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[[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]]

Summarised sections

any wikipedia entry in any language should have links to the same entry in other languages

advantage: this would make it to a very useful dictionary too, and animate growth of good quality entries in other languages


I just was e.g. searching the term "Legacy system" and found exactly what I was looking for.

BUT:

Actually I need (now as I understand what it is) the German word or German definition or entry. Direct translation to German makes no sense since it is a specific professional definition. As well I need related words in that environment.

Because I was missing it: I suggest for every wikipedia entry a link to the same entry in other languages (indicating if there is an entry and/ or suggesting to write an translation of it in their own language). Those persons searching a very specifi definition may have a high competence to be able and willing to do some free translation work ...and growing their native language WIKIPEDIA

Only specialists know the specific definitions in their field of profession.

regards Edgar Munich, Germany

I am not fully sure what is your point. If you just need a dictionary like translation that'd better fit into a multilingual Wiktionary. For the Wikipedia interwiki links, they should link to articles covering the same topic. However this does not need to be a direct 1:1 translation of the article title - sometimes the article in one WP is split into several related articles, while in the other language it is all covered in one (as in that language it does not have enough text to allow to split it); sometimes the two wikipedias have different naming conventions. And if the article doesn't exist in one language yet, then there will be no interwiki link - while sometimes it may be useful if the original author already prepared it if he knows the translation(s) and they are non-trivial, so it can be activated as soon as the article in the other language is created. However this doesn't work automatically, currently the only way to achieve this is to add a interwiki link in a html comment (like a <!--[[de:Feuersalamander]]--> in the article about the Fire Salamander) and remove the comments manually when the other language article shows up. andy 11:03, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Agree that any wikipedia entry in any language should have links to the same entry in other languages, but I'm not quite sure what your point is, either. I think it's already Wikipedia policy to do this. But, it must be done by hand, because machine translation is not sufficiently reliable. So if your point is that we could and should wave a magic wand and create them all, the answer is no. To do this would greatly reduce the value of the enormous investment we already have in people-checked links. If you'd like to help, and encourage others to help, then by all means do, and welcome. Andrewa 19:41, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

the 10 most active Wikipedians of the day

Someone in Chinese WP suggests to create a the 10 most active Wikipedians of the day (top 10 Wikipedians of the day) and update it everyday. what do u guys think? --Yacht 09:25, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

  • interesting. Could be scary. (PS: for some reason I always read your name as "Yakt" instead of "Yot") Exploding Boy 09:38, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
  • This will encourage people to game the system to get on the list. I don't think that's a good thing. -- Cyrius|&#9998 13:05, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
  • Such a page would probably be best titled "Today's Revert Wars". Better to laud the people that make exactly one edit of a new, fully-formed and wikified article. — mendel ☎ 13:31, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
    • I think you're right there. The feature I've always wanted (I'm not serious here, BTW) is a tick box to say "this is a major edit" - sometimes I spend ages developing or reworking a page, and am sad to see it go unnoticed. But that's certainly the kind of edit I'd want credit for, if credit were to come my way. - IMSoP 14:58, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
      • I would like to see a count of the number of changed characters in the edit history of an article by each edit. Bevo 17:46, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
        • Nice though that would be, it's not really possible with the current diff functions: moving a paragraph appears in the diff as deleting that much text from one place and adding it in another. More powerful diff tools do exist, but seeing as it's not particularly important, it doesn't seem worth putting much effort into. - IMSoP 19:53, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
          • Even if a simple move produced an exagerated number, it would still be interesting in general to detect most large versus small edits. - Bevo 16:09, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • I think (as the above users have pointed out) that while this sounds good in theory, in practice it would be an unmitigated disaster. It would only encourage people to make meaningless edits, and the people who are in prepetual revert wars would always be at the top. Nope, sorry - this is not a good idea. →Raul654 17:13, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
    • Should I put Wikipedia:Wikipedians by number of edits on VfD, then? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 17:17, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
      • No - first, it's not updated all that often, and it's cumulative, so it rewards longtime contributors rather than participants in the edit-war-dejour. Plus, most people don't really know about it, so there's not much incentive to artificially inflate the numbers. →Raul654 17:20, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

I've been thinking of making Wikipedia:Great editing in progress as a counterpoint to Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress and people who are noticing other people doing good work can post it there. This adds some subjectivity so it's not just a raw count of possibly irrelevant edits. moink 16:13, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

  • You never know the consequences until you try the experiment. - Bevo 16:40, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Custom footers - how much is too much?

The custom footers for countries seem to be proliferating. I don't really see how having so many adds to the articles. For example, see New Zealand. As of today, there are four separate footers. Has there been discussion about these somewhere? I just don't see how displaying all those lists at the bottom helps anymore than a link to the lists. One footer for the primary region I think I could abide, but is a footer for APEC or OECD or even the Commonwealth really helpful? I think having so many footers is ugly and detracts from the article. Bkonrad | Talk 13:20, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

IMHO one is enough already, making a custom footer for every supra-national organization quickly becomes nonsense. The geographical one is IMHO the most appropiate one. Especially for those organization which cover all (or nearly all) countries of a region (e.g. EU or APEC) or covering way too many countries (UN, Commonwealth) it is rediculous. andy 13:25, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Agreed. On New Zealand the APEC and OECD lists are way over the top and should be removed (but I'm not brave enough to do it!)
Adrian Pingstone 13:39, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Looks like somebody else was [1]; I also agree that too many footers detract rather than adding to the article. Probably one is enough in most cases, I'd propose a maximum of 2, given their average size. - IMSoP 14:52, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Well obviously (value of contributor) is proportional to (amount of text added to pages), thus if you want to feel valuable create some {{msg}}s. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 16:46, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

See also Belgium and United Kingdom. Discuss at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries. If not one objects in the next couple of weeks, then I'll be removing them and leaving only the EU and geographic footers. --Jiang 21:02, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I went ahead and made the change to New Zealand (was quickly reverted, however). I think one simple footer with links to neighboring countries is sufficient (even all of Europe is too much and redundant), as I mentioned at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries. -- Chevan 13:29, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)

