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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Niteowlneils (talk | contribs) at 22:51, 16 August 2004 (Page move collided with existing Talk page). 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

Tomco, please don't continue discussions in the "summarised sections" section - see the top of this very page for a clear explanation of how this works. The bullet point above is just a paraphrase of the original complaint; it's not the final word. The discussion is already continuing in Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. —Hob←Talk 16:00, 2004 Aug 14 (UTC)

"You have new messages."

After I've gone away for the evening and come back to Wikipedia the next day (I have my Favorites set to go to the Main Page), I ge the "You have new messages.", even though I don't have any and had not had that message when I went away. Any way to not have that happen any more? RickK 18:06, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

Are you sure that you didn't? Just recently, a user added something to an old subtopic somewhere in the middle of my Talk page. I got the "new messages" notice, but couldn't find the new message by glancing at the page. I thought the notice was bogus, but I called up the page history just to check—and there it was. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 18:23, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think this is a problem related to cacheing. When I first go to the Main page, it is often a few days old--and apparently the cache also includes the "you have messages" message. I have seen this many times and I've checked history on my talk page just to make sure (now I mostly ignore it unless the message persists after checking my Watchlist or going to some other page). There is a "Main Page cache purge" link near the top of Talk:Main Page which will force a reload of the Main Page. older≠wiser 18:54, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Check your page history. Some anon vandalized your talk page and someone else cleaned it up. That may've been interpreted as new messages. Salasks 19:52, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

Nope, there have been no changes to my Talk page since the last time I was there. And why would it only show up on the Main page? Is the Main page cached differently from other pages? RickK 21:37, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

This often happened to me, oddly in both Opera and IE. It definately was cache-related, as a CTRL-F5 would bring up a totally different frontpage, sans the 'messages' message. TPK 05:32, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How about a rename for ...

I am searching for the correct person to address this issue: The infobox on terrorism lists Islamic .. rather than Islamist .., which I believe is a more precise and respectful label. That way it is possible to distinguish the adjective (Islamic) for a religious group from the adjective (Islamist) for a political group with an agenda. My template for this is the distinction between the secular from the secularism articles. That puts the label more in line with the ism article as well. I realize that involves some page moves as well. Ancheta Wis 19:02, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's done. Thanks to all. Ancheta Wis 04:47, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a guide?

As far as I remember "wikipedia is not a guide", so am I right to guess that how-to and everything in it is content "to be cleaned up sometime and expected not to be expanded further"? I specifically ask because I told a guy that he should not create howtos in article space and he pointed me to this specific article and its contents. I believe this is wikibooks content, and not wikipedia's.--grin ✎ 19:33, 2004 Aug 7 (UTC)

This seems to support transwiki'ing how-to's Talk:How to breed Siamese Fighting Fish (despite the fact the article still exists)--besides the nominator, six votes to transwiki/delete, with one neutral vote. Why on earth is How to breed Siamese Fighting Fish still here?
For what it's worth, I think it would be MUCH better if articles transwikied from Wikipedia were NOT deleted, but replaced with interwiki redirs (or possibly interwiki links). It's better for Wikipedia, because there's less chance of the article getting recreated. It's better for Wikibooks (or Wiktionary, or whichever) because it raises the visibility of the sister projects. It's better for the user, because they find the info they're looking for. Niteowlneils 20:02, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Be cautious and tentative when you tell people such things. You're not exactly wrong but it's not that simple, either. I believe that this is controversial, that there has never been consensus on this point, and that there is no official policy. I asked this question on the mailing list a while ago and several Wikipedians confirmed my impression.
In practice, though, articles that consist solely of a cooking recipe tend to get listed on VfD, and what then generally happens is that the recipe ends up being transwikied to Wikibooks. The same thing happens to articles that are very explicitly pure step-by-step directions. (I personally oppose this and regard it as tyranny of the majority, or tyranny of the more persistent, rather than true consensus policy, but there you have it.) If you want to test the waters, it might be interesting to list how-to for deletion and see what happens. Conversely, if someone wants to contribute an article that includes a recipe or a set of directions for something, it is a good idea to present them in a cultural context, proceding from general to specific, with the recipe or directions being presented at the end as a very specific example of whatever is being discussed.
Warning, warning, POV alert. Historically, encyclopedias contained a great deal of how-to-like material. Diderot's work was entitled "Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of Science, Arts, and the Trades." The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition contained all sorts of detailed mechanical and circuit diagrams. It did not quite tell you how to build a working transatlantic telegraph, but nearly. Chambers' 1728 work was entitled "Cyclopaedia; or an Universal Dictionary of Art and Sciences, containing an Explication of the Terms and an Account of the Things Signified thereby in the several Arts, Liberal and Mechanical, and the several Sciences, Human and Divine." The very word "encyclopaedia" means "universal course of study," or "textbook of everything." If it's suitable for a textbook, it should be suitable for Wikipedia. That's just my $0.02 and others do disagree. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 20:30, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the history, Dpbsmith. I am part of the minority faction that believes guides aren't always out of place in an encyclopedia. I've heard the contrary asserted several times, but never convincingly justified. What determines the nature of what is "encyclopedic", apart from majority opinion? --Fritzlein 00:43, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I understand the general issue is under some debate. However, at the moment I am more concerned about the apparent violation of VfD policy/process in this one specific instance. Unanimous vote to transwiki, and yet a generally respected Wikipedian removes the VfD tag and leaves the article on Wikipedia? Why have VfD if the results areoutcome is based on the whim of individuals. Niteowlneils 19:56, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Also, I am interested in responses to the broader issue, if articles are transwikied for whatever reason, is it not better to leave a redirect to whatever 'sister project' it went to. Niteowlneils 20:26, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How to Guides generally belong on Wikibooks, because they are not strictly encyclopedic, wikibooks is a collection of books, documentation, and textbooks written by the equivalent of wikipedians. So that is where how to guides belong. —siroχo 09:30, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

The fact that Wikibooks uses information originally placed on Wikipedia isn't a justification for deleting that information from Wikipedia. There's no reason to cannibalize when copying will do. - Nunh-huh 23:10, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The only reason I can think of for keeping how-tos (for now) would be to wait until the software can support moving page history across wikis. (Unless this is now possible and I've missed it. I don't work on the other Wikimedia projects so I don't know.) Isomorphic 06:12, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Read this page. When the mouse hovers over a wikilink, the top of the linked definition is brought out in a "tooltip" popup. This is done client-side with Javascript; the generation of the page does not require more database requests.

It works on Mozilla and related browsers, on Opera and on Internet Explorer; it is broken on Konqueror. (Apparently, Konqueror lacks support for some CSS properties.)

Comments on my talk page or here. David.Monniaux 22:00, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Doesn't it need more database requests, though? Either through the server sticking the text in the generated page, or through the client loading something from another page? =/ - Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 02:07, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The server does not stick the text in the generated page. The client indeed needs to download the text for the boxes (on-demand), but this is text without decorations or personal options, so it's perfectly cacheable by the Squids. David.Monniaux 07:39, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
FYI. This seems to require IE 5.5 or later. (I can get the exact 5.0 version # it fails on later today). Niteowlneils 17:35, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It works on Mozilla 1.7.1 for me (and nicely I might add). No sane individual would use IE, unless in a public environment. --TIB 05:19, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)

Article counts inconsistent

The article count shown on special:Statistics is 6,934,615, but the number on WikiStats for August 5th is 292,000. I really don't think that we added nearly 30,000 articles in 4 days. What's up with this? --mav 07:19, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There is some additional discussion on stats problems over on Wikipedia_talk:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits. It looks like User:Erik Zachte has found a fix for a stats script, but I couldn't tell you whether it affects this particular discrepancy. -- Solipsist 07:44, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes, Erik's fix will fix this. Pcb21| Pete 09:22, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The fixed stats script has been run again with correct results (thanks Erik!). Glory in how fast we grew in July! Pcb21| Pete 10:26, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

please block 217.132.176.75 he is deleting this article over and over again

he is deleting the article Avigad Berman for no reason

Which is fully understandable - an article which claims that someone "is living in the basement", "has a virtual girlfriend" is hardly encyclopedic. To me it simply looks like you want to insult this person. andy 15:05, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

it's a fictional charactor! not a real person!!!

And where does the article state that important fact? (BTW: please sign your statements by adding ~~~~). andy 15:13, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

According to the Avigad Berman Talk page, the contrib of this article has been banned from Hebrew Wikipedia. Searching "avigad berman" gets two hits, both sites in Hebrew. I'd say, nuke the article, and if it continues to get posted, ban the user from EN, as well. Niteowlneils 17:56, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The article has been listed on wikipedia:votes for deletion Clearly 217.132.176.75 does not need to be blocked. theresa knott 18:55, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Image bug

There must be something strange about the image Image:Monalisa.jpg in Leonardo da Vinci. For some reason whenever I view that page, the Mona Lisa picture never renders and thereafter, IE6 won't render any images until it is restarted -- Solipsist 21:57, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is IE's JPEG-resize bug which crashes its image subsystem. Try a different thumbnail size in the article, or upload an alternate format of the image. Radagast 00:42, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)
How many people are affected? All IE6 users? (And Solipsist, why not use Firefox, Opera, Mozilla, or some other modern web browser? Firefox is smaller than IE.) --Ardonik 00:52, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)
Well the original Image:Monalisa.jpg show's up fine, so it may only be the Wiki-thumbed version. I'm reluctant to resize the image in the article since there's a general preference to use |thumb| without a size attribute, which is how it is at the moment.
Why use IE? I used to join in Microsoft bashing, but now I can't be bothered. I'm halfway tempted to give Firefox a try, but probably won't get round to it. Wikipedia:Browsers says 80% of readers use IE, but it doesn't give the versions. -- Solipsist 06:51, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Maybe 80% of readers used IE in February, but the Microsoft Security Holes of late may have altered that a bit. --TIB 05:24, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)
It looks like any size value for Wiki-thumbing triggers the IE6 bug. Using [[Image:Monalisa.jpg|frame|Some caption]] avoids the problem, but the image is too large. -- Solipsist 07:02, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Fascinating. So IE is also bemused by the Mona Lisa smile! :o) Zoney 17:09, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The B-Movie Bandit

I've quit this project three times now, twice over this substub-writing idiot. The proxies change but they're all from the Northeast division of SBC. I really want to come back on a limited basis, but I will not put up with this troll. He/she is driving MikeH out of his mind with malformed entries about soap opera stars, little-known TV shows and minor movies. Ditto RickK. I wouldn't be surprised if Jim Regan left over this ninny as well. He left a number of messages on the different proxies. No one has answered them, and no one has ever answered the requests for contact.

Sysops, I am begging you. Please. Just block the range. These entries are useless. - Lucky 6.9 22:26, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

To be honest, this doesn't seem like the kind of thing that should make you quit - sure it's irritating, and the entries aren't particularly informative, but they're not false or misleading and they should be pretty easy to fix. The worst he is doing is adding a bunch of stubs, I'm not sure why that really endangers Wikipedia so much. Adam Bishop 22:49, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Ok, with further evidence from Custom and Rick, I see that this goes beyond simple creation of sub-stubs; while I would still suggest fixing up the stubs, I would also support a block if that is possible. (Although I'm not sure how block a whole range, or if this needs to be discussed somewhere else...) Adam Bishop 23:22, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Do you suggest other people fix the stubs rather than doing it yourself? The B-Movie Bandit is littering. Dropping short ill-written stubs for other people to fix up should not be acceptable from anyone, unless one believes it acceptable that stub-writers set the agenda for people who are captable of writing full articles. Should others have to clean up after their mess. Or should we just leave the mess, leave article after ill-written article. It often takes more time to check and fix a bad stub than the original writer to create it, especially since the original writer usually has the information or misinformation right at hand while the fixer does not. Such stubs are useless and there are too many of them in Wikipedia outside of what the B-Movie Bandit is providing. And such stubs don't grow into good articles by themseles. There should be a rule against littering in Wikipedia policy. And that includes blank pages with links to them and place holder articles about future events. Jallan 23:43, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Rather than doing it "myself"? No, I have attempted to fix some of them, that's what caused this dispute in the first place. Adam Bishop 23:54, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I've fixed every one I've found on newpages and recent changes patrol, and the {delete} cat. For example, look at how Another World (soap opera) started[4], and look what it became. I just fire up IMDb (actually I always have it in a browser tab), spend 5-10 minutes, and fix them into reasonable stubs. Most recently I added a bit to No Way Out (1987 movie), which Adam had already gotten into decent shape. Niteowlneils 02:50, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
So what it amounts to, is that the B-Movie bandit is deciding both what you are spending your time on in Wikipedia and what gets into Wikipedia. Is that how priorities should be set? Should actions in Wikipedia be driven by the most ignorant and inconsiderate editors? By picking up after this troll, you are encouraging this troll and encouraging others to emulate this troll. Jallan 13:46, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The problem with the B-Movie bandit isn't only the plethora of substubs. It's that he sometimes replaces existing articles with his useless junk. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:06, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Ouch, I hadn't run into that. That IS bad. Niteowlneils 03:13, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Check that, I may have once. About a week ago I found Kane on the Speedy delete cat, and when I checked the history I saw that it had once been a decent, if short, article, so I just reverted it. Is IP 64.12.116.74 in the bandit's range? Niteowlneils 03:28, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Might be, at least geographically. Geektools.com shows it as an AOL proxy out of Manassas, Virginia. The majority of the proxies have been coming out of the Northeast US division of SBC, and they all start with that "64." The subject matter doesn't follow the pattern, unless our little friend was trying to drop something on "All My Children" character "Erica Kane." Believe me, this boob isn't the only reason I left. He was the icing on the cake. After some thought, I am more determined than ever to see a change to policy to deal with this litter in a direct fashion. I too have expanded a number of these ridiculous entries and I'm sick and tired of doing so. He/she never returns to fix the substubs and, as Cyrius pointed out, now has a history of reverting existing articles. - Lucky 6.9 06:07, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Chill out, man. There's no need to take the burden of everything sucky that happens on Wikipedia. You are not personally responsible for this user's mischief. Take it to RfC/RfM/RfAr, and if you're completely fed up, forget about it. Wikipedia won't collapse if you don't deal with this guy's problems. Johnleemk | Talk 14:23, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • John, you're absolutely right. In the scheme of things, this is just a pimple and it took a few days away from this site for me to realize that. Still, it's an annoying pimple. I've brought up this case to everyone short of the White House, or so it seems. We all devote a lot of time and energy to Wikipedia. Real time. Real energy. Every day brings some really wonderful contributions from across the world. The B-Movie Bandit just "shits in our nest," if you'll pardon the scatological metaphor. In, out, done...never to be seen again. This isn't a public restroom, after all.  :^) - Lucky 6.9 18:25, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Check out what this guy did to the Matt Crane article today: [5] RickK 04:44, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

