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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by IMSoP (talk | contribs) at 15:57, 16 June 2004 (→Page duplication: it's bug 949323 - edit conflict with self undetected). 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. Please note that all comments relating to the new software have been moved to Wikipedia:Mediawiki 1.3 and all comments regarding categorisation to Wikipedia talk:Categorization.

Article with missing history

Dunno if this is a software bug or what, but imagine my surprise on seeing my watchlist report that Ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy has been changed by an anon, then clicking on the diff only to find that it's a new article! Of course, without history, there's only my word that it's not new, but then how did it get on my watchlist? Stan 16:21, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It is possible to add article to your watchlist which don't exist yet. Another possiblity is that you added the article to your watchlist, it was deleted and now recreated. However I cannot see any deleted revisions of that article either, so this must have happened before the last purge of the deleted articles. Or it may of course be a database glitch which made the database forget the previous edits. andy 16:26, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
However as that article didn't show up on Special:Newpages, a database problem becomes more likely. andy 20:12, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
No, the article definitely existed previously, that's why I was watching it. Presumably the history has to be restored from backups somehow? Is there any way to know if more than the one article was affected? Stan 21:52, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
According to the history of Ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy, it was created on June 3. However, thefreedictionary.com have this article, and their copy appears to be older than June 3 as they don't have a copy of HNMS Jacob van Heemskerk which was created March 29th. There have been other weird things going on with page histories on wikitech-l. I don't know if this is related. Angela. 00:55, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Is anyone familiar enuf with the Amazon "affiliate" program to know if the external links being created here[1] are 'for-profit'? If I find the albums from the amazon.com home page, the links are QUITE different. I am assuming using WP for profit is frowned upon, but I don't remember ever coming across an article that explicitly states that as a policy or guideline. Niteowlneils 19:27, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Links to book (etc.) retailers should use the ISBN syntax, allowing visitors to chose from whom they buy. So even if they don't contain affiliate links we should still change 'em. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:36, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
As the links are about music the ISBN magic doesn't apply here. I don't think a link to amazon for CDs is really needed, and if I am not totally mistaken they are for an affiliate with the ID 968160d-20. So either we should remove those links directly, exchange the affiliate-ID with wikipedia08-20 (the one registered for wikimedia, or exchange them with an empty ID. I'd vote for the first - users should be smart enough to buy CDs by artist and title, and we don't prefer any online shop here - and I am already doing that. And if I see it correctly those articles are about CD singles as well and just contain a track listing - not really worth keeping IMHO. andy 19:51, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
For now, remove direct links that benefit any affiliate ID, even ones that would benefit Wikimedia. The indirect ISBN links were controversial enough, and any further steps in the this direction would require explicit approval of the community. Pcb21| Pete 21:47, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I know those were controversial, and as I don't see much point in amazon links for CDs I removed them completely. And I left a warning on the user's talk page. Anyone want to nominate the articles like Complicated on VfD - not much point to have the track listings of a CD single. andy 22:15, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Looks like a merge job to me. Pcb21| Pete 08:44, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Agreed and merged. Angela. 06:27, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Copyright_problems

Help! I screwed up this page [2] somehow (edit conflict or bad section edit or something) and am not sure exactly how to fix it. anthony (see warning) 01:42, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

  • Fixed. I will also report it as a bug. I do not know what happened but I have seen this at least once before on a different article. Andris 03:55, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

Hiding bot edits on watchlist?

Since my watchlist has been flooded by Template namespace initialisation script edits [3], is there any way to disable bots from being visible on this page, similar to how they can be blocked on recent changes? I've tried &hidebots=1 (or &showbots=0, whatever it was), but no luck. Chuq 03:01, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't these edits should be marked 'minor'? If they were we could opt to ignore minor edits in the watchlist. --Chopchopwhitey 03:37, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Marking the edits as minor won't help. The watchlist works by querying the cur table, there's no way to check for edits further back in history. It's not really practical to change this with the current schema. I could filter out bot edits, but you would still not be able to see edits to articles which occurred before the bot's. And it's not really a bot, it's a script. -- Tim Starling 03:53, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)
Point by point: Marking the edits as minor will help - I can exclude minor edits from showing up. And, of course, the edit is rightly of a minor nature so there is no problem there. There is a way - it is just not implemented! What is really not practical is screwing up the watchlist: It is only through the vigilence of countless editors that useless / poor / bad / inaccurate / vanadalistic edits are discovered. The primary tool for that is the watchlist. Frankly, I can't be bothered to scan the 100's of articles I now watch because the bot / script / macro / program doesn't mark the edits as minor. But better would be an option to exclude the edits of any one bot / user. I am most appreciative of all your highly valuable work - all that is being suggested is an improvement to Wikimedia. And the suggestion is being made to a person with the opportunity and the skill set to implement the improvement. Paul Beardsell 15:55, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Submitted this feature months ago, with no success but I am still interested in the issue. Greudin

Login timeouts

About the automatic log-off:

  • What is the time-out period?
  • Has it been shortened recently, or is it just my impression?
  • Could it be made into a user profile option (say, up to 6 hrs)?

Since I edit wikipedia as a background activity to other tasks (it beats playing mahjongg!), I often get logged out while editing an article -- which means my edit is either rejected or stamped as anonymous. Now, I am the only user of this machine, so security is not a problem; and I can't see how an inactive logged-in user could have a significant cost for Wikipedia....
Jorge Stolfi 03:57, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

    • Ditto — I agree, but from what I have seen of web server configurations, it could be difficult to arrange as a user profile option. Perhaps just increasing the default session close interval to ~ 1 hour would be enough. -- Solipsist 19:47, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
    • This irritates me, too. I've reported it as (wikipedia-Feature Requests-936137), but I need to make the case clearer. Mr. Jones 09:32, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

New servers

Are we still waiting for new servers? Wikipedia speed seems to be getting worse instead of better. RickK 07:01, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

The #wikipedia topic says "Wiki is slow because of ongoing template conversion". So fingers crossed it will be better after that. Pcb21| Pete 08:49, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Where does the ordinary, non-technical but vaguely interested citizen find info on this stuff? If for example I want to know what all this template business is and why watchlists have gone bonkers, etc etc, where is this kind of announcement made? What I mean by this is a plain language announcement that says We are doing X because Y and its effect is Z rather than one that says We are reconfiguring the axiom-thrust particle disproportionators in order to improve flange density followed by 19 pages of argument about why this is right, wrong, or would be better with m-dashes! :) Thanks, --Nevilley 09:17, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Using m-dashes to reconfigure the axiom-thrust particle disproportionators would be the height of stupidity... Duh! Tuf-Kat 14:15, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)
I disagree. Anyway, as for Nevilley's question, try Wikipedia:Goings-on. -- Itai 12:32, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Additionally, one apache server (will) is down to due overheating problems (might be a hardware problem), and the new db server (ariel) is not currently doing anything. Putting those two in use should also help things. Dori | Talk 14:23, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

the speed of the servers are good but can get better. --Jew 10:00, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Possible database corruption

I was adding section headers to the page "Talk:List of sets of unrelated songs with identical titles". After doing a "Show preview", I attempted a "Save page". I got the following error:

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-new/includes/OutputPage.php on line 223

After trying it several times, I also tried "Cancel" and got the same error. Same thing if I entered the page title directly just to read it. Checking "My watchlist", I found the page was listed as updated by me. Clicking on the link, I again got the error. I logged out and anonymously fetched the page successfully. The current page, however, is NOT updated, even though its Page history says otherwise. Looks like database corruption to me. How does one address this problem? I want to make some more updates, but I'm afraid to do anything to it now. -- Jeff Q 11:36, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I just checked on the page again. Now it shows my recent update and is therefore in sync with its "Page history". Maybe that error is what happens when the database is out of sync? I don't know. But the problem appears to be gone. As Emily Latella would say... "Never mind." -- Jeff Q 17:41, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Old page was cached? Grandma, take your dentures out. Paul Beardsell 17:46, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This was just a bug in MediaWiki which happened all over the place for a few minutes, before Gabriel fixed it. The problem was rendering and caching, it's very unlikely there was any data loss. -- Tim Starling 05:22, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)
OK, Jeff, your dentures are out, sorry. Paul Beardsell 06:40, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Is it possible to switch off underlined links in the Monobook style? I can't, the radio box on my prefs doesn't seem to do anything, on other styles it works. Thanks, Mark Richards 18:36, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ongoing discussion at MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css#Underlining links. Dori | Talk 19:06, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

regardless of the bug in the userprefs, you can fix it without learning css coz I'll tell you how. Just insert the code below at this page: User:Mark Richards/monobook.css. 

/* remove the ugly, recently-reinstated link underlines */
a { text-decoration: none; }
a:hover { text-decoration: underline; }
I wrote the missing pref system, new users will have to change the pref to get rid of the underlines after login as this setting is not per-skin but global. Not ideal imo- most users never touch their prefs- neither in the browser nor in MediaWiki, they have no way to get the default no-underline setting by default now. -- Gabriel Wicke 15:34, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Pi

What's up at article π ? When did the title start displaying as π ? - Bevo 20:27, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

wow, that's lame. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 20:35, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)
lame indeed! blankfaze | •­• 00:03, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I moved π to Pi. It can be moved back once this is fixed. Guanaco 02:08, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I asked on IRC and Brion says that we'd need to move to UTF-8 to fix this. Apparently a bug in 1.2 allowed this sort of thing to work before, and now the bug has been fixed :) Dori | Talk 02:30, Jun 6, 2004 (UTC)

In the same vein, the Polish 'L' Ł as in Lucasiewicz of Polish Notation fame is not rendering. Ancheta Wis 02:20, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

New article text, and draft of guide

I've just changed the new article text—the text that appears when you edit a page that doesn't yet exist. It now reads:

You are at a page that does not exist yet. To create an article on this topic, type in the box below (see the help page for more info). If you are here by mistake, just click your browser's back button. Your addition to the encyclopedia will be visible immediately, so if you just want to test how things work, please do that in the sandbox.
Please do not create an encyclopedia article about yourself, or an article whose main purpose is to promote a product or business. See What Wikipedia is not for more guidance. Articles in serious violation of Wikipedia's policies may be removed without notice.

I've also create a rough draft of a simpler guide to use instead of What Wikipedia is not—one which concentrates on the most common reasons why things end up on VfD.

Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion#Discussion of new article text and proposed guide, not here. Dpbsmith 23:58, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC))

Weird thing with categories

I'm not sure whether this is a bug or a user error, so I'm asking here first. (I've cleared my cache and restarted Netscape, to forestall those questions!) From Category:Dogs, click Category:Dog types. The category exists, has content, has an article assigned to it. Click Sheepdog. It is assigned to the category Dog types, but the link shows as if it doesn't exist and, sure enough, when I click it, I get an edit page rather than a display of the category page--but it doesn't say it doesn't exist, it actually shows the content of the page! Why does it think it doesn't exist at the same time that it knows that it does? Elf | Talk 00:32, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Cache issue, nonetheless. Just clearing your cache isn't sufficient - you need to send a message actively to tell intermediate caches (certainly wikimedia's squids, and possibly your ISPs too) to clear their caches. Ctrl-f5 on the specific page does this, but telling your browser to purge its own cache doesn't. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:39, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

There seem to be wild cache issues with wikipedia right now, and especially with categories. Anyone know what the deal is? john k 02:13, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Template Sandbox

How is someone supposed to test a template if template:Sandbox is protected and template:Test is already in use? --Ankur Oops, just noticed actually template:Sandbox too is in use and protected. Well, I guess then I'll try the "Be Bold" idea now. But it would help to have a template sandbox too that would work with the wikipedia:Sandbox.

The thing about Template:Sandbox is that it is the template that is used on Wikipedia:Sandbox, and not a sandbox for templates. if you really want somwhere to play around freely, there's always the test server, although there's no guarantees that it'll be acting exactly the same as everything else at any given time. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:13, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
You can also use subpages of your user page, see m:template. Also there is Template:Template sandbox.--Patrick 12:05, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Oh, Thanks booth of you. I never knew about test.wikipedia.org its a cool place sort of like google labs. --Ankur

Wikipedia talk:Vandalism in progress

Please see Wikipedia talk:Vandalism in progress. I'm going to wait until Sunday evening and if there are no objections, I will delete all Vandalism in progress alerts more than one month old. RickK 05:09, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)

Moving Category pages

I am being told I am unable to move Category:Australian MHRs to the correct form, Category: Australian federal MPs. Is there a rule against moving Category pages? If so, what is one supposed to do with a wrongly-titled page? If not, what is the problem? Adam 13:45, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

try it without the space before "Australian". Also, note you can refer to a catagory without making the current page a member of it, by putting another colon in front of it, like this Category:Australian MHRs -- Finlay McWalter | Talk
It doesn't work with or without the space. I still want to know whether there is something preventing moving or otherwise renaming Category pages. Adam 07:49, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I think it is a known problem with Categories. You probably can't delete a Category either. Until the problem is fixed you can ask an administrator to move or delete the Category. There is further discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Categorization -- Solipsist 14:47, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Why is Queenstown, New Zealand not listed under "The following pages link to this image:" on image Media:Queenstown - Remarkables 1.jpg ? - Bevo 18:55, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Many, if not all, pre-1.3 image pages have this problem. SourceForge bug #963763, being worked on presently. (Bug #966936 points out that editing, then re-saving the page, is a work-around.) Niteowlneils 19:06, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the workaround. I did a trivial edit to Queenstown, New Zealand and now it shows in the list of linked articles to that image. - Bevo 19:20, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The What links here on image pages is still broken, though. Lupin 08:06, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
'What links here' will not show pages that use an image inline, period.
Currently, the list of pages using an image is also broken since that data wasn't restored with the rest of the database. It'll be regenerated later. --Brion 08:12, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Editing of main page by anons

I fixed some things in an article from Template:Feature and noticed that is was edited by anon users. Since it shows on the main page, is it a good idea to allow anons to edit it? (BTW, bye to all unitil July 27)Mikkalai 23:21, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

(As the one who just reverted those changes) - I have argued consistently that the featured article should be protected, and I still think it should be. However, 'In the News' is kept very, very up to date because it is not - we had news of Reagan's death within moments of it being broadcast. However, ITN has been vandalized before. →Raul654 23:24, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)
If I remember correctly with the introduction of MediaWiki 1.3 changes in templates (MediaWiki or template namespace) get into the articles directly, whereas before it took some time till the cache became emptied. While I doubt that the normal newby vandal would ever find the templates used on the main page, long-time vandals or trolls would have it easier to deface the main page now. Thus if I remember correctly :-) those template should be protected, with the same rationale as the mainpage itself. andy 23:31, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Vandalism of the main page is very rare. Lots of pages are vandalised more regularly. I don't believe that the cost of protection can be justified in terms of preventing these rare and rapidly corrected events. -- Tim Starling 01:50, Jun 6, 2004 (UTC)
I strongly agree with Tim. Protected pages are considered harmful. We're a wiki - you need to expect a bit of vandalism. It's really not a big issue. Most other wikis don't even have a protected page option, or never make use of it if they do. There is no reason to start closing down pages just because they are prominent. Angela. 06:32, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Indeed, people have a little bit too much paranoia at times, put some more faith in the wikisystem:) --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 22:05, 2004 Jun 8 (UTC)

Math bug?

