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Moved discussion

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Requests for help and comments

  1. Daniel's redirect project still needs your help with fixing thousands of broken links
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  12. ilya invites all math geeks to discuss what articles should be written as we move towards 1.0

Note: Some discussion archived at Wikipedia:Village pump/January 2004 archive 4 and Wikipedia:Village pump/January 2004 archive 5. Optim 14:01, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

We have more than twice the articles in Encarta

I've always wistfully looked to the day when Wikipedia would be able to take established encyclopedias head-on. Just now, I looked up Encarta, and found that their biggest edition has less than 70,000 articles! In two years, we've created more than 2 and a half times the number of articles in Microsoft's encyclopedia. Well done, Wikipedians! -- Lunkwill

Note however that Encarta's articles are on average longer and more complete than ours. So we still have some work to do! :) --mav
What'd be more interesting is what percentage of Encarta articles Wikipedia has. I suspect a large percentage of the WP articles are fluff (are we counting every single city in the US as part of the total, for example). Anthony DiPierro 21:14, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Searching

How about letting the google search be directly from the main page? Instead of the frustration of entering a search and then having to accept a google search (which b.t.w. gives completely acceptable answers) -- anon

Searching is disabled because of performance reasons, but as we just yesterday moved back to the faster computer and some more new servers are scheduled to be online within the next weeks you can expect to become online soon again. The Google search was thus just an emergency workaround - having the same user interface as before, but avoid the server slowdown. Moving the google search to the main page would make the temporarily workaround more permanent then anyone wants. andy 08:40, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Seems like searching is already enabled again now. However the index seems to have some wrong entries - if I search for my favourite mispelling "generaly" it gives just two pages, and both don't contain that word anymore. andy 08:48, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

School project

There's a school project on cosmetics going on. See Mascara, Nail diseases, Manicure (existed already before), Pedicure, Eyebrows, Eyebrow makeovers, and maybe others. All are on Cleanup, the last one also on VfD. See also the page history of Manicure, where the author comments "Begining a page for a grade, do not edit"... I have the strong feeling that the other authors belong to the same class. Most of these articles are in a pretty bad shape, and anyway, others have edited some of them. I'll grant that some of these may yet become real articles, but somehow I doubt it. What to do with these? Lupo 13:00, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Briefly, keep and improve if worth having an article on. Delete if not. Just like any other contributions, in fact. Bmills 14:10, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
To clarify: my problem is not the poor quality, but the fact that these girls apparently will be graded on something others also edited. Lupo 14:12, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
That's not our problem, but something for the teacher to sort out. I think that this type of school project should be encoraged though. theresa knott 15:03, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

See User:Craigbutz for a list of them. There are more than cosmetics articles. My concerns are that we correct and improve the English and they get marked on our corrections, some have been redirected (what mark to they get then?) and some are how-tos. The premise may not understand the wiki concept - people don't own articles here, they are collaborative efforts. Secretlondon 14:17, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

I have taken the liberty to write on his talk page and to email him. Hopefully he'll show up and can provide some reassurances and perhaps we can all gain some enlightenment. - UtherSRG 15:39, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC) ⊙

Maybe he should have his students use temporary pages before unleashing them on the unsuspecting public. Davodd 18:52, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)
By using subpages off the teacher's username? No one would mess with them there I suppose, and once grades have been handed out the teacher could move them to an appropriate page on wikipedia-proper and let them sink or swim on their own merits. Fabiform 19:20, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I think this is an excellent idea. - UtherSRG 19:39, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thank you all for your interest in this experiment. Please do not about students being graded on work they didn't do. I will be looking at page histories, user contribution lists, as well as narrative response papers in assessing. I would think that wikipedians would understand that writing has value beyond the finished product, and have faith that people can be given credit for participating in collaboration.

One of the biggest frustrations of writing teachers is finding assignments to give where the writing actually matters. I work with vocational high school students who are learning a wealth of specialized knowledge worth sharing. Some of them, obviously, struggle with writing. They are the ones who need their writing to matter the most, or they won't take it seriously.