It seems to me that some contextual editing of footers with a little more thought in the content of the footer messages themselves would help in this case (and others like it). For instance, editing the main footer to have a link that says "lists of commonwealth nations" in the footer, with link to said page (list) vastly reduces the clutter while retaining the self-directing navigation. Other such list links as "nations in APEC, UN, etc. could easily be added to the footer message and thus remove the need for separate footers. This is what some of us have been doing in the footers in naval ships, which list other ships in the class, but also have links in the footer for lists of other aircraft carriers, list of U.S. naval ships, etc (for example). Lestatdelc 19:40, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)

Ia & Wikipedia

Hi all,

I'm just impressed by the content... Just amazing. I just wonder if someone have heard if some there is some utilisation of the Wikipedia(text articles) as an "common sens" package brick for IA projects? Just curious...
Frano
Franosub_NOSPAM<_>transcribeworld.com

Frano, do you mean as "raw knowledge" for AI projects? I'd have thought that such inputs would have to be expressed in a significantly more formal language that wikipedia uses, which is really only a bit more structured than HTML. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:22, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Actually, somebody else has suggested this, although it's not clear exactly how it could be done - see meta:Wikipedia Virtual Mind - IMSoP 16:52, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Seems to me that you would need an AI System that was able to understand the english language to be able to use this information as raw knowledge. The problem is to build a system that understands the english language, it needs to have quite a bit of raw knowledge already. Nroose 05:57, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Who are the coders?

Are the programmers that create the software that Wikipedia uses also contributors to the content? Who are they? - Bevo 17:49, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Almost certainly missing someone out, for which I sincerely apologize in advance, they include User:Brion VIBBER, User:Tim Starling, User:Gwicke, User:Eloquence, User:Magnus Manske and User:EvanProdromou. According to her user page, User:Angela has contributed one line to the code base. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 18:08, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There is a list of those with certain access levels at m:developer, but others have contributed code without having any access so are not listed there (me, silsor and Timwi for example). Angela. 18:14, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
Lee Daniel Crocker should also be mentioned, he started the phase 3 project and wrote a significant proportion of the current codebase. JeLuF wrote the extended image syntax. Taw wrote the code for <math> tags. Brion has done lots of work in unglamorous areas such as code quality, browser compatibility, the anonymous file cache, unicode and RTL support. I wrote the MediaWiki namespace and most things to do with blocking. Gwicke wrote the squid support, and an impressive new skin which will soon become the default. Eloquence wrote section editing and the TOC code. Magnus wrote the phase 2 code on which phase 3 was based, he also wrote the enhanced recent changes feature. Evan wrote some metadata/RDF code. E23 has done some work in caching and efficiency. The diff code was nicked from another GPL wiki project, written by Geoffrey Dairiki. Angela is responsible for the "disclaimers" link in the top bar (I'm sure it was 3 or 4 lines, not 1). Sorry to anyone I'm missing. Many people have made minor contributions, unfortunately I can't mention them all. -- Tim Starling 03:14, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps we could have a Meta:MediaWiki Credits page, which could include everyone who'd contributed - although not what they'd done, because that would become too unwieldy. (For comparison, Mozilla and Firefox have an about:credits page built in.) - IMSoP 13:07, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I have created such a page by simply copying this section verbatim. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 13:25, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)
Special:Version will have some credits and legal info in the next release. Not as much detail as I gave above though, maybe I should copy it in. -- Tim Starling 23:52, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)

Extended filmographies

I edit a lot of entries on actors and actresses and I've noticed a disturbing trend: some fans add complete filmographies for these celelbrities. While this isn't much of an issue for actors who have starred in just a few movies, for actors with long careers, the filmography can span several scores of entries. While Wikipedia is not paper, it is an encyclopedia and I think the lists should be trimmed to include just their notable films. After all, the IMDb has every actor's complete filmography for those interested (and I always include the link if it is missing). A list with hundreds of entries is almost worse than no list at all.

Is there a page that discusses how to make an entry on an actor/actress? I think including a note to not include an overly long filmography plus always including the IMDb entry would be useful. —Frecklefoot 18:41, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Filmographies and Discographies and its talk page, where a suggestion is made to have lists on a separate page when they become too long. Angela. 19:12, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
I strongly support that suggestion. Wikipedia should be as self-contained as possible. A shorter filmography could be included to the main article, and the complete one could be a separate entry. Andres 07:04, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Also, it is very useful to indicate if there are issues that IMDB may have missed (e.g. if IMDB is unaware of the person working under another name). Similarly, it is useful to indicate if seemingly authoritative filmographies / bibliographies have included "phantom" works (such as the Premio Cervantes bibliography for Jorge Luis Borges that turned his Historia Universal de la Infamia into Historia Universal de la Infancia, an error that has now propagated around the net. -- Jmabel 00:58, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I have nothing to contribute to this conversation, but I would like to say that the "It's all on IMDB" argument doesn't seem to hold much water with me. All of the information on Wikipedia is certainly available elsewhere. We put it here because then it can be free (speech, not beer). Complete filmographies can of course be unwieldy; the challenge then is to organize it so it's manageable. "Notable films" and "not-so-notable films", perhaps. I'm sure we can do better than IMDB's "all 300 films chronologically" approach, or what-have-you. OK, I'm done. :-) -- Wapcaplet 01:03, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for all the input. I think having the complete filmography in a seperate list is a good compromise. At least that way it wouldn't clutter the main article with every single film an actor may have appeared in. Also, of course the IMDb may have some incorrect information (since it's not a Wiki!) and if it does have any, we should clear those up in the article proper. —Frecklefoot 16:03, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)

See Image:India city population.jpg and the comment there. Is this indeed fair use, or does the government of India retain copyrights? RickK | Talk 02:50, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I've rewritten it as text. See Indian City Statistics (probably should be renamed or incorporated into another article). -- Wapcaplet 04:21, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Meaning of NPOV

Since I haven't contributed anything substantial today, I'll continue in the same vein: I've noticed many instances of "NPOV" being used to mean "not NPOV". I just want to point out that in Wikipedia it means "neutral point of view," which is what we're aiming for. Therefore, saying an article "is very NPOV" should be a good thing, not a bad thing!  :-) ... Elf | Talk 05:20, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)


Trustworthiness of Wikipedia?

