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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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump.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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Edit-war brewing on Warwickshire...

... again.
*sigh*
Could some non-involved sysop (are there any left, now?) please protect the page, as User:80.255 doesn't seem to want to engage in further discussion ("Ping pong!" as an edit comment isn't terribly inspiring, TBH)?
James F. (talk) 19:39, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

• • Done --Raul654 20:27, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

For those of us who don't have strong feelings about Warwickshire but have an idle and discreditable fascination with edit wars... can anyone explain to us just what this edit war is apparently about? Dpbsmith 17:30, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It's ultimately caused by the fact that in the UK, county boundaries are changed every now and then (or seemingly every five minutes in a few cases). In the case of Warwickshire, a large chunk was taken out in 1974. The war is over whether Warwickshire should be a simple disambiguation page between Warwickshire (traditional) and Warwickshire (administrative), or whether it should just describe the modern administrative county. But for all that, it's still less silly than was the fight over at Birmingham as to how big London is. Onebyone 17:51, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! Dpbsmith 23:42, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

DOWNLOAD PAGE BROKEN

Could somebody tell me when ill be able to download tomeraider wikipedia?

Should be back up sometime today with a spanking new January 1 backup; I'll try to get the tomeraider files back online sooner. --Brion 00:13, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Self-promotion?

Moved to Talk:M.R.M. Parrott.

Wikipedia database problem?

I created the article Éothéod during the wikipedia problems of Dec 28, and the article does exist, but all articles linking to it seem not to be aware: the link is marked as a non-exist article. I have tried to resolve it by performing an edit on Éothéod, but alas without success. Jor 14:24, Dec 30, 2003 (UTC)

See Dragons_(Middle-earth) or Rohan for examples. Jor

This sometimes happens, however the magic is to edit the page which contains the red link (I just did it with Cirion - it needed bolding of the topic anyway), and the link went blue. andy 16:36, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think you need to edit the linking articles, as they are where the problem lies. I have edited and saved Rohan, which seems to have fixed it. I'll do the others when I get time - unless somebody else does them first. Anjouli 16:37, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the assistance in fixing the links :) Jor 21:51, Dec 30, 2003 (UTC)

I think that, wherever possible, article titles with such accented characters should be accompanied by a redirect from the unaccented equivalent (in this case Eotheod). Apart from fixing problem arising from this (entirely understandable) misspelling, it avoids the circumstance where some future visitor makes a dupe article at the unaccented name, without knowing the accented one exists. -- Finlay McWalter 17:03, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Preservation

I am always interested on knowing whether examples of a particular aircraft have been preserved. Two of interest, because my father made me models of them, are the Handley Page Hampden and the Vickers Wellington.

Keith Lucas kwl@aber.ac.uk

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Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) suggests using English unless the native form is more commonly used in English than the anglicised form, which in this case it isn't as there are only 60 Google hits for "Rudolf Heß" if you limit the search to English pages, compared to over 15000 for "Rudolf Hess". Angela. 06:19, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree: use Rudolf Hess as the almost universally-used name in English. In addition, I believe German spelling reform now means that Hess and not Heß is the proper spelling in German as well, though I'm not sure whether this is applied to names or not. --Delirium 09:57, Dec 30, 2003 (UTC)

I think the English page should be Rudolf Hess, but I wonder about the google numbers. A search for "Rudolf Heß" is extended by google to "Rudolf Hess" (at least if I use google.co.uk or google.com from Germany - even with the link above! -, I'm not sure if this applies universally, and finds some 8.000 pages). If I search for "Rudolf Heß" -Hess, it still get's 2.800 pages. Only if one turns it to "english language only", the page number is reduced to 45. -- till we *) 12:58, Dec 30, 2003 (UTC)

I'd say put it at "Hess". Practicality should be more important than issues of whether English or German speakers are using the more "correct" form of the name. The practical issues here are (1) in other articles, it's marginally better to link to the page itself than a redirect to the page, and (2) if you're writing an article in English, you'll always want the visible link text to be "Hess", not "Heß". If the article were at "Heß", then links would thus best be [[Rudolf Heß|Rudolf Hess]] rather than [[Rudolf Hess]]. That wouldn't be very intuitive, and I don't think it's worth it for a point of linguistic etiquette. If the issue needs highlighting, then the article itself should do that, not the title of the article. Onebyone 16:05, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Google tells me there's "about 87" hits for Heß on English pages. I checked some, and many of them are either quoting German text or belong to neo nazi organizations. I say, go with Hess. Zocky 16:18, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree that the article should live at Rudolf Hess (much as I love the ß) and want to add a little note thanking Raul and Schnee for demonstrating how disputes on Wikipedia should happen: polite disagreement (not just caving when someone disagrees with you), the decision to make sure the community is involved, and an overall spirit of Wikilove. I'm happier just having read this thread. :) Jwrosenzweig 16:31, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hear! Hear! Andrewa 21:59, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Aww... I'm flattered :) --Raul654 07:20, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

This is the English Wikipedia. We should no more have an article at Heß than at Wien. RickK 05:08, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

There are lots of folks like Albrecht Dürer, Ernst Thälmann or Franz Josef Strauß. Should they all be changed to Albrecht Duerer, Ernst Thaelmann and Franz Josef Strauss if google gave more hits with the "wrong" spelling? Or do we make an exception especially for Rudolf? -- User:Moehre 08:04, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Interesting point. As an English speaker with no knowledge of German, I'd have looked for Ernst Thälmann under Ernst Thalmann, which isn't even a redirect. This article is a stub anyway, so perhaps a name change and redirect creation will happen when the article is written.

I think the point about Wien is well made above. The English spelling is Vienna of course. The only consistent and enforceable policy is to use English spellings. Alternatively, we could change the policy to say that so long as the appropriate redirects are there, either spelling can be used for the article. That strikes me as more Wikipedic, but may promote fruitless revert wars. I'd leave the policy as is.

And as the policy stands, the examples given and many more should eventually get changed. It doesn't seem all that urgent to me. Andrewa 14:01, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I tend to favor the actual spelling of anyone's proper name (thus Rudolf Heß not Rudolf Hess). However, it becomes quickly obvious to me that while German uses mostly the same alphabet as English, difficulty in being consistent on this will arise for all languages which do not share the English alphabet — and becoming downright impossible for most Asian languages. So the only consistent approach is to transliterate these names into "English". Nonetheless, that is not necessarily my vote, as it could be argued that this Wikipedia is for English and perhaps other european users primarily, and the case could be made to use "correct" spellings for such proper names, and transliterate all others. - Marshman 22:17, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Rudolf Hess vs Rudolf Heß

Schnee and I have a question about the following articles - Rudolf Hess and Rudolf Heß. He moved the article from Hess to Heß (making Hess a redirect), and I moved it back again. We talked it over (I am copying our discussion below) and we wanted to get everyone's opinion on which one to make the article and which one to make a redirect . It basically boils down to - Hess is the way it is always spelled in English, but Heß is the proper german way of spelling it.

(From User talk:Raul654)

Hi, with regard to the question which of the two pages given above should be a redirect to the other one - it may be true that "Hess" is the traditional english spelling, but the correct spelling of the (german) name is "Heß", so don't you think that Rudolf Hess should redirect to Rudolf Heß instead of vice versa? Just a thought. :) -- Schnee 01:37, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

(From User talk:Schneelocke)

My thoughts on the matter were basically:

1. This is the english wikipedia - I don't think it's a trivial matter that the titles should be only standard english-language characters, or else no one can directly link to Rudolf Heß without copying it first, like I did.
2. Like I said before, Hess is the way it is spelled in English. (I've never seen it any other way) As precedent, I'd point out the fact that Italia (how Italians refer to Italy) is a redirect to Italy, Deutschland (as a disambig page) to Germany, etc etc. We usually put articles under the name by which they are most commonly known, which is not always the most "proper" name. Where languages are concered, we go with the standard English version.

--Raul654 02:09, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

There's a difference here, though. "Germany" or "Italy" or translations of the respective names, whereas "Rudolf Hess" is merely a spelling variation of the correct name (Heß). It may be true that it's more difficult to directly link to Rudolf Heß than to Rudolf Hess for someone who can't directly type a ß, but since one of the articles will always redirect to the other, I think that's irrelevant. And for what it's worth, there are several examples where latin-1 characters are used for article titles: take a look at, for example, Kraków, Eugène Ionesco, Josef Hiršal and others.

Furthermore, the fact that this is the English Wikipedia does not mean anything - to quote from Wikipedia:POV, "Also be careful to avoid an English-speaking Point Of View. Although country-specific and similar POVs are often easy to spot, this can be harder to spot." As said above already, "Rudolf Heß" *is* the correct spelling, so this is what should be used for the article. -- Schnee 13:16, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You make a good point. Here's what I propose - let's copy the above discussion to the Wikipedia:Village pump as a request for comments and see what everyone says. That way, should another issue like this come up again, the community can enfore uniformity. --Raul654 19:48, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Good idea. Let's do that. -- Schnee 21:36, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

List of teenagers

Been thinking of making this, list of teenagers, not people who became famous as children, mind you, only as teenagers, what do you think? Antonio Forever Young Martin

I think we have too many lists already, but that's just my opinion. Metasquares 14:43, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Metasquares in general. However, if there is a clear need for it, go ahead. If there is no need for it, don't bother. —Frecklefoot 08:52, 30 Dec 2003 (PST)

There is a List of youngsters in history, that has a list of teenagers included in it. Adam Bishop 17:16, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yet another frivolous list (IMHO). If we have this list, then why wouldn't "list of 20 year olds", "List of 30 year olds", etc. be allowed so as not to age discriminate? RedWolf 17:26, Dec 30, 2003 (UTC)

I have a proposal for a list that we can all find revlevant - the List of hookers. Anyone have suggestions to start the list with? --Raul654 07:25, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Heidi Fleiss? RickK 05:05, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Currently Teenager redirects to Adolescence, which does include a (short and not terribly illustrative) list. I think it might be more appropriate to use Teenager specifically for the emergence of a distinct teen culture, primarily in the US in the 1950s. Or at least there should be such an article under some name. Jmabel 04:41, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Welcome back everybody.

Good to see you. Zocky 03:11, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks to all the Wikimedia developers (Brion, et al) and sysads and employees at Bomis (Jason, et al)! Hope that the 23K raised could really help with the redundancy effort. :) --seav 03:32, Dec 30, 2003 (UTC)

Yip, thanks to Brion and all the others involved. --snoyes 03:39, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Time for the most unique rider's club to reunite again, the wikiriders!! LOL!

Antonio Harley Wikipedison Martin

Agreed, thanks to everyone who works so hard on keeping Wikipedia going. And everyone, give yourselves pats on the back for contributing to the fundraiser! (You did contribute to the fundraiser, right? If not, what are you waiting for? :-) -- Wapcaplet 21:05, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Contribution record on deleted pages

If I'm not mistaken, if a page is deleted, contribution refords on that page is not listed on "User contributions" and "My contributions" pages. But I would like to double-check on this. I and others are now discussing a possible defamation case between two Japanese Wikipedians, and we may soon try to delete a certain summary comment that is allegedly defamatory. Is deleting a page enough to eliminate the comment, or should we possibly have to ask special help? Tomos 01:29, 28 Dec 2003 (UTC)

That's correct. Deleted pages in essence vanish from history. (Unless they're subsequently undeleted, of course.)

If a summary comment is the only thing at issue, though, it could be individually wiped if everyone thinks that would be better. Depends on circumstances. --Brion 02:12, 28 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Fictional Universes?

Is there/should there be either a standard designation for the plethora of articles on the characters, locations, etc. of self consistent fictional universes. Those of science fiction and fantasy seem to be especially prevalent (e.g. Star Trek, Star Wars, Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Harry Potter). A few of these could almost sustain a wiki-encyclopedia of their own... As it's traditionally not customary for encyclopedia to include numerous articles on fictional characters... has this issue been hashed out already? - Seth Ilys 21:22, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Numerous times. There's widespread agreement (although no consensus) that it's best to merge these into super-articles like Characters of Middle Earth, with redirects from the respective pages where appropriate. This avoids context duplication and flooding of the article space with what many consider to be unencyclopedic fringe material.

This advice conflicts somewhat with the standards presented in Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia.

Elde 21:57, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Not anymore.—Eloquence

I tweaked the bit to have more of a rationale based on amount of possible content; a lot of the fictional character articles I see can never muster more than "Doggydoo is the lovable sidekick of Smartypants the Bear, and always says 'arf' when he's hungry." The whole fictional characters thing should probably be more organized, because there are hundreds if not thousands of stubly articles wandering around the namespace now. Stan 23:06, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

There is in fact a Tolkien wiki and a MediaWiki-based Star Trek encyclopedia, but that doesn't stop the respective fans from hanging out here. I personally have no problem with that but I do detest small articles about individual fictional characters and places.

Perhaps, for those groups for which wikis exist, a prominent link to the relevant wiki could be placed in the appropriate articles... would that discourage their development here?

We do not tolerate fan fiction or other material that is only relevant to very small fringes even within the respective communities.—Eloquence

To put it in perspective, Odysseus and Achilles have been described in encyclopedias for a long time... :-) In general, I think it's sufficient for the first sentence to say "fiction" or "fictional", and supply author/milieu; disambiguators like "(Middle-earth)" are annoyingly verbose in titles, should only be used if necessary. (If you disagree, move him to Achilles (Iliad).) Wikipedia:WikiProject Fictional Series purports to be a project on this, but says little, also there's Wikipedia:Check your fiction. Stan 21:37, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It's important to note that these are mythological figures which appear in different stories and in different imagery. When a character becomes so deeply embedded in our culture or in a past one, it clearly deserves its own article (compare also Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck). Also, when it's a very complex character with a long back story, this may also be preferable. On the other hand, an article about Zipper the Fly makes a lot less sense.—Eloquence

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of encyclopedias. There is therefore nothing wrong with having a great many Middle Earth, Star Trek or Star Wars articles if there is enough to write about each subject. But if all there ever can be is a stub on a subject then it should be merged into a larger article. There certainly is no consensus to do this to the extent the Eloquence suggests. --mav 13:02, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Article creation

During the drafting of my user page many errors were made while scripting the various links.

• Does errant scripting of links inadvertently create new article pages?
• Is there a wiki listing the most recently created articles? (Did I "wiki" the term "wiki" correctly?)
• How are items compiled for the Requested articles list? (How are user/member requests made and processed?)

--azwaldo 16:25, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

• I take it you mean something like this article doesn't exist with "errant scripting of links"? It doesn't create an article, just provides an easy link for someone wishing to create that article. (The links are useful as well for stuff like investigating which non-existant articles are most in demand)
• There is a special page on wikipedia listing all the newly created articles: Special:Newpages
• People just add titles that they think should be created but are either too lazy or not knowledgeable enough to create themselves. The page is edited like any other wikipedia article. --snoyes 16:47, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Logos

Please continue this discussion at Wikipedia talk:Logos and Wikipedia:Logos

Hello again,
and sorry for my perfectible english. I see that my question about the presence of commercial logos in wikipedia pages has disappeared from the village pump, so I put it again because from my point of view, these logos don't bring any information; on the other side such a logo entertain the image of the company in our minds, that's why I consider it as advertising. Why do you think commercial firms pay a lot of money to have their logos visible during big events? Hémant 15:47, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

• Please provide examples of (links to) articles where logos might be improperly displayed. I think it is an individual matter dependent upon relevance to the article (for example if not a copyvio, it might well be appropriate to display the logo of CocaCola in the article on colas) - Marshman 17:45, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)
• It's generally perfectly appropriate. If a TV news was covering a story about Ford, they'd show the logo. They'd show it if Ford was creating new jobs, firing lots of people, had broken some world record, or made some car that killed its occupants. -- Finlay McWalter 17:51, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

• Take a look at Wikipedia_talk:Logos and Wikipedia:Logos and join the discussion. Most of the Village Pump discussion was moved there. Discussions here and elsewhere led to the drafting of a proposed policy, which, to date, has not gotten enough discussion and debate.

My own view is that the logo is the the corporate equivalent of a person's portrait. I feel that a picture of Mark Twain or Hans Christian Andersen or Stephen Crane or Nicole Kidman adds something to an encyclopedia article, even though it is hard to make any left-brained logical explanation of precisely what information it conveys. In similar manner, I think that a logo is a very reasonable thing to have in an article about a company. As to the point that the logo promotes the company, well, so does the mere presence of an article (by indicating that the company is significant enough to deserve mention in an encyclopedia). Any article on practically anything of contemporary commercial significance can be regarded as having a promotional effect. Should we not have articles on J. K. Rowling or Nicole Kidman or Eminem on the basis that commercial firms "pay a lot of money" to publicize these people? That's my $0.02, go to Wikipedia talk:Logos and Wikipedia:Logos and let us have yours. Dpbsmith 23:59, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Please continue this discussion at Wikipedia talk:Logos and Wikipedia:Logos

Are lists copyright?

Can a list be copyright? The article List of former members of the U.S. House of Representatives has been copied directly from a website called Nationmaster.com ( http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Historic-Members-of-the-United-States-House-of-Representatives ), but it's only a list of names and I don't know if a list can be copyrighted. If it is, ought it be deleted? Adam 15:26, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hello. If you were to read the nationmaster site, you'd see that it is copying from us, legally. Thanks, Morwen 15:28, Dec 27, 2003 (UTC)

Hi, also, I think this list will be somewhat useless if and when we have more complete listings of the members of each Congress. I think that someone has already started working on this. Danny 15:31, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I have been looking for a complete list of members of the House back to 1789 by district and party, but I can only find one back to 1824 - any suggestions? Adam 15:35, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I suggest you write to the Library of Congress? :) Morwen 15:38, Dec 27, 2003 (UTC)

Check Wikipedia. We have computer-generated lists for First United States Congress to Thirtieth United States Congress. ;-) Danny 15:44, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yes but they don't identify Representatives by District. However, I see that if I cross-reference the lists at the Congressional Biography website (which gives party but not District) with the lists at the Political Graveyard website (which gives District but not party), I can compile a complete table of all Reps by party and District 1789-2003. Am I mad enough to embark on such a project? Possibly - I already created a list of all members of the British House of Commons by constituency back to 1800 so I am capable of anything :) Adam 16:10, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Start with the Senators; there are less of those. I am trying my hand at a table of Senators for the First Congress. Danny 16:18, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I already have a complete list of Senators somewhere, which is easy to get from the Congressional Quarterly Guide to US Elections, which I bought for $50 in San Francisco in 1987. I might turn that into a WP article soon. The House is much harder. Adam 16:23, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

A plain list can not be copyright. -- Tarquin 17:56, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

But a sorted list can be. CGS 18:28, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC).

A merely sorted list? Have you got a citation for that? Dandrake 02:13, Jan 1, 2004 (UTC)

VfD

• After the ballots on Votes for Deletion are closed, IF the tally is in favor of keeping the article, is the article cleansed of all history of prior nomination in VfD?

thanks -- Ensiform

I don't understand your question. All prior versions of an article are kept. It is not possible to erase any. So the history will carry verisons that include the deletion message. -- Tarquin 17:58, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Rainbow 6/six disambiguation help

There are two things called Rainbow six/6, a book and a computer game based on it. The game is at Rainbow 6 (video game) (It was at Rainbow 6, but I changed the name. The book is at Rainbow six. I am fairly new to Wikipedia, at least to editing, as I've been registered for quite a while, so I would like some help in what to do here. One issue is that people would get one entry if they searched for Rainbow six, and another for Rainbow 6.

