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[[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]]

Moved discussion

Questions and answers, after a period 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).

(New questions from JB82 moved to bottom of the page)

Requests for help and comments

I have been very impressed with this whole site. I have yet to find an article suffering from a lack of NPOV. Of course I know they are out there, but so far so good. I was pretty skeptical about this in the beginning. (Good to be wrong once in a while.)COMPATT 21:37, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

  1. Sennheiser has created a WikiProject Space and he would like to invite Astronomy and Space Exploration enthusiasts to join his new project.
  2. TUF-KAT has created Wikipedia talk:Infobox for all taxobox/infobox discussion to be centralized
  3. Belizian is willing to take photos of plants and animals in the jungle for wikipedia, he requests your help in identifying species at Plants and animals of Belize
  4. For those who enjoy writing and editing: Wikipedia:Articles requested for over a year, Wikipedia:RC patrol
  5. The Wikipedia:Association of Members' Advocates is an intra-Wikipedia voluntary association looking for new members who are interested in assisting users with the dispute resolution process.
  6. If you voted to remove an article to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates but have not raised a formal objection to it, please do so now. Bmills
  7. Wikipedians are encouraged to make use of this public domain site, see Wikipedia talk:Porting Vectorsite articles
  8. Multilingual? Or need a foreign-language wikipedia article translated into English? Check out the newly created Wikipedia:Translation
  9. Rholton (aka Anthropos) suggests that every Wikipedian take the time each day to find a home for one of the many orphaned articles.
  10. Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups has gone live, seeks more participants.
  11. Jengod would love it if you would adopt your birthday (April 7, November 22, etc) and keep it updated, so the Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries people have more material with which to build that section of the main page.

Received mail: your password has changed

I got an e-mail from wikipedia:

Someone (probably you, from IP address 220.111.131.210) requested that we send you a new Wikipedia login password. The password for user "Pascal" is now "XXXXXX". You should log in and change your password now.

But, my old password still works, so there is no problem. I don't believe I unintentionally pushed this button, even since I did not visit Wikipedia yesterday.

Anyone any explaination? Who is 220.111.131.210?

Pascal 12:07, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ignore the e-mail. Someone just entered Pascal and pushed the button. Anyone can do that. — Timwi 13:56, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Out of interest, that IP appears to belong to someone somewhere in Japan. But indeed, just ignore unless it keeps happening. - IMSoP 01:01, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

How to deal with rampant POV?

I'm fretting over the article Asymmetric warfare. The original author seems to be making a sincere effort to put forward what he/she thinks the subject is about, but it amounts to an extensive POV, mixing incomparable elements, personal musings and attempting to reach a conclusion.

I know something about the subject, having taught related subjects in the US Army, and the subject is worthy of discussion, but I'm not comfortable essentially throwing out someone else's work and writing the article new.

This is not the only such article. I'm tempted to simply leave them alone, but it makes wikipedia very un-encyclopedic, if someone were actually researching a subject.

Opinions? About this and the issue of near totally POV articles in general? Cecropia 14:46, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You are quite welcome to completely re-write articles if you want see Wikipedia:be bold in updating pages If you think the present article is beyond salvage. I have done on occasions and I have also had some of my articles completely re-written by other people, although it might be better to try to integrate changes with the existing text G-Man 14:54, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)
In this case, if you know that this (really long) article is riddled with POV and since it isn't the focus of edit wars and you wont be upsetting a delicate balance, I suggest that you can be quite radical. If you're willing to do the work this involves, I suggest that you write a good solid stub from scratch and replace the current article. If the current article contains anything useful then copy it to the talk page first, or summarise the key points it makes which should still be included (albeit it correctly flagged as a certain POV). Then build on the stub, reintergrating anything you want to keep into the new article, expand it and add balance where appropriate. If you document all these stages on the talk page, you may even encourage other knowledgeable people to join you in creating a much better article.  :) This might be too radical an approach for articles which have escalated into an edit war, in which case you might propose completely rewriting the article on the talk page, and solicit a lot more opinions in order to reach a consensus. fabiform | talk 15:00, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well, you guys are encouraging me. It's a complex subject and might be more controversial if more people really knew what it was. I'll see if I can upgrade it modularly. Cecropia 23:14, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

A further thought: Set it in context at the start. "Asymmetrical warfare is an inherently freighted term expressing the value judgment that..." Thus you can discuss the subject within its defined bounds. Not all point-of-view need be smoothed into cream pudding. Sometimes a statement that seems to lack any objective reality springs into crisp focus when the opening words set the context: "In Arianism..." "In Catholic dogma..." or "From the standpoint of..."etc. Wetman 14:37, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

need work

hello sir , this is pankaj from india , we have team of software developare , we are loking for some work ,our main motto work hard & do our best in the chosen field, so plz give some attention on this. thanks

Hello Pankaj, welcome to Wikipedia. We can always use skilled people to help write articles for Wikipedia, so feel free to dive right in and start working. If you are interested in helping with the development of Wikipedia's software, check out the MediaWiki homepage. If you have any questions, the Wikipedia:FAQ may be a good place to start. Once again, welcome! -- Wapcaplet 18:53, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Just so there is no confusion, Wikipedia is not a for profit endeavor. Anyone that contributes here does so only to build a better free encyclopedia. Dori | Talk 20:07, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

Sisi- Forever my Love

I want to order a Sisi Movie, I have seen it in French, and I would like to order it in French.

We don't sell movies here. However, you may be able to order it from this site. Cheers! -- Wapcaplet 04:44, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Neutrality dispute blackmail

As some readers may be aware, yesterday I did a fairly major edit on Kim Jong-il. User:172 then put a "disputed neutrality" on the article, but declined both to edit it himself or to discuss with me what he objected to in my edit, other than that he didn't like it. I then removed the tag, but he reverted. So now the article is permanently tagged as non neutral, but the person who holds this view will not do anything to resolve this. I consider this to be blackmail. What does the panel think? (Note that I am not asking what the panel thinks about my edit - I am asking about the dispute). Adam 07:22, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I could understand if he were unwilling to help fix it, but (at the very least) he has to *say* what he finds objectionable. I agree with you - if in some reasonable amount of time the NPOV objection isn't clearly stated, consider it moot and remove the tag. →Raul654 07:27, Mar 1, 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Raul, adding that, even if your change was entirely POV you are entitled to due process - Gaz 12:15, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Raul and Gaz. We need a process to deal with this since way too many articles are semi-permanently tagged. IMO, at least two users should agree that an article is POV before a tag can be placed on it. Then if the consensus on the talk page that the article is OK, then the tag should be removed. This unilateral tagging of articles has got to stop ASAP. --mav 12:24, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I agree - we have had NPOV tags unilaterally added for the most trivial of reasons (e.g. the Macedonian disambiguation page got tagged because someone apparently objected to the term being used for anything other than the Greek province, though it's not easy to tell for sure because no explanation was posted). But how could we enforce your "two users" rule? -- ChrisO 12:45, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Same way we enforce any other rule. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:53, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Old English markings

I am reading a book, a 1972 reprint of the 1925 book "Brunel and After, The Romance of the Great Western Railway", by Patrick Stevens. Throughout the book it has the "st" and "ct" of every word joined with a half circle over the tops of the letters. I have never seen such markings before and hoped there might be someone who could tell me what they are and what they signify. A particular pronunciation? 

                     Ross Lambourn
                     rossandlesley@yahoo.com

No, it's a typesetter's device called a ligature. See Ligature (typography) Adam 09:53, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

My watchlist

I propose a small modification to the header section of the Special:Watchlist page, similar to a feature already present on the Special:Recentchanges page. In Recentchanges there is an option to show/hide logged in users, bots, etc. I would like an option in "My watchlist" to show/hide my own edits so that edits by others are far more evident. - Gaz 12:32, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't this go to Wikipedia:Feature_requests? —Frecklefoot 16:44, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Corsican "nidicà "

On my userpage, I include the Corsican proverb: "Quandu ellu canta lu cuccu Muta pèlu lu singhjari E la gallina faci l'ovu Senza mancu nidicà lu. " This translates to "When the cuckoo sings, the wild boar changes skin(pelt); and the hen is able to lay an egg without the same { nidicà }. I don't know what the Corsican word nidicà means and the quote doesnt make that much sense either. Anyone know enough Corsican to help me out? Perl 15:31, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps "nest"? ("Nidus" means nest in Latin, and "nid" is nest in French.) Adam Bishop 21:47, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Thats what my brother guessed this afternoon. I think that makes the most sense. The meaning of the proverb, however, still doesnt make sense to me. Perl 21:58, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I presume this proverb has something to do with the fact that the cuckoo lays her egg in the nest of another bird. -- Jmabel 02:14, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Nonsense

I added the MediaWiki:Nonsense, which is:

I want your feedback at MediaWiki talk:Nonsense. Don't answer here. Any comments you make on the Village Pump will be ignored or moved to the talk page. Optim 18:12, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

cvfd

Take a look at Wikipedia:Candidates for vfd and vote at Wikipedia talk:Candidates for vfd. Do not reply here; your comments on Village Pump will be ignored or moved to the talk page. Optim 18:43, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Merging Accounts

If it is at least frowned upon to have multiple accounts, is it possible to have them merged somewhere (given that such thing already exists for IP addresses)? -- Dissident 19:10, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

See: Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit --Kokiri 10:09, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

wobble-ocity

Wiki,

I need to reconnect the East/West shores of Panthalassa. I gotta walk the amiable Tapirs across. Problem: Dinos had to be long dead. 'Possums crossed down under. The Calendar doesn't Jive.
 
Japan will have to go back to Utah, and NewZealand to Patagonia.
 
Please help, davidrdowner@yahoo.com

Alright, is someone using Village Pump as a channel for coded messages again? ;) -Rholton (aka Anthropos) 02:21, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No, we put those in the images via steganography. Dpbsmith 03:15, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

And Plautus satire was laughed down when he said we were talking about him in code. RickK 03:23, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Bedrest, enforced if necessary. (The Head Nurse will explain.). And no caffeine or other stimulants for the first month. Wetman 15:14, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What's wrong with the images?

I uploaded an image to Wikipedia, but something seems to be wrong with it.

This is the image: File:MissingNo.GIF

Check the file size of the current version. Now, click on the image, and check the size of the file. Aha, you got it - they don't agree. What's wrong here? Can somebody help me?

