Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

[[:|WP:VPM]]

The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please try to post within policy, technical, proposals or assistance rather than here. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Yamaha Virgo 1100 Starter Project Video

Hi there...

While searching the net for Yamaha starter problems I came across Wikipedia -- Great site. I really like the interactive Q&A -- Good Stuff. While searching your site I came across the one hour video mentioned in the subject line and I couldn't wait to dnload it. I down-loaded the video but for some unknown reason the video/audio stops playing after the first minute; right after it gets into the same problem I am having -- boy... major disappointment.

I am far from being an IT person. I know just enough about a computer to get around and get most of my tasks completed; it's these types of things that hang me up. I searched your FAQs and unfortunatelyh I did not find a similiar question/topic to help me trouble-shoot my problem.

Do you know what it is that I am doing or what it is that I should be doing to get the audio to work? The video sounds like just what the doctor ordered. I need help.... please..... pretty please :-)

Any and all assistance is GREATLY appreciated, hope to hear from you soon.

Have A Great Day, pattie —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pattiepool57 (talk • contribs) 29 July 2007.

Fundraiser 2007 – Buttons and Banners

We are searching for people who can help to design buttons and banners for the Fundraiser 2007 and of course they will be used also after that period. Also the translation of the texts and people who then work on the graphics to add these texts are needed.

You can find examples for buttons that are ready right now on this page on meta and some more info about the initiative here.

Of course, should you have further questions, please contact us. Thank you!!! – 12 september 2007 Sabine

This is a message posted according to the Village Pump list on meta. Should it go in the wrong place on your wiki, please help by correcting the link on the page on meta.

Artur Balder

There's something strange happening at the Artur Balder page. It's been translated into about 50 other languages, seemingly for no reason at all? Was it recently World Artur Balder Day, or has he just got a massive internet fan base? Or is there (my favourite) a conspiracy. I did a bit of search, and of the 25 other language versions I checked, 24 of those articles were made by a newly-created user who only cotributes to that page, and linked ones. How strange. --Montchav 15:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like what happened with some of those pages, at least, was not that the page was translated, but that References, References (art), and External links, all in English, were added to a pre-existing article.

I checked out one of the external links, which, although given an English title in the link, was originally written in Spanish (and the site required that one subscribe to access it).

This is true of the French and Esperanto versions (I speak both languages): The start of each article appears to have been written by someone who knows the language well and who wrote an independent article, but the sections named above, still in English, were added on.

In the case of two languages which I do not read, Scots and Lojban, the same additions were made to what I expect were the original short articles. Mplsray 07:24, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Khmer Wikipedia

Where can I get the fonts for it? Æetlr Creejl 21:59, 15 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are some links on Khmer script#External links. Also http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts_windows.html#khmer —Leo Laursen ( T | C ) 10:19, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Napulitano (language code "nap") shows wrong name in "in other languages" links

The Napulitano language (in English, Neapolitan), language code "nap", wrongly shows up as "Nnapulitano" in the "in other languages" links of Wikipedia articles. It should be changed, but I have found no way to change it myself.Mplsray 06:11, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That could only be fixed by someone with the power to alter the MediaWiki software that Wikipedia runs on. I just left a message about it on the village pump on Meta, so hopefully someone will fix it. --CrazyLegsKC 17:18, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

user pages in categories

Are user pages allowed to be in categories like Category:1992 births? The Placebo Effect 15:20, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, but they are allowed to be in user categories, which can be found at Category:Wikipedians. There used to be birth-year categories specifically for user pages, but they were deleted a few weeks ago. --CrazyLegsKC 15:54, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Flags

Whats going on with country flags on wikipedia.

When ever you look on an article about a town, mountain, person etc were it says Location, Place of Birth etc I'm no longer seeing the image of the flag but instead words like "Flag of Nepal Nepal".

Whats going on? I preferred it when you could see the images. Surely it has nothing to do with image rights does it Samaster1991 16:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's been happening to a lot of people lately, me included. There's a notice on Commons that says they're working on fixing it. In the meantime, you could try purging the images to get them to show. --CrazyLegsKC 16:26, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

ThanksSamaster1991 18:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Server difficulties banner

Hey, I read up about it on some disscussions, but there are so many threads with a lot of people saying the same thing that everything is broken and not saying anything useful. I just wanted to hear the whole story of what happened instead of link jumping across all the wikimedia projects. I've seen 5 explainations already and I've only been to WP:VPT , here, and the commons VPT. No rush, I'm sure I could read about it soon in the signpost, but if you don't have anything to do, would you respond? Thanks, - Hairchrm 00:56, 17 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Greasemonkey Script

from my proposal at UserScripts:

I know nothing about Greasemonkey, but based on other scripts I know parts of the following should be possible:

One of the great drawbacks of MediaWiki is its complete lack of AJAXy features. To edit a page, you have to hunt down the edit link, edit the whole thing in a different tab, click preview, rinse, edit, repeat. I've actually stopped contributing because it is too cumbersome.

