Jump to content

Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Bkonrad (talk | contribs) at 20:13, 27 April 2004 (Random wierdness or user error?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Village pump sections
post, watch, search
Discuss existing and proposed policies
post, watch, search
Discuss technical issues about Wikipedia
post, watch, search
Discuss new proposals that are not policy-related
post, watch, search
Incubate new ideas before formally proposing them
post, watch, search
Discuss issues involving the Wikimedia Foundation
post, watch, search
Post messages that do not fit into any other category
View all village pump sections at once
Other help and discussion locations
I want... Then go to...
...help using or editing Wikipedia Teahouse (for newer users) or Help desk (for experienced users)
...to find my way around Wikipedia Department directory
...specific facts (e.g. Who was the first pope?) Reference desk
...constructive criticism from others for a specific article Peer review
...help resolving a specific article edit dispute Requests for comment
...to comment on a specific article Article's talk page
...to view and discuss other Wikimedia projects Wikimedia Meta-Wiki
...to learn about citing Wikipedia in a bibliography Citing Wikipedia
...to report sites that copy Wikipedia content Mirrors and forks
...to ask questions or make comments Questions

[[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]]

Summarised sections

This is a list of discussions that have been summarised and moved to an appropriate place. This list gets deleted occasionally to make room for newer entries.

Greek unicodes

I have placed a set of Greek alphabet unicodes at the foot of my User page for anyone who works on Greek-related articles and shares my inability to memorise them. Adam 03:12, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be best to use HTML entities, for backwards compatibility? Dysprosia 10:28, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Plus they are a lot easier to remember.theresa knott 11:01, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
HTML entities are hard to edit and look ugly in the editing window, not to mention that they are SGML only, and that Unicode can just be copied&pasted in any text editor. — Jor (Talk) 12:21, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
What was wrong with the Unicode tables in the Greek alphabet article? Gdr 11:56, 2004 Apr 23 (UTC)
There is nothing inherently wrong with Unicode, but most people who are on non-Unicode compliant systems can't see Unicode glyphs. Dysprosia 12:05, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
But people using those archaic systems won't be able to access most non-US ASCII websites anyway. Why punish everyone to cator to a very small minority which probably has no interest in reading Greek in the first place? — Jor (Talk) 12:21, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)


That doesn't mean we should actively seek to prevent users on different, non-Unicode-compatible systems from reading the text. I was somewhat sure that Windows 9x versions were not natively Unicode compatible, but [1] seems to suggest that this is the case.
In any case, how are the HTML entities "punishment" in comparison to the Unicode glyphs? One would think that the numerical Unicode entity would be more painful to enter than the slightly more intuitive HTML text-based entity... Dysprosia 12:53, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
You can't save unicode characters into articles on en, the encoding is ISO 8859-1. If you paste in a unicode character, or type it somehow, most browsers will automatically convert it to a numeric character entity. You can type in unicode if you wish, but it means that numeric character entities will be saved (e.g. α) rather than the more readable named character entities, e.g. α. Unicode support in browsers is irrelevant. -- Tim Starling 01:15, Apr 24, 2004 (UTC)

Main Page: Where is it?

I tried to get into the Standard Main Page, but it wasn't there. Why is that? JB82 04:03, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

CLARIFICATION I clicked on the logo on the upper left of my User page and I got the Main Page. It's just when I type in the address, that's all. JB82 04:09, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

What did you type? RickK 04:27, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Adult Content

