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Other languages straw poll

People, we are desperately in need of some consensus here. Can we all please vote for one of the following options. Given that there are three options, I think a 51% plurality would suffice. Some of the options have subordinate polls: please vote again in each of these subpolls. GeorgeStepanek\talk 01:34, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Use the other languages by word count template

  1. dab (ᛏ) 08:18, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  2. Pidgeot 10:14, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  3. --fvw* 13:22, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)
  4. Nyenyec 17:09, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  5. Bawolff 23:34, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  6. Gubbubu 15:03, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  7. Steverapaport 17:29, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  8. -Aranel ("Sarah") 03:47, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Keep word counts for each language

  1. GeorgeStepanek\talk 01:34, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  2. dab (ᛏ) 08:17, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  3. Pidgeot 10:14, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  4. --fvw* 13:22, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)
  5. Nyenyec 17:09, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  6. Bawolff 23:34, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  7. Gubbubu 15:03, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  8. Steverapaport 17:45, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC) and normalize them if people object to inaccuracy.
  9. -Aranel ("Sarah") 03:47, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Change to word count categories

Change to an alphabetical list showing word counts for each language

Use the other languages by article count template

  1. Tom- 01:29, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  2. Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 08:22, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)
  3. Fredrik | talk 14:39, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  4. Eloquence* 17:01, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
  5. Gkhan 17:14, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
  6. rydel 18:45, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  7. Dan100 20:12, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
  8. Arwel 00:36, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  9. Shmuel 07:04, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  10. Squash 02:04, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Highest category is 100,000+

  1. Scott Gall 06:59, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Highest category is 50,000+

  1. GeorgeStepanek\talk 01:34, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  2. Tom- 01:29, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  3. gadfium 01:51, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  4. SnowRaptor 02:33, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  5. Kiand 03:01, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  6. dab (ᛏ) 08:17, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  7. Fredrik | talk 14:39, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  8. Nyenyec 17:09, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  9. Gkhan 17:14, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
  10. rydel 18:45, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  11. Dan100 20:12, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
  12. Shmuel 07:04, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Highest category is 10,000+

Lowest category is 1000+

  1. GeorgeStepanek\talk 01:34, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  2. gadfium 01:51, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  3. dab (ᛏ) 08:17, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  4. Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 08:22, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)
  5. But let this be the last poll on the matter, or I'll run out of opinions. --fvw* 13:23, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)
  6. Fredrik | talk 14:39, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  7. Nyenyec 17:09, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  8. Gkhan 17:14, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
  9. rydel 18:45, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  10. Shmuel 07:04, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Lowest category is 500+

  • Kiand 02:59, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Lowest category is 100+

Remove the other languages template entirely

  1. GeorgeStepanek\talk 01:34, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
(question: and replace it with interwiki links? or just the 'languages' icon? dab (ᛏ))
And link "Other languages" directly to the Complete list of language Wikipedias available. GeorgeStepanek\talk
  1. Mimirzero 08:23, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  2. This is a completely mystifying introduction to people visting the wikipedia.org page for the first time, and a waste of time for everyone else. It should be deleted entirely. At the very least it must have some kind of heading or introduction section, such as "Welcome to Wikipedia, a free-content encyclopedia that anyone can edit." (which could be in several languages). Adam 06:20, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  3. Da 'Sco Mon 19:58, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

5 Million ?

"An international charitable effort is underway to help the estimated 5,000,000 victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and its subsequent tsunamis."

What the hell, is this a typo ? Unless we have another earthquake soon in the middle of Sumatra, that number is just way too high.

That's not deaths - that's all victims, including homeless (who outnumber deaths - a lot of people got away in time). That said, I have no specific idea of the exact figure. Pakaran 03:58, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Oh, and see 2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake#Damage_and_casualties. Pakaran 04:33, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
On yet another note, there's a possibility of displacement due to disease. Pakaran 14:56, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The dead aren't in much need of charity. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:43, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Exactly. And I think the estimated figure is still lower than the actual one.


mean

jeez...when editing articles people are mean-bstar

yes...it's their standard deviation from societal norms - Blair P. Houghton

All contributors are expected to show respect and consideration for one another, as a norm. If they do not, they earn a reputation for poor citizenship, to use an old-fashioned term. See Wikipedia:WikiLove for one of the founding principles of the community, dating back to the founding of the Wikipedia, and perhaps before that. Ancheta Wis 23:48, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

man...if you have to explain a joke - Blair P. Houghton

if it is the mode to be mean then that is a deviation (for Poisson statistics) Ancheta Wis 03:34, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Slow response time

Since I came back to "Wikipedia", I have suffered from some extremly long response times. It's gotten progressively worse. Today, it took almost ten minutes to post an edit. Is it just me? RickK 00:22, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

You are not alone, there have been problems at times for the last couple of weeks. maybe time for another holiday from wikipedia. Clawed 01:49, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Slashdot ran a story referencing Wikipedia earlier today. Could be some residue of that. Few servers other than Slashdot's own are capable of handling the compulsive link-frobbing of their simian membership.
Wikipedia has become much bigger than Slashdot, so it no longer suffers brownouts when slashdotted. Compare the two Alexa rankings. It's just getting very popular, particularly now that people have time after celebrating Christmas. GeorgeStepanek\talk 04:28, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Configuration and software issues as far as I could tell from the IRC traffic. Dori | Talk 05:06, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)
  • You can read status info here and see server hits here. Dan100 17:37, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)
  • Where can we find upgrade/roadmap status? Cuz this thing is desperately in need of some performance improvements, or it's going to thrash itself to vapor. Blair P. Houghton 22:48, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
    • okay...duh...page down on the normal status page and upgrade and roadmap are discussed in wikilush detail. Blair P. Houghton

The encyclopedia that anyone can edit

Now that I see the new introduction at the top, it occurs to me that the blurb on top of every page that says From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia should be changed to From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It says the pro and con of wikipedia, that it anyone can edit it and that it is not necessarily reliable, which is something that would not be immediately clear to somebody seeing a printout of an article or coming directly to any article other than the main page. Of course this is not the appropriate talk page to raise this issue, but ask me to figure out which one is. --Ezra Wax 05:21, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think that would be a good idea, but I have no idea which talkpage it should be put on. Maybe the logo should be changed too. Bawolff 23:38, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Why would the logo be changed? The community voted in favour of it, and it's your problem that you weren't there. -- user:zanimum
There's a link saying "Edit this page" at the top of every article.

WIKIPEDIA STATUS UPDATES

PLEASE seriously consider including a well highlighted and regularly updated (very short) summary of WIKIPEDIA STATUS (in layman's terms)right at the beginning of the Main Page. (Or at the very least a high-profile link to [1]. **Wikimedia Technical Group think this would just overload them too, so maybe a bad suggestion on my part** ). I feel we could lose many potential users and contributors during extended periods of significantly slow access during maintainance, hardware/software problems etc..etc.. Wikityke

Opening section

It's great to have a concise intro, but I'm missing the links to CSS-free and textonly version of the main page. Shouldn't they be readily available to our readers without too much searching around? Mgm|(talk) 10:47, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

The table-free link at the top of Main Page in turn has a link to the text-only Main Page. Ancheta Wis 21:40, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
There is now a redirect with dashes instead of underscores to the Main-Page-(text-only). If you are using a PDA without the underscore character, it may be simpler to enter the entire URL for an article with a single word as the title, such as Science. I can report that the Palm wireless PDA's can get to this article. Ancheta Wis 08:44, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

US hasn't conquered Canada. Yet.

To whoever edits the front page...

"Did you know..." today (1/6/05) starts off:

From Wikipedia's newest articles:
East and West Memorial Buildings, Ottawa, Canada
* ...that the East and West Memorial Buildings in Ottawa, Canada were originally built in 1949 to house the rapidly growing Department of Veterans Affairs?

Clicking "Department of Veterans Affairs" takes one promptly to this article. Clearly the US isn't housing offices in Ottawa just yet, David Foster Wallace hypotheses aside. Should be linked to Department of Veterans Affairs (Canada).

