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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Dori (talk | contribs) at 15:28, 23 November 2003 (re: Truncated dodecahedron). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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File:Village pump yellow.png

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Moved discussion

Questions and answers, after a period of time of inactivity, will be moved to other relevant sections of the wikipedia (such as the FAQ pages), placed in the Wikipedia:Village pump archive (if it is of general interest), or deleted (if it has no long-term value).

See the archive for older moved discussion links. For the most recent moved discussion, see Wikipedia:Village pump archive#November 2003 moved discussion.

Requests for help and comments

  1. See User:Daniel Quinlan/redirects if you want to help out with fixing thousands of broken links prepared by Brion and Daniel.
  2. See Wikipedia talk:Interlanguage links for Hashar's information on using RobBot to add interlanguage links.
  3. See Talk:Historical anniversaries/Example for mav's idea to add table to day page articles
  4. Should more than three reverts be allowed? Comment on Martin's proposal.

Show new changes starting from:

I just noticed this feature on recent changes. Very slick, thanks to whoever implemented this. -- Merphant 13:54, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hasn't that always been there? Angela 14:28, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Not always, but at least for half a year. -- Baldhur 16:04, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Heh, I'm a little slow sometimes :) I could have sworn it wasn't there yesterday... -- Merphant
I must be slower still... how do you use this feature? Andrewa 11:21, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
You should see the following on recent changes:
Below are the last 50 changes in last 7 days.
Show last 50 | 100 | 250 | 500 changes in last 1 | 3 | 7 | 14 | 30 days; minor edits
Show new changes starting from 20:31, 20 Nov 2003
The date stamp is a link so you can check recent changes (up to a certain limit) since the last time you looked at recent changes. Angela 20:32, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)


Access to /w/wiki.phtml is denied?

I have a confession to make... now and then I count how my contributions I have made to Wikipedia. I used to do this at the click of a button - I ran a Python script that grabbed my user contributions page and then counted the number of relevant lines. However I have just tried to do this and the page returned says "You don't have permission to access /w/wiki.phtml on this server"... however I can access my contributions page perfectly happily in Internet Explorer. Has there been a software change in the last couple of months that has restricted to me only being able to access via IE? Any ideas? THanks. Pete 23:41, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, there's been a software change. You have to set the user-agent string to something identifying your bot. Sorry, I don't know how to do this in Python. -- Tim Starling 23:48, Nov 17, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks Tim. It's bound to be possible to check the user-agent id. I will find out. Given that the script would formally qualify as a bot should I do anything other than make a promise that I don't use it very often honest, gov?
Any pythonistas out there may like to know that to do this you need to subclass the URLOpener class in the built-in standard module urllib such that the attribute 'version' is overwritten with whatever user-agent string you fancy. Less difficult than it might sound! Pete 00:44, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)
As long as you don't use it to edit or create pages in large numbers, and don't use it to an amount that much exceeds normal browsing speed, it should not be a problem. By the way, if you're interested in Python-based Wikipedia bots, take a look at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywikipediabot/ and http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/pywikipediabot/pywikipedia/. Andre Engels 11:57, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)
On a bright note: what the developers taketh away the developers giveth too... it seems like the "offset" bug on the contributions page has been fixed since I last tried. Thus when I have sorted the user-agent string my script will hit the server even less as I can give it an estimate of the minimum number of edits I have done to avoid counting them over again... Thanks ever so much for whoever took the time to fix that. Pete 00:15, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)



POV in Dune?

Discussion moved to Talk:Dune (novel) -- Marshman 03:24, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Scouring for (ab)use of wikipedia content

I'd like to just stand on this here Village Pump Soapbox quickly: Can anyone who has got a minute to spare (and if you're editing WP, then you do ;-)) just paste some bit from any wikipedia article into google. Then check Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content to see whether the search returns any usage that is not already listed on Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content. Quick hint: choose a continuous block of words which seems somewhat unique and enclose it in quotes. Like so (from Stephen King): "wealth itself: his earliest works (Carrie, The Shining,". Here are some links to improper usage of wikipedia content that I found in doing a few such searches (Some of them not just improper, but downright criminal): [1], [2], [3], [4]
Cheers, snoyes 08:12, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

ezResults.com Uses wikipedia articles as encyclopedia. Added an entry to Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content hope thats appropriate : ChrisG 13:46, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The japan-101.com page mentions the text is from Wikipedia way down at the bottom, so I guess it is compliant. I didn't ad the site to Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content though. —Frecklefoot 15:46, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Well it doesn't mention the GFDL or link to the page it is taking content from... so its not really compliant at all... perhaps it'd be best if you did list it on Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content.
Interesting work, Snoyes. One thing that intrigues me is that all the sites that use our content claim all rights reserved copyright on all non-wikipedia elements. I thought the licence was supposed to be viral in the sense that if people take free content then derived works are similarly free. This doesn't seem to be happening at this embryonic stage in Wikipedia development, in contrast to similar software projects. Pete 17:41, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

See wikipedia:verbatim copying. Martin 02:39, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)



