Wikipedia:Village pump/Archive Q

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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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump.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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VfD Interpretation?

How is the consensus of a VfD debate determined? I'm particularly curious regarding Talk:Easter Bradford/delete. orthogonal 23:17, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Deletion_guidelines_for_administrators#Rough_consensus and also Wikipedia:deletion policy. However, note that these decisions are currently in a somewhat unsettled state, with varying views on the correct approach. Martin 23:36, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Cimon avaro would be the person to ask about that particular decision. Angela

I didn't make the determination of what the form of the delete debates utcomes were easily, or with haste; and even much less did the discussion guided determinations follow my own predilection on the articles in question. I followed the discussion, and the views therein. That is just about all I will add to the above. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 00:35, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)

Unstubbing a stub

When is a stub no longer a stub? And who can remove the stub note? See Irish literature for an example. I guess everyone but me knows the answers. Bmills 17:11, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Irish literature is definitely not a stub. Do the honors! There are no fixed rules. Some subjects can be dealt with in a sentence or two and such articles are not stubs. Other articles are still stubs even with three or four paragraphs.

Done and thanks. Now, if anyone feels like helping with the article, .... Bmills 17:34, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

My threshold for stub display (see preferences) is 2000 bytes. Any article that is substantially complete with less 1000 bytes is probably not on a particularly good topic and may be ripe for merger with a parent article. Of course articles with way more than 2000 bytes may be incomplete... but I wouldn't call them stubs. Pete 20:00, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Re-emerging debates

Is there some kind of guideline on what to do when, after consensus or at least a majority decision has been reached (delete it, merge it, keep it as a stub for the time being, or whatever) and a particular matter is accordingly dropped, it is revived at a later point by someone who has just discovered Wikipedia or that particular article?

I'm asking this question in the context of the re-emerging AIDS kills fags dead discussion (I don't have to worry about the correct link here, do I?), but there are others I could think of. --KF 09:35, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

There is something called Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion; and AIDS kills fags dead has been a regular there IIRC. But apparently, since all our deletions are in general fairly uncntroversial, it gets very little play most of the time. In fact, people probably easily forget it exists. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 19:11, Nov 17, 2003 (UTC)

If the article is not deleted then all debate should be collated on the talk page (or an archive thereof) of the article in question. If the article *is* deleted then archived talk should be put on some page and then linked to from Wikipedia:Archived delete debates. Newcomers are always welcome to re-open debates, although old hands will always encourage them to read old talk to save where possible going through the same debate (this doesn't always work perfectly!) Pete 20:58, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think people should look at the archived deletion debate, and make sure they fully understand the backlog, then add any new arguments they can bring to the table, then discuss the issue with those who previously expresse an opinion, and if they think they can get a rough consensus in favour of some outcome, then and only then raise the issue on VfD.

Of course, all this takes effort, and sadly some folks think it's easier to just list the article on VfD. Martin 21:09, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Blank maps

I just finished making some little locator maps for the country articles, and someone suggested that I could make the basic unedited world map I used available for other people. This would make it easier for people to modify anything I've made, and might even be useful for something else. As I created the maps myself, there's no problem about usage permission, and so I've put links to them on my user page. I was wondering, however, whether there was anywhere better to put them - people aren't likely to notice them where they are. Whether they'd be of any use to people, I don't know, but I thought that there's no harm in making them available (especially to facilitate correcting what I've already done). Is there somewhere I should put a mention of them? - Vardion 04:37, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I copied it to Wikipedia:Blank maps. - Patrick 04:58, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wouldn't Meta be better as other languages are likely to want to use it? Angela 05:04, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Short stories

I am writing an article on Hackers (short stories) and I was wondering if short stories should each have their own article. There isn't much to say on a short story, but they might deserve their own article nonetheless. Opinions? Dori 17:49, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)

When an article about a short story becomes complex enough to warrant its own page, re-factor and give it its own page. Were I reading it, I'd want at least blurbs about each story on one page, and an "In-depth analysis" link where required; then I could use it easily both as a casual browser ("What are those short stories about") and as a more serious student ("I need to know more about 'The Greatest Short Story Ever Told: Jesus the Scrivner'"). orthogonal 18:05, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's fine, knowing that there are people who want to include every CD albums on this planet. --Menchi 18:07, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I would oppose an article on each short story - it would make more sense to cover them all in the same page. Martin 19:38, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think it largely depends on a story. Some short stories have remarkable influence or context while many other just are parts of collection books. For example, Minority Report is actually very short but one of well-known stories of Philip K. Dick. -- Taku 00:30, Nov 17, 2003 (UTC)

I guess I will write an overview of each story on the page itself otherwise that page would be nothing more than a list. If someone decides that one or more of the stories deserves an article on its own, they can move it. thanks, Dori 01:11, Nov 17, 2003 (UTC)

This fits into the one longish article/lots of shortish articles decision. My personal preference is the former. The "wiki way" is probably the latter. (cf the completely disorganised but totally absorbing wikis such as the MeatballWiki). Pete 12:28, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Google Indexing Update

It seems to me it's been a while since Google updated its Wikipedia index. Is that our fault (i.e., did we accidentally tell its robots to go away in one of our files), or is it their fault, or is it my psychotic delusion? -- Someone else 11:22, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Having a look at the stats for this month [1] (second to last table) the googlebot has made over 90,000 visits and accounts for 1.25% of all hits. Going by percentage and comparing with previous months this is about normal. However going from www. to en. seems to have affected the rankings of wikipedia pages in google. Also having both en. and en2. addresses doesn't help. But it will hopefully settle down in a month or two. -- Popsracer 11:54, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

AIDS

I don't see this as vandalism, so I'm putting it here for want of a better place. A logged-out user changed the article substantially to indicate that immunity to AIDS is a myth - I linked it to Wikipedia:Accuracy Dispute for now, but I'm tempted to just revert. I know nothing about medicine though. -- Pakaran 05:10, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Revert it. It's only one group's opinion, nowhere near a consensus. RickK 05:50, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't see anything objectionable in the changes. Have I overlooked something? It's correct to talk about relative susceptibility rather than an absolute immunity. -- Someone else 06:21, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm no expert on AIDS, but the anonymous contributer seems pretty much correct IIRC. HIV is not SIV, the FIV stuff I hadn't heard about. But the contributor didn't say immmunity was a myth, he said that studies showing babies being spontaneously uninfected were flawed. As far as I know, only a small number of Northern European-descended persons are immune, thanks to having been selected in the Black Death (which virus entered the cells in the same way AIDS does). orthogonal 06:37, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

- You're referring to people with variant (delta 32 CCR5) cytokine receptors, and it would still be better to talk about them having a lower susceptibility to HIV infection rather than an immunity to HIV infection. I think our anonymous friend can be given an all-clear. -- Someone else 07:01, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

- - Yes, I am, but clearly, not as clearly as you are. orthogonal 08:40, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Signing different name

I've noticed that some users, like Ed Poor and Lir, always sign as something besides their actual user name - how does one set it to do that?

Special:Preferences → write something at "Your nickname (for signatures):". Done. --Menchi 05:15, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ok thanks - I guess that was just too obvious for me or something *blush*. -- Pakaran 05:16, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It took me half a year to get what "Add pages you edit to your watchlist" means in the Preferences. And I didn't figure it out on my own. :-) --Menchi 05:19, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You can edit the pages??? orthogonal 06:39, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That isn't the ambiguous part... is it? --Menchi 02:50, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Someone (historian) please preserve the above conversation - Marshman

Revert a page: How?

Wikipedia talk:How to revert a page to an earlier version says a lot about why or when to revert a page, but doesn't actually explain the mechanism.

How does one revert a page, other than by copying and pasting the text of the version desired? orthogonal 01:04, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

See:Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version. Maximus Rex 01:15, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Google/Wikipedia search engine problems

I have a question about the current Google/Wikipedia search engine, or comment. Namely, it seems to produce very inconsistent, incomplete, or paradoxical responses to inquiries. A few examples:

Oftentimes, I will read an article, and then do a search on the title of that article (EXACTLY as it is in the title, verbatim, down to caps even) and it fails to be found by Google to be on wikipedia. I find this very strange. Sometimes, nothing is found; other times, other articles, that only very indirectly link to the article, are produced. For instance, if one does a search on "Modular group" or even "Modular group Gamma", one doesn't get a link to the article entitled "Modular group Gamma", instead one gets a link to a user page, where "Modular group Gamma" is listed among several hundred pages created and/or edited by the user. What is going on here?

Another example: If you do a search on "Gauss" (or even "Carl Gauss"), then you won't get the article on Gauss the person for at least a couple pages (if that, I gave up after a while), you get lots of articles with "Gauss" as a keyword, or linking to "Gauss", but not to the article on Gauss himself. This seems very strange.

Many times, when looking for a specific article, (to see if it's there) I do a search and get absolutely nothing. But then, I say, "well, Google has failed me in the past, let me try directly" and I type in the actual URL of what should be the article page, and up in comes!! There it is!

This is what I find most disconcerting about the search engine. Someone will look something up, not get any results, and just assume that it is not present in the wikipedia. They won't know the little tricks about following other search results, going to more "meta-" pages (e.g. in math, going to major mathematical pages and looking around), or typing in URLs directly. This doesn't give a bad impression to newcomers, but it certainly fails to take advantage of everything that IS here. And it's a major inconvenience to people who use the wiki.

I would like to know if I am the only user that this happens to. I only bring it up in the village pump because it has been a common, persistent, recurring problem for me ever since I started (or ever since the Google/wikipedia page came up). It's not just an isolated incident with a few searches. Revolver 15 Nov 2003

I think this is because google is confused about www.wikipedia.org, wiki.riteme.site, and en2.wikipedia.org. I suspect it will settle down some in the following weeks. Also, google will often (some say always) be inconsistent on results for a website that (like this) changes often - different search servers at google (all which _appear_ to be www.google.com) are looking at subtly different sets of crawl-data. So sometimes (especially during the "googledance", when they progressively update these database-copies) two identical queries will produce different results. And as to the "right link being way down the search", that's a function of google's (secret, and utterly arcane) pagerank algoritm - there's not much we can do about that, as manipulating google's rankings (for good or ill) is notoriously difficult. -- Finlay McWalter 20:51, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I also had similar experiences. I have a theory for this. According to my theory, Google/ whatever might consider a page for searching only some time after the article is written, probably because it allows time(which seems to be around a month or so) for vetting by enough number of people. But the links to user pages and individual words in articles comes into the realm of search because in most cases the user page and the words that link exist much prior to the creation of the article. However, having said that, one of pages which had been there for sometime in the third page in Google suddenly disappeared for me totally, even after including the word wikipedia. I can't figure this one out. KRS 05:06, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I duuno about that. I've seen articles I've written pop up in the index within a day or two, but they have been ones that were listed (I think) for a day or so on the main page. -- Viajero 13:39, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Google only shows an article when it rescans that portion of the site. An article with few or no links may take a lot of time to be found and indexed on Google. An article listed on the main page will be found and indexed very quickly. To help, it's useful to link to articles from their parent subjects and to link to related articles, so Google and other search engines can follow the web of links between related items. Jamesday

Google supposedly has automatic functions to remove pages that "spam the engine", by creating synthetic cross-links or by posting many identical pages on different domains. Because of the license model, there are many fairly identical copies WP pages on non-WP sites. And of course WP has heavy internal cross-links. Could this be causing a 'false positive' in the Google spam-killer? Anjouli 07:28, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Longest article title?

I just came across MrsFalafel's Ale, Mustard and Winter Vegetable Pie. I was curious if, at about 50 characters long, it was the longest article title in Wikipedia. Turns out, I made a few that are longer (how embarassing, really):

Well, I'm curious to find out, what is the longest article title? Kingturtle 18:14, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

What about Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (69). Longest place with an article may be Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (but that's just a redirect.) -- Morwen 18:17, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

List of localities in Britain where rare ant species had previously been recorded but are no longer considered to be present (104) is also a redirect. Angela 18:35, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit (188) is a redirect to Bangkok. Jay 19:54, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

There are huge resources of information out there, on the internet, in public libraries and other soruces; a lifetime could make only a small dent on reading all of it. Lots of that information is, of course, not particularly interesting or insightful, but even subtracting that out, you're sitll left with more than a person could ever hope to read. Thus, if you want to gain an understanding of this world through reading, you have to be selective. Paul Klenk 01:11, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Two long East Asian ones:

--Menchi 01:54, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I did a database search, and the longest page title is Acetylseryl.. (a redirect to Acetylseryltyrosylserylisol...serine - and still much shorter than the actual 1185-character 'word' that the page actually is about). Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit comes second.

More interestingly perhaps, the longest non-redirect page titles are:

Andre Engels 11:44, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I tried to create acetylseryl.. just now, but instead it recreated the Acetylseryl.. already there, in recent changes showing my edit at MN, but in the article history as M, with no earlier edits... Coincidentally, the length of the article it recreated happens to be 2⁸-1=255 characters long. Κσυπ Cyp 12:07, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I personally don't see the point of having articles with such long names. No one will ever get the title right when they're looking for the subject and they really mess up the formatting of pages. Perhaps the length of a title should be limited (better get a flame-retardant suit on :). Dori 17:53, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)

I'd be against a "title limit". And i think the 1st two are UN bills (which would be right title for a search). Not sure about the others though ... JDR

Wikipedia logo policy

Moved discussion to: Logo policy talk page.

Recording Wikipedia Content

Hi, I was wondering how this works with the license.

I want to make recordings of some of the content on Wikipedia, and I want to do it legally. My intention (if possible) is to make Compact Discs containing some of the text in spoken form, together with other text I have produced personally.

It is not my intention to make money out of Wikipedia content, but I am obviously free to charge for that proportion of the CD that is made from my own personal content.

I am very happy to reference the source of the Wikipedia in the manner outlined on the license (I could obviously not hyperlink), and the proposed cost of the CDs isn't going to be a great deal more that of the raw materials.

Can anyone advise on what I should do. Many thanks.

Not a lawyer so don't know the issues intimately, but my understanding is that you can use the works and even charge for them as long as you attribute correctly and you make available any derivative works from the wikipedia. See the GFDL for more specific information. Dori 16:20, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)

(Also not a lawyer) Yes I think Dori has it right. Any materials you prepare deriving from Wikipedia content (and I think a spoken word version of articles counts in this respect) and then redistribute, would have to be available under the same licence. It would be brilliant if they could be available on the web and our pages could say "a spoken version of this article is available for download at ...." Pete 22:21, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Questions moved the Wikipedia:Reference desk.

Inline external links

I noticed on a recent edit to World Wide Web by Mav that his summary stated:

DO NOT sublink external links under body prose; use wiki refs or the external links section

yet I encounter this technique of embedded links regularly, like in this short article which has seven (!) such links in the body text:

Pijnacker-Nootdorp

Is there any kind of concensus about this? -- Viajero 13:39, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'd copyedit it ... mv'ing the links to a external link area (if needed) ... and mabey a ref to "see below" (as needed) ... don't know what the std nor concensus is though. Other than that you can always do a brackets notation citations (ala. [1]; how events does it), puttin' the link inline with the cited text.reddi

I have done the latter now, that is sometimes more convenient for the reader than links in the External Links section. Patrick 22:45, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It is perhaps better but it is still far from ideal. For example:

departure schedules: to rtd [1], to gvc [2], DB site [3].

This is not exactly intuitive, especially since such links customarily refer to citations; moreover, the text is written in a kind of shorthand (what is rtd and gvc? And many people in the Anglophone world may not know that DB stands for Deutsche Bahn. It looks like you are writing for an Dutch audience!). It is a tiny article. Why not put the all external links at the bottom with clear labels? -- Viajero 00:19, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The labels could be expanded, but it is not essential, they are already an extra compared with "departure schedules: [1], [2], [3]". I have no strong feelings either way regarding placing the links in the Ext. links section, but it would either give some duplication or some article content would be moved there too. - Patrick 11:43, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If you like to demonstrate another arrangement, you could also pick another municipality, and add contents and links in the process, rather than just rearranging them. - Patrick 12:36, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I always delete inline links when I encounter them and move them to an External Links section. If they're kept inline, it's hard to tell that they're references to non-Wikipedia sites. Putting them in the External Links section makes that clear. RickK 19:58, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think what Mav meant is that body text shouldn't be hyperlinked. Wikipedia will covert a link by itself to a footnote format, which is perfectly desirably as footnotes. I suppose the Wikipedia software could be enhanced one day to automatically list these links in a reference section at the bottom of the article. Samw 01:19, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Samw, the page was just changed; look at the previous version and you'll see what I mean. -- Viajero 13:36, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Nupedia

What's up with Nupedia? Google has the text: "Unfortunately, Nupedia is unavailable due to some server problems" shown when you search for "nupedia", which means it must have beend own for a while. On Nupedia, the external link says "temporarily offline due to server troubles". According to the page history that change was made on September 26th! There is some talk on Talk:Nupedia but nothing current. I'm inclined to believe that it is truly dead. I mean how can they keep web traffic and editors if the site has been down for almost 2 months? dave 05:59, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Nupedia had been fairly inactive for some time, but putting it back online is solely a matter of restoring things from database backups. I'm assuming these exist, but I've never been directly involved in Nupedia so I don't know the details. --Brion 02:45, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I e-mailed Jason at the e-mail listed on the current Nupedia page about this, but heard nothing. Can somebody else ping him as well? At the very least it would be nice to pull out the old text from the database so we can reuse, particularly the articles-in-progress section which had much good stuff that I was in the process of porting, (see Wikipedia talk:Nupedia and Wikipedia). It could be just static HTML and graphics for all I care, so long as we don't lose the work done to date. I tried using Google and archive.org to pull the old cached text, but neither of them archives the a-i-p section. --Lexor 02:47, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

WikiProject Chemistry

I know it's fun editing articles about Macedonia, the Catholic and Mormon churches, and maybe tomorrow we can have some fun arguing over spelling Mother Teresa's name... but, I think it's time to resurrect Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry. I only spend about 10% of my time on classic sciences (originally I was a biochemistry/cell biology major), but I know you real scientists (and I don't mean computer, I'm one of those) are out there.