Fibonacci 23:42, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

They agree down to the last byte for me. Were you using the images as thumbnails, as these are supposed to have smaller files sizes than the large versions. fabiform | talk 23:53, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Or, are you seeing the a cached copy of the old smaller image on the image description page? If that's the case, you need to refresh the page in your browser, it should correct itself after a minute or two, or after a hard refresh (hold down shift or control as you click refresh). fabiform | talk 23:56, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Thank you. I was seeing the cached copy. The strange thing is, I've seen it since I uploaded the image... until now. Fibonacci 01:27, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Trademark symbols

So, the article on the 76th Academy Awards has a bunch of trademark symbols (the R-circle thing), as well as a disclaimer at the bottom ("Oscar, Academy Awards, etc. are trademarks of..."). I think this is pretty unusual for Wikipedia. There's no legal requirement to add those symbols -- companies do it so they don't lose the trademark, but nobody else is obliged to. Is there a good reason to have these, or could we just get rid of them? Do we have a manual of style entry for trademark? --ESP 01:38, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I got rid of them. They don't belong in an encyclopedia. Perl 01:41, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
(IANAL) In general, a trademark used in a conversational way that in no way implies endorsement of, or that you are, the owner of the trademark is permissible. "While we drove to the mountains, my daughter played with her Beanie Babies and stuffed Barney toy."
In an article talking about a product in a descriptive way or in any way that might imply endorsement of (or that you are the owner of) the trademark, or imputing trademark of an actually generic product, or where the reader might be uncertain whether you were describing the trademarked product or a similar generic product probably should have the circle-R once. For example:

Stuffed dolls
Stuffed dolls are classified for trademark purposes as soft sculptures. Familiar examples are Beanie Babies® and Barney® dolls.
Beanie Babies are generally small representations of animals stuffed with batting and the kind of pellets familiar in bean bags made by the Ty Company, while Barney dolls are the more usually kind of stuffed doll modeled after Barney character of TV...
As to whether the "Blah blah is a registered trademark of blah blah" should be in an encyclopedia, I have no opinion... Cecropia 19:37, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

List of en.wikipedia.org pages with more than 1000 hits in February

For those curious to see which parts of the English Wikipedia see the most traffic, I've put a list of Pages from English Wikipedia with more than 1000 hits in Feb 2004 on meta, generated from the webalizer stats. -- Jeronim 02:16, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Lunokhod 1 and 2... Aramaic... Katie Hnida! Color me amazed. I wish you'd do this for historical months, too.
Lunokhod 1 and Lunkhod 2 were slashdotted recently. Aramaic is probably searched for because it features prominently in Mel Gibson's propaganda movie. Two copies of the Wikipedia article about Hnida rank highly in a Google search, one of them links back to the Wikipedia article. Goes to show that forks aren't all bad... —Eloquence
Yahoo linked to Aramaic in a story about the Passion of Christ. fabiform | talk 02:55, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Wow, that's pretty cool. Looks like our cooperation with them (see search) is starting to bear fruit.—Eloquence
"Mel Gibson's propaganda movie" -- The Village Pump is immune from NPOV, I see. :P Garrett Albright 23:48, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Sweet. My user page actually made the list :) →Raul654 23:50, Mar 2, 2004 (UTC)

Username or Real Name? Which should I use?

Moved to User_talk:Skyfaller and Wikipedia talk:Username

I'm reading some very intersting articles about middle and old english when I start to get a little frustrated with all the links within the article. I love being able to instantly connect with relevant articles, but the links stick out so much that they are difficult to pass them over when one is trying to actually get all the way through an article (I tend to wander to other pages). Anyway, my point is, has anyone ever thought of making the links more subtle? If Wikipedia continues to grow, and just about anything has an associated page, then every article will be covered with links! Can you imagine trying to read a whole page of blue, underlined words?

Just thought I'd add my two cents.

The Manual of style says that you are not supposed to link every word. You're only supposed to link important ones. So even as Wiki grows (assuming people follow the guideline) I don't think we have to worry about anything. →Raul654 05:46, Mar 2, 2004 (UTC)

There was a m:Link style vote on Meta in which, sadly, a large majority chose to keep the current, underlined link style (really the browser default). If you are logged in, you can disable the underlining in your preferences.—Eloquence 06:51, Mar 2, 2004 (UTC)

Or, if you have a browser with good Cascading Style Sheets support, you can use your own style sheet to choose what you want links to look like. -- Wapcaplet 00:45, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Overlinking defeats its own purpose. It's done with a good heart so it's crotchety to complain. I dare not de-Wikify, though I itch to. Wetman 15
18, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Remote possibilities

My friends and I were recently (3/2/04) playing Milton Bradley's game "Remote Possibilities" and noticed one question regarding who recieved the most Oscar (Academy) nominations. Until the 2004 awards held on 3/1/04, Titanic had the most nominations in history, but it no longer does, thereby making your game incorrect, by stating Titanic as the answer. I am a huge fan, i know two other people who have this game, and we want to know if you will be making a new version.

Let me know, Nichole nichole1@eden.rutgers.edu

Er, we don't make games and we aren't affiliated with Milton Bradley. You may want to go to Milton Bradley's web site and ask them there. Dysprosia 08:23, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Isn't it a bit odd that so many questions of this sort get asked. What is about our pages that causes people to think we can answer these sorts of things? And besides the Oscars were held on the 29th and All about Eve and Titanic still jointly have the most nominations (14), IIRC. Lord of the Rings equals Ben-Hur and Titanic in having the most wins (11). Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:28, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Not only is it odd, I'm now tempted to write a love letter to my ex and post it to the Pump. And she's not even a Wikipedian. --Charles A. L. 16:28, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
I think one reason that so many are posted is that most get answered. Wikipedians seem unable to resist helping someone outwith a bit of research. Not necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps we need a special page for it. Mark Richards 21:23, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
We have a special page for it. Wikipedia:Reference Desk. moink 21:25, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Er....not to be too elitist, but those of us who keep up with RD regularly really do hate to be seen as the people who handle any question. :) RD is designed to handle reference questions, not the questions of people who don't know what Wikipedia is. :-) Frankly, people like Nichole (no offense, Nichole) rarely seem to return to see if we answered their question....at least, we never see evidence that they did. I think explaining who we aren't and letting it sit here a few days is fine, personally. Redirecting them to RD where they will be told the same thing isn't a good idea--believe it or not, RD is about as crowded with posts as the VP is, usually. :-) That's my 2 cents,

Jwrosenzweig 21:30, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hey, I keep up with RD as well! No, Nichole's question would not be answered any better there. But Mark's point about helping someone out with research refers to the reference desk as the right place. moink 21:36, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Sorry, moink! I phrased that badly. I get tired of the Village Pump's tendency (in my experience) to dump just about any question on the Reference Desk, especially when it sometimes seems like there are only about 4 or 5 of us trying to answer questions at the RD. I didn't mean to imply that you didn't though -- my bad. You are right....helping out with research is definitely in the RD's purview. I was just looking at this particular question and thinking "this doesn't have anything to do with research or reference questions". Didn't mean to be grumpy -- I'll go make some productive edits as penance. :-) Jwrosenzweig 21:39, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Horizontal dividing lines

Where can I find a Wikipedia guideline for the usage of horizontal dividing lines, like the one above, especially within articles? Thanks! olivier 10:11, Mar 2, 2004 (UTC)

Here: Horizontal dividing line use. Cheers! —Frecklefoot 14:58, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. But isn't there anything clearer? I am trying to explain to a user that such lines are not appropriate for dividing sections of an article. The paragraph you are refering to is not very explicit in this respect. I think I remember having read something about this in the Manual of Style but I cannot find it any longer. Any idea? olivier 12:16, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
Well, they are appropriate for dividing sections of an article, but only if the article discusses two distinct items: "A horizontal dividing line is sometimes used as division demarcation for sections which are logically main sections, such as an article that contains two distinct meanings of a term." As an example, see Call Me. The first entry discusses an album called "Call Me." The entry at the bottom discusses a seperate song called "Call Me." Other examples would be Vanity and Avatar. Seperating these distinct items is the only appropriate use for horz dividing lines. Sorry I can't find a page that describes it more clearly, but I'm sure others will back me up on this here. :^) —Frecklefoot 15:00, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Missing Information

I am not a very good writer but I have some reliable/independent sources for a (large) entry. Without that information the entry seems lacking and misleading at some points. Is there a more experienced editor to add the information or should I take my chances?

Be bold. But if you really don't dare you can also put the informations you'd like to have inserted on the talk page associated with the article (the "Discuss this page" link), and then hope that someone will spot it there and do the updating. andy 11:45, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Barred IP addresses

Hi. I have sent this message to User:PMelvilleAustin, but could somebody please have a look at it? I'm quite confused about the whole IP thing so if anybody could please help I would be very very grateful. Thanks.

