Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive H

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Village pump (miscellaneous) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous).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

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Uploading Law and Order orchestral sting

I am unaware of the exact nature of what music files are permitted to be uploaded and which ones aren't. I want to upload the Law and Order orchestral sting, as the current host for the sound file that I'm trying to upload is a Tripod site, which is unnecessarily irritating. Am I allowed to upload this file, or do I need to find some alternate host for it? Thanks in advance, Mo0[talk] 02:51, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm not exactly certain about this, but I beleive that in terms of copyright and suchlike sound files are treated like pictures - i.e. they need to be under a suitable liscence or fair use, and need to be apropriately tagged.

Ogg Vorbis is the format used for Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Media looks to be the place to go to find out how to convert other formats to that. I don't know what the policy is regarding midi files.

The files are uploaded like images, and can be uploaded either here or at Wikimedia Commons. There is probably a comprehensive help somewhere (either here or at the commons) regarding all of this, but I haven't been able to find it. Thryduulf 14:11, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I have no idea what a "sting" is, but this is almost certainly copyrighted (so you can't upload it). Deco 02:34, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

• A "sting" is a very short excerpt from a piece of music, sometimes just one or two notes. It's a term mostly used in TV/movie/advertising music composition and production. Sometimes it's used generically, just to indicate that a particular section should be emphasized with music. In this case I would figure that Mo0 is talking about a short but recognizable excerpt from the show's theme music that is used as an intro/outro for commercial breaks. I'm sure the theme song is copywritten, but the sting, being so short, may fall under Fair use guidelines. Soundguy99 16:03, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

This particular sting has become part of the show's identity. Just for the sake of example, I've uploaded a version to my webspace. The show establishes setting with white text on a black background accompanied by this sting. Mo0[talk] 04:06, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

As a second note, in Wikipedia:Fair Use, it's said that "Samples of music, sufficient only to illustrate the point" are fair use. This isn't exactly a "sample", since this file is the whole thing. This does, however, help establish the sound in the head of anyone who hasn't watched the show for whatever reason (for instance, those readers not from the US). Mo0[talk] 04:12, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion box

The box is open. — Xiong熊talk* 01:26, 2005 May 26 (UTC)

What do I do with this? — Xiong熊talk* 16:57, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)

Wayback machine

Is it possible to view a previous version of Wikipedia, similar to the Wayback Machine? www.archive.org/ This service can narrow it down to a few days, but I wanted to see what the Main Page looked like on a particular date. Thanks, Percolator 18:55, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you can use the article history, although it's not perfect since it misses software and template changes. That's not a problem if you go back to before templates were used, e.g. [1]. It's also fairly slow. There's also http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/ which is a snapshot of Wikipedia from December 2001 with a visual design similar to the one that was in use at that time. -- Tim Starling 01:26, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

Hey, that's a cool backup! I wouldn't mind seeing a Wayback Machine of our own though, it'd be fun to see what the Wiki was like on, say, January 12 2004 or whatever BUT still with the current interface to navigate around it. Master Thief Garrett^Talk 10:22, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Unrelated links

I find many little errors like links to pages that actually concern something completely unrelated. I don't know where I should report them, and I don't feel confident enough to fix them myself. One example: the link See also: Maersk Sealand on the page Maersk sends you back to the same page. Apparently, there's no separate article for Maersk Sealand (yet?) but why create a link without an article?

• Be bold!. Fixing this sort of thing is a great way to get started editing. There are many small issues of this kind. Don't worry too much about making a mistake. If you change something that someone really did for a good reason, they'll probably have the page on their watchlist and they'll revert it--and their edit comment should explain the reason. Oh, and type four tildes like this ~~~~ at the end of remarks on Talk pages to "sign" them. And consider creating an account. And welcome to Wikipedia. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:49, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Airline destinations?

I resisted the temptation for a mass-VfD, but seriously: Is Category:Airline destinations and the 41 articles in this category in any way encyclopedic? --Pjacobi 14:08, 2005 Jun 21 (UTC)

I think it is potentially a great listing, for comparing where various airlines go to for the purpose of of commerical and accademic study resource. With the number of aticles of lists on what is to many fancruft, I see nothing wrong with it. Anyway, where the heck are Virgin Aitlines? Dainamo 2005 Jun 21.

They're Aitlines before they get married.—Wahoofive (talk) 20:41, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I thought they had more than 8. Grutness...wha?

• Sounds somewhat problematic, as it doesn't cite sources and tends towards unmaintainability. It sounds like prime material for WikiTravel though. Radiant_>|< 08:25, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)
  • Agreed, it's far easier to keep track of it over there. The whole point of a WP article is to be accurate, but a list like this can't be; some airlines like Air New Zealand seem to change their services with the weather, so that list would need frequent updating. I'd say these could all be tagged to transwiki to WikiTravel, unless they're already over there. Master Thief Garrett^Talk 13:11, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Awesominity

perhaps, (i have no sources for this), Wikipedia is an abbriviation for (Wickid Encyclopedia? please tell me if u know. Supersaiyanplough|^(talk) 08:04, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Nope, it comes from Wikiwiki, which is Hawaiian for very quick. --Golbez 08:07, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Actually if I recall correctly from my (pre-Wikipedia) research about a videogame called Wiki, it seemed that the term actually originated from a bastardisation of "quickly quickly"... or something like that, I forget. Regardless, it's certainly not Wickid. We're not (all?) evil and we're certainly not just for children! :) Master Thief Garrett^Talk 01:05, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ward Cunningham says that he got it from the "wiki wiki" buses at Honolulu International Airport, which is stated in the Wiki article. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:35, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes. Yes, that's exactly what it means. Don't believe Golbez - I mean, really, Hawaiian? He takes you for a fool. Deco 17:55, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I wish! Nickptar 21:32, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Inappropriate image?

Check out this article, especifically the image illustrating it. Is that considered fair play? Looks unnecessary to me...but I'm in doubt, since I'm aware that images of nudity are acceptable if justified by the content and the need to illustrate it. Doesn't seem to be the case here though. Regards, Redux 03:09, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Not clear what your objection is. If you're objecting to the partial nudity, I should point out that toplessness is the subject of the article. If you think it's a lousy illustration of the subject, that's already been raised on its talk page. If you think the subject isn't encyclopedic, send it to VfD. —Wahoofive (talk) 04:35, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Arguably, a less explicit image should be used because people going to that page might not expect an explicit image of toplessness at the very, uh, top. This could cause a major problem for someone reading in a school, library, or (bad) home environment. Just arguably. Nickptar 04:39, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Nickptar raises good points. My question, since Wahoofive asked, and perhaps I wasn't clear enough, is whether the [partial] nudity scene was necessary to illustrate an article that simply says some people think that women should be allowed to be shirtless in places where men are usually shirtless. I could not see how it would be necessary to display [partially] nude women to illustrate this point. It seemed gratuitous to me, and it is my understanding that we, realizing that such images may pose problems (as pointed out by Nickptar's post), do try to limit their use to those cases when they are justified and necessary to illustrate a point. In the talk page of the article, some people opposed the nudity image, but a point was made that the image should stay for the lack of a better one (or until a better image could be found), which in my humble opinion is really besides the point, unless I was mistaken about our standards and/or this image's compliance with it, hence my post here. Furthermore, the caption says that it's two "Canadian women exercizing their right to topfree equality in British Columbia", but what you see is really two young girls topless in a balcony next to what seems to be an antenna. No indication that they are in British Columbia, or that they are Canadian or, perhaps most importantly, that their toplessness is related to exercizing a right to "topfree equality". In the talk page, someone said it looked more like a scene from "Girls Gone Wild". I'm inclined to agree. This last part goes to demonstrate that the image is not really illustrating the topic of the article, it's just two topless girls whose image was posted in an article somewhat about toplessness. Regards, Redux 05:40, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Man, I hope Jimbo doesn't find out that images like this are on his servers...oh wait, never mind. --Arcadian 01:26, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Notification of changes

Is there a method to automatically send an email to me when articles on my watchlist has changed. I have created a number of articles and I would like to receive notification when they are modified.

