Wikipedia:Village pump/Archive D

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump.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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At 15:28 Mar 3, 2003 UTC I added "Calimero" to Anthropomorphism, but soon after that a search for "Calimero" failed to give this article, although when I checked the article the new version with this term was there. Is this perhaps due to a database backup at that time, or an indexing of the database or something like that? That in such a case the search feature is applied to a slightly outdated version of the database? - Patrick 22:02 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

The search index table is updated with delayed inserts. If there is heavy searching activity, the queued updates will wait a bit for activity to lighten up before being actually added. Since search queries are sometimes rather slow, this cuts down on locking problems where additional searches are blocked until the first one finishes, allowing an update to go through. --Brion 23:24 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, good to know: my reaction was additional searches and edits to find out what the problem was! I updated Wikipedia:Searching. - Patrick 00:27 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)

Respect. Perhaps the most mis-used word in the english language, respect is very often used when regard or in regard to is meant. It is often also confused with - honor.

Do a search of wikipedia for respect; you'll see what I mean.

Is there any sane way to link in a a vector source file for a raster image? How soon will SVG support be added ( http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/SVG_image_support ). My attempt is over at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image%3AMonopoly_pricing.png Problems are:

Giving a link to the page (currently requires viewing source)
Requires confermation that .fig is not a prefered image method... Jrincayc 14:18 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

Use a link in the form [[media:filename.ext]] to include a direct link to an uploaded file.

As far as SVG support, it's fairly uncontroversial as far as I know ;) so it'll be added as soon as someone has the combination of the inclination, the ability, and the time to hack it in. At the moment I lack the time, alas; I may get to it later in the month, or I may not. My Wikipedia to-do list is very long. :) If someone else wants to give it a try, they are more than welcome! --Brion 20:34 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

What's the standard for NPOV in external links? If one spies an External link in an article that appears to be a personal political rant, is it ok just to leave it there? In this case, I'm referring to a link at the bottom of the Epilepsy article. It was written by a fellow Wikipedian, and seems to have only a faint relationship with the subject matter, but I'm not sure what the "rules" are for such material. Dachshund

One should seek NPOV balance in links the same as one seeks NPOV balance in quotations, citations, and attributions: try to include links to a variety of viewpoints and note what kind of treatment each site gives the subject. That doesn't mean you should link to every nutter with a geocities page, of course; information should be relevant, informative, and useful. --Brion

Re: Wikipedia:votes for deletion

The third paragraph of the page about a page-to-be-deleted is really confusing to me. I would appreciate if someone could explain what it means, or rewire it. Thanks, 129.79.38.163 19:40 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)

Is it possible to move Images the same way as articles? I'm working on the Wikiproject German districts, and there are several maps uploaded in JPG format already which need to be replaced by higher quality PNG ones, thus nearly the same name except the last three letters. Moving the images would be nicer then upload the new map and have the old ones deleted. andy 15:24 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)

Not at present, no. However I'm not sure I see how this would help in your case, as the new images must be uploaded by the nature of the operation... --Brion 19:32 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)

I want to filter my watchlist and remove user pages to a seperate "user" watchlist. Susan Mason

I need the help of somebody who connects through a commercial ISP or through work, not from a library or school. Can you access the URL http://www.brenda.uni-koeln.de/php/result_flat.php3?ecno=1.1.1.1 and do you get loads of data about alcohol dehydrogenase? AxelBoldt 20:51 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

I'm at home - I get a login page with that URL. I tried to register but it gave me the choice of academic or commercial, I'm neither - so chose commercial and was blocked (not available to commercial users without licensing) -- sannse 21:02 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, I guess we can't use that site as external reference then. AxelBoldt 21:11 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

There is an interface, but material is not available unless you register and pay up. -- Egil

We use books as references, and last I heard you had to pay for them. Reference away.

Plus, working on wikipedia counts as "academic" - if you twist the definitions enough... :) Martin

Ever heard of libraries?

But by all means, a reference for money is 1000 times better than no reference. -- Egil 22:05 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

Has anyone noticed a serious problem with the English Wikipedia speed during the last two days?
Frequently I've not been able to get in at all (the IE.5 Page Not Available notice comes up). At other times the speed has been so poor that the encyclopedia has been unusable. When I wanted to type this message it took 23 seconds to load the Village Pump but then another 38 seconds to get to the Edit box. I wish it had been that "good" these last two days!
I don't think there's anything wrong with my internet set up (Broadband) because all other sites come in nearly instantly. Puzzlingly there are very few comments on speed in this Village Pump, so is it just my computer? -- Arpingstone 18:41 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

It's the site, I'm afraid. The developers are aware of the problem, and are working hard to eliminate the bottlenecks. -- Stephen Gilbert 23:47 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

With pages like Dolphin Interconnect Solutions, isn't Wikipedia at risk of becoming a giant Yellow Pages? cferrero 09:56 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

Just add an objective assessment of the technology's suckiness, and report on the latest indictment of the corporation's officers (ha ha, just kidding), and you have a nice balanced article. There are always juicy factoids to supplement a company's rah-rah image of itself... Stan 20:32 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

I did that stub. Wanting to find out whatever happend to Norsk Data technology, I found that the Dolphin Server operation was now defunct, but that some remains of Dolphin remain. I used that as a basis for a Dolphin stub (which presumably would be filled with useful material, esp. computer/technology historic, since I find that particularily interesting). If you think that computer history and related stuff does not belong in Wikipedia, go along and put the 1000s of articles covering it on the deletion list. -- Egil 21:21 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

Why, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/List, doesn't the first link work? I know I'm always using illegal dr... characters, but this only has a comma, ? and (), all of which are legal (right?). Tuf-Kat

It's something to do with the pipe. I have no idea what, but I note that [[O Brother, Where Art Thou? (soundtrack)]] and [[O Brother, Where Art Thou? (soundtrack)|Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?]] work, it's just [[O Brother, Where Art Thou? (soundtrack)|]] that doesn't. --Paul A 06:10 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

With IE 6.0 how can I have it auto-refresh pages. It is caching them and not updating unless I use ctrl-F5. Also, how can I download asian character sets? Susan Mason

Just a quick question about the User Contributions pages, are they supposed to list all a user's edits? I ask this as when I perform different searches on my own User Contributions page (i.e. looking through by 100s or by 250s) I seem to get different results. For example the page 1000 starting at #1 shows that I have made 654 edits (by copying it all into a spreadsheet) but the page 500 starting at #501 is empty, implying that I have made less than 500 edits. I'm not really concerned by how many edits it claims that I have made I'm just wondering why this happens. The other thing this could affect is when looking through a vandal's contributions to check they've been returned to sonthing sensible it might mean that we are missing some, which would be a problem. Anyway, thanks for any information - Ams80 19:38 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, looks like the offset is broken on the query. It uses the offset for total-number-of-edits, but the old and current revision tables have to be queried separately; the offset isn't valid for the individual tables, and skips too many. With out current setup I can't think of a way offhand to make that work correctly (short of doing a full query up to offset+limit, then throwing away the first offset results, at which point why bother with the offset? Just click the longer limit.) --Brion 00:15 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

Where is the template for US President entries, for example used at George Washington, stored? More specifically, where is the talk page associated with this table to be found? -◈¡◈

A number of wiki utilities, most wanted, short, long etc. have been disabled to save the database response time. Would it be possible to run the queries, say, once a day to create static pages listing the top fifty in each of these catagories so the pages are of some use? 62.253.64.7, March 10

I'd been thinking this myself actually, I think it would be a good idea assuming there aren't technical reasons not to do it. - Ams80

H.G. Wells talking about the idea of an encyclopedia; maybe he was referring to Wikipedia :-):

Special sections of it, historical, technical, scientific, artistic, e.g. will easily be reproduced for specific professional use. Based upon it, a series of summaries of greater or less fullness and simplicity, for the homes and studies of ordinary people, for the college and the school, can be continually issued and revised. In the hands of com-petent editors, educational directors and teachers, these condensa-tions and abstracts incorporated in the world educational system, will supply the humanity of the days before us, with a common un-derstanding and the conception of a common purpose and of a commonweal such as now we hardly dare dream of. And its creation is a way to world peace that can be followed without any very grave risk of collision with the warring political forces and the vested insti-tutional interests of today. --(http://sherlock.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html)

--User:Extro

I've just encountered the "nowiki" tag for the first time in Polysaccharide. While it's pretty clear what it does, I was wondering if it was documented anywhwere that I'm supposed to have discovered (Still learning, as always.) Tenbaset 04:36 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Quite possibly not. Feel free to add an explicit mention of it to Wikipedia:How to edit a page. --Brion 04:40 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

I have done so, hopefully it is correct. Thanks. Tenbaset 05:00 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Help! I can't log in! The system says that my password is incorrect (although I've retyped it several times), and it also says there's no e-mail address registered for me, so it can't send me a new password. Has something gone wrong somewhere? -- Oliver, a.k.a. 152.78.0.29 03:26 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Help! I can't log in! The system says that my password is incorrect (although I've retyped it several times). Tiles

Try again. It seems a fix I made for another bug has broken the login process; I've reverted the fix pending purther testing. Sorry! --Brion 03:58 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, Brion! I'm in now. -- Oliver P. 04:11 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Incidentally, I've reinstalled the fix with another fix. ;) Please give a shout if there are any more problems. --Brion 04:52 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

I'm having some trouble getting a link to a URL with a dollar sign in it to work at William Shield. Is there some way to get it work properly, and if not what's the best thing to do? The troublesome link in question is: Details of the "Auld Lang Syne" controversy --Camembert

For now, replace the dollar sign with its encoded equivalent, %24: Details of the "Auld Lang Syne" controversy. (Note -- do *not* put <nowiki>s into a URL, it does very very wrong things to the parser. :) --Brion 04:14 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Righto, I'll change that. Thanks to all. --Camembert

At Timeline of trends in music (1980-present), there is a link for George Strait's album #7 in 1986, but the link functions as a self-link instead of leading to an article entitled #7. Is this a feature? If so, can it be fixed? Tuf-Kat

It's not precisely a self-link: it's linking to http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_trends_in_music_(1980-present)#7 - and a link I just tried in preview mode on this page linked to http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump&action=submit#7. My guess is that the # sign is making something somewhere think that [[#7]] is a link to a within-page anchor, not to another article. I have no idea how to fix this, apart from forbidding article names beginning with #.

--Paul A 03:23 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

The # character is reserved and is not allowed in page titles. They are allowed in links purely for the purpose of linking to internal anchors -- but the syntax for defining internal anchors has never been enabled, so they aren't much good. ;) --Brion 04:40 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

How does one make text both bold-faced and italacized? Susan Mason

Use five quot marks '''''like this''''' so it comes out like this. Danny 00:45 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

I usually put three on the outside, then two on the inside near the word, ''' ''like this'' ''', for ease of editing. -- Ô¿Ô 00:55 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

That wasn't boldfaced... Susan Mason

It looks boldfaced to me. Maybe there's something wrong with your browser or display settings. --Camembert

And what might that be? Im using IE 6.0 Susan Mason

That I don't know - I'm not technically minded enough. It might be something to do with the font you're using - if it's something quite unusual, maybe you've got the normal, bold and italic versions installed but not the bold-italic. I'm really just guessing though - others will have a better idea of what's wrong than me. --Camembert

Try bumping the font size in your browser up and down; rendering of outline fonts at very small sizes sometimes reduces the weight of bold text, particularly the bold/italic combo. --Brion 01:58 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

I switched out of Times New Roman and that fixed it. Susan Mason

I would like to use a bot to make a stub of Japanese city. The format should be like Funabashi. I will wait to use it until enough dicussion is done. I welcome any sort of comment, really any. -- Taku 04:18 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, that's awfully short. Could you include a little more data? Population would be a start, and such stats are likely widely available. --Brion

Yes, it is less than adequate stub. I put population and I will put area. Unfortunately I couldn't find out the complete set of stat data like census in USA. So we have to get each data like population individually. What else do you think we need? -- Taku 22:27 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

Yea that's too short. I think you could add information like location (latitude, longitude...), climate (max/average/min temperature, rainfall...), geographical features (nearby rivers/mountains...), history (when is the city formed, who formed it, important historical events...), just to name a few. Maybe you could use the US cities articles as reference since they are also added by a bot (AFAIK). --Lorenzarius 15:30 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

Of course, I wish I could. If someone has good stats in English, I will appreciate. But I doubt there is such. Maybe we need to add history or such by hand later. Anyway we can't expect artciels like US cities articles. -- Taku 16:14 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

IMHO, Why can't we expect articles of similar quality? We don't necessarily need history, but if we're going to run a bot, then we should be able to find all the information possible. At the very least, Lorenzarius' first few suggestions are very good; population alone is not enough, nor the city designation. Atorpen

Taku: for population, how about this? [1] Tomos 20:05 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)
for more demographics, [2] (files are in .xls format, and you would perhaps need japanese font)
and land areas [3] Tomos 21:21 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

I am interested in doing a screenshot for the Phoenix article. I know the image has to be in JPG. Can anyone recommend a good image size? hoshie

Actually png is much better for screenshots (gif also works very well but there are evil patents to worry about with using that file type). The size depends on what you want to do with the image: If you want to have text flow around it (like in Pioneer 10) then a width of between 200-300 pixels would be best. If you want to have the image stand alone (like in Yosemite Valley) then it can be upto 600 pixels wide. What I often do is both by having a thumbnail and a link to a larger version (like with the second image at Manzanar Japanese internment camp). For more info visit Wikipedia:Image use policy. --mav

