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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Nevilley (talk | contribs) at 18:46, 10 December 2002 (doh! pic link inserts pic itself, not pic name, sorry). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Moved discussion

Could someone with a fast connection zip through the chains pages on Orders of magnitude/Temp, to check they each connect to their neighbours? These need checking before we replace the old OofM page. -- Tarquin 11:52 Nov 6, 2002 (UTC)

Attributed articles now ?

What's the story on the external links in PUCCAMP, please? The images and info are great, although I don't like having pictures before any text, and it needs to be put into complete sentences, but I'm a little dubious of having a foreign-language link without mentioning that it is on the article page, and I'm a lot dubious about the link to the contributor's résumé -- since when are our articles signed? -- isis 01:30 Nov 8, 2002 (UTC)

I've removed the signature to the talk page, and mentioned that the site is in Portugeuse. --Camembert

Why keep it on the talk page? It's already on that user's user page, and we can get there from the history. Do we all get to put our links on the talk pages of articles now? Is that only for the new ones we start, or is that for ones we edit, too? Only major edits, or minor ones, too, like the ones I only put an image in? And am I restricted to linking it to my résumé, or can I link it to my entry in Who's Who in America, too? -- isis 07:15 Nov 8, 2002 (UTC)

Well look, if you want to remove it from the talk page, then do so, it won't bother me. And if you want to try adding links to the talk page of everything you edit, then try it and see what happens (my guess is they'll be removed if it's done en masse rather than just on one ocassion by a newcomer who doesn't know better). --Camembert

I wasn't going by the newbie's putting it there: I was going by User:Chris mahan's ratifying it and your keeping it on the 'talk' page, and now we have mav saying it's okay to have attributions on the 'talk' page. I am surprised at that (as you must be, given your prediction such postings would be removed), because I thought the 'talk' page was for discussions about the subject of the article and 'user' pages were for claiming credit for articles, but the only way I'm going to learn is by asking. -- isis 15:01 Nov 8, 2002 (UTC)

No, you can also "observe a lot by watching" as Yogi Berra might say (see Yogiisms). --Ed Poor
Normally, I would just remove the credit altogether rather than put it on talk (in fact I have done this a couple of times just now) - what can I say, I'm fickle. Personally, I probably wouldn't move article credits from the talk page (there are better things to be doing), but others might. I think there are some cases where we have copyright clearance to use something, and that goes on the talk page - such credits shouldn't be removed, of course. Otherwise, I don't think it's a very big deal - I can't speak for others. --Camembert

Question/suggestion about http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Booksources

This page only comes up when you click on an ISBN and then it goes from this page directly to a link for the ISBN you clicked on. Mega-handy, but not explained on the page. It would also be mega-handy, to me, anyway, if going to the page directly allowed going to one of the book sources and searching directly. It works on everything but the Barnes and Noble link. Ortolan88

What's the policy on articles containing explanatory text, e.g. "This article will detail how one goes about proving that all cows are green." Is it bad? Good? Uncertain? Graft

It's useful in certain articles, such as anarchism -- the explaination helps people find what they're looking for much quicker. -- Sam
I agree it's useful, but we don't always operate based on what's most useful... I am wondering more if people think (or have thought) that this violates some sort of encyclopedia etiquette, or if it munges with the "voice" of the encyclopedia in some taboo way... Graft

Ok I can understand the change to Discuss this page as I guess it might prompt discussion, but why Older Versions?. History was better I think.

What's up with "Move Page"? It seems it is either broken or too hard to use for a simple soul like me. I moved Scholastic Achievement Test to SAT college entrance test using "Move page". The explanatory text stated "The talk page, if any, will not be moved." Just below that, however, was a box I checked saying "Move 'talk' page as well, if applicable." What happened? Nothing. The talk page Talk:Scholastic Achievement Test wasn't moved and when I tried to move it separately to Talk:SAT college entrance test I got an error saying the page already exists. So, I am dropping my quest and will simply put something on the new talk page so if anyone wants to know why I made the move they can find the old talk page. Awaiting your sarcasm, I remain, that cranky guy, Ortolan88 02:58 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

Since there was an existing talk page of that name, it can't move the talk page over it and, sensibly, refuses to do so when asked. Everything sounds in order. --Brion 03:03 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

You know, Brion, I almost wrote "Awaiting Brion Vibber's sarcastic answer", but I decided that would be too sarcastic. I guess not.



