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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jallan (talk | contribs) at 18:17, 5 August 2004 (→‎Links to fan sites?). 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

Indexed PNG thumbnails

Forgive me if there's already some discussion about this somewhere: are there any plans to improve the image auto-thumbnail process to account for PNGs with indexed color? I'd much rather upload a high-resolution image and let the thumbnail be generated automatically, but since they're converted to true-color, the thumbnail often ends up larger (in bytes) than the original (for instance, the six images on Four-stroke cycle), or almost as large (the rotor breakdown on Enigma machine). Seems to me it should be a fairly simple matter to have the thumbnailing script (or whatever it is) look at the color depth in the original image, and convert appropriately (using true-color only for the intermediate resizing). I've noticed some rather heated disagreements over this issue that would be neatly solved if thumbnailing worked better for indexed PNGs. -- Wapcaplet 16:53, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • I've noticed this, too; see Dopefish. It makes attempts at painstakingly optimizing PNGs before upload sort of moot, doesn't it?
    To the developers: why not try convert -depth 8 and pngcrush -brute (with the appropriate nice value) when generating thumbnails of indexed-color PNG files? --Ardonik 20:06, 2004 Aug 4 (UTC)

pause/delay during navigation

i have been plowing through this site a lot lately - it's a fabulous idea. however, i notice now when poking around there is a small 2-5 second pause when moving anywhere on the site. what gives? is it a hardware issue? i myself am on the UCSC campus t1. if it is a hardware issue, what would the solution be?

thanks all. JoeSmack 20:38, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)

I think it's a hardware issue - that's why they're doing the fundraising. Also, Wikipedia:Cleanup and Wikipedia:Offline reports/Nothing links to this article are good places to check out if you're poking around looking for stuff to improve. Salasks 21:37, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

redirects pointing at each other

is it possible to make an article that redirects to another that redirects back? wouldn't that make an infinite loop? wouldn't that make my computer and the server explode? wouldn't the world as we know it explode? ok, i got carried away there, but still, im curious.
JoeSmack (talk) 21:43, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)

I believe redirects stop after the first redirect. That is why it is important to check for and fix any such double-redirects after moving a page. older≠wiser 21:47, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Exactly right. Andrewa 02:58, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This is one of the main reasons off-site redirects are frowned upon. The software can't detect these cycles if the other half is on Wiktionary, meta, or elsewhere. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:22, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

third post in a row, wow. i see links all over the place on this site that are red and not blue, which typically means i have visited the site; however there are many i know i havent touched that show up as visited. anyone get this too and know why it happens?

thanks JoeSmack (talk) 22:57, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)

Red links are ones with empty pages at the other end (which you are welcome to populate!) Depending on the sort of browser you are using, and also the preferences that you have selected, links that you have and haven't visited show up as something like purple and blue, respectively. (Well, they do for me using Netscape.) Noisy 23:36, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Also Joe, you can go to your preferences panel at the top of the page, click on "Misc Settings" and uncheck the box labeled "Format broken links like this (alternative: like this?)." This will cause links to empty pages to show up as normal text but with a red underlined ? at the end of the words. Some people might not like it, I do. - Ocon | Talk 17:36, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Help! Am I colorblind?

Is it just me or is the background color (#F8FCFF) for non-article namespaces prescribed at MediaWiki:Monobook.css basically the same as white? It says "light blue" but all I see it white. --Jiang 01:45, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's not white, but it's pretty close. Moreover, as it's not a netsafe colour, your browser may be aliasing it to what it considers to be an acceptable netsafe colour (which may indeed be #ffffff, i.e. white). Naturally browsers are most likely to do this in 256 colour mode, but some do it for text (etc) regardless of colour mode. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:55, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I was scared for a second there. Can we change it to a netsafe color, either #CCFFCC or #CCFFFF then? I don't think I'm alone, because Im not using particularly outdated or rare technology. --Jiang 02:07, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If "Am I colorblind" is a serious question... ask your eye doctor to test you the next time you're in. Or look for one of the many color-blindness tests on the web. The two commonest kinds of color-blindness, deuteranopia and protanopia, involve problems discriminating along the red/green axis, not the blue/yellow axis. Not only can a color-blind person tell the difference between white and light blue, in many cases they might even have heightened sensitivity to such differences than someone with normal color vision. Protanopes will see the red light on a traffic light as rather dim. Deuteranopes will see all lights on a traffic light as bright (and of different colors) but will find that even bright green colors look similar to shades of brown.
Well, you asked.
The color I see as the text background on this very page is indeed a very light blue. It is a tossup whether I could call it a "very light blue" or a "cool white." I might not notice that it was not white if it were not for the fact that there are patches of actual white on the same page. But it's there, (and personally, I find it annoying). [[User:Dpbsmith|dpbsmith (talk)]] 02:22, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The "web-safe" palette is not all it's cracked up to be. See "Death of the Websafe Color Palette?" Also, if you find the background color annoying, or would prefer it to be a different color, simply edit User:YourUserName/monobook.css and add: 

#content {
    background: #FFFFFF; /* Or whatever color you like */
}

-- Wapcaplet 02:39, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think if people can barely see the background color, then the purpose of having such a background color is defeated. It helps prevent newbies/anons from getting too hyped up (e.g. at Talk:dictator) at what they see on talk pages and to not confuse them with articles. --Jiang 06:26, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I am colorblind and a happy user of the WhatColor freeware. -- Pjacobi 18:40, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I always wondered too. It looks white to me. Johnleemk | Talk 10:44, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Default skin

Chosen an arbitrary skin, how do I change back to the default skin, which I see when I'm not logged in? --PuzzletChung

Go to "preferences", there will be a "skins" option. Check "Monobook", or try the others if I'm remembering that wrong. Best, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 18:27, 2004 Aug 1 (UTC)

<span> tag poll

I've reopened Wikipedia:Span tags poll, in case there are users who were unaware of it the first time or who were ineligible to vote. --Eequor 21:12, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hordaland picture

Does anyone know about the picture on Hordaland? One picture that's supposed to be there isn't, and the other isn't on Wikipedia so it doesn't show up. I'd upload it and add it, but I'm not sure if it's fair use. Salasks 00:33, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

DST

Can someone tell the server about a phenomenon called Daylight Savings Time, so I don't have so switch between GMT-5 and GMT-6 every time we have DST?

The specific date, direction, and amount of shift to "correct" for the changing light levels is very much location-specific; indeed, some places don't have any need of it at all. The server is in GMT (well, an approximation of UTC-1, AIUI); the clocks change but twice a year, and I'm sure that you can cope. In fact, I don't have it change, and use my head to do the offset instead (well, 'tis only an hour for me, so...).
James F. (talk)
It would be simple. There could be a check box that says "Please auto-correct my time shift for daylight savings time", so it would only do it if you wanted it to. If there are different types of daylight savings times around the globe, it could have an option to select which type. Worth submitting a feature request for, I might do it soon if nobody else has. —siroχo 04:26, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
Over here in Israel, there is a vote taking place every year, that determines the DST shift in/shift out. Computer modelling of our politicians to predict what they are going to vote on would be mostly welcome. :-) Seriously, a common practice is using NTP to feed off a trusted server, and once it jumps, you know that the daylight savings jumped. The server is manually updated. Some systems just have some hardwired approximate default dates, so around the shift they give wrong time for about a month in the worst case. BACbKA 20:58, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Most open source Unix systems use a library produced by NIH that knows about virtually every set of timezone rules on earth and is capable of translating things like US/Eastern + an offset in GMT into the local time and date. This library is extremely well maintained, the timezone files cover almost all jurisdictions on the planet, and updates come out several times a year. The code is all open source. There is no reason not to use it. --Pmetzger 21:03, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Counting Edits

Perhaps this has already been discusseed, but is there an easy way (aside from counting and using fancy offsets on my contribs) to count my contributions? Does this involve running a Perl/Python script? Ilyanep (Talk) 00:36, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Copy and paste your contributions into a file, and do a simple line count. Otherwise there is no other way other than running a database query, AFAIK. Dysprosia 01:17, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The other way is to ask on the pump when a developer is in a good mood. 1195. -- Tim Starling 01:19, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
Haha, thanks a lot, any way for me to do my own check and find which edit was the xth contrib? Ilyanep (Talk) 05:08, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There is a weekly updated CSV file with number of edits for Wikipedias of all languages, or if you have a lot of contributions check Wikipedia:Wikipedians by number of edits for the top 1000 contributors, distinguishing mainspace and all edits -- Chris 73 | Talk 02:39, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Fine, but what does "en,161,0,527,9,1751,1691,Ilyanep" mean? And what if I want to find the xth contrib (say, the 1250th). Ilyanep (Talk) 05:08, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia_talk:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits#Data_in_the_CSV:

  • First column: Language code: English
  • Second column: Main namespace edits: 161
  • Third column: Number of main namespace edits in the last thirty days: 0
  • Fourth column: Non-main namespace edits: 527 (that would make your total to 688)
  • Fifth column: Number of non-mainspace edits in the last thirty days: 9
  • Sixth column: This week's ranking: 1751
  • Seventh column: Last week's ranking: 1691
  • Eight column: User name: Ilyanep

Chris 73 | Talk 05:41, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

First my edit number is over 1000, which got dumped in the wiki transfer thing. Second, gotta get some more namespace edits :D. Third, thanks for the help. Ilyanep (Talk) 05:45, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Here's what I do: I download all my contribs, by changing the number in the URL line so it is higher than 500 (example: Special:Contributions&hideminor=0&target=Antandrus&limit=1000&offset=0 ); then I copy and paste the whole thing into a text editor, and turn on line numbers. You could drop it into Excel or a database program and then query to your heart's desire. While the .csv download gives you your totals, the method I describe gives you a way to get a specific edit number on anything you have done. Antandrus 05:51, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)


I could script it in VBA. Awesome! — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 06:06, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps a good feature would be to allow the generation of a CSV file of all your edits so it's easier to organize. With one column for all of the following: Minor/Not, New/Not, Date, Article (I seem to be having more ideas at 1:15 AM than I do usually in regular time). — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 06:15, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think that's a great idea! Unfortunately it's a Monday morning for me so I can't improve on it now :-\ Antandrus 16:26, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)


Yay! Well, if you ever have time to do that, please post a note on my talk or somewhere notable so I know I have that power :D. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 20:13, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Time zone offset keeps getting reset

I have set my time zone offset in preferences to "-04:00". However, every few weeks, it changes to "-4:00" and goes back to displaying timestamps as UTC. This is rather frustrating. Does anyone know how to fix it?

