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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump.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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Date information, western bias

If Wikipedia aspires to be a global resource, I think having some way to easily convert dates between commonly used calendar systems would be useful, for instance, the Islamic and Jewish calendars. At the very least, specifying that the years in nearly all articles are AD or BC would be important. If I enter an islamic year right now, I get the (wrong) western year. How should this be done? Moooo! 02:07, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Assuming the years are linked (e.g. 1932), the year page will note that it's AD (or CE, if you prefer). [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 02:09, 2004 Sep 8 (UTC)

Actually, no where on the 1932 page does it say AD or CE. I suppose that's ok with that year, because not many other calendars have used it yet, but take AH 1422 - when you type in 1422, you get, of course, AD 1422. No reference even to other calendar systems, and certainly no mention that this AH 1422 is (mostly) AD 2001. Moooo! 02:17, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Doesn't sound too difficult; the primary years should remain western, but they could all include references to the appropriate eastern years. I don't think eastern years need their own articles, since a year is a universal concept, it's just about when they begin and end and how tied to months they are. It would just require editing a few thousand pages; a bot might be able to handle it. But that's for someone else to handle --Golbez 02:15, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Years do not correspond, since the AH system is lunar, not solar. Your idea of year is not universal. Moooo! 02:19, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In English, if you are going to use AH years, you should use something like "1422/2001", and link to the 2001 article. Or perhaps 1422. The Arabic wikipedia might want to use AH, but I don't see why we would need to do that here - we don't use the Jewish, Chinese, or Julian calendars either. Adam Bishop 02:24, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Exactly, that's the problem - you only use your calendar, the western one. What I am saying is that it seems reasonable to link from the 1422 article to other date systems, or include information about them in that article. For example, although 639 mentions that Dagobert I succeeded by Clovis II as king of the Franks, it does not mention that 639 AD is AH 2. + - Year 1 mentions that Jesus was born, but not that AH 1 is AD 638. It just shows how pervasivet the western bias is, not even to link to other years in different date systems, or even really acknowledge their existance. Moooo! 02:35, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is silly, borderline trollish. In the english speaking world (if not everywhere), there is universal acceptance of Anno Domini and the Gregorian calendar. You want us to waste the space in our articles offering alternative dating that will inevitably confuse 99.99% of our readers on the off chance that someone might find it political-correct that we include their dating system. Sorry, no dice. →Raul654 02:30, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Ah yes, it's trollish to point out that not everyone uses the same date system as you. Acknowledging cultural diversity, or diversion from western dominance would be a waste of space in our articles. Surely camel jockeys can get their own wikipedia. Moooo! 02:37, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's not trollish to point it out. If you want to lobby our developers to make it a preference that you can set (so that it's transparent and optional), go right ahead. But, if (as I suspect) you are lobbying for us to systematically change our articles to add additional dating systems which (1) almost no one in the english-speaking world knows or cares about and (2) which "will inevitably confuse 99.99% of our readers on the off chance that someone might find it politically-correct that we include their dating system" - that's silly to the point of being trollish, and you won't find much support for your position. →Raul654 02:43, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

If your only purpose here is to pick fights and accuse others of racism, please leave. Multiculturalism for its own sake should not come before clarity. Rhobite 02:46, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

If anything of note happened in AH 2 you are welcome to add it to 639. And I'm sure you would be welcome to edit the Arabic wikipedia. Adam Bishop 02:47, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Is now a bad time to point out that the Arabic wikipedia apparently uses er Western dates, ie June 24. Plonk.

Yes, stop proving me wrong :) Adam Bishop 03:06, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No, my purpose is not to pick fights or accuse others of racism, but I think that you are missing the point in thinking that a) only Arabic speakers are interested in the Islamic (or other) calendars; b) English speakers are automatically uninterested in other cultures. I think it is pretty arrogant to say that almost no-one in the english speaking world is interested. My suggestion would be to add a box somewhere on the page mentioning that the page year numbering system here uses the AD/CE/BCE/BC system, but here is the equivalent year number in some of the world's other calendar systems. + I don't know why that would be unreasonable or overly confusing. Who knows, people might learn something about other's cultures. Moooo! 02:58, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, I don't think anyone would be opposed to adding other calendar dates to year pages, similar maybe to the holidays sections of day pages. But how many do we include? What about calendars that are no longer used? Anyway, I don't think there is much we can do about having the article names at the Western dates - that's just how we use dates in English. Adam Bishop 03:06, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Adam - if you want to add them to the year pages (where they are actually relavant) I think that would be fine. But we are *NOT* adding a disclaimer about our dating system, nor are we going to change all of our articles to cite calander systems that the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of our users do not use. →Raul654 03:10, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting to move the articles around, rather to have a box that says: This page refers to the Julian calendar system. Then a table or something with 2-3 (we could argue how many, but it couldn't be much more than that really) important calendar systems with the corresponding dates. The purpose would be - if I know something happened in AH 422, and I type in 422, I get AD 422. Aha I see - I know that stuff that happened in AH 422 will be filed under AD whatever (can't be bothered to work it out!). Calendars not in use? I'd think probably not, although you could I suppose. Would anyone really oppose that? I'm confused as to why. Moooo! 03:12, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I didn't say the years were a 1:1 correspondence, Moooo; re-read my comment and you'll note i mentioned *and how tied to months they are*. An article for 2000 might mention two Islamic years that fall within the bounds of 2000. Likewise, it could contain some information on AH 2000 (Which we haven't come to yet, but I digress). However, this being the English wikipedia, and the Gregorian calendar being the primary used in the English-speaking world, 2000 should still be primarily the Gregorian year, with mentions of the other years. Links in articles to every kind of year are neither required nor desired, except perhaps in those most relevant articles, like about Islamic (or Jewish) history. After all, we use alternate dates for Middle Earth articles. --Golbez 03:16, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

I don't oppose your idea, but I oppose you accusing us of a certain bias. --Golbez 03:16, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

1. We use the Gregorian calendar, not the Julian calendar.
2. What you are describing is effectively polluting our articles. It's not our job to "push" alternative dating systems when only an inscrutably trivial fraction of our users will know or care (show me one general-interest reference that does). If it's not relavant to the article, then it doesn't belong. If you are reading an article on transistor-transistor logic, there is no need to display a date disclaimer.
3. The only articles where it could concievably be relavant is on the year related articles. →Raul654 03:18, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Erm? polluting? Why would a date disclaimer be on a transistor page? I don't seem to be making myself clear - I am proposing a page on each AD date page, making clear that that year also exists in other calendar systems, and where to find information if that is what you are looking for. I have no idea whether Muslims or Jews make up only an inscrutably trivial fraction of your users, but it is concievable that others may want to reference years in different systems. Moooo! 03:23, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm suggesting a box kind of like this somewhere on the date pages:

Dates in Wikipedia typically refers to the Gregorian calendar. If you were searching for a date in another calendar system, please refer to the equivalents given below

Gregorian 639, Islamic 2, Hebrew xx, Other yyy.

Or something like it. Moooo! 03:28, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't think there's a problem creating a several thousand more articles for alternative dating systems. They could each link to the appropriate section of the gregorian year they correspond to, without having an actual list of events themself. It would definately take a bot, but it wouldn't hurt anything. The gregorian pages could link back, as well. I do not want to see the dates cropping up in articles that they are not relevent to, however. —siroχo 03:51, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

It sounds pointless to me. They would be almost verbatim copies of our already existing date articles. A much nicer solution would be to insert a sentence in our date articles saying to the effect that:

1953 is year:

• XX on the AA calander
• YY on the BB calander
• ZZ on the CC calander

→Raul654 04:20, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Thats fine by me too, i'm just tossing out suggestions. You'd need to give explicit dates though, as many calendars' years do not line up exactly to the Gregorian calendar. Basically, if we do try this, we can't half-ass it, we have to be accurate. —siroχo 04:44, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

To summarize: Moooo wants us to recognize the other major dating systems. That's fine. What Moooo seems to be suggesting is that a MENTION be put on each year page (i.e. 639) that says what the Gregorian year corresponds to in the Muslim calendar, and vice versa, i.e. it would also say what Gregorian year 639 in the Muslim calendar corresponds to (1278, I'd imagine). Such a mention would also mention if the years weren't completely in synch, etc. What everyone ELSE is doing is ignoring this and thinking Moooo wants to make thousands more articles. I don't think that's the case, is it Moooo? Or do I have this backwards? :P If that is what you want, I've supported that from the beginning, but I lack the time, technical knowhow and knowledge of the subject to do it. Perhaps a Wikiproject could be made? --Golbez 04:47, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

And just a thought: What do he.wikipedia and ar.wikipedia use as their primary dating format? I'd look, but, ya know, the whole not being able to read Hebrew or Arabic thing gets in the way. --Golbez 04:49, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

On both the Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedias, they appear to use the Gregorian calendar, see e.g. ar:عراق and he:ישראל. -- Tim Starling 07:19, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Tell me about it! The English Wikipedia is full of bias, as toward the English language (the gall!), factual accuracy (though this one isn't really enforced), and Latin typography (how dare they delete my Shavian text!). Such blatant intolerance is absolutely unconscionable, and it's time we did something about it. Austin Hair 05:16, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Very drole! Mark Richards 17:50, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I fully support what Moooo has been suggesting, and that a lot of people seem to have been misunderstanding. I would possibly add something more to the above ideas though:

1984 on the Gregorian calendar is:

• X on the Islamic calendar
• Y on the Hebrew calendar

Also:

• 1984 on the Islamic calendar is XX on the Gregorian calendar
• 1984 on the Jewish calendar is YY on the Gregorian calendar

This allows someone who knows the CE date to find an Islamic or Jewish date, as well as someone who knows the Islamic or Jewish date to find the Gregorian date. This is still a simplified example though, and the exact dates of the correspondences would have to be given. TPK 07:18, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree with TPK, though I would put something more precise like:

• In the Islamic calendar, year X ended 32 Septober and year X+1 started 33 Septober
• In the Hebrew calendar, etc.

• 1984 on the Islamic calendar started 44 Juluary XX and ended 33 Juluary XX+1 on the Gregorian calendar

In addition, I think pages for the first few tens or hundreds of year AH might be interesting if they include a detailed chronology of Islamic events. The same goes of course for other calendar systems at periods where they were in widespread use. _R_ 14:42, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It seems to me that what is needed to convert a date between calendars is a calculator of some kind. Perhaps, at least initially, we put an indication on the English Wikipedia year pages that the page refers to the year in the Gregorian calendar (linked to the page on the Gregorian calendar) (in addition to "BC" or "AD", each of which should be linked to the appropriate pages), and on the pages for the different calendars, we provide a link to an external web page that has a date conversion calculator. nroose Talk 09:14, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I support this idea. Putting reference at each year is unreasonsble. There are more calendars than only western and muslim. Especially when we look in histories of different countries. For example, articles from about Russian topics use two dates: Julian and Gregorian. This a reasonable approach: one may be reading a source from XIX century and it states dates in old calendar. A calculator here would be handy, rather than a text on each and every 1881, 1882,... that Julian is shifted 12 (or was it 13?) days. Mikkalai 16:41, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think the idea is great - Rorro's layout looks really useful. I don't think the number date systems that are actually in current use would be that many - it seems like the main thing is to work out whether we have calculators for the exact dates, then get someone to write a bot, and get agreement on the formatting. The calculator would be another way to go, but I think it would probably be more useful to link. Any volunteers? Mark Richards 17:50, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Cleanup hits 139 KB

Perhaps someone would be willing to divide WP:CU, probably along section lines, into multiple files linked from one that has, say, the last week's entries. (When diligent attention has reduced the pieces to reasonable sizes, perhaps they should come back together.) --Jerzy(t) 00:55, 2004 Sep 8 (UTC)

I have now split cleanup up, by putting previous months into subpages. See Wikipedia:Cleanup/August and Wikipedia:Cleanup/July. The main cleanup page is now under 32k. Norm 01:38, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Even without acceleration of work on individual entries, it is reasonable to hope that that will keep us under 32K until about next weekend. (I.e., Aug 29, 30, and 31, thru the beginnings of the 8th, add up to 31K as of this hour; so the current scheme exceeds 32 around the 11th or 12th, Saturday or Sunday.)
More on Wikipedia talk:Cleanup. --Jerzy(t) 07:28, 2004 Sep 8 (UTC)

Wikitravellers in portuguese

I am searching for contributors to make a portuguese version of wikitravel ( a wiki travel guide)

wikitravel Language_version_policy

Wikitravel:Expeditions

Wikitravel:Portuguese_Wikitravel_Expedition

The English Wikipedia is probably not the best place to look for contributors for the Portuguese Wikitravel. Have you tried the Travellers' pub on Wikitravel or the Esplanada on the Portuguese Wikipedia? Angela. 19:50, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

A note to Muriel Gottrop might be a good idea, though -- she's the only contributor I know here who speaks Portuguese, but you'll find her more quickly if you leave a note at pt.wikipedia anyhow. :-) Jwrosenzweig 15:00, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You might want to contact the people listed at Wikipedia:Translation#Portuguese-to-English -- Jmabel 19:13, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Quick question

This may be the wrong place to ask, but how exactly do you find out how many hits an article has had, if it's possible at all? I have tried looking for the answer, but don't know where to start. 217.44.132.115 17:31, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• According to Wikipedia:Software status, the individual page view counter is disabled, so you can not see how many hits it has had. nroose Talk 18:02, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• You can infer information about hits to an article from http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org/url_200409.html ], which has stats for September; other months are similar. — Matt 18:41, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • It's probably worth pointing out that this page is about 38Mb. Lupin 01:15, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Can I sell my old user name?

"Charade" moved to User talk:Shquid by Angela.

This whole charade was in fact a way of getting rid of this page. For this reason I'm going to undelete. Of course if the community wants to forgive and forget that's fine with me but let's decide that rather than be conned. Theresa Knott (Nate the Stork) 19:28, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Convention on Malaysian political parties (and Anwar Ibrahim NPOV issues)

Right now we're all over the place. We have the Democratic Action Party, People's Justice Party, and suddenly Barisan Alternatif and Barisan Nasional. The coalitions are in Malay, but the parties are all in English. Note that while the DAP, UMNO, MIC and MCA are known best under their English names, the Malaysian People's Movement (which we don't have an article on yet) and the People's Justice Party aren't. They're better known as Gerakan and Keadilan. So...we need to establish a convention for this.

Also, Anwar Ibrahim is having NPOV problems as of now. I've asked for suggestions on peer review, but as has been pointed out on the pump, peer review isn't working. That's the bottom line, so hopefully some non-Malaysians could weigh in with their opinions of the article. Johnleemk | Talk 14:36, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Beware of Wikiactivists

Please see http://sydney.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=45765&group=webcast newcomers from this site can be a little troublesome because they apparently have their own definition of neutrality. Kpjas 12:14, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's easy to learn how to make amendments and additions to any Wikipedia article, and most of the time no one will amend your amendments. It will happen sometimes, but you are allowed to debate it, and anyway, it won't be possible for cranky people to oppose everything you do, and you can invite some friends to join the debate â that's what democracy is all about;

Well, most of his points are fair, and pretty true. 213.206.33.82 12:46, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"an article like 'F/A-22 Raptor' really needs a section that is critical of expensive death machines" - ugh. Hopefully this article goes unnoticed, as do most articles on Indymedia. Rhobite 12:54, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Erm, can you really say that an article that does not mention the fact that the F/A-22 Raptor is a) expensive, by any estimate, and b) designed solely to kill people is neutral? Omiting factual information in favor of fanboyish statistics about how fast it can go is hardly neutrality. 213.206.33.82 13:12, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It says it's a "combat jet aircraft" with an estimated cost of $152 million per aircraft. No factual information from your statement is missing, except perhaps a cost comparison against the aircraft it replaces to establish what is meant by "expensive". -- Cyrius|✎ 13:52, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The real trouble is that this comment won't be restricted to the Raptor. Should every article about a war machine have a paragraph on the evils of war? Although I firmly believe that mechanised death is a horrible thing, I don't think we need to discuss it in every article, any more than we need every article about a British actor to discuss the evils of colonialism, or every article about a book to debate the nature of electronic publishing. It just dilutes the usefulness of an article. However if these guys come here and write good articles about the people they mention, that will be great.

Seriously, is anyone from here going to add a comment to the posting? We could tell them a bit about what Wikipedia is really like, and point out that we already have articles on most of these people DJ Clayworth 14:00, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I just did, and would suggest more! Filiocht 14:50, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We're not talking about needing to add a paragraph about the evils of war, which would be making a value judgement about war, which would not be neutral. We are talking about what facts are mentioned and what is not. Simply mentioning that its primary purpose is to kill people would be sufficient, and is the kind of comment that on other articles would not be out of place.

