Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26: Difference between revisions

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compliments...
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"Try the Google or Yahoo! searches below"<br>
"Try the Google or Yahoo! searches below"<br>
... but the Google and Yahoo search options are no longer there! Surely some mistake? -- [[User:Picapica|Picapica]] 21:16, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
... but the Google and Yahoo search options are no longer there! Surely some mistake? -- [[User:Picapica|Picapica]] 21:16, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

== compliments... ==

I am a newcomer to wikipedia; although I have been aware of it and used it on occasion for quite a while, I have only recently realised the depth of this resource, and discovered the mechanics behind it.

this project is fantastic! the number of articles and the amount of information in them is truly amazing, even articles on topics so obscure I thought there would be no chance they would exist. the band biographies, for example, seem to have more detailed information and useful links than any official band website I have seen.

also, the articles are articulately written and unbiased, and the links between articles are very well done (though perhaps I have whiled away too many hours in school reading article after article as a consequence of this). wikipedia has become the primary internet resource for me (with the possible exception of news websites), and I really think that it is a credit to everyone who works on it, and indeed to human nature itself! this may seem like a sweeping statement, but it is hard to believe that something so incredible could be produced entirely voluntarily by people in their spare time. and, at the same time, would-be spoilers are repelled; I have never seen an incorrect piece of information or any 'graffiti'. good show!

anyway, I'm sure plenty of people have said this before, but just thought I would congratulate everyone who works on here, and say hi. I'm jack by the way, and I live in north wales. I shall try to contibute as much as possible (so far all I have done is added a sentence about john peel going to school in colwyn bay)!

hope everyone is well,
love
jack

Revision as of 21:20, 22 June 2004

Village pump sections
post, watch, search
Discuss existing and proposed policies
post, watch, search
Discuss technical issues about Wikipedia
post, watch, search
Discuss new proposals that are not policy-related
post, watch, search
Incubate new ideas before formally proposing them
post, watch, search
Discuss issues involving the Wikimedia Foundation
post, watch, search
Post messages that do not fit into any other category
View all village pump sections at once
Other help and discussion locations
I want... Then go to...
...help using or editing Wikipedia Teahouse (for newer users) or Help desk (for experienced users)
...to find my way around Wikipedia Department directory
...specific facts (e.g. Who was the first pope?) Reference desk
...constructive criticism from others for a specific article Peer review
...help resolving a specific article edit dispute Requests for comment
...to comment on a specific article Article's talk page
...to view and discuss other Wikimedia projects Wikimedia Meta-Wiki
...to learn about citing Wikipedia in a bibliography Citing Wikipedia
...to report sites that copy Wikipedia content Mirrors and forks
...to ask questions or make comments Questions

[[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]]

Summarised sections

This is a list of discussions that have been summarised and moved to an appropriate place. This list gets deleted occasionally to make room for newer entries. Please note that all comments relating to the new software have been moved to Wikipedia:Mediawiki 1.3 and all comments regarding categorisation to Wikipedia talk:Categorization.

Missing images

I notice that some articles (at least Maui and Haleakala) are missing images. The server seems to be trying to download them; my browser says from this "file": en.wikipedia.org/style/monobook/headbg.jpg No idea what "headbg.jpg" is (not one of the four missing images) or why the download is not working or where the images went. Anybody notice similar problems? - Marshman 08:12, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Bulleted lists

Why is it no longer possible to have a gap (one empty line) in a bulleted list? (Or am I again wrong?) <KF> 20:46, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Monobook.css#Line_spacing_for_lists_and_indents , posted yesterday, seems to be about the same thing. Sorry, I only found out a few minutes ago. But it's a real problem! <KF> 22:08, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Problem doing a Diff

I tried doing a Diff on the most recent change to Atlanta, Georgia from the Recent Changes page, and I got a database error:

[1]

A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an illegal search query (see Searching Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: SELECT old_namespace,old_title,old_timestamp,old_text,old_flags,old_user_text,old_comment FROM "old" WHERE old_id=4043094 from within function "DifferenceEngine::loadText". 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 '"old" WHERE old_id=4043094' at line 1". Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta%2C_Georgia"

I tried going to the article, looking at the History, and doing the Diff that way, and got the same error. But when I opened a new window and tried it, it worked fine. RickK 23:28, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)

Math symbols

Is it just me, or are some math symbols appearing as squares in the Monobook skin? For example, the right arrow (→) appears as a square, which renders some articles, such as domain, codomain, and range, difficult to read (although note in these articles I changed the inline math expressions that involved a right arrow into LaTeX---revert to earlier versions to see the squares). I think the sans-serif font is to blame. I don't believe sans-serif font supports a right arrow symbol. I think we should change the default font back to a Roman font or at least a font which supports all the math symbols the articles use. What does everyone think? –Matt 22:37, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

On the other hand, I see the right arrow appears correctly on this page, so perhaps it is just my computer... –Matt 22:38, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I just checked those pages on Firefox 0.8, IE6, and Opera 7.51, all on windows XP, and the previous versions (before your laTeXification) all render properly (if somewhat anaemically). I don't doubt you've seen a problem, however, but perhaps it's the usual stylesheet-caching issue, or something. Do a ctrl-f5 or shift-reload, sacrifice something cute to Legba, and don't worry. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:39, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I've seen similar square-box problems numerous times, even with the old layout, always when viewing Wikipedia pages under Mozilla on Linux, presumably due to font problems. It would be helpful if Matt would specify an OS and browser. (In-line math seems to have switched over to a serif font, although the font-size now clashes with the body text.) —Steven G. Johnson 15:53, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)
I've tried both IE5.5 and IE6 under Windows ME. In both cases, I see squares in some places (such as the articles cited above) but the correct math symbols in others (such as the village pump). –Matt 01:08, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Actually, the square-boxes seem to appear randomly now. I used to be able to see the right arrow above, but now it appears as a box. –Matt 01:11, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'm on Debian GNU/Linux running Mozilla Firebird 0.8 and I see no problem with the symbols. - Centrx 20:21, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Does anyone know of any ways to solve this problem? Preferably without changing skins, so as to simulate what someone from the outside (i.e., look up an article without an account) would see. I have tried flushing my cache and history, to no avail. Currently, for me, the &middot;, &rarr;, and &minus; have appeared as squares. –Matt 11:00, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Confused categorisation of "Kelvin"

Kelvin is tagged as belonging to the category SI base units but SI base units does not list Kelvin. Any ideas on what's going on here? -- Grunt 03:16, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)

Categories have problems with slow updating. I don't know why. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:42, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I can see that, but the other articles I tagged with SI base units (Mole (unit), Metre, Candela, Second, and Ampere were all added immediately to the category... -- Grunt 15:06, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)

I went to Kelvin and did an "Edit" and "Save". Since I didn't modify anything, nothing shows up in History. But lo and behold, Kelvin now appears in Category:SI base units. -- Curps 15:52, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

A related issue is some items bizarrely sorted under "C". For instance Atom was listed under "C" in Category:Chemistry. Doing the no-modification Edit+Save trick on Atom fixed this too. An actual modification will also fix it. -- Curps 16:02, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Morse code article space rendering problem

In the Morse code article, the american (railroad) morse characters need to render with internal spaces.