Acegikmo1 00:44, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

So it changes from -4 to -4? I don't understand...maybe I'm just that stupid. It also depends which timestamps you're talking about. The signature timestamp, for example, is always UTC. Ilyanep (Talk) 00:56, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think he meant that the leading zero disappears. But the leading zero is automatically removed whenever you save your preferences, so that couldn't be the problem. If you don't believe me, save it with a leading zero and then immediately click the preferences link to reload the settings from the database. Perhaps this is one of those annoying transient bugs that goes away when you look at it. The obvious thing that comes to mind is that timestamps are in UTC when you are logged out, or when for some unknown reason some part of the software is treating you as logged out. -- Tim Starling 01:15, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Greatbigtwit

I found this "talk" page, Talk:Greatbigtwit, but apparently there's never been a Greatbigtwit article. Can I just speedy it, or do I have to VfD it? Seems like it has to qualify under one (or more) of the first four speedy cases, just not sure which one(s). Or maybe case 11 should be amended to cover cases like this. Niteowlneils 01:23, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I read the page; it's blatant vandalism. Speedy it, and quickly. [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 02:12, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Deleted it -- Chris 73 | Talk 02:35, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Old Eastern Bloc C'Rights?

I am just wondering out of curoristy...Whatever happened to copyrights that were held by the USSR, SFRY, Czechoslovakia, and the GDR? Thanks! - iHoshie 04:12, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

First of all, I think this belongs on the Reference Desk. Second of all, they all probably went to heck (who would seriously care about taking over the records -- esepcially if you're a communist), but don't take me as an expert. Ilyanep (Talk) 05:10, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Your right. I posted this in the wrong place. Mea Culpa. - iHoshie 06:18, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't believe they had copyright laws, actually. Intellectual property wasn't protected. That's one of the reasons why the ex-communist countries were and are such a hotbed of piracy - the culture all along the line was one of free copying by the state or citizens. -- ChrisO 15:33, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
They had copyright laws, but they were a different set, which was why many English songs were pirated. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 16:28, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
We have an empty section copyright and communism in the history of copyright article, care to add your knowledge there? Andrewa 06:14, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Siggy

Is there any way to have all my signatures prefaced with the mdash (without manually havine to add it all the time)? I've already learned how to change what's after the signature (as you can see...I added a link to my talk page), but not before. I don't want to make everything cluttered by making my name ' ]] &mdash: [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] [[User talk: Ilyanep|(Talk)]]' because that would show up in every signature as '[[User:Ilyanep| ]] &mdash: [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] [[User talk: Ilyanep|(Talk)]]'. Thanks in advance — Ilyanep (Talk) 05:21, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)-->

I use Proxomitron as an ad-blocker, but it can do much more than that, basically it can perform any search-and-replace on a web page that you can specify with a regular expression. So I set one up to change the Javascript code of the "signature" button above the wikipedia text edit box to insert "&mdash;~~~~", instead of "--~~~~". The expression is:
Matching Expression
\'Your signature with timestamp\',\'--~~~~\'
Replacement Text
\'Your signature with timestamp\',\'&amp;mdash;~~~~\'
Geeky enough? :-) —Stormie 06:37, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
I've successfully done this with my signature. I actually found the code somewhere here on Wikipedia. It looks like this:
<nowiki></nowiki>]]— [[User:Frecklefoot|Frecklefoot]] | [[User talk:Frecklefoot|Talk
The only drawback to this approach is that you'll get a blank link right before the mdash. It doesn't render, but it shows up in the wikimarkup if you edit an entry. Look at the code for this post to see what I mean. But it doesn't affect your rendered signature like I said, so it is only a minor drawback. HTH. — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:11, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
See, that's what I don't like...that it shows up on the wikimarkup. And what does proximitron do? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 16:28, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it shows up ugly in wikimarkup, but this is just a side effect from the way the signature works. The only way to get it NOT to show up in wikimarkup would be to get the developer's to change the way signatures work (perhaps by providing a standard signature or allowing a completely custom one). Sorry, I have no idea what Proximitron does. — Frecklefoot | Talk 18:57, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
I use Proxomitron as an ad-blocker, but it can do much more than that —Stormie 06:37, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
I guess that's what it does, then ;) Dysprosia 02:09, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Most Edits Lists

I know I've been postin a lot here lately. Shouldn't the wikipedians by number of edits be updated more often? One is updated July 1st and the other one was May 7th. Ilyanep (Talk) 05:28, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think once every few months is often enough. My problem is that the information from July 1 is wrong! (see the talk page)
Acegikmo1 05:55, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Helping people keep score should not be a priority. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:50, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Actually the talk page shows that the stats problem is much wider than just the number of edits lists. Given that the stats scripts are basically useless at the moment for an unknown reason, I think it *should* be a priority. Pcb21| Pete 16:56, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Categories issues

I'm putting this here because I couldn't figure out one logical place among all the categorization/category pages to put this request.

  • First, every page that is a member of a category has a link at the bottom of the form Categories:categoryName. One would expect that clicking on Categories would give you something useful--but NOooo, it takes you to Special:Categories, which gives you the first 50 alphabetically of all existing categories and subcategories, which is useless in almost all cases. This link needs to go either to a page that explains what categories are and gives some options on where to go (such as Wikipedia:Category) or else simply to the top-level hierarchical category, either Category:Categories or Category:Fundamental.
  • Second, the top of Special:Categories needs to display text that helps you to get someplace useful from there--first, tells you what it's a list of ("all existing categories and subcategories") and, next, tells you how to get someplace useful (see first point).

Thoughts? Elf | Talk 05:40, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You are quite correct. The Categories link is pretty useless for the average user in this context. older≠wiser 15:48, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Unified Login

Perhaps this was discussed before but I don't know. It would be useful to have a part of the signup screen to say which wikis you want to sign up on, and then you have the same account for all of them and when you login, you login to all, and your userpage is automatically interlinked or redirected, etc. Also, when you sign up for another wiki you can have the option to add that to your existing unified account. This way, you can see the contribs for a user in one screen (with options to filter out depending on which wiki). This could have many benefits. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 06:13, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It has been brought up before. The major issue is that nobody has volunteered to write the code and sort out the issues of existing duplicate usernames. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:52, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Article series boxes/succession boxes

I was fiddling around with the article series boxes and the political succession boxes to see if I could come up with a good mixture of the two...I'm not sure where the best place to discuss this would be, so I thought I would post it here where lots of people would see it (as opposed to the Wikipedia:Article series page where hardly anyone will see it). If anyone would like to comment on/discuss/improve what I've been doing, it is at User:Adam Bishop/sandbox. (If I should post examples here as well, just let me know.) Adam Bishop 06:16, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I really like the second possibility listed. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 06:21, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Looks quite good, especially the third version, which doesn't have the silly repetition of the title. (Co-rulers are uncommon anyway, so that problem could be treated separately.) How would you handle boxes like that in William III of the Netherlands? One box for each title? -- Jao 06:33, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
That is what I was going to work on next - there are even more complicated examples, see Charles I of Sicily for example. Adam Bishop 06:37, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm quite partial to the ones The Tom has been adding for Canadian cabinet ministers. See for instance Mauril Bélanger. I've never been too fond of blue backgrounds for boxes. - SimonP 06:49, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
I dunno, I like the simpler tables used for things like the US Presidents (Bill Clinton is a good example). I dunno about colors. Is the main point of this exercise to create a template? --Golbez 08:42, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If you don't mind, I'll add a little variation on one of your tables to your sandbox page. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 16:30, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Golbez - some of the succession boxes are already templates (the Byzantine emperors box, and some of the British peerage boxes, for example), but they don't all necessarily have to be templates. By the way, another possibility I have seen is some of the Roman emperors on fr: - such as fr:Auguste. Adam Bishop 17:14, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Template:Protected

There is currently a poll at Template talk:Protected regarding whether it should have an image or not. This affects enough high-profile articles that I think it's worth noting here. —Kate | Talk 08:49, 2004 Aug 2 (UTC)

Main page, skins and login

Can anyone explain why my persistent login works on all (AFAIK) pages except for the main page where it displays Login at top right not SGBailey(Talk) and is in the defualt skin. If I move to another page, my loggedin-ness and skin (Classic) return. Puzzled. -- SGBailey 11:02, 2004 Aug 2 (UTC)


Maybe you're looking at a cached Main Page? Try reload. Salasks 15:19, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

Is there any reason that the Wikipedia logo in the upper left corner "flashes" whenever I place my mouse pointer on it? This is really annoying.

Acegikmo1 13:59, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You must be using MSIE. I guess it’s
/* show the hand */
#p-logo a,
#p-logo a:hover {
   cursor: pointer;
}
in IE60Fixes.css: MSIE doesn’t really understand hovers in combination with pointers. Forcing a default pointer for the entire #p-logo class will probably solve it if I remember the bugwards compatibility rules. Anárion 14:43, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I had this same problem. I tried using cursor: default but it still did that. I ended up putting the background on the div instead of the a, with this:
#p-logo {
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: 35% 50% !important;
    background-image: url(/upload/b/bc/Wiki.png);
}
#p-logo a {
    background-image: none !important;
}
That seems to fix the problem. Goplat 04:47, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Actually, no it doesn't. That stops it from reloading when the mouse moves over it, but it still reloads on every new page, because of the underlying problem: IE just isn't caching it. None of this happens on the logos of other Wikimedia projects, only Wikipedia. Goplat 17:22, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia clones and search engine ratings

I've started a page at Wikipedia:Send in the clones to discuss this. Any comments? -- The Anome 14:06, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Say what you will, but two wrongs don't make a right. Much of what passes as SEO is really just plain Googlebombing. If you're talking about real SEO, that'd involve things like correct page structure, etc. which I believe we already have. Besides, if we play dirty, there's a chance Google will later demote us in search rankings. Overall, optimise only if its legal, and doesn't involve some dirty trick. Johnleemk | Talk 14:13, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I wonder if there are any problems for the google crawler going through our site. I usually check for the google rating of some of the articles I have created. For example monthon [1] it recently had the article in the top 10 of google hits, before it had the link only without a cached version (and much below top 10), and now it seems to have disappeared again. But the mirrors are all present. Does the google bot run into any traffic throttleling, or the measures to block mirroring by sucking all pages? It's of course impossible to guess what is really going on at google... andy 18:25, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia's headline stats for July 2004

The July stats are in (see /media/stats/en.wikipedia.org/usage_200407.html ) and they make some interesting reading...