I was barred yesterday from editing and apparently it was you who did it. I was shocked actually and then I realised contributions by my "IP" address were in fact not mine. I actually don't know much about IP addresses, so is it possible for two different computers to have the same IP address? And if it is, why didn't I receive a warning? I have also checked the IP's discussion page and there is no warning whatsoever either. Do you ban people just like that or did I get anything wrong? Thanks Rumpelstiltskin 10:52, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yes it is possible for two different computers to have the same IP address under some circumstances (though not at the same time). This can happen if you use a dial-up modem to connect to the internet. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) gives you a temporary IP address when you dial-up so that other computers can send data to you. Because your ISP knows that not all its users will be online at the same time, it gives you an address only temporarily - when you go offline the address returns to the pool so that your ISP can give it out to someone else. (With AOL it is even more complicated than this - they may give you several IP addresses during one internet session.) It looks like you were extremely unlucky, not only did someone who had previously been given your IP address visit Wikipedia and vandalize it, someone decide to block that address, even though it was an IP address that may be given to lots of people which is not something an admin should do in the normal run of things. If all that is true, you've had a lot of bad luck and I am sure the Wikipedia community offers its collective apologies. It looks like the ban is no longer in force, else you couldn't have posted this message. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:36, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
by edit conflict: Two computers cannot have the same IP address at the same time. However, if you use a dial-up connection to the internet then it is possible that by accident you got the same IP as the one the vandal had before. Another possibility is that both the vandal and you use the same proxy server (which might be a mandatory proxy server from your ISP), then the blocking did block the complete ISP. I doubt that your username was getting blocked, you should've found a warning on your talk page first. andy 11:40, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
What was the IP address? -- Tim Starling 11:46, Mar 2, 2004 (UTC)
Hi and thanks. Yes, I thought it was strange I didn't get a warning before, but I still can't really understand what's going on. Thanks for the IP information by the way, I didn't know that (and yes, I'm using a dial-up connection). IP was 62.255.64.5. Thanks again. Rumpelstiltskin 12:00, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The acts of vandalism in question were [1] and [2]. It looks like the IP address in question is a proxy, which is why you were blocked too. Instead of just one computer, everyone using that proxy server was blocked. That could be hundreds or even thousands of people. To PMelvilleAustin and sysops in general, I would say: this is an example of why it is better to revert several times and warn the user, hoping they will go away, before heading for the block button. -- Tim Starling 12:28, Mar 2, 2004 (UTC)
I think you are going a little too easy on PMA here, Tim. Blocking a proxy after just two non-insidious bits of vandalism (particularly when that IP has made decent contributions before) and without giving any warning on the talk page is totally unacceptable. What happened to Rumpelstiltskin is exactly why it is unacceptable. Sysops respect your power! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:35, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
To Pete: To nitpick: This is irrelevant: "particularly when that IP has made decent contributions before": As a shared-IP user, I can tell you that "good history" means nothing. The vandal and the goodie user are obviously two separate people. People don't turn retarded and start go vandalising after making half a dozen solid contributions. Most of us aren't blessed with Jackyll/Hyde-DNA. My IP is shared by over 10 Wikipedians who dont even know each other's names.About 5 are in fact quite trollish. The solution is easy: Sign up with a nice user name, Anon guys! --Menchi 12:47, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I think you missed my point - the mixed history is *very* relevant. It shows the admin that the address is likely to be used by lots of people.. and thus is likely to be a proxy... and thus extra care should be taken when considering whether to block it or not! All without having to resort to reverse DNS. Agreed that this is just one more reason why it is good to log in... Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:06, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

To Rumpelstiltskin: Silsor told me an easy solution over IRC: Go to (in IE) Options > open "LAN" dialogue. uncheck everything. Da-la... I was never blocked again despite my constant trollism under my anonymous IP. And yes, I in fact was blocked 3 times in 1 Internet (cable) session, without dis/reconnection. Weird dynamic IP. ----Menchi 12:47, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think what is needed here is the ability to differentiate between unlogged in access from an IP, and logged in. Then one can block anon. and bad-user edits. Those with good edit histories for their accounts can continue editing with impunity. They can get started and get such a history by reconnecting and getting unblocked IPs. This is not a complete solution, though. Mr. Jones 09:01, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Excellent idea! I don't know when the developers will find time, but this is definitely the Right Thing. Noel 03:20, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That seems obvious. I'm surprised it's not done this way already. One thing we would need to block from blocked IPs is creation of new accounts, of course. Andrewa 18:11, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Something I'm curious about: in Special:Ipblocklist, I see a number of entries reading "This IP address is blocked for editing because it belongs to an anonymizing proxy. Editing from anonymous proxies is currently not allowed." I looked around on Wikipedia to see if I could find out more about this policy, but couldn't find anything. Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks! Noel 03:20, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Supreme Court Act 2003

→ Wikipedia:Reference desk

Merge page history of Golden mean and Golden Ratio

The pages were cut 'n pasted around January 19 of this year. --seav 13:51, Mar 2, 2004 (UTC)

Pages now merged. Angela. 17:13, Mar 5, 2004 (UTC)

You might be interested to read this [3].

"Additional CAP partners include The New York Public Library, one of the most renowned libraries in the country; Project Gutenberg, the Web's oldest producer of free electronic books; University of Michigan's OAIster project, which provides hard to find academic collections; UCLA's Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) with content documenting Babylonian history back to 3500 B.C.; Wikipedia, a free, multilingual online encyclopedia with articles in more than 50 languages; and the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), the National Science Foundation's online library, with more than 250 collections that improve the way Americans learn about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The OYEZ, CDLI and NSDL projects are all federally funded in part or in whole by the National Science Foundation."

Dori | Talk 17:36, Mar 2, 2004 (UTC)

I am surprised this has generated so few responses. Wikipedia is under Yahoo!'s Content Acquistion Program... does this mean they will index us a lot... or something else? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 23:18, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Jimbo has commented on the mailing list:
"Yes, I was in negotiations with Yahoo about this last week.
We have a contract in which we supply them with an XML feed (which I will have Jason construct) and they stick us in their index. They make no promises as to the placement of our urls, of course, as that's entirely up to their editorial department. But of course we have absolutely maximum quality content, so it is thought by all that we will rank very high in their index.
The area that this will benefit us most is when news breaks on some topic about which there is little information on the net -- an area in which we excel anyway.
I tried to get their PR person to feature us more prominently in the press release, but alas, she didn't listen to me.
--Jimbo"
Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 23:27, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
This sounds incredible! It also sounds like we will need to be even more vigilant on RC, especially concerning articles being highlighted by Yahoo! news. :-) Jwrosenzweig 23:32, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There is a discussion and opinion poll at Wikipedia talk:Community Portal#Visibility poll over whether a link to the "Community Portal" should be added to the sidebar, and what if anything should be removed to make way for it. Please add your opinions there; thank you - IMSoP 19:44, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Main page thumbnails?

The article Revised Standard Version is a featured article. I have taken a beauty shot of the cover of the 2002 anniversary edition I plan to upload. What's the specs on using this image as the main page thumbnail when this article's time comes?

--iHoshie 20:18, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Best post it on MediaWiki talk:Feature.—Eloquence 13:04, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)

Google (et al) caching and associated problems

Although indexing is bound to be a problem on sites as dynamic as 'pedia, for the most part, it seems to be working very well. However, there are various anomalies. Most notably, tonight on IRC someone noticed that google has indexed (and cached) several non-existant articles, such as this: [4] ((Malapropos: is anyone seeing render problems w/overlaping google disclaimer and wikilogo? Mozilla Firefox)) One solution which came to mind, was to add <meta name="robots" content="NOARCHIVE"> or similar tags to the template for non-existant articles. However, a much more elagant solution was proposed by another person on IRC: Enact an Apache Mod_Rewrite rule similar to "RewriteRule ^/edit/(.*)$ /wiki/wiki.phtml?title=$1&action=edit [L]" and instruct spiders to avoid /edit/....... in the robots.txt file. This has the addition effect of making a direct link to an edit page easier to type and considerably more sightly (to non perl-programers :-).

Also, I have wondered increasingly since my recent arrival in the community why Talk: pages are allowed to be indexed/cached, and to a slightly lesser extent, User pages. Most of the preceding could apply equally to those.

Thanks for reading. nsh 20:49, Mar 2, 2004 (UTC) talk

For searching Wikipedia with Google, I find it useful that all namespaces are indexed and cached. --Patrick 23:36, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Indexing edit windows can be annoying, but it shouldn't do that anymore. --mav 00:28, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

nsh: edit pages have long been forbidden by our robots.txt along with other dynamic pages (it wouldn't do for spiders to go through every possible combination of diffs in the history!), and further contain <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">. However if Google catches a live link to a page that is later deleted, or follows an interwiki or otherwise manually constructed link to a page that may not have existed, it does end up at the "(There is currently no text in this page)". This is fairly rare but is a little annoying, yes. Perhaps we'll change it to return a 404 code (with the same output) for nonexitent pages; this would help with automated tools in general.

And yes, the Google header overlaps with the Wikipedia header. CSS absolute positioning doesn't agree with somebody else slipping text into your page. :) --Brion 18:20, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Can the state of new york hold copyright? I want to copy this to wikipedia, but I am not sure if it is in the public domain. Perl 23:11, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I suggest emailing them and asking if their writing is in the public domain. If not, asking if they are willing to release it under the GFDL would be step 2, I think. I've never done this, though -- perhaps someone here who has should offer further guidance? Jwrosenzweig 23:23, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

(→Raul654) Just look here:

http://www.dmna.state.ny.us/copyright.htm -

Copyright, Disclaimer & Privacy
 © 2000-2003 New York State Division of Military & Naval Affairs

and NY National Guard. All rights reserved.

Permission to use, copy and distribute the materials contained in these Web pages without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that the name or any trademark of The New York State Division of Military & Naval Affairs and the New York National Guard not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the information without the National Guard's specific, written permission.

So the talk page just has to include the copyright disclaimer. Thats sounds good to me. I will now copy the nystate text to the wikipoedia article. Thanks Raul!! Perl 00:01, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, you can't use it. It would be an invariant section and we don't allow those. --mav 00:24, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

School Project

Apparently a German business school is using our site for a massive project. The main article page is here: Customer Experience Management (CEM) but there are myriads of these articles. Users are not logged in, and I can't tell whether they have any idea about NPOV or anything else here. I've tried leaving messages on their talk pages, at first confused and concerned they were a business, but then simply asking them for details of their project to go to Wikipedia:School and university projects. Of course, if they're not getting usernames, I don't know that they know about talk pages or will have the same IP address next time. Anyone know anything about this? Anyone have an idea of how to communicate with them? I feel very lost. Jwrosenzweig 00:02, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Get their attention the same way you get anyone's attention: severe refactoring, reverting, VFD listings, etc. The pages which have been created look like they could use some of that. Make lots of references to the questions you asked at User talk:145.254.237.111. University lecturers have no more right to mess up the wiki than anyone else. -- Tim Starling 00:11, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
Whoa... is that how we treat newbies here? Severe refactoring, reverting, VFD listings? I'm glad no one treated me that way when I first showed up. moink 19:41, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Well, when newbies refuse to respond to any talk page messages and don't get an account, and add dozens and dozens of articles in what looks like near-trolling fashion....I guess you have to say "go with what works". :) It worked in this instance, because the VfD notice took them to a posting at VfD that explained exactly what the problem was and how it needed to be corrected. We can leave messages on IP talk pages forever and never get a response. You're right that this isn't how to deal with newbies in general, but in an extreme case like this, I think Tim is right that something drastically noticeable is called for. Jwrosenzweig 19:44, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
You may well be right in this case. In fact, I don't disagree with anything you've said. I do disagree with Tim's statement that this is the "way you get anyone's attention." Maybe he meant as a last resort, which I can understand. I just don't want anyone to read Tim's statement and think that's how we start when we need someone's attention. moink 17:36, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Question from Anonymous User

T think that this aticle is incroect and i want to ask you if you may change it to the right stuff pleses because i need the right information.