I want to filter my watchlist and remove user pages. Susan Mason

When you view a watched page you are given the option to click "stop watching". Arthur

No, I want to filter my watchlist so that it does not list user pages. I didn't say I never wanted to see user pages in my watchlist, I said I wanted to filter the watchlist. Susan Mason

What does "filter my watchlist and remove user pages" mean, then, if not "remove user pages from my watchlist"? --Paul A 08:30 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

Paul - Susan wants to have two views of her watchlist: one in which user pages (and user talk pages) appear, and one in which they don't. Susan - perhaps you could tell us why you would appreciate this feature, and how you would use it? Perhaps you want to only look at changes to user pages some of the time - when you're in a more chatty mood? Or some other reason? Martin

Would some kind people please go to List of people on stamps of Switzerland and let me know on my talk page User talk:Arpingstone if the load time on a 56K connection is reasonable. I ask because there I have put two pics on that page, each about 20K large. I have a broadband connection and wonder if my pics are too large for a dial-up link. You'll somehow have to allow for the fact that the whole site may be slow. Thanks! -- Arpingstone 20:50 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

About 20 seconds to get the whole thing including all the images for me; not unreasonable for those trained to such slowness. ;) Two thoughts: first, progressive JPEGs might be nicer on the eyes, completing the images at low resolution at an earlier point in the download; second, the two images are too close together vertically -- on Mozilla 1.3/linux for me, the Einstein stamp is pushed inwards, as it comes up just before the first table clears the margin. You could use a <br clear=all> to clear the margin, or more simply put them both into the same table (same width, right?) --Brion 01:51 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)

I am afraid that there could be misunderstandings in the near future regarding what I have said to User:Black Widow. Before forming an opinion, please read User talk:Olivier, User talk:Black Widow, User:Tarquin and User talk:Tarquin. olivier 17:11 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

I'm noticing different behaviour with graphic layouts between IE and Netscape; it first came up with a version (now fixed using table rather than div) of curvature; see: [4]. In IE it renders correctly (at least, as intended!) but in Netscape, it renders quite weirdly. I don't think this used to occur in Netscape (although I mostly use IE).

I also notice that currently, in Netscape 4.7:

The Wikipedia logo slightly obscures the "M" in "Main Page" on article pages.
There is no horizontal rule bwteen the upper navigation section and the title of the article;
There is no vertical rule between the left hand navigation items and the article body.

None of these effects are seen in IE. Has something changed recently? Chas zzz brown 23:09 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

A lot of things are broken in Netscape 4 (the exact set of broken things will vary from page to page, setting to setting, day of the week to phase of the moon) and I'm afraid there's little interest among the developers in supporting it. You are more than welcome to make specific suggestions for improvements to the HTML output that will make Netscape 4 render most things correctly without breaking the code in general. (By specific suggestions, I mean an actual example of working code.) My honest recommendation, though, is to upgrade to a more capable browser. [5][6][7][8] --Brion

C'mon! (all that follows is good-natured. don't be angry.) I hate Microsoft like you hate Hitler. And I don't like AOL too much, either. Netscape 4.7 is fine. Calling it merely "obsolete" is like calling a mint-condition 1940 Maserati "obsolete". Even LYNX (my first browser, before Mosaic was written) is still a perfectly functional web browser. I often use it. Beats the crap of the modern gas hogs. 4.7 shows the logo funny? What a disaster. It looks funny. So what? So did my third girl friend. Arthur 00:33 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

Okay, wikipedia is not a dictionary. I get that.

Maybe.

Let me check.

Is the article Tentsuyu in violation of that rule? I originally wrote it, but now I wonder if it's inappropriate. I'd like to find out before I write more things like that? Any advice? Arthur 03:14 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

I think it is fine. -- Taku 04:16 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

That entry is fine; it is about the sauce not the word. Therefore it is perfectly acceptable. What we have problems with are articles that are just about words and not the subjects that those words name. --mav

March 12, 2003

Moved from Wikipedia:Announcements Enchanter

Wikipedia has become consistently very slow due to overwhelming traffic. Attention should be paid to upgrading the proccessing power and available bandwidth of Wikipedia, improving software performance, and increasing cacheability. Is there a distributed database architecture? Would this be a reasonable and workable solution? [anon]

Constructive suggestions are welcome at meta:Cache strategy & co. --Brion 23:26 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

See meta:Article count reform for some discussion on changing the "comma count", which I just blundered across...

US + British spelling No names, no packdrill, no article references but I am very disappointed at how quickly a debate about spelling can degenerate into the stirrings of a transatlantic flame war. It only requires a small level of silliness and a couple of provocative comments for people to lose their sense of perspective and start deploying stupid national stereotypes about "Brits" and "Yanks". I have seen various internet communities have a pretty good go at tearing themselves apart over this stuff and I would hate to see it happen here; I do most sincerely wish that people would check the Manual of Style's comments on spelling, and then take several deep breaths and have a coffee, tea or other beverage of choice before doing anything, when there is a spelling debate in the offing. I really strongly believe that these things can be very damaging and should be avoided at almost all costs. Jimbo pops up from time to time reminding us that peace, love, tolerance etc go a long way in a project like this, and this is a very very good example of an area in which he is right. Please please please check and abide by the MoS, and if you need to discuss it don't drag out the hoary old stereotypes. We try not to do it to other ethnic and national groups, so why on Earth would it be OK to do it about Americans or British people? Nevilley 07:35 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

Does anybody else keep thinking people are appealing to the "Mail on Sunday" as a spelling reference? Just me? Okay, never mind ;-) - Khendon

It happened again: Just edited Sigmund Freud, adding a "see also" for Freudian slip. I wrote a small Freudian slip article, checked the "Whats links here" and verified "Sigmund Freud" was there, along with a couple of other entries. Revisited "Sigmund Freud" a few minutes later, and the "see also" was gone. Any jokes or analysises on Freudian slip are welcome. -- Egil 07:24 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

Why arent we allowed to use AP photos if we provide the source? Susan Mason

Because they are very likely to challenge our claim of fair use. --mav

So? If its a violation we can remove them, we are a non-profit educational/research website. Susan Mason

It is best for us not get into that situation to begin with. They say in big nasty words that the images may not be reproduced period. We should respect that even though legally we do probably have a valid fair use claim. --mav

I think that Great Atuin (Discworld) should be moved to Great A'Tuin, but the automatic mover won't oblige because Great A'Tuin has been stubbed. What's the procedure for non-automatically moving a page? --Paul A 04:45 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

Just ask an Admin to move it. Already moved. --mav

So Epopt organizes Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships, and we start applying it to keep the growing number of ship articles in order, then poor Zoe comes along to fix an apparent lameness in German battleship Bismarck, unaware of the obscure WikiProject that might have answered her puzzlement. What's a good way (other than posting here :-) ) to inform would-be energetic editors that a WikiProject exists, and that an article is being edited to conform to the pattern recommended by a particular WikiProject? Stan 06:28 Mar 20, 2003 (UTC)

How about a bold type link to WikiProject Ships inserted as the top line of the talk page? Tannin

See talk:Lithium for an example. --mav

Couple quick questions:

Should HTML entities for bgcolor (in tables) refer to the common name entity (i.e. "pink") or should they refer to the hex code (i.e. "#ffc0c0")?
I have been moving quite a few images into the style seen in Moon, Rabbit, and Squirrel. Is everybody okay with that style (the image in the table)?
Is there a good reason why Japanese is 日本語 (Nihongo) instead of just 日本語? I mean, anybody who wants to, and can read Japanese is likely to have both Japanese fonts installed, and knows what 日本語 means. As it is, it just makes that title bar longer...
Is there any plan to get caching working in Mozilla? IE 5.5 is lightning fast, but tabs make adding entries about a thousand times more convienent.
- I'd love to have it working, but it's a low priority for me since the caching was added mainly to reduce server load, and IE makes up by far the majority of visitors. Alas... If you can help debugging it, I'd be most grateful :) --Brion
Is there any way to log into the ja Wikipedia with my en Wikipedia login? Certainly would be nice to use the 4~ thing in the ja Wikipedia and have it link to my user page.
- At this time you need to set up user accounts separately on each wiki. You can use the same name, unless someone else ahs taken it which is rare. --Brion

Thanks! -- Marumari 20:58 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

Marumari. You ask a good question about "日本語 (Nihongo)", and indeed that represenation is redundant. I can think of two points to consider. First, a person who does not have the Unicode font installed will see something meaningless for ""日本語", so adding "(Nihongo)" at least lets them know what is behind that link. Second, an english speaker who is at the very beginning of learning Japanese might know no kanji, but only romanji. Perhaps a better solution would be to change it to "日本語 (Japanese)" -◈¡◈

I must admit is tempting to make the cynical comment that somebody who doesn't have a Unicode font probably doesn't care what is behind the link, but I won't. :) I think you make a good point, although it still doesn't ease up on the amount of space that it takes up. And, of course, an English speaker who only knows romanji won't be able to make it very far in the ja wikipedia anyways. Perhaps "日本語 (ja)" would work better? But that seems a bit redundant as the user already sees "ja:..." in the alt for the link. -- Marumari 21:33 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

Basically, if we don't include the romanized version people complain that there's a bunch of weird question marks on the page. ;) And for the occasional person who might be able to read the language but doesn't have the font support, it's an indication that the material is there, they just need to upgrade. So I don't think it's useless... --Brion 03:47 Mar 20, 2003 (UTC)

It seems to me that 日本語 (Japanese) would be the ideal way to go (unless you want to make everything at the top into "French", "Spanish", etc.) "Nihongo" is only used by English speakers who can't read Japanese text (those people will understand "Japanese"). I can see many cases where somebody wouldn't understand what 日本語 (Nihongo) means, but I can't see any cases where somebody wouldn't understand what 日本語 (Japanese) means. 日本語 (Japanese) just seems all-around clearer to me. -- Marumari 16:54 Mar 20, 2003 (UTC)

This is for language links right? Well if you don't understand what Nihongo, Deutsch, or Español means then you'll have a hell of a time reading the articles behind those links. The whole purpose of inter-language links is to inform those people who can read those languages that a version of the article they are currently reading is in another language they can read. Thus we use native forms. --mav

All I'm trying to say is that a Japanese speaker is much more likely to recognize "Japanese" than they are to recognize "Nihongo". The Japanese don't really use or learn romanji in school; they learn Japanese and English. As such, (Japanese) would be a lot more recognizable than (Nihongo).

Is there an "official" way of requesting feedback on an article (Nickel and Dimed)? Should I appeal to individual users, at the risk of annoying them, or is feedback subtly given through edits? Should I leave a message on the talk page and hope for a response or should I just leave a comment at the village pump :)? If feedback is rarely given (I would venture due to the ever-changing nature of articles), would someone mind making an exception and looking over the entry? I'm asking for two reasons, development in my writing (I'm a senior in high school) and for future reference as I would like to add similar entries on other books in my collection (after a quick reread of course :)). Thanks. -- Notheruser 03:16 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

There's no official way as far as I know. If you're aware of a specific problem with the article you can use Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, but that's not really appropriate in this case. My advice would be to ask your English teacher to review the article for you. Teachers are usually overjoyed when their students do extra work, and if you frame the question right, you'll probably get a lengthy response. Print out a hard copy. I guess your other option is one of the ones you suggested -- risk annoyance and suck up to a random contributor on their talk page. -- Tim Starling 05:08 Mar 20, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I think I'll try a teacher rather than risk annoying a user. I don't want to step on anybody's toes (not in my first month here, maybe later :) ) -- Notheruser 06:31 Mar 20, 2003 (UTC)

General feed back for any article from {{two16}}:

if you understand NPOV you won't go too far

Could someone unprotect my user page? The vandal doesn't seem to frequent Wikipedia anymore... Thanks -- Notheruser 01:16 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

Done Enchanter 01:21 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! - Notheruser

Acapedia. What is this? What are its origins, purpose etc.

I don't know, but it's got 354,000 hits. Plus, I suspect it has a higher page ranking than us: bulgaria free encyclopedia gives acapedia's redirect to our server a #1 hit, with wikipedia's URL down at #9.

whois details for acapedia - with a Seattle-based address. Registered 30 January, this year (could be an extension. Still unclear on purpose.

354,000 hits turns out to be just 22 when google has filtered to remove near-identical content - phew! :) [9] gives "Todd T." as a Seattle-based person associated with acapedia. Martin

Looking at Chached pages Cached Acapedia Bulgaris it was a rather cheekey front end to Wikipedia, maiking it look as though Wikipedia supplied 'some of the info. At the moment it is just redirecting to Wikipedia though.

Do these pages have any encyclopaedic value?

These seem to have a little justification

 -- Chris Q 16:49 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

I'd move these two to the bottom list (sic):

List of songs which refer to other songs tells much about "how the web was woven", "passing the torch", "historical process"
List of songs whose title does not appear in the lyrics has some paradoxical/logical interest.