In the page Barycentric subdivision, several formulas are replaced by the message

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): F_0,F_1,F_2,F_3

Is this my fault, or a software bug?
Jorge Stolfi 04:00, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It's not you, I just tried it myself. Equations that have already been rendered are displaying, but new ones are not. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:52, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This is fixed now. -- Tim Starling 03:05, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

An edit I made

...seems to have vanished (here's the dif[4]--it's to George Bush presidential library. What causes this? I'm fairly sure it's not a cache thing--I did cntrl-F5, and cleared out my cookies and history. Meelar 05:25, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It is a cache thing, your edit is there, and in one piece. I've been seeing this happen, but mostly with page moves. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:49, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Renaming images

Does anyone know whether it's possible to rename an image, eg. by renaming its description page. I can't find anything on the subject, though I would expect a solution other than uploading the image anew just to change the name. Aliter 11:41, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No, there is currently no other solution than re-uploading the image. If the old name is very bad/inconvenient, reupload the image, and request the old one to be deleted. If it is a trivial name change, you can just as well let it be. ✏ Sverdrup 11:56, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The deletion request, by the way, should go to Wikipedia:Images for deletion. - IMSoP 22:55, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This is a very good question. We should have it in the FAQ. Yes, there's no equivalent of "moving article" for images. --Menchi 11:47, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Can such a feature be added to a list of requested features for future editions of the software? I know such exists, just I don't know where. -- user:zanimum
Yes, you want the sourceforge tracker. But note that there is a (very old) request for image renaming already: #606192. - IMSoP 22:55, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Strewth

I am not a wikiholic... I am not a wikiholic... urrggg... wow I'm glad that's over. Is there any summary of what happened anywhere?

Wikipedia:Announcements which links to Wikipedia Status here and details here -Wikibob | Talk 03:52, 2004 Jun 8 (UTC)
... need ... wikipedia ... need ... Edit ... this ... page ... (Chris 73)
Yea, it hurt not being able update wiki for a full 24 hours ;) →Raul654 03:58, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)
commendations for to the technical warriers that got things back without any data loss... who are probably catching up on their sleep (or down the pub). I was a little surprised that even the read only version was not available. Erich 04:46, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)


I read the pages linked above, but what's left unclear is why this happened. Anyone have an explanation for the not technically-apt? Meelar 05:35, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Basically, the database was corrupted which meant a new backup had to be made. This took a long time because the database slave server (one which keeps an up-to-date backup) was not in sync, so there wasn't a backup immediately available. There were other problems with new database server Ariel crashing which I think prevented the read-only version being up consistenly. Angela. 07:41, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

new message message

I can't get rid of the "you have new message" message, even though I have edited and unedited my Talk page. RickK 05:51, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

ditto. -- Chris 73 | Talk 05:56, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I think this is fixed now (at least it isn't happening to me anymore). Is anyone else still having problems with it? Angela. 06:37, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it seems to be fixed. RickK 06:40, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)
Well, it required me to log off first. \Mikez 06:55, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

thumbnails not right-aligned

Why are the thumbnails on River Weaver and Buttermere not right-aligned? Am I using the wrong markup? Lupin 08:08, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I know not why, but adding a caption to the pictures fixed the problem. →Raul654 08:13, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)
Fixed (by adding overflow:auto to the outer div). Please reload to get the new css. -- Gabriel Wicke 11:33, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Current Sports Events

--> Moved to Talk:Current sports events

Sharing with other sites

On another topic, I wondered if I could ask the sites I have written about to spread the word about us. Ive tried hard to get my doctor, my pharmacist, my pastor, a cop, a boxing trainer, a former Marine and a pastor to be to help us. The only one who has been hired by me out of those is the former Marine my dad.

By asking some sites I visit and have written about, we might increase traffic, although two of these sites, Projectvoyeur.com and PurePanties.com are of dubious material.

Put your opinions down here, hehe: Antonio Porn Addict Martin

Dude, some things are best kept to yourself. Pcb21| Pete 08:56, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The question is shall we do that or not? Besides everyone here knows Im the Madonna of wikipedia! Antonio Wikidonna Martin
If you think the webmaster of a site called purepanties.com can help improve the coverage of our articles on clothing, go ahead and ask. Without having visited the site however, I fear we would be more likely to attract spam than anything else! Pcb21| Pete 10:57, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Uh...I don't know. Are the people from "Project Voyeur" the spam-type?? --Menchi 11:44, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, what I meant by was like, if we should ask them to adversite us by mentioning us on their home pages. Besides, its not just those two websites. How about Airliners.net and a Christian band's website Im working with? If they could just put a note telling people to visit us, that would increase the page's hits and maybe bring more collaborators. --Antonio Manic Panic Martin !:16 AM 9 Jun 2004 (MST)

Fix Upload page

The Special:Upload page still says {{msg:PD}}, even though the "msg" part is no longer required. Can someone please fix the page (apparently the script can't do it)?

Done. Morwen 11:00, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Template problem

I wanted to make a little Template for the Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress page, replacing the not so nice looking *([[User:a.b.c.d]] | [[User talk:a.b.c.d|talk]] | [[Special:contributions/a.b.c.d|contributions]]) part with {{Vip|user:a.b.c.d}}, but somehow the outcome isn't what I expected. What did I do wrong? --Conti 12:12, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hrm.... I was going to say you did nothing wrong, but it does look like template have a problem linking into the User namespace:

UtherSRG (talk · contribs)

- UtherSRG 12:43, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

ah.. I made a mistake while testing it, foolish me. But now there's another problem with templates. Can someone fix this? :-) --Conti 13:10, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure why it thinks the pages don't exist, but it works ok if you use the full URL in the template instead. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=user:{{{user}}} User:{{{user}}}] | [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=user_talk:{{{user}}} talk] | [[Special:contributions/{{{user}}}|contributions]]) <br/>
Angela. 13:23, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Gonna use that version as long as my does not work. --Conti 13:40, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

New pages?

Under the cologne blue skin, there was a taskbar link directly to new pages, now the book skin doesn't have it. Why? -- user:zanimum

The standard skin didn't have it either. The reason has to do with space probably. Dori | Talk 14:33, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)
It would be nice if you could add it into your skin, via preferences. -- user:zanimum

REDIRECTs now disallow any extra text?

I was trying to add a Category to a REDIRECT page (don't ask rude questions and I won't tell you where to stick them :-). However when I tried to save the change, not only did the Category not get saved, the Edit History wasn't even updated! I have just tested it in my Sandbox and it seems that whereas it used to be possible to append text to a REDIRECT, to explain why it was there, for example, such as "Common mis-spelling", this would seem now to have been forbidden. The edit seems to be simply ignored, but there is no message saying that this has occurred. Was this a planned feature of the MediaWiki 1.3 upgrade? --Phil | Talk 14:57, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know why in this particular instance, but ISTM that to have a category on the redirect wouldn't work anyway as in the category page linking to it when you click that link you'd be redirected through to the actual target page anyway, thus it would be an unusable link. Categories should only be on target (valid) pages. --VampWillow 15:17, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I know that now! (wishing I could recall from whence that is a quote). Well actually I had figured it all along but I wanted to see if it were possible or whether MediaWiki would tell me I was doing something unwise. When the edit was just silently rejected I dug a bit more. It turns out that something which is reasonable and was allowed before—i.e. adding extra explanatory text after a REDIRECT—has now been forbidden for no apparent reason and without any message to explain why MediaWiki is throwing the edit away. --Phil | Talk 15:50, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

I just created Abdul Rahman, Tuanku and it seems to work. There is some sort of char-conversion bug affecting them though. -- User:Docu

You used a template message and appended it to the end of the REDIRECT: if you put your extra text on a new line it gets wiped! A little testing in my Sandbox proves it, and also that the history totally fails to register even the attempt at editing. --Phil | Talk 17:25, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC) ... and just to add a little spice to the mix, putting the Category directive on the same line does allow you to specify a category for a REDIRECT (see Category:Test which has members if no actual text). Which has to make some kind of twisted sense if I can just twist my mind enough ... --Phil | Talk 17:34, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

MonoBook

Uhh, my mono book skin just stopped working, I was seeing the pages raw. I switched to Cologne and everything is fine. Is someone working on the monobook css right now? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 17:54, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

Today, I've seen image rendering problems with both Monobook and the Standard skin. Especially at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates - Bevo 19:44, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
All seems to be working fine for me (NS 7.1/XP). blankfaze | •­• 22:26, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It seems to be an inconsistency with the Mozilla Firefox browser. I just tried IE 6, and it renders OK with that browser. With Firefox, I'm getting some of the images chopped off (renders left-side only) in the thumbnailed presentation. - Bevo 22:46, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Ditto. See ongoing thread at m:MediaWiki_1.3_comments_and_bug_reports#Layout_of_tables.2C_images -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:50, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the link. Mozilla Firefox rendering seems much better this morning. - Bevo 12:47, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Gabriel fixed the CSS, which seems to address the firefox-specific problems. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:54, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Unfortunately, it seems to be broken again in both Standard and MonoBook skins for FireFox 0.8 - Bevo 15:29, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What is the policy for dealing with PageRank vandalism?

What should be the policy for dealing with articles like Protocol Analyzer (see history)? Right now, we list them as copy vios, and link to the site that they plagiarize. However, due to Wikipedia's high page rank and the many number of sites that clone wikipedia data, this will still allow these vandals of achieving their goal of increasing page rank. It would be more effective to make these speedy deletion candidates. What do you guys think? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 18:06, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

I have no problem with that. Or with some approach where we build the VFD notice without an actual HTML link, so that it doesn't have this effect. -- Jmabel 07:40, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)
Not a hard thing to fix. Just have people to put the website into the edit summary when marking it as a copyvio, and have the copyvio template tell readers to look at the page history. →Raul654 07:47, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)
You could put <nowiki></nowiki> tags around the URL to prevent it being a link. Angela. 11:08, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Press kits

While browsing the official web site of the Cassini space probe (that will arrive at Saturn in three weeks), I downloaded the press kit, which is a 400 kb PDF file. In my opinion, this sort of thing is a goldmine for Wikipedia articles: it lists each and every detail about the probe, the planet and its moons in a plain language, designed for journalists who aren't experts on the subject. It includes lots of pretty pictures that are also very informative (in this case, the orbit layout, the planet interior, the ring structure, the probe schematic, and so on). The press kit has no copyright statement on it. Coming from the JPL, I suspect it's public domain. So wouldn't be a good idea to harvest press kits from the various gov. organization that are trying to show off? What's the actual copyright status on them? What could be a proper WikiProject procedure? This press kit is so well done that it could be splitted into two articles: Saturn and the Cassini probe, that could be almost wikified and left that way. Would others be the same? Alfio 18:51, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The JPL is a division of Nasa - NASA images generally are not copyrighted. You may use NASA imagery, video and audio material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits and Internet Web pages. - http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html →Raul654 18:59, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

"generally" is correct, but you do find some images with non-NASA copyright notices on the NASA websites. For example: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_166.html
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/58496main_image_feature_166_jwfull.jpg - Bevo 19:43, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
JPL is not a division of NASA, it is a division of Caltech, and therefore does not strictly fall under the standard NASA/government "everything's public domain" policy. Be careful. [5] -- Cyrius|✎ 22:15, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
JPL images are "pretty close" to public domain. In most cases, only a credit is required. See JPL Image Policy -- Curps 22:42, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Trouble editing template namespace

For some reason, trying to save a change to Template:Album gets an error message, but saving anything else works fine. Can anybody else edit the template namespace? Tuf-Kat 23:05, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry- we have a problem... The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to your request. To get information on what's going on you can visit #wikipedia. An "offsite" status page is hosted on OpenFacts. Generated Tue, 08 Jun 2004 23:03:51 GMT by wikipedia.org (squid/2.5.STABLE4-20040219)

It is not a problem with the complete template namespace as I just succeeded with a trivial edit in Template:Infobox Thai Province. However when I tried to edit Template:Album earlier I had exactly the same problem as you, after a long timeout it gave that error message. Maybe for whatever reason the database locks that entry. andy 11:25, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)


Also Known As

Is it possible for Wikipedia to have some kind of AKA tag akin to categories? Alot of the articles I work on have many names and instead of putting in the article "Also called x,y, and z" I'd rather if there were simply a {{AKA: x,y,z}} feature. Oberiko 00:51, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Can you give an example? Usually the Y and Z to your X would be redirects. -- user:zanimum
Sure. Take the Tiger II. While I do have the redirects, the things has a ton of names (King Tiger, Königstiger, Panzer VI, Panzerkampfwagen VI ausf B, VK4503, SdKfz 182). Putting all that in the main article seems a bit cumbersome. Alot of articles about equipment that I've run across have similar problems.
I'm not quite sure what it is you're hoping to gain: if you just want to list alternative names, then how is typing "{{AKA: x,y,z}}" any easier than "Also called x,y, and z"? If you're after something more than just the text, then what is it you want this tag to do exactly?
Oh, hang on, I just read your comments a bit more carefully: you want it to be off on some kind of subpage, perhaps? I think that's unwise, since it would require people to click through to that page just to discover something which is no less important than anything else in the article - a list in its own section at the end might work if they look too awkward mixed into the prose. - IMSoP 15:03, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

sorting on category page

I cant figure out the sorting of articles on category pages. On category:North American rivers the Yadkin rivers was sorted to C and I changed the link to Yadkin river. So now it is sorted to Y. OK. (Ok, now its a north carolina river)

Then I looked at Pecos River, which is already sorted to P. But there the category is also only category:North American rivers. How does it work? --141.53.194.251 07:54, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Eequor noticed that it's probably sorting on the C in Category, and filed it on the meta page. Dysprosia 08:10, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Missing images

I notice that some articles (at least Maui and Haleakala) are missing images. The server seems to be trying to download them; my browser says from this "file": en.wikipedia.org/style/monobook/headbg.jpg No idea what "headbg.jpg" is (not one of the four missing images) or why the download is not working or where the images went. Anybody notice similar problems? - Marshman 08:12, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

How to get images permission?

