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Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Snoyes (talk | contribs) at 15:32, 21 February 2003 (+ Image:Globalisation.doc). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Moved discussion

See the archive for older moved discussion links.

The article School sanitation seems a little odd and its related link about IRC reads like a business plan without saying much. Should either exist? If so in what form?

I think a rating system similar to amazon would work well on a site like this. That way if i want to use this for my kids school i can guage if it is a good article. This generally needed for subjects that the reason i am coming to the site is that i know little or nothing about the subject i am searching for.

Rating systems of various kinds have been discussed many times. The general opinion around here seems to be that the base Wikipedia should remain as it is, with any rating or moderation systems built as separate projects. Larry Sanger was working on one such system, but there hasn't been much said about it in the past few months. -- Stephen Gilbert 15:12 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

At Talk:List of songwriters/temp a link has automatically appeared to Talk:List of songwriters. Is this a relic of the subpage system? Tokerboy

Partial support for subpages has been restored for user pages and talk pages in recognition of the facts that A) sub-pages have continued to be in de-facto use in these domains and there's no clear suggestion for replacing them, and B) the complaints against sub-pages were primarily in regards to their distortion of article title conventions, which doesn't really apply to the above usages. --Brion 03:51 Feb 12, 2003 (UTC)

Can someone look into the issue I raised at Talk:History of Singapore, regarding copyright problems with the History of Singapore article? I don't have the time to handle it right now. -- CYD

Is is just me, or are the pages starting with a 'V' not showing the 'v' try Secret_Intelligence_Service and click on the vauxhall stuff at the bottom... -Stevert

p.s. : never mind - wierd browser glitch.-SV

I've uploaded an image and forgot to rename it. How can Wikipedia get rid of this (too simple) filename? BTW, it was Image:Leo.png --Torsten Bronger 02:47 Feb 13, 2003 (UTC)

Asterisks in Revision History

In revision history, some people put * in front of their summary. What does the asterisk signify? --Menchi 22:03 Feb 12, 2003

Most likely, nothing at all. An older version of the wiki software put an asterisk in the summary field in the edit form by default, and some people forgot to delete it when typing in their own text. --Brion

The list of words not used in searches seems reasonable for words IN articles. Is there anyway that the search of article TITLES could use ALL words? -- 217.24.129.50

When we upgrade MySQL to version 4 (which has much better fulltext search capabilities, including exact phrase searching), we'll try to reduce or remove the stopword list. This'll have to wait a bit, as the last couple of revisions have had bugs which specifically affect types of queries that we use. --Brion 17:34 Feb 13, 2003 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be nice to have piped wiki links displayed in a different color (e.g. a darker shade of blue)? Mkweise 05:21 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

Well, it would be confusing. With luck, that'll scare a few of the less savory types away. ;) --Brion 05:23 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

I have a question about headers and subheaders in articles. Obviously, the first word should be capitalized, but should the subsequent words be capitalized? Obviously if the words are part of an official title, it should be capitalized, but what about in general? I've seen it both ways, and I didn't see this issue addressed anywhere. I know article titles are not supposed to be capitalized, but what about headers in those articles? Which should it be:

or

-- 136.152.197.237 06:28 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

My impression is that the general convention is not to capitalize subsequent words in section headers (unless they're proper names, of course). I suppose it doesn't really matter, but "External links" etc fit in better with the house style. --Brion 06:32 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

Wikidates

Is there as a rule as when to wikify dates and years? For example, on the pages "Parti Québécois" and "Bloc Québécois", only some dates were wikified, while others aren't. To me, the choice seems to be arbitrary. Are only the relatively more important dates wikified? --Menchi 05:23 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

It's a matter of taste as much as anything else: some people will wikify all dates, some will only wikify important dates, some will wikify very few. Birth and death dates in biographical articles should be wikified (as per the Wikipedia:Manual of Style), but beyond that there's no policy on date wikification, nor any consensus on it, as far as I know. --Camembert
I tend to favor wikifying all dates (and all possible words, for that matter) because a heavily cross-linked encyclopedia is more useful than a bunch of text blobs, it doesn't hurt readability, and it will facilitate various kinds of automated consistency analysis in the future. For instance, imagine being able to check Foo Bar's participation in some meeting against the dates in his biographical info. (Recently I was working over data on early Spanish kings, and found an interesting monograph where one of them was tracked by the grants and charters to monasteries and such - when the dates and locations were plotted, it became clear that he had to have spent most of his life on the road. The names of the witnesses to each charter also showed who traveled with him. Basic date info can be very useful material!) Stan Shebs 14:57 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