I think there should probably be a disambiguation page for one of them to the book and game, and the other one should re-direct to the first, but I'm not sure how to do that. Also, the book entry could be turned into a disambiguation as it references the book and game, alternatively, we could create a new disambiguation page, and leave the book entry (Rainbow six) to be just on the book (possibly as a stub).

Basically, I would like some advice on how to handle this, and possibly someone to deal with it themselves, and walk me through the process involved, so I have a better idea of how things work here. Thanks Silverfish 14:13, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

How to chat with an anon user?

Hi! Here's a minor puzzler: an un-logged-in user (24.202.135.211) has made something like 25 edits to Priory of Sion in the past hour or so- how would one go about pointing out the preview button to someone who presumably doesn't check their talk page? Or would one just use the talk page anyway? Thanks for any light you can shed! - Puffy jacket 09:11, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

• Use his talk page. If nothing else, the alert that he has messages may entice him to click there and read your words. Or if he's clueless, and you are working on the article at the same time, you can write somthing there (just be sure to get rid of it when done!) -- Nauvoo 09:16, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Image linking

Clicking the highlighted text (link) where an image is suggested within an article yields a blank browser screen (IE) with the following URL in the "Address" field:

http://127.0.0.1:1027/clear.cgi?

This URL does NOT match the one revealed in the Status bar when hovering over the given link in the text

(The above URL was obtained by clicking on the highlighted portion of the following entry in the wiki/Special:Imagelist page)
(desc) Kinggus.jpg . . 9050 bytes . . J.J. . . 01:47, 27 Dec 2003 (Government portrait of Swedish King)

Any suggestions?

Most likely you are using some sort of local web proxy; some people use these to filter out advertisements or potentially offensive material. Sometimes these will filter out images that happen to fall in the "/upload/a/ad" subdirectory, for instance. I'm not sure what's triggering this image (http://en.wikipedia.org/upload/2/2e/Kinggus.jpg ) but you should check the settings on your proxy if you're using one. --Brion 08:55, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Appletalk/AppleTalk articles

According to Apple documentation, the official correct name for the protocol is "AppleTalk", not "Appletalk". Yet, it's the "Appletalk" page that has the text and the "AppleTalk" page that is the redirect. Anyone going to have a problem with me flipping this inaccuracy? RedWolf 05:44, Dec 27, 2003 (UTC)

Sounds like an eminently sensible change to me...

James F. (talk) 07:15, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Go for it. Dpbsmith 15:01, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Articles flip completed. RedWolf 22:00, Dec 27, 2003 (UTC)

Additional terms in parenthesis

Has it become standard to indicate films by adding "(films)" or "(movies)" after the title. If it is only for disambiguation I don't think Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (film) is necessary. TwoOneTwo 00:34, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Sage advice. Does the styleguide say this? It certainly should. -- Finlay McWalter 01:05, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

thanks!!!

thank you to whomever fixed the system after the xmas crash. Kingturtle 23:27, 26 Dec 2003 (UTC) P.S. can someone direct me to the this is not wikipedia page so I can retrieve some stuff I was working on during the xmas crash? Kingturtle

I second the motion (and move that $10 of the wikimedia foundation's cash buy that person a few beers). You probably want: [1] -- Finlay McWalter 00:58, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia & ethics of "sensitive" information

While researching the article on medical prescription, I stumbled across information on what consistutes a valid DEA number (US government's Drug Enforcement Agency). That, is the number of letters and digits and the relationship of the digits and letters within the DEA number. While this information is clearly public, including it Wikipedia certainly aids criminals in prescription forgeries. Should I include it in an article? (The same discussion would apply to credit card numbers, etc.) Samw 00:40, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with these numbers (hey, an article about the numbers would be good) - what legitimate interest would someone have in finding these numbers in an encyclopedia? -- Finlay McWalter 00:48, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The information on how valid credit card numbers are constructed is already in Wikipedia, which I don't see as problematic. These are all very simple and openly published checksums, so relying on them to prevent fraud would certainly be foolish. If there is an article in which the DEA number information would be of interest, I would say go ahead and add it. --Delirium 08:38, Dec 27, 2003 (UTC)

I agree. I recall that, at age 15, how to construct a valid credit card number was part of my school syllabus (if my memory can be trusted, they have certian prefixes and a mod 10 checksum). I don't see how a DEA number could be any more sensitive. Stewart Adcock 17:02, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

No answers, but perhaps I can formulate some questions. The big question is, "is it legitimately of interest to someone who's interested in the subject of prescriptions?" Let's put it another way. We normally accept that encyclopedia articles are of legitimate interest to somebody who is not a professional in the field described by the topic. If we truly believed that "A little learning is a dangerous thing/Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring" there would be no point in having an encyclopedia at all. Your article on medical prescriptions (which looks very good, by the way) already contains information about prescription forgeries. I find this information interesting to know, even though I've never forged and never intend to forge a prescription. Normally we assume that the inclusion of information is not tantamount to an enticement to abuse. Personally, I think that information about the internal consistency check algorithm for a valid DEA number is legitimate, while, say, Bill Gates' social security number is not.

I tend to agree with those who deprecate "security through obscurity." There was a recent research paper by some computer security gurus who looked at the structure of an ordinary cylinder lock with master-key system. They saw analogies to well-known security issues in computer systems and were surprised to find that the system was extremely insecure. Their publication created a minor flap—but then it emerged that the security issues had, in fact, been known to locksmiths and criminals literally for over a century. The only people that hadn't known about them were the people that relied on the security of these locks.

The second question is: can you get in trouble yourself or get Wikipedia in trouble by including some piece of information? I think I'm not going to even try to guess on this one. Dpbsmith 15:01, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for everyone's input. I've added a description of the checksum algorithm to Drug Enforcement Administration. Samw 21:39, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

Merry christmas and best wishes for Peace Profound! Optim 06:51, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I'd like an answer to my question

Has Wikipedia or at least the Village Pump been taken over by an authoritarian regime or what? For days now I've been trying to find out why the "list of links" may be incomplete and what could be done about it, but all I get is no reaction (Wikipedia talk:Bug reports) or my question being archived, i e deleted (here, this morning). I don't give up easily, so here it is again. To all of you who believe in Jesus, a merry Christmas! --KF 23:33, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

What list of links? If you mean the list for "What links here", there are two reasons, as has been answered many times in the past:

1. The links tables aren't always accurate.
2. The list is cut off after the first 500 results as an initial measure against pages that gained ~30,000 links due to user:rambot-created city entries, and an ability to page through the list hasn't gotten added yet.

If you mean something else, please specify. --Brion 00:13, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

When I'm reading, say, the 1960s page and I click on "What links here", I get

==1960s==

(List of links)

The following pages link to here:

101st Airborne Division

etc.

So this is why, not surprisingly I think, I referred to it as "list of links".

However, the alphabetical list stops at Co- (Coleco). This never happened, at least to my knowledge, when the list was still chronological.

It was never chronological, though it was previously in no particular order. I explained all this before, who was asking then?

I don't understand what this is to do with the city entries. I don't think it shows 500 results; it seems less. And anyway, if that feature does not work, how on earth are you supposed to build an encyclopaedia? --KF 00:44, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that shows 500. Count them if you like. --Brion 00:53, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

PS When I want to edit a section of this page a different one opens.

That's because people add sections and their numbers change. -- Timwi 01:00, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Actually, there does seem to be a bug. It's caused by your insertion of "==1960s==" somewhere up there (and this will probably worsen it). -- Timwi 01:01, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

All this sounds unfriendly and impatient to me. Am I supposed to be sorry for asking? Am I supposed to be happy that every other question is answered?

You should not consider it your right to receive an answer. Everybody here is a volunteer and is not getting paid. -- Timwi 01:00, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

"As has been answered many times in the past": When? Where? By whom?

I'm too tired to continue now, but I don't understand any of this. KF 01:02, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Here, in the pump. When? I don't know exactly, a few weeks ago? It's probably been archived somewhere where it will never be found again. Anyway, I'm right now banging at the code to try to make it possible to page through the results; apologies if I sound impatient, but it's a bit of a hectic time of year. --Brion 01:06, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Message tags

I've seen tags for the number of articles (6,919,539) and stubs (

). Is there a page somewhere with a complete listing of them? --Raul654 21:22, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:MediaWiki custom messages. ~ Jake 22:09, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

may I suggest a few points?

In producing a wikipedia in another language (in Hungarian, for instance) it may/would be useful for the Hungarian native speakers to have the option of some sort of alignment between phrases and/or sections of texts in an article or the headwords themselves. In the Hungarian texts one could keep in brackets or otherwise the hypertext links that are to be contrasted with the Hungarian terms/concepts and their domain. That can help further translation or learning English, which may of course be out of your scope. But should be? For instance it is very tempting/challenging to translate and/or write the article knowledge in Hungarian which would result in two words tudás and ismeret respectively. They are then used to form a number of other phrases connected with knowledge and to be detailed within. All that may be necessary to explain, just as similar differences in mapping other words are very likely and call for commenting. Further examples include the names of various courses and degrees, a constant headache for translators of diplomas and certificates for accreditation. ~~apogr~~

RC → IRC

Just a feature plug: I'm running a simple IRC bot on irc.freenode.net which dumps recent changes to the #enrc.wikipedia channel. Some people might find it useful. French and German bots are also running, at #derc.wikipedia and #frrc.wikipedia. I've recently improved it so that the bot doesn't have to be manually restarted all the time. There are no immediate plans to extend the service to the other wikis, I don't want to annoy our friends at Freenode too much. -- Tim Starling 12:09, Dec 24, 2003 (UTC)

This bot is extremely useful! Optim 06:53, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

IMDB pseudo-namespace

I was browsing SourceForge to see what was happening and I spotted a report about "IMDB InterWiki namespace incorrectly expanded (out of date)" (it's ID 856707: I would link to it but I'm uncertain what all the doo-dads in the SF URL do). I didn't even know there was such a thing, and I have searched in vain for an explanation. I tested the described behaviour (IMDB:American Pie) and it happens just as stated. Where is the official blurb on this feature? Phil 09:41, Dec 24, 2003 (UTC)

That's "interwiki" linking. We've had that for ever. -- Tarquin 09:48, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

So it uses the table on Meatball UseMod Wiki at [2]? Is that updated real-time, so if I adjusted the Meatball Wiki table would the links automagically re-adjust? I think the problem reported in the bug report is because the URL created has a "_" (underline) instead of each space. Phil 09:59, Dec 24, 2003 (UTC)

Highlighting

What do I add to the end of the URL to highlight certain words on a page? --Jiang 09:38, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

That is a feature of some PHP scripts running some webpages. I suspect the syntax to do this varies from site to site, and far from all sites are served as PHP content. —Sverdrup(talk) 11:18, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Organization of articles

Right now there is a slightly-more-than-stub article about the Committee of Public Safety (during the French Revolution) as such, but much more about the Committee in the excellent article on Maximilien Robespierre (largely from the 1911 Britannica). I kind of like leaving the article on Robespierre intact. Should I just add something to the "Committee of Public Safety" saying, "See also Maximilien Robespierre for a good discussion of the committee and its members", or should I duplicate the content, or what? -- Jmabel 07:55, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

One of the 1911EB's idiosyncrasies is to focus excessively on individuals, describing many organizations inline rather than giving them their own articles. I would move all the CoPS material into the other article, and prune Robespierre down to just the stuff about him personally. 1911EB articles are good starting points, but if you read a modern bio of the person, you'll likely want to do massive editing anyway, just to reflect what historians have discovered in the past century. Stan 14:25, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Automatic adding of information

Recently added a page for Twin towns and wondered if there was a way of automatically making the towns added to the list generate the twin info on the article for that town.

e.g. On the Twin towns page you might add: Oxford - Bonn; Is there a quick way of getting the pages for Oxford and Bonn to have something like:

Twin town: Bonn and Twin town: Oxford

added to their respective articles

[user:btljs]

No there is no such way right now. You have to enter the information manually. By the way, you can sign your messages with ~~~, or ~~~~. Dori | Talk 00:33, Dec 24, 2003 (UTC)

Hi

Hello I would only like to know how do I say I LOVE YOU MY WIFE in Romanian I speek english and am for the US please if you could help me I would appriciate it Thanks Ted here is my email tcecilus2000@yahoo.com

Try Wiktionary:I love you -- Merphant 22:47, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

"Te iubesc, soţie mea." -- Jmabel 07:39, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

"revert" a bad move

How can I "swap" Ann Danielewski and Poe (singer) ?

It was not a move, it was the contents copied from one article to the other - and thus the article with the text did not have the history of the text anymore. Thus all that was necessary was to revert the changes of the anonymous user. If it were a real move then it can be undone be moving the article back - as long as the redirect page has no history of itself it is possible. Only if the redirect page has a history (like now Ann Danielewski) it needs an administrator to delete the redirect before the article can be moved back. andy 21:59, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thank you. Andy Mabbett 00:36, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Error: duplication of "Hua-Yen" / "Huayan" / "Hua-yen" article(s)

A general notice of an error to be rectified:

There were two different articles on the Hua-Yen / Huayan school of Buddhism. I made their texts consistent (and corrected one misleading statement), but there are still two separate pages.

Also, I'm not the greatest master of HTML, so the formatting could probably be improved.

Here's the text for both articles as they now stand.

One of the sysops should elminate one of the two pages, and make sure that all the links are sorted out.

[Probably, there are other problems with Chinese words being Romanized with more than one method]

E.M.

I fixed this using a redirect. -- Tim Starling 07:02, Dec 24, 2003 (UTC)

Navigation tables

It's great that articles like Architecture of the United States are linked to "sideways" topics like Architecture of the United States. But could we find a way of doing this without a table? They are undesirable for a large number of reasons, and only articles where tabular data is essential should have one. -- Tarquin 17:38, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

This case could be done, I believe, with a floating DIV (in much the way we do most images in floating DIVs).

Finlay McWalter 17:51, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

even with a floating DIV, it's still a lot of code at the start of the article, which makes it awkward to edit and confusing to the less technically-minded. I think a section at the foot of the article would be better -- Tarquin 18:02, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Given than we have lots of floating (left and right) stuff, perhaps we should have some specific wiki markup for them. You're totally correct that the CSS markup is too technical - I see lots of images on wikipedia that have botched floating markup (plainly copied from some other article). -- Finlay McWalter 18:15, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I copy and paste images and tables from other articles. If there were a simple wiki markup, I would learn but I've never been able to figure out how to do nice tables with backgrounds or things, or how or why to set margins and the like. Tuf-Kat 20:17, Dec 23, 2003 (UTC)

the point is that it would be preferable to have a section using plain markup, like:

• Other articles in this series: foo - blah - thingy

No complex markup needed. -- Tarquin 20:43, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Well, there is the new table syntax, which is still slightly complicated. I converted the table on Architecture of the United States to the new syntax. It's still a bit of code at the beginning, but it's a lot prettier than the HTML. -- Merphant 08:07, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Help with random Graphs

Help!!

I can't find any basic detailed information on random graphs anywhere and neither can my project tutor. If you help me please email strokable@hotmail.com.

If you're for real (with a handle like that, who can tell?) try the Wikipedia:Reference desk. HTH HAND Phil 18:12, Dec 23, 2003 (UTC)

I just tried Googling for "random graphs" (in quotes). Turned up a ton of what looks like relevant stuff. Suggest you do likewise. Dpbsmith 20:06, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Stubs vs. short articles

Stubs are supposed to be very short articles, supposedly even without a comma. But I've noticed that many short articles, which just need expansion, have the notice "This article is a stub". Should we be doing this?

Real stubs (with or without a comma) are not properly formed encyclopaedic articles, and should be immediately sent to cleanup, while short articles should be listed on something like:Wikipedia:Articles needing expansion. Maybe thay could have a notice, like "This article needs more work. See the talk page for details."

A whole another thing is that some articles may even need to be short. Zocky 16:58, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

There seems to be a significant difference of opinion as to what constitutes a stub article. If you look at Wikipedia:Perfect stub article, it certainly sounds like a stub will have full sentences (presumably with commas as needed). On wikipedia:cleanup the term sub-stub is often used to describe a page that doesn't even meet the requirements of a stub.

By the way, I'd strongly discourage the placing of every stub article on cleanup. Perhaps every sub-stub should be listed there, but we sure don't want to flood cleanup with every stub. -Anthropos 16:19, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree, but I dislike this terminogy creep. I think "sub-stubs" should be called "stub" and most "stubs" should be called "articles in need of expansion". It's much clearer that way for newcomers Zocky 18:26, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Tech: external site to wikipedia wikilinking

Hello villagers. As most good ideas in the world, wiki is becoming so obvious now that one is sure one did really have this idea before (which is obviously false, because ideas don't exist before they are realized). But, anyway, I have done a little web-site on Chinese culture (Classics, poetry...) where I wanted to add many cross-links on any name or important noun, but I never made that because it's too hard to code and maintain. It would be awfully convenient for me to be able to do that massive in-text linking using wiki's markup language. I guess I would only need to include the parse-link function in my php, to translate [[link]] into <a href="wikipedia.org/blabla"> bla </a>. Is it possible to grab politely this chunk of code somewhere? I do believe that it's a great improvement for any dedicated web-site to link many names, titles, or words on a ever-evoluting free encyclopedia (mostly because links should never be broken). I know that my question should be written somewhere else, but where? gbog 16:27, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Look up wiki. there is a link to a list of dozens of Wiki engines. -- Tarquin 16:40, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Aria Giovanni is #1?

According to the current list of popular articles, the individual whose article is most frequently viewed is Aria Giovanni. This amazes me. For those of you who are unfamiliar with her, Ms Giovanni is a relatively obscure nude model and soft core porno actress. But by at least one standard she's more famous than George Bush, Saddam Hussein, Jesus Christ, or Britney Spears.