The code in place is currently 

 ·& nbsp ;& nbsp ;& nbsp ;· · & dagger ;  (note - spaces added to prevent interpretation(

which is rendering as ·   · · † which has no internal spaces.

Why is the & nbsp ; being ignored? How do I fix it? Rick Boatright 14:27, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

A quick inspection of the HTML code being received by my browser indicates that the &nbsp; characters are being stripped out and replaced with ordinary spaces which are then obviously being conflated together when rendered. Possibly a side-effect of the latest round of code updates which IIRC introduced a HTML-tidying stage (which might or might not be the cause before someone jumps to the erroneous conclusion that I know whereof I speak: I just guess good sometimes :-). --Phil | Talk 14:44, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)
I have been bold and suggested an alternative. See Morse code. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 14:56, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)
Arggggh Ick. Blech (Phil used an UNDERSCORE character to indicate the space) Phil, that is TRUELY UGLY. :-) Surely there has to be a better answer? Rick Boatright 15:08, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I hate using HTML, but using pre seems to do what I think you want:
  ·   ··†
Urgh. I feel dirty now. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:13, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Um, this is a bit off topic, but the HTML "tidying" seems to have broken <small> usage in tables--previously you could make the whole table small with one command, now you'd have to add it to every tr. Compare an old version of Seattle with the one right after 1.3, with now. Or, as of this moment, the table of companies at Houston, which I believe used to be all small, but now only the first row is. Anyway, my actual question is, can you point me to info about this 'tidy' feature, and/or places to comment about what it has done to existing articles? Niteowlneils 19:20, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, PRE worked here, but it doesn't work well in the tables in the code in question...
C - · - · 
  ·   ··†
since (at least in the monoblock skin) it puts that "pre" box around the stuff and looks "wonky" I really think they need to FIX the HTML Tidyer..... This worked GREAT before. Rick Boatright 21:52, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)


Self-linking?

Is it just me, or are all new articles claiming to link to themselves (ie the article appears in the "what links here" list)? Worse, if you move the page, the article continues to claim to link to the old location, now a redirect page. See Fulbert Youlou, and its "What links here" page. Niteowlneils 05:43, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I've been seeing this as well. Except for the move part, because I haven't moved anything. -- Cyrius|✎ 06:30, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Is it all articles or just stubs? The stub msg was recently changed to include an link that opened an edit window for the article. older≠wiser 12:11, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Ah, that's it. Niteowlneils 02:46, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

TechTV/Comcast Merger

What should we do about the TechTV, G4, and G4TechTV articles? (Please discuss at This Talk Page, I just wanted a public place to post this) Ilyanep 17:32, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC) and Ilyanep 17:57, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

After the move to "Wikipedia:Village pump/Temp", then u -> h ???

Is it just my computer or what ? How come after the move to here (Wikipedia:Village pump/Temp) all the lowercase 'u's on this page have been converted to 'h's ???? -- PFHLai 23:10, 2004 Jun 16 (UTC)

I'm seeing it too. I'm using an old version of Mozilla (1.2.1? About Mozilla doesn't say) under Linux 2.2. Isidore 00:55, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Seems it's been fixed by someone just now. The background colour has changed from light yellow to white, and the u's have been restored. Isidore 00:59, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • The page was vandalized. I reverted the vandalism. Andris 00:47, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)
I think the "vandalism" was an adminstrator fixing the problem. The history has been wiped out, with your change being the first (bottom-most) shown. Isidore 01:04, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Vandalism was this edit [2]. in which User:216.167.144.187 replaced every u by h. I first reverted to the edit before it and then added back the text that was added after the vandal. Someone else moved the page while I was fixing it. Andris 02:16, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)
The move was vandalism as well (a vandalbot was responsible for both acts of vandalism). See User:Wik for details. -- ChrisO 11:50, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Discussion of policies on dealing with conflict and building an open encyclopedia

I'd like to invite comment, ideas and discussion here Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines, thanks, Mark Richards 02:49, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Page move repairing

Currently I am running an update query to move the history from Mmmttt to here. Please do not delete this page or move Mmmttt to random locations like Village pump/Temp. If you are having trouble repairing page move vandalism due to a large history or a large number of incoming links, fix it using a cut-and-paste move and then report the problem. -- Tim Starling 02:55, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

Page histories

OK, what's going on? Every time I click on a [hist] link I get:

contents of history page deleted

RickK 05:36, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

From IRC - there's live patching going on. So things might be a little screwy. Dysprosia 05:40, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
+ It's for newbie contributions - edits and contributions from very new users. Dysprosia 05:46, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Programming wouldn't be fun without patching the live script of a website with thousands of online users ;) As Dysprosia rightly points out, Special:Contributions/newbies displays all edits by recently created accounts on one page. This is so that it's easier to detect and roll back Wik's edits. It can be slow to load, so it's probably better to use a shorter list if you're going to be hitting refresh often. The rollback links don't seem to work right now, I'll fix that in an hour or two. -- Tim Starling 06:00, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)
This page looks very useful. However it would make it easier to spot real newbies as opposed to on-the-spot vandal accounts if it showed the name of the account at some point. I realise that the layout is simply cloned from the standard single-account contributions page, but I would have thought that the Welcoming committee would find this page very useful indeed. --Phil | Talk 15:59, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)
And I've thought for a long time that contributions pages needed "diff" links. This is even more true for this page. But I understand, of course, that the developers have their hands full. moink 18:35, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Adding Category:Disambiguation to Template:disambig

Would adding [[Category:Disambiguation]] (or perhaps [[Category:Disambiguation pages]]) to Template:disambig be a good idea? I know that disambiguation articles would not instantly show up in Category:Disambiguation, but as they are edited, they would be slowly added to it, and this would be better than adding them all by hand even more slowly (and unreliably)... It would also eventually replace the need to maintain Wikipedia:Links to disambiguating pages which currently takes forever and a day to even load. (Hint: if you are an admin and agree, edit the protected page for me, thanks.) --ssd 05:10, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I don't see what non-maintenance practical reason this would have? Not against the idea, though, just curious. Dysprosia 09:33, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It just seems to me like a great way to get all the disambiguation pages in one place and eliminate a maintaince headache. Not everything listed on the disambiguation page is still a disambiguation, and I'm sure there are some not listed there. The only problem I see with it is that it'll give a fairly hard test of the category system when the number of articles starts going up. It'll probably be one of the first pages to need splitting. --ssd 06:25, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Are there any cases of a page that should be linked on Wikipedia:Links to disambiguating pages, but should not have a Template:disambig notice? I dont think there would be. If not, then it seems like a great idea. Just one less page that people need to take care of manually, and more time for people to update and create actual content! Chuq 10:14, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
They could be placed into the category manually (i.,e., have the category put on the page directly, and leave off the template) if that's really a problem. If they shouldn't be in the category either, they could just be linked from the category description article. A better question would be if there are pages that should have the notice but not be in the category. --ssd 12:29, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Sounds good. -- User:Docu
I think it would be a good idea. although I wonder if Category:Disambiguation should have subcategories for each letter as eventually the main category could have thousands of entries. RedWolf 18:38, Jun 20, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Airports infobox test