There is nothing sensible or in good order about the conflicting statements on the "Move Page" instructions. One says I can't move the talk page and one says I can.

Nor is there anything sensible or in good order about the behavior implied by your reply. If "Move Page" created the talk page along with the new page, just exactly when is it possible to move a talk page under any conditions? If I was supposed to move the talk page and then the article, where would I find that out? Awaiting a supportive and helpful reply, I remain, that optimistic guy, Ortolan88 03:11 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)


I couldn't let you down. ;) Now the real reply: as far as I can tell, Talk:SAT college entrance test was an existing page at the time you moved Scholastic Achievement Test to SAT college entrance test. Perhaps this latter page did not exist, perhaps it was a redirect with no history; in either of these two cases, Move Page will happily replace nothingness with a page.
If there is a page, and it's not a redirect with no history, it will not ever under any circumstances replace that page with something you've asked it to move. If you ask it to do that, it will notify you.
Now, the notification is kinda lame. If the main page you've asked it to move over already exists, it gives you a big, rude, unmistakeable message. If just the talk page has a conflict, but the main page went through fine, it just tells you that "the associated talk page was not moved." I'm assuming your complaint is derived from the subtleness of the message; it doesn't tell you in giant letters why it didn't move it.
There are a couple possible ways to improve the situation:
  • Say in big ugly letters that can't be misread: "Page successfully moved! But talk page was not moved, because there's already a page there! Go fix it, human, for I am but a lowly computer and unable to read your mind and tell which of the pages you prefer."
  • Refuse to move either page, explain "I could move this page, but I won't be able to move the talk page because there's already a talk page under the destination title and I can't overwrite it without intervention from a sysop. If you still want to move the page and leave its talk page alone, click here."
Which would you prefer? --Brion 03:21 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)


An answer I can work with! The reason the page already existed, I think, is that the initial "Move Page" seemed to hang, so I cancelled it (I thought) and tried to resubmit the request. The second time, I got a message that the page already existed, so, obviously (to you but not to me), the talk page existed too.

What I would prefer, and what I think makes most sense, is to automatically move the talk page at the same time as the article. I don't know why the talk page should ever be left behind.

I can't draw a flow chart, but if I were specing "Move Page" anew, I would have the following behavior:

  1. By default Move page creates both new page and talk page.
  2. If article page already exists, move only if it contains no text (or only "edit this page".
  3. If talk page already exists, ask if user wants to overwrite it or append to it.

Obviously I haven't thought this completely through, but I do think the present system is counter-intuitive. Ortolan88 03:34 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

Ahh, that's a horse of a different color! Saying "the initial "Move Page" seemed to hang, so I cancelled it (I thought) and tried to resubmit the request" in the first place would have saved a lot of time dealing with sarcastic responses. It may have, indeed, somehow crapped out halfway through, moving only the article and failing to get to the talk page. If you didn't try the second move until an hour later, when the new talk page was created, then it would indeed have failed due to the existence of that page.
Transaction rollback would help prevent that kind of glitch, but that's not something we can easily do with the version of MySQL we're using. Better explanatory text on the move page, however, I can do. --Brion 05:07 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

I didn't say so because I was lost in a maze of confusing directions and confusing behavior and came here seeking aid.

The text on the "Move Page" instructions should not say you can't and can move the talk page. Yours for more subtle sarcasm, Ortolan88 14:44 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

You didn't describe what you did because the text on screen was confusing? I'll chalk it up to mental anguish. I replaced the instructions last night, let me know if they suit you. --Brion 19:46 Nov 1

Weirdness--I just made a brand-new article for two kinda obscure 60s bands. First, I did the 13th Floor Elevators and everything worked fine except for interminable slowness. Then, I did ? & the Mysterians and once again, everything worked fine except for slowness. Then, since I knew I had seen a few references to the Mysterians that didn't show up on "what links here", I did a search and found two alternate methods of writing the band's name, and I redirected them. Going to recent changes, I saw the two redirects but not ? & the Mysterians. 13th Floor Elevators was listed, and then the redirects a few minutes later but not the article itself (which does exist; the redirects work perfectly). Did anybody see the actual article appear on recent changes?

Does the "Conversion Script" have artificial intelligence?

I was browsing the "older versions" of Tragedy of the commons, when I discovered that a "Conversion script" inserted the following sentence into the article at 18:51 Feb 25, 2002:

Another commonly proposed solution is to convert the commons into private property, giving its owner an incentive to enforce its sustainability.