Thanks for pointing this out. It's fixed now.-gadfium 23:00, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Just so you know, anyone can edit the "Did you know..." section. It's not obvious to those who are new to Wikipedia but it is a tempalte (which is not protected) which is included in the main page (which is protected). Much of the contents on the main page can be edited by anyone. - Jeltz talk 23:06, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

More search options?

Maybe this should be in the navigation bar and discussed on the mediawiki site, but there ought to be an easy way to search other namespaces easily from the main page. The only way I've found so far is to search for a nonexistent article, which brings up a search page with checkboxes for namespaces. I don't want to search other namespaces by default. --Theodore Kloba 15:13, 2005 Jan 7 (UTC)

Go to Special:Preferences, click "Search result settings" and change "Search in these namespaces by default". Tom- 19:48, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Reread the last sentence of my previous comment. I don't want to search other namespaces by default. I just want to do it occasionally without a bunch of gymnastics.--Theodore Kloba 22:09, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

What's silly is that hitting "Search" without typing anything in doesn't take you to a generic search page, but instead an oblique error message. --Fastfission 05:33, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I filed a bug on that a while back. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:54, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

www.wikipedia.org

The problems mentioned below are very simple to fix. Wikipedia just needs to detect the language of the user's web browser (i.e. en-US) and automatically redirect them to their language (en.wikipedia.org, etc). If the user is using an unrecognized language then wikipedia should show the different languages available. Any advanced web developer should know this. -BW --

How come putting in 'www.wikipedia.org' doesnt take us to the main page anymore, but to a language-choice sorta page?

There are Things Going On. I missed exactly what they *are*, but I know they're happening. Keep an eye out.  :-) -- Baylink 20:25, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I hope this isn't a permanent choice... the initial page for Wikipedia ought to be the version of the encyclopedia which gets the most visits and has the most quality pages (a pair of factors which likely are effected by and affect each other). Dumping to a language selection page (before giving you any indication of the content of the website) is not, in my opinion, very good web design, much less for an encyclopedia. But we'll see, I guess... --Fastfission 05:30, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The thing is that while English is a lot more popular than the other languages, its lead is not so overwhelming that they can be ignored. Japanese and German in particular account for a very large fraction of Wikipedia's traffic. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:53, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
And so now we have a language selection page. Big whoop. If I came to the main page and was new I would go to the next site as I'd feel overwhelmed. Sorry, but this is a very bad design decision. I hope that someone will either fix the design or make it more interesting. Our front www.wikipedia.org page is meant to be an interest, eye-catching, "Wow that's a cool site!" sort of page. Right now its a dull, uninteresting list of languages with no explanation of what Wikipedia is, what we are about, what we stand for or why I should care about it. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:40, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
This is a truely terrible design decision. But graoning about it here isn't going to make a difference. I'm taking this up in a more productive forum. →Raul654 06:45, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)
Raul, please tell what is the more productive forum where you want to discuss this? There's no link to a talk page for www.wikipedia.org, and no "view source" link to allow us to find out which template'is being used. (Which is very poor design in itself.) Who made all these changes? And when were they put to a vote? (Is this just Node playing silly buggers again?) GeorgeStepanek\talk 20:36, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Yes, since clearly everything that goes on that you don't agree with is MY fault. Perhaps if you were more informed, you would realise that this was not MY decision at all but the decision of people in a site-wide poll on meta a long time ago, and that the actual switch was made by a developer and was NOT requested by me (only supported by me), you would know this had you ever bothered to subscribe to wikipedia-l. The only people to raise objections were in fact from the English Wikipedia, and even then it was a minority. You missed the chance to vote on the meta poll a loooooooooooooooooooooooooong time ago, but if you really think it's nessecary we can hold a new one. --Node 04:30, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I would rather stick to the old format of a catchy intro page, but if we are going to have this change, could we have a cookie that stores your language choice? I know that there are other wikis out there that are big, but I don't like the idea of having to go to en.wikipeida.org instead of just wikipedia.org every time I want to come to wikipedia. abhishek 08:01, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)
Cookies are a bad idea (and lots of people block them for privacy reasons). The easiest thing to do is have it how I believe it used to be: redirecting to http://en.wikipedia.org/ if the user speaks English, http://ja.wikipedia.org/ if the user speaks Japanese, &c. Why have a cookie when one can just use the user's preference for language in their UA? Why anyone changed this I cannot imagine. Please put it back the old way. This totally goes against design principles and WWW standards.
--Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley talk contrib 21:39, 2005 Jan 15 (UTC)
I'd like to add my voice to the displeasure at being taken direct to a language-choice screen. Now, regardless of the language one wants to read wikipedia in, there is an extra click-through to be made. Bad design, if you ask me. Matthew
Uhh... duhh... you're wrong here. If you want to go to en.wikipedia all the time, use the CORRECT url for that wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org and you will be taken dIRECTLY TO IT every single time. --Node 04:30, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I don't think it's a good idea either. I actually thought wikipedia was broken for a day because I didn't take the time to read and try link.. I just assumed it didn't load and that some troll succeeded in changing the main-page. MikeCapone 05:31, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Uhh... if you want to go to en.wikipedia all the time, use the CORRECT url for that wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org and you will be taken dIRECTLY TO IT every single time. --Node 04:30, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I do not like the new way *at all*. Bye bye passing trade, imho. Kiand 18:20, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I very much dislike it too. violet/riga (t) 21:41, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Where have you all been? I've been on Wikipedia for nearly 2 years now, and for most of that time it's been accepted that www.wikipedia.org should not point at the English main page. It's inherently POV to point at one language version, particularly since it has lost its' pre-eminence in terms of volume. It's been discussed on the Wikien mailing list. I've been bookmarking "en.wikipedia.org" and giving it in references for about 18 months. The change has only now been actioned because someone finally decided to be bold, and admittedly aesthetically it could do with some tweaking, but I fully support the principle of the change. -- Arwel 22:21, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Where have we been? "Where has this been discussed?", is the real question. Oh, on the mailing list. Great. Very inclusive for it to be discussed off-site. I agree it's inherently POV -- the point of view of intelligent web design. The first page people see should be catchy, it should showcase the language which has the most quality articles edited by the most people (which I'm willing to wager is English), and it should give people an indication of what sort of website they are looking at. If you wanted to be super-sensible, perhaps you could have it automatically drop you into the website indicated by your IP's country code. Anyway, we can all pretend that English language sites don't dominate the .org and .com domains, we can all love and aspire to idealistic visions about how much a default language main page will send off a language-centric message, we can all wish life was warm and squishy and everyone communicated in the same tongue effortlessly, we can pretend that discussions which take place on a mailing list someone magically represent the site as a whole (and reach the site as a whole), and we can all dream of a wonderful era where good site design doesn't matter. Or we can be realistic. Well anyway, you can see where I stand on it, but I'm just another average-joe contributor. --Fastfission 23:05, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
It was also discussed long ago on meta at m:What to do with www.wikipedia.org and m:Quelle utilisation pour www.wikipedia.org ?. Yes, I'll grant that the front page should be catchy, but I do not accept that it should showcase English as "the language which has the most quality articles edited by the most people" -- have you seen the multilingual statistics lately? German, Japanese, and French are not that far behind English, and are growing considerably faster. -- Arwel 23:26, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I agree that a language portal page is the right way to go, but this one is UGLY. Can it be edited? Where can it be edited? Who can edit it? Where can we discuss this? Temporary blindness on my part, or so it seems. Arwel's link is all you need. --217.232.181.233 23:56, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Not that far behind? Well, German has around 42% as many articles as en:, and that's as close as other language wikipedias get. English is the biggest project; English is the world's most-spoken language, behind Mandarin and Spanish, neither of which have comparably large Wikipedias. I think that the www.wikipedia.org domain should point to the English Wikipedia until other languages have comparable stats. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 00:18, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
English has a head start, but when I joined less than 2 years ago there were, if I remember rightly, about 130,000 articles on en:. The reason for the comparatively small size of zh: is fairly obviously political, while es: suffered a fork very early in the history of Wikipedia, which is why it's not as big as it should be. English Wikipedia was moved from www.wikipedia.org to en.wikipedia.org as long ago as October 2002 for goodness' sake -- there's been plenty of time for people to get used to using and quoting the 'proper' address. I have to say that I don't think the argument that en: should keep the www address just because it's the biggest will carry much weight with the Wikipedia community as a whole -- English is my preferred language, but I also work on cy: and I certainly wouldn't support a move back to the status quo ante. -- Arwel 01:53, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
If I'm anything like an average user, and I'm doing a search, if I can't find what I'm looking for at a depth of one webpage, I automatically hit the back button and go right back to the search engine. I kind of liked being greeted with the news when I open the page, as opposed to having to make a bunch of choices about my language. I realise this is meant to be inclusive and all, but I think John Thomas is particularly interested in reading his articles in his own language by default than the language of the principality of Kahmed Malai (unless he makes an active choice from an easily accessable subpage.

