Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive F

• Village pump
  • Policy
  • Technical
  • Proposals (persistent)
  • Idea lab
  • WMF
  • Miscellaneous

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous).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

---

< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78

Help! How do I stop anti spammers from harassing me?

Hi, I publish several Web sites that are information portals. One of them is Travelconsumer.com http://www.travelconsumer.com which contains travel information for every country in the world, all U.S. states, Canadian provinces, and hundreds of cities. Several hundred pages of the Travelconsumer.com site link to Wikipedia. In fact, I link to Wikipedia on every page where Wikipedia has published on the topic. Let me make this clear. I do not sell any products or services. No one who visits my site can buy anything from me. They can, like nearly every Web, site follow advertising links like Google Adsense. However, the relationship between content and advertising on my pages highly favors content.

The problem comes when I post links to Travelconsumer.com pages in the external links pages of destinations listed on Wikipedia. Every time I post an link to one of Travelconsumer’s destination pages the Wikipedia anti-spammers get on my case and harass me saying that I am spamming Wikipedia. Nothing I say, no example I give seems to satisfy them. That’s why I am bringing this to an open forum.

Let me show you some examples. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London. Scroll down to the external links section. Click any number of the links and observe that most of the links go to purely commercial sites. Here’s some of the sites that were listed:

http://www.thisislondon.com/ an all commercial site http://www.asinah.org/weather/EGLL.html hotel reservation service http://www.london-eating.co.uk/ a commercial restaurant guide http://www.london-drinking.com/ a commercial pub guide http://www.netlondon.com/ a commercial portal for London http://www.londontown.com/directory/ a commercial portal for London If you continue following the listed links most of them are like these.

Now take a look at Travelconsumer.com’s London page at http://www.travelconsumer.com/intlcities/london.htm. I believe that if you compare the content of my page to those listed on Wikipedia you will see that my page is less commercial and contains real content that people can use. My goal to help travelers who need travel information, but don’t have time to go through the millions of pages listed by Google. Most of the Google links are to the same kinds of Web sites currently listed on Wikipedia.

What seems to red flag my contributions to Wikipedia is the fact that I have lots of contributions to make. Every country in the world and most cities represents more than a thousand links to and from Wikipedia. Because I make a lot of contributions it appears like am a spammer. The truth is that I have lots of information to share.

I appreciate the work done by people like Noel in keeping spammers out of Wikipedia, but it appears that he and people like him are blocking content providers like me and allowing in sites like http://www.2pl.com/London/bs-1250300001.htm. How do we resolve this problem? How can I stop the harassment?

Thanks,

Max (this comment posted by User:Maxlent --Xiong.)

Please do not post your message 3 times in the future. Please see WP:WIN for info regarding what Wikipedia is not. You are not allowed to use Wikipedia to advertise or direct people to your website, as it's self-promotion. In general if someone is mass inserting links, they will be reverted. Now, I haven't checked out the content of the links you've posted, but as it's self-promotion, it is against the rules. If you feel like there are links that don't deserve to be there, feel free to remove them (put in the edit summary why they aren't worthy of being in a particular article). External links have nothing to do with commercial vs. non-commercial. The only real criteria for an good external link is that the content is related to the subject, but different and highly informative/interesting. Hope this clears things up. CryptoDerk 21:15, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

The rules, as far as I can read them, don't impose a flat ban on inserting external links to your own sites -- they only say that, just like links to anybody else's site, they're only permitted when they are relevant and suitable for the content of this site as a whole, and the article in which they are inserted in particular. If you run Web sites that are relevant to topics covered in this site, then it might be reasonable to link to them, though such links would undoubtedly be put under heavy scrutiny if you gain commercially from them and are doing a large amount of such linking. *Dan* 21:41, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest that if you think your site contains notable material on a given topic, mention it on the talk page and say that if someone else agrees it would be a useful addition to the article, they should add it. Also, if you feel links that are there are inappropriate, raise that. In general, adding a link from Wikipedia to one's own site is regarded as spamming. This is very close to the issues of Autobiography. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:53, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

How about this: stop posting spam for your web site and people will stop "harassing" you by removing those spam links? Let's try this exercise, spam is UBE:

• Unsolicited: we didn't ask you for the links
• Bulk: many links many times
• Email: oh well, it's Wiki spam, not email spam.

Daniel Quinlan 05:47, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

Hey, Daniel Quinlan, don't be so rude.

• "Unsolicited: we didn't ask you for the links" - um, what's the "edit this page" button for, then?
• "Bulk: many links many times" - there's nothing wrong with making the same time of change in bulk, as long as it's an acceptable change (which these links may or may not be).
• "Email" - as you said, it's not email.

Remember, (1) assume good faith (2) don't bite the newbies. - Pioneer-12 15:48, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Seriously Max, it looks as though your Web site is basically a link farm, and those tend to be removed. Do you have original on-site content (articles and stuff hosted by you) in there somewhere? Those types of things (if good) would get a much warmer reception than lists of links, which we could do here ourselves if we wanted to. --iMb~Meow 06:32, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have checked out a number of these links, as well as a few of Max's pages themselves. My opinion is that his content is mighty thin, but above the common run of link farms. At least the pages look like they link to relevant content and aren't mere kitbashed glurge thrown under a bunch of keywords. And yes, some of the links he cited as previously appearing at London#External links are every bit as thin, or worse. (Not to say that poor content justifies more poor content.)

Suggestions for Max: If you want to be taken seriously on Wikipedia, you should begin by observing some local customs. Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. You could also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you. Put some content on your user page. Start with some small edits and work up to great manifestos. (I know, I'm one to talk.{blush})

There is nothing in policy that says you cannot insert a link somewhere to a web page of your own, but that link must stand up to the same scrutiny (or sometimes, lack thereof) that any other link gets -- and typically, external links are not the way we like to provide content to our readers. Like any other editor, you may want to remove links that you feel add nothing to an article; but just as quickly, someone else may put them back in. It's highly suggested that you spend time getting acquainted with the Wiki Way in proportion to the size and scope of the edits you make.

Some may criticize my saying this, but it's true: If you put just one such link to your own site in just one page, it's highly probable that nobody will object. You could probably stick in one link per day for weeks without annoying anybody, especially if you do other substantive edits meanwhile. Linking single-mindedly to your own site on many pages all at once is sure to annoy many Wikipedians.

You have no rights at all here. Wikipedia is not a public trust or a government agency. The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Directors and their assignees can and do exercise power in arbitrary fashion. I mention this in case you feel that you have some right to include your chosen content or links thereto.

Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, as are many sister projects. You might like to check out Wikitravel -- it will not welcome link spamming either, but perhaps you will see that the sort of information your site provides with advertising, we provide without. If you want your site to be worthy of mention on either project, you should consider adding more original content to your pages.

Finally, when I went to investigate the typical page you noted above -- London -- I found not only the External Links section missing, but a large portion of the article, including some markup that is not displayed, but is used to properly categorize the page. This alone is not flatly contrary to policy, but steers dangerously close to the edge. I have restored the missing content and suggest that, if you are the remover, you consider the spirit in which this kind of action may be taken.

Suggestions to Wikipedians at large: Whatever else you want to say about Max, at least he's industrious and has demonstrated the ability to put together large numbers of pages, doing the footwork of looking up links and wiring them together. Don't write him off yet. Honey catches more flies than vinegar, and perhaps with a little patient peer pressure, he may develop into a useful contributor. At least, I believe an open, helpful attitude is better than blanket damnation.

On the other hand, we don't have to take any BS. We may want to check out pages similar to "London" and if more partial blanking is found, especially from the same IP-user, ask an admin to run a bot and mass-revert. I suggest that this should not be considered a smoking gun in Max's hands; ban the IP, and let's see what Max does when logged in. — Xiong (talk) 05:05, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)

Beta reader and betareader

I did a search for Beta reader on wikipedia and found nothing so I started up a page. Only yesterday did I discover that betareader existed. What do we normally do in this case? *fvincent 16:31, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Merge one article into the other, and redirect. See Wikipedia:Duplicate articles. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:58, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Or you could simply merge them yourself. I'd prefer them to be merged into beta reader as it's the correct English spelling as far as I know. Mgm|^(talk) 22:52, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Content and history from both have been merged into beta reader. Niteowlneils 07:23, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

where are the chemists?

It's my impression that the maths sections of WP are well-informed and moderated - I can't always be personally sure of this because my own background is in physical sciences, and many of the maths articles lack clear notational introductions (an undergraduate physicist should find a clear introduction to n-forms for example).

Turning to physics, I often find articles which appear to have been hijacked by mathematicians, causing them to loose insight into _physics_ principles. A good example is classical mechanics - I am told that Hamilton's equations are a trivial property of symplectic spaces - er fine - but why? (I think it's because the symplectic group is antisymmetric and so are Hamilton's equations - but a physicist gets a a lot of satisfaction and insight in deriving Hamilton's relations from Newton - how does a mathematician make the same journey? - can't tell!

Turning to chemistry - the situation as far as I can tell is even less good (certainly in UK there is a real shortage of qualified chemists, and no, I'm NOT one). I looked at 'phase diagram' and found an article on 'phase space'; I looked at 'Phase rule' and found two 1 component examples, one the trivial example of a single phase (gas) system; and the assertion that the phase rule is directly equivalent to Euler's relation - well yes it probably IS, once you've used thermodynamics to establish the _form_ of the phase diagram. Ah Gibbs that thou wast with us in this hour!

We desperately need our maths colleagues NOT to edit everything to JUST be maths statements, even if they do consider Euler more interesting than Gibbs - physicists, engineers and chemists need to use these concepts and need to have a grasp of key principles.

AND we need some more real chemists on patrol Linuxlad 11:07, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Technically, I'm somewhat qualified to work on those, but when I saw the entry for acid (or a similar one) a while back I was discouraged by the lack of info it contained. I've got no clue where to start in fixing these things. Mgm|^(talk) 22:51, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

I try as first priority to remove or modify 'howlers' before passing by, and to leave a note on the Talk section of material I think needs addition or recasting - (though I think many people don't read or monitor the Talk sections). But, there is no sadder event than 'the person who did nothing because he could only do a little' (Edmund Burke??) Linuxlad 08:41, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Retrospective

We would like to make a retrospective on the most special events of these past 4 years on Wikipedia, with a special interest for the first 2 years.

For doing so, we need oldbies :-)

We would like 10 oldbies (at least 3 years on wikipedia) and ask them to cite between 1 to 10 special moments or special persons which they think either impacted a lot the direction of the project, or of the community. Fun moments, sad moments, critical moments, controversial moments, special persons, special citations, still used 3 years later.... OR just events which were strange and reflected a certain spirit at some point, a spirit perhaps lost now ? Just make us remember...

I invite anyone who have been more than 3 years on the project to reflect on his past, and help us to remember. The Quarto team will also try to contact some people, which do not necessarily answer spontaneously :-) If you think someone needs to be contacted, please ... euh... be a denonciator.

A couple of examples I can think of myself (Anthere, which will consider herself an oldbie)

• the letter of resignation of Larry Sanger
• the goatse on the english wikipedia
• the fork of the spanish project
• some citations by The Cunctator
• the major server break in december 2003
• Lir playing chess on her talk page
• the polish cities dispute
• Papot'ages on the french wikipedia

Of course, we will all have different special moments to cite :-) This is what could make it real fun.

Each point reported could be either

• a link, which could be self-sustainable or be accompanied with one sentence explanation (example : link to Larry Resignation on the mailing list. Example : a link to an old version of the project)
• an image, with a legend or no legend at all (example : the first wikipedia logo. Example : a screen shot of Lir chess game)
• a short story (Example : a summary of the spanish fork). This could be proposed by the oldbie himself
• A citation

Please, make it short, make it patchwork, and make it non politically correct if you wish :-) (but stay civil).

See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/Retro

Thank you

Anthere 17:15, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Shakespeare in modern language

I find some of the speeches very intriguing but difficult to really understand. Could some expert be invited to contribute parallel texts in plain language? Hamlets soliloquy To Be Or Not To Be? would be the best starting point in my opinion!!

This kind of thing has been attempted before, but I don't recommend it. Shakespeare made heavy use of puns, rhymes, alliteration, and of course iambic pentameter. Reinterpretations of his words detract from the various meanings of the text. Reading Shakespeare can be daunting and slow, but hey - we all have to do it in high school, so obviously it's not impossible. The annotated versions can be helpful, they include definitions of many words which were used in Shakespeare's time. Rhobite 20:19, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

Also the language really hasn't changed that much since Shakespeare's time. A modern translation of "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/Or to take arms against a sea of troubles/and by opposing, end them" would be literally: "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/Or to take arms against a sea of troubles/And by opposing, end them." The words would be identical--the language is modern. So why bother? Of Hamlet's soliloquy, I think "who would fardels (burdens) bear" might give the modern reader some trouble. And perhaps the reference to Ophelia's orisons (prayers). Shakespeare's use of the language is complex and, in places, awe-inspiring. But that's why he's still remembered and his plays are still performed wherever English is spoken. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 20:49, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree completely. It's a gift to be able to read such a brilliant writer in one's own language. Rhobite 02:10, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

I wasn't terribly impressed with Shakespeare. I tried to read The Tempest a few years back, but got bogged down in all the clichés. ☺ — Jeff Q (talk) 00:19, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's hard to rewrite Shakespeare in plain language because often we don't know what he meant. His words are full of sound and fury, but signify... well, not nothing, but often they are obscure or ambiguous. For example, is Hamlet's speech expressing a genuine dilemma or mere indecision? What exactly does the phrase "in the mind" add, other than scansion? When he says "by opposing, end them [i.e. the troubles]", does he mean "by opposing, defeat them" or "by opposing, die (and so all troubles are ended)"? And does Fortune really have three arms (one to operate the sling, two for the bow and arrow)? Gdr 02:53, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)

I know Hitler has only got one ball. I don't know about the appendages of Fortune, but I'm sure Shakespeare wasn't trying to stir up controversy. JRM 22:06, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)

Feel the beat of the WikiPulse

WikiPulse is a website I created which brings together many statistics about the project and is updated hourly. I plan on adding more information as good ideas come about or the statistics become available. If you would like me to add statistics for a project in another language, please translate Special:Statistics from that project and post the translation on the talk page of meta:WikiPulse. Note that this is only so I can read it - the section of the feed relevant to that language/wiki will be in English. Here is some example output (did you realize there are over 200 conversations on the pump?)  :

The WikiMedia grid is currently FAST and AVAILABLE

In the last hour there have been 1 new articles, 13 new pages, 232 new edits, 13 new messages on the mailing lists, 1 new topics on the village pump, and we have used 276.48 MB of outgoing bandwidth.There are 217929 registered users and 424, or 0.19% are administrators. 178 people are currently chatting in #Wikipedia, and over the last 210 days there have been 5034 nicks. On the Village Pump there are 252 ongoing conversations. There have been 3729 messages across all wikimedia mailing lists this month. 67 total CPUs are operational right now and there have been 5440000 pages indexed by Google, comprising 0.68% of their index. The MediaWiki project is currently ranked 813 on SourceForge and the software has been downloaded 96789 total times. Ping response time from Colorado is 106 milliseconds. So far this month we have used 10869.61 GB of outgoing, and 1113.90 GB of incoming bandwidth.