  • OK, now that my blood pressure is back to normal, I can't believe that I actually tried reasoning with the B-Movie Bandit earlier today. I hoped beyond hope that I'd hear from this person. Instead, the incredible work that MikeH brings to the table gets reverted not once, but twice. What more do we have to do to make a simple exception to the rules and block this troll once and for all? I've half expected to get some indignant note on my talk page from someone else using one of the proxies. I've never heard anything from anyone. Now we have a known and proven vandal on our hands. A simple range block will solve the problem. Please consider this, gang. - Lucky 6.9 05:35, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Comment: I left a nice note on talk page User talk:69.0.38.162. Six minutes later, another entry via this same proxy came in for Catherine Hickland, which I've made into a redirect to "One Life To Live" for the time being. No answer. The message flag was totally ignored. - Lucky 6.9 05:54, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • Well, doesn't some of this count as vandalism? Just treat him as you would Michael or the Vandalbot. Delete anything that looks like his stuff and block the addresses. Or is that somehow against the strange and confusing and unfathomable policies that supposedly guide Wikipedia? Jallan 16:40, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Can I nominate you for adminship? :^P - Lucky 6.9 16:44, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • More fun via 69.0.38.162. A new substub called Charlotte Ross came in after both Niteowlneils and I have left word. Ignored it. Redirected to NYPD Blue. We persist... - Lucky 6.9 18:40, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Calm down a second. Because the target page contains no mention of Charlotte Ross (potentially for good reason, I don't know), the redirect is inappropriate. Either the article should be deleted because of lack of notability, or it should be left as a harmless (but also fairly useless) stub. Admittedly there is something odd going on with this user, but that doesn't mean we should redirect like that! Pcb21| Pete 18:53, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I'm perfectly calm. A sysop once suggested redirecting these things as the fastest way of dealing with them. I have to respectfully disagree that these entries are harmless, however. A number of existing articles have de-evolved because of this guy. I do agree with your reversion and wholeheartedly if the actress wasn't mentioned on the target page. The new stub looks fine. Still, why couldn't the original poster have taken the time that we've taken? Also, why don't we get an answer? Frankly, I'm a bit creeped out. :^) - Lucky 6.9 21:30, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • That's the thing that gets me about this guy. He won't ever discuss what he's written and, usually, he just gets years he saw from IMDB and that is it. I just thought he was a petty nuisance until he started reverting other people's articles (most of which were already started and were written to a fair extent by me, so I was peeved even more). He does seem to be reading our comments, as now he is adding who was married to whom. However, you know it's one of his substubs when the verb tense is incorrect. It's always someone "stars" on so and so show, even if the actor hadn't appeared on it for fifteen or twenty years. Mike H 23:11, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)
      • The case is genuinely odd. From what I have seen and read, his behaviour appears to be:
        • Only ever write an article from scratch.
        • Sometimes he overwrites articles if they pre-exist
        • He never returns to an article (the cases where he has edited the same article twice appear to be new rewrites from scratch - are they subtly different from reverts).
        • Never seems to see user talk messages.
        • My guess is that it is a bot. Nikola 20:26, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • Now this could be a weird form of vandalism (particularly the overwrites) but that doesn't feel right; it has more of a clueless newbie feel about it. One far-out suggestion is that he is somehow writing to the Wikipedia database without actually coming to the wikipedia website. This *is* possible, though it would be a new sort of mirror. The mirror site would invite new contributions HTTP POST them to WP in the usual way and then scrape the content. Then the user would never see the talk pages or the "new message" dialogue. Ok, it isn't a particularly likely suggestion, but I am scrabbling around for possibilities.
      • As for resolution, as they are proxies with a large number of users I don't think the data dump is so vile that we can block the whole range. I suggest we ban anon contributions for this range. If users in this range wish to contribute, we explain unfortunately for vandalism reasons they temporarily have to create an account. I can't remember if exactly this solution is implemented already due to past experiences (Wik/Michael?) but it would be good to have around. Pcb21| Pete 23:57, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • You may be on to something. It could be a matter of can't answer instead of won't. I absolutely love the idea of blocking anon entries just within the range. Legit users would gladly sign up to edit, and this guy would be forced to do likewise or go off to play somewhere else. Bravo! A solution has presented itself! - Lucky 6.9 01:47, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
        • If I'm not mistaken, the Mr. Treason IPs also come from this range. Mike H 00:00, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
          • I think you're wrong because nothing similar's listed on the IP list. Furthermore, a whois on 69.0.38.162 and 64.252.168.209 reveals them to belong to SBC. Michael and Mr. Treason use(d) AOL. The 64.12.116.74 address cited by Niteowlneils above is likely one of them and not the Bandit. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:59, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • The theory that those edits happen through a weird mirror sounds interesting, but shouldn't they be rejected as "edit conflicts" then. And if not, and there is no easy way to implement it, that could revive the interest in the "enter the text displayed below" tests for anon edits. -- Pjacobi 10:37, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • It seems that something less exotic might be going on - see the thread about "new messages" flags being in the wrong place for anons towards the bottom of this page. Pcb21| Pete 11:54, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Another thing I noticed that I failed to mention: the person seems to be at this site, because for every red link I'll make in a soap opera article, the person will fill it in. That happened when I accidentally wikilinked Gary Pelzer (text: "gary pelzer") and what has just happened to Lynn Herring. Mike H 17:39, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

If it's really that bad, why not report it to the "abuse@" email for the ISP (if you can track down SBC, or whoever it is)? Be sure to incorporate as much information re IP addresses and timing and evidence of the abuse. Noisy 18:22, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • Tried that, and I got an automated response asking for the traces and such. Got to get one of the true Gods Of Wikipedia on the case if we're going to go directly to the provider. Thanks for the tip, though. :^) - Lucky 6.9 19:18, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Oh, jeez. He did it again less than an hour after MikeH and I left word on the latest proxy's talk page. Came back with Vincent Irizarry this time, and I almost knew what I was going to read before I read it. No answer, and I've redirected to All My Children. - Lucky 6.9 19:26, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • The redirect was reverted as a "legitimate stub." If anyone's been following this, one would know that it is far from legitimate. It's litter. Mike H 19:31, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • How is it not legitimate? Are the facts incorrect? In this case the article should be deleted. If they're correct, it's an acceptable short stub. If you don't want to bother even checking the facts, then a redirect doesn't make sense, as it could be just as wrong (i.e. if you don't want to check if Irizarry really starred on All My Children, you shouldn't redirect it to All My Children either). The unresponsiveness and overwriting of other articles by this user are different matters. Gzornenplatz 19:43, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • Are you trying to question whether or not I know about the material? Irizarry starred as Dr. David Hayward on All My Children and as Lujack and then Nick McHenry Spaulding on Guiding Light. Just look at my contributions if you haven't already. Mike H 19:47, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • So the stub was correct. Why redirect it then? People looking up Irizarry will now be redirected to All My Children, where they might learn that Irizarry starred there, but not that he also starred on Guiding Light. You're removing information. Gzornenplatz 20:10, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • If MikeH has had a chance to fix the Irizarry article, believe me when I say that if anyone can, he can. I've been doing redirects on the advice of other users, including sysops. I rarely revert other subs and/or substubs unless I'm sure that a redirect was intended in the first place. Besides, anyone looking for information on this actor is probably familiar with his work in daytime TV, and a redirect to the show he currently stars in is, IMO, better than the semi-literate stub that would greet a user. Admittedly, a miniscule bit of information is lost in a case like this. Still, I don't think it warrants keeping these things as they are. This discussion is about the antics of a single user whose "contributions" these past several months just happen to fall on the side of the line that says to keep them. - Lucky 6.9 22:05, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Just let me know that the guy's back and what ID he's using, and I'll delete all of his entries and block him from posting for 24 hours. And if people don't like it they can take it up at RfC. RickK 23:58, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

  • Got 'em all on a "whois" search engine. They're on your talk page. BTW, we have another clueless anon who has also been avoiding contact. He's dropping unformatted substub plot synopses about "Twilight Zone" episodes like it's his last day on earth. Check the user page: User talk:68.48.167.231. - Lucky 6.9 03:43, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I REPEAT: (Some/all) Anons cannot see messages directed at them. See the discussion below. Thus it is the site's fault, not the anons fault they can't respond to messages. The stubs have been poor stubs but not vandalism. Get your itchy finger off that trigger. Pcb21| Pete 07:16, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • We are building an encyclopedia. We should not be catering to people who dump embarrassingly written material that reflects badly on the project, regardless of whether those people can or cannot see messages or refuse to respond to them because they think they are advertisements. If Pete wants such material to continue to flow in, then perhaps he and others should set up a project to clean up all this material as fast as it comes in, which of course will only encourage the flow of this kind of material. Don't support dumping of garbage just because a user doesn't know any better. Stop the dumping. Or clean it up yourself if you want it to continue. Jallan 14:28, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • Everyone was a newbie once (see e.g. the formatting of your first logged-in edit [6]). Cutting off the new blood, who are the only people that can fill gaps those of us here already are unable to fill, is a bad way to "build an encyclopedia".
      • Also you might like to consider what the user thinks when they find they've been blocked for lack of communication when as far as they are concerned no-one communicated with them. The "bad press" from them saying what a bunch of junks Wikipedians are is small, but the negative effect of the odd stub that hasn't been cpedited yet is even more tiny.
      • And yes I have helped tidy up one or two of these particular poor stubs ... and I tidy up more most days when I browse Special:Newpages ... its just this one has got more attention. So yes I have been eating this dog food. Pcb21| Pete 14:43, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I've only been here since this past March. It took me a couple of tries to get the style down, but I like to think that my work has been useful since the get-go. I accepted criticism, took advise and "learned the ropes." How long would I be allowed to write non-articles such as these as a registered user? Or, if I came in via a single proxy, how long before it was blocked? Non-entries like this make the project look bad. This is why we have open discussion in an attempt to get community consensus on the presentation of a site that belongs not just to us, but to the world. This is no newbie we're dealing with. This has been happening for months on end. Articles have been badly reverted by this character. I've gotten messages while editing as an anon. Why can't this guy? Your comment about new blood is valid, but is this the kind of blood we need? Look at the work that MikeH has done in less than half the time the B-Movie Bandit has been dropping substubs. That is the kind of blood this site needs. - Lucky 6.9 17:03, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I now have first, unverified evidence, that there may be a bug, which make users overwrite the newest version, without knowing and without an edit conflict warning. It happened in Unicode and it wasn't an anon. See User talk:Bletch -- Pjacobi 20:19, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • It's certainly possible, but I've received messages from folks logging on via anonymous proxies who wonder why I've accused them of vandalism. I got one in German from some poor soul just a couple of minutes ago. - Lucky 6.9 22:27, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • He's back, and changing his tune slightly. This time, it was a substub about an Ice Cube album called "Death Certificate," of all things. Redirected it to Ice Cube. Proxy is 69.37.75.234, again from SBC. This guy knows what's going on and he's trying to slip in under the radar. - Lucky 6.9 21:15, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • I just got a fantastic suggestion from Infrogmation regarding our pest. I have created a template called "Bmoviebandit1" that I intend to start placing on each of these articles for the time being. - Lucky 6.9 06:29, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • I wanted to see this one. Here it is, and I think it's top notch. -- TIB 05:50, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)
  • Thank you SO much..and I dig the user name! Although a couple of other users have edited it since yesterday, another user has put it up on VfD. I tell you, it's a first for me. This is the first original article of mine that's ever been nominated for deletion! I actually am somewhat amused. - Lucky 6.9 06:30, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I've made a very rough and incomplete start on a discussion on this contentious user at User:B-Movie Bandit. Those interested please see and add info, and discussion on the talk page. -- Infrogmation 21:19, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

WP:AOTW: Baghdad and Renaissance are tied at 21 votes. What is the tie-breaker ?

At Wikipedia:Article of the week today, Baghdad and Renaissance are tied at 21 votes. Renaissance has gathered the same amount of votes in a shorter time period, but Baghdad was nominated earlier ...

We need a tie-breaker. Please come and discuss at Wikipedia talk:Article of the week. Thanks.

-- PFHLai 22:34, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

Renaissance has beaten Baghdad in extended voting, 26 to 21.
Special thanks to those who have come over to vote. -- PFHLai 08:01, 2004 Aug 9 (UTC)


Also, please come vote on what the tie-breaker policy should be for future ties, and whether "Article of the week" should be renamed. • Benc • 05:50, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think this footer should have an empty line or two between the article and itself. As of this writing it is too close to the article in my opinion. --Wernher 00:43, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'd rather that it went underneath the "last updated on" line below the content. Unobtrusive there, you see. --Ardonik 00:56, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)
Second that, it's an even better solution. I hope the responsible wiki-programmer(s), or someone who knows who he/she(they) is(are), see this. --Wernher 01:13, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The thing is horrible. It is far too close to the text. In fact, it looks like it's part of the text itself. And why do I need it on my user talk page? — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 01:16, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The "retrieved from" message was recently added to the HTML, and simultaneously hidden with CSS. However the CSS takes a while to work its way through the caches. If you see the "retrieved from" footer, force a reload with ctrl-R in Mozilla or ctrl-F5 in IE. -- Tim Starling 02:38, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)
I gather the purpose then is to "brand" the output? Why is it a "live" link rather than text? Or is that just an epiphenomenon that's hard to stamp out? - Nunh-huh 05:05, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Could someone explain in plain English what this footer means and what its purpose is? Adam 08:16, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I too would like to know what this is for. At least I don't have to deal with this anymore thanks to Ctrl+R. Johnleemk | Talk 08:20, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Apart from being to close to the text, that note is extremely ugly on those Wikipedias using non-latin fonts - there it shows links like http://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B8%84%E0%... Even an occasional German umlaut is enough to uglify it, see e.g. Düsseldorf. andy 09:58, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Where is the right place to discuss changes to this feature now that it exists, and where would have been the right place to learn about it while it was still being planned? —AlanBarrett 10:17, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

These days, I would say the IRC channel. Pcb21| Pete 11:17, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree this change as implemented is very confusing. Is the intention to force people to link back under the GFDL? anthony (see warning) 11:42, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It disappeared after my cntrl-R. But, it would be a good idea to add it on the very bottom of all main namespace articles only to prevent mirroring. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 15:39, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I am not sure how it would prevent mirroring, which we don't want to be prevented anyway, so long as it done in the right way. Pcb21| Pete 16:17, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What Pete said. This certainly wouldn't prevent mirroring, and unless the text is in the database it wouldn't even hinder mirroring. Besides, we explicitly want to encourage mirroring, that's why we allow our database to be downloaded. If we want to try to force mirrors to link back to us, then we should be putting this text in the database dumps. Otherwise no one is going to use it. anthony (see warning) 17:20, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is just for the printable version. It always used to be there but was accidentally dropped when monobook was introduced. It only shows up on the printed version, not on the viewable page (for most browsers). If you can see it, reload the page and it will disappear as it might be accidentally in your cache. Angela. 19:28, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

Ah, yes, reloading removes it. See the message from Tim Starling above for a bit of explanation. anthony (see warning) 19:55, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It took me the better part of a day to realize what you guys were talking about :) -- god bless the old Wikipedia skin and its trouble-free interface. →Raul654 19:58, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

Move history?

Did something change internally with the way moves work? If so, this is great, but I can't find any details in the history about who moved a page and when. Is this available somehow? Additionally, is there any chance of adding a field to list a reason for a move? anthony (see warning) 11:42, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Best disambiguation for a television series

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television) -- Netoholic 21:25, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Frames for Wikipedia?

