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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Anárion (talk | contribs) at 20:12, 5 May 2004 (=English vs American= :Standing rule alas appears to be to allow Americanisms when they are already there, in essence to keep the language the article was started in. If an article is started using pr). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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[[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.

I think that adding links to the corresponding page on http://nutritiondata.com to food-related articles might be a good idea. Do other Wikipedians agree, and does anyone know of a nutrition site which might be better? Eurleif 00:41, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, adding links looks useful, I started linking food and nutrition to the homepage.--Patrick 10:53, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

New feature

You can now paste an IP address into the search box and click "go", and it will take you to the contributions page. -- Tim Starling 03:26, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)

Cool.. but there's a bug :o) It doesn't take care of articles which have the name of an IP address. For e.g., 127.0.0.1 is the name of an article, but giving it in the "Go" button doesn't take it to the article. Jay 12:28, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Oh diddums. You won't be able to access the only two articles in the entire database which are named after IP addresses: 127.0.0.1 and 155.69.5.236 with the go button! I guess I'd better disable it, I wouldn't want you having to type the URL. -- Tim Starling 14:17, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)
Why not check if the page exists before going to the contri list? Just moving the if block down right before the "No match" should do the trick.--Eloquence* 15:34, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)
Make that one article. I orphaned 155.69.5.236 and deleted it. UninvitedCompany 16:05, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Zero: 127.0.0.1 is a redirect. - Woodrow XXIIIII, Emperor of the United States, Minister of Ministry 19:49, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The bug's still there. Will Eloquence's solution help ? Jay 12:36, 2 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Does it matter now that it doesn't apply to any articles? Angela. 20:41, May 2, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, because it applies to a redirect, and possibly to future articles. anthony (see warning)

image upload problems

I tried to upload some images but kept getting 'This image cannot be displayed because it has errors'. I think others may have the same problem. Is this a software/system bug? -- Kaihsu 12:53, 2004 Apr 29 (UTC)

Which images do you refer to? The last two you uploaded (Image:StopIqaluit Copyright1999KaihsuTai.jpg and Image:RichardHarries20040428 CopyrightKaihsuTai.jpg) display fine here. Maybe you should clear your cache? andy 12:59, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Seems to be working now. Image:BeachBarahona2001 CopyrightKaihsuTai.jpg -- Kaihsu 13:14, 2004 Apr 29 (UTC)

Reg. Privacy

Could anyone please tell me how Wikipedia handles privacy issues? For example, keeping passwords and keeping the watchlists. Is it readable by any others? TIA --Rrjanbiah 14:27, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, there is the draft privacy policy, but as far as passwords go, no other users can access your password. No other users can see your watchlist either. AAMOF, there was a discussion about implementing a feature that would allow users see others' watchlists not too long ago and it was overwhelmingly voted down. You can see all the edits that any user has made, however. As far as what guys working on the server-end can see, I don't know. They probably can see your watchlists, but your password is most likely encrypted. —Frecklefoot 16:42, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)


Developers have access to the hash of the passwords, but not the passwords themselves. They could also see your watchlist if they wanted, and details such as when you logged in etc. Sysops used to have the ability to read watchlists a while ago, but I believe this was removed, and is certainly not possible now that special:asksql has been disabled. Also, contrary to popular misconception, only developers can access your IP, not admins, stewards or anyone else. Angela. 17:42, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)
Oh, Thanks a lot for the explanation. BTW, it would have been much better if the IP itself is hashed and stored. --Rrjanbiah 05:13, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
(Speaking as a computer engineer) - no, that would actually be very bad. If the hash of your IP address were displayed, it would be trivial for someone to come along, hash the 4294967296 possible IP addresses, and figure out which one is yours. Poof, there goes the privacy of your IP address. →Raul654 05:22, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)
If I understand right, Angela says developers can view the IP of the *registered* users. So, if the IP is *really* necessary for some login modules or country detection, it can be better md5/sha hashed and stored. But, YMMV --Rrjanbiah 09:20, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There is no special recording of users' IP addresses. To check, one has to look up the web server logs (which are discarded periodically) to match up their actions with something they're known to have done (ie, editing a page, which records the user name, page name, and date in the wiki, where the timestamp and page name can be compared against the log, which contains only IP addresses and not user names). --Brion 10:31, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Oh...that is cool. Thanks a lot:-) --Rrjanbiah 12:12, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Why did Wikipedia call it the "so-called great train wreck of Nashville"

Why would you call it the "so-called" great train wreck in Nashville, Tn on July 9,1918. 101 people died . Many were soldiers returning from WWI and over have of the victims were African Americans going to work in the Dupont plant.This was very gruesome and tragic event. The newspaper says that wagon loads of body parts were taken to the morge. One witness said that the young mother sitting next to him was decapitaited and her arm was shoved "into her baby." I don't know what Wikipedia ment by the "so-called" great train wreck, but it sounds like a terrible wreck to me. The 1998 article reads "worst train wreck in US history." I am obviously offended by your statement . You should change that before a survivor or relative of someone who was killed reads it.i understand that ignorance was probaly the reason for this offensive blunder. So you are forgiven, but you need to change the statement.

You may want to edit the reference in the Nashville, Tennessee article and write a short article about the event. -- User:Docu
It sounds like you are right and the article needs to be improved. Sometimes people go overboard when striving hard to write from a neutral point of view. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:26, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
"Sometimes people go overboard when striving hard to write from a neutral point of view."
I agree with this, but i'd like to get some feedback about a specific instance. A memorial built in 1918 commemorates a massacre of women and children. One year ago the two statues that make up the monument were smashed. I wrote that they had been desecrated, but are being repaired. Someone changed desecrated to "damaged".
This "neutral" language fails to convey that the damage was human-inflicted, and obviously intentional.
My question is, how "neutral" do we want to be? --User:Richard Myers (talk)
I agree that goes a bit overboard, but have to admit that "desecrated" is a very emotive word, and has (for me at least) almost religious connotations (as in "desecrating a grave"). To convey "human-inflicted, and obviously intentional" damage, I'd probably go for "vandalised"; more neutral in the sense that it conveys the facts (assuming it has the same connotations to other readers as it does for me, of course...) - unlike "damaged" - but doesn't go further than the facts - as "desecrated" arguably does. Just an opinion, of course. - IMSoP 18:35, 2 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