As you can see, much can be done with this, so please post your ideas for me before spring break is over =) --Alterego 05:47, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

Screen scrape wikipedia:featured articles to get the FA count. →Raul654 08:05, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

presto change-o =) --Alterego 08:41, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

In addition to a plaintext blurb, consider making the metadata for it available so other applications can process the data. (In fact, you could split your RSS producer in two that way and separate content from presentation.) JRM 11:50, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)

do you have a preference? just CSV? --Alterego 17:20, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I don't plan on writing such an application, so I can't say that I do—and I know too little of RSS to judge on what is most feasible. Can you use XML as markup in the feed, for example, and is this meaningful in any way? This would be fairly easy to process. CSV is doable as well, though less suitable for extensions and revisions.
You should probably ignore all this until someone with a real need for the feature comes and asks you, though. Don't listen to people who think they have "good ideas". They're the primary source of creeping featuritis. :-) JRM 17:25, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)

It was useful for me to have at any rate. Raw data is now available here --Alterego 20:45, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

WikiPulse is now primarily a website and secondarily an RSS feed =) View the webpage here: http://qwikly.com/WikiPulse.html. I'll be adding refreshing graphs soon. --Alterego 00:36, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Any way to get the number of active Wikipedian's during the day/month? - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 07:28, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You can get total per month here (19,500 last month) at Erik Zachte's stats. I have thought of a way to get active users per day , which consists basically downloading RC in 24 hourly installments, but this is undesireable for several reasons (it's very expensive cpu,bandwidth,time wise) --Alterego 07:53, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

is wikipedia seasick?

hi frontend and monobook skin designer

please do not take any offense in the sharp title of this posting -- i was just shocked seeing the wikipedia main page with the pink and sky blue boxes (again) and the content with that blueish-greenish background!

from the point of view of design i do understand the idea of making white appear as a *colour* and not just *nothing* (like vanilla ice cream, which is like "no taste" nowadays) by coloring the very background.

but really: is the benefit of this design clarification large enough to justify the colorshift that the reader's eye undergoes when he/she is reading texts on blue instead of on white? does'nt it also cause problems with the header lines of tables, that they then might appear lonesome in a white unframed square while with the white background they would just smoothely appear as words centered on a framed box floatin gin the white space?

which brings me to the notion that in graphics design lingo the space between blocks of text is referred to as "whitespace". so is it really appropriate to have wikipedia's whitespace being a bluespace?

i do **very much** appreciate the monobook design for it's pragmatic, beautifully engineered layout, its precise and very legible typography and its subtleties like the thin yello three-quarter-frame around the active tab! and i keep on thinking it everytime i return to wikipedia.

i have now the very strong feeling that coloring the background does weaken the whole design and in doing so also affects the legibility and experience of wikipedia.

best wishes --hochnebel 14:14, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Whatever you do, please don't mess with Cologne Blue. It works for me as it is. --Xiong 16:17, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)

You can edit it for yourself by going to User:Hochnebel/monobook.css --Alterego 23:55, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

Yahoo! Search for Creative Commons content

Hi, this is to inform the new Y! search for Creative Commons content. An API is also available. See if this can be used as a source for content. By the way, what else will be the appropriate place for this kind of info? -- Sundar (talk · contribs)

Weird: so far, at least on the searches I tried, it seems to pick up our user pages (not necessarily a good thing), but not our articles -- Jmabel | Talk 19:48, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

Probably because users have put Creative Commons tags on their user pages. The page footers on our article pages mention GFDL but not Creative Commons, doubtless because it's not clear whether any Wikipedia main-namespace content is actually CC-licensed. If we want our articles to appear, we need to convince Yahoo to add GFDL to their search. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:26, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Californians interested in tech?

I just received a media press release for E3 in LA. The conference runs May 17 to May 19, the exhibit is from May 18 to May 20. Contact me if you're willing to go, to either take PD/GNU/Creative Commons photos for Wikicommons, and/or write articles for Wikinews. Email me at nicholasmoreau@gmail.com -- user:zanimum

Msg from a banned used

CHANNELS

in the times of MASSIVE overloads

in here everything is fine

we broadcast channels of chrome flowers

in here we truly live

tune on us

try us

WELCOME

go away if you must -- we won't follow

we are here for you

you shouldn't be afraid

we love you as you love us

disconnection is not an option

five is the magic number

loop is abstract

reality blows

loop is all you need

---

Circuits running at the speed of hesitation

I can only tell you about the past I used to adore

missing piece from the puzzle of relationships

I keep looking
don't worry
I will find you
While I keep dreaming
I keep waiting

I hope it won't start from beginning

I need to build something

Something that is timeless

At the face of a clock

To move on
Is not the direction I desire
A shape that fills my heart

I can only hope

That I could be whole

source: Channel 5 Sequence by Haujobb [1]

WikiWax

WikiWax. neat stuff! --Alterego 07:02, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Quite neat. Perhaps we should offer this as an additional option when the search page offers Google & Yahoo? Would that be OK with them on the receiving end of the query? -- Jmabel | Talk 23:40, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

I'm sure they'd love the traffic... --Alterego 00:34, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Agree. Anything to loosen the Google stranglehold. I also offer Clusty, which has taken the trouble and done us the honor of putting a WP search tab on their main page, right up there with Web+ and News. This is an up-and-coming engine in any case, with a new twist on search results. — Xiong (talk) 06:03, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

Any reasons not to do this (Clusty, too)? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:07, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

• I like WikiWax. If more people used it, we'd have a lot less duplicate work, because of unknown naming conventions. I'd love to see them included. Mgm|^(talk) 12:10, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

I like them both. Filiocht 12:32, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

User:Ganglieri recently pointed out another cool search: GlobalWPSearch, developed by de:Benutzer:Aka searches titles with the same name in 18 Wikipedias. Because it is exact-match an only searches titles, which will generally differ across languages, it's mainly useful for people and for place-names. But pretty cool if you are at all multilingual. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:15, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

English spelling

I'm a New Zealander, and like many of the English-speaking world we spell the word "colour" with a "u". You might say we use the British spelling, but I wouldn't. I say we use the New Zealand spelling. In New Zealand we use -ise endings almost exclusively, but the Oxford English Dictionary (U.K.) prefers the -ize endings. Besides, characterising the spelling divide as being between Britain and the U.S. is completely misleading. Most Commonwealth and former Commonwealth countrys prefer what you might call the British forms. I'm not sure what spelling they use in Canada (my ignorance!) but I wouldn't be surprised either way.

So my question: is there some boilerplate text, or some standard term, or something we can use when discussing this spelling divide? At the moment, out of frustration, I'm tempted to insert a huge list of countries every time I read an article suggest that a term is "British" usage. That's not good for readability, but "British" isn't good for accuracy.

Maybe a linguist would be of help here. Is "Commonwealth English" a good enough characterisation? Depending on where Canada fits we could describe one variant as "Commonwealth English" and the other as "North American English" or "United States English". Does any other country use the U.S. spelling?

Ben Arnold 08:00, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Ben, I agree that the U.S. v British English split is not always helpful. Canadians use a mixture of spellings, partly what you might call British spelling, partly U.S. As Canada is part of the Commonwealth, using that term to signify British spellings would be a little misleading, though some editors do use it. There there's the issue of the -ize endings, with -ise being used most often in the UK too, although -ize is used by the OED and in many British academic texts. This discussion surfaces quite regularly on Talk:Manual of Style, so you might want to post your query there too. Best, SlimVirgin 08:25, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

I've since discovered the article Commonwealth English and this looks like a good place to link to from articles where spelling variation is significant. It also describes the confusion around Canadian spelling. Ben Arnold 09:11, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Or to really get confused, check the history of spelling Aluminium. The Canadians must have had a tough choice with that one. Do French-Canadians use the -um ending too? -- Solipsist 21:35, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

alphabetization error

Under Choreographers, you have listed Agnes de Mille under "M" instead of "d".

Fixed. I actually listed it under upper-case "D" for easier searching. To see how I did this check out the Category links at the bottom of the article—they end with "|De Mille". — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 05:14, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikimoods

I have created an expanded and more accurate version of "Wikistress", which I call a "Wikimood". A wikimood is your position on a specially-devised 21-point signed integer scale that indicates your general emotional status on Wikipedia. I have devised the following templates that you can use to indicate your current wikimood. The further your position is from zero, the more intense your wikimood. The ideal range is between +1 and +4 inclusive.

-10 (Explosive), -9 (Violent), -8 (Enraged), -7 (Hostile), -6 (Icy), -5 (Frustrated), -4 (Distressed), -3 (Upset), -2 (Depressed), -1 (Withdrawn), 0 (Neutral),
+1 (Calm), +2 (Content), +3 (Happy), +4 (Cheerful), +5 (Enthusiastic), +6 (Zealous), +7 (Mental), +8 (Insane), +9 (Crazy), and +10 (Chaotic).

What do you think? Denelson83 10:15, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good idea, but the colors don't make sense and the look could probably be improved overall. Some illustrations for these would be nice :) - Fredrik | talk 12:45, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The colours make wikimoods akin to temperatures. Also, adding illustrations would mess up the tables, as I created these to exact specs. Denelson83 18:35, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it makes much sense for "explosive" to be cool blue :) - Fredrik | talk 00:32, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, that's because it's the most intense negative, or "coldest" feeling. You know how negative emotions can be called "cold prickly" and positive ones can be called "warm fuzzy"? That's the idea I used. And no, I did not mean "explosive" as in "an exothermic chemical reaction involving rapid expansion of gases". Denelson83 04:09, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Shouldn't neutral (0) be the cold blue feeling. I like the idea, but if you don't change the colours, I'm afraid people are going to mess them up. We're kinda used to Wikistress colors and red being bad. Mgm|^(talk) 19:25, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

• • Okay. I'll apply a different colour scheme, ranging from red for -10, through blue for 0, to green for +10. Denelson83 04:30, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Common phrases in various languages

I need to know common phrases in various languages. Where would you point me to? To an article in an encyclopedia? Probably not. And yet...

In short, I think this tourist phrasebook content should be transwikied. I've raised this issue on its talk page, but no-one responded. What do other people think? — mark ✎ 17:06, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's a great page, and it looks like a lot of people have worked on it. But I agree with your position that it should be transwikied to WikiBooks, because its content is a little bit too deep for an encyclopedia (which as far as I understand is supposed to remain relatively general). --Coolcaesar 00:15, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Enlargement spam supported by Wikipedia?

194.83.173.134 14:49, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC) rja.carnegie@excite.com

I got a spam today which claims that Wikipedia says its "traction method" of making penises larger actually works. I haven't looked, but I think the implication is commercial abuse of Wikipedia editing for gain. In which case, someone should do something. (Or, the method actually works.)

They seem to have a gift for poetry too (see end).

Oh, and they apparently drag in BBC.

From: "Neal" <PIJMRZEKXXY@air-bridge.com>

Message-ID: <079z7fzlsc.fsf@calle74.net>

Subject: You saw it on BBC

Newest penis enlargement system:

-Increases the penis length and girth

-Medically Proven (source: wikipedia)

-No Surgery

-Permanent Results

-Proven Traction Method

-100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

Find more info here:

http://www.klih.com/e/viks

you bayberry me writhe me you disjunct me stethoscope me you homicidal me golden me you bodybuild me juan me you hippopotamus me jocular me you apices me respirator me you ostracism me garter me

http://lekl.com/p.php

This has been reported before -- see Talk:Penis enlargement. While citing Wikipedia "for gain" is not abusive, spamming itself is almost always criminal. (Even in the absence of "anti-spamming" laws, spamming almost always involves violation of computer fraud & abuse laws.)

I think our best response here, in the current state of affairs, should be to keep an eye on that article and make sure it isn't too useful to spammers. For instance, I doubt that any "penis pill" spammer would link to that article, because it cites studies showing that penis pills are frequently contaminated with poisons and fecal matter. --FOo 15:51, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What if...

Suppose there's a small article that someone knowledgeable comes along and decides to add too. They've got a lot to add so it takes them about 30 minutes. About minute 29 someone else comes along and notices a spelling mistake in the article and decides to correct it. Whilst they're correcting the mistake, the first person saves their work and leaves. Then, the spelling mistake corrected, the second person saves over the enhanced version with the old article (minus the spelling mistake) - would that mean someone had just wasted half an hour of their life??

The second person would get a message saying there's an edit conflict, and be offered the opportunity to merge. If they didn't choose to for some reason, the massive improvement would still be in the edit history, and hopefully the first person would be watching, notice they had been reverted, and fix it. Nickptar 20:30, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No. The software is smarter than that. If an article has changed during the course of an edit, then an 'edit conflict' is automatically flagged up, and the editor (in this case, the spell checker), is told about the situation, shown the current version of the article, and so allowed to merge his edit in with the conflicting one. If, at worst, the second editor decides to overwrite the first, then at least both revisions have been saved, and the first editor, or any other user is free to recover the lost changes from the article's history page, and re-add it. This happened during the course of me posting this entry.--Fangz 20:33, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also, if the first person was smart, they would have put up {{inuse}} when they started... (I know - I always forget, too). Grutness|^hello? 06:58, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Of course, some care should be taken if one or both are editing sections, instead of the whole article--there has been a bug that causes text duplication if an edit conflict is encountered during a section edit. Niteowlneils 14:27, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Please vote to settle a dispute

Should Chicago, Illinois be moved to Chicago? Please help and vote at Talk:Chicago, Illinois! Dralwik 15:17, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My contibutions by user ....

I just made an edit not reolisng I'd not logged in. I then clicked on my number (IP) thing to see what else I had done not logged in and it came up with loads of stuff I hadn't done (as well as the thing I had just done). How come? No body else uses wikipedia on this broadband internet connection? I thought all these numbers were uniquie to particular connections?--JK the unwise 22:36, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) probably uses dynamic IP addresses. In other words, your ISP assignes you a different address every time you connect to the Internet. An ISP that assignes dynamic IP addresses picks one from a pool of addresses it owns, thus the edits that are not your own most likely come from other users who also use the same ISP company that you do. Zzyzx11 | Talk 22:56, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

With broadband (cable modem, etc.), you'll sometimes appear to have a static IP address if you stay connected continuously; it's possible you might have the same IP for days, weeks, or months on end. However, there is no assurance you'll keep the address; any time the connection is disconnected (e.g., due to a power failure or a router problem at the provider) it's likely that when it's re-established it will be at a different address, and your old address may be assigned to a different customer. *Dan* 16:26, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm planning to take images from Bridgeman for articles

Is any picture of a painting up to the early 20th century from the Bridgeman archive available through gettyone.com fair game? I plan to embark on a illustrate wikipedia project. Articles without images such as polo will soon include material from Bridgeman. Lotsofissues 14:36, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Requested article

Bleep test. See the following links for information, and a Google search for it.

• [2]
• [3]

Thanks, --213.18.248.24 12:59, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I added this request to one of the request subpages - you can view it here BTW, I've noticed you have a colorful undetermined history at Wikipedia. You make helpful formatting changes and corrections however you vandalize just as much. I hope you choose to stay the course of the former. What is the point of damaging the integrity of a project you've contributed to? Lotsofissues 14:33, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Could be multiple people on one IP. Nickptar 16:43, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Article added. See Multi-stage fitness test.--Fangz 23:05, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What is going on with sandbot?

Take a look at this edit: [4] Lotsofissues 09:50, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think sandbot just makes sure that the appropriate template is the first line in the page. In this case there were spurious headers from other sandboxes below that, but sandbot was ignoring them as it does user tests. I've removed them.-gadfium 09:56, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Something is indeed up with sandbot

This was a duplicate created by sandbot - not by a previous editor - but by sandbot [5] Explainable?

Very active vandal

Hi. Today, a vandal opperating under the IP address 142.22.16.50 vandalized an article with which I was involved. I was particularly impressed by the number of edits (all acts of vandalism, reverted by two different users, and one of them had to do it twice!) he performed on a single day (all close together, indicating his intention of messing the article). When I checked his history of contributions, I verified that he's been around, solely vandalizing articles, for six months!! And I verified that the edits throughout this period of time (I checked different edits from different months) were all acts of vandalism. Over a period of six months, that's not a misguided anon, that's a "criminal". Can someone block this IP address? Regards, Redux 23:02, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism alerts are best dealt with at Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress (shortcut: WP:VIP), block requests are best presented at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents (shortcut: WP:AN/I). Thryduulf 13:03, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Curps blocked the IP address, but only for 24 hours (or so he said he'd do at the WP:VIP). Really, a 24 hour ban for a vandal that has done nothing in six months but vandalize articles?? And notice that the IP address doesn't seem to be shared with anyone else, since all entries there are acts of vandalism (or all of them are vandals, which amounts to the same). That person's violation of the 3RR in the Rio de Janeiro State article is not even the main point, that IP address would have to be blocked indefinitely, so maybe that person would just move on and find some other way to waste his time, without wasting ours. In a blatant case like this one, we should be enphatic. This IP address has already been listed in all forums Thryduulf was kind enough to list above, and yet all we can muster is a 24 hour ban?? I'm sorry, but things like this are a considerable part of the reason why Wikipedia gets so much vandalizing. In this case, there's no gray area, it's six months of pure vandalism people! Regards, Redux 03:43, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

For the record I agree with you, but the administrators (of which I am not one) do have to follow the Wikipedia:Blocking policy. Thryduulf 09:36, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As an admin, I can say most are fairly conservative about blocks, as they are probably the most severe/drastic action we can take, other than image deletion. Also, this particular case is more complex than some, as the same person seems to vandalise from other IPs, such as history of contributions for 142.22.16.53. Also, it's not 100% vandalism--this is accurate, altho' arguably the role is not major enuf to be listed here, but I'm reluctant to categorize such judgment calls as "vandalism". Niteowlneils 15:29, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Queries and updates

Can we please have the general queries and updates list back again - it is an easy method of getting minor problems/glitches and other things one does not have the time/inclination to deal with to the attention of those who can.

Frequent changes to such areas does tend to discourage people from updating Wikipedia.

Developing Compensated Write Policy

As Wikipedia grows into a first look resource like Google, organizations will have an incentive to hire estabished members to write for them. Here is an example [6] Should we develop a policy?