Hi,

I have been having a debate with a colleague about wikipedia. My colleague is claiming that because anyone with internet access can update wikipedia he would not trust the information shown here. How can I allay his concerns other than by assuring him that there are far more people updating wikipedia with correct information than there are people vandalizing wikpedia?

davidzuccaro 06:37, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It may help to point your colleage to Wikipedia:Replies. Dysprosia 06:39, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
According to a recent Wall street Journal article: Recent research by a team from IBM found that most vandalism suffered by Wikipedia had been repaired within five minutes. That's fast: "We were surprised at how often we found vandalism, and then surprised again at how fast it was fixed," says Martin Wattenberg, a researcher in the IBM TJ Watson Research Centre, in Cambridge, Mass. (http://www.theproduct.com/6m105/readings/spring04/encyclopedia.pdf) →Raul654 06:40, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)
PS - just to add a personal observation - it's a *LOT* faster for admins to revert a vandal's changes than it is for the vandal to make them. →Raul654 06:43, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)
You could make the argument that bias exists in an inverse proportion to the number of editors and Wikipedia has a hundred times more editors than a typical paper encylopedia.MK 06:46, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
By making him read Cathedral and the Bazaar :) Seriouly, Wikipedia is akin to a best-effort process, and you can never have a guarantee that what you get here is accurate or authoritative. But, from personal experience, I have found that when you are willing to compromise on the "absolutely factual" gurantee - you get more information here, more easily than anywhere else on the planet. So, the simplest way to convince anybody is to try and make him read materials on his favourite topic elsewhere and compare it with what he gets here. You can also try and ask him to pinpoint instances of vandalism, that have gone unnoticed, for say a minimum period of a month. From personal experience again, I can tell you - at least in topics of mass interest, vandalisms and nonsense rarely stand for more than a month -(I am stetching the limit here. The average is somewher around 12 hours to one day). Good luck Chancemill 06:47, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)
(As the IBM study I cited above would suggest), the median is probably on the order of 5 minutes, and (I'd imagine) the average probably isn't even an hour. Remember, for every vandalism that lasts a month, there's (literally) thousands that get reverted seconds later. →Raul654 07:00, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)
By comparison, I was browsing my 1984 hardcover edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica last night and found some info that I believe has since been disproved. So one could argue that Wikipedia, with its instantaneous update when new information is found, might be more accurate than traditionally "reliable" sources. Elf | Talk 15:40, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I have found by experience that you need to review the recent history of a Wikipedia article before you can judge the trustworthiness of that article's content at the present moment. Look for recent revert-wars and compare current content with the content from a month ago to see if any vandalism has been introduced into the article. - Bevo 14:54, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Later this month, NASA will, at the cost of $700,000,000, conduct a test in space that will defintively either prove or disprove Einstein's theory of relativity. What other encyclopedia will he have to turn to about this? - Woodrow 19:53, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
What will really set Wikipedia apart from other encyclopedias is if Relativity is shown to be a flawed theory. The implications of that on other articles' content should prove interesting in the Wikipedia. Of course, at any time we might have verifiable SETI data and that also would ripple through the Wikipedia differently than other forms of an encyclopedia. - Bevo 14:54, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
How can you trust any information from anywhere? Read something you know about, and see how accurate it seems. pstudier 22:24, 2004 Apr 7 (UTC)
Interestingly, though, this approach is less valuable for Wikipedia and similar projects than it would be for, say, a text encyclopedia, since the underlying assumption is that the same editors and/or editorial standards are consistently applied throughout. Experienced Wikipedia participants know, almost instinctively, that some articles have more veracity than others (often in inverse proportion to controversiality); newcomers do not have the benefit of this knowledge. Jgm 14:04, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
As with any research, the way to get authoritative information is not to trust one particular source, but to use many diverse sources. For more casual searching for information, Wikipedia is a great place to start. Nroose 06:07, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • I noticed on the Pan Am page , that there is a logo there and when I clicked ther, it doesnt mention the source or if it is like a free community image or whatever it is you guys call it. This could be copyright infringement if we dont ask the company permission to have it , right? Remember, Pan Am IS flying again...
There is a proposed policy at Wikipedia:Logos and an ongoing discussion of same at Wikipedia_talk:Logos. Dpbsmith 23:28, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • Also, when are the counters coming back? I love to see how many people have read our pages.
  • One last question, it ocurred to me that we should write an article on the nude scenes at regular movies topic, with a detailed history and some movies that are famous for nude scenes, either male or female. What do you think?

- Antonio Panty scene lover Martin


The current PAN AM seems to use a different logo. JWSchmidt 23:08, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Looks pretty much the same to me - especially if you look carefully at the tail of the pictured plane. However, my understanding is that the general opinion is that such use of logos would come under most definitions of fair use, and therefore is not a breach of copyright (or, more importantly, trademark law). But please don't count on me as an authority on the topic. - IMSoP 23:19, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Republic of China

None of my business, but does this say what I think it says? Kevin Saff 22:02, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The link you provided is the simplified chinese version of Republic of China. --Jiang 22:34, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I know...is the map at the bottom intended to be a map of that Republic? Kevin Saff 13:50, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Hmmm. It's apparently a sensitive topic. See Political divisions of the Republic of China: it seems that the ROC never formally renounced sovereignity over the main land, and it looks like the editors at the Simplified Chinese Wikipedia agree. Lupo 14:03, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It's intended to be a map of the Republic in the year 1936. However, I don't belive that map is accurate (see Talk:Political divisions of the Republic of China) so such a map does not exist on en. those on simplified probably dont agree with the ROC claims, but want to think that the ROC refers the entity pre-1949, so the entire article linked by Lupo is on pre-1949 chinese divisions and not the current ones on Taiwan. --Jiang 20:45, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I was imagining the page asserting that was the current extent of the Republic of China, which struck me as mildly humorous. Kevin Saff 22:40, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Some aspects are accurate (e.g. the name Beiping instead of Beijing, also the names and layout of some of the northeastern provinces), but others are dubious (e.g. the inclusion of Tibet). Regarding the current territorial extent of the ROC, what is the official (Taiwanese) position on that issue nowadays? MarkSweep 10:16, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The government never dropped its claim to Tibet while it did for Taiwan in 1895, so I don't know why Taiwan is included.

