 (UTC)
Ideally, variant names should be listed in the article, and redirects should be made there. See Solomon Ibn Gabirol for example. Adam Bishop 04:50, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Thanks Adam Bishop for your contribution. I am researching about Juan Luís Vives and could see so many spellings. I think that some recommendations should be available somewhere to have a comon look and feel. I am new here and any comment is wellcome. I do not know how calagogues in US and Canada are build up. I searched at [4], [5], [6] ... In talks and e-mails we discussed to mention the names in Catalan (now a new ortography is used), Spanish, English, Latin (because he wrote in this language), Hebrew (the family was an old rabbinic family forced to convert to christianity) and for translation in Wikipedias in other languages of cause the spelling in that language as Jean ... for French, Jan for Polish. Regards Gangleri 14:32, 2004 Oct 10 (UTC)
Additional notes added at (see timestamp): Gangleri 01:39, 2004 Oct 11 (UTC)
Well, don't use too many names - I suggest using his name in his native language (Catalan?), his name in Latin (if he wrote in Latin he probably signed his name with a Latin form), and English (because this is the English wikipedia). His names in French or Polish are not relevant here. Adam Bishop 22:17, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Oh I see...well then, whatever his name is in other languages is up to those wikipedias to decide. Adam Bishop 02:58, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
this is part of the larger issue of consistent transliteration of foreign languages (written in non-latin alphabets). We should draw up guidelines for that, as it will be a pain to clean up the encyclopedia for consistency later. Consistency is not the first concern: The spelling chosen for the article title is of course the one most current in English. (For example, we wouldn't move "bin Laden" to "ibn Laden" if our guidelines demanded that, because "bin" is clearly the current form. But in the case of "Al-Idrisi", who is not current at all, there should be guidelines to prescribe a particular spelling. The same applies to Chinese, Japanese etc. etc.... dab 21:50, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I see not why it should be part of another project Gangleri... However, some more guidelines are certainly necessary to clarify all this. SweetLittleFluffyThing 22:12, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

meta name="KEYWORDS" content="..."

  • Some articles about persons, plants, animals, objects could be refered also by many alternative names and / or misspelled variants very commonly used and having top rankings at search engins listings.
  • What is your opinion having somthing like <content> list of alternative names / spellings </content> to influence meta name="KEYWORDS" content="..."?
  • Should meta name="KEYWORDS" content="..." contain olso the REDIRECTed variants?
  • This could make live easyer. At the end of a page Alternative names, Biographical names could be written with smaller size followed by Misspelled variants, eventualy with REDIRECTed variants. Regards Gangleri 20:41, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)
for goodness sake, no mis-spelled variants, please. we don't want to feed the web with those. common alternatives are normally listed initially, in the lead section. dab 22:32, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Road movie

I created the Road movie stub. Please have a look at it and expand it ! Hashar 00:51, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Possible accuracy problems already, see Talk:Road movie. Andrewa 21:24, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've now done a refactor of the stub, removing most of the text which seemed POV and adding some information which was missing. It's still a stub. Andrewa 20:11, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

User talk:Cheung1303

Anyone want to have a go at communicating with this user in another language? Becuase he is ignoring please for copyright info, and I think it might be a language problem Theresa Knott (The torn steak) 10:44, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Food prep categories

We have both Category:Food preparation and serving related occupations and Category:Food preperation occupations (note misspelling). I don't have much experience with Cats, but the latter seems redundant. If it's not, it should be changed to the correct spelling (but I don't know how--move doesn't work, nor does correcting the spelling in an article using it). If it is, it should be removed (and I am uncertain of the process to follow, if consensus is needed, etc.). Help? Niteowlneils 17:32, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Recategorize the few articles in the category, then list it on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. -- Jmabel|Talk 19:34, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)
I've done a couple. Butcher and Chef currently have both, with the shorter, misspelled one added more recently. So it's OK to unilaterally remove Cats I consider redundant in general, or it's just OK to unilaterally remove misspelled Cats? Niteowlneils 21:34, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
You can edit the categories of any article just lik any of the rest of its content (with about equal likelihood of controversy.) CfD process is just like VfD process: you list it unilaterally, but actual deletion is a consensus decision. -- Jmabel|Talk 21:58, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)
Argh. I've discovered it's more complicated (other than the misspelling issue)--Category:Food preparation and serving related occupations is one of 23 top-level US Dept of Labor occupational categories, which considers Butcher to be Category:Production occupations. I'm at work, and don't really have time right now to research whether the Commonwealth, and/or Commonwealth nations have comparable occupational categorizations, let alone to see if they're similar, or if moving it to the existing Cats would be too US-centric. Probably the Cats should really be driven by UN or WTO (or some other global org) occupational categorizations, if they exist. I guess I'll just remove the misspelled ones for now, and leave the broader issue to other Wikipedians, or when I have more time. Niteowlneils 22:05, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I removed them, then discovered that the cfd instructions specifically, emphatically, and repeatedly say 'don't empty a cat before posting it here', so I restored them. Niteowlneils 22:32, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I just think that's a bad instruction when the issue is a misspelling, as long as you place them in a different, corresponding, correctly spelled category. I've dont that before, myself. -- Jmabel|Talk 23:04, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