Can you explain what article you mean? You yourself can change it, though! That's how it works here. Jwrosenzweig 00:06, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Citations

Where can i find who wrote this page??? for parenthetical sitations......

Well, everything on Wikipedia is written by a lot of different people. If you are interested in who contributed various parts, you can follow the "page history" link; however, for the purposes of citations it is sufficient to just mention that it came from Wikipedia, since all content is licensed under the GNU FDL. -- Wapcaplet 05:28, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia -- Tim Starling 05:34, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)

User concerns over IP address showing?

This probably isn't the best place to ask, but I've recently installed MediaWiki on a site of my own. A few people have expressed concern to me about the software keeping and publicly displaying their IP addresses (either fear of being cracked, or privacy concerns, or what, I don't know). Blatant nonsense, but I don't have the technological smarts to shoot them down. I imagine potential Wikipedia contributors must ask the same question from time to time, but I can't find a FAQ on it or similar, nor on Meta. Any thoughts? Calum 12:42, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Just tell them to log in.—Eloquence
We touch on the issue at Wikipedia:Why_create_an_account?#More_privacy,_not_less. Unlogged-in edits have to be tracked (roughly) by user somehow, else vandalism would be impossible to track and prevent. IP addresses are the only option for this. Thus users should be encouraged to log in to mitigate the issue. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:55, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Is there any reason anonymous users couldn't be given a unique reference number, and leave the IP accessible only to sysops? Seeing as usually the IP is only used as unique tag anyway, I don't see that this would be a serious change. -- Calum

Link to article edit page

Can anyone explain why on Random walk the link to Drunkard's Walk is red (for page doesn't exist) and yet it takes you to the artciles edit page where text exists. From there you can cancel and read the article. -- SGBailey 15:18, 2004 Mar 3 (UTC)

Weird....I tried a minor edit where I changed nothing -- the preview showed that the link wasn't red anymore.....but then I saved and it's still red. This must be database trouble above my ability to understand. :-) Well, I tried. Jwrosenzweig 17:50, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Okay, fixed now, all I had to do was make an edit in which any actual change happened. It should work for you. Jwrosenzweig 19:47, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Agreed, fixed. -- SGBailey 10:12, 2004 Mar 4 (UTC)

Downloading the database

On the 'Wikipedia' article it says that one can download the wikipedia database. How can this be done?

See Wikipedia:Database_download -- user:zanimum

NetSweeper hates Wikipedia Spanish

The NetSweeper internet monitoring software that blocks out unsavoury sites for parents and school boards alike censors out Wikipedia Spanish as a "Sex Site". Unless it is a risque Wikimedia project that I didn't know about, we should look into getting them to change this automated decision. -- Senor Wences

There's a "Website Scanner" you can access from the website (Home Page) which says that it can't categorise http://en.wikipedia.org/ but that http://es.wikipedia.org/ is indeed a "Sex Site". Weird. --Phil 17:58, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
Not weird at all, in fact I'm very impressed they don't list all the Wikipedias as sex sites considering some of the articles we have. There's no way I'd give a child access to Wikipedia. Jimbo has commented that he wouldn't show it to his mother (or grandmother, forget which).
IMO the answer to this is not censorship on the existing project, but an independently filtered version based on the existing (continuing as is) project. Elsewhere I have called this a G-rated Wikipedia.
Some day soon I predict it will be worth someone's while to set up such a G-rated Wikipedia. I'd like it to be Wikimedia that does it, but there's insufficient interest at present, so it's possible it will be a fork instead. There are pros and cons to this. Neither exercise is trivial. Andrewa 22:52, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Recombining protected and unprotected page lists

The current situation with Wikipedia:Protected page and Wikipedia:Unprotected page is untenable. There are multiple listings for pages and it is difficult to coordinate between the two. It is better to have the history of a page's protection and unprotection in a single list. Angela proposed keeping the main list in a separate page on Wikipedia talk:Unprotected page. silsor 18:44, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)

It's cumbersome. But it is a vast improvement on the old. single page system, which was absolutely hopeless. Tannin 20:04, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I would submit that, if admins took the 30 seconds necessary to cut an article's listing from Protected page and paste it to Unprotected page when unprotecting, there would be nothing cumbersome at all. What is needed here isn't page reorganization -- it's admins taking a little extra time and trouble to make sure things remain organized. Saying that as an admin who is giving himself advice as well as others, Jwrosenzweig 20:06, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deadend pages

-->Wikipedia talk:Deadend pages

Weird Middle Ages Year Page Anomaly

As near as I can tell, the years 1154 to 1275 are the only years in our series with a section called "Heads of State" or "Monarchs/Presidents". These lists are ridiculously hard to construct (as a monarch who reigned from 1213 to 1255 would only link to those two years, and not those intervening), and are currently woefully incomplete. May I go through and delete that section, or are they there for a reason? Anyone know? Jwrosenzweig 20:23, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It seems to me that the fact that they're ridiculously hard to construct would be a reason not to delete them. Anthony DiPierro 20:27, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Deleting things is hardly ever a good option. On the other hand, the fact that Henry II of England and the corresponding French guy seem to be mentioned on more than thirty year pages is ridiculous.
Also, lots of things seem to have happened ("Events") in 1180, hardly anything in 1181. Could the reason for that be that it is sometimes difficult to tell when exactly something happened and 1180 really stands for c.1180?
Summing up, some of these pages are really weird, but still I wouldn't do anything about them. If we're talking about Wikipedia being work in progress, they are a case in point. <KF> 20:33, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I like the idea because it gives context for what was happening around the world at that time (and gives context for what was happening for ongoing events between nations, e.g. wars). About a week ago, I was working on a replacement for this section that looked a little nicer and made more sense visually here but back-burnered it until I could think about it some more. But this is just as good a time as any to solicit feedback on it. If anyone has any feedback on that, please use that discussion page. RadicalBender 20:53, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

All right, I'm out shouted. I guess my experience has mostly been with working on pages in the 1270s (why am I working on them? No idea -- completely random), where the only listing is the king of Aragon. He looks kind of silly there, and I had no idea how to go about listing leaders (and which leaders to list?), so I left it, but in my opinion it looked (and looks) pretty bad. If all the people above who are dead set on the idea would put in a little time to flesh it out, I think that would be great. Frankly, though, I think the desire to list world leaders demonstrates a very top-down biased view of history. If a monarch does something of note, it will be listed in events (new rulers are noted there also). Just the fact that a particular person was king, though, doesn't have that great an effect on history--we could try to assemble a list of "influential people of the time" that would be far more meaningful, but ultimately disastrous and edit-warred. This is why I prefer sticking to talking about actual events, and not lists of people who may or may not have been "important" at the time. Jwrosenzweig 21:11, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The medieval years mostly lack people to fill them out. Just using backlinks alone I can fill out a page in 20 minutes, don't even need to hit the library. I would like to see it expanded to non-monarchs, then the rule could be very mechanical; one could have a bit of software that constructs a list of people when you click on "People alive during this year". (Of course, monarch's rule is different from lifespan!) Stan 21:58, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Do not delete the lists. Optim·.· 21:52, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps what is needed is a software-supported way to link to a range of dates rather than to specific dates. This wouldn't be a link you could follow, just one that would show up on some sort of search, similar to what links here. The obvious uses are in biographies and reigns, but there would be others... the period of long voyages and other expeditions, for example. It might also be useful for numeric ranges other than dates. Lots to consider. Food for thought? Andrewa 22:59, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Village Pump -> Agora

See Wikipedia talk:Village pump/Agora for a proposal to rename the Village Pump and name it Agora. Don't vote here. Any comments you make here will be ignored. Use only the talk page. Optim·.· 21:35, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Now withdrawn. Optim 23:15, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Naming conventions (common names)

On Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), the following addition was suggested:

"Use the name the group calls itself People should be called what they say their name is, and groups should be called what they call themselves. This should only not be the case if there is a conflict between groups over who has the rights to a name (such as Taiwan and the mainland PRC both claiming that they represented China). When there is a refusal to call a group what it asks to be called, and instead an outside dominant group claims the right to assign it a pejorative, or propaganda name that it be called, this seems to be the end of any kind of NPOV. Some examples of this would be the Vietnamese National Liberation Front being called "Viet Cong" (as if anyone in South Vietnam opposed to the government was a de facto communist), the Communist Party of Kampuchea being called "Khmer Rouge", the Communist Party of Peru being called "Shining Path" and so forth. These names would usually be created and propagated by a small elite group, from government leaders to the corporate media, in an attempt to make the use of the name widespread."

Then reasoning for this was spelled out on the discussion page. More names spring to mind as I think about it "(American) Indian", "anti-globalization movement", and so on and so forth. -- Richardchilton 21:49, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I would agree to this (ie the actual requirement to 'use the name the group calls itself unless ambigous') as long as you tone down the rationale significantly. Policy pages aren't the place to denounce "small elite groups". Morwen 21:54, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
Does this proposal mean Wikipedia is going to call Americans "Americans"? - Tweak 22:03, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
As opposed to "Yankee Imperialists?" ;-) -- WormRunner 22:11, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I clarify this in the second sentence. Americans call themselves Americans, so that is outside the range of what I am talking about. I am not talking about two groups fighting for the same name, I am talking about two names being applied to the same group, one the name the group gives itself, one the pejorative/propaganda name given to the group by its enemies. Richardchilton 22:13, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Of course, I should have realized that you would not consent to calling Americans Americans. Wikipedia should continue to pretend it's avoiding "ambiguity" rather than making political points. :) -- Tweak 22:21, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
For a policy aimed at de-PoVing, that paragraph is extremely PoV. But more interestingly, it brings to a mind a discussion I barely dare dredge up - Burma versus Myanmar. Arguably, both the government and "the People" are they with respect to a country, but they are asking for the same thing to be called by different names. See, amongst others, Talk:Myanmar and Talk:History of Myanmar. - IMSoP 22:15, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I was not part of the Burma/Myanmar discussion, but I'm surprised it was such an issue. The UN has recognized Burma as Myanmar for a long time now. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 22:18, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)Ugh, never mind- I read through some of the thread. Being of partial burmese descent myself, I'm surprised that people are still so up-in-arms about it. Other countries that requested to be called their original name rather than their Anglicized name (Thailand, for example) are now commonly known as such - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 22:33, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
Importantly, we are deferring to the UN as a higher authority, rather than "what they call themselves" - higher than "the People" or a particular foreign government, such as the US. To clarify, I completely agree that this is the best thing to do, but it bears mentioning in this discussion. - IMSoP 22:36, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC) [Note:this post was a reply to DropDeadGorgias' first, now struck out, comment, so is now rather redundant]

