Wikipedia:Village pump/Archive P

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Village pump archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump. Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Double Voting on Vfd

I've noticed lately that there seems to be gaggle of brand new users who's only real edits seem to be to vote to keep things on Vfd. Earlier it was User:Wartortle and the dozen some of the dozen other names apparently created by User:Tester (see WP:PU). Now there seems to be User:Princess Toadstool, User:Macarenaman and User:Peter Farrell. It seems to me that the last three were created by 1 person with aims of keeping the page Dork, apparently created by User:Mwbassguy. I don't now if all these events are related, but I'm suspicious. Is there any way to check to see if double (or more) voting is occuring on Vfd. Maximus Rex 02:28, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)"

Hang on, I'll see what I can do -- Tim Starling 02:34, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)

Logs were checked for roughly the last 14 hours. Princess Toadstool, Macarenaman and David Stapleton were all using the same IP address. During that period, the only edits made from that IP were to VFD. The address is an AOL proxy. -- Tim Starling 02:49, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)

I just realised David Stapleton wasn't on your list, in fact he's just an ordinary Wikipedian. My word, the interesting things you can discover when you grep logs... -- Tim Starling 02:55, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)

The David Stapleton thing may have just been a coincidence. The edits are overlapping, and nobody manually logged in at any stage. David Stapleton was using section editing, whereas PT was not. And I have an edit by Antonio Martin using the same proxy, the previous day. Time to publish, I think. User:Tim Starling/Log segment 1 -- Tim Starling 03:18, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)

User:Panochik is another user created solely for the purpose of voting on VfD. RickK 03:25, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Just to be clear: it is my opinion that neither David Stapleton nor Antonio Martin were responsible for creating these false identities. AOL has many more users than proxies. By chance, David Stapleton and Antonio Martin were using the same proxy as this Princess Toadstool and friends. -- Tim Starling 00:38, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia needs editor

Should articles have an editor? See m:Wikipedia needs editors

There's an alternative proposal that I think might achieve the desired aim while doing no damage at all to our current structure and culture at m:Referees. Of course this ground might have all been covered before, I can't find it yet but the Meta is a big place. Comments welcome. Andrewa 03:02, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Check Wikipedia:Wikipedia approval mechanism -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 03:26, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you! Yes, that's exactly what I was looking for. I've listed my proposal on that page, it seems to me to have some advantages over the existing ones but there's also a lot in them that can and should be incorporated. Andrewa 03:29, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Largest WPs

I know there is a list top 10 largest wikipedias somewhere but I cant find it. Can someone help me? BL 01:53, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics#Fastest Growing Wikipedias. --Menchi 05:25, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Voting policy

I tried looking for a voting policy, but I did not find one, so I propose a draft: Wikipedia:Voting policy draft

I think voting should be standardized and formalized or else any vote should not be binding for anything. I hate that it has to be this formal, but I think it will be more democratic this way and it will lower complaints.

Please edit at will the draft, it was only the first thing that came to my mind. I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on the Wikipedia :)

The whole idea could also be scapped if enough people think it's crap.

Dori 15:09, Oct 27, 2003 (UTC)

Wikitrivia proposal - not happening

See m:WikiTrivia.

Mother Teresa article

Hi, I've called a vote on Talk:Mother Teresa to clarify once and for all what people think about the current article and what we should do about it. Please express your opinion. lol FearÉIREANN 23:05, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Can't upload an image

After the screen asking if I want to change the " " in the filename to "_", I get this message:

A database query syntax error has occurred. The last attempted database query was: "INSERT INTO image (img_name,img_size,img_timestamp,img_description,img_user,img_user_text) VALUES ('Keyboard_Layout_German.png',,'20031026192319','Keyboard layout, German, upload attempt #120, made by me', '7586', 'Cyp')" from within function "wfRecordUpload". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 20031026192319,Keyboard layout, German, upload attempt #120,.

I don't know anything about SQL, but is the character sequence ',,' appropriate? Κσυπ Cyp 19:28, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

You were right about the ",,". The PNG file you uploaded had zero length, and for some reason the file size variable got set to an empty string instead of "0". I'll submit it to the bug tracker. -- Tim Starling 00:02, Oct 27, 2003 (UTC)

Not just 0 length, it turns out, but also didn't even exist... Was trying to upload "Keyboard Layout German.png", when it was called "Keyboard_Layout_German.png" on my computer... Apparently Windows seems to think there is a difference between spaces and underscores, despite that Wikipedia knows there isn't... Managed to upload, at last... Κσυπ Cyp 01:24, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Why do get logged out?

It seems that I just got logged out while working on a page. I edited a subpage in the user namespace as a logged-in user, but on saving it appeared under an IP number rather than my username. That looks potentially troublesome (after all, it makes a difference whether you edit your pages or someone with an IP number does). I should note that the problem has occurred before (rarely), and that I do not usually have similar problems on the particular computer I am working at. Kosebamse 19:17, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Bug reports should be made at SourceForge. Please see wikipedia:bug reports for instructions on doing this. Angela 19:26, Oct 26, 2003 (UTC)

Done. I seem to remember that similar weirdnesses were discussed here earlier (to do with the en/en2/www thing??) Kosebamse 19:48, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

How long had it been since you logged in? How long was it between when you opened the edit page and when you clicked save? Were you using the "remember password across sessions" feature? BTW you can change history, see Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. -- Tim Starling 01:49, Oct 27, 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't remember how long I had been logged in. Time between opening edit and saving could have been ten minutes or so. I don't use the remember passwords feature. And that particular problem has occurred before, but only in the past weeks, so I assume it could have been because of the hardware difficulties or server overload (and wasn't there a similar discussion recently?). Thanks, Kosebamse 05:13, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

How do I put a French link to my English version and vice versa?

In my "user page" : How do I mention the same page exists in both languages?

Papotine 12:52, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Add [[fr:Utilisateur:Papotine]] (or whatever you login name is in the French wiki) to your English user page. Conversely, [[en:User:Papotine]] to the French one... -- Viajero 13:48, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Muchas gracias, Viajero ! Papotine 14:36, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

overlapping articles

I found General Government listed at Articles Needing Attention, so I rewrote it since it's a subject I know something about. Then I found History of Poland -- World War II 1939-1945, which is just a collection of dot-points and could well be deleted. But in fact this is a better heading for an article about Poland during WW2 than is General Government. On the other hand, Poland under German occupation would be better still. My inclination is to create Poland under German occuption, transfer and expand the text from General Government, then list the two existing articles for deletion. Comments? Adam 07:22, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Keep it. General Government were one of the distinct administrative units of Poland the occupied by Germans. Polices used by Germans in GG were different then those on the areas annexed by Nazi Germany or on the areas occupied by Soviets. For example, in General Government public use of Polish language was not forbidden, while it was like this in Posen. In Warsaw public executions were advised policies, while it was not standard inside borders of Germany. GH 07:41, Oct 26, 2003 (UTC)

No need to list them for deletion - just make them redirects. The title may be more consistent with other history pages if it was History of Poland (1939-1945). Angela 07:41, Oct 26, 2003 (UTC)

You should also read How to rename a page, if you haven't already. —Paul A 10:31, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Colon in link in definition list

A colon in a link in a definition list doesn't work. Can the software be changed to chnage the priority so that a : within [[ ]] doesn't start the second half of the definition entry. This is a problem with any of Wikipedia:... or User:...

This is a known bug, but no one cares enough to fix it, as definition lists are used slightly more often than never (though the colon is independently used for indentation, which happens to be implemented as definition-only definition lists). If you care enough to fix it, please be our guest. --Brion 07:34, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

In the mean time, some adaptation of URL encoding might be useful: Wikipedia:Village pump —Paul A 01:40, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Word and article searches

Am I the only one who has trouble doing word and article searches? Often it seems I search a word or phrase, looking for an article, and I come up blank two or three times. But if I persist, sometimes I come up with an article. What's up with that? It's not so urgent when checking for existing articles on, say, Penis-melting Zionist robot combs. But on more common subjects it's a problem. Also, when are we going to have full search capabilities? Paul Klenk 01:45, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Right-justified intros

The first line of an article is right-justified, which can look very strange if the line is short (e.g. Richard Brinsley Sheridan). It can be fixed by putting a blank line above the first line of text, but is there any way the developers can fix it more effectively? -- sannse 10:50, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The first line of an article is right-justified? Sounds like you've got a bit of browser weirdness going on. The first line, like every other line, looks left-justified to me. --Camembert

In that case I'd better say I'm using IE5 (I think I do on the other computer I use too). I've just got someone to have a look using IE6 and it's not a problem for them. This makes it a much more minor problem. Probably not worth wasting time on! -- sannse 13:06, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

In a lot, but not all, of articles, I see the first line right-justified, too. I think it's rather unjustified of my browser to right-justify for no reason... Κσυπ Cyp 18:29, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It only happens in articles in which the right-floated [edit] links appear. It's a known bug, which has been independently rediscovered many many times since those [edit] links were added. —Paul A 10:28, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Report it at SourceForge (see wikipedia:bug reports), along with your browser, etc. Martin 18:33, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I have this problem too, IE5.0 on Win98. I first raised it when section edit was introduced and I think they may be related. I looked at SourceForge and couldn't find an open problem record there, but that might well be my not knowing how to look. I'm happy to raise it there myself, please don't delete this from the pump until we do get a SourceForge record raised or identified. Andrewa 23:30, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Please do raise it. Martin 21:25, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

As far as I can tell it's just a bug in IE 5.0/win. Upgrade your browser to IE 6 or Mozilla. --Brion 22:36, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Adding Comments to Page History (and taking credit for anon. edits)

Argh, trying again with title and sig. I'm really sorry.

Hi, Wikipedians

New arrival, totally infatuated with all this. It's an obsessive's dream come true.

Question:

I did a bunch of edits to 4-5 entries before I'd created my log-in name. I then tried to sneak in credit (once I signed up) by going back to those entries, marking a minor edit under my nametag, then trying to add a note to Page History saying something like "edits below (by XX-XX-XX-XX) were done by me".

So I made trivial edits (marked "minor"), and saw my name pop up on Page History. Good. But while some editors had added comments here ("Removed the part about the exploding cat" or "corrected punctuation"), I couldn't figure out how to add my own comments. What am I doing wrong?

Also, is it too late at this point? I don't want to do another minor edit in order to insert the comment...feels abusive to really fill up the Page History page just for my own vanity. Please advise. I'm willing to let it go, but I'd at least like to know how to add comments next time.

O. Pen Sauce --O. Pen Sauce 06:49, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You just have to type something into the "summary" box, between the edit box and the "minor edit" checkbox. If you want to change the history of an article so that your edits are attributed to you, see Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. And use ~~~~ to sign your messages -- it's automatically converted to a name and a date. Welcome to Wikipedia!. -- Tim Starling 06:43, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)

tim, thanks for the info and also for cleaning up my mess (I'm a slightly slow learner, but reliable once I get things together)! Ok, I've made the request at Changing attribution for an edit. Thanks to the others for the help on the press matter (which I've edited out) O. Pen Sauce 07:23, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I've Stumpified But I'm Not Sorry

I just stumpified an entry (the one for "yogi"). But it deserved stumpification (the word is a mere variation of another word which IS fully fleshed out in its own entry). I made a case for my action on the "discuss the page" page. I did NOT add the boilerplate inviting others to fill out the stump. Did I handle this correctly? O. Pen Sauce 06:40, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wouldn't a redirect to Yoga be better? Angela

Agreed. --Menchi 06:53, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

How do I do it? (sorry, I'm new) O. Pen Sauce 07:02, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Here: Wikipedia:Redirect. --Menchi 07:04, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Done, thanksO. Pen Sauce 07:31, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Richard Neustadt gone neon

The article Richard Neustadt has more linked text than plain text, and to me looks like a Las Vegas billboard. Too many dates are wikified. It looks very ugly! Does anyone else agree? -- Viajero 14:33, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

Maybe you should create stubs for all the red links, then it will be uniformely blue. :-) andy 15:37, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Oh no! Given the subject, all that red and blue on a white background looks quite patriotic :)     -- Finlay McWalter 15:56, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I always disliked all the years in Wikipedia being linked. Tempshill 23:06, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Please make further comments at Wikipedia talk:Make only links relevant to the context, where you can also vote on the issue.

Wikipedia talk:Make only links relevant to the context is not policy, and it is rude to revert other people's linking. RickK 01:56, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If the Richard Neustadt article said something more about just what he accomplished with all those years in all those jobs, the link density would be a lot lower. He was presumably a historian in the Navy - did he work with Samuel Eliot Morison perhaps? What kind of advice did he give to all those presidents? This article is a good start, but it's completely colorless (figuratively speaking :-) ). Stan 07:28, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Finding redirects to create

Brion was kind enough to prepare me with some listings of articles and broken links and I wrote a program to find broken links that appear to be related to an existing article. It's not 100% accurate and there are some conflicts, so humans are needed to figure out what's valid and what's not. I found some 1678 articles that could be linked from 2073 different broken links. When done with this list, I believe a good 1000-1500 broken links will be turned into valid and useful redirects. (Ha, everyone who said I was a rabid deletionist is proven wrong!)

Right now, the list is just based on middle names which I have noticed to be a frequent cause of broken links. However, I'll probably write some more complicated programs to find other near-matches if this turns out well.

Anyway, I could use some help. The list is located at User:Daniel Quinlan/redirects. Please follow the convention for noting when a broken link cannot be connected to an article (other than that, the page shouldn't really need to be edited aside from questions, notes, etc.) and have fun. Daniel Quinlan 06:46, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Is it possible to rename an article I created?

Bmills 12:14, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Section Number problem?

I just added a new section to Talk: Opera (browser). I did this by clicking the [edit] link for the last section and manually editing the URL in my address bar, replacing the section number (1 as it happens) with "new". When I saved the addition, the new section was there, but it had the same number as the previous section! The [edit] link has the correct section number hidden under it. I've tried refreshing but it doesn't seem to want to change. Is it appearing the same to everyone else or is it just me? If it is real, then is this a bug with my Browser or with Wikipedia? Waaaah! Phil 12:04, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

D'oh! I noticed the same phenomenon on another page, took a look at the underlying text and realised that some dunderhead had started off with a second-level header === so of course when I used a first-level header straight after, they both turned up as 1. Fixed it. Phil 14:25, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

Please report bugs at wikipedia:bug reports. Martin 20:42, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Section Number problem?

deleted - resolved

en2

Any informaion about en2.wikipedia.org? It is far faster than en or www though. -- Taku 02:39, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

It is fast because it is pliny. Pliny is 5 times faster than larousse, and lightly loaded to boot. It was disabled previously because of the hassles of logging in to each one separately, and image synchronisation problems. Brion is working on fixing the login problem, so hopefully we will be able to put pliny to better use in the future. -- Tim Starling 02:48, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Sarah Lane

maybe i am out of the loop....is the Sarah Lane article for real? It looks like a joke to me, but then I looked at the page history. It has been around for a while, and names i recognize have edited it. what is the story of Sarah Lane? Kingturtle 07:45, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

We don't usually write about the history of Wikipedia in the main namespace. Move it to meta. But yes, it's for real. We had a huge number of imitators vandalising monkeypox. We had a protection/unprotection war -- some editors thought the newcomers should be welcome, others thought they should meet resistance when they try to vandalise things. -- Tim Starling 07:54, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

Sarah Lane, demoing Wikipedia on TV, thought it would be a bright idea to demonstrate a bit of vandalism, inserting "Just a test" into the "monkeypox" article see the diff on 11 Jun 2003 at 22:53. Twelve seconds later at 23:05, someone else reverted it see the diff. Her twelve seconds of fame, though, inspired a lot of imitation and the article had to be locked for a bit. I'm not sure it belongs in her article anymore, it really is a footnote. -- Someone else 07:59, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

• "seconds" -> "minutes", surely Just call me Picky

Sheesh. Sarah Lane should have gone to The Screen Savers and added pertinent information. In a word, it was lame of her to demonstrate mindlessness instead of demonstrating a desire to create something useful. Kingturtle 08:03, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's what I thought, and I emailed her and told her so (see Talk:Monkeypox), but Eloquence was more of the view that any publicity is good publicity. -- Tim Starling 08:21, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

grrr

is anyone else finding Wikipedia eben slower than usual at the moment? Adam

• It's always slow. Poor Yorick
• Probably not what you want to hear, but it's actually significantly faster than usual for me. Fuzheado
• Right now, things actually seem pretty fast (it was almost entirely inaccessible to me earlier). According to the stats, right now is about as off-peak as it gets. --Minesweeper

Full speed at the moment, I wish it always ran like this.

Here are some timings for how long things are taking to arrive on my screen (one megabit Broadband) .........

Village Pump 4 seconds Jasper 3 secs Photography 2 secs Paris 3 seconds

Adrian Pingstone 11:14, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I should have said that the timings above are without IE6 loaded ie they include starting up Wikipedia. If I follow a link to them from within Wikipedia then the time for them to arrive on-screen is about a second at the moment.