I could see many people easily get permission to use photos. I want to know if there is any letter templates for that. Why I'm asking is my English is poor and I wanted to use [6] in the article Sari but couldn't even get response. I think, it needs bit diplomacy. Experienced people can share. TIA. --Rrjanbiah 08:46, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, my advice on the matter - don't bother. Getting permission is a *HUGE* pain the ass. At best, maybe 1 in 3 requests get answered. I guess I've had some bad experiences. The best advice I can give is - find an alternative to whatever image you have. Government (.gov) pages are a goldmine of good, public domain pictures. →Raul654 08:56, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)
i disagree. I reuested a couple of permissions, and maybe 50% got satisfied. I think that's a pretty good turnout. -- Chris 73 | Talk 10:39, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Even if you only get a one in three response, this is still very worth doing. We need more images, and I think the effort of emailing the boilerplate request three times is well worth getting a new GFDL image. Please see the Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission page for an example letter you can use to ask for permission on images. Angela. 11:03, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The picture you want looks like it is from a professional news agency. People that make money with pictures almost never give them away for free. You should ask a private person or at least someone who does not make money with the photos. -- Chris 73 | Talk 11:43, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
How about this or this one? Both public domain. -- Chris 73 | Talk 11:53, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Agreed. In my experience, potential victims donators have to be targeted pretty carefully even to get a hit rate as high as 1 in 3. Having said that, I agree with Angela, you can get sufficiently efficient at bashing out emails to make it worthwhile. Pcb21| Pete 11:55, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Also remember you can prefix your search at images.google.com with "site:.gov" to make sure only results from .gov websites are returned - massively increasing chances they are PD. Pcb21| Pete 11:57, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I usually use site:.gov OR site:.mil, wich also gets you the military PD pictures -- Chris 73 | Talk 12:31, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Lorks! Great search tip! I thought I knew some snazzy searches, but I didn't know you could restrict it by high level domain like that. Thanks! I know have a little widget allowing me to search only British gov sites ;o) --bodnotbod 22:45, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)
Indeed you do, and I know you know, but others might be misled ... UK Government info is generally *not* public domain. It's only the US which is. --Tagishsimon
Oh. No. I didn't. Bah! Not that I really intended to use it to grab images. I tend to focus on getting the words wrong instead. --bodnotbod 23:57, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)
Wow, this is a really great thread. I always have a hard time finding usable pictures. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 15:30, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)
Are British government images public domain/fair use? RickK 22:50, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)
No. They are Crown Copyright or copyright the local authority, &c, and are not available on the same basis as US government.. --Tagishsimon
You are absolutely right that copyright is retained. However the licencing is usually pretty permissive. Check individual publications for the extent of compatibility with GFDL. Pcb21| Pete 23:15, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Note - You can ask Jamesday for more specific stuff, but the Crown-copyright for images made prior to and through World War II have all expired and entered the public domain. →Raul654 23:44, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)
Not so - official WW2 pictures and footage were transferred to the Imperial War Museum some years ago and are now the copyright of the IWM. -- ChrisO 16:12, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It used to be the case that all photographs taken before 1957 had a fixed copyright term of 50 years in the UK. Since the EU copyright harmonisation almost 10 years ago that has changed to non-Crown copyright photos having a copyright term of life of author+70 years. However Crown copyright photographs from pre-1957 still have the 50 year fixed term. That means all Crown copyright photographs from prior to 1954 are public domain in the United Kingdom.
Photographs that are 1957 and later (officially 1 June 1957 and later due to new copyright legislation that year) that are Crown copyright have a fixed copyright term of 125 years fron creation or 50 years from first publication, whichever comes first. That means that a photograph taken in 1958 and not published will not come out of copyright until 2084. However by that time it is likely to have been transferred to the public record office and there is a Crown copyright waiver on such materials which means that it will likely be useable after transfer.
As for IWM material, if it is originally Crown copyright, it will still be Crown copyright. The Crown does not generally assign copyrights. That means that if it is 1953 and earlier it is public domain in the UK. However its status in the US, where the Wikipedia server is located is somewhat unclear. It is in that foggy area on international law that often happens when different copyright regimes interact. Where we are talking about ordinary works then matters are clear, published pre-1923 is public domain in the US, and published works with authors dead earlier than 1934 are public domain in most other countries. However government material is an interesting question. I have sometimes seen places where the US Government claims copyright outside of the US. For example the Naval Vessel Register website explcitly claims to not be public domain outside the US. However, with the adoption of the rule of shortest term by the EU that claim is probably bogus within the EU. Crown copyright materials are even more awkward than US Government materials. There is an active copyright that is protected by HMSO. However its term is very different to non-government copyrights. What is its exact term in the rest of the EU? What is its exact term in the United States? Those are questions that I suspect could only be adequately answered by court cases.
To summarise, in the UK Crown copyright photographs from 1953 and earlier are public domain. From the safest point of view in the United States if they are published then they are subject to the same rules as other British copyright works from that period. If they are unpublished then they are subject to Title 17, sections 302 and 303 of the US Code. Section 303 provides that works unpublished in 1978 shall be the same as for published works created after 1978, but that unpublished works shall not come out of copyright before 31 December 2002. If published between 1978 and 2002 they shall not come out of copyright before 2047. British Government works subject to Crown protection are works for hire under US law. That means they are subject to copyright protection for 95 years after publication or 120 years after creation. That means that all unpublished Crown copyright materials that were made before 1884 are not regarded as having copyright protection under US law. Published Crown copyright materials are subject to the same duration rules as all other US works made for hire. So published Crown copyright materials from pre-1923 are out of copyright.
The only common ground for the two regimes is published materials from pre-1923 and unpublished photographs from pre-1884 (since all other unpublished copyright material is under copyright until 2039 in the UK as a transitional provision similar to the US 2002 provision). However Crown copyright waivers on unpublished records extend the extent of photographic materials that could be used on the Wikipedia. That is the strictest view and is probably the one that would have to be taken by the Wikimedia Foundation. Personally I regard published Crown copyright materials that are more than 50 years old as effectively being public domain worldwide as HMSO are unlikely to pursue action over materials that are not in copyright in the UK (especially with respect to internet sites which are effectively acccessible from anywhere in the world at the same level, meaning that something on a UK server which would not be infringing under UK law is effectively the same as something on a US server that would technically be infringing US law). David Newton 00:47, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
As a reminder, if you cant find a photo, try adding it to Wikipedia:Requested pictures. I often try to add photos from various sources that are requested there -- Chris 73 | Talk 01:35, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for all the people who helped me in this thread. Thanks for Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission and Wikipedia:Requested pictures--that is what I was looking for.

BTW, recently the webmaster of [7] replied me stating that the photo is from agency and so he can't help. Unfortunately I couldn't understand this jargon ("agency"). Is there anyway to find the agency of the photo?

Also, is there any place in Wikipedia where I can confirm if the image is in PD or conforms to the license? Say for example, I could find the photo in many places [8] --Rrjanbiah 05:37, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

"photo is from agency": News agencies: A company that makes money by selling photos. They do not give it away for free. I have found two free photos of a Sari: This and This. Can you use these photos?
I also think that to show a Sari (Indian female dress), Anna Kournikova is not the right person in an encyclopedia. An Indian woman would be much more suitable for a picture of a Sari. -- Chris 73 | Talk 06:00, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for the info and photos. I was looking for unexpected personalities on Sari and found Anna and thought her photo is suitable for the article to gather attention. Anyway, the article needs more work and will use the photos that you suggest sometimes later. Thanks --Rrjanbiah 07:50, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

New layout kudos

The new page layout is just wonderful: clean, logical, functional and uncluttered. To whoever is responsible for the new design: Thanks for the great work! AxelBoldt 10:26, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Good to hear there's at least one user who likes the new layout ;-) MediaWiki_talk:Monobook.css seems to indicate most would prefer returning to the standard skin... -- Gabriel Wicke 15:24, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Nah, you only hear from the unsatisfied. I went back to standard for a while, but found it crufty and old-fashioned, so I'm back with monobook. I guess 50% of the complaints (and the most bitter) stem from the cache-snafu prone transitional period (and the categories layout bug period). The only long-lasting issue is (I think) the verdana diacrita placement bug, which (if it isn't sorted already - I wouldn't know!) is something we do need to address. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:49, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I agree - I like the new layout after the initial shock - The javascript errors seem to be finally dieing out too! good on you! Erich 19:21, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Yes, I find Monobook to be a lot better too. Great work! --Chopchopwhitey 06:58, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I love the new layout. As I experience it (Mac OS X 10.3.4, Safari) it looks prettier and the text is more legible and the pages are just as information-dense or maybe denser than before. There are very minor glitches—for example, the article creation text tells you to click "edit this page" but the tab, of course, just reads "edit." Dpbsmith 00:06, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I like the new layout too - especially how each user can customize it for themselves. Perhaps we should create a page for Monobook fans? - jredmond 00:17, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

In general, I like the new layout, but I still can't agree with overriding the user's default font choices, and forcing a sans-serif font in particular. See also Wikipedia_talk:Serif or sans-serif and MediaWiki_talk:Monobook.css#Font typeface —Steven G. Johnson 06:04, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)


The new layout is great and professional looking. That way Wikipedia will become mainstream - massa 16:38, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

When I first saw MonoBook, I actually went to IRC to ask who made this amazing-looking artistic theme. People who like the standard skin don't value aesthetics! --Menchi 16:40, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, in fact they value aesthetics as much as you do, but they feel that bare functionality is more important that glossy looks. — Monedula 10:48, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Man pages

Two questions: (1) under what license are Unix man pages released? (I guess that those used by GNU Linux, use, well, GFDL, but want to ascertain this.) (2) Is there a policy regarding inclusion of whole or part of man pages on Wikipedia? In the rlogin entry, for instance, it is awfully tempting to include sections of the man page, but I do not know whether there's a relevant policy. -- Itai 11:58, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I think linux manpages are probably GPL, as they're distributed in source and binary packages that are GPL. My understanding is that, for our purposes, GPL and GFDL are sufficiently compatible. I think including chunks of a man page wholesale is generally a bad idea, as documentation really belongs either on openbooks (hmm, I think that's what it's called) or wikibooks. Man pages aren't very encylopedic anyway, as they rarely explain what a given command really does, why you would want to use it, who wrote it, how it does what it does, and other programs you might use that do the same (or similar) tasks. rlogin is (as of right now) perfectly encyclopedic (if rather too short), and I think an exlink to some LDP mirror for the man contents is probably the best idea. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:18, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
While I don't think that command-line parameters from the man page would be appropriate in an encyclopedia article, the man pages do provide some encyclopedic content, such as "related topics", and POSIX standards information. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 15:25, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)
I did as Finlay suggested regarding adding a link (thanks for the GPL clarification, by the way). There does not appear to be any additional encyclopedic content in the man page that would not be better served simply by consulting the man page, which it is safe to assume all those who need use rlogin can locate on their own. I agree that the essence of the program - what it does - is far more useful than command-line parameters to the lay reader. -- Itai 21:45, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This is a bad assumption to make. First of all, hardly all Linux software is under the GPL (if you take "Linux" to mean "Linux distribution" as is common). Even if you restrict yourself to e.g. GNU utilities, the man page licenses differ from case to case, and may be different from the software. For example, the man page for gzip is under the license:
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to process this file through troff and print the results, provided the printed document carries copying permission notice identical to this one except for the removal of this paragraph (this paragraph not being relevant to the printed manual).
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the Foundation.
(Manuals for a lot of old FSF software use a similar license. Dunno if this is GFDL compatible.) In general, you have to look on a case-by-case basis for a license statement in the man page (ideally) or a license statement that came with the software. And the man page may not come with the software — many FSF programs don't even come with a man page, and use TeXinfo instead, so distros like Debian write or generate their own man pages. —Steven G. Johnson 05:59, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)
Urgh. Well, so much for Man pages, except, as you say, on a case-by-case basis. I really am disappointed with the FSF on that one. -- Itai 23:40, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Delete problem

Got this trying to delete Baron Rutherford:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an illegal search query (see Searching Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:

DELETE FROM cur WHERE cur_namespace={$ns} AND cur_title='Baron_Rutherford'

from within function "Article::doDeleteArticle". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '} AND cur_title='Baron_Rutherford'' at line 1".

- UtherSRG 12:45, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I had the same problem. Tim Starling told me it would go away, and a few minutes later, it did. Pcb21| Pete 23:10, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

pref system/ access key update

  • accesskeys and tooltips moved to js, needs to be customized/localized at MediaWiki:Monobook.js (copy everything below /* tooltips and access keys */ from [9]. Saves many calls to wfMsg, reduces page size, shows access key prefix depending on browser/os. Easy to customize in your own Monobook.js by changing the ta array.
  • skinphptal underline and justification wired up to produce generated css- users have to adjust their prefs to get the default Monobook behaviour unfortunately
  • MediaWiki:Monobook.css used for anons as well (-> underlined for them now)
  • addcss call removed from header
  • separate js var file included that holds things like the stylepath and the tooltip/accesskey array
  • rtl css included from generated css

Translators: Many translated accesskey-XY and tooltip-XY messages need to be moved to the Monobook.js array, they are now deprecated. The remaining ones might follow soon.

I also changed the wording and key of the 'clear your cache' message as it's now also displayed above the prefs as well. A new string is qbsettingsnote.

To get the new files, a reload might be necessary (the usual reload in moz, ctrl-f5 in IE/Opera, cmd-r in safari). -- Gabriel Wicke 15:02, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

How does Google index Wikipedia?

Wikipedia would seem to be part of the "deep Web" and hence inaccessible to Google. That is, there isn't any static page that links to all the other pages (or a static tree of such links). So how does Google's spider find articles? Does it watch special:newpages, or does it have a Wikipedia-specific search procedure (perhaps based on special:allpages), or what? The speed with which new Wikipedia articles get indexed is astonishing.... Dpbsmith 16:11, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

New articles will be found because other pages have links to them. Usually when someone creates a new page, they link to that page from a pre-existing article, which is already in Google. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 16:18, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)
Unless someone with access to the apache logs undertakes a detailed study, we really don't know how google spiders wikipedia. I understand that google maintains customised crawler preferences for the top websites (tuning things like search depth, frequency, and which things to ignore) but I've no evidence that they've done this for wikipedia. I agree with DropDeadGorgias' suggestion - ephemeral things like special:newpages and special:recent_changes change too quickly to be of much use to the crawler (which visits most sites no more frequently than weekly). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:34, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I have realized, that lonely pages did not get indexed. So, google is another reason to make special:lonelypages shorter.
uhm, first of all: to make special:lonelypages work. Or are there orphans no more?
You might use User:Topbanana/Reports/Nothing_links_to_this_article as the temporary alternative. And the other items on User:Topbanana/Reports give a lot of work for those who like cleanup work - spelling mistakes, missing interwiki, most wanted articles etc. andy 22:25, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What does everybody think of changing:

  • "my talk" to "talk" (a bit iffy)
  • "my watchlist" to "watchlist"
  • "my contributions" to "contributions" (a bit iffy as well)

in the bar at the top (in MonoBook) as they seem redundant to me and they are taking too much space (plus I hate this MS trend). Discussion at WT:MNT. Dori | Talk 19:09, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)

I'm using standard (damn me) but I foresee getting confused if I'm at another user's page and want to see his contributions. Also, I think it's more newbie friendly, and I like the view that WP tailor for the newbie rather than the regular attendee. --bodnotbod 00:03, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)

Deletion log

Can someone please add Wikipedia:Deletion log to Category:Wikipedia:Deletion? It's a difficult article to find normally. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 19:18, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)

added it as a link. That's the best I can do -- Chris 73 | Talk 23:59, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I tried adding Wikipedia:Deletion log to the Deletion log redirect, but if i add it after the redirect it gets deleted, and if i add it before then it is no longer a redirect. Sorry -- Chris 73 | Talk 00:04, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Category rendering in history

If you look at the history for Wikipedia:Categories for deletion, you will see that think link for Category:Jewish mythology appears red and links to the "edit" page, as if it didn't exist. However, even when you click on that link, there is data there. Is this a mediawiki bug? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 20:05, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)

Another reason why wikipedia rocks the world

Even if an article isn't exactly POV, the debate and discussion regarding how the article should be written is completely public, and anyone can chime in. What other so-called source of information lays all that on the table? Can you imagine if Fox News or the New York Times or Encarta published their internal debates? Wikipedia rocks. Kingturtle 23:43, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm I bet seem as they will be in the history forever, future historians will be fastinated by it when the WP has taken over the world. There are historians who study the history of the Oxford dictionary and the Encyclopedia Brittanica apparently so I'm sure wikipedia will be a source of study at some point G-Man 23:51, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Reminds me of George Patton - he saved virtually every scrap of paper he ever produced in his entire life "for his biographers". Compared to the people studying EB and the Oxford dictionary, WP historians will have a lot more info to work with. →Raul654 23:56, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)

True, the turbulences under a seemingly calm surface can actually be more interesting to some readers. There probaly are WP readers who browse our encyclopedia mainly for the discussions at the Talk pages, instead of the articles proper themselves.