The current government position is ambiguous. The ROC still legally claims just about all that is on that map (since only the National Assembly may change the national borders and has not done so), but these claims have been largely ignored. In 1991, President Lee Teng-hui indicated that he would not challenge the right of the Communists to rule the mainland. Under the KMT, government websites continued to report the total area of China (including outer Mongolia) in its factbooks, but such references have been deleted under Chen Shui-bian.--Jiang 00:41, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Lists and floating images

In the Preview for a certain page, I use a single list item (*) and the bullet point appears on top of a floating image on the left. I use the Opera browser.

It might be helpful if you told us which certain page. Otherwise, there's not a lot we can do. - IMSoP 23:38, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I find this happens too (in IE). That's why featured pictures candidates uses tables. Have a look at this old version. [2] The comments to the right of the pictures all have two bullet points to force them to the right so that they aren't obscured by the pictures. I don't see any bullets next to those lists in IE6. fabiform | talk 23:55, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Text-editor syntax files for Wikipedia?

Are there any Wikipedia syntax files available for programmers' editors? (I use TextPad specifically.) --Conover 00:21, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Syntax highlighting. I don't see anything there for TextPad but perhaps another editor's file will be a useful starting point. — mendel ☎ 03:47, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks much! — Adam Conover | Talk 08:28, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)

Japanese/Chinese character sets

All of the Japanese and Chinese characters show up on my moniter as squares. Where do I go to download the software so that they display normally? --Alex S 02:06, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It's not a matter of software, it's just a question of what fonts you have loaded. -- Jmabel 03:13, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
On some operating systems, yes. However, Windows requires a little extra component so that it can handle non-Latin scripts appropriately. - jredmond 03:18, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Old Windows versions. NT-based systems (NT 4.0, 2000, XP) should be able to handle them as long as fonts are installed.
In my experience most Linux/Unix distributions and Mac OS X come with the necessary East Asian fonts preinstalled. For some reason Western versions of Windows don't; they're a miniscule amount of disk space compared to modern disk drives, so saving space doesn't sound like a legitimate reason. For Windows 98/ME you should be able to find the fonts in Windows Update; for 2000/XP poke around in 'Regional and Language Options' in the Control Panel. (In XP, 'Languages' tab, select 'Install files for East Asian languages' in the 'Supplemental language support' box.) --Brion 03:25, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I think you can download these fonts, if you are using Microsoft Windows, from their website. Otherwise, there are still some free TrueType fonts around, and you can find them at http://www.unicode.org -- Tomchiukc 04:21, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
These fonts are no longer available at the Microsoft site. They can be found at sourceforge, but the legality of distribution is questionable. Arial Unicode MS which comes with MS Office ("universal font") is a good Unicode font, Code2000 is another one. Neither is free, but Code2000 is downloadable. — Jor (Talk) 13:58, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

How to coordinate the efforts of editors?

I am interested in coordinating the efforts of those of us who are knowledgable about philosophy. Unlike other fields (such as history, say), it's very difficult to do quick, factual research on philosophical articles -- it's necessary to have a strong grasp of the literature to write a good article, because the subjects are often quite nebulous, and different summaries (say, from two different philosophical reference volumes) might have vastly differing accounts of the subject. (So, for example, I've been working on qualia and physicalism, but I've been studying those topics for over a year and still am not sure I am able to cover all the bases.) In summary, I feel that it would be highly beneficial to create some sort of "Philosophy Articles" project page, so that the community of philosophically-inclined wikipedians could work together to improve the quality and range of philosophy articles on the pedia, which at the moment is lacking.

However, it doesn't seem as though Wikipedia:WikiProjects is the right place to do this, as they seem to primarily regard standards and formatting rather than content and organization of collective effort. Also, I'm unsure how to "get the word out" once such a project has been started -- notices on article talk pages? An announcement page? If anyone has any advice, please let me know. Thank you very much. — Adam Conover | Talk 08:39, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)

Yes WikiProjects were originally about formatting moree than anything, but have evolved beyond that to discuss all aspects common to particular article types. Having a Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy sounds like a fine idea. You should feel free to announce it at i) talk pages of a selected group of users that you feel are very likely to be interested, ii) talk pages of a selected group of articles at the heart of the subject, iii) Wikipedia:Announcements and Wikipedia:Goings-on, iv) this page. Don't overdo it too much with the talk pages else some busybody will accuse you of spamming. Good luck! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:48, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Thank you so much! I will make the announcement once I have everything in order. — Adam Conover | Talk 08:53, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject Philosophy

I have started WikiProject Philosophy, an attempt to coordinate the efforts of philosophically-inclined contributors. If you are so inclined, please consider dropping by the project page or the talk page to share your thoughts. — Adam Conover | Talk 10:28, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)

A Home for funny deleted entries?

[Someone] (deleted "Gaspar Becerra": content was: 'Gaspar Becerra was like this dude who painted some things and stuff.')

This original entry before deletion was so hilarious, it made me think we should have an Alternative Wikipedia, where funny entries could go when deleted!

timl 14:34, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

We already have Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense, where we collected a lot of nonsense like that - however in most cases even more hilarious than the one you noticed. andy 14:35, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Returning Anons

If an anonymous contributor is vandalising articles, and I go to their talk pages and find that the same IP address was warned (say) a month ago, what is the likelihood that this is the same person returning and what is the chance that this is a new user who happens to have the same IP address? I guess this boils down to how likely an IP address is to be reused. Any ideas? DJ Clayworth 16:11, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

If you ask them if they are the same as before, do you get an answer? - Bevo 16:21, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Probably the same ... I was wondering how feasible it would be to have some kind of model of what address blocks are dialup modem banks or DHCP etc., and which are fixed IPs. Piece of cake, right? A rather large cake. At least it's not IP v6 that we're trying to sort out.

Anyway some kind of history mechanism that sorts everything by IP and correlates user names ... like I always have the same user name (except when I log out and then finish up something I forgot to do), but my IP will be from a small group, usually, or another group when I'm at school, though the latter category is usually fixed IPs.