The rest are just self-indulgent fun, probably harmless. Ortolan88

GNU FDL - new version available

There's a new version of the GFDL in town: version 1.2. See the differences. Currently wikipedia is using "version 1.1 or later". I think we should change this to "version 1.2 or later". The changes are fairly minor, but it's always good to stay up to date... :) Martin

I've noticed that MeatballWiki gives no IPs for anon users, but (what I presume to be) reverse DNS lookups. Has this been proposed/discussed/rejected here? Martin

The old usemod wikipedias also show the hostname. I would be nice to have option to select between IP adres and hostname. Giskart 18:39 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

Except in rare cases (dynamic IPs), IPs and hostnames are equivalent, but hostnames are sometimes considered more privacy-invasive, as they often explicitly specify a person's university, workplace, or local ISP by name in text for all to see, which information would require a separate lookup with an IP. That, and we'd have to do reverse lookups on every visitor in order to obtain the information -- that'll slow things down a little. --Brion

This would be useful information, though, in helping to judge such a user's contribution. For example, if the BBCi article was modified by someone with a bbc.co.uk hostname, one might expect it to be accurate, but potentially biased. If the Java programming language was modified by someone with a university hostname, one might expect a certain, more theoretical, slant. If someone with an French-based hostname posted to US plan to invade Iraq, one might want to check for an anti-US slant - and also copyedit the spelling+grammar of someone who may not be a fluent English speaker. Martin

Sun in Pisces, Moon in Sagittarius

This astrological combination indicates a person who is in a perpetual state of motion. Your nature is excitable, sometimes irritable. You love change and will probably be involved in numerous occupations throughout life. You approach each new project and contract with new enthusiasm. At first, your interest is real enough, but it tends to be fitful. You appear to be a busy worker and have good abilities in a variety of areas. In society you are inclined to be talkative, sometimes enjoying gossip. However, your intentions are always sincere and you have a sympathetic nature. Your most conscious aim in life is to gain understanding and sympathy, but your chances for attaining these are diminished because of the diffuseness of your character.

The key to a harmonious existence lies in trying to concentrate your will in a single direction.

Why arent we allowed to use AP photos if we provide the source? Susan Mason

Because they are very likely to challenge our claim of fair use. --mav

So? If its a violation we can remove them, we are a non-profit educational/research website. Susan Mason

It is best for us not get into that situation to begin with. They say in big nasty words that the images may not be reproduced period. We should respect that even though legally we do probably have a valid fair use claim. --mav

Buy a camera: take your own photos. It's more fun than law. Two16

Link question

Dietary Fiber

Difficulty: Very Easy
Opening: A00
Previous move: Black played: 15...Ng4

File:3 - A00 - 15...Ng4.jpg

Dietary Fiber

I don't know whether putting chess problems in the Wikipedia is a good idea or not (if you can make an encyclopaedia article out of them, I suppose it's fair enough), but why are you adding them to the Village Pump? The VP is for questions about the Wikipedia. --Camembert

I wouldn't object to more chess stuff in the wiki (please link them somewhere appropriate from Chess), but 130k per image is a bit excessive. These boards could be reduced to just a few kilobytes each by using solid squares for the board and PNG instead of JPEG compression (which is inappropriate for what is essentially line-art, and thus has to use an absurdly poor compression ratio to achieve decent visual quality, hence the large size). --Brion 20:59 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

Camemberet, I suppose I must have been asking a question at the Village Pump? Brion, PNG is no problem, but Im not sure I have a means of making solid squares. PNG doubles the size of these .jpgs. Dietary Fiber

Difficulty: Very Easy
Opening: A00
Previous move: Black played: 13...Be7

File:2 - A00 - 13...Be7.jpg

Difficulty: Very Easy
Opening: D00
Previous move: White played: 16.Rh2

File:1 - D00 - 16.Rh2.jpg

Does anyone think it is good idea that we have an aritcle for each Chinese character? While each western alphabet has own article like C, I think it is not bad to have an article for a Chinese character. Each Chinese character has ethnology, the relationship with other characters. Wikitionary is not suitable for this because it is about a word not a character. We can also put a character code of each encoding. See [10] In fact, there are many dictionaries in Japanese and Chinese that have each entry is one Chinese character. If no one seems to show objection, I will start to add some. -- Taku 03:56 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

Besides, we can use a bot to have a good coverage of each Character at first with presumably Unicode code and each native code with rendered character. -- Taku 03:57 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a dictionary and you mention that Japanese and Chinese dictionaries have entries for each character. I fail to see how Wiktionary isn't the most appropriate place for these entries. For one thing, you will be able to have the native Chinese as the title of the page - in en.wiki you are limited to extended ASCII (and for good reason). The reason we do have encyclopedia articles for each English letter is because this is the English language wiki encyclopedia and for some reason this is a tradtion for English language encyclopedias (I have no idea why since this is the stuff for dictionaries). At the very least I would like to see how substantial an example article on a single character would be. I'm very skeptical though (aren't there over well 10,000 Chinese characters BTW? I see some major article bloat if we were to include every character in every language). ---mav

First of all, While most of Japanese dictionaries contain one character entries, there are independent dictionaries dedicated only to Chinese characters, called "Kanwa-jiten" (loosely translated as Chinese-Japanese character dictionary. I have same concern with you. I am not sure we really can have decent articles. Adding an each character individually might be an option but in that case the drawback is much -- definitely we want to put graphic-rendered character and encoding to each character, which is a really tedious jobs and the number of articles might be numerous.

Wikitionary is in turn a bad place to do this kind of project. Chinese characters are called ideography because each character represents certain idea. Wikitionary is a dictionary about basically words. I don't see the reason why we want to mix up characters and words, both are different concepts.

So maybe an independent project does make more sense? I don't know how much people are interested in such although I bet there are so many people having trouble handling Chinese characters love such a project. -- Taku 22:54 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Both Wikipedia and Wiktionary are not a good place to do it. Wikipedia is not good as Wikipedia is not a dictionary; Wiktionary is not good because we do not want to talk only its meaning, but its history as well. I recommend a new project outside Wiktionary, maybe called WikiKanji? ---Wshun

WikiKanji? No, maybe we should name it wikiunicode since we want to cover all characters out there in the world, possibly including Hierography in Egypt. -- Taku 23:07 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia could be a great place for it. Chinese characters have complex meanings and ancient histories; they're not used simply for spelling words like Roman characters, and yet we can easily write encyclopedic articles about A (which needs some work, I see...). However, I'd like to see a sample article before I give my support. -- Stephen Gilbert

I (or anyone) will write an sample article. One article for discussion should not hurt anything. -- Taku 23:07 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Among the smallest set of chenese characters in Japan is approx. 2000 (Joyo Kanji), for daily use. Mass media use mostly these ones, except for proper nouns. But many criticize it to be too limited. Japanese Industrial Standards offer a basic set of approx. 7,000 and expansion/supplementary set of 6,000 characters. Unicode is not complete but quite good, offering, well, 34,000 or so? I guess it takes a lot of time to develop good 34,000 articles...

Do we really cover every single character in wikipedia? Many of Chinese characters are actually simply combining simple parts. We don't need thousands articles at all. That is not my intent. I guess at least one hundered is needed to explain decent history of the characters. If we go to a new project, the story is different of course. -- Taku 23:07 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Besides, I have seen Taku proposing a use of bot twice in the past (once for Japanese writers, the other for cities) it seems he never gets permission or definitive answer and the discussion just fades away. Why is that?

Regarding making encyclopedia articles on characters, I am not sure. We can talk about the meaning, and the origin and history of the shape (why this character's shape is as it is, how it has been changing over time and across different places), how it is used, what are the characters with similar or opposite manings, etc. I guess it's good for Wiktionary. Tomos 21:58 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

Those proposal are not dead yet actually. I will organize my plans atWikipedia:Bots page. -- Taku 23:07 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Taku's previous bot proposals haven't gone anywhere mainly because the created articles have been so very very minimalist. It's okay to input an individual microstub -- it will get expanded -- but a lot of people will balk at dumping hundreds or thousands of microstubs with a bot. The name and birthdate of an author by themselves aren't much of an article; something more like name, birthdate, nationality/languages written in, genre/medium, and a list of major works would be the minimal acceptable stub for a mass dump. For the cities: name, prefecture, and URL to web site is too little; I could have gotten that link from google, I want actual information! The present state of Funabashi as an example is much improved, though still somewhat light. --Brion 22:35 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

It looks like thousands of bot-generated short entries would be welcome in Wiktionary but not here. --mav

I still believe it is better to start a new project, maybe an even more ambitious one, a project about all characters in the Unicode. -- Wshun

How do I display an image in multiple language versions of Wikipedia without having to upload it more than once? Mkweise 18:42 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

You don't, so far. Or, if you want to cheat, you can upload it to the English wiki and then use the direct URL for the picture on the others, where I think we haven't got around to disabling external image links. But these won't link to image description pages, and there's no way to track usage from within the wiki (ie, if an image is no longer used by a page on the english wiki, the page won't show that it's still being used on the German or Japanese wikis). --Brion 19:03 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

Somebody mentioned that this could be one possible use of wikimedia.org. --mav

As 9 out of 10 images are language-independant, it would certainly make sense to have just one image repository used by all language wikis. Why burden the server with storing, serving, caching and backing up a dozen or more copies of the same image? Mkweise 17:23 Mar 25, 2003 (UTC)

A data has been chosen for the Wikivention. It will be July 29-31, 2005, so mark your calenders!

I want to do an article on the Tasmanian Devil cartoon character. There is already a page called Tasmanian devil that has a dummy link to a page called Tasmanian Devil cartoon character. I think that's a bit unintuitive. If someone wants to link to the cartoon character, they will most likely type in his name as it is officially written, Tasmanian Devil. The capitalized "Devil" keeps the link from going to the page about the real-world mammal.

So, what should I call my article? I'd prefer Tasmanian Devil, but if y'all think this will make for to much ambiguation, I'll call it Tasmanian Devil cartoon character. -- Brian Smithson 6:24 (UTC) 3-22-03

IMO Tasmanian Devil is fine. For better or worse we aleady have quantum leap/Quantum Leap and red dwarf/Red Dwarf. --mav 07:06 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

IMHO, this is fine, BUT each page should have a disambig link to the other. jaknouse 01:55 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

Link question

Why does the Mathematical Association of America link within Underwood Dudley appear dead when it isn't dead, and why does it link to the "edit" MAA page, rather than the MAA page itself? I am baffled

looks fine to me -- Tarquin 16:26 Mar 25, 2003 (UTC)

Well I'll be darned. It was screwy a few minutes ago ... honest.

It's a caching issue (see m:Cache strategy).

Why was the hit counter dropped from each page? Was it the server strain thing? jaknouse 01:55 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

I do hope it returns some day... Arno

When I want to refer to a city, is it better to use "CityName" or "CityName,_Country", e.g., "Paris" or "Paris,_France"? Paris or the redirected one Paris? -- mkrohn 21:56 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

How about Paris, France? --mav

Erm, no offense or anything, but that sounds very American! "Paris" will do if it's obvious from the context that the one in France is meant; otherwise you could say, "the French city of Paris", or something... -- Oliver P. 23:06 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

P.S. - Tarquin says...

My (current) number one Wikipedia grouse is this: "Venice, Italy", "London, England" and so forth. That is how cities are indentified in the US; not in the rest of the world. A rout through UK train timetables for the few duplicate towns shows they use "Gillinham (Kent)", for example. The same form or "Gillinham in Kent" is usual in newspaper or reference articles if readers may not know which country a place is in. However, in the interests of consistency in page names, we're stuck with the stateside terminology. It's probably all irrational reactions to cultural imperialism. That or seeing that dratted comma always reminds me of Marilyn Monroe saying "Paris, France is in Europe?" in Gentlemen prefer blondes...

Yes, I was refering to the cases, where it is clear from the context which "Paris" I refer to. Since I am new, I was interested if there is some kind of policy for that. I did not find anything and before messing things up I decided to ask here. Since it seems common usage to give certain cities priorities, e.g., the main page of Paris is "Paris" and not "Paris,_France" it makes sense to me in these cases to set the link directly to "Paris". -- mkrohn 00:23 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

I think he meant "Gillingham", though. :) -- Oliver P. 23:12 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

Is there a way to make a title which ends in an apostrophe both italicized and bolded? See Burnin'. Tuf-Kat

Nobody knows or cares whether a space is bold or italic! --Brion

I would never in a million years have thought of that. A sheepish Tuf-Kat

Could be worse; see WikiWikiWeb:SixSingleQuotes. ;) Also, if you need to abut a printing character (like punctuation), you can separate it with an empty HTML tag (Know what's great? Wikiin'!) --Brion

One thing that is getting to be a serious pain in the rectrum is discovering when you have finished editing a page and then discover that you cannot save becuase someone else is there. Can something be done about altering frequently used pages such as Votes for Deletion and Village Pump so that you know in advance that someone else is in there? Arno 02:35 Apr 5, 2003 (UTC)

About concurrent edits (sorry if this has been discussed before, I seem to recall reading something but can't find it now):

When two users edit an article simultaneously and don't know about each other, it may take some work to integrate the concurrent changes. Wouldn't it be useful to have an alert "user:soandso is currently editing this page" and some means of communication so you can coordinate your work? Don't know if it's technically feasible; do others consider it desirable? Kosebamse 10:33 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

It is not possible to know whether another user is editing a page, because we don't have spies sitting on their desktops watching what they do. ;) The most we could know without installing spyware is whether another user has loaded the edit page or run a preview recently (ie, with an arbitrary timeout). This would be somewhat problematic for two reasons:

False negatives: people taking longer to make their changes than the timeout allows; end result is same as present, another user can unknowingly make an edit, and when the first guy comes back and hits save, he is informed of an edit conflict and must merge.
False positives: people hitting the edit link accidentally or just to copy/check out the source of a page, or starting to edit but deciding not to. (Or worse yet, misdirected web spiders hitting every edit page on the site...) Meanwhile, users will be scared off from trying to edit, and may never make that excellent, clean edit that would have taken three seconds to merge. End result: less productive activity on the wiki.

