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[[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]]

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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)

-->Wikipedia talk:Copyrights

Image Cache Problem?

I uploaded a new, larger version, of a file, Vassar_Logo.png, but it keeps displaying the old version.

The image page, has the updated image size, because the rectangle to show the image has expanded. but it fills in the old version. I see that the file size of the upload file matches the size of the original on my machine, so I know I uploaded the proper image.

18 hours have gone by and it is still using the old image. Is there a way to tell tell wikipedia to use the new image? NickP 11:41, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)

It worked for me once I cleared the cache with the Shift-Reload forced reload. andy 12:18, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)



Alfred hunt engineer in nigeria

I have recently recieved a e-mail about a cousin of mine and I don't know what to do it is from a attorney that is representing my cousin it seems that he and his whole family died over their in a car accident. he is looking for information to deal with the estate. is their any way you can check old records? we had no idea he died... can you help up Ron Hunt

I think this is a Nigerian scam (Nigeria seems to be the current capital of internet and telephone scams, I'm afraid). It's very unlikely that an attorney would email you without writing first. Be very aware that any confidential information you may give out may be used to defraud you or to obtain credit in your name. If you think there's any chance that this might be genuine, contact the Nigerian Embassy or Consulate nearest to you. They can verify the details of the persons death, and can confirm that the lawyer is who he says he is. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:14, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Details on this can be found at Nigerian scam. Jgm 17:17, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

English Versions

There are two main recognised ways of spelling English. British and American. I was wondering, is there any way of customising the spelling on the page so that a reader can automatically get his spelling as the case in date variations? Wiki programmers should take up this issue. Probably an array of words could be cross referenced. Nichalp

Automatic procedures and language don't go well together at present, and I don't think there is a simple find-and-replace that can shift between AE and BE; there is more to language than spelling, even though the difference between AE and BE is small. This subject is partly dealt with in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, esp the section Usage and spelling. The convention seems to be consistent within articles. — Sverdrup 14:33, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
If the authors of word processors can find an acceptible solution to language translation, there's no reason why Wikipedia shouldn't incorporate the same. Although I agree that there is more than spelling to language variations, spelling differences are the most visible. Nichalp 18:55, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)
While it sounds relatively easy to convert color to colour or to delete an L in travelled, thinking the proposal through further reveals major problems: would you convert a textual quote from Shakespeare or the title of a U.S. tv program? I'd certainly hope not, so we'd need a <noUsUkconvert> tag. And the next request would be automatic conversion of punctuation rules, or of the which/that distinction that USians are so quick to stomp on but that UKians largely don't care about. I think our programmers' time could be more usefully spent pursuing other enhancements to the software. The use of different styles of English here isn't really a problem, so long as everyone – on both sides of the Atlantic and both sides of the Irish Sea, on the soft underbelly of Asia, and right round down under – learns to rejoice in diversity and respect the different ways of saying, and punctuating, the same thing.–Hajor 19:22, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
May I just compliment you on the truly beautiful way in which you spelled and punctuated that statement. :D - IMSoP 23:17, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Accessibility

I ran the wikipedia main page in [Bobby] which checks web pages for accessiblity issues.

  • It failed!!

I strongly feel that Wikipedia software writers should help make pages more accesibility friendly so that 'challenged people' should not have a problem. What do you think? Nichalp


Try the text-only version. Mkweise 20:40, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

For the record, I checked our main page for w3c compliance, and it failed. see here →Raul654 19:32, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)

HTML Tags

I wish the authors of wiki software do add some more HTML tags & attributes. eg SPAN, and attributes: eg 'title'.

What's more is that it doesn't qualify as a "clean" page when I tried validating the main page in w3c.org page validation.

Nichalp

More important missing tags (to me) are <del> & <ins> for talk pages, and <acronym> & <abbr> for articles. — Jor (Talk) 20:51, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
HTML is un-wiki and should be avoided, I think. Markup should be easy and non-complex, creating more uniform look. We could add wikimarkup corresponding to the more wanted HTML tags, if they are very useful. — Sverdrup 18:14, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Skins

Hope Wiki guys can provide us more skins

Nichalp

It is rumored that there are people testing out new skins at the wikipedia test platform — Sverdrup 14:24, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Try http://wiki.aulinx.de/ for example. The skin itself is xhtml/css based, the output of the content area wiki->html parser isn't validationg though. This skin is in the wikimedia cvs, needs more testing and (browser)bug fixing. -- Gabriel Wicke 16:23, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

User:666

-->User talk:666

Hungarian Counties

There is a new WikiProject called Wikipedia:WikiProject Historical Hungarian counties. This is similar to the historical Swedish provinces project. Anyone who wants to join may do so.

