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is wikipedia seasick?

hi frontend and monobook skin designer

please do not take any offense in the sharp title of this posting -- i was just shocked seeing the wikipedia main page with the pink and sky blue boxes (again) and the content with that blueish-greenish background!

from the point of view of design i do understand the idea of making white appear as a *colour* and not just *nothing* (like vanilla ice cream, which is like "no taste" nowadays) by coloring the very background.

but really: is the benefit of this design clarification large enough to justify the colorshift that the reader's eye undergoes when he/she is reading texts on blue instead of on white? does'nt it also cause problems with the header lines of tables, that they then might appear lonesome in a white unframed square while with the white background they would just smoothely appear as words centered on a framed box floatin gin the white space?

which brings me to the notion that in graphics design lingo the space between blocks of text is referred to as "whitespace". so is it really appropriate to have wikipedia's whitespace being a bluespace?

i do **very much** appreciate the monobook design for it's pragmatic, beautifully engineered layout, its precise and very legible typography and its subtleties like the thin yello three-quarter-frame around the active tab! and i keep on thinking it everytime i return to wikipedia.

i have now the very strong feeling that coloring the background does weaken the whole design and in doing so also affects the legibility and experience of wikipedia.

best wishes --hochnebel 14:14, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Whatever you do, please don't mess with Cologne Blue. It works for me as it is. --Xiong 16:17, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)

You can edit it for yourself by going to User:Hochnebel/monobook.css --Alterego 23:55, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

Wikimoods

I have created an expanded and more accurate version of "Wikistress", which I call a "Wikimood". A wikimood is your position on a specially-devised 21-point signed integer scale that indicates your general emotional status on Wikipedia. I have devised the following templates that you can use to indicate your current wikimood. The further your position is from zero, the more intense your wikimood. The ideal range is between +1 and +4 inclusive.

-10 (Explosive), -9 (Violent), -8 (Enraged), -7 (Hostile), -6 (Icy), -5 (Frustrated), -4 (Distressed), -3 (Upset), -2 (Depressed), -1 (Withdrawn), 0 (Neutral),
+1 (Calm), +2 (Content), +3 (Happy), +4 (Cheerful), +5 (Enthusiastic), +6 (Zealous), +7 (Mental), +8 (Insane), +9 (Crazy), and +10 (Chaotic).

What do you think? Denelson83 10:15, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good idea, but the colors don't make sense and the look could probably be improved overall. Some illustrations for these would be nice :) - Fredrik | talk 12:45, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The colours make wikimoods akin to temperatures. Also, adding illustrations would mess up the tables, as I created these to exact specs. Denelson83 18:35, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it makes much sense for "explosive" to be cool blue :) - Fredrik | talk 00:32, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, that's because it's the most intense negative, or "coldest" feeling. You know how negative emotions can be called "cold prickly" and positive ones can be called "warm fuzzy"? That's the idea I used. And no, I did not mean "explosive" as in "an exothermic chemical reaction involving rapid expansion of gases". Denelson83 04:09, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't neutral (0) be the cold blue feeling. I like the idea, but if you don't change the colours, I'm afraid people are going to mess them up. We're kinda used to Wikistress colors and red being bad. Mgm|^(talk) 19:25, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

- Okay. I'll apply a different colour scheme, ranging from red for -10, through blue for 0, to green for +10. Denelson83 04:30, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Feel the beat of the WikiPulse

WikiPulse is a website I created which brings together many statistics about the project and is updated hourly. I plan on adding more information as good ideas come about or the statistics become available. If you would like me to add statistics for a project in another language, please translate Special:Statistics from that project and post the translation on the talk page of meta:WikiPulse. Note that this is only so I can read it - the section of the feed relevant to that language/wiki will be in English. Here is some example output (did you realize there are over 200 conversations on the pump?) :

The WikiMedia grid is currently FAST and AVAILABLE

In the last hour there have been 1 new articles, 13 new pages, 232 new edits, 13 new messages on the mailing lists, 1 new topics on the village pump, and we have used 276.48 MB of outgoing bandwidth.There are 217929 registered users and 424, or 0.19% are administrators. 178 people are currently chatting in #Wikipedia, and over the last 210 days there have been 5034 nicks. On the Village Pump there are 252 ongoing conversations. There have been 3729 messages across all wikimedia mailing lists this month. 67 total CPUs are operational right now and there have been 5440000 pages indexed by Google, comprising 0.68% of their index. The MediaWiki project is currently ranked 813 on SourceForge and the software has been downloaded 96789 total times. Ping response time from Colorado is 106 milliseconds. So far this month we have used 10869.61 GB of outgoing, and 1113.90 GB of incoming bandwidth.