I at least don't find it a particularly good trade-off. What might be a good idea though is making a note of edit conflicts at the preview stage. --Brion 11:31 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

If I create a new page, and then make another edit or two, it would be nice if a flag would pop up for 5-10 minutes indicating that Im probably working on the article. Likewise, if I make a series of edits within a short time to an older page, its probably a good guess that Im making yet another edit. It would also be useful if a user who had made 10 edits to a page (without any other user making interim edits) could delete the 9 previous edits, thus making it appear as if they had only made one major edit. Susan Mason

Quite so, Susan. That last idea would be really neat, but not very practical from a software design point of view, I imagine. Since I started putting in progress in the comment field when I make the first edit of a series, and then still going (or etc.) as I go, and then done for now for the last one, I don't get nearly as many edit conflicts. Not a 100% cure of course, but worth doing. Mind you, lately I've been working on obscure articles that no-one else much edits anyway, so I guess that helps too. :) Tannin

The 'Pedia Icon: Where to Download?

I just discovered the pretty 'pedia icon when I put the shortcut of a 'pedia page on my desktop. It's really quite nice, with the Earth and the big W. I'd like to use it on my personal computer. Where can I download it? --Menchi 02:10 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

Right here -- Notheruser 02:14 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you. How did you find the link? --Menchi 02:18 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that favicon.ico is the standard location for icons. For example, NY Times Slashdot etc. -- Notheruser 02:28 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

"Oscar Wilde's Tomb" Link

On the page "Père Lachaise", there's a peculiar link: Oscar Wilde's Tomb ([[Oscar Wilde|Oscar Wilde's Tomb]]). The link says "Oscar Wilde's Tomb", but it directs the user to the page "Oscar Wilde". This is misleading. Shouldn't the link be like: Oscar Wilde's Tomb ([[Oscar Wilde]]'s Tomb)? Is there some reason behind such a confusing format of linking? --Menchi 02:36 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

Yes. --mav

I think mav means, yes it should be [[Oscar Wilde]]'s Tomb and no, there is no reason to have [[Oscar Wilde|Oscar Wilde's Tomb]] (unless I misunderstood which you were saying "yes" to mav). Hephaestos has already removed the link anyway, it's not needed because there is already a link to Oscar Wilde in the main text. -- sannse 07:15 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Why is 1918 in literature a protected page? User:Black Widow

Unprotected. Probably an Admin mistake ('Watch this page' is next to 'Protect this page'). --mav

"Oscar Wilde's Tomb" Link

On the page "Père Lachaise", there's a peculiar link: Oscar Wilde's Tomb ([[Oscar Wilde|Oscar Wilde's Tomb]]). The link says "Oscar Wilde's Tomb", but it directs the user to the page "Oscar Wilde". This is misleading. Shouldn't the link be like: Oscar Wilde's Tomb ([[Oscar Wilde]]'s Tomb)? Is there some reason behind such a confusing format of linking? --Menchi 02:36 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

Yes. --mav

I think mav means, yes it should be [[Oscar Wilde]]'s Tomb and no, there is no reason to have [[Oscar Wilde|Oscar Wilde's Tomb]] (unless I misunderstood which you were saying "yes" to mav). Hephaestos has already removed the link anyway, it's not needed because there is already a link to Oscar Wilde in the main text. -- sannse 07:15 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

I'm currently engaged in a project describing detailed the history of all the coin denominations of British coinage. At the moment I'm doing probably the largest article, English/British coin Penny, which has some 1200 years of history to recount and at the moment I've got as far as 1422. I'm aware that there's some maximum size to a Wiki article, but I've no idea of how big that is compared to what I've already written -- could someone suggest an article that's near the maximum size so that I can see how much more I can write before I run into problems? By the way, I know some people have complained about the naming style of the different articles for the individual coins, but that was adopted before I ever found Wikipedia - maybe we can rename them in a more elegant fashion once they've been written! Thanks -- Arwel 23:55 Apr 2, 2003 (UTC)

There's no theoretical maximum, but our server only has 2 gigs of memory, so don't push it please. ;) In all seriousness though, I very strongly recommend against letting articles grow beyond 32 kilobytes. (This page right now is about 34 kilobytes.) Not only is this uncomfortably long to navigate if you're only looking for a small bit of information, and very annoying to edit if you want to touch on something in the middle somewhere, but it's technically problematic because some browsers (including most browsers on MacOS) cut off the text around this point when editing. If a page can't be reliably edited, it really should be refactored into several smaller, more self-contained sections.

When a page reached about 28kb, you'll see a warning message appear on the edit screen letting you know that you're entering the danger zone. See Wikipedia:Browser notes et al for more details on browser compatibility. --Brion 00:57 Apr 3, 2003 (UTC)

see wikipedia:page size

Thanks for the advice. In fact the article hit 30K at 1558, so I'll start writing about Elizabeth I's pennies in part 2! :) -- Arwel 23:50 Apr 3, 2003 (UTC)

Where is the real Spanish wiki? I think it hurts the project that we do not have a clear link to that site. The main page should link to it. Where is it? Dietary Fiber

As far as I know, the Spanish monarchy has not endorsed any wiki. ;) Are you trying to get at the Spanish Wikipedia (http://es.wikipedia.org/ ) or the more active Enciclopedia Libre (http://enciclopedia.us.es/ ), which is not a part of the Wikipedia project? --Brion 22:03 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, plz create a front page link to it. Its a wiki and its Spanish and its 600% larger than the es.wikipedia Dietary Fiber

Why? It is not a part of Wikipedia. --mav

Out of educational respect and Wikilove, it is rude to not link to them as they are trying to do the same thing we are. Dietary Fiber

It was rude of them to fork es.wiki to begin with. They are already linked on Wikipedia:About which in turn is linked from every single page here. That is IMO way more than enough. --mav

Someone having been rude to you is a poor excuse for being rude to them, even if it is a frequent one. EL may not be a part of Wikipedia, but it's goal, process, and license are identical, making es.wikipedia.org largely redundant. It makes more sense to me to link it more tightly from es.wikipedia.org than from the English-language front page, though, if we're to continue to maintain it. We don't link any other non-Wikipedia projects from there, just the other Wikipedia subprojects (meta-wikipedia, wiktionary) and the other languages Wikipedia is available in. --Brion 01:03 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)

Article title starting with lower-case

Currently, it is impossible to start an article title with a lower-case letter. So we get things like IMac instead of iMac. Was there any discussions about this feature? Any possibility that it will be changed in the future? Thanks, Tomos 05:02 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Leaving your ACTUAL question for the more technically minded to answer, in the meantime, you can take advantage of the fact that the first letter of an article is case-insensitive: iMac and IMac take you to the same place. So even if the article title is "funny", your reference to it doesn't need to be... -- Someone else

Initial capitalization is a tricky thing. If we were to make title completely case-sensitive, you'd get links to two separate pages from these two sentences:

Asteroids are relatively abundant in the region between...

Many have dreamed of colonizing the asteroids and mining...

That would greatly magnify the occasional problems caused by variations in capitalization in subsequent words. Alternatively, we might preserve the case, thus allowing iMac and pH to look right, while allowing both variations to match and link to the single article. This would lead to great inconsistency in titles, as we find ourselves with here a lowercase asteroid and there a capital Comet. This would at least be aesthetically displeasing (less a lot of effort at renaming to maintain a nicer system); and I'm not sure how much trouble it would be to make partial case insensitivity work -- and if we were to change to complete case insensitivity, at least hundreds of title pairs would need to be cleaned up. Redirects removed and alternates merged or disambiguated; that's going to require some manual labor.

The simplest solution would be to create a manual tag of some sort creating a 'display title', which would be displayed in the header in place of the page's 'real' name and could be differently capitalized or contain special characters. (I think this was discussed a long time ago on the mailing list, I don't know what the commentary was.) --Brion 06:30 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

The "Display Title" - yes, great idea! Tannin 09:08 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Talk:Bass guitar seems to be protected, for no obvious reason. It is empty. --rbrwr

I've unprotected it - most likely it was protected by mistake (the "Protect this page" link is right next door to the "Watch this page" link, so it's easily done). --Camembert

The Warren Commission published 26 Volumes of Hearings and Exhibits. Researchers cite these as 1H1, which would be translated as:

Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. I, p. 1

So, If i'm writing an article and want to cite the Warren Commission hearings, which is better? --hoshie

For the purposes of Wikipedia articles, I'd use the expanded form: most readers are not going to be Warren Commission researchers, and won't know how to interpret "1H1". --Paul A 09:05 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Talk (etc) pages vs Mailing list: Sorry if this is an unbearably naive question and/or discussed to death elsewhere, but: What's the mailing list for, and how does it compare in function to various facilities on the wiki like this village pump, annoying users, votes for deletion, various standards discussions etc? Sometimes on the list I see someone say that this would be better off on a Talk page; sometimes in the wiki I see someone say this should be taken to the list ... I just can't nail down what the effective difference is, and when you'd choose which for what ... help!. As always if this IS discussed elsewhere please feel free to point me in that direction rather than rehash a whole load of stuff here for the Nth time. :) Nevilley 08:53 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Good question. WikiEN-L is for general discussion of en.wiki policy and direction. Wikipedia-L is for general discussion of Wikipedia-wide (all languages) policy and direction. The specifics for en.wiki are supposed to be worked out wiki style on en.wiki. The specifics for the whole project are supposed to be worked out on meta. That is how it is supposed to work. In practice it doesn't work out so nicely. --mav

Changing_of_the_Guard is less than a stump and rather silly. Should it be removed? 17:01 Apr 10, 2003 (BST)

Will someone who has access to the data post a list of all pages which are currently protected, or post instructions so that I can determine this myself. -◈¡◈

Done. -- Tim Starling 04:17 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

was moved to wikipedia:protected page

Where did several entries for March 29th of the Current Events page go? --66.47.86.47 12:02 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

Well, the first page from March 30 shows this:

March 29, 2003

2003 invasion of Iraq
- The Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf has accused the US forces of killing 140 civilians during the last 24 hours and denied allegations that Iraqi soldiers are disguising themselves as civilians.
- An explosion damaged a shopping center in Kuwait City before dawn, apparently caused by a malfunctioning U.S. cruise missile. No injuries are reported. [11]
- A Iraqi military suicide bomber, driving a taxi, killed four US soldiers in an attack. "We will use any means to kill our enemy in our land and we will follow the enemy into its land," Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said, "This is just the beginning. You'll hear more pleasant news later."
SARS: Dr. Carlo Urbani, a WHO expert on communicable diseases and the physician who first identified the outbreak, dies of the disease in Thailand. He had been infected in Vietnam. [12]

An aweful lot of edits to go through here. I suggest you just reinsert this material if it meaningful to you. Fred Bauder 13:40 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

Please add Carlo Urbani to Recent Deaths. Dietary Fiber

It's not protected - do it yourself. If you're referring to the Main Page, try Wikipedia talk:Selected Articles on the Main Page. Martin

I'm using Mozilla 1.3B on a Mac with OS 10.2 and, for the last two weeks or so, Wikipedia has been sporadically forgetting my login. I've never had a problem before, and have always been automatically logged in as soon as I came to wikipedia, but maybe a dozen times in the last few weeks, I've had to re-log in. I can't detect any pattern to when (and clicking on the box to be automatically logged-in doesn't prevent) being logged-out. Am I alone? Tuf-Kat

Just so no one gives it as an answer, I've checked my cookies and Wikipedia is allowed to give them to me. I have four from Wikipedia; they are called "User Password", "User Name", "User ID" and "PHPSESSID". Tuf-Kat

I had a similar problem with Chimera, but it seems fine now I've upgraded to 0.7 (now Camino) :-) -- Tarquin 09:14 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

____

Almost a third of the most-wanted article list has now been created. Could someone please reset it long enough to renew the list? jaknouse 03:00 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

Done. --Brion 03:16 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

A date has been chosen for the Wikivention. It will be July 29-31, 2005, so mark your calendars!