-> Wikipedia talk:Content disclaimer

Where to answer user talk page questions

I sometimes ask another user a question on his/her talk page. Some of the users respond on their talk page underneath my question, some on my talk page with a new heading. Is there a guideline where to answer, or is it up to the user? I thought it is easier if the entire conversation is on one page. -- chris 73 | Talk 11:54, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This is because of an awkwardness of the software, but it's not easy to see how to improve it: when someone adds a comment to your talk page, you see a special "You have new messages" link at the top of every page loaded; whereas to track somebody else's talk page, you'd have to add it to your watchlist - which means that you will see every comment posted to that user, and every change to their user page, as well, until you unwatch it. Obviously, for a user who gets a lot of messages, this can be somewhat less than helpful; but the alternative, as you say, is that the conversation gets split into two incoherent halves.
What's more, with different people following different conventions, you don't know whether to assume they'll watch your talk page just because they added to it, so you more or less have to reply at theirs. That said, it might be possible to come up with a compromise: add a not to your talk page saying that if somebody is responding, they should make a trivial edit (so it triggers the notification) - or maybe list their name or something - and then reply on their own User_talk: page. That way the conversation stays together, but you know when it's been updated... - IMSoP 12:21, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
A good way to follow conversations on talk pages other than your own is to use the "My contributions" list. If there have been any edits to the talk page in question, your edit is no longer marked as "top". Explaining your preferred comment procedure on your talk page is a good idea.--Eloquence* 13:53, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)
I answer on my talk page and then leave a note "I answered on my talk page" on theirs. It takes two edits instead of one but the conversation is in one place and their notification message gets triggered. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:00, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I alternate between the two. Originally, I mostly replied on the other person's talk page, these days I more often reply on my talk page. Replying on the other talk page is IMHO more courteous, and ensures that they will get the message as quickly as possible. Replying on your own talk page takes is easier for you because it requires less clicks. It keeps the discussion in one place and thus makes it easier to follow for others watching the discussion. So it depends on how lazy you are, what tone you want to set, and whether or not you want other people to be able to read the conversation at a glance. -- Tim Starling 15:13, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)


If you want to be sure the other person will get your message, you should reply on their talk page, or at least tell them on their talk page that you have replied elsewhere. You can't assume that people will have your talk page on their watchlist, so there's a chance they will never see your reply there. Angela.
Would it be an option to copy (not cut) the entire question and paste it onto the other talk page, and then write your answer underneath? If everybody did this, then both parties would have a complete copy of the conversation on their talk page. Of course, for longer conversations you copy only the part that is missing since the last exchange. -- chris 73 | Talk 15:58, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Yes, there's nothing stopping you doing that on your own page. It's up to the other user whether they also want a whole copy of it on their talk page though. Angela. 16:07, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)
OK, I'll complete the half-conversations only on my page then, and still answer on the other persons page. Thanks. -- Chris 73 | (New) Talk 16:28, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Interwikis on fr:

There are 16,000 articles on the French Wikipedia without an interwiki to the English Wikipedia. A list is available at http://mboquien.free.fr/nointerwiki.gz You need an edito that can read unicode. --Youssef 16:22, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I can't seem to open that file. Would someone take the list and put it up on wikipedia somewhere? (On en or fr) - I imagine it would need to be split up into pages of 1000 links... that way we could update it as well, especially if we were to work through it, deleting from the list as they're done. fabiform | talk 16:45, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
And as if by magic, (the) Angela appears: meta:Articles on fr with no interwiki link to en. Thanks! fabiform | talk 16:54, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
(groan) As a punishment for dragging out this hackneyed line, I sentence you to writing a much-needed stub for Mr. Benn. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:25, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Heh, OK, punishment accepted. I'll do that tomorrow. Does my memory deceive me, or did you make an awful "I can't believe it's not butter" pun on Jimbo's april fool's admin nomination? I'm sure you deserve something pretty bad if that was the case. ;) fabiform | talk 21:46, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Short-toed in Granada Spain

moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk#Short-toed eagles in Granada Spain