And I do wonder from time-to-time how exactly do Britannica people reach their final form on their controversial articles. For an encyclopedia as old as EB, the behind-the-scene debates themeselves must be a delight to read. Indeed, writing an article is just half the fun. The other half is to participate in Talk discussions, engaing or not. --Menchi 06:23, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I almost always go through the talk page when looking something up - they often have all sorts of extra information and colorful bits and pieces that didn't make it into the main article. I actually found myself wondering a while a go whether years and years from now Wikipedia Talk and History pages might contitute major historical sources, for seeing how grasp of an event or issue has changed over time or how popular culture has shifted (by the number of sorts of articles bieng staryted at a given date for example). Hmm, I may have been putting too much thought to this...Datepalm17 22:12, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What an interesting thought. I bet someday a historian will read this very discussion were having now, and thin "gosh, didn't these wikipedians have foresight" so just in case....Hello Historian... G-Man 22:51, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What's going on with images

I've noticed all of a sudden that thumbnailed images seem to have gone to the far left of the article space and overlap with the taskbar. I dont know if anyone else has experienced this or whether it's only me. But it wasn't doing it a few days ago. G-Man 23:48, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Maybe it's related with the above topic thumbnails not right-aligned - thumbnailed images without a text did some strange things. But that one was fixed - maybe you can give an example, and probably should try it with different skins. andy 18:17, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Coventry is an example, although it only seems to be doing it on one computer I use. I was using another computer earlier and it was fine. G-Man 19:52, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Example of image rendering concerns

Borrowing from Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates two image rendering examples follow.........- Bevo 18:48, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Strange - yesterday I did see one broken and one fine, now both are fine. Maybe the bug in the css was fixed without further notice? andy 11:33, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Still happening with me, does anyone know what I can do about it? G-Man 22:54, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Still broke for me too, using Mozilla FireFox 0.8 - Bevo 18:20, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
OK now, see Gabriel Wicke's comments below. - Bevo 22:39, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)


Case 1: The image below looks OK (Monobook skin or Standard skin, Mozilla FireFox 0.8): (also looks OK with either skin using IE 6)

{|
|[[Image:Painter's algorithm.png|thumb|left|400px|Painter's algorithm]]
|---
| Illustration for [[painter's algorithm]]. Early crappy attempt at vector drawing from me, but I'm giving this nomination a shot anyway. [[User:Fredrik|Fredrik]] 15:21, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
|}

Painter's algorithm
Illustration for painter's algorithm. Early crappy attempt at vector drawing from me, but I'm giving this nomination a shot anyway. Fredrik 15:21, 30 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


Case 2: The image below does not look OK (Monobook skin or Standard skin, Mozilla FireFox 0.8): (but does look OK with either skin using IE6)

Suddenly, this afternoon the image below is rendering OK using Mozilla FireFox 0.8. - Bevo 19:15, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

{|
|[[Image:Painter's algorithm.png|thumb|left|400px|Painter's algorithm]]
| Illustration for [[painter's algorithm]]. Early crappy attempt at vector drawing from me, but I'm giving this nomination a shot anyway. [[User:Fredrik|Fredrik]] 15:21, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
|}

Painter's algorithm
 Illustration for painter's algorithm. Early crappy attempt at vector drawing from me, but I'm giving this nomination a shot anyway. Fredrik 15:21, 30 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


Case 3: The image below looks OK.

[[Image:Painter's algorithm.png|thumb|left|400px|Painter's algorithm]]
Illustration for [[painter's algorithm]]. Early crappy attempt at vector drawing from me, but I'm giving this nomination a shot anyway. [[User:Fredrik|Fredrik]] 15:21, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
<br style="clear:left"/>

Painter's algorithm

Illustration for painter's algorithm. Early crappy attempt at vector drawing from me, but I'm giving this nomination a shot anyway. Fredrik 15:21, 30 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


Interesting that Mozilla FireBird 0.7 (the previous version of FireFox) renders both images correctly. So, maybe there is a bug in FireFox 0.8 ? - Bevo 14:22, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The images seem ok to me, running FireBird 0.8. What are they supposed to look like?--Fangz 23:06, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Three boxed images of the same size, enclosed in a box. And, it's FireFox 0.8 (not FireBird), right? - Bevo 14:40, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Oopsy, I did mean Firefox 0.8. That's what I see. It looks right to me. I'm using the monobook skin, a screen resolution of 800x600, Win 98, with the style sheet mods that give rounded corners and bottom tabs. What about everybody else?--Fangz 00:29, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'm having this problem too. FireFox 0.8 here. Fredrik (talk) 09:14, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Looks ok for me after removing the table (Case 3). This also has the advantage to work better for really small screens (pdas etc). You can use the same techique with the <br style="clear:left"/> at the end for photo galleries as well, the images will wrap to the available screen width then. -- Gabriel Wicke 22:02, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Suddenly, this afternoon the image in Case 2 above is rendering OK using Mozilla FireFox 0.8. - Bevo 19:15, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I moved the overflow: hidden declaration to the inner div earlier today, that achieves the same thing without allowing tables to shrink the image. -- Gabriel Wicke 19:49, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

We have links to edit individual sections, so why not a link to add a new section? It would be especially useful on this page. --Juuitchan

There used to be one at the top of the page. Insert non-formatted text here
There still is one, in the Monobook skin, iff you're editing the top of the page. It's next to the Edit link and looks like a plus sign. - jredmond 03:49, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
From what I've seen, only "Talk:" (AKA "discussion") pages have the "Post comment" link ("+" tab in Monobook), which does exactly this. It's questionable whether a "create new section" is useful in an ordinary encyclopedia article, since such an article rarely benefits from new sections simply being tacked onto the end of the article. However, pages which are inherently discussion pages (like Village pump and many others) would certainly benefit from this. The alternatives for these are:
  1. Edit the whole page. Bad form, especially for long discussions.
  2. Edit the last section and insert your new section header. Easy to miscount or mismatch =s, and people can easily forget to change the misleading Edit summary.
Plus (pun intended), providing and encouraging the use of Post comment/+ gets away from (what I suspect is) the legacy of separating topics with horizontal lines, thwarting automatic tables of contents (TOCs). I can't tell you how many pages I've come across that have a TOC that's halfway down the page, where it's fairly useless. I'd think that the problem would be how to tell the Wiki software to differentiate between ordinary encyclopedia articles and non-"Talk:" discussion pages like this. I can see some guidelines (e.g., "Wikipedia:*" is discussion), but I don't know if they're universal. -- Jeff Q 04:26, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What happened to this simple lightning article edit?

I edited the page on Lightning to remove a line about unsubstantiated speculation on the shuttle columbia crash being caused by lightning (a single sentance removal) and it made all these [[10]] other changes I didn't make!!? Did I do something wrong? Is this a bug?? Deglr6328 03:23, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)

Look at this comparison: [11] -- it's the difference between 07:40, 27 May 2004 80.43.180.179 (positive and upper atmosphere lightning expanded) and your initial change. Somehow you ended up editing a version from 12 revisions ago (this one). --Yath 06:09, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Wikidictionary or Pedia?

I have in mind a series of concepts related to each other, and while some of them are pretty short, they have the potential to become much longer. So my question is whether to just go ahead and make stub articles (which are easier to look for), put them in the Wikidictionary or just use one main Pedia article to summarize.

One example is:

Principle I: Long vowels rise. Principle II: Short nuclei fall. Principle III: Back vowels move to the front.

These principles are defined by William Labov for chain shifting, something found in language change.

For this example, I would like to make 4 pages (William Labov already has a page). Is that making an excess of short articles?

TIA bab

There's always a third option: Wikibooks. What you're thinking of doing sounds like a good introductory linguistic text. --Menchi 09:17, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, Menchi. I just found something addressing my question, so I think I'll work with both: Dictionary definitions. Wikipedia is not a dictionary, so please do not create an entry merely to define a term. But of course an article can and should always begin with a good definition or a clear description of the topic. If you come across an article that is nothing more than a definition, see if there is information you can add that would be appropriate for an encyclopedia. If you're interested in working on a wiki dictionary, check out the Wiktionary (http://wiktionary.org) project! An exception to this rule are articles about the cultural meanings of individual numbers.
Don't worry. I won't. :-) --Menchi 10:35, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The ideal encyclopedia article is a dictionary definition. Bensaccount 03:27, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Template namespace initialisation script

What on earth is Template namespace initialisation script? In the article on Something Might Happen it changed {{msg:spoiler}} to {{spoiler}}, with no apparent difference on the surface -- you can still read the same old spoiler warning. What is sthis all about? <KF> 12:43, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

See User:Template namespace initialisation script. {{stub}} is the new way of writing {{msg:stub}} since the new software. This script was just making things consistent. Angela. 12:51, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. <KF> 17:16, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Book blurb

Originally posted on Wikipedia talk:Fair use but garnered no response yet ... Is the blurb on the back of a paperback, or on the flyleaf of a hardback, fair game for inclusion in a Wikipedia article? It would seem intuitively obvious, since the purpose of the blurb is to garner publicity for the book, but is there any hard policy? I would of course assume that any such text would be clearly annotated as such. --Phil | Talk 13:05, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)

IMO (though IANAL), any short quote, if properly attributed, can be used under fair use. older≠wiser 13:20, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Indeed, it should be fair use if it's quoted. Obviously, the blurb shouldn't be quoted entirely if it's too long, and the quote shouldn't be the most significant part of the article. Dori | Talk 14:52, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)

Category weirdness

I can't work out why some categories don't appear to be displaying properly. Take a look at the foot of Avignon and the category Category:Cities, towns and villages of France. Even though it's a populated category, it's displaying as if it was an empty article. Can anyone explain what's going on here? -- ChrisO 15:38, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It seems like it has a ton of articles to me (204). Dori | Talk 15:41, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)
It does, but try the (much smaller) Category:Landmarks of Paris and you'll see the same behaviour. The category definitely exists but it shows as a bad link. -- ChrisO 16:16, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The category remains red until someone enters some text I believe (if that's what you mean by bad link). Otherwise that also seems fine to me. It shows two towns, and both those town articles show the category. Dori | Talk 16:26, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)
It is a poor bit of the user interface: the category page is taken to exist only when someone has created a page with some blurb about the category; but meanwhile a user can get to a page which says, in effect, "hello, I don't exist, but look, I've got a bunch of links to lots of articles". And the user could be forgiven for thinking "but you do exist, you crack addled categorisation page, you do, I can see you. And what's this ugly edit box like a carbuncle on your bottom, eh?". In other words, would be better, imo, to have the categorisation page created as a blank page by some process, such that we don't get this UI 'feature' --Tagishsimon
The red category link is useful when trying to spot categories that need description articles. Also, categories with descriptions but no member articles don't show up in Special:categories even if they are members of other categories. More wierdness. --ssd 00:43, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

About the new skin

This might be rather late but, why exactly was it decided to change the skin. and why was no-one told about it before it happened?. Personally I find the new skin quite hideous, it hurts my eyes reading it, I've had to go back to using the old one. I think this might be quite off-putting for readers. What does anyone else think? G-Man 19:58, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I am not very knowledgeable about how things work at en. But at Japanese Wikipedia, someone caught that info. on IRC, and reported it to the wikipedia embassy page, with links to pages like meta:Skins. Perhaps there is a similar flow of news here?
Also, in case you want to comment this skin and other features, here is a convenient place meta:MediaWiki 1.3 comments and bug reports. I don't think it is too late. Tomos 20:57, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It's been floated about for a long time (mostly mentioned off-handedly), but ever since it was put on test it should have become widely known as most of the features there eventually make it onto the 'pedias. I think the new skin looks better, but it's not just that. It's a whole new system that allows for better customizing the look. This one was supposed to inspire a new skin that would be based on the new system. Dori | Talk 22:55, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)

Page duplication

Recently, I've noticed a lot of accidental duplications of pages, VfD especially. What are these, precisely, and is there anything we can do to get rid of them? Thanks, Meelar 20:22, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

  • As the guilty party who duped VFD just now, I think it's related to the really slow response time we're getting at the moment. Might be some kind of timeout-and-retry effect with my browser. -- DrBob 20:51, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I guess you mean duplication of sections of pages, not the complete page? There is a problem with the automatic editing conflict merging, which fails when sections are added, deleted or moved. As VfD is maybe the most often edited page it is the prime candidate for such problems to surface. This is probably the one mentioned on MW1.3 bug reports. I also had a duplication once when getting the real edit conflict window and then trying to merge both edits, but I haven't tried to reproduce that one. andy 20:54, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I've tried to reproduce the bug, without much success. I think it arises from section edit conflicts, and the use of either Back or repeating clicking Save Page, I'm not 100% sure. Dysprosia 14:07, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Well, as I've mentioned elsewhere, this predates v1.3 - Bug 949323 explains the old behaviour. Now, essentially, the response to an edit conflict with oneself is "undefined" - there is no explicit code for dealing with it, so whatever bit of code it gets passed to next will blindly do who-knows-what. I'm guessing the section-specific effects may indeed be an odd interaction with the new merging code, but still boil down to the same undetected case (i.e. user submits the same edit twice). I'll update the bug report to mention this. - IMSoP 15:57, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Bulleted lists

Why is it no longer possible to have a gap (one empty line) in a bulleted list? (Or am I again wrong?) <KF> 20:46, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Monobook.css#Line_spacing_for_lists_and_indents , posted yesterday, seems to be about the same thing. Sorry, I only found out a few minutes ago. But it's a real problem! <KF> 22:08, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Linked Images

Noticed this at Template talk:Wikipediasister. I think this is important and is missing attention. --Ankur 21:04, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Is there any way the images can be made clickable? (ie act as links?) Otherwise it would be annoying to click on the image, expecting to go to the site, when one goes to the Image: page instead. Dysprosia 01:12, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I've asked about this before as well when the Main Page was first redesigned. It would be nice to have on anything on the main page really. RADICALBENDER★ 23:00, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Absolutely. I mean, a lot of people coming to wikipedia are newcomers. They've spent there lifetime clicking on images that either enlarge or take them to another article. To a newcomer it obviously is a strange behaviour for an image to take the user to the attribution page even if the image does enlarge. On the main page it is expected that clicking on the image will take you to the article rather the Image:Xyz.png page. So definitely image on main page should take you to the article. This reminds me of the wikipedia logo - which takes you to the homepage of wikipedia instead of Image:WikipediaLogo.png or something of the sort. Now if there were a solution to the problem of wikipedians who will want to modify the image. --Ankur 02:29, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I put a redirect on the image page of the Meta image, the same can be done for the others. The only disadvantage is that it is now inconvenient to go to that page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Image:Metawiki.png&redirect=no .--Patrick 11:19, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Actually, I don't think it will, for places like Wikibooks or Wikiquote, which don't have the capability to link to the projects using conventional [[ ]] means (eg, you can't go wikibooks:Main page) Dysprosia 05:04, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Case sensitivity in "Go"