TeX / Math markup rendering problems

I'm currently having a problem with Trimagic square article: it contains some embedded math markup that is not rendered correctly (in fact, not rendered at all) despite having no apparent errors. Can anyone help with this? Thanks. -- Schnee 19:40, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It appears TeX just dies when you try to use more than 10 columns:
I don't know why. -- Tim Starling 00:14, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)
From the AMS-L TeX manual (PDF): "The maximum number of columns in a matrix is determined by the counter MaxMatrixCols (normal value = 10), which you can change if necessary using LaTeX's \setcounter or \addtocounter commands." Unfortunately, \setcounter and \addtocounter can't be used within the Wikipedia math mode, so either wide matrices have to be avoided, or the counter will have to be increased on the backend (which may slightly increase rendering cost in time and/or memory—how much so I have no idea). --Delirium 10:04, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)
Given that the TeX renderings are cached (they are... aren't they?), this shouldn't be much of a problem. -- Schnee 16:16, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Just an editorial comment regarding complexity of math in some of these articles: please remember this is an encyclopedia and not a post-graduate mathematics textbook. Daniel Quinlan 01:17, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)
Your general point may have so validity... but trimagic square and its prerequisite magic square require no mathematics beyond that taught to a youngish schoolchild (the age of the schoolchild depends on the country you are in). Now if you were to pick on Weierstrass preparation theorem on the other hand... Pete 08:59, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Regarding "complexity of math" ... surely an article is not to be considered inappropriate simply because it handles complex issues, provided always that it presents them with clarity ? We are told that there are no size limits. There are guidelines for writing a clear mathematics article at WikiProject Mathematics and most of the mathematics articles that I have seen here are very clearly written. Incidentally, I thought Schnee's contributions on magic squares and magic cubes were completely fascinating. -- Gandalf61 13:14, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)
I don't see any problem at all with presenting even the most complex mathematical topics in Wikipedia. The articles should be written in a way that does not assume that the reader is already intimately familiar with the subject that is being talked about, of course, and thus will probably be written in a less compressed way than a mathematical textbook, but limiting what can have an entry in Wikipedia because it might not be understandable outright and without further reading to a typical person would be silly. -- Schnee 16:16, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Yes, that was sort of my point. I was speaking of the level of mathematics knowledge required and complexity of formulas used with no introduction, not the advanced level of topics. Daniel Quinlan 10:20, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

Diff too whitespace insensitive

The diff doesn't see changes that only involve whitespace, as in "events.After" changed to "events. After" orthogonal 19:59, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, it does, at least in my experience. Can you give an example of an actual edit where the diff doesn't see a whitespace change? —Paul A 01:04, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Ah. Whitespace additions are not highlighted in red (given that there's nothing to highlight, I suppose this isn't too much of an oversight.) But perhaps instead of highlighting the letter/foreround, we should highlight the background. That would take care of the problem. It might also make things easier for red-green colorblind users if that backgrond were, dsay, gray, rather than red. orthogonal 14:27, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)


Looking for recent events

I was looking for links to a news event that occurred earlier this month and ran into a snag. Most links like this are listed by month like October 2003. There's also a page, Current Events, with links to the news events of the past week. But when I tried to go to November 2003 I was redirected to Current Events. The effect of this is that I couldn't find links for the dates between November 1-10. Are they located elsewhere? MK 20:13 (EST) 19 November 2003

Current Events is supposed to cover the whole month. Unfortunately it seems that when 35.8.131.155 edited it at 2104 UTC tonight his/her browser truncated the article at 32K. Anyway, I have restored the "lost" news, so please try again. -- Arwel 02:17, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Shouldn't we do something to split the page down to a reasonable size? Andrewa 03:09, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Year pages, calendar designation of

I hate to sound like a politically correct multiculturalist, but I was looking at recent changes, and wondering just what a "245" might be. Of course, it's year 245, but that got me to thinking that not everybody uses the Christian calendar. So at minimum we should make it plain that it's A.D. 245, rather than B.C., a.u. (from the founding of the city of Rome), AH (since Mohammed's hegira), etc.

Which brings up the second issue, A.D. means "anno Domini", "in the year of our Lord", said Lord being Jesus Christ. A more secular, if namby-pamby, alternative is "Common Era", abbreviated "C.E." (and "before Common Era", B.C.E. for dates prior to the nativity of Jesus).