As you can see, much can be done with this, so please post your ideas for me before spring break is over =) --Alterego 05:47, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

Screen scrape wikipedia:featured articles to get the FA count. →Raul654 08:05, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

presto change-o =) --Alterego 08:41, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

In addition to a plaintext blurb, consider making the metadata for it available so other applications can process the data. (In fact, you could split your RSS producer in two that way and separate content from presentation.) JRM 11:50, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)

do you have a preference? just CSV? --Alterego 17:20, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I don't plan on writing such an application, so I can't say that I do—and I know too little of RSS to judge on what is most feasible. Can you use XML as markup in the feed, for example, and is this meaningful in any way? This would be fairly easy to process. CSV is doable as well, though less suitable for extensions and revisions.
You should probably ignore all this until someone with a real need for the feature comes and asks you, though. Don't listen to people who think they have "good ideas". They're the primary source of creeping featuritis. :-) JRM 17:25, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)

It was useful for me to have at any rate. Raw data is now available here --Alterego 20:45, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

WikiPulse is now primarily a website and secondarily an RSS feed =) View the webpage here: http://qwikly.com/WikiPulse.html. I'll be adding refreshing graphs soon. --Alterego 00:36, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Any way to get the number of active Wikipedian's during the day/month? - Roy Boy ⁸⁰⁰ 07:28, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You can get total per month here (19,500 last month) at Erik Zachte's stats. I have thought of a way to get active users per day , which consists basically downloading RC in 24 hourly installments, but this is undesireable for several reasons (it's very expensive cpu,bandwidth,time wise) --Alterego 07:53, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Shakespeare in modern language

I find some of the speeches very intriguing but difficult to really understand. Could some expert be invited to contribute parallel texts in plain language? Hamlets soliloquy To Be Or Not To Be? would be the best starting point in my opinion!!

This kind of thing has been attempted before, but I don't recommend it. Shakespeare made heavy use of puns, rhymes, alliteration, and of course iambic pentameter. Reinterpretations of his words detract from the various meanings of the text. Reading Shakespeare can be daunting and slow, but hey - we all have to do it in high school, so obviously it's not impossible. The annotated versions can be helpful, they include definitions of many words which were used in Shakespeare's time. Rhobite 20:19, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

Also the language really hasn't changed that much since Shakespeare's time. A modern translation of "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/Or to take arms against a sea of troubles/and by opposing, end them" would be literally: "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/Or to take arms against a sea of troubles/And by opposing, end them." The words would be identical--the language is modern. So why bother? Of Hamlet's soliloquy, I think "who would fardels (burdens) bear" might give the modern reader some trouble. And perhaps the reference to Ophelia's orisons (prayers). Shakespeare's use of the language is complex and, in places, awe-inspiring. But that's why he's still remembered and his plays are still performed wherever English is spoken. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 20:49, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree completely. It's a gift to be able to read such a brilliant writer in one's own language. Rhobite 02:10, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

I wasn't terribly impressed with Shakespeare. I tried to read The Tempest a few years back, but got bogged down in all the clichés. ☺ — Jeff Q (talk) 00:19, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's hard to rewrite Shakespeare in plain language because often we don't know what he meant. His words are full of sound and fury, but signify... well, not nothing, but often they are obscure or ambiguous. For example, is Hamlet's speech expressing a genuine dilemma or mere indecision? What exactly does the phrase "in the mind" add, other than scansion? When he says "by opposing, end them [i.e. the troubles]", does he mean "by opposing, defeat them" or "by opposing, die (and so all troubles are ended)"? And does Fortune really have three arms (one to operate the sling, two for the bow and arrow)? Gdr 02:53, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)

I know Hitler has only got one ball. I don't know about the appendages of Fortune, but I'm sure Shakespeare wasn't trying to stir up controversy. JRM 22:06, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)

Retrospective

We would like to make a retrospective on the most special events of these past 4 years on Wikipedia, with a special interest for the first 2 years.

For doing so, we need oldbies :-)

We would like 10 oldbies (at least 3 years on wikipedia) and ask them to cite between 1 to 10 special moments or special persons which they think either impacted a lot the direction of the project, or of the community. Fun moments, sad moments, critical moments, controversial moments, special persons, special citations, still used 3 years later.... OR just events which were strange and reflected a certain spirit at some point, a spirit perhaps lost now ? Just make us remember...

I invite anyone who have been more than 3 years on the project to reflect on his past, and help us to remember. The Quarto team will also try to contact some people, which do not necessarily answer spontaneously :-) If you think someone needs to be contacted, please ... euh... be a denonciator.

A couple of examples I can think of myself (Anthere, which will consider herself an oldbie)

the letter of resignation of Larry Sanger
the goatse on the english wikipedia
the fork of the spanish project
some citations by The Cunctator
the major server break in december 2003
Lir playing chess on her talk page
the polish cities dispute
Papot'ages on the french wikipedia

Of course, we will all have different special moments to cite :-) This is what could make it real fun.

Each point reported could be either

a link, which could be self-sustainable or be accompanied with one sentence explanation (example : link to Larry Resignation on the mailing list. Example : a link to an old version of the project)
an image, with a legend or no legend at all (example : the first wikipedia logo. Example : a screen shot of Lir chess game)
a short story (Example : a summary of the spanish fork). This could be proposed by the oldbie himself
A citation

Please, make it short, make it patchwork, and make it non politically correct if you wish :-) (but stay civil).

See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/Retro

Thank you

Anthere 17:15, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

alphabetization error

Under Choreographers, you have listed Agnes de Mille under "M" instead of "d".