A lot of these arguments remind me of the novel 1984, where the government puts out a new Newspeak dictionary every year, and everyone complies right away, rewriting all the old words so they comply with the new ones. Then they are all "common usage" and all of the arguments presented here, after all, the government called them that, the corporate media complied, and tried to propagate that. Thus words like freedom would become thoughtcrime in the common usage. I think one thing that is instructive is to note how there are only a small number of groups where the US government (and corporate media) refuses to call them by their names, whether anglicized or not (Partido Comunista del Peru = Communist Party of Peru). You can't find many instances where a political group is refused even to name itself. The ones where this is done are just total propaganda from what I've read. This just seems like the kind of totalitarian white collar American arrogance that exists - most white, white-collar Americans call a group a certain name, thus, that will be its name. Richardchilton 23:03, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Richard, you have at the core a very good point. Why are you making it with rhetoric which will alienate many people who would otherwise agree with it? Morwen 23:07, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
Richardchilton/Lancemurdoch was telling us on IRC yesterday that we should also call African-Americans "niggers" because that's what they call themselves. Do you think that's also a good point? For the full conversation, see User:Tim Starling/Richardchilton IRC log -- Tim Starling 23:42, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
Let's see, your log says that if the white Americans get to name everything should apply everywhere that "We should change the African-American entry to niggers since that name was commonly usage (by white Americans, the only group on the planet whose opinion matters) to refer to a certain group of people." It says in the log that whites called blacks this, yet here you say that it was said that blacks called themselves this. In other words, you are misrepresenting what was said, and are in fact, saying the exact opposite of what was said. -- Richardchilton 00:11, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Oops, sorry. -- Tim Starling 01:57, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)

The issue of "two groups fighting for the same name" seems to me to apply to what we have to date calling the "Shining Path". They call themselves the "Partido Comunista de Peru", but, in fact, references to the "Partido Comunista de Peru" nearly always mean the party that used to be part of the Comintern. "Shining Path" is a literal translation of "Sendero Luminoso", a name that to the best of my knowledge is -- at least in part for just this reason -- used both in Peru and elsewhere, by friend and foe alike. (E.g. it is used by the RCP, who claim the Senderistas as an affiliated party.) It seems to me that it would be OK to list what a group calls itself as a very important factor in what to call an article, but not to make this an absolute and immutable rule. And in any case, I hope we can all agree that all of the relevant forwards and disambiguations should always be in place, and all commonly used names should be mentioned in the first paragraph, making this all more of an issue for partisans (of either side) than for end users of our site. -- Jmabel 00:43, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

But speakers of English are a "small elite group." And, without intending anything whatsoever, certain names for things have just come into being, mostly by common usage, since we have no Royal Academy directing usage here in the English-speaking minority. In Wikipedia, any local name can be set in parentheses once— italicized, since it's a foreign language&mdash and then the article can continue blithely on, in English. (Now what's that Egyptian name for "Egypt" again?)Wetman 15:52, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Script to convert to new table syntax

Please where can I find the script to convert to the new table sysntax ? Kpjas 22:29, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm not aware of a script. The new markup is described in MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables. Elf 23:40, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It is in the Python Wikipedia Robot Framework, http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/pywikipediabot/pywikipedia/. The bot itself is table2wiki.py, but to have it work you also need wikipedia.py, config.py and and a reasonably recent version of Python. Also download and read CONTENTS, and create user-config.py as described there. Subscribing to the pywikipediabot mailing list (see http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=93107 ) would also be useful, as would getting permission to use a bot first. Andre Engels 02:08, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There is a robot used on de: to convert the tables - but it must be human-monitored as HTML-tables can contain many mistakes but still get rendered by the browsers correctly - for example a missing </tr> is just ignored. However if the robot misses it it can destroy the table. You might ask User:Head, as he is one of those who used to run that robot on de:. andy 09:28, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I agree - you can use the bot to do the conversion for you, but you should still check the page afterward to see whether it has not made any errors. Still, it's a nifty bit of programming. Andre Engels 19:29, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Is it really usefull to convert all tables. The new syntax may be suitable for some of the tables, but for many tables, the simple five tags <table>, <tr>, <th> or <td>, and </table> are much easier to use. Given that the software supports both, Wikipedians should have the choice. -- User:Docu

Yet another site using Wikipedia material

[5] is using Wikipedia stuff. Seems to comply with GNU-FDL, anyone want to confirm? --Dante Alighieri | Talk 01:30, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Seems to have already been categorized as a "high compliance" site. See [6]. --Minesweeper 02:33, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)

Article naming strategy on the Mozilla Knowledge Base

Hey folks, sorry this isn't directly about Wikipedia, but I have a meta question over at the Mozilla Knowledge Base, which is a brand new wiki instruction manual for Mozilla software that runs on the MediaWiki software. I wrote up an article about why limited use of categories is actually useful for the Mozilla KB, and why the current article naming scheme there should be changed. I basically got the go-ahead to implement my suggested changes, because there doesn't seem to be anyone else there who is experienced with the Wikipedia software and culture who could/would agree or disagree with me. I'm pretty sure that my suggested changes are a good idea, but I thought I'd post to the Wikipedia community to get feedback before I follow through. What do you folks think? -- Skyfaller 03:33, 2004 Mar 4 (UTC)

Actually, Mozillazine is down for planned maintenance, guess I have bad timing... I'll try to post again when it comes back up. -- Skyfaller 04:42, 2004 Mar 4 (UTC)
It's back up. -- Skyfaller 06:22, 2004 Mar 4 (UTC)

Front page design...

I noticed the new front page design which has the ability to switch between a table version and nontable version. I was just wondering why the nontable version is so neutered? A CSS version of the table-based design is perfectly possible. I'm fairly into the whole "CSS thing" so I was wondering if there's some sort of place where this type is decided or where people can contribute? -- 132.162.225.93 06:12, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Try feedbacks at Talk:Main Page (table free). You'll be the 1st who comments on that. A pioneer commentor, if you will. Have fun! ----Menchi 07:30, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

short note on installation of a computer

B-flat hemidemisemiquaver. HTH HAND --Phil 11:03, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)

"For me a simple chord of Beethoven is enough. This is happiness." ... [Ernest, with] his mind's ear seemed to hear Miss Skinner saying, as though it were an epitaph:—
"Stay:
I may presently take
A simple chord of Beethoven,
Or a small semiquaver
From one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words."
—Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh

Make Edit Summary compulsory for anonymous users

I would like to suggest that it be made compulsory for anonymous users to put something (anything!) in the edit summary box. I would like to make it compulsory for everyone but I'm willing to start small and work up. --Phil 11:02, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)

Apart from the "start small and work up" idea, is there any other reason why only anonymous users should be made to do this ? I'd prefer making the summary compulsory for everyone for non-minor edits. Or if that is frowned upon, at least make it compulsory for long pages like Village pump and Vfd. Jay 15:03, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Jay, if it's only for minor edits, I think all that will encourage is for people to mark major edits as minor, rather than explain them in detail. Sorry to be pessimistic. Jwrosenzweig 16:47, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I surpose making it compulsury for anon users to add a sumary might help curb vandalism, as people putting rubbish in the article are likely to do the same in the summary box making it easier to spot. But I wouldn't support making it compulsury for logged in users. G-Man 20:43, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I concur with the original post - I'd like to see it mandatory for *all* edits, but I'm willing to start with anon users. I agree with the point about differentiating between minor and non-minor edits, though. Noel 00:10, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Compulsory summary and copyrights on images

Good idea, I would like to see it compulsury for people to add a summary of copyright details on pictures they've uploaded as well, because on many of them you havn't a clue where they've come from. G-Man 19:26, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hmmmm. Just as you can't legislate morality, I doubt that forcing people to do what they don't want to do will help here. I agree with the comments on image copyrights... It's a pet peeve of mine. But software is not the way to go IMO. Rather we need to somehow motivate image contributors to provide the info. At present I suspect that many of the unattributed images are deliberately so, because the contributors know they are violating copyright but don't care and don't think Wikipedia should either. Andrewa 17:45, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Au contraire, if there are other contributors anything like me, they upload the photo and then *maybe* they've at some time in the past seen a page somewhere that talks about what kind of copyright info you're supposed to put on the image page, but they don't remember where and it's a pain to find it. Or they simply went straight to the image upload and never saw the detailed info on what's expected on copyrights in the image description. Could the image page automatically be filled in with boilerplate, prompts, links to help dense and/or lazy people like me get the right info in place? Elf 20:57, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I expect it could, and if you think it would help then this should be raised as a software upgrade. Meantime, let me try to scare you.
These images are all temporary citizens. Long term and perhaps long before that, Wikipedia will have no choice but to delete them, because it will be impossible to source them. Exactly where the line will be drawn about verifiable provenance is a bit hard to say, but as King Lear said, "nothing will come of nothing". So, if you do have any provenance at all, and if the images are worth having, then please go back and add it before you forget it. Otherwise you are just wasting everyone's time by contributing them. Sorry if that's blunt. Andrewa 21:59, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
OK, I'll see about exploring requesting software updates. Actually it did scare me when the image/copyright discussion first came up (here? somewhere?) about 2 weeks ago with threats of pending removals and I went back & tracked down the instructions and edited the images. So, yeah, I scare good. :-) I'll try to come up with a suggestion for what could be done with the page to (a) provide the relevant info and (b) scare people realtime. ;-) Elf 23:55, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Great stuff. Positive directions. Feel free to continue on my talk page if I can help.
And welcome to the image team! It can be an exciting place... sometimes exciting good, sometimes exciting ordinary... artistic types aren't always famous for their tact and graces. (;-> Andrewa 20:11, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Tables

What's the meaning of id=toc of the table params (apears in MediaWiki:JanuaryCalendar and other tables). Guillermo 12:39, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It applies the formatting defined in the style sheets [7], [8] for the automatic TOC to the table. The CSS don't offer another selection of styles for tables. -- User:Docu

Why have people started explaining their edits in e-mails, instead of on the appropriate talk page?