I've noticed two or three instances where some contributor has inserted comments about the safety of certain types of aircraft. Some of these are certainly justified. For example, the DC-10 had a major problem with the cargo door seal and some hundreds of people were killed. This is relevant, factual information and should be included in the Wikipedia entry on the type. However, the great majority of passenger aircraft types are widely known to have a good record.

Someone with a particular weirdo POV inserted comments in some of the Airbus entries, suggesting that they were unsafe (an assertion that is clearly without evidence or merit). That's fine: I removed the POV comments some time ago and there is no controversy about that.

But now I get to the curly one. Look at the links from Airbus A300. The last two links contrive to suggest that it is an unsafe aircraft (which it is not) without the contributor actually having to say anything. Now the first link (to a CNN page) is easy: it's an ill-informed tabloid article and the link should be deleted. (I'll leave it for a day or two longer so interested people can have a look first. If you don't understand why it's BS, sing out and I'll provide appropriate details.) But the second link is (a) perfectly valid information from a respectable source, and (b) highly misleading, insofar as the link is made from Airbus A300, but similar links are not made from (for example) Boeing 747, or Lockheed L-1011 (two other aircraft types which also have perfectly respectable safety records). I don't like to delete good information, but the placing of this particular link in this particular context without similar links in all the other entries is highly POV and possibly slanderous.

Thoughts? Tannin 15:03 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Tannin, I do not see why the first link should be deleted. Any airplane article should have links to relevant press coverage of past accidents. As for the second link, the answer is simple: Add similar links to other airplane articles. --Eloquence 15:07 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)
That's what I'm afraid someone would say! Three reasons: (a) lots of work to do that, (b) we end up with a whole stack of redundant links to different pages of the same site, (c) we make the aircraft pages look like a roadmap to a graveyard (when in fact the modern passenger aircraft is one of the safest transport technologies ever invented). The first link though is - forgive my technical term here - crap. It's disinformation, not "relevant press coverage". Tannin
Sure, it's not the best solution, that would be to have a detailed article about aircraft safety, with a discussion of different types of aircraft and their safety record, and so on, linked from every aircraft page. But as a temporary solution, it's completely acceptable. Regarding the CNN link, if it's crap, point to a publication that shows why, or explain that in the article. Just removing the link without explanation is not OK. In generally, make statements (and links are a form of statement) NPOV by providing balancing statements, not by removing them. --Eloquence 15:32 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Is the Wikipedia guideline of only linking to the first reference of something in an article, written down in the style guide or elsewhere? I can't find a reference to it. Mintguy

The Wikipedia:Manual of Style says "Do not link every occurrance of a word; simply linking the first time the word appears will usually be enough" (in the section headed Free Link Style). --Camembert
Thanks for that. I skimmed through that bit, and moved my eyes on swiftly after reading George W. Bush. Mintguy

Wide Screen problem. I have seen some oblique references to this, but only really noticed it this past couple of days. It seems to happen when I edit an article containing an image. What causes it and can I prevent it happening? Deb 21:41 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

It is not always clear to me either, but some info you can find in page widening. Which article edit gives this? = Patrick 14:40 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)


Is there any way to get to an anonymous user's talkpage except on recent changes? Like in the list of contributions page... If not, can there be? Tokerboy

Be a man: type in the URL manually! --Brion 10:57 Feb 17, 2003 (UTC)

It did it again. This is now the third time in a few days that I properly entered revisions to an article, but the next day it is gone! This is pretty discouraging, especially since I do not usually take local backups of what I do (it is too cumbersome)! I think it may be connected to the (far too short IMHO) login timeout. Perhaps when you're submitting the article and the article times out, the article seems to be all right when you look at it, but it is not really properly entered into the database after all? (I know there is a bug report thing somewhere - it just seems much more suitable to discuss bugs at the pump first) -- Egil 10:06 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

