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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump. Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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RSS Feeds

I just got a plugin for mozilla that reads RSS feeds. Can somebody direct me to all the wikipedia ones so I can try it out? [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] 16:48, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The two (I think) feeds available are linked to in the sidebar of Recent Changes and Newpages[[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 19:52, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There's also a feed for Wikipedia:Announcements here. - 20:52, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
It would be neat if it were possible to have an RSS feed for the my watchlist. Rgarvage (talk)
It would only be neat if you found a way to make sure only you could read it-- otherwise anyone could see what any given user had on their watchlist. You could use some kind of authentication, of course-- cookies or HTTP auth-- but AFAIK most RSS readers don't support authentication anyway. Marnanel 07:21, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

ARIN Home Page ARIN Site Map ARIN WHOIS Help Tutorial on Querying ARIN's WHOIS Search results for: 80.133.56.237

OrgName: RIPE Network Coordination Centre OrgID: RIPE Address: Singel 258 Address: 1016 AB City: Amsterdam StateProv: PostalCode: Country: NL

ReferralServer: whois://whois.ripe.net:43

NetRange: 80.0.0.0 - 80.255.255.255 CIDR: 80.0.0.0/8 NetName: 80-RIPE NetHandle: NET-80-0-0-0-1 Parent: NetType: Allocated to RIPE NCC NameServer: NS-PRI.RIPE.NET NameServer: NS3.NIC.FR NameServer: SUNIC.SUNET.SE NameServer: AUTH62.NS.UU.NET NameServer: SEC1.APNIC.NET NameServer: SEC3.APNIC.NET NameServer: TINNIE.ARIN.NET Comment: These addresses have been further assigned to users in Comment: the RIPE NCC region. Contact information can be found in Comment: the RIPE database at http://www.ripe.net/whois RegDate: Updated: 2004-03-16 

AndyL 21:03, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
RIPE provides the secondary database for all of Europe, so all Europeans are in Amsterdam that way :-) If you read the comment you'd have trace further and then found it is a German one. But it doesn't matter, the problem isn't that much that anonymous user, but more that Wheeler believes you and me and the one in Amsterdam :-) are the same person. andy 07:48, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

80.133.56.237

This account had been active on many articles. This account vandalized Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. He goes to the Glossary of the Third Reich without logging in and edits things out. This account goes to Glossary of the Weimar Republic and vandalizes that site also. Gorenzplatz and myself have both corrected this man's actions on this site. He then goes to Weimar Timeline and edits complete sections out.

I don't know who he is, but I have my suspicions and I believe you have made him an administrator. I Have reported his actions on the Wikipedia:Vandalism only for someone named Pehrs (in a red color) to correct the errors on a certain article and 80.133.56.237 continues to do damage without showing his face and taking responsiblity.

I would like this to stop. This guy is an administrator and nothing is being done about this. I have complained and complained. Will someone do something about this guy? Please. This shows no professionalism and maturity. Will someone please do something.WHEELER 16:15, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't think you can make an IP an administrator. Besides, if you've left warnings and the IP ignored them, we should just block him. [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] 16:44, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hell of a chain of thought you have there. An IP is vandalizing, you think he's an admin, and by the third paragraph he absolutely IS an admin! Problem, though - if he were an admin, he would have to be logged in. An IP address can't be an administrator on its own. You offer no evidence as to why you think he's an admin. Why does everyone here with a beef with a vandal automatically assume that it's a member of the cabal?? --Golbez 16:57, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
In the Weimar Timeline the account deleted a large section and then proceeded to put Question Marks (?) where apostrophes (') existed. The number shows up blue. So the person has an account here and won't log in. And his vandalism is the same in previous cases and the mannerisms remind me of the same person. His damage is getting quite extensive.WHEELER 17:08, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You are incorrect. All that usually means is that his user page has content. (It doesn't for some reason, so maybe I misunderstand. Maybe it's someone with an account name that's an IP?) It does not mean the IP has a user account and is not logged in. Furthermore, it does not say in the least that he is an admin. Incidentally, the ' -> ? problem is a problem some browsers and fonts have, and you should rever that. --Golbez 17:24, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hmmm, its not quite that simple. It looks like there may have been an interface change such that links to anonymous IPs now point to that user's contribution list rather than their user page of talk page. As such IPs never show up as red for unlinked, because they must have made at least one contribution for you to be looking at them. Anyhow it still has nothing to do with Admins. -- Solipsist 18:04, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Uh huh. What exactly are you basing your claim that he's an administrator on? -- Cyrius|✎ 18:16, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I only see 5 edits to 4 articles. I'm more concerned about the next guy to edit one of those articles[1], as, at best, his typos need to be cleaned up (example[2]), and since I'm at work I don't really have time. Niteowlneils 20:24, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Unless these [3], [4], and [5] are the same person, but that's still only 6 more edits on 2 or 3 more articles. Niteowlneils 20:43, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
And those contributions hardly qualify as vandalism, most of them are small spelling fixes (some may be mistaken ones). The only edit I found which could qualify as vandalism was the deletion of the "Pre-History of National Socialism" section in the timeline article - but it could also just be a newcomer who think that part is not relevant enough to be included in the list, and does not know that it's custom here to discuss major deletions on the talk page first. It seems you are a bit hyper-sensitive about those articles (sure, these articles need regular NPOV checks). Maybe you should try to contact that user first. andy 22:45, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Andy or is it AndyL or is it 80.133.56.237. What day of the week and who are we talking to here? The perp reveals himself.WHEELER 17:51, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I am rather sure now you are rather confused with your accusations. The Andy who wrote above (me) is User:Ahoerstemeier (but who usually signs with just Andy), and yes, I am an admin for quite some time already. But I normally avoid the controversial articles, too much stress, I want to have fun editing - so I haven't editing that Weimar timeline before, except for those two typo changes/broken character fixes. I haven't interacted with User:AndyL before, but yes, he is an admin as well. Nor am I that 80.something-IP (which however is a dialup IP from Germany of the same ISP I am using, but that's hardly a coincidence as T-Online is the biggest in Germany). So before you start to accuse anyone please keep your facts straight. andy 19:33, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sorry WHEELER, my IP address begins with a 64. If you do an IP trace on 80.133.56.237 you'll see the user is in Germany. I'm in Canada last time I checked. AndyL 21:00, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No, I'm wrong the user is in Amsterdam:

Output from ARIN WHOIS

Images in by-lines

Lately, I have noticed some people putting images in their signatures (~~~~). I don't mind people putting ornamental Unicode characters in their sigs (but changing colours using <font> is borderline IMHO). However, using scaled-down images is just a waste of server resources. For some examples, scroll through WP:VFD. Right now, I see three different images: The EU flag, The Italian flag and a bulldog. Apart from using bandwidth, database and other server resources, the images attract unnecessary attention to the signatures that use them. — David Remahl 11:47, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

And it's slightly annoying. I think font color and unicode is okay as long as it's text only (or I'd put an American flag, A russian flag, a Latvian flag, and my pic :D) [[User:Ilyanep|Ilyanep]] 13:13, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
One can do tricolours without images. zoney | talk 14:33, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Another bonus is that the text can be kept the same size as page text, and will scale (should one scale the browser text, Ctrl -/= with Mozilla Firefox) zoney ███ talk 14:41, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Would you happen to know an easy way to show a cross design (as in the Scandinavian flags) like you do the Irish flag? (I know, I know, probably a dumb question, but I'm curious, and my HTML is rusty.) Cheers Io 15:59, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I agree, image sigs are beyond the pale. And actually I'm not too keen on colours and flags either. Anything that makes one editor stand out more than another breaks the general egalitarianism of Wikipedia. Sysops aren't supposed to have more authority than a newbie, but a new editors might not realise that the opinion of a hyper-sigged editor carries no more weight than anyone else. -- Solipsist 22:55, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Font coloring is OK with me. Fancy font usage is borderline, but not so bad. Images, if they are very tiny and tasteful, will not cause me to lose any sleep. These animated images are getting out of hand, though. They are distracting and annoying, almost as much so as blinking text. The Village Pump already takes a fair amount of time to load up; if half the conversation is signed by personalized animated GIFs, it makes the problem far worse. I hesitate to make anything like a policy against this (even though to me it's verging on being akin to inappropriate usernames), but in the interests of maintaining a non-hostile community we should encourage people to avoid doing stuff like this. Please, if you are using an animated image in your sig, take it out. -- Wapcaplet 18:01, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Another problem with image as signatures, is when they're used in place of the name. That reduces searchability. For example, I tried to find all Theresa Knott's comments on this page, but had to browse through it manually since the signature was an image. — David Remahl 21:01, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'd welcome a good policy based on recommendations, for example to avoid sigs with only pictures, blinking things etc. I was inspired when I saw the first user putting in an image in his sig (User:Cow) and has since tried different things, to inspire other wikipedians to follow and test the usefulness. David raises a good point; a point against having all images in your signature. Eventually I hope there will be a simple command like the one I use ({{User:Sverdrup/sig}} to include your sig. This would have to be included endlessly, but I think it is better than pasting three lines of font color=blue tags into the wikitext, making it unreadable. [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 21:11, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The solution (for the future) that you suggest could also facilitate a user preference to standardise or allow signature customisation. It would be a bit heavier on the servers (more database queries to get the sig template to include, etc, but perhaps it would be negligible.) — David Remahl 21:36, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I only created my animated sig as a bit of fun, and am happy to remove it if it irritates people. Also i didn't think about searchability. We should have a policy though. It seems to me that a sensible policy might be no images whatsoever. This has the advantage of being easy to enforce unlike e.g. "tiny and tasteful" in which we would then have to get into just how tiny, or what is tasteful. The fact is, no one has to have an image as part of their sig. Theresa knott

I have drafted a section discussing signatures on Wikipedia:Username#Signatures. Please edit it if you do not agree with it. Further discussion will take place on Wikipedia talk:Username. This discussion has been copied there. — David Remahl 13:42, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Summarised sections

Software Freedom Day

Just to be sure it'll be seen before it ends.
Summary : A banner today (28 aug) for Software Freedom Day ? Talk:Main_Page#Software_Freedom_Day
FoeNyx 01:18, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Recent Changes user contribution counter

Proposal:

Let's list the number of total user contributions next to all the user names in the Special:Recentchanges list.

Rationale:

This will make it easier to focus on new users who may not yet be familiar with what's acceptable and what not.

While it is true that there is no straightforward relation between a bigger number of contributions and contribution quality, it can by and large however be assumed that if a user regularly submits substandard and/or mischievous contributions then the community probably knows about that user.

So despite the shortcomings, seeing a user's number of total previous contributions in the Recent changes list would be a step forward.

Ropers 01:06, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Comments

Endorsements

Objections

The Test Wikipedia

It seems to be down... --Sgeo | Talk 19:22, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Rather than attacking other websites for copying our content, Wikipedia should be grateful to them for making the encyclopedia ubiquitously visible. How do mirrors threaten Wikipedia? They are not wikis. They are completely dependent upon Wikipedia for their content. Their response to criticism of inaccuracies in "their" content must be to immediately blame Wikipedia, and if they have any interest in self-preservation, they will tell the critic how to fix the error.

Wikipedia provides a valuable service for free to anyone, with almost no restrictions on how anyone might use the content. Don't be surprised when everyone copies Wikipedia in every way possible. It is extremely short-sighted, ingrateful, selfish, greedy, and juvenile to suggest restrictions for our mirrors. --Eequor 18:15, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No - the GFDL does not mean they can grab all the content, and only list "Wikipedia" as the source. The authors of the text must be listed (providing a link to the "real" article with history is one solution for them). I for one object to my work being NICKED. zoney ▓█▒ talk 18:44, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It isn't "your work", and you implicitly gave permission for the entire world to use and modify, in almost any way, anything you submitted to Wikipedia. Please see Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter for the two requirements Wikipedia places on mirrors. --Eequor 19:16, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It isn't "your work" - Dead wrong. You retain the copyright on it, even if you give others a license to use it (in this case, the GFDL). Zoney is quite correct - the GFDL says "You may copy and distribute the Document... provided that... the

copyright notices... are reproduced in all copies". In our case, we have a fairly lenient intrepretation -- we allow them to link to our article, which contains the page history. If mirrors want to be GFDL compliant, they have to link to the source article. →Raul654 00:47, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)

Exactly Eequor, we require the clones to link back to the original article, to provide the credit for our work, just as the page you linked to states: "we'd like to point out that when using content from Wikipedia you should include a link back to the source Wikipedia article." (I suppose that if they bothered to make their own list of authors, that would be fine too, but I've never seen any citation of wikipedia that listed all authors of any article). —siroχo 00:32, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Monobook.css

I don't like the new green external links. Please change it back.

MediaWiki:Monobook.css

I don't like the new green external links. Please change it back.

I didn't see that, but I think it's a splendid idea, about time. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 02:23, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Life cycle of the ideal article

I recently finished the first draft of this new Wikipedia page, which is intended to be an intermediate-level guide documenting the various ways you can help improve articles. I'd like some feedback on it, please (positive and negative, of course). Thanks, • Benc • 15:05, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Who hacked into the system and changed the logo? -- user:zanimum

What's with the ugly wiki logo today? Kevyn 20:12, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The logo has been fixed. Hard-refresh your browser if you still see it (Ctrl+F5 in IE). --Slowking Man 20:20, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)

Ugly logo

What's with the ugly wiki logo today? Kevyn 20:12, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Template:Wrongtitle2

SimonP has set to systematically changing the scheme used to indicate improper page titles (due to software limitations) in a manner I, for one, think is unwise. (See iPod for an example.) Try as I might, I can find no consensus for this of any size, anywhere, and invite your comments at Template talk:Wrongtitle2. Austin Hair 05:25, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

London talk

Angela and Jimbo are giving a talk about Wikipedia at Oyster, 1 Naoroji Street, London WC1X 0JD on Tuesday August 31. This free event starts at 19:10 (BST). See minty.org for details. Around 40 people have signed up so far.

Politics of the Maldives pov clash

Seems to be a minor POV clash on Politics of the Maldives check out this diff. People with more knowledge should try to sort it out. —siroχo 00:08, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)

Can someone convert these images to PNG?

All these Calvin and Hobbes book covers should be converted to PNG and optimized, if possible:

JPG to PNG

GIF to PNG

Thanks. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 23:08, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • Are you sure about those JPEGs? It seems to me that JPEG is the better format for book covers. Having them as PNG would only make the images larger. Rhobite 23:29, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)
  • In particular, converting from JPEG is a very bad idea, since the PNG will have to encode every detail in the JPEG artifacts. The resulting image could be very large, compared to a PNG created from the original source material. David Remahl 23:32, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Agreed; I just tried optimizing the Yukon Ho cover, and it ended up being slightly larger than the JPEG. It's probably possible to get a smaller file size, but a lot of the subtlety of Watterson's watercolors would be lost. I think leaving the JPEGs alone is the best option. -- Wapcaplet 23:42, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Oh my. I just noticed that in several of them, the watercolors have already been destroyed by palettizing of some kind (Revenge of the Baby-Sat, especially). Perhaps some of these should be re-scanned? (I own several of them, so I'll see what I can do...) -- Wapcaplet 23:48, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • I've scanned my copies of Yukon Ho, 10th Anniversary, and Scientific Progress to replace the existing JPEGs. File size is smaller, quality seems a bit better. Also Something Under the Bed, Authoritative, Lazy Sunday, and The Days are Just Packed to replace existing GIF and PNG versions. Again, overall smaller file size and better quality. Neutrality, I will leave it up to you to justify the fair use of these images, since I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with using them. I chose a smallish resolution (320px wide or high, as the case may be) to, I hope, make them more compatible with fair use. -- Wapcaplet 00:37, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Test Wikipedia

It seems to be down... --Sgeo | Talk 19:22, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

Works for me, although now the interface is in Finnish. AidepikiW 19:29, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
That sounds like it could be an episode from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "The technician had fixed the computer but it was talking in finnish for some reason. Ford gave up and sold the computer to a passing meteor". — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:40, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's a demonstration of the new Finnish grammar support. Language files are meant to be independent of site name, but that's difficult when the site name can have 15 different cases. -- Tim Starling 00:19, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I can't connect... not that I've tried...