Suddenly I've started receiving all sorts of e-mails discussing article edits. Has there been a recent change that encourages e-mailing? I think this is a major change for the worse; such discussions should be preserved for all to see on the appropriate talk page. Mkweise 12:47, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Emails from lots of different people? Or just one? The former would surprise me. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 13:40, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
To be specific, I've received e-mail from 3 different users concerning 3 completely unrelated articles in less than a week—compared to zero over the previous two years. Mkweise 13:57, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I would just tell them that it's better to discuss Wikipedia matters on Wikipedia, unless it's a personal matter that you would rather not divulge to the world. Dori | Talk 14:11, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)

Actually I have also started receiving many emails from Wikipedians. I also prefer to communicate with others using e-mail, and not the talk pages. I don't know why everyone started using e-mail suddenly, but probably it has something to do with mirrors who copy the talk pages. (that's also my reason I use email). My advice is not to use the talkpages unless the discussed topic needs to be public. Optim 14:16, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

IMHO, discussions about articles should be in the talk pages. I've recently recieved a couple emails about other wikipedians, in which case I think those should be handeled privately. →Raul654 14:21, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)
I'd strongly disagree with that advice. Openness is a good thing. Is Fred Bauder's site (Wikinfo) the only site to copy user pages? We can surely work with him to alleviate that concern, if needs be. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 14:42, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There are many. The worst thing is that most of them don't let you edit the contents. Optim 15:50, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The way to fix this is to provide mirrors with pre-prepared HTML tarballs. That way we can include GFDL notices and links back, and exclude non-article pages. Some recent code refactoring means this isn't as hard as it used to be. Any volunteers? -- Tim Starling 23:17, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)
See also User:Optim/Userpages. Optim·.· 16:22, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree that it is very important to have openness on Wikipedia, and that things related to Wikipedia should be discussed on publicly visible Talk pages. Any Wikipedia-related issues that need to be discussed in realtime should be taken to the Wikipedia IRC channel. IMs and e-mails should be reserved for private, non-Wikipedia-related contact. -- Skyfaller 02:49, 2004 Mar 6 (UTC)

Sound power & Sound intensity level

Should Sound power & Sound intensity level be merged into one article? -- SGBailey 2004-03-04

Not the same thing. I've fixed some confusing wording that may have made it appear so. Mkweise 16:10, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It might be worth someone who knows about this adding a sentance at the bottom of each explaining who they are different, or at least linking as somewhat related concepts. Mark Richards 00:18, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

217.230.179.232 has added 3 Gandhi extlinks not only to Mohandas Gandhi (where they belong), but continues to add the same links to over a dozen loosly related articles. I think it's enough to have them in the article where they're most relevant...comments? Mkweise 21:18, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I mentioned hir at Wikipedia:Clueless newbies. Has created a number of articles which now solely contain that external link. It seems to be a commercial site. moink 21:21, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
In fact the user/users seem to have registered as User:Gandhiserve. I don't think they have commercial interests. Jay 15:03, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
After extensive spam-like edits yesterday, I blocked him for two hours with the instruction to read our policies. He has emailed me since apologizing, and stating that he now understands our policies. He offered to clean up the damage done (i.e., the unnecessary links) but I told him I was sure we'd handled it....I also said he was welcome to add the link to Gandhi's article, and to add factual information to Gandhi-related articles. I think we're fine now -- he seems very pleasant and understanding about the whole thing. Jwrosenzweig 16:51, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Why do the links at The Dils (to roots rock and Los Angeles, California) not work? Tuf-Kat 21:53, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)

I find a page for roots rock reggae (redirect), but I don't see one for roots rock; the los angeles links work fine for me here & there. Elf 22:17, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

They weren't working because there were line breaks in the middle of the links: [[Los<br>Angeles]]. That won't parse as a link. –Hajor 17:29, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Definitions

Knowledge requires definitions. There are two roads that wikipedia can go down.

  1. It can become a database of usless unimportant articles that have novelty appeal.
  2. It can become a compendium of human knowledge which not only gathers vast amounts of information but presents this information in the most comprehensive organized way.

When I first came to the site I saw its potential for the latter. Now I am beginning to have doubts. What good is a compendium of human knowledge that can't tell you what a compendium is? If you want a list of three letter abbreviations however...

Think about it. Bensaccount 23:38, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a compendium of human knowledge, and it doesn't aim to be one. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Perl 23:37, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I added the hyperlink to encyclopedia. Bensaccount 23:39, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That was rash, I dont want a hurried response...I want this to follow the second road. Bensaccount 23:45, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
What you should consult when you want to know the meaning of a word, is a dictionary. Mkweise 23:49, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Mkweise -- If Wikipedia tried to be both a dictionary for every conceivable word in the English language and the world's most comprehensive encyclopedia, it would be twice as hard to maintain at the very least. Ben, I suggest looking at encyclopedias in print -- you'll see that they do not attempt word definitions (except in cases where the aim of the definition is encyclopedic -- we should define "nation" because there is something to say about varying perspectives, change over time, meaning in political and social contexts, etc., but not "numb" because defining an adjective like that is a dictionary's task). Jwrosenzweig 23:54, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Nation vs. numb: there is something to say about varying perspectives, change over time, meaning in political and social contexts, etc. for each. The real difference is that for numb these are well defined whereas for nation they remain less clear.

If everything defined was taken out, where would we be? Bensaccount 00:06, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Ben, all I can say is this. For centuries, educated people have used a dictionary and an encyclopedia for different purposes -- we expect and need different information from each work. Wikimedia supports an encyclopedia and a dictionary. You are (we all are) welcome to work on them both. I don't see any compelling need to combine the two, and plenty of reasons why not to combine them (involving logistics, aims, scope, etc.). Jwrosenzweig 00:14, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The best explanation of the difference is probably this quotation from Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary (a good talk page to peruse, Ben, if this is important to you) -- "A dictionary entry will describe the meaning of a word and perhaps its pronunciation and its origin. An encyclopaedia entry should describe not only these things (in the case of words) but go further and discuss significance, history, effects, related concepts and so on. There is much more meat in an encyclopaedia article than in a dictionary article." If you can make an encyclopedia article about a word, I say make one. If you can't, we don't. Jwrosenzweig 00:21, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm in the process of losing all hope in wikipedia here. You say "significance, history, effects, related concepts and so on" but what I want to hear is "shorter more precice, more organized information about".

I dont think you understand. I will not return to this page again today but I will continue to add and organize info at least until tomorrow, no longer in hope that it will help present the worlds info in a more organized way but because it helps me study for the test tommorow. Bensaccount 00:32, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Care to give us an example of an encyclopedic article on compendium? How about User:Bensaccount/compendium. I eagerly await your addition. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 08:03, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Ben---as for articles being "shorter and more precise"---obviously there's merit to being concise and to the point, but that doesn't necessarily mean being shorter. If there is a lot to say about a subject, there is no reason not to say it, since length is not a restriction. Please feel free to improve any article you find that has problems with conciseness, provided that does not mean effectively turning a thorough discussion into bullet points. And of course there are some issues with lack of organization here; when thousands of relative strangers randomly contribute to any article they like, quite a bit of messiness can result. We always welcome those who would like to put their time into making Wikipedia more organized and coherent; I think if you spend a little more time here, you'll be impressed with how well the system works, and with how most problems tend to be self-correcting. -- Wapcaplet 23:03, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yes, shorter isnt better. But when an article is too long it should be subdivided. Bensaccount 18:14, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia and novelty appeal

Wikipedia will become a database of usless unimportant articles that have novelty appeal. Bensaccount 17:37, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There are more than two roads. Web implementation, hyperlinking, and open collaboration give it interesting characteristics. One of the more curious ones is that garbage damages Wikipedia less than it would damage a print encyclopedia. If you look up on LISP and find a well-written article that answers your question, you don't really care whether there's a questionable List of [insert favorite junk list here] in the same "volume." As for organization, the article on Programming languages is a very good organization of the overall topic. It doesn't matter much if there are junk articles on programming if you don't find them when you're searching, or looking up something, or if the articles you find don't link to them. Wikipedia is proceeding down a road of its own. It is encyclopedic, but it combines elements of traditional, scholarly encyclopedias and "encyclopedias" of popular-culture topics. Dpbsmith 14:03, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
In retrospect, I agree theres nothing wrong with wikipedias inculsion of pop-culture and any topic at all for that matter (I dont really even have a problem with lists of two letter words, but in comparison with definitions there is a definite level of priority). Bensaccount 17:35, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Borderline Vandal: posting in bad faith; POV material largely off-topic

I'm about to call it a session, but perhaps others will be able to pay attention to the following users and articles:

Note that those are the entire contribution histories of the 3 users.

I reverted Governments' pre-war ...

04:27, 2004 Mar 5 . . Jerzy (rv to last of 134.132.117.252 : POV, off topic, at least one absurd assertion about polling public in every country)

for the reasons stated, especially in light of "masking" of the IP's edits with the 2-character Minor edit. That is, i believe User:Mobz's edit was pre-planned, and intended to keep the use of the IP and the extent of the edit from being noticed by Watchlist users who look at "(cur" rather than "hist)"; i describe this as editing in bad faith.

The counter-revert by a third brand-new user reinforces my impression of the attempt (initially) at stealth.

I don't contest that there may be some verifiable and useful material in what i reverted, and other edits that may be similar. But at this point in time, i don't edit for the enemy when they are using stealth, doing sloppy work, and showing no regard for staying on topic. As i suggest in my heading, i consider these 3 users represent a single person, who is entitled only to be treated like a vandal.

I'm going to do another revert, on the one article, before logging off.

Whether the contributed material deserves harsh treatment is of course another matter; i leave it to others, as i do the other, i think similarly edited, articles. --Jerzy(t) 08:14, 2004 Mar 5 (UTC)

Press Release

I'm asking Wikipedia, please, please, every user, send off the Wikipedia:Press releases/February 2004 press release off to your local paper, a few local papers, a dozen papers in Tibet. We need to get this out to the media, and can only do it with your help! Even contacting one local paper will make a world of difference. Secretlondon once said, "If some of the people who helped write the thing had helped send it out we would have the world covered by now." -- user:Zanimum

Just the release itself? Do we need to write a cover letter? How should this be done? --Jiang 19:42, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
If someone could put together some kind of standard form letter or instructions, that would be helpful. I mean, how seriously would a local paper take an emailed press release from some random person (like me)? --Minesweeper 02:33, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)
Ditto on these requests. I looked at the press release page when it first came out but couldn't figure out what I was supposed to say or include in my email, so did nuthin'. Elf 03:09, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Find instructions at How to send a press release

wikipedia mirror

Hello,

Is it possible to get the complete sources of all articles compressed into a single file like a .tar.gz file? or is it possible to get a copy of the MySQL database directory?

