Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

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Summarised sections

This is a list of discussions that have been summarised and moved to an appropriate place. This list gets deleted occasionally to make room for newer entries.


foo Day

I think for greater community spirit we should hold certain theme days, or days where people concentrate on certain subjects that need attention, for example we could have 'fix stub day' or a day where we would all fix stubs, ( of course participation would be voluntary. There could be a page where people would nominate what days to hold and what subjects to consentrate on, it could be anything, like gathering information about a tricky subject or cleaning up some pages.

Sorry in advance if this has been brought up before. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 16:02, 2004 May 6 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea. Perhaps have a signup page such as Wikipedia:Flying squad or Wikipedia:Gala days which would list supporters and keep a calender of such days, past and future. Those interested could then watch the page, and discuss ideas for new Gala Days on its talk page.
One severe caution, we would want to make sure that there were clear guidelines as to exactly what was to be done, and have plenty of review of these by some old hands. Done in this way, newbies participating would learn a lot. But without this preparation, there's the prospect of many hands all at once creating the same sorts of problems for admins and developers to sort out... Aaaargh!!!! It's enough to make you want to bang your head against your monitor to see which breaks first. Andrewa 20:26, 6 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, there would have to be clear guidelines about what specifically would have to be done, --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 08:54, 2004 May 11 (UTC)
Probably worth mentioning Wikipedia:Article of the week here. --bodnotbod 12:05, May 7, 2004 (UTC)

This is almost at the top of village pump now which means it will be chopped off soon, any ideas where this discussion could be continued? Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:55, 2004 May 13 (UTC)

HTML to wikitext converter

There are a few out there, including Magnus Manske's C++ version and David Wheeler's version in C, but I decided to create my own HTML to wikitext converter anyway. It differs from others in that:

  1. it's got a web-based interface (http://diberri.dyndns.org/html2wiki.html)
  2. it's in object-oriented Perl, as HTML::WikiConverter
  3. it shouldn't break on considerably broken HTML code (though I don't know the exact threshold for other converters)
  4. it has some nice image-handling DWIMmery (read more at the URL above)

When I get a chance, I'll upload the Perl module to CPAN, but for now I figured I'd share the tool with the WP community. Please comment on my talk page. --Diberri | Talk

Combining one of these converters with Epoz could be a good start for WYSIWYG editing (See meta:WYSIWYG editor). -- Gabriel Wicke 01:01, 8 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I've uploaded the module to CPAN. It's available at my CPAN author page. --Diberri | Talk 00:38, May 11, 2004 (UTC)



Protocol for Alternate Definitions

I am putting together a page for Marie-Louise von Franz and have found that some tangential topics do not exist. To this end, I would like to create them. As an example, there is an analytical psychology term amplification. There is an extant page for this term, however it is only a generalised definition. What is the protocol for adding a specific alternate definition?

2. Amplification: Expansion of dream content through personal associations and comparison of dream images with images from mythology, religion, and so on, which resemble the dream content. This concept can also be applied to myths and faerie tales.

Would something like this be appropriate?

this is discussed in more detail (on policy, technology, and practice) than you could ever want in Wikipedia:Disambiguation -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:36, 7 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
It's one approach. Another might be for an article which defines terms used in analytical psychology (to avoid multiple small articles which have little chance of being expanded): you might include individuation, anima, animus, ego (in its use in analytical psychology as opposed to psychoanalysis), self, collective unconscious, complex, archetype, etc... though most of these seem to already have their own (short) articles - they might perhaps be constructively grouped together in one article, with redirects to it from each of the terms. - Nunh-huh 22:42, 7 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


User:24.232.198.99

Maybe I'm just suffering a brain-freeze, but I can't figure out what to do with this IP[4] that's uploading a bunch of lyric articles to only moderately noted songs. I don't want to bite the newbie by simply listing them on VfD, but as far as I know, these articles aren't really appropriate. Niteowlneils 00:08, 9 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

You delete them (put msg:delete on them) as lyrics are usually copyrighted, and they're not encyclopedic anyway in most cases. Dori | Talk 00:18, May 9, 2004 (UTC)
Actually, some people may argue that at least one of these should be listed on VFD to set a precedent. Dori | Talk 00:26, May 9, 2004 (UTC)

Nexuscience — A new mirror?

Various Nexuscience issues: WikiSpam, GFDL compliance, and on-going issues over whether this project is in good faith or a scam. Please continue discussion at Wikipedia talk:Mirrors and forks#Nexuscience.

Loughall Martyrs

See Loughall Martyrs

1. The name of this article may be POV; but what is a better one? 2. Although this is a sensitive subject, I think the article generally is pretty NPOV. 3. Where do we go for advice on POV disputes? Duncharris 10:56, May 9, 2004 (UTC)

I have renamed the article to a hopefully less POV name. -- The Anome 13:23, 9 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

The names of diseases: policy?

There is a wide gap between lay terms and doctors' jargon when it comes to the naming of diseases and medical procedures. Several doctors on Wikipedia (see WikiProject Clinical medicine) feel that articles should be named by their scientific names, rather than the lay terminology (myocardial infarction instead of heart attack).

Arguments:

  • Many of these terms appear to denote something that they're not (heartburn does not affect the heart, nor has it anything to do with burning);
  • Some terms are imprecise: heart attack does not specify the nature of the attack (infarction) nor does it mention the fact that the heart muscle (myocardium) is affected;
  • Some terms are bound by geographical constraints; diseases have different names in different communities and countries;
  • People might actually learn something about medical terminology, especially if the redirects are in place and the page explains that myocardium is heart muscle and that infarction means dying tissue due to lack of blood.

See also Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions#Medicine, where I've raised this point and received a deafening silence.
JFW | T@lk 15:50, 9 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Why not name it to the scientific name and have a redirect of the lay name? RickK 22:40, 9 May 2004 (UTC) [reply]

Yes, RickK seems to have the best solution there. The trouble with using medical terminology alone is that it will render the articles invisible to anyone but doctors. The person suffering from the condition who may come here for information won't find them. --bodnotbod 23:00, May 9, 2004 (UTC)
I suggest that you'll need to preemptively create redirects to the common names for diseases, otherwise well-intentioned users will inevitably come along and create new articles using the common names. No biggie and it happens all the time here, but just thought I'd mention it. You might even want to create some sort of cross-referencing index page to help keep track of things (also helpful to use the Related Changes function to see updates made to the articles on the list). older≠wiser 23:52, 9 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

RickK: User:Ksheka tried moving heart attack to myocardial infarction but there was no consensus on the issue because "Wikipedia policy" was supposed to be that lay terminology is employed. My aim is to see if this should indeed be/remain policy, or that we can follow your suggestion and employ judicious redirecting. The Wikiproject Clinical medicine policy is to keep pages aimed at the general readership, only escalating the difficulty to address technical issues (e.g. what cellular molecules participate in the development of atherosclerosis in patients who smoke?)
JFW | T@lk 09:10, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

It should work to have --using heart attack as an example-- an article in layman's terms in that location, and one in medical terms filed under myocardial infarction, each with reference to the other at the top of the article. (Is this discussion redundant?) I don't think redirecting is the answer here. ;Bear 01:01, 2004 May 11 (UTC)

note: new blueblox

There's a new bluebox at MediaWiki:US currency and coinage. It's my first one, so I'm probably missing a lot of style thing. If folks would like to fix it up and make it better, I'd appreciate it. Also, the pages it appears in---I didn't know whether to put it at the top or the bottom, so I generally picked the bottom. Is this policy? Grendelkhan 16:43, 2004 May 9 (UTC)

Looks nice. The bottom of the page is the normal location for blue boxes like this. -- Arwel 22:42, 9 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Unrelated contents

What should we do, if we see the contents of a page are unrelated to the subject? For example, in the farsi section, the page under "philosophy" is just christian propaganda. Should it be moved to "Christianity"? "Propaganda"? deleted?