Mega LOL!. :) --mav

I'm a little uncomfortable with what's happening at Robert Mugabe at the moment, I notice the page is protected, yet folks with sysop status are still making edits. this suggests a two tier level of editorship, from which non-sysops are excluded. i can understand that the page needed to be protected due to the edit war that was unfolding, but surely that should mean that EVERYBODY leave the page alone until things have cooled off or until a third party can intervene and adjudiacte fairly, not that the person with syssop status be in a position to continue to makes edits whilst the other person is excluded from having a write to reply as it were. This isn't meant as personal, if anything I actually agree with danny's edits, but if 172 isn't allowed to edit, dannny should also refrain. Just thoughts. quercus robur 16:35 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

As far as I can tell the page doesn't seem to be protected right now. -- JeLuF 16:37 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

That's true now, but it was happening for a while- i was flagging this up more as a general point (which is why I put my comments here rather than on the relevant talk page), that really protected pages (at least those that are protected due to an edit war) shouldn't be touched by either party until the problem is resolved. (That's my view anyway) quercus robur 16:50 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

For a sysop, the only difference between a protected and an unprotected page is that the toolbar button to the left doesn't read "protect this page" but "unprotect this page". So normaly a sysop won't recognize a protected page on first sight. -- JeLuF 17:15 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

Good point, I'll make the flag more prominent. (I'd also love comments on m:Protected pages considered harmful.) --Brion 20:17 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

Would someone please delete Image:4-A00- 27...Re7.gif Dietary Fiber

Hi! A question for everyone ..... does it look best, if an article has two pictures, to put them:
One on the right and one on the left - see Airbus A380
Both left - see Amber
Both right - see Avro Vulcan
I just can't decide.
Thanks -- Adrian Pingstone 09:41 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

IMO, one on the right and one on the left. The variation gives more interest to the layout -- sannse 09:45 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

I agree. But just make sure they are not too close to each other -- otherwise they will sqeeze the text between them at lower resolution screens. --mav

Dietary Fiber

I don't know whether putting chess problems in the Wikipedia is a good idea or not (if you can make an encyclopaedia article out of them, I suppose it's fair enough), but why are you adding them to the Village Pump? The VP is for questions about the Wikipedia. --Camembert

I wouldn't object to more chess stuff in the wiki (please link them somewhere appropriate from Chess), but 130k per image is a bit excessive. These boards could be reduced to just a few kilobytes each by using solid squares for the board and PNG instead of JPEG compression (which is inappropriate for what is essentially line-art, and thus has to use an absurdly poor compression ratio to achieve decent visual quality, hence the large size). --Brion 20:59 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

Camemberet, I suppose I must have been asking a question at the Village Pump? Brion, PNG is no problem, but Im not sure I have a means of making solid squares. PNG doubles the size of these .jpgs. Dietary Fiber

What are you using to create the images? Can you adjust its settings? --Brion

I am not sure what your question is, but I don't see why one should clutter up the pump with this stuff. I am moving the chess problems to -- surprise -- Chess problems Slrubenstein

If you weren't so rude you might take the time to reflect on what my question might possibly be. Dietary Fiber

If you weren't so rude you might have created the page and done the link yourself. But no need to thank me -- wikipedia now has one more article. Slrubenstein

Slr, DF was giving an example of some material and asking if it was appropriate to put in Wikipedia. That's entirely appropriate for discussion in the village pump. --Brion 22:16 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining -- and my apologies. Should I delete the article? Or should we leave it until someone can compress the ficures? Slrubenstein

As a semi-professional chess player, I would like to expand the chess section. In particular, I would like to add instructive chess tactical problems. Each of my .jpgs has a size of about 130kb and I have quite a few. Although this is not necessarily encyclopedic, I don't see how it could hurt to have the wikipedia also contain the internet's best source of chess problems. Below is an example:

Clicking on the picture takes you to a screen which shows the answer.

Is Image:Tibetmap.png copyright violation? The user has altered the image by adding a thumbnail (is this image also violation?).

If you do think that the user has violated copyright, does it mean no matter how much or how little one has modified an image, so long as it is originally a copyrighted image, it is copyright violation? --142.103.108.105 23:50 Mar 26, 2003 (UTC)

That's what we call "blatantly removing the copyright notice and making a couple of scribbles -- oh look it's all new!" That's roughly as acceptable from a copyright standpoint as ripping the "property of Joe Blow, please return if found" tag out of a pickpocketed wallet and calling it your own. I've deleted the image (a sad rip-off of [13]). At least trace over them yourselves, people... geez. --Brion 00:24 Mar 27, 2003 (UTC)

Actually, I found the image without any copyright information. Thus, the image will remain on wikipedia. If you wish to argue with me, email me, and we'll arrange a court date.user_talk:hfastedge 01:35 Mar 27, 2003 (UTC).

Ach, fuck. This pre-emptive, disrespectful behaviour of deleting the image, now see us without a Tibet map at all, as it is deleted from my own system.

Since you found the image without copyright information, you could have argued to a court that you didn't realise the image was copyright. Since you've now been told (by us) that it is copyright, that defence is no longer available to you. --- Tim Starling 01:43 Mar 27, 2003 (UTC)

I want to add an external link to Afghan Hound, but how do I link to this page without loosing the site frames? The URL I see in the address bar ( http://www.the-kennel-club.org.uk/ ) links to the home page. Is there a way round this? Thanks -- sannse 19:10 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

...and that's why frames are evil. E-mail their webmaster and ask if they have a way to link to their frameset such that it will show a particular file in the content frame. --Brion 20:40 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

I was looking at 1944 and I noticed how frequently Nazi is used to describe German military forces. I find this offensive and inappropriate, this is comparable to referring to US forces in Iraq as "Republican Forces" or to US forces in Bosnia as "Democrat Forces". Likewise, referring to Iraqi forces as "Baath Forces" would be inappropriate. German troops of World War II should be referred to as Germans, not as Nazis. Many of them were not Nazis and many of them were killed for disagreeing with the Nazis. Dietary Fiber

Many Germans would rather not be associated with the genocidal Nazi Germany but if you don't like it then change it. This is a wiki if you haven't noticed. --mav

I thought you might want to form a consensus on the issue before I changed it. Dietary Fiber

This isn't that important - both terms are unambiguous. Besides if anybody didn't like your edit it is very easy to revert. --mav

Axis powers (linked as [[Axis powers|Axis]] would be a good solution, when talking about the Axis side as a whole. "German" is the best solution when talking about the specific German forces. "Italian" is the best solution when talking about the specific Italian forces. "Japanese" is the best solution when talking about the specific Japanese forces.

Similarly, when talking about the allied side, Allied powers (linked as [[Allied powers|Allied]] would be a good solution, but when referring to specifically British forces, use "British", etc. Martin

Wikipedia can't upload audio files including songs, national anthems etc. Is there any current project that would do the trick? I am pretty sure that quite a few people have brought this up in discussions but could someone direct me to any current result or conclusion drawn up? Thanx. kt2

We can and do have audio files. OGG Vorbis format is preferred (as it is not patent-encumbered, like MP3). Use [[media:somefile.ext]] to link directly to any uploaded file (including images, audio, video, etc). As usual, respect copyright! --Brion 07:54 Apr 3, 2003 (UTC)

Minor enhancement suggestion - when you add a page to your watchlist, the text on the confirmation screen which then appears: The page "Foo-Bar" has been added to your watchlist contains a link from your watchlist to - erm - your watchlist. When you stop watching a page, there is a similar confirmation text, but your watchlist isn't linked. It would be more consistent, as well as nice and helpful, if it were. Can some nice developer-type-person please consider adding this to their list of Things To Do?? Thanks Nevilley 07:16 Apr 2, 2003 (UTC)

Another thing: do we need a separate confirmation screen at all? When I decide to watch an article I usually want to continue reading it. To avoid having to reload the article I apply "open in new window" to the link "Watch this page", then click away the confirmation window. Can it be programmed such that by just clicking "Watch this page" the article does not disappear (by not having a confirmation window or by having a small one, automatically as new window)? - Patrick 13:38 Apr 6, 2003 (UTC)

I agree, the Watchlist confirmation screen is a real drag, especially on days when Wikipedia is really crawling (like today...) Cheers quercus robur 13:48 Apr 6, 2003 (UTC)

A general observation, folks. I think Wiki could do with a lot more images. It makes pages on wiki look much more attractive. In this image conscious age, endless pages of text is not overly user-friendly. Right now, it is up to each of us to track down images, and it isn't always easy to find if there is already an image elsewhere that might suit a particular page.

Is it possible for a group of people to take on the task of putting together a wiki image-bank, ie spend some time tracking down images that are not copyrighted or are available through GNU. This bank of images could be displayed not as an alkward list of jpegs but by name of the contents on a special browser button. For example I've just finished a page on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It would have been wonderful if I could check on a list that tells me if we have any images of the UK parliament, listed simply as say

UK Parliament (wideview)
UK parliament (House of Commons).

and I could then easily pick an image for the page. You could have a long list subdivided, telling us if we have an image of Abraham Lincoln, Eamon de Valera (oh, we have that. I downloaded it), Sydney Opera House, Red Square, Jacques Chirac (stop the hissing, Americans! *grin*) etc etc. We could also include on the page a standard command that we could cut and paste to install the image in. It would make it easy then for people to know what we have and how to use it, rather than our rather haphazard way now, where if someone discovers we have a good image, we then have to think - ok which pages would that suit also? It would take a bit of work to get off the ground, but if we could even pull together a list of what we currently have, in simple name format saying what it isalphabetically rather than our current 'search through lists of Jpegs with variable and often useless names in the hope of just maybe finding something sometime. Any observations? STÓD/ÉÍRE 01:28 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)

Start with:

What is the policy on headers? The headers that exist on such webpages as Analytical Society seem far too large for the article. Arno 07:33 Apr 8, 2003 (UTC)

What headers are those, then? There aren't any headers in Analytical Society - although the bit at the bottom that says <b>External links</b> should be a header.

(looks at edit history)

No, it was exactly right before you changed it: ==External links== is the standard header for an external links section of an article.

-- Paul A 07:47 Apr 8, 2003 (UTC)

A major list of links deserves such a heading, but I agree with Arno that it is a bit excessive for one or a few links, and that with just bolding it looks better (but use ' ' ' instead of < b >). - Patrick 09:26 Apr 8, 2003 (UTC)

Paul is right. "External links" is a header, specifically an H2 header. Therefore that is the correct markup. --mav

Wikipedia:Manual_of_style states that ==External Links== is the perferred header. (As a matter of taste and consistency, I perfer using this header even for a single link)Tenbaset 04:56 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

==External links==, with a lower case ell, please. Egil

I stand corrected - thanks.Tenbaset

Ok, then try United Airlines flight 93 as another example where excessively large headlines exist. Also none of the above answers answer my original question. What policy states that all the headers have to be excessively large - ie H2 size? Arno 07:59 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

I do not feel that these are excessive. The headlines would look much better it they followed the style guide though, avoiding capitalization. -- Egil 08:30 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

Arno, the policy for Wikipedia section headings is laid out in the Headline style section of Wikipedia:Manual of style - including a point specifically to the effect that == is the correct markup even if the result happens to look too large on your computer, followed by an explanation of why.

-- Paul A 08:52 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

Ah, an answer. Thanks, Paul. Methinks that the end result is still too big and excessive, though. Arno 09:10 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

The "Chemical Ali" link on the main page is not appropriate. We would write GW or The Butcher Sharon, nor should we use "Chemical Ali" which refers to an event which, if Im not mistaken, Iraq says it wasn't responsible for. Dietary Fiber

Response is already on the appropriate place; Talk:Main Page. --mav

I would like to add something to the style guide Wikipedia:Manual of Style, but am not sure how to do this and with whom I have to discuss this. My question is about "external links": sometimes it is handy to add additional information than just the URL. Unfortunately there is no standard about that and at the moment I am aware of three different methods:

Adam Bede
http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/qt.php -- History of Qt and Harmony
City's own website: http://www.hannover.de/

examples: George_Eliot, Harmony toolkit, Hannover

-- mkrohn 23:05 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)

I think the Adam Bede method is the preferred method. See external links on this page: [14] -- Notheruser 23:13 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)

#1 is the standard. Note that the "printable version" of a page reveals the URL. --mav 23:49 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)

"Savage", POV?

Is the following, from "Hawaii County, Hawaii" a violation of NPOV, since it contains stereotypes?

Captain James Cook...was killed on Hawai`i....No one who visits it in the present day need be afraid of sharing the fate of poor Captain Cook; for the descendants of the savages who, in his time, inhabited the island, have now, through the labours of Christian missionaries, become a very decent sort of quiet, well-behaved Christian people.

--Menchi 04:40 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)

Yep, I have removed it. Mucho graciasTuf-Kat

Two of the regulars at Wikipedia_talk:Timeline_standards have decided that there are too many small entries for years prior the Common Era/AD 1, & decided, following the guidelines at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), to start consolidating these into articles for various decades.

In general, I have no objection to this: my argument is that the cutoff date that was selected -- 550 BC -- is not early enough, & that the cutoff date for consolidation should be earlier. (I think it should be left at 2000 BC where it was a week or two ago, but I can be convinced otherwise.)

I made several arguments -- that the material to flesh these articles will be coming; that the consolidation as it is currently done will lead to more work, not less; that questions about accuracy of dating could be applied to later dates -- but I haven't convinced either of them. (In response, I was told that perhaps we need to consolidate more yearly articles -- which I feel would only make this situation worse, not better.)

Martin suggested I bring this concern here for a more general discussion. Am I alone in expressing my objections? -- llywrch 18:58 Apr 4, 2003 (UTC)

550 BC is not a good choice - many Near Eastern year dates before that are considered pretty solid. If it were an easy mechanical procedure to create and link in timeline years as needed, that would address the problem of the hundreds of empty pages all saying "vandalize me". :-) Stan 23:20 Apr 4, 2003 (UTC)

As is mentioned in the discussions on the timeline pages, the main reason for grouping ten years per article is that these ages simply do not (and will not) contain enough entries with known dates to make yearly articles useful. The main objective of the yearly pages is to be able to compare and set in a perspective, one particular event with others. Clicking through a long row of empty or even non-existing yearly articles to find even the nearest event really defeats this purpose. It is much better to have at least a few events per article. The fact that many of the dates are inaccurate is an extra argument, because with more clustering it is easier to compare events with accurate and inaccurate datings. One may still use an exact year in the article link, this will simply be redirected to the relevant decade. I agree that 550 BC is not the best choice. 1 BC seems to be more suited, but then someone must take on the job of rearranging existing content. -- Egil 06:32 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)

How do you put a caption on a picture? -- Zoe

I can't seem to find the policy on ordering lists (this is in reference to the year in literature topics, specifically the new books sections). I want to order the new books sections for each year, but I'm not sure how to, by author or title? An example, 1877 in literature. Thanks. -- Notheruser 15:47 Apr 8, 2003 (UTC)

whichever you think is most useful.