User: HJKeats

There will be, in the next (1.5) version of the software -- it should be live within a few weeks. Careful, though, if you have as many articles on your watchlist as I do on mine, you could be inundated! — Catherine\^talk 04:13, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Community Service

Can editing Wikipedia count as community service hours? as in work for a not-for-profit for college applications? I'm wondering how it all works, this tricky community service thing... --Mazin07 18:49, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes report it if you wish on your college app. However you must consider a way to aggrandize your role. To adcoms reporting "editing wikipedia" may be very unimpressive and in fact laughable as a EC.

lots of issues | leave me a message 07:20, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

eerste nl.wikimedia.org ontmoeting

ik zou iedereen graag willen uitnodigen te overwegen of zij een rol willen en/of kunnen spelen in de oprichting van een nederlandse wikimedia-organisatie. een eerste ontmoeting wordt momenteel georganiseerd, zie daarvoor hier, op de nl.wikimedia.org wiki. er zijn nog vele stappen te nemen, en meer wikianen nodig, om e.e.a. op verantwoorde wijze verder te ontwikkelen. oscar 12:47, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

English translation

I'd like to invite everyone to consider if they want and/or are able to play a role in the establishment of a Dutch wikimedia organisation. A first meeting is presently being organised, see for that here, on the nl.wikimedia.org wiki. There are still a lot of steps to take, and more wikians necessary, to develop things in a responsible manner further.

Bovlb 13:23, 2005 Jun 19 (UTC) (via Babelfish), Eugene van der Pijll 13:31, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC) (cleanup)

thanks for translating, sorry i forgot to do so in the first place. oscar 13:39, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

New, and not sure what to do

I love Wikipedia! I live in Kelowna (BC), and discovered the entry in Wikipedia, and I am quite happy with it. It has an incomplete link for the 2003 fire, though. I have the information, but not the discernment on what to post. Can I leave the info here, and hope that someone who knows what information is useful will take it over? ^_^

Here is what I have:

http://www.dotcommediainc.com/slideshow/mixed/index.php3

http://castanet.firewatch.net/

http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/protect/reports/2003Review/Okanagan_Fire_Review_K50628.pdf

http://www.highwaylodge.com/fire.htm

so - a lot of links and info. Hoping someone will take it on. Thanks!

Hey, always good to have fans of our work! What you can do in future for things you think would be useful to future researchers is to dump them on the article's Talk page. Just click the Discussion tab of any article. Click the + to add a new section if there's already a page, or if the tab's red and comes up with an edit box just go ahead and create the first discussion entry! I've copied this info there now, so future researchers will be able to find your work. Anyway, hope that helps! Master Thief Garrett^Talk 00:01, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks?

I wanted to thank you guys for creating such a versatile tool. I myself have just updated an article on Albert von Le Coq, who I wrote my term paper on earlier this year. I can't describe the pride or the feeling of worth I get out of helping spread knowledge. Thank you for this opportunity to both learn and teach.

May you never thirst, heh.

Why, you're welcome. Nickptar 20:20, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

New

Hi,

My name is Noor Dahlvi Khan and I am new here! Is there also a place where members introduce themselves to each other?

Actually, if you take a look at your talk page, you'll find a welcome message with this and other useful information. Whenever there are new messages on your talk page, after you log in you'll get an indication that "you have new messages". These messages don't go away unless you delete them (even though the "you have new messages" indication goes away after you look at them). You can get to your talk (message) page by clicking the talk link next to your name whenever you're logged in. Good luck and happy wiki'ing! -- Rick Block (talk) 01:15, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

You can always try the wikipedia irc channels.--Fangz 14:19, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Best way to get to know other wikipedians is to become involved in a WikiProject, or find a regional noticeboard for particular Wikipedians. If for example (apologies, I'm guessing here) you are from India, you could add your name at Wikipedia:Wikipedians/India. Many countries and regions have similar lists and accompanying notice boards. Grutness...wha? 01:41, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What is RNG Kill at http://labmaster.4gigs.com/Emerald, a Wikipedia link thing special mean?

Well, the question sums it up. I have no idea what it means.

I have no idea what your question means. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:38, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Is that you, Dave?

Dave who? -- Cyrius|✎ 11:06, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Who is this user??

I appear to be aware that there must be a user whose IP address changes among various IP's that start with 131.96 and I want to make sure I know exactly who this is. He appears to sign Wikipedia as Robert rather than ~~~~ . Georgia guy 21:26, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Bloomsday pastiche: 2004- A Superstore Odyssey

The following may be of interest to your James Joyce readers, on this this historic day 16th June 2004

2004 - A Superstore Odyssey By Brian Moore, CEO, EMR-NAMNEWS, bmoore@namnews.com

I've removed the text of...whatever this is...as it's just cluttering things up. It's also not 2004 anymore. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:18, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

contributions

How do I use the contributions tag?

Admiral Roo Talk to me My Contributions Admiral Roo 13:46, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page#Links_and_URLs, your's would be Special:Contributions/Admiral Roo. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:23, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

What do you think?

I talked to my psychologist Monday and told him that perhaps I would do better getting in the Engineering field. He told me I might do better with a degree in Veterinary Technology. He knows I am better at science (Chemistry, Biology, and Medicine) then I am at Math, and getting a Bachelor's degree in engineering is more relient on higher math then veterinary technology. What do you think? And what are the advantages/disadvantages in being in these fields and getting an education in them (through comparing the two for the advantages/disadvantages)?

The engineering I want to take in school is Electrical/Electronic and Mechanical engineering.

Thank you.

--Admiral Roo 11:37, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

Um, I'm sure many Wikipedians pride themselves on having achieved higher education, but that doesn't mean we're the ideal career advisors. All universities have planning counsellors who can help you work out what to study, and I'm sure from a look at your past grades in said subjects that they could assess which you were more likely to succeed at. So my advice is to get professional advice. Master Thief Garrett^Talk 11:58, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. Thanks. --Admiral Roo 12:12, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

Added to Wikipedia:Unusual requests. Deco 18:17, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Can't you just pick your favorite and do that? ¦ Reisio 03:38, 2005 Jun 23 (UTC)

Social networking groups about Wikipedia

I just wanted to let everyone here know about a new Wikipedia group at StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is an increasingly well-known social networking site that its members mainly use to browse, review and share websites in a very innovative mannner (you literally stumble onto sites you might not have ever found otherwise).

Another long-standing group is the Wikipedia tribe at Tribe.net, a somewhat more standard social networking site.

I wasn't sure if anyone here was knowledgeable about the goings-on with regards to the Wikipedia outside of the Wikipedia, so hopefully the above two links will be helpful. And I'm sure there are other groups elsewhere that others might want to bring up.

Disclaimer: I am merely a member of the above two services I mention.

— Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work</span>} 22:54, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

It's hard enough for me to keep up with everything that happens on Wikipedia itself, on Wikipedia's mailing lists, and the various developer forums without adding yet more locations for discussion. Sorry. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:45, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

To each his own.  :) At any rate, the group at StumbleUpon is not only about Wikipedia, but also wiki developments in general. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 04:51, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

Re: LINKS

I just recently added (Answers.Com) on to my website that is a KISS FAN SITE re: http://cosmicgarden.tripod.com. My question is when I looked up the rock group KISS or Gene Simmons, I was wondering how can I have my link from my website posted on them pages? Thanks for your assistance...

Mary Esther

• Sorry, but you can't. See Wikipedia:External links for the policy that says you can't use Wikipedia to promote your own site. RSpeer 19:52, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)
  • To be more exact, the above is stated to be a "guideline" rather than a hard policy, and it says that it's "strongly discouraged" to link to your own site (rather than absolutely prohibited). Self-promotion will usually be reverted (and be considered vandalism if it's done repeatedly), but it might be possible to get a link to one of your sites into this site if it's relevant, if you're not too "spammy" about it. (Though, the average cheesy fan site probably won't make the cut, unless it's actually the leading fan site for its subject.) *Dan* 23:49, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Online Questionnaire

Dear Wikipedians,

We cordially invite you to answer a short questionnaire which is a part of a non-commercial cross-cultural research project conducted at INFOSOC (The Center for the Study of the Information Society), exploring Wikipedia community aspects.

The findings of this study will be published in Wikipedia to the benefit of everyone, personal copies will be also available via e-mail (wiki@shil.info).

Click here for the questionnaire: http://wikien.shil.info/

Thank you in advance.