You have a number of options, though you've made my task harder by not naming the article. I've been to farsi and there's no philosophy section so you must mean some other article.

Anyyway:

The first option is the most admired. --bodnotbod 22:45, May 9, 2004 (UTC)

Neutral point of view (NPOV)

Neutral point of view (NPOV) is the official, non-negotiable law established by Jimbo Wales. I think it is a crucial Wikipidia policy, but I don't see much attention being paid to it. Are my search skills poor? Are there reams and reams of discussion, but I haven't found them? I support the policy, I think it is an excellent policy, and I think it needs more exposure. I don't think it is a policy that is intuitive. One has to study and learn it. Have most Wikipidians done that? I think not. Worse, I am afraid people don't even agree on what it means, and many think it means to do exactly what it really is prohibiting. Therefore, to help generate some interest in wider publicity, as well as agreement on what the NPOV policy is, I have written a short story (moved the page and fixed the link --Jiang 23:03, 9 May 2004 (UTC)) that hopefully will generate some talk. I invite all people who edit on Wikipidea to read it. I hope you find it entertaining as well. ChessPlayer 22:33, 9 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Many Wikipedians have heard of it, but many Wikipedians are humans and can fail to adhere to NPOV at times. It's up to you to either discuss what you feel is POV on the talk pages (where all the discussion usually goes), or you could try to change it yourself if the issues are not explosively controversial. Dysprosia 22:52, 9 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Your story is in the article namespace. Can someone move it to the users subpages? I don't know how that's done, and I'm assuming that the user doesn't either. --bodnotbod 22:57, May 9, 2004 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:How to move a page. --Jiang 23:03, 9 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for moving it. I didn't understand what the colon did or that I had created the page in the wrong namespace. I thought it was in my user space.ChessPlayer 23:13, 9 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
The story shows a grasp of the essentials of NPOV, but as your travails at Talk:FOX News and Talk:Jesus over the last few days have surely proved, it can get a lot more subtle and complex than that in the real world. Thank goodness only a tiny fraction of articles have these in depth problems. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 00:15, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Actual disputes can be more complex, there is no doubt; also, they can be mired in bias and partisanship based on specific issues. I think it best to not link to real world disputes here, as that may drag partisanship into the discussion on this page of NPOV. ChessPlayer 00:44, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I want to again repeat my observation: Wikipidians for the most part do not know the NPOV policy. ChessPlayer 05:44, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I think there is a distinction between a Neutral Point of View and a Point of View Which Nobody on Earth Disagrees With. Offhand, I can't think of a single fact that could possibly be posted which some one somewhere wouldn't dispute the truth of. And that one person will claim that everyone else is just advocating their own personal opinion. MK 05:35, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Overzealous brand documentation?

Is it just me, or are we seeing a lot of overzealous documentation of the specifics of commercial products—the verbatim copying of ingredients lists, labels, the detailed listing of all the products in a specific product line, and so forth? My perception is that this material is not being contributed by people trying to promote the product, but just by people who, for whatever reason, just like to do it. Fans of the products, I think. I don't want to single out Sharpie other than as an example of the sort of thing I mean. Is it really valuable to note that it is available in Fine, Extra Fine, Ultra Fine, Super, Twin, Super Twin, Chisel, Metallic, Grip, Industrial, and Professional tips, and in Yellow, Black, Blue, Green, Orange, Red, Brown, Purple, Turquoise, Lime, Aqua, Berry, Olive, Marigold, Navy, Plum, Burgundy, and Silver ink? I won't remove valid information just because I personally happen to think it's silly, but... is this getting out of hand and, if so, do we need to draw a line, and if so, where? Dpbsmith 23:38, 9 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I think people do this not only because they like the product but because they want to contribute an article with "encyclopedia-like" details, but can't think of something to write about. And I have cut out most of this ridiculous Sharpie details. DavidWBrooks 00:39, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I think David's hit it on the head there. Someone likes a product, or - even - just has it on their desk, and they feel virtuous, conscientious including every detail from the labelling. I suppose it's interesting to consider how difficult it might be to find the ingredients of a soft drink that stopped being produced ten years earlier without such people ;o) --bodnotbod 16:49, May 10, 2004 (UTC)
If these were products discovered on a dig in of an 1872 heritage site in Virginia, we'd be glad to have this historical documentation; would we not be creating a cultural record of our modern society for future archeologists, sociologists, paleontologists, et al? It may be rather odd to create the historical documentation for those historians of the future, but they'll thank us for it. -- user:zanimum
That's [http://www.archive.org]'s mission, not Wikipedia's. Dpbsmith 17:16, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not too sure about that, not to mention that, for a marker, tips are important. Furthermore, I do not entirely approve of DavidWBrook's edit, although this probably belongs in the article's discussion page. What I would have done is change the bulleted list (which takes up far too much space) into a comma-separated list, which would have fit nicely within a single paragraph, while preserving all information. -- Itai 02:54, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Horse breeds

Wikipedia:WikiProject Horse breeds is a new project that needs participants. Organizations that set the standards for horse breeds are needed for the table template. Bensaccount 02:24, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Safty Concern

Wow! I just read a short artical on the toxisity of Colchicine. My Doctor has just, prescribed an 0.6mg dose for an undiegnosed case of Gout, I have had for 8 weeks, now. I'm to take 1 tablet every 1 to 2 hrs., until I can no longer, tolerate the diarrhea or nausea. Is this common practice? Thanks! R.L. Sidowey PS Please forgive the fumbling, but I can't find a submition button.

Wikipedia does not give medical advice. If you are uncomfortable about the treatment your doctor has prescribed for you, arrange another consultation and/orseek a second medical opinion. --Robert Merkel 13:24, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Page moves logged?

Is there a log of which pages have been moved where, and who has moved them? -- ChrisO 10:21, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't a log, but the most recent page move is saved in the article's history. For example, if you move [[page 1]] to [[page 2]], the history of [[page 1]] would say "moved to page 2" and the previous history would reside at [[page 2]]. However, if you then move [[page 2]] back to [[page 1]], there is no record that page 1 was ever moved. It will look like the page was originally at [[page 2]] and then moved to [[page 1]]. Angela. 23:56, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

Upcoming Slashdot invasion (probably)

Someone's posted an article to Slashdot on our various articles on Quantuum physics:

There is a massive update on Strings Theory in Wikipedia : AdS/CFT, Andrew Strominger, Cumrun Vafa, Ashoke Sen, Juan Maldacena, Mirror symmetry, String field theory, Holonomy, Heterotic string, Closed string, Open string, F-theory, Background independence, Higgs mechanism, Conifold, Tachyon condensation, Einsteinian manifold, Second superstring revolution. Now you can easyly tell Open string from Closed string at last."

It might get a little busy here, assuming that the article goes through...
James F. (talk) 11:18, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Slashdot is past its prime (see e.g. Alexa), and the slashdot effect is overstated, particularly by slashdot readers, who believe everything they read on slashdot. The 200,000 articles slashdotting barely registered more than a blip here. So don't panic :) Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:30, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
It made it on to the Science section of Slashdot, but I doubt it will be put on the main page of Slashdot. So it probably isn't going to attract as many visitors. -- Popsracer 12:38, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Saving

New pages not showing up in Google: Wikipedia:External search engines

Guidance?

