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Moved discussion

See the archive for older moved discussion links.

Here I am again with one of my great newbie ideas. This one concerns the short pages list, which I perceive is still down. I think there should be an option in the left-hand nav bar to add a page to the short pages list, interfacing to a little tiny program that edits said list. The list would be of a fixed length (the current 125 looks good), so that any time a new stub is listed, an old listing falls off the end of the list. -- Smack

Neutrosophy looks coppied. Do you think it is? LittleDan 16:21 31 May 2003 (UTC)

Yup, I put the opening sentence into google and found almost everything: Try this link for more http://arxiv.org/ftp/math/papers/0010/0010099.pdf Danny
BTW Florentin Smarandache is from the same IP-address and has some connection with the subject of Neutrosophy as well. I have no qualification to comment on the subject, but at the very least it could do with a bit of wikifying. It appears to have stood there without edits for quite a long time... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 09:52 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

For some strange reason I got an error message trying to move Ess-tsett to ß, even though the target page didn't exist, but ß clearly is a valid page name as I was able to paste content there manually. Could a sysop please do the move? Having the page at Ess-tsett is inconsistent the way we handle other Latin-1 characters (e.g. Ä, Å.) Mkweise 17:34 31 May 2003 (UTC)


There was a weird little bug in the rename code that wouldn't let you rename a page to a one-character title. (!) Fixed now, page renamed. --Brion 20:22 31 May 2003 (UTC)


Thanks, I figured it had to be something weird since I was able to create an article by that name, just not move. Mkweise 20:31 31 May 2003 (UTC)

I can't seem to move power supply to power supply unit, even though the destination never had anything but a redirect in it. Weird, huh? What I think should be done is for power supply unit and electronic power supply - which essentially cover the same subject - to be merged, and I think the most logical place for this article to reside is at power supply unit. Comments, anyone? Mkweise 20:31 31 May 2003 (UTC)

It's because the redirect had a page history (albeit a history of different redirects). Anyway, I deleted it, then made it a redirect again, but now it has no history, so you can move a page there if you like. Evercat 21:12 31 May 2003 (UTC)

What's the consensus on User talk:Viking/ban? Should it be undeleted? --Dante Alighieri 20:40 31 May 2003 (UTC)

User:Viking has morphed to User:Vikings so the debate on banning viking is moot. User:Kils , who is associated with the group has stated that they will not be vandalising any more pages, but will try a different tactic. Never the less User:Vikings needs to be monitored and I think the ban page should be undeleted so that there is a history that can be checked Theresa knott 22:44 31 May 2003 (UTC)
Done. --Brion 00:35 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Can anyone translate Roman Odzierzynski into english? Kingturtle 23:19 31 May 2003 (UTC)

Should Vulcanology just be a redirect to volcano? If so, change it. LittleDan

I don't think it should. I'm sure there are interesting things to say about vulcanology; if we leave the page, someone will probably flesh it out one day. Followup to Talk:Vulcanology. -- Merphant 02:31 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

An anonymous user is adding a lot of links from computing articles to his favourite computing website. Actually, I don't find this annoying yet, as they seem quite reasonable links. But I thought it worth mentioning, in case it gets out of hand. Here are the contributions. Evercat 02:44 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I've been writing quite a bit (too much, in fact) on Middle-earth recently, and frankly, I'm getting tired of writing "Elendil is a character from J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world Middle-earth" at the start of each and every page. Furthermore, many, many of the Middle-earth pages are quite old, and do not have this blurb. I think that the best way to resolve this is to - yes, I am a newbie and I am suggesting that we bring back the subpages.
To use an analogy from Middle-earth, the resurrected subpages would be like Lúthien redivivus - they would sit quietly in their assigned corner, rather than running loose in the wiki and doing all sorts of crazy things. I think that subpages are appropriate for fictional people and places. I have looked at many of the arguments against subpages, and found that they simply do not apply. It would, of course, be good to replace the slash character (and the concomitant subdirectory backend structure) with something else, such as the proposed "--" character.
; So feel free to grab this idea by the tail and bash me over the head with it if you feel that it is appropriate, because I am afraid that I am being a stereotypical newbie and failing to see the gaping maw of some mistake or other. Smack 07:04 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I think you'd be better off using standard disambiguation format, e.g. Luthien (Middle Earth). And don't call them subpages, use a euphemism like "pages from the Middle Earth category", because some editors are very hostile when they hear the S-word. :) -- Tim Starling 07:11 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, subpages, no matter which separator is used, are dead and gone, end of discussion. Everything has already been said on Wikipedia:Do not use subpages and people are tired of going through this again. The proper way to organize these pages is to create longer articles:

--Eloquence 07:16 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

See what I mean, Smack? You can make subpages, just don't call them subpages :) I don't know if Eloquence looked at the pages in question, but they seem to me to be too long for merging. -- Tim Starling 07:42 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
With few exceptions, most of the articles in the Middle Earth section could be merged and redirected to longer articles. Exceptions would be stuff like Elvish language. Many of the Middle Earth articles are horrible stubs, e.g. Elrohir, Éomer. And adding a qualifier like "(Middle Earth)" will not help: Smack wants to do away with the introductions to save time. Sorry, but this is not how Wikipedia works.--Eloquence 07:53 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Sorry Eloquence, you're quite right, doing away with the intros is completely unacceptable. The articles I saw, which I thought were too long for merging, were Lúthien, Thingol and Beren. -- Tim Starling 08:31 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I don't really think they're too long, especially since the characters' fates are interwoven, so some present redundancy could be eliminated. A good overview article can well be 20,000 to 30,000 characters in length. See also the Wikipedia-l thread Limits to the non-paperiness of Wikipedia. --Eloquence 08:54 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I appreciate the nuisance factor of the leadins required to set context, which is why I prefer "In the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, ", which is succinct and sufficient. Giant omnibus articles do not serve the reader well, because if I'm reading along and am confused whether it's Glorfindel or Galadriel that's the bigshot queen, I don't want to wade through a massive Lives of the Elves to find them. What I do see in Tolkien articles is that enthusiasts have wanted to retell the entire story in each article, and those should be pruned down, so that, Rashomon-like, each character's article only describes what is directly relevant to that character. If there's not much to say about Elrohir and the article is short, fine, that means I as a reader am done with it more quickly and can get back to my original activity. Stan 13:08 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Please see the long thread on wikipedia-l referenced above for why this is a very, very bad idea. --Eloquence 13:15 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Indeed, I even contributed to that thread. Having experimented with both the "long form" and the "short form" articles, I've decided that shorter cross-linked articles serve the reader better. Consider HMS Ocean - nice long article, lots of content, but if the reader links to it from Royal Marines, it takes some work and reading of irrelevant material to find which of several ships was being referred to. That is unfriendly to the intended audience, and some day the Ocean article will be divided up according to the standard for ship articles. Stan 18:13 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
HMS Ocean is really a bad example. This is a bunch of articles thrown together simply because they are about ships with the same name. In a way, it's the expanded form of a disambiguation page. I agree that this should be divided. However, if there's not much to say about a ship, it may be more useful to have "XXX class ship" and then list and describe the ships of that class in the article. --Eloquence 18:19 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

A Photograph Source

I have attempted to recruit contributors or photographers several times before, but have all failed until now. I just met a Mississippian photographer on a digital graphics DelphiForum, and convinced him to let Wikipedia to use, and modify if necessary, his photos on plants. For an example, see his Naked Lily (Lycoris radiata, L. squamigera).

Where do I announce this exciting (well, for me, anyway) information, so other contributors interested in gardening and botany can use them freely too? --Menchi 07:37 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Excellent news! Wikipedia:Announcements would be a good place, and you may want to create a page like Wikipedia:Merman flower collection to describe the copyright status of the pictures, so that it can be easily linked to from the image pages. I checked out the first page of the thread, and while he endorses sharing, I don't really see a comment referring specifically to the use on Wikipedia, or distribution under a specific license. So please do your best to describe when and where he made that declaration. --Eloquence 09:10 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I'll make a page with his exact statements relevant to uses on Wikipedia. But another members on that forum has just gave us permission to use her photos as well, and I have not gotten the details on her conditions yet. After receiving them, I'll make a page. --Menchi 10:12 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Done. Wikipedia:Plant photo collection I. I'll add it to Wikipedia:Announcements now. --Menchi 15:37 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