Is there some mundane explanation for this, or does the conversion script perhaps have AI of some kind? =)

--Ryguasu 02:34 Nov 25, 2002 (UTC)

The "conversion script" entries are the munged versions of the last edit of the article on the old UseMod wiki. Any earlier entries were from _before_ that version and were imported by another script months later; so a diff from the last pre-conversion revision to the conversion will show both actual conversion changes (subpage links etc) and the last human revision if any. --Brion 03:07 Nov 25, 2002 (UTC)
Does this mean that the credit to whoever did the last human revision has been dropped? Is it possible to put it back in? It seems a shame to lose the information on who made the last change. -- Oliver Pereira 20:33 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)
Yes, it could be done, but it's way's down on my list at the moment. If somebody else wants to give a try at munging the script, drop me a line. --Brion 21:03 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

I've been thinking of writing a "unblock all IPs banned more than 30 days ago" script. And running it once a week. Any takers? --Ed Poor

Well, I was just going to add an automatic timeout to the banning system; the length of ban would be set when banning (default 30 days, options to less?), and when the timeout came up, they fall off the list. Sound good? (Also, there should be a log page listing bans, manual unbans, and automatic unbans.) --Brion 21:03 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

Hey all --

It seems that my watchlist has been blanked. There's nothing there now. Has anyone else had this happen? Is it part of a general housecleaning effort? Thanks, Stormwriter

Mine is fine. I think the Watchlist only goes back a week now so if your watched pages haven't been edited in that time then a blank watch list would the the expected behavior. I'm pretty sure this limit on watchlists was done to reuduce server load. I, for example, am watching a couple thousand pages and it used to take 3-5 minutes to generate my watch list. --mav 20:01 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)
I find that I get logged out of Wikipedia if I don't make any edits for a while. (Not sure how long it takes, though.) Since users who aren't logged in can do most of the same stuff that logged-in users can, my watchlist going blank is usually the sign that alerts me to the fact that this has happened. Could this be it?
By the way, why does the watchlist now only go back a week? There were things further down mine that I had there because I was eventually going to get round to doing something about them, but now I can't remember what they were. :( -- Oliver Pereira 20:15 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

Hey guys -- thanks for the info. I figured it out. It seems I needed to click "Show changes for the last 7 days" in order for it to open the list. It defaults to 1 day now. Stormwriter

Oh, you can change it! That's all right, then. :) Mine seems to be set to "3 days" by default, though... -- Oliver Pereira 20:33 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

Note that I'm actively working on streamlining the watchlist function to balance performance and usability, so it may change frequently over the next few hours as I put the latest goodies online. --Brion 20:40 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

thanks very much for this, Brion :-) user:anthere
I'm grateful for any changes for the better, but is there a list of "latest goodies" anywhere or does everyone have to find out by chance, luck and intuition? KF 20:57 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

I have read many a comment posted particularly by newbies saying that Wikipedia is doomed because anyone can edit a page and create or add all kind of nonsense. I don't think this is a major problem. Rather, I believe this is one of Wikipedia's assets. To me, the real problem is that every single day, for several weeks now, there have been technical problems, something I find *very* demotivating. If it takes more than two minutes to get to a particular page and if ever so often there is no connexion at all, lots of potential newcomers will leave again before they really got started. Is there anything that could be done about it? KF 20:47 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

We're working on it. --Brion 21:03 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)
I'm glad to hear that. Thanks a lot, and best wishes :-) KF 21:08 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)
as for the goodies, you can also suggest them yourself. If some find the idea interesting, they will give it a try...:-)

Technical moving help please !!

Somebody has been moving pages from the encyclopedic namespace to the wikipedia space, the talk page was not moved with the subject page. I tried to move the discussion page from the encyclo to the wikipedia space. It was moved, and the talk page appear linked to the subject page. But when I go to the subject page, it shows an empty discussion page, and does not link to the discussion page moved. Hope I am clear...

So, what do I do to link the subject page to the talk page properly ? I can't figure it, and the only option I currently see is to copy paste all, but then history will be lost... Can somebody help me here ???

user:anthere

The equivalent of "Wikipedia talk:" namespace on fr.wiki is "Discussion Wikipédia:" -- if you put it in exactly, the move will work properly. It's a known problem/feature/bug/mysterious behavior that talk pages aren't automatically carried over when a page from one namespace to another. But there's no good reason why not; it could be changed. --Brion 13:22 Nov 27, 2002 (UTC)
ahhhh Discussion pas Discuter...yes, got it. Thanks Brion --anthere

Question (well, actually questions about Copyright violation . . .