I'm not clear on the custom for Wikipedians to give others critiques/guidance/corrections. User Olivier seems to be a valuable, prolific contributor generally, but seems to have moved the constellation content via cut and paste from Taurus to Taurus (constellation). Also, everything that pointed to just Taurus (including a msg) still points there (I've been working on updating the links this morning). Would it make sense for someone that can, rv taurus, del Taurus (constellation), then Move this page? Note, I have no problems with the end result, I just have concerns about how it was done. Niteowlneils 16:55, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

My approach starts the same as yours, I check the users contributions to see what they're like. So far, everyone has been a good solid contributor. So, what I've then done is to spell out my concerns about the change on their talk page and just say "I would approach it this way, I see you've done a,b & c. Can I ask why you've done that?" If I disagree with the reason I say, "hmmm... how can we resove this amicably?" So far it's worked well. And on one occasion, once it was explained to me, I could see they'd done the right thing. --bodnotbod 17:31, May 10, 2004 (UTC)
I deleted Taurus (constellation), which had 1 edit by Olivier. I then moved the Taurus page, including the talk page there. I replaced the new redirect from Taurus with the last disambiguity edit from Taurus (constellation), and then reverted the Taurus (constellation) to the last edit with the full text. I think the situation is fixed now, loosing only one edit when Taurus (constellation) was copied by Olivier, and another two edit histories of the disambig page are now under Taurus (constellation). I will drop Olivier a note soon. Happy editing -- Chris 73 | Talk 02:59, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Screen width

Looking at a specific astrology page issue regarding appearance at 800x600 (I usually run higher), I discovered that Wikipedia comes close enuf to fitting that it seems to be the target resolution, but in reality, is just enuf wider to be a pain. Anyone know if TPTB are aware of this? Niteowlneils 17:36, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what TPTB means... but anyway I have a 800x600 resolution (pity me) and I have the left hand menu turned on.... wikipedia renders perfectly for me without horizontal scrolling. Unless, that is, there is an element on a specific page which is wider than my screen. Perhaps the problem is with the astrology page you were on, do you remember which it was? fabiform | talk 18:49, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
It was probably Taurus (constellation) (or possibly Gemini or Taurus (I've spent most of the day cleaning up move from Taurus--see above))--all are fine if I'm not editting them. Niteowlneils 19:55, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
(the powers that be). It may depend on which skin Niteowlneils is using. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:58, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
...and which browser (css not being quite as portable as one might hope). Niteowlneils - if you can tell us the page, skin, and browser combination, it may be possible to submit a bugfix request to have the stylesheet tweaked. It tries very hard to work everywhere, but suc transit... -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:01, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Initial report. Skin/left nav=default. browser=IE 5.5 and Mozilla 1.4. OS=Win2k. Page=at a minimum, edit pages. Niteowlneils 19:08, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
So far seems to be limited to Edit pages. Also occurs with Netscape6/7 and Opera 7. Niteowlneils 19:12, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Also happens currently on VP and VfD, but I believe it is due to the Darwin image and a long URL, respectively, so I don't think those need to be "fixed". Niteowlneils 19:19, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Screenshot of problem (using IE5.5--the severity is pretty consistent between all browsers tested) at Image:IEHorScroll75percent.jpg. Niteowlneils 19:35, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW (not too surprisingly) the Wiktionary Edit page has the same hor. scroll issue. I'm going to assume that A) the problem is limited to the Edit pages, and B) the issue has been sufficiently documented, so I am going to bump my resolution back up, unless someone has a specific request. Niteowlneils 19:42, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
This seems to happen only when the "Edit box has full width" is not checked (which I think it isn't when you're not logged in). This makes the edit box a fixed width, and one that does appear to be just a bit big for 800x600 (probably depending on your default font settings). You could file a bug on this, suggesting the default be a wee bit smaller. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:10, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I'll go do that. Since I have changed few, if any, of my Prefs, and I see the problem logged in, I have to assume the fixed width box is the default. Nice diagnosis--I went back to 800x600, checked the box, went to an Edit page, and confirmed that there was no hor. scroll. Niteowlneils 20:26, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Done. #951517. Niteowlneils 21:08, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
In the monobook skin the edit area has a % width by default, the pref is only there to work around some bugs in the old skin/ in ancient browsers afaik. Could be dropped maybe, and shouldn't default to a fixed width in any case. Try http://test.wikipedia.org in doubt. -- Gabriel Wicke 22:51, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Newspaper story about Wikipedia: Thoughts welcome.

First things first: I learned of the village pump through Raul654. He said this would be a good place to find administrators and members who'd like to share details about the more interesting facets of Wikipedia. So here I am.

I write for The News Journal, a newspaper in Wilmington, Del. The story I'm writing is meant to inform readers about Wikipedia and how it works, but also to answer some of the questions they're most likely to have. What intrigues me about Wikipedia, beyond the vast collection of articles on obscure topics, is the culture that beats within the site. Here's where you come in.

Raul654 gave me a quick education on two of the more prolific Wiki-outlaws. That's what intrigues me most, and readers are likely to share that wonder. And through the sharing of such tales, readers will learn much about the evolution and self-policing of this unique site. (I'm loathe even to call it a mere "site.")

Please contact me at cyasiejko-at-delawareonline-dot-com. (Have I thwarted the spambots? I hope so.)

Take care, Christopher Yasiejko The News Journal

While of course I wouldn't dream of telling you what should intrigue you, I do think "wiki-outlaws" shouldn't. They are footnotes to parenthetical remarks, distractions from the purpose of Wikipedia, which is to build a useful and reliable reference work. On Wikipedia there is a "giant conspiracy attempting to have articles agree with reality". That some refuse to participate in this conspiracy is, in the end, irrelevant to its success, as it is irrelevant to the generally progressive nature of human knowledge. -- Nunh-huh 22:40, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I agree entirely. A useful analogy (and a deeper one that might first appear) is to compare wikipedia with the wild west. It's easy to think there's a lot of lawlessness, gunfights, tough-but-kindhearted sheriffs, and bitter feuds in blanco canyon (as The Simpsons would have it "now with 50% more rootin-tootin"). It is like the wild west, but not like that - like the unreported wild west, the unreported wikipedia is mostly a bunch of farmers - each plowing their personal furrow on an unthinkably vast land. Many never see a stranger for weeks on end, many have no-one to turn to when their crops fail. Here and there there's an odd little clan, the faithful in neglected commune, a two-horse wikiproject, someone's grand scheme gone to seed. It's a little more populated each day, each day a new stranger in town. Most of your cattle go unrustled, most of your banks unrobbed, and one day the railroad may come this way. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:08, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Just so you guys know (so you can be specific in your responses), the 2 users I told Chris about (he spent about an hour interviewing me) are Michael and Plautus Satire. →Raul654 05:07, May 12, 2004 (UTC)
Does having a newspaper article about them count as feeding the trolls?! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:38, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
lol @ Pcb21 Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:24, 2004 May 13 (UTC) ;)

Shifting to a new house

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk#Shifting to a new house

Thanks Wikipedia

Thanks Wikipedia. This is a letter I wrote to Brittanica:

When your online encyclopedia became a pay service, I was very disappointed. The internet and information should be free to everyone. There is now a new free encyclopedia called wikipedia that will lead to your eventual demise. May I be the first to say goodbye to you and your misplaced values.

If you didn't do it, I would have been forced to. Thanks.

Thanks for your comments. Do we have a Wikipedia:Testimonials or something similar? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 07:58, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently so. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:25, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
While I think it's great that you have found Wikipedia and love it, just like everyone else here, I don't really look forward to the demise of Brittanica. I view Wikipedia just as another source of information. Not the one and only source. That said, Britannica may have to change their subscription model really soon, as Wikipedia just keeps growing and getting better, and more and more people are aware of how good it really is. --Vikingstad 11:53, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

Page move to new destination without deleting existing page at destination?