help for a new user

Can somebody please give a hearty welcome to User:Benschop. He is asking me questions about things down here I cannot answer, because I work mainly on nl:wikipedia. He is wondering why one of his pages (about himself as author of another article) is listed for deletion for instance. Thanks, Ellywa 22:47, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Done, customized with refs to Wikipedia:Auto-biography, Wikipedia:What is an article and, Wikipedia:Naming conventions. Niteowlneils 04:42, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If anyone thinks my message could be improved, please feel free to edit it (I know that's not standard for Talk pages, but I'd like this message to be as helpful as possible). Niteowlneils 05:01, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Does the "article" total...

...include redirects, stubs, and substubs? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 00:11, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The conservative article count is of all pages in the main namespace which are not redirects and have at least one internal link. -- Tim Starling 02:14, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

Folks,

It's easy when linking an article to others generate 'near-misses' by using a slightly different capitalisation or punctuation of a term - for example Non-deterministic rather than Nondeterministic. Red links lead not only to frustrated users who can't find the information the want, but also duplicate articles that need to be merged at great time and effort.

I've automatically generated a large list of possible near misses and need your help to work through them. Do wikipedia a favour - visit the list and spent half an hour fixing some. Reclaim a red link today! - TB 13:39, 2004 Oct 12 (UTC)

Would anyone mind making non-deterministic a redirect to nondeterministic? It would spoil the illustrative example, but.. :-). — David Remahl 21:57, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Question about Solar Tower article

I've been working on cleaning up Solar Tower, which was riddled with trademark symbols and likely advertisements for a specific company that develops solar towers. I'm concerned that the article describes generic solar chimneys, but presents them as the property of a company. This company goes by the names "Enviromission," "AEldwood," "Solar Mission," "Opensource Energy," among others. The company owns the trademark for the term "Solar Tower," note the capitalization in both the term and the Wikipedia article. An anonymous user, who I believe is affiliated with Enviromission, recently moved the article from Solar chimney, a term which I believe is unencumbered. The user added numerous links to the company, and a confusing note about the trademark status. Personally I think it's odd that someone invoking the spirit of open source would care so much about protecting their IP, but that's beside the point.

What do we do about this article? I think all generic information should be moved back to Solar chimney, and Solar Tower should focus on the activities of the company which owns that trademark. Right now we are muddling the technology with a specific product. It's like if Operating system redirected to Microsoft Windows. Thoughts? Also posted on the article's talk page. Rhobite 14:02, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

I've written stubs to replace three inappropriate redirects from solar tower, solar power tower and solar chimney. The Solar Tower project is an instance of the last two, it's not even an instance of the first. Lots still to do to remove promotional material from the article itself, and yes, some historical material should be moved back to solar chimney.

And if you want an example of how one contributor's passion can introduce bias into a range of articles, look no further than its link list, it's now linked to from everything from hydrogen to PEMFC (which needs some work too). Andrewa 11:03, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Flower request: Cosmos

For the next major version of MediaWiki, I would like to redesign the current logo (see article). Right now, the MediaWiki logo is a sunflower surrounded by square brackets. I like it, but the sunflower is very common as a symbol - a little too mundane.

I therefore humbly request a high resolution photo of the flower Cosmos, which I think is both beautiful and appropriate for what we are doing. The photo should be symmetric, so that it can be used in the logo in the same way the sunflower currently is. Any help would be much appreciated.--Eloquence*

There is a variety called Chocolate Cosmos which actually smells of chocolate (and I can testify to this having had one at home): I would like to request that this be the variety of choice. --Phil | Talk 08:49, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
I have these growing in my parents yard, if they are still in bloom i will take a picture this weekend. - [[User:Cohesion|cohesion ☎]] 08:57, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)

Where to redirect?