I do now see a number of aspects of the assignment that should be reworked, which I could not have foreseen without letting students giving it a shot. I opted not to have them work up drafts in MS-Word because it would have been a nightmare to explain why formatting doesn't tranfer. Even with a demo and basic guide, many are confused by the mark-up.

In the future, I may have to save this project for more proficient writers. I do like the idea of temporary pages. Is there a protocol for doing that? Would it work to create links to obscurely named articles, then change the titles to their real names when completed? Other ideas? - Craigbutz 00:33, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'll reply to Craig (on his talk page and email him a copy) on how to create sub-pages off of his own page. - UtherSRG 02:52, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Letter sent. - UtherSRG 03:16, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Messages for works in progress, low-quality articles, stub-message variants?

A lot of problem articles seem to be works in progress. Someone had an idea, got started, left things just barely started or incomplete, and you can't tell whether the project is still alive.

A related problem, which I think we may see more of, are pages started as school projects (see above, and also see Nurse assistant skills, which is currently the result of my efforts to fix grammar and language in an article of this type).

In such cases, Wikipedians are reluctant to delete the articles if a) the topic is worthy and b) the content that is there is considered to be better than nothing.

Still, it seems to me that it might be useful to have messages that are variants on the stub message. One might say something like "This page is a work in progress. You can help Wikipedia by adding to it." And it also might be useful to have a message that says something like "This page does not meet Wikipedia quality standards. You can help Wikipedia by improving it." In both cases, the message should be dated and should be handled as a sort of postpone vote for deletion. If someone notices that the page with such a notice is bad and hasn't been improved in months, that would be a prima facie case for deletion.

Thoughts? Dpbsmith 13:28, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Well, my immediate reaction is to reiterate what others have said on this subject before - the problem is that all articles on wikipedia are, by definition, works in progress. Granted, some are more polished than others, but there's no such thing as a final version of an article here, and that is surely the strength of the wikipedia approach. If a page needs attention, by all means list it on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, but would we really gain anything by going round putting notes on things that basically say "I don't think this is very good, but I'm not going to improve it at the moment so you should"? And as for deleting articles because they have remained low quality for too long, this seems to involve far too many fuzzy quantities: how long, and how low quality. And if you do delete it, you lose any information that could have been used by someone to improve it. - IMSoP 14:06, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I agree with IMSoP on this, to a point at least. It seems possible that some articles may someday say all that's needed on a subjcet and be well-written and so need no further tweaking. But most articles are wip and will be for some time to come. The problem is with really poor articles on subjects worth having, and I see no real alternative to listing on Cleanup or Pages needing attention until someone comes along to improve them. Bmills 14:14, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

migration of the apaches? --> Wikipedia:Reference Desk

Year in X

I noted some of the year (example 1988) have a box on the right to select other categories such as 1988 in sports, 1988 in film and the like. However, in 1954 (and others), this box does not appear. It is quite useful so if somebody knows how to add this, then I think it would be a good idea. Thank you. JackandJill 17:04, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You could add this yourself, looking at the 1988 page, the code is as follows:


<div style="float:right; border:1px; border-style:solid; padding:2px"> 
'''See also:'''
* [[1988 in aviation]]
* [[1988 in film]]
* [[1988 in literature]]
* [[1988 in music]]
* [[1988 in sports]]
* [[1988 in television]]
</div>



There may not be any info on those years yet though, so the links will appear in red. Dori | Talk 17:11, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)


However for 1954 I did just add it :-) andy 17:13, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)


The current version of the see also box is at WikiProject Years.  The box is a newish idea, and hasn't been added to all year pages, yet. Gentgeen 07:05, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Case sensitivity of page names


Is there any justification for case sensitive page names?

Is there any reason to want "climate change", "Climate change", "climate Change" or indeed "ClImAte ChangE" to be different pages? In this case, obviously no, but are there in others?