Can you tell us what the articles were? Any chance your changes are in the Older versions? -- Zoe
Just to double check: hit ctrl+F5 to reload and override local cache. (You must hold down control.) Does the new version show up now? And yes, for the love of all that is wiki, when you report a problem PLEASE say EXACTLY what pages the problem is occuring on, as well as exactly which web browser, which version of it, and under what operating system you are using it. We simply cannot effectively figure out what the problem is without that information. --Brion 10:20 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)
OK, the latest incident seems to be perhaps me jumping to conclusions based on two previous incidents - the artciel in question had disappeared from my watch list. The previous incident was the Nile, were I lost something on February 12, or thereabouts. The one incident before that I did not record - I will try to keep my eyes open. Browser is Galeon 1.2.7, on Linux RedHat 8.0. And no, It never seems to cache thinhs it shouldn't. And yes, it would greatly help me restore my sanity if the auto logoff period could be extended. -- Egil 15:03 Feb 17, 2003 (UTC)

I've just put a request for guidance on the structure of the America's Cup article at Talk:America's Cup. Dramatic 21:12 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia Logo

Why are the logos of some non-English language 'pedias, such as the Afrikaanse, have two enormous vertical strikes over it, like this? What do they symbolize? --Menchi 22:39 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

I believe that's the old Nupedia logo; it's a giant "N" squished into the circle. --Brion

Random page function

Is there any way the random page function can be changed so that it doesn't throw up these Nowheresville, Ohio census statistic pages? (Or, alternatively, offer some options in the user preferences page). Whilst I'll admit that a purely random page choice should throw them up occasionally, there's so many of them that they occur very frequently and are of, I would imagine, little interest to people who aren't looking for them directly but just looking for something interesting to read. cferrero

This should really be in the Wikipedia:FAQ. The answer is no, just push the button again if you want to see something different. :) On the other hand, if you'd like to spend a few moments researching the town to add local history, that'd be even better! Many communities have at least some web presence, and you could send an e-mail letting them know Wikipedia exists and has an article on their town which they can expand. Might get some bites! --Brion 10:51 Feb 17, 2003 (UTC)
Perhaps the random page feature could be weighted by size, so that you're more likely to go to a page with more content, rather than a stub. Martin
Since one of the things people use it for is to find stubs that need to be expanded, that may not be the best idea. The problem is that different people want 'random page' to do different things -- some want interesting fully-formed content to read; others want stubs to expand, still others want anything that may need fixing up, wikification, proofreading. Weights appropriate for one are wildly inappropriate for the others. --Brion 11:20 Feb 17, 2003 (UTC)


The effort might outweigh the benefit, but you could have a user-preference option to weight random pages towards "short articles", "long articles" or "no weighting". -- Chris Q 12:05 Feb 17, 2003 (UTC)
Surely short pages are best found using the special page for short pages? Or most wanted stubs or find or fix a stub... Martin

Those city articles are rather longer than most articles in the 'pedia. -- Zoe

Searching

I'm trying to do a search and exclude redirects, but it's not working. Ideas? Martin

after adding the image, I'm getting the following error when I display the page for the Bab.

Warning: error_log: Unable to write to /usr/local/apache/htdocs/upload/logfile in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/OutputPage.php on line 436

I rotated the logs to compress the old one and save disk space. You must have loaded the page during the split second between the old file being renamed and the new one being created. Congratulations! :) Reload the page (you may need to hold down "control" to force a reload) and it should be fine. --Brion 08:18 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

An interesting question has been raised by mav concerning NPOV. I'm posting this here before someone actually deletes the page ("Losers in literature"):

How in the world can this entry ever be NPOV? This page needs to be deleted. --mav 10:28 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

Delete it then -- it's in your power, not mine. However, I urge you to reconsider what you have just said. Including even fictional (!!!) people in that NPOV craze is really carrying things to extremes. Has it ever crossed your mind that creating winners as well as losers is exactly what fiction writers are doing all the time? And before you delete this talk page as well, I'll have to copy it and paste it over to the Village pump. --KF 10:54 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