Research Team, INFOSOC

Haifa University

123 Football

As written in 123 Football copyright: "The photos and information contained on this Site are submitted by our visitors and/or believed to be public domain". Does all the photos in 123 Football are good for use in wikipedia? Roeeyaron 3 July 2005 12:41 (UTC)

"Believed to be" is not enough. --cesarb 3 July 2005 14:23 (UTC)

• Unless they signed a release of some sort, the contributors still own the copyright of the pictures they submitted. - Mgm|^(talk) July 4, 2005 11:02 (UTC)

Wildlife

Isn't there a WP project that sorts out wildlife articles and conforms them to one style? Jaberwocky6669 July 3, 2005 06:45 (UTC)

I suspect you're thinking of Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life, but I could be wrong. Grutness...wha? 3 July 2005 10:16 (UTC)

Farquhar Islands

Is there anyone who is familar with the Seychelles? The Farquhar article has a list of islands added recently, including Ile Gumball, Partie Island, and Polyfoam Island. Can someone confirm that these actually exist? Joyous (talk) July 3, 2005 01:23 (UTC)

Sounds pretty dubious. Polyfoam+Farquhar returned two google hits, and less than half of those were anything to do with the Seychelles. However, there is some good news. While searching I found a bit more information on the group, which I shall add to the stub. Grutness...wha? 3 July 2005 10:22 (UTC)

Less than half of two? Joyous (talk) July 3, 2005 16:56 (UTC)

Aye - which by my reckoning means zero. Grutness...wha? 4 July 2005 01:16 (UTC)

One of them may have linked to a Half page. ;-) func(talk) 3 July 2005 17:10 (UTC)

Overlapping categories

Is there any meaningul distinction between Category:Culture, Category:Personal life and Category:Society? Maurreen 2 July 2005 20:55 (UTC)

race and intellegence

This topic has been moved to the discussion page specific to the race and intelligence article

Two other meanings of village pump

Is anyone aware that the term 'Village Pump' has some negative connotation? They are both somewhat archaic, but here goes: in medicine the term has been used to refer to a common source of disease, diseases have been traced to a central well or pump in rural epidemics, fairly frequently, so 'the village pump' has been used to refer to any common source of infection. Also, it is an American idiom for the loose woman in the community who will lay with anyone. ( a related meaning if you look at it right ) Sorry I can't cite sources off the top of my head, but I'm not writing an article about it. As I said, both are somewhat archaic and out of general use, but I just thought other Wikipedians might be interested. (PS I'm not advocating changing anything, just sharing) Pedant 2005 July 2 05:06 (UTC)

• Yes, both with exactly the same derivation: both good and bad things come from common gathering places and shared resources. -- Jmabel | Talk July 2, 2005 05:02 (UTC)

Image:IN-N-OUT BURGER MENU BOARD.JPG

Could anybody that knows copyright law answer this question? The user who uploaded this image claims this under GFDL. Unfortunately, it is basically a photo of a copyrighted sign - the printed menu of the In-N-Out burger chain. So would it actually fall under fair use instead? Zzyzx11 (Talk) 1 July 2005 23:04 (UTC)

These signs are just thrown together. The copyright belongs to the photographer. A word of advise, if you eat at In-N-Out, you will regret it. — Ŭalabio July 1, 2005 23:41 (UTC)

I agree, it's similar to taking a photo of La Gioconda or any other work of art, the photo's copyright belongs to the photographer, or in some cases, the photographer's employer. I am not a lawyer, but the principle seems translatable from the fine arts. Pedant 2005 July 2 03:36 (UTC)

Bzzt. Photographer's copyrighted work is a derivative work of the In-n-Out copyrighted work. Not GFDL. -- Cyrius|✎ 2 July 2005 16:48 (UTC)

• There are two issues here that I know of:

• First is the fact that you are photographing a two-dimensional object. See Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. for some food for thought on whether this constitutes enough creativity to register as a new work, one which would trump the copyright claims of the original creator. I don't think it does.
• Second is the problem of the logos and soforth, which are problems with trademark law, not copyright law.

So my basic answer is... it probably would not hold up in a court of law unless it fit under the various legal uses of copyrighted material (i.e. fair use, parody, critique, etc.). But people have threatened legal trouble for far less -- see Lessig's note on Jon Else's problems in getting permission to use a tiny snippet of The Simpsons in the background of one of his documentaries in Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture (a good primer for thinking about copyright questions, very easy to understand, a very quick read). (I am not a lawyer) --Fastfission 2 July 2005 19:26 (UTC)

• Well in my opinion, Cyrius and Fastfission have it right. There probably is an effective copyright on the original sign, and your photograph is a derivative work. You can GFDL your mechanical copyright, but the image still infringes the original copyright so overall it is not GFDL unless you can secure a similar release from In-N-Out.

However, Fastfission's interpretation of Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. seems a bit flawed. There is no question of trumping - it only really applies if the original work is out of copyright. The issue is that a straight photograph of a flat 2D work can be argued to be non-creative and therefore inelligible for copyright. So the photographers claim for mechanical copyright in reproducing a PD painting is considered invalid. -- Solipsist 2 July 2005 20:15 (UTC)

Strange Email

I received an email today from wiki@wikimedia.org with the following message:

Someone (probably you, from IP address 81.79.103.160) requested that we send you a new Wikipedia login password. The password for user "Marshman" is now "wrB4bvW". You should log in and change your password now.

I made no such request and am not associated with that IP address. When I tested the "new" password both it and my password worked. When I responded to the email, it was rejected by MAILER-DAEMON@mail.wikimedia.org. Any idea what this is about? - Marshman 1 July 2005 19:39 (UTC)

Maybe someone thought they already had an account here--specifically, yours--and couldn't seem to get any password to work so requested a new one? And you can't as (a rule) reply to any server-generated emails regardless of the website, so that's to be expected. Master Thief Garrett^Talk 2 July 2005 01:18 (UTC)

And, of course, you have changed your password. (SEWilco 2 July 2005 02:41 (UTC))

Yes, I quickly got rid of the false one after testing that it worked. Suppose I should change the original one as well? The curious thing is that both worked. The "reassignment did not "change" my password; just added another one. I tested by logging in and out under both passwords. That should be a security concern, I would think - Marshman 2 July 2005 04:14 (UTC)

The system keeps track of both passwords so that when this sort of thing happens to you, you can just delete the "changed password" email, and go about your business. If it did not, an annoying person could effectively prevent you from logging in by setting a script to continually request a new password. -- Cyrius|✎ 2 July 2005 16:54 (UTC)

Difference

WHat's the difference between knowledge, wisdom, and information? Of these three, which one does an encyclopedia provide? That encyclopedia may be paper or digital. I bet you thought this was gonna be about the diff function huh? Jaberwocky6669 July 1, 2005 13:30 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, knowledge can be considered a justified true belief, meaning that for me to "know" something fulfills the three criteria that: 1. I believe it to be true, 2. I am justified in believing it (evidence), and 3. it is actually true (can't know something untrue). Wisdom is the subset of said knowledge gained by experience (and not instinct, book-learning, etc.). Information is merely a collection of facts, separate from experience (ie, opposite of wisdom: the subset of said knowledge that can be gained by learing, etc.). By these definitions, an encyclopedia is not wisdom, but confers knowledge in the form of information. How does that sound? --Dmcdevit 2 July 2005 07:48 (UTC)

ok. So Knowledge encompasses both wisdom and information as subsets. Knowledge is something that you are sure to be true by evidence. What kind of evidence? So wisdom is knowledge gained by experience and information is knowledge gained by intuition i.e. book learnin'? I see now... Jaberwocky6669 July 2, 2005 07:56 (UTC)

I'd say the kind of evidence depends on the kind of knowledge. To know Fermat's Last Theorem, a precise, repeatable, mathematical proof based on the accepted axioms of mathematics is the evidence. To know Mendelian inheritance, the systematic disconfirmation of any doubt using such processes as the scientific method is evidence. To know the Black Death, the analysis of sources, both primary and secondary and their bias and limitations, as well as other data available, serves as evidence. But what is evidence to the historian is not necessarily evidence to the scientist or mathematician, and so on. Neither Mendel nor Andrew Wiles would look to previous sources as evidence, but deduce their knowledge themselves. A historian has an open system not a closed set of axioms, and any process derived from such would be flawed. What do you think? I'm actually enjoying this.

--Dmcdevit 2 July 2005 08:40 (UTC)

Reminder to test pages with large fonts

I've been running into more and more pages that render poorly, or are just outright broken. Please test any fancy formatting you use by viewing it at a large font size before you save your changes. Test your pages with a font size of 24pt at minimum. If you test at multiple sizes, all the better.