Is there a good place to redirect Criticisms of electoralism, USA? Any time I see "Criticisms of..." articles, I always want to redirect to the main article, and merge if necessary. I can't see merging this with Electoral college, as that article isn't US specific. I almost redirected to Criticisms of electoralism, but this seems to be a deliberate split from that article. Any suggestions? SWAdair | Talk 08:06, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Looks like a simple merge call to me: Criticisms of electoralism, USA into Criticisms of electoralism. There's no reason why the "see also" links in the USA article can't apply in the main article also. Go for it. --Phil | Talk 08:38, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)

Name disambiguation

It turns out there are two drummers named Roger Taylor, in the bands Duran Duran and Queen. The current disambiguation setup has them at Roger Taylor (Duran Duran) and Roger Taylor (Queen), which isn't ideal as first of all because the Queen Roger Taylor has a solo career which would warrant a Wikipedia article even had he not been in Queen (and so he is not just the drummer from Queen); Also Roger Taylor (Queen) looks kind of odd to users accustomed to there being an is-a relationship between the subject and parenthesised label (though this isn't always true). Does anyone have a better suggestion for naming? (I've taken this here as I think the issue deserves a slightly wider audience and people who don't know/care about either Roger Taylor can still give useful answers). --fvw 20:36, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)

Analogously to Roger Taylor (tennis player) I'd suggest Roger Taylor (Duran Duran drummer) and Roger Taylor (Queen drummer). Or perhaps Roger Taylor (Queen and solo drummer). Sharkford 21:08, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)
The easiest way to handle it would be simply to use their full names (Roger Meddows-Taylor and Roger Andrew Taylor) for the article titles. You could then add any type of redirect necessary to get to those pages. Also it is worthwhile to note that Roger Taylor points to a disambiguation page and would be unaffected. —Mike 01:39, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
Ooh, they have fuller names. How utterly convenient, good idea. --fvw 15:43, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) says to use the most common name instead of full name. Discussion of this is happening at Redirects for deletion#October 13 if anyone is interested. --fvw 21:54, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)

Pseudo data

Moved to Wikipedia:Cleanup. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 00:32, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Move page with incorrect capitalisation in title

Hi The page 'Heinz henghes' was incorrectly capitalised and should be called 'Heinz Henghes'. I have tried to move it but I imagine as the spelling is the same there is an error saying that the page already exists. How can this be fixed?

Looks like it's already done. --Golbez 17:04, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

Special:Whatlinkshere/Fdghjkldfghj

Can someone explain why so many things appear to link to Fdghjkldfghj on Whatlinkshere? None of these articles actually link there, from what I've seen. ~leif 00:23, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

That's a mystery to me, but no more so than how you came to discover that so many things linked to Fdghjkldfghj. Care to share that? Database browsing?--NathanHawking 02:38, 2004 Oct 16 (UTC)
It's because a vandal moved Nature to Fdghjkldfghj and the links table hasn't updated yet, so it thinks pages that link to Nature are linking to Fdghjkldfghj. Angela. 06:36, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

How to handle alternate spellings and punctuation?

One sometimes notices people changing spelling and punctuation from US to UK-style, and vice versa, not in the course of a rewrite but just out of the blue. What's the consensus etiquette on that?

It feels strange to add a significant portion of text to an article using my US-style while the remainder of the article is in UKese--the inconsistency diminishes the appearance of quality. But it also feels provincial to alter others' spellings, etc. Does one rewrite in toto or adopt the existing style?--NathanHawking 02:30, 2004 Oct 16 (UTC)

