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Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive C

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Village pump (miscellaneous) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous). 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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Finding a template

I just wanted to correct a page that is in two categories, one of which is a sub-category of the other, to remove the parent category as redundant. I found this: {{Category:Computer companies of the United States|Alienware}}. This is a template, but I can't find it. How do I find templates? Is there a search function? Also, similar question for categories. I want to find categories that contain a particular word, how do I do that? PhilHibbs 11:38, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Someone transcluded the category into the article (on November 13!), rather than adding the article to the category. I have now fixed it. HTH HAND. --Phil | Talk 11:51, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

copyvio

Could someone please have a look at my concerns about Image:Harlequin_valentine_panel.jpg on Copyvio#November_25? I suspect we have a copyvio image on our frontpage as part of Did you know... --fvw* 09:01, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC)

Happy Thanksgiving!

If you don't celebrate Thanksgiving, have a happy day regardless! Maurreen 13:54, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Happy Thanksgiving, Maurreen. :) P.S. I think I may have been the very first person to ever revert you on Wikipedia... sorry about that. :) Mmm... turkey! func(talk) 17:02, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
No problem. If you were, I'm confident that you did it with Wikiquette. :) Maurreen 17:23, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hms kite

Hms kite. The page was an unwikified cut and paste job from a very poorly laid out website. [425] (http://www.mikekemble.com/ww2/kite_a.html)Rje 11:01, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC) Contributor claims that he is the copyright owner of the text of the external site and has re-contributed the article at /temp. Should be moved to HMS Kite. --Rlandmann 22:28, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Is an entry that I spotted today, the day after I posted a section on this ship, the first in this site. I am a full time worker who does history research as a hobby, I do not have a degree in grahpics or design and take serious offence about the phraseology used in describing my site. It must be really awful to be perfect as Rje seems to be (who lives not a dozen miles from me either). At least the goos emails I get, and the thanks outweigh Rje's comments by some 3000-1.

(unsigned post by User:82.36.200.223)

I'm not sure what you're saying here. You originally wrote the text on the page http://www.mikekemble.com/ww2/kite_a.html and voluntarily contributed your own text to a Wikipedia article, and have been accused of copyright violation? -- Chuq 04:02, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it appears to be listed at Wikipedia:Copyright_problems#November_24. Since it's listed there I don't know why Rlandmann copied it here. -- Arwel 04:24, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I didn't. The above was copied here by User:82.36.200.223. --Rlandmann 13:05, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

?

Hello dear Jim, is the only way for me to get into "Wikepedeia" some mention of 42nd Baltic Fraternities` Convention [ which Corps Concordia Rigensis/Hamburg will organize] to become a contributer/editor ? Greetings from Germany Jürgen Moeller-Nordhastedt@t-online.de

You can contact User:Jimbo Wales more easily via his talk page. --[[User:Eequor|η υωρ]] 09:18, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Use of pics of genitals in articles

 – lengthy

Sadly what we see here is a case of the misrepresentation of consensus which is now being "kicked" off the main page. The act itself and the subsequent failure to address the issue is not good for Wikipedia. What a pity. - Robert the Bruce 03:18, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It has been pointed out to me that I might have slightly over-reacted. So here are the good bits with the stroppiness elided (deletions and insertions) so no-one thinks I'm covering up my abominable rudeness:
No, what we see here is a rude jerk who can't stand his discussion being displayed anywhere else than in the most public place possible, regardless of how crowded that space might become You appear to have misunderstood the situation. The pump is for general discussions: there's not room for everything. Only the most high-profile and high-volume discussions get their own articles , you nitwit, so stop complaining. You've got a whole brand-spanking-new article to use for your debate: stop your posturing and high thee gone seize your golden opportunity.
I apologise for my moment of madness and return you to your usual programming. --Phil | Talk 07:59, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

Two English Wikipedias needed?

After a large number of distressing debates about how and when to use things like diacritics (which I would guess most of our native-English speaking readers have no clue of how to enter), and whether to use Western name order in articles about people from other cultures, etc, etc, etc ad infinitum, I am half-ready to suggest that we really need two Wikipedias in English - one as a safe harbour for native speakers of English, and one for everyone else. The one for the rest of the world can put the articles at Zürich and Montréal, make sure the current events are properly spread out around the world, etc, etc.

Umm, isn't this what redirects were invented for? --Tagishsimon (talk)

But seriously, the current situation is really not even-handed. I have no interest in what {foo}-speakers do in the {foo-langauge} Wikipedia, and don't go over there to criticize and argue with their rules, and they are free to do whatever they like there. However, here the native-English speakers have to share everything with large numbers of people from the rest of the world, and it just gets a little old after a while. Noel (talk) 19:40, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to see how you'd succeed in Current Events/ITN where others have failed. Furthermore, below the edit summary are little glyphs that we can click to èâßÍ|æ.. cough, I mean, easily insert extended characters. So I really don't see what the problem is?
PS - if someone who can fix this is watching, clicking Í gives two characters, like so: Íí--Golbez 20:08, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)
Erm, I think that redirects should help on this one? Zurich gets you to the same place as Zürich. Mark Richards 23:09, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This discussion seems somewhat pointless to me. Even if a second encyclopedia was created, how would we implement it? Place headers saying: "if you are not a native speaker of the English language contribute "here"". People just won't care. If stuff like that was possible we wouldn't have to worry about vandalism, context-free stubs and stuff like that. And more to the point, I really don't see what's the big deal with people contributing, especially since, as it was pointed out above, redirects solve any kind of spelling difficulty. That people from all over contribute to the English language encyclopedia should be flattering, and it's priceless for the expansion of this website. If you ever want to look up something about a Chilean celebrity, what do you think are the odds that the article would be available if Chileans were not contributing to the encyclopedia? I seriously doubt that the website would have its present 400 thousand articles without the help from the rest of the world. Odds are that the "Native Wikipedia" would be so incomplete that eventually no one would care much about it. Sure people sometimes go over the edge, it is (or should be) undisputed that in the English Wekipedia spelling should be in English only, and any alphabetical order should respect the order of names/grammar/words in English, but overall I guess the benefits outway any trouble by far. Finally, if we were to follow that trend of thought, what would be next? "British English Wikipedia"? "Australian English Wikipedia"? It's enough that we have that "simple English Wikipedia", better to stop there. Redux 00:02, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Many non-native speakers contribute to the English Wikipedia, because they want their work to have the largest possible impact on the world. They want the same thing we do, to build an excellent encyclopedia. There are more non-native speakers of English than there are native speakers, this encyclopedia is as much for them as it is for us. They want to feel part of an international community with a common goal, not to be treated as outsiders. Give them the concessions they want -- diacritics may look strange to us, but if that's what it takes for these contributors to not feel alienated, then so be it.
I'm against splitting wikipedia. It's enough with the current split. Doesn't we get a more complete encyclopedia if people all aorund the world contribute to it? I personally don't think that diacritics do any harm as long as there is a redicrect without them. The question is if it's the name with or without diacritics that should be used as the title of that article or be the redirect. Jeltz 09:08, 2004 Nov 23 (UTC)


I think you underestimate the intelligence of native English speakers. Diacritics are easy enough to deal with using redirects, and there is no practical difference between type Goering and being redirected to Göring, and typing Goering and reading an article without a redirection occurring--the redirection is internal to MediaWiki. I think Wikipedia is fine as it is, and Zürich is just fine where it is. A serendipitous advantage of the redirection is that one is reminded that the native spelling of the place name has an umlaut and the native pronunciation (for the German speakers, at least) is significantly different from the standard English pronunciation. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway Talk ]] 20:13, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I'm of the same opinion, but I used vague formulations for some reason. Jeltz 21:05, 2004 Nov 30 (UTC)

A modest proposal: actually I am going to propose that we split it on slightly different lines: one English language Wikipedia for people with an IQ > 1 and another for those who don't quite make it above the threshold, e.g. the kind of people who think that a fork like this has any point whatsoever. Sjc 06:58, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Duhh, what's a threshold, George? My forks all have four points, don't yours? —"Lennie" 08:03, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

Help with possible copyvio

Hi. As could be expected, the media attention that Roger Federer has been getting recently also put his article on Wikipedia on the spot light. Now, an anon user has made a staggering number of consecutive contributions to that article. I am particularly concerned with this section of the article. That looks a lot like it was taken from somewhere else, possibly a specialized publication. My research on Google has yelded no match, however, so I can't be absolutely certain that the text comes from some other source &#150; not forgetting, the text might not be online, the guy might have typed it from some paper magazine that he had with him. What should we do, if anything? Redux 19:07, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I noticed that one too; however, I don't think the google test worked for me either. You might want to try putting it on Copyright problems. --Golbez 20:10, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Celebrity contributors?

This is more of food for the mind rather than a question but it has been around my mind all day. What if an actual celebrity, say Cher, for example, decides to become a contributor? W'ed probably see a lot of POV on her page! And she can become a contributor just like the rest of us on the interet. When I ran into a perfect example, someone who calls herself Hilary Duff, I knew it was the perfect time to post this comment. Hey, it COULD really be her, after all shes only a human being with Internet access just like the rest of us as well....

(for the record, I dont believe it's her but you never know) "Antonio Tallest Tree in the neighborhood Martin"

For any contributor, the values of NPOV hold true, whether it is a celebrity trying to "improve" their own article (how low CAN you go?), or some religious or political fanatic trying to introduce POV into the article about their religion. There is no reason to differentiate these groups, all can be dealt with by identifying the biased contributions and removing or rather rewriting them to be NPOV. On the Hilary Duff issue, if you read all that is written surrounding that account, it is a clearcut case of impersonation, but most importantly, it is not at all relevant if she is who she says she is, we do not discriminate anyone, neither positively nor negatively. -- [[User:Solitude|Solitude\talk]] 14:55, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)
Have a read of Wikipedia:Auto-biography. — Matt 23:46, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
How low can you go? Ask Amazon -- they had so many authors leaving puff-piece reviews of their own work (and cut-downs of their enemies'!) that they implemented display of real names (at this point, optional). And a discussion of RateMyProfessor.com revealed that many college instructors believe that service is riddled with similar problems. --Dhartung 12:48, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Circumcision edit wars

Almost every article related to foreskin or circumcision has turned into an edit war including the article on phimosis. -- DanBlackham 06:50, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC) Recently Tannin made significant improvements to the foreskin fetish and circumcision fetish articles. Tannin explained the changes in detail on the Talk pages, but both articles were soon reverted without comment. -- DanBlackham 07:02, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • Yes since the infamous call-to-arms went out Wikipedia has been inundated with aggressive anti-circumcision activists [1]. You are a member of that list Dan so why are you attempting to play the victim here? - Robert the Bruce 13:43, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Tannin's not an anti-circ activist. Neither is Exploding Boy. Both are regular long term wikipedians. Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 19:37, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • You are going to have to explain that phenomenon to me Theresa. What are you saying? Because these two individuals are long term Wikipedians they could not possibly have a peculiar interest in the foreskin? I don't follow the logic (if that is what it is). - Robert the Bruce 03:20, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A question about symbolism

Hey, since I'm taking a high level English class I'm learning a lot about how certain things are used in literature to symbolise things (For example, in most literature, light symbolises truth, so if somebody starts talking and the sun comes out, you can assume what they're saying is true). Would it be a good idea for me to add a section on to each article about something that I know the symbolism of stating what they symbolized in literature or is that a bad idea? ---Cookiemobsta 04:25, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Your question isn't clear to me. It's usually good to add verifiable information. It's not good to just add our own opinion. Maurreen 05:06, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Sorry, let me rephrase. It's not opinion what I have-it's verifiable information that my English teacher learned in college and taught to me. My question was if it was a good idea for me to put it in the pages about certain things-for example, light is a big technical article about the properties of light and I was wondering if it was appropriate to add a section that would say essentially (with some more fleshing out) "In Western literature, light often symbolises truth"
I think it probably wouldn't be very pertinent in an article about light. But it probably should go in an appropriate literature article, or one on symbolism in general, if it isn't already there. Maurreen 06:54, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Agreed. This sounds like useful information but it would belong in an article such as symbolism in literature, on and individual author or book's page, or depending on the authors you are thinking of, it might be included in Symbolism (arts) which covers its popularity in 19th century European literature as well as painting. You would have to be careful in defining your boundaries - I doubt that it is the case that light always means truth - individual authors, periods and art movements tend to have their own collection of symbols. There are also articles on individual symbols, such as Eye of Providence or halo, although they tend to be more graphic symbols. -- Solipsist 07:47, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Alright-thanks guys :) -Cookiemobsta 05:40, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Varieties of English

  1. Can anyone elaborate on "International English"?
  2. Since the subject of various varieties of English (and how to handle them) seems to come up so often, maybe it should have its own page. Maurreen 08:01, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Maybe I'm missing something, but the phrase "International English" seems biased to me. Maurreen 05:04, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
How else would you describe the form of English which is used almost everywhere outside the USA? -- Arwel 10:02, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
International English is the standard term. Filiocht 10:26, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

What about Canada, for example? Maurreen 15:55, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In some ways Canadian spelling is like Wikipedia's: a mish mash. Even newspapers and government documents frequently switch from one spelling to another within the same publication. See the spelling section of Canadian English for more. - SimonP 23:36, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)
"International English" has a number of different meanings, which is why it is a confusing term. Sometimes it includes American English and is used to mean words and phrases generally understood throughout the English-speaking world as opposed to localisms. "World English" is also sometimes used for this. Sometimes it means what is also called "Commonwealth English", a term actually not much used. Google gets only 9,530 hits for "Commonwealth English" and drops to 7,740 hits for "Commonwealth English -Wikipedia". So about 20% of the hits are to Wikipedia and mirrors which is not a good sign, especially when investigation shows a very large number of the non-Wikipedia are also Wikipedia-based or are just juxtapositions of the words in contexts such as "... British Commonwealth. English speakers ..." and so forth. When it refers to a spelling system "International English" sometimes means Oxford English spelling, using -ize and -ization, the English of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and much academic writing, the spelling used in most United Nations documents and by most international standards committees. But "International English" is also used by some for English spelling using the -ise and -isation spellings which is the more common spelling in current British English and also the spelling almost universal in Australia. This is also the spelling preferred by EU bureaucracy. "International English" is also the name of a particular proposed spelling reform. Jallan 07:54, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, Jallan. I'm going to copy and keep that info. Maurreen 08:40, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Bandnews

Nader has been adding links to artist pages on http://bandnews.org on wikipedia band articles, ocassionally along with other minor edits (no other edits by that account). Unsurprisingly, all signs point to bandnews.org being run by User:Nader (whois says the domain is registered to Nader Cserny from Berlin). While there does appear to be some news about the bands in question there, it appears to be just scrapings off other fansites, and not much better (if not worse) than a google news search. While I'm sure it was done in good faith, I would like to hear some other opinions on whether these are valuable links or not and whether it's a good idea to ask Nader to remove them. --fvw* 05:41, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

  • I dunno. I can't really say I have a problem with them. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 06:16, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • i'm sorry for having raised negative feelings about links to bandnews.org

i see myself as a quite ok contributor to wikipedia in terms of article extensions like the moloko discography, band picture, links to the official band site but also to a free website with news. it hasn't gotten anything to do with getting money or something. the site's created by me, Nader (23) and a friend of mine Alex (22) to promote music bands from all over the world.

what about the other people linking to lyrics, allmusic.com, info sites? why not link to band specific news?

this should not sound like an offense, i'm just asking.

we have gotten great feedback from the bands and fans. they're happy about the site just like people who are happy to have wikipedia. greets from berlin, --Nader 20:50, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Breadth and quality

I created a page mainly to discuss the tension between the goals of quantity and quality, and what, if anything, to do about it. If you’re interested, please see Wikipedia:Breadth and quality. Maurreen 02:31, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia titles of color articles (American vs. International spelling)

  Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of style/Titles of color articles
 – lengthy

Wikipedia:Discussions

Having recently tried to initiate a discussion on an article talk page (see above) and only getting one reply I was thinking: would a Wikipedia:Discussions page, listing talk pages with ongoing discussion topics that are wanting more attention, help to get more involvement? Perhaps the number of ongoing discussions could get out of hand, but it may be worth a shot. violet/riga (t) 21:19, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Would this duplicate WP:RFC? If not, could it somehow be merged with that? Angela. 22:50, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps in part, but I was thinking of it being less of a dispute resolution system and more of a "I'd like to know what other people think" advertising of a discussion. violet/riga (t) 23:52, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think RfC was supposed to be that, originally. Maybe it could be moved back in that direction... Or am I just confused? JesseW 22:03, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think RfC shouldn't need to be adversarial. But RfC needs help. I think people list pages, but few people go to the links to help other discussions. Maurreen 22:14, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Slashdot effect --> Web traffic

I've proposed at talk:slashdot effect that the slashdot effect article should become more generalised and be placed in web traffic. With only other person replying (in opposition) it'd be nice to get some more opinions if some of you could take a look. violet/riga (t) 21:19, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Arthur Omar

Talk:Arthur Omar

The text about Arthur Omar that has been removed from Wickipedia for infringing copyrights of Museuvirtual was written and published as a release and is used everywhere universaly as my current biography and can be presented anywhere without my previous authorization. The same text is publishe in Wickipedia in portuguese. It is copyright free. Based on this I ask Wickipedia to replace it again in the english version. museuvirtual.com.br/arthuromar is my personal site. Any doubts please get in touch with arthuromar@uol.com.br or arthuromar@alternex.com.br — 201.17.36.17 21:54, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How good should WikiReaders be?