What the heck has been going recently with edit previews bringing up a "not getting a response from the server" type message? See my comments at MediaWiki talk:Noconnect. Note that my main objection is the incredibly brief time it takes for this message to come up, as if it's not even waiting for a response. - dcljr 12:33, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, the same thing has been happening to me sometimes. Just on random occassions, though, and it's solved by just going back and trying again... just an annoyance... -- Booyabazooka 21:25, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Basically, we're too popular. I can introduce you to any number of site owners who would pay handsomely to have this problem... (;-> Andrewa 07:47, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Do everyone see the same thing that I see: there is no more WP logo on en: ? -aka-demia 07:07, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Logo fully visible here, on XP with IE6, with the old skin. - Adrian Pingstone 08:31, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Invisible with "my" monobook (with no changes), but no problem on other Wikipedias (fr:, de:, etc.) | -aka-demia 09:14, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I can see it on monobook with WinXP on Mozilla 1.8a3. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 16:26, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Monobook, Win98, Firebird 0.6.1. But I see the logo on all others WP that I read (on the same "way"). -aka-demia 01:30, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I see it on IE6 but it vanishes when I move my mouse over it. Derrick Coetzee 17:56, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I too used to see it on IE6 but since I switched to firefox it's not happened. Theresa Knott (The token star) 18:08, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There is no linkback requirement. You must credit the copyright holder (the author) and relicense under the GFDL. There is nothing in the license that says you must mention Wikipedia. 195.158.19.248 08:24, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

US Navy Sea Bees

I'm trying to find out more information about the SeaBees and the different units. I have found the page that shows the emblem but I'm looking for more. My uncle and father were both with the SeaBees. My uncle was stationed with the Marines during WWII and my father was in the Aleutian Islands. I have the units where my uncle was stationed. They were the 25th and the 53rd Naval construction Battalion. My father was with the 12 NCB, 2 NC Brigade, 7th NC Regiment and the 112th NC Battalion.

Can anyone help me?

vicki.poates@verizon.net

Question posted to Wikipedia:Reference desk#US Navy Sea Bees —siroχo 03:14, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

A sneaky idea for page rank giving credit to authors

Ok, this is sneaky, this is awesome. Everyone's been complaining for various reasons about how many wikipedia mirrors do not link back to wikipedia's articles properly. One of the most upsetting features of this is that other websites get higher google page ranks than us.

How about this sneaky way of avoiding that. Why not automatically embed a link back to the article, somewhere in the article? It could be an automatic thing without the arrow. Most mirrors won't take the time to remove it from each article, and we'll have the link we want for the page rank. Its not at all dishonest, after all, they are required to link back.

Anyways, I just thought I'd throw it out there.

—siroχo 00:24, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

You could set a piece of code in the article that when it's viewed from en.wikipedia.org it doesn't show it. Or in some other way to not be intrusive upon our readers but still "fool" the page rank. Overall, it's a nice idea. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 00:30, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Before we do this, has anyone tried emailing Google? --Golbez 00:30, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)
I bet someone has. I mean, it'd be like if we were looking for a phone and nobody tried looking on the hook. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 00:46, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  1. There is no requirement to link back in the GFDL.
  2. Google doesn't get involved in these kinds of politics.
  3. If this is going to be done, it has to go into the DB, and it has to go into every single row of the cur table. That's the only way it's going to get incorporated into the forks.
  4. If the message is so intrusive that we must set a piece of code to hide it in en, then you should expect forks to do the same.
anthony (see warning) 00:52, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Re "google doesn't get involved in these kinds of politics" - Oh, really? Then why do they have selected providers for dictionary definitions? Why can't the same consideration be given to providers of encyclopedia entries as well? --Golbez 01:15, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)
Somehow I doubt google would give a free link to an encyclopedia which can be edited by anyone in the same way they gave the link to a dictionary definition provider, which most likely cost a good deal of money. But go ahead and ask. anthony (see warning) 13:57, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There's not a requirement to link back in the GFDL, per se, but there are few practical alternatives, since they have to give credit to all original authors. I agree that Google shouldn't be involved in this at all. The message should be added to every article when the downloadable dumps are created. And if you think that they'll go out of their way to remove all these messages, especially considering it saves them the trouble of adding stuff to comply with the license, I think you underestimate the laziness of forks. Derrick Coetzee 00:57, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Linking back does not give credit to the original authors. I for one consider merely linking back to be a violation of my copyright. As for my estimation of the laziness of forks, I run a fork, and I'm not going to insert any links beyond what I already have, unless Wikipedia does the same. It's not fair to put forks on a different playing field. Wikipedia doesn't own the copyright, the individual authors do. anthony (see warning) 14:01, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm not privy to the intricacies of the PageRank system, but I wonder if a self-terminating anchor (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo" title="Wikipedia: Foo" />) in each article would do it. If not, perhaps the usual syntax with null text (<a &#x85;></a>) would. It's something to consider, anyway. Austin Hair 01:19, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

I think this is a bad idea all around. Why is it such a big deal that the higher-ranked Google hits are Wikipedia content on some other site, rather than marginally more up-to-date Wikipedia content on Wikipedia itself? It's not like we profit from users coming here rather than our mirrors (aside from the influx of new contributors - and interested potential contributors will likely find their way here anyway). Tricking search engines merely to achieve a higher page ranking is sneaky and dishonest, and I don't think Wikipedia should participate in such tactics. If we do make alterations to various meta tags, it should be to help people get relevant search results, not just to win a race to #1 Google Hit. -- Wapcaplet 02:10, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The entire point is not about page rank, the sites are supposed to link back to the articles anyway, or find some other way to provide credit to the authors. Its certainly not dishonest to encourage mirrors to follow copyright law. —siroχo 02:15, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)
First of all, the sites are not supposed to link back. That's not a requirement under the GFDL. Secondly, if we want the mirrors to follow copyright law, we need to follow it ourselves. A link is fine, so long as it is a link which is paletable enough for Wikipedia to put in its own pages. A link which is meant to be added only to the forks and not to Wikipedia is not fine. anthony (see warning) 14:05, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I have no view on the validity of the scheme, but my first thought is that whatever one tries to do it would not be too difficult to strip it out in an automated way, using some kind of find and replace process, though without replacing with anything. But I'm not technical, so perhaps I overestimate what can be done. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 02:30, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)
Anything we do is technically alterable, but given the fact that few of our pseudo-mirrors are competent enough to even disable page editing effectively, it doesn't seem likely that they'll circumvent this—especially if the result is effected by some Mediawiki keyword present in the database but transparently filtered in editing. This is not to say that I support the idea, but I don't think it would be difficult to implement. Austin Hair 02:45, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)
The mirrors which don't even disable page editing by and large are the ones which do not have a good page rank. The mirrors Wikipedia should be working with are the better ones which do take the time to create a good image. These are the mirrors which Wikipedia should want to be associated with in the first place. But these mirrors are probably also the ones who would object to being pawns in some googlebombing scheme. anthony (see warning) 14:09, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Marginally up to date? I've seen mirrors with my userpage from June or July of 2003 and with vandalism preserved for a looooong time (still there, BTW...do a google search on "Adey Chaplin"). So, I'd like to know your definition of Marginally. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 05:54, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

apologies if i am wiki'ing poorly. anyway, there are several ways to make the self-link invisible to humans. and it doesn't matter if even 75% of the illegit forks stripped it, since the other 25% would be enough to put you at #1. please implement this suggestion. i ran into this problem today actually and did not appreciate the illegitimate mirror.

Embedding invisible links to increase pagerank directly violates google guidelines. If the parsers determine that this is being done you can expect your pagerank to go down, not up. anthony (see warning) 14:15, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Complete agreement with Anthony. If we want to boost our Google presence (and our traffic seems to be doing ok, thank you) then the only way is to talk to Google. Apparently Jimbo has some contacts there, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn if he doesn't want to do that any time soon. Pcb21| Pete 16:20, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't get how a mirror can be considered illegitimate. About the only ways somebody could violate our license are:
  • forcing users to subscribe or otherwise pay to use their site
  • not having a website at all
If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, do not submit it. --Eequor 17:50, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Even those wouldn't really be violations. There's nothing in the GFDL saying you can't charge money for content licensed under it, and not having a website at all (say, if someone took Wikipedia and produced print versions for sale) would be fine, as long as modifiable ("transparent") versions are also made available. The only real violations I can think of would be: not giving contributors credit; relicensing under a GFDL-incompatible license. -- Wapcaplet 19:30, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I mean, having subscriptions as the only means of access. It might be possible, somehow, to provide the modifiable source in some other form, but distributing the entire database in that manner would mean lots of CDs or DVDs. --Eequor 20:48, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm not sure what in the GFDL would preclude having subscriptions as the only means of access. anthony (see warning) 15:45, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Police the licence

I LOVE the idea of a self-linking link in each article - put it in the bit that says "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia"! Irregardless of the Google issue, it REALLY helps with ensuring mirrors have a link to attribution of authors (necessary for not violating GFDL/p*ssing us all off). Plus, it helps the Google ranking issue (big time I suspect - probably will ensure we are always no. 1). And we do need to be no. 1, for all those non-cautious people who click "I'm feeling lucky". It's a lot preferable for people to go here rather than a static or slowly updated mirror. Any "snapshop" of Wikipedia can conceivably (and probably does) have "trapped" vandalism (that is probably going to be fixed right after) - even possibly on major articles. Such things bring Wikipedia into disrepute. zoney ▓█▒ talk 13:06, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think a better idea would be to help the mirrors by making it easier for them to download the list of authors themselves. Help us by allowing us to easily determine when an article needs to be updated. A better mirror provides better exposure for Wikipedia, and this is where we should be focussing, not on sneaky googlebombing techniques designed to subvert search engines. anthony (see warning) 14:20, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  1. There is no reason to suppose that there is any more or less vandalism at the instant the snapshot is taken than at any other time.
  2. The would-be mirrorer could easily strip such a link. Note that mirrorers have historically not given a toss about Wikipedia by and large. In general they obfuscate links as much as possible. Pcb21| Pete 16:13, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Pete, the problem is that on Wikipedia the vandalism is fixed quickly, but on some of the mirrors there are year-old vandalisms that still haven't been replaced. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 16:25, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes, but vandalism is *created* equally quickly... so although the mirrors will have *old* vandalism they won't have the new vandalism. If the amount of vandalism on WP stays roughly constant over the time, then all mirrors and this site will have the same amount. Pcb21| Pete 17:10, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think that the "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" could be a link to itself (the current article page) with a css thing for no underline and black text. Therefore it looks like a normal text. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 16:25, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
That isn't in the database, though. anthony (see warning) 20:17, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It should be. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:37, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Seems like it'd be a pain to code, but if done it would be the best solution. anthony (see warning) 02:29, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Let's try some googlebombing. we could use the talk pages. e.g. by putting encyclopedia to try to get the top hit for encyclopedia. we could also go through all the web directoryes and sort them out. Dunc_Harris|☺ 21:54, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Rather than attacking other websites for copying our content, Wikipedia should be grateful to them for making the encyclopedia ubiquitously visible. How do mirrors threaten Wikipedia? They are not wikis. They are completely dependent upon Wikipedia for their content. Their response to criticism of inaccuracies in "their" content must be to immediately blame Wikipedia, and if they have any interest in self-preservation, they will tell the critic how to fix the error.

Wikipedia provides a valuable service for free to anyone, with almost no restrictions on how anyone might use the content. Don't be surprised when everyone copies Wikipedia in every way possible. It is extremely short-sighted, ingrateful, selfish, greedy, and juvenile to suggest restrictions for our mirrors. --Eequor 18:15, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No - the GFDL does not mean they can grab all the content, and only list "Wikipedia" as the source. The authors of the text must be listed (providing a link to the "real" article with history is one solution for them). I for one object to my work being NICKED. zoney ▓█▒ talk 18:44, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It isn't "your work", and you implicitly gave permission for the entire world to use and modify, in almost any way, anything you submitted to Wikipedia. Please see Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter for the two requirements Wikipedia places on mirrors. --Eequor 19:16, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It isn't "your work" - Dead wrong. You retain the copyright on it, even if you give others a license to use it (in this case, the GFDL). Zoney is quite correct - the GFDL says "You may copy and distribute the Document... provided that... the

copyright notices... are reproduced in all copies". In our case, we have a fairly lenient intrepretation -- we allow them to link to our article, which contains the page history. If mirrors want to be GFDL compliant, they have to link to the source article. →Raul654 00:47, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)

You're both wrong. As you said, I retain the copyright on my work. So your "lenient interpretation [sic]" is meaningless. Linking to the source is neither necessary nor sufficient for GFDL compliance. And since there are no copyright notices in the original, there is no need to reproduce any in the copies. anthony (see warning) 02:19, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Exactly Eequor, we require the clones to link back to the original article, to provide the credit for our work, just as the page you linked to states: "we'd like to point out that when using content from Wikipedia you should include a link back to the source Wikipedia article." (I suppose that if they bothered to make their own list of authors, that would be fine too, but I've never seen any citation of wikipedia that listed all authors of any article). —siroχo 00:32, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)
Aside from the politics of it all, it really is a shame that the world gets this free dictionary crap as 7th on a Google search for Kelly Holmes when our (now) far better article doesn't make it into the top 100. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 17:59, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)
So, am I right in thinking this is non-compliant... I wrote all, or the overwhelming majority, of our article David Quantick, which is now available here at something called Wikiverse.org. The site's home page links clearly to us, but not the article page itself. There appears to be no advertising, so I wonder if it's a mirror - but then, if it is, I wonder why they redesign the look of it.
I've gone and read the copyright stuff, but it's too confusing for me - I'll probably understand it much better if someone can clarify based on this example. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 22:25, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)
Bod, each article is required to link directly to the originating article (or provide the authors in a different way, technically, but thats never been done), so Wikiverse is not in compliance. —siroχo 22:31, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)

No, no, no. This is not true. Linking back to the article is one way of crediting the copyright holder, but it is a bit of an odd one. There is no need to link back so long as you credit the copyright holder... 195.158.19.248 08:59, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Here's an Idea

Currently the contrib list is in ascending order, perhaps it would be nice to do a descending order? This way it would be easier to find what my xth edit is (for this page) — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 00:09, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Not a good idea? I see no response. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 00:21, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Its a pretty good idea, for people who want to figure out when in their wikicareer they made an edit. Maybe make a feature request on sourceforge or meta? —siroχo 00:26, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)

Even better would be for the user to be able to select ascending and descending as a user preference. Kevin Rector 17:38, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)

Too many mirrors of Wikipedia content?

I was looking at the Wikipedia article on Four-character idioms, so I decided to go onto Google to see whether there were other websites that elaborated on this topic, but when I typed the query "four-character idiom" into Google, all of the hits that came back turned out to be just carbon copies of the Wikipedia article, and I'm concerned that all of the independent websites that elaborate on the topic I was looking for have been squeezed out by all of the Wikipedia-copying sites, so no further information can be found on this topic over the Web, even though many people are interested in such a topic. I'm thinking that there should be a limit to the number of websites that directly copy Wikipedia's articles, so we could indeed find more information to put into the Wikipedia articles. Denelson83 22:42, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • Ah, but then Wikipedia would no longer be GFDL. That would definitely be Bad. I think it's a good thing that so many sites are using our content, though I do wish some of them would give attribution a little more prominently, rather than having a tiny footnote, buried in a paragraph of seemingly unrelated text, stating that the content comes from Wikipedia. But one of our goals is to promulgate knowledge, and these sites are certainly helping with that. Also, the more mirrors there are, the less (we hope) demand there will be on Wikipedia's servers. -- Wapcaplet 23:06, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Not only bad, but probably not even possible. To change Wikipedia's licence at this point would require all of the holders of copyrights to its content to agree to it. I doubt anyone would be able to even find 90% of them, let alone get them to agree on anything like this. I think this proliferation of mirrors is a problem for Google to sort out, not Wikipedia. It's their responsibility to make their search engine useable, not ours. Bryan 23:11, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I doubt it would help (even if the problems already raised could be somehow overcome), in fact it might be counterproductive by reducing the incentive for mirrors and other content users to comply with the GFDL. What might help would be to clarify our interpretation of the GFDL to require or at least request complying content users on the Web to have the word "Wikipedia" in text on the page rather than just as a logo, as some of them now do.
Have you tried excluding "Wikipedia" from your searches? That still eliminates most of the copies for the moment. I do this so often I'm thinking of setting up a hotkey to do it! Andrewa 23:16, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Tried, and failed. Still got too many carbon copies. Even tried excluding "GNU", "FDL", and "GFDL" from my search, but that too didn't work. I don't see anything wrong with other sites copying Wikipedia's content verbatim, but it's an issue if the number of sites that do goes into overkill. Denelson83 23:27, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Try excluding "destroy all cooking utensils" from your searches. That reduces the number of hits I get from about 30,000 to about 467. Eugene van der Pijll 23:51, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This issue comes up a lot. There are some discussion pages dedicated to it (see elsewhere on this page). I think the only real solution is to mandate that the Wikipedia credit message and source link are conspicuously shown at the top of mirror pages. Besides just keeping people coming to the main, up-to-date, editable site, it would also make "-wikipedia" more effective, since Google excludes keywords beyond a certain point in a page. Then, anyone else coming up would be noncompliant, and so subject to legal action. Derrick Coetzee 23:54, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As noted above, Wikipedia is GFDL. Anybody else can use Wikipedia content however they wish, as long as they freely provide copies in some form. We can't mandate anything for mirrors. --Eequor 00:01, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
GFDL is not public domain; we are allowed to and in fact do make a number of significant requirements on those using our content, and many people illegally violate these or comply as minimally as possible. The GPL has similar requirements for giving credit to the original authors of software like Linux and Emacs. Derrick Coetzee 00:45, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
That page contains only one legally binding requirement: follow the GFDL. The main problem is that the current license specifies "no invariant sections", so Wikipedia can't mandate any particular notice. --Eequor 01:01, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
What is the position where a clone messes up a format on a Wikipdia page? I have been looking at a piece I wrote on Portsmouth Block Mills and find that www.pedia.nodeworks.com has it, but has changed the format so the headings are misplaced and all the references run on as a block. It looks a mess, and I don't know I would want my name associated with it. Does this conflict with our licence? Apwoolrich 05:46, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
No; the GFDL permits anybody to make any changes whatsoever to the content, even if they're ugly. --Eequor 07:08, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
On the other hand www.omniknow.com has it right and has a sentence asking readers to make donations to Wikipedia to continue the work! I wish there were more like that! Both these sites have pages listing all the topics in Wikipedia. Needless-to-say my original article is not yet noticed by Google!! Apwoolrich 05:46, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If anyone wants to give me a 468x60 banner, I could replace my current Wikipedia banner with it. Right now I'm using this: http://www.mcfly.org/wikiad.html . I'd also like to note that omniknow doesn't have the Wikipedia link at the top either. I think requiring it to be at the top goes too far. anthony (see warning) 14:32, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Here's another idea: Rather than trying to apply the stick to the mirrors, why not try a carrot? Wikipedia is always likely to have chronic performance problems, the pattern is that the more hardware we install the more people use us. So, why not have a list of recommended mirrors that is dished up by Apache, Squid and Mediawiki itself whenever there's a timeout or a page fetch is cancelled by the requestor (which is probably a timeout in disguise). The list should include both partial and complete mirrors, and should describe the scope of the partial mirrors. It should be maintained as part of the Wiki but be cached by the programs that use it so as to be highly available, and graphically sparse so as to load quickly even if it gets quite long.