If not, could wiki perhaps internalise names based on capitalising the first letter and little-ing the others (ie "Climate Change" is canonical), and (if desired) undo this in the displayed page. Ie, if you search for "ClimATE CHange" wiki would search for "Climate Change" but could (if this is desirable; it would be, say, if you had searched on IPCC or ASEAN) reconvert to whatever you had searched on, and display a page headed "ClimATE CHange". This would I think be very little extra load. (William M. Connolley 17:39, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC))



The only time it could possibly make a difference (that I've noticed) is when it comes to acronyms →Raul654 17:42, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)


True. But acronyms are all uppercase, so UC'ing the first letter wouldn't affect them [WMC].


Not all acronyms are uppercase. Think of Dfs or Basic, for instance. Bmills 10:42, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


I'm sure this came up before and an example was swiftly located where a two-word entry had different meaning depending upon whether the second word was capitalised or not. The answer will probably waken me sometime later tonight at which point I will have no clue as to why I thought it :-) Phil 18:18, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)


A trivial example is Meat loaf vs. Meat Loaf.  Despite this example, I heartily agree that things in general would be easier if entry titles were case-insensitive, with the odd exceptions like this handled through disambiguation.  Jgm 18:53, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Of course, those rare cases could be treated like any other disambiguation. Anthony DiPierro 18:37, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)


OK, so, can anyone either point to the earlier discussion, or, give an example where the different meanings occur? (William M. Connolley 22:36, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC))



This did come up in the Pump recently, and I'd be interested in continuing the discussion. But I don't know offhand where or even whether it was archived.


Mind you, I have found Wikipedians to generally be very conservative about such changes even if trivial. And this is not a trivial change. Andrewa 00:18, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


There are many good reasons to keep titles case-sensitive. For example, GNU and gnu are quite different things, as is OVA and ova. With a little time, it is not difficult to compile a long list of words where case matters. Furthermore, an addition good reason to keep page titles case-sensitive is the fact that it helps to standardize the way users write pages, so we don't have people writing pages like "comMUNity" just to be funny. --Lowellian 00:46, Jan 22, 2004 (UTC)


A long list perhaps, but are they all acronyms-vs-words? OVA and ova are different, but Ova and ova are the same thing. And indeed (I wasn't ware of this - is it new?) "ova" is actually "Ova" so my suggestion is half-done already, but only for the initial letter of the first word. GNU and Gnu/gnu are different so perhaps I have to modify my idea to just uppercase-ing the initial letter of each word, which is only a minor extension of what seems to be done already.


As to your second point, at the moment you CAN write a page called comMUNity, and it does something. (William M. Connolley 10:21, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)).


There are certainly reasons for not completely removing case-sensitivity. But there are schemes that would do this far better than we do at present. At present a link to Oyster bay is broken even if Oyster Bay exists, while a link to oyster Bay would find the article. All this has been discussed before, I wonder where it went? Andrewa 18:44, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


It looks like gnu and ova should be treated as disambiguisations. Why not gnu (acronym)?
ilya 23:50, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)



Broken link?


Can anyone spot what I've done incorrectly on the John Hanson (disambiguation) page. The links to minor Hansons show up as missing articles. When I click on one (e.g. the John Hanson (musician) ) the pedia gives back an edit page with the existing article. The reverse seems OK, in that the [[John Hanson (musician)]] list of what links here shows the disabiguation page. I've built several of these disambig pages but never encountered this problem before.  Thanks, Lou I 18:27, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)



It should display OK now.  I wikified a couple of links on the page to force it to save a new version (because it ignored me when I tried to save with no changes).  Did you make the disambig page before you had created the new pages John Hanson (musician) etc?  I think wikipedia remembers whether a page was blank at the last save or something?  Hopefully someone who's not just speculating will come along and explain in a moment... Fabiform 18:50, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)


War Quotation


Who said "I am going to Heaven because I have seen Hell" while fighting a war and in which war.