We mention how quickly bombs can be ejected from its bomb-bay, but not the likely effect? Why not? A clear bias towards the positive aspects of technology, as if the short time of the bomb-bay door opening is in some way more important that the innocent people this act will kill. Excluding this information is biased, and pernicious. 213.206.33.82 14:41, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It is not the duty of an encyclopedia to judge, we aim to present the facts as neutral as possible. And I am quite sure no intelligent reader would think the bombs are used to plant flowers - and the description of the results of bombing belong into the article about bombs, which can be linked in the plane article. Please re-read the above explanation by DJ Clayworth. andy 15:19, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Nobody is asking you to judge, simply to state the facts in a neutral way. To avoid stating the (albeit perhaps obvious to you, although by no means to eveyone) fact that this is a machine designed for the sole purpose of killing people is not neutral. It is putting an absurdly biased spin on it by discussing the technical aspects of speed, capacity etc, without ever mentioning once the simple fact of the machine's purpose. That is not judging it's purpose - simply stating it as a fact. Moooo! 01:50, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The effects are going to be that whomever is unlucky enough to be under that bomb will be killed. This does not need to be mentioned in the Raptor article; if it goes anywhere, it obviously goes in the bomb article (or in this case, apparently, JDAM). That is what Wikipedia is good for - you can easily click the link to find out more information. This article is on the Raptor, not on the bombs it carries. Furthermore, your assumption that innocent people will be killed by any opening of the bomb bay is not neutral. As far as the Raptor article is concerned, yes, the workings of the Raptor are more important than any possible fatalities the bombs may cause. Those can go into the bomb article. What would you have us add? "The Raptor drops bombs, and those bombs can kill people. Sometimes good people, sometimes bad people, sometimes no people at all." ??? And of course, I (hesitantly) point out that, this being a wiki, you can do it yourself. --Golbez 15:24, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Well, you could make a case that guns don't kill people, bullets do, so we should move Gun politics etc to Bullet politics, but I think most of us would recognise an integrated weapon system when we see one, the bombs are an integrated part of the machine. Neither the bomb nor the bomber have any meaning without each other. And no, I don't need you to add anything about the relative merits of killing people or not, just state that that is what it does. Moooo! 01:50, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC) PS I should never have said that the people it was killing were innocent, that's a value judgement that doesn't belong here. Moooo! 01:56, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Its primary purpose is destruction, yes. And that is made clear with the seventh word of the article: combat. What more is needed? Not to mention that it lists bombs, missiles, guns, etc... so why is a further mention of is destructive purpose required? It's a combat jet, not a cropduster. Now, not all the articles say combat, but for the others, the purpose is in its description, i.e. B-52 Stratofortress is a "strategic bomber." Again, not a cropduster. "long range and heavy weapons." Why is a further mentioned required? A subtemplate on all combat airplane articles that mentions that, yes, this, like a shovel and a pillow, can be used to hurt people? --Golbez 17:06, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Actually "sole purpose of killing people" is false statement. It can also destroy rocket launch sites, Pentagon, etc. And this (these) purposes are not specific to raptor, and must be placed into bomber, if enywhere. Mikkalai 16:51, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Swapping an article with a redirect

If there is an artice with a sub-optimal title, and a redirect with the desired title, how do I swap them? I tried moving the redirect to a different name, but that actually copies the redirect and leaves the original redirect occupying the title, preventing the move. For instance, Kepler solid should be called Kepler-Poinsot solid, but that is a redirect. Wikipedia:Redirect says "To delete a redirect without replacing it with a new article, list it on redirects for deletion .... This isn't necessary if you just want to replace a redirect with an article: see meta:redirect for instructions on how to do this" but meta:Help:Redirect doesn't say how to do it. PhilHibbs 10:20, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have resolved this instance by moving it to Kepler-Poinsot solid, as the blocking redirect was actually Kepler-poinsot solid, but the question still stands. PhilHibbs 10:23, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You can only move an article on top of a redirect if the redirect has no further edit history: if there is anything more than one edit in the history you are not allowed to move it there. Thus you can move back-and-forth without problems, but not if the redirect was ever edited. [[User:Anárion|File:Anarion.png]] 10:27, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have added that info to the meta:Help:Redirect page. Can someone check it please? PhilHibbs 10:45, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Coincidentally, I was just thinking of a similar problem. There are a few articles without spaces in front of the unit symbol. For example 7.62mm caliber, 4mm scale. This is contrary to the Manual of Style. There are redirects from 7.62 mm caliber. In the case of 4mm scale there is no redirect. I would like to fix these so that the destination article has a space in front of the unit, but I don't know how. I would be grateful for help in doing this. Bobblewik  (talk) 12:12, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Can you point me to the relevant page(s) on this issue, from a quick scan, it's not obvious where to find it. Niteowlneils 13:47, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think I found it. I moved 7.62 mm caliber. If there's no redir in the way of 4 mm scale, you should be able to do the move whenever you want. Hmmm. There's a ton of redirects to clean up from 7.62 mm caliber--I hope you had figured that in to your desire to move the page. Niteowlneils 14:07, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Many thanks for making the destination 7.62 mm caliber, and for creating the redirect from '7.62mm caliber'. There are similar problems in other ammunition titles (e.g. references to calibers of 5.45, 5.56, 20, 25, 30 mm etc). You can find these if you do 'What links here' from 7.62 mm caliber or any one of them. Yes I know that there is more redirecting work to do, I am on the case.

The reference in the Manual is "Use a non-breaking space character between the value and its units". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_%28dates_and_numbers%29#Style_for_numbers.2C_weights.2C_and_measures A non-breaking space clearly is a type of a space character, and looks identical to the reader. Perhaps the wording in the manual needs a little revision to say make that explicit. In any case, thanks for what you did, that is a welcome surprise! Bobblewik  (talk) 14:52, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If a redirect exists at the 'proper' title, it generally needs to be deleted before the move can work, which only admins can do. Of course, most, if not all admins are happy to do so, as long as they are told that is the purpose, in the Talk page and/or History comments (and assuming they agree that the proposed new location is indeed the proper one--I have on occasion seen people suggest moves that I didn't think were warranted. Other times, I had to do some research to determine if I agreed, as is with the unit spacing, mostly because I've seen spaces systematically removed, have never read the related standard, and don't want to do anything until I'm certain). Fastest way is to put a {delete} tag on the article (with explanation somewhere), as admins patrol the speedy cat pretty regularly. Niteowlneils 13:34, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

For a worldwide Wiki bibliography

Dear Wikipedians,

I am looking for a contact within the community to inquiry about possible interest for a new project.

For the last two years, during a sabbatical, I have been working on a universal, worldcentric, integrative bibliography in the human and social sciences. It attempts to answer the question: what should one read, in terms of the best and most significant books, to have a broad understanding of the history, present and possible futures in the main four fields of the evolution of self (subjective), of technology and material basis (objective), of social/political/economic systems (interobjective) and on collective worldviews, religion/spiritualities and culture/philosophies (the intersubjective. For each there is a timeline, an attempt to combine various critical perspectives, as well as to be cross-civilisational.

It functions as a kind of encyclopedia but instead of giving you the article,it gives you a selection of annotated books.

If anyone thinks this is a good idea, or wants to collaborate, please also contact me at michel@noosphere.cc.

I have a document on methodology, and one with an extensive table of contents, that I can send. The quadrants on the self and on technology are the most advanced at this stage, and I can send samples of these drafts as well.

Michel Bauwens

It would, perhaps, be interesting to have more bibliographical notes in most articles. Moooo! 12:45, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Minor edit 'm' capitalised

Now, maybe I'm just imagining things, but I'm sure the 'M' for Minor Edit on the Recent Changes page was lower case, now it is upper case. When did this change occur? It's a small point, but I think that the lower case m looked nicer, and it made it easier to distinguise between Minor Edits and New Pages. Since M and N are similar, if you glance at the page without paying attention, you can get the two confused. Darksun 09:07, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I just hard refreshed and it seems to have reverted to lowercase m? Filiocht 10:06, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is an ongoing problem with the way messages are handled. Sometimes the MediaWiki: namespace messages (e.g. MediaWiki:Minoreditletter) are not used, and the software defaults are used instead (which is this case is a capital M). — Kate Turner | Talk 10:15, 2004 Sep 7 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. But couldn't the software be changed so that the default is lower-case m? Darksun 11:07, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but this would affect all users of mediawiki (not just wikimedia) - there are quite a few MediaWiki: messages which have been customised for Wikipedia, all of which will revert to the defaults when this problem occurs. The proper solution, of course, is to fix the problem :-) but it's not entirely trivial. — Kate Turner | Talk 12:19, 2004 Sep 7 (UTC)

Photograph credit

I've looked for an hour and not found an answer to this, so I've decided to post it here. I've just started writing articles and posting my pictures on wikipedia. i've recently found these articles on several other web sites. Most of them retain the "Photo by me" that I us, but some do not. Is this okay? Can othr sites use wikipedia photos [and they have all creditd wikipedia] and not credit the photographer? Carptrash 07:41, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It depends on the individual copyright status of the photo. It seems that they are licensed under many different licenses, and some are used under 'fair-use' clauses in US copyright law. You would probably be advised to investigate the status of each photo you want to use before you go ahead. 213.206.33.82 14:49, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sorry I was not more clear last night - it was late. the photos in question are mine. They have my name under them in wikipedia, but now I am finding them on other sites without my name, but with aknowledgement to wikipedia. Is this okay? Other sites are using them, but they retain my name. I am pretty new here and am trying to figure out what is okay and what is not. Carptrash 15:27, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It looks like your photos are licensed under the GFDL, in which case they must give credit to the photographer. This is an interesting case, because acknowledging wikipedia's article that they mirrored is the only easy way to credit authors of articles, but witht he photo, the best way is to just take the name. Maybe if you give an example of a website that does this it would be easier to investigate. —siroχo 19:29, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I can do that.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Alexander%20Stirling%20Calder

When you click on the picture [of which i am rather fond] you should get my name along with the larger version - which is what occurs on other versions of my stuff that i am finding, but not here. Thanks for getting involved. Carptrash 20:56, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, they're definately not complying with the GFDL there, as they do not provide any credit to you. Take a look at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks and Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter as a starting point for how to approach them, hopefully someone who has approached violaters before can help you too (I never have). "The Free Dictionary" website generally has been in compliance with the GFDL, so if they are notified I'm hoping they'll correct it pretty quickly. The Free Dictionary is run by Farlex, and that website has some contact info. If you use those standard gfdl violation letters, you might want to rephrase them a bit to clarify that the images themselves are licenced under the GFDL, and use those direct links to the enlarged images as examples. Good luck with it. —siroχo 21:49, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

So; I sent the folks at Farlex my version of a violation letter and just got back a form lettr that did not really address the issue. So I emailed Steve [at least i have a name] back and tried again. We'll see what happens next. Carptrash 21:05, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

a STOP-THE-PRESSES UPDATE for those of you closely monitoring this nail biting, can't put it down, page turning drama, I just heard from Steve at Farlex who said that he could not imagine what had happened and he'd get the tech folks on it as soon as they cleared up the situation in the Middle East . . . . . . . . . or something. Stay tuned. Carptrash 00:13, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Seeking an opinion

I'm obsessed, I know. But I wanted an opinion - which format is better? Examples taken from US Congressional Delegations from Alabama (And will be used for all fifty delegation pages).

• Full table of information on passages and vacancies: [1]
• Using footnotes instead, leaving the more specific information out to be included in the individual article pages: current edit
• The original idea of including reason and date in the table cell itself: [2]

(note: the newest version has some fact fixes the older ones don't, ignore those)

The info would be kept in the individual articles, and in the pages for the congresses themselves, in order to keep things in perspective - this is a list of the Alabama delegations, not a comprehensive guide to them. Then again, if a delegation changed, it should be noted, but the question is, how much detail to note in this article alone?

Anyway, before I spent time doing this for all fifty, I wanted to get someone's opinion. The footnote idea is easier, much cleaner, but doesn't offer as much information - but perhaps it doesn't need to. I didn't like the 'original idea' because it you might end up with a 50 year term, but the resignation or death is mentioned right in the middle of the cell, 25 years in. It also makes small cells disproportionately larger. But, again, I appeal to the community for comment. Thanks! --Golbez 06:47, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Oh my god! These are so great the way they make terms and succession so visually accessible! Excellent! I like including stuff inline (the final example), because I don't have to scroll up and down to understand one period. Also, is there any good way to compress the tables vertically? -- I suspect it works best when a bigger "chunk" of the table can be seen at one point.

Sheesh, make an ol.. well, young man blush. :P I can't claim full credit; US Congressional Delegations from North Carolina was my inspiration. I just was insane enough to kick it up a notch. As for squishing them vertically, I could manually set the width of the House table much wider, so that named could be on one line, but then it would require the use of the horizontal scrollbar. I might try it, just to see how it looks, though. --Golbez 16:51, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

But these are minor quibbles: this really stitches together the histories and displays continuities and changes (like the change from representation by conservative Democrats to conservation Republicans in the South in the last 30 years, and relative state population by the number of Congressional Districts -- you can see the rise to the 1920s, then the decline -- this is freaking wonderful!). Great project, great work, wow! -- orthogonal 06:54, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I found those quite interesting, how there were Republican congresses right after the war, and then they flipped hardcore Democrat, then back to Republican in the 20th. Thanks again :) --Golbez 16:51, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Also, explain classes of Senators by reference to the US Constitution, and use "until", not "til" (I didn't make edits myself, as I don't know which version will prevail.) -- orthogonal 06:59, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

And include a key to party designation, as at Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. -- orthogonal 07:02, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Aye, I plan to; you'll note that exists already in the Senate table, but not yet in the house table. --Golbez 16:51, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Note that Golbez even aligns the table such that early resignations/deaths show up visually as cells truncated proportional to the date of departure! Truly amazing work! -- orthogonal 07:08, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Now now, don't prop me up more than I deserve... :) yes, the cells are truncated, but not in proportion to the date of departure. It's just that if three people were in a particular office in a particular congress, it reflects that. --Golbez 16:51, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

This is just an opinion on esthetics rather than detail, but my gut feeling is that the column which determines the order of the list (in this case the dates) should be placed first. Of course the majority decision should prevail whatever that decision may be. --JohnArmagh 07:17, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Makes it harder to read though, and to see how the dates line up with the officials. -- orthogonal 07:25, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree, at least as far as the senate is concerned. A state will ever only have two senators, from specific classes/blocks, and therefore it makes sense to me to have the defining column in the middle. It's also aesthetically pleasing, to me at least. :) --Golbez 16:51, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know: with there being only 3 columns in total, and with the cell borders showing, it should still be quite clear. It won't be something I will lose sleep over though. --JohnArmagh 07:38, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Heh, I should see how it looks w/o borders. ... probably not good, since the middle column would lose them too. --Golbez 16:51, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

I second orthogonal's effusive praise. Very nice work. I would prefer either footnotes or inline annotations. I found the passages table somewhat confusing--it took me a few minutes to figure out exactly what it was (i.e., it's not ALL passages or transitions, but ONLY those occuring outside of the normal election cycle). An introduction explaining that may help with that, but I think I'd still prefer either footnotes or inline annotations (with a slight preference for the latter). [[User:Bkonrad|older≠wiser]] 11:02, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The problem I had with inline is that it kind of defines a senator's entire term by how he left it. No way around that if I use inlines, but the whole point of this is to get comment from others, not me, heh. :) --Golbez 16:51, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks y'all, hope to hear more opinions! --Golbez 16:51, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

User:Michael

So how come the only way I learned he has been unbanned (experimentally) was because I was prowling thru some VfD archives for a different reason, rather than reading it here? I get more than enuf email as it is--I don't think I should have to sign up for a Wikipedia mailing list just to be an effective editor/housekeeper here. Niteowlneils 04:13, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Personally, I learned by reading the WikiEN-l archives for September. I guess Jimbo and the two mentors he posted for Michael will have everything under control. Or at least they'll have their eyes on him as to minimize damage. --Ardonik.talk() 04:27, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

The unbanning of Michael was discussed here. It was on the village pump from August 27 to September 4. It was later moved to [3]. Angela. 05:30, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

I kinda recall that discussion, but at the bottom of that discussion link, Michael still seems to be banned. I just scanned the whole article, and don't see anywhere it is stated that Michael is unbannedNiteowlneils 06:43, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

PS This is one case where I'd love to be proved wrong. There are many other issues/projects I'd rather work on, besides general housekeeping, Clarification of CSD guidelines, entertainment substub fixing, VfD nominations getting accidentally deleted, VfD nominations being unilaterly removed, researching accusations that some admins abuse their power, consolidating tiny fiction articles, making Wikipedia documentation more accessible, and many others. Niteowlneils 07:09, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I guess you mean the announcement wasn't here rather than the discussion wasn't here? The proposal was linked to before it was moved off the village pump [4]. Jimbo's email about the unbanning was put on User:Mike Garcia and User:Michael. Either of those pages, or the Wikipedia:Block log would tell you he was unbanned, but it does look like the actual unbanning was not mentioned on the pump since the unbanning. Angela. 18:30, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Press release update

The press release for 1,000,000 Wikipedia articles in all languages is in the final writing stages. If you have any comments or suggestions to add, please make them in the next 24 hours before the press release is frozen.