Adrian Pingstone 12:01, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Any banned user protection for Meta?

moved down here because of dearth of responses up the page

This is probably a very silly question. But is the ban limited to the English Wikipedia? There is someone with a quite similar IP:address doing quite active editing at meta... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 17:28, Oct 31, 2003 (UTC)

Jimbo has now replied 'Just to clarify, the hard-ban on 24/142 is *everywhere*, all languages, meta, everywhere.' Andrewa 15:16, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's a very good question. Someone not logged in from 142.177.79.225 has created a four-paragraph talk page for the m:Referees page I created, containing some provocative and interesting statements but on the whole a waste of time IMO. It could be an interesting discussion, it's just not the right place for it. Any advice? Andrewa 12:36, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Banning policy is in the hands of one man. Ask on wikien-l in the hopes of attracting his attention. -- Tim Starling 14:10, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)

I've raised it on Wikipedia-l (my <trumpets> first post </trumpets> to any Wikipedia list), it seemed to fit Jimbo's recently posted guidelines for that list rather than Wikien-l. Andrewa 18:36, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hmmmm, I've now posted it to the mailing list twice. It hasn't made it to the archive either time, at least the headers have but the message text has been lost. I've received it intact myself, so it has presumably gone out to people who subscribe to the list as individual emails. But I have grave fears that those who subscribe to the digest version may still not have received the text I sent, and the archives are useless if they look there of course. And I've had no responses. Any suggestions? Andrewa 14:40, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I now have a reply, see above. The ban applies to the Meta, etc. Andrewa 15:16, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Now why does "in the hopes of attracting his attention." have a distinctly ominous ring to it? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 15:23, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)

Dunno. Seems to work OK even with software glitches. (;-> Andrewa 15:16, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

slowwwwwww tonight

wikipedia is sooooo slow tonight. i just had to vent for a moment. it is really frustrating. and can get demoralizing sometimes. alas. Kingturtle 11:51, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

All night I've been averaging between 20 and 30 seconds per edit. Sigh. Kingturtle 11:55, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

We're in the ugly part of the queueing delay curve. We're about to double our hardware, but hopefully that will increase speed by far more than a factor of two. -- Tim Starling 14:30, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)

When exactly will the new hardware be working? G-Man 19:37, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

When it's built and delivered and installed. Unfortunately we're in the dark on this; I only know what Jimbo says when I bug him for more info. Hopefully it should be set up within a week or so, but I'm just making up numbers here with little basis in known facts. --Brion 22:36, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Messed up move, need help

I tried moving Mysterious Play to Fushigi Yuugi (the term all Enlish speaking fans use), after moving Fushigi Yuugi to Fushigi Yuugi:temp (and then Fushigi Yuugi2) in order to make it a redirect page with no history, but it gives me an error, telling me that the page already exists, or the name is invalid. Please help. -- Khym Chanur 02:40, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)

I think I've done what you wanted - Fushigi Yuugi is now just a redirect to Fushigi Yuugi and the temp pages don't exist. Angela 02:51, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)

IRC

Is there anyone who would know the name of a decent (understand something that I can understand -> easy) IRC soft for macintosh, OS 9 (very important, not X).

Thanks

Anthère

William Crowther

This William Crowther page is all wonky. It seems like it might be a legit topic, if it lost the BBS tone, but I don't know enough about net history or spelunking to dare an edit. Not sure what do about it, so came here.

Yeah, the page should go on cleanup. Crowther is encyclopedic (I think, anyway) as co-author of Adventure, the first computer adventure type game. We already have a decent page for his co-author, Don Woods -- Finlay McWalter 01:02, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia unbelievably fast

Wikipedia is now unbelievably fast, and it's all thanks to Brion. Some pages are served from pliny, some are served from larousse, and no-one should notice the difference, except for the blindingly fast response. -- Tim Starling 03:47, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Yee-haa! Daniel Quinlan 03:48, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Except that I'm having an odd problem where when I click on some links (not even most of them), I just get a blank page unless I Refresh. RickK 03:56, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Some people are never satisfied. You want fast response, which we give you, and now you want it to serve non-blank pages as well! ;) Which pages? When you click "view source" in your browser, what comes up? -- Tim Starling 04:05, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

I'll let you know if it happens again. RickK 04:09, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

That happens to me too, most often to the Recent Changes page, but it has happened in the past as well (I don't know when, specifically...). I just refresh the page and it's fine. Adam Bishop 04:37, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I can't seem to stay logged in. I know, I know, report it to Sourceforge. -- Cyan (65.92.245.155 04:41, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC))

Me too, just log in, and then automatically log out. :( --218.19.141.3 04:45, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Your browsers might be having trouble with the new multi-domain cookies. Which browser are you using? Does reducing security/privacy settings temporarily fix the problem? -- Tim Starling 04:48, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

No trouble logging in, but an accidental log-out between edits. Mozilla 1.0.2. (Mozilla/5.0) on a Mac -- Someone else 04:52, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm using Opera 6.0, settings are wide open, I think... doesn't work from IE v5.5 either. --Cyan (65.92.245.155 04:55, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC))

Just checking, when you logged in, you did remember to click Remember password between sessions, now didn't you? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 05:00, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Do i have to? it doesn't work on both IE and Opera. --218.19.141.3 05:02, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's vaguely possible that the old cookie is somehow interfering with the new cookie (but it shouldn't be). Clear out any cookies you may have set on 'en.wikipedia.org' or 'en2.wikipedia.org' and try again. --Brion 05:04, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It works for Opera, but it doesn't seem to work for IE. --218.19.141.3 05:16, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It doesn't even work for Opera now?? --218.19.141.3 05:19, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm using Opera 7.11 and it works for me. Evil saltine 05:21, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I mean it works if i click the Remember password between sessions, but i don't like to do that. --218.19.141.3 05:27, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I cleared out my cookies. No dice. I can't get at my preferences, since I log out instantly. -- Cyan (65.92.240.192 05:38, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC))

Check your cookies for one named "enwikiSession" set for the domain ".wikipedia.org". Have you got one, and what's the expiration date look like? It should be ~an hour in the future. --Brion 05:43, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Could anyone with cookie problems check the date & timezone settings on your computer? If it's off (for instance a daylight saving time glitch) that could expire the cookie early. If that's totally off base, I'd like to be able to strike it off my list of things to check. --Brion 05:47, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Where is that? I am using Windows XP, and only found 3 files in my \cookie, one is called "administrator@wikipedia[2].txt" which is modified 3 mins ago. :? --218.19.141.3 05:56, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If you open that file in wordpad (not notepad! notepad gets confused) you'll see some gobbledegook inside; looks like the expiry times aren't in human-readable format though, unless you understand seconds since January 1, 1970... --Brion

I've changed the cookie to expire at the end of the browser session instead of at a time offset. Does this help? --Brion 05:57, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It works now!! Thanks! --Samuel 05:59, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Awesome! (By any chance, can you check that your computer's clock and timezone are set correctly?) --Brion 06:03, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

New Feature suggestion: selective hiding of TOC

I would like to suggest an augmentation of the TOC to allow sub-headings to be hidden whilst leaving higher-level headings visible (at the moment the only option is to have the TOC visible or not; some are very long with meny levels and it would be good to be able to reduce the number of choices visible without hiding it totally; Characters in the Wheel of Time series is a relatively brief example). Each TOC has a [hide] link next to the caption. I would suggest having further links ([1], [2], ... up to the maximum level visible) to hide all but the selected heading. Is this the proper forum to discuss my suggestion? Am I the first to suggest such a thing? Phil 09:34, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

Feaure requests can be made at sourceforge.

Thank you. I snaffled the link from further up the page. However there doesn't seem to be much capacity for discussion on SourceForge (or am I missing something again?) and I wanted to wave my suggestion under more knowledgeable noses before bothering the code-monkeys. Phil 09:50, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

No violent outbursts of negativity having manifested, I have submitted it on SourceForge: 237 Open Items as of when I clicked "SUBMIT". Maybe I should learn PHP, help cut that queue down. (I'm feeling whimsical because I'm just about to send off the results of a particularly horrible job and I now have some respite before it comes back and bites me :-) Phil 17:45, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia punishes users who do large edits

I just finished editing Islam and fixing some of the dozens of typos and nonsensical sentences that permeate that article. When I submitted my changes, I was informed that someone had made an edit in the meantime, forcing me to spend another five minutes laboriously scrolling up and down, adding in my changes again. I submitted the new changes and found that someone had wiped out an entire section of the original article in the meantime. I gave up and lost all my edits.

So what are my options here? Either I can submit my changes every thirty seconds, filling up the article history with inane trivia, or wonder why Wiki isn't smart enough to combine simple changes. It could at least have some feature to save the endless scrolling up and down while reinserting my changes. -- silsor 00:16, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is too stupid to merge changes because we don't have enough developers to have them spending time on this sort of thing. So for the time being you will have to put up with it. I should note that sometimes it is easier to merge the other person's edits into your text than to merge your edits into their text. -- Tim Starling 00:32, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

D'oh, I should have thought of that! From looking at the page history it looks like the other changes were just part of the edit war over a couple of links. I'll try to redo all my edits at home tonight. -- silsor

Of course it would still require some developer work, but might the merging code from an open source project like CVS be usable as a drop-in module? If it merges okay, then use the merged version; if not, then still report the edit conflict as usual. This would at least remove edit conflicts in the cases where two people are simultaneously editing completely different sections of the document. --Delirium 03:43, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

Merging code is similar to merging wikitext -- there are some conflicts which no computer could ever merge, specifically whenever two people edit the same thing. One difference is that CVS does a line-by-line diff, and we usually do a character-by-character (LCS-based) diff. But by all means, submit it to feature requests, if it's not already there. -- Tim Starling 04:54, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

There's something to be said for doing changes in more incremental steps. This makes the changelog rather easier to read and the deltas rather easier to understand (providing you do the changes in a logically partitioned fashion). So one change to fix links, another to fix grammar, another to reorder paragraphs, another to rewrite bad grammar in paragraph one - that makes (for me at least) a more legible changelog than a single megadelta that makes tweaks to every single bit of the article. -- Finlay McWalter 00:49, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Finlay's advice is good. However, if you work this way, please add summaries to each of your changes so that other users can understand what you have done. And also, saving incremental changes shouldn't be a substitute for using the Preview button. There are some users who, for whatever reason, make ten, twenty edits at a time without summaries and just clog up the article history. BTW, Edit conflicts are indeed a royal PITA but they don't happen that often. Except for a few very busy pages (new and/or controversial), you should find you have most pages to yourself. -- Viajero 13:36, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Nearly all of the edit conflicts I have had have been within the first ten minutes or less of the creation of a new article. It seems to be part of the current culture to make spelling corrections, add stub warnings, change formats etc etc etc in this timescale.

This can be a problem. In one recent case a newbie was making his third contribution, the first two had been good minor corrections to articles about which he was well qualified to comment, one was for his country of residence for example. His third contribution was to create a new article, again in a field of his expertise, which he wrote offline. Owing to our performance problems of the time he had trouble saving it, and on his third attempt saved instead just an external link to an information source, which is of course a sub-stub and an innocent mistake. He intended to put up the whole article as soon as he could, he'd already written it after all. Six minutes later the sub-stub was deleted. He gave up.

I have contacted this user by email and he says he will be back, fortunately he had also created a user page with an email address. The sub-stub was undeleted on someone else's protest, and is now an excellent article, but the original creator has taken no futher part in editing it, so presumably the text he wrote was wasted. The above is from his account to me, and also my perusal of article history and votes for undeletion at the time. He sees it as quite funny. But I see a problem here, which I have raised before.

Everybody acted properly and in good faith. The sub-stub met the criteria for instant deletion. Food for thought? Andrewa 15:50, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Being a sub-stub alone shouldn't be sufficient to qualify for instant deletion (or VfD). Being a sub-stub that's several days old should be, naturally, as would blank, offensive, and nonsense ones, as now. To avoid our forgetting about these guys, it should be fairly simply to cook up a SQL query that selects all articles which are more than three days old and that have fewer than say 40 characters in their body. -- Finlay McWalter 17:32, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It seems to me that some delay should precede action on any recently-changed page unless the edit is vandalism of some sort. Yes, a query is an excellent idea. What about an alternative version of Recent changes that only lists pages unchanged for the last 60 minutes? Keep the existing one too for the moment, although I suspect that even many vandals would be better handled using the delay.

The vast majority of the edit conflicts I have personally encountered would not even have occurred under this rule. Personally I doubt there is any really good solution to edit conflicts, so reducing their number seems a good idea. It saves the time not only of the person originally working on the article, but also of the copy-editor, sysop or whoever else currently jumps in as soon as you hit "save page".

I'm about to go away for a few days (not avoiding Wikipedia, another project). I may be ready for a go at updating the current Wikipedia:Deletion policy and some related areas when I get back, to address these issues. Or maybe someone else wants to attend to it sooner? Andrewa 00:21, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You can't make changes to the deletion policy based on things like saying articles have to wait an hour or whatever before they can be deleted. Recent changes does not work this way. Unless you can come up with a solution to that, nonsense has to be deleted when it is found, which is going to be within the first few minutes of its creation. Further comments on this should go to Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy. Angela

There are several possible technical solutions, one of them I described above. An hour is modest, someone else suggested several days. The more challenging problem is the culture shift required. Please note by culture shift I don't mean challenging the underlying goals. I just mean challenging some current practices (such as the instant deletion of sub-stubs, and things that cause unnecessary edit conflicts) that perhaps don't support those goals as well as they might.

Please feel free to move this discussion to wherever it belongs. Andrewa 21:16, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

What I do in a case as Silsor describes, where I have been editing at several places in a page, and then got an edit conflict, is to copy-and-paste my version into the edit box, add a warning about edit conflicts in the summary, and hit save. Then afterward I check what the other person has changed, and I will encorporate his/her changes on the page again. If you have done edits at many places, such a 'reverse merge' is usually easier than a standard one. Andre Engels 21:13, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

See MeatBall:MergingAutomatically. Martin 20:38, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I have experienced a few times the frustration of doing complicated edits only to find out I have to piece it all together again. So now when I am doing a large edit, I will first add to the top of the article "Please do not edit this page for the next 10 minutes because I am doing a large edit," then save it, and then do my large edit. It seems to work.

Diacritics

I'm sure this comes up regularly - but where to start looking for answers? I want to use extended character sets to display diacritics for Sanskrit and Pali terms. Things like 7747 = ṃ (an m with a dot underneath = anusvara). Trouble is that it degrades to a square gliph without specifying a unicode font. I can get vowels with macrons OK, but it's the retroflex consonants and the anusvara that are problematic. Is it possible/desirable to specify fonts in Wikipedia? I think it's important to have the diacritics, although some general works leave them out, but without them the words are different! Mahaabaala 12:40, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think it just depends on individual people's browsers. I can see the m with a dot thing in Mozilla, but it is a square in IE. Angela 12:57, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

fyi, it works okay in Opera 7 and konqueror, but (naturally) shows up as m- in links(cygwin) and lynx(cygwin), and I imagine visitors with screenreaders will hear a rude noise. So one shouldn't rely on it. -- Finlay McWalter 13:45, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Naming policy

I find it somewhat inconsistent. E.g. Some insist that Danzig should be used instead of Polish Gdansk whenever majority of population was German or when city was part of German states. OTOH, trhoughout the encyclopedia only Vilnius is used instead of Wilno. The same is with L'viv and Lviv used almost consitently instead of Lwow or Lwów. Did that means that policy is to use German names whenever possible and local names in other cases????!? szopen

There's been a lot of discussion of this issue on one of the mailing lists recently, do a search on "Polish" in the Wikipedia-l archive for October and you'll get some of it. It seems it is a recurring subject, but doesn't yet have a page of its own. Perhaps we should have one in the Meta? Andrewa 14:17, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). We use what the place is best known as in English. It isn't an issue of whether it's a German or Polish or whatever name. Angela

This is exactly problem with what is "English" name. Germans keep saying that German name is "English" name. Also, few have insisted on inserting German names into places e.g. Warsaw which were temporarily under German government. I am not talking this is right or wrong. DOn't care much in fact. But i want consistency. If such policy is adpoted, then Brandenburg would have to include also name Brenna, Vilnius WIlno, L'viv Lwow etc. szopen

I don't think there is a problem. The "English" name is what the majority of English-speakers use, not what people want English speakers to use. Daniel Quinlan 23:51, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

Well, it is a problem if it is hard to determine what English speakers currently use. Maybe Danzig/Gdansk is a good example, maybe not, but in any case: Danzig is the form of the name you encounter when you read books on World War II, where disputes over Danzig and a Danzig corridor ultimately ignited the war in Europe. In a historical context the town is mostly not re-named to its Polish equivalent Gdansk. On the other hand, the Solidarność movement was of course ignited in Gdansk - not in Danzig.

But usually, the issue of what's English usage is rather uncontroversial, and it is more an issue of courtesy or political correctness if names in other languages should be listed as more or less equal alternatives. In hot spots, as currently on Polish wikipedia pages, this easily leads to long lists of names on half a dozen different languages.

--Ruhrjung 03:18, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

FWIW, this isn't only a Polish issue either. Ukrainians want to use Kyiv as the name of the city usually known in English as Kiev, considering the latter, as a transliteration from Russian, to be an offensive relic of Russian imperialism. However, Kiev is by far the more common English name, so there is disagreement over whether "common, but possibly offensive" or "official, but very uncommon" should take precedence. See also Talk:Kolkata for previous discussion of Calcutta vs. Kolkata and related. --Delirium 23:57, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

Exactly. Those are Kiev and Calcutta. The preferred local names can and should be noted, but the articles should be placed where common English usage dictates — we cannot please everyone, so common is safer (and much more friendly to users) than figuring out what is least offensive to everyone. Note that English usage often does eventually change to conform to the whims of other countries. For example, Peking became Beijing (although that was an issue of transliteration, perhaps not imperialism, although some might interpret Peking as being an imperialist name too). Daniel Quinlan 00:37, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

Well, since that article is located at Kolkata, this is currently somewhat inconsistent. That one's a little more tricky though, because it is called Kolkata commonly in India, which has English as an official language (and ~200m English-speakers). --Delirium 01:53, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

Good point! Kolkata is perhaps more correct as per Wikipedia:Manual of Style. I think India counts as an English-speaking nation. Daniel Quinlan 07:25, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

Bug?