Can someone tell me why one cannot frame Wikipedia pages? Since one cannot add frames (or iframes) selectively via browsers (sigh) and since one cannot add frames at Wikipedia, and since frames (and iframes) could add tremendous usefulness to wiki articles (e.g., viewing discussion pages, (targeted) page histories, diffs, "what links here", or even the edit pages alongside the article pages), I would hope that the source code for Wikipedia might be modified to allow all of its pages to be framed. If copyright is for some reason an issue, I would think that would be the problem of the person who tried hosting the frames. Brettz9 05:48, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I know little about frames. Have you tried using multiple windows, each only part of the screen? Robin Patterson 06:00, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for answering. Yes, I know that that is possible, but I'd prefer it to be automated for convenience. One could even conceivably program these frames to automatically show up according to one's preferences every time one loaded a new wiki page (e.g., one could opt to show the page history and discussion pages for any Wikipedia page visited). It would be a big hassle to have to do this each time (and even keeping window positions (or saving them, if that is even possible now) wouldn't have the windows automatically load the corresponding meta pages (such as the discussion pages)).
I think the actual problem is related to "bandwidth theft" rather than copyright. Perhaps a techinically-inclined person could tell us exactly how it works. Pcb21| Pete 10:50, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
In /style/wikibits.js:
if( window.top != window ) window.top.location = window.location;
The reason for this is that people might think Wikipedia is part of another entity who puts us in a frameset. [ alerante | “” 14:22, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC) ]
Can't people download and adapt the Wikipedia content and software anyways? And if they are using it commercially, can't they be held accountable for violating the GPL?
There's nothing in the GFDL to prevent someone from using our content commercially. Yes, people can download it anyway. The reason we try to "deframe" ourselves is mostly to discourage sites from using frames to effectively "steal" our bandwidth. I think we also check the referrer on image GETs too, for the same reason. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:51, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Ok, thanks, that was helpful to know. But what about the idea above? Would there be some way the above idea could be implemented within Wikipedia in the future? I guess if the server is already overtaxed, it would not be a good idea to have everybody loading multiple windows at once. But might it be added to some to-do list for when there is infinite bandwidth?  :)

Creating a category

How do I create a new category? --Auximines 14:18, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Just link to it from a page with [[Category:X]] and it'll be automatically created. [ alerante | “” 14:26, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC) ]
Worked a treat. Thanks! --Auximines 14:37, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
But then it is a good idea to go to the new Category page, and link it to its appropriate parent category(s) by adding a [[Category:ParentOfX]] tag. You might also add a short desciption of what the category is intended to be (and I can see you have done both.) -- Solipsist 16:30, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Categorization for category guidelines. --Ardonik 02:37, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

Java applets

Is it possible to upload a Java applet into Wikipedia?

(Un)fortunately no. Johnleemk | Talk 14:42, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)


Terry Nichols article featured in Yahoo! News

This morning Yahoo is featuring our article about Terry Nichols in Yahoo! News, take a look: http://story.news.yahoo.com/fc?cid=34&tmpl=fc&in=US&cat=Oklahoma_City_Bombing

Ruiz 16:51, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Adding it to Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a press source. Thanks for the heads-up! --Ardonik 02:51, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

New Users

Is there any way to find new users (to welcome them), without doing a SQL query? (the database seems to be locked at the current moment and I don't feel like downloading it). — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 17:27, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You can't get a list of them, but Special:Contributions/newbies shows the changes made by the newest users, so you can work out from the page histories listed there who is new. Angela. 19:31, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

Invalid image naming

We have an image named Image:É??ç??å ´ã?«ã?¦ 003.jpg. If we want to make this something meaningful, is this page going to have to be downloaded and then re-uploaded with a different name? RickK 19:50, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

Well, the image is, yes. That's how the software works. Or, doesn't. ;-)
James F. (talk) 02:25, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Empty image files, cur/image tables

Hello, I did this for the german WP before, and am now planning to do this for the english WP as well:

I downloaded the database tables cur and image (dump of august 08) and am looking for

  • empty image files (files that have img_size = 0): found 133 entries
  • image table entries without image description pages
  • image description pages without image table entries

I plan to upload these, so that this inconsistencies can be cleared. At de I also looked at each of the image pages to see if an image exists and wrote this information into the list too. Entries without images were deleted shortly after I put them on VfD.

At de I put these lists onto a subpage of my user page (de:Benutzer:SirJective/Bildprobleme) and could do this here as well. But maybe there is a better place for this, and maybe someone already did this.

I welcome any comments on this. --SirJective 20:24, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See User:SirJective/Image problems. --SirJective 21:56, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Substubs

The issue of whether a substub category is desirable has been debated extensively, without a clear conclusion. Currently we are trying to decide what to do with the substub template, and a survey is being conducted at Template talk:Substub. More input is welcome there. --Michael Snow 21:32, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How to delete an unused image?

I uploaded Image:Arimaa_Setup.png and then realized a jpg would be smaller than a png, so I uploaded Image:Arimaa_Setup.jpg instead. Now I want to delete the png, because it is taking up space and not linked to by the Arimaa article. How do I delete an unused image? Thanks, --Fritzlein 00:26, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If the image is an exact copy, I believe you can put it up as a Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion. Or you can use Wikipedia:Images for deletion. Best wishes, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 00:27, 2004 Aug 10 (UTC)
Thanks, I put it on Images for deletion. --Fritzlein 00:49, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

VfD acting up

Can anyone figure out why Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Societas_Via_Romana refuses to show up on the main VfD page? Niteowlneils 03:27, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Problems with the links table probably. I deleted and undeleted it and it seems ok now. Angela. 03:36, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)
Great. I figured someone would know of something to try that I wasn't trying. Thanks. Niteowlneils 03:49, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How do I find out on what pages an image is used? "What links here" gives me no pages for every photo I've tried, and I know they're used on pages (and have been for months). Is something broken and I've missed a discussion? Or is this user error? Elf | Talk 03:08, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Pages that include the image are listed in a section called "File links" at the end of the image description page. For example Image:Village pump clear.png says "The following pages link to this file: * Template:Villagepump * Wikipedia:Village pump". Angela. 03:33, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)
With the change to 1.3 the link table for images was corrupted, thus all images looked like orphans. Only those articles which were edited since show in the "File links" list. There was talk about a bot updating that table, but apparently it never happened. So if you still know where that image is used just do a trivial edit to that article. andy 09:36, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Actually it wasn't the 1.3 conversion, it was the suda crash. The entire database was restored from a backup, with 2 days of downtime. The archive table (i.e. deleted pages) were also lost at this time. -- Tim Starling 10:37, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

Commenting on Special pages

Where should comments and questions about "Special:" pages go, since they don't have their own talk pages? I'm thinking in particular of the page Special:Statistics (which personally I think should be renamed to Special:Site statistics or Special:Wikipedia statistics or something). This came up because some people have asked about the site stats page on Talk:Statistics. I added a link there to the Village pump, but there's gotta be a better place. - dcljr 04:17, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Special pages, belonging to Wikipedia:Special pages.--Patrick 10:50, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Ah. Yes. Thanks. - dcljr 06:32, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

weird happenings

Is anyone else getting a "Retrieved from "(full URL of the page being viewed)"" line at the bottom of all Wikipedia pages? I am and I have no idea why. It's kinda creeping me out. Lachatdelarue 14:15, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See above: Wikipedia:Village_pump#.22Retrieved_from.22_footer Anárion 14:19, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Contribs by anon

This anon's contribs have been vandalism, but of a weird type. What are those contributions under "Excrement (weird character) (weird character)" etc? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 14:49, 2004 Aug 10 (UTC)

The weird characters are the UTF8 remnants of a special unicode character, probably a different kind of blank. The user recreated the same article as Excrement tasting without the weird stuff - but apparently that one was deleted. Yet the japanese article it had as an interwiki (ja:嘗糞) translated with babelfish suggested it might not be a nonsense article, but a valid topic of traditional koreanish medicine. But it was a substub anyway, maybe it is better to wait till someone can elaborate better on that topic. andy 16:16, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

TOC should be called "Contents"

I hope I'm not opening a can of worms or making a Frequently Rejected Suggestion, but I think that when you look at a Table of Contents, you should see just "Contents", not "Table of Contents". After all, you can tell it's a table. I've just checked several books in different fields, and their TOCs are headed simply "Contents" (or some slight variation).

--JerryFriedman 16:32, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Discussion moved to MediaWiki talk:Toc. Please comment there before August 17 if you have any objections to this change being made. Angela. 21:05, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

New WikiProject Arcade Games

Just wanted to announce that there is a new WikiProject: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Arcade_Games. Hop on over and add yourself to the Participants if you're interested. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 19:19, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

Page history link

Is there a way to do an internal link to a specific time in a page's history? For example, an external link would be: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump&oldid=5126141], but how would you do an internal link to that page? (You know, like [[cheese]].) [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 22:59, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No, afaik. Dysprosia 04:55, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Category:Air Forces can't be deleted

Category:Air Forces has been superceeded by Category:Air forces, but it still shows up in Special:Categories, somewhere around here even though the category is empty without a description. --ssd 02:28, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Judging from how Special:Categories is implemented, I'd guess it's because the categorylinks table wasn't updated properly. But I'm afraid that probably doesn't help much. You might want to file a bug report and have a real developer take a look. --Diberri | Talk 03:42, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
Based mainly on the fact that similar things happen with updating templates, which were implemented in the same rolling release (MediaWiki 1.3?), it may be worth watching for 12-48 hours to see if it eventually does what you expect. IMO, there is something i would ignorantly call "server-side caching" going on. (No, my client-side caching doesn't seem to explain any of this.) I find that delay and/or re-editing a page that calls a changed template can result in seeing the expected change. Similarly with undeletes for merging page histories (but not necessarily related even as to timing, since i had no experience undeleting before 1.3), the undeleted versions often take a while to join the freshly renamed ones, and the "top" and current version may be an old one, even when all are shown, until another edit seems to force them being sorted into chronological order. --Jerzy(t) 18:08, 2004 Aug 11 (UTC)
Actually, I did a couple of edits and stuff to try to make it go away and then waited a couple of days before posting here. Anyway, it seems fixed now. --ssd 04:13, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I take it back. The link shows up as edit, so at least part of the system thinks it does not exist, but it is still showing up in Special:Categories --ssd 13:56, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Compatibility of headings with templates

Having seen at least one case where headings broke VfD soon after we started transcluding sub-pages into VfD, i've made a practice of adding comments reading

<!--For technical reasons, do not add headers to VfD subpages-->

and converting heading to boldface. But i've seen some lately where there seem to be no bad effects (i think bcz the transcluded headings are rendered, but do not effect either the ToC or the numbering of sections for section-edit purposes).

Is it true that there is no longer a reason to avoid headings in VfD subpages that are to be transcluded into VfD's rendering? Or is the situation more subtle than that?
--Jerzy(t) 04:45, 2004 Aug 11 (UTC)


best practice for WikiProject ?

I have started a new article to discuss the best ways to lead a WikiProject. Any comments are more than welcome (please do them directly in the Talk page). Pcarbonn 05:46, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

User:Celindgren

User:Celindgren has been going around adding a certain external link to every Vietnam-related article he/she can find, pushing a certain POV regarding the current Vietnamese government (the link itself is to the website of the "Imperial Nguyen Dynasty Overseas Council & The Vietnamese Constitutional Monarchist League"). Often, the link is actually irrelevant to the article in question (eg Dien Bien Phu, John Paul Vann). User:Celindgren also appears to be the same as User:198.26.120.13, who has made more dubious edits. For example, the repeated deletion of external links which don't match User:Celindgren's point of view, such as in this edit. Also, a POV comment on Flag of Vietnam. Other articles primarily created by User:Celindgren (such as the one about the Vietnamese Constitutional Monarchist League) are definitely POV. Would someone better used to dealing with such matters please have a word with User:Celindgren about Wikipedia's POV policies? I'd do it myself, but I'm not really very familiar with the details of our policy, and have no experience with such things. (I have, however, started to go through the various articles attempting to remove the POV). Thanks. -- Vardion 06:29, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I added this to Wikipedia:RC patrol because it's going to take many hands to undo all this inappropriate editing... and I did add a general comment on User Talk:Celindgren, which I hope wasn't out of line. I've reverted a few of the more extreme examples such as Vietnamese language and Ngo Dinh Diem. --—Hob←Talk 17:45, 2004 Aug 13 (UTC)

Ok to Use Rumors as Sources in Wikipedia?

On the main page the anniversary of the patenting of the spork is listed, along with an illustration. However, I was dismayed to find this in the article:

"According to a rumor, the spork was invented in the 1940s by the United States Army, which introduced them to occupied Japan. It was hoped that the use of the spork would wean the people there from the use of chopsticks. This pointless hope did not come true; yet the spork that was spurned by the Japanese found a home in the United States of America, where its versatility and disposability were well adapted to the cuisine of the United States."

Am tempted to delete it, but maybe not? Is it really okay to cite a rumor as a source? Seems like there ought to be some factual basis, not just "according to a rumor..." H2O 07:07, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If its a notable enough rumor (for example the folk etymology of posh is quite famous and has been published in books and such), its probably encyclopedic as a rumor, it should be included and noted as a rumor (hopefully with some reasoning for how it started/spread). Of course if a rumor is fact, it should be given as fact. In this case, there should be some more investigation probably. —siroχo 07:42, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
I looked around and everything seems to point back to one guy's comment on a spork newsgroup some years ago. Hardly encyclopedic. Probably another urban legend. I deleted the rumors. If someone wants to verify this with something more than some newsgroup chatter, fine. H2O 07:48, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If you are feeling confident about your facts and if you think it is important, then you could debunk the rumor as a rumor on the page itself. "Many web sites indicate that the spork was unsuccessfully introduced in Japan following WWII. However this rumour appears to originate from a single newsgroup posting [here]." Pcb21| Pete 10:06, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I am not confident enough in my "facts" to include a debunking of a "rumour" in an encyclopedia article. That would be like starting another rumour. However, I have enough doubt that I think the rumour should be left out of the article until more evidence is available. Maybe someone knows of a person who lived or served in Japan around that time or has more knowledge of WWII history than I do. They could confirm or deny this rumour. H2O 15:58, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Proper treatment of rumors, which by nature accumulate small mutations, includes IDing any near-truth in them, e.g.:
  1. In "the anniversary of the patenting of the spork", almost certainly distinguishing that from "... of a new design for a spork". ("Prior art" aside, popular culture has a pathetic misunderstanding of the incremental nature of invention and patenting.)
  2. Thinking not in terms of whether sporks were invented for Japan, but of whether there was a specific plan to introduce them there with the intent already stated.
And don't forget to copy this discussion to Talk:Spork.
--Jerzy(t) 17:26, 2004 Aug 11 (UTC)
I think it is fine as long as you can cite a good source describing the rumor (i.e. it is not just a rumor started by a random Wikipedian). e.g. "One rumor, according to the American Dictionary of Slang (1983), is that the "spork" originated as...." —Steven G. Johnson 22:39, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
Because incorrect folk etymologies accumulate around works like spork, I think that it is much better to discuss it intelligently within the article rather than to leave it out. Include rumors from suspect sources if you don't have better evidence and if you can establish the rumor as widespread, and verifiable, and label it as such. E.g. do a Google Groups search for it. If you turn it up, say, "The story that the spork originated in thus-and-such way has been widely repeated on the Internet in the USENET newsgroups. However, the first such mention is in the year 1998, and the absence of mentions prior to that time makes it unlikely ..." Readers can judge for themselves whether they trust USENET or like your methodology. Later on, if someone finds a better piece of information they can replace yours. If you just leave it out, people will keep reinserting versions because everyone wants to know the origin. If you can find a dictionary that says "origin uncertain" be sure to say "The so-and-so dictionary says origin uncertain." Say what you believe about the rumor, give verifiable reasons for your belief, and supply information that lets the reader judge the soundness of your statement. My $0.02. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 13:32, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Recent changes mirrorred

If I enlarge the list of Special:Recentchanges the list gets mirrorred about halfway. I checked the source but could not find a rogue RTL character anywhere. Using Opera 7.54 on Windows2000 -- screenshot can be upped on request. Anárion 09:54, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Only visible on showing 250 or 500 changes. Anárion 09:59, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Bogus "you have new messages" flag for anon users? (Please fix this)

related entries elided by User:Finlay McWalter

Several anons are complaining that they're getting "you have new messages", and when they click on the link it takes them to the wrong User Talk page. See User talk:195.93.34.7, for an example. I don't know if this is true or not, but there have been a lot of anon editors complaining on several different Talk pages. RickK 23:48, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

IP users are getting directed to the wrong user talk pages (as has been discussed) and I just receved a 'you have new messages' thing when my edit was last in the history (at least sent me to my talk page). There's something up with WP lately...and it's confusing eveyone ?:| — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 05:13, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This has happened quite a bit. I've created bug # 1007164 anons receive bogus "new messages" indicators for OTHER anon on sourceforge, and added the two confused IPs RickK cited. Can others who know of such occurances amend the bug to add more such confused pairs (as I imagine the developers will want as many cases as possible). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 10:49, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This happened to me once when I used my brother's computer to access Wikipedia. Johnleemk | Talk 13:11, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See User talk:64.12.116.10. Apparently, SEVERAL anon users are being directed to this same page. RickK 06:58, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)

Historical categories

Are there any recommendations on how to name and organize historical categories? I looked at Wikipedia:Categorization and Wikipedia:WikiProject History but didn't see anything. Category:History itself suggests that different contributors have had different ideas. Gdr 12:03, 2004 Aug 11 (UTC)

I wrote some guidelines for categorization of historical articles, and organized Category:History to fit my scheme. See Wikipedia:WikiProject History#Categories for details. Gdr 14:05, 2004 Aug 16 (UTC)

If defined work yet?

