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Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

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Moved discussion

See the archive for older moved discussion links.

Linking Chinese Article to the English Article

I've already asked the following Q once, but it apparently seems to be deleted! I visited the Archives and didn't find it. Why is it delete?

When linking a Chinese article to its corresponding English one (adding the interlanguage link [[zh:___]] after "Other languages: " at the top of the Edit Page), do I link the traditional Chinese version or do I have to link to the simplified version? I just linked the traditional version to overseas Chinese because that's the original version I wrote. --Menchi 00:48 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

As a test I linked to both. That works, but you can not see which is which, except that the numerical code that pops up is different. One solution is to have two Chinese wikipedias, another is to have the two links in fixed order for all articles, a third solution would be some software change, for example showing the Chinese characters in the popup, or just an indication for traditional/simplified. - Patrick 10:35 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Anyone speak Greek? I need to know for a wiki article if 'αρπαστον' would equate to 'pheninda' ? Mintguy

I think I've found that it equates to 'episkyros', but could 'pheninda' be a Romanisation of this?

Two questions: How do you add the comments that appear in black on the "recent changes" page? Second, I don't see a link to the village pump on the main page. Is there one I am not seeing? If there is not, can we consider adding one? --Mahongue 05:30 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

For the comments, just fill in the Summary box. Have fun! Danny 05:36 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

So obvious, I never saw it. Thanks, Danny. --Mahongue 05:38 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

I see someone just added the "village pump" link to the main page (or I just now see it). Thank you. --66.47.86.47 12:36 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Daniel MacKay writes: I get the feeling that there is an enormous and interesting discussion and lots of info about contributing going on in the Wikipedia: "hierarchy". Is this true, and is there a guide to it? Or are there only a few articles?

Wikipedia:Utilities is a good start - the Related Changes button will give a reasonable impression of Recent Changes for the wikipedia hierarchy Martin

I have had some trouble logging in. This is probably a browser problem for Safari users (Safari has problems with this site!). Too bad for us Safari users. --66.47.86.47 13:52 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Safari is based on the Konqueror HTML rendering engine, I don't know whethter that encompases such things as login/cookie management, but everything works fine under Konqueror - maybe you could describe your problems more acurately. --snoyes 15:04 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Here's a more indepth description: When I go to the login page and type in my user name and password and click "login", red lettered words inform me that my user name does not exist. At other times I can login with no problem. --66.47.86.47 15:59 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

see Wikipedia:Browser notes & leave a note there -- Tarquin 15:06 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

Could someone who has privillege put 最近更新したページ (Japanese for RecentChanges) to RecentChanges? -- Taku 01:04 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

Done. --Brion 01:28 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Can you do it for chinese 最近更改 (Chinese for RecentChnages) -- Taku 01:49 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

Done. --Brion 01:59 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you. Sorry but can do me a favor again? Put this to main page. [[af:HomePage]][[ar:HomePage]][[da:Forside]][[de:Hauptseite]][[en:Main Page]][[eo:%C4%88efpa%C4%9Do]][[es:Portada]][[fr:Accueil]][[it:HomePage]][[ko:대문]][[nl:Hoofdpagina]][[pl:Strona główna]][[ru:Main_Page]][[su:HomePage]][[zh:首页]] I found this list in ja wikipedia, which seems more comprehensive than current one. -- Taku 03:43 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

There already is a comprehensive list on the Main Page under the In Other Languages area. Some of the links you've listed are to wikis that don't even have a Main Page. --mav

Aside from Sudan, all of them have homepage I think. And it is quite convinient and normal to have language links. -- Taku 05:24 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

If we include some of the smaller wikis as interlanguage links on the Main Page then it would only be fair to include all of them. That would mean that people at 800 x 600 screen resolutions will be greeted not by content on the Main Page but by a screen full of language links. --mav

I'm pretty sure I already know the answer, since I've already looked at the UNICODE and HTML pages, but I'm asking. Is there any consistant way to indicate dot-under characters in the wiki and in html in general? I know, dot-under's are not part of ISO-Latin-1, but they're an important part of transliterating Persian. It's not uncommon to ignore them, and that's what I have done, but I've tried _hard_ to get the orthography correct on the various Bahá'í stuff I've done, and the lack of the dot-under's is annoying to me. -- thanks in advance (and yes, I know that sometimes the answer is "no". Rick Boatright 05:05 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

The dot under characters are mostly in the "Latin Extended Additional" area of Unicode. Using number codes should do the trick. They fall in the hex range, 1E00-1EFF. Thus Hex 1EA1 = Decimal 7841 gives "&#7841", Hex 1E05 = 7685 gives "&#7685", etc. Eclecticology 07:49 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

WIKIPEDIA DELETION AND LINKING TO OLD VERSIONS 2/24/03 Are previous versions of Wikipedia pages eventually deleted? Could someone theoretically choose to link to a previous version (in case newer versions insistently omitted the data)?