I can't seem to establish the article R.J. Rummel at that place and a redirect from Rudolph J. Rummel to R.J. Rummel. Edits I do at one of those seem to be duplicated at the other. As can be seen in the Recent Changes, I only edited one of them with the summary "what is going on here?". But that summary appears in the histories of both! --Wik 06:19, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, it's weird. I deleted R.J. Rummel and redid the redirect. It seems to work now. --Jiang

Now the history seems to be lost. Also, I have this double entry in my watchlist:

(diff) (hist) . . R.J. Rummel; 07:27 . . Wik (Talk) 
(diff) (hist) . . R.J. Rummel; 07:27 . . Wik (Talk) 

Clicking on either of the (diff)s gives an error. --Wik 06:35, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

Somehow or other we've ended up with two entries in the database with the name 'R.J. Rummel'. This confuses some things; I'll clear one out. --Brion 06:38, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Found and fixed the bug. --Brion 09:36, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I just found a very similar bug, however not related to moving. According to the User contributions there were two edits on Aachtopf, however the history of the only shows one. And for admins the older one even shows the "rollback" button, so I guess there are two database entries for this article as well. andy 12:01, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Also: Special:Contributions/212.72.200.242 shows duplicate entries, and Special:Newpages shows the Lines page twice:

# 10:35, Nov 4, 2003 Lines (804 bytes) . . 212.72.200.242
# 10:33, Nov 4, 2003 Lines (808 bytes) . . 212.72.200.242

Angela

Protest of Zofia Kossak-Szczucka is a duplicate as well. And before the it was added the second time I could not see the first instance of that article, that polish text only showed up on when the second instance was created. Another side note - the above mentioned Achtopf also misses one article which links to it, probably because the database links that one to the first instance. And still more pages with this problem: Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, Cynthia Horner

Those articles which were not fully created at first and haven't been resubmitted then create the following error message:

The database did not find the text of a page that it should have found, named "Miguel Bosé".
This is usually caused by following an outdated diff or history link to a page that has been deleted.
If this is not the case, you may have found a bug in the software. Please report this to an administrator, making note of the URL.

andy 16:18, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

There are a variety of longstanding bugs that can produce double entries, but last night's changes (which backport things long in the development branch) do seem to have aggravated it. I've disabled the change and am cleaning up the affected articles. --Brion 19:58, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

A plain and simple question

Has anyone tried to delete the deletion log page? Does it just create itself again? Poor Yorick

It should recreate itself, although without the header text. IIRC I tried this recently with the block log, which shares the same code. -- Tim Starling 11:26, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)

Editing One's Subsequent Editors (and a proposal for "locking in" mature entries)

There's a fine line between obnoxiously restoring one's "golden prose" after it's been subequently edited...and honestly improving an article that's been degraded by reintroducing legitimately better commentary...which happens to be one's own previously posted material!

Where do Wikipedians stand on this call? Firmly against persistent "ping ponging" (i.e. post it once and let it go forever)? An anarchic "go ahead" shrug? Simply use one's judgement?

This is a facet of a larger issue which I perceive as Wikipedia biggest fault: past a certain point, articles don't get better, they just get different (or, just as easily, worse). As a given entry ages to a certain point where' it's been worked over by many participants, might it not be intelligent to introduce a "vote to seal" feature, where viewers who think the entry is at a really good point can temporarily freeze edits and call for a vote to permanently seal the entry (or at least a vote to impede subsequent editing, e.g. by requiring additions to be approved by vote)? Otherwise, absolutely terrific entries can and will be degraded and washed away like sand castles in the tide.

I realize that many entries are temporal in various ways and therefore benefit from unended editing. Obviously, they should stay ever open.

I suspect my solution can/will be picked to death...but the problem I'm raising is a serious one, and there may be more intelligent/effective ways to address it. Or maybe I'm just being unwikipedian....? O. Pen Sauce 08:09, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that's the eternal debate, which has been (is being) discussed as the Sifter project, "1.0" or in many other forms. The discussion flares up regularly with no clear answer. So people keep chugging along. :) --Fuzheado

I'm very interested in previous discussion of this 'Sifter project', where would I find it? I've found Jimbo's 1.0 discussion page. Andrewa 13:42, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

O Pen is absolutely right, and Fuz is also right to say this issue has been raised before, even in the short time I have been contributing. And it will go on being raised, because it should be obvious that this is indeed WP's crucial weakness, much as I love it. At the moment WP's primary role is as a playpen for writers and editors and pedants and know-it-alls (like me), and not as a service to readers. At the moment if WP tells me that the capital of X is Y, and my Funk & Wagnalls tells me it is Z, I will believe F&W, and so will most other people.

My view is that once the groups of genuine contributors to an article (as opposed to vandals and propagandists) are satisfied that it is as good as it is going to get, then it should be declared complete, and after that it can only be edited with the approval of the original authors or some panel of editors or reviewers. For 90% of articles, this won't be a problem. Turtles of the Upper Orinoco will be declared complete without fuss. The remaining 5% (God and Zionism and George W Bush is Evil Incarnate can be fought over for a few months, and then some sort of arbitration process can take place. I know this is all very un-Wiki-ish, but at the moment process is being privilges over product, and in the long run this will not produce an encyclopaedia. Adam 09:54, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I suppose it comes down to a question of the ultimate goal of Wikipedia: creation or creating? To produce an encyclopedia, or to produce the production of an encyclopedia?

An idealist might say that since perfection is unattainable, there's no reason not to endlessly refine in more and more subtle strokes. However Wikipedia has no mechanism to ensure or even encourage increasing subtlety as an entry ripens and matures. The credo is "be bold!", period. So over the lifetime of Wikipedia, great encyclopedias may arise and disappear. This will be nothing more than an amazingly ambitious and intelligent grafitti wall.

And the revisions archive will be too huge and noisy for even a collaborative network to make use of.

Someone (or some group or some function) must watch the zillion typing monkeys, lest Hamlet, The Secret of Life, and The Grand Unifying Theory of Everything be discarded underfoot along with the mountain of randomness. --O. Pen Sauce 18:16, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The reason why evolution creates better things is because advantageous mutations are retained, while disadvantageous mutations are removed. The wiki process that creates an article is somewhat analogous, so there is little danger that articles of true quality will disappear entirely, although they may undergo superficial alterations. It's not quite as bad as all that. -- Cyan 19:35, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

An idealist speaks! :)

The monkey analogy is imprecise, and was added mostly to be amusing. The graffitti wall is a much more apt analogy. Human creativity always involves a destructive impulse, that is patently clear from any look at our history. Also, to preserve quality one must appreciate quality. Such appreciation is by NO means a given. I think you're wrong on this, Cyan. --O. Pen Sauce 20:23, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

No, appreciation of quality is not a given. It is however an observed fact. In my evaluation at least; and I personally would like to believe I appreciate quality. Who are those in the "majority" which in your opinion do not appreciate quality. I just don't see it. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 14:50, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

I'm with the idealist, Wikilover POV. From my point of view Wikipedia is an ecology of ideas. I sympathise with the desire of you Encylopediasts, but I think [Wikipedia 1.0] will serve your needs in the long run, so don't worry.

Can anyone direct me to a major article that people have cared about which has detioriorated over the long term? Say three months. I would be interested :ChrisG 14:08, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Despite what I wrote just above your message, I think some rare examples of such articles might be found (see Wikipedia:Dark side of Wikipedia). Some subjects just inhabit a Lorentz-attractor type of existence within Library-space.

-- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 05:31, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Tensions resurfaced at Islam

We have been receiving more complaints than usual at Islam and I would to take the opportunity to request for detailed analysis and assessment of this article or possibly related ones as well. Besides neutrality in dispute, we have an exterior link also disputed. The website 'fruitofislam' was removed, reinstated and later removed again. The site URL is available through the history page and was introduced: 19:37, 31 Oct 2003 by 24.96.57.18 The contributor who implemented this peculiar site also made some questionable edits. Is the site NPOV and should it be an exterior link for the Wiki article Islam? Please discuss at Talk:Islam. Take care. Usedbook 11:55, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The situation came to a head and he appears to have given up for now. See also Talk:Islam. silsor 04:37, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

Formatting question

Why does this not make a bolded italic? Also, either break this page into smaller sections, or start adding new stuff to the top so people don't have to load the whole page in order to add something. Please respond on my talk page, this page is not something I can access easily. Lirath Q. Pynnor

''''' does seem to produce bold italics to me. Where have you had problems with it? If you find this page too large to edit, you can use this edit link, which allows you to post a new section. This means you don't have to load the whole page. In fact, you don't even need to come to the page. Angela 02:08, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)

The this you placed there certainly is in bolded italics on my screen? - Marshman 02:35, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Mine too. I'm IE5 on Win98SE. Andrewa 08:40, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Page move

Could some sysop delete Jim Bolger please. James Brendan Bolger needs to be moved there. Thanks. --Wik 07:02, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)

Done. Dysprosia 07:05, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

List of noted autograph signers

I have been debating for months whether to do this list or not. I decided to post my query here based on the limited encyclopedic value I think it would have: Any autograph collector could look up the list and find out if a celebrity who is in town likes signing autographs or not. I have vast experience in this field, I am an autograph collector myself.   

Like I said, the value would be limited, but that value makes me wonder. Antonio Megacrazy Martin

unknow artist 1935-1950 ?

can you help me identify a NYC artists? His water color was given to my wife's grandfather, then to her by her grandmother. The signature seems to read Gaylwing , the picture is of a large pear shaped cop with a brace and bit at a ballpark fence. please help Larry Borkowski larrybhi@bellsouth.net

Anniversaries

Is Sesame Street really more important than the end of World War I?

Anniversaries

Is Sesame Street really more important than the end of World War I?

Adam, if you are referring to Armistice Day, the custom on the Main page is to add anniversaries after the current day. It may seem an idiosyncratic practice, but there is logic behind it; see: Wikipedia:Selected Articles on the Main Page -- Viajero 12:26, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, I just realized that this explanation was in a discussion on the Main Talk page, so I added it to the above-mentioned page. -- Viajero 13:23, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It already is the next day where I am. Adam

Indeed! -- Viajero 13:23, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

...Added. -- Viajero 13:28, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Formatting country templates

Can someone reduce the width of the United Kingdom and Niue tables to be like the rest of them? --Jiang

I narrowed Niue, but UK looks already narrow on my computer. So I wouldn't narrow if what I'd do is working or not: a break code for a long line. --Menchi 09:23, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org

Has anyone seen this? Aplank 17:59, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Article naming (British / United Kingdom House of Commons / Lords / Parliament etc)

I'd like to ask for broader comment on a discussion going on on the British House of Commons page. The debate hinges on whether the page about the House of Commons in London should be called British House of Commons or United Kingdom House of Commons. It seems that everyone agrees that the House of Commons in question is part of the government of the United Kingdom, but some assert that the page should nonetheless be called British because it is often (erroneously) called that. The convention of naming the article by its most common correct term, not necessarily the official one, is cited to justify that. My concern is that Britain is only part of the United Kingdom, and it is factually incorrect and misleading to title the article British. Comment would be appreciated on that page since there are implications for many other articles.2toise 05:13, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

My concern with "UK" is that there is a Scottish one too, right? This is their web page: "The House of Commons is part of the United Kingdom Parliament." Speaking as an American, I think it's silly to call it anything other than plain old "House of Commons" in the article. They were first, it's quite unambigous, etc. There should be another article entitled United Kingdom Parliament, etc. For the article itself, I would recommend House of Commons (United Kingdom). Daniel Quinlan 06:46, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Err, no, not if I'm reading you properly -- there's a Scottish Parliament, not a Scottish House of Commons. I'd stick to "British House of Commons" since British is the common term for things pertaining to the whole UKGB+NI not just the island of Britain. My passport says that I am "Nationality: British Citizen" not "Nationality: United Kingdom Citizen". -- Arwel 12:03, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think that you might be mistaken there, there is, indeed, a Scottish Parliament, which takes some decisions relating to Scotland, and a Welsh Assembly, which makes decisions relating to Wales. Both were established by acts of the House of Commons in Wesminster, which makes decisions relating to the entire United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Britain, is shorthand for Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), while UK includes Northern Ireland. Your passport may say British Citizen, that indicates that you were not born in Northern Ireland.

The United Kingdom Parliament site is at http://www.parliament.uk/ and houses government information about the UK Houses of Commons and Lords. The confusion surrounding this underlies the importance of us getting it correct as an encyclopedia.2toise 17:47, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Both were established by acts of the House of Commons in Wesminster -> actually the were passed by the Queen-in-Parliament, ie passed by the House of Commons and Lords and given the Royal Assent by HM the Queen. The House of Commons cannot pass Acts, merely Bills, which cannot purely by being passed by the House of Commons become Acts. FearÉIREANN 00:04, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Indeed, but as far as I can see, this pedantry has nothing to do with the point in hand.2toise 00:05, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that someone born in Northern Ireland would not have British Citizen in the nationality part of their passports' data page (unless they applied for an Irish passport, which they certainly could do at least before the Good Friday Agreement)? If this is the case, you are simply wrong in your argument. The British Nationality Act 1981 defines British Citizenship, not United Kingdom Citizenship, there is no such thing. "British" is an adjective meaning "of the United Kingdom" - see any reputable dictionary. Your argument is misconceived and I see no point in continuing this argument. -- Arwel 23:55, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

No, citizenship has nothing to do with what we are talking about. The use of the term British to refer to citizens of the UK is fine, but not for government. You will not, I think, find any examples of the UK government describing itself or parts thereof as the British Government. I challenge you to find any cases of this.2toise 00:07, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Then again, the U.S. articles are all named United States House of Representatives or Supreme Court of the United States or similar. (What I said about the references inside the article itself still stands.) Daniel Quinlan 06:57, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

My two cents is that the article should be listed under United Kingdom House of Commons as I think official names should be the default in situations like this. I'd list British House of Commons as a redirect. However, I'd generally use "British" rather than "United Kingdom" as the adjective form in articles; it's the common term in general usage and much less unwieldy.

Agreed. Within the article (so long as it isn't a link) it can be listed however the authors like, although I would still tend to avoid British (unless we actually mean England Wales and Scotland) and just use HoC if it is clear which one we are talking about. We should also avoid reffering to the Netherlands as Holland for the same reasons2toise 17:55, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That is a false argument based on a historical and linguistic misconception. Many states have adjective forms of their name. Some do not. In the case of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, British is universally used and has been continually throughout the variety of states that have existed in that geographic region. In modern geo-political terms, British was used initially from October 1604 to describe the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, which in the previous year had come to share the same sovereign, James VI/I. It owned its origins to James's unsuccessful attempt to create a single name for his separate kingdoms. That name he chose was Great Brittaine. Great Britain because the formal state name following the 1707 Act of Union of Scotland and England. In 1801 a new state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was formed. (James had used the perscriptive, not descriptive term united kingdom as early as 1604.) In 1922, most of Ireland left the kingdom, and the new truncated state was renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Through every state from 1604 to the present day, (ie. England and Scotland separate with a shared king, Great Britain, the UK of GB and I, then the UK of GB and NI) the term British has been used as the adjective form of the state, whatever its nomenclature, in 99% of cases. Queen Anne is recorded as a British Queen, as is Queen Elizabeth II. (Some commonwealth states used to refer to "His Brittanic Majesty") Every prime minister without exception has been known when defined by state mostly as British prime minister, with the alternative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom used largely only in formal legal documentation (eg, treaties). The monarchy since James VI/I has been regularly called the British monarchy, the House of Commons the British House of Commons. The media is referred to as the British media. Sports stars are referred to British athletes/footballers/ etc. David Beckham is called a British football player, except when seen in terms of international soccer when he described as English.

A linguistic distinction exists between British/Britain, which is used to refer to the entire kingdom, and Great British/Great Britain, which is used to refer to the island that contains England, Scotland and Wales, and is used as such in the name of he UK, ie, the United Kingdom of Great Britain (the island) and Northern Ireland (a territory off the island of GB). To use Great British PM would be wrong as there is no PM in the Island of GB, not is there a queen of GB. But using British as the adjective form of United Kingdom is standard, not least because it allows for a degree of continuity between the often changing names by which the British state was known since the separate states on Great Britain were first constitutionally linked ago. United Kingdom is also problematical given that there have in fact been 2 UKs, one from 1800 to 1922, one from 1927 to the present (and confusion between 1922 and 1927). Following the flawed logic of 2toise, one could not have a list of British Prime Ministers, for example, but three lists; GB (up to 1800), UK of GB+I (1801-1920s), UK of GB + NI (1920s - present), no list of British monarchs, but 3 lists, no lists of famous British people, but three lists, etc etc. And so one would have articles called

• [[List of Prime Ministers of the Kingdom of Great Britain]],
• [[List of Prime Minsters of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland]],
• [[List of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland]].

Oh and

• [[House of Commons of the Kingdom of Great Britain]],
• [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland]],
• [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland]], etc.

Logically if one was to follow the policy of accurate absolutism 2toise seems to want, you would have to rewrite much of wikipedia - one could not talk about Australia before 1900 as there were six states, not one. Italy could not be used before Italian unification in the 1870s, Germany would be limited to after the creation of the German Empire. And of course, President of the United States would also have to go, as to use the correct state nomenclature, every link would have to be President of the United States of America.

Wikipedia police is clear - according to our naming conventions and Manual of Style,

• Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things. (NC)

• Use the form most familiar to English speakers: see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). (MoS)

According to google searches;

• British monarchy 30,000 versus United Kingdom monarchy 48
• British Prime Minister 182,000 versus United Kingdom Prime Minister 817
• British House of Commons 11,000 versus United Kingdom House of Commons 737
• British Football 11,000 versus United Kingdom Football 774
• British sport 10,500 versus United Kingdom sport 511
• British politics 54,500 versus United Kingdom politics 792
• British music 69,300 versus United Kingdom music 1,630
• British instiutions 6710 versus United Kingdom institutions 281
• British government 496,000 versus United Kingdom government 24,300
• British current affairs 191 versus United Kingdom current affairs 3.
• British media 34,700 versus United Kingdom media 1,050.

All the evidence shows that Britain is

1. The standard use of reference when referring to the UK in adjective form
2. used by 99% of people in up to 99% of cases;
3. is universally recognised and recognisable, as the google search shows;
4. allows for continuity through the various state names used for 399 years;
5. is accurate. It clearly refers to the UK in adjective form. The island's name is Great Britain, not Britain, as the name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland shows unambiguously. In that way it has no parallel with Holland whatsoever, which is not the adjective form of The Netherlands at all;
6. was the form of language overwhelmingly the last time the issue was discussed.