Hey All,

Some of us at Wikipedia:WikiProject Airports have created an infobox for the various airport pages. Please head to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Airports/infobox for look and the various test pages it has been rolled out to. Then join the discussion about it. Don't be shy about how you feel about it. Burgundavia 10:26, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

Cleanup Crisis

There's getting to be a slight Wikipedia:Cleanup crisis, not least because the many hundreds of wretched articles uncovered by User:Topbanana/Reports such as User:Topbanana/Reports/This page contains no links are coming to the surface and being added to Wikipedia:Cleanup probably faster than they're being cleared up. All additional contributions to the cleanup and removal from Wikipedia:Cleanup of items which have been sorted, is most humbly sought. (It's okay - only handsfull are being added; most are sorted out without recourse to a cleanup listing.) --Tagishsimon

Perhaps it would help if you had an automatically maintained alphabeized list that has entries automatically added and removed when the cleanup notice is added and removed? If you'd like that, just get someone to add Category:Cleanup to Template:cleanup and it's there! I would have done that this morning, except that the template article seems to be stuck. --ssd 22:38, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The cleanup message is though seldomly used, and I am among those who very seldomly put {cleanup} on the pages I list. There are several reasons for this, one is that it's often obvious that an article needs cleaup. ✏ Sverdrup 23:00, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia has an enormous amount of unwikified, truly poorly written articles, and they're being added with an increasing rate. I think we should have a monthly great cleanup day. On the great cleanup day, everybody should put petty talk page arguments and original article-writing to the side and instead work frenetically to get as many pages off cleanup as possible. Fredrik (talk) 23:30, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I second that. blankfaze | ?? 08:25, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I like the idea as well. Now that the template has Category:Cleanup in it, at the end of your month, we'll have a nice long list to work on. Assuming, that is, people don't wipe out the list before the month is over. 8-> --ssd 11:23, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
That's a good idea. Don't know how well it would work, but worth a shot. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 13:00, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I've been rather busy recently, but once I begin to have some more free time on my hands, I pledge to go through and clean up as many articles that are on Cleanup as I can :) Dysprosia 05:50, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I do a daily cleaning of Cleanup, checking each article after a week, two weeks, a month, and two months to see if it has been adequately dealt with. Before I started this in early March, Cleanup was over 90KB in size. After a throughout scouring it was brought down to less than 32KB and since March has been slowly growing and is now about 52KB. This is still much smaller than it was for the first months of this year, and I think we can wait for a while before another overhaul of the system is needed. Far worse is Pages Needing Attention, this page is massive and gets little attention. Much of what is on it has already been fixed, but the rest are pages in great need of aid, but very often people with specific expertise are needed. - SimonP 14:14, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)
SimonP, your link to "Pages Needing Attention" above goes to an article on "Peptide nucleic acid". The correct page (as of this writing) is Wikipedia:Pages needing attention. I didn't boldly change it myself because I don't know the history of these pages, but I thought you (and anyone reading this) should know. -- Jeff Q 16:38, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
My own practice agree with those of ✏ Sverdrup. Indeed I've never linked an article to Cleanup, though I could easily add a hundred or more that I know of in areas that I know well that contain gross inaccuracies or which contain information I think of dubious validity, are very POV, or just very poor. So I fix up what I can but most fixups lead to me discovering even more bad articles when I start checking links to the articles I fix up, far more than I can handle quickly. Some articles take a lot of time to clean up. Perhaps we should all start adding every such article to Cleanup and and declare a moritorium on all new articles until the Cleanup queue is empty? jallan 18:49, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hey, mom?

Today's Calvin and Hobbes has Calvin running up to his mother and asking, "Can I have the car keys?" His mother answers, "No." Calvin sprints off and returns with a book and a disappointed expression, saying, "Can you believe the encyclopedia doesn't have an entry for hotwire?"

So, I thought to myself, I wonder if my encyclopedia actaully does. The answer was, "Yes, but not by enough." Hotwire is just a dictionary definition! Could someone who knows how to steal cars please take care of this? :) -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 20:33, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Tutorials belong at wikibooks ;) →Raul654 21:48, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)
MM, good point. But we can at least have an overview of the process, maybe a nice illustration. And the tutorial, over at Wikibooks. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 22:14, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It is encyclopedic to write about the history of hotwiring though - you know, first Roman to hotwire a Senator's chariot and so on. Pcb21| Pete 07:30, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I note that Wikipedia's editors came through once more -- there's now quite a substantial article there. —Morven 10:30, Jun 22, 2004 (UTC)

Image tutorial

I just had the opportunity to refer someone to the lovely Wikipedia:Picture_tutorial. Couple of questions, though--

  • In my browser, at least, the example using div to put two images directly underneath each other has the text running underneath the uppermost image. Is it just me or is there something amiss with the markup?
  • Tutorial doesn't address having images without the thumb box around them but with having captions (as can be seen in Dog). Is the markup at Dog the approved markup for that sort of thing? And would it be nice to have such markup added to the tutorial?

Thanks! Elf | Talk 20:56, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Those thumbbox-less syntax are remnants of the old syntax, before this new one was in place. It's the same. I personally think we should change all old ones to the new syntax to avoid confusion. --Menchi 08:59, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I agree about changing the markup around images to conform to the new standards. It's just another case of Wikifying things.
Is it a good idea not to specify a width for images (unless there's a good reason for doing so in a particular case, of course). If no width is given the thumbnails default to 250 pixels wide which is the recommended size anyway. If that recommendation changes in future, the default could be altered and all unspecified images would change to the new standard without the need to edit each one. What do others think? - Chris Jefferies 17:33, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
If this is the case, I was not aware of it, and I'll go back to the images I've created and remove the width specifications. This is, as you say, a good idea, for the reason you mentioned. - RealGrouchy 13:00, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Should templates be used to add articles to categories?

There are a number of templates that are inserted into articles that need some kind of special attension. Specifically:

I have proposed adding these templates to appropriate categories, which will slowly cause the articles they are inserted into to join the categories, as the articles are edited. As with everything wiki, there is disagreement.

