Cite sources? |
|||
(12 intermediate revisions by 9 users not shown) | |||
Line 498: | Line 498: | ||
* I recommend "born" and "died" instead of "b." and "d.". Much more readable at the cost of only 4 bytes! [[User:Gdr|Gdr]] 18:26, 2004 Aug 1 (UTC) |
* I recommend "born" and "died" instead of "b." and "d.". Much more readable at the cost of only 4 bytes! [[User:Gdr|Gdr]] 18:26, 2004 Aug 1 (UTC) |
||
*I don't put in born or died. It is quite obvious that the first date is the birth date and so on. The introductory paragraph states why the person is important. It is in the Bio section, the next section, where I put in the birth place and places the person been to. [[User:WHEELER|WHEELER]] 23:34, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
|||
==The "''Encyclopedia that Slashdot Built''" Awards== |
==The "''Encyclopedia that Slashdot Built''" Awards== |
||
Line 594: | Line 596: | ||
::Even that page presents it as just a variant of "to-do". And it's not the same meaning. You might as well say that ''todo'' is a word meaning "all". Also be wary of what Google says is in a certain language. Yes, you get over five million results allegedly in English, but a quick look at the first page reveals that they are mostly pages in Spanish and Portuguese. Some of the remainder are mispellings of the English expression "to do", but that doesn't mean we have to do the same. I can also find a quarter of a million instances of "tongue" spelt "tounge", five million of "lol" which is netspeak and not standard English, as well as 218 million of "sex" versus only 17 million for "education", which is not evidence of a spelling error but an indication that it is wise not to lend most credibility to what happens to be common online. [[User:Chameleon| ]]<font color="green">— Chameleon</font> [[User:Chameleon|Main]]/[[User talk:Chameleon|Talk]]/[[User:Chameleon/Images uploaded|Images]] 20:18, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
::Even that page presents it as just a variant of "to-do". And it's not the same meaning. You might as well say that ''todo'' is a word meaning "all". Also be wary of what Google says is in a certain language. Yes, you get over five million results allegedly in English, but a quick look at the first page reveals that they are mostly pages in Spanish and Portuguese. Some of the remainder are mispellings of the English expression "to do", but that doesn't mean we have to do the same. I can also find a quarter of a million instances of "tongue" spelt "tounge", five million of "lol" which is netspeak and not standard English, as well as 218 million of "sex" versus only 17 million for "education", which is not evidence of a spelling error but an indication that it is wise not to lend most credibility to what happens to be common online. [[User:Chameleon| ]]<font color="green">— Chameleon</font> [[User:Chameleon|Main]]/[[User talk:Chameleon|Talk]]/[[User:Chameleon/Images uploaded|Images]] 20:18, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
||
IMHO, if people use it regularly, and widely agree upon its spelling and intended meaning, it's a word. Sort of like the words "today", "email", "handwritten", and "newspaper". "LOL" [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=lol is an abbreviation]. The phrase "todo list" is unlikely to be misunderstood by any native English speaker to mean "list of commotion."-- [[User:Wapcaplet|Wapcaplet]] 23:36, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
|||
== Wikipedia as a press source == |
== Wikipedia as a press source == |
||
Line 989: | Line 993: | ||
**Oh my god. A 23" monitor! 16x12! That would be heaven for me (particularly with a graphics card that supports that). [[User:Ilyanep| ]]— [[User:Ilyanep|<font color="grey">Ilγαηερ</font>]] [[User talk:Ilyanep|<font color="#333333">(Tαlκ)</font>]] 23:27, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
**Oh my god. A 23" monitor! 16x12! That would be heaven for me (particularly with a graphics card that supports that). [[User:Ilyanep| ]]— [[User:Ilyanep|<font color="grey">Ilγαηερ</font>]] [[User talk:Ilyanep|<font color="#333333">(Tαlκ)</font>]] 23:27, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
||
* 19" 1600x1200x24, [[Gentoo Linux]], [[Mozilla Firefox]] with a browser window usually around 1000x1000. -- [[User:Wapcaplet|Wapcaplet]] 23:13, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
* 19" 1600x1200x24, [[Gentoo Linux]], [[Mozilla Firefox]] with a browser window usually around 1000x1000. -- [[User:Wapcaplet|Wapcaplet]] 23:13, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
||
* At work, 17" LCD monitor @ 1280x1024, Windows XP, Firefox; At home, 17" CRT monitor @ 1024x768, Windows 2000, Mozilla. Browser window always maximised. —[[User:Stormie|Stormie]] 23:32, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC) |
|||
* Dual monitors of different sizes and resolutions. Browser windows stay near 750 px wide, which makes overly large fixed-width tables on Wikipedia jump out. -- [[User:Cyrius|Cyrius]]|[[User talk:Cyrius|✎]] 23:40, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
|||
== When interlanguage links are ambiguous == |
== When interlanguage links are ambiguous == |
||
It had occured to me that this problem might be possible, but I had never come across it in practice before. So... Is there any established way to get around the problem that occures when a word in one language translates as two (or more) in the other? I wanted to link the Irish wiki article [[:ga:Cnáimhseachas|Cnáimhseachas]] to the English wiki, but the word translates either as [[midwifery]] or [[obstetrics]]. I can't find any synonyms (or near-synonyms) for the word in Irish that could be used to make two different titles, and I wouldn't dare suggest merge the two English articles. |
It had occured to me that this problem might be possible, but I had never come across it in practice before. So... Is there any established way to get around the problem that occures when a word in one language translates as two (or more) in the other? I wanted to link the Irish wiki article [[:ga:Cnáimhseachas|Cnáimhseachas]] to the English wiki, but the word translates either as [[midwifery]] or [[obstetrics]]. I can't find any synonyms (or near-synonyms) for the word in Irish that could be used to make two different titles, and I wouldn't dare suggest merge the two English articles. I know that there are other examples in other languages. Should altlang links be put in for both articles, or is there some technical trick I'm unaware of? -- [[User:Kwekubo|Kwekubo]] 23:21, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
||
==Taoism, in Klingon== |
==Taoism, in Klingon== |
||
Can someone help me out? I am looking at [[Taoism]], but would really like to read the article in [[Klingon]]. I notice that the Klingon Wikipedia has an article about Taoism, but, although it is in the source, it does not appear in the language bar, but rather, at the bottom of the article: [http://tlh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daw_lalDan Daw_lalDan]. What is wrong? Apart from the obvious, of course. [[User:Mark Richards|Mark Richards]] 23:25, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
Can someone help me out? I am looking at [[Taoism]], but would really like to read the article in [[Klingon]]. I notice that the Klingon Wikipedia has an article about Taoism, but, although it is in the source, it does not appear in the language bar, but rather, at the bottom of the article: [http://tlh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daw_lalDan Daw_lalDan]. What is wrong? Apart from the obvious, of course. [[User:Mark Richards|Mark Richards]] 23:25, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
||
:Klingon interlanguage links are not displayed. This is part of a compromise between the people that wanted a Klingon Wikipedia, and the people that wanted it deleted. -- [[User:Cyrius|Cyrius]]|[[User talk:Cyrius|✎]] 23:32, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
|||
:''<at a loss for words>'' Perhaps people might like to learn Irish instead and help out at ga:! It even sounds similar :o) Eara, níl mé i ndairíre! [[User:Zoney|Zoney]] 23:50, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
|||
==Cite sources== |
==Cite sources== |
||
Does wikipedia have any guidelines that discuss the comparability of different sources? For instance, does wikipedia have a guideline saying that older sources are better? Or that newer sources are better? Or that original sources are better than secondary? [[User:Hyacinth|Hyacinth]] 23:31, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
Does wikipedia have any guidelines that discuss the comparability of different sources? For instance, does wikipedia have a guideline saying that older sources are better? Or that newer sources are better? Or that original sources are better than secondary? [[User:Hyacinth|Hyacinth]] 23:31, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
||
:[[Wikipedia:No original research]] pretty clearly states that original sources (original research, at least) are not allowed, only secondary and tertiary sources are. [[User:Sam Spade|Sam]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Sam_Spade&action=edit§ion=new '''Spade''']] 23:44, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
|||
::Well, that really amounts to "don't add your own theories." Original sources, if by "original" you mean "primary" sources, are perfectly acceptable to use for research purposes, as are secondary sources. For secondary sources, the usefulness of "new" and "old" sources probably depends on the subject - generally newer research is better, as older secondary sources tend to become outdated, but it would depend on the source as well. [[User:Adam Bishop|Adam Bishop]] 23:57, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
|||
::Well, that policy pertains to the contents of an article (that is, if Prof Hawking has a new theory on black holes, he shouldn't publish it here). But isn't Hyacinth asking not about article ''content'' but ''citations'', in which case quite the opposite is true. Hyacinth's article on theories of black holes (say) should ideally reference Prof Hawking's paper (published in the Journal of Jolly Hard Maths, vol 3.14), which is much better than cite to a CNN report about Prof Hawking's paper, which in turn is better than some dude's weblog citing the CNN story that cites the journal. So I think, as far as citations go, the most authoritative (whatever that means in a particular context) is the best cite, and that'll often be the most original. -- [[User:Finlay McWalter|Finlay McWalter]] | [[User talk:Finlay McWalter | Talk]] 00:00, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
|||
::I think there is room on Wikipedia for your modern defintions which don't correspond to anything in the classical world. Hyacinth here wants his modern definition of [[Effeminacy]] to supercede the authority of Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas. He wants to remake the word into a progressive meaning and totally disregard 2500 years of the same meaning. Aristotle, a pagan, and St Thomas a Christian agree on the same meaning of the word.[[User:WHEELER|WHEELER]] 00:08, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
|||
===Classical meanings vs Modern revisionsism=== |
|||
Today, classical departments are closing and no one reads classical literature anymore. The Greeks and the Romans are called DWEM. What I am doing in the [[Classical definition of republic]] and the [[Classical definition of effeminacy]] is catalogueing these classical defintions for posterity. I understand deconstructionism and revisionism that is going on today in every university and college. Old terms are done away with and given new modern meanings that have no correlation to the old. [[Effeminacy]] comes from the Greek word malakos. Yet,Hyacinth wants to transpose his meaning unto the classical idea. Malakos does not have the meaning that Hyacinth wants to give it. I think for posterity and for classical studies, there should be seperate articles. Their new meaning of the term effeminacy is not the meaning for the Victorians, or the Greeks or the Latins or for the Christian church. I say keep the two articles seperate from each other. I can't see how the modern definition of Hyacinth has any correlation or consistency with Greek classical term. If someone read old literature, he needs to understand what those people took it to mean. Not to transpose a new meaning unto a word that has totally different connotations.[[User:WHEELER|WHEELER]] 23:53, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) |
Revision as of 00:08, 3 August 2004
I want... | Then go to... |
---|---|
...help using or editing Wikipedia | Teahouse (for newer users) or Help desk (for experienced users) |
...to find my way around Wikipedia | Department directory |
...specific facts (e.g. Who was the first pope?) | Reference desk |
...constructive criticism from others for a specific article | Peer review |
...help resolving a specific article edit dispute | Requests for comment |
...to comment on a specific article | Article's talk page |
...to view and discuss other Wikimedia projects | Wikimedia Meta-Wiki |
...to learn about citing Wikipedia in a bibliography | Citing Wikipedia |
...to report sites that copy Wikipedia content | Mirrors and forks |
...to ask questions or make comments | Questions |
[[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]]
Summarised sections
- User persists in re-publishing squicky clothing material --> User talk:Zora
- External links vs External link --> Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (headings)
- how to pick a piece of the wikipedia --> User talk:Avsa
- CSS problem --> User talk:Mike Storm
- Child Safety and Wikipedia --> Wikipedia talk:Content disclaimer
- where are the images? --> Picture missing. Now returned. Try Ctrl F5. Caption needs improving.
- Notice of poll opening for managing disruptive or antisocial editors --> Wikipedia:Dealing with disruptive or antisocial editors/poll
- using content in discusion forum --> See Wikipedia:Copyrights#Users.27 rights and obligations
- External links to H2G2 entries --> Wikipedia talk:External links
- On requiring users to sign in --> Wikipedia talk:Why create an account?