Abusive user

I'm not sure what to do with Deism. I don't really know enough about the article to edit the content beyond obvious copyedits. However, one person, user:Andrew Zito, seems to have taken an intense interest in the article and issues profane abuse on the talk page of the article and of users who make edits to the article. I listed the article on Wikipedia:List of controversial issues, but that's not exactly the issue here. It almost seems like we need another category, something like Wikipedia:List of articles protected by trolls. older ≠ wiser 22:35, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Now he changed all references to himself, from sentences like "AZ is quoted as saying ..." to "-censored- is quoted as saying ...". I reverted all of his last edits. Chris 73 | (New) Talk 00:13, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
BTW, why does he have a page User talk:Andrew Zito AND Talk:Andrew zito? Seems when someone deleted the article Zito created about himself (Andrew zito), the talk page did not get deleted, too. -- Chris 73 | (New) Talk 00:19, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I have deleted the talk page now too. Incidentally it looks like a deliberate act as the vanity page was at Andrew Zito (capital Z) and the talk was at Talk:Andrew zito (small z). -- Graham  :) | Talk 00:25, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Dead-end pages

Who do I ask to run the Special:Deadendpages again? I've un-deadended a number of them, and am hoping to maybe see "D". --Brockert 22:37, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

You could try asking at Wikipedia:SQL query requests. Angela. 22:44, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)
Actually, according to that page, it looks like it should be at Wikipedia:Scripting requests - which already lists a request for this from a long time ago. - IMSoP 22:56, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
If you check the dates, you'll find that Special:Deadendpages was updated on April 20, while that request is from March 29. -- Cyrius|&#9998 23:11, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)
I think the request is still there because the page wasn't updated as a result of that request. Until a couple of days ago it was possible to recreate some of these special pages using a "magic" parameter, but it was disabled. Angela. 23:25, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

New File upload page

-> MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext

Mr Peepers

-> Talk:Mr. Peepers


East Turkestan

Does anyone know much about East Turkestan/Xinjiang? I can't say I do, but the article doesn't look very NPOV, and it keeps getting added to lists of countries, List of national flags, that sort of thing when it appears to just be a Chinese province. Scurra 17:54, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The matter is definitely a controversial one. While the area is certainly recognised internationally as part of China, it has a fairly strong independence movement - not nearly as well known in the West as the Tibetan one is, but of a similar background. Even the name "Xinjiang" is regarded as objectionable by many of the independence-seekers, as it's a Chinese (not Uighur) term, and means something like "new borderland", "new province", or "new frontier". So I would anticipate disputes over how to describe it. I imagine that the eventual solution will resemble that for Tibet (whatever that might be). As for the current situation - I agree that the East Turkestan article could probably use some work, yes. And the Xinjiang article should probably talk a bit more about the separatist movements. -- Vardion 23:17, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Really Long Lists

In the biography for Kylie Minogue, there is an very long list of all her 45rpms and albums. Similar such listings can be found for many other singers/actresses/authors and the like. At the same time, in the biography of Jack Pickford, there was a partial list of films he appeared in that was removed by User:Frecklefoot with the reason "commented out overlong filmograph." I’m fairly new here so don’t want to do things that established and valuable contributors have determined as unacceptable. I'm starting on a biography for silent film actress Pauline White but because I am now not certain what is proper, can someone tell me if I should follow User:Frecklefoot's policy when I create new biographies and not include a filmography/list of albums/45s/CDs, or books etc? Similarly, if I edit an existing biography, should I also delete the filmography, list of albums/45s/CDs, books etc? Jill

This was hashed out a while ago. I probably did comment out a very long list (if I deleted it, it can be retreived via the pages history). I dislike really long lists in article, especially filmographies when the information is available via other sites, such as the IMDb. I find that they add little but clutter to articles. However, it was decided that very long lists should go on a seperate page, such as [[List of John Doe's movies]]. Most felt that Wikipedia should not rely on outside websites for complete information. So, if its a really long list, put it on a seperate page. If it's fairly brief, it can go in the main article. I hope this clears things up. :-) —Frecklefoot 19:43, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)
A rule to consider: Suppose you create [[List of Xs relating to Y]]. If the only page that will link to it is Y then you may as well have List Of Y thingies on the Y page, otherwise you are just making navigation unnecessarily difficult for the user for the sake of bumping up the page count by 1. The 32k page size caveat still applies even to list pages though - long edit pages hinder some browsers. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 20:54, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Article in a Day/Week idea

Anyone like the sound of this? Over a certain timeframe, we have a specific featured non-article which either didn't exist or was a very basic stub to begin with. The idea being that within a day, a week or whatever the article gets to Featured Article standard, or as close as possible.