You're probably better asking quote-type questions of our buddies at Wikiquote - here's there Village Pump: http://wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Village_pump (they don't appear to have a reference desk). -- Finlay McWalter 19:57, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Your quote is wrong -- it's "God, if I should die today, I know I will go to Heaven, because I already did my time in Hell." by Rene A. Hebert during WW II. - Davodd 23:38, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)


Only Move-this-page used but history now gone


Obviously i'm confused, bcz i'm convinced i've found some sort of anamoly in the system.  I believe the only action i took was using "Move this page" to reverse what i thot (and would still think, but for the inexplicable situation i now see) was another editor's "Move this page" action.

In a line, neither List of people by name: Mas-Maz nor List of people by name: Mas now includes the history 



  • that Mas-Maz had yesterday,
    • 

  • that i believe Mas had this morning, and
    • 

  • that i believe Mas-Maz should have now.





Yesterday there was an "article", List of people by name: Mas-Maz or Mas-Maz (hereinafter, "the original"; not a conventional article, but a page in the article name-space that was (and i think again is; this note is more urgent than checking) a leaf in the tree whose root is List of people by name).  The following extract from about 16:33, 2004 Jan 21 reflects an effort by another editor to turn that leaf into 4 new leaves, to replace the original (i.e. collectively list the people who were listed in the original), each new leaf having the same ancestor as the original:



14:32, 2004 Jan 21 M List of people by name: May-Maz


14:29, 2004 Jan 21 List of people by name: May-Maz


14:27, 2004 Jan 21 List of people by name: Mau-Max (top)


14:23, 2004 Jan 21 List of people by name: Mau-Max


14:23, 2004 Jan 21 M List of people by name: Mas (top)


14:20, 2004 Jan 21 M List of people by name: Mat (top)


14:19, 2004 Jan 21 M List of people by name: Mat


14:16, 2004 Jan 21 List of people by name: Mat


14:13, 2004 Jan 21 List of people by name: Mat


14:11, 2004 Jan 21 M List of people by name: Mas


14:10, 2004 Jan 21 List of people by name: Mas


14:07, 2004 Jan 21 List of people by name: Mas-Maz (moved to "List_of_people_by_name:_Mas") (top)


14:07, 2004 Jan 21 Talk:List of people by name: Mas-Maz (moved to "Talk:List_of_people_by_name:_Mas") (top)


14:06, 2004 Jan 21 List of people by name: Mas


13:57, 2004 Jan 21 List of people by name: Mas



 

My judgement was that 



  • this editor got confused, gave up, or set it aside temporarily despite not having finished,
    • 

  • there were two copies of part of the list reachable by following links from the root, and
    • 

  • the new configuration should not persist, due to the prospect of editors adding and deleting sometimes from one copy and sometimes the other, and readers consulting one of the resulting conflicting lists without being aware of the other (and therefore not realizing if they consult different copies on different occasions).


(I think i like the other editor's concept, but it needs to be checked, repaired, and evaluated, at leisure, rather than as done, on the copy that is in use.)

I am mystified by the two earliest entries, which appear to me to imply the need for a deletion of List of people by name: Mas if the two entries above them really reflect (a single?) "Move this page" action.

I am more mystified by the fact that my "Move this page" of Mas (back) to Mas-Maz, which i understand to have succeeded bcz of Mas-Maz being a history-less link, lacks any history but the other editor's move. (Yes, i understand why it doesn't reflect both moves, tho i heartily disapprove of that design decision.)

(While not definitive, this helps bolster my illusion of having a dim grasp of what's going on: related stuff that's obviously a place to look.)

I am loath to do anything toward rehabilitation of the data structure and names without resolving the history problem, tho of course users will before too long track mud all over it anyway.  

Help! 

