Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues. Bugs and feature requests should be made at BugZilla since there is no guarantee developers will read this page.

FAQ: Intermittent database lags can make new articles take some minutes to appear, and cause the watchlist, contributions, and page history/old views sometimes not show the very latest changes. This is an ongoing issue we are working on.

Details about the occasional slow speeds and deadlock errors: here

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Spurious article in a category and search

The category listing for Category:Stub contains an entry for [[Katz%27s Deli]]. This article is also listed in searches.[1] In both cases, though, the links point to Katz's Deli which is not a member of the Category:Stub category. Any thoughts? Susvolans (pigs can fly) 12:32, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

I tried adding the article to Category:stub and removing it, which didn't seem to help. It might take a developer to fix this. -- Rick Block 22:15, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Could the article be copied, deleted, and then recreated? Or would the problem be re-animated along with the article? Joyous 23:32, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

This is due to an old page title bug which allowed certain inaccessible titles to be created (but then you couldn't get to them again). I've renamed it to Katz's Deli (broken title); move, delete it or otherwise as appropriate. --Brion 10:19, May 14, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for fixing it. I deleted the page. It's also at Katz's Deli. - User:Docu

Brion, I'm not sure how you did this :-), but the following articles all appear to have the same type of problem, so if you could fix them too, it would be greatly appreciated!:

• • The Three Musketeers (1993)
  • Water Music (Handel)
  • FWAK

RussBlau 18:17, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

There is also an article called Ris%F8 that duplicates Risø. It can be seen in a search]. I can't get at it. Is there a generic solution for this problem? Bobblewik  (talk) 10:22, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Did something happen to category sorts?

I've been using pipes to coerce the sorting of certain articles on their category pages. However, first noticed this evening, if I add a pipe to an existing categorization nothing changes on the category page. Articles newly added to the category do show up and are sorted as expected. What gives? — B.Bryant 09:09, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this is broken at the moment due to a bug in a change to attempt to make categorylink updates more efficient and avoid overwriting the associated timestamp. --Brion 10:12, May 14, 2005 (UTC)

any ETA on when this might be fixed? is there a bug entry on MediaZilla i can use to track it?

ah found it: mediazilla:2166. clarkk 11:56, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

this really needs a higher priority than "minor". it should be "major" or at least "normal", it means that any new entries in people categories: lastname, firstname won't be found in the correct place, a major hit in usability. clarkk 12:01, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

caching problem?

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#page not updating. I can see that the edit is in the history, but it does not show up on the page, and a "null" edit does not fix it. Any developers about? -- Rick Block 03:04, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

For whatever reason, the problem seems to have gone away. -- Rick Block 15:42, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

This happens from time to time due to lag between the various mediawiki subsystems. In future you can try appending "?action=purge" to the URL, that'll usually clear it. --W(t) 15:43, 2005 May 15 (UTC)

Page histories

[2]

On the above history page, if one scrolls down to the very bottom, look at the IP address. What's wrong with it?--217.137.90.125 06:49, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

It's not an IP address, it's a username that looks like an IP address. I don't know whether this is because that person create the account that way or (as the extreme age of those edits might suggest) that it's infact an artifact of one of the scripts that migrated wikipedia from older software formats to the current one. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 13:53, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Back before wikipedia had usernames edits were attributed to IPs, with the last octet xxx-ed out. --W(t) 22:39, 2005 May 15 (UTC)

Problem with loading articles in Firefox - not in IE...

I have a strange problem, several articles does not load in Firefox, but they load in IE. I rund MS Windows XP professional, 512 MB RAM on a laptop. Have tried to shut down the PC but the problem is still there. The articles I have problems with are Rail transport in Norway and Aung San, the Burmese freedom fighter. Have used Wikipedia for almost a year and has not seen something like this before. Anyone having a clue? Ulflarsen 13:44, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Not really. I'm using Firefox (1.04) on XP pro, and both articles work perfectly. Maybe you (or some intermediate proxy) has a bad cached version - try following the procedure at Wikipedia:Bypass your cache (i.e. load the page in question, and then hit ctrl-f5). -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 13:55, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

foreign language image names

I try to add this image from the commons to Pavlov's House, but keep on getting errors presumably due to the russian language image name. Any suggestions? Should i rename the image? -- Chris 73 Talk 21:13, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

I think commons uses UTF-8, where WP doesn't. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 22:44, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Renamed the images, should be good now. Thanks -- Chris 73 Talk 12:04, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

History of Nintendo disappears off face of Wikipedia

Apparently, Nauseam moved Nintendo to Nintendo Company Ltd., but for some reason it ended up at Nintendo Co. Ltd.. I moved Nintendo Co. Ltd. back to Nintendo. Now, the articles content is at Nintendo but its only history is "Nintendo moved to Nintendo Company Ltd." by Nauseam. Nintendo Company Ltd.'s history is "Nintendo Company Ltd. moved to Nintendo" also by Nauseam. Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s history is "Nintendo Co. Ltd. moved to Nintendo" by me. No history of the actual article. wtf? ✏ OvenFresh² 02:00, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

• It looks fine now. Must have been a delay in the web server updating the database. This has been happening a lot today due to increased traffic here. 10qwerty 17:18, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Internet Explorer - Wikipedia default font problem

For some unknown reason, when using Internet Explorer for visiting Wikipedia, another font is displayed instead of the usual (in my case, at least) "Trebuchet MS". IE is somehow mapping Wikipedia's specified font to some other one which so far I have been unable to identify (a narrow, tall font with no serifs, that is also very difficult to read). The task of identifying the font is further complicated by the fact that when printing or converting the page to a PDF (PDF stores the names of the font outlines it uses), the font is changed once again.

A sample of the font that is being shown:

File:Narrow-sample.gif

Does anyone know what could be causing this issue? Thank you in advance for your help.
Mfolozi 02:15, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

• Try this:
  • Go to "Tools" -> "Internet Options"
  • Click on the "Fonts" button.
  • Select "Times New Roman" on the "Web page font" option.

10qwerty 17:26, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

• It is already set to Times New Roman, but Wikipedia uses CSS, so IE won't mind if I set Times New Roman as the default font. What I don't understand is why only Wikipedia displays this font problem.

Any further ideas?--Mfolozi 20:35, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Try clearing your cache. Ctrl + F5. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 20:50, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

I clear the cache regularly, but it doesn't solve the problem. --Mfolozi 02:47, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikimania PR

Analogous with http://www.wikipedia.org , we should make some permanent PR for the Wikimania conference on the front page from now on until the conference, which will secure more publicity. Alternatively, we could also use MediaWiki:Sitenotice like this

The first International Wikimedia Conference will take place in Frankfurt 4.-8 August!