Thoughts? orthogonal 03:37, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

There is some prior discussion on this at Talk:Common Era. Personally I don't see how C.E. can be called secular -- I mean, it's still dated from the birth of Christ, isn't it? -- Tim Starling 03:51, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)
Yes, that's right. But Common Era just accepts this as a conventional standard. Anno Domini actually proclaims Jesus as "Lord", which can make it uncomfortable to use for non-Christians.
It is fine the way it is. Very easy to link to and natural. Like it or not but the Christian Calendar is the de facto standard for not only the English speaking world but much of the rest as well. --mav 03:54, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
First, it's not like any other Calendars in use are any less POV. Second, no other calendar approaches the Western one in terms of world-wide usage, especially in English and this is the English Wikipedia. I don't think it's necessary to make it plain that it's A.D. 245. No style guide for English recommends using A.D. unless it's necessary from context. When is the last time you've read the paper, a book, etc. and it said 1964 A.D. or similar. The only time I see A.D. is when a B.C. date might be possible, for example, in Classics texts (which sometimes use C.E. depending on the author's political views). Finally, moving the articles or adding redirects would only create some 2000 redirects that would then need to be maintained and would clutter search results for any particular year, all for no real gain except political correctness. Note that I think it would be fine to specify A.D. in the articles, if perhaps unnecessary. Daniel Quinlan 06:18, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)
at least in the articles. Under about (AD) 300 , it's not immediately obvious whether it's AD or BC -- as most of the events in either year would center on Rome.
I think the more important bit of Christian bias on the date pages is using little crosses to indicate date of death. - SimonP 17:40, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)
I think, for certain causes of death, bullets would be the most appropriate (joke). orthogonal 17:47, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Probably not famous people

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Probably not famous people. Andrewa 02:51, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

List of fictional characters

I was thinking maybe we could do that. Many people who are ficticious, like Tony Montana, Rocky Balboa, Memin, Pedro Navaja, Superman, Barbarella, etc etc are so famous that they are more famous than some real life people. Antonio Low Class *itch Martin

Yeah. Although we'll most definitely end up getting innumerable obscure characters, like [Ray-gun Daring Devil] and [Manga Guy # 12]. --Menchi 07:15, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)


Special:Whatlinkshere/Fictional_character should give you an automatic list, so I think creating a non-automatic one would be a wasted effort. It would be better to link all fictional character articles are linked to Fictional character to make sure this feature works. Angela 07:20, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
A worthwhile idea in my opinion. But I think the list could use some work. Maybe one list in alphabetical order and a second list broken down by sources (grouping all of the Star Trek and Simpson characters together for instance). And I'm pretty sure Alfred Bester and Sarah Bernhardt aren't fictional characters. MK 03:48 (EST) 21 November 2003
Such a Star Trek and Simpsons characters sub-list are already existent on one of the sub-articles of Star Trek and Simpsons. To repeat would be redundant. It may be be good bad idea to place in some famous char, but of course, somebody will come and say, "wait, that's POV, I think Death-blaster III is also important". The list will grow and grow until it explode. --Menchi 08:56, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

See also: and see also; and see also; and so forth...

Hmm. I don't honestly know whether to laugh or lament...

Check out this example of a good thing gone horribly wrong. I'm almost tempted to reccomend it stay as is, so we can all point it and say: "Don't do this; they will only laugh at you." -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 08:43, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

Cimon, I was going to sort them out (or someone else can) ... it a temporary thing (mainly to get them listed ... btw, there was alot more than that is related; that is the "reduced" list). Sorting them out into '''general''', '''biblical''', etc., ... hopefully sooner than later though it'll get done ... JDR
Holy.... --Menchi 08:45, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Oh my... I think we need a seperate article just for the See Alsos... Dysprosia 08:47, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Most impressive article (and I'm an atheist!) I can't see how this is a good thing gone horribly wrong.. How about a bit of praise for the huge amount of work put into this article? My only criticism is that the gigantic blue list is not much use since it's not in alphabetical order.
Adrian Pingstone 09:43, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Gonna sort 'em soon [or someone else can. JDR
Sorted Dysprosia 10:02, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I took out a lot of the duplicates (and List of Latin phrases was in there three times). --Charles A. L. 16:21, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)
The article looks OK, I think what we're saying is that the See also list is way too long. Dysprosia 09:47, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I would reduce it to one: Christian. The rest can go. -- Viajero 11:54, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Most of the ones in "Others" have just a Christian connection to Jesus, not direct Jesus-related, e.g., A Plea for Captain John Brown, Midwest Christian Outreach, Revised Standard Version, Tomb, Torah, Veil, Thirteen, Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, Theology, Seventh-day Adventist Church, The supernatural in monotheistic religions, and of course, there's Superman (it's actually listed there). --Menchi 12:01, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I broadly agree with Adrain Pingstone's sentiments. But along these lines, was it deliberate symbolism or a simple mistake to list sin twice? Pete 12:07, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Shouldn't the See Also material be hived off to another to another article, e.g. List of Christian topics or List of topics related to Jesus, depending on JDRs motives. Then See Also can be reduced to the important articles and the list of ??? : ChrisG 12:30, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

For me; what it comes down to is this: a See also listing should not be a comprehensive listing of backlinks. It just isn't useful. There are plenty enough links in the articles themselves, most of the time. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 14:58, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

This is way over the top. I'm guessing about 20 might be immediately relevant. Superman has got to go. DJ Clayworth 17:20, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Personally, I think this article looks great. Not perfect, but in the top 5% of our articles. I hope we don't butcher it too badly (a camel is a horse designed by a committee), or waste too much time that would be far better spent in bringing the other 95% up to this standard. Andrewa 20:41, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Image attribution / sig