In order to be on this list, the requirements will be a bit more stringent than the GFDL, and will include having the word Wikipedia in plain text, and a link to the original article, on each article page. No messing with the GFDL required.

The extra requirements should be minimal at first. If the list grows to be more than a screenfull, then split an extra, more highly recommended tier off, and put the sites that meet these more stringent requirements at the top of the page, leaving the others there below them. This process can be repeated every time the top list grows to more than a page. Food for thought? Andrewa 08:15, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Another idea is to ask Browser designers to include Wikipedia in their drop-down list of search engines. I have just asked Opera to do it in the next release. Whether they will remains to be seen. Such a link would kill the late Google pick-up of pages at a stroke IMHO. There is on WP an instruction page for re-programming browsers to do this, but I can't get to grips with the instructions for Opera, so have left it alone. Apwoolrich 09:39, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Deleting user pages - Proposal almost ready

There is a new proposed policy at Wikipedia:deletion of user subpages. In a nutshell the proposal is in future to use a new section of requests for comment instead of VfD to propose deletion of pages in the user namespace.

There have been no objections to this idea since it was proposed at Wikipedia talk:votes for deletion#deleting user subpages some time ago. I think I've now done all I need to do before having a vote on it, which is proposed to start in another week, although I'll continue to make minor clarifications as they occur to me. Have a look at it in that time, those interested, as I propose to freeze it for the purpose of the vote in a week's time. Andrewa 20:01, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Does it really make any sense to "delete" user pages? As I understand it, no pages are being removed from the database, so the claim of using Wikipedia as a free server is totally baseless. Wikipedia continues to act as a server; the pages are simply invisible to most users. It strains credibility to claim that any material on any user page can be objectionable; nobody is forced to read a user page while reading an encyclopedia article. --Eequor 07:20, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Eequor, there have been only two cases where I've voted for a delete on an actual user page. In both cases, the user was not writing articles for WP any more but was writing, non-stop, on the user pages. Even if nothing else happened, that would be our providing that user the joy of a place to post pages -- i.e. acting as a free web host. However, in one case, the user was advertising on outside web pages, with "To learn more, see my web page" and the link was to his user pages on WP. In fact, that person had about 14 different pages, all lined up to act as a separate web site. Anyone who went there would not even see the rest of Wikipedia. That was severe and obvious. Neither has been using us for commercial reasons, but they could have been. Currently, the User:Lindie England pages are pages for a non-user that do nothing but hold dirty pictures that refer the user on to a commercial website (I don't count that as a real user at all). So, there are three cases. However, it does come down to the rules. If an IP writes a page on his or her silly fantasy, we speedy delete it or VfD it and delete it. If a registered user does so, we treat it as sacrosanct. When the registered user is making efforts across the site, they've "paid for it," more or less. We need policies for debating and policing so that we're consistent and to head off trouble. We also need a lower profile spot than VfD. In addition to the three unambiguous deletes I mentioned, there have been four cases of Admins trying to pick on people they don't like and trolls trying to pick on Admins. By listing on VfD and causing the debate, these nominators have won what they most wanted: attention and a place to express anger. Geogre 14:15, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Several points here.
Firstly, many people seem to think it does seem to make sense to delete user pages, as evidenced by previous debates on VfD. This proposal merely moves these debates.
Secondly, although a deleted page is not instantly removed from the database, it is only accessible to signed-in sysops, so it's instantly and completely removed from the site so far as most people are concerned. It will be removed from the database too at some future time, as part of database management. Deletion is no less real just because undeletion is temporarily possible.
Thirdly, yes, material on a user page can be objectionable, as again evidenced by previous debates on VfD, several of which have resulted in consensus to delete.
Does that help? Andrewa 20:04, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Finding the content of some long-deleted pages

I was looking through my watchlist and discovered a couple of pages that had been deleted, and that furthermore were so deleted that I didn't even get a "view or restore deleted edits" link. They're administrative pages and probably don't need to be restored, but I would like to get ahold of the text that was in some of them since it may be relevant at some point in the future. Does anyone have suggestions on how I might go about finding this? Bryan 19:45, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Talk to one of the programmers, they have access to the logs. RickK 23:19, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

All your Wikipedia are belong to us

Look! We've been collectively enslaved by IBM: "Also in the R&D bag of tricks were new Wiki tools that would rationalize the creation, exiting, posting and tracking of group knowledge. Researchers showed off IBM's Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia, as fruit of that research." - CMPNet Asia. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 19:38, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

I wrote a snotty email about that to CMPNet the day after it appeared, but they haven't had the grace to reply... -- Arwel 20:42, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I bet it was a journalist cockup rather than a IBM one though. These things almost always are. Pcb21| Pete 20:59, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Weird. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 21:01, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I just wrote an e-mail to the editor ofCMPnetAsia.com. Hopefully they'll get around to correcting the mistake. —siroχo 22:22, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)
We should document this somewhere to quote the next time a journalist suggests that Wikipedia suffers from poor information quality... (;-> Andrewa 22:52, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hear, hear. Andrewa has a very fine point. When I read the CMPNet article I looked all over for the "edit page" button but couldn't find it... Antandrus 23:27, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Lymeswold Cheese Effect

Don't know if this has been observed a hundred times before but if you do a Google search for "Lymeswold cheese" the 3rd hit takes you to a Wikipedia edit screen (we don't have an article for it yet). I'm not some freaky cheese person who goes around looking up solid milk, I was merely looking at List of major flops and noticed the red link. It was all perfectly innocent. And, anyway, I am a consenting adult. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 17:16, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

See Robots.txt#Don't index vs don't spider. Doppelgänger 17:24, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Oh those pesky red links. Perhaps now that a stub exists, at Google’s next run the edit link will be removed by a real link… (Someone from the UK should check the article, it’s extremely difficult to find info on this and I am not certain I have my facts straight.) [[User:Anárion|File:Anarion.png]] 21:48, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Copyweird

The Habanero-tan article contains some text from this page (the original version was almost entirely excerpted from that page). I asked the author of that page if he was the contributor, and got this reply:

Actually, I didn't submit this article to Wikipedia myself, but it seems as though someone did. Since the Wikipedia article links back to the "Ask John" article on the AnimeNation site, we have no complaints.

My question is, is that enough? I kinda don't think so, but how should I follow up? — Gwalla | Talk 03:57, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

My view is that is quite enough. Note it on the Talk page of the article. Permission has been given, albeit implicitely; and, better, you've taken the trouble to raise your concern with them: they've said they have no concern. An all round good result. Award yourself a nice refreshing cup of tea and cease your needless worrying. --Tagishsimon
This could potentially be taken as a conditional permission. I would carefully mark the link they speak of to discourage other editors from removing it, and try to get more unconditional permission, or better, convert it to a quote, in which case it becomes fair use. Derrick Coetzee 20:38, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia: "outrageous," "repugnant" and "dangerous"

So tell us something we didn't know :) Nice story on BoingBoing] --Tagishsimon

Well, people should doubt Wikipedia, and everything else too. pstudier 21:58, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fasoldt's column is here and here; Techdirt's reply is here. Marnanel 22:39, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Baggies; baggies. Noisy 22:45, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Susan Stagnitta of the Liverpool High School library claims that "there is no editorial review of the content." I'd just like to document here and now that that is patently false. While level of editorial review can be argued, it certainly exists as any Wikipedian knows. That said, many believe that it now exists at level higher than most encyclopedias. —siroχo 23:20, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)
I've heard there's no editorial control of Liverpool High School publications. Or, at least, I deduce that's the case since they, as Wikipedia, do not employ an Editor. --Tagishsimon
I wrote this letter to Al Fasoldt, feel free to use all or part of it to e-mail him yourself. —siroχo 00:10, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

Shrug it off. Don't spend too much effort trying to convert people who have made up their minds, other than correcting outright errors of fact. Wikipedia is what it is. Wikipedia say "edit this page" on every page, so it's not as if Wikipedia were pretending to be anything other than it is. People will make their judgements of what they trust and believe in the same ways they make their judgements about anything else they trust and believe in. As Wikipedia becomes better known we will see more of this. The very idea is going to drive some people bananas; the only reason we haven't seen more of this is that Wikipedia isn't really that well known yet. Just wait until Microsoft sees Wikipedia having an effect on Encarta! And just wait until the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute decides to take at look at Wikipedia. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 10:30, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree: Let it slide. We're going to make them more than they are by replying. They're a small paper for a small area (yeah, yeah, Syracuse is the center of the world, etc.). Betcha the kids at Syracuse use us like mad anyway. The librarian is simply acting out of what she was told, long ago. Believe me: I had the same training, only I actually understand the web. You'd be surprised to see how universal "technology" instruction is in libraries. It does a remarkable job of addressing the needs of 1991. The librarian is to be ignored. The column is to be ignored. The fact is that Wikipedia does a great job of hiding its editorial control. If anyone must reply to the fellow, let me suggest the following: Ask him to assemble experts, not journalists. Have these journalists search Wikipedia (Syracuse is right down the road, he could find experts there) for topics general and refined in their field and give a numerical score on coverage. 5 = general encyclopedia coverage found anywhere else (e.g. the $100 Encarta), 10 = peer reviewed scholarship. Have each assess 10 articles. Give us a score. We'll pass, and it will be a useful assessment, rather than just a journalist calling an out of date librarian. Geogre 14:25, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Also, let it slide, because I doubt Wikipedia would pass if experts were to validate by random article. There is an enormous amount of garbage in Wikipedia. Unfortunately the unevenness of quality in Wikipedia matches that of the web itself. Ad hominem attacks on the supposed training and knowledge of someone you don't know and snide comments about the unimportance of Syracuse don't impress and don't help your own credibility. Your proposed test is double-edged. Why instead should you not be the one asked to assemble experts to test Wikipedia to support your beliefs? I'm here partly trying to fix up the garbage, to help get Wikipedia to the point where it may be noticeably better than average web quality. I got in here when I increasingly found that when I searched for material on the web, Wikipedia articles starting popping up and were very often not especially complete or accurate in providing what I wanted to know, were often downright horrible. But here I could help to change that, which I can't do for other web sites. That is the potential of Wikipedia. But listen to the critics. The article wasn't very wrong-headed, certainly no more so than hundreds that are put into Wikipedia every day, no more so than many that have sat here for two years without correction. Wikipedia content on the whole is not especially trustworthy and its average accuracy is probably far below that of other encyclopedias despite the undeniable excellence of many of its articles. Jallan 15:58, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Of course there is an enormous amount of garbage. My "ad hominem" attack on the person I don't know is based on a cookie-cutter assignment that you can find in any library training of 5 years ago. It is utterly blind, and I say this as someone who received it. I can easily show you the assignment the librarian was shocked -- shocked! -- to have seen WP fail. I can just as easily show you why that assignment is worthless. It was a very intelligent response to the web as it existed in 1991, indeed. It is useless now. As for Syracuse, my point was that this is a small paper. It is a small paper. For us to respond with a Slashdot-like flood would be to elevate that small paper into something that it is not. As for what I think of SU, that's neither here nor there. Ok, would we fail on a random article? Compared to Encarta, yes. Would we win on field searches? I think so. The prestige articles here attract multiple hands. Similarly, the truly specialist articles attract specialized hands. This is part of why the assignment is rubbish: the thesis of the Cathedral and the Commons comes into play. The commons works when multiple informed and ethical persons work. The more rare the item, the fewer hands have been at work. The more common the article, the more often hands have been at work. Scholarly material attracts scholarly workers, and political material attracts political workers. Therefore, the odds are high that a particularly specialized academic subject will have a specialized (or minority) academic viewpoint. A specialized political subject will have a specialized (or biased or advocate) viewpoint. It's when we get into things that "everybody knows" that our worst crimes will be committed. That's why I think a specialist search would make us look better than Encarta. I would say that Wikipedia is of average trustworthiness on average topics. Geogre 18:33, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree in not responding. Such responses mostly make the responder look worse, because generally those responding are angry, and start doing things like making ad homimem attacks. And it is the angriest ones who start sending responses. As to field searches, we'd fail miserably in areas I know well. Too much stuff has been scattered by those who don't know that they don't know. Possibly Wikipedia is better in areas I don't know well. But all of us, once outside the areas we know well, don't see the obvious things that are wrong, things that an expert will zero right in on. See my comments at Talk:Bragi on material that an expert picked up on from another site, six errors in a single paragraph. Wikipedia had every one of the errors he picked up on and more. And the Bragi article wasn't, in my estimation, especially inaccurate compared to much else. But in this and other fields, if anyone starts vetting the material by what's on the web, they may only be comparing garbage with garbage. Unless you are to some degree an expert in what you are writing you may be simply copying in misinformation, often the standard misinformaton that has got into the general literature and is has been repeated and repeated and repeated for a century and which every expert knows is wrong but no-one else does. I would like to see a test done like you proposed, honestly done, to actually know how Wikipedia stacks up in particular areas and how much it fails or succeeds in comparison with Encarta and Britannica and anything else someone wants to compare it with. Jallan 01:09, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
We're shifting focus somewhat, but I reiterate that my attack is on the lesson plan of the librarian and the very limited intellectual scope involved in it. I still don't get where you saw an "ad hominem" attack on the librarian (or Syracuse, btw). That past, we have problems of what I call motivated editors, and then we have problems of vaccuum abhorrence. When we get to the commons, we can fall victim to motivated authors. The crypto fascist hates socialism and is motivated to "fix" all the articles on WP. The idea is that the weight of other observers will neutralize that POV intrusion. What happens, instead, of course, is that the multiplication of editors neutralizes excess less than it averages knowledge. Because "verification" is the answer to POV and motivated edits that differ from what "everybody knows," mediators and fixers go off to the web, to common knowledge, to "fix" problems. The second set of problems, the people who abhor vaccuums, are the opposite. They're the unmotivated editors. Someone writes a substub "Frigg was a Norse goddess," and these folks hate seeing anything get deleted, so they fill it in. They grab from the web. They repeat errors.
But don't assume that the repetition of mistakes makes us worse than the scholarly world. In fact, Boswell made a mistake in his chronology of Samuel Johnson's life, and you can still see it reprinted in casual, but peer reviewed, publications. I have seen (and I won't name names because I'm under a vow not to) a mighty famous feminist scholar who flat out lied in her landmark book on Pope. If you followed all her footnotes and read all her sources, you saw that she lied. However, no one does that. Well, we old fashioned folk were scandalized, and we whispered in the lounge about it. Those lies are now being reprinted, and she's the footnote.
Where I think we succeed is in covering far more specialist material than something bad like Encarta. Our coverage of math is better (in breadth). Our coverage of literature is worse (a thing I should be working to correct). Our coverage of ephemera is the non plus ultra, alas. When you go to some of the medievalist entries, some of the mythology entries, some of the literature entries, you find material that is better than Encarta (but with fewer pictures and noises). We wouldn't measure up to Britanica, but Britanica is more of a goal than anything we could approach with our model. Geogre 01:33, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I exchanged some emails with him (prior to reading VP). If you want to see them, they're at User:CryptoDerk/Fasoldt. CryptoDerk 01:43, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)

Reproduction fees/copyrights/public domain

In view of the discussions in various places about image copyrights, I have written a piece about reproduction fees. Apwoolrich 08:27, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Downloading log files?