Take a look at the article consul as it now stands. On 15:35 Nov 25, 2002, the user at 200.149.95.121 added a list of consuls with commentary. At first glance, my only thought was, "Well, this needs formatting, and eventually moving to its own article." And I would vote for an article with a list of consuls from the beginning to the end of this post. It would a useful resource -- & does not appear to exist elsewhere on the Web.

However, as I looked more closely at the commentary, I grew concerned: much of it appears to be scholarly commentary that would be found in a classical prospography or a scholarly article. In short, I suspect that we have a copyright violation based on someone scanning printed material & adding by cut-n-paste to the Wiki. I appreciate the effort, but a copyright violation is a copyright violation, nonetheless.

Someone may want to look at 200.149.95.121's other contributions. I took a quick look at his contributions to Ab urbe condita, & the text seems suspiciously too well-written. (Then again, maybe some of my submissions read too polished -- but I can attest that with certain, clearly-marked exceptions, they are all the work of my own ten fingers.)

That being said, can we consider the list of names alone also under copyright? IANAL, but I think the mere listing of words or names in itself does not fall under copyright. I'm more than sure that a list of consuls exists that was compiled before 1920, but it would be nice to take more accessible lists that have been compiled since then to create our master list. (And what 200.149.95.121 has added would make for a good start.)

I'm posting here because I couldn't easily find a "Talk:" page where I could discuss this issue. -- llywrch 19:47 Nov 28, 2002 (UTC)

Llywrch, you came to the right place. I know the author, his name is Zoltan Simon. He contacted wikiEN-l a couple of weeks ago about changes he wanted made to the Penelope article. I replied and explained how Wikipedia worked, and we engaged in a longer conversation. I convinced him to give Wikipedia a try. He says he has been editor and proofreader for the Encyclopaedia Hungarica (he wants to work on the Hungarian WP as well, which doesn't exist yet), and he has done a lot of historical research. He wants to add his own work to Wikipedia where appropriate, and I presume stuff like the list of consuls is his own.
I also explained to him that he should create a user account, but he doesn't seem to have managed to do so yet. I'm sure he will get to it eventually. I also hope he will provide citations to published articles when referencing his own research (Wikipedia is not intended for original research). --Eloquence
Well. The articles did have a definite scholarly feel to them, which truly stands out in Wikipedia: it's nice to know that it was because the articles were contributed by a scholar, and not borrowed from one. Heckuva welcome I'm providing Zoltan Simon, but maybe this will help convince him to create an account. (The articles I've seen from his IP number cover a valuable topic that is also very unappetizing to many people: how we determine dates & chronology.) -- llywrch 04:07 Nov 30, 2002 (UTC)
Thanks Eloquence for solving that one. Regarding the more general question: A list of consuls would, as far as I can see, not be possible to copyright. I remember having read about this type of case in a court case regarding a phonebook or some such. Basically, the information is not and cannot be copyrighted, only the way in which it is presented. And it is not work that is protected by copyright, but creativity. As such, the names of the senators and the information regarding them cannot be copyrighted. A certain selection or a certain order in which they appear, can, but only if this selection or order contains some creativity. A selection of all consuls by chronological order would certainly not fall under that criterion. Andre Engels 22:11 Nov 28, 2002 (UTC)

Language conveniton discussion moved to: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages)

Wikipedia Implementation and performance

During the last few weeks I have been thrilled to discover Wikipedia. However, it is not perfect, and there appear to be very significant performance issues with the software/hardware.

Is there information about how WP is implemented, and is there any form of discussion going on about how to improve it?

What sort of loading does WP server out - 10 page requests/second, 100?, 1000?

Also, what proportion of the load is due to edits - it should be quite low - but maybe it's not. Is it possible to prioritise edits over searches? This would be useful, as quite often these days waiting for an edit to Load takes so long - it really is quite a nuisance.

Would performance be enhanced if WP were distributed over several servers? Is this feasible? If not, why not?