My humble opinion is that the frontpage should direct users to the English main page until the day another language surpasses English. FLafaire 22:54, 10 Jan 2005

If wikipedia is all for equal coverage of different language versions of the encyclopedia, regardless of how many people speak it or how many articles it has, then why does wikipedia.co.uk direct only to the english wikipedia? what about cymraeg? --81.135.218.135 15:48, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Or Scots, Gaelic, or any of the other languages spoken in the UK as a first tongue! :-) Matthew 19:57, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Has anyone considered using the Accept-Language HTTP headers that all browsers send? If it starts with en then it should issue a redirect to http://en.wikipedia.org. If it starts with de then it should redirect to de.wikipedia.org etc. Debian do this for a number of their pages and it's a really great idea because everyone feels like wikipedia isn't preferring one language over another--PdDemeter 20:52, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  • Raul654 made this suggestion--or something close to it--at tonight's Tampa Bay Meetup, as a modification to a suggestion of mine, and if no one else files a feature request on it, I will tomorrow. --Baylink 01:30, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Geez, everybody quit whinging about this. This has already been discussed on meta and on wikipedia-l, you missed your opportunity, and a looooooooong time ago there was a massive poll you may or may not have participated on, on Meta. The anglocentrism of the redirect has long been despised by the VAST MAJORITY of Wikipedians and a GROUP DECISION was made to change it to a portal which you can edit at Meta. --Node 04:30, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Node, please do take into account that not all Wikipedians have the time or inclination to discuss things on meta and wikipedia-l, or even know about them, and that most Wikipedia readers and browsers are probably not Wikipedians themselves. Therefore I would suggest that your 'VAST MAJORITY' 'GROUP DECISION' in the 'massive poll' may in fact have been made by a self-selecting group.
Also, if the redesign is so popular then why is there very little lauding of it here in response to all of this criticism of it?
Finally, in your responses here you come across as quite curt and on the verge of being rude. Not particularly good PR for Wikipedia, I would have thought. Matthew 14:06, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

And anyway, if there is going to be a laguage page, it should include Klingon! -Unknown Klingon 21:08 27 Jan 2005

Hey, Node, it's not anglocentric if it redirects to each user's language's page, and then goes to the language select page if it can't find a matching language. That seems totally fair to all users. BTW, what exactly was the old main page? If it couldn't find a language, would the en page or a language select page be default? If it was the en page, than a new redirect system using a default language page would fix the anglocentric problem. If there was a language page previously, then what's the problem? And about this topic already being discussed, why can't there be a new vote? Recounts aren't that uncommon. --Y2kBugxp90 18:17, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

SUGGESTION: Earthquake "and tsunamis"

Yes. I know. But there are lots of people out there who are *not* geophysicists.  :-) Might we expand the Special by those 2 words? -- Baylink 20:24, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Am dummy. Missed that this was a template. -- Baylink 21:26, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Error about Saudi Arabia

WikiCookie
WikiCookie

Not knowing how to edit the main page, I am using this forum to correct an error. The Hejaz is NOT "present day Saudi Arabia". Saudi Arabia occupies almost the entire Arabian Peninsula. The Hejaz is the smaller region on the eastern shore of the Red Sea that includes the cities of Medina and Mecca. Too Old 06:49, 2005 Jan 8 (UTC)

Thank you for highlighting that. The error has been fixed, and if it does not appear corrected to you, try reloading the page. You win a cookie. - Mark 08:28, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Earthquake donation box

I've moved the donation box down. It's been two weeks since the disaster, unless anyone's been living under a rock they'll have heard about it and heard for calls for donations - and probably donated if they've wanted to. Tom- 00:48, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Didn't agree at first glance, but your point of it being two weeks now is very true. violet/riga (t) 00:51, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I can't find it on the main page now. I think it should be on for longer. People need reminding and don't all finish donating by two weeks. If there's room for stuff like this: "...that the racy George Michael song I Want Your Sex touted monogamy instead of promiscuity? " then I think the donation box is more important. A constant "update on the disaster" link would be appropriate for sometime to come, linking to a page like this. WikiUser 21:42, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

language redirect

As multicultural as it is, I find that the multilingual front page they just installed is more unwieldy than it's worth. (above unsigned)

Then just type in the CORRRECT URL FOR THE ENGLISH WIKIPEDIA, en.wikipedia.org, as you should've been doing all along. --Node 04:33, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
and, can it be edited? the 1000-10000 tier is outdated, already. dab (ᛏ) 22:53, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
It can be edited at meta:Www.wikipedia.org_portal Jeff8765 00:08, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
And it is. Ad nauseum. --Baylink 01:32, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

San Francisco Sub Update

The severely injured crewman has died and the current number of injured is 23.

huh?

I saw a swear word so I deleted it.--67.68.15.69 20:45, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)edit

Main Page redirect and recent slowness

How come the main page changed to a new screen (www.wikipedia.org). I liked it better when it simply came up to the page with the search box, news, and articles.

Now it comes up to a language selection screen, which takes a while to load, from where I have to select my language to go to the original main page, which is also slow.

Is there a way to set a cookie or have the webpage simply go to the proper language website, based on the user's previous choices and browser configuration? I mean when I enter www.wikipedia.org for a URL, not set a homepage to the actual domain, or create a special bookmark.

I fixed this by my hosts file to have www.wikipedia.org point to en.wikipedia.org's IP address. --I am not good at running 00:38, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Actually, that's a good idea, but only under prime conditions. It's practical for one or two computers on which one has superuser privledges, but in situations where one logs on from work (in my case) or from various locations, it's not the most feasable (on work computers, lusers don't get to change the hosts file, and at various places, people don't generally like you playing with their operating files. In my case, it's workable from home, but not from work, with the pun quite intended.

I figure that having the main page read the browser's user-agent language component should be enough to select the proper main page. If some has a proxy that alters that and has an unknown language, then a redirection to either a specific language main page, or to the language select page. This begins to address the problem of language preferences. Why not take the user to his own language automatically?

Because if the language selection was done automagically in the background, the casual user would not know how sensitive and inclusive we all are, and would not know that we are aware that there are other languages besides english. It is better this way in that we get to make a display of our sensitivity.

Bahhh, the hosts file thing doesn't work after all. After quick observation, it seems the IP addresses of www.wikipedia.org and en.wikipedia.org seem to change every few minutes. What the hell? Is there any way I can tell my system or even just Firefox -- hell, my LinkSys router if I have to -- to automatically reference en.wikipedia.org whenever www.wikipedia.org is referenced? This is stupid. I want to be able to get the English wikipedia from any instance of the referenced www. prefix via a solution that actually works. Any ideas? --I am not good at running 01:14, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The IP address changes every few minutes because we have multiple servers that answer to a single domain name. A common setup for high-traffic sites. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:47, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Everybody, JUST TYPE IN EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG instead of whinging about the removal of the redirect! Everything people have discussed here has already been discussed on wikipedia-l and meta, ad nauseum. If you want, you can still participate although discussion is mostly over. YThere was a poll on this a long time ago, and people think that a redirect may be bad although a highlight of preferrred language seems possible still. --Node 04:35, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

conflict with information on Pompey

The page for Pompey says "in the spring of 49 BC Caesar crossed the Rubicon and invaded Italy with his thirteenth legion". --Paraphelion 02:28, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hey, there's an error in the news box!