What I would like:

> A selection to edit is highlighted. > The edit link before that section is found, clicked, and opened in an embedded bubble. This bubble has two panes. On the top, the box (no other junk save for maybe the toolbar) where wiki-syntax is entered is displayed. On the bottom, a preview pane is displayed. > While you edit, the preview pane refreshes AJAX-style (ie no blank interim pages). You keep on editing. > Two buttons on top of bubble - Cancel and OK. OK clicks submit button. Bubble disappears. Page bubble is on refreshes AJAX-style.

Everything about this besides the AJAXy no-refresh-blanks requirement seems reasonable to me, and I hope it is. It would also be a killer script, and I could tolerate editing again.

Thanks. Arithmomaniac —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arithmomaniac38 (talk • contribs) 03:20, 17 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You might take a look at User talk:Alex Smotrov/qpreview.js, which is a quick AJAX preview. Also, two WYSIWYG editors - FCKeditor and Wikiwyg - seem to be under active discussion for implementation with MediaWiki software. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:13, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Revocation of contributors' grant under the GFDL

The issue of people trying to revoke the grant of their contributions under the GFDL has come up three times in the last couple months, and there is widespread belief that people can't revoke their license grant. Actually they can, they just have to wait until the 2040s to do it.

Wikipedia's servers are governed by US law, which allows for license revocation:

"during a period of five years beginning at the end of thirty-five years from the date of execution of the grant"

— 17 U.S.C. § 203(a)(3)

This was originally intended to allow musicians to recover rights that they assigned under unfavorable terms when they were unknown and wanted the exposure. But it applies to all copyrighted works. I bet someone actually tries it eventually. ←Ben^B4 01:26, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If it ever becomes an issue, then we could probably just get the FSF to change the GFDL to explicitly waive that right. But 35-year-old edits that the contributor wants to revoke could probably just be removed by oversight without any adverse effects. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 03:47, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, statues take precedence over agreements, and we would need to make sure that any text they added did not survive in the current 35-year-later version. But that wouldn't be hard and we could just paraphrase it. ←Ben^B4 04:16, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Birthday wishes

Is there a template for wishing a Wikipedian a happy birthday? Amit@Talk 04:26, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A brazillion of them ←Ben^B4 04:36, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Um, how do I use them, use subst: or something? Thanks Amit@Talk 05:02, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok I figured it out, thanksAmit@Talk 05:08, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And a committee here. Now why on Earth should a birthday greeting be so difficult? ... x42bn6 Talk Mess 18:52, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

AfD

Average newcomer, on learning that an article they started is up for deletion:

"Don't Delete! Don't delete!!" [1]

Jimbo Wales, on learning that an article he started is up for deletion:

"Some people should excuse themselves from the project and find a new hobby." [2]

Discuss. – 217.44.232.180 21:25, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Before trolling with this sort of question, you might wish to put the statement in the proper context, which requires reading the entire page. Wales' comment could have benefited from a breather before hitting "save", but your "summary" is out of line. --Ckatz^chat_spy 21:38, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I also experienced the wonderful joy of seeing an early page I created subsequently get deleted. But since then I got involved with AfD and have experienced the distinct pleasure of helping save multitudes of worthy pages from extinction. — RJH (talk) 18:06, 22 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

500,000

Everyone seems hyped up about the 1000,000th article (a Scottish railway station) and the 2000,000th (a Spanish TV show). going back to the past, there must have been a record of say the 100,000th article or 500,000th. I am just curious. If there is a record of this or these, what was it\were they? Simply south 21:45, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I typed 100,000 article in Google and got this. A.Z. 04:24, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That page says Wikipedia was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. A.Z. 04:25, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And here are the other press releases. A.Z. 04:28, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

linking dates

I've noticed on a lot of pages that within dates, the year is often linked to the page for that year, like say 1975. I feel like this is a weird practice, as it is doesn't seem to be in context. I doubt if there is any formal policy on this kind of link, but I'm wondering what people think of it. It doesn't seem to happen so often with other ordinary words (unless there seems to be a need to help readers understand) so why dates. maxsch 04:12, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Have you looked at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and m:Dynamic dates? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:52, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Grand Theft Jimbo

I've made a humor article in my user page, about a Grad Theft Auto game featuring Jimmy Wales. Any suggestions? Blake Gripling 05:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can Anyone Help?

I am from Scotland and I am trying to trace my Dad,his name is Norman Grant and he is in his sixties,the last I heard from him he lived near Nahoon Beach in East London. I would be grateful if anyone could give me any information on how to trace him. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kaygrant (talk • contribs) 23:59, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]