To start, I've added some information about the hard-to-find Inorganic table information to the project page. Is there a similar Organic table information somewhere? If not, we need to get one created and rationalize the two tables.

Once we get that done, maybe we can prioritize a list of compounds to be fixed up, etc. Daniel Quinlan 04:56, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)

No, there are no organic tables that I'm aware of. See Talk:Inorganic table information. The excel spreadsheet and template used to create the inorganic tables can be found here. -- Tim Starling 05:58, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Perfect stub article

On the Wikipedia:Perfect stub article, the first suggested guideline is to add a link to your stub from Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub. However, when you get to Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub, there is no place there to do so. Something has to be changed. But I don't know what. Kingturtle 04:46, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps it's supposed to be a link from your stub to [[Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub.? Adding the stubnote certainly does this Dysprosia 04:48, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Beat me to it, but I changed the involved text :) Dori 04:51, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)

Kingturtle, it's actually a link to Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub so that if you click What links here from within Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub you get a list of the stub pages. Dori 05:04, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)

Revertion wars

The rule of three: Do not revert the same page thrice in the same day

Words to wiki by. See Wikipedia talk:How to revert a page to an earlier version. Martin 21:19, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Authors

I thought that it might be a good idea to have a special page for each articles titled "Authors" or similar. All it would do is give a simple list of users/IPs that had ever contributed to said article. Firstly it would give contributors the credit that they are due. A similar thing is already being done in "page history", but is not present anymore when an article is moved, for example. Also, the "authors" page would be much simpler than having to wade through "page history". WDYT? --snoyes 17:09, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Plus it could be ordered by % contribution? (but that may cause over verboss articles Archivist 18:29, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

I'd like that feature. % contribution would be cool too, but what if someone deleted a whole huge segment of an article? Would that + or - his percentage? —Frecklefoot 19:31, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's an interesting idea, but probably not trivial to implement. Most of all the diff needs to be smarter to notice moving of text inside the article without loosing the credit for that text. BTW: If an article is moved the edit history is moved together with the article, it is only lost when the article is moved by copying the contents. But the credit will be lost for sure if articles are merged or split. andy 20:20, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Suppose instead the page history gave a number of lines added/deleted/edited. That would give a fair idea of who had made significant contributions. DJ Clayworth 20:59, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't see how it would work. If someone vandalises an article by blanking it and I revert them, thereby adding 1000 words, it's going to look like I've made a huge contribution, when all I've done is pressed the rollback button. Angela 21:03, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

IBM had technology to solve that problem. I can't remember the link. Martin 21:20, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I guess you mean IBM History flow but I'm still not sure that would solve it. Angela 21:32, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

They're not going to share the technology with us, are they... --Menchi 00:12, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Not all articles are the target of vandalism. It seems that most of articles are primaly written by one or a few authors and many other people copyedit it. Givning credits is always a good way to recognize hard-work. The one of wikipedia's harsness is that good works are rather not given good attention while only heated debate receives public attention. This I believe make contributors feel as if they were not valuable or their works were not welcomed. The most of cases is that one or a very few of your works are controversial but the hudernreds of rest are completely welcomed. I mean so I strongly support this idea. -- Taku 23:53, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Brevity is the soul of wit; let's order the list by the amount of text removed by editors. orthogonal 22:27, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't think it would work out too well. There are many issues with how the authors' works will be cited/listed and in the end it will probably end up something like the history page. This might also attract more trolls and vandals, or simply people who want their name in the list and simply make unnecessary changes. I would think most of us edit on the Wikipedia because it's fun and because it's something that will be useful to others, and not for getting our names in a list. Still, no one wants their work to be credited to someone else and we like to be recognized, but that is what the history page is for (well, among other things :). Some people list their major contributions on their own pages, so that's another outlet. That's my opinion anyway. Dori 00:02, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)

I like credit for my work as much as the next person. But I see potential trouble in giving authorship credit for articles. The current relative anonymity minimizes the temptations for egotism to arise. If enacted, some people would be running around doing pointless edits on articles just to get their name listed. Others would be targeting authors they dislike. And all of us would become involved in endless disputes of whether or not someone had contributed enough to get a credit. MK 01:36 (EST) 16 November 2003

Umm, actually I don't think troubles pointed out above would materialize. Simply listing primary authors is not a big deal. You can think it is very similar to a THANKS file in open source programs. I don't see why the same trivial thing in open source doesn't work with wikipedia. You don't have to worry about that people started to make a trivial edit to have their name listed. We probably appoint someone who maintains such a list of contributors. There would be no debate who should be given credit or not. I mean have you ever seen a heated debate regarding a THANKS file? You may claim that the maintainer is not fair enough, then you don't have to stick to him. Go to other places. -- Taku 19:14, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)

A similar thing is already being done in "page history", but is not present anymore when an article is moved, for example. Actualy, it is. The whole point of the page move function is that ir preserves history. -- Tarquin 19:48, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

"SHYSTER"- ethnic slur?

I am not sure that i am in the right place, but I used the word "shyster" and i was referred to "List of ethnic slurs-Wikipedia." (http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs. I am not sure how wikipedia works, but i believe the intended word was "shylock." I have checked several dictionaries and none of them list "shyster" as an etnic slur. If anyone can clarify this, please e-mail me at sealadaigh@aol.com.

It isn't an ethnic slur, it's just a slur. I'm pretty sure you found http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=shyster ; that's the normal usage. DJ Clayworth 17:22, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's a slur. Sheister - Jews - Like a shyster lawyer. One who carries on any business, especially legal business, in a mean and dishonest way. [2] reddi

Not according to my dictionary

 Main Entry: shy·ster 
 Pronunciation: 'shIs-t&r
 Function: noun
 Etymology: probably from German Scheisser, literally, defecator
 Date: 1844
 : one who is professionally unscrupulous especially in the practice of law or politics

-- Maximus Rex 18:14, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

notice the German origin ... may be historical relic which has a more general meaning now ... reddi

So in the end, has anyone managed to find any document (even a good secondary one like a respectable dictionary) that supports a derivation of the term as an ethnic slur? Or, for that matter, good documentation of a shift into an ethnic slur? If not, the feeling that it might be an ethnic slur should go in the same class as the supposed association of "handicapped" with begging and (believe it or not) "picnic" as a reference to lynching. Both of these are patently recent inventions; is shyster any different? Dandrake 08:18, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)

I checked the OED. It too has the date 1844 as the earliest use. Of the origin it says merely: "Of obscure origin." Does not even mention a possible German derivation. I think it is safe to remove it, until someone comes along with a solid reference. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 03:23, Nov 17, 2003 (UTC)

I checked the Webster Unabridged and it doesn't have a date but it does say this in the etymology "probably alteration of earlier shicer contemptible fellow, from German scheisser, literally, one that deficates." It also says that it is a person who is professionally unscrupulous in politics and law. Funny thing is that it also has it as a verb. -- M1shawhan 08:35, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)

Diff inconsistency

I've noticed sometimes a page diff will have unnecessarily narrow columns (about 1/4 page wide), while other times the columns are too wide (about 2/3 of the page each, forcing one to scroll). Why does it vary? Is there anything I can do about it?
Tualha 16:14, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

The Nov 14, 2003 (Tualha) "last" diff for Scheme programming language illustrates some other problems with the diff generator. Inserting a blank line after a section header caused synchronization to fail in the "Advantages of Scheme" section. In the "Examples" section, two added lines are not shown in red. It would be nice if corresponding lines were lined up, too.
Tualha 16:28, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Is there some standard page for reporting wiki code bugs, wishlist items, ideas, etc? Tualha 16:29, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia is what you're looking for. A better place though would probably be the tech mailing list. --snoyes 17:14, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! - Tualha 18:11, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Copyvio?

Is a summary based on a web page considered a copyvio? An example could be Alternative metal and http://www.bobsmusicindex.com/Alternative-Metal.html . TopCamel 13:41, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

No, it is not a copyvio, that one would be if you copy it word by word. However it is good style to add the source of your text as well, e.g. in a References list, both for giving the author of the original source their credit, as well as to allow others to check the information in that article. andy 13:58, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Andyis correct. You can even copy a sentence from something without violating copyright.(unless that sentence is a one of a kind pasterpiece) ALWAYS INCLUDE SOURCES NO MATTER WHAT!!! Sincerly yours, Alexandros 14:06, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Exactly! You can certainly quote people, pages, web pages, etc. if indicated as a quote and cited from what/where. If you want to take something from a web site not as a quote, but as information, then reword it to your own words but still give credit to the source, as a listing in "References" at the bottom of the article. Knowledge is something you mostly gain from others. Your duty here is to reword what you read and credit where you learned -- Marshman 03:26, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Image copyright

wikipedia talk:image use policy/copyright

When searching for public domain images, I often find the note: "All images on this page are believed to be public domain." Would you consider such a note as sufficient to include the images in Wikipedia, or should I regard the word "believed" as a warning not to touch these images? Example: [3]. -- Baldhur 08:17, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think that note means: "I like the image, so I took it from another website without checking or asking the owner. If you are his or her lawyer, please don't suit me. I mean, please!!! I am ignorant, I said "I believe", didn't I? I didn't say "I know"!"

I wouldn't use them, I don't know about others. --Menchi 08:43, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think you need to go on an image by image (and site by site) basis. A lot of sites just copy images from anywhere without regard for copyright. Some sites are better than others and you can still ask the site what criteria they use for images. There are some initial/skeleton guidelines on Wikipedia:Copyright. Daniel Quinlan 08:51, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your answers, Menchi and Daniel!! I did not use these images up to now, and I won't do in the future. -- Baldhur 14:29, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Whatever you decide to do, say what you did on the wikipedia:image description page. Personally, I would have no real qualms about using such images, provided I made the uncertainties explicit in the image description page, unless I had some reason to doubt that they were in fact public domain. Martin 18:20, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Those will often be Fair use, particularly for the online or print Wikipedia, but you must consider them individually. It's routine for sites to have global copyright notices which don't apply and for sites to use images they don't have rights to. The Google image search is one option if you want to try to track own an image. Always worth remembering that it's preferable (strongly preferable) to use public domain or less restricted images if you can but we are trying to build an excellent encyclopedia, including one using lots of images. If you do use one of those images, please document where you got it from and why you think that it is fair use - such images are very likely to be reported as possible copyright infringements and providing good source information helps a lot. JamesDay 12:17, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Israel security wall

moved to Talk:Israeli security barrier

"Dear Readers"

What is that thing at the top of Local Church about? Is it just some rant or legitimate comment? Even if it's comment, shouldn't it be in Talk? --Menchi 05:52, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think that the standard NPOV (and maybe factual accuracy) warnings should replace this personalized message, which in turn should be moved to the talk page. I'll do it tomorrow unless I am preempted or hear dissenting opinions. -- Cyan 06:00, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You have been preempted. Daniel Quinlan 07:59, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Automatically generated logs

I just stumbled upon the Wikipedia:Protection log and I was wondering if there is a list of all the automatically generated logs somewhere. I am asking about this because I couldn't figure out where/if such a log exists in the other language 'pedias (specifially http://sq.wikipedia.org that I translated). I know of Wikipedia:List_of_articles_in_the_Wikipedia_namespace but it does not seem to be complete. thanks, Dori 00:17, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Upload log
Wikipedia:Deletion log
Wikipedia:Protection log (recently added)

That should be it that's log pages. --Brion 00:39, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Oh, OK. For some reason I thought there'd be more. thanks Dori 03:16, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Not quite the same thing, but there's also the Blocked users log. Angela

Wikipedia Application Program

Hi2all,

I'm quite fascinated with Wikipedia, but I thought it would be useful if there is a (easy to use) application using Wikipedia Data to have a easy offline way to search for stuff. I know there is a Palm/PDA Version for this, but I didn't find any PC form of such a program. Is there such a program in development? Is there an interset in programming such a program?? Ska1do 18:59, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

An offline web browser tool may be the most useful. Plucker is a tool to convert web pages into electronic books of several formats, most employing compresion of some sort. Alternately, one could just download some subset of pages of interest, and browse the local copy with your HTML browser of choice. More ambitious would be to request a dump of the Wikipedi database, and mirror it locally; as the wikipedi's based on open source software, you could have your "own" wikipedia. Also, though I don't know what Palm/PDA version you refer to, most Palm readers have PCs versoiosn as well. orthogonal 22:31, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- Theoretically all one needs to do is crawl through every possible page, save the generated html and images, and convert the links to be localized. Then all that is needed is a browser. Of course, this will be a big load on the 'pedia so it might need to be done on someone's own setup with a recent dump. If you had a listing of all the pages, you could do this very simply with a script or java program. The biggest effort would be in setting up a machine and getting the list of all pages. It doesn't seem that bad if someone (other than me) wants to do it :) Dori 23:39, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
Did some digging, and found http://download.wikipedia.org/. I hope this is what you need. -- Cyan 23:52, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

See old discussion at meta:Wikipedia Client and elsewhere. There are several static HTML dump generation scripts floating around somewhere. Magnus Manske has been working on a MediaWiki-compatible wiki parser which can be used as a CGI with a lightweight web server for a local browsable copy with a local web browser or HTML viewer; code is in our CVS on sourceforge[4], module "Waikiki". Demo versions with Windows binary: English Wikipedia ~160megs, German Wikipedia ~30megs. --Brion 00:46, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Redirect to headers not allowed?

Am I right in thinking that you can't REDIRECT to a Header within a page? I'm sure I read this somewhere shortly after discovering Wikipedia but I can't find where I might have seen it. I'm asking because I want to know how difficult it might be to combine several pages into one, one section per, and have each of the old pages REDIRECT to the appropriate header. How mad am I? (Serious answers only please :-) Phil 17:09, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

not that I know that it's "legal" to or not ... but wouldn't "#REDIRECT [[main article#heading]]" work? more later [mabey] reddi

Yes, Reddi is correct that will work. I tried it once and was immediately reverted with the comment that it was not a good idea because headers change or are easily changed, rendering the redirect impotent w/o the the person redoing the header knowing a problem was created. I guess I'd consider why you want to combine several articles. If each is rather small by themselves then the redirect to the combined page should not really need directs directly to a header; if there is that need for clarity, consider just keeping the pages separate. The way things link together around here (hypertext) the need to have a subject all laid out on a single outlined page is not so great as in a printed doc - Marshman 17:30, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

On that "header change" thing, it should (?) defualt to the top of the page (when the anchor isn't found) ... and I haven't found any other info on this =-\ ... reddi

Well I found a clue lying around under my desk, seeing as I was too lazy to go out and buy one :-), and I tested this with a couple of Subpages off my User Page. And it appears not to work. If you go to the REDIRECT page and click on the link it says it REDIRECTs to, it goes straight to the correct header. If you actuate the REDIRECT, it doesn't, it just goes to the top of the correct page. What I don't know is whether this is conclusive since it might be the fact that I'm doing it in a User page, and it's quite obvious that they work differently since I don't get a TOC. I'm rather loath to play around anywhere else (and possibly mess something up) just to satisfy my curiosity if someone who actually knows can tell me. Just because it might be a stupid question doesn't mean I'm too embarassed to ask. And no, that doesn't mean I'm not embarassed :-) Phil 17:30, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

It does not work. I have put in a feature request, but the feature request will only get filled if a developer finds it an interesting project. If anybody good at snazzy web design can think of a way to emulate this with javascript, that would be very cool. DanKeshet 18:44, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Compass on Canadian Cities, can it be made dynamic

Does anybody know how I can use a generic flash file on pages and load links off the page. Check out Caledon, Ontario to see the textual one, but what I wan't is to make that into a flash movie that can be placed on every page, and then place the 4+ links on each page that flash will load. This will help clean the mess of html code so people can more easily copy and past it and change the names of the north, east, west, south, and city name texts Fizscy46

I thought people already generally agreed that the "compasses" were not really helpful and that they did not add encyclopedic value beyond the hassle, size, and ugliness. I really don't like them myself. Daniel Quinlan 18:15, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Flash is big no-no in my book. I stay away from pages with flash and I have it disabled in my browsers. Although I am sure Flash could be put to good use, currently it is used for ads most of the time and you can't turn it off. It's funny, if you right click on a flash page it often has the options to disable the play and/or the loop, but those options never work. I really hate flash and it usually turns me off to sites that won't work without it. I would hate for Wikipedia to become like that and I am sure other people feel the same. That's just my opinion. Dori 18:34, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Agreed. As an off-topic aside, I didn't enable flash until I found the Mozilla "click to play Flash animation" extension. Basically, it supresses the flash unless you click on the flash animation to start it. Prior to getting that, I just avoided flash pages. orthogonal 22:37, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I didn't even know such an extension was available. I was waiting for bug 94035 to get fixed. Thanks for the tip. Is it this one? Dori 23:45, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Yup. orthogonal 00:00, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Is there a policy for Flash content in Wikipedia? I personally think the articles should just contain text and images, but I've never encountered this before. If there isn't a policy, it seems like there should be one. —Frecklefoot 19:21, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I would second that (for the most part), as flash editing is not available to me [and probably some others]. If it's not "editedable" by the vast majority of editors/readers ... should it be included as a navigation element? what if the structure of the pages change? I could see where static content where things like flash would be good [demonstrations of a pendulum, mabey] ... but not as a nav element ... but that is only IMO ... sincerely, reddi

I didn't think it was all that difficult to fix those tables, when I made them smaller a couple of days ago (actually, that was Vancouverguy's idea, I just implemented them). You can just copy the whole thing and replace the city names, they are pretty obvious within all the HTML. I'm not sure how that would work with Flash because I don't know how Flash works in the first place, and whether or not the tables are really necessary is another story, I suppose. Adam Bishop 07:09, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Man, you guys must be old classics,sticking to the BBS and stuff. Flash adds interactivity and simplicity. Its annoying to go through the html. Much easier to just type out the 4+ links and have flash automatically do the rest... And who disabled flash... Cause you don't know what you are missing. Fizscy46

It's not about being old or classical, it's about maintiaining a level of backwards compatibility. As an encyclopedia, we have to be as open as possible to all, and thus with all browsers. Dysprosia 02:27, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Not to mention the fact that flash is not an open standard and only has proprietary software implementations. --Lexor 02:41, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You actually think there are people with Internet explorer 1 and 2?Fizscy46

No Flash is my view. I have to have it installed but it's usually disabled via a registry block an I strongly dislike having to check the source code of the page I'm viewing to see just what ActiveX control the page is trying to get me to grant permission to run. And no, not checking is not an option - ActiveX controls are inherently unsafe. I'm also not keen on encouraging people to install something which is most often used as an ad engine to cicumvent browser restrictions on animation. JamesDay 12:06, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

changing username

I need to change my username on Wikipedia. I need to do it in a way that will change the authorship of my past contributions as well. I can't find a way to do it. Please help.

