Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

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[[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]]

Summarised sections

Images in by-lines

Lately, I have noticed some people putting images in their signatures (~~~~). I don't mind people putting ornamental Unicode characters in their sigs (but changing colours using <font> is borderline IMHO). However, using scaled-down images is just a waste of server resources. For some examples, scroll through WP:VFD. Right now, I see three different images: The EU flag, The Italian flag and a bulldog. Apart from using bandwidth, database and other server resources, the images attract unnecessary attention to the signatures that use them. — David Remahl 11:47, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

And it's slightly annoying. I think font color and unicode is okay as long as it's text only (or I'd put an American flag, A russian flag, a Latvian flag, and my pic :D) [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] 13:13, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
One can do tricolours without images. zoney | talk 14:33, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Another bonus is that the text can be kept the same size as page text, and will scale (should one scale the browser text, Ctrl -/= with Mozilla Firefox) zoney ███ talk 14:41, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Would you happen to know an easy way to show a cross design (as in the Scandinavian flags) like you do the Irish flag? (I know, I know, probably a dumb question, but I'm curious, and my HTML is rusty.) Cheers Io 15:59, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I agree, image sigs are beyond the pale. And actually I'm not too keen on colours and flags either. Anything that makes one editor stand out more than another breaks the general egalitarianism of Wikipedia. Sysops aren't supposed to have more authority than a newbie, but a new editors might not realise that the opinion of a hyper-sigged editor carries no more weight than anyone else. -- Solipsist 22:55, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Font coloring is OK with me. Fancy font usage is borderline, but not so bad. Images, if they are very tiny and tasteful, will not cause me to lose any sleep. These animated images are getting out of hand, though. They are distracting and annoying, almost as much so as blinking text. The Village Pump already takes a fair amount of time to load up; if half the conversation is signed by personalized animated GIFs, it makes the problem far worse. I hesitate to make anything like a policy against this (even though to me it's verging on being akin to inappropriate usernames), but in the interests of maintaining a non-hostile community we should encourage people to avoid doing stuff like this. Please, if you are using an animated image in your sig, take it out. -- Wapcaplet 18:01, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Another problem with image as signatures, is when they're used in place of the name. That reduces searchability. For example, I tried to find all Theresa Knott's comments on this page, but had to browse through it manually since the signature was an image. — David Remahl 21:01, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'd welcome a good policy based on recommendations, for example to avoid sigs with only pictures, blinking things etc. I was inspired when I saw the first user putting in an image in his sig (User:Cow) and has since tried different things, to inspire other wikipedians to follow and test the usefulness. David raises a good point; a point against having all images in your signature. Eventually I hope there will be a simple command like the one I use ({{User:Sverdrup/sig}} to include your sig. This would have to be included endlessly, but I think it is better than pasting three lines of font color=blue tags into the wikitext, making it unreadable. [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 21:11, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The solution (for the future) that you suggest could also facilitate a user preference to standardise or allow signature customisation. It would be a bit heavier on the servers (more database queries to get the sig template to include, etc, but perhaps it would be negligible.) — David Remahl 21:36, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I only created my animated sig as a bit of fun, and am happy to remove it if it irritates people. Also i didn't think about searchability. We should have a policy though. It seems to me that a sensible policy might be no images whatsoever. This has the advantage of being easy to enforce unlike e.g. "tiny and tasteful" in which we would then have to get into just how tiny, or what is tasteful. The fact is, no one has to have an image as part of their sig. Theresa knott

I have drafted a section discussing signatures on Wikipedia:Username#Signatures. Please edit it if you do not agree with it. Further discussion will take place on Wikipedia talk:Username. This discussion has been copied there. — David Remahl 13:42, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

80.133.56.237

This account had been active on many articles. This account vandalized Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. He goes to the Glossary of the Third Reich without logging in and edits things out. This account goes to Glossary of the Weimar Republic and vandalizes that site also. Gorenzplatz and myself have both corrected this man's actions on this site. He then goes to Weimar Timeline and edits complete sections out.

I don't know who he is, but I have my suspicions and I believe you have made him an administrator. I Have reported his actions on the Wikipedia:Vandalism only for someone named Pehrs (in a red color) to correct the errors on a certain article and 80.133.56.237 continues to do damage without showing his face and taking responsiblity.

I would like this to stop. This guy is an administrator and nothing is being done about this. I have complained and complained. Will someone do something about this guy? Please. This shows no professionalism and maturity. Will someone please do something.WHEELER 16:15, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't think you can make an IP an administrator. Besides, if you've left warnings and the IP ignored them, we should just block him. [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] 16:44, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hell of a chain of thought you have there. An IP is vandalizing, you think he's an admin, and by the third paragraph he absolutely IS an admin! Problem, though - if he were an admin, he would have to be logged in. An IP address can't be an administrator on its own. You offer no evidence as to why you think he's an admin. Why does everyone here with a beef with a vandal automatically assume that it's a member of the cabal?? --Golbez 16:57, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
In the Weimar Timeline the account deleted a large section and then proceeded to put Question Marks (?) where apostrophes (') existed. The number shows up blue. So the person has an account here and won't log in. And his vandalism is the same in previous cases and the mannerisms remind me of the same person. His damage is getting quite extensive.WHEELER 17:08, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You are incorrect. All that usually means is that his user page has content. (It doesn't for some reason, so maybe I misunderstand. Maybe it's someone with an account name that's an IP?) It does not mean the IP has a user account and is not logged in. Furthermore, it does not say in the least that he is an admin. Incidentally, the ' -> ? problem is a problem some browsers and fonts have, and you should rever that. --Golbez 17:24, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hmmm, its not quite that simple. It looks like there may have been an interface change such that links to anonymous IPs now point to that user's contribution list rather than their user page of talk page. As such IPs never show up as red for unlinked, because they must have made at least one contribution for you to be looking at them. Anyhow it still has nothing to do with Admins. -- Solipsist 18:04, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Uh huh. What exactly are you basing your claim that he's an administrator on? -- Cyrius|✎ 18:16, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I only see 5 edits to 4 articles. I'm more concerned about the next guy to edit one of those articles[1], as, at best, his typos need to be cleaned up (example[2]), and since I'm at work I don't really have time. Niteowlneils 20:24, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Unless these [3], [4], and [5] are the same person, but that's still only 6 more edits on 2 or 3 more articles. Niteowlneils 20:43, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
And those contributions hardly qualify as vandalism, most of them are small spelling fixes (some may be mistaken ones). The only edit I found which could qualify as vandalism was the deletion of the "Pre-History of National Socialism" section in the timeline article - but it could also just be a newcomer who think that part is not relevant enough to be included in the list, and does not know that it's custom here to discuss major deletions on the talk page first. It seems you are a bit hyper-sensitive about those articles (sure, these articles need regular NPOV checks). Maybe you should try to contact that user first. andy 22:45, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Andy or is it AndyL or is it 80.133.56.237. What day of the week and who are we talking to here? The perp reveals himself.WHEELER 17:51, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I am rather sure now you are rather confused with your accusations. The Andy who wrote above (me) is User:Ahoerstemeier (but who usually signs with just Andy), and yes, I am an admin for quite some time already. But I normally avoid the controversial articles, too much stress, I want to have fun editing - so I haven't editing that Weimar timeline before, except for those two typo changes/broken character fixes. I haven't interacted with User:AndyL before, but yes, he is an admin as well. Nor am I that 80.something-IP (which however is a dialup IP from Germany of the same ISP I am using, but that's hardly a coincidence as T-Online is the biggest in Germany). So before you start to accuse anyone please keep your facts straight. andy 19:33, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sorry WHEELER, my IP address begins with a 64. If you do an IP trace on 80.133.56.237 you'll see the user is in Germany. I'm in Canada last time I checked. AndyL 21:00, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No, I'm wrong the user is in Amsterdam:

Output from ARIN WHOIS

ARIN Home Page ARIN Site Map ARIN WHOIS Help Tutorial on Querying ARIN's WHOIS Search results for: 80.133.56.237

OrgName: RIPE Network Coordination Centre OrgID: RIPE Address: Singel 258 Address: 1016 AB City: Amsterdam StateProv: PostalCode: Country: NL

ReferralServer: whois://whois.ripe.net:43

NetRange: 80.0.0.0 - 80.255.255.255 CIDR: 80.0.0.0/8 NetName: 80-RIPE NetHandle: NET-80-0-0-0-1 Parent: NetType: Allocated to RIPE NCC NameServer: NS-PRI.RIPE.NET NameServer: NS3.NIC.FR NameServer: SUNIC.SUNET.SE NameServer: AUTH62.NS.UU.NET NameServer: SEC1.APNIC.NET NameServer: SEC3.APNIC.NET NameServer: TINNIE.ARIN.NET Comment: These addresses have been further assigned to users in Comment: the RIPE NCC region. Contact information can be found in Comment: the RIPE database at http://www.ripe.net/whois RegDate: Updated: 2004-03-16 

AndyL 21:03, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
RIPE provides the secondary database for all of Europe, so all Europeans are in Amsterdam that way :-) If you read the comment you'd have trace further and then found it is a German one. But it doesn't matter, the problem isn't that much that anonymous user, but more that Wheeler believes you and me and the one in Amsterdam :-) are the same person. andy 07:48, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

RSS Feeds

I just got a plugin for mozilla that reads RSS feeds. Can somebody direct me to all the wikipedia ones so I can try it out? [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] 16:48, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The two (I think) feeds available are linked to in the sidebar of Recent Changes and Newpages[[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 19:52, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There's also a feed for Wikipedia:Announcements here. - 20:52, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
It would be neat if it were possible to have an RSS feed for the my watchlist. Rgarvage (talk)
It would only be neat if you found a way to make sure only you could read it-- otherwise anyone could see what any given user had on their watchlist. You could use some kind of authentication, of course-- cookies or HTTP auth-- but AFAIK most RSS readers don't support authentication anyway. Marnanel 07:21, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

policy on image text wrt pointers to email addresses?

What's the policy on images like Image:GlockenspielSousaphone.jpg where the photographer has provided a sample of a photo for use in the Wikipedia, and also provides the email address where other photos potentially can be acquired by private arrangements with the photographer? Isn't this a form of an advertisement?

Hmm, interesting question. Since the "ad" is on the image page itself, I'd say "No." But it is a form of advertising when/if the user clicks through to the full-size image. Looking at the text on the image page, it looks rather benign and harmless. I'd say it's fine, but I don't know if we want to encourage professional photographers to license us photos just to get more business. Actually, I guess it might be a Good Thing. This 'pedia desperately lacks good illustrations. Anyone else?
Also, next time sign your post. Do this with 3 or 4 tildes ~~~ or ~~~~. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 17:15, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)
I'm all for it. Hey, free images, right? As long as it's GFDL, this is no worse than by-attribution licences, of which we use plenty. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 17:27, 2004 Aug 19 (UTC)

As long as the photographer understands that his image description can be edited mercilessly at will (and we can remove the email address if we choose to), it seems fine. I don't even think we need to remove the email address in this case, because it's not really an ad, and it's on the image page, not in the article. anthony (see warning) 00:47, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Using GNU GPL content in Wikipedia

Does anyone know if GNU GPL text is compatible with the GNU FDL? Any requirements? Reason I'm asking is that I'd like to include some documentation licensed under the GNU GPL. --Dittaeva 18:34, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

From http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html "For instance, anyone publishing the book on paper would have to either include machine-readable "source code" of the book along with each printed copy, or provide a written offer to send the "source code" later."
So, I'd say sadly no. Can you contact the copyright owner and ask them to dual-licence it? PhilHibbs 19:21, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The GFDL has the same machine-readable requirement. And we provide exactly that. →Raul654 19:26, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)
It's odd, then, that the FSF should list that as a reason not to use GPL for documentation. PhilHibbs 19:31, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
On reading and comparing the GPL and the GFDL, the difference seems to me to be that the requirements for the transparent copy are not as stringent as for the source code. Source code should be the "preferred form for modification", where as a transparent copy can be plain text, HTML, LaTeX, PostScript, etc. So, while Wikimedia might conform to the GPL by providing the database source, I could publish printed Wikipedias with an HTML snapshot of the wiki available online. If there were GPL text mixed in, then I would not be able to exercise my rights under the FDL to do this. So, if we include any GPL content, we might as well have chosen the GPL with all its extra lawyerly goodness all along. Professing to be GFDL would be disingenuous. PhilHibbs 19:42, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I discussed this with Anthony before (you might want to ask him about this) - he was advocating the use of the GPL for text documents. In my opinion, the big problem with GPL'd docuements is interpretation - interpreting the GPL for a text document instead of a program is mighty difficult. →Raul654 19:40, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)
OK, I can accept that for plain text, the GPL and GFDL could well be identical. However, inclusion of GPL'd PostScript documentation wouldcould require provision of PostScript source for that document. PhilHibbs 19:44, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
No, that's blatantly not true. The GPL and GFDL both say that the machine readable version should be provided in the form that the human works with (or something to that effect) - so in the case of a program, you have to provide the source code and not the binary. In the case of wikipedia, that means we have to provide the wiki-markup, not the postscript. →Raul654 19:50, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)
I don't think anything to do with the GPL could be described as blatant except that it's blatantly difficult to fully understand! :-( You may be right, but I can only conclude from the FAQ quote that the FSF consider this to be a problem with the GPL that users of the GFDL would wish to avoid. PhilHibbs 19:53, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Text should almost never be licensed under the GPL, and the GNU website says so. Contact your source and explain this to them, and hopefully they can be persuaded to change their licensing. Derrick Coetzee 20:13, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As an aside, there is other GPL material already in the Wikipedia such as Image:Smiley.png - what's the official policy on inclusion of GPL material? PhilHibbs 20:17, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Images are different, because it's the position of Jimbo that images don't have to be GFDL compatible. anthony (see warning) 00:40, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the enlightening discussion. I was thinking about a file describing USE flags in Gentoo Linux, its probably GPL because its in their CVS, and I don't think they will prioritize to change it GFDL anytime soon, but I probably wont find any good use for it here either. I was thinking (now) about something like List over USE flags in Gentoo Linux. But there are probably many much more useful GPL resources out there. --Dittaeva 22:01, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

IMHO, it all hangs on the difference between "the preferred form ... for making modifications" (GPL) and "a machine-readable copy" (GFDL). With plain text, there is no difference. With images, again, not a problem if you distribute the original image format (conversion from .bmp to .jpeg would not be suitable for GPL, IMO, but from .bmp to .png would). One could interpret the GPL wording as permitting conversion to an equivalently-modifiable form, but anything that decreases modifiability (such as converting wordprocessor documents to plain text or HTML) would be problematic. PhilHibbs 09:46, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I would think that including the source code of a program in a GFDL text would count as providing the source. The problem is that the GPL requires derivative works to be released under the GPL. The only way I could see this being legitimate is if you consider the text to be "mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium". If you keep the text clearly separated from the rest of the article, this might be OK. anthony (see warning) 00:38, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

2004 in Sports

I might have missed a previous discussion on this topic - but is there a consensus on the year in sports pages? With the 2004 in sports article, some sports are only listing a few major events, others are getting an increasingly full list of minor happenings. Some get a full list of every event for a month, then nothing. I put a comment in the talk page - no-one has responded. Now, I don't particularly want to go making sweeping changes off my own back, but the page is getting rather overlong. So I've brought the question here, aiming to avoid any dispute before it can even begin. So... what I'd propose is to trim it. Severely. Sweepings to be put into their own pages (2004 in Baseball, 2004 in cricket, etc). You'd only list the really big facts - say, for example, the winner of the men's and women's singles in the four Grand Slam Tennis events, the two top ranked players at the end of the year, and everything else can go in 2004 in Tennis. The idea is to give a quick overview of the year in sports. Any comments? Average Earthman 19:27, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm replying primarily because nobody else has. What you propose sounds eminently sensible, but they're not pages I'm particularly interested in. I would counsel that you let the other years in sports pages be your guide and, provided you put in a decent edit summary for any moves you do, I don't see why you should meet with any resistence. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 18:27, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

Incorporating University of Texas Maps with Wikipedia

UT has a number of maps online that could be used to enhance some of the articles. [6]

According to their Maps FAQ - "Most of the maps scanned by the General Libraries and served from this web site are in the public domain. No permissions are needed to copy them. You may download them and use them as you wish."

Has there been any decision on using these? If there's no objection I may start going through the collection and seeing if any Wikipedia articles would benefit from their inclusion.

--65.197.68.35 20:53, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC) Gordon

As long as its Public Domain there's no problem, but perhaps you should try to find out which of them are not covered by "most"? Perhaps images that thez have manipulated og images of maps that are less then 50 yrs old or so (=copyrighted)--Dittaeva 21:55, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Dealing with vandals from different IP ranges?

Richard Ramirez has been vandalized by both 216.145.85.36 and 208.183.105.11 in exactly the same way. A) How to deal with vandals that can come from such different ranges, and B) Since I'm at work, I can't really spend the time to clean and monitor this article right now. Can someone help deal with this? Niteowlneils 23:51, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This [7] is somehow related, but it's range starts with 12. Niteowlneils 23:56, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Systematic error in use of term "Latin alphabet"?

I just put this into Talk:Alphabet, but it struck me I should also put it here. Perhaps this has been debated to death and I missed it while on my wikibattical, but it looks pretty serious to me:

The following from this article Alphabet seems to me erroneous, or at least incomplete:
In modern linguistic usage, the term Latin alphabet is usually used to refer to the modern derivations from the alphabet used by the Romans (i.e. the Roman alphabet).
       A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z
"Modern variations from the alphabet used by the Romans" include Norwegian (30 characters), Italian (22 characters), Spanish (29 characters), etc. And, for that matter, I'm pretty sure, the actual "Latin" alphabet had no J, no U, no Y, no Z. Every single article on a character uses this phrase Latin alphabet, but this is nothing but the English alphabet. Ortolan88 03:41, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I believe the Romans didn't have a W, either. (OK, that's the straight line...) -- Jmabel 05:41, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)

The term Latin alphabet is accepted and quite acceptable in current use to be the 26 un-accented characters as used in English. Quite clearly this is not the same as the alphabet used by the Romans, any more than the Arabic numerals we are familiar in in the West is supposed to be the same as those used by Arabic writers.
Further, in the Roman alphabet the letters C and G were interchangeable, and C was never pronounced as 'S' (as in Caesar).
--JohnArmagh 06:18, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Also, the K is used rather rarely in Latin. At any rate, I think that the term Latin alphabet really does refer to this alphabet. All the Romance languages I know of use it (of which Norwegian isn't), and accents aren't part of letters, they're separate marks. So Spanish, Italian, and so on have 26 letters. I can confirm it's true for the French alphabet. Andre 07:06, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Actually, I don't know about Italian. A website I just found says it has 21 letters. Andre 07:07, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
While accented letters aren't considered distinct, the use of certain other diacritics—as with ñ, for instance—does introduce distinct letters not present in English (or Latin). Nonetheless, the alphabet used in Spanish and other languages is still "Latin" by all accounts, despite the numerous post-Roman introductions. Austin Hair 07:23, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)
I wonder how to interpret "In modern linguistic usage...." Is the term "Latin alphabet" used formally by linguists? In any case, there is no ambiguity (I think) in programming circles: the term Latin or Roman alphabet is synonymous with English A thru Z. AdmN 08:02, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

New template: POV check

I created a new template, Template:POV check, which is intended to be placed on articles which at first glance don't appear to have NPOV text, but whose neutrality is not disputed, unlike Template:NPOV. The text when I created it is:

This article needs to be reworded to conform to a neutral point of view. The apparance of this notice does not imply that the neutrality of this article is disputed.

Please discuss appropriateness and other matters. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 06:12, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)

In other words, this message is to be used for circumstances in which the article is undisputably POV? What's the point? Austin Hair 06:44, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)
Not necessarily undisputably. I was thinking that it could be used to mark articles for which a rewrite could be helpful to better bring an article to NPOV standard. Examples of this are newly written articles or articles with text paraphrased from other sites. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 06:53, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps this would get the point across more accurately:

This article may need to be reworded to conform to a neutral point of view, however, the neutrality of this article is not necessarily disputed.

zoney | talk 14:33, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Changes made. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 16:11, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)
I profess utter bafflement. Why not just slap a template on every article saying

This article may be neutral or, then again, maybe not; and this article may be accurate or, then again, maybe not; and this article probably could use attention because most articles could; and it might contain spoilers if it happens to be about a book or movie, otherwise not; and it could even be insane but probably isn't, at least I hope not.