User histories can list all the IPs that user has logged in from. Coincidences in IPs across different user names can mean several things, but looking at it "by hand" can reveal patterns ... Are we getting anywhere with this? Talk amongst yourselves ... ;Bear 17:41, 2004 Apr 8 (UTC)

Pipe trick

I may be more gaga than I thought, but does the pipe trick no longer work? (See 1997 in literature.) <KF> 18:03, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

trick...seems to work, what's the problem? Dori | Talk 18:05, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)
The question mark seems to break it: [[Foo? (novel)|]]. fabiform | talk 18:17, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Yes, that part breaks on many cases, but you can still do this: Foo? Dori | Talk 18:19, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, Dori and Fabiform. Glad to find out I'm not beyond hope of recovery. <KF> 00:08, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it is my understanding that the pipe trick does not work if the desired article has a question mark, e.g. [[O Brother Where Art Thou? (soundtrack)|]]. This is an undeniably useful feature because it prevents silly noobs from using the pipe trick when the desired destination has a question mark in the title -- if I need to explain why that would be a Bad Thing, you are clearly whichever sexual orientation offends you the most. </sarcasm> Tuf-Kat 03:51, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)~

Bomis Babe Report

While conducting a review of sexism and the Internet, we came across this site: http://babes.bomis.com/

Can anyone here add anything to our understanding of the relationship between the Bomis Babe Report and the founders of Wikipedia?

Almost certainly not. It is extremely unlikely you would ask this question if you didn't already know the answer. See also internet troll. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 05:41, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
It would be extremely difficult for me to know in advance what thousands of Wikipedia contributors might be able to add to our understanding. My colleague is exploring the Bomis site, among others, but I suggested a querry on an open Wikipedia question page might develop information on this side of the equation, apparently opening myself to your allegation. I know Bomis is, or was, owned by some of the same people who founded Wikipedia, which is now either owned by, or being transferred to ownership by a foundation. I'm not yet up to speed on perceptions of how Wikipedia reflects the values of Bomis' operators, what happened to Bomis' related more academically oriented product Nupedia, or what place Wikipedia holds in the development process of open encyclopedias, except that it currently holds a major market share. Tre 06:20, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
See Bomis.--Eloquence* 06:08, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)
I checked that first. I know a bit about wikis and Wikipedia, and from that I know not to assume articles on wikis are complete or current, which is why I querried here about the relationship. The Babe Report does appear to be primarily a Bomis product, but that premise is based primarily on placement of the Babe Report link on Bomis' main page. The Bomis article in Wikipedia is somewhat ambiguous about what is owned by the foundation, what is the property of Bomis, and who actually controls operation of Bomis' or the foundation's open-source products. Tre 06:20, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I don't see what significance that has. All Bomis does is provide some bandwidth to Wikipedia. It is not related to the Wikimedia foundation.--Eloquence* 06:32, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)
Nor have we yet formulated any conclusions about what significance the relationship might have. If we were to find any significance in the affiliation, it would most likely be in values infused by the founders that might affect operation of the foundation and its products, in the context of meta-data related to value-systems potentially associated with ideas about sexism. Tre 06:52, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
If I understand you correctly, we have a strongly enforced neutral point of view policy which you may want to see. Dysprosia 07:00, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia is written and edited by the consensus of its editors. Of these editors, all but a tiny handful have nothing to do with Bomis or any of its products, and many aren't even aware of them. As Wikipedia's benevolent dictator, Jimmy Wales has final say in community policy (although he rarely exercises this,) and is the original source of Wikipedia's editorial policy, the neutral point of view. Jimbo exercises no control over article content. Articles reflect the values and biases of whatever editors have worked on them, not the values and biases of Bomis, whatever these may be. Isomorphic 07:31, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

See User_talk:Michael3#WikiExperiment and ask: Are Tre and Michael13 the same person? If, like me, you think they probably are, act accordingly. Andrewa 11:54, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Tre, if you have a real interest in the study of wiki systems, you may want to contribute the results of your research to this Wikibooks project. JWSchmidt 12:48, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the invitation, JW, but we rely on a paying readership to support research for articles. If you watch the non-refereed trade journals related to the topic of Internet psychology, you might notice the results of our inquiry a few months from now. But the article is not primarily about wiki culture, it is about perceptions of sexism in electronically networked communication. Wikipedia would likely be a small part of the article, if it makes the cut at all. A wiki enthusiast could probably briefly summarize our work as fair use, if they find it relevant.
These responses have inspired some thoughts about paranoia and expression of suspicions in networked environments, but we would first need to persuade an editor we have a viable premise before investing any research in that topic. I am still interested in any additional information about why Bomis chose to provide bandwidth to Wikipedia instead of to Nupedia, because the two formats are generally indicative of two coping styles we are exploring. Eventually we might call Bomis' owner and ask directly, but this seems a fair way to querry a network of writers. Tre 23:20, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Bomis is a very small company; for most purposes rather than talking of Bomis as some kind of disconnected entity we should simply speak of Jimmy Wales. Bomis is basically Jimmy, a partner or two, and a few employees. He started Nupedia, hiring an editor (Larry Sanger) and donating hosting for it on Bomis's servers. After a while Nupedia spun off a side project, Wikipedia, which was to be a little more free-form and faster paced and was meant originally to provide draft text potentially to be refined by Nupedia. Work on Nupedia (with high barriers to entry) slowly dried up while Wikipedia (with very low barriers to entry) took off to everyone's astonishment. Eventually a server problem knocked Nupedia offline and there've been relatively few requests to try to restore it. I'd recommend you contact Jimmy directly for more information. --Brion 22:24, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Balzan Prize and Italian

Balzan Prize appears three times on Italian's "What Links Here" page [3], but there are no more links to Italian on Balzan Prize. Any ideas? --Golbez 05:59, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This is a glitch in the db that happens from time to time. Don't worry about it. Dori | Talk 06:03, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)

Call for discussion on Talk:Heterosexuality

A long simmering, ongoing dispute has finally resulted in the Heterosexuality page being protected, but the other party to the dispute has (thus far, and once again) failed to return to discuss the problem. Debate is therefore stalled, and since the user persists in reverting any changes made to the problem section (please see Talk:Heterosexuality ==Dispute, contined again==) for further information), nothing can be accomplished without him. The only solution I can think of is to get a few other people to comment and reach some sort of consensus we can all live with. Comments on the talk page greatly appreciated. Exploding Boy 09:01, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)

Userspace policy?