July was the English Wikipedia's busiest month ever (I think), with:

  • 9,439,508 hits
  • 8,208,960 files were downloaded
  • 5,672,051 pages were served
  • 316,295 visits (not clear if this refers to unique visitors or just page impressions)
  • 2,083,869,414 Kb of data was downloaded

Excluding project and special pages (and the Main Page), the 10 most requested articles were:

  1. Nick Berg (Iraq hostage)
  2. John Kerry (new entry)
  3. Kim Sun-il (Iraq hostage)
  4. OS-tan (deeply bizarre; a must-read) (new entry)
  5. List of sex positions
  6. United States
  7. Crushing by elephant (yay, go elephants! ;-)
  8. Bobby Fischer (former chess champion) (new entry)
  9. Wikipedia
  10. Wiki

For comparison, the 10 most requested for June were:

  1. Paul Johnson (hostage)
  2. Kim Sun-il
  3. Paul Marshall Johnson, Jr.
  4. Beheading
  5. Decapitation
  6. Redmond, Washington
  7. Goatse.cx
  8. SpaceShipOne
  9. Wikipedia
  10. United States

The top 10 search terms for July were:

  1. wikipedia
  2. wiki
  3. nick berg
  4. cristiano ronaldo
  5. teresa heinz kerry
  6. encyclopedia
  7. beheading
  8. harry potter and the half blood prince
  9. marlon brando
  10. ken jennings

From this, it looks pretty clear that Wikipedia is being heavily used as a resource for major ongoing news events, particularly Iraq. -- ChrisO 16:37, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

cool. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 20:33, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's also pretty clear that we've been wasting our time with our encyclopedic coverage of kings, battles, politicians, rivers, and elementary particles. We obviously have to radically retask our efforts to expand our coverage of sex positions and macabre modes of death (or ideally articles combining both). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:17, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I have a feeling that kings, battle, rivers, and all that will become more popular again once school is back in session. Samboy 10:57, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
List of bondage positions could use some work ;) →Raul654 21:20, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

Was i irresponsible?

I'm guessing that my horror of the Worm Ouroboros is irrelevant, and that none of the tech wizards will object to my edit at Talk:Priscilla Davis. But i just couldn't resist, and i hope that someone cautious (and perhaps a few irony-lovers) will follow the link from Talk:Priscilla Davis, and revert me if appropriate. --Jerzy(t) 16:58, 2004 Aug 2 (UTC)

Baroque art redirects to Baroque, not Baroque Art

This seems wrong, but Baroque seems like a better article. One sure problem is that Baroque links to Baroque art which redirects back to itself. Baroque is a featured article, so I'm a little weary of busting something up. Salasks 17:34, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

Well, it seems pretty clear to me that Baroque Art should redirect to Baroque art, so I've fixed it so that it does. Don't be put off by the fact that Baroque is a featured article--it's good to edit those boldly too! --Camembert

2004 IAAF World Indoor Championships

I have started an rtcl on the 2004 IAAF World Indoor Championships but cannot find any useful general information regarding which other countries bid for it or any problems the Hungarians had in staging it etc. to fill the introduction out. If anyone happened to be there?? a couple of photos of the stadium or something would be handy. Any help gratefully received.Scraggy4 18:29, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Database error

I've been trying to correct an editing error for several minutes now in the Current Events page, but every time I click "Save", I get:

Database error From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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.

RickK 19:38, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

And now I just got it editing George W. Bush. RickK 20:09, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

Yep, I get it too when trying to edit my user page. — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:12, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
Here's where I got it. While editing User:Ilyanep (2x), while editing User talk: Texture, while editing Wikipedia:Village pump (2x), and while editing another of my User subpages. This has been within the last hour or so — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 20:17, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If I read the IRC chat correctly a vandal moved around a user talk page - which due to its many internal links makes the database server too busy to allow any other transactions. Now it seems to be back to normal. andy 20:26, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Let's hope — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 20:31, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Editing a page above the first TOC entry

There used to be an "[edit]" link at the top of every page which allowed you to edit the section of the page above the first Header. That link is gone. There now seems to be no way to edit a page if the part you want to edit is above the first header, except to edit the entire page. Are we going to have to put "Introduction" headers on every page so we can get to the unlabeled section? RickK 20:09, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

wasn't there something about editing the first header and then changing the URL to section=0? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 20:14, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes. This was discussed not too long ago. It is a known bug. If you like, you can still edit just the first section by replacing the section=1 at the end of the URL with section=0. That way you can select a shorter section to edit, but get the first section by replacing the section number. It isn't perfect, but it's a work-around until the bug is fixed. I use it a great deal and it's always worked for me. HTH. — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:17, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

I just had an idea and I thought I'd spit it out here because it might work well. Why not have links at the top of articles to the relevant Wiki pages like the interlingua links used to be? (So if I go to the 'surfboard' article at the top there'll be a link to the Wiktionary surfboard entry and if I go to the 'John Kerry' page at the top there'll be a link to the relevant WitiQuote article). Sorry if this has come up before - I've been away for ages because at first my internet crashed and didn't get fixed and by the time it was back I was really busy... and so on. Sorry for rambling. LUDRAMAN | T 21:46, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Good idea. Also we should be able to search all the Wikis at once. This might be one of those things to put in SourceForge feature requests. Salasks 22:12, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

Protocol for deleting finished topics

The Village Pump/Help Desk/Ref Desk/VfD pages are all hella long, leading to crazy load times or even sometimes time outs. Is it ok to delete topics that are no longer active? For example, some pages have been listed in VfD and then speedy deleted. Can I delete the page entry? Another example is that I asked a question earlier today on this page about Baroque/Baroque art redirects that was answered and that would not be of any use to anyone else. Can I delete the question/answer?

I don't know the policy, but why not? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:16, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

VfD policy is that, once a page is listed, it stays for 5 days. RickK 22:32, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

Pages don't always have to stay on VfD 5 days. If they were wrongly listed in the first place, they can be removed, and if they are CSDs they can be deleted early. The village pump etc can be shortened through Refactoring or by following the suggestions at Wikipedia:Maintenance. Angela. 23:21, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
I thought the policy on CSDs and other early resolutions was that the VfD entry could be removed 24 hours after resolution if nobody objected, but I don't know where I got that from. It's a good idea to put a notice on the entry saying removal is pending IMO. Andrewa 05:16, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
In practice, you don't even have to wait 24 hours or leave message if the early resolution is an obvious "keep". Pcb21| Pete 11:27, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
That really is not policy. RickK 21:40, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
I would seriously suggest that people do not remove items from VfD early - that page suffers badly enough from the dreaded page duping bug as it is, and I'm positive that people removing sections while other people are adding sections is in some way implicated. So I would recommend leaving them there - where's the harm? - until they reach the end of their 5 days and get cleaned up in a mass swoop by whichever admin is implementing the votes that day. —Stormie 04:05, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

A quick Poll

What monitor size and resolution do you use? Also what OS and Browser?(I use 17" and 1152x768x24, WinXP, Moz 1.7 BTW) I'm just wondering what the community uses. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:19, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • right now it's 23" 1600x1200 Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.8 The lowest I occasionally use is text 80x24 and lynx 2.8.5 BACbKA 22:38, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Oh my god. A 23" monitor! 16x12! That would be heaven for me (particularly with a graphics card that supports that). — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 23:27, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • I didn't intend to engage in comparative penilometry, just gave the honest specs :-) Right now I am surfing off a laptop, same browser/OS (the distro is Debian sarge BTW), but the resolution is 1024x768x24 at 15". Occn'ly I'm using Konqueror/3.2 (when I encounter a Firefox bug, mostly, or if I have a stupid site that is too much IE-optimized), but it is too heavy to use it as a default. Other than that, Konqueror is great. BACbKA 13:06, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • 19" 1600x1200x24, Gentoo Linux, Mozilla Firefox with a browser window usually around 1000x1000. -- Wapcaplet 23:13, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • At work, 17" LCD monitor @ 1280x1024, Windows XP, Firefox; At home, 17" CRT monitor @ 1024x768, Windows 2000, Mozilla. Browser window always maximised. —Stormie 23:32, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
  • Dual monitors of different sizes and resolutions. Browser windows stay near 750 px wide, which makes overly large fixed-width tables on Wikipedia jump out. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:40, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • 17" TFT monitor, 1280 x 1024, Windows 2000, MSIE. -- Arwel 00:57, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • 15" TFT (laptop), 1024x768, WinXP Pro and Firefox --AlexG 01:48, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • 19" 1600x1200x24, a personal variant of Linux, Firefox. -- Grunt (talk) 01:56, 2004 Aug 3 (UTC)
  • 17" CRT 1280 x 1024, Firefox/Opera7 (and IE and Amaya when I feel like pain) all on XP. Also 800x600 on laptop LCD, konqueror on linux (man, konqueror kicks ass) Links and Lynx occasionally.-- Finlay McWalter | Talk 02:17, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • 15" TFT, 1400x1050, WinXP, MSIE. - UtherSRG 02:31, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • All over the map, I routinely work from 4 different places. -- Jmabel 03:12, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
  • 15" CRT 800x600 24 bit, Win98Se, IE6 now but IE5.5 or maybe even IE5.0 shortly. Andrewa 04:36, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Home: 15" LCD 1024×768, Gentoo, Firefox; Work: 17" CRT 1024×768, Win2k Pro, IE6. I don't edit much at work. --rbrwrˆ 06:23, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • 19" CRT, 1152x864, Opera 7 (maximised), XP Apwoolrich 06:32, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • 19" CRT, 1600x1200 (should probably go higher), IE6 in Windows 2000 or Firefox in Fedora Core 2, depending on mood... --Golbez 06:50, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • 17" Flatscreen 128- x 1024, Opera 7, Windows XP. ALose use IE or Netscape if I'm fiddling with how things look, but I forget the versions. Lyellin 08:21, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
  • @home: 19" CRT, 1280x1024, Opera 7 (latest build), WinXP SP2 P2 Anárion 08:29, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • @work: 17" CRT, 1024x768, MSIE 6 (I have to alas :(), Win2000 SP4 Anárion 08:29, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • 17" Flatscreen 1280x1024, Win XP Home, Opera 7.20 (seldom IE or Mozilla). Jao 08:57, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
  • 14" laptop 1024x768, Win2k Pro SP4, Opera 7.23 (w/ Firefox 0.8, Netscape 4.79 & 7.1, Mozilla 1.5, & [ugh!] MSIE 6.0sp1 for testing) — Jeff Q 09:42, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • 19" CRT 1600x1200, Gentoo linux, Mozilla Firefox. —siroχo 09:43, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
  • 15" CRT 1280x1024, Slackware Linux, Mozilla Firefox. Johnleemk | Talk 10:40, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • 19" Viewsonic G90fPlus CRT (superb quality) at 1024px by 768px, Windows XP Home, IE Version 6 - Adrian Pingstone 14:07, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • 35 cm; 1024×768; Mac OS X; Safari, Opera, iCab. Gdr 16:25, 2004 Aug 3 (UTC)
  • 17" CRT 1600x1200, Gentoo Linux, Opera 7.53 aljandy 17:56, 2004 Aug 3 (UTC)
  • 17" flatscreen, 1280x1024 (maximum, although I have it set at 1024x768), Windows XP Professional, Netscape 7.2 (or sometimes Mozilla). (I don't know the specifics of the Mac at work.) Adam Bishop 17:14, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • 15" monitor (unknown type) 1152x864, Windows XP, IE 6 |Rhymeless 19:39, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • 19" 1600x1200 with Firefox on my Linux computer, else 17" 1024x768 on my brother's Win XP computer with Firefox.
  • 21" CRT 1024x768, though I used to run it at 800x600. FreeBSD 4.10 with Phoenixfox 0.9 as my main browser. Darrien 21:33, 2004 Aug 4 (UTC)