To boil down the general guidance from the Manual of Style:
  1. If the article is directly related to an english-speaking country, use spelling and vocabulary preferences of that country.
  2. Otherwise, in most cases you should defer to the preferences as established by the original author of the article.
So to answer your specific question, you should probably adapt your writing to the existing style. Of course, there's lots more about this in the MOS. And for articles where inconsistencies have already crept in, some revision is needed--and at that point it is a bit of a toss-up. My thought is that if inconsistencies have been allowed to stay in the article for more than a few months or so, then one can assume that the original author has lost interest in the article and it can safely be edited to the preferences of whoever is willing to do the work cleaning up the inconsistencies. However, that's if the inconsistencies are relatively even--if there a marked imbalance, the revision should favor the majority style used in the article. older≠wiser 02:48, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
Just to point out: not all of us are fully acquainted with the complete spelling and punctuation styles of every English speaking country in the world, (I'm not even fully acquainted with the complete spelling and punctuation rules of my own country). I think people should simply contribute what they know, and allow members of the Typo Team to take care of the details. For instance, it would be inappropriate to fault someone for using the word "defense" in a UK article if they had never before seen it spelled "defence". func(talk) 17:25, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Also, the supposed differences between versions of English are not altogether fixed. Variant spellings appear in dictionaries. There is no compulsion on anyone to use the particular preferred spelling in any particular dictionary, especially when sometimes a variant spelling is equally popular (perhaps even more popular). The -ize ending is favored by the Oxford English Dictionary over -ise. Some editors ignorantly fix this in British English, replacing -ize by -ise. Canadian dictionaries sometimes give a British form priority and sometimes not. Consistancy within an article on endings -re against -er, on -or against -our, on -l- against -ll- and so forth is a reasonable requirement. But in general spelling correction should be done with a very light hand. If it is a correct form in English of whatever standard variety, leave it alone. Jallan 20:13, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Home Army

Since there is no Wikipedia:Contact an administrator page yet I decided to put this here. Could any of the admins move the Home Army page to Home Army (disambiguation) and make the earlier article a redirect to Armia Krajowa? I posted this solution as a proposal on Talk:Home Army two weeks ago and notified the original author of Home Army page ([7]), yet there was no opposition whatsoever, so I assume that this should be acceptable. [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 05:46, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Home Army (disambiguation) was a redirect to Home Army with no history other than a redirect. This means you could have just moved Home Army there without an admin needing to delete anything. This is only the case for history-free redirects. Anyway, it's moved now. Angela. 06:40, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks a lot, I didn't know that. [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 11:01, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
There is a page Wikipedia:Requested moves for this but it is very new. Rmhermen 13:01, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Vandalism

A vandal has attacked today's featured article, George III of the United Kingdom, and the content appears to have vanished. Can someone more knowledgeable than me fix this? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 05:49, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

date/time format for page update

At the bottom of every page I see something like this:

This page was last modified 15:45, 14 Oct 2004.

As far as I can tell, that is not even one of the standard date time formats referred to in the Wikipedia Style Guide, nor does it correspond to the ISO order. This "SMALL:SMALLER, BIG:BIGGER:BIGGEST" format is almost as bad as the traditional screwy "Unix order". Why not make it conform to the ISO date/time format ordering? Largest unit to smallest. I think that, except in situations where you have an explicitly requested user preference, you should always default to a locale neutral "spelled out ISO" format:

This page was last modified 2004-Oct-14 15:45. (my personal favorite)

or

This page was last modified 2004 Oct 14 15:45.

or

This page was last modified 2004 October 14 15:45.

or something similarly universal for English speakers if you don't want to go to full universality with 2004-10-14 15:45. (And I can understand why you might want to avoid the all numeric form in an English-language article for clarity.)

Because it's more common the way it is - it's the normal way of writing time/dates - and I very much dislike seeing the year first. I also very much dislike to see the mm/dd/yy format. violet/riga (t) 09:27, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"United States" being used as an adjective

