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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump. Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Circumcision discussions and Robert Brookes

It should be noted that an Rfc/Robert Brookes is underway:

The Salem trials were never this good. I came to wikipedia as a result of a rallying cry, I came across (from an anti-circumcision list) to prevent the deletion of the genital integrity article. To my horror I noted that each and every circumcision related article had been hijacked by the anti-circumcision activists and filled with their POV and links. Of interest was that this demonstrable garbage had somehow been sold as NPOV and was now being protected as such by those resident wikipedians who share their peculiar interest in the foreskin. Their tenacity and commitment to this purpose has been self evident. There is no way that these articles will ever approach NPOV as long as genuine wikipedians remain ignorant as to the key issues relating to the anti-circumcision debate. The first rule, (which I don’t expect any genuine wikipedian to acknowledge now, but may reflect upon later), is that you cannot negotiate with monomaniacal fanatics and no purpose is served being “nice” to them as it is interpreted as “weakness”. Their posting tactic of “two steps forward and one step back” serves their agenda well and has no counter from among the “Hobbits” of wikipedia. I am all for NPOV. I wish for nothing more than NPOV articles and am outraged at the blatant hi-jacking of wikipedia by these fanatics. I must state that I am also outraged at the naivety of the genuine wikipedians who seem so inept in countering this obvious POV. So have your Salem trial. Burn your “witch” then. But after the smoke has cleared two facts will still remain. The monomaniacal anti-circumcision fanatics will still be here pushing their POV and the wikipedians will still be too gutless to stand up to prevent it. - Robert Brookes 01:54, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Can you at least reply to the message I left you on your talk page? --Ardonik.talk() 01:56, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Note that Robert has systematically removed scientific information from circumcision-related articles when a paper, digitized in full, was so much as hosted on a website against circumcision (CIRP.org). He has also made interesting edits like this one, and is currently listed on Wikipedia:Requests for comments for his insulting behavior towards other users. Virtually all his edits have been to circumcision-related articles. If you look at User talk:Robert Brookes, you will find a long message from me to him in which I kindly explained to him the problems with his behavior. He never responded.

Wikipedia is a ridiculously democratic/anarchistic place, to the extent that trolls and POV pushers are tolerated for months on end until our dispute resolution mechanisms kick into gear, and even then consequences are mild because of the way committees work (lowest common denominator). Heck, one of our most persistent vandals/trolls who has insulted dozens of users, inserted huge amounts of inaccurate information and created tons of fake identities has been unblocked because blocking him affected too many other users on AOL. To speak of the happenings on Wikipedia as a witchhunt is like equating a heated discussion in a bingo club with Stalin's Great Purges. The Salem witches weren't burned, by the way, they were hanged. See Salem witch trials for more information.--Eloquence*

Well, are they referred to as "skin freaks"? I don't know, but it doesn't seem unlikely, and he did say that it's an "unkindly" usage. -- orthogonal 04:15, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This was not a usage description. There is a big difference between "are unkindly known as ..." and "are unkindly referred to as ... by ...". How does "Christians are unkindly known as Jesus freaks" sound to you? That term gets" 22000 hits, can we add it to Christianity? "Skin freaks" in this context gets 42 Google hits, the first one being Wikipedia.

Even with proper NPOV language, this does not belong in an encyclopedia article. There's a difference between encyclopedic knowledge - e.g. "the views with regard to this fetish are shar

ply divided among the adherents of pro- and anti-circumcision views" (please don't add this without some actual evidence) - and slur words that are merely inserted to push a particular point of view. Only in a context of a long history of discrimination (e.g. homosexuality), such information may be of interest.

I find it seriously disturbing that I have to explain this to you.--Eloquence*

• Having read the history of the Foreskin fetish article would it not be fair to expect you to explain here and on the articles discussion page why you reacted the way you did to a seemingly trivial comment about "skin freaks". It would be appreciated if you would take the time to clear the air on this matter as your aggression may well have served to polarize attitudes and thus undermine the NPOV process. - Friends of Robert 23:36, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Units for speed (for Hurricane data)

There is a discussion in the "Hurricane watching community" about the best way to write down the units for speed (see Talk:Hurricane Ivan (2004)), given by the National Hurricane Center. We are thinking of following their lead: miles per hour = "mph", and kilometers per hour = "km/hr". Any input? — Awolf002 15:44, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've never seen "hr" before. Why not use h as in mph? Km/h is much preferred to me (European) [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 16:05, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The current format, by the way, is "mi/h" and "km/h". I support continuing this, but lots of people like "mph", and yes, that is the most familiar form in the States. I guess the question is, if we change "mi/h" to "mph," do we change "km/h" to "kph"? And should the change occur? Ahh, the small details that we discuss here. --Golbez 16:21, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with using "mph" and "km/h" side by side. T-bomb 16:52, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'd never seen mi/h before I saw it in these hurricane pages. Americans certainly use mph for everything and mi/h would need translation. Elf | Talk 17:05, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Please do not use 'kph', 'km/hr', or even 'Km/h'. The official form is 'km/h'. It is all lower case. Even all the American car speedometers that I have seen use that form. One of the sucesses of metric units is that symbols are standardised in all countries and all languages. The symbols don't have to match local language and that is why they are not called abbreviations, just as 'Hg' is the symbol for mercury even in English. So there is no need for editor to debate whether to use 'kph' 'kmph', 'km/hr', or 'kms/hr' in English, and 'ch/o', 'cao', or 'calo' in Italian etc. This debate probably belongs in the Manual of style talk pages. Any time you are wondering about metric symbols, just look it up at the official SI website. The information is also right here on Wikipedia. Bobblewik  (talk) 17:09, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

So, km/h remains km/h. That's settled. Perhaps we should change mi/h to mph, then. Though I still think we should do everything in cubits. --Golbez 17:21, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

Right, I just noticed Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and it's clearly "km/h". Sorry for missing that. Still, "mph" would be okay? Awolf002 17:45, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Should use km/h and mph. It doesn't matter if the latter isn't so official as that system isn't so... precise anyways... (don't hit me!) Seriously though, anything but mph looks odd. zoney ▓   ▒ talk 17:59, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree mph is what people actually use in practise. So we should use it. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 21:23, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Nah, maxims per centon… oh felgercarb, what is the fracking conversion? [[User:Anárion|АПА́ДІОП]] 22:16, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Since Hurricanes spend most of their life at sea, perhaps the non-SI unit should be knots, although given the number of times I see people referring to knots per hour, maybe that isn't such a good idea :-) dramatic 23:05, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the input! Awolf002 01:49, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Arrogancy

I get anything done anymore because much of the time is spent arguing. Having trouble with Nazi 25-point program. Mihnea Tudoreanu, AndyL, Rorro, keep on deleting this paragraph:

This program is the synthesis of Pan-Germanism, collectivism, egalitarianism and pseudo-liberal currents. Moreover, this program was anti-Habsburg, anti-monarchical, anti-clerical, and anti-feudal. In demanding plebiscites for all important decisions, it showed itself to be nominally democratic. The plan attacks all hierarchies; capital, clergy and hierarchic nobility. The Jews were especially singled out because they were seen as the "rising aristocracy of capital" (Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, founder of the Pan-European movement, repeatedly called them this.). As in all levelling tendencies, all "elites" and hierarchies were to be done away with.

This is a paraphrase from a book by an Austrian German who was born there, and as an understanding of all the political currents of his own country. What I am to be led to beleive that these people, Mihnea Tudeoreanu, AndyL, Rorro, know more about Austrian National Socialism's 25-point program than a political science scholar and an Austrian to boot that came up with the referenceing of the orginal program in the first place.

They delete without putting forward any references no modern scholarship and yet want me to defend the material after I done quoted from a book? Who the hell are these people? Where do these people get their arrogance from? I am just flabergasted at the arrogance. I am tired of arguing with these people.WHEELER 15:37, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Why don't you try adding it back with the phrasing "According to X, an Austrian German scholar who was born there, ..."? It seems to me that when you remember to cite sources, a lot of NPOV disputes (and correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be the problem here) just go away. T-bomb 16:49, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hi WHEELER, please get your details right before doing bulk reversals. There is no Czechoslovakia any more, so the formulation "modern Czech Republic" must stay. -- Pjacobi 17:04, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Copyright and the GFDL

Hmm. I notice Wikimedia doesn't require users to transfer copyright upon submission. At the same time, the GFDL has some serious flaws, especially when it comes to programming manuals, because example code cannot be used in GPL or proprietary programs. So if a better license comes along, say GFDL 2, Wikipedia and its relatives are stuck with the original GFDL, right? Isn't this a serious issue? --hN (10 Sept.)

Yes, it's a serious issue, but to fix it would require getting permission from nearly all the authors. It's probably too late. anthony (see warning) 14:49, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What about this?

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.

[[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 16:08, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If and when GFDL 2 does come along, this will be one of the big issues it addresses, so there is no hurry. If we can do this now (and I can't see any great problem but IANAL) we can do it quite as easily when GFDL 2 does come along. Andrewa 21:20, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Wikipedia copyright notice uses, and, as far as I know, has always used "1.x or any later version". The first revision of Wikipedia:Copyrights [1] used "1.1 or any later version". Guanaco 01:04, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Good point! Andrewa 13:31, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Proposed alterations to the Arbitration policy

I've knocked up a few proposed alterations to the Arbitration policy - thoughts?
James F. (talk) 03:21, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As a body reporting to the Wikimedia Foundation Board, which has the ability to direct the Committee to reach a verdict or otherwise act in a particular way, the Committee has no jurisdiction over the members of the Board.

This sentence is somewhat confusing. I also disagree with the implication. The Committee reports to the board as a whole. This doesn't imply that the board has no jurisdiction over the individual members. If this is a way the Committee wishes to limit itself, it should set such a limitation directly, not try to claim that it follows naturally.

Presumably this is a result of the attempts to arbitrate against Jimmy Wales. I think that is a significantly different scenario than an attempt to arbitrate against other board members, as Jimmy Wales has individual veto power over the Committee, not merely collective veto power through the board. anthony (see warning) 12:29, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would agree with Anthony. Furthermore, I think ArbCom would be ruling on their behavior as Wikipedia editors, not their behavior as Board members. Zocky 12:50, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Arbitrators will reject a case if one week has passed without this occurring AND four or more Arbitrators have voted not to hear it. to The Arbitrators will reject a case if four or more Arbitrators have voted not to hear it.

What is the purpose of this change? I don't think cases should sit in Arbitration limbo potentially forever. anthony (see warning) 12:33, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think you misread it. As I read it, the new wording says that a case can be rejected in less than a week, nothing else.

Yep, you're right. anthony (see warning) 13:23, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wired Magazine Journalist's thoughts on Wikipedia

Lore Sjoberg, a journalist at Wired Magazine (and who is mentioned at Lightbulb joke) has an entry on his [site] about Wikipedia and specifically the VfD pages, which he finds "endlessly fascinating". Nothing too earth shattering, although he classes Wikipedia as a guilty pleasure equal to Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion. --Roisterer 02:24, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Highly recommended reading to all who are involved in the many debates on whether VfD should change, and how to achieve it either way. Andrewa 03:52, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Page duplication, un-duplicated

At about 19:46 today some sections on this page were duplicated. I've fixed this now; some discussions have been merged from where they diverged in the two copies. Sorry if I've missed anything. AlexG 20:11, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A closer look suggests it was 18:46, 15 Sep 2004 Cohesion (Google/Yahoo Search). -- orthogonal 20:16, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I must have got confused with all those huge diffs. (My edit summary is different again, aargh!) And I forgot about the time zone (19:46 is my 18:46). AlexG 20:27, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I had a strange one a few minutes ago. I edited a section of the pump and the result I saw was that there were now two copies of the section, one with the changes and one without. I didn't look to see whether this was the only damage, or even whether the damage was real or just my view of it. I simply reverted to the previous version and then redid my edit without further problems, see the history for details. Andrewa 21:09, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've had this happen a number of times in the past, but I thought the bug was fixed (hasn't happened to me in a while). anthony (see warning) 04:34, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I just removed a large duplicated section that I think may have appeared randomly after one of my edits. violet/riga (t) 21:40, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Oops, i was editing a section, and there was an edit conflict somewhere out of section, it bumped me up to editing the whole page, i made my small edit and hit save. I wasn't aware of that bug so i didn't check for duplication or anything. [[User:Cohesion|cohesion ☎]] 06:25, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Good/bad idea to require a class to submit articles as a writing assignment?

I'm teaching a course on the social aspects of computer security, and my students (bright computer science students, mostly) need to write a paper. I'm trying to expose them to real-world, collaborative writing (as an alternative to the standard college paper), and the thought occurred to me that I could do this by requiring them to create a Wikipedia article on some aspect of computer security that isn't covered (there are quite a few of these). I would require them to read the essential how-to articles (e.g., on NPOV) and submit the draft to me before posting. One problem from the outset would be that they would have to understand the intellectual property concerns... I don't think I could do this unless they all assented, for one thing. What other concerns spring to your mind about this? Is it overall a terrible or perhaps a good idea?

Many thanks Bryan Pfaffenberger University of Virginia

See Wikipedia:School and university projects. Rmhermen 16:59, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

Something that's not covered in the above page and I've always wondered about, what do Profs think of the concept that a required assignment involves the release of work into the public domain? (or near enough, via GFDL) I mean, what if some student didn't want to do so? -Vina 18:28, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I suppose the student would just hand over the work for marking, and it wouldn't get put on the Internet. Personally, I wouldn't be comfortable with making assessed work public, unless it was published anonymously - just for the sake of individual privacy. Since in this case Prof. Pfaffenberger is acting as a "filter", he could arrange for the articles to be put up in such a way that they couldn't be traced back to the individual student. My university (in the UK) claims copyright over all materials submitted for examination, so this may be an issue as well. AlexG 19:32, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Normal practice in the U.S. is that a student retains copyright over materials submitted for class assignments. Are you saying that in the UK you don't have copyright over your own dissertation?

Once you submit an exam paper, project, etc., the university owns it and you will probably never see it again. They also claim they can reproduce your work for their own nefarious purposes, like staff training or as an example to others. This is also the case for most public examinations (GCSE, A-level, etc.). Something like a PhD thesis might well be different, though. AlexG 20:49, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

On the more immediate topic, I think this computer security thing would be great, as long as everyone understands that their work will be "edited mercilessly" and possibly deleted if it doesn't meet our criteria. -- Jmabel 20:22, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

We JUST had a major invasion of a group of Dartmouth College students who made lots of additions of articles which became a major article of contention as to their noteworthiness. PLEASE, make sure they understand not to write about trivia, but about actual articles that they might expect to find in an encyclopedia. RickK 20:36, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

In general, I think this is a great idea, but I agree with User:RickK about the possible problem. If you think there are quite a few topics that need articles, it might help if you were to compile a list of them, and require preclearance of the topic if a student wants to write about something else. One point I'm not clear on is the role of the Wikipedia collaboration process as it relates to the course. Are the students graded on what they give you, and then they get whatever benefit they get from watching other people edit their work? You'd have a problem if you tried to base their grade on their participation in the subsequent editing, because it's quite possible that some articles will attract many contributors while others will just sit there in their original form. JamesMLane 08:26, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Instead of a list of article topics, perhaps just point them to the list of requested articles? [[User:Gamaliel|Gamaliel File:Watchmensmiley20.gif]] 18:39, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

First of all, welcome to Wikipedia! We're always glad when educators take an interest in our project, and are very glad you've arrived. I second RickK's comments and also ask you to remind your students that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and should be written in an encyclopedic style, not an essay style. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 20:55, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've been thinking of this myself but decided against it. Your idea of exposing them to "real-world, collaborative writing" sounds very interesting but if you ask that they give the draft to you before posting then that surely doesn't show collaboration as they will simply have written it by themselves. Further, as stated above writing a paper is somewhat different to writing an article for an ecyclopedia. The alternative I looked at was getting them to look at the history of a compsci topic and seeing how the article developed, writing about the changes made over time and, in particular, any disputes. However, finding such an article about which you could write a decent essay may be rather difficult. violet/riga (t) 21:31, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback!

• Wikipedia:School and university projects is excellent
• Copyright - Very important. At Univ. of Virginia, students, faculty, and staff own their creative works (with certain exceptions). Before I could ask my students to do this, I would need to educate them about the GFDL and, I think, obtain their written consent.
• Encyclopedia - Yes. They'd follow the guidelines, and they'd be graded on how well they implemented them.
• Real-world collaboration - what I had in mind was that the students would watch and comment on what happens after the articles are posted. Not every contribution would receive attention, of course, but my plan is that we'd share our experiences. My own experience with Wikipedia has been very positive - in fact, I don't think I really believed in collaborative writing before I started contributing to Wikipedia. I haven't liked every change, of course, but most of these were subsequently fixed by someone else.