Lotsofissues 23:40, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, I don't think it would be possible to ban companies paying people to deal with Wikipedia. But I am troubled by his offer of money to the person who starts an article on the organization. It raises obvious issues of NPOV to be taking money from the subject of the article. I think the practice of rewards for writing about certain subjects, paid by the subjects themselves, should be forbidden. Of course, it's too late in the current case, and I do admire that they're being forthright about what they're doing, as opposed to sneakily doing this. Meelar (talk) 06:35, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

There is nothing to worry about. If a corporation pays an editor to write an article about them, and the article is NPOV, then chances are likely that someone will put an NPOV flag on the page. If that were to happen, the corporation would then have controversy surrounding their name, whether or not that were previously the case. On the other hand, if an editor writes a well-balanced article about the corporation the encyclopedia benefits, the company gains neutral publicity, and they don't have a scar of controversy. It should be noted that article controversy lives on in search engines, as they do index talk pages[7], so this would be a permanent mark on their name. That said, I am accepting checks and paypal!!! ;) (also consider, if an established editor would like to keep their reputation, it would only be in their benefit to write NPOV articles. this can only be good for the encyclopedia) --Alterego 18:22, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

You mean if they article is POV. NPOV is the thing we should aim for. Mgm|^(talk) 10:23, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

PS

If I were able to obtain the Pelican shit vandal's "real" IP, would it be of any use? ✏ OvenFresh² 16:11, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Image filter

In response to complaints about certain offensive images being used for vandalism (most notably Image:Autofellatio 2.jpg), I've introduced a bad image list, which contains a list of images which cannot be included inline in articles. Inline images are replaced with links to the description page. I only implemented this feature because the current compromise on Autofellatio is amenable to it -- I hope this will be used as an anti-vandalism feature not as a means of censorship.

The feature is implemented for page views not for saves, so it acts retrospectively on diffs such as this one. It's pretty likely that the vandal will try to get around the filter by uploading the same image with a different name every time, but that's what this game is about: increasing the cost to them while reducing the cost to us. -- Tim Starling 06:06, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

Error on Main Page

in "Today's featured article" - on the discussion page someone described it a few hours ago ... greetings -- Schusch 18:48, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How to spot a sockpuppet?

Hi all - I've spotted what looks to me suspiciously like a sockpuppet...but I can't be certain. Is there a hard-and-fast way of being sure of such things? If there is - or if there isn't for that matter, could someone who has some experience in such matters contact me, either at my talk page or by email with what to do about it? Grutness|^hello? 12:45, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There's a page about them, which has a 'Characteristics' section: Wikipedia:Sock puppet. Usually they pretend to have just signed up, but know about Wikipedia procedures a little too well, and tend to have edits only on the pages being disputed. — PMcM 16:04, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

gaim plugin for Wikipedia links

Hello, I'm announcing the first alpha-release of a gaim plugin for translating Wikipedia links. Those using gaim can now talk the same way IRC users do (with those nice scripts installed). They will now get all the [[links]] translated to a fully working URL. It's late here, please forward this message to a better place, I'm not a regular user of en:wp. Thanks in advance! Try it and comment! Nuno Tavares 04:19, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Search Feature

I just did a standard search in the search box for something I didn't get an article on but I did get web search results back. Is the feature back on? Am I just realllly slow??? Nrbelex ^(talk)

• Currently, the feature is on. But it could be turned off again if there is a huge surge in hits all happening at the same time to Wikipedia's web site again. Zzyzx11 | Talk 05:10, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What the...

Humm, what do you make of this? An article about a sci-fi television show that deals with abductions and someone leaves a story about their own alleged (of course) abduction?? Please. Notice that, although this comment was not signed, it was written by a registered user. This user has been around for some time, but has made a limited number of contributions, and has never signed any of his comments on talk pages. Really, I don't know what to do with this. Should we blank this, or leave it there? Regards, Redux 00:59, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Just stick it on an archive page. I don't know if it's policy, but it will make you feel better and won't delete anything. —Wahoofive | Talk 03:42, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Nah - Throw a title on it and leave it be. It's on a talk page, so what's the harm? Personally, I love coming across these bizarre little nuggets in the WikiLandscape. – ClockworkSoul 03:46, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Painting in Purgatory Article

Hi!

I have really fallen in love with the painting depicted in the purgatory article. It is entitled "Anima Sola" and says it is from a holy card. I would really like to find the name of the artist who painted this piece. Is it known, or is it lost to history? If anyone can help me in this search that would be great.

Thanks!

Insulting nicknames for redirects?

Should insulting nicknames for politicians be made into redirects (e.g. Slick Willy---->Bill Clinton or Dumbya---->George W. Bush)? Vote at Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion. Meelar (talk) 19:24, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

• No. Do you really think someone's going to go to an encyclopedia and search for "Dumbya"? —Wahoofive | Talk 23:09, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm the one saying they should be deleted, but there's controversy. I'd urge people to vote if they're interested. Meelar (talk) 02:01, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
  • Depends if they're encyclopedic or not. This discussion should really be on policy, not misc. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 07:28, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Gmail invites

[Deleted]

Quit spamming the pump with commercial advertising. Anyone who wants a gmail invite can just search the web for one, isnoop.net alone have 813,000 on offer. -- Tim Starling 06:51, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

My apologies, I originally got my account because someone was kind enough to share their invites here. I just thought I'd return the favor.

Darrien 00:42, 2005 Apr 13 (UTC)

TRYING TO TRACE FAMILY TREE from Uk

Hullo,

My wife is interested in tracing a long lost relative, or more likely, his sons or daughters. She has very little information, but hopefully the following is correct.

He was probably a headmaster at a school in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands during the early 1950s. My wife has a stamp from G&E Islands commemorating Queen Elizabeth's coronation taken from a letter addressed to my wife's aunt. My wife would have been aged about 10 at that time.

He was probably Welsh, and POSSIBLY called Mr Jones.

And that is about all we know, but somebody might remember him, or be able to suggest where we should go to next. We have only just realised how large an area your islands cover.

My wife is trying to trace her family history in South Wales, and is having dificulty going further back than her maternal Grandmother.

Perhaps anybody with information or advice would email her on Sabresix@aol.com. My wife's name is Barbara Williams, and her mother's family name was Jones.

My fingers are crossed.

John Williams South Wales United Kingdom

Sorry, Wikipedia is not involved in any way with geneology (unless you're a member of the Kennedy Family or similarly famous). There are plenty of sites on the web that are, though. Try searching for geneology, or check our article. Best, Meelar (talk) 17:58, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

The best that we can offer, short of a knowledgable genealogist running acroos this post, is our Category:Genealogy. Perhaps posting to one of those talk pages may yield some results? – ClockworkSoul 18:04, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ah, this listing in particular may be useful to you: Family Records Centre. Good luck! – ClockworkSoul 18:07, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Freedom of information logo

At this page[8] there is a logo which ought to go on Freedom of Information Act 2000. Could someone upload it?--212.100.250.214 07:15, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Done. Zzyzx11 | Talk 16:40, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia's explosion in popularity

What happened to cause Wikipedia's explosion in popularity in October, 2004?

Did Wikipedia start a new advertizing campaign then? Start getting major news coverage? Get better treatment by search engines? The site traffic, after being fairly steady for half a year, almost doubled within a month.

- Pioneer-12 13:34, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

m:Wikipedia.org is more popular than... has a possible explanation:

Dramatic ranking jumps:

[...]

• Aug 2004: New machines come online.

(Wikipedia's growth tends to be limited by the servers' load)

--cesarb 13:49, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A bookmarklet, for me?

Anyone out there that knows js on a higher level than me may want to help me here... I want to put a bookmarklet into my link tab in firefox so that when I'm in an edit page, it adds {{subst:User:Ilyanep/Wel}} into the edit, Welcome! into the edit summary, and perferably clicks the 'watch this page' button. The reason I'd like to have this is because I'm becoming too lazy to type this out (and deal with all the autocomplete things...) Thanks a lot in advance to anyone who takes this up ! (is it possible?) :) — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 04:22, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC) Note: I'd probably also use this as a template for my admin, bureaucrat, test1-4, ban, and copyvio messages :) — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 04:25, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Can't you simply put that code in the signature field in your preferences, choose to have a raw signature (without the added code to the front and back) and just sign using the four tildes as usual? Also, that bookmarklet has to distinguish between talk pages and article pages as articles shouldn't be signed anyway.
  • You're failing to understand the meaning...I have my signature loaded into my pref field and I sign with four tildes, but I'm talking about my welcome message — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 13:51, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also, if that fails, could you paste the code from your subpage into that field? Mgm|^(talk) 08:18, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

If you go to "Preferences", "Editing", from there you can click "Add pages you edit to your watchlist" and that would take care of at least that part... Jaberwocky6669 08:27, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

var f = document.editform, t = f.wpTextbox1;
if (t.value.length > 0)
  t.value += '\n';
t.value += '{{subst:User:Ilyanep/Wel}}';
f.wpSummary.value = 'Welcome!';
f.wpWatchthis.checked = true;

Here you go. —Korath (Talk) 09:14, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you :) — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 13:51, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Now, how would I put that into a bookmarklet? I tried adding javascript: and then pasting the rest in and it didn't work... — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 13:54, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I can't help you there; I don't use Firefox. Let me know what skin you use, though, and I can make it into a tab or quickbar link. —Korath (Talk) 14:27, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Cool, that would be better than a bookmarklet...I use monobook, thanks a lot — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 14:43, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Copy User:Korath/welcome.js into your User:Ilyanep/monobook.js and you should be set. —Korath (Talk) 15:21, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! This will be useful! — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 15:40, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Dot Org Boom

Hello.

I will be in Stockholm from late 11th of april till late 12th of april. And not even time for a coffee I fear. However... I will present wikipedia at a very small meeting in Stockholm before going to a bigger thing in Finland... and the organiser told me wikipedians would be welcome to join if they were interested. I copied the information page on meta m:Dot Org Boom.

It is mandatory to register. But it is free (lunch as well). The event is on the 12th of april. If some of you have time to join for part or all of the day, I would be delighted to meet them. Feel free to join. the event takes place in the Embassy of Finland, www.finland.se, address is Gärdesgatan 11

Anthere 03:28, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Perplexing image edit

Can anyone tell me what is going on here.

Roadsign on the M6 Toll road in the UK.

The article M6 Toll is on my watchlist since I contributed the image. There was a minor change to the article today [9], but on checking it, I noticed that the photo looked different.

On examining the image page, I see that the image was apparently replaced by User:Ukipguy yesterday... now this is where it gets strange.

• The change to the image _doesn't_ show up on my watchlist.
• The new upload is allegedly by User:Ukipguy, but it also doesn't show up on their minimal contribution list
• Further the edit summary is Image with updated prices. Which would make sense, only the prices haven't changed — the only change appears to be the appearance of a UFO above the sign.

I've tried various image reloads to rule out cache problems, so now I'm perplexed. Is this a hoax? -- Solipsist 18:47, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Try [10] (from Special:Log/upload). You can also revert the image to your version. --cesarb 18:59, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It probably didn't show up in your watchlist because you were watching the article and not the image. Mgm|^(talk) 08:12, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

No, no, both are on my list. However, cesarb pointing to the upload log, indicates what is wrong - Ukipguy's change to Image:Kilroy.jpg doesn't show on his contribution list either (the previous image was bizarre and both should probably be deleted).

It looks like, contrary to expectations, overwriting an image doesn't trigger an event on your watchlist although editing the text on the image page does. Similarly reverting an image doesn't affect your watchlist either. Also overwriting an image doesn't show up on a user's contribution list, although a new upload does.

I guess it is a bug, or feature request for the developers. Major events like page moves don't show up in a page's edit history either, so I guess there are a number of actions which may not be flagged the way you would expect. -- Solipsist 08:56, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Another one which doesn't show is removing a page from a category (when using Special:Recentchangeslinked). Watchlists are full of holes. By the way, a new upload shows as a user contribution because it also creates the corresponding Image: text page. --cesarb 13:06, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Test-wiki

I want to find the test-wiki running the latest media-wiki. but the http://test.wikipedia.org has been Forbidden to visit. so please give me the right link if you know, Thanks a lot! --Vipuser 04:45, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)（talk!）

It's my understanding that the test wiki was taken down permanently, due to the inherent security problems of running non-production code on a production server. —Korath (Talk) 06:04, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

BBC

BBC online appear to have started to make it near common policy to give external links to related pages - mainly with their technology articles - on Wikipedia. See [11] linking to Valdemar Poulsen and [12] to Vlog - Estel (talk) 21:55, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

Ye Olde Pages

Is there a list anywhere with the first Wikipedia pages? Fornadan 20:43, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Somewhere there is a version of Wikipedia as of late 2001 online. It's at xxx.wikipedia.org, but I can't remember what xxx stands for, and it doesn't seem to appear in the complete list of Wikimedia projects. I saw it within the last month, possibly through a reference on the mailing list. Can someone give the correct URL here please.-gadfium 23:16, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org —Korath (Talk) 04:47, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles. Niteowlneils 16:31, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Google Satellite

http://maps.google.com/ is offering satellite pics, at least of the United States. They appear to have pretty good detail and resolution - better than anything else I can see on offer, anyways. What's the possibility of using these in Wikipedia?--Fangz 14:47, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I'm afraid that possibility is zilch (or non-existant). The maps in question bear a copyright mark, which is incompatible with both the GFDL and PD options we can choose from for Wikipedia. (see Wikipedia:Copyrights). Mgm|^(talk) 19:35, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

It's a bit more work to create them, but as far as I know any images created with the NASA World Wind program are free. World Wind also covers the entire globe, although it will be most detailed for the United States. Please correct me if I'm wrong.-gadfium 23:06, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wow. The satellite imagery on Google Maps is amazing. Hmm, looking at satellite photos of New York gives me a strange urge to play SimCity. Rhobite 06:29, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Aerial photography has been avaialble from http://www.multimap.com for a while, with funky overlay of maps and photography - for example, see this and move the cursor over the map.

Where we don't have decent GFDL or PD maps and/or satellite/aerial photographs of places, perhaps articles should include a link to the relevant google maps and/or multimap? -- ALoan (Talk) 14:24, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well Google Maps has got some nice scrolling, but its coverage outside of the US is a bit patchy. Multimap is good too, but its aerial photo mode is limited to the more populated areas of UK only. Don't we already have a mechanism for linking to a selection of external map providers via a locations long & lat, similar to the ISBN book connections? -- Solipsist 07:00, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think we already have that. Nearly all of the U.S.-related articles appear to have been automatically linked to the appropriate geo coordinates on Microsoft Terraserver-USA a while back by some bot. Terraserver already has USGS aerial photography that has much more resolution and detail than the Google Maps satellite photos from Keyhole, although the USGS photos are in color only for major U.S. cities. --Coolcaesar 08:41, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Back (Again) (Again)

I'm back again, and staying this time! Can you believe it? (unsigned message from Ilyanep, 5 April 2005)

What is the one article that every Wikipedia should have?

I've set up a small project, that I called Minipedia, to determine the most important article(s) for a Wikipedia to have. You can vote there for the articles you feel are most important. But there's a catch: You can only votes for articles in the Minipedia!

The idea is to write a collection of simple, short (max 1000 char) articles and vote for an order of importance. This will allow new, or small, wikipedias to get a jump start by translating the articles, or at least the important ones.

So far I've only written, and voted for, a few demo articles, but anyone with five minutes to spare should feel free to edit those or to add an important article to the Minipedia. Or if you have only a minute to spare: feel free to vote for the article every Wikipedia should have. Aliter 00:56, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A list has already been made, it's at m:List of articles all languages should have -- Tim Starling 04:45, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Tim, that list is indeed the inspiration for Minipedia.

• The voting in Minipedia is intended to create a single ordering, without bias.
• Minipedia is not intended as just a list; it is a set of articles ordered by importance. A new Wikipedia could start translating right there.

Aliter 16:27, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The whole thing seems to be on "Requests for deletion" at meta. Could someone explain here what is going on? -- Jmabel | Talk 00:02, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

I too noticed the coinciding of my announcement here and the occurence of all those request for deletion headers. Whether there is an explanation, I don't know. I've given my opinion on meta on that m:Requests for deletion page, and will leave it at that. Aliter 21:12, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Older versions of Encyclopedia Britannica

I've come across several articles with messages such as "Initial text from the 9th edition (1876) of an unnamed encyclopedia - please update as needed" and "This article uses text from the 9th edition (1880s) of an unnamed encyclopedia."

Is there a reason that Britannica isn't named here? Should a template be created for these, much like the template for the 1911 version? --BaronLarf 21:21, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

Are they really older editions of the Britannica? I think that a category should be created for these articles (something like "Articles based on unnamed encyclopedias"), much like the 1911 template does. --cesarb 00:07, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I was kind of just assuming that they were from Britannica; it sounded like a tongue-in-cheek way of giving a source without mentioning Britannica. The dates and editions of the unnamed encyclopedia matches up with the Britannica.edition history Here are some examples of what I'm talking about.

