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Village pump archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump. Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Name of Wikipedia

• Wikipedia >> iPedia or ePedia or ... I suggest shortening the project name for easier publicity of the internet site. Tonius 20:55

wPedia, but are you really serious proposing a name change? -- till we *) 21:15, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

Do you think journalists don't write articles on Wikipedia because they can't be arsed to type the extra letters for our name? CGS 21:42, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC).

Wikipedia is not an excessively long name. The wiki part of it is one of the things that makes it different to other "ePedias" which is why I wouldn't want to remove the wiki from the name. Angela

If Wi-ki-pe-di-a (5) is holding an international competition for a flashy logo then it should also hold an international competition for a catchy name. SErvice GAmes of Japan renamed itself to Se-ga (2). Of course people can type extra letters, especially if it's a popular name like Nin-ten-do (3). United States of America = USA ... (numerous examples). Tonius 23:29 (2003.08.12)

We should rename Wikipedia to "W". It's catchy, it's only one letter, and it only requires three syllables to pronounce. Seriously, though, I think you are going to be alone in suggesting a name change. You can't get much shorter or catchier than "wikipedia" without seriously altering the perceived meaning. Having a catchier name is not going to make Wikipedia more popular, more useful, or more accurate. Nintendo and Sega were popular because they made good video games and marketed them well, not because they had short names. -- Wapcaplet 23:36, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I say we keep the name Wikipedia until the Encyclopedia Britannica (their popularity long encumbered by that 10 syllable name) calls itself "EB". At that point, I say anything goes. ;-) Jwrosenzweig 23:44, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Arnold Schwarzenegger has like a dozen syllables in his name and whose name nobody except Germans or his fans can spell right -- And he's a big hit and household name (even when I was in Taiwan). So, as long as our name isn't Wikipefanasticapedia. We're fine. --Menchi 23:52, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

If we can hold a competition for a new logo then we can hold a competition for a new name. At that time a majority vote will choose the name. If we can edit everything on Wikipedia, then we can edit the name just as well. This is the democratic principle of Wikipedia, to edit other person's words:

"If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly...then don't submit it here" (bottom of the Edit Page)

Just like for our new logo, we'll have to establish a practical time frame for when every new competition will be held: every 5 years?

Let the populous hold a competition & let the populous vote. Tonius 00:27 (2003.08.13)

NO! already too many votings :( Do you really have a catchy name in mind? BTW, I don't understand why we need a new logo..... wshun 00:38, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

See m:International logo contest#Background, History, and Reasons for Update for reasoning on why a new logo is needed (the best reason to my mind is that the current one is in English, therefore not international). --Camembert

I would say that before you go about setting up a vote on this, you should at least find one regular Wikipedian who supports you. I doubt you will. But hey, it's your time to waste.—Eloquence 00:56, Aug 13, 2003 (UTC)

The liberally minded want a democratic competition for an international name; They are interested in what possibilities the world can suggest, especially those which are not biased with only roman characters. Tonius 01:12 (2003.08.13)

I think we should stick to characters most people can understand. マイカル (MB) 01:37, Aug 13, 2003 (UTC)

And that all broswers can read. Anyway, no-one is claiming that Wikipedia is an international name. It is Vikipedio is Esperanto and 위키백과사전 in Korean for example. Who are these they you are talking about Tonius? Angela 01:44, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

(1) True, there are software limitations to the range of characters that the nominal candidates can use.

(2) Yes, other wikipedian sites have either phonetically, phonemically, or grammatically 'translitterated' the name Wikipedia into their respective sites.

(3) The referential antecedent to the aforementioned pronominal determiner 'they' is 'the liberally minded' (those who believe in democratic election).

(4) Let the Users provide entries, vote, and elect per majority the name. If there's a logo competition then there can be a name competition as well. This encyclopedia can edit every word (and image) including its name. Let there be a competition and let there be a majority vote. τονιος |Tonius| 02:25|2003.08.13

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Little Orphan Annie's Plea To You

Orphaned pages has not been updated since 09:05, 13 May 2003. It's useless as it stands now. Even as an admin, I can't do a thing about it. Can anyone here hear my plee? - Little Orphan Annie

Could orphaned pages found using a bot? If an admin can't do a thing about it, I can't neither. wshun 05:40, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Unprotect Ariel Sharon

Could an administrator please unprotect Ariel Sharon, since User:Palestine liberator is now banned? Also, is there some page where one can make a request of an administrator? (I know I could leave a note on a user talk page, but I'd like to be sure that someone who's around sees it right away.) -- AdamRaizen 09:34, 2003 Aug 10 (UTC)

I think here's good. There's constantly admin staring here. I am anyway when I'm online, but I don't know you or that conflict enough (actually, nothing) to say that if I unprotect it, evil won't unleash itself and pee on Wikipedia. --Menchi 09:39, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

S/he who unprotected please note so at Wikipedia:Protected page. --Menchi 17:57, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

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Disclaimers

Certain articles have disclaimers in them, indicating Wikipedia does not give medical, legal, financial etc advice. Would not a general link to a disclaimer page in the bottom or top link bar be more useful and more uniform? ²¹² 15:18, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Spam from Within

moved to User talk:Patrick0Moran

wikipedia.org is not redirecting to Main page

fixed bug - delete

• Repeat above -- 戴&#30505sv 03:43, Aug 8, 2003 (UTC)

Password not being accepted

fixed bug - delete

Everytime I have tried to sign in I have been told my password is incorrect. What is going on? FearÉIREANN 02:54, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC) (And when I try to save this I am told I am in an edit conflict . . . with myself!!!'

I had the same problem; try turning off the 'remember my password' option. - Hephaestos 03:05, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Should be fixed. Old problem in the source cropped up again. --128.125.23.68 02:56, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Pump moved

to wikipedia talk:village pump

New design of main page

delete

A new design for the main page has been proposed at Main Page/Temp5. Please vote on whether the new design ought to replace the current design at Talk:Main Page/Layout design. Thank you. Angela 22:28, 7 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Vote: I vote against this new design as the width is so large that a horizontal scroll bar appears (and is also needed). Or is there a problem on my side which causes this width problem? I'm using the Internet Explorer, a resolution of 1024x768 and medium font size. CalRis 07:10, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I vote against it, just make Recent Changes the front page ;) Dysprosia 07:12, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Feature request: Easier redirects to talk page

move to wikipedia:ignored feature requests

A feature request. Can we have a variable name like {{TALKPAGE}} ("TALKPAGE") which expands to a link to the talk page for a page. It will make certain boilerplate text much easier to edit.

See wikipedia:bug reports. Martin

Edit links

moved to Wikipedia talk:Software updates

Wikipedia stats

I recently saw an external website with a table of Wikipedia new users, their edits, etc. It was not about English Wikipedia alone, but the whole project.

I don't remember where the site was, who created it, or where I saw the link to the site. I already checked Wikipedia:Stats and Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics, but no luck. Any help? Tomos 21:36, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This is the work of Erik Zachte, who also makes the TomeRaider-readable archives. See his page at: http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/Statistics/ --Brion 22:17, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, Brion. That's exactly what I was looking for! Tomos 00:50, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

post-1968 radical movement

I'm considering to (sooner or later) research and write on my mother's great revelation (well, ...not specifically her, but her generation's). My question to you is which titles and terms might be appropriate in English (which also would help me to check out what there already exists in English language in the wikipedia and on the world wide web. I did a search for "student-riot AND 1968" - but that didn't give many wikipedia hits.
--Ruhrjung 08:31, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Shameless plug for neglected pages

Everyone please head on over to the Wikipedia:Reference desk. There are some questions on there that you just might have the answer to.

And then head on over to Wikipedia:Pages needing attention. Some of these require an expert, but some of them are refactoring jobs that require no knowledge of the subject. -Smack 06:41, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Biographical articles

Is the a "List of articles about persons that has been edited by the person himself" :-)? If not, can anyone give me a few examples of pages that has been edited by the persons described in the page? I know there are some. BL 05:43, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Mmm, let's see. Daniel C. Boyer, of course, K. Kay Shearin (which has later been blanked because User:Isis wanted it to be removed), Daniel Alston (which has been moved to the user space), Larry Sanger (moved to the user space).. not many, really, and most of them didn't stay in the article space for long.—Eloquence 06:39, Aug 9, 2003 (UTC)

Since you're asking directly I suppose we'd better add Jim Duffy. Although he likes to hide it he's probably the most famous Wikipedian, for reasons other than Wikipedia itself. -- Tim Starling 12:36, Aug 9, 2003 (UTC)

Easter Bradford. There is a dispute under way now. Another example of the sort of distraction and unproductive discussion these sort of pages engender.-- Kat 21:58, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Un-typeable characters

moved to Wikipedia talk:Special characters

Waah, I broke it.

I started editing frenetically last week without reading the rules... I figured that I would learn them as I go, and now I'm actually bolding things... and citing. Yay.

But... the first article I wrote was Macworld Conference & Expo. I was on the Apple Macintosh page, and saw that Macworld Expo was listed, and decided to correct it to its proper name. Then I noticed there was no article for this newly created name (I was new then), and I set out creating an article.

Then a few days later I realized that there was still a Macworld Expo article... even if it was shorter. Oops. So... I guess the question is, should I make the other one a redirect, or should I merge the pages, and keep the old title? -Bugmuncher 17:09, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think merging the short one into the long one, making the short one a redirect is most usual, if the long one has the better name. (17:14, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC))

Just copied the text from Macworld Expo to Macworld Conference & Expo, making Macworld Expo a redirect, haven't merged it properly, though. Ксип Cyp 17:21, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

FDL'ed Photos

listed at Wikipedia:GNU Free Documentation License resources

Links to TOC?

move to wikipedia:ignored feature requests

Is it possible to make a link show the table of contents of a page instead of its title? This could be useful for things like archived talks or lists where you would like to see an overview but not the full content. 141.83.55.66

Oh, you should write an overview yourself. AI is just not there yet. wshun 02:38, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

See wikipedia:bug reports to submit a feature request or bug report. Martin 16:03, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Font size

Why am I seeing the font size on the 'pedia as tiny? I haven't changed my screen resolution and no other sites or applications are affected - just here. Did I change a preferences setting or something? This change happened sometime over the last couple of days -- sannse 08:44, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC) <-- feeling I'm probably asking something stupid

I noticed this too, the other day, although I didn't find default text to be objectionably small. I looked at what seems to be the controlling CSS and we are mucking with font sizes quite a bit, but it mostly seems to be on a relative basis (i.e. 120%, 95%, etc. of whatever base size the browser has set). Perhaps an absolute font size had been set previously which has now been deleted? In any case, changing your browser's font size settings should do the "right thing". The CSS looks pretty reasonably structured to me. Bill 12:50, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Yep, that worked. Course all my other favourite sites now look overly large instead - but I spend most of my on-line time here anyway and I can always flick the switch as I wander around. Thanks -- sannse 15:03, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

US vs. American

Please see User talk:Wik. What is the consensus of Wikipedia concerning the naming of the nationality of people of the United States? Is Wik correct in changing "American" to "U.S."? It's offensive, to me. My nationality is American, not U.S.. RickK 02:09, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Both are correct. There is no reason to change one to the other besides stylistic concerns. --Brion 02:14, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

There you have it, Rick. I don't think you'll find anyone who agrees with you that U.S. is in any way incorrect. And clearly U.S. is more precise and unambiguous; it means the United States of America and not the entire continent. --Wik 02:26, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

Both are not correct. I am an American, not a "U.S.". RickK 02:22, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Now you're just trolling. I already responded to that on the Talk page. --Wik 02:26, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

See American. Its very first sentence says "American can mean "of the United States of America" (the more common usage in the English language)". IF both are correct, as Brion says above, then why do you feel the need to change John Birch Society? You must obviously feel that both are not correct. RickK 02:38, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

No. I agree both are correct, but U.S. is more precise. American can mean "of the United States of America." U.S. always means it. --Wik 02:42, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

Of course you are not a "U.S." While "U.S." can be used synonmously w/ American in the form of an adjetive, only American can be used as a noun to refer to the person(s). "U.S." in noun form just means the country. Both are correct if it is in the proper part of speech. Which one to use is up to the user who inserts the initial text and no one should be removing/changing. --Jiang 03:21, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I was originally American, at [change], until Wik went in and changed it. RickK 03:27, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'm an American, but I believe the term can be used by anyone from the New World. I know most "US"ers would disagree, but I've always felt that it was presumptuous of us to call ourseleves Americans as if people from Canada and Mexico, etc. were not. And I've had peolple in Mexico tell me they consider themselves to be "Americans" -- 24.94.82.245 03:36, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Likewise, it would be unfair for the people of Mexico. Why should only people of the US receive the distinction of being "USers" while the people of Mexico shouldn't? There's no logic behind reserving "US" to the USA and not to the USM. We call the United States of Mexico Mexico. Similarly, we call the United States of America America. See a parallel? Both make the same sense. --Jiang 03:47, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

When speaking in English, only pedants insist that "American" is not specific enough, when the reality is that everyone knows what you mean by "American" since there is only one country in the two American continents that includes "America" in the name (and in English too). In other meanings, you just say "North American", "Central American", "South American", or "Latin American". Seriously, when speaking in English, what Canadian or Mexican would say "I am American" rather than "I am Canadian" or "I am Mexican"? Daniel Quinlan 04:21, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

You're exactly wrong there. The common short form of the United States of Mexico is Mexico, but the common short form of the United States of America is United States, not America. If it's clear from the context that you mean a nationality of a person then American is fine, since there's no continental nationality. But the issue was about an organization (the John Birch Society), which to someone who doesn't know anything about it yet might as well be a pan-American organization. So to be precise it should be called a "U.S. organization." --Wik 13:40, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

No, the United States of America has two short forms--US or America. Since when has it been limited to one? Both of these short forms have their flaws. --Jiang

The common short form (certainly in an encyclopaedic context) is United States. You won't find an encyclopaedia which has the article about the United States of America under "America," which is just a colloquialism. --Wik 18:04, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

That's when referring to the government. But the people are almost always "Americans". --Jiang

Some Canadians do say they are American, meaning "North American," but only if they are extremely sympathetic to the United States, much moreso than Canadians are normally. If that makes any sense. Adam Bishop 04:26, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This category of change is definitely political correctness run amok. How about waiting until we have a significant number of Canadians and Mexicans complaining about the American==USian assumption before hacking up hundreds of articles. The Wikipedia way would be to have the disgruntled Mexicans start making the changes, not to have some patronizing gringo do it. Stan 05:47, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Not to be overly pedantic, but may I make A Modest Proposal? The controversy arises from the English conflation of "American"=resident of U.S. and "American"=two continents of Western Hemisphere. If we used the Spanish "estadounidense" (or French, Italian, etc.) equivalents of the former meaning, there would be no confusion! More seriously, "American" is the only usable word for "citizen of the U.S." (as in, "my nationality is American"), but "U.S." should probably be used whenever possible ("the U.S. government undertook this action" as opposed to "the American government") for precision's sake. Paul Musgrave

Is "U.S.-American" common? That could be a way to move around the dispute, being precise, political correct and including the American part (U.S.-)Americans seems to be proud of. -- till we *) 10:57, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

"U.S.-American" doesn't work, really, because there's already a hyphenated convention with "Irish-Americans," "Mexican-Americans," "African-Americans." "U.S.-American" sounds like you're claiming a dual "American"/"estadounidense" heritage, and I don't think anyone's ever done that. But you're right, we need to meet the criteria you lay out--if we add another one: instant recognizability, so that people who haven't been following this dispute know what we mean. --Paul Musgrave 16:31, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

How silly. Pages of debate on this and no link to USian.

Given Monroe Doctrine, interference in Latin America throughout the entire 20th century, etc., it's fair to say that an "American" is someone who believes they have a right to control everything in the Americas. Let them stand and fall by that definition, rather than inventing new terms now, when it's too late to save the silly thing.

Donations

Is it possible to donate money to Wikipedia, for things like new/improved servers and the like? -- Schnee 01:01, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Not yet. We'll wait until all the wikis together have reached 300000 articles and then we'll hold a big fundraiser and announce Wikimedia.—Eloquence 01:14, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

This way, when the server falls over under the publicity-generated load, we'll look like we really need the money. :P --Brion 02:14, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Just curious: what time scale are we talking about (for the donations)? Weeks, months, 2003? Fantasy 21:52, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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Wikipedia:Village pump/dump

Cryptic NPOV Disputes

Recently I've come across a couple of pages which link to Wikipedia:NPOV dispute, but which don't have any discussion of what the disputed points are; the most recent one is Six-Day War. An anonymous user simple added the NPOV dispute statement without editing the article in any other way or leaving any note on the talk page. How are we supposed to NPOV a page if the party who disagrees doesn't give any indication as to what the problem is? I think that there should be a note on Wikipedia:NPOV dispute which tells people who add a link to that page that they need to also add a note concerning the article's NPOV problems on the talk page if it's not already obvious from the talk page (I guess I can add that). Second, what can be done about the article itself? If no one explains the article's NPOV problems (I added a note on the talk page), can we just delete the note about the NPOV dispute? -- AdamRaizen 02:16, 2003 Aug 10 (UTC)

IMHO that's really not what NPOV dispute labels are for. They indicate that a discussion is ongoing, and hence that the article contents is disputed and volatile. I don't think you should even bother challenging it and waiting for a response -- if the person who added the warning didn't explain why, after a reasonable amount of time, just remove it. You should probably check the talk page history to make sure it hasn't been maliciously blanked. -- Tim Starling

You might also want to skim-read the page to see if there's anything obviously biased that should be fixed. Martin 10:11, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I am requesting an independent review of the following article Millosh Gjergj Nikolla. I wrote the original version, and I believe that someone is slanting it towards a Serb nationalistic POV. I am Albanian and therefore my views may not be objective enough. I don't want to keep reverting the article and/or go into an edit war. If this is the wrong place to post this, then let me know the correct place. Thanks Dori 13:25, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The same person may also be doing this to the following article History of Albania Dori 13:33, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia namespace contents

I never can find what I need in Wikipedia: namespace! :`( I guess that others have this problem too and I suggest that Wikipedia:List of namespace (or perhaps Wikipedia:Contents) is made that would contain a list of all articles in the namespace. (Possibly with exception of obvious subarticles such as Wikiprojects.) This list then must be linked from main page or it would be useless.