Let me add, too, that I see this exercise as an opportunity to teach my students something about the virtues of open, free, disinterested discourse in science and scholarship. At many universities, particularly in science and engineering, it's increasingly common to hold back on publishing important new findings -- an act that could, after all, compromise one's ability to obtain a patent. At the same time, the Bush administration is pushing to impose limits on foreigners' access to scientific and engineering information. In this setting, asking students to do some work with Wikipedia might expose them to a value system that resembles that of traditional science and scholarship:

(1) Scientists and scholars should not try to profit personally from their work, but on the contrary they should make their research data, findings, and writings freely, openly, and globally available in the conviction that this will lead to the advancement of humanity; and

(2) Knowledge advances, not merely because of the achievements of individuals, but because their achievements are collaboratively amended, critiqued, annotated, sliced, diced, chopped, and reformulated by their colleagues and peers.

Rather like Wikipedia, huh?

Bryan Pfaffenberger University of Virginia

Now that should be quoted somewhere. Derrick Coetzee 14:46, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Pfaffenberger's manifesto says it all. I move its incorporated in the beginner's welcome page Apwoolrich 15:07, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Erroneous information

I have just reverted an anon who added fake names to the victims of Columbine High School Massacre. I hate to reopen an old can of worms, but this could easily have slipped through, and I think we can agree that it would have a serious effect on the credibility of Wikipedia. I know how attached everyone is to the principle of anonymous editing, but this reinforced to me just how vulnerable we are.

Maybe if there is anyone else out there who spotted these changes and can say "yes I would have reverted that if you hadn't done it first", then please say so here and reassure me. DJ Clayworth 15:47, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's not one of the articles I watch, but I do catch subtle things in the ones I do watch. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:12, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

It's on my watchlist and I would have certainly reverted it if you hadn't first, yes. There'd be no reason for someone to make those changes. I'd've probably googled them first. Good job. --Golbez 16:23, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

There's a well-known article where someone made sneaky vandalism to a dozen pages for a week and none were caught. This is hardly surprising considering the pages were very low profile, random pages with not many people watching them. My response to this is that important topics will be cleaned up quickly, while less important topics will be cleaned up eventually, and since a lot less readers see these, this is okay. Derrick Coetzee 17:18, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No. It is not okay. It is circular, self-fulfilling rationalization: if it wasn't cleaned up quickly then it couldn't have been important. There are bad articles that have been here for years than I am getting to "eventually". Wikipedia has very little credibility with me as a whole, despite many, many excellent individual articles. And I don't see any answer other than the observation that on the whole good fixes stick. Jallan 19:55, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia has about 0 credibility with me. But that's OK, because credibility isn't what I expect out of Wikipedia. For Wikipedia to have credibility it would have to stop allowing anonymous unapproved contributions. And that just isn't going to happen (nor should it). anthony (see warning) 04:51, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would hypothesize that the chance of something getting fixed is directly proportional to the number of people reading it. Important article? Within minutes, a dozen people will have read it and one will have fixed it? Obscure article? Might also take about a dozen viewers before it gets fixed, but it could take weeks. Either way, about the same number of people will have seen erroneous information, just over a different time span.

BTW, I would be astounded if the bulk of incorrect information in Wikipedia were due to deliberate vandalism. Many people are writing about topics where they are less than expert. I know I've made errors myself, especially in translation from languages in which I am less than fluent; I'd like to think I catch them pretty quickly (especially because I often ask for review), but the nature of this is that we are all publishing our rough drafts as well as our finished work. -- Jmabel 20:17, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

I agree on the reasons for most inaccuracy. It is not malicious. But POV is also part of it. It is interesting to note the occasional phenomenon of a dozen or so corrections made in some featured article only as soon as it becomes featured. I think part of the problem is there is too much encouragement in some of the Wikipedia style guides and help texts and so forth that an editor should just jump in with anything and leave it to others to fix things up. And if it is inaccurate, well that doesn't matter because someone will eventually clean it up. No-one normally comes back and takes the editor to task, because that's not the Wiki-way, as long as it seems like the editor was well-meaning, however incompetent. We do need some kind of editorial trust system. Jallan 21:12, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A standard for adding citations which aren't visible in the default skin would be nice. Eventually the goal would be to have a citation for every single sentence. But obviously this would have to be hidden from the casual reader. Certain citations (maybe "((http://whatever/))" instead of "[http://whatever/]") could be hidden using css markup. anthony (see warning) 04:46, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A couple of questions: Can you point me to a print encyclopaedia that gives a citation for every sentence? What would you do for citations of print sources? I also feel that too many articles on Wikipedia are simply unverifable, but a list of references at the bottom of the article is plenty. Filiocht 08:34, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We're not a print encyclopedia. Furthermore, our product is not geared only to end-users but also to the editors that create the content. A list of references at the bottom of the article is sufficient for an end-user of Wikipedia, but for an editor a much more organized list of citations is preferable. Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check describes a much more complicated version of this, and eventually we might want to get there, but in the mean time being able to add and view hidden citations would be nice. anthony (see warning) 16:51, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If you have a citation that should not be visible to non-editing readers, just stick it in a <!--comment-->. -- Jmabel 22:17, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

Unsigned comment

Hurricanes on the other side of North and South America. It's like they don't exist. And they seems rather large as well. Just my two cents.

I've raised this topic as well, and have been pondering creating a 2004 Pacific hurricane season when I have a few minutes of spare time. Might hunker down tonight and do that. Might want to confine it to East Pacific though, and leave West Pacific typhoon season to another page. --Golbez 16:22, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

Persistent linker

In the last day, someone has added a site called Bollywoodmasti to the Bollywood external links -- three times. I've also pruned it three times, and for good measure gone through all the links and pruned a chunk of them for just being celeb pics/ringtones/wallpapers sites, with little real information offered.

The site was added twice by the IP 193.69.113.22, and once by someone called Sagar Chandna, who seems to be completely new to Wikipedia, and might well be associated with the IP.

I've put a note up on the Bollywood talk page about the reason for the pruning. There's been no response by the poster, just the repeated attempts to post the link.

This seems to me to be an attempt to use Wikipedia for advertising. I would appreciate some advice on how to deal with a persistent advertiser, if that is what it is. I'm fairly new to Wikipedia myself and may not have followed the rules in dealing with this. Zora 10:28, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

These kind of people pop up all the time and are often infuriating. The only thing you can do is keep removing the links, and leave friendly but firm messages on the talk pages of the IP or registered user who's adding them. If they keep doing it list them on Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress so that further action can be taken (such as having an admin block them). — Trilobite (Talk) 11:01, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What's the best article title for flying fox?

We have no article in Wikipedia about the item of adventure play equipment known as a flying fox. There is of course an article flying fox on the several species of large bat which go by that name. So I'm wondering...

• Is there an article on the rope flying fox by another name that hasn't occured to me
• If not, what would be the best disambiguation name?

dramatic 07:56, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Tack a description of the game on the bottom of the bat article, with an HR (----) to separate it out. If there's enough material, then worry about what to call the new article. --Phil | Talk 09:49, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Phil; just leave this as part of flying fox for now, unless you plan on writing more than a stub (which would be great, by the way). Anyway, in my neck of the woods (Southeastern U.S.), there is such a thing as a ball-and-rope toy called a foxtail. (Unrelated to the cablecar-type toy, though.) • Benc • 15:22, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Good question. Flying fox used to redirect to megabat. I can't think of a good alternate article name for the small cablecar-like device, so I've had a go at a scheme that seems logical to me. Have a look at it. Andrewa 20:47, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

And the scheme has changed already... for the better. Have a look for how well a Wiki can work when everyone is prepared to be bold. Andrewa

Ah! I suddenly remembered that we have such a thing on this side of the globe, which we call a zip-line. We already have an article for it, so I'm going to do a merge/redirect. (After verifying that a flying fox == zip-line == aerial runway... can someone do so?) For the record, flying fox is a much more colorful name than either zip-line or aerial runway, which I'm guessing are American and British usages, respectively. :-) • Benc • 01:17, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Gargoyles page Needs Fixing.

Has no menu(/navigation/tool box, top menu) at the side and top does not appear. Could it be my IE6, settings or pc? --Jondel 06:33, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Works fine for me. --Tagishsimon

On my netscape its fine. not on my IE6. Maybe I accidentaly set preferences, etc.--Jondel 08:09, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Fine on Mozilla 1.0PR and IE6 on XP-SP2. So yes, I *think* it might be a client issue... --Tagishsimon

Google/Yahoo Search

I've noticed sometimes the full text search is handled by wikipedia servers, and other times a box is filled in to send you to google or Yahoo, it seems to be flipping back and forth a lot today. I personally prefer google over wikipedia servers, and it seems like that would be better for server load. I have heard other people say that google does a bad job of indexing wikipedia however. Could we have a compromise where the google and yahoo boxes are on the results page regardless of whether the wikipedia servers also do the search? [[User:Cohesion|cohesion ☎]] 04:48, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. Suggest it to the developers. Derrick Coetzee 17:26, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Done, thanks for showing me that :D [[User:Cohesion|cohesion ☎]] 18:46, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Naming Conventions - Public Limited Companies

Following some debate at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#Public limited companies as to whether articles about PLCs should be listed under colloquial names or legal names, there's the start of a structured debate leading to an informal vote at Talk:Public limited company. You're all invited along. As I write, the whole thing is in its infancy, but it's late. (At least, in the UK it's late. We've all gone to bed.) --Tagishsimon

Wikipedia format changes

Today I've noticed that there are some formatting changes that have been taking place around Wikipedia and they keep appearing and then going away. For example, under the article title, instead of saying "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" it has said just "From Wikipedia" or, as it is right now, nothing at all. On the recent changes page, instead of a lower case "m" to indicate a minor change, it's been showing a capital "M" sometimes. And the "Search results" page that comes up when you enter an article name that doesn't exist in the search box and press Go no longer has a link to create the article. What's going on?? --Chessphoon 21:17, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is an ongoing problem with the way messages are handled. Sometimes the MediaWiki: namespace messages (e.g. MediaWiki:Minoreditletter) are not used, and the software defaults are used instead (which in this case is a captial M). Angela. (based on an earlier reply by Kate) 21:52, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

User:SimonArlott's indiscriminate edits

User:SimonArlott unleashed himself on Wikipedia today and went around turning any link or reference remotely British into reference to United Kingdom. He stopped a while back. Here are examples of his mistake: [British Empire to United kingdom] and another (reverted) from [Boer War to United Kingdom]

How can all of this be undone? Left as it is, it will take a lot of time before it is corrected. Just take a look at his edits. There are so many of them that I even thought he was running a bot. --Ankur 19:05, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, if you've got the patience, you can go through his user contributions and find all of these. If we can get a solid consensus that this is enough of a problem to merit rolling back all of work he did in a particular period, it's relatively easy for an administrator to do that to any articles that have not had subsequent edits. I'm not willing to do that on one person's say-so, and would be a little hesitant to do it on a consensus that does not include Simon himself. -- Jmabel 21:38, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

I take back my demand of full revert. I talked with Simon. Some of his edits were correct. While those that I pointed and maybe more are wrong. I am afraid I can not go through all of them. Hopefully wrong ones will be corrected over time. --Ankur 21:46, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Holy Prepuce

On the main page, why does the Holy Prepuce look like the planet Saturn? func(talk) 15:16, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Er... it just disappeared. func(talk) 15:17, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I can't help but think, "Holy Prepuce, Batman!" -- orthogonal 15:36, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I take it that you have read the article. The reference to Saturn occurs in the 'Allegorical importance' section. I think someone expressed some copyright concerns over what was the lead image in the article, which might explain the brief appearance of Saturn on the front page -- Solipsist 17:51, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

English names

I'm a bit confused on the naming policy. We are supposed to use the names most familiar in the English world, yes? Which is why the article is at Germany, not Deutschland. Okay. But when DO we use the local names? For example, the article for the city is at Havana, but the article for the province surrounding the city is at La Habana Province. But, another province (actually, a special municipality) of Cuba, is at Isle of Youth, instead of the local form, Isla de la Juventud. Is there a rhyme or reason to this that I'm missing at 4am? Is it because the city of Havana is well-known to us gringos, but the province is not? I'm not suggesting we start renaming things (And I do think provinces and the like should retain local name, unless horribly ingrained in English), I'm just trying to figure out what the threshhold is! And the island, being a geologic feature, gets the standard English name? (which is why Mt. Fuji instead of Fujiyama, but Mont Blanc instead of White Mountain) Or is it simply more well known as the Isle of Youth? Any comments? (and no, this is not the time to discuss Kiev, Calcutta or Bombay. :P) --Golbez 08:42, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Often there is no real sense, especially when names are known by an English from and a native form. One test is to use Google. Set it to search in English only, then search on both forms of the name. Sometimes searches of the type "Montreal -Montréal" and "Montréal -Montreal" are best as they find only pages that have either one form or the other, not both. The hyphen tells Google to omit hits of pages that contain the form following the hyphen. Sometimes you need to add other keywords (such as the name of the country) to avoid getting references to the same name not applied to the particular place you are concerned with.

The resulting count alone sometimes makes it obvious which is by far the most common form used in English. If the counts are close to being equal (which I have not seen happen much), check the kinds of articles that come up. Does one spelling seem to occur more often in older literary references and the other more often in current news stories? If there is nothing to really break the tie, then either can be justified as the name of an article. In that case, I would tend to go with more official and pedantic usage, to use the local name, with the English name as a redirect. And within articles one should probably often use both forms on first mention, putting one form in brackets or in quotation marks if it is the normal English translation of a non-English form.

Jallan 14:25, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Gender neutral pronouns

Discussion moved to: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Gender-neutral pronouns

User:Vapier is going around changing instances of "he or she" to "he" with edit summaries of the gender neutral form in English is "he". This is something that is somewhat controversial, so I was surprised to find nothing in the Manual of Style discussing this. Is there anywhere where what we do in this case has been discussed? —Morven 04:39, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

So is User:Smrits; I've invited him or her over here to join the chat. --Ardonik.talk() 18:37, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

I'm going to make a prediction that not enough people would agree with Vapier's changes for consensus within the WP community, so she or he shouldn't be doing it. func(talk) 04:46, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I am OK with either "he" or "he or she" -- but I reserve the right to chop off the fingers of anyone using singular-they or (shudder) sie/hir ;) →Raul654 05:00, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Why? It is perfectly acceptable. There was an attempt by 18th century prescriptive grammarians to ban it, but they failed. I doubt you are any more likely to succeed. Filiocht 07:49, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's "he" or, if you want to be PC about it, "they". Simple enough. :-)

James F. (talk) 05:16, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Exactly. [[User:Anárion|Åℕάℛℹℴη]] 08:58, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is an important hole to fill in the Manual of Style, I think. I've moved the discussion above to the MoS talk page; please add additional comments there. • Benc • 05:51, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I suggest the use of singular they; it's been in use for a long long time, and is unambiguously part of the English language. Usually not confused with they (plural) because of context, and even so, a small price to pay for not interrupting the flow of an article with coarsely applied PC. zoney ▓   ▒ talk 12:40, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Actually, "he" is technically still the indeterminate gender. However, usage always determines meaning, and so it is safe to say that it is only technically the indeterminate gender pronoun. Therefore, the best solution, far and away, is a compound form "he or she" and "she or he," as there is no number or orthographic disjunction. "They" is not a proper solution, as it violates number. "S/he" (or the flippant "S/h/it") is a grapheme and not a phoneme (you can't say the word). Feigned rediscovery of Anglo-Saxon hasn't support and would confuse readers (and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, rather than an advocacy journal). Using "the" is acceptable, although it can make the prose rigid. Geogre 12:49, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have no basis for this speculation, so please correct me if I'm off the mark, but wasn't "you" also at one time a plural pronoun (and violate number when used in the singular)? I'll admit I kind of like using "they" in a singular context, though there are times when it's definitely inappropriate (e.g. The doctor is out; they went to lunch). T-bomb 14:43, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Indeed it was, although also used as formal second person singular (as French vous/ Spanish usted). The informal form was thou. Languages change over time or they die. Filiocht 14:58, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I never understood why people are ashamed of using the word it, which is the gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun. 80.58.23.107 14:47, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It is not gender free in the sense of not distinguishing between nouns that have gender. It is gender free in the sense of standing for nouns that have no gender, a common enough group in English. 'The doctor is out; it went to lunch.' is nonsense. 'The car is here; it's waiting outside.' is unexceptional. 'Someone called when you were out. They said they'd ring back.' is also unexceptional IMHO. Filiocht 14:59, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

So my prediction has come true, there is no consensus, so Vapier shouldn't be going around and implemting a global change to articles he has no edit history with. func(talk) 15:28, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, they shouldn't be doing that :-) zoney ▓   ▒ talk 15:35, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

See also: m:Quest for gender-neutral pronouns and its talk page. Angela. 22:01, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

In my opinion the theys have it. It makes sense when the word they (or their) is used in the context and whilst I am vehement opponent of Political Correctness, the word does not exclude either gender in its usage: i.e.: "If a man or woman disagrees with the use of the word they as a gender-neutral personal pronoun then they are entitled to hold their view - however that does not make their view correct." --JohnArmagh 11:02, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Definitely; I think the singular or abstract they is one of these things that has been in an undercurrent of the language all along; it isn't a matter of making it gender-neutral singular, because for many native speakers it always has been. It's silly to overlook it in favour of clumsy artificialities. Along with the thou/you analog, I also liken it to the editor's (or royal) "we", used when the first person is somehow not quite an "I".