Latin name redirects

The first time I looked at the Deletion log, I noticed people deleting latin name articles that redirected to the organism's common English name article. Why would they do that? Does Wikipedia is not paper not apply to redirs? Also, wouldn't the latin names have more currency in non-Eng nations, so the redirs would be quite helpful? Also, some articles, like List of freshwater aquarium fish species specifically use the latin name redirs. Niteowlneils 19:20, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

In general, such redirects should not just be deleted without going through redirects for deletion, if at all. Perhaps you should ask the sysop who was deleting them if there was any reason for it, and if not list the pages on Wikipedia:votes for undeletion. Angela. 19:32, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)
Would you quote some samples, if you list them I can restore them (I can't see them in the log). I haven't seen any on Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion lately. Maybe you want to create a special message to be added to these redirects, to better identify and trace them, e.g. MediaWiki:R_for_scientific_names (see msg in Wikipedia:Redirect#How_to_make_a_redirect ) -- User:Docu
I don't mind helping with the 'leg work' of restoring them, I mostly wanted to double-check whether there was some policy that said they were undesirable (I checked several naming convention pages, and project pages related to the animals in question, but found nothing pro or con RE redirs). I take it from your response that they are considered desirable. A couple are Hapalochlaena maculosa and Hapalochlaena lunulata. While researching this, I noticed one other category of redir deletions that I am curious about. Is there some policy that (assuming there is no other valid topic for the title) names of users can't be used as redirs to their user page? (EG Dgrant) Perhaps these questions should be addressed at Wikipedia:Redirect#What_do_we_use_redirects_for I'm not sure I understand what exactly you mean with your tracing page suggestion? Niteowlneils 20:21, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Both of those two were deleted by User:UtherSRG, and the comments suggest it's something to do with double redirects. I don't understand, but Uther generally is a level head, so if you ask him he might have a more enlightening explanation :) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:25, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I undeleted Hapalochlaena maculosa. It's now a redirect to Blue-ringed Octopus, to add the new {{msg:R_from_scientific_name}} it would need to redirect to Greater Blue-ringed Octopus though. -- User:Docu
I've looked through the deletion log (which has around 10 days of stuff) and while I'm sure I could have missed a few, there certainly doesn't seem to be someone making a policy of doing it wholesale. Yes, the latin redirects should exist (even if they aren't currently referenced). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:19, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Since I just found this discussion (I don't frequent VP) and no one has asked, I'll comment anyway. Some of the time I spend on WP I troll RC for interesting things. At some point the two links in question came to my attention. I saw they needed some work, added a taxobox to the article, etc. When I ofund the article, it looked like this. The scientific name links were only used from the article itself to redir back to itself. Seeing this as needless, and removing the links from the article, I then deleted the redirs. Now that I've started Wikipedia:WikiProject Cephalopods, I actually prefer having the sci name links, so thanks for undeleting them! I like {{msg:R_from_scientific_name}} very much, and I'll keep it in mind. - UtherSRG 17:17, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Special:blockip

I promise I'll learn how to report and look up bugs to the system after tonight, but this is one that requires fairly immediate attention and I don't know how to sort it. User:192.195.64.72 is on a personal crusade to blank various pages he doesn't like. I have tried blocking them following appropriate warning, went through the appropriate system, and they are carrying on using the same IP regardless. Is there a problem with the blockip tool? -- Graham  :) | Talk 01:25, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It's a known bug. Sometimes you need to do it twice before it works. I believe it's been fixed in 1.3. By the way, bugs can be reported at SourceForge or discussed on m:bugs. Angela. 04:00, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)
What's the estimated roll-out date for 1.3? →Raul654 04:27, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)
Sometime in May, probably; we're still finishing things up. However if there's a specific bug here I'd much rather fix it in 1.2 immediately! --Brion 10:33, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome msg suggestion

This may sound weird, but I don't leave 'welcome' messages, and don't want to start now. But, doing some RC patrol I stumbled on a series of contribs from a new user, and I hope that someone from the Welcoming Committee will leave the user a welcome. It's User:Lynnea9. About a dozen new articles on valid topics within about 40 minutes indicates enthusiasm that should be encouraged. But the user could use the benefit of pointers to some of the Style, etc. pages, as the contribs tend to be unformated and barely stubs. I've been working on cleaning up the entries, but I would like her to get a welcome (from someone other than me). Niteowlneils 05:42, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it does sound weird. There's no reason you can't send a welcoming message, and it both helps the newbies feel like they belong and subtly tells the worrying ones that folks do notice what they do. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:44, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I got a welcome earlier and it made me smile. They're good. --bodnotbod 20:30, May 1, 2004 (UTC)

Hacker clans

I came across Hacker clans on RC patrol, but I don't know the material well enough to know if it is legit or vanity. I don't want to post it to VfD if it is legit. Anyone? SWAdair | Talk 08:50, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

the first part of the article looks legit, but I personally haven't heard of any of the "known clans" (though that' doesn't mean much) it is a little strange that the article fails to mention the "Legion Of Doom" or "cult of the dead cow" since these are the most famous. theresa knott 16:25, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The wiki will be locked starting in a few minutes?!?

Why, and for how long? Niteowlneils 17:41, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I have no idea how long it will be for but they're setting up some new hardware (yay) today: Hardware status. fabiform | talk 17:48, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Cool. Thanks for the link. It seems to imply any outage will be brief. That's good news. Niteowlneils 18:28, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Awesome source for public-domain woodcuttings & line drawings

I just dug out an old book (The Clip Art Book, 1980; Amazon link. You have to scan in the illustrations, but there are over 5000 pictures of all kinds of things. There are line drawings of probably famous people (not labeled), tons of pages of old tools (many of which I cant' identify), lots of pictures of a wide variety of horse-drawn carriages & all other kinds of older transportation, people doing all knds of things, plants & food, anatomical sketches, architecture, sports, costume & clothing, weapons & hearldry & armour, animals... jeez I could be here for the rest of my life scanning them in. Get it and start scanning! See what I've uploaded for European dueling sword and Tonsure. Elf | Talk 18:06, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There seem to be more than one book of public-domain images...it would be great if people could get them all online. See also, for example, the appropriately named Scan This Book by Mendenhall (2500 images). —Steven G. Johnson 19:59, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)
It *would* be wonderful; two problems: This particular book is nearly 400 pages, and it'll be rare to find someone with that much time; also, the *page layout* is copyrighted, so in theory we cannot scan in an entire page but must do it an image at a time. ("The selection of illustrations and their layout is the copyright of the publishers, so that one page or more may not be photocopie or reproduced without first contacting the publishers." It's possible that someone could contact the publishers, explain wikipedia, & get permission. Elf | Talk 20:05, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Important distinction being made here. It seems that the images are not individually copyrighted, but the book is. Have a good think about this. It means we can't do what you suggest and scan the whole thing in. What we can do is to use scans of individual images, in appropriate articles. That's what it all means.
And this makes sense. While this particular book may now be out of print, the publishers and the artists they employ still need to eat, and producing whatever clip art books are currently in print is how they do this. To use their work to provide an online alternative is an attractive idea to us, but it's neither fair nor legal. Andrewa 20:59, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Current events

