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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump.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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Redirects and links to empty pages

Following on from some comments above, I am quite surprised that there are so many redirects and links to empty pages. These are not on the list of good things and may even be on the list of bad things. Is it possible to reduce their numbers using some form of search and replace mechanism?
Bobblewik 19:52, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A link to an empty page can be positive. For example, on the Allen Iverson page, there's a link to the NBA Finals, a link that as you can see does not work yet. It's positive for 2 reasons: 1) Maybe someone will see it and decide to write the article, 2) Once the article is written, the link will become active (as long as the name is accurate).

But redirecting to an empty page is bad. Salasks 01:33, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)

• A low-to-medium quality list of redirects to articles which don't exist can be found here. As always in the world of wiki, anyone and everyone is welcome to fix these! - TB 10:53, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)
  • Sometimes the redirects point to deleted pages. One just forgot to delete them as well. -- User:Docu
  • Good news, and bad news. That report doesn't handle diacritical characters well, so about 5% or so, are actually working just fine (I've marked the ones I found to be working). The bad news is that Jane March, for example, is a dead redir because User:Lucky6.9 turned a "b-movie bandit" entry into a redir for her most notable movie, which, unfortunately, we don't have an article on (um, that's unfortunate more for the dead redir than any claim the movie is worth watching--it only is if you like certain types). I can stub her after I go home. I really appreciate your pages like this, TB--I've helped do some of the work off of several of them. Niteowlneils 04:50, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Links to empty pages are good for the two reasons given by User:Salasks. Redirects to empty pages are also good, because they pre-emptively prevent duplicate articles being written. I have created redirects to empty pages when I know that eventually an article will be written on a subject with several names. By making the redirects first, I can make it more likely that the article, when it is written, will end up at the right place. The main problem with redirects to empty pages is that they don't show up as "red links" in the referring page (but that problem applies equally to links to substubs). Gdr 14:05, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)

I've seen this get out of hand on some pages, such as EGovernment. In this example, my gut says many of the links go to terms that will never have articles created for them. -- Stevietheman 14:40, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Going thru the prose, I was going "huh?", then I got to the list of 'issues' and definately agree. Niteowlneils 04:50, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I should have been more explicit in saying that the multiple empty links exist in the long, long list of 'issues'. :) Further, when I brought that up in its Talk before, its principal author couldn't see my point--perhaps if others went in there and said the same thing I'm saying, maybe the article could be modified. -- Stevietheman 15:17, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Logo background changed

The rectangular background to the Wikipedia symbol on the top left hand corner of the page has changed to green. Is this my browser problem or does everyone have it? Apwoolrich 18:50, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Using IE6. — Frecklefoot | Talk 19:05, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

Looks fine to me in Mozilla/Opera/IE under Xp. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 19:14, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I confirm alls well in IE6 - Adrian Pingstone 19:23, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I saw the change to green, too. At the time (several hours ago), I checked the Main Page history and found no page change to cause it. However, it's back to normal now. I'm using Opera 7.23. — Jeff Q 01:48, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Just happened for me, too (Opera 7.20). Has the image file itself been modified at any point recently? -- ChrisO 07:21, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Just happened to me, too. Opera 7.54. Anárion 14:29, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Green background is back again this morning, and yes, I too use Opera Apwoolrich 06:34, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

My two cents here: They should put a hammer in the background, as in, "were hammering you information"...lol as Beavis would say, "Damn it Butthead! Hammer!! Hammer!!"..lol just a joke. But the logo looks great to me. We should keep the pages in yellow too, as I saw they were a couple of days ago. Or red, for a fashion look, although I must admit, we dont want the color of our pages to take attention away from our readers "Antonio Amazonian Temptation Martin"

Arbitration Committee election is open

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

Revamp of how Peer Review works

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

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

Lion.jpg vandalized

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

I find the "vandalized" pic a little too funny to actually seriously think on this, sorry. Anárion 13:53, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree it's amusing. then I tried to revert it, but could not figure out how it was vandalized in the first place. Now I'm no longer amused at all. - UtherSRG 14:04, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Someone seems to have exploited a wiki bug involving capitalisation. The original file name was Image:lion.jpg. Both Image:Lion.jpg and Image:Leon.jpg are new files. That's why you can't find the unvandalised version in the history. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 14:17, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)Nah, I don't reckon that's how he did it. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 14:41, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Has this problem been reported? Seems rather serious. Anárion 14:21, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm still trying to sort this out. this diff shows the change from [[Image:lion.jpg|200px|Lion]] to [[Image:Leon.jpg]]. On my screen, this is the point at which the image seems to change. However, both image files contain the same content. The difference in appearence on my screen may be more to do with the fact that the image size changed: the image was previously a thumbnail, so I am getting and old, unvandalised version of this thumbnail.

I've found a temp replacement image on Google, and uploaded it as Image:Lion.jpg.

Update: I've taken that unvandalised thumbnail and re-uploaded it as Image:Leon.jpg. It's only 200px wide, but I can't do better. We now have two usable images. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 14:36, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A couple of days ago I reverted the links from Image:Leon.jpg (which then was the one with the not so funny Grrr) to Image:Lion.jpg and left a note on the creator's talk page User talk:JeffyJeffyMan2004. -- Chris 73 | Talk 16:00, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but the image you reverted to appears to be corrupted in the process somehow, as was mine that I uploaded on top of the vandalized/corrupted one. - UtherSRG 16:07, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

It's not a kosher image. I just randomly found it. It needs to be replaced. But hang on, was the previous image properly licensed anyway? I don't think so. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 18:39, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Man, I don't want to encourage vandalism, but after reading this discussion I had to check on what the vandalized image looked like...and I just could not stop laughing. I vote for BJAODN (; —siroχo 16:42, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

Whoops - I'm a words guy, not a picture guy, so I've never dealt with images in my wikipedia time, and through ignorance I may have just reverted to an earlier version of the picture in question while trying to look at it. I'm not quite sure, though ... - DavidWBrooks 17:10, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ah yes, DavidWBrooks reverted to the vandalised version. I've re-reverted. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 18:55, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The weirdness continues. Look at Lion. I tried to use both photos, one at the top, one at the bottom, both at the original width of 200px. They appear the same! And it's not my cache that's doing it, but Wikipedia's! Lion.jpg uses its old, unvandalised 200px thumbnail if you tell it to be 200px. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 19:33, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If you need a PD image of a lion, there is a whole bunch of them here : [1], which are PD according to the photographer [2], he just wants somebody to drop him a line if the image is used. -- Chris 73 | Talk 23:03, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I've uploaded several. I think the old pix can go now. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 09:24, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Links to fan sites?

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

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

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

I vote no fan sites, for the reason you stated and for the fact that this is a good way to increase dead links. For similar reasons I frown on links to news stories about the topic. External links should only be to primary sources, or extensive background information not easily available elsewhere. - DavidWBrooks 13:05, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately I don't have many answers for you, but I tend to think there is not enough of a policy. I recently posted at Wikipedia talk:External links#More restrictive policy on external linking with some ideas for a start of a better policy on external linking. I don't think fan sites or personal web pages should be allowed as external links unless the article specifically makes reference to them for some reason. Maybe we should begin to hammer out a policy on this to stop wikipedia from becoming a collection of links. —siroχo 13:08, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

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

There are cases when fan-sites are big/good enough to justify linking to them. I've noticed this with tv shows/movies, where the official site is little more than an ad and the best fan sites have voluminous information about the subject.

It looks like the link in question is one for "Optimize XP", a website so personal that it's hosted on comcast's free user web space. Removing that one from Windows XP is pretty much a no-brainer. So I removed it. -- Cyrius|✎ 13:12, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

The answer is to be reasonable. If there are only three or four sites findable on the web pertinent to an article, and all of them are fan sites, then linking to them all is reasonable. If there are twenty or thirty pertinent sites then use judgement and link to the best ones, just as in an article on an historical figure, you would link to web pages that were most useful in respect to that article, regardless of whether a page happened to be on a university website or was a good discussion or essay on someone's personal website. You don't have to include everything. On many subjects there are often a few large websites that themselves provide many other links and in those cases linking to those sites alone is often the correct answer.

That Wikipedia is not a link repositary should not be taken to mean that an article should not sometimes include a large number of links to further information. Wikipedia is not a bibliography, but articles may sometimes contain extensive bibliographies, extensive selected bibliographies. Only including corporate websites has certainly never been Wikipedia policy. Such a policy would be very wrong-headed for articles I tend to edit and write. If an individual website on free user web space contains excellent material concerning the topic of any article that is not just rewording of material duplicated elsewhere on the web, then it should be linked to.

The question one should ask is what degree of extra benefit does the link provide to people reading the article who want more information. An article should contain the best and most useful links that can be found, just as it contains the best and most useful information, regardless of origin. Select links for an article just as you would select facts for an article. Obscure facts not generally known are sometimes what makes an article especially valuable. Similarly, if you find an excellent, obscure web page on any subject, linking to that page provides far more value to a Wikipedia user than does linking to well-known pages near the top of Google's search on a topic which the user would also easily find in a Google search. If a user comes out of an article thinking that the links were excellent, especially if they pointed to good material that the user would not have easily found otherwise, then the links were well chosen. Whether they are links to personal websites, hobbiest websites, academic websites, corporate websites, political propaganda websites, fan websites ... all that is secondary.

Jallan 18:17, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I dont have a problem with fan sites, as long as they are decent. Like, in an extreme case, some pervert might place a "fan site" for, say, Hilary Duff and it could actually contain a fixed photo of a girl naked with Hil's face pasted on, well that would be a little troubling and not of our standard. Like it has been said beforem a few well done and well meaning fan sites are ok to keep. Besides, another thing is that we also have links to the celebrity's own websites, and they obviously use their official websites to glorify themselves too.

"Antonio The Crusher Martin"

Vandalizing notice

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

It is possible that your ISP is sharing your IP address with other people, and the vandalism notice was directed at one of them. Now that you are registered, this problem should go away. If you can tell us what IP address you were using before you registered, we can investigate further. -- Heron 11:22, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC) P.S. I should have warned you that publishing your IP address here might allow someone to trace your location, so don't feel obliged to reveal it just because I asked you. -- Heron 11:26, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Alternatively you may have received the message by accident. You can find a list of notified vandalism at Wikipedia:Vandalism_in_progress. The principle active problem today appears to be at Horizons: Empires of Istaria, which has quite a few anonymous IPs making edits. At least one is a clear vandal, but it is not easy to disentangle. If you were making anon edits to that article, you may have got tarred with the same brush. -- Solipsist 11:33, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It is also possible that you have come across a Darrien-style Wikipedian who thinks anyone who disagrees with him is a vandal. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 11:36, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

None of the articles I edited are mentioned in the Vandalism in Progress list, my IP isn't on there and the name Darrien doesn't ring the tiniest of bells. The person who sent me the notice had a nick consisting of two parts, the last part being magnus (something like Hercules Magnus or Rex Magnus).Aecis

Sounds like User:Maximus Rex, but his last edit was in July. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 12:13, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've found the notice in my History... apparently it wasn't for me, but for another user (looking at the IP). Yet somehow, the notice showed up as a new message for me. And it was indeed from Maximus Rex. *baffled* Aecis

Where was the message? In the summary of an edit to an article? On your talk page, after following a big, colourful link saying "You have new messages"? — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 12:23, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It was on my talk page, after following a big, colourful link (I think it was yellow) saying "You have new messages" Aecis

The person it was intended for likely left before being warned, which means the first person to show up with the same IP address would have gotten the new messages notice. -- Cyrius|✎ 12:57, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

And that's the strange thing about it: the IP of the user the message was intended for and my IP do not match up. Aecis

y'know, I think you're not the first person to see such a weird thing - didn't someone else report just the same a few days ago? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:01, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is a bug of some sort. I myself had this same experience a day or two ago, and I remember other people discussing the same problem. It happened to enough different people that I assume it's already been listed on the bug reports page. Isomorphic 03:03, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Random Page Additions