Here is what I have so far:

• Wikipedia:Articles_requested_for_over_a_year
• Wikipedia:Articles_requested_for_over_two_years
• Wikipedia:Brilliant_pictures
• Wikipedia:Brilliant_prose
• Wikipedia:Database_queries
• Wikipedia:List of articles in the Wikipedia namespace Ксип Cyp 07:51, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Namespace
• Wikipedia:PHP_script

• Wikipedia:Projects_using_Wikipedia_software

• Wikipedia:Protected_page

• Wikipedia:Reference_Desk
• Wikipedia:Requested_articles
• Wikipedia:Village_pump
• Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion
• Wikipedia:WikiProject

(User:Nikola Smolenski)

- You can sign automatically, by typing ~~~~ or ~~~, by the way. Ксип Cyp 07:55, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I didn't knew it works on non-talk pages too :) Nikola 18:29, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I've started to accidentally sign my name in the articles this past week, once even in the populous Current events. How embarrassing is that. >_< --Menchi 19:18, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

That's a good start Nikola, but you missed about 400. See Wikipedia:List of articles in the Wikipedia namespace. You might also find Wikipedia:Utilities useful, unlike me: I can never find anything in that page. I usually just type out the page title. -- Tim Starling 10:12, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

OK, no need to make anything new :) But they should be linked from main page, what's the need for a list of pages if it's less accessible then pages it lists? Nikola 18:29, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

One of the most important aesthetic concern is cluttering the Main Page up with non-essential links, so Wikipedia:List of articles in the Wikipedia namespace is probably considered to be not that widely used or interested in by most people (including me, but excluding you, apparently :-). --Menchi 19:24, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

But it's just one (1) more link! :( And there's room for it right of Reference Desk. But OK, I think I'll link it more visibly from How_to_edit_a_page and a few other places. Nikola 06:49, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

By the way, is there a similar list of Special: pages, or Special:Specialpages is complete? Nikola 18:29, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Special:Specialpages is curious in that its content changes depending on your access priveleges. It doesn't contain special pages which require a target, like Special:Movepage. And it doesn't contain special pages which don't actually work, like Special:Vote. Other than that I think it's probably complete. -- Tim Starling 13:14, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia Mascot

I have added a mascot for Wikipedia- an Octopus. Later I read that some other Wikipedian has to second it. Will anyone interested have a look and do it if you find it OK? KRS

Does it fret? --Wik 18:19, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

It doesn't look like it's fretting, it looks like it's just spotted a kitten to strangle. -- Tim Starling 13:23, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

So mean :-(I thought it was a great idea. Guess others don't think so:-))) But leave the graphics guys, what about the concept with a better graphic?--KRS

Linking to original image from description page

I'm really happy to see an image of mine used here:

I'm concerned however that without a link to the original image other people don't have an oppertunity to see the source data and therefore can't re-crop it or do other things with it. Should there be a policy of linking to the source image?

Thanks to google images I have tracked down the original version of this image: beer image and I guess I should add a link to it from the beer image page, but I'll leave it as it is for the moment so others can decide what they think about this...

--ChrisCroome 11:04, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Yes, original source should be linked whenever possible.—Eloquence 17:00, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

No problem, I'll keep that in mind in the future. Note that Image:Small open fire (small).jpg is also yours. -- Tim Starling 11:54, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

On a related note: I see Martin removed the larger image version from the description page. I'd just like to say that I think it's a great idea having larger images pop up when you click on thumbnails, it mirrors what happens elsewhere on the web and therefore what the user expects. I stole that idea from someone else, not sure who. Might have been Taku... -- Tim Starling 12:08, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

If there's a "larger version" media link on the article itself, isn't that better?

I'll self-revert: it's no fuss either way. Martin

I found it got in the way

I'm not particularly fussed, it's just style. I'd like to hear another opinion on the matter, though. -- Tim Starling 13:14, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

I like the big image on the description page, I have copied this style here: Notting Hill Carnival | Sheffield | Upper Derwent Valley I hope this is OK... --ChrisCroome 23:22, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Common Format for University/College Articles

I'm trying to organize a good article on my home university, Indiana University at Bloomington. I'm wondering if there is a preferred/recommended/suggested style for all university/college articles? If not, would anyone like to work with me to create one? --Paul Musgrave

Not that I'm aware of...we could start a Wikipedia:Wikiproject universities. See List of colleges and universities --Jiang 04:59, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think Drexel University is a shining exmaple :). ミハエル (MB) 01:43, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

Maybe, but the WikiProject mentioned above is under way and has worked out a nice template, almost perfect. See at: Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities. -- till we *) 18:03, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

Renaming a Page

When I want to rename a page, I just create the new page and move stuff over to it. But clearly that loses the history of the material.. None-the-less, I can find no where in the help pages how to actually change the name of a page and preserve the page history. I would like Peat bog changed to Bog the former is "redundant", but the latter presently exists as a redirect. How do I accomplish this? -- Marshman 03:40, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

"Move this Page" function on the left hand side of your screen. --Jiang

Thanks. That looks like it. But Bog as a short bit of page history, so it seem it will not work until it is -- what, Vfd deleted? - Marshman 03:45, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Done. You can proceed now. Yes, next time, vfd is an option, or you can drop a line to a sysop who happens to be active in recent changes. --Jiang 03:50, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Miscount in Vfd

The speculative physics articles up for deletion, seem to suffer from not having votes opposing deletion counted, but rather being "shunted" into an undefined category of "non-voting" opinion. Not apetizing viewing, especially as the subject has superficially been deemed substantial enough to warrant an extended exchange of views before "unsummary" deletion. On these grounds I would extend (not indefinitely) the stay of these articles. Just my opinion. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 03:13, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

Two Russian WPs

Why are there two Russian WPs? (Rossijskaja Vikipedija (wikipedia.ru) & ru.wikipedia.org) --Menchi 17:07, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

My understanding is that ru.wikipedia.org is the "official" Russian Wikipedia, while wikipedia.ru is an unrelated project that happens to also be calling itself a Wikipedia (possibly started by someone who wanted a Russian Wikipedia and wasn't aware of the existance of ru.wikipedia.org). —Paul A 03:11, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Who is the Russian ambassador? Could we ask them to contact the non-Wikipedia project to discuss a merger? -- Tarquin 10:18, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

From Rossijskaja Wikipedia FAQ: http://wikipedia.ru/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%8F:%D0%A7%D0%90%D0%92%D0%9E

1. Sometimes local Russian connections are cheaper (however, relatively rarely nowdays)
2. It more optimal using of the internet bandwidth
3. Much greater accessing speed for the target group
4. Decentralization of the wikipedia
5. It was not possible to use ru.wikipedia.org before spring'2003 due to encodings problem
6. Lack of resources at wikipedia.org
7. Reliability problems at wikipedia.org
8. Licensing problem - GFDL considered non-free

However, wikipedia.ru is still (and so will be) under GFDL, there are no severe localisation problems anymore, and all other problems may be solved by simple mirroring. So it is direction that we try to follow. Drbug 13:56, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Great, another pointless fork, more needless duplication of work. Please do not call your fork Wikipedia if it is not controlled by the Wikimedia foundation. Wikipedia.ru has nothing to do with Wikipedia.—Eloquence 15:49, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

Eloquence, it doesn't look like a fork in the same sense as the EL project -- more a case of people using a stopgap server. Drbug has also posted to the intl mailing list where I have raised this; it seems that now ru.wikipedia is running nicely, there is the will to merge the two. -- Tarquin 18:06, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The weakest link

The number of articles is going up fast, but the number of images is not. There are many images about cities, persons, maps; but too few for mathematical objects and "simple things" like screws, windows, chairs,... I would count that as the weakest link for Wikipedia.

I put the comment here as a reminder to Wikipedians. Upload more useful pictures! (I will later, after I get a digicam :P) wshun 01:25, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Oh, it is possible to list the recent updated images seperately from "Recent changes", it usually takes up the whole page. Also, could we upload images in a more efficient way? Uploading one by one is awful. wshun 01:31, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'd agree; it seems that the images of mundane stuff are often overlooked. This is partly the reason I started an attempt at Wikipedia:WikiProject Illustration, to kind of bring together the various attempts at illustrating Wikipedia. Please feel free to offer your suggestions there! -- Wapcaplet 01:52, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'm always trying to take pictures for Wikipedia. I've done Winchester Cathedral, just because I was walking past one day on my way to college. I do try to do some mundane stuff too, like mirror, but screws and things aren't very interesting to photograph. CGS 08:55, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC).

I've done scissors and a few other "boring" ones. :) -- Tarquin 13:18, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Add stuff you want to wikipedia:requested images. Martin

Ogg uploads.. any guidelines for size, length, quality?

move to wikipedia:sound help

I'd like to upload some of my music, so that it can be used as examples of styles like ambient and techno. I licensed it under the Free Art license, so that will be no problem. (And if it would be a problem, I don't mind to pick another license.) But I guess it's not a good idea to upload very large files. Are there any guidelines for this? Like, using specific quality settings, or make sure the file size is not bigger than a certain size. I could also take an excerpt of the piece and link to the complete piece. Guaka 02:36, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The upload system currently rejects any file larger than 2 megabytes. Anything approaching or exceeding that size should at present be hosted offsite. --Brion 04:12, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

So I presume that it is okay to upload <2 MB files? The thingy I just uploaded is 1.6 MB. Is that okay, or is it a case of 'approaching that size'?

Guaka 21:30, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

You should also license them under the GNU FDL if submitting to Wikipedia or put the samples into the public domain (the entire song is not necessary unless you want to upload the entire piece). (You can license under both licenses such that the licensee must choose one license disjunctively if you wish.) Daniel Quinlan 04:27, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

Ok. Well, I prefer the entire piece. So I added the GFDL. But I wonder what this exactly means for musical pieces. Wouldn't it be better to simply allow other copylefted or free licenses?

Guaka 21:30, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It's legal - it's never simple. Martin

please think of the average reader of Wikipedia. Most people do not have broadband. A short sample that can be quickly downloaded is best -- Tarquin 12:58, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Upload both - a short sample, and a full version. Also, upload versions encoded at different data rates. Martin

Hey folks, I don't see any reason to put up any of my music, but if I did find an excuse in the future, I would prefer to put up my stuff under a Creative Commons license, since it seems that the GFDL isn't really intended for stuff like music. It seems that the Attribution-ShareAlike license is closest in spirit and intent to the GFDL (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/), would that be an acceptable substitute? --Nelson 18:14, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

If you do decide to do this, please make very clear what the situation is on the wikipedia:image description page. The same applies to fair use sound, etc. Martin 19:12, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

---

See Wikipedia:Village pump/dump for just-removed items. (quick removal due to size issues)

Mona Lisa copyright ok?

The Image of Mona Lisa just says "(Automated conversion)". Who uploaded it? Is the copyright ok? Fantasy 22:08, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It's a bit too dark anyway, so a replacement image could be better in both senses. Any Louvre tourists lately? --Menchi 22:14, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

I doubt they allow tourists to use flash photography. It can bleach paintings. Some museums don't even allow photographs since a lot of people can't figure out how to turn off their flash. Daniel Quinlan 04:20, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

... since that way they can sell more postcards and official reproductions. Bleaching paintings is just a handy PR line. Martin 21:37, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

My wife was there last week, but she is not yet fully Wikified... ;-)

But my question was more: Are there people hiding their names? I would like to know, WHO contributed something to Wikipedia. How can I find out? Fantasy 22:25, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Last week! Mmm.. I do envy the convenience and accessibility of Europeans to such stuff.

That Automated conversion, a mysterious Wiki-force now dead, hid people's name, but people couldn't (and definitely cannot now) hide their login names. I asked about Automated conversion a few months ago, but am still not very clear. I think it is an unintentional, noted, but unavoidable result/bug that took place when developers upgraded the website some time last year. --Menchi 00:10, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

I don't have anything to say about the copyright question, but I did make it a good deal lighter - perhaps too much so; tell me if it needs to go darker again. -Smack 22:57, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I took the liberty of fixing it. ミハエル (MB) 03:34, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

"It was accomplished between 1503 and 1506." Even US copyright hasn't been retroactively extended that long yet ;-).—Eloquence 23:15, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

Mbecker, here's an image — it looks like we might be able to copy it (or at least get permission to copy)

http://www.paris.org/Musees/Louvre/Treasures/gifs/Mona_Lisa.html

terms for copying are here: http://www.paris.org/copyright.html &mdash Daniel Quinlan 04:25, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

Much better. Lady M. Lisa deserves better. I can see her smiling more brightly now. --Menchi 04:30, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

Please, just ignore those bogus copyright claims. The painting is in the public domain and the digitization process is not creative.—Eloquence

Regarding automated conversion: do we have a backup of Wikipedia from the Phase-II days? Maybe we could run a copy, in read-only mode, for historical purposes. I know we still have all the old software, so it should just be a case of dusting it off and switching it on. -- Tim Starling 04:35, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

(dig, dig) I've got one dated May 20, 2002. That's a few weeks before the conversion. I haven't checked to see how complete it is. --Brion 04:41, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Cool. Now all we need is a sepia-tone colour scheme and a script to prepend "Ye Olde" to every instance of "Wikipedia" :) -- Tim Starling 05:05, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

Ok, I have uploaded a bigger version to Image:Mona_Lisa.jpg, but I like the color on the current smaller version better. What do you think? ミハエル (MB) 04:59, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

Copyright Violation Images

New user Tonius uploaded a slew of company logos and added them to articles. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these copyrighted and therefore can't be included on the 'pedia (without special permission)? Or is use of these covered under fair use? My wife used to write letters to people threatening to sue them for unauthorized use of the "Intel Inside" logo, so I'm fairly certain we're not allowed to use these. Anyone? —Frecklefoot 19:54, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

IANAL. Seems like that'd be more an issue of trademark infringement; in the case of "Intel inside", it could be misleading to apply the logo to something which does not, in fact, have intel inside. As long as it doesn't misrepresent anything, or imply that the company endorses or sponsors the thing, it seems like it'd be fair use. -- Wapcaplet 21:03, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

p.s. - This site has a pretty good explanation. -- Wapcaplet 21:05, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The site says "Many companies claim trademark infringement or dilution when pursuing unauthorized uses of their names or logos on the Web--but it's not entirely clear how these laws apply to noncommercial activity on the Net." The 'pedia is, of course, noncommercial--I just hope none of these companies decide to come after us! :O

And, yes, it probably is more of a case of trademark infringement--that was the case with the "Intel Inside" logo. For those interested, numerous companies (such as OEMs) would just cut & paste the logo onto their ads, which was unauthorized. Intel had to give permission to use the logo. If your ad met certain criteria, Intel would even reimburse 50% of the ad costs (so my wife was actually doing them a favor by telling them). I remember she had a hard time with Linux--Linux distributors would use a similar "Linux Inside" logo on their ads which was a huge issue of trademark infringement and dilution. But since no one owns Linux, she had a hard time tracking down who to write the letter to. :S

If no one else wants to chime in, I guess its okay to leave the images up?  —Frecklefoot 15:48, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I made a T-shirt with the "Linux inside" logo. I wonder if Linus Torvalds will reimburse me for my T-shirt costs? :-) That one to me sounds like a case of parody, though, which fair use seems to support... Anyway, I'd say leave the images unless there are any serious objections. -- Wapcaplet 23:42, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Recent changed sidebar

A nice idea I found at the CaptainCook Wiki is the possibility to have the Recent Changes as a sidebar (at least for the Mozilla browser, don't know which others supports this as well). This seems to be only a stripped-off version of the full recent changes page, [1]. I don't know how popular the sidebar is, but it might be a nice feature for us Wikipediholics. Any comments? -- andy 12:19, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Copyvio?

I'm not sure whether Know-Nothing movement is a copyvio or not. The original version of the article is largely copied from http://www.bartleby.com/65/kn/KnowNoth.html or the same source. Every other phrase or sentence is exactly the same, so there is definitely a common base document for both. However, it's possible that the Wikipedia origin was an earlier version that had fallen into the public domain. However, the page lacks any attribution, so I think copyvio. If I do a word-diff, it's clearly from the same source, but it could have been a 1911 encyclopedia entry for all I know. Anyone care to weigh in? Daniel Quinlan 13:19, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)

I think the first paragraph is close but ok, while the second and third are direct c'n'p from bartleby. The first para has been moved a little closer to bartleby, I rather like "racist Anglo-Saxon Protestant" over "American". ²¹² 14:47, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A copyvio is a copyvio. If the original version was a direct copy, we need to delete the article and start from scratch. We don't make it legally okay by editing it over time until you can't tell there is a violation. Even the first paragraph is an obvious rephrase. Unless it definitely came from a public domain source, it needs to be deleted and restarted. (The "racist" from "racist Anglo-Saxon Protestant" does not really seem accurate, more like "religionist" and the other parts of that phrase were redundant (read the sentence). The slavery stuff was later on and caused most of the members to flee to the new Republican party.) Daniel Quinlan 17:29, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)

Rephrasing a copyrighted text is perfectly OK. Copyright protects the exact wording of a text, not its content. Mkweise 00:39, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Striking false statement to avoid misleading other Wikipedians with this complete misunderstanding of copyright law.

No, you are completely and entirely wrong. It is true that copyright does not protect information, facts, etc. However, it does not permit rephrasing or paraphrasing. Those are "derived works". How do you think translations or abridged versions, for example, of the latest Harry Potter book are deemed illegal? Or why I can't just produce a free version of Time magazine by rephrasing every article. No wonder Wikipedia has so many copyright violations! Daniel Quinlan 00:55, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

You are comparing apples and oranges. The concept of derivative works applies to works of art, not journalism. If you learn facts from someone else's writing and then rephrase those facts in your own words, you have not created a derivative work but own the copyright to your words. Your words are your words, regardless of where you learned the facts expressed therein. Now in fiction, the situation is a whole lot more complicated; see, for example, The Wind Done Gone - a case in which the courts spent years deciding whether they were looking at a parody (permited under fair use) or an unauthorized derivative work. Mkweise 04:04, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

No, derivative works also applies to journalism and other works of fact. Digesting facts and writing them in your own words is entirely different from paraphrasing and rewording. Otherwise, all it would take is a thesaurus and a sentence reconstruction engine to copy any work of journalism and Reuters would have gone out of business a long time ago. Daniel Quinlan 05:24, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

Also, in the case of The Wind Done Gone, the suit was over the basic storyline and the telling of the story from an entirely different perspective. It was not just a copy of the original work paraphased. Daniel Quinlan 05:27, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

See "paraphrasing" on http://www.iplegal.com/lib/cprtout.html — it's a good explanation of why this article, if copied without permission or from a non-public domain source is a copyright violation. I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't actually copied without permission or from a non-public domain source before putting it up for deletion. I'll post to VfD now and also put a note on the page itself to give the originator a chance to correct any mistaken assumptions on my part of the origin. Daniel Quinlan 01:03, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

Your link essentially says what I've been saying all along. Assuming fair use, I quote:

The court stated that it was not an infringement because, "Copyright protection does not extend to historical or contemporary facts, material traceable to common sources or in public domains, and scenes a faire."