• Pope Valentinus
• Pope Clement XI
• Celestines
• Pierre Abélard original version; current version uses 1911 template
• Pope Urban III

Another solution would be to get more "up-to-date" information (though still 100 years old) from the 1911 edition and just use the 1911 template. --BaronLarf 01:44, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

It's quite possible that those were unnamed encyclopedias, even if they contained Britannica text. For example, foreign works weren't given copyright protection in the U.S. until 1891, making U.K. publications an attractive source of royalty-free content here. --iMb~Meow 02:18, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As I recall, the reason for coyly not naming the Britannica was fear that they would sue for trademark reasons. - Nunh-huh 04:33, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The coyness is inappropriate. We can cite a source as legitimately as anyone else can. We are no more subject to a suit for mentioning this source than any other. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:59, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

Another active college project, FWIW

Creating lots of needy articles (mostly lack of wikification, intro problems, and other MoS issues, but also lots of untagged images, GIFs, cut&paste moves and other common newcomer errors, and occasional ESL issues, etc. (I've cleaned up some of them). See Method Engineering Encyclopedia/Talk:Method Engineering Encyclopedia. Niteowlneils 18:21, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I see it's also being discussed up in the Policy section. Niteowlneils 00:57, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Changing article about Changing_attribution_for_an_edit

I was reading Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit to find how to personaly change the attribution of one single editing as described in Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit#General Notes the senence starting with Note that there is a simple way to "reclaim" such an inadvertently ....

Now thepage is very long and starts with a big message saying the service is disable. I undestood that is disable only the service made by developer not this simple way, but I thought that the most of users would not undestand this.

The instruction to to by ourself the simple revertion is not easy to found in this article. I would suggest to put in a more evident part of the article (for example just belove the red alert message at the beginnig). It would be nice if it would be inserted in some Help Section/Manual/How To (so that a user can have this information without having to go to that page, that is for the request to te developer) AnyFile 09:40, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Photos of emergency service boats

I have recently been to Venice and now have perfect photos of the following emergency cars boats:

• Lagoon police
• Prison police
• Municipal police
• National police (Polizia di Stato)
• Carabinieri
• New-style ambulances
• Old-style ambulances

I am willing for them to be used in Wikipedia, but I don't want to go through the trouble of uploading them and putting them into articles. So if you want them, email me at gwusenet<at>gmail<dot>com and I'll reply with them attatched.--212.100.250.208 07:55, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I've emailed this anon requesting the images. Mgm|^(talk) 09:05, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
  • Cool! Thanks both. Pcb21| Pete 11:55, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Where to go to discuss new features?

Is there a central place on WikiPedia that we can go to discuss new features for the MediaWiki software? Bugzilla.wikimedia.org, while great for reporting bugs, is just not good for feature discussion, and meta:MediaWiki feature request and bug report discussion, which appears to be the central discussion page, seems to be permananetly vandalized. (The top of the page says bizarre things like "This page is a black hole.")

- Pioneer-12 23:49, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• The so-called vandalism was posted by a developer. :) It may not be obvious how to do it, but Bugzilla is the best place for both bugs and feature requests. It's were developers hang out and where your request is most likely seen and acted upon. If you want to request a feature, be sure to include the words "Feature request" in the "bug's" name. Mgm|^(talk) 08:58, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

I don't want to request features at this time; I want to discuss them. And just because he's a developer doesn't give him the right to vandalize a page because he doesn't like it. - Pioneer-12 00:01, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I don't see it as vandalism, it's informative in the sense that it informs you developers watch Bugzilla instead of that page, or would you prefer to have requests sit there without being seen? Anyway, you can discussion features here on the village pump if you want to. Mgm|^(talk) 08:20, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

I would prefer to have a central place set up to discuss features. We need a central place to keep track of feature suggestions so that people don't keep reinventing the wheel. Well defined feature proposals could then be submitted to bugzilla. Then everyone would be happy. Read my thoughts here - Pioneer-12 14:08, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

AIDS, HIV and other related articles

Could someone with a medical background please look over the recent edits to HIV and AIDS? One user is rewriting many sections to downplay the importance of antiretroviral therapy, removing mention of condoms and abstinence as preventative measures, and generally removing much information. Thanks. Rhobite 23:40, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

If you want help, I suggest you be more specific, rather than expecting people to look through the edit history of an article they haven't worked on in order to determine which "one user" has made edits you object to. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:34, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

The user in question is clearly Sci Guy, who's been systematically gutting the HIV and AIDS articles just as described, and rewriting them to his taste, slanting them away from the scientific concensus and towards emphasizing Duesbergian viewpoints. - Nunh-huh 06:38, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• I guess Duesbergian viewpoints should be included in the article, but I'm pretty sure you can undo the edits and include mention of condoms, antiretroviral therapy, and abstinence. Mgm|^(talk) 08:47, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

Duesberg has always gotten more than his due: his "view" has never been excluded:the question before us is whether it should replace actual scientific facts: the edits under discussion delete information about the standard medical understanding of AIDS and seek to replace them with information AIDS dissidents would prefer to emphasize. -Nunh-huh 15:43, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into this. Yes, it's sci guy. I'm sorry I wasn't more specific, but this isn't a case of recruiting for someone to go in and do a simple revert. I think this situation needs an honest assessment by people with medical backgrounds. I'm glad that Nunh-huh and Jfdwolff are on top of this. Rhobite 00:06, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

I don't think we're quite on top of it. I'm glad to confirm your impression of what's going on, but the misrepresentation continues in a sort of death-by-a-thousand-cuts, and probably will continue as long as Sci Guy wants. The sabotage is subtle enough that not many people will be dealing with it, and I (at any rate) don't have the energy to combat a determined POV-pusher in this way. If it were a matter of reasoning with a well-intentioned individual, it would be one thing, but dealing with willful misrepresentations is something Wikipedia doesn't really deal with all that well. - Nunh-huh 04:56, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A Hypothetical Question

Hi. I'd like to pose a hypothetical question here: suppose a group of users wanted to change a key policy of the website, especifically, say they wanted to "outlaw" fair use as a valid license for an image to be used in Wikipedia. Could this be done by a consensus achieved in a vote in which only 25 users participated? Even if those 25 users happen to be the top 25 contributors to the website? I'm asking it because that's been done in the Portuguese language Wikipedia. A vote was carried by a group of users (mostly Admins of that project, which enables them to enforce their decision) to rule out fair use under the general argument that they wanted the website to be 100% free, and images published under the U.S. fair use are not so, especially if the website is viewed in other countries. I had been absent from that project for a while and had not taken part in that decision. Upon returning, I noticed that the people who did participate had a very slim understanding of international law (especially concerning the internet) and had reasoned only with personal opinions about the fair use. So I tried to explain the legal reasons why fair use is valid, even if it's a US legal institution. I also thought that such a change in the essence of the project could not be carried out by such a limited number of users, since it is not the same as reaching a consensus about an article. The general reply to my (rather long) posts explaining international law was that "it was voted and decided, and [as part of the decision] this can only be revisited in a year". In protest, I've withdrawn from that project for the time being (not for good), but still thought I had a point, so I thought I'd ask for some advice on this, the largest of all the WPs. Was I right about the issues with the procedure? Or, regardless of whether I could be right technically, a consensus of 25 (of over 5 thousand) should prevail to change part of the essence of the project? What would happen if something similar was attempted here (going back to my original question)? Regards, Redux 17:58, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what procedure there is to stop that policy from being enforced, other than getting Jimbo to overrule it. I would do that right away, before any images get deleted. Rad Racer 18:32, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not all that hypothetical, apparently, but still:

• Each W has its own approximation of democracy. If the rules on pt: allow this, then it has been decided correctly.
• The fact that something has been decided correctly doesn't mean that it's right. You will however need to make your point to enough people , and hence clear enough, to get something done about it.
• Since most Wikipedians in Europe did not have a say in allowing Fair Use, they tend to have little respect for that possibility.
• Ignoring the fact that several Wikipedians misuse the concept, the very fact that not all of our servers are actually located in the USA makes its application a tricky affair.
• In all I would suggest creating a platform somewhere central to get all Fair Use issues clear before trying to convince people that it's worth overturning a democratic decision. Aliter 23:37, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, I guess it would depend on whether they are talking about banning use of images, or deleting them altogether. The latter, being irrevocable, would justify immediate intervention, in my opinion. The former is not such a big deal. Don't they have RfC and arbitration over there, by the way? Those are quasi-democratic and -republican processes, respectively. Rad Racer 23:50, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

About what Aliter said: I've already brought up a great deal of it during my aforementioned "long posts" explaining why fair use was a valid licence. As I mentioned, the general reply (of those who were able to get their way, of course) was that it was decided in a vote (democratly), to which I replied that the mere fact that it was a democratic (although there was no minimum quorum respected, which I had thought would be advisable to make such a profound change) decision does not ensure the quality of that decision. But the situation is more complicated. The people over there appear to have, as far as this issue is concerned, a very limited understanding of the mechanisms that make Wikipedia possible. Here's one example: one of the Admins over there was advocating, during the discussion, that fair use violates the GFDL. Isn't that one of those issues that have already been put to rest here? How can an Admin be so on the wrong track? In the case of the Portuguese WP, there are no servers in the countries were its readers are located (although there are plans &#150; meaning, sometime in the future, not now &#150; to install servers in Portugal). And finally, yes they are deleting images on account that fair use has been outlawed. Regards, Redux 17:33, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

About the violation of the GFDL: that issue has been put to rest here, but apparently not on the Portuguese wikipedia. The aim of using the GFDL is to make a encyclopedia that can be freely copied and modified; but when an article includes portions that are used under fair-use, these articles can not be copied in their entirity by people outside of the US (or countries with an equivalent fair-use system). Apparently, the contributors to the Portuguese wikipedia have decided that their main audience is located outside of the US, i.e. in Portugal and Brazil, and it's more important to keep their freedom for to copy their entire wikipedia (including all of the images) than to keep those fair-use images. A very understandable point of view, and one they should be allowed to take, imho. The same rule is also followed on at least three other wikipedias: the German, Dutch and Norse wikipedias only accept images that are allowed under German/Dutch/Norwegian/EU copyright law (which is stricter than U.S. law). Eugene van der Pijll 01:17, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Addition: this is also the reason that the Wikipedia Commons does not accept fair use images: see commons:Copyright_tags#Unfree_copyrights Eugene van der Pijll 01:36, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but the point of view is flawed, not to mention inconsistent. As I have mentioned over there (although I don't think anyone cared), if the concern was only creating a "100% free" encyclopedia concerning the images as well [as the text], changes could not have been restricted to the fair use policy. The Admin I mentioned before gave this example about a hypothetical someone "wanting to copy an image from the pt wp onto a t-shirt as selling it in the streets and that this someone should be able to do this without concerns for copyright restrictions". He gave this example as a paradigm of what he meant. Then I asked, with no reply until now: what about the permission for use? If we ask a copyright holder for permission to use his material on WP and get it, that doesn’t mean that people can "copy it onto t-shirts and sell it down the street", even though the image will be useable on Wikipedia. That policy remains intact in the pt wp, even though it's a classic example of an image being used that is not 100% free. So, if you ban fair use because you wish the encyclopedia to be 100% free, you have to ban the use of copyrighted images with express permission for use &#150; or, as I also asked there, does anyone believe that when a copyright holder allows us to use his material he is revoking his rights entirely and releasing the material in the public domain? Not at all, permission for use is special for WP. But the crusade over there was against fair use only, so they only approached the issues that fit their interests, again showing a complete lack of knowledge of international law.
Furthermore, you are mistaken about images used under the fair use license being free only in the US or other countries with fair-use-like legislation. In fact, it's not completely free even in the US. Fair use allows us to use images on the WP, for its purposes (non commercial, etc.), but that does not mean that anyone in the US could copy the image, again, "onto a t-shirt and sell it down the street". Also as I've stated there, tagging images is not intended exclusively to orientate wikipedians (as to whether to leave an image alone or list it for deletion), but rather it also serves the very important purpose of letting the visitor know that, even though that image is being used here, it is not completely free (or it is, depending on the tag that we've added). It's restricted in the US, it's restricted elsewhere, and since there are no wikipedia servers in the countries where the Portuguese-speaking users are located, and the data for that wikipedia is being hosted in the US (they have admitted that), international law allows the pt wp to use images under the fair use institution of the United States.
And finally, there’s a very relevant issue (I believe) of having a handful of users decide such a fundamental change in the website. My hypothetical question here (the title of this discussion) was precisely to know if something like that would be accepted here. Adjusting for the very different magnitudes of both communities, would such a decision made by a consensus of 70 users (there, it was 25) be acceptable to ban either fair use or some other main aspect of the image policy in effect here? Given the smaller numbers there, it’s even more problematic, since you can change the very nature of the project by having a vote in which a very small group, that represents one (biased?) train of thought, vote and decide for the community. Then, as the community slowly catches on (since the admins who are part of that group start deleting images all over the place), they come back with the good old “it’s already been voted and decided, come back in a year”. As I said there, that is not the same as reaching a consensus in a article. And did I mention that the period to vote was rather short? So, if you’ve been away for two weeks, you missed it, and it’s too late? For a change like that? That is not democracy, unless you’re thinking in terms of the 19th century. That is why I’ve withdrawn for the time being, in protest. Regards, Redux 22:03, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't see the inconsistency. The point is that fair use images cannot even be used under European law in the same context; it is illegal for Europeans to make a complete identical copy of the wikipedia. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this point. However, I found these mails by Jimbo on a mailing list: [13] and [14]:

"For example, I think it is a good thing that the German wikipedia is quite strict against fair use"

"I *do* make the same argument for removing fair-use from en as well"

Eugene van der Pijll 16:02, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Returning to Eugene's entry [way] above, I'd have to say, first off, that the pt:wp is not the property of the Europeans (in this particular case, meaning the Portuguese). If the laws of Portugal or any other specific country makes it harder to utilize the material from Wikipedia, the objective should be to create tags and warnings to let people know that the material may be further restricted in certain parts of the world. Banning fair use because the Europeans can't copy and distribute the material (here, the images) at home is a simplistic and national-centric solution, and it would create a crazy logic. For instance: let's ban all images that may be offensive for the Muslim world (meaning, no pictures of women in "revealing" clothes). The pt wp is not hosted in Portugal, or even in Europe for that matter, so there's no sense in banning content because hard copies of it would be restricted over there. Our responsibility is to provide ways to let people know about those restrictions (again, tags are not just meant for Wikipedians, but rather to let any user know of the status and eventual limitations of the images).
And how can you not see the inconsistency of arguing the "need for the material to be 100% free" to justify banning fair use and not touch the express permission for use, which Izwalito also brought up in his comment about the French WP? That's the pinnacle of inconsistency! A double standard, if you will. I guess I could even say that they used this excuse because the Portuguese who got fair use banned (they were the majority) didn't want to say with all the words: "we don't want fair use because we can't make as free a use of the material as others could". Are they envious? Bitter? I believe all of these may be true, but mainly they are suffering from the same problem that seems to plague the French WP: a complete lack of knowledge and understanding of how international law (especially with regards to the internet) works. It's no offense, but one of the strongest opposers of fair use in the Portuguese language project is an Admin who is 17 years old. Others may not be as young, but they too know nothing about international law or how the internet works (in terms of the legality of it) in contrast with their own national laws.
What would happen if people from all over the world started arguing the limitations of their own countries to supress material from an international project that is, for the most part, hosted in the United States (where the law gives us latitude to use at least some copyrighted material)? The project would be unworkable. Regards, Redux 00:07, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I am thinking of refactoring this section somewhere. Would Wikipedia talk:Fair use be a good place, is there a better place, or should it stay here? Rad Racer | Talk 02:23, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Izwalito is a banned user. Sorry, but I do not think his comments should stay here. Anthere 22:20, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Artificial intelligence and Wikipedia

I think Wikipedia should make better use of artificial intelligence, in order to automate more simple tasks. An example is redirects. Someone had to manually redirect Condoleeza Rice to Condoleezza Rice. We could have a feature similar to what Google has, where if you make a typo, it will suggest "Did you mean Condoleezza Rice?"

Copyvio detection software also wouldn't be too hard to implement.. I think we should make greater use of bots too; a sophisticated algorithm could find overlapping articles (e.g. United Nations Security Council and Reform of the United Nations) and flag those for linking, so that contributors would be less likely to duplicate each others' work.

Spell-check is another obvious possibility, as are bots to perform more complex tasks such as conforming references to the style manual. A number of methods could be implemented for vandal detection. Page move rollback and other repetitive admin tasks could be automated.

As it is now, Wikipedia article creation tends to be very labor-intensive, sometimes unnecessarily. Rad Racer 17:05, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think you are giving too much credit to Google's apparant ease in this task. 'AI' in general is CPU expensive and G has every conceivable mispelling of Britney Spears or whatever name you're interested in on the books to help them along with this task. --Alterego 18:43, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree some uses of AI are a waste of CPU resources. I was definitely opposed to the proposal to negotiate a deal with Microsoft to license Clippy as part of the Wikipedia user interface("It looks like you're writing an article.") Rad Racer 19:03, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A phonetic algorithm index hooked into the Go button would get us a large part of the way to this. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:26, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You know the size of the server farm Google has? It's BIG. Alphax ^τεχ 09:21, 28 Mar2005 (UTC)

It wouldn't take a huge server farm to do what Cyrius mentioned. This would take a few bytes per entry to store a soundex or similar value. Then a lookup for matching soundex values on the new article page. Kenj0418 04:22, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Somewhat related to this- does anyone know if Wikipeida logs failed lookups, so a person could query to see if there was Condoleezza/Condoleezza issue occuring with many requests? Kenj0418 04:22, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if that's a good idea---Wikipedia already keeps turning off the existing search feature every time the servers get overloaded and slow down. Maybe if Bill Gates or some other rich guy donates some hardware to Wikimedia then it might work. --Coolcaesar 08:28, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

USA PATRIOT Act

I seem to have gotten it moved back, with it's history, but am having trouble with it's Talk page. Any help, or ideas what I've done wrong? Niteowlneils 00:14, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Done. You moved it to USA Patriot Act instead of USA PATRIOT Act.  :) RickK 00:31, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

D'oh! Thanks. Niteowlneils 03:24, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Questionable use of Wikipedia content?