Having said that, I think in formal writing I'd prefer to recast the sentance, perhaps to use plurals.

To carry on with "he" as gender-neutral is, I think, a losing cause. It's just too tied up in the assumption that any given protagonist may be presumed to be male.

At least let's be glad that nobody seems to be proposing "s/he". Sharkford 15:21, 2004 Sep 16 (UTC)

These recent comments need to go here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Gender-neutral pronouns. Filiocht 15:28, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

How do I reform Wikipedia?

In my time at Wikipedia I've noticed several broken aspects of Wikipedia policy (for details, see User:AaronSw/Policy_comments). As a key example, take the deletion mechanism. There is apparently no good reason to delete pages on a Wiki (assuming a minor software fix to treat empty pages as deleted for purposes of link color and such), but yet Wikipedia continues deleting pages.

This has actively harmful consequences: Content gets deleted. People leave Wikipedia. (It's very close to getting me to leave Wikipedia and when I griped about this to a friend, he responded that he left Wikipedia after a page he worked on was deleted.) And so on.

So is there any way to get rid of the current deletion policy, or other disagreeable parts of Wikipedia? Do I just need to convince Jimbo? Take a vote? Build consensus here? What do I do? AaronSw 01:03, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There have been many proposed theories about how to reform the deletion policy, but none (to my knowledge) have ever proposed not deleting pages at all. Some reasons for why some articles have to be deleted are explained at Wikipedia:Deletion policy and Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion, both of which I suggest you read. [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 01:51, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There will always be a need to delete articles as we aim to be an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, nor a cookbook nor a blog nor a random collection of random ramblings of random contributors. Rmhermen 01:54, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

The idea of displaying links to blank pages in the same way as links to non-existent pages has been suggested before, see m:Pure wiki deletion system (proposal). There is a camp which is in opposition to the idea. To effect change on Wikipedia, you need to have an understanding of the politics and power here. You need to convince the majority of the users, and it helps to get a few influential people on board, such as Jimbo. You have to understand the nature of the developer roadblock, or else you'll be frustrated. Most developers are averse to controversy, they generally won't write something likely to be controversial even if they agree with it. The easiest way to get around this in my opinion is to learn how to program. -- Tim Starling 02:22, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

I comment only on User:AaronSw/Policy comments#Deleting pages. Do you honestly feel that no page, no matter how ridiculous its content, ought to be truly deleted from this collaborative work? I ask this because your opinion echoes that of a number of Wikipedians who have become disgusted with VfD in recent weeks. The protests against VfD have manifested themselves in various ways; some users have removed subst:vfd from articles while they were being deliberated upon, while others have unlisted articles there without seeking consensus. Still others regularly chastize those who do not vote to keep, gleefully lecturing them on what they should have done instead; one even proposed an "autokeep" template for people who would like to unconditionally keep all articles listed on VfD without further deliberation. So I find it hard to read your proposal to never delete any page, regardless of its content, as anything but another attempt to subvert VfD. (Or, rather, I can see that VfD would clearly become a casualty of war if such a proposal were implemented.)
We all know that VfD has its flaws. It's bulky, it's confrontational, many articles that are put on there shouldn't be. But for all its flaws, VfD works, and results in the cleanup or wholesale removal of hundreds of articles each month. I'm new to the internal politics around here, having only joined your ranks in June, but I am impressed with the process.
I see much of the objection to the present deletion policy as part of the inevitable holy war between Meta:Inclusionism and Meta:Deletionism. I find it healthy, and as such, I don't see anything drastic enough to warrant a change in any policy. Nobody ever wins a holy war. Time spent trying to reform a functional deletion policy would be better spent trying to invigorate WP:CU and WP:PNA so they could churn out high-quality articles at a faster rate than WP:VFD excised the lowest-quality ones. I am guilty as charged on this front--I've only formally cleaned up one article so far, but I've voted for or against the deletion of hundreds. But the regular cadre of volunteers at VfD mean well. They--and I--just want to make this a work that we can all be proud of. --Ardonik.talk() 03:00, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

I hate to be blunt and rude, but I personally feel that anyone foolish enough to believe that there is no point in deleting an article from Wikipedia needs to take a break and spend a decade or two in the real world. Johnleemk | Talk 08:33, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Just a hunch, but this odd "no good reason to delete pages on a Wiki" rant might not be unconnected with the current VfDing of List of left-wing organizations in the USA, started and tended by Aaron. Most voters appear to think it is a POV mishmash of groups that neo-cons hate, or groups that liberals love. Many voters appear to think the premise of the article is just very very stupid indeed. That, I guess, would be one reason why things like this get deleted. That seems healthy to me; I find the POV in the article offensive and think it reflects very badly on Wikipedia. Sooner it is gone the better. --Tagishsimon

I think there may be a distinction being lost here between deletion of certain content (blanking pages, removing certain content) and deleting pages (deleting their history). It does seem there could be a case for this. Intrigue 17:35, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I think that it depends on our goals. If our goals are to be the World Wide Web in miniature, then we should let everything in. If we want to be an encyclopedia on the web, we have to delete things that don't fit in an encyclopedia. If we want to demonstrate to the world that a cooperative system of voluntary contribution and editing can rival peer reviewed and proprietary systems like the old Britanica, then we have to delete things, and sometimes users. We can be nice about it, and we must be deliberative about it, but we can't say that the mission takes a back seat to feelings. There are web sites out there where people can post their opinions of anything. This project, though, is still a project, still devoted to becoming a valuable and, as much as possible, reliable resource to the world. Geogre 18:02, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There still seems to be an important distinction being lost between removing content that is not appropriate and deleting pages. Why does not wanting to delete a page get equated with wanting to fill WP with any type of crap? If I create Blueberry iMac, and fill it with crap, you don't have to delete the page to remove the content and redirect it to iMac. Intrigue 22:36, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Why not move pages to the contributor's userspace instead of deleting them? This would certainly hurt people's feelings less, and it would preserve the contents that might acquire some value in some future revision. -- Etz Haim 22:52, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If we want to be an encyclopedia on the web, we have to delete things that don't fit in an encyclopedia. Deleting things that don't fit in an encyclopedia doesn't have to involve deleting pages. You'd really have to elaborate on that point a lot to come up with an argument for deletion of pages. I agree we should, in some rare cases, be hiding pages from search engines and anyone not explicitly looking for the pages, but even then I see no reason to disallow editors from seeing the history and restoring the pages if they disagree. Whether you want to call that "deletion" or not, well, that's up to you. In some sense articles are only "deleted" when we happen to lose the backup. They just happen to be hidden from anyone not deemed worthy of adminship. anthony (see warning) 05:16, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Chinese language translation issues

I've just noticed that the Chang Jiang (Yangtze) is literally the "long river" and that the Huang He is literally the "yellow river". Since they seem to share no character in common, are there multiple Chinese characters that are all best translated as river in English or are we just fudging the translations somewhat... in which case the qualification of said translations as "literal" is inappropiate. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 17:14, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Jiang and He both mean river. - Nat Krause 17:51, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Jiang in general, is bigger than He. (At least, when it enters the ocean.) The problem is that in these two particular instances, historical naming takes precedence. Huang He was settled around Xi'an and Xiangyang (btw, why does Xi'an have that '?) at which point the river is not quite wide enough to be called a Jiang. On the other hand, the Yangtze was settled more in the east (Shanghai area), where it was wider. So it rated a Jiang. At least, that's how it was explained to me. -Vina 06:07, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Major Minor

Did the m for minor become M for minor, on Recent changes? Or am I hallucinating? Assuming I'm not, let me express my view that m is more appropriate for minor than is M. --Tagishsimon

****. They're back to m again. <checks into the priory> --Tagishsimon

It's a software problem. Can't be helped, sadly. Johnleemk | Talk 14:49, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Apparantly M is the software standard, so when there is a problem loading the custom m, it automatically replaces it with the upper case M. I posted this on the Village Pump a few days ago. Darksun 19:42, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Downloading images

The images tarball (available here) hasn't been updated since July 2. Can someone do this? anthony (see warning) 14:16, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You might get a faster response if you ask this in #mediawiki since it needs a developer. Alternatively, there is the non-development tasks for developers page, but I don't know how often they check that. Angela. 14:27, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

AAH!!!

I just finished a fresh install of Windows and don't have any browser other than IE so far (sux, don't it?). Why is my User sig green (the part that says Ilyanep in random greek letters)? It's supposed to be grey-ish. Is this a web-safe color violation or something? Or did monobook.css change recently? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:43, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Looks grey-ish even in MSIE my mistake: I forgot I had changed the app path of iexplore.exe to Firething with an IE skin. Have you checked your videocard drivers? [[User:Anárion| (Anárion)]] 22:45, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's green on my computer but if you change the color in the font tag from "grey" to "gray" it should show up as gray. --Chessphoon 22:46, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I use MSIE 6 (no SP1 yet tho, I'm crazy aren't I?) and it does look green to me. BTW, my drivers are fine (Catalyst 3.8, however I am going to download 4 soon). Thanks for the advice, Chessphoon. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:49, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

How's this look? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:50, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC) Normal

It's gray again! I'm on SP2 by the way. --Chessphoon 22:53, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Your sig has always looked bright green to me (MSIE 6.0 on XP). Now that you've switched from color="grey" to color="gray", it's properly grey. :-)

Apparently some versions of MSIE aren't aware of American and British English differences, and when it sees a color name it doesn't recognize, it looks for a substring match (grey → green). • Benc • 23:21, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The correct HTML color keyword is "gray". "Grey", as far as a browser is concerned, is not even a word, so they can treat it however they want. I imagine many of them work around the problem by making "grey" == "gray" (they get to choose what "grey" is, as it's not defined). —Rory ☺ 12:12, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Please, for the sake of doing what is best for humanity and its posterity, stop using Microsoft products!!! ;-) func(talk) 00:36, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Func is joking but in all seriousness since I switched to firefox I've never looked back. It is a much better browser.It's small, fast, free, and runs on windows. Well worth giving it a go Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 08:18, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As is Opera, of course! Apwoolrich 08:43, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It depends on your needs. Some people want a Swiss army knife. Others want a knife where you can add/remove extra stuff as necessary. If you're of the latter group, Firefox [2] will suit you fine. If you're not, Opera or the Mozilla Suite's your best bet. But as a webmaster, I can state that MSIE users are holding the web back, because MS only supports CSS 1, which is annoying when CSS 2 can even replace Javascript in some places. Johnleemk | Talk 08:47, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

AFAIK, no browser supports full CSS2 (not even Amaya), although MSIE for Mac was the first to achieve better than 99% support for CSS1. Recent versions of MSIE are just a little bit worse in their CSS2 support than competing browsers (though admittedly, the things MSIE fails to support are frequently important). -- Wapcaplet 18:35, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Amaya has less support for CSS2 than most browsers actually. Opera 7.5 supports most of CSS2, and all of the current CSS2.1 CR. (Although there remain a few bugs.) [[User:Anárion|Åℕάℛℹℴη]] 20:13, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Finally got Firefox 0.9.3 — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 01:33, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Safari for the Mac!!! Oh... um, what was the question? ;-) func(talk) 05:01, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As long as it's not IE (I don't even remember how the discussion got to browsers...) — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 05:48, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've recently switched to Mozilla (not Firefox) from IE, entirely because I needed a break from the perenial problems Wikipedia gave on both IE5 and IE6. It's working well but I'm not at all comfortable with the decision. I'm guessing that most of our readers use IE, and that many of them have no real choice. IMO our default skin should support IE well. It doesn't, and IMO one of the reasons it doesn't is that so many of our movers and shakers use other browsers, and now I've joined them. Now if I wreck the articles I edit so far as IE users go, I won't even notice. Food for thought? Andrewa 12:37, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In principle, I agree: Wikipedia shouldn't become a participant in the lingering Browser Wars, but on the other hand, every concession made to IE is another step backwards for Internet technology: MS simply doesn't choose to move forward on any technology until they are absolutely forced to by competition. If websites had followed the notion of always supporting the absolute least common denominator, we wouldn't even have animated gifs today, let alone CSS2. func(talk) 16:36, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Copyright question

Some copyright images at Wikipedia are obtained with permission for non-commercial use with link to the provider. Can these images be modified? --Ankur 07:34, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I wouldn't have thought so. Working on the principle that all rights are reserved unless otherwise stated, it seems that if the copyright holder has explicitly granted only non-commercial use on the condition that a link is provided, there can be no assumption that they've granted the right to create derivative works. That said, if all it involves is compressing a huge file or something like that they are unlikely to even notice. Cropping a photo might be a different matter. You could try asking the copyright holder but this seems quite an effort to go to for images which are in any case likely to be deleted some time in the next few months. — Trilobite (Talk) 08:11, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Fewer and fewer people pay attention

I had seen that this was a recurring problem here at Wikipedia, but just now I came accross something that really tipped my boat. It appears that more and more users are so concerned with leaving their own mark in articles that they don't even pay any attention to what is happening around them, as long as it doesn't involve their own edits. Or even worse, they don't care. Before I go on, I'd like to make it clear that this is in no way directed to all users, we all know that there are quite a few people who spend a lot of time cleaning up other users's mess. Here is what happened: I was reading the article on the Concorde, and as I usually do, I also read the Talk page. There, at the bottom of the page, Fabiform made a note to something rather disturbing: two Wikipedia articles giving conflicting information about the same fact. That should had been fixed right away, but I was surprised to see that his remark was dated 21st of January 2004 - and I just found it, checked the facts and corrected the article that had the wrong data, almost eight months later! When I checked the article's history, however, I was even more surprised to see that the article had been edited quite frequently (the last edit had been only three days ago). So I wonder why the people who contribute to the article didn't catch the problem and fix it sooner. The conclusion I come to is that they simply are not concerned with anything other than their own edits. I mean, if someone had erased something they wrote, odds are they'd react immediately, but as long as that doesn't happen... and that's not about the people involved with the Concorde article, since, as I said before, this is a recurring problem, with all articles. Now, I'm sorry if I might have offended someone, but it concerns me that Wikipedia is becoming more and more a vehicle for people's vanity (again, this is NOT directed at all users, but the shoe should fit in quite a few people). Regards, Redux 02:41, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You're absolutely right, we need a better methodology for systematically checking the consistency of related articles. Maybe it's possible to combine that with the "to do" template system that is already used on many talk pages.--Eloquence*

Perhaps we need a centralised place where people can record they are dubious about a fact recorded in an article or set of articles. Those people who are interested in that sort of thing could then check this information and amend the article and talk page as necessary. What we really need is a way of adding the query to the talk page of the article and automatically generating the same question in the centralised repository. Perhaps it could be picked up by Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_Check :ChrisG 08:04, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

When editing a small part of an article a person shouldn't have to go through the entire thing to check the facts, or, sometimes, even the section edited. Though it would be beneficial if people could it must surely be better that people are encouraged to do minor edits than to moan at people that don't background check every detail of things they haven't added. violet/riga (t) 08:58, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That's exactly the point. If you are going to contribute to an article, one would expect the contributor to have read it (at least the first time) and, of course, that he understands something about the topic at hand. And by "read" I also mean the Talk page and even the History page of any given article, otherwise we can easily get chaotic editing, which can entail edit wars and compromise the quality of the article. If people are so eager to edit that they don't even take the time to know what exactly is that they are editing &#150; and it's just about putting in what they want to put in &#150; it will likely lead to poor writing in articles (who hasn't read an article where the text just didn't work as a whole, or where certain passages looked like they were just shoved in there - because they were - ?) and, in some cases, even to a situation like that in the Concorde article I mentioned. And there's an even worse scenario: people actually do that but they just don't care, because, as I said, it's not their own edits. And in the example I gave, someone had pointed out the problem, spelled it out, so either no one saw it because they just didn't read or they saw it but chose to ignore it. Either one, the result was the same: an inconsistency that makes all of us, Wikipedians, look bad (one word: credibility. If we can't get our facts straight, why should people believe what they read on Wikipedia? Understand, the occasional visitor neither knows nor cares that we function in cliques, or that some users are more dedicated than others). In short, if one can take the time to edit, one can take the time to read. Regards, Redux 15:49, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• I have to agree that this is a problem, especially the apparent fact that many contributors don't read an article before editing it; thus we end up with out-of-place factoids, errant paragraphs and other things that break up the continuity. I usually notice it with pages on my watchlist, most especially ones I've contributed heavily to. This edit, for instance, I caught and fixed just a few minutes later. In another article, a contribution was well-intentioned and mostly useful, but since I had written much of that article, as well as a related one, I had a better idea of where the information should go. When things like this occur to articles that I in some way consider "my" articles, I try to tidy it up and incorporate whatever was added, but sometimes a simple reversion is in order because an editor didn't read the whole article, or related articles, before putting in redundant information. Perhaps we could have some kind of informal "adopt-an-article" system, whereby we can each keep an eye on an article that's important to us? With so many regular contributors, each with their own watchlist, I'm sure this effectively happens already, but it might be handy to know who has adopted various articles, and which articles are neglected orphans. Perhaps just a note in the talk page - "I've adopted this article" with signature. And of course, being broad-minded people, we believe it's okay for an article to have many foster parents :-) -- Wapcaplet 16:45, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You have read my mind! That's exactly what I was thinking of as a means of solving the problem, at least partially. But I would go a little further. Once someone has adopted an article, I believe that person should be "held accountable" for some stuff that just can't happen, such as allowing wrong information to be online for eight months! Especially when someone else was good enough to write on the article's talk page to let you know of the problem. I mean, usually when you check the History page, you easily identify those who regularly contribute to the article, which means that those people visit it regularly and have it on their watchlists, which makes them fully aware of any edit to the article or its talk page. And it's not only about problems. For instance,on quite a few instances, I've visited articles and had ideas that might help improve them, either in terms of content or layout, so I wrote them as suggestions on the talk pages. In most cases, I had no answer and it has been months &#150; and I mean any answer. I don't expect people to agree and accept what I propose, but since I took the time and an interest to try to help, it would be nice to have some feedback, even if to tell me that I couldn't be more wrong. Sure I could leave messages on anyone's user talk page, but really, if that person didn't care about what I had to say on the article's talk page, why would it be any different when I speak it up on the personal talk page? In the end, you end up with a clash of egos, which only contributes for nothing to get done. When I say "accountable", I'm not proposing a whitch hunt, that we set up the "Wikipedia Inquisition", but just that a relapse "article parent" get a note not from any individual user, but from the community, which would certainly add to the impact. As an extreme measure, the user could loose the condition of "parent" of that particular article, but no one would get banned, branded or anything like that. A similar procedure could be adopted in regards to people who make it a habbit to edit without paying any attention (in that case, we'd need clear rules and parameters to determine the existence of a pattern, that is, someone who always edits without thinking first). Maybe this would inspire more responsibility and less vanity-driven edits. Regards, Redux 19:12, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I see all kinds of articles that I could give help to, sometimes with comments on the talk pages, sometimes years old. I can't get to a fraction of them quickly. There's too much that needs fixing. And I'm the kind of person who wants to fix things correctly, which sometimes means new articles to back up information in another article or to take some of the information from another article. I'd rather spend three or four hours and get the thing done right than slapdash a quick fix (which is sometimes wrong because I haven't remembered something properly).