Mkweise 04:15, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Ark30inf 05:34, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC) I think this is the section that applies. Factual works differ. Subsequent authors wishing to express an idea contained in a factual work such as a history, mathematical book, scientific text, and films of historical events like "Titanic" and "Amistad" often can choose from only a narrow range of expression. For example, Landsberg's work states that "[t]he poor player simply attempts to make as many points as possible each turn." The idea contained in that statement cannot be expressed in a wide variety of ways. Just about any subsequent expression of that idea is likely to appear to be a substantially similar paraphrase of the words with which Landsberg expressed the idea. Therefore, similarity of expression may have to amount to verbatim reproduction or very close paraphrasing before a factual work will be deemed infringed. The Amistad film raised a similar issue, whether the author of the book "Echo of Lions" could prove an infringement. The court stated that it was not an infringement because, "Copyright protection does not extend to historical or contemporary facts, material traceable to common sources or in public domains, and scenes a faire." (Barbara CHASE-RIBOUD vs. DREAMWORKS, INC 45 U.S.P.Q.2d 1259, (9th Cir. Ct. App. 1997).

Hello? Facts? Nope. Fair use. Nope. The article is not a presentation of facts. It is paraphrased copyright material. Is it not fair use. It's 100% of the original article. Not even close under fair use. Daniel Quinlan 05:24, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

I posted proof the article in Talk:Know-Nothing movement that it was copied from the same base document, probably a 100% copy at some point before the conversion script (the oldest entry in the history). I also checked the 1911 encyclopedia and it's not the source, so I'm pretty confident this should be deleted. We can begin the article anew from the 1911 version as nothing really happened after the mid 1800s anyway. I'm still hoping there was a public domain source so the copying will be a moot point (aside from the lack of attribution which is at least not a classy thing to do). Daniel Quinlan 05:50, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

GNU FDL Considered Non-Free

The GNU Free Documentation License is enough important foundation of the Wikipedia project. However, mny claim that it contains major flaws that makes it to be non apropriate for our project.

Namely, one who forked ru.wikipedia.org into wikipedia.ru, argues that GFDL in considered non-free and refers to the Debian project and R.Stallman.

However, as far as I know, GFDL is mostly criticised for its special Invariant sections. But this problem is solved by specifying under the GNU Free Documentation License with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts instead of simple under the GNU Free Documentation License - it is partially done at Wikipedia, but I propose to insert this in Language.PHP too.

Another point for criticism is that it can't be seamlessly combined with GNU GPL and other free licenses. But,from my point of view, we don't have this problem here, because it is single solid rock encyclopedy, not software collection!

I guess that these question are not new for the community, and I appreciate any answers and comments. It will help us to merge back both Russian Wikipedia projects. Drbug 11:47, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Stallman amazes me. The GPL restricts freedoms, because you can't distribute a binary only version of software under it, and the FDL restricts freedoms because you have this invariant sections. Then he has the cheek to have a go at the BSD license for not being free enough. He really is a wanker. I would prefer an alternative to the FDL just because it smells of Stallman. CGS 16:46, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC).

Please look from another side: If you don't fight for your freedom, you lose it. It seems that "Invariant sections problem" is not a problem for Wikipedia because there are no such sections in it and it is explicitly expressed. Nobody needs emotions, we'd like to receive information instead. Drbug 18:44, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Your freedom ends the same point, where my freedom starts... ;) So GPL is about the freedom to modify, inspect and so on, the freedoms that the person that distributes binaries had... As about w.ru - please consider 'two russian WP' section of Village pump. -- vovkav 07:02, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

We have discussed this before. The summary position (IANAL) is:

1. The GFDL is not ideal, for a wide variety of reasons. However, it suffices. Its downsides are not deal-breaking for most Wikipedians.
2. We (and the Russian Wikipedia too) are stuck with the GFDL, because we don't have any other license to modify and redistribute content on Wikipedia. Ditching the GFDL would mean ditching most of our existing content. Martin 19:01, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! Could you please provide me with link to these older discussions? Drbug 19:22, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Follow links around Wikipedia:copyrights, and search the mailing list archives with google. Martin 19:31, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

User:Kenneð

This guy was supposed to be on hard ban as I recall. --戴&#30505sv

Note: This User:Stevertigo is making a grand assumption. Nobody banned me and now he has blanked and "protected" my page. From what I have seen, User:Michael has been hard banned a bunch of times. Nobody ever banned me just reverted some humourous things I wrote in response to User:JoeM, who was screwing up the Islamofascism page and making a lot of NegativePOV about controversial political issues to incite violence and I was just messing with him. I realize that I was out of line, no matter what JoeM did. I haven't even bothered to see what was the result of JoeM's actions, whether a ban or not. I moved on and recognised the stupidity wasn't worth it, but other users kept on harassing me when I decided to erase my mistakes and the commentary about it. I just wanted to forget I I ever was a pat of he silliness. P.S. Somebody please stop reformatting my work! I am not interested in fighting anymore. Besides, that was my first day using Wikipedia. I am only interested in learning and contributing positive and neutral things. What happened before was an abberation.

Wow. Death threats as humor. Color me not laughing. RickK 00:59, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This almost sounds like an apology. Correct me if Im wrong. -戴&#30505sv 05:50, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)

of course it is. my word is good as gold

NPOV question

A user whose name I can't type added POV comments to the Current events page which can only be viewed when one is editing the page:

* Disgraced <!-- That is a word universally applied to him. His reputation is such that he was booed by mourners at a funeral he attended, and even when he announced he has terminal cancer, many people still called for him to be jailed and "preferably die in jail"!!!--> Irish former [[Taoiseach]] [[Charles J. Haughey]] sells his historic home and estate, ''Kinsealy'', in north [[Dublin]] to a property developer for 30 million euro. The former taoiseach, whose financial dealings and [[tax-evasion]] is the subject of a judicial inquiry and which have largely destroyed his reputation, bought the palatial mansion, which was once the summer residence of the [[United Kingdom|British]] [[Lord Lieutenant of Ireland]], for £200,000 in the [[1960s]]. Haughey, who is suffering from terminal [[prostate cancer]], will not be allowed to remain in the house as a sitting tenant for the rest of his life<!--Don't remove. Haughey having to move out of Kinsealy is like Washington having to move out of Mount Vernon. Irish people worldwide will be shocked (many delighted) to hear he is being forced to move, given his terminal cancer -->, a demand of his which scuppered past attempts to sell.<wiki> Surely adding POV material, even if it can't be seen when reading the article, is unacceptable. ~~~~

Actually in principle what has been done here is a good way to add controversial material (another would be to add an explanation on the talk page). What the facts in contention are, that I have no opinion on. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick

---

I am having dns problems, but I have a method of finding the ip address of a site (don't ask). Anyhow, I got the ip address of meta as 130.94.122.197, so I typed it in IE, and I ended up on the english wiki, except with a whole lot of php errors (the page was down there though, and everything seemed to work). But I wanted to look at meta. Is my ip wrong? Is it using a port other than 80? Is there just something wrong with it? マイカル (MB) 01:40, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)

Wow, that's not supposed to happen! (tweak tweak) Okay, the broken English wikipedia should now be replaced again with a message telling you you're in the wrong place. That doesn't help you, I guess, but... :)

The Wikipedia servers use name-based virtual hosts. We've only got two IP addresses for the two machines, and unless your browser has a hostname to send along with the connection we don't know which wiki to serve you. It should be possible to adjust your computer to hardcode the Wikipedia addresses as belonging to their IPs, so that temporary DNS errors don't slow you down. (On Unix-like systems, add them to /etc/hosts. On Windows or Mac I'm not sure what the current method is offhand.) However be warned that if you do this, you'll have to update manually when at some future time we throw new servers into the mix. --Brion 02:17, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Darn, that sucks. Thanks anyhow. マイカル (MB) 02:44, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)

"2 edits merged into one" bug

I discovered a bug here. My edit and an unknown person got merged within 10 minutes (judging fr. history).

My edit was simple: I changed ==Name of Wikipedia== to a Wikipedia-like definition, with a bolded subject and a complete sentence. The rest is not mine. Although I could've deleted that big chunk ("I don't think that a name change is ......" 3 messages) by accident, even though I don't remember messing around with the bottom. However, I definitely did not change 'transliterated' to 'translitterated'. The farthest I go in modifiying other people's messages in Talk is Wiki markup, such as, divider (----) and indentation (:) that may cause reader's reading difficulty without them. But I never changed other people's typo or grammar or whatnot. I don't care to, not in the informal Talk pages anyway.

So, that's definitely somebody else's work. How could this happen? It is disturbing that somebody can "cooperate" with me from another computer in 10 min (I was home that time). --Menchi 23:55, Aug 13, 2003 (UTC)

I believe it's referred to as the "rare but deadly Simultaneous Edit Bug" (to quote Brion). I can see it would be annoying if you're getting the blame for something you didn't do. Angela 00:11, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'm just happy it wasn't a Lir-incarnate who "cooperated" with me! Well, it was posisble, but from my personal experience, Lir tends to be more ... annoying than that, much more. --Menchi 00:15, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)

The good news is that if it was a simultaneous edit problem, it will be fixed soon because I've got some code almost ready to submit. But it may have been something more exotic. It sounds like anon's update went successfully, and then Menchi edited it, but his edit failed quietly on inserting into old and then continued on to update cur, leaving anon's edit unattributed. -- Tim Starling 00:47, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)

Status of Nupedia's "articles-in-progress"?

Originally posted at Wikipedia talk:Nupedia and Wikipedia, but reposted here, question probably deserves a wide exposure'

I see from Wikipedia:Nupedia and Wikipedia that we shouldn't add articles from the Nupedia Chalkboard, but what about Nupedia's articles in progress?. There are articles that are languishing there, with no visible movement, since late 2001. Do these have the same status as chalkboard articles, or can they be assumed to be released under the GFDL? It would be a pity to not use them as many of them would make excellent stubs and it would be a pity if they disappeared down into /dev/null simply through inactivity at Nupedia. -- Lexor 23:47, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

User contributions - New pages

Hi, is there a way to perform a cross between "My Contributions" and "Newly Created Articles" - i.e. list all articles created by a given user? Maybe there's another argument to "Special:Contributions", other than "&target=<username>", one which isn't documented (yet)? I found Wikipedia:User_contributions but it makes no mention of such, so I'm guess the answer is "no". Anyway, it would be a lot less hassle than maintaining a manual list of which articles you initiated. If this is something that doesn't exist and has to be added, how about also adding a flag to avoid listing minor edits, if that doesn't exist already... (And yes, I know this might be more appropriate in a feature request, but I need to make sure it doesn't exist first :-).

Also, FWIW, in trying to find this, I noted that Special pages doesn't list "My Contributions", although it does list "My Watchlist".

Noel 22:44, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, that wouldn't be easily possible with our current database setup, but a future change could make it easy. Basically the problem is that the table of _current_ article revisions, and the _recent changes_ table both keep track of which revisions are new creations, but the _old_ revision table doesn't. To tell who's the first person to have edited an article we'd have to take the earliest recorded edit for the page, which doesn't mesh well with a check through the entire database for a single user. (That is, it would run reeeeeal slow.) It's also not reliable, as many older (pre-January 2002) pages are missing their first few edits due to a misconfiguration in the original software. Now, we could limit the 'new articles' page to showing just those by a certain user, but since it uses the recentchanges table it only goes back a few days. It could not show a complete list. --Brion 02:17, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Let me see if I understand this. I am gathering, although you don't say so explicitly, that the "User contributions" page is currently derived from poring over the "old revision" table, which doesn't include info on which pages are new/minor, etc. (I gather the "old revision" table is basically just an time-ordered audit trail of all changes made to the entire database?)

So one way, with the current database, to provide a list of all articles started by user X would be to look down the list of all articles, and for each article, look at who did the first edit (and some of those are missing anyway) and see if it was X. Or, alternatively, as you're working down the "old revision" list looking for user X, every time you came to an article (there's no point looking at Talk:, User: etc pages) they had touched, which was one you hadn't seen before, you'd have to check its revision history to see if X was the first entry. And either would be slow.

Is that accurate? Noel 19:19, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Lost page history?

The edit history for Back_to_the_land seems to be gone. What happened? The page is a couple months old, I thought. Kat 19:46, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Disclaimers

Certain articles have disclaimers in them, indicating Wikipedia does not give medical, legal, financial etc advice. Would not a general link to a disclaimer page in the bottom or top link bar be more useful and more uniform? ²¹² 15:18, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

There's a disclaimer on wikipedia:about. Legal articles say Wikipedia:Wikipedia does not give legal advice. There are other proposed disclaimers on wikipedia:boilerplate text. However, they are not universally approved of. Martin

Need Some Redirection

Put together an article on Donald Davidson the poet/essayist. It appears that the stub article for Donald Davidson was a stub for a philosopher of the same name. Would someone with more experience mind replacing the stub and disambiguating the two Donald Davidson's? I'm not quite sure how to accomplish that properly at this time. Thanks User:Ark30inf Ark30inf 18:34, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I created the disambiguation page. But if you create an article on a person with he same name please do not wipe over teh other person even if it is a short stub. If you don't have time to create a disambiguation (or your just lazy(like me sometimes)), use a Horizonatal rule by typing ---- , and seperating them that way. :-) - fonzy

Thanks. To be honest, I thought it was some sort of nonsense article since it had something about a swamp monster being struck by lightning or some such. I realized the error when I looked at the pages that linked to it and realized it was actually philosophy, which only appeared to be nonsense to the uninformed. Like myself. Thanks again.Ark30inf 04:30, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Where is Here.. and What is local for Wikipedia

As a new person I wonder if this question has been asked, but what counts as "Here" or "local" for a wikipedian article? I know it should be clear, but some articles (for example the holden article) that talk of a locally produced something or other. Well I live in Australia so I assume it is Australian Built, but an American may assume it is American Built. can anyone suggest a way to fix this - Torien 23:29, 13 Aug 2003 (AUS EST)

I think the Holden article makes it sufficiently clear that "locally", in this case, means "in Australia". (But then, I'm Australian too, so I may not be a useful judge.)
On the wider issue, I think "local" should be determined by the subject of the article: Holden is an Australian company, so "local" means Australia, but in an article about a USian company "local" would mean the US. —Paul A 14:11, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Being that US is an abriviation of United States, USian is not proper usage (maybe you can get away with it in Australia, but not elsewhere [I know all about you australians and your abreviations, and slang ;)]). It should read "but in an article about a US company." マイカル (MB) 15:25, Aug 13, 2003 (UTC)

I only used USian because it got stuck in my head while I was reading the #US vs. American discussion; it's not a particularly Australian expression. The usual Australian term for the inhabitants of the USA is "bloody Yanks".  ;) —Paul A 03:18, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Disabled special pages

Most wanted, orphaned pages, popular pages, short pages, long pages are disabled. Could these at least be regenerated weekly by a cron job? Jrincayc 13:16, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

All of these except popular pages could be generated from the SQL dump files, thus not affecting database availability. Popular pages needs info that is not in the dump files. See also section Little Orphan Annie's Plea To You just above. Erik Zachte 13:50, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Short articles and Wikipedia:Long articles are now updated. There are alternative versions at Wikipedia:Longpages and Wikipedia:Shortpages which can be edited to show additional information, such as which pages have been deleted etc. (Rest of discussion archived to Wikipedia_talk:Shortpages). Angela 23:30, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It seems two people have done the same job (again). I have written a Perl script that can be run on the server in a matter of minutes and extract Shortest/Longest/Most wanted/Most reference/Orphaned articles from the dump files, thus not affecting the online database. For now I have added and Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles and Wikipedia:Most Referenced Articles. I will add Wikipedia:Most Wanted Articles soon (needs some more testing first). Erik Zachte 23:46, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

As far as I know it was not done using the online database. I just used the data provided by Docu to update the page. Angela

I did not mean to say that! I expect Docu has processed a local copy of the database, thus in fact using the same dump file. Erik Zachte 00:19, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Name of Wikipedia

Discussion moved to meta: m:Name_of_Wikipedia

Little Orphan Annie's Plea To You

Orphaned pages has not been updated since 09:05, 13 May 2003. It's useless as it stands now. Even as an admin, I can't do a thing about it. Can anyone here hear my plee? - Little Orphan Annie

Could orphaned pages found using a bot? If an admin can't do a thing about it, I can't neither. wshun 05:40, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

There is an automatic system for updating the Orphaned Pages list; it used to run itself at regular intervals, until it was disabled to reduce server load. Now it can only be run at the command of a Developer; the trouble is finding a Developer who has the time to run it. —Paul A 07:17, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

There is a lot of discussion on Wikitech about upgrading the hardware. I suggested there to produce daily SQL dumps once the capacity problems have been solved. This would be for disaster recovery in the first place, but it would then also be easy to extract special pages lists from these files. I volunteer to write a Perl job for it. But new hardware is a prerequisite. Erik Zachte 09:34, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I have SQL dumps downloaded and installed on my machine. I guess all I need is a script to make the orphaned page list, no? -- Ram-Man 11:03, Aug 13, 2003 (UTC)

I will work on a Perl script. Most of the logic is already in my TomeRaider/Stats scripts. Give me a few days. Erik Zachte 12:17, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Yeah! Progress. Thank you, all you Daddy Warbuckian Wikipedians, you! - Little Orphan Annie

Thx Annie, and congratulations with your 25th birthday! Erik Zachte 00:54, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I sent Ram-Man a Perl script (β) to test. It produces 5 sets of files: Shortest/Longest/Most wanted/Orphaned/Most referenced articles, each as html file and also as text file in wiki format for copy/paste. So progress has been made. Erik Zachte 21:57, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The files are done at specialpages.zip or specialpages.tar.gz. I did not check the files for accuracy, but the perl script did not give any errors. -- Ram-Man 00:09, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)