I've created a mock-up of things I, and others using large fonts, typically see at User:Mark/temp (Mark has given me permission to use his page temporarily). Just because a page looks fine at 12pt, doesn't mean it's going to look the same at 24pt.

Darrien July 1, 2005 12:31 (UTC)

• noted, sir Jaberwocky6669 July 1, 2005 13:29 (UTC)

Disturbing Trend

Is it me or has Wikipedia just stopped churning? Has everyone dedicated solely to creating new articles? What happened?!?!?!?!?! Jaberwocky6669 July 1, 2005 11:21 (UTC) I know what it is! Everyone is too involved playing wikigames and watching their watchlists! Give me my fix--EDIT A PAGE!

Can someone please review pupa

A Friday column in a Virginian newspaper requested three professors review sample content from Wikipedia. The only unsatisfied professor was a biologist who reported the pupa entry was filled with errors. The professor may have himself corrected many problems yesterday, but can someone who has a good grasp of the sujbect look it over?

lots of issues | leave me a message 30 June 2005 14:20 (UTC)

Indeed it appears the professor rewrote the article today.

lots of issues | leave me a message 30 June 2005 17:15 (UTC)

Here it is: [2]

The columnist is still skeptical, but a fair story. Casual users might think Wikipedia is worthy enough to help with the crossword puzzle.

lots of issues | leave me a message 1 July 2005 12:57 (UTC)

If you are being told you have zero edits...

(from meta:Elections for the Board...)

Sorry, you made only 0 edits before 00:00, 30 May 2005. You need at least 400 to be able to vote.

• The above message may be because the Elections for the Board of Trustees link in the notice has brought you to Meta-Wiki, thus the vote link is now within Meta. Go back to your preferred Wiki and try to vote there. (SEWilco 20:07, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC))

And also ask your local administrator(s) to fix the sitenotice. Thanks. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 20:17, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Say, en:Administrator: "fix the sitenotice". (SEWilco 1 July 2005 06:35 (UTC))

Emigration

Is it just me, or are most of the good contributors really leaving? And they don't seem to have any intention of coming back. JMBell° 20:07, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Examples? --Golbez 20:41, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

RickK, Hephaestos, Finlay, Maximus Rex, Benc, Fvw, David Remahl (Chmod007), MyRedDice, Poccil, ShaneKing, Zoney... there are more, I just can't think of them... BLANKFAZE | (что??) 05:29, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

...Wik... --Golbez 00:20, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

Good people come and go all the time. The thing is that when people who are established leave, you notice; when new people come in, you don't know who they are, so you don't notice. I'm not saying it's not a problem when good people leave, just that it's not quite as dire as it sometimes seems. -- Cyrius|✎ 08:23, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

More important is reason /why/ they leave. Here is reason of former admin from Albania: User:Dori. And if this doesn't get solved the situation will only get worse. Pavel Vozenilek 02:59, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Looks like the vandals will eventually take over the place if this sort of thing continues. The problem is that the admins who stop vandalism are the ones who leave! If only .... Don Diego 11:43, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've seen a few vandals become good members of the community too... I don't really think wikipedia is in any danger at all. Vandalism was what brought me here, at least what made me want to register a user name. I saw a page that someone had crudely hammered on, and I fixed it. I consider mistakes and vandalism and even spelling errors to be like recruiting posters. A good thing though, would be some resources to help spot vandalism easier... like that auto-refreshing recent changes feed that was around for a while (kate's tools? or something) and some genius idea that someone who is reading this right now will invent... you know who you are. Pedant 2005 July 2 05:25 (UTC)

Good and active editors are the "resources" who spot vandalism. If they leave in sufficient numbers quality of Wikipedia as whole will degrade and this will drive off more good editors. Seeing e.g. User:Weyes leaving gives me impression the process had started. Pavel Vozenilek 4 July 2005 03:30 (UTC)

Frequent external link modification

Hi. In many tv-related articles we have been listing the website TV Tome as a reference for readers. As of this week, it appears that TV Tome no longer exists. Apparently, it's been incorporated by another website, TV.com. This was not a simple layout change, only the general scope is similar to the original TV Tome. I've checked some articles that carried links to the website, and it seems that many different users have already started to change the links to reflect the new website. The potential problem is that this effort is probably not coordinated, so many articles may be left with the old link. Maybe we could set up a bot to perform the change in all articles, so none would be left behind. I have no idea whatsoever of how to set up something like this, so maybe someone more knowledgeable could do this. But even before that, I was wondering if this new website is sufficiently accountable to deserve as wide a reference as TV Tome did. This new thing seems much more unstable, as it now allows for any registered person to edit the pages on the tv shows (a wiki-like system, but I doubt they have as wide and efficient peer review as we have here). I simply cannot account for its credibility. Regards, Redux 03:51, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Have you checked to see how exactly their edit system works? I know the old page had an edit system too, but I'm fairly certain all changes had to be confirmed by the administrators. If this is still the case, there is a good chance the content may remain reliable. If not, then it is very sad, an invaluable entertainment resource will be forever lost. Well, almost.

If all else fails you could link to the Internet Archive's backups. Like for example here's the main page from 2004. When linking you would always ensure to find the most recent stored version of that particular page, as well as making note to the reader that it's a backup only.

Now this is by no means a good solution at all as the pages are static and occasionally have broken images or non-functional search features, but if that's the only way to resurrect good content from TV Tome then you may have to resort to that.

Anyway, hope that helps... Master Thief Garrett^Talk 04:07, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

UPDATE: Well I just checked it out. All submissions are checked before uploading. If it's anything like their sister site GameFAQs, user will have a ***** of a time getting anything added, let alone incorrect information! The editing system looks virtually identical to GameFAQs', and that system is very accurate with lots of ways to check and report inaccuracies. So I'd say there's no need to worry. Looks like TV Tome isn't quite as dead as it looked, but, just like GameSpot, I hate the colour scheme. Ah well. Master Thief Garrett^Talk 04:29, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That is good news about the contents of the new website — although I totally agree with you, the layout blows :p. Here's why I got concerned: when I first visited the new website, I checked a random tv show's page. In one of the episodes of the episode list, in the place where the episode synopsis should be, there was a sentence like this you got the character's name wrong, it's not Anne. Anyone who works in Wikipedia would id that as a typical newbie mistake, and that led me to question the credibility of the contents. I saw that there was an "edit" link next to the entry (sort of like we have here too), so, although I had no intention of editing the website, I clicked to see what would happen. I was taken to a page that requested me to either log in or register in order to be able to edit. The registration form requested some personal information, and there was a disclaimer about having to be at least 13 years old to edit. But there didn't seem to be any way through which that information would be confirmed, I mean, if I said there that my name was William, Prince of Wales they wouldn't question me. There was no verifyable information requested (such as social security number or something of the kind). The impression I got was that I could just register with bogus personal information (if I so wished) and edit away in the website.

That having been said, if we are still going to refer people to the-website-that-used-to-be-TV-Tome, I would like to reiterate that a bot would be safer, to ensure that all old links are amended. I'm assuming, of course, that such a thing could be programmed. Regards, Redux 17:09, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If we end up running a bot, then instead of putting in a hard link, could we use a template akin to Template:Imdb? --Arcadian 01:16, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That sounds like a very good idea! The TVtome link (now TV.com) is extremely common and recurrent in tv-related articles. And the bot is indeed necessary. I had said that users were already substituting the old links, but I've recently run into some articles that still carry the TVtome link. That happens because the effort in not coordinated. But if we use the suggested template, even the articles that have already been updated will need to be adapted. So the bot would have to act on two types of links: those that are already pointing to TV.com and those that are still pointing to the nonexistent TVtome website. Can this be set up? Regards, Redux 03:12, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Whoops, didn't realise this was still going! Um, I'm sure it can be done. Try cross-posting this to the Technical page. I'm sure there's some sort of "I need a bot!" help hub, but I don't know where it is. But try that. :) Master Thief Garrett^Talk 1 July 2005 00:32 (UTC)

Meanwhile (until we feel that TV.com is a stable source) linking to the Wayback machine's archived pages at archive.org seems to be the most reliable way to provide a link to a stable reference source. Pedant 2005 July 2 03:41 (UTC)

Voting

On the english WP I have way more than 400 edits does this still mean that I am excluded from voting??? Jaberwocky6669 June 30, 2005 07:06 (UTC)

From Election page: In order to vote you must have at least 400 edits prior to 00:00 May 30, 2005 (UTC) on the Wikimedia project from which you cast your vote. The first edit must have been 90 days or more before the time of voting. That doesn't seem to be the only thing. Do the other arguments apply as well? - Mgm|^(talk) June 30, 2005 08:15 (UTC)

• Huh? Jaberwocky6669 June 30, 2005 15:37 (UTC)

Update on "wikimoods"

For the past month or so, I have been using a "wikimood" to express my current emotional state on Wikipedia. If you recall, a "wikimood" is a position on a 21-point signed integer scale that expresses how you think your current behaviour on Wikipedia can be described. Well now, I have changed the wikimood meter into graphical form. You may feel free to use these on your User or User Talk pages.