I'm leaning towards alphabetizing by title, but I'm going to wait for any additional input before I change two hundred pages :). -- Notheruser 23:17 Apr 8, 2003 (UTC)

I'd prefer alphabetically by author's surname, as it keeps books by the same author together. But if you think by title is better and you're going to do the work, well, I won't argue :) --Camembert

I agree with Camembert. But I also won't make a fuss if you decide to order by title. --mav

When I start changing the pages, I'll go with surname. -- Notheruser 00:57 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

Next question: How can a sysop delete an image? For example, [:Image:Ulmo001.gif], which appears to be someone's copy of a background tile. -- Zoe

On the image page [15], there's a (del) link. -- Notheruser 06:35 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

Oy. Thanks. I was looking at the hot links with all of the other ones. -- Zoe

Yeah, the interface for working with image pages is pretty uglified. :) Do not use the "delete this page" button for images, as that only deletes the page. The (del) link for the most recent revision should delete the image file and the page. However note that images deleted in this way are gone, and can't be restored unless someone kept a backup. If you delete an image, please save a copy to your computer first just in case. --Brion 07:22 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

Changing_of_the_Guard is less than a stubb and rather silly. Should it be removed? Cgs 17:01 Apr 10, 2003 (BST)

Either my brain is malfunctioning, or something bizarre is occurring. Go to hip hop and click on the link to It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (right above the rise of gangsta rap and below the Run-D.M.C. cover). I just wrote the article on ITaNoMtHUB and clicked what links here. The only one listed was hip hop, so I went to Public Enemy to link. Public Enemy already linked to It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, which was a redirect I apparently made a few days ago (presumably, I thought there was already an article to redirect to). After following the redirect to make sure it worked, I was confused because what links here had only listed hip hop and no other pages. Further experimentation has revealed that going to It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back from hip hop reveals only one what links here, while going there via the redirect lists several (only one of which uses the redirect in question). Tuf-Kat

P.S. going to It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back from the Village Pump gives you the same results as using the redirect from Public Enemy.

Perhaps if hip hop linked with "Millions" instead of "Million", that might help? ;) -- John Owens

Okay, two things:

If you go specifically to the redirect page (ie, that which shows only "1. REDIRECT Foobarbizbax") and click 'What links here' you will see only those pages that link to the redirect. If you follow the redirect and receive the target page, the 'What links here' will be for the target page, and is indistinguishable from the 'What links here' from the target page visited directly, because it's exactly the same link. Any difference between subsequent visits is therefore due to changes between your visits to it.
The link tables occasionally get messed up, which can cause 'What links here' to not show all the links. Saving a page should reset the tables. I notice that many of the pages that link to the page in question have been recently modified.

Could you check again (force reloads if necessary to be sure -- hold down 'ctrl' and/or 'shift' while reloading if you don't trust your browser) and see what it looks like? --Brion 17:25 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Brion, like I said, it was just a case of the hip hop article being misspelled with "Million". I've fixed it since then, both by redirecting the "Million" spelling, and fixing the spelling in the hip hop article. -- John Owens 17:32 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Ahh, there wasn't a redirect at all, but a duplicate article. Yes, that makes it clear. :) --Brion

I'm going to suggest that the article Fuck (and ALL others like it) be moved to a catagory under a heading that is not offensive to a great many people. I just searched Google for Norman Mailer and up came WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE FUCK. User:Black Widow.

Let's be serious, your ten year old son will have heard the word ten thousand times before he read the article in Wikipedia.

Ericd 20:44 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

I also suggest everybody to try :

http://www.google.com/search?q=norman+mailer&hl=fr&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=80&sa=N

and

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search=Norman+Mailer

just to verify that it's not obvious to get some fuck while searching Norman Mailer ;)

Ericd 20:51 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure just what those searches are supposed to prove, but a more reasonable comparison would be that a search for "norman mailer" (no quotes in the actual search) returns 129,000 results, but "norman mailer fuck" gives 2,010. And the first one is probably hitting lots of pages that are just genealogy and such and happen to have a "Norman" somewhere, and a "Mailer" somewhere else. Just for further points of reference. -- John Owens 21:04 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

To Ericd: I don't know why you keep adding your comments, you repeatedly demonstrate you have your brain up your butt. Think before you open your mouth. Get rid of the "freedom" bullshit and learn some dignity because I certainly will change all of these crap articles. User:Black Widow

Try it. They'll be reverted. -- Zoe

Black Widow having read your user page I know you a have something personal against me. I don't want to discuss anymore. Ericd 21:26 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

If you click on edit this page on a protected page, the warning says WARNING: This page has been locked so that only users with sysop priveledges can edit it. Be sure you are following the protected page guidelines. Can someone who is able change priveledges to privileges (I think...)? Tuf-Kat

I'll ask Brion or Magnus to fix that typo. --Uncle Ed 19:46 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Tarquin has addressed one of my issues, but the remaining still exist. Will someone please unprotect the following pages:

Wikipedia:Copyrights
(See below)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions
done
Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines
done
Wikipedia:Policy on permanent deletion of pages
done

Thank you. -◈¡◈

Wikipedia:Copyrights sets out the legal terms of use for this site. As such, we're a little finicky about it. ;) That one stays protected. --Brion 23:04 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for those three. -◈¡◈

Please unprotect the following pages:

GNU FDL
Wikipedia:Copyrights
Wikipedia:Naming conventions
Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines
Wikipedia:Policy on permanent deletion of pages

Thank you. -◈¡◈

The first two can't be -- in fact they should be locked to all edits, even sysops. Please sign with a name composed of letters that can be read and pronounced. -- Tarquin 16:35 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

When you say that the first two "can't", what do you mean? Are you saying that there is some sort of technical bug in the wikisoftware that prevents these two from being unprotected, or are you just expressing your opinion? My request for all five of the above to be unprotected still stands. Regarding my signature, I have already changed it once specifically at your request, and I am happy with it as is. -◈¡◈

It can't be edited because unlike most articles in Wiki it is imported from an existing work (the GNU project), not created by Wikis. And if it could be edited a user could change the license for the entire site - not good. User:Cgs 21:34, April 10 2003, BST

The text of the GDFL can't be edited. That's why can't. -- Tarquin 19:56 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

Those are nice factoids, Cgs and Tarquin, but they are irrelevant to my request. You seem to be assuming that one of the above links contains the GFDL when in fact none of them do. Since that is not an issue, will someone kindly unprotect them? -◈¡◈

GNU FDL should go to the article on that rather than our policy page -- I've done that. I'll leave the other matters for the other sysops to deal with. I don't like talking to squiggles. tarquin out. -- Tarquin 22:07 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

Well, gee, thanks I guess. That was the exact edit I was going to make to that page had you unprotected it as I requested. God forbid a mere mortal should deign to improve a page watched over by the almighty Tarquin. I'll post the rest of my request again below. -◈¡◈

I believe that the GNU FDL redirect page was protected because the "please note" section underneath the edit box linked to GNU FDL., so if someone changed the redirect it could have legal consequences. The text under the edit box now links directly to Wikipedia:Copyrights, so I think it can now be unprotected. Have I missed something? Martin

The link at the bottom of every page goes to GNU FDL. Should it go to Wikipedia:Copyrights as well? --Brion 23:30 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

Oops! Yes, it should do. I changed the redirect for the time being, because of that. When the link at the bottom of the page is changed, the redirect can be changed and unprotected. Martin

sounds like a good idea. We could linkify the "GFDL" text at the foot of the edit box too. -- Tarquin 09:50 Apr 11, 2003 (UTC) (thanks for the sarcasm, squiggle.)

vote for deletion moved to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion

Copyright rules are essentially the same for text and pictures read Wikipedia:Copyrights. Ericd 15:49 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

Problems arise with several things but the reality is that Wikipedia:Copyrights is written by users, not the owner. With respect to lawyers varied opinions, a lawyer is legally liable for their opinions. Universities, banks, insurance companies, and every business pay for a legal opinion that they rely on. However, none of us as far as I can see is qualified to discuss this. At least not me. User:JoanB

JoanB, there is no one "owner" of wikipedia as such. There is an owner of the machine that hosts wikipedia, but they do not own the content within. -◈¡◈

We don't need to be experts we just have to apply the rules. They're adequate to give an encyclopedia licensed under GFDL. Ericd 16:26 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

The GFDL was written by experts. The rule are just requiring to complies with the GFDL. And as we are not expert we should have a very restrictive understanting of the rule. You made the photo it's yours you can release it under the GFDL. You should be aware that by doing that you loose your own copyright. If you did'nt made the photo it's better not to post it here. Ericd 16:44 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

WHOA! Wait right there Ericd, you do not "lose your own copyright" when you release something under the GFDL. You instead grant a license under the GFDL, but you most certainly remain the copyright holder of whatever you write. -◈¡◈

I can't claim to be a legal expert, but after 15 years of working with GNU professionally and talking to lawyers about it from time to time, I have some sense of what's OK and what's not. Lawyers' advice isn't a magical yes/no - sometimes it's a "you can probably get away with this", because there's no law or precedent. One of the advantages of the GFDL is that it's been vetted by real lawyers such as Eben Moglen, who is also responsible for the GNU license. Stan 16:47 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

75 years old is OK see http://www.superstock.com/about/copyright.aspx Ericd 16:59 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

That information, regarding the copyright act of 1976, is out of date. In 1998 congress extended the terms of copyright to 95 years, which is why the Mickey Mouse cartoons from 1928 still have 20 years of protection ahead of them. -◈¡◈

This made in 2003 80 years in the USA and 75 years in most other countries isn'it ? Ericd 17:12 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

There is no one answer to how long a copyright lasts in the US Ericd, but 80 years is not one of the options. A copyright can last for the life of the author plus 70 years, 95 years from date of publication, 120 years from date of creation, or 95 years from the date a copyright was secured. -◈¡◈

Holy Cow! You are back where we started and everyone who is not qualified giving opinions. GFDL has nothing to do with copyright infringement, it is the after use granting. But, again, no one here (so far) is qualified or legally entitled to impose their rules. That is why I said that the owner (responsible party) of Wikipedia must have a policy in place. User:JoanB

And you can grant use only for things that belongs to you or to nobody or everybody. -Ericd 17:25 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

JoanB, the simple policy is this. Do not post anything that is protected by copyright unless YOU created it or the copyright holder has EXPLICITLY released it under GFDL. Fair use is a slippery slope that we could argue about forever. -◈¡◈

Fair use doesn't even exist in France for instance.

Ericd 18:02 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

I posted my thoughts on this subject to Wikipedia talk:Image use policy, which (IMHO) is where this discussion should continue. -- NetEsq 17:49 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

I'm learning quickly, finding new pages. There are lots of contributors above with very diverse opinions on photograph copyright but I don't see any person signing as a United States attorney. I would like to possibly insert some pictures with biographies. There must be a legal policy set down by whoever owns this web site, otherwise they would be subject to the risk of very costly litigation. Where do I find the legal facts instead of this collection of very diverse opinions? User:JoanB

A statement written by an attorney is no more binding than that of any other user. Attorneys disagree frequently and the result is often a court battle, and telling a judge that "an attorney told me it was ok" won't protect you. I think that most everybody here would go along with the following statement:

There are images that it is clearly safe for wikipedia to use, such as those which are in the public domain and those which the copyright holder has explicitly released under the GFDL. There are also images that it is clearly unsafe for wikipedia to use, such as a commercial works where inclusion in wikipedia diminishes the value to the copyright holder. Then there is a huge vaguely defined middle ground called "fair use", where most of our wikisquabbles center. -◈¡◈

I want to use some pics off Boeings site www.boeing.com . The copyright notice is this:
Terms and Conditions of Personal, Non-Commercial Image Use: The images on these pages are provided subject to the following terms and conditions. Boeing owns and retains the copyrights in the images except as noted. No copyright license (either express or implied) is granted to the user, other than the right to reproduce the images without alteration for non-commercial, personal use only.
Can I use them for Wikipedia? Adrian Pingstone 17:34 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Under those conditions, no. Wikipedia would need to right to alter them at the least. -◈¡◈

Correction please: "The word "alteration" refers to making changes that alter the purpose and facts of the picture. Example: putting a logo on the side for advertising or by protestors to put up anti-Boeing slogans or other uses that might affect the company's image in a way they do not want. However, to alter the size to fit an encylopedia is fine. In fact, the executive at Boeing would be pleased if you put up a picture and wrote a nice history of every plane they ever made. Thank you very much. User:Wei Chin Ho

But end-users of the wikipedia should be able to use the images any way they see fit. Under Boeing's copyright, this content would not be 'free' and the Wikipedia would be 'The (Mostly) Free Encyclopedia' Jordan Langelier

GFDL also allows one to make as much money as one can get away with selling the content, which is contradictory to Boeing's conditions. Also, I'm sure they would object to a Wikipedia picture with a large arrow added pointing to, say, a design or construction flaw, should that ever prove desirable for an article. Stan 18:07 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Yep, that licence is not compatible with the spirit of the GFDL. Therefore, you can't honestly check the tickbox that says "I affirm that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license it under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright" on Special:Upload. That may or may not be a source of concern for you. Personally I think that the upload page should have extra checkboxes for "fair use", "wikipedia-only", and "public domain" and people should have to select one of the four.

