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Moved discussion

See the archive for older moved discussion links.

How does one make text both bold-faced and italacized? Susan Mason

Use five quot marks '''''like this''''' so it comes out like this. Danny 00:45 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)
I usually put three on the outside, then two on the inside near the word, ''' ''like this'' ''', for ease of editing. -- Ô¿Ô 00:55 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

That wasn't boldfaced... Susan Mason

It looks boldfaced to me. Maybe there's something wrong with your browser or display settings. --Camembert

And what might that be? Im using IE 6.0 Susan Mason

That I don't know - I'm not technically minded enough. It might be something to do with the font you're using - if it's something quite unusual, maybe you've got the normal, bold and italic versions installed but not the bold-italic. I'm really just guessing though - others will have a better idea of what's wrong than me. --Camembert

Try bumping the font size in your browser up and down; rendering of outline fonts at very small sizes sometimes reduces the weight of bold text, particularly the bold/italic combo. --Brion 01:58 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

I switched out of Times New Roman and that fixed it. Susan Mason

At Timeline of trends in music (1980-present), there is a link for George Strait's album #7 in 1986, but the link functions as a self-link instead of leading to an article entitled #7. Is this a feature? If so, can it be fixed? Tuf-Kat

It's not precisely a self-link: it's linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_trends_in_music_(1980-present)#7 - and a link I just tried in preview mode on this page linked to http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump&action=submit#7. My guess is that the # sign is making something somewhere think that [[#7]] is a link to a within-page anchor, not to another article. I have no idea how to fix this, apart from forbidding article names beginning with #.
--Paul A 03:23 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)
The # character is reserved and is not allowed in page titles. They are allowed in links purely for the purpose of linking to internal anchors -- but the syntax for defining internal anchors has never been enabled, so they aren't much good. ;) --Brion 04:40 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

I'm having some trouble getting a link to a URL with a dollar sign in it to work at William Shield. Is there some way to get it work properly, and if not what's the best thing to do? The troublesome link in question is: Details of the "Auld Lang Syne" controversy --Camembert

For now, replace the dollar sign with its encoded equivalent, %24: Details of the "Auld Lang Syne" controversy. (Note -- do *not* put <nowiki>s into a URL, it does very very wrong things to the parser. :) --Brion 04:14 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)
Righto, I'll change that. Thanks to all. --Camembert

Help! I can't log in! The system says that my password is incorrect (although I've retyped it several times), and it also says there's no e-mail address registered for me, so it can't send me a new password. Has something gone wrong somewhere? -- Oliver, a.k.a. 152.78.0.29 03:26 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Help! I can't log in! The system says that my password is incorrect (although I've retyped it several times). Tiles

Try again. It seems a fix I made for another bug has broken the login process; I've reverted the fix pending purther testing. Sorry! --Brion 03:58 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks, Brion! I'm in now. -- Oliver P. 04:11 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)
Incidentally, I've reinstalled the fix with another fix. ;) Please give a shout if there are any more problems. --Brion 04:52 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

I've just encountered the "nowiki" tag for the first time in Polysaccharide. While it's pretty clear what it does, I was wondering if it was documented anywhwere that I'm supposed to have discovered (Still learning, as always.) Tenbaset 04:36 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Quite possibly not. Feel free to add an explicit mention of it to Wikipedia:How to edit a page. --Brion 04:40 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)
I have done so, hopefully it is correct. Thanks. Tenbaset 05:00 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

H.G. Wells talking about the idea of an encyclopedia; maybe he was referring to Wikipedia :-):

Special sections of it, historical, technical, scientific, artistic, e.g. will easily be reproduced for specific professional use. Based upon it, a series of summaries of greater or less fullness and simplicity, for the homes and studies of ordinary people, for the college and the school, can be continually issued and revised. In the hands of com-petent editors, educational directors and teachers, these condensa-tions and abstracts incorporated in the world educational system, will supply the humanity of the days before us, with a common un-derstanding and the conception of a common purpose and of a commonweal such as now we hardly dare dream of. And its creation is a way to world peace that can be followed without any very grave risk of collision with the warring political forces and the vested insti-tutional interests of today. --(http://sherlock.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html)


--User:Extro

A number of wiki utilities, most wanted, short, long etc. have been disabled to save the database response time. Would it be possible to run the queries, say, once a day to create static pages listing the top fifty in each of these catagories so the pages are of some use? 62.253.64.7, March 10

I'd been thinking this myself actually, I think it would be a good idea assuming there aren't technical reasons not to do it. - Ams80

Where is the template for US President entries, for example used at George Washington, stored? More specifically, where is the talk page associated with this table to be found? -◈¡◈