Fixed. I actually listed it under upper-case "D" for easier searching. To see how I did this check out the Category links at the bottom of the article—they end with "|De Mille". — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 05:14, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

English spelling

I'm a New Zealander, and like many of the English-speaking world we spell the word "colour" with a "u". You might say we use the British spelling, but I wouldn't. I say we use the New Zealand spelling. In New Zealand we use -ise endings almost exclusively, but the Oxford English Dictionary (U.K.) prefers the -ize endings. Besides, characterising the spelling divide as being between Britain and the U.S. is completely misleading. Most Commonwealth and former Commonwealth countrys prefer what you might call the British forms. I'm not sure what spelling they use in Canada (my ignorance!) but I wouldn't be surprised either way.

So my question: is there some boilerplate text, or some standard term, or something we can use when discussing this spelling divide? At the moment, out of frustration, I'm tempted to insert a huge list of countries every time I read an article suggest that a term is "British" usage. That's not good for readability, but "British" isn't good for accuracy.

Maybe a linguist would be of help here. Is "Commonwealth English" a good enough characterisation? Depending on where Canada fits we could describe one variant as "Commonwealth English" and the other as "North American English" or "United States English". Does any other country use the U.S. spelling?

Ben Arnold 08:00, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Ben, I agree that the U.S. v British English split is not always helpful. Canadians use a mixture of spellings, partly what you might call British spelling, partly U.S. As Canada is part of the Commonwealth, using that term to signify British spellings would be a little misleading, though some editors do use it. There there's the issue of the -ize endings, with -ise being used most often in the UK too, although -ize is used by the OED and in many British academic texts. This discussion surfaces quite regularly on Talk:Manual of Style, so you might want to post your query there too. Best, SlimVirgin 08:25, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

I've since discovered the article Commonwealth English and this looks like a good place to link to from articles where spelling variation is significant. It also describes the confusion around Canadian spelling. Ben Arnold 09:11, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Or to really get confused, check the history of spelling Aluminium. The Canadians must have had a tough choice with that one. Do French-Canadians use the -um ending too? -- Solipsist 21:35, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

WikiWax

WikiWax. neat stuff! --Alterego 07:02, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Quite neat. Perhaps we should offer this as an additional option when the search page offers Google & Yahoo? Would that be OK with them on the receiving end of the query? -- Jmabel | Talk 23:40, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

I'm sure they'd love the traffic... --Alterego 00:34, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Agree. Anything to loosen the Google stranglehold. I also offer Clusty, which has taken the trouble and done us the honor of putting a WP search tab on their main page, right up there with Web+ and News. This is an up-and-coming engine in any case, with a new twist on search results. — Xiong (talk) 06:03, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

Any reasons not to do this (Clusty, too)? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:07, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

I like WikiWax. If more people used it, we'd have a lot less duplicate work, because of unknown naming conventions. I'd love to see them included. Mgm|^(talk) 12:10, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

I like them both. Filiocht 12:32, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

User:Ganglieri recently pointed out another cool search: GlobalWPSearch, developed by de:Benutzer:Aka searches titles with the same name in 18 Wikipedias. Because it is exact-match an only searches titles, which will generally differ across languages, it's mainly useful for people and for place-names. But pretty cool if you are at all multilingual. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:15, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Artificial intelligence and Wikipedia

I think Wikipedia should make better use of artificial intelligence, in order to automate more simple tasks. An example is redirects. Someone had to manually redirect Condoleeza Rice to Condoleezza Rice. We could have a feature similar to what Google has, where if you make a typo, it will suggest "Did you mean Condoleezza Rice?"

Copyvio detection software also wouldn't be too hard to implement.. I think we should make greater use of bots too; a sophisticated algorithm could find overlapping articles (e.g. United Nations Security Council and Reform of the United Nations) and flag those for linking, so that contributors would be less likely to duplicate each others' work.

Spell-check is another obvious possibility, as are bots to perform more complex tasks such as conforming references to the style manual. A number of methods could be implemented for vandal detection. Page move rollback and other repetitive admin tasks could be automated.

As it is now, Wikipedia article creation tends to be very labor-intensive, sometimes unnecessarily. Rad Racer 17:05, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think you are giving too much credit to Google's apparant ease in this task. 'AI' in general is CPU expensive and G has every conceivable mispelling of Britney Spears or whatever name you're interested in on the books to help them along with this task. --Alterego 18:43, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree some uses of AI are a waste of CPU resources. I was definitely opposed to the proposal to negotiate a deal with Microsoft to license Clippy as part of the Wikipedia user interface("It looks like you're writing an article.") Rad Racer 19:03, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A phonetic algorithm index hooked into the Go button would get us a large part of the way to this. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:26, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You know the size of the server farm Google has? It's BIG. User:Alphax/sig 09:21, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Msg from a banned used