[[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 23:16, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Too long-winded

This article may be a perfect article with absolutely no mistakes, or then again, it may not be neutral, may need attention (of course all of them do), contain spoilers (of course, who cares), need to be deleted, or be insane

Or even better:

There is an 85.7% chance that this article is in some way flawed or just plain sucks. In the case that it is part of the other 14.3% excuse us for the bother

;) [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] 00:57, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the original post above concerned where one looks at an article, isn't sure if it's neutral or not, and is flagging it as I've described. Now personally, I suggest merely commenting on the talk page is enough - but the point is, it's not a neutrality dispute. zoney ███ talk 01:37, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It Came From Dartmouth College

Wikipedia has been invaded by a mass wave of newbies posting sub-trivial, detailed non-notable articles about Dartmouth College (the favorite drink of Dartmouth College and how to drink it?) Has Wikipedia been suddenly advertised to Dartmouth? Can we look for these and put them on VfD where they belong? RickK 06:51, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)

Dartmouth - where have I heard that name before? OMG Archemedies Plutionium. Please no. [[User:Theresa knott|]] 13:49, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Judging from User:Pcw, this is a Dartmouth course project, where the instructor has asked students to go on Wikipedia and create article. Andris 16:02, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)
Well I didn't really think it was Archie, his style of writing is instantly recognizable, he doesn't go in for drinking games only grandious theories. Anyway I think he was fired from Dartmouth if my memory serves me correctly (I haven't been on usenet for years) [[User:Theresa knott|]] 20:21, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Condition yellow on this one anyway I think. This user is not just violating Wikipedia policies to which he objects himself, he's instructing his class of computer students to violate them too. A lose/lose scenario at present IMO. Andrewa 21:13, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Violating policies? I'm not sure I understand. I've looked over the policies and I can't find a clear instance. The biggest problem seems to be that someone feels that the articles are "sub-trivial" and "non-notable." These are pretty subjective designations and, I'm sorry to say, designations that don't seem to have a very neutral point of view. Unfortunately, the policies also encourage me to ask them to "write about what they know". What most of them know is Dartmouth college and, perhaps, something about their home town. Pcw 01:59, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Well, then, write about their hometown. I'm a 14-year old student from Malaysia, and I've written an article on Bandar Utama (though perhaps I should move it to comply with the naming conventions). Settlements, no matter how trivial, are generally accepted. Surely they must have some sort of passion. Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit? What's their favourite food? The relevant articles could use help, and even if they don't know much about them, people passionate about something generally research it. For example, despite being completely ignorant of Beatles trivia six months ago, within that time, I've written Yesterday (song), Something (song) and Hey Jude up to featured level with the help of Google. Johnleemk | Talk 09:00, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Well said.
As to which policies were violated, Wikipedia has policies as to what is encyclopedic, but the students appear to have been encouraged to ignore these policies on the grounds that the instructor thinks that they should be changed. Not good IMO. Andrewa 17:40, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
PS see Wikipedia:School and university projects for what he should have done. I guess we need to make this page more prominent somehow. Andrewa 21:37, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
PPS see also User_talk:Andrewa#Delayed_deletion. Andrewa 22:26, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The instructor has replied to me personally, and grading in this course will be completed by 25 August. Andrewa 17:40, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Andrewa, I saw your plea for a delayed decision, but the fault lies not with us, for upholding our standards and policies, but with the user for violating them and asking us to, essentially, offer a free web host for his class for a little while. Dartmouth is not an impoverished community college. It is a very, very expensive, well endowed institution with a far more than adequate computing backbone. If Pcw wants his students to learn the wiki, he can have it installed on his campus intranet. I'm sure his computer science folks would be delighted to see someone take the initiative in creating a Dartmouth wiki. I feel very strongly that it is not our place to make an exception to make his life easier. I've taught technology for years, as well as English, and if I send students out of our resources, I figure it's like sending them abroad: they must obey the local laws. I find, further, his continued arguments on VfD that we're all wrong, that it is our policy that is at fault, arrogant and trollish. For my part, I do not plan to make an exception, and I urge others to do the same. Treat these articles like any others, and let Pcw invest in floppy disks, if he needs storage media for his class. This, to me, is extremely distasteful and offputting. Geogre 20:53, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This should be a community decision, but I still think it would be good to postpone any deletions until Thursday 26, which is only a few days extension in the worst cases. There is no suggestion that standards will be lowered, or that the VfD notices will be removed during this extension.
And I'm appalled at what I see as a suggestion above that we would prefer the students to be directed to an in-house Wiki instead. Did you read the assignment sheet the students received?
We have an excellent opportunity here to make some new friends, and also an opportunity to make some new enemies, including of friends we already have. There are some lessons to learn, certainly, and I agree about the attitude shown by the instructor, and I am also appalled at the thought of what he might have told his students along these lines. But the assignment sheet gives a very different picture, and very in keeping with the valid points you are making.
It is not a matter of helping the instructor, that is a by-product. The articles are contributed by his students, not by him. Andrewa 21:37, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
PS but I wouldn't get too excited. From the voting, it appears unlikely that there will be any extensions granted. It was just a suggestion (plea if you like). Andrewa 21:41, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Andrewa, I did see the instructions, and the instructor asked the students to write articles that fit our guidelines. They do not do so, they have failed the assignment. Indeed, I am quite suspicious of "Pcw" being the instructor, as those instructions and the plea to leave the articles are incommensurate. Would I divert students to a campus instead of Wikipedia? If they cannot write articles that fit on our site, then they cannot write articles that fit on our site. If they must exist somewhere so that a teacher can complete his assignment, it would be better if they were on the in-house wiki, yes. Call that snobbish elitism, if you choose. Consider me hostile, if you choose. However, it is utterly unprofessional and unethical academic behavior for Pcw to ask us to change our policies. It is also, I think, inappropriate for us to make such an offer. As an academic, I am appalled at the suggestion that we change our standards for this assignment, especially since the assignment explicitly stated that we should not have to. Geogre 22:15, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Again, you make some good points. Agree it's unprofessional of Peter to have suggested we should change our policies, and unethical for him to have suggested as he seems to have done that his students should violate them. In fact the assignment sheet and his user page are so different in tone that I wonder what's going on. So far as I know, nobody has offered to change our policies. I certainly haven't. So far as students being unable to write articles that fit our site, I think that's over the top. They take a while to learn the ropes. Doesn't everyone? Andrewa 06:30, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It seems to me that, if the assignment reads, Choose two topics that are appropriate. Make sure they fit inside the definition and are not in the Wikipedia already, they have failed. It is not up to US to change our rules to meet Pcw's assignment, it is incumbent upon him to follow his own assignment and to fail every single student who submitted unacceptable material. If these things are being listed on VfD right and left, this is a pretty good indication that the material is NOT appropriate, and does not meet Wikipedia standards, and therefore they should get F's, and we shouldn't bend to their needs. RickK 23:06, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)

And more good points. I'd hope that the fact that despite what the assignment sheet said, several articles submitted in response to it were listed on VfD would cause those students to lose marks. That's one reason Peter's user page defending them and his comments attacking the validity of the VfD listings were of such concern to me, see above.
But the assessment is up to him. My concerns are twofold. Firstly, the current content of Wikipedia, that is to say what to do with substandard articles. My suggestion was that normal standards should be followed despite what Peter said, but that we consider a delay of a few days to allow the course to finish as smoothly as possible. Secondly, the future content of Wikipedia, which is dependent on the contributors. These students are all newbies. Some of them may become contributors. Some may become trolls. Some will undoubtedly just go away. I think we could be a bit more welcoming to them, at no loss to ourselves and great potential gain.
Peter's future students are also potential contributors. I hope that next time he might tell us in advance, as other instructors have done, and also revise the assignment sheet. Despite what it says, the message didn't get through. Perhaps it should explicitly say that articles listed on VfD and likely to be deleted will lose marks. IMO it should mention speedy deletion, which seems to have caught some by surprise. These aren't computer majors, and they seem not to have understood that Wikipedia isn't just another blogg.
I would have liked to get a list of the work submitted by his students. As well as the obvious idea of checking that we have caught all the damage, I'm also interested in why the assignment sheet didn't work as well as it should have, and whether we did get any new contributors as a result. So far as I can see this information isn't publicly available, their website is set up so that only the students themselves and the college staff can see the submissions. If we were in a less adversarial situation I'd ask Peter for a list by email, but frankly I don't even feel like asking in the current environment.
Cool it, guys. It's not all that important if the articles are deleted on our normal schedule. The assignment submission date was last Friday. Any further edits are in their own time, hopefully because they like it here and want to contribute. If Peter needs to see any deleted articles then I can simply email him a copy. I haven't promised him that there would be any extensions, and it doesn't look like there will be. No big deal there. Andrewa 06:30, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Andrewa, just a thought: it occurs to me that the assignment is such an extraordinary example of a well written assignment, and the behavior of "Pcw" is so out of line with it, that it's possible that the user is not the instructor. His words and actions seem much more in keeping with a kid trying to ensure that his article stays and he gets good marks than an instructor or professor. It seems to me that the instructor/professor wanted us to act with our usual discretion and wanted to assess his students' abilities to fit in. I also note that the local content of the students is fairly characteristic for students in college. We have a Requested Articles page, and they have a really good library. I hope they do get hooked on Wikipedia. Given the fact that each student was to write two articles, we can assume that we have already had some forty submissions from the Dartmouth group. That means that some thirty-five, minimum (if the instructor has more than one class with this assignment, then we have

had eighty submissions), articles that haven't been listed on VfD or been speedy deleted. I welcome each and every one of those authors, and I thank the instructor (whoever he or she may really be) if any one of the students remains engaged and aware. Geogre 21:35, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You're not the only one to have wondered that, I have (and I've hinted at this above, twice) and so have others who have contacted me privately. But the email address on the assignment sheet is live, the person who responds identifies themselves as user:Pcw, and gives the email address given by Pcw as the return address. So I'd have to say no, there's some other explanation.
Class assignments such as this are going to happen, and more and more as we become better known, and I think we should welcome them as we have previously. They are an excellent chance to give people a very positive experience of contributing if we handle them well. If we handle them badly, on the other hand, they can just as easily be schools for trolls. Some of these people would never have attempted to edit at Wikipedia without the assignment. If it's a positive experience some will stay, and that's a win for us, as of course are the good edits they make. On the other hand if it's a negative experience they've been forced into they may find it easier to take it out on Wikipedia than on the educational institution, and even if they don't do this deliberately they are unlikely to have contributed much that doesn't need to be deleted or reverted.
I think we should give some thought to promoting Wikipedia: School and university projects a bit better. I was wondering at one stage whether perhaps we should even have a policy requiring class projects to be registered, but far better is to have a carrot, a positive reason for instructors to want to register. Ideas? Andrewa 07:39, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
PS your arithmetic doesn't do this justice. They each had to write two 200 word articles that fit inside the definition and are not in the Wikipedia already (their linking) to get the thirty points for question five, but to get the full fifty possible bonus points for question six they had to write another five articles. That's 140 new articles if one class of twenty all went for maximum credit, and looking at the assignment, once you've got the hang of the first two articles the bonus points are relatively easily earned IMO compared to the rest of it. I've seen at least one article (and not on VfD) that I thought might have been an attempt at these bonus points. Andrewa 07:56, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Just adding my two cents here on the controversy: Most of the Dartmouth articles, while probably not notable enought to warrant individual articles, are still important information in a greater whole about Dartmouth College. The wave of "mass deletions" going on at VfD strikes me as reactonary. What I propose is that we take whatever information that can be reduced (edited down) and merge it into the Dartmouth College article. Additionally, several stand-alone articles about aspects of Dartmouth should be created, most notably Dartmouth College student life, Dartmouth College arts and Dartmouth College athletics, which seems to cover most of the content of the articles. Let's work with this influx of energy, instead of fighting it. We might get some new editors of it, and I fear alienating these students. Kevyn 00:12, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Kevyn, I really appreciate your example of Wikilove here. Truly, I do. If I'm frothing a bit, it's because of my experience as a teacher. (I'm a tough, tough grader.) It's exasperating to have bright students wilfully misread an assignment, and it's pretty characteristic for 18 year old college students to either plead ignorance or, more commonly, argue bitterly that it's not fair that their article be deleted. That's just an explanation of my mood about these. As for my votes, those are different. If we merge all of these articles to the Dartmouth College article, we're going to have a Dartmouth article that outweighs the Dartmouth College website. We're getting such excessive detail here on such minutia that our Dartmouth article is going to be four or five times anything else. As much as I think more information is better than less, I also think that we have to provide an overview. We can't duplicate the resources of the rest of the web. How much detail on a particular university does an encyclopedia need, and how much should it allow (different questions). For me, a single sentence ("Dartmouth has many musical groups, including the Dartmouth Dodecaphonics, the Dartmouth Wind Ensemble...") is all we should provide. More than that, and we start to diverge from our path. Major universities and colleges have great traditions and provide a raft of service and community organizations. Each one does, and providing 200 words on each facet of each is simply overwhelming. As for redirects, I think we have to ask the question we always ask of redirects: Will someone search this term? If we're talking about Dartmouth Womens Crew (n.b. the lack of apostrophe), possibly so. Otherwise, we're back to good old notability. Are the Dartmouth Chi Alpha Chi going to be a search term? No. Sorry for going on so long, but I definitely wanted a chance to explain my votes, as well as my mood. The two are unrelated, but they show up in the same vote space, I'm afraid. Geogre 00:47, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • Geogre, I don't think we are quite as far apart in our positions as you think. I agree that we should not try to be the definitive source for Dartmouth, nor is it desireable to be bigger than the Dartmouth website. To repeat what I said: What I propose is that we take whatever information that can be reduced (edited down) and merge it into the Dartmouth College article. Note the emphasis on REDUCE. While I probably wouldn't reduce as far as you would, I agree that we have more information than is necessary. I'd take it down to a paragraph, you say you'd take it down to a sentence -- it's just a matter of degree. On the issue of redirects, my reasoning for making redirects is not for SEARCH purposes -- though it is a remote possibility that these terms might be searched for -- but to put in a placeholder, to discourage future Dartmouth students from creating an article on the subject if they find no article at that location. I think that redirects serve a valuable function in cases like this, where VfD has determined that no article should exist. One other thought on the value of the articles being made into redirects instead of deleting them -- it preserves the history of the page, including the VfD discussion, in case at any point in the future someone wants to know why the article is no longer there. And, in the remote possibility that the subject of the article should become notable (Cue Judy Tenuta saying "It could happen!"), we've got the content already there in the history, ready to go. Kevyn 01:37, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Most of these articles are not violations of Wikipedia policies. What they are are examples of articles which are continually deleted via VFD despite their not being violations of Wikipedia policies. Some of them also are not very well formatted, but I don't think you can expect new users to learn the obscure formatting guidelines of wikipedia right off the bat. I don't even know many of them myself and I've been here a long time. anthony (see warning) 00:04, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Does anyone think that we were a bit harsh on the Dartmouth folks? Particularly Pcw? --Golbez 22:05, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • VfD can be harsh, I agree. I don't think, though, that we're being too harsh on Pcw. I say that as a former prof. He has had time to correct his students. When the articles began showing up on VfD, he could have mentioned to his class(es) that they needed to look for items that are notable outside of the campus. I, at least, mentioned repeatedly that we have a Requested Articles page. His assignment (whether he wrote it or it came from another section of the class, I don't know) specifically informed students to read what we have, to see what we cover. And yet he has argued repeatedly that we're wrong, that we're calling "the people at Dartmouth not notable." We're not, of course, saying anything about people on VfD. If he is a dispassionate observer using Wikipedia as a metric of his class, then he is going to let the chips fall where they may. My own code of professional ethics says that it's wrong to send your class onto anyone else's space and then argue that the space is something you have rights to. Wikipedia is for everybody, but it has the same standards for everybody, too. This includes, unfortunately, the cutting comments and exasperation that some VfD voters (Lord knows, me too) will voice. He has to feel beseiged by having 20 condemning voices aimed at him, just as we feel beseiged by having what seems to us to be a flood of inappropriate articles. Both sides get testy. I hate to say what I'm about to say, but I think he should (dang, but I hate saying what anyone should do) work with us to work with his class to ensure greater conformity from them and greater benefit to us, and he can't be personally emotionally invested in the inclusion of any of the articles. Geogre 02:07, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Keep in mind that the latest word from User:Pcw is that there were two hundred articles submitted. Perhaps twenty of them ended up in VfD. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 10:00, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
To answer your question, Golbez, I didn't think that any of the decisions to list on VfD or the votes were particularly harsh. But I do think we could have done it in a more constructive manner. One article was described as crap, for example. IMO that's unnecessary, uncalled for, and violates the spirit of Wikipedia policies on personal attacks. The tone of VfD debate overall has been dropping lately IMO, and we need to correct the slide. Moving user subpages elsewhere will help, those discussions have been particularly difficult, and that policy change is in the pipeline. Perhaps we need to do something else too, but I'm unsure what.
Another thing that I notice is of the three newcomers' user talk pages I checked, on two no welcome had been posted although their articles had been listed for deletion. I question whether listing the article on VfD was really a more urgent task than posting a welcome to the newcomer. Ideally do both. In this case the welcome was particularly urgent, as the contributor may not return now that the assignment is over. But any newbie who has scored a VfD nomination needs an urgent welcome IMO. I'm sensitive to this as I scored on VfD myself before I scored a welcome, and I was very nearly not back.
It should IMO be a standard part of listing (or even voting on) an article on VfD to check who the contributors are, and what their edit histories are like, and what links to the article, and I fear this is often neglected at present. I'm not sure what to do to make it more common.
I'm sure there are more lessons to learn as the smoke clears. Andrewa 14:14, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Good articles from Dartmouth?