There's a missing pic or something.

www.wikipedia.org

Very Simple Problem to fix. Wikipedia just needs to detect the language of the user's web browser (i.e. en-US) and automatically redirect them to their language (en.wikipedia.org, etc). If the user is using an unrecognized language then wikipedia should show the different languages available. Any advanced web developer should know this. -BW

ok, i unterstand that www.wikipedia.org goes to a global page, where you can choose a language etc. but why does www.wikipedia.com go to that page?? this adress should go the english page.

it freaks me out because now i have to click on english and wait for the english page to load before i can search. And don't tell me to use en.wikipedia..., i'm used to www.wikipedia.com, as everybody else i think.

Then get used to using the shorter url. I've been using it since before this site was moved the the language subdomain. --mav 20:16, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
In a way, en.wiki.org isn't shorter because you can leave out the www in www.wiki.org. But that's really besides the point, as there's this nifty thing called a bookmark.
BTW, there's no reason .com should be any different from .org, as both are TLDs meant for global use. If you really want an English-specific domain that doesn't require you to use a subdomain, register/use wikipeia.co.uk, wikipedia.org.uk or wikipedia.us. --Pidgeot 21:26, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
www.wikipedia.org.uk exists and redirects to en.wikipedia.org, though it shouldn't as UK also has cy, kw, gd, and (arguably) ga wikipedias, too. -- Arwel 02:01, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I'm someone else who thinks the new language-selection main page is a severe step backwards. Feel free to disregard me (as I don't have an account ;). The design is ugly with no pretty pictures, it's slow, and on many computers (eg. mine) the Japanese characters display as "???" - yuck. It doesn't even have a clear statement of what Wikipedia is on that page! I can't see how a new user who'd never heard of the project (if there are any left) would be tempted to carry on and browse the encyclopedia. In any case, there's an "other languages" link right there on the top right of the English main page. If we really have to have this new page, can there at least be a cookie set so people only have to see it once? Thanks.

One reason the first page seems slow to load is because it causes many, many fonts to be loaded into your display server, just to display one word in every proposed language. PLEASE replace this text by images! My mozilla grows by 120Mbytes and my X server by 200Mbytes when I pass on this first page. People with smaller/slower computers will just give up waiting. Check the wiki server logs to see how often the "client stopped connection before send body completed" on this first page.

  • Ok, now *that's* a valid complaint. I'll point that out to folks... but remember: you can do it yourself.  ;-) --Baylink 01:33, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

On the .org portal page, Wikinews' address needs to have an en in it, not just an n. -- user:zanimum

Anyone can edit the portal - it's at m:Www.wikipedia.org portal. [[User:Rdsmith4|User:Rdsmith4/sig]] 17:05, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Newsbox error 1/10/04 4:00 PM CST

Picture of Abbas with Yushchenko lead? Anyone fix this? --[[User:TheGrza|TheGrza]] 22:01, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)

  • seconding the above re this embarrassing error: PLEASE FIX IT. btw, the "Tintin" cartoon on the left isn't placed too well either. Sfahey 23:13, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Anyone can edit "In The News" (unless it happens to be protected, which it normally isn't): see Template:In the news. [[User:Rdsmith4|User:Rdsmith4/sig]] 23:24, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the info, which I actually just used. It's a wide-open door for vandals, so I won't spread this around.Sfahey 15:55, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Thing is vandals don't generally read deeper into things. Other than a goatcz picture on the front page for a while, we've never had any major incidents to my knowledge. -- user:zanimum
  • Somebody did mess with the front page using the "In The News" thing, but it was reverted after several minutes.
  • Well, that and the infamous Felix the Cat incident.  ;-) -- Baylink 15:45, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • The Goatse image on the main page *was* the Felix the cat incident. →Raul654 15:54, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
  • OK, *be* picky.  :-) --Baylink 01:34, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Why Wikipedia is running slowly

Read why Wiki is slow. Dan100 14:29, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

Link on Main Page to Allpages

Could we have a link to Special:Allpages on the Main Page? In my opinion, it's better than the Quick index, and better for namespaces than the search engine. Lee S. Svoboda 01:11, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There currently is a link it is near the bottom of the page. The text of the link is "All". It could probably do will more prominent placement. -- Popsracer 07:39, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for telling me. I would like the it to be moved to above the tables, the most prominent place on the Main Page, but I think that I'm a bit on the radical side there. Lee S. Svoboda

whut?

why are we back to ungrammatical

Started in 2001, we are currently working on 449425 English articles.

?? don't tell me it won a poll or something. How can we convince people there is anything of value in WP when even the first sentence is wrong. Or is this in the spirit of "weeding out elitism since 2001"? dab (ᛏ) 18:35, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't like how it says "we are currently working on..." maybe put "English Wikipedia started in 2001, we now have 449425 articles." instead. Squash 02:04, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I actually love that part: it dispells the illusion that you will find anything lik 450k encyclopedic articles here. We have no 'finished' articles, of course, but if you want to count articles that are by some standard encyclopedic, we now have 478. dab (ᛏ) 18:13, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse picture

Those who know me know that I generally oppose censorship (and I specifically voted to delete the censored Abu Gharib page). However, is it really appropriate to show that image on the main page? -Ld | talk 00:25, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely it's completely integral to the recent news regarding Charles Graner. It's ugly, that's a bad reason to hide it. --Christiaan 14:06, 15 Jan 2005

Happy Birthday

to Wikipedia :) I love this project.

Also, what happened to the article counter?

NM, it's back
It was temporarily removed to make way for the birthday message. Things have been redesigned however and now it's back. --fvw* 01:30, 2005 Jan 15 (UTC)
I created a birthday banner, Template:Birthdaynotice, but on second thought I moved it to Template:Main Page banner so we needn't create another template for every occasion. I'd suggest, however, that the banner be commented out rather than deleted to make it easy to re-enable next time it becomes necessary. [[User:Rdsmith4|User:Rdsmith4/sig]] 02:40, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Of all the many bad ideas I have seen floated at Wikipedia, this "language template" thing is one of the worst. To new visitors, it will be totally meaningless and confusing, and will discourage use of the encyclopaedia (something I know many users don't care much about). To everyone else, it is just a redundant nuisance. Adam 06:26, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

What of those who would be ultra-confused by a page with not a single word they can understand? This was, until a few weeks ago, the situation of any given monolingual Chinese speaker after typing "www.wikipedia.org". The world doesn't revolve around en.wikipedia - we may be the biggest, but the others are big. --Node 09:58, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
in case you mean the portal page, see above, and meta:Talk:Www.wikipedia.org_portal. It's experimental, and will react to browsers' language preference setting. dab (ᛏ) 10:10, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
How is that a response to my criticisms? Adam 05:42, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

triple 'in' in news

"Mahmoud Abbas is sworn in in a ceremony in" - I suppose its valid english but it reads terribly. Change 2nd 'in' to 'at' ?. - Wombat 01:09, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

Suggested new method for hyperlinking

Hello All

I'm a new visitor to this site, having only just discovered it a few weeks ago. For this reason please excuse this comment if it infringes any pre-defined rules on suggesting new changes. In this same spirit, please excse it if it has been porposed before. It is late, and I have not yet had time to peruse the site for all of the rules on proposed changes etc.

I have used the Wikipedia intensively since I discovered it just over six weeks ago. In general, I have found every single article to be concise, informative and very well written. The links have been exceptionally helpful and have always led me on many an interesting diversion.

I do have one suggestion to improve the usefulness and integrity of the site though and it is pretty fundamental. My suggestion is actually more of a question - Is it possible to automate the generation of hyperlinks so that every word within the text of an article is checked against every topic in the Wikipedia to determine whether or not a link should be established ?

In conjunction with this - Is it possible to establish a set of synonyms and associations for each topic to aid the above process so that the checking does not miss anything just because it is worded the wrong way ?

For example - I might write a 4,000 word essay on King James I of England. Upon submission, the hyperlink checker would check every word in the article against every entry in the Wikipedia and create hperlinks for all known entries. It would also create links for related entries - for example, King James I of England also refers to King James VI of Scotland. The word "King" might also link to the word "Monarch" and so on.

Of course, the automated hyperlinks may be manually vetted by human operator to cull any irrelevant links (eg - "Monarch" => Monarch Butterfly" etc) but the process would still save thousands of man hours and produce a much richer document.