To refresh your memory, here's the wikimood scale again:

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

--Denelson83 30 June 2005 03:15 (UTC)

I love it...I'm replacing the wikistress meter on my page with this. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 30 June 2005 03:19 (UTC)

Hilarious. I've been meaning to use the WikiStress thermometer, but I'm definitely going to use this one instead. Besides, I like pointing meters. --Deathphoenix 30 June 2005 13:21 (UTC)

Yeha!

I am done with this code. Starts to moonwalk while singing MC Hammer's Can't Touch This.

Can someone do me a favor?

Could someone edit this code so I can make a templet (sp?) in Wikibooks? I need everything that says Merit Badge that is outside of the [[]] code. If you can quickly program a bot to do this, that would be great, because it would take an awfull lot of time to edit the code by hand. Here it is:

{| style="margin:0 auto" align=center id=toc |align=center| '''[[BSA Merit Badges|Earning merit badges in the Boy Scouts of America]]''' |- |align=center| [[Scouting:BSA - American Business|American Business]]| [[Scouting:BSA - American Cultures Merit Badge|American Cultures]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - American Heritage Merit Badge|American Heritage]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - American Labor Merit Badge|American Labor]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Animal Science Merit Badge|Animal Science]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Archaeology Merit Badge|Archaeology]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Archery Merit Badge|Archery]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Architecture Merit Badge|Architecture]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Art Merit Badge|Art]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Astronomy Merit Badge|Astronomy]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Athletics Merit Badge|Athletics]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Atomic Energy Merit Badge|Atomic Energy]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Auto Mechanics Merit Badge|Auto Mechanics]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Aviation Merit Badge|Aviation]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Backpacking Merit Badge|Backpacking]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Basketry Merit Badge|Basketry]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Bird Study Merit Badge|Bird Study]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Bugling Merit Badge|Bugling]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Camping Merit Badge|Camping]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Canoeing Merit Badge|Canoeing]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Chemistry Merit Badge|Chemistry]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Cinematography Merit Badge|Cinematography]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Citizenship in the Community Merit Badge|Citizenship in the Community]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| [[Scouting:BSA - Merit Badge|]] Merit Badge| Merit Badge|}

Thank you. --Admiral Roo June 29, 2005 12:05 (UTC)

Can you please clarify what you want exactly? Your second sentence doesn't make sense to me (missing a word?). Thank you in advance. Whitehorse1 | November 10 2024 06:03 (UTC)

What I mean is this. Take [[Scouting:BSA - American Cultures Merit Badge|American Cultures]] Merit Badge| for example. Do you see the Merit Badge portion of the code that is outside of the [[]]? I programmed my text editor to enter Merit Badge before each | that it finds, and forgot that the | is used both inside the brackets and outside the brackets to seperate each bracket code. this code is a text box thingy, like what you find here. --Admiral Roo June 29, 2005 15:41 (UTC)

I assume that this is what you ask for? I used wordpad for this and it took no time at all. You wanted this: [[Scouting:BSA - American Cultures Merit Badge|American Cultures]] Merit Badge| to become this :[[Scouting:BSA - American Cultures Merit Badge|American Cultures]] | ? I hope I didn't make any mistakes. Jaberwocky6669 June 29, 2005 16:16 (UTC)

Indeed. That is exacly what I wanted. I used Microsoft Word. How did you do that in wordpad so fast? Forgot to say thank you and my sig. --Admiral Roo June 29, 2005 16:24 (UTC)

I had Wordpad find every instance of merit badge. It then gave me a Find Next window and then I left clicked on the Fnd Next button and then I clicked the Wordpad background and hit Backspace because wordpad instantly highlights every instance of the word it finds. I kept in mind to see if I was about to delete the correct instance of Merit badge (and not every instance) ;) lol I'm not exactly good at using words to explain myself. Maybe thats why I dont contribute many articles. lol Jaberwocky6669 June 29, 2005 16:30 (UTC)

You still did a good job. I simply deleate the duplacate BSA - Merit Badge by highlighting it and pasting the name of the merit badge. Again, thank you. --Admiral Roo June 29, 2005 16:49 (UTC)

Chess!

Competition is needed at User:Tparker393/Team Game 1. Thanks, Nathan256 29 June 2005 18:18 (UTC)

How to place a company logo?

I want to place the logo of Paragon Vision Sciences on Wikipedia but i don't know what html to type to get the picture.How can i put the logo?203.124.2.14 29 June 2005 06:45 (UTC)

The code for html images is <IMG src="place name of image here" border=0 alt=""> --Admiral Roo June 29, 2005 12:07 (UTC)

Which was very deliberately disabled here. -- Cyrius|✎ 29 June 2005 13:30 (UTC)

Have a look at Wikipedia:Picture tutorial. Bovlb June 29, 2005 13:15 (UTC)

WP mirrors and copyrights

I've noticed a disturbing amount of Wikipedia mirrors when I'm searching Google recently, even sometimes mistakenly clicking on the mirrors. And it seems to me that many of those that copy WP content do so without crediting Wikipedia, which is a big violation of Wikipedia's copyright. To test this theory, I did a Google search of the first sentence of Parthenon, a featured article. Among the results, there is fact-archive.com's copy, which claims "Copyright 2005 Fact Archive.com" at the bottom; physicsdaily.com's which claims "Copyright 2005 PhysicsDaily.com"; mathdaily.com's, which claims "Copyright 2005 MathDaily.com"; definitioncenter.com's, whic claims "Copyright © 2005 DefinitionCenter"; essaycrawler.com's which claims "© 2000-2004 essaycrawler.com"; wikimirror.com's, which has no copyright info; and definition-info.com's which has no copyright info. I'm sure there are more out there. What is going on here? --Dmcdevit 28 June 2005 22:59 (UTC)

There is a list of these at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks and its subpages. Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/GFDL Compliance gives details on how GFDL-compliant each site is and Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter has a letter you can send to non-compliant ones. Angela. June 29, 2005 05:00 (UTC)

Thanks, again. An update: I've added all the new ones, but I can't find the contact info for any of them. Alexa gives either no contact info or the site where they're registered to (And I tried to email RegisterFly.com about two of them, but the email was returned to me as a nonexistent address). It seems like all of the contact links are always broken. I'm at a dead end for these ones, any help appreciated. --Dmcdevit 30 June 2005 23:11 (UTC)

Wikibooks

Wikibooks is severly screwed up. It takes multiple times to hit the save page button for it to finnally submit, and my contributions page is not working in their. I think it needs the admins attention. --Admiral Roo June 28, 2005 14:20 (UTC)

Why are you telling the English Wikipedia this? -- Cyrius|✎ 29 June 2005 13:30 (UTC)

Converting Entities to unicode.

Oh brave new world that has such entities in it.