TIA --Jerzy 20:08, 2004 Jan 21 (UTC)
I said (emphasis added), just above the tabular extract above



Yesterday there was an "article", List of people by name: Mas-Maz or Mas-Maz (hereinafter, "the original"; not a conventional article, but a page in the article name-space that was (and i think again is; this note is more urgent than checking) a leaf in the tree whose root is List of people by name).  The following extract from about 16:33, 2004 Jan 21 reflects an effort by another editor to turn that leaf into 4 new leaves, to replace the original (i.e. collectively list the people who were listed in the original), each new leaf having the same ancestor as the original:


But i shouldn't have needed to check: my plan after my "move this page" was to revert to my own last edit, which would have hidden the main (and probably all) links thru the tree to the new leaves; if the history had been intact as i expected, i'd have had the old version to revert to, and i forgot that having nothing to revert to was what led to this appeal. [shrug] --Jerzy 20:37, 2004 Jan 21 (UTC)



The history hasn't gone, it's at [1]. You probably need to Wikipedia:clear your cache, or at the very least click here. Hemanshu moved it to List of people by name: Mas-Maz, you moved it back. -- Tim Starling 01:53, Jan 22, 2004 (UTC)


Marking births and deaths


How should we be marking births and deaths on the anniversary pages? (eg January 21) people born on this day who are now dead have their year of death marks as († YYYY), (+ YYYY) or (d. YYYY) (each page seems to be different).  For people who have died on this day, births are often not marked, or they use the convention (* YYYY), (+ YYYY), (b. YYYY) or (YYYY - YYYY).  I had been changing all the death symbols to the dagger (†) as I thought it was a good symbol of death (stab, stab) and * for births, but another user pointed out that both † and + could be seen as Christian symbols and there was a policy to avoid them.  I can't find any policy on this in the manual of style. Fabiform 20:21, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)






NPOV is the policy you seek. We need not have a Christian bias here when it is not needed. See related talk at Talk:Historical anniversaries/Example --mav 20:36, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Well I'm not Christian and it hadn't occured to me people would see the dagger as a cross instead of weapon.  But I do of course want to be NPOV which is why I asked here.  Thanks for pointing me toward the relevant talk page.  I see the consensus on the talk page is for (b. YYYY) and (d. YYYY).  Cheers, Fabiform 20:57, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)


When I saw the symbol I thought it was supposed to be a cross.  But, whatever, I don't care one way or another for that reason.  The dagger is unclear, though.  I'd prefer (yyyy-yyyy), or alternatively, (died yyyy). Anthony DiPierro 01:54, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Actually Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) is better. We use (yyyy-yyyy). de.wikipedia uses the format with * and crosses. Secretlondon 20:44, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)


The issue at hand is on pages like January 21 (as indicated) where there is a ==Births== section. In that section, if the person born then has since passed on, it's common to list the year of their death. In what manner should this indication be given. Of the above options, (d. YYYY) is my preference. - UtherSRG 20:55, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)



ah but (YYYY - YYYY) would duplicate information in this case


Today we have this entry for example-
Births



  • 1738 - Ethan Allen, American patriot († 1789)


Changing this to (d. 1789) is one thing, but this would look odd IMO-




Fabiform 20:58, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)



The dagger (†) notation for many English-speaking users is a footnote notation. Its use to mark a death is archane and unclear to modern readers. When I see a "†", I start looking for the footnote explainer.  My vote is for the standard (YYYY-YYYY) WP style. As for the Ethan Allen Link above -- the death is not germane to the list topic unless he died on his birthday. Otherwise, it should be in his bio entry article. Davodd 21:48, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

I disagree that the mention of Ethan Allen's (and everyone else's) year of death is out of place on the anniversary page.  It adds context.  Either way, these dates are all over the anniversary pages and written in many different formats, so I think it's worthwhile to tidy them up (rather than remove them).  Of course, if lots of people jump in and second your comment, I'll bow to the consensus.  Fabiform 22:31, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Linking Wikipedia to 1world2travel


Dear editors
My compliments for the Wikipêdia initiative.
I already added a lot of links to my pages!
The homepage is www.1world2travel.com
It is a one-man-site (I really am the only one working on it) promoting countries for tourism and culture. The site is private and non-commercial and started two years ago when I studied the net, learning how to produce a website.
You will find most of your links on my country-portals, the 'starttips'. You will find them immediately by going to www.toerisme.starttips.com and then search the continents.
These pages started in Dutch but I'm extending them and translating them into English. 
An example I just finished South Africa (www.zuidafrika.starttips.com) giving a mass of information. China will be next. Some European and African countries underwent these changes already.
Maybe you can use my site? Put some links to your pages?
I don't think you will find many other sites offering the same volume of information to their visitors.
Kind regards
Walter Vaerewijck
Menegemlei 15
2100 Antwerp
+32/475/386-486
wvaerewyck@pandora.be
1w2t@pandora.be