- AFL dot com spaming --> Talk:American Football League
- Yaargh! --> Skin looks funny? Try changing it to Monobook in Special:Preferences
- Political Color Coding? --> Talk:United States Senate
- List of XXX necessary? --> Categories complement lists, not replace them.
- What links here wierdness --> Known bug in the links table.
- Remove top whitespace, mv category+interwiki links to bottom --> Wikipedia talk:Categorization
- Common sense on MainPage, please. --> Wikipedia talk:Editing the main page
- Add references, please --> A reminder to cite your sources
- New project: Wikipedia:WikiProject Irish literature
- Wikipedia Publicity Committee --> m:PR department
- Categories --> User talk:Nichalp
- Weird templates --> User talk:Grin
- Americocentrism --> Wikipedia talk:USPOV
- Modern Library --> Category talk:Modern Library 100 best novels
- Britain = United Kingdom ? --> See User talk:KF#GB.2FUK
Do you ever make significant changes to an article?
I'm just curious, what do any of you do when you come across an article which you believe needs significant changes to its structure? Like if it restates facts, scatters facts under irrelevant sections, uses 'critics believe that...' too often, rambles, includes lots of citations which aren't relevant or noteworthy, or just generally has poor formatting - do you ever go in and rework an article significantly? If you do, how do you deal with previous editors who may get their nose bent out of shape that you redid their stuff? Or do you just leave well enough alone, limit your changes to specific details within the existing structure of the article, and trust that the people who edited before you knew what they were doing and your own opinion might be wrong? - Brian Kendig 00:49, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Be bold, and explain your changes on the Talk pages, but be prepared to get involved in pointless controversies, or to get abused if a long standing one already exists for that article, or to get all your work reverted. -- Simonides 00:57, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Most of the time if you do a good reorg of the info, and structure a good encyclopedia article, you won't get wrapped up in arguments. Sloppy articles need to be fixed, and most people actually apprecaite a helpful touch on pages they frequent. —siroχo 01:13, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)
- Windows XP. Before I started editing it [1], I felt like it read like a high school essay. It rambled and repeated words. I reworked it; someone reverted it (possibly by mistake?); someone else (in Talk:Windows_XP) said he was glad it was reverted. The version that's up there right now is based on my own edits, and I'm comfortable in my reasoning behind what I changed (but, of course, I don't mind someone else editing me). I guess I was just rattled a bit at first at having been reverted, and wanted to know what to do in case I was reverted again - especially as the complaints given about my article were fairly subjective and could have gone either way. Who's to say whether or not I deserved to be reverted? (Today I also reworked Windows Me and Mac OS. Is there any sort of "request for peer review" list around here, where I can ask people for opinions on my edits?) - Brian Kendig 02:36, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Brian, there is a place to request peer review at Wikipedia:Peer review —siroχo 04:57, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
- Windows XP. Before I started editing it [1], I felt like it read like a high school essay. It rambled and repeated words. I reworked it; someone reverted it (possibly by mistake?); someone else (in Talk:Windows_XP) said he was glad it was reverted. The version that's up there right now is based on my own edits, and I'm comfortable in my reasoning behind what I changed (but, of course, I don't mind someone else editing me). I guess I was just rattled a bit at first at having been reverted, and wanted to know what to do in case I was reverted again - especially as the complaints given about my article were fairly subjective and could have gone either way. Who's to say whether or not I deserved to be reverted? (Today I also reworked Windows Me and Mac OS. Is there any sort of "request for peer review" list around here, where I can ask people for opinions on my edits?) - Brian Kendig 02:36, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I've reworked a couple of articles. Sometimes I just start rewriting it one paragraph at a time, adding a paragraph, and then later deleting the redundant parts in the rest of the article. Sometimes I just add all the missing pieces first, so grossly expanding the article that the previous text is in the minority. Then, later, the previous bits can be reworded, worked in, or just deleted. Either way, if your text is high quality, and no factual data is actually lost in the process, it'll probably stick, and hopefully fewer noses will be bent. --ssd 03:42, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I have also reworked a couple of articles. I think the following steps can be taken to minimise the risk of dispute -
- Check the article's history. If there is a frequent contributor or the article is clearly largely the work of one or two users, explain your plans on their talk page(s) - not to ask "permission", but just to keep them informed.
- Explain your plans on the article's talk page and invite comments. Anyone watching the article will see this.
- Re-write in stages. If a re-structuring is necessary, do this first, with minimal changes to existing text. Leave it for a day or two. Then tidy up existing text (spelling, grammar, style etc.) but keep the same content. Leave it for a day or two again. Then add all that new content that you have been itching to put in.
- Try not to remove stuff - this is what often causes disputes. Clear factual errors should be removed, but other material can usually be incorporated in one way or another. POV stuff can be re-written as NPOV; bias can be balanced etc.
- Just my few thoughts ... Gandalf61 10:41, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)
- Gandalf61, this is great advice (is this written up anywhere in a Wikipedia: space article?). Anecdote: one of my earliest contributions was an overly enthusiastic refactoring of cryptography — I think I ticked off a couple of editors because they were already working on a new version (although it was under construction as a user subpage, quite easy to overlook...). If I'd followed these guidelines, it would gone much smoother. — Matt 18:49, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
That IBM research suggested that initial text is rarely taken away. With the exception of short stubs, the first edit tends to define an article. There of course plenty of exceptions (even 1% would be 3,000 articles). Pcb21| Pete 10:51, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- What's this IBM research you mention? Was it all about Wikipedia? [[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod ......TALKQuietly)]] 07:14, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
- Blimey Bod you have a very long sig when you view it in wikitext! The IBM paper is [2]. (Read the PDF). See also Wikipedia:Wikipedia_in_academic_studies Pcb21| Pete 08:40, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I've seen the direct results of what the IBM study found, it isn't pretty. Some articles that started with text with factual errors continue to support those errors many edits later. I think people are afraid to edit it out. Frequently if the original text was disorganized, people just keep adding bits and pieces without ever actually restructuring it, leaving it a rambling mess. I've found myself doing this. It is much harder to rearrange and restructure a text than just add a few pieces. The original text will color the tone of the article long afterwards, even if it does not deserve to. --ssd 04:41, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
To facilitate the building of a consensus around what edits an article need, you can use the new Wikipedia:Todo lists. Any comments on it are welcome. Pcarbonn 17:04, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
A challenge to all you designers out there - I need somebody to create a new barnstar.
Anyone interested in creating a barnstar of reconciliation to honor those who excel at patching things up between users? Neutrality 03:54, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- You could just tell them how much you appreciated it... Dysprosia 07:58, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Need to know Tongan words translated to English
(Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk)
How does someone correct a false definition and inaccurate article content/
(Moved from Reference Desk)
Dear Wikipedia Administrators and Editors,
It is with great dismay and sadness that when I looked up the definition of the Hawaiian word Hapa, I found that it was not defined truthfully. Please advise. I would like to know how one can be sure that the true meaning and definition of a word will be present on an article site that has redefined a word as a usage. I tried a few times to edit the article "Hapa" to present all the facts and the true meaning of this Hawaiian word, but someone kept puting the incorrect definiton back before I could finish. (PikiPik and Pez?)
Hapa is a Hawaiian (kanaka maoli) word of Hawaiian (ethnicity, blood ancestry) origin. Hapa began as a word by Hawaiians (like my great grandmother) for Hawaiians of part Hawaiian ancestry. Hawaiian dictionaries define "hapa" as "part, fragment., portion" or "an indefinite part of a thing, a few, a small part". Later it was further defined to include "of mixed blood, person of mixed blood". Hapa does not mean "part or partial Asian".
To take a word which is a part of an indigenous language and then redefine it as a word used for part-Japanese people who came from Hawai'i and then further redefine it as "people of part Asian and European ancestry" is ethnocultural theft. At the very least, the article site on wikipedia that defines and explains the word "hapa" should give credit where credit is due-to the Hawaiian (kanaka maoli) people of Hawai'i. The word hapa was in use long before any of the foreign Asian, Portuguese and Filipino immigrants came to Hawai'i. Hawaiians and (the first foreigners) Europeans (like my grandfather) created the first hapa people of Hawai'i. An example is Princess Victoria Ka'iulani Cleghorn. Later, Hawaiians intermarried with the Chinese (like my great grandfather) who were the first non-European immigrants to Hawai'i. This then created many people of Hawaiian, European and Chinese ancestry. Hapa is a Hawaiian word, it is not a "Hawai'i Creole" or Hawai'i Pidgin English" word.
How can anyone just take a word that has original meaning, definition and usage of a native peoples and just redefine it to suit someone and something else? Why has no one looked up the word in the dictionaries that would be the authority as to the definiton of a Hawaiian word? People of Hawaiian language authority. Please look in the dictionaries of Hawaiian language. It is a terrible thing to present something wrong and false as being the "truth".
By the way, I am Hawai'i born and raised, and am hapa because I am part Hawaiian- I am of mixed ethnic/racial ancestry-Hawaiian, Chinese, French, Welsh, Dutch, Irish, Scottish, Mohawk, Prussian, Austrian, English and Seneca. Two of my nephews are all of this and part Japanese and Okinawan too; they are hapa. Please make sure the truth is presented. Please do not allow someone to put forth a false definition. It is hurtful to those of us who are hapa and grew up with this word as a part of our heritage. People of Hawaiian ancestry have always been known to share and give in a most generous way, easily mixing and intermarrying with all ethnicities and races, and the word hapa can evolve to include anyone of mixed ethnic and racial ancestry, but please do not state that the definition of hapa is part Asian mixed ancestry. It is defined as "part, partial or fragment; one of mixed blood". Kelly Hu is hapa. Kelly Preston is hapa. Keanu Reeeves is hapa, and so forth. I have seen many sites on the web where the defition of hapa has been redefined. Please do not be such a site, be fair and just. (This was posted on the Reference Desk by User:Ilikea)
- OK, so, in summary, you dispute:
- The origin of hapa — Hawai‘ian rather than pidgin.
- Usage of hapa — any mixed race, not just Asian.
- On the first point, I think you need to discuss your sources for your beliefs on the etymology of the word with your co-contributors. I see that the talk page for the article is blank. It is best to talk to people there before resorting to consulting the entire community.
- On the second point, I see that the article does not say hapa means part-Asian. It just says they more often than not are. Isn't this true? Again, it is best to talk about this on the article's talk page.
- I also see the article is very badly named. Hapa seems to have been moved to HAPA-Mainland U.S.A. redefinition of Hawaiian word, which is not in line with Wikipedia naming conventions. I am going to move it back to Hapa.