Sometimes I see an erroneous information added to an article that I've worked on. But I'm working on other matters which I consider of equal importance or more importance. And sometimes that misinformation vanishes without my having to take a hand, sometimes removed by the same person.

Sometimes also, fixing an article means making related changed in other articles, sometimes adding or changing links or correcting related information or adding related information. I usually get into one of the other articles, make the change, and get out. I may spot other things that could be fixed in that article, but at the moment that is not the task I'm concerned with. And I often don't even look at the talk page in such cases. If I have twenty article that need slapdash fixes of this kind I am likely not to read in full even the section of the article that I am editing. Just remove or change the erroneous information or add a small reference and get out and on to the next article. In some cases the article as a whole may look very poor to me, but one thing at a time. I've got a hundred or so articles already in my mind that I know could use improvement. I am quite reasonably in such cases only concerned with my own edits.

But I don't want "official" parentage of any article and I certainly don't want to have to deal with an "official" parent of any article. And I generally don't put articles on my watch list, even when I've made a great number of changes to them or when they are mostly or entirely my work. I don't consider anything here to be "my" article. Change something if you think the change would be better. Or discuss on my talk page. But I've swooped down and blown away and chewed up other people's work without permssion and don't mind if that's done to my work if it improves an article. I don't feel I "own" any articles.

Jallan 15:40, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Currently, we surely have lots of de facto "parents" of articles -- people who review and check every single edit made to articles. This is a good thing. One problem is that it is entirely implicit -- there's no reliable way to tell whether the article you are currently reading is being overseen like this. Someone recently suggested that the number of people having the article on their watchlists be published, as a rough heuristic for how "well-maintained" it is; this might be useful. But even better is Wapcaplet's suggestion of signing "I've adopted this article" onto the Talk: page — this wouldn't mean that the "parent" had any official responsibility or accountability or ownership for that article. It would merely be a useful explicit statement of what already occurs implicitly. — Matt 16:08, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Jallan, by what you wrote I can see you have the right attitude. If everybody did as you described, we wouldn't have a problem. But this is not the case, and unfortunately your attitude is becoming more of an exception. I know that this system I've proposed is not ideal, but the English version of the Website is pushing towards 400 thousand articles, with thousands or registered users and who knows how many sporadic anon contributors. Without something like that system (maybe someone could come up with something better), I'm afraid the project will get stuck in a vicious circle. The idea, however, is not that everybody would be forced to parent one or more articles, rather this would be voluntary, so that those who wish it can remain as "rogue contributors" (I'm making this nomenclature up as I go along...), but as Wapcaplet pointed out, the "adoption" of articles by users is effectively already happening, as people tend to pay special attention to certain articles (that they created or contributed heavily to), and as he also said, there would be no exclusivity in this, several users could "adopt" an article. Furthermore, it would not be the case of having to "deal" with official article parents. Everybody would still be able to contribute freely, the "parent" would just be in charge of making sure that chaos doesn't set in &#150; or if it does, it would be up to the "parent" to put an end to it; a sort of "microadmin". The bottom line is: the project has grown past the point where it could be expected to develop smoothly on its own. It's history repeating itself: in the 19th century, a true liberal would find it preposterous that governments could identify people by numbers (social security) or that people would be forced to file early reports informing the government about every dime they've earned and spent (tax return). But now those things are normal and widely accepted, and that's because they are necessary, without such a system society just wouldn't be able to function properly. I'm afraid we at Wikipedia have reached that point. So far, we can still manage, but not for long. Regards, Redux 16:23, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This all reminds me of m:Article validation. --[[User:Eequor|ηυωρ]] 16:32, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the reference. I was not aware that such an effort was already underway, and it has already reached levels of technical complexity that I had not dared to dream. It's not exactly what I had proposed though, especially since I feel that this idea might be less complex to implement and maybe less polemical. But I've also come to the conclusion that it is not going to happen. Maybe I'm too skeptical, but I've been doing some thinking and I guess nothing is going to get done until we have indeed reached a point where there will just be no way but to implement some kind of system. Realistically speaking, all this talking I've been doing here will have been for nothing, unless I managed to convince someone like Mr. Wales. And even so it would be quite unlikely that something might actually happen, since Wikipedia aims at being as democratic as possible (which is good), and such a large scale, uncontrolled Democracy usually works reacting rather then anticipating &#150; so as I said, nothing will happen until complete chaos sets in. Regards, Redux 23:42, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• I don't think it'd be necessary to institute any official system or policy to handle this. Most of the policies we do have are quite loose and informal; to be otherwise would to my mind run counter to the philosophy that has built Wikipedia. You're not alone in predicting that a burgeoning article population will eventually lead to previously unanticipated problems, but to date the very nature of the wiki has helped us adapt to our own success. It's hard to know where Wikipedia is going--AFAIK, no experiment in productive, democratic anarchy has ever had such scope and growth potential. Maybe some day the creation of new articles will plateau--when the supply of new encyclopedic things to write about becomes smaller than those things already written about, if that is even possible--or when the technical capability and body of contributors stabilizes to something better equipped to handle the enormous amount of content we have. I often wonder if the sheer amount of time and energy that is expended on dealing with the internal politics of Wikipedia would be better used in simply making better articles, or if the politics that have developed are a necessary component of that very effort of improvement. Considering what we've created in the not-quite four short years since inception, I think Wikipedia has already defied all odds. I think it will continue to do so. -- Wapcaplet 04:15, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

And parenting can be as bad as it is good. One encounters the editor who insists an article or part of an article must contain a particular POV or particular information and will fight to the death to maintain it. Sometimes the person takes over an article mostly written by someone else, adding only a few changes to maintain a particular point of few. Then the person fights. This becomes that editor's turf. And, with so many problems in so many articles, so much else that needs doing, it is easy enough for people to defend such turf, right or wrong, by making any attempt to fix the article non-productive. After spending two days of fuitless debate while other articles that are in equally bad shape could have been fixed, why continue? And they can hold their turf forever, as long as they don't pull this nonsense much with too many people too rudely. Errors in articles and POV in articles are sometimes the direct result of parenting. Jallan 14:01, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Diff, Last

When one is looking at a user contributions page, why is there no diff or last link, like one gets when looking at a page's history? Is it because it would place too much of a strain on the server? Typically one wants to see the specific changes that were made, so it's frustrating to only have the hist link. func(talk) 23:25, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly the reason, but the current development version of MediaWiki fixes the problem by only calculating the revision numbers when you actually request a diff, hence causing less of a strain on the database. Credit for this goes to User:JeLuF. MediaWiki 1.4 should be released within the next few weeks and the live site will then be upgraded accordingly. --Eloquence*

User:Kockica

Could someone look at the contribution of User:Kockica [3]. They seem to be uploading a number of large PDF files that are chapters of a several books in some Slavic language. Are they of any use to Wikipedia, or can they be speedy deleted as patent nonsense as well as theft of Wikipedia bandwidth and disk space for private purposes. - SimonP 16:48, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Cannot read the language, but it looks deletable to me. The files are pretty big, too. It is possible that the user is just using the disk space for outside wikipedia purposes. Either speedy delete or put on Wikipedia:Images for deletion -- Chris 73 Talk 17:38, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

It's Croatian, I think. -- Arwel 19:38, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have deleted them all but Image:7. Organizovanost privrede u opstini, strana 315-318.pdf, for which i got an error. I see no way how these files could contribute to the english wikipedia, and based on the edit history of the user i am doubtful if his/her contributions are donein good faih. -- Chris 73 Talk 08:12, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

How to Wikify

How would I wikify Brian Howe in the Mary Bell article? --Sgeo | Talk 02:19, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Your last edit did wikify it, assuming you mean you just wanted to link to it? If not, could you explain your question please? Angela. 02:29, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

It links to the wrong Brian Howe. --Sgeo | Talk 02:36, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

I think you want this syntax: [[page you want to link to|text you want to display]]. For example, [[cat|dog]] produces the underlined word dog, which links to the article "Cat." Ðåñηÿßôý | Talk 03:05, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm not asking about syntax. I'm asking if I should link it to something like Brian Howe (murder)? --Sgeo | Talk 03:07, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

A disambig parenthesis should be descriptive of the person, not the relevant act etc.; I'd suggest [[Brian Howe (murder victim)]]. Radagast 04:15, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

A nice little touch which can safe time in editing is that if you link to [[something (disambiguated)|]] it will automatically expand this to [[something (disambiguated)|something]]. [[User:Anárion|Ана́рыён]] 13:35, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. I knew that if you do [[Namespace:Title|]] that it would expand it to [[Namespace:Title|Title]]. —Mike 01:35, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

About (red) links to non-existent articles

Why does clicking on red links bring you to the edit page? --Sgeo | Talk 01:05, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Because red links go to pages that don't exist (except when the database is confused). -- Cyrius|✎ 01:07, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Woudn't it be better though to send the user to something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adslkjfuwr? -Sgeo | Talk 01:13, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Or even better, make it a user preference --Sgeo | Talk 01:14, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

I think that you [or anyone] wil get used to the red pretty quickly. Don't worry about it and it won't bother you. Carptrash 01:37, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Which leads me to another question: what is the current consensus on red links, anyway? It seems like when I first got here red links for potential article subjects were encouraged as placeholders and a way to draw people into editing and creating articles. More recently I've seen lots of articles "cleaned up" of red links, even when this creates some inconsistency in what is linked and what isn't (such as when some albums but not others by a given group have articles). Of course if an article is created later the implication is that all these articles are now lacking links and have to be located and updated. Jgm 01:46, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think red links make articles harder to read. I also think it has a negative effect on the reader impression of Wikipedia, just as the text "more detail to be added here" makes the encyclopedia look worse. Well-intentioned editors may believe that other people should write particular articles, but it does not mean that they will. Even if they do, the title may differ. Some people assert that they encourage article writing. It is difficult to find out whether there is any significant net benefit. Having the number of persistent red links that we do seems a high price to pay. Bobblewik  (talk) 23:29, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Some guidelines: Links to non-existent articles should only be added when the articles in question are supposed to be written. For example, you should not link a person's name unless that person is notable enough to deserve an encyclopedia article. Avoid links on things like individual works (books, albums, etc.) unless you are absolutely certain that the work deserves a separate article of its own, and the main article is already well-developed. Also avoid links on minor fictional characters and in general try to synthesize fiction articles as much as reasonably possible.--Eloquence*

See Wikipedia:Wikiproject Albums. There is not really much consensus on the specific issue of albums, but common practice indicates that major bands get an article per album (rule of thumb: if people who don't like the genre, much less the band, have often heard of them, each album can have an article; particularly major bands who non-afficionados are probably unfamiliar with can also have an article per album). Ultimately, each issue is separate -- no single guideline can work in all subjects at all times. I recommend abundant linking if you are not sure -- after all, if you do not know whether or not a term needs an article or not, it probably needs, if nothing else, a redirect, and a red link makes that more likely. I suppose the only real answer is to do whatever floats your boat until you have become well-enough versed in Wikipedia to decide based on whatever criteria seems most useful; as long as you don't start any edit wars or anything, disagreements can usually be amicably resolved.

I am probably at the other end of the scale to you then. I recommend that a link should not be created unless an article exists. Links to non-existent articles are not helpful to readers, and may make the experience worse. Could we at least have a guideline that within a single article, the number of links to non-existant articles should not usually exceed 5% of the links on the page? Bobblewik  (talk) 20:41, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sorry for the lack of a concise rule on the subject... Tuf-Kat 07:35, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Surely a red link means that an article is nonexistent as yet and is intended to encourage an editor to create it? A perfectly praiseworthy aim, I would have thought. Dieter Simon 23:22, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It is a praiseworthy aim. Having an aim is one thing, it is quite another to assume it has been achieved.

• What is the effect on readability of having too many links (non-existent and live)?
• What is the effect on the impression of the encyclopedia of having 'under construction' artefacts.?
• Are there limits to our willingness to expose all our readers to the unfulfilled ambitions of past editors?
• Are there any guide lines that a current editor can use to remove a link created by a previous editor?
• How many non-existent links are on Wikipedia?
• What is the proportion of non-existent links to live links?
• How long does it take for a non-existent link to become live?
• What is the proportion of non-existent links that do not become live within 6 months (or any other time period) of creation?
• How many articles are created because somebody saw a non-existent link?
• What is the opportunity cost i.e. if an article is created as a result, is it merely diverting editor effort from other useful work?
• Is 95 % of links in a prose article should be live a reasonable guideline to put in the Manual of style.
• Am I the only one that questions the issue?

Perhaps we should take this debate to the Manual of style talk page Bobblewik  (talk) 10:59, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As of CURRENTYEAR?

Jamie Bulger#Appeal_and_release has As of {{CURRENTYEAR}}. I'm not fully sure that that's acceptable, but what would I do? Replace it with [[As of 2004]]? [[As of {{CURRENTYEAR}}]]? --Sgeo | Talk 00:53, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Replace with As of 2004. —Morven 01:29, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

I'd rather have As of 2004 as well. If it sounds dated, it can always be updated, but having "as of curent year" precede any dated information leads to inaccuracy. --Ardonik.talk() 01:55, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

What if it's already out of date? (not saying it is, though) --Sgeo | Talk 03:05, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

As of 2003, As of 2002--whatever year applies. Niteowlneils 10:58, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure which applies. What I'm saying though, is that if having CURRENTYEAR let it become out of date, what year is it from? --Sgeo | Talk 18:45, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

I see two options: 1. Look at the editing history to see when the fact in question ("no publication... has come to pass") was added. 2. Do some homework and find out whether that information is still correct; if so, put 2004. ←Hob 18:56, 2004 Sep 11 (UTC)

Validity check?

Where do I go to ask about the validity of an article? I have some doubts about Zero-sum fallacy

The talk page is the primary place. Here and/or Wikipedia:Pages needing attention can be used in situations where the talk page isn't enough. And then, there's always IRC. If the problem is small relative to the rest of the article, and it's especially dubious (probably false) you might want to move the dubious text to the talk page. But that's really only for extreme cases (and when no one is likely to disagree with you). anthony (see warning) 01:47, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Use the talk page first, and if that doesn't work out or no information is forthcoming, add the {{disputed}} template to the article text and list the reason for doing so on the talk page. --Ardonik.talk() 02:23, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

I've had a go at this one. Agree, first try the talk page in general. If an article seems to justify it, you can jump straight to cleanup or pages needing attention. In this case I'd have been tempted to go straight to VfD, but in general use the slowest escalation that's consistent with protecting Wikipedia's reputation, and be prepared for some criticism whenever you jump a step (criticism is not the end of the world). Andrewa 16:33, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

THE PROGRESSIVE-CONSERVATIVE APPROACH TO GOVERNANCE

PROGRESSIVE-CONSERVATIVE, a term differentiating present day non-ideological or classical from ideological conservatives.