Recipeland's "Encyclopedia" article on Solubility Equilibrium

Notice that the above is a link to a mirror of Wikipedia that does not appear to be cited. Since I'm an idiot, I'm not sure whether this use is legal under Wikipedia's license or not. As such, I've posted a link here for someone more knowledgeable to pick up on. If you do something related to this (move this post, send the site owner a strongly worded letter, etc.), I'd be interested to know what it was, so I'd be quite happy if you'd tell on my talk page. Thanks. Orborde 04:47, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

I see the words "All Wikipedia text is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License; The original article can be found at: www.wikipedia.org" at the very bottom of the page. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 04:50, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

By gum, you're right. I told you I was an idiot. Orborde 04:54, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

---

Timezone

Just wondering - what timezone does Wikipedia run in? It's clearly not GMT as it's displaying yesterday's date. JiMternet 00:35, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... actually it just changed over as I posted the above... :S JiMternet 00:37, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

The Wikipedia servers run on UTC. If you are seeing what would be yesterdays stuff (so on the Main Page yesterdays FAOTD) then try refreshing your cache. Evil Monkey∴Hello

And to all intents and purposes, UTC=GMT. Grutness|^hello? 04:34, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Someone say thanks

If you check out my contributions, you'll see I've done a great deal, including fixing syntax. I could at least get a {{welcome}} or {{anon}}, couldn't I, now. Reply here please.--The Cross Anon (talk) 07:30, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Looks like you did a whole stack of good work. Thanks. Maybe get an account? Usernames are more easily recognisable than IP addresses. Pcb21| Pete 08:54, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

To be honest, very few of us notice that a bunch of work has been done be the same anon IP address (especially because a particular IP address isn't even always a particular person). My main reaction to seeing an IP edit on a page I watchlist is "examine this closely": I tend to view the IP addresses collectively, as if they were edits by one occasionally talented, occasionally malicious entity. Want credit for your work? Open an account. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:50, May 1, 2005 (UTC)

Anons that have contributed ~50 edits are almost always welcomed, thanked, and urged to register. Lotsofissues 01:20, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Huh. Who knew? -- Jmabel | Talk 05:17, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

Comparative contributions to the Encyclopedia and to supernumerary namespaces

In light of the discussion here, it may be useful to review Snowspinner's contributions to Wikipedia.

Snowspinner's edits to article namespace, 1 January 2005 - 15 April 2005

Number	Percent	Description
318	100%	Edits to article space
75	24%	Removals of {stub}
63	20%	Edits to remove John Gohde additions
45	14%	Reverts in article namespace to John Gohde
21	7%	Edits relating to Steaks or "Steak and Blowjob Day"
13	4%	Reverts in article namespace, not to John Gohde

Snowspinner's edits to all namespaces, 1 January 2005 - 15 April 2005

		Number	Percent of Total
				Number	Percent of Total
Edits to the Encyclopedia		332	22%
	Articles			318	21.02%
	Image			0	0.00%
	Template			7	0.46%
	Category			7	0.46%
Discussion of Articles		258	17%
	Talk			109	7.20%
	Image_talk			0	0.00%
	Template_talk			5	0.33%
	Category_talk			3	0.20%
	Votes for Deletion			60	3.97%
	Templates for Deletion			49	3.24%
	Votes for Undeletion			32	2.12%
Other		923	61%
	Wikipedia			424	28.02%
	Wikipedia_talk			230	15.20%
	User_talk			200	13.22%
	User			69	4.56%

For comparison purposes, the contributions of Everyking, netoholic, John Gohde, and Snowspinner:

	Total Edits in 2005			Edits to the Encyclopedia			Discussion of Articles			Other
Everyking	10000	*		9191	92%		345	3%		464	5%
netoholic	3987			1463	37%		670	17%		2197	55%
John Gohde	1307	**		358	27%		163	12%		786	60%
Snowspinner	1513			332	22%		258	17%		923	61%

* Edits for Everyking are only from 9 February, not 1 January as for all other listed, as the "Wikipedia Contributions" page times out when attempting to show edits beyond 10000

** Edits for John Gohde are only from 30 January, not 1 January as for Snowspinner and netoholic, as he has no listed edits prior to that date

--Statistics compiled by rrcaballo AT yahoo.com

For further comparison, User:Jimbo Wales has made 94 edits since January 1st, exactly three of which were to the article space, and only one of which was not about the edit war on Autofellatio, making him the least valuable of all. But welcome back, [15]. Snowspinner 06:28, May 1, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and he basically runs the Foundation, doesn't he. Oh yeah. —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 17:06, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

If there is a point in any of this, it escapes me. One can make good contributions either in a talk page or an article; one can make bad contributions either in a talk page or an article. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:38, May 1, 2005 (UTC)

It is provides data about stalking, I think. Pcb21| Pete 08:57, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

The point, I suppose, is either that Snowspinner does far more harm than good, since he contributes so little to the encyclopedia, or that he persecutes people who do a lot more good than he does. Everyking 14:21, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

That, and he's part of a whole class of non-editors who are not very interested in contributing to the encyclopedia. but are very interested in controlling and ordering around those who do. —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 17:02, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

I have no experience with John Gohde, so I have no idea whether reverting large numbers of his edits is a service or a disservice to Wikipedia. I can certainly say, though, that I have seen "contributors" where reverting 90% of their edits would enhance Wikipedia. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:46, May 1, 2005 (UTC)

John Gohde seems to have been banned for a year, starting yesterday. I'll let everyone draw their own conclusions on what this means about his contributions, 'cos I don't know the details of his case. -- Eugene van der Pijll 00:45, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Snowspinner's edits: pages accounting for 1% or more of his total 424 edits to Wikipedia namespace, 1 January 2005 - 15 April 2005

Number	Percent		Page
76	17.92%		Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents
72	16.98%		Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration
18	4.25%		Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Netoholic_2/Evidence
18	4.25%		Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/172_2/Evidence
18	4.25%		Wikipedia:Association_of_Member_Investigations
14	3.30%		Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/John_Gohde/Evidence
14	3.30%		Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/3RR
14	3.30%		Wikipedia:Categories%2C_lists%2C_and_series_boxes (changing John Gohde edits)
13	3.07%		Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection
10	2.36%		Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard
10	2.36%		Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Xed/Evidence
9	2.12%		Wikipedia:Blocking_policy/Personal_attacks
9	2.12%		Wikipedia:Categories%2C_lists%2C_and_series_boxes (not changing John Gohde edits)
7	1.65%		Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Snowspinner
6	1.42%		Wikipedia:Don%27t_be_a_dick
6	1.42%		Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Snowspinner_2
6	1.42%		Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Anthony_DiPierro_2/Evidence
5	1.18%		Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Lst27_2
5	1.18%		Wikipedia:Don%27t_disrupt_Wikipedia_to_illustrate_a_point
5	1.18%		Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Gzornenplatz/Evidence
5	1.18%		Wikipedia:AMA_Requests_for_Assistance
5	1.18%		Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Admin_enforcement_requested

Of Snowspinner's 424 edits to the Wikipedia namespace, 156, or 37%, were to an Arbitration page.

At least 31 of his edits to the Wikipedia namespace, or 7%, involved altering or removing edits made by John Gohde, or listing evidence against John Gohde.

Of his 230 edits to the Wikipedia_talk namespace 132, or 57% were to an Arbitration Talk page.

At least 19 of his edits to the Wikipedia_talk namespace, or 8%, were either direct responses to or disputation with John Gohde, or edits to a John Gohde Arbitration sub-page.

Of his 69 edits to User namespace, 3 were to John Godhe's own user page,

another 35 were to Snowspinner's sub-page of evidence against John Gohde, "User:Snowspinner/MNH_Evidence",

for a total of 38, or 55%, of his edits to the User namespace.

Of Snowspinner's 200 edits the User_talk namespace 19, or 10%, were to John Gohde's User_talk page.

what --Golbez 11:00, May 1, 2005 (UTC)

If a bunch of you have a problem with Snowspinner, start an RfC, so that he has a decent chance to reply. Frankly, this effort at prosecution by press release disgusts me, and probably should be considered a violation of the policy against personal attacks. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:54, May 1, 2005 (UTC)

These are merely summaries of what's available under "user contributions" for any user. Aggregating numbers is prosecution? Besides, as I understand the structure here, isn't Snowspinner Wikipedia's Public Prosecutor? If you'd like to discuss your concerns offline, please email me -- rrcaballo AT yahoo.com

What's your point? If you think something should be done, write an RfC, but the Village Pump is no place for your bellyaching. WP:ANI is at least slightly more on-topic for this discussion which is nothing but a large personal attack. RickK 66.60.159.190 17:49, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure why this is seen as a personal attack. It's just an attempt to study Wikipedia by analyzing patterns of edits. In all cases, I've endeavored to impartially show all edits, or to extract the most obvious aggregations ("top ten", "over 1%", etc.) of edits. Of course, being an outsider, I may have missed other patterns in the data. If so, I hope you'll point them out, either here, or, in confidence via email.

Nor am I singling out any one editor; Snowspinner is far from the only editor whose statistics I've analyzed. But when he was accused of stalking here, it seemed most fair to him and to all concerned to make available a portion of my work-in-progress, so that the discussion could reference real facts and figures rather than unsupported and overheated rhetoric. I'm not sure why this is being taken a "personal attack".

In any case, I'll think you'll find that my post of today (below)[16] will alleviate your concerns about this being in any way an attack, but if it does not, please, please, let me know how you think I could better analyze these statistics, so that I can add your thoughts before publication of the final version.

-- rrcaballo AT yahoo.com

Ithkuil cleanup

Recently someone added a cleanup message to the article Ithkuil language. Here are my changes to the style of the article; see how you like them so far.

Recent changes

Help! Lately, when I see Recent changes, it always appears to start 7 minutes ago rather than at the current time. What can be done to fix it?? Georgia guy 22:26, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Change your clock? —Wahoofive (talk) 00:17, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • False. That was speculation of mine. Several minutes after I wrote that, it returned back to normal. Georgia guy 00:18, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Pickypedia: a proposal

Fellow Wikipedians,

I'm proposing an experiment (tentatively called Pickypedia) to see if a collaborative encyclopedia can be created which combines the openness and collaborative spirit of Wikipedia with the reliability of a good paper encyclopedia. Have a look at the description and share your thoughts and comments! --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 20:38, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can't revert vandalism

Every time I try to move Pope Benedict XVI - Wikipedia Is Communism back to Pope Benedict XVI I get the following error: Error in numRows(): Duplicate entry '0-Pope_Benedict_XVI_-_Wikipedia_Is_Communism' for key 2

Backtrace:

   * GlobalFunctions.php line 507 calls wfbacktrace()
   * Database.php line 528 calls wfdebugdiebacktrace()
   * Database.php line 717 calls databasemysql::numrows()
   * MessageCache.php line 307 calls databasemysql::selectrow()
   * MessageCache.php line 249 calls messagecache::getfromcache()
   * GlobalFunctions.php line 429 calls messagecache::get()
   * GlobalFunctions.php line 338 calls wfmsgreal()
   * OutputPage.php line 611 calls wfmsg()
   * Database.php line 386 calls outputpage::databaseerror()
   * Database.php line 333 calls databasemysql::reportqueryerror()
   * Database.php line 911 calls databasemysql::query()
   * Title.php line 1685 calls databasemysql::insert()
   * Title.php line 1449 calls title::movetonewtitle()
   * SpecialMovepage.php line 152 calls title::moveto()
   * SpecialMovepage.php line 36 calls movepageform::dosubmit()
   * SpecialPage.php line 310 calls wfspecialmovepage()
   * SpecialPage.php line 220 calls unlistedspecialpage::execute()
   * index.php line 101 calls specialpage::executepath()

Seems to have finally gone thru--nevermind. Niteowlneils 22:35, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Those backtrace statements seem to always appear when the web site server is so slow that access to the database fails. Zzyzx11 | Talk 04:42, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Frankfurt and Wikimania

As many Wikimedians are heading for Frankfurt and there hopefully will be a lot of PR for Wikipedia, people should expand the article about the city (Frankfurt) as this one probably will be one of the first some people in the press etc. will check if they are going to write something about Wikimania and Wikipedia. German Wikipedia has a very impressive article with many images, see de:Frankfurt am Main. -- George L.

Oy. Someone who knows German really should import a lot of that information.

Is there a central place in WP where people can find "requested translations" or something like that? There is Wikipedia:Spanish Translation of the Week, but that's just one article.

Nickptar 19:41, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There certainly is. See Wikipedia:Translation into English and Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 20:42, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Only the former is relevant. The latter is for cases where people (usually anonymous users) have pasted non-English materian into the English Wikipedia and we have to decide what to do with it. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:11, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)
• Unfortunately, we have an enormous backlog of pages needing translation from German. The German Wikipedia is really strong, so this happens a lot. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:11, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)

Mediawiki message

At MediaWiki talk:Infobox alert/es, I'm requesting the creation of a message in order to solve a problem when you choose to use the Spanish interface of the English Wikipedia. That's how the same problem was fixed at the commons. Thanks in advance. --Ascánder 16:47, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Uncyclopedia

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Have people come across the above?

Is there a list of Wikipedia-associated sites? Jackiespeel 12:53, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You might be looking for Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. Thryduulf 13:43, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Move 3 to 3 (year)

I came cross Talk:3 (number) and the proposal on Wikipedia:Requested moves [17], but I didn't find the discussion of the a/m move. Where is it? -- User:Docu

I don't think it was discussed, so I reverted the moves and started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Rename articles in first decade of the common era?. Gdr 14:28, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

Thanks for starting the discussion. I did go around collecting the old discussions of where to put AD, BC, and (year) a little while back, and noted that there had been no thorough discussion of the issue. As the digit articles were significantly longer and more interesting (and more cross-referenced) than the year articles, this seemed like a good way to bring up the question of what the default article should be. +sj + 16:19, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Three week old FAC

I normally don't cross-post FACs to the Village Pump, but Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs has stagnated on FAC for awhile and more votes are needed to reach consensus: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

A few interesting things about this treaty:

• It expanded the War on Drugs worldwide, leading to more than 100 national laws against cannabis, coca, and other traditional crops.
• It shifted the key drug policy-making decisions to the World Health Organization. Scientists, not politicians, would decide how individual narcotics would be regulated. This new approach influenced Congressmen drafting the U.S. Controlled Substances Act, which empowered the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make binding scientific and medical evaluations about drugs. (See cannabis rescheduling in the United States.)
• It required nations to put an agency in charge of legal cannabis production, leading to the establishment of the National Institute on Drug Abuse marijuana crop at the University of Mississippi.
• The Conference was held place in 1961, at the height of the Cold War. After losing some important votes, the U.S. considered walking away, but didn't want to risk appearing weak in front of the world leaders assembled there. SonicSynergy 05:55, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Content Question

--66.218.13.18 17:21, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Best I can tell, this is the best place for this. I haven't signed on yet, but have used and perused the pages quite a bit, not intimately. That means I might have missed my answer somewhere <g> but I did try.

  At present, I have two interests:

1. Foster Care 2. Social Security Disability (SSDI) Both United States, some Canada.

Looking up each of those two, I can find nothing but a couple of short stubs, one for each one, with little content, and mostly Canadian references for instnce, on Foster Care, though only a few.

We have a pretty fair experience and knowledge in both. I am disabled for health reasons and this may fit one of my current life goals to give back to the world some of the good it has given me. As a result, the following questions:

Would it be acceptable to seriously expand on the accurate, but tiny bit of information in those stubs? Or are they intentionally short due to them being state/government based? Obviously I would concentrate on the US with much less available to me for Cananda, but I do know people <g>.

Everything I would plan to supply would either be clearly linked to .gov references, or clearly noted as opinion based on experiences of myself and others.

I would also intend to provide several links, esp to .gov sites, but some would be more controversial because they might be forums or newgroups or sites that deal with "real" as opposed to fanatical support. A web search on either will get you some pretty lousy and some pretty good links and many, many links!

In both those cases, a person just getting into the system, seems to be at a total loss as to where to look for information and how to even begin the process, let alone find much reliable information about how the processes go and even whether it's a process or a program. Most people, when just getting started in these areas, don't even know what questions to ask yet: But OJT teaches it fairly well even if it's too late to have been useful. The major learning seems to come after the fact, and goes into woulda should coulda, if I'd only known ... categories.