- Finally, welcome to Wikipedia — I hope you will become a regular and valuable contributor. Please make sure you sign your comments by putting ~~~~ after them. It would also be handy if you could divide them up into paragraphs for legibility (I had to do that for you.) Thanks. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 05:27, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Welcome to Wikipedia where redefinition is rampant and a struggle to maintain historical consistency is difficult. My best wishes from a veteran wikipedian.WHEELER 15:02, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Sock puppets
Knowing full well that I am probably going to suggest something that has been suggested and debated a million times before, but not knowing at least where to look for such a debate, I would like to propose that anonymous users and registered users with fewer than 50 edits be blocked from editing such pages as VfD, CfD, and VfU. These discussions get senselessly bogged down by the flocks and armies of sockpuppets (though it is at times amusing), and often after a flurry of them has passed through, a legitimate new user may get "sockpuppet!" yelled at him simply because we can't tell the difference. Having a per se block on those articles would prevent the easy proliferation of sockpuppets, and guarantee that anyone who contributes to the more esoteric debates on wikipedia about keeping articles and categories will have actually been here for a little while. We tend to think that no one will wander to VfD unless they are somewhat familiar with wikipedia, but this would help guarantee that.
a) what does everyone think? and b) is there somewhere that I can see a preexisting discussion of this kind of proposal? I know I've seen similar suggestions arise in VfD comments from time to time... Oh, and c) how would we make something like this official policy and have it built into the system? Is it something that can be done? I initially thought we could do it by namespace, but then I realized that there are pages just for newbies set up within the wikipedia namespace (like the sandbox...duh). Postdlf 07:52, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Doesn't work. The kind of user who creates borderline articles that need to be discussed on XfD are generally new users. How can they defend themselves if you make it impossible to do so at a technical level? (And new users DO end up at VfD, as someone will have just slapped a link to it on the crappy new article. Anyhow, sock puppets can generally be spotted a mile off, and their votes weighted accordingly. Pcb21| Pete 08:30, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- A modification could work. Specially mark anonymous users and registered users with fewer than 50 edits on VfD, Cfd, and VfU. Such marking could be most easily done universally as part of the normal tilde-tilde-tilde-tilde display with some rather neutral phrase such as "Under 50 edits" or "Anon" for anonymous. Votes from "Under 50 edits" and "Anons" would simply not count on those queues and possibly in other circumstances (though those editors could still discuss). But making newness and anonymity very obvious along with such votes not being counted would make this kind of disruption less likely to occur. Jallan 14:36, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Agreed. Full transparency is the answer, just as it may also be to campaign finance. While I still support limiting the degree of edits from anonymous users, I think the prescribed limitation by Postdif goes too far. -- Stevietheman 18:25, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Shades. Display them with a little sunglass icon, like eBay. eBay users who have been registered for less than a month have their usernames displayed with "shades" (a little pair of sun glasses) warning you that their identity might be shady. They don't tell you in so many words what they're warning you about, but what they're warning you about is that a new user might be a reincarnation of someone who's been kicked off for abuse (NARU-ed, in eBay-speak). It's very analogous to sockpuppets here. Don't restrict what new users can do, but I see no harm in making their status evident at a glance. Dpbsmith 16:38, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Anyone wanna make an icon of a dirty sock? 8-P --ssd 04:44, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Could even be a happy sprinkling "new" star -- looks nice to the true newbie, and annoying to the sock puppet. -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 16:30, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I like the idea of tagging them as newbies—that would avoid the problems with blocking them while allowing us to identify who to disregard easily. Postdlf 04:51, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Bug: Image thumbnails have artifacts
(I submitted this to SourceForge [3] but I'm reporting it here in case anyone has any thoughts on how to fix this.)
Compare Image:Sidereal day (prograde).png with the thumbnail of the same image at Sidereal day. The latter image has artifacts (pixels of the wrong colour) around the yellow circle at the left representing the sun. These artifacts are not present in the original image. The artifacts are not just caused by aliasing because the wrong pixels are in a colour unrelated to the colour of neighbouring pixels. It is possible that the error has something to do with the alpha map on the original image: the artifacts are in places where pixels in the original image are partly transparent. Gdr 14:17, 2004 Jul 27 (UTC)
Wikipedia in DICT format: wik2dict.py
I finally wrote something to convert the Wikipedia into the DICT format: wik2dict.py. It tries to create reasonably layouted dict articles. It can also automatically fetch the database dumps. There are some requirements though (running mysql server, dictzip, Python modules for MySQL and dict stuff). And currently it is only version 0.2. So beware.
I would appreciate it if someone (possibly someone at Wikimedia?) could run the script regularly and put the dict files available for everyone to download. Too bad they can't be included in Debian though ("GFDL is non-free"). However, the script itself could probably be included in contrib :)
Hope it can also be useful to other people. G-u-a-k-@ 18:00, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
On wikipedia-l, Jimbo proposed editing weekends be held as a part of the drive towards 1.0. This involves groups of Wikipedians meeting in libraries to finalise articles.
I have created a page to arrange smaller meet-ups prior to the final print drive next summer. I suggest the first of these be held this September and be only one day rather than a whole weekend as a trial run. Please see Wikipedia:Editing Weekend for details. Angela. 18:38, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)
Arbitration Committee election update
The timeline for the arbitration committee election has been finalized. Candidates should present their candidate statements before midnight UTC on Monday, August 2, 2004. The election will start on Wednesday, August 4, and run through Friday, August 13. Anyone who has been a registered user for 3 months is eligible to vote. --Michael Snow 23:15, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Sysop Help
The article on Effeminacy was changed in title to Effeminacy (classical vice). The person doing the changing did not bring over the history nor the old talk page. Since then the article has now been reverted back to the original. None of this my doing but I originated the article and would like the old history to come back.
Can a Sysop restore the old history and talk page elements? I now it has been done before.WHEELER 23:44, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Extending markup syntax to allow easy creation of references
I think it would be useful to extend the wikitext markup syntax to facilitate easy creation and especially maintenance of a list of external documents cited/referenced in a wikipedia article. The full proposal including syntax, an example, and anticipated problems can be found at User:Sperling/References.
Any comments would be appreciated. --K. Sperling 01:51, 2004 Jul 28 (UTC)
- That's a nice idea you got there. And I also didn't know that frogs could move back in time :D Ilyanep (Talk) 03:31, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Looks great to me, but I couldn't retreive your rendered document. — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:00, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
- Looks great. Exploding Boy 15:06, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
Pulling in FCC list of radio stations
The lists of radio stations in the US are a little jumbled, e.g. List of radio stations in Massachusetts, List of radio stations in Ohio, List of radio stations in Oregon. Each state's page is formatted differently and contains different kinds of information. There are thousands of licensed stations in the US.
One of the few things the FCC's done right is publishing downloadable data [4] [5]. You can get a list of all the stations in the US. Thoughts on importing this data into Wikipedia? There are something like 8500 FM stations listed, so I'm not sure if that list includes defunct or trivial stations. Anyway we could filter by certain criteria like wattage, I'd have to do more research to find out possible filters. I could write the bot to do this but it might take a while given my schedule. Rhobite 04:26, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
Evil wiki magic
Can anyone explain to me why the following, from Reign of Terror, shows a period (".") rather than a colon (":") after the italicized word Terror?
Source: On [[September 5]], the Convention, pressured by the people of Paris, institutionalized ''The Terror'': systematic and lethal repression of perceived enemies within the country.
Result: On September 5, the Convention, pressured by the people of Paris, institutionalized The Terror: systematic and lethal repression of perceived enemies within the country.
Jmabel 05:52, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
- Actually, I think it is showing a colon - it's just that when the r in Terror is italicised, it touches the colon's upper dot, making it look like the dot is part of the r. I can't think of any solution to the problem, though, except to add in a space (giving Reign of Terror : instead of Reign of Terror:). -- Vardion 06:21, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- An alternate solution is to italicise the colon as well. Reign of Terror: The typography police are probably going to write me up for suggesting it. -- Cyrius|✎ 06:24, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Most of my clients' style guides call for applying italic to ending punctuation after italic text--including periods and commas because they can show up oddly, too, if not italicized. Elf | Talk 04:39, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Donald Knuth's TeXBook also calls for typesetting the punctuation mark following bold/italic text as bold/italic. BACbKA 21:16, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Most of my clients' style guides call for applying italic to ending punctuation after italic text--including periods and commas because they can show up oddly, too, if not italicized. Elf | Talk 04:39, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- An alternate solution is to italicise the colon as well. Reign of Terror: The typography police are probably going to write me up for suggesting it. -- Cyrius|✎ 06:24, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- It looks fine in Mozilla 1.7/Cologne Blue. You could try changing your browser/skin.
- chocolateboy 16:01, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- The fact that there is a browser/skin in which the article looks right is not the issue. We should be striving for copy that will look right to all viewers. The suggestion of italicizing the punctuation is probably a good one. -- Jmabel 06:27, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
- We should be striving for standards that are supported by all sane browsers, and not implementing hacks that annoy users who don't happen to experience your viewing idiosyncrasies. What browser/platform/skin are you using?
- chocolateboy 08:08, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- This is a well-known IE rendering limitation/bug, unlikely to get fixed in the next four years or so... -- Gabriel Wicke 23:25, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
We should not be ignoring a browser used by a larger number of people than any other browser on the Internet. It's one thing to have a policy like that for tools used by our active participants, but we want our content to look good to people who are turning to us as an encyclopedia, not as a hobby. -- Jmabel 00:55, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)
Despite all the browser bashing (it looks bad in netscape too, btw), the correct solution is to italicize the : so that it does not run into the r. Italic punctuation was created specifically to fix that problem. --ssd 05:13, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
FAQ for users who think Wikipedia is biased against their country
I have written a draft FAQ for users who think that Wikipedia is biased against their country at User:Zocky/Country bias. Any improvements and suggestions are highly welcome. Zocky 12:43, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Here's an excerpt:
- Wikipedia is an international encyclopaedia and should be equally readable and understandable for all readers, regardless of where they come from, and it should not take sides. Where popular beliefs in two countries differ, both should be presented fairly.
- If you think that your country/nation is represented unfairly or that an article is offensive to your country, please read these explanations of commonly raised issues.
I've contributed a few things, but I think that it should be both a FAQ for people who think Wikipedia is biased on their country, and also a guideline for people writing on other countries. David.Monniaux 06:43, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Controversial cat issues
Would some helpful veteran please take a look at the discussions of indoor/outdoor cats and declawing in How to choose your pet and take care of it? These are both controversial topics where the majority opinion is different in the US and the UK (where I come from). I have done my best to include a balanced discussion of indoor/outdoor cats, but I'm not qualified to sort out the discussion of declawing, since in the UK it is illegal and generally regarded as cruel. As I said on the talk page, I think it deserves an article of its own.
131.111.8.103 13:09, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
That was me (Ekaterin) by the way!
Ekaterin 13:13, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I moved some extern links to the External link section, as they should be, and added some wikilinks, but, to be honest, some of the article seems very POV. Especially the section on naming the dog: "Dog names tend to extend from names of countries such as Kenya." How in the world did the author come up with that? I read an article once that suggested giving dogs names with one or two syllables and gave the scientific reasoning behind it. But the article seems to have a great deal of opinion in it, which is impossible to make NPOV without just removing it. But, the paragraph on declawing seems very NPOV and gives views on both sides of the argument. Anyway, peace. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 14:38, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
- Thank you, it's looking much better now. It's hard to think of good reasons for declawing a cat, but someone on the rec.pets.cats newsgroup once suggested the possibility of the owner developing a severe allergy so that even an accidental scratch would be serious. (Some declawing advocates say that it is no worse than neutering the cat, but neutering has health benefits for the cat itself, which declawing doesn't.) Anyway, all that would belong in a declawing article rather than in How to choose your pet and take care of it.
- Thank you, it's looking much better now. It's hard to think of good reasons for declawing a cat, but someone on the rec.pets.cats newsgroup once suggested the possibility of the owner developing a severe allergy so that even an accidental scratch would be serious. (Some declawing advocates say that it is no worse than neutering the cat, but neutering has health benefits for the cat itself, which declawing doesn't.) Anyway, all that would belong in a declawing article rather than in How to choose your pet and take care of it.
Ekaterin 15:29, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Image Markup/ New Preferences (suggestion)
I've just come up with a new item in the preferences: preferred size of the default thumbnail box. I've noticed that a couple of contributors define the width of the thumbnail when there is no reasons. I think most of the time, they do this, so the page looks nice. Now, what looks nice on a small screen might look rather weird on a big one, and vice versa.
My suggestion is to let users choose. Of course, there are cases when we want exactly 237px width (e.g. if the picture is that size). So, I suggest we have a preference to set the default size of thumbnails. Next, we of course encourage all Wikipedians not to add fixed size unless needed.
Can I at this stage also mention, that thumb should be used, because it includes the given description as a caption... many contributors seem to to know that thumb, right etc. are not exclusive statements... Kokiri 13:35, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I second this call. I've had disputes over image size before, and there's no right answer; this would provide one. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 14:36, 2004 Jul 28 (UTC)
- For caching reasons, it would need to be selectable and not arbitrary. That is, you'd have small/medium/large (with pixel values specified) instead of a text field you could put any number into. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:01, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Oh, no problem... Kokiri 20:24, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- So how many values should there be? Three is probably fine, but if it'll change your mind, I'll point out that the computer next to me has six possible screen resolutions, ranging from 640x480 to 1600x1200. Lucky Wizard 02:09, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Categories broken
###Note:### See the thread Wikipedia:Village pump#Categories with sort keys are not sorted properly for discussion of related alphasort issues.