Does anyone have thoughts on what standard of quality (articles) Wikireaders should be? — Matt 11:58, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Good enough that, if I had paid money for one, I wouldn't come to regret it later. :-) Sorry it's vague, but it's the best I can do. Jwrosenzweig 00:06, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Reversible Logic

http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/reversible.html

Comments?

  • What are you driving at? It doesn't seem to be a plagiarism from us, unless I'm missing something. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:32, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Copyright question?

I don't know whether this is the right place to ask this question. Apologies in advance if it is not and kindly point the right direction.

From Maruti Udyog website, in Terms of Use.

RESTRICTIONS ON USE OF MARUTI MATERIALS You may not modify, copy, distribute, transmit, display, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any information, products or services obtained from any Maruti Web Sites, directly or indirectly in any medium. Neither these materials nor any portion thereof may be stored in a computer except for personal and non-commercial use. Maruti will not be held liable for any delays, errors or omissions therefrom, or in the transmission or delivery of all or any part thereof, or for any damages arising from any of the foregoing.

Based on this can we use images from this in Wikipedia?

Thanks,

Alren 23:35, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Not any more. Its good to have clear licensing information, but non-commercial images are now discouraged on Wikipedia, as the view is that it may in future be desirable to have cheap printed versions available for distribution in the third world. And the best way to get the cheapest print versions is to have 3rd parties fight over getting the best price to quality ratio with commercial distributions . -- Solipsist 23:55, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
In free market theory, that is... — David Remahl 01:34, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
So what's the bottom line, can we use it or not? How does one get about getting permissions especially, when outside US, there is not much copyright info on the website and also not much explicitly non-copyright stuff is available? Alren 17:14, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
No, we cannot. You get permission by contacting the copyright owner directly and asking for them to allow you to use it under the GFDL or some other permitted license. If you can't get in touch with them, then you're out of luck under current copyright law. —Steven G. Johnson 05:07, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Copyright

Is this copyrighted?

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html

I have seen other sites post articles from this site with the message

"Source: U.S. Library of Congress"

So it's not copyrighted? Can anything from the site be posted on wiki? If not, why not? And who holds the copyright? 65.66.156.171 19:52, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The copyright status of information available through the LOC varies. You cannot make a blanket assumption about something simply because it appears on the LOC web site. You need to check the copyright status of each exhibit (or of individual items within an exhibit). The countyr studies site that you link to is public domain because all of the information was developed by agencies/employees of the federal government. Other LOC exhibits may contains items that are not in the public domain. The FAQ link for that site contains this: With the exception of some photographs, which are clearly marked in the photograph's caption, text and graphics contained in the Country Studies On-Line are not copyrighted. They are considered to be in the public domain and thus available for free and unrestricted use. As a courtesy, however, we ask that appropriate credit be given to the series. If you or your publisher require specific written permission for the record, queries should be directed via Email to frds@loc.gov. older≠wiser

Hi I'm only 13!

Hi I'm Lyndsey Perry and I'm only 13!

Hello, Lyndsey. It is somewhat unusual for a 13 year old to be so enthusiastic about their age. Can we help you? func(talk) 01:09, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

¡Hello, oh Lyndsey Perry!

¿How fare you?

I understand your enthusiasm; but unfortunately however, it is not wise to reveal so much about yourself on the Internet. Although 99% of all people on the Internet are good, that bad 1% does nothing else than look for people like you. You must be very careful.

I hate to sound preachy. I myself advocate for the rights of children as everyone here can attest to their chagrin -- most of the people here wish I would not be so vocal -- but this is very serious. I know that if I continue to preach, you will tune me out, so I shall stop here, with one least warning:

Never ever meet anyone from Cyberspace in Meatspace or give anyone any information which one could possibly use for finding you.

Regards, Ŭalabio 02:04, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)

Oh, really? You just gave away the fact that you speak English - it's now 6 times easier to find you. Don't be paranoid, there is nothing wrong with saying you are 13-year old. Paranoid 13:05, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

On the other hand, you might want to know that there are at least two other comparably young and very active Wikipedians, User:Revolutionary and Ilyanep. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:13, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Many more, actually. See m:Wikipedians by age. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 03:33, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

Hi Lyndsey Perry !! Welcome to Wikipedia.Us young people should stick together huh? ( to others -depends on what you define as young! I'm entitled to my delusions.)But don't ask my age please. Have fun editing at wiki.--Jondel 07:06, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hey there, welcome. Us young 'uns ought to form a group or clan...accepting only under-18 Wikipedians. --Etaonish 21:45, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Haha. As long as you're good at editing encyclopedia entries, Lyndsey Perry, welcome aboard! Infobacker 21:38, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Chemistry: Reaction Mechanism

I'm a new here so forgive me if this is the wrong category. I was wondering if there was some kind of policy regarding displaying reaction mechanisms (diagrams of molecules and their lone pairs, with arrow pushing) for any relevant page, since I haven't seen any? For instance, the page dealing with electrophilic substitution could benefit from showing a mechanism. Displaying Ar + NO2 -> Ar-NO2 is nice, but it doesn't really help explain what's happening.

Is this too advanced for the audience (or something like that) or is the lack of mechanisms just because no one has found/made any? I've drawn (with Chemdraw) several myself already and wouldn't mind uploading them or making more, so that settles any copyright issues.

While I'm on the subject of Chemistry, can we do something about the electrophilic substitution and electrophilic aromatic substitution pages? The former's reaction all include an aromatic compound so the name should be changed to the latter. For future reference, what's the protocol for situations like this? Do I do add a redirect? Ask for input in the Discussion page?

Thanks for your help! --jag123 17:44, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think it's mostly because we miss a lot of expertise in that area. Just upload them and add them in appropriate places. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 21:30, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)


AIDS question

I was looking at the movie called And the Band Marches on, And the Band Plays on or something like that, whatever the name actually is.

According to the movie, Patient 1 or X could have been one Bobby Campbell, or an airline stewart from the United States. Could it be true that any of these two men be the so called patient 1 or x?

Also, the movie tracks the AIDS virus to the Ebola River. Can it be possible that a connection exists between AIDS and the Ebola virus??

PLEASE respond here, as I seldom remember to look up Village Pump when I ask things.

Thank you, and God bless you all!

Sincerely yours "Antonio Interested in finding facts Martin"

And The Band Played On, based on the book by Roger Shilts. "Patient Zero". I'd be very skeptical of any claim of a connection between AIDS and Ebola: HIV and the Ebola virus are radically different. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:08, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

ElectGOP.net

Ken Weide (aka 65.68.200.238), sole proprietor of ElectGOP.net, has embarked on a campaign to include links to his site from every Republican wikipedia article he can find. I first noticed this on Republican Party (United States), but he's also creating links to his site on all the state party articles, sometimes creating new articles solely for that purpose. I've removed the link twice now from the main GOP article, drawing a colorful request to prohibit me from "sabbotag[ing] the viability of the Wikipedia, as well at the good name of the 'Grand Old Party'." I'm sure the link doesn't belong there, and the link-only articles have been listed as candidates for speedy deletion, but I'm not sure what, if anything, should be done about the other state party articles. RadicalSubversiv E 22:24, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If the link provides substantial, authoritative, informative material that complements the article in question (e.g. that helps verify the article, or helps the reader find out more information about a topic in the article), then it is useful and should be kept. A quick glance at electgop.net site gives me the impression that it is mostly advocacy. Linking it might be appropriate in an article about GOP advocacy groups (depending on how prominent electgop.net is), but it's probably not appropriate in a general historical article on the Republican Party. Feel free to use your judgement and delete such link-spamming attempts. —Steven G. Johnson 20:36, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)
(Note also that for the information the site does provide, such as the names of Republican senators, more neutral sources are available like www.senate.gov. Given a choice, I think Wikipedia should prefer non-partisan sources. —Steven G. Johnson)

Gmail

I have 3 Gmail invites to give away to wikipedians so any Wikipedian who wants one is welcome to email me at john@collison.ie JOHN COLLISON [ Ludraman] 17:35, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

More

And in related news, I have 12:

Cross them out when you register them with <s></s> please. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:19, 2004 Dec 2 (UTC)

Newspaper historical databases via local libraries

I only discovered recently that my local library in Massachusetts provides home access via the Internet to a number of databases, via (in my case) two Massachusetts regional library networks. Among other things, I can search the last decade-or-so of the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. More significantly, I can search the New York Times back to 1851(!) (Full text in the form of page images).

Since I doubt that my suburban town is especially unique, I encourage all Wikipedians to check with their local libraries to see what similar resources may be available. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 02:31, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Good point. I knew my local (Santa Clara, California USA) library had similar resources available on in-library computers[2] (to library card holders), but didn't realize I could access them from home. Niteowlneils 06:21, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
You don't need to be in the US either, my local Northampton, England library gives me home access to online reference book, newspapers and journals by logging in with my library card number Maxx 23:45, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Currency Terminology (Bill vs. Banknote)

In general, I always thought the terminology for currency is to use "bill" for the United States (where this term is standard) and "banknote" elsewhere. Yet, another Wikipedian says it is more convenient to use "banknote" always including those of the United States. Any opinions?? 66.245.77.205 23:36, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Arguably it could be useful to use the word "banknote" throughout, provided this words did not jar with American readers, because "banknote" is a more searchable word than "bill" which has multiple meanings and is also used as a proper name. But I don't think that's good from a stylistic point of view. Instead I think that artlcles primarily of interest to Americans should use the word bill (I am British but I would double-take at reading the phrase "U.S. treasury banknotes") and that otherwise we should follow the normal practice of adopting the word that is most compatible with the context at the time. Hence, "The new British £20 banknote" and "Abraham Lincoln is on the U.S. $5 bill". While being able to lever the textual search capabilities of internet servers is good, it isn't worth compromising style to accomplish this in the case of individual words that have a usage entrenched as deeply as the word "bill" in the context of American currency. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway|Talk]] 01:13, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
An approach you might take is that a £5 note and a $5 bill are particular examples of banknotes; also see euro banknotes for the €5 note. --Phil | Talk 11:25, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

Inuktitut

Does anyone on en: speak Inuktitut? --[[User:Eequor|ᓛᖁ ᑐ]] 23:44, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Trying to Locate Iain Strang

Trevor Deaves and John Astbury are trying to find an old friend Iain Strang. He is married to Janetta Norwicki? Please reply to inenergy@sopris.net

Should wikilinks to temporary versions be allowed?

Assume a page is protected, and a user creates their own version in a temp subpage. Is it allowed for that user to create wikilinks to the temporary article, effectively de-linking the "main" article from Wikipedia? For example, there was a version of La La (an Ashlee Simpson song) which linked to Autobiography (album)/Temp instead of the main article, Autobiography (album). The reason given was that the main article is protected at a sub-optimal version.

This strikes me as a no-brainer. Editors should not create wikilinks from articles into temp articles. Assuming the temporary article is eventually integrated into the main article, the merge will create double redirects and force people to go around changing a bunch of other articles. Linking to temp articles leaves wikipedia in an inconsistent state. It implies that the temp article is the "official" version, when it may not be. Most importantly, it allows groups to put forth their own POV versions of articles and integrate them into Wikipedia.

Thoughts? Rhobite 03:02, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Of course it's a no brainer. If the article is protected at The Wrong Version, too bad. The temp page is there purely as a work in progress, not as something to direct people to because you don't like the current version. To do so is an attempt to get around the page protection. I think it's very poor and quite anti-social behaviour. Shane King 03:44, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
Thank you, I couldn't point to any real policy so I thought I'd ask. Common sense should be policy, too. Rhobite 04:05, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
I agree with you and Shane King. This sort of notice should be on the talk page, and I was disappointed to see La La edited under protection to add such a trivial thing. Cool Hand Luke 04:35, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Search wikipedia from the command line (Mac OS X Hints)

Mac OS X Hints has an article on how to "Search wikipedia from the command line". Paul August 18:03, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

Barnstar of Vigilance

What do you all think about a barnstar of vigilance for those that reliably and consistently fight the good fight against vandalism? Would somebody mind creating the image, because I'm pretty graphically inept... -- ClockworkSoul 16:29, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC

Black Night

The film Black Night is misspelled it should read Black Knight (2001)

Shameless plug for nonsense

This seems like a perfect message to post here: if you're bored (how is that even possible on Wikipedia?!), you can always read User:JRM/Orange, a true hallmark of something. Oh, go on. I promise there is at least one thing in there that'll trigger at least a brief chuckle—or your money back. JRM 05:14, 2004 Dec 5 (UTC)

I noticed some orange work a wee while ago ... by now you almost certainly deserve a medal - a most excellent improvement in my understanding of the etymology. The only fact that seems not to be pinned down is "a major distribution point of oranges to northern regions", which is, btw, missing from the Orange, France article. --Tagishsimon (talk)
You are completely and utterly right. The sources that mentioned this fact all... mentioned it as fact, actually, and in supiciously comparative terms. Of course I am now paranoid as to whether they weren't just creatively assuming things (that's so easy to do, I should know). *sigh* I'll put this on my to-do list rightaway. I may need some more help from the French Wikipedia after all. Thanks for the pointer. JRM 02:06, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

Help with a troublemaker

Hi. I have a potential issue, maybe even a potential edit war, coming up on this article. An user has decided to create a new article, the object of which is a part of the history of the city about which the article at hand is. Upon doing that, he simply decided that the whole section that made any mention to the topic on this article had to be erased and replaced with a "see main article" notice. That was particularly ludicrous, since the article he had created was still a stub, and in fact the information he erased from the article in question was simply not on the new article. I reverted his edit, but he rereverted it, now claiming that the paragraph was "inaccurate" (or unnacurate, as he wrote...) historically wise, which is preposterous, since I obtained the information from offical sources. In order to make a better case, he also decided to claim that the article was "confusing", which I find really hard to believe, since the article has been complimented on more than one occasion and translated into more than 5 other languages. But even it was unclear, the due process is rewording, not bluntly erasing the data. I restored the paragraph again, but I have a strong feeling he's just going to go back and do it over and over. If you follow the link above, you'll see his user main page. By what he chose to write there I get the feeling that this guy is up to no good, and I really don't feel like engaging in an edit war with someone like that. I need help on this one! Regards, Redux 14:42, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I thank MacGyver and Jmabel for taking an interest in the issue. Following on some rather disturbing news from MacGyver (on his talk page), I decided to check Pinnecco's contributions, and there's a clear signal of trouble there. First, there's what appears to be a vanity article: notice the guy's name (the user's screen name is Pinnecco), I'm fairly sure that the person being discussed is either the user's father or grandfather (or maybe some other relative), who is a painter. I have never heard of him, and I'm not sure if he would qualify as worthy of an article in Wikipedia. Furthermore, Pinnecco's edit in this article is a copyright violation. It's particularly strange since Pinnecco appears to be a registered user since early April of this year, and thus is hardly a newbie. I'm hesitant to take action on these problems myself because Pinnecco has proven to be somewhat... "immature" in handling criticism (he bluntly erased MacGyver's request to discuss before editing articles from his talk page, without responding, then proceeded to leave an ironic note on the Niterói talk page addressed to me, clearly showing that he was crossed by the reactions to his edits). If I do it myself, I might start some "rivalry" with him, and that's never good for the Wikipedia community (and to me, of course). Any thoughts? Regards, Redux 01:01, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Have you considered Requests for Comment? Maurreen 01:26, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Is that your criteria for calling something a vanity article? That you have never heard of the subject? A google search shows some third-party web pages discussing him, and images of his work show a Picasso influenced cubism. Jordan Langelier 22:31, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Yes, Jmabel suggested that to me on my talk page, but as I told him, so far this has been one isolated incident (although his reaction to MacGyver's approach was a bit disturbing), so I was hoping to see how he would react to criticism from other users, besides myself, on issues concerning other articles, before I put him on the spotlight as a "rogue user". The Niterói issue may not be a good reference, since he admitted to being a native of the city in question, and we all know that some people do get somewhat "radical" when articles regarding their home (country, city, etc.) are involved. Since his last edit in the Niterói talk page indicates that he may not be liking me very much now, I preferred that others approach him on the other problems (and there might be others, besides those I listed); I don't want him to feel that I'm "out to get him", which is not the case. I hope I'm doing the right thing. Regards, Redux 02:20, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Humm, the Faccetta Nera article may not be a copyright violation. I'm not certain, are fascist songs from the mid 40's copyrighted? I do know that we don't normally post entire lyrics of any song (except national anthems), but then again most songs are copyrighted. If anything, however, the article appears to be content-free. Redux 02:57, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Version 1.0

The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team is up and running. If anyone dislikes the name, your suggestions for a different name are welcome. Maurreen 09:11, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC) And of course anyone interested is invited to join us. Maurreen