Stating "I am a conservative" conveys very little without the qualifier social, neo, or progressive.

The first two have clearly defined sets of fixed beliefs and having these are ideological conservatives. The third, progressive-conservative, differs substantially in that it is an approach to decision making. An approach stemming from the view of Edmund Burke that “ A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.”

The present is viewed as linking past and future: conservative in preserving the positives from the past; progressive in introducing change necessary toward constructing a positive future.

Decision-making is not approached with pre-conceived beliefs. Recognizing that all options have both positive and negative effects associated with them, the progressive-conservative weighs each carefully before deciding upon a course of action.

There will be a time to levy taxes and to remove them, a time to institute new programmes and end existing ones, a time to assume additional responsibilities and to withdraw from them. Each decision must be based on that which is best for the society as a whole, at the time and for the future.

Progressive-conservatives hold this philosophy as being the most effective form of governance, as a form unique among political groupings terming themselves conservative, for the others approach decision making with preconceived ideological positions as to what should be, rather than how what exists can be improved upon.

Regions of Italy

Somehow these pages were altered, and the result is that the Italian coat of arms at the right appears disproportionally big. See Marche for an example. Etz Haim 03:02, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It appears to be due to changes at Image:Italy_coa.png - it is back to the small version now. -- Chuq 03:31, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I edited a page before I logged in

Is there some way to put that edit under my userId?

Litigious society

I don't I have anything like the knowledge of law to create it, but I was thinking that a Litigious society article would be an interesting addition. It is mentioned briefly in lawsuit (Some countries, especially the USA suffer from a very large number of lawsuits per capita per year, while people in many other cultures (most notably Japan) tend to avoid bringing their disputes to the courthouse) but I'm sure there must be more to be said. Perhaps mentioning landmark cases (some about people suing tobacco and fast food companies, perhaps) and the constant "accident claim" adverts. Apologies if this is covered elsewhere - I've not come across anything yet. violet/riga (t) 21:41, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

spsific pump

hi iwant to find sutobl pump for disalination plant to predusing 100,000litter\houes for frish water

"Concentration" or "Extermination" Nazi Camps?

Wikipedia has an article on the Auschwitz concentration camp and one on Treblinka extermination camp. There are is also a Category:Nazi concentration camps and a Category:Nazi extermination camps. The term "concentration camp", when referring to Nazi camps of the WWII, was originally a lie used to mislead the Holocaust victims, who were unaware of the regime's true intentions. Nowadays, it still serves as an euphemism. IMHO, extermination or death camp is the right word here. I strongly suggest that these articles should be renamed, and their categories merged into one, and that for the sake of historical awareness. -- Etz Haim 04:03, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I suggest you to read carefully the articles, for the sake of historical awareness. There were concentration, extermination, labor, training, and many other Nazi camps all over Europe. With German bureaucracy they were classified as such. Of course, we can rightfully claim that labor camps actually exterminated the laborers, but their purpose was still labor, see, e.g., Mittelbau-Dora. I also suggest you to read Auschwitz concentration camp. Actually, it was a camp complex that consisted of concentration and extermination camps.

Also, I would suggest you to carry discussions on well-defined topics at the talk pages of the corresponding articles. Willage pump is for general-purpose discussions, not immediately related to specific articles. Mikkalai 04:24, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Also*, we have a policy that you are supposed to pick the most common english names - in this case, "concentration camp" is by far the most common. So your suggestion goes against policy, and will probably be shot down on that account. →Raul654 04:34, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

The reason I posted this here is because this problem (from my POV) spans several articles and categories. And just to be fair and prevent possible misunderstandings, I'm not suggesting that everyone who is using the word "concentration camps" has ill intentions; on the contrary, many decent people use this unintentionally. Honestly, I value the victims' fates and the survivors' memories of these installations more than how the Nazi regime described them in their paperwork. I'm suggesting extermination camps on basis of these facilities' aftermath, not the Reich's alleged purposes of them. Regards. Etz Haim 04:50, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The article can set people straight for historical awareness, in case anyone has any doubt about what went on in these horrid places. However, most people call most of them concentration camps and look for references to them as such and will search for them as such; hence articles should be named as they are commonly called. This is not "unintentional"--that's what they're called. Second most common in my (limited) experience would be "death camp". Wikipedia's article titles are not the place to attempt to change the world's vocabulary. (And, incidentally, I suspect that most people automatically connect the phrase "Nazi concentration camp" with "genocide", so it's not like anyone's being misled by the terms. And for those people who stubbornly refuse to admit that the Nazis ever killed anyone--well, changing the article titles won't make a difference there, either.) Elf | Talk 05:32, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We should certainly have appropriate forwards from "concentration camp" and (if we stick with "extermination camp" for the title) "death camp". I do agree that "death camp" is more common in English than "extermination camp", and it's just a matter of translation (neither is "more correct" than the other), but I do believe it is important to distinguish the death camps from other concentration camps. The U.S. put Japanese Americans in what were essentially concentration camps, but had no death camps. The distinction is very important. -- Jmabel 21:58, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

"Concentration" or "Extermination" Nazi Camps?

The discussion moved to Talk:Extermination camp.

(film) or (movie)??

Pages exist for cinematic films, usually titled as the film's title. However, sometimes this title must be disambiguated to its own page. Should these pages be annotated as (film) as with Xanadu, or as (movie) as with Predator?? I'm looking for any sort of concensus here, so any that are of the 'wrong' title could be updated. I hope this is the proper place for such a question. Any suggestions? Whosyourjudas 02:18, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (movies)

thanks hadn't been able to find that before. exactly what i needed. Whosyourjudas 03:23, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

numbers and singular articles with -ware words

My take on "software", "hardware", and most other -ware words (though not "ware" itself) is that they are grammatically singular ("software is"), but semantically plural or collective, and - here's the point I'm getting to - are not used with numbers or indefinite singular articles. So, it strikes me as correctible when I see "they wrote softwares" or "it is a software". But I'd like to hear if there is a consensus to that effect... Sharkford 15:42, 2004 Sep 16 (UTC)

They are uncountable nouns, like "rice", "money"; as opposed to countable nouns like "grain of rice", "dollar". "It is a software" needs to be corrected to "It is software" / "It is a piece of software" / "It is a program". Chameleon 15:55, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

And yet it's not incorrect to say "These programs are software." I suppose it might be correct (though unusual) to say "Our company's software are all located in the vault." But I'm not sure this is correct. – Quadell ^{(talk) (quiz)}[[]] 16:04, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

Go back to examples like "furniture" or "money". "These chairs are furniture" or "These dollar bills are money" are acceptable (they're really shorthand for "These X are examples of Y"). But you wouldn't say "Our company's furniture are located..." or "Our company's money are located..." anthony (see warning) 16:27, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

When you say "programs are software" or "chairs are furniture", the subject (programs and chairs) is in plural, hence the plural form "are", which has nothing to do with the grammatical number of what comes after the verb "to be". Zocky 16:46, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think what you're seeing is quite possibly writing from people who are not native English-speakers and have limited proficiency in the language. Please go ahead and correct any such mistakes you find. --Michael Snow 15:52, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"Software" now duly referenced in article Mass noun. See also: Count noun. –Hajor 16:09, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'd hate to learn English as a foreign language. The amount of random grammatical curiousities is quite astounding! zoney ♣ talk 17:46, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would think most languages would have the concept of the uncountable noun. nl.wikipedia.org says "Software is" and "Waterslag is", but then again I don't know their word for "is" and "are". anthony (see warning) 12:28, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"Mass noun". Excellent! That's the concept I was looking for. Thanks! Sharkford 17:54, 2004 Sep 16 (UTC)

Protection for wikipedia's articles. Original articles get copyright violations!

Hi! Wikipedia 's original articles are doomed to die through the process of protecting other people's copyright protection, and thgough its power of being a a good reference. Wikipedia's own articles need protection . (Maybe there is , I need to read more )Please do something. The articles are copied onto other websites. These are seen and then the original wikipedia articles get the copyright violations.

I wrote this original Edgar Cayce on Karma but this was copied onto another website and now the original wikipedia article has a copyright violation! I swear I am the author. It is them who copied this wikipedia article.

I will be writing to the website that copied the article after this to try to clarify ownership. --Jondel 05:44, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

According to the article's history log, Jondel posted it at "08:38, 2004 Aug 4". Google's cache of that page says "Aug 3, 2004 06:32:18 GMT". -- Netoholic @ 05:55, 2004 Sep 16 (UTC)

I've posted info on Talk:Edgar Cayce on Karma that tilts this back into Jondel's favor. --Golbez 06:27, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

It certainly is a frequent problem that Wikipedia articles get incorrectly flagged as a copyright violation because someone else copied our content (whether within our license or not). —Morven 06:59, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

Same phenomena is now going again with Langauges of the Philippines. I wrote the same thing about Tagolog (when it was Tagalog and not Taglaog Language) and placed it in Languages of the Philippines. Do I have to copyright what I wrote in Wikipedia?? I am seeing my own articles on other webpages thanks to Wikipedia copyright protectors.--Jondel 07:08, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You can't prevent that; everything written on Wikipedia is subject to the GFDL, which allows anyone to take any article and put it up anywhere they want, as long as attribution is made. You don't own copyright to your article. Sorry. --Golbez 07:19, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

Well I don't want to own or copyright what I contribute but I don't want to be labelled as copyright violator nor do I want my articles ripped off as being only copies. It's like there's a penalty for an honest contribution.--Jondel 07:25, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Um... Jondel most certainly does own the copyright to his own work. People are allowed to copy Wikipedia articles, that's why it's a free encyclopedia. As noted below every edit box, "all contributions to Wikipedia are released under the GNU Free Documentation License". You own the copyright to your contributions, but the license you have granted is non-revocable. Anyone who copies your work is required to credit you. If they don't do so, you can threaten legal action against them. Wikimedia cannot take legal action against license violators since it does not own the copyright. -- Tim Starling 07:30, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

I apologize for my error; I was unclear on the nature of the copyright and the GFDL. I'm just amazed that after 2500 edits, I haven't encountered a single problem on this front. :) --Golbez 16:50, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, and he's making a valid point IMO. We have up until now accepted the citing of a site that is not a Wikipedia mirror and that has identical text as prima facie evidence of a copyvio. With the increasing web prominence of Wikipedia, this policy is probably unsustainable, because it's equally possible that the guilty party is the other site, as appears to be the case here. Food for thought? Andrewa 09:30, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It is a problem, but most copyvios are reported pretty soon after article creation. In such cases, it is highly unlikely that the external site copied from us. When large unwikified chunks of text are copied to Wikipedia, it is also likely that the text comes from elsewhere. If, however, a copyvio is reported for an article with a long history, I get wary and start to investigate in depth, trying to find out through www.archive.org what the external site looked like at earlier times, and going through the page history looking for clues to figure out who copied from whom.

Still, cleaning up WP:CP takes time, precisely because one has to verify each suspected copyvio. It might be good if more people participated in this task... Lupo 09:51, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

One problem is that while this is happening, the article is blanked under our current procedures, and replaced by a notice that at least one contributor has found offensive. I think they have a valid point. Andrewa 17:27, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

PS as I write this, the article in question is still replaced by the copyvio notice, and the link to the supposed rewrite is to a non-existent page, not surprisingly. Andrewa 17:43, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Now fixed I see, with a note to that effect at Talk:Edgar Cayce on Karma. So the process does work. The question of inclusion is still open. Andrewa 20:15, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We have up until now accepted the citing of a site that is not a Wikipedia mirror and that has identical text as prima facie evidence of a copyvio. As long as the submitter (if a logged in user) is informed of this on her talk page (in a non-confrontational manner which assumes good faith), I don't see a problem. Citing a non-Wikipedia mirror with identical text is prima facie evidence of a copyvio. If the submitter claims to have created the content herself, then further evidence would be necessary if you still believe there is a copyvio. But if the submitter fails to respond to a request for more information, then the suspicious content can be removed. anthony (see warning) 16:40, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Anthony said But if the submitter fails to respond to a request for more information, then the suspicious content can be removed. Hmmm, do you mean this is what should happen? Currently the content is removed before they have a chance to reply, and replaced by the copyvio warning. Agree this is one possible solution to one of the issues raised, but it's a major change. Andrewa 17:27, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A thought. Is it entirely OK for one to publish ones own work on ones own website prior to using it in Wikipedia? Now, I do mean licensing it for use under the GFDL on ones own website, but with of course, a "© 2004 Some Wikipedian" before the "licensed under GFDL" notice and link. I presume there is no legal/technical reason for Wikipedians not to be able to do this? zoney ♣ talk 17:52, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's quite OK. For work you yourself own the rights to, you are free to republish it anywhere you please under any license you please. I've put a number of articles from other places onto here. However, such articles generally need substantial rework to fit the Wikipedia house style ... —Morven 18:12, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

It's maybe helpful to think of Wikipedia as a collection of bits of GFDL text and images that thousands of different people own the copyright to. Anyone in the world can do anything they want to with any piece of it, as long as they comply with the license. Wikipedia chooses to compile an encyclopedia. Intrigue 18:50, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Internet Archive can often be a useful way to see whether a page is of recent vintage (although they do not generally post pages until 6 months after the fact, and they can get rather confused by frames). -- Jmabel 21:07, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

Thank you all for your participation. I have the e-mails from the three copyright violating websites' webmaster. All do not claim copyrights or original authorship. 2 have placed the proper acknowledgements to wikipedia. I will be posting the email responses on the appropriate wikipages. (This is ridiculuous, being accused of copying what you contributed.)--Jondel 05:59, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

An Issue of Fundamental Fairness

An RfC has been opened on a user who was at the time it was opened was, and currently remains, blocked, and is thus unable to respond in his own defense.

Regardless of the substantive merits of the claims in the RfC, it is fundamentally unfair to make formal allegations against a user, and to allow others to comment on or endorse those allegations, while the individual charged is unable to respond.

Leaving the RfC until such time as the block ends is not a reasonable option, as in that time many other users will read the allegations, and inevitably draw conclusions, without ever seeing the response of the user charged; if the RfC is simply to be held in abeyance until the block ends, the "jury pool" of users will be irreversibly tainted.

Therefore, in the interest of fundamental fairness, I ask that either the RfC be declared invalid without prejudice to plaintiff or defendant or that the user be unbanned forthwith in order to be able to answer the allegations against him.

-- orthogonal 17:40, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The simpler solution, if the software will accommodate it, would be to modify the ban so that the user can edit that specific RfC page. I assume the user can already edit his or her talk page, despite the ban. The user would presumably want to put a note on the talk page to the effect of "comments will be answered only here, because I can't edit your talk page". The blocked user would still be somewhat inconvenienced, by being unable to leave comments on others' talk pages, but not to a level constituting a denial of fundamental fairness. I agree with you that continuation of the present situation makes the RfC of questionable value. JamesMLane 18:06, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As far as I know, blocks are complete and we do not have the capability for partial blocks or "throttles" currently in place. --Michael Snow 18:10, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If it's who I think it is, I think the RfC and ban were independent of one another, that the ban was the more suspicious of the two actions. I do not think the persons creating the RfC were the ones who made the ban. At any rate, stopping the clock on the RfC while the ban is in place or removing it, only to reinstate it at the end of the blocking period, would be the best solution. After all, the people putting up the RfC were trying to do things according to established procedure and should not themselves be penalized if someone else took up the cudgels. Geogre 18:29, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It sure looks like another Salem trial from where I'm standing. This is unbecoming. These feeding frenzies must stop! - Friends of Robert 18:21, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The block in question has now been in place for nearly three days (it is scheduled to last for seven). Once the justification for the block was initially clarified, nobody has seen fit to reverse the block, though undoubtedly a large number of admins are aware of it. This suggests to my mind that the community consensus accepts the block as legitimate.