Is it just me or are categories broken? I just went to Category:Political divisions of the United States and the list was empty and saw the same thing with a quick sampling of several other categories. older≠wiser 14:39, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Not just you, all categories I checked are broken. The breakage occured less than an hour ago. Anárion 14:41, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I thought it was me too. They're still broken now. Is anyone looking it or should we post something about it somewhere? Guess I'll wait before adding List of supercars to Category:Supercars now anyway. [[User:Akadruid|akaDruid (Talk)]] 15:26, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- The bug has been found, we're working on a fix. -- JeLuF 19:22, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
- Gabriel has fixed the bug. Should be fine now. -- JeLuF 20:22, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
- Still not fixed, Category:Athletes for example show all the athletes in alphabetical order but just in one long sentence instead of under sections A, B, C etc Scraggy4 20:38, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- All categories I found that were broken have been fixed, and I can't find any new ones. However, there are so many that there may well be more out there and I'm not going to be able to find them all. So assistance is welcomed/needed. Also, if they really are all fixed, could Tech support give me a confirmation?
- Ones that have been fixed since I mentioned them = (Category:Films by year), (Category:Celebrities), (Category:Feminists), (Category:Ballet), (Category:Antenna teminology), (Category:Clear Channel radio stations), (Category:Clear Channel Communications), (Category:Mosques), (Category:Sportspeople), (Category: Fictional Jews), (Category:Fictional gays and lesbians), (Category:Islamic mythology), (Category:Christian music), (Category:Aliens), (Category:English athletes), (Category:Environmental law), (Category:English actors), and (Category:Campaign settings). -Erolos 12:55, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Boston meetup
There will be a Wikipedian meetup in Boston this Saturday. Sign up at User:Jimbo_Wales/Boston if you plan to attend. Dori | Talk 16:52, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC) (Who unfortunately cannot)
Duke University
The "Duke University" entry is not displaying properly.
- It looks fine to me. Could you be more specific? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 17:29, 2004 Jul 28 (UTC)
- There, how's that? — Frecklefoot | Talk 18:51, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
External link policy?
I'm looking for some clarification of the policy about external links. What makes a link acceptable on a page? Should new links be posted at the top, or the bottom, of the existing list of links? How does one determine if a link is spam or astroturfing, or a valid submission?
Frequently I've seen users putting in links that are relevant, but not the most important sites in relation to an article. E.g. a user linked photomigrations.com from Digital photography, which is relevant but it's not a very well-known site, and it's not a general digital photo site.
Even though they're just trying to increase traffic to their site, it's possible that the link should stay. Tips? Rhobite 18:42, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
- There is probably a Wikipedia policy link on this, but here is my opinion: Most relevant links should go first, then less relevant ones. For example, for an article on General Motors, their official website should be listed first. For an article on Michael Douglas, his official personal website should go first. All other links are secondary. I'd say "most relevant" links should go in next, followed by the least relevant. What is relevant and what isn't gets murky, however. Use your best judgement. If it looks like an ad, it probably is. HTH — Frecklefoot | Talk 18:56, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
- On external links do we have a policy of periodically checking if they are still valid? Links die and so do editors, and in time Wikipedia might well have an unacceptable number of dead links. Not guaranteed to instil confidence among our users. Apwoolrich 19:03, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- One user, Lady Lysine Ikinsile, is well-known for her efforts in standardization of style and format of External links sections. You may want to talk to her. Derrick Coetzee 22:05, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- You might also be interested in my personal manifesto for what should and shouldn't be included. --ALargeElk | Talk 08:46, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
And why does it feel right that it should be "external links" with an s, even when there is only one link? (Admittedly not everyone feels this, but plenty do). Pcb21| Pete
- There are a few reasons. The practical one is that when people exapand the external links section, they shouldn't have to remember to update the section title. The more subtle one is that it makes sense for a section titled Blahs to contain only one Blah, just as the Plumbers section of your phone book could very well have only one plumber in it. It is a list of all of them, of which there happens to be only one. Derrick Coetzee 23:08, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:External links and m:When should I link externally. For link v. links, see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Angela. 14:13, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
Pi x 10^5 pages!
For all those zealots and anarchists who claim that the decimal number system, and so our usual milestones, have no real significance, let them witness that Wikipedia has exceeded Pi x 10^5, or about 314159, pages! Definitely deserves a press release. Derrick Coetzee 22:09, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I can't help but point out that π×105 is only special because of your decimal-chauvinistic bias towards the number 105. Personally I can't believe that we passed 262,144 without anyone noticing. -- Tim Starling 04:45, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
- Is this a riddle? Can you give a hint?--Patrick 10:03, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Ah, 2^18.--Patrick 10:06, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The real milestone is that Wikipedia now contains over 19,683 (39) good articles. AsbestoSuit 355:113, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Public domain for state govt pages?
Are items and pics on state government official pages public domain, or are states allowed to copyright? RickK 00:00, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
- No. As Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ (which Jamesday and I wrote) says: All work produced by employees of the US federal government as part of their work is public domain—thus, almost all content found on US government websites (.gov and .mil) is public domain. Note, however, that this applies only to the US Federal government. State governments retain the copyright on their work. Also note that some US Federal websites can include works which are not in the public domain--check the copyright status before assuming something is public domain. Works produced by the UK government are not public domain; they are covered by Crown copyright. →Raul654 00:08, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
- According to Wikipedia:Image copyright tags, images created by the State of California may be ineligible for copyright. I don't know the details, however. -- Chris 73 | Talk 00:19, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- And don't forget that other countries have different rules entirely. See Crown copyright for a case in point. -- ChrisO 18:21, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- According to Wikipedia:Image copyright tags, images created by the State of California may be ineligible for copyright. I don't know the details, however. -- Chris 73 | Talk 00:19, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
User Talk Page Prob
Before I created my second archive on my talk page, the TOC for the talk showed up fine, however it doesn't now, can somebody tell me why? Ilyanep (Talk) 03:15, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- You need more than three headers for an automatic TOC. To force a TOC when you don't have four headers type __FORCETOC__. Angela. 03:34, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
Some brainstorming...
First off, I want to say that I discoverd wikipedia yesterday and am ecstatic over it. I think the principals of "community cooperation" found within wikipedia, open-source software, creative commons and everything GNU are going to revolutionize the future in a HUGE way and will save all of us from ourselves....
But anyway, a couple of quick questions popped in my head about wikipedia that I couldn't really find an answer to:
1) As we've all seen in history (and no I can't really find a good example), it has been possible for a large group of people to, over a period of time, slowly believe something as true which very well may not be. Now I understand that fact is fact is fact. And I got the vibe that things like religion and such are explained in a very unbiased manner, as they should be. But my only concern is that I feel it IS possible for an entire population to believe something as true that isn't if its very slowly introduced to them. Like a very slow public "numbing to truth brought on by thier ability to believe whatever they read." Now I can't even begin to think of a scenario where that might happen, even if it's possible. But I just wanted to throw that out there.
- That's an interesting point. Are you saying that, given enough time, Wikipedia might develop its own set of myths that it will defend against reasonable argument? I hope that doesn't happen, but it's a possibility. -- Heron 08:33, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- There's been some discussion about whether this might already be happening with the issue of Vampire watermelons. --ALargeElk | Talk 08:54, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I checked that article out and can't see how its "bending truth" or creating myths (maybe I've fallen victim to exactly that condition which I introduced, who woulda thunk it). The first line even says its a myth. The only way I can see a problem with it is if the actual existence of that particular myth is in dispute. If so, could another example of this potential problem be if someone decided to add thier little two cents to history and really just create it on the spot? Maybe they talk about a small tribe in Norway around 200 A.D.that was the 3rd tribe to create fire in that region. Chances are, no one is going to really care about that fact enough to really challenge it. So those reading take it to be true. It's basically the adding of pointless, possibly untrue, and definetly undisputed facts. (not registered yet) --68.170.38.222 07:34, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Vandalism such as that will most commonly be done by anon. IPs, and most of the time, there are people checking anon. IPs' edits as they happen, or at least have the pages on their Watchlist, so they see the anon. IP edit next time they log on. If it is done by a registered user, it might be a little tougher to catch, but watchlists help protect still. Ideally, every wikipedian should add all the articles they create to their watchlist, so that every article is monitored by at least someone. —siroχo 11:35, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)
- I checked that article out and can't see how its "bending truth" or creating myths (maybe I've fallen victim to exactly that condition which I introduced, who woulda thunk it). The first line even says its a myth. The only way I can see a problem with it is if the actual existence of that particular myth is in dispute. If so, could another example of this potential problem be if someone decided to add thier little two cents to history and really just create it on the spot? Maybe they talk about a small tribe in Norway around 200 A.D.that was the 3rd tribe to create fire in that region. Chances are, no one is going to really care about that fact enough to really challenge it. So those reading take it to be true. It's basically the adding of pointless, possibly untrue, and definetly undisputed facts. (not registered yet) --68.170.38.222 07:34, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- There's been some discussion about whether this might already be happening with the issue of Vampire watermelons. --ALargeElk | Talk 08:54, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Ideally, Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopedia. Perhaps it will become (is?) the broadest and most detailed encyclopedia, but it should still be an encyclopedia. Meaning newspaper articles, books, letters, and journals will probably always contain more detailed specific, and true information than Wikipedia. If we have a dedicated army of wikipedians checky facts that seem off, this creation of myth will hopefully be uncommon. —siroχo 09:11, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
2.)Advertising. What if someone writes up a pizza page and explains how to make it and such, then talk about history and blah blah blah. Then at the end put a http://www.dominos.com. Eventually someone will take it off because it's biased and advertising. Pretty simple. But what if everyone likes dominos? (just using it as an example, replace dominos with anything widely excepted). Then that opens up a way for people to advertise. Again, I can't really see that happening because there is nothing that everyone agrees on, even God, or god, or gods or allah or no god or aliens or etc,.
I'm just trying to find ways to scrutinize the system because I like it so much. I'M TRYING TO FIND FAULT AND CAN'T. By its very design, it WILL become the most in-depth, complete, and unbiased source of information on the planet. Good job guys.
- You are of course preaching to the converted, so we certainly agree with your final point. :) As an example of (2), Dominos is indeed listed in the Pizza article, which links to its own article and only in there is a Web link. But it is sufficiently removed from the general pizza page such that it cannot be construed as gratuitous advertising for that company. This is the convention that has evolved, and has become quite accepted in the community. It balances the goals of expressing what is commonly accepted as "the truth" and resisting commercial tendencies. Fuzheado | Talk 07:51, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Blantant advertising is consistently removed by users. If User:A wrote an article on how to make pizza and then only added a link to Dominos, it is likely User:B would come along and delete just the link to Dominos, not the whole article (assuming the article was of good quality). Blatant advertising does happen here, but editors (like you) are pretty swift to delete it. — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:31, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
Linking to Wikisource
I was just wondering if there was any effort to encourage linking to Wikisource for any sorts of documents/sources that might be mentioned in an article here on Wikipedia. It came to my attention after browsing through Wikisource and reading 'Civil Disobedience' by Thoreau, then coming over to Wikipedia for more info about him and the essay. There was an external link to the essay from the Civil Disobedience page to a college site or something, which I changed to link to the Wikisource document. I just think it would be a great idea to help out the sister projects and encourage people to add stuff to Wikisource, and hopefully it would strengthen both projects. So is there any policy/project to help these two projects help each other out?
p.s. Hope this is an appropriate place for this discussion since it concerns two different Wikimedia projects, but I didnt see anywhere on the MetaWiki to put it...
thanks, biggins 10:14, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Linking between the sisters, especially from wikipedia to the others is generally encouraged. The United States Constitution contains a link to wikisource, I think. I'm sure many other such links exist. —siroχo 11:18, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
We need more sounds
I've posted this before, but I haven't gotten much of a response. Everyone can speak a language natively, so if you have a mic, how about adding some sounds to these pages (note that English hasn't been done either):
- Your alphabet
- Common phrases in different languages
- List of tongue-twisters (if there aren't any phrases in your language, add some first)
- Numbers in various languages
- Any other page you think could use some sound
I suggest using Audacity to record and export the files to Ogg Vorbis format (See also Wikipedia:Ogg Vorbis help). Dori | Talk 12:45, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
Personal articles and solution thereof
Among the votes for deletion, the most commonly encountered category is personal articles. These articles are usually by some flaky person of no true interest to a Wiki-xxx. Though seldom encountered in votes for deletion, there also exist people who are of some minor interest, but who would not always justify an article. I propose a solution for both categories.