If you do decide to upload the images, make sure that their copyright status is clearly marked on the image description page, as described in wikipedia:image use policy. Talking of which, I've made a suggested change to the policy on image copyright at wikipedia talk:image use policy which would benefit from extra eyes... Martin

I don't understand? Is the wikipedia:image use policy a condition of use that I am obliged to follow or a suggestion? User:Wei Chin Ho

You are obliged to follow the license terms as described in Wikipedia:Copyrights, as noted and linked to on the edit and upload pages. The image use policy reminds you of your obligations regarding licensing, copyright, and redistributability, and additionally gives suggestions about sizing, formatting, naming, and the like. --Brion 20:12 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Okay, someone really needs to clarify this image business. As I understood it, copyright holders retained their original copyright and were allowed to set terms of use for images used on Wikipedia, and only the text was released under the gdfl, since the bottom of each page says, "All the text on Wikipedia," etc., etc. Now I've heard different things in many, many different places, and I've uploaded images under different conditions. The relevant pages are very ambiguous and opaque, particularly to inexpert users not versed in the intricacies of copyright law. Can someone please decide for once and for all what the answer is, and more importantly, post it multifariously in all relevant locations in very clear English? - Montréalais

I second that. It seems either virtually anything can be uploaded, or essentially nothing. Tuf-Kat

Boeing image are just free for personal use, not free of rights that mean you can watch them and keep as many copies as you want for yourself. In fact you can do nothing..... Ericd 20:30 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

In short, nothing that is less old than something like 75-80 years can be uploaded except if you made the photo yourself and accept to release it under the GFDL (or another license compatible with Wikipedia) or if the copyright owner agreed to release it under the GFDL (or another...). Ericd 20:37 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

If you want to ask someone for permission to host photos on wikipedia, try the wikipedia:boilerplate request for permission. I've used it eight times and got three positive responses - people are often happy to grant permission

I suspect that the "all our text are belong to you" bit is incorrect and the stuff on wikipedia:copyrights is more accurate. Read the section under Using copyrighted work from others. Martin

Ideally, why asking permission, you don't simply say "can we use it", but you also say "will you release it under GFDL". Difference within there is. -◈¡◈

Yes, now you know why there are so many 19th century drawings and engravings illustrating articles. Sending more email asking for GFDL permission is on my to-do list - serves the dual purpose of getting the image, and advertising wikipedia's existence to more people... Stan 20:48 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

You also know why World War I can have a lot of photos.

I still don't understand while photos make such debate. The situation is simple. You write a text it belongs to you, you take a photograph it belongs to you. You can paste text from the 1911 encyclopedia because it has fallen in public domain, you can upload a photography made by Nadar because it has fallen in public domain. You could paste a text from Microsoft Encarta if Microsoft allows you to do this you could also upload a photograph by Helmut Newton if he allows you (you can try IMO you have more chances than with M$). Of course you can also paste any text that is already under the GFDL and upload any picture that is already under the GFDL. Etc... etc... etc.... Ericd 20:59 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Is there a way to force the TeX interpreter to make nice large images instead of small ones? A page I recently created is an aesthetic mess due to the inconsistency. Cyan 06:07 Apr 12, 2003 (UTC)

You can set how TeX is shown on your prefs page (you're wanting "Always render PNG" under "Rendering math"). --Camembert

Ah, I understand now. -- Cyan

I've found that you can force an individual <math> formula to be a PNG (for people with default preferences) by putting \, at the end. --Zundark 11:33 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

Of course it's an aesthetic mess. I tried to tell you people,<math> is ugly. -- Tim Starling 06:02 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

a point raised in that email: "As for other improvements: perhaps you could find some way to convert most formulas to ASCII art and use that for the ALT text." -- an important aspect of ALT text is that is accessible to those who cannot see the images. I don't think ASCII art would satisfy that requirement. -- Tarquin 17:24 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

That idea of mine is long since dead and buried -- it's technically impossible anyway since ALT text cannot be multi-line. Why are you digging it up? This is why I gave up on that discussion: so much unconstructive argument. -- Tim Starling 01:04 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Sorry. -- Tarquin 09:16 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Maybe the answer to my question is explained somewhere, but I haven't found it. Here's my situation...I want to create a wiki-style music almanac for the punk scene in my town. It would allow local musicians to post their band's history and their upcoming and past shows, etc. Such information wouldn't really fit into the wikipedia scheme, therefore I want to make a separate almanac. I have a web host to place such an environment. But how do I create the environment. I assume I have to install software. Where do I get the software? How do I install it? I have plenty of experience using windows, but very limited experience using unix. But I could get help from a friend if the directions were user-friendly. Thanks, Kingturtle 01:52 Apr 12, 2003 (UTC)

I recommend you check out WikiWikiWeb:WikiFarms for some sites that provide wiki and wiki-like hosting. If you've got the machine and the time to spend on setting up your own wiki server, I personally recommend UseModWiki, which runs in Perl and can be run on Windows as well as Unix. It's easy to set up and the syntax will be familiar, as Wikipedia used to run on UseMod. It's also possible to set up your own wiki using our software, but it's quite finicky and requires more additional stuff (mysql, php with certain configuration options; a lot of Wikipedia-specific text hardcoded into the interface you'd have to get rid of, etc). --Brion 03:06 Apr 12, 2003 (UTC)

Tsk, tsk, Kingturtle. I answer this exact question higher up on this very page! :) I recommend UseModWiki as well. Your web host must provide cgi for you. -- Stephen Gilbert

Thanks. Although reading through all different wiki options is quite overwhelming. Which software would be most like the wikipedia software? And what exactly would be entailed in the setup? Truth is, I really don't know squat when it comes to installing and running such things. But I am willing to learn. Kingturtle 07:00 Apr 12, 2003 (UTC)

Number pages

It's great to see these... but how far are you guys planning on going? You do know that there is no smallest unintersting number, right? ;-) -- Tarquin 09:50 Apr 11, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, see Talk:Sixteen. I put a note at twenty suggesting we do increments of ten from there on (up to one hundred, presumably). Since interesting numbers appear all over the place, one idea is to collect (and redirect as necessary) all numbers from 20 to 29 in the twenty article, 30-39 in the thirty, and so on. Which means that "twenty" really means "twenty-something", although I would suggest still calling it "twenty". This should be extended so that over hundred it would be by the hundreds, then by the thousands etc. -- Egil 06:01 Apr 12, 2003 (UTC)

I agree. Susan Mason

Changing GNU FDL to version 1.2

This reminds me. A while back I suggested we change Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License to be version 1.2 rather than 1.1 (and appropriately modify wikipedia:copyrights, of course. Nobody commented on this, negatively or positively, so I'm going to be bold and just do it if I don't get any responses this time round. Consider yourselves warned! :) Martin

What would the consequences of that be? Would it no longer be possible to distribute pages edited after the change under version 1.1 of the GFDL? --Brion 23:30 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

Suppose we make the change on May 1.

It would be possible to distribute versions prior to May 1 under version 1.1 or version 1.2 or any later version. This is because when you grant a license under the GFDL you can't take it back again.
It would be possible to distribute versions after May 1 under version 1.2 or any later version, but not under version 1.1.

The changes are minor fixes and clarifications - closing a few loopholes here and there.

Consequences: if Fred's Document has been released under the GFDL and he specified version 1.1 and he didn't specify "or any later version" (which is the standard) then we can't add it to wikipedia. However, we couldn't add it before either, because it would invalidate our own "or any later version" text. For material that says it is licensed under the GFDL without specifying a version, the license says "If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation." - so we can happilly use it under version 1.2 or later. Martin

I propose to use Xvid with Ogg/Vorbis sound as the standard video format for Wikipedia. Any advice ?

http://www.xvid.org/

Ericd 21:43 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

I have been trying to change the title of existing articles "comparative" and "superlative" to "grammatical comparative" and "grammatical superlative" by wikifying them to that effect as I feel that the names are too ambiguous. Is there a quicker way than changing all links the new versions? Can I have some ideas on this from the experts?Dieter Simon

What other meanings of "comparative" and "superlative" are there? what other pages will want those titles? -- Tarquin 21:14 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

I thought it would look more relevant to the subject of grammar than a referenc to a thing itself that is judged by comparison or is relative to other things as being better or the best. I do see your point though. ==Dieter Simon 22:18 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

It would be good if the wikipedia namespace would be included:

in the titles search when Wikipedia's internal full-text search facility is temporarily disabled
in http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allpages (or is there a way to list all pages in the wikipedia namespace?)

Even when Wikipedia's internal full-text search facility is on, a title search option would be useful (faster if here are many hits in the full text).

Patrick 17:10 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

Concerning the above discussion about headlines: the Wikipedia:Manual of style also says that there should be no empty line between the headline and the following paragraph ("Note that with the == brackets used, no space under the headline is needed. The space should be removed."). I have seen many cases where an additional line was added, probably because the wiki text looks more organized and the headlines are easier to indentify (at least me thinks so). The above discussed United Airlines flight 93 contains a mixture at the moment ("Internal links" has an additional empty line, "External links" has not). Now my actual question :-)

Isn't it possible to remove empty lines after a headline automatically? I see two advantages: the headlines are IMHO easier to identify with the additional empty line, and we get a consistent layout for free. Are there any disadvantages I am not aware of? The only thing I see is that the code has to written and that it costs a bit CPU time (which should be neglectable). Is this the right place to discuss this, or should I better post it to one of the wikipedia mailing lists? -- mkrohn 11:39 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

Feelgood factor: the page was a single paragraph split from jumper this morning. Look at it now... http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Jumper_(computing)&diff=0&oldid=816672 -- Tarquin 10:32 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

But I created Jumper (computing) before there was any mention of them on the jumper page :) Maybe it should be renamed to Jumper (electronics).

Since both are just as relevant, it is probably easiest to use a "first served" appraoch, and create redirects as required. -- Egil 11:21 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

Is this the best place to ask for help with translation? I've got a few snippets of French from a 1911 EB entry that I'd like to get a proper translation for... Is there a central/standard place I can go to ask native speakers of a given language for help with small translations like this?

For my current question, see Talk:Michel de l'Hôpital.

I don't think we have a specific place to request translations, although we probably should. For your particular problem, I suggest asking Anthere, Brion VIBBER or Tarquin. -- Stephen Gilbert 12:55 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

What efforts do you know of which may be currently being made to allow anybody and everybody with a basic web design program to easily create and share their own sites which could allow Wiki features of being able to edit a page, discuss a page, browse all recent contributions, etc. (preferably with the option in one's web/file browser/writer to just begin typing on any page one is browsing)? (I use a mac, but I'm also interested if this would be possible for others as well.) -Brett

There are many different types of wiki software you can use. If you can administer your own web server, you should be able to set them up. I recommend UseModWiki, which is one of the easiest wikis to set up. -- Stephen Gilbert

GNU Free Documentation License Project Management Standard

I'm looking for volunteers to develop a GNU Free Documentation License Project Management Standard (just like the PMBOK, but possibly better). Mkoval

After adding ru: (Russian) and la: (Latin) links here (Wikipedia:Recentchanges, from whose Talk page this is copied), I've thought about it a bit more, and think both of them having a link would be rather unjustified. But then, I started trying to figure out which one (if not both) should go, and I found a little dilemma. Should "popularity" for the purpose of which languages get links on major pages be based on how many people speak the language, or how active its Wikipedia is? Russia (obviously!) has more speakers, but the Latin Wikipedia (much to my surprise) is several times more active (mostly with German people, oddly enough). So, in a case like that, which one, if either, should stay? And even if it's the general consensus both ought to go, we should still work out which way to figure "popularity" anyway, for future clarity, if it hasn't already been worked out. And if it has been worked out, could I get a pointer to it? -- John Owens 04:35 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Who pays for wikipedia and why? I mean, I know that it's Bomis, but why does Bomis do it? Does Bomis make money from wikipedia either directly or indirectly, or is the cost of the server incidental to Bomis, or what? Also, could this answered on some FAQ such as wikipedia:overview FAQ, since I doubt that I am the only one curious about this. -- AdamRaizen

Jimbo Wales, the majority owner of Bomis, pays for Wikipedia out of the kindness of his heart. Bomis makes no money from it, and Jimbo has promised never to run ads here. See Wikipedia and Bomis for more information. There has been talk from time to time of starting a non-profit organisation. -- Tim Starling 00:51 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Following on from this, a thought therefore occurs to me- should Jimbo become disheartened with the project, or should circumstances arise where Jimbo personally could no longer continue to support the project, would this mean that Wikipedia would disapear and all our efforts have been in vain, or are backup systems in place to ensure that wikipedia would continue no matter what? This sin't intended to be critical or anything, just a query about long term sustainablity based on the permaculture principle that no element (or individual) within a system should be indispensible, for should that element fail (or individual go away) for any reason then the whole system collapses...quercus robur 21:15 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

The complete article database is backed up weekly, with the latest dumps available for download. I keep these backups on CD, and I hope others do as well. If the non-profit ever comes together (Jimbo, we're waiting for news... :) that'll provide some protection against the Jimbo TruckNumber factor regarding infrastructure (the server, the connection, the domain name). The content itself is protected by the GNU Free Documentation License, which makes all the content redistributable and modifiable. --Brion 04:43 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Captions and Pictures

How do you put a caption on a picture? -- Zoe

On or under? Can you point to an example of the effect you want? -- Infrogmation 04:47 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

Joseph Stalin, for example. -- Zoe

This is how I would do it: click on the link to edit Joseph Stalin, copy the relevant source code, paste it into the article where I wanted a picture with a caption, and change the appropriate bits of the code.