Someone mentioned somewhere (and now I can't remember where) that they knew of several articles that came from the Dartmouth class assignment that were top-notch articles and valuable inclusions to Wikipedia. We all know what the bad ones were, from the VfD controversy. Does anyone know what the good ones were? I'd really like to see the flip side of this mess. Kevyn 23:57, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I know some of them, and you could email the lecturer and ask too, or you can guess them I think. Look for new users who created up to seven new articles in the week or a little more leading up to last Friday, and have done little if anything else. The lecturer has asked me not to identify the ones I know, and for obvious reasons I think.
My observation is that the overall quality is very high indeed, as you would expect. These are college kids, they have lots of interests, and they knew they would be graded on the quality and compliance to standards of the articles. And if under those conditions we didn't get a lot of good articles, then rather than sniping at the instructor and students we should be asking what's wrong with our documentation - which is the thing we can most easily change (and before anyone jumps on me again, I'm not saying lower our standards and have never said that).
But another thing I'm wondering is whether a certain amount of the conflict over those articles that did attract (sometimes valid) criticism is quite deliberate on the part of the instructor. One of the goals of the course seems to be to give the students experience in all aspects of the Internet, including the joys and otherwise of open-source development. IMO they've now seen first hand the worst face of our community, and I'm sure it's been very educational for them. I'd love to be a fly on the wall at any tutorials where the assignment experiences are discussed (I assume you do that in America, we certainly have in the courses I've taught in Australia), or even in the canteen where the students informally compare notes. Food for thought? Andrewa 00:49, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I just found a partial list of the articles on Pcw's talk page. I've looked over them, and most are, indeed, noteworthy, and fairly well-written, though there are a few that need cleanup. From this class assignment we've expanded our coverage of significant feminist issues, sports stars, Utah ski areas, Korean films, cold war history, weather phenomena and literary landmarks. Clearly, despite the tempest in the VfD-Pot, this was a worthwhile exercise for us. Kevyn 01:44, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • We've also got some squirrely college stuff on feminist issues. It's what you'd expect, and not bad per se. As a literature person, I get hypertensive about things like the recent changes to Orlando: A Biography that sound like they came straight from a sophomore lecture and got filtered through a student. More a case of generalizing too much, adding trivia of interest, and presenting classroom observations as truth.... Like I said -- about what you'd expect. (In that article: Orlando was not her most successful novel or even close, its being in the fiction rack is no outrage, it's not all about Vita Sackville-West (that's a favorite theory of biographical readers), even if there is an element of that in it. Just enthusiastic. I wonder if the proposed Sexism on Wikipedia Pages argument is a Dartmouth IP.) Anyway, that's not a complaint. It's just a different kind of editing that needs to be done -- cleaning up over eager POV. Geogre 03:10, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Some lessons to be learned

Another lesson I think we can learn is that there were some negative comments about the standard of English in which some of the articles were written. Is this covered anywhere in existing policy? Anyway, I've put together something at Wikipedia:non English speakers that deserves work and comments IMO. If it's already covered elsewhere it can be merged or whatever. If it's not, it should be linked from a few places probably, and edited mercilessly like any new guideline. Andrewa 01:56, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

And another is that despite consistent policies on the subject, rhetoric is becoming common on VfD. For some thoughts on the subject, see Wikipedia:rhetoric. Again, I hope this will be edited mercilessly and if it's not entirely absorbed into other policy documents it should be linked to and from them. Andrewa 07:22, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Dartmouthian Votes for Deletion

I'm sorry... reading the Votes of Deletion page has prompted me to do a bit of humor in creating a special template for these Dartmouth Pages for Votes for Deletion. See Template:Dartmouth-vfd. I am certain it will end up on the tfd page, but anyone who's having a headache right now can get a good laugh out it, I suppose. -- Allyunion 00:33, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Federal depository libraries

I'd just like to make everyone aware of this - as most of you know, US Government documents are public domain. What most of you probably don't know is that some libraries across the country are "Federal document repositories" - IE, they are storehouses for goverment documents. A Federal respository library is *THE* biggest cache of public domain information you will ever find. So if you are in need of pictures, maps, or diagrams on any topic, you can go to one and get them by the kilo. Here is a listing of federal repository libraries. →Raul654 06:55, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)

Cue article: Federal Government Depository Library, according to a link on Troy Public Library. --Tagishsimon

Analogue disc record

Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but there seems to be a consensus that analogue disc record is the worst-named featured article. There is a on-going vote to move it somewhere more sensible in the talk page, now at the stage of a run-off between the two most popular candidates. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:33, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

With 17 to 13 vote, the article is now at Gramophone record. -- Infrogmation 00:42, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
P.S.: Help in fixing links to the article is encouraged. Especially from those who voiced their dislike of the old title :-) -- Infrogmation 15:52, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Featured articles on politicians

A few days ago the featured article, Barack Obama, was about a politician currently running for U.S. Senate. I had requested it be featured (mainly out of pride), without realizing that having it on the main page could be seen as unfair. It raised several issues about what should go on the main page, so I've started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. Jump in please, we'd love to have you. Best, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 13:19, 2004 Aug 20 (UTC)

Article of the week

A note was posted here a while about about the two votes on:

  1. the name of the Article of the week—some people have found the name "Article of the week" confusing, thinking that it a way to choose the week's best article, whereas it is actually a way to choose a non-existent article or stub page for everyone to work on to bring up to , the aim being to have a featured-standard in one week; and
  2. the policy for ties—this is not hypothetical: two weeks ago, Renaissance tied with Baghdad.

The vote has ended, and the proposal is to:

  1. rename "Article of the week" as "Collaboration of the week"; and
  2. for the policy for ties to be to extend the vote for 24 hours and then choose whichever article was nominated first (seniority).

If anyone has any strong objections, please comment in Wikipedia talk:Article of the week. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:03, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Aozora Bunko: S editing problem

Aozora Bunko: S is 31kb, and my primary browser can not edit the entire thing. I've fixed what I can through my secondary browser, but would someone be kind enough to fix the problem? It probably should be split, but there's no really good place to do so IMHO, since the "Sh"'s constitute the middle third of the list. Please also note all of the linking articles. 24.218.107.75 18:07, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC) (DocWatson42 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DocWatson42 )

The Aozora Bunko: S page is now sectioned. Hope this helps. Happy editing ! :-) -- PFHLai 02:10, 2004 Aug 21 (UTC)
Thanks! That looks much better than I conceived of. Though the above message was the last bit I had to do, as I am to unfamiliar with Japanese literature to undertake any more. — DocWatson42 19:17, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Links: underlined or not?

Some weeks ago, at the time that the new "wikipedia page appearance" was launched, all the links on the pages lost their underlining. A few days later the underlining was back. Now, in the last few of days, they've gone again. Now there might be somewhere better to discuss this (but I can't find it), so here's my opinion! Links with no underscores definately look slicker and cooler - but they aren't practical in Wikipedia. When there are several links next to each other in the text, without the underlining you sometimes can't see whether it is one link or several, for instance:

To put it simply, it's not always intuitive. See also: Human-computer interaction - or should that be Human-computer interaction? 80.46.184.205 21:14, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether link underlining is on or off by default (I'll check the source), but you can explicitly enable/disable it in the "Misc settings" tab of your user preferences. FWIW, I agree that Wikipedia's default behavior should be to underline links as that's the generally accepted way to say "Hey buddy, this is a link". --Diberri | Talk 21:31, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)


I see how you can change your preference for whether or not to underline links, but what I can't figure out is how to get the underlines to print. They used to be printed out with underlines as default, but now it seems you can't do this. Eoghan 19:22, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Licensing

Do I misunderstand the GFDL? I thought that the GFDL requires attribution to the author(s). Afaik, Wikipedia caters for this by having the history function. However, are not all copy&paste edits (copy from one article and paste in another) violations if the original author/article is not mentioned? Also, I've come across a number of images stating from German Wikipedia as source. This is probably true, but should there not be a link (and credit to the contributor), too?

I there a project working on image licensing? (tough on images ;-) I mean making sure images are tagged accordingly or removed? (BTW, what do you think about this source: Image:Michel-foucault.jpg?)

Summa summarum, should we not take licensing a bit more serious? Kokiri 21:25, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is a matter of some concern to me also. The issue of other encyclopaedias "grabbing" WP content is also pertinant. They shouldn't be allowed - WP "knows" who its contributors are, and has histories, these others do not. Bah! People getting confused between "copyleft" and "copyabsent". Sue them all I say :o) zoney ███ talk 00:47, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If they link to the wikipedia article, the edit history there. So no problem. As for images - I do think people should put a link in to the image description page on the other wiki [[User:Theresa knott|]] 01:12, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, we should advertise this to make wikipedians more aware of the need of attribution. It is therefore also important to remember to use the edit summary to attribute to someone else when copy-pasting, for example by writing "merged from Wikipedia:Village tap" when doing a merge, using the links-in-summary feature. [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 17:27, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The history information isn't exported in the cur dump, so it's really hard to get the information without downloading and parsing a multi-gig file. If Wikipedia wants individual authors credited, they should make this information more readily available. anthony (see warning) 00:28, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It does look like copying and pasting anything that is not solely one author's contribution is against the GFDL. If you export the history that should be fine, and you don't need to link to wikipedia, likewise manually attributing to the authors in the history would be ok. If, however, you copied a chunk of text from one article to another within Wikipedia, and failed to attribute it to it's author (or its constituent parts to the relevant authors) that would be a violation.

Scanned images of specific editions of books

I see that in the article Childhood (novel), there is a scan of the Penguin Classics edition. I would have thought this contrary to Wiki policy - there are many editions, why are we advertising a particular publisher?

We generally pick an edition, any edition. Current or first would of course be most canonical. If you have a better one to scan, go for it - David Gerard 22:29, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Minor edit symbol

Why does the letter to denote a minor edit in the watchlist/etc constantly switch between an m and an M? Is there some revert war going on with the codebase or what? --Golbez 22:52, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Nope, no one is fighting over the minor edit letter in the MediaWiki namespace. The software must at times be loading Language.php instead (where the minor edit letter is still M), instead of the custom interface. Natryn 00:59, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
For me it's not M or m it's m [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] 01:01, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't remember ever seeing M, altho' it apparently was the first few weeks I was here. I do remember when N briefly became ! a month or so later. Niteowlneils 02:43, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The "Creatures" Category

Category:Creatures seems to be a bit messed up. --Sgeo | Talk 23:30, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? I went to the Cat page, and it looked like a normal Cat page to me. Niteowlneils 02:43, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It has two "C" sections, and two "G" sections --Sgeo | Talk 17:45, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The software doesn't align categories that well, especially when there are a small number of entries, unfortunately. So this category is fine in terms of what we can expect. —siroχo 18:17, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't notice--I've seen that come and go on the speedy cat so much I don't notice any more when it happens elsewhere. Niteowlneils 01:05, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

white box outside thumbnail border

Could this be removed? It only shows up when the content part of the page has a different coloured background (e.g. user pages). I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post about this, but it is annoying when wiki generally looks so good :o] porge 03:03, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

License violations

Where do I report sites violating the GFDL license in how they use our content? One particularly flagrant example is firstcarhire.com, stealing portions of Wikipedia pages without the slightest credit. See, for example, http://www.firstcarhire.com/country-guide/united-arab-emirates/abu-dhabi/ (compare Abu Dhabi). I've seen a number of mirrors also fail to credit. Is there a standard process for reprimanding these sorts of people? Thanks. Derrick Coetzee 08:01, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

And it gets much worse - this site copied the entire encyclopedia, including the project pages, with no credit to Wikipedia! They simply say "This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License." These people are getting sloppy. Derrick Coetzee 08:10, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

And even worse! This site claims copyright to our article (Abraham Lincoln)! The page is nothing but a mirror of our content, and it says right at the bottom of the page, "The contents of this web site are Copyright © 2003 Otherground, LLC and Civil-War.ws. All Rights Reserved." I can't imagine it getting much worse than that. Derrick Coetzee 08:15, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If i understand it correctly, they do not have to credit wikipedia, but they DO have to license it at GFDL! Your last example is definitely a violation. -- Chris 73 Talk 08:31, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)

No they do have to credit Wikipedia. [[User:Theresa knott|]] 08:34, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

They fail to cite us or mention that it is licensed under the GFDL (thus, their copy is an illegal copyright infringement); worse, they claim they own it. This is a definite violation. →Raul654 08:40, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks is probably the place you want, Derrick --rbrwrˆ 09:41, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I should've been able to find this. Looks like others are already ahead of me on this. Derrick Coetzee 16:54, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The text at the bottom currently reads "All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for details).". Perhaps "It is illegal to copy text here without attributing Wikipedia as the source, and linking back to authors' pages". Oh, maybe bold text the illegal bit. I'm not really kidding - this sort of nonsense needs to stop - just cause it's "open" licence doesn't mean one can just STEAL. zoney ███ talk 11:25, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Strange Interwiki

I noticed on East Asia that the interwiki link to [[minnan:Tang-a]] shows up at the bottom of the article rather than under other languages. (the link works as advertised ;-) Is this just me? Kokiri 08:16, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No. Me too. -- Chris 73 Talk 08:28, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)
I noticed the same thing with a similar 'minnan' interwiki on another article (can't remember which one). I suspect it affects many minnan connections, but I can't see why - the links look well formed. -- Solipsist 09:52, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Known bug. Angela. 11:29, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)

Domain donation — please vote! poll closed

Some time ago, I noticed that the wikipaedia.net domain name was hitherto unregistered.

I registered this domain name and sought to fully turn over it (donate it) to the Wikipedia Foundation.
I proposed making wikipaedia.net an alias/redirect to wikipedia.org, just like wikipedia.com and wikipedia.net (which are working aliases).

I did not however get anywhere with this. I got little or no answers to my emails to Jimbo (he's probably a busy man) and nothing concrete developed when I floated this issue on the wikiEN-l and foundation-l mailing lists.

I am now posting the issue here to get a spotlight on this and get your input, to get things done and ticked off my list as soon as possible.

On the mailing lists, some felt that by using the wikipaedia.net domain names, we're running a risk of people confusing us with the wikipaedia.org, wikipaedia.com and wikipaedia.de domains — these domain names are currently controlled by a third party. (This is part of a wider issue which I raised on the wikiEN-l mailing list. See [8] — user name guest, password 1ns4nI+y)

I feel that we have a very valid claim to all the major wikipaedia and wikipedia domain names. It is more than likely that many web users all over the world frequently enter wikipaedia domain names when looking for the Wikipedia. I also feel that we can best defend our interests by "claiming our space", adding the wikipaedia.net domain to the valid domain aliases we have and moving to gain control of all other domain names that ought to be in our control. Yielding to what I personally perceive to be cybersquatting is not a good idea.

I also know that some of us don't like wikipaedia domain names per se. However, I would like to point out that the Wikipedia name derives from "encyclopedia", and encyclopedia is simply the modern/American form of the English word encyclopaedia. The words are both in use and synonymous. Again, it is more than likely that many web users all over the world frequently enter wikipaedia domain names when looking for the Wikipedia. As Wikipedians, we have an important claim to wikipaedia and wikipedia domain names — and considering the scope and importance of our project, it is reasonable for us to control both variations of the name. Ropers 16:56, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Please vote: Poll closed

Should the donation of the wikipaedia.net domain name be accepted and made a working redirect to the wikipedia.org domain?

Please sign below:

Yes

  • Ropers 16:56, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • As a Brit, I'm uncomfortable with the missing æ (it just seems wrong) and this site is supposed to be universal, so this is a good move. Necrothesp 17:19, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • "Wikipedia" should still be treated as the correct spelling, since that is what is used throughout even the non-English versions, but most likely anyone looking for "Wikipaedia" is looking for us. Maybe we should register wikpedia.org while we're at it... -- Wapcaplet 17:38, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I stress using "Wikipedia" as the proper spelling. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 18:41, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)
  • Sure. Of course, the name will remain the same, but we're not Wikipedia.com, either, and there are no problems with that. Publications frequently get our address wrong (sending them to .com, for instance) so this is a logical step. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 18:58, 2004 Aug 21 (UTC)
  • I doesn't hurt us and can help others find our site. - SimonP 19:39, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)
  • It should definitely be accepted. We aren't talking about changing the name to Wikipaedia here so I really can't imagine what the no-voters have got against the idea. The more avenues we can close off to cybersquatters the better. Trilobite (Talk) 19:42, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes. The more entrances we make available, the better we are. --the Epopt 20:16, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Herbert 20:48, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)
  • Derrick Coetzee 21:06, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC): Changing my vote; while I certainly wouldn't encourage use of this as a primary name, having some common misspellings redirect is good, and others using them is definitely potentially confusing.
  • [[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 21:19, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Sure, no reason not to. —Stormie 22:52, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes, the redirect would be useful. Dieter Simon 23:05, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Of course, Wikipedia would remain the correct spelling. -Sean Curtin 01:57, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)
  • I don't see any downside to this one. Let's do it.Antandrus 02:05, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Aye Alexburke 07:41, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes. In fact, seeing as the American standard is taken for Wikipedia, we should compromise by having "Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia" as the image tagline ;o) zoney ███ talk 15:47, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Obviously. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 16:57, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • As Neutrality said in fewer words (; —siroχo 19:26, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)
  • 172 19:39, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No

  • Mikkalai : Cybersquatting is cybersquatting is cybersquatting regardless who's doing it. If people are looking up 'wikipedia', they will eventually find it. If people are looking up an subject, they land into wikipedia good time. IMO wikipedia is already littering the cyberspace too much (with mirrors and cybercash cows). Sometimes it is takes pains to find an independent source on a subject. Mikkalai 17:59, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Unless someone is willing to donate the annual registration fees, this is a waste of money. If someone is willing to, then I'm ambivalent. I don't think very many people are going to type in "wikipaedia.net". If it were .com or .org, then maybe... anthony (see warning) 19:45, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Agreed but as reproducers of our content tend to use every trick in the book to get a top rank in Google, if cybersquatters had this address it's conceivable that someone could do a search and come up with a "Wikipaedia" page and think they were looking at the real thing. At least reproductions which don't use variants of our name don't taint our reputation too much with their pop-up ads etc. One with a similar spelling might. — Trilobite (Talk) 22:58, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You make a valid point, but at the same time, when will it end? There are a large number of top level domain names, and other variations on the spelling of Wikipedia. Should we register every single one of them, just because someone might use them to illegally abuse our trademark? I don't think the damage that would potentially be done outweighs the cost of maintaining every single one of the possible variations of wikipedia.org, and I don't think maintaining the registration of just this one variation does anything to reduce the possibility of harm. anthony (see warning) 13:17, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • No, at least not unless the offer is accompanied by wikipaedia.org - I think Wikipedia is an .org or, at best, a .com, but certainly not a .net. Having only the .net is not much use in my eyes. (Yes, I'm one of the three remaining people who believe that generic top-level domain names should have a little meaning.) -- pne 19:41, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Please see below for answers to some of these concerns. Ropers 22:41, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ambivalent

  • While I can't see any major harm in using www.wikipaedia.net and redirecting to www.wikipedia.org, I do see a point in having users get used to one domain only.
    RoseParks 17:04, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't see that it would matter even if someone used Wikipedia all the time under the impression that it was spelt Wikipaedia because that was the address they used. They would still be coming here, and anyway we can't go round policing people's minds to ensure adherence to US spelling. — Trilobite (Talk) 17:10, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Oh, it's actually even better:
Go to http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter. (Note that that's .com.)
See how using that .com URL seamlessly redirects you to the "correct" .org one?
If wikipaedia.net gets set up the same way, then there wont ever be the least chance of anybody hanging around at the "wrong" URL. They'll get to the wikipedia.org address regardless — thus people will notice pretty quickly that we're "really" at wikipedia.org. The wikipaedia.net domain name is really just another door we're opening to our users (and at the same time closing to traffic hijackers). Ropers 18:08, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

May I close this poll?

Seeing the response, I don't think there remains any chance on the "No" votes overtaking the "Yes" votes. Also, I have just gotten an email from Jimmy. If nobody objects, I will proclaim this poll closed some time tomorrow. Please only respond if you want to object to me closing the poll. Putting up a second poll on whether to close the first one would be absurd. Feel free to still sign while the poll remains open. Ropers 03:59, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Since Britain is a U.S. colony, couldn't we simply ask them to spell things in proper American...? ;-) AdmN 19:26, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Poll Closed

This poll is now closed.

That's not to prevent anyone from still voicing their opinion, but we have to draw a line somewhere and count. Also, I'm readying this to get archived off the main Village Pump site, which is very crowded.

Results

  • In favour: 20
  • Against: 3
  • Ambivalent: 1

Thanks to everyone who voted. :)



I may add:
This donation doesn't cost the Foundation anything right now. The domain name is payed for a year. A cost would incur if it was intended to transfer the name to another registrar (which can be done anytime after the first 60 days of registration). A cost would also incur if the domain name were to be renewed. I would be very much for that, but my donation doesn't come with any strings attached.
This is in fact a very minor contribution (Go google for the cost of a domain registration. See?), but one which still hasn't been ticked off the to-do list.
I registered this domain because I ended up on wikipaedia.org and found out that... -- see here for my writeup of my findings: [9] (user name guest, password 1ns4nI+y) It was in the course of this noble waste of time that I realized that wikipaedia.net was not yet taken.
And yes, I am all for us getting the wikipaedia.org, wikipaedia.com domain names into the fold (and maybe the German wikipaedia.de as well).
I feel they belong to the Wikipedia and I fail to see any legitimate, non-traffic hijacking reason why anyone would want to use, say, wikipaedia.org.
I suggest we get working what we've got (wikipaedia.net) ASAP and then proceed to claim wikipaedia.org and .com as well, under the terms of the ICANN UDRP.

Ropers 22:41, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Overzealous spam filter

I am unable to edit the page Wikipedia:Copies of Wikipedia content (low_degree_of_compliance) to report violating copies because it already contains regular expressions considered spam by the spam filter. I see no way to repair this, since it's all over this project page, and it also won't tell me what expressions it's using. I have to wonder if it's doing its job properly even on article pages. Derrick Coetzee 17:15, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

m:Talk:Non-development tasks for developers
chocolateboy 04:09, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Help vandalism on Thai wikipedia

User: 203.145.13.22 is emptying all pages on the Thai wikipedia. I do not have moderatorrights there. I am one on the Dutch wikipedia. Can someone either block the guy, or give me some rights? Waerth 17:31, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Why is no one coming to help the Thai wikipedia is geting destroyed !!!!! Waerth 17:40, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Help!!!! Waerth 17:45, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You're temporarily an admin there, and I've blocked 203.145.13.22. Angela. 17:57, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)

Affirmative action

Please give a hand, this article needs alot of work, and alot of help from as many editors as possible. Sam [Spade] 18:23, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Does "E-mail this user" ever work for anyone else?