Is it possible to move a page to a new location, even if there exists already a page there without deleting the target page first? I am asking because there is a controversy about the location of Kosovo, a.k.a. Kosovo and Metohia. Majority vote on the talk page (10 to zero) was for the location Kosovo, and it has been moved there three times in the last two days. It was always moved back unilaterally by user: Nikola Smolenski, most recently today at 15:02. I think this would require the deletion of the Kosovo and Metohia page first to make the move. However, there is no deletion log entry, and Nikola is not an administrator, so he could not delete it in the first place. What is going on? -- Chris 73 | Talk 06:36, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I think I got it: the redirect page created at Kosovo and Metohia after the move to kosovo had only one history entry, so it can be overwritten by non-admins without deletion. So, after i moved the page to Kosovo again, i made a minor change on the Kosovo and Metohia redirect page, so now the page has a (tiny) history. Hope that stays there. -- Chris 73 | Talk 06:46, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Your edit won't actually prevent a non-admin moving the page back. As long as the redirect is still to Kosovo, Kosovo could be moved back to Kosovo and Metohia. I suggest you request protection if it becomes a problem. Angela. 00:47, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject : Gastropods

  • WikiProject Gastropods is up and running. This huge project is an offshoot from the WikiProject : Tree of Life. Contributions from new collaborators and enthusiasts are most welcome. There is a great need for pictures of mollusks, marine snails and land snails. This is the occasion to give your photos a second life on Wikipedia. JoJan 09:19, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Compliment Committee

We have a Welcoming Committee to greet new users, but once they get greeted, they're rarely subject to much positive at the hands of other users, and many of them are subjected to a slew of insults from trolls, vandals, etc. Perhaps we should have a parallel committee, modeled after the WC, to compliment users when we see good edits, substantial work on pages, etc. Something less than a barnstar, but still a nice thing to do for the users. I suspect that, after a lengthy edit, it would be more than a little welcome to see a post on your talk page to let you know you did a good job, and that this would foster Wikilove Snowspinner 20:50, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I think this could fit in well with the recent idea of Wikipedia:Great editing in progress; or, to be more accurate, I think some hybrid of the two ideas could be achieved that served this role well... IMSoP 21:45, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Hearing compliments from "Compliment Committee" is like you hearing "You look great!" from your grandma (as opposed to your girlfriend or partner). My point is that, the person who gets such a compliment won't feel particularly honoured, because those people saying so are comissioned ...to say such a "compliment"! Doesn't mean much. It sounds much better when coming from some random person. However, an Award Commission makes more sense. --Menchi 21:52, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


I think that last sentence made more sense when attached to the thoughts in your head (unless it's just that the thoughts in my head are rather detached right now :-/). What do you envisage an "Award Commission" as being/doing? - IMSoP 22:37, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Just an organization that gives out Barnstar and Wikipedian of the Year Award and stuff like once a month. --Menchi 12:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the compliment commttee would be as problematic. It's not as though every comment will get complimented. At least as I'm picturing it, the CCwould not simply compliment everyone blindly. It would be a more or less completely informal list of people who are committed to recognizing good work when they see it. We already have plenty of people dedicated to recognizing bad work, but very few beyond featured articles for good. Snowspinner 16:20, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a good idea, and hearby appoint every single user to the Compliment Committee. Please remember to thank others when you see good things happening! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 07:59, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I'm new and I've already left a few comments on talk pages like "Great page - well done to all concerned." And when people have reverted vandalised pages that I'm particularly interested in I drop them a note to thank them - particularly when it's my User Page as was the case yesterday. Apparently I smell of cabbage. Some people who know me in real life might say that was NPOV. --bodnotbod 21:40, May 12, 2004 (UTC)
I also think it's a great idea, and would like to hereby second Pete's nominations of all users. Andrewa 07:03, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Copyvio clarification

When a site doesn't state copyright status explicitly, do we assume it's public domain, or do we assume it's copyrighted. Most of the articles created by this user [5] seem to be 90-100 percent copies from a couple web sites [www.healing-arts.org/tir/frank.htm][www.tir.org/metapsy/issues.htm] but neither seems to have any statement RE copyright status, so I don't know if they are a problem. (This posting is mostly for my education, and just happens to use these article I just found as examples.) Niteowlneils 21:57, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Unless the author explicitly state otherwise, any work like that is copyrighted, and not eligiblge for inclusion "off the bat" - we'd have to speak to the webpage author. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:13, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Read what Pete says carefully: It's not a matter of our assuming it is under copyright. In the US, it is under copyright in the absence of a specific act making it PD. --Jerzy(t) 14:40, 2004 May 14 (UTC)
Just to amplify this--this is true not only for the U.S. but for all countries that have directly or indirectly acceded to the Berne Convention (which for all practical purposes is most countries of the world). In general, you should assume that a work is copyrighted unless it is from a public domain source (such as the U.S. federal government) or the author has expressly transferred copyright to the public domain (or made it available under GFDL). older≠wiser 15:06, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Link back to parent page

I think there should be a link back to the parent page, in every page; Of course, we can use the back button in our explorers. But, after editing a page and saving it, if we click 'back' it goes to the editing page again. So 'The parent article link' feature would make life a lot easier. I havent scanned the whole page to see if such a feature already exists. So, even if such a feature already exists, please make it more eye-catching. :SudhirP 05:01, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you have in mind as a "parent page". Everything links back to the Main Page. Most articles don't have a particularly obvious "parent." -- Jmabel 05:15, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Jmabel, if you are suggesting what I think you mean. If by parent you mean the entry where you clicked on a link to get to the current page, there are a number of possible such entries in some cases. For example, Isaac Newton is be linked to from the articles on Analytic geometry, as well as the Bank of England article, aparently. There is a list of entries that link to any entry, you get them by clicking on the 'what links here' button on the list on the left. If this isn't what you mean, could you please explain further. Silverfish 14:09, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


Thanks! I did not simulate all the possibilities! I think that a series of 'back' clicks is the only solution. Thanks 4 the response.

Please send me E-Mail address of libiya IT companies

Family Feud

Hello, I been looking for family feud game and wonder if it's available in the market on disc to play it on PC or Play Station/? please let me know it is available and where can I find it.

thanx Riyadh

shawan_riyadh@yahoo.com

Amazon has it. or see here for more --bodnotbod 21:46, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

Offensive pictures

How should ofensive pictures be handled? Are there double standards? Should they be displayed inline or linked to? Are disclaimers needed?

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Content disclaimer

See also Wikipedia talk:Profanity, Talk:Nick Berg, m:offensive content

Subtle POV edits?

While Googling for "wikipedia and google", I came across a thread on the forum of an organisation called the "Stormfront White Nationalist Community" from the end of April, discussing Google and, tangentially, how to add (presumably) POV edits to Wikipedia: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=129083. Happily, it seems they quickly encountered "censorship" and IP bans, but the following post was a little worrying:

I have done a little "creative editing" on Wikipedia too. It is a waste of time to try it on any of the major articles, because the censors will pounce on you immediately. However, sometimes you can slip in a few words in the less popular articles, and they will last for some time.

What are the current Wikipedia mechanisms for defending against subtle POV or vandalism, and what confidence do we have that they work? — Matt 13:25, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Our defense mechanism is lots of eyes, and our confidence varies by individuals. I, for example, fear that wikipedia won't scale to massive size for social reasons such as this - but then, I'm a grump. - DavidWBrooks 14:16, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
That is precisely why I am not an inclusionist. The 'wp is not paper' argument focuses on physical resources. I don't remember where I saw it, but the comment totally resonated with me; the gist was, 'the number of articles should be limited to keep the ratio between articles and editors at a managable level'. Niteowlneils 18:55, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
And not get to worked up over it. I find it difficult to relate to the outright childishness of a person that gets his jollies by adding some small POV to an obscure Wikipedia article that might actually stay posted for a week or two! Or the ultimate (how do they contain themselves) a whole month! - Marshman 17:12, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Press release: Wikipedia wins 8th Annual Webby Award for Best Community

I think we should have a press release to announce our Webby Award success. I've started one at Wikipedia:Press releases/May 2004. Please add to it. Other sites such as Google and the BBC have made press releases when they have won in the past, so I feel it's important we do too. We haven't had one for over three months, and the last one received little attention in the outside world. Perhaps this one will have more of an effect. Angela. 17:03, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

  • Good idea. I don't feel in the mood to write PR copy right now (I actually have in the past), but I left some things I could see adding on the talk page. Niteowlneils 01:46, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Copyright

Why is the English Wikipedia:Copyright locked? Please change the interwiki link to Swedish Wiki to "Wikipedia:Upphovsrätt". // Rogper 17:52, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I imagine it's protected so that no one can change such important policies while we're not looking (just like our general disclaimer is protected). I've updated the interwiki link for you. :) fabiform | talk 18:17, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. :-) // Rogper 18:39, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Image for deletion

I have listed the image of the severed head of Nick Berg for deletion. Please vote at WP:IFD. Dori | Talk 21:00, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

Fundamental inequalities between races in Wikipedia treatment

Are articles involving race given equal treatment? Answers to this and various discussions about the definiton of racism moved to talk:reacism.

reclaiming anonymous edits

somewhere once on a wikipedia FAQ i saw instructions for reassigning an anonymous edit you have made to your account. now i cannot find this FAQ. can someone give me instructions?Lethe

found it Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit

Murray Haszard

I wrote this article (Murray Haszard) a few hours ago, and when I saved it, it took several minutes for Wikipedia to respond. I then saw in Recent Changes that two New copies had been saved.

