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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 MartinHarper (talk | contribs) at 15:04, 18 March 2003 (acapedia has 354,000 hits...). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
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Moved discussion

See the archive for older moved discussion links.

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
This would be useful information, though, in helping to judge such a user's contribution. For example, if the BBCi article was modified by someone with a bbc.co.uk hostname, one might expect it to be accurate, but potentially biased. If the Java programming language was modified by someone with a university hostname, one might expect a certain, more theoretical, slant. If someone with an French-based hostname posted to US plan to invade Iraq, one might want to check for an anti-US slant - and also copyedit the spelling+grammar of someone who may not be a fluent English speaker. Martin


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

When you view a watched page you are given the option to click "stop watching". Arthur

No, I want to filter my watchlist so that it does not list user pages. I didn't say I never wanted to see user pages in my watchlist, I said I wanted to filter the watchlist. Susan Mason

What does "filter my watchlist and remove user pages" mean, then, if not "remove user pages from my watchlist"? --Paul A 08:30 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

Paul - Susan wants to have two views of her watchlist: one in which user pages (and user talk pages) appear, and one in which they don't. Susan - perhaps you could tell us why you would appreciate this feature, and how you would use it? Perhaps you want to only look at changes to user pages some of the time - when you're in a more chatty mood? Or some other reason? Martin

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 600 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

I would like to use a bot to make a stub of Japanese city. The format should be like Funabashi. I will wait to use it until enough dicussion is done. I welcome any sort of comment, really any. -- Taku 04:18 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, that's awfully short. Could you include a little more data? Population would be a start, and such stats are likely widely available. --Brion

Yes, it is less than adequate stub. I put population and I will put area. Unfortunately I couldn't find out the complete set of stat data like census in USA. So we have to get each data like population individually. What else do you think we need? -- Taku 22:27 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

I think that Great Atuin (Discworld) should be moved to Great A'Tuin, but the automatic mover won't oblige because Great A'Tuin has been stubbed. What's the procedure for non-automatically moving a page? --Paul A 04:45 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

Just ask an Admin to move it. Already moved. --mav

Why arent we allowed to use AP photos if we provide the source? Susan Mason

Because they are very likely to challenge our claim of fair use. --mav

So? If its a violation we can remove them, we are a non-profit educational/research website. Susan Mason

It is best for us not get into that situation to begin with. They say in big nasty words that the images may not be reproduced period. We should respect that even though legally we do probably have a valid fair use claim. --mav

GNU FDL - new version available

There's a new version of the GFDL in town: version 1.2. See the differences. Currently wikipedia is using "version 1.1 or later". I think we should change this to "version 1.2 or later". The changes are fairly minor, but it's always good to stay up to date... :) Martin

Do these pages have any encyclopaedic value?

  1. List of songs which refer to other songs
  2. List of songs which have the word List in title or lyrics
  3. List of songs which do not appear on a Wikipedia list
  4. List of songs whose title does not appear in the lyrics
  5. List of songs in which the title constitutes the entire lyrics
  6. List of songs which have the word Song in title or lyrics
  7. List of songs in which the title pretty much sums up the entire point of the whole song
  8. List of songs whose main title appears more than twenty times in the lyrics

These seem to have a little justification

  1. List of songs that retell a work of literature
  2. List of songs my Muddy Waters a redirect to
  3. List of songs by Muddy Waters
 -- Chris Q 16:49 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)
I'd move these two to the bottom list (sic):
The rest are just self-indulgent fun, probably harmless. Ortolan88

Acapedia. What is this? What are its origins, purpose etc.

I don't know, but it's got 354,000 hits. Plus, I suspect it has a higher page ranking than us: bulgaria free encyclopedia gives acapedia's redirect to our server a #1 hit, with wikipedia's URL down at #9. Martin
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