Pros:

  • This will cause an alphabetical list (category) to be automatically generated which does not need direct maintenance of all the articles with the template.
  • The category format is better than the format in What links here and lists all articles, rather than just the first several.
  • Pages renamed would be updated in the category list. Redirects don't always stay pointing to the correct article.
  • If the template is removed from the article, the page is instantly removed from the category, and won't linger until someone discovers it.
  • There are a lot of lingering stubs in wikipedia. Perhaps if there was a somewhat unified list in an easily browsable form, people would pick more of them off and expand more articles.

Cons:

  • This duplicates the functionality of What links here which could be enhanced.
  • "It is not the point of categories and is just plain silly." --Maximus Rex
  • It is bad to mix things which are in the encyclopedia with maintaince material
  • The categories could get huge and the category system might not be ready for that.
  • Adds the stub message twice, first the template text, then a tall line with Cat:Stub.

Apparently there are technical performance issues with modifying the template that is included in so many articles, so this should be decided once, and not unilaterally decided by one or two people. I would appreciate it if anyone could add to the arguments above (pro or con!). Perhaps we could have a vote or something later. --ssd 04:41, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I think the Cons are very strong, and not matched with the pros. My preferred solution is "This duplicates the functionality of What links here which could be enhanced". ✏ Sverdrup 12:47, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'm not really much in favor of using temporary categories like Category:cleanup or category:stub on articles. See category talk:stub for alternatives for stubs. In regards to Category:disambig see my comment further up on (here on Village pump). -- User:Docu
However, does it work? Does including a cat: on a template cause all pages to which it is added to belong to the category also? This is of course useful for maintaining other pages with categories.
It may be a good thing, to present a back-link to other pages needing cleanup prominently on the page, but it may be redundant to go about this through means of a category, however.
I don't know... Dysprosia
Yes, it works, but I think a page has to be purged/touched before the cat shows up. ✏ Sverdrup 13:28, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

User:Docu has suggested several alternatives to categories, but none of them work. I will list them on category talk:stub. --ssd 04:36, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC) them

Alternatives to using Category:stub that is. Did you try? I'm much in favor of adding Category:Disambiguation to Template:Disambig. -- User:Docu

Slow access times

I wanted to know why the access times recently are sooooo slooooowwwww... It is almost impossible to normally use the Wikipedia. Maybe some kind of traffiking monitoring should be done - such as limiting the amount of users currently connecting (or ideally increase bandwidth dah...) (Ivenger)

Wikipedia is experiencing growing pains. We are being bottlenecked by our server power. It's already been said that from now on, we'll need to buy (at least) a new server every month. →Raul654 09:40, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)

THIS MEANS PLEASE DONATE, IF YOU CAN. -- blankfaze | ?? 12:24, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Categorization Naming Conventions

I was wondering what people thought of the current categorization scheme. Most of the categories seem to be created (Somewhere) (Something). I think it looks better and is more formal to use (Something) of/in (Somewhere). Ie. Canadian Banks vs Banks of Canada. Burgundavia 11:40, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)

On an unrelated note, I saw you inserting Category:Banks of the People's Republic of China and similarly titled articles. I would prefer it be Category:Banks of mainland China as that would be more politically neutral. It's clearer to keep Hong Kong and Macau separate and won't cause NPOV issues on whether to include Taiwan. --Jiang 11:44, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Jiang, while I see your point about trying to keep it NPOV as far as Taiwan is concerned, I don't feel like this change is needed. When someone comes along (like that'll ever happen) looking for info on Banks in Taiwan, they're going to look in Category:Banks of Taiwan or something of the like, not Category:Banks of the People's Republic of China. I understand your concern, but I really don't think we should but Taiwanese banks under Category:Banks of the People's Republic of China. blankfaze | •• 12:55, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
As for the thing about China, that is a landmine I am not going to step on. Do you have examples for your idea? As for Hong Kong and Macau, they ARE part of the People's Republic. Just as Puerto Rico and the Bermuda are part of the US and the UK respectively, a dependent, not an independent country. Any, the issue at hand is that of naming conventions regarding about order, not countries and NPOV. Burgundavia 12:37, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)

I'm well aware that HK and Macau are part of the PRC. However, Hong Kong and Macau are governed under a distinctly different economic systems than the mainland. When it comes to banks and companies, it really helps the reader to keep these regions separate. They're considered separate countries for economic purposes (APEC, WTO, etc). Economic topics for separate economies deserve separate categories.

We use the combinations Mainland China/Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau for neutrality when politics is not the subject so the territorial claims are left ambiguous. see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese). While there is little room for confusion (other than using political labels that are rarely used in economics), it's not NPOV to assert that there are two countries each consisting of their current jurisdictions. I know this is really the case, but saying so is making a politcal statement. I don't see what's wrong with using non-political titles. --Jiang 13:04, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

From naming conventions (chinese) In particular, the word "China" should not be used to be synonymously with areas under the current administration of the People's Republic of China or with Mainland China. Similarly, the word "Taiwan" should not be used if the term "Republic of China" is more accurate. What in my naming scheme conflicts with this? There is a note in the Category:Airports of the Republic of China and Category:Airports of the People's Republic of China about the other. Burgundavia 13:12, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)
I can add a note to the bank articles on a similar line, as I think that would help. Burgundavia 13:17, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)

Neither you nor I am proposing a Category:Banks of China to cover only the PRC. We didn't even propose Category:Banks of China at all. In this case, "Republic of China" is not more accurate. It's only more accurate in a political context ("President of the Republic of China" vs. "President of Taiwan"). We're now implying that the ROC and PRC are separate countries limited to their current jurisdictions. Instead, I cite The term "Mainland China" is a term which can used when a comparison is to be made with Taiwan for non-political purposes. Hong Kong and Macau are generally not considered part of Mainland China, but are under the jurisdiction of the PRC. Thus, it is appropriate to write "many tourists from Hong Kong and Taiwan are visiting Mainland China." A non-political subject deserves a non-political description. Yes, a description within the category helps, but still... And why not separate the economies when people would like to see them separate? --Jiang 14:24, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Mysterious pic on Main page

The symbol of Wikisource on the Main Page (bottom right), a bluish image, has been disturbing my peace since a while. Anyone knows what it is or what it attempts to imply. Is it a photograph or painting ? Jay 13:21, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The iceberg? - UtherSRG 13:25, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It's an iceberg, as the first name of WikiSource was "Project SourceBerg". andy 13:27, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. image:sourceberg.jpg didn't have any details but image:iceberg.jpg had. Hence I provided a link from the former to the latter. Jay 17:47, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
That logo was only a temporary thing put there when the wiki was created. It was never officially decided on as a logo, so, as far as I know, it's just waiting for someone to design something more appropriate. With the new name "Wikisource", the iceberg makes ever less sense than it used to. :) Angela. 23:27, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Playing with some ideas, and keeping the blue that seems to be consistent for other logos, how about...