Also, anyone who would like to help translate the press release into other languages is welcome. We plan to start sending the press release out to media organizations on September 15. --Michael Snow 03:42, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The press release is now frozen. --Michael Snow 21:05, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category heading cut-off

Right now in some categories, like Category:Natural sciences, the lists of subcategories and articles are very short, it looks quite silly having one article under each of only a few subheading letters. Perhaps a cut-off should be set before letter subheadings are added? Something around 10 seems about right to me, a list of about 10 things is pretty easy to look over, but if it gets to be too much more, then the subheadings will make it easier to browse. I'll suggest this on sourceforge if people think it's a good idea. —siroχo 03:09, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

I think that sounds like a reasonable feature request to submit, although personally I'd rather the developers make feature changes that would help speed up 'new pages' patrol faster, and things like that, a higher priority. Niteowlneils 04:39, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

MediaWiki Server

This may not be the best place to put this, so please copy it to the correct area

Hi, I'm thinking about running a personal Wiki (for me and my friends) on a pretty old computer (about 250 Mhz, probly a 10 GB HD, etc.) -- why? Because I'm a geek and my friend's geek dad is giving it to me for free if I can find a use for it!

Anyways, I want to install Linux on it and run MediaWiki 1.3. My question is, what's the best free Linux distro for this? I'm trying to choose between Debian, Mandrake, and Fedora (but there may be a better one out there). Generally, all I need is a good secure, lightweight distro with the proper PHP, MySQL, and Apache support.

Additionally (another situation entirely), is it possible to install a MediaWiki server on my "work" (primary) computer running WinXP, so that only me and the other computer on my wireless network can see it? Would I be able to access the Wiki from the local computer running it? And would I still need Apache?

Thanks for any insight you can give me,

— Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 01:32, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It depends on whether you want to keep running Linux on that machine. If you just want a quick install, Mandrake and Fedora are good choices, as they provide a fairly easy setup. Both of them should contain up-to-date MySQL, Apache and PHP binaries, but you'll have to manually select them during or after installation. For a long-term installation, Debian's apt-get and associated configuration tools can save you a lot of pain, but the installation procedure is more involved and will take an afternoon at least if it's your first time.

Fedora is the unstable development version of Red Hat, so you may encounter some unpleasantness. Mandrake is a bit more solid.--Eloquence*

If it's between Mandrake and Fedora, I choose Mandrake. Personally, I've used both on my primary comp as a dual-boot and I just like Mandrake more. I'm right now in the process of downloading Debian to see how that works on my primary comp. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 02:18, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Any distro will work, but ideally I'd recommend you compiling the software yourself, as then you can optimise it easily. There's a guide so you won't screw up. [5] It's supposedly for Red Hat only, but it worked for me on both Mandrake and Slackware. As to your other questions, the answer to the first question is no. The second, yes, and the third, yes. Johnleemk | Talk 11:34, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If you're reeeeeeally into compiling software yourself, then you might find Gentoo Linux interesting. It builds your entire environment from source, and optimizes it for your hardware based on compiler flags that you specify. However, on a 250MHz system, it can take days (literally) just to get a rudimentary system running. - jredmond 21:05, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sissy. "Portage," hah! Real men install Linux From Scratch. --Ardonik.talk() 21:11, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Lol... — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 23:42, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

On a server that slow, you would get much better performance from FreeBSD. Though I wouldn't use the 5.x branch on a production system yet.

Darrien 00:44, 2004 Sep 8 (UTC)

I thought FreeBSD was dying. Seriously, though, I've run a large mediawiki installation (several gigs) with a decent amount of traffic (10,000 or so hits/day) on a 400Mhz Celeron running Linux from Scratch. My CPU averages about 15%. So I wouldn't worry too much about performance. Mediawiki's bottleneck is in the disk seeks. anthony (see warning) 01:55, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As I've often wryly said, MediaWiki doesn't have a bottleneck, it's not a bottle. It's a complex application. On the live site, most requests are filled without any disk activity. We have a lot more hardware dedicated to providing CPU than to providing fast disk storage. If you are observing a large amount of disk seek activity, you might want to try upgrading your RAM, and enabling the various kinds of application-level caching. -- Tim Starling 03:24, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Lists of missing actor articles

If anyone wants to participate in a pro-active approach to the "B-movie Bandit" problem (or to help Wikipedia's entertainment coverage for any other reason), I've Wiki-linked a list of actors, to make it easy to see which are missing articles, linked from my user page at: User:Niteowlneils#Actor_lists. Every red-link that gets an article gives one less 'invitation' to the bandit. There's some red-links for movies and TV series, as well. (FWIW, we seem to have better coverage of rock/pop musical artists--only three red-links at User:Niteowlneils/music.)

Seems kinda sad that we have an article for Yahoo Serious, but not Clayton Moore; also articles for Seska, Tuvok, Neelix, and Harry Kim, but not Martha Hackett, Tim Russ, Ethan Phillips, or Garrett Wang. Niteowlneils 00:50, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think it would be useful to check these against the various "proper" lists articles for actors: List of male movie actors, List of female movie actors (A-K) and List of female movie actors (L-Z), List of male theater actors and List of female theater actors, List of male television actors, List of female television actors. If someone is significant enough to write about, then they should really be in one of these articles.

Newbie questions

Just joined a few minutes ago. Been reading Wikipedia for a few months. I'm generally enthusiastic about what I see (some great articles and writing!).

Questions:

1. Any objections if I start by adding to the USB (Universal Serial Bus) article(s)? I'd like to add text about the Cypress EZ-USB chips, especially their ReNumeration feature. I think this has wider interest than just USB, because it gives a good example of how Windows selects the correct driver, etc. My level of expertise is high in this area.

2. Edit wars appear to be a royal pain. Is there someway to lock down a page so that it can be edited after a discussion with the original author? If that's not possible, any tips on avoiding editing wars? (Then again, it's not likely that contributors will have strong opinions about ReNumeration, compared to an article like Circumcision, hence they're not likely to want to edit 'my' article.)

Thanks, --Geek84 21:42, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

1. Be bold in Editing

2. Pages can be locked by sysops until the dispute can be resolved by all parties in the edit war.

(Oh, and welcome to wikipedia! 21:46, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC))

--Darksun 21:46, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Darksun's right on all points.

1. By all means, go ahead and edit the page! I'm glad we have an expert.
2. See Wikipedia:Dispute resolution and Wikipedia:Requests for page protection.
3. Welcome to the wikipedia. :-)

• Benc • 21:52, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

3. I remember there was a link on every wikipedia page to get an "optimized for printing" version. Is this feature still available? If yes, how? If no, why not? I looked over the help pages and faq, searched on google, but didn't found any information on this. --aku

I believe that this is now available through the magic of CSS - when you send a page to the printer, a modern browser will automatically apply the appropriate formatting. --AlexG 23:01, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, thanks to CSS maintaining two versions of a page: one for viewing and one for printing, is no longer necessary and is generally considered poor web design. If you print a Wikipedia article you will see that it's formatted completely differently from its appearance on the screen. Links aren't underlined because they're fairly irrelevant to a printed article, and things like "edit this page" disappear. The wonders of technology! — Trilobite (Talk) 23:25, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Removing visible editor instruction notes

(copied from User talk:Bobblewik) Hi Bobblewick- may I ask why you are removing visible user instruction messages from pages like List of musicians in the first wave of punk music etc? As a person who spent lots of time and sore fingers alphabeticising some of these otherwise totally randomly ordered lists I think it's better that editors are reminded to insert their new contributions in the correct place rather than just stuck on the end of what is already there. Maybe there is a policy on this now that I missed (I used to be very active but only dip in now and again these days), but I'll post this message to village pump as well in case anyone else wants to discuss quercus robur 19:29, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've restored the suggested format comment, but as an HTML comment, which is the standard way to leave comments for future editors of the article--editors see the text, but general readers don't know it's there. Niteowlneils 19:57, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That's what should usually be done. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 21:32, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This issue is in the Manual of Style. Making instructions to editors invisible to readers is not a criticism of the hard work required to sort a list. I have also resorted lists and I know how the effort involved, so I appreciate what you have done. The topic was raised on the Manual of Style talk page recently, contributions are welcome there. Bobblewik  (talk) 22:23, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

GFDL Question

I was reading about the GNU Free Documentation License and some of the arguments against using it. The section about Invariant Sections seemed particularly interesting. My understanding of it is that if a portion of a document licensed under the GFDL is labelled an Invariant Section it cannot be modified or removed from any subsequent versions of the document, i.e. it will be included, unaltered, with the document in question forever. Am I right in this interpretation or am I completely misunderstanding the license (quite possible as I am nowhere near an expert on legal issues)? Basically, I'm wondering if a vandal could post an Invariant Section to Wikipedia and therefore make it be part of the encyclopedia forever? I'm sure that can't be how it works, but thats what it sounds like to me. Where am I going wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks - biggins 19:25, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not use invariant sections, even though the GFDL allows them. As you indicate, attempts to post a supposed "invariant section" are vandalism and should be removed. In effect, the policy against invariant sections is enforced by the wiki model itself. The software does not allow anything to be written so that it may not be altered again later. --Michael Snow 03:38, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is false - since anything contributed to Wikipedia is licensed under the GFDL, and there is nothing on the submission page to prohibit invariant sections any contributor has the right to contribute anything as long as it is in compliance with the GFDL. Of course, Wikipedia could decide that the constraints placed on that material are not compatible with their use of the GFDL material and remove it from their database. 195.158.9.78 07:07, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Page production process

I'm not sure where this should go, so please direct me to the proper page if it exists...

I am thinking about how to produce a "production" quality version of Wikipedia.

So far, I am thinking that we need:

• some way of freezing or snapshotting a page as a 'release candidate';
• once a page is a release candidate, receiving contributions — issues or endorsements — as to the quality of the page;
• some controlled way of editing release candidate pages — to address issues, not to add new content;
• a promotion ladder
  • alpha/test
  • beta/unstable
  • production/publication/stable
• a group of moderators who can promote articles — to assess the contributions and determine whether a consensus exists, not to decide themselves;
• a meta-moderation system to track the moderators; and,
• way of having multiple versions of a page without going crazy.

All this is based on the equivalent process for software, but it will need to be modified to meet the specific needs of Wkipedia. m.e. 11:00, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think all pages are always beta ;) They can always be changed and usually have some way to be fixed. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 15:57, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What you're looking for is User:Jimbo Wales/Pushing To 1.0, though it seems to have stagnated a bit. Based on Jimbo's recent talk in London, it seems like he's planning to put together a fairly fully-worked out process to do everything you're talking about, and then opening it up for discussion again. --195.11.216.59 16:05, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Several such ideas have been floated: see m:Article validation, m:Anonymous users should not be allowed to edit articles, m:Referees, m:Paper Wikipedia, m:Sifter project, User:172/History_Committee, probably some others. . . —No-One Jones 17:00, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

wikipedia rendering corrupt?

It might be my network connection but for the last hour or so the Village Pump, and sometimes other long wiki pages, are appearing mangled (and the source is corrupted, missing open tags etc) on three different browsers, both logged out and in, and under these skins:

• Cologne Blue
• Classic
• Monobook

On XP I tried Firefox 0.93, Opera 7.11 and IE 6.0 (I only these last 2 in emergencies) and there is similar corruption but in non-reproducible places.

• my page caching is disabled
• section editing via links is enabled
• I've cleared my Firefox cache
• I've closed and restarted browsers, and done control-R, Shift control-R
• I've scanned for spyware with Ad-aware

An example in the generated html from wikipedia is the TOC will be a normal list of divs and then a section of HTML source is missing:

<div class="tocline"><a href="#Need_all gas explo>all href</a>> <div clas explomunity_Input_for_a_new_WikiProject_-_Fact_and_Refer-n-Check">16></dF clTr> <t34 fer-n-Checka newine"F c Tr>

Thereafter the browser has understandable problems displaying anything coherent (Opera pops-up a corrupted message, while the others do their best).

I can workaround by using history diffs, which seem to always work. PS: now after more cache-clearing,reloading IE works, but both Opera and Firefox have persistent problems. Any advice, as I hate to use IE? -Wikibob | Talk 10:53, 2004 Sep 6 (UTC)

Is it still happening? I'm using Firefox and I haven't seen any problems. PhilHibbs 10:56, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

IE 6.0 is now working, but does not give me the focus unless I minimise overlying windows, Firefox was until just a minute ago still failing (after close and restart), but has just now rendered the whole page! Opera still complains about corruption and displays mangled pump image, but I've experienced such Opera bugs before (why I moved to Firefox). Now Firefox has problems with these:

a Talk:Beslan_hostage_crisis diff
a diff of the Pump

-Wikibob | Talk 11:14, 2004 Sep 6 (UTC)

I now believe my problem is due to my ADSL router cable connection or my ISP, as it has improved after re-inserting the LAN cable, power-down-rest-20-minutes-restart of both router and PC. I now have a lot fewer problems - not isolated to wiki as I lose occassional bytes when downloading PDFs as well. -Wikibob | Talk 12:20, 2004 Sep 6 (UTC)

The Slashdot-advertised wikipedia unreliability vandal

I suppose some of other wikipedians read Slashdot frequently as well, but for those who don't, have a look at this Slashdot article which actually just brings into the slashdot spotlight this blog entry by our own (as per the blog) wikipedia contributor working from 65.27.75.56. The user does make a point, although in a rude way (bordering on trolling) IMHO. On the other hand, currently, a lot of the Wikipedia info quality is depending on the "augment-when-challenged" principle - the contributor is supposed to provide additional references and sources etc. until convincing whoever questioned the validity of the contribution. (As opposed to requiring an article to be more mature from the start, this enables more articles to be brought in, but at the expense at spreading the background research thinner per article. If we discouraged raw articles, a lot of valuable info would have never made it to the wikipedia.) The history of such challenges and responses is visible on the history and discussion pages of each article. And, of course, as with any reference, wikipedia facts have to be taken with a grain of salt (that's the way the humanity progresses, by constantly putting under scrutiny its most authoritative fact sources, isn't it?) BACbKA 09:40, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well thats what I have being saying all the time. I hate slashdot, I hate slashsdotters. I used to be a troll there, but with the moderation sysem only giving the dumbest of slashdotters mod points they were trolling themselves! Slashdotters just ruin things. For example they are responsible for a lot of the "fancruft" by putting "articles" on individual klingon vocabluary and every obscure linux distribution out there. They treat the NPOV as the "Nerd point of view". The slashdotters are the real problem, and I suggest that if your a poor soul who read Slashdot because you think its "nerdy" I suggest you stop right now! Wikipedia is "NOT" the encylcopedia that slashdot built, its the one they ruined. Similarly, if Eugenia Loli Queru, an infamous technology critic were to write about Wikipedia, there will be World War 100 in flamewars. So, my stance is that if someone reads slashdot, they are not to be trusted. So, if you are a slashdot reader, stop reading it now, your stress levels will go down. I am here for one reason only, to create an encylcopedia using my well earned knowledge, not to play with Slashdot idiots! 82.32.35.210 10:06, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC) (posting as "anonymous coward").