Would it make any sense at all to come up with a Class rating scheme for Wikipedia articles? I.e. The articles covering the broadest categories of information being rated I (1), up to the most trivial articles having a rating of, say, V (5). Everything would then fall into the scope of one of those ratings, and attention could be focused appropriately. -- RJH 20:52, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I think the idea has some potential in theory, but I don't know how practical it is. Also, by "attention could be focused appropriately," I'm not sure whose attention you mean. Maurreen 05:28, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Not exactly the same, but I've created User:Maurreen/Basic topics to list a small selection of core topics.
Also, for anyone interested in helping, the first article we're working on is Culture. Maurreen 00:51, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia trivia quiz

The fourth round of the Wikipedia trivia quiz is now open. Find out how good you are in finding the most obscure facts on wikipedia! Eugene van der Pijll 21:24, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Currency formatting

I was unable to quickly find a style guide for currency. I was faced with the phrase "N billion dollars" vs. "$N billion", and there wasn't any obvious guidance out there. The obvious place, to me, is Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Punctuation or Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), but there's nothing there about this. --Dhartung 12:53, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think the standard is to put the symbmol in front, though you might need to specify the country. Maurreen 17:49, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I'd avoid either form in this case, as "billion" means different things in different countries, and use $n,nnn,nnn,nnn. (that said, I found numerous instances of $n.nn billion) Niteowlneils 20:32, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This last chestnut keeps coming up, but there is no English-speaking country where billion has any different meaning in present-day usage. Yes, it is a word that can be confusing for dealing with old documents or for translation (at one time, outside of the US, "milliard" was more common for this meaning, and "billion" meant what is now meant by "trillion"; cognates to those usages still exist as contemporary usage in some other languages). I've seen this come up several times, and no one has produced a contemporary English-language example of "billion" meaning anything other than 109. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:05, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)
In british english both meanings of billion exists, at least officially. I personally think that it's best to try not to use billion and higher as much as possible to avoid possible confusion. Jeltz 10:57, 2004 Nov 24 (UTC)
You could simply use the ISO 4217 code to specify the currency, then follow it with the amount, e.g., "USD 45 million". Denelson83 04:19, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Personally, I go for "USD$45 million". -- user:zanimum
Exactly where is billion meaning a "million million" still used officially in the UK? If anyone can find a genuine reference in a current official document, please do add the information to the article billion? The Cambridge Guide to English Usage claims:

The value of billion is now 109 everywhere in the English-speaking world even in the UK. British usage has changed during the last twenty years, bringing it into line with American on this crucial issue, and so a billion means "a thousand million" (Ritter; 2002), rather than "a million million." The changeover was led by British financial institutions such as the Treasury, and has been reflected in reporting by the London Financial Times and The Economist for some time.

Jallan 08:10, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
For reasons of style, I often go with $45, for instance, if I were talking about 45 U.S. dollars. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 19:49, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)
Update: I've since found a couple of places that recommend using "USD $5 billion" as conforming (partially) to the ISO 4217 format: User_talk:Dysprosia/Archive_(6)#Currency_notation and Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Examples. There is also this unofficial policy page Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(currency), which seems to address the question directly, without solving it. Thanks to everyone! (copying discussion to User page) --Dhartung | Talk 08:31, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

We should try to avoid the word billion for the same reason gas stations don't use the word 'inflammable' on gas pumps. While it is technically correct, there is room for confusion. Intrigue 23:08, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Without disturbing images, please.

Note: Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse (no pictures) is current as of 2004 November 19, but has no pictures, captions are still retained. Since so many people asked for it and since it's not too difficult to replace pics with Image:null.png Pedant 02:00, 2004 Nov 18 (UTC)

Discussion moved from the reference desk. func(talk) 05:03, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Abu Ghraib scandal

I would like a version of the page on the Abu Ghraib scandal without the disturbing images. That way, I (and others) could get the information without having to see more than we want to. There are many minors who use this site; shouldn't there be an appropriate version for them?

What about a separate, linked article for the images? That way it can be linked from the main article in a prominent way, but there can be a warning so that people will know what to expect. I do think that it's appropriate to be considerate of our younger readers, as long as the information is retained. [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 21:14, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
You could use a browser that allows switching off images. Opera has a very easy quick-toggle for this but Mozilla/Firefox and Internet Explorer let you do this in the preferences too. --fvw 21:58, 2004 Oct 22 (UTC)
You could also save the entire page to your computer and delete the images --Cvaneg 22:08, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The problem, I think, is not so easily solved. (In order to do either of those things, it would be necessary to first look at the images in order to determine that I wanted to remove them.) I agree that the information is important, but at the moment the text of the article is practically inaccessible to anyone who has a hard time looking at those images. I'm not so much concerned for myself as for young people who may be trying to access this information. Sure, there is a warning at the top of the page, which is helpful, but if you read the warning and decide you don't want to contine, there is no way to get the information. Perhaps there could be a text-only sub-page? [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 02:12, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
You could go to the page, read the warning, then turn off the images in your browser and reload. Or yuo could could just look at the source code of the page. (in IE it's view--> source,Similar in netscape, and firefox, i don't know about other browsers but i expect it would be similar) The text would be there after the initial HTML header stuff, but the images would not be visible.Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 14:29, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Or you could start to edit the page. 212.159.101.179 20:42, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The images are the story. Mintguy (T) 05:17, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Aranel has something of a point. What about a disclaimer, that linked to a subpage? [[User:Rhymeless|Rhymeless | (Methyl Remiss)]] 05:30, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If we are going to go this far, we might as well start a new system. Say there is a basic image in place of the actual images as a placeholder. People could read the disclaimer and click a different link within the disclaimer for the full article (i.e. offensive pictures and/or profanities included). This should apply to language, as well. For example, the article entitled Fuck. Suprisingly, I do believe this article deserves its place on Wikipedia; however, I doubt parents would appreciate their children seeing it. In a case such as that, we may have to use a page with only a disclaimer and then a "go forward" link to the article. I don't know how much support this would get, but if we are going to do this on principle to a single article, we might as well propose it as Wikipolicy. Skyler1534 15:04, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
Hmm as a parent i can say I certainly do want my teenage children to see the images. Mintguy is right the images are the story. Yes they are disturbing and disgusting, because the behaviour is distubing and disgusting, becasue IMO war is disturbing and disguisting, and i want my children to grow up knowing that this is what war is about. For smaller children i can't see a problem becasue they probably wouldn't look at the article anyway, and should be supervised by their parents whilst online anyway. As for Fuck. it's an entirely different sort of article. Harmless, well written and very interesting. Someone who objected to profanities would consider the page title itself objectionable and so certainly wouldn't visit the page. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 15:22, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There are too many pictures, imo - perhaps some could be taken out and placed in an image gallery. violet/riga (t) 18:48, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be moved to the Village pump? func(talk) 16:35, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. --Edcolins 21:22, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
Why do the disturbing photos (and there are many of them) have to be on the main page? A number of articles already have links you can click on to see further images. Cat and Adolf Hitler spring to mind. Nothing wrong in doing something similar here, albeit for a different purpose. jguk 20:24, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
All the computers in my house are used by kids, and all of them read wikipedia, but we certainly don't allow minors access to the internet without supervision. There is nothing that a child old enough to access wikipedia shouldn't be allowed to see if they are looking for it, and nothing that they will stumble across by accident, usually. If the kids are looking up information about the Abu Ghraib scandal then they are expecting this sort of thing. I sure hope most adults don't let their kids read the internet unsupervised though, that would be inappropriate even for the very bright kids I know.Pedant 02:00, 2004 Nov 18 (UTC)

Hello. By the looks of the VfD, most people were opposed (as am I) to splitting the article in two. However, I think that I've come up with a clever solution which can be seen at Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse/pictures suppressed. Basically, I turned the article into a template with embedded parameters inside of potentially images' tags. Undefined parameters normally summon up a default templates, but in the middle of image tags they're meaningless and do nothing. On the subpage, I've used the main page as a template except with the "suppress image" parameter set to "-5px". This apparently causes the images to error out.

Thus, I've created a version without potentially offensive content that doesn't split the article in two. Cool Hand Luke 08:56, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

Just heard a radio interview with Andrew F. Smith, who edited this two volume set, the contents of which, he claimed, were severely limited by space. It would be wonderful if we could fill in the gaps left by his 770 articles on (the minutia of) food and drink in America, as well as the rest of the world. Just wanted to share. It might be interesting to look at the kind of articles these guys consider 'encyclopedic' here. Mark Richards 21:30, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Category policy

Should we rethink the guideline that an article shouldn't belong to a category as well as its parent? Many people either don't know this guideline, or don't choose to adhere to it. According to Wikipedia:Categorization, "An article should not be in both a category and its subcategory". For example Activity Based Costing belonged to Category:Management accounting, its parent Category:Accounting, and its grandparent Category:Business. Does this rule still apply? If people disagree with it we should get it out of policy.. if people do agree with it, we need to make the categorization style clearer, since many editors don't seem to follow it. Rhobite 19:56, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

  • I think (1) the policy is fine, (2) violations are relatively harmless, but (3) clean 'em up when you find them. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:44, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

New To Village Pump!!!!!!

Moved user's math challenge to User talk:Wishbone332.-gadfium (talk) 02:29, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia needs special standards

I'd like to try to roughly consolidate a few general issues from multiple pages.

A couple catalysts for this are discussions are related to Wikipedia:No original research and a vote here about whether or not to delete Image:Nevada-Tan.jpg for ethical reasons.

Wikipedia's uniqueness means we don't have a pure direct model for the whole of Wikipedia. Some Wikipedia matters seem to at least verge on journalism, and most Wikipedians don't have a journalism background.

I think some examination or re-examination is warranted concerning the following matters, and how they relate to each other:

  1. Verifiability.
  2. What is "encyclopedic"?
  3. Handling of firsthand knowledge.
  4. Handling of current or recent events.
  5. "Original research" (I put that in quotes mainly because it's undergoing review; the title might change).
  6. Media law and ethics, including:
    1. Libel.
    2. Privacy.
    3. Copyright.

If you're interested, please join the discussion at Wikipedia needs special standards. Maurreen 08:11, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sandbox Editing

I don't know if you know this, but people are now in the habit of editing the sandbox above the sandbox template. I suggest adding a message about saying that edits go below the template at all times to the {{sbox2}} template . 66.245.97.5 01:15, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It doesn't really matter what we write. People will muck up the sandbox. We just need to revert every now and then. Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 20:47, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Hmm... could the server just treat the sandbox as a special page that automatically includes the sandbox template? func(talk) 22:12, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Add lyric links to album articles

I run http://www.lyricshead.com, which offers people many lyrics without popups and other annoying advertisements. I think that it would improve the usefulness of wiki album articles if a link was provided to users that provided lyrics for the album. You can see a sample of such a link at the Get a Grip album page.

The format of the link that I would like to make would be "[artist]: [album] lyrics," (as opposed to the link on the get a grip album page, which is simply "lyrics") so that it is more descriptive, but I am open to whatever format you think would best serve the community.

I wrote a program to do the following:

  1. get the list of wiki albums
  2. compare wikipedia albums to my albums
  3. everytime I have lyrics of a wikipedia album, then add a link to the appropriate page
  4. record the wikipedia file name

The wikipedia file name is recorded so I can later go back and manually check each page to ensure no formatting issues happened. I will also check to make sure the album does not already point to an official site (some do, but most do not link to any lyrics provider), so I can remove my link if it does.

I ran the program a few days ago and was kindly informed that by Rhobite that this is considered to be spamming / self-promotion. As you can see, it provides a service to users that are looking for album information and would also like to see the lyrics of the songs. He proposed that I bring it up to the community.

So, what do you think about adding a link to wikipedia album articles that direct the user to the album lyrics?

Full disclosure: As an anon, parahost used an automated program to add links from many album articles to his own site. They were coming in quickly so I immediately blocked the bot. Since then, we've been having an e-mail dialogue and I suggested that parahost ask here and get a sense of what people thought of the proposal. I'm still against it because I don't believe editors should be allowed to add their own site to external links sections - even if their site is relevant. I believe this would be prohibited under the self-promotion policy. There's also a technical issue, where the bot was replacing ampersand characters with the &amp; HTML entity, breaking other links and interwiki links.
I want to point out that parahost has been extremely polite, a rare quality in someone who's run into trouble here at Wikipedia. Please resist the urge to be rude to him, as I'm sure he'll respect whatever consensus we come to. Rhobite 00:13, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
Isn't there a copyright issue here. If the lyrics are copyrighted should we be linking to them? Rmhermen 00:21, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
I don't know if we can get in trouble for it, but I'd rather not have a giant pile of links to a site that could disappear the moment the Harry Fox Agency turns its sights on it. I'm going to need convincing that this site won't turn into another Lyrics.ch fiasco. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:47, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm neutral on the idea, but if we do it we should do it with a template, so we could change how all of these are shown (or make them disappear!) by changing the template. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:16, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Rhobite: Yes, I will respect whatever the community decides. I want the community to be as excited about this as I am. My intentions are not to spam people, but to give people information that they are seeking. It is true that I am motivated to share more because it is my site, but I don't think it is strange for people to want to share their hard work with others. I am definetly guilty of feeling good when a new visitor e-mails me and tells me that they find my site useful or think the winamp plugin I just released is indispensible. It is because of this that wikipedia should link to my site; I take pride in it and I want to make it useful to people.

Also, I will definitetly look into the error in my program that breaks the code. Also, keep in mind, I will be manually reviewing every edited article page to correct any mishaps.

Rmhermen: The lyrics are provided for educational use only. They are user submitted and the site in no way endorses pirating (in fact, it encourages visitors to buy the album). The Web site provides a link to contact me in case of a legal issue. If I were to receive an e-mail to take down lyrics from a verifiable source, then I would promptly respond by removing the artist's lyrics. Since there is a method to get lyrics removed and damages would be very difficult to prove, there should not be a concern about a lawsuit against a site (not to mention, I have few assets). As far as I know, wikipedia would not be come liable for anything, even if the site gets sued. If there were problems with linking to potentially copyrighted material, then search engines would be sued out of existence.

Cyrius: This Web site is not going to just disappear. I am not doing this for profit, so the Web site will not be shut down because it is underperforming. I am a full time college student taking the load of two people (finishing my BS in two years) and working, so if there was a time for me to give up on this Web site, it is already behind me. Even with my expenses, I have no problem paying for this web site because I enjoy doing it and I enjoy that people find it useful. For proof of my long-term intentions, you will notice that I just released a winamp plugin. I would not release software for people to download if the Web site was potentially going to be closed in a year.

If, by some chance, I do shutdown my Web site. I will take responsibility and remove my links from wikipedia. This task would not be too difficult.

Jmabel: I do not know enough about wikipedia's backend to know if there is an easy solution to do this once the links are in place, but when I run the program to edit the articles, I will format the links however the community wants them to be formatted. Here are some examples:

  • [Artist]: [Ablbum] Lyrics -> Aerosmith: Get a Grip Lyrics
  • [Album] Lyrics -> Get a Grip lyrics
  • Lyrics -> Lyrics
  • [Album] lyrics @ lyricshead.com -> Get a Grip lyrics @ lyricshead.com

As you can see, it is very flexible. Personally, I think the first or second one are the best because they are the most descriptive and does not include unnecessary information like the last one. -- Parahost | Talk 06:16, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not worried about you shutting down your site. I'm worried about someone else shutting down your site. Has everyone forgotten the International Lyrics Server (apparently so, given that we don't have an article on it)? -- Cyrius|✎ 06:44, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
If that happens, then the links can just be removed. Until then though, it will make it more convenient for users to find lyrics. Parahost 17:24, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Cyrius, can you explain what happened to International Lyrics Server. If these sites are regularly shut down, I don't think it is worth the effort to link to it. Rmhermen 02:23, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

For what it's worth, my suggestion is that if we do this — about which I am neutral — we design an appropriate {{lyricshead}} template that would let the titles be inserted into articles along the lines of

{{lyricshead|id=eminem/cleaning-out-my-closet/|artist=Eminem|title=Cleaning Out My Closet}}

The resulting links would necessarily be uniformly presented; we could make any changes to presentation of these links in a single place; if we ever needed to suppress them all, we could also do that with no difficulty. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:43, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

That looks good to me. What do I need to do to get that working so that it would create a link when that was outputted on a page? Parahost 17:24, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Since we don't have lyrics, it might be nice to provide links to them, although I have mixed feelings on the issue of the links, since the target site does have left side google ads (and most pop music lyrics don't seem to be very hard to find). What I did want to point out is that it seems like if this is done in an automated fashion, it should probably observe the guidelines given at Wikipedia:Bots, as discussed on Wikipedia talk:Bots. (BTW Yes, better link titles than just "Lyrics" would be a good thing, as would a template.) Niteowlneils 00:54, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree that linking to a lyric site would be beneficial because wikipedia does not have lyrics. I do not understand what the conflict is about the unobtrusive, left hand google ad, though. Lyricshead does not run off of donations like wikipedia, so it has to get money from somewhere to help cover hosting costs. Also, you will find, that few lyric sites don't run popups and I have never seen one that did not run ads of some sort.
Regarding the bot, it waits a minimum of 45 seconds to make an edit when it is ran. This number can be increased if the community wants it to be. Parahost 02:36, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How do we reach a decision on whether we want to do this? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:19, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

I am uncertain on how to do this too. It does not seem like anyone is vehemently against it. The main concerns are the longevity of the site, which is mitigated by the fact that few lyric sites are shutdown and the links could be removed easily (I already said I would take responsibility for this) and the sponsored links, which are found on every lyric site I have been too and help pay for the servers.
I suppose we could do a poll of some sort or just have everyone who is neutral or in favor of it say "Aye". Rhobite, do you have any suggestions on how this issue could come to a conclusion quicker? Parahost 00:26, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Good site Parahost, however I personally can't support these links from wikipedia because of the Google ads and Amazon associate program. — Jeandré, 2004-12-11t13:50

Should we add links to Parahost's lyrics site to album articles?