Can image artists sign names on their works when they agreed to let WP use their images? --Menchi 09:39, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Menchi, I don't know what you are asking. Can you be clearer?
Adrian Pingstone 09:45, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
When an artist draws a map/diagram/illustration and contributes it to WP, can s/he sign his/her name on it? Most artists like to sign their names on their work, and it may take some pursuasion to make them not do that. Or they may just don't contribute their work to WP at all because a sense of authorship -- which is saddening. --Menchi 09:48, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
AFAIK (IANAL) there is no legal reason why they can't sign their work, and there's no legal reason we could just airbrush it out and resubmit it. GFDL requires that we credit the authors, but I don't think the authors can dictate the particular form of that credit. Since we generally frown on overt displays of authorship, I think we should discourage artists from signing work, crop or airbrush it out if possible, or look for another equivalent image if it is not possible. -- Tim Starling 10:28, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

Artist needed for heart drawing

I have tried now for a while but cannot get permission to use a drawing of the inner workings of the heart. The ones from Gray's Anatomy are not clear enough. An excellent one is at http://www.tmc.edu/thi/anatomy2.html . Any artists here who could produce a similar drawing? AxelBoldt 12:27, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Overtype mode

Can anyone tell me why I sometimes find myself in overtype mode when editing a page? The problem goes away if I save and then start editing again, but it's a bit annoying. Bmills 12:37, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

  • If you hit the "insert" key on your keyboard, it should go back to insert mode. Maximus Rex 16:22, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
    • Thanks. Bmills 16:23, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The 18th letter of the alphabet

Looking at The Powerpuff Girls and then as a test the three most recent UK PMs, I find the lowercase r's in the titles look funny. This isn't happening in subheads or text, even bold text. Capital r's (e.g. Ronald Reagan) are also fine. I don't know if the problem is my iMac, Netscape 7, or some other thing. Is anyone else experiencing this, and what are you using? --Charles A. L. 16:08, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

  • Just tried on Windows 2000 with both IE 6 and Netscape 7 and the rs are fine for me, which may narrow it down to the iMac. Bmills 16:15, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  • Could you post a screenshot? It looks fine on my PowerBook in Mozilla (1.5 on Mac OS X 10.3.1, 1.2 in Classic), haven't tried NS7 specifically. --Brion 02:50, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  • Well, there aren't any non-ASCII characters in the source text. Daniel Quinlan 09:58, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

The Google Test

Are there any guidelines as to how many Google hits a topic needs to pass? I just added a page on Mary Devenport O'Neill who gets 4 hits, two on Wikipedia, but I think she is important enough to merit inclusion. By the way, she died when I was a child, I never met her, and I'm not related to her, but she played an important bit part in the history of 20th century Irish poetry, my main field of interest. Bmills 17:02, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think the Google test is simply one of many heuristics use to determine if an article belongs on Wikipedia. Nor is Google the ultimate reference; it will skew to the popular and the general. Your entry seems a fine addition to Wikipedia. orthogonal 17:15, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I just started Balaenoptera omurai, which has 0 Google hits (take it as read that I am only VERY distantly related to this whale species) There are no hard and fast rules to the Google Test, and some contributors actively dislike it as a guideline because of its limitations particularly with matters of history. Pete 17:16, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Google hits just a guide. If you are knowledgeable in the field and say she is important, that should be good enough. Clearly not a vanity page, which is the biggest problem here with the obscure biographies (autobiographies). Also yours is well written (does not go into her pets' names, lifetime moves, childhood friends, etc.) explaining why she is significant. -- Marshman 17:18, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I only asked because the Google test is quoted so often on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. As a relative newcomer, I'm still feeling my way around these things. Bmills 17:23, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Re Balaenoptera omurai:
I have checked in Copernic Agent. There are 14 results:
One each in National Geographic and Nature
One Japanese, one Polish, one Czech, one Argentinian, one Norwegian
Seven German results
Dieter Simon 01:15, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
That's not surprising - the news about that whale species did just came out yesterday, so we are very fast to include an article on that. Right now google has 56 unique hits for that one, and the number will probably increase more. andy 12:41, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's only one guideline. It is perhaps most useful (but not limited to this use) for contemporary topics and for evaluating vanity pages. Daniel Quinlan 01:42, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

Yes. It does tend to get overused IMO. We don't want Wikipedia to reflect the bias already shown on the WWW, especially since a similar bias is probably produced by the demography of our editors as a population. But, both finding print media to cite, and verifying them when cited, are a lot more work than just typing a query into Google. Andrewa 03:23, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Agreed, Andrewa. My perspective is probably skewed by the fact that I've been making contributions around writers and writing and in almost all cases with those writers' books to hand. I also try to add external links to provide as much verification as possible, but sometimes this is difficult as with Mary Devenport O'Neill. And sometimes the information on the Web is wrong, or slanted. Bmills 12:05, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Trolling below the radar

Take a look at Special:Contributions/66.157.94.151 some seem legitimate, but some seem suspicious, but I cannot confirm as inaccurate. I reverted the Michael Jackson one which seem an outright troll. This seems to be the biggest danger to the Wikipedia. This kind of vandalism can go unnoticed, because it is not possible to tell at first sight whether something is accurate or not if it is written in a certain manner. Have you guys run across the more sophisticated vandals? Dori 17:25, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