I can't even begin to express what a profoundly bad idea it is to have case sensitivity for the "Go" 'search' (for instance, "gnu project") without providing a page of case-insensitive alternatives should the 'search' fail to find any results. If this isn't remedied, it seems necessary to provide redirect pages for these case variations, despite it being a tremendous waste of time. - Centrx 21:27, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree it is strange. With the current algorithm a search on "gNU project" will work - the software will try alternative casing for the first alphabet of a word. I think at the time of indexing all content should be converted to same case (same thing for searching) --Ankur 21:39, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Completely disagree. Case sensitivity is important in Wikipedia because articles are differentiated by case. Ab is different from AB. RickK 23:52, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)

It should be case-sensitive as long as the article exists. But it should fall back to a case-insensitive comparison if the exact capitalization is not found. As I write this, putting "gnu project" into the box and hitting Go doesn't work, when it should find the GNU project redirect. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:18, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The "Go" function sucks. The Google-powered search function sucks. The Yahoo-powered search function sucks. And the previously-available built-in global search wasn't all that fantastic, either. I'll bet I'm not the only person who has innocently created a short stub for a subject because I couldn't find the excellent full-length article that happened to be already available. Dpbsmith 13:58, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
What's wrong with the Google search function? Aside from the lag of it, it should index the Wikipedia successfully. - Centrx 02:39, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Articles are differentiated by case, but generally speaking users (as opposed to editors) don't care. Google searches are completely case-insensitive. A good compromise for Wikipedia would be: If a search term includes any upper-case characters (from any locale) then treat the entire search term as case-sensitive; otherwise, treat it as case-insensitive. If there are multiple matches for a case-insensitive search, show them and let the user pick. Support for explicit wildcards (*, ?) would be nice too. -- Avaragado 17:42, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the programmers have included searches for several possible capitalizations of articles when using Go: I don't remember the order, but after trying "as entered", they try all lowercase, all uppercase, and all lower case except with the first letter of each word uppercase (probably others--I can't find the article). There are two I feel should be added:

  • Just like the last one I mentioned, except define "word" as preceded by punctuation, not just preceded by a space, for things like "North-East India"
  • Again, like the previous ones, but lowercase first letters of 'small words' (of, the, and, etc.) to catch things like "University of Washington"

I think all "go" searches should be case-insensitive. Articles with differentiated case are really only of interest to editors (and then mostly for editing purposes), and to people who know precisely (down to the capitalization) what they are looking for; even those who know precisely what they are looking for may not correctly guess what capitalization scheme is in use for an article. Articles that might inadvertently turn up in a case-insensitive search (for example, Ab when one is looking for AB) could just have the disambiguation notice ("This article is about... for other meanings, see...") at the top. -- Wapcaplet 00:37, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Commas in article titles

I've noticed a sudden rash (well, a few pages I have on my watchlist) suddenly being moved from their current page name to the same name with an added comma. Example: European Parliament election 2004 has been moved to European Parliament election, 2004. I'm not sure this helps (actually, I'm sure of the reverse) as if someone enters an address directly they are more likely to enter it without the comma. Comments anyone? --VampWillow 23:33, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Looks like an attempt to be consistent with the UK general and US presidential election naming conventions. There seems to be about a million and one sensible ways of naming a particular election. I am not sure if the reason for picking that one was any better than "Pick one, and make appropriate redirects". (Redirects take care of your last concern, btw). Pcb21| Pete 00:09, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I really dislike the election title format with the comma. Someone seems to have started using it for American elections and now it is the "standard" that everyone else must follow irrespective of how it is a rarely used and grammatically suspect arrangement. - SimonP 13:06, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)
I don't like it either. Maybe it is not too late to bring down this terrible institution. Now if only I could find the original debate.... Pcb21| Pete 14:19, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It was just the arbitrary way that [[User:RobLa|] named all the U.S. presidential election articles when he created them from public domain text. TC was the first to complain [12] and I agree that the format is not at all natural to link to. For example, 2000 U.S. presidential election is more natural and thus more likely to be directly linked to without using the pipe trick than U.S. presidential election, 2000. If you want to have this changed, then goto Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions and argue your case. If a change is approved I volunteer to move all U.S. presidential election articles and fix any broken redirects. --05:04, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[[{year} {adjective of nationality} {type of election}]] – yes, let's do it! –Hajor 13:27, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Before y'all get fired up to make a bunch of changes, you might want to review the extensive discussions that have teken place on this topic: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (years in titles), Wikipedia:WikiProject POTUS Campaigns, Talk:John Kerry presidential campaign, 2004#Page title. These are ones I know of, there may be others. FWIW, I don't especially like how the titles look, but can live with it--especially since you can create redirects to use whatever formulation you prefer without needing the pipe trick. older≠wiser 13:46, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
See also Talk:Canadian federal election for more discussion. Perhaps we should hold a poll to decide such a major change. - SimonP 15:03, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)
My own preference would be [[{adjective of nationality} {type of election} (year)]] as being more logical and making the same election appears in a date-order list directly, but I'll off to the other discussions for a read... --VampWillow 16:26, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Have re-opened disussion on this at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (years in titles) Please continue disussion there. Thanks. --VampWillow

Can't edit Template:Opentask

I've tried at least a dozen times today to edit Template:Opentask. Everytime, the page won't load after I his "save page" and after a few minutes has passed, I get Database error: A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an illegal search query (see Searching Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug in the software...from within function "Article::updateArticle". MySQL returned error "1205: Lock wait timeout exceeded; Try restarting transaction". I want to chage the "wikify" line to: <li>'''[[Wikipedia:Glossary|Wikify]]:''' [[Antioch, Pisidia]], [[Euthymia]], [[Candaba, Pampanga]], [[Lector]], [[Leroy_Chiao]], '''[[Wikipedia:deadend pages|Deadend Pages]]''' Anyone else getting this problem? --Jiang 23:57, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

There seem to be more such problems recently - see the above section Delete problem and even more similar Trouble editing template namespace. andy 11:36, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
And another article which cannot be edited anymore: Flat-clawed Hermit Crab. There seem to be serious database problems developing. andy 14:50, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The Template:Opentask page is still un-edit-able. I have been trying to replace the 'blue' requests with new 'red' ones the past few days, and I keep getting the same error msg. Rather frustrating.... :-( -- PFHLai 20:32, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)
I tried to fix this once, and only succeeded in crashing the whole site. Apparently it's impossible to fix while there's a backup running, which is a fair proportion of the time. -- Tim Starling 04:05, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)
Thank you for trying, Mr. Starling. I hope you can catch the backup taking a break soon. :-) Good Luck. -- PFHLai 06:07, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)

After almost a week, Template:Opentask is still frozen. Sigh .... Is it possible to start a new Template, delete the old template, then rename/move the new template to take up the void ? Will this solve our problem ? I ain't an Admin. I can't try it out it myself. I don't even know if this is a good idea or not, so I shouldn't try it, I suppose ..... -- PFHLai 05:22, 2004 Jun 16 (UTC)

Aligning an image without a table?

I'm sure this is recorded in some FAQ, but I can't find it. I want to float an image to the right with text filling in whatever space remains to the left. Is using a table the best (only?) way to do this? Thanks. --Fritzlein 05:23, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

To float to the right, use [[Image:NameOfImage.jpg|right|Alt text]] or [[Image:NameOfImage.jpg|thumb|Caption]]. Read more at Wikipedia:Extended image syntax. --Diberri | Talk 06:34, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for. I see that the html it produces uses divs, not tables, so I guess I was not only doing it the hard way, but also the wrong way! --Fritzlein 23:39, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Can't make my mind up ...

Article on nerd has had an edit by an IP address user. To the list of Examples of the stereotype in the media they have added

I can't quite decide whether this is misplaced within the article, an example of minor vandalism, or totally accurate, so I have brought it to a wider audience for amusement and response ;-) --VampWillow 11:49, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

If it is supposed to an insult, it is a self-referential one :P Chuq 14:01, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It appears that someone has removed it. But I think it's fair under the terms of its own definition, frankly. And I speak as someone who has every intention of hanging around for a very long time. --bodnotbod 16:20, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)


Ethnic Groups Infobox

There is a proposal to change the ethnic group infobox at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups Template. Proposed alternatives can be found at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethnic Groups Template#Color scheme. Some people may want to propose more drastic changes: see Talk:Jew#Ethnicity box. If you have an opinion, please chime in soon at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethnic Groups Template#Color scheme. -- Jmabel 21:24, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)

Suggestion: Rendering of "wurble (thing)"

(William M. Connolley 22:32, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)) There are quite a few articles of the form, e.g., "Joe Brown (climber)". To refer to these, its necessary (I think) to write: Joe Brown (climber)|Joe Brown. But since the ()'s is (always?) inteded to be hidden, couldn't the wiki software do this automatically?

It can, just write your link in the form [[Joe Brown (climber)|]]. The trailing | will cause mediawiki to auto-convert it to Joe Brown. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:35, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
(William M. Connolley 11:30, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)) Clever. Thank you! (and now I know about the nowiki tags too...)

Help with accents in article name

I just attempted to move the article Bogoljub Karic to Bogoljub Karić. What I got was something that the link Bogoljub Karić certainly goes to - but it displays at the top of the article as Bogoljub Karić (the URL has Bogoljub_Kari%C4%87). What have I done wrong?! Can it be fixed!? —Stormie 22:39, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)

Currently the english wikipedia, unlike some other wikipedias supports only latin-1 (or is it latin-15?), not UTF titles. It means that we cannot use any other characters than those in latin-1 ✏ Sverdrup 09:09, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Right.. so to summarise it very crudely, the various accents over vowels are available, but accents over consonants like ć for the most part are not? Thanks for explaining that.. --Stormie 04:08, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)

Problem doing a Diff

I tried doing a Diff on the most recent change to Atlanta, Georgia from the Recent Changes page, and I got a database error:

[13]

A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an illegal search query (see Searching Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: SELECT old_namespace,old_title,old_timestamp,old_text,old_flags,old_user_text,old_comment FROM "old" WHERE old_id=4043094 from within function "DifferenceEngine::loadText". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '"old" WHERE old_id=4043094' at line 1". Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta%2C_Georgia"

I tried going to the article, looking at the History, and doing the Diff that way, and got the same error. But when I opened a new window and tried it, it worked fine. RickK 23:28, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)

I miss the colored diffs

Yesterday, I could recognize which words were changed in an edit-diff. Today I can not. Is there some preference I ought to change to get this feature back again?
--Ruhrjung 02:51, 2004 Jun 12 (UTC)

I also noticed this. I think it's a newly introduced bug. The CSS rule to color differences must have been removed, or the HTML changed so that the CSS rule can no longer apply to these sections. I would've added my own CSS rule in my User CSS page but it seems to be protected. --seav 03:28, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Never mind... I was logged out. --seav 03:31, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
As a temporary fix, add this line to your User:xxx/monobook.css page:
 .diffchange {color: red;}
Although this should've been working in the first place. --seav 03:34, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Holy, somebody just changed the diff to a ginormous fontsize! How can I change it back? ".diffchange {size: NOT-OVERSIZED"? ;-) --Menchi 03:48, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It isn't so much a bug as a feature... before today, diff text was formatted with a tag like this:
<font color="red">diff text goes here</font>
We'd been discussing it over at m:Talk:User styles#Changing text style in diff, and User:Gwicke re-worked a few things so that diff text is now formatted like this:
<span class="diffchange">diff text goes here</span>
As far as I'm concerned, that change is a good thing; I couldn't always tell when text was red before, but now I can make it underlined, ginormous, and mauve (if I want) without having to interfere with other possible uses for the <font> tag. I think the default settings are still evolving, though. - jredmond 04:35, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Was the recent drop in the font size in the two parallel diff text columns (using Standard skin) part of this change? It suddenly became smaller and now I have to lean forward in my chair to peer at the screen and see what changed. Was that discussed anywhere? Can I change it back on my own? –Hajor 13:36, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Huge images

How firm is the 100K guideline? There's a bunch of HUGE photos going in, such as Image:Charmed Rose McGowan.jpg , which is over 1.3 Megabytes. Niteowlneils 04:57, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I have uploaded large pictures once in a while (I like high-res pics), but I never go above 300k. 1.3 megs is ridiculous. →Raul654 05:00, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)
I think the limit is 2MB. With automatic thumbnailing, the size of images in articles is not so much of a problem anymore, but it does make it difficult if someone wants to go to the image page. Angela (who has no tildes so can't sign properly)
Yes, 2 megs is the limit (as I found out empirically when uploading songs). →Raul654 09:45, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)
In the light of the thumbnailer, 100K seems rather low. If possible, it's nice to be able to keep a small image on the page and click to a larger one, and find something worthwhile there. 800x600 seems like a sensible workable maximum, which produces JPEGs roughly in the 200-400K range. Giant images (the 2000x1600 etc. one gets from a decent modern digicam) are impractical for almost all screens. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:08, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

1.3 is ridiculous. But it's quite bad when you click on a thumbnail size, and you get a image that's basically one fingernail larger than the thumbnail. (What's the point?) ^_* --Menchi 22:22, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree that it is annoying when you click on a picture, the "larger" version is basically the same size, and that 100K might be a little low, but jeez, this one[14] is 1858933 bytes, 3783x2543 pixels, or (according to Photoshop) 12.61x8.477 inches, but that's gotta be print size or something, because using 1024x768 monitor resolution, I can only see a small fraction of the picture at a time in a maximized browser window. I mean, we're talking a headshot several times bigger than life-size. Wikipedia is not paper, but at some point there's gotta be bandwidth issues, and what about dial-up users? Other than the 100K request on the upload page, and the 2M hard file limit, nobody says/does anything when people are uploading pics that are basically useless when not thumbnailed? (Actually, I may crop some, as some have quite a bit of wasted space, but I'm reluctant to do anything more drastic that might open me to "lowered image quality" complaints. There's no way to put the cropped image at the same name, and still have the original version available thru the history, right?) Niteowlneils 02:39, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I've uploaded several images in the 700kb range because i believe that those *are* useful if somebody would like to print them or use them for other things. The image shown on the the image page should probably be 800px width max (shouldn't be hard to do on the software). That should avoid any bandwidth problems- the really big image could still be downloaded with an extra 'full image (768kb, 3783x2543px)' link. Some central repository (be it wikiimages or wikicommons) would also be nice of course. -- Gabriel Wicke 23:35, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