--Dagestan

Okay, here's the first one so far: Bihar

Uhhhhhh.....anyone?

Don't be disheartened. After all, one would reasonably expect many (most?) of the folks interested in Hungarian Counties to be Hungarians, and thus (generally) located in Hungaria (sic), and consequently tucked up, warm and snug, in bed. I'd give it a day or two (oh, and you should probably crosspost on the hungarian wikipedia's village pump too). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:44, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There is the chance that you may be the only contributor for that project for some time. I have experienced the same when I started a project on the provinces of Thailand, where I finally had to create all the articles myself - that was no problem, it only took longer to finish them. But you will experience at least one part of the wiki principle - spelling or grammar errors will be fixed, even if it's a more exotic topic. But don't let this stop you from pursuing with that project, quite the contrary - and maybe the already finished articles may attract new contributors later. andy 11:46, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I do not really get why do they need a "project", since they already have got an article? --grin

Wikipedia on CD-rom

Is there a way to get a (snapshot of) Wikipedia on CD-rom? I know this is against the interactive nature of Wikipedia, but I would like to have it for my students without internet access. Anybody knows how it can be done? -- Kjetil Halvorsen

Kjetil, we don't have a great solution, but there are two schemes for static dumps, both described at Wikipedia:Database download. You might like to try the "terodump" thing, although I can't personally vouch for it. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:51, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)


Kobe Bryant's Accuser

There is now a page entitled Kobe Bryant's accuser. It does not currently include a name. I hope that we can have a debate about whether or not to include the woman's name at Talk:Kobe Bryant's accuser. moink 01:15, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

By copying and pasting rather than moving the page you have removed the history information and infringed the copyright of the contributors. Update: I see the history has been copied to the discussion page. Good enough. anthony (this comment is a work in progress and may change without prior notice) 01:19, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
FWIW, I found the name of the accuser in a matter of seconds through Google. Her name is already in the open, so why continue to hide it? — Jor (Talk) 12:32, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Possibly due to legal reasons in the US, but IANAL and I am not sure. Pfortuny 13:44, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There was much discussion on VfD on this issue. - IMSoP 14:59, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
And there is currently much discussion on Talk:Kobe Bryant's accuser. If you have an opinion, please come post it there. moink 17:36, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

-->Wikipedia talk:Copyrights

The film of the book

When a book is adapted into a film should there be one article for the book and one for the film? Sometimes on Wikipedia theres one page for the film and one for the book (Trainspotting (movie) and Trainspotting (novel)). Sometimes there both covered in the same article (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). Is there a policy on this? My own personal view is that they should be in the same article unless theres a very big difference between them (although I admit that thats a very subjective question). Saul Taylor 06:37, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree with that. It of course depends on how faithful the film is to the book, and if differences can be addressed without taking over the entire article. — Jor (Talk) 12:31, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wiki as Language Learning

I might have asked this before, but I don't remember receiving an answer--is there any special program for using Wikipedia as a way of learning foreign languages? (I am thinking specifically as a way of learning several languages simultaneously). Mjklin 15:04, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No, but there are several language textbooks in progress at Wikibooks. Tuf-Kat 17:27, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)

Im looking fo an athelte

During the games there was a negro athelte in the 400 meters that when he got half way around pulled a muscle. He didnt stop he got up and limped to the finish. I was wandering if you had his name or any information for me where i could please find more out about this moving experince.

I really would like to hear anything you had or know please. I rember there was a commercial with Robin willams that featured this guy.

Thanks for your time

Matthew Scott

Matthewscott1@hotmail.com

  • This seems to match your description[1]. Niteowlneils 23:02, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Image Authorization

How can you get the right to use these images Boeing X-43 on Wikipedia in such a short notice? I am new at Wikipedia and would like to know how you get in touch with the owners, in this case NASA, and get their authorization so fast. Am I totally lost or what, please help me?

As I understand it, images on USA government sites (TLD .gov as in nasa.gov) are free for use. A note of course should be given where it is from on the image page. — Jor (Talk) 16:22, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
One should be careful though; all images which credit only NASA are PD. NASA may however include pics from individual astronomers/space agencies in their articles, and they are not free, just like our 'fair use' images are not GFDL — Sverdrup 19:29, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The products of US federal government employees produced in the course of their work is in the public domain. Federal sites are generally pretty good at indicating when this does not apply, as is done for things like NASA/ESA projects, where an image credit is requested. That's compatible with the GFDL license authorship requirements, so it's not problematic to accept that request. US state government works are not included in this. In other cases, fair use can be used to respond quickly and news-type items are a well-accepted fair use situation. That can be followed with a GFDL permission request as time allows. Jamesday 05:57, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
If you do find that permission is needed, check out Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission. -- Wapcaplet 23:32, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Log-in problems?