CHANNELS

in the times of MASSIVE overloads

in here everything is fine

we broadcast channels of chrome flowers

in here we truly live

tune on us

try us

WELCOME

go away if you must -- we won't follow

we are here for you

you shouldn't be afraid

we love you as you love us

disconnection is not an option

five is the magic number

loop is abstract

reality blows

loop is all you need

Circuits running at the speed of hesitation

I can only tell you about the past I used to adore

missing piece from the puzzle of relationships

I keep looking
don't worry
I will find you
While I keep dreaming
I keep waiting

I hope it won't start from beginning

I need to build something

Something that is timeless

At the face of a clock

To move on
Is not the direction I desire
A shape that fills my heart

I can only hope

That I could be whole

source: Channel 5 Sequence by Haujobb [1]

A Hypothetical Question

Hi. I'd like to pose a hypothetical question here: suppose a group of users wanted to change a key policy of the website, especifically, say they wanted to "outlaw" fair use as a valid license for an image to be used in Wikipedia. Could this be done by a consensus achieved in a vote in which only 25 users participated? Even if those 25 users happen to be the top 25 contributors to the website? I'm asking it because that's been done in the Portuguese language Wikipedia. A vote was carried by a group of users (mostly Admins of that project, which enables them to enforce their decision) to rule out fair use under the general argument that they wanted the website to be 100% free, and images published under the U.S. fair use are not so, especially if the website is viewed in other countries. I had been absent from that project for a while and had not taken part in that decision. Upon returning, I noticed that the people who did participate had a very slim understanding of international law (especially concerning the internet) and had reasoned only with personal opinions about the fair use. So I tried to explain the legal reasons why fair use is valid, even if it's a US legal institution. I also thought that such a change in the essence of the project could not be carried out by such a limited number of users, since it is not the same as reaching a consensus about an article. The general reply to my (rather long) posts explaining international law was that "it was voted and decided, and [as part of the decision] this can only be revisited in a year". In protest, I've withdrawn from that project for the time being (not for good), but still thought I had a point, so I thought I'd ask for some advice on this, the largest of all the WPs. Was I right about the issues with the procedure? Or, regardless of whether I could be right technically, a consensus of 25 (of over 5 thousand) should prevail to change part of the essence of the project? What would happen if something similar was attempted here (going back to my original question)? Regards, Redux 17:58, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what procedure there is to stop that policy from being enforced, other than getting Jimbo to overrule it. I would do that right away, before any images get deleted. Rad Racer 18:32, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not all that hypothetical, apparently, but still:

Each W has its own approximation of democracy. If the rules on pt: allow this, then it has been decided correctly.
The fact that something has been decided correctly doesn't mean that it's right. You will however need to make your point to enough people , and hence clear enough, to get something done about it.
Since most Wikipedians in Europe did not have a say in allowing Fair Use, they tend to have little respect for that possibility.
Ignoring the fact that several Wikipedians misuse the concept, the very fact that not all of our servers are actually located in the USA makes its application a tricky affair.
In all I would suggest creating a platform somewhere central to get all Fair Use issues clear before trying to convince people that it's worth overturning a democratic decision. Aliter 23:37, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, I guess it would depend on whether they are talking about banning use of images, or deleting them altogether. The latter, being irrevocable, would justify immediate intervention, in my opinion. The former is not such a big deal. Don't they have RfC and arbitration over there, by the way? Those are quasi-democratic and -republican processes, respectively. Rad Racer 23:50, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

About what Aliter said: I've already brought up a great deal of it during my aforementioned "long posts" explaining why fair use was a valid licence. As I mentioned, the general reply (of those who were able to get their way, of course) was that it was decided in a vote (democratly), to which I replied that the mere fact that it was a democratic (although there was no minimum quorum respected, which I had thought would be advisable to make such a profound change) decision does not ensure the quality of that decision. But the situation is more complicated. The people over there appear to have, as far as this issue is concerned, a very limited understanding of the mechanisms that make Wikipedia possible. Here's one example: one of the Admins over there was advocating, during the discussion, that fair use violates the GFDL. Isn't that one of those issues that have already been put to rest here? How can an Admin be so on the wrong track? In the case of the Portuguese WP, there are no servers in the countries were its readers are located (although there are plans  meaning, sometime in the future, not now  to install servers in Portugal). And finally, yes they are deleting images on account that fair use has been outlawed. Regards, Redux 17:33, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