Does anybody know where I can download a few days worth of Wikipedia hit log files? I'd like to do some analysis on them, but I can't figure out where they're kept.

Thanks, --William Pietri 00:30, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

We don't have daily log files. We have log files for the current month, updated nightly. If you take the difference from one nightly log file to the next, you can calculate the day's hits. →Raul654 00:37, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)
Ah, I was looking for the raw log files, with Referer information. I was curious do some analysis on Wikipedia usage patterns, including how people come in via search engines and what they do after that point. But I gather you're saying that raw hit logs just aren't collected on a regular basis? In that case, are there older ones around, perhaps collected during an optimization run? --William Pietri 00:44, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The raw logs are available only to wikimedia's developers. Publishing them would be a major issue, as in general we view people's IPs, the sites and pages they visit, and what they do here to be private information. A lot of people would be very pissed off if the raw logs were available to the casual visitor. I suppose if there were such a thing as a decent unified logfile sanitiser (which removed/abstracted IP information) then publishing that would be an option. But if I were running such a sanitiser, I'd surely have it purge the referrer information too, as (occasionally) there's juicy info in the referring URL (particularly when the referrer is an email in a webmail service, and sometimes a search query). That said, there doesn't seem to be such a program anyway (I guess I don't know what it would be called, so it's rather hard to google for it). The problem of examining the log files is compounded by wikimedia's server setup - most pages are served ex-cache by one of the frontline squid servers; so we'd need to publish a number of the (huge) squid logs too. It would indeed be a very interesting exercise to run some analyses of the logs, as there's all kinds of things we don't know about how visitors and search engines enter, move around, and leave the site. If we could figure out an acceptable way to do things then there is much value to be mined. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:58, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Right, logs are private. You can find some statistics extracted from log files, including a list of referrers, on the Webalizer stats page. -- Tim Starling 01:28, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)
Interesting. I hadn't thought about the privacy issues, but they make complete sense to me. If I get enough time to do the research properly, I'll contact y'all with a proposal to either A) write a log sanitizer that meets your standards, or B) write an analysis program that you guys run, so I never see the log data. Also, thanks for the link to the Webalizer pages; I had missed those the first time through. Thanks, --William Pietri 20:54, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
When you write your log file analysis program, keep in mind that the squid logs for each day come to about five gigabytes. Also, depending on how much spare CPU time there is, running the analyzer might be done only intermittently, as has been the case with the Webalizer statistics. It will be interesting to see the results of this. Until now, everybody wanting to do this has been all talk and no code. -- Jeronim 05:26, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Suffixes in the Wikipedia

I think the following articles should be moved to the Wiktionary, but I don't want to get anyone mad or have revision wars over the fact. Please see the following articles: -cide, -cycle, -cracy, -ic, -ism, -ist, -ography, -oid, -ology, -omics, -onomy, -onym, -philia, -phobia, -scope, -stan, -ware

Found while stub sorting. -- Allyunion 00:11, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Look like Wiktionary articles to me. --Tagishsimon

They do provide useful lists of words that use the suffixes though, and those are pretty much Wikipedia material. The lists at least should be left. (perhaps each moved to some better name). I agreee that the definitions parts are Wiktionary material. —siroχo 00:22, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Siroxo that the lists are encyclopedic and/or an almanac-like list, which is included in Wikipedia--can't get such a list from m-w.com. Of the ones I've checked, -ography seems to be the best example of the potential these articles have to be 'pedia-worthy (oh, even better is -ology and -ism). If we're going to have a list anyway, I think some prose at the top to set context is reasonable. As for the articles they link to, I think they would need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis--take a look at biography--hardly a dicdef. On the other hand, -stan and especially (at least the current contents) -ware have a bit of a "what doesn't belong in this set" flavor to them. If you check the histories, -ism, -ology, and -phobia have had contributions from dozens of Wikipedians, and the rest average almost eight different contributors. Also, the 17 articles in this series were started by at least 8 or 9 different Wikipedians. Finally, at least two have inter-wiki links from other language Wikipedias. Wholesale transfer to Wiktionary doesn't seem appropriate to me. Some of the articles are certainly less developed than others, but that can be said about most any category of articles on Wikipedia. Niteowlneils 21:17, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Even so, if the entry is still looking like a definition, it can moved to the Wiktionary then redirected back to the Wikipedia. As it stands, a lot of the features in the Wiktionary don't exist like the features in Wikipedia -- just because the Wiktionary is new. Perhaps using a basic definition in Wiktionary would be useful then putting a "See also" to point to the Wikipedia for any words on that list. Normally, suffixes are in a dictionary, as opposed to a encyclopedia. It just seems so... out of place to me. -- Allyunion 11:21, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If you move them to Wiktionary and redirect them back, all the links would be the same color. Most encyclopedias don't have "List of gay waitresses who shot mailmen" either, but I think these articles, as links, fit in with the precedents of Wikipedia. (personally I think just about all lists should move to a separate namespace as they're not articles but lists, but I'm in the minority on that opinion and it's not a big deal either way). anthony (see warning) 14:40, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

New Stubs to Use

I'm sorting out the stubs, and as I go around sorting, I'm creating several broad stub categories to use to sort stubs. Please be advised before using {{stub}} to check the stub categories before marking your pages as a simple stub. Thanks! - Allyunion 23:40, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Alternatively, check at Wikipedia:Template messages#Stubs (hint, hint) ;) - 23:49, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
Stub categories are updated more frequently than Wikipedia:Template messages#Stubs. (That's because, I end up having to updating both myself.) -- Allyunion 11:29, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, but ideally, Wikipedia:Template messages should be a quick one-stop shop for (almost) everybody's templating needs. So it's important to try and keep it up to date. - 17:52, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
Isn't there a category for list-stubs? LISTDEV? LISTSTUB. Vaguely remember that these exist... --Tagishsimon
Try Wikipedia:Template messages#Lists. ;) - 17:52, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
Should the University Stub be broadened a little to encompass all education topics (schools, teaching, training etc.)? violet/riga (t) 14:12, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It can be renamed to "Educational stub" instead... - Allyunion 05:39, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
These new stub messages violate Wikipedia:Avoid self-references and should have been discussed first. As for the instruction creep of making us all now categorize stubs when we add a stub message, I suspect a number of people are going to refuse. Besides, all this work will be wasted once it is possible to limit search results by category. Then we can use boolean operators on category tags that are already there (Category:science and Category:Stub = Category:Science stubs). anthony (see warning) 14:42, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The database is already slow, and there are well over 500 pages that use the general stub template. Pardon me by saying, the Wikipedia in house search engine is far more ineffective than a Google search on Wikipedia. Additionally, mind I remind you that not all stub pages have the category already? Half those that I looked at which now use the bio-stub tag didn't even have a category for people, let alone marked as a stub either -- some of them were one liners, so I marked them as substubs. So are you suggesting that we leave the stubs unsorted, when it would be better to have them sorted? I'm only following up an idea already started. This is certainly not a new idea, from what I'm looking at the history. There was the use of a tag called "stublist" which I somehow don't see on the template page anymore, but it still exists. As it stands now, there isn't a good way to look at the current stubs. Plus, there are people who are generally knowledgable in a certain aspect as opposed to other
categories. Why was their time in trying to find stubs even if you have a search engine working? I'd say it's a lot easier to just move the stubs out of general stub category into a specific one. I think this was one of the reasons "substub" was created -- because the general stub tag was overused. Excuse me for trying to clean up the Wikipedia's stubs. There's far more junk in the Wikipedia than you don't know about -- sorting it into specific categories only helps to clean it up. If you feel all the templates I recently added are worthless just because they violate the "Avoid self-reference" policy, please go ahead and list them on the tfd page and go back to revert my changes. -- Allyunion 05:39, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
By the way, Ssd was the one who added the bio-stub tag on 25 Jul 2004. Mike Storm created the substub tag on 20 Jul 2004. The content in Wikipedia changes quite rapidly -- you, as a long time user, no doubtly already know this. On 6 Jul 2004, Patrick wrote this into the policy page on self references: "Self-references are generally considered acceptable when used in the Template namespace, and these templates are referred to from the main namespace." It was on 30 Jul 2004 when the page was changed to as you see now. To me, what it looks like was that starting on 20 Jul 2004, the people who mostly keep track of substubs started to attempt to offload the stub category by adding substub and bio-stub. My additions of the new stub categories were not discouraged by Ssd nor anyone else until now... plus I am only attempting to follow what other users have just started to do... I just happen to add a lot more categories of stubs than they
did. -- Allyunion 05:59, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • "As far as geo-stub, hm. Could be useful too, since the Stub category is woefully overcrowded. Still, not sure... --Golbez 15:36, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)" -- Allyunion 06:36, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oh, one more thing. Thank you for calling me a "instruction creep" on the Village Pump page. That's really nice of you despite my good intentions in trying to organize the Wikipedia. - Allyunion 06:36, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Instruction creep is the slow process of adding more and more instructions for a situation to the point where hardly anyone follows them all (WP:VFD regularly gets accused of this, for example). I doubt it was meant as a personal attack. - 11:00, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

I know I'm not alone in thinking that balkanizing the stub message is simply a dumb idea. Am I to understand that "This X article is a stub" is somehow superior to "This article is a stub?" Such policies—as with PokeStubs—have met with harsh criticism in the past, for numerous reasons, and I personally don't take kindly to this unilateral "advisory." I, for one, intend to go on using the same stub message I've always used. Austin Hair 06:51, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)

I believe that I did start the trend of categorizing stubs. I didn't advertise it at first, because I wanted things to go slow to make sure it got the kinks worked out first. Others have done (IMHO) a good job extending this. Now, just to set the record straight, I hate stubs, and I think the stub messasge needs to be removed from all articles! Of course, ideally, this would be done by making them not-stubs before removing the message. --ssd 07:29, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Most of them are good, but who added a KDE-stub? Surely the compu-stub is good enough? violet/riga (t) 07:45, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

To summarize what this is all about:

  1. Stub articles need to be expanded; we put the message on the article to remind people of that.
  2. The stub categories serve to give people a place to go when they are looking for something to write.
  3. The main stub category has far too many items in it, so we split it. By splitting it into broad topics, this also allows people to narrow down what to write on.
  4. Yes, when a binary search is available on categories, the split will be redundant, but the split is for database performance more than it is for page size, although both are important.
  5. When any category reaches 2000-4000 items, it is past time to split it further! This goes for the s*-stub categories too! But oversplitting is not good either.
  6. It is not necessary to change the generic stub message when making a new stub category; however, since we have to make a new template to change the category name, why not customize the message too?

Does that make sense? --ssd 07:29, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators/Administrator Accountability Policy

Due to concerns from multiple users, the period allotted for discussion on this proposal has been extended by 48 hours. Voting will now begin at 00:00 UTC, 31 August 2004 and last until 00:00 UTC, 7 September 2004. Thanks. blankfaze | (беседа!) 21:41, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

National Monuments

Can someone with knowledge confirm that the buildings mentioned in Columbus, Indiana as National Historic Landmarks are National Monuments? Dunc_Harris|☺ 19:26, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

According to http://www.cr.nps.gov/nhl/designations/listsofNHLs.htm ,yes, it's true. RickK 20:04, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw that but I think they're privately owned which might make them illegible, but instead a National Historic Site. Dunc_Harris|☺ 20:40, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

They are just National Historic Landmarks, not Monuments or Historic Sites. The only National Memorial in Indiana is the Lincoln Boyhood Memorial and there are no National Historic Sites as Appendix B on the list says. Rmhermen 00:22, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)
I assume you mean ineligible? They are perfectly legible AFAIK. Andrewa 01:02, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Request for comments

I've written a proposal for m:Automatic unit conversion including what I feel are the most important points. It can be found at http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=235. Please indicate your opinions regarding this proposal. --Eequor 18:57, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

m:Automatic unit conversion doesn't exist. It is possible to vote for this proposal if you support it, but this does not guarantee the developers will work on it any more than on one with no votes. See Wikipedia:MediaZilla for more info. Angela. 22:56, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

Renaming VfD and wordsmithing the article tag

Nothing will make VfD pleasant for the contributor of an article, but I really do believe that the current way in which Votes for Deletion is named and presented is inducing misunderstandings, unnecessarily contentious behavior, and hurt feelings in some well-meaning newbies unfamiliar with our process. A discussion of possible new names for the page and new wording for the tag is taking place at Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion. An example of one proposal is that the page be named "Article inclusion debates" and that the tag look something like this:

Those interested, please join in at Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 17:11, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm usually against hypocritical political correctness - but this I like. Quite smooth-talking - a lot less in your face. I also like the inclusion of a "guide" link, as behaviour on VfD needs to correspondingly change, or this solution will simply be hypocritical PC nonsense. zoney ▓█▒ talk 21:39, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Michael/Mike Garcia

Is there a reason that banned user Michael is being allowed to edit Wikipedia? ...

Discussion moved to User talk:Michael/Proposal.

Templates stop after 5 iterations

I recently designed Template:OMIM to rapidly create links to the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man database (the McKusick catalogue). On porphyria, however, I discovered that if I link to the template more than five times, it is not processed by the wiki but replaced with Template:OMIM. Why is this, and how can I make sure the code is still processed? (Replies on my talk page please...) JFW | T@lk 16:09, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This will be fixed in 1.4 -- Tim Starling 16:52, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

Vandalism threat

I originally tagged Intelivand Technologies Inc for speedy deletion, but it seems worth mentioning it here. I still think it should be speedied, as obvious vandalism, but perhaps one or two of the admins should be aware of the (probably idle) threats first. --195.11.216.59 14:41, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Deleted as vandalism. A copy still exists at User:216.148.246.134 for anyone who wants to see. -- Cyrius|✎ 15:11, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Interesting that their attempt to censor Atlantium is what drew my attention to the articlePedant 06:16, 2004 Aug 30 (UTC)

BR

What's the advantage of/reason to change <br> into <br /> that I occasionally see on some pages? I know XML requires a closing tag in that fashion, but is that the reason? -- Golbez

Yes. Tags without a closing tag must close themselves with the trailing slash for XML (and thus XHTML) conformance. -- Cyrius|✎ 14:33, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's not necessary here, MediaWiki automatically puts it there if it isn't there already. Goplat 15:10, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Some us have a lot of occasion (outside wiki-land) to hand-write XML (including XHTML). Someone (including me) might be editing for other purposes and change <br> to <br /> almost by reflex. -- Jmabel 21:26, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

What is the sort order in the search results?

What is the sort order in the search results? My home pc search results are any of the following ascending/descending orders:

  • Alphabetical
  • Date last modified
  • Size

But the Wikipedia in-house search appears to be none of these. I can't work it out. Does anybody know what it is and why? Bobblewik  (talk) 11:35, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's, theoretically, by relevence. Unfortunately it's a rather terrible search and doesn't always give relevent results. Perhaps the Wikimedia Foundation should purchase a Google Search Appliance? Derrick Coetzee 16:14, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. I am not sure how they work relevance with single word searches. To use a specific example: a search for the one word 'tonga' produces:
  • Article matches:
    • 1. Tonga (13812 bytes)
    • 2. History … (2459 bytes)
    • 3. Geography … (3105 bytes)
    • 4. Demographics … (3056 bytes)
    • 5. Politics … (7671 bytes)
    • 6. Tonga/Economy (30 bytes)
    • 7. Communications … (614 bytes)
    • 8. Transportation … (788 bytes)
    • 9. Tonga Defence … (937 bytes)
    • 10. Economy … (5953 bytes)
  • Page matches:
    • 1. Archipelago (3457 bytes)
    • 2. Demographics … (1892 bytes)
    • 3. Abel … (3542 bytes)
    • 4. Asian … (4199 bytes)
    • 5. Bat (11538 bytes)
    • 6. British … (42112 bytes)
    • 7. List … (24431 bytes)
    • 8. Convention on Biological … (4138 bytes)
    • 9. Convention on Fishing … (1442 bytes)
    • 10. Convention on the … (1784 bytes)
Not alphabetical order, not size order, not date modified order, and not relevance order (that I can see). Weird. Bobblewik  (talk) 21:22, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
"Perhaps the Wikimedia Foundation should purchase a Google Search Appliance?". Yes, but they cost $32000 for two years (ouch). Perhaps the Wikimedia Foundation should instead ask Google to lease us one for free. We are, after all, a "worthy cause"; perhaps a job for the nascent Google Foundation? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:37, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps once other sites which need decent search capabilities start using MediaWiki, we might see some improvements to the internal search engine. I think $32000 could be better spent. Angela. 22:30, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)
Agree. The original Google remains available of course. Having previously expressed the opinion that we didn't need our own internal search engine at all for the online version, I'm now finding ours very useful when it's available. Of course any offline version needs it, so that might be another incentive to develop or acquire a better one. Andrewa 15:44, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As long as we are on the subject of the search engine, have we considered a way to implement spel cheking? When you do a search on google you get a "did you mean XXXX?" I think this could greatly improve the quality of the searching, reguardless of the order of returned items.Cavebear42 21:23, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure there's a page for this, but I can't find it

Can someone update Wikipedia:Most-edited talk pages, preferably removing the main page and any of its subpages from the list? Tuf-Kat 05:40, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

Admin, need merge on Filmfare Award and Filmfare award

I wrote a whole new article on Filmfare Award without being aware that Filmfare award already existed. These articles should be merged and perhaps a redirect put in place. Also, to avoid making such mistakes in the future, I'd like to know what the policy is on caps in article titles. Did I make a mistake in capitalizing Award? Also, should I have done a search before starting to write? Is that a recommended procedure?