File:Wikisource newlogo.pngFile:Wikisource newlogo lge.png --VampWillow 16:10, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It looks like a bread clip? Was that the idea? Dysprosia 21:44, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

UTC TimeClock

Can someone put the UTC Timeclock to on side so when we see messages that the server will be down from this time to next time, We have a UTC clock ticking to show us the time? This would be a nice addition. How about the UTC time clock under the search box?WHEELER 14:00, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Coordinated Universal Time has a clock. You must be logged in to get the correct time. If you are not, you will get a cached copy. Paul Studier 00:12, 2004 Jun 19 (UTC)

I take it back. Even when logged in, this clock is not always updated, even if one does a ctrl-F5 in Microsoft Internet Explorer. Best is to use http://time.gov/timezone.cgi?UTC/s/0/java. Paul Studier 00:27, 2004 Jun 19 (UTC)

Personally, I just type 

 TZ=utc date

or (csh) 

 env TZ=utc date

but it's obvious what my bias is. 8-P --ssd 14:39, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Some issues

{I am posting this at Meelar's suggestion, to get a more responsive audience, though some of it's already appeared at the Help Desk.}

  • Some contributions never show up. I have created three new articles recently; while the first one showed up immediately after a search, the second two (created early yesterday) never show up on search results either on Wikipedia or on Google & Yahoo. Meelar says this might be because they haven't been crawled by search engines yet, but I am not sure that is the problem - I discovered some other pages, like the one on Viktor Shklovsky created last December, which also don't show up after a search on Wikipedia, Google or Yahoo.
  • I can't seem to move pages either. Though I did it for my first article, everytime I try to move a page now Wikipedia tells me I am not logged in, though I am and can still make edits. I have tried logging back in repeatedly, and also restarting my computer and clearing my cache, but nothing seems to change (so I doubt the problem is with my browser); I keep getting the same answer when I click on Move Page, ie that I need to log in first.
  • There is no coherent, rational structure or index for the distribution of articles, and no specified protocol which makes this structure/ index possible; because the current distribution is not rational, access routes to information are not reversible. Though each article has links that lead to other links, it is quite random; to illustrate with an example, a) User A creates article on Famous Scientist. Famous Scientist belongs to Specific Science, and is citizen of Certain Country; however, clicking on link to "Specific Science" does not lead to a COMPREHENSIVE list of famous scientists which will lead back to the Famous Scientist in question; in some cases it does not even lead to a list, or a history, or any such thing; similarly, clicking on "Certain Country" does not lead to a comprehensive list of famous scientists, or even "Contributions to Science" subdivision which will lead back to the Famous Scientist in question. User A may make an effort to rectifying said links and lists, but there are too many articles, lists, links and so on to ensure the changes have much impact. It would be much simpler to encourage a protocol among article creators and editors that would give rise to indexing, and will make these "information access routes" smoother and rational. (Additional note) b) I see there are " Wikiprojects" for some subject areas - would it be possible to direct newcomers to exisiting Wikiprojects, or ask them to create new Wikiprojects, so that groups of related articles can be effectively indexed and linked to each other, and category-wide changes can be requested and/or tracked?
  • I wasn't planning to complain about servers and slow downloads, but I finally had to edit this page and repaste this post, because I tried to "Start (a) Discussion" three times, and instead of submitting my discussion Wikipedia led me to some absurd "download" page that had a long list of numbers. What's with that?
  • Are there any simpler ways of catching the attention of the right people on a wide number of specific issues, instead of hunting all over Wikipedia looking for the right discussion on a Meta feature, which may have been abandoned a long time ago, and then the right discussion for a Bug report, which is not really a Bug report but needs to be submitted elsewhere, and so on and so forth ... this manner of electronic bureacracy is very time-consuming and discouraging to the newcomer.

Simonides 19:00, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Searching: google (etc.) do the searching, and we don't know what rules they use. Wikipedia's "own" search is just a pointer to google. They don't crawl all articles. The specific article you mention may not be indexed for the following reasons: 1) it's not very well linked-to (at the very least, fix the references via the redirect, and add one from your user page). 2) it's very short. The search engines may well have a threshhold that says "pages with < n characters are just intfrastructural junk (as, for example, redirects are)". moving pages: moving pages was disabled for new(ish) users a few days ago, because a vandalbot was using that technique to cause trouble. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:39, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for replying. I experimented on your suggestions by lengthening one of the articles, but it still didn't show up on Google. By the way, who should be notified of the fact Yahoo can't always search the Wikipedia domain and throws up something weird like "http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org could not be searched"? Moving: the first move I made was less than two nights ago. So it would be after moves were disabled. Or perhaps I did not come up as a new user right away. Please let me know if you find out more in any case. Simonides 03:43, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Google tends to only spider pages once a month or once a week, so it's likely that Google just hasn't/hadn't yet picked up on your expansion. Lucky Wizard 21:48, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Simonides, I'll add a little to Finlay's comments. The "What links here" button works in many cases for finding an article -- if Adolphe Theodore Brongniart is an authority on paleobotany, well, it's easy to go to paleobotany and see what links there. Sadly, of course, the list at physics is too long to manage sorting through. The category system is our attempt to resolve this problem....it's been active for just a few weeks now, though, so it's still incomplete. We'll need to work together to build the category system so that it's a good solution. The download page.....wow, got me. We've had trouble this week with access, largely because of a systematic vandal attack (really the first one we've ever had). Hopefully we can learn from this and avoid it in the future. And finally, it _is_ hard to know where to post things. This is a problem for even the experienced on a site with thousands of users and hundreds of thousands of pages (perhaps a million pages by now....can't say for sure). I usually post questions here or on one of the Wikipedia:Mailing lists, where I either get an answer or directions to the right place. If you have ideas for streamlining this process, especially if they can make it easier for new users to understand and be made aware of, please offer them! I'd be really interested in a solution. Discussion would probably take place here initially, but eventually be moved to a place where it could remain in the public eye longer (the pump needs cleaning pretty regularly)...perhaps a move to Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines, where we could set up some guidelines for how to approach problems? Just a few thoughts. Thanks for sharing your concerns! Jwrosenzweig 21:05, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for responding. I don't have any suggestions right now, but I was wondering if I could perhaps edit the Newcomer page to direct people straight away to the Help Desk or Village Pump after reading the bare essentials, if they have questions? And make it mandatory for at least one adminstrator to check the Desk daily, a different one every day, or something on those lines. I realise increasing protocol is cumbersome. But at least it keeps the newcomers (like me) interested in and confident about any tasks ahead, insteading of feeling shrugged off by the habitués and the jargon. (I don't feel that way - yet - but it's a possibility.) Simonides 03:43, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Simonides, categories aim to resolve some of the problems you've found with "list" articles; Wikiprojects are generally more about standardized formatting etc. And the "numbers" page you're hitting is the "tarpit", designed to slow the vandalbot down. (It isn't just affecting you, BTW; I had some replies for your questions earlier today, but the 'pit swallowed them whole.) - jredmond 01:03, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thank you for the comments. The page I was getting was indeed the "tarpit." I have just been reading the Category page and they seem to be hosting a real Platonic dialogue over there! Categories that could be subcategories which are categories in themselves ... Never mind. I think there is a rationale for categories, where broad subject areas are concerned, and lists can be subjugated to categories, and vice versa, staggering on till we get to articles. I think Wikiprojects could be extended, to discuss some of the "context" behind categories, and to make peer review more productive and manageable. You know you are dealing with people interested in the topic, so for instance 1) you can discuss some overall topic-specific changes, and 2) any "formatting" corrections that are made are also unlikely to become errors of content. PS I find it a good idea to save your article in notepad first, or keep it open for copy-&-paste, in case you lose something.
Thank you all for the thoughts, please keep them coming. Simonides 03:43, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
PS Would anyone mind if I reposted some of these thoughts once I join the mailing list? I realise it's beginning to look like spam...