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

• Stubs (and only not stubs?)
• Wikify
• Deadend pages

Just an idea

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

I'm very much in favor of this sort of thing. It would be cool to pick a random article from Category:Stub or any (one?) of Category:Stub categories. -- ssd 05:18, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, this would be useful. It should be a user preference thing and/or done with alternate special:randompage pages. But adding additional links to the sidebar should not occur and special:randompage should continue to work as it now does. --mav 07:30, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Is there any Free Good Html Desiging Software other than Frontpage

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

FrontPage isn't free. There's a few things out there, including Composer which comes bundled with Mozilla, but I've always found the best HTML-designing software is a text editor. Marnanel 03:12, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Try vi, or Notepad if you're cursed with Windows. -- Grunt (talk) 03:14, 2004 Aug 5 (UTC)

There is a native version of vim, it has very nice HTML-editing capabilities out of the box (syntax highlighting), and is just awesome when combined with some tips from vim.org. For any professional HTML editing, WYSIWYG environments like Frontpage or Netscape (composer) are not as mature as tag-based editing. emacs is also very powerful, but I personally prefer vim. Vi rules :-) BACbKA 08:53, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No, don't use notepad if in Windows. Textpad, which can be downloaded [3] and used free, but is worth registering after the trial period, includes syntax highlighting, mad search/replace features, all the things notepad should have! The program is also useful for programming (menu allows access to e.g. Java compiler) or just editing code. Zoney 09:54, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There's a nice list at the bottom of HTML editor. --ssd 03:31, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Try doing a google search for '1st Page 2000' I don't know if they're still up (or free), but it's a good piece of software (I used to use it myself...now I just use notepad or something.) — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 06:08, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

HTML-Kit. Or a pirate version of Dreamweaver. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 09:03, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

NoteTab (various configurations from Lite (free) to Pro (paid for) http://notetab.com, with Joe Barta's tutorial courses, http://PageTutor.com.

Sorry I forgot to sign when first sent!Apwoolrich 12:14, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If you already have and are competent to use Microsoft Word and/or Publisher, both of these will generate HTML and they give WYSIWYG of sorts. Word will open web pages, edit them and save them as either HTML or as Word documents (or other formats of course but you probably won't want to). The main drawback of both is they generate an incredible number of redundant tags, reflecting their native file structures which contain enormous numbers of hidden and mainly redundant control blocks and characters which accumulate with every edit!

This is probably only relevant for fairly simple pages, but for example I maintain some local links pages (including the one my browser loads on startup) using Word, and it's very quick and easy to do. Andrewa 09:37, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm rather surprised nobody has mentioned Nvu yet. It's based on the Mozilla Composer, but is much more pretty and effective. Although at first glance it's Linux-only, it has a Windows version too. And by the way, the only worser producer of HTML (if you can call it that) than Frontpage is Word. Of course, YMMV – if only IE users will ever be able to view it, it doesn't make much of a difference. Johnleemk | Talk 10:49, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Never tried Nvu. However, I have tried to edit pages generated by Word, and they are horrible. You can't find more tags with more options anywhere! — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 15:03, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Categorization weirdness.

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

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

as an aside, you know you can refer to a catagory in a page (like this) without adding the page to that category simply by putting a colon infront of the word "category", like this - Category:Hawaiian rivers (it's easier than nowiki). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:40, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

to answer your actual question, wikipedia seems sluggish today, and I think i've seems a couple of places where altered templates weren't immediately visible in pages that included them. So I guess your problem may go away given a little breathing room. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:43, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

And lo, at least from my cache's perspective, the change you performed is now visible. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:55, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

how to rename a category

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

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

TextPad clip library for Wikipedia syntax and templates

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

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

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

I had a look at doing this, but it's a bit fiddly. The problem is that TextPad's support for syntax highlighting isn't as full-featured as that of vim, nedit, or emacs, say. Specifically, it only allows a very small number of (non-nestable) "bracketing" constructions, whereas most MediaWiki syntax is bracket-based: ==...==, [[...]], ''...'', etc. The next best thing is to add these as keywords or operator symbols, but this isn't quite so nice to look at. I'll keep at it, but I don't hold out much hope that the result will be very pleasant. --AlexG 16:52, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

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

www.vaspersthegrate.blogspot.com

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

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

Well, I don't really think it's our place to make up words or add to the English lexicon. Once it becomes commonplace, I can see it being added to the Wiktionary. — Frecklefoot | Talk 21:28, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

It isn't our place, and neologisms are routinely deleted via VfD. They violate both "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" and "no original research". -- Cyrius|✎ 03:28, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I see what you mean. I'm brand new to this site, so I didn't know the policy. I've linked to wikipedia definition entriesfor several terms in my "Banned" article. vaspers

Fort Bennings renaming issue

from cleanup:

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

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

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

Writers and readers

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

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

Suppress image error messages

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

I assume you are using MediaWiki and a download of Wikipedia content: See if replacing the text in MediaWiki:Missingimage with a non-breaking space (& n b s p ; without the spaces) works. --mav 07:36, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Can Wikipedians of specific nationalities be located?

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

It has the lists linked from Wikipedia:Wikipedian, e.g. Wikipedia:Wikipedians/The Netherlands for dutch people. It's totally voluntarily to add yourself to any of the lists, but it may be useful if you need to contact someone with a special interest, location or whatever. andy 12:08, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Also, if there's a corresponding page on the relevant wikipedia (e.g. nl:Cornelis Vreeswijk) you could ask on the corresponding talk page (e.g. nl:Overleg:Cornelis Vreeswijk) for some help. You can also look on m:Wikimedia Embassy to find out who is the "ambassador" for that wikipedia (which for the nl wikipedia seems to be User:Walter) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:25, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Thanks very much, Andy and Finn. Great stuff.--Bishonen 06:28, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Anon talk pages

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

You're wrong, and it's a problem. I agree. Is there a way to delete anon talk pages, say, 1 month after the last edit? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 14:09, 2004 Aug 4 (UTC)

I believe they're purged (deleted) after a year, but that seems rather too long. Maybe they should be blanked (but not deleted) after a month of inactivity (blanking leaves evidence of longer-term discussions, without scaring innocent noobs). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:15, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That's what I understand too, deletion after a year. Blanking after a shorter period seems an excellent idea, but I suspect a month is too short. Many newbies go more than a month between editing sessions 1 and 2. I've seen up to six months, but I'd suggest two months as a good compromise. Andrewa 19:39, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Bad article title

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

Done. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 06:59, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Curiously I just noticed a similar problem today. It looks like the garbled title may be caused by entering a word with a diacritical mark in the search box, then clicking on the The query is xxxx link to edit the page. It looks like the title might go through two URLencodings which corrupts the page name in the final URL. E.g. Très -> Très   -- Solipsist 17:13, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There are other bugs in that spot too. If you try to search for a namespaced article, it deletes the : character, and the create this page edit link is similarly wrong. --ssd 03:59, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Moving to Wiktionary

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

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

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

Archive, first timeto do so

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

what's the name of the Wikipedia ref page? Salasks 05:18, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

It's not that hard. Just create the page Talk:Karma/Archive, or, if their might be more archives, Talk:Karma/Archive 1. Then cut text out of Talk:Karma and paste it into the archive. Tada! [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 18:47, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. The Wiki ref page is 'Karma' . I thought there was some special template with the double bracket or stuff like that. I already created one but with a very long title including the subject material.--Jondel 00:19, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica Use Guidelines?

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

Use it verbatim and slap a {{1911}} tag on it. →Raul654 03:12, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

..and have fun wikilinking all the appropriate names, words and phrases! —Stormie 03:23, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

You should take a look at Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopedia Britannica Just slapping a tag on is really not enough. This encyclopedia is replete with scanning typos and archaicisms and other unsuitable material. It can hardly ever be used without some hard work. The article (I wrote it back when) is full of hints and ideas about how to adopt and/or adapt material from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Incidentally, I have two copies of the EB1911 and will be glad to check things for you if asked nicely. Ortolan88 04:11, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ortolan88: Thanks for the great article! As regards to the content issues: scanning errors, out-of-dateedness, I had mostly figured them out for myself. My primary concern, was/is with the legal/ethical/intellectual honesty issues. Is it a correct reading of the article that it is inappropriate to copy and paste content from online versions of 1911? That you must have access to your own copy of the text to use it? Paul August 15:17, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

The 1911 Britannica is out of copyright, so there's no legal problem using it. It's certainly polite to cite Britannica as a source. Beyond copyright problems, plagarism isn't really an issue here. So providing you don't claim 1911 Britannica's works to be your own, I can't see any ethical problems. It's probably inappropriate to cut'n'paste from 1911 only because of the scanning, out-of-datedness, etc., issues. Naturally, it's downright illegal to cut'n'paste more than a trivial amount from later Britannicas. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:48, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Many of the brief biographies in 1911 Britannica can stand with little modification, mainly because little work has been published on the subjects since. Certainly the language wants tweaking, but the basic facts are often sound. Much of the writing about British subjects was based on the DNB which appeared a decade or so previously. One thing I am not clear over is how many of the articles are a carry-over from earlier editions. The three additional volumes which make the 12th edition were published 1921-22 and so are out of copyright as well. If somebody could scan and put that on line it would be an incomparable resource for WWI topics. What is the prospect of Wikimedia building up a bank of online out-of-print resources for Wikipedia contributors? Apwoolrich 16:07, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The online version also lacks the numerous illustrations, diagrams, maps, photographs, circuit schematics, etc. that form important parts of many articles in the original, particularly articles on science and technology. I haven't checked to see how the online version deals with the 1911 Encyclopaedia's frequent use of tables and mathematical formulae, but I'll bet it doesn't do it well. [[User:Dpbsmith|dpbsmith (talk)]] 16:10, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It doesn't - those things just appear as gibberish in the middle of the text (which compounds the bigger problem of missing text, that happens even more often). Adam Bishop 15:45, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have just noted that Knight's 3 vol Dictionary of Mechanics, c 1880 is on line. Tbis has a great number of good quality line drawings of all manner of machines and mechanisms of the C19. Maybe that is in public domain. I will put a page about this in the Dictionary section when I can get round to it. Holidays are now due!!Apwoolrich 16:50, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Link parsing

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

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

Background image

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

1. Edit your monobook.css page (User:Gzornenplatz/monobook.css).

2. Insert

body { background: Purple; }

(or whatever color you want) into the page.

3. Save the page.

4. Refresh. You can usually just click the Refresh or Reload icon on your browser's toolbar to do this.

[[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 00:14, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks. Gzornenplatz 01:27, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, thanks Mike. Finding out how to do that had been on my todo list since soon after the skins arrived. None that I've tried are any good on Win98SE (I think owing to the chronic memory bleeds which are the main vice of this OS... but I have no problem with any other site, just Wikipedia).

Anyway, with User:Andrewa/monobook.css now in place, performance is restored to pre-skin standards, and I'm hopeful that stability will likewise be restored.

Until we get around to having a default skin that will detect client configurations and work with them, every Win98 user should use this workaround. Andrewa 12:27, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Another request to German speakers

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

See my comment on the aricle's talk page. I'm afraid the article is of little use. Geheimrat is really nothing more than the German word for Privy Consellor. Simon A. 14:33, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

German speakers, can you help out here?

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

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

VRML

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

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

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

Wouldn't this be an issue on the browser side? I.e. if your browser supports VRML, you would see a VRML document? Chris 73 | Talk 22:36, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Not sure whether VRML would be useful but SVG rendering, similar to MathML, could have some interesting applications. I'm not sure about embedding actual SVG in Wikipedia because it can contain potentially malicious script. Rhobite 23:34, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

So can HTML, though, and the solution's the same. Marnanel 01:43, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Take a look at meta:SVG image support Jrincayc 14:58, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

No, it isn't. MediaWiki afaik actually doesn't support a lot of these new fancy things directly. If you want, you could submit a feature request at sourceforge. Dysprosia 11:15, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A hand to merge histories ?

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

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

Thanks.

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

Probably, but here will do - are you sure that it should be renamed though? Usually articles should be on the most common English name. Mark Richards 20:31, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is a special case, there are 2 distinct University of Leuven (and confusion between them is common) so University of Leuven was made a disambiguation page.