Section edit bug

Just try to edit section "Plagiatarism" by [edit] link, got the next section "Bolding bug". (Maybe it is because the Plag-section was edited at that time by someone else?) -- till we *) 20:55, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

Image Name Obfuscation

I know this is the obsolutely wrong place to ask this, but where can I find information on how Wikipedia obfuscates the location of images? For example, in the article on Bob Hope, the image is referred to like this in Wiki Markup:
[[Image:BobHopegettingOsca.jpg|Bob Hope receiving Oscar]]

But the rendered HTML src tag refers to the image like this:
src="/upload/b/be/BobHopegettingOsca.jpg"

which resolves to:
http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/b/be/BobHopegettingOsca.jpg

Now my question is, how does the Wiki software generate that /b/be portion of the URL? The /b part is easy enough (it looks like it based on the first letter of the filename), but what about the /be portion? It looks like a hash code of some sort. Does anyone know the algorithm that the Wiki software uses to determine this? Or is it stored in a database somewhere? If it is the latter, is there some API for querying the database for locations of such images? Thanks! —Frecklefoot 20:49, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

See m:MediaWiki_file_usage#Uploaded_media_files. --Brion 01:23, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Great! This looks like just what I needed for WikiEdit. Thanks! —Frecklefoot 14:31, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Bolding bug

How came we fix this (caused by ''book title'''s by markup instead of by rephrasing? I've encountered such a bug several times already in the past few weeks and always need to rephrase it by remove the possessive suffix from the word, and thereby change the style when it's not necessary (sometimes worsening the case, as may be in this TIME). --Menchi 19:48, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

It's not a bug... you need to use html tags in that case... Evercat 19:53, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

re my typo: nokiwi! :-D --Menchi 20:03, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

<i>TIME</i>'s or ''TIME''<nowiki>'s</nowiki> would work. Angela 20:21, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A simple solution not involving HTML or pseudo HTML tags is to put a space between the markup and the apostrophe: ''book title'' 's -> book title 's. This may annoy punctuation purists, but it does work. —Paul A 01:51, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Plagiarism

I have been encountering articles that appear suspicious in their style. These are submitted by anonymous Wikipedians, and the writing style is very good, although not contemporary English. In some cases, events are described which required a presence, although the submitter was very likely not there at the time of the event. Aside from the good article on Plagiarism, there is not much in the material provided newcomers like myself as to what to do wit these. If I have knowledge, I just replace the suspicious material. It seems that the problem is not one of adding copyrighted material, but submitting without due credit, material that is no longer protected by copyright (although this would be difficult to determine without finding the original source). Any words of wisdom? Can someone expand on this problem in the introductory instructional material? Should I? - Marshman 19:38, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A heinous copyright crime too. --Menchi 19:48, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Copyrights#If you find a copyright infringement. DanKeshet 19:52, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

Here is an example from the article Hekla:
It took a long rest, however, of more than sixty years' duration, prior to the year 1845, when it again burst forth. After a violent storm on the night of the 2nd of September in that year, the surface of the ground in the Orkney Islands was found strown with volcanic dust. There was thus conveyed to the inhabitants of Great Britain an intimation that Hecla had been again at work. Accordingly, tidings soon after arrived of a great eruption of the mountain.
presented with no hint of credit to source. -- Marshman 20:33, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It's part of an Project Gutenberg text which has gone out of coypright and into the public domain, see [2], the source is:

WONDERS OF CREATION:

A DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF

VOLCANOES AND THEIR PHENOMENA.

"The mountains quake at Him and the hills melt and the earth is burned at His presence"--NAHUM 1:5

1872

So there should be no problem with copyright, but maybe with accuracy. -- till we *) 20:39, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

ARGH - I just wanted to post exactly the same, you were one editing conflict faster. andy 20:42, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

My problem is not with copyright - these texts mostly appear to be turn-of-the-century works. My problem is with lack of attribution. If it is known where this mateerial comes from, why is it submitted anonymously and no credit given in the article (and a statement added to the article TALK page)? Without due credit, is it not plagiarism? -- Marshman

Better now? I added a short section in that article describing the source. andy 20:53, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thanks. I do see a (minor?) problem here, that may have been faced somewhere already. In the text I submitted above there are two "typos" A copyedit would fix those. But if text is presented as a quote, it should not be altered (expect perhaps sic added). We cannot extend this do not change to parts of articles that are cited sources, yet word-smithing a sourced statement carries the danger of altering the meaning away from that in the original source. Maybe this is not really a problem -- I'm just grousing or rambling. Bottom line: should one just modernize these old texts? I still say credit MUST be part of the original article submittal. - Marshman

Of course you are right, it is always necessary to quote the sources, see Wikipedia:Cite your sources. In this case we should copyedit the text to current language - that's why I wrote "is based upon". I don't think that text deserves to stay as a citation - for citation it is of course not possible to change them, but that'd be for historic sentences or something like that, not for public-domain article sources. andy 21:18, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think this old text (particularly historical first-hand descriptions or observations) can have great value if preserved. As an example, I have edited paragraphs 3 through 6 of the Hekla article. Not sure how much of the "old" text got changed before I isolated it as a quote, but this approach should be considred (with proper credit citation) for these kinds of submittals. -- Marshman

Automaticly link talk pages to main pages

deleted - feature already implemented

Undoing a page move

I just want to ask the other admins, what you usually do in the following case: A page was moved to another location, and you want to undo the change, because the new title of the article is worse than the old one. Now the old title has become a redirect, and just moving the page back does not work, because the old (and desired new) page has to be deleted first. Do you a) delete the redirect page (which has no history) and perform the page move, or b) list the redirect page on Votes for deletion and do the page move a week later. I ask as a precaution, since I don't want to break Wikipedia policies. (I am talking about numerous page moves by Ruhrjung, for example from Brunswick, Germany to Brunswick (Lower Saxony).) -- Cordyph 14:27, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

If the title you want to move a page to has no history apart from a redirect to the title you are moving from (as is the case with Brunswick (Lower Saxony)), then the software should allow you to make the move without doing any deletion. So first off, you should try just moving the page back - it will probably work. In general, I think it's fair to say that Votes for Deletion doesn't need to be used when there's no content to a page. --Camembert

Thanks a lot. Stupid me, I just assumed, that it would not be possible. -- Cordyph 15:46, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Redirects after moving

move to wikipedia talk:redirect

Often after moving a page from one name form to another there are inbound links from other pages that point to the redirect(s) created during the move. Should one

1. Modify the links to point to the new form of the name, even if it means aliasing the link (e.g. Bockscar|Bock's Car)?
2. Change the form of the name in the pointing article (e.g. Bockscar, assuming this does no violence to the sense of the article)?
3. Just leave the pointing article alone and let the the redirect do its work (e.g. Bock's Car)?

For a real-world case-in-point, visit: http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Bockscar -- Bill 11:29, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This is one of those things that must be judged case-by-case. In the case of Bockscar, the correct action would be your second: change all references to the "Bockscar" spelling (if you're sure that spelling is the correct one?). —Paul A 14:03, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The U.S. Air Force thinks the name is Bockscar. I guess they're in a better position to know than I am (I hope so anyway). But, OK, decisions must be made on a case-by-case basis; all well and good, but what factors need to be considered when making the decision? This is something that comes up all the time. I've normally been fixing the redirects, but if that's not the right thing to do, I'd like to know. -- Bill 15:18, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Answer depends on the many reasons we use redirects on Wikipedia:

• abbreviations - use a piped link, in case abbreviation needs to be disambiguated due to the TLA shortage.
• redirects where the redirect is wrong (eg Philisophy redirects to Philosophy) - edit the article to make it right. This is a neat way of fixing bad spelling.
• redirects where the redirect represents an alternate option (eg dates, US/UK spelling, different names for the same thing, etc) - let the redirect do its work.
• sub-topic redirects - use your judgement, but avoid surprising the reader by making them think we have a specific article on the subject, when we don't.
• self-links via redirects - remove the link
• duplicate links via redirects - remove all but one of the duplicate links

Hope this helps (and is non-controversial!) :) Martin

Picture caption text

Just a minor question but I'm keen on getting the detail right on Wikipedia pictures. Look at Air France for an example .......
I've begun changing all my Larger version messages below picture captions to Larger picture but have realised this may cause a little confusion because I've noticed that many people seem to have copied me (or came up with it independently) and are using Larger version as well.
Firstly, does Larger picture conveys the message clearer than Larger version?
Secondly, is it too late to change because Larger version is so common now?
Thirdly, I wonder how much annoyance I would cause if I changed other peoples pics to the Larger picture message?
The more replies to this, the better I'll know what to do!
Thanks Adrian Pingstone 09:45, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Larger picture may be a different picture, larger version I understand as the same, just larger. - Patrick 09:50, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think either one is fine; hopefully someday we can establish some guidelines for captions (such as font size and emphasis, how to link to larger versions, whether to parenthesize link phrases within captions, etc.) As far as I'm concerned, Adrian, you've added pics to so many articles that the rest of us may as well follow whatever guidelines you make up :-) -- Wapcaplet 14:51, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. I've decided I'll stick with Larger version. Now I'll revert the 50 or so pics I've converted to Larger picture. At least that's a lot less work than the other way round!

Adrian Pingstone 15:31, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

"Larger version" is what someone (maybe me?) put at wikipedia:image use policy#Markup, but I can't remember if there was any really convincing reason for that... Martin

"Larger picture" and "Larger version" both look peculiar to me. After all, I already know it's a picture, and what is a "version" anyway? I think "Enlarge" would be a lot better. It's more succinct, and it's what I usually see at sites that have a link to enlarge a picture. Michael Geary 07:38, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Donations Article

As this questions come up again and again, I just startet this page: Wikipedia:Donations. Please help in adding the relevant informations, Fantasy 09:41, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Watchlist "cutoff"

(687 pages watched not counting talk pages; 244 total pages edited since cutoff...) What does this "244 since cutoff" mean? Fantasy 08:58, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think it means 244 of your pages were edited (once or more) since the developers truncated the watchlist to its present state last week. My interpretation may be wrong.

Mine is about 2000 watched, but only about 100 edited! I mostly work on historical stuff and cities. I guess those aren't very popular!

--Menchi 09:07, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

No, if you ask for watched pages edited during the last n hours (n=1 by default) it tells you also (I think) the total number of pages edited in that time. - Patrick 10:00, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Yes, Patrick is right, as one can see by looking at various watchlist-periods. The number of pages edited since cutoff grows with longer times. Andre Engels 15:50, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This feature doesn't seem to work all that well. If I click the 1 day limit I still see edits from other days. Anyone else experience this? Dori 12:17, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Gender Pronouns In Articles?

How should Wikipedians deal with gender pronowns in articles? I am for gender pronowns, but I don't want to force gender pronouns were they aren't wanted. --hoshie

I go with Strunk & White, except that I usually use "they" as a singular gender-neutral pronoun instead of "he". This is much debated by grammarians and pedants, but I think sentences such as "If someone needs to use the bathroom during class, they can just excuse themselves." are increasingly well-accepted. I find some of the other "gender-neutral" formulations such as using "she" or "s/he" instead of "he" as the "unknown gender" pronoun to be very distracting since almost everything I've ever read is not written that way. Switching between "he" and "she" for the same person is even worse. Imagine reading Jane Austen or Shakespeare with such contortions. Using the plural "they" instead works better, in my opinion, because it's almost always clear from context whether or not "they" is really plural or not (and it has also received far greater usage than the other formulations). Daniel Quinlan 04:36, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

I think the author of this page nails it on the head (reading up to the "followup" section). Daniel Quinlan 04:43, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/they.html

See also: gender-neutral pronoun, singular they, gender-specific pronoun, non-sexist language, sie and hir, Spivak pronoun, it (pronoun).

Choose whatever is clearest in the particular example - sometimes it will be singular they, sometimes it will be rephrasing, and sometimes it will be a construction like "him or her". Generic male should probably be avoided - studies seem to show that it's particularly prone to misinterpretation. Neologisms like (my personal preference) sie and hir aren't widespread enough to be used, except for a few transgenders who specifically desire to be so pronouned. Martin

Now sie hir, I strongly caution against sie and hir and Spivak pronouns in favor of singular they even in the case of transgendered people except for direct quotations, of course, or discussion of these virtually unused neologisms. sie and hir are understood by very few people and I care more about Wikipedia being easy to read. Case in point: I just had to look it up "sie and hir" which point I vaguely remembered reading about them before. Yes, I've read about them, but I never see them used so I forgot (and I have to wrack my brain to figure out how to use them whereas "they" comes naturally since it has been used well over a century in literature). Spivak has similar problems and also suffers from pronounciation problems ("he" and "e" is very similar in many regional dialects). Anyway, see this page also Singular "their" in Jane Austen and elsewhere: Anti-pedantry page. — Daniel Quinlan 02:09, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)

Two Russian WPs

Moved to m:Two Russian WPs

History of the Pump

Has anyone noticed that the entire history of the village pump now resides at Wikipedia talk:Village pump? Are there any plans to move it back? -- Tim Starling 13:51, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

Moving pages with over five thousand entries in their edit histories is a somewhat less reliable process than one might like. :P For the meantime, let's all just leave it alone. --Brion 07:22, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

How bout finally getting a logged system like at http://www.craigslist.org/forums/

"Divided by a common language"

Wikipedia isn't the only community project that wrestles with American vs. British spelling ... as this debate about Linux shows ("flavour" vs. "flavor") http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/726 -- DavidWBrooks 13:03, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Surely you mean "USian vs British" :-7 -- AndrewKepert 06:41, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The weakest link

Moved to WP:VD prune for salvage

Wikipedia Mascot

Moved to meta:Wikipedia mascot (talk page)

Unprotect Ariel Sharon

Resolved

Wikipedia namespace contents

They're at Wikipedia:List of articles in the Wikipedia namespace

Renaming a Page

Moved to Wikipedia:Village dump (prune for salvage)'

Miscount in Vfd

Moved to WP:VFD

Copyright problem

A contributor added the text of a Ted Rall column to the article on Bush regime. It doesn't appear that the contributor obtained permission to copy the Rall column (which is syndicated) here. Should I go ahead and delete the copied portion myself, or should I contact the contributor first? I don't want to step on anyone's toes. Thanks, Clipdude 02:59, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Go ahead and clip it.  ;) Remember, be bold. (Meanwhile I'll look around and see if I can find an external link to add.) - Hephaestos 03:06, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. I won't be so worried about fixing things in the future.--Clipdude 04:24, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Ogg uploads.. any guidelines for size, length, quality?

move to wikipedia:sound help

Page title controversy

Please take a look at Talk:Roman Catholic Church sex abuse allegations and comment on the page title.—Eloquence 22:53, Aug 9, 2003 (UTC)

---

See Wikipedia:Village dump for just-removed items. (quick removal due to size issues)

---

The new 'Table of Contents' is very nice. But why not also have a 'Back to Top' button from each of the sub-headings? If you use the former for going directly to a subtopic, you would definitely need the latter to pick another sub-topic again.I am sure its obvious and probably it has not been done for various valid reasons, anyway I just wanted to point this out:-).KRS 06:40, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Is weasel terms really a good term?

(text is soon inserted here)

Children's Wikipedia ?

Could a Wiki be started for children? It was when viewing 'simple english' translations that I thought of this. If it were given its own subdomain (kids.wikipedia.org maybe?) then articles could be tailored for children (i.e. made very simple to read/understand). I haven't really thought about age range yet, maybe under 14s ?

This would be entered as a 'translation', a new type of language.

Just an idea... --Richard Corbin 10:36, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

There is already the Simple English Wikipedia. CGS 12:06, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC).

A children's wikipedia would need lots of pictures and not much text, unlike the simple english wikipedia, which merely aims to rewrite the current wikipedia using a smaller vocabulary. I remember reading a couple of children's encyclopedias when I was young -- they were great. Each article was short, focused on exciting or interesting aspects of the topic, and was probably 2/3 pictures. And they definitely used a vocabulary bigger than 1000 words. Children know 2500-5000 words by age 5 or 6, and the way to increase that number is not by shielding them from further exposure. -- Tim Starling 12:39, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

Tim, this is why I think a children's version of Wiki would be a good project. How many online encyclopedia's for children exist on the internet? Or more to the point, how many with such a potential. The children's wiki could eventually be used in schools all around the world, and it would be free. It would save so many education boards money. No longer would they have to purchase software encyclopedias. They could either browse wiki on the net or download a SQL dump and run it on their local network.

So who thinks this is a good idea worth starting? I'll need a little help in getting it going if anyone's interested. --Richard Corbin 13:34, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

One of the biggest difficulties with such a thing, though, is the question of whether certain material is appropriate for children. Consider Wikipedia:Content disclaimer and the accompanying discussion for a glimpse of the kinds of conflict that might arise in trying to determine what is appropriate for children. I really like the idea of a visual encyclopedia with lots of pictures, but we should probably concentrate on making Wikipedia itself well-illustrated before making a simplified version. Probably a Children's Wikipedia would need different sorts of illustrations than the regular Wikipedia would, but IMHO Wikipedia itself can be made easily accessible to children with a little extra effort. Once again, though, there's that appropriateness issue... If we can find a way to resolve that issue, though, I think it's worth trying. -- Wapcaplet 13:36, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Beyond the appropriateness issue (which is a big deal -- some people think children should know about issues such as homosexuality and contraception as early as possible, others want to keep these issues away from children for as long as possible), translating NPOV to a children's project is also very difficult. Children need emotional language and clear values. The "Some people think .. these other people argue that .." methodology doesn't work very well for children. Should a children's encyclopedia have an article about creationism? If so, what would be in it? IMHO such a project would need more rules beyond NPOV.—Eloquence 13:51, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

Wow! Good question. I propose that we should keep creationism OUT of a children's encyclopedia. The challenge would be to come up with a NPOV rule that would keep OUT creationism but allow Jack and the Beanstalk. Rednblu 15:56, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I don't agree. An article on creationism should be allowed (if it gets created!) ... As long as it is understandable for children then there won't be a problem. Of course, I also think there should be a simple explanation of evolution on that page too. What is the harm in teaching kids new things?... they will have to learn some day. Maybe there should also be links to other religions' pages so as to come from a NPOV. BTW, In case any of you were wondering, I am not religious at all and do not wish to be associated with any religion, so I am unbiased. When thinking of a kid's wiki I was assuming that if an article was too difficult to convert (e.g. nuclear physics), then it simply wouldn't be converted for children. --Richard Corbin 16:15, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

It's already been suggested -- someone started making pages called "Chemistry/Kids" a while ago. You might still find them. -- Tarquin 16:59, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It is an interesting idea; but it will not be a wikipedia. To design it for any particular audience, distinguishing content by any other criteria besides language, implies a set of rules that would disqualify it from being part of the same project. Mkmcconn 17:32, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

How about entering it as a 'sister project'? There is a list of sister projects on the main page, some of which do not qualify either. --Richard Corbin 19:24, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

I suggested a Wikipedia for "kids" once but it didn't get anywhere. Altopugh the problem I have with wikipedia at the moment is that a young child could find something only "adults" are meant to know. I think there should be a new prefrance where you can click and not view certain "rude" pages. -fonzy

Question about contentless articles

I know I should know this, but I've forgotten. I just blanked offensive content from Trina, but I can't remember where I post a request to delete the article name: I know it's not VfD, but I just can't remember. Thanks for your help! Jwrosenzweig 17:39, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Put it on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion ;-) Fantasy

It can go on VfD. It just doesn't need to stay there a week like other entries. Angela 18:35, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

FYI vfd can be linked to with the redirect WP:VFD -- the Volunteer Fire Department is (will be in a minute) is WP:FD -戴&#30505sv 19:22, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)

Deleting an article name is deleting the article. Just put it on VfD. CGS 21:01, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC).