I don't have a point to make about this except that I find this very strange. MK 0124 EST 23 December 2003

Please note that this is based on the page counters, which have been disabled for ages. It might have been because of a high Google ranking at the time (it's not high now), while we have no chance to achieve a high ranking on Jesus or Britney (at least until Google integrates us into their UI like they did with dictionary.reference.com).—Eloquence

I suppose there may also be a connection with her being an "adult" subject. Ours is one of the very few pages about Ms.Giovanni that doesn't contain nudity and keywords that would trigger the adult-content filters used by lots of people and institutions. So I'm guessing that if I enter her name into a search that's intermediated by such a filter then ours would be one of the few sites it would permit through. I'd say the same would be true for other people who you'd typically find on adult websites (largely nude-models and porn starlets). The same isn't true for Britney, Jesus, George, or Saddam - so most sites wouldn't get filtered and wikipedia wouldn't enjoy this unusual "unfair" advantage. -- Finlay McWalter 01:41, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Obscure to who? Not to followers of pornagraphy or adult film stars, to them she's very well known.--Elde 16:51, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Search Log

Back before the Wiki Search was taken down, there used to be a Search log, where we could see what things people were searching for. Is that still available? RickK 06:32, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

That was taken out in mid-2002. It wasn't really directly usable for clicking to create articles as most of the entries were misspellings and/or not exact titles (lowercase, missing articles, with extra terms for 'search engine' style). Further, I don't think most people expect that typing something into a search engine will record their query publicly for posterity. There are privacy issues. --Brion 08:50, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Usernames

What is the relationship between Wiki and Clublet? Why won't my Wiki username let me post/reply there. There is not page, that I can find, that lets me register with Clublet seperately. Is it me, or is Saturn too close?--anon

Are you referring to http://clublet.com/c/c/why?HomePage ? If so, that is a completely different website. "Wiki" is simply a name that describes the concept of openly editable websites, Wikipedia is one website (an encyclopedia) which uses this concept. There are many others, and they all require separate registrations (unlike Clublet, most allow anonymous editing). Please read the article Wiki for more details. As for registering on Clublet, when you click "Edit" on a page, there should be a "Sign in" popup window. If you enter a non-existent username and a password you will be prompted for further information to complete your registration. Hope that helps,—Eloquence

When did articles get categories?

I was reading Drum and bass and saw this notice at the top of a table: This article is part of the Electronic music series. When did Wikipedia articles get categories? Where can I find guidelines to incorporating articles into categories?

I don't think there are any guidelines. Do as you see fit and be willing to discuss alternatives if others don't like it. Tables like that have no technical effect -- they're just a method of organizing articles.Tuf-Kat 03:32, Dec 23, 2003 (UTC)

There's a real technical category system in the works (I kinda get tired of saying this -- when will it go live?), but these series boxes are fairly arbitrary. Someone came up with a standard layout for them once and several users adopted it to group related articles together. I think these boxes are quite neat, personally.—Eloquence

Refreshing Brilliant Prose

The voting for this is on going, but there have not been many voters (a notable exception in an almost entirely negative Tuf-Kat). Could a note of this winnowing be put somewhere prominent, eg Recent Changes, to encourage participation? TwoOneTwo 23:46, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Automobile diagrams?

I'm idly considering working on a generalized 3D model of important parts of an automobile, completely assembled, for the benefit of current or future articles that may need illustration. Significant bits I'd like to include:

• Engine compartment, including engine block, radiator, air filter, battery, and however much additional detail I can squeeze in
• Suspension/steering system and drive train, including shocks, struts, wheels

This is obviously a large undertaking; I am thinking of loosely basing the model on the illustrations in the repair manual for my Corolla, and plan to essentially build the car from scratch, body and all, in Blender. I'm confident that it can be done, but I'd be interested in hearing opinions on whether it would be worthwhile. Eventually, it'd be great to get a fine enough level of detail to make it applicable for illustrating almost any aspect of how a car works. There's probably enough encyclopedia-like information on automobile construction to make a fairly decent WikiProject out of it. Thoughts? -- Wapcaplet 21:14, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

How about doing this as part of the illustration WikiProject? I would definitely love to recruit a 3D artist for rendering some ancient temples and machines... ;-) In any case, we certainly need a decent 3D model of an automobile. How would you upload this? Maybe Flash would be an appropriate format here (it's open), to allow rotation of the model.—Eloquence

Still images (jpg or png) would be easy to export, but since the resulting images will be raster, rather than vector, I don't think Flash would be a possibility without additional conversion. Animations are easy enough to do with Blender, but they'd be .avi or another video format, and probably prohibitively large. What kind of ancient temples and machines do you have in mind? Request them and I'll see what I can do :-) -- Wapcaplet 16:43, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I would strongly put my voice in against using Flash. At least inline in the article. --Morven 23:41, 26 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree, but I think a still image with a link to "Interactive 3d model (requires Flash)" would be okay. I'd still prefer as much static content as possible though, as this keeps the articles more generally useful outside a WWW context (e.g. a paper version of Wikipedia, or even just individuals printing out an article for personal use). --Delirium 08:26, Dec 27, 2003 (UTC)

Well, with the approach I'm using, Flash is not likely to be a possibility, so no worries on that front. I've finished the basic body of the car (no interior or wheels yet) and have a rough idea of where I'm going to place some of the engine components; I haven't decided how detailed the eventual model will be, but it will certainly have enough detail to indicate where most of the important parts of a car are (though only in the most general way, since vehicles are all different), and probably a little bit about what they look like. Later, I can go further and flesh out the detail of each piece, aiming for something pretty close to functional realism (if not visual realism). I hope to be able to use the diagrams to explain, for example, how coolant flows through the engine, radiator, and heater core; how the gasoline gets to the engine; how the engine drives the alternator to recharge the battery; how the pressurized brake fluid applies the brakes to the wheels, etc. If anyone else out there is proficient with Blender, please let me know, as this is likely to be a complex project! Later, it'll also be good to have the input of people with automotive expertise. -- Wapcaplet 23:50, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

---

• Bard's Tale - Levitating Up a portal--> Wikipedia:Reference desk

Great new thought - I want feedback!

I just had an interesting idea and I wanted to get some feedback. On the main page, we have catagories for "In the News", "Recent Deaths", "New Articles" and "Anniversaries". The only way for a non-timely article to get put there is just after it is created.

My thought was - why not create a 5th catagory - "Featured Articles"

People could nominate articles on the discussion page (or would could have a special page just for that). That way, nontimely articles get their time on the main page too. Personally, a lot of the editing I do is on technical articles, which never makes it to the front page. I think this is a way of rewarding people who have similiar tastes. ---Raul654 10:48, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Maybe the most recent additions to Wikipedia:Brilliant prose would fit the bill? Bmills 10:50, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

or random or rotating selections from that list. Gentgeen 11:15, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree. Let's add it under the anniversries bar (take out the second line); there's also space in the enclyclopedia box. --Jiang 17:08, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I've created a page for further discussion of this topic --Raul654 17:27, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

When should there be a picture?

I see lots of entries which I could add a picture. Should I go ahead and add the picture, or are the guidelines as to which articles should and shouldn't have pictures? Eurleif 04:23, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

As long as there are no copyright infringements, I think most articles could do with a picture. - Hephaestos 04:33, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Please do! Also, if you find articles that especially need a picture, and you can't provide one yourself, please list them on Wikipedia:Requested pictures. -- Wapcaplet 04:45, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

12314 total pages edited

I may be a bit slow understanding how Wikipedia works, but what does "12314 total pages edited since cutoff" mean? (I'm talking about my basically empty "watchlist".) Edited by whom? Certainly not by me - I've only just discovered Wikipedia. Who or what was cut off (ouch)? Wikikiwi P.S. Hope this is the right place to ask this question.

That's 12314 edits by anyone, within the last week or so, or whatever the cutoff time was when viewing your watchlist. (Cutoff time ---> Show last 1 | 2 | 6 | 12 hours 1 | 3 | 7 days all) Κσυπ Cyp   23:36, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hi and welcome to wikipedia. hope you like out place. feel free to ask questions here whenever you are unsure about how something works. Optim 00:46, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

List of Wikipedians by number of edits

Update Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits? --Jiang

Try the stats. I can't believe it. The last time I checked you were just one above me, now you're like 10 or 15. :-) --Menchi (Talk)â 23:46, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Marlon Brando

Someone told me that Marlon Brando's ethnic origin is Maltese or part Maltese. Can someone tell me if this is true or false?

Since it's impossible to prove a negative, that's a pretty hard question to answer ;) --Raul654 04:39, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Marlon Brando

(Moved to Reference desk)

Redirection

Many writers reviewers are redirecting pooorly to the false article e.g if you are looking for graphics then you will be redircted to computer graphics.well engineering graphics and computer graphics both are diffrrent topics and i dont understand if anyone written short intro to start article like these then you will find those articles deleted immediately and redirected to other releavant artilces.there is no need of redirection you can keep that space blank.i dont know why the heck guys are doing it.this will definitely distract users from using wikipedia.and those writers who want to show their articles on wikipedia are doing this redirecting thing.also some of people from here are actually behaving like they are modertaors or something like that.also deletion of articles is very burning issue here why articles are deleted if they are not copyrighted.could be due to gramatical mistakes.if guys from here are deleting articles constantly due to grammatical mistakes and lableing the article as stub then this is very poor thing.wikipedia is just born project and not taken seriously and as this project is in immature state then this very serious matter.well i think if there are any moderator here should take this thing seriously cause if this continues then many people will sign up here to delete articles and lable it stub.well this will be fun for these guys.and wikipedia will be destroyed in few days as this project took 2 years to reach this position it will be deleted in 2 weeks.as nupedia is down otherwise there is no need for this question also i will imediately move to nupedia if it starts and tell others to dot the same cause when nupedia was there i havent found such issue. its up to you take this serious or not but let me tell you that this is not good.

Image downloads

When are image downloads going to be re-enabled G-Man 00:51, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Uploading disabled?

While trying to put together an article I noticed uploading has been disabled. I presume this has to do with the temporary(?) nature of the server. Does anyone know or have a good guess as to when I can upload my image? Hadal 11:13, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Erm, next year? :) --KF 15:10, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Uploading is temporarily disabled while we're in server limbo because it's harder to move the images around in sync, since they're separate from the database. Should be back up sooner or later; sorry for the inconvenience. --Brion 00:06, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

REP.GRANTED......

I missed the party last nite, huh. I was working on my Anthology.

oh, I forgot HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What I do is like M.L. King did but on another level. If you don't get it, don't worry about it I GOT THIS! I am not protest'n or writing no un-read letters to nobody. Us blacks have done it all .YOU WOULD ONLY HAVE TO EXPLAIN IT TO A dummy WHAT'S GOING ON and what's not. What IS going to happen and what's NOT going to come-about! What doesn't anybody understand about, Give ____ , to who it rightfully belongs to. If you are a black person, my Q. to you is ?You don't want reparations Or what.. And, how do you propose BLACKS get it? and if you are a white person... NO comment. You don't deserve one. If blacks don't deserve, You don't either! and if you dont understand Too bad!!!!!!!!!!! IT's nothingWE KNOW WHITE PEOPLE AINT GONN' JUST GIVE REPARATIONS. IF YOU GOT A BETTER IDEA DO IT THEN DON'T PUSH THAT DOOR OPEN F- MARCHING, F- WRITE'N LETTERS

CREATE YOUR OWN DOUBLE SIDED BOLD PRINT FLIERS. SIDE A>

Guess What, This lady at the church said she didn't like my letter. What am I susposed to say when all these people get educated on another level and can't comprehend english. I wrote her to let her KNO. I think black folks think they too good for Reparations. while whites play'n keep away! if you are a punk, to go get whats rightfully OURS/YOURS sat down ..?What is anybody doing to recieve Rep.. besides WAITING ON. I'll tell you, I ain't March'n shhhh. I aint talking or sendin some un-read letters to nobody. e real wit cha-self. What do U think people doing? honestly! GETTING THEIR ___ S' Everybody Jack'n. Whuss wrong wit her? Don't act like you you dont live in the world and aint from the streets. JACK-em for Reparations. Do-it right. Blacks don't have to begg for Rep. You take your destiny in your oun hands. I'm am not mad at the individuals who dont understand I woudn't say their stupid but their education got-em.. Issa long STOry. "You Roll Or Get rolled OVer." THE MESSAGE IS SERIOUS. MAYBE YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IS'T LIKE TO BE INCARRCERATED. GOD, HOPES YOU NEVER FIND OUT. It'S PANTHER POWER AT FULL REIGN / RAIN, HOWEVER YOU WANT TO PUT IT. ALSO, IT IS SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED. HOW ELES IS REPARATIONS GOING TO BE GRANTED TO US SLAVES ANCESTORS? KICK-IN (WITH ALL DUE RESPECT,) IT WAS NO OTHER WAY AND WEATHER YOU ARE WIT- IT OR NOT. THIS SHOW, MUST GO ON. TO KICK IN THE DOOR. I KNO I'M NOT MARCH'N SHH, NOR WAITING ON OTHERS WHO TALK A GOOD GAME TO ME, WITH WAITING ON, MR BILL. I'LL TAKE YOUR OPINION INTO THE VAULT. ? WHAT AM SUSPOSED TO DO KEEP PRAYING TO ME, NOT TO GET NOTING BUT WORK DONE? I HOPE YOU FEEL ME WHEN I SAY THIS, BUT MOST N... ARE CALLED LAZY. AND YOU GOT TO TALK TO THEM REPEATEDLY. TALK THEIR TALK , WALK THEIR WALK, AND ECT.. GOD BLESS this what Ill say to anyone. Black folks caint talk, they aint doin' shh either. All this because I wanted to get Info. on a pardon...

SIDE B>

GOD, giving people something to fight for besides a peacea ASs.. . (Kick-in -nuh door, Let them M-F's know, like they do U.)

REAPRATIONS!! Granted

                                                                                         * NOTICE Revised. 11/03

AFRICAN AMERICANS VS. YA'LL FOLKS

As of November 1, 2003. Reparations are Granted! This is an upstanding document because, "It Is" written. Monthly check's calculated on the 13 day of each month. "Reparations," to the Americans who have taken a loss during the course History. This money will be paid tax money assigned between the regional divide. 100% of 25 States Tax income, will go to Region 1. 100% of 25 States Tax income, will go to Region 2. For the purpose of "just do". Total, 50 States divided. Admittance testimonials of past and present events of bondage, have been displayed as evidence in the plaintiff's defense. Plaintiff/AFRICAN AMERICANS. Repeated confessions of misconduct are explained by the Defendant Party. Defendant/YA'LL FOLKS. The Decided ruling, is stated in the following judgment.. A mandatory 3% will be taken out to AID all minorities. Supplying each Region with a 14% Gain. The voting public, desides if taxes fluctuate. Stolen. As-said, by the defendants testimony. I "quote" also, BOOKS MATERIAL "quote," film documentation, substantial documents, audio and video selections, ect... are described as being the evidence. Providing descriptions of persons being, mutilated, robbed, sold, ect... To ASSIST THE BUILDING OF, the United States. Persons of African American descent* (dating back through history's judgment). All evidence "quote(s)" these acts. Items stolen unaccountable for. Inheritance of mindset harshened.. The glorification, in the meaning "to do." All prisoners are exempt from past criminal punishment. Broad-based scan, according to the tragedy (s), of infliction. Criminals are "FREE" to go. Due to un-just tampering, the human mindset was not capable of making rational decisions. Under past and present false (cir). Circumstances, with the evidence presented. All "laws" & traumatic episodes, were undoubtedly based upon altering. Accusations are not allegeded. All persons who were-not legally willing, to assist in the building of the States are elligible. Proven testimony presented as African American persons. Property of a stolen person(s), stolen or forcefully taken person(s). Are redeemed by this Reparation Grant. Boundary's were set, based upon evidence that African American's have been, Admitting Abused. All evidence have been reviewed. Evidence includes. Video(s). Audio (s), documentation (s), photograph(s) involving past and present issues. Decision ruled was the defendant "YA'LL FOLKS " were/are "GUILTY," of all past crimes. Crimes which have resulted in, stolen persons, stolen property, ect... Documented abusive descriptiveness, in events, have resulted in a, REPARATIONS GRANT. In order to provide the fund's, capable to pay for the reparation's grant. In effort to help build the Unites States of America's economy. Evidence displays, that persons of African American criteria were used as tools to help build the Foundation. (1/2) known assets, referred to as Unites States of America. The 50 states have been divided into equal portions, pooled. 9% of all taxable monies accumulated in each region will go toward Education, highways, and utilities. The remaining 14% of the 25 States income will be distributed monthly checks to the public. No one is exempt from paying taxes. Incoming tax funds are to be processed by enough officials (*equally matched) to meet the 13th day of each month deadline, in each region. STATE TAX REVENUE PAYMENTS within region of. Regional Areas. Announcement 1 - Broadcast monthly. Live verification on all broadcast stations, announcing the total of income of Region. 1 and Region. 2. Live verification all checks have been distributed. REGION 1- American of American 1. Alabama. 2. Connecticut. 3. Delaware. 4. Arkansas. 5. Hawaii. 6. Illinois. 7. Iowa. 8. Maine. 9. Massachusetts. 10. Michigan. 11. Mississippi. 12. Missouri. 13. Nebraska. 14. Arizona. 15. New York. 16. North Carolina. 17. South Dakota. 18. Ohio. 19. Oklahoma. 20. Texas. 21. Vermont. 22. Virginia. 23. Wyoming 24. Indiana 25. ( @ )

• • California. EAST. WEST
  • Georgia. WEST. EAST
  • Indiana. WEST. NORTH.
  • Nevada. NORTH. SOUTH
  • New York. SOUTH. WEST

REGION 2- America of Africa 1. Florida. 2. Idaho. 3. Alaska. 4. Kansas. 5. Kentucky. 6. Louisiana. 7. Maryland. 8. Minnesota. 9. Montana. 10. Nevada. 11. New Hampshire. 12. New Jersey. 13. New Mexico. 14. Colorado. 15. South Carolina. 16. North Dakota. 17. Oregon. 18. Pennsylvania. 19. Rhode Island. 20. Tennessee. 21. Utah. 22. Washington. 23. West Virginia. 24. Wisconsin 25. ( @ )

• California. SOUTH. NORTH
• Georgia. SOUTH. WEST
• Indiana. WEST. NORTH.
• Nevada. WEST. EAST
• New York. NORTH. EAST

X GOd

1. 0-9742563-1-5

• equally matched-the only qualification we ask to qualify for these two position's are... Minority: 1. You must be born of American African descent and able to learn. Born in the USA.

Majority: 2. Any person who is not of African American descent and able to learn. Born in the USA.

• • American African/African American- Meaning definition Includes. All children, who's parent(s) are born of American African/African American descent.
    • American of American / YA'LL FOLKS -Persons who are not of African American descent, are those who parent(s) are not, born of American African/African American descent.

Copyright© 2003. All Rights Reserved. SMOKIE "GOD"JOHNSON. Revised. 10/03

(Sample.THEIR, confusing ass legal bullshh...)>

NO REAPRATIONS!

end SIDE B. Do your job as a Fabrication Lifter...

Email: jibrezy@yahoo.com If all blacks a g r ee on 1 (one) thing.

<SEE. ALL CAPS>

LEARN YOU.....  HOW TO BE SMART.. NOW GO! 

PS, Pass it, SREAD it.

note:After I wrote this Michael Jackson got blamed. I comprehend everything, so should you! R U S H If NIHAS WAnna say they DONT LIKE it F-em, They Aint doin' shit either! Holiday Greetings!

FREESYLY'N MY SCRIPT. EVERY DAY IS DIFFERENT, BEATS BEING WHIPPED..

I KEEP NOt liking what's going on. BUT, something's wrong with me!

YOU DON'T THINK. O' OR YOU THINK TOO MUCH. R U S H... their A-- GOD, giving people something to fight for besides a peacea ASs.. . (Kick-in -nuh door, Let them mutha-fukas know, like they do U.)