Moving on to the question of what to do with the RfC while the block is in place. The initiator of the RfC apparently did so without knowledge of the block or corresponding unfairness. In fact, the subject of the RfC was given notice of the listing in appropriate fashion. My personal suggestion would be to put a prominent notice at the top of the listing about the user's present inability to respond and stating that the listing is suspended until a response is possible, then protect the RfC listing so that no further edits can be made until the block expires. On Wikipedia:Requests for comment, I would suggest adding a note that the listing is suspended and using strikethrough on the text that presently appears there. Would that be a workable resolution? --Michael Snow 18:23, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think Michael's answer is fine, if a bit overstated. I think unblocking Xed, however, would be ludicrous. Because he's a problem user who generated an RfC, he's somehow immune to consequences for his actions? This is just waiting for some abuse. Snowspinner 18:34, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

Snowspinner writes, he's somehow immune to consequences for his actions? Is blocking a punishment then? Are blocks of seven days generally made by sysops? I thought such lengthy punishments were more a province of the Arbitration Committee? -- orthogonal 18:44, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Blocks typically start at 24 hours, but Xed was already blocked previously for that length (by five different sysops, incidentally). It has been fairly common to increase block lengths when dealing with repeat offenders, whether the basis for the block is vandalism or disruption. Seven days is around the outer limit of what sysops generally do on their own, except for blocking malicious impersonations and reincarnations of banned users. Also, it's worth noting that at least two members of the Arbitration Committee, in voting on these cases, called for sanctions against Xed. --Michael Snow 19:11, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Not being a sysop myself, please forgive me if I'm a bit dense: are you saying that five sysops blocked Xed five different times, or five sysops together agreed on a single 24-hour block? And -- again parson my ignorance -- I thought for a decision by the Arbitration Committee to be binding, more than two members had to vote for it? Or is the argument that a sanction that fails to win support of a majority of the Arbitration Committee can nevertheless be imposed by a single sysop? -- orthogonal 19:51, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

5 sysops, acting indivdually, each blocked Xed at just about the same time. RickK 20:33, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

The comments by the arbitrators were in the course of rejecting cases brought by Xed himself, so no case was actually accepted in which they could have issued an official decision against Xed. --Michael Snow 20:39, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Then your point is that the call for sanctions by two members of the Committee was unofficial and merely obiter dictum? In that case then, what relevance does it have? -- orthogonal 00:30, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No, that's your point, though I don't particularly disagree with it. My point was that "it's worth noting". I think it should be clear that the expressed opinions of individual arbitrators are relevant in evaluating actions that might later come before the Arbitration Committee. Relevant, not decisive, of course. --Michael Snow 02:57, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• If any blocked user has a rational, appropriate response to either their block or any RfC or arbitration or other matter that they are involved in, and they email it to me, I will post it for them myself. I am confident that most other frequent contributors would do the same. uc 19:45, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• • Ditto to uc. And I know he has my email address, because he has more than once emailed me to complain about the conduct of another admin. -- Jmabel 20:27, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

Category:Hellenic languages and dialects

I've created the Hellenic languages and dialects category, and edited it to add a couple of words to describe it. However, the links to this category page appear in red (take a look at Griko language for an example), as if it was never edited. Is this a technical problem or am I doing something wrong here? Thanks. -- Etz Haim 00:34, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I suspect a cache issue--it's blue for me. If you're using IE, try Control-F5. Niteowlneils 01:26, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There is a known glitch in the Wikipedia software which causes links to appear as red, even though the destination article already exists. Clicking the red link brings up an edit screen with the article content in it, rather than an empty edit screen. This problem usually goes away after a short while. Sorry for the inconvenience. The developers might actually get around to fixing it one day. - Mark 01:30, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Rambot articles: completely useless?

I've been using Random page as a timewaster for the past few days, and I've found a lot of interesting articles. There is an immense list of articles which appear to be completely useless, however: the various Rambot articles about USA towns. They come up almost one in five today. Take for example Ladera Heights, California: I learn nothing from the article about the town itself, only some census data. There is no info on the origin of the town, the layout, the history, etc.. I honestly do not see what is gained by the inclusion of these articles other than a huge article number. And that's not even mentioning the lack of wikification they suffer from, and that they assume a USA audience: apparently everyone should know Cobb County, Georgia is in the USA State Georgia, and not in the Caucasus country of Georgia. [[User:Anárion|Ⓐℕάℛℹℴɴ]] 14:14, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In the case of the two Georgias, the answer is in the naming convention. X,Y indicates the US addressing convention. So long as it's "Tiblisi, Georgia" and not "Tiblisi," it's a subunit in the US. That includes Memphis, Tennessee vs. Memphis. Geogre 14:51, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Everyone hates Rambot. Thing is, Rambot has its uses. First, the stuff manages to cover the US. That there isn't one for Australia or England is something actually that we should regret (see below). I don't exactly enjoy reading an article about a town of 300 in Montana, either. No one does. However, I think they do no harm. First, like "Gamamiel was a character in Return of the King and he was awesome" gets defended on VfD every time with the logic that "someone will make a real article of it," the Rambot articles can similarly be improved. Secondly, when you are writing about Battle of Bull Run, it's nice to be able to say it occurred in Manassas, Virginia and know that that's going to be a blue link that will, in fact, tell someone where and what that town is. The biggest reason I like Rambot (even if I don't like any of its articles) is that these are NPOV articles. They're brainless, and that means they're without POV. Think about what would happen if locals wrote their town articles only when motivated to do so. For an example, look, indeed, at the coverage of villages in England and Scotland or small towns in Australia. They're fragmentary. They're incomplete. They include irrelevancies. They include inaccuracies. Again, I'm not saying that I enjoy any Rambot articles. I was sincere when I said that everyone hates Rambot. I hate Rambot, too, but I like what Rambot does, and I think Rambot is very, very valuable to us. Geogre 14:46, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No, everyone DOESN'T hate Rambot. It was VERY useful in doing what it was set out to do. RickK 20:46, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

These articles aren't NPOV. Rambot collects information from an old-fashioned and biased source which has a limited understanding of ethnicity or gender. Each original Rambot article is a throwback to the 1950s and hopelessly POV. --[[User:Eequor|ηυωρ]] 21:15, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The US Census Bureau is an old-fashioned and biased source? RickK 20:46, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, particularly regarding minorities. --[[User:Eequor|ηυωρ]] 21:26, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What utter nonsense. But then, I consider the source. Of this statement. RickK 04:57, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Oh, one more on that: Rambot prevents some of the kiddie slams that come with towns. On New Pages patrol, I've had to speedy delete quite a few "Bumfsford is a stupid little town with wankers living in it" kinds of things. Rambot does us a favor by getting there first and preventing some of the juvenile high spirits by intimidating the would-be vandal. Geogre 14:51, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Damn you deletionist! The Bumfsford Wankers are our football team here in Bumfsford! -- orthogonal 17:49, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The population figure of 300 is interesting, because there are high schools with that many students, and trailer parks with considerably more than that many people, yet high schools and trailer parks are often placed onto VfD. func(talk) 15:23, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As they should be. What has relative population to do with it? Stephen King is a person of one, but that doesn't mean he is not more notable than a country club with 1,000 members. Sherlock Holmes is not even real. A village with a population of 300 is more notable and encyclopedic than an apartment building with a population of 1,000. Would you argue for inclusion in Wikipedia for an article on every apartment building in the world with over 300 apartments? The rambot articles, despite their ugliness, at least provide solid information that is of use to some people. The articles on high schools and trailer parks that get put onto VfD, if retained in Wikipedia, mostly get in the way of anyone looking for genuine information on the high school or trailer park, just annoying and uninformative stubs, coming up on mirror after mirror. Jallan 19:42, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's extremely silly to compare people as being equivalent to cities. Relative population does not apply to individual people; most everyone is no more populous than anyone else. --[[User:Eequor|ηυωρ]] 21:15, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

1. Not everyone hates Rambot. I love the little bugger.
2. If there's not enough information, add one. Consider most Rambot articles geo-stubs and get to work. Though I agree we could live with a little less census info, though I have found racial distribution and income info (particularly for Killington, New Hampshire interesting.
3. I want there to be Rambots for every country. Every frickin municipality on this ball should be on here. And work down from there.
4. As for some trailer parks and high schools having more people, yes, but high schools and trailer parks are still part of a municipality. And I'm not much of a deletionist, so. --Golbez 17:06, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Hear, hear! RickK 20:46, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

Rambot is cool - sure, many of the articles could do with more info, but they are a great start. Intrigue 17:15, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't hate the Rambot. (I actually named the Rambot, back in the day). The Rambot gives us a place to start. Here, from my user page are some of my additions to Rambot (including those controversial Georgia counties). I assume many others have done the same:

Above and beyond the rambot: I coined the word and also added substantially to the articles on Newton, Massachusetts, my home, Valdosta, Georgia, my home town and the high school football capital of the world, Moody Air Force Base, where I mention the beloved Miss Peaches and her immortal "Callin' Moody Field"; and Cedar Key, Florida, where I stayed overnight and was served gruel for breakfast; identified the namesake of Deaf Smith County, Texas;Habersham County, Georgia and Hall County, Georgia, wherein I quote Sidney Lanier's "Song of the Chattahoochee", about the river that starts there:

OUT of the hills of Habersham,

Down the valleys of Hall,

I hurry amain to reach the plain,

Run the rapid and leap the fall,

Split at the rock and together again

On to the musical history of Macon, Georgia and West Memphis, Arkansas; more poetry, why lovely villages on plains are named Auburn; Whitehall, Michigan; Magoffin County, Kentucky, birthplace of Larry Flynt; Lebanon, Pennsylvania; Waltham, Massachusetts; Erick, Oklahoma, my prize catch so far; Oregon City, Oregon; Ferriday, Louisiana, three piano-playing fools from there; Florence, Alabama; Orange Park, Florida, where my father was born and his father went broke; Winslow, Arizona (guess what); Enterprise, Alabama and its boll weevil statue; Lithonia, Georgia, birthplace of Brenda Lee; Stone Mountain, Georgia, the next little town over, home of Stone Mountain; Del Rio, Texas, home of XERF; Canton, Mississippi; Bogalusa, Louisiana; Zanesville, Ohio, hometown of Zane Grey;, and more tomorrow. Ortolan88 17:54, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That's very impressive, but do you really need a bot to create the articles for you? Surely you aren't helpless to produce original articles. --[[User:Eequor|ηυωρ]] 21:15, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Think a minute. It is easy for me to add that Brenda Lee was born in Lithonia, Georgia, but that is hardly an encyclopedia article. So, yes, I do need a robot to create the original articles. They may be a little over-complete, but as we add to them, the seemingly dense statistics fade into an appropriate weight. In the meantime, we have something on every little dorp in the country. I'll bet that there are statistical agencies in Greece -- that is where you are from, isn't it? -- that would permit a similar attention to all the little polises you have in your country. Ortolan88 23:03, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I remember when I first started contributing to Wikipedia, somewhere close to half our total articles were Rambot city-census-data articles. "Random page" then led to even more tiresome results; I've been random-browsing recently, as well, and have come across far (relatively) fewer than I used to. Unfortunately, still about half the randomly-selected articles tend to be sub-stubs, which is probably the bigger problem right now. At any rate, I think the Rambot stuff is good! Consistent, factual NPOV information, spanning what is likely the largest article category we have. Users visiting those pages might notice "Hey, none of the really interesting things about this city are mentioned," and add some info, feeling probably more comfortable in contributing knowing that the article already has some solid information. They are an ideal stub, beginning with a solid foundation and leaving plenty of room for improvement. -- Wapcaplet 18:49, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedians (particularly the Rambot whiners) should do their own home town, the town they live in, the town they went to college in, every town they know something about, and, when in the course of life they come across some information about a town, they can pretty much count on the Rambot having put it in the Wikipedia and can go there and add something to an already existing article. A book I'm reading says the Gypsy moth was introduced in Medford, Massachusetts. The current article doesn't mention that (or Tufts University, not even Jumbo!), so I'll go add them in, and so on and so on, and shooby dooby do, as the Rambot improves the Wikipedia. Ortolan88 19:04, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC) PS - I guess it is interesting that users of the Random page function, presumably among the more devoted Wikiites, are also the main complainers about the Rambot. No one else knows there's a "problem" or would even consider it such.

You left out the most important fact about Medford: it is the location of the first Krispy Kreme in Massachusetts. Opened last fall, I believe. Mmmm, mmmm, Krispy Kremes! I think I better go add that to the article right now, as soon as I stop drooling. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 20:23, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's a little known fact that the animated cartoon character Homer Simpson was based on User:Dpbsmith. --Tagishsimon

Thanks for the answers people. I have now indeed come across one article which was largely expanded from the Rambot ugly duckling (some small town in Oregon), so I guess all it takes is interested people :). Rambot: not so completely useless after all. Still, some bot should add "USA" to all the counties: context is king. [[User:Anárion|Ⓐℕάℛℹℴɴ]] 22:10, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The subject came up here at the pump a few weeks ago. There seemed to be fairly unanimous consensus that the fact these articles don't mention the country is a deficiency that should be corrected. Why it wasn't implemented, I'm not sure, but looking at how the discussion was going[4], it may just be that people couldn't decide the best format to use. (I implemented my preferred uses on Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California, Santa Clara, California, and Sunnyvale, California). Niteowlneils 01:22, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have a rambot question: Why do so many of those little USA-ian pages come up in Random Pages? The number I've seen quoted is that 30,000 were created - so they should only be roughly 1 article in 10 now, but they're more common than that in RP. Anybody know why? - DavidWBrooks 23:54, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've just done an unscientific test (clicked several dozen times on Random Pages) and the number of Rambot pages was about the expected statistical average, i.e. about 1 in 10. I have noticed on other occasions that sometimes they are bunched together though. Fortunately the prevalance of LOTR, Harry Potter, Thingymon and video games articles has reduced the relative frequency of Rambot pages ;-).Ianb 00:11, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Something that I have seen brought up before, but not in this thread - when the next lot of US census details are released, how are the articles going to be updated if people have been manually editing some in the meantime? Is it possible to work out what % of Rambot created articles have been unchanged? Perhaps Rambot could post the "new" article on the Talk page for articles which have changed - after all if people have been editing them, the pages would probably be on peoples watchlists? -- Chuq 00:41, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hopefully, some brave soul will be bold and will write a bot to do the updates. But we won't have to worry about that for another eight years or so. RickK 19:19, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)

Renaming an article

How do I go about suggesting that an article be renamed? I believe that Pokemon/Stats (a subpage) should be renamed to the article Pokémon statistics. --Chessphoon 18:37, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Looks like someone already fixed this for you, but to generalize on your question for the benefit of anyone who may have a similar question: this is what "Move" is for. If the article is not much edited and not much linked to, you can do this about as casually as any other edit. If there has been a lot of activity on the article, you should probably first post a note on the talk page and se if there are objections to the move. If there is a lot of "What links here" -- especially if the move will create double redirects -- you need to clean up afterwards. -- Jmabel 19:21, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
  • Thanks, I didn't notice that link before. --Chessphoon 19:25, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • Amazing! I have been done things the hard way (create new article and copy everything across). The 'Move' option will make it a lot easier. Thanks very much for pointing it out. Bobblewik  (talk) 19:30, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
      • Using move maintains the edit history too. violet/riga (t) 19:39, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
      • Right, If you can post a list of articles you used copy'n'paste on, an admin can help restore the articles Edit history. -- Netoholic @ 19:44, 2004 Sep 12 (UTC)
      • Yes please do this. It's a violation of the GFDL to move articles using copy and paste because part of the license is that contributors (who after all still hold the copyright to their work) have to be given credit, and Wikipedia achieves this by means of the edit history, which is lost when someone copies and pastes. — Trilobite (Talk) 02:41, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Setting up your own wiki

I have a website witch i only have access thru FTP. Is there a way to set up a personal wiki over there?

In fact I am not even trying to set up a real open wiki, but a personal wiki, to use the potential of ease of creating and maintanig pages..

Alexandre van de Sande 10 set 18:22 gmt-4

Alexandre, one person to ask is Anthony DiPierro, who has run his own wiki for some time. I know a number of others here do also, but I can't recall specifics right now (hopefully they identify themselves here or someone else remembers who it is and lists them). I imagine it will get pretty complicated, and it's probably best to discuss it in a talk page (yours or theirs) rather than here. Good luck! Jwrosenzweig 21:28, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Different Wiki software can be found on the article wiki software. Your website will need to support scripting languages for them to work. There is also MediaWiki, the Wiki that Wikipedia uses. I sometimes use it myself. Norm 23:21, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If you want something that isn't as complicated as MediaWiki (which requires some SQL administration experience), try OddMuse. (Note to self: write article on OddMuse!) OddMuse supports free linking (i.e., [[article link]] instead of ArticleLink) and most other aspects of the MediaWiki syntax; it's just a giant Perl script, so it's simple to set up; it's mature and the EmacsWiki runs on it. One interesting application is disabling edits for non-priveleged users and then making yourself the only priveleged user. A little CSS to make the editing tools invisible and voila! A website that looks like a website, but is edited as a Wiki.