Yes:

  1. 130.13.185.73 01:49, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC). I will start with Aye.

No:

  1. jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 01:54, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC). Can of worms & can of ads.
  2. Jeandré, 2004-12-13t13:54z. Nice site, but I don't think it's right for WP
  3. iMeowbot 22:51, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC) I think it would be safest to stick with authorized lyrics sources, such as Warner-Chappel and EMI.
  4. no -- they are copyright, though the music industry won't sue, it is still innappropriate. Dunc|☺ 13:55, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

All right, that settles it. I will not add links to lyrics.

Twenty Questions

Discussion moved to User talk:TwentyQuestions.-gadfium 00:06, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Google Scholar

Google has a new beta search engine called Google Scholar. This looks like a great reference to find scholarly articles about different topics. Check it out. This will be a great tool in addition to the upcoming Google library (see above). -- Chris 73 Talk 04:39, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)


This is absolutely amazing!

Just discovered Wikipedia and have been spending all day reading about math, statistics, spiritual concepts, my favorite authors. The articles I've come across are very clear and easy to understand and seemingly accurate. Has all of this writing really just come from random people editing pages and adding articles? This is absolutely Amazing! My faith in humanity has seriously just increased orders of magnitude.(User:198.62.10.11)

Thanks for the compliments. Yes, all of the stuff is written by random people, plus a few public domain source (e.g. 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica). Subsequently not everything is perfect, and some articles are discussed heavily, but overall I think Wikipedia is great! I am glad you like it. BTW, it is very easy to contribute, so if you're missing your most favourite "math, statistics, spiritual concepts, [...] authors" article, go ahead and add an article! -- Chris 73 Talk 00:02, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)
Personally, after reading all the rubbish about Sollog my faith in Wikipedia has gone up severalfold. I hope you become a contribuutor as we need as many helpers as we can to make Wikipedia a great resource. I personally believe Wikipedia will soon have millions of articles and billions of words. The true power of randomness. We may be random, but we have good filters to reduce the noise. Norman Rogers\talk 00:32, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

WireImage.com

I just came across WireImage.com and saw a fantastic selection of photos there that could massively benefit many of the articles we have. Obviously the licensing there is quite strict but perhaps with a little discussion we could get them to allow us to use them. I'd do it myself but really don't know very much about the various licenses. Anyone able to volunteer?

PS. I notice Will Sasso already has an image from there - is that allowed? violet/riga (t) 17:08, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't see how a professional press agency would let us just use their pricey celebrity images, some of them maybe be useable under the U.S. Fair use doctrine, which is not a license. Ideally each image used should be accompanied by a rationale explaining the grounds for its fair use. -- Solitude\talk 09:08, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)
It's rather good advertising for them and worth a shot, I thought. Perhaps fair use would be applicable but some people might want to look into that. violet/riga (t) 09:32, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Creating a Wikipedia Bot

Hey all, I was thinking about making a bot to browse through Wikipedia and generally help out in any way possible. I've recently learned how to access the internet using Java (which I know well) and I wanted to make a little program for practice. My question is, what should this bot do? I've thought about it, and right now I'm leaning towards having it make links more efficient by changing them so they directly link to a page if they're currently linked to a redirect. I figure it can't hurt, right? Anyways, what other miscellaneous chores should this bot do? Any suggestions? --pie4all88 06:49, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Make sure you read Wikipedia:Bots before doing anything else. Repost your question on the talk page there to get the attention of the right people.gadfium (talk) 07:03, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Yes, and beyond that, don't assume that ALL redirects should be changed into direct links. Sometimes there are good reasons to keep a link to redirect. older≠wiser 13:42, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for the help, guys. --pie4all88 21:20, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
You might start it off doing only a few hundred such edits at a time and see what percentage of them are viewed favorably. It can be very subtle whether a an indirect link is good or bad. In any event, this should not be done without some element of human judgment. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:00, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)
Directing links away from redirect pages is not always a good idea. A redirect page is sometimes used when information about a specific topic exists in a more general article. Since it is conceivable that someone in the future might move the specific information to its own article, links to that specific topic should be kept specific. Fredrik | talk 10:20, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Complicating VfD

I don't understand why someone is adding complexity to the VfD main page, with a bunch of HTML comments, redundant links that need to be manually updated, etc. We have enuf problems with people not following the basic steps that appear on the bottom of the page--why add further complexity with a bunch of confusing asides in the code? I assume it's well-intentioned, but it seems to have a net effect of making it harder to make VfD nominations, not easier. Niteowlneils 18:49, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • I just ignore the extra noise unless I see a good reason not to. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 01:55, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Absolutely. I noticed somebody added a bit of code supposedly to make it "easier" to add VfD, at the expense of requiring a section number update by every passing user who adds a VfD. I'm deliberately ignoring it until it becomes evident even to the creator that it isn't going to work. The VfD procedure we have already is complicated enough for ordinary users without making it more so. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:04, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, guys. That's basically what I've been doing. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't alone in my reaction. Niteowlneils 18:42, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Jerzy appears to be the one adding this schtuff. Someone might want to tweak him a bit about it. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 02:04, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Patrolling" of recent changes

There has been some discussion on IRC about whether the term "patrolling" of recent changes gives the right impression or not. In MediaWiki 1.4, there will be a feature that allows logged in users to click a link on a diff to say they have "patrolled" the edit. The edit can then be hidden from recent changes using "hide patrolled edits". The link on a diff will say "Mark as patrolled". After you click that, you will see "The selected revision has been marked as patrolled.". When it is disabled, it will say "The Recent Changes Patrol feature is currently disabled."

Are there any suggestions on what would be a better term for this, such as "checked", or do you feel "patrolled" is appropriate? Angela. 08:24, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

"reviewed" perhaps? Or should that be reserved for future fact reviews? I don't think there's anything wrong with patrolled, really. — David Remahl 08:30, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think there are better alternatives to "patrolled"; maybe "vetted", "checked", "reviewed", "inspected"... — Matt 11:54, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
"Patrolled" seems fine to me, and suggests a shallow examination for obvious signs of vandalism, misinformation or POV. "Reviewed" or "inspected" imply a much deeper level of fact checking. —AlanBarrett 18:35, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I like patrolled, but "checked" might be better. A question - will any user be able to use this bit, or just admins? Also, where can I find a full list of features for 1.4? --Golbez 18:49, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
Who has access to it will be up to each wiki. See Wikipedia:User access levels. The default is that only sysops have it, but changes can be proposed at Wikipedia talk:User access levels. There's a partial list of new features at Test:Main Page. Angela. 22:53, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia should appear inclusive, not defensive. Patrolled has odd connotations, and its meaning in this context certainly isn't immediately obvious. Perhaps "this edit has been accepted by other users"? --η υωρ 23:14, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How about just viewed or read. Other alternatives, scanned (elements of virus checking but also 'scan your eye over that'), perused or visited. -- Solipsist 07:45, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Patrolled seems fine to me, as does visited. They both seem neutral to me, and have no implication that action will be taken, but leave that option open. As a fallback, I'd go for scanned, but in this case the word carries a more active message. Noisy | Talk 13:05, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Will this just mean that a determined vandal will just make sure to patrol his own edit, or is there functionality to prevent this. Of course (!?) only logged in user should be able to patrol. But even if there is not any qualifications required it is a nice feature which work against the majority of less determined vandals, as well as well-intended people making undesirable edits.
When will this feature be available in wikipedia? Thue | talk 18:07, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
"patrolled" seems wrong to me; it suggests conotations of marching, or territory, and unless you are familiar with the "RC patrol" it doesn't suggest "a quick reveiw", which(I assume) is what it means. I think "checked" or "scanned" would be better. The feature sounds great. I've wanted a way to know what pages have not been looked at on RC for a while. One posible addition would be making it allow more than one review; so there would be "checked once", "checked twice" and so on(up to, say 4 or something) That would allow more fine grained identification of non-"checked" edits. And, I assume, "checking" would be tagged with the person who did it, so people couldn't "check" their own changes, or "check" a change multiple times(with my suggested addition)? JesseW 12:55, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think vetted is the right term, since that is what happens when you apply for certain jobs. Likewise we vet the diffs. :ChrisG 18:32, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I've never heard of that outside Wikipedia. What is "vetted" an abbreviation for? --ᓛᖁ ᑐ 20:05, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I don't believe it is an abbreviation, although I don't know the etymology. More widely used in UK than US, but a perfectly good word. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:46, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)
I think there's a connection to veterinarian --Phil | Talk 08:05, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)
My personal preference, be it ever so slightly verbose, would be idiot-checked as in "this edit has been checked for idiocy and none was immediately apparent". HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 08:05, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)
I think I like Accepted or Acknowledged. -- Stevietheman 19:10, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
"Patrolled" has a police connotation which comes across as negative to some people. -- Stevietheman 20:30, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

School tables

I've done four tables (Rockingham County Public Schools, Washington, DC schools(needs some work--I didn't think it thru fully), and Rhode Island schools/Providence County, Rhode Island schools with public domain/US Gov data from here, but want some feedback on a number of issues before I do any more: besides establishing a naming convention (I want to avoid the word "list", as it usually means just a bunch of links, with the data at individual articles, which this isn't, I just wonder if it would be better as "Schools in Rhode Island", etc.), should the school names be hilited (IE italic or bold), should alternating schools have a different background color (like Rockingham County Public Schools) to make it more clear what's going on and if so what color (I picked a supposedly "safe" gray--how important is it to use "safe" colors?), whether anybody has strong objections to leaving them as HTML tables instead of Wiki table markup (HTML seems much better for expansion and maintanence, as it allows a line-per-row correspondence that makes it more clear what data will be placed where), whether anybody thinks there might be enuf interest to make a formal 'US schools' WikiProject (once all the state and state/county or /district articles are created, it's probably possible to create stubs for the school district articles, from the same data (I'm thinking of creating Rambot-style article starters)), and any other thots people might have about what to include. Two things I'm looking to automate are: conversion to mixed case (most of the data is ALL CAPS)--I'm using a trial version of software that I don't like enuf to pay for at the end of the trial period,(found a way to do it in Excel) and hiding the redundant mentions of the state names, EG converting [[Bristol County, Rhode Island]] to [[Bristol County, Rhode Island|Bristol County]] and [[Barrington, Rhode Island]] to [[Barrington, Rhode Island|Barrington]]. Niteowlneils 20:09, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Non-free images and old archive

I'm having trouble locating the statement by Jimbo Wales deprecating the upload of 'non-commercial use only' images. I'm pretty sure it was on the mailing list and was posted on the Village Pump sometime before the the split into sections last September - but I also can't locate the pre-split archives.

Shouldn't a link to the earlier Village Pump archives be more obvious. And shouldn't the image upload pages make the policy against non-commercial use image clearer (its briefly mention on someway down on Wikipedia:Image copyright tags, but doesn't explain why). -- Solipsist 22:12, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Is this what you were looking for? - SimonP 05:27, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, that's a good start. But there was also some useful discussion in the Village pump archive, wherever that is now. -- Solipsist 23:08, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Baha'i entry is being held hostage

The entry on the Baha'i faith is being held hostage by members of the Baha'i faith who will brook no criticism of the religion, regardless of its accuracy.

I am a former Baha'i and my entries were deleted wholesale, even though they are facts about the religion. I am posting IP only to avoid repercussions against members of my family who are still members of the Baha'i faith.

If this kind of violation of NPOV by deleting all factual criticism of the Baha'i faith continues, I am going to request that the Baha'i article be subject to protection. 65.184.35.245 21:09, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

see the talk section on this... - --Cyprus2k1 10:25, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikitition (Wiki - Competition)

My friend and I have recently created a game revolving around Wikipedia. We were wondering if any similar game exists. The goal is to get from any page on Wikipedia to any other page in as few clicks as possible. The rules are as follow:

1. Two windows are opened; in each window Wikipedia is opened and the "Random page" link is hit.
2. The first window opened is the starting point, the second the destination.
3. The player is allowed to use the destination's "What links here" page but nothing else in the navigation box nor the search box nor the toolbox may be used and no other links on the destination may be clicked on after the "What links here" page is reached. Categories (on the bottom) the page belongs to may be used but the link to "Categories" in general may not be used.
4. The player is given one "go back" which allows them to use the back button to replay a single click without adding the mistake to thier score.
5. No page may be edited or created while the game is in progress.
Other variations include a challange where one player gives another the starting point and destination or a timed version in which clicks do not matter and the lowest time from one page to another is the goal.
When using the random page link my friend and I have never needed to click more than 6 clicks. It's actually pretty fun. So... back to my question. Does any similar game exist?

- Thanks - Brett

Posting from school but my name is User:nrbelex

209.11.48.2 20:09, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Yes. In fact someone has a tool that does it with software. Unfortunately i cant remember who it is. I' try to find out. Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 20:24, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think it's User:Kate. AShe has a link to Kate's tools on her userpage. I think it's there but the site ias down at the moment so i can't check. Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 20:30, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Kate appears to have up-and-left, removing the tools in the process. For (hardly any) more info, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Kate.27s_Tools &#0xfeff;--fvw* 18:52, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC)

This game sounds a bit like Wikipedia:Six_degrees_of_Wikipedia (which, I believe, is what the particular Kate's tool helped to solve). In any case, if you feel it is sufficiently different, you might like to add this game to the Wikipedia:Department_of_Fun. -- Solipsist 19:29, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wow - the human six-degree theory is loosely what we based our game on. So... I guess it's essentially the same. Too bad that Kate left, sounds like she had some fun stuff. Nrbelex 20:12, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New WikiProject

(Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (news) Paul August ☎ 21:58, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC))

1st Article

What was Wikipedia's first article? And how long did it take for the word to be spread and for there to be lots of people editing here?

No idea on the first article, but you can get a clear picture of Wikipedia's growth for EN here, or pick all, or another language, from here. Niteowlneils 22:38, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

See History of Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles. Rmhermen 23:05, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)


Picture of the Day

Just a quick request to find out if someone can tell me why Picture of the Day has been red-linked with some considerable regularity the past while. Denni☯ 21:33, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)

Based on the recent edit histories for the PotD pages, I'd have to say it's because Solitude is just one person. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:47, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Dictionary of National Biography

Okay, so I've just become aware that I can get the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography through my university library. Of course, this is under copyright. But one can also get access to the articles from the old Dictionary of National Biography published starting in the 1890s. So my question, then, is whether the old dictionary is in the public domain, and available for use like the 1911 Britannica. The legal notice on the ODNB site talks about how they reserve all rights on the ODNB, but doesn't say anything about the older work. Anyone know about this? john k 20:32, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Inherently, if it is that old, it is not under copyright. They can copyright any substantive enhancement of content (e.g. new footnotes) just like we can, but the material itself is public domain. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:39, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

That's what I'd have figured, but I wasn't sure about British copyright law. Also, new volumes continued to be put out up to 1980 or so with the newly dead, or missing people. At what point would copyright come into play? john k 20:55, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The newer volumes would be under copyright, but the older ones aren't. If the material is identical in both, then old portions aren't under copyright, but the combination of older and newer is. The safe solution is simple: only refer to the old ones if you're directly copying. Facts can't be copyrighted, only presentation, so you can refer to newer information (you should, and you should cite it), but they must be in your own words. I don't know the details, but I believe there is a weird exception involving "Crown copyright" for UK stuff; I think that's a pretty rare thing and is unlikely to hit your circumstance. Dwheeler 14:21, 2004 Dec 19 (UTC)
The Old DNB and supplements up to 1923 are out of copyright, but the more recent supplements to it and the whole of the Oxford DNB is in copyright. There is also a 'missing persons' volume published in about 1980 which is also in copyright. I am not clear what the position is with the on-line Oxford DNB, to which you are referring. I am far from clear how you would unscramble from this online version which texts of the DNB are copyright free or are not. I am a contributor to the Oxford DNB and will make some enquiries, since I do feel that a public domain version of the DNB plus supplements would be a worthwhile resource. You might not be aware that all the original DNB articles were either written anew from scratch with new research, or just updated for the Oxford DNB. In all cases there are significant differences between the two versions, and the Oxford DNB has a decent chunk of lives which are not in the DNB. Manufacturing and engineering, for example were very poorly served in the original volumes, though the supplements are a little better.
A Wikipedia article based on the original DNB should also contain data (but not extracts of the original words, of course) from the Oxford DNB as well, to be fully up to date.
The biograpies in Britannica 11ed are generally sound, in my experiece, and were written in many cases based on the DBN material.Apwoolrich 17:18, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
So does this mean that we can expect someone to start mining the pre-1923 volumes of the Victoria County History? Such work would add a considerable amount of UK material to Wikipedia. -- llywrch 22:29, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Google library