[[Image:Wikimania-468x60-en.png|100px]] The first '''[http://www.wikimania.org International Wikimedia Conference]''' will take place in [[Frankfurt]] [[August 4|4.]]-[[August 8|8 August]]!

The banner at the top of the main page (and possibly others) is currently used exactly like you suggest on about half the wikipedias, including cy:, pt: and ja:. Thryduulf 07:43, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Stupid auto-logout revisited

Because the discussion above did not actually answer the question: I have been having the same problem for over a month now. I can stay logged in for 2-3 links, then I am auto-logged out. I am consistently logged out when attempting to edit a page. The ideas mentioned earlier about cookies, browsers, etc, all occurred to me too, so I have varied all of the following:

1. Firewall. Same both on and off.
2. Check box. Regardless of what you call it, it doesn't remember me.
3. Browser. Same with IE, Opera, and even Lynx. Opera allows direct editing of cookies, which here have all necesary permissions and (apparently) don't expire till 2009 or some such.
4. Computer. Same on other peoples' machines.
5. Time of login. Followed the advice above. Morning, midday, evening, dead of night: same thing.
6. Connection. Same deal on both dialup and broadband; thought it might be IP-related. This is redundantly subsumed here, but for completeness-- also the same whether networked or direct connection.
7. Operating platform, for Pete's sake. This also happens on a Mac I have access to.

So what gives? Have I been exiled by the Wiki gods? Guru comments appreciated. (Signed, Mashford)

List of all articles in a category

Does anyone know of an easy way (tool, script etc) that I can get a list of all articles in a category, including its subcategories (and, recursively, their subcategories etc)? — Matt Crypto 13:22, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

I recommend getting in touch with User:Erik Zachte who has done exactly this from a database dump ... I think a (monstrously large) zip file is still around somewhere containing a category tree from a few months ago. Pcb21| Pete 14:09, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Actually it is quite up to date - http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/CategoryOverviewIndex.htm. For April 22nd. Pcb21| Pete 14:11, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Template:Wrongtitle

I think wrong title problem has a very simple fix. Instead of telling human readers what the title is supposed to read, you can let the Mediawiki to serve the correct title instead.

For example, if Mediawiki sees the wrongtitle template such as {{wrongtitle|title=C++}}, it simply exports: <h1 class="pagetitle">C++</h1>. If it sees {{wrongtitle|title=Chu nôm}}, it shall export: <h1 class="pagetitle">Chu nôm</h1>.

If there's a wrongtitle template, instead of going to the Server Side Includes program, you can simply assign the title variable to the value of {{{title}}}. I don't think it is impossible, isn't it? -- Toytoy 01:46, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

{{Otheruses}}

The Template:Otheruses is incompatible with the "disambiguated primary topic" disambiguation style that has recently found its way into Wikipedia:Disambiguation. I recognize that it is incumbent upon those who opt for this disambiguation style to go and fix all of the erroneous links that it creates, but in many cases (i.e. Analog), these links number in the hundreds and take a very long time to sift through. --Smack (talk) 20:48, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Rather than Otheruses, this style of disambiguation could use template:redirect or template:otheruses2. See Wikipedia:Template messages/General. -- Rick Block 13:54, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

That works. --Smack (talk) 18:28, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Articles as HTML Fragments?

I've been looking for a way of dynamically retrieving a wikipedia article as an HTML fragment, so that it might be included, say, in a web page.

This seems a rather obvious need - any web site quoting a wikipedia article must do this somehow! Having conducted a reasonably wide search I have found that by using the "export" special page, wikipedia will produce an article in raw output format, wrapped in XML; but there are only a few scripts (php mainly) to convert wiki format to HTML.

So does anyone know of other ways this can be done, or is there something obvious I have missed? Something like an xsl stylesheet to transform the export XML, a vi/vim/sed script or a general algorithm would be really useful... allegedly.

Cheers

Raad--131.111.21.21 11:43, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Revenue template

I've created a template for use with Template:Infobox Company. My template, Template:Revenue generates a specific agreed upon format, for usage see Template talk:Revenue. My question is whether a template being passed as a parameter to another template would be too large a load for the servers? Is this technically too taxing? — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 17:51, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

• Including a template in another (unless subst'ed) is frowned upon by the development team. Would you please consider a different solution? Radiant_* 08:48, May 20, 2005 (UTC)

Two Edit How-To Questions.

OK, on the page film distributors, there is some introductory text at the top and then a list of 7 companies under the heading "Articles..." There is no separate edit attached to the list, just edit this page at the top. But when I click on edit this page, all I get is the text from the top. So, how do I add companies to the distributors' list? Why is this locked?

Whoa - I just clicked Show preview, and film distributors is all in red? Why? Go to the main page and choose Culture, then choose Cinema, and you'll see there *is* an article active and headed film distributors. Why doesn't my URL connect to that? Also, I did something when I found that, and somehow ended up with a blue film distributor (single, not plural), and this is a whole different page with a whole different definition of the same thing. Same goes for Culture and Cinema. What's the deal here - I'm on the same site, but getting sent different places for the same topic...

Also, how do you change an incorrect article header once it's left "red" status and gone "blue"? On the same page, if I want to change 20th Century Fox to the correct Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp., how do I do it? If I go to the 20th Century Fox page and choose edit this page, I can edit the text but not the title. On other pages where there *is* an [edit] option for specific Article titles, I can change the title on the list but then it goes to "red" and the link to the article is broken rather than having the correction made. So, what to do here??

Oh, and, PS - How come the *latest* post sinks to the *bottom* of the thread list? I've never seen that on a website before.

Carbuncle 19May05 ++++

• Let me take a shot at your questions:
  • There is not an article named film distributors. There is however a page called Category:Film distributors which is a category that groups specific articles. When you edit that page, you just edit that category's description at the top of the page. To actually add specific articles to categories, you have to edit each of those separate articles, adding the words "[[Category:Film distributors]]" to each of them. See Wikipedia:Categorization for more information.
  • If you wish to change the title of an article, you can rename or move the page by following the directions at Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page. However, for security reasons, you can only move or rename a page if you have a user account that is several days old.
  • It is our general policy for the *latest* post to sink to the *bottom* of the thread list.

Zzyzx11 (Talk) 00:31, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

By the way, we do have an page called Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. But if you click on that link, it just redirects you to the 20th Century Fox article. The article for the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation was put on the "20th Century Fox" page because, using our naming conventions, it is the name more commonly used by the general public. Oh, and you can create or edit your own redirects by following the directions at Wikipedia:Redirect. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 00:49, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. The site seems to be more complex than I thought at first glance, or at any rate the editing process is. Your citations demonstrate that, but also clarify what I've been running into and how to deal with them. Will get back if I hit another wall.

---buncle, a couple hours later.