Just a quick question about the User Contributions pages, are they supposed to list all a user's edits? I ask this as when I perform different searches on my own User Contributions page (i.e. looking through by 100s or by 250s) I seem to get different results. For example the page 1000 starting at #1 shows that I have made 654 edits (by copying it all into a spreadsheet) but the page 500 starting at #501 is empty, implying that I have made less than 500 edits. I'm not really concerned by how many edits it claims that I have made I'm just wondering why this happens. The other thing this could affect is when looking through a vandal's contributions to check they've been returned to sonthing sensible it might mean that we are missing some, which would be a problem. Anyway, thanks for any information - Ams80 19:38 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, looks like the offset is broken on the query. It uses the offset for total-number-of-edits, but the old and current revision tables have to be queried separately; the offset isn't valid for the individual tables, and skips too many. With out current setup I can't think of a way offhand to make that work correctly (short of doing a full query up to offset+limit, then throwing away the first offset results, at which point why bother with the offset? Just click the longer limit.) --Brion 00:15 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

With IE 6.0 how can I have it auto-refresh pages. It is caching them and not updating unless I use ctrl-F5. Also, how can I download asian character sets? Susan Mason

Why, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/List, doesn't the first link work? I know I'm always using illegal dr... characters, but this only has a comma, ? and (), all of which are legal (right?). Tuf-Kat

It's something to do with the pipe. I have no idea what, but I note that [[O Brother, Where Art Thou? (soundtrack)]] and [[O Brother, Where Art Thou? (soundtrack)|Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?]] work, it's just [[O Brother, Where Art Thou? (soundtrack)|]] that doesn't. --Paul A 06:10 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

With pages like Dolphin Interconnect Solutions, isn't Wikipedia at risk of becoming a giant Yellow Pages? cferrero 09:56 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

Just add an objective assessment of the technology's suckiness, and report on the latest indictment of the corporation's officers (ha ha, just kidding), and you have a nice balanced article. There are always juicy factoids to supplement a company's rah-rah image of itself... Stan 20:32 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)
I did that stub. Wanting to find out whatever happend to Norsk Data technology, I found that the Dolphin Server operation was now defunct, but that some remains of Dolphin remain. I used that as a basis for a Dolphin stub (which presumably would be filled with useful material, esp. computer/technology historic, since I find that particularily interesting). If you think that computer history and related stuff does not belong in Wikipedia, go along and put the 1000s of articles covering it on the deletion list. -- Egil 21:21 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

Has anyone noticed a serious problem with the English Wikipedia speed during the last two days?
Frequently I've not been able to get in at all (the IE.5 Page Not Available notice comes up). At other times the speed has been so poor that the encyclopedia has been unusable. When I wanted to type this message it took 23 seconds to load the Village Pump but then another 38 seconds to get to the Edit box. I wish it had been that "good" these last two days!
I don't think there's anything wrong with my internet set up (Broadband) because all other sites come in nearly instantly. Puzzlingly there are very few comments on speed in this Village Pump, so is it just my computer? -- Arpingstone 18:41 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

It's the site, I'm afraid. The developers are aware of the problem, and are working hard to eliminate the bottlenecks. -- Stephen Gilbert 23:47 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

I need the help of somebody who connects through a commercial ISP or through work, not from a library or school. Can you access the URL http://www.brenda.uni-koeln.de/php/result_flat.php3?ecno=1.1.1.1 and do you get loads of data about alcohol dehydrogenase? AxelBoldt 20:51 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

I'm at home - I get a login page with that URL. I tried to register but it gave me the choice of academic or commercial, I'm neither - so chose commercial and was blocked (not available to commercial users without licensing) -- sannse 21:02 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks, I guess we can't use that site as external reference then. AxelBoldt 21:11 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)
There is an interface, but material is not available unless you register and pay up. -- Egil
We use books as references, and last I heard you had to pay for them. Reference away.
Plus, working on wikipedia counts as "academic" - if you twist the definitions enough... :) Martin
Ever heard of libraries?
But by all means, a reference for money is 1000 times better than no reference. -- Egil 22:05 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

It happened again: Just edited Sigmund Freud, adding a "see also" for Freudian slip. I wrote a small Freudian slip article, checked the "Whats links here" and verified "Sigmund Freud" was there, along with a couple of other entries. Revisited "Sigmund Freud" a few minutes later, and the "see also" was gone. Any jokes or analysises on Freudian slip are welcome. -- Egil 07:24 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

US + British spelling No names, no packdrill, no article references but I am very disappointed at how quickly a debate about spelling can degenerate into the stirrings of a transatlantic flame war. It only requires a small level of silliness and a couple of provocative comments for people to lose their sense of perspective and start deploying stupid national stereotypes about "Brits" and "Yanks". I have seen various internet communities have a pretty good go at tearing themselves apart over this stuff and I would hate to see it happen here; I do most sincerely wish that people would check the Manual of Style's comments on spelling, and then take several deep breaths and have a coffee, tea or other beverage of choice before doing anything, when there is a spelling debate in the offing. I really strongly believe that these things can be very damaging and should be avoided at almost all costs. Jimbo pops up from time to time reminding us that peace, love, tolerance etc go a long way in a project like this, and this is a very very good example of an area in which he is right. Please please please check and abide by the MoS, and if you need to discuss it don't drag out the hoary old stereotypes. We try not to do it to other ethnic and national groups, so why on Earth would it be OK to do it about Americans or British people? Nevilley 07:35 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

Does anybody else keep thinking people are appealing to the "Mail on Sunday" as a spelling reference? Just me? Okay, never mind ;-) - Khendon

See meta:Article count reform for some discussion on changing the "comma count", which I just blundered across...