The website is http://www.oddmuse.org. If I ever run my website as a Wiki, that's what I'm going to use. --Ardonik.talk() 00:57, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

There is a section at Wikibooks on how to start a wiki that you might find helpful. Angela. 02:26, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

I've just had MediaWiki installed on the intranet at my school. I'm trying to encourage teachers from other departments to get into adding their own articles, and have some of the kids working on it too. Obviously, however, I can't allow just anyone to edit - even people that register would need to go through an authentication (and acceptance) process. Now I'm not sure if MediaWiki is capable of what I'm wanting but seeing as I'm used to using it here and that it's already installed I'd like to be able to stick with it. I've had a look through the documentation on the MediaWiki site but it doesn't seem complete and I can't quite find what I'm looking for. Anyone able to help? My talk page would love suggestions! violet/riga (t) 11:11, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Lost in wikipedia features again

I see that the template {{wikiquote}} inserted into an article (e.g., Diana, Princess of Wales) puts a nice infobox that there are quotes by this article title in wikiquotes. I'm trying to find where this template is defined--I wanted to see whether it was parameterizable (i.e., add a person's name to insert xref in another topic where the person had a quote ABOUT the topic), but I can't find it, and I'm going in circles. I tried:

• Wikipedia:MediaWiki namespace, which has links to:
  • "PHP, without links", which actually displays a page named "All system messages" (which is really Special:Allmessages)
  • "with view links", which appears to take me to exactly the same place (although I can see there's a parameter on the URL)
  • "with edit links", which actually displays a page named "Wikipedia: All system messages", which looks like the same list *again* but with a different display format (the subtleties of these 3 variants are lost on me despite labels)
  • Wikipedia:Unprotected MediaWiki messages, which is an apparently random selection of messages whose only commonality is that you can edit them (?)
  • Wikipedia:All pages in the MediaWiki namespace, which takes you to a page titled "Wikipedia:All pages in the MediaWiki and Template namespace", which I would assume has everything on it, but wikiquote isn't there, either; this page has links to:
    • "MediaWiki interface messages", which goes back to Wikipedia:All system messages
    • "Template messages", which goes to Wikipedia:Template messages, which seems to be repeat of some of the other page contents, but in any event this page says it has been moved to "Template namespace", which goes to Wikipedia:Template namespace, which has links to:
      • Wikipedia:Template messages", which seems to be circular
      • Wikipedia:Navigational templates
      • Wikipedia:All pages in the MediaWiki namespace which see above
    • Wikipedia:Navigational templates, which also doesn't have wikiquote

In Wikipedia:Template namespace, there's a search URL that you're suppoesd to be able to use to find any item anywhere in the template namespace, but I plugged in wikiquote and it didn't find anything.

I am going in circles and getting nowhere.

1. Is there any reason that we have to have this plethora of circular lists of references to mostly identical lists of messages? Can someone clean this stuff up please?
2. Where else is there to look for things like {{wikiquote}} to find what's available, what they do, how to use them, etc.?