Bogus interwiki

Someone, presumably with the intent of an Interwiki link, has added [[zh-cn:法国大革命]] to the article French Revolution. I believe "zh" is Chinese. "zh-cn" means nothing to me, but I hesitate to simply delete. Does anyone know what is going on here? -- Jmabel 00:51, Jun 19, 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Chinese interlanguage links. There are two versions of Chinese characters in use. It's good to specify which one. --Jiang 01:43, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
These links temporarily stopped working, and should be fixed shortly. -- Tim Starling 03:53, Jun 19, 2004 (UTC)
zh-cn is "simplified" Chinese, as used in the PRC, zh-tw is "traditional" Chinese as used in Taiwan and other overseas Chinese communities. I noticed these links have stopped working when I was on cy.wikipedia last night. -- Arwel 10:31, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Spam filter

I spent most of this morning trying to post Doggystyle Records to Cleanup, but I kept getting an error page that was title "Spam protection filter" and kept telling me that I wasn't allowed to post Spam to Wikipedia. It WOULD NOT let me add it. So I came here to post my problem, and it wouldn't let me post it here! And now, the problem seems to have gone away. What's going on? RickK 05:13, Jun 19, 2004 (UTC)

I had something very similar happen. -- Jmabel 05:02, Jun 20, 2004 (UTC)

Alive: plane crash

I have an article naming conundrum. I've just been looking for an article on the 1972 plane crash in the Andes following which the survivors turned to cannibalism in order to live. Wikipedia, has references to the event at 1972, in Cannibalism and for the film Alive: The Miracle of the Andes. There is also a good external reference at [3].

Now it seems to me, there should be an article for this event in and of itself - but what should it be titled? I can only think of Plane crash Chile (1972), which isn't brilliant. --Solipsist 08:27, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

For commercial airliner crashes, the standard seems to be "<Airline name> Flight <flight number>", for example Air New Zealand Flight 901 (see List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners grouped by location). Since this was a Uruguayan air force plane, and I can't find a flight number, I might suggest Uruguayan Air Force Fairchild FH-227D if that's not too obscure! -- Arwel 10:43, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I have always found the standard odd, because it does not mention that it is about a crash. Also, the Uruguayan Air Force may have other planes of type Fairchild FH-227D.--Patrick 11:09, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Personally I think the article should be named by what the incident is most commonly known as. I do note that in the United States it is common to call air disaster after the flight number. But in other parts of the world it is not. Example while US people refer to Pan Am Flight 103 people in the UK refer to it as the Lockerbie disaster. Now getting back to original question. There doesn't seem to be a common name. Andies disaster has been used by some media, but there have also been other crashes in the Andies. -- Popsracer 11:23, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I suspect the Airline Flight 001 naming standard comes from general air incident investigations, the majority of which don't end in a crash. I'm not sure that Uruguayan Air Force Fairchild FH-227D works, because it sounds like it would be about a type of plane in the Uruguayan Air Force. So now I'm leaning towards Andes Flight Disaster (1972) or Uruguayan Air Force Flight (1972). An analogous problem occurs with the 1994 crash of a Chinook helicopter on the Mull of Kintyre, killing several top UK anti-terrorism experts. It seems to mostly be refered to as The Chinook Helicopter Crash/Disaster, even though I would have thought it was not the only Chinook to crash. -- Solipsist 12:23, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Surreptitious POV vandalism

Please see my revert to H. R. Haldeman, and note the sneaky under-the-Wiki-radar used to white wash this criminal's career:

Here's the version prior to the white-washing (and what it's currently reverted to by me): http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=H._R._Haldeman&oldid=1272207

Here's the end result of the white-washing, before subsequent edits: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=H._R._Haldeman&oldid=1351158

Here's the diff of those two versions: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=H._R._Haldeman&diff=1351158&oldid=1272207

Here's the white-washing after other, presumably honest and well-intentioned edits, showing that the white-washing has largely been accepted as true by subsequent editors: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=H._R._Haldeman&oldid=4175302

Here's the diff between what was current before my revert and the wqhite-washing, showing almost all the white-washing was accepted as true: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=H._R._Haldeman&diff=4175302&oldid=1351158

Here's the user page of the user who did the white-washing; note that this user is anonymous and only ever edited the HR Haldeman page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=208.180.47.191

Wiki needs to be on guard against this sort of subtle re-writing of history; while not as obvious as vandalism, it's far more pernicious because of its believability. orthogonal 02:47, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

You have stumbled onto the very reason that User:Michael was banned and is automatically reverted every time he contributes. He was known for adding subtly incorrect information to what he wrote. →Raul654 08:43, Jun 20, 2004 (UTC)

Hello all, I am having similar problems with User Humus at Media_coverage_of_the_Israeli-Palestinian_conflict. Please see discussion and advise, I have reported the article in a couple of places but I guess the administrators are not up and around yet. Simonides 09:38, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Administrators do not play any special role in disputes over article content, other than having the ability to protect a page to stop an edit war if they are not personally involved with it. See Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. Angela. 23:33, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Disambiguating 'Hispanic' in census data

Could anyone responsible for uploading U.S. Census data please see Talk:Hispanic at "Disambiguation in census data". m.e. 08:14, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

We really need someone to cleanup after User:Rambot, whose operator seems to have vanshed from the site. Asia is also one of the most linked pages. The link to the continent is inconsistent with the links to the American ethnic groups and should be [[Asian American|Asian]] and not [[Asia|Asian]]! I think User:Ram-Man resolved to change all of the links to Race (U.S. Census) but left without finishing the task. It's also illogical that there are no links for white. Any bot operators out there willing to help? --Jiang 08:24, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)
If you want, I can try to fix them with D6. As there are quite a few of them, it's likely to take days though. Which ones shall we change? Shall we change [[Asia|Asian]] to [[Asian American|Asian]] in all Census data? Which WikiProjects would we need to consult ?-- User:Docu

It'll be great if you can do something about this, Docu. There's Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Counties, but I'm not sure if this is part of their scopes. It was pretty much Ram-Man doing his thing...A note won't hurt though.