A couple times already today I found I was logged-out for no apparent reason. Did anything change on the Wikipedia end (in other words, is this affecting more people)? — Jor (Talk) 16:49, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

  • It was happening (often) to me, so I finally used the 'remember across sessions' checkbox so it's not happening any more. Niteowlneils 23:09, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia jabber chat room.

After setting up a chatroom for the Italian Wikipedia comunity on Jabber (Free and Open Source Instant Messenger) I noticed that the majority of the people that enter the room asking for information are English speakers. So here we are: I made another chatroom en.wiki@muc.jabber.org with the purpose to host the English Comunity chats. You are all welcome to give discuss the concerns and problems of wikipedia and give advise to the chat voyageurs that enter the room. I think it is a good way to find new adepts, what do you think about it?

Schopenhauer 17:21, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think this might fragment the #wikipedia IRC room, but hey some people hate IRC, so it might be a good idea. Dori | Talk 17:35, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)
I've found Jabber chatrooms to be wanting. Jabber has the possibility of being even better than IRC in terms of features, but I've yet to find a client that implements chat perfectly. Even so, this is a great idea, so I'll be sure to check out the room. Ashibaka ✎ 20:38, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The best part of the IRC chat is that it has ~= 62 people on it normally. Here... not so. =( Fennec 04:42, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Searching

Is the text search of Wikipedia permeanently disabled? Every single time I go to use it, it says:

"Sorry! Full text search has been disabled temporarily, for performance reasons. In the meantime, you can use the Google or Yahoo! searches below. Note that their copies of Wikipedia content may be out of date."

Or am I doing something wrong? LUDRAMAN | T 17:31, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It was disabled prior to the arrival of the new (fast) servers, but has not been re-enabled. — Jor (Talk) 17:37, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
More specifically, (as I understand it) the search was intended to use the one server which wasn't replaced, and is still awaiting return from repairs. - IMSoP 01:19, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Rumour has it the old server is repaired and will be installed on Saturday. I don't think this guarantees the search will be back on though. Angela. 21:03, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

Table tutorial

Recently, someone came up with the brilliant idea of the Wikipedia:Picture_tutorial. Could someone do the same for tables? I'm totally confused here, and I'm sure there are many other Wikipedians who would appreciate one as well. LUDRAMAN | T 20:03, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

see m:Wiki markup tables. IMHO the image tutorial should be moved to meta too. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:09, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
oops, m:MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:58, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Well, it' good to hear that someone liked my picture tutorial :) →Raul654 20:47, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)
IMO all the tutorials inc. the picture and table tutorials should be put on the Wikipedia:Tutorial so you have one main tutorial instead of lots of scattered ones. What do other users think? LUDRAMAN | T 21:13, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That's Isomorphic's baby - I know from talking to him (in the flesh) that he's the tutorial master. But I made sure he is aware of the picture tutorial. →Raul654 06:18, Mar 30, 2004 (UTC)
BTW there is a tutorial at How_to_use_tables. -- User:Docu

Who can nominate for deletion?

I'm sure I've seen something written about who can nominate for deletion, and who can vote on VfD, but I can't actually find the reference to it, if it exists. Anyone? DJ Clayworth 22:51, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There is no rule. In practice the sysop who "actions" a VfD day has a degree of latitude with regard to which votes they choose to count as valid (a latitude mitigated by the inevitable recriminations should they be felt to misstep). Obvious sockpuppets tend to be discarded out of hand, and in general most other votes seem to count. An imperfect scheme for an imperfect world. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:00, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Finlay. Obvious sock puppets and anonymous votes are not counted. Unsigned votes are almost never counted (unless the admin decides to check the page history and try and find out who it was -- a rare thing, usually not done, I think, unless the vote might tip a page one way or the other). In general, any account that has not edited beyond voting on VFD is ignored (even if it can't be traced as a sock puppet to a particular user) under the reasonable (I think) assumption that it's either a sock puppet we haven't identified, or a banned user wreaking minor havoc. Jwrosenzweig 23:09, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Sort of like the US election system. Votes are muddled by unanswered questions of who can vote, vote counters are selected from among those with interest in outcome of the votes, and final outcome is determined by judges with partisan interests. User:not
I shouldn't have, but I snickered. Feel free to invent a better system for us to use, though; you can propose it on Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion. Yours, Meelar 06:12, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
How about anons? DJ Clayworth 21:22, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I can't recall a time when this issue has come up; there's never been more than one anon vote on a given page, really. Meelar 21:26, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
(Maybe I should start making all my points at once) I asked because I in fact saw an anon add a VfD notice to an article (though they didn't actually list it on the page). I think they were just messing around, but it strikes me as a good way of creating a little chaos - just add twenty random articles to VfD and we have to go though the whole process for them. As for anons voting, I think we should forbid it. It's just asking for a whole lot of sock puppetry. I suspect that the only reason some people haven't done it is they think anon votes will be ignored. However maybe we should make it explicit. I'll take this to another page. DJ Clayworth 03:38, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
This has been discussed lot at Wikipedia talk:deletion policy. Currently, the policy states "any votes or comments relating to a listed page must be made in good faith", which implies sockpuppets may not vote. Earlier suggestions that voters must have a certain number of edits did not reach consensus. Angela. 20:56, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