A problem

Every time I go to a different page, a message flashes up, saying "A Runtime Error has occurred. Do you wish to Debug? Line 363 Error: 'ta' is undefined". What's causing this, and how can I fix it? It only happens when I use the "standard" skin. Meelar 05:43, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It sounds like it could be your browser. What browser do you use? →Raul654 05:53, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)

IE 6.0. Meelar 05:56, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That is the debug feature that is turned on by default. The problem it probably the css, if you are only getting it on the standard skin. I suggest you google for the answer. Hope this helps. Burgundavia 12:27, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)
Please reload (ctrl-f5) the page to get the latest js. It was changed a few days ago. Same applies to the diff rendering (if the font size is larger and the red colour is missing). -- Gabriel Wicke 17:06, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Reloading didn't help for me, I had to Delete my cache (ALT+T ALT+O ALT+F <ENTER>) to make it go away, even tho' I have IE set to load the page "every time", instead of the default "automatically". Niteowlneils 02:47, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

IE's browser cache handling is famous for it's brokenness. During testing i also sometimes got an older version after an initially successful refresh, not sure what's going on in IE but it sure ain't pretty. -- Gabriel Wicke 09:03, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I guess--on one of my other systems, even deleting the cache didn't work--I had to re-boot the computer to make the errors go away. Niteowlneils 20:05, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Working barefoot in the Wiki Village

Arbitration and de-adminship

Proof of blatant double standards

Request here was removed. There is ABSOLUTELY NO place in public Wiki space where this can be put without it being immedately removed or redirected by wikipolice to some 'quarantaine quarters. On the contrary, if admin complainants care to carry active editors in ludicrous "arbitrations" without trying to resolve dispute first, such complainants are heard and pampered viz. titillated. So they feel encouraged to "admin" even more in such masturbatory styles. Alas, they are also, by this very action, de facto, and automatically requesting review of their own administrative actions, AND desysoping. As I ALREADY stated, redirecting or CUTTING my request is NOT, repeat NOT a REVIEW of admin actions - but Wikipolice "maintanance" as usual. I therefore LEAVE WIKI having made my final point. - Good bye, and good riddance :O) irismeister 14:27, 2004 Jun 11 (UTC)

The link you used specifically quotes you as saying "Do me a favor! Forget me! Just help the Alternative Medical Project going on thanks to John, and I will retire my request". Why, then shouldn't it have been deleted? RickK 23:08, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)

Proposed practical measures

  1. systematic inclusion of "Wikicreative indices" (WICI) on each editor's personal page;
  2. automatic addition of the "Wikipolice tag", when attributed by computed stats to personal signatures;
  3. real-time measures of the "Wikicreative index";
  4. NEVER delete thispage, even after I'm gone for good. This is essential for newcomers. They absolutely need this warning, so that their would-be, bona fide volunteer contributions would not be exploited.
  5. FINAL WARNING In my own half-year assignment I had to deal with aggressive, brutal, ignorant Wikipedia:Wikipolice. There is no doubt in my mind that Wikipedia has become a piratocracy. Basically, you would give time, energy, knowledge away for free, only to be insulted and libelled. That's how piratocracies work: They grab what they can and then they boast and tap each other on their respective shoulders about how democratic they are. They aren't. They are only pathetically brutal pirates, giving themselves a collective treat by pampering their "position" in wolf packing-order. If you want to give it a try at your turn, be ready to lose enormous amounts of time of your life, only because Wikipedia:Wikipolice takes advantage of your life, and try to smear you or your ideals, dragging you into unnecessary babysitting sessions with the incredibly ignorant "peers". Consider yourself warned! - irismeister 12:12, 2004 Jun 12 (UTC)

I have no idea what Wikicreative indices are and why you think they're necessary. Can you elaborate? RickK 23:10, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)

Editing

When attempting to edit Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, one comes across a "database error." One is instructed to restart the transaction. What would cause such a problem? -- Emsworth 14:45, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)

In my experience this is pure random chance. I would suggest that you try it a few more times and see if you can't get through. If not.. well.. I wouldn't know what to do then. :/ -- Grunt 14:55, 2004 Jun 12 (UTC)
I hope I am permitted to delete and undelete the page to resolve this issue. -- Emsworth 15:16, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)
I had the same problem earlier with Flat-clawed Hermit Crab (it worked in the 10th try), and then this page showed that error. And above are two sections about pages which have the same problem, e.g. Template:Opentask. I think a developer has to look into it, this looks like a serious database problem growing... andy 15:19, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Well, its working now... so let's hope it's not too significant a problem. -- Emsworth 15:25, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)

Identical articles on Wikipedia and encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com

Snap!

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/History%20of%20Scotland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Scotland

I'm not a wikipedian but found one of your articles useful reading today. Then found the identical one. Just letting anyone concerned know, in case it's a problem.

Nope, this is perfectly legal, since all our work is licenced under the GFDL (see Wikipedia:Copyrights for more info). Thanks for the heads up; have you considered creating an account? Hope you found the place useful, Meelar 19:01, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That's ok then, wish more of the 'net was more open. I've often found wikipedia useful but virtual home is the erratic but sometimes breath taking h2g2 (and I spend too much time on the internet already).

I've noticed recently that clicking on "What links here" for an Image: page lists nothing, even though pages do link to the image. For example, click on the image from Bose-Einstein condensate, and then click on the image's "What links here" — it says that nothing links to it. Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug? Thanks. —Steven G. Johnson 20:56, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)

The switch to 1.3 created this issue. It's been reported multiple times on the bugs page. →Raul654 21:45, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)

Math symbols

Is it just me, or are some math symbols appearing as squares in the Monobook skin? For example, the right arrow (→) appears as a square, which renders some articles, such as domain, codomain, and range, difficult to read (although note in these articles I changed the inline math expressions that involved a right arrow into LaTeX---revert to earlier versions to see the squares). I think the sans-serif font is to blame. I don't believe sans-serif font supports a right arrow symbol. I think we should change the default font back to a Roman font or at least a font which supports all the math symbols the articles use. What does everyone think? –Matt 22:37, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

On the other hand, I see the right arrow appears correctly on this page, so perhaps it is just my computer... –Matt 22:38, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I just checked those pages on Firefox 0.8, IE6, and Opera 7.51, all on windows XP, and the previous versions (before your laTeXification) all render properly (if somewhat anaemically). I don't doubt you've seen a problem, however, but perhaps it's the usual stylesheet-caching issue, or something. Do a ctrl-f5 or shift-reload, sacrifice something cute to Legba, and don't worry. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:39, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I've seen similar square-box problems numerous times, even with the old layout, always when viewing Wikipedia pages under Mozilla on Linux, presumably due to font problems. It would be helpful if Matt would specify an OS and browser. (In-line math seems to have switched over to a serif font, although the font-size now clashes with the body text.) —Steven G. Johnson 15:53, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)
I've tried both IE5.5 and IE6 under Windows ME. In both cases, I see squares in some places (such as the articles cited above) but the correct math symbols in others (such as the village pump). –Matt 01:08, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Actually, the square-boxes seem to appear randomly now. I used to be able to see the right arrow above, but now it appears as a box. –Matt 01:11, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'm on Debian GNU/Linux running Mozilla Firebird 0.8 and I see no problem with the symbols. - Centrx 20:21, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

On Providing Sources For Fiction

Hello. I wanted to disuss to you about loosening your concrete rule of providing a source. I do not believe providing a source is necessary for all articles, especially when it's about fiction. I believe that all that is needed to solve issues about fiction is logical reasoning. Please be aware of your policy and try to change it for the satisfaction of many people such as me. --Marcus2

If we started to have a policy that people could insert stuff, on any subject, without being able to prove what they say is true, then people would insert any old crap they wanted, and there would be no criteria for ever removing it. I don't understand the debates your having about Mario characters, but say I inserted that Mario was a radical trotskyite insurgent (manual worker, wears red, always fighting against entrenched capitalist interests). It's utter nonsense, but it could be said to be logical reasoning (for some value of "logical", which is surprisingly subjective). So it's not sufficient that something has to be true to be included - it has to be provable too (yes yes popperian pedants, it has to be falsifiable and not falsified). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:11, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Please. Everyone knows that Mario is a hippie. Powerups from mushrooms and flowers, following which he fights a giant lizard? Meelar 23:19, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
If you are looking for hidden fictional communists you need look no further than the smurfs. And there, I provided some sources too :) →Raul654 23:16, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)
Urgh. Yet another strawman comes to life and goes off, ravaging the countryside. I should know better. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:30, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Popperian pedants? I haven't heard one like that since Spiro Agnew's "nattering nabobs of negativism."

            She said they were real, so he tried
            To prove they were real--and she cried
              "That's very improper;
              According to Popper,
            They only can be falsie-fied."

Dpbsmith 01:09, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

About Mario being a radical Trotskyite insurgent, the logical reasoning you gave is ridiculous and has no comparison to mine on a different matter. Besides, this is POVish. Please change your policy, or at least let me edit the articles. --Marcus2

"ridiculous" you say :) Bah! prove it's ridiculous. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:46, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Please watch the language. Not all laborers are Trotskyites, not everybody who wears red are communists, and Mario in no way fights against "entrenched capitalist interests." Eat your hat! --Marcus2

Nobody's stopping you from editing the articles, but you haven't really convinced people that we should change our policy of requiring sources on fictional material. As such, I have to ask that you continue to follow them. Best, Meelar 23:42, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Goodbye

It was fun while it lasted. But I've no interest in working here as long as people just delete what they don't like without discussing it on the appropriate talk pages. There are more mature places on the internet to work. abigail@abigail.nl. Abigail

Oh dear, this is unfortunate. Abigail has done some sterling work on snooker players, and in general has been very dilligent doing unpleasant work on taxoboxes and other unexciting things. I was verging on nominating her for adminship ;( As far as I can tell, Abigail's unhappiness stems from a (frankly rather mild) category dispute. Abigail: please come back. Stuff like this happens all the time, and things generally aren't as contentious as they seem (okay, the anon who threated to behead me was somewhat contentious). It turns out I've read wikipedia's constitution (a privilege granted me by my inner membership of the 9th cabal, occupied only by myself and Jimbo's cat) and it turns out that, like the mob, once you're in, you're in. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:21, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I did not threaten to behead you. Were you talking about me? --Marcus2

Oh no (sorry folks, probably wasn't clear about that). That was some crazy dude, months ago. Sorry for any confusion. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:42, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

For background, please see the pre-blanking version of User_talk:Abigail-II (see [15]).

I would urge her to un-blank her talk page and respond. You demand a discussion, and you've got one, so please participate in it. -- Curps 00:39, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

From what I see here, (s)he did not demand a discussion, just stated his/her leaving. I don't think you are in the position to urge her (is it a her?) to do anything... Pfortuny 19:01, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Co-Writing

Would anyone be interested in writing an article with me? I like to write articles in Computer Science and Science and Political stuff (maybe some other stuff too)...but two+ heads are better than one! Please reply here or on my talk page. Ilyanep 01:07, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I have a half-assed version of "name mangling" that I need motivation to work on. Hmm, maybe that's too trivial for any sane wikipedian. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:29, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Some Pages too long

There should be a mass cleanup of the Village Pump and Vfd pages...they take at least 15-20 seconds to load on my DSL! Ilyanep 01:07, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Admin enforcement requested by AC page set-up

I just set up a page that will be used by the Arbitration Committee to inform Admins of arbitration rulings that we would like to see enforced. Please see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Admin enforcement requested for current requests. --mav 02:08, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Given the length of time that some of the arbitrations have been outstanding (nearly 2 months in some cases), how about Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Admin decisions requested? -- ChrisO 07:11, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Election results

"Elections are over. Congratulations to ..." To whom? I don't see any results. What am I missing? RickK 03:03, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)

Confused categorisation of "Kelvin"

Kelvin is tagged as belonging to the category SI base units but SI base units does not list Kelvin. Any ideas on what's going on here? -- Grunt 03:16, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)

Categories have problems with slow updating. I don't know why. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:42, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I can see that, but the other articles I tagged with SI base units (Mole (unit), Metre, Candela, Second, and Ampere were all added immediately to the category... -- Grunt 15:06, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)

I went to Kelvin and did an "Edit" and "Save". Since I didn't modify anything, nothing shows up in History. But lo and behold, Kelvin now appears in Category:SI base units. -- Curps 15:52, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

A related issue is some items bizarrely sorted under "C". For instance Atom was listed under "C" in Category:Chemistry. Doing the no-modification Edit+Save trick on Atom fixed this too. An actual modification will also fix it. -- Curps 16:02, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Kingdom of Israel is largely myth.

Moved to: Talk:Zionism

Sandbox for Templates

Shouldn't there be a [[Template:____]] page for testing out templates just like Wikipedia:Sandbox? One could use the string "{{{inuse}}}" in the page when working on it, so that when someone views the template he/she/they know(s) that the page is in use, but the "inuse" message won't appear in the page when the template is transcluded. -- Paddu 10:28, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

You mean, creating new Templates to play with? Do that at the test wiki. Dysprosia 10:31, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
See above: You can also use subpages of your user page, see m:template. Also there is Template:Template sandbox.--Patrick 10:46, 13 Jun 2004
Thanks! Subpage templates are actually what I was looking for, but thought it was too much to expect. -- Paddu 12:33, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

worldhistory.com

Moved from Wikipedia:Reference desk.

I was wandering on some google results when I found this site. It seems to be using ALL Wikipedia content on it. The page just downloads the Wikipedia page and then prints it on their site, along with ads and sponsor links all around it (and their "on the news" is just a google link, as well as their other "features" are just "sucked out" from other sites). I googled wikipedia about this site name and didn't found anything, so I suppose nobody's aware of this yet. But, anyway, there ARE texts over there saying the article is from Wikipedia, but, is this alright or legal or what? I know Wikipedia is free and etc, but can they do that? Even with all those ads? Aren't they USING Wikipedia and it's content for dragging users to their page so they get hits on their ads? That's what it seems to me!

Compare:

http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/N/Nikola-Tesla.htm with Nikola Tesla http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/D/Dilbert.htm with Dilbert http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/W/Wikipedia.htm with Wikipedia

Just change that letter after "/wiki/" and try it with ANYTHING!