We have two options - change all the racial links to point to Race (U.S. Census), as Rambot was partly through doing, or change [[Asia|Asian]] to [[Asian American|Asian]] and [[Hispanic]] to [[Hispanic American|Hispanic]]. I personally think that the former may be slightly confusing. I think we should do the latter and make sure Race (U.S. Census) has a place in the individual Race articles. --Jiang 16:56, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It's probably preferable to link [[Asia|Asian]] to [[Asian American|Asian]] or to [[Asian (US census)|Asian]].
As there may be some 25000 references to change, the pywikipediabot I was planning on using might be a bit at its limits, but it should be feasible. If Rambot/Ram-Man is going to do some other changes, he could probably updated all references in the articles easier. -- User:Docu

Linkage weirdness

On my draft Guide intro ([[4]]), when I Preview, Wikipedia correctly shows as a "visited" link. However, when I save and view the page, it shows as a "red-link", and links to the Edit page for the article. Any ideas? Is it just some obscure bug? Niteowlneils 20:38, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Arrrgh. I made some unrelated edits, and now it's behaving correctly. I guess I'll blame solar flares. Niteowlneils 21:12, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Found another page that still shows the problem WTEV--WJXX in the infobox shows as a red-link, even tho' the article exists. Niteowlneils 20:40, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Provocative use of Arabic script

A user called Elyaqim has visited the pages for three Bollywood movie stars (Bollywood = Mumbai movie industry) and added an Arabic script version of the stars' names immediately after the English rendering.

In the context of Indian politics, this is extremely provocative. It seems like an attempt to point out that the three top male stars

are all of North Indian-Muslim descent.

I contacted the user with regard to the Aamir Khan article (the only one I noticed at first) and asked him to either delete the Arabic script, or add a Devanagari script version too. He responded somewhat curtly that the star was Muslim, his forbears were Muslims, and that his name should be written as an Urdu name. Since then I've had no reply from this user.

North Indian dialects are a mixture of Hindi and Persian and Arabic loan words. If the tilt is heavily towards the loan words, the language is called Urdu and written in Arabic script. If the tilt is towards Hindi, the script used is Devanagari. Choosing to write a name in Arabic rather than Devanagari script is tantamount to saying "He's Muslim".

Most Indian movies are careful to show film titles in English, Devanagari script, and Arabic. If we're going to add Arabic script versions of the stars' names, we ought to add Devanagari too.

But I can't write Devanagari.

I asked the user to supply Devanagari versions and he said he didn't know Devanagari.

I would like to just delete the Arabic script but I don't want to get into an edit war.

Please advise.

I suggest that you move the arabic script to the appropriate talk page, and add a note similar to the above to explain the removal of it from the article text. Tannin 23:45, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Editing conflict prevention doesn't seem to be working right

See history of Mazda 929. A user made an edit after I started editting it (removed "msg:"), but when I hit Save, I was not told about the conflict, but got a MySQL error, something about 'lock wait timeout'. I tried saving again, and it wrote my changes despite the conflict. Niteowlneils 00:45, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Huh. Must be more specific, as I was unable to repro doing the basic steps. I did see this message earlier today, but not sure if the same cause. Niteowlneils 07:23, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Is anyone selling copies of Wikipedia at this time?

Hello everyone! The GFDL says that a person who copies WP "may accept compensation in exchange for copies" (Section 2). Is anyone selling copies at present? If so that's great, if not, that's great too. I searched the wikien-l archive and did a general web search but I couldn't find any info one way or the other. Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this topic. Regards & happy editing, Wile E. Heresiarch 00:57, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

WikiReaders are selections of Wikipedia articles on a particular subtopic; these are being sold: http://shop.wikipedia.org/ — Matt 01:00, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Look at Wikipedia:WikiReader, which is our english version of a project at german wikipedia that has come much further: The german wikipedia are currently selling printed "Readers" on single Topics taken from German Wikipedia articles! Wikipedia-shop is currently only in German and sells these two items. ✏ Sverdrup 01:04, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
You can also look at the vision of a Wikipedia 1.0 ✏ Sverdrup 01:04, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Umm...

A few burgers, and a donut. A coffee, a small coke. And yes I'd like fries with that... (sorry--Couldn't resist...this won't happen again [or for a long time]) Ilyanep 01:59, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

IDGI. If this was Y Caffi, or Le Bistro, then I could see where you were coming from - but who orders food at a pump!? - IMSoP 02:33, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Maybe someone brought some potluck or something. Ilyanep 14:29, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps it's a gas pump, and he's buying from the nearby 7-Eleven? [ alerante | “” 17:08, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC) ]

Vandalism on Germany article

I am not sure if this is the place or method to report this, and I am sorry if I'm mistaken, but I'm afraid the article on Germany has been vandalized.

When I open the article on IE, the normal page appears. However, using Mozilla Firefox I see the vandalized version of the article in which the German flag has been replaced by the Nazi Swastika and the coat of arms by the Nazi Eagle insignia. Parts of the article's content have been vandalized as well.

I've taken screenshots of this:

Germany article as seen on Internet Explorer

Germany article as seen on Mozilla Firefox

However, a friend told she sees the vandalized article even using IE.

I do now know how to solve this, but I guess the code or something has been modified as I see the problematic page with Firefox but not with Internet Explorer.

Papa Lemming 03:08, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

  • Thanks for reporting vandalism on an important article. I fixed it. (For future, it can be fixed it by clicking "history", then finding the last non-vandalized version, clicking "edit" and saving. Or you can report it and somone else will fix it.) Regarding Mozilla/IE, my only explanation is that your IE was showing an earlier version from a cache. Andris 03:14, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)

Stickies for Editors?