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

Now it seems to be two different universities, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the University of Leiden. Chris 73 | Talk 22:35, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Actually it's Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Université Catholique de Louvain. Leiden has nothing to do here except by error. --FvdP 18:35, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

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

Refreshing categories

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

Wait. It will fix itself eventually. Actually, on my browser it is OK already. (Try CTRL-Reload for a real reload) Chris 73 | Talk 22:39, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't know if it fixed itself or if it had help. Either way, this sort of thing is best for WP:CFD where they know how to deal with this sort of thing, and where it was already posted. --ssd 03:52, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Search engine

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

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

I'm working on reducing the memory consumption.

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

Comments on my talk page or here.

If you mean that you just want to copy the names of articles onto your hard disk, then what would be the point? If you mean that you're trying to create an offline version of Wikipedia, then that's essentially impossible for most people. The Wikipedia database is more than 16GB in size, and it would be obsolete within seconds because of the number of edits to Wikipedia. [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 19:07, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

False. The current Wikipedia database, which I downloaded (see the download page, is about 600 Mbytes long in compressed for, 1.4 Gbytes long in uncompressed form. This means that one could conceivably generate all HTML pages for Wikipedia and obtain a static version in less than the capacity of a DVD, and certainly well within the reach of current hard drives. The only issue is the size of the images (21 Gbytes).

There are many people on there without a good Internet connection, often without any Internet connection at all. It makes sense to me that these people would like to use an offline version; it also makes sense that they would like to use a search engine that does not require the installation of a SQL database or other complex stuff. ;-) David.Monniaux 20:27, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, but this could mean a Wikipedia snapshot DVD. Consider the possibilites, releasing a new DVD every month. Post the image on the wikipedia website. It'd be like Encarta for Wikipedia — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 20:34, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Putting an ISO up for download would be a huge hit on our bandwidth - instead, make it a BitTorrent file, which can soften the blow. - jredmond 22:18, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

My first edit conflict

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

I think the policy in this case is to have a separate article, possibly called Ensenada massacre with all of the details, and the washingtonpost link, and link to it from the Ensenada article. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 17:22, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

Your edit was reasonable and relevant. If you put in 5 or 10 paragraphs and overwhelemed the article, I could understand Togo's edit or the need for a seperate article. In this case, however, Togo(perhaps from an overdeveloped sense of civic pride? - I've run into that before on wikipedia) is the one being unreasonable. Gamaliel 17:44, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think either solution would be equitable in this case. However, I think that a very relevant precedent is Hiroshima, Hiroshima, which is mostly about the present political and cultural status of the city, and which has a tasteful link to the main article on the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is also a great way to separate politically charged material from fairly innocuous material, which is useful in cases that require temporary page protection. -- DropDeadGorgias (talk) 18:10, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

I'd agree if there was an article's worth of material here, but it's only a link. Gamaliel 21:35, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well I live in Ensenada and I have never heard anybody drop as much as a word about anything even closely related to the incidence. Therefore if this is not part of the local conciousness why should it be part of the global conciousness about Ensenada? But coming from Washington and knowing other unwelcomed US interventions in the latin american world I have to concider it biased! Why dont you put the link into the article Drugwar if it exists? There is about a million things about Ensenada you could mention and the Washington fear mongering is a US issue the English speaking world may not have such anal retentive issues ... cheers Togo 21:10, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If there are a million things about Ensenada worth mentioning, then go ahead and mention them in the article, no one is stopping you or editing them out. But this article is one of those million things, and there is no reason to keep it out. Gamaliel 21:35, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A quick google for Ensenada massacre gives 643 pages in English (more if I remove the language restriction) and almost all are about the story mentioned (although one seems to be a report on a very successful fishing expedition!). Not all of them are from Washington; most are from newspapers or equivalent. I think it would make a very bad precedent if a user were to be allowed to delete an event from Wikipedia simply because it made their home town (city/village/whatever) look less sparkly. --Phil | Talk 12:03, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

My suggestion at this stage is to create a good stub at Ensenada massacre. It can't just be the link of course, it must also say what the article is about and why it is important information, as well as the external link and a stub notice. There is plenty of information just in the Washington Post article to make a good stub IMO. Then put a see also link in the main article. Those who wish to censor this piece of information will have much more trouble blanking or deleting a good stub than they currently have just reverting a link, and if they remove the Wikilink the page will still show in searches and what links here. If they take it to VfD I predict the result will either be keep or merge and redirect, and either way if they then complain that they would have preferred the original link, they will get little sympathy. I'd like to think of a less confrontational way out but I can't. Andrewa 12:52, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

As a political issue it fails the neutrality test. Lets rather talk about the joke that there is no Drugwar page !? Togo 20:25, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fixed. ("War on Drugs" is the more used term by several orders of magnitude.) --Aponar Kestrel 23:06, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

World War II wikireader

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

Classical meanings vs Modern revisionsism

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

Clearly an article on a term should explain its uses in different time periods. I can sse why this calls for multiple sections in an article. It escapes me why this would call for two different articles. -- Jmabel 03:17, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

Because they lead off with the modern meaning by purpose and totally drown out the old and classical meaning of the term. If a highschool student went to the article: Golden Mean He would find this statement: "The one producing a temper of hardness and ferocity, the other of softness and effeminacy". Now to understand this term in a Greek Classical sense does one go to the modern definition of Effeminacy or to the Classical definition of effeminacy? Which one answers the student's question? This is important. I have been told many times, "Only the modern definition needs applied. Well, the modern definition is revisionism and is misleading approaching propaganda. Is that what an encylopedia is about? I don't think so. These people have an agenda. Their modern definition has no bearing on what Socrates means in Plato's Republic.WHEELER 15:32, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Medicine article doesn't say that our health problems are caused by humors and vapors. It doesn't talk about demonic possession or bloodletting. It's written from a modern point of view. Articles can discuss historical opinions, but they shouldn't be presented as statements of fact if they're no longer accepted. I also don't think the term "revisionism" should be used as pejorative. Accusing someone of revisionism is like accusing them of progress. Rhobite 15:58, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

Isn't the Wikipedia philosophy to try to find a neutral way to combine different points of view rather than to have separate articles for the two sides of a debate? The classical meanings of "republic", "democracy", "effeminacy" etc belong in the main articles, probably in a section on the historical meanings or origins of a term or concept. They should become articles on their own only when they are too big to fit. Gdr 16:03, 2004 Aug 3 (UTC)

I understand what is going---This encyclopedia exists to rewrite terms and ideas for the modern age. This encyclopedia is about revisionism and deconstructionism.WHEELER 16:28, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In my experience, WHEELER has not been told that "only the modern definition needs applied [sic]". On the contrary, I and others have been very clear that it is the role of an encyclopedia article to cover modern definitions of concepts as well as "classical" or ancient definitions. For clarity's sake, however, we can't write articles that treat modern definitions as "errors" because they deviate from a classical Greek ideal. WHEELER seems unable to accept this, and believes that our desire to treat modern definitions as no worse than ancient definitions is tantamount to believing that only the modern definition is valid (this is my perception of the situation, and therefore is likely incomplete). I concur wholeheartedly with Jmabel's belief that treating both definitions requires sections within an article, not separate articles. WHEELER's refusal to budge on this point is becoming troubling, and I fear damaging to Wikipedia, though I hope very much to be wrong on that point. Jwrosenzweig 16:02, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

WHEELER, your edits were not refused because only modern definitions need apply. They were refused because your edits promoted the belief that modern definitions of the word "republic" are flawed, misleading, and completely false. This is a perspective peculiar to you and perhaps a few others -- to allow the article to take on that perspective was unthinkable (and it remains so). As was argued months ago at Talk:Republic, most of us reject your original research that suggests ancient Sparta was a Republic. This isn't based on any agenda -- just a reading of Plato and Aristotle. If you want to reopen the question, let's do it there. There needs to be no second article -- we simply need to add a section to the article to deal with classical definitions: however, it is important you remember that the classical definition section will be written by consensus in this community, not by you alone. Your desire to "own" your contributions makes it difficult for any other editor to modify your work without raising your ire. Jwrosenzweig 16:10, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Jwrosenzweig is the one who kept telling me that only "modern definitions" need apply.

• Quote==From the Wikipedia Article A Republic is any government without a King. Well Sparta has a King. Two Kings actually. The Greek term for Republic is Politeia. Sparta was a Republic. Plato, Aristotle considered it so. How do you answer this?WHEELER 16:20, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Quote==Curiously, Sir Thomas Smyth also described England under Queen Elizabeth I as a republic in De Republica Anglorum; the Manner of Government or Policie of the Realme of England, {1583}.(2) Today, there are no governments based on the classical form.

Obviously Sir Thomas Smyth considered England a Republic and it has a KINGWHEELER 16:22, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• The editors, Terence Ball and Richard Dagger, of Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal, 2nd ed, HarperCollins College Publishers, l995, (pp 265 & 267) have printed the right definitions.
  • republic A form of government by the people that includes the rule of law, a mixed constitution, and the cultivation of an active and public-spirited citizenry.
  • mixed constitution (or government) The republican policy of combining or balancing rule by one, by the few, and by the many in a single government, with the aim of preventing the concentration of power in any person or social group.

Here is the correct definition of a Republic that contradicts the Wikipedian Article.WHEELER 16:24, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

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

Thanks, I know I'm kinda butting in an ongoing thing here. I'll look and try to educate myself a bit more about the specific situation. --DanielCD 16:59, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

Wheeler, you're misunderstanding NPOV again. All it means is that if POV material is presented, such as the classical definition of effeminacy, it should be presented not as fact but as the opinion of classical philosophers. The suggestion that your material would be tainted by the mere presence of modern material in the same article isn't workable. Rhobite 03:24, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

Then, WE NEED SOME Guidance somewhere somehow. Classical definitions of Aristotle and St. Thomas are NOT POV. They are two of the smartest people who ever lived. Because Aristotle did not have technology that has helped us does not disparage Aristotle's achievements. Someone argued that Aristotle does not know what he is talking about. And this idea that Modern Scholars 2500 years later know better than Aristotle is nonsense.WHEELER 17:03, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Um, yes, they are in fact POV. They are respected, widely agreed-with, and culturally important POV, but they are still very much POV. Furthermore, the idea that Aristotle, 2500 years ago, knew what a modern-day English word means is nonsense. (Quite frankly, the idea that we don't know anything better than Aristotle did is also nonsense, but that's neither here nor there.) The fact of the matter is (as any linguist will tell you) that the meaning of a word is based not on its etymology, but on its usage. I don't mean by "republic" quite what Cicero meant by "res publica", nor did Cicero mean by "res publica" quite what Plato did by "πολιτεία" -- in fact I suspect that our meaning of "republic" is closer to "δημοκρατία", simply because English makes distinctions in this regard where Classical Greek did not. (As with any language, the converse is also true.) The historical or original meanings of any word are important, and must be mentioned where confusion may set in; but they cannot and should not be presented as the modern use. Or do you also suggest that our words "policy" and "polity" (from Latin "politia", from Gk. "πολιτεία") are synonyms for "republic"? --Aponar Kestrel 22:59, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

Cite sources

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

Wikipedia:No original research pretty clearly states that original sources (original research, at least) are not allowed, only secondary and tertiary sources are. Sam [Spade] 23:44, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well, that really amounts to "don't add your own theories." Original sources, if by "original" you mean "primary" sources, are perfectly acceptable to use for research purposes, as are secondary sources. For secondary sources, the usefulness of "new" and "old" sources probably depends on the subject - generally newer research is better, as older secondary sources tend to become outdated, but it would depend on the source as well. Adam Bishop 23:57, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well, that policy pertains to the contents of an article (that is, if Prof Hawking has a new theory on black holes, he shouldn't publish it here). But isn't Hyacinth asking not about article content but citations, in which case quite the opposite is true. Hyacinth's article on theories of black holes (say) should ideally reference Prof Hawking's paper (published in the Journal of Jolly Hard Maths, vol 3.14), which is much better than cite to a CNN report about Prof Hawking's paper, which in turn is better than some dude's weblog citing the CNN story that cites the journal. So I think, as far as citations go, the most authoritative (whatever that means in a particular context) is the best cite, and that'll often be the most original. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:00, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think there is room on Wikipedia for your modern defintions which don't correspond to anything in the classical world. Hyacinth here wants his modern definition of Effeminacy to supercede the authority of Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas. He wants to remake the word into a progressive meaning and totally disregard 2500 years of the same meaning. Aristotle, a pagan, and St Thomas a Christian agree on the same meaning of the word.WHEELER 00:08, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