Calling all Junta members

Junta Oath
Out here in the wiki
I fight for my edits
I get my back into my reverting
I don’t need to quickpoll
To prove I’m right
I don’t need to be forgiven

All right members. Let's congregate at the usual place and time. We've got business to discuss, don't forget to switch codes every once in a while; we were almost found out last month.

IMSoP scratches head, and notes that Dori either forgot to sign, or was trying to be anonymous but forgot to log out[2].
And is obviously not a member of the Junta, because it doesn't know the top secret chorous:
Internet wasteland
It's only Internet wasteland.

Yate article

I am having a discussion with Dunk concerning my opinion that his Yate article is not NPOV and is written in a nonencyclopedic style. I would appreciate any comments, please put them on the article’s Talk Page. Thanks
Adrian Pingstone 16:00, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Looks ok to me --80.177.214.204 16:21, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Looks a bit arch, but entirely valid. I take it you don't like the fact that it makes the place look rather a shithole? I'd suggest that the remedy for that would be to come up with further facts that mitigate the picture. -- Jmabel 23:34, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Well, I rewrote it a bunch after 1st comments. Arch, huh?  :-) See its talk page. Elf | Talk 00:49, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
What's arch? --80.177.214.204 01:00, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Per M. Webster: "marked by a deliberate and often forced irony, brashness, or impudence". I'll give credit for that to the material rather than to my (probably incomplete) edits. Elf | Talk 01:12, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Adjectives

There should be an official guideline that adjectives redirect to nouns. (If there isn't one already).

For example: Renal should redirect to kidney. Happy should redirect to happiness.

I can't think of many cases where this should not occur (perhaps only if the adjective is ambiguous). Bensaccount 16:33, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This was actually supposed to be a question. Bensaccount 04:03, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Delete history page?

New - and hense foolishly edited the entry in window with repeated "saves". Ugh. Is there any way to erase the history page? Alex obladida@adelphia.net

Not readily, and no big problem, happens all the time. A sysop could, in theory, fix it, but they've generally got better things to do. Don't sweat it, just know about it for the future. -- Jmabel 23:36, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Sysops can not (currently) delete individual revisions of an article. Developers can if it's really necessary, but for something like this, just don't worry as Jmabel says. The show preview button is useful for ensuring this doesn't happen. Angela. 21:00, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)


What should i do with images i dont want to write an article about?

i have lots of images i've taken recently , like Picture of lillebælt , this would apply to this article: Small_Belt however i have lots more that i couldnt possibly be bothered to write an article about this, What is the proper way to handle this? i've seen some people put them on their User: pages saying anyone can use them under the GFDL, should i do this? --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 09:34, 2004 Mar 31 (UTC)

Upload the pics, display them on your user page (or better a subpage of your user page) and link to that page from Wikipedia:Images with missing articles. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:00, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
P.S. forgot to mention before: THanks! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:02, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Petitions in Wikipedia

I found a couple of pages with external links to an online petition. I deleted the links, as I didn't think them appropriate for Wikipedia. Any comments? --Auximines 10:53, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Very unlikely to be relevant to the article page. Possibly ok on the talk page depending on the context. Note it is common for dubious external links to get added to articles (probably by the external site webmaster seeking traffic) and equally common for them to get removed pretty quick. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:00, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Totally agree, except in very unusual circumstances. (Trying to think of any that would be appropriate. Umm, maybe if there were an article specifically about the effect that a particular online petition had had. But I'm stretching here). --ALargeElk 11:03, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments. I'm pretty new here, and the advice is very welcome. --Auximines 11:46, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Leopold II quote in French? "Un pays que ouvre..."...

The beginning of the quote is "Un pays que[qui] ouvre sur la mer..." -- and goes on from there. [could also be "Un pays qu'ouvre sur la mer..."

I do research for a living, and have googled the entire web on this phrase, portions of the phrase, "leopold II" -- and come up with NOTHING. I need the full original quote IN FRENCH and am asking for help from any of your wizards.