Just read this BBC news story about Google scanning pages from five academic institutions (libraries of Michigan and Stanford universities, and archives at Harvard, Oxford and the New York Public Library). Scans of works in the public domain will be made available for search and reading online. Presumably we will be able to 'borrow' bits? Does anyone know for sure?> -- ALoan (Talk) 20:51, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If the work in question is actually public domain, it can be 'borrowed'. Unless one of the involved parties does something nasty to qualify for a new copyright. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:07, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Google is doing this because it wants the metadata: Bibliographies and Footnotes, the original hyperlink. From that it can build a popularity index of searches. So for example a search on "Petrarch" turns up 2 million books, and then sorts them based on citation popularity.. it is the "wisdom of the crowds", Brilliant really. That they get public domain books online is a secondary bonus, the real money is a private database of all the metadata information linked in to full text searches of copyrighted work, no one else will have that.--Stbalbach 03:58, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The metadata comment is purely speculation. Not all that many books, especially older ones, had extensive bibliographies. The entire books are simply being shoved into the main index. "Google Library" already exists, as publishers are already sending Google their books and Google are putting them on the web. The difference is that Google's scanning process for modern books requires that they destroy them.
Regarding the question specifically, it will be difficult to get significant amounts of data from the search results, as Gooogle will be showing paragraph sized chunks at a time and only as they relate to your query. They will then provide a link to purchase the book from an online seller. In addition, you will never see the text except the 1-2 sentences in the search snippet, as they will be showing scanned images which are dynamically highlighted in yellow depending on your query. Hope that clears it up. --Alterego☺ 07:49, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

If you don't celebrate Christmas, have a merry day anyway! Maurreen 06:00, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Deleted page restoration seems to be broken with 1.4

OK, I f-ed up big time. Actually, a few days ago, the mistakes I made would have been easily recoverable, however one or more bugs in the 1.4 software seem to be preventing recovery. This morning, before I was fully awake, I meant to delete some VfD'd articles from the speedy cat, but forgot to hit Back after viewing the VfD subpage, and ended up deleting the subpages instead of the articles. The deletions do not appear in the new Deletion log, and if I manipulate the URL, in some cases MediaWiki says nothing has every existed there (even tho' I know it has), and even when it says it knows there are deleted edits, if I try to restore them it says it can't. Articles this applies to are the VfD pages for (probably) Nerdbrains, Ottawa Canada Linux Users Group, Private sozluk, Qurban Jan, That's My Sonic, and maybe William Cameron Menzies. A) If anyone can figure out how to undo this mess, I'd be eternally grateful. B) It seems there are one or more serious bugs in the new software that are probably more important to resolve than a few missing VfD discussions. Niteowlneils 00:28, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

EG Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Ottawa Canada Linux Users Group says "9 deleted edits", but if I click on that link, it says "There is no edit history for this page.". Also, there's stuff showing in the speedy cat that seems to have already been deleted, even tho' I hit Ctrl-F5 to fully reload the page--major weirdness going on. Niteowlneils 00:32, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I had no trouble undeleting them. I would guess it was just a temporary glitch. —Charles P. (Mirv) 00:45, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Cool. That's a relief. I work in the software industry, so you'd think I'd have guessed it was a transient issue. :/ Niteowlneils 03:27, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Information Regarding Old Victor Records

I am searching for information on Red Seal Record "His Masters Voice" Ignace Jan Paderwski Pianist. Recorded May 23, 1917.

I have Bach, Chopin and want to know the value.

Wikipedia tends to be pretty uninterested in the economic value of things like this. If anything is on line, you'll probably need to search auction sites to find it. I'm sure there is a bulletin-board type site out there somewhere with collectors of old records discussing prices, but I don't know where. I'd be surprised if it is very valuable: there isn't a big market in old clasical records just on the basis of rareness of a pressing. On the other hand, if it was never reissued, you could be sitting on something rare indeed and quite valuable. My guess, though, is that everything by Paderwski is much reissued; you don't say anything specific enough for me to say more. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:20, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

1.4 stopped deletion log?

It looks like nothing has been recorded at Wikipedia:Deletion log since the db was locked for the 1.4 upgrade. Niteowlneils 03:39, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Thanks. (I've now updated the link on CAT:CSD.) Niteowlneils 06:32, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I keep getting an error ("Sorry- we have a problem... The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to your request.") trying to view the old log to check its' 'what links here'. Anybody know anyplace else that needs the link updated? Niteowlneils 06:58, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Clash of ideologies

There's an interesting discussion going on at User talk:Jimbo Wales#Stop breaking Wikipedia policy. ‣ᓛᖁ ᑐ 00:05, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Right-wing politics

I would greatly appreciate if some people with solid political-science backgrounds would check in on the discussion at Talk:Right-wing politics. I feel like I am engaged with people on the political right most of whom are more interested in scoring points for particular views than in writing a scholarly article. In particular, (1) there seems to be an effort to deny that any despicable regime was part of the right. Look, I'm on the left, and I'll own up to Stalin and (especially) Mao as having been leftists, but Hitler? Pinochet? (2) Slightly less important, this was all triggered by a discussion of whether the U.S. Libertarian Party belongs in the general list of right-wing parties. My view is that it shouldn't be listed there: while there are significant right-wing aspects to Libertarianism, their are also significant aspects that do not fit into a right-wing view. Certainly the party considers itself neither left nor right. I think the relation of Libertarianism to the political spectrum is an interesting question; it belongs (and is present) in the article political spectrum; I haven't checked where else, I presume it is also in Libertarianism, Nolan chart, and possibly even Left-right politics, but I think adding it without qualification to a list of right-wing parties does nothing to help explain either right-wing politics or the Libertarian Party. And explaining is what this ought to be about, not advocacy. And certainly not about politically expedient obfuscation. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:19, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Copyright on image

I have uploaded an image for my user page which the copyright holder has allowed me to use for that page alone (understanding that the user pages are not counted under the GFDL/Creative commons licensises int he same way as the rest of Wikipedia). What tag do I use to mark it, since this doesn't seem to be comvered by any of the listed tags? Grutness|hello?   08:07, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The best you're going to find is Template:Permission. We don't exactly want to encourage people to upload such things even for user page use. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:22, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Given the lack of appropriate template, you should write out the conditions explicitly. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:33, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
Actually according to here, user pages come under the same Gnu FDL as every other page on Wikipedia. Evil Monkey → Talk 01:01, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

New features

I've noticed some new features in diff management and on changes/wishlists, letting you go back to the previous diff and letting you jump directly to the section cited in the comments, respectively. And I think the Template list at the bottom of the edit is new too.

So, my question: Is there a page on here that mentions when such changes are made? --Golbez 05:23, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Edit: It seems that this is all part of MediaWiki 1.4 being installed, rather than these being single feature upgrades. So where can we get a comprehensive list of changes? --Golbez 05:26, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
There isn't an actual good list of the changes. The best I can point you at right now is at Wikipedia:MediaWiki 1.4 release notes, which is just a formatted version of the 1.4b3 changes. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:28, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
There are "official" MediaWiki 1.4beta3 release notes at SourceForge, but changes are sometimes added to the Wikimedia sites before the next version is labeled. Zigger 15:02, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)

Spurious wikicode

For anyone wondering why many signatures are suddenly appearing with unmodified wikicode, this is bug 1142 on Mediazilla. ‣ᓛᖁ ᑐ 04:13, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I put a notice on the Wikipedia:Community Portal about this yesterday. If you overried the default format with your own sig you'll probably need to select the Raw signatures (without automatic link) option to prevent the (now) additional 'top and tailing'. Arguably it is a feature not a fault! --Vamp:Willow 12:49, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Maps

I've been trying to make my own maps, but I've run into a little problem. I was wondering if anyone could help me out. My inspiration was Morwen, who has great maps, like at Image:LincolnshireBoston.png. Now, if you zoom in on the edges, you'll notice she seems to use *soft lines*; that is, the black line suitably turns more pink (and white on the outside) as it goes diagonal, thereby anti-aliasing it. However, when I try to do this, I get results like Image:Azerbaijan districts numbered.png. What I did here was draw the border, then use a fill tool - and the fill tool ignores the anti-aliasing, the soft lines.

I got Azerbaijan to look so good by filling in each area *three* times, and then going over manually to color any remaining transparent bits. This is not an ideal solution, and you can see, it still leaves a little border around every line. (For an even worse example, look at the upper half of my Image:Algeria provinces.png.)

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get maps that look like Morwen's? I COULD paint the area in first, then draw lines over it, and that would properly anti-alias them - except then they wouldn't properly anti-alias with the outer white/transparency. This is annoying enough that I'm holding off on making any more until I can figure out what I'm doing wrong, so I'd truly appreciate any help you can give me. Thanks! --Golbez 06:10, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)

I improved it a little although it looks better on my picture processing software than it does when I uploaded it to the commons. I flood-filled a particular shade of pink in each cell which changed all the pinks to the same color. Then I filled in some of the whitest pixels. This only worked for pink, not black or blue though. I am also interested to hear better ways. Rmhermen 04:53, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
:D I just had one of my happiest moments in awhile. (okay, yes, I'm an unhappy person =p) In Fireworks, I decided that, instead of looking at the brush/pencil properties, like I have been doing, I'd look at the FILL properties. And what did I find there? "Tolerance". It was set to 50 or whatever. I thought, huh, that might be useful. Dropped it to 0; no discernible change. Pumped it to 255 and HOLY CRAP it looks awesome now :D I'm gonna redo all my maps with this now. (OK, many needed redoing anyway =p) I'm not *entirely* sure if this is the best technique, but it works for now. Thanks for looking at the map. :) --Golbez 05:15, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Wikiripoffs

What is done about sites like this:http://www.knowledgeisfun.com/ that rip-off wikipedia and don't mention their source or the gpl?--Deglr6328 02:34, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm not clear on how active people are about actually contacting sites, but it seems the two relevant pages are Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks and Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/GFDL Compliance. Knowledge is Fun doesn't seem to have been added to either yet; from my quick scan, it looks like it would probably fall in the "low" category on the latter page. Niteowlneils 04:46, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ethics and law

(Moved to [[Wikipedia:Village pump (news). Paul August ☎ 03:59, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC))

New Admin noticeboard

(Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (news). Paul August ☎ 03:51, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC))

Tired of talk-page spam?

No
Solicitation

Tired of unsolicited bulk talk page messages? Someone else wants you to join a wikiproject or to vote for them on the Arbcom or to add cross-licensing tags to your user page? Try Template:NoSolicitors as a vaguely subtle hint! -Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 04:20, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Just so you know, solicitor can, in various forms of English, mean a type of lawyer (solicitor) ... or a pimp. :) --FOo 06:13, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The term you are seeking is No Solicitation; (cf. Solicitor) --Vamp:Willow 12:43, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New version of MediaWiki

Firstly, please reply on my talk page. OK, I see further up this page, that MediaWiki 1.4 (I think) will have a feature enabling a user to say that s/he has checked an edit? Well, excellent idea. When will it be up and running?--Gabriel Webber (babble were rig) 18:14, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You can already test it on http://commons.wikimedia.org - it was activated there a bit earlier because some image handling features were desperately needed (images in categories, a new gallery syntax). And also the first bugs which weren't spotted on the test server surfaced in that real life test. andy 23:09, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
MediaWiki 1.4 is running now I believe. Paul August ☎ 03:47, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Gender ratio

I just did some statistics on gender ratio on the Wikipedia community at orkut.com, and made a mailing list post about it. I thought some people might be interested: http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-December/036142.html -- Tim Starling 08:32, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

That comes from being “the encyclopedia that Slashdot built”. Given that only 5% of Slashdot readers are women, a 13% score here is still more balanced. There has been talk at the Countering systemic bias project about how to tackle this. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 17:53, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
You're talking in circles, the fact that a lot of Wikipedia editors are also interested in Slashdot is not the cause of the gender inbalance, it is merely a result of a more deeply rooted issue. Hard as it is to pinpoint, I feel women on-line are in general more interested in communicating and socializing, and less in discussion. However there are possibly other reasons and there has been some research in the area I believe. -- Solitude\talk 21:05, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

How do you know what sex wikipedians are? Women might be less likely to disclose their sex, or more likely to lie about it, or, in fact, the majority of wikipedians might be poodles for all we know. Intrigue 23:11, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As I said in the mailing list post, many people don't give their sex on Wikipedia, but 99.5% of them do on Orkut. It's a bit of a leap of faith to say that the demographics of the Wikipedia community on Orkut is the same as the editorship, but bad statistics are better than no statistics if you're able to look at them for what they are -- i.e. interesting not perfect. -- Tim Starling 03:36, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
As someone had mentioned above, it is possible that women may not wish to disclose their gender automatically. I was compelled to refer to my gender only because I was constantly referred to as 'he' or other users wanted to clarify. On the other hand, it does seem from my interaction with other regular Wikipedians of India that I might be an exception. On another note, if you see the MBTI types on meta, it seems that the INT (introvert, intuition, thinking) types frequent Wikipedia more. So, there must be a pattern somewhere. And the elections winners for Board or whatever ( Angela and Anthere) were females of the E type (extroverts) and maybe not NT. Is there is a correlation between gender and MBTI types? Maybe that will help in your analysisKRS 04:35, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
You'll want to consider whether reasons for not disclosing gender may be gender-related. Women, in general, are perceived to be more vulnerable to, say, stalking. (Whether this is the case or not, it is the perception.) Women, particularly very young women, may feel that it is more important to protect their "real life" identities. (I know I certainly do. I don't hide the fact that I'm female, but I don't advertise it, either.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 22:14, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I been looking at this issue for a while to try to better understand our systemic biases. I looked at Wikipedia's top contributors and found that 17% of them declared themselves to be female. (There were another 20% where I could find no declaration of gender).

I also did a very rough, and perhaps meaningless, search to try and see what effect this has had on our encyclopedia. In Wikipedia the word he occurs five times more than the word she, and the word man occurs three times as often as the word woman. I also compared this to other encyclopedias:

He:She Man:Woman Encyclopedia
5:1 3:1 Wikipedia
7:1 2:1 Columbia
4:1 2:1 Encarta
2:1 2:1 Britannica
-SimonP 19:25, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
  • Not to be a prig, but how much of that is due to the article balance? For example, in historical articles up through perhaps the mid-20th century, articles are more likely to be about men, just because there were more notable men then women. The same is true today for many categories (e.g. professional sports). Is this only generic "he/him"s, or all instances?
    • That is an important point, but it doesn't explain why Wikipedia is worse than other encyclopedias. - SimonP 18:55, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Another factor is that some articles incorporate material from the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica, which was written back when he was used as a pronoun for a person of indeterminate sex. Don't think that's enough to entirely explain the skew though. Most likely, the main factor is the "the encyclopedia Slashdot built" effect. crazyeddie 05:07, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

      • I like the notion of looking at active contributors. It shouldn't be difficult to do a survery of top contributors (by number of edits) and see how they identify themselves on their user pages (just time consuming). Looking at active contributors might be a better way to understand systemic biases. -Aranel ("Sarah") 22:14, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
        • Edit count isn't everything, generally the only thing a high edit count indicates is that the user does a lot of minor edits and RC patrol. I'd actually like to see an extra metric which would be the sum over all edits of (the size of the diff between that revision and the previous revision to which its diff is the smallest). That would weed out those of us who write sentences like the previous one and therefor are wise enough not to write any new content, and would be a more useful metric for what you are proposing. &#0xfeff; --fvw* 22:29, 2004 Dec 21 (UTC)

Secret societies

Secret society lists a number of organizations that by definition we cannot verify like other facts in Wikipedia. Consider the recent addition of Noble Order of the Lamp and Sword: it was created by anonymous editors, likely students, and there's no obvious way to verify this. Is there any point in even listing secret societies that have no indepenedent verification? Samw 15:14, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No. Feel free to delete any material without public sources. Wikipedia is not for original research. —Steven G. Johnson 21:21, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)
VfDed, good find. --fvw* 22:46, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)


Template:Sandbox

I'm not happy about the changes that have been made to the above template, above all they make it look more unpleasant and it is so much larger. Anyone else agree?--Gabriel (internal ID number: 118170) 12:39, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The place to discuss this is Template talk:Sandbox, User:Oven Fresh already left a comment there stating she changed it, and the template talk page definately is in use. --fvw* 17:05, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

Is the Gutenberg license compatible with GFDL

Is the license of this [4] page compatible with GFDL? Jayjg | (Talk) 04:34, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Since most of the stuff at Project Gutenberg is Public Domain then there is no issue with GFDL as I understand it. It appears to license is to do with use of the trademarked 'Project Gutenberg' logo which can only be used if the book is provided as is. But IANAL. Evil Monkey → Talk 05:09, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)

195.146.134.53's edits to lead sections

An anonymous user from 195.146.134.53 (contribs, talk) has been changing many lead sections of articles about geographical topics to de-link language names and bold (instead of italicize) foreign versions of names. I've asked them to stop, but there was no reply. They've also started making redirects from these other names to articles, which may be occasionally useful but is by default gratuitous unless something links there. The English Wikipedia doesn't need all this. Is there grounds for a temporary ban here, to get their attention?