A question (yet again!) on copyright. I've come across a site which would be a good source for pictures of all kinds but I can't decide if the pics are public domain. Any opinions, please?
Go to http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/~aminet/pix/vehic/ then click on HELP, then on SECTION 8 (Copyright Status and Disclaimer). Thanks Adrian Pingstone 09:03 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The collection copyright that Mueller claims does not concern us, since we do not intend to setup an AmiNet mirror. What does concern us, however, is the copyright status of the photos, which are described as "freely distributable". But that claim is without legal value if it is not made by the copyright holder, so you may want to contact umueller at aminet dot net and ask for the names and email addresses of the persons who created the photos you want to use. Just putting the stuff online and describing it as "freely distributable" would be fine with me, but Brion would probably disagree again .. --Eloquence 09:14 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Image Boilerplate

A few weeks ago, somebody discovered a set of HTML code that makes aligning works in most versions of most browser. But I can't find it. --Menchi 12:52 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You mean a floating frame? that's <div style="float:right;">{image}</div>. To make it work in all browsers, you can make an aligned table by doing <table align=right><tr><td>{image}</table> LittleDan 18:07 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Yes, thanks. --Menchi 04:48 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

(No idea if I'm doing this right... oh well.....) I created a page for 'America's Best Comics', but due to an irritating Shift key, it's come up as America's best Comics... is it possible to change this at all..? --ntnon 15:00 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yep - from the article page in question, you should see a link to "Move this page" (it'll be one of the links down the side of the page and/or at the bottom). Click on that, follow the instructions, and there you go. More details are at Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page --Camembert


Next Query: Pictures. I've just uploaded two, 0201peoplelikeus2.JPG and 0201peoplelikeus.jpg, and the former is not showing up on the page People Like Us, while I can't find the latters Image Page... um... --ntnon 16:04 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Misspelling.
image:0201peoplelikeus2.JPG is the image description page. You didn't upload image:0201peoplelikeus.jpg. --Menchi 15:11 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Disinfopedia has taken wikipedia articles and expanded them usually with a back reference. Is it worthwhile to forward reference from Wikipedia to Disinfopedia? Zardoz 17:57 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

no, why would you do that? LittleDan
Disinfopedia is highly POV. CGS 19:51 1 Jun 2003 (UTC).
Sometimes. Treat disinfopedia articles as you would any other external source. Martin 00:42 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Size of Wikipedia-L NNTP

I had been reading the online Wikipedia-L archives for info and for fun, but there seems to be something even easier to browse: the Wikipedia-L NNTP. But I tried it, and there are over 10,000 messages! How many bytes is it? I can't overload my Internet connection again. The last time I did, they phoned and threatened to disconnect me. :-} --Menchi 18:54 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

What is the policy of deleting blank entries such as this one created by Michael Candlebox (album)? I just want to make sure this is something acceptable to do, before I delete it. MB 20:13 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

As nobody else had edited this article, its arbitrary deletion was uncontroversial. However, deleting articles that someone else has edited (beyond blanking/reverts) is more controversial, with strong opinions on both sides. Martin 00:42 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)


When, for example, a page on en: has been made a redirect to m:, and that with an afterthought on want to make a proper page on en, how can she modify the page for it not to be a redirection any more ? Same question on m: with a page redirected on en: ?

User:Anthere

For the moment you need to manually construct the url to it, such as http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=The_title&redirect=no (the &redirect=no is the key part, so it won't zip you over automatically). --Brion 21:41 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
yo ! Okay. that works. Thanks Brion.