So you used to troll on Slashdot, now you troll the Village Pump. Fuck off back to Slashdot, please. PhilHibbs 10:11, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

p.s. Can someone check out the accuracy of Duopenis as the other change that this IP made was vandalism. I can't check it because the subject matter is likely to get me flagged by my employer's internet filter. PhilHibbs 10:31, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Duopenis is now on VfD. You may vote on it there. Geogre 13:40, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think 5 days is quite a short timescale as well, but calling it vandalism is a little strong. PhilHibbs 10:08, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, I thought that introducing deliberately wrong facts into the Wikipedia is vandalism. I agree that this is somewhat a mild case as the user self-cleaned. BACbKA 10:20, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The articles he chose were very small traffic ones - two authors, two edits on one of them, for example. The good news is that Slashdotters are more often than not fans of Wikipedia, so they are more likely to defend the project than to mimic the same type of vandal-like exercise. Fuzheado | Talk 10:23, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

My main concern about Wikipedia is that once an incorrect artice starts getting mirrored by all the other "free encyclopedias" with "better" Google rankings, it becomes hard to find anything that isn't a Wikipedia mirror. PhilHibbs 10:54, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Does the user that prompted this discussion, 65.27.75.56, qualify for the Vandalism in progress? I mean, what is a "sustained attack" - does it have to be something at least several times a day, or does it have to be sustained users' desire that culminates in trolling every several days? BACbKA 13:35, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I am curious about this. Do we know how many people viewed the pages with the errors in? How many logged in users? Lupin 13:40, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Attempted answer: If an IP is logged in and vandalizing, no matter if it's one change or 500, that person should be listed at VIP. If the vandal has sowed seeds throughout articles, you can list on Vandalism in Progress and say, "All previous contributions need to be checked." You don't need to be an administrator to start hunting backward and reverting. I suggest that your edit summaries for reversions indicate that you're reverting vandalism. An administrator is needed for blocking a contributor, and ongoing vandalism is sufficient reason. Geogre 16:44, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

God damn, if these people don't like the Wikipedia then we'd all be better off if they simply left it alone. But no, they must perform "experiments" on our work, timing how long it takes for us to revert their inaccuracies, before they reach their "conclusions" about the Wikipedia's inaccuracy. Reading that article and watching people back up and legitimize the submitter's vandalism makes me grit my teeth. --Ardonik.talk() 17:51, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

I may be stating an unpopular opinion here, but as long as:

• this is not too pervasive
• this sticks to relatively innocuous areas
• people eventually roll back their own erroneous material if it is not detected
• peole eventually share the results when their experiments are complete

this actually seems to me like the only way one can evaluate how good we are at identifying false additions and seems like a necessary part of a QA process. While I'm not too keen on random individuals trying this on their own -- they are not readily distinguishable from vandals -- I acutally think it would be a useful controlled experiment by an identified QA group. -- Jmabel 18:11, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it would be a good exepriment, but this idiot picks the five least-read articles in all of wikipedia, and gives us a week to find it. Five articles is definately NOT quantitative evidence, which in this case would be required. All he's doing here is giving us a bad name for no good reason. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 18:13, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, at least Jimbo got a chance to comment. We only differ in that I'm feeling wikihate instead of WikiLove at the moment. Other than that, I agree with both of you. --Ardonik.talk() 18:20, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

Personally, it has been noted by the RC patrol that it is getting harder to monitor the recent changes... this "experiment" happen to pick pages that weren't so easily veriable... or so it looks like. --[[User:Allyunion|AllyUnion (Talk)]] 22:47, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've been hanging around and contributing to Wikipedia for close to 3 years now. I've come to believe strongly in its potential and its resilience. Let the detractors say (and do) what they will; I know that time will bear us out, and prove, as it always has, that Wikipedia works. -- Wapcaplet 03:22, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Image updates, thumbs

Hi, someone put a nice new Bruce Sterling photo on the article. I looked at it and found it a bit large (>500 K) and dark, thus replacing the image with a half byte size lighter version. After a browser reload, the image on the image page showed fine, but not the thumb on the article. My work-around was to create a new thumb by changing the size (200px instead of 180px, triggering the thumb generator). Is there a better way to sync thumbs with the actual images? -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 08:32, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think you just have to get the server to regenerate the page by making a no-op change, such as inserting an extra space somewhere. After a period is a good place, because that's a typographical convention anyway. PhilHibbs 10:15, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, although that is mostly the same work-around (a bit less nasty) -- ideally, a change to an image should be propagated to all articles with the image or thumbs of the image. Does anyone know if such a feature is planned? -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 16:31, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"Categories for deletion" needs admin attention

There's a growing backlog on WP:CFD; apparently, not enough admins tidy this page frequently enough. I've gone over everything in the August 19-31 range, so all a friendly admin needs to do is judge whether or not there's a clear consensus for deletion, and follow the tentative policy at the top of the page. Anything for which there's not a clear consensus can be left behind, and we'll discuss what to do with it. If there's something that needs to be emptied before deletion and the friendly cleanup admin doesn't have time to do it, leave a message on my personal talk page, and I'll write back when it's ready for deletion. Thanks! -- Beland 06:20, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Shipping Forecast

Does anyone else get an error when viewing this page?

Acegikmo1 03:23, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes,

Warning: strstr(): Empty delimiter. in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-new/includes/Parser.php on line 2183 Shipping Forecast

—siroχo 04:05, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

Works fine for me in Monobook. -- Cyrius|✎

Seems to be a Cologne Blue thing. Dysprosia 06:55, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Works in IE. TPK 10:36, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've fixed this now. The second book reference in the "Further reading" section had an incorrectly-formatted ISBN reference: (ISBN ...) was replaced by (ISBN ISBN ...), making the parser choke. Perhaps this should be reported as a MediaWiki bug, but I don't know how to do that. --AlexG 14:32, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Geneva's airport is being really really stubborn

I've been trying to move Geneva Cointrin international airport to Geneva Cointrin International Airport, but Wikipedia won't let me move it. I'm confused... all that's at the latter is a redirect. Sekicho

The redirect Geneva Cointrin International Airport had a history of more than one edit, and thus you cannot overwrite it but have to delete it first. I deleted it and moved the article -- Chris 73 Talk 20:30, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

Merci buckets! Sekicho

Templates

I noticed that all the regional templates {South Asia, North America, East Asia etc} have the caption suddenly changed from a lavender background to black. The text being dark blue makes the caption unreadable. What's going on? [[User:Nichalp|¶ ɳȉčḩåḽṗ | ✉]] 19:18, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

I changed in Template:South Asia ccf to ccccff, it is OK now.--Patrick 20:48, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Vote is now open on deleting user subpages (proposed policy)

See Wikipedia talk:deletion of user subpages#The vote. Andrewa 18:42, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Note that the vote may or may not exist when you click the link above, for reasons given under the heading "voting is bad". -- Tim Starling 01:15, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

Quite right. Tim has removed the vote. Apparently he objects to it for reasons I have yet to understand. I have no intention of reinstating it until we clear this up. See his new section Wikipedia talk:deletion of user subpages#Voting is bad for this discussion. Andrewa 03:47, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm still waiting for Tim to reply, but it seems from his comments at Wikipedia talk:deletion of user subpages#Voting is bad that one of the problems he had was my request that, as people had had two weeks to edit the proposal, the two pages and one section of a third page that contained the proposal should now be frozen for the period of the vote. He has now removed these requests from the relevant pages.

I'd welcome other comments on this. How do we hold a vote in a Wiki? Can we have a voluntary freeze (as I was suggesting), should we protect the pages (which seemed overkill to me, and we would need to develop a policy authorising it), or do we need to somehow take into account that by the end of the voting period people may be voting on a completely different proposal to what it was at the beginning of the vote? Andrewa 04:38, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Tim has now restored the vote, but not the freeze notice. I again invite votes. We'll sort the freeze business out as we go. Andrewa 09:53, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

When is a freeze not a freeze? When it's a semi-freeze! The relevant pages are now noted

This is a proposed policy, and is currently subject to a vote following a two week discussion period which closed on September 5. Please think twice about updating it now as this will make consensus more difficult to call. TIA.

or similar, with a wikilink to the vote in each case. I hope this is both effective and acceptable to all. And it's very, very wiki! Andrewa 21:16, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Please announce this on any relevant mailing lists

It's obvious that some people have missed all the notices saying that this proposal was open for discussion, so I guess others have also missed the notices saying that the vote is now open. I am not active on any relevant mailing lists, but that's another obvious place to bring it to people's attention. So if you are active on any lists where such things are discussed, please announce it there. TIA. Andrewa 00:55, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Images

When selecting an immage on the web to "save as" ususally it can only be saved in the same format itv appears e.g. "JPEG". By printing to paperport in can be converted to another format, but in the absense of paperport how can it be intructed to be saved in another format? Dainamo 16:26, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You can convert image formats easily using Photoshop or GIMP. →Raul654 17:08, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

Those two programs are excellent image editing programs. I especially recommend the GIMP, which is free and open-source. A Windows version is available here.

If you're looking for a lightweight, fast Windows program to quickly convert (not edit) images, I highly recommend IrfanView, which is also free. • Benc • 20:37, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Search strings?

Is it just me, or does the cache search seem to be broken--IE the search string doesn't get passed to the google/yahoo search boxes. Niteowlneils 14:16, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's not just IE. I'm using firefox and notice the same problem. Theresa Knott (Nate the Stork) 16:15, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I noticed the same on Firefox. Trilobite (Talk) 17:06, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Same on Mozilla 1.7.2 under Win98SE. Andrewa 18:14, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It was probably this change. The $1 got lost. Someone should ask Angela. cesarb 18:32, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I reverted my edit. I couldn't check it at the time since internal search was working, and the google/yahoo boxes don't show up then. This means it is no longer XHTML compliant though. Angela. 18:44, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

I don't think there was a need to revert, you could just have added back the $1 in the proper places. Surely the attribute being nonempty wouldn't make it non-XHTML-compliant. cesarb 23:09, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Oh, is that why the Google/Yahoo! boxes show up sometimes and not others? Personally, I think they should always show up (or at least a link to such a page). Sometimes a Google search (of Wikipedia) is just so much better... - dcljr 01:17, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Maybe i am not using it right, but it's my experience that Google searches of Wikipedia miss a lot. The internal search, when it's up, seems to be much more thorough. Can anyone explain? The Wikipedia does not work when it cannot be searched correctly Pethan 10:33, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The yahoo/google searches look thru cached pages, the other is real-time. Of the two cache searches, I actually prefer yahoo, as it seems to prioritize 'title hits' higher than 'content hits'. Niteowlneils 14:22, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I am quite sure that the google search does not find a lot of articles that are around for a long time. Try searching for "Kimswerd" and compare Google and Yahoo results. Or for "wavy blade" - Google finds flamberge and not kris, which is around for ages. I am confused and concerned Pethan 20:08, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:External search engines has some discussion on pages not appearing in Google. Angela. 18:21, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Is it an appropriate subject for a Wikipedia article?

I am the moderator of an e-mail list for former pupils of a particular school in England. We have our own website where we collect old school photographs and such-like. We are now considering writing a history of the school.

Wiki technology seems ideal for such a collaborative venture, but would it be appropriate for a Wikipedia article? It would, by its nature, appeal only to a very small number of people - a few hundred at most.

Advice please.

--Andy Lee 13:31, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If the school is notable (a large school, the first school to do something important), etc. it is usually considered as deserving of a Wikipedia article. Otherwise, the MediaWiki software is always available for download, and you can install it on your own website, and I suppose you could have a wiki for your school (which is what a few schools do actually). But don't take only my word on it, I'd wait until someone else responded (if only to confirm what I'm blathering on about ;) — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 13:57, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Why the criteria? Isn't the fact that it's an established educational institution (I assume) enough? That's the kind of thing that is clearly relevant for inclusion in an encyclopedia. We probably have hundreds of articles about schools of all sorts. Why shouldn't we include as many as possible? As is often said, this ain't paper. (Besides, at least their goal will be to create a substantive article, as others have pointed out.) - dcljr 01:09, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It depends on many factors, but I would think about two things:

1. Would the article appeal to more than a negligible amount of people?
2. Are the article's facts verifiable from another source?

If you answer yes to both questions, you're set to go, IMO. This isn't set in stone or anything, so I suggest you wait for others to weigh in as well. Johnleemk | Talk 13:59, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would say that if a decent article can be written on the subject it would be a welcome addition. People often create useless one-sentence articles for schools and other institutions, and these tend to annoy people and are liable to be deleted. If you write more than a few lines of decent prose, and maybe include a picture or two, it will almost certainly be kept, even if someone of what we call the deletionist mindset lists it on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. Wikipedia has articles on very minor things, tiny villages of less than 20 people, obscure fictional characters etc. Consensus seems to be that as Wiki is not paper there is no harm in including these things provided they aren't just nonsense articles. The MediaWiki software might be worth considering if you want to start up a collaborative project of your own with people contributing lots of photos and memories, as that doesn't belong on Wikipedia, as I'm sure you can understand. My advice is to write the article, keep a copy of it so you can put it up elsewhere on the off chance that it's deleted, and then if someone lists it on VfD wait and see what happens. I am confident though that it won't be deleted. — Trilobite (Talk) 14:57, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You should be aware of the considerable ongoing controversy here surrounding school articles. I would have to say that there's a good chance of this article becoming the subject of debate as to whether it should be kept, perhaps even a test case, and therefore some chance it would be deleted. Andrewa 18:22, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

While I understand that we are debating articles on schools releventness here, I have a feeling that the vote would not be to remove them when/if it ever comes to vote. Even if this article does end up being deleted, an admin could easily recover his data for him and he can move his venture to another location (perhaps a metawiki of his own). During the interm Wikipedia could offer the exact tool he is looking for to get this article edited. There are a lot of articles which have far less significance than a school. There are articles which have far fewer people editing/interested in them than it sounds his will be once he posts it to his page. I say "be bold", make your article, handle the problems when or if they ever arise. Cavebear42 19:11, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Schools in general are controversial. There is no general agreement about them.

It is quite possible that someone will put your school article up for "votes for deletion" and an ugly notice will appear at the top for a while. Do not panic. If what you contribute is a good history of your school; if it is at least, say, five paragraphs long; if it gives some reason why your school is worthy of an article in an encyclopedia (notable alumni, recently mentioned in the news); and if it is written so that the article is genuinely interesting—at the very least, interesting to alumni of the school—then, although it may be listed on Votes for Deletion, it has a very good chance of surviving. Some Wikipedians are "deletionists" and feel it is important to remove articles that are not "encyclopedic." Some Wikipedians are "inclusionists" and a number of them are on record as feeling that all high schools should be included; some of them systematically vote "keep" whenever a high school article comes up for deletion. Some feel that it depends on whether the high school is notable and whether or not the article is a good article. Despite the phrase "vote," articles are only deleted when there is a "rough consensus to delete," which means that it only takes a little support for an article to be kept.

So, if what you want is to contribute an article on your high school, go for it. My suggestion is: just try to make sure you have a fairly decent article before you push that "save" button for the first time. And if it comes up on Votes for Deletion, don't panic, participate in the discussion, and concentrate on improving the article rather than fighting the (sometimes obnoxiously argumentative) participants.

If you have historical photographs and are certain that they are public domain, or that the person who took them is willing to release them under the GFDL, they would be really good to put in.

As you develop the article, do not hestitate to put notes on the Talk (also called the Discussion) page for your article. Begin by saying on the Talk page that you asked about this here in the Village Pump and got advice to the effect that it would be OK as long as the article was well done. If you save a short article and you have a lot more material to put in, say something on the Talk page to that effect ("Just a start, more to come.") This sort of thing will definitely be noticed and taken into account, and you may get helpful advice on the talk page.

By the way, I am sure I speak for everyone when I say that I appreciate your asking. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 00:24, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Undoc'd Bug or Feature in Edit-Conflict handling?

(What i've written below is long; when you get bored, consider jumping back to the top of the page, and linking via the ToC to the next item.)
This edit and this one may reflect something new, if someone was testing out relevant new code late-ish Friday UTC. Or it may have been there a while (i assume since 1.3 came on line), waiting for me to get bold in my big-page editing technique.
And in either case it may be a bug ("Wow, it never occurred to me that could result.") or a feature ("Hey, anyone pushing the envelope that far deserves something just like that happening to them."). I'll rap my own knuckles in the second case. But in either case, i'd hope we could get the danger (of unexpected and unnoticed results of saves) documented somewhere that's linked from wikipedia:edit conflicts and how-to-edit articles.
I don't know which of the following practices (or what combinations of them) occasioned the outcomes of the two edits already cited, but i'm pretty sure i engaged, during that sitting, in all of them. (I was using MS IE (v 5 or 6, i think, but ask me later, if it matters).):

• Using "Open in New Window" (or, rather, the equivalent Shift-LMouseClick) to start one section edit on the page in question, and then using it again to start an edit of another section, before saving the first edit. (This operation "follows a link into the new window", leaving the old window as it was before linking.)
• Using Back to get back, in the Address pane, the URL for a section edit that has been closed by a Save, calculating the change in section numbers resulting from that Save, and editing the section number (or leaving it alone, where the old section number of the first coincides with new one of the desired other section) in order to edit a different section.
• Using File|New|Window (or, rather, the equivalent keyboard command Ctrl-N) to clone a window that displays an in-progress section-edit, and eventually doing a Save from each window. (The "cloning" creates a second window with the same URL, the same fill-ins of the form-panes, and the same Back "history" (and i suppose the same "forward history"!))

(Why would i save both clones? Don't think i set out to do that; and while i remember cloning, probably several times, only in one case do i even specifically suspect i saved both clones. The first clone (or is that called the original?) saved would be this edit and the second (the original's clone) would be one already cited: the 2nd done and 2nd cited of the edit-diffs i've cited in my first sentence of this section. Generally when i clone a window, it's either to get a new window for a search, to view a bookmarked location, etc., when i don't have a link for it that i can Open-in-New-Window via; several times in the sitting in question, it was to recover a window i wished i had Open-in-New-Window-ed from. I probably saved the "original" prematurely by hitting Enter after starting the summary for the incomplete edit, said "OK, i'll have to remember to come back and finish that when i know the page size", and (an hour later) serendipitously found i had a suitable edit for that still in progress (probably created for a purpose that i forgot to pursue). I think i realized it was a clone of one that had been saved, probably by seeing the same summary already in the page history, expected no worse outcome than an Edit Conflict screen (despite the 1st-cited unexpected result, which would have occasioned the history inspection), and proceeded to finish the edit and save.) While i don't presume i have as much insight as those who are familiar with the code, i note for developers to at least consider ruling out relevance, that one of these glitches involves adding text following section N, where replacement of section N +1 was intended (in an edit that began its life described as an edit of section N), and the other involves replacing a different section than intended, where the section numbering had also been changing.
--Jerzy(t)

So, if I understand the long explanation, you were editing a section of an article, and when you saved, the wrong section got overwritten? I believe that this is a known bug. —AlanBarrett 13:45, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

IMO, the above is worth documenting, along with the following.
It occurs to me that i left out one form of risky behavior, which may specifically apply to my approximately-doubled-section case. Whether or not it is functionally equivalent to cloning an edit window, i am unsure:

I may also have used Back to get to the pre-save state of already-saved edit, then changed it, rather than getting the second copy by the explicit cloning i described above. (In terms of how i work, that technique is more likely to explain that instance of that phenomenon.)