REAPRATIONS!! Granted

• NOTICE Revised. 11/03

AFRICAN AMERICANS VS. YA'LL FOLKS As of November 1, 2003. Reparations are Granted! This is an upstanding document because, "It Is" written. Monthly check's calculated on the 13 day of each month. "Reparations," to the Americans who have taken a loss during the course History. This money will be paid tax money assigned between the regional divide. 100% of 25 States Tax income, will go to Region 1. 100% of 25 States Tax income, will go to Region 2. For the purpose of "just do". Total, 50 States divided. Admittance testimonials of past and present events of bondage, have been displayed as evidence in the plaintiff's defense. Plaintiff/AFRICAN AMERICANS. Repeated confessions of misconduct are explained by the Defendant Party. Defendant/YA'LL FOLKS. The Decided ruling, is stated in the following judgment.. A mandatory 3% will be taken out to AID all minorities. Supplying each Region with a 14% Gain. The voting public, desides if taxes fluctuate. Stolen. As-said, by the defendants testimony. I "quote" also, BOOKS MATERIAL "quote," film documentation, substantial documents, audio and video selections, ect... are described as being the evidence. Providing descriptions of persons being, mutilated, robbed, sold, ect... To ASSIST THE BUILDING OF, the United States. Persons of African American descent* (dating back through history's judgment). All evidence "quote(s)" these acts. Items stolen unaccountable for. Inheritance of mindset harshened.. The glorification, in the meaning "to do." All prisoners are exempt from past criminal punishment. Broad-based scan, according to the tragedy (s), of infliction. Criminals are "FREE" to go. Due to un-just tampering, the human mindset was not capable of making rational decisions. Under past and present false (cir). Circumstances, with the evidence presented. All "laws" & traumatic episodes, were undoubtedly based upon altering. Accusations are not allegeded. All persons who were-not legally willing, to assist in the building of the States are elligible. Proven testimony presented as African American persons. Property of a stolen person(s), stolen or forcefully taken person(s). Are redeemed by this Reparation Grant. Boundary's were set, based upon evidence that African American's have been, Admitting Abused. All evidence have been reviewed. Evidence includes. Video(s). Audio (s), documentation (s), photograph(s) involving past and present issues. Decision ruled was the defendant "YA'LL FOLKS " were/are "GUILTY," of all past crimes. Crimes which have resulted in, stolen persons, stolen property, ect... Documented abusive descriptiveness, in events, have resulted in a, REPARATIONS GRANT. In order to provide the fund's, capable to pay for the reparation's grant. In effort to help build the Unites States of America's economy. Evidence displays, that persons of African American criteria were used as tools to help build the Foundation. (1/2) known assets, referred to as Unites States of America. The 50 states have been divided into equal portions, pooled. 9% of all taxable monies accumulated in each region will go toward Education, highways, and utilities. The remaining 14% of the 25 States income will be distributed monthly checks to the public. No one is exempt from paying taxes. Incoming tax funds are to be processed by enough officials (*equally matched) to meet the 13th day of each month deadline, in each region. STATE TAX REVENUE PAYMENTS within region of. Regional Areas. Announcement 1 - Broadcast monthly. Live verification on all broadcast stations, announcing the total of income of Region. 1 and Region. 2. Live verification all checks have been distributed. REGION 1- American of American 1. Alabama. 2. Connecticut. 3. Delaware. 4. Arkansas. 5. Hawaii. 6. Illinois. 7. Iowa. 8. Maine. 9. Massachusetts. 10. Michigan. 11. Mississippi. 12. Missouri. 13. Nebraska. 14. Arizona. 15. New York. 16. North Carolina. 17. South Dakota. 18. Ohio. 19. Oklahoma. 20. Texas. 21. Vermont. 22. Virginia. 23. Wyoming 24. Indiana 25. ( @ )

• • California. EAST. WEST
  • Georgia. WEST. EAST
  • Indiana. WEST. NORTH.
  • Nevada. NORTH. SOUTH
  • New York. SOUTH. WEST

REGION 2- America of Africa 1. Florida. 2. Idaho. 3. Alaska. 4. Kansas. 5. Kentucky. 6. Louisiana. 7. Maryland. 8. Minnesota. 9. Montana. 10. Nevada. 11. New Hampshire. 12. New Jersey. 13. New Mexico. 14. Colorado. 15. South Carolina. 16. North Dakota. 17. Oregon. 18. Pennsylvania. 19. Rhode Island. 20. Tennessee. 21. Utah. 22. Washington. 23. West Virginia. 24. Wisconsin 25. ( @ )

• California. SOUTH. NORTH
• Georgia. SOUTH. WEST
• Indiana. WEST. NORTH.
• Nevada. WEST. EAST
• New York. NORTH. EAST

                                                                               X              gOD                
                                                                                                                                #0-9742563-1-5 

If NIHAS WAnna say summ'n& they DONT LIKE it F-em, They Aint doin' shit either! <SEE. ALL CAPS> ' LEARN YOU,,! HOW TO BE SMART.. NOW GO!

(BONOUS CD TRACKS\\\ MY lyrics)

TELL me that it makes no sence,

ta Represent.

Money, Ta talk fuh Years, like STREET SOLDIERS hints. Reparations, Kick inna doe', like GOD Dents. DON'T see the yap&trap (yap yap, yap-yap-yap) . The teach'n is Good,

it made A Hoe snap.

(insert the beat) Roll model, hen boddle, Hit The Throdle, model. Pimpin Bill Clinton see the presidents. (the beats) Don't lissen ta me, I'm not-cha-GOD. Wit big Nuts, juss ta come aNtell-em How Hard. The D. Ta The O. Ta the G. !Is how they treat me. You SHIT, You P. Don't wanna waste my time trynna make you nighas See. Don't want me ta ANSWER when Imma Z.. Real Talk Bay-b, Ima G. (the beats) Letta fuh letta- Key FUH Key. Iss Betta-late-den Neva, onna D- we abandon fuh*da LIFE Ova B. !BIOTCH WHY WHITES APPRECIATE THE TIME THAT I BUILT THE STUPID FENCE, BUT DON'T APPRECIATE WIT 1/2 SLAVE SWEAT DRIPS. THE LIPS, WE RIPS, STOP CALLIN' MY NAME- AND SHAKE YA GOD-DAMN HIPS. * BLAME'N GOD FUH SOMETHIN CUZ YOU SLIPS. IZ YOU REPARATIONS YAP'N CLAP'N CLIPS. EVERYBODY PLAY'N GUSS'N NIS. EASY CURSE'N A CHILD, AND HURT'N MENZ, HOES AND BITCHES WIT DEM NEVA ENDZ. IT DON'T TAKE A GOD TA TELL YOU- HOW TO TELL-EM NO PRETEND KEEP YA EYES CLOSED FRIEND. Attend

Song Title: " YAMP "

        &

9: 58 - 10:O2pm"

You can get zig-zags

 long  or  Sho-wt-,

When you come inta ya Par-de idsda hoe,

Bounce  it up 

bounce it down, likea sixtee-fo. and you kno baby vcome'n back. Like a GIGGALO.

Issa  CRACK  inna crevis  onna  flow.

Money got the smell ova PO' NO. ( SAidporno )

eyes and the girls get'n L o

as they can go

E -- One -- 4.

Hoe  stro.   

SAN-PAB-A-LOW

Lea, it up ta us, We be back at Mo'.

Early inna morn'n switch'n carsz like we switch'n a bro.

have'n hellla fun when we hitt da do'

GO! GO! AND we aint gon' stop fuh nutt'n. Summ'n Stunt'n.

I would hate ta fall in love, Buss'n & Cuss'n PARTY--OVA HERE PARDY OVA DERE

"Y E A H"

      &

I answered because she asked, Kimba Smithh. Now I am in need of help, my sentenceing date is 2/15/04 in redwood city,CA. And, this is what I said to Kimba Smith (sample writings posted below) I don't want to put you on the path thinking you need to start a program Yapp'n for 20-30+ years 4 to 5 hours, yet. like "streets soldiers", Get to the Point! I want to direct YOU to say, to all these M-f'S, I'm not Fuk'n Play'n. And get what you&all want from the one the henders you. Last night you asked for my help. Kimba Smith

-from GOD

Dear Method, I need to get something off my chest. Last year, late 2002 I wrote a book and gave it to Russell Simmons in Richmond,CA. However, I am offended, not that he read my book, but made a movie about my book/poetry and called me in a movie "EVEA" Evil...? I am a female trucker. But to see me U wouldn't believe it. Strerotyped. i hate Def Jam/ Russell Simmons with a passion. Then plan B. REP. oH, and I almost forgot I know you are man enuff not to let the way I feel about def jam/r.simmons, F- with the job you have to D0 as a Fabricationlifter. Sortta like them niggas that didn't have no bizzness get'n in the mix.. what was between Big&pac, was between Big&pac. Listen baby, People are n0t afraid of prisoners getting out of jail so much as they do fear themselfs when it comes to being able to keep their mouths shut, talking like their big & and bad, all of a sudden. THaT's what they fear. fRO INSTANCE, today in oakand an Iranian man got smoked over a parking space at B of A, by the Quick way food by lake merrit. Common sence tells me the iranian tried to jump bad, when it didn't have to be all that..aND THE POLICE, well we know about they sorry butt. They probally aint gonn' neva catch the man they say did it. Now on to my Q&A... Mr. ask MR. Method, that don't never answer myyyyy QUESTIONS. Have you read my reparations pro posalS? I LIKED KNOWLEDGE BONNE BETTER!

 - GOD

Marlon Brando

(Moved to Reference desk)

Can anyone help?

I have a friend whose greatest hero is Errol Flynn. Although his first film was Captain Blood, my friend says there was a movie before that where Errol was just a dead body...know the name of that film? Thank you, Connie stlgal99@charter.net

http://www.imdb.org is a great source for all things cinematic. It lists no less than six screen appearances prior to Captain Blood:

• • Pirate Party on Catalina Isle (1935) (uncredited) .... Cameo appearance
  • Don't Bet on Blondes (1935) .... David Van Dusen
  • Case of the Curious Bride, The (1935) .... Gregory Moxley
  • Murder at Monte Carlo (1934) .... Dyter
  • I Adore You (1933) (uncredited) .... Bit
  • In the Wake of the Bounty (1933) .... Fletcher Christian

It doesn't say what he did in I Adore You. The others appear to be real parts. Dpbsmith 03:17, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

P. S. I'd suggest some caution about your "friend." Errol Flynn was a fine screen actor but not, perhaps, the best role model.

Happy new something

Happy 11th or so of 冬至 dōngzhì. (Wikipedia)

Happy Julian day 2453005.5 or so.
5764 טבת 7
1424 Dhu I-Qa`da 8
1382 Dey 11
12.19.10.16.3
Jád Sharaf Jalál
1925 Pausa 11
212 Nivôse II du Primidi ([3]) Κσυπ Cyp   00:00, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I believe that last (French Revolutionary Calendar) should be written "11 Nivôse CCXII." -- Jmabel 04:56, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

"Fractional-reserve banking"

What do people think about the article on Fractional-reserve banking? I'm not enough of an economist or historian to judge, but I vaguely thought that ranting about fractional reserves was goldbug stuff and pretty far out there. Does this article have a reasonably NPOV? Dpbsmith 22:20, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I'm uncomfortable with it, but i'm not an economist either. I do note that neither are any of the people promoting the idea that this is a 'scam' on the web, though. Morwen 22:24, Dec 31, 2003 (UTC)

At best, it's a poor article, full of poor grammar and spelling mistakes. So why don't I just fix it? Well, I'm not convinced I can fix it. It seems a bit POV to me.

Well, the original contributor is apparently not a native English-speaker. Dpbsmith 17:20, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

That said, I don't think it's a VfD candidate. It is a suitable article topic. Andrewa 10:34, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Continue this on Talk:Fractional-reserve_banking There's now a pretty good discussion in process there... Dpbsmith 17:20, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

May you all have a wonderful new 525,600 527,040* minutes! Yay, it's 2004! (At least here in the Far East.) --seav 16:56, Dec 31, 2003 (UTC)

* Whoops! 2004 is a leap year. Too bad... I like the Seasons of Love song from Rent. ("five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes / five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear...")

Fireworks!!! greenmountainboy (talk) 18:03, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Happy New Year, every wikipedian! Cheers! <|:o) --yacht (Talk) 04:38, Jan 1, 2004 (UTC)

The main page sucks!!!

Many of the articles linked in the "Encyclopedia" section of the main page are of inferior quality. I propose that we replace those articles (save the couple that are brilliant prose) with a selected listing of brilliant prose. It will look something like Wikipedia:Brilliant prose/temp, but more localized. Objections? --Jiang 09:56, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

That's an excellent idea. It means the main page can be a bit more dynamic. At the moment, that section never changes. It also gives a bit more meaning to the brilliant prose page and might make people more motivated to be involved with it. Angela. 10:01, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Strongly disagree. I was the one who originally proposed the idea of putting non-timely "Featured articles" on the main page, in the same area as the anniversaries, deaths, etc (see my post on this page - "Great new thought - I want feedback!"). However, I *do* think we should keep the links to topic overviews (history, biology, et al) on the main page. When someone new to wikipedia comes here, they should find links to those major areas. Think like the Dewey decimal system - put the overviews first, then link to specific articles later --Raul654 10:16, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Independent from the question if we are to include them, all articles with a list on Lists_of_articles_by_category should probably provide an easy (and preferably uniform) link to that list. -- User:Docu

Unfortunately, those articles fall short of brilliant prose. The main page should showcase out best articles, because first impressions matter most and determine whether people will continue to use wikipedia as a resource. These topic overviews are not major link farms like our various list of lists. People don't always show up entirely clueless, they may want something speciefic, and the specific topic probably seems a lot more interesting. Also, focusing on topics neglects people - that section provides no clear link to biographies or interesting articles, such as the one on the work fuck. --Jiang 11:49, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Compromise: Retain the most important categories, but also include a listing of featured articles. About 30% categories/70% articles.—Eloquence 18:09, Dec 31, 2003 (UTC)

How would the rotation work? Every two weeks? How do we determine which tags are important? Or should we just keep the current headings but change the articles listed under them? --Jiang

How about protecting all pages other than the category articles until they get better? :-) I'm not sure that random readers are looking for brilliant prose in category articles anyway; how many people are going to want to read about chemistry in general, vs using it as a trampoline to a specific topic like oxygen or LSD? If the latter, then those articles' main value is as a descriptive index to the next level of depth, and we should make sure that they connect to everything interesting. Stan 22:34, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I doubt many people actually use that section. How many people here regularly do? Either you hate chemistry and find a link to chemistry repulsive, or you like it and don't need this basic information. The point of the section is to get people engaged and reading our articles. Such overly basic topics fail to achieve this purpose. --Jiang 02:24, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If you want to get more biographies of living people on the main page, I feel the birthday listings would be a good way. (To reply to some of the previous objections: no it doesn't have to read "Happy Birthday to .." and we don't have to include them with the Historical Anniversaries). -- User:Docu

Thanks!

I just wanted to say THANKS to Raul654, Dori, Alfio and ilya for the quick responses to my question titled "Two questions..."

I'm going to get cracking and get the new sites up this month. I'll post again when they are finished before going live. I may be able to work with the database files... if I can import them into FileMaker. I actually manage about 500,000 pages of content right now in custom FileMaker databases that I designed - so don't make fun!

Have a Happy New Year!

Jeff

The database dump comes as a big series of SQL insert statements; FileMaker Pro doesn't speak SQL natively, though perhaps you could rig up something with JDBC or ODBC (or a 3rd-party plugin) that would work. You'd probably have better luck just installing MySQL though, if nothing else as an intermediate stage. --Brion 06:14, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Biology article name

Have editted Diving insects considerably, now it seems that a better title for this info would be "Aquatic insects", as the former is like categorizing Jumping mammals. --azwaldo

Just be bold and move the page to the better title. andy 23:34, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

biodiesel oil

I am a college student which making some research on biodiesel oil, for earning my bachelor degree at Chemical Engineering. I have already suceeded making some, but I have some difficulties about methods for exact measuring the contents of my product or by-product. I wonder if there's somebody who is willing to help me by providing any information for : - method to analyze and determine amount of glycerine in WVO (Waste vegetable oil) or in any oil/fat which being use as raw material for making biodiesel oil - method to analyze and determine amount of methyl acetate (product). - amount of glycerine needed to make best quality biodiesel oil. I am very thankful for any help on providing any information for me. Thank you very much. If you don't mind, please send the information towards my e-mail address at donnywinardi@yahoo.com. thank you

Links to sections; or, why didn't my redirect redirect where I expected it to redirect?

Pursuant to a discussion in Votes for Deletion, I moved some text from the page South Orange Grove Boulevard (Pasadena, California) and made it into a section in the article on Pasadena, California .

I then replaced the text on the South Orange Grove Boulevard (Pasadena, California) with this:

#REDIRECT [[Pasadena, California#South Orange Grove Boulevard]]

Within the page that you are now reading, the link Pasadena, California#South Orange Grove Boulevard takes you directly to the section on South Orange Grove Boulevard . And that is what I expected the REDIRECT command to do. However, if you click on South Orange Grove Boulevard (Pasadena, California) you will see that although it does take you to the Pasadena, California page, it take you to the top of the page, not to the section where I wanted it to take you.

Am I doing something wrong? Or can't you REDIRECT to a section? Dpbsmith 03:49, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You can't redirect to a section. --mav

firehouse

does firehouse have a web site?

Requests

I would like the mediawiki software to notify me via watchlist when someone creates a redirect to any article on my watchlist. The problem is that this would take a lot more bandwidth possibly. Why is there no Wikipedia:requests page? Green Mountain 19:20, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I would also like the software to create a subject, if the subject line was left blank, possibly using a changed sentence as the topic, or if a new heading is added, include the new heading as the subject. Green Mountain 19:23, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

firehouse

does firehouse have a web site?

• by "firehouse" do you mean The Firehouse Band (German), whose English-language site is at http://www.firehouseband.de/start-e.htm, or do you mean something else? Jmabel 19:05, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• firehouse is a redirect to firefighter. Green Mountain 19:09, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Danish recipe calling for "250 g" of flour....What is "g"?

Hello, In a Danish recipe for "Breakfast Horn Bread" the amount of flour required is "250 g". To what does the "g" refer? It cannot be grams because this would equal only a half cup of flour or so, whereas most bread recipes call for 5 or 6 cups of flour. Thanks for your help. Steve

grams WormRunner 17:51, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Just conducted an experiment in my kitchen - 250 grams of wheat flour equals 450 millilitres. I don't know what size your cups are, but that's around a US pint. Kosebamse 17:56, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

One uses weight measurements in order to avoid the innaccuracies like 'about'. Elde 19:52, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

According to cup one pint would be two cups, so a bit closer to the 5 cups expected than the originally estimated half cup. andy 21:24, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It stands for gram, which is the Danish word for gram. Pronounced differently, though. Κσυπ Cyp   03:38, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Please Let me know asap

Sir/Madam, Is Lord Rama, Hindu god and avatara of vishnu, is of mobite tribe. If he is can you send me web site link or scriptures name. I really appreciate you.