Cheers, Vincent

Yes, see http://download.wikimedia.org. Please also see Wikipedia:Copyrights if you are going to set up a mirror. Dori | Talk 14:04, Mar 5, 2004 (UTC)

Scientific name redirects

Should it be made possible for people to look up organism species via their latin names, via redirects? Or is there already something fulfilling this need? I first wanted to start doing this off my own bat, but then I decided to ask first; then I can also ask whether it should be put on the open tasks list if it needs to be done. I have a suspicion that it may be a very large task; maybe it would be a good idea to ask page authors if they would make scientific-name links for their own pages? Thanks, Sietse

Ask at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Tree of Life for specific ( :-) ) advice. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 14:51, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
As that discussion is a bit lengthy - the short answer is: current policy is to have any lifeform at its common english name (if it has one), and make the scientific name a redirect. E.g. Salamandra salamandra is a redirect to Fire Salamander. However by far not all species have that redirect. In the Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life you'll find the full answer with a lot of discussion around it... andy 15:09, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Project Gutenberg

Would it be useful to go through and post links to full text versions of literature as found on PG? I am a newcomer here, so let me know. kmac 20:52, Mar 5, 2004 (UTC)

Links to PG works are fine (actually welcomed not just fine). Dori | Talk 20:56, Mar 5, 2004 (UTC)
Wikisource is a sister project of Wikipedia and is the proper repository for the full texts themselves. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 22:49, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)


Issues

First, I'd just like to say that it sucks that VP is now no longer linked from the main page.

Secondly, what the heck is going on with the "What Links Here" page for Fortran? (scroll down) --Dante Alighieri | Talk 23:10, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Seems like the link table updating bug gets more and more serious. The way it happens there is a minor problem, much more annoying is that sometime a links stays red even though the target page exists. andy 23:22, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Fun new page suggestion - Monsters!

I was thinking about a page for monsters with human heads/torsos. We could put sphinx, harpy, mermaid, shedu, Lamia, centaur and many more there. Can anyone think of a good title for the page, and/or a good way to organize it? Perhaps a table listing the component body parts of the beasties? Lion's body with human head as compared to horse's body with human torso for example.

Furthermore, what about monsters with different human body parts? For example, the Minotaur is all human... except for his head. While we're at it, what about werewolves who are human most of the time? Darn it, this is getting complicated... --Dante Alighieri | Talk 01:19, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Chimera is both the name of one such monster and a term for a living creature combining attributes from several different sources, so it might be one possible title... By the way, I think that the existence of mermaids and mermen were deductions from a medieval theory that every land creature had a corresponding sea creature (hence all the sea-urchins and sea-lions and sea-whatevers...) Which comedian had a bit about a "maid-mer" ("on her, the top half was a fish?") Dpbsmith 01:37, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The Chimera had no human parts. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 01:52, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Although Chimeric creature might work... but it wouldn't limit it to beasts with human components. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 01:54, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It might belong as a sublist on some existing pages. Browse around List of species in folklore and mythology and List of species in folklore and mythology by type and see what you think. (Main entry seems to be Legendary creatures, but I don't think Legendary means at all the same as Mythical, which is what I really see these things as. But I didn't title the pages. :-) ) Elf 02:28, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)~

Meta Question

For reasons we shall leave to a defenseless posterity to ponder, I have composed a lengthy ill-contrived article over in m:User:Itai/Gnutella (if you want to comment on this article, please do so in the article's Talk page. It should be noted that despite several ill-conceived declaration on my behalf, the idea thereby presented is doable. Worse still, I could do it). I was wondering where in the Meta - if such a place exists - I should place a link to this article (although I should probably move it out of the User: namespace first), the concept therein discussed not quite fitting the title of a Project? Furthermore, if I have future questions regarding the Meta, where should I place them? (Somehow, I'm not sure Wikipedia's own Village Pump is the best place for questions such as this. Possibly a mailing list would have been better, for a given definition of the term.) -- Itai 01:54, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Mainly m:Current issues and m:MediaWiki_development#Proposed. As you're saying we could do away with the Squid proxies, you might want to link from m:Cache strategy. If you think it will make things faster, you can link from m:Why Wikipedia runs slow. And if you're desperate for more links, claim it will reduce stress and link from m:wikistress. :) Angela. 10:43, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)
Reduce stress... I wouldn't know. Is there a page for reducing Wikipedia? :) Anyway, I am much obliged. -- Itai 23:51, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Pancreatitis in the headlines

Attorney General John Ashcroft has been hospitalized (intensive care) with acute gallstone pancreatitis. Looking at our article on pancreatitis, it sure could use some spiffing up -- including articles for the many red links.

Could someone with a medical background take a look and see what can be done? Thanks. -Rholton 02:47, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

LinuxQuestions.org

LinxQuestions.org was just featured on Slashdot. A nice enough project, but they need help. Many of the contributions would make a seasoned Wikipedia editor cringe for abuse of Wiki syntax, their manual of style is blank, Article Titles have Mixed Case Too Often, and I can't find a single community page.

BUT STILL! It shows promise, and I thought you (plural) would. be interested. They could use some help.

-- Fennec 03:33, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC) LinxQuestions.org (User:Fennec)

Hey Fennec, I just saw you over there a few minutes ago :-) Fennec is right though, the project is just starting up and has a lot of gaping holes to fill, so any Wikipedians who know stuff about Linux would certainly be welcomed there. They use our Wiki code, so there is zero learning curve for anyone who's spent time here. -- Wapcaplet 04:09, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I see an upside and a downside to this. We don't need to lose seasoned wikipedians to another wiki project, but if their project adds even one or two more developers to the project, it would be a great windfall. →Raul654 04:11, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)
Indeed? :) I should try to become a developer-type... I've considered running my own wiki as well. As for this site... Right now I think that they suffer from a lack of infrastructure for guidelines and community. A village pump? Naming conventions? Editable help pages? You wish. - Fennec 06:27, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Weird bug on VFD or stupidity on my part?

I went to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion and tried to vote on Symbiotic algorithm. I clicked on the section "edit" and it took me to an editing page. The edit box, instead of the list of votes, had the following: 

=== The 6th ===
Take an old day's section off by moving by removing its last listings, and moving    
its heading to be the line before this sentence.
(However, headings containing the word "March" may be discarded instead of being     
moved.)
-->

Does anybody know what this means? Why can't I vote? moink 04:12, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Tried it with no problems... might just be you, may have been temporary... Fennec 07:32, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I think it was temporary. I suspect that User:Jerzy was in the middle of something odd he was doing with the date headers. Thanks for checking for me. moink 08:19, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The --> is a clue that a comment was created, and is probably a guideline to editors who want to maintain the page. Anything you put in between a <!-- and a --> doesn't show up Dysprosia 08:25, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I think it is a known bug that headings inside comment tags break section editing. Angela. 10:43, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

Tutorial on 'how to write a well-sourced article': Hapiru example

I just ran across Habiru/Sources, and was pleasantly amazed at the quality of the source-referencing and research that has gone into what was once a likely deletion candidate. I think every Wikipedian should run across this page in their first day of community-page browsing, so that somewhere in the back of their minds they have an idea of what high-detail citations can look like.

Could someone who knows where all the WP-intro documents are include this as a standard for excellent research, so that people who would otherwise be inclined to engage in POV or factual finger-pointing can see how else their efforts might be directed?

Maps, etc...

It is despairing finding an article on a region/river/place... which is not illustrated with a map. I am sure this has been already discussed, but it might be worthwhile keeping a record of those articles somewhere so that someone having the time and willing may "fix" them. Any ideas? I am going to start this list at user:Pfortuny/Unmapped_places. Pfortuny 12:32, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree, maps are so important to these articles. I know that User:Morwen has been uploading loads of maps recently, so I don't know if she already has a list that she's working off of? fabiform | talk 13:06, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I am making a list of things as I do them at User:Morwen/maps. Morwen 13:27, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)
You're doing some commendable work.MK 22:37, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I am not sure if you are aware of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps - maybe your requested maps list can become a subpage in that project. And it would be more likely that any wikimapmaker would look there than your userpage. andy 20:26, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I knew there was something of the sort. I'll refer to that page. Thanks to all. Pfortuny 08:42, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I noticed another header bug when I was wikifying Casualties of the September 11, 2001 Attacks: City of New York ... if there's a broken header, such as === Header ====, it completely borks the section editor, as that header is still counted as a section.... [ alerante 13:46, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC) ]

What are these?

What's the use of this page: List of stations of the Paris Métro? Most of the links there are stubs! Like Pont de Levallois - Bécon, Anatole France, Louise Michel, Porte de Champerret etc. Are they necessary? --Yacht 14:33, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, they are. Optim·.· 15:03, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I would agree with Optim if those articles have more then the basic stub info they have now. There is probably more info than the subway line which goes there. When was the station opened? Where did the name come from? Any special events there (e.g. a bomb, a serious accident)? See the London subway stations as a positive example what this stub can grow into. But there is equal chance they will stay these ugly stubs for a long time. andy 20:20, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Errr... what i cay say is: they are really ugly...--Yacht 08:40, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)
Some suggestions, best first:
1. Fix them. It's a lot more work to fix them than to just criticise them, but it does directly improve the Encyclopedia.
2. Add stub warnings, if appropriate and not already there. This is really a minor fix, but it is progress and it's surprising how often it's overlooked, so I thought it deserved its own line.
3. Discuss them on the article talk pages, making the best suggestions you can to help others fix them.
4. List them on cleanup. This at least alerts others to the fact that they need fixing.
But, please don't list them on VfD unless you've read Wikipedia:Deletion policy and there are sound reasons for deleting them in terms of this policy. Oh you may laugh, but doing just this seems to be an increasingly common hobby and is IMO an enormous waste of the time of those of us who would like to improve the articles. Sorry if that's blunt. Andrewa 19:49, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Michael Hayden

Michael Hayden's name should have been included in the list of "classical period composers".