Also, I wonder if it would be possible to have a utility that warned people that they were about to duplicate an article, if there already existed an article that differed only in capitalization. Zora 04:55, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:duplicate articles and Wikipedia:naming conventions. I think your version was at the correct title. I've merged in the additional information from Filmfare award to Filmfare Award but haven't merged the page histories since they overlap slightly. Filmfare award is now a redirect. Angela. 05:14, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

New WikiAwards Project

Hi, I'm trying to create a new project. Please read the introduction and see the History category as an example.

This project has caused some opposition and controversy and I would like to know if anyone supports my idea. Please answer here. Tks--05:02, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)Gameiro Pais

Please sign your posts (four tildes: ~~~~). Trilobite (Talk) 04:49, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I know. Sorry... Just forgot... By the way, what do you think of the project?--Gameiro Pais 05:02, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Achieving consensus

For all those stuck in endless disputes or attempts to achieve compromise (e.g. Talk:Georgia) I just thought I'd offer this quote:

"It is better to debate a question without settling it, than to settle a question without debating it - Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)

I came across it in John Gribbin's book, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat (see Schrödinger's Kittens).

zoney ▓█▒ talk 00:55, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Adult content warning template?

Should there be an adult content warning template? In fact, would there be a need for it for any entry in the wikipedia? There might be some articles which border that line, but I'm just wondering if we should include a warning template to be on the safe side. However, this does open Pandora's box of suggestive articles that may not be wanted on the wikipedia. Just some thoughts. - Allyunion 23:35, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No. Never. Nowhere. RickK 23:39, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Content disclaimer should be enough of a warning. --Eequor 23:53, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Allyunion, I think you're right to suggest it would open Pandora's box. Many people are uncomfortable with some of the more risque content here, and I think dredging it up in their faces with such a discussion could actually lose us a few good editors. Anyone whose child isn't old enough to make up their own mind should supervise their child's Internet use, and anyone who's old enough not to be a child should know to avoid sex-related articles if it bothers them. It's not as though we give detailed pictures of sadomasochism in the middle of the article on kittens. :-) Any adult content here should always be a simple neutral description of an act or thing and its effects on society/culture -- certainly it can occasionally be words that we might not prefer a 7 year old to read unsupervised (though of course opinion is divided there), but I don't think we have anything requiring a warning. And if we do, it would be wise to discuss on that article's talk page the utility of the shocking content -- encyclopedias should never _seek_ to shock, but rather to report the truth in an unbiased manner (and if the truth shocks, so be it). That's my opinion. Jwrosenzweig 00:00, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Only if the template has an extremely pornographic icon on it. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:04, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You could use my naked tits picture if you want (see my user page under the red Warning sign) Theresa Knott (Hot net streak!) 01:05, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Nice looking pair of tits! Thanks for sharing.  ;-) pstudier 04:58, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
No. Adding such a label to (for example) list of sex positions will inevitably lead to non-explicit articles like homosexuality or perineum receiving the label because any sexuality-related content will offend someone. Wikipedia is neither babysitter nor censorware.
(Alternately, yes, but only if Cyrius' and Theresa's suggestions are followed.) -Sean Curtin 01:21, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)
I expect such a template would fairly quickly end up on BJAODN, so it may as well never exist. You ought eliminate the middleperson and add it to BJAODN directly. --Eequor 01:40, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Censorship of encyclopaedias is an interesting topic. Diderot's Encyclopedie had several explicit plates illustrating midwifry and hermaphrodism. Rees's Cyclopaedia (1802-1819) has a detailed article on midwifry by Bland, the leading expert of the time, the plates for which, after being engraved, were suppressed and never printed. Other parts of Rees needed very sensitive handling by the editors due to the anti-Jacobin feeling then rife in England. Parts of the article 'Generation' (aka reproduction) are in Latin. And then there is the Soviet Encyclopaedia, where pages were re-ussued as people and topics fell out of favour with Stalin. Having begun this train of thought I will add this topic to the main Encyclopaedia page and hope that others can add to it. Apwoolrich 06:48, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Sure, add the template. It would make it so much easier for everyone, kids included, to find all the "good parts" of Wikipedia. ;-) Jallan 14:05, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think it might be better to approach this from the opposite angle. Rather than flagging adult content pages, why not flag G-rated pages? This might be more acceptable to the many who protest at any suggestion of censorship, and also a lot easier to do. Andrewa 16:15, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If we did that, is there a possibility that mischievous users and/or users with an agenda would systematically apply that flag to every page? Either by using a bot, or by doing it manually, raunchiest pages first? Could that happen here in Wikipedia? Did I just ask some rhetorical questions? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 16:21, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It is certainly possible, and I'd say very likely. But whether this would be a significant problem, or even a show-stopper, I find it impossible to guess.
One of the reasons Wikipedia works is that nearly everyone wants most of it to be accurate. Even those who want to use Wikipedia to promote a software product, a political viewpoint or a career in showbiz all want the rest of Wikipedia to be as high-class, encyclopedic, NPOV and accurate as possible.
In fact that's a basic requirement for abusing Wikipedia in this way. It's only such a potentially useful platform for these causes if its reputation is high. Or to put it another way, if we accepted every vanity article, every micronation and every crackpot theory, there's every chance we'd get far fewer of these articles and edits, because such content then wouldn't fool anyone. It's only because the quality of Wikipedia articles is known to be surprisingly high that it's worthwhile trying to infiltrate them with lower quality information such as advertising, propaganda, and even jokes and pranks.
Personally, I hope we will eventually have a software supported, version-based approval mechanism, and I've previously described one of the several ways it could work. But I think this could be a very interesting interim solution. That doesn't mean it would work. I don't know, and I'd be very interested to find out whether it would, and how exactly it failed if not. Andrewa 15:36, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Just my $0.02 worth but I see 2 potential problems with this line of thinking.
1. would prefer we do not attempt to censor the content. I know that this may not seem like a sensor at first but it would soon lead to one. With either method described, we would soon find the fork to the adult version and the G-rated version.
2. NPOV would be lost. Isn't our purpose here to compile the knowledge and information? Any tagging of whether I, you, or anyone else considers this appropriate would, by nature, be POV. What I find offensive is far less than the general public in America and most of the world. For instance, in America, we fine people for showing breasts on TV whereas in the UK there are breasts on billboards.Cavebear42 21:13, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Requests for summaries

Is Wikipedia:Requests for summaries watched by anyone who is likely to fill requests? There seems to have been practically no activity for most of a year, and no completed requests. The page seems well-intended but poorly executed. --Eequor 22:12, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I didn't even know it existed. :-) I'd say, if it is determined that it can serve a useful function, it needs someone to "captain" it and make it functional. Most projects here don't survive without that. Right now....I can't make heads or tails of it. Does anyone know what it was intended to do? Jwrosenzweig 23:16, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps move to Wikipedia:Peer review? [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 23:17, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

Vandals at work

Where I work, someone is blanking pages... --Sgeo | Talk 18:59, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia: Vandalism in progress. Derrick Coetzee 19:27, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Aum Shinrikyo

I would invite anyone interested to take a look at the entry on Aum Shinrikyo. The current version seems pretty tendentious, in a pro-Aum sort of way, although I just made some edits to try to improve it. I'm mentioning it here because I couldn't figure out which of several Wikipedia:collaboration pages would be best to use. Cleanup? Articles needing attention? Peer review? Requests for comment? Appreciate any advice. - Nat Krause 14:44, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'd suggest peer review. RFC is for article disputes (in other words, edit/revert wars). Cleanup is for articles which have good content but need to be formatted correctly per the manual of style. Johnleemk | Talk 18:36, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Template for weather?

Just wondering... would some kind of template to link to a weather forecast be useful? --Allyunion 12:31, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Huh, you know, that might not be a bad thing. And since it's a template, it's not like we'd be editing the page constantly. Not quite sure where it'd belong, though. I'm enjoying your improvements, I think the Mapquest template could come into some good use.
As far as geo-stub, hm. Could be useful too, since the Stub category is woefully overcrowded. Still, not sure... --Golbez 15:36, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The Geography already has picked up 16 pages, based on looking at the Wikipedia:Most_wanted_stubs page. 16 pages - some are cities, but that already makes it very notable, if that were to grow, of course. -- Allyunion 21:41, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Weather template created here: Template:Weather; A few test runs should be conducted before listing it on the template page. The search is conducted using Yahoo! Weather, as I found that Weather.com costs money, but Yahoo! Weather does not. Anyway, the syntax is simple, however apparently picky as I've discovered so far. Example:

Part of a series on
Weather
Temperate and polar seasons
Tropical seasons
Storms
Precipitation
Topics
Glossaries
icon Weather portal

is required. Perhaps adding a second parameter would be better suited to make the text look nicer. -- Allyunion 07:03, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Geo-stub

The template:geo-stub has been added for geographical locations, landmarks, cities, etc. I have not added it to the list of templates, however I have begun changing several stub pages to use the geo-stub template. - Allyunion 10:54, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Still growning... now marked 24 articles in this category. - Allyunion 23:15, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Amazing... 16 more articles have been added... this time not by me ^^;; -- Allyunion 06:41, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Untagged images - please help!

There are lists of untagged images at User:Yann/Untagged Images. Please help with tagging these, and remove any tagged ones from the lists. All images that are not tagged will not be included in the planned Mandrakelinux distribution (see m:Wikimedia and Mandrakesoft). Please see Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for details of how to tag images. Based on a sample of 277 untagged images, at least 1 in 5 should have been tagged GFDL. Therefore, there are 10,000 GFDL images that won't be distributed unless they are tagged. Angela.

I'm afraid I don't understand. How can we know how to tag an image if we don't know where it came from? — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:39, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
Often the uploader has written something on the page like "my own photo" or GFDL, but hasn't added the GFDL tag. If it's their own photo and they clicked the box to say "I affirm that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license it under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright", you can assume it's GFDL. Other images have a link to a source. If this source is a *.gov site, you can add {{PD-USGov}}. If it's a logo or album cover, you can generally assume it's {{fairuse}}. If the date is on the image description page, and it is before 1923, you can add {{PS-US}}. A lot of the time the image description page tells you what the licence is, but doesn't use a tag. To allow automatic filtering, we need the tags. Angela. 18:19, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
If you're really keen, you can also drop a few notes on user_talk pages to find locations for specific - remember there will be a lot of people around who uploaded images before tags existed, and have forgotten that they uploaded those images - and thus haven't gone back to tag them. User_talk messages might help jog the memory. Pcb21| Pete 18:27, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Minor clarification on what Angela wrote about *.gov websites. Works of the U.S. federal government are public domain. The same is not true for most U.S. state governments. Also, *.gov can host copyrighted material three random examples: the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center states "Some of the resources, or portions of them, are protected by copyright", the U.S. Geological Survey states that "Information presented on this website is considered public information (unless otherwise noted) and may be distributed or copied", and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service states "not all the information on our site is in the public domain". Be careful and happy tagging. Doppelgänger 22:36, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Is this the first time that the Wikipedia will be available in a way that off-line access is possible? - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 15:46, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

On a related matter I have just come across this, which concerns me somewhat. The welcome note says, misleadingly, that "most images taken from another website" can be tagged as fair use. The user then uploaded a photo (Image:Gibbs_nascar.jpg), was asked on his talk page to tag it, and promptly follwed the advice he had been given by tagging it as fair use, when it looks like a straightforward copyvio from [6]. We really do need to be much more careful about liberally slapping fair use notices on things. I know the discussion about whether such images are more trouble than they're worth and don't belong here is an old one, but if they are to be included we must at least have a decent verification system, whereby someone who knows what they are doing can go through and cull copyvios unless the uploader has provided a good solid rationale for tagging their image as fair use. — Trilobite (Talk) 01:03, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Is there a deadline for completing the tagging? My section of the list is taking way longer than I thought it would. [[User:Gamaliel|Gamaliel File:Cubaflag15.gif]] 22:34, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Question about Argentine economic recession

Is there an article on the 2000 Argentine economic reccession? If not, Id be more than glad to, at least, begin a page about it.

Thanks and God bless you! Sincerely yours, "Antonio Senseless but not sexless Martin"

Fiddling with template not working

I would like to make the TOC and the Template:MusicTimeline display right next to each other on pages like Timeline of trends in music (1920-1929). I aligned the template right and that gives the TOC plenty of room to move up, but it doesn't move up all the way and looks all squished. Can someone fix it? Is it my browser? (Mozilla 1.6/Mac OSX) Tuf-Kat 04:41, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

Mark your template as: <div style="float:right">[[Template:MusicTimeline]]</div>

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion phrases

I just wrote up a quick page, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion phrases that might be useful to include in the VfD template and as a link from VfD, to explain to new users why these phrases are used, and that they're not intended to be mean. I think this might go a long way towards helping newcomers understand Wikipedia better, especially since VfD can seem so hostile. I'm only a semi-regular of VfD, so others should look at it before we launch. [[User:Siroxo|Here is a schmancy new signature and a line of text that is long enough to show how it might look when there is some stuff coming before it. Please take a look at it to bask it in all of its radiant glory —siroχo

—siroχo 



#627562



#7b967b

#4d6c94]] 03:08, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
I think this is an excellent idea, and you've made a great start. I don't have time to look at it in much detail tonight, but if I have any comments tomorrow I'll leave them on it's Talk page. Niteowlneils 03:39, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Agree. Good stuff. Andrewa 19:32, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

New policy proposal

Just so everyone knows, I'm proposing a new policy at Wikipedia:Administrators/Administrator Accountability Policy. Please, everyone, take this seriously. Discussion on this proposal shall last until 00:00 UTC on 29 August 2004, at which time voting will commence. Please do not edit this proposal, or vote before voting officially begins.

Feel free to discuss the policy, and suggest changes that you think should be made, but do not please edit the proposal itself. blankfaze | (беседа!) 03:06, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The image at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Common_clownfish.jpg is used in the article Clownfish, yet the way it does so (within a table) somehow precludes discovering that fact via the usual automated "What links here" mechanisms. Can this be fixed? - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 02:47, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I doubt it's the table that's the problem. I suspect it's the template. The article doesn't actually contain a link to the image until the template is expanded. Note that Perciform, which is linked to in the same manner, also doesn't show Clownfish in its "What links here". -- Cyrius|✎ 03:53, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's aknown bug with templates, see Bug #48. andy 07:33, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As a workaround I've created the page Clownfish/template items. - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 22:21, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Moved to talk:Clownfish/template items since non-articles shouldn't be in the main namespace. Angela. 22:36, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks! - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 22:39, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Gmail invites

I have loads of Gmail invites if anyone wants one. Just drop a note on my talk page. blankfaze | (беседа!) 00:09, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Rargh. I've had Gmail ages and only just got 1 invite. Someone who got their account 2 weeks after me has had 5. Does it depend on how much you recieve or something? Darksun 08:12, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Activity seems to be what it depends on. [[User:Anárion|File:Anarion.png]] 10:02, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I have WikiEN-l, Wikipedia-l and the WikiEN-l admin emails all flowing into my Gmail, and only just got 4 invitations after having none for ages. I only got one after signing up. So I think it might be kind of random, really. Incidentally, I have 4 invites left now, as it seems my numbers have been replenished. If anyone wants one, leave me a message on my talk page. - Mark 16:00, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I got 6 invites to give immediately after sign up. Perhaps it's due to the activity of the user who invited me? zoney ▓█▒ talk 01:43, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I have a few to give out too. Email me or drop a note on my talk page. First come first served and all. —Morven 08:05, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)
Weird, I signed up and I have no invites. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 18:27, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There's nothing on the GMAIL article about invites. What are they?