April just disappeared a couple hours early of UTC, and the page seems way to empty! Where is the link to the previous month. It's been a few months since I have been at the wikipedia, but didn't we used to keep the last months news up there for at least a day before?! Also, the history is gone, did someone delete it and over write it? { MB | マイカル } 21:55, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)

  1. Don't panic!
  2. The current events page is moved each month to become the historical page for that month - so the page recently known as Current events, history and all, is now at April 2004. The current Current events page is essentially a brand new one, which will eventually become May 2004.
  3. Moving it ahead of 00:00 UTC was probably carelessness on the part of the user in question (Kaihsu by the looks) - although it is endlessly arguable which timezone should be followed, since some parts of the world will remain in April for several hours yet.
  4. As for what to do around the time of transition, so that the page is not simply blank, there was some discussion (now archived) about this very issue a few weeks ago. There are various complications involved, and I don't think any real conclusion was reached.
Hope that clears things up! - IMSoP 22:51, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

If you have a newspaper from today..

.. head over to Talk:Abu Ghraib and let us know how coverage in your paper was of the Abu Ghraib prison incident. We'd like to add some empirical data to the article about a disparity (or not) between US and European media coverage.--Eloquence* 01:19, May 1, 2004 (UTC)

See talk:Abu Ghraib for a discussion of this project. Meelar 01:19, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Fundraising through Increased Book Linking

I'm very new to this so forgive me this is a yawn inducingly old idea.

I've noted the way books are to be cited, and the page which clicking an ISBN number takes you to.

I also note that this provides a source of funding as some click-thrus will give Wikipedia money for any sales made on referral.

For the uninitiated, you can see an example here.

What I was wondering is, would there be any value in having a Book Citation Drive to push up the number of book sales that Wikipedia earns commission on?

Of course, we would want to make sure additions are relevant - you can see the 3 I've added to the Dad's Army article at Further Reading

I figured if you had a splash on the front page and some other reminders strategically placed, it might cause an increase in citations and funds.

If you wanted to be gung-ho about it, Wikipedia could be a lot more aggressive in funneling click-thrus to those retailers Wikipedia can get money from - but I suspect that's against the spirit of Wikipedia. --bodnotbod 01:45, May 1, 2004 (UTC)

Well, shortly after the amazon partner link was added as an experiment Jimbo declared the experiment as being over as the income generated was quite small - and probably also because some wikipedians issued bad feelings about working together with amazon, as the patent policy of amazon is somewhat controversial. However that link wasn't removed even after the experiment was declared over, so maybe Jimbo should check again if it gained any significant income since.
But even if there were no affiliation programs used, adding books in a "resources" or "further reading" section makes perfect sense, as well as adding the ISBN for books which are listed already but lack that number. I myself do that regularily, but I limit myself to books I have read, so I can recommend that book to a topic. Searching through amazon to find a book related to the topic of an article just to add book title is not a good idea IMHO. andy 19:58, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
But Price Owl has a note saying it pays commission too. How about encouraging that? I agree books should be added on genuine merit (which means adding ones you've actually read, preferably). --bodnotbod 02:14, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Should we report vandalism that we fix?

I have reverted a case of minor vandalism. I mentioned revert in the editing explanation. Should i do anything further to report the vandal (an IP address), or does someone (or some process) examine reverts to track such incidents?

Richard Myers

Yes. It gives the rest of us a heads up to keep an eye on the vandal's other actions. RickK 04:40, 1 May 2004 (UTC) [reply]
OK. Report it here? Or...?
(Answering my own question)
I was already familiar with this page: Wikipedia:Dealing_with_vandalism
I have found two additional pages which are helpful: Wikipedia:Dealing_with_vandalism and Wikipedia:Vandalism_in_progress
thanks, richard myers
In response to the original question, I would urge caution - an isolated case of minor vandalism may not be true vandalism at all, merely a newbie test, and labelling the user a vandal is likely to be counter-productive (see also Wikipedia:Clueless newbies for an alternative label that may be more suitable). What's more, even if made in bad faith, the best reaction to such edits is simply to revert them. If, on further investigation, you find that the user has made many such "bad faith" edits, then it is worth adding a notice on Vandalism in progress; alerting the community to a user who has made one or two bad edits is a waste of both your time and those who follow it up. - IMSoP 19:25, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. I was unable to find any other damage reported initiated from this IP address, so i have decided to let it pass, pending further information. --richard myers

are rubber/plastic bullets still in use in northern ireland?

Moved to (and answered at) Wikipedia:Reference desk#Plastic bullets in NI

New hardware

The thing is that this is not a discussion, but I have read above someone was setting up some new hardware and (as I feel it is faster I think it has been already set up) I wanted to say many thanks and a big cheers to whomever did it.

If the above is incorrect, please remove. Pfortuny 10:08, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the servers were down yesterday and there was an OpenFacts screen that mentioned new servers were being put in. Is there a page where we can see details of what's changed? As a newbie I'm curious about the hardware set up and funding situation (healthy/unhealthy?). --bodnotbod 18:04, May 1, 2004 (UTC)
See meta:Wikimedia servers and meta:Wikimedia#Financial situation, repectively. - IMSoP 19:12, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Aha! Here's the dop on the new gear Wikipedia:Hardware status. --bodnotbod 20:53, May 1, 2004 (UTC)

<span> and language tagging

Wikipedia does not allow the HTML tag <span>. Why?

Very often we insert some non-English words in English texts. It is desirable to always mark them as belogning to a particular language.

The best way to do it is to write like this: <span lang="xx">some foreign text</span>.

But the <span> tag is not available. Of course, one may write instead like this: <font lang="xx">some foreign text</font>, but it is not so nice (because we do not want to change font, but only to change language).

So it is necessary eigther to allow the tag <span>, or to invent some Wikipedia-specific way of language tagging (which will translate into <span></span>). — Monedula 11:05, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

See the Wikipedia-l thread on the mailing list for last month's discussion on it. There were a couple of related posts on Wikitech-l as well [1][2]. Angela. 12:41, May 1, 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps we should have some pseudo-tag for language marking? Something like

<lang xx>some foreign text</lang>, which will translate into <span lang="xx">some foreign text</span>?