On a second though, after JeLuF's investigations, it seems that this user's edits may be legitimate, but the points about under the radar trolls remains. Dori 17:30, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)
A quick look at Special:Contributions/66.157.94.151 makes it clear that this user is Easter Bradford or an EasterBradford sock-puppet or supporter, so misuse of Wikipedia is no surprise. Can you enumerate what else you find suspicious, Dori? And what did JeLuF determine? orthogonal 17:33, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I checked the facts that were added to Michael Jackson, Dorothy Parker, Eminem and Spike Lee using http://news.google.com . All edits were backed up by news articles. -- JeLuF 17:39, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Which does create some credibility. The problem is, that might be the whole reason for them. Wikilove is blind. It's a very complex issue. Andrewa 14:19, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I see no clearly-defined dividing line between trolling and POV. At one end there is deliberate vandalism and at the other there are contributions with perhaps just a very slight bias. Somewhere in the middle is the grey area where most discussion page arguments take place.
The most subtle problem is an article or section that contains nothing but a few negative statements on a subject. Such statements may be obscure but verifiable facts, but on their own can give an article a complete bias.
A recent example is an addition on "Saudi Culture" which said only that Saudi Arabia banned the burial of non-Moslems (untrue)and the practice of other religions (partly true - non-Islamic religious ceremonies are only permitted in private). Even if true, this is hardly a sound representation of "Saudi Culture" and not of much use to a schoolchild doing a project on the subject. What about camels, tents, songs, stories, carpets, desert-life, legends, musical instruments and so forth?
Do we need "balance police"? Anjouli 06:55, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)


error worth fixing

Hi ... How does one notify the Wikipedia editors of a spelling error? Your article about Catharine Parr Traill misspells her first name.

Fixed. If you create an account, you can move articles to fix stuff like this. Daniel Quinlan 19:09, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

Category-tag

For a month I saw an article containing a [[Category:]]-tag. Is it something implemented or something that is going to be implemented ? (I.e. as a way of categoring articles on wikipedia.) // Rogper 20:04, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's in the next version of the software. We'll be installing the updated version this weekend, then enabling the categories and a few other new features later once everything's a little more thoroughly tested. --Brion 02:38, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Aha, that is a interesting news! :-) BTW, is there any newsgroup or discussion-list where you talk about issues like this ? (never mind, I found where it is.) // Rogper 16:38, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Where? Andrewa 09:19, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The best bet for this sort of discussion is the Wikitech mailing list. Best starting point for mailing lists is Wikipedia:Mailing lists. Pete 11:43, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)


Authors and their copyrights

Moved to Talk:Credit repair

175000 articles

I was just adding {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} to my user page and discovered that we'll probably break the 175000 mark [in the English version] sometime tonight. Congratulations everybody! Current count: 6,931,636. silsor 07:19, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

Nice catching that... 174989 as of now... not bad, eh? (pondering whether or not to add a couple...) -- Jake 07:26, 2003 Nov 21 (UTC)
Anybody want to keep track of what the 175000th article is? I'm going to bed now. silsor 07:36, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)
By this rate, it'll occur in between the next 20 - 30 min. Correct my math if wrong. --Menchi 07:40, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It was The Adventures of Pete and Pete when I looked, but if a page is deleted, the total will be set back to 174999, meaning something else could be the 175000th. Angela

When I just loaded Wikipedia:Village Pump, seeing the post for the first time, it said exactly:

I was just adding {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} to my user page and discovered that we'll probably break the 175000 mark [in the English version] sometime tonight. Congratulations everybody! Current count: 175001. silsor 07:19, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

Κσυπ Cyp   08:42, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Outdated
Just to nitpick. There may not be a way of knowing which article it is, due to technical limitations (no-one bothered to code it).
That does not mean that there is not an unambigous 175000th article. It naturally was the one to first hold that position. That is a unique honor. Others may hold that position later, but only one was the 175000th first. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 08:44, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)
In any case, I think this is GOOD. WTH, let's celebrate. It's been BHW but we are doing something right. Andrewa 09:17, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Wow, it's not even two days later and already we have over 175500 articles - this means that from the 175000 point we are over 2% of the way to 200000. Has anybody been tracking the number of articles over time since the beginning? It would be nice to see what the growth looks like. silsor 17:56, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)
More information than you could ever want: Wikipedia:Modelling Wikipedia's growth. --snoyes 18:21, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
This information, and much more (21 statistics for 31 Wikipedias), can be found at http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm Andre Engels 01:19, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
This seems to be broken for the English wikipedia. Jrincayc 15:25, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Before we get too carried away, remember that only 60% of these articles are articles in any real sense, and that probably only a quarter of them are of a genuine encyclopaedia standard. See my Wikipedia Quality Survey for a discussion of this. Adam 12:40, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You mean we have 43,000 articles of genuine encyclopedic standard, all written in two years? Wikipedia rocks. -- Tim Starling 13:18, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