You might want to actually read the article you mentioned, you'll find that it explains what they are. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 15:20, 2004 Aug 30 (UTC)

Language Disambiguation

Out of curiosity, how is disambiguation achieved with different languages? Sometimes a concept may be divided into two in another language or vice versa. Is there a special meta domain for such (bilingual) disambiguation or would people just add in links to multiple language pages if a page corresponds to two or more in another language? [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 23:55, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Most commonly, one just links to the most appropriate article in the other language; if there is another closely related meaning, you assume the articles will be linked within the other language's wikipedia. Is there a specific case you have in mind where this hasn't worked well, or is this really just "out of curiosity"? -- Jmabel 00:14, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it's just out of curiosity. But I imagine it could be a common issue. Sometimes a concept might not even occur to another language speaker as having the multiple connotations discussed on the page. (Even individual sections might require their own link...) [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 00:27, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Winter Olympic Games page...

Has been vandalised. I'm going to edit out the language in a minute - but because I'm new here, what's the protocol? Is there a saved version of a proper article that has been deleted? Or does it start from scratch again?

Sorry if this is the wrong place to put this...

Edit: Sorry - someone was on top of it, obviously. Is fixed now.  :)

No worries! :-) In the future, know that you can always click the link to the page's history (for most of us, that's the tab marked "history" at the top of the page) to view previous versions. When the list comes up, click on the time/date stamp of any previous version to bring up the old saved version. Now, while that old version is displayed, simply click on "edit" and then save the page -- essentially, you're writing over the current version of the article with the content of the old version. So, when a vandal comes through and writes "penis" all over a page, just open the history and select the last version of the page before the vandal's arrival and save it, thereby erasing the vandalism. Be warned, though -- if you do this (it's called a "revert" or a "reversion") to erase any edit except clear vandalism, it can be very controversial. If the edit you're looking at is biased but does add some information to the article, try not to revert, but rather to edit the page so as to retain the additional information and eliminate the bias. Jwrosenzweig 23:51, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Nationalism Issue.

Dear Wikipedians,

I'd like to ask your advice how to deal with the aggressive nationalism.

The problem with aggressive nationalists is that they reject the common knowledge. They accept only invented terms and invented events that are not shared by most scholars. It makes article to look non-encyclopedic (because other encyclopedias use a scientific terms) and, what is even worse, the articles became incomprehensible to the common public.

If you prevent them from making extremely biased contributions, they start to vandalize user pages and to make different accusations. I don't care too much, even Angela's page is often vandalized too, but I'd like to ask those who have the experience in dealing agressive nationalism. Please, share your experience!

And also, maybe we should elaborate a bit more precise regulations related to nationalism and common use? Or I missed something, and it is done already?

Dr Bug  (Volodymyr V. Medeiko) 22:25, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia will always be better than the alternatives in this regard - because even if there's nationalist editors, there's enough of a variety that articles here are a lot less likely to be biased than in any deadwood encyclopaedia. History for example, will be attacked by such a variety of viewpoints, it will never look like the biased version that we are familiar with in our respective countries. So the only downside to it all, is that people will occasionally fail to work out an NPOV version. (Well, perhaps a bit more than occasionally - but it seems by and large to work in the end) zoney ▓█▒ talk 22:43, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I sympathize very much with your concern. (I defined the wiktionary term for "nationist" at Wiktionary's neologisms page to create a term as strong as racist to refer to nationalism in an inherently bad sense.) Maybe you could tactfully find a way to point out that distortions actually make the group they are representing look worse rather than better. You might also try to draw out of them a sense that it is not us vs. them but that their group is a valued part of our world culture. If they are religious, it may help to draw attention to the fact that the Deity recognized by their religious tradition does not see the world according to the piece of dirt people are born on. You should also be sure that your own prejudices as we all have are not missing some grain of truth in their own arguments. [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 03:47, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Transcluding pages (including special pages like WhatLinksHere, etc.) into a page

Is there a way (for Mediawiki software in general if it is not enabled on Wikipedia too) to get a webpage transcluded into a page (besides templates which I know can be transcluded)? How about "WhatLinksHere" or other Special command pages specifically? Other wiki software has this, and it can be very useful, especially if one can control the paramaters (e.g., how many items to show, etc.). Thanks. [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 20:31, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I know in particular that Special:Whatlinkshere/Frog works, for example. I'm not sure if this is special or if other generated pages allow to specify a parameter. I also don't know how to specify multiple parameters. Derrick Coetzee 01:20, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks...By transclusion, I meant that these links could be included inside of another page. For example, if someone on the Frog page wanted to show also on that same page everything that linked to that page (without needing to click "What links here"), some code could be inserted inside the Frog page to include that information. [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 20:12, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Is it ever possible to ban troublesome but non-malicious users?

If you have a user who does not appear to be malicious, but repeatedly inserts misleading and nonsensical material, is it ever possible to ban them? I'm thinking of a particular user who (for at least a year) has been editing physics topics to insert either garbled gibberish (which is merely embarrassing for Wikipedia) and/or to give misleading prominence to extreme fringe viewpoints or even stating them as fact. Worse, he usually fights tooth and nail any attempts to edit the material into a more mainstream form. Worse, he often comes back at a much later time and re-inserts similar or identical problematic material on another page.

I'm not naming names at this point...I just want to know if it's worth even bothering to complain about users who do more harm than good?

—Steven G. Johnson 17:48, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

PS. I have no problem with including fringe science viewpoints, as long as they are clearly stated as such and as long as they are not given a prominence out of proportion to their acceptance... especially when they have not even been published in mainstream peer-reviewed journals.

The user is recognizable even to a non-physicist. I agree that this is a big problem, particularly on scientific articles...or rather articles that ought to be scientific. But it seems that if an advocate for phlogiston insists, every sentence in the "combustion" article must adapt itself to his liking. It would be good to have a mechanism for dealing with this, but the short answer seems to be that we have no mechanism for dealing with this (other than continued tooth-and-nail defense of sanity in each article) and no one has ever been kicked off (or asked nicely to leave) for advocating nutball theories...though some have been kicked off because they were obnoxious while advocating nutball theories. - Nunh-huh 18:11, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
User:Mr-Natural-Health is now serving a 3 month ban after being very forthright about complementary and alternative medicine. There's no doubt he was being obnoxious. see [7]
I think if you have around 3 people who are confident in their knowledge of a technical or difficult subject you can be pretty firm in marginalising or even erasing any content you feel is out there as you will have a consensus between you. All the user with more, shall we say, challenging ideas can do then is to reinsert what you've moved or deleted, and if they continue to do that in the face of a different person moving/erasing each time they can be identified as a problem user.
You can always ask for references in support of the worrying material too. That can be quite revealing: seeing what the sources are ;o)
If it really has got to a tooth and nail stage, that implies to me that an edit war is in progress and there are definitely procedures to deal with that. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 18:46, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
(a) With any particular page, eventually a number of users have been able to come to bear against this particular individual. (At least until the user comes back and re-inserts a few weeks or months later when the other users have stopped paying attention.) But when a user inserts things in tens and hundreds of pages, it becomes a full-time job to keep up with him. Why should Wikipedia be forced to repeatedly repair the damage caused by one user?
(b) When it comes to historical sequence of arguments and evidence about particular experiments, good sources often aren't available online and most people don't know the history well enough to tell fact from fiction offhand. Moreover, if a person doesn't care about accuracy it is easy to insert claims ("such-and-such experiment was inaccurate") that take substantial effort to refute definitively by someone who does care about accuracy. Why should Wikipedians be saddled with the effort of laboriously refuting the writings of someone who repeatedly slips in inaccuracies?
(c) Outright edit-wars (repeated reversions) can be stopped. But what about when every time you fix a a page, the user inserts some of the old material, or the old material in new words, or changes a sentence here and there...you get in a "two-steps-forward, one-step-back" situation that is a full-time job to keep up with. That's what I mean by "tooth-and-nail". Why should Wikipedia tolerate this?
In any open-source project, if one programmer persistently and unrepentantly inserted buggy code, he would be kicked out. Why should Wikipedia be different? —Steven G. Johnson 19:35, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

Why not start down the dispute process? Start a request for comments on this user. Theresa Knott (Hot net streak!) 19:42, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Are you saying that a user can certainly be banned for the kind of behavior I described, assuming it is demonstrated clearly? —Steven G. Johnson 21:39, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
You're going to have a very difficult time trying to get Reddi banned. Doppelgänger 20:07, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Steven, I hesitate to comment too much (as an arbitrator, I'm still trying to figure out how much I should say about problems and conflicts that are not yet in my purview, lest I make myself into a standing recusal), but I have a few thoughts for you. Let us suppose (and I won't trust our Doppel-friend's guess here, as I don't have any idea who is being discussed) that the user in question is not verbally abusive when confronted. Even so, if they consistently disregard Wikipedia:NPOV after it has been clearly demonstrated to them, and if they appear to be contributing in bad faith, the arbitration committee, I think, would be willing to consider sanctions (though a ban might be unlikely unless the pattern of behavior was significant). Obviously, if the user in question was sanctioned and continued to disregard policy, bans would be very much more on the table. The difficulty is demonstrating to a 3rd party's satisfaction that a user is not merely possessed of unusual opinions (or opinions almost universally considered incorrect), but that the user is somehow violating the principles and policies of this site in the advocating of their positions. I would suggest you go to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration and consider the case now in arbitration concerning Lyndon LaRouche. I believe many of the issues in that case might be more broadly applicable to the situation you describe. The short answer is that we often do have to put up with fringe opinion here, even when it seems to be making our articles "bad" -- or rather, we cannot simply ban someone for inserting their beliefs. We can seek to correct the articles, inform the user, and ensure policy is upheld. If a user, for example, reinserts said information again and again, after consensus obviously opposes its inclusion, then you have a more clearcut case that may well deserve banning, or censure at the least. I'm sorry this is so vague and long-winded, but I hope it helps to know the opinion of at least one of the members of the oft-maligned AC. If you wish to discuss this with me further, please feel free to drop a note on my talk page or to email me (address available at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee). And please know that anything you do to make Wikipedia a calmer, more rational place, and a more reliable and authoritative source of information is more than appreciated by me, to say nothing of the many others who would agree. Jwrosenzweig 23:45, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Jwrosenzweig, thanks for your comments. It's good to know that there is a process by which such behavior can be dealt with collectively, instead of forcing individuals to chase down one edit after another. I can see that it will take some effort, and probably a fair amount of time, to put together a convincing rationale for sanctions, and it's a painful course that I do not enter lightly, but I'll look into it. —Steven G. Johnson 00:30, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
The AC can't do anything. The most they would do (and I must emphasize that this is highly unlikely) is deliberate for a month and then declare a light penalty, like a ban for a couple of months. Reddi is a calm, patient guy, he would probably take such a sentence in his stride. Just keep at him until you are sick of it, and hope that there is someone else to take your place when you give up. -- Tim Starling 02:46, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

The trouble with this is that science is not a cut and dried business with a 'right' and 'wrong' answer. All of the more interesting areas are disputed, with heated debate between scientists. To gang up on one user because they don't agree with you is jsut narrow minded and biggotted. -Anon

I think the only correct course of action is to, after a vote, "protect" well developed articles and reasonably finished ones from further change unless a census has been formed to allow further changes. --Matthewdikmans 14:24, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No! That is totally antiwiki. Having to reach a consensus for every edit would slow the editing process down to a snails pace, put off anon editors and lead to a huge amount of frustration. The great thing about wikipedia is that the good gus outnumber the bad by a huge margin. Reverting may be a pain - but it is effective. Theresa Knott (The token star) 08:31, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In house search not working?

The in-house search has not been working for me for a while. I have not seen any mention of a problem. Is it just me?
Bobblewik  (talk) 17:35, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If I understand the question correctly, I've been seeing it flip-flop between real-time search and the google/yahoo cache search several times a day, for at least the past few days. Niteowlneils 19:26, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Maybe two times per day, not several. The behaviour can be summed up with the following: 

$tmarray = getdate(time());
$hour = $tmarray['hours'];
if ( $hour >= 7 && $hour < 23 ) {
   $wgDisableTextSearch = true;
}

In other words it's disabled between 07:00 and 23:00 UTC. We have more database hardware on order, which hopefully will allow us to enable it all the time without causing problems for site-wide performance. -- Tim Starling 02:29, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

Is there a way to make it disabled/enabled based on the load average figures instead? Or is the network link the bottleneck? BACbKA 09:15, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Project for the terminally bored: A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature by John W. Cousin

Convert this to a whole bunch of usable Wikipedia articles. A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, by John W. Cousin (1910) - one-paragraph listings on a huge number of authors. Just released by Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders - David Gerard 15:53, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • And I quote, -clears throat - "The primary aim of this book is to give as much information about English authors, including under this designation American and Colonial writers, as the prescribed limits will admit of. At the same time an attempt has been made, where materials exist for it, to enhance the interest by introducing such details as tend to illustrate the characters and circumstances of the respective writers and the manner in which they passed through the world"...
  • ...ah, they don't write 'em like that any more, do they? Thank Heavens... --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 18:52, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
  • Like this? I copied the footnote style from Template:1911, I couldn't think of a snappy name to give it if I made it a template itself. —Stormie 03:38, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

HTML -> Wiki Table Conversion?

Is there a online script that converts HTML tables into the Wikimedia table markup (with pipes)? I've only found Düsentrieb's csv2wiki... Kokiri 15:37, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There's one here :) - 15:42, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
I also have one at http://www.wackyboy.com/ConvertHtmlTableToWikiTable.html Kevin Rector 21:58, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
Man, everyone's got one of these things :-) [8] --Diberri | Talk 22:08, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
http://pywikipediabot.sourceforge.net/ can even do this to articles for you. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 09:07, 2004 Sep 1 (UTC)

Non-commercial images

Just the other day someone was emphasising a recent change in the non-acceptability of uploading 'non-commercal use' images - ie. we just want PD and GFDL images. But now I can't find it, and no reference on Wikipedia:Image use policy. Can anyone point me to the new policy. -- Solipsist 08:27, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Jimbo declared it in a mailing list post. See Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ for a discussion and a link to Jimbo's declaration. →Raul654 15:45, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, it was the link to Jimbo's declaration that I was looking for.
It might be an idea to update the Wikipedia:Image_use_policy to mention the new policy. I think its the first page we direct new editors to when they want to upload an image - and I can't see an obvious path of links to Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ. The next page you are likely to look at is Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags (both from here and Special:Upload) which still includes non-commercial licence tags under the Creative-Commons section. -- Solipsist 16:27, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Permission letters

I have come across articles that use privately owned material (especially images) after the contributor wrote to the owner via e-mail and received permission.

On the one hand, I think it is great that contributors are taking the copyright issues seriously and getting permission. On the other hand, I have a question: Is there (or should there be) any place on wikipedia for recording/storing such permission letters so that there will be a public record of them?Dovi 08:23, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know of a public place for storing permission letters. (Would copying someone else's e-mail without express permission constitute a copyright violation?) Personally, I keep a record at User:Diberri/Work in progress of all the copyright-related issues I've handled, and keep a backup of correspondence on my PC. --Diberri | Talk 09:20, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
I think copies of both (request and permission) the emails should go on the image description page, so that it is clear exactly what was asked and what was agreed to. I don't think this would violate copyright, If this wasn't "fair use" i don't know what would be. Theresa Knott 10:50, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Duplicate article

When I type in 'duplicate article' in the search box, the top 10 results are:

  1. Calvin and Hobbes (47603 bytes)
  2. Cache (5566 bytes)
  3. Database management system (17245 bytes)
  4. Ecstasy (16397 bytes)
  5. James Bond (31113 bytes)
  6. Jargon File (7547 bytes)
  7. Josiah Wedgwood (4987 bytes)
  8. Logarithm (13778 bytes)
  9. Media bias (11223 bytes)
  10. Open Directory Project (29022 bytes)

Where can I learn more about how searching wikipedia works, since I am clearly missing something... Thanks 213.206.33.82 06:27, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

For details on searching Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Searching. I'm not sure what you were intending to search for, but there is a list of duplicate articles at Wikipedia:Duplicate articles. --Diberri | Talk 09:24, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! I was looking for the list of duplicate articles. I was surprised that the search engine threw out so many apparently completely unrelated hits.

By default, the search engine searches only the article namespace (that is, the blank namespace). This is typically the desired behavior, as there's giant piles of Wikipedia: and Talk: pages that the average searcher doesn't want to get pointed at. Logged-in users can change the default behavior in their preferences, and anyone can change the namespaces searched on the actual search page (when it's turned on...). -- Cyrius|✎ 09:43, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What would cause it to throw out Calvin and Hobbes and James Bond though?