Please sign your post. Here: Wikipedia:Changing username. We recommend no inflammatory names. --Menchi 10:38, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I read Wikipedia:Changing username but it doesn't tell me what I need to do to have my name changed. (e.g. how do I contact developers, and which one) Also, I don't want to have my old username on that page. And how do I sign this? (Anyway, the point is I dont want to use my username. I even want this discussion to be deleted once I get a reply.) Sorry, I am new here.

Place it under "Requests for name change". Sign by four tildes: ~~~~. Go ahead and remove this discussion once it's over. And no, once the change is made, yours will just say "changed to X", not "Paul changed to X". Say you want that in the request, or afterwards. Doesn't matter --Menchi 11:05, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

TODO - FIXME - IN PROGRESS, etc

Move to Wikipedia talk:Make omissions explicit

I ran a few queries on the database about the above notes and I found a few pages (at least with todo, fixme, because there is a lot with in progress that are probably legitimate text). Most of these were not links and the pages had not been worked on for a while. I think this sort of litter is not too productive so I removed them. I don't know if it's mentioned somewhere, but there should probably be a standard way to leave notes so that it can be tracked more easily. For example including something like ''This page is still [[Wikipedia:FIXME|in progress]].'' in the article with the rest of the note inside HTML comments. Or it could be left in the talk page, but the former might be better in my opinion. Of course, some people work on temp pages and don't create the article until they're somewhat done. Opinions?

Can you give some example pages? Were they just indications that the page was in progess or were they indications of what needs to be fixed (e.g. "FIXME - add more detail about dorsal fins" or something)? I don't see a problem with these, it seems bad to categorically delete them all if they served some useful purose. Axlrosen 21:04, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I listed a couple at WP:CU and the rest simply had a fixme next to the stub notice. Here's one I deleted [5] Dori 21:14, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)

I think it would best on the talk page. All pages are in progress, and if someone has comments to make on something that needs fixing, it looks awful to put that in the article itself. For example, Software license has a paragraph which starts "The (FIXME) Act of (FIXME), codified as 17 USC 117, permits...". I think it would be best to reword to include what is known, and someone can add in the additional information at a later date without needing to be told FIXME in the middle of a sentance.

If a link to Wikipedia:FixMe was left on the talk page, you could click what 'links here' and find all the affected pages, without having to write such comments in the actual article.

See also: Wikipedia:Make omissions explicit. Angela 21:12, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hmmm that page is kind of confusing. Is it actually suggesting to leave notes in the article??? I think that is a terrible idea because those notes will go mostly unnoticed until a reader looks up an article and it looks horrible. I think it is much better to link (maybe from the talk page) to a FIXME site so those pages can be tracked more easily. Dori 22:39, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)

FIXME and such are common conventions in computer programming but I don't think they work well in wikipedia. First and most importantly, they are distracting. Any article in wikipedia is in progress. You can add FIXME to any article. Some article lacks the birth and death date and some article about an artistic work lacks the social significance of the work. Talk pages or embedded HTML comments are a better solution. -- Taku 21:20, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that's why I searched for them, my results (using a dump from 2003-11-04 I think) are here: User:Dori/Queries if anyone is interested. What I meant by "in progress" is in immediate/short term progress. Dori 22:39, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)

Sometimes such things are very useful in resolving NPOV and other disputes and suchlike. See, for example, Open Directory Project (at the time of writing). I think a robotic removal of such things would be a mistake, but by all means go through and either fix them or change them into HTML comments or talk page notes as appropriate. Martin 23:52, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Occitan wiki

Moved to Talk:Main Page

Probably not famous people

I've created a page at Wikipedia:Probably not famous people which I invite people to inspect, update and talk about. Presently I intend to move these comments to its talk page, along with any others that are added here in the meantime.

I'd prefer it wasn't used for a few days at least, until I do get some feedback about whether to do it at all, and how to do it best.

It was inspired by the discussion surrounding the Easter Bradford article(s). I don't want to enter into the discussion on this particular article, other than to say it raises some issues, see also this external link.

Whatever the status of Easter Bradford, I think the issues raised on Probably not famous people are all ones we need to address somehow.

My intention is that it should be used like the existing stub and NPOV dispute pages. People interested in helping with such problems can use the What links here facility to find affected pages.

Two advantages that I don't spell out on the page, or intend to spell out there:

I hope it will save us some time. I'm concerned that perhaps it's a lot less trouble for someone to set up a false identity than it is for us to investigate it.
I hope it will discourage some perpetrators. If they know that a link to a page such as this is a possibility, they may decide they don't want to be mentioned in Wikipedia at all. In particular, it's the last thing those wishing to further Internet-based mail fraud schemes (and I don't say whether or not this is the case with Easter Bradford) will want linked to their pages!

Likewise, I don't describe why third parties might set up false pages. I think it's best not to. It risks encouraging them.

If this were to be really successful, who knows, we might have people voting to delete their own autobiographies, rather than see themselves listed as 'probably not famous'.

Comments? Andrewa 06:11, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Well, we already have a guideline that people should not write about themselves and that Wikipedia is not to be used for advertizing. I think this is a useful guideline to be used until the 7 day period on VfD. If someone survives VfD, I would assume that the "not famous" banner could be removed 90% of the time. I'd suggest perhaps "not famous or not significant" since we have articles about a whole lot of people who are not famous, but are significant to world events, etc. Daniel Quinlan 06:23, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments.

Interesting. But what of the other 10%? Does Easter Bradford fall into this category? I'm far more interested in the ones like this that survive VfD.

I suspect that you and I mean different things by "famous". Can you give me an example of a non-famous person who currently has a deserved article in Wikipedia? Andrewa 08:56, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Authors and their copyrights

I am particularly interested in the controversy around Credit repair as outlined in ~~the messages on User talk:RickK (which may soon move to Talk:Credit repair)~~ Talk:Credit repair. Particularly,

Quoting from section 2 of the GFDL: "You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License." This makes it very clear the copyright notice is an integral part of the copy. The way I see it is that some people are insisting that my copyright somehow is not deserving the same courtesy. I'm happy to share, freely, under the terms of the GFDL those portions of my copyrighted work I have posted, but I insist that my rights under that very same GFDL be respected. Kielsky

Can an author donate text to Wikipedia and insist that a copyright notice remain? The page given to editing users does specify the license, but not who the license holder will be. Should it be specified? silsor 01:41, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

I don't understand the motivation for having a copyright notice of the text you added. What are copyrights good for? 1. Restricting the copying of a text so that you can make money off of it. 2. Making it clear who is the author of this text. 1 falls away if you license the text under the GFDL. 2 is satisfied by the "page history". Furthermore: what if I cange a sentence in your text: do you still keep that notice of yours? Do I now get to add my own? I just don't understand the motivation for having a copyright notice. As always, IANAL. --snoyes 02:41, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

My opinion: Wikipedia policy is that we don't include attribution for authors in the article text. So we have two options: we can either consider the "Document" to include the talk page (or even the whole site), in which case including the copyright notice on the talk page, alongside other copyright notices, would be sufficient under GFDL; or we can delete the offending text entirely. See my user page for an IANAL statement. -- Tim Starling 03:25, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

Making the "Document" include the Talk page would lead to the unfortunate result of requiring anyone who prints out and distributes the article under the rules for "verbatim copying" to also print out the full talk page (and any talk page archives) and distribute it alongside the article itself. This would be bad. Making the Document include all of Wikipedia would have even worse consequences.

We do include attribution text in the article itself for a number of articles, where required under the GFDL. See, for example, the Nupedia and Wikipedia list. The attribution statement requested by Kielsky is roughly equivalent to such notices, and is not unreasonable. Martin 19:19, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

An attribution is not unreasonable, but it is not required and it can be removed. Isn't the system for providing attribution from outside Wikipedia is one's listing on the page history? If one is making a contribution to Wikipedia isn't the attribution in the page history? If not, is not everyone who writes something on Wikipedia entitled to add a © date and name at the end of the article? This would seem to clutter things up to a terrible degree. Should each user have the right to go back and make such an addition at the end of the article? The reality is that we are making a collaborative work. If someone dumps their work on Wikipedia from their hard disk, their published book or something else, it does not change the attribution rules. Don't we all contribute our work equally here? Does any one have greater rights than any other contributor? The only time this becomes problematic is if one moves an article from one page to the next, cutting and pasting the text will destroy the page history, and IMO this is a violation of the attribution rules and not respectful of the contributions of others (this also occurs when a page is translated from one language to another, the translator should list the five major contributors in the summary box when translating and the origin language url). Just a suggestion, not a legal opinion. — Alex756 06:38, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

How to delete previously uplodaed file?

How can i delete a previously uploaded file?

How to delete previously uplodaed file?

How can i delete a previously uploaded file?

VfD. Please your name by ~~~~ like everybody else in all Talks and Talk-like pages. --Menchi 03:29, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

brown links

What do brown links mean? Protected pages? :O --Yacht 07:12, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Please merge Wikipedia talk:problem users

The Wikipedia talk:Problem users page didn't get merged in. I'm not sure how I'd do this, or even if it can be done without sysop privs. Thanks... -- Pakaran 06:14, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I assumed that was done on purpose as it was mostly discussing the name and related issues of the old Problem users page. Angela 07:10, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ok that makes sense. Feel free to remove this section. -- Pakaran 08:11, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

<Representing the phenomenal Wikipedian growth. Any ideas?>

OK, I usually sign with an updated 6,917,513 articles in Wikipedia, and growing, growing... field statement. So I always wonder how we could monitor this growth visually. Did anyone think about representing the phenomenal Wikipedian growth as 4-D knowledge landscapes, with hot spots, link density, edit wars, spikes, and all?

Sincerely, best to you !

Irismeister

Friday, 2024-November-29, 17:42 Universal Time, 6,917,513 articles in Wikipedia, and growing, growing...

"Remember! United we stand... Divided we fall... Well, well, well... well... Well, Stanley!"

wikipedia:statistics

Page Stats

How can we see visit, reload and other usage stats for any random page?

Sincerely, best to you !

Irismeister

Friday, 2024-November-29, 17:42 Universal Time, 6,917,513 articles in Wikipedia, and growing, growing...

"Remember! United we stand... Divided we fall... Well, well, well... well... Well, Stanley!"

Meaning of a proverb

Hello I am just wondering in which situation "a creeking gate hangs long" is used as proverb. Mostafa

Database error when doing a move

When I move a page whose title contains an apostrophe, I get a database error message (A database query syntax error has occurred. The last attempted database query was: "SELECT wl_user FROM watchlist WHERE wl_namespace=0 AND wl_title='Salters'_Company'" from within function "". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '_Company at line 2".)" The move actually takes place, so there's no problem, just a bogus error. RickK 20:42, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm no expert on MySQL by maybe you need to encase it in double quotes or escape the single quote. Something like:

SELECT wl_user FROM watchlist WHERE wl_namespace=0 AND wl_title="Salters'_Company" or
SELECT wl_user FROM watchlist WHERE wl_namespace=0 AND wl_title='Salters\'_Company'

Dori 20:48, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)

Equals signs in headings don't work

See User_talk:SGBailey.

I guess these are swap-related problems: I reverted Wikipedia:Who, Why and it is now blank with no edit history block log is blank also Secretlondon 11:52, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

Editing other people's remarks in discussion pages

Do we have a guideline on editing other people's remarks in discussion pages?

I'm quite happy if somebody corrects a typo or spelling error, but a complete rework of my remarks - even when done expertly and with no sinister intent - leaves me a bit nervous if it is still tagged with my signature. Anjouli 06:18, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Don't know of any guidelines, but I wouldn't sign anything with anyone else's name. That is just misrepresentation, no matter how accurate. Something like "Anjouli said: [synopsis]" should be OK though. --snoyes 06:27, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I would consider even the correcting of spelling errors a break of Wikiquette. Dori 06:33, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

Correcting a typo or spelling error is okay, other forms of editing are quite unacceptable, IMHO. --Yacht 06:43, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Agreed. But allow the editing of tabs, indents and whitespace where these are clearly wrong.

What about where somebody fails to sign (even with an IP)? That can be very confusing if the following paragraph has the same indentation. I usually put "Anjouli starts here". Is that correct protocol do you think? Anjouli 07:12, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You can do that, or you can sign for the anon by finding their IP from the history or just writing (anon) after their comments. Angela

This may often be necessary. The lack of signature can be very confusing, especially if the unsigned poster and signed replier both do not indent and end up looking like they are the same person... the horror. --Menchi 00:04, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Whatever the consensus, I think it needs to be written into the guidelines. Anjouli 07:12, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's perfectly fine and even encouraged by ~~policies~~ [proposed policies] such as Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks. Please note the statement at the bottom of every page:

If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here.

Angela 07:08, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hi Angela. Surely by implication that means articles, not signed remarks in discussion pages? Anjouli

No, ~~it means~~ [I think, it should refer to] everything - pages, talk pages, user pages. See Wikipedia:Talk page#Refactoring talk pages and Meatball:RefactorAsYouGo. Angela

That's another case, what's about editing ur point of view to the opposite one? like, say, changing "I agree with you" to "I disagree with you"? --Yacht 07:16, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Well that would be a violation of Wikiquette but editing your comments to cut the size of an overly large page or to add clarity is [in my opinion] to be encouraged. Angela

Editing other people's comments is evil and should be outlawed. Roughly half the editors agree with this, see Wikipedia talk:Remove personal attacks. Join us, Anjouli! :) -- Tim Starling 07:46, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

Some guidelines on this would make things a lot easier. Personally I think nothing should be changed, except typo's. The problem gets more tricky though when you are discussing things. For instance, is it okay to reply to another contributor point by point (which is a lot easier) by interspersing comments? The problem being that may break up the flow of their argument and possibly weaken their argument. : ChrisG 12:58, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

There are no guidelines because opinion is deeply divided and Jimbo hasn't made any declaration. I can only suggest that you read Wikipedia talk:Remove personal attacks carefully, and perhaps add your own observations. -- Tim Starling 13:14, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

With all due respect, Angela, you're incorrect. According to Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks (emphasis mine): "Following is a policy proposal regarding removing personal attacks from discussions. After a discussion and a vote on the talk page, no clear consensus was reached. Thus, the practice of removing personal attacks remains subject to personal preference". So there's no such supporting policy, despite your claim. orthogonal 01:41, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I hadn't realized there was so much disagreement with the policy, so yes, it is only a proposal at this stage, although some people are following it now. Angela

Orthogonal: the paragraph you quote was entirely written by me, long after the discussion ended. So Angela can hardly be blamed for not having read it. -- Tim Starling 12:32, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

As for me, I think any alteration of a user's opinions or statements on a talk page, other than re-formatting indentation, has the potential to disingenuously distort the user's intent, and should therefore be entirely avoided. I would, in fact, consider any such alteration of my own posting, where my signature continued to be attached, to be itself a personal attack. orthogonal 01:41, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

There is a danger of distortions occurring, so obviously if it is done, it needs to be carefully. Angela 03:47, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Would you rather your signature just be removed then if there is a need to refactor the page? There is no reason to keep talk pages in their original state. This is not useful for developing the article, which is what the talk page is supposed to be for. Angela 01:45, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think the talk page should be archived, in this case. I'm not against reasonable and NPOV summaries of the arguments to date, but there is (and should be) a distinction been quotes, paraphrases, and summaries. "Angela said, 'xyz'" is entirely different from "Angela argued for xyz". If someone is summarizing a page, there's no need to keep signature lines in any case. The greatest care must be taken not to attribute to persons, as direct quotes, something they did not say. Indeed, I consider it disingenuous to alter my own comments (except for typos) after they've been commented on. It's far too easy to moderate one's comments after the fact, and thus make a measured response seem overly strident or off the mark. Once a comment has been replied to, the original comment should be considered part of the record. orthogonal 01:52, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ok, so maybe it would be better for a policy to state that refactoring should change things into the third person, rather than allowing editing of first person comments, or the removal of signatures. That seems sensible to me. Angela 03:47, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Please correct me if I'm wrong: is Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks a policy or a proposed policy? orthogonal 01:54, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, just proposed. Angela 03:47, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

My suggested guidelines would be that even typos should not be 'corrected', remembering that Wikipedia accepts variant spellings. I'd regard it as a cultural faux pas for someone to change my quite deliberate UK English spellings to American, for example, if it were to be done in something I've signed. If it's really important, leave a message in my talk page so I can fix it. But is it? The bottom line is the articles. I'm only interested in stuff in other pages that leads to more and better articles.