I see Michael Haydn in List of classical music composers# Classical era. Maybe you missed him because you misspelled his lastname? Or do you mean another list? andy 20:12, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Spoiler Warnings

A technical suggestion: it would be great if a spoiler warning lead to a message in the <head><title></title></head> of the page in question, rather than just in the body. My feeling is that if you are looking something up in an encyclopedia, you should already be ready for potential spoilers. So I see the spoiler warning as often more useful for people navigating in from Google searches and the like, who might not realize that they are about to get a plot summary. As such, it would be nice to put the warning somewhere that Google searchers will notice it right away. Chinasaur 19:37, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

That seems good lateral thinking to me. Interested in other thoughts on the matter. Andrewa 12:14, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Coorporate Prosecution

We seem to be moving forward a little, however, the greatest crime to the American citizens is the theft of millions of dollars which was earmarked for our military. What and when are we going to launch an investigation and prosecution on Halliburton for their theft and kick-backs? We really need to do something about that to stop coorporate greed!

Does anyone have any idea where to move this to? Certainly doesn't belong here. -- Jmabel 22:18, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps on Talk:Halliburton? RickK 03:33, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Or perhaps just delete? Of course then it will stay in the history, it just won't be easy to find it.
The function of this and all other Wikipedia pages is to support the development of Wikipedia, which consists primarily of the articles. I can't see how indexing this particular comment is helpful towards this goal myself. I suppose perhaps it might help to attract this anonymous critic to the idea of becoming a contributor, or perhaps it might inspire someone else to improve the article suggested, but I'm not convinved of either of these. Andrewa 20:04, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"neurodermitis melánica"

Looking at a source for the article on Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, I have run into a Spanish-language term I do not know who to translate: "neurodermitis melánica". I have translated this conservatively as "a form of neurodermatitis", but I would like to be more precise. Does anyone know the English-language equivalent? -- Jmabel 22:16, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Overwikification

To be moved to Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context

I apologize if I'm raising this issue in the wrong forum or if it's already been discussed. But I've noticed several examples of what I'd call overwikification. Check out these articles: List of Ambassadors to Canada, Survivor: Pulau Tiga, Tom Berenger, Twelfth United States Congress. There's over two hundred red links to empty articles on these four pages alone. And looking at the titles of these empties, it's likely nobody is ever going to fill them in with any article, let alone one worth reading.

Maybe we need to discuss some informal standard an empty article needs to rise to before someone creates a red link to it. MK 22:30, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I can't really see the harm. It's possible that they may just inspire an interested party to write a series of articles for them - it's certainly happened before. Ambivalenthysteria 22:53, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I'm with MK. I find it prevalent and an annoying irritation. I suspect the practice of wikifiying almost everything regardless of whether the linked article exists was more useful when Wikipedia was getting started. I don't believe a word should be linked unless you either a) know that an article for the linked term exists or b) feel strongly that the article should exist and have a reasonable expectation that someday it will exist. Dpbsmith 22:59, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Well, I can't speak for everybody, but I "strongly feel" that an article for every member of the U.S. House (past and present) should exist, along with an article on every movie in IMDB and every band at Ultimate Band List. I've got no problem with these articles. Meelar 23:02, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I agree that in narrative text, overwikification is very annoying. But I'd draw a distinction between narrative text and lists: in lists of films, books, credits, etc, like those pointed to by MK, it's less annoying to have them all wikified. And many of them will come to have articles eventually: several of those in Tom Berenger's list, for example have three or more links to them already. - Nunh-huh 23:07, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
What Nunh-huh said. On lists like 12th Congress, all of those names eventually (sometime in the next decade) should get articles of their own. In actual articles overwikification is a huge problem, especially with dates. But in lists is cool...
What? you want us to re-wikify them all after they exist, which means once the links are available, we have to search them all in wiki and wikify them? I guess that's more annoying! Besides, i have to check out all the links in my article to see if they exist before i submit it. which one is more annoying? i strongly believe that a red link gives Wikipedians a desire to creat it. What we need to worry about, is the vandalism, IMO. PS: I DON'T like repeated wikified links in one article... --Yacht 12:17, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)
So people are claiming that there actually will someday be an article on Philémon Yunji Yang, the current Cameroonian ambassador to Canada? A solid biography of Mr Yang (I'm assuming Phil's a mister) and a brief but thorough history of his diplomatic and political career? Hopefully it'll appear before someone else has suceeded him as Ambassador because an article on the former Cameroonian ambassador to Canada seems pointless.
If we're going to have a standard that any subject potentially deserves an article because someone may be interested, why do we discourage vanity pages and high school articles?
My personal suggestion is that when you're wikifying an article, ask yourself these questions before creating a red link: Should this article exist? Would there be information in this theoretical article that goes beyond what's in this existing article? Is it ever likely to be written? Would someone be likely to be looking for an article with this subject?MK 16:26, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Warbox

I know there is a Wikipedia:WikiProject Battles battlebox, but is there a page (apparently it's not Wikipedia:WikiProject Wars) that itemizes a "warbox"--just want to ask about recent adds to U.S. wars. jengod 23:43, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

I've seen those as well, but I've never seen a discussion about it...it looks interesting though. Adam Bishop 23:44, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Squid problems?

My Netscape 7 only let me see the last four village pump entries in this very big issue after I went into the edit box -- even a forced reload didn't get me actual content. Maybe a problem related to file size and the caching system? -- till we *) 00:12, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I've been having a lot of mysterious problems with pages not being up-to-date in the last few days. Edits apparently not taking, and so forth. Forced reloads don't work, emptying my browser's cache doesn't work. I've tried using IE rather than Safari. No difference. What does work for me is to log out of Wikipedia and then log in again. Dpbsmith 03:07, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Automatic lists

Is there any way to automatically generate a list of related articles? Such as all Unterseeboots that have articles? --Pascal666 03:02, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No, right now there is no such way. Unless you can get what you want by clicking "What links here." The other way is to run a query on the database, administrators used to have access to queries, but I am not sure if that's the case anymoe (it slows down the db server). Dori | Talk 04:55, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)


Special:Allpages/Unterseeboot might yield what you are looking for. -- User:Docu

The logging-out bug

Could somebody please fix the bug that causes a user to become logged-out when they hit the "Save Page" button after editing an article, and now also causes the edit to be lost. (It used to be that if you got logged out in this way you could hit "Back" and your edit would still be there. Now it lost for good.) This has happened to me twice in recent days, causing me to lose a lot of work. I know others have complained about this bug for a long time, but it has never been fixed. (Yes I know I should save all edits somewhere else before attempting to "Save Page," but I don't always remember.) Adam 04:32, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Deleting a page

How does a Wikipedian go about deleting a page? JB82 16:55, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

In general we don't like deleting pages - we'd prefer to see them fixing in some way, if possible. See Wikipedia:Deletion policy for more, and how to delete a page when it really needs to be deleted. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:19, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Talking to Wikipedians using UserTalk

I was wondering how do you talk with other Wikipedians using UserTalk if they don't have a link to their talk page? JB82 15:07, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

They have a link to their user page. Hit that, then hit "Discuss this page" to get to their talk page. Does that answer your question? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:17, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)


Making most wanted more useful?

At the moment, Special:Wantedpages is not updated automatically, but created only once in some days (to help the servers with their burden). That is okay -- but what is confusing is the use of edit links, because they stay red. That is no problem if Wantedpages is generated every time one calls it, but in the current state of affairs, it would be more useful if one actually can see if a wanted page (say: Toto (band), which is still listed on the top of most wanted) has been created by someone else in the meantime. So I propose to introduce another link (to the page, not to editing the page) for every item in the Special:Wantedpages to make it easier to check if the item got created meanwhile. -- till we *) 13:13, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I *STRONLGY* agree with the above - there's no way of telling which ones have been written and which ones haven't. →Raul654 16:42, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)
I agree with you, the current situation for this (and other special pages) isn't that great. A solution could be to place the content on Wikipedia:Most_Wanted_Articles and edit it there. Special:Wantedpages would just suggest to look there. -- User:Docu


Search engine limitation?

I have a search-engine question over at the Talk:Ballard,_Seattle,_Washington page.

--c3k 17:04, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)

Replied there. By the way, someone needs to align the two search forms at MediaWiki:Googlesearch as it doesn't look very professional right now. If you're not an admin, just paste it on the talk page, and someone will get it. Dori | Talk 17:11, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)

Enter the "who is moink?" contest!

Identify my gender, nationality, and rough geographic location, and win a fabulous prize! Details at my user page.

Contest is ended. Maximus Rex has won. moink 21:42, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

University of Bristol

I am a little uneasy about recent edits in University of Bristol by someone from an IP address (137.222.50.154) at that institution. Nothing terrible but a bit of a PoV feel (to me) and perhaps some kind of agenda, maybe an official Bristol one, being promoted. Claims about its prestige, claims about mediocre depts holding back the ratings. Maybe it's OK really but I would be grateful if someone with more experience than I would take a look at it please. 82.35.17.203 20:55, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Help me make this article NPOV?

I recently added a lot of information to the Microsoft antitrust case article. However, another user believes the article to be biased, and has added a disclaimer saying so to the top of the page. I've discussed it with him offsite; he can't point to anything specific he believes to be biased in my additions to the article, but he believes the general tone of what I added is biased, perhaps in my choice of what facts to add. Would someone else please have a look at the article and either help me bring it further NPOV or else remove the disclaimer? - Brian Kendig 23:25, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

An NPOV header needs to be substantiated, Brian. In other words, it is not good enough to say "I object to this", you must say why you object. A vague "I don't like the presentation of the article" doesn't cut it. On these grounds, I removed the header. Tannin 23:39, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Formatting help

The table at European Union is too wide. Please fix it. --Jiang 01:16, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I changed width=400 to 300. Better? fabiform | talk 01:23, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Greek Letters

Anybody happen to know how Georgios Papanikolaou would be written in the Green alphabet? jengod

I would hazard something like Γεοργιος Παπανικολαου but I'm probably wrong :) Dysprosia 03:15, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

error

There is an error in the spelling of monatomic on one of the pages about helium. I just thought that I would send this message so you all know. I do not know how many other errors there are on this word but I thought I would let you know that there was at least one. Monatomic was typed in as monoatomic instead.

Sincerely, Dan Knapp

  • Dan, you can go ahead and fix it, just click on "Edit this page" when you notice something wrong and correct it! - Nunh-huh 03:37, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
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