I was wondering if the "{{{if defined}}}" described at meta:Extended template syntax works? If so, can someone give me some hints as to what was wrong with the "if defined" syntax in this? Much thanks. —siroχo 13:20, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

Probably you overread the word "proposed" in that article. While optional things with templates would be quite handy for many things, they could also lead to rather complicated templates, which then aren't much wiki (in the sense of quick to grasp) anymore. But before we get optional parameters in template, I wish the calculated links and images in template would finally work, thing like [[{{name}}]] or [[Image:{{{whatever}}}.jpg|100px|Comment]] don't work yet. andy 14:33, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Unverified images

I was going through some articles and noted that they had unverified images (no info given on image description page). I've added {{unverified}} to them, and removed them from the articles, but is there anything else I should do with them? They appear to be photos from a news service. Best, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 15:47, 2004 Aug 11 (UTC)

For now, I think that's all you do. Eventually, images without source information will need to be deleted, but that is waiting at least until we have a new upload form and people are more used to the requirement. --Michael Snow 16:36, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Noncommercial-use only images are not acceptable

A general reminder: Please stop uploading images where permission is granted for non-commercial use only, effective immediately. Under official Wikipedia policy, these images are no longer accepted. [7]. It is anticipated that existing images with the {{noncommercial}} tag will be deleted at some point in the future (possibly after a new upload form is in place), except for images whose use can be justified on other grounds. --Michael Snow 16:36, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • At the risk of making a lot of extra work for myself, I would be willing to accept requests for creating GFDL replacements for noncommercial-use illustrations. See my user page for a list of the sort of things I have illustrated. -- Wapcaplet 16:48, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • I can help out as well with diagrams. (Some of my diagrams can be found here) theresa knott 18:21, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I guess this means we shouldn't be featuring these images on the front page? [8] anthony (see warning) 16:51, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Yes. Middle-earth is actually what called my attention to the problem, but by the time I noticed it was already on the front page, and I didn't think the issue warranted taking it down once it had gotten there. We are not yet to the point of removing all of these images from articles and deleting them, but I agree that they should not be used on the front page. I regret that your objection wasn't acted on while featuring this article was still in the planning stages. --Michael Snow 18:19, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is a great blow to the ongoing process of illustrating Wikipedia. There are a lot of people out there taking a lot of good photos which understandably they don't want other people making money out of. However they are quite happy, even honoured, to allow use of their images for noble projects like Wikipedia. I have been uploading a few of these non-commercial images recently to illustrate articles on towns. There is absolutely no reason why they should not be used. Downstream reproducers of Wikipedia content should simply not incorporate the images into their content if they intend to put it to commercial use. This can be achieved very easily with the tagging of images with their licensing status. What this policy is doing is allowing downstream commercial users to dictate to us here at the main project what we can and can't include. Can somebody please offer a decent explanation as to why non-commercial images shouldn't be included so that we can all come to an informed consensus on the matter instead of having policy decided by a small clique on the mailing list and announced to the rest of us from on high. If this policy is adopted then we are pointlessly preventing ourselves from using images which their creators are quite happy for us to use. A far greater problem Wikipedians should be devoting their time to is the lack of any licensing information whatsoever on the vast majority of uploaded images. — Trilobite (Talk) 20:55, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

IANAL, but it appears that restrictions on re-distribution directly conflict with the GFDL, our license of choice. - jredmond 21:58, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The issue is not the GFDL — the GFDL is chosen because one wants to allow commercial use, not vice versa. —Steven G. Johnson 22:22, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
Our text is GFDL - images are not (which is why we have the image pages). →Raul654 22:07, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
The trick comes in when we place images on articles, though. Is the image a part of the article? If so, what license applies to the compilation of GFDL text plus non-GFDL images? - jredmond 22:12, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
But then there is an inconsistency. Mr Wales writes, "For the time being, I think we should rely on fair use, because it's a good thing, but cautiously so." We certainly cannot grant licences for images, but we use them nevertheless. Another problem is that the restriction on non-commercial images can be easily evaded with the fair use doctrine. -- Emsworth 22:18, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
In the present (US) legal environment, "fair use" is a pretty flimsy crutch to lean on. Besides which, Wikipedians seem to think "fair use" means "we can use any image we like as long as we really really want to." —Steven G. Johnson 22:32, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
Jimbo'll have to speak for himself, but I read that sentence to mean "Until we can get new, more libre images, fair use will have to do". This is consistent with the bits on fair-use content in Wikipedia:Copyrights. - jredmond 22:36, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it's pretty clear what Jimbo means here. He says that non-free content "should be removed from Wikipedia with reasonable haste." Then he says "This decree is only about non-free licenses _as a justification_ for images being on Wikipedia, and does not comment on, nor affect, evolving doctrine on 'fair use'." "For the time being, I think we should rely on fair use, because it's a good thing, but cautiously so." He is saying that we should get rid of content that is used under a non-free license, but that this doesn't apply to free use images. It's an interesting statement, because you could technically say since these images are copyrighted, they can be used under fair use. But IANAL. — マイケル ₪ 00:10, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)
In addition, the statement at the bottom of each page reads, "All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License" (emphasis added).
Non-commercial-use images are problematic for the same reason that non-commercial-use text is — there is no reason to allow one and not the other. We allow commercial use because we want to allow things like Wikipedia being distributed on CD by CheapBytes for a few dollars, being included with future Linux DVDs as a built-in OS resource, being bundled with every PalmPilot sold... as long as the encyclopedia material itself is never made proprietary. This is the same as the free-software/open-source philosophy (both of which movements require that commercial use be allowed). —Steven G. Johnson 22:22, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
From a contributor's standpoint, why not just contribute the image under the GFDL? Although the GFDL does not prohibit "commercial" use per se, it prohibits most uses that people ordinarily think of as "commercial" — for example, usage in a typical magazine or newspaper — because it prohibits proprietary use (all derived works need to be under the GFDL as well). (Indeed, just as companies do with GPL software, you could imagine a professional photographer contributing GFDL images as a promotion, and then selling the right to use a non-GFDL, proprietary license to magazines etc. that want to use the image.) —Steven G. Johnson 22:28, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
I think what Trilobite is talking about is images that have been copied from elsewhere under non-commercial use permissions. In that case, you don't have the ability to contribute the image under the GFDL yourself. --Michael Snow 22:31, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think he was talking about photos taken by individuals...unlike companies, individuals can sometimes be persuaded, and you just need to convince them that the GFDL prohibits most of the uses that they want to prohibit with a noncommercial restriction. —Steven G. Johnson 22:35, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
Sure they can be persuaded, and if so, great. But it does take a little more work, and as you note about fair use, some people are just dying to contribute this lovely image they found "right now", without caring about the implications of copyleft. --Michael Snow 22:52, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I meant photos taken by anyone who has nothing to do with Wikipedia, so they can't just say, "I'll make things easier and license my images under the GFDL," as I would (and have done) with my own images I want to put on Wikipedia. There are a lot of people making their very useful photos available for non-commercial use which Wikipedia should be able to take advantage of. — Trilobite (Talk) 23:04, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is committed to being as free (libre) a project as possible, as part of the open content community that relies on copyleft licenses. This is a core part of our mission. We define ourselves as an open-content encyclopedia on the Main Page. This principle has been policy since the beginning of the project.

There are a lot of people out there writing a lot of good text which understandably they don't want other people making money out of. This text is not allowed on Wikipedia, because it is not open content. There are plenty of people who might let us use their text, or their images, as long as it can only be used on Wikipedia. Because we're a noble project, because they're honoured to have it published, because they want publicity, motives may vary. We can't accept it on those terms, because it's not open content. The policy against non-commercial-use-only images reflects that commitment. --Michael Snow 22:31, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I quite agree with you where text is concerned. However, text which someone wanted to contribute on a non-commercial basis would of course make things very difficult and complex, as text is added to and taken away from, edited mercilessly etc. It would be absurd to have different portions and fragments of text under different licenses, but images are a very different matter. They are discrete entities instead of something that can be mixed up with new contributions until it's impossible to extricate the original. They are also, as Raul654 pointed out, on seperate image pages which are simply referenced to in the Wiki markup. By tagging those images which are not available for commercial use, downstream reproducers, or future commercial applications of Wikipedia such as those which have been mentioned, can remove them automatically. This makes things a little bit more complicated, but is greatly preferable to purging Wikipedia of vast swathes of perfectly good graphical content. Am I the only one who still isn't persuaded that this policy makes sense? — Trilobite (Talk) 23:04, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
A license to use something only for noncommercial use is not free, and it's inconsistent with our underlying philosophy. The fact that you can separate the images out from text doesn't matter. What we would be doing is flatly saying no, you can't use this content if it's for commercial purposes. In other words, the content is definitely not open, even though we claim that we are.
If you can claim fair use for an image, that has a slightly better shot at working in an open-content world, because commerciality is only one issue considered in fair use analysis. And with fair use, we're not telling people "you can't use this stuff", but we're tagging it so they can separate it if necessary. What we're really telling them is to figure out for yourself if what you're doing is still fair use. --Michael Snow 23:27, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The mainstay of our content, which is text, would be very much open and free. Images not available for commercial use would serve as an embellishment on the Wikipedia website itself, as this is not a commercial use. In some other applications of our content, those images would not be available. It's as simple as that. Fair use, as I understand it (and I am by no means an expert), is a phenomenon of US copyright law of dubious international applicability. I have always thought it best avoided as it is often far from clear where the line between fair use and unauthorised copying lies. Non-commercial permission however is clear and unequivocal — we can use it on this website and any other non-commercial application, and we simply blank it out from anything commercial. This is easily achieved by putting all such images into a category. This is the Wiki equivalent of the sort of machine-readable metadata Creative Commons encourages the use of along with their licenses, so that computers can be used to selectively do things with content according to how it's licensed. Technologically this is very simple for Wikipedia and need not contradict the philosophy of the project at all, as long as we remain a text-based encyclopedia with images as non-essential extras. After all, we should already be aiming at this if only for accessibility reasons. I would appreciate some input into this debate from others as I think it's one worth having. — Trilobite (Talk) 23:58, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Noncommercial use is technically legal on Wikipedia itself right now, but would not be if we decided to add advertisements to the site (I'm not suggesting this is planned, but it has been contemplated). But anyway, such images are clearly not open and free, and I don't see why we should stray from our commitment to open content in order to embellish the website.
Fair use is specifically US, but other countries have fair dealing, and for a more international basis, the Berne Convention has fair practice. Determining what's "fair" tends to be case-by-case analysis, and the US may well be the most liberal jurisdiction in that regard, but the principle is internationally available.
Incidentally, if images are "non-essential extras", why exactly is it so important to allow images under noncommercial-use permissions? That philosophy seems to negate all of the arguments raised for including them. --Michael Snow 00:20, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Personally, I'm glad to have non-commercial images go. The goal of Wikipedia is to create a free resource which anybody can easily take material from. Moving to the GFDL will not remove any credit from you – and you aren't losing any money anyway, unless you're rich enough to distribute the picture, etc. What's so wrong about letting a company use your image? As long as they credit you, there's nothing you're losing. As for fair use, I consider images commonly seen (i.e. a particularly famous image of a celebrity), or images distributed publicly (i.e. broadcast on television, published in major publications) to be valid fair use material. Anything else is dubious. So, for example, an image of the cover of the Yesterday single would be fair use, but not a copyrighted image of the Beatles (or anyone else) performing it, unless licensed under the GFDL and/or published in several major publications. Johnleemk | Talk 10:53, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Have you considered this from the contributors point of view? If you have an individual who donates his or her time to write an article for which there are none of the traditional benefits of commercial reward or peer recognition and that individual also prepares images to support and embellish the article then it should be entirely up to them if they do not want to see their work profited from commercially unless they do so too. prometheus1 20:51, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I am not contesting that right. What I am contesting is that we allow that to happen on Wikipedia, and that as a contributor, IMO, there's little reason for it. Unless you have a way to make loads of money from it, there's no reason for not licensing the image under the GFDL or some other free license, unless you're one of those anti-corporate...um, "girlie men". (Don't take the comment seriously.) The decision is up to the image's owner, but we really shouldn't be using these images on Wikipedia. Jimbo's posts on the mailing list say it much better than I ever could. Johnleemk | Talk 05:12, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I'm a big fan of Arnold and I don't think you would call me a "girlie man" if you saw me ;). But I am not a fan of having others sell and make money out of a contribution that I made in the interests of sharing knowledge. From both an ideological and economic perspective if others wish to make money out of it then I should be entitled to my fair share in the great corporate tradition! If you go to pubmed books online you will find that some images cannot be shown in the online version. If it's good enough for them to compromise it should be good enough for wikipedia. I think placing such a restriction in the event that wikpedia want to change the business model so that they can sell CD's or use banner advertising to generate income is illogical. It is easy to tag the images such that if an ad appears or if the content is going to CD that it be not included. Otherwise pay a percentage back to the contributor - or better still stay non-profit like everyone believes wikipedia is, then there's no problem of using non-commercial use. prometheus1 06:42, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
A non-profit organization can make commercial use of images (or other things), right? Dan Gardner 19:20, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
But if you really had a strong interest in sharing knowledge, you wouldn't mind allowing commercial uses of your contributions. After all, don't you know that every piece of text on Wikipedia can be taken and resold as long as we are credited, and nobody can say a thing? Jimbo makes the point for why we shouldn't be allowing non-commercial use only uploads on Wikipedia brilliantly – it's supposed to be free. If we have to rely on restrictive licensing, it goes against our original goal of an encyclopedia anybody can take and reuse. I can't wait to see how you're going to ask for a cut when some company decides to lift text from DNA repair, by the way. ;-) Johnleemk | Talk 07:30, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think this decision has the priorities wrong. At least non-commercial-use images have licences and at least we can use them. Our first priority should be to remove images with no source; our second should be to remove copyrighted images unless the "fair use" defence is really solid (e.g., corporate logos). Non-commecical-use images should come a distant third. Gdr 15:35, 2004 Aug 12 (UTC)

The first priority is quite correct. People shouldn't be uploading images without source information any more than they should be uploading non-commercial-use images. In both cases, actual removal is waiting until we have a new upload form that will improve compliance. Weeding out improper claims of fair use would be good, too, but you have to debate those individually. Keep in mind that some of the images used under non-free licenses will also need to be considered for possible fair use claims. --Michael Snow 17:47, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
First off, I agree with Trilobite: "non-commercial use only" images can – if tagged – be easily removed by commercial re-users of Wikipedia content. Wikipedia itself is a non-commercial endeavour, and I can't see anything wrong with the use of such images here. Removing them from here would only needlessly deprive Wikipedia of many great pictures.
It seems to me that downstream republishers of Wikipedia content will find it far more difficult to properly deal with "fair use" claims: they will in effect have to re-evaluate each and every of these images to check whether the fair use claim made by Wikipedia also applies in the jurisdiction they're under.
I think Gdr has the priorities exactly right. First deal with copyvios (we already do), then images without source and licensing info, then verify those "fair use" claims. Deal with problems that could affect Wikipedia itself first. "Non-commercial use only" images pose no legal problems for Wikipedia, and as I wrote above, commercial dowstream re-users can remove them. We have more important things to do.
How many "non-commercial use only" images do we have, anyway? Category:Non-commercial use only images currently lists 81 images, but I know that this number is far too low, maybe due to some corrupt link table in the database. A search of the "Image" namespace for "non-commercial" lists more than 500 results. (I tried to find out how many exactly by playing around with "&limit=" & "&offset=" in the URL, but queries invariably timed out for me.)
Lupo 19:17, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't know. Any image which is fair use for Wikipedia is probably fair use for just about any noncommercial encyclopedia, so non-commercial only images are probably more restrictive. That said, both issues need to be addressed. We shouldn't have many images here which we can't put in the print version, as having them here will just make us lazy about replacing them with free ones. anthony (see warning) 20:31, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A lot of people are confused to as to what Jimbo meant. I think the text of from his latest e-mail states much more clearly what he means: 

> We have a lot of images with "no commercial use" caveats.  Does that
>mean these images have to be removed?