Now we have wikimedia 1.5 running English wikipedia can we say goodbye to character entities? And can existing character entities be converted to real unicode characters. Is this a job for a bot? Zeimusu | (Talk page) 28 June 2005 13:07 (UTC)

Yes, entity encoding is no longer necessary with the conversion of enwiki to UTF-8. I don't know whether any decision has been made about what to do about them. -- Cyrius|✎ 29 June 2005 16:48 (UTC)

New style for broken links is ugly

Okay, who else things that the new style for broken links is ugly? Get rid of the question mark, and bring back redlinks! (At least give us the option...) AиDя01DTALKEMAIL June 28, 2005 12:07 (UTC)

• Err, disregard that... everything appears to be back to normal... (For the record, I tried changing my preferences to the "old style", but the question mark remained.) AиDя01DTALKEMAIL June 28, 2005 12:08 (UTC)

Need major help

I have a new project that I am doing. I am creating the history of the Boy Scout Handbook and I need serious help. If anyone can contribute, then thank you. --Admiral Roo June 28, 2005 11:28 (UTC)

strange watchlist count

Anyone know why - since yesterday's change to 1.5 - my watchlist now contains "209.5 pages"? Grutness...wha? 28 June 2005 04:59 (UTC)

• Obviously, you're watching a page that doesn't fully count as an article.... ;) sorry, no idea - Mgm|^(talk) June 28, 2005 08:39 (UTC)
  • Mine now says 908.5. What is this? Filiocht | Talk June 28, 2005 09:30 (UTC)
    • Really? Mine has a whole number. Nickptar 28 June 2005 10:04 (UTC)

It's a bug. It's just cosmetic. It has been reported over and over again. Don't worry about it, it'll get fixed after the developers get done dealing with real bugs. -- Cyrius|✎ 29 June 2005 16:50 (UTC)

recent changes and random page?

Will the two special pagws be back on the toolbar, or are we going to have to go to the Special pages section each time? --Ixfd64 2005 June 28 03:59 (UTC)

Unsure of what to do

Just found this page and im unsure of where to post it so that it can get appropiate attention. Fantacular I dont know if it should be deleted or if it happens to be a notable subject then should it be expanded? As it stands it is just an advertisement.

I suggest starting a VfD (vote for deletion) on it. The site it's about uses as its subtitle "The best search engine you've never heard of.", which implies right there that it's non-notable; until some of the public has actually heard of it, it doesn't deserve inclusion here. Anyway, it's got a strange definition of "best"; I tried a few searches in it and got a pathetically small number of results, and they weren't even the most notable sites on the topics I was searching. I'll stick to Google. *Dan* 02:01, Jun 27, 2005 (UTC)

New portal: Brazil

Just thought I'd make it "public" here. I've just opened the Brazil Portal. The layout was inspired in the already-existing Australia portal. Zscout370 created the color scheme I followed and the entire first box. Not to blow my own horn, but I believe it's looking quite good! Regards, Redux 23:55, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Indopedia?

Is there a reason that the known mirror of Wikipedia, Indopedia.org states that "Indopedia is a trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc."[3]? I certainly can't find any evidence to support that. --Dmcdevit 23:33, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

A mirror, all instances of Wikipedia auto changed to Indopedia.

lots of issues | leave me a message 29 June 2005 06:41 (UTC)

FOX News

Hi...we're starting a mini-collaboration over at the FOX News article. We need some people to come over and help, from both sides (pro- and anti-FOX). Please post on the Talk page — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 15:03, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Beetles...a project in the making?

Hi all,

I'm a relatively new but already addicted wiki-bod. I've just got done re-writing the beetle page, which was a bit sad considering the number of species. Would be great if someone could cast a (nice) critical eye over it.

There is a list connected to that page of families within the order of beetles, and few of them are populated! - I'd really like to start banging through them but it would take some time, any one else out there a bit of a beetle nut who'd like to help me out, trade ideas, and maybe act as a wiki-style mentor??

Anyone out there with pictures of beetles, also somewhat lacking?

Thanks

John

--John-Nash 16:26, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I can't help with the subject, but I can suggest this: you may get better results in getting some feedback if you check the article's history; find out who has been contributing regularly to the article and contact them in their talk pages asking for feedback. There's no garantee that the people who are interested in the subject will read your post here, whereas if you drop them a message in their talk pages, you know that they will get that orange strip informing them of your post as soon as they log on. That may prove more effective. And welcome to Wikipedia! Regards, Redux 21:51, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You might be able to get some people interested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life. Grutness...wha? 00:37, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

FOX News -- need sysop help

There has been an anon editing that page and a large amount of wrinkles/reverts appearing. There has been a proposal on the Talk page to move back to the 24 Jun 13:23 UTC edit and protect the page until this can be sorted out. I'd like to do it, but would like to consult with some other admins before acting single-handedly. If you can, please comment on the Talk Page of said article. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 04:05, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

See section on fox news below.. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 15:07, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Failed VfD

I ask all of you to pay attention to the VfD of this page and its two VfD nominations: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Chung Tat-chi, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Chung Tat-chi (2nd nomination). The discussion result is clear: a majority think this person is too insignificant to be included in wikipedia and this page should be deleted. However, an admin has exercised partiality in this VfD, ignoring the content of discussion and keeping the page with reasons of no consensus and invalid. I strongly question his judgement. (It is not written in the official pollcy about any time period between the end of first VfD and the start of second VfD. Please point out if I'm wrong.) This is unfair and I ask all of you to comment on the deletion of this page. --218.103.251.125 02:51, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree with your goal of eliminating that vanity article, however, the admin properly followed policy. Wikipedia VFD outcomes are determined by consensus. 5 keep to 3 valid deletes = no change to the status quo. Please wait a little longer before resubmitting. If you drop me a message then I'll vote to delete.

lots of issues | leave me a message 03:18, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, when I counted it, the first vote seems to have been a 5-5 tie (there's an unsigned "keep" and an entry marked "comment" by Jerry Crimson that from context seems to indicate "delete"). It was a "no consensus" when the voting expired. The VfD was resubmitted in the same day, and that's invalid nomination. Cesarb did not express any opinion about the question of whether or not to keep the article, only that the first nomination was inconclusive and that the second one was invalid. That looks objective to me. No foul. As Lotsofissues said, please wait a little longer before resubmitting the article for deletion. I too volunteer to participate if someone lets me know when the article has been VfD again. Regards, Redux 03:40, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It's subjective, but an admin takes more than raw numbers into account. First of all, the status quo, in this case Keep, is always preferred without clear consensus to delete. Second, they take the reputations of the contributors and the strength of their opinions and reasoning into account. I would have considered the first vote consensus to delete, but there were several keep votes, weak though they are, and it's their decision. The second nomination should not have been made - this clearly contradicts policy and wastes everyone's time. Deco 03:31, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Freenode fundraiser

Because Anthere told me to:

• 24 June 2005 : Please help. Peer-Directed Projects Center runs freenode, an interactive service which helps Wikipedia and the FOSS community. Their annual fundraiser ends July 1, and they're about US$8,500 short. Their fundraising page. From lilo, the director of PDPC and the head of staff of freenode. Please spread the word...freenode is very helpful for us.

Freenode hosts the IRC channels for all Wikimedia projects. They're an invaluable resource. Help if you can. --Slowking Man 21:56, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia hiring

Listing - relocation to Japan required

lots of issues | leave me a message 03:34, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Um... Is this a software company called Wikipedia? What am I not getting? --Dmcdevit 03:44, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • It is indeed. They do "Software development for control systems, management systems". Seems to be cellphone-related. The English site is crappily translated. I'd say it's trademark-lawsuit time - what the F are they thinking? Nickptar 04:25, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • What the heck?? Established February, 2005? What were they thinking? — Knowledge Seeker দ 04:57, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • Hmm... I'll send a message to Wikitech-l. We might be dealing with a domain name squatter. Ambush Commander 05:03, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
        • I left messages on Jimbo's talk page and WP:AN too. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:09, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
          • The best part about the job is the $24,000/year salary [4]

I mention the issue to the juriwiki list. Anthere 05:37, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, if I did the calculation right, the entire paid-in capital of the company (from the "About Us" page) is $27,478. (It sounds much more impressive as 3,000,000 yen.) *Dan* 11:57, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Are you sure that's their all capital comes to?!? Not saying you're wrong, but heck, my family home would be worth more than that, even with NZ>US currency conversion! That's... um... not a flippin' lot of on-hand capital. But, then again, if they were a big company would they have overlooked our blatantly obvious existance? Master Thief Garrett^Talk 12:44, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Africa

Hello,

I am seeking to enter in contact with editors on the english wikipedia, living in African countries. This is at the same time for Wikimania and to prepare a report on African participation to Wikipedia. If you fit the profile, or know someone who fits the profile, please contact me on my user talk page or by email at anthere9ATyahoo.com

Thanks.

