Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

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Moved discussion

Discussion of aligning images down a page moved to Wikipedia talk:Image use policy

Discussion on size of map for kurdish area moved to Talk:Kurds

Ad-blocking note added to Wikipedia:Problems FAQ

See the archive for older moved discussion links.

To avoid being controversial again. Is there "Wikipedia:Votes for merging" page somewhere ? Sometimes 200 bytes is more than enough to write about someone or someplace but there is so much unnecessary segmentation going on.
Kpjas 14:10 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Might Wikipedia:Duplicate articles be what you're looking for? Andre Engels 09:10 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Whenever I am on RC (far too often), I get the impression that the input to the encyclopedia is rather unbalanced: lots on computer stuff (surprise!), science, pop music, sci-fi/fantasy, bits of geog/hist. The impression is that the typical user is a young male with computer qualifications and stereotypically geeky interests. (How many Tolkien or D&D articles do we need?). I'm not sure what can be done to redress the balance, but at least we should be aware of it. jimfbleak 12:17 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I brought this up over 12 months ago, and I don't think I was the first. Seems like we still have a long way to go! -- Tarquin 12:26 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is heavily biased towards computer generated articles on US towns and cities. Surely they must outweight the Tolkein and D&D areas combined! I don't think balance matters because we've got good organisation and no space limit. I prefer to think of the missing articles as the problem, not the ones we have in quantity. -- Tim Starling 12:28 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The inclusiveness is part of the project's culture, though I believe it detracts from the overall value of the effort. I myself believe that the project would have better balance if we made an effort to keep article length proportional among topics of similar importance. For example, Tolkein's literature does not deserve a more lengthy writeup than Dickens' or Steinbeck's books. D&D should not enjoy a more lengthy writeup than contract bridge, dominos, or mah jong--all of which have subtleties and histories rivaling that of D&D. And the Dead Kennedys should not enjoy a more detailed treatise than does Franz Liszt, who left a greater and far more enduring mark upon musical history.

The numerous articles on various fictional universes, particularly, do not appear to me to be encyclopedic in nature. What reader will turn to an encyclopedia for an entry like Bree (Middle-earth) or Aragorn? I'm not trying to pick on Tolkien, as I enjoy his writing immensely; the Star Trek articles have the same characteristics as do many others. These articles pollute the namespace and have far less potential to become encyclopedic than the geographical stubs from the census data.

IMO, for a fictional work, character, or setting to be encyclopedic, there must be references to it elsewhere in art or literature. Consider the Greek and Roman mythological pantheons. Portions of them appear throughout literature, sculpture, painting, and so on; an article on Aphrodite is unquestionably encyclopedic. Where are the sculptures of Aragorn or the literary references to Sarek outside the series of works where they originally appear? Now, perhaps we can do with an article on Mr._Spock owing to the inseperability of that character from pop culture of the 1970s. But Sarek? Kat 16:19 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Are you seriously proposing to delete all the articles about Star Trek, Middle-earth and other large-scale fictional universes? Perhaps most encyclopedias (like EB) don't contain an article about Sarek, but why is that reason for us not to have one? Perhaps encyclopedias are not normally considered a place to look up facts about fictional universes, but there's no reason for Wikipedia not to change that. I don't see why the articles aren't "encyclopedic in nature". I also object to your argument that they "pollute the namespace" (we can move pages and disambiguate; it's never been a problem), as do I object to your claim they have little potential to become non-stubs (see Vulcan (Star Trek) for an example I de-stubbed).

Also, how do you define "references to it elsewhere" -- Sarek is referenced in several of the Star Trek series and movies ;-). I also remember reading (though I forgot where) that there exists a full-size model of a Vulcan space ship in one of the various places called "Vulcan" in North America. Is that a "reference elsewhere"?

All this aside, I really don't see the problem with those articles simply existing. I mean ... you don't have to read them, do you? It's a bit like saying a program that has atrocious stability and limited usefulness should be deleted from the Internet. -- Timwi 17:22 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I can see you have strong feelings on this matter. I do not. Please note that I did not propose wholsale deletion of content. In any case, we would have to agree on the principle (that is, whether balance is a goal of the project) before trying to figure out how to achieve it. (Which could perhaps begin by merging some existing stubs).