About the violation of the GFDL: that issue has been put to rest here, but apparently not on the Portuguese wikipedia. The aim of using the GFDL is to make a encyclopedia that can be freely copied and modified; but when an article includes portions that are used under fair-use, these articles can not be copied in their entirity by people outside of the US (or countries with an equivalent fair-use system). Apparently, the contributors to the Portuguese wikipedia have decided that their main audience is located outside of the US, i.e. in Portugal and Brazil, and it's more important to keep their freedom for to copy their entire wikipedia (including all of the images) than to keep those fair-use images. A very understandable point of view, and one they should be allowed to take, imho. The same rule is also followed on at least three other wikipedias: the German, Dutch and Norse wikipedias only accept images that are allowed under German/Dutch/Norwegian/EU copyright law (which is stricter than U.S. law). Eugene van der Pijll 01:17, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Addition: this is also the reason that the Wikipedia Commons does not accept fair use images: see commons:Copyright_tags#Unfree_copyrights Eugene van der Pijll 01:36, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but the point of view is flawed, not to mention inconsistent. As I have mentioned over there (although I don't think anyone cared), if the concern was only creating a "100% free" encyclopedia concerning the images as well [as the text], changes could not have been restricted to the fair use policy. The Admin I mentioned before gave this example about a hypothetical someone "wanting to copy an image from the pt wp onto a t-shirt as selling it in the streets and that this someone should be able to do this without concerns for copyright restrictions". He gave this example as a paradigm of what he meant. Then I asked, with no reply until now: what about the permission for use? If we ask a copyright holder for permission to use his material on WP and get it, that doesn’t mean that people can "copy it onto t-shirts and sell it down the street", even though the image will be useable on Wikipedia. That policy remains intact in the pt wp, even though it's a classic example of an image being used that is not 100% free. So, if you ban fair use because you wish the encyclopedia to be 100% free, you have to ban the use of copyrighted images with express permission for use  or, as I also asked there, does anyone believe that when a copyright holder allows us to use his material he is revoking his rights entirely and releasing the material in the public domain? Not at all, permission for use is special for WP. But the crusade over there was against fair use only, so they only approached the issues that fit their interests, again showing a complete lack of knowledge of international law.
Furthermore, you are mistaken about images used under the fair use license being free only in the US or other countries with fair-use-like legislation. In fact, it's not completely free even in the US. Fair use allows us to use images on the WP, for its purposes (non commercial, etc.), but that does not mean that anyone in the US could copy the image, again, "onto a t-shirt and sell it down the street". Also as I've stated there, tagging images is not intended exclusively to orientate wikipedians (as to whether to leave an image alone or list it for deletion), but rather it also serves the very important purpose of letting the visitor know that, even though that image is being used here, it is not completely free (or it is, depending on the tag that we've added). It's restricted in the US, it's restricted elsewhere, and since there are no wikipedia servers in the countries where the Portuguese-speaking users are located, and the data for that wikipedia is being hosted in the US (they have admitted that), international law allows the pt wp to use images under the fair use institution of the United States.
And finally, there’s a very relevant issue (I believe) of having a handful of users decide such a fundamental change in the website. My hypothetical question here (the title of this discussion) was precisely to know if something like that would be accepted here. Adjusting for the very different magnitudes of both communities, would such a decision made by a consensus of 70 users (there, it was 25) be acceptable to ban either fair use or some other main aspect of the image policy in effect here? Given the smaller numbers there, it’s even more problematic, since you can change the very nature of the project by having a vote in which a very small group, that represents one (biased?) train of thought, vote and decide for the community. Then, as the community slowly catches on (since the admins who are part of that group start deleting images all over the place), they come back with the good old “it’s already been voted and decided, come back in a year”. As I said there, that is not the same as reaching a consensus in a article. And did I mention that the period to vote was rather short? So, if you’ve been away for two weeks, you missed it, and it’s too late? For a change like that? That is not democracy, unless you’re thinking in terms of the 19th century. That is why I’ve withdrawn for the time being, in protest. Regards, Redux 22:03, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't see the inconsistency. The point is that fair use images cannot even be used under European law in the same context; it is illegal for Europeans to make a complete identical copy of the wikipedia. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this point. However, I found these mails by Jimbo on a mailing list: [2] and [3]:

"For example, I think it is a good thing that the German wikipedia is quite strict against fair use"

"I *do* make the same argument for removing fair-use from en as well"

Eugene van der Pijll 16:02, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Those quotes are argument from authority. The long version is not so strict.

"As a matter of fact, I *do* make the same argument for removing fair-use from en as well. I think we should avoid fair-use images much much more strongly than we do now." "At the same time, I think that fair use is a *good thing* in general, because it is an acknowledgement that there are limitations on the rights of copyright holders, and we should use it when we really do need it."

The point not to miss here is that wikipedia is not public domain. Let's imagine a copyright holder gives permission to use his copyrighted work in wikipedia for its specific purposes, that doesn't make it public domain, but allows wikipedia to use it anyways. This situation happened to me on fr:wiki : I talked about wikipedia to a friend of mine who s running a unique database of french pocket books reference. He even add a partnership offer to make. I used only one of those reference in a single article, while working on a complete presentation of his database and website for the community. I got reverted and blocked for adding copyrighted content inside wikipedia without any explanation asked from me. No one asked me anything, no one would accept to hear anything explanation from and before I could finish the database/website/partnership presentation I was in no mood to go further from the way I've been treated.

My guess is only a few really understand what GFDL is meant for, how and why it is inappropritate and irrelevant to wikipedia admitted purposes (I'm speaking of the fr:wiki here). But as the GFDL is common to all wikimedia project, hanlon's razor suggest there's stupidity involved which I don't doubt at the moment, even though Jimbo didn't take time to give me directions for my GFDL concerns (he's busy) and it seems he's not considering to (I've been banned from all wikimedia project since then and so have no right to speak, that's what I've been told).