Category:Philippine Writers

Can this be fixed ? There are two Category:Philippine writers The other one is accessible from the redirect of List of Philippine Writers. Please merge. Thanks.--Jondel 06:44, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

It seems okay to me. Redirects to categories don't work quite the way they should, failing to display the lists of subcategories and articles. -- Cyrius|✎ 08:05, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

But there are 2 versions? I would like to link to the Spanish wikipedia . Which one shoud be used?--Jondel 08:47, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

There is only one version - it displays differently (incorrectly) when it is arrived at by the redirect. There are a number of known redirect related issues with categories and this is one of them. I'd suggest changing List of Philippine Writers to not be a redirect, but something along the lines of Please see category:Philippine writers. -- Rick Block 13:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Ok. I guess I didn't understand that there was only one version from Cyrius' statement. In addition to list, there is also a category (of Philippine writers). I'll be making interlanguage links too with these categories.--Jondel 03:52, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Something wrong with the history?

I made a fairly big edit on an article (added a couple of sections, cleaned up the text, added an image) and followed it up with a minor edit (changed a couple of words). The first edit doesn't show up in the history, but my minor edit shows up with both changes in the diff. Because my minor edit summary is something like "Cleaned up the text a little bit", I am understandably a bit concerned. Is this a problem with the database servers that will fix itself over time? Thanks, Deathphoenix 16:53, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't know. Probably. There's no way of telling since you didn't say what article it is. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:47, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

I did that on purpose, just to ask a general question, but it was to Lutz Long. --Deathphoenix 18:11, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

There appear to be two distinct history weirdnesses afoot. The first, which sounds like what you have, is where entries are temporarily omitted from the history list. After a while (presumably when the slave databases catch up on the lag with the master) these reappear, and all is well. Secondly, there's a very rare case where edits seem to permanently get the wrong timestamp, and appear in odd places in the history list. I guess yours is the first problem, and it'll fix itself in a while. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 17:53, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, looks like it was the first, because the contrib came back in. History seems to have caught up with me my contributions. --Deathphoenix 18:11, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

• In summary, blame it all on the lag time of updating all the databases. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 07:52, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

I have had experience of the first one (entries are temporarily omitted from the history list). There is also a third problem. When the page Strategic bombing during World War II was moved it lost its history see Talk. I think it happened to another page I was monitoring (unfortunately I have forgotten which one), when it was moved twice in quick succession (eg due to a typo in the first move). Perhaps it too is a bug caused by master slave caching problems. Philip Baird Shearer 12:47, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

I've noticed this on numerous occasions recently; fortunately the database seems to recognize which is the actual order of edits, regardless of timestamp. For example, [3] I reverted vandalism on Rush Limbaugh; the vandal's edit shows up at 16:57 and my reversion shows up, at the top, at 16:56. Would that I could deal with problems in real life before they occur. Perhaps I am developing magical powers! Antandrus (talk) 17:04, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Special pages

I am wondering how the special utility pages, such as Special:Uncategorizedpages, Special:Ancientpages, and Special:Shortpages, get updated. Currently it has been several weeks since they were updated and almost everything listed on these pages has been dealt with. Is the updating on an automatic schedule? If so what interval is it set to? Or are they only refreshed when a developer gets around to it? For a period a few months ago the pages were being updated once every 24 hours, which was extremely useful. How big is the downside to this? How big a problem would updating these pages once a week be? Could the fast moving ones, like Shortpages and Uncategorizedpages, be set to update more often than the comparatively slow moving ones, like Wantedpages and Deadendpages? - SimonP 02:53, May 21, 2005 (UTC)

Random Page Options

Are there any plans to let us make the Random Page button have further options, such as filtering to

• find pages of a certain size or over,
• chose a random page from a particular topic,
• look for stubs or articles that need editing?

--Nova Cygni 20:30, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Misaligned graphics

I've noticed that right aligned graphics don't seem to be placed correctly. I use Firefox 1.0.4. You can see an example here: Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Star_Wars in the "Star Wars News" section, the graphic overlaps the text on the top side. Similarly, here: Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Biography in the "featured article" area where the Isaac Asimov article currently is, the graphic overlaps text on the top side.

Is this a known issue? Or is this something new? --Wolf530 04:48, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

This seems to be skin and browser related - I see problems with neither example with (Safari and classic skin) or with (Windows IE and monobook skin), but do see the problems with (Safari and monobook skin) and (Windows Mozilla and monobook skin). I suspect this is likely to be a CSS implementation difference between IE and other browsers. Although I can't find a reference (perhaps it's implied by NPOV), I believe it is official wikipedia policy not to prefer one browser over any other. I can't find any information about this problem on Wikipedia:Browser notes or meta:Browser issues with MediaWiki, and as far as I can tell there is no existing bug report. Please let me know if you pursue this (if you don't, I will). -- Rick Block 16:54, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

You seem to be more knowledgeable about the subject than I. I'm not quite sure of the policy on this type of thing, so if you would take the lead, I'd greatly appreciate it. I'll help in any way that you think would be of assistance. --Wolf530 17:46, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

It is a known Gecko bug. It seems to use only the top left pixel of the characters to check if they are overlapping the float. See bug 25888, bug 93592 and a number of others (most marked as being blocked by bug 25888 or blocking bug 78094). --cesarb 19:32, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

I see this with Safari+Mac OS X+monobook skin, implying it's not "just Gecko". Perhaps the same bug occurs in other layout engines, and if so I'd think we (wikipedia) should try to avoid whatever CSS artifact is causing this. -- Rick Block 23:45, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Mysterious 'k' in search results

What does the 'k' mean in search results? For example, if I put 'global dimming' in the search field and press the 'Search' button, the first result shows:
Relevancy: 100.0% - 8.8k (1321 words)

I see 8.8k. I know that 'k' for kilo means '1000', but one thousand what? Bobblewik  (talk) 00:51, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm guessing, but perhaps kilobyte size of the article? -- Rick Block 01:24, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:34, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Bobblewik  (talk) 12:53, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

i have changed the default for this from "k" to "KB" which is hopefully more clear. if anyone has a better suggestion, you can create/edit MediaWiki:Searchsize, which would look something like:

$1KB ($2 words)

and put whatever there. — kate

How to slip the New Page Patrol and create a vanity article without having it deleted

If a person wants to create a nonsense/vanity article without being quickly spotted on the New Page Patrol isn't it just to create first an irrelevant redirect, then convert the redirect into a nonsense/vanity article. Redirects don't turn up on Special:Newpages, nor do articles created from redirects. Sure these things will pop up on Special:Recentchanges but if it survives for about five minutes it will have slipped through most fingers until somebody stumbles upon it which can take a very long time.