I use <i lang="xx"> for this. Of course it's not so good if you don't want italics, but often when you insert text from one language into a running stream of another language italics are conventional anyway. Marnanel 22:19, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

Cut-and-paste move

Can a more knowledgeable/experienced admin fix the cut and paste move of Loch Ness monster to Loch Ness Monster, if possible? There's a page on how to fix cut and paste moves, but I'd rather not fool around with it. Thanks, Minesweeper 11:13, May 1, 2004 (UTC)

As the history of one starts more or less where the other one ends, one can delete one article, move the other there, and then restore the deleted one. It's a bit too messy when they have an overlapping history .. anyways it's merged now. -- User:Docu


Encouraging A Global Perspective

I'd appreciate some thoughts on this please. My interest and, cough, expertise lies with comedy. And, since I'm British, British comedy.

I've been working on a couple of broad articles, notably sitcom and television comedy.

The thing is they are grotesquely skewed to UK/US information. And I, for one - though I would never have thought about it without Wikipedia - am now curious about sitcoms and TV comedy from around the globe. What the hell's it like? I ask myself. And Wikipedia's articles, currently, cannot help me.

So. How can I attract the non-English speaking globe to our English Language comedy pages?

I've added the articles to Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, but I have this nagging sense that all the best potential contributors are over on their own language versions.

Is there a separate page for this kind of request? Something like 'Pages Needing Global Perspective', perhaps?

--bodnotbod 21:17, May 1, 2004 (UTC)

I know of no such page, but it might be a useful idea. I remember coming upon bureaucracy and discovering that it was entirely a British perspective. Anyway, there is a page for coordinating translations (Wikipedia:Translation into English) that you can use if you know there's material in another language's Wikipedia that could be moved over. Isomorphic 22:08, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately my foreign language skills are, for these purposes, zero. I stopped studying languages at 14. And I started age 12. My teachers told me I'd regret it if I didn't continue with a language. Damn them.
But it strikes me that this must have been debated before.
One solution that occurs to me is simply to add an invitation to articles that are more likely to attract foreign contributors, ie articles about individual countries or things that are iconic about them. I may try that, but any other thoughts, or tips, gratefully received.
--bodnotbod 22:15, May 1, 2004 (UTC)
Using pages on the English Wikipedia isn't an ideal way to attract the attention of editors of other language Wikipedias. Ideally meta should be used for this, but currently it is slightly overlooked, so you may find setting up a page there doesn't help any more than one here would. However, one of the aims of meta is to facilitate cross-project work like this and the recent call for help with the m:Articles on fr with no interwiki link to en seemed to work well, so it might be worth creating a "Pages Needing Global Perspective" page there to see if does work. Angela. 11:55, May 2, 2004 (UTC)
Hmmmm. OK. that sounds a bit intimidating at the moment. I've peeked at metawiki(?) but noticed I appear to need a separate log on. Unsurprisingly after working ten hour shifts for 4 days I am beginning to get a headache as it is ;o) I'll think about it again when I've got my wikiholism under control and have stepped outside, seen some daylight... --bodnotbod 20:35, May 2, 2004 (UTC)
The EPOV (English/Empire Point of View) is a huge can of worms. See Wikipedia:POV for the English community view of its own systemic bias. This is not as critical as it could be, which is normal, since no one who speaks English as a first language will really be fully aware of EPOV. Translators in particular would be much more aware of it. See also the history of Wikipedia:EPOV for good ideas about things to add.
Also, see major discussions on Meta-Wikipedia such as m:linguistic democracy in a multilingual project - and, see debates around economics, ethics, politics, philosophy, psychiatry as conducted in other languages. It is often remarkable how different they are. JRR Trollkien (see warning) 21:56, 2 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the links, I read the POV ones and scanned the others (I hate statistics articles). Yes, that strikes me as a very significant problem. I'm going to try and make sure I put most of my stuff (I tend to add/edit comedy articles) under a British... subheader and hope that seeing a nationality as a subhead will inspire others to add their nation too. I think that would work well on most of the pages where this issue has caused me concern. Also, if the articles become lengthy it is then easier to give each nation it's own page. I will, from time to time, try and recruit people if I spot they're from somewhere useful. I've already sent out some invitations.
But on the larger, more thorny issues (political, historical, controversial)... all I can say is Yikes! And, you know, I never say Yikes!. It's beneath me. And unbecoming of a well educated Brit... --bodnotbod 22:17, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

Case Sensitivity

This seems to apply when going for some articles but not on others. I don't know what the rules are but, more to the point, shouldn't case sensitivity be totally disabled for this search function?Dainamo 21:56, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Titles are case sensitive, and the first letter is automatically capitalised. See Wikipedia:How to edit a page#Links, URLs, images and Wikipedia:Canonicalization. -- Tim Starling 05:49, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

Medals for Suez Canal Zone Veterans

moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk#Medals for Suez Canal Zone Veterans by IMSoP 18:41, 2 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

White buttons.

Has anyone noticed the changes to forms?

--Saint-Paddy 21:52, 2 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Um, do you mean on the edit screen and so forth? In which case, they look the same as ever to me; what do they look like to you? - IMSoP 22:48, 2 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
You probably tinkered with your own computer's Appearance lately. Maybe a change from XP Traditional them to Modern. --Menchi 09:51, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Could also be an Opera or Mozilla skin, or an IE-addin. Anárion 11:02, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

They look fine now. Hmmm. Are my eyes playing tricks on me? Am I paranoid or something? Nah. It's just browser I bet. I don't where it came from though weird. It just seems that Go and Search had white backgrounds instead of grey and the search and summary forms had a glossy white look to them, or kinda like something like Mac-form field. Never mind. It's too hard to explain.

Deleting Redirect pages

What's the policy on this? Someone has created the page Ohosaka to redirect to Osaka. This just seems like a complete waste of space to me. Can I just delete it? The same applies to several pages using the romanization Õsaka -- Japanese romanization systems do not use that O with the tilde thing over it. Exploding Boy 23:27, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

It should listed at Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion.--Jiang 23:28, 2 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
If the redirect is meaningful, there is no problem as Wikipedia is not paper. Dori | Talk 23:30, May 2, 2004 (UTC)
Slow down, Exploding Boy! I like to search Wikipedia by typing in last names or alternate spellings into the search box, and it always frustrates the hell of me when I have to try several times to guess what particular name or spelling is actually used by Wikipedia. (Just today, I ended up writing a stub when Einsatzgruppe turned up nothing, even on the Google search, only to have it pointed out to me that it is under the plural, Einsatzgruppen, where Wikipedia catalogues particular horror. Users less familiar with Wikipedia than I might just assume that Wikipedia is far less comprehensive than it really is, and go away disappointed when "obvious" searches fail. More redirects make a better wikipedia. orthogonal 05:42, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Syntax highlighting mark up for programs?