See Talk:Losers in literature for the reply. --mav

Hi!! from a cold England (-2C at breakfast). Just two questions from a newcomer. What does Wikified mean and what does Meta (in the context of this encyclopedia) mean? Thanks!
Arpingstone 12:24 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

wikified = changed to use wiki markup, as described in wikipedia:how to edit a page
meta = to do with Meta-Wikipedia (see also wikipedia:meta-Wikipedia)
Martin

Meta is also short for meta data which is a techy term for documentation. So since all pages in the wikipedia:namespace are supposed to be about or relating to Wikipedia then they contain "meta data" about the project. Thus the use of the word "meta". Meta-Wikipedia contains even higher level "meta data" about the project that is more general and of interest to more than just the English Wikipedia. --mav 21:17 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

Anybody thought about open source textbooks? That are freely editable? What about www.wikibooks.org? User:Extro

Somebody brought this up once, but I don't remember if anything ever came of it. You might search around on meta. Tuf-Kat
I love Internet textbooks, and there are now many around, especially for mathematics. I suppose it would be easy to take related Wikipedia articles and to package them as books to start with. Then they could be edited further. Maybe also create the PDF's. And reserve the URL www.wikibooks.org. How would one start such a wiki project? User:Extro

Something funny's happened to my article on Caroline Lennox. If you go to it from Recent Changes, you get the article in its current state. But if you go to it from Charles James Fox, you get the edit page. Help!!! Deb 20:52 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

go to Mr. Fox and click Ctrl+F5 - that forces the server to recalculate the page and turn the red link into a blue link. Martin

I would like to draw some diagrams on a graphics package and use them to illustrate an article. How do I do this, do I merely cut & paste them or what. User:G-Man

Please see Special:Upload and Wikipedia:Image use policy. --Brion

For anybody interested in how the day and year pages are formatted please visit Talk:Historical anniversaries/Example because there is a question about a change in formatting. --mav

Way(s) to Convert CJK Characters to HTML Unicode

How to you convert a relatively large portion (one sentence or two) of Chinese/Japanese/Korean characters into HTML Unicode? I've been using Google to convert, but it only supports less than ten characters at once. Thx for answering. -Menchi 22:31 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

If you use Mozilla as your browser, you can simply paste the CJK text into the text edit box on the wiki; on submitting the form, the chars not available in Latin-1 will be automatically converted to numeric references, which is exactly what you want. --Brion 22:48 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)
Is that different in the esperanto wikipedia? http://eo.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Ami%C5%9Dismo&action=edit&oldid=19473 contains CJK characters, not numeric references, in the edit box. (I changed that to allow copying to other wikipedias, which did not work). - Patrick 23:09 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)
The Esperanto, Polish, Czech, Bosnian, Serb, Croat, Malayalam, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean wikis use UTF-8, so they can store the CJK characters directly. The browser has no need to convert to references which may or may not be (but in our case are) an acceptable alternative. --Brion 03:27 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)
I use Internet Explorer 5.0. Is there a conversion method for the IE other than Googling? --Menchi 23:31 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)
Some tips in Wikipedia talk:Wikipedians/South Korea might help you. --Brion 03:27 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)
Here's the method I use, which is similar to what is proposed in Wikipedia talk:Wikipedians/South Korea --kt2

Can we please bring back the asterisk in the top right corner telling you you've got a new message? I know you get a message at the top of the page saying you've got a new message etc.., but the * was a nice little reminder so that you could just look up at, out of the corner of your eye every now and again. Im asking if this can run alongside having the current reminder. Cheers. Mintguy

Chinese 'Pedia Log In Problem & Minor Edit

Dear administrator, the Chinese 'pedia's login isn't working. After registering and logging in, it still says "登录" ("Login in") and not "Log out" or "Login Succeeded". And after one chose "我的設定" ("My preferences") or any other options listed on that get-form, the new page that shows up is still the main page.

Also, the minor edit (细微修改) check box has disappeared.