A summary should use indirect speech, or remove the attribution altogether. Either is acceptable. The idea of refactoring is to improve the value of the information, often by making it more concise, using summaries or lists. We do far too little of this in talk pages currently IMO. But, if you change what has been said in any way and leave the signature intact, this is inaccurate. Andrewa 01:26, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

~~Why on earth would anyone object to their typos being fixed?~~ [Perhaps a little harsh, but in my opinion, this should be done] [6]. I really wish people would fix mine. ~~If you're not happy about your comments being edited, perhaps you shouldn't sign them in the first place.~~ Angela 01:39, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Angela, I think your tone is unfortunate. Asking "[w]hy on earth would anyone object to their typos being fixed?" implies that there is no sensible reason for the objection, and thus that the person disagreeing with you is incapable of reasoning. This despite that person having explained their reasons in the very comment you're responding to: Andrewa considers it to be inaccurate. You go on to suggest that those who disagree with you not sign their comments at all -- which doesn't change the problem -- it's still their words, signed or not. orthogonal 02:18, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm sorry if you feel my tone was inappropriate as I am certainly not saying that those who disagree with me are "incapable of reasoning". I just meant that I can't see a reason. As far as I'm concerned, there is no difference between that a text editor with autocorrect changing your spelling for you. Angela 03:47, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

My reason is that I don't see where you draw the line. What you are confident is a typo might be an attempt at humour which you don't appreciate, for example. So I'm suggesting it's safer not to even fix 'obvious' typos. The other side to this is, the more obvious the typo is, the less reason there is to fix it. Remember we are talking about talk pages here, not articles. Typos here do the articles no damage at all, conversely, fixing them has no obvious benefit. So fixing them, even if correctly, is a minor waste of time. 'Fixing' them incorrectly will just cause friction and is a colossal waste of time. I admit I didn't express that very well before. Is it any clearer now? Andrewa 08:36, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It also gives the impression that you're saying that those who don't agree with you should either acquiesce to being edited by you or not participate in Wikipedia. So does your reply to me, above: "[w]ould you rather your signature just be removed", which suggests my choice is to acquiesce to your edits or have any note of my participation erased. As I'm sure you don't mean to suggest that those who disagree with you are not reasonable, or to give the impression that users can either do things your way or not participate at all, I hope you'll take the opportunity to correct this impression. orthogonal 02:18, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I am definitely not saying that. It was just a suggestion. I realise now it was a stupid suggestion and I'm sorry I made it. It was just a suggestion though. I didn't go and set up an official policy called Wikipedia:Those who disagree with user:Angela must not sign their comments. :) Anyway, it would be nice to now delete the suggestion and stop this section getting way too long, but I expect some people might object to that, so I shall leave it there despite the fact it does not no reflect my current thoughts on the matter. Angela 03:47, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing the air. I think it's well known to everyone (everybody who looks at Recent Changes, anyway!) at Wikipedia how hard you, Angela, work to maintain and to expand Wikipedia, and I know that your motivation has solely been to improve everyone's experience here. Personal attacks are unseemly, unnecessary, and unwarranted, and no one is -- I hope -- suggesting they should be encouraged or go unanswered. I am thankful for your attempts to discourage such unpleasantness. I also realize much of this discussion was motivated by a question about unsigned comments, and from personal experience I can attest that unsigned comments on Talk pages make following the thread of discussion extremely difficult. And I think most users agree with you that Talk pages can accumulate quickly and become unwieldy, and that some sort of pruning is occasionally required. Please don't think that my disagreements about methods -- not goals! -- in any way detract from the respect I have for you, and your work at Wikipedia. (P.S., I'm one of those curmudgeons who's never gotten used to text editors with autocorrect.) orthogonal 04:15, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hear! Hear! on the hard work... just for the record, Angela, you are one of my heroes. Hmmmm. I also turn off autocorrect, it wastes far more of my time than it saves. I leave it in a mode which flags probable errors but I never let it do its thing unfettered. Partly that's because I spent three years recently using MS-Word for serious linguistics papers... which was horrendous... Andrewa 08:36, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Just a quick comment on personal attacks. As keen as we all are to prevent them, is removing them the right path? For instance a racist and unreasonable user could be made to appear a moderate if others carefully edit her/his comments. Scrub the stripes off the tiger and people may think it is a pussy cat. I think we should leave them alone, or at most put a few hashes or stars in grossly offensive text. Anjouli 06:20, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Equals signs in headings don't work

See User_talk:SGBailey.

51 Pegasi

I am interested in further information about the Turtle or Tortoise Constellations, particularly in pre-dynastic Egypt. Is there someone in your group working on this project? Andrew Eddy - andrew.eddy@athenaglobal.com

Votes for deletion page

Is it possible that this page can be shortened? Maybe some of the older sections can be put in a separate archive? It's gotten to over sixty kilobytes, and it's taking quite long to load.

Denelson83 08:42, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Please move this disc to Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion. --Menchi 08:59, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think so, maybe the sysop should cleanup this page now and again. --Yacht 09:15, Nov 25, 2003 (UTC)

I clean it up every single day. If you have any great solutions, please say so at Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion. Angela 09:19, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Votes for deletion page

moved to Wikipedia_talk:Village pump

Overtype mode

Can anyone tell me why I sometimes find myself in overtype mode when editing a page? The problem goes away if I save and then start editing again, but it's a bit annoying. Bmills 12:37, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If you hit the "insert" key on your keyboard, it should go back to insert mode. Maximus Rex 16:22, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- Thanks. Bmills 16:23, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Probably not famous people

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Probably not famous people. Andrewa 02:51, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Year pages, calendar designation of

I hate to sound like a politically correct multiculturalist, but I was looking at recent changes, and wondering just what a "245" might be. Of course, it's year 245, but that got me to thinking that not everybody uses the Christian calendar. So at minimum we should make it plain that it's A.D. 245, rather than B.C., a.u. (from the founding of the city of Rome), AH (since Mohammed's hegira), etc.

Which brings up the second issue, A.D. means "anno Domini", "in the year of our Lord", said Lord being Jesus Christ. A more secular, if namby-pamby, alternative is "Common Era", abbreviated "C.E." (and "before Common Era", B.C.E. for dates prior to the nativity of Jesus).

Thoughts? orthogonal 03:37, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

There is some prior discussion on this at Talk:Common Era. Personally I don't see how C.E. can be called secular -- I mean, it's still dated from the birth of Christ, isn't it? -- Tim Starling 03:51, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. But Common Era just accepts this as a conventional standard. Anno Domini actually proclaims Jesus as "Lord", which can make it uncomfortable to use for non-Christians.

It is fine the way it is. Very easy to link to and natural. Like it or not but the Christian Calendar is the de facto standard for not only the English speaking world but much of the rest as well. --mav 03:54, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

First, it's not like any other Calendars in use are any less POV. Second, no other calendar approaches the Western one in terms of world-wide usage, especially in English and this is the English Wikipedia. I don't think it's necessary to make it plain that it's A.D. 245. No style guide for English recommends using A.D. unless it's necessary from context. When is the last time you've read the paper, a book, etc. and it said 1964 A.D. or similar. The only time I see A.D. is when a B.C. date might be possible, for example, in Classics texts (which sometimes use C.E. depending on the author's political views). Finally, moving the articles or adding redirects would only create some 2000 redirects that would then need to be maintained and would clutter search results for any particular year, all for no real gain except political correctness. Note that I think it would be fine to specify A.D. in the articles, if perhaps unnecessary. Daniel Quinlan 06:18, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

at least in the articles. Under about (AD) 300, it's not immediately obvious whether it's AD or BC -- as most of the events in either year would center on Rome.

I think the more important bit of Christian bias on the date pages is using little crosses to indicate date of death. - SimonP 17:40, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

I think, for certain causes of death, bullets would be the most appropriate (joke). orthogonal 17:47, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Looking for recent events

I was looking for links to a news event that occurred earlier this month and ran into a snag. Most links like this are listed by month like October 2003. There's also a page, Current Events, with links to the news events of the past week. But when I tried to go to November 2003 I was redirected to Current Events. The effect of this is that I couldn't find links for the dates between November 1-10. Are they located elsewhere? MK 20:13 (EST) 19 November 2003

Current Events is supposed to cover the whole month. Unfortunately it seems that when 35.8.131.155 edited it at 2104 UTC tonight his/her browser truncated the article at 32K. Anyway, I have restored the "lost" news, so please try again. -- Arwel 02:17, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Shouldn't we do something to split the page down to a reasonable size? Andrewa 03:09, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Diff too whitespace insensitive

The diff doesn't see changes that only involve whitespace, as in "events.After" changed to "events. After" orthogonal 19:59, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, it does, at least in my experience. Can you give an example of an actual edit where the diff doesn't see a whitespace change? —Paul A 01:04, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ah. Whitespace additions are not highlighted in red (given that there's nothing to highlight, I suppose this isn't too much of an oversight.) But perhaps instead of highlighting the letter/foreground, we should highlight the background. That would take care of the problem. It might also make things easier for red-green colorblind users if that backgrond were, dsay, gray, rather than red. orthogonal 14:27, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

TeX / Math markup rendering problems

I'm currently having a problem with Trimagic square article: it contains some embedded math markup that is not rendered correctly (in fact, not rendered at all) despite having no apparent errors. Can anyone help with this? Thanks. -- Schnee 19:40, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It appears TeX just dies when you try to use more than 10 columns:

{\begin{bmatrix}1&2&3&4&5&6&7&8&9&10\end{bmatrix}}

{\begin{bmatrix}1&2&3&4&5&6&7&8&9&10&11\end{bmatrix}}

I don't know why. -- Tim Starling 00:14, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

From the AMS-L TeX manual (PDF): "The maximum number of columns in a matrix is determined by the counter MaxMatrixCols (normal value = 10), which you can change if necessary using LaTeX's \setcounter or \addtocounter commands." Unfortunately, \setcounter and \addtocounter can't be used within the Wikipedia math mode, so either wide matrices have to be avoided, or the counter will have to be increased on the backend (which may slightly increase rendering cost in time and/or memory—how much so I have no idea). --Delirium 10:04, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

Given that the TeX renderings are cached (they are... aren't they?), this shouldn't be much of a problem. -- Schnee 16:16, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Just an editorial comment regarding complexity of math in some of these articles: please remember this is an encyclopedia and not a post-graduate mathematics textbook. Daniel Quinlan 01:17, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

Your general point may have so validity... but trimagic square and its prerequisite magic square require no mathematics beyond that taught to a youngish schoolchild (the age of the schoolchild depends on the country you are in). Now if you were to pick on Weierstrass preparation theorem on the other hand... Pete 08:59, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Regarding "complexity of math" ... surely an article is not to be considered inappropriate simply because it handles complex issues, provided always that it presents them with clarity ? We are told that there are no size limits. There are guidelines for writing a clear mathematics article at WikiProject Mathematics and most of the mathematics articles that I have seen here are very clearly written. Incidentally, I thought Schnee's contributions on magic squares and magic cubes were completely fascinating. -- Gandalf61 13:14, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

I don't see any problem at all with presenting even the most complex mathematical topics in Wikipedia. The articles should be written in a way that does not assume that the reader is already intimately familiar with the subject that is being talked about, of course, and thus will probably be written in a less compressed way than a mathematical textbook, but limiting what can have an entry in Wikipedia because it might not be understandable outright and without further reading to a typical person would be silly. -- Schnee 16:16, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that was sort of my point. I was speaking of the level of mathematics knowledge required and complexity of formulas used with no introduction, not the advanced level of topics. Daniel Quinlan 10:20, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

Scouring for (ab)use of wikipedia content

I'd like to just stand on this here Village Pump Soapbox quickly: Can anyone who has got a minute to spare (and if you're editing WP, then you do ;-)) just paste some bit from any Wikipedia article into Google. Then check Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content to see whether the search returns any usage that is not already listed on Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content. Quick hint: choose a continuous block of words which seems somewhat unique and enclose it in quotes. Like so (from Stephen King): "wealth itself: his earliest works (Carrie, The Shining,". Here are some links to improper usage of Wikipedia content that I found in doing a few such searches (Some of them not just improper, but downright criminal): [7], [8], [9], [10]
Cheers, snoyes 08:12, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

ezResults.com Uses wikipedia articles as encyclopedia. Added an entry to Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content hope that's appropriate : ChrisG 13:46, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The japan-101.com page mentions the text is from Wikipedia way down at the bottom, so I guess it is compliant. I didn't ad the site to Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content though. —Frecklefoot 15:46, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Well it doesn't mention the GFDL or link to the page it is taking content from... so its not really compliant at all... perhaps it'd be best if you did list it on Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content.

Interesting work, Snoyes. One thing that intrigues me is that all the sites that use our content claim all rights reserved copyright on all non-wikipedia elements. I thought the licence was supposed to be viral in the sense that if people take free content then derived works are similarly free. This doesn't seem to be happening at this embryonic stage in Wikipedia development, in contrast to similar software projects. Pete 17:41, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

See wikipedia:verbatim copying. Martin 02:39, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

POV in Dune?

Discussion moved to Talk:Dune (novel) -- Marshman 03:24, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Access to /w/wiki.phtml is denied?

I have a confession to make... now and then I count how my contributions I have made to Wikipedia. I used to do this at the click of a button - I ran a Python script that grabbed my user contributions page and then counted the number of relevant lines. However I have just tried to do this and the page returned says "You don't have permission to access /w/wiki.phtml on this server"... however I can access my contributions page perfectly happily in Internet Explorer. Has there been a software change in the last couple of months that has restricted to me only being able to access via IE? Any ideas? THanks. Pete 23:41, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, there's been a software change. You have to set the user-agent string to something identifying your bot. Sorry, I don't know how to do this in Python. -- Tim Starling 23:48, Nov 17, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks Tim. It's bound to be possible to check the user-agent id. I will find out. Given that the script would formally qualify as a bot should I do anything other than make a promise that I don't use it very often honest, gov?

Any pythonistas out there may like to know that to do this you need to subclass the URLOpener class in the built-in standard module urllib such that the attribute 'version' is overwritten with whatever user-agent string you fancy. Less difficult than it might sound! Pete 00:44, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

As long as you don't use it to edit or create pages in large numbers, and don't use it to an amount that much exceeds normal browsing speed, it should not be a problem. By the way, if you're interested in Python-based Wikipedia bots, take a look at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywikipediabot/ and http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/pywikipediabot/pywikipedia/. Andre Engels 11:57, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

On a bright note: what the developers taketh away the developers giveth too... it seems like the "offset" bug on the contributions page has been fixed since I last tried. Thus when I have sorted the user-agent string my script will hit the server even less as I can give it an estimate of the minimum number of edits I have done to avoid counting them over again... Thanks ever so much for whoever took the time to fix that. Pete 00:15, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Show new changes starting from:

I just noticed this feature on recent changes. Very slick, thanks to whoever implemented this. -- Merphant 13:54, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hasn't that always been there? Angela 14:28, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Not always, but at least for half a year. -- Baldhur 16:04, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Heh, I'm a little slow sometimes :) I could have sworn it wasn't there yesterday... -- Merphant

I must be slower still... how do you use this feature? Andrewa 11:21, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You should see the following on recent changes:

Below are the last 50 changes in last 7 days.
Show last 50 | 100 | 250 | 500 changes in last 1 | 3 | 7 | 14 | 30 days; minor edits
Show new changes starting from 20:31, 20 Nov 2003

The date stamp is a link so you can check recent changes (up to a certain limit) since the last time you looked at recent changes. Angela 20:32, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The Google Test

Are there any guidelines as to how many Google hits a topic needs to pass? I just added a page on Mary Devenport O'Neill who gets 4 hits, two on Wikipedia, but I think she is important enough to merit inclusion. By the way, she died when I was a child, I never met her, and I'm not related to her, but she played an important bit part in the history of 20th century Irish poetry, my main field of interest. Bmills 17:02, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think the Google test is simply one of many heuristics use to determine if an article belongs on Wikipedia. Nor is Google the ultimate reference; it will skew to the popular and the general. Your entry seems a fine addition to Wikipedia. orthogonal 17:15, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I just started Balaenoptera omurai, which has 0 Google hits (take it as read that I am only VERY distantly related to this whale species) There are no hard and fast rules to the Google Test, and some contributors actively dislike it as a guideline because of its limitations particularly with matters of history. Pete 17:16, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Google hits just a guide. If you are knowledgeable in the field and say she is important, that should be good enough. Clearly not a vanity page, which is the biggest problem here with the obscure biographies (autobiographies). Also yours is well written (does not go into her pets' names, lifetime moves, childhood friends, etc.) explaining why she is significant. -- Marshman 17:18, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I only asked because the Google test is quoted so often on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. As a relative newcomer, I'm still feeling my way around these things. Bmills 17:23, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Re Balaenoptera omurai:

I have checked in Copernic Agent. There are 14 results:

One each in National Geographic and Nature

One Japanese, one Polish, one Czech, one Argentinian, one Norwegian

Seven German results
Dieter Simon 01:15, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's not surprising - the news about that whale species did just came out yesterday, so we are very fast to include an article on that. Right now google has 56 unique hits for that one, and the number will probably increase more. andy 12:41, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's only one guideline. It is perhaps most useful (but not limited to this use) for contemporary topics and for evaluating vanity pages. Daniel Quinlan 01:42, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

Yes. It does tend to get overused IMO. We don't want Wikipedia to reflect the bias already shown on the WWW, especially since a similar bias is probably produced by the demography of our editors as a population. But, both finding print media to cite, and verifying them when cited, are a lot more work than just typing a query into Google. Andrewa 03:23, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Agreed, Andrewa. My perspective is probably skewed by the fact that I've been making contributions around writers and writing and in almost all cases with those writers' books to hand. I also try to add external links to provide as much verification as possible, but sometimes this is difficult as with Mary Devenport O'Neill. And sometimes the information on the Web is wrong, or slanted. Bmills 12:05, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ackermann function

Hi,

I added a table to that article. It was based on another table (which I link to) but it shouldn't be a copyvio because I just copied the numbers (and to some extent the format). I could have generated my own table, or typed in the values from scratch, in a bit more time. Is my editorial comment at the bottom of the table section appropriate? I guess I have a sense of awe towards the function that's proving quite hard to get rid of, and it shows in the article.