United Kingdom is

1. rarely used in adjective form (eg, people say British prime minister, British queen, British House of Commons, British football, British tabloids, etc., not United Kingdom prime minister, United Kingdom queen, United Kingdom House of Commons, United Kingdom football, United Kingdom tabloids, etc, as the google search shows in every single case)
2. is ambiguous as it could refer to either of the two UKs;
3. is period specific and so cannot be used to describe the holders of offices before 1800;
4. is clumsy in language;
5. is not the most common form of terminology used, meaning that its usage would run contrary to the 'common name' and 'form most familiar to English speakers' rules that tens of thousands of articles have been drafted using;
6. if followed, would require major change in large numbers of articles that have followed the the 'common name' and 'form most familiar to English speakers' rules to the letter;
7. was rejected as an option when previously the issue was discussed for many reasons, including those above.

One final point: Northern Ireland Unionists insist that they are British, not Great British, because as they openly admit they couldn't be the latter as they don't live in Great Britain (the island), but in Britain (the state), formally known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So clearly using British as the adjective form of UK is the solution that follows general usage, international usage and wikipedia's own rules. Using United Kingdom in adjective form involves ignoring general usage, accepted usage worldwide and breaking wikipedia's own rules on the matter.FearÉIREANN 22:35, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

1. British is not 'universally used'. It is often (erronenously) used in a casual context, rarely in a discussion of constitutional or political issues. It is clumsy to have sentences like In the United Kingdom, Parliament consists of the British House of Commons etc. (from Parliament). The author is careful to point out that they are talking about the UK, but have to link to the British House of Commons, even though they know the term is misleading.

2. I am not suggesting that we need separate pages for all of the historical cases. I am suggesting using the current correct name, and discussing the historical precursors on that page, as we do with most successor states.

3. You are a little misleading in your statistics all the evidence shows 99% etc? That's simply not true.

4. You might want to take a look at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) we need to temper common usage when the commonly used term is unreasonably misleading. Wikipedia does not condem authors to parrot common errors.

5. The UK Parliament (of which the HoC is part, describes itself on the site http://www.parliament.uk/. That seems pretty definative, there is no mention of it being the British Parliament.

6 The CIA World Factbook: conventional long form: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland conventional short form: United Kingdom abbreviation: UK

I don't understand why you seem so committed to perpetuating a common misconception.2toise 22:58, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It is a misconception to equate Britain and United Kingdom. It is NOT a misconception to use British to mean of the United Kingdom - it is the accepted adjective. No adjective form of United Kingdom has been successfully coined, and although it's sometimes used unmodified as an adjective this is FAR from being common usage. --Morven 23:15, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Morven is absolutely correct. As to British not being "universally used" in adjective form it is a fact that it is. As to the British House of Commons link, that should have been piped. As to the current correct name argument, OK, so you want to rename the British House of Commons article as United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland House of Commons? That is what your argument requires. United Kingdom is not the correct name but a generalised shortened version, as you will see if you look at treaties signed in the state's name. So if you want accuracy, it has to be that! As to the we need to temper common usage when the commonly used term is unreasonably misleading argument that is completely irrelevant. British is not "unreasonably misleading". It has been used as the adjective version of various British states for 399 years. Calling The Netherlands "Holland" is misleading. Calling France "the Kingdom of France" would be misleading. Calling Northern Ireland "Ulster" is misleading. Using the standard adjective form of a name, used worldwide by billions of people, including the British (BTW what do you suggest calling the British then? United Kingdomish?) is common sense and follows wikipedia's rules on name use to the letter and the spirit. Your suggestion does neither. As to the British Parliamentary website, that is completely irrelevant, and I'm surprised you use it. Of course they use the most formal title. All official sites do that. That is not evidence of anything. Why does Tony Blair have international press releases issued that call him the "British Prime Minister" if the "British" bit was so wrong. I simply cannot understand your determination to push an illogical, factually inaccurate agenda that breaks wikipedia's own rules to produce article titles that will be no more accurate, just less accessible and less likely to show up in google searches, given that most of the planet will use British in searches, whether you want them to or not. FearÉIREANN 23:20, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Clearly, the correct approach according to Wikipedia precedent with American which is similarly problematic for a few editors (although because it may be too inclusive, not because it may be too exclusive) is to clarify every single usage of "British" and replace with "UK citizen" or "of the UK" since it can be confusing. UKian would be the best option if only people would use that term instead of British. We should also create a new page named Alternate words for British and list any alternative words that have been constructed to raise awareness of the issue and it can be linked from various possibly offensively-titled articles where "British" has to be retained for some pathetic reason. Basically, a few people might find it offensive, so it doesn't matter what common usage dictates. Daniel Quinlan 23:35, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Not necessary, we are not talking about citizenship, British is fine for that, since there is no confusion. The name of the government and parts thereof is the only thing that needs to be corrected.2toise 23:59, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

But this would also be wrong. There is no such thing as United Kingdom Citizenship, there is British Citizenship - see the British Nationality Act 1981, or the article on British Nationality Law. 2toise is, quite simply, flogging a dead horse; he is just plain wrong in his arguments. -- Arwel 23:45, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm sorry, you are insisting on caracaturing my argument. United Kingdom is the correct short form of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Britain is simply not. Arguments about "British citizen" etc are irrelevant, since, as you point out confusion does not arrise in those cases. In terms of which parts of the UK different parts of government have authority over confusion does arise, and the use of British is unreasonably misleading. :Please find any reference in official UK government material to "British House of Commons", "British Parliament", "British Government". I think you won't find it, because that usage is wrong and misleading in that context (in other contexts, as you correctly point out, it is neither misleading or incorrect).2toise 23:57, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

*sigh* You are ignoring every single point everyone else makes and continually repeating factual inaccuracies as if if you say them often enough they might just become true. How many times does it have to be repeated? British is the adjective version of United Kingdom, not the name. BTW if British was such nonsense, why would Parliament enact a law called the British Nationality Act? Not that you'll answer the point of course. Your argument is getting increasingly silly and threadbare. FearÉIREANN 00:12, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I will concede this point if anyone can find a single official usage of British Parliament, British House of Commons etc by the UK Government. I doubt that you will respond to this reasonable request.

I will answer your point that British is a perfectly acceptable adjective in terms of citizenship. Indeed, as you point out, it is used officially. I don't disagree with you. I disagree that you will find any official usage in terms of discribing the government itself.2toise 00:17, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

(Caught in 4 edit conflicts, but I'll post anyway) Oh for crying out loud! How many times do we have to tell you that United Kingdom (whether the short form or the long) is a noun and British is an adjective one of whose commonest meanings is "pertaining to the United Kingdom"? (In any context, not just citizenship) I absolutely refuse to continue this pointless argument until you go away and read a bloody dictionary!!! -- Arwel 00:25, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Getting shrill won't help.2toise 00:27, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Re references from the UK Government to itself as the "British Government" - here is one particularly notorious example (not notorious for use of the word "British", I hasten to add). It's quite common, I think. --Camembert

I beg your pardon - I mean in the form British House of Commons, or British Parliament, which is what we are talking about.2toise 00:27, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Article naming (British / United Kingdom House of Commons / Lords / Parliament etc)

See Talk:Alternate words for British.

Image copyright

When searching for public domain images, I often find the note: "All images on this page are believed to be public domain." Would you consider such a note as sufficient to include the images in Wikipedia, or should I regard the word "believed" as a warning not to touch these images? Example: [1]. -- Baldhur 08:17, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think that note means: "I like the image, so I took it from another website without checking or asking the owner. If you are his or her lawyer, please don't suit me. I mean, please!!! I am ignorant, I said "I believe", didn't I? I didn't say "I know"!"

I wouldn't use them, I don't know about others. --Menchi 08:43, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think you need to go on an image by image (and site by site) basis. A lot of sites just copy images from anywhere without regard for copyright. Some sites are better than others and you can still ask the site what criteria they use for images. There are some initial/skeleton guidelines on Wikipedia:Copyright. Daniel Quinlan 08:51, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your answers, Menchi and Daniel!! I did not use these images up to now, and I won't do in the future. -- Baldhur 14:29, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Image copyright

wikipedia:image use policy/copyright

When searching for public domain images, I often find the note: "All images on this page are believed to be public domain." Would you consider such a note as sufficient to include the images in Wikipedia, or should I regard the word "believed" as a warning not to touch these images? Example: [2]. -- Baldhur 08:17, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think that note means: "I like the image, so I took it from another website without checking or asking the owner. If you are his or her lawyer, please don't suit me. I mean, please!!! I am ignorant, I said "I believe", didn't I? I didn't say "I know"!"

I wouldn't use them, I don't know about others. --Menchi 08:43, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think you need to go on an image by image (and site by site) basis. A lot of sites just copy images from anywhere without regard for copyright. Some sites are better than others and you can still ask the site what criteria they use for images. There are some initial/skeleton guidelines on Wikipedia:Copyright. Daniel Quinlan 08:51, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your answers, Menchi and Daniel!! I did not use these images up to now, and I won't do in the future. -- Baldhur 14:29, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Whatever you decide to do, say what you did on the wikipedia:image description page. Personally, I would have no real qualms about using such images, provided I made the uncertainties explicit in the image description page, unless I had some reason to doubt that they were in fact public domain. Martin 18:20, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Comma usage

Without mentioning names, does anyone agree or disagree that these sentences are incorrect grammar and punctuation?

• "The British could be removed from the sentence, and it would remain accurate."
• "The Germans invested more heavily, in the development of science and pure research, than the British."
• "The Germans invested more heavily, in the development of science."
• "The Germans invested more heavily, than the British, in the development of science and pure research."

I contend all four are only made correct by removing each and every comma. Daniel Quinlan 02:03, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC) (Oops, I should add that the third sentence is missing a "than something", so it is doubly ungrammatical. Daniel Quinlan 02:08, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC))

• I, concur. Poor Yorick 02:05, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Agreed, especially the last three sentences. Btw, I think this is better at Wikipedia:Reference desk. --Menchi 02:07, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree for the last three. The first one is not incorrect, I believe, since the two parts of the sentence are independent clauses connected by a ", and". However, when one of the two independent clauses is short, the comma does not have to be included. So, all four would be correct without the commas. The first one is the only one that could pass as correct with the commas. -- Minesweeper 03:52, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think the commas due to dividing the the sentences especially the second and fourth into seperate logical parts are useful.

I think the commas, due to dividing the the sentences, especially the second and fourth, into seperate logical parts, are useful.

The commas in the first and third seem a bit redundant, however. Instead of commas, maybe a different form of punctuation, including brackets, labels, goto commands, and things like that, would be more consise. Κσυπ Cyp 09:13, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree they all should be removed. But I am sympathetic with the author as I tend to overuse commas as well. Fernkes 13:46, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC)

The first one is OK. The other three should not have any commas in them. BTW, the third sentence could be OK even in the grammatical sense, if the overall text is: "The British invested heavily in .... . The Germans invested more heavily, in the development of science." At18 20:31, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Recent Changes

I've (sigh) grown used to Wikipedia timing out just when I've reached the peak of boredom, but now I'm finding every page I try to go to is fine except Recent changes. Is that sort of situation common? The text box here is also responding quite slowly; SimpleText isn't. I'm not demanding someone fix this, I'm just trying to see if there's an explanation. --Calieber 20:29, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

The sluggishness is probably just length -- now that I'm just editing in this section rather than the whole page it's fine. --Calieber 20:31, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

The reason recent changes was not accessible while some other pages were is because the en server was down whilst en2 was still up, owing to Apache being stuck in some weird state where it wouldn't restart cleanly apparently. It should be working now that Brion's restarted Apache. Angela 22:09, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

Again, I didn't mean to come off like I was complaining, I understand computers sometimes go down; I guess I was just trying to get a glimpse of the underlying structure as displayed by this particular issue. I wqas merely motivated by curiosity (else I'd probably have gone to Bug reports. --Charles L. 02:17, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC)

Curiosity. The seed of Wikipedia! I think it is, as you mentioned, because the length of the page. RecentChanges is quite large, compared to most articles. It's been like that -- slow -- for a long time now. But then once it finishes loading, you get all sorts of surprises and weird articles to read and to copyedit. Like waiting for a gift to be unwrapped. Except there's no Christmas tree and blinking lightbulbs. --Menchi 02:25, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Can't find "Post a Comment"

I must be stupid, but I can't seem to find the "Post a comment" feature on talk pages. All I see are the usual "Main Page|Recent changes|Edit this page|..." links in the header, as well as "Edit this page|View article|..." links in the footer, as well as the sidebar links. "Edit this page" never shows me a "Subject/headline" box, just the text area, Summary box, "Minor edit" and "Watch this page" checkboxes, and Save and Preview buttons. What am I doing wrong? Tjunier 12:48, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Nothing. You are probably using a non-default skin. Certainly the blue and yellow skin I use doesn't have the "Post a comment" button. Pete 12:51, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ok I set my skin to "Standard" and I'll see what happens. Thanks anyway. Tjunier 13:38, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

In the Standard skin it's in the navagation page on the left of the screen just under Edit this page. Bmills 12:53, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Well one weird thing (IMHO) is that the navigation page seems to randomly disappear (e.g. when I log in), only to reappear in some mysterious circumstances. Thanks anyway. Tjunier 13:38, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

- I had something like this the other day. I went playing with my preferences and eventually went back to set Standard as the skin, but found I had no navagation pane. I went back to Preferences and found that the skin had reverted. It took three or four attempts before it would stick with Standard, but when it did the pane was there alright. Bmills 13:42, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Well finally it was a matter of preferences (unfortunately I had some trouble just finding the prefs page, since the link wasn't there :-). Now everything seems to be working. Thanks for your time! Tjunier 13:40, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

'pointlessly detailed' award

I just stumbled on the infinitely tedious collection of articles about Gundam, an anime series. Somebody is creating detailed, albeit not very coherent, plot synopses about every single series: It could swamp the server all by itself ... (Not that I think anything can be done about it, since editing them all into coherence would be an inhuman task. I just wanted to spout.) -- DavidWBrooks 01:27, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I dunno. It's no more pointlessly detailed than the interminable stuff we have about Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings etc. While a bunch of the articles aren't wikied (yet), a bunch are. I suspect untold legions of gundammers will spring from the wiki and polish those to the same degree. -- Finlay McWalter 01:56, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Gundam is more accurately a series of series, and is often tedious and incoherent itself. There's a lot of info (I think there are 14 series or so... most a season long, some longer), but hardly server-swamping. I could list a lot of TV series, books, etc, with much more detailed and tedious descriptions. Just ignore it unless you're in a position to improve it. -- Jake 02:01, 2003 Nov 7 (UTC)

One person's pointlessly detailed is another person's heaven. m:Wiki is not paper memory is cheap, so there is no reason for Wikipedia not go into detail about everything and have the limits of existing encyclopedias: ChrisG 02:26, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm prepared to tolerate such indulgence, mainly because achieving consensus for deletion is impossible. But what really annoys me is when they branch the article out into dozens of short subpages. Some hard-working wikipedian usually comes along and adds context to each article "in the Gundam Anime series...", but the practice still pollutes the namespace and makes it hard for fans to gather significant amounts information. Ruthless merging is often necessary. If you ever see one of these articles with all the characters, all the concepts and all the places linked to as-yet non-existent articles, defuse the timebomb and remove the links before it is too late. -- Tim Starling 08:46, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

See also: wikipedia:check your fiction and m:Kill the Stub Pages

press image of wikipedia

Hi, how can I get in touch with the appropriate person for image rights and clearance. We're interested in featuring the wikipedia story in a book and international touring exhbition - in the section devoted to info/software. Please advise asap. Thank you!

Jennifer
416-260-5777 x234
leonard@brucemaudesign.com

Jim Wales is the man in charge, and is reachable directly at jwales@bomis.com. Being an Open Content project, permission tends to be very easy to get. -- Jake 02:01, 2003 Nov 7 (UTC)

Permission to reproduce is easy, living with the ensuing GFDL conditions is harder. Fuzheado

Jimbo doesn't own the articles, the individual contributors do. Either you stay within the license limitations, or you obtain permission from everyone who has contributed to the article in question. -- Tim Starling 05:05, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not a lawyer of course, but I think you will find that the authors don't own the articles. Once they have posted them to Wikipedia then Wikipedia owns them and they are released under GFDL. You may find that even the author (whoever that is in an article more than a few edits old) can't reproduce under another form of copyright. Having said that, unless the questioner wants to reproduce most of Wikipedia they should be able to quote chunks of it without permission under 'fair use' law, just a like a reviewer can quote passages of a book. DJ Clayworth 15:32, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If I were entitled to royalties on everything I've written -- even just professionally -- I wouldn't be renting in Harlem. --Calieber 20:29, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

Also NAL, but please note that posters do not assign copyright to Wikipedia (rather, the Wikimedia Foundation), and they may reproduce their own contributions under other licenses if they like (but most articles contain material contributed by several or many different people). Wikimedia owns only the contributions of Jimbo Wales and his employees who have worked on Wikipedia. Fair use of course may apply. --Brion 02:20, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Images on UseModWikipedias

Quite some time ago I stumbled upon images uploaded by User:Renato Caniatti, when I noticed that all of them are orphans here. Later I found that those images aren't real orphans, but are used in the italian wikipedia included with html, not the image links I know here. I asked Renato about it, and today he answered that it is not possible to upload images on the italian wikipedia, and thus he uses the english one for storage. As I had no interaction with the old software - is that true? I don't think that the way he includes images to it: is a good one as it will break when someone checks the orphan images here, or once the policy of not using external images in wikicode is enforced, but what is the better way? Wait with images till it: gets converted to MediaWiki? andy 21:49, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes it is true. I do the same with Simple - just link to photos that exist here. I'm aware they might break but I don't think it's a huge issue as they will be replaced once we get the new software and a broken image link is hardly the end of the world. Angela 21:53, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Is it possible to rename an article I created?