  • Calvin's duplicator, of course! I have no idea about James Bond, though.Ðåñηÿßôý | Talk 04:47, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Proposed Tutorial Video for Wikipedia (comments sought; not a dispute)

(I've also added this section to Wikipedia:Requests for comment, but since it is time-sensitive, I wanted to bring it to your attention here as well, to whatever extent others may wish to help and participate.)

I have temporarily added a tentative instructional video script for Wikipedia as a subpage of my user page. I hope to put together the video within the next week. It is to be mostly for beginners (though it might showcase some more advanced but common interest features of use) on how to use and contribute to Wikipedia.

I am actually preparing this for the purposes of an unrelated conference, and since this conference is to be next week (I leave September 2 and plan to wrap up the "filming" of screen-videos by Monday August 30 if not earlier), I do not have much time, at least for this version, so I would be most grateful for any prompt feedback.

I am mostly concerned now about making sure everything is accurate, although people are free to make comments on clarity, organization, content, etc., and suggest their own alterations or adds, as I'd like to do what I can to make it better all around. You can still make comments after the date as well, though I'm not absolutely sure I will have the energy and time to make revisions at that point.

However, as I would like to make this script (and any videos I can create off of these scripts) under the GNU free documentation license (can videos fall under this license as well as text?) and if possible make this available from Wikipedia (Wikimedia could use this or add to it as they like as well) at least as a link if not hosted here, anyone else would be subsequently welcome to modify the script as they pleased (translating, adding, deleting, whatever).

In the meantime, the tenative script is at User:Brettz9/videoscript. Feel free to add comments to its Talk page.

Best wishes, [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 05:30, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have now added one more small introductory section at the beginning ) now just called "Background"... Thanks... [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 21:46, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I had an x-ray of my teeth a while ago, I need my wisdoms out :(

I was wondering who owns the copyright on the x-ray?

I know the guy who did the x-ray (although i don't know if it was him or a student who pushed the button), so he could give me GFDL permission if he had copyright. The problem is that it was done at a Dental School, so do they have copyright over everything their employees produce?

It's my health information, so I own the 'information' (whatever that is), but the film is owned by the Dent School.

I'd appreciate others thoughts/facts on this T 04:57, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If X-ray photography follows the conventions of other professional photography, the person taking the picture has the copyright unless you agree otherwise with them. I do not know whether this is the case though.

This is an interesting case. UK and European data protection laws say that you have some control over the image, but this is primarly what is *not* done with it, rather than what *is* done with it (for example, the person who took the x-ray couldn't post it on wikipedia without your permission - even if he owns the copyright). I'd contact the dental school and ask them for permission, just to be sure though. Darksun 10:04, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is a problem of privacy rather than ownership of the image. The doctor cannot publish your photo (x-ray, etc.) without your consent in the same way as he cannot publish your clinical data without your consent. He owns the x-ray in the same way as the person who takes a photo of you owns the negative. Pfortuny 15:55, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If someone takes your photograph, sie owns the (copy)rights to it. In some juristictions, there are limitations to how it can be used, and that is especially true for clinical data, I believe. However, the person who took the photo definitely owns more than the negative. — David Remahl 19:00, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In the U.S., for a work to be protected by copyright, there needs to be some creativity involved. A purely scientific photograph, that simply documents objectively is probably not elligible for copyright protection. Granted, not a lot is required for a work to be considered creative, but putting a piece of film at a fixed position in your mouth and pushing a button is almost certainly not enough. In my opinion, the x-ray is public domain. — David Remahl 19:00, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Imagine this thought experiment. A professional photographer takes your photograph. He owns the copyright. If you step into a photo-me boothe, put your dollar in, and get the photo, who owns it? You, or the company that owns the boothe? I think you do. But what if there is a person opperating the booth - let's say loading the film and making sure you are sqaure to the camera, then pressing the button, in much the same way the X-ray technician does. Who owns it?

I've asked my friend to make a copy for me, and i'll try to get a nice digital photo of it. I think the best bet is to ask the dental school, although I don't think they'll actually care. It's unlikely that they'll ever want to publish my boring x-ray in any other source.

In terms of privacy, I always thought a doctor/dentist/etc could use the photos without my permission, as long as I was not identifiable. It'll be quite cool to have my dental records on wikipedia, just in case i ever go missing. :-) I'll try to get a copy of the post-wisdom teeth removal if i can too. T 05:15, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A measure of Wikipedia's spread

Apropos of the last entry, I just did a medium edit on Ambrose Bierce. In the course of working on it, I did a Google search on "bierce mckinley assassination hearst" and got 267 returns. I clicked around and noticed most hits read the same, and, in fact, were the same Wikipedia article on William McKinley. I did another search on "bierce mckinley assassination hearst -wikipedia" and got only 68 hits, meaning the McKinley article or a variant was appearing in 199 places. That is, 75 per cent of the web sites discussing Bierce's part in the McKinley assasination are relying on Wikipedia Ortolan88 03:07, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Another interesting way to measure is searching for Michaelisms... there are incorrect dates for Punk groups all over the net. AdmN 03:25, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, often now I want to get more information on a topic, only to discover that the first set of Google hits are for copies of a Wikipedia article on the topic that I edited—in other words, the hits are for something that will not provide me with any more information than I already have! So -wikipedia has become part of my Google vocabulary as well.... -Sewing (山道子) - talk 14:02, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I created a script that uses minus wikipedia to search for copyright violations. To my dismay it discovered a lot more noncompliant mirrors than it did copyright vios, or else sites where Google never got to the notice at the bottom of a long page. Your 75% estimate is probably entirely too low. Derrick Coetzee 14:16, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Maybe Google should ignore copies of Wikipedia articles and just give the source of the duplicate articles, Wikipedia itself. If there are a lot of duplicate articles, it'll just "rank" Wikipedia higher. Who wants a bunch of duplicate articles? Just give Wikipedia and ignore the mirrors and forks. Just MHO. — Frecklefoot | Talk 17:27, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Google wouldn't ignore copies so simply. We just have to enforce the GFDL, threaten to sue if need be. If everyone complied with the GFDL, Wikipedia would have the highest page-rank over its copies and should appear first. [[User:Siroxo|Here is a schmancy new signature and a line of text that is long enough to show how it might look when there is some stuff coming before it. Please take a look at it to bask it in all of its radiant glory

—siroχo

—siroχo 



#627562



#7b967b

#4d6c94]] 20:09, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

How to correctly use Wikipedia content on my website

I understand how important abiding by the GNU FDL from what I've read on these posts so I want to make sure that I correctly use content from Wikipedia on my own website. I would like to take snippets of Wikipedia articles to use as descriptions for certain animals and plants on my website. Does this mean that the page on which that Wikipedia content exists on my site completely becomes under the FDL? Or can I say that this text snippet is under the FDL and the rest is copyrighted by me? Am I allowed to display my own copyright on the page? Thanks. --psyphyre 01:56, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

You might want to check out the sites listed on Wikipedia:Copies of Wikipedia content (high degree of compliance). Basically, we want a sentence saying (a) that you are using content from Wikipedia (and you have to link to either the main page, or (preferably) the article itself) and (b) that it is available under the terms of the GFDL (and you have to link to the GFDL). As to your other questions, I'm not sure. →Raul654 01:58, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
If you're taking small sections, you don't need to comply with the GFDL at all; just quote it and indicate the source (preferably including a link) and this is fair use. If you're taking larger sections, I don't think the GFDL has the "infectious" property of the GPL, but you would have to clearly delineate which sections are Wikipedia-based and place those under the GFDL, with a credit to Wikipedia and a link to the page, and explicitly reserve all rights to other sections, just to be careful. Derrick Coetzee 14:11, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Someone who knows what they are talking about ought to write a clear, easily accessible page on these matters. Wikipedia is "the free encyclopedia" so we should be very happy to oblige people who want to use our content. An FAQ explaining all the relevant information would be very helpful for anyone wanting to make use of what have created here. — Trilobite (Talk) 22:59, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Server problems?

I got this on Special:Randompage a couple of times, then, er, I got it when I tried to get onto the Village pump! Now I'm here, so here's the server error I saw:

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-new/includes/LoadBalancer.php on line 107

Yours, -山道子 (Sewing) - talk 01:19, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've been getting this about a third of the time I try to update Recent Changes, so it's not just you--also everything seems to be stuck in mud today. Time to do something else for a while, LOL. Antandrus 01:35, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Bloody algebra I hate it

Would mathematicians/Physicists go to Roche Limit and check the derivation. I've stopped near the end because I can see I'm going to be out by a factor of 8. I can't see what I'm doing wrong (editing very late at night is a bad idea. I'm stupid enough when I'm awake). Thanks. Theresa Knott 00:57, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The numbers seem to be right, but the initial assumption is flawed i think. You handle the smaller body as two spheres with radius s, distance 2s. According to World of Physics, they assume only one smaller body, and take one arbitrary mass u on the surface of the smaller body. Next they balance the gravitational pull on this mass toward the smaller body (G*m*u/(2*r^2)) with the pull toward the larger body (G*M*u/(2*d^2)) (where d is tehcnically the distance from the center of the larger body to the surface of the smaller body). I am crunching numbers right now. -- Chris 73 Talk 02:02, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
I fixed it, but as Chris 73 said, if you keep the (2s)^2 in the denominator you end up with an extra 4 so you don't get the right answer. Wuzzeb 02:38, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I fixed it, too. Wuzzeb beat me by a few minutes. I actually replaced Wuzzeb's edit with mine, since mine was more detailed and had a more consistent nomenclature (i think). Hope this is OK. I also removed the image, since it no longer explained the used variables.-- Chris 73 Talk 02:44, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, your version is cleaner and better worded. I fixed the image and put it back on the page as well. Wuzzeb 03:41, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. Isn't collaborative editing great! I love Wikipedia Theresa Knott 08:37, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
But you should love Wikipedia and algebra! You've only won half the battle. Dysprosia 09:53, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You've seen how badly i type? My maths is just as bad. (Whoops I put a plus instead of a minus, whoops I lost a power on the way, etc). I'll never love algebra for that reason. Programming is even worse. I remember spending hours at university trying to find out why a qbasic program wouldn't run in my "introduction to programming" course. I couldn't spot the error and neither could my instructor. Eventually he came back the following week and told me I'd typed x where I should have typed X. Grrrr Theresa Knott (Hot net streak!) 19:54, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As Donald Norman would say, don't blame yourself for a bad design - real programming languages produce an error in this case. Derrick Coetzee 21:25, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Infobox craze

Tables are fun to play with, and effective at conveying tables of data. But when a table takes over the screen in order to list a handful of facts that merely duplicate the opening sentence of the article, then that table is junk. In particular, a table is not required to give the title of a book, its author, and the date of publication. You can use a "sentence" to convey the same information in a smaller space, saving room to actually write the rest of the article. See [9] for a truly horrible example. Gdr 23:15, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)

Redundant infobox : Check.
Horrid pink box in the middle of the page to act as a "spoiler warning", despite book being a classic (We'll be putting them in Shakespeare next) Check.
I read the article on Macbeth before I was finished reading the play and it told me how Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. Just totally spoiled it for me. Now I'm reading the Bible and I'm not going to read any Wikipedia articles about the Bible until I get to the end and know how it turns out.
Categorized in an extremely small category. Check. (Though admittedly this category could and will be expanded).

The novel infobox is a product of Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Novels, though several people there seem not to like it, but it has survived anyhow. The pink spoiler box is a product of Template:Spoiler, home of several pink box fans (though they can't explain why they like it). Pcb21| Pete 00:03, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Though I suspect you already know it, I'm compelled to point out that we already "thoughtfully" include spoiler warnings on much of Shakespeare (e.g. King Lear, Romeo and Juliet), and that we equally "thoughtfully" often provide the warning that "plot details are revealed" right after the heading "Plot". - Nunh-huh 05:08, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Heh, there are spoiler warnings for Richard III and Henry VI part I, but not for Richard II and Henry V. I guess we have a policy somewhere on interpreting how much Shakespeare had to make up before his histories deserve spoiler warnings. Pcb21| Pete 07:29, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Worse yet, we give away the fact that King Lear is a tragedy in the first sentence, well before our spoiler warning! Perhaps we need a rule that we must insert "spoiler space" before the body of each article that might contain information.... - Nunh-huh 21:19, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes. Stop marking texts with these silly boxes and templates. Does every article about a ruler of a territory need an enormous centered box at the bottom giving predecessor and successor. I agree that information is good to have. I'd be happier standardizing on always including that information as a final single-paragraph sentence. Jallan 00:35, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Does every article about a ruler... need a ... box at the bottom giving successor and predecessor? Yes. Yes it does. --Golbez 02:21, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Rulers aren't really my bag, but I do like seeing succesor and predecessor on them when I somehow end up looking at one. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 02:35, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
I totally agree with having predecessor and successor information in such articles. I've added such information myself to some articles before these big box templates started turning up everywhere. No-one here has claimed that the information that appears in boxes and templates should not appear, but that boxes are overused and make the presentation of the material worse rather than better. For succession information, a short standard summary sentence in each article would would do as well, something like: "In #### YYYY succeeded XXXX to the throne of AAAAA, reigned for ## years, and in #### died/abdicated/vanished/was exiled and was succeeded by ZZZZ". Make it a standard that it is a separate paragraph to appear under the lead paragraph or the last sentence in the lead paragraph. Problem solved without need of a big, honking box that doesn't give as much information. And odd variations like intermediate exile during a reign or succession to more than one territory during a rule can be flexibly incorporated. Neither a box or a template is needed. Jallan 18:09, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't agree, I'm afraid. I like the boxes at the bottom giving the predecessors and successors in official posts. It avoids cluttering the article with the information. -- Necrothesp 21:41, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I sooooo loathe having those things interpolated into a novel. If Moll Flanders gets a table, it just makes it look fluffy, IMO. To me, all these graphical objects make serious works of literature look like infobytes that one finds plastered in USA Today and crawling along the bottom of CNN. They take away the seriousness. When I wrote (pretty much) Moll Flanders, I wove tiny incidents of the plot into a discussion of Defoe's career, interests, and genre. Then, -boing!-, a salmon colored Spoiler box was shoved incongruously in there. Ick. No, I didn't revert it or cut it out. I figured that someone thought he was making the article better, and I didn't want to offend, but I don't read for plot, and plot is the least important thing in 18th century novels. (Thanks guys, I feel better having gotten that off my chest.) Geogre 02:15, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The execrable "spoiler warning" is under discussion at Template talk:Spoiler. - Nunh-huh 02:33, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

We should have these warnings on science articles too - it is horrible to find the results of an experiment plastered on a page here, it removes all of the joy and suspense of reading the paper. Likewise news, when I see the front page, the news for the day is ruined for me.

:). The economists don't need spoiler warnings on their articles though - they haven't got a clue what's going on. Pcb21| Pete 09:36, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I edited The Man Who Was Thursday into shape: compare before [10] and after [11]. Gdr 13:51, 2004 Aug 25 (UTC)

An incredible amount of Wikitime is used in tinkering...and tinkering...and tinkering with the format of taxoboxes. I don't understand it, and I don't have a lot of time to spend on Wikipedia, so I generally ignore it. But I've often wondered if the time could have been better spent improving content.Pollinator 14:19, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

A yes, the mythical wiki-man-month. I think that most contributors are only contributing to something because they're legitimately interested in it. If someone is interested in taxoboxes or spoiler warnings and is going to improve it that's fine. I doubt that they would drop that interest and start researching dinosaurs or something random instead. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 14:48, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Infoboxes are eeeevil... I hate it when inappropriate articles get them. They're concise, but ugly. Infoboxes are a necessary evil for articles about countries or leaders, though. But still...it drives me mad to see an inappropriate article getting such a table, or even worse, crowding it with data. Johnleemk | Talk 16:29, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Just curious, how do you feel about the infobox at Lowe's Motor Speedway, et.al.? (the list of races may seem redundant but that's because few minor leagues race at Lowe's. I need to go back and work on that anyway. ) --Golbez 17:00, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Even if overused, infoboxes have their place. For example, music album articles benefit from them, as many audiophiles desire quick, organized access to such information. However I agree that some, if not most of them get clogged with excessive data, and this should be kept to a minimum. I also agree that most books have no need of an infobox, although their ISBNs should be given somewhere near the bottom of the article!
On the other hand, navigational templates (including the "predecessor/succesor" boxes) are almost always a good thing, as they make the encyclopedia easier to navigate for those perusing articles. Perhaps some of the negatve feeling against all boxes is that most of them are ugly. Many have those age-old, pseudo-3D html borders that everybody loves to hate. If a one pixel medium gray border were used everywhere instead, it would look much nicer. Given all the tools we are, we might as well use them to help make Wikipedia as easy to use as possible, even if it bends the traditions of former encyclopedias.[[User:Siroxo|Here is a schmancy new signature and a line of text that is long enough to show how it might look when there is some stuff coming before it. Please take a look at it to bask it in all of its radiant glory

—siroχo

—siroχo 



#627562



#7b967b

#4d6c94]] 22:18, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Which is what I've been trying to say. Try to make things noticeable but subtle rather than big and ugly. Jallan 00:32, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There's some work being done on the succession info boxes in my sandbox and Adam Bishop's. Please have a look and comment. —Michael Z. 19:10, 2004 Aug 28 (UTC)

The Thumbnailing craze

To me, the 300 pixel size was a good idea for photos that seems to have gone by the board. It is an ideal size to add visual impact to an article, without overwhelming browsers or slow connections.