Around 85% of visits to WP are via IE. I expect this self-selecting poll will show a much lower number. What conclusions can we draw? Pcb21| Pete 11:20, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That where people have no choice of browser (work, library etc.) they will use IE, and otherwise they install a modern browser? Anárion 13:22, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Not true. I'm a die-hard, build it yourself computer nerd. Or at least I was until I bought a laptop. (Ain't so easy to build something highly portable...) I've given up on trying to keep up with the latest and greatest hardware and software. When Netscape stopped coming out with updates way back when, I switched to MSIE, kicking and screaming all the way. When I bought my laptop with XP (finally an OS from MS that's reasonably worthy of being called an OS...) I continued with MSIE. I don't want to learn where all the tweak buttons are for yet another piece of software. I'm used to MSIE now. Can I do better? Sure. Will there be down-sides? Perhaps. Will they be small compared to the benefits? Probably. - UtherSRG 19:02, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You should try Firefox. At only 4.7MB and simple interface designed for the average user, its good to go, there is even a guide written about switching from IE[2]. It is also extendable, there is even Wikipedia specific extensions. Firefox is the browser of choice for all my family. So I recommend everybody who voted IE to try Firefox. [[User:Krik|User:Krik/norm]] 21:58, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Firefox is okay, Opera is a great browser also. A full internet suite in less than half the size of Firefox (less than a fifth if you want FF to be comparable and install Thunderbird + all those necessary extensions). As for IE being sufficient, I know people that were using Netscape 4 until 2003 so I can understand the reluctance to chance even though the browser is technically a generation or two behind... Anárion 07:53, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It had occured to me that this problem might be possible, but I had never come across it in practice before. So... Is there any established way to get around the problem that occures when a word in one language translates as two (or more) in the other? I wanted to link the Irish wiki article Cnáimhseachas to the English wiki, but the word translates either as midwifery or obstetrics. I can't find any synonyms (or near-synonyms) for the word in Irish that could be used to make two different titles, and I wouldn't dare suggest merge the two English articles. I know that there are other examples in other languages. Should altlang links be put in for both articles, or is there some technical trick I'm unaware of? -- Kwekubo 23:21, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I can only think of two less than ideal methods:
  • put both and rely on users looking at the hover box or status bar to distinguish the two
  • put them in the page body, where they can be explained
--Patrick 06:43, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Also you can split the Irish article, but that is rather drastic if it is just for this purpose.--Patrick 06:57, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Taoism, in Klingon

Can someone help me out? I am looking at Taoism, but would really like to read the article in Klingon. I notice that the Klingon Wikipedia has an article about Taoism, but, although it is in the source, it does not appear in the language bar, but rather, at the bottom of the article: Daw_lalDan. What is wrong? Apart from the obvious, of course. Mark Richards 23:25, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Klingon interlanguage links are not displayed. This is part of a compromise between the people that wanted a Klingon Wikipedia, and the people that wanted it deleted. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:32, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I can understand that, but the link does appear at the bottom of the article, it looks odd, and is confusing, since it is not apparent what it links too, it not being in the language bar, and links to a page that is uninteligible. Can we fix it in any way? My browser renders:

External links 

   * Taoism Information Page (http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/gthursby/taoism/)
   * Resources for East Asian Language and Thought (http://www.acmuller.net) with Translation of the Daodejing 
   * Lao Tse & Daoism (http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/ejournal/laotse.htm)
   * Taoist Restoration Society (http://www.taorestore.org)
   * Taoist Culture & Information Centre (http://www.eng.taoism.org.hk)

tlh:Daw lalDan

Mark Richards 18:30, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

<at a loss for words> Perhaps people might like to learn Irish instead and help out at ga:! It even sounds similar :o) Eara, níl mé i ndairíre! Zoney 23:50, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Can someone point me to where this discussion is had? The current 'compromise' is kind of kookey! Mark Richards 22:22, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Apparently "languages" like Toki Pona (with maybe as much as 12 "speakers", if you’re generous) are allowed to link, but fun languages like Klingon with a relatively large speaker base (rivalling or exceeding Esperanto, iirc) are not. Purely arbitrary because some people dislike tlhIngan Hol. Never mind the fact that Klingon has an ISO language code apparently! Anárion 06:21, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
*yawn* m:Artificial languages equal rights. -- Tim Starling 06:27, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)
Eh, who uses meta? And how long has that "poll" (if that what it is) been going on now? Anárion 07:51, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The orignal compromise was made on the mailing list. Angela. 08:23, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

Taxobox template documentation

The taxobox_begin,...,taxobox_end syntax needs to be documented somewhere. I think there is a real danger that Wikipedia becomes more and more difficult to use for new users, with all the arcane templates. This documentation belongs in Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life and Wikipedia:Template messages. AxelBoldt 11:08, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I replied to you on the ToL page, as that's where you'd initially posted. You are quite correct! However, even just in the last couple of days there have been some changes. I'd rather wait a little bit longer to see if any further changes come along before publishing the new format formally. Users (readers) shouldn't notice a thing. Die-hard contributors (editors) can take a peek at the taxoboxes on Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life already to see how they are constructed. I'm thinking this weekend or next, depending on if more changes happen. - UtherSRG 18:52, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Categories not showing contents

Could somebody check out out Category:Sportspeople by country and tell me why I cannot see Category:Sri Lankan sportspeople.Scraggy4 11:51, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Found it now, my own mistake,I think, but then again the category was already linked? sportspeople was mistakenly typed beginning with a capital S.Scraggy4

Sustainability and Environment WikiProject

Hi. I'm looking for people interested in a new wikiproject on the topics of sustainability, environment and ecology.

WikiProject_Sustainability.

All input welcome.

--Pengo 15:01, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Cite sources

Does wikipedia have any guidelines that discuss the comparability of different sources? For instance, does wikipedia have a guideline saying that older sources are better? Or that newer sources are better? Or that original sources are better than secondary? Hyacinth 23:31, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:No original research pretty clearly states that original sources (original research, at least) are not allowed, only secondary and tertiary sources are. Sam [Spade] 23:44, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Well, that really amounts to "don't add your own theories." Original sources, if by "original" you mean "primary" sources, are perfectly acceptable to use for research purposes, as are secondary sources. For secondary sources, the usefulness of "new" and "old" sources probably depends on the subject - generally newer research is better, as older secondary sources tend to become outdated, but it would depend on the source as well. Adam Bishop 23:57, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Well, that policy pertains to the contents of an article (that is, if Prof Hawking has a new theory on black holes, he shouldn't publish it here). But isn't Hyacinth asking not about article content but citations, in which case quite the opposite is true. Hyacinth's article on theories of black holes (say) should ideally reference Prof Hawking's paper (published in the Journal of Jolly Hard Maths, vol 3.14), which is much better than cite to a CNN report about Prof Hawking's paper, which in turn is better than some dude's weblog citing the CNN story that cites the journal. So I think, as far as citations go, the most authoritative (whatever that means in a particular context) is the best cite, and that'll often be the most original. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:00, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think there is room on Wikipedia for your modern defintions which don't correspond to anything in the classical world. Hyacinth here wants his modern definition of Effeminacy to supercede the authority of Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas. He wants to remake the word into a progressive meaning and totally disregard 2500 years of the same meaning. Aristotle, a pagan, and St Thomas a Christian agree on the same meaning of the word.WHEELER 00:08, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

So far the answer to my question is: No, wikipedia has no policy whatsoever on citations, except to encourage any of them. I suggest that we develope some criteria, explicitly spelling out how to use citations in an collaborative neutral encylopedia. Hyacinth 02:56, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hawking is not a good example. IMO if he contributed here, he could write anything he liked. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 07:45, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There may not be a general policy because it is not possible to say what it is best every time. The age of a source may be unrelated to the quality. Given Wheeler's comments, it seemed like you asked a different question than the one that was truly on your mind. Pcb21| Pete 11:17, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hyacinth doesn't want certain sources that contradict his definition. Don't you see what is going on they are trying to "*Square the Circle*"! It can't be done. I argue for seperate articles. Let them write their modern definition. Leave the classical defintion alone and by itself. The modern definition is not connected to the meaning of the Greek Classical or Biblical texts.WHEELER 15:37, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Requests for comment/WHEELER2. Hyacinth 19:02, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Please keep in mind that citation guidelines for research are not the same as guidelines for an encyclopedia. In original historical research, you often prefer primary sources because you are making arguments directly about those sources. In an encyclopedia, more-accessible summaries, reviews, and textbooks are often more helpful to the reader...here, you are only trying to summarize the existing knowledge, not add to it. (I've written for print encyclopedias, and the editors there suggested similar guidelines.) Even in scholarly research, if you are not writing history you often prefer textbooks and reviews for well-established subjects; for example, few contemporary papers on electromagnetic subjects will reference Maxwell's 1864 paper. —Steven G. Johnson 23:02, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

See: Wikipedia talk:Cite sources#Proposed guidelines.

To Steven G. Johnson, I have taken a different approach to things. I kind of regard this as a central place for research. In an encyclopedia, one is confined to space and time so one must interpret original sources and have very few quotes. I do not agree in toto in telling people what to think---I want Aristotle to do the talking. I quote profusely from the originals and let the originals do the talking. I want somebody to know where all this info is and where to find it. Where it has been used. We have room and time and we can expand past constrictions. The ariticle like the [Classical definition of effeminacy] will draw scholars and academics. Let St. Thomas speak for himself. Let Plato speak for himself. Let Aristotle speak for himself.WHEELER 14:15, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Classical meanings vs Modern revisionsism