Hawking is not a good example. IMO if he contributed here, he could write anything he liked. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 07:45, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There may not be a general policy because it is not possible to say what it is best every time. The age of a source may be unrelated to the quality. Given Wheeler's comments, it seemed like you asked a different question than the one that was truly on your mind. Pcb21| Pete 11:17, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hyacinth doesn't want certain sources that contradict his definition. Don't you see what is going on they are trying to "*Square the Circle*"! It can't be done. I argue for seperate articles. Let them write their modern definition. Leave the classical defintion alone and by itself. The modern definition is not connected to the meaning of the Greek Classical or Biblical texts.WHEELER 15:37, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Requests for comment/WHEELER2. Hyacinth 19:02, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Please keep in mind that citation guidelines for research are not the same as guidelines for an encyclopedia. In original historical research, you often prefer primary sources because you are making arguments directly about those sources. In an encyclopedia, more-accessible summaries, reviews, and textbooks are often more helpful to the reader...here, you are only trying to summarize the existing knowledge, not add to it. (I've written for print encyclopedias, and the editors there suggested similar guidelines.) Even in scholarly research, if you are not writing history you often prefer textbooks and reviews for well-established subjects; for example, few contemporary papers on electromagnetic subjects will reference Maxwell's 1864 paper. —Steven G. Johnson 23:02, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

See: Wikipedia talk:Cite sources#Proposed guidelines.

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

Sustainability and Environment WikiProject

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

WikiProject_Sustainability.

All input welcome.

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

Categories not showing contents

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

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

Taxobox template documentation

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

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

Retrieved from

Can I be the first to say that the Retrieved from bit, inserted at the end of each article, is the ugliest thing I've ever seen. I really hope it's not here to stay! -- Tristanb

Best disambiguation for a television series

Current methods being used to disambig TV shows. Which is the best? Trying to get a straw poll to add a section to Wikipedia:Naming conventions, so feel free to add other ideas and vote -- Netoholic 05:38, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Show Name (TV)

I like this one - the shorter the better The Steve 05:46, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

• Show Name (television)
• Show Name (TV series)

EuropracBHIT 05:57, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)-if the show concerned is a series, that is. Easier to type.

• Show Name (television series)
• Show Name (TV show)

EuropracBHIT 05:57, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)-A good general disambiguation which is what we want here.

• Show Name (television show)
• Show Name (series)

There's already some discussion on this, almost all of it from last year, at Wikipedia_talk:Naming conventions (television) (which is a pretty well-hidden article, only linked to from Talk pages until now). I vote for article titles including TV only, with added qualification as necessary to distinguish different TV shows with the same name (eg by country, year...).-- Avaragado 18:10, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It seems to me that semantically, a disambiguator should be a category containing the thing it's disambiguating. Thus Foo (Bar), should mean that Foo is a kinda of Bar. Thus TV show would be ok, but TV would not. Paul August 20:48, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

Please fix this

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

Bogus "you have new messages" flag for anon users?

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

Random walk

As a litte test I had a look at 250 random pages. 5 hits (2%) each for

• railway or metro stations
• albums/track lists
• fictional characters

Some more stats at User:Pjacobi/Random -- Pjacobi 12:53, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Obviously, I need to add more metro stations. ;) --Golbez 18:31, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review has a new look

Based on comments solicited at Wikipedia talk:Peer review, I've recently re-organised the peer review page accordingly (I left out the templates system, though, as something for the future). Brickbats welcome at the talk page for peer review. Now, we need to promote peer review. It's disheartening to see how infrequently peer review is used. Johnleemk | Talk 11:33, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Nice work! --mav

Catholic Cardinals

The Roman Catholics consider the office of Cardinal (Catholic) much like a noble title, and so term their cardinals, e.g., "Theodore Cardinal McCarrick", similar to say, "Alfred Lord Tennyson"; non-Catholics seem to use the term as an office: "Cardinal Theodore McCarrick", as in "President William Jefferson Clinton".

Until recently, the New York Times followed the former form; it now uses the latter, as does the Washington Post and the Guardian. Wikipedia (no surprise) uses both forms. While not myself a Catholic (or a Christian), I prefer to use the terms a subject uses to name himself (thus, "Her Majesty" for Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, or even "Dear Leader" for Kim Jong-il), and beside find the former more stately.

But overall, I'd prefer to see wikipdia use a single consistent form. Which is it? -- orthogonal 11:11, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles)#Clerical names suggests "Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger" as the standard form. --AlexG 12:49, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Litany against fear

This is clearly copyrighted material, from the book Dune (novel). It is also quoted extensively on the web, without any apparent action being taken (why would they, when it's free advertising?). Could we make a fair-use argument for its inclusion here? If so, should it be merged with the novel and/or book articles, then made into a redirect? Or should it simply be listed as copyvio? I'm not familiar enough with the legal nuances here to be sure. Anyone? SWAdair | Talk 10:29, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Meesa say, merge without redirect. Meesa say, list on VfD. -- orthogonal 11:11, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've added a cultural reference which might just save it from genre obscurity... Just MHO. Radagast 02:47, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

Colombia (and Columbia)

At one point I put a notice at the top of Colombia, reading something like, "One might be looking for Columbia, another name for the United States.". Soon, it got deleted. I put it back and posted something on the talk page. It got deleted again with no response, so I put it back demanding (too harshly, I admit) that the talk page be answered first. I argued about it a bit with Fibonacci, but there's still no feedback from anybody else. See Talk:Colombia for what we covered so far. Does the notice belong or not? - Furrykef 04:33, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• I have added a comment to the talk page, saying that I do not think a xref to Columbia is needed. Noisy 08:25, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think a disambiguation is needed, the names are very similar. In my ignorance, I didn't really know there was a difference until I was 20 or so. I'm sure there are others. The one Dunc Harris added seems decent, it has no specific reference to any use of Columbia, just a link to the page. —siroχo 13:04, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

wikiverse.org

FWIW, they seem to have sent spam emails to one of the sites listed on my user page, based on my contributions to the article they link the email to on their mirror: http://custom-error-page.wikiverse.org/ Is there any way to go after spammers that mirror, and abuse, Wikipedia? Niteowlneils 04:06, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've gotten some spam from them too, which is annoying (especially since they take credit for "linking to your site", when the links really came from the WP content they borrowed), but they seem to be a mirror that's compliant with our license. --Hob 00:55, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

Are you sure they're compliant? They're copyright info is such:

• All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License [see Copyrights for details].

Yet the terms of the GFDL require them to attribute it to Wikipedia on each page, correct? —siroχo 02:07, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

I've never been entirely clear on what the GFDL's requirements of attribution are in this case - whether it needs to say Wikipedia on every page, or just on their main page as they do - it would seem to depend on whether "document" is defined as the entire encyclopedia or each individual article. So when I said "they seem to be compliant" I just meant that the editors of the Mirrors and forks page had looked at them and made that determination. I haven't seen this issue specifically addressed anywhere - maybe I just don't know where to look... —Hob←Talk 07:03, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

Please ignore what I said above about wikiverse having been in any sense "cleared"... a quick glance at the edit history of Mirrors and forks and Wikiverse shows that there is a single anonymous user here doing public relations for that site, who added the "compliant" remark and has tried to delete opinions to the contrary. Sleazy. Anyway, hopefully clarification will occur on the mirrors/forks page. —Hob←Talk 08:10, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

Alase technologies

Alase technologies just looks like an advertisement. I read the VfD procedure but it looks way too complicated for me so I thought I would mention it here.Scraggy4 03:20, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree, and am working on it (800 hits, but most are link farms). Niteowlneils 03:34, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well, I posted it, then discovered it's a copyvio, anyway, from their corp website[4]. Niteowlneils 03:46, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Transhumanism

This article has a "guardian" who is reverting any attempts to NPOV and provide links or information which he does not personally agree with. Since I don't agree w edit warring, I am mentioning this here w the hope of community involvement improving the group editing of this page. Sam [Spade] 03:06, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fait accompli

Fait accompli has a vfd tag from 7/15/04, with a blank talk page. The discussion seems to clearly be a consenus to delete. I don't think putting it back on VFD so soon is the right thing to do. If it was in the same condition as it was during voting, I would assume we could just delete it 'per process after the fact'. However it is now several times longer, which means it's very different from what was voted on, so that doesn't seem like a fair solution. On the other hand, the additions are kinda rough, and I'm not familiar enuf with the exact def/usage to judge how applicable they are. Anyone with both a strong knowledge of WP process (esp. correcting variances) and the term "Fait accompli" want to try and sort this out? Niteowlneils 03:01, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Joe Arpaio protection?

I want to ask if we should protect the Joe Arpaio page. We keep getting some non-wikipedian to revert to information he added indicating that Arpaio is guilty or involved in many law violations. Not coincidental;ly, Arpaio is seeking re-election as sheriff...a political rival, perhaps?

"Antonio America's silliest guy Martin"

Antonio, I don't think it is a good idea to protect the Arpaio page and leave it where it is presenting basically one side of the story.. There is probably quite a bit of truth in the info your "non-wikipedian" is posting, but it sure needs a hell of a lot of non-POVing. Also, the whole article needs a really good edit. It's badly written. And hey, how do you decide who is or isn't a "non-wikipedian"? Cheers....Moriori 03:13, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

Ditto. We need a third party involved. NPOV does not mean presenting just one viewpoint – this is to both you and the anon. The extra details the anon has provided should be NPOVed, not outright removed. As Jimbo has put it, a revert is a slap in the face. Better to adapt the material given, unless it's patent nonsense. Johnleemk | Talk 11:26, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The anon said with his last revertion that he will make another Joe Arpaio page here, this one saying "the truth" to pharaphrase him. We should protect the page until election day, September 7, that way, in the extreme case that the anon is his political rival, maybe he wont be able to use wikipedia as a tool to gain votes. I trust wikipedians will be on the watch out for this new "Bad" Joe Arpaio page. Keep (y)our eyes open!

"Antonio Super Insane Martin"

Moving pages with redirects in the way

I want to move Callus and Corns of the Foot to Callus, but there's a redirect at the latter; how do I get that moved? It appears someone has just now moved ITIS to Integrated Taxonomic Information System. How do they do that? grendel|khan 02:56, 2004 Aug 7 (UTC)

Anyone can use the Move tab if nothing exists at the target name. Admins can delete redirs in the way of a proper move without any overhead process. I'll go take a look. Niteowlneils 03:01, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Um, based on the content in Callus and Corns of the Skin (calluses and corns seem to be mentioned pretty equally often), the name seems proper to me, altho' someone else might have a different opinion. True, the 13 articles that link to it all go thru the callus redir, but it wouldn't really take very long to fix that few links--I've tackled redir pages with hundreds of links. Callus and Corns of the Foot doesn't exist, and seems like it would be redundant. If anything, it should be a redir to the current article, whether it gets moved or not. Niteowlneils 03:14, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Er, on second thot, the name probably is due a fix to match singular vs plural, if nothing else. Even tho' it's contrary to most WP title convention, I'd probably vote for Calluses and Corns of the Skin as I think it makes a lot more grammatical sense, but would very much like at least a second opinion, if not a third, before moving it either direction. Niteowlneils 03:14, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ack, case problems, too. Now I'm thinking Calluses and corns of the skin. Thots, anyone? Niteowlneils 03:14, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

OK, having digested the article contents further, and seeing nothing relevant on the talk page, I'll ask here: Is your argument that, since corns (apparently--I'm way of of my field here) are a particular type of callus, that the title is redundant? Niteowlneils 03:22, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Corns are indeed particular types of calluses. I wanted to move the article to a more general name; who wants to link to this huge kibbly article name every time they mean 'callus'? Also, since 'corn' is already in use, the disambig note there pointing to 'callus' is perfectly appropriate. (There are also bone calluses, but they have their own article. Foot calluses are the same type as guitar players get on their hands.) So, yes, the title is redundant, as well as being too long, badly capitalized and overly specific. grendel|khan 21:36, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

Wikipedia has sucked much of the useful encyclopedic content out of the Web

When I'm working on an article, and I Google on the subject in hopes of finding out a bit more about it, I'm finding increasingly that most of the top hits are to the very article that I'm tinkering with, or to mirrors thereof.