(Please answer or notify me on my talk page, I don't watch VP.) --Joy [shallot] 20:42, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

There's an old proverb about training mules. First you've got to hit him in the face with a two-by-four. You've tried being nice, and got no response. Time to break out the lumber.
Given the guy's speed, it almost looks like a bot anyway. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:52, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Problems upholding NPOV

I have been working on a page called Views of creationists and mainstream scientists compared for some time with a couple of creationists of strong beliefs (I am not a creationist myself) and I have found it an almost dayly job to NPOV their various strongly biased statements. It is sometimes quite difficult to check a statement that has been made for authenticity as I am not an expert on all areas of science. I encourage others to take a look and check statements that have been made. Barnaby dawson 15:21, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Non-realtime search broken?

When realtime search is diabled, usually the search term is defaulted in the google/yahoo search boxes. But currently they show up blank. Niteowlneils 22:46, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Suspicious users / suspected cranks

Where is the best place to put up a notification that a known web/usenet kook is now on wikipedia making edits and his edits should be monitored closely? (It seems the infamous Jim Bowery [5] has graced us with his presence [6] [7](at bottom)) I'm not sure he belongs in request for comments....yet...--Deglr6328 22:01, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, as per standard policies of assuming good faith, don't do anything unless mr. Bowery (if it is him) has made repeated vandalisms to articles. Then put him up on Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress. You never know, maybe he's so bowled over with Wikipedia that he decides to become productive. :-) OK, maybe not, but we can't do anything until the opposite has been demonstrated. The note here should be enough for concerned people to watch him closely, I think. JRM 22:08, 2004 Dec 28 (UTC)

Can dogs develop Diabetes?

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk#Can dogs develop Diabetes?

Page history merges needed

One (or maybe two) people moved pages to disambiguation titles unnecessarily, then another reverted using cut&paste, which has left a number (that I haven't determined yet) of articles with seriously messed up histories. Ones I've found so far are Everybody Has Secrets/Everybody Has Secrets (movie)--not sure I want to change while it's on VfD, Untold Scandal/Untold Scandal (movie)done, Summer Scent/Summer Scent (drama), All In/All In (drama), and True To Love/True To Love (drama), and I'm not going to have time to do it tonightdone today. Two that were caught it time (before both copies ended up with more or less equally long histories) are Winter Sonata/Winter Sonata (drama) and Hotelier/Hotelier (drama). Niteowlneils 02:58, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Government controle on xh.? Open letter to Jimbo

Dear Jimbo,

I am a regular at nl. and sysop there, but I write this letter in which I would like to voice my concern as the only registered user and sysop of a fledgling wiki, the one in isiXhosa. (xh.) I am a Dutchman living in the USA and my isiXhosa is pretty limited. I just wish to repay the hospitality of the amaXhosa that I experienced as a VSO volunteer in South Africa 97-99 by helping this wiki to get going. I had tried to put a word of welcome on the main page in the hope of attracting some native speakers and was at first delighted to see it had been edited by one, who had also left a page about the National Language Services of South Africa on all wikis of the 11 languages of the country.

What I was not so happy with was the addition of the phrase 'kulo Mzantsi Afrika umtsha' for the New South Africa on the main page of the xh. wiki. Apart from the fact that 10 years after 1994 the expression is getting a bit stale it is a clear political reference and a pet phrase of the Pretoria government. Although the number of Xhosa speakers outside South Africa is limited, wikipedia is imho not owned by the Pretoria govt, nor is isiXhosa. Besides many of the other 10 are spoken widely outside the country, e.g. Tsonga in Mozambique, Afrikaans in Namibia and -dare I say- English in Bermuda and a few more places I believe.

The contents of the NSL page are even more worrying imho. It states that this agency is in charge of the communication between all these (11) languages. The Afrikaans version even says bestuur (=governs). Although I applaud Pretoria's efforts to translate documents across languages, I do not think that any goverment should presume to govern the communication between people, let alone whole languages even as they are spoken outside their borders. This simply does not chime with article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that grants freedom of speech and expression to all global villagers. As wikipedia is concerned this sets a dangerous precedent. Even though the interpretation of the NLS is most likely rather benign, if other goverments presume to have the same rights of controle we might as well give up on wikipedia.

Sincerely Jaap Folmer xh:User:Jcwf

Are they claiming to govern the use of this languages internationally? The Académie française governs French in France, but Quebec is allowed to dissent; indeed, see the many articles under Category:Language regulators. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:55, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)
In a sense this is precisely my question, Jmabel. Does wiki belong to Quebec or France (or neither)? Is the Xhosa wiki part of South Africa? Can a SA goverment agency lay claim to it? Then -if so-, who governs the English one? Of course many governments do -often excellent and very useful- things about language. We should repect their efforts and be grateful if they provide e.g. a sensible orthography, but how far can their efforts go before it infringes upon free communication here? I do not think that that is South Africa's intentions at all but the same cannot be assumed for all governments. Can governments outlaw the use of certain terms? Impose a kind of 'newspeak'? JCwf
To me, this is a no-brainer. Governments or ruling bodies can claim to own a language, if they wish. If enough people believe it, it might even be true. But obviously, this does not give them a claim to "owning" anything written in that language, whether it is this comment in English or a whole Wikipedia. As you say, that would be a patent violation of free speech. A free encyclopedia is not free if governments can presume to tell you what goes in it. So Wikipedia is owned by nobody who imposes such requirements, or it is not Wikipedia.
Does any government of Africa host the servers the African Wikipedians are on? No. End of discussion. JRM 16:50, 2004 Dec 28 (UTC)

Merry Christmas and "correctness" gone mad

Hoi, {{ChristmasWish}} Is getting atraction for a project that is done on the Italian wiktionary. This project has several aims:

  1. Wishing people a merry chrismas.
  2. Promoting the use of soundfiles in the wikimedia projects
  3. Promoting the use of .ogg files
  4. Promoting the use of Commons as a place to store multimedia files
  5. Promoting Wiktionary.

There are some who consider it not correct to wish people a merry christmas because "they might feel offended". There need for righteousness goes so far that they remove both the content of the message AND the message. Both action are throwing away the baby with the washing water. Because either nothing is left or nothing is left what this project is about.

I am all in favour to have ALL traditional wishes for all festivities recorded both in Wiktionary and, the corresponding soundfiles in Commons. If this happens as a result of the Italian wiktionary's christmas project then that is a blessing.

Finally, Vrolijk Kerstfeest en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar GerardM 08:49, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC) :)

I second the .ogg recordings. There's no need to throw the files away, that's just silly. If we can have a lot of recordings of say, "water" in different languages, then why not the traditional Christmas wishes?
However, I still think this should not go on the Main Page. The problem is that nobody who wants to put this in has so far given me a better reason than "it's fun for most of our readers", if they give a reason at all. The Main Page is not your personal advertising space for Wiktionary projects, Christmas or no.
Then there are users who have expressed legitimate concerns about neutrality and appropriateness, and they are basically told not to be so Ebenezer Scroogey and get with the program. Sorry folks, you'll have to do better than that. Oh, and merry Christmas to you all! JRM 12:16, 2004 Dec 25 (UTC)
The whole thing is horribly unfriendly for newbies:
  1. It's not clear what the links are
  2. Red links are supposed to mean no article
  3. The layout is, to be blunt, rather dull
If it were tidied and these points dealt with then I could understand its inclusion. As it stands I've removed it for the time being. violet/riga (t) 16:25, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Excluding the non-Christians is sufficient reason for not including it anyway - needs to include all who are having holidays and religious celebrations at this time IMO. The current form appears to be always unacceptable here because it fails to do that. Jamesday 18:26, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
That some might feel offended wasn't the main reason those who discussed it with you gave. It not including all of those who aren't Christians but are having holidays now and simply it being a bad idea to make any such well wishes were the most commmon reasons I saw being given and were the reasons I gave myself. If you are Christian: merry christmas!. Really.:) If not, happy holidays anyway.:) Jamesday 18:26, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Festiva! =) --Alterego 18:35, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I agree that it shouldn't be there, but anyone who is offended by it needs to grow the hell up. --Golbez 18:38, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)
Hello. I see that this notice is currently up on m:Main page. And I am offended. I am not a Christian, and along with many other people I think that the entire religion is made up rubbish, and do not appreciate an official endorsement of it by this encyclopedia. It is politically incorrect and hardly neutral! --Alterego 03:03, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Your offense offends me, sir. I'd hate to see what you'd do if a religious show advertised on television. Call the cable company and claim offense? --Golbez 03:14, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)
I don't own a television, I see few advertisements on the Internet, and try my damndest to avoid billboards, but what can a man do. It's all aside. The project is neutral, which includes not making endorsements of religions. --Alterego 03:48, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I have also linked this discussion on the talk page of the Meta main page. I vote that the endorsement be taken down immediately. --Alterego 04:09, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Which is why "Happy holidays" or "Season's greetings" is preferred. Peter O. (Talk, automation script)
I agree it shouldn't be there, not because of possible offensiveness, but because it just shouldn't be there. We don't advertise WikiProjects of any kind in this way. Tuf-Kat 05:18, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

I am not a christian and your being offended is something that amazes me. Why would you be offended by a project that is there to promote the use of Commons, Wiktionary, .ogg files and cooperation and, wishes you a merry christmas as well? Being against the efforts of many people who contributed to this project, what did you do to balance this project in a positive way? Where does our project manifest this endorsement of religion? Who said, Sir, I disagree with you totally but I will defend your right till the end that you may say what you say? Your wish for censureship has nothing to do with neutrality. GerardM 19:46, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It would've been good to have included it if you'd have gone about it the right way. As it was it was ugly and didn't fit in at all. As for people offended by the religious context then I really think that's quite odd considering millions of non-Christians celebrate the holiday around the world - I can't think of anybody I know (some of many different religions) that doesn't celebrate it. violet/riga (t) 19:53, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I know many people who don't celebrate it. Jayjg | (Talk) 22:05, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Now you can say you met some crazy person on the Internet that stands by his ideals and wouldn't touch Christmas with a ten foot pole. You can take "offense" to mean anything you want to suit any purpose you want, but obviously the context is "violates logical principles". --Alterego 20:01, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
There is always January 6th and 7th for a re-run. These are Chrismas for the Armenian and the Russian/Serbian orthodox tradition respectively. As to "obvious", I guess not. GerardM 20:04, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
A 're-run'? Unless Wikipedia posts a message for every single holiday on every single calendar, this does not happen. --Alterego 20:08, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
This project has little to do with religion. It is also not about all these other festivities. It has everything to do with things that make up the wikimedia projects. Your argument has only to do with your beliefs and values. They cannot be called neutral which you make abundantly clear with your "ten foot pole". Neutrality is also about allowing the opinions of others to have there day under the sun and not insisting that everything should be in your image. GerardM 20:38, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I voiced my opinion on the subject openly. It seems pertinent that someone let's those celebrating Jesus Christ on the front page of a neutral wiki know that not everyone shares their enthusiasm.
"This project has little to do with religion.".
Excellent. I am glad we agree! So any reference to Christmas gets dropped, then? Wikipedia is not a platform for religious zealots to offer millions of visitors "christmas wishes." --Alterego 21:03, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Not only am I amazed with the opposition that this project has had so far but your reply is another puzzlement. How can you come to this amazing conclusion. If anything there is newyear and the two other christmasses who are a splendid opportunity to ask the attention for the "Buon Natale" project, and you expect me to drop it because I am not religious, the project is not religious because it uses the "C"-word ?? I hope that when you look inside yourself you may find some room for positions and opinions not your own. It is nice to contribute to a chrismas spirit, make yourself appreciated just for doing something that is fun too. I had tea with a lady from Iran on one occasion, with a gentlemen and a lady from Armenia and had two nice evenings talking about language, culture, religion. They appreciated this "Western Christian" phenomenon and thought this project charming. Then again, you only have these kind of experiences when you are open for them.
So, you are welcome to your opinion. And I respectfully disagree. I am happy that my idea of wikimedia is a bit more inclusive. GerardM 21:45, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I thank you for welcoming me to my opinion, and I welcome you to yours as well. Therefore, having agreed upon this point, I will continue to not post messages on the front of any wiki admonishing this holiday as invented rubbish and gluttony and will expect my peers to behave likewise concerning their private beliefs. --Alterego 03:44, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
You are mistaken. I do not believe in Christmas as a religious event as mentioned before. I hope you will mellow when you age and be happy in a world not only reflecting your needs and wants. GerardM 07:05, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
One sweeping statement damns my youth, prays hope for my conformance to the whims of the sweeping masses and leaves in my mouth a thick resin of hypocricy - all the while avoiding the point. Shall I congratulate? -- Alterego 07:23, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hockey team pages

why are we allowing mulitple pages for the same nhl franchises? the hartford whalers page should be merge with the carolina hurricanes pages as it is the same franchise?

I think there's merit in leaving those pages be since they are usually separate entities. For example, the history of the Minnesota North Stars is applicable to both the Minnesota Wild in terms of the animosity between the fans and the team in Minnesota surrounding the circumstances of the team's departure, and the Dallas Stars who inherited the team. (Unfortunately, there's nothing about the Stars' departure, yet.) A better (existing) example would be the Washington Senators who became the Minnesota Twins and now the advent of the Washington Nationals. Where does the historical information belong? With the new Nationals, with the Twins, or both? What happens when the historical information is changed under the Twins, but not the Nationals, etc. I think I asked more questions than I attempted to answer. — Wheresmysocks 06:58, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)
But the question is really whether they are "separate entities". If the team is moving from one location to another and changing its name, but retaining a majority of the same players and management, there is still a continuity to the franchise history. It is no different than a corporation deciding to relocate its headquarters and change its brand name. The history in the franchise's article should be able to effectively deal with the circumstances of the move. I don't see any reason to have a separate article based simply on the name and location of the team. —Mike 03:49, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)

Gmail invites

mine have all been used —Charles P. (Mirv) 13:58, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Cheers - XED.talk.stalk.mail.csb 14:11, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've got a fresh crop in. Eight invites, first come first serve. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 23:19, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Same here. Leave a message on my talk. --Whosyourjudas\talk 04:02, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have 6, just leave a message on my talk. talk Stuff ign 16:32, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Got a bunch. Leave message on my talk, or just [email me and I'll respond back the gmail invite]. Ozzyslovechild 19:00, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have around 10, but wouldn't it be a better idea to just set up User:Ludraman/gmail or Wikipedia:Gmail, and everyone who has invites says so there? JOHN COLLISON (An Liúdramán) 19:50, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, I've done that now to save everybody posting at the misc village pump, just head on over to User:Ludraman/gmail and add your name and how others can get an invite off you. Much better. JOHN COLLISON (An Liúdramán) 11:47, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

perspective correction in photos

I was looking at today's featured article, The Cathedral at Magdeburg, and saw that there was some discussion about the featured photo, that being the interior of the building. I was curious as to why that photo, and the other photos that accompanied the excellent article were not perspective corrected. I have downloaded the image, corrected the perspective, and it's beautiful. I would upload it to show you if I knew how.

Further to this, I would be willing to help correct and enhance photos for Wikipedia if there was a need. It is my profession. I don't know where to go to volunteer.