In reading the discussion about User:I am sexy and her (mis(s))use of Wikipedia, I found someone there writing "Sometimes you create a rule by breaking it." I don't think we need a constitution, and I don't think we should create to much rules before we need them, but maybe we should discuss about a policy for userspace usage. Are there things we don't allow/we encourage on userspace, and if so, which ones? -- till we *) 09:23, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:User page and its talk, and consider joining in the discussion there. Andrewa 11:43, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Also see the discussion at Wikipedia:Possible abuse of User namespace. Mkweise 11:58, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. Do we have Wikipedia:User page in our standard newbie welcome message? -- till we *) 12:03, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure that there is such a message, is there? There are several suggested texts, as used by several different people, I forget where these are now. But I'll certainly include it, and I'd recommend others do too. Andrewa 14:06, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There's one at Wikipedia:Standard user greeting. Angela. 14:21, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)
Hmmm, yes, that's the page I was thinking of, thank you. And I think it's good that there's no standard, to keep it personal. If we wanted to send the same greeting to everyone, we could easily do that, but it's not the same. Andrewa 23:12, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

the article about john f kennedy's presidency

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk

I would like to have a policy on how to sort interlanguage links. It's obviously a good idea to sort them alphabetically, but on some pages they are sorted by the language code and on some by the language name. This is very notable in the case of Finnish language ("suomi"), which is placed somewhere before French language ("français") by the code but right before Swedish language ("svenska") by the name. I think sorting by the language name is more logical to the reader as the language name is the only thing shown, but there is no written policy. -- Lakefall 18:51, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There is no fixed policy yet - but a poll is running for some time already at Wikipedia:Language order poll. Currently the sorting by local language name is leading the poll. andy 19:14, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Tutorial

The welcoming committee has put together a tutorial for new users, so that people won't have to RTFM when they first get here. It's now ready to go live. Comments, corrections, or edits to the tutorial are welcome. If you want to add anything, just remember that we're trying to keep it short and easilly usable. Isomorphic 21:06, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It looks awesome! I'm learning quite a bit from it myself. Recommended for old hands too, for
  • filling in gaps in your knowledge
  • understanding better what's going on
  • links to reference pages which you may have read but can never remember exactly where
  • fun
  • and of course you may be able to improve it...
...but I urge caution in editing it, it's pretty polished already IMO. Comments on talk pages might be a better idea, and let the team that wrote it consider these suggestions. And well done to the team! Andrewa 23:34, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Well there's a bit of a blunder on page 4 about external links. [http://www.google.com] displays as [4] not http://www.google.com (I'll leave it to the team to fix, though). Aside from that, it's pretty good :). - Lee (talk) 23:45, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Noticed that at about the same time you did. Corrected now. Thanks! Isomorphic 00:06, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I translated it as de:Wikipedia:Tutorial (not page 7, because to search for the right links is a work of aeons). -- till we *) 01:54, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The welcoming committee and its/theirs helpers is/are to be praised for its/theirs (as you like it) work! Pfortuny 09:29, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Novel Synopses

General comment here: is it really necessary for article writers to detail every event in the entire plot? (See my edits to Dune.) I think it not only makes the article too long and unwieldy, it also opens the door to more errors, inconsistencies, etc. A synopsis is just that — a brief summary to lay out the essential theme, plot, idea of the book, so that a reader has some notion what it's about. Not what happens at every turn. Wiki articles shouldn't be book reports. OK, off my soapbox now. User:Alcarillo

I try to lead through it without putting in every detail. If a scene is not essential to the plot, then out it goes, but all of the major events should be outlined. - Woodrow, Emperor of the United States 23:04, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
For an egregious abuse of synopsis see The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 23:16, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)


The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was no more egregious than the one I chopped for Dune (novel) -- at least the WWoO was fairly well written (can't vouch for the accuracy not having read the book). -- User:Alcarillo
Not every event as to reading the Wp synopsis instead of the book/movie, but I think it should give an extensive idea of all of the themes, issues, and characters' stories in the work. But of course there is reason not to have it blow out of control... Dysprosia 10:05, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I dunno. The Dune (novel) entry left me wanting more. It's been many years since I read it and it didn't refresh my memory at all about what happens later in the book among the Fremen. -- Decumanus | Talk 14:08, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Given that some (series of) novels have whole sets of pages devoted to them (see dozens of articles on Tolkien's Middleearth), I don't think we need to worry about excessive detail on a single page. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:11, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Traditional Chinese medicine

There is a battle going on over this article. There is plenty of disagreement over what is vandalism and what is not. I have been attacked personally, and accused of deleting something I did not. Now someone is "laying down laws" concerning Wikipedia, but it is not clear at all what his authority is in doing so. It would be great to have some intervention, perhaps to block editing on this page after reverting to something sensible. I am not clear where is the best place to seek assistance on this matter. I have posted to vandalism in progress as well. Suggestions and help appreciated. heidimo 01:10, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Main page text

Should I protect Main Page (text only)? Meelar 03:15, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

No, it doesn't look like it's frequently "visited". -- User:Docu

Polish history

I have taken the horrible mess at List of concentration camps for Poles and moved it to Camps in Poland during World War II, where I have tried to write a decent article. I expect to be attacked by the Polish Nationalist faction, and it would be nice to get some support from people who care about history at Wikipedia. I am getting tired of fighting this battle by myself. Adam 09:51, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Good work, you have my support. Pkmink 10:01, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, nicely done, much more readable. -- chris_73 10:47, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Kyiv vs. Kiev

We could use some more voices in the discussion currently at talk:Kiev. It's been argued that "Kiev" is appropriate because it returns more google hits, but that (Soviet-imposed) spelling is offensive to many Ukrainians. The Government of Ukraine has formally requested that their capitol be spelled "Kyiv" in English; a request that has been honored by the UN and the US State Department. While google hit counts are useful in many cases, I don't feel that we should allow them to enslave us when other important factors are involved. There is precedent for correctness overruling hit count, e.g. with Gdansk/Danzig and Mumbai/Bombay. Please chime in at talk:Kiev so we can reach a consensus one way or the other and get the article unprotected. Mkweise 17:28, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This issue seems to come up a lot. The "official" name is different than what everyone else calls it. Consider Mumbia vs Bombay , Kiev vs Kyiv, Makkah vs Mecca. I think we need to be consistent, and I think we need an official policy on this. →Raul654 17:36, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)