You may think that this may lead to nearly every word becoming a hyperlink but in fact that is the goal - to have every single word and phrase in every article become some sort of searchable reference. I know that this is a pretty major ask but if it is possible then imagine the possibilities - an endlessly searchable database of the entire sum of all knowledge.

Please comment on this topic as I will be checking regularly - as I said, I'm new to tis site and am not sure what the correct protocol is in this regards. Again, please excuse any errors in etiquette that I may have committed.

Thank you or your time.

[email protected]

there are some bots around who do this, and dump their suggestions on talk pages (its User:LinkBot, see Wikipedia:Bots; ). you don't want them to insert links automatically, because most of them will be irrelevant to the context (link-spam). (btw, this inquiry would belong on Wikipedia:Village pump. dab (ᛏ) 16:50, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

inflammatory frontpage?

Why does it say Jews are Subhuman on the wiki frontpage? Perhaps someone should change it. Soon.

this was vandalism to Template:Did you know by User:70.88.129.205, a comcastbusiness.com customer. dab (ᛏ) 16:17, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Note that you can revert such vandalism yourself using the "did you know" (or wherever it is) subsection linked to at the top of the paage 203.217.78.218 12:19, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I do not get this. What measures are in place to preserve the integrity of the site from idiots? I also think the link for each section on this page is misleading and as a result accidental damage could also occur. Who is in charge of content overall?
No one is in charge of content over all. This is the entire point of the website. The mechanism in place is that any reasonable person, seeing obvious vandalism (of which inflamatory racism is an obvious example), will want to delete it; experienced Wiki users will find that deletion quite simple. This is what the prior poster meant by "revert."User:Polyparadigm

Contradictory Information for Kiwanis

The main page says there are 600,000 members. The Kiwanis page itself says there are under 300,000. --Paraphelion 01:06, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Commented out the statistic until there is confirmation or agreement. Ancheta Wis 01:50, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be nice to have a link to Wikitravel on the starting page? Nobody knows about this project.

Wikitravel isn't part of Wikimedia Gkhan 18:50, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)
Tried the Moscow link. Novodevichy Cemetery wasn't even mentioned in the Wikitravel. So far, there is much more information in the WP Category:Moscow items. Ancheta Wis 17:16, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Typo

There is a typo on the front page (which I am unable to edit personally). Where it says: "the unrest over the goverment's new taxes", it is meant to read "the unrest over the government's new taxes".

Thank you Bobo192 04:10, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, fixed. You could have fixed this yourself at Template:In the news.-gadfium 04:22, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Biggest charity concert since Live Aid 1984?

It was 1985, wasn't it?

Fixed. [[User:Rdsmith4|User:Rdsmith4/sig]] 15:44, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Asking for changing a language name mistake from Galician Wikipedia

Me (and in fact all the collaborators of Galician Wikipedia) are no happy with the related translation made for "Galician" in the wikipedia languages list performed above. The real translation for Galician in Galician is "GALEGO", not "gallego". Even wherever you may see the mistaken "gallego", never has been a Galician word. I only ask to whom who may concern to change please this error (as I don't know how to change it). Many thanks and best wishes.

Sobreira User

I have asked for Template:Wikipedialang to be unprotected so that this change can be made. —AlanBarrett 17:34, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Typo, Episode II

In the "This day in history" section, "beter" should be "better." --Fermatprime 11:10, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It's fixed. For the record, though, you can fix that yourself, too (and doing so takes less time than writing about it here :)). -- Schnee (cheeks clone) 11:54, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Logo is not doubled-up. Good!

Although the Wikipedia logo was not doubled up in Firefox, it was in IE when MediaWiki 1.4 came out. Now it looks good; Congratulations on the fix! Ancheta Wis 22:24, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Selected anniv (Jan 25): "Tu Bishvat in Israel"

Under Selected anniversaries for January 25 is listed "Tu Bishvat in Israel". Since Tu Bishvat is a general Jewish holiday, and thus not only relevant or celebrated in Israel, the words "in Israel" should not be used here. Furthermore this is correctly portrayed in the January 25 page, so I don't understand why it has been written up as such for Selected anniversaries. --jnothman 01:15, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Updated, but you can always fix those yourself, too :). 68.81.231.127 10:55, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

how far should we take this ?

hey i just started at this website but its pretty cool and hey i have a question!!! is there any info on what people think about how far we should take our new technology and abilities ????????????? and if any body has any good info or a view let me now cause i have a debate to do soon and could as much help as pssible if u do email me at [email protected] thanks so much

Why are links in the sidebar (along with some others) no longer underlined? Shouldn't they be consistent with the choice made by the user? It looks wrong to be to have them without the underline. violet/riga (t) 19:09, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My previous question about vandalism

was deleted. Which I guess is OK, maybe I was too flippant, but the fact remains there was an item on the (supposedly protected) main page earlier today that said Viktor Yuvschenko had been nominated for an award based on his role in a porn film. I assume I'm not the only one who saw this. Would anybody like to comment?-rastro

Several sections of the main page can be edited by anyone. See the box at the top of this talk page for links to the editable sections.-gadfium 21:31, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Oh. Is it poor form to waste space saying "thank you?" -rastro
A "thank you" never goes amiss.-gadfium 22:38, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Important Information needed Please

Hello everyone, this is my first time to this web site. I have a project to do and I need some answors. Please! My son was born in Augest 2002 and Im doing his baby book It ask me questions like: 

                    **Important National events
                    **Current national Leaders
                    ** Important worldwide leaders
                    **Best-selling books and authors
                    

 And the price of things:
                         MIlk, Gas ,ect


Can someone please help me to where i know to look this information up?????

See our article August 2002 for a list of important events in that year. If you want events in your city, go to your public library, ask for the newspaper reading room, and ask for the local newspaper for August 2002. For other events in 2002, see Category:2002, and from there you'll find articles and subcategories such as Category:2002 books and List of state leaders in 2002.
I can't help you on the price of things, except that the grocery/supermarket advertisments in the local paper for August 2002 might be useful. If you reply to this, include your location and other people may be able to give you web resources for local information.-gadfium 00:19, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Error on the main page

The main page says:

1951 - Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site began with a one-megaton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flats.

That's grossly inaccurate. Operation Ranger, Able shot on jan 27 1951 was of a 1 kiloton bomb. The first meagton detonation was the Mike shot (Mike for Megaton) in october/november 1952 during project Ivy.

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/index.html
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Ranger.html
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Ivy.html

--J-Star 09:02, 2005 Jan 27 (UTC)

The KJV article on the main page says:

"emains one of the most widely-read literary works from its time, surpassed only by the works of playwright William Shakespeare."

It is difficult to imagine this to be true as the sales of the KJV Bible are reported as many many multiples of any other book, period.

--[[User:Eagle|Eagle|

The Dutch wikipedia

run this night over the 50,000. Can anyone change it and place it in the head group? Thanks

Well you learn something new everyday: as an English speaker, I have just learned that Nederland is Dutch for The Netherlands, but that Nederlands is Dutch for Dutch! If this type of subtlety arises everyday between native and learned speakers of any language, can you imagine the miscommunication that basically arises everyday in the Wikipedia? Yet Wikipedia keeps growing. (Congratulations for the 50,000.) Ancheta Wis 17:38, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
next runner-up (for this completely arbitrary threshold :p) will be es: (now at 40k). dab (ᛏ) 17:33, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Anniversary

Today's news talks of a one month anniversary which is a howler. Anniversary relates to annus which is the latin for year

Hope that it can be changed asap. Jack Hill

This seems a bit pedantic. You're correct about the derivation, but the term "anniversary" has come to be used for various different lengths of time. I don't think it needs to be changed unless someone can suggest a better alternative. [[User:Rdsmith4|User:Rdsmith4/sig]] 16:59, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The term is widely used--"one-month anniversary of our first date"; "the two-week anniversary of my new job." What do you recommend, montheversary? Nelson Ricardo 17:02, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)
Yes, the term is widely used INCORRECTLY. As Jack Hill stated, and as published in Wiktionary, "anniversary" pertains only to the annual date. The slang misuse should not be quietly condoned on the front page of what is supposed to be a source of knowledge. Why not simply say "it has been a month since..." 148.63.234.151 19:48, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I don't think this meets the definition of slang, since it doesn't seem to define a cultural group. And even if you're using "slang" loosely, I don't see the harm in letting the language drift a bit in this case. For instance, you didn't use "source" to talk about the origin of a running body of water, did you? Yet no one is confused because you say "source of knowledge" to denote a difference between this and the classical, technically correct use of the word. "One-month anniversary" would be a similar term. polyparadigm