Today, classical departments are closing and no one reads classical literature anymore. The Greeks and the Romans are called DWEM. What I am doing in the Classical definition of republic and the Classical definition of effeminacy is catalogueing these classical defintions for posterity. I understand deconstructionism and revisionism that is going on today in every university and college. Old terms are done away with and given new modern meanings that have no correlation to the old. Effeminacy comes from the Greek word malakos. Yet,Hyacinth wants to transpose his meaning unto the classical idea. Malakos does not have the meaning that Hyacinth wants to give it. I think for posterity and for classical studies, there should be seperate articles. Their new meaning of the term effeminacy is not the meaning for the Victorians, or the Greeks or the Latins or for the Christian church. I say keep the two articles seperate from each other. I can't see how the modern definition of Hyacinth has any correlation or consistency with Greek classical term. If someone read old literature, he needs to understand what those people took it to mean. Not to transpose a new meaning unto a word that has totally different connotations.WHEELER 23:53, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Clearly an article on a term should explain its uses in different time periods. I can sse why this calls for multiple sections in an article. It escapes me why this would call for two different articles. -- Jmabel 03:17, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
Because they lead off with the modern meaning by purpose and totally drown out the old and classical meaning of the term. If a highschool student went to the article: Golden Mean He would find this statement: "The one producing a temper of hardness and ferocity, the other of softness and effeminacy". Now to understand this term in a Greek Classical sense does one go to the modern definition of Effeminacy or to the Classical definition of effeminacy? Which one answers the student's question? This is important. I have been told many times, "Only the modern definition needs applied. Well, the modern definition is revisionism and is misleading approaching propaganda. Is that what an encylopedia is about? I don't think so. These people have an agenda. Their modern definition has no bearing on what Socrates means in Plato's Republic.WHEELER 15:32, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The Medicine article doesn't say that our health problems are caused by humors and vapors. It doesn't talk about demonic possession or bloodletting. It's written from a modern point of view. Articles can discuss historical opinions, but they shouldn't be presented as statements of fact if they're no longer accepted. I also don't think the term "revisionism" should be used as pejorative. Accusing someone of revisionism is like accusing them of progress. Rhobite 15:58, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
Isn't the Wikipedia philosophy to try to find a neutral way to combine different points of view rather than to have separate articles for the two sides of a debate? The classical meanings of "republic", "democracy", "effeminacy" etc belong in the main articles, probably in a section on the historical meanings or origins of a term or concept. They should become articles on their own only when they are too big to fit. Gdr 16:03, 2004 Aug 3 (UTC)
I understand what is going---This encyclopedia exists to rewrite terms and ideas for the modern age. This encyclopedia is about revisionism and deconstructionism.WHEELER 16:28, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
In my experience, WHEELER has not been told that "only the modern definition needs applied [sic]". On the contrary, I and others have been very clear that it is the role of an encyclopedia article to cover modern definitions of concepts as well as "classical" or ancient definitions. For clarity's sake, however, we can't write articles that treat modern definitions as "errors" because they deviate from a classical Greek ideal. WHEELER seems unable to accept this, and believes that our desire to treat modern definitions as no worse than ancient definitions is tantamount to believing that only the modern definition is valid (this is my perception of the situation, and therefore is likely incomplete). I concur wholeheartedly with Jmabel's belief that treating both definitions requires sections within an article, not separate articles. WHEELER's refusal to budge on this point is becoming troubling, and I fear damaging to Wikipedia, though I hope very much to be wrong on that point. Jwrosenzweig 16:02, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I tried to edit the Republic but all my edits where reverted out and was told that only "*modern*" definitions need apply. So, I started the article, Classical definition of republic. I don't know what you people mean — Is this encyclopedia only for modern defintions? What about old meanings and old definitions? Sparta is a Republic. Yet, reading the "*Republic*" article denies that Sparta is a republic. This is misleading. The modern definition has no bearing on Sparta. What does someone do when studying Sparta? Does he understand it the way the Greeks understood it or the way moderns do who want to change the character of Sparta? The modern definition in no way describes Sparta. There has to be two articles or the Modern definition of Republic is WRong and needs to be deleted alltogether. You can't "*Square the Circle*"!WHEELER 15:58, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

WHEELER, your edits were not refused because only modern definitions need apply. They were refused because your edits promoted the belief that modern definitions of the word "republic" are flawed, misleading, and completely false. This is a perspective peculiar to you and perhaps a few others -- to allow the article to take on that perspective was unthinkable (and it remains so). As was argued months ago at Talk:Republic, most of us reject your original research that suggests ancient Sparta was a Republic. This isn't based on any agenda -- just a reading of Plato and Aristotle. If you want to reopen the question, let's do it there. There needs to be no second article -- we simply need to add a section to the article to deal with classical definitions: however, it is important you remember that the classical definition section will be written by consensus in this community, not by you alone. Your desire to "own" your contributions makes it difficult for any other editor to modify your work without raising your ire. Jwrosenzweig 16:10, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Jwrosenzweig is the one who kept telling me that only "modern definitions" need apply.
  • Quote==From the Wikipedia Article A Republic is any government without a King. Well Sparta has a King. Two Kings actually. The Greek term for Republic is Politeia. Sparta was a Republic. Plato, Aristotle considered it so. How do you answer this?WHEELER 16:20, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Quote==Curiously, Sir Thomas Smyth also described England under Queen Elizabeth I as a republic in De Republica Anglorum; the Manner of Government or Policie of the Realme of England, {1583}.(2) Today, there are no governments based on the classical form.
Obviously Sir Thomas Smyth considered England a Republic and it has a KINGWHEELER 16:22, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • The editors, Terence Ball and Richard Dagger, of Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal, 2nd ed, HarperCollins College Publishers, l995, (pp 265 & 267) have printed the right definitions.
    • republic A form of government by the people that includes the rule of law, a mixed constitution, and the cultivation of an active and public-spirited citizenry.
    • mixed constitution (or government) The republican policy of combining or balancing rule by one, by the few, and by the many in a single government, with the aim of preventing the concentration of power in any person or social group.
Here is the correct definition of a Republic that contradicts the Wikipedian Article.WHEELER 16:24, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree with WHEELER that there needs to be a strict observance of the meanings terms had in their historical context. To mislead people by making them think the words Plato used had meanings that arose over two thousand years later is wrong. I don't know about separating the articles, but I do know modern interpretation should not be allowed to contaminate original meanings: both should be given their unqualified voice. What the ancients term effiminate should not be 'qualified' or 'apologized' over if it's put in the same article with the modern. --DanielCD 16:40, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Daniel, I agree with you. None of the editors opposed to WHEELER's version, that I know of, are interested in ignoring past uses of the word. Our difficulty is that we are prevented from introducing modern definitions and uses of the word unless we can produce satisfactory "classical Greek sources" that establish that our definition traces to the ancient Greeks. If it does not, WHEELER rejects it as a false definition, even if modern sources are provided, since he believes that modern sources which do not quote or rely on classical Greek sources are flawed. This, at least, is my understanding of the arguments he has made in talk pages -- you should read them yourself, and see if you reach the same conclusions. Jwrosenzweig 16:50, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, I know I'm kinda butting in an ongoing thing here. I'll look and try to educate myself a bit more about the specific situation. --DanielCD 16:59, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/WHEELER2. Hyacinth 19:11, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

To Jwrosenzweig I did not object to any one adding to the original Effeminacy article. It was Korpios who first moved the article to [effeminacy (classical vice)] I didn't do nothing because I agreed with it and I knew that he wanted to make a modern view of the term. I DID NOT DISAGREE HERE with Korpios in this move. Korpios made a disambig page. I did not disagree. Someone else moved this all back to the original. Then they kept putting the modern view before the meaning of two thousand five hundred years. I restored the original meaning and then I put their modern meaning at the end of the Classical meaning. I put meaning in "*Chronologically"*. It was all reverted. I have no objection to that but then they kept on putting their modern view before the classical meaining at the beginning of the page and then destroying the classical meaning all together. That is when I made a seperate article.WHEELER 14:06, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

NPOV is a methodology of events or something like the George bush and John Kerry biographies. But NPOV for technical and classical and Christian terms is unusable and untenable. NPOV is useless in a culture of revisionism and deconstructionism. I know very well that these thought paradigms and methodology is alive and well in college classrooms. In the medicine example above about humors and vapors-=-medicine is scientifically proved through the scientific method. It is a mistake to move the methodology of the material world to define the metaphysical world. It is the rule of Philo that guides in the meteaphysical world.WHEELER 14:06, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

NPOV is not the rule of the Encyclopedia Britannica, or the Catholic Encyclopedia nor the Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. NPOV and integration methodology is very dangerous to use for classical texts. Modern ideas and conceptions have no place in the classical world. The classical people are very different from modern people. NPOV would in a sense redifine and destroy classical culture and its meaning. We have got to be more sophisticated than "NPOV". This is quite banal as a rule and guidelines for an encyclopedia. It is tooo simple for all the contingencies that happen.WHEELER 14:06, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wheeler, you're misunderstanding NPOV again. All it means is that if POV material is presented, such as the classical definition of effeminacy, it should be presented not as fact but as the opinion of classical philosophers. The suggestion that your material would be tainted by the mere presence of modern material in the same article isn't workable. Rhobite 03:24, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)
Then, WE NEED SOME Guidance somewhere somehow. Classical definitions of Aristotle and St. Thomas are NOT POV. They are two of the smartest people who ever lived. Because Aristotle did not have technology that has helped us does not disparage Aristotle's achievements. Someone argued that Aristotle does not know what he is talking about. And this idea that Modern Scholars 2500 years later know better than Aristotle is nonsense.WHEELER 17:03, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

World War II wikireader

I've decided that I'm going to do a World War II wiki-reader. I'd like to know what people think about it. Volunteers are welcome, especially anyone who has experience doing them is very welcome. →Raul654 16:44, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)


My first edit conflict

I'm having a dispute with another user about whether this external link on the 1990's Ensenada massacre and the continuing threat of violence is appropriate for the Ensenada article. I've added it a few times but it keeps getting killed by User:Togo. I left a note on User talk:Togo and he said the article was irrelevant because it focuses largely on a single horrific incident in 1998. Please advise. Salasks 17:08, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

I think the policy in this case is to have a separate article, possibly called Ensenada massacre with all of the details, and the washingtonpost link, and link to it from the Ensenada article. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 17:22, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
Your edit was reasonable and relevant. If you put in 5 or 10 paragraphs and overwhelemed the article, I could understand Togo's edit or the need for a seperate article. In this case, however, Togo(perhaps from an overdeveloped sense of civic pride? - I've run into that before on wikipedia) is the one being unreasonable. Gamaliel 17:44, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think either solution would be equitable in this case. However, I think that a very relevant precedent is Hiroshima, Hiroshima, which is mostly about the present political and cultural status of the city, and which has a tasteful link to the main article on the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is also a great way to separate politically charged material from fairly innocuous material, which is useful in cases that require temporary page protection. -- DropDeadGorgias (talk) 18:10, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
I'd agree if there was an article's worth of material here, but it's only a link. Gamaliel 21:35, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Well I live in Ensenada and I have never heard anybody drop as much as a word about anything even closely related to the incidence. Therefore if this is not part of the local conciousness why should it be part of the global conciousness about Ensenada? But coming from Washington and knowing other unwelcomed US interventions in the latin american world I have to concider it biased! Why dont you put the link into the article Drugwar if it exists? There is about a million things about Ensenada you could mention and the Washington fear mongering is a US issue the English speaking world may not have such anal retentive issues ... cheers Togo 21:10, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If there are a million things about Ensenada worth mentioning, then go ahead and mention them in the article, no one is stopping you or editing them out. But this article is one of those million things, and there is no reason to keep it out. Gamaliel 21:35, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
A quick google for Ensenada massacre gives 643 pages in English (more if I remove the language restriction) and almost all are about the story mentioned (although one seems to be a report on a very successful fishing expedition!). Not all of them are from Washington; most are from newspapers or equivalent. I think it would make a very bad precedent if a user were to be allowed to delete an event from Wikipedia simply because it made their home town (city/village/whatever) look less sparkly. --Phil | Talk 12:03, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)
My suggestion at this stage is to create a good stub at Ensenada massacre. It can't just be the link of course, it must also say what the article is about and why it is important information, as well as the external link and a stub notice. There is plenty of information just in the Washington Post article to make a good stub IMO. Then put a see also link in the main article. Those who wish to censor this piece of information will have much more trouble blanking or deleting a good stub than they currently have just reverting a link, and if they remove the Wikilink the page will still show in searches and what links here. If they take it to VfD I predict the result will either be keep or merge and redirect, and either way if they then complain that they would have preferred the original link, they will get little sympathy. I'd like to think of a less confrontational way out but I can't. Andrewa 12:52, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Search engine

I've made a simple search engine in Java. The engine can work off-line (i.e. if you copy all the files in the directory to your hard disk, the engine can be run off the hard disk), which, coupled with a static HTML copy of Wikipedia, would make a portable, searchable encyclopedia.