11:13, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'd suggest repeating this request at Wikipedia talk:Africa-related regional notice board and Wikipedia talk:Wikiportal/Africa. You might want to add your username so that people can respond at your user talk page, too! Grutness...wha? 12:00, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oooops, I probably did one thild too much ;-) Sorry Anthere 05:39, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Visual Music

Does anyone have Visual Music, a free program that helps people like me create MIDI music? If you do, can you pleas put together a better help file, for Shitil is obviously not a good english speaker, and I don't understand his instructions. I think he came from the middle east, and I seriously need help with the programming aspect of Visual Music. Thanks. Admiral Roo (Talk to me)(My Contributions) 20:03, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

What do you think?

I have made several lyrics now, but this is what many consider my best. To see them, go here. --Admiral Roo 19:37, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

What do I think - no offence, but I think that these would be better on your own website, with perhaps a link from your user page to it (then again, I can't really talk since I have a self portrait on my user page...) Grutness...wha? 00:17, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

How long to write a typical paragraph?

I'm thinking of putting something into Wikipedia:Your first article to suggest that Wikipedia articles should be distillations involving a certain amount of real work. Unless you're a bona fide subject matter expert they should not be just written off the top of the head. Facts should get at least a cursory check, and so forth.

When I was in college, it was helpful to me that my school had a very explicit statement that it was expected that students would spend two to three hours in preparation for each hour spent in lecture. Thus a nominal "fifteen-hour" load represented a 45 to 60-hour work week. I was very surprised when I was a TA at a big state university to find that nobody had ever told the students there anything similar and that many students did NOT realize what was expected of college-level study.

So... just as the roughest guess.... How long does it take YOU to write a typical paragraph? And how many times during the writing of a paragraph do you stop to check a fact, even if very casually?

I'd say it takes ME ten minutes to an hour, and I stop to check facts one to five times. (Let the flames from those who work harder begin!) Dpbsmith (talk) 10:04, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Depends on the subject matter. But if I know where to find the facts, it could take me as little as ten minutes to prepare a certain amount of text. Whole articles is another matter. I've been preparing several rewrites for ages. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:15, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

• I find I write about five paragraphs all at once without worrying about the detail contained in them, but then spend the rest of the hour mercilessly rewriting them to be "perfect". Not very efficient, but it gets the job done. Also another thing to suggest is running a spellcheck on the new/edited content before submitting, as sometimes that will catch things that even the most grammar-oriented editor can overlook. Master Thief Garrett^Talk 12:58, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I'm pretty much with MTG on this one - I usually write a handful of paragraphs. They will usually be fairly general, with not much that needs too much research. But I also keep a couple of research books handy so that I can look things up when i need to. Once that's done, I start revising using the books and google. BTW, it's pretty vital to use two different sources for the facts - one might have somethign wrong, but it's unlikely for two to get the facts wrong in an identical way. So the initial writing only takes a short time, but the revising takes quite a bit longer. Grutness...wha? 04:26, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Here is a piece of string; please estimate the length. Filiocht | Blarneyman 11:23, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

• Hm. Hard to say for me, since I don't usually write one paragraph at a time but rather start with a structure and then keep adding to it and tweaking and reorganizing as it goes. If I know the subject matter well and have to look at references only to confirm, 15 minutes; if I am writing about something that was previously unknown to me, an hour seems about right, or longer if it's a long paragraph. An occasional exception will take me ages; I think of myself as a slow writer, but then I do little revising after the initial draft. Most of the time I'm not writing off the top of my head but rather with all my references right in front of me, so fact-checking is continuous. (And I won't say how much time I spent on this paragraph; it would just be embarrassing!) Sounds like a good addition to WP:YFA. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 12:05, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I wrote the whole of Blue Ant in about 5 minutes. But Mary Seacole has been simmering for months. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:11, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• My usual writing scheme: I start with a good intro, which helps determine the scope of the article and summarize what it'll all be about. Then write everything else I know about the topic as a long series of paragraphs while drawing detail from web sources, add comments marking anything I know should be there but I don't want to do right now. Finally I rearrange everything and add section headers and formatting until I like the presentation. I check any links I'm not confident about and sometimes copy in a bit of material from other articles. Then I save and read it again and notice a bunch of other little things which I fix. At the end I add all the plausible redirects. Usually I leave images for later, since those require more work, but as soon as I get one I toss that in. I don't usually stop until I feel the article has no serious shortcomings other than clearly marked missing stuff which could be added in the future - I try not to let anything incorrect or unverifiable slip by without correction or deletion, but sometimes it does. Deco 03:50, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

HELP!!!!! Anybody have a good remedy for massive welts and itching?!?!?!?!?!

Forgive me if this is covered somewhere or this isn't the proper forum but I'm squirming and yelping from intense itching and almost body wide welts from bites. I live in Florida (am hoping to move to a drier climate, at least less mosquitoe infested soon) and this season is particularly bad. I've tried ice, cold water, alcohol (applied to the skin) benadryl spray and am still covered in welts and going nuts. Any help would be appreciated. I'm at JSOkazaki@hotmaill.com or call 305-793-8527 (I'll call you back and reimburse any long distance charges).

Thanks! Suffering in Miami, Jean

The questions may be different, the answer is always the same: Never seek medical advice online, go to a doctor! --Golbez 23:51, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

This guy must be trying to get on Wikipedia: Unusual requests. Deco 00:12, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This is a minor enough problem that I don't see the problem with online advice. Mine is: don't get bitten by mosquitoes. Use repellant. If that's insufficient, try stronger over-the-counter anti-itch products; if it's really bad, see a dermatologist. Nickptar 04:05, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The alcohol must be taken internally, not applied externally. That's just the waste of a good martini. -Willmcw 04:31, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Must... clean... keyboard... --Deathphoenix 14:31, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ammonia is usually good for taming an itchy insect bite - you can quite literally spray a bite with Windex (just like in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding). However...depending on what your bites are from and how severe your reaction is, you may really want to see a doctor. Do start using bug spray, too. ¦ Reisio 03:44, 2005 Jun 23 (UTC)

Really? Never heard of that.

Anyway, this is probably just someone trying to get a bunch of emails and spam and phone calls to someone he doesn't like. - Omegatron 04:13, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Advice

Hi, Im new to Wiki and I have just finished re-writing Saint John, United States Virgin Islands, it used to be a stub. It is my first real article and I was wondering if I could get some feedback and suggestions for the future. Thanks

(for other readers, the article is *actually* at Saint John, United States Virgin Islands). Wow, that's a good rewrite. Yeah. :)

The only thing is minor spelling and formatting niggles. Note that you don't need to use <p> tags, just use two line-breaks (hit Enter twice) and it will automatically generate it like that. About the only time when you do need HTML is for section-breaking. Tables and images will ignore paragraph breaks, so you need <br clear=all /> or whatnot to force them to stay down. You can see I've done that with the "Territory of the" box so it's now completely separate from the map. But other than things like that it's a fine rewrite. Well done! Master Thief Garrett^Talk 04:52, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks-yeah I wasnt quite sure about formatting but now I know Gpyoung 19:48, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

ONLINE

WERE BACK ONLINE HOOORAY!!--Jondel 28 June 2005 04:00 (UTC)

Belfast Telegraph Blasts Wikipedia Article

Read here Apparently a Belfast radio program devoted a segment to Ballymena article because of 5 highly sarcastic lines in the introduction. The B.Telegraph follows up with an entire article. Slow newsday. This article must be responded to and our article should be scrutinized. Please join me. lots of issues | leave me a message 06:28, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

((cleanup)) notices unhelpful

I occasionally see the {{cleanup}} posted on articles that look perfectly all right to me. Checking the links given within the notice does not help. Requests to the person who has posted the cleanup request occasionally result in sarcastic and unhelpful replies. It is easy for the person who posts the notice to vent his/her irritation with something that seems less than ideal, but I have yet to see a case where I have been able to figure out what the gripe is, much less what needs to be done to correct the problem. A brief indication, perhaps involving one's own boilerplate, on the discussion page of the article would IMHO be much more useful and less likely to provoke frustration. P0M 14:57, 23 July 2005 (UTC) P.S. The specific notice was added by 24.29.141.167 who has vandalized the user page of another contributor as well as making a few fairly reasonable looking changes. P0M 15:19, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

What to do with Concert-master?