On another note - I mentioned in the talk page that NIST has their own version of the Ackermann function - which seems incompatible with ours, and which does not appear anywhere else on the web. Are they just plain wrong?

Thanks! -- Pakaran 04:46, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Update: I added a lot of content to the article, and I have been informed that there is no copyvio issue. I'd be interested in comments. -- Pakaran 06:47, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Just in case you are not aware of it Wikipedia:Peer review is another place to ask for comments ... it seems to be on plenty of people's watchlists. (Probably not as many as the mighty VP though!) Pete 10:15, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'd already computed some of the numbers and put them on the talk page, based on the definition already in the article, so I doubt the numbers themselves could somehow in any way be copyrighted by some other site... Κσυπ Cyp 12:16, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

New Messages

The you have new message sign won't go away. Lirath Q. Pynnor

New Messages

The you have new message sign won't go away. Lirath Q. Pynnor

See above :) Dysprosia 23:55, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The problem with not being able to get rid of the "You have new messages" message is back

After I first reported the problem it went away for several weeks, but tonight, it's back again. Nothing seems to work to make it go away. RickK 03:59, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

A workaround is to edit and save with no changes. Should go away after that. Dysprosia 04:02, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Or watch/unwatch any page. That was suggested in my SourceForge bug. -- Pakaran 04:44, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Simon Crean

Could somebody look at Simon Crean and tell me why the page seems to be defective? Adam 08:09, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

OK it seems to be fixed now. Adam

List of fictional characters

I was thinking maybe we could do that. Many people who are ficticious, like Tony Montana, Rocky Balboa, Memin, Pedro Navaja, Superman, Barbarella, etc etc are so famous that they are more famous than some real life people. Antonio Low Class *itch Martin

Yeah. Although we'll most definitely end up getting innumerable obscure characters, like [Ray-gun Daring Devil] and [Manga Guy # 12]. --Menchi 07:15, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Special:Whatlinkshere/Fictional_character should give you an automatic list, so I think creating a non-automatic one would be a wasted effort. It would be better to link all fictional character articles are linked to Fictional character to make sure this feature works. Angela 07:20, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

A worthwhile idea in my opinion. But I think the list could use some work. Maybe one list in alphabetical order and a second list broken down by sources (grouping all of the Star Trek and Simpson characters together for instance). And I'm pretty sure Alfred Bester and Sarah Bernhardt aren't fictional characters. MK 03:48 (EST) 21 November 2003

Here's two examples which, in my opinion, should what should and should not be done. Characters in Atlas Shrugged is the good entry: a collection of the characters from the book, explaining their individual roles. Characters in The Sandman is the bad entry: a list of links to individual entries, some of which are misdirected and have no relevance to the subject, others of which are stubs or orphans. MK 18:56 (EST) 23 November 2003

Such a Star Trek and Simpsons characters sub-list are already existent on one of the sub-articles of Star Trek and Simpsons. To repeat would be redundant. It may be be good bad idea to place in some famous char, but of course, somebody will come and say, "wait, that's POV, I think Death-blaster III is also important". The list will grow and grow until it explodes. --Menchi 08:56, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Image attribution / sig

Can image artists sign names on their works when they agreed to let WP use their images? --Menchi 09:39, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Menchi, I don't know what you are asking. Can you be clearer?

Adrian Pingstone 09:45, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

When an artist draws a map/diagram/illustration and contributes it to WP, can s/he sign his/her name on it? Most artists like to sign their names on their work, and it may take some persuasion to make them not do that. Or they may just don't contribute their work to WP at all because a sense of authorship -- which is saddening. --Menchi 09:48, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

AFAIK (IANAL) there is no legal reason why they can't sign their work, and there's no legal reason we could just airbrush it out and resubmit it. GFDL requires that we credit the authors, but I don't think the authors can dictate the particular form of that credit. Since we generally frown on overt displays of authorship, I think we should discourage artists from signing work, crop or airbrush it out if possible, or look for another equivalent image if it is not possible. -- Tim Starling 10:28, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

Category-tag

For a month I saw an article containing a [[Category:]]-tag. Is it something implemented or something that is going to be implemented ? (I.e. as a way of categoring articles on wikipedia.) // Rogper 20:04, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's in the next version of the software. We'll be installing the updated version this weekend, then enabling the categories and a few other new features later once everything's a little more thoroughly tested. --Brion 02:38, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Aha, that is a interesting news! :-) ~~BTW, is there any newsgroup or discussion-list where you talk about issues like this ?~~ (never mind, I found where it is.) // Rogper 16:38, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Where? Andrewa 09:19, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The best bet for this sort of discussion is the Wikitech mailing list. Best starting point for mailing lists is Wikipedia:Mailing lists. Pete 11:43, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Error worth fixing

Hi ... How does one notify the Wikipedia editors of a spelling error? Your article about Catharine Parr Traill misspells her first name.

Fixed. If you create an account, you can move articles to fix stuff like this. Daniel Quinlan 19:09, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

How is that minor?

The definition of minor edit is "spelling corrections, formatting, and minor rearranging of text." Now look at User:Frecklefoot's revision of 18 June 2003 for the Rebecca Romijn-Stamos entry. How can THAT be a minor edit?! -- RoyV 06:25, 22 Nov 2003

Well, other than the bit about the Stamos couple being sexually liberal and throwing nude parties, all he did was rearrange some text for flow and neutrality. There's a lot of red in the diff, but it's really a borderline case. This sort of thing is not a big deal as long as it's not both egregious and habitual. -- Cyan 06:32, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree with RoyV. I don't think it's borderline, "removal of POV text" as Frecklefoot puts it should always be marked major. -- Tim Starling 08:38, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Cyan that it's borderline. He hasn't really changed the content; just moved it around. Angela 12:47, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

He added "The Stamos' are widely known as one of Hollywood's most sexually liberal couples. They often throw nude parties at their California home." That's not rearrangement. -- Tim Starling 13:29, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)

Ok, but adding one sentence could still be regarded as minor. Angela 14:23, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Sometimes that's true. But not for that particular sentence, IMO.

It's not a big deal though is it? I make mistakes like marking minor as major and major as minor all the time - pointless worrying about single edits - only if it were a systematic attempt to make deceptive edit should we care. Pete 23:51, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It would be nice to get an idea of community opinion on this particular edit, even if there will clearly be no repercussions for Frecklefoot or anyone else doing a similar thing. We have a policy, but many Wikipedians seem to ignore it. Should it be altered to reflect the current trend? -- Tim Starling 07:50, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

I mark a change I make as minor if it doesn't change what the article says (or, if the problem is that it says it badly, my best guess as to what the article was intended to say). So spelling, grammar, most rearrangements, all minor, but if you're adding or removing words -- especially in groups -- it's probably not minor. Changing the information is not minor, changing the presentation of that information is minor. --Charles A. L. 19:03, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

Where is this policy documented? I know it exists (or at least one does, maybe more), I've seen it, but I've lost count of the number of policy and guideline documents I've read. Perhaps one of those who refer to it could provide a link? This would also have the advantage of confirming that everyone is referring to the same policy, and that any duplicates we know of are consistent to it.

Relying on a vague memory of the policy and (more so) what I've seen others do in practice, I would personally not mark this edit as minor were I doing it, but neither do I object to its being so marked. The content is unchanged, or at least that seems to be the intention. Maybe that's what others mean by borderline. Do we really need to decide it? I think we'll always have borderline cases. The role of the "minor" flag is to help us to communicate with each other. Certainly it can be abused, but there's no suggestion of that here IMO. Andrewa 18:36, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Please look at Wikipedia:How to edit a page in the Minor Edits section. The gist of it is that changes which don't affect the meaning, or don't add or subtract information are minor edits. Obviously typos and simple rearrangement of text fall into that category. Everything else is a major edit. I agree with this view, and I believe the change I referenced originally was miscategorized. The only reason I asked about it here was to see if I was missing something (since I'm a Wikipedia newbie). I don't see anything in the replies to my question that indicate that I am. I'm also astonished that some people thought I was just referring to the rearrangement of text and not to the addition of new facts. It's not "borderline" at all. By the way, I'm not looking for "repercussions, " and I agree that the miscategorization could've been an honest mistake. However, it also crossed my mind that this could've been an attempt to "vandalize" a page and then marking it as minor to hide it (as suggested in the Minor Edits section). Note that I'm not saying whether the new facts ("sexually liberal", "nude parties") are true or false. I see today that those sentences have been removed. Ironically, I believe in some cases those sentences should stay in even if they are false, while in other cases they should be left out even if they are true! But I'll leave that discussion to the article's Talk Page.--RoyV 06:37, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Got it, thanks. Agree that if you were adding new 'facts' (I looked at the diff display before and must have missed them, but I'll take your word for it that they are there), then it is not a minor edit, and others may wish to review the accuracy of those 'facts'. The page you refer to makes this quite clear IMO and also shows you how to fix such a mistake. Andrewa 08:58, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Liu Bang Han Dynasty

I have recently acquired a sword allegedly from the Han Dynasty period. It was owned by a man named Xiangyu, who took his own life after being invoved in some type of an attempt to overthrow the Emperor Liu Bang. Any info on this character and the role he may have played in history from that era.

About copyvios

I should probably know this, but... What do we do when we stumble on an article which has a borderline copyvio? Meaning that some sentences are copied, others not. Is the whole article going to the copyvio page? I'm tempted. Cheers, Muriel Victoria 09:12, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Even if you're unsure, it is better to be vigilant and list it on the suspected copyviolations page. Then you can get other people's help in analysing whether or not it constitutes a copyvio. I think (IANAL of course) that using other people's copyrighted material is unlawful, unless it is clearly quoted as belonging to the originator. --snoyes 16:22, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

OK, I had a quick look at the article. Given that the original (long) version comes from a respected, longtime wikipedian a better approach would be to address the concerns on that users talk page. Or the article talk page. --snoyes 16:30, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

brown links

What do brown links mean? Protected pages? :O --Yacht 07:12, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It means the page is a stub. You can set what you regard as a stub in your preferences. Angela

Can we make those links underlined? They really don't look like links at all to me, who is used to seeing links underlined. So I miss them easily. --Menchi 06:25, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Menchi. --Yacht 12:48, Nov 25, 2003 (UTC)

Editing other people's remarks in discussion pages

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Remove personal attacks

How to delete previously uploaded file?

How can I delete a previously uploaded file? Pradeepbansal

wikipedia:images for deletion. Please sign your name by ~~~~ like everybody else in all Talks and Talk-like pages. --Menchi 03:29, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Page Stats

How can we see visit, reload and other usage stats for any random page? -- Irismeister

You can't. See wikipedia:feature requests to request that feature. Martin 16:29, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Representing the phenomenal Wikipedian growth. Ideas?

OK, I usually sign with an updated 6,917,513 articles in Wikipedia, and growing, growing... field statement. So I always wonder how we could monitor this growth visually. Did anyone think about representing the phenomenal Wikipedian growth as 4-D knowledge landscapes, with hot spots, link density, edit wars, spikes, and all? -- Irismeister

excessive signature cut.

see wikipedia:statistics

Target audience

Who is the target audience for Wikipedia articles?

The answers to this question may resolve a dispute on the software engineering page. One author wants to remove some introduction content, because it is obvious (and it is obvious to professionals). Another wants to include the introductory content because non-software engineers (like high-school students and general public) may not know it very well. Articles could be targeted to experts, general public, or to high-school or college students writing papers on these topics. How should we balance the conflicting needs of different groups?

The SE page starts off with 3 very general and simple paragraphs that (hopefully) anyone can read. The rest of the article delves into complex detail. 204.134.9.1

See this very old post on the mailing list for the views of Larry and Jimbo. I think we need to assume people aren't stupid, so listing examples of software is unnecessary if you've stated that software engineers develop software, you can expect people to know what software is without giving examples of it. Angela 16:49, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

I always try to write the lead paragraph for a literate adult whose education somehow completely passed over the subject of the article, and rely on links in case the terms being used to define are themselves unfamiliar. So for software engineering, assume the reader has heard of both software and engineering in general, explain what "software engineering" is, and contrast with computer programming, which is what it's most frequently confused with. Stan 19:57, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I've taken my example from what seemed to be the best articles in the general field. I hope my articles would be intelligible to year six primary school (which by no coincidence I teach, age about 11 years) and useful to anyone without a major subject (ie including final year) in the field at pass level (or better) at an Australian university. That's an extra eight years education between the lower and upper marks but it's the standard I thought others were setting and I find it surprisingly achievable. It's also a good test of NPOV... year six are really good at cutting through weaselwords, and people who've studied the topic for two years at uni are pretty critical readers. So, if you can imagine your perspective being respected by both these extreme audiences, it's pretty safe, and otherwise an alarm bell should ring.

Having written that first and then checked Larry and Jimbo's views they seem to line up pretty well. Andrewa 20:18, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Our target audience is encyclopedia readers. Beyond that, I think Andrewa has the right approach. Martin 00:01, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I was wondering recently how many people (who don't edit and write for Wikipedia) use Wikipedia as a resource. It would be interesting to conduct some polls of those who don't edit here. Kingturtle 00:03, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I try to write in news style. If we all did this, then Wikipedia would be a concise, general and a whole bunch of specialized encyclopedias all in one. --mav 04:21, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

I think Stan Shebs has it right. The opening paragraphs of an article should give an overview, suitable for someone who has no knowledge of the subject, but can follow links. Experts are free to skip to the next section! ;) -- Tarquin 15:39, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Who is the target audience of the article parameter? Is anyone else floundering trying to read this article? Or should we all be able to read it from the word go? Would it not be a good idea to explain the terms such as "argument", "function", or even "parameter" itself. Or are we expected to jump into the deep end and come up swimmingly? As it is, we would need to schlep on a great technical dictionary/encyclopedia to see what it's about. Dieter Simon 02:14, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The math articles are notoriously bad in this; I even have a minor in math, and there are many articles for which I have no idea what they're about. I've poked math writers a couple times in the past, but it doesn't seem to have much effect. Maybe someday I'll see what I can dredge up from my memory ("My God, it's full of holes!") and work over some of those, even though it's not as much fun as scanning in scrungy old postage stamps... :-) Stan 04:32, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ouch, I've had a quick look around some Maths articles and you're right, there is some work needed. There are unclear explanations, there is bad grammar, and there are outright inaccuracies. But worst of all IMO, there are articles which assume prior knowledge but which don't provide clear and convenient links to the articles which cover this prior knowledge.

On the other hand, there's a WikiProject Mathematics, and a lot of great Maths articles. I believe many of them could be made more layperson-friendly and we'd have an awesome resource, we do already have an awesome resource in fact but could leverage it more. This issue doesn't seem to have been discussed by the project on a very quick first reading of their page, but perhaps I missed it. Or perhaps I should join the project... in my (;-> spare time... Andrewa 20:11, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes I did miss it, because it's on the talk page. Very much a hot topic in the project, which I have joined. Have a look at my first attempts at parameter and argument. Any others that you think are particularly bad, Stan? Andrewa 00:46, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Many thanks, Andrewa, a great piece of work. Now we have the tools and with the right tools you can do anything. Hope other mathematicians will take this article as an example. Dieter Simon 01:14, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I bet that demographics will change. as Wikipedia matures. I bet that it will get as many junior-high and high-school students as readers as it gets adults.