The sum of the information available on the Internet is a mere aggregation of those things individuals and groups wish to publish. On the other hand, Wikipedia is edited, and there is already a consensus that certain things do not belong here (dictionary entries, biographies of obscure persons, POV material). The criteria for inclusion of fictional material are a legitimate topic for discussion.

<<you don't have to read them>> We're not, I hope, writing this for ourselves. A major reason I participate in this project is that I believe that it has the potential to become, in time, a legitimate, respected reference work. The opinions of people like librarians, teachers, and others who are not involved in the project will determine whether this happens. Now, including an article on a topic implies a judgement made by us that the topic is part of the canon of human knowledge. To a degree, the relative quantity and quality of information about two topics imply a judgement we have made about their relative importance.

What would you do if you're trying to decide whether an encyclopedia or other reference work is worthwhile? Well, first, you'll probably look up a few things that you're an expert on and evaluate the articles. You might look up some politicized topics to see what political bias might exist. You might look up some obscure facts that you know to check for breadth. You might look up some controversial or inflammatory topics and see whether they are treated in an appropriate manner. And you might pick a few pages at random just to see what's there.

At the end of all that, if you're more impressed with the thorough treatment of the Ents in Middle Earth than, say, the coverage of Brown vs. Board--then hoom, humm, let us not be hasty, we'll just stick with World Book until Wikipedia grows up a little bit. 209.150.193.201 18:12 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Because Wiki is not paper, we have the latitude to include as many articles on fictional worlds as we want to. The truly considerable number of articles on Middle-earth has not reached the same genuine nuisance proportions that the user:rambot entries have, and yet we consider the latter to be a valuable contribution. We can let the Tolkien fans (like me) have their fun, and then wait for the articles of broader interest to grow up around them.

As regards outside references, there may indeed be statues of the Beatles, but most bands in the Wikipedia will be gone and forgotten in a few years. Fewer people will know about N'Sync than about the Baggins family. Nevertheless, we will keep those articles around. -Smack

Agree with Smack. I just don't see a problem here. I don't see that Wikipedia has to exist in a state of balance; it is, after all, in its nature that it is constantly changing. The current user profile means we have more articles on certain areas than others, that's obviously agreed. That doesn't mean those articles are somehow made invalid by the non-existence of the supposed "balancing" articles. To take the Dead Kennedys / Liszt example, the correct solution is not to remove valuable information on the Dead Kennedys, but to leave it there and wait for someone to add information on Liszt, which they inevitably will. Removing the Dead Kennedys information (or not adding further information in the same area) till such time as the Liszt information is available is not the way forward, IMHO. --AW

There are places where Tolkien intersects with the real world - there was a CPU design called the "Hobbit" with an interesting history that I may write up some day, and googling "Aragon" I see a "Aragorn Enterprises" that runs boats on the Thames. One thing to keep in mind that it is difficult for us to know what will come to be significant in the future - students of ancient history tear their hair out because cryptic references to certain bits of the culture are not explained by a single surviving objective source. For instance, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea has words for trade goods from Africa that appear nowhere else in ancient sources, and trading centers whose names appear nowhere else, and we can only guess what they might mean. To the writer of the Periplus, they were so obvious that they didn't need explanation, and so now we'll never know. Stan 14:29 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Balance of subject matter is user-driven. Internet users and geeks tend to have specific kinds of interests. What we need to do is encourage more users to post information on their particular segments of expertise.Content should not be turned away.

We have bird enthusiasts working on birds. Movie fans working on movie awards. I, myself, am focusing on Afghanistan.

A beauty of wikipedia involves worlds colliding. The more information put forth in the database, the more connections can be made. Kingturtle 05:43 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

For the heck of it, I just browsed all the NEW articles created in the last 24 hours. Although nothing close to an exact science, it was nice to see the wide range of topics broached. Your results will obviously vary from mine, but in my eyes, I saw topics on: geography (15 new articles), leaders (15), math (10), recipes (9), government (7), games (7), music (7), warfare (7), biology (6), religion (6), tv (6), novels and authors (6), poets (6), communications (6), transportation (5), schools (5), birds (4), Harry Potter (4), adventure (3), art (3), culture (3), software (3), corporations (2), mammals (2), archeology (2), sports (2), management (2), astronomy (2), technology (2), chemistry (2), restaurants (2), the internet (2), energy (2), advertising & marketing (2), products (1), language (1), scholars (1), reptiles (1), justice (1), historic events (1), race (1), cartoons (1), medicine (1), comedians (1), film (1), economics (1), food (1), gardening (1), physics (1), sailing (1), electronics (1). Just for fun!!!! Kingturtle 07:57 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I have received the following message three times over the last 10 minutes when I tried to enter some pages, including Jimbo's talk page.