Many thanks! Merci beaucoup et gros bisous!

Avril

“Un pays baigné par la mer n’est jamais petit” ? or ask it in fr:wikipédia:le bistro. Greudin

Error on "Ibuprofen" stub

Hello The structure on the ibuprofen stub article is entirely incorrect - the branches extend from the wrong place on the benzene ring and one of the groups themselves is wrong - it should feature an OH group, not a single bonded oxygen mid-branch.

I cannot discuss the article as it does not exist yet. I would be more than happy to write the article when I have finished my current paper, however I wondered whether it was in some way possible to correct or remove the erroneous information before then.

Many thanks strych 16:28, 31 Mar 2004

You can discuss the article by clicking on the "Discuss this page" link. Though it doesn't exist yet, as you note, just by inserting some text you will create the page. There is no stigma attached to creating a page—it is one of the best things about wiki-ing! You can also edit the Ibuprofen article yourself. I hope this helped. :-) —Frecklefoot 15:32, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
Fixed Rick Boatright 05:52, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedians by age

Because it came up elsewhere (and I was already curious), I have created m:Wikipedians by age - yet another social organization grouping ;) →Raul654 17:59, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

Um, I hope it doesn't became a harvesting ground for pedophiles. —Frecklefoot 18:06, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
Curiousity killed the cat. (anon)

April Fools' jokes

I think someone ought to put up a message somewhere popular, such as the front page, to warn people not to write up April Fools' articles. Ashibaka ✎ 19:13, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

That would just give 'em ideas. It didn't occur to me, until right now. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:15, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Rather than attempting to control the behavior of others, it might be a better strategy for concerned editors to control their own behavior by watching what is submitted on that day and using the occassion to improve fact checking skills. This gives me a little idea.... (anon)


Geez, this caused more trouble than it was worth. (That anon's contributions are here) Ashibaka ✎ 01:10, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Brazilian Portuguese

Hi,

I've been surfing the site and found that the Portuguese version of Wikipedia is on Portugal's Portuguese. This is most inconvenient for Brazilian users, for, even though we speak Portuguese, it's different enough to prevent integration on the same site-version. Can this be changed? Can a "Brazilian Portuguese" version be created? Help!

Thanks,

Helen

You can create a Brazilian Wikipedia (I'm surprised there isn't one already). Go to Wikipedia:Create a new language in Wikipedia as a place to start. LUDRAMAN | T 20:02, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
From what I understand of w:pt's policy, both spelling systems are perfectly acceptable, in the same way that we allow both US and UK spellings here. Don't you think it'd be terribly sad to start a new version over minor differences such as "correto" vs. "correcto"? Are the two versions really "different enough to prevent integration"? Wouldn't it be better to start lots and lots of new articles in Brazilian Portuguese and redress the balance? –Hajor 20:09, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Just a comment: Some language learning courses (such as Linguaphone) offer both Brazilian and Portuguese. Wouldn't this signify a reasonable difference. LUDRAMAN | T 20:19, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC) (PS I am indifferent to the creation of a Brazilian Wikipedia)
We've got an article on it. I would hope that the differences are not insurmountable, but isn't this really a matter for the Portuguese speakers on their Village Pump? –Hajor 20:44, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)