See the History of Antarctica article to know that the discovery of Antarctic mainland is disputed between Russia, England and USA. For example, Russian sources claim, that it was discovered January 28, 1820 by the Russian expedition lead by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev, which approached to the Antarctic coast in the point with coordinates 69°21'S, 2°14'W [2] So, the controversial statement on the main page should be removed. Cmapm 09:44, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The 3 articles each clearly acknowledge these three men, who are each now listed in the Category:explorers of Antarctica (see the talk page for more). It's like the invention of the computer; no government ever recognized their achievement until it became obvious that the discoveries were significant. You are welcome to learn how to edit the Selected Anniversaries section so that you can make the changes you desire. Just follow the instructions in the box at the top of this page. Ancheta Wis 17:47, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Since www.wikipedia.org no longer redirects to this page, the issue came up as to whether we needed that gigantic languges section. I have gone ahead and converted it to interwiki links (which is the standard for every other page on Wikipedia and is done by most of the languages main pages) for the languages over 10k articles. What does everyone think? →Raul654 19:49, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

  • Long overdue. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 19:55, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Good idea, I agree. --fvw* 19:57, 2005 Jan 28 (UTC)
  • Much better, though I can see people being confused as to the order (it doesn't say anywhere that it's in size order). However, alphabetical has its problems too. violet/riga (t) 19:59, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
    • Right now, it's approximately size order, although I'm told that there's a "standard" (approximately alphabetical) order somewhere →Raul654 20:06, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm strongly against this: I think it's important to promote the other language versions and I don't think this does that as well as the box. I personally find it interesting and useful to see a quick reference on this page to the versions by size. It's also not true that other langages mostly use the side-bar links - of the 19 largest, 12 have similar lists to our template version. (fr. ja. nl. pl. cs. da. it. sh. uk. ru. ro. pt.) I really want the language box back -- sannse (talk) 20:02, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps a link to www.wikipedia.org would help too? violet/riga (t) 20:08, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  • so we went from "gigantic langage section" to "no language section"? I object. I say, keep the major ones in the template (>10,000 or so), and link *all* (or, >100) by interwikis, alphabetically. dab (ᛏ) 22:32, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • strongly against. (personally for me it was the existence of many language versions that sparkled my initial interest in Wikipedia. The other languages' versions should be promoted, not hidden away.) --rydel 22:57, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Very good, this is step two of the long-awaited portal; now we can do whatever we want (this is positive, I think). The only thing we miss is a link back to our multi-lang portal. ✏ Sverdrup 00:22, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Excellent idea, but I think we need to retain Complete list, Multilingual coordination and Start a Wikipedia in another language somewhere. GeorgeStepanek\talk 01:26, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I used these links on a daily basis, and i especially liked the grouping according to size. DAb's suggestion seems good. - Chris 73 Talk 03:45, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I think we should have a link to the complete list on the mainpage, it won't take up that much room. I do not think we should have a link to everything on the mainpage, but we should at least allow people easy access, especially given that this is by far the largest Wikipedia. Rje 04:00, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • Linking 151 other-language wikipedias from the sidebar is nuts - it'd 2 or 3 times longer than the main page itself. →Raul654 03:58, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)
    • I think Rje means the Complete list link. GeorgeStepanek\talk 04:20, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
      • I do indeed. I forgot we used to have one, I never used it with the old template that linked to most of the other languages. :). Rje 05:00, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • While some people may think its only purpose was to direct visitors to wikipedia.org to a specific Wikipedia, it serves more than that. Look at the top 10, the top 20, even the top 30 Wikipedias, and you will see that every single one of them has a Template:Wikipedialang type arrangement. Some of them have only languages with over 1000 articles, others have over 100 only, and some even have less than 100 (Some, like the Chinese Wikipedia, include national minority languages). People are way, way, way too obsessed with an itsy bitsy mainpage. I don't advocate something that takes up an entire browser window, but those who don't think we can spare a few lines are, in my book, wackos. --Node 09:53, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Ugh. PLEASE, let's revert that - not everyone's using the new skin, and I now have six lines of interwiki links at the top of the page, which take up a considerable amount of screen space, distract from the actual main page and make the whole page look rather unprofessional. -- Schnee (cheeks clone) 18:26, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm using the classic skin. The main page now looks like crap (as Schneelocke pointed out). CryptoDerk 18:51, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)
    • I use both skins (classic for most editing, and monobook when I want to see how most people will see it) and I agree that the main page looks like crap. I have reverted it to what it was prior to when I started. →Raul654 19:38, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)
      • Ok, so that didn't work. How about having a single link back to www.wikipedia.org instead? --fvw* 19:43, 2005 Jan 29 (UTC)

Suggestions for "Article of the Day"

Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge , mabye.....

Check out Wikipedia:Today's featured article for more information. Evil Monkey∴Hello? 01:55, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

Mohandas?

Why is Mahatma Gandhi's image on the main page entitled "Mohandas Gandhi?" When I checked out the image, the subtitle said Mahatma Gandhi. ???

The article actually says: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (October 2, 1869—January 30, 1948) (Devanagari: मोहनदास करमचन्द गांधी) also called Mahatma Gandhi ("great soul"). Articles are supposes to go at the most common name, and whoever wrote that decided (correct, in my opinion) that Mahatma Gandhi is the most common. →Raul654 01:19, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
To clarify, Mohandas was Gandhi's given birth name. Mahatma is a title, or nickname even, that was given to him later in life. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 02:20, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm confused. It is 9:00 pm where I am and the featured article is Super Mario 64. Two Hours ago, it was Gandhi. Whats up?

Probably weird caching or something. Mario 64 was yesterday's FA. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:09, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, it changed back right when I went back to the Main Page.


en.wikipedia.org now shows "Wikipedia in other languages" and "Wikipedia's sister projects", but they no longer answer a need. Wikipedia.org now makes the visitor immediately aware of Wikipedia's sister projects and its many translations. Mentioning the same things over again on the main pages of specific Wikipedias, such as the English Wikipedia is redundant a waste of space and detracts from an otherwise clear and concise project.

We should clean up the front page by liberating it from these artifacts and using the extra space to better organize our content and perhaps include a new section. -Exigentsky

No shouting. Disagree. This edition gets referred to by the other wikipedias. Omitting the sized links would make it less welcoming for the other editions. Ancheta Wis 01:47, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I don't see how, everything is already mentioned to all visitors entering Wikipedia.org. I don't think a Wikipedia dedicated to a particular language and subject matter should have to include all those extra sections now that Wikipedia.org takes care of informing visitors of the full range of Mediawiki projects and translations. -Exigentsky

one of the disadvantages of not being able to edit the main page

one of the disadvantages of not being able to edit the main page is not being able to remove vandelism such as the erect penis photo shown now.