I've tried contacting other users about four times this way; never any responses. Then I tried to test the feature by trying to send an E-mail to myself. Didn't receive it. Finally I created a sockpuppet (sorry) just so that I could test whether I could send E-mail to myself from an account that wasn't my own. Nothing. Every time Wikipedia's software says the E-mail has been sent. Does this feature work for anybody else? Is my ISP doing overzealous spam filtering and blocking E-mail from Wikipedia without telling me? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 18:32, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've never gotten any either, though I have sent messages (or thought I did). I just sent you a message--did you get it? Antandrus 18:35, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, I did. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 21:52, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I just sent a mail to myself, and it seemed to work fine. I've never tried to mail anyone else, or received mail from anyone... — Kate | Talk 18:37, 2004 Aug 21 (UTC)
Seems to work fine for me, I get emails sometimes. A few of the times I tried to use it to send one they didn't have email enabled, but at least one time they did and I was able to send the email just fine. Sam [Spade] 18:38, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I have never used it to send e-mail, but I have received e-mail a number of times, so it works for me. Adam Bishop 19:00, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Received a couple of them, but not many. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:02, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I've sent several and I received quite a few. Always seems to work fine for me. →Raul654 19:09, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)
The one time I emailed another user w/ this feature it did work ok. Ropers 19:44, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I've gotten a couple of death threats that way. A kind message of support I sent, on the other hand, was not received. I think it filters for hate speech. Try screaming and yelling. That will probably get through. :-) Geogre 20:56, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I've gotten emails before. Are you sure your email is correctly put into your preferences? [[User:Ilyanep|— Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ, cοηtrιbs)]] 15:37, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oh, great. It's not reliable enough to depend on, but it's not broken enough to diagnose. Oh, well. My question is answered, no need to continue. Thanks. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 21:52, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The one time I tried it, it didn't work. Incidently, did you check your spam folder (if you have one). The mail might be getting put there. anthony (see warning) 00:19, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Weird image uploading problem

See Image:Conti-sig.gif and Image:Thisisatest.gif. I made a little picture for my signature and wanted to upload it. I first uploaded it as "Conti-sig.gif", which was "0 byte" according to wikipedia. I then renamed the picture on my hard drive to "Thisisatest.gif" and uploaded it again, and it works! I tested a bit more: Image:Thisisanothertest.gif and Image:Testsig.gif do work, but "Contisig.gif", "ContiSig.gif" and "Conti sig.gif" were all "0 bytes" as I tried to upload them. This looks very weird to me.. anyone knows what's up with that? --Conti|✉ 20:29, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)

No idea at all, except that after the initial faliure you maybe messed up in proceeding to replace the existing file.. At least, I successfully uploaded the pic and I've cleaned out your tests. Please note that graphics like that are much preferred to be PNGs, not GIFs. [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 02:05, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I uploaded Thisisatest.gif, ContiSig.gif and Testsig.gif in that order, first worked, second didn't, third did.. really weird. Thanks for your uploading and cleaning anyways! Well, PNGs don't have the option to use a transparent color, so my sig might look not so nice when using a non-white background. What's so bad aboug GIFs anyways? --Conti|✉ 02:41, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)
I uploaded a png version now after I have found out that transparency is possible with it. I had the same problem again. I moved the pic to another directory and it worked, so I apparently can't upload some (not all) pictures directly from C:\ --Conti|✉ 18:50, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)

Kemari

Could a Japanese speaking Wikipedian please assist at Talk:Kemari Mintguy (T) 22:42, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How did you build and populate the calendar?

I'm running MediaWiki on a company intranet, and wanted to know how you built all the templates and infrastructure for the great calendar? Is that all done manually? What happens to conent marked for some given date when a new year comes in? Is there a bot that helps with all the calendar maintenance?

thanks a bunch, --NickT 23:32, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it's all done manually. Dysprosia 00:47, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's all done with a bot. His name is Maveric149 :) →Raul654 04:57, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)

Transparent PNGs are really annoying me...

I have posted this here instead of on Sourceforge because I am sick of the lack of attention this issue seems to have been receiving. People say that transparent PNGs stuff up in Internet Explorer because of IE's poor support for PNG images. I disagree. Those of you with IE6, go to User:Mark/temp and look at the transparent regions of the flag of Nepal there. When inserted into an article at full size, the image is actually transparent, and Internet Explorer renders it perfectly. However, as soon as the thumbnailer is used to reduce the size of the image, the transparency goes out the window. Instead of showing the pink background I used there, most thumbnailed sizes have a white background, however one has a black background. When will the thumbnailer be fixed???? It's getting really annoying... - Mark 07:08, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The bug is with MSIE, not with the thumbnailer. Switch to a browser which is still being developed such as Opera or Mozilla Firething, or contact Microsoft support and insist they fix a years-old bug. MSIE is capable of supporting transparency, but alas this requires a really ugly hack to work with PNGs. Anárion 10:15, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes, this is the usual pre-programmed response. If Internet Explorer is entirely to blame for this problem, then how come only thumbnailed versions of transparent png images have the transparency problem? Why the difference between the full size image and the thumbnailed one? Did you even look at the page through Internet Explorer? If not, then I have prepared a screenshot of the page through IE6 for you here. - Mark 11:13, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC) Edit: I also tried manually resizing the image and saving it in Paint Shop Pro using the same palette and transparency as the full-size original image, and as you can see in IE6 on User:Mark/temp its transparency works fine. This just continues to point to a flaw in the thumbnailer, or at least a shortcoming in that it does not maintain the identical format used in the originals. - Mark 11:29, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I agree that it is a minor shortcoming in the thumbnailer, since it does not maintain the "colour" of fully transparent areas (I'm guessing that is the problem). What method is used in mediawiki to thumbnail PNGs? David Remahl 11:41, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You're both right. The problem with the thumbnailer is that PNG thumbnails for some reason always come out being true-color (which causes a related problem, namely that indexed full-version images are often smaller, in file size, than their true-color thumbnailed counterparts); transparency is interpolated in the auto-thumbnailed versions, resulting in partial opacity in some areas. That is where the MSIE bug comes in, because it can't handle partial opacity; it must be all or nothing. The reason your hand-made thumbnail worked, Mark, is because it does not have any partial opacity (in fact, it's indexed color, which AFAIK doesn't allow it). If our auto-thumbnailer just correctly produced indexed-color thumbnails for all indexed-color images, I suspect the problem would go away... -- Wapcaplet 17:06, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The problem would also go away if Microsoft would fix their broken PNG transparency support... -- Cyrius|✎ 17:08, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Well, that's true only if everyone using a broken version of MSIE upgrades immediately. It's a lot more realistic to hope for an improved thumbnailer. -- Wapcaplet 17:54, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
COOL - I never knew that PNG transparency was so impressive! Partial opacity is very useful/nice! Pity about it not working in IE! (Well, a pity for others - I can go "Bwah hah hah" with Firefox). As an addendum - are 16million colour PNGs not much larger file sizes? I've noticed that I must consciously reduce colours to 256 with PNGs. (To GIFs, of course, PSP would always automatically reduce). As PNGs are used mostly for diagrams, the 256 colours should usually be enough. Perhaps this reduction should be encouraged on Wikipedia? zoney | talk 17:14, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
One uses higher color depth PNGs when appropriate, like lossless storage of a photograph (JPEG is lossy). For the tasks one would have used GIF for, dropping to 8-bit (256 colors) or lower is desirable. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:19, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Well, my query is more along the lines of, "are people using truecolour when they shouldn't be?" zoney ███ talk 17:44, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • True-color PNGs are often much larger than indexed. In my experience, the size difference is usually in the ballpark of 50%; that is, true-color versions are at least twice as many bytes as indexed versions. The quality difference is negligible for most diagram-like images; when it's not, it's usually when the diagram has many colors and lots of complex gradient areas, in which case a JPG is probably more appropriate anyway. You can do a lot with indexed color; my Enigma rotor illustration is indexed, believe it or not. A good rule of thumb: For noisy images, use JPG. For clean images, use PNG. -- Wapcaplet 17:54, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • (post-edit-conflict) - to answer your second question, Zoney, yes, absolutely. I'd be willing to wager that 90% of the true-color PNGs that have been uploaded should really be indexed (or JPG, instead). -- Wapcaplet 17:54, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Another interesting aspect of this is that again above we have the response in several places that since it's Microsoft's fault, therefore it's Microsoft's problem. Nothing could be further from the truth.

At the risk of offending (again) some of our wonderful (I mean that) volunteers who work on the code and the site configuration, I'm going to explore this a little. Please take this as intended. It's not a criticism of any particular person, it's not a criticism of Linux or of alternative browsers, and it's not a recommendation that anyone support Microsoft.

Microsoft's driving force is to sell software. I often speculate that some of the patently poor quality in their products is what a British comedian (I forget who it was) termed falltobitsability, that is planned obsolescence. Regardless of whether it's deliberate, this inherent obsolesence is clearly an advantage to Microsoft. It is in their interests for users to upgrade as often as they can be persuaded to.

When a major site such as Wikipedia fails to support IE6 (or IE5 for that matter), the biggest winner is Microsoft. Few if any users will go to Linux as a result, a few may go to alternative browsers but for most the choice is between suffering the problems or upgrading their Microsoft browser. Upgrading the browser often means upgrading the hardware, which often means upgrading all the application software as well. (Few if any will go to Apple computers, but if any do again they are likely to buy lots of new Microsoft products as a result.) For Microsoft, it's a licence to print money.

The main losers are low-end users, and the next most significant loser is the site itself. From the point of view of both those who don't upgrade for whatever reason, and those who do upgrade but who don't understand the subtleties of HTML and other specifications, it's the site that is delivering poor quality.

Wikipedia is the only site I visit that has significant problems with either IE5 or IE6 and no apparent interest in fixing them. I have my theories as to why this is so, but probably that's enough for now. Food for thought? Andrewa 18:51, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The fact still remains that IE's PNG transparency support is broken. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:10, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
True. But is that really relevant? AFAIK we are not in the position to offer a fix for it. Andrewa 19:25, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Andrewa's points above; I am not an MSIE user, and I encourage every MSIE user I meet to switch to a less-broken browser, but the simple fact remains that MSIE has huge market share, and we're only hurting ourselves if we stubbornly refuse to make our site work well in that browser. That said, I think I will go take a serious look at the thumbnailing code, to see what it would take to resolve this issue... -- Wapcaplet 19:50, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I suggest Wapcaplet who seem to have a great understanding of the problem take it to MediaZilla (link in header). My guess is that it could be fixed with config, upgrade or change from gd php extension to ImageMagick (more overhead), or the other way around (don't know what they're using).

  • I just took a crack at it; it appears that ImageMagick is in use at the moment. I don't think ImageMagick supports any kind of color depth reduction (except to grayscale), which is most likely the reason we're ending up with truecolor versions. The GD extensions seem to be severely broken; in particular, the critical function ImageTrueColorToPalette, at least in my particular installation and config, does not seem to respect transparency. I did manage to get a truecolor transparent version by explicitly using ImageAlphaBlending and ImageSaveAlpha, but transparency goes away (replaced by black, usually) upon palette reduction. I'll keep at it; perhaps with some combination of the GD extensions and ImageMagick, it could work. -- Wapcaplet 22:04, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • if GIMP does it correctly, then libgimp should be able to do (programatically) also. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:14, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oh, the frustration. I can clearly see now why this problem has not been fixed. I've concluded that the PHP-GD libraries are either absolute and utter crap, or I am just too dumb to figure out the right way to use them. I have successfully:

  • Created transparent nicely-antialised truecolor images
  • Created non-transparent nicely-antialiased palette images
  • Created horribly aliased palette images

The problem is, GD lib images by default are not transparent. They cannot be flood-filled with a transparent color; apparently the only two ways to do it are: (1) Tell a certain color to be transparent, in which case any of that color in the image also gets turned transparent, or (2) loop and set every single pixel to be transparent, which is definitely out of the question.

I think it might work to use a combination of ImageMagick (which has no problem whatsoever with resizing transparent images, unlike the GD libs, which botch this seemingly simple operation), and the GD libs (which can easily create palette images from truecolor, unlike ImageMagick, which botches this seemingly simple operation). The only question is whether transparency would be preserved. I suspect no. I think I'll come back to this in a day or two, when my neurons aren't so fried.

p.s. - The GIMP is definitely an option for this, but I don't know how good it is in terms of speed. Worth a shot, at least. -- Wapcaplet 00:53, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

At risk of displaying my spectacular lack of knowledge in the area of image formats and palette transparency, if one of the options is to make a certain colour transparent in the thumbnail, why can't you make the desired region that colour, and offset any other instances of that colour in the image by a small (insignificant) RGB value? So you make the transparent region #FF00FF, and make the other instances of pink in the image something like #FF01FF or something. But IANAP (I am not a programmer). - Mark 16:08, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You know, that is actually a fabulous idea. I'm fairly certain it can be done using the GD library functions. It'll result in some fairly inelegant code, but if it works, it will be worth it. I'll give it a shot! Thanks! -- Wapcaplet 16:45, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Linux

Yay! I made the transition to Linux! I write to you now on Red Hat Linux 9.0, using Mozilla Firefox! Just felt like shouting it. [[User:Supadawg|supadawg - Talk]] 13:50, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
P.S. Still gotta figure out how to recompile the kernel...

OK, Zaphod!
  • If you only just "made the transition", then you most definitely 'do not' want to be recompiling your kernel. Regardless of whatever any l33t h4x0r tells you. Stick with the pre-packaged ones. I remember being a newbie and recompiling the kernel, it led to reinstalling the system. Oh, and you might want to upgrade to Fedora Core, which (unlike RH9) is neing actively maintained. The User Formerly Known As 82.6.10.139
  • Hey, I've also recently installed Linux on my WinXP laptop - I use Mandrake 10.0, a fairly user-friendly distro. I like it a lot, and it sure is much more stable than XP. Mac OS X remains my favorite OS, however. Good luck and whatnot. Ðåñηÿßôý | Talk 02:03, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What is the best linux for an old x86 pIII? I want a desktop environmnt with Open office and a browser. Can this be done? I am not up to making my own, and all the RH and Man versions that I have tried are too slow. Thanks

a better message needed when moving a page that does not have content in its talk page

Right now if you move a page that does not have content in its "talk page" you get this response after the move: 

  Move page
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
  Move succeeded
  &nbsp 
  Page "Bea Weblogic" moved to "BEA Weblogic".
  &nbsp 
  Please check if this move has created any double-redirects, and fix them if necessary.
  &nbsp 
  The corresponding talk page was not moved.

While "true", I find that last sentence somewhat misleading. Either it should be eliminated in that set of circumstances, or should be reworded to indicate there was no talk page to be moved. - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 15:40, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps "no talk page to move"? Ilyanep — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ, cοηtrιbs) 17:56, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Fixed up. Dysprosia 23:05, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thank you! That threw me, too, the other day. — Jeff Q 16:45, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Missing Wikipedians

Kingturtle, and Hcheney seem to have disappeared. Anybody seen them around? [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 16:54, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

And Fabiform. Someone needs to upload a photo of a milk carton onto Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:55, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Milk carton? zoney | talk 00:04, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's an American thing — missing people are sometimes featured on the back of milk cartons. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 00:05, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Creepy... zoney ███ talk 00:34, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's supposedly found hundreds of people, so hey. You learn to ignore it (which, I know, contradicts the first sentence, but hey). [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 06:36, 2004 Aug 23 (UTC)
And Kate (formerly Lady Lysine Ikinsile). We're gonna need a bigger milk carton. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:12, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Database Error on Watchlist

I'm getting a database error (again) when I try to view my watchlist.

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 cur_namespace,cur_title,cur_comment, cur_id, cur_user,cur_user_text,cur_timestamp,cur_minor_edit,cur_is_new FROM watchlist,cur USE INDEX (name_title_timestamp) WHERE wl_user=44062 AND (wl_namespace=cur_namespace OR wl_namespace+1=cur_namespace) AND wl_title=cur_title AND cur_timestamp > '20040822065741' ORDER BY cur_timestamp DESC from within function "wfSpecialWatchlist". MySQL returned error "1104: The SELECT would examine more rows than MAX_JOIN_SIZE. Check your WHERE and use SET SQL_BIG_SELECTS=1 or SET SQL_MAX_JOIN_SIZE=# if the SELECT is ok".

There was a user (developer?) who was able to help when this happened before, but I can't recall who this was. [[User:Bkonrad|older≠wiser]] 19:01, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I've raised the appropriate limit again. Please let me know on my talk page if you (or anyone else) sees it again. Longer term I'm working on a way of doing watchlists which shouldn't have this problem. Jamesday 01:49, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Television naming conventions

A draft of a poll to establish (or re-establish) naming conventions for television programming is currently underway at User:Gtrmp/TV draft poll. Once finalized, it will be moved to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television)/poll and opened. All input and criticism are welcome! -Sean Curtin 22:07, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television) was written as a result of a previous poll and discussion. A vote has been presented asking Wikipedians whether they would like to adopt the current version. The vote is being held on the Talk page and ends on Sep 13 2004 at 00:00 UTC. The intent is that if the measure fails, that Sean Curtin's poll would be used to gather consensus and re-write it. -- Netoholic 02:13, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)


Lack of Wiki hits in Google

Is anyone bothered by the fact that the 'pedia no longer appears anywhere near the top of searches in Google? When I put in Syagrius or magister militum I get any number of sites containing copies of the wiki text, but not this site itself - in these two cases I gave up looking. The info on these sites is presumably copied at some moment in time and therefore "frozen", and is therefore less likely to be accurate. Please forgive me if this is a subject that has been raised before, but I couldn't find any mention of it. Djnjwd 23:02, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It has been mentioned before, but what can we do? We can't force google to put us top. Theresa Knott 00:08, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes, you can. Go to google and put in a word. Look at the top-right of the screen; that word is hotlinked. It takes you to selected definitions from certain sites. Would it be too much to ask Google that they give us the same consideration? Maybe I will, but it'd be nice if someone official did it. --Golbez 03:19, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
We can send google quality complaints. Basically, these other sites optomize for google and we don't; that's why they kill us in the google rank →Raul654 00:15, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)
Is it true that a possible reason for the low Google rating is low reliability? The other dictionary sites are more consistently, available than Wikipedia. I think uptime has been pretty good for a while now, but the site still rates relatively poorly... David Remahl 00:22, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Similarly, latency might figure in, if relevence is considered equal. I think our only real hope is to enforce our license so that people can get from any mirrored page to the "live" page. We may consider modifying our license slightly to ensure that the link is prominent (many are at the bottom of long articles in a tiny font). Derrick Coetzee 00:51, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I hope something like this is done. Google ranking wouldn't matter all that much if when people had read a mirrored article once they knew where it came from originally, and that the mirror was inferior, and came here in future. — Trilobite (Talk) 00:56, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm wondering if we could legally sue the people who own these domains (do a detailed WhoIs to find who it's registered to). I'm not sure if Wikipedia could get a team of lawyers, but is it actually possible? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ, cοηtrιbs) 02:17, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Well, you certainly don't need to start with suing. There is a standard license enforcement sequence, starting with polite requests, to more sternly worded, then threatening legal action. I know it has worked with a number of sites. I don't know where on wikimedia, but this has another place it is being discussed actively, somewhere on meta I'm sure. - Taxman 02:45, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks has a non-compliance process, including a Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter. -- Chris 73 Talk 02:58, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)
But even the compliant sites shouldn't be above wiki. Suing aside, this is sort of a problem. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ, cοηtrιbs) 04:26, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Why not? From Google's perspective thefreedictionary.com is a better site than Wikipedia. It has virtually the same content, faster response time, better use of tooltips/metatags/etc... Yeah, Wikipedia is becoming well-known and has a gazillion links to its homepage, but links to specific pages aren't that common, so the clones don't lose out from this perspective either. AFAIK Google doesn't have a weighting for being the "original". Pcb21| Pete 09:15, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There's discussion on this ongoing at Wikipedia:Send in the clones. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 06:38, 2004 Aug 23 (UTC)

There is also a valuable discussion about problems with Google on Wikipedia:External search engines. Some of those discussions began last year, and it looks as though each intake of new editors asks the same questions - and gets the same answers! May I suggest these pages plus this current Parish Pump discussion are somehow consolidated (by an administrator?) and placed on the Community Portal page with a heading like 'Wikipedia and search engine difficulties'. That way we have somewhere to keep an eye on it. It might be noted in whatever welcome material we sent new editors to draw their attention it.