I just check "What links here" and nothing does, yet there are references to this article from Ghost, B32 Business Basic and Binary Research. These links work. Why doesn't "What links here" work? --Gadfium 08:28, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


I had a similar problem with Battle of Mukden, with some but not all pages showing up in the "what links here". Two hours later it was fine. Right now on my computer, Murray Haszard & "what links here" gives me only the village pump, even though the other pages you mentioned also contain the link. Strange -- Chris 73 | Talk 14:09, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Huh. I got the same result. I just went into the Ghost, B32 Business Basic articles, did a couple of minor copy edits, and saved the articles. Immediately they showed up in What Links Here for Murray Haszard. I don't know what the deal is. Elf | Talk 16:23, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Histoy deletion.

Is it possible to delete the whole history of one page forever? How?

Not without a developer editing the database manually, which is seldom done for technical/licensing reasons, probably. When a page is deleted, the history and page becomes inaccessible and viewable only to administrators, but not obliterated. Dysprosia 13:31, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
The ver.1.3 of Mediawiki comes with XML import feature. The feature is available only to sysops (i.e. admins), but with that, one can delete a past version of an article. I have just experimented with it on Test wiki, where the ver.1.3 is currently tested, and took some notes on some details here. I am not sure when the ver.1.3 will be implemented, if the feature is turned on (to allow admins to really use it). Tomos 01:52, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to section

The Five Boroughs contains less information than City of New York#The Five Boroughs. Most of the info currently has to be maintained in both places. IMO, The Five Boroughs also tears the subject out of the valuable context of the City of New York article. But (as i learned by experimenting), overwriting The Five Boroughs with

#REDIRECT City of New York#The Five Boroughs

has the same effect as

#REDIRECT City of New York

Sounds like a useful SMOP to me, to have the Wiki engine use the section info instead of ignoring it. Has there ever been discussion of doing so? --Jerzy(t) 18:12, 2004 May 13 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:How to edit a page, "Note that redirects to sections do not work yet. #REDIRECT [[United States#History]] will redirect to the United States page, but not to any particular section on it. It is possible this feature will be implemented in future, so such redirects could be used now for future compatibility." So, I guess it has been discussed, but not yet done. --Stormie 00:43, May 14, 2004 (UTC)
Out of interest, the reason this isn't as simple as it might seem is that currently, a redirect essentially replaces the content of a page, whereas the information telling the browser to focus on a particular header (the "#anchor" notation) is stored in the address. So, if you go to, say, New York City, the page's address is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City (as you'd expect) - but the content is the same as that of City of New York (the target of the redirect) with an additional "redirected from" note. In order to redirect to a section, the browser would have to be told somehow to add "#section_name" to its own address - possible, but not trivial. With the current system, the browser is completely unaware that a redirect has been used, as it is all processed by the server.
Additionally, it could be argued that being taken to a the middle of a page when you thought you were going to view a whole article could be a bit confusing, although this is true to a certain amount with normal links to a section. - IMSoP 13:51, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Can I use these pics on WP?

This is the copyright notice for a site I want to use as a picture source, [6]:
"All the pictures on this site were taken by Jo Mitchell (unless otherwise stated) and may be used for legitimate and legal purposes provided credit is given. It would be appreciated if you email Jo to request permission for use of images. Most images are available as high-resolution scans (up to 4000dpi) for use in print and screen media - please do not hesitate to ask for further details. Copyright is retained at all times by Jo Mitchell. Thanks"
Can I use these pics (if I check with Jo Mitchell first) and what would be the copyright notice I should use on the Image Description Page? Thanks for any help,
Adrian Pingstone 18:51, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Goodness whether "legitimate and legal purposes" is, formally speaking, a restriction incompatible with the GFDL, but it does sounds like Jo would respond favourably if you explicitly asked for a GFDL licence (for the low-res versions) via email. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 19:17, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
There are a couple of pre-written permission-asking templates at Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission -- they cover most of the important points. Modify as needed for your purposes. Catherine - talk 01:56, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Toki Pona link in Town article

There a link to Toki Pona language version of the town article but for some reason it does not display together with other languages but at the end of the article. The same seems to be the case on the Toki Pona language page itself. Why? Brona 20:48, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to be a limitation in the software, list it on meta:MediaWiki feature request and bug report discussion --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 23:13, 2004 May 13 (UTC)
This is fairly easy to fix, I'll do it now. -- Tim Starling 00:54, May 14, 2004 (UTC)

I want to purchase the Xmen animation series

Since reading the Xmen storylines her on Wikipedia, I would like to purchase the Xmen anmiation series that aired on the Foxnetwork from 1992 to 1998. I would like all the five seasons, every episode please. Who do I call?

Michael Frye 1414 Wilcox Ave Portsmouth, Va 23704 1-757-391-0207


GHOSTBUSTERS!
Seriously, at least some appear to be available on DVD from Amazon. --Robert Merkel 03:34, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

On a completely unrelated note - I just found out that John Malkovich is playing Lord Voldemort in the next Harry Potter movie. Now, I've asked 5 people who they would prefer to play Lord Voldemort, and every single person said the same thing - Christopher Walken! Why, oh why, couldn't they get Walken to take the role? →Raul654 03:36, May 14, 2004 (UTC)

Not Malkovich. I read that the other day, then read a denial (can't remember where, now.) But Rowling has insisted all along that only British actors be cast. RickK 03:41, 14 May 2004 (UTC) [reply]

One more thing - is Warner Brothers the official owner of Daniel Radcliffe's soul yet, or are they just waiting for the paperwork to go through? →Raul654 03:51, May 14, 2004 (UTC)


Offices Held by politicians

Do any guidelines exist for the content of tables showing the offices held by politicians? (See the bottom of the Tony Blair entry for an example.) It appears that periods spent as members of bodies such as Parliament aren't included, but I think it would be a good idea to do so. Betelgeuse 15:33, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