Thank you

For whatever it's worth, this question, which is almost certainly on the wrong page (maybe Reference Desk) came from an IP address (171.75.87.219) that has no other history, so it's probably a randomly assigned IP address. If you've got an answer for this person, go for it, but I doubt he/she will ever see it. Jmabel 00:47, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Taraful Haiducilor

For the article on the Romanian Gypsy musical ensemble Taraful Haiducilor: there is apparently a book (in Romanian) Hopa, tropa, Europa (Hop and trot around Europe) by Speranţa Rădulescu, about the group's first European tour. I don't imagine I'm going to track that down from Seattle. If anyone has a copy of the book and would like to contribute relevant material to the article, (or if anyone knows where I might get a copy) that would be greatly appreciated. -- Jmabel 20:29, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Pnyx

Hello, I read your article about the Pnyx with is realy detailed but I'm searching for ancient maps of athene within the pnyx. Where can I get any?

Please mail to Iscander@gmx.net

thankfull Iscander

---

Please note image uploading is temporarily disabled while we're in server limbo because it's harder to move the images around in sync, since they're separate from the database. Should be back up sooner or later; sorry for the inconvenience. --Brion 00:06, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Methane Digesters

Once carbon dioxide is extracted from the methane digester via lime water, what is the methos(s) for extraction the carbon dioxide from the lime water?

Puppy to Malta

Dear Sir, Please can you help me to find a St. Bernard female puppy long haired. I want this puppy as a pet, but it has to be shipped to Malta. Please can you help me with some contacts? Waiting for your answers.

Thanks Marlon

A quick google search turned up Janeway Farms. They do St. Bernards exclusively and do ship internationally on several airlines. --Raul654 11:46, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Specific question on how to become an administrator

Hi! This is taken from the Request for adminship page:

"After a 7 day period for comments, if there is general agreement that someone who requests adminship should be given it, then a developer will make it so and record that fact at Wikipedia:Recently created admins. "

My question is: what exactly does "general agreement" mean? Can you become an administrator by only having one person that has reviewed your work and that was positive about it? (--130.236.224.35)

General agreement means that everyone who responds (more or less) agrees that you should become an admin. Specific questions/criticisms must be addressed before the request/nomination can proceed. If you do make a request there, you can be assured that you will get more than one response. --Raul654 18:52, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

What are these questions/criticisms?

People will post them after a request/nomination is made. They vary on a case by case basis. The most common criticism is that someone will want to become an admin after being here only a short time. They're generally told to keep contributing for a few months, and reapply later. --Raul654 21:39, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Ok, but theoretically it is then possible to become an administrator by just having one positive comment, or am I wrong?

Theoretically, many things are possible. ;-) --snoyes 00:02, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Max Schmeling

Looking for contact details for former World Heavy Weight Champion Max Schmeling. Can you help? Ernst F. Kriesner efk@danzig-freestate.org

Climate Change/Climate change/Geography pages

(William M. Connolley 10:18, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)) There are a whole pile of "geography of ..." pages which contain links to "Climate Change" (http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Climate_Change) under the heading of "international agreements", and Climate Change is a redirect to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Meanwhile, under "Climate change" (small C) there is a page that is actually about climate change. This seems a bit silly... could one of those nice auto-robots convert the "geography of..." pages to point stright to unfcc, and then "Climate Change" (big C) can be deleted?

There's probably not much point making a bot for so few changes, so I did it myself. I needed to take my mind off Conflicts between users. :) Angela. 11:07, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! - WMC

A mysterious space at the very beginning of an article

In the article "Electron Spiral Toroid", there is a mysterious space at the very beginning. When I went to edit it, and previewed it, nothing showed up in the source, but when I saved it, it still showed up.

What causes this to happen? How might one get rid of it?

—Vespristiano 22:49, 2004 Jan 8 (UTC)

I don't see any space at the beginning. What browser are you using? Alfio 23:06, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think I figured out the cause: I'm using Internet Explorer 6 here at school. Stupid standards-uncompliant browser!

Someone can now probably delete this whole section.

—Vespristiano 23:23, 2004 Jan 8 (UTC)

Site is slow

just wondering why your site is so slow other wise great site tkthecorr@yahoo.com

If I recall correctly, we've been having hardware issues with the servers. Thanks to our little fundraising effort a couple weeks ago, these should be cleared up within a couple weeks. --Raul654 15:15, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Don't forget to donate. :) http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising --snoyes 15:49, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Is it just me or is it particularly slow today? Bmills 16:05, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

en2.wikipedia.org is really *&)#ing slow today. Use en.wikipedia.org and you should have no problems. --Raul654 16:07, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

en.wikipedia.org seems to be a lot faster than yesterday, I've not had any timeouts today. — Jor 16:08, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, that's better. I've lost so much work today!!! Bmills 16:21, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Proposed Metapage - "What Wikipedia Wants"

I was looking around the metapages and whatnot for a page that talks about what articles are "encyclopedic" - that is, articles that we want on wikipedia. I could not find one, but I think that one should absolutely exist. So here's my initial draft:

What is encyclopedic?

• Anything with name recognition - That is, anything that an average person would have heard of.
• Anything academic - Someone or something that would be mentioned in a textbook or research paper. This includes technical jargon and historical events.
• Cities, municipalities, physical landmarks or regions

• Post-secondary schools - Colleges and Universities
• Political entities
• Fictional Fixtures - Notable (that is, having at least limited fame) fictional works, events, characters, and places.
• Popular culture - People/places/things in sports or the media or that are suddenly-famous.

What is not encyclopedic

• Nonfamous people, websites, and companies
• Specific elementary or high schools
• Nonfamous Roads, buildings, locations
• Definitions that can be found in a dictionary (except in conjuction with an encylopedic article on the topic)
• Original thoughts or research

What else? Wikipedia does take some non-encyclopedic articles:

• Relavant Tutorials - How-to's on relavant topics
• Relavant Lists - Lists on relavant topics

--Raul654

Be bold, and create the page. Don't allow the discussion to unfold here, though, I anticipate this one running forever... Onebyone 12:29, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Add

• High culture - Literature, visual arts, art music, performance arts, etc.
• General culture - Mythology and religion, language, patterns of social organisation, human behaviour, etc

Those are too broad. For example, Jesus's quote in the Talmud (or something clos to that) was just deleted, and rightly so - but I could argue that it is religious, and by your catagories, belongs here. What about a language I make up? It's a language, all right, so why not include it? --Raul654 12:46, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If you take the many years required to construct a language, it would definately be noteworthy and should be included in the encyclopedia. Green Mountain 15:05, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I could make up a famous person or a college and they would also likely be deleted. In fact, there was a made-up Political entity only yesterday, as I recall. I don't see that my categories are any more vague or broad than the ones you put up at first, just addressing other, and equally important, areas of content. Bmills 15:09, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As far as your suggestions - I like your catagories, but I think you need to be a bit more specific. For example - mythology is pretty cut and dry, but religion gets pretty hazy.

Now, like Onebyone suggests, I propose we dump my draft to Wikipedia:What Wikipedia Wants (where people can do some actual editing on an existing article), and copy and continue this discussion on that talk page. --Raul654 15:15, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Official titles/names that are invalid article names

When filling out the list of of Sanrio characters, the character "U*SA*HA*NA" wouldn't link, because you can't have a "*" in an article name. However, the "*"s are actually a part of the name, as decreed by Sanrio. So, what do we do in cases like this? Make it "U-SA-HA-NA"? -- Khym Chanur 07:31, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

Choose something, and make sure you add it to Wikipedia:List of pages whose correct title is not allowed by MediaWiki. Morwen 07:34, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

You could even put the description of this character in the Sanrio page: how long would your proposed article be (the article on Hello Kitty, another Sanrio character, isn't very long and I've actually heard of that one)? Phil 08:43, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

I was just stuffing the Sanrio page with a list of character names I found on the Sanrio website, even though there's no articles for them (and I don't plan on writing them). I was just wondering if there was some canonical way for dealing with these sort of things, so I could point U*SA*HA*NA to the correct title for the not-yet-existing page. -- Khym Chanur 14:50, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

Isn't U﹡SA﹡HA﹡NA the best solution? (you should use Unicode encoding then: it's character 65121) ilya 23:56, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If you do that, you'll end up with a page called [[U﹡SA﹡HA﹡NA]] - click on the link above and see. Wikipedia's linking thingy has trouble with a lot of Unicode characters. —Paul A

Hm. IE shows correctly if encoding=utf-8, but otherwise it's bad thing. ilya 23:35, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Votes for deletion

The accessory articles of votes for deletion (images for deletion, redirects for deletion, lists for deletion, etc.) seem neglected. Here's a request that I moved from Lists article:

• The page here is useless and should be deleted.
  The correct version is here Vít Zvánovec 20:27, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

--Jiang 06:57, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The subpages are hugely neglected, including by me I sorry to say. I've written Wikipedia maintenance to explain how VfD needs to be dealt with if anyone is interested in helping with it. Angela. 09:58, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

Interwiki problem

I don't know y, but it seems that wiki can't encode Chinese translation for foreign names as interwiki in English wiki well, esp. when the name in Chinese contains the mark "·", it will links to a nonsense page. Is that a bug? --快艇 (Talk)☺ 05:45, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

Does universal wikipolicy really exist?

This issue was first brought up by User:Stardust in connection with a painful and bloody debate regarding Settlers of Catan and related pages. How familiar is the average wikipedist with wikipolicy? Do wikipedists (and more importantly, sysops) routinely take action based on limited and imperfect knowledge of wikipolicy? Is brilliant policy formulated on pages that nobody ever reads? A quick examination of the Wikipedia:Policy page reveals that it is far from complete, listing only the most basic, fundamental and common-sense policies. -Smack 00:56, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Painful and bloody debate is the only real policy. New users often want to appeal actions to some higher authority (sysops, policy, jimbo) when really things are decided on talk pages, the pump, and vote pages like vfd. The policy articles are largely the rough consensation of the last consensus of the rabble, not tablets from the mountain. Consequently, if "nobody ever reads" a policy page, then it ain't policy. That's whay the policy pages are so threadbare - that's mostly what folks could (by and large) agree on. Oh, and I utterly refute any suggestion that sysops have any more responsibility to behave "better" than non-sysops (with the strict exception of the exercise of their sysop "powers"). When not actively pushing a sysop-only button, a sysop carries no more responsibility than anyone else, and no less. Concomitantly, sysops don't enjoy special status, golden votes, or anything like that. -- Finlay McWalter 03:20, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Why does Wikipedia allow anonymous editing?

I've never quite understood why Wikipedia allows anonymous edits - the list of vandals almost entirely consists of anonymous IPs. Is there a policy reason for this? Wouldn't it be better to require everyone to have an account so that there can at least be some accountability for edits? -- ChrisO 16:45, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Continued at m:Talk:Anonymous users should not be allowed to edit articles. Please reply there, not here.

You have new messages

I have a sense that this was addressed before, but cannot find on archives: why doesn't my You have new messages message go away after I click it? Bmills 12:11, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it's a returning bug, addressed here several times already. The easiest way around it: just edit your talk yourself once. andy 12:39, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

thanks. I will. Bmills 12:59, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I find that clicking the (Talk) link in the top right corner is more likely to get rid of the message than clicking the message itself. Failing that, try watching and unwatching the page. Angela (with thanks to Cyan and Pakaran)

New articles a user has written

Is there a way for someone to find out what new articles they have created? The contributions page only lists articles by major or minor edit, nothing about new ones. --Raul654 10:11, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

General Disclaimer

I notice that the standard interface includes a disclaimer at the bottom of each page. Does this mean that other disclaimers added to article content are no longer necessary? Or, when is an additional disclaimer necessary?

Also, in my opinion, putting the disclaimer link at the very bottom of the page (on a line by itself) is not prominent enough. We don't have to shove it in anyone's face, but this almost seems to be hiding it. -Anthropos 04:49, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Spoiler warnings are still OK. Everything else can thankfully be axed. --snoyes 04:53, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

There's now a disclaimer link at the top as well, thanks to Angela. It is controlled using the new messages MediaWiki:Disclaimers and MediaWiki:Disclaimerpage. Set MediaWiki:Disclaimers to "-" to hide it. -- Tim Starling 07:39, Jan 6, 2004 (UTC)

How are these used? -- till we *) 11:37, Jan 6, 2004 (UTC)

Does this apply to all languages? I've just tried edit them on cy.wikipedia but can't find them (though "Disclaimers" is appearing in the header). -- Arwel 13:06, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You have to create them. When the articles don't exist the software falls back to Language.php. I should probably run a script to generate all the articles. "Disclaimers" is the link text and "disclaimerpage" is the page title it links to (with underscores). -- Tim Starling 14:04, Jan 6, 2004 (UTC)

Aha! OK, thanks. -- Arwel 15:43, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not sure we really need Disclamer on top. I think there are also people who like me don't like too much law stuff hanging around. May be the bottom one is enough? And we could sum up Copyrights and Disclaimer and name them Terms of Use. ilya 18:21, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

See the prior discussion at MediaWiki talk:Risk -- Tim Starling 23:47, Jan 6, 2004 (UTC)

I started a vote at MediaWiki talk:Risk about this disclaimer. ilya 02:38, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Methane Digesters

(Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk) --snoyes 03:34, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Walon language wikipedia ?

http://wikipedia.walon.org: Is this a wikimedia project? Do inter-language links to this encyclopedia work? Thanks to Dori for pointing the site out. An anon added it to the list of wikipedias on Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination. --snoyes 21:04, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

looks pretty substantial (although it's a mix of Encyclopedia and dictionary). I don't think I've ever before seen anything substantive in Walloon written down. Those with at least a reading knowledge of French should find this quite interesting. -- Jmabel

Yes, I also fill it with dictionnary entries (from http://moti.walon.org/ ), the reason is that, as there is no modern and easily available dictionnary for walloon language it may be helpfull to have those entries too (they are all prefixed with "Motî:" so they can be taken out some day if needed). As that dictionnary is growing, the simple interface in use at the main site is becoming less and less usable (as huge pages are loaded each time), the ability to display by article, and to use query functions, is a big advantage.

I don't know what you call "substantive", but there is quite a lot of written material in walloon language (even more on paper than on the internet, btw), a lot is available trough various *.walon.org addresses (I got that domain to solve one of the worst problems that walloon pages were facing: each time a page was becoming popular and had its url listed in lots of places, it changed of provider, and urls were invalid... quite a common problem :) ). Among the things available online are two novels, various smaller ones, a translation of the Genesis book and the various Evangiles, learning stuff, a lot of journalistic-like writtings, and archives of mailing lists (that should now amount to a lot of text as they are quite old).

For the encyclopedia part I put emphasis on walloon and Wallonia related stuff (for example, I plan to make articles of all old municipalities existing before the municipalities fusion of 1977) Srtxg

If it were a wikimedia project, it would be walon.wikipedia.org. In otherwords, no it isn't a wikimedia project, and no interlanguage links to that encyclopedia will not work. Green Mountain 22:54, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'll post a note to the wikilegal list, as this concerns our aspirations for filing a trademark for "wikipedia". --snoyes 23:17, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Seems as if (see below) they were offered, and want to move to wa.wikipedia.org, so I doubt there will be a trademark issue in this case. I suppose they couldn't figure out how to ask for a new language to be started, but they could figure out how to start one on their own... Κσυπ Cyp   23:49, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

OK, cool. Shouldn't have been so hasty in sending that email. --snoyes 23:56, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Looks like it was started on the 22nd of June 2003 [4], and has 760 articles. The address was added to Wikipedia:Multilingual_coordination on the 26th of November, by an anonymous ip, which has also edited the Walon main page. I doubt these would work walon:test... Judging by recent changes, there's at least one active user there... Ancient pages didn't work (not implemented?) there. Κσυπ Cyp   23:05, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

User Srtxg on the French Wikipedia seems to be quite active on the Wallon one, too. Maybe you should contact him to learn more about it (seems that he speaks French, Spanish and a bit of English)? Other active users are User:Brion VIBBER and User:ArnoLagrange (see [5]). -- till we *) 23:25, Jan 5, 2004 (UTC)

User:Brion VIBBER has over 2 contributions there, one seems to suggest moving to wa.wikipedia.org (posted the day after wikipedia.walon.org was mentioned on Wp:Multi.. Coord... In user contributions, there is at least 1 contribution that doesn't show, as far as I can tell... (Database error?) wa:Uzeo:Pablo seems to have accepted the offer, so I guess it's just a matter of time... Κσυπ Cyp   23:40, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Which contributions don't show? the ones from ::1 ? (that is an IPv6 adress, from localhost); indeed there is a bug in the wikimedia code, the IPv6 adresses should be enclosed with square brakets; if you use them the contribs can be shown: w:wa:Sipeciås:Contributions&target=[::1] (mmh, not that easy to put [ and ] inside a wikilink... had to use html numeric entities &#91; and &#93;).

Well, as probably the wikipedia servers won't have IPv6 connectivity for a while it doesn't matter that much; and the special address for localhost is even less relevant (special cases of at home trying, it never happens); anyway, the wikimedia scripts work very well in IPv6. Srtxg

Yes, I started it on a different machine for some reasons, first, there was no wa.wikipedia.org available, then, I wasn't sure how it would evolve, and I would prefer, in case the idea was dumped, to do some experimentations on my own rather than clobbering wikipedia.

Now, the goal is indeed to switch to wikipedia.org, it's just that I'm quite busy, I could have asked just before New Year, as I had some time, but at that time the wikipedia servers were in trouble, so I thought there were most urgent tasks for them.

The LanguageWa.php is almost 100% finished (most of the remaining stuff are admin strigns anyway), so I suppose I could ask now. But I still have some questions, and I don't know exactly whom to ask...

I would like to remove the "WikiDeveloper" and "WikiSysop" accounts (they are there just because I don't know how to remove them, and I don't know how to add myself sysop status (to be able to remove occasional myspelled pages)

And I want to ensure that walon.wikipedia.org will continue to work as an alias for wa.wikipedia.org (that requires virtual host configuration on the wikipedia servers)

Note however that the interlanguage links are another matter, they work only if an url is defined for "wa" in Interwiki.php, and technically the url doesn't have to be on wikipedia.org; in other words, the interlanguage links to "wa" can work even using walon.wikipedia.org, and conversely, even when walloon wikipedia is switched to wa.wikipedia.org they can be innactive if not defined.

Srtxg 17:42, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

ionization energy of Astatine

According to your web page, the first ionization energy of astatine is 20KJ/mol. But i have contacted many universities to check if the first ionization energy has been discovered, and so far all of them have denied of the idea. please contact me to tell me where you got your source for this info. My name is Maulik Shah and my email is: shah_maulik23@yahoo.com

Thanks

This discussion belongs at talk:Astatine.

Image upload not working

I have been trying to upload some images but every time I press the upload button it sends me to the "This page cannot be found" page. G-Man 19:44, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It was finally working this morning, but probably has been swamped by the backlog. Pollinator 19:58, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Brilliant Prose Voting

Decision time approaches. Lots of votes cast and the picture is a bit clearer. Here's a proposal:

• All unopposed Keeps are kept.
• All articles with one or more Remove votes go.
• All articles with no votes are added to Wikipedia:Brilliant prose candidates

Anyone got a better idea?