There are also the regular pages Search engines and Google which so far as I can see do not touch on this problem. Apwoolrich 13:20, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I tend to believe that there's also a software (Google compatibility) issue involved. I did a Google search for the first paragraph of our Cohortative mood article - it's a vanity thing, and Firefox make such searches very simple - and got three results: 2 from thefreedictionary.com (which does link to the Wikipedia article, although the article has been since moved) and one from wikiverse.org (which doesn't). This means that not only Google does not rank the Wikipedia article highly, it is also entirely unaware of its existence (the same can be asserted using a Google cache query). Worse still, particularly when Wikipedia's search is disabled, is that, naturally, Google is also unaware of the article when doing a Wikipedia-specific search. The article is also not particularly new; presumably, Google scans the Web every 30 days, and the article is seven months old. One reason for this (and for other issues) is possibly Wikipedia's Crawl-delay value set at robots.txt. While it not particularly high (in fact, it is minimal), Wikipedia is pretty big, which might discourage even usually-reliable Google. -- Itai 14:31, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

nationality

I'am a little confused by certain nationalities such as people from Slovenia. In the past I categorised an athlete as Slovene but was left a message by someone saying they should be called Slovenian. Not a problem I just guessed I had made a mistake but I have just noticed that the same problem has arisen with Argentina where the preferred option seems to be Argentine not Argentinian. Does wiki have a standard list somewhere of what we are to call people so that the categories can follow the same standard as it seems a contradiction to choose Slovenian and then Argentine in Category:People by nationality or I am just being stupid???Scraggy4 00:51, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See List of adjectival forms of place names, though be aware that the issue isn't always that simple. IIRC, Croat/Croatian aren't supposed to be interchangeable and the issue is perhaps bound up in Croat/ian nationalism... or something. Tuf-Kat 01:01, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)
Just a note about this last sentence — they can be interchangeable in normal writing, i.e. one can use "Croatian" as an adjective for the Croats, but the links to Croatian should be all disambiguated in order to indicate whether the country or the nationality. I have been doing this for a while now, though some careless anonymous users still persist in linking ambiguously... --Joy [shallot] 16:00, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The issue is usually ethnicity vs. citizenship. To use Tuf-Kat's example, a Croat (as a noun) is a person of Croatian ethnicity, regardless of his/her citizenship; a Croatian (as a noun) is a citizen of Croatia regardless of his/her ethnicity. I believe Slovene/Slovenian is exactly analogous. The matter gets muddled because for some countries/ethnicities the word for both is the same (e.g. German). Also, there are cases like Hungarian/Magyar where in English the first can mean citizenship or ethnicity, but the latter refers specifically to ethnicity. -- Jmabel 03:55, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)
The "Slovenians" vs. "Slovenes" thing is not actually a decided standard -- there's some users who have an agenda to change _all_ instances of Slovenes to Slovenians because they think it's "archaic", but so far there has been little or no substantiation to this claim on the relevant Talk pages (AFAICT).
In any event, if you have a person from Slovenia, they are definitely Slovenian, and chances are that they're also Slovene (but do check before writing that). If you have a person who speaks the Slovene/Slovenian language but who is not from Slovenia, they're almost certainly ethnic Slovenes, but calling them ethnic Slovenians is IMHO a bit confusing. I think that the analogy with Croat/Croatian should be applied, but it's not a consensus. Who left you this message, anyway? --Joy [shallot] 15:56, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Aum page image screw up

Hi, the image in the page appears screwed up in IE6. I just would like to bring attention this . Thanks.--Jondel 03:57, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's not an image, but the unicode #2384 (ॐ) Not sure how to fix that -- Chris 73 Talk 04:24, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps someone should make it an image. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ, cοηtrιbs) 04:27, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Adding another br tag seems to fix it at the Sandbox. I'll do the same in page. Thans.--Jondel 06:46, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Still getting a ? in Win98/Firefox 0.9. I guess this thing needs Unicode... Radagast 19:38, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)
I use Mozilla 1.8a3 and it works fine. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 19:41, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's not a question of browsers, it's a question of installed fonts. I have Japanese, etc. fonts installed, so that works, but I don't have Devanagari, so it doesn't show for me. DenisMoskowitz 17:45, 2004 Aug 25 (UTC)

I know, I am far from ideal

I am totally positive there is a page for such requests as mine, but I don't remember what it's called. Please forgive me. Can someone update Wikipedia:Most-edited talk pages please? Tuf-Kat 05:10, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)

French Revolution: WikiProject?

Over the last year a few of us have done a lot of work on topics related to the French Revolution. We've pulled in a ton of relevant 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica material, some of which has now been heavily edited, some not. We've also drawn heavily on an out-of-copyright history by François Mignet.

At this point the political history is pretty solid through at least September 1992 1792 (the start of the National Convention) and not too shabby even after that; the military aspects are just starting to come together. User:Didactohedron recently did a pretty major refactoring. I was wondering if there are, say, at least five people interested in starting a WikiProject to coordinate further efforts]: it would be nice to start keeping a collective task list. If you're interested, reply briefly here. If I get 4 yeses besides myself, I'll set up a WikiProject page. (I'd model it more or less on the approach taken by Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy -- Jmabel 05:17, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)

Gee, I had no idea the French Revolution lasted so long. --Michael Snow 22:13, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Guess that's why Zhou Enlai thought it was too soon to tell what he thought of it... -- Jmabel 01:01, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

Jewish Holidays Wikiproject?

Is there a wikiproject for Jewish Holidays? If not, there should be. I was looking at a few articles (specifically Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur) and found that their layouts aren't the most standardized. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ, cοηtrιbs) 05:19, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How about just a Holidays wikiproject? Why not make them all alike? RickK 06:30, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)

I suppose we could do that. But is there one? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 15:30, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Not in favour of this. Far too many articles would fall into the ambit of this. For a start, it's unnecessary to mix religious and secular holidays. Plus there's national and meaningless (bank holidays?) holidays to be thrown in too. Probably it is enough to start projects for holidays that should be logically grouped - like Jewish, Christian, US, English, Scottish, etc. zoney | talk 23:48, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC) Hierarchically organised, it should be fine. zoney ███ talk
That's what I'm trying to do on here. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 19:43, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Images of Italy

I have a pile of photos of various Italian locations (architecture, etc) that has been given to me for use on Wikipedia, provided that it appear on pages. (In other words, the person who took it, doesn't want them to sit around in an image dump). So, if anyone who would know major landmarks in Italy would want to go through them with me, and find where they should go on various pages, that would be great Rhymeless 06:47, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How many are there? You could put them up on a gallery sub-page of your user page, leave a note here, and invite people to go and have a look at them and put them in the relevant articles if they feel they are needed. I am happy to do this so you've got one volunteer already. — Trilobite (Talk) 17:30, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Roughly 30. Allright, I could probably put them there, as long as they didn't remain there indefinately. Thanks. Rhymeless 18:36, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This seems to me like a form of blackmail: "use my image RIGHT NOW or I won't let you use it EVER". What harm would it do if an image was uploaded but not used immediately? If the photo is good then eventually an article will be written that can use it. Can you persuade the photographer to chill out and just GFDL the photos? Gdr 11:14, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)

Yahoo search

Since the in-house search (what is the name for it) has stopped working, we are back with Google and Yahoo search. The Yahoo search does not seem to work for me. Does it work for anyone else?
Bobblewik  (talk) 09:01, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I never use it, google always works for me. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 15:32, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yahoo produces different results to Google. It can be used to find things missed by Google. Given that they are both out of date, that is convenient. I think they also differ in the search options permitted. Anyway, if it has been broken for a length of time, then it should be fixed or removed.
Bobblewik  (talk) 17:26, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think it was the {{SERVER}} variable in MediaWiki:Googlesearch that was causing problems. I've replaced this with en.wikipedia.org. Does it work ok now? Angela. 19:32, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)
Yes it works now. Thank you for fixing it.
Bobblewik  (talk) 08:46, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Montréal, Québec

Could an admin please move "Montreal, Quebec" to "Montréal, Québec"? It cannot be done right now, not sure why (the target page is just a redirect). The e acute is ISO-8859-1 safe.

Urhixidur 12:16, 2004 Aug 23 (UTC)

Is the English name really with an accent? I cannot recall ever seeing it written such outside of French texts. Anárion 13:04, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Google gets 12 million hits for Montreal and 4 million for Montréal, or if limited to english pages only, 7.4 and 1.2 million respectively -- Chris 73 Talk 13:44, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)
Officially, the name Montréal is supposed to be written with an accent in English.
From The Canadian Style, published by Public Works and Government Services Canada, 1997:
"On November 23, 1983, the Treasury Board issued its Circular No. 1983-58 to implement the policy adopted by the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (CPCGN) regarding the linguistic treatment of geographical names on federal maps and in federal documents. [...] Names of inhabited places retain their official form in both English and French texts, e.g. Montréal (Que.), Saint John (N.B.), and St. John's (N.L.)."
On the other hand, Montreal (sans accent) is very very common, and easier to type on keyboards sans accents. Grstain 13:47, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There has been considerable discussion about naming conventions for cities. I believe the convention is to use the most common English language spelling rather than defer to "official" spellings. It was decided that the article should be at Kiev rather than the official "Kyiv", similarly Calcutta is used rather than the official "Kolkata". If we locate Montreal at Montréal, Québec simply because it is the official spelling, we could risk reopening some highly contentious cans of worms (which have been fairly quiet of late). [[User:Bkonrad|older≠wiser]] 14:16, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Style sheets created and used by government bodies are just that. They have no standing outside the body that creates them and anyone who choses to use them. Different government bodies within the same government may have different style sheets. Often, as with any style sheet or style guide, a particular recommendation may not be generally followed outside the organizaton. See Hansard: Thursday, May 13, 2004 for an official English transcript from the Canadian parliamentary record in which diacritics are not used on Montreal or Quebec (though diacritics appear on personal names and the place name Trois-Rivières). This is normal Canadian English usage in which it is customary for certain place names to appear in English without diacritics (even though in general diacritics on French names are preserved). I would not be surprised to see this change eventually. In which case Wikipedia can also change

eventually. Jallan 18:30, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This article should be at Montréal instead of Montréal, Quebec, as this is a prime example of primary topic disambiguation. Trilobite (Talk) 17:26, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've only ever heard Montréal pronounced in such a way as to warrant keeping the accent in English. Then again, maybe it's pronounced differently in the US (like coupe and coupé). How is it pronounced in Canada - is the spelling Montréal more accurate? zoney ███ talk 19:28, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
In Canada both Montreal and Quebec are generally pronounced in English as they look like they would be pronounced in English: something like Mun-tree-all and Kwuh-beck. That an Anglicized pronunciation is normal for these forms in English is certainly part of the reason for the customary dropping of the acute accent. In any case, since that is current de facto standard practice and also a practice of the Canadian government (as indicated above in my last note here) it is what Wikipedia should follow. I believe that use of Montréal in an English context is increasing but that it is very far from being the norm. That parliamentary transcripts do not use it shows that CPCGN recommendations are not accepted universally for English text by government bodies. Jallan 20:40, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Our policy is quite simple - you are to use the most common english name. As has been said above, I think that means the unaccented form (Montreal and Quebec). →Raul654 22:52, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)
Oh good. So the policy for this encyclopaedia is to use the wrong names. I think it is splitting hairs to insist on the accent removal - the accented form is correct, but almost identical to the "common" form. zoney ███ talk 23:33, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It is not the policy of this encyclopedia to use the wrong names. It is also not the policy of this encyclopedia to replace the forms of names in general use in English by forms not generally used because some people think they ought to be used. Such advocacy is against Wikipedia policy. If, for example, you wanted Deutschland to appear in Wikipedia instead of Germany, you would first have to persuade a substantial number in the outside world to use Deutschland in English text instead of Germany.
To make a case that Montréal is the correct form in English text, you might first convince the editors of the Canadian parliamentary proceedings that they should use it. Then convince the Bank of Montreal (which calls itself "Bank of Montreal" in English and "Banque de Montréal" in French) that they should use Montréal in English. Convince the Montreal Gazette that they are spelling it wrong and so forth. Convince other English newspapers that spell Montreal but Trois Rivières. Only if the outside English-speaking world changes should Wikipedia.
There's a discussion of such translation issues at "Reader Reaction and Workplace Habits in the English Translation of French Proper Names in Canada" by Brian Mossop, Government of Canada Translation Bureau and York University School of Translation. It states in part:

No government-wide official rules have ever been enunciated by a federal authority concerning the translation of French place names into English in running text. However, some government institutions do from time to time provide translators with rules, and these do not necessarily conform with The Canadian Style. For example, the instructions from the Immigration and Refugee Board state that 'Montreal', 'Quebec' (the province) and 'Quebec City' are to be written without accents. Also, an Alta Vista search of Government of Canada Web sites (...gc.ca) showed that 'Québec City' is used, but not nearly as often as the unaccented form: there were 1,124 hits for the accented form, as compared to 5,254 hits for 'Quebec City'.

While your at it, persuade French speakers in Canada that "London, Ontario" in Canada should not be rendered in French as "Londres, Ontario" because "Londres" is the wrong name.
Names of places are often different between languages and only usage defines what is right. Style sheets like The Canadian Style cannot force their views on correctness. No style guide can. The French Language Academy is often the butt of ridicule for attempting and failing to force particular usages and spellings. As long as a significant majority government documents and university publications and newspapers presenting text in English predominantly use Montreal rather than Montréal in English, Montreal is the predominant correct form in English, the form of common usage, and therefore the correct form to be used in Wikipedia. The Canadian Style hasn't yet been able to change general usage on that matter. If usage does change, even if the change were mostly confined to government use and academic use and reference works, then there would be a good case for Wikipedia to follow along.
Are the correct Gaelic forms of Irish names with diacritics always commonly used in Ireland in English text or are the names used in English text often those forms that have become normal in English?
Jallan 02:36, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree with the "most common" rule for spelling — this is language, not mathematics, and there are only "standard" and "nonstandard", not "correct" and "incorrect" — but I wouldn't use Google blindly. We should use the spelling (and accenting) that is most common among professional sources. This is especially important for accenting, because many nonprofessional English-speaking writers don't know how to type letters with accents. That being said, the New York Times, CNN, and other English newspapers I can find, even the Canadian canada.com and the Globe and Mail, use the unaccented "Montreal" in their online editions (I'm not sure about print editions). —Steven G. Johnson 01:08, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

Do we have to have this discussion every three weeks? Why do new editors think that, somehow, the arguments that have failed in the past will somehow prevail this time? THIS IS THE ENGLISH WIKIPEDIA!!!! RickK 05:00, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

Er, if they are new editors, they wouldn't been around for previous debates. THIS IS COMMON SENSE!!!! Pcb21| Pete 07:20, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate lists both spellings in both cases, each with a different pronunciation (the French pronunciations are given for the accented forms). This is consistent with the "conventional/local" distinction, which seems to be standard in English writing. Keep it where it is. Austin Hair 07:51, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

Would it make sense to ask the developers to design and provide a facility, much as we have now for dates, which would allow entities that have alternative presentations, such as Montreal/Montréal, Hawaii/Hawai'i, etc. to be displayed according to a user's personal preference? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 16:22, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Leave the accents off. I've never once seen them used in Australian English, and suspect that the only place you will find them consistently used in English is in Canada, where Francophone politics is an ever-present force. Our consistent policy has been that where something is well known internationally by a different name to that used locally, the international name takes precedence, and the local name is used as a redirect. This as I see it is saying that so far as article names are concerned, it's more important for the encyclopedia to be easy to use than to be pleasing to the pedants. Andrewa 17:36, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You suspect wrong, Andrewa. Mostly Montreal remains mostly unaccented in English text in Canada. And The Canadian Style rules adopted by a some government departments which would like Montreal to have an acute accent in English text are just as clear that English names should not be modified in French texts, for example that "St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador" should be rendered in French as "St. John's, Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador" instead of the normal French usage "Saint-Jean, Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador". Their rules want cities, towns and villages to remain untranslated and unadapted in style although names of regions and geographics names are to be translated. From this comes the oddity above that they don't want the city "St. John's" to be translated when rendered in French but accept that "Newfoundland" should be translated. I sympathize with an attempt to simplify by standardizing on one name only for each municipality. But the CPCGN rules have not caught on in Canada outside of some government departments and have not become general usage in Canada outside those departments in either English or French. CPCGN wants names of cities to be left alone (other than translating of geographical terms that might be part of a city name). That changes much traditional usage. But names of provinces are to be translated (as the translations are too "official" to be discarded). That produces the much ridiculed recommendation that the city of Québec in the province of Québec should be "Québec, Québec" in French but "Québec, Quebec" in English. The traditional English rendering is "Quebec City, Quebec" and that remains the normal English rendering. See List of communities in Quebec for the normal English forms which are in almost all cases exactly the same as the French forms.. The only ones with different English and French forms are Montreal (which is Montréal in French), Quebec City (which is Québec in French), and Trois Rivières which is often rendered in English by the English translation "Three Rivers". Jallan 19:22, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Very interesting, but I think you've misunderstood me. What I was saying was that outside of Canada, I don't think the accented form is common in English. If as you say the accented form is not the most common English form inside Canada either, that's even more reason not to use it in English Wikipedia article names.
And from what you say it seems this pattern carries on to translated names as well as transliterated ones, with some amusing glitches. Andrewa 03:03, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Template:Mapquest

I've added a new template, Template:Mapquest ... but I haven't fully tested it yet, and at the moment, it only works for US Addresses, because of the state factor... I suppose different templates could be created to assist for other countries searches... -- Allyunion 14:09, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If anyone wants to try it now... Format is: {{Mapquest|address=|city=|state=|zip=|country=|text=}} -- Allyunion 14:41, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

how come AOL. [{{{url}}} "Village pump archive 2004-09-26"] (Map). Mapquest. AOL. {{cite map}}: Check |url= value (help) doesn't work? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 15:40, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See Template talk:Mapquest. The usage changed slightly. -- Netoholic (Talk) 15:57, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

We're trying to improve and fix any of the bugs still. See Discussion page @ Template talk:Mapquest for usage and updates. -- Allyunion 14:37, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Alright! It seems to be working quite well now. I think we have an agreement on the format, as listed above. All we need is people to run a lot of test trials on it, preferably non-US cities. -- Allyunion 11:19, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Article of the week --> Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week

Dear all Wikipedians,

Please note that Wikipedia:Article of the week has been renamed as Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week. If you have a link to AOTW on your Userpage, you may want to update and edit it accordingly.

BTW, please come to WP:COTW and vote for the next week's article for "Collaboration of the week". Thank you.