Hope I'm being helpful warning about this, and sorry if the reference desk isn't the right place for it

This (the Refernce desk) probably isn't the right place, so I move your question. However, it's a good thing you brought this up. To the best of my knowledge the site is perfectly legitimate. They do not download Wikipedia articles on the fly, wrap them in advertisements and redistribute them, causing undue Wikipedia strain. Rather, they appear to have downloaded the database (available freely at Wikipedia:Database download) and are now hosting a mirror. This is perfectly legitimate, as long as they give due credit to Wikipedia (which, in turn, gives credit to its editor, as per GFDL specifications). -- Itai 11:15, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
*sigh* This is already on the Wikipedia:Help desk too... Dysprosia 11:21, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

"Page does not exist" warning

This may sound silly, but I've just noticed that the notice one gets on pages that do not exist is: "(Wikipedia does not have an article on this topic yet. To start the article, click Edit this page.)" Thing is, under the current default skin, there is no "Edit this page" link - there is simply an "edit" tab at the top of the page. Could someone modify this message? I gather it's somewhere in the MediaWiki: namespace - in which case, by the way, feel free to move this request into that article's Talk page and continue the discussion there, if this is more appropriate. (I've never really dealt with interface before.) Ideally, the "Edit this page" part should be a link to the relevant edit page. -- Itai 12:27, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Sounds like a very good idea. Let's see if we can change it. ✏ Sverdrup 12:29, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I have changed it. It was in MediaWiki:Noarticletext and you can find such pages by searching Special:Allmessages. You'll have to get an admin (if you are not one) to make the changes to most of them though. Dori | Talk 14:16, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)
It works! Thanks. (By the way, when I followed the link to MediaWiki:Noarticletext, I must admit that for a moment I thought you gave me the wrong address.) -- Itai 14:36, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
But... with the change, it is now right for people using the Monobook skin, but wrong for people using the Standard skin. It's probably better this way, but really, some of these messages need to be defined on a per-skin basis. Dpbsmith 22:52, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Actually, you can take it to mean click the Edit link in the box rather than the edit link which is part of the tabs :) Dori | Talk 04:17, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

Automatically fixing category sorting under "C" ?

It seems that there was a bug at one time, causing any article added to a category to be sorted under "C". Articles sorted this way remain there until the next time they are modified.

For instance, Category:Programming languages, as of this moment, has "Ada programming language" listed under "C", as well as "JavaScript", "Fortran", "Lisp programming language".

Fixing this is very simple for any individual article: just Edit it and Save. This can be done even without making any changes during the edit, in which case the "modification" won't even show up in the article History. But the category will now show the article under its correct alphabetical letter.

The problem is, there are many such bogus "C" listings, scattered over all the various categories and sub-categories. It may be months before some of the articles in question get edited and modified in the normal course of Wikipedia editing. Is there any way to run a script to fix this globally, or must we wait for the problem to fix itself over the coming weeks and months? -- Curps 16:37, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

If you can get a developer to run the update suggested on meta, it might be fixed. -- User:Docu

Section editing

When editing only a single section, where you click on the edit link next to the section name and cannot edit other parts of the page, the software should not prompt an editing conflict if other sections of the page are changed. This would be quite beneficial, especially for active pages like the Village Pump or VfD and, if section editing is only a user interface thing and still posts the entire article, then changing that would be of great benefit to conserving Wikipedia bandwidth, etc. - Centrx 20:18, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I thought this was changed with the latest change of the software. RickK 21:00, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)

HELP!!!

Hi! I started the Current Sports Events page yesterday, by copying the Current Events page model, but something went wrong, and the letters look extremely small....I need help, can someone correct this? Antonio World Matrix Martin 20:something 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Looks like you copied some of the right-hand table source from Current events. I've removed this table, so your text now appears how I think you wanted it. I also moved it to Current sports events following Wikipedia naming convention. -- Avaragado 22:57, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Skin changing

Recently, I've noticed a few changes. For example, instead of nonexistent pages appearing in red, they've only got a red question mark next to them. Also, links are no longer underlined. At the same time, section editing stopped working. Why is this happening, and how can I change it back? Meelar 22:49, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The things you noticed are preference settings, you can change them back. -- Gabriel Wicke 08:56, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

In case it's useful to anyone, tonight I made this:

It's the vaguely-standard link button size of 80x15. Feel free to use it to link to Wikipedia. Marnanel 01:04, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I've added a link to it under Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. —Steven G. Johnson 02:11, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)
My understanding is that the nohat logo is not GFDL. See m:Logo -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 03:27, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Given what I see there, Finlay, I would argue that Marnanel's work is derivative, and that nohat's only request for derivative works is that they be released under the GFDL, which it's my understanding that Marnanel's work is. Is there a section I'm misreading? Jwrosenzweig 19:50, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
My understanding is that nohat hasn't yet agreed to the terms on that page, so they're pending terms, not current ones. On the assumption that he does approve them, those terms request that derivative works be licenced under the GFDL (I think that implies, but doesn't prove) that the original isn't GFDL - the restriction would already be there were the original GFDL. Don't misunderstand me - I'm not critisising Nohat or Marnanel or their work at all (they're lovely - the work, that is). Indeed, I think that the logo and marnanel's button shouldn't be GFDL. Just like the wikipedia trademark, ideally they'd belong to Wikimedia (or have Wikimedia in particular be granted a rather broad licence to them). If the logo were GFDL, then any of our mirrors could blithely use them, change them as they saw fit, and change the link target to point not to wikipedia but to the mirror. By way of a (somewhat extreme) example, Sun Microsystems has a "jump to java" webbutton, the only redistributable use of their "Duke" character (roughly a logo for their Java technology). The terms they impose on users of the webbutton is that the button be accompanied by html (essentially, the link text and destination) supplied by Sun. So you couldn't use their button but point it somewhere else. That seems like a reasonable thing we'd like to think about for users of buttons like Marnanel's (and, not to belabour the point, but that's something we can only achieve if the image isn't GFDL) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:41, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hijacked browser keys

Along with the new layout, Wikipedia seems to now hijack browser keys. For example, when I hit "alt-f", which normally brings me to the "file" menu of my browser, Wikipedia instead moves my cursor to the "search" box on the right hand side. When I hit "alt-e", which normally brings me to the "edit" menu of my browser, Wikipedia instead seemingly does nothing - until I happen to hit the "enter" key, at which time it magically brings me to the "edit" page for the article I happen to be on, even if I hit a bunch of other keys in between "alt-e" and "enter".

I'm sure that the heart of whoever made this feature was in the right place. But please. Please. Turn it off. There's nothing worse, from a UI point of view, than taking something that the user knows so well that he doesn't even think about it, and replace it with something else entirely. It stops me in my tracks, confuses me, and forces me to think about things on a conscious level that otherwise are entirely subconscious. Moreover, it can be viewed, in a way, as rude.

I know how to use my browser. I know how to edit Wikipedia articles. Please don't presume that you know better than me how I should use my browser and how I should edit Wikipedia articles.

Thank you.

-Rwv37 03:29, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

What browser are you using? Presumably you don't want *any* site to do this, and there may be a way to turn it off globally. Marnanel 03:38, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
At this machine, I am using IE 6.0. However, at other machines, I use Firefox 0.8, and I believe I've noticed this behaviour there too (although I could be wrong). You're correct that I don't want any site to do this. However, no other site that I am familiar with does do it in the first place. Presumably because it's annoying, counterproductive, and potentially mildly rude. -Rwv37 03:43, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)
I think you can turn this off by means of your custom skin, but it doesn't address the problem globally. Dysprosia 05:29, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
In Firefox, open "about:config" and filter by "accesskey". The problem is that "ui.key.generalAccessKey" and "ui.key.menuAccessKey" are both "18" (Alt) (Bug 128452). Modify "ui.key.generalAccessKey" to "224" (Meta). You may not have Meta, but I understand that you do not want this feature. Rajasekaran Deepak 05:43, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)

I believe it is only a feature with the Monobook skin. It doesn't look like there's a way to turn it off inf Prefs (probably should be), so you'll probably have to switch back to Standard if you want to use the ALT keys. Niteowlneils 05:50, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Not true -- I use the classic skin and the shortcut keys are there. This should obviously be a user preference -- I love them. I have an unfortunate tendency to hit Alt-S without filling in an edit summary but otherwise they're a godsend. BTW: to get to the menu bar, in Firefox/Linux you can hit F10 and then the shortcut key (eg F10 f gets the file menu). I think this is copied from windoze, so it'll prolly work there too. Lupin 07:52, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
See meta:User styles#Changing access keys on how to change individual keys or how to disable them completely. -- Gabriel Wicke 08:48, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
One suggestion, which works for me in Mozilla 1.4 -- if one presses and releases "Alt" then presses "F" the file menu opens. If one presses "Alt" and "F" simultaneously, the cursor goes to the search box. Admittedly, this isn't the most user-friendly solution in one sense, but it's certainly the least technical. Jwrosenzweig 19:34, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Seeing as accesskeys are a W3C standard, it's not really fair to say that a site (the Wikipedia) using them is hijacking keys. It's the browsers that needlessly cede control over their shortcut keys. Apparently IE on PC, and Firefox on several platforms, stupidly assign conflicting accesskeys and don't do anything about the conflicts. I'm lucky, because Firefox on Mac assigns accesskeys to ctrl which don't conflict with anything — I'm having a blast using them. Nathan 19:52, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)

DOS and Windows computers have used ALT-key combinations to access their menus (the CTRL key is used for "shortcuts") for about 20 years now, so you shouldn't blame browser manufacturers just because W3C decided to hijack those keys despite a decade of prior established usage for programs (not Web sites). This issue affects ALL Windows browsers, because the ALT key has been the standard way to access Windows menus since the early 1980s. (FWIW, I am actually anti-Borg, but since this issue affects the vast majority of users, I have concerns about it defaulting to 'on', forcing people to register if they want their normal keys back.) Niteowlneils 05:26, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
W3C doesn't say to use ALT or anything else [16]. My guess is that it was Microsoft, aka borg, who set the defacto ALT standard and Mozilla.org copied it. So, I blame them both. And maybe we should poo poo the W3C a bit for inventing accesskeys without saying also that (well, duh) they shouldn't be implemented in such a way that conflicts with existing accelerator keys. Anyway, I guess it doesn't matter; we have to work with the browsers as they are, not as they should be. Nathan 15:06, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)

ISO 8601 date format

ISO 8601 date format "2004-06-14T05:43Z" is better than "05:43, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)" for signatures, etc. Rajasekaran Deepak 06:20, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)

The ISO-8601 formats are lovely for creating computer-readable text, but are not too readable for humans. I believe this argument has been done to death before but sadly cannot recall just where. HTH HAND--Phil | Talk 13:51, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

My own preference would be writing all dates in ISO 8601 format and having the software optionally display them differently... but that probably won't happen. Fredrik (talk) 14:47, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Mmmmh, just stating "is better than" seems quite POV. I like integers more, so maybe just the number of seconds since Unix time 0 is better...
Seriously, readability for humans is essential in this project, and ISO8601 means too many alphanumerical chars mixed together. Pfortuny 18:55, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Relevance is nice

What or who determines the daily featured article? I wish they would select ones with a bit more relevance to todays problems/issues and entertainment.

For the things which have daily relevance we have the "Current Events" box, or sometimes also relevant things happen to show in the anniversaries box. The "Featured Article" however is supposed to show those articles we are most proud of. For most of the current event we don't have a very good article yet. andy 07:28, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Raul654 is the de facto administrator of the featured article box. -- Cyrius|✎ 08:35, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This point has been brought up before and effectively shouted down each time. The Featured Article box is, by definition, *not* supposed to be timely. That is what the current events box is for. The featured article is supposed to showcase the articles we think are good. In fact, I've generally avoided timely articles for just that reason. The only exception to this was European Union, which was featured on Europe Day by request from *numerous* people. →Raul654 19:03, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

China blocks Wikipedia

I think we could all see this one coming - sad but probably inevitable...

"According to several Internet reports both the Chinese and English-language versions of Wikipedia have now been blocked and are inaccessible from the Chinese mainland."
http://www.chinatechnews.com/index.php?action=show&type=news&id=1316

-- ChrisO 07:54, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I know the discussion on this is going on on the mailing list, but as I generally don't participate there, I'll raise something here. For those considering our options, there's a minor but amusing card in our hand; a while back, we caught the Chinese government borrowing Wikipedia content without attributing it. The relevant PRC People's Daily article is here, with content copied from our article here Any leverage we have is probably from the potential for bad international press, so this copyright violation could be an extra tidbit to throw in when complaining to the press. "Funny how they block Wikipedia but they still like it enough to steal our content" or something like that. Isomorphic 04:32, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Accusing someone in China of copyright infringement is like accusing water of being wet. →Raul654 04:36, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)
Well yes, but when it's the national government, there's a certain humor value to it. Especially when they use our content and censor it at the same time. Isomorphic 04:39, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Results for the Elections to the Board of Trustees

Congratulations to Angela and Anthere, who have been elected on the m:Board of Trustees as Voluteer User Representative and Contributing Active Member representative, respectively!

But — where are the election results? In any election I know, the final results (which candidate got how many votes) are published together with the announcement of the winner(s). Lupo 08:43, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I have heard some rumours (see mailing list and IRC) that the results may not be published. If this is the case I think it would be a travesty. It would be great if the board could be run in as open as a manner as its projects are, with as much accountability as possible. It might be helpful if all the candidates could say that they have no objections to the results being published; this might mitigate any reasons for withholding them. Pcb21| Pete 16:31, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Openess is essesial for the trust of the Elections and the board ✏ Sverdrup 16:55, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaattttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt? Come on, someone please refute/confirm this rumour, because THIS WOULD BE THE END OF TRANSPARENCY. Good grief! Pfortuny 18:51, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It's no rumor, Danny has explicitly said on IRC that the results won't be published. There were many many complaints, but apparently the desire for openness is being overruled by a desire not to hurt people's feelings.
Yeah, we didn't think it was much of an excuse either. There was talk of asking all the candidates if they were okay with releasing the results, but I don't know if it went anywhere. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:58, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Man, I have seen better excuses... I guess anyone standing up for a post is aware that it may prove quite shameful. But I will not believe the results until I see the statistics. Otherwise this is not fair play -to say the very least. How/who can verify the results?
And this is no complaint about the results (I am happy with the elected candidates), it is a basic procedural need. What is this, my schoolyard? Come one, people!.
Yes, I AM GOING TO SHOUT OUT LOUD about this. Good intentions do not lead necessarily to good deeds. There is no shame in getting 0 votes (if that is the problem), it is simply that nobody voted for you. And?
Oh, dear what is this about?
And then we talk about information and NPOV and facts. Well, where are the facts here? What did the people say?
Yes, I am quite annoyed. YES. Shameful behaviour. YES Pfortuny 19:43, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Hmm, I don't think hurt feelings is a sufficient reason, nor do I really think there's much to worry about in that regard. Firsly, folks standing for any election need to perpare themselves for rejection (and all our candidates are highly experienced, mature individuals who I'm sure can take it, even if they got zero). Secondly, a low vote doesn't mean much - there were a couple of candidates I essentially didn't know anything about (mostly because they're active on wikipedias I'm not), and so certainly wasn't going to vote for. That doesn't mean they're not worthy, indeed for all I know they'd be better choices than the ones I did vote for, so one can't infer unpopularity from a low vote. I think it's unacceptable that the tallies of each election aren't published, and I don't consider the election valid in their absence. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:49, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I think most candidates agreed to results being published, except for those who are not often on the mailing list, and did not see people requests. Danny is busy getting these last agreements. Hopefully, results will be visible in a few hours.
I also agree that low results do not mean the candidate was bad at all. They may be little known, or the votes may have been strongly political. Sorry to hear that some people do not recognise the validity of Angel and I elections though :-) SweetLittleFluffyThing 23:29, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Good grief. I would have thought it obvious that if you have an election that you announce the results, not just the winners, otherwise we'll just have variations on the old Soviet election jokes ("thieves broke into the Kremlin last night and stole next years' election results"). I stood for my council in last weeks elections and got 165 votes; my Conservative opponent got 608 -- I'm not in the least embarrassed (not least because it was a no-hope ward and we didn't spend a penny on the campaign!) to have the result in all the local newspapers and on the web. -- Arwel 23:36, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Well, I'm with Pfortuny here, all the way. Compromising openness for such silly things as believing it will hurt their feelings (you are underestimating them and possibly hurting their feelings by believing such things about (confirmed, even) grown adults), will seriously hurt the credibility of the Board, Jimbo and our Wikimedia governance in whole. ✏ Sverdrup 00:01, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Imran let some of the results for top vote-getters out on IRC, having gotten permission from the candidates involved. As they were stated:

For contributing rep:
  1. Anthere (Florence Nibart-Devouard) 269
  2. Eloquence (Erik Möller) 258
  3. Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) 163
For volunteer rep:
  1. Angela (Angela Beesley) 345
  2. Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) 159

I apologize if I'm stepping on anyone's toes by posting this, but it was stated publically, and people are getting antsy for actual numerical results. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:41, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, thanks to Cyrius some of the numbers are published now. However, these numbers are incomplete and inofficial, which may be worse than not having any numbers at all. (No offense meant, Cyrius.) I'm still waiting for Danny or Imran to publish the official results: number of voters; total number of votes; tally for all candidates, summary statement who has been elected. Maybe even with a breakdown by language: candidate X got that many votes on en:, that many on fr:, and so on. That's standard practice! (At least where I live.)
The (temporary) summary statement in Wikipedia:Recentchanges won't do; there will need to be a more permanent record on a page over on Meta and an announcement telling us "common folk" where to find these results. Announcing it on IRC or the mailing list is not sufficient; only a small percentage of contributors to the Wikipedias follow these channels.
And what's this business of having to get the candidates' permission to publish the results? I've never heard such utter nonsense. You stand in an election, you'll have to live with the fact that the results are published. If they're not, this whole election's credibility is seriously undermined. Lupo 07:28, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
You're giving me too much credit for the partial release. Turns out that Imran posted the same bits to the mailing list about two hours before I put them here [17]. I'm just a reposter. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:41, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'm not ready to get in a lather about this, but it seems utterly bizarre not to have the complete numerical results, listing all candidates and the number of votes they received. I've never heard of any other election where this was done. I'm not enough of a conspiracy theorist to see any suspect motives in this. If the candidates in this election were promised in advance that the numerical results would be confidential then they should not be released—this one time—but we should not have further elections with confidential results. Of course, Wikipedia is eccentric, but I am totally unconvinced that there's any good purpose served by not publishing the results, or if there is the case hasn't been made. As for hurt feelings, it seems to me that those who do not get elected will have hurt feelings anyway. Dpbsmith 14:53, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Once we have approval from the candidates we will publish official results. But if a candidate wants us not to disclose their results I can't see a good reason for us to do so. --Imran 09:17, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The reason is that it is absolutely not their results, but the elections'. Once one stands up for a post, the result is no longer his property. Sorry to be harsh, but this is as clear as water to me. You would be hiding the voters' oppinion, not the candidate's property. Pfortuny 10:22, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I totally agree. The opposite to Imran's statement is that if anyone wants to see the full results, I can't see a good reason why they should be hidden. That someone might be embarrassed by lack of support is not a good reason. The votes belonged to the voters orginally, not to the candidates. By what rules of Wikipedia or general election procedure does any individual candidate have the right to veto full disclosure of the election results? Where and when and by whom and on what authority was the rule adopted that a candidate must give permission for full relection results to be released? jallan 14:10, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The Economist

I'm not sure if this has already been raised, but Wikipedia has got a mention in a leader in this week's The Economist as a "surprisingly good open-source encyclopedia" in an article on the economics of open-source generally. Looks like wikipedia's star is still very much on the rise. Kudos to all. 217.159.81.197 18:43, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It will be more interesting when coverage gets past the "What is wiki?" stage and starts to give more than a passing glance at the content. —Steven G. Johnson 02:18, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)

Stub msg weirdness

Anyone else having {{stub}} behaving erratically? It can have the normal old message, like at Panchathan Record Inn, or be "Template:Stub", like at Xanthosoma. Sure look the same to me. Niteowlneils 03:34, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Looks like it gets fixed if you edit the page. Still, that should of course not be necessary. Fredrik (talk) 03:36, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This weirdness has to do with some changes we've been discussing over at Template talk:Stub. This probably warrants a post to wikitech-l. --Diberri | Talk 04:22, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)

Adding Category:Disambiguation to Template:disambig

Would adding [[Category:Disambiguation]] (or perhaps [[Category:Disambiguation pages]]) to Template:disambig be a good idea? I know that disambiguation articles would not instantly show up in Category:Disambiguation, but as they are edited, they would be slowly added to it, and this would be better than adding them all by hand even more slowly (and unreliably)... It would also eventually replace the need to maintain Wikipedia:Links to disambiguating pages which currently takes forever and a day to even load. --ssd 05:10, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I don't see what non-maintenance practical reason this would have? Not against the idea, though, just curious. Dysprosia 09:33, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Stamps and bank notes as image sources?

A lot of stamps and bank notes display well-made portraits of important persons, and we might want to use this source to fill up missing portraits for Wikipedia biographic articles, cf. e.g. http://www.th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~jr/physstamps.html . On the one hand, these images are of course copyrighted by the respective national banks and postal authorties that have issued them, but on the other hand, a bank note or a stamp is such a hugely distributed and often displayed object, that it could be considered fair use if we used them for our purposes, too. Opinions? Simon A. 12:29, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'd be very wary of doing this (other than with images of cancelled stamps, which are generally OK). You may run up against some country's counterfeiting law. -- Jmabel 21:15, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)

Morse code article space rendering problem

In the Morse code article, the american (railroad) morse characters need to render with internal spaces.

The code in place is currently 

 ·& nbsp ;& nbsp ;& nbsp ;· · & dagger ;  (note - spaces added to prevent interpretation(

which is rendering as ·   · · † which has no internal spaces.

Why is the & nbsp ; being ignored? How do I fix it? Rick Boatright 14:27, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

A quick inspection of the HTML code being received by my browser indicates that the &nbsp; characters are being stripped out and replaced with ordinary spaces which are then obviously being conflated together when rendered. Possibly a side-effect of the latest round of code updates which IIRC introduced a HTML-tidying stage (which might or might not be the cause before someone jumps to the erroneous conclusion that I know whereof I speak: I just guess good sometimes :-). --Phil | Talk 14:44, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)
I have been bold and suggested an alternative. See Morse code. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 14:56, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)
Arggggh Ick. Blech (Phil used an UNDERSCORE character to indicate the space) Phil, that is TRUELY UGLY. :-) Surely there has to be a better answer? Rick Boatright 15:08, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I hate using HTML, but using pre seems to do what I think you want:
  ·   ··†
Urgh. I feel dirty now. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:13, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Um, this is a bit off topic, but the HTML "tidying" seems to have broken <small> usage in tables--previously you could make the whole table small with one command, now you'd have to add it to every tr. Compare an old version of Seattle with the one right after 1.3, with now. Or, as of this moment, the table of companies at Houston, which I believe used to be all small, but now only the first row is. Anyway, my actual question is, can you point me to info about this 'tidy' feature, and/or places to comment about what it has done to existing articles? Niteowlneils 19:20, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, PRE worked here, but it doesn't work well in the tables in the code in question...
C - · - · 
  ·   ··†
since (at least in the monoblock skin) it puts that "pre" box around the stuff and looks "wonky" I really think they need to FIX the HTML Tidyer..... This worked GREAT before. Rick Boatright 21:52, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Half-million article pool

There's still a day left to get your vote in on the Wikipedia:Half-million pool. Based on the current bets, the English Wikipedia is expected to pass 500,000 articles sometime in early 2005. There's no prizes other than the opportunity to gloat over your peers. And isn't that good enough? The contest will be closed to new entries at 03:07 Jun 17, 2004 (UTC). -- Cyrius|✎ 18:44, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Bullet lists and images

At least on the in the news template, if the image is at all to the right of an item in a bullet, even just a half line, the alighnment of the entire item will leave space for the image, even though the remainder of the margin is just empty space. I see this all the time with the in the news template and it unnecessarily lengthens it and doesn't look good. ? - Centrx 20:01, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

You're most likely running into one of IE's gazillion rendering bugs. -- Gabriel Wicke 10:24, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Dashes

Opinions are being sought regarding a proposal on this thorny issue for inclusion in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Please see the bottom of Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dashes. Thanks. –Hajor 20:15, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That huge and technical debate (still) seems to say that a software update will convert simple minus signs that everyone has one their keyboard into these funny entities that are not at all intuitive. One of the hugely disagreeable things about this debate is that usability (the essence of wikitext) seems to get repeatedly ignored, and we go round in circles about trivial details. Pcb21| Pete 08:07, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What's going on with images

I've noticed all of a sudden that thumbnailed images seem to have gone to the far left of the article space and overlap with the taskbar. I dont know if anyone else has experienced this or whether it's only me. But it wasn't doing it a few days ago. G-Man 23:48, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Maybe it's related with the above topic thumbnails not right-aligned - thumbnailed images without a text did some strange things. But that one was fixed - maybe you can give an example, and probably should try it with different skins. andy 18:17, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Coventry is an example, although it only seems to be doing it on one computer I use. I was using another computer earlier and it was fine. G-Man 19:52, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Self-linking?

Is it just me, or are all new articles claiming to link to themselves (ie the article appears in the "what links here" list)? Worse, if you move the page, the article continues to claim to link to the old location, now a redirect page. See Fulbert Youlou, and its "What links here" page. Niteowlneils 05:43, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I've been seeing this as well. Except for the move part, because I haven't moved anything. -- Cyrius|✎ 06:30, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Is it all articles or just stubs? The stub msg was recently changed to include an link that opened an edit window for the article. older≠wiser 12:11, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Vandalbot

The vandalbot's changes aren't showing up when I view Recent Changes. How do I view bot changes? Yes, I know Wik has started listing his changes as minor, but even before that, they weren't showing up. RickK 06:13, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)


I've been told that http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges&hidebots=0 should show the bots too. However, I don't have any to start up in order to check whether it's true:-) \Mikez 08:49, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It's possible for a sysop to retroactively hide edits from recent changes. If you had read m:Vandalbot (as I keep telling everyone to do), you would know that this is the recommended procedure. Edits are reverted and hidden so that they don't inconvenience other users. You can use hidebots=0 if you don't trust the sysop, or if you are curious. -- Tim Starling 15:16, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)

Tarpit???

Weird..... When I tried to save the page with the comment above, I was redirected to http://download.wikimedia.org/tarpit.php..... What on earth is that? (twice now...) \Mikez 08:49, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Has to edit the whole page instead to be able to make any changes. What kind of sick joke is this?? \Mikez 08:53, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It's not a sick joke. It's a page to which malicious bots are supposed to be redirected so that they are slowed down. Unfortunately the code is not perfectly tuned and you fell afoul of it. Jeronim 09:55, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Sorry everyone! I didn't mean anything personal. I never heard of it before, and hence I was a bit surprised when I saw it. But, now I know about it I think I can handle an occasional dip in the tar pit:)
Conserning my comment above, I sincerely hope noone is offended - I can now see it was a bit too harsh. \Mikez 10:06, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Just be glad the page isn't protected. The problem with section editing should be fixed now. -- Tim Starling

On Providing Sources For Fiction (renewal)

If you would like to know my proposal see the original entry on the topic "On Providing Sources For Fiction. And I must say, I must complain about this policy when applies to all Wikipedia articles. My proposal still stands to change your policy slightly. The developers and and service people should at least be aware of this. --User:Marcus2

Well I AM paying attention, but this presumed controversy is certainly a mystery, as there are no links and Google doesn't help. Pollinator 13:52, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)

If you are looking for the previous discussion, check "79" in the table of contents. And what do you mean by showing links and using Google? --Marcus2

How about a link to the page where this controversy started? I googled Wikipedia for the terms "On Providing Sources For Fiction." Nothing turned up. I suppose I could dig it out with more probing, but I have limited time on Wikipedia. If you are going to call: "Attention, All Wikipedians" you'd be wise to make it quick and easy to find the meat of the controversy. (BTW, don't expect instant answers to your questions. I signed back on to find a comment on my talk page that almost sounded like a demand for a quick response. I'm not online all the time; I do have a life.) I haven't seen anything so far that indicates that this is anything I could consider earth-shattering, so I'm going to retire from this issue at this time, and focus on things that are more important to me. Pollinator 21:45, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I didn't mean to barge in on you like that if that's what you think. The contoversy is of the articles Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island and Bowser (Nintendo character). Fredrik and Meelar argue the doctrine that Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, and Bowser met as babies and revert my edits that delete the mention. Meelar in particular said that I needed to back up the deletion with a source, after I had already explained what really happened in the history of the Mario Bros, which refutes the text I deleted. Since it's based on fiction, it isn't a big deal, so I was thinking that there should be an exception made in Wikipedia's policy. --Marcus

In other words; Marcus wants Wikipedia to contain his own fiction instead of encyclopedic facts about others' fiction. Fredrik (talk) 18:18, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I do not want to add my own fiction. I may discuss it, but I won't add it to the encyclopedia articles. --Marcus2

If the stuff you're adding is not your fiction, then whose is it? Provide sources. Fredrik (talk) 18:49, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Marcus, the argument you present doesn't seem very strong to me ("Since it's based on fiction, it isn't a big deal"). Imagine if Wikipedia didn't require a source for information contained in articles on fiction; what would prevent anyone from adding any information they felt like to it? e.g. I could add that Bilbo Baggins was a talking horse, or whatever. The articles on fiction would rapidly become useless. Verifiability is as important there as it is to articles about the real world. — Matt 18:57, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'm not adding anyone else's fiction either. --Marcus2

In that case, what exactly is it you are you proposing to add, and why are you wanting to change Wikipedia's policy on having sources for fiction? — Matt 16:27, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'm not proposing to add info. I'm proposing to delete what I think is a little false to me. --Marcus2

Marcus2 — OK, if you wish to be pedantic, modify. To change my example above, what's to stop me from deleting any mention of Bilbo Baggins being a hobbit? What use would fiction articles be if everyone could, by policy, delete anything that seemed "a little false" to them? — Matt 11:50, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
But what is your justification for thinking it false? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:52, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What justification are you talking about? Have I not already discussed it with you? --Marcus2

I'm just having trouble understanding. And it would help those who are just jumping in. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 17:18, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Okay, what is it that you have trouble understanding? --Marcus2

Well, you think that Baby Mario is not Mario, Baby Bowser is not Bowser, etc. Why is this? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 18:02, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Marcus2, being so deliberately evasive is not helping your cause any. I've been half-heartedly following this thread and have looked on the article's talk page and I still have no clear idea what specifically you are proposing or why you want to remove a statement from that article. older≠wiser 18:12, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

In what way am I being evasive?! Anyway, my proposal is that Mario and Luigi were reared in Brooklyn, and therefore not orientated with the Mushroom and Koopa Kingdoms and Dinosaur Land (Yoshi's residence) prior to working as plumbers. And another thing, Baby Bowser likes to ride Yoshi. --Marcus2

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