But if we are proven stupidity is not involved then we wikipedians have to consider the possibility that some wikipedia purposes are yet to be unveiled that wikimedia foundation may have lied about their motivations, and that we are being fooled as a free endless supply of expendable labor [4]. user:Izwalito

Californians interested in tech?

I just received a media press release for E3 in LA. The conference runs May 17 to May 19, the exhibit is from May 18 to May 20. Contact me if you're willing to go, to either take PD/GNU/Creative Commons photos for Wikicommons, and/or write articles for Wikinews. Email me at nicholasmoreau@gmail.com -- user:zanimum

Yahoo! Search for Creative Commons content

Hi, this is to inform the new Y! search for Creative Commons content. An API is also available. See if this can be used as a source for content. By the way, what else will be the appropriate place for this kind of info? -- Sundar (talk · contribs)

Weird: so far, at least on the searches I tried, it seems to pick up our user pages (not necessarily a good thing), but not our articles -- Jmabel | Talk 19:48, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

Probably because users have put Creative Commons tags on their user pages. The page footers on our article pages mention GFDL but not Creative Commons, doubtless because it's not clear whether any Wikipedia main-namespace content is actually CC-licensed. If we want our articles to appear, we need to convince Yahoo to add GFDL to their search. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:26, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

where are the chemists?

It's my impression that the maths sections of WP are well-informed and moderated - I can't always be personally sure of this because my own background is in physical sciences, and many of the maths articles lack clear notational introductions (an undergraduate physicist should find a clear introduction to n-forms for example).

Turning to physics, I often find articles which appear to have been hijacked by mathematicians, causing them to loose insight into _physics_ principles. A good example is classical mechanics - I am told that Hamilton's equations are a trivial property of symplectic spaces - er fine - but why? (I think it's because the symplectic group is antisymmetric and so are Hamilton's equations - but a physicist gets a a lot of satisfaction and insight in deriving Hamilton's relations from Newton - how does a mathematician make the same journey? - can't tell!

Turning to chemistry - the situation as far as I can tell is even less good (certainly in UK there is a real shortage of qualified chemists, and no, I'm NOT one). I looked at 'phase diagram' and found an article on 'phase space'; I looked at 'Phase rule' and found two 1 component examples, one the trivial example of a single phase (gas) system; and the assertion that the phase rule is directly equivalent to Euler's relation - well yes it probably IS, once you've used thermodynamics to establish the _form_ of the phase diagram. Ah Gibbs that thou wast with us in this hour!

We desperately need our maths colleagues NOT to edit everything to JUST be maths statements, even if they do consider Euler more interesting than Gibbs - physicists, engineers and chemists need to use these concepts and need to have a grasp of key principles.

AND we need some more real chemists on patrol Linuxlad 11:07, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Technically, I'm somewhat qualified to work on those, but when I saw the entry for acid (or a similar one) a while back I was discouraged by the lack of info it contained. I've got no clue where to start in fixing these things. Mgm|^(talk) 22:51, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

I try as first priority to remove or modify 'howlers' before passing by, and to leave a note on the Talk section of material I think needs addition or recasting - (though I think many people don't read or monitor the Talk sections). But, there is no sadder event than 'the person who did nothing because he could only do a little' (Edmund Burke??) Linuxlad 08:41, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Beta reader and betareader

I did a search for Beta reader on wikipedia and found nothing so I started up a page. Only yesterday did I discover that betareader existed. What do we normally do in this case? *fvincent 16:31, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Merge one article into the other, and redirect. See Wikipedia:Duplicate articles. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:58, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Or you could simply merge them yourself. I'd prefer them to be merged into beta reader as it's the correct English spelling as far as I know. Mgm|^(talk) 22:52, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Content and history from both have been merged into beta reader. Niteowlneils 07:23, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Featured picture: rat 'kittens' vs. 'pups

Today's 'Cat' featured picture writes that rat babies are called kittens. In the U.S. (west coast) I've only heard rat babies be called 'pups'. Perhaps this is a dialectic discrepancy?--Nectarflowed (talk) 03:33, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've only heard them called "pups" also, but there is no shortage of Google hits that support the "kitten" name as well. Could they both be correct? – Clockwork Soul 03:51, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Help! How do I stop anti spammers from harassing me?

Hi, I publish several Web sites that are information portals. One of them is Travelconsumer.com http://www.travelconsumer.com which contains travel information for every country in the world, all U.S. states, Canadian provinces, and hundreds of cities. Several hundred pages of the Travelconsumer.com site link to Wikipedia. In fact, I link to Wikipedia on every page where Wikipedia has published on the topic. Let me make this clear. I do not sell any products or services. No one who visits my site can buy anything from me. They can, like nearly every Web, site follow advertising links like Google Adsense. However, the relationship between content and advertising on my pages highly favors content.

The problem comes when I post links to Travelconsumer.com pages in the external links pages of destinations listed on Wikipedia. Every time I post an link to one of Travelconsumer’s destination pages the Wikipedia anti-spammers get on my case and harass me saying that I am spamming Wikipedia. Nothing I say, no example I give seems to satisfy them. That’s why I am bringing this to an open forum.