Registered users can use the "Upload file" link to upload picture and sound files. (also Wikipedia:Image use policy and Wikipedia:Requested pictures may be of interest.) Niteowlneils 01:58, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I just moved the image to commons:Image:Cathedral_of_Magdeburg_Inside.jpg. The Commons is the storage place for all free images (Gnu license, many creative commons, and of cource PD). You would need a login there if you want to change the image. I also thought that I corrected the perspective already, but would be interested to see your work. -- Chris 73 Talk 23:57, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)
Chris 73, your photo is tilted! --Alterego☺ 19:32, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
No its not (at least not much). See Image:MagdeburgAngles.jpg -- Chris 73 Talk 09:38, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)
These are VERY useful skills and your contributions in this area would be very valuable. To contribute you need only to create an account. Then you could click on Upload file link available on all pages. By downloading a file with the same name as the existing file you would replace it. So you can just go through the articles (possibly featured articles first), find images which don't look right, download, correct, save, upload new versions, provide a comment on the image page on what you did.
Eventually you may want to start a new page (may be a Wikipedia:WikiProject) where users could list the images requiring correction. By linking to that page from pages related to adding images you would make photo uploaders aware of this important aspect of image quality, let them find someone who could make their decent image look great, and eventually attract other people with professional skills in correcting photos to help. Paranoid 15:08, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I'm curious: what is perspective correction? ‣ᓛᖁ ᑐ 21:21, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I added a stub at that article. Wikipedia actually needs links to tutorials for fixing images (including white balance, brightness/contrast, etc). And it would be great if the anonymous poster above would help. Paranoid 16:54, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I am the anon poster. I have put forth a proposal on the proposals page regards this item. As I said on the proposals, I need a simpler way to upload images. I would very much like to help, but can't make sense of how to do it. I did read the tutorial. I did figure out some things, but not how to link images or how to send them to a particular place.--Jocsboss 22:23, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)Jocsboss
FWIW, the few I've done I contacted the original uploader of the image and said something like "good photo, but a bit of tweaking might improve it... do you mind if I do that?" (Since most of the items are GFDL anyway you don't even have to do that - it's just courtesy to do so). Then I've downloaded their image, tidied it up and emailed it to them. If they agree that it's better I've then uploaded the new image in place of the old one. With me it's mainly been straightening horizons and fixing brightness problems - someone who can handly perspective corretion will be very useful to have available! Grutness|hello?   02:18, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Okay, so I edited the stub perspective correction with some examples. I don't know how to embed images so so they are internal links. If someone could put the images in the page for me I would appreciate it. Emailing the original photographer sounds like a workable solution. How do you know who to email? Does it always say? Sorry if these are stupid questions. Like I said somewhere else, most of this seems to be in a foreign language to me.--Jocsboss 03:50, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Go to the image page (clicking on an image in an article will take you there). That will give you the edit history of the page - the first edit will be the uplifting of the image file. go to that user's hope page and look at the menu to the left (same place as "What links here" etc on this page. One of the choices will be "email user". As to putting the images in the page, I've done that - the best way of learning is probably looking at how articles with images are worded (click on edit for one of those pages and you'll see details of how the image is scripted in). There are various pages in the Wikipedia help files, but they probably aren't as clearly explained as they might be. Other than that, there are always other wikipedians around to ask. Grutness|hello?   04:11, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Request for outside views

I don't know if I'm posting this in the right place (most village pumps I know are a lot easier to use). Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Antifinnugor is at a deadlock because of the lack of outside views. There has been much discussion already (rendering the RfC increasingly unreadable); however, most of the debating editors were previously involved in the issues at hand. The RfC is in desperate need of some fresh outside opinions. Please take a look there if you want! — mark ✎ 13:46, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)


Musings: digitally-signed declarations for imported content

I approached someone by email to see if they would be willing to license one of their photographs under the GFDL for inclusion within Wikipedia; the author agreed, and was even helpful enough to offer to (digitally) sign a license declaration using his GPG key. From Wikipedia's point of view, this might be a Good Thing for two reasons: 1) it gives other Wikipedia editors some assurance that the author has indeed licensed his work this way (rather than relying on the word of one single Wikipedia editor); and 2) it gives Wikipedia some protection from the author changing his mind later and denying that he ever licensed his work that way (that is, a little bit of non-repudiation).

See Image:Typex.jpg for the image in question. (I have verified the signature with a key downloaded from the author's website and on the key servers, but I haven't verified the key.) (And, I guess, he might better have included a SHA hash of the image rather than a URL, but it doesn't matter too much).

However, most people don't have the technical ability to create digital signatures, and those that do may not want to go to the effort. And, of course, a PGP/GPG signature doesn't guarantee us everything (for example, how can we tell that the owner of a certain email address has the authority to license an image found on the web? etc.)

— Matt Crypto 17:45, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Putting aside the point about "...owner of an email address..." we have know way of associating a pgp signature with a natural person. (This is a weakness of many security schemes). If there was some (inter-)national public key infrastructure, that associated a public key with a person, then digital signatures might be a good idea, but I don't think it is terribly useful for wikipedia now. (not to mention the other reasons that Matt mentions). Morris 03:08, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)
You might be able to, at least in theory, associate a PGP signature with a "natural person" through a Web of Trust — that is, someone that you trust trusts someone who trusts someone else who has met up with the owner of this key and oggled his passport. But I don't think we really need to know details about actual persons. In an ideal world, we'd like two things: 1) Evidence that some entity X is the copyright holder for some content; and 2) Proof that entity X has licensed it under the GFDL. Entity X could be a grabbable person ("Jo Bloggs at 15 Chapletown Rd"), or an ethereal net alias ("WikiHaxx0r@hotmail.com"). If you've established (1) somehow, you could use PGP signatures to shore up (2), but Wikipedia doesn't do strong checks for either of these things, and, I guess, doesn't really have a great need to. — Matt Crypto 10:07, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

democracy

Just found this website after trying to look up information on historical democracies that have failed and why. 1/6/05 NYT "Public Lives" "Warning from a Student of Democracy's Collapse" article by Fritz Stern by Chris Hedges . I was glad to see that a "scholar" was able to get this "what could happen" thought into national print. I had been thinking about the parallels of the religious right's influence to pre-war Germany. Nohing could have been done then and I doubt anything can be done now or in the future. anyone expressing such thoughts will be silenced. I'm not an agitator or radical. Just a student of "history repeating itself" in all sorts of areas. Brenda

Regarding Wednesday, 9 February 2005

That date (2005-02-09) will be:

  • The Chinese New Year (Year of the Rooster)
  • Ash Wednesday (for Catholics, I don't know about for other Christians)
  • the approximate Islamic New Year (AH 1426)

What am I to make of this? --Juuitchan

An interesting coincidence? -- Cyrius|✎ 02:36, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • "The law of truly large numbers says that with a large enough sample many odd coincidences are likely to happen." [8]
  • "Littlewood's Law states that individuals can expect a miracle to happen to them at the rate of about one per month." --Alterego 02:52, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)
Or if you are more optimistic: Seeing the unstopable march of Democracy after the successful Iraqi elections, the Islamic terrorists with renounce their ways, throw themselves down before God in repentence, and then all gather together for a big chicken—or 'rooster'—dinner celebration. (And I know what you are thinking, Pigs will fly.) —Mike 03:57, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

Well, I think the main thing you should conclude is that the Chinese calendar is based on a lunisolar calendar, the Islamic New Year is based on a lunar calendar, and the date of Easter, and so Ash Wednesday, is also complexly related to the lunar calendar. Since the date of each full moon is the same for all countries, it is not so surprising that these various lunar based calendars come into synchronisation every now and again. -- Solipsist 11:29, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Question about GFDL

I have a few questions about how the GFDL is interpreted on Wikipedia:

  • What if wikipedia for some reason went away. Would that put all mirrors and partial mirrors who merely link back back to wikipedia.org be in violation?
  • What if you did have edit history publicly available but no user pages? Would that be sufficient attribution?
  • What if you had user pages too, would that be sufficient attribution? The link between users and real-world people would still be weaker than on wikipedia.org itsself, as a person can prove they are a user on wikipedia.org, but not on mirrors.
  • What if all edit histories were desroyed by some horrible accident that also knocked out all the backups and other copies. Would distributing the current articles be a license violation then?

--fvw* 17:46, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

How many wikis can dance on the head of a pin?
I suspect that the Internet Archive renders some of this moot from a legal point of view, unless Wikipedia were to go away so completely and so suddenly that it cannot even point there. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:16, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)
If some technical problem destroyed the attributions, if anyone wanted to complain (claiming that their work was being used without attribution, and that they had not given permission (license) for their work to be so used) one could presumably remedy that particular violation since the complainer would have to identify him or her self in order to complain. I think that Wales/etc. from the wikimedia foundation are requesting a revision to the GFDL from the FSF because the terms were not meant for someting like wikipedia with many people editing. Morris 01:46, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

Frustration

For whatever it's worth, I think the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution process and violations of Wikipedia:Wikiquette are too frustrating. Is anyone interested in discussing possible improvements? Maurreen 07:27, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

RE: Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism (Op-Ed) by Larry Sanger

What right does someone who does not contribute to this encyclopedia have to get up on a pedestal, flaunting their epalauts of epistemology and ribbons and medals of co-foundership alongside a nervous trembling for their reputation to come around and bash the Philosophy section without editing it to a higher standard? Absolutely none. And this is why Wikipedia is and will be succesful. If you don't believe me, read the growth charts. It will handle itself. Just as our growth has been exponential, so to are our capabilities to deal with the vast sum of human knowledge. Doomsaying us does not help and I, a contributor, personally do not welcome it.

Sanger, Larry (Dec 31st, 2004) Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism (Op-Ed). Kuro5hin. Retrieved January 2, 2005.

--Alterego 19:59, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

I think that this article was reasonable, well-written, and presented some good arguments that should be discussed by the wikipedia community. While it may turn out that few people agree with the thoughts in this article, to dismiss this by dismissing the individual does everyone a disservice, I feel. kmccoy (talk) 20:05, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I personally welcome it. Thanks for the link; this should probably go under Wikipedia:Press coverage 2004. I think putting in effort to ensure "doomsaying" arguments will not work is more productive than pointing to growth charts and claiming it'll all work out in the end. Obviously, our growth will not remain exponential. Do we already know what comes afterward?
Finally, of course, Larry Sanger's right is called "free speech". And considering he did co-found the thing, I think he's had more time to think about it than most of us. Claiming that contributors get to have better-founded opinions on the general direction of Wikipedia is facetious. I value his opinion, whether I'll ultimately agree with it or not. JRM 20:28, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)
Agreed that it is all very well that we are getting lots more articles but what is the quality of those articles. It is very easy to find articles that are just plain crap. As for the anti-elitism, this is not something I have seen. This is not to say that it doesn't exist but in the articles that I edit, it is not something that appears. Evil Monkey → Talk 21:12, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)
I am glad to hear someone saying this. Dare I say, someone authoritative? There is a significant culture of anti-elitism in Wikipedia. It troubles me to see someone vote on an article "Weak Keep, until it is proven beyond doubt that it's a hoax." (This is an article whose contributor, pressed to provide any verifiable evidence, produced a single URL which returned a "404 Not Found.") Notions of verifiability, scholarship, citing sources, and just plain work are relevant to articles on any topic, high culture or popular culture. If there were to be widespread consensus that dodgy articles must be kept unless proved hoaxes, rather than deleted unless verified, Wikipedia would surely be in trouble. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:33, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Jimbo has now commented here. "Larry's comments betray a complete ignorance of the project and a total lack of understanding of how it works and how it is changing over time." --Alterego 23:14, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to bring attention to a comment Larry Sanger made to Jimbo Wales on the talk page of the article for Larry Sanger. It seems relevant.: "Jimmy, I notice that you removed "conceived of" from the description of my relationship to the origin of Wikipedia. I didn't conceive of it? It seems to me I did; it was, in a very robust sense, my idea. You remember this, I'm sure. Not to say that it was my idea, in some form or other, would seem to leave out a pretty important historical fact. Had I not made the proposal for a wiki-based encyclopedia, Wikipedia would not exist. If this shouldn't be expressed by saying that I "conceived" of the project (maybe, maybe not), then how should this fact be expressed? (Bear in mind, what "conceived" might express is entirely apart from my key--but not unique---role in shepherding the project from a very rough initial conception to a much more refined conception.) --Larry Sanger" --Alterego 23:26, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)
Giving some irreverent outsider summaries: Larry seems to have a lot of issues about not being heard properly — i.e. people were not as sufficiently roused by his grave concerns as they ought to have been. Jimbo seems to believe he saw the light anyway while Larry didn't, so let's not overemphasize the Deluded Elder's role in Wikipedia, and his wacko opinions are so anti-wiki that listening to them is only to humor him. None of this is very productive, or relevant, from the point of this contributor. Wikipedia is bigger than Jimbo and Larry put together, a hundred times over. Said the single faceless contributor who came much later. :-) I think it's best to completely ignore their personalities, implied agendas, personal differences, and actual impact on Wikipedia and just evaluate their arguments, where they are relevant to Wikipedia as it is now — as opposed to the intricate history, which is mostly an artifact. Regardless of anything, I don't mind if Sanger keeps mentioning his opinions, as long as he feels they're not properly considered. Whether that's actually so is another thing. JRM 23:54, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)

The only good points... well, problems of the Wikipedia, that likely will eventually get resolved is the lack public credibility... but again, this is the Internet. And the other, lack of expertise. Not so much as a respect for expertise, but more so of lack of. I have to be in agreement that there seems to be a lack of experts on the Wikipedia. But I can not say either way there has been respect or disrespect of the current experts on the Wikipedia. Yes, editing on the Wikipedia is a bit daunting at times... adherance to certain rules that one has to be familiar about may stem some of the elitism in which I think Mr. Sanger is talking about. This is only comes from my view, a person who's been trying to cleanup the Wikipedia a bit (like stub sorting), and making my small contributions. It is rather disappointing in the lack of experts... some stubs have remained stubs for a long time. -- AllyUnion (talk) 11:18, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  • Well, one of the articles of faith among some Wikipedian factions is that stubs magically grow all by themselves. I happen to believe that stubs only grow if there is a community of people interested in and qualified to write on the stub's subject matter, and therefore stubs should be kept if such a community exists and jettisoned if no such community exists. ("Qualified" here can mean nothing more than a willingness to put in some work researching secondary sources). To me, stubs are only valuable if they lead to articles and therefore not all stubs are equally valuable. I parse the attitude of some as saying the existence of a pool of expertise should not matter in deciding whether a stub should be kept. To me, that is a disrespect for expertise and an indication of a fairly radical anti-elitist attitude. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:53, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
    • What about the stubs which are encyclopedic (that usually belongs in any other encyclopedia or is found in other encyclopedias) but has no community to expand the piece? -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:20, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)


I think that there is some truth in the op-ed piece. I have no opinion on Sanger being a good person/bad person whatever (I never heard of him until this morning) but I will comment on the substance of the article.

My 14 year old son and my 11 year old son use wikipedia a lot, researching European history from several hundred years ago. They find it useful for their school related research. I stumbled upon the project helping them with their work. I have recently retired from a decade as head of quant research at one of the biggest banks in the world, having made some contributions to the mortgage securitization field (what Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae do for a living). I will probably never try to make a contribution in my own field of expertise. because I don't feel like getting into arguments with a bunch of grad students who don't even quite know what the field is. Whatever. I have made contributions to some pretty noncontroversial articles (I've been contributing biographies of mid-level U.S. government officials from the 1950's and 1960's.)

Mortgage securitization is an interesting topic (it certainly affects the finances of most American homeowners), but the current system does not make it likely that wikipedia will have a good article on that topic, because unlike a peer-reviewed journal, a wikipedia article is subject to review by non-peers. That works well if we are talking about Harry Potter, or Linux Distributions, or any subject that a large number of wikipedia contributors know a lot about; it does not seem to work very well on a topic that a lot of people know something about, but a few people know well. Morris 15:17, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

Give it a try. You may be right but you may be pleasantly surprised. On relatively obscure topics, you may have the field to yourself, i.e. people may come in and wikify the text or fix links but you may find that few edit it substantively. If it is a topic that does not attract kooks, you may find that if one of the "bunch of grad students" does something stupid, you can revert the change and explain it in Talk, and unlike Mr. Joe Kook the "grad student" will actually pay attention to your comment rather than starting a revert war.
Or then again, maybe not.
All I'm saying is, give it a try. Consider it an experiment to find out the extent to which your expertise is respected. Or the extent to which article on narrow topics neither benefit from nor are hurt by "many eyes" because they don't get many eyes.
I'd second that encouragement. I'm a postgradudate student who works on cryptography articles, and I'd be over the moon if, say, a professor in the field started contributing. — Matt Crypto 11:24, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Is Wikipedia "anti-elitist" or "meritocratic?" A bit of both, I think.
I ain't saying Sanger is wrong; in fact I say above that in some ways he thinks he's right. But Wikipedia does work far better than I would have expected. (What, do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes). Dpbsmith (talk) 17:32, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Sanger comments are now featured on /. [9] The comments make interesting reading and have many thoughful insights on the points he has raised. Well worth reading. Apwoolrich 18:56, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I wonder how many Wikipedias are having the same discussion right now... Those who read French may check fr:Wikipédia:Le Bistro#Ragot de comptoir. _R_ 22:05, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

After this has had another day or two on the Pump, we should move it to a Wikipedia-space page of its own, ditto for other languages, and interwiki the discussions. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:06, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

Sci-fi: not a suitable word to use in articles?

I have deleted a couple of instances of the word "sci-fi" from the Thunderbirds (television) article and replaced them with "science fiction".