I also note that just now, i reached a point in editing where i said "Hey, if i save that, i bet i'll duplicate the other case." (The replacing-wrong-section one). Yup, i did. Scenario:

1. Open edit of section N.
2. Open edit of section N-M; insert one heading (presumably with or without other text); save.
3. Save the edit of section N.
4. The contents intended for section N replace section N-1, while section N remains unchanged.

The server's behavior corresponds to what you would expect if it is matching the section number mentioned in the section edit URL to the current section numbers, to decide what to replace with the new text. (If you can't work out your own recovery strategies, for the point where you notice you're on that road, i'll probably put some on a user page if someone asks for it.) --Jerzy(t) 20:17, 2004 Sep 7 (UTC)

Categories??

Is it intended that every article be in a category? The categories seem pretty disjointed and inconsistent to me, but I think it would be great if they actually made sense. How can I best help in this? Spalding 03:32, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

By putting more articles into categories, I suppose. I'd agree with you that the categories function needs some work, for sure. Rhymeless 03:39, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Go to Wikipedia:categorization to see the guidelines, and discuss those parts you'd like to see changed at Wikipedia talk:Categorization. --Ardonik.talk() 04:15, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

It's all very confusing, but here are a few pointers:

• Wikipedia:Categorization seems to be the best place for broad issues about how things should be categorised. At present on Wikipedia talk:Categorization, we are trying to come up with a better name for "Category:Fundamental".
• Wikipedia:Categorization projects (current) seems to be for organising projects to place articles into categories.
• Wikipedia:Browse by category is supposed to be a useful set of links to categories. That page is not much more than a wrapper around Template:Categories.
• Putting existing un-categorised articles into existing non-controversial categories is easy. Just add [[Category:Whatever]] at the bottom of the article.
• To link to a category's intro page, use [[:Category:Whatever]]. The extra ":" at the beginning means this is just a link; I don't want to put my article into that category.

—AlanBarrett 09:50, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

OK, I'm trying to put article List of radio stations into Category "Reference>Lists" and then other subcategories into what should be the new category List of radio stations. But what I really need to do is create a new category with that name, correct? I added the Category markup to the bottom of the article. But it will still be an article and not a category, correct? The instructions for categories show some scripts, (that maybe will make things (articles) a category?), but I have no idea how to run them or if I even can or should. I'm in over my head - any ideas?

My intention was to make it match television stations, with a subcategory named List of radio stations, and under it would be things like Lists of radio stations in North and Central America, etc. But wouldn't that require deleting the article List of radio stations that is basically functioning as a category? I'm getting too confused here. Spalding 11:31, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

Here are several suggestions:

1. Put the article "List of radio stations" into Category:Lists that should be categories. Just edit the article to do that.
2. Create Category:Radio stations. Just click on the red link, write an introduction, make it a member of one or more suitable parent categories, and save. (That category already exists.)
3. Create suitable categories for "Radio stations in <name of country>", and make them members of Category:Radio stations.
4. Add all the radio station articles to the appropriate category.
5. Eventually, after everything is neatly categorised, think about deleting List of radio stations.

—AlanBarrett 12:13, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hm .. I just "suggested" replacing Category:Lists, Category:Radio and Category:Reference with Category:Lists of radio stations as there is a series of those (many, unlikely for all to have or get articles). -- User:Docu

Yes, that makes sense. —AlanBarrett 13:30, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I put the article "List of radio stations" into Category:Lists that should be categories, but it doesn't look correct. The text shown when editing is less than the article - the second section doesn't show. Does that get processed every so often? Spalding 12:43, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

To add an article to a category, you edit the article; you do not edit the category's intro page. The effect is instant; there's no periodic processing. In this case, you should have added [[Category:Lists that should be categories]] at the bottom of List of radio stations, and not edited Category:Lists that should be categories at all. I have fixed it up for you. —AlanBarrett 13:30, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I generally disagree with the idea that categories supplant/replace lists. Lists can have red links, inviting new articles, categories can't. The only exception I can think of is lists that are known to be 100% complete. Niteowlneils 14:13, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That's a good point, Niteowlneils. So what do you suggest in this case? I have a headache from this, so I think I'll stay out of categories until I get some more experience here. But how should we resolve this radio one for now? What should be done with the individual items in that list? Should they be in that new category, should they be subcategories of it as I originally intended? Or just left with no category and the one I did change for Asia be removed from its category? Is my assumption that every article should be in at least one category valid? Or is it too picky? Spalding 16:28, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

Categories can have a list of unwritten articles. Just edit the category page and put it there.--Eloquence*

Also, Lists can give a little information for each entry (like List of web comics), whereas a category can't. I think its fine to have both in many cases. —siroχo 04:14, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

Is Hurricane Frances threatening Wikipedia?

The Wikipedia servers are located in Florida; is Hurricane Frances threatening Wikipedia? --Gary D 02:09, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

Frances is expected to strike Tampa as a tropical storm. It's possible flooding could temporarily damage Wikipedia's network connections, but it's not nearly the concern Charley was. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:15, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

And since Charley ended up doing zilch to Wikipedia, I think we're all right. Besides, Wikipedia is mirrored and backed up at so many locations that the only way to wipe it out would be with a planet-destroying cataclysm. --Slowking Man 03:28, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

Hope you all don't mind if I weigh in. I'm coming in from my father's computer, which I've connected via AC power. I'm here in Orlando and seeing the potential path, it will be moving south of here, yet curve north. The only thing that affects Tampa is likely intense rain and wind, as that is what would be what I'm getting in here up north of the path, and is likely to get down south. Sean 03:31, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Charley did zilch largely because it missed Tampa. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:40, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

the only way to wipe it out would be with a planet-destroying cataclysm -- please don't tempt fate like that. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 03:52, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm with you. Chills ran up my spine when I read that. Cavebear42 18:59, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Psh, it wouldn't dare. Frances doesn't want a bad write-up. ;) Rhymeless 03:39, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You mean Hurricane Frances? -- Cyrius|✎ 03:40, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Increasing exposure to sister projects

Moved to Wikipedia:Sister projects and talk page.

Votes for Deletion revisited

There's a discussion ongoing at Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion re: a proposal to look at alternate possibilities to VfD. Please visit - it'd be nice to get the views of non-VfD'ers. zoney ▓   ▒ talk 21:12, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There's also a flame war occuring on wikien-l, if you'd like to contribute to that. </tongueincheek> --Slowking Man 03:26, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

C'est quoi? What's wikien-l when it's at home? zoney ▓   ▒ talk 09:11, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Hallowed Mailing List, Fount Of All Policy From Which Commandments Issueth Forth. Trilobite (Talk) 10:20, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

See subscribing to wikien-l, wikien-l archives, and meta:mailing lists. Angela. 19:25, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Side-by-side diffs too wide

Side-by-side diffs can get very wide when the article contains long (very long) character sequences without whitespace. See Beslan hostage crisis's diff for an example of the problem (I tried to 'quarrantine' the long lines in one place). Bugzilla's Bug List for diffs lists no bugs open or closed that mentions this, so I suppose I should report it, but before I do is there maybe a preference or setting that affects the window width of diffs? A quick look at my Preferences (I use Classic Skin) did not help. Cheers -Wikibob | Talk 19:42, 2004 Sep 4 (UTC)

Well, a problem would be that you'd have to break character strings apart at un-natural points to do so, which would be... annoying, as then the diffs would be inaccurate and unclear and all that.

James F. (talk) 21:58, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The only thing I know is reducing the character size in the browser settings. Line wrapping within very long "words" (wider than half of the screen) would be good, or two frames with horizontal scrolling for each, but only for the lines with the long words--Patrick 22:02, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC).

Worth adding or unencyclopedic nonsense?

Discussion moved to Talk:Does exactly what it says on the tin

Improving articles

It seems to me that currently, the easiest way to improve an article is either to:

1. List it on VfD (only if the article is subpar), or
2. List it on FAC (but then it's likely you'll merely get suggestions, but still...).

There's an obvious lack of usage in Wikipedia:Peer review. There are lots of unfulfilled requests that probably would get a lot of constructive criticism if they were on FAC instead, especially if they are almost featured-level. Now, how can we address this? If we could get a larger audience for peer review, we could easily have better articles without misusing other pages. How do we publicise peer review? Johnleemk | Talk 14:08, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The thing about VfD and FAC is that there is a time limit and an end outcome that adds to a sense of urgency. With peer review there's all the time in the world. We can get around to later, it's not going anywhere. (I don't know what we can do about this). Theresa Knott (Nate the Stork) 15:47, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Johnleemk, you've hit the nail on the head. Wikipedia:Peer review is plagued by several major problems:

1. Limited scope: it exists primarily to make good articles better.
2. Traffic: too many listings for too few peer reviewers.
3. Competition: to name a few, there's Wikipedia:To-do list, Wikipedia:WikiProject, and Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week. This isn't necessarily a bad thing — but an average user wanting to improve an article has a huge array of choices, and peer review is not likely to be the first choice.

To address the last of these concerns, I recently created Wikipedia:Guide to improving articles (previously known as Wikipedia:Life cycle of the ideal article). I've asked for feedback, and so far no one's said it's a bad idea. To help publicize peer review (and other article improvement mechanisms), I'm shamelessly suggesting listing Wikipedia:Guide to improving articles more prominently on Wikipedia:Community portal and other pages. :-) • Benc • 00:33, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Let's not forget Pages needing attention and Cleanup. There are clearly far too many places on Wikipedia to list articles that need work. Who can tell the functional difference between a PNA listing and a PR listing? The end result is apathy due to bureaucracy. Rhobite 05:53, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

clean up Swanscombe!

Discussion moved to Talk:Swanscombe

Chilef Wikipedia

(moved from Chilef)

Chilef is: Chile plus Lef (that means fast in mapudungun, like wiki in its language).

We want to create a meta-site for coordinate the Free Encyclopedia of Chile with all the knowledge that the same people of chile can give, and of course the links and the articles provides by the net.

We have the computers for support it working and want to share a subdomain with you.

This is a computing proyect of the UTFSM (http://www.utfsm.cl) for the Information Systems of this University.

UTFSM - Tecnical University Federico Santa Maria

--Rvera 07:22, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm missing something here, I think. Why not just participate in the Spanish-language Wikipedia? -- Jmabel 20:05, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

Timeouts on editing articles

I am getting timeouts on some articles, for example I tried several times to add the interwiki [[pt:Tipitaka]] to Tripitaka, but no matter how often I try to hit "save" nothing happens (and the same on portugese for the backlink). I also cannot upload a file anymore tonight. But strangely other articles work fine, like (obviously) this one. Anyone have the slightest idea what is happening? Database hickup? andy 21:23, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

And once I write about it that article works. But there is something odd going on. andy 21:24, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You obviously missed the installation of the new intelligent servers that have a sense of humour (a highly sadistic one albeit, but that's a minor bug/feature). ;) — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 21:27, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What's next - elevators who want to argue with me? :-) andy 21:56, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"Third floor" "No, you don't want to go there" "what do you mean?" "I mean, The third floor is bad" "THAT'S WHERE I'M GOING" "no you aren't" *guy leaves elevator* "It's been a pleasure serving you, sir." — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:02, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Another odd thing - articles like [[Athens Township%2C Bradford County%2C PA]] show up on recent changes. Yet the %2C is automagically changed into the comma, but that's a different article in the database (which does not exist yet). andy 21:56, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Pilot Error. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:02, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've seen this too, I saw a few articles go by with %28 band %29 the chars for ( and ) but then when i clicked on them, it showed no article created as that what it checked for was the ( and not the true name of the article which was %28. If this is what i think it is, this is big and there is gonna require fixin if its not addressed soon. Cavebear42 22:53, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC) heres an example [[Dune_%2528fan_fiction%2529]] Cavebear42 23:04, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

fixed before my very eyes. Cavebear42 23:11, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As this problem is still existing, and I haven't read any developers word on it, I now commited a bug to bugzilla: [6] andy 11:01, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The "Edit Conflict" screen

If you are like me and you really really hate the "Edit Conflict" screen, please take a look at meta:Edit conflict handling suggestion. Thank you.

VfD Madness

When should a page be delisted from Vfd? Who should be allowed to delist it? What is VfD for? Should we suspend it altogether?

Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#VfD Madness and Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion#Proposal - suspension of VfD.

Category:Move to Wiktionary

Does anyone actively monitor Category:Move to Wiktionary and actaully move those articles to Wiktionary? There probably is someone, but there are over 100 articles there. Kevin Rector 17:46, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

links to commercial sites

I've just removed a link to an Amazon.co.uk page from Friends for the second time. Though it contains numerous quotes from the series I don't think that linking to a primarily commercial site is a good idea, so instead I've put a link to the (very poor) article at wikiquote. Having briefly looked around I've not found any mention of the policy regarding linking to commercial sites – is there one and is it right not to include this link? violet/riga (t) 10:29, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Why not suck some of the quotes off that page onto the Wikiquote page? --Phil | Talk 10:53, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah that's what I suggested on Talk:Friends – hopefully someone will help the wikiquote article at some point. violet/riga (t) 13:22, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't think there's a major policy including links to commercial sites, but that one was probably not appropriate. Check out Wikipedia:External links/temp for a revision to policy that I and some others have been working on slowly. I just added a point about not linking to sites selling things. —siroχo 17:34, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

It's likely a "referral" link; the beneficiary will receive commission if someone buys something from that link. Why else would it be there? [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 22:07, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

Template help

Discussion moved to Template talk:Nuremberg Trial judges

jpgs in Internet Explorer

Discussion moved to Talk:Internet Explorer

NPOV resources

discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view

Summarised sections

The links below indicate the page to which the relevant discussion has been moved.

• Front Page -> Main Page
• Logo changing for no reason. Use MediaZilla: for bug reports.
• War over circumcision -> Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Robert Brookes
• Voting begins on Wikipedia:Administrators/Administrator Accountability Policy
• Protest to universal addition of metric measurements to US topic articles --> Wikipedia:Measurements Debate#Protest to universal addition of metric measurements to US topic articles
• A template box for games? See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer and Video Games#Project template
• Capitalisation of 'I' in Internet and 'W' on World Wide Web. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Capitalisation_of_.27I.27_in_Internet_and_.27W.27_on_World_Wide_Web
• Consistent spelling. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Consistent spelling
• List of first names. Talk:List of first names
• Wikipedia:Life cycle of the ideal article
• Slot: Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Policy proposal for dicdefs: soft redirects
• List_of_people_by_name:_Se. Complaints about years being linked
• Copyright Permission. Unanswered question moved to Wikipedia talk:Boilerplate request for permission
• New template: {{Deletiontools}}
• Wikipedia average? Template talk:Attention
• Images from other Wikipedias -> User talk:PhilHibbs
• Community Input for a new WikiProject Fact and Reference Check
• Cut & paste move. Lolium/ryegrass fixed.
• Episode template. See Template talk:Infobox Episode, template:Infobox Season, Template:Infobox episode list
• Improper block. RfC
• Recklessness. Be bold... but don't be reckless
• Main Page Category browsebar. Category talk:Fundamental
• about natural gas exploration. Wikipedia:Reference desk
• Call to linguists. Talk:Acronym
• Front Page -> Talk:Main Page
• A template box for games? See Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer and Video Games
• Capitalisation of 'I' in Internet and 'W' on World Wide Web. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style
• Consistent spelling. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style
• Hiding the "edit" link for sections. Use __NOEDITSECTION__. Other comments moved to Wikipedia talk:Peer review
• Illegal blocking by Guanaco. RfC (deleted)

Liquid Democracy

I just noticed that the long-standing Liquid Democracy article (linked to from several other articles) was recently speedy-deleted when it should have gone through the VfD process. This article needs to be restored and an appropriate discussion commenced in VfD. -- Stevietheman 15:26, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• It was deleted through VfD process. See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Liquid Organization. Also, the right place for undeletion requests is Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion. Andris 15:46, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

• Also see [

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion&oldid=5535996#Liquid_Democracy_--_Add_to_this_discussion] Theresa Knott (Nate the Stork) 15:51, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

OK, that's cool. Since the overwhelming vote was for Delete, and I don't feel any special attachment to the article, I won't fight it. I just wanted to bring this up for the sake of fairness. -- Stevietheman 16:00, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Need a bit of admin help

Could an admin exchange the pages at Vuelta a España and Vuelta a Espana so that the article text is in the former with the redirect in the latter, while keeping the page history intact? Thanks, [[User:Mike Jones|Mike J. (talky)]] 05:07, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Done. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:50, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Read only time

The site will be read only or, unlikely, unavailable, for about 5-15 minutes during the next quiet time, between 23:00 and 06:00 UTC. Changes to the database server which may improve speed at busy times are being made. You can see the quiet times here http://wikimedia.org/stats/live/ . RAM on Ariel is being reallocated from search (which uses MyISAM) to general queries (which use InnoDB). A dedicated search server and storage server are expected to be installed on Friday and to become available for service a few days later. Jamesday 18:18, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The site will be read only for 5-15 minutes at the 30 minutes after the hour time immediately following the timestamp of this message, 01:30 US Eastern. Jamesday 05:26, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Completed. Jamesday 05:47, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

research instrument destroying the research object

--213.216.223.13 16:30, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)george@nic.fi I' ve heard about a paradox that if we study very small of difficult particulars of "things", they are so delicate that the instrument meant to study them destroy them. Where can I find more information on this issue?