Bmills 12:14, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

yes, use the Move this page command on the left of the screen. Only works if name is not already in use. BTW, if you add User:Bmills\ as a prefix to the filename, it is copied to your private namespace. Useful for drafts, etc. To copy it back to the main article space, just delete it using Move.-- Viajero 12:21, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes: See wikipedia:move.

I need help in the Catalan version

We have lots of vandalism from Spanish nacionalists and others. We need ban them, but how? I have the password that let me to delete pages. ¿Is the same that let ban de people? Have I to request another password or I have to visit an other page with the same password? Thanks. Llull 10:12, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Llull, please see UseMod:AdminFeatures for documentation on the admin system on the old wikis. --Brion 21:39, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Fixing broken links with redirects

Brion was kind enough to prepare me some listings of articles and broken links and I wrote a program to find broken links that appear to be related to an already existing article. It's not 100% accurate and there are some conflicts, so humans are needed to figure out what's valid and what's not. I found some 1678 articles that could be linked from 2073 different broken links. When done with this list, I believe a good 500 broken links will be turned into valid and useful redirects. (Ha, everyone who said I was a rabid deletionist is proven wrong!)

Right now, the list is just based on middle names which I have noticed to be a frequent cause of broken links. However, I'll probably write some more complicated programs to find other near-matches if this turns out well.

Anyway, I could use some help. The lists (it's broken into two sub-pages now) is located at User:Daniel Quinlan/redirects. Please follow the convention for noting when a broken link cannot be connected to an article (other than that, the page shouldn't really need to be edited aside from questions, notes, etc.) and have fun. I've already done about 70 or so, but need to sleep now. Daniel Quinlan 06:46, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Cool idea. I've already finished the Q's! (OK, there was only one, but still...) Jimbreed 14:09, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Update: there are even more lists of broken links now. Daniel Quinlan 07:50, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)

Strange behaviour of link -- bug?

Could someone help me there? I feel really puzzled what is going on. Steps to reproduce:

• Go to List of political parties in Poland
• Find string Unia Wolności (in section alphabetical list of parties)
• Click this link
• Observe that edit page is opening, even though this page contains properly done redirect. <-- Strange behaviour

What went wrong there? Przepla 23:34, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's not a legal link; use a plain "s" in links on this wiki. This wiki, and most of the western european language ones too, are encoded in ISO 8859-1. Characters not in that range won't work in titles here. --Brion 03:09, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

VfD vs Cleanup

Having been contributing to Wikipedia:Cleanup for a bit more than a week, I have come to value it. Much to my amazement, I have seen a few miserable-looking stubs (which I would have voted to delete on VfD) blossom into real articles, and it has given me renewed appreciation of the way WP works. Listing pages on Cleanup gives newbies a chance to improve stubby articles they've submitted, without fear of the axe, as well as stimulating others to help out.

However, I am slightly disappointed to see that several articles are now listed in both Cleanup and VfD, meaning the two pages are working to some degree at cross-purposes. There also seems to be more activity at VfD, but that is not surprising since it has been around a lot longer, and, obviously, it is much easier to simply vote on an article than actually roll up one's sleeves and improve it.

Is there anyway we could improve the coordination between the two pages? I think it would be desirable if all questionable articles were first parked on Cleanup for a week or two, and if they don't improve only then moved to VfD for a potential coup de grâce. This would probably require some kind of date stamping on Cleanup, which it doesn't as yet have.

Anway, I hope more people lend a hand at Cleanup; there is lots to do. -- Viajero 14:43, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Please don't take offence, but I don't understand why, if you percieve lots to do, you don't just get on and do some of it rather than writing about it at Cleanup and here? Surely that is the point of a Wiki system? Time spent voting and "coordinating" is time not spent improving articles. GrahamN 20:34, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps because this is a collaborative project and this is a way of encouraging others to collaborate? Angela

These "others" of whom you speak. Who are they? Why are they here, if not to participate? GrahamN 23:37, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Coordination helps groups of people work more efficiently. -- Tim Starling 23:46, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

What I met by coordination was not increasing the bureaucracy here but simply arranging things so articles aren't listed on both pages simultaneously. Doesn't this seem like a good idea? -- Viajero 10:00, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Personally I think that is a logical next step, now that Cleanup is mostly starting to lose its "babylegs" and starting to stride with more confidence. Of course the culture of Cleanup and its format and such should be continually improved too. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 10:14, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)

I think Cleanup is an excellent step, and is already saving us time and users, but that's just a guess really. See my nightmare story in the following entry "Wikipedia punishes...". Andrewa 16:01, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Mythology Stubs

I have noticed that there are a lot of one-sentence stubs for mythological figures, especially non-Greek myths (but even then there are a lot). Shouldn't they be merged into the respective mythology articles? Limu, for example. Limu is listed on Polynesian mythology, but it seems to me that it would make more sense to write about him on the mythology page. Adam Bishop 07:20, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't think so because, eventually, these will be expanded. Nikola 07:51, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

And if you merged them people would be less likely to think to expand them. Stubs are a Good Thing. CGS 09:41, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC).

What if there is just nothing more to add to them? I tried to find more for Limu before posting it here, but all I can find is that he is a god of the dead. I guess that is probably because every other website has copied from Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Mythica, which both only have the one line. I know stubs are good, but what if they don't have the possibility of being expanded? Adam Bishop 16:56, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I ran into a similar problem with characters in the Bible, especially but not only from the Old Testament. Many of them will never be more than stubs IMO, we just don't know any more than two or three sentences about them. So, I'm now thinking seriously of creating some articles along the lines of Minor characters in the book of Judges (and another for Samuel, probably put Kings and Chronicles together as there's so much overlap, similarly Ezra and Nehemiah). I'd then make the names themselves redirects to these, or disambiguation pages where necessary. This is a similar approach to what is already recommended for fictional characters (I'm not suggesting that these are or are not fictional characters, that would be POV either way, just that the same format seems likely to work). Other opinions very welcome, it's very early days in my thinking on this.

If we do find more material on any of these later, then nothing is lost, they can and should become an article then.

Anyway, a similar approach would be a Minor characters in Greek mythology article. Andrewa 20:08, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

There surely is much more to say about a god of any culture, it's just that the information isn't online. Nikola 08:32, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

BTW there are more than 1100 of those stubs. -- User:Docu

"See also:" formatting

Michael Shields just made me aware of the fact there are two different styles advised for formatting the "See also:" section. In Wikipedia:Manual of Style, a simple, unitalicised version is 'declared' the standard. While Wikipedia:Boilerplate text advises to italicise "See also:". We should definately have one standard. What are your preferrences? Why? What about bullet lists? (I don't like them but quite a few people use them) --snoyes 22:26, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Agree, we should probably standardize this. I like the bullets, both in lists and elsewhere. My preference for "see also;" is one of these:

• See also: plants

• See also: plants

but I'm easy - Marshman 02:31, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

An example of what I meant when I said bullet list can be seen on Chinese written language. Every article in the "See also" list is a bullet point. --snoyes 03:34, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If there's only one or two items in see-alsos, there's no point to list-fy them. It looks ugly. --Menchi 03:48, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't see any reason for it to be different than the "External links" section, which has a subheading and a bullet list. That is what the manual of style already recomments for multi-section articles, but it says the section should be called "Related topics" instead of "See also". I'd probably suggest deprecating inline "See also" paragraphs in favor of using a "Related topics" section for all articles. --Michael Shields 05:25, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

What do other encyclopedias do? If you'll notice, most of them have different styles of "See Also/Related topics" formats depending on the importance and length of articles. For example, in the World Book Encyclopedia, major articles have a full-blown Related Articles section with articles listed under appropriate subsections. In minor articles, related topics are listed inline in a separate paragraph as in "See also ..." --seav 05:32, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)

I would like to note that the style exemplified on Chinese written language is the most consistent one, with "external links", "references" and "see also" in similar formats. Also, it offers enough structure for the reader who wishes to look up something quickly. Whether it is called "related topics" or "see also" does not make much difference IMO, but it might be desirable to be keep this consistent throughout Wikipedia. Kosebamse 07:41, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I asked this question a while back here (can't find where it ended up now). Since then I have decided to use bullet lists on a separate section for See also to make stand out and uniform. I think it should be a separate section because it "moves" readers to a different page. Therefore you need the bullet list to make it look cleaner. Also, it should probably be near the end (the only thing I could see after it would be an External links section). Dori 07:58, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)

Personally, I prefer this:

See also: plant, tree

for short lists. For sections that have numerous entries (i.e. over four or five entries), I prefer the seperate section with a list afterwards. But I really don't like the latter "secion-ified" version—it's ugly and obstrusive. The only reason I use it is because with numerous entries, the former version looks worse. But I agree that the "see also" section—whatever the format—should appear directly before the External links section. If a See also item pertains to only one section of a very long article, however, it can appear at the end of that section. Just my $.02... :^) —Frecklefoot 17:36, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I confess I've personally slid towards using the sub-heading and bullet-points format even for just one entry on the list. My thinking has been that the format is more encouraging for others to add to the list, and is easier for the reader to grasp visually. But that is just me; I'm not bothered if someone reverts them. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick

I think it depends upon the number and the emphasis needed for the "See also's". My suggested style(s) (above) would be for one to several links. If the links are pretty significant and there are many of them (often the links are to rather dubious connections), then a bulleted list seems appropriate and most helpful to the user. Order at the bottom (IMHO) should be "See Also", External Links", "References" - Marshman 19:18, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Actually I would do References, See also, External links because the references are usually about the content (text) above and have nothing to do with the see also and external links (if you are including an external link about the references, it would probably go in the references section). That's what I've been doing anyway. Dori 23:35, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

New Messages Revisited

Is there a way to get rid of the "you've new messages"? I've already visited my talk page, and it still persists. Poor Yorick

I had the pb today, just re-edit your talk page. Ant

Thanks!Poor Yorick

Help me name this article idea

I want to make an article that lists songs that tribute other musicians by referencing those musicians. For example:

• "All the Young Dudes" says "Oh man I need TV when I got T Rex" and "My brother's back at home with his Beatles and his Stones"
• "Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes" says "Old Jerry Lee and Charlie And old Go Cat Go still echoes through the years"
• "Sir Duke" says "there’s basie, miller, satchmo and the king of all sir duke; and with a voice like ella’s ringing out there’s no way the band can lose"

But what I need is a solid name for the article...something like List of songs that tribute other musicians by referencing those musicians....but something that will leave no doubt what it is about while not be overly complicated.

thanks Kingturtle 01:20, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hm. List of songs containing overt reference to real musicians might do if you are satisfied with categorising into tributes and non-tributes within the article itself. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 01:38, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)

Cross-referenced songs? --Menchi 02:14, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)

List of songs that contain musician's names seems the simplest.

Adrian Pingstone 09:30, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Remember, verbing wierds language: tribute is a noun. It should be List of songs that pay tribute to other musicians. MK 21:43 (EST) 11 November 2003

Warnings

I was wondering if there was a standard adult warning for article links? should editors just put in "Warning, contains adult material" after the link? and what about offensive content (which some may view adultcontent as)? any feed back would be appreciated .. reddi

I'm not aware of any standard text for such warnings. You may want to add some at Wikipedia:Boilerplate text. Angela

"Offensive" is impossibly POV. CGS 01:31, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC).

There has been an excessive amount of discussion on this point at Wikipedia talk:Content disclaimer. Read and be damned. Martin 02:23, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The solution is not just a disclaimer, but a G-rated version IMO, probably with its own URL space. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia approval mechanism for more on this. Andrewa 19:33, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Writing on subjects close to your heart

Hey folks, I just wanted to ask for the community's help on this. I'm intimately involved with the Diebold issue, as a co-plaintiff in the EFF's lawsuit, and a founding member of the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons which was one of the first student pages to host the memos. I'd like to expand the Diebold article to reflect the recent events that my friends and I have been involved in, and I'd like to fill out the "wishful thinking" link to an SCDC article that I found on that page. However, I want to be careful about stepping over the line of writing about myself and rehashing the Boyer controversy. Could people look at the sources and tell me whether either of these actions would be a good idea? I've read Wikipedia:Auto-biography, and I think the first case falls under the acceptable category of "writing on subjects close to your heart", and I think that filling in the empty link to an SCDC article may be borderline acceptable as I found the link already in existence, but I would like some feedback. --Nelson 04:45, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It sounds like you are very involved, well beyond it being something close to your heart — I mean, you're a co-plaintiff. I would personally recommend not adding any first-person information and stick to just making simple corrections (that do not rely on first-person information) to obvious mistakes. If you want to add something more, mention it on the talk page and let someone else do the work. Daniel Quinlan 05:25, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC)

Hm, it is indeed true that I am super-close to the issue, and that suggesting changes on the talk page may be the best way to go. However, if you look at Wikipedia:Auto-biography, the example they give for something "close to your heart" and acceptable is an athlete or official actually involved in the Olympic Games writing about them. At what point does it cross the line from being close to your heart to being actually about you? The athletes and officials sound pretty close to the Games. It would seem to me to be the difference between an event that involves you and an event that IS you. So, maybe it might be OK to write about a march on Washingon that you helped organize, but not all about how your latest scientific discovery saves the world. Or am I missing the point? What is the reason for the Auto-biography policy again? --Nelson 07:55, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm quite certain that if you happen to have made the "latest scientific discovery saves the world", there'll be tons -- and I mean tons -- of Wikipedians rushing to describe that discovery for you. Some of the most exciting news have became articles that way, as I've found thru Current events. Auto-biographies and the likes easily lead to POV, no matter now hard you try not to. Hey, it's brain. We don't know why it works that way! (I mean, I don't.) --Menchi 08:02, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

N.B. But I agree with Daniel's advice. Talk about it on the Talk page (mm.. the pun), and somebody who knows enough about the matter can go on and do something with it. Good method indeed. --Menchi 08:05, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I couldn't write neutrally about myself (well, I guess it would be neutral, since all praise of me really is objective and all criticisms of me really are invalid). --Charles A. L. 18:35, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Also, as a co-plaintiff, Wikipedia policies aside, you might want to think carefully before you comment on the issue. IANAL though. -- Pakaran 05:29, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Good point. It seems that simple statements of fact should not be an issue, but thank you for reminding me to think about that. --Nelson 07:55, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

To me the Diebold article seems POV, but I can't put my finger on why. Have you considered listing it in Peer review? Andrewa 08:54, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hm, now that you mention it, it does seem POV, probably because all of the links at the bottom are to websites and news stories that talk about the recent scandal, and all of the comments are like, "critics say that Diebold sucks". There is also no information about their ATMs and other things that they make. On the other hand, the scandal is why Diebold is in the news, and the primary reason why people care about the company. Note that there is no article on Avante or any of Diebold's other competitors. This is of course not an argument for deleting the info on the controversy, I actually wanted to add more information on the latest developments (Wikipedia is not paper), but it is an argument for writing a less narrowly-focused article. --Nelson 05:43, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Second skin titles

How should I deal with these two articles: Second Skin && Second skin, the content are different, but the titles are alike! :O --FallingInLoveWithPitoc 03:01, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's fine, since both link to each other, but you may want to put some sort of See also thing on Second skin up the top of Second skin. Dysprosia 03:03, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Parallels exist, e.g., Quantum Leap & Quantum leap. Dysprosia is probably referring to the disambiguation block at the bottom of that page, which can redirect the reader if they get to the wrong page. --Menchi 03:05, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

No, I'm thinking of something along the lines of John Neumann and John von Neumann :) Maybe try this? Dysprosia 03:09, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Do I need to creat a disambiguation page? I mean the movie Second Skin can be written like Second skin too! :O --FallingInLoveWithPitoc 03:08, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

A block is enough. It's impossible tell if one should create [Second Skin (disambiguation)] or [Second skin (disambiguation)] anyway. --Menchi 03:13, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

ancient wiki history question

I have an ancient wiki history question. What does it mean when the Conversion script is listed as the first author of a page? Was the actual attribution to the original author lost forever? Maximus Rex 05:48, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The "conversion script" was the script which converted Wikipedia from usemod format to the current phase III format. This conversion occurred in Februrary 2002. Originally, no history could be seen from before the conversion occurred -- every article which existed before phase III appeared to have been started by the conversion script. Brion has now managed to extract most history from usemod and has added it to the database. However, the conversion script entries in history remained, in most cases appearing to perform whatever was the last edit prior to the conversion. See also Wikipedia:Usemod article histories. -- Tim Starling 06:09, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

List of noted autograph signers

I have been debating for months within myself whether to do this list or not. I decided to post my query here based on the limited encyclopedic value I think it would have: Any autograph collector could look up the list and find out if a celebrity who is in town likes signing autographs or not. I have vast experience in this field, I am an autograph collector myself.