Don't you just hate it when that happens?

It seems much of the useful encyclopedic content on the Web has already gotten sucked into Wikipedia. When mining for Wikipedia articles, the Google lode is getting exhausted. Do I need to do something radical and drastic... like going to the library? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 02:35, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm reminded of a TV ad for broadband (heck, was it BT or PacHell?). It went something like this:

wife: darling, I thought you were browsing the web?

husband: I finished it.

-- Finlay McWalter | Talk 02:40, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

For the WWII wiki-reader, I have no fewer than 15 reference books lying around my desk :) →Raul654 02:45, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been spending a lot more time at the library recently as well. I like to think that we've largely finished importing the web, and now we're going to start distilling and importing the sum total of human knowledge over all recorded history. Not to get a swelled head about it or anything. grendel|khan 02:56, 2004 Aug 7 (UTC)

Yet Google is not up to date and neither are the clones. Stuff I sent to Wikipedia over a month ago has yet to be picked up by them Apwoolrich 06:41, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Rather, those encyclopedias are sucking all the encyclopedic content out of Wikipedia. :-p The material there has been taken from here, not vice-versa. In short, blame them, not us. We ought to get search engines to rank us higher than our mirrors, though. Finding an outdated article from one of those horrid mirrors out there really blows. Johnleemk | Talk 06:47, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Send_in_the_clones for a discussion on exactly that point.

I know what you mean, I was recently searching for some independent references to verify a rather obscure article, and everything was coming up wiki-clones. One obvious tip is to exclude wikipedia from your search;

• Jimbo Wales -wikipedia     [5]

Its not 100%, but fortunately most of the clones do cite wikipedia.

My other suggestion when you are not getting useful results, would be to try some other search or meta-search engines, for example http://www.dogpile.com -- Solipsist 07:21, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In my experience, if you are failing to find useful, relevant content on the web, one or more of the following usually applies: (1) you are working in an area that we already have well-covered (2) you need more creative searching strategies that will find something other than Google's top ten on the obvious keywords (3) you are a monolingual English-speaker, who cannot access the mass of excellent online information in other languages... including the Wikipedias in other languages. For example, we still could use translations of most of the featured articles from the French and German wikipedias, which are emphatically part of the Web. -- Jmabel 07:58, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

I'd agree with (1). There are still large areas to be populated. For instance, I am trying to develop the history behind the Industrial Revolution, and there is a wealth of detail on inventors, inventions and the textile industry that needs to be filled out. Noisy 19:24, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Ditto. Many search hits do end up being Wikipedia or one of the other sites using our content, but I'd venture to wildly guess that we haven't covered even 10% of the encyclopedia-appropriate information available through Google. -- Wapcaplet 19:34, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A sad result of this is continual recycling of internet garbage. An article in Wikipedia sucks up various bits of misinformation from different websites, and so provides a more completely misinformed article than any of its sources. That article in turn is used by others as a source of information (and Wikipedia searchers checking out the web may take this derived misinformation as validating the Wikipedia article). In John Lindow's Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, and Rituals and Beliefs (published in 2001 and widely available), the final chapter on further resources is quite disparaging about web sources in general, giving as an example the article http://www.pantheon.org/articles/b/bragi.html Encyclopedia Mythica: Bragi. Lindow claims (correctly) that this short paragraph has six errors. Until yesterday exactly the same misinformation appeared in the Wikipedia article Bragi along with some additional etymological misinformation. My comments on my cleanup are at Talk:Bragi. Unfortunately inaccuracies of this kind are not uncommon in Wikipedia. The moral is, don't trust anything you find on the web without further checking and especially don't trust anything that the ignoramuses at Wikipedia have thrown together. ;-) Jallan 16:22, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Another lesson learned: cite your sources. If a fact can't be determined to be correct by an absolute minimum amount of research, you should at least put an entry into the References section (and possibly add a reference like [6]). It'd be really nice if we could integrate source citations into the editing directly (I dunno, next to the edit summary?), but this seems like a complicated problem. anthony (see warning) 16:40, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Often the sources are only tertiary compilations of material on the web that it would be embarrassing to list. And in some cases, if the tertiary source were admitted in article after article, it would come close to copyright violation. The Wikipedia editor is doing nothing but sucking up all of someone else's copyright research and rephrasing. When fixing up a series of articles on which the same editor has worked and checking for additional web information it often becomes very obvious which particular bad compilation of web data has been used as the primary source and rephrased without acknowledgement from the unique combination of errors and particular information that is included in one article after another. This could be copyright violation if the owners of a site wished to pursue it. Jallan 14:39, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I appreciated Dpbsmith's quip: "Do I need to do something radical and drastic... like going to the library?" My experience is that for the topics I've researched for the Wikipedia using both books and Web pages, there is more stuff, and better stuff, in books than there is on the Web. A person who writes a book is often very invested and puts a big chunk of her life into it; Web sites are usually (if not always) done on the fly, and thus suffer from the recycling mentioned above. Opus33 20:59, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Linking to gameinfo wiki

Hey, a few days ago I started the gameinfo wiki, which is small and humble right now but will grow with time. The aim is to compile data on every game ever made (concentrating on computer and video games, but we may expand from there), similar to GameFAQs, but it's a wiki, and each game will have only one guide for simplicity. Should I or should I not link to gameinfo for articles relevant to a game? For instance, should Civilization computer game contain a link to http://moinmoin.riters.com/gameinfo/index.cgi/PC/Civ as an external link? - Furrykef 23:03, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it's a good idea at the moment, as there really isn't much content to the current entries on gameinfo yet. Perhaps when and if it gets established, and produces good quality entries that complement wikipedia, providing information that we don't have in wikipedia then it might be worth a link. In any case, as and when gameinfo is in a position to provide worthwhile links, I think we should decide on a case by case basis, whether a particular game wants a link to gameinfo.

What if I restrict it only to games that have guides or other substantial information? - Furrykef 18:35, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If there are pages with substantial amounts of (good quality) information then I'd be more happy with links to gameinfo. I've had a look at a few guides, and they look like they rather good, although I'm not really familiar with the games in particular, so It's hard to judge.

Where there is good information as those seem to be, then it's probably worth linking, but again, I think these should be judged individually.

If you link because of the guide, then I think a direct link to the guide would be better than a link to the main game page. Silverfish 12:56, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well, each game should have a guide -- eventually. I don't consider the guide anything special except that it's likely to have more content than any other kind of game information with the possible exception of reviews. I'd prefer to link to the game page itself for the "chat" and "review" links, not to mention the game description (which may well include something the Wikipedia entry does not, like a game excerpt), publication data, etc... - Furrykef 19:27, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

User Talk page policy question

I have a question about dealing with people like User:JohnDoeTM. His five contributions to date are: improperly marking all three new article contributions of an anon with Speedy tags, leaving an derogatory vandalism accusation on the anon's user talk page, and a spurious comment on his own Talk page. I polished one contrib into a stub, and Hadal has taken care of the other two, so that's taken care of, and I don't care about Doe's talk page. I've added a welcome msg to the anon's Talk page, but I would really like to remove the rant, but I don't know if that would violate User Talk page policy. Niteowlneils 19:08, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Looks like a personal attack to me. Policy allows for their removal. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:35, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Cool. Good to know (I watched Girl, Interrupted again recently ;) ). Niteowlneils 22:41, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have done so -- don't bite the newcomers is (or ought to be) important around here, and his message was without any redeeming content. I suspect a troll, or whatever word we want to use to describe people who come here only to tear it down. Jwrosenzweig 19:47, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

And thank you for taking care of it already--I got side-tracked. Niteowlneils 22:41, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

EasyTimeline

After a two week outage EasyTimeline is up and running again. For those who want to try it, see examples at w:Category:Graphical Timelines, many more at w:de:Kategorie:Zeitleiste (Zeitleiste = Timeline, Vorlage = Template). For those who want to give it a try: it may be a bit overwhelming at first when you start a new timeline, the easy in EasyTimeline reflects that an existing timeline is pretty easy to understand, correct or translate. Most editors seek an existing timeline and use that as a model. This will bring you up to speed. See also intro on meta. Erik Zachte 17:03, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

"Fictional" Categorization

After I did a small amok run on this, I was convinced to discuss it first. The question is, how to use Categorization to enable (in the future) excluding "Fictional" articles from searches. The main discussion seem to go here Category talk:Fictional, but also have a look at Category talk:Fiction and maybe Wikipedia:Categorization -- Pjacobi 16:51, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Protected Templates

Why are there so many edit-protected templates? I can understand if a popular template might have vandalism problems, but some of the protected templates are things like Template:Cc-by-nd-nc, and the most-used templates like Template:Stub aren't. There are 49 protected templates listed on Wikipedia:Protected page, and I've found some protected ones that aren't listed. What if someone wants to do something benign, like, say, make a new category using a template? Do all of those have to be protected? [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 14:03, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You don't want people changing copyright or licensing details. This could mislead people wanting to use an image. I expect these should remain protected for the same reason Wikipedia:Copyrights is. Angela.

If you have an edit you want to make to one of these templates, some of which could potentially affect the appearance of 10,000 to 30,000 pages, discuss it on the talk page for the template. If your edit is really that worthy, someone will certainly do it. --ssd 13:03, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Summarised sections