My first instinct was to agree with you, but after thinking about it, at least in the US, congressional districts change often enough that it's difficult to ascribe a real continuity to all of them. Similarly, Senate seats are arranged as junior and senior, but which seat is which will change periodically. So at least in US politics, I'm not sure how the linear nature of these boxes would work. I don't know, in Britain, how variable districts and their representation are, so I don't know if this problem exports to other countries. Snowspinner 16:29, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
It'd be awkward to include such tables on all politicians, even without reapportionment or redistricting - very few politicians stay in the same office for very long, and including a table for each office held would make their articles bulky. - jredmond 16:44, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Tricky. UK parliamentary boundaries are reviewed about every 10 years, and if the changes are too drastic a sitting MP may jump ship and look for a more winnable seat elsewhere (I'm reminded of one Conservative MP who looked for a better seat in 1997 and failed to win it, while what was left of his original seat remained Conservative...). Also MPs may lose their seat at one election, and be elected somewhere totally different at a later election (see Gwyneth Dunwoody or Tony Benn for example). -- Arwel 16:45, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Sir George Young is an example of an MP who moved constituencies because of boundary adjustments. For his entry I would add 'MP for Ealing Acton 1974 - 1997' and 'MP for North West Hampshire 1997 - present'. I don't think the two extra rows would add to much bulk to the article (most politicians entries are little more than stubs anyway), and I think it's the type of information a reference work like wikipedia should include. Betelgeuse 16:56, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about UK politicians, but it would be a huge mess trying to figure it out for U.S. representatives except for perhaps the last few decades. For early politicians, documentation is not always readily available about which district a representative was from (and even if available, may be misleading because the district boundaries change frequently). So even if we could figure it out, I'm not sure it would be that helpful since the actual districts change dramatically over time. For example, when Michigan first became a state, the entire state was one congressional district. Now the state is divided into 16 districts. I believe it had more districts in the past. Further, there are MANY U.S. politicians who have held multiple offices: representative, senator, governor, Presidential cabinet (sometimes different positions in the cabinet). In short, it *might* be feasible to do this for U.S. Senate seats, but I don't see any point to attempting it for House seats. older≠wiser 17:47, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
  • Besides, many (perhaps, sadly, most) people in the U.S. don't even know who their representative is let alone what district they are in. older≠wiser 17:52, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia rules for External links?

See Wikipedia talk:External links

Redirect warriors

From time to time here comes a guy and starts "fixing rediects". A recent example is massive change of Trans-Siberian railroad into Transsiberian railway.

It is one thing to fix redirects from, e.g., common misspellings. It is totally meaningless IMO thing to replace a perfectly valid and almost as common name, like in the example above. In some particular case I fixed some time ago, the article author intentionally used an archaic term, only to be "fixed" by some overzealous wikipeditor.

Guys, please be reasonable. Think about other useful things you can do, like Wikipedia:New pages patrol. Mikkalai 18:25, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be a 'redirects are evil' mindset among some people here. Not sure where exactly that came from ... possibly from the 'linking to disambiguation pages is evil' idea.
IMO, one should rarely change the linked-from text, that's what the pipe-link is for. But really, is there any reason why a pipe-link is BETTER than a redirect? It's just two ways of handling the same thing: linking from a string of text to a page whose title is not the same. One method keeps it all in the linked-from page, another uses a secondary redirect page, but I don't really see a reason why to change it.
It's possibly a squid/database load issue ... using the redirect takes two hits; piping the redirect at the point it is anchored takes a single hit. As others have said, though, there's never any reason to change the anchor text to deal with the reirect issue. --Tagishsimon
They are actually both one request (we don't use http redirects, instead the 'redirected' content is served at the requested url). But: Because we currently don't have a good way to find out which pages redirect to a certain page (for purging), so they aren't cached as a result. This will very likely change with 1.4 where the redirect will re-use the cached content of the 'real' page. -- Gabriel Wicke 08:13, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
As Mikkalai says, if the linked-from text is actually inaccurate and it's a context where that matters, then it should be changed ... —Morven 02:46, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
As the person who did the redirects to Trans-Siberian railway, let me explain my reasoning. It was based on what happens when you move a page, and you get the following warning: "Links to the old page title will not be changed; be sure to check for double-redirects (using "What links here") after the move. You are responsible for making sure that links continue to point where they are supposed to go." As far as I'm concerned, an article that points to "Trans-Siberian Railroad" when the actual article is at "Trans-Siberian railway" is not pointing where it is supposed to go. I understood that the point of redirects was to deal with people looking things up from outside Wikipedia, rather than badly-formatted wikilinks. However, I concede that in most if not all of those articles I should probably have piped the redirect rather than changing the text. Some articles are formatted in British English (railway); some are in American English (railroad); the important thing is consistency within the article. I will give myself a slap on the wrist and a task to check that all the pages linking to Trans-Siberian railway are still consistent. --ALargeElk 08:48, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion lets me undestand "the root of the evil". All this redirect/piping thing is simply a techie mindset: you are trying to "help" computer to do the job (of readdresing), whil it should be exactly vice versa: computers are here to help us write articles (and read articles). Using pipes and fixing redirects is IMO like writing pieces of code in assembly language where the compiler is dumb and cannot optimize. It ought to be done sometimes, but if you have to do it almost everywhere, this should be the hint that either the overall design is wrong or atavistic instincts come creeping. I know that "real programmers" write in FORTRAN, but... Mikkalai 15:46, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Title casing

A user e-mailed me this afternoon, asking if I could correct the article IMac to the proper spelling iMac. Both spellings bring me to the same article as it is (and not even as a redirect), so I was wondering if someone could clarify for me how Wikipedia handles casing in titles -- am I correct in assuming that the Wiki software doesn't actually distinguish between IMac and iMac? Bearcat 18:25, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

yep - see :Wikipedia:List of pages whose correct title is not allowed by MediaWiki -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:30, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
That sucks, but people have now come to rely on this software bug, if it would be fixed something would have to be implemented which auto-redirected to the same title except with a capital first letter if it wasnt to break alot of links. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 14:35, 2004 May 15 (UTC)

Demographics of US towns

I note that in the demographics of us towns like Hialeah, Florida, all ethnic groups except white are wikified. Does this strike folks as odd? What should this one link to? Thanks, Mark Richards 21:28, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

It should link to Race (US Census). User:Rambot didn't finish his job and vanished for some reason. The link to Asia is inapproprate. We need to know about the ethnic group, not the continent from which their ancestors originated. --Jiang 22:50, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
There is a WikiProject on ethnic groups. It's been a bit quiet lately. If anyone is interested in investing some effort into it, that would be great. This does come with one warning though: this is an area that ineveitably must be handled with some sensitivity, a matter that is discussed in that project page and its related pages. -- Jmabel 23:55, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

From Wikipedia™

Should the text at the top of each page that says From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia include the trademark symbol? Please discuss at MediaWiki talk:Fromwikipedia. Angela. 00:31, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

Appropriate URL

This is kind of amusing: the URL that Wikipedia generated for Image:Us-pa.gif (the Pennsylvanian flag) is "/upload/7/76/Us-pa.gif". Marnanel 04:07, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

I think that's intentional, my memory is not so good but I remember reading that this is so because the 7 and the 76 are hash-type keys relating to the filename, so accesses are more efficient. Dysprosia 05:48, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I think Marnanel had another reason in mind. If so, an even more appropriate URL would contain 7/4/76 if viewed from America and 4/7/76 if you write your dates in the other fashion. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:52, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, dates did cross my mind, but I didn't find the specific date/knew it was significant :) Dysprosia 10:22, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Umm. Can someone fill in the in-joke for me? Evidently I'm stupid and ignorant... ;-)
James F. (talk) 10:46, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
4/7/76 is the US Independence Day. Dysprosia 11:37, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Odd, but 7/4/76 (U.S.-illogical-style) does not instantly evoke a flash of recognition for me. Not that I didn't "get" the 7/76, but I had to think about it. Perhaps because without the "17" in front of it, 76 is just a random year in my own life. Incidentally, in my experience, the holiday is never called "Independence Day" in ordinary speech. The "real" name of the holiday is "the Fourth of July" or "July Fourth." Our department would never send out a notice referring to company policy about "the Independence Day weekend," it would always be called "The July 4th weekend." Dpbsmith 12:46, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, in my experience, the holiday is never called "Independence Day" in ordinary speech
(This is probably a result of me being a person who has only watched that alien-invasion movie and the book by Richard Ford ;) Dysprosia 13:41, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
This may be an age-related thing: While "Fourth of July" and "July Fourth" are what I'm most inclined to call the holiday, in my experience "Independence Day" is a close third behind them -- and moreover, is the real name rather than a description of the date without context. orthogonal 11:07, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, thanks.
James F. (talk) 14:45, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for Wikipedia pages

I'm looking for the page that directs the "Did You Know?" section on the front page. Who decides what we see there?

I also want to know if there's a New pages patrol, just like the RC patrol.