Who is looking at these issues? --User:David Martland

David--
Wikipedia is open source software. See the SourceForge page for details. See Wikipedia:Statistics for detailed access statistics.
The performance issues are discussed on the wikitech-l mailing list. The server is reasonably huge and not suffering from the load. The main problem appear to be locking issues (we use MySQL's MyISAM tables, which only support table-level locking) and unoptimized queries (some columns do not have indexes where they should have etc.). These issues are slowly being worked on by Wikipedia developers, feel free to participate. See m:How to become a Wikipedia hacker for a growing tutorial on the code. --Eloquence 12:22 Dec 3, 2002 (UTC)
Regarding the number of page views per second: On Special:Statistics. In the past 4 1/2 months (since 20 July) there have been about 20,000,000 page views and 400,000 to 450,000 edits. This is equal to slightly under 2 page views per second. As we are still growing dayly, the number will be higher at the moment, put it will probably be well under 10 per second. Andre Engels 14:29 Dec 3, 2002 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick answers. I suppose it's possible the poor performance I get sometimes is due to network problems - besides the locking problems. Another possibility is that a mean rate of 2 queries/second still permits a much higher peak rate. It quite often takes a minute or so to have an update during editing from my locations in the UK - maybe that's the locking problem? David Martland 20:19 Dec 4, 2002 (UTC)

I'm getting the following message at the bottom of my wiki pages;

Notice: Couldn't find text for message "subjectpage". in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/GlobalFunctions.php on line 141

Notice: Couldn't find text for message "subjectpage". in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/GlobalFunctions.php on line 141

Is it just me? quercus robur

No - I see them as well. --Camembert
Me too -- but there's no delay in accessing the pages, and that's the main thing. KF 00:45 Dec 4, 2002 (UTC)
Minor version mixmatch between files, sorry. Should be fixed now. --Brion 00:47 Dec 4, 2002 (UTC)

Hi, I am a newcomer (just discovered Wikipedia yesterday). I think this is a great idea. I notice that you have headings on the main page for mathematics, physics, statistics, and the like, but none for engineering. Speaking for the engineers, I think this would be extremely useful. Is engineering currently grouped with another field, and if it is, does anyone think it should merit its own heading? I did not see any contiguous body of information for engineering when I searched. If there is agreement that this is a good idea, I would be willing to make a few entries for electrical engineering...

M Raj

It's there under "Applied Arts and Sciences", between Education and Family and consumer science. --Brion

For the last few days, I've been getting lots of article titles repeated in my watchlist. The first entry is bolded; the second entry for the same article follows immediately afterwards, and is identical except that it is not bolded. Does anyone know why this is? -- Oliver PEREIRA 23:05 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)

This is a known bug and is being worked on. --mav 23:08 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)
AFAIK it happens when you watch both the article and the Talk page. --Eloquence

Is it possible to automatically include the talk page when you watch a page? This would be very handy when a page is created. There will be nothing on the talk page at that moment, but it would be nice to know what's on it when it gets created. Dhum Dhum 23:24 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)

Yes, in fact that is what you get. Whenever you "watch" a page, any changes to that page or its talk page automatically show up on your watchlist. --Uncle Ed 23:29 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)
It should already work this way. (watched pages are bold and their corresponding talk/regular page shows-up as unbolded text in your watchlist). --mav
I believe if you click on "watch this page" when you're looking at the talk page, it doesn't watch the subject page though. I think I remember noticing that once. Confirmation? Tokerboy 23:35 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)
Confirmed. I believe it's a feature, though, not a bug. -- Stephen Gilbert 00:11 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)
Well, then I vote to remove that feature. Tokerboy 00:14 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)
The way it probably ought to work is that subject and talk pages are considered equivalent for the purposes of the watchlist. How exactly to handle this I'm less sure about, particularly when dealing with the nonexistence or renaming of one or the other of a pair. --Brion 00:40 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)


Do us all a favor, oh great public servant (sysop Tokerboy), and create a Wikipedia:Feature wishlist page. Then, volunteer to coordinate between the various mailing lists, source forge and that new page. You can hold votes and report results. What's stopping you? ;-) --Uncle Ed
I'm much too busy trying to smoke pot out of a toilet. (see Talk:Water pipe) Tokerboy 00:25 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)
Speaking of Source Forge, I've tried to sign up twice (so that I can put in a feature request) and it won't work. I didn't even get a response to my query as to why I couldn't sign up. --Dante Alighieri 00:27 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)
Check out the second to last line of undocumented feature. --Dante Alighieri 00:18 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)