You need a recent Java Virtual Machine to use it; in particular, the one shipping with Microsoft Windows won't work. There's a link pointing to Sun Microsystems' virtual machine.

I'm working on reducing the memory consumption.

I'm interested in hearing impressions from people on various computing platforms.

Comments on my talk page or here.

If you mean that you just want to copy the names of articles onto your hard disk, then what would be the point? If you mean that you're trying to create an offline version of Wikipedia, then that's essentially impossible for most people. The Wikipedia database is more than 16GB in size, and it would be obsolete within seconds because of the number of edits to Wikipedia. [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 19:07, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
False. The current Wikipedia database, which I downloaded (see the download page, is about 600 Mbytes long in compressed for, 1.4 Gbytes long in uncompressed form. This means that one could conceivably generate all HTML pages for Wikipedia and obtain a static version in less than the capacity of a DVD, and certainly well within the reach of current hard drives. The only issue is the size of the images (21 Gbytes).
There are many people on there without a good Internet connection, often without any Internet connection at all. It makes sense to me that these people would like to use an offline version; it also makes sense that they would like to use a search engine that does not require the installation of a SQL database or other complex stuff. ;-) David.Monniaux 20:27, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, but this could mean a Wikipedia snapshot DVD. Consider the possibilites, releasing a new DVD every month. Post the image on the wikipedia website. It'd be like Encarta for Wikipedia — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 20:34, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Putting an ISO up for download would be a huge hit on our bandwidth - instead, make it a BitTorrent file, which can soften the blow. - jredmond 22:18, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the ability to put a CD version out would be fantastic for areas of the world with some access to computers, but no internet - many areas of the former Soviet Union have libraries without many resources, but with a computer or two that are not used for much, even pre-loading computers that are donated. Mark Richards 21:37, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A CD version is a bit unrealistic, but we have been considering the feasibility of making a DVD version. MandrakeSoft have been pondering putting such a DVD in their distro. The images are about 3.5 GB for en, not 21 GB, and MySQL on ariel uses 108 GB in the InnoDB data files, not 16 GB. -- Tim Starling 01:36, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

The current version of the applet is slow, but the reason for the slowness is understood and the problem will be fixed at the expense of some added memory costs (I may try some more subtle strategy later). I tried to be "too clever" with some of the caching code. David.Monniaux 23:41, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fixed. David.Monniaux 05:58, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Refreshing categories

I'm trying to move the articles in Category:Substub to Category:Substubs. I changed Template:Substub so that they would do that, but the only way to get either category to refresh is to make an edit on the pages that are listed (substubs). It sounds simple, but there are over 250 articles to that need to switch categories. Does anyone know a quicker way to get a Category page to refresh? [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 18:59, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wait. It will fix itself eventually. Actually, on my browser it is OK already. (Try CTRL-Reload for a real reload) Chris 73 | Talk 22:39, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't know if it fixed itself or if it had help. Either way, this sort of thing is best for WP:CFD where they know how to deal with this sort of thing, and where it was already posted. --ssd 03:52, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A hand to merge histories ?

I'd like to merge the history of Catholic University of Leiden under that of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven because it belongs there; the thread of history was broken when someone renamed "... Leuven" into "... Leiden" (!) and turned the new Catholic University of Leiden into the mere redirect it now is.

I suppose this needs an admin with special powers. Is there a special place for such requests ?

Thanks.

--FvdP 19:53, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Probably, but here will do - are you sure that it should be renamed though? Usually articles should be on the most common English name. Mark Richards 20:31, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This is a special case, there are 2 distinct University of Leuven (and confusion between them is common) so University of Leuven was made a disambiguation page.

So what do you need exactly? One of them deleting? Mark Richards 20:45, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Now it seems to be two different universities, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the University of Leiden. Chris 73 | Talk 22:35, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Actually it's Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Université Catholique de Louvain. Leiden has nothing to do here except by error. --FvdP 18:35, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

So what help is needed? 23:20, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If you're Mark Richards, I explained it on your talk page. But I'm worried I'm going to be misunderstood, if the statement I made above (the first one - I thought it was clear enough) leads to misunderstanding or non-understanding. --FvdP 18:35, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

VRML

I want to know if wikipedia supports VRML. Are there any image editing programs where I can draw these vector diagrams and contribute them to wikipedia? [[User:Nichalp|¶ nichalp | Talk]] 21:03, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

Isn't VRML for making things in 3D? --Sgeo | Talk 21:56, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it is a web markup format for 3d 'worlds'. Mark Richards 22:05, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wouldn't this be an issue on the browser side? I.e. if your browser supports VRML, you would see a VRML document? Chris 73 | Talk 22:36, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Not sure whether VRML would be useful but SVG rendering, similar to MathML, could have some interesting applications. I'm not sure about embedding actual SVG in Wikipedia because it can contain potentially malicious script. Rhobite 23:34, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
So can HTML, though, and the solution's the same. Marnanel 01:43, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I was drawing a Cricket pitch using MS Word, and I got an opportunity to save the it as VRML. It was neat, plus it was scalable. Hence I was wondering if this markup supported (ie. I save the code here). [[User:Nichalp|¶ nichalp | Talk]] 20:01, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

German speakers, can you help out here?

Hello to German speakers here. There's a very messy stub called Thomas Hoffmarck which desperately needs attention. Google reveals it has potential to be a very fine article. Cheers. Moriori 21:25, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

Why not add notices? (BTW I added the stub notice) --Sgeo | Talk 21:59, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Another request to German speakers

Please help out with the Geheimrat page. Feel free to remove or delete if erroneous. I read about the Geheimrats in a book by Norbert Weiner when he was in Germany. Thanks --Jondel 01:03, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Background image

Is there a way to use the Monobook skin without the book, that is, with just a gray background instead of that book image, which my browser sometimes takes forever to display? Gzornenplatz 23:03, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

1. Edit your monobook.css page (User:Gzornenplatz/monobook.css).
2. Insert
body { background: Purple; }
(or whatever color you want) into the page.
3. Save the page.
4. Refresh. You can usually just click the Refresh or Reload icon on your browser's toolbar to do this.
[[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 00:14, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Excellent, thanks. Gzornenplatz 01:27, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, thanks Mike. Finding out how to do that had been on my todo list since soon after the skins arrived. None that I've tried are any good on Win98SE (I think owing to the chronic memory bleeds which are the main vice of this OS... but I have no problem with any other site, just Wikipedia).
Anyway, with User:Andrewa/monobook.css now in place, performance is restored to pre-skin standards, and I'm hopeful that stability will likewise be restored.
Until we get around to having a default skin that will detect client configurations and work with them, every Win98 user should use this workaround. Andrewa 12:27, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In Jews as a chosen people, I tried to move the category links and the interlanguage links nicely down to the bottom. There's a Polish interwiki and one category. For some reason, one of the two doesn't parse, with the wiki returning the link text as if a bracket was missing (like [[Category:Judaism ] this). Is this a bug, or should the diacritic in the Polish word be replaced with a Unicode sequence? JFW | T@lk 00:18, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've fixed this now. The last external link, to The Real Truth About The Talmud, was missing the final right square bracket, causing an odd parse error further down the page. --AlexG 01:50, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica Use Guidelines?

What are the guidelines (if any) for using material from the (copyright free) 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica? Can it be used verbatim? Are there plagiarism issues? Is there a standard (boilerplate?) for citation? Sorry if this has all been discussed before someplace. I've looked but I couldn't find such a discussion. Paul August 03:09, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

Use it verbatim and slap a {{1911}} tag on it. →Raul654 03:12, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)
..and have fun wikilinking all the appropriate names, words and phrases! —Stormie 03:23, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)
You should take a look at Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopedia Britannica Just slapping a tag on is really not enough. This encyclopedia is replete with scanning typos and archaicisms and other unsuitable material. It can hardly ever be used without some hard work. The article (I wrote it back when) is full of hints and ideas about how to adopt and/or adapt material from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Incidentally, I have two copies of the EB1911 and will be glad to check things for you if asked nicely. Ortolan88 04:11, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Ortolan88: Thanks for the great article! As regards to the content issues: scanning errors, out-of-dateedness, I had mostly figured them out for myself. My primary concern, was/is with the legal/ethical/intellectual honesty issues. Is it a correct reading of the article that it is inappropriate to copy and paste content from online versions of 1911? That you must have access to your own copy of the text to use it? Paul August 15:17, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)
The 1911 Britannica is out of copyright, so there's no legal problem using it. It's certainly polite to cite Britannica as a source. Beyond copyright problems, plagarism isn't really an issue here. So providing you don't claim 1911 Britannica's works to be your own, I can't see any ethical problems. It's probably inappropriate to cut'n'paste from 1911 only because of the scanning, out-of-datedness, etc., issues. Naturally, it's downright illegal to cut'n'paste more than a trivial amount from later Britannicas. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:48, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Many of the brief biographies in 1911 Britannica can stand with little modification, mainly because little work has been published on the subjects since. Certainly the language wants tweaking, but the basic facts are often sound. Much of the writing about British subjects was based on the DNB which appeared a decade or so previously. One thing I am not clear over is how many of the articles are a carry-over from earlier editions. The three additional volumes which make the 12th edition were published 1921-22 and so are out of copyright as well. If somebody could scan and put that on line it would be an incomparable resource for WWI topics. What is the prospect of Wikimedia building up a bank of online out-of-print resources for Wikipedia contributors? Apwoolrich 16:07, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The online version also lacks the numerous illustrations, diagrams, maps, photographs, circuit schematics, etc. that form important parts of many articles in the original, particularly articles on science and technology. I haven't checked to see how the online version deals with the 1911 Encyclopaedia's frequent use of tables and mathematical formulae, but I'll bet it doesn't do it well. [[User:Dpbsmith|dpbsmith (talk)]] 16:10, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It doesn't - those things just appear as gibberish in the middle of the text (which compounds the bigger problem of missing text, that happens even more often). Adam Bishop 15:45, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I have just noted that Knight's 3 vol Dictionary of Mechanics, c 1880 is on line. Tbis has a great number of good quality line drawings of all manner of machines and mechanisms of the C19. Maybe that is in public domain. I will put a page about this in the Dictionary section when I can get round to it. Holidays are now due!!Apwoolrich 16:50, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Archive, first timeto do so