Anyone with info please contact me hear or at my talk page. MGM 10:20, May 15, 2004 (UTC)


MediaWiki:Did you know is shown in the main page, and Wikipedia:Recent additions is the history thereof. The rules are in the corresponding talk page MediaWiki talk:Did you know. Wikipedia:New pages patrol is for the new pages patrol, but it's rather quiet over there. -- Chris 73 | Talk 02:01, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

URL trouble

I'm trying to add the following external link to a page:

[7]

As you can see, it is not parsed into an html link. If there is something wrong with the URL, I don't know what it is (the dollar sign?) but it works when copied into my browser's address bar. Is there any way to force the parsing, or will I be unable to link this page?

Radagast 22:54, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

Use the %-trick: replace the dodgy character with a percentage sign and its two-digit hex code (here, 24). Thus: [8]
Marnanel 00:00, May 16, 2004 (UTC)
Wonderful! Thak you most kindly. Radagast

"See also" vs "Related topics", and Category Project

The Wikipedia Guide to Layout recommends that "Related topics" be a heading for a collection of internal links to related topics. Custom and practice in the Wikipedia appears to be to use "See also". Google:"See also" = 56,100 hits, Google:"Related topics" = 1,900 hits. Should we wait for a thunderbolt from on high before we change the recommendation in the Guide to Layout? --Tagishsimon

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Sections gives a better explanation. Ideally there should only be one place that explains a rule or policy so as to avoid problems like this. Bensaccount 01:36, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I don't go according to the MoS on this one. I think it's not useful to have "Related topics" and "See also", since they're basically the same thing... Dysprosia 01:44, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I think they're not the same thing. I went back through the various see also/related topics discussions & I see more people with my dilemma--in certain cases, you want to include links in the "related articles" list that also appear in the body text. See Wedding, for example. It would be confusing, I believe, to leave off the 3 or 4 links that appear in the text. In this case, Related articles would be more correct, whereas the See also presumably would not include links already in the text. Elf | Talk 15:52, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
With categories this will no longer be a problem. Related articles will be in the same category, so there won't be a need for a section. There will always be a need for a See also section though, and that is what we have standardized on for a long while now. Dori | Talk 16:26, May 17, 2004 (UTC)
I've just this week heard about the famed mythical categories project--meanwhile, until it's finalized and someday implemented, I don't think we can say unequivocably that one can't put links into the list that also appear in the article. Elf | Talk 16:44, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
It's not mythical, you can try it out on http://test.wikipedia.org and I think it's redundant to link things more than once on each page. If readers were interested in the link, they would have followed it. If we go by this, then we could end up listing every link on the Related section becayse how could you decide? Dori | Talk 16:48, May 17, 2004 (UTC)
Re: categories: Cool! Now that I've tried it, I want it *now*! And I will hold my breath and turn blue until I get it! Wahhhhh! Re: how could you decide? Same way we'll have to decide what categories things go into & same way we decide what to link already--roll a 10-sided die--er, I mean, common sense. I'll admit that mine isn't always in smooth running order, but I like to think that it mostly is and so are most folkses' who edit wp. Elf | Talk 18:00, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Verbs

I think there should be some naming conventions for verbs (Wikipedia:Naming conventions (verbs) - tentative).

There is a convention about using the most common words (Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)) which could apply to verbs in some cases; ie killing redirects to murder.

It seems to be common practice to use the present participle; ie. jumping rather than jump or jumped.

Any comments? Bensaccount 01:20, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I advocate really useless and counter-intutive verb forms as the standard. i.e. Will have been jumping. Though if people insist on a reasonable standard, present participle. Snowspinner 04:30, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

emdashes

em dashes — dashes the width of an "m" character — are used in typesetting and "upscale" web page set off text, in a use similar to parentheses. where emdahses are unavailable, two "regular" dashes are often used: --

While em dashes look much nicer, on certain displays and devices -- such as my handheld -- they aren't in the character set at all, and are displayed using a placeholder character, often a question mark or unfilled square (a "box").

Should we use nice-looking em dashes, knowing they won't display properly on certain devices, or fall back on the less elegant but more portable double dash?

Thanks. orthogonal 04:22, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Is it that time already? Yeah, ok, we've had the mirror/fork question and the case sensitivity question, I guess we must be back around to dashes. May I suggest we keep it civil this time? More like the time before last than last time. -- Tim Starling 04:28, May 16, 2004 (UTC)


Tim Starling: while it's certainly fine to note that this discussion has come up here before -- and I understand the annoyance of an old-timer seeing questions arise again and again -- I do it would be more helpful for you to let us know what the previous consensus was.
Sorry. There was a short discussion last August, here. Then the civil discussion I referred to last December: Wikipedia talk:Special characters#Unicode. Then there was the discussion on wikitech-l in January: [9]. And finally there was the February discussion here. The current situation as far as I'm concerned is that either TeX-style conversion or -- to — conversion will be implemented as soon as someone works out how to do it without breaking various things such as the table syntax. -- Tim Starling 04:59, May 16, 2004 (UTC)
No problem, and thanks Tim, that's good to know. (however, this doesn't answer Othagonal's original question -- what should be done about the incompatibility of em dashes with certian devices? Personally, I think it's the device's own damn fault.) — Adam Conover † 16:47, May 16, 2004 (UTC)
In principle we could change the rendering according to user agent, although that may make caching difficult. Obviously we have to think of everyone, not just those trying to view Wikipedia from a mobile phone. -- Tim Starling 01:23, May 17, 2004 (UTC)
Personally, though I use an emdash in my sig, I generally use double-dashes when writing, simply because that's what I'm used to doing -- most online communities don't support anything else, and '--' is the quickest way to write a dash in word -- and because they're must easier to type. I would guess that double-dashes will continue to be by far the most prevalent regardless of what we decide. — Adam Conover † 04:33, May 16, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been against them for some time now as they make editing difficult. Use "--" instead. RickK 04:43, 16 May 2004 (UTC) [reply]

Linking to family trees

As an example, the article Julio-Claudian family tree has a single image with the entire family tree. I'm wondering if it's possible to create a family tree that appears similar but has a feature linking the individual names in the tree to the articles about those people. Does the software exist to do this? MK 06:22, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

External links epidemic

I've noticed that many editors have taken to including external links which are strongly POV towards one particular view or item of the article, often without any warning that this represents the views of one particular side. Often, these links escape the normal Wikipedia NPOV process, because someone needs to take the time to check them out (not always easy). Does anyone have views on this? Lately I've been killing links that are not properly described as being POV or fringe interest. JFW | T@lk 08:55, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Documenting the POV is much more helpful than killing the link, don't you think? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:11, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, Pete. I personally only kill links when I feel they don't enhance the article content but just confirm that someone has a POV. Random assasinations of links will just provoke "link insertion wars" anywayz. JFW | T@lk 11:27, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Oops yes, should've added that before. Link to xyz's opinion only if it is an significant opinion. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:23, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed this as a serious problem in science articles: Standard and established science knowledge is usually found in textbooks and not so much on the web. But fringe theories, non-standard ideas and other strongly POV stuff is easily found on the web, often in a way carefully tailored to be easily accesible and quick too read. Hence such links often overpower the standard science in the link list, especially if its a stub.

