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Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by GGano (talk | contribs) at 21:54, 22 February 2003 (Pointer to copyright issue). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
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NOTE - questions and answers will not remain on this page indefinitely (otherwise it would very soon become too long to be editable). After a period of time with no further activity, information will be moved to other relevant sections of the wikipedia (such as the FAQ pages) or placed in the Wikipedia:Village pump archive if it is of general interest, or deleted. Please consider dating and titling your discussions so as to facilitate this.

Moved discussion

See the archive for older moved discussion links.

The split between Spanish 'pedia and la Enciclopedia Libre

What exactly caused the split between Spanish 'pedia and its daughter project that came to be la Enciclopedia Libre? Unresolvably different objectives? If so, what are the differences? It seems rather illogical to divert manpower into two separate projects that could've been one combinedly better one. --Menchi 20:04 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

See m:User:Maveric49/The Wikipedia Family and also the history section of Wikipedia. --mav

I see how you can edit a page (like this one). But how do you create a new entry in the encyclopedia? I see that if you click on a link that does not have an entry this creates an new page. Is there another way? --66.47.86.47 20:39 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, type the new article name directly in the address bar, like http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/____. Replace "____" with the desired new article name. --Menchi 20:43 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)
It isn't simple to make an article that is not linked to in another, to discourage "orphans" that aren't linked to. It is best to find a related article and make a link, perhaps in a see also format. Orphans are bad, though, so try not to make them often except redirects and such. Tuf-Kat
That does make the creation of redirects difficult though: it'd be nice to have a quick way to create one or more redirecs to a page. Martin
Edit a page, any page. Add links to your new redirects. Don't save, click SHOW PREVIEW. Take those links. When finished, throw away your previewed page. Tannin

external book sources

I'm working on the Japanese Wikipedia, and some pointed out that "external book sources" option in the Special: name space can direct users only to English-based sites such as Amazon.com which have, quite predictably, few books in Japanese.

Would there be any way to change the list so that Japanese users can have the same benefit of locating the books of their interests conveniently? Tomos 23:13 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

If you edit a page, I don't see the changes because my broswer doesn't refresh and get the new version. How can I change that? Im using IE6 Susan Mason

Ctrl + F5. --Menchi 00:54 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

If I find a page that says "Not Wikified." what does that mean? --Mahongue 00:34 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Wikify = Make cross-reference, by linking, to other Wikipedia pages, as described in wikipedia:how to edit a page --Menchi 00:52 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
The Wikipedia:Glossary explains many Wikipedia terms. -- Stephen Gilbert 17:14 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

I am planning to put hunderes of stubs for Japanes authors using bots. Any objection? The format should be like Hozumi Shigeto -- Taku 04:47 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Nice format. I like the way you have the Japanese characters in the same parenthesis as the birth/death dates. One minor issue: a space needs to go after the comma in the dates. --mav
I don't like the way the Japanese characters are in the same parenthesis as the dates. They are different things altogether, so it seems strange to link them in that way. And it doesn't follow the standard "(date - date)" pattern that seems to have been agreed for biographical articles. I prefer the format used at, e.g. Kokichi Mikimoto. -- Oliver P. 16:04 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
The article contains little more than List of Japanese authors, only the Japanese characters. These could be added in the list. It seems better that a separate article about an author is made at the moment that there is more info on him/her. Except when it is probable that soon more info will be added to a large percentage of the stubs. - Patrick 10:33 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
I agree that it makes more sense to do a list, and when someone decides to flesh out a particular author they can create a new page. --snoyes 16:34 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

What is the benefit of adding all these authors using a bot? Is it truly contributing to the content of wikipedia, or just cluttering the database? If people feel that they need to add content about a particular topic, then surely to benefit readers, it should have at least a little content. Kabads

I don't think they're just "clutter", since these people are presumably all going to get articles, so pages on them are going to be in the database eventually anyway. These bot contributions are just providing slots into which people can put stuff. We all want more encyclopaedic content to be added, of course, so I think the most important question is: are people more likely to add encyclopaedic content on an author who (a) has no entry at all, or (b) has a very brief entry with almost no content? I suspect that the latter is more likely to spur people on to add information, but it's debatable, of course. (I still don't like the format, though!) -- Oliver P. 16:51 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

First of all, stub articles have inadequate information but the purpose of them is to provide a good starting point to write an article. Finding out the birth date and death date is a tedious job and particularly putting Japanese characters are difficult to job for those who can't type Japanese. Secondly, we already have the List of Japanese authors. It means soon or later we will have articles for all of them. There is no reason to postpone making articles unless we are unsure we need such a article. Yeah, we need a little more at least, where he/she was born and died. I think I can put such information because I have it.

Yeah, maybe bots are a little too overwhelming. I will put stubs by hand if we can agree with having stub articles for Japanese authors.

Taku, Have you read Wikipedia:Bots? It's a useful page on this issue. -- sannse 16:41 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Yes. I believe my bot is useful, harmless and not server hog.