My position is that yes, eventually, these do need to be removed.
There can be exceptions, though...

If an image meets our fair use/fair dealing guidelines, which
basically means that it is easily fair use for us, and likely fair use
for most contemplated reusers, then we can keep it (because it is free
in the relevant sense) *even if* we are *also* able to obtain a
license of some sort.  It can be wise for us to have licenses for
content that we could use without a license, just to make things more
clear.

An example of a "fair use" that would likely be fine for just about
any contemplated reusers would be a quotation from a book that an
article is discussing.  Another example would be a screen shot from a
movie in an article about that movie.

If the _only_ way we can use a particular image is through a non-free
license, and we believe that a fair use defense would be unavailable
to us, or to most contemplated reusers, then it should be avoided.

--Jimbo

I hope that clears up any confusion anyone had. — マイケル ₪ 20:37, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)

National treatment

The Berne convention says that: "Authors shall enjoy, in respect of works for which they are protected under this Convention, in countries of the Union other than the country of origin, the rights which their respective laws do now or may hereafter grant to their nationals, as well as the rights specially granted by this Convention." [9]

So it seems to me that Wikipedia should be assuming the protections of the country of origin. If the work is a US work, then fair use applies. If it isn't, then it shouldn't. anthony (see warning) 17:14, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

An interesting legal interpretation, but not a correct one. Fair use is not a right of the author; it is a right of the (re-)user. Therefore, this section does not apply. This section is meant to ensure that, for example, copyright doesn't expire in foreign countries before it expires in the home country. It has no merit on fair use grounds. →Raul654 17:19, Aug 13, 2004 (UTC)
Your statement is completely wrong. I never claimed that fair use was a right of the author. I also never made any legal interpretation. As for your statement that this section is about copyright expiration, I have no idea where you got that from. Did you just make it up yourself, or can you point me to somewhere that backs that up? anthony (see warning) 17:24, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Your cite says: "Authors shall enjoy...the rights which their respective laws do now or may hereafter grant". Fair use is not a right of the author; therefore, this section does not apply. Therefore, we can operate under US fair use law if we so desire. →Raul654 17:30, Aug 13, 2004 (UTC)
Furthermore, "So it seems to me that Wikipedia should be assuming the protections of the country of origin. If the work is a US work, then fair use applies. If it isn't, then it shouldn't." - this is legal interpretation, whatever *you* might think it is. →Raul654 17:30, Aug 13, 2004 (UTC)
I understand that fair use is not a right of the author. I never said it was. Copyright is a right of the author. Fair use is a limitation on that right. My statement which you consider a legal interpretation is a suggestion as to how Wikipedia should treat things, and not a legal interpretation. I guess I see how you could misunderstand the sentence "If the work is a US work, then fair use applies." if you took it out of context. But even so, do you dispute that fact? It is obviously true. I take it you haven't found anything to back up your other incorrect statements, and that's why you ignored my question as to whether or not you just made it up yourself. anthony (see warning) 18:04, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Ok, so your "suggestion" is that Wikipedia follow the copyright laws of the respective country in which a work is published, even though you conceed that we are not required to by law (why did you not just say this in the first place?). That's your opinion, and you are entitled to it; however, a large number of our contributors would disagree. →Raul654 18:33, Aug 13, 2004 (UTC)
My suggestion is that we only use under the doctrine of fair use those images for which the country of origin is the US. We are, of course, "required" to follow the laws of any country in which we distribute Wikipedia, in that not doing so is a violation of the law, of course. That people might disagree is precisely why I brought this up on the pump. Personally I don't think the Wikimedia foundation should harm its status in other countries (virtually all of them) over the issue of fair use, it's just not important enough. anthony (see warning)
I discussed this with Jamesday in Boston at length. Basically, he's adamant about making sure the foundation does *NOTHING* except the website - so long as they only do that, they're legally untouchable (Webhosts and ISPs are covered by all kinds of safe harbor laws and precedent rulings). Distribution can be handeled by others - Mandrake, for example, wants to package Wikipedia on a DVD, or we can do it ourselves using a seperate foundation (which means that the Wikimedia foundation is still legally bulletproof). →Raul654 20:13, Aug 13, 2004 (UTC)
Jamesday doesn't run the foundation, isn't a lawyer, and isn't right if he has said that the foundation is legally untouchable, as not all countries have those safe harbor laws. Furthermore, just because we might be able to get away with breaking the law doesn't mean we should do so. Like I said, our status in other countries is just not worth it. As for whether or not the foundation should do nothing except the website, I disagree with Jamesday on that point, but this is a different topic altogether. If you or he would like to raise the issue somewhere and would like to hear my input, point me to the location. anthony (see warning) 20:27, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hurricane Charley

There once was a Hurricane, Charley...
That came from the land of Bob Marley...
chased Jimbo away
that very same day
But the site did not die, not hardly
by User:Jimbo Wales

I just thought I'd share that with everyone who doesn't hang out on #MediaWiki. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:21, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Did BushCountry.org REALLY get this biased information from here?

To find a fair and well-documented biography of John F. Kerry, and discover who this Presidential candidate really is, go to this Wikipedia Encyclopedia:

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

You will find that:

Kerry came from German-speaking Jews, but the family concealed its background upon migrating to the United States, and raised the Kerry children as Catholics. Kerry professes to be a Catholic but is divorced and pro-abortion, positions from which his Diocese has distanced themselves. Kerry has a family history of flip-flopping and appearing to be something other than he is.

John Kerry's maternal grandfather, James Grant Forbes, was born in then American occupied Shanghai, China, where the Forbes family of China and Boston accumulated a fortune in the opium and China trade.

I really think someone from your organization needs to look into this. Here is a link to the whole article: http://www.bushcountry.org/news/aug_news_pages/n_080204_kerry_facts.htm

Reading your site as I do, I'm sure you realize that people are going to start believing that you are Pro-Bush and not realize what it is you ARE actually about.

I appreciate your time and consideration in this matter.

68.228.144.45 06:59, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) MetroRetro

(I'm not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation, so this might not be an interesting answer for you, nor am I a US citizen, but I'm at least a regular contributor to this encyclopedia.) I'm not sure what is the problem here really. The "flip-flopping" formulation is a conclusion bushcountry.org draw themselves from the information they had read on Wikipedia, I assume, so Wikipedia can't really answer to that part. The other things here are claimed facts (although the statement about Shanghai being American occupied at the time was removed as incorrect on June 10). If you feel that any of these facts might be incorrect, and no evidence is given, demand evidence on Talk:John Kerry. You have the right to it. All this while, you should be aware that the article (John Kerry) is one of the most frequented and edited on Wikipedia, subject to often repeated vandalism, several edit wars (one ongoing, it seems, between User:Rex071404 and User:Neutrality), the occasional protection, and harsh words between many of the involved editors (many words, too – only this month, the talk page has been archived three times already). So there will be statements there from time to time that are incorrect, point-of-view, or conceivable as point-of-view. This is the nature of wikis. These statements generally disappear within minutes or even seconds. This is the nature of good wikis. And of course, such statements disappear even more rapidly if more people join in and monitor articles. (Yeah, that's you.) -- Jao 09:23, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)
If the information is incorrect, remove it. If it has been selected so as to present a false picture, then add information to make a complete picture. bushcountry.org appears to be pushing a particular point of view: namely, (a) that the actions of Kerry's ancestors were bad; and (b) that this reflects badly on him. Wikipedia can't stop people making arguments like that, nor is it really the place to refute them (but see guilt by association). Gdr 12:16, 2004 Aug 12 (UTC)
You need to carefully read the article on John Kerry. The John kerry article is factual (well, close, it's being ironed). The way something is INTERPRETED makes all the difference. Bushcountry.org is very good at interpreting things the way they want to. Lyellin 12:21, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)
Reading both texts, it appears that Bushcountry.org has taken every sentence from the Wikipedia article that supports their POV and pasted it together in their own way, with their own interpretations (but still crediting Wikipedia). The facts are the same as what we have, except that Bushcountry.org have been very selective about picking out pieces from Wikipedia article. I don't quite see what we can do about this but, if Wikipedia keeps getting more popular, things like this one are going to be more common as well. Andris 14:42, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)
Not something to worry about. Such selective quoting goes on the world over. However, if "from Wikipedia" is used as an attempt at authoritativeness of selective quotes - I'm sure for serious problems of this kind, action can be taken over the misuse of Wikipedia's name. zoney ███ talk 17:53, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Taking a lighter look at it. I think it's great that Wikipedia's name is being used in order to add authority. I remember in the early days argueing on usenet with people who said "It'll never work, the general public are a bunch of idiots, if you let them all edit you'll get rubbish" How wrong they were. theresa knott 20:30, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • Plus, it may get some BushCountry readers with tendencies towards critical thinking to pop over here and check out the actual article. Exposure is rarely a bad thing. -- Wapcaplet 22:08, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Bold/italics combinations broken?

There seems to have been a software change here today that means that bold text nested within italics no longer seems to work the say it used to - is this by design or should I file a bug report?

Specifically, '''''P'''anzer '''E'''insitzer'' used to give Panzer Einsitzer but now gives Panzer Einsitzer.

We make quite a lot of use of this combination on aircraft pages... --Rlandmann 07:41, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is odd, it seems to work sometimes and not for others. If we actually use the Wikitext you wrote (not just forcing bold and italics), see: '''''P'''anzer '''E'''insitzer'' == Panzer Einsitzer. Introduce a space, ie '' '''P'''anzer '''E'''insitzer'' == Panzer Einsitzer

The problem is that the parser won't be able to differentiate ''''' as being <b><i> or <i><b>. The space should force this to happen. Dysprosia 08:40, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

OK thanks, but text formatted without the space in Casa C-101 was working fine yesterday, but not today... Will the parser ignore the extra space when using the method above? --Rlandmann 12:42, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
HTML ignores extra whitespace, so having that extra space will have no difference in rendering. You can see this above. Dysprosia 22:36, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Is this change permanent or is it going to be "fixed"? I'm still not clear whether it is a bug or not. A lot of ship articles now have broken formatting, such as HMS Queen Elizabeth (1913). Geoff/Gsl 05:27, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
While there's a perfectly good work-around, this is affecting quite a few existing pages. I've just filed a bug report on it --Rlandmann 06:01, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Appears to be fixed. Yay! Geoff/Gsl 01:04, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Disambiguating pages

I want to properly disambiguate Hey Jude, which is both a compilation album and song, the song being far more widely known than the compilation album, which was United States-only. What would be the "correct" way to fix this? I'm looking into rewriting the article to featured standard, so I'm curious. Thanks in advance for help rendered. Johnleemk | Talk 13:14, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I would say keep the song at Hey Jude, and the album goes to Hey Jude (album), with a note at the top of Hey Jude saying This article is about the song; for the album of the same name, see Hey Jude (album).. Just my $.02. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 13:17, 2004 Aug 12 (UTC)
Seconded. Anárion 13:18, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Another possibility is to include both in the same article, especially if the album article isn't likely to be more than a paragraph or two. Each could have its own section. The article could start with a sentence that provides internal links to each section — something like "Hey Jude is a [[#The song|classic Beatles song]] and [[#The album|a Beatles compilation album]]". (I'm not suggesting this artlessly brief sentence, just its format.) Just a thought. — Jeff Q 15:21, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I had added a note about the album to the bottom a while ago, which was removed by a recent editor. I readded it, but if you wish to expand it to the point that it needs its own page, that would be excellent as well. —siroχo 15:41, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)
The album is nothing special - stick it all one article with the song taking precedence. Pcb21| Pete 16:52, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I agree. The sentence about the album is not worth of a separate article, at least not yet. anthony (see warning) 20:24, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Search sometimes identifies target text within an article only minutes after it has been written. On other occasions, it fails to identify it for many weeks. Why is that?
Bobblewik 20:24, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think the "many weeks" scenario is for the occasions when we're forced to fall back on google and yahoo for a search solution (something that hasn't been necessary for some months). As they're based on crawlers, updates must wait until the are crawled, which can take some time. Right now we use mediawiki's own mysql-based search function, so changes should be manifest immediately. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:17, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for that explanation. Let me give you a specific example. I edited Banshee light fighter on 27 June 2004. I changed 'km/sec' to 'km/s'. Yet when I search for 'km/sec', it still appears as a hit. What is happening there?
Bobblewik 09:47, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
For your specific example, what I'm seeing is that the '/' character is removed from the search string, which becomes;
  • The query is "km sec"
and the Banshee light fighter article eventually shows up in the result list because it contains the letters 'km', as highlighted in red on the following line. Other articles show up because they just contain the word 'sec'. -- Solipsist 10:16, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. Yes, I note that the '/' character is removed, as you say. That is a little frustrating. If I run the query without quotes as in km/sec, it tells me The query is "km sec". I get 67 hits which includes the Banshee article. I believe that it is trying to give me all articles which contain the string 'km' AND the string 'sec'.
If I use double quotes as in "km/sec", tells me The query is ""km sec"". I get 1 hit which is the Banshee article. I believe that it is trying to give me all articles which contain the string 'km' followed within one character by the string 'sec'.
The Banshee article has not contained the string 'sec' for over 6 weeks. So it should not be a result in either of those two queries. It looks to me like a false positive.
Bobblewik 10:56, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I now see that a search for "km/sec" gives zero hits and a search for km/sec gives 92 hits. So something has changed in the last 24 hours. Let me give the example of Eden, Cumbria. The words 'eden cumbria north west' have been in the text since 24 June 2004. If I search for those words, it tells me The query is "eden cumbria north west". I get 15 results but not Eden, Cumbria. It is not finding the page, yet it has been a valid result for over 7 weeks.
Bobblewik 09:57, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Another example:
A search for "600 mps" tells me that The query is ""600 mps"" and the page text match is in Jungle Carbine. But it is not true. That string has not existed on the page since 27 June.
Bobblewik 10:05, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Another false result since 27 June is "745 mps" leading to No. 4 Mk1.
Bobblewik 14:52, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Vandals

If an anon user is vandalising talk pages persistently, how long should he/she be banned? What if they're blanking/vandalising articles? etc... — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 20:38, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

First, you need to check whether the anon is a shared proxy (from someone like AOL). There's not much point blocking such IPs for more than an hour or two (or a day or two, max) as a determined miscreant can just log off and then on, and they'll get a new IP. At this point your block will only inconvenience some innocent third-party. We have a few of such persistent anonyvandals (no names, no pack drill) and there's a limited amount we can do about them. If an IP appears to be fixed (or the proxy-user is determined), then make sure you've warned the person that what they're doing is inappropriate (after all, anything goes in some other online places), and warn them that if they don't quit then they'll be blocked. After that, if they persist, a 12 or 24 hr block seems appropriate. If the come back, unreformed, the same again. Some people advocate a progressive doubling. Remember that the point of the block is to get them to quit vandalising, not to permanently ban them from wikipedia. There's really very few anonyvandals who have the patience to stick with it in the face of implacable reversion and a measured, firm blocking scheme. Oh, and remember that anything you write on an anon's talk page can be read by some innocent later (or, it seems, randomly right now), so try to sound, well, fatherly :) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:59, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 04:17, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
My procedure is as follows: The first test or vandalism edit prompts a {{test}}~~~~ on the user's talk page. Subsequent questionable edits more than 5 minutes after I've left the previous message (making sure they have a chance to read what I've said) get {{test2}}, {{test3}}, {{test4}}. After that, one more bad edit results in a 24 hour block, noted on the user talk page. If they return and continue to vandalize, they get one more warning and another 24 hour block. After that the blocks get progressively longer. Note that this is extremely seldom necessary; most people stop after the first or second warning, and almost everyone goes away after the first block. In my opinion, we should standardize this among admins so that we stop working at cross-purposes. moink 16:58, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hurricane Charley - part 2

Just in case there's people who watch the pump but not Wikipedia:Announcements

Hurricane Charley is expected to make landfall near Tampa, Florida on August 13. Wikimedia's hosting center is prepared for the storm, but downtime is possible. For offsite updates on Wikipedia's status, see the Wikipedia Status page at OpenFacts.