It could help fill in big missing gaps in Wikipedia, and would also give users something to concentrate and work on collaboratively.

Any thoughts? Tom- 21:56, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea, and it is something that seems to be working well on some other Wikipedias. See fr:Wikipédia:Article de la semaine, ro:Wikipedia:Articolul săptămânii and sv:Wikipedia:Veckans artikel for example. There is also the related Qualitätsoffensive on the German Wikipedia. Angela. 22:40, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)
Interesting, FR changes every week, DE every two. So some questions that need answering for EN are...
  • How would the article be picked? Public vote?
  • How often should it be changed? Every day? 2 days? Week? Or "when it's good enough"?
  • Where should the article be featured?
Tom- 22:53, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

How does this differ from the 5 requested articles listed at the top of Recent Changes? Even when we have a wider range of choices (as opposed to one, possibly very narrow and boring ONE), we -- as a group -- don't really work on them. Reducing the # from 5 to 1 would just be more restrictive to people's interest.

In any case, it's impossible to get a stub or non-existent article to be feature article-standard in 1 day. Maybe 3. --Menchi 00:17, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Surely the reason nobody edits those is that they don't really notice them. Sure, there's always plenty of articles we could write. The idea of an "article of the week" is surely to get lots of people to focus on it, and turn it into a kind of event, something to be proud of and that people will appreciate an individuals work on. At heart, it's an incentive scheme, like offering WikiMoney. - IMSoP 10:51, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I like the idea. How about a week? About selection, maybe 2 or three people (Tom should certainly be one of them if he agrees) decide on what article to select. Any user can nominate an article to be "featured" and the selectors pick it. The page to be written is then advertised. That work? LUDRAMAN | T 19:39, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

the beltway murders.

-->Wikipedia:Reference desk

msgs

Is there something wrong with the "msg" translation? PUtting msgs on pages doesn't cause them to be translated. RickK 05:32, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Such as where? I haven't noticed anything. Dori | Talk 05:36, Apr 27, 2004 (UTC)
I tried adding msg:d=protected to Schnorrer and it wouldn't translate, but it seemed to work when I did it again. But there were a couple of other cases earlier today that I don't remember right now. RickK 05:40, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I think you had a space in between msg: and protected the first time, that's probably why. Dori | Talk 05:45, Apr 27, 2004 (UTC)

Yet another Wikipedia: page

Following from someone's suggestion, I started Wikipedia:Great editing in progress intended as a counterpoint to Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress. Please consider watchlisting it, or commenting on the idea at its talk page. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:06, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)


Wik's increasingly crackpot behaviour

Section on the conduct of Wik started by Gene Poole before that user knew that arbitration was taking place. Move suggested by Anárion - to keep the discussion in one place, and away from the village pump - and carried out by IMSoP 13:14, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC); and seemingly Theresa knott, simultaneously.

Please continue the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Wik2#Discussion continued from Village pump

Change to Recent Changes (N to !)