• Indexed PNG thumbnails --> Wikipedia talk:Extended image syntax
• Pause/delay during navigation --> Possible hardware or software issues. See fundraising.
• Redirects pointing at each other. Redirects stop after the first redirect to prevent infinite loops
• Visited links i havent visited. Red links are pages that don't exist yet. You can change this in your preferences to make them appear as question marks instead.
• Help! Am I colorblind? The background color for non-article namespaces is blue, but very close to white and not a web safe color. Discuss at MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css if you want it changed.
• Default skin. Go to special:preferences to change skins.
• <span> tag poll. Reopened poll at Wikipedia:Span tags poll
• Hordaland picture --> User talk:Salasks
• DST questionn--> Talk:Daylight saving time
• Counting Edits --> Wikipedia talk:User Contributions
• Time zone offset keeps getting reset --> User talk:Acegikmo1
• Talk:Greatbigtwit. Now deleted.
• Old Eastern Bloc C'Rights? --> Talk:History of copyright
• Siggy. Is there any way to have all my signatures prefaced with the mdash. Proxomitron can do this. Feature requests can be made at sourceforge
• Most Edits Lists. Should these be updated more often? Yes, no, and the stats are broken. See Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by number of edits
• Categories issues --> Wikipedia talk:Categorization
• Unified Login. This isn't coded yet. See m:single login.
• Article series boxes/succession boxes --> Wikipedia talk:Article series
• Template:Protected. Should it have an image? See poll at Template talk:Protected
• Main page, skins and login. Try reloading, it might be cached.
• Wikipedia logo. IE bug with reloading logo. IE is not caching it. Please report bugs to sourceforge.
• Wikipedia clones and search engine ratings--> Wikipedia talk:Send in the clones
• Wikipedia's headline stats for July 2004. See Wikipedia talk:Statistics for some new stats.
• Was i (Jerzy) irresponsible? See Talk:Priscilla Davis.
• Baroque art redirects to Baroque, not Baroque Art. Now fixed. Be bold.
• 2004 IAAF World Indoor Championships. Can't find info on which countries bid for it or any problems the Hungarians had in staging it. Contact Scraggy4 if you have details of this.
• Database error. Now fixed. Was caused by database slowdown following a page-move vandal attack.
• Editing a page above the first TOC entry. You can edit the URL directly to say section=1. Feature requests can be made at sourceforge
• Interwiki links should be allowed for the sister projects too. Feature requests can be made at sourceforge
• Protocol for deleting finished topics. See Refactoring, Wikipedia:Maintenance, Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page. See Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion for discussions of removing items from VfD early.
• A quick poll on monitor size and resolution --> User talk:BACbKA
• When interlanguage links are ambiguous. If a page could link to 2 pages on one other wiki, you can add both, or explain them in the body of the text. Also you can split the original article into two so each part could link to only one of the pages on the other wiki.
• Taoism, in Klingon. Klingon links are not allowed. See m:Artificial languages equal rights and wikitech mailing list
• Taxobox template documentation is needed. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life
• Categories not showing contents. Fixed
• New project: WikiProject Sustainability.
• Cite sources. Which sources are best? Not your own sources. It depends on the subject. Non-outdated, high quality ones best. Effeminacy problems. Criteria needed. See Wikipedia:Requests for comment/WHEELER2. Accessible ones are best. See: Proposed guidelines.
• Classical meanings vs Modern revisionism. Should classical definitions be recorded? Are two articles needed? Effeminacy and Classical definition of effeminacy? We can't write articles that treat modern definitions as "errors" because they deviate from a classical Greek ideal. Problems at Republic and Classical definition of republic. Again, see RfC. NPOV issues. See the related talk pages for discussion.
• New Wikireader project: World War II wiki-reader
• My first edit conflict. Problems at Ensenada. See also User talk:Togo. Suggestions include a separate Ensenada massacre article.
• New Wikipedia search engine. Discuss this search engine at User talk:David.Monniaux. It can work offline and needs Java Virtual Machine.
• Refreshing categories. Try CTRL-Reload.
• A hand to merge histories. Do Catholic University of Leiden and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven need merging? See User talk:Mark Richards
• VRML (a web markup format for 3D worlds) is not supported by MediaWiki. You could submit a feature request at sourceforge.
• German speakers, can you help with Thomas Hoffmarck and Geheimrat?
• Background image. You can use the Monobook skin without the book image by adding body { background: Purple; } to your monobook.css page (User:Gzornenplatz/monobook.css)(Win98SE users are recommended to do this to prevent memory issues)
• Link parsing. Fixed. The last external link was missing the final right square bracket.
• 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica Use Guidelines? --> Wikipedia talk:1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Archive, first time to do so. Just create the page Talk:Karma/Archive, cut text out of Talk:Karma and paste it into the archive. See Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.
• Moving to Wiktionary. See m:transwiki to help with the Things to be moved to Wiktionary.
• Bad article title. Fixed. Diacritical marks can not be used.
• Anon talk pages. Some people believe these are deleted after a year. Perhaps they need more frequent purging (every 2 months?)
• Can Wikipedians of specific nationalities be located? See Wikipedia:Wikipedian. You could also look at the corresponding page on the relevant wikipedia (e.g. nl:Cornelis Vreeswijk), ask on the corresponding talk page (e.g. nl:Overleg:Cornelis Vreeswijk) or ask the embassy.
• Suppress image error messages. The error messages that are generated when using a copy of the wikipedia that doesn't include the images can be removed by adding a non-breaking space to MediaWiki:Missingimage.
• Writers and readers. The majority of those who visit Wikipedia come only to read articles. Are there any stats relating to this? Trying to answer this question is speculative. Since page views are logged you could generate statistics on views by logged-in users collectively vs. views by IPs. Then, using the ratio of contributions by logged-in users to contributions by IPs, you could extrapolate what proportion of the page views by IPs were from anonymous contributors as opposed to anonymous readers.
• Fort Bennings renaming issue. Fixed. Moved to Fort Benning, Georgia
• New term to define: "cold kicking" or "web ban". Wikipedia is not a place to make up words or add to the English lexicon
• TextPad clip library for Wikipedia syntax and templates. This add-on to the TextPad text editor helps with editing Wikipedia pages offline. See Image:Wikipedia syntax and templates.TCL
• How to rename a category. See WP:CFD
• Categorization weirdness. Categories don't always update immediately. Try reloading. You can refer to a category in a page without adding the page to that category simply by putting a colon in front of the word "category"
• Recommended HTML editors: Frontpage, Mozilla Composer, vi, Notepad, vim, emacs, Textpad, 1st Page 2000, HTML-Kit, Dreamweaver, NoteTab , Microsoft Word, Publisher, Nvu.
• Random Page Additions. Allow options for random pages to include only Stubs/ Deadend pages etc. See Wikipedia:Offline reports and User:Topbanana/Reports. Good idea but not in the sidebar. Could be a user preference. Feature requests can be made at Sourceforge.
• Vandalizing notice received by accident from a different IP. Bugs can be reported at Sourceforge.
• Links to fan sites? --> Wikipedia talk:External links
• Lion.jpg vandalized. Now replaced. See Image:Lion.jpg
• Revamp of how Peer Review works. See Wikipedia talk:Peer review
• Arbitration Committee election is open until Friday 13. See Special:ArbComVote.
• Logo background changed. The logo was alleged to have turned green. No one knows why.
• Redirects and links to empty pages --> Wikipedia talk:Redirect
• New page: Wikipedia:Zeitgeist
• Has Template:Opentask grown too large ? See Template talk:Opentask
• Extra spaces in template. The {{cc-by-sa}} template has empty lines at the bottom. (Changes to templates can be suggested on their talk pages)
• Why are the multilingual contents NOT encoded in uniform UTF-8? Because en is not yet UTF-8. de recently switched which took 8 hours downtime. See also Wikipedia:Unicode.
• Is This In The Public Domain? House of Reps is public domain because it's federal government but still make sure to cite your sources.

Trouble moving page

Hi. I am trying to move Tagalog to Tagalog_language but it's not allowing it. Could someone help me out, please? Thanks. --Chris 04:55, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

he is deleting the article Avigad Berman for no reason

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

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

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

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

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

Hvar er π

Hvar er pí greinin eiginlega? ef maður leitar að henni virðist hún á Π sem er tilvísun í π. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 20:06, 2004 Aug 17 (UTC)

Anyone up for a quick photoshop job?

File:Airman Campbell.GIF

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

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

Substubs

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

Empty image files, cur/image tables

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Invalid image naming

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

Well, the image is, yes. That's how the software works. Or, doesn't. ;-)

James F. (talk) 02:25, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

New Users

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

You can't get a list of them, but [7] shows the changes made by the newest users, so you can work out from the page histories listed there who is new. Angela. 19:31, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

Terry Nichols article featured in Yahoo! News

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

Ruiz 16:51, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

Java applets

Is it possible to upload a Java applet into Wikipedia?

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

Creating a category

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

Just link to it from a page with [[Category:X]] and it'll be automatically created. [ alerante | “” 14:26, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC) ]

Worked a treat. Thanks! --Auximines 14:37, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

But then it is a good idea to go to the new Category page, and link it to its appropriate parent category(s) by adding a [[Category:ParentOfX]] tag. You might also add a short desciption of what the category is intended to be (and I can see you have done both.) -- Solipsist 16:30, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Categorization for category guidelines. --Ardonik 02:37, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

Frames for Wikipedia?

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

I know little about frames. Have you tried using multiple windows, each only part of the screen? Robin Patterson 06:00, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for answering. Yes, I know that that is possible, but I'd prefer it to be automated for convenience. One could even conceivably program these frames to automatically show up according to one's preferences every time one loaded a new wiki page (e.g., one could opt to show the page history and discussion pages for any Wikipedia page visited). It would be a big hassle to have to do this each time (and even keeping window positions (or saving them, if that is even possible now) wouldn't have the windows automatically load the corresponding meta pages (such as the discussion pages)).

I think the actual problem is related to "bandwidth theft" rather than copyright. Perhaps a techinically-inclined person could tell us exactly how it works. Pcb21| Pete 10:50, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In /style/wikibits.js:

if( window.top != window ) window.top.location = window.location;

The reason for this is that people might think Wikipedia is part of another entity who puts us in a frameset. [ alerante | “” 14:22, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC) ]

Can't people download and adapt the Wikipedia content and software anyways? And if they are using it commercially, can't they be held accountable for violating the GPL?

There's nothing in the GFDL to prevent someone from using our content commercially. Yes, people can download it anyway. The reason we try to "deframe" ourselves is mostly to discourage sites from using frames to effectively "steal" our bandwidth. I think we also check the referrer on image GETs too, for the same reason. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:51, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ok, thanks, that was helpful to know. But what about the idea above? Would there be some way the above idea could be implemented within Wikipedia in the future? I guess if the server is already overtaxed, it would not be a good idea to have everybody loading multiple windows at once. But might it be added to some to-do list for when there is infinite bandwidth?  :)

Best disambiguation for a television series

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

Move history?

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

"Retrieved from" footer

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

I'd rather that it went underneath the "last updated on" line below the content. Unobtrusive there, you see. --Ardonik 00:56, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

Second that, it's an even better solution. I hope the responsible wiki-programmer(s), or someone who knows who he/she(they) is(are), see this. --Wernher 01:13, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The thing is horrible. It is far too close to the text. In fact, it looks like it's part of the text itself. And why do I need it on my user talk page? — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 01:16, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The "retrieved from" message was recently added to the HTML, and simultaneously hidden with CSS. However the CSS takes a while to work its way through the caches. If you see the "retrieved from" footer, force a reload with ctrl-R in Mozilla or ctrl-F5 in IE. -- Tim Starling 02:38, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

I gather the purpose then is to "brand" the output? Why is it a "live" link rather than text? Or is that just an epiphenomenon that's hard to stamp out? - Nunh-huh 05:05, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

I too would like to know what this is for. At least I don't have to deal with this anymore thanks to Ctrl+R. Johnleemk | Talk 08:20, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Apart from being to close to the text, that note is extremely ugly on those Wikipedias using non-latin fonts - there it shows links like http://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B8%84%E0%... Even an occasional German umlaut is enough to uglify it, see e.g. Düsseldorf. andy 09:58, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

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

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

It disappeared after my cntrl-R. But, it would be a good idea to add it on the very bottom of all main namespace articles only to prevent mirroring. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 15:39, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I am not sure how it would prevent mirroring, which we don't want to be prevented anyway, so long as it done in the right way. Pcb21| Pete 16:17, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Renaissance has beaten Baghdad in extended voting, 26 to 21.