Unicode question

This may be the wrong place to ask this, or it may be answered elsewhere, but can anyone tell me if and when the English Wiki will be changed over to UTF-8? I ask becuase it's hugely inconvenient to work with text that's full of &#347;'s, but for some topics (Sanskrit and associated languages and subjects, in my case), there is no adequate alternative to using unicode characters. This is true even if I eschew Devanagari and work in roman, because standardized roman transliteration requires characters with diacritics that aren't available in latin-1. कुक्कुरोवाच 20:51, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm assuming that moniker is in Tamil, because my Mozilla 1.6 is totally fazed by it. -Phil | Talk 14:, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
No, regular everyday Sanskrit, in Devanagari.
As I understand it: Until recently, the general prognosis was "never", but the French Wikipedia recently converted, and I believe it was mostly successful. So if the remaining problems highlighted by that conversion get ironed out, there may be a possibility that the English 'pedia could make the switch as well if the desire is there. - IMSoP 22:08, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
What are the pros and cons? (I am sure this conversation has been had before, so a pointer will plenty). Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:30, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The pros are that people who edit pages using special characters or non-Roman alphabets can just enter the characters as normal, and it'll just "work," instead of them having to encode the characters using a somewhat random numerical code. For example, the characters in Kukkurovaca's name above must be encoded as &#2325;&#2369;&#2325;&#2381;&#2325;&#2369;&#2352;&#2379;&#2357;&#2366;&#2330;
I'm not sure of all of the cons, but one is that some older browsers don't support Unicode, in input if not in output; the database back end that Wikipedia uses may not support it either, in which case there would have to be a layer of code that would convert the Unicode-encoding text into something the database can handle when it is stored, and convert that text back into Unicode when it is retrieved. Also, special characters which are already on many pages currently in Wikipedia could go glitchy due to the change. Garrett Albright 22:41, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Those older browsers are not able to browser half the WWW by now. — Jor (Talk) 12:21, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The masses clamor for Unicode! I'm surprised something so standards-oriented as Wikipedia isn't using it already... Garrett Albright 22:23, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The main reason it isn't Unicode is because the original version of the software didn't support it, and conversion is difficult. It'll require some downtime. There were worries about corruption of the database in various ways, but we have a fairly good handle on that problem now thanks to the recent conversion of the French Wikipedia. I think conversion of the English Wikipedia would be a good idea, some time during the next few months. -- Tim Starling 00:04, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
The only Mac browsers able to use Unicode are Safari, Opera etc. on MacOS X, as far as I know, while it is not possible to edit unicode pages with IE. A switch to unicode would be very problematic for many Mac users. Ertz 00:12, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
OS 9 has Unicode support; not quite as slick as OS X, no, but it's there. Either way, the number of people still using OS 9 is dwindling rapidly, and will continue to do so. Garrett Albright 02:43, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Which masses have you polled? Unicode would be largely impossible to edit. RickK | Talk 02:45, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Howso? I mean, what are the specific drawbacks, other than for the users of older macs?कुक्कुरोवाच 03:10, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
If I were trying to edit a page, and came across something looking like |कुक्कुरोवाच, I would have NO idea what to do with it. RickK | Talk 03:35, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
RickK: Just work around it and don't touch it. :)
Judging by your <nowiki> tags, do you mean "something looking like &#2325;&#2369;&#2325;&#2381;&#2325;&#2369;&#2352;&#2379;&#2357;&#2366;&#2330;"? In which case, I'm not sure I see your point. We already use such character entities extensively in articles. The idea of UTF-8 is to allow unicode characters to be inserted without resorting to such ugly constructions. Also, switching en to UTF-8 will make it easier to implement some proposed interwiki features, such as merging the meta recent changes (which is UTF-8) with the local wiki recent changes. -- Tim Starling 03:49, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
Doesn't work in Safari, at least not whatever particular language that is. I see the same character (a box surrounding a char I don't recognize) repeated for each character in your sig. Other languages work fine: Japanese, Chinese, Greek, some Cyrillic, but there's one Cyrillic-alphabet-based language that also doesn't work (not sure which it is). That's the problem: support is spotty. If user A enters in text in Japanese natively, what happens when user B who doesn't have Unicode support saves the page? I'm pretty sure the characters would change to little boxes (or whatever the browser displays when it doesn't understand a character) in the textarea, the user would save the page and then everybody would see the "little boxes." I think it could be a problem waiting to happen. RADICALBENDER★ 05:02, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The web browser does *not* rewrite the characters to "little boxes" when editing -- they are simply shown that way by whatever display mechanism the browser uses. silsor 05:29, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
RB: Next time you (re)install OS X, make sure to let it install every language file it can. I'm running Safari on OS X, and I see the characters just fine. Garrett Albright 05:34, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I have no idea how to do that. And how many other random Wikipedia editors would? RickK | Talk 04:14, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The whole point is that if the software were switched over to UTF, you wouldn't need to interact with these strings or know anything about them at all. They would just work as regular characters.
I'm at an utter loss. How would I possibly be able to insert a character that isn't on my keyboard? RickK | Talk 04:56, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Rick, if you're using Windows, then the Character Map applet is your friend. Find the character you want and it will either tell you how to enter it from the keyboard or allow you to copy+paste it. You'll need some nice Unicode fonts, like Junicode, but newer versions of Windows come with Lucida Sans Unicode anyway. --Phil | Talk 14:, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
In most Windows applications, Left alt + numeric keyboard types (dec) Unicode. alt+0549 is ȥ for example. — Jor (Talk) 12:21, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The prefixing 0 is important by the way: otherwise the Windows encoding is used instead, which wraps around (alt+256 = alt+0) — Jor (Talk) 12:25, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
With a compose key, maybe, or with copy-and-paste. I keep a set of characters I need which I don't have on my keyboard on my userpage on cy:, and c+p them when I need them in articles. Marnanel 05:01, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
People who use the languages in question know how to type in them. Someone who studies Sanskrit needs to be aware of how to produce the relevant unicode characters. Similarly, someone who writes mathematical articles may need to learn TeX, and someone who works in science may need to produce diagrams. You contribute what you know, it's not necessary to be an encyclopedia to contribute to an encyclopedia. That said, there's a good resource at http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/ . If you go to the test pages, you'll see a list of characters which can be copied and pasted into an edit box. -- ɫɪɱ ʂɫɒɼʅɪɳɠ 05:10, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
If you were going to work with Sanskrit (or other languages in its family) I would suggest http://www.aczone.com/itrans/online/. Other tools would apply for other languages (there's also http://www.emeld.org/tools/charwrite.cfm for IPA in Unicode, which would offer pan-linguistic functionality of a certain kind.) Of course, it's entirely possible you'll never need to deal with nonstandard characters (in which case it shouldn't make the least differnece to you which encoding the site uses, as your keyboard will suffice in either), but those who contribute to articles that necessarily involve terms from languages that aren't representable with the characters that go into English, there's a basic need, here.कुक्कुरोवाच 05:42, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Switching the entire project over to UTF-8 or leaving things in ISO-8859-1 are not the only two choices. It would be straightforward to add a user option for "Edit in UTF-8". When a logged-in user with this option set requests to edit a page, the server translates HTML character references to their UTF-8. When the users submits their edit, the server translates non-ASCII (or non-ISO-8859-1) characters back to the HTML character references for storage in the database. Users who don't set this option would see no differences. See my Editing in UTF-8 feature request. — Gdr 12:33 2004-04-01.