To view the votes so far:

• Wikipedia:Refreshing brilliant prose - Science
• Wikipedia:Refreshing brilliant prose - People and culture
• Wikipedia:Refreshing brilliant prose - History and religion
• Wikipedia:Refreshing brilliant prose - Others

All articles with 1+ remove votes are out? In my opinion too harsh. Why are remove votes weighed heavier than keep votes? Even the most excellent article will be disliked by someone. Tuf-Kat has voted about 80% of the articles out. Maybe limit votes per person to 10 items? Erik Zachte 12:21, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Erik - a single remove vote is far too little to justify removal, particularly if there are keep votes too. If there are the same number, or more, keep votes than removes then it ought at least to go to Wikipedia:Brilliant prose candidates. -- Arwel 12:34, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

That seems to be the most reasonable compromise. Any differences of opinion can then be resolved on the candidates page, which, unlike the voting page, also requires a justification for an opinion.—Eloquence

My own view is that to keep something as Brilliant Prose, consensus is required. Anything that is removed can always be added to candidates for reconsideration. Bmills 12:38, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

So how about:

• All articles with at least one vote and no Removes stay.
• All articles with at least one vote and no Keeps are removed.
• All other articles go to candidates under the heading Moved after voting.

???? Bmills 13:51, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. As Eloquence says above, moving things to the Candidates page has the advantage that the opinions come with justification. Even an article that has one lone advocate against the world probably merits some statement of what the rejectors think needs to be changed, even if that turns out to be "Everything." Dandrake 00:17, Jan 6, 2004 (UTC)

London Congestion Charge has 7 votes to 1 in favour of keeping but under these rules will be removed... in the name of consensus! I don't really understand but would appreciate it if someone would tell me what to do to the article to improve it. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 07:20, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Not exactly removed, but moved to candidates where it will sit for one week. Assuming no objections, it will go back, if there is an objection, it will have to be explained. Have you asked the user who voted to remove why they did so? Bmills 09:07, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I have no direct disagreement with any specific interpretation of the voting results, as long as everyone is allowed a reasonable time to switch their votes after the final method of interpreting the votes is decided. If any of the above interpretations are implemented, I will certainly be changing a couple of my votes... -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 12:49, Jan 8, 2004 (UTC)

• Mortgage payment question moved to the Wikipedia:Reference desk.

Use of Wikipedia

Is there any indication to what extent people are using Wikipadia as a source of information, people other than Wikipedians that is? ping 07:38, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You can find some at Press coverage or Wikipedia in academic studies - but of course these are only those a Wikipedian has noticed and noted there. But just a simple search in groups.google.com will give you many many hits where questions are answered with wikipedia articles. andy 08:33, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

A lot of people on the Opera forums and Opera newsgroups use Wikipedia as an additional or the main encyclopedia of their Hotclick menu. — Jor 12:31, Jan 5, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, ping 10:01, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It's great for setteling arguements :) --Raul654 16:24, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Art images

I have read several interesting articles that include portraits of historical figures - Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Medici, Elizabth I of England and more, but I do not know who the artists are who painted the portraits so I can locate these pictures for teaching purposes. Is there some way to identify who created the art included in the articles? Please respond directly if possible as I am a novice at the mechanics on Wikpedia beyond searching for informative articles.

Thanks, Janet LeBlanc <JBFLeBlanc@aol.com> Associate Professor of Art History

To find out about a picture, click on it. This takes you to the image description page. All pictures should, theoretically, have the source on the description page, but two out of the three images you mentioned don't. Hence all you can do is contact the people who uploaded them. However Image:Eliza1.JPG was uploaded by Isis and Image:DianedePoitiers.jpg by DW. By an unlucky chance you have chosen two wikipedians who are essentially uncontactable. One is a lawyer who left Wikipedia in a rather angry state, and later demanded that all information about her be removed. The other is a well known "troll" who has been banned from Wikipedia since July 2003, although he has been seen several times since, under different names. (I'll send this by email as well) -- Tim Starling 04:44, Jan 5, 2004 (UTC)

Apologies

Apologies for my ill-conceived and poorly executed Sock puppet escapade. Proof, if it were needed, that Opera and mediawiki do not play very well together. -- Finlay McWalter 02:41, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

What is a troll?

Is there somewhere, where common jargon used in Wikipedia is listed? I have been here since April 2003, and still have absolutely no idea what a troll is, or a definition of the term 'trolling'. -- Graham  :) 00:36, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Try looking at Internet troll. :-) Evercat 00:41, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, I am now in the know. Odd that I've never come across the term before, I must just spend far too much time in the real world... ;-) -- Graham  :) 00:55, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

We do need a "learn to speak wikipedian" page somewhere, defining (at least) VfD, copyvio, rv, tyop, and sock puppet (the last of which was entirely new to me, and the philology of which remains obscure) -- Finlay McWalter 00:52, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Well not that hard to figure out, really. Imagine you want support within a group , but no one steps forward on your side. You put a sock on your hand, paint some eyes on it, and make it talk by moving your thumb and fingers (forming a mouth); and trying not to move your lips too much. "Hello. I think X is great"! You have a friend, and he always supports your point of view. - Marshman 01:15, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I guess all this means Wikipedia:Glossary isn't visible enough, and it looks like it's fallen behind current usage... Stan 01:29, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I added the ones mentioned above (except for sock puppet, which is new to me too) to Wikipedia:Glossary. -- Merphant 01:56, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Spelling of Swiss Cantons

I've tried to initiate a discussion/vote on the spelling of Swiss cantons at Talk:Switzerland. I've used Google to establish common use and now wish that those with an interest join in. Kokiri 00:11, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Anyone bothered at all? I just wanted to involve the community... Kokiri 11:28, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Pnyx

[moved to the Reference desk]

Scanning Printed Encyclopaedias

This may be a FAQ, but:

Is there any mileage in obtaining an out-of-copyright copy of e.g. the Encyclopaedia Britannica (such as, I believe, the 1910 one currently in my parents house in the UK), splitting it up, distributing the pages to volunteers and OCRing articles of importance on subjects whose important content was fixed at that time (e.g. the Wars of the Roses)?

Would this way of expanding the content available in Wikipedia (or, at least, providing a base for people to edit) be better than writing articles from scratch?

Gerv

There are quite a few wikipedia articles based on (or even identical to) articles from the 1911 Britannica. The trouble is that 1911 articles usually aren't very good - for example look at History of Africa. Even in history, opinions and attitudes change over time. Onebyone 23:29, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Project Gutenberg might be a better way of getting out-of-copyright material OCRed, and formatted. They have a Distributed Proofreaders scheme where they split up the text into pages, and have volunteers who proofread each page. Presumedly we could still use the pages they process, although I'm not sure on that, hopefully someone with more knowledge on the subject could clear this up.

In any case, presumedly even if there are restrictions on the use of text produced by the project, we could still use your original scans for wikipedia..

Silverfish 23:30, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

BTW the Distributed Proofreaders are currently going through volume 4 of the 1911 encyclopaedia... Anyway, I have to echo Onebyone; most times "no article" is better than an article from the 1911 encyclopaedia. I used to think they might make a good starting place, but now (after having reviewed several actual examples) I think it is purely wasted effort in the vast majority of cases. If you really put your effort in searching articles from the 1911 Encyclopaedia on subjects that you yourself know intimately and judge to still be up to date (I don't really think there are that many), then maybe, just MAYBE, you might be able to scrounge something genuinely useful. Frankly I think it may well be more trouble than it is worth, but remember, you are the best judge of what you like to do; everything that moves us forward, moves us forward, at whatever pace... -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 23:58, Jan 4, 2004 (UTC)

I have to take mild issue with those who knock the Britannica 11th Edition. I own a copy and I love it. (Actually mine is the 12th addition and has three additional volumes that include information about the Great War and the many advances in aeronautics, etc.

And, yes, it does need to be used with caution. Whoever did many of the music articles (I could find out, because the articles are all signed, but I can't remember offhand) simply hated Meyerbeer and knocked him at every opportunity. It's really great for any kind of science, engineering, or technology that existed before 1911 and you'll find much more stuff on how telegraphs or lighthouse lenses worked than in any modern encyclopedia. It's also pretty good on soft stuff like theology... but it should never be just used as-is as a raw starting point for an article.

But what I wanted to mention, since nobody else has yet, is that the Britannica 11th edition is already online at http://www.1911encyclopedia.com . I'm somewhat concerned by the fact that they've changed its presentation—they now call it "The LoveToKnow Free Online Encyclopedia." This change suggests that they're trying to figure out how to market it, which suggests that the old marketing wasn't working, which suggests to me that they may not be around for much longer. But, for now, there it is. And generously replete with scannos, various strangenesses with respect to searching and tables of contents, and none of the illustrations. (I wonder if the thin, translucent pages are especially hard to scan?) Dpbsmith 02:44, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

LoveToKnow, the "free" encyclopedia, as long as you agree to 4 pages listing the terms and conditions of the sale of your soul... (According to the bottom of the pages there...) Κσυπ Cyp   03:22, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Open directory project

From Wikipedia talk:Announcements

As a web site operator I can answer questions about Wikipedia's Google Page Rank. The homepage rank is currently 7/10. Medicine has a rank of 5/10 which incidentally is the rank of the homepage of my small website.

Google has its own private system of ranking. The ranking of the homepage is relatively meaningless as nobody really uses the homepage unless you are trying to sell advertising for it, for which you are not. What counts is the ranking for each individual article. When somebody searches in Google for medicine the Google Page Rank determines where the Wikipedia hit will show up. The higher the rating the higher on top the hit will show up. But, since there are tens of thousands of web pages that uses the word medicine a rank of only 5/10 could mean that the person searching for medicine on Google might have to wade through several hundred hits before coming across Medicine.

I have noticed that Wikipedia has not joined the relatively new Open Directory Project at: http://www.dmoz.org/ Most of the major search engines are now using the Open Directory Project. Joining simply means classifying your web site by their classification system and providing a brief description. As this description is not displayed on Google search Hits, Wikipedia is NOT a member.

By joining, Wikipedia could up its page rank automatically by a couple of points. Only the owner or webmaster of Wikipedia can join the Open Directory project. But, once Wikipedia has been accepted into the Open Directory, it may take anywhere from 2 weeks to several months for your site to be listed on partner sites which use the Open Directory data, such as AOL Search, AltaVista, HotBot, Google, Lycos, Netscape Search, etc. -- Mr-Natural-Health 15:45, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As far as I know, this was discussed on Wikipedia before (can anyone give a link?). The problem with that could be: "Joining simply means classifying your web site by their classification system and providing a brief description." -- see the lengthy debates about the new category system; Wikipedia just isn't an automated, categorizable system yet, and I doubt it ever will be, and I especially doubt it ever will be using the DMOZ open directory classifications. -- till we *) 19:04, Jan 4, 2004 (UTC)

"Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" classifies "Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. How are the other online encyclopedias classified? What is wrong with an objective classification? NOTHING -- Mr-Natural-Health 21:42, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If Mr-Natural-Health by joining dmoz means having Wikipedia listed in their directory, Wikipedia has been listed for quite some time now (and prominently, too): [6].

Besided, as far as I can see, Wikipedia has a page-rank of 8/10. And have had that for some time, too: User:Nintendo noted it on 7 Nov 2003. Of course I might be mistaken. I do not operate any web sites.

Of course having individual articles listed might be interesting, too. We already have about 750 listed ([7]) -- especially about demons... -- but a systematic process might be interesting, too.

In my opinion, though, it should be up to individuals to submit their favourite pages for dmoz review. I cannot find any policy that prohibits other than owners from submitting sites ([8]).

Rasmus Faber 22:05, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Websites don't join ODP. Individuals can join if they want to edit there, but anyone whether connected with ODP or Wikipedia or neither can submit a page or a site for review by the editors there. Wikipedia is already listed 750 times in the directory according to a DMOZ search. Angela. 22:35, Jan 4, 2004 (UTC)

The amount of misinformation posted under this simple topic is truly amazing. -- Mr-Natural-Health 03:38, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)~

Images - how do I upload them

I went to help - looked at adding images - totally useless - it discusses stuff about images but NOWhere does it tell you actually how to upload an image. So how do you do it then? I even edited the page to make this point but someone reverted it rather than fixing it -- Kevin Flude

Sorry, Kevin. Because of the strain on the alrady overtaxed servers, uploading has been disabled. Expect to see it back soon (I hope) when the new server is fully functional. I think you first need to establsh a login persona; then access to the upload log for images will be seen as a menu selection near the bottom of the menu list at the left. - Marshman 17:34, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I have a login persona but absolutely no reference to uploading images appears on a page either when editing or not. Can you give me further information?

Sure. First, whenever you ask a question here, end it with - ~~~~. That will sign and date your entry. When the upload log selection appears (it is not there anymore, as it has been disabled) below "special pages" on the left column menu, you click on it. An instruction page will appear requiring you to browse to the image on your computer, check that you have the rights to the image, and create a name for the image at Wikipedia. You then click upload and the image is copied to Wikipedia. You should then go to the image info page indicated to edit and fill in info on the photo. Also, keep images to be displayed on pages under 400 pixels in width. There are many other details you need to know that are explained on the "How to edit" page. I'll need to track down the link unless someone has it available? - Marshman 17:52, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The instructions are here Wikipedia:How to edit a page#Links, URLs, images. They are clear to me because I have been doing it for a long time, but it will quickly make sense to you too once you try it a few times. Unfortunately, you will have to wait until that feature is reenabled - Marshman

You can access Special:Upload in many ways, but image uploading is disabled for everybody until the situation with hardware is finally solved. ilya 18:03, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Uploading should be back up now. I've got a full backup of the images now and set up a job to check for updates every hour, so in the case of one of the web servers going down it'll be not too difficult to recover things. --Brion 10:46, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Talk page proposal

See m:Talk page proposal - Hemanshu 16:34, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

MSG shortcuts

Anyone know the link for a list of the MSG's like {{msg:stub}}. I suggested to a newbe that they would find a link here, but I was wrong.... - UtherSRG 01:02, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• I asked the exact same question here about a week ago. The list is here: Wikipedia:MediaWiki_custom_messages --Raul654 01:04, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree. I added today MediaWiki:Index .. hope it redirects to the right place. -- User:Docu

You can also use the messages in Wikipedia:All messages in the MediaWiki namespace in the same way, though I don't know if any of them would be of any use besides where they are used right now, which is in the interface itself. Dori | Talk 04:05, Jan 4, 2004 (UTC)

Once a page has been moved without using "Move this page"...

...is there anything that can be done to merge the histories? Los Macheteros was recently moved to Puerto Rican Army of the People. Unfortunately, the person who moved it apparently didn't know about "Move this page" (hey, I didn't the first time I moved a page, either). I've used "Move this page" to get the talk page where it belongs, but it would be a very good idea if we could somehow move the history over as well; since this is an article that has raised POV and factuality issues in the past, it seems more than routinely important to have the history available. Jmabel 00:37, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Done. Check current version to see if it is up to date. --Jiang 02:47, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Move#Fixing cut and paste moves Dori | Talk 04:11, Jan 4, 2004 (UTC)

Image Upload

When will Image Upload be re-enabled?
Adrian Pingstone 23:31, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

At the top of this page it says "sooner or later." And if you click on "Upload file," which has reappeared, it says "(sorry, no time estimate)." I doubt that anyone has a more authoritative answer than that. Dpbsmith 01:11, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Uploading should be back up now. I've got a full backup of the images now and set up a job to check for updates every hour, so in the case of one of the web servers going down it'll be not too difficult to recover things. --Brion 10:46, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Requests

Mediawiki feature request moved to Meta Green Mountain 19:37, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Feature Request: Horizontal TOC flag

I'm no longer on the ML's and was wondering where on W a feature request should be posted?

The request is for a flag which may be set on a page which will switch the TOC display to a horizontal display with items unnumbered and separated by pipes |. This would be a far better rendering for lists with many sections, e.g. List_of_aviation,_aerospace_and_aeronautical_terms or just about any alphabetically grouped list. dramatic 17:29, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Would be possible now, if the TOCs were lists instead of tables :/ — Jor 13:55, Jan 5, 2004 (UTC)

Feature requests should be made at SourceForge [9]. Kosebamse 18:25, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

But is there somewhere they can be discussed before submission to Sourceforge? (So that there can be 1) an indication of support for the idea and 2) a group refinement of the proposal via wikiprocess?

Yes at meta. Dori | Talk 18:12, Jan 4, 2004 (UTC)

UPDATED LISTING

in your movie studios webpage you have our company, American mutoscope and Biograph Co. in historical movie companies. we are also an active movie company. please list our link in the active studios area.

www.biographcompany.com

Thanks,

This is a Wiki, you could if you liked do it yourself. Perhaps you could say a few words here about just what is happening, what Biograph is today, and what it is doing or plans to do? The Biograph website appears to be under construction. Since the historical great silent movie company is generally thought to have stopped making films in 1916, I suspect there is not a great deal of continuity between it and the present company. The Biograph Girl died in 1938... Dpbsmith 15:41, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC) P. S. Apparently the current company is in the process of restoring an early silent movie called "In Old California," but the press release that says they have acquired "nearly 2000 acres of lunar real estate and plans to use it as the first lunar lot" and produce movies there sounds, um... dare I say it... like some kind of Hollywood publicity stunt? True, there is no problem with cloudy days, and the moon should be out of reach of the long arm of the patents trust...

Disclaimer notice

I like the way the Disclaimer notice is now presented to users. However, it is much too small. I never would have seen it myself if I hadn't heard someone else talk about it. There may have been a discussion that I neglected to notice about this issue. Maybe a Disclaimer link could also be placed on the left-hand toolbar, under Contact us and above Donations. Just a thought. Kingturtle 08:53, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thank you! :) I removed the small tag - it was kinda ugly next to the larger 'last edited' text anyway. Instead of under "Contact us" I think it would be best to have it next to it like so Contact us/Disclaimers. --mav 09:01, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Would Contact us/Disclaimers fit? Would it look bulky? Kingturtle 19:56, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Financial information

Do we really want detailed financial information on companies? International Paper. --snoyes 04:55, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Net sales and net loss is far from detailed. --mav

Sub Stub?

I'm encountering the term 'sub stub' on various pages in WP, but Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub or the Wikipedia:Glossary do not mention the term. In what way is a sub stub unlike a stub, and if this is an official term, shouldn't it be added somewhere? Jor 03:26, Jan 3, 2004 (UTC)

It is used to mean an article which is currently too short even to deserve the name stub. This often refers to a simple definition ("An airplane is a type of winged flying vehicle") or a biography consisting only of the subject's nationality and occupation ("Douglas Adams was a British author who's dead now"). Onebyone 03:59, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I have incorporate Onebyone's useful reply to Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub as requested by Jor. --Menchi (User talk:Menchi 04:12, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

A stub is a short article. A sub stub is not even an article. Sub stubs are often deleted instantly, but they also often undeleted by those disputing the worthlessness of them, so there is not agreed-upon definition of what a deletable sub stub is. Angela. 07:40, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

why so Sloooooowwwwww

Why does everything seem to be so slow tonight (although it seems to have improved) Has something crashed?. I was under the impression that the technical problems had been fixed by the new fancy database (obviously not) G-Man 00:54, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Servers. --mav

Or OpenFacts:Wikipedia Status. Angela.