You can: see Template:In the news. I've just reverted it, however. User:Rdsmith4/Sig 14:30, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)


Disagree - a first page needs to outline all the facets of the following pages. Wikipedia is intended to make information free for everyone and increase awareness of the world for everyone. Therefore informing members and visitors of the many languages available and the subdivisions of the concept is necessary. The home page is a guide for new visitors and a starting place for a logical exploration of available invormation. The home page is fine as it is as anyone dissatisfied can use search imediatley and get on with their business. ERS

Well then how did it get vandalized? Never mind. I get it. --Blair P. Houghton 00:54, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Main page is male dominated

It seems that the main page is almost always dominated by articles and pictures of men. Right now the main page includes 4 pictures - all of them are of men (3 of the 4 are white male politicians). I can't remember the last time I saw a picture of a woman on the main page. In the interest of broadening the appeal of Wikipedia, maybe we should make an effort to feature more women and minorities. Just a thought. Kaldari 15:47, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think that's at least partly a consequence of the fact that a large proportion of people who are encyclopaedic are men. --Khendon 15:54, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That's probably true, especially historically. I'm just saying that we should be aware of it and maybe make an effort to include more women and minorities so that Wikipedia appeals to a broader audience. Kaldari 16:01, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Disagree

  • Affirmative action is entirely orthogonal to the Wikipedian spirit. Featured articles etc. on the main page should be displayed entirely on the merits of the article itself: interesting, informative, and cross-referenced to numerous other articles.
  • If most of the articles are about or pertaining to men, then most of the featured articles, statistically, will be about or pertaining to men. How else can the project claim to be entirely unbiased?
  • Wikipedia may be for everyone, but that doesn't mean we should be extra careful not to offend anyone. - Hieronymous (couldn't be bothered to log in)

I'm not saying we're offending anyone, I'm just saying it might be nice if Wikipedia was more appealing to people besides white males. Otherwise we just end up with white males writing about white males and we're missing an opportunity to diversify the content of Wikipedia. I don't think we need to bend over backwards or institute any kind of affirmative action policy, but I think considering that Wikipedia contributors are 90% white male (if you look at the user photo albums), it would be nice to get a broader range of input. An easy way to do that would be to make a conscious effort not to ALWAYS feature articles about men, especially white male politicians. If we were truely "unbiased" the featured article would be selected totally at random, but as it is, personal preferences, interests, and biases are certainly a factor. Kaldari 17:04, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, there was a woman on the main page when Bishojo game was featured, but I don't think that's exactly what you had in mind :). Anyway, the featured article is not chosen at random. It goes through a peer review process at WP:FAC, and if it is voted featured-quality then it is added to the pool of featured articles at WP:FA from which the main page articles are chosen. You're right that biases and personal interests are a factor, but only in the sense that not enough contributors are writing good articles about women, not that the main page selection is biased against them. Unfortunately we can't make a "conscious effort" because if you look at WP:FA virtually none of them are about women. If you'd like to see an article about a famous woman on the main page, then the best thing to do would be to write a featured-quality article on one and submit it to WP:FAC; then everyone will be happy to see it on the main page. --Redquark 17:18, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the helpful suggestions. I'll follow your advise and see how it goes. Kaldari 17:25, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I am endlessly puzzled by the notion that one needs same sex (or race) role models and topics of interest. Do men not admire, and write about, Mother Theresa? Are women not interested in Gandhi? Did only females participate in the recent Roe v Wade FAC debate ... or were there any at all? FWIW, I appreciate Ms "Kaldari"s moderate, "examining" stance on this issue, but it is a slippery slope to start down.Sfahey 03:22, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I took this issue into account when writing the Weight training article (which recently achieved FA status), by trying to make it more "women friendly". The photos were of a female weight trainer, and moreover one who does not have an intimidatingly perfect figure. Women are often turned off weight training because of its macho image, which is a shame because it can be very effective for them.
So, while I accept your point, Sfahey, I also feel that Kaldari has a very valid point. In addition to the suggestions made above, how about finding striking images to illustrate FAs such as Roe v Wade, that would put more women on the front page. A good quality image of Emily Dickinson could very well be subtituted for the current male image selected to represent Poetry of the United States, when it comes up. GeorgeStepanek\talk 04:04, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Should we protect the main page again?

As many will be aware, the main page used to be protected because of regular vandalism. It isn't currently protected because at least two of the components used to build it are not protected. As a result it's easy to vandalise it. Time to revisit the discussion of whether protecting the main page is preferable to goatse.cx on the main page. No view expressed by me in this case. Simple choice: protection or goatse and penis pictures regularly. Over to the rest of the readers here to discuss this question again... :) Jamesday 01:39, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I took some heat when I started doing this with the featured article write ups following the last major vandalism incident in Novemeber (the felix the cat incident). I have gone ahead and protected the 9 static images on the main page (the 8 sister project logos and the language logo). Someone else protected Template:Wikipedialang, Template:Newpagelinksmain, and template:WikipediaSister, and (since they are mostly static), there's no reason why they should not stay protected as well. Mav intends to protect all the selected anniversaries later this month after the last of them are filled in. Once this is done, our security soft spots will be:
If you want to stop all vandalism to the main page, we need to figure out some system for reliably protecting all of the above. →Raul654 04:44, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)
What about a system for automatically protecting any template or image on the Main Page? That way, featured article images would only remain protected while they are shown on the Main Page. But writing stuff in the software specifically for the Main Page may be tricky and counterproductive. - Mark 09:55, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I believe the main page should be protected. Because it relies so heavily on its templates, it rarely needs changing. However, i believe the templates should remain open, since more people need to change them more often, and because it takes a determined vandal to find the templates to edit. In my opinion, page protection should be used to prevent casual vandalism only. On a wiki, someone actually trying to do damage will find a way to do so. foobaz·✐ 04:56, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
What you are describing is the same security though obscurity scheme that we've been using for a year. Only problem is, security through obscurity breaks down when the obscurity goes away, which is apparently what has happened. →Raul654 05:00, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)
Exactly. Frankly, I'm not at all suprised this happened. Look above in the top-right corner. We have a prominent message advertising the fact that anybody can edit it. If you ask me, this is a bad idea. Eventually, enough people are going to find out (which has started to happen), and those templates will have to be protected (or we have to find a new system). We seriously have to look into ways of protecting the main page. The way things are going, it looks like we may have to protect the templates not so long from now; but as a first step, I think that the prominent "you can edit the main page" box has got to go. If we make that so well-known, then we might as well just unprotect the main page itself! -Frazzydee|✍ 19:07, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Please keep in mind that hiding Wikipedia's editability will reduce the number of new editors we get. foobaz·✐ 16:29, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I don't see any options other than protection, unfortunately. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:17, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • My vote is for one of the above compromises, born largely by the presence right now of several embarrassing "typos" on "Did you know". Granted, I missed the vandalism, but sloppy front pages are a downer too. Are you administrators still be able to correct stuff like this, when it's frozen? Perhaps I should give whoever added these items a buzz in the meantime, since I can't fix'm myself, as I've been doing. Sfahey 03:07, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The main page is already protected. I oppose protection of templates used on the main page. Although templates used on the main page are often vandalised, the vandalism is usually reverted within minutes. This is good enough. We do not need to ensure that things visible on the main page are never vandalised. I would not characterise the current system as security through obscurity, because there is very little obscurity, and what obscurity exists is an unfortunate consequence of the way templates work, not a feature intended to provide security. The system I want to see is better charracterised as eternal vigilance: leave all the templates open for editing, but revert vandalism promptly. Vandalism visible on the main page for a short time does hardly any harm, whereas protecting things all over the place causes great harm. (The harm is that, when people want to fix problems but can't edit the page, they are more likely to give up leaving the problem un-fixed than they are to ask for a change via the talk page, or to ask for unprotection.) It seems to me that most of the people arguing in favour of protection are admins, who are able to edit protected pages, and so are unlikely to see how harmful protection is. —AlanBarrett 17:06, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Front page hacked?

Nineteen hours ago I was assailed by some of the most revolting pornographic images I have ever seen. As I set Wikipedia's main page to load in one of four tabs when I start my Firefox browser, this could have easily been seen by anyone of my kids -- with the very real possibility of psychological scarring. As I said these images were utterly revolting -- as in bizarre/extreme.

This is a real security flaw that threatens to ruin this entire project. You can imagine what sort of response this would get in the both the tabloid media and among those opposed to the concept of a user-compiled and edited dictionary. Then, of course, there would be the copycats who would try to outdo each other.