Last month I checked (2 months ago?), we had like 200 ancient blanked pages. We should have a project of admins to delete that. Or a bot. --Menchi 23:34, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)

Is there a list of them anywhere? I'm sure if you list the link to it people will work on it. Angela

Special:Shortpages. --mav

I meant a list specifically of blanked pages. Not just of short ones. I am quite aware that that exists but the list is mostly made up of deleted pages and redirects. Angela

I think Special:Shortpages was where I discoverd that long list of (0 byte) articles when it was still live. Either somebody really gung-ho deleted it all alone, or the developer chose not to include the 0-byte's on that page. --Menchi 05:55, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

Here are the blanks: Wikipedia:Blankpages with a link to the page's history included. --User:Docu

User:Saddam Hussein

If it turns out that this person is not infact Saddam Hussein, and the user does some serious vandalism, there is a possibility that Saddam Hussein might have grounds for complaint. I think we should at least require that she/he provide a real mailing address or phone-number. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 07:14, Aug 17, 2003 (UTC)

GPS coordinates perhaps?Ark30inf 07:19, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

O. A celebrity. Wee. --Menchi 08:41, Aug 17, 2003 (UTC)

You know, famous people do not have a monolopy on their name! There are probably at least tens of Saddam Husseins in the world. Before WW2 I'm sure there were numerous Adolf Hitlers. Don't jump on this guy for offensive user name or whatever before you know for sure. CGS 11:26, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC).

Ahem. Just as a small hint, why not check his userpage at User:Saddam Hussein? I know that Saddam Hussein is kind of like George Adams in the relative commonness department. But the full name given on the userpage is the whole rigamarole including the al-tikriti etc. stuff. And there is a pretty unmistakable photograph. In fact it is the article from wikipedia, with even the other-language links intact. While I am not sure that the users name is not Saddam Hussein; I am convinced that anyone really named Saddam Hussein would not fault us for being pointedly sceptical. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick

Yeah, ok. I didn't look at the edit history. But still, keep it in mind for the future. CGS 15:09, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC).

Love-mates

For those who wish to break up, or support, the attempt by love-mates User:RK (who politically censors talk files and spams articles full of inappropriately located text) and User:JoeM (read the page for yourself) to establish a Wikipedia:ZOG <--- tells you how you can actually vote for ZOG!

Different pages for different meanings of the same word/ phrase

In Wikipedia I found the following instances when page titles had more than one meaning/ association and the problem had been dealt with in the manner described below.

1. Architecture- inbetween the explanation for architecture as in buildings, there was a paragraph on architecture as related to computer lingo and again there was a continuation of the former meaning. Problem further compounded by use of similar terms in both fields- language, building, etc.,
2. Calculus- before even explaining what calculus is as generally known[ mathematics related] intro line said that there is something called dental calculus for which one had to go to another page.
3. Taj Mahal- at the end of a very long article on Tajmahal, the monument, there was a single sentence that said that there is also a blues singer by the same name.

People thus seem to try to
[a]fit in their meaning within the narrative of the first meaning[as in 1]
[b]add it at beginning of page[as in 2]
[c]add it at end of page[as in 3]
This does not seem to be an adequate way to deal with the situation which is likely to arise in many instances. Sometimes it gives an absurd effect. So why not have a system by which we have separate pages that can be named as Calculus[1], [2], Architecture[1], [2] etc., as in a dictionary. This way, we do justice to both -not dilute the effect of the stronger one nor relegate the weaker one to discovery by chance. This is not the same as having two pages on the same topic [ as in New Imperialism:-)]. The formation of a new page with a legitimately different meaning can be vetted by sysops or through vote. In such cases the search or go button can lead to a master page which lists- for eg- Architecture 1 and Architecture 2 giving links to each page. [In architecture the new meaning has long obscured the old one as any search in Google would reveal:-)]You could still do this in one page[ TOC?] but the effect may not be satisfactory- each meaning deserves its own page--KRS 18:59, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The dental calculus thing is not good. However, in the Taj Mahal and Archiecture cases are valid according to current policy. We do separate if each definition is or deserves to be expanded. Otherwise, the stubs are placed together, or under a large article to eliminate the the prolific occurence of stubs. (See [Disambiguation]]) The policy is that once we can make it over one paragraph (de-stubbed), it can have its own article. Dictionaries can have as many stubs (aka, entries) as it likes, but we are an encyclopedia. Feel free to raise any more concerns. --Menchi 19:43, Aug 17, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguation?

~ender 2003-08-17 13:26:MST

I am aware of the disambiguation technique. Just thought that it would be more professional when you have it like Architecture[1][2], Calculus[1][2], etc., instead of Architecture[ buildings], architecture [computers] calculus[maths] calculus[ dental] and so on. KRS 04:23, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

but then we'd have to remember numbers that have no connection to the subject. -- Tarquin 08:38, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

No, the idea is not to remember meaning 1 or 2 or 3, but just to type the word without any qualifying phrase which will lead to a master page that lists the different meanings in a serial order according to popularity of usage and also gives links to each detailed page[ The numbering is only for creating unique page names and not for searching or remembering] So you don't have to start any search by prequalifying a word/ phrase or prior knowledge of different usages.

Moreover, it will help in saving some admin time- many people seem to be helping in disambiguation. Even a link from a simple word such as 'English' had to be disambiguated [language vs nationality] by someone in a page I created. It boils down to this- everytime such a word comes in a new page, you have to keep disambiguating it after reading the context[ which is a waste of time and resources]

So for both the user and the altruistic Wikipedian, this approach might prove to be a good thing.---KRS 14:35, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

But the English case isn't the same as stub-collection case. English language and England have complete articles on their own already, so that page is completely disambiguation, not stub-collection. However, it is easier if I could just type [[English (1)|]] instead of [[English language|English]]. --Menchi 14:42, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC)

So make a redirect from English (1) to English language. Job done. Martin 21:24, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

No, you don't have to type English[1] or English [language]. You just have to type English which will lead to a master page from which it would be obvious which meaning fits the context among the many listed KRS 14:48, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

How does that differ from the current disambiguation? --Menchi 14:52, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC)

The disambiguation has to be done everytime the phrase occurs within a particular context and is an automatic redirect[ helped by wikipedians]whereas if you use this master page approach, it wil take care of every single usage of the word- you just have to add meaning to the master page[ in case there are more meanings] you don't have to redirect every page that uses the word to its correct meaningKRS 15:04, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Again, how does that differ from the current disambiguation? Currently, you can link English or pitch and that will link to the disambiguation page. A later editor can insert the shortcut to pitch (music) so readers go directly to the correct page. Your system wouldn't allow the shortcut unless people linked ((pitch [1])) which is pretty ugly. -- Tarquin 22:09, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hi KRS. Do you mean something like Taj Mahal/temp, every meaning is numbered. -wshun 22:38, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I just read the disambiguation utility more thoroughly and followed the link to English that Tarquin had given. It seems that such a concept exists, but is not in use much or not correctly used.

What I mean is this- There is a disambiguation page on English, but actually it shouldn't be called a disambiguation page and doesn't need the postscript disambiguation .....blah, blah...It does not look nice, it feels like an excuse. There is usually no ambiguity for the human user only for the AI wikipedia, and if there is, then all the more important not to redirect but give all meanings. A page on English with its different meanings should be a legitimate page and whenever someone creates a link to the word English, it should point out to this master page and not get redirected manually for every unique context. People can take the trouble to choose the correct meaning among the many rather than Wikipedians 'spoon feeding' them the right one.

Probably it can be something like the Englishdisambiguation page without all postscripts in italics, without any automatic redirects, and users can choose the meaning they want

Engl1ish(1)- the people who reside in England

English(2)- the language which originated in..

Or it can be like Taj Mahal/temp by Wshun with neither a one word description nor a detailed one, but one sentence.

Tajmahal(1)- a monumental tomb in India built by the Mughal emperor Shahjahan

Tajmahal(2)- a blues singer

In each detailed/ unique page, the number can be in very small script if it looks ugly. Or if you device a system where you can make the number invisible in each individual page Tajmahal(invisible 1) then that would be excellent.

So you get

1] easy search without prequalification of phrase[ is thus better than a Google search]

2] No absurd mixing of meanings or trivialising important ones

3] easy admin KRS 04:25, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

There should be no disambiguation page and no xxx (yyy). Only xxx and possible subpage of the form xxx(invisible index), with the index generated automatically according to its position in xxx. Readers have to choose the correct meaning by themselves. Is this what you mean? -wshun 04:52, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Exactly!!KRS 05:09, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I can agree with having a disambiguation page that is simply named "English", or "Calculus", etc.; in fact, that's what we have in most cases, except where the meaning of a word (such as Calculus) is overwhelmingly in favor of a specific meaning (that is, it is not very ambiguous).

If you want, you can create a page Calculus (mathematics), so we can use Calculus as a disambiguation page. I fail to see how a numbering scheme will make anything easier on anyone; it'd be hard to decide what order of importance to use, and extremely confusing for editors who had to remember which numbers were which, especially when guessing at what the link should be (as you may know, experienced editors can often make educated guesses about what link to use to get to a desired article; asking them to remember "Calculus (dental)" makes more sense than asking them to remember whether it was "Calculus (3)" or "Calculus (4)". Or do I mis-understand your numbering proposal?)

Finally, some of what you mention - linking to the disambiguation page, instead of "spoon-feeding" the correct page, is precisely what we are trying to avoid. Almost always, the correct meaning is evident from context. If an article is about mathematics, and someone wants to check out the Calculus page, you don't want to divert them to a page which asks them "did you mean the mathematical one or the dental one?"

-- Wapcaplet 04:55, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

An encyclopedia should be objective and should give importance to both meanings of -say a word like calculus - but without diluting the more popular one. If you take the word calculus, obviously everyone will know that it relates to mathematics. But within an article on mathematics, if you get the word calculus and you redirect someone directly to the mathematical calculus, you are controlling the way in which someone gets knowledge- many times one learns by accident[ you might never learn that there is something called dental calculus]. In a dictionary or enclopedia, this is what happens precisely, you might start looking for the meaning/ expalnation for a word and find out things you haven't even dreamed of. Such an occurrence is impossible if you do automatic redirects. Also, who will get to see the disambiguation page at all if you keep redirecting everyone directly to what you think is the correct context?--KRS 05:23, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Well, provided the article at the unmodified term (Calculus, English, etc.) is the disambiguation page, anyone who searches for those terms (either on Wikipedia or Google or whatnot) is going to get the disambiguation page; they can then select which one they are interested in. When we do disambiguation links like Mercury (element), there is not any redirecting going on; the link is simply being changed to the one which is most appropriate in some context. I can see your point, that since unambiguous links keep the reader on the "straight and narrow path", so to speak, they may discourage some exploration, but the very nature of hyperlinking, to me, overwhelmingly makes up for it. Some have speculated that there may be a "six degrees of separation" kind of principle at work; you can get from any article to any other seeminly unrelated article, just by surfing the hyperlinks.

One of the situations in which disambiguation is most useful, I think, is in disambiguating multiple place-names. In an article about Ireland, for instance, Dublin is probably referring to the capital city, and not to Dublin, Ohio. Asking the viewer to manually disambiguate the link by first going to a Dublin disambiguation page, and then to the page they wanted, seems like an equal or greater amount of presumption about what the viewer wants. I don't know whether viewers would tend to prefer either "spoon-feeding" the related page, or giving them the option to check out Dublin, Ohio after they read about Ireland. Keep in mind that every link we insert into an article makes presumptions about whether the viewer will want to go there. They can always ignore the links. They can always search for "Calculus" to find out what other kinds of calculus there are. I think the system we have now makes the most sense. -- Wapcaplet 15:01, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I agree to some extent with you, but the assumption now is that a disambiguation page might come inbetween your search, but it could very well come at the beginning. So when I search for 'calculus' or 'Dublin', I would not like the first page I get to say ' This is a disambiguation page... if you have come to this.....'and so on. That would kind of negate the whole concept of an encyclopedia.KRS 16:05, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I am confused, then... if someone searches for "calculus", what should they get, if not a disambiguation page, or some other form of result that essentially tells them "there are lots of different kinds of calculus"? -- Wapcaplet 18:20, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Is Fox News a real news source?

(from user talk:Wik)

Main page redirect not working

Looks like more redirect problems --at best I got a link to http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Path -- going directly to other pages seems to work fine. -12.233.97.211 19:12, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

• Um, don't you mean http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page ? —Paul A 11:47, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

• • No, I think sie means Main_Path. I keep ending up there too. Angela 01:50, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Note for the confused: there was a tiny 404 error page that just linked to the Main Page, whose sole purpose in life was to be something other than a directory listing in the /w directory. Hovewer "Main Page" was misspelled as "Main Path".

I've redirected Main Path to the main page, and moved most of its former contents directlf into the 404 page. --Brion 04:57, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Is weasel terms really a good term?

Suddenly one day, ...today to be precise, I discovered the policy against "weasel terms", exemplified as

• Some people say/believe...
• It has been said that...
• Some would say...

For long these kind of expressions has been one of my main points of critics against the Wikipedia project, and of course I can blame myself for my bad command of English and my too superficial study of Wikipedia policies, that I in several months haven't understood that my critic actually "is" answered in Wikipedia-policies, but on the other hand it turns out from the what-links-here list that at least the page on "weasel terms" is unknown by most wikipedians.

A few question raise from this:

• is the term really good?
• is this issue really considered important by other wikipedians, or is it a policy which is made and accepted in order to be put in the drawer and forgotten?
• could something be done to emphasize this misconception of NPOV?
• should something be done?

--Ruhrjung 19:18, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

How are you going to present views that differ from your own on controversial subjects without doing this? I can see wanting to put exactly who holds the opposing point of view "Adherents of the pre-1956 Georgia flag say......" and "Some homeless advocates say.........." rather than just "Some people say......" But not sure how you can present multiple point of views without saying that someone said them.Ark30inf 19:32, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Well, your question actually highlights another of my points of critic against Wikipedia customs. If I hadn't hid Wikipedia:Avoid weasel terms by [[Wikipedia:Avoid weasel terms|policy against "weasel terms"]], I think the probability for you reading that Wikipedia policy page would have increased. Mea culpa!

...now, see what the page has to say first, then we can discuss the solution the page proposes. :-)

--Ruhrjung 20:19, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Well, I admit doing just a quick run through of the page before commenting and missed the meat of it. That itself might be a problem, either with me, the page, or both. I probably would not have missed it if the article had stated it right off the bat....."Try to attribute statements of opinion to a specific source such as "Joe said..." rather than using 'weasel words' like "Some say.....". That will solve the problem with the page (but perhaps not the problem with me scanning and then commenting).Ark30inf 21:05, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Back to the original discussion (which IMHO should probably be moved to Wikipedia_talk:Avoid_weasel_terms), I think the neagative cononations of 'weasel terms' should be avoided, even though (in general) we want people to avoid using those terms.

How about: Ambiguous phrasing | Ambiguous citing | Ambiguous sources?

~ender 2003-08-17 14:50:MST

Or maybe just Wikipedia:Avoid vagueness. -- Wapcaplet 02:03, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Fictional characters

The articles on fictional characters are going out of control. Simpson, Star War, Star Trek, Harry Potter. A strict guideline is definitely a priority.

Not to mention articles on the physics of Star Trek. Sure, there was a book published with that title and we should have a review of it, but that's about it. -- Miguel

I know many classic novels having more than one hundred characters. It is tempting to add all of them in Wikipedia, but I want to wait until we have a clear guideline.-wshun 20:34, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I don't know that it's really a problem, aside from the fact that we tend to prefer articles on real people to be qualified by some measure of "importance" (especially given all the recent discussion over Mr. Boyer), and that fictional characters perhaps should have similar qualifications. But the existence of an article on, say, Bleeding Gums Murphy doesn't harm Wikipedia in any way, or distract anyone who wants to from creating articles on similarly obscure real people. If someone wants to spend their time on articles about fictional characters, it doesn't bother me any. -- Wapcaplet 20:50, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This matter has been raised quite a few times, not all of them by me. I say by all means, add articles on Mr Darcy, Heathcliff, Sir Toby Belch, Kate Croy, Sir Lancelot, Bartlebooth, Yossarian, Becky Sharp and any others you can think of! -- Tarquin 21:20, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think it's ok as long as it's made clear they are fictional people in the introduction. Angela

I just fear that there will be too much stubs. Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter are "important" enough, I think. But other minor characters? wshun 21:38, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Our deletion policy allows for us to delete pages that can never be more than stubs. マイカル 21:56, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

Why would anyone want to stop people writing articles? The more articles, the better. Having an article on the used ship salesman in Monkey Island does not prevent us from having an article on physics or something. CGS 22:01, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC).