PS - Personal info: I'm a retired journalist. Still active in touristic trade magazines and a tourmanager for the Flemish TO 'VTB'.






proposition regarding article length


I'm kinda new here but I have an idea.  An author could write an article on a subject such as Computational complexity theory that could take an hour to read.  Some people might want an article that long.  Some people would rather spend 10 minutes reading the article, others might want to spend 5 minutes and some would only want to spend less than two minutes.  I propose we create a system where articles would have different versions with different lengths.  One could choose what version they want based on their needs, and we could even have a setting in the prefrences page where users choose what their default size would be.  I realize that this might cause problems with minor edits (applying them to each version), and such, but I think we should give it a try.  We could only use this system on articles that might need it.  I think we might have 2 or 3 versions at most for each article.  Tell me what you think.  Thanks, and happy editing!. Sennheiser



Well, a well-written section should essentially do that already (and something that's kind of enforced by how nasty it is to edit a large article), with sub-subjects farmed off to other pages.  Good information design would suggest that the largest single article should take around 5 or 10 minutes to read (heck, probably less). That does seem to be the case, at least in the overwhelming number of cases.  I figure if some article were to rise to the titanic proportion you suggest, the correct solution would be to radically refactor it. IMHO the same information shouldn't ever be in more than one article. -- Finlay McWalter 23:28, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)


There is no need for separate articles. An abstract at the top of the article would be ok, I think. Optim 01:00, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


I'd go with Finlay on this one: if the article gets too long, it should be split into seperate articles.  My justification is that ease of cross-referencing is an obvious advantage of hypertext: since you don't have to turn lots of pages to find another article, you lose little by having to go from one to another.  That's not to say we should have a million one-paragraph articles; and as they grow, it does become important to add abstract-style introductions; but really big articles should be split section-wise. - IMSoP 01:18, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Sigh.  I disagree with this very strongly.  Breaking up long articles on single topics into multiple pages is *not* an effective use of hypertext: it unnecessarily complicates usage and leads to duplication of information, difficulty of indexing and general tangles.  From a user point of view it makes it impossible to know when you have seen all pertinent information or completed an article.  Moreover, No size limits is an early and basic tenet of the Wiki [2] .  So how do we prevent the problem originally raised by Sennheiser?  Sectioning, resulting in effective tables of contents (these serve all the purposes of hyperlinks between pages with none of the disadvantages) and news style (which, done properly, yields exactly what Sennheiser is suggesting in one article).Jgm 02:30, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


You are correct, Jgm, but extreme length also has its problems: higher risk of edit conflicts, of internal inconsistency, broken anchors etc. Also my experience is that very long articles are often viewed as "set into stone" - people are more cautious about editing them.


Generally, we try for each article to have a maximum size of about 30,000 characters. At this point, it usually makes sense to summarize the individual section and split them away into individual articles (e.g. Germany). For a 30K article, an individual abstract section is really not necessary. A couple of carefully worded intro paragraphs should do the trick.—Eloquence 12:18, Jan 22, 2004 (UTC)


This topic is (tangentially) adressed in Wikipedia:Article series. Elde 09:18, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Image copyrights


The featured article on the V1 flying bomb is great, but I was a little miffed to see no copyright or source details in the image description page of the photo. IMO this is a real slap in the face for those of us who are putting a lot of work into providing properly GPL-ed images for Wikipedia.