Not as serious, but related, are external links to papers or articles dealing with definitly minor details. Especially if these are the only links, this looks highly misleading. Stubs with such links are worst. I usually at least consider deleting such links but then don't as I feel obliged to replace it by a better link. But maybe one shouldn't be so hesistating. Sanders muc 18:44, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

One option is always to move links you're not sure of to the article's discussion page - particularly if the article is a stub, so that it's hard to determine whether the link will end up appropriate or not once it has been expanded (in the potentially distant future...). That way you can also justify your deletion, and people can respond and discuss it with you or one another. - IMSoP 20:40, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

IMSoP: This is what is probably the best thing, but many POV pushers simply reinsert the links without engaging in a discussion :-(
Sanders muc: This phenomenon (of fringe theories overwhelming main science articles) attracted my attention at cholesterol, where someone inserted a rant on the "dissidents of the lipid hypothesis", some noisy people who doubt the link between cholesterol and cardiovascular disease. Yet >99% of all doctors will subscribe to the "lipid hypothesis" (which is not a hypothesis anymore). Disconcerting. JFW | T@lk 22:46, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

In praise of annotating lists of links—and anything else

In reference to the above problem of external links not being described (and consequently hiding POV), let me add that I feel that in general, Wikipedia has too many lists of links and anything else that just list items without any descriptions. Most of could be enormously improved by adding short notes to list items. (The note should be short enough so that the list remains on a single line without wrapping when the window is a normal size. This preserves the vertical compactness of the list and keeps the list items positioned for easy visual overview).

Editors seem to be reluctant to do this, I'm not sure why.

Perhaps what happens is that someone starts a list that contains no comments, and subsequent editors are reluctant to be the first to disturb the pristine columnnar appearance of the list by adding the first comment? Or is it a "foolish consistency" fear that it is somehow wrong to annotate one item unless you can annotate all of them?

When listing Moog synthesizer users, how much better to have

(as is the case in the actual article) than

Dpbsmith 11:13, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

That's better, certainly, but good old fashioned sentences would be better yet. Strawman:
I've taken to doing this on disambigs, e.g. Stirling (disambiguation) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:41, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know. There's a case to be made for conciseness as well. I think we should seek a happy medium. I agree that "Mike Farrell" or "Doug Fieger" is too little, but I think information about particular albums, songs, or collaborators should be found in the linked article not the link itself. MK 04:47, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

gold sovereign

Question moved to Wikipedia:Reference Desk. Meelar 17:52, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Quantum optics

Quantum optics is a very lively field of current physics research. But so far we only have articles on its more application-related neighbouring field, laser science. I've done a start by writing the article quantum optics, but there's much to do: MOTs, optical tweezers, PDC, and the like should be covered as well. Any fellow physicists out there willing to help? Or other people knowing about it? (Sanders muc)

References

This community seems very sensitive to the issues of copyright. But when it comes to credit and citation, we do quite poorly. I'm surprised at the number of articles that refer to authors' conclusions and interpretations without crediting the author or citing the source.

Some may disagree with me, but I think this is a serious weakness. It only takes discipline to cite source; hunting down original sources takes time, effort and uncommon selflessness — let's face it, unless you happen to know the source, you're unlikely to invest much effort in uncovering the implicit citations in somebody's articles.

Integrity, transparency, credibility, honesty: that's what's at stake here. What do you think?

Making references easier to add might lower the activation energy. If I'm not aware of a system that's already in place to simplify this, please let me know. — Johny 21:48, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

This is a serious problem, as not citing references is often part of a violation of the NPOV rule, by making it sound like the information cited is being made by the article itself, thus making the article the source of opinions. There seems to be no awareness of this issue, and even some who oppose citations, and who want Wikipedia to look like authoritive encyclopedias where the article writer simply pronounces the truth, whether it be about fact or opinion. These people want articles to be the products of consensus, whatever the editors can agree on as "proper" going into the article, instead of the NPOV way of stating only hard facts, and attributing all opinions to some source. ChessPlayer 22:09, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
It is official policy to include references, see Wikipedia:Cite your sources. Feel free to point it out to anybody who gives you a hard time about adding references, and of course set a good example by adding them to existing articles. The hardcore approach would be just to delete text and articles that are missing proper references, heh-heh. Stan 22:33, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you on all counts. Wikipedia does not include enough references, and Wiki markup does not make them easy to include. This is also a shortcoming of traditional encyclopedias, but not one that Wikipedia should emulate. Furthermore, when one does not have the chain of trust implicit in the traditional encyclopedia's choice of contributors, it's especially important that statements of fact be verifiable. Dpbsmith 00:27, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with citing sources is that we really are an encyclopaedia and not an original research project.

In research, you really do need to cite your sources, to prove you are enlarging on what others have created, you are developing what others have originated and not just copying what someone else has written.

In an encyclopaedia, you are referring often to what is in the public domain anyway. What is more, continuously citing others makes it so much more unreadable for the often casual reader. If you look at other encyclopaedias, how often do you come across: “(such and such) is the case, according to (author So-and-sos)?
It is different, of course, if you are actually writing about a particular concept, article, book or theory originated by another author. Of course, you must refer to every part of his work if you want to describe it.
However, take a geographical entity, when all you want to do is describe its settings, its famous buildings and scenery, it borders on the ludicrous to keep citing what other people have said about it unless their views throw a different light on what you might have seen yourself. All you need do is walk out the area concerned, clap eyes on what it is famous for and its sights and describe them.
Take an article by Tiscali Reference, an encyclopaedia, about ‘’Garcia Marquez, Gabriel (Gabo). You would look in vain for any source, where the information has come from. And why would you? It doesn’t matter whether the writer of the encyclopaedia article has read all the works of the author himself, and therefore knows them. He doesn’t have to quote himself as the source, or whether he has gleaned it from other sources. Surely, it is something that is more often than not commonly obtainable knowledge open to all of us?
After all, an encyclopaedia is a work of convenience for all of us, which if we try hard enough, we can search for laboriously ourselves, but that is what it does. It helps us find all the facts in one place and saves us time.

Dieter Simon 01:08, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


Dieter writes, "In research, you really do need to cite your sources, to prove you are enlarging on what others have created, you are developing what others have originated and not just copying what someone else has written." In an encycopedia, you need to cite your sources, to prove you are not arbitrarily enlarging on what others have created. -- Jmabel 03:42, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, Jmabel, I see your point. If you are actually quoting the words someone else has used to describe a subject, of course, you must cite this source. I was however referring to the adoption into the encyclopedia of a generally known subject, such as bibliographical details of a writer, geographical locations (often you can find this in brochures), technical details of a car engine, etc. Yes, if you are citing a specific aspect of someone else's research and findings of a subject, and you find it apposite to it, or an aspect of an article which only another source has given, then that has to be cited in detail.Dieter Simon 11:19, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


Wikipedia trophy room

Wikipedia recently won two awards (Webby Awards and Prix Ars Electronica), and I am sure there are more to come in the future :-) Do we have a place to list the awards, sort of a Wikipedia:Trophy room? I was thinking about making a page, but wasn’t sure if something similar already exists. -- Chris 73 | Talk 04:14, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

A formal one can be found at Wikipedia#Awards_and_nominations.

canadian prime ministers

Watchlist trauma

My watchlist now won't update, and instead says - 'this is a saved version of your watchlist'. Any ideas why? Thanks! Mark Richards 15:42, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, a developer has enabled cached watchlists to improve performance (which had crawled to a halt pretty much). Dori | Talk 16:27, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

So when do I get the real one, and when the caches one? Thanks, Mark Richards 17:56, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Normally when this is the case, you get one update per hour. -- Jao 18:15, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Can You Give us the E-mail address of National Congress.

Dear Sir, Can you give use the E-mail address or the Contact address of National Congress, actualy we want to give congratulation to Congress President Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, Please sir, help us in this matter, please give reply us on accesspuri@sancharnet.in, pointaccess@eth.net, dilu_mishra@yahoo.com.

With warm regards,

M/s. Access Point, Puri, Orissa India

HELP!

Chinese WP is suffering mass attack from several IPs, continuously creating nonsense pages like "Shizhao再麻煩你砍一下吧44daf22d99161b01a4148a8c3cffedc4". Can the developers ban the feature of creating new pages in Chinese WP for a while? --Samuel 18:11, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism in Chinese Wikipedia

Hello,

the chinese Wiki is experincing massiv vandalism with a bot and a proxy again. Please help.--Philopp 18:13, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Please ban the IP addresses rang from 210.139.252.1 to 210.139.252.255. --Samuel 18:17, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
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