(I have to say that, with labels that don't match where you're going, and the going in circles, and the inconsistent descriptions of going to the same places, if this set of pages & links were a user interface design, it would flunk. But that's the frustration speaking.)

~~~~

Are you looking for Template:Wikiquote? I didn't look too closely there for info about how to use it, but there's a discussion page and a history page so you could contact contributors directly if no one responds on the discussion page. [[User:Bkonrad|older≠wiser]] 17:16, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yup, that's what I was looking for. Thanks. I guess the hint should be listed somewhere to "try Template:nameofthingie" if it's not in any of the lists--I just didn't think about doing that and assumed it would be in one of the lists. Elf | Talk 17:23, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The current development version of MediaWiki gives you a list of all templates used on a page when you edit it.--Eloquence* 19:38, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

Main Page+VfD

i. Wikipedia Main page reads like a newspaper, should an encyclopedia mimic a newspaper? I am not complaining, but observe the point, hoping the main page might be used to further assist in providing a better understanding of the rest of the project. (Faedra 07:41, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)) Also paragraph below...

• I do think that all the fantastic design work done on the Main page in recent months have tended to move it further and further away from an encyclopadeia front page, on the whole. I've been looking at Wikiquote today, and I think the Main page there is a lot more functional (note: high functionality = good design). The one thing I'd hate to lose from our current Main page is the rotating Featured article. Filiocht 14:03, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • I agree with that. The Featured article is a very good thing for an online encyclopedia. Spalding 16:51, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
    • Yes, it's the rest of the Main page I have a problem with. Filiocht 08:04, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

ii. VfD page is uwieldy, I've said it before, and repeat it now because slower pc find it difficult to broswe. A maximum size should be allocated to all pages in an encyclopedia, so that everyone can enjoy its content.

• Just wondering who could possibly enjoy the content of VfD. Filiocht 12:06, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• It's like watching a car crash. [[User:Anárion|АПА́ДІОП]] 15:26, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I love it. That said, VfD is about as small as it can get. If we want it smaller, we're going to have to expand speedy deletes, shorten the amount of time for voting, or encourage people to write better articles. Geogre 01:02, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

New image copyright deletion page

Wikipedia has a huge number of {{unverified}}, {{unknown}} and non-commercial use only images that need to be dealt with. They can't be dealt with through Wikipedia:Copyright problems and they can't go through Wikipedia:Images for deletion unless they're unused and unwanted.

I propose that we create a new page to list these images. They would be listed for 30 days, giving people plenty of time to look for their source and copyright status, or in the case of NC-only images, to contact the copyright holder. A maximum of five images uploaded before the page's creation could be listed per UTC day, but an indefinite number of images uploaded after that point could be listed immediately regardless of the number of previous listings.

Images on the deletion page would not be orphaned until immediately before their deletion, and a boilerplate notice would be added to their image pages. —Guanaco 01:07, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I support this idea. I've been working on tagging a decent number of images, and there are some problematic images that I don't know what to do with. Since they're quite possibly GFDL, or in many other cases fairuse, I don't want to put them on Wikipedia:Images for deletion, nor Wikipedia:Copyright problems. A page to list such edge cases and gather community input would be a nice way to deal with the problem. It is also very bad that still today some images are uploaded without proper tags. Even GFDL images. In half a year, when they are noticed, the Wikipedian and copyright holder may very well have left the project, so it is better to act fast. — David Remahl 01:20, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

For now they're supposed to be dealt with on Wikipedia:Copyright problems. That was the reason the name was changed from Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements. anthony (see warning) 01:25, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

But the new page will have a time limit of 30 days, as in Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. As one of the threads on this page shows, the time limit may be part of the reason that Votes for deletion is so popular. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 01:32, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

Are there any good ideas for a name for this page? I can't think of anything that isn't either very long or very ambiguous. Guanaco 01:37, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Images needing attention? anthony (see warning) 01:44, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Maybe we could remove the image from the article during the last week or so, to lessen the chance someone isn't going to notice until it's too late. Or maybe a tag can be put on any article which contains one of these images. Maybe both. It seems too likely that a page like this is going to be ignored until it's too late, and my understanding is that undeletion of images is somewhere between really hard and impossible. anthony (see warning) 01:57, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is a really good idea, maybe call it Wikipedia:Possible image copyright violations? Filiocht 07:37, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I support the idea. As one who has carefully GFDLd all the images I have used, I've been offended to see images that have copyright problems often used on featured articles. But I also preach caution. Remember, once an image is deleted, it can't be undeleted. Andrewa 10:00, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Most of these are definitively not copyright violations (for instance non-commercial images). They're not acceptable because they're not free, and Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia. anthony (see warning) 14:53, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

another "support" vote. Like User:Andrewa I will not use a image that I'm not sure of, and if fact have a couple of articles on hold, waiting to hear from folks who might never get back to me. And surely any image that gets deleted can be uploaded again? Even if it requires a slightly different name? So, if it is a usable image it is not lost forever. Carptrash 16:33, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It can be uploaded again if you have a copy of it, or it can probably be restored from a backup if you can interest a developer in doing this. However, in the case of the images I'm scanning from old books, I suspect that there are not too many hard copies left in the world, and the others may not be accessible to us. If we delete similar images scanned in good faith by people who weren't aware of the GFDL requirements, we may be losing something useful.

The other thing to be aware of is that Wikimedia commons will hopefully replace all this in time. Perhaps some of this effort would be better spent on that project? Andrewa 16:53, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I thought of a name: Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images. Guanaco 20:14, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think time would be better spent tagging the images rather than debating whether to delete them. There are still over 40,000 untagged ones at User:Yann/Untagged Images that can not be distributed in the upcoming Mandrake release. Angela. 02:21, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

since I am new here I'm not sure about just "doing things; ie deleting pictures. I was reading about Cecil Fielder last night and there were two photos, both of which seemed to have been tagged, or at least not properly credited. i thought, "Well I have a couple of shots of Cecil that I could just exchange for the two questionable ones, but is that fair to the person who first uploaded the ones without proper credit, or should I be . . .une belle dame sans merci and just chop them? Carptrash 14:54, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's always preferable to have images we know for sure we are entitled to use. If your images are better than or of similar quality to the current ones I recommend just replacing them anyway. If they are worse they might still be preferable becuase of their confirmed source, but in this case I would advise asking the uploader of the original images to provide license information first, and if none is forthcoming go ahead and replace. — Trilobite (Talk) 00:40, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Is this comment in support of this idea or in opposition to it? It's my impression that this page wouldn't be used for deletion debate, but for attempting to find the information needed to tag the image. anthony (see warning) 14:09, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Linking to Amazon, affiliate tags

Hi, I'm new on this page but have been hanging about on Wikipedia for some time.

Anyway, recently I noticed that on some articles, links to related literature at Amazon have been provided. While I don't wish to debate the pros and cons of this particular retailer, I'd like to point out that it seems some contributors have been adding their own affiliate IDs to these links. I'm not too familiar with the format of Amazon links but I've been removing these IDs when I come across them as I don't see this as a legitimate method for individuals to profit from Wikipedia. Depending on context I've inserted the Wiki ISBN link, or a "neutral" link to Amazon.

Is there some policy on this, and am I doing the "right thing"?

An example (uncorrected) is here: Marilyn Monroe - last link on page for the book "The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe" - the inktomi-bkasin-20 looks like an affiliate ID to me.

For reference, a google link for digging up Amazon links: [5] Ianb 22:44, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is not as it should be. All that should be there is the ISBN or ASIN, which gives a page offering numerous library and retail options. Kill these when you find them, replace with our usual method of including an ISBN. -- Jmabel 23:13, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

and never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. I suspect most people merely cut & paste the URL they see when they browse Amazon ... what you call their affiliate ID is merely the URL when logged in. --Tagishsimon

I believe the Amazon references on a previous version of Thomas_Merton: [6] are not down to stupidity. Ianb 07:20, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It is a ridiculous disservice to readers to remove links such as the citation supporting the following quote: According to Firth, an anthropologist, "A major problem in modern thought is the existence and survival of religion." (Firth 1996:1) If the Reference section of a Wikipedia article gives the ISBN, there is no rational justification to remove the link to the actual image of the text where the reader can peruse the context in which the quote was made. This is the electronic age, my friends. No reason to be afraid of it. Links to electronic text are good. Stop being Luddites! You are being irrational in this indiscriminate nuking of Amazon.com links. You have set in motion whole idiot armies and bots doing nothing but making information less accessible and sending us back into the primitive Age of "you have to buy it before you can read it." ---Rednblu 02:01, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Amazon on wikipedia should be either a large river in South America or a woman in comfortable shoes. That's it. The tags gotta go. Carptrash 00:18, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've simplified links in the past, as well. If I sign in, I get a link like this[7]. If I get to Amazon via known 'associate' dilbert.com, I get something more like [8]. I believe that any amazon.com URL with "ASIN" in the path (as does that MM link), will be credited to the associate affiliated with the values of the next two data points in the URL. Niteowlneils 00:45, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I do not think that ASIN denotes an affiliate tag. I have not tracked down exactly what it does mean, but it looks like an Amazon specific reference number for the book (or whatever product) to me - vide http://hacks.oreilly.com/pub/h/387 --Tagishsimon

OK, I may have guessed at the wrong commonality. The dilbert.com affiliate link has /dilbertcom-20/, which is very similar to the 'inktomi-bkasin-20' in the MM link, and there is nothing similar in my logged in link. Niteowlneils 01:52, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've looked into the matter: ASIN is documented here, who'd have thought it ;-) Ianb 07:20, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, after a few weeks here, I would have! This is a great project because it has old as well as brand new information, all linked together. It's like an oral history as history is being made. Spalding 23:00, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Categories

I think categorization has gotten out of hand. We are now getting categories for all years and even for years of birth and death. Conceivably, one could categorize articles in innumerable ways—people who died on Sundays in December of 1921?—but what's the use in it? I think we should limit ourselves to relatively broad, reasonably useful categories, and not just categorize every way we can think of. Everyking 20:42, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Categorizations of that kind can be useful for a number of things. Its a useful way to group related items. Many of these will just be sub-categories of the larger, broader categories you mention. We're not paper and very specific categories are better than, say, making an article which is just a list.

But there are too many categories to easily traverse. What we really need is an alphabetized list of categories so one can find specific categories easily. Just my $.02... — Frecklefoot | Talk 21:25, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

There is an alpabetized list. Just click on 'Categories' at the top of any page which is categorized. However ... there are more than 20,000 entries. That'll take you some time to traverse!! [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 22:48, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

People devote their entire lives to studying categorizating...I have friends in library science whose heads would probably explode if they saw these. It's kind of ridiculous, but that's what we get for allowing non experts to do anything :) Adam Bishop 21:28, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That's an excellent point. There's a lot of expertise out there, and there's no point our reinventing the wheel. In fact we are possibly wasting a lot of time trying to do just that. How do we tap into this expertise? Or have we already done so? Andrewa 17:34, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm all for having multiple independent or overlapping schemes of categorization. Yes, right now it's a little out of control. Yes, we probably need a WikiProject to look for anomalies and try to fix them; I've already fixed a few myself.

I think they are potentially far more useful to readers of Wikipedia than any other form of organization. You can traverse from an article that interests you to the category that looks most likely to you, then up and down the hierarchy category looking for other related material. I like it. I use it.

I don't find "year of birth" particularly useful, but I don't find the overwhelming tendency to link every year mentioned in an article particularly useful, either. Apparently someone likes it, or it wouldn't be there. It's easy enough to ignore a category you don't care about. -- Jmabel 23:09, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

As an aside having nothing to do with categorization, I have been doing some of the year-linking you mention. When I first started editing here, I asked what the accepted practice was on the manual of style for dates and numbers, and a Wikipedian responded that we should always link dates so that user preferences can change them. I was not aware that there was opposition to this practice. --Ardonik.talk() 00:07, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

Well, years (1977) aren't dates (May 12, 1977). AFAIK there are no preferences for years. Dates should always be wikied (my opinion, but I'm not aware of any opposition). For years this is not as clear, see Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context. anthony (see warning) 01:32, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I also think categorisation has got out of hand - seems to me it's for people who like to organise things rather than create new things, though of course there's a place for that. It would be nice if adding categories as the only change to an article could be filtered from a watchlist though, as at the moment it's jolly hard to pick out "real" changes amongst the noise. This make spotting vandalism harder, for one thing. Any reason this could/could not/should/should not be done? Graham 03:42, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A better solution for the long term would be to consider a change in categorization as a change to the category page, rather than a change to the article page. Then you'd be able to watch the category page if you want to watch these changes. This would also fix a lot of other issues, such as mass changes in categorization. I'd imagine this would be somewhat of a pain to implement, though. anthony (see warning) 15:45, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

But then how am I supposed to know if someone is adding a bad category to an article? Everyking 22:53, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You'd find out about someone adding Bill Gates to Category:Magicians the same way you'd find out about someone adding him to List of magicians. anthony (see warning) 04:57, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I too think the categorization has got out of hand. Some categories are set up so they are only every likely to have a handful of articles. I also think the categories for each years must go. They are basicly doing the same thing that the year pages are. DJ Clayworth 17:17, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Spell Checking

I think it would be really useful to include a spell check feature in the editor to automatically spell check new articles and edits before they are posted. Also, has anyone tried running a spell checking script through the wikipedia database to spell check all of the current articles? Or maybe even a grammar checker? Just an idea. --Chessphoon 01:15, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There are some spell checking bots that involve user interaction (I believe that pywikipediabot was it, correct me if I'm wrong), but I think an auto spell checker would be more of a pain to most people. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 01:18, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

http://iespell.com is an excellent on demand spell checker for browser text boxes, but unfortunately is available only for IE. It can just put a button on the IE toolbar for quick easy access. Spalding 01:52, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

For the 'fox, there's SpellBound.

chocolateboy 03:27, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You can also just use the K Desktop enviroment which has spellchecking for over 50 languages through aspell. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 08:14, 2004 Sep 14 (UTC)

• Accurate spelling is certainly desirable, although since Wikipedia has articles in multiple forms of English (American, British, etc.), depending on the context, it is probably impossible to do it in the database, or on a wide scale, without user intervention. To give you some ideas about what various Wikipedians are trying to do regarding spelling, you might want to look at:

User:Topbanana/Reports/This_article_may_contain_a_mis-spelled_word actually, there's a lot of cool stuff at User:Topbanana/Reports

Wikipedia:Typo

Wikipedia:List_of_common_misspellings

Niteowlneils 02:00, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Harry Potter may have use for a spell checker, but I think that Wikipedians would benefit more from a spelling checker.

dramatic 02:12, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC), lamenting the demise of the Gerund in North America.

Hah! That's a good quote quotation about gerunds; I'll have to file that one away. • Benc • 02:19, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Don't you mean a "spellings checker?" Austin Hair 02:37, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

I had to D: —siroχo 02:42, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

Not necessarily a bot to make spelling corrections, but perhaps just a "Spelling" button on the editing pages that would let you run your edits through a spell checker before saving the page would be useful. Sort of similar to IESpell but not something you have to install in your browser. --Chessphoon 02:52, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I find more of my spelling mistakes get through when I write directly on the WP editing page. It might be more of a legibility problem with the script used there, especially the spacings at punctuation. I normally wrote new stuff on Notetab Pro which has a built-in spell check, and then paste that into the WP editing page for final tweaking at the preview stage. Apwoolrich 09:31, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it's a bad idea, but I think there are much more pressing things that need to be coded first. Let's fix the bugs first before we start adding new features like this. If you've already got it coded, on the other hand... anthony (see warning) 12:51, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree we don't want the developers to spend a lot of time on this, even tho' it would be handy. This out-of-the-box spelling checker[9][10] seems like a good fit (from the list of features, not from any particular experience with it), and is only $60. If a developer would be willing to install it on test.wikipedia.org for a quick, basic compatibility/usability test, then on the production servers for a trial period to make sure there's no performance hit, etc., I'd be willing to donate the money to buy it (altho' someone else should do the actual purchase, since I'm in CA, and would have to pay an extra $5-6 sales tax). Niteowlneils 21:01, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Would it be appropriate to add an article titled ieSpell? I think it would. There are many other articles on companies or products here. I'm not sure this is the case, but if the manufacturer spells it with a lower case, should an article then not capitalize it, even though capitalization is the standard here, (I think)? I guess I can check k.d. lang or e.e. cummings for an example. Edit - sorry, found the answer, it needs a capital due to technical limitations, as it says under K.d. lang Spalding 12:15, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Here might be a good place to add it, rather than devoting a whole article to it.

chocolateboy 15:51, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

OK, I added it there. Thanks, Chocolateboy. Oh, and I took dramatic's advice and called it a spelling checker. Spalding 23:45, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

I'm a moderator for http://wiki.linuxquestions.org (LQwiki). We have a spellchecker (oops, spelling checker), and we use the same engine as the Wikipedia, or at least an older version of it. There was some talk of porting it to the WikiMedia people/ Wikipedia, but I haven't heard anything for a while. It does require user intervention, but that's a Good Thing - wiki, LQwiki, and Wikipedia all show up as misspellings. I think we use a different character set than the Wikipedia, so it might need a little work to port. If you're a coder for the Wikipedia, you might want to get in touch with Jeremy at our site - he takes care of sysadmining. crazyeddie 23:23, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category footer and Special:Categories need fixing

I've asked this in about 3 places with no answers--does anyone know who to ask for help or where to go to get these fixed? (trying for over a month; have an agreement that this makes sense, no disagreement, no info on who ya gonna call)

• The link at the bottom of articles of the form Categories:categoryName. Clicking Categories takes you to Special:Categories, which is useless. It needs to go either to Wikipedia:Category for an explanation or else to the top-level browsing hierarchical category, probably Wikipedia:Browse by category.
• The Special:Categories page needs an explanatory intro that helps you to get someplace useful from there--but there's no editable template for that page, so I can't do anything about it.

Elf | Talk 15:11, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree that Special:Categories is pretty useless (what, are there like 500,000,000 categories?). Finding a category via that link is almost impossible. It needs an alphabetized index, just like the Main page got recently. Though perhaps the Category link shouldn't go there, it needs to be easily accessible so one can find if particular category exists. — Frecklefoot | Talk 18:40, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Beowulf

I have been doing some work at the Beowulf page and added a lot of articles on the people described in the epic. At the moment Beowulf concerns the epic itself, whereas the "person" is treated at Beowulf (character). My gut feeling is that the most common meaning of "Beowulf" is the epic, and not the person. Any opinions on the naming?--Wiglaf 10:00, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Just testing

Y'all I'm justing testing this out. Man is this good or wha?

New request for opinion

For all the fans of my tables (... right, well, anyway), I've just popped a new House of Reps one up on US Congressional Delegations from Missouri. Questions

1. Does the table look better with the thinner border? (Example of the other kind: US Congressional Delegations from Alabama)
2. The previous opinion call told me that people wanted the passages information inline; i.e. it should say in the table when someone resigned, etc. But for a house table, particularly a crowded one like Missouri's or, god forbid, California's, that would add unneeded bloat to the table, IMO. Does anyone have any opinions on how best to do this? Or stick with in-line? Or abandon altogether and leave that to the individual articles?

Thanks! --Golbez 03:03, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

Re 1) I like the thinner border -- fairly subtle difference, but nicer. Re 2), How about footnotes -- I only had a slight preference for the inline notes -- if people really want to know why a term ended early, they can scroll down for the note or look in the article. [[User:Bkonrad|older≠wiser]] 03:18, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I like that; and if they really want to know why and when the term ended, they can go to the individual person's article. --Golbez 03:28, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

Absolutely lovely tables; if I were in control of the CSS, I'd add a table td, table th { font-size: smaller; } rule and all of your width problems would be solved once and for all. But your congressional tables are outstanding. I think the "block" layout is intuitive and superior to "inlining" dates of office. The scrolling is a small price to pay, in my opinion.

Footnotes like Bkonrad suggested are a good idea for irregular terms--one idea is to have them all link to the same #notes section in the manner of Saddam Hussein#Notes. --Ardonik.talk() 04:12, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

Looks nice, though I'd suggest filling in those nonexistent table cells somehow, so the unenlightened (such as me) know why there isn't anything there. Aside from that, it's clear and intuitive! And I agree, scrolling is a small price to pay. -- Wapcaplet 04:31, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• You mean the ones where there were fewer districts than max? Hm. Not sure what I'd put there... thanks for the compliment. :) --Golbez 05:08, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
  • Perhaps just an extra cell, spanning all the empty columns, saying something like "District not active at this time." It might also be good to add additional district-number headings periodically throughout the table (maybe every 10th Congress or so), so it's not necessary to scroll all the way to the top to see district numbers. Another thing to consider is having a separate article for a large, detailed table, while keeping a smaller, less-detailed one in the main article (compare Periodic table with Periodic table (huge), for example). -- Wapcaplet 16:32, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • Except "Huge" has more information in the table. I can't really think of what info I'd remove... or do you mean the other way around? Have this be the "basic" table and then add all the info into a "huge" table? I don't think there's enough demand for the information to be at the fingertips for something like that, as opposed to the periodic table.. and yeah, I've thought of doing that congress thing too; unfortunately, it would break up the longer terms. Someone who's in congress for 40 years would end up having at least four blocks instead of one large one, somewhat dulling his influence (Or perhaps exemplifying it, since you'd easily be able to see someone dominating a single 10 year block?) What do you think?--Golbez 21:11, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
  • True, I wasn't sure whether there was additional information that could be added. If not, there's probably no point to have multiple table-sizes in different articles. Extra headings would indeed break up the longer terms; I'm not sure how to handle that. I don't think having multiple blocks for someone would disrupt the flow very much; it may even make it more readable, since users would not have to scroll around as much to see who's occupying that big block. At the very least, an extra heading at the very bottom of the table would help. It's tables like this that almost make me wish CSS would let us print text sideways! Maybe in the next version. -- Wapcaplet 22:45, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I can't see a difference on the classic skin. I've played around with the <font size=-1>fred</font> command (which produces fred), but it looks as if it has to be applied to every individual cell, rather than as a block command around the whole table. Bummer. Perhaps you could just apply it to the Congress column to make it shorter.

On the House of Representatives table, why don't you set the column widths, rather than relying on <br>? Like this

!width=50|1st!!width=50|2nd!!width=50|3rd!!width=50|4th!!width=50|5th
!width=50|6th!!width=50|7th!!width=50|8th!!width=50|9th!!width=50|10th
!width=50|11th!!width=50|12th!!width=50|13th!!width=50|14th!!width=50|15th
!width=50|16th

Anything wider than 50 pixels will force the column wider; wrapping will be enforced. (In District 8, you needed a space before 'Independent' to fix the width problem for that column.) I've made the changes on US Congressional Delegations from Missouri - just revert it back if you don't like it. (I haven't eliminated all the unnecessary breaks, though.) [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 10:02, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I like it. It widens the table if it's so squished that the columns get unbearably thin. As for the extra >br<s, I only use those to set apart third parties. In fact, I should have had one before the Independent deal, just left it out in my fatigue. I should probably remove that mention altogether, it was more of a future reminder to me. Thanks, I like this idea. :) Probably works best on states with more than, oh, 8 or so districts. Or maybe I should force it on all states, though Alaska would start looking unnaturally cramped. --Golbez 15:18, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

If you are looking for a way to make the font smaller, add a style to the first line of your table (see below). Also instead of trying to repeat the district numbers inside the table you could put vertical lines between columns. For example to have a thick divider after every fourth column you might do this:

{| border=1 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0 align=center style="font-size:smaller;"
!rowspan="2" width="15%"|Congress
!colspan="19"|District
|-
!width=50|1st!!width=50|2nd!!width=50|3rd!!width=50|4th
!rowspan=123 width=1 bgcolor=#000000| !!width=50|5th!!width=50|6th!!width=50|7th!!width=50|8th
!rowspan=123 width=1 bgcolor=#000000| !!width=50|9th!!width=50|10th!!width=50|11th!!width=50|12th
!rowspan=123 width=1 bgcolor=#000000| !!width=50|13th!!width=50|14th!!width=50|15th!!width=50|16th

One further note: you don't need to sprinkle align=center throughout the table as it is currently. If you change the style in the first line of the table (shown above) to style="font-size:smaller; text-align:center;" it has the same effect. —Mike 02:54, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Relieve or Relief?

The page Relieve, it should be under the word Relief, it is incorrect usage of the word, I tried to move it but couldnt, admin needs to. Thanks. AmyNelson.

No relief is currently about sticky out bits, as it should be IMO. Prehaps relief (emotion)? Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 19:41, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"Important stub" template

I have created Template:Importantstub based on the above discussion regarding systemic bias. I think having this notice on significant articles which are underdeveloped will help in at least three ways:

• Acknowledging an obvious weakness gains the reader's trust
• A more prominent notice encourages development
• Having these articles in a separate category is useful both for expanding and analyzing our progress.

The difficult part is of course to decide what an "important subject" is. I have proposed a standard at Category:Important stub: If another general reference work has a detailed article, and we have just a stub, then it probably is in special need of expansion.

I have not slapped this on articles yet, except for Congo Civil War as an example. What do you think about the idea? We can discuss it here for a while and then move the discussion to Template talk:Importantstub.--Eloquence*

YES!! Let's all read "Systemic bias in Wikipedia", then this, (and maybe "Dealing with trolls" ;-) and start working on a good solution! Awolf002 02:28, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I STRONGLY oppose this. It's entirely POV, saying this stub is more important than some other stub. RickK 02:56, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

I understand your concerns. I agree that the value statement "important" is problematic. I hope you agree that Wikipedia aims to rival all existing general reference works in scope. For those who consider this goal very important, it would be extremely useful to specifically flag those articles we have that are much shorter in Wikipedia than they are in other reference works. Do you see a way the template could be phrased to avoid POV concerns and still fulfill that purpose?--Eloquence*

Isn't this what {{todo}} is for? [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 03:03, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

Unified Web search page

Just as we have a facility for ISBNs, I created a prototype template page to facilitate Web searching and to eliminate the bias of using Google.

The template is non-functional, but it uses two variables:

• ARTICLETEXT - name of the article; underscores are replaced by spaces
• ARTICLETEXTURL - URL-escaped name of the article; underscores and spaces are replaced by "%20"

Discuss. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 16:50, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Now you've mentioned ISBNs, I wonder whether that will still work after 1-1-2007, when the size of the ISBN is being increased to 13 digits. -- Arwel 18:27, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is addictive. I should have gone to sleep 3 hours ago.

I must wake up early tomorrow morning. This is a bad omen.

The "new, improved" Votes for deletion page

What the hell is going on on the VfD page? Without discussion, SOMEBODY has changed the page to change the way it's to be edited, and now I can't add new entries. Is this a not-so-subtle way of sabotaging VfD? RickK 22:13, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

No. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 22:29, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

While I certainly don't think it's sabotage, if you make a major change to how an important project page works, you should (a) tell people and (b) document it. —Morven 22:44, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

Evidently someone's removing the "add to this discussion" links? I can't tell who it is from the history, but whoever you are, it's disrupting things, so a revert of your VfD mods would be appreciated. Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Maintenance is a better proposal for managing the size of VfD. --Ardonik.talk()^* 22:49, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

Okay, now I understand the system (basically, the "add to this discussion" links are being replaced with section edit links), but I don't see what makes it better than the old way of doing things. The same number of templates are still being expanded, and the change isn't going to reduce the size of the VfD page down noticeably.
I guess I'm not opposed to it, but I don't understand what benefits we're supposed to reap by following it. --Ardonik.talk()^* 22:55, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

Well, from my understanding, the new procedure places a link to the article on the subpage automatically, so that's one benefit. - RedWordSmith 23:28, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Section edit links now work on sections in transcluded pages ({{these things}}). This allows us to just use the regular section editing feature (the [edit] links attached to each section header) in order to edit the individual VfD subsections -- the [edit] link automatically "knows" that it has to load the content from the transcluded page.

This has various benefits:

• the VfD page no longer has to use a nonstandard format to achieve the desired effect
• adding pages is easier - no need to create the "Add to this discussion" link on your own
• the [edit] link goes directly to the edit view for the desired subpage
• the actual VfD wikisource gets a lot cleaner and easier to refactor
• you can enable right-click editing in your preference (then you just have to right-click a section title to edit that section)
• you get auto-summaries (which is useful here, because the auto-summary will include a link to the page that is supposed to be deleted, so that you can directly jump to it from RecentChanges)
• you can edit individual subsections.

Not all the old-style entries have been switched to the new format yet, so please help in doing that.--Eloquence*

I should add:

• no more need for the "you are about to edit the main VfD page" comment.

— Gwalla | Talk 04:00, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Lol, Rick made almost exactly the same {comment,paranoid rant about sabotage} the last time VfD structure was improved. Pcb21| Pete 08:39, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with being paranoid. Are you accusing me of being paranoid?! Curse you and the rest of your co-conspirators!

Seriously, RickK is just making sure that VfD is, in fact, being improved rather than vandalized. He's looking out to make sure the whole thing runs as smoothly as possible, so please avoid calling anyone's concerns a "paranoid rant". I'm sure you meant no offense, but remember WikiLove, and all that. :-) • Benc • 21:34, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Why not Soundex searches?

As I was trawling through a chunk of All Pages, I noticed yet again the large number of redirects such as Cheeleaders, Chem Trails, Chaykovsky, etc. that seem intended to help with misspellings or variant spellings. Although there are many such entries, they are unsystematic and don't even come close to covering the range of reasonable possibilities. For example, we have Cheeleaders but not Cheerleaders, Chem Trails but not Chem trails, Chaykovsky and Chaikovski but not Tchaikofsky or Tchaikovski or Tchaikowski, or Tchaikowsky, etc. We don't have Neitzsche or Nietsche or Nietszche.

It seems to me that it would really be helpful to have some kind of fuzzy matching capability, particularly on the Go command.

Why not Soundex lookups, for example? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 00:44, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Not a good idea; every homonym would map to the same article (e.g. poor, pore.) Maybe an extra "sounds like" link in the search results would be best--it's not like the soundex algorithm would tax the MediaWiki servers. However, the real problem is what to do for non-english languages. --Ardonik.talk() 02:31, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

And Soundex is a rather poor algorithm with too many collisions. -- orthogonal 04:23, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"Sounds like" searching wouldn't be a bad idea, and there are several alternatives to the Soundex algortihm that aren't quite so English-biased. The New York State Identification and Intelligence System (NYSIIS) code was developed in 1970 or so to cope with just that problem, and produces a computable and storable result, unlike string-comparison algorithms (e.g. Jaro-Winkler and Levenshtein distance). Such codes could be stored with the article itself and searched for, just like any other term. It sure beats the heck out of polluting an encyclopedia with typographic error redirect pages. (Oh, and Cheerleaders now exists, created by User:Golbez yesterday :-) ) RossPatterson 17:03, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Although redirects are necessary for variant spellings, having a redirect for every misspelling is a bit ridiculous. I have to wonder if the redirect for Cheeleaders wasn't just a typo by the person who created it. —Mike 01:47, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

I think that's the likely cause for a lot of these. If you use Move to rename an article, the old name becomes a redirect. ←Hob 06:18, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)

MediaWiki already has a feature for searching for a "fuzzy search" on titles using Levenshtein distance, but it was disabled on the live site because it was too slow. -- Tim Starling 15:28, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

I am against Cheeleaders-type "typo-redirects", because it means we are "feeding" the web with typos. If I am redirected, I assume my spelling was a variant, not a mistake. For typos, there could be a "did you mean" page, but these - necessarily unsystematic - redirects are less than elegant, if not harmful. dab 10:04, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What do you mean by "feeding the web"? If there's no link to a redirect, it's invisible and doesn't get indexed by search engines - no? ←Hob 06:18, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)