Could not connect to DB on 130.94.122.197

Host 'larousse.wikipedia.org' is blocked because of many connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts' If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache, please notify the Wikipedia developers. FearÉIREANN 21:48 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Got the same error message just now. Often, Wikipedia pages have been rather slow recently (sometimes instant, sometimes very slow, to the point where I open pages in parallel instead of looking at one at a time), don't know if it's related. كسيپ Cyp 21:55 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Me too!!! Wshun

Me three... Evercat 22:53 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I did an honest search (much more than just a search-feature search) on Meta-Wikipedia for a good discussion of the "5000-people" rule, and I couldn't find one. I find it inconceivable that a meta-article like that doesn't exist. Could someone help me out here? -Smack 00:35 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It's just mailing list chatter. People have proposed all sorts of rules to determine which subjects deserve an article and which don't. None are official. Martin 13:47 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

And if I don't want to subscribe to the mailing list, I should just create a meta-article? -Smack

Is there a good reason to keep bushfire and forest fire separate? -Smack 17:17 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Why do I keep receiving this message? Is there something you sysops can do about this?

Could not connect to DB on 130.94.122.197

Host 'larousse.wikipedia.org' is blocked because of many connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts'

If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache, please notify the Wikipedia developers.

-- Timwi 22:13 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

P.S. In this message, "Wikipedia developers" is a link to an e-mail address that bounces. -- Timwi 22:36 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I am recieving the exact same error over 2 days, more so in the past 30 min. MB 22:18 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Ditto. Maybe the server's just really busy? -- Wapcaplet 23:20 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I just stumpled across Wikipedia:Wikipedians by number of edits. Although I don't think I qualify for this page quite yet, I'm wondering if there's a way to view my number of contributions? The Special:Contributions page doesn't seem to show it for me. -- Timwi 22:29 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

But you do, Tim. You ranked the 181st, with 1066 edits. And considering this's all done basically within a week. You're one of the fastest rising star in WP history.

(I found this # out by reading your contribution page and copy the list to MS Word and convert bullets into #.)

--Menchi 01:00 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! :) But

How did you find out my rank if I'm not listed there?
How do you copy the entire contributions list to Word? I can only seem to get lists in chunks of 500.
Do you have a Sourceforge account? If so, please could you submit a Feature Request that this little number be added to "My Contributions"? It can't be that difficult. -- Timwi 22:17 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Welcome & congrats for making it.

Your contribution # is betwen those of the 180th & the ex-181 persons. Assuming nobody has made the list above 180 (and I'm pretty sure that's the case), you push the 181st person down and replaced him.
Manually replace the 50 in the URL ...Special:Contributions&target=Timwi&limit='50'&offset=0 with 999999
I don't, but from what I gather, even making the Active List has been quite a hassle for non-developer administrators.

--Menchi 00:00 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Or, download the page and grep -c "<li>" file if you're on a unix. CGS 12:00 21 Jun 2003 (UTC).

I wrote a Python script that does the equivalent of a grep which works on Windows. Anyone who wants to use it (responsibly :) ) can email me via my user page. Right now it requires Python installed but could be made into a standalone file. Pcb21 19:39 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You don't have to have a Sourceforge account to submit a feature request. You can just do it anonymously. In my experience, the fastest way to get a feature request (or a minor bug fix) implemented is to learn PHP and do it yourself. That's what I did, when after 6 months a bug reported by me hadn't been touched. -- Tim Starling 06:03 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

More Speed Please!!! I have been using Wikipedia for about a week now and most of the time, the server seems to run reasonably quick. But I have also noticed some l-o-n-g delays. When Wikipedia stops dead, I check the rest of the Net to see if the problem is widespread, but all seems fine, running at normal speed. This suggests that the problem lies at Wikipedia. Anyone else having problems? Could Jimbo or other powers-that-be upgrade the capacity? -- User:MarcusVox

Seconded. It's just about unusable now, and this has been true for several days.