I'll keep puttering around and learning, but any comments back would be appreciated. Not signed up yet but I will soon. Oh, and I'm not adverse to criticism of any kind. I might surprise you if you speak badly about my parents, but beyond that I understand what criticism is about; I was a tech writer in one of my past lives and still dabble.

Regards & TIA,

Tom

r91658@yahoo.com, but please use this forum for responses; I only use Yahoo for temporaray throw-aways and places I've not mailed before <g>.

PS - Interesting form! Never had this much control before; looks like fun.

Be bold and go for it. Just a couple of notes though: keep in mind that Wikipedia isn't a how-to guide, and that you should use an encyclopedic tone in the articles. If you do end up writing a lot about how the system(s) works in the US, it may be spun off into a separate article, but that's not a bad thing. If you need feedback, you can always ask here or on the talk page of the relevant articles. Cheers. CryptoDerk 17:29, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

--66.218.13.18 18:39, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC) Gee, that was fast! Are you a person or a bot? <g>. No problem, no need to actually respond, either.

Cautions/comments noted: I'll probably screw up a few times, but I'll work at keeping it within the guidelines and I'll go slowly enough to watch for problems. After all, Vetting's my middle name!

Many thanks,

Tom (aka Pop)

South Africa

The FA South Africa contains a pronounciation in the MP3 format. Is this in accordance with current Wikipedia policies? If not, can someone remove it? Thanks. --Eleassar777 17:18, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

UK Executive Agencies

Could I suggest making a page List of executive agencies in the United Kingdom? A list can be found by clicking here and then on "Executive agencies" on the right hand side".--E.M.

Nice idea, and you could do it yourself, if you like. Filiocht | Blarneyman 13:22, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

The above comment is, in my belief, very dis-constructive, and verging on rude. See my comments on his/her user talk page.--212.100.250.208 15:57, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC) NB, I'm a user, just not logged in.

The comment is true, though. That's the idea of a wiki, do it yourself. Eugene van der Pijll 16:51, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you consider me to have been rude, I can only say that wasn't my intention. I'd add that maybe you need to study how this place works before jumping to such conclusions. Filiocht | Blarneyman 07:41, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

In any case, it's probably a good idea to wait until after the election, if you're going to include mention of the ministries the agencies are related to, as it's usual to reorganise ministries immediately after a general election - there's talk of scrapping the Department for Trade and Industry, for example. -- Arwel 01:45, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Query on data overload

I was just wondering if previous versions of wikipedia pages (and talk ones) will be kept forever? Will it not be the case that eventually these will mount up into a huge (expensive to keep) heap of data? Of course I can see why if possible it would be good to keep as much as we can. I am not a tec' head perhaps I am over estimating the size of this heap. Any way just wondering if there are currently any plans to junk really old stuff/numerically early edits or we are just going to wait till it becomes a problem or whether it is not likely to become a problem for a long time.--JK the unwise 10:34, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Disk space is astonishingly cheap (it's the bandwidth that eats money), so we're likely to keep them essentially forever, or at least as long as the project itself is running. Also, the GFDL, our licence, requires that the edit history be available, so we're legally obligated to keep these around as long as we're hosting the actual material. Best, Meelar (talk) 10:37, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

Observation:Trolls are like vampires, their bites create another one(sometimes)

No names (pointing fingers )please. Trolls encounters generate disharmony. They bring out the worst in people. Innocent bystanders get hurt in the dispute wars. Vendettas start. etc. So its best not to make a big deal out of things or endanger youself by becoming one.--Jondel 09:33, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hence the simple slogan: Don't feed the trolls. All together now, I will not feed a troll today. Filiocht | Blarneyman 09:38, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)

ne siveris flagrantis cinaedos hortari I'm told this is the way more prestigious way to deliver the same maxim. Lotsofissues 15:42, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm a Latin fan. What does these literally mean? --Jondel 02:20, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Literally: "Don't let jerkwads be encouraged". Lotsofissues 10:22, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Needless to say, translating "cinaedos" is the most contentious part. With all due respect, I'd suggest "faggots" (or less strongly, "fairies" or "sissies") is more accurate. JRM · Talk 11:48, 2005 May 2 (UTC)

inventions, inventors and groups or organizations of inventors

Greetings! As a new user I tried to find something about 'inventions' & promptly got lost in the vastness of wiki. So I'd like to contact any & all others who have ideas / inventions (pat. or pend.) in order to find out what is being created in this wonderful /crazy world. I only have one that I'm working on right now, but I have some more in files. The USA is struggling in the world market, except where we always have shined - the innovation & invention category, and if someone has an idea, that might need a little help, and someone else can help, and they both can make a little ($) off it, and possibly help wiki out of it, that might be a good thing. Please excuse any misspellings. I couldn't find the spell-check button at the top, Tiredfingers

Welcome! Wikipedia may not be appropriate for inventions-in-progress. (See: Wikipedia:No original research) Wikipedia can be used to document well-known inventions. There's an invention Wikicity at http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/Inventions but there's not much activity there. (And Wikipedia doesn't have a spell-check due to different spellings globally.) Again, welcome! Samw 00:37, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Fair Use?

I have noticed that [18] has appropriated my entire article on urban seismic risk without any attribution to Wikipedia, and have even honoured me by copyrighting it! This site appears to be a sleazy pop-up trap. --Zeizmic 16:41, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I suggest noting this at the apropriate sub-page of Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks#GFDL compliance. That page also has suggested processes, etc to help you. Thryduulf 18:20, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Have a look at his copyright page ( the right button at the bottom) There is a section in there about material being taken from Wikipedia, but you are right, he is not acknowledging this the page in question, as he should. Have a look at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks and follow the links for what to do. Apwoolrich 18:18, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! That link is an eye-opener! --Zeizmic 21:38, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikimedia Poland

This is a message which is sent to every Polish project regarding the creation of Wikimedia Poland - a Polish local chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation. I've been informed there are quite a few Polish users on en.Wikipedia, who aren't registered on other projects - so I've decided this will be a good place to inform them on this fact. Again, sorry if some of you will decide this is spamming up your Village pump, but this is pretty important for us.

Original message:

Trwają już plany powstania stworzyszenia Wikimedia Polska. Byłby to polski oddział Fundacji Wikimedia, który ułatwiałby Polakom kontakt z Fundacją, możliwość łatwiejszego wsparcia pieniężnego Fundacji, reklamował i organizowałby on także w przyszłości spotkania Wikimedian ze swojego budżetu.

Wszystko jest szerzej wyjaśnione na Meta. Proszę tylko aby wszyscy pamiętali, że to stowarzyszenie zostaje stworzone dla dobra wszystkich powstałych i nowo-powstających projektów Fundacji w Polsce. Z pewnością znajdą się sceptycy. Niektórzy mogą powiedzieć o biurokratyzowaniu Wiki, którego wszyscy się wystrzegamy - ale działanie Wikimedia Polska nie zaszkodzi żadnemu z projektów. Większość z normalnych użytkowników z pewnością nawet nie zauważy zmiany - Wikimedia Polska będzie jedynie reprezentantem Fundacji Wikimedia. To nie daje nam żadnych specjalnych uprawnień w niej, z wyjątkiem możliwości zaproponowania pomysłów dla rozwoju projektów Wikimedia.

Jako że polskie wersje językowe projektów Wikimedia są jednymi z najbardziej rozwiniętych, uważam osobiście, że powinniśmy mieć własną reprezentację w Fundacji, która pilnowałaby naszych interesów. Jeszcze raz podaję link - wszyscy zainteresowani mogą więcej przeczytać na temat pomysłu, ogłosić swoją pomoc przy projekcie, a także ewentualnie sprzeciwić się powstaniu organizacji - na stronie Wikimedia Polska na Meta.

Proszę także tam kierować wszelkie dyskusje i pytania, oczywiście na stronę dyskusji. Pozdrawiam, Dariusz Siedlecki.

Would someone like to post an English translation? — J3ff 10:32, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Articles on prefixes

I think several Wikipedians need a discussion on what to do with articles on prefixes. Any discussions must be made on Talk:List of English prefixes. Georgia guy 00:23, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sandbox link in sidebar

What about it?--83.138.136.92 16:55, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Stolen image?

I've discovered that the Danish Wikipedi has at least one of my images that was given a different name and used without attribution. I know this kind of thing goes on all the time on the Internet, but I'm surprised to find it on Wikipedia. It is a (Bombus fraternus) on Eupatorium. It was renamed and posted at [19] and at [20] apparently by user Mosepors [21]

I happened on this by coincidence. I don't speak a word of Danish, and cannot find any translation tools. How can I find if other images have also been appropriated? How can I communicate with the Danish Wikipedia? Pollinator 19:50, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

try posting a message at da:Wikipedia:Ambassaden (the embassy of the Danish wikipedia) or da:Wikipedia diskussion:Ambassaden (its talk page). There is at least one other message there in English that has been responded to. Thryduulf 20:18, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've updated the image description page on the Danish Wikipedia to link to the image description page here, and I've done my best to give you attribution (I don't speak Danish either, but if I've got it wrong someone who can will hopefully correct it). You released it under the GFDL and so, using the image elsewhere is perfectly acceptable – provided attribution is given (which I've made explicit), and that the conditions of the GFDL are passed on (I added a GFDL tag as well). Thryduulf 20:37, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC

Thanks Thryduulf! Pollinator 20:59, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

Test-wiki

Why doesn't this site work anymore?--212.100.250.214 06:47, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

See above. —Korath (Talk) 11:56, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand. The link points to the same place. Ambush Commander 20:59, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

category

Greetings Wikipedians I am a user and would like to contribute but do not understand how to yet. I am a sociologist and philosopher and I teach psychology. May I contribute in some modest way? 1. The wiki categories on the main page are awkward to use and do not appear to be in logical order regarding subcategories. 2. Example; category: science: subcategory lists philosophy and psychology and social sciences (but does not list sociology)? 3. Behavioral science does not list sociology? 4. Philosophy does not link to critical thinking? cheers! ergot51

If you feel a change is needed, feel free to make it yourself! Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone (yourself included) can edit any article by following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in, although there are several reasons why you might want to. Wikipedia convention is to be bold and not be afraid of making mistakes. If you're not sure how editing works, have a look at How to edit a page, or try out the Sandbox to test your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome.

Also see Wikipedia:Category and Wikipedia:Categorization. The order within a category is alphabetic, not logical. Category:Sociology is within Category:Social sciences, which is within Category:Science.

--cesarb 03:08, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you Cesar. OK. I see alphabetical, but I refer to category and subcategory heirarchy priority. I will create user account regarding; 1. The MAIN PAGE category: SCIENCE: does NOT list sociology. 2. Philosophy is not a science (eg. nor is math or logic). Perhaps a Humanities category would be appropriate? 3. Behavioral (spelling should be without "u" and consistent within wiki). 3. you can know a little about a lot, or a lot about a little, but no one knows it all- sorting the significant from the trivial? cheers! ergot51

Hello, ergot51. If you're interested in helping sort out those high-level categories I should think we'd all be very grateful. Because Wikipedia's article structure tends to operate as an interlinked web rather than an organised hierarchy, not a great deal of effort is devoted to classifying some of these navigational categories. There's a fair bit of work to be done in this area and I'm sure there are certain users who have been involved in the high-level classification of subject areas that would be interested in your feedback. (Just one more thing: with regard to your comment about the spelling of "behavioural", that is not the way we do things here. Consensus on these questions of policy has been thrashed out carefully and constructively (on the whole) over the last few years, and is unlikely to change now. See for example this recent attempt to make spelling consistently US-only. I'm sure you'll become acquainted with all these policies and conventions soon enough.) Anyway, welcome to Wikipedia! Your experience and expertise will be very welcome in the fields you mention, since they tend not to be quite as well-covered by professional academics as mathematics and the 'hard' sciences. Your next step will probably be to create an account. Good luck and happy editing! — Trilobite (Talk) 04:29, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

WRT your point 1, Category:Science is a parent of Category:Social sciences, which is a parent of Category:Sociology. It is considered bad form for an article or category to at the same time be in a category and in its parent; so, Category:Sociology cannot be in Category:Science.

If you want to help with the categories, you could join the WikiProject Categories.

--cesarb 04:52, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Re: category. Thanks Trilobite. Pardon my ethnocentricism. You know how Americans are! I am in Pasadena California. I thought the behavoir spelling with a "u" was ye olde UK spelling. However, my suggestion was for wiki consistent form rather than style. Cesar my friend, if you peruse the parent catergories and subcategories you will find what you refer to as "bad form", rather than a logical and rational (ie: easy to navigate) classification heirarchy. Far be it from me to suggest an unwelcome edit to wiki veterans whom I respect and admire. In any event, let us adopt a common sensical perspective for a moment rather than taking a dogmatic stance concerning "the way it is". From a pragmatic view, does it make sense for a user to search wiki and not find sociology where psychology is listed? I do not mean to be redundant, but search from the Main page yourself as perhaps you do not use sociology reference as I and my 90 students do. That is, for example; category: science: subcategory lists philosophy and psychology and social sciences (but does not list sociology)? BehavioUral science lists social psychology (and itself in articles- is this what you mean by bad form?)but does not list sociology? Philosophy does not link to Critical Thinking(very popular in contemporary academic curriculums- I teach this class too) The Main page CULTURE lists philosophy, but does not list sociology or anthropology? Let me ask you if that makes sense? Maybe I am confused. The Main page parent catergory Geography does not list subcategory social science. I thought that geography was a social science? Main page category History does not list social science in its subcategory or articles? I thought that History was a social science? Maybe I am being too wiki-picky? Peace! ergot51

WRT spelling - no problem at all. I just thought it would be worth letting you know there were reasons for the inconsistency before you tried to change it and found someone inexplicably changing it back. As has been said, the best place to propose changes to these categories is at WikiProject Categories. If you need any more assistance, in the way of editing articles etc, please feel free to ask. — Trilobite (Talk) 18:16, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Why does Wikipedia allow itself to be destroyed?

[22] THIS IS ASTOUNDING. 2 years + of editing 500+ entries - wrecking havoc in EVERY SINGLE ON OF THEM. Why is this account not banned for a good year?

Lotsofissues 15:59, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress#192.139.27.18. Bear in mind that, at the moment, if we block in IP address, logged in users can't edit either. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 16:06, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In particular, Grunt uses this IP address.[23] Susvolans (pigs can fly) 16:09, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Polls about merging articles

Talk:Streetcar and Talk:Metro. I'm trying to get the word out to prevent low turnout. Basically the argument is whether to merge two regional names for the same concept. Streetcar has the additional fun of light rail being thrown into there, basically meaning any new streetcar system that the promoters want to promote as futuristic, but it is used in a serious fashion to describe systems. --SPUI (talk) 21:14, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

bg.wiktionary.org

Could somebody explain to me what is happening in bg.wiktionary.org because i don't speak the language. The thing is, they are registering new pages by the minute for the begining of the day or so. 24.201.116.26 17:10, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I can't quite work out what you mean. If you have a look at their recent changes page there doesn't appear to be a great deal of activity on that wiki, with just a few changes per day. I don't speak Bulgarian either so I'm not in a position to be able to ask them about it, but you could try putting a question in English on the talk page of their main page and there will probably someone who can understand it. A better aproach might be to leave a message on Borislav's talk page, as he appears to be the most active user there at the moment. — Trilobite (Talk) 17:32, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You'd better take a look at their new pages, its blasting off and they went from like 2000 articles to 6200 articles for the last days. 24.201.116.26 17:35, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ah, now I understand. There is a bot at work, which is hidden on recent changes. It seems to be adding entries in alphabetical order, based on some resource I don't know. It seems to be operated by Borislav, because if you follow the link in its edit summary you get to a page edited by him. On the bot's user page it says "Bgbot is a bot" and then beyond that I am lost, except that it links to itself in other Bulgarian versions of Wikimedia projects. I get the impression whoever is operating it knows what they're doing, although it does seem to be running at quite a speed, creating several pages a minute. I don't know too much about running bots but I wonder if they ought to build in a delay so as to ease load on the servers. — Trilobite (Talk) 17:49, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's at least partly using a bulgarian spell-checker from sourceforge named bgoffice. --Alterego 12:32, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

List of the Great Boners of all time

Please contribute to List of the Great Boners of all time. This article has an incredible potential for expansion! - Pioneer-12 04:21, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

By it's title alone, it's hopelessly POV. — Frecklefoot | Talk 14:21, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Compare List of movies that have been considered the greatest ever and its old page names (now redirects). Should be moved to List of boners that have been considered the greatest ever to avoid POV issues. Don't ask me to do the verfiability bit. Pcb21| Pete 14:51, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, if we have a list of (what some consider to be) greatest movies we should have a list of (what some consider to be) greatest boners. It's just a matter of a more precise name. - Pioneer-12 19:05, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Note: List of the Great Boners of all time is currently on VfD. Zzyzx11 | Talk 21:42, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The only reason it even got listed on VfD is because some people misunderstood the original title. Boner is another word for blunder. (What were you thinking! Get your mind out of the gutter!) The page has since been renamed to:

List of incidents that have been considered great blunders.