Let me show you some examples. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London. Scroll down to the external links section. Click any number of the links and observe that most of the links go to purely commercial sites. Here’s some of the sites that were listed:

http://www.thisislondon.com/ an all commercial site http://www.asinah.org/weather/EGLL.html hotel reservation service http://www.london-eating.co.uk/ a commercial restaurant guide http://www.london-drinking.com/ a commercial pub guide http://www.netlondon.com/ a commercial portal for London http://www.londontown.com/directory/ a commercial portal for London If you continue following the listed links most of them are like these.

Now take a look at Travelconsumer.com’s London page at http://www.travelconsumer.com/intlcities/london.htm. I believe that if you compare the content of my page to those listed on Wikipedia you will see that my page is less commercial and contains real content that people can use. My goal to help travelers who need travel information, but don’t have time to go through the millions of pages listed by Google. Most of the Google links are to the same kinds of Web sites currently listed on Wikipedia.

What seems to red flag my contributions to Wikipedia is the fact that I have lots of contributions to make. Every country in the world and most cities represents more than a thousand links to and from Wikipedia. Because I make a lot of contributions it appears like am a spammer. The truth is that I have lots of information to share.

I appreciate the work done by people like Noel in keeping spammers out of Wikipedia, but it appears that he and people like him are blocking content providers like me and allowing in sites like http://www.2pl.com/London/bs-1250300001.htm. How do we resolve this problem? How can I stop the harassment?

Thanks,

Max

Please do not post your message 3 times in the future. Please see WP:WIN for info regarding what Wikipedia is not. You are not allowed to use Wikipedia to advertise or direct people to your website, as it's self-promotion. In general if someone is mass inserting links, they will be reverted. Now, I haven't checked out the content of the links you've posted, but as it's self-promotion, it is against the rules. If you feel like there are links that don't deserve to be there, feel free to remove them (put in the edit summary why they aren't worthy of being in a particular article). External links have nothing to do with commercial vs. non-commercial. The only real criteria for an good external link is that the content is related to the subject, but different and highly informative/interesting. Hope this clears things up. CryptoDerk 21:15, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

The rules, as far as I can read them, don't impose a flat ban on inserting external links to your own sites -- they only say that, just like links to anybody else's site, they're only permitted when they are relevant and suitable for the content of this site as a whole, and the article in which they are inserted in particular. If you run Web sites that are relevant to topics covered in this site, then it might be reasonable to link to them, though such links would undoubtedly be put under heavy scrutiny if you gain commercially from them and are doing a large amount of such linking. *Dan* 21:41, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest that if you think your site contains notable material on a given topic, mention it on the talk page and say that if someone else agrees it would be a useful addition to the article, they should add it. Also, if you feel links that are there are inappropriate, raise that. In general, adding a link from Wikipedia to one's own site is regarded as spamming. This is very close to the issues of Autobiography. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:53, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

How about this: stop posting spam for your web site and people will stop "harassing" you by removing those spam links? Let's try this exercise, spam is UBE:

Unsolicited: we didn't ask you for the links
Bulk: many links many times
Email: oh well, it's Wiki spam, not email spam.

Daniel Quinlan 05:47, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

Seriously Max, it looks as though your Web site is basically a link farm, and those tend to be removed. Do you have original on-site content (articles and stuff hosted by you) in there somewhere? Those types of things (if good) would get a much warmer reception than lists of links, which we could do here ourselves if we wanted to. --iMb~Meow 06:32, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please

User:SPUI has practce vandalism in Spanish wikipedia. He has redirected pages to the image "autofellatio". Please block him. User:FAR

es:Usuario:Comae already did block es:Usuario:SPUI. --iMb~Meow 21:52, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes he did. I´m form there, and he and I have reverted SPUI´s editions but perhaps you know more about him. Anyway, be ready if he do anything. User:FAR

OK. I don't think they are the same person. --iMb~Meow 22:12, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Right. I only though you must know it. Please, if you know anything more, tell us. We think the vandal is from here (the image was here).--80.58.48.42 22:35, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Other SPUI has done the same vandalism in NL. Be care.--FAR 22:52, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK. I´ve investigate mire and It seem somebody is doing vandalism to disacredit SPUI. He looks inocents. Sorry!--FAR 23:10, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi there, you have been trolled. Unfortunately not by me. My condolences. --SPUI (talk) 22:41, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Eleventy-billion pool

Where did the silly eleventy-billion pool come from?? I think we should wait until Wikipedia gets 1,000,000 articles before any pool beyond the five-million pool (e.g. ten-million pool) can be open. What do you think?? Georgia guy 22:21, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See the first revision. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:02, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If it continues growing exponentially, it might not take that long. Do note that this pool will be closing for new entries when Wikipedia reaches the half-eleventy-billonth article. Rad Racer | Talk | Contributions 14:27, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia name used in email spam subjects

Nothing really important, but it might be of interest to some: the "Fast Extender" penile enlargement product is being spamvertised with the subject "Wikipedia knows the shit". Was the word "Wikipedia" just randomly chosen, or do the spammers have some reason to mention Wikipedia in particluar? -- Khym Chanur 02:35, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Spurious underscores

I've been noticing a lot of links in articles that use underscores instead of spaces, such as:

Main_Page

instead of

Main Page.