I'm kinda newbie here. I'd thought that there will be some kind of mark up for syntax highlighting of programs like <program lang="PHP">..code here..</program> But, I couldn't find anything such. So, I have experimented few syntax highlighting with PHP's highlight_file() in few articles: PHP programming language#Code_Examples, Hello world program#Perl, and C programming language#Hello,_World!_in_C As Wiki is fast, I strongly believe this might be already discussed. Could someone please direct me to such thing? TIA. --Rrjanbiah 12:21, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I've always thought syntax highlighting ugly. Others though may have good reasons to do so, though. It does make the code snippets difficult to edit, though... Dysprosia 13:16, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Wiki's own syntax highlighter something like <program lang="PHP">..code here..</program> may be helpful incase someone feels it is hard to edit the code. Is there any such projects going in Wiki anyway? --Rrjanbiah 13:21, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
An additional problem with manually colouring syntax, like you have, is that it won't take into account properties of skins, a user's preferences, possible future non-Web versions, etc, etc. Which brings me to suggest that somebody (you?) could write an extension, à la <math> et al to do exactly what you say. This could then include abilities to vary based on skin/preference/display modality (or whatever it's called) in the same way as the other extensions - there's probably a description of the new modular extension architecture somewhere on meta:, or will be soon.
Now, having said all that, I'm not sure whether I think highlighted code is better or worse, for such short bursts as we're likely to have here. It would probably be useful on wikibooks: though, where there are likely to be whole program listings... - IMSoP 16:02, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Mixing ltr and rtl

Recently I came across a strange problem with rtl (right to left) direction fonts. For example, please look at Google#Other_national_Googles and see the India (at 16 position). It is messed up with the rtl text. Is there any solution for this? TIA --Rrjanbiah 12:35, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately that problem cannot easily be solved, as it is not a real list, but inline text with LTR and RTL. Since the Wiki blocks the <span> tag, none of the workarounds I know of work either. Anárion 12:42, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
See Wikipedia:Span tags poll. Nohat 02:53, 2004 May 4 (UTC)

centre steer

What's with the "mystery" here? -- user:zanimum

Whether one exists or not. Dysprosia 13:17, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
So this is a mechanical Nessie? Do they have blurry black and white photos of center steer walking at the edge of the forest? Do the Cree pass down legends of the mystical centre steer, and how it saved the first woman, who fell from the sky? -- user:zanimum
Seems perfectly self-explanatory to me: was such a vehicle ever made, or is it just an urban legend? (That link's probably better than myth; I think I'll change it) - IMSoP 16:09, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Annoying contributor

Amandag6 is a newbie, and on his talk page, I put this message User talk:Amandag6, welcoming him, and asking him to review other Wikipedia articles, to see the style we write encyclopedia articles in. However, he keeps creating orphan stubs by the dozen, in a definition format. What to do? -- user:zanimum

By the dozen, is misleading. There's about 5 stubs and a couple of those might make articles. I suggest waiting to see if he ignores you and carries on at the same rate, in which case maybe he needs some more advice. Too early to start getting heavy, surely? --bodnotbod 19:58, May 3, 2004 (UTC)
I agree entirely with bodnotbod, and have put a slightly fuller welcome message on her talk page (I'm willing to bet that's "Amanda G. #6"). Just to let you know, there is a page for listing "clueless newbies", so if it were more than half a dozen such edits, that's the place you could go for advice (theoretically, I don't know how well-watched that page is...)
Out of interest, why did you feel the need to create an (essentially) empty user page for the user in question? Seems to me it's up to them to do that, and it's quite a good way of spotting new users if their username comes up red (and if their talk page comes up red, you can be sure no-one's welcomed them yet...)
Oh, and please do not bite the newcomers; most everyone was new once! :-D - IMSoP 21:01, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, you've inadvertently solved a mystery for me there: I wondered how red usernames could exist. I thought it was people who had created an account, done something (probably negative/harmful) and then closed the account. If that sounds like a baffling line of reasoning, you should note this is my first week, and I'm clueless ;o) But I suppose I thought a user page would exist automatically rather than requiring an initial click. --bodnotbod 02:11, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Use of quoted passages, especially in entertainment bios.

Thought I'd sound people out on this. A number of my contributions are likely to be biographies of British entertainers. I'm pretty sure that in a paper encyclopedia there would be very little or no quoted passages from the artist themselves giving colour to biographical detail but, as we know, Wiki is not paper (see, in particular, ==no size limits==).

I am particularly interested in comedy performers and I feel that having something from them that contributes to the life story and indicates their sense of humour is a good thing and makes for more interesting reading. However, I can see that traditionalists might baulk at this.

The bio style guide isn't helpful on this point.

I would not be excessive in this regard but I'm trying to guage whether there is an almost complete intolerance to quoted passages (as very distinct from notable quotes, without surrounding context) used in bios.

Opinions?

--bodnotbod 20:19, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

  • Personally, I think it would make the articles more interesting. But it's largely a matter of taste, and I'd have to judge based on how it was implemented. Just be bold, and the rest will work itself out. Yours, Meelar 20:36, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, that's what I want to hear ;o) I have a tendency to ask questions first and then be bold later... if that makes sense. I'm wary of upsetting people in my first week. --bodnotbod 01:45, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Locked wiki.

The locked wiki warning isn't appearing on all the pages, I'm currently surfing the the Tom Clancy article and I'm clicking on some of the links and the warning is appearing and on others it's not. I think there might be a problem, I don't know, but of course I don't I'm not a sysop or the server admin. --24.128.142.43 21:32, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

That message itself is out of date. The reason you're seeing it sometimes is that anonymous users see cached pages. If you create an account (pick a username and password) you will see the most up-to-date versions of pages automatically. The wiki was locked down for hardware upgrades, which are now completed.  :) fabiform | talk 21:49, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm. Yes, I was absent-minded a bit when I typed that, I thought I logged in when I wasn't. Hehe. Oops, oh well. Hopefully, its gone now. --Saint-Paddy 00:29, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

King of Wikipedia!