- Pioneer-12 01:01, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The only reason it's on VfD is because it should be. If I'd been the one to run across it, I would have nominated it under any title. It's not an encyclopedia article, and the original version wasn't even close. --Carnildo 02:12, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The orginal version wasn't encyclopeadic. Agreed. The rewritten article is, imho, a perfectly encyclopaedic stub. However the proper place for this discussion is on the VfD. Thryduulf 02:31, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Rush Limbaugh

I think we just got the best free advertising we could have. Rush Limbaugh not only mentioned us (as a "left wing online encyclopedia") but REFERENCED us, on the matter of Pope Benedict XVI, about whether or not he was a willing member of the Hitlerjugend. I loved it. --Golbez 19:30, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

You're kidding? That's so cool! I love that Rush Limbaugh would say "Left Wing" to this, possibly the most NPOV collection of articles there is :P Gkhan 02:46, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Whatever you think about Limbaugh, any free publicity from a radio show that is listened to by millions of people is better than none. Zzyzx11 | Talk 02:50, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Um...depends. If a horde of dittoheads descends on us to edit away any "left-wing" tendencies, we're in for a long week. Meelar (talk) 02:51, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

At one point back in the early '90s, Limbaugh gave out his e-mail address (on CompuServe), but pompously asserted that he would delete, unread, any mail that came from an Internet address (as opposed to a CompuServe address), because the Internet was nothing but a bunch of dirty, smelly, leftists from academia who got net access at others' expense, while Compu$erve users were a higher breed of people because they paid for their own access. *Dan* 03:15, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

BWAHAHAHA! This is hilarious! What an endorsement. — Trilobite (Talk) 10:13, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As someone who's read a couple of "Wikipedia is run by neoconservatives/Ayn Rand/Mossad" rants, that's pretty amusing. If Wikipedia is hated by both the extreme left and the extreme right, we're in the right spot. The only question remaining is... what was Golbez doing listening to Rush? Rhobite 04:47, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

More pap from Lush Bimbaugh. But then, there's no such thing as bad publicity. :) — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 18:10, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Update: I missed the next broadcast, but a friend tells me Rush was told it was a "left wing" site by a staffer, whom is presently being flogged for his error. --Golbez 17:16, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

SNAFU at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria

Not sure whether this is the correct place to put this (I should know - I'm an admin, dammit. Sigh), but there's been a major snafu at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria. About 24 hours ago (I'd guess) there was a glitchy edit which resulted in the page doubling in length - the whole list, followed by the whole list again - you know the sort of thing. Unfortunately, since then, there have been quite a few edits to the page, with additions to both the top copy and the bottom copy of the page. It's all got too tangled for me to know exactly how to fix it up... anyone able to help? Grutness|^hello? 07:10, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I can't help with the fixing, but there is someone who is (was?) trying to figure out the cause of the page doubling by looking for common factors. See the Village pump (technical), you might want to note it there. Thryduulf 08:32, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Have done so. I'm fixing it the long tedious way - bit by bit. Seems the only "easy" option. Grutness|^hello? 11:18, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've noticed that similar glitches have happened from time to time on various page on the Wikipedia namespace. Zzyzx11 | Talk 02:51, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

HELP!

HELP!

When I see Recent Changes lately, instead of seeing the usual picture, I just see one single line of text. Who did that?? Georgia guy 22:23, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Looks fine now. It could have been a database error, or the server was overwhelmed with traffic. Zzyzx11 | Talk 23:23, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

VandalBot Needed

Hi. I am busy trying to modify wikimedia code to protect against so-called VandelBots. Does anyone know where I can get one so I can test it against my test-wikipedia to see if my code changes are working? Stormtroop 13:18, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Nice try. No one is going to provide you with a "vandalbot". ✏ OvenFresh² 16:12, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I'm sure if you ask a regular Wikipedia vandal nicely they'd be happy to apply and vandalize you till you drop. Mgm|^(talk) 19:00, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
• If you'll point me to your wiki, I can write up a vandalbot to start hammering it. --Carnildo 19:05, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• I do admire the chutzpah. Meelar (talk) 05:57, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

The best vandal-bots are implemented in wetware. -Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 03:56, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How to write articles that would track evolution of a topic?

When people write paper encyclopedia on an evolving topic, they only need to write the current state of the matters because they know that historians can compare the 2005 edition to the 1995, 1905 edition and figure out how things have changed over time. Wikipedia is a living encyclopedia, there is only one edition, the current edition. Do contributors need to adjust their writing style and try to present the past and present more than they would in a paper encyclopedia?

For example, people are writing about computers as they are today. Ten years later, when people want to research how computers evolved between 2005 and 2015. Wikipedia will not serve such purpose well because by then there will not be a 2005 edition. Reviewing 10 year worth of edit history in the database can be overwhelming.

Another example: A few years ago, I started an article on American Chinese cuisine trying to document the dying American culture known as Choy Suey houses. The article evolved and it now documents the current Chinese cuisine in the US which is no longer resemble what Choy Suey used to be. Strictly speaking, there is no more Choy Suey house in the US because Chinese cuisine in the US has become authentic Chinese cuisine due to a large number of skilled restauranteurs among new immigrants. The wikipedia topic died along with the real-life topic. Is it right for an encyclopedia to lose track of things that have faded away in history? What is the proper procedure to stop this phenomenon in wikipedia?

Kowloonese 23:30, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Maybe add it to the article on Chop suey. If there's really a lot, you could start an article on Chop suey houses. We have articles on all kinds of things that are out of date. —Wahoofive (talk) 23:51, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Or History of Chinese cuisine in the United States, or something like that. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:15, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

What should I do?

The answer to this question is in this web site at the present time. When I find it I will be delighted to share it with all of the people starting with a posting on this web site. Than you. T. C. Rath

bad jokes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastico http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrifica

These people really exist; I remember seeing some TV newsmagazine segment on them a while back. Their articles could use some NPOVing, though. *Dan* 18:03, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Mmmmm.... Valkyrie bra. - Pioneer-12 22:18, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

"Great Depression" "See also"

"Great Depression" "See also" includes:

Aftermath of GAY SEX VOL.1 The Great ANAL in Canada The FUDGE PUNCHERS in the United Kingdom The QUEER Deal

Please do something about this. Thank you.

You know since this is a wiki - when you see stuff like this, the best procedure is to be proactive and go fix it yourself...--Fangz 10:47, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I tried to be proactive, but couldn't figure out the Wiki edit method. I went from "Help" [which was not helpful] to "Contact us" [which did not Eddress right off the bat] to... Wiki is not computer/net-illiterate friendly, try as I might. Sorry. Otherwise, I love, dote, refer and daily Wiki.

Oh, and thanx fer attending to the situation.

No problem (I'm speaking for Fangz here, but I hope xe doesn't mind). Anyway, you might want to check out Wikipedia:Tutorial for a basic intro, if you haven't yet. Best, Meelar (talk) 18:44, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

No problemo. In my opinion, the best way to learn to use wikipedia is to actually do edits. Choose edit this page (or press alt-e) on a few articles to see how the wiki syntax works. (Don't submit spurious edits, of course. That would be vandalism, and vandalism is bad.) Try out a few edits on Wikipedia:Sandbox. Use previews extensively. Don't be scared if you mess up - someone else can easily revert back to an earlier version.--Fangz 21:45, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanx ALL! I love Wiki, so, I'll get involved.

Okay, who erased the Foster's future episodes?

I was looking to check on the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends page, and "Future Episodes" are missing. WHo did it?

According to this diff, an anonymous user did. You can check changes yourself with the "history" tab, and see also Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version. JRM · Talk 08:15, 2005 May 11 (UTC)

• It may be a better idea to add them again instead of reverting. Reverting would also undo all the edits which have been made since. Mgm|^(talk) 07:50, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

  At the time of writing, he/she had already done that, manually. I was merely pointing out the tools we have for such cases. JRM · Talk 08:38, 2005 May 13 (UTC)

this is my fouth attempt to interact

and I leave with an even stronger faith in the potential dangers to truth posed by open-sourced knowledge bases. Apologies if the typos predominate in this post. I am tired, and do not presently have the motivation to spell check.

I certainly had no intention to visit this site on last Friday evening, the sixth of May. I was searching for information on regarding a newly announced al Qaeda capture in Pakistan. I was surprised to see that a wikipedia link had such a high listing on a current news item, and assumed it was older data, which is what I was seeking.

I felt there was something wrong with the story. There was a large amount of data swirling around the story, but I had already discovered that it consisted of very little in terms of varied content, and almost all had been generated since the capture had occurred. I tasted propaganda, and was curious.

Almost hysterically obtuse was the often repeated claim that al-libbi's notoriety was completely derived from his being the Mastermind behind multiple failed assassination attempts, and that it was this mastery of failure to complete operations to a fruitful completion that had earned him the the 3 position at al Qaeda.

Is al Qaeda involved in a battle against the Peter Principle as is Mr. Bush? Laughable, pure obvious spin, and I wanted some more data. Yes, I freely admit it, I stand in opposition to the Bush Presidency, I firmly believe that the administration misused, distorted and manufactured data, and have hid from there own setup investigations. I believe that any president who takes America into a war under pretexts, subsequently found to be untrue is unfit to lead. I believe that the Bush admin's policies violate the 5th, 6th, 8th and 13th amendments to the US Constitution. I believe that his holding of humans without due process; his assent to their mistreatment is antithetical the the American Ideal, is inhumane, and unchristian like. I feel that his willingness to distort the constitution in his War Upon terrorism fought against actors he has left unproven as terrorists, is an open sign of his personal cowardice and his own lack of belief in the American system. The president was never empowered to strip the basic rights of humankind away from anyone not convicted under due process of law. Bush is a usurper of liberty, simply, a tyrant. Clear enough?

Yes I have of late waxed hyperbolic, but I have never as, was alleged when a whole post of data was simply deleted from the talk page stated anything close to a Bush=Hitler argument, my posts were deleted and I was slanderer unjustly in the stated cause for the deletion. I would consider calling Bush Hitler to be an insult, but I could care less if the target of the insults were Bush. Anyone alleging that this is what I have done suffers from a misguided sense of self-worth in the performance of their dutiful obligations as a tool. To claim Bush=Hitler is to insult to everyone who died, fought or suffered during WWII. It would also serve as an aid in empowering a venal and vindictive wager of unlawful war upon Iraq. What other definition can be given a premeditated aggressive war against a country predicated upon data cherry picked, sexed up and manufactured?

Bush acts evilly, but his expression of it has all too often been petty, base and juvenile, and predicated upon a need to satiate his own personal vengeance. Don't anger Mr. Bush, he'll roll the Ambassador's wife. Hitler? Hardly!

Bush is a poseur Connecticut Cowboy, a tin-horn hack wearing a 37qt Stetson.

I am unabashedly biased, without question. I am also willing to argue this bias is justifiable on it merits. Name the forum. If the war issue makes you uncomfortable, would you care to defend the Christian heresy of Bush as evidenced in his acts? I choose King James Versions, at twenty paces, high noon, next Sunday.

It seems that wikipedia has at least one censor unwilling to engage in open dialogue though, who chose instead to simply delete, and state dishonest rationales for the deletions on the logs, knowing full well that the chances someone would actually check their allegations is slim to none.

I also came to wikipedia understanding that my deeply held convictions make me unsuitable as an author in the al-Bibbi article, which is why I stayed on the talk-page side, and refrained from deleting what I believe to be errant data on either the article page or the talk page.

I was the first to post on this talk page, I questioned the official story before I had seen solid evidence in the streams. I have chosen to post under anonymous credentials at this time. Unless I am mistaken, this is still allowed on wikipedia:

page reference - Talk:Abu_Faraj_al-Libbi,

also

• history ids:
  • 13351810
  • 13357049
  • 13435570
  • 13486583

• Special:Contributions&target=172.199.204.105

I offered a fairly good amount of solid data on the talk page, along with my diatribes. Personal honour kept me from directly editing the article. Sadly I find that wikipedia still has at least one who wills to be king, who does not understand why honour should prevail in an open-sourced knowledge base, if veracity is to be maintained.

I retured to the page last evening to find that someone was completely opposed to the usage of the Times Article I think should be held as an authoritarian citation:

Christina Lamb and Mohammad Shehzad, Captured Al-Qaeda kingpin is case of ‘mistaken identity’, The Times (UK), May 08, 2005

Read the article and I think you'll find that it has been credibly sourced, and thoroughly researched. It is sad that the Bush administration's intelligence capabilities have not shown the same capacity for honest research and sourcing of their false claims which justified the Iraq invasion.

I also discovered specious and/or deceptive arguments and citations being used to justify the opposition to the article.

• a claim that The Times article was suspect because it is a foreign source which quoted foreign intelligence officers. Something I found unusual in The Times article was that one of their sources was a named high-end and respectable French Intel officer. It also stated in at least 4 other places information which the authors had acquired data from American Intelligence sources. This argument seems egregiously deceitful to me and indicative of a misplaced bias towards Americanised sources.

• the first claim that foreign sources made the article suspect was immediately followed by a citation to a foreign newspaper, The Telegraph: ummm...moral relativism at play here?

• This Telegraph Article was improperly cited to tailor it as a fitting argument by the poster, who used only part of a name to back up a claim, leaving out the last name which would seem to argue against the poster. More dishonesty, or maybe just stupidity. Either way, three unjustified arguments to defend not using a justified article as a source. The poster used Abu Faraj, when the article used Abu Faraj Farj. I do not claim expertise in the meaning or purpose in English transliterations of Muslim names, but I am versed enough from just research to know that it is extremely important to use all names offered and that there is a high degree of probability that Abu Faraj Farj and Abu Faraj al-Libbi are two separate individuals.

I posted these reservation's. My allegations and counter arguments were quickly stripped away.

I came here last night with several new pieces of data to offer, and I found that three were as yet uncited. I have chosen not to give them, because I have found that the problems I've encountered previously on this site may have even gotten worse since my last visit.

I freely choose NOT to give to this site.

But I will offer a warning and advice, even though I have no reason to think it will be heeded. Soon, people will come to realise that wikipedia's knowledge base is too easily jacked by biased editors, and that no proper methodology of oversight exists to stem this.

If this continues without resolution within open-source knowledge bases, the concept will whither and die. I believe open-sourced knowledge is a good concept, and have in the past and will in the future contribute to open sourced content sites that I feel I can aid, and have faith in the propriety of their methodologies.

cheers mates, I know that overall you are trying, and it is a difficult task, and am sorry I am unable to aid at this time.

if history and cycles serve the future in the same frequency as the past, I reckon my next inbound pass at wikipedia to be 6 months to a year.

will for peace, and America, turn and face the facts honestly; if our dreamtime dissipates, we are lost.

an ally who traverses the streams on the elliptic.

Corporate wiki?

For some reason, somebody may have listened to me about a corporate wiki. This would probably be a technical definition site (seems safe enough!). Does anybody have links or experiences on this? Or some good corpo-speak on the issue? --Zeizmic 20:59, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Copyediting needed

A new and very enthusiastic user, User:Monkofthetrueschool, is being exceptionally productive at adding articles on Ecology and forests. This is a great thing, but he needs some copyediting and gentle guidance on the way of Wikipedia. Anyone willing to help out can check his contributions. Thanks. DJ Clayworth 20:04, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

4th attempt at wikipedia

and i leave with an even stronger faith in the potential dangers to truth posed by open-sourced knowledge bases. Apologies if the typos predominate in this post. i am tired, and do not care enough here to spell check.

i certainly had no intention to visit this site on last friday evening, the sixth of May. I was searching for information on regarding a newly announced al Qaeda capture in Pakistan. I was surprised to see that a wikipedia link had such a high listing on a current news item, and assumed it was older data, which is whatr i was seeking.

I felt there was something wrong with the story. There was a large amount of data swirling around the story, but i had already discovered that it consisted of very little in terms of varied content, and almost all had been generated since the capture had occured. I tasted propaganda, and was curious.

Almost hysterically obtuse was the often repeated claim that al-Libbi libbi's noteriety was completrely derived from his being the Mastermind behind mutiple failed assassination attempts, and that it was this mastery of failure to complet oeprations to a fruitful completion that had earned hi the the 3 position at al Qaeda.

Is al Qaeda invovled in a battle against the Peter Principle as is Mr. Bush? Laughable, pure obvious spin, and i wanted some more data. Yes, i freely admit it, i stand in opposition to the Bush Presidency, I firmly believe that the administraion misued , distored and manufactured data, and have hid from there own set-up investigations. I believe that any president who takes America into a war under pretexts, subsequently found to be untrue is unfit to lead. I believe that the Bush admin's policies violate the 5th, 6th, 8th and 13th amendments to the US Constitution. I believe that his holding of humans withou due proces; his assent to their mistreatment is antithetical the the American Ideal, is inhumane, and unmchristianlike. I feel that his willingnes to distort the constitutionm in his War Upon terrorism fought against actors he has left unproven as terrorists, is an open sign of his personal cowardice and his own lack of belief in the American system. The president was never empowered to strip the basic righs of humankind away from anyone not convicted under due process of law. Bush is a usurper of liberty, simply, a tyrant. Clear enough?