The idea is to create a separate Wiki with unlimited (except for size) personal articles. The idea is that if you can't easily deal with them, at least categorize them into a heap where they would be harmless. The existing Wikipedia would simply redirect via creator selection option, or by speedy VfD to the personalWIKI. The personal articles would not be searchable by Wikipedia, but would available through a different Wiki name.
A variation on this is to also require personal articles to have an selectable "open date" e.g. 50 years in the future, when the article would finally be posted to the public, but held confidential to Wiki (via password) prior to that date. The idea here is that some people actually are noteworthy, and that often such people would be reluctant to publish personal information prior to their death. I recently encountered an example of this. The lady was a former professor of French, had lead an interesting life, but was otherwise little known publically. She is also very old and probably near death. An article about her would be highly appropriate, and, it would be best done with her assistance. What do you do with such an article?
I think that such future open date personal articles would tend to attract the less flaky members of society, and, would be a useful content. Perhaps such articles could be automatically forwarded to Wikipedia after the open date. Posted by User:66.44.3.205
- It's ironic that this was posted by an anonymous user and that this was that user's first edit. Anyway, personally I don't think this is a great idea. Exploding Boy 15:00, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
- I don't think its a good idea either "Create a separate Wiki with unlimited (except for size) personal articles." Am I reading this right: so everyone could write an article about themselves? The other part doesn't sound like a horrible idea, but too complex to implement effectively. — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:19, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
And the beauty of it is, people can just create an account under their real name (provides searchability!), and then link to their blog from their user page. Exploding Boy 16:42, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
Caching of text used in edit summary
How do I clear out the cache that retains the text I have used for edit summary? The cache is a useful feature but after a while, it contains so many similar text strings that the value decreases. I deleted the browser cookies but that didn't clear it. I also looked in the help but could not see anything about it. Thanks in advance. --Bobblewik 15:56, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- This depends on what browser you're using, but if you're using IE, when the list pops up, highlight the entry you want to get rid of and hit the Delete key and it won't show up again (unless you use the same text again). Also, Internet Option | Delete Files should get rid of all the entries, but as you start using the summary box again, it will fill up again. There is a way to turn off this feature, but it sounds like you didn't want to turn it off, just get rid of redundant entries. HTH — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:01, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
- And, in IE, to get a list of *all* the entries in the cache, just go to the summary and hit alt-down. This brings up the total list. Also, Frecklefoot, why does your sig contain "[User:Frecklefoot|(nowiki)(/nowiki)]"? (offending characters removed so it all properly shows up) Why have a blank User:Frecklefoot link before the mdash? --Golbez 16:55, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- It's in there because of the way signatures work. The signature automatically prefaces your signature nickname with [[User:<username>|. But I want the mdash; before any of my signature and that junk gets rid of all that initial signature stuff. I added the link to my user page and talk page afterwards. I hope that's clear. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 17:36, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
Excellent. I have IE6. I can now delete offending entries one by one. As you guessed, I don't want to turn it off, just remove a few. I tried to see if I could delete them all at once by following your second suggestion. I went to Tools, Internet Options..., Delete Files..., Delete all offline content, clicked OK then rebooted. Unfortunately that did get rid of any entries. However, deleting them one by one is a great advance and suits me fine. Thank you very much.
Bobblewik 20:54, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Rebooting probably does not make a difference. What you want to clear is not files but automatic form filling stuff. I forget exactly where in IE that is, but look for "clear form data" or something like that. --ssd 05:28, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Using your clue, I found it. Tools, Internet Options..., Content tab, Autocomplete..., Clear Forms. That deleted them all. Many thanks!
Bobblewik 16:46, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Redirect should work, doesn't
Take a look at Marauder's Map. The page redirects to an article that exists. It redirects to an article that isn't a redirect. Yet the redirect doesn't take you to the article.
It doesn't appear to be because of the anchor in the link; I checked another anchor redirect (Sorting Hat), and even though anchor redirects don't take you to the anchor, they do take you to the right page. What's going on?
As a sidenote, I found the brokenness jarring enough that it took me a minute to remember why I was interested in reading the article. Lucky Wizard 02:09, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- You can't redirect to sections yet, so it will only take you the right page, not the right section. For some reason, replacing the %28 and %29 with real brackets helped as the redirect seems to work now. Angela. 02:36, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)
How to sort list of articles by popularity in collaborative-edition mechanisms
Increasingly, collaborative-edition mechanisms are using categories in templates to automatically generate the list of the concerned articles: Wikipedia:todo list, Wikipedia:disputed statement, Wikipedia:Cleanup, ... Those lists are sorted in alphabetical orders. Other popular collaboration mechanisms show the most-recently-posted first: Wikipedia:peer review, Wikipedia:Cleanup, ...
Sorting articles by popularity would bring the major benefit of focusing the editing effort where it is most useful, i.e. where many people will actually view it. The popularity could be measured by the number of links to that page (like Google does).
The category feature allows the entry of a sort key, e.g. [[Category:foobar|sort key]] (see m:Help:Category#Setting_sort_keys. This could be used for our purpose if we enter the popularity in the sort key. To have a descending order, we could use 999998 for an article referred once, 999997 for an article refered twice... (This sort key is not shown in the list of articles of the category).
As far as I know this is currently not possible in Wiki, because there is no "popularity" variable that we can automatically insert in a text, so we'll probably have to enter a request for new feature. Any other idea ?? Pcarbonn 06:05, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- What is popularity? Is it a weight assigned by an outside source? Is it the number of links to the article? ("most requested"...) Is it the number of article viewings? Is there a popularity contest where we can vote for it within wikipedia? (these are all ideas for you to take or leave) --ssd 21:56, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
How to include places of birth/death briefly?
I recently created a stub about Ruth Krauss. I wanted to include her places of birth and death as well as the dates, without saying anything more about them. (biographies) recommends the standard format
but if you open like that, it is hard to think of a way of including the places succinctly. It's not as if it were a full biography, in which you could have a paragraph beginning "Krauss was born in a red-brick Mongolian yurt in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of a poor but honest woodchopper and screenwriter Anita Loos. The influence of Baltimore's red-brick architecture can be seen every aspect of her work..." (or whatever the actual facts might be).
I settled for:
Ruth Krauss (b. July 25, 1901, Baltimore, Maryland; d. July 10, 1993, Westport, Connecticut)
Thoughts? Are there any experienced sages who have a recommendation (and might consider adding it to (biographies)?)
- It's hard to work in the birthplace where there is nothing about youth or upbringing. If there were, it would be easy to start with, "Born in Baltimore, Maryland...". Even a short article like this would not do poorly to end by reiterating death date (and that's where place of death can go): "Krauss died July 10, 1993 in Westport, Connecticut." -- Jmabel 21:01, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)
- I recommend "born" and "died" instead of "b." and "d.". Much more readable at the cost of only 4 bytes! Gdr 18:26, 2004 Aug 1 (UTC)
- I don't put in born or died. It is quite obvious that the first date is the birth date and so on. The introductory paragraph states why the person is important. It is in the Bio section, the next section, where I put in the birth place and places the person been to. WHEELER 23:34, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The "Encyclopedia that Slashdot Built" Awards
I will be making occasional awards to pairs of articles that typify this accusation, in the hope that it will motivate some (including me) to overcome our tech and pop biases and invest in some of the (apparently) less appealing articles. The first award goes to:
- the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ("one of the oldest civil rights organizations in the United States"), which I clock at 249 words (not including external links) and;
- the GNAA ("a self-aggrandizing troll organization originating from the popular news website Slashdot."). I count our article at 422 words.
I make that a 1.69 Slashdot ratio, and will leave folks to draw their own conclusions about the relative significance of these two erstwhile organizations. Yours, hoping to meet you on the pages of some articles that traditionally don't get our focus, Mark Richards 15:28, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- What, only 1.69? Take a look at MIT:Harvard, or Heinlein:Steinbeck. (OK, I was originally going to suggest Heinlein:Hemingway but that's about 1:1... and anyway I don't like Hemingway). The Moon is a Harsh Mistress:A Farewell to Arms has a good Slashdot ratio, though. Dpbsmith 16:21, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Or consider "Fluble", a now-defunct comic that appeared in the Brown University student newspaper while its writer was a student there. Described as "at times a re-casting of the Job story, at times a meditation on depression and insanity, and often simply an aggregation of (loosely) popular cultural references, concept humor, and endless asides," one can't help thinking that this description really boils down to the same kvetching heard at any late night college bull-session of "misunderstood" and self-absorbed kids taking Philosophy 101.
- Of interest only to nostalgic Brown alumni, it clocks in at 3303 words, 2.15 times the length of "Doonesbury", a comic that, while it began as a student's work in a student paper, is now seen in 1400 newspapers and which has been making incisive political commentary and causing controversy since 1970.
- But the pioneering "editorial comic on the comic page", considered by many the precursor of both "Doonesbury" and "Calvin And Hobbes", "Pogo", a comic that arguably hastened the downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy, clocks in at less than one-eighth the length of "Fluble", at a mere 410 words. The actual ratio is 8.01:1.
- Technologically prescient, too... I remember Albert watching Pogo at a typewriter and saying to the effect that it's no wonder his writing is so good, he "has a little spellin' machine." And remember the Loan Arranger? But it always seemed to me that the political commentary, if any, was so very, very subtle as to have no sting at all and present virtually no challenge to the establishment. Dpbsmith 18:27, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- "Simple Joe Malarky", the pole-cat (?) with the perpetual five o'clock shadow who brought his mobile inquisition to the swamp was certainly Joe McCarthy. (Indeed, my life-long revulsion for state suppression of dissent probably originated in the Pogo comics I read at six or seven.) And according to this page, "[a] disagreeable Senator named Wiley appeared as Wiley Cat. The ultra-right-wing John Birch Society became 'The Jack Acid Society,' the Ku Klux Klan was 'Kluck Klams.'" Of course, much of Pogo was light-hearted: "Deck us all with Boston Charlie/ Walla Walla, Wash., and Kalamazoo!" -- orthogonal 19:23, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- But "Fluble" takes up even more space in Wikipedia: it includes five example comics as images, totaling another 281446 bytes of bandwidth.
- Presumably there would be copyright issues with reproducing Pogo or Doonesbury strips, and they'd be fairly serious as both of those strips still have a lot of commercial value left in them. I'm not sure why there aren't copyright issues with Fluble? Dpbsmith 18:27, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Presumably there are copyright issues -- although I haven't looked closely enough at the page to be sure. -- orthogonal 19:23, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Taking into account the images and comparing bytes, not words, the Fluble:Doonesbury ratio is approximately 31:1; Flubble:Pogo ratio is approximately 117:1. -- orthogonal 18:08, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Not any more; I hacked out some of the most obvious excess. The ratio is still way excessive, though. - DavidWBrooks 18:52, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Gee it seems to me that adding to Pogo or Doonesbury would be better than subtracting form Fluble, no? ;-) Paul August 06:13, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)
- Bravo! Let's have a regular WikiProject and feature it on the Wikipedia:Community portal so these articles get the deserved attention! -- ke4roh 20:54, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)
- FYI, I have nominated National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for Wikipedia:Article of the week. —Stormie 02:01, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
- Chewbacca defense - 1,073 words
- Insanity defense - 1,591 words →Raul654 20:22, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)
- Category:Slashdot - "This category contains 14 articles"
- Category:Shakespeare - "This category contains 0 articles"
Pcb21| Pete 11:26, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- (This example admittedly works better if you don't look at Category:William Shakespeare!)