Please see New England Patriots. Is it legal for us to include the logos of sports teams here? They're copyrighted. The NFL's website says "The team names, logos and uniform designs are registered trademarks of the teams indicated". -- Zoe

IMDB

I suggest that all articles about movies and tv shows be scrapped, and instead have the links point to the apropriate page on the Internet Movie Database. www.imdb.com Their database is already amazingly thorough, and appears to be around to stay. No point in rewriting copious amounts of information which already exists in a well organized form elsewhere Vroman 23:12 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

  1. Descriptions at IMDB don't link back to other related articles on Wikipedia (such as interesting locations, years, film technologies, and people other than cast and crew)
  2. IMDB's license is restrictive
  3. IMDB data won't be directly available in an offline edition of Wikipedia
  4. IMDB is available in English only (and possibly partially in Italian and German, though the links don't work), so that wouldn't help the many other languages Wikipedia is available in.
It's certainly appropriate to link to IMDB for additional information, but it doesn't replace free, integrated descriptions. --Brion 23:37 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
There is never a good reason to delete perfectly good material from the Wikipedia. Wikipedia isn't paper. We can create perfectly good NPOV articles, something IMDB doesn't even try to accomplish. -- Zoe
I agree with keeping those articles. If we have a britannica, why do we want a different one from scratch. -- Taku 00:10 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Agreed, no reason to delete any of them. Forever free, not tied to any commercial concern, etc. etc. One thing that could certainly be said about Wikipedia's articles on movies and TV shows, though, is that they would benefit from some standardization (especially in terms of the nice things that IMDB does, such as links on all cast and crew), but that'd be hard to implement in the Wikipedia format (since we prefer linking on commonly-used names; disambiguation would be a nightmare for larger collections). A wiki devoted just to movies and TV shows would not be a bad thing. We're probably not there yet, though. -- Wapcaplet 00:58 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Ok, I see your point. Would it be possible to write a bot that would automatically translate IMDB pages into wiki articles, like the city pages from census data? Vroman 09:51 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)
No, because IMDb is copyright, and they are unlikely to license their content under GFDL any time soon. -- Tim Starling 10:17 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)
we could bot-ify their filmography lists, since they are plain data and not copyright as such. But please, anyone who does this: reverse the lists into forward chronological order when you do this, ie oldest first, newest at the foot of the list, so it reads in the same order as other chronologies on Wikipedia -- Tarquin 10:34 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)


Solution for Michael edits

Alright, there seems to be some disagreement as far as what should be done with pages that Michael has made/worked on, but others have worked on as well such as St. Anger. Zoe seems to think we should delete the articles all together, b/c Michael's name is in the history. Now, while I can understand why we don't want Michael's name anywhere on the wiki, it isn't fair to other users for us to delete articles they have contributed to. What should we do about these situations? Would it be acceptable to delete Michael from the history? Zoe seems set on making sure any record of his contributions are removed permanently. While I don't blame her, I don't think it is a solution for everything. MB 00:49 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

As I wrote on User talk:Camembert, those who wish to undelete articles should instead salvage the non-Michael parts of it that they want to keep, and re-create the article from scratch. That keeps Michael out Wikipedia's history. Say with me: Ignorance is strength.... --Eloquence 01:39 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

New Topic - Accessing Wikipedia
I'm a new user and new to programming. I want to access articles on a topic (e.g Battle of Hastings)in Wikipedia automatically (using a Java program)for study purposes. I want to transfer the first 100 or so words of each article to a file.
Is this ok ?
Its been suggested I should use a web crawler for this (but they seem to cause problems and I'm not sure I caould specify a particular topic either)
I thought of using database queries, any advice please? --User:Searcher7

My advice would be to just download the articles using HTTP. You can't make database queries without special permission. You might be interested in Lee Daniel Crocker's Java test suite. It's a Wikipedia speed test which is not exactly what you want to do, but it has various handy functions to download articles from Wikipedia. -- Tim Starling 12:08 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Please don't use a crawler to download large amounts of articles. You can download a database dump of the entire Wikipedia. Aggressive crawling of the server can cause a dramatic slow-down of Wikipedia. -- JeLuF

Some queries:

  • Since it appears that subpages are unwelcome, can you link to halfway down a page..? Say, for example I wish to list the titles and plots of a series of books, but link to a specific title from a different page..?
  • With the furore about pictures and whatnot, are we allowed to scan the covers of books/CDs/videos..? I presume we cannot just lift them from Amazon or wherever, but surely this would be OK?
  • In providing book summaries or whatever, can you quote from the blurb..?
  • Am I correct in thinking that it is the case that you cannot post pictures with copyright details in full view unless they are owned by the person posting them..? --ntnon 13:56 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)
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