Yours, cordially Yrjö Mikkonen, Oulu, Finland george@nic.fi

Perhaps Uncertainty principle - stating that the act of measuring changes the condition of the thing being measured? -- Netoholic @ 16:49, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Precedents

I was going to list this on VfD, but to avoid the accusation that I am somehow "trolling" I'll bring it up here first. This page is completely useless. It tries to make broad reaching precedents based on single examples with a small number of voters. This fallacious reasoning (proof by a single example) takes a decision such as to keep Affectional orientation, which had 1430 google hits, and attempts to say that this creates a precedent that "article[s] with 1430 Google hits merit inclusion". I modified this to at least at the word "could", indicating that not all articles with 1430 Google hits merit inclusion, but that makes this example rather useless as a precedent. Further, as the number of VfD entries increases, the breadth of opinion on a single VfD article becomes very thin. The proper way to set such precedents, if anything, is to take the broader issue (does a certain number of google hits merit inclusion) and discuss it directly.

I think this page should be deleted. If not it needs to be seriously reworked. anthony (see warning) 14:30, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There is no need for precedent in wikipedia deletion policy, each article should be judged based on its own merit. Darksun 14:41, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Certainly not in current Wikipedia deletion policy, in which the actual reasons for the decision are rarely articulated. Even if this part of the policy were fixed, I'm not sure we should have precedent set in a situation where a quorum of 50% of eligible voters is not reached. There are just far too few votes in a typical VfD vote to be binding on future decisions of Wikipedia in any way. anthony (see warning) 14:51, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I hate the Google test! Here's an article whose subject had 2 Google hits at the time it was written, but who clearly merited inclusion. She now has 347, thanks mainly to the Wikipedia entry! A lot of knowledge resides off the Internet, even still and using Google hits as a measure of worth is just not always valid. That's that off my chest. Filiocht 14:47, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Google test works in most cases, but not all. It should be applied in conjunction with other reasons for deletion, but should never be used as a stand-alone reason for deleting. Johnleemk | Talk 16:30, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hear! Hear! One of Wikipedia's strengths is that we have contributors with expertise in subjects not yet well covered on the World Wide Web, if they are covered at all. Naturally, some articles they write will fail the Google test.

I've been thinking for some time that we need to provide some more help for people making their first listing on VfD. This is one thing it should point out. Another possibility is a gentle suggestion that it's good to list only one article per week for your first few attempts. Some newcomers list several articles only to see them all fail to get consensus and there is ill feeling generated all around. Andrewa 20:59, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That page should have a note in the lead paragraph indicating that none of the precedents are generally considered binding just because they are precedents, especially as arguments given in discussion for retention or deletion do not necessarily reflect all or even any of the reasoning used by other individuals in casting their votes. Something like that should neutralize it. However, since no-one ever seems to cite this particular page on VfD, it seems actually quite neutralized and harmless as it is. It is not unhelpful to have a compendium of old discussions. The Google example cited by Anthony is indeed rather strange since I know there have been a number of retentions with less hits. Another one, besides the one Filiocht mentioned, had only 11 Google hits and is discussed at [7]. Google tests are usually reasonably evaluated by commentators. Most people can see when apples are being compared to oranges and when relative Google hits are very relevant and when they don't matter very much. Jallan 18:14, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I created this page and I do think it is important to recognize that VfD largely operates on precedent, whether you like it or not. For instance this time last year about every second VfD nomination was a list of obscure trivia, the first such being List of songs whose title does not appear in the lyrics. After several close votes it was determined that such lists are encyclopedic. Today these lists are an accepted part of Wikipedia, pages like list of films by gory death scene rarely appear on VfD. When they do the votes are overwhelmingly to keep, with even RickK supporting their inclusion (e.g. Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of song titles phrased as questions). This policy on list of trivia is nowhere written down, but is based on the long debates of a year ago. Similar consensuses have developed for 9/11 victims, misspelled redirects, surnames, towns with under ten people and many other areas. In the future I am certain that similar unwritten rules concerning high schools, micronations and conlangs will evolve. The vast majority of these precedents are only recorded in the memory of longtime users. This helps make VfD accessible to only a minority of experienced Wikipedians. VfD Precedents is an attempt to preserve early and trend setting debates that clearly affect a whole class of articles so that these precedent setting cases can be easily found and read by those without a long history of reading VfD. - SimonP 20:13, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

I've just looked at this article and I think the information in it is quite useful. Paul August 21:37, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

I think it has potential. So far, the selection of cases is too much the work of one person, but I think that it would be useful to build up a body of "case law" to complement our equivalent of "statute law". -- Jmabel 22:56, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

The concept of "case law" doesn't extend well to situations where 4 or 5 of the 100,000 interested persons express their opinion on a matter. At the most a VfD vote should set a precedent for a single article. To require someone interested in voting on a broad issue to vote on hundreds of individual articles is ludicrous. anthony (see warning) 15:04, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Small numbers of people voting is exactly how case law works. In the real world one, or at most a handful, of judges makes a decision that affects every subsequent decision. - SimonP 17:24, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

The problem isn't the small numbers of voters. The problem is the miniscule number of voters compared to the number of eligible voters. To bring the analogy to the "real world" you would have to have panels of unpaid self-appointed judges deciding whatever cases they feel like. When John's five friends decide that John was only doing 75 in a 55 and doesn't deserve a ticket that would then be a precedent when Mary does 72 and five friends of the cops show up to judge the case. anthony (see warning) 01:42, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Bogus. The real world of VfD is a free vote outside of any case law. There is no case law here. A legislative body or corporate board of directors is similarly not bound by past decisions except insofar as individuals knowingly allow themselves to bound and to the extent that previous practice may weigh with individual voters. But the body may choose to totally reverse themselves or to be inconsistant with past practice, may vote for something unprecedented. No vote by itself establishes a precedent that must later be followed unless that is what the vote is about. And even then such a rule can be reversed. I see what Anthony is getting at. It looks like a single sysop is setting up rules which gives him an excuse to ignore consensus if consensus doesn't agree with the particular rules he (but not necessarily anyone else) thinks are binding, to attempt to claim that some results of consenus would be illegal and therefore should be ignored. But I am aware of no policy that voters on VfD or elsewhere in Wikipedia cannot vote against past precedent and no policy that if consensus is against any supposed past precedent, a resulting consensus can be overruled on those grounds alone. If suddenly all articles on minor individual fictional characters in any book or television show or comic book and so forth were accepted on VfD when submitted, regardless of how trivial that character was, that does not mean that a year from now, having seen the results of that, one might not find almost all articles of that kind being rejected regardless of what was being done in the previous year, and that many of the same articles that had been accepted placed again on VfD and rejected. People change their minds. Organizations change their group minds. Precedents on VfD may be cited as argument one way or the other, but they aren't law. Jallan 22:02, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Absolutely. Case law evloves over time, and we have no equivalent of a Supreme Court. But it is very useful to track things like this over time and see if we can identify a consensus over time on certain issues. Like the records of trial courts, it will show many conflicting decisions, but over time it will presumably help us evolve toward consensus policies. If, for example, we can see that certain types of things always get deleted, we may have a new criterion to add to what may be speedy-deleted. -- Jmabel 01:56, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

I guess the page is worth keeping, as a number of people find it useful. It still needs to be cleaned up, though. Right now it seems like a dump of random VfD entries. Is there any reason the votes need to be listed on the page? This page should have more original text and less copy/paste. anthony (see warning) 00:42, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Military equipment namign convention

Is there cutrrently any convention on which of the many names of various bits of military equipment to use?

For instance we currently have a page on 88mm gun referring to the family of models of that cailbre used by Germany in World War II. However, Anti-aircraft lists the same things as [[8.8 cm Flak 18]].

Is there or should there be a policy on which of various alternative names to use and help stop different contributors missing one anothers' work with slightly different names?

Just £0.02.

Good question. I noticed that anomaly and would be interested in clearing it up. The convention today is certainly to use mm rather than cm. For example, see 30 mm (note the recommended space between the digits and the unit symbol). There are examples of people at the time talking about 'eighty eights'. It is possible that cm values were valid in some way in the past. It might even be that both terms were in parallel use. A brief Google frequency search does not have a persuasive majority for either. I use mm by default unless there is a strong case for cm. Bobblewik  (talk) 10:55, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I added a redirect to the current article title. Rmhermen 13:06, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

What the (help w/ recovering article)

I trie to move What the Bleep Do We Know?! to its proper title (What the #$*! Do We Know!?), but I guess the software couldn't handle the #. And so it "seemed" to move to What the, but as you can see there is nothing there. What the Bleep Do We Know?! has since been "restored" but only by an apparent copy paste from someone who had saved it. IE, the history is gone, and there is no record of deletion since it was intended to be a move. Anyone have any ideas on getting the history back? (I'm going to report the bug on sourceforge bugzilla right now) —siroχo 04:14, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

It's being worked on. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:42, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Gender neutral pronouns

User:Vapier is going around changing instances of "he or she" to "he" with edit summaries of the gender neutral form in English is "he". This is something that is somewhat controversial, so I was surprised to find nothing in the Manual of Style discussing this. Is there anywhere where what we do in this case has been discussed? —Morven 04:39, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

I'm going to make a prediction that not enough people would agree with Vapier's changes for consensus within the WP community, so she or he shouldn't be doing it. func(talk) 04:46, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I am OK with either "he" or "he or she" -- but I reserve the right to chop off the fingers of anyone using singular-they or (shudder) sie/hir ;) →Raul654 05:00, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

It's "he" or, if you want to be PC about it, "they". Simple enough. :-)

James F. (talk) 05:16, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Holy Prepuce

On the main page, why does the Holy Prepuce look like the planet Saturn? func(talk) 15:16, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Cleaning up a cut-and-paste move

Hi, even though I'm an admin, I have no idea how to fix this: someone did a cut-and-paste move that left the history of International Labour Organization at International Labor Organization. The former is apparently the correct name of the group, so it's where things should presumably end up. I'd also appreciate knowing:

• could I somehow have fixed this myself?
• if not, where would have been the most appropriate place to request the fix?

Jmabel 19:01, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

(As you apparently suspected, in this case it does require an admin.)

Have you read Wikipedia:How to fix cut and paste moves?

That section's "A troublesome case" section seems to apply here; however, IMO that section makes too strong a statement. (I think i should add a description of my solution to the problem it refers to, whose results you can see at Talk:Ernst Herrera Legorreta.)

--Jerzy(t) 20:17, 2004 Sep 8 (UTC)

Thanks. Done. -- Jmabel 21:44, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Hurricane Ivan

Is Wikipedia set up to deal with Ivan the Terrible (now a Cat 5 blow)? I know we'd all hate to see all our work blown away (of course we're also all concerned about everyone down there too). Anyone know? — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:00, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

After Charley and Frances, do you really think a hurricane will destroy Wikipedia? Maybe Tampa's other Web servers are more prepared than Wikipedia's? [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 19:33, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

Charley missed Tampa completely and Frances was a tropical storm by the time it hit us. If Ivan hits it'll be a lot worse than either. But that's a big if. At this point there's something like a 300 mile margin of error on each side of us.

Either way the server is housed in a colocation facility which in theory should be able to withstand Ivan. Better safe than sorry, of course. We should have some sort of offsite backup, even if it's just getting someone to download the backup files. I'd volunteer, but I live in Tampa :). anthony (see warning) 01:22, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Backups and Contingency plans are being made. Angela. 02:32, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

In case anyone hasn't been watching, Ivan is now about 50/50 to hit the Florida panhandle and is very unlikely to hit Tampa. anthony (see warning) 14:11, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, I suppose one could ask Google or check the Internet Archive... --AllyUnion 00:03, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Need help with tables

Can someone adjust the width of the table at Caprivi? Thanks. :) [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 17:16, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

User:Goplat shrunk it some. A >br< after 'south african' (in the Time Zone row) would bring it down some more--not sure why the lower flag isn't centering properly. Niteowlneils 17:54, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have re-written it wiki-style. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 18:21, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC) See my user page for demo code. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 18:28, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Aaah!

I was on Special:Recent changes, saw ice cube go by and thought I'd put in a request on Wikipedia:Image requests. While there, I noticed a request for Diplomacy (game), which I own, so I stopped by. They already had their picture, but I read the article and noted that it was the favorite game of Henry Kissinger and John F. Kennedy, so I read Kissinger's article, wondering if the two might have played. While I was there, I thought, I might as well add a few links...

Wikipedia 1, Psych homework 0.

[[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:36, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

Maybe you need to make a date at the Wikipediholics Anonymous? :-) andy 19:17, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Slow Wikipedia

I've noticed wikipedia is very slow today, it's taking 5 minutes to load articles and pages in some cases. Are there any technical problems, something going on with the servers, or is it just heavy useage? Am I the only one being affected by this? Darksun 13:14, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You're not the only one: Wikipedia is extremely slow for me. [[User:Anárion|File:Anarion.png]] 13:19, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Same here. Filiocht 13:37, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I could be wrong, but could it be the fact that mySQL can't handle it all quick enough? I've heard postgreSQL is a lot faster. --AllyUnion 00:01, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ordnance Survey maps

If we go to http://www.getamap.co.uk we can under their licence, we can have a maximum of 10 images of OS maps. I propose that we locate examples of such maps, illustrating at different scales, and upload them.

Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.

I then propose to add the following:

Note under this licence, we are limited to a maximum of 10 such images. Please do not upload images without discussion (and pointer to appropriate talk page)

We can do this with an image copyright tag, say {{Copyrigh_Ordnance_Survey}}

Problems with this are that it is not released under the GFDL, so it falls under "only used with permission". However, given the nature of such images, i.e. we are not going to get permission or alternate, I think this is okay.

We need to try to maximise the potential of the ten, so identifying those which show particular features, e.g. churches, etc, and those of different scales. What do other people think of this? Dunc_Harris|☺ 20:31, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Did someone contact them and see if they would be willing to forgo the limit for this project? You might be suprised. Cavebear42 22:29, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

anyone with an interest in Vietnamese royalty...

There is a new user, Tran Van Ba, who appears to have taken up the banner of User:Celindgren to promote the Vietnamese Constitutional Monarchist League and is writing articles on various members and associates of the Vietnamese imperial family, including himself. Like Celindgren, he is apparently employed by the VCML. Unlike Celindgren, he's not engaging in link-spamming, but his contributions are rather POV, not to mention in serious need of copyediting. I mention this here instead of in WP:RFC because I really have no desire to argue with Mr. Tran, whose knowledge may well be useful here; but I think involvement in these articles by others with knowledge of the subject matter would be helpful, and might meet with better response than further edits by me (since I have a previous history of disagreements with Celindgren, who stopped editing here shortly before Tran Van Ba showed up). ←Hob 18:52, 2004 Sep 9 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Precedents

moved to Wikipedia talk:Votes_for_deletion/Precedents

Speedy deletions?