I am posting this method here, not to encourage people to actually use it as a way of creating vanity articles without seeing them listed on VfD, but I want to ask: Is there any good way to detect this, and is it possible to modify the Newpages page to detect articles being created out from redirects? Sjakkalle 06:56, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

I know there have been proposals somewhere to allow additions/removals from categories to be watched (i.e. it appears on your watchlist when an article is added or removed from Category:Foo). If/when this is implemented, then we could make a category:redirects and watch that, doing a diff would show all the adds/removals and you could check them. There is probably a better way that wouldn't require a change in the software, but this is my first thought. Thryduulf 07:43, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

actually category:redirects exists, which I didn't know about! Thryduulf 07:45, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Redirects did use to appear on newpages until fairly recently. I am sure it could be turned back on again if needed. Pcb21| Pete 08:15, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Assistance with printing stylesheet

I've noticed that with Template:Ref, when printing the note it adds the external URL to the end of the footnote. This is unnecessary. Does anyone know if there is a style we could use to suppress the URL being appended to an external link so we could apply this to that template? - Ta bu shi da yu 03:36, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm not an expert by a long shot, but I think that isn't possible as long as you're using an external link. --W(t) 04:04, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

How does the style sheet create the expanded link though? - Ta bu shi da yu 04:41, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

There are separate stylesheets for screen and printing defined. The latter states that urlexpansion spans should be displayed, while the former hides them. --W(t) 04:47, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

I see. I'd like to see if we could add a class or something that would suppress this on printing. Then we could apply it to the template. - Ta bu shi da yu 05:03, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

The transformation of the wikimarkup link to the html (which includes both the <A HREF=… and the urlexpansion span) is done by the serverside wikimarkup to html renderer though. So you'd have to hack that to allow for different types of external links (or you could adjust the stylle sheet not to print the URLs for any links, but that would be a bad idea). --W(t) 05:16, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

Of course you can. The HTML is generated server-side, but the CSS is interpreted at the client. Just add the following to your monobook.css:

@media print {
   sup.plainlinks .urlexpansion {
     display:none ! important
   }
}

This will omit all URL expansions in print output, but only within the <sup> tags created by the {{ref}} templates. Lupo 07:49, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Cute trick, but it does mean all superscript external links will not be shown; admittedly, there aren't many of those apart from {{ref}}'s, but that does make it ineligable for being in the default stylesheet imho. --W(t) 08:28, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

Well, it works for me. You quite correctly point out, if there are other superscripted extlinks, it'll suppress the URL expansion on those, too. But typically there aren't any. But if you want to make sure that it only catches those from {{ref}}, edit the template such that the <sup> used there has an agreed-upon, unique class and use that instead of "plainlinks". Also add the necessary CSS such that this new class behaves like "plainlinks" in all other respects. It certainly doesn't need hacking of the "wikimarkup-to-HTML" generator. Lupo 09:14, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Does mediawiki allow setting the class for markup elements like sup? If so, that would be a perfect solution, and having a no-external-link-listing-when-printing style in the default style sheets seems like a useful idea, unless someone can think of a method it could be abused. --W(t) 10:12, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand you right. You could go to Template:Ref and edit that; it currently says <sup id="..." class="plainlinks">... Or did you want to define a class for all sup's? I don't think that's needed, the "sup.plainlinks" in the CSS fragment above is a specialisation meaning "only those sup's with class plainlinks"; just use a bare "sup" to denote sup's in general. Lupo 10:49, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Ah yes, I didn't know whether mediawiki let through any parameters to sup and such (as mentioned above, this isn't really my thing). Sounds like a decent plan then… --W(t) 10:55, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

All right, I've gone ahead and implemented this site-wide in Template:Ref and MediaWiki:Monobook.css (new class "plainlinksneverexpand"). That new class can of course also be used elsewhere, it behaves like "plainlinks", but suppresses URL expansion for everything conatined within an element having the class. Lupo 11:33, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

"Speedy Deletion" Overkill

We spent a good deal of time last night working up an Indexing (List) format for individual issues of The Saturday Evening Post magazine. Before we got interrupted by mundane life, around 8PM CST, we'd gotten as far as setting up two headers and listing one article as contents for the September 16, 1950, issue. This morning, that's all gone and we have to start over again.

This is absurd. It's the second time it's happened, too. We tried to default several motion pictures from a chronological list, where we'd added the titles, to the main alphabetical list of titles: since our notes are in alphabetical order, it will be obviously much easier and quicker for us to get the data details into each film's "article" by access from the alphabetical list. But first thing next morning, the added titles had all been wiped off that list (while remaining on the secondary, chronological list).

If you're serious about having our input, you're going to have to do something about the arbitrary overnight erasures which accomplish nothing except to set us back in our efforts to help. Why not allow at least a 24 hour period, or 48: since we're not on salary, and have outside lives, we cannot be expected to drop everything and service wikipedia on a 24/7. Program your site otherwise, or run the risk of killing off geese who can lay golden eggs - for you.

23May05

I don't know who deleted them, but deleted pages can be easily undeleted and restored by an Admin, so nothing is lost. Could you please give the article names that you want restored, and I'll bring them back for you. A list of recent deleted articles can be found in the deletion log. Shanes 13:45, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

My gripe is, no one deleted them: there's an automated addition of a "delete" command by the master computer (put there by the owner/programmer) to text spaces that don't have a certain amount of verbiage in them when the writer leaves the page to do something else. The command removes the "offending" piece then within what cannot be more than a 12-hour period. No one reads them, much less tries to understand why they might've been left, or e-mail the contributor to inquire. I found it on a couple of workpages I'd set up, and removed it, and they stand where positioned in the alphabetical film index: those I didn't, evaporated.

Also, NB, I tried to use the list of deleted articles and there are 50 of them deleted between 9AM and 1PM today, and it's just 9:05 CST now: where is this machine's clock? Furthermore, when I hit the "next 50", "next 100" URLs, I kept getting the same first-50 page: either my browser or wikipedia's programming for that page doesn't get me anywhere. (Maybe I should come back at 2:00PM?). In any case, I'm not going to waste time scanning down hundreds of deleted entries looking for one, when I don't even know what time the deletion occurred (my time or wiki-time); it's not worth it to me. I appreciate your offer to help, but the real problem is in the programming, and that would need to be up to an administrator to fix. --24May05, 9:05AM

This is not how it works, so I'm curious to know where you've read or heard about any "automated addition of a delete". Nothing like that is automated as far as I'm aware of. I might be wrong, though. I've been wrong before once. But here's how it works. If you make a very, very short article that clearly is not up to standard and only contains 3 or 4 words, people monitoring the list of newly created articles might see them as just being a test and/or not meriting being an article. They will then manually edit the article and add the delete tag. This again makes the article being noticed by administrators (like me) who again will review the content and decide if it really should be deleted. In my case I sometimes delete them, and sometimes I don't and I remove the delete tag. The point is: Nothing is automated, and it's all done by unpayed hardworking volunteers who just want wikipedia to be as good as possible.