Like I said, the value would be limited, but that value makes me wonder. Antonio Megacrazy Martin

There are quite a few people who are weary of lists of dubious value. I say only go for it if you can tie it with the article of broader scope about autographs in general. Perhaps list of autographs (images) might be more "worthy"Dori 05:50, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

I think it would be hard to confirm the correctness of additions or deletions; if a celebrity doesn't give an autograph to some annoying person, does that mean the disappointed seeker should then run to WP and delete the celebrity's name from this list? If you can come up with criteria that other editors can use, then the list makes sense. In the meantime, you could always create the list as one of your user subpages and "test-drive" it for a while, see how it works to maintain. Stan 07:06, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Sounds pretty dubious to me and also rather POV. Isn't this the sort of thing that really belongs in a autograph signer enthusiast web site or something. Daniel Quinlan 08:49, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

It might be of interest if you recorded idiosyncracies. For example, Terry Pratchett has a particular style for each book (or at least he did when he last signed a batch for me). Or maybe a list of authors who really do not like signing books might be more useful :-) Phil 14:46, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

Favourite vs Favorite

OK- I didn't know where else to ask this question. I recently looked at my watchlist, and someone had made an edit at Saved by the Bell, where they had done almost nothing except to change "favorite" to "favourite". Is there a convention about this sort of thing? A quick search reveals a few articles that are particularly troubling, they feature both spellings: e.g. Chateau Chenonceaux -DropDeadGorgias 22:06, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think that it all depends on the writer's accent. Favorite or Favourite, whatever. It means the same. -- Antonio Graphic sexaholic Martin

Wikipedia Manual of Style#Spelling style. As Saved by the Bell is an American program and the original author of the article used AE, it makes sense to keep it AE and not change "favorite" to "favourite". Angela 22:17, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree. I think it is "bad form" to go around and change from American to English or English to American, but Angela makes the point that where terms might appear mixed in the same article, go by the rule: "Is this article more likely to be of interest to (or pertain to) Americans or Brits?" If unsure, leave it alone. There may be a proponent of that page that is using the spelling he/she is most comfortable with. One might even consider that the other's spelling version has merit, as I learned when someone changed "groin" (a rock jetty) to "groyne" in one of the articles I was working on. I'd never seen "groyne" before, but I like it better than "groin" for a rock structure (leave "groin" to the anatomists). - Marshman 18:45, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It is worse form to care about it. :) Martin 19:41, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

---

• unknown artist 1935-1950 ? -->Wikipedia:Reference Desk

Most-edited talk pages

Could some kindly developer update Wikipedia:Most-edited talk pages, preferably removing Talk:Main Page from consideration? Tuf-Kat 19:32, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:SQL query requests.

Questionable text in Bar Association

Hi,

I removed some text from Bar association that I found questionable, and that seems to be a rehashing on the urban myth that the word "testimony" was based on an ancient Roman practice of holding one's gonads and swearing on them.

I cannot confirm that the text is false, can anyone help?

Thanks! -- Pakaran 18:46, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This is probably a matter best discussed on Talk:Bar association. -- Finlay McWalter 18:57, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ok, thanks - I started a thread there. I'm late for class, so I'll head out now. -- Pakaran 19:10, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

User sub-pages

I have noticed that some Wikipedians have added sub-pages underneath their main user page to hold a personal sand-box, to do list etc etc. But I couldn't find anything about this in any of the help pages or FAQs. So I have two questions ...

• Is this discouraged ? Am I breaking some rule of Wiki etiquette if I do this ?
• If I want to do this, do I just create a link on my user page (called, say, User:Gandalf61/blick) then go to it and edit it ? Or is there more to it than that ?

Gandalf61 12:05, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Gandalf, - while subpages in the main article space are discouraged (I don't really know why), you are free to create them in your user space, and 2. that's indeed the easiest way. Cheers, Kosebamse 12:17, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Here are some arguments both ways: Wikipedia:Do not use subpages. I personally think keeping subpages out of the main article namespace is one of the best decisions made in Wikipedia's early history. It usually keeps things more appropriately titled and allows for articles with slashes like Nip/Tuck. Subpages are good in the user and talk namespaces, though. --Minesweeper 05:51, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia is not a place for personal homepages. Thus, subpages of your homepage that have something to do with Wikipedia (a list of pages you created, ideas about the wikipedia project, a list of pages you would like to work on, possibilities are still almost endless) are welcome, but to create them for personal ramblings, lists of what you ate on various Wednesdays, or whatever, would be considered very bad Wiki-etiquette. Or such is my opinion at least. Andre Engels 13:31, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't eat on Wednesdays, you insensitive clod! Oh, sorry, thought I was on Slashdot. orthogonal 18:01, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

calling all sysops, brush up on the limitations of your powers.

I noticed that people are getting seriously sloppy with the guidelines on protecting pages. We are all human (Ghu knows I have made my share of mistakes). Please remember that protecting a page should always be done by an uninvolved party (even if it is your own user page); I'll try to remember that too. Just ask someone else to do it for you. As you likely have a good case for the protection of the page, getting another sysop shouldn't be so hard. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 23:57, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)

I agree. User:Viajero's protection of the ever controversial Mother Teresa article to stop User:Aplank's edits (which others were reverting) is a case in point. Viajero had been a participant in the debate over weeks and so was not a neutral person to do the protecting. FearÉIREANN 00:04, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree. Sysops have be desysoped for doing as much. The only time when I've protected a page I was actively involved in editing was when it was being repeatedly blanked (vandalism) and I wasn't one of the main parties involved in the edit war. Use your common sense, people. Daniel Quinlan 05:34, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)

On this I have to disagree most strongly. No sysop has ever been desysoped for making an honest mistake. And I would thank it if no-one suggested it was a policy to do so. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 21:26, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)

I wasn't actually talking about honest mistakes, but repeated bad behavior. (I was replying to Viajero's comment, perhaps that helps.) Daniel Quinlan 23:32, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

I protected my User page, and intend to keep it protected. It was the subject of far too much vandalism. I don't think anyone but the User should be able to edit their own User page anyway, but that's my opinion, YMMV. I agree in principle to not protecting pages you're involved with, but I believe doing it to your User page is different. RickK 23:38, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The lost edit (Fungus)

Edit history for Fungus says that User:Kingturtle made an edit on the 9th of November. I object to that edit, and I left a comment on his talk page requesting that he revert it. He has not replied to my message, but the most interesting thing is that the edit does not appear in his user contributions page. -Smack 21:42, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It does appear in his contributions. Why don't you revert it and explain on the talk page why you are doing so? Angela 22:04, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Watch out when looking at user contribution lists: the "next 50" or whatever link has a bug, and will always skip some contributions. It's better to get a long list selecting the 250 or 500 option. At18 22:19, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

done -Smack 04:45, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The 'next 50' bug should be fixed now, btw. --Brion 11:15, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

4Reference.net?

What's 4Reference.net? It appears to be a dynamic copier of Wikipedia, which reformats the article (badly), and adds "This article courtesy of Wikipedia", a reference to the GFDL, and an advertisement. orthogonal 01:59, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yep, all quite legal and above board. It is, as you say, an ongoing copy of wikipedia. And yes, they do make it look ugly. -- Finlay McWalter 02:06, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's just one of many sites that use Wikipedia for content. -- Cyan 02:08, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia at lightspeed!

wow, I commend whomever was involved in the latest magic that gave us such great speed on Wikipedia. I've been around these parts for nearly 10 months and this is by far the greatest access-speed I've ever experienced. thanks again to all involved! Kingturtle 18:59, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is now unbelievably fast, and it's all thanks to Brion. Some pages are served from pliny, some are served from larousse, and no-one should notice the difference, except for the blindingly fast response. -- Tim Starling 03:47, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Great, great magic. Shall we vote on a title to bestow upon Brion? Kosebamse 19:37, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

An aside: google notices. But worth it. Martin 19:39, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Actually, I think I do notice. Sometimes I need to refresh to see new information in an article. For example, after I wrote Wikipedia at lightspeed!, I changed computers, and came back to this metapage, Wikipedia at lightspeed! was not on the metapage. But then I refreshed and it was there. I am guessing that this is because of the dual server action? It is a small price to pay for these incredible speeds, though. Kingturtle 19:57, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This notoriously unreliable popularity index seems to notice, too. Kosebamse 20:45, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Black or black?

Is there a Wikipedia consesus on the use of first-letter-capitalized or first-letter-uncapitalized "black" when referring to persons of that race/ethnicity? Is it "noted Black author W. E. B. DuBois" or is it "noted black author W. E. B. DuBois", or is there no consesus?

I think the term "African American" may be more NPOV? mabey not ... -- reddi

1) "African American" would be a poor way to describe Diane Julie Abbott, given that she's MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington in the UK House of Commons. 2) Most American blacks would describe themselves as "black", not "African-American". 3) The term "African-American" seems more suited to (recent) immigrants, and is ambiguous if it descibes both recent immigrants and Americans of long standing who happen to be black. 4) The term "African-American" reeks of euphonism.

1) Yep ... "African American" would be a poor way to describe Diane Julie Abbott, given that she isn't american. Not sure what the EU calls citizens of african descent. Anyone know?

Black. FearÉIREANN 23:41, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

2) Most American blacks would describe themselves as "black"? Hmmm ... ok ... but I think that the line on the US census (IIRC) is that ... there probably is a few other "types" that can be included ...

3) I was under the impression that "African-American" was a descriptive term of both recent immigrants and Americans of long standing who happen to be black.

4) Euphonism? hmmm ... [stares blankly]

I'd use the most apt description of the individual tha'tis possible .... Sincerely, The Mutt

Ok, I wrote "euphonism" (which actually is a word, it turns out) when I meant "euphemism". You got me. I r edumacated. orthogonal 23:07, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Also, what about white/White when referring to race/ethnicity?

Mabey Caucasian? mabey not. -- white trash

On a tangential note, spaces or not after initials in names: "W. E. B. DuBois" or "W.E.B. DuBois", "P. A. M. Dirac" or "P.A.M. Dirac"? orthogonal 20:05, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think initials without spaces (W.E.B. DuBois) looks nicer and The Economist style guide also says without spaces. -- Viajero 20:13, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's my (hopelessly uninformed) understanding that caps belong on proper nouns (and initials, sentence starts...). So I'd say:

• J.K. Rowling is a british author, who lives in Britain
• W.E.B. DuBois is a black writer, who likes Black Sabbath, black pudding, and Blackpool
• I am heading south to Alabama, which is in the South
• Jane's eyes glittered in the light of the Moon, but Jack could think only of Ganymede, his favourite moon of Jupiter. -- Finlay McWalter 23:18, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm consistently reverted on all of these, so plainly plenty of folks don't agree with me. -- Finlay McWalter 23:18, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

• J.K. Rowling is a british author, who lives in Britain. Locations are capitalised, and British means 'of Britain'. So it would have to be British, never ever british.

Re - black vs African-American. It reminds me of a story about a US TV presenter interviewing Nelson Mandela who worked for a company that threatened anyone who called someone black with immediate dismissal. She wanted to ask Mandella "so how does it feel to be South Africa's first black president?" but couldn't. So ended up asking the South African statesman "how does it feel to be South Africa's first . . . em . . . eh . . . . em . . . African American president?" Mandela's comment on such ridiculous Political Correctness after the show was finished, was apparently rather sharp. FearÉIREANN 23:41, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

• I had a professor in one class where we were watching the Spartacus and Gladiator movies, and she referred to the black characters in both as "African American." I don't know about the guy in Spartacus, but I know that neither Djimon Honsou nor his character are American! Anyway...I would say "black" and "white" uncapitalized, personally. Adam Bishop 23:50, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think "black" can be used in most cases, but if the person has used another term that is generally accepted such as "African-American", we should use that instead. I'd be careful about how it's mentioned, though. Some black authors might rather be known first as authors. Mentioning race in the first sentence of only articles for people who are non-white is very POV. W.E.B. DuBois is known as a black author, so it would be okay in his case, but just be careful. Daniel Quinlan 23:27, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

P.S. I believe it's "black" or "white" (lower case) and "African-American" (upper case since it's based on place/country names). Daniel Quinlan 23:28, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

Nationalities are always capitalized, "british" is plain wrong. (That's an error often made by some Germans here - I can't count how often I have changed "german" to "German".) As to black, you could treat it in the same way (though the implications might be problematic, since there is no one "Black race" etc.), but it's more often used just like a colour, i.e. uncapitalized. --Wik 00:09, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, black and white are adjectives describing colour, while Black and White are ethnic/racial designations. But in practice both forms are used and I don't think WP should try to make either of them mandatory. But we certainly should ban Caucasian, which is based on a long-discredited racial theory. Caucasians are people from the Caucasus. Adam 01:14, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

We use 'Black' and 'White' (I work in the British public sector). Caucasian is bizarre (is this person from Armenia?). We subcategorise black into Black African and Black Caribbean (two different communities). You sometimes see Black British used. Secretlondon 12:27, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

From my experience in American English, Caucasian can be to describe someone of primarily European descent very clinically. But it really depends on context. When authors use the word 'black' as a adjective to describe a person, are they using it in the context of describing their ancestry, their physical or cultural characteristics, or place of origin? Thunderbolt16 05:25, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) recommends black instead of Black. silsor 20:14, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Article naming (British / United Kingdom House of Commons / Lords / Parliament etc)

See Talk:British House of Commons. (I moved it the originating site). A much smaller list can be made here of official UK Government uses of the term British House of Commons. There are none.2toise 00:38, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Doesn't remember password

Darned thing doesn't remember my password, nor does it remember that I told it to remember my password. Why?????
Tualha 05:16, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Now it does. Who knows...
Tualha 05:52, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Ah. If I close all windows and come back, it keeps me logged in. If I close the browser (Opera 6), it doesn't.
Tualha 05:54, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

I've been tweaking the login cookie system for the last few days trying to get things to not interfere with each other due to the en/en2 thing... It should work at this point. It may or may not help to clear out any old cookies from *.wikipedia.org first and try again. --Brion 08:55, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That would explain why I had to login again at the beginning of the session the last few days, much more often then before. But of course this little drawback is more then countered by the massive speed gain that come with it (thanks Brion). andy 09:01, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Incidentally, IE and Mozilla remember the password across even reboots. But once in a while (maybe in 2 or 3 months), it loses the password too. Nothing is perfect. --Menchi 06:56, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The saved password cookie expires after 1 month. --Brion 08:55, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Nope, it's still doing it. I tried clearing out the cookies, didn't help :( It's not clearing cookies between sessions; they were there, and LWN, for example, works fine.

FWIW, the cookies listed in my cookie manager seem to be empty...
Tualha 21:44, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, now there are cookies there. wikidbUserID and wikidbUserName. Still doesn't work, though.
Tualha 21:54, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Oh, good grief. I checked the "keep password" box in the login page and now everything works fine. I kept overlooking that one. It's the one in preferences that's broken. Sorry for the wild goose chase.
Tualha 22:24, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

My system (IE5.0, Win98SE, dialup PPP line) seems to forget my password whenever I view a cached page while not connected. For example, say I'm logged on to both the Meta and the English Wikipedia, with "remember my password" checked on both. I disconnect the line, but later absentmindedly click on my local home page link to English Wikipedia main, or on any link to an English Wikipedia page that I may have left open when I disconnected. IE gives me the option of staying offline and viewing the locally cached page. But if I do this, when I later reconnect to the Internet, I'll now find I'm no longer logged on to the English Wikipedia. Assuming I've viewed no Meta pages while offline, I'll still be logged on to the Meta. At least that's how I think it happens. Is that consistent to anyone else's experience? Andrewa 00:13, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Just occurred to me, there's a bright side: my password is now firmly embedded in my memory :)
Tualha 14:48, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Arborealoids

I'm not sure to be pleased or worried that my Arborealoids has survived 24 hours without being deleted or even questioned. This little experiment does seem to confirm my suspicion that a great deal of nonsense sneaks its way into Wikipedia undetected. On the other hand, it's no sillier than Reptilian humanoid, from which it draws inspiration. Adam 11:11, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's deleted now. Dysprosia 11:17, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's exactly what I simply can't believe. I vote for undeletion so that people can have a look at it. How on earth could we ever make sure that such things do not seriously happen if we cannot examine them? Whyt have we got pages like "deleted nonsense" for? --KF 11:21, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, that's probably a good idea. I couldn't find the page before, sorry. Dysprosia 11:28, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Here, at the bottom Dysprosia 11:30, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Maybe we all know you as a great editor and thus noone bothered to check that new article, as noone expected Adam Carr to write nonsense. It might have had a different fate if it came from an anonymous IP or a new user. But I agree with your basic statement that too much vandalism, nonsense or bad articles slip out through the Recent Changes and New Pages monitoring. andy 11:20, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Note that you added the article as you, not as an anonymous user and not as someone with a record of such edits. I suspect the article may have been noticed faster if that were not the case. (Ooo, wow, some comment as andy, but I'll add it anyway despite being second after the edit conflict.) Daniel Quinlan 11:24, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

I moved the article to Wikipedia:Arborealoids so people can take a look. Right after I did that, someone redeleted it (as I was planning to do, actually, since I don't think we need or want to leave invalid information in the main article space for this discussion). Daniel Quinlan 11:32, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

I've just moved it to bad jokes via the link above. Ok to redelete the article in the Wikipedia namespace? I just think it's pointless to have crud like that floating around, but (You all are too fast :) apologies as to people wanting to take a look before, probably was a bit hasty Dysprosia 11:36, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

All of which begs the question: Why is Reptilian humanoid still here? Bmills 11:45, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Bizarre as it may seem to most people, there really are people out there publicly declaring that reptilian humanoids exist. The article notes who these people are and states these beliefs are not accepted by the mainstream, so I think it's a useful article debunking a ridiculous idea. MK 12:38 (EST) 12 November 2003

Edits by trusted users typically make it past RC and only get picked up at the second line: watchlists and random reviews. That's because RC junkies (like what I was for a while) typically know who they can trust and who they can't. The frequency of random reviews depends on how visible the article is. I once inserted a joke into Water, and it lasted 10 days. However an orphan with an obscure title could have easily remained for months. -- Tim Starling 11:47, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Well I'm flattered that you all think my stuff is so wonderful that it doesn't need to be checked. I guess I've blown my gold-star rating. But Bmills is right - I actually started Arborealoids not to expose WP's procedures but to draw attention to Reptilian humanoid and all of Khranus's other garbage, which discredits WP more than a dozen joke articles. Adam 11:58, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Oh, so you intended it as a publicity stunt, but no-one noticed? That's so sad, my heart bleeds for you ;) Next time you wish to pull a publicity stunt, be sure to link to your article from many prominent locations. Or create a sock puppet user account to list it on VFD. -- Tim Starling 12:17, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

I guess that makes me no-one? Adam is right to move the conversation back to the main point of what he did. An encyclopedia should be about knowledge, not about fringe lunatic hearsay and half-baked notions that are entirely unverifiable. Maybe this is not the most effective way to make the point, but it was effective enough to have us all here talking about it. Bmills 12:21, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I meant that no-one noticed for a week, forcing him to make a post to Village pump. -- Tim Starling 12:37, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

I don't want to sound too snippy or biased or whatever in saying this, but is the creation of a nonsense article the best way of going about resolving an issue? Dysprosia 12:19, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's a demonstration of Adam's commitment to mature debate. -- Tim Starling 13:18, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Or perhaps that I am a reptoid. Adam 13:45, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I spotted Arborealoids on 11th Novemeber, but chose not to recommend for deletion because it was just so damn funny! Mind you, I'm also a regular watcher of Reptilian humanoids (which must give me about 8/10 for insanity). DJ Clayworth 20:54, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If there are undetected nonsense pages in Wikipedia, here's one way to ensure they'll be noticed eventually. Have a page that lists articles that have not been viewed by at least three people since the last change. This would preferably be sorted by how long ago the third most recent viewing was (oldest first). The "three people" and "third most recent" are to make it harder for people to "whitewash" their own nonsense; they could view it, but it wouldn't go away until two other people did as well.