For complex scripts, this is a nontrivial operation. This would require the server to change all entities over #255 in Unicode to numeric entities when converting to ISO-8859-1, and likewise to convert all entities back to direct characters when converting to UTF-8. Let alone the problem of combining diacritics and RTL/LTR! — Jor (Talk) 12:41, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I don't see the difficulty. Numeric character references are trivial to translate since HTML &#x1234; turns into Unicode U+1234 and vice versa. Named character references like &ouml; and &rarr; can be looked up in a table. There's no need to do anything with diacritics and bidirectional text. Just store and transmit the text as it was written and leave it up to the browser to render it. — Gdr 13:52 2004-04-01 (UTC)

Current time?

I once saw someone use some wiki code to insert the current time; however, I've completely forgotten how to do it! I know it's not 05, Template:CURRENT HOUR, or anything like that ... so, what is it? [ alerante 21:27, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC) ]

Taken from Current Events code:
'''Time''': {{CURRENTTIME}} [[Coordinated Universal Time|UTC]]   |  

'''Date''': {{CURRENTDAYNAME}}, {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}

Hope it helps! --Vikingstad 21:55, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

Meta pages

Should meta pages (wikipedia:) be used for discussion?

ie. Wikipedia:Unencyclopedic Bensaccount 23:03, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It depends, but for the most part no. One should use the Wikipedia talk: pages instead, unless the Wikipedia: page was designed for some specific discussion such as Wikipedia:Requests for adminship or Wikipedia:Quickpolls. That page does not seem to have been well designed. I have no idea what's supposed to take place in there. Dori | Talk 23:07, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
I think this page should be a redirect to Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. The discussion content would have to be moved to Wikipedia talk: What Wikipedia is not.

The reasons for this move seem obvious to me so I left them out but if you want me to state them I will.

I wont copy and paste the content, and therefore am powerless. Help? Bensaccount 23:52, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

For the most part, meta (i.e. Wikipedia:) pages seem to act as polished pages, in the same way as articles do, with their corresponding discussion pages. Contrast this, however, to pages on meta (that is, the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki) which function in a more wiki-like way, with discussion simply being refactored into content as appropriate. This is mainly because the meta-wiki isn't really big enough to require the full features (discussion pages, watch-lists...) that the software provides.
Sorry, this is drifting towards a different topic. It's also rather hard to follow all this meta:meta:meta at this time of night, so I'm going to bed. - IMSoP 23:54, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Regarding the Milosevic entry & killing of Stambolic'

The addition of some substantiation or at least a reference to the agency or entity, or literature which proves the allegation that Milosevic' had Stambolic' murdered would improve the article. Can anyone add to this aspect of the history/biography? I think it's probably true, but what I'm asking is for some more rigorous historical writing.