Adrian Pingstone

It's not just browsing. I'm constantly put off editing because it takes yeeeaaaars to submit changs. We really need that foundation up to accept donations. I'd be willing to stick 10 quid or so in every now and again. CGS 11:33 21 Jun 2003 (UTC).

Let me give an example of how pathetically show it is. This morning I tried to open Mav's page. After five minutes of waiting, I left my apartment, walked five minutes to a shop, queued while something was prepared for me, queued at the till (where a problem caused further delay), walked five minutes back, made some tea, ate the roll I had bought in the shop, finished it and washed up afterwards. And it still had not opened up Mav's page, after 26 minutes'. I can no longer use safari because it times out and wiki is so incredibly slow it times out 9 out of 10 times when on wiki. So I am reduced to using I Explorer, a browser I hate and which prevents me from editing any pages that are over 32K. (Right now, miraculously, I am on safari but I have no way of knowing if I can even save this page or will it take so long it will time out. I am on a dial up modem so everytime wiki hits one of these slow phases it costs me money. That 26 minute delay with Mav's page cost me money! (I ended up aborting my attempt to contact Mav in frustration.) Unless this problem is sorted out with wiki very soon, I am simply going to have to drop out. I cannot afford in terms of money and wasted time to sit and wait up to half an hour to get into a page. This has hit absurd levels. FearÉIREANN 11:23 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

A problem so severe that it chases loyal Wikipedians away -- may be lethal.
For me, when the problem turns bad, I go offline and write new articles in word processor my computer. --Menchi 11:40 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The wikitech mailing list are aware of the problem and are discussing ways to deal with it. From what I can gather, it's not a question of throwing more hardware at the problem -- it's database code in need of optimization. -- Tarquin 12:22 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The dev team is chronically short on manpower. Both Lee and Brion have backed from their Wikipedia commitments in the past few weeks. Lee's last wikitech-l post was on June 4, and Brion announced last Tuesday that he's having a week off, to work on other things. Is 10 quid here and there enough to hire someone, at least part-time? In the short term, we need some more volunteers pretty urgently. -- Tim Starling 16:57 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I know the odd think about SQL databases and their optimisation. What needs doing? Where do I sign up? Darkov 17:21 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

What sort of skills do you need? -- Tarquin 17:19 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thats odd, the site is now running full speed (at 7 pm GMT). What's changed?.

Adrian Pingstone 18:02 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps this post on the tech list has something to do with it? :-) Evercat 18:05 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Quite resourceful he is. Which Wikipedian is Nick? --Menchi 00:05 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

In reply to Darkov and Tarquin, it's a bit hard for me to say anything definitively, since I'm just a part-time observer in this, and I don't really contribute at all. Brion and Lee were basically the main two people responsible for maintaining the PHP code. On wikitech-l, people report bugs, make suggestions, and post patches. But Brion and Lee would install the patches to the server. Plus they did system maintenance, like what Nick did in the message cited. It seems to me that the shortage is not in people offering advice or code patches, it's in people who have free time and full server access.

Now I'm talking about them in the past tense as if they're not coming back, although it's almost certain Brion will, and very likely Lee will. But if they continue to put in only a few hours here and there, I don't think they will keep up with what's expected of them.

If you want to contribute, I suggest you read a few months of wikitech-l archives and find out what's really going on. Contact someone who sounds like they know what they're talking about. If you want the sort of server access I'm talking about, you'll probably have to talk to Jimbo. -- Tim Starling 12:59 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Wanted: skilled programmers with lots of free time. Preferably unemployed with no social life and willing to work for free. :) --Brion 21:30 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that would be nice. But barring that, I think we should pay someone, if Wikimedia can get the cash. -- Tim Starling 05:16 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Is it just me, or is Wikipedia:Upload log broken? I get no content other than the usual navigation stuff... Evercat 17:46 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. --Brion 21:30 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I've got a proposal for dealing with extended references, but don't want to clog the pump. So, I call your sattenton to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Thanks ..Lou I 18:07 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Oversize edit box

f'(f^{-1}(x))=x

How can I enter a space prior to the ' ? Pizza Puzzle

f\,'(f^{-1}(x))=x

\, = thin space

\: = medium space

\; = thick space Theresa knott 19:34 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I notice that Pizza Puzzle has removed Seanos's vote in the current Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/vote. This looks a bit strange to me. Is there some history here that I don't know about? -- Arwel 19:50 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The reason Pizza Puzzle gave in his edit summary was that the user whose vote he removed had made only one other edit, and therefore probably wasn't deserving a vote. This seems reasonable to me: otherwise somebody could make a hundred accounts to support their own view. (Why is this question here rather than the talk page in question or on Pizza Puzzle's talk page, by the way?) --Camembert