Dedicated Wikipedians could check the top articles, which would then migrate off the list. This would work better than Recent Changes and New Pages, because articles that had already been "vetted" would not be on the list.

Tualha 02:05, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

I saw Arborealoids when it was created, and thought about moving it somewhere else, but it was pretty funny, and anyway all the great works of scholarships have inside jokes; someday perhaps I'll create a list of scholarly jokes to clue people in on the most notable ones. Stan 08:05, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

See also the Protocols of the Elderberries of Zion (awaiting development). Adam

http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org

Has anyone seen this? Aplank 17:59, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

• Deja vu all over again.Poor Yorick 21:56, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
• Yes.2toise 22:17, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
• Seriously broken in Opera 6, the div on the left overlaps other text. Ick. Tualha 22:27, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
• This is a prank, right? Consider [3]. I'm dying to read his Sympathetic point of view article on Adolf Hitler or Reptilian humanoid (although I for one welcome our new alien overlords) -- Finlay McWalter 22:41, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
• A real quote from Internet-Encyclopedia's entry How Internet-Encyclopedia differs from Wikipedia and why

"A major innovation, especially with regard to controversial subjects, is the policy of sympathetic point of view. The main article on a subject, especially a person, a country, or a movement should present the subject in as good a light as the facts permit."

A parody of Internet encyclopedia:

Adolf Hitler, a great orator and German leader, rescued Germany from the ashes of World War I by harkening back to traditional German passions, including lebensraum and the scapegoating of minorities. His other great insight was to recognize that democracies are always less efficient than dictatorships; by uniting Germnay under his will as "Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Fuhrer" ("One Empire, one People, one Leader"), Hitler enabled Germany to break the bonds forced on them by the despicable and cowardly Treaty Of Versailles.... orthogonal 23:06, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Come on, this is hardly SPOV. scapegoating?. And while you've largely been SPOV about Hitler, you're totally NSPOV (not SPOV) about Treaty of Versailles. Bigot! -- Finlay McWalter 23:13, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

• See also this edition of the Pump, right at the bottom. -- Cyan 23:07, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
• I think this is good for wikipedia. Aplank 00:09, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It certainly seems to be the right place for Aplank to write his article Mother Teresa was a model of piety and virtue whom nobody may criticise. Adam 03:36, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

My first SPOV article: John Howard Adam 08:24, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Internet-Encyclopedia:Deletion log; 03:59 . . Fred Bauder (Talk) (deleted "John Howard": fun but nonsense)

I guess they have a different deletion policy to us. :) Angela

Deleted. That explains it. I thought Adam meant he wrote nothing because that place is unworthy of his words or something. :-} --Menchi 09:28, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If you look at their "Recent Changes" page you will see that Fred Bauder is writing the entire encyclopaedia himself. I hope he doesn't forget Reptilian humanoids. Adam 09:49, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Revertion wars

Do not revert the same page twice in the same day

Words to wiki by. See Wikipedia talk:How to revert a page to an earlier version. Martin 21:19, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Image uploads

Are we having image upload issues again? (See Betty Friedan). - Hephaestos 16:44, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Malcolm mentions a film from the '80's called Loose Shoes. I remember it well! Can you tell me where I can get a copy, either VT or DVD? I live in the UK. Thanks

Indian Tribes that were around Statesboro or Brooklet,Georgia

I am trying to find out what Native Americans were around the Mill Creek area in Bulloch County. We have found numerous arrowheads and pottery peices nearby...

Israel security wall

As far as I know, there is not yet an article describing the Israel security wall. I was going to add something to Wikipedia:Requested articles, but I don't know what to call the article...

Should it be Israel or Israeli in the title?

Is it a wall? partition? fence? barrier?

Suggestions? Kingturtle 08:00, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I would suggest Israel-Palestine Barrier, because all of wall, partition and fence are also barriers. CGS 08:25, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC).

What's wrong with Israel security wall? The current events page already has a missing link to it. My general feeling on article naming is that if it's the first thing that comes to mind then it's proabably the best name. We can make all kinds of redirects and discuss the "proper" name later, but start it with a "good enough" name and at least the article will get started instead of being stalled in committee. -- Merphant 08:41, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This is the kind of thing I love trying. I wrote a perl script to find most common 2 and 3 word combinations on news.google.com and google.com using the top 100 hits using the search terms Israel and wall OR fence OR barrier OR partition OR divider OR enclosure OR fortification OR palisade.

• Most common 1 word terms in title:
  • 132 barrier
  • 117 wall
  • 107 fence (next only had 3 hits)

• Most common 1 word terms anywhere:
  • 98 wall
  • 61 fence
  • 58 barrier (next only had 8 hits)

Based on that, I'd say "wall", "fence", or "barrier".

• Most common 2 word terms in title:
  • 22 security fence
  • 18 security barrier (next only had 12 hits)

• Most common 2 word terms anywhere:
  • 11 security fence
  • 8 israel wall
  • 7 israel's wall
  • 7 berlin wall
  • 6 security wall
  • 5 security barrier
  • 5 israel's barrier

"Israel security fence" looks good. "Israel security wall" might be best by single word frequency. I guess "Israel-Palestine" wall might be okay for the first part, but I don't see that often. Palestine ain't building the wall, so tht would not be my inclination. Daniel Quinlan 08:46, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Great stats.

I'd say Israel security wall or Israel security wall. Wall gives me a concrete or earth feeling, but fence has hole in them, like in prison. I'm not sure what's the material of the Israeli one. --Menchi 08:50, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'd go for "Israel security fence". From the pictures I've see of it, it's a few block on the ground with a chain link fence about 10-15 ft high ... here's some pic of it http://www.israelnewsagency.com/israelsecurityfence.jpg [4] ... reddi

Some bits are wall and some bits are fence. The more contested the area the stronger the barrier. From what I can tell the Israelis call it a fence and the Palestianians call it a wall. One lot of spin is that it is a security fence, the other that it is a partitioning wall akin to the Berlin wall. Have fun with your article. :) Secretlondon 13:37, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Of course both sides will produce appropriate pictures ;) Secretlondon 13:39, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Heres the isreali's site on it Israel security fence. reddi

I'd say "barrier". In some places it's a fence, in some places a concrete wall. And there's more to it than just the physical wall - it's a system, with some depth - there are gates (which are a bit like airport security checkpoints married to bus terminii) and in many places a levelled strip. "Barrier" seems to me to capture that a bit better than either wall or fence (but then all the same things could be said about the Berlin Wall, and no-one called it the Berlin Barrier.) -- Finlay McWalter 13:44, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yea, barrier may be better ... "Israel security barrier" with redirect of Israel security wall and Israel security fence ... it's officially (by the il.gov) called the "Seam Zone project". reddi

Israelis tend to call it "security fence", whereas Palestinians call it a seperation wall (note: seperation, not "security wall") or, in some cases, apartheid wall. I don't think there's any way to use either term without seeming POV. Better would be to redirect, then to explain the different names in the first sentence. "barrier" is a good fudge, but I wouldn't even mind using the official name, because nobody actually uses it. DanKeshet

My stats were of news sites via news.google.com, and that included a good number of (English web) Arabic news sites. I still think Israel security wall or Israel security fence are best, but I could live with Israel security barrier since barrier was also a relatively common word used to describe the structure. Daniel Quinlan 21:32, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Well I started an article at Israel security fence since it doesn't seem like anyone else has yet. -- Merphant 00:57, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The word security is POV. I mean, one can argue that the wall is for Israel's security, but one can also argue that the wall is to nullify Palestine. Maybe it should be called West Bank wall....like the Berlin wall is so named. Kingturtle 01:01, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Israel security wall

moved to Talk:Israeli security fence

banned users

Could someone point me out to the page of banned users ? I need the little text, with reference to Jimbo, and possibility for the banned user to fill an application of forgiveness from him. Anthère 01:33, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Its listed in "Special pages". See: Special:Ipblocklist WhisperToMe 01:36, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

silly me. Had not thought of it :-) thanks for whispering me the answer. ant

Accuracy dispute banners

Daniel Quinlan is adding loads of "Accuracy disputes without explanation. I think he is using an automated script because of the speed - is this vandalism? -- 213.122.126.91 09:32, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

He's noting that those are the works of this person, who is now banned: User:Khranus. --Menchi 09:36, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Oh, I've been found out! Seriously, though, I'm adding accuracy disputes to selected articles edited by Khranus (see User:Khranus/ban for more information which should explain why I felt the need to add the banners). Some of them may be okay, but I am not an expert in all areas so when I was not sure whether a Khranus addition was okay, I added the banner. I felt it was better to err on the side of caution. Perhaps I should add something to the talk pages as promised. Daniel Quinlan 09:42, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

If Khranus has been banned for posting ridiculous articles, doesn't it follow that those articles should now be deleted? Does anyone really think that Reptilian humanoid can be turned into a useful article? Delete the lot, I say. Adam 10:05, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The Dogon is a valid concept, take a look at the above header. Khranus contributed a lot of material to the page. It should not be thus blindly deleted. If there is issues with the content, it should be discussed and offending material removed. That is the process here Dysprosia 10:08, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think something interesting could come of it - perhaps an examination of the role that reptilians play in some peoples belief systems. I'm personally interested in the 'reptilians as jews' idea - there are large similarities between the two sets of conspiracies. Secretlondon 10:13, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Er. I don't want to appear to be defending kookery, but I note that pages such as Reptilian humanoid are at least somewhat self-coherent (as oppossed to a completely unintelligible ranmblings, and as opposed to any coherence with any objectice reality). As such, they usefully document these unlikely conspiracy theories. Perhaps they could be carefully marked as examples of, and moved to subpages of/links from, a Conspiracy Theories page? orthogonal 10:16, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think the reptilian article can be NPOVed (it's being tried right now) and it may offer some insight, perhaps into the phenomenology of mental illness (or whatever one likes to categorize these beliefs). And once it's NPOV it might help in debunking some particularly nutty ideas when they come up again. Kosebamse 10:23, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Legitimate page that looks like nonsense

It's interesting...the article on the Dogon, at first glance, looks like blatant nonsense. People named the Dogon, whose religion involves Sirius the Dog Star? And their neighbors are the Bozo? Trash it!

But a little googling reveals that there is indeed such a tribe living in Mali, with that religion and those neighbors. Thousands of pages found.

Goes to show...

Tualha 02:46, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Yes this is common as there are so many cultures in the world and so many interests represented by different editors. That's why I usually ask here at the pump if an article looks suspicious to me. The talk page of an article is also a good place but it may not get as much attention. Dori 04:43, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Link to video?

Is it possible to link to a non http external link? I want to link to
rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/news/olmedia/n5ctrl/events03/uk_pol/cons/leadership/nb_newsnightiv.rm
(a video clip) but the Wiki parser doesn't like it... Evercat 02:01, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

• My two cents: linking directly to a video will perturb people who click on the link, thinking it's a page, and immediately find they're downloading a video. (As in my case, wheree I intentionally got rid of all software able to play RealMedia files). It's also likely to perturb whomever hosts that link, and many sites use the "referer" (sic) HTTP header to refuse to serve linked files except from requests via their own pages. It's probably better all areound to link to the page that links to the video. orthogonal 17:13, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

New user question

As a newbie, I'm not sure of the procedure for adding pages to votes for deletion, so I'm moving this here from there:

Ben & Mo's seems slightly POV, somewhat like an ad, and a bit ephemeral and local for an encyclopedia. Apparently, it was created by someone who also creates Easter Bradford entries. Similarly Omega D.C., Chesapeake Bay Bears, Staccatto. Note that I think these entries would be appropriate and indeed useful in a Wiki guide to Washington DC night-life, or a Wiki guide to gay Washington D.C. The Dupont Circle entry does seem appropriate, although I'd emphasize the park, and de-emphasize the gay themes -- in the last five or so years the Dupont area has gentrified and yuppie-fied. (Note, it is locally spelled Dupont, not DuPont, despite memoralizing Admiral Samual Francis DuPont.) orthogonal 11:48, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

anonymous edit statistics

If anyone is interrested, I did an analysis of all the anonymous edits in half a day to see what proportion were vandalisms, and what proportion of those were not corrected. Have a look at my user page (under "Stats on anon editors"). --snoyes 18:10, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Very interesting. The thing that most caught my eye is your conclusion that "a quarter of anonymous edits are counterproductive". Does means three quarters are productive? Given that if they weren't anonymously editing, many perhaps most vandals would just be setting up glove-puppets to get at us anyway, that doesn't seem too bad at all to me.

The observation about the bad edits that were missed is also interesting. This brings us back to approval mechanisms. Andrewa 18:52, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

interesting, though the conclusion that 16 were missed goes too far, IMO, because people like me catch vandalism by looking at watchlists. If I find vandalism on anything I'm watching, I take care of all vandalism by that IP. A followup study of those 16 unreverted edits two weeks later would be interesting. JamesDay 15:48, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Log In

How can I stay logged in for longer than (whatever the default) is? I'm finding that I'm editing articles only to later notice I'm not logged in. I dislike this because it makes me less accountable. orthogonal 17:53, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If you aren't already, and you are using a private computer, ask it to remember your password. Κσυπ Cyp 18:02, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but won't that just make logging in a bit easier? That's not what I want, exactly; I want not to be logged out in the first place. orthogonal 18:11, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It'll make login automatic, not just easier. It will appear as if you never get logged out. (Under the covers, you'll get logged out, but then when you visit any WP page, it'll automatically log you back in.) It should work just like you want it to. Axlrosen 19:51, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm oblivious to the actual way this all works, but it seems plausible that if you do relatively frequently "Show Preview" clicks, your login "timer" will be refreshed on the server. A server sysop can probably confirm or correct this assumption. - Marshman 18:29, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's vaguely possible that the old cookie is somehow interfering with the new cookie (but it shouldn't be). Clear out any cookies you may have set on 'en.wikipedia.org' or 'en2.wikipedia.org' and try again. Check your cookies for one named "enwikiSession" set for the domain ".wikipedia.org". Have you got one, and what's the expiration date look like? It should be ~an hour in the future. Could anyone with cookie problems check the date & timezone settings on your computer? If it's off (for instance a daylight saving time glitch) that could expire the cookie early. If that's totally off base, I'd like to be able to strike it off my list of things to check. --Brion 05:47, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Where is that? I am using Windows XP, and only found 3 files in my \cookie, one is called "administrator@wikipedia[2].txt" which is modified 3 mins ago. :? --218.19.141.3 05:56, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If you open that file in wordpad (not notepad! notepad gets confused) you'll see some gobbledegook inside; looks like the expiry times aren't in human-readable format though, unless you understand seconds since January 1, 1970... I've changed the cookie to expire at the end of the browser session instead of at a time offset. Does this help? --Brion 05:57, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It works now!! Thanks! --Samuel 05:59, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Awesome! (By any chance, can you check that your computer's clock and timezone are set correctly?) --Brion 06:03, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Right then. Any chance the cookie expiration could be set to, say +12 rather than +1 hours? orthogonal 19:45, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Don't know why are having this problem. WP never logs me out, even after I reboot. -- Viajero 20:16, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Also be aware that some internet privacy programs, browsers' privacy options, or privacy and ad-blocking software (such as Zonealarm) have options that either block wikipedia's cookie altogether or expire it prematurely. It should be possible to configure whatever it is you might be using to cut wikipedia.org more slack than you would doubleclick.net, for example. -- Finlay McWalter 23:04, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That was routinely done: all three cookie blockers in my chain admit Wikipedia's cookies. (although javscript cookies are still blocked.) orthogonal 11:26, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Posters

Can I use posters of movies here? --FallingInLoveWithPitoc 11:52, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, if: you own the copyright to the poster; or it is in the public domain; or you obtained permission of the copyright holder (in a verifiable manner). Otherwise, no.

(Note this is not an official Wikipedia answer, and may be wrong. orthogonal is not a representative, official or unofficial, of Wikipedia. Note that this is not legal advice. orthogonal is not a lawyer. If you need legal advice, you should contact a lawyer.) orthogonal 17:57, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

What Orthogonal said. Martin 19:40, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

orthogonal prefers "orthogonal" to "Orthogonal". orthogonal 19:53, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Oh, I thought all the posters can be used without permission, since they're used everywhere on the Internet. I think adding a poster to the movie topics would be a good idea, but since it's so troublesome... give up. --FallingInLoveWithPitoc 05:28, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Idea to add table to day page articles

See Talk:Historical anniversaries/Example. --mav 10:00, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

RobBot on fr: and interwiki missing on en:

Hello,

I ran the RobBot on the french wikipedia for the last 4 days. It generated logs for a lot of interwiki missing on all wikipedia. I am wondering if someone on en: might please use the data to update the en: wikipedia ? Maybe you already know people able to take care of this on other wikipedia ?

The logs are available at:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LinksFR.20031109.zip

Hashar 23:37, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This sounds like something many people (including myself) would be interested in helping with. But I think some better explanation is needed for this to happen.

I've downloaded the ZIP file from the above link, and extracted the 39 logs it contains, and I'm a little the wiser. It seems that these show missing links between various language Wikipedias, for example logs.en.txt shows links missing from the English Wikipedia to the French.