Before February of 2001 the software we had did delete older versions and only kept newer versions. But all versions since have been stored so nothing since then can be permanently lost. --mav
I think it was 2002, not 2001. --Zundark 11:06 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

Under our current software, old revisions of pages are not deleted (unless the page itself is deleted). They should remain forever for future data archaeologists to examine. :) However, there is not yet a reliable way of linking to a particular revision; this is currently under discussion on the wikitech-l developers' mailing list. --Brion 19:43 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

OPINIONS ON WIKIPEDIA 2/24/03 Also, someone mentioned I could not express opinions on Wikipedia (e.g., looking for feedback on my dream file/web browser concept), even on the "Discuss this page" item. Is this true? It seems to me Wikipedia would otherwise (if it did allow opinions at least on the DiscussThisPage pages) to be a potentially incredible way to store discussions in that it would not get in the way of the "facts" which would be limited to the main documents (though obviously "facts" can be opinions too, it's largely about the tone in which they're worded), but they would have the advantage of being automatically categorized and allow people familiar and interested in a certain subject to know exactly where to look (like Usenet groups, but more accessible to anyone and even more hierarchically specifiable).

Feel free to express opinions on talk pages and on your user page - there is no rule against that. But articles must be NPOV. ---mav
Thanks, the npov article was helpful...By talk pages I assume you mean the pages under "DiscussThisPage"?
Is there a place to navigate only the discussion pages?
No. Should there be?
So are user pages are totally unrestricted then as to content?
No. You should still consider wikipetiquette, make no personal attacks, and avoid breaching copyright or the law. But they are less restrictive.
Also, I was just wondering, can people post advertisements in the talk pages? (e.g., under the computer OS page, could Microsoft theoretically be allowed to point out under "DiscussThisPage" that they can purchase the newest Windows software at their website)
Personally, I would remove such adverts on sight.

Hey everyone... is there some blindingly obvious way to link to wikionary articles that I'm missing? I tried the obvious... Wiktionary:Beer parlour archive, but that doesn't seem to do it.

Try wiktionary:dog wiktionary:Rain cats and dogs or wiktionary:Wiktionary:Beer parlour --mav

Well it works, but a more direct linkage would certainly be nice.

I'm not sure what could be more direct than an InterWiki link? --Brion 02:32 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

When I search for Panzer VI, I don't directly find it. Susan Mason

Double and triple redirects seem to have been confusing the software. I've fixed them, and Panzer VI is appearing on searches now. --Camembert

Edit Disappeared


I discovered that my edit to the article "Three People's Principles" on Feb 16, 2003 is gone. It took me some research and wasn't a really minor edit (it contains 4 or 5 new sentences, if I remember correctly), so the disappearance is quite disappointing. The edit was more info on "San min chu i", the Taiwanese national anthem. I also remember that another edit of the same article in December 2002 also disappeared and I had to redo it again, but at the time I thought it was just me forgetting to save the work.

What's going on? Can the disappearance be restored? --Menchi 03:24 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

Server logs show your IP opening the page for editing at 06:59 on Feb 17 (10:59pm on Feb 16 in PST), but have no record of it being saved (or previewd) that I can find... Hmm, around that time I was running a backup of the server; the wiki would have been in read-only mode for a few minutes. If you saved it at that time though, you should have received a message telling you that the wiki was in read-only mode... --Brion 05:31 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

So I'm working in USS Bennington, find that Bennington, Vermont is completely missing, but then go to http://www.bennington.com and find that it's the "5th-largest community in Vermont". How is it that Bray Township, Minnesota, pop. 73, got created from census data but not Bennington? Stan Shebs 13:13 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

hth, Martin

Going by the Bennington home page, there is an actual town that is different from "Old Bennington" and "North Bennington". (Now that I've done the study, guess I should record all this in an article, eh? :-) ) Stan Shebs 19:03 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

There has been some lively discussion on Talk:List of United States people and related pages on usage of "America", "American", "United States", "USA", etc. Perhaps the most extreme position in one direction has been taken by an unlogged in user from 128.193.88.195 and 128.193.88.55, who insists that "American" is the only proper term for a USA national, and calls phrases like "People from the USA" an attempt "to reengineer the english language". I'm towards the other side, arguing that "American" without context can be ambiguous, and prefer other constructions. Suggestions like "American (USA)", "People from the USA", "United States people" etc are all fine by me, but not for some others. Check it out. -- Infrogmation 16:29 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

I consider your position (of denying that "American" is the proper name for the nationality of United States citizens) to be the "extreme" one. You would prefer to rewrite the definitions of words for the sake of your perceived "clarity". Fortunately, you found essentially no support for any of the neologisms you proposed.
I also find quite peculiar the other reversions of my edits you have been doing. For example, you appear to deny that "swiss" is the plural noun used to describe natives of Switzerland, and you appear to insist that Quebec is a nation. Were it not that your actions appear to be well intentioned, I would say you are bordering on an ill-tempered vandalism of my edits.