• Rainham -->Wikipedia:Reference desk

EM and italics

Throughout the Wikipedia there are quite a few articles which have a statement like 'Alternate names are in italics', referring to text marked up with two apostrophes. This does not add an <i> (italics) tag, but rather adds an <em> (emphasis) tag.

All nice and well, but http://en.wikipedia.org/style/wikistandard.css does not contain any rule for EM, so EM is styled according to browser preferences — which does not have to be italics. Surely it'd be best if the rule

em {font-style: italic;}

were added to the CSS file? — Jor 21:58, Jan 2, 2004 (UTC)

It's an idea. I'll add it to the stuff on meta about stylesheets. -- Tarquin 18:11, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Redirection

Many writers and reviewers are redirecting poorly to false articles - e.g if you are looking for "graphics" then you will be redirected to computer graphics. Engineering graphics and computer graphics are different topics and I don't understand [why this is so]. If anyone writes a short intro to start such an article, you will find those articles deleted immediately and redirected to other releavant artilces. There is no need for redirection. You can keep that space blank. I dont know why the heck [you] guys are doing it. This will definitely distract users from using wikipedia, and those writers who want to show their articles on wikipedia are doing this redirecting thing. Also, some of people from here are actually behaving like they are moderators or something like that. Also deletion of articles is very burning issue here. Why are articles deleted if they are not copyrighted? Could [it] be due to gramatical mistakes? If [you] guys from here are deleting articles constantly due to grammatical mistakes and lableing the article as stub then this is very poor thing. Wikipedia is just born project and not taken seriously, and as this project is in [an] immature state then this very serious matter. Well I think if there are any moderators here should take this thing seriously because if this continues then many people will sign up here to delete articles and label it a stub. Well this will be fun for these guys, and wikipedia will be destroyed in few days as this project took 2 years to reach this position it will be deleted in 2 weeks. As nupedia is down otherwise there is no need for this question. Also I will immediately move to nupedia if it starts, and tell others to do the same because when nupedia was there I hadn't found such issue. It's up to you whether to take this seriously or not but let me tell you that this is not good. (--61.1.112.99)

If anyone writes a short intro to start such an article, you will find those articles deleted immediately and redirected to other releavant artilces. Nonsense. I dont know why the heck [you] guys are doing it. This plainly isn't the only thing you don't the heck know. If [you] guys from here are deleting articles constantly due to grammatical mistakes and lableing the article as stub then this is very poor thing.. We aren't. And deletion and stubbification are entirly different things. this very serious matter no, it isn't. wikipedia will be destroyed in few days bollocks. I will immediately move to nupedia if it starts goodbye. -- Finlay McWalter 14:06, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Although I suspect that post might be a troll (hence, the need for extensive copyediting just to understand it), I'd like to try to respond to each of the points you make in kind.

1. Where redirection is concerned, for the most part, we'd rather set up wikipedia with all the proper links, and then split hairs (computer graphics vs engineering graphics) later, if need be. If you have a particular grudge against a particular redirect, please feel free to fix it.
2. Articles are deleted in one of two ways. Either it is a candidate for speedy deletion, or it goes through the Wikipedia:Votes for deletion page where it is voted upon for no fewer than five days. The short articles you refer to (which we call "stubs") are kept unless there is a very good reason not to. Generally, the only reasons we will delete an article is if it is (a) a copyright violation, or (b) non-encylopedic. (vandalism, of course, falls into the latter category)
3. Stub warnings - when someone writes an article he does not feel is quite detailed enough, he can put a warning there. It simply means that the article could be longer. This does not, in any way, destroy wikipedia. It simply lets others know where efforts should be concentrated.
4. Yes, there are moderators here - around 160 or so. In order to make wikipedia function, there has to be some seperation of privileges, to seperate vandals from legitimate contributors. As a rule, moderation is done with a very light touch.
5. As a simple look at Wikipedia:Modelling Wikipedia's growth will tell you, Wikipedia is growing by leaps and bounds. There seems to be no evidence of the destruction you imply.

--Raul654 14:10, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

61.1.112.99 wrote: If anyone writes a short intro to start such an article, you will find those articles deleted immediately and redirected to other releavant artilces.

Finlay McWalter wrote: Nonsense.

Actually, this has happened several times to articles I've started (when both logged in and with a random IP). Homology modelling would be one example, off the top of my head. (Not that it really matters, but as a new contributor I did find it very disconcerting.) Stewart Adcock 01:39, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)]

Redirects do not have to be redirects forever. They are often a temporary solution until a real article is written at that place. If someone enters a sub-stub and that is redirected, there is nothing stopping someone editing the redirect and replacing it with a non-sub-stub. Angela. 07:29, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• Sonic question and biodiesel question-->Wikipedia:Reference desk

• Biology article name-->Talk:Aquatic insects

Two Questions about the GNUFDL on Wikipedia

Hi!

I love this site/project! And, to help I would like to create two sites using Wikipedia data, and I want to make them RIGHT in the first place (vs. just making them and leaving out anything important). I have been reading as much as possible... but to be 100% honest, the licence isn't all that clear so I thought I would describe the two projects and see if I can get some quick feedback on what I would need to do to be a "good wikipedia content user".

Project 1 BrainyEncyclopedia Use the entire HTML content in a full mirror of Wikipedia from the content at: http://www.tommasoconforti.com/wiki/

This is perfect and easy for me since it's just plain HTML, I am not a programmer. Now, the big question is this data in the format that would be in 100% compliance with the licence as is? It contains a link to the GNUFDL on every page and a link to "Edit this page" on every page (that is hard-coded back to Wikipedia). From looking at the non-compliant sites - these seem to be the major problems that people seem to create when using your content. I don't want to make that mistake (I'd rather make new mistakes!).

I would have a nice little statement about the copyright of the data on the site and how it's GNUFDL (the only things that wouldn't be would be our site name/logo). I would also be adding headers/footers/navigation for the site.

Project 2 BrainyBiography Use only the Biographies on the site and reorganize them to be an easy to navigate biography site. The articles would not change - just the navigation. In addition most links that were not biography-related would be taken out.

This site would keep the link to edit the page and to the GNUFDL licence as well.

So... after all that: are these projects OK? Is this what you intend people to do with the content? Is there anything else that is necessary on my part? It seems so simple... but a good portion of the sites that use this content seem to be screwing up their usage in some way.

Thanks for the help,

Jeff

(Obligatory IANAL, but I slept at a holiday in this morning)

The GNUFDL is a pretty open license. Your obligations are here.

If you create a derivative version by changing or adding content, this entails the following:

• your materials in turn have to be licensed under GFDL,
• you must acknowledge the authorship of the article (section 4B), and
• you must provide access to the "transparent copy" of the material (section 4J). (The "transparent copy" of a Wikipedia article is its wiki text.)

--Raul654 05:43, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I would like to add that you don't actually need the edit link. I don't know how you plan to get the html, but there is a database dump available at [10]. You say that you are not a programmer (which you don't need to be, but it helps to know your way around), but it is not easy to make the dump work. I just wanted you to know just in case. Good luck and let us know how it works out. Dori | Talk 06:56, Jan 2, 2004 (UTC)

(Once again, IANAL]...) So just to clarify - if you don't modify the material, you haven't created a derivative work, and therefore you have no obligations at all. If you do modify the material, then you just have to do those three things I listed above. Happy hunting :) --Raul654 10:08, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hello, I'm the author of the html dump you are using. The hard-coded "edit" link is there because the archive was meant as an experimental static dump, with links to get back to the main site. I could remove it, or better change it to a "see live article" that links to the live Wikipedia article in non-editing mode. Now that I think about it, the name "wikipedia" is not mentioned anywhere in the page! so it's better if I update that too. It will take time, not because of the script modification (which is trivial), but because I'm quite bandwidth-starved and uploading the gigabyte or so of the English wiki is a long task :) Alfio 14:32, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Jeff, aside from technical questions -- why not start organizing biographies right now here, as User:Jeff/Biographies? Let's do it together! ilya 23:06, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks!

I just wanted to say THANKS to Raul654, Dori, Alfio and ilya for the quick responses to my question titled "Two questions..."

I'm going to get cracking and get the new sites up this month. I'll post again when they are finished before going live. I may be able to work with the database files... if I can import them into FileMaker. I actually manage about 500,000 pages of content right now in custom FileMaker databases that I designed - so don't make fun!

Have a Happy New Year!

Jeff

The database dump comes as a big series of SQL insert statements; FileMaker Pro doesn't speak SQL natively, though perhaps you could rig up something with JDBC or ODBC (or a 3rd-party plugin) that would work. You'd probably have better luck just installing MySQL though, if nothing else as an intermediate stage. --Brion 06:14, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

SpellBott

What's this SpellBott that's running? Is there any way to protect words that are already correct, but might be candidates for alteration? Something like <nospellfix>misspellling</nospellfix>? Anjouli 05:23, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It's just a user. Check the userpage. Kokiri 11:02, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Ahh! Thanks. That wasn't on the user page the first time I looked. But she/he's very fast. Suspiciously so, for someone doing it manually. Not that I see any problem if corrections are accurate. Anjouli 05:42, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

b0rked redirection...

Hi,

I think I've managed to b0rk the redirect from Northern Territory University to Charles Darwin University -- I think I managed this by deleting the redirect from CDU to NTU, then doing a "move" from NTU to CDU, when I should have left CDU alone initially, from what I can tell.

First question: did I really muck it up?

In short, could I have it fixed?

Cheers, Jonathan.

--Jonathan Ah Kit 03:40, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, Charles Darwin University is currently redirecting to Northern Territory University with no problems. It seems to me, though, that it should be the other way around. —Paul A 04:49, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• Marlon Brando -->Reference desk

Ethnicity vs. nation-state

Working on topics related to Eastern Europe, I have found it inconvenient that, for ethnicities/nationalities that have a nation-state associated with them, we always have an article about the nation-state and never, it seems, about the ethnicity. This is not a problem a single person can even begin to address -- I can tell that just by looking at some of the conflicts that have arisen about related issues such as German vs. Polish place names -- so I thought I would raise it here.

For example, the article Ethnic German (one of the few articles about an ehtnic group) is just a disambiguation page. When referring in the List of political parties in Romania to Forul Democrat al Germanilor din România, the political party of ethnic Germans in Romania, a link to Ethnic German is what is I would presume is called for. However, someone recently (and probably appropriately) changed that to link to Germany instead. Why? Presumably because Germany has a real article and Ethnic German does not.

Nonetheless, I would argue that these two concepts are separate enough to merit separate articles (and the same for ethnic Hungarians, Romanians, Poles, you name it). We would never conflate Jews and Israel. We would never conflate Celts and, say, Eire.

I admit that I have something of an axe to grind here: I am not a fan of ethnic nationalism. I feel that Wikipedia's current organization of this material constitutes an implicit endorsement of an ethnic nationalist point of view.

I am not sure if this page is the best forum for this discussion, but it seems to be at least the place to open it. If someone wants to suggest a better forum, I'm totally open to moving this.

-- Jmabel 02:07, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Good point. WormRunner 02:42, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Maybe you want to start a project so you can first collect ethnicities and then write article on them? Kokiri 11:05, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

A fine idea. I'll start Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups Jmabel 22:41, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I've started Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups, but I really need collaborators to make anything meaningful happen here. This is not a one-person job. Consider this a solicitation! Join me! The meta article itself is still kind of a stub, but I've written quite a bit on the talk page, which I hope will trigger further ideas on how to approach this. Anyway, further discussion of this might as well move to that talk page. Thank you WormRunner and Kokiri. -- Jmabel 00:41, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Besides the meta and some discussion on the relevant talk page, there is now a draft template. I'd greatly appreciate some feedback, especially from people who have previous experience with WikiProjects. This is a very tricky area, and I'd really like to get our ducks in a row before we start writing or revising any articles. -- Jmabel 09:57, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• Can anyone help?-->Wikipedia:Reference desk

Wikipedia Search Program in UI Context Menu

I have a little device on my desktop called GuruNet TopicBar. It's really quite a good idea, it lets you right click on any word in any document (web browser, word processing...), or you can click on its icon in the system tray (near your clock), or a little arrow docked on the side of your screen, and search for encyclopedia articles or dictionary definitions, relating to a chosen word.

It's a wonderful concept, except after the first two months or so, you have to be a paid member of their service to get the full article on anything. And the resources are stubby, most articles quite honestly pale in comparison to Wikipedia's. Still, it's gathered lots of good press, and the endorsement of Donald Sutherland, who claims to be an active user.

Would it be possible for us to create a similar tool, available for download off Wikipedia. It would search all of the Wikimedia family: Wikipedia, Wikitonary, Wikiquote, Wikisource and Wikibooks. If we ever endorsed it, Wikitravel could be another member, September 11th Memorial Wiki would also be in the search results, just not promoted. Also, users could set it to search other language Wikipedias, if so desired.

Like GuruNet, results would be delivered in a little program; alternatively, we could make it more like Google Toolbar. The device, in which ever form, would be targeted entirely towards a viewing audience; those wanting to edit would be directed towards the actual webpage.

I really think there would be a market for this. If we don't do it, someone else surely will; already there's a research device using Wikipedia in its searching plug-in. [11] It would take the developers away from other important projects, however, I'd be willing to scout out software developers on other Wikis.

- user:zanimum

The primary difference between GuruNet and Wikimedia is that GuruNet pay their programmers. It sounds like a great idea. Now, like so many other great ideas, someone just has to code it. -- Tim Starling 02:11, Jan 2, 2004 (UTC)

I made two Wikipedia bookmarklets based on other bookmarklets I have seen on the net:

Wikipedia First: javascript:Qr=document.getSelection();if(!Qr){void(Qr=prompt('Text:',))} 

if(Qr)location.href='http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search='+escape(Qr)+"&go=go"

Wikipedia Search: javascript:Qr=document.getSelection();if(!Qr){void(Qr=prompt('Text:',))} 

if(Qr)location.href='http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search='+escape(Qr)+' '

To use them bookmark those URLs. These make use of JavaScript and DOM. If you have a word or phrase highlighted when you click on one of them, it searches for that word or phrase. Otherwise, a window or sheet appears asking you what to search for. Wikipedia First corresponds to the Go button and Wikipedia Search corresponds to the Search button. When the Search button breaks, so is that bookmarklet. Whether these work depends on your browser. If they do not work you can try another version that always asks you what to search for rather than using the selected word or phrase:

Wikipedia First: if(!Qr){void(Qr=prompt('Text:',))} 

if(Qr)location.href='http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search='+escape(Qr)+"&go=go'"

Wikipedia Search: if(!Qr){void(Qr=prompt('Text:',))} 

if(Qr)location.href='http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search='+escape(Qr)+' '

Mozdev: Mycroft downloads has Mycroft plug-ins to search Wikipedia. The Mycroft plug-in format is based on the Sherlock I & II format.

--Ellmist 22:40, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

When to roll up or tear off discussion pages

I'm working on a page that has a lengthy history, and the associated discussion page is pretty long. The main problem is that it's hard to see the new comments, and the old, now-irrelevant stuff is cluttering it up. Is there an established policy about erasing old discussion comments?

For example there are comments that say things like "Hey, you need to work on this some more", followed by, "OK, I worked on it". I'm inclined to erase that stuff, and without making a backup or archive page, since all the original comments are saved in the page history anyway. Wile E. Heresiarch 16:28, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Go for it. See Talk:Anti-Semitism for an example of a talk page that has a lot of archived talk. --snoyes 16:34, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

See How to archive a talk page for guidance on the various ways to go about doing this. -- Viajero 11:50, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Request for feedback on Wikitex syntax

As some of you know, Wikipedia (through its underlying MediaWiki software) already supports embedding mathematical formulas, currently using the <math> syntax. Peter Danenberg is working on a complete redesign of the code to allow for much more flexibility, so that additional backends can be supported. His new scheme, called Wikitex, will not only allow embedding mathematical formulas , but also music notation (using GNU LilyPond) with auto-generated MIDI files, chemical formulas, TIPA phonetic symbols, chessboards, polytonic Greek, attribute-value matrices and parsetrees. This is very much droolworthy and there's probably more to come.

However, there is still an open question as to which "wrapper syntax" to use for the new scheme. Some (including myself) favor a simple syntax like <math>..</math>,<music>,<greek>,<chem>,<tipa> etc. Peter currently favors a more complex syntax: <rend math "..."/>, <rend music "..."/> etc.

If you prefer the simpler syntax, now is a good time to make your voice heard on the discussion page. It will likely be difficult to change once we have adopted a particular syntax.—Eloquence 02:38, Jan 1, 2004 (UTC)

I would be against using HTML-type tags entirely. Something like "{{math\n" to topen and end the block on a "\n\n". Could I also request that all this type of content be rendered inside classed DIVs, eg DIV class="math" and so on -- Tarquin 14:26, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Which subnet (range) of 142.177.0.0/16 is banned?