- There are 24 articles in the category William Shakespeare, giving it a Slashdot Ratio of 2:1 with category Slashdot. I don't know about the article length, but it would be nice to think that we had even more than twice as much to say about Shakespeare than Slashdot... Mark Richards 16:46, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Uh....a little too pessimistic, I think. :-) Mark, you forgot that the category has four subcategories, so all the articles in those didn't count towards your ratio. We in fact have 67 articles under the umbrella of Category:William Shakespeare, for a Slashdot ratio of almost 5:1. I think we can relax just a little bit -- in the year I've been here, we've made huge strides away from being narrowly focused on "geek topics", and I think we should be congratulated more than derided. We've a ways more to go, but as it stands I think we have achieved a relatively sound balance. Jwrosenzweig 17:39, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- There are 24 articles in the category William Shakespeare, giving it a Slashdot Ratio of 2:1 with category Slashdot. I don't know about the article length, but it would be nice to think that we had even more than twice as much to say about Shakespeare than Slashdot... Mark Richards 16:46, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Captions in non-thumb photos
Hi - could someone take a look at Intercontinental ballistic missile and let me know what I did wrong trying to put a caption under the photo? I can't seem to get non-thumbnail photos to display captions. Thanks - Tempshill 19:26, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- It's fiddly. Basically you have to put it in a table I think. Easy captions are one of the best things about thumbnails. Mark Richards 19:30, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Or you could make it framed. I.E. [[Image.blah.jpg|framed|captiion]]]] -- DropDeadGorgias (talk) 19:40, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)
Categories with sort keys are not sorted properly
###Note:### OT "linguistic" subthread moved into subsub "Todo is not a word" at the end of this thread.
The Category:todo have articles with sort keys (i.e. [[category:todo|<sort key>]] or piped format), but it does not look correct to me. For example, "Talk:One-time pad" has a "T5" sort key, but comes before "Talk:Train station" that has a "T1" sort key. (these codes are meant to sort the articles by priority). Strangely, others are sorted correctly though, so that it is not a repeatable problem.
Has this problem been seen before ? Is someone working on it ? Should I report it somewhere else ? Pcarbonn 20:07, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- ###Note:### The relevant subthread of "Categories broken" has now been moved here, see below.
- Great! Category:todo works now. However, Category:to-do of popular articles still does not work... Could anybody help ? Pcarbonn 19:39, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Moved from "Categories broken":
Is this bug also responsible for the stuff I've been seeing the last couple of days, which is that several categories have more than one section for a given alphabetical letter? For example, Category:Software has two separate occurrences of "F", with some subcats living under one section and the rest under the other. Same trouble with several other categories above/below/"to-the-side-of" the Software one (the part of the category tree where I've been working lately). I really, really, really hope that this bug (or maybe bug complex) is generally fixable ¹ -- i.e. that one doesn't have to redo stuff ad aeternum...? --Wernher 02:15, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
( ¹ not at all having studied the wiki-software, I would nevertheless strongly assume that the category pages are regenerated regularly -- and that, if the wiki was a small one, they could in fact be regenerated on demand, i.e. per visit )
- If you mean when one letter is shown at the bottom of one column, and again at the top of the next column along, that isn't a bug - it is just about fitting the articles in alphabetically. -Erolos 12:55, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Sorry, I didn't follow the link before. I don't think it's part of the same problem, but it is a problem. Do you have links to the others? -Erolos 13:37, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Good point. I removed the piped File formats, and the two subcategories went into "C" without creating a new "C". Putting them under "F" was illogical, anyway. But, still, they shouldn't have done that; even piped they should have gone under the first "F". -Erolos 15:33, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Putting them under "F" was illogical, anyway. Nope, it was in fact very logical -- the word "computer" in those cases, and inside that category, is of no informational value whatsoever, so 'pipe-sorting' the subcats was the only sensible thing to do. I will therefore put it back. However, we agree of course on the main thing here: such alphabetical category sorting is most probably meant to work! :-) --Wernher 21:45, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I tried to put "Computer file formats" back into cat Software in the -eh- sorted mode, i.e. I put the 'pipe-sort'-inclusive code "[[Category:Software|File formats]]" into the "Computer file formats" category page. But, alas, it still doesn't work, instead spawning a separate "F" at the end of the list and filing the item there. Argh. I do hope someone is working to fix this. Does somebody here know the correct way of raising such an issue to the developers/maintainers? (or is so already done, but not gotten to the head of the "needs fixing soon" queue? :-) --Wernher 23:04, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Todo is not a word
"Todo" is not a word. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 13:43, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=todo&r=67. It is a word. Even the computer jargon meaning of the word is widely used (5m+ English language google hits for todo). Pcb21| Pete 09:22, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- yes, it's a word, but with another meaning... I guess we should use "to-do" Pcarbonn 19:39, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Even that page presents it as just a variant of "to-do". And it's not the same meaning. You might as well say that todo is a word meaning "all". Also be wary of what Google says is in a certain language. Yes, you get over five million results allegedly in English, but a quick look at the first page reveals that they are mostly pages in Spanish and Portuguese. Some of the remainder are mispellings of the English expression "to do", but that doesn't mean we have to do the same. I can also find a quarter of a million instances of "tongue" spelt "tounge", five million of "lol" which is netspeak and not standard English, as well as 218 million of "sex" versus only 17 million for "education", which is not evidence of a spelling error but an indication that it is wise not to lend most credibility to what happens to be common online. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 20:18, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
IMHO, if people use it regularly, and widely agree upon its spelling and intended meaning, it's a word. Sort of like the words "today", "email", "handwritten", and "newspaper". "LOL" is an abbreviation. The phrase "todo list" is unlikely to be misunderstood by any native English speaker to mean "list of commotion."-- Wapcaplet 23:36, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia as a press source
For a good laugh, see my latest addition to the Wikipedia:Wikipedia_as_a_press_source#July_2004_.2818_articles.29 :))) Nikola 00:47, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
"substubs"
It seems to be the utility of "stub" and "substub" messages is...limited, and that the recently developed "substub" message was rude and reflected poorly on Wikipedia. I have discussed this at more length at template talk:substub and ask that others voice their opinions. I'm going to have a go at making it less off-putting. - Nunh-huh 02:51, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I personally find your message rude and off-putting. There has been a lot of discussion about substubs recently. Stub messages have had a long lifetime on Wikipedia, and your description of their utility is purely your opinion, and should not be purported as the consensus of Wikipedians at large. Furthermore, all discussion about substubs themselves should be on Wikipedia talk:substub. The template talk page is reserved for discussion of the template message. [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 01:03, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Request for bot permission
Since i requested permission to run a warnfile on en three days ago and have not yet recived any reply i would like to draw some attention to the requst here so people wont go all postal when/if i actually run it.
Here goes. -- Ævar Arnfjörð 03:59, 2004 Jul 31 (UTC)
Proposed disclaimer
I propose that all pages describing a potentially harmful activity that the reader may like to try (chemistry experiment, sport etc...) should carry a disclaimer linking to a long version such as this proposal. In the past, there has been a number of people, generally older teenagers, who have harmed themselves or others trying to do stuff they had read about in a book (like making explosives). Even if Wikipedia is not legally liable for this (and this even remains to be seen, depending on the jurisdiction and how courts rule), there's a definite risk of adverse publicity. The media can well blow such incidents out of proportion: "Online encyclopedia a cookbook for explosives", "Youngster experiments as described in online site, loses both arms", etc... David.Monniaux 07:46, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- There's already a general disclaimer on every page. Isn't that adequate? - Nunh-huh 08:22, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC) (click link at bottom of page to read it) -- Nunh-huh 08:22, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I know, but we already have specific disclaimers for medical and legal issues. You will tell me that any person with common sense would not do a dangerous chemistry experiment based on some vague Web encyclopedia content, but the same applies to medical and legal advice. David.Monniaux 13:14, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- It's my impression that the specific disclaimers were/are not to be used. Though I suppose they keep getting re-added because they seem like a good idea to people. - Nunh-huh 21:14, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I suspect that anyone who wants to make explosives will try to do so regardless of any warnings. A specific disclaimer would probably be more aimed at protecting Wikipedia than its readers - a question of legal liability, and of publicity. From a publicity point of view, I could see a short notice being more useful than the proposed long screed: obvious and easy to understand. On the other hand, the boundaries of "dangerous activities" are rather ill-defined, so it's not clear how many pages might end up with disclaimers. If sports are to be tagged, then almost anything can be. --AlexG 17:01, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Indexed PNG thumbnails
Forgive me if there's already some discussion about this somewhere: are there any plans to improve the image auto-thumbnail process to account for PNGs with indexed color? I'd much rather upload a high-resolution image and let the thumbnail be generated automatically, but since they're converted to true-color, the thumbnail often ends up larger (in bytes) than the original (for instance, the six images on Four-stroke cycle), or almost as large (the rotor breakdown on Enigma machine). Seems to me it should be a fairly simple matter to have the thumbnailing script (or whatever it is) look at the color depth in the original image, and convert appropriately (using true-color only for the intermediate resizing). I've noticed some rather heated disagreements over this issue that would be neatly solved if thumbnailing worked better for indexed PNGs. -- Wapcaplet 16:53, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
pause/delay during navigation
i have been plowing through this site a lot lately - it's a fabulous idea. however, i notice now when poking around there is a small 2-5 second pause when moving anywhere on the site. what gives? is it a hardware issue? i myself am on the UCSC campus t1. if it is a hardware issue, what would the solution be?
thanks all. JoeSmack 20:38, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)
I think it's a hardware issue - that's why they're doing the fundraising. Also, Wikipedia:Cleanup and Wikipedia:Offline reports/Nothing links to this article are good places to check out if you're poking around looking for stuff to improve. Salasks 21:37, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
redirects pointing at each other
is it possible to make an article that redirects to another that redirects back? wouldn't that make an infinite loop? wouldn't that make my computer and the server explode? wouldn't the world as we know it explode? ok, i got carried away there, but still, im curious.
JoeSmack (talk) 21:43, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)
- I believe redirects stop after the first redirect. That is why it is important to check for and fix any such double-redirects after moving a page. older≠wiser 21:47, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Exactly right. Andrewa 02:58, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
visited links i havent visited
third post in a row, wow. i see links all over the place on this site that are red and not blue, which typically means i have visited the site; however there are many i know i havent touched that show up as visited. anyone get this too and know why it happens?
thanks JoeSmack (talk) 22:57, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)
- Red links are ones with empty pages at the other end (which you are welcome to populate!) Depending on the sort of browser you are using, and also the preferences that you have selected, links that you have and haven't visited show up as something like purple and blue, respectively. (Well, they do for me using Netscape.) Noisy 23:36, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Also Joe, you can go to your preferences panel at the top of the page, click on "Misc Settings" and uncheck the box labeled "Format broken links like this (alternative: like this?)." This will cause links to empty pages to show up as normal text but with a red underlined ? at the end of the words. Some people might not like it, I do. - Ocon | Talk 17:36, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Help! Am I colorblind?
Is it just me or is the background color (#F8FCFF) for non-article namespaces prescribed at MediaWiki:Monobook.css basically the same as white? It says "light blue" but all I see it white. --Jiang 01:45, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- It's not white, but it's pretty close. Moreover, as it's not a netsafe colour, your browser may be aliasing it to what it considers to be an acceptable netsafe colour (which may indeed be #ffffff, i.e. white). Naturally browsers are most likely to do this in 256 colour mode, but some do it for text (etc) regardless of colour mode. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:55, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. I was scared for a second there. Can we change it to a netsafe color, either #CCFFCC or #CCFFFF then? I don't think I'm alone, because Im not using particularly outdated or rare technology. --Jiang 02:07, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- If "Am I colorblind" is a serious question... ask your eye doctor to test you the next time you're in. Or look for one of the many color-blindness tests on the web. The two commonest kinds of color-blindness, deuteranopia and protanopia, involve problems discriminating along the red/green axis, not the blue/yellow axis. Not only can a color-blind person tell the difference between white and light blue, in many cases they might even have heightened sensitivity to such differences than someone with normal color vision. Protanopes will see the red light on a traffic light as rather dim. Deuteranopes will see all lights on a traffic light as bright (and of different colors) but will find that even bright green colors look similar to shades of brown.
- Well, you asked.