Where to discuss possible problems

If I'm convinced a page should be deleted, I can post it at VfD. But where do I post a page I just think is questionable? If I do it on that page's Talk page, will it really be seen by enough people? orthogonal 07:45, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Cleanup is for anything questionnable. Angela
I post to the article's talk page. There it will gather attention precisely proportional to the number of readers of the article. Martin 18:54, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
But i get no response even though i left several questions in the certain talk pages...--Yacht 02:59, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
If you know how to correct the page and was just using the talk page out of politeness for previous contributors and get no responses, go ahead and correct the page. If you don't know how to correct the page but know its wrong, you can also ask for help at Wikipedia:Peer review and Wikipedia:Pages needing attention. Wikipedia has quite a few bad pages, but also Wikipedia is getting better all the time, particularly in these times of excellent server response, so although your concerns may not be addressed immediately if you can't address them yourself, there is excellent reason to think they will be addressed eventually. Pete 11:38, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

TV episode names

I just spent a little time moving The Shelter around. The article name was in use as a Twilight Zone episode. On closer examination I found that dozens of Twilight Zone episodes were listed as just their title. Many of them were just common phrases or nouns (The Mirror, The Shelter, A Game of Pool etc.)

The chances that anyone who enters 'Mirror' or 'Shelter' as a search term in Wikipedia expects to find a Twilight Zone episode is tiny. Also, my guess is that there are fifty or so shows on US television with named epsiodes; that means that a thousand of these articles are potentially being generated every year, ignoring foreign contrubutions.

It seems to me that this is not helpful to our users. Any thoughts? DJ Clayworth 18:37, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I dislike episode articles on Wikipedia, especially stubby ones. You may want to orphan and redirect to Twilight Zone. Ideally our search engine should return shelter before The Shelter. Martin 18:53, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Show episodes are like short stories; only one in a hundred is significant enough to discuss at length, the rest are likely be stubs forever, and can be effectively converted into 2-3 line entries in a big list - more readable for the TZ fan, doesn't lose any info. To keep List of The Twilight Zone episodes from becoming a really massive article, I would suggest making an article for each season, and redirecting titles to season articles, which hold the date, synopsis, and cast notes. Isn't there are a Wikiproject that makes TV article recommendations? Stan 19:22, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I definitely don't think we want to see individual entries for every episode of every popular television series. Even the people who are looking for that level of information would probably prefer to find it organized in a more accessible manner. In my opinion, as a rule of thumb there should be a main entry for general information about a television series with a linked "episode guide" entry for those who want detailed information. In a few cases, like "The Simpsons" for example, there might be a legitimate need for other specialized sub-entries like "characters" or "inside jokes". But overall, I think we should be working on reducing the proliferation of fan articles about every individual item on a single show. MK 02:16 (EST) 22 November 2003
Eh gads! There is no reason why stubs like Escape Clause should have its own article. All the info in there can easily be placed at the episode list. --mav 07:27, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Film

I just found out all 'films in year' are using title like 1982 in film. since i like term 'movie' more, am i allowed to creat some redirect pages like 1982 in movie? --Yacht 02:57, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't know about "allowed to", but I'd ask you not to on grammatical grounds – "film" works as a mass noun in a way that "movie" doesn't. Compare the (nonexistent) pages 1982 in theater vs. 1982 in play: that's the same as you're proposing with 'film' vs. 'movie'. –Hjr 09:15, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
1982 in the movies would be ok on grammatical grounds. Making a whole stack of redirects just on the grounds you like the word movie more, however, is probably unnecessary. Pete 11:46, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Maybe 1982 movies redirecting to 1982 in film (ie, not as the target of the redirect; which is what you meant all along, right, Yacht?) would be useful. –Hjr 15:06, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
not on grammatical grounds, just preference (redirect). I am just thinking of 'Wikipedia contains all possible misspellings'. --Yacht 03:33, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
No, I don't think we do want Wikipedia to contain all misspellings. The difficulty of ever getting a redirect deleted leads some people to strongly dislike needlessly created ones. The purposeful creation of grammatically incorrect redirects would be a bad idea in my opinion. Angela 04:22, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

How is that minor?

The definition of minor edit is "spelling corrections, formatting, and minor rearranging of text." Now look at User:Frecklefoot's revision of 18 June 2003 for the Rebecca Romijn-Stamos entry. How can THAT be a minor edit?! -- RoyV 06:25, 22 Nov 2003

Well, other than the bit about the Stamos couple being sexually liberal and throwing nude parties, all he did was rearrange some text for flow and neutrality. There's a lot of red in the diff, but it's really a borderline case. This sort of thing is not a big deal as long as it's not both egregious and habitual. -- Cyan 06:32, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I agree with RoyV. I don't think it's borderline, "removal of POV text" as Frecklefoot puts it should always be marked major. -- Tim Starling 08:38, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)
I agree with Cyan that it's borderline. He hasn't really changed the content; just moved it around. Angela 12:47, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
He added "The Stamos' are widely known as one of Hollywood's most sexually liberal couples. They often throw nude parties at their California home." That's not rearrangement. -- Tim Starling 13:29, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)
Ok, but adding one sentence could still be regarded as minor. Angela 14:23, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Sometimes that's true. But not for that particular sentence, IMO.
It's not a big deal though is it? I make mistakes like marking minor as major and major as minor all the time - pointless worrying about single edits - only if it were a systematic attempt to make deceptive edit should we care. Pete 23:51, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It would be nice to get an idea of community opinion on this particular edit, even if there will clearly be no repercussions for Frecklefoot or anyone else doing a similar thing. We have a policy, but many Wikipedians seem to ignore it. Should it be altered to reflect the current trend? -- Tim Starling 07:50, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