Wikipedia's first Typo Correction Day

Saturday the 22nd is Wikipedia's first typo correction day. Typo

Please don't do it by using a bot. Bots have to be approved before they're unleashed on the Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Bots. RickK 19:09, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That is correct. No unapproved bots will be permitted on Wikipedia. Bots can wreak havoc. Alexandros 19:16, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Undeletion

I'm trying to undelete Eckernförde, but I keep undeleted A. What am I doing wrong? RickK 08:26, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Peculiar. I just undeleted it successfully - just clicked on the Restore! button... Dysprosia 08:29, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

What Restore button? RickK 08:34, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

When you've got a deleted article you've got the "n deleted edits" link, click that and you'll see the Restore button :) Dysprosia 08:56, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I figured out my problem. I clicked on the link from the undelete page and it sent me to the page to undelete, and I changed the address to "Eckernförde", but I didn't GO to that page before trying to undelete. RickK 19:06, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Film

I just found out all 'films in year' are using title like 1982 in film. since i like term 'movie' more, am I allowed to create some redirect pages like 1982 in movie? --Yacht 02:57, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't know about "allowed to", but I'd ask you not to on grammatical grounds – "film" works as a mass noun in a way that "movie" doesn't. Compare the (nonexistent) pages 1982 in theater vs. 1982 in play: that's the same as you're proposing with 'film' vs. 'movie'. –Hjr 09:15, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

1982 in the movies would be ok on grammatical grounds. Making a whole stack of redirects just on the grounds you like the word movie more, however, is probably unnecessary. Pete 11:46, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Maybe 1982 movies redirecting to 1982 in film (ie, not as the target of the redirect; which is what you meant all along, right, Yacht?) would be useful. –Hjr 15:06, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

not on grammatical grounds, just preference (redirect). I am just thinking of 'Wikipedia contains all possible misspellings'. --Yacht 03:33, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

No, I don't think we do want Wikipedia to contain all misspellings. The difficulty of ever getting a redirect deleted leads some people to strongly dislike needlessly created ones. The purposeful creation of grammatically incorrect redirects would be a bad idea in my opinion. Angela 04:22, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

TV episode names

I just spent a little time moving The Shelter around. The article name was in use as a Twilight Zone episode. On closer examination I found that dozens of Twilight Zone episodes were listed as just their title. Many of them were just common phrases or nouns (The Mirror, The Shelter, A Game of Pool etc.)

The chances that anyone who enters 'Mirror' or 'Shelter' as a search term in Wikipedia expects to find a Twilight Zone episode is tiny. Also, my guess is that there are fifty or so shows on US television with named episodes; that means that a thousand of these articles are potentially being generated every year, ignoring foreign contributions.

It seems to me that this is not helpful to our users. Any thoughts? DJ Clayworth 18:37, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I dislike episode articles on Wikipedia, especially stubby ones. You may want to orphan and redirect to Twilight Zone. Ideally our search engine should return shelter before The Shelter. Martin 18:53, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Show episodes are like short stories; only one in a hundred is significant enough to discuss at length, the rest are likely be stubs forever, and can be effectively converted into 2-3 line entries in a big list - more readable for the TZ fan, doesn't lose any info. To keep List of The Twilight Zone episodes from becoming a really massive article, I would suggest making an article for each season, and redirecting titles to season articles, which hold the date, synopsis, and cast notes. Isn't there are a Wikiproject that makes TV article recommendations? Stan 19:22, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I definitely don't think we want to see individual entries for every episode of every popular television series. Even the people who are looking for that level of information would probably prefer to find it organized in a more accessible manner. In my opinion, as a rule of thumb there should be a main entry for general information about a television series with a linked "episode guide" entry for those who want detailed information. In a few cases, like "The Simpsons" for example, there might be a legitimate need for other specialized sub-entries like "characters" or "inside jokes". But overall, I think we should be working on reducing the proliferation of fan articles about every individual item on a single show. MK 02:16 (EST) 22 November 2003

Eh gads! There is no reason why stubs like Escape Clause should have its own article. All the info in there can easily be placed at the episode list. --mav 07:27, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Where to discuss possible problems

If I'm convinced a page should be deleted, I can post it at VfD. But where do I post a page I just think is questionable? If I do it on that page's Talk page, will it really be seen by enough people? orthogonal 07:45, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Cleanup is for anything questionnable. Angela

I post to the article's talk page. There it will gather attention precisely proportional to the number of readers of the article. Martin 18:54, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

But I get no response even though i left several questions in the certain talk pages...--Yacht 02:59, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If you know how to correct the page and was just using the talk page out of politeness for previous contributors and get no responses, go ahead and correct the page. If you don't know how to correct the page but know its wrong, you can also ask for help at Wikipedia:Peer review and Wikipedia:Pages needing attention. Wikipedia has quite a few bad pages, but also Wikipedia is getting better all the time, particularly in these times of excellent server response, so although your concerns may not be addressed immediately if you can't address them yourself, there is excellent reason to think they will be addressed eventually. Pete 11:38, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

175000 articles

I was just adding {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} to my user page and discovered that we'll probably break the 175000 mark [in the English version] sometime tonight. Congratulations everybody! Current count: 6,917,513. silsor 07:19, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

Nice catching that... 174989 as of now... not bad, eh? (pondering whether or not to add a couple...) -- Jake 07:26, 2003 Nov 21 (UTC)

Anybody want to keep track of what the 175000th article is? I'm going to bed now. silsor 07:36, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

By this rate, it'll occur in between the next 20 - 30 min. Correct my math if wrong. --Menchi 07:40, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It was The Adventures of Pete and Pete when I looked, but if a page is deleted, the total will be set back to 174999, meaning something else could be the 175000th. Angela

When I just loaded Wikipedia:Village Pump, seeing the post for the first time, it said exactly:

I was just adding {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} to my user page and discovered that we'll probably break the 175000 mark [in the English version] sometime tonight. Congratulations everybody! Current count: 175001. silsor 07:19, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

Κσυπ Cyp 08:42, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Outdated

Just to nitpick. There may not be a way of knowing which article it is, due to technical limitations (no-one bothered to code it).

That does not mean that there is not an unambiguous 175000th article. It naturally was the one to first hold that position. That is a unique honor. Others may hold that position later, but only one was the 175000th first. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 08:44, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

In any case, I think this is GOOD. WTH, let's celebrate. It's been BHW but we are doing something right. Andrewa 09:17, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wow, it's not even two days later and already we have over 175500 articles - this means that from the 175000 point we are over 2% of the way to 200000. Has anybody been tracking the number of articles over time since the beginning? It would be nice to see what the growth looks like. silsor 17:56, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)

More information than you could ever want: Wikipedia:Modelling Wikipedia's growth. --snoyes 18:21, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This information, and much more (21 statistics for 31 Wikipedias), can be found at http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm Andre Engels 01:19, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This seems to be broken for the English Wikipedia. Jrincayc 15:25, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Before we get too carried away, remember that only 60% of these articles are articles in any real sense, and that probably only a quarter of them are of a genuine encyclopaedia standard. See my Wikipedia Quality Survey for a discussion of this. Adam 12:40, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You mean we have 43,000 articles of genuine encyclopedic standard, all written in two years? Wikipedia rocks. -- Tim Starling 13:18, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

I am not belittling that achievement, or the project as a whole, which I think is wonderful, since it gives me an excuse to write articles about all my peculiar interests. But I do think the 175,000 figure is a little misleading and should not encourage complacency. Adam 00:49, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Awesome survey, Adam, I missed it before. It should be repeated regularly, not too regularly, and ideally the second by yourself using the same methodology. Have you given any thought to when? Andrewa 18:48, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think repeating it would just produce the same result, and would go on doing so as long as WP uses the same methodology, of allowing anybody to contribute anything they like and not having any formal quality control process. There are of course many good reasons for that methodology, but its downside is that we have to accept a crap/quality ratio of perhaps 2 to 1. Sooner or later if WP really aspires to be an encyclopaedia people can have confidence in, some kind of crap-elimination mechanism will be needed. Adam 00:49, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Are you sure you mean 'crap-elimination mechanism' or 'sifter project'? There is a major difference of emphasis on those two positions. If you truly means 'crap-elimination mechanism' you are saying at some point Wikipedia should stop being a Wiki, and become organised more like Britannica and other official encyclopedias with only 'reputable' people being able to edit under certain circumstances. If it does that it will IMO kill the thing that made it great - the Wiki process. A 'sifter project' on the other hand could be seen as a kind of harmless parasite on the wiki process, which takes snapshots of valuable articles once a year(at a guess), and thus provide some form of approved Wikipedia, whose content would be one anyone could have confidence in. Such a sifter project need have no effect on the Wiki process, other than a reality check as to whether specific articles have actually improved, which would feed back on the Wiki process itself. : ChrisG 01:15, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You may be right about the results staying the same. If so that's good, it means that we've reached a certain stability and that further growth should not be a problem. It would also mean that in order to improve quality, we probably need to think of something like a sifter, which I think is true, see below. But my fear is that further growth may have a negative effect on these percentages, and on some others too. Andrewa 09:21, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Once again this raises the central question of who an encyclopaedia is for: is it for writers or readers? If it is for writers, then it does not matter if 25% or 50% or 75% of the encyclopaedia is badly written or inaccurate or about reptilian humanoids, because, hey, we are all having fun writing and editing and arguing about each others' articles. If it is for readers, on the other hand, then it does matter, because when readers consult an encyclopaedia, they expect to find accurate and well-written articles about whatever it is they want to know about. The main page of WP says: "Wikipedia is a multilingual project to create a complete and accurate free content encyclopedia." This suggests that one day the encyclopaedia will be complete, and that all its content will be accurate. I don't think the present process will ever reach either of those points. Adam 06:17, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The point I would make about a future sifter project is that will create some kind of 'official'/'approved'/'refereed' encyclopedia that meets your concerns and the needs of some readers, but still retains the dynamic nature of wikiness. It then becomes possible to add to the latest version something like 'This is version is the latest work in progress' and create a link to an approved version if it exists'; and give some sort of official status to approved pages, and provide a link to the work in progress. It would be possible at this point to make the default setting of anonymous users the approved Wikipedia. : ChrisG 07:10, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This 'sifter' concept is certainly IMO the basis of all the serious contenders for a Wikipedia approval mechanism, which is an interest of mine too as you well know. But I think it could also have a very positive effect on the 'Wiki process', by subtly discouraging much of the unproductive activity we currently need to deal with. It won't eliminate it, but I have a hunch that those involved in edit wars for example would sometimes be less interested in them if they knew that their bickering was invisible to the database view seen and used by, say, school students. The same goes for serious trolls, not mentioning any names here.

The beauty of this is, it reduces the soapbox that we give these people, but IMO won't discourage good-faith contributors at all, probably just the opposite. Andrewa 09:21, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree Andrew. To my mind the sifter project is a way of resolving the tension between the tendencies of m:deletionism and m:inclusionism, which will only grow greater as Wikipedia becomes a more and more effective encyclopedia. Though I have concerns about the principles and guidelines which structure the sifter project to ensure that it remains meritocratic rather than elistist which I voiced with your proposal m:referees. : ChrisG 09:39, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Authors and their copyrights

Moved to Talk:Credit repair

The 18th letter of the alphabet

Looking at The Powerpuff Girls and then as a test the three most recent UK PMs, I find the lowercase r's in the titles look funny. This isn't happening in subheads or text, even bold text. Capital r's (e.g. Ronald Reagan) are also fine. I don't know if the problem is my iMac, Netscape 7, or some other thing. Is anyone else experiencing this, and what are you using? --Charles A. L. 16:08, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

Just tried on Windows 2000 with both IE 6 and Netscape 7 and the rs are fine for me, which may narrow it down to the iMac. Bmills 16:15, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Could you post a screenshot? It looks fine on my PowerBook in Mozilla (1.5 on Mac OS X 10.3.1, 1.2 in Classic), haven't tried NS7 specifically. --Brion 02:50, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Well, there aren't any non-ASCII characters in the source text. Daniel Quinlan 09:58, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

Artist needed for heart drawing

I have tried now for a while but cannot get permission to use a drawing of the inner workings of the heart. The ones from Gray's Anatomy are not clear enough. An excellent one is at http://www.tmc.edu/thi/anatomy2.html . Any artists here who could produce a similar drawing? AxelBoldt 12:27, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Truncated dodecahedron

Funny. But I guess this goes to Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense and replaced with a more encyclopedic text? --seav 11:23, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

*Wryly laugh*. Replace with encyclopedic text of course. This goes on saying that even some admins think Wikipedia is all just a big joke. Ha.. so funny...ha......... --Menchi 11:26, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

A very carefully crafted joke - someone spent a lot of time and effort over this ! Definitely deserves to be preserved for posterity. The joke version is actually on Wikipedia:Yet more bad jokes and other deleted nonsense -- Gandalf61 14:09, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps someone could explain the joke to non-mathematicians? Adam 15:05, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It has been replaced. See the link posted by Gandalf. Dori 15:28, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

I actually thought that was pretty funny. Face it, we're writing an encyclopedia and that gets pretty dry sometimes... silsor 17:56, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

I loved it. Perhaps we need a "good jokes" page in the Meta somewhere, to show people what not to do and also preserve gems like this. Hmmmm... but I don't think we want to encourage such, however well written. Because if we do we'll be swamped by efforts that are not nearly so well written. Or at least that's the danger. Andrewa 08:20, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Adding inter-language links

Can the people who are not logged in and adding inter-language links please put "de:", "fr:" etc. in their edit summaries. That would save the people who are patrolling Recent Changes for vandalism some time. Thanks, snoyes 20:14, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Good luck, they probably aren't reading this. Most likely they are users at other languages who just swing by EN to add links and nothing more. I know, it is a nuisance. -- Viajero 01:08, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

RIght. Very likely they do not speak English at all. It is like telling foreign visitors behave themselve in your native language. This is supposed to be funny if you get offensed. -- Taku 04:37, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

New Software Problems?

I guess these are swap-related problems: I reverted Wikipedia:Who, Why and it is now blank with no edit history block log is blank also Secretlondon 11:52, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

If you click on the cur/hist links in Recent changes it comes up - seems like the question mark in the article title is the problem... andy 11:56, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This is actually nothing to do with the new software, but with our primitive load-balancing. The question mark on the end of Wikipedia:Who, Why? doesn't properly get escaped when you get redirected from http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Who,_Why%3F to http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Who,_Why? -- the question mark is a reserved character in URLs and gets dropped from what the wiki can interpret as the article name. I'll see if I can adjust it... --Brion 14:19, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Okay, this should be resolved now. If any new and more exciting problems appear in its place, do give a holler. --Brion 04:57, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ad bots

It strikes me it would be very easy to write a bot that spammed WP with banner ads on multiple pages.

If it has not been done yet, surely it will be in the future.

Do we have a defense other than reverting? (Might be impossible to keep up with a bot.)

If not, perhaps we should think abut it now. Anjouli 14:40, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I guess the first line of defense would be to ban the IP of the bot. Then individually reverting the pages. This would only work if the bot attack isn't the massive type (one coming from various different IPs). --seav 16:55, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

See wikipedia:replies Martin

In the event of something serious, a developer could put the wiki into read only mode, and if there are no developers around, there are a number of contributors here with a list of their phone numbers to inform them of an emergency situation. Angela 20:22, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Presumably the database is checkpointed at regular intervals, and one could roll back to a checkpoint. orthogonal 22:43, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, wikipedia:replies covers it pretty well. Sorry, I had not seen that. But roll-back and IP blocking responses have their limitations. Roll-back can undo contributions and IP blocking has not worked at all for spam mail. I was thinking of something more like an antispambot that searched WP (presumably by following links, if full-text search were still off) and automatically edited pages to remove known spam text. Probably best run on the local server for speed, although could be run from anywhere. Such a bot could probably be written so that apart from the speed, it would appear no different from a human editor. Anyone see a downside? Anjouli 13:27, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I can see downsides, I'm afraid. The nightmare scenario has not arrived yet ... spammers can send gajillions of emails per day... relatively few people would notice Wikipedia spam relative to this email deluge... so for the forseeable future it won't be a sensible option for spammers. This means that the development time, and our developers have limited time, would be sucked up into a project with no short-term gains. Also the spam-detection would be HARD - look at the anti-spam filter solutions out there trying to outwit spammers and still spam gets through.. an antispam bot hacked in-house is unlikely to fair better. Thirdly such a bot would suck server system resources up. I guess the nightmate scenario is not such a spammer but a vandal bot which could hop across IP addresses. Pete 00:34, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree that WP is not a (yet) prime target, which has perhaps protected us. I do not think that such an antispambot would be hard to write. I am pretty sure I could write one myself without too much trouble - which frees us from the "developer's limited time" problem. And if remotely run, I do not see how it would suck up resources any more than removing such spam manually. Anjouli 09:41, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Votes for deletion page

moved to Wikipedia_talk:Votes for deletion

Ackermann function

moved to Wikipedia:Peer Review

Equals signs in headings don't work

See User_talk:SGBailey.

Known bug. --Brion 14:03, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Egyptopedia

Hello all,
I'm Aoineko from the French Wikipedia.
I started a new project on MetaWikipedia named Egyptopedia. This project goal is to coordinate Egyptology projects of all Wikipedia. If some of you are interest in, please contact me.

My discussion page on fr (English, français or 日本語): http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_Utilisateur:Aoineko
To participate in Egyptopedia: m:Egyptopedia
To discuss about Egyptopedia: m:Talk:Egyptopedia

Thanks, Aoineko

Test Wiki developer

Who exactly is this "Dev" guy at Test Wiki? He apparently possesses real sysop power like page-protection and deletion, and he seems territorial: [11] (Tim Sterling's talk page) Judging from his contri-list, he just fools around there practically everyday doing "tests/non-sense". Is this the alter ego/incarnation of some developer? It is sort of freaky when you think about it, seeing how he basically lives here for no purposes other than play like a child. And I don't mean X-File-cool-freaky. I'm curious, no insults intended (I haven't spent much time, but that's my impression). --Menchi 10:32, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Have a read of the test wiki's main page Pete 11:10, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Dev is just an account that I set up so that anyone could test sysop-only features like rollback and deletion. Someone was using it for trolling: writing silly messages on the test wiki main page and elsewhere, deleting people's user pages, etc. So I blocked the whole class B subnet :) -- Tim Starling 13:52, Nov 25, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia Quality Assessment

I've done a Wikipedia Quality Assessment. Kokiri 18:32, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

An interesting read Kokiri. Thanks for taking the time to do that. More non-text media is probably something no-one is going to argue about. The other most major point you raise is the stubs issue. Stubs that _can_ grow but just haven't been written yet are great IMO. I am one (surely not) who gripes about stubs that _can not_ really grow because their domain is too small.. I think the needs of an encyclopedia reader would be better served by fewer, but longer, articles than the current trend as a point of 'policy' (meant in a vague sense!)... especially since we can redirect pages to particular parts of other pages using the [[...#...]] syntax. NB I am aware the wiki is not paper and that we don't necessarily want to slavishly copy Britannica. Now someone can show me where this issue has been raised ten times before! Pete 22:22, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I note that when this topic was added to the pump it was not only without a heading (which was easily corrected) but was also marked as a minor edit (which I can't fix). So this edit is partly to bring the article to the attention of others who might have missed it because of this.