Hello. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I think somebody's been speedy deleting my articles. I stubbed Christopher Street, Manhattan and East 8th Street, Manhattan last week, and both were gone the next day—I figured it was a bug in Wikipedia, so I rewrote them and they've been fine since then. This morning I stubbed Spaghetti strap, half-jokingly, and was gratified later on to see someone else come along and expand it into a decent article. But I checked again just now, and suddenly it's gone! What's going on? I don't think any of these were speedy deletion candidates... are these disappearances actually a bug? Am I seeing a conspiracy where there is none? T-bomb 17:23, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Replying to myself—after digging around on WP:SD, I found Wikipedia:Deletion_log, and it looks like all three of my articles were in fact deleted (by User:Jimfbleak). I disagree with the deletions (jeez, man, can't you at least let them sit for a day or two?) but at least now I know what was going on. Carry on... T-bomb 17:31, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I believe these are not speedy deletion candidates, and so the deleter is in fact violating policy. On the other hand, they may very well be candidates for the ordinary deletion process, due to the relative insignificance of the topics (we don't usually have articles on individual streets unless they have some wide significance, like Wall Street.) Derrick Coetzee 17:49, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In Wikipedia:Deletion policy, the only rule for speedy deletions that might possibly have applied to these articles was: "Very short articles with little or no definition or context (e.g., "He is a funny man that has created Factory and the Hacienda. And, by the way, his wife is great."). Turning such pages into relevent redirects may sometimes be appropriate." Which, in fact, doesn't sound like all that great a match. So I agree that the deleter was a bit over-zealous. Elf | Talk 18:12, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The original Spaghetti strap that you created was probably a candidate for SD, I was considering adding the delete tag, or possibly putting it on VfD, until is was edited into a valid substub. I don't believe that the substub was a candidate for speedy deletion. Darksun 18:19, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

BTW, I would certainly argue that Christopher Street, Manhattan and East 8th Street, Manhattan are of sufficient significance to merit articles, for exactly the same reason we include Brick Lane. Each has been the defining center of a neighborhood and a subculture. Christopher Street is the center of the West Village gay community and East 8th, or more precisely St. Mark's Place, has been a countercultural center at least since hippie times. -- Jmabel 19:06, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for backing me up. I have to admit, though, even as the author of the stubs, I can understand why someone unfamiliar with the city could consider them candidates for deletion—they're “just” streets, after all, right? Anyway, I started these articles in the hope that others can develop them further... there's far more history to these streets than any single person can possibly know. I'm looking forward to learning more myself. T-bomb 19:18, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, Christopher Street is pretty darned famous, but I'd ask that a street be famous outside of the city. Christopher Street is. The Bowery is (both the lane and the district). Park Ave., Broadway, 7th Ave. as the Fashion District, 42nd St., 5th Ave., all famous to people outside the city. On the other hand, every street has some major history to it, so we've got to think long and hard about them. After all, 86th and 53rd have major historical persons associated with them, all the streets in Alphabet City have things associated with them, etc. I.e. I think E. 8th probably doesn't make it. It isn't just that it has historical claims, but that it is known by a potential user of the project. At least that's my stance. Geogre 00:57, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Some streets may be notable, but do we really need articles on every street in Manhattan, as this article's red-links seems to imply? 23rd_Street,_Manhattan#Intersections Niteowlneils 20:09, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In such cases a good idea to put all streets into a common article, kind of Manhattan streets, eventually separating streets wilh lots of info into separate articles. It is a common-sense approach in wikipedia for all "listable" topics. Mikkalai 20:27, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That's a reasonable approach--don't make break-out articles until the parent gets too weighty. Niteowlneils 21:15, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Why not? Not like it's polluting the namespace, and it's not like it's self-promotion. --Golbez 20:14, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

Huh? Thousands of cities have a Second Avenue. Some are one-way, some two-way. Who cares? Niteowlneils 21:15, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That's nice of you; the only streets mentioned here are Christopher Street, Manhattan and East 8th Street, Manhattan. You notice the little ", Manhattan" bit there? Yet you then pull Second Avenue out of your hat, which I didn't know exists and I wasn't justifying its existence. Bravo. For the record, I think these should be redirects to a possible Streets of Manhattan article. Keep info there til it grows too big for its britches. --Golbez 00:25, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't intentionally sandbagging you--Second Avenue is the second active link in the list at 23rd_Street,_Manhattan#Intersections that I cited, but I regret that the way I presented it came across like a set-up. Streets of Manhattan, until it needs to be split up sounds like a great solution/compromise/whatever. Niteowlneils 01:46, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In any case, all three of these articles should've been sent to WP:VFD, not WP:SD. • Benc • 20:34, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have no argument with that. Niteowlneils 21:15, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Could someone look into Jimfbleaks extreme deletionistism *wrings tongue*. A few days ago he deleted a perfectly valid article CMUCL which I have since replaced and expanded slightly. Ludraman 22:52, 8 Sep 2004 [signature originally omitted]

Huh. Ironically, the first one I've checked that I can't think of a speedy case for is content="Abuses of power occur whenever a postion of power created. Infringements can range from the petty, (stealing staples from the office) to the outrageous (waging war on a country in order to line your own pockets)." That said, there are quite a few admins that regularly delete things that I don't know what case applies. However, most of it isn't even worthy of VfD, so I see the problem more in the speedy definitions--too many are too vague, there should be more examples, and they even sometimes seem to contradict each other. I have been collecting samples to try and get this issue clarified. The ones I have so far are at User:Niteowlneils/csdornot/. Some are actual examples (with tweaks to obscure source) and some are facsimilies, but all represent articles I've seen get speedy deleted--most I think rightly, but most I don't know on what basis. As for your specific CMUCL, "CMUCL is a Common Lisp implementation" would probably be speedied by 1/3 to 1/2 of the admins, from what I've seen--it's awfully minimal. Some others would have made it a redir, as has happened. Niteowlneils 02:45, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Is there really a substantial amount of data on these two streets? Wouldn't they be better suited as a section in the city article? I question if even the more significant west coast counterparts to these subjects(Haight-Ashbury and The Castro)might be better served as sections in San Francisco.Cavebear42 23:05, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree. Putting small snippets of dicussion into a suitable large article is far nicer (and it won't get deleted as merely a piece of litter of interest to no-one). Then make redirect pages. I think the problem is that creating numerous small, annoying stubs is so much easier for some. You never have to worry about how to fit the material into another article or about about some other editor tromping on your work because they think it is messing up that editor's article. Maybe the answer to stub littering is indeed to speedy delete them when they don't tell you anything that anyone looking up the topic would care to know and just get in the way of the real information when someone is searching in Google and gets Wikipedia mirror after Wikipedia mirror of the same two-sentence non-information, supposed articles that on their own topic correspond to "Christopher Columbus was an explorer who discovered America in 1492." Articles of that kind normally do not help those searching for information and are usually worse than nothing for anyone searching on the web. Jallan 18:31, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Complete e-mail in article: is it encyclopedic, copyvio, fair use ?

A person created an article whose content was basically someone's email. (Please see John Carmack describes the fight for Doom 3 and its talk.) I raised my doubts on whether this is encyclopedic and fair use. What's the policy here? Wikipedia goes lengths about images, but I didn't find much indications on this issue. Mikkalai 16:08, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Just a legal question here, not specifically about wikipedia: Are emails copyrighted, and if so, who owns the copyright and what defines fair use of the emails? Darksun 16:59, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Contents of e-mails and even newsgroup posts are (by default) copyrighted by their author, just like the contents of a website. Private e-mails in particular have legal privacy concerns attached to them, making permission especially important. To qualify for fair use, it has to be clear the author intended it to be exposed publically, and no more must be quoted than is necessary for the discussion. Paraphrasing is much safer.

Moreover, if they excessively quoted another author, such as by top-posting, then this probably violates fair use, and so the quoted author's permission is required as well (if this portion is not snipped - yes, this means top-posting is technically illegal).

I'm not sure if the content is encyclopedic, but it should probably be incorporated into the Doom 3 article. I am not a lawyer. Derrick Coetzee 17:03, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

FYI, the content in question is NOT an email message. It is a .plan file, which is public, and accessed by a common unix utility called "finger". It is rarely used and has a couple of security loopholes (which is why no one uses it) but it is definitely public, and in use around 2000. From what I remember, allegations like this has been floating around for a while, and never substantiated. Of course, .plan messages are probably copyright as well.

This, of course, begs the question of copyrights of email messages, and Derrick is right in that the copyright is assigned to the WRITER of the email message, the receiver has no rights to it. -Vina 19:50, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Similarly (and with more legal precedent), snail mail letters are copyright of the writer but (usually) owned by the recipient. The second becomes relevant when someone wants to auction the correspondence they received from someone famous, and the first when someone else wants to include the text of the letters in a biography or the like. -- Solipsist 18:16, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

XIII

The disambiguation page for "XIII" explains several options, but gives links to none on them. Is there a way to fix this?

TheGrza TheGRza@hotmail.com

• not sure what your problem is. I see a live link to the Belgian comic, and a red link (meaning there is no article) to the Playstation game. The Roman numeral doesn't really merit an article. -- Jmabel 23:24, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
  • I wikified the disambig page right before you viewed it. Gentgeen 23:49, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Gentgeen, that's all I needed. TheGrza

Korea

It seems such contributors as Egon and Kokiri have all but abandoned English Wikipedia. I am all alone editing Korea-related articles, and it is too much for me to handle...in fact, I'd like to scale down all my Wikipedia activity if at all possible. If anyone as any interest in Korean matters, please check out Korea, South Korea, North Korea, and List of Korea-related topics, and contribute any way you can. -Sewing - talk 21:23, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Dude, take a deep breath & chill. The Korea articles don't need to be written now, or this month, or this year, or even this decade. They'll come when they come. I diagnose severe wikistress and prescribe a few days off to get a sense of perspective. --Tagishsimon

I've got a cousin who was a PCV in Korea, speaks the language - even co-authored a Korean/English/Korean dictionary. I'll send this to him and see what, if anything, he does. Unless of course you or either of those other folks IS my cousin, in which case all bets are off Carptrash 00:26, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for both your replies. I was suffering from a severe case of Wikiburnout yesterday. I am going to force myself to take a three-day break. -Sewing - talk 15:25, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Adding Biographies to the Main Page Browse section

Just a proposal I'd like to make. The recent revision of the Main Page put a Browse section at the top of the page with seven broad categories of subjects: Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Mathematics, Nature, and Technology. I think we should add an eighth, Biographies, with a link to Lists of people. A lot of people are going to come here looking for information about a specific person. We should have a convenient access for this on the Main Page. MK 18:32, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

MK, I may be wrong, but I believe all biographies are included under the scope of the category "Humanity". Is there a reason to have two links that will get people to the same place? My impression was that the 7 categories are the major "parent categories" that encompass most of the articles now categorized. I guess I would support keeping it that way, rather than having 7 category links and one link to Lists of people, which doesn't make as much sense to me, organizationally. Jwrosenzweig 20:01, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

When I read "humanity", I assumed it meant the humanities. If what you say is true, it should probably made more explicit. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 21:16, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

Much of the humanities are covered in Culture, another of the big 7 links. Culture is parented by Category:Human (which is where the Humanity link goes to), as is Politics, another of the 7 links. I suggest, then, that Humanity be replaced by a link entitled People, which aims at Category:People. Any thoughts? Or should this end up on Talk:Main Page? I never know. Jwrosenzweig 21:37, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Humanity link goes to a category page. This page has categories like Anthropology, Human Appearance, Organization, Child, City, etc. There is a prominent link to People, but this only goes to another category page, where a seeker might try the link to Celebrities (which has three entries; Jeremy Clarkson, Adam Curry, and Jeffrey A. Sachs) or to People by Last Name (which has five entries; Bauer, Collins, Eponymous people, Farmer, and Fischer). By this point, the seeker, who only wanted to look up some information on Jessica Simpson, might have decided that the Wikipedia is a complete waste of time.

Admittedly, there is a link to Lists of People farther down on the Humanity page. But it's subtle enough I had missed it myself the first few times I was looking for it. As I said above, I think an area as large as biographies should have a prominent link on the front page.

My suggestion for a direct link to Lists of People was only one possible idea. A link to a Category:People page might be another. MK 22:03, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Obviously the category system has a few holes. :-) I have to say, I am still almost completely confused by the categorization system, which I have rarely used. Obviously, though, the people category needs some serious work. Maybe the Lists of people idea is the best, unless there is a good way to "bot" a category together -- that would require agreeing on labels, though, something Wikipedians are notoriously bad at. :-) Jwrosenzweig 22:42, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have to say that the first time I saw it, I assumed that the Humanity link would take me to the humanities and was confused when it didn't. I still find it a less than useful link and would support either a Biographies category or something based on the list of people to replace it. Filiocht 07:42, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I doubt it was a result of this discussion, but I see the list of the "big seven" has now been reduced to the "big five" - Nature, Culture, Society, Humanity, and Technology. MK 05:23, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

GFDL violation

A series of moves between VTOL and Vertical Take-Off and Landing has erased the edit history of that article. The only thing that exists on either history page now is the record of a move to the other name. Since the names of the authors which contributed to the page are no longer recorded, I believe this consititutes a violation of the gfdl. I'm not sure who should be notified to try and fix this, so I'm posting it here to see if anyone can help out. --Aqua 18:08, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

• Looks OK to me. Did someone already fix it? -- Wapcaplet 19:05, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Ok, this is pretty weird, when I click that link or the history link in the article, it only shows one edit, "(cur) (last) 10:41, Sep 9, 2004 Eequor (VTOL moved to Vertical Take-Off and Landing)". Reloading doesn't change anything. The limit seems to be set at 50. However, if I click on any of the limit links, the other edits show up. I don't see anything in my preferences that would cause this. I'm not sure what's going on now. --Aqua 19:22, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
    • Well when I click on "history" I get entries going back to 2001. -- Arwel 13:08, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
      • History doesn't automatically update immediately after a page move. You need to reload the page using ctrl and F5 or similar. Angela. 02:35, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
• It's working ok for me now. Like I said, clicking the reload button didn't change anything at that time. This is the first time that this has happened. Well, now I know what it is. Thanks everyone. --Aqua 18:39, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Poll

Wikipedia:Dealing with disruptive or antisocial editors/poll2 has begun. anthony (see warning) 14:51, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

WikiCommons

Wikimedia Commons has been started at http://commons.wikimedia.org/. At the moment it is just a place where one can deposit images and other files; I hope in the near future to be able to say it is a place where pictures can be found as well, and in the not so far future that the excellent plans for direct uploading and using Wikimedia Commons in Wikipedia will be installed. However, anyone who has pictures that might be usable for Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects is very much invited to upload them to WikiCommons. - Andre Engels 13:31, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Irish wikipedians' notice board

User:Ludraman has hosted this for a number of months (even while he wasn't around, creepy), but it's become rather popular with us Irish here recently. So it can now be found at Wikipedia:Irish wikipedians' notice board. So to all Irish wikipedians out there, or those interested in Irish topics (it's not just for the Irish!), your involvement would be welcome! We have a to do list and everything! zoney ▓   ▒ talk 22:21, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In fact its become more of an Irish-related articles do stuff board (which isn't at all a bad thing). Hey, we might even be boosting Irish tourism :-) LUDRAMAN | T 22:47, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's a really useful resource and I hope it develops in all kinds of directions. Filiocht 09:18, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Can anyone do a little image fix?

File:Hywel Francis.JPG

For an image of Hywel Francis (see right), I'd like to take the white backround off. Can someone do this for me? Thanks. :) [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 05:08, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Do you want it (the grey background) cropped out (which IMHO would look very dumb) or do you want the grey background erased (IE, turned white)? →Raul654 05:17, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Erased is what I meant. "Cropped" wasn't the right word to use. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 05:18, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Done. →Raul654 05:21, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

monobook.css header

The header comment on the monobook.css editing is wrong: pressing CTRL+F5 on Opera does not reload from cache, but reloads all opened pages. The correct reload key combination is either CTRL+R or F5 only. I have not been able to find out what template holds the text, so I am posting it here. [[User:Anárion| (Anárion)]] 22:23, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The template is MediaWiki:Usercssjs and I've made this change now. Angela. 14:22, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

You should probably update MediaWiki:Clearyourcache as well. - 14:28, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

Thank you! [[User:Anárion| (Anárion)]] 14:29, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Some text on differint encyclopedias?

I was searching for more info on Programmer's Day when I stumbled upon this page: Programmer's Day

It's a page from another (obviously inferior because infested with ads) online encyclopedia that uses the exact same description for "Programmer's Day" as Wikipedia does. Is this normal? Isn't this copyright infringement (or something)?

That site did indeed copy data from Wikipedia, but notice that it gives us credit on the bottom of the page. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 16:58, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

...see Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks for more. --rbrwrˆ 17:00, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

All contents on Wikipedia is released under the GFDL, which means they can be copied, edited, and used in certain ways. Darksun 18:08, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

thefreedictionary is not following the GFDL, though. anthony (see warning) 16:47, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

research instrument destroying the research object

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference Desk#Research Instrument Destroying the Research Object by Ilyanep

Looking for someone who can help translating Dutch into English

Hello,

I hope this question belongs to the Village pump. I have some articles and information, mainly on different reptiles (e.g. on Phelsuma), amphibians and terraria etc, which I wrote some years ago. Most of them were never finished or published. Although these texts would complement some other articles which I started here on Wikipedia, they are written in Dutch. Unfortunately, I haven't much time to translate them or rewrite them for the Dutch Wikipedia. So I am looking for someone who is willing to help me translating those texts into English and add them to the existing Wikipedia articles.

Cheers,

Jurriaan 08:44, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Go to Wikipedia:Translation_into_English#Dutch-to-English and list the articles there. Dunc_Harris|☺ 08:49, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

ESP/PDF to SVG conversion

We could use some help over at Talk:George W. Bush military service controversy#Graphical timeline - can we get it into SVG? to convert a quite nicely done timeline () into SVG from either PDF or EPS. Does anyone here have the necessary tools? There's a proprietary PDF2SVG program and probably many others, but the free software solutions I tried didn't work.--Eloquence*

• FreeSVG, a free online PDF-SVG converter, has worked well for me in the past. -- Wapcaplet 16:49, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Need a little image fix

Can someone touch up Image:Barnstar3.png so it looks like Image:Barnstar2.png, except yellow? [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 21:57, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• I got this one. -- Wapcaplet 22:31, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Getting rid of custom CSS

How do I get rid of my monobook.css and monobook.js pages? --Sgeo | Talk 16:31, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

put speedy {delet) tags on them, specifying why--an admin should delete them. Niteowlneils 19:14, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Just blank them or comment everything out. Guanaco 23:56, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Multiple users editing?

Sorry to ask a silly question, but I can't seem to find a satisfactory answer anywhere. My question is: what happens if multiple users simultaneously edit an article? How does wikipedia handle this? -- FirstPrinciples 06:00, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Edit conflicts. Hope that helps, and don't worry about asking--it's appreciated. Best wishes, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 06:07, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Outdated, see m:Help:Edit conflict, particularly the last paragraph. Help pages in the Wikipedia: namespaces are deprecated and will be replaced with auto-imported help pages that are maintained on Meta. The reason being that there is more than just Wikipedia, so we don't want to maintain all the help files in several places.--Eloquence*

Hmmm, maybe we should wait until the replacement feature is written before we declare the old one deprecated. -- Tim Starling 15:30, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks guys, that's exactly the information I was looking for. -- FirstPrinciples 08:58, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

English to Hebrew?