A general policy will be more complicated than you might at first think. Consider for example Burma versus Myanmar, where there is significant doubt that the government edict is supported by the people. Wikipedia currently sides with the military government and the UN, and against the US government, the more common English usage and (probably) the people of the country. I don't think that's too strong a statement, and while obviously this decision is POV either way we need to jump one way or the other. Andrewa 19:27, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
For the record (and in case this comes up again), we already have a rule on the books for this - "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." (Wikipedia:Naming conventions). →Raul654 19:31, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)
It certainly will come up again. For the present, I think 'Kiev' is overploweringly more recognizable, and I'd never even heard of 'Kyiv' until reading this section. But as long as we have redirects and have sufficient explanation in articles that use the names, we ought to be able to go by our own policy and not be too far afield. ;Bear 20:40, 2004 Apr 11 (UTC)

Stub

I have noticed that several times when I or someone else tries to mark a section of an article as a stub, someone comes along and either deletes the note or changes it to mark the entire article inaccurately as a stub. This has happened so often lately that I guess I should ask. Is it against policy to mark a sectoin as a stub? If so, is there any preferred way to draw attention to an article where a relevant topic is barely mentioned and needs to be expanded upon? -- Jmabel 23:52, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm not aware of anyone else marking a section as a stub, usually it seemed to refer to the whole entry as a stub, so your marking sections as stubs might be causing confusion. How are you doing this, by the way? I think the standard stub message refers to the whole article. It would probably be better to either put some text in the section to indicate that it needed expansion, or put a message in the talk page. I would avoid the term stub, as I think most people associate that with a whole article needing expansion. I would, anyway. Silverfish 00:56, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Silverfish is right. I have no idea this "section stub" thing even exists. So, it's not even a matter of "can I do it", as in "we have no idea what you are doing". You should just leave message in Talk instead drawing attention. "Stub", AFAIK, describes an article, not a section of an article. We do need to point out that certain section is insufficient, but to re-use the "stub" terminology can be really confusing. --Menchi 01:02, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)~
I have, on occasion, used notes such as:
(todo: explain blah rhubarb blah)
at specific places in articles when I didn't have the time just then or felt others might be more competent on the subject I considered missing. Mkweise 05:11, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Maybe it's best we use HTML comments for inline comments on the article, so at least that articles look somewhat complete. Dysprosia 05:20, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Html comments aren't visible until after one clicks on "edit", and thus would rather defeat the purpose of such notes—being to encourage anyone viewing the article to help fill in the blanks.
Also, why would you want to make a product that you yourself consider to be lacking something essential appear complete in the first place? This is Wikipedia, not a Microsoft developer team! <g> Mkweise 14:26, 11 Apr 2004
Then try and make "todo" notes as neat as possible, perhaps at the end of the article. Perhaps complete wasn't the right word - perhaps "functional" would better suit. Articles should look clean, professional, and be as functional as possible. Presentation is important.
It may appear to look more haphazard and annoy users hoping to find certain information if one has comments about the text inline with the article text itself. Contributors for an article would know about the topic itself before beginning, so if they feel they can contribute, they will see perhaps what needs doing in the wikitext. Dysprosia 14:37, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
It's my understanding that to-do notes belong in talk. The only exception is msg:stub which is partly designed to head off criticisms from readers (i.e. "yes we know that this article is much to short, we're acknowledging it's just a start"). Once an article has expanded to the point that it's no longer a stub, use the talk page instead. fabiform | talk 15:53, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Or talk. Talk's a great place for todo notes too. Dysprosia 15:56, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Recursive [[MediaWiki:{{{1}}}]] ([{{fullurl:MediaWiki:{{{1}}}|action=edit}} edit] | [[MediaWiki talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] | [{{fullurl:MediaWiki:{{{1}}}|action=history}} history] | [{{fullurl:Special:Whatlinkshere/MediaWiki:{{{1}}}}} links] | [{{fullurl:MediaWiki:{{{1}}}|action=watch}} watch] | logs)s?

Do {{msg}}s transclude recursively? That is, if I create MediaWiki:MessageA, then add {{msg:MessageA}} to MediaWiki:MessageB, then add {{msg:MessageB}} to an article, will I see the full text of MessageA and MessageB in the article?

I want to do this because I have made a complicated task box at MediaWiki:PhilosophyTasks. I want this box to have a border and be right-aligned in most of the pages I include it in, but since I don't necessarily want that layout all the time, I'd like to separate the content from the layout by including the content as a {{msg}} in another MediaWiki: page. Will this work? (I would test it, but I don't want to create unnecessary pages as part of a test.)

Thanks! — Adam Conover † 01:07, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

Nope, doesn't work. I guess because it would be too easy to set up an infinite recursion with those things (sticking {{msg:MessageB}} inside MediaWiki:MessageA for example). The best you can do is use {{subst:MessageB}} which would copy the entire contents of Mediawiki:MessageB (including the {{msg:MessageA}}) to the article. - Lee (talk) 01:51, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Bah, that's frustrating. And yeah, infinite recursino would suck, but still. I guess I have to choose between putting the layout code on each page specifically, or having no choice in whether or not the layout appears on each article. I was hoping to separate them so people could choose -- ah, well. Thank you. — Adam Conover † 02:20, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)
I think you're allowed one level of nesting and then it stops there, but I'd have to doublecheck. Dysprosia 04:09, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Hm. It would be nice if a sysop could do the experiment -- I would, but I don't want to create pages needlessly. However, I have discovered another strategy, courtesy of an anonymous benefactor -- if need be, I could put the content into a {msg} and then transclude that into a {subst} containing the layout. This would also have the benefit of allowing people to customize the box as they saw fit. — Adam Conover † 04:44, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, you can have a subst that includes msgs, I did this with {{subst:sandboxpaste}} which includes the normal {{msg:sandbox}} and a HTML comment. I'll do the test now at the Test Wikipedia now...which is especially for these kinds of things Dysprosia 04:50, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
It appears you can do somehing like having messages-in-messages upto one level, though it cuold be a software difference between here and the Test Wiki. But give it a try... Dysprosia 04:58, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Thank you, I will! — Adam Conover † 05:09, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)
Nope, it didn't work. Try previewing {{msg:PhilosophyTasksBox}} to see the results -- it just prints the name of the message. (Incidentally, it would probably be too much to ask that redirects act as aliases for {msg}s, right?) In any case, I went with the {subst} method. Thanks again! — Adam Conover † 05:36, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