I feel that "sci-fi" is little better than slang, does not constitute proper English usage, and should be replaced wherever it appears in a Wikipedia article with "science fiction", or if appropriate some alternative phrase such as "speculative fiction" or "fantasy". Lee M 16:26, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I tend to agree with this -- I'm one of the boring old farts who cringes when they hear the term, as documented in Sci-fi ! :) "SF" is the preferred term among more serious fans of the genre. -- Arwel 16:54, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Very true, but I wouldn't advocate the use of "SF" in Wikipedia as the majority of users probably wouldn't be familiar with it. Lee M 17:01, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I don't mind SF or sci-fi in daily use, but for an encyclopaedia we should be writing the full term. Then again, I also think contractions should be used rarely if at all (in the main namespace), but I manage to sin against that constantly. --fvw* 17:02, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)
I agree, "sci-fi" is slang at best, and usually objected to by fans of the genre (who prefer "SF"). Encyclopedias should avoid slang, and in this case use "science fiction". Jayjg | (Talk) 17:25, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I don't think it matters much. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:10, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not paper. We can afford to write out "science fiction": the full term is clearer than its abbreviations. Gdr 18:54, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)

The term sci-fi is an abomination. It is slang when used in general language (as slang, it shouldn't be in articles), and is seen as a perjorative term by sf fans. Grutness|hello?   (former president, New Zealand's national association for science fiction! :) 06:38, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Forty years ago, the term "sci-fi" was comfortable slang for many science fiction fans, supposedly invented by über-fan Forrest J Ackerman. (Some serious SF fans may find this origin alone sufficient justification to ban its use.) Its pejorative use developed over time, used by "mainstream" fiction and journalists to dismiss the genre. However, it does have a negative connotation now (witness the atrocious "Sci Fi Channel", whose greatest fiction is that its programming has something to do with science), so it's a good idea to avoid if possible. And since "science fiction" is perfectly acceptable, and "Wikipedia is not paper", there's no good reason not to use it. If there's a compelling need to abbreviate it in some text (e.g., if it's repeated several times in a sentence), perhaps an initial citation of "science fiction (SF)" in an article would allow the use of the modern abbreviation. — Jeff Q 09:34, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Country infoboxes as templates

moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries

Potential for abuse

Should Donations for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake be protected indefinitely (request here) to eliminate the possibility for scammers to take advantage of our readers? ‣ᓛᖁ ᑐ 16:56, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

image copyright issues

The image Image:039_65658.jpg is a sample image from a poster selling website. I gather it would be copyright, but I'm not sure if it could be fair use. I'd like some advice on what to do with the image. There is a {{poster}} tag, which claims that reduced quality poster images can be fair use, but how reduced must it be? This image doesn't look reduced quality to me. Silverfish 15:16, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Besides the appalling image name (039_65658???)... I'd guess that this is much too high-res to count as fair use. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:40, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)
I thought as much, which is a pity as it's a good picture. Is it possible to reduce the quality to make fair use apply? If not, where should I list the image? There appears to be a number of pages where you can list images to be either deleted, or for fair use, copyright, etc issues to be considered, so I'm not sure which would be appropriate here. Silverfish 11:52, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)
Image size and resolution aside, the real question on a 'fair use' claim, is could you be harming the copyright holders interests. Since the source is a poster selling site, someone is presumably making money from this image which could make it harder to claim 'fair use'. If the image was a publicity shot distributed by the artist in question it would be easier. Of course, it is quite possible that many of the poster selling sites haven't got their copyrights and licenses in order (I do wonder about some of them), but that doesn't affect a decision on whether an images qualifies as 'fair use' for Wikipedia.
I would think that image size can come into the question. If a particular image is too large, might someone prefer to print it out themselves rather than pay for the poster, even though the poster would be much bigger and better quality. If so, then you could be harming the sales of the copyright holder, if not then the claim of 'fair use' is more secure. It would also be easier to claim fair use if the article were about the poster itself (as in Cassadre's poster of the SS Normandie). -- Solipsist 12:06, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

JanuaryCalendar

The {{JanuaryCalendar}} is for 2004. Where is the 2005 version? Ancheta Wis 15:02, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well looking at the template, it seems to use {{CurrentYear}} to magically includes the JanuaryCalendar for the current year. Of course until tomorrow, that is still 2004. In the meantime {{JanuaryCalendar2005}} might surfice.
At a guess, if you have already been using {{DecemberCalendar}} you should check it still gives the intended result tomorrow. -- Solipsist 15:53, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
2005 calendars for the rest of the year have not been made yet. Thus the calendar links at December 30, for example, are broken right now. I plan to create these soon. --mav 00:17, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Done. I also created template:calendar which will automatically change based on the year. --mav

Anti-randomness

I've moved the discussion to Wikipedia:Reference_desk#Anti-randomness. crazyeddie 22:44, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Autoupdating Discussions

What do you think about people having an automatically updated copy of a VP discussion they start in their own user space (I'm trying this here, actually). This could even be used to have a discussion about a topic between two users on both user's pages. --SgeoTC 01:39, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

Considering that I posted a reply to the above thread in this thread by mistake, needs some work. Might be handy, but I think it would also be a pain to keep straight. crazyeddie 06:12, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I did this myself to make sure I have all the answers in a convenient place before it's archived. Most people click the correct link in large pages like the help and reference desks, so I don't expect much problems. Personally, I think it's a great idea. Just go ahead. Mgm|(talk) 19:16, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)

Well this certainly confused me when I tried to archive this discussion just now. Which I do by editing the "section" to be archived, selecting all the text of and doing a cut and paste. In this case that meant "blanking" your user subpage. This will make archiving a lot harder, if I have to check to see whether the "section" I'm editing is really an included subpage. Then if so just copy without deleting, then go back to the VP and delete the include — difficult and prone to error. Paul August ☎ 23:27, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

Deletion of user subpages

Some time ago, a user subpage was deleted against its owner's will following a series of hostile, tasteless comments by people with no sense of humor. For those who are interested, I've placed it on Votes for undeletion.

Policies and guidelines relevant to the matter are Wikipedia:User page, Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers, and Wikipedia:Wikiquette. ‣ᓛᖁ ᑐ 12:49, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I looked at the discussion linked above. Onoe of the deleters cited any policy. Also, a certain user know for abusing VfD listed this page for deletion. That is a sufficiently good reason not to delete.

--

Ŭalabio 01:19, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)

Image efficiency

Wikipedia's servers have (despite recent improvements) a perennial problem of keeping up with demand. Question: how much of this is due to inefficient storage of images? For example, when a 200px or 100px image on-the-page is stored as a 100kb+ file, the whole of which needs to be provided by the server to the browser? Secondary question: if significant, what should be done about it?

A "List of Big Images" would be a start; some way of comparing the display size of images (in the image tag) with the stored size would also help identify wasted bandwith. Some way of focussing on the most popular pages (hits-wise) in order to optimise their images would be good. Comments? Rd232 14:37, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The developers state that the effect of large images on Wikipedia's speed is "approximately none". -- Cyrius|✎ 19:05, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)


Slow fixes!

I deceided to do a test today after reading a critism of Wikipedia as being unreliable and full of incorrect information. I knew this is true at any point in time, but is usually resolved in a quick manner (no more than a few hours usually). To confirm this I edited the carrot article with a sentence that is not true at all. I haven't reverted it yet because I was curious to see if anybody would spot it. Now I understand that the "carrots" article is most likely not one of the most accessed pages on wp, but it a high quality page that doesn't deserve to be degraded by a outright untruth. Well, I edited it 7 hours 20 minutes ago and there have been 2 edits since then; and nobody noticed a thing. I'll leave it there and see how much longer it takes, but I have to say I'm disappointed. Wikipedia is always a source I turn towards when the rest of the web seems devoid of anything more than a stub. How do I know if one odd statement turns out to be wrong if I have no way to verify it? The statement I made may even make sense to someone with no knowledge of fruits and vegetables. bernlin2000 ∞ 04:04, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

DON'T DO THIS. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:22, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I removed the big tags as they disrupt Wikipedia. The grandparent makes a great point though, which is at the core of Wikipedia's problems. —Cantus…☎ 05:04, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)
What the fucking hell. My big tags "disrupt Wikipedia", but the intentional addition of false information "makes a great point"? My big tags were tacky. His test falls under the category of vandalism. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:10, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
We don't need proof that people acting in bad faith cause trouble. This has been evident to people of even mediocre intellect for quite some time now. What would be far more impressive is a community built on trust–a trust that you willfully violated today. But, then you'd have to do something useful, instead of throwing rocks. I suppose the latter is much easier. Mackensen (talk) 05:20, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I don't see a big problem with people doing this, and I see very little point in chastising them for it. It's not the people who edit all the time and have a reason to follow Wikipedia's rules that do things like this - it's those who come to the site, recognize that it's something they have never seen before, and decide to probe it and poke it to see what it does.
Unfortunately, a lot of the time it doesn't do anything. That's not their fault. If you don't want them to do it get rid of the "edit this page" button --Alterego 05:37, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)
Mackensen, I was simply making a point: fixes are slow and sometimes never come. I want the Wikipedia to be the best it can be, my "test" wasn't an act of vandalism; I did it in good faith and with the full intention of restoring the page to it's previous soundness. I'm not really new or anything, but the article I read really bothered me, I've always had faith that everything Wikipedia says is true, just by pure consensus, but I see thats not necessarily true (no doubt it would be true on a more viewed article, but all articles should have equal weight). Mackensen, inflaming users is worse than vandalism, since it causes bickering and slows the developement of articles (which vandalism rarely does). If you would like to argue please use my talk page; the Village pump is intended to advance the developement of Wikipedia, not impede it. bernlin2000 ∞ 23:15, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)
I've commented on this test at User talk:Chris Ducat.-gadfium 00:01, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)


More tests [10] preceded by flattery [11] (this is supposed to make me less likely to revert?). So when does the "testing" stop? See Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.

Long pause in contributions from October 6 to January 6. We regularly deal with sock puppets, but is this a podperson? -- Curps 06:17, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

POV question

I've just had a minor edit war with anon user 81.174.158.223. He claims that the term "drugs and alcohol" is POV, implying that alcohol is morally different from other drugs, and therefore has been changing all references to "drugs (including alcohol)" particularly in a lot of articles about rock musicians (see his contributions). I maintain that, although alcohol is a drug, normal English language usage is "drugs and alcohol" and it is not POV, and cite Google in my favour (I wouldn't normally, but a 908,000 - 25,400 lead over "drugs (including alcohol)" is pretty decisive, I think). What does the assembled masses think? -- Arwel 01:33, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think yours is more common and his is more correct. I don't think it is worth fighting over from either side. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:08, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
Alcohol is a drug. So is nicotine. Many drugs, including caffeine and theobromine are legal in most jurisdictions and are widely considered to be socially acceptable. A phrase like "alcohol and illegal drugs" might be an acceptable compromise. —AlanBarrett 06:58, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I noticed a similar edit to a page on my watchlist and wondered about it. Part of the problem is a language issue. In the phrase 'drugs and alcohol', the drugs are implicitly understood to be illegal drugs. Changing to 'drugs including alcohol' blurs that meaning and introduces its own POV. So 'alcohol and illegal drugs' is one way to go, the other might be to make the references more explicit, as in 'drugs and alcohol'. (Of course to muddy the NPOV waters further, in some territories its the alcohol that's illegal and the drugs may not be) -- Solipsist 09:06, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
On a personal level I'd agree that "drugs" should include alcohol, caffeine, aspirin and nicotine. On a practical level however the term "drugs" is usually taken to mean only those drugs which are prescribed by law as illegal, such as cocaine and so on, thus "drugs and alcohol" would be the correct usage. --Vamp:Willow 16:40, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Page Formatting

Is it just me or are the paragraphs way too close together?

Look! There's hardly any space between this line and the last! This makes for difficult reading.

Also, and this is being picky, the "edit" links seem to float too high above their associated content. I was confused at first as to whether the edit link applied to the above or the below text.

Since it looks fine for most people, you'll need to provide more information, such as:
  • What browser (and what version) on what operating system are you using?
  • What user preferences if any are you using? Different skin settings etc? Does it appear different when logged in or not logged in?
  • Have you tried clearing the browser cache? Or in a different browser or from a different computer?
  • Can you provide a screen shot of the problem and upload it?
--Brion 22:01, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)
Not just you. I've thought the paragraphs were too close since I began here, but have never bothered protesting because I figured it would never get changed. (Besides the fact that I don't know where one would go to suggest changes to the CSS.) For monobook the margins between paragraphs is only 0.5em while the line height is 1.5em. The spacing should be at least 2/3 of the line height to make it easier for the eye. Most web sites seem to use at least a full line. I included examples below so you should be able to see the difference even if you don't use monobook. —Mike 02:54, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

Paragraph 1: The default style statement
"margin: 0.4em 0em 0.5em 0em;" is used...

Paragraph 2: to separate these paragraphs.

Paragraph 1: The style statement
"margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;" is used...

Paragraph 2: to separate these paragraphs

If you personally don't like the style, you can customize your styles: meta:Help:User_style --Brion 03:22, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
The most appropriate place to complain about such things is probably MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css, but don't hold your breath for any useful response. As my own complaint last year under Line spacing for lists and indents shows, such considerations don't appear to be of interest to those who maintain and constantly tweak the default skin of Wikipedia. Complaints about the frequency of these experiments seem to fall on deaf ears (or is it blind eyes?). The experts typically respond (as did Brion above) by saying users can modify their own style sheets (true), but conveniently forget that the people most comfortable doing this are the ones who are messing with the default skin. Ordinary mortals don't see why they have to become CSS experts in order to get an acceptable reading experience. IMHO, far too many seasoned Wikians seem to be oblivious to the importance of readers of the information they create and focus far too much on the pleasure of the writing and customization experience. It's a real "let them eat cake" attitude. — Jeff Q 04:07, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I'm honestly not sure what anyone who reads your complaint could do to please you -- the current style is bad, changes to the global style are bad, and pointing out information on user customization of styles is bad. This doesn't leave a lot of options; can you recommend something in particular which would be an improvement, which we might actually be able to make happen? We'll chalk down "increase paragraph spacing a bit" for starters. --Brion 07:18, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
Fair enough. My meta-complaint is that there are areas of page formatting that require some compatibility between all skins. Line spacing is one of them, because non-paragraphic text — especially colon-based indents, which are heavily used in dialog quotes, poetry, lyrics samples, and probably other things that may not have been anticipated and are not otherwise accomodated by Wiki markup — will look good in one skin and terrible in another. There's no way to fix this as long as there isn't even an acknowledgement from the global style tweakers that there's a need for consistency.
The "change your own style" argument isn't adequate, as the information content of articles should not depend on one's skin. Any content that relies on visual separation of two sections to make the intent clear — like separation of dialog samples to indicate multiple sections, a major formatting issue in Wikiquote that pops up in Wikipedia, too — suffers from this blind spot. The whole philosophy of "current style" is problematic enough: why do global styles need to change so frequently? And I repeat, the vast majority of Wikipedia readers are not computer geeks who find creation of their own style an amusing and useful diversion. (And I speak as one such HTML/CSS geek, who refuses to play this game because I don't want my article contributions to look nice in my skin while looking atrocious for the crowd.) I don't deny that the people who work on the global styles have good intentions, and have made some positive changes to these styles, but the whole process is just a bit too fluid.
For starters, you could look at Blackadder, q:Blackadder, q:Firefly, and q:MST3K in all four of the predefined skins (or even just Classic and Monobook) to see some of the line spacing problems and different attempts to work around them. None of them is especially satisfactory. The gaps between these samples should be easily distinguished in all skins without artifices like HTML horizontal lines (already used to set off Monobook headers) or multiple blank lines (which only looks good in one style at a time, which one depending on how many lines you add). — Jeff Q 12:24, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
By the way, pardon my ignorance, Brion, but I just discovered that you are apparently the lead Wiki developer. I am humbled by your attention to my own complaints. I can't speak for others on this topic, but considering the current slowness and database issues you're no doubt working on, I've waited half a year and can wait a little longer for you to look into this issue. But I'm certainly glad someone with clout is asking. — Jeff Q 18:37, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As long as we're talking about leading, I think the section headers look bad when there is more than one line. The ascenders and descenders of the letters run together. But I doubt I'll go to any trouble to fix it. Maurreen 05:21, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)


International Writing Contest

Hello everybody,

In Berlin at Dezember 2004 there was the critique that there is not enough connection in the work of all the different Wikipedias in their different languages. I think, that an internationally linked writing contest should be one possible chance to cooperate and work together. At March 1st there will be the start of the second writing contest in the german Wikipedia so I thought, we can start it as an international project. There had bee contests in the Wikipedia of the Netherlands nl:Wikipedia:Schrijfwedstrijd, the german Wikipedia de:Wikipedia:Schreibwettbewerb and the english one en:Wikipedia:Danny's contest and as far as I could see it, it worked really good.

I hope you will join the Contest, please visit meta:International writing contest to find out more. -- 149.225.56.90 08:40, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC) (Achim Raschka aka Necrophorus

Country Infobox Vote

Hello, as a resolution to the ongoing debate surrounding the Country Infoboxes, I have created a forum for voting on which solution the wikipedia community would prefer. The vote can be found here. Thank you! Páll 19:26, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Tremendous speed improvement

I just noticed a tremendous speed improvement in the last couple hours. What happened? Did someone add a gazillion servers? Keep up the good work. pstudier 02:31, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

The optimism is admirable, but I'm afraid this is normal. In the periods with lower load the server responds quickly and without errors, however when the load goes up the performance comes crashing back down again. --fvw* 02:39, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)
I fixed the disabled css caching which caused your browser to re-request your user styles on each page view and didn't display anything until it had them. -- Gabriel Wicke 07:00, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Open Gaming License

Recently an article, Jump Gate Technology was added, based on material that is under the Open Gaming License, which you can read here. I would appreciate any well-informed comments (here, at Talk:Jump Gate Technology or at WP:CP as to whether this material (aside from any consdieration of whether it is encyclopedic) can be incorporated into Wikpedia articles. I suspect that it is impossible, as there are many requirements (distribution of the complete text of the OGL with the material, for example) that would violate the GFDL, but more words of wisdom would not go amiss. --rbrwr± 23:35, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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