Hi, I would like to archive the Karma::Talk page. (Also create a Edgar Cayce on Karma page)Its my first time to do so. I saw the Wikipedia Reference page and will be referring to it. Advice would be appreciated. Thanks--Jondel 03:58, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

what's the name of the Wikipedia ref page? Salasks 05:18, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)
It's not that hard. Just create the page Talk:Karma/Archive, or, if their might be more archives, Talk:Karma/Archive 1. Then cut text out of Talk:Karma and paste it into the archive. Tada! [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 18:47, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. The Wiki ref page is 'Karma' . I thought there was some special template with the double bracket or stuff like that. I already created one but with a very long title including the subject material.--Jondel 00:19, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Moving to Wiktionary

I noticed that on VfD people often vote to transwiki to WikiBooks (esp recipes) or Wiktionary (dicdefs) and also came across this page Wikipedia:Things to be moved to Wiktionary which has a 6-month backlog. How can I get involved in transwiking things that need to be transwikied? Salasks 02:46, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

Thank you very much. To find out how, see the meta page on transwikiing. Again, thanks--that's dedication. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 14:28, 2004 Aug 4 (UTC)

Really, it's procrastination. Salasks 16:14, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

Bad article title

Could someone go to "Ä?etnici" at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=194.152.246.2, copy what is there to Talk:Chetniks, delete the article and kill all links to it? I can't even see the article. Nikola 05:09, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Done. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 06:59, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Curiously I just noticed a similar problem today. It looks like the garbled title may be caused by entering a word with a diacritical mark in the search box, then clicking on the The query is xxxx link to edit the page. It looks like the title might go through two URLencodings which corrupts the page name in the final URL. E.g. Très -> Très   -- Solipsist 17:13, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There are other bugs in that spot too. If you try to search for a namespaced article, it deletes the : character, and the create this page edit link is similarly wrong. --ssd 03:59, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Anon talk pages

I may just be ignorant (which I ought not to be in my position, but still), are anon talk pages deleted after a period of time? Given that a lot of people don't seem to read the disclaimer down the bottom, and some messages like {{test}} are ambiguous enough that someone might think that they're directed at them when they were not meant to be, the messages on these pages could well scare people off. I assume that they are purged, but someone please correct me if I'm wrong. TPK 06:53, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You're wrong, and it's a problem. I agree. Is there a way to delete anon talk pages, say, 1 month after the last edit? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 14:09, 2004 Aug 4 (UTC)
I believe they're purged (deleted) after a year, but that seems rather too long. Maybe they should be blanked (but not deleted) after a month of inactivity (blanking leaves evidence of longer-term discussions, without scaring innocent noobs). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:15, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
That's what I understand too, deletion after a year. Blanking after a shorter period seems an excellent idea, but I suspect a month is too short. Many newbies go more than a month between editing sessions 1 and 2. I've seen up to six months, but I'd suggest two months as a good compromise. Andrewa 19:39, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Can Wikipedians of specific nationalities be located?

Is there any way of finding, or addressing, wikipedians of specific nationalities? For instance, is there a list where I could get to acknowledge that I'm willing to be known to be Swedish? Or is the Village Pump the best place to give a shout for help from, say, Dutch editors? The Cornelis Vreeswijk article, that I've been expanding, could really do with some input from Dutch speakers. If you are one, please check out the article's talk page, where I have left a fuller note. Bishonen 12:04, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It has the lists linked from Wikipedia:Wikipedian, e.g. Wikipedia:Wikipedians/The Netherlands for dutch people. It's totally voluntarily to add yourself to any of the lists, but it may be useful if you need to contact someone with a special interest, location or whatever. andy 12:08, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Also, if there's a corresponding page on the relevant wikipedia (e.g. nl:Cornelis Vreeswijk) you could ask on the corresponding talk page (e.g. nl:Overleg:Cornelis Vreeswijk) for some help. You can also look on m:Wikimedia Embassy to find out who is the "ambassador" for that wikipedia (which for the nl wikipedia seems to be User:Walter) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:25, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Thanks very much, Andy and Finn. Great stuff.--Bishonen 06:28, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Suppress image error messages

Is there a convenient way to suppress the error messages that are generated when using a copy of the wikipedia that doesn't include the 4G (!) image collection (or any of the other Wiki-projects, since no images are exported for those)? Or better still, a simple way (maybe just a one or two line query) to rewrite the image links so that they all link to some harmless padding image?

Writers and readers

I've heard many things about how the majority of those who visit Wikipedia come only to read articles, and that a small minority actually contribute. I was wondering if there is anywhere to find good statistics relating to these facts. Also, does anyone know how many anon IPs make minor corrections (spelling, grammar, typos...) compared to those who only read? Just interested in finding out about the dynamics of the wiki. —siroχo 12:48, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

Trying to answer this question in terms of people is inevitably speculative, since even if we tried to conduct a survey it would be nigh impossible to determine response rates among those who normally only read. However, since page views are logged, I suppose it might be possible to generate statistics on views by logged-in users collectively vs. views by IPs. Then, using the ratio of contributions by logged-in users to contributions by IPs, you could extrapolate what proportion of the page views by IPs were from anonymous contributors as opposed to anonymous readers. It would still be a rough guess, but it's at least a way of assigning a number to the guess. --Michael Snow 21:56, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fort Bennings renaming issue

from cleanup:

I accidently moved Fort Benning to Fort Benning, Texas—I intended to move it to Fort Benning, Georgia. I manually moved the page to Fort Benning, Georgia, but I don't know how to move its history (which is now at Fort Benning, Texas). Mateo SA

--The article was actually moved from Fort Benning, Georgia to Fort Benning a few months ago, so maybe the article should be at Fort Benning after all. But when I tried to move the article from Fort Benning, Texas back to Fort Benning, it said there was already an article there (which isn't true, now it's just a redirect), and it said to contact an admin; I can't move it to Fort Benning, Georgia either. Both the history and the text are now at Fort Benning, Texas, but Fort Benning's not in Texas. So the page and it's history should be moved either to Fort Benning or Fort Benning, Georgia, whichever's proper. So if an admin could move it, that'd be nice. Salasks 17:52, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

Moved to Fort Benning, Georgia. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 17:59, 2004 Aug 4 (UTC)

new term to define: "cold kicking" or "web ban"

I have been banned from a few sites, without warning or explanation. I explain it all in my article "Getting Banned from Other Blog Sites" at: 

www.vaspersthegrate.blogspot.com

I call this unannounced, unexplained action "cold kicking". It's being banned from a web site, assumedly for posting something that must've "offended" someone. I'd like some word to be included in the wonderful wikipedia, that would denote this action.

"Cold kicking" or "web ban" or "online ostracization" or whatever.

Well, I don't really think it's our place to make up words or add to the English lexicon. Once it becomes commonplace, I can see it being added to the Wiktionary. — Frecklefoot | Talk 21:28, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)
It isn't our place, and neologisms are routinely deleted via VfD. They violate both "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" and "no original research". -- Cyrius|✎ 03:28, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

TextPad clip library for Wikipedia syntax and templates

I have created an add-on to the TextPad text editor to help with editing Wikipedia pages offline. It is a "clip library" that works much like the Wikipedia editing toolbar: you can click to make selected text bold, insert a link, etc. It also includes some templates which I believe to be among the most commonly used, or relevant for this kind of editing. The file is available at Media:Wikipedia_syntax_and_templates.TCL; to install it, just copy it into the Samples subfolder of your TextPad installation.

Comments and suggestions are very welcome. If there's interest, I can try to put together something to help with tables, timelines, or the rest of the templates. --AlexG 22:37, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Handy. What would be more useful though is syntax highlighting rules file. Zoney 22:48, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

how to rename a category

could somebody explain or change Category:Unified Team gymnast to the plural as I am unsure how to do it?? thank you Scraggy4 00:44, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Done. This sort of thing can be requested on WP:CFD where it will get proper attension. --ssd 03:21, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Categorization weirdness.

While I was working with [[Category:Rivers]], some interesting things happened:

I creating two new subcategories ([[Category:Hawaiian rivers]], and [[Category:Middle Eastern rivers]]) and labeled articles in the new subcategories, as appropriate. But for some reason they still remain in the larger [[Category:Rivers]]. Anyone know why this is happening or how I can fix it?--Neutrality 01:28, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

as an aside, you know you can refer to a catagory in a page (like this) without adding the page to that category simply by putting a colon infront of the word "category", like this - Category:Hawaiian rivers (it's easier than nowiki). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:40, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
to answer your actual question, wikipedia seems sluggish today, and I think i've seems a couple of places where altered templates weren't immediately visible in pages that included them. So I guess your problem may go away given a little breathing room. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:43, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
And lo, at least from my cache's perspective, the change you performed is now visible. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:55, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Is there any Free Good Html Desiging Software other than Frontpage

I hope there is a good html designing software other than frontpage

FrontPage isn't free. There's a few things out there, including Composer which comes bundled with Mozilla, but I've always found the best HTML-designing software is a text editor. Marnanel 03:12, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Try vi, or Notepad if you're cursed with Windows. -- Grunt (talk) 03:14, 2004 Aug 5 (UTC)
There is a native version of vim, it has very nice HTML-editing capabilities out of the box (syntax highlighting), and is just awesome when combined with some tips from vim.org. For any professional HTML editing, WYSIWYG environments like Frontpage or Netscape (composer) are not as mature as tag-based editing. emacs is also very powerful, but I personally prefer vim. Vi rules :-) BACbKA 08:53, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
No, don't use notepad if in Windows. Textpad, which can be downloaded [3] and used free, but is worth registering after the trial period, includes syntax highlighting, mad search/replace features, all the things notepad should have! The program is also useful for programming (menu allows access to e.g. Java compiler) or just editing code. Zoney 09:54, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There's a nice list at the bottom of HTML editor. --ssd 03:31, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Try doing a google search for '1st Page 2000' I don't know if they're still up (or free), but it's a good piece of software (I used to use it myself...now I just use notepad or something.) — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 06:08, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
HTML-Kit. Or a pirate version of Dreamweaver. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 09:03, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
NoteTab (various configurations from Lite (free) to Pro (paid for) http://notetab.com, with Joe Barta's tutorial courses, http://PageTutor.com.
Sorry I forgot to sign when first sent!Apwoolrich 12:14, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If you already have and are competent to use Microsoft Word and/or Publisher, both of these will generate HTML and they give WYSIWYG of sorts. Word will open web pages, edit them and save them as either HTML or as Word documents (or other formats of course but you probably won't want to). The main drawback of both is they generate an incredible number of redundant tags, reflecting their native file structures which contain enormous numbers of hidden and mainly redundant control blocks and characters which accumulate with every edit!
This is probably only relevant for fairly simple pages, but for example I maintain some local links pages (including the one my browser loads on startup) using Word, and it's very quick and easy to do. Andrewa 09:37, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm rather surprised nobody has mentioned Nvu yet. It's based on the Mozilla Composer, but is much more pretty and effective. Although at first glance it's Linux-only, it has a Windows version too. And by the way, the only worser producer of HTML (if you can call it that) than Frontpage is Word. Of course, YMMV – if only IE users will ever be able to view it, it doesn't make much of a difference. Johnleemk | Talk 10:49, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Never tried Nvu. However, I have tried to edit pages generated by Word, and they are horrible. You can't find more tags with more options anywhere! — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 15:03, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Random Page Additions