Just checking if there's a general policy. If you argue that one edit isn't enough to deserve a vote, how do you decide how many edits are enough? Apart from this edit reducing the count for my favoured option :), I'm uneasy about just anybody going in and removing votes that they didn't cast. -- Arwel 20:07 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I think I agree - people removing votes (at least without some discussion) makes me a bit uneasy as well, and there probably does need to be some policy on this. As far as I know, there isn't one at the moment - you might perhaps take it up at Wikipedia talk:Vote or Wikipedia talk:Decision Making Process. --Camembert

Disambiguating TV series

We have a variety of ways of disambiguating television series: Bottom (television), V (television series), Hercules (TV series), Jeremiah (series). I'd like to standardise this a bit. My preference, after discussion on Talk:Enterprise (series) is to use "series" as the disambiguator. Any objections before I go ahead and move some pages? -- sannse 21:21 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'd prefer "TV series", since otherwise it could be interpreted as a book series, comic book series etc. --Eloquence 21:32 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

"TV series" seems the best. -- Wshun

I vote for "TV series" too. That's how IMDB does it as well ;-) -- Timwi 21:55 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Call me BBC, but I prefer "television series". Also, there are tens of series that have been both on the radio and on television (Dead Ringers, Goodness Gracious Me, Dad's Army...), how will "series" disambiguate these? CGS 22:08 22 Jun 2003 (UTC).

Well, this Yank prefers "television series" too. -- John Owens 22:42 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I think "television" is unnecessarily long. "TV" is a pretty much universally recognised abbrev. -- Timwi 22:50 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

"TV" or "television" would be fine with me, but I think I'd prefer "television" for no really good reason. Even just plain (television) might make just as much sense (since television has more than just series - it has programs, commercials, etc., which could be disambiguated in the same way). -- Wapcaplet 01:13 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Something about this on one of the disamb or naming convention pages recently. needs to be cross-linked-- Tarquin 09:43 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That was on Talk:Enterprise (series), I'll link there to here too.

mav said on that page (arguing for ... (series)): "We only add enough disambiguation text to distinguish one thing from another. That is why we only add the year to parens of movies when there are more than one movie with the same name. Thus we have Titanic (1997 movie) since there were more than one but we have Platoon (movie) since there was only one movie by that title. And we don't have parenthetical disambiguation at all for unique movie titles, such as You Can't Take it With You."

Which makes a lot of sense to me. -- sannse 19:13 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Why add "TV" or "television" to the disambiguating text when there is only one thing by a particular name that could be a series? If there is a book, a movie and a series that all have the same name then (book), (movie) and (series) would be used as disambiguating text. There is no need for having extra information in (series) unless there were also two different types of series - such as a radio series. Then and only then does it make sense to have (television series) and (radio series). --mav 01:14 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

In that case, I'd vote to use just plain (television) then (since "series" could itself be, at least as far as interpretation on behalf of the user goes, ambiguous; is the article about a TV, book, comic series, etc.) That way, the title itself tells us a bit more about what the article is about. -- Wapcaplet 02:04 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That is not what disambiguation is for. You are trying to use disambiguating text to input meta data when disambiguations only goal is to distinguish one thing from another when they share the same name. The book, movie, series example above are disambiguated by type and a TV series is not a television. --mav

Does anyone have objections to "series" strong enough to ask me not to do the change? If so I'll drop it (I don't have very strong feelings about this, I'd just like to make things a little more consistant) -- sannse 19:26 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

"Series" is definitely ambiguous for most fiction: Could be books, TV, radio, etc. The Barchester Chronicles is all three. "Books", "TV" and "Radio" disambiguate better; don't need the word "series". Will there ever ba a need to distinguish between single and series TV programmes of the same name? I don't think so. Andy G 19:53 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