That's a big "Wikipedia might go down tomorrow" in case you missed the point. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:11, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The colo is pretty confident they can maintain service. Jimbo's house is in a more tenuous situation. -- Tim Starling 07:49, Aug 13, 2004 (UTC)
Isn't Wikipedia great. I thought I had recollections of another Hurricane Charley (The remainder of the 1986 one managed to carry on over to Ireland). How confusing to keep naming them the same name! zoney ███ talk 11:49, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
They stop using a name once a storm reaches a certain degree of notability. The previous Charleys haven't, but this one might. -- Cyrius|✎ 13:55, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

incorrect category name

I have just noticed that Category:Women's basketball player has not been pluralised. And that it should really be moved as a sub-category of basketball players with the all players recategorised into men and women or all the female players moved into Category:Basketball players?? as it does not make sense at the moment. Are there any Basketball fans who know how to and would like to correct the error???Scraggy4 23:29, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I know how, and I can do it. However, it's better to teach someone to fish than to give them a fish. So here's what you do:
  1. Open the category.
  2. Edit each of the articles, so that they are categorized into the new category.
  3. If it doesn't exist, create the new category so that it looks just like the old category.
  4. Once it is empty, mark the old category with {{cfd}} so that an admin will know it is ready to be deleted.
- UtherSRG 23:36, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanx Uther, I didn't really want to do it myself as I am currently working on many other things, I only noticed this by chance. I was hoping that somebody who had made some input into the Basketball articles would do it, but many thanks for showing the procedure, now I will know what to do if I need to do it. C'mon Basketball fans there must be one of out there with a few minutes on your hands.Scraggy4 23:50, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Also, you can list it on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion and then move a handful of articles as you have time. Others on that page might be willing to move some as well, and pretty soon, it'll all be done. --ssd 03:59, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is a nice short article that I am trying to make better known, so I am trying to link it somewhere logical. I can't figure out what Chinese cuisine to link Sweet heart cake to. The article says Hong Kong. Why isn't this Hong Kong cuisine in the infobox for Chinese cuisine Ancheta Wis 00:13, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

that would be cantonese cuisine, I believe. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:25, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Observation

Does anyone else find it ironic that WP:VIP redirects to "Vandalism in progress"? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 00:56, 2004 Aug 13 (UTC)

No. Your point?Graham 04:01, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think he means like VIP is 'Very important person' therefore labelling vandals as VIP's. I do find it somewhat ironic. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 04:18, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Isn't that the point of vandalism (both online and IRL), to feel important? I am of the opinion that they should be ignored. Is anybody familiar w behavioural psychology? In it there is a method of conditioning called "extinction" in which you cause certain types of attention seeking behaviours (of which this would be one) to disappear, by ignoring them. IMO its best not to talk much about, or fuss over vandals. That?s what they want. Correct the mischief and move on, I say. Getting involved in dramas with them provides them the very importance and amusement that they crave. Sam [Spade] 04:33, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Handling double copyvio Q

Luc_Fierens/Temp is also a cut and paste from [10], so what now? Delete it? /temp/temp? Niteowlneils 03:45, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

When I've seen that sort of thing, I've just speedy deleted it. It doesn't make sense to create an ever-deepening set of /Temps when some copy/pasting slacker just won't get the point. -- Cyrius|✎ 06:14, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Watchlist times failing

My watchlist is only showing the last 12 hours of changes. When I click on 3 days or 7 days, it still shows the last 12 hours. Does anyone know what's going on?

Acegikmo1 05:26, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, that kicks in when you've got more than a certain number of pages on your watchlist to reduce database load. -- Cyrius|✎ 06:15, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This was reported as a bug at sourceforge nearly 24 hours ago. It has become impossible to change the default, which is 12 hours or 3 days depending on whether you are watching more or less than 1000 pages. Angela. 06:29, Aug 13, 2004 (UTC)
Wow...1000 pages. I only have 148. BTW, how come a little padlock shows up after the link to SF? Is it because it's a secure connection? How does wikipedia know? — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 16:51, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it's a secure connection. The addresses for secured Web sites all begin with "https://" instead of "http://". - jredmond 16:56, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I gotcha. "http://www.inquotes.com" [11] "https://www.securequotes.com" [12] Wow, you learn something new every day. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 17:29, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hey, that's why we hang around here, right? In any case, Uniform Resource Identifier has a more complete explanation. - jredmond 17:33, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Watchlists should now be working normally again thanks to Tim Starling. Angela. 16:02, Aug 14, 2004 (UTC)

Hi, could you guys and gals generally start adding more interwiki links outside the main namespace, such as in Image: namespaces when you copy images to other wikipedias and to Category:. Thanks. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 11:47, 2004 Aug 13 (UTC)

May I second that request with the request not to forget the interwiki links in both direction for normal articles either. Im am slowly working through the list created by User:Topbanana of missing or wrong interwikis between de-fr-en - which would be much shorter if everyone who adds a link to the english article on any international wikipedia would also add the backlink on en:. andy 12:03, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Wow man, are you doing that manually, It would be much quicker to run an Interwiki bot on the whole thing, I'll be doing that soon on en. to update all articles that dont link to the respective article on is., see Interwiki bot/Getting started for a tutorial on how to run one. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 16:12, 2004 Aug 13 (UTC)
I am doing them manually because there are quite a lot of them which are misleading, thus a fully automatic robot would just make it worse. If it were simple slavish ones like those for the year numbers I would leave them for a robot of course. andy 18:08, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You can have the robot ask you for each one, anyway, some people even get the years wrong. I had that conflict one time i ran it. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 18:54, 2004 Aug 13 (UTC)
Yes, but not in templates: such a link appears in the edge of the page that includes the template, giving the impression that the link is to a version in the other language of the referring page instead of the template.--Patrick 13:45, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oliver Hardy

If you look for the page of Oliver Hardy, you are redirected to the page of Laurel and Hardy. But doesn't Oliver Hardy deserve a page of his own, just like Stan Laurel? Aecis 15:25, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Of course they both deserve their own articles. We just need someone to write them. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:46, Aug 13, 2004 (UTC)
But is there no way to make the redirection undone? Aecis 15:52, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There is indeed. Click Oliver Hardy. When you end up at Laurel and Hardy, you will see a "Redirected from Oliver Hardy" link just below the title. Click that link, then click "Edit this page" to undo the redirect. Pcb21| Pete 16:03, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Won't work now, though, 'cause I've already beaten you to the punch. :) You can also add "&redirect=no" to the end of the URL to skip redirection. - jredmond 16:07, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Just MHO, but I think we should leave the redirect in until the article is actually written. Right now it just ends up at a blank page. Redirecting to Laurel and Hardy is more useful than just going to a blank page. When the article is written, there will be no redirect. — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:20, Aug 13, 2004 (UTC)
Now that I look further into it, Stan Laurel redirects to Laurel and Hardy, so I've reverted Oliver Hardy back to the redirect for consistency's sake. Arthur Stanley Jefferson (Laurel's real name, and the subject of the link above) has some biographical info but raises some copyvio flags for me. (I'm looking into that now.) - jredmond 16:38, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Oops, I just undid that redirect and put a crappy stub - thinking it was also for consistencies sake! Now we have two articles to write :) Pcb21| Pete 16:40, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
D'oh! I think we can safely redirect Stan Laurel to Arthur Stanley Jefferson, though, as long as the destination article mentions that the former is a stage name. - jredmond 16:50, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Which is the case :) ("Arthur Stanley Jefferson (1890-1965) is better known as comedian Stan Laurel. In this article, Arthur is used to refer to the person, while Stan Laurel refers to the actor and producer.") Aecis 17:09, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I dimly recollect that the (possibly de facto) policy on this is that the article would be at the most common name (i.e. Stan Laurel but that the opening line would be as above. Pcb21| Pete 17:16, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
An admin'll have to handle the move, then. I don't have such powers. - jredmond 17:30, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hmm, strange - I thought I had seen your name around quite a bit. How long have you been here? I've moved the page. Pcb21| Pete 22:50, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Editing special text

When you click on "edit this page", you get a message which says:

If you would just like to test or practice editing, please do that in the sandbox. You are encouraged to create, expand, and improve upon articles, however, bad edits to articles are watched for and will be quickly removed.

There are a couple of linguistic errors in this:

  • "practice" is a noun, not a verb. It should say "practise".
  • There should be a semicolon or a period after "improve upon articles", rather than a comma.

However, I don't know how to change this text. Does it need to be done by a developer, or is there a template somewhere?

Thanks, ,,,Trainspotter,,, 17:31, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree on the comma/semicolon bit, but "practice" is the US spelling for both the noun and verb forms. (uh-oh, can of worms.) I'm almost positive an admin will have to alter that text. - jredmond 17:35, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I changed the , to a ; - the relevant text is at Mediawiki:Copyrightwarning should a change to "practise" needs to be put into practice. That page is protected but I don't think we can afford to unprotect it - the copyright information must remain invariant. Pcb21| Pete 17:47, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Anyone else flummoxed by the combination of "practise" (UK-ish for practice) and "period" (US-ish for full stop)? Or am I missing something? –Hajor 22:30, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I am British. I sometimes write in US English here if I think it will be more intelligible to the majority of users, hence "period". However, I had no idea that the spelling of the verb as "practice" is correct in US English. I am accustomed to seeing it in the UK as a plain mistake, in contexts where there is no suggestion that the author is using American English -- e.g. a quick Google search has found the word "practicing" on this page from the BBC/British Council teaching English :-) ,,,Trainspotter,,, 12:26, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Two pages slightly different names Same topic

Hi I found two pages on the same topic but with slightly different names. I don't have much time to go through both as they are quite long.

They are: Henry Bartle Frere and Henry Bartle Edward Frere.

Is there some place where these duplications are reported? --Jcw69 18:17, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, at Wikipedia:Duplicate articles. Check the "Community portal" link on the left for a list of all these helpful pages. :) --Golbez 18:20, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've redirected the second one (which was created later; had been edited less, and had fewer links pointing to it) to the first, and dabbed the links. Noisy 02:44, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the news

I have to compliment the people behind the "In the news..." section on the front page, I've learned a lot of things there before I heard them on the mass media, and some things I haven't. In particular, the plan to move the South Korean capital from Seoul, and the resignation of Jim McGreevy, all appeared there before I noticed them on mainstream news sites. Thanks for keeping Wikipedians and the world at large informed! :) --Golbez 18:23, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I heard it on the Wiki IRC. Anyhow, yes, the In the news section is really nice (for example I didn't hear anywhere about the s. Korean capital) — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 20:58, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I generally think "hmmm, that's interesting", and manage to find the story on BBC news or whatever, albeit buried where I may not have seen it. It's handy to have the different view of importance - but I would suggest that Wikipedia doesn't always get it right. It is often quite US-centric also. I don't think anyone from a European country would get away with adding a personal-life scandal involving one of their politicians to the "in the news" section. I believe the EU commissioners appointment didn't make the main page! I've edited it in the past, but the box is cumbersome to access and I'm busy enough without keeping an eagle eye on it. zoney ███ talk 21:03, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Anyone up for a quick photoshop job?

File:Airman Campbell.GIF

If anyone can get rid of the caption on this military photo of Ben Nighthorse Campbell, I'd be forever grateful. Neutrality 21:27, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Done. -- Grunt (talk) 22:05, 2004 Aug 13 (UTC)

Moving categories?

Just wanted to check if moving categories works just like moving articles, and is everything updated automatically, or do I have to edit and re-save every article to get everything looking and acting right? I didn't see anything to address this at Wikipedia:Categorization. Niteowlneils 01:49, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think the only thing that you will get by moving a category is to move the text associated with it, if there is any. (I.E. a description or any super-category memberships.) All the individual articles that are included in a category will have to be edited one-by-one. Think very carefully before starting down this path, and read as many Talk pages as you can find where this move might have been discussed before. Noisy 02:03, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick answer. It's good to know, but it turns out for the future, as I later realized it currently has no articles linked to it, and I believe could only ever have three articles, and the three are well-enough crosslinked I see no point in having a cat for it. If anyone's curious, it's [[Category:Bytopia (plane)]], and the reason I was thinking it needed to be moved is that Bytopia (plane) has been moved to Bytopia. Maybe I'll leave a note on the Talk page, or for the creator. Niteowlneils 02:37, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wiki Code for non wiki purposes

I am working on creating a page for the alumni of my alma matte, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. I am thinking of a page for users/alum to note what they are doing in life and how to find them. The user pages of Wiki are an ideal way to do this however, there are 2 things which I would like to change: the fact that everyone can edit a user's page (like any other page) and the visibility to the rest of the Wiki, which I would consider clutter for non-active users. I would like to consider hosting my own version, separate from the Wiki, using some of this extremely well written code. Is there any info which might get me started on getting a grasp on this situation? Cavebear42 02:56, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Wikipedia uses MediaWiki but there are lot of Wiki type software. See the previous links and How to start a Wiki over at WikiBooks. Mintguy (T)

Silicon Valley Meetup

I've set up a Silicon Valley Wikipedia:Meetup for next Thursday. Hope to see you all there! Peter Hendrickson 05:38, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Errors in other Enyclopaedias

I thought there was a page which listed factual errors in other encyclopaedias, but I can't find it. Anyone know if this exists or is it a figment of my imagination?Mintguy (T)

There's Making fun of Britannica over on meta. Was that it? - 10:09, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

A plea for civility in VfD

Within VfD, it is almost customary to conduct discussions as if they were being done by a committee in executive session, behind closed doors, in the absence of the people who developed the article. In reality, not only is VfD public, but the VfD notice has invited the authors of the article to attend. Many kinds of joking, disrespectual remarks are made as a kind of verbal shorthand which communicates the essence of the argument to other VfD regulars. Many VfD issues are recurrent and provoke an irritable curtness among those who have discussed a dozen vanity pages in the last month. If the article creators are not Wikipedia-junkies, it may take them a day or two to discover the VfD notice and make their way to the discussion. Having already gotten a slapped from the VfD notice itself, what they then find in VfD is likely to be experienced as salt in the wounds.

And that's when the discussion is polite.

Plenty of VfD pages are created by people who are by no means newbies and have an agenda and probably deserve a little antagonism.

But innocent newcomers are apt to interpret the VfD atmosphere as much more hostile and disrespectful than it really is. A number of VfD discussions which I interpret as "look how careful and punctilious we are about due diligence" are being interpreted by others as "This is getting blown way out of proportion. Why do you hate me so much?"