From a practical view point. Everything is unique, but you can't have articles on everything. We don't write about every physicists, so why do we write about every fictional characters? BTW, mentioning the used ship salesman in the article of Monkey Island is, functionally speaking, better then writing a separate article about the character. wshun 22:36, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

We don't write about every fictional character. If we have more fictional characters than physicists listed it is because that is what people prefer writing about. Whether a character (fictional or otherwise) should be on their own page or page about whatever it is they are related to should probably depend on how much there is to write about them. A page containing info on all the Harry Potter characters, for example, would be way too long. Angela

But if someone wants to quietly document every single character invovled in the Star Trek universe, with a bio, episode references, et cetera, why stop them? CGS 22:46, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC).

Then why do we need Wikipedia:Criteria for Inclusion of Biographies? Of course, on the same page we say that we can ignore it.wshun 23:31, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

In case you hadn't noticed, the same thing is currently being dicussed on the votes for deletion page - in relation to real people rather than fictional ones. Angela 11:08, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Neither of those artiles say why there is a need to limit the number of articles. CGS 11:23, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC).

I don't see the difference. If you don't support any limit of articles on fictional characters, you are in no position to support any limit of articles on real persons. But we have to set such limit, right? wshun 20:01, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Redirects and Deletion

First, I have a question about the "Listed for deletion" notice, as called for by Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion, Wikipedia:Deletion_policy etc. It's stated that this has to be added to any page you list on VfD - but does this really apply to Redirect pages? (For one thing, you generally won't even see it unless you manually pull up text of the Redirect page.) I would assume this rule only applies to pages with actual content - if so, could someone make this clear on those pages?

The rule is now optional. Ignore it if you want.—Eloquence

Redirects have modified rules, as they have no content other than a computer-ese line, so no, the "Listed for deletion" notice is not listed --Menchi 06:35, Aug 17, 2003 (UTC)

Well, that's what I thought seemed logical, but that's not what the pages say. Shall I fix them so the exception for pages without content is clear? Noel 17:10, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

As if to make it plain that not everyone understands the unwritten policy, I've just noticed that someone recently edited one of the Redirect pages I listed on VfD to add a "this page is on VfD" notice! Unless someone thinks that it's a bad idea, I'm going to modify the policy pages (above) to make an explicit exception for pages with no content. Noel 18:43, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I disagree and I have been adding the notice to redirects. There may have been content on the page before it was a redirect, and the author may still want to be informed that their page is being deleted. There may be no current content, but there could be content in the history. If the policy is going to be that you have to add a notice (which btw I don't think it should be), then I think it ought to apply to redirects as well. Angela 20:35, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

OK, how about excepting redirects with history from the exception? (Note that if the old page was moved, the history would have gone along with it.) Noel 00:01, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Ok. The issue of adding the boilerplate message is also being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion by the way. Angela

Since we seem to be done here, maybe this section should get removed from VP and moved over there? I'll fix things to clarify about the notice. Noel 16:31, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I just simply copy the history & content (I've yet to encounter more a stub) to the moving-in-article's Talk page before I delete, since the requesting person usually has good reason. Those redirects deserve to be deleted.

As for those redirects with no hist, a notice is unnecessary and impedes time efficiency. Again, as long as the requesting person provides good reason. --Menchi 20:54, Aug 19, 2003 (UTC)

I didn't mean redirects where there was a new page moving in. Those go through the fast track of VfD anyway, so the boilerplate text would not be used. I mean if a redirect is to be deleted and nothing to replace it. Angela

Second, about deleting Redirect pages which are created by typos. Currently Wikipedia:Deletion_policy calls for keeping Redirect pages, except "when the problems they cause outweigh their advantages"; Wikipedia:Redirect says nothing about real typos, but lists "Misspellings" as one use for them. I would argue that all Redirect pages caused by real typos on the part of people working on the 'pedia should be candidates for instant deletion, no debate needed. They just clutter up the database, and "What links here" pages.

By "real typos" I don't mean things like "Michaelangelo Buonarroti" instead of "Michelangelo Buonarroti"; someone who wasn't sure of the spelling could easily type the former. I mean things like "Michrlangelo Buonarroti", i.e. a real mistake that's just a slip of the finger.

No doubt someone's going to say (they already do!) "but it could be useful". So what? I could create thousands of different wrongly spelled versions of almost any page. There is just no need or use to clutter up the database with them. If we really want to make allowances for people who can't spell/type, we should add some sort of DWIM (e.g. like the one Google has) to suggest what people might have wanted if a search/lookup turns no matches.

Noel 06:18, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

• If you want to "del redir to make way for move". It'll done by an admin within hours if possible.
• Complete typo ("Presidenté Busch") in redir is also deleted.
• Similar typo are preserved exactly because:
  1. we don't have DWIM.
  2. alternate and correct spellings, especially for ancient people and non-English personalities.

Anything I didn't cover? --Menchi 06:35, Aug 17, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not after alternative and/or very plausible spellings, I agree we should keep those. I'm only asking about "complete" typos in redirects. I would have thought those fell into the "shoot on sight" category, but several I have listed on VfD are still there, so I can only guess there is no agreed-upon policy about them. Noel 17:10, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Is Fox News a real news source?

(from user talk:Wik) Im asking this question on behalf of User:Wik who seems to be confused enough about the matter to take it upon himself to automatically delete links to Fox news. Any comments? --戴&#30505sv 23:53, Aug 19, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not confused at all. I just remove POV where I see it, thank you. --Wik 02:22, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

The problem with allowing openly biased sources (the leftist equivalent would be Indymedia) is that our link could be interpreted as an endorsement of that particular POV. The same problem exists with allowing links to any other biased website. The solution is not to remove the links but to describe them properly. However, this may not be an option for the compact Current events listing, where it may be preferable to concentrate on sources which have no obvious bias, and to list these alternative perspectives on the page about the event in question instead.—Eloquence 23:58, Aug 19, 2003 (UTC)

Conservatives consider CNN, CBS, and BBC biased in certain areas. Who decides whose opinions weigh more? If I decide that CNN is biased can I delete links to it? I think not. Nor would I want to. In fact I used a source from BBC because it had the info needed. I'll refrain deleting CNN and BBC links because of my political opinions.Ark30inf 00:08, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Fox News is no more biased than CNN, the BBC, or the New York Times. Comparing it with Indymedia is a ludicrous comparison. I've used both the BBC and Fox News (as well as numerous other sources) in Wikipedia articles. Deleting Fox News links because someone has an axe to grind against their style of reporting is unacceptable. They are the #1 or #2 cable news outfit in the United States, not an agendaized reporting group catering to some small hard code readership. I don't think there's any evidence that they've lied or distorted their reporting although some leftists may believe they are biased (it is true, compared to CNN, they are further to the center or right). This is in contrast to, say, NBC, who like blowing up trucks and certain prominent US newspapers, who have problems with their journalists doctoring stories [3], altering photographs [4], and covering up torture [5]. Simply put, links should be judged by factual content and an overall NPOV should be presented. The way that certain editors censor some of "their" articles and refuse to allow any contrary viewpoint to their own to appear at all in articles is unacceptable. Daniel Quinlan 00:38, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Fox News is no more biased than CNN, the BBC, or the New York Times. Tee-hee. Now that we've all shared a laugh, hopefully we can agree on a serious policy of how to treat openly biased links on the current events page. As for the Indymedia comparison being "ludicrous", you may intentionally ignore the fact, but Indymedia has both an open newswire and an editorially controlled story section. The edited stories are usually biased in the same way that Fox News, Newsmax etc. are biased, but with a leftist slant.—Eloquence 01:04, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

The humor of the situation seems to be a matter of political opinion as well. Comparing Indymedia and Newsmax (google doesn't consider them news sources) is a valid comparison. But comparing Indymedia with FOX is indeed ludicrous. Fox does not appeal to some limited right wing audience unless the majority of cable news viewers are somehow all right wingers. I cannot go deleting CNN links willy nilly just because I think they are biased and use the firmness of my opinion as the reason. My personal opinion does not trump everyone elses. Refusing to allow external links to the highest rated American cable news network because someone has a bad personal opinion of it is silly and censorship.Ark30inf 01:23, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

You're overlooking two things. First, our POV policy is not about presenting the "majority view" or a "centrist view." It is about sticking to demonstrable facts, and not passing off controversial opinions as fact. Where appropriate, opinions should be described but clearly identified as opinions. Second, if or when a majority view is relevant here, it should be the global majority view, not the U.S. majority view. Some opinions that are perfectly mainstream on a global scale may be considered left-wing fringe views within the U.S. (Majorities in most countries consider the U.S. the greatest threat to world peace, for example.) And views that may be considered mainstream within the U.S. may be considered far-right globally. But this is not an "American" encyclopaedia. So FOX's ratings within the U.S. are of zero relevance. --Wik 02:22, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Its ratings are pertinent to the extent that they indicate that maybe what they put out is not as 'controversial' as is being indicated here. On the other point, American news sources will be biased in some manner to the American point of view and dominant culture, even if its NPR, CBS, or CNN. BBC will be biased to the British point of view and culture in some way. If you disallow links because they come from some country with a cultural bias towards its dominant culture then you are out of luck for having any external links at all. What I would prefer is a variety of links from a variety of points of view. I would prefer a sampling of links from Indymedia, CNN, FOX, Xinhua, and Newsmax ALL. Let the reader look and decide. Ark30inf 02:39, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The inevitable minimum bias is not the problem. But there is a huge difference between FOX and BBC, for example. BBC generally sticks to facts and does not take a side, not even that of "general British opinion". But anyway, I can accept FOX links if comparable left-wing links are also accepted. Contrary to what sv said, I didn't start an edit war over the links, only over the use of the term "homicide bomber" (in the Current events article itself, not in an external FOX article). --Wik 02:51, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

I can agree with that. Homicide bomber sets my teeth on edge.Ark30inf 05:16, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Ratings are irrelevant. Bias is relevant. Links to stories that use clearly biased (and idiotic) vocabulary like "homicide bomber" should have their source clearly labeled and their content described, and the Current events format does not accommodate this kind of neutral linking. Thus, if you want to have this type of biased links, they should be placed on the article about the incident instead.—Eloquence 01:36, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

But biased in who's opinion? Yours? I am at a loss to know why your opinion would trump mine, Daniel's, or the majority of the news viewing public. Reuters for instance refused at one point (and may still do so) to use the word 'terrorist'. Thats just as idiotic as 'homicide bomber' but I must in good conscience still consider Reuters a valid news source.Ark30inf 01:52, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A quick search does not indicate that Reuters does indeed avoid the term "terrorist". Of course, they may have different rules for when to call soemone a terrorist and when to call someone a "freedom fighter".—Eloquence 02:04, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

article referencing policy IIRC they would not use the word terrorist to describe the 911 hijackers. There are reasons to be careful with use of the word. But the word does not really ascribe motives it describes method. That is why I am opposed to Reuter's policy on usage. Calling the 911 attackers terrorists is not a value judgment, its a description of their method. A person or group can be "freedom-fighters" AND terrorists at the same time. An otherwise nice person here in the US can be accused of terroristic threatening which describes the manner of threat, not a value judgment of the individual.Ark30inf 02:26, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A memo is different from evidence that this suggestion was actually followed. That evidence would be interesting and relevant for the Reuters article.—Eloquence 02:55, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

It was on NPR so I thought you would like it :-) Seriously, I put a response from Reuters that indicates the policy (they consider terrorist an emotional term). I'm not castigating Reuters, I just disagree completely with this view (just as I do the homicide bomber view by FOX). In any event, I think this subject is milked dry for the moment. I think we both have the same goals.Ark30inf 03:15, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

All that said, I think we can agree that its not proper to decide to remove links in favor of other links. Add the polar opposite Indymedia link if you want, and put them both at the bottom after BBC, PBS, etc.. but dont just remove them. Current events is a bit different due to its limited space -- still, Wik was unjustified in starting an edit war with Reddi over such a trivial matter as a link. Let this be the consensus.-戴&#30505sv 01:41, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Ark has made an interesting point: "Google doesn't consider them news sources." Perhaps a simple solution would to make an extension of the Google test. Call it the Google news test if you like it. It states the following: if the article or parent site is accessible through Google news, then the source is valid enough to be a Wikipedia source. Yes? No? Comments/criticisms? --Ed Cormany 01:43, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

That is at least a valid third party test. Even if they put Indymedia back I would accept that test.Ark30inf 01:52, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think each article should be judged on its own merits. Some Fox articles are indistinguishable from CNN articles, some Indymedia articles read like something from the NYT etc. But the whole homicide bomber affair is a classic example of a news organization engaging in political advocacy, and this kind of bias should not be hidden or treated as normal.—Eloquence 01:47, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

I'm for judging each case individually rather than as a group also.Ark30inf 01:52, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

"homicide bomber" is not a very good term, but it does point out the similar weakness in the "suicide bomber" term. I would prefer the term "suicide killer" or "suicide murderer" or something that captures both aspects clearly. "homicide bomber" neglects the suicide. "suicide bomber" neglects the killing of others. Daniel Quinlan 01:59, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

The intention to kill others is implied in the "bomber" part, and many suicide bombers have actually failed to kill others.—Eloquence 02:04, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Everyone knows what a suicide bomber is up to. We haven't had a case yet of one having only the intent of killing himself alone by the lake yet. As for your 'homicide bomber' stance. I feel the same about Reuter's 'no such thing as a terrorist' policy. But they are still a valid new source IMOArk30inf 02:14, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The killing part is naturally mentioned in the news item, e.g. "A suicide bomber killed 20". However if you say "A homicide bomber killed 20" you have just added a redundancy and actually reduced the informational content by removing the suicide part. --Wik 02:22, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

As far as the standard goes, I think articles should be judged individually as a rule. For example, why should an opinion piece from the NYT be okay because Google lists it, but a factual article from a less prominent source not be okay. Some of the news sources used by Google are blatantly POV such as several state-run newspapers in the middle east. I fear that Google's use has more to do with permission-to-use than journalistic integrity. Daniel Quinlan 01:58, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Well the "use Google" argument is persuasive -- (I used it below ;) but Im with Daniel (though Im suspect of his examples) that Googles news isnt necessarily editorial based in its selections. We should find out. Still - more is better and we shouldnt advocate blanket-removing links (which I just did on the Zionism and racism article...==Oh my GOD, Im not NPOV! -戴&#30505sv 02:08, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Its got to be a combination of Google test, case by case, and common sense then. That can't be too hard :-) Ark30inf 02:14, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I agree Google News can't be a standard here. They have all kinds of biased sources, from the Christian Broadcasting Network to the World Socialist Web Site. --Wik 02:22, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

My POV: Anyone who registers the phrase "Fair and Balanced" as a trademark deserves to be shot. Mkweise 06:49, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

If you delete links to a news site, be sure to replace them with equally informative links from alternate news sources. Also, do not delete links to a news site, when that site was used as a reference for the article - that doesn't help us to cite our sources. Martin 13:47, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

We have a policy of verifiability here that is frequently being used. When someone writes an article, they want a source. If there is no source, it is often deleted. Fox news (or any other source) is an external source of verifiability and it may be biased, but it is a still a source. As far as I know, there is not a Wikipedia policy that states that external websites, books, or other sources must be NPOV for us to use them. Next we will have to ban Harry Potter article links because the books have a "biased world view". Or maybe we should ban links to the KKK from a KKK article because they are biased about themselves. We must definitly delete the article on Jesus because so much of his life is based on the biased Bible. Give me a break! This is nothing more than censorship. -- Ram-Man 16:45, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

WikiFiction

Currently, there are many articles about fictional characters. Unluckily, most of which are hopeless stubs. The number of such stubs grows very quickly and every time a suggestion of VfD leads to a lengthy debate, partly because it is never NPOV to say whether or not a character is important.

I hereby offer two possible solutions:

1. We tolerate all articles on fictional characters. Any suggestion on VfD will be automatically removed. I don't like this solution but at least we can save time and energy on this subject.
2. With the help of all those fiction fans, we can create a sister project, maybe WikiFiction. In WikiFiction, fans could even create miniproject on star wars, middle earth, Harry Potter, Simpsons, Pokemon, etc.

--wshun 03:55, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I really disagree with either of the above. There are many fictional characters, such as Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, just to name two off the top of my head, that are cultural icons. But to name every charactger in every episode of some TV series that lasted five episodes, and to make them seem somehow of the same weight, is ludicrous. And I definitely don't agree with spinning off all fiction into a separate Wiki. Would this include all television shows and movies? RickK 04:06, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Why do you want to list them on VFD? That's just asking for trouble. You should merge them to a characters page, Atlas Shrugged style. As for WikiFiction: I know there's been a lot of fan wikis going up recently, for example This Might Be A Wiki. Perhaps we could expand your proposal somewhat to encompass that sort of site; to jump on that bandwagon. A fan wiki, with WP:WWIN #8 relaxed. (via edit conflict with RickK) -- Tim Starling 04:22, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

No, I never list them. I just frequently see similar requests and similar arguments over and over again on VfD page. I have done some merging myself, but it is not a good solution, as nowadays the number of characters of a TV series could grow very fast. See Characters from The Simpsons, which is broken down further into subpages. --Wshun

Crappy little pages like Snowball (The Simpsons) must die. They should be merged into larger pages like Major characters from The Simpsons, Minor characters from The Simpsons, Guest stars on The Simpsons, Food eaten by Homer Simpson, Nuclear accidents on The Simpsons etc.—Eloquence 05:17, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

There are new characters on The Simpsons everyday, so I guess we can never catch up. I give up, but maybe someone can come up with more creative ideas. --wshun 05:28, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The thing is that while The Simpsons has 100 characters. All but 10 are very shallow ("stubs"). On the other hand, some novels has 100 characters, and 60 of then have some real things to be said in an encyclopedia ("articles"). --Menchi 05:35, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

I hate to sound elitist, but is has to be a sad commentary on the state of education that there is any significant number of people that actually would write on each fictional character that appears on a TV episode. It does show what a bored human mind is lead to. I'm not sure if these people are just killing time and excercising their fingers, or actually think that sort of information will have some lasting interest. I like the idea of a whole separate wiki for that, but clearly there is room here (and interest) for many fictional characters; so where does one draw the line. I think it should just be a rule that a show (like the Simpsons) gets one or two pages and only the important stuff need be expanded upon within that limitation. I love the Simpsons, by the way, but in the not to distant future, the entire phenomenon will rate less than a page (and perhasps only a paragraph) in any real encyclopedia. - Marshman 05:50, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think it's a bad idea to splice off into different sub-encyclopedias, which is what "wikifiction" would be. But we do have too much on pop culture -- as Marshman says, people find it much easier to ramble about it off the top of their heads than do actual research. I guess we have too many clones of Comic Book Guy about ;) There was talk on the pump about this last week -- might still be up there ^^^. Create more article on important fictional characters to balance it out! -- Tarquin 09:59, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Can someone explain to me exactly what the problem is? Why is it bad to have these pages? They don't stop us having other pages, they don't hurt anyone! CGS 16:54, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC).