Nude scenes

For lack of anything else, Ive been thinking the last few days about making a historical page about famous nude and underwear movie scenes, with historical information (eg. who was the first person to take clothes off in a regular movie, what movies have been deemed controversial because of some scenes like this). What do you guys think? Antonio Spank me Baby! Martin

woohoo! Sam Spade 05:32, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Looking forward to it. <KF> 09:39, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I'm not personally enthusiastic about this as an encyclopedia article. I would think there are enough websites that deal with this. I think it would be much more interesting to try to document the ebb and flow of cinematic treatment of sexuality in general (just how hot was the 1913 movie Traffic in Souls? Just when did the Hollywood starting showing married couples' bedrooms with separate twin beds and no toilet in the bathroom? How much skin was exposed in movie prior to the institution of the Hays Office? Dpbsmith 18:47, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Counters

On another topic, when will the counters be back???

Antonio El Pollo Loco Martin

The last statement I heard was to the effect of "probably never". The counters, as implemented, require a database write for every page view, slowing things down considerably. -- Cyrius|&#9998 05:42, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)
Seems like they would be somewhat useful, so one might then wonder what mechanism there might exist that would not be more cumbersome than is warranted by their utility. What first comes to mind is a database write on each page once a night -- accumulate the data during the day and sort it, compile it, and then write it just once per 24. Up-to-the-minute counting is not that important to warrant its overhead, but long-term stats are probably what we'd need anyway. This is wordier than if I'd composted it off line (and I kinda like that misspelling I just did) but oh well. ;Bear 20:26, 2004 Apr 11 (UTC)
FWIW, test seems to have them: [5]. Marnanel 20:59, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

Redirects from Article to Wikipedia namespace

Is it appropriate to create redirects from the article namespace to the Wikipedia namespace? For example, I was looking for Wikipedia:Article series just now, so I typed "Article series" into the go/search box, and found an empty page. Since one of the purposes of redirects is to make it easier to find thing, I was about to create a redirect to the Wikipedia namespace page, but then realized that this might be good practice. What should I do? — Adam Conover † 04:53, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

There are many, many, many existing redirects to the Wikipedia namespace. Case in point, Village pump redirects to Wikipedia:Village pump. Hell, Redirect redirects to Wikipedia:Redirect. Just don't create redirects to another wiki. -- Cyrius|&#9998 06:08, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks! Done and done. — Adam Conover † 06:11, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

heteronormativity

needs help [6][7][8].

Sam Spade 05:40, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)]]

Policy suggestions

I have two suggestions:

  • Implement edit-throttling
  • Limit IP bans to 1 hour

One hour IP bans and edit-throttling are sufficient to counter bot attacks (vandal bots, spam bots, etc.), while they will not be of any use against humans. This is deliberate.

Permanent IP bans (and long term IP bans) are a form of censorship. They go against the Wiki way, and I believe that they are starting to have damaging effects on the GFDL text corpus. The measures suggested above should be enough to stop vandals. It is important not to extend these actions into the realm of political censorship.

Please at least attempt to implement my suggestions. Do it gradually. Slowly unblock blocked IPs, just a few at a time, and see if the world explodes. Censorship will choke the GFDL text corpus. Please, freedom of speech is important.

I don't know where you are getting your information, but we don't permanently ban IP address. Sysops can manually block IP addresses, but those expire after 24 hours (although the sysop can choose to make it longer - to my knowledge, no sysop has ever banned an IP address indefinitely). The only exception is that we have a proxy blocker, which blocks open proxies. Those proxies are periodically rescanned to see if they have since been closed. If they are, they unblocked. →Raul654 16:13, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)
That is not correct, Raul—a number of IP ranges and individual IPs are indefinitely blocked for various reasons. I assume he got his information from Special:Ipblocklist, which is of course always current and accurate. Mkweise 16:20, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I just counted. There are around 9 (give or take) ranges or addresses that are permanently blocked. I think this is a being blown out of proportion. →Raul654 16:26, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)
I beg to differ. We have some extreme vandals who come back time and again and enjoy disrupting things. See User:Bird, who enjoys massive vandalism as an anon user. RickK 23:43, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

New msgplate

Hows the new msgplate? (sorry about ignoring it and posting in the wrong section). Bensaccount 21:13, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Artificial mythology

The page artificial mythology is problematic. The article has useful information about the concept, useful information that belongs in an encyclopedia. On the other hand, I don't think "artificial mythology" is a standard term. A search on Google turns up few hits that are not derived from Wikipedia and its mirrors. So, would any mythology experts care to weigh in? Is there a better term we can use instead, a different title we can use for the article? And if I'm wrong and the term "artificial mythology" is standard, can someone provide a citation to prove it? --Lowellian 22:39, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

There are at least 25 non-Wiki originated websites referring to "artificial mythology" in Yahoo Search.

Craig J. Saper has written a book, Artificial Mythologies: A Guide to Cultural Invention, 1997, Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
A. Wicher quotes The artificial mythology of Tolkien's "The Silmarillion".

And H.P. Lovecraft's Necromicon is described in Straightdope as an artificial mythology.

There is a magazine called Zothique which is quoted as "a journal of dark fantasy...and artificial mythology".

I think you can be pretty confident there is such a thing as artificial mythology. --Dieter Simon 01:10, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Disambigging question

If an article says something like "in the film version of The Wizard of Oz", should the link be disambigged to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or The Wizard of Oz (1939 movie)? The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is technically what the article is talking about, but most users would probably want The Wizard of Oz (1939 movie). Eurleif 01:17, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

VFD could need your help

We could use a few more sysops on vfd. Lately we have been up to 5 days backlogged; articles should really only be listed on vfd for 5 days, but still we got entries as old as March 29 listed at the moment. I have done a little of the delisting and deleting myself, but I don't have that much spare time at the moment. Sysops please help bring vfd back on track. ✏ Sverdrup 01:23, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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