Since Wikipedia is open to contributions from all comers, what is to prevent its being taken over by commercial interests wishing to promote their products?

Primarily, it's against the rules of contribution - wikipedia is not a place for advertising, and most advertising is not wikipedia:neutral point of view. The various checks and balances against vandalism have always worked to date (see Our responses to our critics). If companies want to contribute to writing factual, balanced, informative articles, so much the better. Martin

How do you go about translating a page into another language? Do you have to go into the French/German/Italian wikipedia and create the page again there, or what? Olivia Curtis 18:35 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

yup. -- Tarquin 19:04 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for your succinct answer. What do you do next? I've created a new page to match the one in the English wiki, but there still isn't a thing at the top saying 'other languages:' - how do you do that? Olivia Curtis 21:07 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

Did you copy in the interlanguage links? (BTW, it's always best if you can give a link to the page you're working with as an example.) --Brion 21:12 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks - I didn't know about those but have got there now. Olivia Curtis 21:24 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

You have to log in in the other wikipedia separately, then create an article similar to doing that in the English wikipedia. - Patrick 21:35 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

Could anyone rename ECMAScript to JavaScript? I can't use rename by move this page because there is already artcile named JavaScript. Thanks -- Taku 01:10 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

Done. For future reference: just click edit on both entries and cut-and-paste the content. Mkweise 01:16 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

No, you should not rename by that way because you will lose edit history of the article. -- Taku 01:24 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

If it's the same article that has been at some point in its past cut-and-pasted from one title to the other, the preferred method to recombine the histories is to delete the original, rename the later version to the original's title, and undelete the original. The recombined article can then be renamed to your heart's content. If these are two separate articles, that's another matter. In this case, JavaScript had contained an ancient stublet followed by a couple variants of redirects as the page got moved around, then the recent rape-and-paste history-breaking move from ECMAScript. I've deleted the old JavaScript title and renamed ECMAScript in its place. --Brion 02:32 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

To be precise, by delete you mean permanent deletion or simply submit empty text? The term like rename, delete are quite ambigous here (or only to me?) -- Taku 02:42 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

"Rename" is (or should be) never ambiguous: it means to use the 'move this page' function to change the name of a page. "Delete" is sometimes used to mean "save over with an empty text area", however I try to avoid this usage because it's confusing. Here, it means to remove a page entirely from the wiki. (Deleted pages are retained in an archive, and can be viewed and restored by other sysops, so "permanent" is a misnomer.) --Brion 02:48 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

By the way, should ordinary wikipedia ask rename for sysops or ask delete to make a room to rename? I want to put more concrete yet preferrable procedure (It seems there is some confusion about renaming) -- Taku 02:58 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

I've been doing some work on the British railway system, mainly involving creating new articles on historic railway companies of the 1830s-1940s. In editing the article on Midland Railway I notice that Pullman redirects to sleeping car; most of the text in the article clearly refers to practice in the US, but the Pullman company also provided dining cars for the Midland Rly from the 1870s. Should the redirect be cancelled and the article hacked about (the sleeping car article doesn't really describe modern sleeping cars anyway!). Arwel 03:02 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

As is fairly common in the wikipedia, Pullman redirects to sleeping car because there was no article about Pullman and I thought it ought to point to something since there were links to it. The sleeping car article does talk about both about Pullman and the Wagon-Lits company. Obviously, there is a lot to be said about Pullman, not only their international operations, but also the "model town" Pullman, Illinois and the Pullman Strike. There's also a lot about Pullman porters in the sleeping car article that could be in a separate article as well, and an article about George Pullman. I think this discussion about reorganization should probably move to Talk:Sleeping car. It would be good to have someone else involved. Ortolan88

These logo's are owned by Drexel University. Image:Drexel.png, Image:Dxl-logo.png. Is it copyright infringement to have them on the wiki? If so, they should be deleted. If not, I will put them back on the Drexel University page. MB 05:12 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

Wouldn't that be a matter of trademark law, not copyright? --Brion 06:42 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)
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