I've noticed there are several people who are using "United States" as an adjective, as in Thomas Edison was a United States inventor. Personally, I think this is wrong - nobody would try to say someone's an Italy painter or a Japan poet. Is there any reason for using "United States" instead of "American"? MK 06:58, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Laziness? Maybe they meant to do [[United States|American]]. That's what it should be changed to, at least. --Golbez 07:25, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
I've seen examples of people editing articles to change "American" to "United States" - it's clearly an intentional choice in at least some cases. MK 22:53, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'd imagine it stems from that old notion that the Americas include more countries than just the United States. I think United States as an adjective in the context you suggested is a perfectly valid term, and certainly better than Usian (something you might see on some other websites). Then again, I also think American is probably acceptable there, just like European, Asian, African, et al (though it is a little more inclusive, covering two continents). ~leif 07:49, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It derives from people wanting to try to avoid using "American" to refer to people from the United States because they think they can dictate what we call ourselves. RickK 08:15, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
You may, of course, call yourselves what you like, and if you like you may, of course, ignite a flamewar with inappropriate comments like that. You may have heard of two countries named Canada and Mexico that share a continent named North America with the United States, and also of something like thirty independent countries in central and South America There are dozens of countries in Central and South America (and also the Caribbean), which together with North America form America aka The Americas. At least that's how geographers see it. The matter has been discussed before, and if I recall correctly, the result was that, while some US citizens see no problem in calling themselves "Americans", people from elsewhere tend to feel that this is an inappropriate use, as it apparently excludes the majority of the population of The Americas. From Alternative words for American: In the Iberoamerican countries, the use of "American" to refer only to a US citizen could be considered politically incorrect and culturally aggressive. Kosebamse 11:17, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
But none of these countries call themselves American. Nobody would call Jean Chretien or Vicente Fox an American political leader. MK 22:53, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
And on an afterthought, why would the United States of Mexico resent the United States of America using the word "American"? It would they'd have a better reason to resent it if we actually started claiming exclusive use of the "United States" as an adjective. MK 23:07, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Does this take into account that we write articles in English, and thereby use and express all the inherent bias that is unavoidable in language? I think American equals USian or whatever silly word is more correct, that is in this language. That spanish-speaking latin americans don't express themselves the same way is no wonder -- they speak a different language. ✏ Sverdrup 12:14, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Agreed. In English if not other languages (and the former is all that matters)Using "America" exlcusively for the USA may be unacceptable in a broader conext, but "American" in the context of nationality is lingustically unabiguously connected with the USA. In terms of the contiunent if "North American" and "South American" are not being used, "American" as a resident of the continent(s)is is also abundantly clear by context. Neologisms such as "Usians" are just ****ing terrible (I'm sorry for the thinly disguised swearing but no other adjective can encompass my venom agaisnt such cultural fascism that makes me think I've arrived in an Orwellian universe) If I've offended anyone then stick in your pipe and smoke it (oh I forgot, references smoking may infer I kill babies) Dainamo 12:26, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC) (not an American/Usian/Unclesamite by the way)
The "politically incorrect and culturally agressive" argument aside, from my (European) perspective "American" just doesn't look right, because "America" is far bigger than the Unites States. My impression is that "U.S. American" is inoffensive and not an ugly neologism, so how about replacing "American" with it like in "Thomas Edison was a U.S. American inventor" ? Kosebamse 13:10, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
"U.S. American" is highly offensive. Our nationality is American. Nothing else. And it certainly IS a neologism, and incredibly ugly, at that. RickK 19:01, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
Good idea. I do think there is a genuine distinction between the accepted use of the noun and adjective as using the argument for not using America in reference to the US goes but, possibly for the lack of any other non contrived adjective, American does not follow this where the context is clear. However, in fairness, I like the compromise of U.S. American. At first I thought it clunky, but it fits and certainly reads better than using "United States" as a adjective and avoids awful neologisms. Dainamo 14:23, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
"Avoids awful neologisms"? It is an awful neologism. We had better start using British European, and oh no, I mean, United Kingdom European, and Federal Republican European. I don't know how we will differiantiate the various Kingdom Europeans, perhaps Dutch Kingdom Europeans, Danish Kingdom Europeans, etc.. This is the English Wikipedia and in English the form for citizens of the United States of America is "American". We also use U.S. as an adjective, just as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland uses Briton and UK. We don't often use the spelled-out "United States" as an adjective, however. I think you would also "a UK citizen" not "a United Kingdom citizen". Rmhermen 14:36, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
... This is moronic that people are even debating this. We aren't trying to be as poltically correct as possibly. AMERICAN is the common term used today by almost all people. it's the dictonary defination, we aren't trying to change the language here with wikipedia. In even other languages they refers to people in united states of american as americans(Like Amerika Person in Japanese means a person from U.S.A)
The point that some of our esteemed fellow Wikipedians seem to miss is that using the name of a continent to denote citizens of a single country is rather unique. No Briton, German, Swede would call him/herself a "European" except to make a political statement. And arguing that "AMERICAN is the common term used today by almost all people" does not get us any further, since this argument rests on a rather narrow definition of what constitutes "all people". A majority of US citizens, probably yes. All people, definitely no. "it's the dictonary defination (sic)" - what dictionary, please? Wikipedia at least has several definitions for American. "we aren't trying to change the language here with wikipedia" - true, but we should at all cost strive to make articles as NPOV as possible, and if there is an alternative that does not offend the readers, we would need better arguments against using it than these. Kosebamse 17:54, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In Canada, "American" does not refer to people from the continent(s), it refers to people from the United States. I'm certainly not "American." I'm not sure what Spanish or French usage on the rest of the continent is, or what English-speaking people say in Belize and wherever else they speak English. Adam Bishop 17:52, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The usage of "American" as the accepted adjective for the U.S. is scarcely disputable. I had understood that U.K. usage of "America" meant the U.S. uniquely, and would be surprised to find a Londoner in Toronto thinking he'd "come to America", but perhaps I stand to be corrected there. ("America", outside the forms "North America", "South America" or "The Americas"—always plural, as there is no continent of America—is rare in Canada, where the U.S. is "the U.S." or "the States".) Offense might be taken if "American" were used to refer to the whole of North America or as the sole location of English in the New World, but anyone reading that into "American" is looking for a scrap and will find one whatever we do.
At any rate, use of "U.S." in adjectival form is grey because English permits use of nouns as modifiers, and several phrases are in common use: for example, "United States dollar", "United States Senator", "U.S. Army"; for all of which the distinct -ian form would be used for many countries (Canadian Armed Forces, Australian dollar). I would myself use it only in established phrases. I'd probably change it only it cases that seemed particularly wrong.
I can see the possibility of United States being an acceptable adjective for something associated with the government, as are the examples you gave. I could accept "George Bush is a United States President" but "Julia Roberts is a United States actress" still looks ridiculous to me.MK 22:53, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Sharkford 18:14, 2004 Oct 16 (UTC)
  1. Yes, it is the most common word for this in English, pretty much everywhere.
  2. No, there is no convenient non-neologistic substitute.
  3. Yes, it may sound awkward to Spanish-speakers, but they are not the primary audience of the English-language Wikipedia.