What about the idea of adding special types of the "Random Page" function. Perhaps pages that only choose from:

Just an idea

I've been wondering for some time about sweeping all the 'little fixes' (typos, spelling, grammar, punctation, red links, interlanguage links, disambiguation and other such suggestions) suggested in the various reports I run (See Wikipedia:Offline reports and User:Topbanana/Reports) into a system that doled out a random "something quick and simple needing fixed" on request. - TB 13:03, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

Vandalizing notice

Apparently, I have just received a notice that I should stop "vandalizing" articles. I acknowledge that I have edited several articles (prior to registering at Wikipedia, so "using" my IP address). However, I do not see that as "vandalizing". I would like to be informed of what exactly is seen as my "vandalizing" Wikipedia articles. (I am posting this as a general/public discussion because I do not know who sent me the notice.) Aecis

It is possible that your ISP is sharing your IP address with other people, and the vandalism notice was directed at one of them. Now that you are registered, this problem should go away. If you can tell us what IP address you were using before you registered, we can investigate further. -- Heron 11:22, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC) P.S. I should have warned you that publishing your IP address here might allow someone to trace your location, so don't feel obliged to reveal it just because I asked you. -- Heron 11:26, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Alternatively you may have received the message by accident. You can find a list of notified vandalism at Wikipedia:Vandalism_in_progress. The principle active problem today appears to be at Horizons: Empires of Istaria, which has quite a few anonymous IPs making edits. At least one is a clear vandal, but it is not easy to disentangle. If you were making anon edits to that article, you may have got tarred with the same brush. -- Solipsist 11:33, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It is also possible that you have come across a Darrien-style Wikipedian who thinks anyone who disagrees with him is a vandal. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 11:36, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
None of the articles I edited are mentioned in the Vandalism in Progress list, my IP isn't on there and the name Darrien doesn't ring the tiniest of bells. The person who sent me the notice had a nick consisting of two parts, the last part being magnus (something like Hercules Magnus or Rex Magnus).Aecis
Sounds like User:Maximus Rex, but his last edit was in July. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 12:13, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I've found the notice in my History... apparently it wasn't for me, but for another user (looking at the IP). Yet somehow, the notice showed up as a new message for me. And it was indeed from Maximus Rex. *baffled* Aecis
Where was the message? In the summary of an edit to an article? On your talk page, after following a big, colourful link saying "You have new messages"? — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 12:23, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It was on my talk page, after following a big, colourful link (I think it was yellow) saying "You have new messages"? Aecis
The person it was intended for likely left before being warned, which means the first person to show up with the same IP address would have gotten the new messages notice. -- Cyrius|✎ 12:57, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
And that's the strange thing about it: the IP of the user the message was intended for and my IP do not match up. Aecis
y'know, I think you're not the first person to see such a weird thing - didn't someone else report just the same a few days ago? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:01, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What's the policy of adding links to related web sites to an article's "External links" section? For example, linking to Pokémon fan sites from the Pokémon article, or Disney fan sites from a Disney article, or Windows discussion boards from a Windows article?

My own opinion is that Wikipedia is not meant to be a link repository, and if we allow a link to one fan site then we're going to have to allow links to every fan site. I figure that a user can use Google if he wants to find related web sites, so I usually delete "External links" to anything other than corporate web sites. If someone really wants to link to his own web site, he can use Yahoo or Dmoz.

The situation which raised this question is that someone edited Windows XP to add a link to his own personal page which has a Windows XP performance guide. I removed it, then he re-added the link. I don't want to get into an edit war with him, so I decided to ask here to find out if there's any official policy on the subject. - Brian Kendig 12:51, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I vote no fan sites, for the reason you stated and for the fact that this is a good way to increase dead links. For similar reasons I frown on links to news stories about the topic. External links should only be to primary sources, or extensive background information not easily available elsewhere. - DavidWBrooks 13:05, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Unfortunately I don't have many answers for you, but I tend to think there is not enough of a policy. I recently posted at Wikipedia talk:External links#More restrictive policy on external linking with some ideas for a start of a better policy on external linking. I don't think fan sites or personal web pages should be allowed as external links unless the article specifically makes reference to them for some reason. Maybe we should begin to hammer out a policy on this to stop wikipedia from becoming a collection of links. —siroχo 13:08, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

There are a lot (too many?) fan sites from Ken Jennings also. A page can easily get overwhelmed by fan sites, but one or two well-done fan sites can be helpful. Salasks 13:10, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

There are cases when fan-sites are big/good enough to justify linking to them. I've noticed this with tv shows/movies, where the official site is little more than an ad and the best fan sites have voluminous information about the subject.
It looks like the link in question is one for "Optimize XP", a website so personal that it's hosted on comcast's free user web space. Removing that one from Windows XP is pretty much a no-brainer. So I removed it. -- Cyrius|✎ 13:12, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

My solution when faced with a multitude of fan sites on Lucy Lawless was to remove them all and replace them with a single link to the Lucy Lawless webring. --ALargeElk | Talk 13:20, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The answer is to be reasonable. If there are only three or four sites findable on the web pertinent to an article, and all of them are fan sites, then linking to them all is reasonable. If there are twenty or thirty pertinent sites then use judgement and link to the best ones, just as in an article on an historical figure, you would link to web pages that were most useful in respect to that article, regardless of whether a page happened to be on a university website or was a good discussion or essay on someone's personal website. You don't have to include everything. On many subjects there are often a few large websites that themselves provide many other links and in those cases linking to those sites alone is often the correct answer.
That Wikipedia is not a link repositary should not be taken to mean that an article should not sometimes include a large number of links to further information. Wikipedia is not a bibliography, but articles may sometimes contain extensive bibliographies, extensive selected bibliographies. Only including corporate websites has certainly never been Wikipedia policy. Such a policy would be very wrong-headed for articles I tend to edit and write. If an individual website on free user web space contains excellent material concerning the topic of any article that is not just rewording of material duplicated elsewhere on the web, then it should be linked to.
The question one should ask is what degree of extra benefit does the link provide to people reading the article who want more information. An article should contain the best and most useful links that can be found, just as it contains the best and most useful information, regardless of origin. Select links for an article just as you would select facts for an article. Obscure facts not generally known are sometimes what makes an article especially valuable. Similarly, if you find an excellent, obscure web page on any subject, linking to that page provides far more value to a Wikipedia user than does linking to well-known pages near the top of Google's search on a topic which the user would also easily find in a Google search. If a user comes out of an article thinking that the links were excellent, especially if they pointed to good material that the user would not have easily found otherwise, then the links were well chosen. Whether they are links to personal websites, hobbiest websites, academic websites, corporate websites, political propaganda websites, fan websites ... all that is secondary.
Jallan 18:17, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Lion.jpg vandalized

Ok, this is weird. I noticed that Image:Lion.jpg was vandalized. I thought first it was a new image uploaded and the pages it is used on modified. Nope. So then I thought that it was a new file uploaded to the same name as the old file, so I got a clean copy of the image from one of our downsources and re-uploaded it. This didn't work either, as my clean, freshly uploaded file has the same vandalism on it. Might there be some hacker who has done something more serious in the way of vandalizing? - UtherSRG 13:34, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I find the "vandalized" pic a little too funny to actually seriously think on this, sorry. Anárion 13:53, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I agree it's amusing. then I tried to revert it, but could not figure out how it was vandalized in the first place. Now I'm no longer amused at all. - UtherSRG 14:04, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Someone seems to have exploited a wiki bug involving capitalisation. The original file name was Image:lion.jpg. Both Image:Lion.jpg and Image:Leon.jpg are new files. That's why you can't find the unvandalised version in the history. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 14:17, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)Nah, I don't reckon that's how he did it. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 14:41, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Has this problem been reported? Seems rather serious. Anárion 14:21, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hmm, I'm still trying to sort this out. this diff shows the change from [[Image:lion.jpg|200px|Lion]] to [[Image:Leon.jpg]]. On my screen, this is the point at which the image seems to change. However, both image files contain the same content. The difference in appearence on my screen may be more to do with the fact that the image size changed: the image was previously a thumbnail, so I am getting and old, unvandalised version of this thumbnail.
I've found a temp replacement image on Google, and uploaded it as Image:Lion.jpg.
Update: I've taken that unvandalised thumbnail and re-uploaded it as Image:Leon.jpg. It's only 200px wide, but I can't do better. We now have two usable images. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 14:36, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
A couple of days ago I reverted the links from Image:Leon.jpg (which then was the one with the not so funny Grrr) to Image:Lion.jpg and left a note on the creator's talk page User talk:JeffyJeffyMan2004. -- Chris 73 | Talk 16:00, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes, but the image you reverted to appears to be corrupted in the process somehow, as was mine that I uploaded on top of the vandalized/corrupted one. - UtherSRG 16:07, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There's still something screwy going on. My "clean" version that appeared to be vandalized after I uploaded it is now clean again. Very strange.Anyway, Chameleon, you need to add attribution to the new image you uploaded so as to keep us kosher. - UtherSRG 16:07, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)


Man, I don't want to encourage vandalism, but after reading this discussion I had to check on what the vandalized image looked like...and I just could not stop laughing. I vote for BJAODN (; —siroχo 16:42, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)
Whoops - I'm a words guy, not a picture guy, so I've never dealt with images in my wikipedia time, and through ignorance I may have just reverted to an earlier version of the picture in question while trying to look at it. I'm not quite sure, though ... - DavidWBrooks 17:10, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Revamp of how Peer Review works

There's been talk recently of improving Wikipedia:Peer review at Wikipedia talk:Peer review. It came about because too many people are using WP:FAC as a place to review their articles, some of which are obviously not featured level. This has been compounded by the fact that not many people know about the peer review page, and those who do use it often get no or little response (at least, I never have).

The suggested solution currently is to make peer review more like FAC – have discussions on the PR page itself, sorting entries in descending order, as well as a posible {{pr}} template. Please comment and discuss at Wikipedia talk:Peer review. Johnleemk | Talk 13:38, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee election is open

After a slight technical delay, the Arbitration Committee election is now open. To vote, go to Special:ArbComVote. Voting will continue through Friday, August 13. --Michael Snow 16:39, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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