I think the featured articles should be examples of what we want, and I don't think this one currently qualifies on these grounds. Sorry! Andrewa 00:02, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Help I cant see international fonts? --> Wikipedia:Reference Desk



Abstract


How do you think about adding an abstract on some articles? Optim 01:14, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)



That is a good idea I was actually thinking of introducing that idea, but I was busy with something else. Sennheiser 02:41, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Could you give us some examples of where that might be appropiate... an abstract and an introduction are not the same thing and I would've thought the latter is most appropiate for an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia doesn't try to demonstrate anything, more discuss what others have demonstrated. When I think of an abstract I think of "This article demonstrates/proves/presents evidence that..." Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:21, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


What I mean is: One paragraph which will include all the useful information contained in the article, so that the reader can get the info in less than 1 minute without even having to scroll, and it will be written in a way that will motivate the reader to read the article. A summary. See [3]. Another way is a bulleted list with the main facts, without motivational text. Optim 08:34, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Is anything stopping you from just doing it? Why not do it, to an article that you think needs it, and let us look at a specific rather than a generality. If we really hate it, we can always revert it. (Of course, if it is literally true that it is possible to put "all the useful information contained in the article" into a single paragraph, then there's no need for the rest of the article, is there?) (BTW, what does Britannica 3 do? Do they ever have both a "micropaedia" and "macropaedia" article under the same heading?) Dpbsmith 11:38, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


I wouldn't imagine somebody not to like the idea, and I was planning to add intros/abstracts/summaries to some articles. When I added the first abstract (which wasn't so good in my opinion, but I was about to make it better it later), it was reverted, so I asked here in order to see what's your attitude on this matter. It seems that for some reason the idea is not considered good, so I am not going to add any more summaries. Optim 13:03, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


I don't like the idea. I think it's the right style for a report or scientific paper, but inappropriate for an article. In any case, the most important facts should already be in the introductory paragraph. -- Tim Starling 12:08, Jan 22, 2004 (UTC)


I don't like it either. An article is already, if you like, an abstract inasmuch as it attempts to summarize knowledge from a variety of sources in a single text. The implicit assumption of this idea is that articles contain not-useful information. Bmills 12:12, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


I think an introduction or overview is important for articles that are long and detailed; for example, the Voltaire article could do with one! --Sam


I'm afraid I'm also not keen on the idea.  Really, the opening sentence or two (heck, there's a policy document for this, but I'm damned if I can find it) should say a) what the thingy is, b) in what context, and c) why I should give a damn. ("Finsville is the capital of Finlandia, and is its largest city. It is noted for its preponderance of unicorns, and for its lack of wise men and virgins.").  Frankly, we're very bad at doing this already, with lots of articles getting launched straight away into history or controversy.  This alone should be enough to tell some reader who has chanced upon the article (particularly from a search engine) whether this is the thing they're looking for.  Beyond that, I think the article should take its own, linear, course. -- Finlay McWalter 23:54, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


If you mean abstract is a short summary of what is actually in the article I think it's nice for really long articles (greater then 10 sections) ilya 23:59, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Picture copyright?


If I have a scanned film picture that I give to wikipedia, what have I given to free domain then?



  • The scanned copy and any derivate of it?
    • 

  • The original film picture?


Same for a digital picture. I give a cropped and resized version, do I still have copyright of the original or not?
Stefan 02:49, Jan 22, 2004 (UTC)



(IANAL)You retain the copyright to anything you post to the 'pedia.  You have only released that particular version under the GNU-FDL, which does not say you can't release it under some other terms later.  Any source you have, such as an uncropped and unzoomed version of a picture, is not included in what was released, and so you retain all rights to them.  I think. Gentgeen 07:22, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


That's certainly what Wikipedia:Copyrights says, so that's probably the best legal information available to Wikipedia. Onebyone


Votes for Merge


Moved to User:Optim/Wikipedia:Votes for merge






access request


I received a request to permit access to my computer while on Wikipedia. As I did not know it I refused the request -- it was from "mega something.." and sheer habit made me deny acess automatically and miss the full bit -- is it your computer? 

thank you

Ray Stirling



Probably it is not Wikipedia's server. AFAIK the only communication between a user and the server goes thru the standard HTTP port. I suppose the message you got was about another TCP port. Optim 07:45, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