-- PFHLai 14:31, 2004 Aug 23 (UTC)

why? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 15:33, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There was some discussion at Wikipedia talk:Collaboration of the week; to some, "article of the week" gave the impression that AOTWs had some special status, which is misleading. A vote was held, and "collaboration of the week" won with 37.5% of the votes, with "project of the week" close behind at 25%. --Diberri | Talk 16:44, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)

Vote

There's apparently a vote ongoing at Wikipedia:Blocking policy/Personal attacks about a proposed addition to blocking policy. Wasn't sure it had been announced and the vote totals seemed awfully low on both sides, so I thought I'd announce it here. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:33, 2004 Aug 23 (UTC)

  • Thanks, Meelar! It hadn't been announced anywhere I've seen, and I know my own feelings on the matter are rather high. Geogre 00:52, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Just gab

I really can't stand when I come across the entries named in foreign words! (sorry, I don't read French, German etc.) Even though I am learning Japanese, I found weird when I see some entries named in Japanese romanization even though there are the corresponding words in English. English seems to be so easy to introduce latin family language words that may make English WP a mixed-up. They really spoil my enjoyment when I am surfing the English WP, and I have to keep reminding myself that this is English WP, not French one, nor German one, nor Swedish one. Don't ask me which entries, because I can't remember them all. I am just thinking, some entries with Chinese-character-titles would appear later, it seems to be only a matter of time. So what the use of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)?--Yacht (talk) 18:55, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)

Do you have some examples? --Golbez 19:02, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
See Wikipedia Talk:Naming conventions (use English) - topic has been brought up there. zoney | talk 19:38, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Examples of what you are unhappy with would be useful. In some cases (e.g. Nihilartikel) there is no English word, and a foreign word is presumably better than making up a neologism. In other cases (e.g. Académie française) the native form or (e.g. Bharatiya Janata Party) semi-native form qualifies as the most common way to refer to the entity in English. I would consider these to be under their correct names. But maybe you have something else in mind? -- Jmabel 01:09, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)
Well one misnamed article, which I plan to move shortly, is Les Fauves which should be under Fauvism in English. But if you really want to get alarmed about foreign infiltration, check out List of English words of German origin or worse Lists of English words of international origin. -- Solipsist 15:21, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Or see loan word. According to that article, Latin and French make up 40% of the English vocabulary. Norse loanwords make up only 2%, but the important 2% - apparently one could go a day without using the aforementioned Latin/French 40%, but you would have to use the Norse 2%. zoney ███ talk 16:12, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
In the words of James D. Nicoll: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- Nunh-huh 02:40, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Here perhaps is a good example, created just a few minutes ago. Ägyptisches Museum could be better placed at Egyptian Museum Berlin. -- Solipsist 17:33, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
And now a tough one - 'Xiangqi' which I've never heard of as anything other than Chinese chess, whilst Japanese chess I'm more than happy to call Shogi (perhaps because I know it better). On the other hand Go is redirected from Wei-ch'i. I suppose the question is; does it matter if the redirects are in place? -- Solipsist 21:18, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Dealing with growing page (References to Star Trek)

My pet page, References to Star Trek has grown quite large in a relatively short time. It is now 30 kb, so each time it is edited there is a warning. There is no natural way to split the page that would avoid the problem in the long run, since the "television series" section alone will eventually exceed 32 kb. I would like some feedback on the following:

  • If the page is simply let to grow over 32 kb, what sort of bad things might happen? Apart from being a big page to load, is there any risk that some browsers may not be able to view it properly at all?
  • Are there any existing guidlines on how to split a list (although this is slightly more than a list). One idea is to make separate pages for all television series which have more than 10 entries. If that were done with for example The Simpons, would References to Star Trek/The Simpsons or References to Star Trek in The Simpsons conform better to whatever existing practices/conventions there are? The drawback would be that the episodes could not be seen in the ToC (which is useful to avoid accidental exposure to spoilers).

Any ideas on how/if to make the article smaller are appreciated – Foolip 19:04, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Do not use subpages in the article space. Ever. References to Star Trek in The Simpsons is fine, but if it is just a list, it should really be named List of references to Star Trek in The Simpsons. Somewhat large pages shouldn't present a real problem with most modern browsers, but are often a good sign that an article needs to be broken up, because it's difficult for a person to find content on a large page. Derrick Coetzee 19:52, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think the References to Star Trek in The Simpsons scheme would be just fine. I think that if you split of any large ones, you should probably split off all large ones. Perhaps set a cutoff of 5? That would remove the bulk of the long entries, namely Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, and South Park. Then leave the ===The Simpsons=== in there with "Main article: References to Star Trek in The Simpsons" [[User:Siroxo|Here is a schmancy new signature and a line of text that is long enough to show how it might look when there is some stuff coming before it. Please take a look at it to bask it in all of its radiant glory —siroχo

—siroχo 



#627562



#7b967b

#4d6c94]] 20:29, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. I'm curious: is there a Wikipedia policy for subpages, a reason why they are considered harmful/unwanted? Fortunately, I do like the "References to Star Trek in The Simpsons" scheme better, and will chose that. I had considered having a cutoff at say 5-10, and perhaps to lower that limit as needed when more different series are added. My only concern is, as mentioned, that the episodes will not be visible in the ToC, something which may be useful to avoid seeing any spoilers. Are there any ideas on how to address this? Perhaps stating right before the ToC that any television series which does not have subheadings probably (the exception is Cheers) has a separate page. – Foolip 22:13, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wording for copyright request

Is there suggested verbage to use in a written request to a copyright holder to use his/her material on Wikipedia? Do I need to mention the GFDL for example? Taco Deposit | Talk-o Deposit 20:26, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)

There are a few suggestions at Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission - 20:44, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
Thanks; that's just what I was looking for. Taco Deposit | Talk-o Deposit 21:01, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)

Are these valid votes? Sockpuppets, or just new?

A lot of new users with no other contributions are starting to vote on the VfD Sång till Skåne discussion, where I've been active, and where there have up to now been rather few votes. Is there something I can/should do about it? Is it possible to check, for instance, whether they're all from different IP's (=not sock puppets)? If they're bona fide new users, they've still registered purely in order to submit these votes. Compare the straw poll at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship. I'm feeling a bit frustrated about it, and a quick response would be appreciated. Bishonen 20:56, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think most admins familiar with VfD can look at the discussion and recognize the familiar pattern of a deletion debate being inundated by newbie users and possible sockpuppets. Whoever takes responsibility for assessing the consensus of the debate will be able to take this into account. Thus, a decision to keep or delete can be made while giving appropriate weight, if any, to the opinions of these users as opposed to the more established participants. If you're still concerned, you could add a comment that simply states how many contributions those users have and how long they've been registered. I don't think more than that is necessary. --Michael Snow 22:44, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks very much, you've set my mind at rest. I don't think I need to point out the lack of edits, then, since the redlinks on one side of the vote are conspicuous enough. Bishonen 00:13, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hey, bishonen. The socks aren't going to have their votes counted. Sometimes people like to point that out to the sock puppets themselves, but sometimes not. When you point it out, the sock puppets just seem to multiply all the more. I don't think you need to worry about it. If you want, drop me a note the day that that article drops off the VfD, and I'll do a count and take the appropriate action. My recollection is that the thing is failing but is just being debated whether it should go to Wikisource or not. The more worrisome thing, I think, is the bone of contention about National Anthems. Geogre 00:51, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hey there, Geogre, you might definitely want to take a look, if you haven't for a while. Rossami has made a very good intervention, so the situation's not as it was. But you're the one who listed this item on VfD, remember; maybe you shouldn't be the one to do the counting? --Bishonen 13:02, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
What's funny is that I was thinking that I should, for the very same reason -- as if, as the nominator, I was especially responsible for its fate. I can see that I was just tripping, though, and Rossami is an excellent, fair, professional, and even handed admin. Geogre 02:20, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
He will be, yes. :-) See RfA. I know, it's a classic case of "Wasn't he one already?", isn't it? I'm hanging fire on voting for him, as you know, but that's hardly going to make any difference. Bishonen 19:24, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikiproject Holidays

I've just started Holidays Wikiproject. Can some people join to help organize that? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:53, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

London talk

For those of you in London, England, you may be interested in a Wikipedia talk taking place next Tuesday (31st August). Jimbo and I will be giving a talk about Wikipedia at Oyster, 1 Naoroji Street, London WC1X 0JD on August 31. It will start at 19:10 (BST). Updates on the event will be made at minty.org, a wiki run by the BBC employee who is organising this. (map) Angela. 00:41, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

Template:Wrongtitle2

SimonP has set to systematically changing the scheme used to indicate improper page titles (due to software limitations) in a manner I, for one, think is unwise. (See iPod for an example.) Try as I might, I can find no consensus for this of any size, anywhere, and invite your comments at Template talk:Wrongtitle2. Austin Hair 05:25, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

Turin or Torino?

I've always heard this city called Turin by English-speakers, but since the city was awarded the Olympics, even American broadcasters have started calling it Torino. Is it time to move it? RickK 07:17, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

The official logo for those winter games uses "Torino 2006", but the IOC still refers to it as Turin. See here. The name of the city is still "Turin" in English; this is just a marketing gimmick to emphasise the fact that the city it Italian. It would be like using "Firenze" instead of Florence, or "Toscana" instead of Tuscany. So I feel the article should remain at Turin, until it becomes more clear closer to the time of the games whether the apparent name change is a result of a marketing campaign or actual changing usage in the English-speaking population. - Mark 07:41, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Got to agree with Mark here. They've thrown "Torino" against the wall, let's wait and see if it sticks before we start moving stuff around. -- Cyrius|✎ 13:11, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I've just gotta compliment that image. :P --Golbez 16:13, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If "Torino" becomes roughly as or more common than "Turin" in English, a move would be a good idea. While "Turin" is still overwhelmingly the more common name in English, leave the en wikipedia article there. -- Infrogmation 16:08, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)


Limited permission: image copyright problem

I would really, really like to add a photo to Cornelis Vreeswijk (Swedish singer-songwriter, deceased in 1987), but I know there isn't a hope in hell of getting one under GFDL. It just might be possible to get more limited permission, though. I have talked with the Swedish Cornelis Vreeswijk Society, whose website has a few nice pics, and it turns out they have the photographers' permission for free, but only for their own use — the copyright is retained by the photographer. I think it might be worth contacting one or two of these photographers and asking for the same kind of permission for Wikipedia. They're professionals, they live by selling the rights to their images, and Cornelis Vreeswijk portraits are in limited supply (Cornelis being more famous and popular now than in his lifetime), so forget GFDL. But since they weren't averse to having their work shown for free by the Cornelis Vreeswijk Society, why not Wikipedia, too? That's what I think, but I have two questions:

1. Is this kind of limited permission any use to Wikipedia? I could have sworn I'd seen a reluctant admission in some policy document that occasionally this was the best we could do and in such a case it was acceptable to use images with those conditions attached. But I can't find it again.
2. If it is any use, how should I ask the copyright holders? (Boilerplate request for permission, anyone?) I've been trying to formulate a request in my head, but the harder I try, the more it sounds like something shady. ;-( (I should preferably ask in Swedish, too, which always makes any request sound a little shadier. But if I had a template to work with, I could deal with translation issues.)--Bishonen 14:34, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
1. Limited permission is definitely second best. Ask the photographer for GFDL if possible.
2. See Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission. Gdr 14:59, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)
Thanks for replying, but my problem is that it's not possible. Or, well, it's possible to ask, but I think it's impolitic to lead with a request that's bound to be refused. It's not that I don't realize that GFDL is totally the recommended option, infinitely preferrable, etc. I do realize it. Also, I only see the familiar boilerplate requests for permission under GDFL at the link you give (am I missing something?). Sounds as if the answer is no to both, then. I've been roaming Wikipedia for weeks looking for a solution to this, but, well, I guess the reason I couldn't find it is that it doesn't exist. :-( Thanks for trying, Gdr.--Bishonen 15:41, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't think it will hurt to ask for GFDL even if you think it likely that you won't get it. If refused, you can ask for a more limited license. Gdr 15:50, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)

Sorry to throw cold water on the idea, but because Wikipedia is committed to providing open content, we can't accept images if our only basis for using them is a non-free license such as this. Jimbo Wales has stated that images restricted to noncommercial use only, or with permission specific to Wikipedia only, are not allowed.

I think what you're referring to with "a reluctant admission in some policy document that occasionally this was the best we could do" is our policy on fair use images. See Wikipedia:Fair use. Currently we do allow images if we can make a good case for fair use and have little prospect of obtaining a truly free substitute.

So the answer is, if you believe the image can be justified as fair use, it may be acceptable. Fair use is not based on permission, but of course it would still be useful to obtain whatever permission you can from the copyright holder, even though with fair use you are claiming permission is not needed. --Michael Snow 16:33, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Right. I understand the concept of fair use, and, no, that wasn't what I was talking about. It was something different, that would have fitted this case ... well, I must have dreamt it, or else it was obsolete. I certainly couldn't in good faith claim fair use, since there aren't any PD photos of Vreeswijk out there. I'll forget the whole thing, then, and not trouble those copyright holders. I do understand that we need a transparent policy, rather than a jungle of exceptions, and thank you both for your prompt replies. Bishonen 18:57, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Template:Notenglish

The template "Notenglish" is very biased.

This article needs translation. If the article is not rewritten in English within the next two weeks, it will be listed for deletion.

Deleted?!? That's just too extreme. That just suggest that Wikipedia is an English only Encyclopedia, as opposed to a community of editors who speak various languages. The notenglish template is a good idea, but I think it needs to be toned down to something like: "This page has been listed on the List of Pages to be Translated to English. Please help Wikipedia by translating this entry into English so that it can be easily translated into other languages."

See Template_talk:Notenglish for discussion.

-- Allyunion 14:55, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

But, um... this IS an english-only encyclopedia. Hence the little "en" at the top of the screen, in the addressbarthingy. I would presume that es, jp, de, etc. would have similar policies. --Golbez 15:59, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As an occasional supporter of "native" terms, I do however, suggest that this template is perfectly warranted. Any non-English article content should either be translated, or if no-one's doing so, deleted. One should perhaps first check if it has come from the appropriate language wiki, if not, copy it there first. That step should maybe be added to the template. (If it's French, stick it on fr: if not there already. If it's nonsense, the fr: editors should pick it up) zoney ▓█▒ talk 16:50, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Zoney. Why is anyone loading an article not in English into the English Wikipedia or an article not in French into the French Wikipedia and so on? Possibly by mistake ... that is the editor works on more than one Wikipedia and accidently inserted an article into the wrong language version. Possibly it is a kind of vandalism, dropping down an article incomprehensible to most readers just for the fun of minor disturbance. Possibly an editor copied something from another language Wikipedia and intended to translate and never got around to it.
So just move such an article to the corresponding language Wikipedia when one exists instead of leaving it here. Always add "-en" to the article name and move it to an appropriate cleanup list in the target Wikipedia because there is something odd about a non-English article appearing in the English language Wikipedia and so such an article should be made visible. (It may duplicate an article already on the target Wikipedia. Then forget about it. If the language is incorrectly identified, it will still probably have been sent to a Wikipedia using a closely related language and the editors there will likely be able to properly identify the language and forward it correctly or possibly translate it themselves if there is no Wikipedia for the actual language of the article.
Jallan 00:19, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I was thinking it should read as something along the lines of "This article needs translation. If the article is not rewritten in English within the next two weeks, it will be moved to the approprate language version of Wikipedia." Just because we can't read it, doesn't mean it has to be deleted. Maybe the person intended originally to put it into one of the other language Wikipedias. I think a contribution is still a contribution, even if it is in the wrong place... just move it to the right place, and make sure it's worthy. - Allyunion 09:15, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This stuff is mostly handled at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English. There are about a dozen of us quite active in trying to handle things like this appropriately case-by-case. Wikipedia talk:Pages needing translation into English would probably be the best place to propose any changes in policy, but I'd suggest that you first familiarize yourself with what we currently do. Yes, if something looks encyclopedic and the relevant language lacks an article we put it there, but there are a lot of other possible dispositions of non-English content in en.wikipedia. I don't think the template is the place to fully discuss policy, and it already points to the page that does. -- Jmabel 02:28, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

I would think the articles would be transwikied before being deleted. But maybe that is supposed to be implied? anthony (see warning) 00:30, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Thumbnailing craze

To me, the 300 pixel size was a good idea for photos that seems to have gone by the board. It is an ideal size to add visual impact to an article, without overwhelming browsers or slow connections.

The glory of Wikipedia, I thought, was that, as a non "dead tree" publication, we could "waste" a few electrons, and make the articles really live. Our layout options are somewhat limited by the format, but good pictures can make some articles real gems.

But a bunch of people have, in my opinion, been running amuk, thumbnailing everything. Why!?

There is a place for thumbnails; I use them myself. But many articles that were greatly enhanced by an appropriate photo, are now degraded by unintelligible thumbnails that require an additional step, and the viewing of more info that often has no relevance to the article.

On a few occasions I have reverted thumbnails. I've been tempted far more times. I am aware that not all my photos are brilliant, and sometimes have just let it go, but I find my enthusiam to contribute photos is declining. Naturally I keep best track of my own photos, but I would think this to be true for other photographers as well.

I think Wikipedians should establish some guidelines. At least one full sized image that adds to an article should NOT be thumbnailed. And many images that "go to pieces" cannot be thumbnailed. Non-photographers need to be especially cautious about thumbnailing, as they may not have the "eye" for good photos or layout. Some thumbnailing should not be so bold, but should be done only by consensus.

At any rate, I toss these ideas out for discussion. How about some policy specifications? Pollinator 16:36, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

  • Actually, you'll hate me then. When there's no need to resize an image, I like to use the "frame" option to add a frame and caption. It just looks so neat and tidy and pretty. zoney ▓█▒ talk 16:42, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • The main reason I use them is to avoid having to upload separate "large" and "small" versions. I can see why it would be a problem if the thumbnails were too small to be intelligible, but that's a bad choice of sizing and/or poor image design (too much complexity, too-small details, or other things that are lost in size-reduction), not a result of thumbnailing. Thumbnailing lets us have a greatly detailed, near print-quality image and, if the image is designed with thumbnailing in mind, a perfectly intelligible thumbnail-sized image all in one. It also gives article editors far more flexibility iin deciding what an appropriate image size is, rather than assuming that 300px is going to be okay for all situations. -- Wapcaplet 18:49, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I use thumbnail, but with a 250px (or whatever) parameter ... seems the best of all worlds to me. I venture to suggest the problem is not marauding thumbnailers, but marauding thumbnailers unaware that you can define the image size, and with little eye for page composition. --Tagishsimon
  • As a matter of aesthetics, some images should not be thumbnailed, especially diagrams and screenshots, especially ones that are already small (see older versions of The Legend of Zelda). In many cases, a specifically constructed smaller version, such as by cropping, shrinking, and sharpening, looks a lot better. This is common practice on many art webpages. In this case the smaller version's image page should link to the larger version. On the other hand, for many images simply shrinking them works fine and eliminates work for everyone. Should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Derrick Coetzee 19:13, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • The struggle between least-common-denominator and good-looking goes on - I think eventually the sizing calculations will have to be under less manual control, for print purposes and the like - 300px is kind of wide for screens, distorts formatting around it, but would be too small for most printed works. So I don't spend a lot of time worrying about image sizes; more important to get them in there, so they're available to use (maybe not even in the article you anticipated), and also to discourage uploading of images with undesirable licenses. I think it's safe to say there will be several more rounds of image markup tinkering before it really stabilizes at something we all like, while properly-licensed images will become more valuable as the dubious ones get scrubbed out. Stan 19:26, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Pollinator, can you give some examples of photos that have been treated badly by thumbnailing? I'm not sure I understand your criticism yet. Large pictures are important when they are the subject of the article (for example Mona Lisa needs a large picture), but when used as illustrations a large picture can take over the article, distort formatting, and leave little room for text (a good size for the Mona Lisa article would not be so good for the Leonardo da Vinci article, where it has to share the space with other illustrations). I see that you carefully size your pictures to fit the article context you have in mind; perhaps this is why you are unhappy when others resize them. You might do better to upload the biggest image you have, let the software scale it, and not worry too much that its not perfect. That's what I do. I know the thumbnail software isn't very good at the moment but it will get better — and when it gets better every big picture will benefit automatically. Think ahead to the hypothetical print version... Gdr 23:40, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)
    • Ah, I see that you don't want to upload the original image because you don't want to license it under the GFDL. But on the other hand you are annoyed when someone resizes your carefully prepared reduction. Maybe you just can't have it both ways? Gdr 23:40, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)
      • Perhaps a concrete example would help. One of Pollinator's striking photographs (full frame) can be found at Windpump. Judge for yourself whether the page layout works, or whether some thumbnailing would help. -- Solipsist 08:14, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • Example: Niagara Falls was thumbnailed. I reverted that one.Pollinator 14:15, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
        • Is is acceptable like this? [10] Gdr 16:32, 2004 Aug 25 (UTC)
      • Yup, that one almost certainly better full frame. Have you tried the 'frame' option that Zoney was mentioning. It would help separate the image from the horizontal rule and gives a cleaner caption.... Hang on Gdr got there before I had finnished typing. -- Solipsist 16:34, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
        • The Niagra Falls one is a good size. Too much detail lost if that particular photo is smaller. But each of the photos in Windpump is larger than the article itself--almost as tall as a smaller screen--and there's no important detail to be seen. They could both be half as high/wide or even smaller and not affect the info they're conveying in the article. Elf | Talk 22:05, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
          • I think the first photo on the Windpump article is a good size. The second doesn't fit, though, but the best solution would be to add text until it does. Right now, before there's more text, there's really no good solution. anthony (see warning) 00:27, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • As I've mentioned on the pump afew weeks ago, I think we should not give pixels for images unless there's a specific reason. Why? Because what looks great on my screen (in my browser) will look horrible in yours. I suggested a setting (small/medium/large) in the user settings, so everyone can set to see the thumbs accordingly. Of course, there will be always reasons to specify the size of an image exactly. I hope that these settings will be implemented one day. Kokiri 16:38, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • That's a good point; many times, a more fuzzy setting such as small/medium/large would be perfectly adequate. Though I'm a bit hazy - do you mean that instead of specifying "200px" in the image thumbnail, we'd say "small", etc.? That alone seems fairly pointless, since "small" is just going to translate into some predetermined number of pixels anyway. Having such an item as a user preference (i.e., "Image thumbnail quality: ()small ()medium ()large") might be handy, and could help with bandwidth issues too (modem users could stick with small thumbnails - though, this would also mean they'd more frequently need to view the full version, since a smaller thumbnail may not be clear enough) but it seems like extra work for already taxed servers; three differently-sized thumbnails would need to be generated for each image, for each sizing that is used in any article, and roughly tripling the disk usage for thumbnail images. The ability to specify pixel-widths in image syntax is of vital importance in many thumbnails; for instance, when I do a large, high-res diagram for some article, I choose the thumbnail size carefully so that most of the relevant detail is still visible - that there are still enough pixels to show the detail. If all I had to go on was "medium," that would be far less flexible. -- Wapcaplet 21:32, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Infobox craze

Tables are fun to play with, and effective at conveying tables of data. But when a table takes over the screen in order to list a handful of facts that merely duplicate the opening sentence of the article, then that table is junk. In particular, a table is not required to give the title of a book, its author, and the date of publication. You can use a "sentence" to convey the same information in a smaller space, saving room to actually write the rest of the article. See [11] for a truly horrible example. Gdr 23:15, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)

Redundant infobox : Check.
Horrid pink box in the middle of the page to act as a "spoiler warning", despite book being a classic (We'll be putting them in Shakespeare next) Check.
I read the article on Macbeth before I was finished reading the play and it told me how Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. Just totally spoiled it for me. Now I'm reading the Bible and I'm not going to read any Wikipedia articles about the Bible until I get to the end and know how it turns out.
Categorized in an extremely small category. Check. (Though admittedly this category could and will be expanded).