I'm not a technical person but, surely, the main page could be set up to randomly load articles and related graphics from Wikipedia's database, with a reputable RSS feed providing the news. It, at least, needs a gatekeeper -- either a real person or a robot/script -- to ensure the main page content is genuine.

which template was vandalised? I'm unable to find the incident. My proposal would be a mechanism to prevent the appearance of images that were uploaded less than, say, a day ago, on the main page. In the rare event that a breaking news story needs a more recent image, the image would have to be 'certified' by a sysop. A day should be sufficient to spot goatse, so it will not make it onto the main page. That would still leave us with images like the autofellatio one which for some unknown reason were able to survive ifd and could be added to the mainpage by anyone, without having to upload anything. dab (ᛏ) 12:44, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Also, some images that are quite appropriate on Wikipedia would not be in the eyes of some on the front page (images of genitalia, graphical diagrams of sexual congress, etc.). These images will have been uploaded many moons ago, and certainly more than "a day ago".
The main problem is having open templates on the front page. It's a bad idea.
However, a note of caution to the original poster - Wikipedia is not a "child safe" environment, and you probably should not let them do anything involving the Internet unattended if you are actually worried about the effect that such imagery and/or ideas might have; the Internet, sadly, is littered with such piffle, and much of it is overly easy to stumble over.
James F. (talk) 12:57, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
the images you mention will have survived ifd at some point, and "relativists" would argue that by virtue of being encyclopedic, they have the same right to appear on the main page as every other image. What would happen if autofellatio ever reached FA status? Would it be featured on the main page? With the image? The problem I am addressing here is people uploading porn that will be speed-deleted, but not speedily enough to prevent it briefly appearing on the main page. This would be addressed by my proposal. The points you raise go much deeper, because they are a matter of policy: Let's not have them get in the way of dealing with clear cases everyone agrees on. dab (ᛏ) 13:07, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This was not appropriate content. I'm pretty broadminded. I know what gratuitious offensiveness is when I see it. Images were not accompanied by an explanatory text. They were just repeated ad nauseum on a yellow background. Yes, encyclopedias can contain material that is offensive to some but that is no reason to keep them away from teenagers!

I don't know what template was vandalised -- all I do know is that when I opened Wikipedia last night (between 11pm and midnight, Perth Australia time) I was greeted by the grossest of images. The menu on the left was unaffected but the rest of the main page was filled with multiple images on a yellow background. I cannot be sure of their duration but I did reload and restart browser a few times but to no effect.

For those that don't know - this was goatse - uploaded and added to the sister projects template and the recent changes header. Because of an unrelated site slowdown, those of us trying to fix it couldn't access the site. This meant that the image was up for in excess of 20 minutes. The blue ribbon goes to fvw for getting to the delete button first and Hadal for fixing the template and recent changes. We've had complaints via email again (to Jimbo and the board) - one from a teacher who was showing the site to her class. We need to stop this NOW. This happens on a regular basis. It's true that this incident was made more problematic by an unrelated problem, but this sort of vandalism happens very regularly - and on our most public face. I can't say strongly enough that I believe we have to fully protect the front page. It's only recently that it was unprotected in any way. Before templates were used, the page was locked. Until we get a new system that allows for an alternative solution such as delayed editing on problem pages , let's protect -- sannse (talk) 14:02, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC) (fvw - yes, I know I said I was done ranting on this, seems I was wrong :)


Agree absolutely. All elements of Main page need to be protected indefinitely. Filiocht 14:38, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

Protect it all. violet/riga (t) 19:29, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"We've had complaints via email again (to Jimbo and the board) - one from a teacher who was showing the site to her class. We need to stop this NOW." Well we all knew this day would come, but security through obscurity does not work without obscurity. Lock the templates down and look for ways to protect images displayed on protected pages. --mav 20:35, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Protect them. We should figure out a way to make it easier for non-sysops to help keep Template:In the news and Template:Did you know up to date, though. I'm thinking of some sort of associated pipeline page where any user can add items for sysops to copy over to the main template; something like Template:Did you know/To be added might be appropriate. It would be clunky and annoying, but certainly not as bad as goatse images on Wikipedia's most public face. —Charles P. (Mirv) 20:56, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Alternatively, a technical solution whereby a shadow page gets copied to T:ItN every time it hasn't been edited for 30 minutes. This is a bit like the mythical delayed editing that we're going to have in mediawiki one day, but done on this page and copying only when it's stable would make it implementable outside of mediawiki I think. --fvw* 21:02, 2005 Feb 4 (UTC)
Delayed or pipelined editing has been suggested in #mediawiki. Jamesday estimates it would take 6-12 months if the devs decided to impliment it. Personally, I prefer the already-made request for recursive page protection (protecting a page automatically protects all images used on it). →Raul654 21:07, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)
Ohh, come on, can it really be that hard? One fairly easy way to do it would be to have a template up for editing, like Template:In the News and another one called Template:In the news LOCKED which is locked and is displayed at the main page. Then every X minutes a bot copies the contents from the open template to the locked one if it has been there for more than Y minutes. The potential problem with this could be that you'd have to give a bot Administrative privliges, but if the bot does that and ONLY that, I'd be ok with it. Personally I think that one of the great things about Wikipedias front page is that it CAN be edited. I am totally against protecting it, but when things like goatse happen one realizes that something needs to be done. This way, we get the best of both worlds. Gkhan 22:54, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)
All the vandal would have to do is time his vandalism so that the bot copies it the the live template. That may buy us a bit of time by adding more obscurity but is ultimately a fatally-flawed idea. --mav 23:13, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
No thats not what I meant. Lets say that the bot updates once every halfhour and submissions must have been on the page for 20 mins. The bot updates at 2:30 and sees a submission made at 2:29. That means only one minute has passed and does NOT add it. However at 3:00 the next update sees that it has been there for 31 mins add does add it (these numbers are not optimal in any way, if someone makes a submission at 2:11 it would take 49 mins for it to get to the page which might be a little long, but you see my point). Gkhan 01:27, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)
This sounds a very interesting idea. Are you on IRC? If so, maybe you could pop into #mediawiki and see what they think of it there. ([3]) -- sannse (talk) 01:32, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Seems a bit that this discussion has noted the fact that images can be overwritten with newly uploaded ones, even if everything under the sun is protected. A simple solution is not allow overwriting of file names, aswell as protecting all elements. Pcb21| Pete 01:37, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Incorrect. Protecting an image page protects the image from being uploaded over. This has been true for about 3 months. →Raul654 02:10, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)
What about images on commons? Even if they're protected on commons, won't someone uploading an image with the same name here mask them? And if we create an image page here and protect that, that will cause the image on commons to be masked, right? So we'd need to upload all images on commons that we want to use on the front page to en.wikipedia? --fvw* 02:15, 2005 Feb 5 (UTC)
How about disabling automatic cache update/template content refreshing for the Main Page, and making the purge function available only to admins? That shouldn't be too hard to implement. (You could then have a copy of the Main Page with automatic updates, available for admins to check that nothing has been tampered with just before purging) - Fredrik | talk 03:09, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Wouldn't that require quite a significant change in MediaWiki software? I mean, couldn't any user just enter http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page&action=purge in their browser and get the main page purged? Is there any way right now so that that page can only be accessed by admins? And by the way, doesn't the main page purge automatically? Gkhan 13:18, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)
My idea was to disable automatic purging for Main, and add a few lines of code to check whether the purge action is used by an admin. Fredrik | talk 14:06, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Template talk:Did you know already has a list for pending new items which works like Charles P's suggestion. 68.81.231.127 21:47, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Isan

This should have a comma after the poor conditions

Agriculture is the main economic activity, but due to the poor conditions output trails that of other parts of the country, and this is Thailand's poorest region.

In the news

In the news seems to feature a lot of pictures of dead white men, literally. Anyone else notice this? Hyacinth 08:37, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

More to the point, it hasn't been updated for 2 days! jguk 08:47, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Probably due to it being blocked after vandalism, no? Gkhan 09:58, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

Yes. It means only admins can edit it now - and none have done so. I question how up to date it will remain when there are only 300 or so people who can edit it, and many fewer with the inclination to edit it, jguk 10:02, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Why not an in-the-news candidate page, to be checked and copied periodically by an admin? --dreish~talk 19:29, 2005 Feb 5 (UTC)
I've added such a page at Template:In_the_news/Candidate. --dreish~talk 19:34, 2005 Feb 5 (UTC)
This seems like the best plan to me. Any automated updating system could be abused by a smart vandal. User:Rdsmith4/Sig 19:50, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Article Ratings

This has probably has been suggested before... if not tried somewhere. But why isn't there a rating system for the articles? This would create a feedback loop to ensure high quality material. When explaining some ridiculously complex theorem the writer could check back to see if her explanation was useful and edit it accordingly. It would also give a good idea of where improvements could be made.

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