There is probably some existing discussion that I don't know about, but I came across some articles which use the "bread crumbs" navigational links commonly seen in hierarchical webpages. Namely, Appendicitis, Coeliac disease, Lactose intolerance, etc., all of which have something like:

Medicine > Gastroenterology > Lactose intolerance

At the top. These are understandably useful for putting the article in some context, but seems out of place on Wikipedia (since articles could be categorized according to any number of criteria, in addition to Medicine or Gastroenterology; it imposes an artificial hierarchy). Should these be removed (and maybe incorporated into a "see also" at the bottom)? -- Wapcaplet 01:40 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

For anyone who is interested in having a Wikipedia T-shirt, and doesn't want to wait for official ones, I have made a simple design that anyone may use if they are so inclined. It's on my user page. -- Wapcaplet 02:23 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I've set up a shop at http://cafepress.com/wikipedia, please leave me a message to suggest more designs. --Eloquence 05:46 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That URL gives a "Document contains no data", http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia is the right one. andy 09:58 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You need a space after the opening parenthesis in "contact me (moeller@scireview.de", unless you intended it to be anti-spam. --Menchi 11:31 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, even Wikipedia's URL parser is better than that ;-). --Eloquence 12:17 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Sweet! Okay, the next step in my plan for world domination is to make the Wikipedia T-shirt in many languages. Anyone who knows what the phrase "Edit this page" translates to in any language other than English, please visit my sandbox and fill in the translation for me. Thanks! -- Wapcaplet 12:32 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The old list is at m:22 languages. Not quite complete, and the phrase then was "edit the text of this page", so they're not quite the same. Of course, all you really need do is flip through the various Wikipedias with translated interfaces and copy-paste the edit link. :) --Brion 17:53 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I've nabbed all the ones I could from that list. The consensus at the m:Wikipedia T-shirts page seemed to be "Edit this page" rather than "...the text of...", so I decided to go with that. I got all the text I could from the interlanguage versions (most of them seem to have it written in English, since apparently they use older-phase Wiki software (?) so I couldn't get much from those). And of course, also it'd be good to verify them with people who know the language, to make sure I didn't grab the wrong text or something :) -- Wapcaplet 20:46 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I currently have 17 languages. More would be great, but this would probably be adequate for a T-shirt design. As far as I can tell, the big ones are represented (the top 10 wikipedias in terms of size are here). If nobody adds more in the next day or so, I will probably go ahead and make the T-shirt design. Of course, feel free to keep adding and/or revising the ones that are here! I can always add them to the design later. I'd welcome suggestions regarding other design elements; currently, I just plan to list these vertically, with a URL or some such at the bottom. -- Wapcaplet 23:49 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I have a doubt that I haven't been able to clear looking at the Help and FAQ pages. If I want to add a new entry about a book that has no title in English because it has never been translated in English, how should I call the page? According to naming conventions it would seem that I should use the original title, but since I haven't been able to find an example I'd rather ask than making a mistake... Lazarus Long 08:31 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

If there's no existing common name for it in English, the original title is exactly what people who did need to refer to it would refer to it as when speaking English. So, yes, use the original title. --Brion 09:17 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Brion. However, before starting the page, think whether this book really deserves one. If you don't have much to say about it, perhaps it would be better to talk about it on the writer's page instead. Andre Engels 09:26 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Please could one of the sysops re-generate a new version of Special:Longpages? I have moved/split up/reduced/etc. some of them and would like to see how the list has changed. Thanks a lot in advance. -- Timwi 20:01 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Also Orphan articles - still a small snapshot dated May 13th. -- SGBailey.

I think you need a developer for that, not just a sysop. -- Tim Starling 00:58 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I got several nasty messages ending with something like; contact wikidown! Don't have a message thingy to do that. I'm just leaving this as a notice. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 21:58 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Proposal to somewhat simplify markup to float images: see Wikipedia talk:Image markup gallery and comment please -- Tarquin 09:46 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Could someone who looks after protected pages take a look at what happened to the special pages for Book Sources? Last time I used it (maybe a week), it clicked through to Amazon, etc. Now it just goes to the Wikipedia page describing Amazon. I certainly liked the old one better, but don't know if the change was intentional.