--Paul A 09:14 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Next question: How can a sysop delete an image? For example, [:Image:Ulmo001.gif], which appears to be someone's copy of a background tile. -- Zoe

On the image page [16], there's a (del) link. -- Notheruser 06:35 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

Oy. Thanks. I was looking at the hot links with all of the other ones. -- Zoe

Yeah, the interface for working with image pages is pretty uglified. :) Do not use the "delete this page" button for images, as that only deletes the page. The (del) link for the most recent revision should delete the image file and the page. However note that images deleted in this way are gone, and can't be restored unless someone kept a backup. If you delete an image, please save a copy to your computer first just in case. --Brion 07:22 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

I've just read User talk:J.J. where it says that use of Tables in pic coding dispays the pic totally incorrectly in some browsers. If this is so, why have I had no complaints about my pic coding, which uses Tables? I've used it on approx 120 articles so far, mostly France, gemstones and aircraft. For an example, look at CH-46 Sea Knight.

If my coding is unacceptable I need to know real soon so that I can slowly change to the new coding. Comments, please. (I have IE5 with Windows).
For other examples, all my pics are listed on User:Arpingstone
-- Adrian Pingstone 08:42 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

I think a preferred way of displaying the image+caption is to use div+CSS like this (in the example of CH-46 Sea Knight):

 <div style="float:right;width:270px;text-align:center;margin:5px">
 [[image:sea.knight.cv-46.250pix.jpg]]
 ''October 20th 2002: members of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit board a
 CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter on USS Saipan, during beach-landing training.''
 [[media:sea.knight.cv-46.750pix.jpg|Click here for larger version]]
 </div>

It definitely makes the code smaller and neater, and should display the same in any browser that supports CSS. --Minesweeper 09:32 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, I downloaded a number of browsers from the net and found that certain pages appeared differently depending on the set of commands used. Mav and I once had a disagreement over a page layout until we discovered we were arguing about different pages because our browsers were showing different page layouts. Internet Explorer on a Mac appears a particular problem, showing pictures on different locations to where other browsers show them (leading to farcical wars as the person of IE moves the picture so that it looks right on their screen, only for it to look all wrong on someone else's using a different browser.) The particular commands above seem by and large to be the most user friendly. Using tables for images or putting an image in on its own comes out on some browsers as a complete dog's dinner and should be avoided. Also using the border commands should be avoided; some browsers show them, others don't. pages can look all over the place if the image is not perfectly lined up in the box. Lines around an image date from the old days of 'cut and paste' page layout, when you left a box and then printed a picture in it. There is no need these days for boxes. They look clumsy, outdated and can really screw up an image. STÓD/ÉÍRE 06:00 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

see m:Image pages for a proposal to make this all a whole dang lot simpler -- Tarquin 09:40 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Are you sure that this proposal will work across the board with all browsers? I have my doubts. The only set of commands I have found work universally are those above, with minor unimportant differences. Images that don't explicitly state width seem to jump in terms of location on the page depending on the browser, meaning that no one page will be the same in every browser, with on occasion the page looking absolutely hideous to some viewers. STÓD/ÉÍRE 06:00 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

It is quite clear that the user using the name Black Widow is baiting all of you. Don't fall into the spider's web. He/she lives off of debates like this. Don't take the bait. Kingturtle 05:05 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Nice one, Kt. Was typing above and just got the message!!! Love it. STÓD/ÉÍRE 06:00 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

You are getting the message? You must need to adjust your tin foil hat, unless you've got one of the antenna models. -- John Owens

Mmmm... *chomp chomp*... tastes good though, *chomp chomp chomp* -- Tim

Rude article titles

main article: wikipedia: foul language

I'm going to suggest that the article Fuck (and ALL others like it) be moved to a catagory under a heading that is not offensive to a great many people. I just searched Google for Norman Mailer and up came WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE FUCK. User:Black Widow.

Let's be serious, your ten year old son will have heard the word ten thousand times before he read the article in Wikipedia.

Ericd 20:44 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

I also suggest everybody to try :

http://www.google.com/search?q=norman+mailer&hl=fr&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=80&sa=N

and

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search=Norman+Mailer

just to verify that it's not obvious to get some fuck while searching Norman Mailer ;)

Ericd 20:51 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure just what those searches are supposed to prove, but a more reasonable comparison would be that a search for "norman mailer" (no quotes in the actual search) returns 129,000 results, but "norman mailer fuck" gives 2,010. And the first one is probably hitting lots of pages that are just genealogy and such and happen to have a "Norman" somewhere, and a "Mailer" somewhere else. Just for further points of reference. -- John Owens 21:04 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

For some strange reason I could create normal external links at the end of the article chess-type problems in the puzzle section. Always the http:... stuff is showing instead of the description text only. Can someone please correct it? Thanks, Karl Scherer

Done; it was a problem of your having written "html" where it should have been "http". Could you please take time to learn the wiki conventions of articles here, perhaps by looking at some of your own article which others have modified? Your contributions would be more appreciated if others didn't have to clean them up afterwards. Cheers, -- Infrogmation 22:07 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)

I'm intrigued as to why chess-type problem now has nine external links all pointing to the same page (not to mention that that page is selling a Windows-only commercial software product). Several other puzzle-related pages are the same. Is "Zillions of Games" so good that it should receive this kind of endorsement from Wikipedia? --rbrwr

Be bold in keeping wikipedia free of advertising. Martin

I bow to your boldness, Martin. I took the ads out of a couple of those pages about 15 hours ago, but they got reverted, so I thought I'd try a different tack. --rbrwr

1. I just started to correct the mising highlights when I got your message that the highlights are missing. But thanks for the reminder anyway.

2. The links to Zillions games are NOT COMMERCIAL LINKS. If you would have ever followed any of these links you would have seen that ALL LINKS leads to games and puzzles which various authors around the world have created for free, not receiving a cent for it, and they are FREE to download from the Zillions page. Zillions does not earn a cent from that, no matter how many you download. That you have to own the Zillons CD in the first place (a huge expense of US$15) it think should be a minor issue comapred to the fact that everyone can create their own games, and about 1000 games are available for free from many places on the net. I could refer many of the links to my own or other web pages which are non-commercial, but Zillions simply has the BIGGEST collection of free downloadable games. Many puzzles and games would stay totaly unknown to the public and whither apart in old tomes would it not for the unique opportunity to easily create them in this wonderful game language!!!!

I have created more than 300 games and puzzles in Zillions myself, free for everyone to download. The Zillions download page is simply the most central page to do this from. Believe me, I do not get a cent from Zillions for all that work.

I hope this made it a bit clearer that YES, Zillions deserves all that attention. There is nothing comparable in the word relating to games and puzzles. Please correct me and show me why I am wrong. Thanks for listening Karl

And please don't delete the links. They are very valuable for everyone who is intersted in agmes and puzzles, and I know there are thousands of people who love them.

The problem I have with the links is that they point to the Zillions main games page, which makes them look like advertisements. They should point to the individual game pages (e.g. L Game) instead.--Eloquence 23:56 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)

Zillions DOES NOT HAVE a 'main games page'! (because the games on the Zillions CD are nowhere mentioned on their pages at all!)
Zillions HAS a home page, which I am NOT linking to. I am linking to the FREE DOWNLOAD PAGE (look at the link, that indeed IS its name!), were NON-ZILLIONS authors display their work.
OK, I should have done the linking to the specific pages for the games, I agree. I am willing to do all the corrections necessary. But this is only posssible when you REVERT your deletions!!!! Do you expect me to type everything in again???

Please be aware of your power: People with the power to DELETE are 100 times stronger than people who CREATE because typing takes so much longer.....

...and saying (as you do) "If you would have dome it differently, I would not have deleted your stuff" obviously immensely adds to the frustration that authors have with the admin.

You can revert to an earlier version yourself, if you like - see Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version. But please don't put in a stack of links to the same page again. --Camembert

Thanks for the replies to my questions about picture coding (above) but I'm not getting the information I need. Because I'm not technical, the discussions about tables, div, CSS etc. are not helping me at all. Simple people like me need a definite instruction on what is currently the most acceptable code.
Can some kind person(s) answer the list of questions below? Thanks.
Question 1 Is my code acceptable or not? Here's a copy. The 270 in the first line is not a mistake, it gives more white space around the pic. The double dot in the 250 pixel file name is necessary (bad typing when I named the file!).

<table align="right" width="270">
<tr><td align="center">
[[image:royaljord.a310-300.f-odvi..250pix.jpg]]
</td></tr>
<tr><td align="center"><small>
''Royal Jordanian Airbus A310-300<br>(F-OVDI).''<br>
[[media:royaljord.a310-300.f-odvi.750pix.jpg|Click here
for larger version<br><br>]]
</small>
</td></tr>
</table>

Question 2 Has anyone seen a browser that my pictures look a mess in? If so, no one has told me. Wouldn't someone have complained by now?
Question 3 If I must change, can someone let me have the new code, to do the following things. It would be great if you could edit it into Royal Jordanian so that I can see it works (distrustful!).....
.....Insert one thumbnail, always 250 pixels wide.
.....Have a clickable link to a pic, usually 750 pixels wide but can be smaller sometimes.
.....Thumbnail choosable to go on left or right of article.
.....Picture to be embedded in the text.
.....Caption to be small text, in italics and centred.
.....Clickable link to be also small, italics and centred, and to say Click Here for Larger Version.

I really would like to sort this problem once and for all, it's holding me back from adding any more pics at the moment. Thanks.
Adrian Pingstone 10:55 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Don't write "click here". Use just "See a {{larger version}}". Other than that, it's probably fine until we come of with something better. -- Tarquin 10:59 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

I've put the current favoured way of doing things in place at Royal Jordanian; here's a copy for reference.

 <div style="float:right; width:270; text-align:center;">
 [[image:royaljord.a310-300.f-odvi..250pix.jpg]] <br>
 <small>''Royal Jordanian Airbus A310-300<br>(F-OVDI).'' <br>
 [[media:royaljord.a310-300.f-odvi.750pix.jpg|Larger version]]<br>
 </small>
 </div>

Change the "float:right;" to "float:left" to put it on the left side instead, take out the "text-align:center;" for left justified text (the kind you're reading now), I think changing the width should be pretty obvious. -- John Owens 19:04 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

I've just read User talk:J.J. where it says that use of Tables in pic coding dispays the pic totally incorrectly in some browsers. If this is so, why have I had no complaints about my pic coding, which uses Tables? I've used it on approx 120 articles so far, mostly France, gemstones and aircraft. For an example, look at CH-46 Sea Knight.

If my coding is unacceptable I need to know real soon so that I can slowly change to the new coding. Comments, please. (I have IE5 with Windows).
For other examples, all my pics are listed on User:Arpingstone
-- Adrian Pingstone 08:42 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

I think a preferred way of displaying the image+caption is to use div+CSS like this (in the example of CH-46 Sea Knight):

 <div style="float:right;width:270px;text-align:center;margin:5px">
 [[image:sea.knight.cv-46.250pix.jpg]]
 ''October 20th 2002: members of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit board a
 CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter on USS Saipan, during beach-landing training.''
 [[media:sea.knight.cv-46.750pix.jpg|Click here for larger version]]
 </div>

It definitely makes the code smaller and neater, and should display the same in any browser that supports CSS. --Minesweeper 09:32 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, I downloaded a number of browsers from the net and found that certain pages appeared differently depending on the set of commands used. Mav and I once had a disagreement over a page layout until we discovered we were arguing about different pages because our browsers were showing different page layouts. Internet Explorer on a Mac appears a particular problem, showing pictures on different locations to where other browsers show them (leading to farcical wars as the person of IE moves the picture so that it looks right on their screen, only for it to look all wrong on someone else's using a different browser.) The particular commands above seem by and large to be the most user friendly. Using tables for images or putting an image in on its own comes out on some browsers as a complete dog's dinner and should be avoided. Also using the border commands should be avoided; some browsers show them, others don't. pages can look all over the place if the image is not perfectly lined up in the box. Lines around an image date from the old days of 'cut and paste' page layout, when you left a box and then printed a picture in it. There is no need these days for boxes. They look clumsy, outdated and can really screw up an image. STÓD/ÉÍRE 06:00 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

see m:Image pages for a proposal to make this all a whole dang lot simpler -- Tarquin 09:40 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Are you sure that this proposal will work across the board with all browsers? I have my doubts. The only set of commands I have found work universally are those above, with minor unimportant differences. Images that don't explicitly state width seem to jump in terms of location on the page depending on the browser, meaning that no one page will be the same in every browser, with on occasion the page looking absolutely hideous to some viewers. STÓD/ÉÍRE 06:00 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Should User:Daniel C. Boyer and his works be allowed in the main namespace? See User talk:Daniel C. Boyer. -- Tim Starling 04:46 Apr 20, 2003 (UTC)

Sorry to be dumb - but I don't see anything wrong. What is your complaint? Cgs

I'm not complaining, I'm trying to inspire comments. I got into trouble about a month ago trying to get a user into the main namespace (everyone was against it), so now I'm asking the Wikipedia community, "what about this one"? -- Tim Starling 00:55 Apr 21, 2003 (UTC)

Ah! Sorry - I thought you wanted to ban him (not allow him in the main namespace. Noob. Cgs

I know that someone dropped by Daniel's page a while back and asked if he was the Daniel C. Boyer, so at least one person has heard of him outside of Wikipedia. Also, his articles are quite neutral. Another Wikipedian with articles about himself and his work is User:Sheldon Rampton (see Sheldon Rampton, PR Watch, Disinfopedia). I don't think there's any problem with Wikipedians having their own articles if they are noteworthy outside of Wikipedia; such articles simply have to be edited carefully for NPOV. -- Stephen Gilbert 02:52 Apr 21, 2003 (UTC)

Zillions of Games

See also: Talk:Zillions of Games