For the longest time we've had discussions like this. Some city articles are so small and boring that they will always be stubs, so why have them? Having 30,000 cities will make the balance of wikipedia get off. It will keep people from joining. Naysayers. Now the next thing is the big bloat of fictional articles. -- Ram-Man 17:02, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Wikimedia article naming

I have a question about Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), and after painful prior experience would like to get some guidance on what to do. The page says "Use the most common name of a person or thing" and "The Wikipedia is not a place to advocate a title change in order to reflect recent scholarship." OK, so far, so good.

Here's the problem. There is a person, in Wikipedia as Akhenaton, where seemingly every book in the field in the last 50 years (including the 6 most recent biographies of the guy) spell his name Akhenaten; but web pages about the guy (pace Google) use Akhenaton by 2:1 over Akhenaten.

Just to make it even crazier, both Wikipedia and web use prefer the Aten spelling for the god Aten, which he's named after, and common usage also prefers Akhetaten, (the name of the city he founded and named after the god (but not by so wide a margin).

So it's not exactly "recent" scholarship to spell him Akhenaten, but to strictly follow common usage (which is only 2:1, not like 10:1) puts his name at odds with long-standing practise, other Wiki pages, etc.

So what's the call here? I'd really prefer to switch to "aten", to match everything else - all the books on him, etc, etc. Noel 00:33, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

If you do a Google search just on English-langauge pages (by using their advanced search, "Akhenaten" has about three thousand more hits than "Akhenaton", so I'd certainly go with the E spelling. In fact, I'd go with it even if Google came out against it in this case - it's hard to ignore all those books (presumably written by paid experts). --Camembert

My rule of thumb is that I use the name most common in common sources, other encyclopedias, news articles, how people would search for it. Changing a name to reflect recent scholarship or spelling/naming change proposals should not be the way we do things. A redirect for new names may be appropriate, of course. Your situation is a bit tricky, but I'd go with Akhenaten. I think your Google stats are actually wrong. I tried a more specific search combined with a restriction for English-only pages:

• more Akhenaten dynasty OR egypt OR egyptian
• fewer Akhenaton dynasty OR egypt OR egyptian.

Daniel Quinlan

You spoke of "Changing a name to reflect recent scholarship", so I'd just like to point out that in this case "recent" means "last 50 years", which I think is tending to get a little out of the "recent" category! :-) Not that it mattesr, probably, as your Web search stats show. Noel 01:32, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Just go with google, dammit. Conventions are made by conventioneers -- google has a decent enough read of the throng on matters of convention popularity.-戴&#30505sv 01:41, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

When I made my original comment, I was thinking somewhat of the recent change in spelling on Chernobyl and several worse instances which seem to be motivated by politics rather than actual usage. Chernobyl is actually a bit iffy and I'm somewhat ambivalent on that one, which is why I didn't make a fuss about it (perhaps the Russian spelling should always be used when referring to the nuclear incident, but the town spelling should be changed to reflect current the political situation), I've seen worse, though. Daniel Quinlan 01:49, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Wikimedia article naming

Discussion moved to Talk:Akhenaten/rename

Not exactly vandalism

Until recently I had been making fairly frequent contributions to the pages that list events, birthdays, deaths, etc for particular dates. A few weeks ago another user wrote to threaten me saying that he would simply delete items that he could not himself verify. I wrote to him to protest. However, he said that he has the perfect right to act as he has been and I notice that he is persisting in this behaviour, and I notice that he is treating items from people other than me in the same fashion. Since he does not warn others of his actions people other than me may be unaware of his deletions.

I willingly stipulate that some aspects of some of the items I submit are incorrect. However, this individual is deleting entire items when any part of them appear to be incorrect to him.

Obviously his actions are frustrating and discouraging. In my view, they also impede development of the 'pedia because they make it difficult to provide corrections.

What to do? I have looked in the FAQs, can't find an answer.

--BillBell 12:39, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

How about giving us a clue as to who and or what pages you are talking about. Mintguy 12:46, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I believe the pages Bill is talking about are the daily pages (July 17 etc) and the alleged "vandal" is mav. Angela 13:19, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

See August 8 11:47, 9 Aug 2003 . . Maveric149 (more events; all checked for accuracy; removed a couple that could not be confirmed or were misplaced)

I think, this is a misunderstanding... You said "I wrote to him", but I can not find your comment on a talk-page. Where is the discussion? Fantasy 13:44, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

PS:Found it: User_talk:Maveric149/archive_14...

BillBell, it seems that you stopped to speak with Mav (he wrote the last line). I guess, Mav thought that you understood his arguments and that everything is ok. Mav is a person you can talk to. Don't stop talking to him,

if you feel that he did something he should not have done. I understand his line "I have every right to delete material that cannot be verified in order to preserve the accuracy of Wikipedia." that Everyone has this right, not only he. You as well. Just everyone can delete something, if it is not possible to verify. Did this help in some way? If you have more questions, just let me know! Fantasy 14:06, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Bill, Maveric149 is a very unpretentious person, therefore protective of this project sometimes in ways that may offend newcomers unintentionally. Wikipedia has its share of newbies and anonymous who ignorantly just cooy-&-paste other people's material like plagiarism or obscurely weird stuff about their great-great-grandfather or whatnot. And those people deserve to be offended a little. I'm certain you are not one of such vandal/experimental newbies. So, I'm positive that this misunderstanding can be worked this out in no time. And yes, we're allowed to make mistakes here, just not intentionally, i.e., claiming stubbornly what cannot be confirmed to be universal truth. We're Wiki, we correct each other's mistakes and improve! :-) --Menchi 14:32, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC)

Hah! Me a vandal? That's a laugh. What I'm doing is systematically going through each day page and confirming every fact and adding a great deal more. Your entries Bill, have been less than accurate to outright wrong, so I have corrected what I could, moved what was misplaced and deleted what could not be confirmed. You have had every chance to defend your work by providing references. So who is the vandal - the person who is adding incorrect data or the person who is deleting it? --mav 19:33, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

All I can say is that you seem to recognise yourself. You have deleted items from other people for which I was able to find authoritative sources. The one I remember in particular had to do with the Weimar Constitution. You deleted it, with your customary, cavalier "couldn't verify" and I found it, albeit in German, in the German Historical Museum web pages. Yes, I think you did read what I said (as someone kindly claimed above) and decided to ignore me. Who the hell are you to accord me "every chance to defend [my] work". I don't remember giving my life to you and I'm damned if I will put myself in the position of being accorded "chances" from he likes of you .

(a) AFAIK--take note, please--the 'pedia is not your property and we are not obliged to satisfy you alone, and (b) when you discard items, as I have said, it makes it difficult to know what was wrong with them or even that they have disappeared. Try to get with the programme, this was intended to be a co-operative project. You are not God. I believe that your ways of dealing with me are deliberatively provocative and bloody. --BillBell

So you verified it in German and I could not verify the entry while searching English webpages. Good for you - now put it back in. The (a) applies to you as well; Wikipedia is not a dumping ground of ill-informed and badly researched material. So when I see that I will either correct it or delete it depending on how salvageable it is. And when I see a pattern of bad edits from a single user I don't bother spending a great deal of time checking each of their facts (but I still check). Some users have such a bad track record when it comes to submitting correct information that they have been banned and everything they write is automatically reverted without checking; there comes a point when it just isn't worth it. I'm sorry if my checking and correcting of your mistakes bothers you, but you agree each time you submit that; "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here." Got it? --mav

wikipedia:verifiability has a suggested procedure for removing stuff that a Wikipedian cannot verify, as well as hints on how to ensure that text one adds is easily verifiable. Martin 21:17, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Just to avoid a possible misunderstanding: Information on Wikipedia is usually not deleted permanently. Past versions of a page can be accessed using the "Page history" link and previous versions can be restored. Information is less likely to be removed if it is referenced (with an endnote, for example).—Eloquence 21:55, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC)

Sometimes I discover my own mistakes upon re-reading days later. But other times, I don't, and I'm glad that other mistakes of mine were found by others before me (if I could ever realize those are mistakes! ;-)) But once an uncertainty is discovered, it's either moved to the Talk page or "deleted" (but easily recoverable, as Eloquence points out). We can't leave possible misinformation on our website. --Menchi 22:07, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC)

The one thing that bothers me is that someone might add something, I might verify it, and then mav might delete it because he wasn't able to verify it. So what gives? I am not going to make a special note to the talk page for every sentence that says "verified xxx" every time someone makes a modification. And even when we cite articles, we rarely/never use inline superscripts on *every sentence*. I think verifiablility is great, but it should be based on consensus like everything else. One person should not be able to just delete things at will because they didn't verify it. In that case I should be able to delete just about half of Wikipedia because I couldn't verify it. Maybe I just didn't know where to look. Much better would be to make a note in the talk page, which is what I generally do when I don't know anything about a topic and I don't know everything. I really don't like the idea that someone will delete my work just because they don't know where to look to verify it. -- Ram-Man 11:10, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Sounds to me like "Vote for Deletion" for lines in Articles on talkpages. I guess, that would be unproportional more work...

A compromise: If (e.g.) Mav deletes a line, you cecked it and thought it was ok, you just put it in again with a comment on where you verified it. Would that work? Fantasy 14:43, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A person needs a chance to defend their work, and they need to know about the dispute. All this *before* we go to the work of deleting it. Give people the benefit of the doubt unless they have a very well-known reputation of causing trouble. -- Ram-Man 16:32, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Ram-Man here. You should only delete things when you are reasonably sure they're wrong. But if you just can't verify something, that's no reason to delete (unless the user who added the information is already notorious for inaccuracies). Instead, put a question on the article's talk page, and if necessary, on the user's talk page. Then if the user can't provide a reference, it's OK to delete it. --Wik 15:08, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

What is the problem with deleting it? If the user has evidence, he can add it again, with a link to the evidence. The difference is:

• The Post a comment - solution is more work:
  1. Mav posts a comment
  2. BillBell has to check, if someone posted a comment regarding his article.
  3. BillBell has to comment Mav's comment
  4. Mav has to check, if someone answered his comment
  5. If no answer: Mav has to delete the line in the Article
  6. If answer: Mav has to check if it is true, then keep or delete.
• The delete-solution is less work:
  1. Mav deletes, if not verifieble
  2. BillBell has only to check, if someone deleted his line (easyer to spot then talk-pages)
  3. If BillBell has arguments, he adds them when reentering the line
  4. If Mav sees the line again with the arguments, he can decide if keep or delete.

It seems to me less work with the "delete" strategy.

Also keep in Mind: WIKI means QUICK. Wikipedia works, because changes are quick, not discussions and discussion. So delete, add again, that is quick. Fantasy 16:04, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Again I strongly disagree. I've worked on 30,000 - 35,000 location articles, as well chunks of articles in other areas. I *cannot* be required to watch every single on of those page just to make sure some person, like mav, does not come along and just remove my additions because the could not find a source. If they do disagree with what I've placed, then either a comment should be placed on a talk page or better yet, I should have a comment placed on my own talk page telling me of the disputed information. No one can watch all changes and we don't want articles where every single line has to be cited. If there is a dispute, it should be reached by consensus, not by a unilateral abuse of individual power.

If mav has truly been deleting things because he didn't find a source, then he is abusing his reputation and power. It's great if you can find proof *against* something, but if you simply can't find any information on the topic, leave it for someone who knows about it! If all my work here can be deleted at the abuse of one person, I don't see why I should even contribute to Wikipedia. -- Ram-Man 16:28, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

I happen to watch and monitor a few pages that I care about and in one case I had information deleted from the article (by carelessness) that I had *cited*. Had I not been monitoring the page, that accurate and valuable information would have been lost because no one else ever would have restored it. The last thing I need is a wikipedia policy that allows for this. Careless deletions are bad enough! -- Ram-Man 16:38, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Am I Being Needlessly Nordic-Centered

I find it offensive that The Little Mermaid is primarily a discussion of the animated movie and not the story by Hans Christian Andersen. Maybe I am being too sensitive, but... Don't really know what avenue of remedy I should seek. Would someone want to rebut my concern or advice in some other manner? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick

I suppose the best avenue of remedy would be to write more about the Hans Christian Andersen story. If enough is written, the stuff on the film could be spun off into The Little Mermaid (movie). --Camembert

I don't think that anyone wanted to offend someone by writing about the film. Just be bold, if you feel offended, you can change it. ;-) Fantasy 14:06, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I don't think it's offensive, but I do think it's wrong. I think originals should have naming precedence over derivities. CGS 17:30, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC).

I don't see this as a case of one having precedence over the other. When two subjects are closely related, and have the same title, there is no need to split the page unless it is otherwise becoming too large. No need to say that either should have precedence. Andre Engels 18:18, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I split it (see below) because the original fairy tale is something else than the WD commercialized movie adaption, and the Little Mermaid page was only about the latter one, which just gives a wrong picture. Two articles make it more clear what is a derived work and what is the original. -- till we *) 18:25, Aug 21, 2003 (UTC)

I splitted into The Little Mermaid (1836) and The Little Mermaid (movie) (1989). -- till we *) 18:02, Aug 21, 2003 (UTC)

Stop the Stubs

A lot of really small articles are being created. These sub-500 bytes stubs are very poor, no encylopedia topic can be adequately covered in 500 bytes. I feel it would be better not to have them and prevent such articles being created. I propose a change to the code so that non-redirects under 500 bytes cannot be saved, preventing this rubbish from cluttering up wikipedia. If people are prepared to write an article they should be prepared to write more than a sentence -- ²¹² 09:23, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think, the limit of 500 bytes can easily be overcome by tricking the system. And I don't see stubs as sooo negative. see also Wikipedia:The_perfect_stub_article Fantasy 12:50, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Wasn't this discussed on the mailing list? -- Tim Starling 13:01, Aug 21, 2003 (UTC)

The question of how many bytes should constitute an article for the purposes of the article count was discussed (and then there was a vote on it and the counting system was changed a bit, I think), but I don't think anybody's suggested actually making it impossible to make sub-500-byte articles before. It doesn't seem a good idea to me. 500 bytes isn't sufficient to write about any subject adequately, of course, but it's perfectly possible to have a decent sub-500-byte start (John Tenniel, for example). --Camembert

That is exactly the problem, these 'start' articles are no good. People need to be thinking in terms of creating well-crafted encyclopedia articles not 'perfect' stubs. For example, on Wikipedia 1.0 most of the stubs will be ditched as not worth including on paper, so why create them just because you can on the online Wiki when you would never consider them adequate elsewhere? -- ²¹²

It might be nice in principle, but I fear it may scare away too many new contributors. We want to welcome newcomers; it would be snobby of us, I think, to insist that they make all new articles 500 bytes or more. It just says to them "if you can't think of a paragraph to write about this subject, we don't want your help." We can just concentrate more on fixing the stubs we already have. I know there are tons, but it doesn't take that much work to turn one-sentence articles into at least a reasonably-sized paragraph. -- Wapcaplet 15:10, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A 500 byte lower limit is a very moderate hurdle and one that for newcomers would be valuable - it would encourage stub creators to think more about what they add and serious contributors would be, in no way, deterred. To develop your quote I think it is reasonable to say "if you are sufficiently motivated to start an article but can't write a paragraph don't do it." -- ²¹² 15:40, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Many articles on which I have done major work started as somebody else's stub. I saw them on the "stub" page and thought "I can help that!" - whereas if the article didn't exist, I might never have thought to create it. Also, I have created a stub or two in my day because of lack of time/energy, only to see them grow into excellent articles (e.g., Orval Faubus. So I think stubs are a good way to "seed" wikipedia. -- DavidWBrooks 15:19, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Stubs may encourage article creation but if you are interested/knowledgable you will create the article anyway. My thinking is the need to change the viewpoint of contributors - from stub creation = "I can help that!" to - what would someone coming to this article for information think on being confronted with a single sentence. The need is to encourage the creation of articles rather, than as new pages indicates, choking the articles under endless stubs -- ²¹² 15:40, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

²¹², just out of curiosity I browsed a bit thru your user contributions and found many articles in the 500 - 1500 characters range (even at the first glance no article below 500 characters). So maybe someone else would say "an article below 1000 characters isn't worthy for wikipedia", and exclude many of your contributions. On the other hand, there are really encylcopedia-worthy stubby articles -- because I couldn't get a listing of articles by length, I pressed "Random page" some times and found in ten tries these four articles: Matjaz Omladic, Nesset, Melchiorre Murenu and When in Rome Do as the Vandals. Each of them seems to be rightly included in Wikipedia, even if short and sometimes (Omladic, Nesset) expandable. And even if I take a paper encyclopedia out of my shelf, I'll find next to long descriptions and simple redirects one or the other short entry. So I don't think there should be a technical hurdle to kill off articles below 500 chars. The most I'd do would be issue a warning ("You just saved an article with only xyz chars. Do you want to enlarge it?"). -- till we *) 17:43, Aug 21, 2003 (UTC)

For a term of reference, 212's original paragraph is just over 500 bytes long. I have sympathy for your view 212 and have myself recently resolved to only commit articles for the first time if they are at least 1k and preferably 2. I'd support a move to stronger wording against stubs on the appropiate Wikipedia: namespace pages. It would also be great to see a 'real' article count as well as a headline article count that count articles that were, say, 2k+ bytes long and had at least 3 distinct contributors. Having said all that I think stubs are a necessary evil. Pete 20:03, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

it.wikipedia.org instead of .com

Hi, I wanted to have a look at the italian wikipedia, but only the .com works, .org gives an error. Is there a reason for this. I don't like Wikipedias to be on the .com domain, we are not .com, we are .org. Fantasy 08:29, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It.wikipedia is still on the old (Bomis) server with the old software. When it is upgraded it will be on the newer (Wikimedia) server with the MediaWiki software. --mav

OK, I was having problems using it with this old version. IF the new version resolves the .org problem, that is ok, Thanks. Who decides to go to a new version? The italian admins? Fantasy 08:08, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It's when Brion gets time to do it ... contac the tech mailing list or see his TODO page on meta. :) -- Tarquin 08:52, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

My current work plan is roughly like this:

1. set up a translation system the users can directly edit without waiting for developers to check and update files
2. which needs: decent use of memory cache so this doesn't flood the database (this is what I'm mainly working on at the moment)
3. and: finish conversion script to import pages and their edit histories from old system all in one go (this is half-done since some time ago, but still needs work)

Once these are done, I intend to convert all remaining wikis from the old server in one lump. --Brion 12:05, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, Brion, for your efforts. I didn't wanted to rush you, just to understand how it works. I think, if the italian Wikipedia changes to the new system some months sooner or later makes not a really big difference. Who wants to contribute can do that. Take your sleep and see you tomorrow ;-) Fantasy 12:47, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Can we move important (or all) discussions from the Mailing lists to Wikipedia (or meta)?