While I'm at it though, I'm not completely convinced of the methodology. My first impression is that there seem to be a lot of assumptions which the data itself contradicts. Is Peter III of Portugal really a stub, for example? It's marked as one now, possibly because of this survey. But what extra information should be added? I notice you say that Britannica has a short article. Is it significantly more complete than this one? It seems to me that this might be a classical case of an article that we want to keep despite its being very short.

If there's a problem with this article, it's that there seems to be some sort of battle over his name, Peter or Pedro. Andrewa 03:17, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I've now reworked the Peter III of Portugal article on the assumption that it's essentially complete. I think it is. I'd now like to remove the stub warning, which I see you put there yourself, Kokiri.

But I have added very little information, and what I have added is entirely duplicated in other articles that were already directly linked to from this one. I've just rephrased things. Andrewa 08:48, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Firstly, apologies for marking this as a minor edit. Secondly, I have mentioned in the introduction of the test that I don't consider it a good one myself. For example, as you might have noticed, I compiled the data rather quickly. As for the Peter III article, Britannica doesn't have more on him and I have removed the stub alert now. Please feel free to edit the assessment I've done (isn't this Wikipedia?). Maybe one day I'll do another one where I take more time. Kokiri 11:34, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Very nicely done. It is very easy to read. And wonderfully interesting. I have often been disappointed and frustrated at the frequency of Rambot articles that come up when using the Random function. Sometimes I get three in a row.

I wonder if you could try the assessment again someday utilizing a different way to obtain your data. Rather than use the Random page feature, maybe you could ask a small sample of people to list specific things they would be interested in reading about. Afterall, wikipedia serves human readers, not Randomizers :) Kingturtle 10:46, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I've been thinking about the Peter III issue coming out of my attempt to assess Wikipedia's quality of the articles. My feeling is that many stubs shouldn't exist as there just isn't enough for an entry. However, there are stubs we want to keep, just like the Peter III of Portugal. What about having a boilerplate text such as Mini Article to show that this article may be very short, but it's sort of finished (as finished as a Wikipedia article gets)? After all, Britannica does have very short qarticles too. Kokiri 09:50, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent idea, Kokiri. Stubs can be divided into 3 types: delete because of no real value, potential long articles, and whole short articles (non-stubs). A way of marking this last group so that they do not clutter up Wikipedia:Cleanup and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion would be a good thing. Bmills 09:59, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Please answer!

How can you figure out who wrote the articles?

Natacha Rambova

Why is Wikipedia's entry on Natacha Rambova filled with so many errors? I am the biographer of Natacha Rambova. Read MADAM VALENTINO: THE MANY LIVES OF NATACHA RAMBOVA (Abbeville Press 1991) if you want the truth. Michael Morris

If you feel that there are errors, you should feel free to correct them. The information that is there was entered by other editors like you. Dori | Talk 05:06, Nov 30, 2003 (UTC)

That is to say, just click here, Mr. Morris, and correct away. ScareQuotes

Redirect

I don't think redirect Mr. Bush to George W. Bush is a good idea... --Yacht 02:21, Nov 29, 2003 (UTC)

Who would ever use that link?!?! There's no absolutely pages w/ that wikilink! Where did that person get this ridiculous idea? --Menchi 02:31, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It was created by Michael who is a banned user, so I deleted it. Angela 02:56, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)

And rightly so. Would that all life's problems were so easily solved. Andrewa 09:09, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Are copyright expired encylopedias suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia?

Why or why not? Has anyone worked on an automated tool to do an import?

Quick reference on server status

The database server / web server for the other wikis ("pliny") is online
- Motherboard and CPUs have been replaced (2003-10-14), which hopefully will eliminate the frequent crashes we've had
The regular webserver for the English-language Wikipedia ("larousse") is online.
- Back online 2003-10-14, running on older, slower processor temporarily
- Faster processors and memory are being tested now (2003-10-17) and should be put back in soon if all is well
- 3 December -- The new database server is now online

Trolling below the radar

Take a look at Special:Contributions/66.157.94.151 some seem legitimate, but some seem suspicious, but I cannot confirm as inaccurate. I reverted the Michael Jackson one which seem an outright troll. This seems to be the biggest danger to the Wikipedia. This kind of vandalism can go unnoticed, because it is not possible to tell at first sight whether something is accurate or not if it is written in a certain manner. Have you guys run across the more sophisticated vandals? Dori 17:25, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

On a second though, after JeLuF's investigations, it seems that this user's edits may be legitimate, but the points about under the radar trolls remains. Dori 17:30, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

A quick look at Special:Contributions/66.157.94.151 makes it clear that this user is Easter Bradford or an EasterBradford sock-puppet or supporter, so misuse of Wikipedia is no surprise. Can you enumerate what else you find suspicious, Dori? And what did JeLuF determine? orthogonal 17:33, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I checked the facts that were added to Michael Jackson, Dorothy Parker, Eminem and Spike Lee using http://news.google.com . All edits were backed up by news articles. -- JeLuF 17:39, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Which does create some credibility. The problem is, that might be the whole reason for them. Wikilove is blind. It's a very complex issue. Andrewa 14:19, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I see no clearly-defined dividing line between trolling and POV. At one end there is deliberate vandalism and at the other there are contributions with perhaps just a very slight bias. Somewhere in the middle is the grey area where most discussion page arguments take place.

The most subtle problem is an article or section that contains nothing but a few negative statements on a subject. Such statements may be obscure but verifiable facts, but on their own can give an article a complete bias.

A recent example is an addition on "Saudi Culture" which said only that Saudi Arabia banned the burial of non-Moslems (untrue)and the practice of other religions (partly true - non-Islamic religious ceremonies are only permitted in private). Even if true, this is hardly a sound representation of "Saudi Culture" and not of much use to a schoolchild doing a project on the subject. What about camels, tents, songs, stories, carpets, desert-life, legends, musical instruments and so forth?

Do we need "balance police"? Anjouli 06:55, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't talking about POV or cases where editors really believe what they are adding is true. I am talking about cases where vandals pick an obscure topic and make remarks that are not true, but not easily verifiable. Thus they slip through until someone else takes an interest in that topic and discovers the "blatant" vandalism. Dori | Talk 20:54, Nov 29, 2003 (UTC)

Wrong contribution dates

I just discovered that officially my first contribution was moving Brutus to Marcus Junius Brutus in Augus 23, 2002. Neat. Problem is that i did it yesterday! Is there something wrong in the kingdom of Wikipedia? Muriel Victoria 10:51, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, moving will cause weird time travelling events. I thought the bug's fixed. It was mentioned in the Pump a while back. --Menchi 10:54, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm assuming that Marcus Junius Brutus already existed a redirect to Brutus? If so, that's a known but minor bug. If not, that's something new and existing. --Brion 21:36, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Actually i dont remenber... But i think that if MJB already existed, then i couldnt have make the move of Brutus to there. Or could I? Muriel Victoria 11:23, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Time traveling in wiki... Hummm. What are the philosophical repercussions? Michael was a vandal before he was born?... Current events are being posted before they actually happen? The list is endless. Muriel

Bugs -> wikipedia:bug reports

Watchlist

How can I move my watchlist from one account to another account? --Yacht 02:58, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

I don't think it is possible to do using the current software. You might view the list on the first account, open another window and login using the other account, open a new window for each entry and click Watch this page (from the new account). This should be easier with a tabbed browser. Another alternative is to save the links to one of your user pages, and then click Related changes from that page (or create a link [[Special:Recentchangeslinked/page_containing_links]] Dori 03:08, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Changing username, maybe that's what you need. I think maybe when you merge, the watchlists merge as well. I never merged, not sure. --Menchi 03:32, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thanks. BTW, how long will the User contributions be kept? can I check out one's contribution 2 years ago? --Yacht 03:14, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

Forever I think, just set the maximum limit to 9999999 or something. --Menchi 03:32, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Where to set that? --Yacht 04:10, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

In http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=Dori&limit=20&offset=0 , change limit=20 to limit=999999 . --Menchi 06:14, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You really don't want to do that; some accounts have tens of thousands of edits. --Brion 06:20, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Maybe a "show edits from January 2001 to March 2001" feature could be handy. I don't think currently we could just zoom back to see contri-list 2 years ago without also getting the ones before that. Could we? --Menchi 06:23, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

no need for 2 years, but the default setting of 1hours really upsets me, 'cause i have to click the 7days every time when i check out my watchlist. --Yacht 08:49, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

sorry, i missed the point, i thought you were talking about the watchlist... --Yacht 08:54, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

Database corruption?

In Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (slogans), (Revision as of 15:26, 16 Aug 2003) The following header (h3) string (emphasis mine) :

3iyZiyA7iMwg5rhxP0Dcc9oTnj8qD1jm1Sfv4 ?

replaces the header (h3) string (emphasis mine):

Because the worldwide spread of AIDS has had such a tragic effect on millions of ... ?

in the previous revision of (Revision as of 16:11, 7 Aug 2003)

In revision as of 15:26, 16 Aug 2003, the same nonsense string also replaces a portion of a comment by Jtdirl.

NEITHER CHANGE IS REFLECTED IN THE VISUAL DIFF.

In the revision as of 16:11, 7 Aug 2003, Jtdirl's comment seems corrupted as well but with a different replacement string (emphasis mine):

As the defining characteristic of slogans is that they are slogans, it seems logical to state that they are slogans up front, in the form ...ng sexual intercourse with a virgin will cure AIDS has gained considerable notoriety. This myth has... . Drawing links to books, films etc is irrelevant. Books & films etc are real, existing items. A slogan is a propagandistic statement. Quoting them without calling them a slogan is POV because it can be seen in the manner of the title's use that you are endorsing the slogan. Calling it a slogan makes it clear that you are not endorsing it, merely stating it, hence the need to use the word. The defining characteristic is that it is a slogan, therefore it is logical that that word is stated first. Readers should not immediately that they are dealing with a slogan. There is always a danger that in a long slogan, on a google search the slogan qualification might not be seen, but cut off at the end. So the fact that it is a slogan should be stated at the begining where it cannot be lost or cut off. I propose this methodology. Jtdirl

The "3iyZiyA7iMwg5rhxP0Dcc9oTnj8qD1jm1Sfv4", in both the header and Jtdirl's comment, persists (is faithfully copied) to the current revision.

orthogonal 05:55, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's a parsing/rendering error and does not indicate any sort of problem with the database. A number of things, such as <pre> tags, <math> sections, and <nowiki> text, store chunks of source text outside for different processing and then replace the placeholder string after the regular wiki parsing is complete. Sometimes when things are incorrectly nested, a placeholder is duplicated and shows up incorrectly in the output.

The culprit here was "=== <nowiki>[[slogan 'X']] or [[X (slogan)]]</nowiki> ? ==="; a <nowiki> inside a section heading is guaranteed to get messed up. Don't do it. --Brion 06:09, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Red link

When I go into the lobster article, American lobster shows up as a red link. But when I click on it, the redirect is already in place. Same problem clicking Pakistan Air Force from Islamabad International Airport. I've tried logging out and using a different browser. - Hephaestos 10:06, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Alas, it looks like the new experimental persistent link caching suffers the same fate as the last similar attempt and isn't getting updated correctly. It's now disabled pending further testing. Force a reload of the page, it should appear correctly. --Brion 10:13, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Is this related to a problem with the WhatLinksHere I just found - I changed several links to ATP to their correct disambiguated target, however the pages still show in the WhatLinksHere? I just reported that bug on SourceForge... andy 10:25, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

And another missing link oddity - I just uploaded a picture which in it's image description page says that no pages use it - but it is used and displayed quite fine - see the coat of arms of Nordvorpommern. andy 22:56, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Okay, tracked that one down. Should be fixed now (though similar cases will be scattered throughout the databases; as linking pages get editing this will right itself). --Brion 00:16, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Moving page to redirect without history

Brunswick is a redirect with no history. Why am I not able to move Brunswick, Germany there? - Sandman 10:55, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's a redirect to a different page. --Brion 10:57, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Interesting, I didn't know about this limitation - Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page not only doesn't mention it, but describes a procedure for swapping two pages that is made impossible by it. - Sandman 16:37, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You may want to fix the manual then... :) Martin

Given the number of things listed in Brunswick (redirect to a disambiguation page), I would not swap it with Brunswick, Germany. The last link is more specific. At18 11:10, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Redirect page

Should we list the redirect pages which redirect to non-existing page on the VfD? --Yacht 09:15, Nov 25, 2003 (UTC)

No, please list them on Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion. Angela

Is this allowed? See: Karkikailash --Yacht 09:27, Nov 25, 2003 (UTC)

It's not not allowed. If the redirects are old they are usually kept (not wishing to break links and all that). If they are new (like in the last few days), then normally the user would be told and then the redirect deleted in a day or two, which is what I expect will happen with this one. Angela 10:03, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Sandbox history

Is it crucial that we keep the edit history of Wikipedia:Sandbox? Because if so, there are 6055 deleted edits under Raqs al sharqi. - Hephaestos 07:57, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The edit history of the sandbox is wrong anyway as it has more than once been moved to another page and not all moved back. When Raqs al sharqi was deleted, the sandbox still contained some history, so not all had moved to the Raqs al sharqi page. The current sandbox has 1154 edits, some dating to before it was moved. Personally, I don't think it is worth trying to restore 6000 edits, though if someone can think of a use for it then they could merged back. Angela 08:25, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

IMO the whole concept of the Sandbox is that this history is expendable. Andrewa 08:52, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't see why it would be needed, but I also see no reason to get rid of it on purpose. It's probably fine as it is. Dori | Talk 20:50, Nov 29, 2003 (UTC)

Declaring outside interests?

I am doing some editing on Good News Translation and American Bible Society. In the past, I have donated to the American Bible Society. Should I declare this fact on the talk pages for each article and/or my user page so that other Wikipedians (and general users) don't get the idea that my edits are biased because I have donated to the ABS? --hoshie 08:22, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about it unless a controversy comes up. There's plenty of people here with outside interests, many much more "conflict of interest"-like than the one you cite. It's always good to look for your own biases though and try to make sure they're not showing through in the article. --Delirium 08:44, Nov 26, 2003 (UTC)

Sounds like a good and ethical example to set. I know that many people think of Christians as bad people without morals, so I think it's especially appropriate for you to challenge these prevailing stereotypes. Perhaps you'll be known "The Good Christian", and who knows, maybe we can hope that sometime in the future only academics will remember the original, negative connotation of "Christian", and that the word "Christian" primarily will make people think of "The Good Christian" instead, the one person who did the right thing when all others, with better reputations, did nothing or did evil. Oh, wait, never mind, that's "Samaritan" and "Good Samaritan" I'm thinking of. Still, it sets a good example to reveal your biases. orthogonal 09:18, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I would judge a NPOV by what you write, not by anything else. But it is always interesting to know who people are. Anjouli 09:52, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

19th century (and earlier) art

"Accurate photographs of paintings lack expressive content and are automatically in the public domain once the painting's copyright has expired (95 years after initial publication). All other copyright notices can safely be ignored." Public_domain_image_resources
Am I correct in reading that as meaning that any jpg, gif, etc. of a painting first produced in 1908 or earlier found on the web can be safely appropriated for use here? Or do we need to be more subtle about it? Guidelines? (This is specifically in connection with the discussion at m:Talk:Egyptopedia. –Hjr 17:59, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If the scanning guy in addition done some graphic manipulation on it, then the image's copyright magically becomes his. Does such graphic manipulation include resize and highlight?! I dunno. --Menchi 01:52, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

OK, thanks for taking the time to answer. Definite grey area, then; I'll hold back. –Hjr 17:28, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

There is one thing that you could do, if you want: if the image does not have digital watermark (I'm not sure how to check it), you could crop/resize/enhance it yourself so that it is not identical to the original image, and it could not be proven whether you or someone else scanned it. If you then post it to Wikipedia claiming that you have the copyright, it is not illegal for Wikipedia to use the image, only for you. Nikola 18:06, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hmmm... interesting. But it's still not entirely kosher, is it? Let's try a different tack: what's the legal position of scanning in 19th C. art from late-20th C. books (books which have the "No part of this publication may in any way be reproduced... etc., etc." blurb in the front)? Still a grey area? –Hjr 01:51, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikiedia: Article name discussions?