- The color I see as the text background on this very page is indeed a very light blue. It is a tossup whether I could call it a "very light blue" or a "cool white." I might not notice that it was not white if it were not for the fact that there are patches of actual white on the same page. But it's there, (and personally, I find it annoying). [[User:Dpbsmith|dpbsmith (talk)]] 02:22, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The "web-safe" palette is not all it's cracked up to be. See "Death of the Websafe Color Palette?" Also, if you find the background color annoying, or would prefer it to be a different color, simply edit User:YourUserName/monobook.css and add:
#content { background: #FFFFFF; /* Or whatever color you like */ }
-- Wapcaplet 02:39, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I think if people can barely see the background color, then the purpose of having such a background color is defeated. It helps prevent newbies/anons from getting too hyped up (e.g. at Talk:dictator) at what they see on talk pages and to not confuse them with articles. --Jiang 06:26, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Default skin
Chosen an arbitrary skin, how do I change back to the default skin, which I see when I'm not logged in? --PuzzletChung
- Go to "preferences", there will be a "skins" option. Check "Monobook", or try the others if I'm remembering that wrong. Best, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 18:27, 2004 Aug 1 (UTC)
<span> tag poll
I've reopened Wikipedia:Span tags poll, in case there are users who were unaware of it the first time or who were ineligible to vote. --Eequor 21:12, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hordaland picture
Does anyone know about the picture on Hordaland? One picture that's supposed to be there isn't, and the other isn't on Wikipedia so it doesn't show up. I'd upload it and add it, but I'm not sure if it's fair use. Salasks 00:33, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
DST
Can someone tell the server about a phenomenon called Daylight Savings Time, so I don't have so switch between GMT-5 and GMT-6 every time we have DST?
- The specific date, direction, and amount of shift to "correct" for the changing light levels is very much location-specific; indeed, some places don't have any need of it at all. The server is in GMT (well, an approximation of UTC-1, AIUI); the clocks change but twice a year, and I'm sure that you can cope. In fact, I don't have it change, and use my head to do the offset instead (well, 'tis only an hour for me, so...).
- James F. (talk)
- It would be simple. There could be a check box that says "Please auto-correct my time shift for daylight savings time", so it would only do it if you wanted it to. If there are different types of daylight savings times around the globe, it could have an option to select which type. Worth submitting a feature request for, I might do it soon if nobody else has. —siroχo 04:26, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
- Over here in Israel, there is a vote taking place every year, that determines the DST shift in/shift out. Computer modelling of our politicians to predict what they are going to vote on would be mostly welcome. :-) Seriously, a common practice is using NTP to feed off a trusted server, and once it jumps, you know that the daylight savings jumped. The server is manually updated. Some systems just have some hardwired approximate default dates, so around the shift they give wrong time for about a month in the worst case. BACbKA 20:58, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Counting Edits
Perhaps this has already been discusseed, but is there an easy way (aside from counting and using fancy offsets on my contribs) to count my contributions? Does this involve running a Perl/Python script? Ilyanep (Talk) 00:36, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Copy and paste your contributions into a file, and do a simple line count. Otherwise there is no other way other than running a database query, AFAIK. Dysprosia 01:17, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- The other way is to ask on the pump when a developer is in a good mood. 1195. -- Tim Starling 01:19, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
- There is a weekly updated CSV file with number of edits for Wikipedias of all languages, or if you have a lot of contributions check Wikipedia:Wikipedians by number of edits for the top 1000 contributors, distinguishing mainspace and all edits -- Chris 73 | Talk 02:39, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia_talk:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits#Data_in_the_CSV:
- First column: Language code: English
- Second column: Main namespace edits: 161
- Third column: Number of main namespace edits in the last thirty days: 0
- Fourth column: Non-main namespace edits: 527 (that would make your total to 688)
- Fifth column: Number of non-mainspace edits in the last thirty days: 9
- Sixth column: This week's ranking: 1751
- Seventh column: Last week's ranking: 1691
- Eight column: User name: Ilyanep
Chris 73 | Talk 05:41, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Here's what I do: I download all my contribs, by changing the number in the URL line so it is higher than 500 (example: Special:Contributions&hideminor=0&target=Antandrus&limit=1000&offset=0 ); then I copy and paste the whole thing into a text editor, and turn on line numbers. You could drop it into Excel or a database program and then query to your heart's desire. While the .csv download gives you your totals, the method I describe gives you a way to get a specific edit number on anything you have done. Antandrus 05:51, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I could script it in VBA. Awesome! — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 06:06, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Perhaps a good feature would be to allow the generation of a CSV file of all your edits so it's easier to organize. With one column for all of the following: Minor/Not, New/Not, Date, Article (I seem to be having more ideas at 1:15 AM than I do usually in regular time). — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 06:15, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I think that's a great idea! Unfortunately it's a Monday morning for me so I can't improve on it now :-\ Antandrus 16:26, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Time zone offset keeps getting reset
I have set my time zone offset in preferences to "-04:00". However, every few weeks, it changes to "-4:00" and goes back to displaying timestamps as UTC. This is rather frustrating. Does anyone know how to fix it?
Acegikmo1 00:44, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- So it changes from -4 to -4? I don't understand...maybe I'm just that stupid. It also depends which timestamps you're talking about. The signature timestamp, for example, is always UTC. Ilyanep (Talk) 00:56, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I think he meant that the leading zero disappears. But the leading zero is automatically removed whenever you save your preferences, so that couldn't be the problem. If you don't believe me, save it with a leading zero and then immediately click the preferences link to reload the settings from the database. Perhaps this is one of those annoying transient bugs that goes away when you look at it. The obvious thing that comes to mind is that timestamps are in UTC when you are logged out, or when for some unknown reason some part of the software is treating you as logged out. -- Tim Starling 01:15, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
Talk:Greatbigtwit
I found this "talk" page, Talk:Greatbigtwit, but apparently there's never been a Greatbigtwit article. Can I just speedy it, or do I have to VfD it? Seems like it has to qualify under one (or more) of the first four speedy cases, just not sure which one(s). Or maybe case 11 should be amended to cover cases like this. Niteowlneils 01:23, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I read the page; it's blatant vandalism. Speedy it, and quickly. [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 02:12, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Old Eastern Bloc C'Rights?
I am just wondering out of curoristy...Whatever happened to copyrights that were held by the USSR, SFRY, Czechoslovakia, and the GDR? Thanks! - iHoshie 04:12, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- First of all, I think this belongs on the Reference Desk. Second of all, they all probably went to heck (who would seriously care about taking over the records -- esepcially if you're a communist), but don't take me as an expert. Ilyanep (Talk) 05:10, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Your right. I posted this in the wrong place. Mea Culpa. - iHoshie 06:18, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I don't believe they had copyright laws, actually. Intellectual property wasn't protected. That's one of the reasons why the ex-communist countries were and are such a hotbed of piracy - the culture all along the line was one of free copying by the state or citizens. -- ChrisO 15:33, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Siggy
Is there any way to have all my signatures prefaced with the mdash (without manually havine to add it all the time)? I've already learned how to change what's after the signature (as you can see...I added a link to my talk page), but not before. I don't want to make everything cluttered by making my name ' ]] &mdash: [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] [[User talk: Ilyanep|(Talk)]]' because that would show up in every signature as '[[User:Ilyanep| ]] &mdash: [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] [[User talk: Ilyanep|(Talk)]]'. Thanks in advance — Ilyanep (Talk) 05:21, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)-->
- I use Proxomitron as an ad-blocker, but it can do much more than that, basically it can perform any search-and-replace on a web page that you can specify with a regular expression. So I set one up to change the Javascript code of the "signature" button above the wikipedia text edit box to insert "—~~~~", instead of "--~~~~". The expression is:
- Matching Expression
\'Your signature with timestamp\',\'--~~~~\'
- Replacement Text
\'Your signature with timestamp\',\'&mdash;~~~~\'
- Geeky enough? :-) —Stormie 06:37, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
- I've successfully done this with my signature. I actually found the code somewhere here on Wikipedia. It looks like this:
- <nowiki></nowiki>]]— [[User:Frecklefoot|Frecklefoot]] | [[User talk:Frecklefoot|Talk
- I've successfully done this with my signature. I actually found the code somewhere here on Wikipedia. It looks like this:
- The only drawback to this approach is that you'll get a blank link right before the mdash. It doesn't render, but it shows up in the wikimarkup if you edit an entry. Look at the code for this post to see what I mean. But it doesn't affect your rendered signature like I said, so it is only a minor drawback. HTH. — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:11, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
- Yes, it shows up ugly in wikimarkup, but this is just a side effect from the way the signature works. The only way to get it NOT to show up in wikimarkup would be to get the developer's to change the way signatures work (perhaps by providing a standard signature or allowing a completely custom one). Sorry, I have no idea what Proximitron does. — Frecklefoot | Talk 18:57, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
Most Edits Lists
I know I've been postin a lot here lately. Shouldn't the wikipedians by number of edits be updated more often? One is updated July 1st and the other one was May 7th. Ilyanep (Talk) 05:28, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I think once every few months is often enough. My problem is that the information from July 1 is wrong! (see the talk page)
- Acegikmo1 05:55, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Categories issues
I'm putting this here because I couldn't figure out one logical place among all the categorization/category pages to put this request.
- First, every page that is a member of a category has a link at the bottom of the form Categories:categoryName. One would expect that clicking on Categories would give you something useful--but NOooo, it takes you to Special:Categories, which gives you the first 50 alphabetically of all existing categories and subcategories, which is useless in almost all cases. This link needs to go either to a page that explains what categories are and gives some options on where to go (such as Wikipedia:Category) or else simply to the top-level hierarchical category, either Category:Categories or Category:Fundamental.
- Second, the top of Special:Categories needs to display text that helps you to get someplace useful from there--first, tells you what it's a list of ("all existing categories and subcategories") and, next, tells you how to get someplace useful (see first point).
Thoughts? Elf | Talk 05:40, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- You are quite correct. The Categories link is pretty useless for the average user in this context. older≠wiser 15:48, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Unified Login
Perhaps this was discussed before but I don't know. It would be useful to have a part of the signup screen to say which wikis you want to sign up on, and then you have the same account for all of them and when you login, you login to all, and your userpage is automatically interlinked or redirected, etc. Also, when you sign up for another wiki you can have the option to add that to your existing unified account. This way, you can see the contribs for a user in one screen (with options to filter out depending on which wiki). This could have many benefits. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 06:13, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- It has been brought up before. The major issue is that nobody has volunteered to write the code and sort out the issues of existing duplicate usernames. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:52, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Article series boxes/succession boxes
I was fiddling around with the article series boxes and the political succession boxes to see if I could come up with a good mixture of the two...I'm not sure where the best place to discuss this would be, so I thought I would post it here where lots of people would see it (as opposed to the Wikipedia:Article series page where hardly anyone will see it). If anyone would like to comment on/discuss/improve what I've been doing, it is at User:Adam Bishop/sandbox. (If I should post examples here as well, just let me know.) Adam Bishop 06:16, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Looks quite good, especially the third version, which doesn't have the silly repetition of the title. (Co-rulers are uncommon anyway, so that problem could be treated separately.) How would you handle boxes like that in William III of the Netherlands? One box for each title? -- Jao 06:33, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- That is what I was going to work on next - there are even more complicated examples, see Charles I of Sicily for example. Adam Bishop 06:37, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I'm quite partial to the ones The Tom has been adding for Canadian cabinet ministers. See for instance Mauril Bélanger. I've never been too fond of blue backgrounds for boxes. - SimonP 06:49, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
- I dunno, I like the simpler tables used for things like the US Presidents (Bill Clinton is a good example). I dunno about colors. Is the main point of this exercise to create a template? --Golbez 08:42, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- If you don't mind, I'll add a little variation on one of your tables to your sandbox page. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 16:30, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Golbez - some of the succession boxes are already templates (the Byzantine emperors box, and some of the British peerage boxes, for example), but they don't all necessarily have to be templates. By the way, another possibility I have seen is some of the Roman emperors on fr: - such as . Adam Bishop 17:14, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There is currently a poll at Template talk:Protected regarding whether it should have an image or not. This affects enough high-profile articles that I think it's worth noting here. —Kate | Talk 08:49, 2004 Aug 2 (UTC)
Main page, skins and login
Can anyone explain why my persistent login works on all (AFAIK) pages except for the main page where it displays Login at top right not SGBailey(Talk) and is in the defualt skin. If I move to another page, my loggedin-ness and skin (Classic) return. Puzzled. -- SGBailey 11:02, 2004 Aug 2 (UTC)
Maybe you're looking at a cached Main Page? Try reload. Salasks 15:19, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia logo
Is there any reason that the Wikipedia logo in the upper left corner "flashes" whenever I place my mouse pointer on it? This is really annoying.