Special thanks to those who have come over to vote. -- PFHLai 08:01, 2004 Aug 9 (UTC)

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

The B-Movie Bandit

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

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

To be honest, this doesn't seem like the kind of thing that should make you quit - sure it's irritating, and the entries aren't particularly informative, but they're not false or misleading and they should be pretty easy to fix. The worst he is doing is adding a bunch of stubs, I'm not sure why that really endangers Wikipedia so much. Adam Bishop 22:49, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ok, with further evidence from Custom and Rick, I see that this goes beyond simple creation of sub-stubs; while I would still suggest fixing up the stubs, I would also support a block if that is possible. (Although I'm not sure how block a whole range, or if this needs to be discussed somewhere else...) Adam Bishop 23:22, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Do you suggest other people fix the stubs rather than doing it yourself? The B-Movie Bandit is littering. Dropping short ill-written stubs for other people to fix up should not be acceptable from anyone, unless one believes it acceptable that stub-writers set the agenda for people who are captable of writing full articles. Should others have to clean up after their mess. Or should we just leave the mess, leave article after ill-written article. It often takes more time to check and fix a bad stub than the original writer to create it, especially since the original writer usually has the information or misinformation right at hand while the fixer does not. Such stubs are useless and there are too many of them in Wikipedia outside of what the B-Movie Bandit is providing. And such stubs don't grow into good articles by themseles. There should be a rule against littering in Wikipedia policy. And that includes blank pages with links to them and place holder articles about future events. Jallan 23:43, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Rather than doing it "myself"? No, I have attempted to fix some of them, that's what caused this dispute in the first place. Adam Bishop 23:54, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've fixed every one I've found on newpages and recent changes patrol, and the {delete} cat. For example, look at how Another World (soap opera) started[8], and look what it became. I just fire up IMDb (actually I always have it in a browser tab), spend 5-10 minutes, and fix them into reasonable stubs. Most recently I added a bit to No Way Out (1987 movie), which Adam had already gotten into decent shape. Niteowlneils 02:50, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

So what it amounts to, is that the B-Movie bandit is deciding both what you are spending your time on in Wikipedia and what gets into Wikipedia. Is that how priorities should be set? Should actions in Wikipedia be driven by the most ignorant and inconsiderate editors? By picking up after this troll, you are encouraging this troll and encouraging others to emulate this troll. Jallan 13:46, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The problem with the B-Movie bandit isn't only the plethora of substubs. It's that he sometimes replaces existing articles with his useless junk. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:06, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ouch, I hadn't run into that. That IS bad. Niteowlneils 03:13, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Check that, I may have once. About a week ago I found Kane on the Speedy delete cat, and when I checked the history I saw that it had once been a decent, if short, article, so I just reverted it. Is IP 64.12.116.74 in the bandit's range? Niteowlneils 03:28, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Might be, at least geographically. Geektools.com shows it as an AOL proxy out of Manassas, Virginia. The majority of the proxies have been coming out of the Northeast US division of SBC, and they all start with that "64." The subject matter doesn't follow the pattern, unless our little friend was trying to drop something on "All My Children" character "Erica Kane." Believe me, this boob isn't the only reason I left. He was the icing on the cake. After some thought, I am more determined than ever to see a change to policy to deal with this litter in a direct fashion. I too have expanded a number of these ridiculous entries and I'm sick and tired of doing so. He/she never returns to fix the substubs and, as Cyrius pointed out, now has a history of reverting existing articles. - Lucky 6.9 06:07, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Chill out, man. There's no need to take the burden of everything sucky that happens on Wikipedia. You are not personally responsible for this user's mischief. Take it to RfC/RfM/RfAr, and if you're completely fed up, forget about it. Wikipedia won't collapse if you don't deal with this guy's problems. Johnleemk | Talk 14:23, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• John, you're absolutely right. In the scheme of things, this is just a pimple and it took a few days away from this site for me to realize that. Still, it's an annoying pimple. I've brought up this case to everyone short of the White House, or so it seems. We all devote a lot of time and energy to Wikipedia. Real time. Real energy. Every day brings some really wonderful contributions from across the world. The B-Movie Bandit just "shits in our nest," if you'll pardon the scatological metaphor. In, out, done...never to be seen again. This isn't a public restroom, after all.  :^) - Lucky 6.9 18:25, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Check out what this guy did to the Matt Crane article today: [9] RickK 04:44, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

• OK, now that my blood pressure is back to normal, I can't believe that I actually tried reasoning with the B-Movie Bandit earlier today. I hoped beyond hope that I'd hear from this person. Instead, the incredible work that MikeH brings to the table gets reverted not once, but twice. What more do we have to do to make a simple exception to the rules and block this troll once and for all? I've half expected to get some indignant note on my talk page from someone else using one of the proxies. I've never heard anything from anyone. Now we have a known and proven vandal on our hands. A simple range block will solve the problem. Please consider this, gang. - Lucky 6.9 05:35, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• • Comment: I left a nice note on talk page User talk:69.0.38.162. Six minutes later, another entry via this same proxy came in for Catherine Hickland, which I've made into a redirect to "One Life To Live" for the time being. No answer. The message flag was totally ignored. - Lucky 6.9 05:54, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• • • Well, doesn't some of this count as vandalism? Just treat him as you would Michael or the Vandalbot. Delete anything that looks like his stuff and block the addresses. Or is that somehow against the strange and confusing and unfathomable policies that supposedly guide Wikipedia? Jallan 16:40, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Can I nominate you for adminship? :^P - Lucky 6.9 16:44, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• • Comment: Another proxy at User talk:64.252.168.209, another message on my part...another revert on his part. This time, it was to Cady McClain. I've fixed it. - Lucky 6.9 16:39, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• More fun via 69.0.38.162. A new substub called Charlotte Ross came in after both Niteowlneils and I have left word. Ignored it. Redirected to NYPD Blue. We persist... - Lucky 6.9 18:40, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• • Calm down a second. Because the target page contains no mention of Charlotte Ross (potentially for good reason, I don't know), the redirect is inappropriate. Either the article should be deleted because of lack of notability, or it should be left as a harmless (but also fairly useless) stub. Admittedly there is something odd going on with this user, but that doesn't mean we should redirect like that! Pcb21| Pete 18:53, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• I'm perfectly calm. A sysop once suggested redirecting these things as the fastest way of dealing with them. I have to respectfully disagree that these entries are harmless, however. A number of existing articles have de-evolved because of this guy. I do agree with your reversion and wholeheartedly if the actress wasn't mentioned on the target page. The new stub looks fine. Still, why couldn't the original poster have taken the time that we've taken? Also, why don't we get an answer? Frankly, I'm a bit creeped out. :^) - Lucky 6.9 21:30, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• • That's the thing that gets me about this guy. He won't ever discuss what he's written and, usually, he just gets years he saw from IMDB and that is it. I just thought he was a petty nuisance until he started reverting other people's articles (most of which were already started and were written to a fair extent by me, so I was peeved even more). He does seem to be reading our comments, as now he is adding who was married to whom. However, you know it's one of his substubs when the verb tense is incorrect. It's always someone "stars" on so and so show, even if the actor hadn't appeared on it for fifteen or twenty years. Mike H 23:11, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

• • • The case is genuinely odd. From what I have seen and read, his behaviour appears to be:
      • Only ever write an article from scratch.
      • Sometimes he overwrites articles if they pre-exist
      • He never returns to an article (the cases where he has edited the same article twice appear to be new rewrites from scratch - are they subtly different from reverts).
      • Never seems to see user talk messages.

• • • • My guess is that it is a bot. Nikola 20:26, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• • • Now this could be a weird form of vandalism (particularly the overwrites) but that doesn't feel right; it has more of a clueless newbie feel about it. One far-out suggestion is that he is somehow writing to the Wikipedia database without actually coming to the wikipedia website. This *is* possible, though it would be a new sort of mirror. The mirror site would invite new contributions HTTP POST them to WP in the usual way and then scrape the content. Then the user would never see the talk pages or the "new message" dialogue. Ok, it isn't a particularly likely suggestion, but I am scrabbling around for possibilities.

• • • As for resolution, as they are proxies with a large number of users I don't think the data dump is so vile that we can block the whole range. I suggest we ban anon contributions for this range. If users in this range wish to contribute, we explain unfortunately for vandalism reasons they temporarily have to create an account. I can't remember if exactly this solution is implemented already due to past experiences (Wik/Michael?) but it would be good to have around. Pcb21| Pete 23:57, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• You may be on to something. It could be a matter of can't answer instead of won't. I absolutely love the idea of blocking anon entries just within the range. Legit users would gladly sign up to edit, and this guy would be forced to do likewise or go off to play somewhere else. Bravo! A solution has presented itself! - Lucky 6.9 01:47, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• • • • If I'm not mistaken, the Mr. Treason IPs also come from this range. Mike H 00:00, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
        • I think you're wrong because nothing similar's listed on the IP list. Furthermore, a whois on 69.0.38.162 and 64.252.168.209 reveals them to belong to SBC. Michael and Mr. Treason use(d) AOL. The 64.12.116.74 address cited by Niteowlneils above is likely one of them and not the Bandit. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:59, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• The theory that those edits happen through a weird mirror sounds interesting, but shouldn't they be rejected as "edit conflicts" then. And if not, and there is no easy way to implement it, that could revive the interest in the "enter the text displayed below" tests for anon edits. -- Pjacobi 10:37, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• • It seems that something less exotic might be going on - see the thread about "new messages" flags being in the wrong place for anons towards the bottom of this page. Pcb21| Pete 11:54, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

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

• Tried that, and I got an automated response asking for the traces and such. Got to get one of the true Gods Of Wikipedia on the case if we're going to go directly to the provider. Thanks for the tip, though. :^) - Lucky 6.9 19:18, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• • Oh, jeez. He did it again less than an hour after MikeH and I left word on the latest proxy's talk page. Came back with Vincent Irizarry this time, and I almost knew what I was going to read before I read it. No answer, and I've redirected to All My Children. - Lucky 6.9 19:26, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• The redirect was reverted as a "legitimate stub." If anyone's been following this, one would know that it is far from legitimate. It's litter. Mike H 19:31, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

• How is it not legitimate? Are the facts incorrect? In this case the article should be deleted. If they're correct, it's an acceptable short stub. If you don't want to bother even checking the facts, then a redirect doesn't make sense, as it could be just as wrong (i.e. if you don't want to check if Irizarry really starred on All My Children, you shouldn't redirect it to All My Children either). The unresponsiveness and overwriting of other articles by this user are different matters. Gzornenplatz 19:43, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

• Are you trying to question whether or not I know about the material? Irizarry starred as Dr. David Hayward on All My Children and as Lujack and then Nick McHenry Spaulding on Guiding Light. Just look at my contributions if you haven't already. Mike H 19:47, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

• So the stub was correct. Why redirect it then? People looking up Irizarry will now be redirected to All My Children, where they might learn that Irizarry starred there, but not that he also starred on Guiding Light. You're removing information. Gzornenplatz 20:10, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

• If MikeH has had a chance to fix the Irizarry article, believe me when I say that if anyone can, he can. I've been doing redirects on the advice of other users, including sysops. I rarely revert other subs and/or substubs unless I'm sure that a redirect was intended in the first place. Besides, anyone looking for information on this actor is probably familiar with his work in daytime TV, and a redirect to the show he currently stars in is, IMO, better than the semi-literate stub that would greet a user. Admittedly, a miniscule bit of information is lost in a case like this. Still, I don't think it warrants keeping these things as they are. This discussion is about the antics of a single user whose "contributions" these past several months just happen to fall on the side of the line that says to keep them. - Lucky 6.9 22:05, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

• Got 'em all on a "whois" search engine. They're on your talk page. BTW, we have another clueless anon who has also been avoiding contact. He's dropping unformatted substub plot synopses about "Twilight Zone" episodes like it's his last day on earth. Check the user page: User talk:68.48.167.231. - Lucky 6.9 03:43, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• I REPEAT: (Some/all) Anons cannot see messages directed at them. See the discussion below. Thus it is the site's fault, not the anons fault they can't respond to messages. The stubs have been poor stubs but not vandalism. Get your itchy finger off that trigger. Pcb21| Pete 07:16, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• • We are building an encyclopedia. We should not be catering to people who dump embarrassingly written material that reflects badly on the project, regardless of whether those people can or cannot see messages or refuse to respond to them because they think they are advertisements. If Pete wants such material to continue to flow in, then perhaps he and others should set up a project to clean up all this material as fast as it comes in, which of course will only encourage the flow of this kind of material. Don't support dumping of garbage just because a user doesn't know any better. Stop the dumping. Or clean it up yourself if you want it to continue. Jallan 14:28, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• • • Everyone was a newbie once (see e.g. the formatting of your first logged-in edit [10]). Cutting off the new blood, who are the only people that can fill gaps those of us here already are unable to fill, is a bad way to "build an encyclopedia".

• • • Also you might like to consider what the user thinks when they find they've been blocked for lack of communication when as far as they are concerned no-one communicated with them. The "bad press" from them saying what a bunch of junks Wikipedians are is small, but the negative effect of the odd stub that hasn't been cpedited yet is even more tiny.