That said, I'm very sory that you feel your hard work is not being appreciated. I wish that wasn't so, and I hope that by clearing up any misunderstandings and inform about how stuff like this works, we can avoid it hapening again. Thanks for contributing. Oh, and btw, the clock in the logs are on GMT time. Shanes 14:52, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind response. Will address your comments in my response to Golbez, below, who now has also shown up to defend the ramparts, since they are duplicated there.

According to the deletion log, this was the content ===Masthead Staff:======Contents:==='''Fiction:''''The Lady In The Jungle'..............Author, Hugh B. Cave. Such a page is definitly not up encyclopedia standards. Why not work on the page offline so that when you do enter it here it is complete? And another thing, wikipedia wont host a separate article for each issue, that is just absurd. Make an article for all the issues and put in the information there. And by the way, none of us (well, very very few of us) get paid to do this. Please don't be so arrogant when posting, it really don't serve your purpose well.

Gkhan 13:53, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Look, friend, don't tell me how to post complaints. I endulged in no obscenities or personal attacks. I'm not arrogant, I'm justifiably angry that my work got the overnight blowoff because wikipedia programming attaches a delete command to contributions that don't have X number of lines of text in place before the contributor goes off to bed. I could put gobbledygook in to hold the space, and that would really not be "up encyclopedia standards" - whatever that means - but it would hold the place 'til I could get back to it. It's obvious from reading several articles on this site that that's just what some others do, intentionally or not. Not "up encyclopedia standards" either. Or I can go in and erase the delete command, something I've done twice, but that requires extra time and energy.

And wikipedia will too host a separate article for each issue, that is not absurd or I could not have started setting up the connections in the first place: there's no way to "make an article for all issues" as this is a weekly magazine of 80 or more years' duration. Such an article would scroll on forever and never be downloadable to users. Let each of us create in his/her own way: no one else is working on this topic, so stop imposing your vision of "encyclopedia standards" on the one person who is. I'm a 59-year-old English major, with nearly 30 years' experience in technical writing, cataloguing and categorization, so stop the unnecessary and uninvited attempt at one-upsmanship. Or, to put it another way, if you can't help correct the problem, then MYOB. --24May05, 9:22AM

There is no automatic deletion system. Nothing is automatically done here. If someone added a delete notice to the page then a human did that.

My assumption, based on the rapidity with which the delete command was added, and the fact that it could be manually disabled (deleted) by me: see Two Lost Worlds for a entry where I deleted the delete command, 4-5 days ago, and it hasn't been touched by human hands since.

It's not a command; it's simply a template that puts the article into the speedy delete category. Then admins look through the category and see if things should be deleted. --Golbez 19:30, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is physically located in Eastern, but I believe its official time is UTC, so 9am CDT would be 1pm UTC I think. Lemme check the log... the article "The Saturday Evening Post - September 16, 1950" was created at 21:31 on May 23 and the deletion notice (specifying it as "nonsense") was added at 21:32. I must say, the New Pages patrol was working quickly that day.

Lastime it was done to me, it happened just as quickly. Which also led me to reasonably assume it was automatic.

And it was deleted at 01:00 May 24. The article consisted of, as stated above, ===Masthead Staff:======Contents:==='''Fiction:''''The Lady In The Jungle'..............Author, Hugh B. Cave'.

Actually, it consisted of

Masthead Staff:

Fiction:

• "The Lady In The Jungle................Author, Hugh B. Cave

which might seem nonsense to someone who's just done a careless glance and made a snap judgment. But anyone familiar with a magazine (and this was an article about a magazine) should recognize the beginnings of a table of contents page, which anyone who stopped and thought about it a moment, might realize could easily be going somewhere, especially since it hadn't been lying around the site for weeks but had just been saved One Lousy Minute Earlier.

You're assuming people on Wikipedia care about familiarity with a magazine. No matter what you say, a mostly empty table of contents is not encyclopedic, even if it does include linefeeds. --Golbez 19:30, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Now, could this have grown into a real article? Entirely possible. But as it was, it was not an article at all. Please understand that we are working against the tide here, and any article that doesn't immediately have context and information runs the risk of being speedily deleted. The best way to avoid this is to finish the article first. This isn't a race.

"Please understand that we are working against the tide here... This isn't a race." Please, make up your mind. You give me one minute to do something to a saved page or else have a delete command attached to it, and about three more hours to do something (at night) to avoid having that command acted upon - whether by a human or automatically, it doesn't matter - and you talk to *me* about a race? C'mon, loosen up, give a plan a chance to come together. If that thing had been sitting there a week, it would make sense to delete; but three lousy hours? I'm not the one who was in the BFHurry.

Sure you were, you submitted an incomplete article. You aren't the one in the race, we are. You have all the time in the world to work on your article - but for us, new edits only stay on the recent changes list for *seconds*. If they scroll off, then it's unlikely anyone will see them. We have to work quickly. Such is the life of a Wikipedia janitor. --Golbez 19:30, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

I doubt anyone else in the world is working on "The Saturday Evening Post - September 16, 1950". So what's wrong with not submitting it until its done?

As I said in my original post, I started on it, with every intention of getting it done, or at least getting a larger chunk done before bedtime fell, but got interrupted by another facet of real life. Since it's not "a race", and there were three lines of data (one part of one line being URL'd, even, to something else in the pedia, even) with some semblance of form and relevance to anyone who bothered to look, the real question is, what's wrong with leaving it alone, watch and see what develops? Do you have a "delete quota" to meet each day?

If you got interrupted, then there was no reason to save it to the main namespace. Save it to notepad, or start a sandbox in your user space. No, we have no quota, and your lack of good faith in this circumstance is starting to annoy me. Do you have to try this hard to start a fight, or does it just come naturally? --Golbez 19:30, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

As it was, it could be said to fall under the candidates for speedy deletion, in particular, Article #1 (very short, no context).

What I'm saying is, we have to actively prune wikipedia, or everyone and their mother will have a profanity-laden "article" in this "encyclopedia" about how much they hate their little sister's cat.

Which this in no wise resembled. If I'd submitted that sort of crap, I'd expect my entire account to be deleted.

For better or for worse, we don't work that way. We assume good faith, that bad editors will reform. --Golbez 19:30, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

If you can finish the article before you submit it - or, perhaps, start with a different issue, which might have more content readily available - then please, resubmit it. It is your responsibility to make sure the first version is useful. There's really no excuse for starting a new, incomplete article.