The glory of Wikipedia, I thought, was that, as a non "dead tree" publication, we could "waste" a few electrons, and make the articles really live. Our layout options are somewhat limited by the format, but good pictures can make some articles real gems.

But a bunch of people have, in my opinion, been running amuk, thumbnailing everything. Why!?

There is a place for thumbnails; I use them myself. But many articles that were greatly enhanced by an appropriate photo, are now degraded by unintelligible thumbnails that require an additional step, and the viewing of more info that often has no relevance to the article.

On a few occasions I have reverted thumbnails. I've been tempted far more times. I am aware that not all my photos are brilliant, and sometimes have just let it go, but I find my enthusiam to contribute photos is declining. Naturally I keep best track of my own photos, but I would think this to be true for other photographers as well.

I think Wikipedians should establish some guidelines. At least one full sized image that adds to an article should NOT be thumbnailed. And many images that "go to pieces" cannot be thumbnailed. Non-photographers need to be especially cautious about thumbnailing, as they may not have the "eye" for good photos or layout. Some thumbnailing should not be so bold, but should be done only by consensus.

At any rate, I toss these ideas out for discussion. How about some policy specifications? Pollinator 16:36, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

  • Actually, you'll hate me then. When there's no need to resize an image, I like to use the "frame" option to add a frame and caption. It just looks so neat and tidy and pretty. zoney ▓█▒ talk 16:42, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • The main reason I use them is to avoid having to upload separate "large" and "small" versions. I can see why it would be a problem if the thumbnails were too small to be intelligible, but that's a bad choice of sizing and/or poor image design (too much complexity, too-small details, or other things that are lost in size-reduction), not a result of thumbnailing. Thumbnailing lets us have a greatly detailed, near print-quality image and, if the image is designed with thumbnailing in mind, a perfectly intelligible thumbnail-sized image all in one. It also gives article editors far more flexibility iin deciding what an appropriate image size is, rather than assuming that 300px is going to be okay for all situations. -- Wapcaplet 18:49, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I use thumbnail, but with a 250px (or whatever) parameter ... seems the best of all worlds to me. I venture to suggest the problem is not marauding thumbnailers, but marauding thumbnailers unaware that you can define the image size, and with little eye for page composition. --Tagishsimon
  • As a matter of aesthetics, some images should not be thumbnailed, especially diagrams and screenshots, especially ones that are already small (see older versions of The Legend of Zelda). In many cases, a specifically constructed smaller version, such as by cropping, shrinking, and sharpening, looks a lot better. This is common practice on many art webpages. In this case the smaller version's image page should link to the larger version. On the other hand, for many images simply shrinking them works fine and eliminates work for everyone. Should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Derrick Coetzee 19:13, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • The struggle between least-common-denominator and good-looking goes on - I think eventually the sizing calculations will have to be under less manual control, for print purposes and the like - 300px is kind of wide for screens, distorts formatting around it, but would be too small for most printed works. So I don't spend a lot of time worrying about image sizes; more important to get them in there, so they're available to use (maybe not even in the article you anticipated), and also to discourage uploading of images with undesirable licenses. I think it's safe to say there will be several more rounds of image markup tinkering before it really stabilizes at something we all like, while properly-licensed images will become more valuable as the dubious ones get scrubbed out. Stan 19:26, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Pollinator, can you give some examples of photos that have been treated badly by thumbnailing? I'm not sure I understand your criticism yet. Large pictures are important when they are the subject of the article (for example Mona Lisa needs a large picture), but when used as illustrations a large picture can take over the article, distort formatting, and leave little room for text (a good size for the Mona Lisa article would not be so good for the Leonardo da Vinci article, where it has to share the space with other illustrations). I see that you carefully size your pictures to fit the article context you have in mind; perhaps this is why you are unhappy when others resize them. You might do better to upload the biggest image you have, let the software scale it, and not worry too much that its not perfect. That's what I do. I know the thumbnail software isn't very good at the moment but it will get better — and when it gets better every big picture will benefit automatically. Think ahead to the hypothetical print version... Gdr 23:40, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)
    • Ah, I see that you don't want to upload the original image because you don't want to license it under the GFDL. But on the other hand you are annoyed when someone resizes your carefully prepared reduction. Maybe you just can't have it both ways? Gdr 23:40, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)
      • Perhaps a concrete example would help. One of Pollinator's striking photographs (full frame) can be found at Windpump. Judge for yourself whether the page layout works, or whether some thumbnailing would help. -- Solipsist 08:14, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
        • Framed both images because I feel that they look better that way. Framing, I think, offers a good compromise between the desire to thumb/annotate and the desire to include an original image in its full glory. --[[User:Ardonik|Ardonik(talk)]] 02:54, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)
      • Example: Niagara Falls was thumbnailed. I reverted that one.Pollinator 14:15, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
        • Is is acceptable like this? [12] Gdr 16:32, 2004 Aug 25 (UTC)
      • Yup, that one almost certainly better full frame. Have you tried the 'frame' option that Zoney was mentioning. It would help separate the image from the horizontal rule and gives a cleaner caption.... Hang on Gdr got there before I had finnished typing. -- Solipsist 16:34, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
        • The Niagra Falls one is a good size. Too much detail lost if that particular photo is smaller. But each of the photos in Windpump is larger than the article itself--almost as tall as a smaller screen--and there's no important detail to be seen. They could both be half as high/wide or even smaller and not affect the info they're conveying in the article. Elf | Talk 22:05, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
          • I think the first photo on the Windpump article is a good size. The second doesn't fit, though, but the best solution would be to add text until it does. Right now, before there's more text, there's really no good solution. anthony (see warning) 00:27, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • As I've mentioned on the pump afew weeks ago, I think we should not give pixels for images unless there's a specific reason. Why? Because what looks great on my screen (in my browser) will look horrible in yours. I suggested a setting (small/medium/large) in the user settings, so everyone can set to see the thumbs accordingly. Of course, there will be always reasons to specify the size of an image exactly. I hope that these settings will be implemented one day. Kokiri 16:38, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • That's a good point; many times, a more fuzzy setting such as small/medium/large would be perfectly adequate. Though I'm a bit hazy - do you mean that instead of specifying "200px" in the image thumbnail, we'd say "small", etc.? That alone seems fairly pointless, since "small" is just going to translate into some predetermined number of pixels anyway. Having such an item as a user preference (i.e., "Image thumbnail quality: ()small ()medium ()large") might be handy, and could help with bandwidth issues too (modem users could stick with small thumbnails - though, this would also mean they'd more frequently need to view the full version, since a smaller thumbnail may not be clear enough) but it seems like extra work for already taxed servers; three differently-sized thumbnails would need to be generated for each image, for each sizing that is used in any article, and roughly tripling the disk usage for thumbnail images. The ability to specify pixel-widths in image syntax is of vital importance in many thumbnails; for instance, when I do a large, high-res diagram for some article, I choose the thumbnail size carefully so that most of the relevant detail is still visible - that there are still enough pixels to show the detail. If all I had to go on was "medium," that would be far less flexible. -- Wapcaplet 21:32, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I admit that I have recently thumbnailed an image for the sole reason that I wanted to give it a caption and did not know about the frame option. Maybe somebody could point me to the description of the image tag syntax, and put this pointer at some easily found location. I'm sure I'm not the only one still wondering where this syntax is documented. Simon A. 15:56, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Template:Notenglish

The template "Notenglish" is very biased.

This article needs translation. If the article is not rewritten in English within the next two weeks, it will be listed for deletion.

Deleted?!? That's just too extreme. That just suggest that Wikipedia is an English only Encyclopedia, as opposed to a community of editors who speak various languages. The notenglish template is a good idea, but I think it needs to be toned down to something like: "This page has been listed on the List of Pages to be Translated to English. Please help Wikipedia by translating this entry into English so that it can be easily translated into other languages."

See Template_talk:Notenglish for discussion.

-- Allyunion 14:55, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

But, um... this IS an english-only encyclopedia. Hence the little "en" at the top of the screen, in the addressbarthingy. I would presume that es, jp, de, etc. would have similar policies. --Golbez 15:59, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As an occasional supporter of "native" terms, I do however, suggest that this template is perfectly warranted. Any non-English article content should either be translated, or if no-one's doing so, deleted. One should perhaps first check if it has come from the appropriate language wiki, if not, copy it there first. That step should maybe be added to the template. (If it's French, stick it on fr: if not there already. If it's nonsense, the fr: editors should pick it up) zoney ▓█▒ talk 16:50, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Zoney. Why is anyone loading an article not in English into the English Wikipedia or an article not in French into the French Wikipedia and so on? Possibly by mistake ... that is the editor works on more than one Wikipedia and accidently inserted an article into the wrong language version. Possibly it is a kind of vandalism, dropping down an article incomprehensible to most readers just for the fun of minor disturbance. Possibly an editor copied something from another language Wikipedia and intended to translate and never got around to it.
So just move such an article to the corresponding language Wikipedia when one exists instead of leaving it here. Always add "-en" to the article name and move it to an appropriate cleanup list in the target Wikipedia because there is something odd about a non-English article appearing in the English language Wikipedia and so such an article should be made visible. (It may duplicate an article already on the target Wikipedia. Then forget about it. If the language is incorrectly identified, it will still probably have been sent to a Wikipedia using a closely related language and the editors there will likely be able to properly identify the language and forward it correctly or possibly translate it themselves if there is no Wikipedia for the actual language of the article.
Jallan 00:19, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I was thinking it should read as something along the lines of "This article needs translation. If the article is not rewritten in English within the next two weeks, it will be moved to the approprate language version of Wikipedia." Just because we can't read it, doesn't mean it has to be deleted. Maybe the person intended originally to put it into one of the other language Wikipedias. I think a contribution is still a contribution, even if it is in the wrong place... just move it to the right place, and make sure it's worthy. - Allyunion 09:15, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This stuff is mostly handled at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English. There are about a dozen of us quite active in trying to handle things like this appropriately case-by-case. Wikipedia talk:Pages needing translation into English would probably be the best place to propose any changes in policy, but I'd suggest that you first familiarize yourself with what we currently do. Yes, if something looks encyclopedic and the relevant language lacks an article we put it there, but there are a lot of other possible dispositions of non-English content in en.wikipedia. I don't think the template is the place to fully discuss policy, and it already points to the page that does. -- Jmabel 02:28, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

I would think the articles would be transwikied before being deleted. But maybe that is supposed to be implied? anthony (see warning) 00:30, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, an article that is written in a language other than english should be m:transwikied to the 'pedia of the language it was written in before it is either translated or deleted. The editors at the target location can choose to either keep it, merge it with an existing article, or delete it, at their leisure. Gentgeen 07:23, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I would really, really like to add a photo to Cornelis Vreeswijk (Swedish singer-songwriter, deceased in 1987), but I know there isn't a hope in hell of getting one under GFDL. It just might be possible to get more limited permission, though. I have talked with the Swedish Cornelis Vreeswijk Society, whose website has a few nice pics, and it turns out they have the photographers' permission for free, but only for their own use — the copyright is retained by the photographer. I think it might be worth contacting one or two of these photographers and asking for the same kind of permission for Wikipedia. They're professionals, they live by selling the rights to their images, and Cornelis Vreeswijk portraits are in limited supply (Cornelis being more famous and popular now than in his lifetime), so forget GFDL. But since they weren't averse to having their work shown for free by the Cornelis Vreeswijk Society, why not Wikipedia, too? That's what I think, but I have two questions:

1. Is this kind of limited permission any use to Wikipedia? I could have sworn I'd seen a reluctant admission in some policy document that occasionally this was the best we could do and in such a case it was acceptable to use images with those conditions attached. But I can't find it again.
2. If it is any use, how should I ask the copyright holders? (Boilerplate request for permission, anyone?) I've been trying to formulate a request in my head, but the harder I try, the more it sounds like something shady. ;-( (I should preferably ask in Swedish, too, which always makes any request sound a little shadier. But if I had a template to work with, I could deal with translation issues.)--Bishonen 14:34, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
1. Limited permission is definitely second best. Ask the photographer for GFDL if possible.
2. See Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission. Gdr 14:59, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)
Thanks for replying, but my problem is that it's not possible. Or, well, it's possible to ask, but I think it's impolitic to lead with a request that's bound to be refused. It's not that I don't realize that GFDL is totally the recommended option, infinitely preferrable, etc. I do realize it. Also, I only see the familiar boilerplate requests for permission under GDFL at the link you give (am I missing something?). Sounds as if the answer is no to both, then. I've been roaming Wikipedia for weeks looking for a solution to this, but, well, I guess the reason I couldn't find it is that it doesn't exist. :-( Thanks for trying, Gdr.--Bishonen 15:41, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't think it will hurt to ask for GFDL even if you think it likely that you won't get it. If refused, you can ask for a more limited license. Gdr 15:50, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)

Sorry to throw cold water on the idea, but because Wikipedia is committed to providing open content, we can't accept images if our only basis for using them is a non-free license such as this. Jimbo Wales has stated that images restricted to noncommercial use only, or with permission specific to Wikipedia only, are not allowed.

I think what you're referring to with "a reluctant admission in some policy document that occasionally this was the best we could do" is our policy on fair use images. See Wikipedia:Fair use. Currently we do allow images if we can make a good case for fair use and have little prospect of obtaining a truly free substitute.

So the answer is, if you believe the image can be justified as fair use, it may be acceptable. Fair use is not based on permission, but of course it would still be useful to obtain whatever permission you can from the copyright holder, even though with fair use you are claiming permission is not needed. --Michael Snow 16:33, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Right. I understand the concept of fair use, and, no, that wasn't what I was talking about. It was something different, that would have fitted this case ... well, I must have dreamt it, or else it was obsolete. I certainly couldn't in good faith claim fair use, since there aren't any PD photos of Vreeswijk out there. I'll forget the whole thing, then, and not trouble those copyright holders. I do understand that we need a transparent policy, rather than a jungle of exceptions, and thank you both for your prompt replies. Bishonen 18:57, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've often wondered, in cases such as this, where all of the available photography of a subject is unlikely to be GFDL-compatible, if it would be helpful for some talented sketch-artist Wikipedians to produce an "artist's rendering" of a subject based on one or more photographs. Such a sketch would certainly constitute original work, and could then be licensed as GFDL or public domain. -- Wapcaplet 01:19, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

how about asking for permission to use a low res thumb? that way they get to advertise their wares and still have the prospect of a sale? Erich 02:27, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Turin or Torino?

I've always heard this city called Turin by English-speakers, but since the city was awarded the Olympics, even American broadcasters have started calling it Torino. Is it time to move it? RickK 07:17, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

The official logo for those winter games uses "Torino 2006", but the IOC still refers to it as Turin. See here. The name of the city is still "Turin" in English; this is just a marketing gimmick to emphasise the fact that the city it Italian. It would be like using "Firenze" instead of Florence, or "Toscana" instead of Tuscany. So I feel the article should remain at Turin, until it becomes more clear closer to the time of the games whether the apparent name change is a result of a marketing campaign or actual changing usage in the English-speaking population. - Mark 07:41, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Got to agree with Mark here. They've thrown "Torino" against the wall, let's wait and see if it sticks before we start moving stuff around. -- Cyrius|✎ 13:11, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I've just gotta compliment that image. :P --Golbez 16:13, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If "Torino" becomes roughly as or more common than "Turin" in English, a move would be a good idea. While "Turin" is still overwhelmingly the more common name in English, leave the en wikipedia article there. -- Infrogmation 16:08, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Summarised sections

Summarised sections

Error in your entry

Please correct your entry for the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service. Dr. Charles E. Sawyer was not the Surgeon General of the USPHS from 1921 to 1924; in fact, Dr. Sawyer never held the position of Surgeon General of the USPHS. Dr. Hugh S. Cumming held the position of Surgeon General from March 3, 1920 to Jan. 31, 1936. If you have any questions about this, please contact the Historian for the United States Public Health Service.

Done. PhilHibbs 12:04, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Capitalisation of 'I' in Internet and 'W' on World Wide Web

Not sure if we might need a bot here. Contrast this BBC story to our article Internet. Personally I'm all for de-capitalisation. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 02:33, Sep 2, 2004 (UTC)

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