Are all 142.177.?.? IPs hard-banned? I believe the user has returned....none of his actions so far have been detrimental that I can tell, but if I am supposed to block him I will do so. Can someone who knows more about the history of this let me know? Jwrosenzweig 22:54, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think the individual you are talking about (142.177.19.200) is different from the 142.177.etc that is hard banned. It is seems 142.177.19.200 is ip142177019200.mpoweredpc.net while EoT (such as 142.177.82.204) is hlfx32-204.ns.sympatico.ca . I seem to remember that Tim blocked the entire range of sympatico halifax IPs that EoT was posting from, although I could be mistaken. Maximus Rex 23:29, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The currently blocked range is 142.177.71.0 to 142.177.114.0, which should be roughly the same as the Halifax section of Sympatico. I determined this range by trial-and-error, repeatedly calling the unix "host" command to find the edges. There are lots of innocent people using 142.177 IP addresses, please don't vilify them unnecessarily. -- Tim Starling 12:41, Jan 1, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks much for the information! It would be nice if this was easily available, though. When I saw the IP, it reminded me of the banned user....when I tried to find info about him, the only thing I discovered was his "user page", User:142.177.etc. That name, as you can see, vilifies anyone in the 142.177 range unecessarily....if I'm being chastised at all by Tim (and I can't tell if I am), all I can say is that Wikipedia needs to have a much easier way of describing for us who is banned and what the terms of their ban are. :) Based on that user page, all I could conclude was that anyone in that IP range should be considered a suspect. The last time I tried to talk to an anon in the 142.177 range, I was immediately chastised by other Wikipedians for trying to talk to a user who'd been hard-banned. I really don't intend to make anyone upset, so it would be nice if everyone agreed what I can and cannot do about 142.177 IPs, and about banned users in general. Thanks. :) Jwrosenzweig 17:18, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Amount of duplication

I have a Wikipedia-philosophy question. I'm trying to figure out how much duplication there should be between articles. Do we expect people to read the most important links in a page, or should the crucial elements be repeated? As a specific example, I was trying to write Aerodynamics and put a lot of stuff in there about basic assumptions, classes of problems etc., then realized that much of that should go in Fluid mechanics. So I rewrote fluid mechanics to contain that kind of information. But now much of what's in aerodynamics is a duplication of fluid mechanics. Aerodynamics could now simply read "Aerodynamics is fluid mechanics applied to gases" and with the links, that's almost enough information. But aerodynamics is much too important a topic to have a supershort article. Thoughts? moink 18:31, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

My thoughts, since I notice the same issue, is to provide a quick background on the issue and then link to a more thorough discussion elsewhere. Wikipedia articles do not need to be long to be influential or important. Keep em short and sweet, but packed with info and link to other Wikipedia pages with more information. No need to duplicate repetitive info. -Visorstuff 18:43, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

There shouldn't be significant overlap, and the division between the two articles should be made along pragmatic lines (for some value of "pragmatic"). So in this case fluid dynamics is the theory, aerodynamics its application. I figure the theory should be in fluid dynamics (lift, drag, bernoulli, reaction) and the aerodynamic specific stuff (wing shapes/angles/sizes/profiles/sweeps, stability Vs agility, deltawings, canards, tridekkers, flying wings, BBW, etc.) should be in aerodynamics. If something is borderline, it doesn't really matter which article it's in (ideally it shouldn't be in both) as both articles are interlinked, and its unlikely that someone who really cares about either won't read its counterpart too). -- Finlay McWalter 19:01, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

That would be a good solution if they were divided like that, unfortunately aerodynamics and hydrodynamics are also theoretical disciplines, while aeronautics and hydraulics are their practical analogs. moink 03:01, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

IMO, A small to moderate amount of overlap between articles is just fine. I really don't expect most people to really do significant cross-referencing when reading articles. It helps that all of the essential information to understand a topic is in the article itself. If duplication is really unwarranted, then explicitly say in the article that there is more in-depth information in the other article. E.g., "The theoretical foundation of aerodynamics lies in fluid mechanics, an important branch of physics. See the article on fluid mechanics to learn more." --seav 02:26, Jan 1, 2004 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with a certain amount of duplication, particularly if it is a short but essential fact that would otherwise have to be found buried in a huge cross-linked article. Just imagine yourself as the reader and use common sense about what would be convenient to you. Anjouli 09:53, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

There are some people here (esp. techies) who believe that information should never be duplicated in Wikipedia, that everything should be stored once and linked as need be. From a software engineering point of view, this is an elegant solution, but we are writing an encyclopedia, not programming a computer. I believe strongly that even though Wikipedia is not paper, every article should be an organic whole; that -- figuratively speaking or otherwise -- if you print an article it, it is complete. Links should only be pointers towards additional information, not essential information. Hence, some duplication is inevitable and should be expected. -- Viajero 11:55, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I would agree that some duplication is a good thing and that Viajero's call to remember the reader is by far and away the most sensible thing any of us can do. An article should be as self-contained as possible and links are for those who want to know the finer details, IMHO. Bmills 12:06, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks all for your comments. I think my personal opinions are most closely aligned with Viajero's. Articles should be complete on their own, without being cut-and-paste copies of one another. I'm surprised there isn't more consensus on this issue around here; I thought this would have been something to come up pretty often. I'll fix aerodynamics when I have a free moment. moink 20:16, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Image markup

Can markup be used to create an image that is smaller in size than the one that has been uploaded? (Am formatting Diving_insects.)--azwaldo 18:03, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Not yet. greenmountainboy (talk) 18:04, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Reckon I'll shrink my originals and upload new image files, how can the old images be removed from the server?azwaldo

I re-formatted Diving_insects so that the pictures stay on the right hand side without resorting to <br><br><br><br><br><br>. It looks pretty good now, and I don't think the pictures need any shrinking. --snoyes 23:57, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Re: image deletion: Wikipedia:Images for deletion, or write a short note on a sysop's (that you see to be active ATM) talk page. --snoyes 00:00, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If you just want to change the size, just upload them as new versions of the same files. No deletion is necessary. Check first that no other pages are using these images, this is shown at the bottom of the image description page. Andrewa 10:24, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

King Charles I Society

Hi

I have recently formed the King Charles I Society and am looking for anyone interested in becoming a member. Membership is free and the society aim is to increase membership base so that we can start working towards our aims. You can see the website for more info:

www.kingcharles.biz

Would you be interested in joining and would it be possible to pass this information on to anyone who may be interested?

Kind regards

Mark Turnbull King Charles I Society

Question of unknown origin

My family watched the movie, The Verdict, on TNT a few years ago and really enjoyed the version that your station aired. I've checked listings from time to time trying to see if it was being aired again but haven't seen any mention of it. I know that movies are frequently aired and would like to know if this movie will be aired any time in the near future.

Thanks, Jean Mitchell jermit1@hotmail.com

Let's ban Lir (again)

I find Lir impossible to deal with, and my impression is that this is a common experience. Meanwhile, although I haven't made a conscientious study of Lir's edits, among the ones I've seen I haven't regarded any of them as having improved the articles that Lir made them to. On the science pages I watch, Lir's edits sometimes create mistakes of fact where there were none before, and I have only seen Lir refuse to accept evidence that they are mistakes. I have read several other users on the talk pages comment angrily about the same phenomenon. I suggest Lir be banned. If Lir is not banned, I would be grateful if someone would explain to me what a user has to do to be banned.

There is a page that discuusses problem users. I'm having so much trouble with navigating and editing Wikipedia today, that I do not want to search for it right now - 24.94.82.245 19:28, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

ENQUIRIES

Sir, We will want to enquire on how to properly reach you.We own a communication company ( DARLING COMMUNICATIONS ) that will like to commence a Television Program in your enviable Station. We request you mail uo on the e-mail address below on how to go about it. donwolexy@yahoo.co.uk richoma4u@yahoo.com darlingcom@yahoo.com Thanks for your anticipated concern.

yours faithfully, Richard Ovwielefuoma The manager.

Jamie Johnson?

Dear Johnson and Johnson,

               I just got through watching a film done by Jamie Johnson, and his work was wonderful. He defintly has talent in the film industries.  If he has any other films could you please let me know.  
          Jennifer Stover
           (extremgrrl@hotmail.com)

Let's ban Lir (again)

I find Lir impossible to deal with, and my impression is that this is a common experience. Meanwhile, although I haven't made a conscientious study of Lir's edits, among the ones I've seen I haven't regarded any of them as having improved the articles that Lir made them to. On the science pages I watch, Lir's edits sometimes create mistakes of fact where there were none before, and I have only seen Lir refuse to accept evidence that they are mistakes. I have read several other users on the talk pages comment angrily about the same phenomenon. I suggest Lir be banned. If Lir is not banned, I would be grateful if someone would explain to me what a user has to do to be banned.

[Peak:] The main problem with Lir is not so much the multiplicity of mistakes or the frequent refusal to accept evidence, but the pattern of behavior that has resulted, for example, in the DNA page being Protected for an extended period. This behavior has probably wasted more time of more people than the average vandal. If Lir would agree to desist from re-inserting changes that others have explained are deleterious, then perhaps there would be no need for a ban. Alternatively, if Lir is unwilling to make and keep such a commitment, then it might suffice to prevent him or her from editing specific articles. Is that currently possible? Peak 07:48, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

There is a page that discuusses problem users. I'm having so much trouble with navigating and editing Wikipedia today, that I do not want to search for it right now - 24.94.82.245 19:28, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

And Wik... User talk:Wik/ban. --Jiang 22:32, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

And Wik what? --Wik 09:45, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)

Talk:DNA speaks for itself. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Janet and Friend's Photographs

Hi, I am just wanting to know about a picture i have of Janet. It's a black and white photo graph, It was sent to my great aunt from Janet in 1939. It has been hand written on and signed by Janet her self. It is in mint condition. The thing I would like to know is, would it be worth any amount of money. I also have have a black and white photo of Anna Neagle and three hand painted photographs in colour of Peire Trevor, Alice Faye and Sonja Henie. These photo's are all in mint condition and were all hand signed by the stars them selves between 1939 and 1942. I also have a hand written note from Janet Gaynor and a typed letter from Anna Neagle's secretary in 1941 with a money order for one shilling and six pence. Is it possible for you to e-mail me back and let me know what they are worth approxamently.

Yours Sincerely Terri Giles

Hello Terri. I would imagine that what you describe would have immense value to some people out there. May I suggest eBay as a more appropriate forum? There is likely to be many more treasure-hunters there than here, on Wikipedia. - Mark 07:44, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

LIKE TO KOW

 I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION ABOUT AUDRY TOTTER THE ACTRESS.
                             THANK YOU 
                            SAMUEL SMITH
                            ANNISTON AL. 3620
                      E-MAIL SAMUALS@BELLSOUTH.NET

Try her IMDb entry at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0869429/. RickK 19:34, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

what do you call?

a form of art in which lengthy,thin strips of colorful paper are wound into tight circles(?) and "molded" into things like petals which are eventually glued together to make things like paper flowers or snow flakes? my mom called it "quilling", but i can find no specific mention of this type of "quilling". probably cuzz it's called something else. let me know at

randymetscher_3@hotmail.com

if you have any insights. thanks

Hello

I was just wondering if you can e-mail me more recent issues on school killings because i am a 10th grade and i am doing a speech on how we can prevent kids from killing eachother and i would appreciate the help...Thanks..Bye

My e-mail is

crazY_kryS69@hotmail.com

1724 - Events

Does anyone have more information on what was happening to the world during the year 1724 ? pure.dew@noos.fr

---

Someone please revert the edits Angela made to the protected page Wikipedia:Conflicts between users. --Wik 10:59, Jan 11, 2004 (UTC)

Mediawiki ebuild

Im working on a gentoo ebuild ebuild for mediawiki. I have never made an ebuild before, so I really need help. Thanks in advance, Alexandros 17:57, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

what criteria for banning users?

Since I suggested banning Lir yesterday, I have noticed that I am way behind the times in this regard, and that the idea has been going around and around for ages, even though Lir has been banned before and so arguably it shouldn't take much misbehavior for Lir to earn a ban again. This makes me wonder: Why is it so hard to ban people from Wikipedia? What are the criteria?

To me there's an obvious rule of thumb that should apply: If a user has lots of complaints against him or her about behavior that is documented and verifiable in the histories; and if no one with a good reputation speaks in favor of keeping that user around--citing some verifiable good behavior like "so-and-so made a nice contribution to article X while I was there on such and such a day" or "so-and-so discussed an issue reasonably over at article Y while I was there then"--then the person should be banned.

Could such a rule work? Is that in fact what we do? I ask just because it doesn't seem like that's what's being done. Instead I get the impression many people regard banning as almost too harsh to contemplate, as if nothing short of verified 24/7 beligerence and vandalism with no redeeming or ambiguous behavior deserves a ban. But the way I react to users is that after I experience a certain amount or a certain consistency of unreasonableness and/or incivility from them, I just don't trust them anymore. But of course there's no avoiding such users on Wikipedia, if they take an interest in the same articles as you.

At the very outset of discussions Lir has had with other users on Talk pages, I have noticed them address or respond to Lir with skepticism and or sarcasm. I imagine that's because they've interacted with Lir before and they no longer assume good faith. Why on Earth should we put up with users of whom nobody with experience assumes good faith? (Not that I'm positive that Lir in particular falls in this category). Does Wikipedia have any obligation or responsibility to people like that? If people think so, I can't imagine why. 168... 02:31, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As of September 2003, it is now possible for sysops to block usernames. It is important to note that sysops are not authorised to decide whether a particular case of Wikiquette violation warrants banning by username. The ability to ban by username has been made available for the purposes of enforcing a ban already approved by Jimbo, and to protect Wikipedia from "simple vandalism". It may be used to block accounts of obvious reincarnations of hard-banned users (see below). (from Wikipedia:Bans) Anthony DiPierro 04:01, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there seems to be a kind of "complicated vandalism," besides the simple kind. That's what concerns me and what I feel most victimized by. Simple vandalism you can revert with a mouse click. Getting into discussions with antisocial users costs you hours of aggravating and often pointless discussion which leave you feeling worse about the world and your fellow human being. I'm sensing that there's not much hope or interest in reducing this kind of thing, but I'm trying to see if I can generate a little. 168... 07:26, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

BTW, a policy of imposing bans for bad behavior doesn't necessarily exclude anyone. Some people it would deter from being antisocial in the first place. Others who end up banned can always come back under new names, hopefully inspired to establish a better reputation the next time. I guess there are some people who enjoy watching dust-ups and bad behavior, and clearly there are some that enjoy behaving badly themselves, but I imagine most people would enjoy Wikipedia more if there were less bad behavior. 168... 07:41, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Category link

I have a fuzzy recollection of a proposed "Category" link to replace the many and varied lists. Is that still a possibility? and where is the discussion? WormRunner 04:19, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Discussion about a photograph moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk by .'. Optim 18:20, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC) .'.

Like to Kow moved to Wikipedia:Reference Desk by .'. Optim .'.

I need a record deal

My band is looking for a record deal...we have been saerching for the past 3 days and we wanted to know if u have open spots for new bands what kind of deals are you offering...please reply back asap

Thank you

information for Scholarship

Dear,  
       Hello. It is really so nice to write you this massage. Really, I need your help. I think the best thing in life is to help the others who really need help. 
          My name is Mohammed Wesam A. M. Amer.  I live in Khanyounis refugees' camp, southern Gaza strip, Palestine. I graduated from English department, Education collage at the Al-Azhar university-Gaza. I am font of education, and human rights. So I am planning to further my study in civics and democratic rights. I  send  this massage, for  I  would like  you  to  provide me with information as possible as you can about scholarships for such program , and information of how can  I  get  a scholarship to  help me  further my study  in such major .

I will be glad with getting information. I am ready to send my statements of purpose and of future plans. I am ready also to provide you with all information you need or you request. It will be nice to hear from you. For contact, Mohammed Wesam Amer 333-51 Hai Al-Amel , KhanYounis , Gaza strip, Palestine, via Israel E-mail address: m_w_amer@yahoo.com . Massager: m_w_amer Hotmail messenger: wisamlove1980@hotmail.com Cell phone: 00 972 59 862 630

With best regards
Mohammed Wesam A. M. Amer

English Channel Depth Chart

I am involved in a foolish argument/discussion with my neighbour. She claims that, under certain conditions, one can walk from Cornwall to Mont St. Michel on a sandbar. Of course this is balderdash, however, I would like some hard data to lay my case to rest. Can someone direct me to a website where I can print out a depth chart of the Channel? Thank you.

Chinanose

Love the Wikipedia!

Bakkah is an example of why I love how the Wikipedia works. I post an article based on what I know about it, and based on some comments and editing help am able to turn it into a very NPOV article that tries to show both sides of the issue. If I were to have posted it elsewhere instead the result would've been a POV article that does not give the other side at all, and it would be a lot less useful for others. ☺ — Jor 15:58, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

What links here

Although I added Fischer to Wikipedia:Links to disambiguating pages it doesn't show when I click on "What links here". (It also takes up to three minutes to load). Any reason(s) for that? --KF 15:56, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yep, only the first 500 pages to link to a page get listed on "What links here" for performance reasons relating to pages that have huge numbers of incoming links (e.g. year pages). Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 07:58, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. However, only five (!) rather than 500+ pages link to Fischer, but voilà the link, which does show toay. So thanks again, let's leave it a mystery. >KF< 16:55, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Islamic terms

Please would some of the regulars give this newbie some guidance? The Wikipedia:List_of_common_misspellings has Mohammedan (Muslim), Mohammedans (Muslims), Muhammadan (Muslim), and Mecca (Makkah).

As part of my on-going efforts to fix spellings - with reference to that list for anything doubtful - I recently corrected Mecca to Makkah for articles where it was clearly in an Islamic context. I was told by Salsa Shark via my talk page that Mecca/Makkah "It isn't now and isn't going to be" on the list. This seems to be a personal view as the spelling is currently the subject of an edit war on Wikipedia:List_of_common_misspellings.

Wiki articles (before my changes) seemed divided about 50/50 on the spelling, and strangely the Mecca page uses the spelling Makkah internally, but is titled Mecca. Apparently this was the unhappy state in which it was protected at the end of a previous edit war.

It seems to me that Makkah is certainly correct for Islamic articles, and other uses are arguable either way.

My question is should I change the spelling to Makkah where I am sure that is proper, or should I defer to Salsa Shark. If I persist in my viewpoint, would that be considered vandalism, or is that normal behaviour on Wiki? Is there any formal voting process (I can't find one). At the moment my impression of Wiki is that the loudest and most active tend to win-out, even if they are not in a majority. (Perhaps an analog for life).ّ SpellBott 12:20, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This question relies on the same precedent we established in Rudolf Hess vs Rudolf Heß. Go with the typical British/American spelling, and put Makkah in a first line "Also known as". →Raul654 13:03, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia uses the common English name. That Muslims want to remove the gambling associations from their holy city is their problem, not wp's: Mecca is still Mecca in English. — Jor 13:14, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

Please make sure you've read the earlier discussion (and very cogent arguments) on Talk:Mecca. I thought we had it right prior to today's changes. –Hajor 03:06, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I was the one who made today's changes. I read the talk page (and it's a lengthy one, at that), and I remain convinced that the changes should stand. Mecca is, inarguably, the common english name. As the talk page mentions, Makkah might be more common among english-speaking Muslims, but they too are in the minority. Every publication I've ever seen uses that spelling. I don't doubt there are some that don't, but they are the minority too. Arvindn's googling found an order of magnitude difference in favor of Mecca. Wikipedia:Naming conventions: "Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things." End of story. →Raul654 03:30, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

Well you are answering the wrong question! I am not disputing the spelling of Mecca. I am asking if it is correct to change something you believe is wrong to something you believe is right, even if others disagree. What is the proper way of doing it?SpellBott 06:27, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

(In Sean Connery voice - Ok, Trebek, I'll play your game!). If a dispute has not yet arisen (no one has said *not* to do such-and-such), go ahead and make your changes. It's a lot easier to apologize than it is to ask permission. (A good lesson for life!) If someone has voiced disapproval , then use the article's talk page to flesh it out (or if it's a person-to-person dispute, that person's talk page will work fine as well). If neither of you can come to an agreement, take it to the village pump and let the community decide.

Note, none of these are hard and fast rules, but it's just the typical way of doing it. →Raul654 06:45, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

reading list for 15 year olds

At the High School where I teach (in California, U.S.) there is a school-wide program that allows me to assign outside reading to students. I am amassing a reading list. Last semester I focused on the 11th grade U.S. History students. I asked Wikipedians to make suggestions, and that process was very helpful for me.

This semester, I will focus on the 10th grade World Cultures students. I ask you Wikipedians again for some recommendations. Please visit Reading List Recommendations and make some suggestions.

Thanks in advance, Kingturtle 07:27, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I like the idea of wikipedian reading lists as ex books .. so i'm asking myself if they would qualify as an article section (doesnt exist yet as such) -- Ebricca 08:17, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)