This is just a funny article I wrote when I saw the link on EntmootsOfTrolls user page. Don't ask me why I made it, I was bored and needed something to do and so I created that. Of course, It's just parody of the "real" articles of "REAL" monarchs. Anyways if you want to access it go to Wikipedia:King of Wikipedia, Also, I don't If it goes into votes for deletion, It's not THAT unless there are some people who acutally worship Jimbo and kiss the ground he walks on.

This is already listed on VfD, and so far there seems strong support for deletion. Andrewa 14:03, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Acutally, Angela wants me to move it to the MetaWiki. --Saint-Paddy 00:29, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Bah, let meta write its own jokes. There's a special "April fools' day" section in Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense , which seems to be the perfect place for this (well, I thought it was fairly funny). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:38, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Sock puppets

If a particular username is known to be a sock puppet and has been established as a sock puppet by Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration, is it acceptable to put some sort of message on the sock puppet's user page that links to the usual name of the user so that people know that the username is a known sock puppet?

For example, suppose someone normally edits under the name "AAA". And for the purposes of a dispute, that user created the sock puppets "BBB" and "CCC". The dispute was taken to arbitration, where the committee concluded that "BBB" and "CCC" were indeed sock puppets of "AAA". In that case, can someone, say, on the arbitration committee, edit those user pages, putting a message on "User:BBB" and "User:CCC" along the lines of:

:''This user is a [[Wikipedia:Sock puppet|sock puppet]] of [[User:AAA]], as established by [[Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/AAA]].''

The reason I'm asking for this is that otherwise when combing through the page histories of certain pages, it can be unclear who had been involved in editing it. --Lowellian 00:35, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

It's definitely helpful. Otherwise, except for those involved with insane passion in pursuing that case, us "outsiders" will never figure it out. It may be obvious to the committee, but not to most other people who's whose puppet. --Menchi 00:54, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
It might be better to just redirect one user page to the other one, unless the user themself has written that notice on the page. 1Angela 00:56, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
What if they're innocent? Will the redirected user be effectively locked out of their account/talk page? Love the term sock puppet BTW ;o) --bodnotbod 01:27, May 4, 2004 (UTC)
No, they can simply edit the page to remove the redirect. Angela. 02:02, May 4, 2004 (UTC)
Presumably, if the arbitration committee found the page to be a sock puppet, then it probably is and they're not innocent. --Lowellian 01:22, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Kosovo and Metohia

I have started an RfC and a vote on Talk:Kosovo and Metohia#Vote on the name on the naming issue. Please give your comments and vote there. Thanks, Dori | Talk 03:14, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Note: if you can't find the vote on the talk page, check the history and revert to the last edit with the votes if necessary. They have been removed from the vote list twice so far. -- Chris 73 | Talk 08:23, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I have removed the vote because there is no naming issue. The article is named in correspondence with Wikipedia:Naming conventions. Nikola 08:33, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Nikola, please do not remove other peoples comments from the Village pump. I just reinserted my comment above. -- Chris 73 | Talk 08:37, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I thought that your comment about me is no longer needed as I have just said the same thing as you myself. If you think that it is, no problem with me. Nikola 08:41, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Wikitravel

As a contributor to both Wikipedia and Wikitravel, what is involved in getting Wikitravel mapped in Wikipedia's Interwiki system? I link a lot of Wikitravel articles to the Wikipedia article. I would like to link in the reverse direction. Is there a policy for this? What would the format be? Something like wikitravel:article name ? --Nzpcmad 07:51, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Unless I'm mistaken, isn't wikitravel not a wikimedia project, and not GFDL (it's attribution-sharealike, if memory serves). So the issue of how/whether to implement interwikis between the two is a political, not technical, one. I don't know if there's a formal policy on this, but it's noteworthy that no such extra-org interwikis currently exist. The best venue for this discussion is the wikimedia mailing list. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 11:07, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Not true actually, e.g. [[meatball:UseRealNames]] works. A wikitravel shorthand seems reasonable, though there is nothing to stop editors using longhand links right now.
Indeed, we have a quite extensive set of InterWiki links - as mentioned on InterWiki, according to which page ours is based on that provided by UseMod (but I'm not sure that's up to date). I fairly often use links to MeatBall:, especially on meta: - I also note that Google:some search terms works, but the character escaping makes it fairly useless for anything other than single words - I fiddled, and the best I came up with was Google:some,search,terms,and-a-phrase which is about as ugly as copying and pasting the full URL :-( You can do Dictionary:word and Foldoc:foo as well.
But I'm wandering away from the point here - I'm not actually sure how and where the "InterMap" is defined on MediaWiki, so I guess we need to ask a developer to add WikiTravel: to it and/or tell us how. In fact, I don't even know of anywhere that lists the InterWiki prefixes currently available... - IMSoP 18:42, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Interwiki links are defined in a special table. It is very easy to add new ones (though it might be hard to add same ones on all Wikipedias). I guess that anyone with SQL access can see which interlinks exist. Nikola 23:02, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Edit summary: Forcing the issue through blocking blank entries.

Don't know if this has been discussed before. A number of people seem to find it frustrating when people don't provide an edit summary. I do.

How about when someone clicks "save changes" and hasn't filled in a summary they get a "You have not provided an edit summary!" alert, and are left on the edit screen with the blank space staring at them expectantly?

--bodnotbod 09:39, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Then people will enter " " or "fhouash;piuh;iuh", just to get their edit in? Dysprosia 09:52, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
One prior discussion (at least) did not accept that proposed solution as it was too annoying for those occasions when it was appropiate to not put a summary (e.g. many minor edits) and too easy to circumvent e.g. write "xxx" instead of blanking when you can't be bothered to write one. Sorry. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:52, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
OK. The random letter thing did occur to me. If it's already been proposed and rejected, that's good enough for me. --bodnotbod 10:45, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

minus signs in math

When I use a single greek letter in math, as in "mit <math>\beta</math> multipliziert", I get a minus sign after it in the output:
"mit multipliziert"
Is this a known bug? Am I doing something wrong? Fpahl 09:42, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Use the HTML entity, regardless. & beta; (without the space) produces β Dysprosia 09:51, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

If you leave a space after the beta it shows no minus - <math>\beta </math>. andy 10:16, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Front Page Observation

Today's main page has Did you know... links to Broadmoor Hospital and mental institution. The first is now peppered with redlinks (as a result of it's front page appearance, one imagines) - the nature of which will not be understood by a first time visitor ("Yikes! How have I hacked the site? I just pressed a link.").