Should recent changes display N or ! next to new pages? See MediaWiki talk:Newpageletter

Facebook

This is going to stir up a helleva hornet's nest, I know, but it's been quiet here lately. About two months ago, someone asked about the possibility of compiling pictures of wikipedians. Well, long story short, I did it - User:Raul654/facebook is the end result. I wanted to get community opinions. On a wikiettiquite note - one user noticed it before now and objected to his picture being there; I told him to go ahead and remove it. Personally, I think it's pretty neat - I find it much nicer being able to associate a face with a name. →Raul654 17:16, Apr 27, 2004 (UTC)

PS - I think I am going to move it to Wikipedia:Facebook and let people add their pictures there voluntarily. But first, I just wanted to get a proof of concept going and get some community feedback. →Raul654 18:01, Apr 27, 2004 (UTC)
Interesting, a lot of Wikipedians are a lot more attractive than I imagined them to be! It'd be easier to use if thumbnails and tables (with a few images in each row) were employed. That'd be my only suggestion. And perhaps a link to the user's page. —Frecklefoot 18:23, Apr 27, 2004 (UTC)
Agree with frecklefoot. If you laid it out well with a colourful background it would look really well. LUDRAMAN | T 18:35, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Good job, Raul. I second Frecklefoot's proposed enhancements. Niteowlneils 19:32, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
To be on the right side of cautionness and courtesy, I think it would be appropiate to ask each user on their talk page whether they were happy with using pictures. I know each user has uploaded the pic so are probably ok with it, but it is reasonable to ask.
More generally I think this is somehow ok in a way the WikiSex debacle wasn't. It's another one of those situations where the dividing line between appropiate and not is not well-defined, but you can tell what side of appropiate something falls when you see it.
From other forums I know that having pictures of people can change the behaviour of other users, particularly immature ones, for the worse, so I think if Wikipedia needs to have a policy on it, it should be "you are free to add to this [facebook] page if you want to, but it is not actively encouraged".
<parrot mode> This obviously should be on meta, not in the Wikipedia: namespace </parrot mode>
And my piece of feedback, how the heck am I supposed to have constructive debates with Cimon now... he looks far too wellard.
Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 19:26, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Image fair use?

I'm not entirely clear on the guidelines laid out in Image use policy. If I wanted to add (a smaller version of) this picture to the article On Your Mark (about a Japanese animated music video), would that be allowed? I believe that image is from a calendar; if I posted an actual frame from the music video itself, would that fall under fair use? I see professional movie reviewers using shots from movies all the time, must they always have special permission? If I copied a Disney park photo from a Disney park web site, would it be fair use to put that image on a Wikipedia article about the park? I have trouble seeing how the reproduction of any image here on Wikipedia would cause any sort of financial harm to the owner of the image, and an image would often help make an article clearer - what's a good rule of thumb to use in deciding whether my intentions for an image fall under 'fair use' or not? Brian Kendig 19:14, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Request for comments and arbitration

Just wanted to know where I should post a request for comment and arbitration on a specific article. Is it in the Cleanup page? More specifically, is anybody willing to give a third party opinion (or whatever party really...) on the NPOV of the last edits in Brussels article (cf. Brussels' talk page in section neutrality for more on the issue). cheers. -- Edcolins 19:16, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Site performance

Anyone know why WP is suddenly so much slower/balkier? Yesterday I saw a bunch of 'all servers down' messages, and both then and now my browser is timing out trying to contact WP MUCH more than usual, and even when pages finally come up, even tho' they look complete, the status bar shows 'waiting for...' or 'transferring data from...' much longer than normal. Seems like some change in the past 36-48 hours severely hampered WP's performance. Niteowlneils 19:32, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

We're down to one squid since Browne went down. Dori | Talk 19:52, Apr 27, 2004 (UTC)

Random wierdness or user error?

Am I doing something wrong, or is there something funky going on? The Talk:John Kerry page was quite large so I archived old materials at Talk:John Kerry/Feb 2004 archive, Talk:John Kerry/Mar 2004 archive, and Talk:John Kerry/Family background and added links to them on the main Talk page. But the Family background page always appears in red and clicking on it opens the saved article in an edit window. I've tried refereshing several times and even resaved both articles to no effect. What's going on here? older ≠ wiser 20:13, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_archive_2004-09-26&oldid=3363240"