It was probably one of the Windows Popup spammers - you are using Win2000 or XP, right? You should disable the messenger service (not the Windows Messenger, that's a different program), or use a firewall which blocks connects to port 137/139. andy 08:43, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Discussion of formatting toolbar


I notice that in the most recent clearing of this page, the discussion of the proposed Javascript edit toolbar has been archived.  Am I alone in feeling that this discussion was very much still 'alive', and should therefore be carried on somewhere else if there is no room here? If I am, feel free to remove this comment. - IMSoP 15:19, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)



The top of this very page states: Do not raise bug reports or suggest features here. Submit them to sourceforge or discuss them at Meta. Javascript is off-topic on the village pump, imo. Martin 00:21, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Just a quick note that I have read your comments, and I plan to make some changes that will hopefully make the toolbar more useful. Note that it can be disabled in the prefs.—Eloquence


thank you wiki.. i love you! ce.



Inland Empire in California


While updating the Interstate 15 article, I came across an interesting situation.  The article contains a link to Inland Empire and Inland Empire (California).  Both articles contain information about the region near Los Angeles, California, but I don't know enough about the area to merge the articles myself.  Also, there's the question of which would be the most appropriate title -- with or without the state name.  Is the "Inland Empire" near Portland, Oregon sufficiently well-known to warrant its own entry?  If not, I'd think the simpler Inland Empire would be the best place for the article.

I'm not planning to make this change myself, as my hands are full with the List of United States Highways.  I'm hoping a Californian will jump into the breach!  --Robertb-dc 23:09, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)



Usually "Inland Empire" in California means around the Central Valley (Sacramento area), not LA. I've lived in the Pacific NW for 26 years and never heard of an "Inland Empire" by Portland (although I guess I could imagine such a term having been used many years ago to mean Oregon's now-dominant Willamette Valley, including Portland, as against the Oregon Coast). It is the common term for the area around Spokane, Washington, extending into part of Northern Idaho. -- Jmabel 23:15, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Told you I didn't know enough to make the change myself! :) So who will bell the cat? --Robertb-dc 01:17, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Question - language dictionary


Can I create one?
I'm linking it to Japanese_language

No one's answered... I guess I will.
If I'm not allowed to, tell me asap by User_talk:KevinJr42.



Wikipedia's Tipping Point


Hi. Many of you probably know about the Tipping Point idea popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, and if you don't, you should--it rocks. Anyway, I was wondering, does anybody have any predictions about when Wikipedia will tip? Or if it already has? I posit that the tipping and the 2,000,000 articles (English? all languages? I dunno) will happen at about the same time. jengod 00:28, Jan 23, 2004 (UTC)



I'm not sure what exactly you mean, but you may want to look at Wikipedia:Awareness statistics. You can also compare our overall traffic ranking against other lage websites here.—Eloquence 00:42, Jan 23, 2004 (UTC)


Compared to the massive size of the web, the numbers at niether place are that impressive.  (Alexa data in particular is suspect as it depends on self reporting by people who have chosen to use the Alexa toolbar.  Given that older versions of Netscape and I.E. are not supported, nor Mozilla, nor Opera...  Alexa data also only appears to provide raw acess statistics, not unique vistor counts.)  Looking at the number of Usenet posts, it's a vanishingly small number.  "Mention of the Wikipedia outside of the Wikipedia" finds a lot of Slashdot posts and other places where you'd expect to find a mention. etc... etc...  Wikipedia is far from reaching the 'tipping point'.  Elde 01:13, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)


I think Wikipedia made such a transition a couple of years back. I don't forsee anything on that magnitude occurring again. -- Tim Starling 00:51, Jan 23, 2004 (UTC)


Question?


How do you comment on other people's suff or leave them a message on their page?
I would really like to be able to do this but can't figure it out.
Katie Salyer
User # 4.8.161.217



Click the "edit this page" link in the bottom left of any page to edit it, and type your comment. Messages for a user go on the page called "User talk:" plus their user name. For example, mine is User talk:Onebyone. Onebyone 01:35, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)








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