Nothing new here, but think the temperature's rising a bit on VfD and I think it would beneficial if participants tried to use a more formal and civil tone, particularly when listing articles. I think this is a case where a little bit of charitable hypocrisy might be beneficial.

I am eternally grateful to User:Angela when, as a newbie, I mentioned my favorite bed-and-breakfast in the article on Lancaster, Wisconsin and she moved it to the Talk page with a remark, phrased as a (rhetorical) question: "I moved this from the article because I don't think having lists of accommodation in places is a good idea. What do other people think?" So much nicer than if she had phrased it as say, "Accommodicdef nonnotable vanity doubleplusungood autorevert per Wikipolicy, in other words delete! delete! delete! with extreme prejudice and never darken our doors with commercial plugs again, O vile Wikispammer from the pestiferous pits of Hades!" Don't you think? (Rhetorical question). [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 13:02, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I for one admit to having resolved never to visit VfD unless it concerns me, I am sorry to say. Combined with the awkwardness of the big long page anyways, it's quite an unpleasant experience. Also, it's kind of like looking at Wikipedia's "dark side", all the pure rubbish that one sees. I now go about, blissfully unaware of really absurb nasty articles. I believe seeing such tripe has upset a number of Wikipedians. I don't need Wikistress from VfD. So I avoid it. I'm not paid to deal with such unpleasantness. There you go. How un-wikipedian I guess. zoney ███ talk 20:45, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I do frequent VfD (but certainly don't consider it un-wikipedian of those who chose not to), and agree with Dpbsmith that it does violate Don't bite the newcomers, Wikiquette, and Wikipedia:Civility too often. VfD, as a mechanism, is a part of one of Wikipedia's greatest strengths, keeping only encyclopedic and notable content. However, VfD as currently practiced is, um, well, lets just say, not always our proudest moment.
This might be a good venue for me to mention one of my pet peeves with VfD, which is somewhat related: I'd like us to find a word or phrase to replace "vanity page". "Vanity" as it's currently defined in the VfD context is much different than the definition to the outside world, where it also has additionally negative connotations. Of all the standard/suggested phrases to say why a page is not encyclopedic, it seems to be the one that is most likely to make contributors feel very bitten. To them, they have just been accused of having a negative personality trait. Simply "not notable" probably would probably include most, if not all cases, but surely we can come up with something less likely to make people bristle, if we really feel these particular pages need a specific word/phrase. Niteowlneils 22:03, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Your point about the word vanity is a very good one and is well worth considering. I interpret it as shorthand for "Wikipedia is not a vanity press," which means a "publishing" house which publishes anything any author chooses to write at the author's expense. But even the phrase "vanity press" isn't terribly well-known. I don't think "not notable" quite does it, though. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 12:34, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I considered "promotional", which led me to "hype"--according to m-w.com, "PUBLICITY; especially: promotional publicity of an extravagant or contrived kind"--just the point we're trying to make, and even faster to type than "vanity". :) Still some negative connotations, but not nearly so personal. Niteowlneils 18:48, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps part of a solution would be to make a few templates like template:vfd-vanity to use in vfd-nominations, which we could then take the time to carefully formulate to make them polite and easily understandable to newcomers. Thue | talk 09:47, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I like the idea. I just would want to try to get a feel for how many people would use them before spending a lot of time on them. On the otherhand, the number doesn't have to be two large--if even 3 or 4 of the most prolific VfDers committed to using them I think it would be worth it. Niteowlneils 02:00, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Isn't it funny how the people who attack VfD are the ones who always insist "I never go there"? It reminds me of those people who always attack television and claim they don't own one, yet know everything about every show being shown. RickK 05:08, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)

Regardless, I think Dpbsmith's criticism is very valid (He does read VFD, and so do I). Even if VFD is somewhat fair, it can be (or be percieved as) very hostile by newcomers. Thue | talk 09:47, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm personally quite active there, and I completely concur with the complaint. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 17:19, 2004 Aug 15 (UTC)
Likewise. Andrewa 07:29, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

As a start, I've added a sentence to Template:VfD header about biting newcomers, civility, and wikiquette, as per some good points made here —siroχo 13:07, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)

Nice work. Niteowlneils 02:00, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm active on VFD, and I'm generally civil, I believe, but frankly it gets tedious looking at a lot of obviously inappropriate submissions. I do indeed want to dismiss them with a single word. If someone wants to give me a {{vanity}} template, a {{non-notable}} template, etc. I'll gladly put curly brackets around these words to get someone's lengthier, more polite wording, but I really don't feel bad about telling someone (for example) that their former elementary school or current hacker clan is not notable enough to belong in an encyclopedia. -- Jmabel

Coloring columns

Could anyone help us how to colour the columns in a table? (Coloring rows would be definitely easier...) Is it possible at all? - The question arose at Talk:List_of_Germanic_and_Latinate_equivalents.

Thanks,

Adam78 13:50, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • I tried ... and failed. Sorry. I will keep trying. Noisy 22:26, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • The only way I know of is to use the colgroup and col elements, which are currently unsupported in Wikipedia. Best bet is probably to color each table cell in that column. -- Wapcaplet 04:26, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

High-schools?

I know that this may seem silly to most, but a local high-school of mine has a number of "famous" alumni.

Would it be wrong of me to add a page for their school? The school has been around for over a hundred years and has a very long history (of course). Plus, many current students and past alumni are very proud of their school - I think they would benefit from a wiki page.

  • It wouldn't be wrong. The absolute worst that would happen is that the article might get deleted, but even that is very unlikely as there are a number of people who believe that any article about any high school should be kept. Based on the questions you're asking I'm confident your article will be fine. You understand, of course, that it may get "edited mercilessly?" [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 23:26, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What should I do? (I can get a detailed history of the school, I hope, so creating a lengthy article could work)

  • Do get the detailed history. But do boil it down into something interesting. Don't just dump it in verbatim. And do cite where you got it from. And don't copy big chunks of it, that could raise copyright issues. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 23:26, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Also, should I add the city name afterward?

For example: should Walnut Hills High School, which could refer to any school with that name in the entire universe become Walnut Hills High School?

  • Which regard to organization, formatting, and title: I'm not aware of any formatting or style guide for articles about schools, so just be bold and go ahead. I'd guess the title should be Walnut Hills High School initially, but it's easy enough to disambiguate later if it becomes necessary. But with all these things, don't worry. Editing these sorts of details is one of the ways in which Wikipedia functions quite well. Don't obsess with formatting and wording and structure or let it get in the way of putting your article together, just be bold and bull ahead as best you can. Do try to write an article that is at least slightly interesting to an utter stranger, and that answers the question "why does this school have an encyclopedia article about it." And do write one that will be pleasing to alums; just seeing their school listed isn't going to mean all that much to them. All my comments are just my $0.02, of course. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 23:26, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There are already a few people who have articles which are alumni (Charles Manson, Jerry Rubin, Theda Bara....)

  • Do include a list of notable alumni. All three of the names you mention are ones I certainly recognize and I believe their mention should be plenty to justify an article about your school. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 23:26, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Likely there are more, they like to boast their alumni. --JoeHenzi