• • • And yes I have helped tidy up one or two of these particular poor stubs ... and I tidy up more most days when I browse Special:Newpages ... its just this one has got more attention. So yes I have been eating this dog food. Pcb21| Pete 14:43, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• I've only been here since this past March. It took me a couple of tries to get the style down, but I like to think that my work has been useful since the get-go. I accepted criticism, took advise and "learned the ropes." How long would I be allowed to write non-articles such as these as a registered user? Or, if I came in via a single proxy, how long before it was blocked? Non-entries like this make the project look bad. This is why we have open discussion in an attempt to get community consensus on the presentation of a site that belongs not just to us, but to the world. This is no newbie we're dealing with. This has been happening for months on end. Articles have been badly reverted by this character. I've gotten messages while editing as an anon. Why can't this guy? Your comment about new blood is valid, but is this the kind of blood we need? Look at the work that MikeH has done in less than half the time the B-Movie Bandit has been dropping substubs. That is the kind of blood this site needs. - Lucky 6.9 17:03, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• I now have first, unverified evidence, that there may be a bug, which make users overwrite the newest version, without knowing and without an edit conflict warning. It happened in Unicode and it wasn't an anon. See User talk:Bletch -- Pjacobi 20:19, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• It's certainly possible, but I've received messages from folks logging on via anonymous proxies who wonder why I've accused them of vandalism. I got one in German from some poor soul just a couple of minutes ago. - Lucky 6.9 22:27, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• He's back, and changing his tune slightly. This time, it was a substub about an Ice Cube album called "Death Certificate," of all things. Redirected it to Ice Cube. Proxy is 69.37.75.234, again from SBC. This guy knows what's going on and he's trying to slip in under the radar. - Lucky 6.9 21:15, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• • I just got a fantastic suggestion from Infrogmation regarding our pest. I have created a template called "Bmoviebandit1" that I intend to start placing on each of these articles for the time being. - Lucky 6.9 06:29, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• • I wanted to see this one. Here it is, and I think it's top notch. -- TIB 05:50, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)

• Thank you SO much..and I dig the user name! Although a couple of other users have edited it since yesterday, another user has put it up on VfD. I tell you, it's a first for me. This is the first original article of mine that's ever been nominated for deletion! I actually am somewhat amused. - Lucky 6.9 06:30, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• I've made a very rough and incomplete start on a discussion on this contentious user at User:B-Movie Bandit. Those interested please see and add info, and discussion on the talk page. -- Infrogmation 21:19, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Image bug

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

This is IE's JPEG-resize bug which crashes its image subsystem. Try a different thumbnail size in the article, or upload an alternate format of the image. Radagast 00:42, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

How many people are affected? All IE6 users? (And Solipsist, why not use Firefox, Opera, Mozilla, or some other modern web browser? Firefox is smaller than IE.) --Ardonik 00:52, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

Well the original Image:Monalisa.jpg show's up fine, so it may only be the Wiki-thumbed version. I'm reluctant to resize the image in the article since there's a general preference to use |thumb| without a size attribute, which is how it is at the moment.

Why use IE? I used to join in Microsoft bashing, but now I can't be bothered. I'm halfway tempted to give Firefox a try, but probably won't get round to it. Wikipedia:Browsers says 80% of readers use IE, but it doesn't give the versions. -- Solipsist 06:51, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Maybe 80% of readers used IE in February, but the Microsoft Security Holes of late may have altered that a bit. --TIB 05:24, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)

It looks like any size value for Wiki-thumbing triggers the IE6 bug. Using [[Image:Monalisa.jpg|frame|Some caption]] avoids the problem, but the image is too large. -- Solipsist 07:02, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fascinating. So IE is also bemused by the Mona Lisa smile! :o) Zoney 17:09, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Article counts inconsistent

The article count shown on special:Statistics is 6,816,928, but the number on WikiStats for August 5th is 292,000. I really don't think that we added nearly 30,000 articles in 4 days. What's up with this? --mav 07:19, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There is some additional discussion on stats problems over on Wikipedia_talk:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits. It looks like User:Erik Zachte has found a fix for a stats script, but I couldn't tell you whether it affects this particular discrepancy. -- Solipsist 07:44, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, Erik's fix will fix this. Pcb21| Pete 09:22, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The fixed stats script has been run again with correct results (thanks Erik!). Glory in how fast we grew in July! Pcb21| Pete 10:26, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Javascript "automatic" wikilinks

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

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

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

Doesn't it need more database requests, though? Either through the server sticking the text in the generated page, or through the client loading something from another page? =/ - Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 02:07, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The server does not stick the text in the generated page. The client indeed needs to download the text for the boxes (on-demand), but this is text without decorations or personal options, so it's perfectly cacheable by the Squids. David.Monniaux 07:39, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

FYI. This seems to require IE 5.5 or later. (I can get the exact 5.0 version # it fails on later today). Niteowlneils 17:35, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It works on Mozilla 1.7.1 for me (and nicely I might add). No sane individual would use IE, unless in a public environment. --TIB 05:19, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)

Fine, just so long as folk remember to optimise wikipedia for the insane, who make up the vast majority of visitors. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 01:55, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a guide?

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

This seems to support transwiki'ing how-to's Talk:How to breed Siamese Fighting Fish (despite the fact the article still exists)--besides the nominator, six votes to transwiki/delete, with one neutral vote. Why on earth is How to breed Siamese Fighting Fish still here?

For what it's worth, I think it would be MUCH better if articles transwikied from Wikipedia were NOT deleted, but replaced with interwiki redirs (or possibly interwiki links). It's better for Wikipedia, because there's less chance of the article getting recreated. It's better for Wikibooks (or Wiktionary, or whichever) because it raises the visibility of the sister projects. It's better for the user, because they find the info they're looking for. Niteowlneils 20:02, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Be cautious and tentative when you tell people such things. You're not exactly wrong but it's not that simple, either. I believe that this is controversial, that there has never been consensus on this point, and that there is no official policy. I asked this question on the mailing list a while ago and several Wikipedians confirmed my impression.

In practice, though, articles that consist solely of a cooking recipe tend to get listed on VfD, and what then generally happens is that the recipe ends up being transwikied to Wikibooks. The same thing happens to articles that are very explicitly pure step-by-step directions. (I personally oppose this and regard it as tyranny of the majority, or tyranny of the more persistent, rather than true consensus policy, but there you have it.) If you want to test the waters, it might be interesting to list how-to for deletion and see what happens. Conversely, if someone wants to contribute an article that includes a recipe or a set of directions for something, it is a good idea to present them in a cultural context, proceding from general to specific, with the recipe or directions being presented at the end as a very specific example of whatever is being discussed.

Warning, warning, POV alert. Historically, encyclopedias contained a great deal of how-to-like material. Diderot's work was entitled "Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of Science, Arts, and the Trades." The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition contained all sorts of detailed mechanical and circuit diagrams. It did not quite tell you how to build a working transatlantic telegraph, but nearly. Chambers' 1728 work was entitled "Cyclopaedia; or an Universal Dictionary of Art and Sciences, containing an Explication of the Terms and an Account of the Things Signified thereby in the several Arts, Liberal and Mechanical, and the several Sciences, Human and Divine." The very word "encyclopaedia" means "universal course of study," or "textbook of everything." If it's suitable for a textbook, it should be suitable for Wikipedia. That's just my $0.02 and others do disagree. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 20:30, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the history, Dpbsmith. I am part of the minority faction that believes guides aren't always out of place in an encyclopedia. I've heard the contrary asserted several times, but never convincingly justified. What determines the nature of what is "encyclopedic", apart from majority opinion? --Fritzlein 00:43, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I understand the general issue is under some debate. However, at the moment I am more concerned about the apparent violation of VfD policy/process in this one specific instance. Unanimous vote to transwiki, and yet a generally respected Wikipedian removes the VfD tag and leaves the article on Wikipedia? Why have VfD if the results areoutcome is based on the whim of individuals. Niteowlneils 19:56, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Also, I am interested in responses to the broader issue, if articles are transwikied for whatever reason, is it not better to leave a redirect to whatever 'sister project' it went to. Niteowlneils 20:26, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

The fact that Wikibooks uses information originally placed on Wikipedia isn't a justification for deleting that information from Wikipedia. There's no reason to cannibalize when copying will do. - Nunh-huh 23:10, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The only reason I can think of for keeping how-tos (for now) would be to wait until the software can support moving page history across wikis. (Unless this is now possible and I've missed it. I don't work on the other Wikimedia projects so I don't know.) Isomorphic 06:12, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How about a rename for ...

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

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

"You have new messages."

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

Are you sure that you didn't? Just recently, a user added something to an old subtopic somewhere in the middle of my Talk page. I got the "new messages" notice, but couldn't find the new message by glancing at the page. I thought the notice was bogus, but I called up the page history just to check—and there it was. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 18:23, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think this is a problem related to cacheing. When I first go to the Main page, it is often a few days old--and apparently the cache also includes the "you have messages" message. I have seen this many times and I've checked history on my talk page just to make sure (now I mostly ignore it unless the message persists after checking my Watchlist or going to some other page). There is a "Main Page cache purge" link near the top of Talk:Main Page which will force a reload of the Main Page. older≠wiser 18:54, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

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

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

Summarised sections

• Protected Templates. Template:Cc-by-nd-nc etc are protected to prevent people changing copyright or licensing details. Ask on the talk page if you want it changed.
• "Fictional" Categorization. See Category talk:Fictional, Category talk:Fiction, Wikipedia:Categorization
• EasyTimeline is back. See w:Category:Graphical Timelines, w:de:Kategorie:Zeitleiste, meta:EasyTimeline
• User Talk page policy question. Personal attacks should be removed.
• Linking to gameinfo wiki --> Wikipedia talk:External links
• Wikipedia has sucked much of the useful encyclopedic content out of the Web--> User talk:Dpbsmith
• Moving pages with redirects in the way --> Talk:Callus and Corns of the Skin
• Joe Arpaio protection? --> Talk:Joe Arpaio
• Fait accompli has a vfd tag from 7/15/04. Now deleted.
• Transhumanism reverts. Try WP:RFC.
• Alase technologies looks like an advertisement. Listed at copyvio
• wikiverse.org are spamming people. They have no connection with Wikimedia and are violating the GFDL. See Mirrors and forks and the foundation-l mailing list [11] [12] [13]
  • Hi, I'm one of the programmers who created Wikiverse. I'd like to set a few things straight. Wikiverse is not spamming by any reasonable definition of the word, unless you consider link exchange requests as spam. Wikiverse are also in full compliance with the GFDL, which is linked at the bottom of each article. Furthermore, Wikiverse states plainly that it is a mirror of Wikipedia at the very top of it's front page. Don't take my word for it, judge for yourself: Wikiverse.org --Tomco 14:27, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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

• Colombia (and Columbia) --> Talk:Colombia
• Litany against fear --> Talk:Litany against fear
• Catholic Cardinals. Naming conventions suggests "Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger" as the standard form.
• Wikipedia:Peer review has a new look
• Random walk. See User:Pjacobi/Random for some stats on special:randompage

How to delete an unused image?

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

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

Thanks, I put it on Images for deletion. --Fritzlein 00:49, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

VfD acting up

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

Problems with the links table probably. I deleted and undeleted it and it seems ok now. Angela. 03:36, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

Great. I figured someone would know of something to try that I wasn't trying. Thanks. Niteowlneils 03:49, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

TOC should be called "Contents"

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

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

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

New WikiProject Arcade Games

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

Contribs by anon

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

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

weird happenings

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

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

Commenting on Special pages

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

Wikipedia talk:Special pages, belonging to Wikipedia:Special pages.--Patrick 10:50, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ah. Yes. Thanks. - dcljr 06:32, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What links here for images

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

Pages that include the image are listed in a section called "File links" at the end of the image description page. For example Image:Village pump clear.png says "The following pages link to this file: * Template:Villagepump * Wikipedia:Village pump". Angela. 03:33, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

With the change to 1.3 the link table for images was corrupted, thus all images looked like orphans. Only those articles which were edited since show in the "File links" list. There was talk about a bot updating that table, but apparently it never happened. So if you still know where that image is used just do a trivial edit to that article. andy 09:36, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Actually it wasn't the 1.3 conversion, it was the suda crash. The entire database was restored from a backup, with 2 days of downtime. The archive table (i.e. deleted pages) were also lost at this time. -- Tim Starling 10:37, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)