--Menchi 02:33 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

Looks okay to me. Two things: first, make sure the login cookie's getting set (occasionally it happens to me that I accidentally rejected a cookie, and our system doesn't handle that case with, say, a useful warning message, but just silently un-logs you out the next page you visit). Second, if you're using Internet Explorer, force the page to reload: Ctrl+F5. Also try visiting pages on the site that you haven't been to before, to be absolutely sure they're not being loaded from the browser cache. I've got some workarounds planned that should allow caching to keep working while avoiding the problems of unchanged articles not forcing reloads of a differently formatted page due to login/logout/creation or deletion of linked pages. Hopefully those should be in place in the next couple days... I may never get that conversion script for the other languages finished at this rate. :P --Brion 03:38 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)
How about the minor edit (细微修改) check box? Where did it go? --Menchi 21:00 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)
It's only available if you edit while logged in. --Brion 21:24 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)
But I did log in. And I ctrl+F5 many times. Problems described above still persists, i.e., I still can't access My Preferences. --Menchi 21:40 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)
I just tried it with Mozilla and it works. It turned out that I wasn't registered! But I did, several times actually, in the IE. So it seems the problem is only IE-specific. --Menchi 21:57 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)
Caching is only done for IE, because refreshing is even buggier on Mozilla. Did you check that your login name appears in the upper-right corner of the edit page? If not, force a reload (see above). --Brion 22:08 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for the information! I've been hindered by this problem for a very long time. Now I switched to Mozilla and I can create an account now on zh.wikipedia. --Lorenzarius 14:20 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

How come I get

Sorry! This feature has been temporarily disabled during peak access hours for performance reasons; come back between 02:00 and 14:00 UTC and try again.

when it is after 2:00 UTC? Mkweise 03:06 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

The last I heard, those features were disabled permanently until rewritten because they tax the server to the point all traffic slows to a crawl. The programmers decided--rightly, I think--that being able to read and edit articles quickly was more important than letting a few people surf randomly (and if I've understood right, it would only be a few people at a time able to use the special features). Talk to a developer about changing the message, maybe? Koyaanis Qatsi

I thought I'd already changed that! I must have forgot to commit the file... Okay, changed again. --Brion 03:27 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)
Umm, why don't you just cron generating the CPU-intensive special pages (even just once a day) and serve them statically? Mkweise 03:44 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

php.wikipedia.com

When I was Googling, I came across a URL that starts with http://php.wikipedia.com/, but it's unaccessable. What's php.wikipedia.com about? --Menchi 21:38 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

Long ago it housed a test installation of the PHP-based Wikipedia code when it was new. It has been since walled up in the basement where we hoped no one would find the body. ;) --Brion 22:08 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

Goodbye to a debate: a promise

I just wanted to say this. You don't know who I am, I hope, and I am not - even when not working under a different pseudonym or logged out - someone you would have heard of or think is important or interesting. I've decided to never again work on the Richard Wagner article, or on anything that Clutch touches, ever again. This is not a promise to anyone else but myself as I find that trying to understand and be involved with what is going on there is actually making me ill. No kidding. So, I'm stopping. Clutch will have one less person to revert his strange changes, and one less person to make claims against: he will maybe feel that he is "winning" in some sense. I hope that others will have the strength to keep going and to try and understand what he is doing and why - I don't think it's difficult to understand: Clutch does it in a subtle way but it's not a very subtle thing really. You just have to look really closely and carefully at what he does. I wish you luck in dealing with him but I never ever will again, under any name or from any IP address. I feel, speaking purely personally, that Clutch has wrecked Wikipedia for me and if I go on using it at all I will cross the road whenever I see him. I am sure he is a great guy and has high principles but I cannot work on a project with him. I am too depressed by it. Someone some time ago in the course of one of these arguments said that it's not Jewpedia - well, sure, good and right. But if people don't start looking closely at what he's doing, it will be Clutchpedia before too long. Good luck. I'm out of this mess and back to doing stuff I enjoy. Clutch has beaten me. Goodbye. 62.30.150.99 22:49 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

Copyright: Translation

I wish to translate materials from the English 'pedia and use them on the Chinese 'pedia. Do I need to acknowledge it? If so, how? --Menchi 23:45 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)