A new, incomplete article is called, in your terminology, a "stub". This site is crawling with "stubs", which no one has assumed the responsibility for completing OR deleting. And expanding/editing on even fairly long text is part of the stated wikipedia project. And I *was* going to complete the one I had started; you just couldn't wait even 12 hours to see what happened. Besides which, the whole project could take weeks to complete my part of, and my way of working is to handle several projects at one time, an hour or two on each one, with time off for outside life. There are many (most) issues of SatEvePost to which I do not have access, and can provide nothing more than a date and cover artist: once I'm done with my part, there will still be a need for others' involvement. It isn't a race???? Then back off the delete keys, because this is a big project that will take time and help from others - many of whom may not feel welcome here if they know they could be deleted after hours, weeks and months of contributing, on someone's whim

Yes, the site is crawling with stubs - and the ones that aren't deleted have context, which, again, your article lacked, and you have steadfastly refused to admit that simple fact. --Golbez 19:30, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

That said, such articles aren't exactly what we handle here,

What articles *do* you handle? For specific motion pictures, you have a separate article for each picture, not just a big mess for each country or studio or director. For specific novels, you have separate articles for each book, not just a simplistic composite for each publisher or writer. So you don't handle specific magazine editions or their specific stories and articles, you just want everything dumbed down and glumped together under the lowest common denominator. Isn't this what the PC is supposed to do for information - create an environment not limited by the boundaries of paper size, type size or volume size-to-cost ratios in which to install information??

and even if you do make it and complete it, it may be put up for a deletion vote - note that I said vote. If it has context and actual information, then it's no longer a candidate for speedy deletion, and someone could put it up on Votes for deletion, which is a five day process to determine if said article belongs in the encyclopedia. I don't think we typically have articles like this here, so it would be a useful precedent if it did come to that.

Well, I have been roaming around and found quite a bit of disorganization, incomplete text (sometimes marked stub, sometimes not), illiteracy and just plain nonsense on randomly picked "articles" "categories" and "lists"; so, how does one go about putting *them* up for deletion? No one seems to be bothering with those. If it's your intention to "monitor" me, and then after I've done something very time consuming and satisfying at the time, and just kill it off by the vote of some ubercommittee, then you can count me outta here. Please advise; I'm already fed up enough for today.

All things considered, I won't miss someone as unlikely to be reasonable as yourself. --Golbez 19:30, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

But all this is irrelevant until you resubmit the article. Long story short: The speedy delete was not overkill. It is not our responsibility to wait for the article to be completed, it is yours to complete it, to a reasonable extent, before you hit submit. Otherwise, the article will scroll off Recent Changes/New Pages, and our chance to easily get rid of what seems to be a horribly incomplete, context-lacking article will be gone. You said yourself, "no one else is working on this topic," so there's no problem in taking your time and creating a proper article.

Like I say, that's what I was doing when I got deleted, taking my time and creating a proper article. I hope you aren't suggesting I write it out in pencil first, or on a typewriter. If that's what you want, give me your mailing address and I'll send it to you written and you can waste *your* time reformatting it and retyping it.

You weren't taking your time - you hit save the moment you got one name in there. As it was, it wasn't an encyclopedic article. We assume good faith in many cases, but when an article meets the criteria for speedy deletion, that isn't one of them. We can't assume that every sub-stub created that has a single valid wikilink and no context will be returned to in good time by its author. --Golbez 19:30, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

And I agree, one article per issue may be a bit much, so perhaps a middle ground - one article per year? Either way, I suggest you make only a few, and then see if they stick. Again, if they contain actual context (like explain what this is - never, ever, rely on the article title to do that for you) and information, then it will not be speedily deleted.

Well, you would have to wait and see. Obviously, Hugh B. Cave was already a completed section of the fiction piece: all you did was cut off the URL by deleting the text. The fiction piece itself would have to be read and synopsized - a ways down the road when we were just at the start of getting the content titles and authors and other names installed.

Do you have any more questions? --Golbez 15:02, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Golbez puts it in a very good way, and as he said, there is no automated deleting. Two people looked at your article and decided that it should be deleted (the person who tagged it speedy delete and the admin who made the deletion). As for the arrogance part, I was reffering both to your style and the "geese that lays the golden eggs part". If this offended you, I apologise. But to be frank, you come off with an unwarranted amount of hostility, especially now that you were incorrect in your assumption.

The only thing I was incorrect in, was assuming an unreasonably short amount of time had been allotted to an automated program function. Knowing that two actual people showed up and neither one had the decency to wait and see what happened, or ask me what was going on, but just made big-assumptions on their parts - incorrectly - and played god with the delete key, makes the hostility all the more warranted. Treat people like people: I spent 2 hours experimenting with formats and layouts to get as far as I did and, since this is not a race, and this thread is attracting people like flies all of a sudden, with plenty of time to talk, I don't think I'm the least bit out of line with that hositlity.

Why should we have the "decency" to wait and see, if you didn't have the "decency" to wait until the article was remotely finished before posting it? I apprecitate that you spent time and effort learning layout and style, and your next step is to apply it towards a complete article. You started the hostility here, don't push it on us. --Golbez 19:30, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

You'd get much more help and the conversation would be nicer if you simply had asked for helped and described your problem. Now, as for the articles, one article per year would certainly be acceptable (52*80=4160, surley that is a bit much, don't you think). Also, consider signing up if you want to make a significant amount of contributions,

I am signed up. For some reason - computer, or human? - when I use Show Preview and then Save Page, I find I've been logged out and the contribution credit goes to some number. I have not discovered how to correct this glitch when it occurs.

It happens on random occasion. We don't know why either. :( --Golbez 19:30, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

it is so much nicer to communicate with someone with a name than an IP-adress. Gkhan 15:18, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Gkhan is a name?? My name, when the -pedia shows it, is Rich Wannen, which is my real name.

(added after an edit conflict, so I'm repeating some of the things Gkhan said)

If I may add to that; here are a couple of ideas you (the original poster) could try out.

1. It would help if you could write one complete article, to show what the final result would be.

For the umpteenth time, that is what I was *doing*. I had to stop for the night and when I came back this morning to press onward, the start I'd made had been peremptorilly and rudely deleted.

So the main Wikipedia space is just a blank notepad for you to do your scribblings on? That's what sandboxes and notepads are for. Not the encyclopedia. Imagine if Brittanica published an article that the person had put into the main queue but had left for the night before finishing it. Don't you think they'd be annoyed that he had made it a real article? --Golbez 19:30, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

It would seem that at least 2 other wikipedians thought your article had no potential to grow (one who added the {{delete}} template; one who deleted the article). Prove them (and me) wrong.

I will try. However, I have the hunch that if the logic isn't immediately obvious - and as I said above, this is one of several longterm projects - some one or another will apparently feel free to hit the delete key without so much as a courtesy e-mail. It's bad enough that the environment itself allows strangers, even unregistered ones, to stumble across your work, decide they don't like it for any whim or dense moment, and edit it all to hell. It's quite another to find that there is actually a hidden committee of overseers of the same temperament with access to an instant delete key.