The second, to my mind, is a pretty shoddy article in that it is riddled with implied and explicit criticism of the subject from start to finish: criticism, which, whilst valid, really needs to be explored as a discussion of the subject later in the article rather than entangled throughout.

Whilst I know something of the subject, it isn't really enough I'd feel happy tackling it. I've listed it on pages needing attention.

My point is: a little care in what is put on the front page may be called for? I would hate to think of people being made sour on such a fantastic project by ill chosen main page links. --bodnotbod 11:45, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

The reason this occurs is that it was decided that the "Did you know" content on any given day has to be new content. New content tends to appear on new pages, which tend to be more red than old ones. Your point seems to be valid though - see also MediaWiki_talk:Did you know and its archive. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:14, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Ive gotta disagree with you here Bod. Having "perfect" articles only on the main page leads a false impression of what wikipedia is all about. Having articles that need some work will encorage newbies to do that work. When I first pressed a red link and got to an edit box I didn't think "("Yikes! How have I hacked the site?" I thought "jesus I've never seen anything like this before, then set about creating my first article". I personally don't want newbies afraid to edit because they feel they cannot come up to the exacting standards of a perfect article.theresa knott 12:16, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I almost added something here about Cap Arcona, which is referenced from the front page and had (until I fixed it) some lousy and confusing English in it (I'm still not sure I've captured the author's intent). I disagree with Theresa here - while we want to encourage contributors, we also want to encourage readers. An encyclopedia which is only used by the people who write it is a pretty pathetic object. We want people to come here because they get solid, factual, useful information. If I had come here and found that most of the articles were confusing or badly written I would not have bothered to start contributing - it was the high quality ones that made me want to contribute.
Incidentally, no insult to whoever wrote Cap Arcona, you did a good job (especially if English is not your first language). DJ Clayworth 14:29, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't like the articles featured in DYK, then do this:

  • Keep an eye on Special:Newpages
  • When you see a potentially interesting article, edit it to meet your high standards
  • Then add one interesting fact from that article to MediaWiki:Did you know.

This way, everyone benefits. This was my intent when I invented DYK -- getting people to keep an eye on newly created articles. Brushing the bad ones under the carpet won't do us any good.--Eloquence* 00:46, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

You guys aren't gonna like this, but the first time I clicked a red link, I thought "Yikes! How have I hacked the site?" than backed away from anything Wikipedia-related for a few months. --SMWhat 04:39, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone from Brookline, Massachusetts?

Could you phone James Schwartz on (617) 566-4262 and ask him to email me at dunc_harriscoughhotmail.com (with cough replaced by 'at) re: George R. Price please? I don't fancy a trans-Atlantic phone call. If he doesn't know who Price is, you've got the wrong number! Duncharris 12:53, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Can this be wise? --bodnotbod 15:24, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Well my idea was that I was trying to contact George R. Price's family to see if I could get a photo of him, a bit of original research. James Schwartz has written the definitive biography of Price. Unfortunately, googling for George Price turns up no resources, [3], George R. Price George R. Price does little better, George Price ESS gets a few, George Price equation gets a few more conceptual topics. Read the article and Schwartz's biography; he was a fascinating gentleman. Duncharris 16:19, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Quick note: There is a link to a pdf version of the biography in the main article. Duncharris 16:25, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

No, I'm from Lynn. I do know a girl from there though. However, I not sure she knows him.

I'll probably send something snail mail then ;) Duncharris 10:27, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

New York, New York

Theres a discussion and poll going on at Talk:New York, New York that needs a wider view of the wikipedia community. the discussion is about moving New York, New York to New York City, New York (city) or some other name. Come give your opinion and take part in the poll (near bottom of page). Theon 13:31, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Karl Koch (botanist)

Help! Or maybe it's just my browser. The Kentucky coffeetree article has a citation link to Karl Koch (botanist), but the link is stuck on "edit" even though the article exists. I've gone to the Karl Koch article and resaved it, but it hasn't helped (and, of course, I've reloaded the coffeetree article several times). Anybody know what's going on? jaknouse 14:59, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I just tried my usual fix for this and edited the Kentucky coffeetree article by adding an empty line. That seems to have fixed it. Lupo 15:06, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a wiki travel guide?

A LonelyWiki guide perhaps? Where can I find it? If not, how do I start it? Thanks! Mark Richards 17:09, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed there is - you need Wikitravel. It's newish, so a lot of material needed to be added. I'm sure they'd welcome your contributions. --ALargeElk 17:12, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! See you there! Mark Richards 18:05, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Its license does not look compatible with Wikipedia's GFDL. Since the GFDL is not identical to the "attribution-share alike" license (although their goals are similar), one cannot copy info from wikitravel to wikipedia. That's disappointing. - Kevin Saff 18:58, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Evan Prodromou, the instigator of Wikitravel and a major contributor to the MediaWiki code, thought a lot about this issue before going with the creative commons licence. The reasons are explained at http://wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Why_Wikitravel_isn%27t_GFDL. While incompatibilities remain between the two licences it is worth considering releasing your own contributions under both licences where possible... I am going to do that now. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 20:05, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the link. Dual-licensing seems like a good option for now. Kevin Saff 20:17, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Einsatzgruppe

I think it's a major oversight that we don't have a page on Einsatzgruppe. I've added a stub. Please help me to fill out.

Thanks. orthogonal 19:33, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

The page is at Einsatzgruppen. Proteus (Talk) 19:42, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
My bad, but that page didn't cme up on Googling Wikipedia for Einsatzgruppe. Better cross-referncing is needed. orthogonal 19:46, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
On a somewhat arcane technicality, would Einsatzgruppe be the better location, since it's the singular, in keeping with general policy (even though it's not English)? But yes, this demonstrates the usefulness of creating redirects from obvious alternatives, doesn't it. - IMSoP 20:26, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone a wiz with Wikimarkup tables?

Could you do a family tree based on

with the addition of children, see http://www.aboutdarwin.com/darwin/Children.html ; some were quite important in their own right.). That way we can also replace the image with links! It can be put into:

which is at MediaWiki:Darwin

and also add a photo to the blue box would be nice.