Jmabel | Talk 20:22, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

  • Although I had considered suggesting the usage of "Yankee" or "Yank" instead, I decided I didn't want to alienate all those lovely Bostonians who like using the Wikipedia.  ;-) But humor aside, consider this: If I stood up in a crowd in some unnamed location in the world and yelled, "I AM AN AMERICAN!" what meaning do you think they would find in that statement? —Mike 20:58, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Doesn't the same question come up with term "British"? We don't call say "United Kingdom inventor", do we? anthony (see warning) 22:44, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Olbers's paradox - surely the skies would be dark?

In reference to Olbers's paradox my grasp of physics is fairly elementary, but surely the wave nature of light means that this paradox should state that the sky should be dark? Light behaves as a wave. For the uniitiated, Putting a source of light through two slits in a card shows this effect with bands of darkness "rippling" outward. This occurs with any waveform when two waves beocme perfectly inversely corrleated with each other (that is to say the pattern of peaks and troughs of one respectively match the torughs and peaks of the other) and they cancel each other out. If there were an inifinite number of light sources, there would be an infinite area of peaks and troughs in every direction resulting there being no visible light. Would a nice science person be kind enough to comment? Dainamo 12:32, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You're thinking in terms of amplitude; think instead in terms of energy, and it's a lot easier to reason about. -- The Anome 12:35, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thank you, but doesn't the amplitude determine what the output is? Dainamo 12:39, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The light of infinitely many stars are not necessarily in phase with each other, which explains why the two-slit analogy doesn't work; A lightbulb, or a sole star doesn't give rise to an interference pattern, because the phase constantly varies, also only a laser, not a lightbulb would create a pattern in the two-slit experiment. ✏ Sverdrup 16:01, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If there are an infinite number of stars then every bit of light will have another in phase with it, this has to be so from the nature of an infinite number of them. The experiment uses a normal light source and the point of the slits is to narow this down. Dainamo 17:47, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Georgia Category Terminology

I suggest that in Wikipedia sub-categories of either of the two Georgias, we use the following terminology:

As an adjective meaning "having to do with Georgia", "Georgian" relates to the country whereas "Georgia" relates to the state. Example: "Georgia rivers" means the category for rivers of the state of Georgia, but "Georgian rivers" means the rivers of the country of Georgia. Any opinions?? 66.32.255.91 14:54, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This is proper American English. To Americans, "Georgian", "Californian", etc. are nouns, referring to the people who live in those states. Proper usage is "California wine", not "Californian wine", "Georgia peach", not "Georgian peach". "He is a Californian". But I don't know about usage for the European nationality. RickK 19:03, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Most European countries for the adjective form like this: "French franc" or "Spanish peso", not "France franc" or "Italy peso". 66.245.67.166 22:41, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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