If the Chinese wikipedia is under the same license (which I assume), then there is absolutely no problem. --snoyes 00:42 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)
Yup, you can reuse material in the Chinese Wikipedia without restrictions or limitations. That's the great thing about open content. If you want to be 100% on the safe side, you may want to add a "Based on the English article foo" notice, because the FDL requires attribution, but I don't think anyone will go after you if you don't do that. --Eloquence 01:55 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

Linking Chinese Article to the English Article

When linking a Chinese article to its corresponding English one (adding the link [[zh:___]] after "Other languages: " at the top of the Edit Page), do I link the traditional Chinese version or do I have to link to the simplified version? I just linked the traditional version to overseas Chinese because that's the original version I wrote. --Menchi 00:48 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

Hi, I'm new to Wikipedia. What an amazing idea! This is my first post, so bear with me. The first thing I noticed was that the vertical black line on each page that separates the left column from the heading and body sections goes through the links "Main Page", "Printable version", "Other languages", etc. Not very pretty. I am using Safari as my browser and when I use Chimera pages are formated correctly. How can I suggest to the webmaster (if there is such a thing) to fix the formating so that it works for Safari? --Feb 21, 2003

Hmm, strange to believe but it must be a quirk with Safari, as Konqueror (on which Safari is based) renders it just fine - as do most other browsers. Just checked the wikipedia browser notes, could it be that it has something to do with a sidebar function? (It notes under Konqueror: "Problems with tables on pages when sidebar is activated. Left-aligned tables get overwritten by the sidebar". Is there even a sidebar in safari? --snoyes 06:44 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

No, there is no sidebar in Safari. Safari (because it is in beta form) allows you to send in bug reports. So I just did that. So, there is nothing on this end that can be done? --06:56 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

A screen shot should help with figuring out just which part is going wrong. (I do use a mac at work, but only OS 9 so I can't test it in Safari myself.) --Brion 07:17 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

Is it appropriate to post a screen shot here? What did you have in mind? Is there a place I could send it? --mahongue

Just a screen shot of the main page (and/or other pages on the wiki) would be fine. Just to keep things separate, upload on http://meta.wikipedia.org/ . (You'll have to login separately.) --Brion 07:58 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, maybe I'm a little dense here, but are you telling me to go to that website and modify the page by adding my screenshot to it? Or go to the "discuss this page" and put it on there? Then, how do you "upload" the file from my computer to the page? Also, how do you add your signature and time automatically (if this is what you are doing)? -- mahongue

Meta-Wikipedia is the wiki for general discussion about Wikipedia and its mysterious workings. Once you're logged in there, there should be a link "Upload file" in the sidebar (if you can't get at the sidebar, follow this link: m:Special:Upload). Just follow the directions there, and once the file is uploaded I can take a look at it. (You don't need to link it anywhere, I'll see it from m:Recentchanges.) --Brion 08:27 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

The upload was successful. I hope you got it. mahongue

Got it, thanks. Looks like the spacer cell in the table is coming out too small. I'll try something, gimme a sec... --Brion 09:03 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

By the way, the "nostalgia" and "cologne blue" settings render just fine. And how do you add the time and signature automatically (I assume you are not typing in the time like that every time)? --mahongue

Just do four tildes in a row like this --~~~~. It gives your username and the UTC time. (UTC effectively means GMT). --Arpingstone 09:19 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC).
Yes, those skins deal with the sidebar and topbar a little differently. Could you also take a shot of http://test.wikipedia.org/ ? I've modified it to show the borders of the layout table. (A link to your user page is inserted as a signature if you type three tildes - ~~~. A fourth adds the time & date. This is probably buried somewhere in Wikipedia:How to edit a page, which I think was layed out for maximal intimidation factor. ;) --Brion 09:23 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

There you go. The second screen shot should be there. --Mahongue 10:05 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

It looks like you moved the top portion over. The M of the word "Main" is right on the line so the table could move over 1/2cm more to the right.Mahongue 10:59 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

Invasion of essays

...by a variety of writers, it seems. WikiWeeders be alert please, and rewrite / move to meta / etc -- Tarquin 14:38 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

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