We have this wonderful tool called Wikipedia. We can discuss. We see, what people think, and what the result of the discussion is. We can point to the result. Why do we need mailingslists additionally? Fantasy 20:34, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I agree in principle, since the mailinglists tend to be cliquish and inaccessible. They do have the advantage of being easier to archive and search, though maybe this isn't enough justification for them. Graft 20:38, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I disagree that they are cliquish. They are available to read online, so you don't even need to subscribe to them. Personally, I find it much easier to follow conversations there than here as people could be having policy discussions on dozens of different pages here that you may not even know exist. Angela

• Wikipedia IS online, so "online" is not a real argument.
• Why use email-webpages, if we have Wikipedia?
• And what is with the people "here" that don't know of the discussions of the mailing list?
• Because the Wikipedia-search has problems, we should use mailinglists?
• Why are Wikipedia-contributors left out of policy-discussions at all?!
• What is meta.wikipedia.org in the end for?

Sorry, if this sounds a little bit agitated, but I really feel sometimes "left out", if people say "it was decided on the mailinglist". How can Wikipedia take decisions without involving the Wikipedians? Fantasy 23:33, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

PS: off to sleep now. I look forward to see good reasons for/against this tomorrow ;-)

There is the general Mailing List, then there's the technical Mailing List. It'd make no difference to me whatsover if the technical list is here or somewhere between a black hole and a comet. However, the general list... I never really figured out how it differs from the Village Pump in theory. But in practise, the Pump seems to have small Q-&-A between newbies and oldies; while the List has extensive discussions on limited topics among around two dozen oldies, and rarely any newbies.

Perhaps the List intends to let newbies participate actively, but the fact is that newbies don't participate there. They just don't.--Menchi 22:09, Aug 21, 2003 (UTC)

ah no. The mailing are definitly not for the newbies. There are for old hands, who may take decisions quietly, to the astonishment of the newbies who still believe decisions are taken here :-) Anthere

OK, that sounds like a reason. Then the mailinglist is a meta-meta-wikipedia. It's a way to get rid of the "noise" when discussing someting seriously and you have no vandals. That makes sense. Thanks for helping me understand :-) Fantasy 06:49, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Downloading US government photos

Can we legally download photos from members of the House and Senate at http://www.senate.gov/ and http://www.house.gov? RickK 02:16, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The best answer I could find is here: http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/Photo_Collection_of_the_Senate_Historical_Office.htm — I believe photos or prints of anything older than the oldest possible copyright (pre-Mickey Mouse) is safe. I think official portraits of senators and congressmen are probably also safe, but we could always just ask. Daniel Quinlan 03:43, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

As I understood it -- the general rule was anything "state" -- with a .gov origin (unless explicitly states that its used by permission of a 3rd party) is fair game. -戴&#30505sv 05:06, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

It's not state, it's federal. Local and state governmental bodies are exempted from the law. Only the federal government is forbidden from holding a copyright, and there are a couple loopholes/exceptions that allow it to hold a copyright or two. -- Ram-Man 11:07, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia Case User:RK

Is there a reason why this is in the article space? It has quite a Page History so I didn't want to just move it. Suggestions anyone? -- Ams80 17:05, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Of all places, it should definitely not go there .. I moved it on. IMhO redirects like [[WP: ]] from the article namespace to Wikipedia namespace should also be avoided. -- User:Docu

Why? I love those WP redirect things. Angela

Its there to be rid of /ban pages altogether- see recent wikien-l discussion. Since RK is still here its rather rude to be discussing his ban on his user pages -- since its a community "case" - it deserves community attn. Though I think it might be better on meta, let us see what people think. It has substantial linkages already, and I (as uninvolved in any of the voting, etc) took it upon myself to clean up the mess, to be fair to RK, and to get this stuff aired as openly as possible. -戴&#30505sv 17:22, Aug 22, 2003 (UTC)

(In the meantime, Stevertigo moved it back). It's just that Wikipedia:Article about is in the Wikipedia namespace, and Wikipedia Article:about in article namespace. I'm not sure where it belongs, but it's definitely not for the article namespace. -- User:Docu

Thats all Fine and dandy. But I dont care about style conventions at this point -- Im just trying to clean up a big frickin mess, involving the possible banning of a user. I think the import of the latter takes precedence over the former, and since there is a huge revision history here, and its a community issue, -- how about Community case user:RK?? Would that suit the fancy -- I will move the page if you take care of all the redirects. -戴&#30505sv 17:37, Aug 22, 2003 (UTC)

I think you missed the point of the "no ban pages" discussion -- the objection was to having these pages at all, not to naming them /ban. I.e. discussing the possibility of banning an active contributor on the Wikipedia is needlessly inflammatory, and should be avoided unless there is absolutely no other option but to ban them. --Delirium 20:28, Aug 23, 2003 (UTC)

Brazilian rocket explosion

This is in the news right now. Does anyone know anything about this? could we get an article on the rocket itself & put it on the main page? -- Tarquin 12:12, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I've found this http://www.mrree.gub.uy/iiicea/PAISES/Brasil/Brazilian%20Space%20Program98.htm & http://www.agespacial.gov.br/

Ericd

here is another link : http://www.wisconsinproject.org/countries/brazil/missile2000.htm

Conference WP 2004

I remember seeing a page on a conference to take place next year (or maybe later) a few months ago in the United States. Some Wikipedians will give speeches, like Brion I believe. Where's that info page? --Menchi 05:04, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

Better find it, or I won't know where to go! ;) There have been a number of vague 'we should have some sort of event' pages, but nothing's ever been solidified. m:Wikipedia meetup is the only one I know off the top of my head. --Brion 05:08, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It is a page completely in Wikipedia. It listed only half a dozen Wikipedians and their speech title, like:

• Hjianmi -- "The significance of Wiki in a ..."
• Deloru -- "..."
• ..

(None of whose speech or name I remember now, only that they are well-known here)

That's all I remember. I got the link from the Pump. It was probably written in early 2003 or late 2002. Maybe it's just some Wikipedian's joke which I completely didn't appreciate. Maybe that particular conference idea was long dead.

--Menchi 05:30, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

That sounds like a joke page I vaguely remember. The date given was much later than 2004, and there was something about Britannica putting their material under FDL or something. :) --Brion

m:WWN sample? I saw that too, but I didn't mean this one. If the speech conference page creator posted here once, maybe s/he'll be back again before this msg get archived. :-D Otherwise, I'll live without knowing a single already obscure meeting. --Menchi 05:41, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

Wikivention was announced in March 2003. (You can see the announcement at Wikipedia:Village_pump/March_2003_archive_4.) —Paul A 06:37, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Ok, I didn't know Dietary then (I still don't, only his reputation), and I obviously didn't get a good look at those topics then. :-D --Menchi 06:41, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

Offensive user name

User:Saddam Hussein is an offensive user name and violates Wikipedia:No offensive usernames. There is no need an editor to operate under the name of a man who gassed his own people and sent tens of thousands of people into mass graves. I originally thought it would be sufficient to just note this on the user page, but, in retrospect, it's not really an issue of truth (whether or not the editor is Saddam, which is clearly not the case), but of the offending user name itself. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a forum for offensive jokes. The name should be forcibly changed. I have also noted my objection on the user's talk page. Daniel Quinlan 01:19, Aug 23, 2003 (UTC)

I don't think it's worth worrying about. I kind of find the username "Harry Potter" offensive, but I'm not complaining. Someone might just as well complain that my username is offensive because it reminds them of a particularly obnoxious character in a Monty Python skit. I think that policy is in place so we don't have users with swear words or whatever as their usernames. -- Wapcaplet 01:38, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A name doesn't have to be offensive to everyone or even most people to require changing. I also think there's a vast difference between a fictional character (which would probably run awry of trademark issues) and a brutal dictator. Just like we don't allow user names based on offensive words, we shouldn't allow user names based on offensive historical or contemporary persons. It's hard to think of a worse person's name to pick. Maybe User:Adolf Hitler or User:Jeffrey Dahmer would be equally offensive to other people. A direct victim of one of these persons in real life would probably be even more offended. — Daniel Quinlan 01:50, Aug 23, 2003 (UTC)

The names User:George W. Bush or User:Ariel Sharon would be offensive to several Wikipedians from the Middle East. Should those usernames be banned as well, based on your standard? -- Kaijan 02:10, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Of course they should be prohibited as well. As another matter, Wikipedia may not want to allow names of famous (or notorious or infamous) people to be used unless someone is stuck with the same name as someone famous, in which case I have less of an objection to them using their real name. Daniel Quinlan 02:22, Aug 23, 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Daniel. I've only been here less that a month and it is quite evident that there are (at least) two kinds of people at Wikipedia: those who are sereious about the dream of creating a free online encyclopedia and those who are here mostly to blow their horn (personal or political). I cannot determine if both types reside in some people. The point is, I'm sure I'm more opionated than most (at least my wife tells me so), but also old enough to know that opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. The question is, how badly do you really want to poke yours in other peoples faces (a sure sign of immaturity IMHO). - Marshman 02:49, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I would like to voice my opposition to any policy that would make my username prohibited. Perhaps a waiver for famous people who have been dead for more than 500 years? No chance for confusion then. ;) --Dante Alighieri 04:22, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I thought about that and agree. I think there are a few other examples. I think 250 years should be enough removal from present-day. Offensive historical names should still be off-limits, like uhh... "Jack the Ripper". If you go back far enough, though, it gets harder to offend, I think. We should also probably grandfather in any existing account names for famous people that have been deceased for say 100 years. Daniel Quinlan 04:42, Aug 23, 2003 (UTC)

I think such names should be allowed as long as the user does not claim to be this famous/controversial person. If User:Saddam Hussein removes those pictures of the famous Saddam and replaces it with his personal info, then I think it is acceptable. That way, we know he is not glorifying Saddam and should no longer be offended.

If the existence of such a name offended someone, then this person is just too easily offended. While it is understandable to be offended by obscenities, I think it is ridiculous to be offended by a couple words in a news article. A user should be judged by his/her contributions. User:Saddam Hussein is not a vandal.

However, we should advise people to avoid such names in order to be taken seriously, but I don't think we should be making it the policy. It would be quite obvious what my screenname is alluding to if you encountered me on my regular trolling sprees on certain internet message boards. --Jiang 09:57, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Contest Idea

While looking around on this site, I like to see how far off topic I can go from a starting link. Like, starting at, say, heroin, end up at Star Wars exclusively using in-text links. I think it'd be fun to see who could go from one topic to the other in the shortest amount of legitimate links (no making them up). Does this sound fun to anyone else? -- Moros

It sounded fun to at least one other person, so they made Wikipedia:Six degrees of Wikipedia. --Camembert

Thanks a lot.Moros

Astronomy and astrophysics

Can an admin move back the Astronomy and astrophysics article from Stupidpedia?. Thanks. -- Looxix 15:55, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This has been sorted. Mintguy 17:05, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Recent changed sidebar

A nice idea I found at the CapitanCook Wiki is the possibility to have the Recent Changes as a sidebar (at least for the Mozilla browser, don't know which others supports this as well). This seems to be only a stripped-off version of the full recent changes page, [6]. I don't know how popular the sidebar is, but it might be a nice feature for us Wikipediholics. Any comments? -- andy 12:19, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Conference WP 2004

deleted - bad joke

TOC "back to top"

The new 'Table of Contents' is very nice. But why not also have a 'Back to Top' button from each of the sub-headings? If you use the former for going directly to a subtopic, you would definitely need the latter to pick another sub-topic again.I am sure its obvious and probably it has not been done for various valid reasons, anyway I just wanted to point this out:-).KRS 06:40, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Clicking on "Back" arrow button works on all browsers I know. --Menchi 06:44, Aug 17, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion, it worked. But there are 2 problems 1) you have to move your hand more:-) 2)If you scroll down while reading then you get a different 'back', and sometimes only onceKRS 08:18, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

True enough, there's a certain distance between the scroll and the arrow button. :-p And I'm so used to using the "Top" link on other websites that I sometimes mistake [Edit] for [Top]. :-}

I guess it may look more stuffed than it already looks if we have [Top]. But fuctionality-wise and browsing-wise, it may be good. --Menchi 08:41, Aug 17, 2003 (UTC)

I use the Home key on my keyboard. - Patrick 09:46, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Redirects and Deletion

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/redirects

Fictional characters

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Criteria for inclusion of biographies.

Robert Heinlein

Robert Heinlein should be moved to the name he published under and is best known by: Robert A. Heinlein (currently a redir with an edit history.) Mkweise 20:26, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'll delete the redirect, give me a minute. Btw, this request should be @ VfD. --Menchi 20:29, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

Done. --Menchi 20:33, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

Children's Wikipedia?

Discussion moved to Meta.

Edit empty articles and newbies

Hi, I find that a lot of the deleted articles containig only rubbish appear to have the form of questions about specific subjects. Maybe the edit an article page for new entries should link to Village Pump / Reference Desk with some text like: "If you want to ask Wikipedia a question, go to ...", so that unanswered questions don't end up in junk articles by clueless newbies? -- till we *) 21:39, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)

Just to make more clear what I'm talking about: All the time you get entries in the Recent changes looking like this:

(diff) (hist) . . Wikipedia:Deletion log; 13:17 . . Ams80 (Talk) (deleted "Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma": content was: 'Some body please inform more about Chithira Thirunal Maharaja', no edit history)

It seems to me that somebody mistakes the edit field for articles that don't exist for a question field. We should take this into account! What do you think? -- till we *) 11:34, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps a link to WP:RA would be useful? Angela

Skeptic influx?

Did that skeptic recruitment program of ours work? Tim was working on the letter, right? Did it get send? --Menchi 09:28, Aug 17, 2003 (UTC)

No response from sci.skeptic, and the interest generated from the CSICOP mention remains unknown. The response from our post at the JREF forum was very good in comparison. There were maybe 4 or 5 people who came over to have a look, and made a few contributions. I don't know if any of them are still around. User:Lord Kenneth was especially enthusiastic, but he only made about 40 edits and then lost interest. -- Tim Starling 09:47, Aug 17, 2003 (UTC)

Past tense vs. present tense

Over at Talk:Nikola Tesla, a disagreement over whether history should be written in the past or present tense has resulted in an article that alternates between past and present tense in a very ugly fashion. I've started a discussion at Talk:Nikola Tesla; if there is an authoritative answer, please post there. Mkweise 16:45, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I posted a link to How to Write History from Brown University, which I assume is authoritative enough. I couldn't find any arguments stating that history should be written in the present tense except from Reddi. I'd appreciate any further input, either for or against present tense (with evidence for stance). Reddi's objection to past tense is that it is "passive." I countered that both present and past tense can be passive, and he countered again. I still hold that history should be written in the past tense, but as Mkweise notes, the discussion should be furthered on the Talk:Nikola Tesla page. —Frecklefoot 17:20, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

My wife, who was a History major, says that it can be either past or present tense (but obviously it shouldn't be both in the same article); apparently there is no standard among historical writers about which is better. I personally find it strange to read about past events in the present tense, but it can be pulled off convincingly by skillful writers. My preference is past tense for historical subjects; the only potential problem with it is how to transition from events of the past to events of the present; it is probably for this reason that the policy for adding to the Current events is to use present tense. Anyhow, I would find any arguments regarding the passivity of either tense to be specious; it's very much possible to use an active voice while using past tense (consider how you would write a resume!). Anyhow, I have no solid evidence for either, but I strongly oppose the intermixture of the two. We should pick one and stick with it. -- Wapcaplet 19:43, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A lot of the problem is that people are switching back and forth between tenses in the same article. I've also run across the future tense -- "He would go on to ..." form. I change those to "He went on to ..." whenever I see those. RickK 02:12, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Since it's clearly the consensus, I suggest we make it official Wikipedia style that historical articles be written in the past tense. While we're at it, how do you all feel about past vs. present tense when describing legendary and mythological events? I personally tend towards describing legends and mythology in the present tense. Mkweise 23:39, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Naming question

I have a number of articles elsewhere (Everything2) about various types of British railway locomotive that I'd like to put here. Should I create 'British Rail class NN' articles for them (all have two-digit numerical classification)? Or would it be better to stuff them all into a smaller number of pages, given that most of the more obscure ones are only going to warrant a small number of paragraphs? Or indeed, any other suggestion?

Read:Wikipedia:Guide for Everything2 noders-戴&#30505sv 23:49, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Read already. I guess I'll just do it the way that seems good to me, and then let you all disagree with me! Probably easier to tell me the right way to do it once you've all got a concrete example in front of you. -- Morven 23:57, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

We aim for larger articles than E2 writeups, on average - see wikipedia:page size. That help? Martin 09:22, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Yes. E2 users don't like long writeups and show their displeasure; maybe Wikipedia renders them more readably, or the sectioning helps. Here, I suspect it might be best to write one article for each of several major sub-groupings and maybe break out seperate articles when there's a LOT to say. -- Morven 23:21, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Funky. I edited Wikipedia:Guide for Everything2 noders appropriately :) Martin

Also the user ranking scheme on E2 encourages more short writeups. The XP system, as an unfortunate side effect, encourages the (even unconscious) 'gaming' behavior of optimising for score not quality, and one long writeup will not garner the XP of two shorter ones. -- Morven 06:33, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)