Sourceforge is rather a pain to work with these days. We could set up our own copy of GForge, a stripped down and updated version of the original open-source Sourceforge code, or perhaps Bugzilla. Since they're all pretty and open source, we could integrate the user accounts with the wiki, which would save a lot of trouble. (If someone is interested in setting this up, please drop by Wikitech-L. I'm up to my ears in general maintenance and i18n and probably won't get to it for some time.) --Brion 00:40 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)

May I recommend BerliOS? It's a government sponsored project that offers the same services as SourceForge (plus a MySQL DB, so we might set up a demo WP). No banners, free of charge, and there's the added benefit that I currently work for them, so I can personally make sure that everything's running. Shared user accounts would be tricky, but perhaps I could import the existing user database (there may be a few duplicates). --Eloquence

Looks like a nice site, but I'd be very leery of importing the user database; I think that would violate our implied privacy policy (ie, that we won't hand out your e-mail address to third parties). --Brion 22:33 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)

I haven't been active here for a while, because grad school is way hectic, but yesterday in the shower I had what may have been a cool idea, one I wanted to share.

With Wikipedia traffic going up and up, it is becoming increasingly impossible to stay on top of the Recent Changes page. So what if there were a time-independent version of it? Specifically, what if the recentness of a change were measured not in terms of how long ago the change was made, but in terms of how many times the page has been viewed since then?

The point is that we don't want really bad changes to fall through the cracks just because nobody noticed them fly by on the Recent Changes list. But if an alternate version, say Unexamined Changes were implemented, then I could see even a week later that only two people have checked out such-and-such an edit.

Well, just a thought. I don't know what it would involve server-side.

Peace, --Fritzlein

That sounds like a great idea! --Dan
I agree. It's an interesting and potentially useful concept. --Dante Alighieri 07:46 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)
As a footnote let me add that I'm not worried about machine edits (such as the bot import of cities) being really bad edits, so I wouldn't want it to show up at the top of the list that Podunk, Wisconsin has never been viewed since the last edit. What I want to see is the number of views since the last human edit. Peace, --Fritzlein

I've noticed once of twice large deletes have gone unnoticed for a while(particularly on talk pages), because someone has accidentally edited an earlier version of a page and not realised it. Can I suggest that it might be an idea to pop up a confirmation box if a person tries to save a page after editing a version other than the current one? Mintguy 14:13 Dec 9, 2002 (UTC)

I wouldn't like that, because it would make reverting vandalism more troublesome in some cases. There's already a message in bold type at the top of the screen if somebody tries to edit an old version - that should be enough. By the way, are you sure these deletions are as a result of people editing old versions of the page? Some browsers (Opera 5, I think) can't seem to handle pages of more than a certain length, and truncate them - maybe that's the problem. --Camembert 14:18 Dec 9, 2002 (UTC)

The Cologne Blue skin seems to have lost all it's "blueness", among other things. Is anyone else having this problem? -- Stephen Gilbert 14:33 Dec 9, 2002 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Could you be more specific, please? What *does* it look like? Have you reloaded, cleared the cache? What operating system? What browser are you using? What settings in the browser? If Netscape 4.x, is JavaScript enabled? (Disabling it breaks style sheets, if I recall.) If you can't describe it, can you at least send a screen capture? --Brion 21:26 Dec 9, 2002 (UTC)
It's fine for me now. I was just checking to see if anyone else had weirdness going on, or if it was something I had to fix on my end. For the record, the blue bar at the top was gone, and the fonts were all the same size and style, looked like a CSS problem; Win95, Opera 5.11; I reloaded and cleared the cache, no effect. I did nothing and it was back to normal when I came back a few hours latter. -- Stephen Gilbert 00:38 Dec 10, 2002 (UTC)

Someone added a spurious link to February 21. I've removed it, but he also created Russell_Goffe's_Birthday. How does one delete a page like this? User:SGBailey

It's an admin function. There's a page called something like Wikipedia:Votes for deletion to alert admins to pages which need to be zapped. user:sjc

See Wikipedia:Editing FAQ.

Can some clever person please sort out the silly b*lls up over pictures of Wallace - two of 'em, William and Alfred, where they were both just called "Wallace.jpg" like this: ... and guess what, poor Alfred has been overwritten by Bill's memorial plaque! I would love to sort this out but have not a clue how to even start. Do please enlighten me, if you feel like it. I am sure that somewhere in an FAQ I have seen the dangers of this imprecise naming mentioned ... thanks. Nevilley 18:44 Dec 10, 2002 (UTC) oh and I'm sorry if this is the wrong file for this, just call me a stupid newbie. :)

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