I guess another benefit of using a bot is to guarantee consistent format for the articles. --Tomos 20:30 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)


I would like to add the abreviation DEC to the database. It stands for the drug diethylcarbamazine. There is already a DEC, which redirects to Digital Equipment Corporation. What do you do when there is one name for two different entries. Can someone help me with this? --Mahongue 09:37 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Actually this kind of thing happens a lot at Wikipedia, see Disambiguation. In your case, I suggest you use the full name of the drug as the title of the article and turn DEC into an disambiguation page. --Lorenzarius 10:07 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
"DEC" is the abreviation for many things. Ideally a disambiguation page would be created at DEC but in this case DEC probably means Digital Equipment Corporation almost all the time when it is linked. So your article should be at drug diethylcarbamazine. --mav
Surely you mean it should be at diethylcarbamazine (which is where it is already). --Zundark 10:17 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
Opps! You are right. --mav

I think this would be an easy disambiguation page to write as DEC is currently just a redirect itself. As Zundark mentioned, I have created a diethylcarbamazine entry already. Does anyone have a problem with me creating a disambiguation page for DEC? --Mahongue 10:28 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Just make sure to fix all the misdirected links to DEC and then list it on the disambiguation links page. --mav
Maveric, what does it mean to "fix all the misdirected links to DEC"? Does that mean to find the links and have them point directly to Digital Equipment Corporation (instead of to the newly created disambiguation entry)? --Mahongue 11:05 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
Yes, you need to change every [[DEC]] to [[Digital Equipment Corporation|DEC]]. You should do this before creating the disambiguation page, so that nothing is broken, even temporarily. --Zundark 11:18 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
Or is it better to put the disambiguation page at DEC (disambiguation)? There're a lot of article linking to DEC and all of them are referring to the Corporation. --Lorenzarius 10:42 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Ok, its done. And what is great is that if anyone is unhappy, it is very easy to reverse what I did. I (1) changed every DEC link to point to Digital Equipment Corporation (I think someone was helping me, thank you!) and (2) created a very simple disambiguation entry (please check it out and change it if you would like). --66.47.86.47 11:47 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

How do I delete "Older Version" entries in my Profile? Because my computer has a fault and crashes regularly I have to save my typing very frequently so my "Older Version" list is much too long. Go to User:Arpingstone and then to "Older Version" to see what I mean. I only need the latest entry.Can I do it or can an Admin? Thanks Arpingstone 09:53 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

I can do it for you - just say when. --mav
Please clear out my profiles Older Versions (except the very latest, of course!) whenever it suits you. Thanks -- Arpingstone 10:36 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
Will do. --mav

Going back to an earlier comment regarding the USA census results, I have in fact added some colour to a few towns. Unfortunately, as a Brit who has spent a total of 10 days in the USA in Florida, I am probably the least qualified person to do this. I haven't seen anyone else adding anything, so it would be reassuring to know if any American contributors were building o the bare statistical facts as well.jimfbleak 12:07 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Sure, see Topeka, Kansas amoung others. Many people do their home towns, and as I get tired of working on the Baha'i subjects, I'm doing eastern Kansas. It will be a while, there are a lot of towns in eastern KS and not a lot of wikipeidans. Did you do YOUR hometown? Not many Brit towns are in the database. Rick Boatright 17:16 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)~

Hi, Please help if you can... How can get Wikipedia to work offline? Have downloaded the database cur_table.sql and the database program cygwin-1.3.9-1 but cannot get it to work. I'm using Windows 98. Would like to use Wiki offline because my cost per hour online is high.

If can get this to work others might find it useful. Maybe we could set up a link (that I have been unable to find)...

Peter - Bangkok

See (if you have not already) Wikipedia:Readers' FAQ, question "Can I get Wikipedia on CD, or download it for offline use?"

searching for worcester

I'd like an easy way to search for articles containing the text "worcester" that do not link to Worcester, England, Worcester, Worcestershire, etc, so that I can link them properly (if relevant, of course). Is there any way to do this? Martin 18:45 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Why can't newbies understand the concept of the 'Show Preview' button? It's getting really annoying seeing 10 edits of (for instance) Shawn Mullins in a two-minute span. -- Goatasaur 19:03 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Am I right that we shouldn't have sub-pages for articles? I'm looking at Godsmack/Self-Titled, Godsmack/Awake and similar. Should they be moved to Godsmack (album), Awake (album) and so on? sannse 19:43 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

You're right. I didn't make the pages, but I do know that every subpage I've worked on has been moved. If you want to move them I have no objections. -- Goatasaur
OK, thanks - job done -- sannse 20:03 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

An RSS feed?

Could someone code a simple script that would convert Special:Newpages (maybe some parametrisation e.g. exclude new articles under 100 bytes) into an RSS feed. I think that this would interest lots of people, and wouldn't consume very much bandwith. -Tzuhou 19:57 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

See m:RDF spool. --Brion 20:02 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

I have a copyright question at Talk:List_of_miscellaneous_poker_variants. --GGano

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