Undeletion

I'm trying to undelete Eckernförde, but I keep undeleted A. What am I doing wrong? RickK 08:26, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Peculiar. I just undeleted it successfully - just clicked on the Restore! button... Dysprosia 08:29, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
What Restore button? RickK 08:34, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
When you've got a deleted article you've got the "n deleted edits" link, click that and you'll see the Restore button :) Dysprosia 08:56, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I figured out my problem. I clicked on the link from the undelete page and it sent me to the page to undelete, and I changed the address to "Eckernförde", but I didn't GO to that page before trying to undelete. RickK 19:06, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia's first Typo Correction Day

  • Saturday the 22nd is Wikipedia's first typo correction day. Typo

Please don't do it by using a bot. Bots have to be approved before they're unleashed on the Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Bots. RickK 19:09, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

  • That is correct. No unaproved bots will be permitted on wikipedia. Bots can wreak havoc. Alexandros 19:16, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Target audience

Who is the target audience for wikipedia articles?

The answers to this question may resolve a dispute on the software engineering page. One auther wants to remove some introduction content, because it is obvious (and it is obvious to professionals). Another wants to include the introductory content because non-software engineers (like high-school students and general public) may not know it very well. Articles could be targeted to experts, general public, or to high-school or college students writing papers on these topics. How should we balance the conflicting needs of different groups?

The SE page starts off with 3 very general and simple paragraphs that (hopefully) anyone can read. The rest of the article delves into complex detail. 204.134.9.1

See this very old post on the mailing list for the views of Larry and Jimbo. I think we need to assume people aren't stupid, so listing examples of software is unnecessary if you've stated that software engineers develop software, you can expect people to know what software is without giving examples of it. Angela 16:49, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)~
I always try to write the lead paragraph for a literate adult whose education somehow completely passed over the subject of the article, and rely on links in case the terms being used to define are themselves unfamiliar. So for software engineering, assume the reader has heard of both software and engineering in general, explain what "sofware engineering" is, and contrast with computer programming, which is what it's most frequently confused with. Stan 19:57, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I've taken my example from what seemed to be the best articles in the general field. I hope my articles would be intelligible to year six primary school (which by no coincindence I teach, age about 11 years) and useful to anyone without a major subject (ie including final year) in the field at pass level (or better) at an Australian university. That's an extra eight years education between the lower and upper marks but it's the standard I thought others were setting and I find it surprisingly achievable. It's also a good test of NPOV... year six are really good at cutting through weaslewords, and people who've studied the topic for two years at uni are pretty critical readers. So if you can imagine your perspective being respected by both these extreme audiences, it's pretty safe, and otherwise an alarm bell should ring.
Having written that first and then checked Larry and Jimbo's views they seem to line up pretty well. Andrewa 20:18, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Our target audience is encyclopedia readers. Beyond that, I think Andrewa has the right approach. Martin 00:01, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I was wondering recently how many people (who don't edit and write for wikipedia) use wikipedia as a resource. It would be interesting to conduct some polls of those who don't edit here. Kingturtle 00:03, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I try to write in news style. If we all did this, then Wikipedia would be a concise, general and a whole bunch of specialized encyclopedias all in one. --mav 04:21, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

Database error when doing a move

When I move a page whose title contains an apostrophe, I get a database error message (A database query syntax error has occurred. The last attempted database query was: "SELECT wl_user FROM watchlist WHERE wl_namespace=0 AND wl_title='Salters'_Company'" from within function "". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '_Company at line 2".)" The move actually takes place, so there's no problem, just a bogus error. RickK 20:42, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm no expert on MySQL by maybe you need to encase it in double quotes or escape the single quote. Something like:
  • SELECT wl_user FROM watchlist WHERE wl_namespace=0 AND wl_title="Salters'_Company" or
  • SELECT wl_user FROM watchlist WHERE wl_namespace=0 AND wl_title='Salters\'_Company'
Dori 20:48, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)

Representing the phenomenal Wikipedian growth. Ideas?

  • <Representing the phenomenal Wikipedian growth. Any ideas?>

OK, I usually sign with an updated 6,931,636 articles in Wikipedia, and growing, growing... field statement. So I always wonder how we could monitor this growth visually. Did anyone think about representing the phenomenal Wikipedian growth as 4-D knowledge landscapes, with hot spots, link density, edit wars, spikes, and all?

Sunday, 2024-December-29, 07:26 Universal Time, 6,931,636 articles in Wikipedia, and growing, growing...

  • "Remember! United we stand... Divided we fall... Well, well, well... well... Well, Stanley!"


Page Stats

How can we see visit, reload and other usage stats for any random page?