The novel infobox is a product of Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Novels, though several people there seem not to like it, but it has survived anyhow. The pink spoiler box is a product of Template:Spoiler, home of several pink box fans (though they can't explain why they like it). Pcb21| Pete 00:03, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Though I suspect you already know it, I'm compelled to point out that we already "thoughtfully" include spoiler warnings on much of Shakespeare (e.g. King Lear, Romeo and Juliet), and that we equally "thoughtfully" often provide the warning that "plot details are revealed" right after the heading "Plot". - Nunh-huh 05:08, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Heh, there are spoiler warnings for Richard III and Henry VI part I, but not for Richard II and Henry V. I guess we have a policy somewhere on interpreting how much Shakespeare had to make up before his histories deserve spoiler warnings. Pcb21| Pete 07:29, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Worse yet, we give away the fact that King Lear is a tragedy in the first sentence, well before our spoiler warning! Perhaps we need a rule that we must insert "spoiler space" before the body of each article that might contain information.... - Nunh-huh 21:19, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes. Stop marking texts with these silly boxes and templates. Does every article about a ruler of a territory need an enormous centered box at the bottom giving predecessor and successor. I agree that information is good to have. I'd be happier standardizing on always including that information as a final single-paragraph sentence. Jallan 00:35, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Does every article about a ruler... need a ... box at the bottom giving successor and predecessor? Yes. Yes it does. --Golbez 02:21, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Rulers aren't really my bag, but I do like seeing succesor and predecessor on them when I somehow end up looking at one. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 02:35, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
I totally agree with having predecessor and successor information in such articles. I've added such information myself to some articles before these big box templates started turning up everywhere. No-one here has claimed that the information that appears in boxes and templates should not appear, but that boxes are overused and make the presentation of the material worse rather than better. For succession information, a short standard summary sentence in each article would would do as well, something like: "In #### YYYY succeeded XXXX to the throne of AAAAA, reigned for ## years, and in #### died/abdicated/vanished/was exiled and was succeeded by ZZZZ". Make it a standard that it is a separate paragraph to appear under the lead paragraph or the last sentence in the lead paragraph. Problem solved without need of a big, honking box that doesn't give as much information. And odd variations like intermediate exile during a reign or succession to more than one territory during a rule can be flexibly incorporated. Neither a box or a template is needed. Jallan 18:09, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't agree, I'm afraid. I like the boxes at the bottom giving the predecessors and successors in official posts. It avoids cluttering the article with the information. -- Necrothesp 21:41, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I sooooo loathe having those things interpolated into a novel. If Moll Flanders gets a table, it just makes it look fluffy, IMO. To me, all these graphical objects make serious works of literature look like infobytes that one finds plastered in USA Today and crawling along the bottom of CNN. They take away the seriousness. When I wrote (pretty much) Moll Flanders, I wove tiny incidents of the plot into a discussion of Defoe's career, interests, and genre. Then, -boing!-, a salmon colored Spoiler box was shoved incongruously in there. Ick. No, I didn't revert it or cut it out. I figured that someone thought he was making the article better, and I didn't want to offend, but I don't read for plot, and plot is the least important thing in 18th century novels. (Thanks guys, I feel better having gotten that off my chest.) Geogre 02:15, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The execrable "spoiler warning" is under discussion at Template talk:Spoiler. - Nunh-huh 02:33, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

We should have these warnings on science articles too - it is horrible to find the results of an experiment plastered on a page here, it removes all of the joy and suspense of reading the paper. Likewise news, when I see the front page, the news for the day is ruined for me.

:). The economists don't need spoiler warnings on their articles though - they haven't got a clue what's going on. Pcb21| Pete 09:36, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I edited The Man Who Was Thursday into shape: compare before [12] and after [13]. Gdr 13:51, 2004 Aug 25 (UTC)

An incredible amount of Wikitime is used in tinkering...and tinkering...and tinkering with the format of taxoboxes. I don't understand it, and I don't have a lot of time to spend on Wikipedia, so I generally ignore it. But I've often wondered if the time could have been better spent improving content.Pollinator 14:19, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

A yes, the mythical wiki-man-month. I think that most contributors are only contributing to something because they're legitimately interested in it. If someone is interested in taxoboxes or spoiler warnings and is going to improve it that's fine. I doubt that they would drop that interest and start researching dinosaurs or something random instead. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 14:48, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Infoboxes are eeeevil... I hate it when inappropriate articles get them. They're concise, but ugly. Infoboxes are a necessary evil for articles about countries or leaders, though. But still...it drives me mad to see an inappropriate article getting such a table, or even worse, crowding it with data. Johnleemk | Talk 16:29, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Just curious, how do you feel about the infobox at Lowe's Motor Speedway, et.al.? (the list of races may seem redundant but that's because few minor leagues race at Lowe's. I need to go back and work on that anyway. ) --Golbez 17:00, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Even if overused, infoboxes have their place. For example, music album articles benefit from them, as many audiophiles desire quick, organized access to such information. However I agree that some, if not most of them get clogged with excessive data, and this should be kept to a minimum. I also agree that most books have no need of an infobox, although their ISBNs should be given somewhere near the bottom of the article!
On the other hand, navigational templates (including the "predecessor/succesor" boxes) are almost always a good thing, as they make the encyclopedia easier to navigate for those perusing articles. Perhaps some of the negatve feeling against all boxes is that most of them are ugly. Many have those age-old, pseudo-3D html borders that everybody loves to hate. If a one pixel medium gray border were used everywhere instead, it would look much nicer. Given all the tools we are, we might as well use them to help make Wikipedia as easy to use as possible, even if it bends the traditions of former encyclopedias.[[User:Siroxo|Here is a schmancy new signature and a line of text that is long enough to show how it might look when there is some stuff coming before it. Please take a look at it to bask it in all of its radiant glory

—siroχo

—siroχo 



#627562



#7b967b

#4d6c94]] 22:18, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Which is what I've been trying to say. Try to make things noticeable but subtle rather than big and ugly. Jallan 00:32, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Bloody algebra I hate it

Would mathematicians/Physicists go to Roche Limit and check the derivation. I've stopped near the end because I can see I'm going to be out by a factor of 8. I can't see what I'm doing wrong (editing very late at night is a bad idea. I'm stupid enough when I'm awake). Thanks. Theresa Knott 00:57, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The numbers seem to be right, but the initial assumption is flawed i think. You handle the smaller body as two spheres with radius s, distance 2s. According to World of Physics, they assume only one smaller body, and take one arbitrary mass u on the surface of the smaller body. Next they balance the gravitational pull on this mass toward the smaller body (G*m*u/(2*r^2)) with the pull toward the larger body (G*M*u/(2*d^2)) (where d is tehcnically the distance from the center of the larger body to the surface of the smaller body). I am crunching numbers right now. -- Chris 73 Talk 02:02, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
I fixed it, but as Chris 73 said, if you keep the (2s)^2 in the denominator you end up with an extra 4 so you don't get the right answer. Wuzzeb 02:38, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I fixed it, too. Wuzzeb beat me by a few minutes. I actually replaced Wuzzeb's edit with mine, since mine was more detailed and had a more consistent nomenclature (i think). Hope this is OK. I also removed the image, since it no longer explained the used variables.-- Chris 73 Talk 02:44, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, your version is cleaner and better worded. I fixed the image and put it back on the page as well. Wuzzeb 03:41, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. Isn't collaborative editing great! I love Wikipedia Theresa Knott 08:37, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
But you should love Wikipedia and algebra! You've only won half the battle. Dysprosia 09:53, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You've seen how badly i type? My maths is just as bad. (Whoops I put a plus instead of a minus, whoops I lost a power on the way, etc). I'll never love algebra for that reason. Programming is even worse. I remember spending hours at university trying to find out why a qbasic program wouldn't run in my "introduction to programming" course. I couldn't spot the error and neither could my instructor. Eventually he came back the following week and told me I'd typed x where I should have typed X. Grrrr Theresa Knott (Hot net streak!) 19:54, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As Donald Norman would say, don't blame yourself for a bad design - real programming languages produce an error in this case. Derrick Coetzee 21:25, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Server problems?

I got this on Special:Randompage a couple of times, then, er, I got it when I tried to get onto the Village pump! Now I'm here, so here's the server error I saw:

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-new/includes/LoadBalancer.php on line 107

Yours, -山道子 (Sewing) - talk 01:19, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've been getting this about a third of the time I try to update Recent Changes, so it's not just you--also everything seems to be stuck in mud today. Time to do something else for a while, LOL. Antandrus 01:35, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How to correctly use Wikipedia content on my website

I understand how important abiding by the GNU FDL from what I've read on these posts so I want to make sure that I correctly use content from Wikipedia on my own website. I would like to take snippets of Wikipedia articles to use as descriptions for certain animals and plants on my website. Does this mean that the page on which that Wikipedia content exists on my site completely becomes under the FDL? Or can I say that this text snippet is under the FDL and the rest is copyrighted by me? Am I allowed to display my own copyright on the page? Thanks. --psyphyre 01:56, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

You might want to check out the sites listed on Wikipedia:Copies of Wikipedia content (high degree of compliance). Basically, we want a sentence saying (a) that you are using content from Wikipedia (and you have to link to either the main page, or (preferably) the article itself) and (b) that it is available under the terms of the GFDL (and you have to link to the GFDL). As to your other questions, I'm not sure. →Raul654 01:58, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
If you're taking small sections, you don't need to comply with the GFDL at all; just quote it and indicate the source (preferably including a link) and this is fair use. If you're taking larger sections, I don't think the GFDL has the "infectious" property of the GPL, but you would have to clearly delineate which sections are Wikipedia-based and place those under the GFDL, with a credit to Wikipedia and a link to the page, and explicitly reserve all rights to other sections, just to be careful. Derrick Coetzee 14:11, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Someone who knows what they are talking about ought to write a clear, easily accessible page on these matters. Wikipedia is "the free encyclopedia" so we should be very happy to oblige people who want to use our content. An FAQ explaining all the relevant information would be very helpful for anyone wanting to make use of what have created here. — Trilobite (Talk) 22:59, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A measure of Wikipedia's spread

Apropos of the last entry, I just did a medium edit on Ambrose Bierce. In the course of working on it, I did a Google search on "bierce mckinley assassination hearst" and got 267 returns. I clicked around and noticed most hits read the same, and, in fact, were the same Wikipedia article on William McKinley. I did another search on "bierce mckinley assassination hearst -wikipedia" and got only 68 hits, meaning the McKinley article or a variant was appearing in 199 places. That is, 75 per cent of the web sites discussing Bierce's part in the McKinley assasination are relying on Wikipedia Ortolan88 03:07, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Another interesting way to measure is searching for Michaelisms... there are incorrect dates for Punk groups all over the net. AdmN 03:25, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, often now I want to get more information on a topic, only to discover that the first set of Google hits are for copies of a Wikipedia article on the topic that I edited—in other words, the hits are for something that will not provide me with any more information than I already have! So -wikipedia has become part of my Google vocabulary as well.... -Sewing (山道子) - talk 14:02, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I created a script that uses minus wikipedia to search for copyright violations. To my dismay it discovered a lot more noncompliant mirrors than it did copyright vios, or else sites where Google never got to the notice at the bottom of a long page. Your 75% estimate is probably entirely too low. Derrick Coetzee 14:16, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Maybe Google should ignore copies of Wikipedia articles and just give the source of the duplicate articles, Wikipedia itself. If there are a lot of duplicate articles, it'll just "rank" Wikipedia higher. Who wants a bunch of duplicate articles? Just give Wikipedia and ignore the mirrors and forks. Just MHO. — Frecklefoot | Talk 17:27, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Google wouldn't ignore copies so simply. We just have to enforce the GFDL, threaten to sue if need be. If everyone complied with the GFDL, Wikipedia would have the highest page-rank over its copies and should appear first. [[User:Siroxo|Here is a schmancy new signature and a line of text that is long enough to show how it might look when there is some stuff coming before it. Please take a look at it to bask it in all of its radiant glory

—siroχo

—siroχo 



#627562



#7b967b

#4d6c94]] 20:09, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

Copyright on tooth x-ray

I had an x-ray of my teeth a while ago, I need my wisdoms out :(

I was wondering who owns the copyright on the x-ray?

I know the guy who did the x-ray (although i don't know if it was him or a student who pushed the button), so he could give me GFDL permission if he had copyright. The problem is that it was done at a Dental School, so do they have copyright over everything their employees produce?

It's my health information, so I own the 'information' (whatever that is), but the film is owned by the Dent School.

I'd appreciate others thoughts/facts on this T 04:57, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If X-ray photography follows the conventions of other professional photography, the person taking the picture has the copyright unless you agree otherwise with them. I do not know whether this is the case though.

This is an interesting case. UK and European data protection laws say that you have some control over the image, but this is primarly what is *not* done with it, rather than what *is* done with it (for example, the person who took the x-ray couldn't post it on wikipedia without your permission - even if he owns the copyright). I'd contact the dental school and ask them for permission, just to be sure though. Darksun 10:04, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is a problem of privacy rather than ownership of the image. The doctor cannot publish your photo (x-ray, etc.) without your consent in the same way as he cannot publish your clinical data without your consent. He owns the x-ray in the same way as the person who takes a photo of you owns the negative. Pfortuny 15:55, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If someone takes your photograph, sie owns the (copy)rights to it. In some juristictions, there are limitations to how it can be used, and that is especially true for clinical data, I believe. However, the person who took the photo definitely owns more than the negative. — David Remahl 19:00, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In the U.S., for a work to be protected by copyright, there needs to be some creativity involved. A purely scientific photograph, that simply documents objectively is probably not elligible for copyright protection. Granted, not a lot is required for a work to be considered creative, but putting a piece of film at a fixed position in your mouth and pushing a button is almost certainly not enough. In my opinion, the x-ray is public domain. — David Remahl 19:00, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Proposed Tutorial Video for Wikipedia (comments sought; not a dispute)

(I've also added this section to Wikipedia:Requests for comment, but since it is time-sensitive, I wanted to bring it to your attention here as well, to whatever extent others may wish to help and participate.)

I have temporarily added a tentative instructional video script for Wikipedia as a subpage of my user page. I hope to put together the video within the next week. It is to be mostly for beginners (though it might showcase some more advanced but common interest features of use) on how to use and contribute to Wikipedia.

I am actually preparing this for the purposes of an unrelated conference, and since this conference is to be next week (I leave September 2 and plan to wrap up the "filming" of screen-videos by Monday August 30 if not earlier), I do not have much time, at least for this version, so I would be most grateful for any prompt feedback.

I am mostly concerned now about making sure everything is accurate, although people are free to make comments on clarity, organization, content, etc., and suggest their own alterations or adds, as I'd like to do what I can to make it better all around. You can still make comments after the date as well, though I'm not absolutely sure I will have the energy and time to make revisions at that point.

However, as I would like to make this script (and any videos I can create off of these scripts) under the GNU free documentation license (can videos fall under this license as well as text?) and if possible make this available from Wikipedia (Wikimedia could use this or add to it as they like as well) at least as a link if not hosted here, anyone else would be subsequently welcome to modify the script as they pleased (translating, adding, deleting, whatever).

In the meantime, the tenative script is at User:Brettz9/videoscript. Feel free to add comments to its Talk page.

Best wishes, [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 05:30, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have now added one more small introductory section at the beginning ) now just called "Background"... Thanks... [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 21:46, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Duplicate article

When I type in 'duplicate article' in the search box, the top 10 results are:

  1. Calvin and Hobbes (47603 bytes)
  2. Cache (5566 bytes)
  3. Database management system (17245 bytes)
  4. Ecstasy (16397 bytes)
  5. James Bond (31113 bytes)
  6. Jargon File (7547 bytes)
  7. Josiah Wedgwood (4987 bytes)
  8. Logarithm (13778 bytes)
  9. Media bias (11223 bytes)
  10. Open Directory Project (29022 bytes)

Where can I learn more about how searching wikipedia works, since I am clearly missing something... Thanks 213.206.33.82 06:27, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

For details on searching Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Searching. I'm not sure what you were intending to search for, but there is a list of duplicate articles at Wikipedia:Duplicate articles. --Diberri | Talk 09:24, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! I was looking for the list of duplicate articles. I was surprised that the search engine threw out so many apparently completely unrelated hits.

By default, the search engine searches only the article namespace (that is, the blank namespace). This is typically the desired behavior, as there's giant piles of Wikipedia: and Talk: pages that the average searcher doesn't want to get pointed at. Logged-in users can change the default behavior in their preferences, and anyone can change the namespaces searched on the actual search page (when it's turned on...). -- Cyrius|✎ 09:43, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Permission letters

I have come across articles that use privately owned material (especially images) after the contributor wrote to the owner via e-mail and received permission.

On the one hand, I think it is great that contributors are taking the copyright issues seriously and getting permission. On the other hand, I have a question: Is there (or should there be) any place on wikipedia for recording/storing such permission letters so that there will be a public record of them?Dovi 08:23, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know of a public place for storing permission letters. (Would copying someone else's e-mail without express permission constitute a copyright violation?) Personally, I keep a record at User:Diberri/Work in progress of all the copyright-related issues I've handled, and keep a backup of correspondence on my PC. --Diberri | Talk 09:20, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
I think copies of both (request and permission) the emails should go on the image description page, so that it is clear exactly what was asked and what was agreed to. I don't think this would violate copyright, If this wasn't "fair use" i don't know what would be. Theresa Knott 10:50, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Non-commercial images

Just the other day someone was emphasising a recent change in the non-acceptability of uploading 'non-commercal use' images - ie. we just want PD and GFDL images. But now I can't find it, and no reference on Wikipedia:Image use policy. Can anyone point me to the new policy. -- Solipsist 08:27, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Jimbo declared it in a mailing list post. See Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ for a discussion and a link to Jimbo's declaration. →Raul654 15:45, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, it was the link to Jimbo's declaration that I was looking for.
It might be an idea to update the Wikipedia:Image_use_policy to mention the new policy. I think its the first page we direct new editors to when they want to upload an image - and I can't see an obvious path of links to Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ. The next page you are likely to look at is Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags (both from here and Special:Upload) which still includes non-commercial licence tags under the Creative-Commons section. -- Solipsist 16:27, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

HTML -> Wiki Table Conversion?