Thank you, and best wishes to all, John-Peter Creighton, Tattnall County, Georgia, USA

John-Peter: Try adding your request to the Talk page of the entry you are speaking of. To do this, go to the article, then click on the link that says "Discuss this page" in the list on the left. Then post your request on that discussion page instead. Garrett Albright 02:40, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

speak and type?

does anyone know a good program that will type into a text program the words you speak into a mic? Kingturtle 02:09, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)~

I've heard that IBM's ViaVoice is supposed to be good. There's a Speech Recognition HOWTO if you happen to use Linux. -- Wapcaplet 02:29, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Vote Announcement at Talk:Fascism

Hello all. In the interest of getting the article unprotected, I've called for a vote/poll at Talk:Fascism on the question of whether the Soviet Union and other communist regimes should be listed as fascist states on that page. Please come and express your opinion. john 04:54, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Lists and photos

I got two concerns, number one a couple of lists have been rounding my mind: Look at Women's boxing and see the small list of female boxers we have there. Should we change the name of List of boxers to List of male boxers, take out the list of female boxers in the article about women's boxing and make a List of female boxers?. There are about 100 more or less known women boxers, and we already have a precedent anyways, look at List of actors and List of actresses. On that same line I was also thinking about a list of teen-idols.

Second concern: I have obtained many, many copyright guarantees for photos t be used in airline articles. While most photographers have accepted our policy of not giving credit under the photo itself, a couple of them lately have expressed as a requisite that I do credit them under the photo. Can I do this? I know that many wikipedians dont like that, and that its basically a rule not to credit the photographer under the photo, But I was wondering if I could put a note under the photo, a note that would look integrated to the article.

Thanks and God bless!

Antonio Cannabilistic Martin

your opinion on the matter here (hehe!):

Some Wikipedians may not like it but moral rights outside the US makes that unimportant, since it may be a legal right the photographers have, independent of copyright status. In any case, it's polite to give credit. Please do, though in a reduced size font so it isn't unduly prominent. If there's any actual policy on this, please let me know. If there's not, we might as well create one and say that it's polite and should normally be done, though as a courtesy. Jamesday 07:25, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but - since Wikipedia is wholly located in the US (which, as I understand it, does not recognize moral rights) - what legal weight do those moral rights carry? →Raul654 07:31, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
Non-US jurisdictions may choose to say that a work published in their language is intended for their people and may apply their law. Since the contributors in many languages are within those jurisdictions, it's also helpful to those contributors to make their life easy by accepting attribution requests. Say we print a German edition for distribution in Germany, or ship an English version for deliberate distribution in Germany. How would we be able to avoid following German law and moral rights requirements for that German publication? It helps contributors to stay nice and safe according to their local laws. Still, politeness is perhaps a greater reason for doing it, though we don't actually want to encourage Wikipedia contributors themselves to do this for their own contributions, just third parties. Jamesday 07:50, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Call me paranoid but - let's say we go the whole 9 yards, put it in our manual of style that photographs should be attributed, etc. When we (inevitably) forget to attribute one, and should wikipedia (or one of our contributors) be brought into court as a result, couldn't our desire to attribute photos be used as an implicit admission of culpability for infringement on their moral rights? →Raul654 08:03, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia is meant to be a free encyclopedia, but 95% of the world's population can't legally copy it. That's starting to annoy me. -- Tim Starling 07:53, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)
Antonio, you asked if a credit notice could go in with the caption. In my opinion this would be regrettable as WP policy because
- it looks ugly
- it distracts the readers attention away from the caption itself
- it makes the caption one line longer
- and I'm fairly sure the print encyclopedias do not have credit notices attached to their pics
I will upload the next set of your airliner pics real soon (do I have a list?), Best Wishes, Adrian.
Adrian Pingstone 08:17, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I think it is fine to credit a photographer if they wish, certainly it is much better than having no photo at all. Your first three points are about ugliness. I disagree - see e.g. Sperm Whale where the artist asked for a credit, and we give it in a subtle but effective way. At least some print encyclopedias give credits next to the photo itself - for instance the Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals certainly does this. All of this does not conflict with the GDFL. Thus Antonio, if you think the article would look good, go for it. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:03, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Test to try to help Google

Several people are trying a test which may help Google to find new articles quickly. User and user talk pages are very highly ranked by Google because they have lots of links to them. The test is to include {{msg:newpagelinks}} at the top of your user and/or talk page. As the test progresses we'll possibly tweak the message to see if we can find a combination which helps Google the most. This came about after Dori noticed that articles linked from his sandbox appeared in the Google index very quickly. Jamesday 07:37, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sweet. So we're googlebombing our own database. →Raul654 07:42, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Fundamentalism

The link Talk:Fundamentalism is broken. It was too large and I archieved a lot. The archive is at Talk:Fundamentalism/Archive1 and functions well.

I would appreciate it if someone was able to make the talk page function again and, explain what went wrong. GerardM 07:53, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It has fixed itself after 5 minutes. I am puzzled. GerardM 08:02, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Seconds in RC

In response to a request by Seth Ilys, I've put seconds in the timestamps on RC. What do you think? -- Tim Starling 14:42, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)

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