I'm already worked out that there is a standard software-supported way of linking to articles in other Wikipedias, but I don't know where this is documented.

I'm guessing that these logs are not reliable enough to generate these links automatically, and that what is therefore needed is someone with knowledge of both languages to verify each, and then create the missing link(s). This sounds like something that software tools could help with, for example showing both articles in some sort of split screen and providing a button to approve the links. I don't know whether any such tools already exist, or what the basis is for compiling these lists, ie what does an entry actually mean? Knowing this would help me a great deal.

For the links in logs.en.txt my French is probably up to the job, if my guesses are correct.

But could someone check my understanding above, or perhaps provide a better explanation, or even wikify some of the text to point to existing explanations? TIA.

Perhaps we should also come up with a way of dividing the log between those interested. It could be quite time-consuming, and frustrating if it turns out that large numbers of the links have been created since the list was compiled. Andrewa 19:17, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The software that produced this, and can be used for automated link-adding, can be found at http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/pywikipediabot/pywikipedia/.

The list has been created by going through the French Wikipedia, checking language links, language links from those, etcetera, and when no problem occurred (a problem being two pages from the same language, or an fr: link to a page that does not exist), all pages found that way were added to fr:, and any other lacking links between these pages were written on the log. So for example: "WARNING:en:[[.NET Messenger Service]]does not link to[[fr:MSN Messenger]]" means that the French page links to the English, but there is no link back, "WARNING:en:[[Émile Zola]]does not link to[[da:Emile Zola]]" means that there is a French page that links to both pages, but the English page does not link to the Danish one, and "WARNING:en:[[Émile Zola]]does not link to[[fr:Émile Zola]]but to[[fr:Emile Zola]]" means that the English page links to "Emile Zola" on fr:, but "Emile Zola" either does not exist or is a redirect page, while "Émile Zola" on fr: links to the English page. If wanted, the entries can be added automated or semi-automated. Andre Engels 14:22, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

thanks Andre Engels, you are way better than me when it comes to explaining things :p Hashar 15:32, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Protected Pages

Hi, all. I was just browsing the Mother Teresa talk page and noticed a bit somewhere in the middle about Cimon Avaro missing the 'protected page' blurb and accidentally editing the article page when it was protected and then being quite embarressed to have broken the 'don't edit a page when it's protected' guideline. This is something I can have sympathy with as I've made this mistake myself in the past. When you're in the cycle of rushing through articles clicking 'edit this page' and scrolling straight to where you think you want to edit it's easy to not concentrate on the text at the top.

I think one of the two following ideas may help avoid these errors, either put an extra page between the article and being able to eidt it, a 'are you sure you want to edit this protected page, if so click here' page (similar to when deleting a page), or I think my preferred option of changing the 'edit this page' link at the top to say 'Protected Page (edit)' (or something similar) in bold face.

Do others think this might be a good idea or should some of us just be a bit more leisurely with our edits!? -- Ams80 15:12, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Done it myself too. I think a slighly bolder header in a different color might be enough. --Viajero 17:26, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Good idea. It's far too easy for a sysop to overlook that a page is protected. We just need something to stand out and make us think "that's different!". -- Arwel 00:38, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

A simple thing that I think would be really effective would be to move the "Edit this page" link. If it's taken off the top/front of the list, and inserted, say, between "Unprotect this page" and "Discuss this page", then inadvertent editing of protected pages would be impossible... I think. If the idea appeals to all and sundry, I'll submit it to sourceforge. -- Cyan 03:04, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Cleanup

I read the intro by Stevertigo about Wikipedia:Cleanup and I'm still not quite sure how it exactly differ from Wikipedia:Pages needing attention and VfD. It seems to, judging from the items listed there, be a mixture of both. But leaning more toward Wikipedia:Pages needing attention (need-NPOV, need-Wikifcation), with also some new VfD-type items (delete-this-nonsense) and ancient VfD-items (no-concensus-reached). But it seems Cleanup is not redundant, because people do use it. Its use frequency is between Wikipedia:Pages needing attention and VfD, but seems to be used by least of amount of people (i.e., the same people repeatedly use Cleanup religiously). Please clarify, thanks. --Menchi 04:05, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wellll I use it to put stuff that maybe need a bit of work to become decent but can't do it myself or don't feel up to doing, or if there's something I don't know about or can't decipher and needs work I put it there. Its quite useful to see if there's anything that needs work that slips past RC. Dysprosia 05:58, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

But isn't that the already-established Wikipedia:Pages needing attention's job? --Menchi 06:31, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Cleanup seems to be more a dynamic sort of system, sort of like a Recent Changes of Not-so-good Articles...

It seems to be also a method of averting people who will go straight to VfD with things that could be patched up, or people listing things on VfD for the intention of having them patched up, to a specialized place, taking some of the stress of VfD

Of course, that's only my interpretation of it :) Dysprosia 07:27, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

One of the tasks of cleanup is to let those would otehrwise list a new page from a newbie somewhere where it'll get taken care of instead of using VfD and its 5 day process to bite the newbie just becuase it's the only place with a monitored turnaround time. Using a less resource-intensive placelike pages needing attention is good if you don't really want a deadline and lots of attention. JamesDay 12:10, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia logo policy

I'm wondering what the policy is for adding corporate logos to pages is (ex. CN). I've seen a few and am wondering if they should be removed. Vancouverguy 18:08, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't know if there is a common policy but I have my own: DELETE! I think it makes a article look like its been sponsored or something. -- Viajero 00:09, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

There is no policy. I say keep. It is valuable, I don't think anyone will assume the page is approved by the company. Tuf-Kat 00:14, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)

Just curious: in what way could a corporate logo be considered "valuable" in an encyclopedia article? I think my objection is primarily aesthetic: it just looks cheap. -- Viajero 20:13, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Personally, I think it's time to develop a policy on this. Vancouverguy 23:50, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I've seen political party logos on a few pages - I could add them as I go - but won't until we get a decision. It could be useful to help people recognise logos - I don't imagine people would think that the page was sponsored. Secretlondon 00:00, Nov 17, 2003 (UTC)

Hmmm... I have no objection at all to the logo on the IBM page, for example, and I'm about to add one to the Uniting Church in Australia page. What's the problem? I think they add value to the articles. Andrewa 09:13, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I would imagine that most, if not all, logos are copyright and should not be included without the permission of the owner? Bmills 09:37, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Logos are a sensitive issue for many companies and are generally licensed to a single user publication at a time without any redistribution rights (other than normal viewing). I also want to use items like company logos (and Time magazine covers) and there's an agency which issues these licenses. In a phone call a couple of weeks ago they indicated that there would be no problem licensing the Wikipedia to use logos on an exclusive basis but that doing so allowing reuse by others was not something they could do. Other encyclopedias would need to request their own permission (which would also probably be granted if they were serious encyclopedias). Should I proceed with the applicaton process? JamesDay 12:01, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ok, this all seems rational, but let's decide whether we want to have logos in the encyclopedia. My reasons against:

• free advertising for corporations
• looks like page is sponsored
• aesthetic: tacky, tacky, tacky.

Wikipedia desperately needs more graphics. But are we this desperate???

-- Viajero 12:24, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

First off, should any article that currently includes a logo have it removed until permission is sought (if that is what is decided)?

Second: Viajero raises some interesting points:

• one of the primary purposes of a logo is to promote the organisation to which it belongs. By adding logos to articles about companies, Wikipedia will be contributing to this promotion, wittingly or otherwise.

• what does the logo add to an article beyond this promotion of the logo owner? Most article about companies are likely to contain links to the company Web site, where the logo will be there for all interested parties to see.

IMHO, Wikipedia would be better off without logos. Bmills 12:37, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

No need to immediately remove them because fair use applies to logos as well as other things. Logos are used to associate a visual symbol with a company to aid in recognition. So, yes, we should include almost all corporate logos. They also add to the visual appeal of he Wikipedia and are good for that reason. Requests for logos for use in encyclopedias are so common that there's a specific applicaton type "encyclopedia" in the service which handles the licensing. JamesDay 14:08, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

IANAL but the use of the logo in an article about the organisation which owns and is represented by the logo isn't likely to be a problem IMO so long as there is a caption on the logo which clearly identifies it as a sample of the logo, and the logo is accurately rendered. The image itself may be copyright, this is a different issue and needs to be resolved separately. This same caption IMO removes the problem of anyone mistakenly thinking that the organisation is somehow involved with the article, or with Wikipedia, other than in the obvious way that the article is about them. Without both this caption and accuracy, use of the logo is misleading and probably illegal, and I'd expect the owners to object.

There are three reasons the logo should be there. Firstly, it helps to identify the organisation concerned. Secondly, it's information that is encyclopedic, will be of interest to people reading the article, and which they can reasonably expect to find there. Thirdly, IMO it looks good.

So my suggestion for logo guidelines while the technicalities are being further investigated:

• Use only in articles whose name is the organisation which either owns or uses the logo.
• Must be captioned.
• Must be accurate.
• Normal copyright requirements on the image.
• Encouraged provided these guidelines are met.

Is there anything along those lines in the license mentioned above? Does the license deal with all trademarks, or just those which are also corporate logos? It sounds worth having, provided signing up doesn't in any way compromise our existing commitments under the GFDL, which it may. Definitely investigate.

Alternatively, do we need a boilerplate text to ask permission of individual organisations? Andrewa 16:00, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Most of those guidelines are good, but I'd query the last one - encouraged, or merely tolerated? Martin 21:12, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Encouraged because they are human knowledge that readers are likely to want to obtain from us, and that's exactly what Wikipedia is there to provide. I've given three arguments in favour above. There are several arguments against put above too. Let's look at them.

Firstly, it is argued that using the logo constitutes free publicity. That's true, but if that's a reason for deleting the logo, then it's an equally good reason for deleting the whole article if it reflects favourably on the organisation. Surely we don't want to do that?

If accurate information reflects well on a company, that's their good luck or planning. A well-designed logo does reflect well on a company. But we shouldn't censor this information just because we don't like the corporate world.

Secondly, it has been argued that it's misleading to use the logo. I think the guidelines avoid this problem.

Thirdly, it's been suggested that it's illegal. This should be investigated, but I'm skeptical of this claim, again provided it is properly captioned. If it turns out to be the case, I might instead just use a photo of a piece of equipment, signed building or similar clearly showing the logo. But I'm confident that most organisations would prefer to have their logo clearly and accurately shown rather than displayed in this manner.

Fourthly, it's been suggested that it just looks bad. Obviously I don't agree, but this seems to be the main sticking point. I'm happy to concede it provided we don't sanction arbitrary removal of logos as a result. They are content. People who don't like a particular company or the whole corporate structure should be discouraged from removing logos. If they really do look bad, someone else will do it.

I think we should move this discussion to a talk page. Vancouverguy 16:06, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Or perhaps to a style page? Andrewa 00:25, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

BTW, there's a very interesting quote and some links on this topic at Image:Canadian National Herald.png. Andrewa 00:53, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

TODO - FIXME - IN PROGRESS, etc

I ran a few queries on the database about the above notes and I found a few pages (at least with todo, fixme, because there is a lot with in progress that are probably legitimate text). Most of these were not links and the pages had not been worked on for a while. I think this sort of litter is not too productive so I removed them. I don't know if it's mentioned somewhere, but there should probably be a standard way to leave notes so that it can be tracked more easily. For example including something like ''This page is still [[Wikipedia:FIXME|in progress]].'' in the article with the rest of the note inside HTML comments. Or it could be left in the talk page, but the former might be better in my opinion. Of course, some people work on temp pages and don't create the article until they're somewhat done. Opinions?

Can you give some example pages? Were they just indications that the page was in progess or were they indications of what needs to be fixed (e.g. "FIXME - add more detail about dorsal fins" or something)? I don't see a problem with these, it seems bad to categorically delete them all if they served some useful purose. Axlrosen 21:04, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I listed a couple at WP:CU and the rest simply had a fixme next to the stub notice. Here's one I deleted [5] Dori 21:14, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)

I think it would best on the talk page. All pages are in progress, and if someone has comments to make on something that needs fixing, it looks awful to put that in the article itself. For example, Software license has a paragraph which starts "The (FIXME) Act of (FIXME), codified as 17 USC 117, permits...". I think it would be best to reword to include what is known, and someone can add in the additional information at a later date without needing to be told FIXME in the middle of a sentance.

If a link to Wikipedia:FixMe was left on the talk page, you could click what 'links here' and find all the affected pages, without having to write such comments in the actual article.

See also: Wikipedia:Make omissions explicit. Angela 21:12, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hmmm that page is kind of confusing. Is it actually suggesting to leave notes in the article??? I think that is a terrible idea because those notes will go mostly unnoticed until a reader looks up an article and it looks horrible. I think it is much better to link (maybe from the talk page) to a FIXME site so those pages can be tracked more easily. Dori 22:39, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)

FIXME and such are common conventions in computer programming but I don't think they work well in wikipedia. First and most importantly, they are distracting. Any article in wikipedia is in progress. You can add FIXME to any article. Some article lacks the birth and death date and some article about an artistic work lacks the social signifcance of the work. Talk pages or embedded HTML comments are a better solution. -- Taku 21:20, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that's why I searched for them, my results (using a dump from 2003-11-04 I think) are here: User:Dori/Queries if anyone is interested. What I meant by "in progress" is in immediate/short term progress. Dori 22:39, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)

---

Post a question now if you don't want to wait for the whole page to be loaded. But consider skimming to see if your question was already asked. Also, do not push the "save page" button multiple times when posting this way! The server is overloaded but it will usually respond eventually and add your question to the page multiple times!

POV in Dune?

Dune, revision of 14:52, 27 Oct 2003, seems to have added quite a bit of POV. Or is it just me? orthogonal 22:52, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Orthogonal is referring to this diff in the Dune (novel) article. IMO bold assertions like those made in that addition need some external authoritative sources. What was the thinking behind bringing this to the Village Pump? Pete 00:13, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I figured it would be noticed in pump. (It was, the OP of that revision toned it down some (but not, I think, enough).) Where should I have posted this? orthogonal 02:49, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Best place is to put it on the Discussion page for the article. Wikipedians listing Dune for "monitoring" will pick up that uyou added something there. Include a pertinent statement in the "Summary" Editing stuff like this should just be discussed among those working on the specific page, and the Discussion page keeps a record of questions, disputes, resolutions where it is most pertinent. - Marshman 03:19, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Occitan wiki

Hi, as Main page is protected, I can't add link on the occitan's wikipedia. Can somebody do it for me ? Thanks. Gnu_thomas

Image attribution / sig

Can image artists sign names on their works when they agree to let WP use their images? --Menchi 09:39, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Menchi, I don't know what you are asking. Can you be clearer?

Adrian Pingstone 09:45, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

---

See also: and see also; and see also; and so forth...

Hmm. I don't honestly know whether to laugh or lament...

Check out this example of a good thing gone horribly wrong. I'm almost tempted to reccomend it stay as is, so we can all point it and say: "Don't do this; they will only laugh at you." -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 08:43, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

Cimon, I was going to sort them out (or someone else can) ... it a temporary thing (mainly to get them listed ... btw, there was alot more than that is related; that is the "reduced" list). Sorting them out into '''general''', '''biblical''', etc., ... hopefully sooner than later though it'll get done ... JDR

Holy.... --Menchi 08:45, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Oh my... I think we need a seperate article just for the See Alsos... Dysprosia 08:47, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Most impressive article (and I'm an atheist!) I can't see how this is a good thing gone horribly wrong.. How about a bit of praise for the huge amount of work put into this article? My only criticism is that the gigantic blue list is not much use since it's not in alphabetical order.

Adrian Pingstone 09:43, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Gonna sort 'em soon [or someone else can. JDR

Sorted Dysprosia 10:02, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The article looks OK, I think what we're saying is that the See also list is way too long. Dysprosia 09:47, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Deletion policy?

I am a little confused about the deletion policy of Wikipedia. I am not an admin or a sysop; can I list things on the Wikipedia:Votes for deletion page? If not, what can I do when I see a page that should be deleted (like BlogLines)?

(Err.. disregard that BlogLines example--that was deleted quickly! But my confusion about my deletion powers remains.)

Anyone can list things on VfD, and after 5 days, if there is a rough consensus to delete it, a sysop will delete it. Angela

And you can vote! *Blinking-teeth smile* Exercise your democratic power! --Menchi 01:27, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

However you don't necessarily have to list every bad article on VfD - if the new article has potential to be converted into a valid stub, then list it on Wikipedia:Cleanup instead. And most of the time the obvious nonsense articles are deleted by admin quickly, only those which survive more then lets say 10 minutes would be worth to list to make sure they don't get forgotten. andy 09:16, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I have real problems with the deletion policy. It is not democratic in the slightest! I would like to propose that instead new pages are put on 'Probation' for a month. There is an attached -VoteToKeep page linked to it and at the end of the month if there is a clear democratic majority then goodbye. But at present the time-period is too short, too unclear and hidden and opaque... ABC

Not undemocratic, hidden, nor opaque. Voting is just that -- democratic. Not hidden, since a blurb is put at the top of the page to indicate that it has been proposed for deletion and where to go to discuss it. And not opaque, since the Votes for Deletion page explains what is going on. RickK 16:37, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

• Not so sure about that. It seems to me that if a listed page is in the least controversial, the votes get lost in a welter of arguments. It might help in these cases if, at the end of the five days, all interested users came back and did a simple Yes/No vote having considered all the pro and con points raised. Bmills 16:54, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Or separate a VfD entry into two parts, argument and vote, e.g.:

• Foo Bar Baz.
  • Discussion: (Initial reason for listing:) This is page is a vanity page authored by Mr. Baz. orthogonal 16:57, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
    • I disagree, Mr. Baz is world famous in Japan! !orthogonal 16:57, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  • Votes:
    • Delete. orthogonal 16:57, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
    • Keep. !orthogonal 16:57, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)