The page has an 'edit this list' option, but I'm not sure how the old one handled the ISBN variable. So I'm don't want to attempt to reset it. Thanks Lou I 15:49 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Did you try clicking the "run a search on" links? --Brion 18:25 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Brion, you're right as usual, maybe we should exlain that "search on" is a "go to book store" link.Rhanks again,, Lou I

The Wikipedia stylesheet "/style/wikistandard.css" contains two errors:

border-width: 1 (requires unit of measure)
padding: 2 (requires unit of measure)

as well as a number of warning conditions. Can this stylesheet be fixed (at least the two error conditions)? It's at least possible that this is related to an overlap problem that's occuring in Provinces of Thailand (see Talk:Provinces of Thailand for a further discussion Bill 16:18 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Done. --Brion 18:22 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Some time ago I had written a short biography about Romano Scarpa for the IMDB. I'd like to use it here too, but I'm not sure whether what I wrote is still "mine" (and so I can do whatever I want with it) or not. On their site there's a note saying that "If you do post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant IMDb and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate..." so it being nonexclusive I think I can use it here too... or not? Lazarus Long 19:06 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yes, if it's a nonexclusive license (as opposed to signing over your copyright to them) that should be fine. (I am not a lawyer, nor to I play one on TV.) Keep in mind that you should always mention it when you reuse existing work, so people don't delete it after turning up the original on google. :) A note on the talk page and the edit summary comment should do it. --Brion 19:11 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)~

Well, Im obviously not getting along with the mathematicians here; but, I think the "professional" mathematicians are so intent on outdoing each other with their rigorous mathematics that they fail to understand that the non-mathematician is the one who most needs this site, and nearly ALL of the math pages (even on some of the most "simple" and elementary of topics) are nigh-impossible for anyone without the proper training to understand. Kinda a Catch-22 if you see what Im saying.

Its not that I have a problem with rigorous mathematical definitions and proofs, but we also need to have stuff that is "un-professional" "idiotic" "silly", and the like, and of course (most important perhaps), we need "childish" articles on these topics. To be honest, I don't know (and right now I don't care to know) what real, general, and complex functions are. All I know is that every one of my calculus books talks about stuff which either isn't discussed on the wikipedia (or isn't discussed in language which the beginning calculus student is expected to understand).

Now Ill admit, Im not a mathematician. I don't want to be a mathematician. I don't even like math. I don't even understand why math is worth learning. But I do understand that, right now, the wikipedia is about the last place I would go to if I wanted to learn about a mathematical topic. Its not because the wikipedia is inaccurate; but, because the wikipedia seems determidly hostile (in such areas as mathematics) to expressing things "as if a moron had written it"

What Im trying to explain is, a lot of what Im doing in the math section is, to some degree or other, not correct. A lot of it is correct. But some of it definitely isn't. Unfortunately, I have been, more or less, attacked by certain users who remind me of the young John Forbes Nash, with their elitist attitudes, snobbery, and insulting degradation of others. One user actually had the gall to state that he was too busy with his real job, as a real mathematician, to read my crap anymore. He wasn't just referring to my various misconceptions, he was also referring to my inclusion of material which he felt was redundant, redundant to him of course, since he is a "real mathematician".

Let be clear, this wikipedia thing is a lot of work. But the wikipedia isn't going to get better simply by having a bunch of PhDs stroking their phallic egos. What the wiki really needs is a bunch of "ignoramuses" running amuck, trying to learn what the wiki is saying, trying to add to the article with their (frequently incorrect) newfound understandings, and most importantly, BEING CONSTRUCTIVELY CRITIQUED ON THEIR EDITS.

There is a substantial difference between what the wiki claims to be, and what it is. The wiki urges me to "be bold in editing" but the overwhelming response I have gotten, albeit from a handful of more boisterous editors, is a statement of "Get the hell out of here."

Indeed, I have thought about leaving, but I do see some great potential for good here at the wiki, and I do want to improve this site. So I am simply taking a moment to stand up and ask the Wikipedia what it thinks, does it really think that its appropriate to call people stupid because they don't capitalize something (or because they do) or because they forget a comma, or because they get somewhat confused regarding the implicit differentiation of inverse trigonometric functions?

I have made several new friends since I arrived at the wiki this spring; however, I have also met several people who are not friendly. I would like to know what it is that has turned them so sour.

Pizza Puzzle 23:48 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)