Articles on J. Random High School are generally frowned upon, but where a school has some notable characteristic it is possible to make a worthwhile article out of it. Look at the "blue" links in List of schools in the United States for some examples - both good and bad. I think an unusual number of famous alumni sounds like a good basis (you might have to argue it out on VFD, though). I would go with the simple Walnut Hills High School until another school of that name that deserves an article is found, then disambiguate if necessary. --rbrwrˆ 20:33, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the input. There is a rich history and Alumni world-wide. It isn't just another school. It's a college prep school and very unique amongst other high-schools in the USA. Another school of note is School of Creative and Performing Arts, also here in Cincinnati which has plenty of famous alumni. --JoeHenzi (BTW, how are you adding the date? is there a tag for that?) UTC/GMT is 21:31 on Saturday, August 14, 2004
~~~=name, ~~~~=name and date/time stamp. Niteowlneils 22:07, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I wouldn't worry about it even if it was just another school, what annoys people is when someone writes a useless article on an unremarkable school (or anything else), thus cluttering up Wikipedia with stub articles. Not being a paper encyclopedia, Wikipedia has effectively infinte space for articles on non-notable places so you might as well go ahead. As for the adding a date unless I've misunderstood what you are referring to you just need to write four tildes like this ~~~~ at the end of your posts. Three just signs your name and five will insert a timestamp only. Four tildes is always useful on article talk pages and pages like this one. Hope this helps. — Trilobite (Talk) 22:12, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Sorry Niteowlneils i didn't notice that you'd already responded to the datestamp query. Wasn't trying to imply there was anything wrong with your explanation or anything! — Trilobite (Talk) 22:18, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Eh, don't worry about it. I've always tried to not take life (or myself) too seriously, and each decade it gets easier. Plus being on Wikipedia has really re-inforced that, along with not taking things personally, and realizing that even tho' most people are operating with strictly good intentions, sometimes shtuff happens. Besides, I didn't know about the 5-tilde feature, so I learned something I wouldn't have if you had noticed. :) Niteowlneils 22:37, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Consider that this might belong more relevantly in an article about the town or city than about the high school (see, for example, Freeport, New York#Famous Freeporters. It's of more general interest that people are from a given town than that they went to a particular high school (unless, of course, the high school is notable for other reasons: say, an architecturally unique building, frequent winner of national competitions, etc.) -- Jmabel 06:24, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

Sig Escalation

Over the past month or so I've noticed a number of users playing increasingly clever tricks with their signatures (you know who you are...) From what I can see, there is quite a history of customised signatures on Wikipedia, but is this starting to get out of hand?

Signature Escalation; a harmless bit of fun, or the end of civilisation as we know it. -- [[User:Solipsist| File:SolipsistSig.png   ]] 20:55, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

So far I haven't seen anything that causes me much concern. Where I would draw the line is if they start getting so big they slow page loading noticably, are unduly distracting (EG red and blinking), or require a plug-in (so help me, if anyone EVER puts a Flash animation in their sig...). Niteowlneils 22:20, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think images are on the wrong side of the line, personally. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:36, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Probably. They also seem impractical, as I haven't found a way to make them link somewhere (the question below caused me to try a couple ways). Your comment made me finally do the research to see what your graphic is supposed to be (found it was the tip of a pencil)--at that size, on my system, anyway, it looked more like a Rorschach test. Niteowlneils 22:49, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Ain't Unicode grand? -- Cyrius|✎ 06:17, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I know how to link them where I want them. But I was yelled at as soon as I tried to put images in my sig... I can adapt my sigs nowadays, though, even if it's not a good solution to use templates. [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 02:23, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The only problem I have with excessive signatures is that it makes the wikitext a lot harder to read. If you're reading in the edit box, or reading the diff, seeing a load of stuff like

<sup>[[User:Angela|''Angela''</sup>]]<big>[[User_talk:Angela|&#9829;]]</big> ([http://en.wikipedia.org Website])

makes it very hard to tell what the person has actually written. An alternative would be to put your whole sig inside a template so you would just see [[User:Angela|{{User:Angela/sig}}]].
[[User:Angela|User:Angela/sig]] 15:03, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)

But wouldn't that limit you to just five (signed) comments per page? - 15:30, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
That's correct -- it's just what it does, sadly. I don't worry too much. [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 02:24, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Is it possible to use {{subst:User:Johnleemk/sig}} instead? Johnleemk | Talk 06:59, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Oh wait, the idea is to have a nicer-looking edit box. My mistake. Johnleemk | Talk 13:48, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have the following requests for people who want complex signatures:

  1. Please ensure that the result looks reasonable in a text browser, and in a graphical broswer with images disabled. For example, use sensible alt tags for images (see Wikipedia:Alternative text for images).
  2. Please ensure that the result does not take up a lot of space in a graphical browser. For example, keep it all on one line, and ensure that images are not significantly taller than text in the default font. (15 pixels would be fine. Solipsist's image at 18 pixels is just a little too large for my taste. Angela's and ScudLee's are much too big.) —AlanBarrett 16:44, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I only discovered this neat little personalisation recently. I am curious as to how well the obsure Unicode characters work. Do those browers/systems not able to present them just present a weird symbol? (cause that wouldn't worry me). zoney ███ talk 23:57, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Depends on the browser, but nothing bad should happen. For any character IE is not familiar with, it displays a square box outline. All the others, I believe (I know most do), display a question mark in that case. Niteowlneils 01:55, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's actually font dependent: the character that should be displayed is defined as the Unicode U+FFFD (�) REPLACEMENT CHARACTER. This is typically either a question mark or a box. It looks like this: �. However, MSIE is broken here (where isn't it?) and always does the question mark it seems. Anárion 09:10, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Nitpicking: IMHO Unicode U+FFFD is for byte sequences in the HTML which cannot be transcoded into Unicode at all, e.g. malformed UTF-8. -- Pjacobi 12:27, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You're right of course, but most platforms and fonts seem to use �. Although I remember some Unixen display U+0000 instead (NUL — often a diagonally written NUL), or display the first character in the font (which often is a question mark). I prefer the missing character glyph, although it would be nice if all fonts displayed it rather equally so it would be more recognizable. (A question mark is of course always wrong.) Anárion 14:58, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Under Mac OS X, a character that isn't available in any font is rendered as a box with a symbol inside to show you what Unicode character category it belongs to. Gdr 19:36, 2004 Aug 16 (UTC)

Is there any way to make an image link to somewhere besides its own image page? Thanks in advance, [[User:Supadawg|supadawg - talk - contribs]] 22:11, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No, 'fraid not. This is a good reason, however, to make image pages proper interesting wikipedia pages, not just infrastructural dumping grounds. Might I humbly (ahem) suggest Image:Wfm guggenheim exterior.jpg as an example. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:09, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Although, putting a redirect into the image page (as solipsist's sig does, above) kinda does what (I guess) you want. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:11, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

vote for olympic medal tables

There is currently a vote taking place at Talk:2004 Summer Olympics medal count as to the style to adopt for medal tables. Obviously many people have inputted on the games rtcls today so many styles have emerged. Please vote if this is of interest to you.Scraggy4 22:44, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

On reviewing that talk page, all concerned with it deserve a "best practice" barnstar, for:
  • doing work rather than volunteering others to do it
  • realising that consistency is more important than perfection
  • not making molehill differences in to mountains
  • just generally being nice, agreeable wikipedians
kudos. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:04, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Search/Go/Save Page buttons do not work

When I try to use the search, go and save page buttons on Wikipedia they do not usually work. I have no other problem with any other website. Delete this if you think it is irrelevant, but this problem makes it basically impossible to edit an article. - User:Icurite

What browser are you using, what version is it, and what operating system? — Trilobite (Talk) 06:52, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I am using IE 6.0 on Windows XP. User:Icurite

Much as I'd like to blame it on the evils of Internet Explorer there must be a lot of people with that set up out there. I'm no expert, and the only thing that springs to mind is that with Wikipedia being a bit overloaded and slow at times the buttons appear not to work when really all that's happening is it's taking a while. — Trilobite (Talk) 19:00, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's hard to believe that we would only hear about it now if it was a general XP/IE6 problem. Have you tried different skins? I suspect Trilobite may be correct, that it's actually just Wikislowness. Niteowlneils 01:51, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, thanks for the replies. I don't believe it's Wikislowness because as long as I wait nothing happens and the status bar doesn't change. It's almost like the button doesn't have any value. Eventually, though, it always manages to work. ;) User:Icurite

Non-English references in the English Wikipedia

I received a complaint that I used Dutch references in an article in the English Wikipedia. I used it because that is was all that I had. I also regularly add German and sometimes French references to the English Wikipedia when I do not have access to an English version. I try to replace them as soon as I can. Using non-Dutch references is very common in Dutch scholarly tradition. Is it allowed here? Thanks in advance. Andries 17:03, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If you have the choice the english sources are preferred here, as that'd be the one easiest accessible to most user here. However if there is no such source (e.g. if you write about a Dutch city and add the dutch website as your source) it is better than none, you just should add a short remark about the language - a "Dutch" in brackets is enough. Wikipedia:Cite sources does not mention anything about non-english sources, so there seems to be no official policy. andy 17:32, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
"Using non-Dutch references is very common in Dutch scholarly tradition." That's because there is hardly such a thing as a monolingual Netherlander; and I sometimes feel like there is hardly such a thing as a multilingual American or Brit. Clearly, given the number of monolingual English-speakers in our readership, English-language references are strongly to be preferred. On the other hand, I myself have probably cited about 500-1000 non-English web pages in the last year. When I place them the "external links" section of an article, I always note "in Catalan", "in Romanian", "in German" etc. I try to avoid citing them in passing in the body of the article, because explanatory language is hard to insert without breaking the flow, and a lot of people will be annoyed to click to something they can't read. If you have to do this, it's best to do something like (as discussed on IDESCAT's Catalan-language site [http://www.idescat.es/]) ==> (as discussed on IDESCAT's Catalan-language site [13]) instead of just [http://www.idescat.es/] ==> [14] -- Jmabel 06:37, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)
Agreely strongly with all that of that, but I just wanted to emphasise that it is standard scientific even in English practice to quote foreign language papers if that is the best reference on a particular point. Wikipedia is less specialist; but shouldn't be afraid to do the same where appropriate. Pcb21| Pete 07:59, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Use the best reference, whatever language it's in. English scholarly papers frequently cite papers written in languages other than English. As a courtesy to English-speaking-only readers, a short phrase describing the article in English wouldn't be out of line, and, of course, including similar references in English would be fine. There is a legitimate objection to articles in the English Wikipedia that are written entirely in languages other than English, but a complaint about a reference sounds inappropriate to me. The article in question gives three references, two in English. Without knowing the complaint I can't judge, but I'd be inclined to shrug it off as xenophobia. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 12:24, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Possible vandalism on id:

Anybody here know anyone or anything RE the Indonesian Wikipedia? This[15] really looks like vandalism--given the title I really wouldn't expect a date from 1980, but since I can't be sure, I don't want revert it. Niteowlneils 18:48, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Er, I shoulda checked it before posting this--there's nothing to revert to. Tho' I still think it's vandalism, and probably should be deleted. Niteowlneils 18:59, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Levels of Protection

Now I don't know if this idea has been proposed before, but I think a lot of vandalism could be slowed down a considerable bit if we implemented levels of protection. Here's how I would do it.

  • Level 1: Low level, just prevents anon from editing. Signing up fixes this.
  • Level 2: Low level, prevents anon and users less than 2 days old from editing (this time is subject to change).
  • Level 3: Medium Level, users must be over 7 days old before editing. (time stc)
  • Level 4: Medium Level, users must be over x days old and have x number of edits (I can't come up with great numbers for this).
  • Level 5: High Level, only mods ++ can edit.
  • Level 6: Sysops Only Edit. This is basically the current protection, where sysops can fix things discussed and voted upon on the talk page, or something to that effect.

This was just my idea, as most of the vandalism (such as on There page) is from a group of anon ip's in the same range. Forcing signups not only gets a name for the person, but also an email address, helping to find out who it is and prevent them in the future.

Feel free to edit the plan mercilessly, but keep the original intact so others can see where I was going ;) -- TIB 20:58, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)

Seems a much more sensible idea that the current "protect"/"no protect" situation (damned if you do, damned if you don't). zoney ███ talk 00:02, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Seems like a promising proposal (you are talking site-wide, not article by article, right?), altho' I'm not sure so many levels are needed. In addition to reducing the kiddiewiki that we've been receiving a lot lately, it would have prevented that attack we had recently from true "vandal bots" (I suppose someone could mass produce new usernames in one run, and do the attack in a second run a few days later, but that seems unlikely). I think just having something like 1, 2, and 6 would take care of 90% of the problem, and since most things are implemented if they just pass the 80/20 test, I think anything beyond that and you've reached the point of diminishing returns. Niteowlneils 02:17, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I like this idea, but it doesn't need so many levels. I think that normal (all edit), 1, 2, and 6 would be enough as Niteowlneils said. There are redundancies between 1 and 2 and perhaps only 2 is needed? —siroχo 06:33, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

I agree, we really only need none/1/2/6, or none/1/3/6, or either but without #1. -Sean Curtin 08:34, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
none/2/4/6 my vote, but any improvement over current situation welcome. Pjacobi 08:35, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I also don't think we don't need that many levels. One more thing we'd need is to have a page "move protection", i.e. articles which only an admin can move. This would apply especially to User and User talk (some vandals like to create havoc by move User:Whatever to User:<Insert insult here>, thus it could be default both User: and User:talk), as well as some high traffic articles in the Wikipedia namespace. andy 08:37, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I strongly agree with "move protection" - it is a significant security hole. I also agree that that number of levels of protection would not gain us much. However a single extra "anti-sockpuppet" layer might be useful. Though in the cases where it might be used, more hard-headed admins tend to block the offending user anyway. Pcb21| Pete 08:44, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

So how about (choosing less levels), and nicking a designation scheme from somewhere else :o) -

  • Green: No Protection
  • Yellow: Low protection - No anons. All anons need do is sign up to circumvent/edit.
  • Orange: Medium protection - No anons. Users must be over x days old and have y number of edits. (Choose X and Y either each time, or we have fixed numbers for those variables)
  • Red: Full Protection (current protect) - Sysops Only Edit. Sysops can fix things discussed and voted upon on the talk page, or something to that effect.

And I suggest that yes, it would be nice to have this on article-by-article basis! zoney ███ talk 11:47, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Will we have more "Orange" and "Red" alerts when we are close to elections? Pcb21| Pete 13:28, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes. Me for Admin. I'm down with the color scheme though, that's nice idea. Yes, I know I listed too many levels, but I was trying to give fairness. There are 5 levels of warnings for people 'testing', so I went off that concept. --TIB (talk) 19:16, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)
Note, signing on as a member does not require giving an email address as was stated above. Also, it isn't clear here what criteria would be used to set yellow or orange levels and for how long they would be set and so forth. Vandalbot attacks and random vandalism by anons wouldn't be slowed down much unless a very larger percentage of articles were protected at least to the yellow level. That would a major change of policy. But I can see implementing automatic protect to the yellow level for 24 hours on any article reverted from vandalism. Is that what is wanted, or something else? I can certainly see setting up VfD with two sections for each article, a vote section always at orange level and a discussion level always at green. I can see certain articles being voted on by consensus to be always at yellow or orange level (until voted by consensus to be changed to another level). Is that what is wanted? Jallan 19:32, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How about this:

Level 0: No protection
Level 1: No anonymous edits, and logged-in users must have existed for x days and have made y edits to edit. These variables would be set by the protecting sysop. If the sysop wants all logged-in users to be able to edit the page, they should set x and y to 0.
Level 2: No edits except by sysops.
  • There would be an option to allow/disallow page moves.

A similar system could be used for blocking IP addresses.

Level 0: Not blocked
Level 1: No anonymous users may edit from the IP address/range. User accounts that have existed for x days and have made y edits may edit. These variables would be set by the protecting sysop. If the sysop wants all logged-in users to be able to edit, they should set x and y to 0.
Level 2: No one without a "sysop" or "noipblock" flag would allowed to edit.
"Noipblock" flags would be exceptions to IP blocks that could be set by any sysop on any user account at the user's request. The flag would not prevent specific account blocks from working. Only stewards would be able to remove this, but it would truly be "no big deal" since flagged accounts could still be blocked.
  • There would be an option to enable/disable account creation.


—Guanaco 19:52, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The only problem with the three-level system you propose (in my view) is that at level 1 would allow disruptive and contentious users to edit protected pages provided that they've made enough edits over a long enough period. Two possible solutions to this are 1) A level between three and four that prevents "disruptive users" from editing the page. Defining disruptive would be difficult, of course. It could mean users who have been banned at least five times. It could mean users who have been ruled against by the arbitration committee three times. But you get idea. 2) A level between three and four that allows "trusted users" to edit the page, but no-one else. Again, the definition is difficult. It could simply been all users with >x edits whose trustworthiness in editing protected pages is not questioned by any sysops.
Of course, either of my proposed solutions could create problems. The former seems to be unfair to well-meaning users who get involved in disputes and comes too close to being a blacklist. The latter might create the appearance of elitism and/or cabalism. But I do see a problem in allowing ALL logged in users over a certain threshold to edit a page, especially considering that such users might be the very people causing pages to be protected.
Acegikmo1 20:25, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Deleting user subpages

There is a proposal at Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion#Deleting_user_subpages for a policy that requests to delete user subpages should go through RfC not VfD. It would be good to have some more input there before I actually write the proposal, only three people (myself included) have commented so far. Andrewa 03:08, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Are you including here delete requests of a user subpage, by the user who's subpage it is? Paul August 21:23, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

References

Do you have find that you cite the same reference work in plenty of different articles? E.g. if you write about tanks do you always need to add "Great tanks I have known" to the references list? If so, I have a new template for you.

Template:Book reference is set up to allow BibTeX-style book reference data. See e.g. Template:RefAudubonMarineMammals for example of how the base book reference template is used in practice. This allows us to write references quickly and in a standard way. Comments please to Template_talk:Book reference. Pcb21| Pete 13:24, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Convention for Lists of Office-Holders

I would like to get some consensus on the format of lists of incumbents.

I have been working on standardised format for Heads of State and Heads of Government. However my work is regularly being reverted to a previous, more cluttered, less detailed and inaccurate version.

A case in point is List of Presidents of Benin where clearly very few of the listed incumbents were actually 'president'.

My version, which is now located at User:JohnArmagh/Heads of State of Benin clarifies the office of the imcumbent and details the political party of the incumbent whilst uncluttering the format.

It appears though, that I am not allowed to use it. The reason behind this is that it is duplication (or, as it has been called, quote:stupid duplication) of the List of Presidents of Benin. However whilst the names of the incumbents are essentially the same, the latter includes a description that is specific to the post of President, whilst including non-presidential incumbents in the list.

So it currently appears that lists of Heads of State which include at least one President must be titled Presidents of Xxxx, which can only serve to render the information held in the Wikipedia as amateurish.

If this is an enshrined policy of Wikipedia then the phrase You are encouraged to create, expand, and improve upon articles on the edit page should be removed as it is clearly untrue.

--JohnArmagh 16:45, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There is no such policy (Presidents of Xxxx instead of Heads of State of Xxxx), AFAIK. It's just one user, probably. Personally, I would prefer your format, except for the explanation of the abbreviations at the top. Move that to the bottom, and I would be completely happy with it. Only User:Gzornenplatz knows what his objections to your format are; have you tried asking him, on his talk page or on Talk:List of Presidents of Benin? About the name: I prefer the (simpler) name "List of Presidents", but only if it is accurate. In this case, "List of Heads of State" would be my preference. Eugene van der Pijll 17:52, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)


Thanks for this Eugene - most welcome. I have discussed this on User:Gzornenplatz' talk-page, and his suggestion was to post it here for a consensus.
I am concerned that there is some kind of standardisation of the lists without making the detail at variance with the title.
There is no wikiwide standardisation. But it seems that the objection on User talk:Gzornenplatz' was about duplication: one article named "Heads of State", and one named "List of Presidents". That would be bad, and one of those should probably be made into a redirect. Of course, because of the lack of standardization, this kind of duplication will happen from time to time.
In this case, you could move the "List of Presidents" to "List of Heads of State". Or you could wait for a few more opinions, if you want.
I have been in two minds about the placing of the abbreviations at the foot of the list rather than the top. I can see that it detracts from the list of incumbents if it appears before it (especially if the listing is short), but then again if the abbreviations appear at the end of a long list of incumbents then it takes a lot of scrolling down to. I could put it on a separate page, but I don't really want the reader to have to go back-&-forth between pages. I think the remedy is to put a link above the list the abbreviations at the foot of the list - but I haven't tried it yet to see how well it works.
regards --JohnArmagh 18:09, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
With the title of the page, you promise a list of presidents; it would be best if the reader sees that list as soon as possible, preferrably on the first screen. Perhaps put the list of parties at the bottom, and add "See below" to the heading of the "Affiliations" column. A separate page would be really bad, although a separate article on political parties in Benin would be great. Eugene van der Pijll 18:50, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)


I do agree with you, and User:Siroxo has provided assistance at User:JohnArmagh/Heads of State of Benin in making the Affiliation heading into a link to the list at the bottom of the page, which I like.
I had moved the page List of Presidents of Benin to Heads of State of Benin but User:Gzornenplatz didn't like it and as a measure of his disgust, reverted the data to the previous list and renamed the Head of State of.... page back to President of...
--JohnArmagh 19:01, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Selected anniversaries

I edit at 0000-0200 hrs Indian Standard Time (+5:30 GMT). Each time I log in to the wikipedia home page, in the selected anniversaries, the previous day's anniversaries are perpetually shown. (I have no problem with cookies etc.) I request the people responsible for maintaining that section edit it a day in advance so that the server dishes out the correct anniversary, as midnight ticks over, for us editing at that hour. [[User:Nichalp|¶ nichalp | Talk]] 20:15, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

Naming conventions for programming languages

For those interested in such things, many of the programming language articles have recently been moved to nonstandard titles, and we are talking about this at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages). Stan 20:55, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

1911 Britannica : Old but interesting articles

I have a hard copy of the 1911 Britannica. There are some articles that are outdated, yet still very interesting. The "Calculating Machines" article for example is about the state of the art in computers in 1911. Theres very little useful information there to incorporate into Wikipedia, but it is still fascinating to glimpse what was happening in computers at the time.

Any thoughts on how this would incorporate, if at all, into Wikipedia, or perhaps a diffrent Wiki project? Stbalbach 21:43, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

My thoughts are that surely you shouldn't need to worry about whether or not to add such topics when there are extensive Wikipedia articles on entirely fictional universes. I mean, there's actually a Klingon Wikipedia! So obscure facts are, I assume, the least of people's worries. zoney ███ talk 22:19, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Art articles?

Please let me know if this is not the right place, thanks. :)

I remember reading somewhere on the site that Wikipedia has a few gaps in knowledge, and one of them was art. After looking through the site a little while, it does seem like fine art is a little neglected. I'd love to create articles in this subject area, since it is my career and all! But I'm still a little new, so I need to ask questions here first. Has this been discussed before?

I'd like to create separate articles for individual works of art. Not all of them, of course! Just major works that are important (in an art history sense) or well-known (in other words, ones whose articles will be longer than stubs). I'd also like to list as many works as possible on the artist's article, as well. However, I haven't seen many articles on individual artworks. Is this because we shouldn't do it, or only because not many people have an interest in doing it?

Thanks for reading! Miss Puffskein 22:09, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

"I haven't seen many articles on individual artworks. Is this because we shouldn't do it, or only because not many people have an interest in doing it?" ::It is absolutely the latter - art is a definite weak spot, and if you want to create articles on individual works, go right ahead. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them (you can ask on my talk page). Oh, and as for copyright issues, you might want to read up on the Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ. →Raul654 22:18, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)
I'm no expert, but I don't see a problem with that - we already have individual articles on famous novels (eg. Nineteen Eighty-Four) and pictorial art should be treated no different. If people may type it in the searchbox, you should create an article about it...--Fangz 22:25, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Page move collided with existing Talk page

Can an admin that knows how to fix this condition fix Epicurean paradox/Epicurian paradox? Obviously I need to learn how to do it myself, but I'm worried that if I leave it in this state while doing the research, something may be done to it that makes it harder to cleanup. Niteowlneils 22:51, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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