Would it be possible to have some sort of Post-It/ Sticky feature that would allow all registered contributors to leave notes on the article page (such as "Bibliography Missing for Article, Please Add") that would only be visible to other contributors, instead of visiting readers? -- Simonides 03:35, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

<!-- Do it like this --> jimfbleak 05:03, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
(corrected HTML comment syntax) Dysprosia 05:47, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Or just use the attached discussion page - it's a good habit to get into, if you're glancing around pages with a view to editing them, to see what's being discussed. I think inline HTML comments are somewhat less helpful, since they require reading through the entire wiki-source (and who does that on a regular basis?). The only use I can think of for HTML comments is to really draw attention to a particular design / content decision which has already been discussed but might be inadvertently be "fixed" if someone forgot to check the discussion page. All just IMHO, of course, but that's my €0.02 - IMSoP 18:57, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Inline comments are also useful to indicate (for example) that a particular foreign-language word could use a good English-language translation. -- Jmabel 19:03, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)
I still think it's better to at least draw attention to the need on the talk: page - there's more chance of someone spotting it there than in the article's edit window, IMHO. - IMSoP 17:54, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Watchlist

Hi kids! My watchlist has decided to stop showing up. When I click "My watchlist", I get a blank page. This problem has been persisting for a few hours. Before I submit it as a bug, I'd like to check that I'm not doing something really weird that's causing the problem. Any ideas? Thanks! --Puffy jacket 04:04, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

My child - our developers are aware of the problem. Now go, and sin no more. →Raul654 04:05, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)
Thank you, Father. ;) --Puffy jacket 04:06, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Works for me, but recently I have seen blank pages elsewhere. Niteowlneils 07:23, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Edit this page

Big thanks to whoever restored that text on monobook skin. Would still like the tabs to have initial caps, and to default to top and bottom, but at least the consistent verbage makes documentation easier. Niteowlneils 07:23, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That would be Guanaco: [5]. Any sysop can do this, see Wikipedia:All system messages for a list. -- Tim Starling 08:40, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)

A Question for Arabic speakers

I have a question in Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places) for anyone who knows Arabic / is familiar with Arab countries. Thanks to all in advance. -- ran 09:07, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)

High resolution wikipedia logo needed

has anybody the wikipedia logo in high res, or can tell me where to download it? At Computer Sciences Corporation we are working on a research report and want to include the logo. We already have the approval, but unfortunately not the logo :-)

Check out http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo - Fredrik | talk 15:06, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)


Cannot work while logged in.

I have been plagued by a problem which I haven't seen mentioned by anyone else: Ever since the new software, when I log in I can't work. If I don't log in, I can read, edit, etc with no problems at all. But after I log in all pages refuse to load. This has been going on for quite a while already.

Does anyone have any idea why this might be so? Thanx in advance, Dovi.

I don't think this is the case for most people, so if you are not using an unusual browser, I can only imagine that it is a problem with cookies. If you can find your web browser's cookies, you might try deleting any that relate to Wikipedia -- Solipsist 19:45, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This is happening to me as well. I was trying to edit the see also section on the Inca Empire page. I tried it from two computers using three browsers (safari, camino, and IE 6.0 Win XP). I'm new to wiki, so I don't really know the best way to escalate this. And I can't be logged in while I report it, for obvious reasons. -nep
'I'm new to wiki' - Ahh this might be the clue. I believe there have recently been some changes to limit or slow down editing by new users, as a defense against a vandalbot that has been causing trouble (see Wikipedia talk:Vandalbot log entries and look for Vandalbot above on this page). Your editing problems might be related, but of course I could be off base -- Solipsist 11:24, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

References/Books/Further reading/Bibliography

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Cite sources. —Steven G. Johnson 01:30, Jun 22, 2004 (UTC)

Namespace in Korean Wikipedia

In Korean Wikipedia, we have used "위키백과:"("%EC%9C%84%ED%82%A4%EB%B0%B1%EA%B3%BC:" in UTF-8) for "Wikipedia:" namespace. But it seems that all pages under the Korean namespace have changed title into "Wikipedia:" namespace during the innovation about a day ago. Is there the way of restoring them? And how to have namespaces of lingua's own, so that later automatic changes wouldn't affect? --PuzzletChung 11:34, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)


More wrong redlinks

I added four bios in the last few days to List of Heavyweight Champions as follows:

On List of Heavyweight Champions page if you click on some, they open to the edit page while another opens to a "create an article" blank. Elsewhere, some links work, some don't.

There is the same problem with List of famous cemeteries re Canada = Halifax, Nova Scotia ... JillandJack 17:46, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yes, there seems to be something odd with the way the database is storing links - it even affected the article on Wikipedia the other day. Have you tried doing some trivial edits to the pages in question (sometimes this causes the software to recheck the links)? See also (possibly) Bug #802814 and Bug #964858. As Brion commented in the former of those, bit rot seems to have set in! - IMSoP 18:25, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I tried edits, pasting good title etc. Nothing works. Maybe it's just a "work to rule" campaign by a "bit" wanting better pay, or at least a little appreciation. JillandJack 18:56, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Okay, how did this get duplicated ??? It happened the other day to me on List of Jews.

It's a software bug which I triggered discussing a software bug, and which seems to have triggered another software bug that's stopping me cleaning up after myself! d'OH!! - IMSoP 19:06, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Problems editing

Just spent the last half an hour trying to fix the complete duplication of this page, was having major problems. I finally gave up just now.

'Show preview' worked fine, but on trying to hit 'Save page', the resultant edit did not go through. The link http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump&action=submit loads up as a blank page. Any hints as to what's causing it/what to do? I have submitted a SourceForge bug report, but wanted to check if anyone here knew what was happening. -- Michael Warren 19:15, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I've been having the exact same problem on Cleanup, which is also currently doubled. - SimonP 19:19, Jun 22, 2004 (UTC)
I finally got around it by deleting text bit by bit from the top of the page - it doesn't seem to like you deleting too much in one go. I suspect this of being a "feature" to discourage vandalism. Grr... - IMSoP 19:40, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I did the same thing at Cleanup, cutting section by section. - SimonP 19:53, Jun 22, 2004 (UTC)
Apparently, it was supposed to be a newbie block, but somebody forgot a "not" - meaning that only newly created accounts could delete that much of a page! D'oh! - IMSoP 20:00, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What's happened to Search?

A "redesign" seems to have happened since yesterday, the most frustrating element of which is that when the search is unsuccessful we now get:
"Try the Google or Yahoo! searches below"
... but the Google and Yahoo search options are no longer there! Surely some mistake? -- Picapica 21:16, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

compliments...

I am a newcomer to wikipedia; although I have been aware of it and used it on occasion for quite a while, I have only recently realised the depth of this resource, and discovered the mechanics behind it.

this project is fantastic! the number of articles and the amount of information in them is truly amazing, even articles on topics so obscure I thought there would be no chance they would exist. the band biographies, for example, seem to have more detailed information and useful links than any official band website I have seen.

also, the articles are articulately written and unbiased, and the links between articles are very well done (though perhaps I have whiled away too many hours in school reading article after article as a consequence of this). wikipedia has become the primary internet resource for me (with the possible exception of news websites), and I really think that it is a credit to everyone who works on it, and indeed to human nature itself! this may seem like a sweeping statement, but it is hard to believe that something so incredible could be produced entirely voluntarily by people in their spare time. and, at the same time, would-be spoilers are repelled; I have never seen an incorrect piece of information or any 'graffiti'. good show!

anyway, I'm sure plenty of people have said this before, but just thought I would congratulate everyone who works on here, and say hi. I'm jack by the way, and I live in north wales. I shall try to contibute as much as possible (so far all I have done is added a sentence about john peel going to school in colwyn bay)!

hope everyone is well, love jack

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