What's up with this? Do we need to tell new editors that they can use spaces?

Nickptar 02:38, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think they're copying the article name out of the URL. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:54, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This habit is common enough that has been a bot proposed to automatically fix these (barring the handful of articles that should actually have underscores in their names for whatever reason); see Wikipedia_talk:Bots#Underscore_correction_bot (underscores kept for effect!). — Matt Crypto 16:05, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I use the underscore to keep multi-word articles titles on the same line within templates and tables. Noisy | Talk 16:51, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

You could just simply use no-break spaces instead ( ). Denelson83 03:53, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm. Here's the main page link using space, underscore, and non-breaking space (respectively):

Main Page
Main_Page
Main Page

Space and underscore render differently (at least, under Firefox) and non-breaking space doesn't seem to work. Noisy | Talk 16:43, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Here's how you render with non-breaking space: [[Main Page|Main Page]], displays as Main Page -- Jmabel | Talk 21:01, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Online UK English dictionary?

Can anyone recommend a good online (or downloadable) UK English dictionary? I keep running into words that I suspect are misspelled, but can't be sure because they follow patterns that this Yank recognizes as potential UK variants. I have Merriam Webster Online to verify U.S. spellings, and Dictionary.com sometimes includes Oxford English Dictionary entries, but I have nothing robust and reliable. (I recall that OED offers online lookup, but for a substantial price. I need something free, or nearly so.) — Jeff Q (talk) 03:17, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You could try the Microsoft Word spell checker with the language set to English (UK). In the Wikipedia article, click on 'edit this page' and use Ctrl-A and Ctrl-X to get the text. Then go to MS Word and use Ctrl-V to paste the text into MS Word. Do Ctrl-A to select all the text again. In MS Word, select 'Tools', 'Language' and choose 'English (UK)'. You will then see the red squiggly underlines highlighting things it does not recognise with the English (UK) language set.

Right click on the red squiggly underline to get the new spelling option in that language. You can also use 'Tools', 'Spelling and grammar' to run the spell checker and grammar checker using the chosen language set.

If you do this frequently, then you could save a document with the language set to English (UK). If it is just an occasional word, then you can just type it into MS Word. Hope that helps. Bobblewik (talk) 18:43, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I used Cambridge Dictionary at http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ Samw 00:43, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wow! That Cambridge Dictionary is impressive! It handles UK and U.S. English, includes idioms, verb phrases, and translations to French and Spanish! And it doesn't take 10 seconds to load its overhead applets like Merriam-Webster. I'm tossing my other references and going with this one! Thanks, Samw! I also appreciate the Microsoft Word tip, Bobblewik. That'll certainly help when I'm working offline. — Jeff Q (talk) 01:37, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Erm - shouldn't we be recommending Wiktionary?

In any case, I usually use a meta-dictionary at OneLook.com which links into most of the dictionaries mentioned so far, and several more. -- Solipsist 07:46, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

where can I download Cologne Blue skin CSS file?

because monobook is universal mediawiki cliche. :) --Alexandre Van de Sande 02:40, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cologne Blue isn't just a stylesheet, it's a skin. You can switch it to be the default for new users and anons by setting $wgDefaultSkin = 'cologneblue'; in your LocalSettings.php. If you want the stylesheet by itself for some reason, you can find it in skins/common/cologneblue.css in any recent MediaWiki installation, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/skins/common/cologneblue.css -- Tim Starling 04:59, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

AIDS, HIV and other related articles

Could someone with a medical background please look over the recent edits to HIV and AIDS? One user is rewriting many sections to downplay the importance of antiretroviral therapy, removing mention of condoms and abstinence as preventative measures, and generally removing much information. Thanks. Rhobite 23:40, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

If you want help, I suggest you be more specific, rather than expecting people to look through the edit history of an article they haven't worked on in order to determine which "one user" has made edits you object to. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:34, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

The user in question is clearly Sci Guy, who's been systematically gutting the HIV and AIDS articles just as described, and rewriting them to his taste, slanting them away from the scientific concensus and towards emphasizing Duesbergian viewpoints. - Nunh-huh 06:38, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I guess Duesbergian viewpoints should be included in the article, but I'm pretty sure you can undo the edits and include mention of condoms, antiretroviral therapy, and abstinence. Mgm|^(talk) 08:47, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

Simple English Wikipedia

Please don't underrate the Simple English Wikipedia. This is useful for young people, speedy translations to other languages as well as for non-native speakers.--Jondel 02:26, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How to cite Wikipedia?

Hello there. I have a question: I am doing a school paper on Joseph Stalin and I must cite sources. So my question is: how to cite Wikipedia's article on Stalin as a source? I regard Wikipedia as very good source of information. --Belgrader 09:21, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia-gadfium 09:33, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Project Gutenberg referencing Wikipedia

I don't think this has been posted before, but I see that the online Project Gutenberg catalogue now has a link to the Wikipedia articles for authors - Samuel Smiles and Adam Smith,for example. Apwoolrich 12:44, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)