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk. Trilobite (Talk) 03:06, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Offline database

Is there a step by step guide to setting up a database for private SQL queries? --Sgeo | Talk 00:09, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Yes,

1. Download the database dump at http://download.wikipedia.org

2. read all about how to load it, query it and so forward on http://dev.mysql.com/doc/ -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 08:19, 2004 Sep 14 (UTC)

Categories and Press releases

As stated on the talk page, Monday Night Football is referred to at http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=list/mondaynight . There is a category (or maybe template) that had pages that was linked to by the press or media or some such thing. and I can't find it. How do I go about finding things like that? (especially during times when search is disabled...) - Vina 23:53, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Press Coverage Rmhermen 01:57, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

TV Naming conventions.

I have instigated a new poll on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television). I am hoping that this poll will properly allow all users who have an interest in the subject to express their views fairly before we come to a consensus. I have scrapped the poll that was previously in place on that page, which was to endorse a unilaterally declared policy and had just had its deadline extended, because I believe that it was part of an unfair procedure that was going against the majority view, which was generally against thatpolicy. I am appealing to all users who contribute to that page to approve my actions. I would appreciate it if users could take the time and trouble to read the page carefully and express an opinion and vote as they see fit. I am hoping that the page you see after reading this still contains the poll that I am instigating, as the disruptive user who unilaterally created the policy has been reverting it. Mintguy (T) 17:06, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Let me see if I understand you: there was a poll already in place, you decided that existing poll was "unfair" and "going against the majority view", so you replaced it with your own version of the poll? -- orthogonal 19:14, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

And engaged in a revert war in order to get your replacement poll on the page, and won that revert war by using your sysop powers to block your opponent in the revert war? How exactly do you think this upholds anything Wikipedia is about? Why not just vote "oppose" on the exiting "unfair" poll and open your new poll on another page? -- orthogonal 19:19, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No the old poll was a poll to endorse a unilaterally defined policy. That poll had reached its deadline with a majority of people voting to not endorse the policy. The dealine was then artificially extended by the same user who instigated it. I am instigating a new poll which allows people to choose from a range of options rather than just to approve an option which has already been voted down twice. Mintguy (T) 00:14, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The poll specified that in the case of less than 2/3 majority, it would be extended a week. The vote was Yes=4, No=7 (and one unsigned) - which last I checked was less than 2/3 majority. Everyone who signed the poll agreed to the written conditions. -- Netoholic @ 02:28, 2004 Sep 14 (UTC)

I chose to abstain from voting as the instigation of your poll was invalid to start with. But even by the criterion that you unilaterally instigated there were 8 votes to 4 == 2/3 majority. User:Mackerm forgot to sign but his vote still counts, don't you think? Mintguy (T) 02:36, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I guarantee that if one of the Yes votes had not signed, you'd have complained and pulled the vote... Oh wait, you did that unilaterally anyway. I really do wish you'd keep these little conversations of ours in one place. It would make responding so much easier. -- Netoholic @ 03:22, 2004 Sep 14 (UTC)

Well, as always you mis-judge me. Anyway last word - I did not come to this page to converse, but to let people know what was going on. Mintguy (T)

Formatting help

There is a formatting problem with List of countries with mains power plugs, voltages & frequencies.

It displays fine on Xp, but not on all other systems according to User:Darrien (my Linux machine is screwed, so I can't check this at the moment). The fix he proposes (align="left") breaks the display on everything except Internet Explorer. Any clues as to how to fix this for all? Chameleon 13:20, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Continued on article's talk page

Wikimedia meetup 2005

Preliminary musings have begun at m:Wikimedia meetup 2005. Those interested in attending are invited to review the current proposals, make new ones, and discuss logistics. Austin Hair 00:50, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Old polls

Wikipedia has some polls that started months ago. The voting virtually stops at some point but is never formally closed and then, months later, someone comes across the page and adds a vote. Like Wikipedia talk:Fame and importance which started more than 7 months ago, received about 70 votes back then, with an inconclusive outcome. Now, it is still getting one or two more votes a month.

Is that right? Polls should have a certain end date. Could we have all polls formally closed after at most a month, with a clear message put on the page? Andris 23:13, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Technically the poll is invalid if it has no end date. Johnleemk | Talk 07:56, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Depends on the type of poll. I don't see a problem with leaving a poll like the fame and importance one open, as it is one of those global issues that doesn't really change in its fundamental nature. Remember that polls are essentially meaningless anyway. They're just rough indicators of how users feel on an issue. anthony (see warning) 16:45, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Typically, you can say that the poll is useless if not the interpretation of the outcome is decided before the poll starts. [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 19:05, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Question on user pages

• For one's own user page...

1. Is there a difference between your user page and any other wiki page?
2. Can you create sub-pages?
3. Can you make your own user pages unviewable by others, or uneditable by others?
4. Is there any difference between User:name and User talk:name?

answering.

1. Yes, you have moral control over your own user page, whereas the rest of the wiki is owned by everyone.
2. Yes. To create a subpage use a forward slash, e.g. User:Duncharris/Alan Harris images
3. Everyone can view your user page. Keep your private details on your hard drive! You can request the page to be protected to stop other from vandalising them if you wish see Wikipedia:protected page
4. Your user talk name is for messages. when someone posts a message, you get a note saying "You have new messages" so that you are notified. Your user page is to describe yourself, what you like, contain useful links, etc.

Hope that helps. Dunc_Harris|☺ 20:39, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Duncharris beat me by a second. You can easily make sub-pages. Just create/type a link e.g. [[User:Ihavenolife/Subpage]], and you will get an edit window with a sub page User:Ihavenolife/Subpage. For example I have a sub page User:Chris 73/Images. Every page (User, Image, Article...) in wikipedia has a talk/discussion page. The (empty) talk page for my images would be User talk:Chris 73/Images. You cannot make pages unviewable. You cannot make pages uneditable by others, except for admins which can protect pages, and then only admins can edit protected pages. However, it is very rude to edit other peoples user pages (except talk pages). BTW, you can sign your comments by typing four tildes ~~~~, which automatically turns into your name and date. Hope this helps. -- Chris 73 Talk 20:42, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

You can also just type [[/Subpage]] on your userpage and that will link to the subpage, e.g. /Subpage (on this page) is the same as Wikipedia:Village pump/Subpage. - 20:53, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

Sorry to go off on a tangent here, but: Your user talk name is for messages. when someone posts a message, you get a note saying "You have new messages" so that you are notified... To clarify, the "you have new messages" deal currently does not work for subpages in your user talk space. This makes user talk subpages much less useful. I have submitted a feature request to amend this, however. • Benc • 22:57, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What a good idea! Andrewa 13:01, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

For general info on user pages see: Wikipedia:User page. Paul August 00:39, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Please note that if you aren't a sysop, you can't delete subpages to your User page. RickK 20:54, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

Naming convention for TV shows and series

A poll is running asking whether to adopt the naming convention, written at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television), is due to end very shortly.

Please take a look at the proposed standard and vote on the talk page.

As a side note, I'm the one that originally authored the convention, based on much original discussion. I'd invite everyone to take a look at it, and vote on its merits and your preference. -- 14:36, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It appears this has turned into an unmitigated disaster - perhaps some experienced Wikipedians could lend a hand, though personally, I haven't a clue where to begin. zoney ▓   ▒ talk 15:17, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, a bit. I think some people are voting "no", not because they dislike the convention, but rather because they think everyone else wants more discussion about every single point (see Abilene paradox. -- Netoholic @ 16:29, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

POV and the circumcision articles

It has been noted that since Robert Brookes' banning wholesale reverts have been made to article to restore the anti-circumcision POV. What is the mechanism within Wikipedia to prevent this or at least to set up a mechanism to monitor this activity? Sadly it is also apparent that the administrative Wikipedians who were so keen to get involved in the censure of Robert Brookes either are "not neutral" or just don't care so one needs to look elsewhere for guidance towards NPOV. Perhaps as a suggestion the applicable articles be "frozen" at the point they were when Brookes was banned so as to allow for a special "talk" page to be set up to debate how the matter of control over editing of circumcision articles can be established. - Friends of Robert 08:56, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment is probably best, he may already have a page if he is a persistent POVver. Dunc_Harris|☺ 09:03, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

yep, see Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Robert_Brookes, and feel free to make any suitable comments. Dunc_Harris|☺ 09:04, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If you see anticircumcision activists inserting POV into pages then the best thing to do is argue the case on the relavent article talk pages. A one of the "administrative Wikipedians who were so keen to get involved in the censure of Robert Brookes" I can assure you that his rfc was started becasue of his abrasive attitude and refusal to work cooperativly with others. Not because of his POV. It is not true to say that admins here are not neutral or don't care about POV warriers from the other side of the argument. Their edits are being watched and neutralised by a number of regular wikipedians. We don't in general "freeze" pages. It's against the idea of a wiki, but all articles already have special talk pages where you can argue your points. In the efvent of POV warriors from either side of the debate refusing to come to a reasonable compromise we already have procedures in place to deal with it. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 20:42, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• • Theresa, would you be so kind as to state any possible conflict of interest in the issues relating to circumcision you may have? Thanks. - Friends of Robert 23:05, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• • • Sure! I don't have any conflict of interests. I originally went to the circumscision page because of a call for help from regular wikipedians as there was a revert wat going on. I came across Robert Brookes there and tried to talk to him about the way things are done around here. Talking, compromise, consensus. He has accused me of being a anticurmcumcsion activist but that is not true. I am English, I've never even met a man who is circumcised (to the best of my knowledge) and have no strong opinion on the matter. I am most certainly not a member of any group either for or against. After trying to reason with RB on a number of articles related to circumcision I gave up,started a rfc on him, and decided simply to work on the articles a best as i could. I took an interest in the smegma article, was someone surprised that an articles with so many edits in the history had so little information on the pag and decided to try and expand it. I've been searching the web and adding to it since. In the course of that search i've come across a large number of websites, both for and against. My personal opinion of circumcision has only formed in the past few days becasue of that web search. I simply never thought on it before. Anyway the opinion i have formed so far is that the 'debate' is a lot of fuss over nothing. Personally i wouldn't get my own son circumcised (if I had one) but I feel that all this talk of "mutilation" is OTT. I've been a wikipedian since it's first year. My interests a varied, certainly not restricted to circumcision related articles. (check my edit history). I hope this answers your question. feel free to ask me anything. Oh and i forgot to say ealier -Welcome to wikipedia!  :-) Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 23:27, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
      • Thank you for placing that here for posterity. I noted Robert's comment about the build up of the lysozyme theme on the Smegma article. It remains of interest where you sourced your information from in this regard. What was your primary source of information? Lastly, just an innocent question to help me come to terms with what Robert alleges as to your possible agenda. Why does it appear you spent so much time reverting Robert's edits and so little from those with an obvious POV? Take truthbomber for example, he seems to have taken advantage of Robert's banning to carryout wholesale edits of certain articles. I hope you agree that it is absolutely necessary that those with administrator status are squeaky clean and totally transparent. I hope you don't see this as the type of Salem trial Robert was subjected to? Let’s hope not. I hope you will find the time to respond. - Friends of Robert 23:55, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
        • I can't really remember i was searching the web amd i got snippets from all over the place. As for truthbomber - which articles? I'll take a look tomorrow (I'm going to bed now) Why did i evert Robert? Because he wouldn't compromise, and he wouldn't discuss. What you've got to remember is this site works by people getting together and talking things through and coming up with a version that everyone can live with. If someone comes along and starts sticking dubious tags on without specifying what it is that is dubious on the talk page, then there is nothing that we can do to address the problem. Robert called the text "mumbo jumbo" Now how am I supposed to adress that? Dubious tags in Wikipedia have to be actionable. As for truthbomber, i did revert some of his stuff but I only did partial reverts because i was happy with some of what he wrote. Thus my edits after truthbomber don't say "reverted to last version by" they say what I actually did for example this was a partial revert #Anyway I've got to go to sleep now. I talk to you tomorrow. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 00:19, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
          • Sleep well. I do hope that you will remember to answer the question tomorrow. - Friends of Robert 16:28, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
        • Are you a sock puppet of User:Robert Brookes? You seem to be doing everything in your power to make yourself look like one by arguing on his behalf. In particular, "Salem trial" was his wording for what the rest of us call requests for comment. RfC is the first step in conflict resolution and as such is an important part of Wikipedia policy. Robert didn't feel the need to take seriously, but that doesn't mean that you have to denigrate it, too. --Ardonik.talk() 00:13, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)
          • Robert was singled out unfairly. He was set upon by the pack. Wikipedia has nothing to be proud of in this respect considering the onslaught of anti-circumcision POV you seemingly are unable to counter. Robert was criticised for posting only to circumcision related articles there are three, four, five such others who are plugging away at pushing their anti-circumcision POV with little or no attention from wikipedians. Now that you are aware that "truthbomber" is having a field day, I will watch with great interest what gets done about it. I'm sure you will do the right thing. - Friends of Robert 16:28, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Robert wasn't banned, he was blocked for 24 hours. Please don't exaggerate in order to make your dubious case for a "vast anti-circumcision conspiracy." Rhobite 00:15, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

• How would he have known that? The poor man was set upon and savaged. This while a handfull of true believers are able to edit the articles at will. It has been mentioned before how they do it. It is the old two steps forward and one step back routine. It works like this. Major POV edit done ( - two steps forward). Along comes a tame admin and does a small timid edit ( - one step back). The cycle is repeated until the truth and NPOV are lost in the haze of POV in the articles. Game, set and match? - Friends of Robert 16:28, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• The best way to counter this is for the pro circ people to edit the articles instead of the village pump. To say that RB was set upon and savaged is nonsense. It beggers belief. Your own POV is influencing your assement of the situation.Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 08:50, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• That is nowhere near the truth unfortunately, Theresa. There is no point in promoting an edit war while you clearly have no counter nor wish to counter the known and obvious anti-circumcision POV pushers. You seem to have rules for everything here except POV pushing. What about three strikes and you are out? Give the pro-this and the anti-that three chances then ban them from those articles. And yes, BTW, give this recuse thing a second thought. To be brutally honest your time would be better spent elsewhere. I would state clearly that you are POV in this respect but I also have no doubt that the sysop/admin wallahs will stick together, as thick as thieves. - Friends of Robert 17:55, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Guys let's assume "good faith". I'm satisfied the above use is a freind of Robert Brooks but even if he is a sockpuppet of RB himself so what? He is arguing his case politely so he is welcome here as far as i'm concerned. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 00:22, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Especially given Theresa's interaction with Robert Brookes, I can only say that her patience and willingness to listen to anyone being polite -- even if that might be Brookes himself -- should be an example to us all. I'd award her a barnstar if I didn't think I'd be being presumptuous. ;) -- orthogonal 00:27, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks :-) Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 08:52, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ironically, you're demonstrating exactly the sort of all-embracing openness that prompted Robert to liken us to hobbits in the past. --Ardonik.talk() 17:59, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

True but who cares? In some ways we are a bit like hobbits. Wikipedia is open, we do embrace everyone. We welcome all sorts of people with open arms, the more diverse the better as it ultimately leads to better articles. We do believe the wikipedishire is the best place on middle earth ( sorry I meant the web) But we are not weak, we outnumber troublemakers hundreds to one. We don't need anyone to fight our battles for us. We are building the best encyclopedia the world has ever seen and no POV pusher will prevent me from accomplishing that task. And I am only one of thousands like me. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 19:21, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Good stuff Theresa. Two points though. It is because Wikipedia is becoming a "recognised resource" that it becomes a target for POV pushing by special interest groups (thereafter the laws of physics take over - "for every force there is an equal and opposite reaction"). Robert was correct in stating that the early opportunity was seized and anti-circumcision POV quickly filled the circumcision related articles. Second his point was the allegation of bias among some sysop/admin here. I believe there is some merit in this. Sadly. Surely it is simple, in that wikipedians who have strong POV about a certain subject should "recuse" themselves from involvement in those articles? Perhaps a mechanism should be put in place whereby those who stray into the no-go area of POV can be gently nuged back into line? - Friends of Robert 01:09, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We already have mechanisms in place. Please read our policies. As for biased admins you keep saying this is the case yet you haven't presented any evidence. If you truly believe admins have behaved unfairly your first step should be going to their talk page and present them with the evidence involved, so that they can explain themselves. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 08:12, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• First, you never got around to answering my question after you cried off with a headache (or whatever). I don't want to get into a knock down drag out with these people while you sysop/admin types toss the odd cheap shot into the melee. I am looking to you to police this (like you seemed to have no hestiation in climbing into Robert). Why the delay? Why no comment when Wally did a wholesale revert back to anti-circumcision POV? Why are you letting "truth bomber" and the various incarnations of Dan have a free hand? Is one to deduce that you believe that their efforts are NPOV? See this as a test of your integrity Theresa. Its not looking good right now but perhaps where there is life there is hope. - Friends of Robert 17:55, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I must say that this is one of the odder forum threads I've had the pleasure of reading. Perhaps I need to read the Village Pump more often. crazyeddie 23:40, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)