March 12, 2003

Moved from Wikipedia:Announcements Enchanter

Wikipedia has become consistently very slow due to overwhelming traffic. Attention should be paid to upgrading the proccessing power and available bandwidth of Wikipedia, improving software performance, and increasing cacheability. Is there a distributed database architecture? Would this be a reasonable and workable solution? [anon]

Constructive suggestions are welcome at meta:Cache strategy & co. --Brion 23:26 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

Okay, wikipedia is not a dictionary. I get that.

Maybe.

Let me check.

Is the article Tentsuyu in violation of that rule? I originally wrote it, but now I wonder if it's inappropriate. I'd like to find out before I write more things like that? Any advice? Arthur 03:14 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

I think it is fine. -- Taku 04:16 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)
That entry is fine; it is about the sauce not the word. Therefore it is perfectly acceptable. What we have problems with are articles that are just about words and not the subjects that those words name. --mav

I'm noticing different behaviour with graphic layouts between IE and Netscape; it first came up with a version (now fixed using table rather than div) of curvature; see: [1]. In IE it renders correctly (at least, as intended!) but in Netscape, it renders quite weirdly. I don't think this used to occur in Netscape (although I mostly use IE).

I also notice that currently, in Netscape 4.7:

  • The Wikipedia logo slightly obscures the "M" in "Main Page" on article pages.
  • There is no horizontal rule bwteen the upper navigation section and the title of the article;
  • There is no vertical rule between the left hand navigation items and the article body.

None of these effects are seen in IE. Has something changed recently? Chas zzz brown 23:09 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

A lot of things are broken in Netscape 4 (the exact set of broken things will vary from page to page, setting to setting, day of the week to phase of the moon) and I'm afraid there's little interest among the developers in supporting it. You are more than welcome to make specific suggestions for improvements to the HTML output that will make Netscape 4 render most things correctly without breaking the code in general. (By specific suggestions, I mean an actual example of working code.) My honest recommendation, though, is to upgrade to a more capable browser. [2][3][4][5] --Brion
C'mon! (all that follows is good-natured. don't be angry.) I hate Microsoft like you hate Hitler. And I don't like AOL too much, either. Netscape 4.7 is fine. Calling it merely "obsolete" is like calling a mint-condition 1940 Maserati "obsolete". Even LYNX (my first browser, before Mosaic was written) is still a perfectly functional web browser. I often use it. Beats the crap of the modern gas hogs. 4.7 shows the logo funny? What a disaster. It looks funny. So what? So did my third girl friend. Arthur 00:33 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

I am afraid that there could be misunderstandings in the near future regarding what I have said to User:Black Widow. Before forming an opinion, please read User talk:Olivier, User talk:Black Widow, User:Tarquin and User talk:Tarquin. olivier 17:11 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

I've noticed that MeatballWiki gives no IPs for anon users, but (what I presume to be) reverse DNS lookups. Has this been proposed/discussed/rejected here? Martin

The old usemod wikipedias also show the hostname. I would be nice to have option to select between IP adres and hostname. Giskart 18:39 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)
Except in rare cases (dynamic IPs), IPs and hostnames are equivalent, but hostnames are sometimes considered more privacy-invasive, as they often explicitly specify a person's university, workplace, or local ISP by name in text for all to see, which information would require a separate lookup with an IP. That, and we'd have to do reverse lookups on every visitor in order to obtain the information -- that'll slow things down a little. --Brion

Would some kind people please go to List of people on stamps of Switzerland and let me know on my talk page User talk:Arpingstone if the load time on a 56K connection is reasonable. I ask because there I have put two pics on that page, each about 20K large. I have a broadband connection and wonder if my pics are too large for a dial-up link. You'll somehow have to allow for the fact that the whole site may be slow. Thanks! -- Arpingstone 20:50 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

About 20 seconds to get the whole thing including all the images for me; not unreasonable for those trained to such slowness. ;) Two thoughts: first, progressive JPEGs might be nicer on the eyes, completing the images at low resolution at an earlier point in the download; second, the two images are too close together vertically -- on Mozilla 1.3/linux for me, the Einstein stamp is pushed inwards, as it comes up just before the first table clears the margin. You could use a <br clear=all> to clear the margin, or more simply put them both into the same table (same width, right?) --Brion 01:51 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)

I want to filter my watchlist and remove user pages. Susan Mason

I am interested in doing a screenshot for the Phoenix article. I know the image has to be in JPG. Can anyone recommend a good image size? hoshie

Actually png is much better for screenshots (gif also works very well but there are evil patents to worry about with using that file type). The size depends on what you want to do with the image: If you want to have text flow around it (like in Pioneer 10) then a width of between 200-300 pixels would be best. If you want to have the image stand alone (like in Yosemite Valley) then it can be upto 500 pixels wide. What I often do is both by having a thumbnail and a link to a larger version (like with the second image at Manzanar Japanese internment camp). For more info visit Wikipedia:Image use policy. --mav
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