Sunday, 2024-December-29, 07:26 Universal Time, 6,931,636 articles in Wikipedia, and growing, growing...

  • "Remember! United we stand... Divided we fall... Well, well, well... well... Well, Stanley!"

How to delete previously uplodaed file?

How can i delete a previously uploaded file? Pradeepbansal

VfD. Please your name by ~~~~ like everybody else in all Talks and Talk-like pages. --Menchi 03:29, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Please merge Wikipedia talk:problem users

The Wikipedia talk:Problem users page didn't get merged in. I'm not sure how I'd do this, or even if it can be done without sysop privs. Thanks... -- Pakaran 06:14, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I assumed that was done on purpose as it was mostly discussing the name and related issues of the old Problem users page. Angela 07:10, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Ok that makes sense. Feel free to remove this section. -- Pakaran 08:11, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Editing other people's remarks in discussion pages

Do we have a guideline on editing other people's remarks in discussion pages?

I'm quite happy if somebody corrects a typo or spelling error, but a complete rework of my remarks - even when done expertly and with no sinister intent - leaves me a bit nervous if it is still tagged with my signature. Anjouli 06:18, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Don't know of any guidelines, but I wouldn't sign anything with anyone else's name. That is just misrepresentation, no matter how accurate. Something like "Anjouli said: [synopsis]" should be OK though. --snoyes 06:27, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I would consider even the correcting of spelling errors a break of Wikiquette. Dori 06:33, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)
Correcting a typo or spelling error is okay, other forms of editing is quite unacceptable, IMHO. --Yacht 06:43, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Agreed. But allow the editing of tabs, indents and whitespace where these are clearly wrong.
What about where somebody fails to sign (even with an IP)? That can be very confusing if the following paragraph has the same indentation. I usually put "Anjouli starts here". Is that correct protocol do you think?
You can do that, or you can sign for the anon by finding their IP from the history or just writing (anon) after their comments. Angela
Whatever the consensus, I think it needs to be written into the guidelines. Anjouli 07:12, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)


It's perfectly fine and even encouraged by policies such as Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks. Please note the statement at the bottom of every page:
If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here.
Angela 07:08, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hi Angela. Surely by implication that means articles, not signed remarks in discussion pages? Anjouli
No, it means everything - pages, talk pages, user pages. See Wikipedia:Talk page#Refactoring talk pages and Meatball:RefactorAsYouGo. Angela
That's another case, what's about editing ur point of view to the opposite one? like, say, changing "I agree with you" to "I disagree with you"? --Yacht 07:16, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Well that would be a violation of Wikiquette but editing your comments to cut the size of an overly large page or to add clarity is to be encouraged. Angela
Editing other people's comments is evil and should be outlawed. Roughly half the editors agree with this, see Wikipedia talk:Remove personal attacks. Join us, Anjouli! :) -- Tim Starling 07:46, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)
Some guidelines on this would make things a lot easier. Personally I think nothing should be changed, except typo's. The problems gets more tricky though when you are discussing things. For instance, is it okay to reply to another contributor point by point(which is a lot easier) by interspersing comments? The problem being that may break up the flow of their argument and possibly weaken their argument.  : ChrisG 12:58, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
There are no guidelines because opinion is deeply divided and Jimbo hasn't made any declaration. I can only suggest that you read Wikipedia talk:Remove personal attacks carefully, and perhaps add your own observations. -- Tim Starling 13:14, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

What do brown links mean? Protected pages? :O --Yacht 07:12, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It means the page is a stub. You can set what you regard as a stub in your preferences. Angela

About copyvios

I should probably know this, but... What do we do when we stumble on an article which has a borderline copyvio? Meaning that some sentences are copied, others not. Is the whole article going to the copyvio page? I'm tempted. Cheers, Muriel Victoria 09:12, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Meaning of a proverb

Hello I am just wondering in which situation "a creeking gate hangs long" is used as proverb. Mostafa

Wrong contribution dates

I just discovered that officially my first contribution was moving Brutus to Marcus Junius Brutus in Augus 23, 2002. Neat. Problem is that i did it yesterday! Is there something wrong in the kingdom of Wikipedia? Muriel Victoria 10:51, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, moving will cause weird time travelling events. I thought the bug's fixed. It was mentioned in the Pump a while back. --Menchi 10:54, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Time traveling in wiki... Hummm What are the philosophical repercussions? Michael was a vandal before he was born?... Current events are being posted before they actually happen? The list is endless. Muriel

Truncated dodecahedron

Funny. But I guess this goes to Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense and replaced with a more encyclopedic text? --seav 11:23, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

*Wryly laugh*. Replace with encyclopedic text of course. This goes on saying that even some admins think Wikipedia is all just a big joke. Ha.. so funny...ha......... --Menchi 11:26, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
A very carefully crafted joke - someone spent a lot of time and effort over this ! Definitely deserves to be preserved for posterity. The joke version is actually on Wikipedia:Yet more bad jokes and other deleted nonsense -- Gandalf61 14:09, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)
Perhaps someone could explain the joke to non-mathematicians? Adam 15:05, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It has been replaced. See the link posted by Gandalf. Dori 15:28, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)
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