Acegikmo1 13:59, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- You must be using MSIE. I guess it’s
/* show the hand */ #p-logo a, #p-logo a:hover { cursor: pointer; }
- in IE60Fixes.css: MSIE doesn’t really understand hovers in combination with pointers. Forcing a default pointer for the entire #p-logo class will probably solve it if I remember the bugwards compatibility rules. Anárion 14:43, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia clones and search engine ratings
I've started a page at Wikipedia:Send in the clones to discuss this. Any comments? -- The Anome 14:06, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Say what you will, but two wrongs don't make a right. Much of what passes as SEO is really just plain Googlebombing. If you're talking about real SEO, that'd involve things like correct page structure, etc. which I believe we already have. Besides, if we play dirty, there's a chance Google will later demote us in search rankings. Overall, optimise only if its legal, and doesn't involve some dirty trick. Johnleemk | Talk 14:13, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I wonder if there are any problems for the google crawler going through our site. I usually check for the google rating of some of the articles I have created. For example monthon [6] it recently had the article in the top 10 of google hits, before it had the link only without a cached version (and much below top 10), and now it seems to have disappeared again. But the mirrors are all present. Does the google bot run into any traffic throttleling, or the measures to block mirroring by sucking all pages? It's of course impossible to guess what is really going on at google... andy 18:25, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia's headline stats for July 2004
The July stats are in (see http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org/usage_200407.html ) and they make some interesting reading...
July was the English Wikipedia's busiest month ever (I think), with:
- 9,439,508 hits
- 8,208,960 files were downloaded
- 5,672,051 pages were served
- 316,295 visits (not clear if this refers to unique visitors or just page impressions)
- 2,083,869,414 Kb of data was downloaded
Excluding project and special pages (and the Main Page), the 10 most requested articles were:
- Nick Berg (Iraq hostage)
- John Kerry (new entry)
- Kim Sun-il (Iraq hostage)
- OS-tan (deeply bizarre; a must-read) (new entry)
- List of sex positions
- United States
- Crushing by elephant (yay, go elephants! ;-)
- Bobby Fischer (former chess champion) (new entry)
- Wikipedia
- Wiki
For comparison, the 10 most requested for June were:
- Paul Johnson (hostage)
- Kim Sun-il
- Paul Marshall Johnson, Jr.
- Beheading
- Decapitation
- Redmond, Washington
- Goatse.cx
- SpaceShipOne
- Wikipedia
- United States
The top 10 search terms for July were:
- wikipedia
- wiki
- nick berg
- cristiano ronaldo
- teresa heinz kerry
- encyclopedia
- beheading
- harry potter and the half blood prince
- marlon brando
- ken jennings
From this, it looks pretty clear that Wikipedia is being heavily used as a resource for major ongoing news events, particularly Iraq. -- ChrisO 16:37, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- It's also pretty clear that we've been wasting our time with our encyclopedic coverage of kings, battles, politicians, rivers, and elementary particles. We obviously have to radically retask our efforts to expand our coverage of sex positions and macabre modes of death (or ideally articles combining both). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:17, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- List of bondage positions could use some work ;) →Raul654 21:20, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
Was i irresponsible?
I'm guessing that my horror of the Worm Ouroboros is irrelevant, and that none of the tech wizards will object to my edit at Talk:Priscilla Davis. But i just couldn't resist, and i hope that someone cautious (and perhaps a few irony-lovers) will follow the link from Talk:Priscilla Davis, and revert me if appropriate. --Jerzy(t) 16:58, 2004 Aug 2 (UTC)
Baroque art redirects to Baroque, not Baroque Art
This seems wrong, but Baroque seems like a better article. One sure problem is that Baroque links to Baroque art which redirects back to itself. Baroque is a featured article, so I'm a little weary of busting something up. Salasks 17:34, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
- Well, it seems pretty clear to me that Baroque Art should redirect to Baroque art, so I've fixed it so that it does. Don't be put off by the fact that Baroque is a featured article--it's good to edit those boldly too! --Camembert
2004 IAAF World Indoor Championships
I have started an rtcl on the 2004 IAAF World Indoor Championships but cannot find any useful general information regarding which other countries bid for it or any problems the Hungarians had in staging it etc. to fill the introduction out. If anyone happened to be there?? a couple of photos of the stadium or something would be handy. Any help gratefully received.Scraggy4 18:29, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Database error
I've been trying to correct an editing error for several minutes now in the Current Events page, but every time I click "Save", I get:
Database error From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an illegal search query (see Searching Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug in the software.
RickK 19:38, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
And now I just got it editing George W. Bush. RickK 20:09, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
- Yep, I get it too when trying to edit my user page. — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:12, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
- Here's where I got it. While editing User:Ilyanep (2x), while editing User talk: Texture, while editing Wikipedia:Village pump (2x), and while editing another of my User subpages. This has been within the last hour or so — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 20:17, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- If I read the IRC chat correctly a vandal moved around a user talk page - which due to its many internal links makes the database server too busy to allow any other transactions. Now it seems to be back to normal. andy 20:26, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Editing a page above the first TOC entry
There used to be an "[edit]" link at the top of every page which allowed you to edit the section of the page above the first Header. That link is gone. There now seems to be no way to edit a page if the part you want to edit is above the first header, except to edit the entire page. Are we going to have to put "Introduction" headers on every page so we can get to the unlabeled section? RickK 20:09, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
- wasn't there something about editing the first header and then changing the URL to section=0? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 20:14, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Yes. This was discussed not too long ago. It is a known bug. If you like, you can still edit just the first section by replacing the section=1 at the end of the URL with section=0. That way you can select a shorter section to edit, but get the first section by replacing the section number. It isn't perfect, but it's a work-around until the bug is fixed. I use it a great deal and it's always worked for me. HTH. — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:17, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
Interwiki links
I just had an idea and I thought I'd spit it out here because it might work well. Why not have links at the top of articles to the relevant Wiki pages like the interlingua links used to be? (So if I go to the 'surfboard' article at the top there'll be a link to the Wiktionary surfboard entry and if I go to the 'John Kerry' page at the top there'll be a link to the relevant WitiQuote article). Sorry if this has come up before - I've been away for ages because at first my internet crashed and didn't get fixed and by the time it was back I was really busy... and so on. Sorry for rambling. LUDRAMAN | T 21:46, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Good idea. Also we should be able to search all the Wikis at once. This might be one of those things to put in SourceForge feature requests. Salasks 22:12, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
Protocol for deleting finished topics
The Village Pump/Help Desk/Ref Desk/VfD pages are all hella long, leading to crazy load times or even sometimes time outs. Is it ok to delete topics that are no longer active? For example, some pages have been listed in VfD and then speedy deleted. Can I delete the page entry? Another example is that I asked a question earlier today on this page about Baroque/Baroque art redirects that was answered and that would not be of any use to anyone else. Can I delete the question/answer?
VfD policy is that, once a page is listed, it stays for 5 days. RickK 22:32, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
- Pages don't always have to stay on VfD 5 days. If they were wrongly listed in the first place, they can be removed, and if they are CSDs they can be deleted early. The village pump etc can be shortened through Refactoring or by following the suggestions at Wikipedia:Maintenance. Angela. 23:21, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
A quick Poll
What monitor size and resolution do you use? Also what OS and Browser?(I use 17" and 1152x768, WinXP, Moz 1.7 BTW) I'm just wondering what the community uses. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:19, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- right now it's 23" 1600x1200 Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.8 The lowest I occasionally use is text 80x24 and lynx 2.8.5 BACbKA 22:38, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- 19" 1600x1200x24, Gentoo Linux, Mozilla Firefox with a browser window usually around 1000x1000. -- Wapcaplet 23:13, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- At work, 17" LCD monitor @ 1280x1024, Windows XP, Firefox; At home, 17" CRT monitor @ 1024x768, Windows 2000, Mozilla. Browser window always maximised. —Stormie 23:32, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
- Dual monitors of different sizes and resolutions. Browser windows stay near 750 px wide, which makes overly large fixed-width tables on Wikipedia jump out. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:40, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
When interlanguage links are ambiguous
It had occured to me that this problem might be possible, but I had never come across it in practice before. So... Is there any established way to get around the problem that occures when a word in one language translates as two (or more) in the other? I wanted to link the Irish wiki article Cnáimhseachas to the English wiki, but the word translates either as midwifery or obstetrics. I can't find any synonyms (or near-synonyms) for the word in Irish that could be used to make two different titles, and I wouldn't dare suggest merge the two English articles. I know that there are other examples in other languages. Should altlang links be put in for both articles, or is there some technical trick I'm unaware of? -- Kwekubo 23:21, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Taoism, in Klingon
Can someone help me out? I am looking at Taoism, but would really like to read the article in Klingon. I notice that the Klingon Wikipedia has an article about Taoism, but, although it is in the source, it does not appear in the language bar, but rather, at the bottom of the article: Daw_lalDan. What is wrong? Apart from the obvious, of course. Mark Richards 23:25, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Klingon interlanguage links are not displayed. This is part of a compromise between the people that wanted a Klingon Wikipedia, and the people that wanted it deleted. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:32, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- <at a loss for words> Perhaps people might like to learn Irish instead and help out at ga:! It even sounds similar :o) Eara, níl mé i ndairíre! Zoney 23:50, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Cite sources
Does wikipedia have any guidelines that discuss the comparability of different sources? For instance, does wikipedia have a guideline saying that older sources are better? Or that newer sources are better? Or that original sources are better than secondary? Hyacinth 23:31, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:No original research pretty clearly states that original sources (original research, at least) are not allowed, only secondary and tertiary sources are. Sam [] 23:44, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Well, that really amounts to "don't add your own theories." Original sources, if by "original" you mean "primary" sources, are perfectly acceptable to use for research purposes, as are secondary sources. For secondary sources, the usefulness of "new" and "old" sources probably depends on the subject - generally newer research is better, as older secondary sources tend to become outdated, but it would depend on the source as well. Adam Bishop 23:57, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Well, that policy pertains to the contents of an article (that is, if Prof Hawking has a new theory on black holes, he shouldn't publish it here). But isn't Hyacinth asking not about article content but citations, in which case quite the opposite is true. Hyacinth's article on theories of black holes (say) should ideally reference Prof Hawking's paper (published in the Journal of Jolly Hard Maths, vol 3.14), which is much better than cite to a CNN report about Prof Hawking's paper, which in turn is better than some dude's weblog citing the CNN story that cites the journal. So I think, as far as citations go, the most authoritative (whatever that means in a particular context) is the best cite, and that'll often be the most original. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:00, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I think there is room on Wikipedia for your modern defintions which don't correspond to anything in the classical world. Hyacinth here wants his modern definition of Effeminacy to supercede the authority of Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas. He wants to remake the word into a progressive meaning and totally disregard 2500 years of the same meaning. Aristotle, a pagan, and St Thomas a Christian agree on the same meaning of the word.WHEELER 00:08, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Classical meanings vs Modern revisionsism
Today, classical departments are closing and no one reads classical literature anymore. The Greeks and the Romans are called DWEM. What I am doing in the Classical definition of republic and the Classical definition of effeminacy is catalogueing these classical defintions for posterity. I understand deconstructionism and revisionism that is going on today in every university and college. Old terms are done away with and given new modern meanings that have no correlation to the old. Effeminacy comes from the Greek word malakos. Yet,Hyacinth wants to transpose his meaning unto the classical idea. Malakos does not have the meaning that Hyacinth wants to give it. I think for posterity and for classical studies, there should be seperate articles. Their new meaning of the term effeminacy is not the meaning for the Victorians, or the Greeks or the Latins or for the Christian church. I say keep the two articles seperate from each other. I can't see how the modern definition of Hyacinth has any correlation or consistency with Greek classical term. If someone read old literature, he needs to understand what those people took it to mean. Not to transpose a new meaning unto a word that has totally different connotations.WHEELER 23:53, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)