I don't think either wikimarkup or the underlying html table markup is powerfull enough to adequately capture the layout of the family tree graphic (well, it is, but in a horrible unportable scary way). We did have some work underway for family-tree markup, but I think that a) it isn't implemented yet, and b) it would only produce a graphic (now, at least) anyway. One day in the future (several years, I fear) we can replace stuff like this with a SVG graphic, which would allow nice things like stylesheets, searching, and hotlinks within the image. In the meantime, some poor person has to haul out a regular image editor (of one kind or another) and author another PNG. You could ask User:Cutler to produce another version of the graphic (and while you're at it, ask Cutler to upload a zip of the original image-editor file from which they made the PNG, so that others can change the graphic more easily). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:47, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I like those box things with the links. Where would a newbie go to learn about those? Just knowing what the term for them is would be a start ;o) --bodnotbod 02:05, May 5, 2004 (UTC)
They're added by using a custom msg tag (edit the darwin page to see an example of use). More info, and list, at Wikipedia:MediaWiki custom messages. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 02:11, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be possible then to do an image map? Duncharris 10:25, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

There's currently no support in wikimarkup for image maps. Image maps don't really work very well for a number of circumstances, particularly accessibility-browsers and the arrow-key based browsers one finds on cellphones and PDAs. In the absence of a decent stylesheet-aware graphics format (like the aforementioned SVG) I think we should stick with functional-if-dull tables, like the one above. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:09, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki:States

I'm concerned about people adding "Largest Cities" to the state MediaWiki boxes. I don't argue with adding the cities, but some are, I think, going overboard. For instance, for MediaWiki:Ohio I only added the very largest cities. However, MediaWiki:Maine has more cities listed than counties! We need to find some reasonable standardization on this. jaknouse 22:25, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I was going to say >500,000, but I see that doesn't work for some states. Maybe limit to top 10, at most? Even a state as big as CA only has 20 listed, and probably half don't really need to be listed. Niteowlneils 23:05, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Community Punishment Order

Can I serve my Community Punishment Order by editing Wikipedia? Troll Silent, Troll Deep 22:38, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

What's that? Dysprosia 05:44, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't there a type of punishment that a judge can give so that instead of prison, a convicted person can give community service to a registerest charity? Could he mean this? I can't find any articles on it, perhaps we need on... Mark Richards 18:43, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

table formatting

Can anyone help with the formatting problem being discussed at Talk:Panamanian election, 2004? Adam 01:10, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

This had already been fixed by the time I clicked through. (To force an empty cell to render properly, put a &nbsp; - non-breaking space - in it). fabiform | talk 01:29, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Cat breeds

WikiProject Cat breeds - New project; need participants

A project in the same style as Wikipedia:WikiProject Dog breeds but with the specifics for cat breeds. There needs to be a table template made and pictures located etc. Incentive: There are a bunch of requests for cat breed pages at Wikipedia:requested articles/Mathematical and Natural Sciences. Bensaccount 01:58, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I'm vaguely confused (not unusual); you didn't give a link for the project and I couldn't find it by searching. Did you mean that the whole project needs creation? If so, you can do it using the project template link at WikiProject. BTW--there's a juicy link there "Wikipedia:WikiProject/Guidelines" that says you can go there to learn how to create your own project, but there's actually no such destination! Anyone remember what happened to it? Or did it just never get born? Elf | Talk 03:49, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
- The whole project needs creation. I created the page @ Wikipedia:WikiProject cat breeds. It needs to be adapted to cats. Specifically, does anyone know what organizations define cat breeds and how? Bensaccount 17:02, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting statistical analysis

There was some discussion over at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship about the number of admins we have (initaited by yours truly, for better or for worse), so I did some statistical analysis. The final result is this excel document. I figured the results might be of interest to some people, so I thought I'd share them here. Comments are welcome. →Raul654 06:55, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Interesting. However when I open it in OpenOffice only one of the charts has captions. What are the others? DJ Clayworth 16:36, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
So the number of admins in relation to the number of articles has increased. But in proportion to contributors has stayed about level. I use OpenOffice too: Um, what charts!? I can only see a table. --bodnotbod 20:02, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Lindi and Malindi

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk#Lindi and Malindi by IMSoP 10:21, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Awards

Do we need a Wikipedia:Awards article, maybe linked from announcements like the one actually on the main page? -- till we *) 09:36, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia article now a sections for awards. Angela. 18:35, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

David Bates - A real can of worms

Picking the missing article David Bates from the most wanted articles list to write, I've found something a bit odd. There appear to be no fewer than 8 different notable David Bates's mentioned in other Wikipedia articles and one or two non-notables. And not a single page existed for any of them.

Would anyone care to help me unravel this please ? - TB

Good luck! I used Ask Jeeves "Who is David Bates" and found Sir David Bates, the physicist and peace activist, after whom an award was named. And David Bates the poet (1809-1870). David Bates the artist, exhibited in at least one museum of modern art. And a ton more David Bates, noteworthy & not. Elf | Talk 14:51, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
There are also 4 listed here at IMDB - note that page lists some people NOT called David Bates - you only need peek at the top 4 entries. --bodnotbod 20:11, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Wikiproject Evolutionary biology

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Evolutionary_biology

Announcement, we've set this up. Anyone interested? Duncharris 11:30, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Somewhere in Wikipedia is a page about sites that link to Wikipedia but it seems I cannot find it - Nilmerg 11:45, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean Wikipedia:Friends of Wikipedia? andy 13:21, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Thanks. -Nilmerg 13:30, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Idea: featured stub article

I just had an idea for the main page. It seems like the articles on the main page get a lot of attention. Why not have a 'featured stub article' of the day, like the regular featured article, and hope that it gets a little attention by being in the spotlight? That might help get more info into those stub articles.

This has probably been suggested before. Thank you guys for working so hard on this project! I use it all the time.

Sound like a cute idea to me. The only problem I can forsee would be how to choose the featured stub. It's hard enough judging articles by their content, even harder trying to pick good articles by their potential content... --Woggly 14:49, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Guess what, Wikipedia:Article of the week is just in the final steps before a first article is featured for expansion. And you still have one day time to vote for your favourite candidate for the first round. andy 15:48, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

User:Irune Berdún

Seems to be an enthusiastic and sincere, even if minimalistic, contributor, and could use a welcome and guidance (I have only been here a short time, and am not ready to do welcomes). Niteowlneils 19:46, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

English vs American

Heya.

Just curious whether the 'English' language wikipedia is in fact in English or American. I find myself forever 'correcting' Americanisms, and I'm not sure if I'm just creating work for more knowledgable editors. So, clarification would be handy =)

--Si

Standing rule alas appears to be to allow Americanisms when they are already there, in essence to keep the language the article was started in. If an article is started using proper English keep using that, but if it is written in US English use that. Some people get annoyed if you correct their spelling :-/
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