If you don't want strangers editing your work, perhaps Wikipedia isn't for you. --Golbez 19:30, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

1. Create an account for yourself. If you do so, you'll get a user page to explain your plans, a talk page at which other people can contact you, and an infinite amount of user space, where you can start writing your articles without the threat of having them deleted. Move them to the main article space when it's ready. If you do this for the first few pages, and if they are accepted, you'll have an easier time convincing us of the usefulness of all of your articles. (Anonymous users also get user space, etc. But it's better if you get an account. It's also easier to build up credibility that way.)
2. If you want your articles back, go to Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion, and make your case there. It's probably easier if you say that you want them moved to your user space.

No, I'll just start it over again. Maybe. Or maybe I'll just not waste my time trying to satisfy people who claim outwardly to be open and receptive - be bold - but have a clandestine set of narrow, rigid expectations applied swiftly, at least to newcomers, at the expense of creativity and interest. We'll see how I feel tomorrow. From 2-4 I work for IMDb; they have weird constraints and quirky policies, but at least they state most of them up front. --Rich Wannen 24May05 2:04PM

PS - Oh, looky. My name is in red again. Yesterday, it was in blue, after I stuck in a couple of trial sentences, intending to come back to that later too. Guess the delete-o-philes even mess around with user's personal pages!!

It's red because you linked Rich Wannen, not User:Rich Wannen. It's simpler if you simply sign remarks with ~~~~.User pages are ot deleted in the same fashion as other articles. --Golbez 19:30, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

1. You don't need to type in the date and time manually each time; use ~~~~~ for that (5 tildes). If you have a user account, type in four tildes ~~~~ for user name, date, time.

Eugene van der Pijll 15:28, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Wow

This is getting difficult to read. Here's my summary:  :::which is wrong on several key points.

1. Rich made a short article with no context. It is not our responsibility to know if he was coming back to it; it is his to make it of undeletable quality from the start.

Rich started an article in the context of Saturday Evening Post - Index of Saturday Evening Post Issues - 1950: September 16. He had gotten two headers and one text entry in place on the latter connection when he was called away by other business; so he saved the work done to pick up the next day.

1. Rich has not assumed good faith in his dealings here; he could well counter that we did not assume good faith with his article.
2. Rich continues to assume bad faith in thinking we deleted his user page.

I assumed only, in all innocence, that the delete was automatic. Staff members told me it was done wilfully and manually. I assume in good faith they are telling the truth. The only "bad faith" was the two deleters' assumption that I had just stuck in some stuff to annoy them or ruin the -pedia and thus it merited deleting without warning.

1. I personally welcome any future contributions, but stress that, for temporary or still-working-on-it pages, Rich may want to use a sandbox, like User:Rich Wannen/Sandbox.

I could, but why. If the editors/readers would assume *in good faith* that I would finish what I start, and not be so quick on the trigger, it works better for me to just go on the article page directly and work there. It also makes sense because the -pedia is *filled* with articles by others that are only partly done.

1. And the fact remains, had he not spent the time ranting on this article, he might have finished the article by now and we could see what he intended.

And the fact also remains, if three or four of the supposedly harried editors hadn't felt it necessary to pile on me in detail for critiquing a user-unfriendly practice, apologized, and restored the work, I wouldn't have felt the need to defend myself against personal attacks (NB: the original post complained about a presumed automation problem. Personal attacks were started by others) and explain in as much detail why I think they need to get flexible here.

1. I see Rich has made several other edits, including starting a new article, which he should notice was not deleted, and has in fact been improved by another editor. (well, me)

Which one?

1. However, he also made Index of Saturday Evening Post Issues and Contents. This lacks context, but it has more than the other article did, since the article title says it's an index, as opposed to simply a name. Personally, if I were on deletion patrol, I would give this one the benefit of the doubt - but probably not the older one that was deleted. It might be put on VfD, though, and that doesn't mean it's deleted - part of the VfD debate allows people to improve an article, and many great articles have come out stronger in part due to VfD.

The Index is in the context of the main article on the Saturday Evening Post. Why do you say it lacks context? I simply used a word I was more comfortable with - Index - instead of List (which is hidden). It is intended to be an index of the issues - cover date by cover date over the 80-some years of the magazine's history - in two steps. The first step is to identify (List) each issue by cover date. The next step is, where information is available, to create a page for each issue defining the contents and related demographics of each issue. Those contents - staff, writers, and article titles - will also be accessible and contain an article on each person/literary piece.

Logic: Magazine Main Page, click to see chronological Index of Issue Dates, select and click to specific Issue Description article, select and click title of piece(s) or name of person(s) of interest to read individualized articles. Voila, you have a logically linked chain taking the reader as far into the contents of each issue as he/she wishes to go, without shortcutting any part of the overall subject matter in order to avoid a relatively useless, generalized, single-volume print-encyclopedia short subject on a major piece of Americana.

The strategy and logic of the approach I propose is applicable to any topic, many of which have bits and pieces unconnected and floating about the -pedia currently. (Some, of course, follow similar constructs). We had hoped to do some other tidying up as well so that users could, e.g., look up Cinema on the search field or go to Cinema in the Index for the Culture page, and come up with the same main article, something you can't do now, or couldn't as of 2 days ago. We have several areas of interest, tho film is our major one: but we've been 9 years with IMDb and are/were looking forward to making publicly available collected data in other areas of interest as well. Wikipedia appeared, by a recommendation from a contributor and by its main page, and with some early experiments, to seem a place open to creative structuring as well as in need of certain types of coverage, especially in areas (such as the SatEvePost) where there isn't a great deal of evident contributor involvement.

Hopefully, this little escapade with the overzealous anonymous deleters and the gangup on the visible newbie for trying to help with a personal, creative spin on data organization, is not a harbinger of worse things to come. IMDb has a number of problems arising from institutionalized rigidity, and it is only trying to deal with film, TV and videogame: Wikipedia is still new and trying to cover the entire universe, no small undertaking, which requires openness to newcomers and their experiments, not reactionary deletionism. RW

In short: Rich, please calm down and try again. --Golbez 19:39, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

I might want to warn Rich, though, that even if he completes an entire article which contains nothing but the table of contents for one issue, or even the table of contents of an entire year's worth of issues, some (myself included) would conclude that such an article is not an encyclopedia article, and would list it for Votes for deletion, where it would sit for 5 days while the community would discuss whether or not it should be retained. RickK 21:19, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Rich, you have repeatadly assumed bad faith in this discussion, you have been angry and bascially insulting wikipedia when twice when you were wrong (the automated deleting thing and assuming your user-page had been deleted). You are over-all very uncivil. Calm down and realise that your article simlpy wasn't good enough. This is not something to be ashamed of, when I was a newbie I created a few articles which were all speedied (including a vanity article, of which I am a little ashamed :P). Get off your high horse and accept our advise. We arn't "ganging up" on you. Because you are new you do not know how things are done here, and that is ok, none of us did in the beginning. There is nothing wrong with that! Now, please calm down, read Wikipedia:Civility, and try not to be so hostile to everyone. Gkhan 21:58, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you both. You continue the process of blaming the unfairly injured, good-faith contributor and avoid absolutely looking at the actions of staff and interloping (troll) users in inciting and fuelling the hostilities on this board. It is clear this is not an open site focussed on the product and quality improvement through infusion of new ideas, but just a closed clique trying to appear as one; and complaints and disagreements that confront the clique's pre-established notions will only result in more and more personalized insults, "warnings" and other acts of Wikipedia "civility", and always dodging the major issues raised.