Is there a place in wikipedia where dialogs take place involving suggestions for renaming articles that already exist? Kingturtle 20:15, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Only the talk page of the article in question, AFAIK. Pete 22:11, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Start there. If, however, you have the conviction that the present name is really just not the right one, then move the page to the new name and keep the old article as a Redirect. You may need to go in and fix all the links on the Reduirect Page. Also check the page history first to make sure you are not changing a name to something that it was before and moved away from for an equally (to yours) valid reason. In that case you really do need to make your arguments on the Talk page. - Marshman 22:35, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Also try wikipedia talk:naming conventions, for broader issues. Martin 23:01, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Image Bug?

I just noticed that this image: Image:Closeuppineneedlessm.jpg lists only leaf as where it is presently used, but that is just the last place I placed it. It is still used at spruce and Pinophyta, perhaps elsewhere in Wikipedia. Is this a bug or justy a consequence of the wiki being spread over two servers? - Marshman 23:40, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Same here: See Image:NEO_sulaiman_small.jpg which thinks it isn't being used anywhere, but Sulaiman Mountains shows it. --snoyes 23:49, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This bug was fixed yesterday. When the pages that use the image are next edited, the links should be re-recorded. (We'll rebuild the whole link table at some point in the near future once we think we've got most of these fixed.) --Brion 01:23, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Excellent! thanks. snoyes 01:55, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Cool. Can't wait for the new server to be up a running. And thanks Brion. - Marshman

Disclaimer needed on main page?

RickK recently expressed concern that WP may be liable if someone followed a herbal remedy that had been posted and got poisoned.

I went to look at the disclaimer on the main page and was surprised to find that there isn't one - unless you count GNU Free Documentation License via Wikipedia:About

Should we have one? Anjouli 08:36, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Anyone who takes a berbal remedy they find on the internet deserves to get poisoned. Adam 12:55, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If this is really necessary, put one on the page with the herbal remedy. -- Viajero 10:27, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think that has already been done. I meant something more general to protect against future postings. Safer than trying to police everything and post warnings after the fact. Anjouli 10:58, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

We have Wikipedia:Content disclaimer, which IIRC correctly makes specific mention that we don't give medical or legical advice. There is also Wikipedia:General disclaimer. There was definitely discussion here on the pump about where these pages should be linked from... at the moment Wikipedia:About links to the content disclaimer but only in the context of us using rude words rather than medical/legal contexts. There was a chorus of disapproval about putting it in a prominent place on the main page (which happened for a couple of days). A less prominent place on that page would've been "consenus-ok" IIRC. However given that most visitors will "parachute in" to a particular article rather than visiting the main page whether much is gained by this, I don't know. Pete 11:20, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Well I must admit I was specifically looking for a disclaimer and failed entirely to find Wikipedia:Content disclaimer, which must prove something - if only that I'm a silly old bat. My concern is protection of WP against malicious litigation which could wreck the whole thing.Are we unwisely exposed? Can somebody with legal qualifications please advise? Anjouli 11:52, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I suppose a general disclaimer would have to apply not just to herbal remedies but to other potentially hazardous uses of Wiki information. For example, there was a (sort of) dislaimer on the nitroglycerin page, which read The making of nitroglycerin is obviously potentially very dangerous, because of the product's explosive nature. Do not attempt to make it yourself! - so I have now strengthened it by adding a link to Wikipedia:Risk disclaimer -- Gandalf61 16:07, Nov 27, 2003 (UTC)

Declaring interests again

I also have a potential conflict of interests I'd like advice on. I was scanning List of English language poets for red links, looking for articles I'd like to write. I found one that has been there for seven months (long before I started wiki'ing) that I'd very mucg like to write and that I think would be worth having. Problem is, the poet in question is a friend of mine. Should I go ahead or leave it for someone else to do? Bmills 09:53, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I would give it a try if I was you. You may have better insight than most. If you are not impartial, somebody will soon edit it. Anjouli 11:58, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't see why there is any reason why it would be impartial to list just the biographical facts. Someone else can add qualitative aspects. -- Viajero 12:01, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll think about it for a day or two and see what I can do that avoids judgements but isn't a stub. Bmills 12:09, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If someone else has listed this person as a poet but failed to write even a stub, I think you're still on good ground. It's a shame they didn't create the stub and an excellent example of why stubs are helpful.

IMO this is an excellent chance to get important and accurate information perhaps not available elsewhere. We should grab it. But certainly, be conservative regarding assessment of their work. Others will add this. As to listing their major publications to date, do!

Check the article with the person by all means, but remember it's your contribution, not theirs. You understand what Wikipedia is and isn't. They might not. So as to the accuracy and completeness, get their OK. As to what goes in and how it is phrased, you may need to be firm. Good luck. Andrewa 01:07, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Article now at Tom Raworth. I did not talk with him and kept it very short and factual. I may come back to it again. Thanks for all the advice, and I'd appreciate any suggestions for improvement. Bmills 09:42, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

New Messages

deleted, see wikipedia:bug reports

links

Why do I occassionally see internal links that are brown and without underline? Kingturtle 23:22, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

stubs - you can set in your preferences to highlight stubs below a certain size. Secretlondon 23:26, Nov 27, 2003 (UTC)

Is there any consensus on a sensible value for this preference? I've set it at 250 and haven't actually spotted any yet. Phil 13:43, Nov 28, 2003 (UTC)

The problem is that a stub with boilerplate is nearly always bigger then 250 - the complete stub notice has 130 bytes by itself. But of course those stubs can be found using the WhatLinksHere list of the stub article. I personally have the threshold set to 200, and I did find several vandalized pages otherwise lost that way already. And I found stubs without the stub boilerplate as well :-) andy 14:05, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

For reference Andy, your comment is 206 bytes long so would be not be a stub by your standards. I set mine to 2000, but I think I probably use it in a different way to most people... basically as a minimum guard when I start a new article... if I can't write 2000 bytes then I don't enough about the topic. Pete/Pcb21 14:16, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The only sensible setting is 0 (which turns it off; this should be the default setting). "Stubs" are a qualitative designation, not one of size, so the 'stub threshold' is not so useful as it sounds. --Brion 23:49, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Organization of biographies

When reading biographies of individuals, I find that the introduction part is chronologically organized rather than being organized by their importance. A case in point is Eduard Shevardnadze. I would normally expect people to know him as a former President of Georgia first, and then as a former foreign minister of the erstwhile Soviet Union. The article prefers to introduce him in the reverse order. Is it a convention in wikipedia to follow this methodology or is it upto the editors? Left to me, I would change the order, but I find simply too many articles like this, and I thought I would ask first.

I tried to find the answer in Wikipedia biography style guides. But, I found no specific answer. chance 06:22, Nov 28, 2003 (UTC)

Left up to editors, not least because "importance" is subjective; for instance, some would argue that Shevardnadze was more important as foreign minister of the SU than as president of a small country. Also note that sometimes it works better to list the most important notability last in a paragraph, because you can make it stand out more - a sort of mini-conclusion. Read it out loud both ways before deciding. Stan 08:22, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

What you describe is not limited to biographies, but very common in the natural sciences where I like to work. Lots of "good" facts added over time with no thought to any logical arrangement/organizatioon. But that is how this place works for a lot of people: "Hey, I have a factoiid, I'll go add it to Wikipedia!" IMHO that is just fine. My forte is to go into those articles and do the organizing; I love it, especially if I'm confronted with numerous interesting factoids. It is called copyediting, and a valid persuit that many spend their time here doing. Great system in my opinion; not a short-coming - Marshman 21:02, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

articles are getting sloppy

The first paragraph of a biographical entry should always mention birth and death years, nationality, and brief descriptions of three or for of that person's most important accomplishments. If the person is still alive, the first sentence should say what that person is (in terms of position, occupation, etc.)

It is getting a bit frustrating seeing biographical articles that don't help the naive reader along.

The most important bits should be in the forefront. As you write, don't assume the reader knows the topic at hand. Kingturtle 19:32, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) for this and similar hints. There are also links to and from Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography. As to putting yourself in the readers' place, that's really good advice, but not always easy. It's a skill that can be learned IMO and all serious Wikipedians should try.

On the other hand, IMO we'll always have some sloppiness in the 'base' Wikipedia. This slop-friendliness is part of its charm and strength, and part of the reason I'd like a sifter project. Andrewa 20:07, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Sloppiness may well always be with us, but one thing I've noticed about biographical articles a tendency to have a selection of random facts (information) added in no particular order over a period of time with no real attempt to arrange them in a way that illuminates the importance of the person in question (knowledge) which comes back to a discussion I've seen here a few times on the privileging of process over product in the Wikipedia experience. Would love to know what the answer is, especially as I seem to have been engaged mostly on biographical articles myself and may well be one of the sloppy ones referred to. Bmills 12:20, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Please answer!

How can you figure out who wrote the articles?

Click on "page history" along the bottom of the screen. --Jiang

Could someone do me a favour?

I added a picture to Hendrick Goltzius, but it's too large in more sense than one. Could someone please turn it into a 35,000 bytes picture? Mrdice 18:58, 2003 Dec 4 (UTC)

Done. I resized it to 350px width, which is still acceptable as per Wikipedia:Image use policy. --snoyes 21:02, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The Zirbaghali- goblet drum of Afghanistan

I'm trying to find information on the making of this drum, particularly in regard to the skins i.e., the animals they may come from, choosing the proper part of the hide, the curing of the hide, and what possible blemishes are to be avoided in deciding what part of the skin to use? Also, if an improper part IS used, what are the possible effects in sound?

Muggles

Muggles brings the following response from the WP SQL server:

"Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /usr/local/apache/common/php/OutputPage.php:258) in /usr/local/apache/common/php/OutputPage.php on line 201"

May be temporary, but it's been doing that for over an hour now, and everything else seems fine. Corrupt record? Anjouli 07:57, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

CVS Blame

Is it possible to do a 'CVS Blame' on an article? Jahs 17:39, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Made a mistake moving a page

I happened upon Oswiecim while random-paging around, and tried to move it to the accented [[Oświęcim]]. In the process something blew up, though; the article got moved to [[OÅ›wiÄ™cim]] instead and now when I try going there to move it back Wikipedia thinks the link leads to O instead. I pasted the text of the article to Talk:Oswiecim just in case I've done something horrible and unrecoverable. Has anyone got suggestions on how I can fix this? Bryan 08:00, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Update: The text I copied and pasted has been restored to Oswiecim, but the edit history is still gone so I still want to move the original article back if possible. Bryan 08:03, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I've restored the page history revisions to Oswiecim. Clear your cache if you don't see the additional entries in the history right away. --Brion

Hi, the problem you experienced is related to the Unicode UTF-8 encoding, or lack thereof - it's needed to handle some characters that are not found in the traditional Latin alphabet, and the English wikipedia is not using it (it's on iso-8859-1 instead). So I guess that the wiki will have problems handling those characters. Moreover, some browsers handle UTF8 correctly, others translate them into HTML entities, others leave them alone, others don't know what to do with them. I'm not sure if the problem is the browser or the fact that certain characters in the title are not allowed at all. Alfio 10:14, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The problem is that this wiki (and several of the other european languages) are not set up for UTF-8 internally, but interpret non-latin1 character entities as UTF-8 for generating outgoing links to the rest of the languages. When you try to put these characters on an internal link, the wiki gets very confused. Just use Latin-1 for now here; it'll get moved to full working UTF-8 at some point once we get some more 'armor' code against problem browsers that don't support it well. --Brion 10:42, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia a suitable place for constructing knowledge?

Though Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopaedia, would it be appropriate for researchers in a set of overlapping fields to use it for collating fragmentary information - that is, for *constructing* knowledge rather than for *referencing* knowledge?

My example: I recently discussed setting up a collaborative Wiki for early modern historians to collate information about minor personages in Quattrocento Northern Italy. This kind of information is normally extremely fragmentary, strewn carelessly (by the winds of time) across multiple sources of varying reliability and accessibility - diaries, letters, footnotes, etc. Collaboration would help the community of early modern historians bring together these shards of knowledge into a more complete whole.

However, while this would satisfy some of Wikipedia's objectives and match its collaborative methodology, it would also implicitly contain a content mismatch (typically book references rather than URLs), while also relying on internal completeness to be useful (rather than on summaries plus links).

True, I could easily host it on one of my own (personal) mini-Wikis... but building it directly into Wikipedia would seem to be an inherently better approach. I'm really in two minds about this - what do you think?

Nick Pelling --Nickpelling 11:55, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Constructing existing knowledge, sure, Wikipedia is collaborative. Just as long as an article looks relatively presentable if someone was to come across it, it should be okay. But constructing new knowledge, probably not, you may want to check Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. Thanks Dysprosia 12:00, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

My instant reaction is that you should use your personal mini-wiki to build the content, then pipe it through into Wikipedia in a controlled fashion. You could include links back to the originating mini-wiki for anyone who wanted to see the process, or contribute further. This would localise the traffic and relieve the main Wikipedia site of some pressure. YMMV. Phil 12:03, Nov 28, 2003 (UTC)

An interesting question that lines right on the border between two of our current practices. We routinely sift through sources, often biased and/or inaccurate media sources to try to build an accurate and balanced article. In this sense we do gather primary sources together into a secondary source article. However Wikipedia is emphatically not a repositry for original research. I think the main driver for this is that many of the people who've tried to add original research have been of the crankish/crackpotty type that frequent many of the sci.* hierachy newsgroups. Your plan - to gather together very primary and fragmented sources into a coherent article is on a border line. My feeling is that other encyclopedias don't do this "close-to-the-knuckle" sourcing - they probably coallate secondary sources. However if you achieved your goals I am sure it would be very valuable addition to Wikipedia so would hope that the rules could be interpreted to accommodate you as you piece together Quattrocento Northern Italy. Interested in other opinions.... Pete 12:36, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If a Wikipedia article can present a primary source then that is excellent providing that primary source has been subject to academic peer review and ideally other similiar studies have been done. The issue with a primary source is whether it can be considered reliable. I'm struggling with the Dolphin brain article because it is cutting edge stuff, which has a lot of controversy around it, and the lack of reliable primary sources to fill in all the sections. Looking on the internet there does not seeem to be an article that has carefully considered the existing evidence in the way we are now trying to do. Wikipedia can provide a real service by tackling such controversial issues in a sensible non-partizan way. : ChrisG 16:40, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Walk away; WALK A-WAY! :-) Seriously, Wikipedia can't be its own authority on anything; otherwise the crackpots will take over. If you're struggling with contradictory primary sources, that's a sign that your subject is not yet ready for a WP article; wait for the book or review article to come out, and work from that. You might have to wait a while, but WP isn't going anywhere, and it isn't a science news magazine anyway. There are thousands of topics for which the research is settled, and that WP needs in order to be a good encyclopedia; by the time those are done, current controversies will likely have have been resolved by the experts. Stan 17:17, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thank you all for your feedback - I held back from adding any pages for precisely the kinds of reason given. However, does anyone know of any existing larger-scale Wikis out there which try to act as a genuinely open and collaborative forum for (what one might call) the "social construction of new knowledge"? I take Phil Boswell's point that it might be a good thing to build in a cross-reference to related Wikipedia articles... though where one should begin and the other should end might be hard to judge in practice.

I suppose what I'm talking about is a kind of "Wikipository"... any suggestions? Nick Pelling --Nickpelling 19:16, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)~~

I'm not sure its a 100% fit, but http://sources.wikipedia.org/ should be a good place to start such a project. --snoyes 19:22, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Project Sourceberg, eh? I suppose what I'm describing does amount to collaboratively constructing a primary source... unfortunately, while the French/German/Nihongo versions are all running OK, the English appears to be crashing ATM (perhaps because of a recent server move?) I'll keep trying though... thanks! --Nickpelling 23:12, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)~~

This query could be summarized to the FAQ page -- Tarquin 13:22, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

VfD Interpretation?

Unstubbing a stub

Re-emerging debates

Blank maps

Short stories

Google Indexing Update

AIDS

Signing different name

Revert a page: How?

Google/Wikipedia search engine problems

Longest article title?

Wikipedia logo policy

Recording Wikipedia Content

Inline external links

Nupedia

WikiProject Chemistry

Wikipedia:Perfect stub article

Revertion wars

Authors

"SHYSTER"- ethnic slur?

Diff inconsistency

Copyvio?

Image copyright

Israel security wall

"Dear Readers"

Automatically generated logs

Wikipedia Application Program

Redirect to headers not allowed?

Compass on Canadian Cities, can it be made dynamic

changing username

TODO - FIXME - IN PROGRESS, etc

Occitan wiki

Probably not famous people

Authors and their copyrights

How to delete previously uplodaed file?

How to delete previously uplodaed file?

brown links

Please merge Wikipedia talk:problem users

Page Stats

Meaning of a proverb

Database error when doing a move

Equals signs in headings don't work

Editing other people's remarks in discussion pages

Equals signs in headings don't work

51 Pegasi

Votes for deletion page

Votes for deletion page

Overtype mode

Probably not famous people

Year pages, calendar designation of

Looking for recent events

Diff too whitespace insensitive

TeX / Math markup rendering problems

Scouring for (ab)use of wikipedia content

POV in Dune?

Access to /w/wiki.phtml is denied?

Show new changes starting from:

The Google Test

Ackermann function

New Messages

New Messages

The problem with not being able to get rid of the "You have new messages" message is back

Simon Crean

See also: and see also; and see also; and so forth...

List of fictional characters

Image attribution / sig

Category-tag

Error worth fixing

How is that minor?

Liu Bang Han Dynasty

About copyvios

brown links

Editing other people's remarks in discussion pages

How to delete previously uploaded file?

Page Stats

Representing the phenomenal Wikipedian growth. Ideas?

Target audience

Wikipedia's first Typo Correction Day

Undeletion

Film

Is Wikipedia a suitable place for constructing knowledge?