Yes i have of late waxed hyperbolic, but i have never as, was alleged when whole posts of data were simply deleted from the talk page stated anything close to a Bush=Hitler argument, my posts were deleted and i was slandered unjustly in the stated cause for the deletion. I would consider calling Bush Hitler to be an insult, but i could care less if the target of the insults were Bush. It is an insult to everyone who died, fought or suffered during WWII to compare this venal and vindictive wager of unlawful war upon Iraq. Oooh yes bush, evil, he'll roll the ambassador's wife, he will circle Kansas in AF1 after his clueless implementation of the Presidency as a mon-fri 9-5 gig finds itself at the helm on Sept. 11, 2001.

Bush is a tin-horn hack wearing a 37qt stetson.

anyway, i feel that i offered a fairly good amount of solid data on the talk page, along with my diatribes. I also personally hold that it would be improper of me to delete any data in the articcle or the talk simply because of my aforementioned bias.' Sadly i find that wikipedia still has their lil pretenders the throne, who do not understand why honour should prevail in an open-sourced knowledge base, if veracity is to be maintained. I retured to the page last evening to find that someone was completely opposed to the Times Article's usage:

Christina Lamb and Mohammad Shehzad, Captured Al-Qaeda kingpin is case of ‘mistaken identity’, The Times (UK), May 08, 2005

Read the article and I think you'll find that it has been credibly sourced, and thoroughly researched. It is sad that the Bush administration's intelligence capabilities have not shown this capacity.

I also discovered specious and/or deceptive arguments and citations being used to justify the opposition to the article.

• a claim that The Times article was a foreign source that quoted foreign intelligence officers. The Times lists the name of a high-end and respectable French Intel officer as a source. It also stated in at least 4 other places information that came from American Intelligence sources. This argument seems egregiously deceitful to me.

• the first claim of foreign souces was immediately followed by a citation to a foreign newspaper, The Telegraph; um...moral relativism?

• The Telegraph Article was improperly cited as an argument by the poster, who used only part of a name to back up a claim, and left out the last name that would seem to argue against the poster. More dishonesty, or maybe just stupidity. the poster used Abu Faraj, when the article printed Abu Faraj Farj. Now i do not claim expertise in the meaning or purpose of english transliterations of muslim names, but I am versed enough from just research to know that it is extremely importatnt to use all names offered and that there is a high degree of probability that Abu Faraj Farj and Abu Faraj al-Libbi are two separate individuals.

My allegations and counter arguments were quckly stripped away.

I came here last night with several new pieces of data to offer, three not cited as yet. I have chosen not to give them, and i found that the problems i've encountered previously on this site may have even gotten worse than my last visit.

But i will give a warning and advice, even though i have no reason to think it will be heeded. Soon, people will come to realise that wikipedia's knowledge bsse is to easily jacked by biased editors, and that no proper methodology of oversight exists to stem this.

If this continues without resolution within open-source knowledge bases, the concept will whither and die, and i believe it is a good concept, and have in the past and will i the future constribute to some that i feel i can aid, and feel that a proper oversight exists.

cheeers mates, if history and cycles serve the future in ths same timing as the past, i figure by next inbound pass at wikipedia to be 6 months to a year.

page - Talk:Abu_Faraj_al-Libbi, if the wiki history functions haven't been jacked, what i placed will remain. It is record, I believe my instincts have been proven true in regard to al-Libbi's exaggerated rank. I also bleieve that the obstruction going on there to keep The Sunday Times Article is reprehensible, dishonest and Orwellian. These are assuredly not stated purpose of wikipedia's, are they?

I understand your frustration, but sometimes you'll just find that in a community of editors, not everyone will agree with your viewpoint. You either fight them or you give up. The fact that this is your "4th attempt" makes me think you'll be back for more, even if you lost this battle. Deco 18:25, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

{{Pending deletion}}

Just wondering, but what exactly does "{{Template:Pending deletion}}" mean? When will it be deleted? I'm just wondering because I've come across a few that have lingered since January. Is that long (and maybe they've been forgotten), or is that normal? Thanks. --Dmcdevit 01:40, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

There are block compression problems with some articles, which means that they cannot be deleted at present. Hopefully they will be as soon as those problems are fixed. It's also worthwhile us admins going through the pending deletions a bit more often, perhaps! Grutness...wha? 02:49, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Does that mean that all tagged articles can't be deleted until some software update, or that it varies by case and they can be deleted as that option becomes available? --Dmcdevit 02:58, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

It requires a programming fix that, from what I understand, will be repaired in the next release. RickK 22:31, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

It's fixed now. The fix isn't the efficient one we did for 1.5, it's fairly inefficient and will cause deletions to run slowly, especially for large histories. I ran a script (User:Pending deletion script) to delete all the articles marked pending. If you want the script to be run on your local wiki, please translate that user page. -- Tim Starling 03:32, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Free art images?

Silly question, probably... I've been wanting to add pictures of artworks to some artist biographies I've been writing, but have no idea whereabouts you can find free-use pictures. There must be a way, given that there are quite a number in WikiCommons, but I've no idea where they are sourced from. Anyone able to give me some clues? Grutness...wha? 01:37, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Well of course the primary concern is making sure you've checked that the copyright is OK. However, if you are talking about an artist who died more than 70 years ago and so is out of copyright, then on the basis of Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corporation most scans that you can find should be OK using the {{PD-Art}} tag (note photographs which include 3D elements are not covered). Many major galleries will still claim copyright over material on their site, and you should also be aware of reproduction fees which may also be claimed and is a separate issue - whether either claim is valid is another matter. There is additional advice at Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ and meta:Avoid Copyright Paranoia.

That said, Olga's Gallery can be a useful source of images, although they also include some artists that I would say were still in copyright. If you know the title of a specific artwork, Google's image search can usually find something, but is also likely to show significant variations in quality of scans and colour reproduction. Another source would be to scan a painting from a book. Further advice at Wikipedia:Finding images tutorial.

On occaision I have decided to illustrate the article of a living artist with an example of their work under FairUse. My rule of thumb here is to only use an image from the artist's own web site and only use a small version of the picture. If the image were large enough that someone might be tempted to place it on their desktop instead of buying a postcard of the work, then it would be difficult to claim fair use. -- Solipsist 06:55, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks - I'll try those, although most of the artists I've been working on articles about are still alive. Grutness...wha? 07:51, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

I failed in my attempt to donate something to Wikipedia

Here one, hear all. I failed miserably in my attempt to donate some of my "winnings" from poker tourney that never came. I did my best but was pipped at the post and returned empty handed. had i won that i was thinking of donating a 5th of my winnings to Wikipedia (first prize was 6 grand). I guess good guys finish last. btw I had 2 Kings and my opponent had 2 Queens and hit his 3rd queen on the flop. and i was a flop. ironically he won the tourney an hour later. talk about insult to injury--Idleguy 08:12, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

I failed, too. I bought a Lloyds of London insurance policy which would pay a fifth of a million dollars to Wikipedia if I was hit by a meteor on the 8th of May. The rest was going to my cat. Am I a philanthropist yet?

Questionable language

Amazingly, a trivial subsection in a trivial article has managed to stir some polemics concerning what is the standard of the language to be used on Wikipedia. I'm sure most people here have at least heard of the politically incorrect cartoon South Park. In the article dedicated to the feature film, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, there's a subsection on the soundtrack of the movie, which was released on cd. Naturally, some of the titles for the songs contain offensive language (one of the songs is called "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch", for instance). Thinking that it would be nice to keep some sort of standard, I used a simple trick and "broke" the sentence using stars (as in "Kyle's Mom's a B**t). It was always clear what the word (and thus the sentence) meant and there would be no need to reproduce on Wikipedia the "cursing". The stars have been reverted repeatedly, however, sometimes by anons, sometimes by registered users, and now the "full version" is on, and the [registered] user that reverted it back claimed to be eliminating "censorship" from the article. There's also a ramification that some of the songs have been given their own articles. Someone created the article "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch", I moved it to "Kyle's Mom's a B**t", but someone moved it back, and now we have the article Kyle's Mom's a Bitch — that stuff is run mainly by anons, who seem to have very little understanding of Wikipedia beyond the articles they want to edit (for instance, they were posting the full lyrics to the songs, an obvious copyvio).
How to proceed with this? There's very little point in keep going back and renaming the links in the movie article and moving the articles just to have someone revert it all back again. Or is it that I'm wrong, and it's fine to have language (and articles) such as those in Wikipedia? It's certainly not censorship, since I reckon that would be the case if we were supressing the track listing altogether on account that the we didn't approve of the language used in the song titles... Regards, Redux 04:36, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Profanity, which says we should keep bad language if it's in the interest of accurary (which is certainly is in this case. Anyway, do you really think B**t is the correct spelling for the bowdlerization of "Bitch"? Seems like B***h might make more sense. —Wahoofive (talk) 05:02, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

I, too, would revert the stars on sight -- once. I imagine others will do exactly the same thing. — Xiong熊talk* 08:15, 2005 May 9 (UTC)

Me too. Filiocht | Blarneyman 08:25, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't a bowdlerized site; I don't think there's any call for using silly "censored" versions of "bad words" with asterisks. If there's valid cause for using a word at all (as there is if it's part of an actual title), it should be written correctly. One shouldn't insert gratuitous profanity just to shock or offend, but there are instances where the use of a particular word is necessary, and one shouldn't be squeamish about it in those cases. *Dan* 15:05, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

All right, I see that this is pretty much accepted. I'll let it go then. My only concern was keeping Wikipedia up to standards, if that's not an issue here, all the better. Btw, thanks Wahoofive, the "B**t" instead of "B***h" was a side effect of late night editing. I do feel that some people tend to exaggerate however. "Censorship" is a completely misguided assessment of what was going on in that article, goes to show why some people believe that "witch hunts" are going on all over the website. Regards, Redux 16:39, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Blatant Advertising

In My View seems to be just an advertisement for a 2-suite hotel-thingy in Australia, not encyclopedic. I threw an NPOV flag on it, but perhaps that's too generous; it is quite likely a deletion candidate. So, go look and act on it, or something. Also, there's probably somewhere better I could have posted this, but I failed to find it; could someone please tell me where that is? Thanks.

• Okay, scratch above. The guy blanked the article on reprimand, so I guess it needs deletion; how do I list it for speedy deletion? - Orborde 04:32, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
  • To list something for speedy deletion place a {{speedy}}, {{deletebecause|reason}}. In cases where it isn't immediately obvious, I feel the deletebecause template is better. Make sure it truly is a Candidate for speedy deletion first though. Thryduulf 08:19, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Copyright stauts of abandoned website

What is the copyright status of a website that has been abandoned since March 2001? http://www.danger-ahead.railfan.net is a very good resource for rail accident information, and back when it was regularly updated was the best place online for news about current rail accidents. It is still probably the best for some historic accidents (e.g. Salisbury). I have tried emailing the address of the webmaster several times over the past few years, but have never received a response. Thryduulf 10:48, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

• They've left it online for people to read. I don't think it not being updated changes anything about its copyright status. Unless he's GFDLed it, I doubt you can copy it. You can still use the info to write an article yourself and link to it, of course. Mgm|^(talk) 11:44, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Current copyright law gives copyright protection to all authored works, whether they have a copyright notice and whether they're registered or not, and has no concept of "abandonment" that expires copyright early for neglected works; copyright continues for the life of the author plus 70 years, or for a flat term of 95 years for anonymous and pseudonymous works and corporate-owned works-for-hire. There has been some discussion about possible future legislation to deal with the case of "orphan works" whose owners are no longer reachable, but nothing has been done about this yet. *Dan* 12:00, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

There's actually considerable debate lately on the concept of "orphan works" in Congress, abandoned works for which you can't reasonably contact the copyright owner. You may want to respond to the Copyright Office's inquiry here to give them some fuel for their orphan work proposals. As it stands though, there's no provision for them. Deco 18:30, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Los Angeles Times editorial about Wikipedia

The Los Angeles Times published a nice editorial about us (a few days ago, but I didn't see it until just now) -- you can either log in to their site and find it, or read it here [24]. Have a look! Antandrus 03:52, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Foxtrot

Today's Foxtrot comic strip mentions Wikipedia; there's mainstream acceptance if I ever saw it. Now if the strip just didn't happen to encourage vandalism... keep Rabies and Warthog on your watchlists! —Wahoofive (talk) 16:34, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Carlsberg bottles

I put the above heading into search, and came up with you. I am not quite sure what you folks are about, but it seemed someone might know about the swastika connected with carlsberg. I have bottle with a ceramic pull down top that says carlsberg, and the bottom of the bottle also has carlsberg with a 42. With the swastika on both the top and bottom, and number 42, I thought perhaps this was a wwII bottle. Any thoughts? This is the only sight that connected the swastika to carlsberg. I am just curious, any help would be appreciated. If I am in the wrong place I apologise! Thanks, Devidog

• Did you try the company website? They probably don't mention it on the website, but there's contact info so you could write them directly. According to the Carlsberg article, they discontinued the swastika before WWII started. —Wahoofive (talk) 03:56, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Something to be real proud of

To all of you that contributed to the article Gaia theory (science), you can take pride in this recent discovery. In an article titled "The So-called Gaia Theory" (Skeptical Inquirer, 29(3), May/June 2005) Massimo Pigliucci (p. 21) makes this attribution:

....(quoted at http://en.wikipedia.org—a good, neutral introduction to the theory and controversy);....

Wow! For those of you unfamiliar with Skeptical Inquirer, I can only tell you that it is very exciting to me as a scientist to see that the likes of M. Pigliucci considers Wikipedia worth his time to visit, read, AND mention! - Marshman 02:48, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

• Drop off a message to Worldtraveller. I'm sure he'd like to include this in his Signpost article for this week. Mgm|^(talk) 21:48, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

Upkeep-project

Is there some wikiproject to maintain pages that need to have access to a dumped database (such as List of lists, Wikipedia:Most wanted articles, WP:IT for the image list, etc.)? I find that they frequently are in need of updating, and I wonder if there is already some project I can join to help. Gkhan 18:37, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

Free image resource site for Wikipedians

I hope this is ok to post this, please accept my appologies if it isn't. I've been a longtime fan of wikipedia and done some minor contributions in the past; unfortunately, writing has never been my strong point.

Since web design and programming are more my strength, I present to you: YotoPhoto.com This is a search engine that indexes various public domain, Creative Commons and other similarly licensed images from throughout the web. You can search several different image resources (including stock exchange, en.wikipedia and commons) at one time.

It's still beta, but currently contains over 50,000 images for your wiki'ing pleasure. Enjoy!

Nice! Interestingly... it seems to get the majority of it's images from Wikipedia! It also adds in other sites and makes for a very nice image search that's much faster then the overworked Wikimedia servers. This needs to be added to a list of "Image resources". (Do we have such a list already?)

- Pioneer-12 09:33, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

I added this resource to Wikipedia:Images — J3ff 23:01, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

This totally rocks - clean, simple, and very useful to image hunters of all kinds. I should ask, though, are you checking the license tags of the images you pull off en.wikipedia.org? We have a large number of non-free images here. Also, do you index the full text descriptions as well as the names? Can you make it so you can filter by license and size? Keep up the good work! Deco 00:09, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Houston, we have a problem. — Xiong熊talk* 01:46, 2005 May 7 (UTC)

Houston, I've fixed the problem - thanks for pointing out that questionable pic Xiong... As for the licenses, currently it will only return images that were showing a free license at the time of indexing (ie PD, CC-by-sa, GFDL, US-Gov etc). It won't show works tagged as copyrighted or fair use (at least it shouldn't). In case one of these images does accidentally show in the index, I have clearly stated that the user should verify the copyright status on the image page before using any pics.

To answer the questions, the indexer currently uses both the filename and text description for it's keywords. It seems to work quite well. An earlier version I had also added the "pages that link here" as keywords which was a good option for broadening the search. Maybe that feature will return as an option someday. Other features I'm considering down the road are indeed searching by license and size; right now I'm just concentrating on getting everything dialed as is.

Thanks for all the positive feedback!

(now to figure out how to create a login on here so I don't keep posting anonymously....)

Ladies

I would love to hear from any friendly lady for friendship. Sgt. Lin underemployed@yahoo.com I live in ft. Lewis but email is good for me.

you should write this on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) :) Oleg Alexandrov 23:02, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't think advertizing yourself as "underemployed" is gonna make "the ladies" come running. - Pioneer-12 09:35, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

There's always someone out there... there's like 6 billion people in our world — J3ff 04:48, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

You have new messages

Every time I enter a new Wikipedia page, I keep seeing the "You have new messages" since about an hour ago even though nobody edited my user talk page since then. Any way to fix this?? Georgia guy 22:39, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

• See the discussion at WP:HD#You_have_new_messages.. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 22:43, 5 May 2005 (UTC)