At this juncture, I can only offer that a Wikipedia staffer submit the description of my plans for improving the Saturday Evening Post coverage at the site to the Five-Day Community Discussion Board, or whatever it is; and if you decide it would be something really worth examining in more detail without any reactive "I...would list it for Votes for Deletion" attached, you can e-mail me and I'll consider whether I feel like giving you a look at what you would've had if your two editors hadn't decreed my bare start "nonsense" (covertly, amongst the staff) and consigned my 2 hours of thinking and format-experimenting to the Wikitrash. Having had my enthusiasm for this site completely numbed by the wet-blanket-and-cold-shower verbiage of most of the respondents here (especially Golbez), I imagine I'll decline, but you do have the option to try. You might include a thanks for the stuff I contributed that you did decide to use and probably will decide to keep, at at least a rate of agreeability as the disagreeability the majority of your responders have presented in defending the indefensible here today.

I also suggest you look at severely revising your home page to indicate that this is not the open, curious, progressive and friendly site you play it up to be. That way, at least you will attract more of your own kind and not have to waste *your* time trying to drive off people who don't exactly fit your narrow views and ways. Whoever said it was right about one thing, I have been wasting my time today. Indeed, I've been wasting it for the last few days.

Meantime, to the couple of you who've shown some effort at trying to understand and mediate - thank you. It's just too bad you're in the minority.

Adios, wikeroos.

---Rich Wannen, 24May05, 6:55PM

I am very sorry that you feel this way. I always hate seeing editors go, especially those who can contribute anything worth including. I would email you but you provided no adress. Suppose that you email me instead (don't forget to include a return adress). Gkhan 00:12, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

I think Rich's description of how Wikipedia works is quite perceptive and accurate. Mirror Vax 03:22, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

So

I know I tend to stick my nose into things, but honestly, someone else say something, did I say anything that was remotely wrong or hostile? If I was hostile, I was certainly less hostile than he. Cmon, repair my wounded ego please. I could expound on how irritated his parting shot makes me, but hey, we don't get anywhere by biting the newbies, right? Especially if they start out by stabbing us. And mirror vax, if it's so accurate, I suppose you're welcome to come to the same conclusions and take the same actions - whining and leaving in a huff. The article was a bit crappy, yes. --Golbez 03:37, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Reading through this exchange I'm not sure who was at fault, but the fact is a newbie distinctly felt bit. I think we should all feel bad about it, and I think we should all try to make newbies feel more welcome. IMO, some of your comments weren't exactly welcoming. Was the article crap? Who cares. The newbie felt bit. -- Rick Block 04:04, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

(Note: refactored my argument above to remove my attack, retained word "crap" so as to not change the meaning of Rick's response) Perhaps we did bite him, but what do you suggest? That we don't slap {{delete}} when needed? It was a bit quick, but 99% of the articles caught within the first minute by new page patrol are worthy of deletion. If the newbie didn't want to feel bit, maybe he shouldn't have come at us with teeth gnashing. Because we bit the newbie, do you propose we change the way CSD works, Rick? --Golbez 11:41, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion we shouldn't be critisising a new wikipedian on a page like this. Even if a new contributor comes across as abit angry and teeth gnashing, we should just not comment on that and just explain politely what he had missed about the technical stuff. Thats what this page is about after all. Shanes 13:49, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

We weren't the first "criticism" he received; he got one in the form of the delete template, and in another in the deletion itself. He had already felt criticized and came across that way. We tried to be civil and understanding; he refused to be. --Golbez 14:16, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

I fully agree with Golbez here. The newbie came here with all guns blazing, and the old hands tried to be reasonable in explaining what happened, why it happened, and what to do to achive his goal without the same happening again. He was also asked to calm down and remain civil, but he refused and kept raging at the "staff and interlopers" of Wikipedia. Thryduulf 14:27, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I would like to point out that Golbez first edit to this discussion [4] which is now hoplessly massacred, was a long helpful and generally nice comment. He had not been nice, made assumptions that weren't true and generally said that we sucked. I could have perhaps been a little more diplomatic in my first comment, but my second was a genuine attempt to be nice and help, and he responded in a very hostile way. We did nothing wrong here. Gkhan 14:37, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting changing CSD policy. It's not obvious it was followed in this instance, particularly Try to avoid deleting a page too soon after its initial creation, as the author may be working on it. I am suggesting if you can't see a very clear difference between this response and this one, you might want to refrain from commenting on pages regularly accessed by new users. IMO the above protestations of innocence are stunningly insensitive. And, in case anyone doesn't know, telling someone to calm down almost always has exactly the opposite effect. -- Rick Block 18:40, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Move option

As a accounted user I have the ability to move pages. However on some pages I can't see the move button. These happen to be Wikipedia and Helium, they are both {{featured}} so I thought that had something to do with it. You know, the best articles shouldn't need moving. But I go to other featured articles, namely Buddhism and Emacs, have the move button there. What's the deal? --metta, The Sunborn 16:39, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

• I presume they have been protected against page move to combat vandalism. Confirmed with the protection log. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 16:41, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

That is what was happening, thanks. --metta, The Sunborn 19:17, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Blue background?

Ok, I'm extremely confused as to why namespaced pages are suddenly appearing with blue backgrounds. Did I miss something? Oh look, I notice as I type that this edit page has a blue background as well. What's going on? Sorry if I'm being extremely unobservant and stupid etc. AdamM 18:49, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

The light blue background for non-article space pages has been introduced a loong time ago, shortly after the introduction on the monobook skin. On July 3, 2004, to be precise, after having been voted upon. Got a new monitor? Lupo 19:37, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Weird alphabetising problem

...so I made these two new categories, "Canada buildings and structures stubs" and "Asia buildings and structures stubs", and wanted them to appear in the parent category "Buildings and structures stubs". I added the category link to the bottom of the editing in the usual way, [[Category:Buildings and structures stubs|Canada]], and the same for Asia (only with Asia instead of Canada, of course, and go back to the parent category... where both my new categories are indexed under S (presumably for Saskatchewan and Sri Lanka respectively). What gives? Grutness...wha? 13:42, 25 May 2005 (UTC)