Is there a online script that converts HTML tables into the Wikimedia table markup (with pipes)? I've only found Düsentrieb's csv2wiki... Kokiri 15:37, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There's one here :) - 15:42, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
I also have one at http://www.wackyboy.com/ConvertHtmlTableToWikiTable.html Kevin Rector 21:58, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
Man, everyone's got one of these things :-) [14] --Diberri | Talk 22:08, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

Project for the terminally bored: A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature by John W. Cousin

Convert this to a whole bunch of usable Wikipedia articles. A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, by John W. Cousin (1910) - one-paragraph listings on a huge number of authors. Just released by Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders - David Gerard 15:53, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • And I quote, -clears throat - "The primary aim of this book is to give as much information about English authors, including under this designation American and Colonial writers, as the prescribed limits will admit of. At the same time an attempt has been made, where materials exist for it, to enhance the interest by introducing such details as tend to illustrate the characters and circumstances of the respective writers and the manner in which they passed through the world"...
  • ...ah, they don't write 'em like that any more, do they? Thank Heavens... --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 18:52, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
  • Like this? I copied the footnote style from Template:1911, I couldn't think of a snappy name to give it if I made it a template itself. —Stormie 03:38, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

In house search not working?

The in-house search has not been working for me for a while. I have not seen any mention of a problem. Is it just me?
Bobblewik  (talk) 17:35, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If I understand the question correctly, I've been seeing it flip-flop between real-time search and the google/yahoo cache search several times a day, for at least the past few days. Niteowlneils 19:26, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Maybe two times per day, not several. The behaviour can be summed up with the following: 

$tmarray = getdate(time());
$hour = $tmarray['hours'];
if ( $hour >= 7 && $hour < 23 ) {
   $wgDisableTextSearch = true;
}

In other words it's disabled between 07:00 and 23:00 UTC. We have more database hardware on order, which hopefully will allow us to enable it all the time without causing problems for site-wide performance. -- Tim Starling 02:29, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

Is it ever possible to ban troublesome but non-malicious users?

If you have a user who does not appear to be malicious, but repeatedly inserts misleading and nonsensical material, is it ever possible to ban them? I'm thinking of a particular user who (for at least a year) has been editing physics topics to insert either garbled gibberish (which is merely embarrassing for Wikipedia) and/or to give misleading prominence to extreme fringe viewpoints or even stating them as fact. Worse, he usually fights tooth and nail any attempts to edit the material into a more mainstream form. Worse, he often comes back at a much later time and re-inserts similar or identical problematic material on another page.

I'm not naming names at this point...I just want to know if it's worth even bothering to complain about users who do more harm than good?

—Steven G. Johnson 17:48, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

PS. I have no problem with including fringe science viewpoints, as long as they are clearly stated as such and as long as they are not given a prominence out of proportion to their acceptance... especially when they have not even been published in mainstream peer-reviewed journals.

The user is recognizable even to a non-physicist. I agree that this is a big problem, particularly on scientific articles...or rather articles that ought to be scientific. But it seems that if an advocate for phlogiston insists, every sentence in the "combustion" article must adapt itself to his liking. It would be good to have a mechanism for dealing with this, but the short answer seems to be that we have no mechanism for dealing with this (other than continued tooth-and-nail defense of sanity in each article) and no one has ever been kicked off (or asked nicely to leave) for advocating nutball theories...though some have been kicked off because they were obnoxious while advocating nutball theories. - Nunh-huh 18:11, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
User:Mr-Natural-Health is now serving a 3 month ban after being very forthright about complementary and alternative medicine. There's no doubt he was being obnoxious. see [15]
I think if you have around 3 people who are confident in their knowledge of a technical or difficult subject you can be pretty firm in marginalising or even erasing any content you feel is out there as you will have a consensus between you. All the user with more, shall we say, challenging ideas can do then is to reinsert what you've moved or deleted, and if they continue to do that in the face of a different person moving/erasing each time they can be identified as a problem user.
You can always ask for references in support of the worrying material too. That can be quite revealing: seeing what the sources are ;o)
If it really has got to a tooth and nail stage, that implies to me that an edit war is in progress and there are definitely procedures to deal with that. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 18:46, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
(a) With any particular page, eventually a number of users have been able to come to bear against this particular individual. (At least until the user comes back and re-inserts a few weeks or months later when the other users have stopped paying attention.) But when a user inserts things in tens and hundreds of pages, it becomes a full-time job to keep up with him. Why should Wikipedia be forced to repeatedly repair the damage caused by one user?
(b) When it comes to historical sequence of arguments and evidence about particular experiments, good sources often aren't available online and most people don't know the history well enough to tell fact from fiction offhand. Moreover, if a person doesn't care about accuracy it is easy to insert claims ("such-and-such experiment was inaccurate") that take substantial effort to refute definitively by someone who does care about accuracy. Why should Wikipedians be saddled with the effort of laboriously refuting the writings of someone who repeatedly slips in inaccuracies?
(c) Outright edit-wars (repeated reversions) can be stopped. But what about when every time you fix a a page, the user inserts some of the old material, or the old material in new words, or changes a sentence here and there...you get in a "two-steps-forward, one-step-back" situation that is a full-time job to keep up with. That's what I mean by "tooth-and-nail". Why should Wikipedia tolerate this?
In any open-source project, if one programmer persistently and unrepentantly inserted buggy code, he would be kicked out. Why should Wikipedia be different? —Steven G. Johnson 19:35, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

Why not start down the dispute process? Start a request for comments on this user. Theresa Knott (Hot net streak!) 19:42, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Are you saying that a user can certainly be banned for the kind of behavior I described, assuming it is demonstrated clearly? —Steven G. Johnson 21:39, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
You're going to have a very difficult time trying to get Reddi banned. Doppelgänger 20:07, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Steven, I hesitate to comment too much (as an arbitrator, I'm still trying to figure out how much I should say about problems and conflicts that are not yet in my purview, lest I make myself into a standing recusal), but I have a few thoughts for you. Let us suppose (and I won't trust our Doppel-friend's guess here, as I don't have any idea who is being discussed) that the user in question is not verbally abusive when confronted. Even so, if they consistently disregard Wikipedia:NPOV after it has been clearly demonstrated to them, and if they appear to be contributing in bad faith, the arbitration committee, I think, would be willing to consider sanctions (though a ban might be unlikely unless the pattern of behavior was significant). Obviously, if the user in question was sanctioned and continued to disregard policy, bans would be very much more on the table. The difficulty is demonstrating to a 3rd party's satisfaction that a user is not merely possessed of unusual opinions (or opinions almost universally considered incorrect), but that the user is somehow violating the principles and policies of this site in the advocating of their positions. I would suggest you go to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration and consider the case now in arbitration concerning Lyndon LaRouche. I believe many of the issues in that case might be more broadly applicable to the situation you describe. The short answer is that we often do have to put up with fringe opinion here, even when it seems to be making our articles "bad" -- or rather, we cannot simply ban someone for inserting their beliefs. We can seek to correct the articles, inform the user, and ensure policy is upheld. If a user, for example, reinserts said information again and again, after consensus obviously opposes its inclusion, then you have a more clearcut case that may well deserve banning, or censure at the least. I'm sorry this is so vague and long-winded, but I hope it helps to know the opinion of at least one of the members of the oft-maligned AC. If you wish to discuss this with me further, please feel free to drop a note on my talk page or to email me (address available at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee). And please know that anything you do to make Wikipedia a calmer, more rational place, and a more reliable and authoritative source of information is more than appreciated by me, to say nothing of the many others who would agree. Jwrosenzweig 23:45, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Jwrosenzweig, thanks for your comments. It's good to know that there is a process by which such behavior can be dealt with collectively, instead of forcing individuals to chase down one edit after another. I can see that it will take some effort, and probably a fair amount of time, to put together a convincing rationale for sanctions, and it's a painful course that I do not enter lightly, but I'll look into it. —Steven G. Johnson 00:30, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
The AC can't do anything. The most they would do (and I must emphasize that this is highly unlikely) is deliberate for a month and then declare a light penalty, like a ban for a couple of months. Reddi is a calm, patient guy, he would probably take such a sentence in his stride. Just keep at him until you are sick of it, and hope that there is someone else to take your place when you give up. -- Tim Starling 02:46, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

Transcluding pages (including special pages like WhatLinksHere, etc.) into a page

Is there a way (for Mediawiki software in general if it is not enabled on Wikipedia too) to get a webpage transcluded into a page (besides templates which I know can be transcluded)? How about "WhatLinksHere" or other Special command pages specifically? Other wiki software has this, and it can be very useful, especially if one can control the paramaters (e.g., how many items to show, etc.). Thanks. [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 20:31, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I know in particular that Special:Whatlinkshere/Frog works, for example. I'm not sure if this is special or if other generated pages allow to specify a parameter. I also don't know how to specify multiple parameters. Derrick Coetzee 01:20, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks...By transclusion, I meant that these links could be included inside of another page. For example, if someone on the Frog page wanted to show also on that same page everything that linked to that page (without needing to click "What links here"), some code could be inserted inside the Frog page to include that information. [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 20:12, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Nationalism Issue.

Dear Wikipedians,

I'd like to ask your advice how to deal with the aggressive nationalism.

The problem with aggressive nationalists is that they reject the common knowledge. They accept only invented terms and invented events that are not shared by most scholars. It makes article to look non-encyclopedic (because other encyclopedias use a scientific terms) and, what is even worse, the articles became incomprehensible to the common public.

If you prevent them from making extremely biased contributions, they start to vandalize user pages and to make different accusations. I don't care too much, even Angela's page is often vandalized too, but I'd like to ask those who have the experience in dealing agressive nationalism. Please, share your experience!

And also, maybe we should elaborate a bit more precise regulations related to nationalism and common use? Or I missed something, and it is done already?

Dr Bug  (Volodymyr V. Medeiko) 22:25, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia will always be better than the alternatives in this regard - because even if there's nationalist editors, there's enough of a variety that articles here are a lot less likely to be biased than in any deadwood encyclopaedia. History for example, will be attacked by such a variety of viewpoints, it will never look like the biased version that we are familiar with in our respective countries. So the only downside to it all, is that people will occasionally fail to work out an NPOV version. (Well, perhaps a bit more than occasionally - but it seems by and large to work in the end) zoney ▓█▒ talk 22:43, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Winter Olympic Games page...

Has been vandalised. I'm going to edit out the language in a minute - but because I'm new here, what's the protocol? Is there a saved version of a proper article that has been deleted? Or does it start from scratch again?

Sorry if this is the wrong place to put this...

Edit: Sorry - someone was on top of it, obviously. Is fixed now.  :)

No worries! :-) In the future, know that you can always click the link to the page's history (for most of us, that's the tab marked "history" at the top of the page) to view previous versions. When the list comes up, click on the time/date stamp of any previous version to bring up the old saved version. Now, while that old version is displayed, simply click on "edit" and then save the page -- essentially, you're writing over the current version of the article with the content of the old version. So, when a vandal comes through and writes "penis" all over a page, just open the history and select the last version of the page before the vandal's arrival and save it, thereby erasing the vandalism. Be warned, though -- if you do this (it's called a "revert" or a "reversion") to erase any edit except clear vandalism, it can be very controversial. If the edit you're looking at is biased but does add some information to the article, try not to revert, but rather to edit the page so as to retain the additional information and eliminate the bias. Jwrosenzweig 23:51, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Language Disambiguation

Out of curiosity, how is disambiguation achieved with different languages? Sometimes a concept may be divided into two in another language or vice versa. Is there a special meta domain for such (bilingual) disambiguation or would people just add in links to multiple language pages if a page corresponds to two or more in another language? [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 23:55, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Most commonly, one just links to the most appropriate article in the other language; if there is another closely related meaning, you assume the articles will be linked within the other language's wikipedia. Is there a specific case you have in mind where this hasn't worked well, or is this really just "out of curiosity"? -- Jmabel 00:14, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it's just out of curiosity. But I imagine it could be a common issue. Sometimes a concept might not even occur to another language speaker as having the multiple connotations discussed on the page. (Even individual sections might require their own link...) [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 00:27, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Gmail invites

I have loads of Gmail invites if anyone wants one. Just drop a note on my talk page. blankfaze | (беседа!) 00:09, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Rargh. I've had Gmail ages and only just got 1 invite. Someone who got their account 2 weeks after me has had 5. Does it depend on how much you recieve or something? Darksun 08:12, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Activity seems to be what it depends on. [[User:Anárion|File:Anarion.png]] 10:02, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I have WikiEN-l, Wikipedia-l and the WikiEN-l admin emails all flowing into my Gmail, and only just got 4 invitations after having none for ages. I only got one after signing up. So I think it might be kind of random, really. Incidentally, I have 4 invites left now, as it seems my numbers have been replenished. If anyone wants one, leave me a message on my talk page. - Mark 16:00, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

"What links here", Clownfish and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Common_clownfish.jpg

The image at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Common_clownfish.jpg is used in the article Clownfish, yet the way it does so (within a table) somehow precludes discovering that fact via the usual automated "What links here" mechanisms. Can this be fixed? - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 02:47, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I doubt it's the table that's the problem. I suspect it's the template. The article doesn't actually contain a link to the image until the template is expanded. Note that Perciform, which is linked to in the same manner, also doesn't show Clownfish in its "What links here". -- Cyrius|✎ 03:53, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's aknown bug with templates, see Bug #48. andy 07:33, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As a workaround I've created the page Clownfish/template items. - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 22:21, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

New policy proposal

Just so everyone knows, I'm proposing a new policy at Wikipedia:Administrators/Administrator Accountability Policy. Please, everyone, take this seriously. Discussion on this proposal shall last until 00:00 UTC on 29 August 2004, at which time voting will commence. Please do not edit this proposal, or vote before voting officially begins.

Feel free to discuss the policy, and suggest changes that you think should be made, but do not please edit the proposal itself. blankfaze | (беседа!) 03:06, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion phrases

I just wrote up a quick page, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion phrases that might be useful to include in the VfD template and as a link from VfD, to explain to new users why these phrases are used, and that they're not intended to be mean. I think this might go a long way towards helping newcomers understand Wikipedia better, especially since VfD can seem so hostile. I'm only a semi-regular of VfD, so others should look at it before we launch. [[User:Siroxo|Here is a schmancy new signature and a line of text that is long enough to show how it might look when there is some stuff coming before it. Please take a look at it to bask it in all of its radiant glory —siroχo

—siroχo 



#627562



#7b967b

#4d6c94]] 03:08, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
I think this is an excellent idea, and you've made a great start. I don't have time to look at it in much detail tonight, but if I have any comments tomorrow I'll leave them on it's Talk page. Niteowlneils 03:39, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Agree. Good stuff. Andrewa 19:32, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fiddling with template not working

I would like to make the TOC and the Template:MusicTimeline display right next to each other on pages like Timeline of trends in music (1920-1929). I aligned the template right and that gives the TOC plenty of room to move up, but it doesn't move up all the way and looks all squished. Can someone fix it? Is it my browser? (Mozilla 1.6/Mac OSX) Tuf-Kat 04:41, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

Mark your template as: <div style="float:right">[[Template:MusicTimeline]]</div>

Question about Argentine economic recession

Is there an article on the 2000 Argentine economic reccession? If not, Id be more than glad to, at least, begin a page about it.

Thanks and God bless you! Sincerely yours, "Antonio Senseless but not sexless Martin"

Untagged images - please help!

There are lists of untagged images at User:Yann/Untagged Images. Please help with tagging these, and remove any tagged ones from the lists. All images that are not tagged will not be included in the planned Mandrakelinux distribution (see m:Wikimedia and Mandrakesoft). Please see Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for details of how to tag images. Based on a sample of 277 untagged images, at least 1 in 5 should have been tagged GFDL. Therefore, there are 10,000 GFDL images that won't be distributed unless they are tagged. Angela.

I'm afraid I don't understand. How can we know how to tag an image if we don't know where it came from? — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:39, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
Often the uploader has written something on the page like "my own photo" or GFDL, but hasn't added the GFDL tag. If it's their own photo and they clicked the box to say "I affirm that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license it under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright", you can assume it's GFDL. Other images have a link to a source. If this source is a *.gov site, you can add {{PD-USGov}}. If it's a logo or album cover, you can generally assume it's {{fairuse}}. If the date is on the image description page, and it is before 1923, you can add {{PS-US}}. A lot of the time the image description page tells you what the licence is, but doesn't use a tag. To allow automatic filtering, we need the tags. Angela. 18:19, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
If you're really keen, you can also drop a few notes on user_talk pages to find locations for specific - remember there will be a lot of people around who uploaded images before tags existed, and have forgotten that they uploaded those images - and thus haven't gone back to tag them. User_talk messages might help jog the memory. Pcb21| Pete 18:27, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Minor clarification on what Angela wrote about *.gov websites. Works of the U.S. federal government are public domain. The same is not true for most U.S. state governments. Also, *.gov can host copyrighted material three random examples: the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center states "Some of the resources, or portions of them, are protected by copyright", the U.S. Geological Survey states that "Information presented on this website is considered public information (unless otherwise noted) and may be distributed or copied", and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service states "not all the information on our site is in the public domain". Be careful and happy tagging. Doppelgänger 22:36, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Geo-stub

The template:geo-stub has been added for geographical locations, landmarks, cities, etc. I have not added it to the list of templates, however I have begun changing several stub pages to use the geo-stub template. - Allyunion 10:54, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Still growning... now marked 24 articles in this category. - Allyunion 23:15, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Template for weather?

Just wondering... would some kind of template to link to a weather forecast be useful? --Allyunion 12:31, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Huh, you know, that might not be a bad thing. And since it's a template, it's not like we'd be editing the page constantly. Not quite sure where it'd belong, though. I'm enjoying your improvements, I think the Mapquest template could come into some good use.
As far as geo-stub, hm. Could be useful too, since the Stub category is woefully overcrowded. Still, not sure... --Golbez 15:36, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The Geography already has picked up 16 pages, based on looking at the Wikipedia:Most_wanted_stubs page. 16 pages - some are cities, but that already makes it very notable, if that were to grow, of course. -- Allyunion 21:41, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Aum Shinrikyo

I would invite anyone interested to take a look at the entry on Aum Shinrikyo. The current version seems pretty tendentious, in a pro-Aum sort of way, although I just made some edits to try to improve it. I'm mentioning it here because I couldn't figure out which of several Wikipedia:collaboration pages would be best to use. Cleanup? Articles needing attention? Peer review? Requests for comment? Appreciate any advice. - Nat Krause 14:44, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'd suggest peer review. RFC is for article disputes (in other words, edit/revert wars). Cleanup is for articles which have good content but need to be formatted correctly per the manual of style. Johnleemk | Talk 18:36, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Vandals at work

Where I work, someone is blanking pages... --Sgeo | Talk 18:59, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia: Vandalism in progress. Derrick Coetzee 19:27, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Requests for summaries

Is Wikipedia:Requests for summaries watched by anyone who is likely to fill requests? There seems to have been practically no activity for most of a year, and no completed requests. The page seems well-intended but poorly executed. --Eequor 22:12, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I didn't even know it existed. :-) I'd say, if it is determined that it can serve a useful function, it needs someone to "captain" it and make it functional. Most projects here don't survive without that. Right now....I can't make heads or tails of it. Does anyone know what it was intended to do? Jwrosenzweig 23:16, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps move to Wikipedia:Peer review? [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 23:17, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

Adult content warning template?

Should there be an adult content warning template? In fact, would there be a need for it for any entry in the wikipedia? There might be some articles which border that line, but I'm just wondering if we should include a warning template to be on the safe side. However, this does open Pandora's box of suggestive articles that may not be wanted on the wikipedia. Just some thoughts. - Allyunion 23:35, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No. Never. Nowhere. RickK 23:39, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Content disclaimer should be enough of a warning. --Eequor 23:53, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Allyunion, I think you're right to suggest it would open Pandora's box. Many people are uncomfortable with some of the more risque content here, and I think dredging it up in their faces with such a discussion could actually lose us a few good editors. Anyone whose child isn't old enough to make up their own mind should supervise their child's Internet use, and anyone who's old enough not to be a child should know to avoid sex-related articles if it bothers them. It's not as though we give detailed pictures of sadomasochism in the middle of the article on kittens. :-) Any adult content here should always be a simple neutral description of an act or thing and its effects on society/culture -- certainly it can occasionally be words that we might not prefer a 7 year old to read unsupervised (though of course opinion is divided there), but I don't think we have anything requiring a warning. And if we do, it would be wise to discuss on that article's talk page the utility of the shocking content -- encyclopedias should never _seek_ to shock, but rather to report the truth in an unbiased manner (and if the truth shocks, so be it). That's my opinion. Jwrosenzweig 00:00, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Only if the template has an extremely pornographic icon on it. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:04, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
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