Any suggestions of what to do with Concert-master? As it stands, it's just a dicdef, and has been that way for almost a year. Being listed as a stub doesn't seem to have attracted anybody to fix it up. On the other hand, while the article clearly fits into VfD territory, the topic seems like it could certainly have a good article written about it by somebody who knows the field (which I do not). RoySmith 13:17, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

How does it look now?—Wahoofive (talk) 18:06, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

P.S. one reason it languished is it had the wrong stub tag. {{musician-stub}} is for individual musicians; it should have had just {{music-stub}}.—Wahoofive (talk) 18:07, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, that helped. I tweaked it a little more. RoySmith 21:35, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

What does (top) mean?

I was recently looking at "My Contributions" and noticed that next to some of my entries, it's listed as (top). What does this signify? Fieari 23:36, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

It's the most recent edit to the article. —Cryptic (talk) 00:09, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

See also bug #2727. Bovlb 17:24:37, 2005-07-23 (UTC)

Which program can i download to play Ogg Vorbis files?

Which program can i download to play Ogg Vorbis files?Which program can let me record Ogg Vorbis files?How can I post them? Tdxiang 07:11, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

• Audacity is one; see Wikipedia:Media help, and also Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia if you want to help there.--Pharos 07:16, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
• I like Foobar2000. Nice and simple. --Dmcdevit·t 08:14, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
• I LOVE IrfanView. Free at IrfanView home website. Good for pics, music, and more! 4.250.33.49 09:06, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
• There was a plugin to WMP that is free. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 21:59, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

An Idea (sort of WNN related) - Hiroshima 60 Documentary programme

Hi,

2005 is 60 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki

I felt it would be a good use of WNN (and Wiki ideas in general) if someone was able to produce a NPOV documentaty concerning the events.

A rough proposal is at: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/WNN:Hiroshima_60_Programme_Idea

If this is best directed at a different forum please redirect me in the appropriate direction.

I just loveeeee this site

I love this site. I wish I could get every christian I know to read it. Christians do not realize just how much has gone into the making of the Christian religion or the putting together of the bible. They seem to think that the bible and the church just popped out of thin air as soon as Jesus went to be with the father. Thank you so much for being here and for allowing those of us who cannot afford to pay for such information, to utilize this site all the same. I am not able at this present moment to contribute, but be rest assured that in the future, this will be the first place I send a donation, to express my extreme gratitude.

We appreciate contributions of information and time, too! Anything you can do to help. - Omegatron 13:57, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Apparent invalid message from Wikipedia

I got this message at my private e-mail address today.

"Someone (probably you, from IP address XXXXXXXXX) requested that we send you a new Wikipedia login password. The password for user "Richman" is now "XXXXXXXXX". You should log in and change your password now."

I had not requested a password change at all. When I went to Wikipedia my old password worked fine. What is going on? Is this some sort of a phishing or scam?

David Richman

• It certainly sounds phishy to me. You should definitely NOT change your password.--Pharos 03:51, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

It's the "Mail me a new password" system. Posting the new password here was quite possibly the worst thing you could have done. Go "change" your password immediately by "changing" it to what you were previously using before somebody steals your account. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:22, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Eh, what's the deal with this sytem? It's very strange. You can just type in anyone's user name and send them a password, and at that time they have two working passwords? --Alterego 04:38, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's precisely it. It's just a lost password system, but sends to the signup address. In this case it doesn't erase your old passwords (like forums do) so instead gives you an alternate password, which is also valid. Certainly this particular email may have had a false link to capture account info, but the process behind it is completely real. Garrett^Talk 05:13, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

This is a standard lost password system as you would see anywhere. How else would it work? -- Cyrius|✎ 07:51, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I have never seen a lost password system that created two concurrently valid passwords. The proper way to do it is to send the user a hashed validation link; if they click the link their old password is deactivated and a new password is generated for them or they may specify the new one. Not two at the same time... --Alterego 23:14, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

I don't know what is going on. The IP number is wrong for me and the return address for the e-mail was wiki@wikimedia.org. Of course that could be a cover and if I had answered the e-mail they might have gotten some information. If I did change my password I'm not sure how anybody could steal my account. As a matter of fact, since my old password worked I don't know how this would operate. Is Wikipedia so insecure that someone could know when you changed a password and what it was? How can I contact anybody at Wikipedia (I could not find a way) to find out if my account has been stolen?

No, it's not like that. All it is is that someone can enter a user name and choose "mail me a new password" and it's sent to the email address associated with the password. It then says to check your email, where they've given you the new password. However if you don't have access to that email account you can't GET that email. If the URL had a redirection at the end it could have been to trap IDs (read phishing for more on this), but there is no way to use a legitimate Wikipedia mailing system to steal IDs. Don't worry, everything's OK! :) Garrett^Talk 05:13, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, I hope so. I did not try the password they sent because I was afraid that it might work, but my old password did work. Is it possible that they have an alternate password into my account? My guess is that the phishers (assuming that is what they were) assumed that I would think it was a real message from Wikipedia- answer it and somehow give away my password. They did send it to my correct e-mail address. How did that happen?

May I also ask why you are "Master Thief"??

I had one of these on 12 July - see my post on the Technical Pump. In my case my private email address was right but the username cited was not, which was why I smelt a rat. Apwoolrich 07:17, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

It is a real message from Wikipedia. When you go to log in, there is a "Mail me a new password" button. When that button is hit, it takes the given user name and looks to see if there is an email address on file for that user name. If there is an email address, it generates a new password and sends out the email you received. The password is only sent to that address, it is not displayed to the person who pushed the button, and the only insecurity was you posting the new password here yourself. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:51, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I thought about that later. However that password does not work anyway (I did change it before I posted to here- the only way the first password could have worked, I think, was if there could have been two passwords at the same time). At the time I did not mention that I had altered my password because I did not understand what had happened. I'm still not sure as I don't know who would have requested a new password in my name!

I have hopes that all is well. I should have blanked it out myself, but I did not think that it was actually from you. I still do not know how I got the message as I have not been on Wikipedia for a while to actually work on anything.

I might add that I DID NOT try the password that was sent to me bewfore I changed it, only my old one.

Sorry about not signing and dating- just noticed the tool bar mark.

I guess that is the end of it- sorry for being such a computer illiterate! After several bad experiences I tend to be a bit careful (although perhaps not careful enough.)

--Richman 13:18, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Calling all Roman scholars

Can someone have a look at Flaccus (composer). The only Google refs I can find for this guy are at Wikipedia and mirror sites. I admit I'm not a Roman scholar, and that we learn something new every day, but it seems very suspicious to me. Moriori 00:29, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Riiiiiight... um, very suspect. I've never heard of Roman music existing, and I'm sure we don't even know what notation system they used--if any, for example medieval jongleurs memorised everything. So I'd say it could be marked with {{fact}} or whatever it is (y'know, where it says "doesn't differentiate between fact and fiction" or whatnot) until such time as we can have it properly proven. Just like Jedi Master Obius, sounding real doesn't mean you are. And Flaccus ~> flaccid ~> non-erect penis, so possibly some sort of joke. Garrett^Talk 01:33, 21 July 2005 (UTC) --I'll try to have a look at that book it refers to though, unless someone else beats me to it of course. If all else fails this can be taken to Vfd as the truth is bound to surface there. Garrett^Talk 03:56, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Whoa, just now saw this. It's not a hoax, but there is some controversy over whether the one surviving bit of Roman music is actually by Flaccus (it probably isn't, at least according to the New Grove). Flaccus was a slave or freedman who supplied music for the comedies by Terence. A 10th century manuscript referenced in Denkmäler altgriechischer Musik (Nuremberg, 1970) contains a single line of music allegedly from Terence, and by Flaccus; but the author of the Grove article says that it is not authentic, without further elaborating. Guess I'll have to fix the article ... Antandrus (talk) 03:54, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Ah, so the music isn't in an original format, ah... that's more believable then. Slightly. :) Garrett^Talk 04:13, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I don't have it in front of me to see what it looks like, and I don't know if the Romans had the ancient Greek musical notation in the 2nd century BCE ... at any rate not a scrap has survived. We'll probably never know. Not a shred, not a single note even chiseled on stone. (See Seikilos epitaph for an example of the Greek notation of the period). (Oh, and how would anyone in the 10th century have learned to read the ancient notation even if they found some? hmmm...) Antandrus (talk) 04:19, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

OK, I added everything from both editions of Grove. All that is really known about Flaccus is that he was a composer of music for the comedies of Terence, but that bit of music is probably spurious. Antandrus (talk) 04:12, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Misrepresentation of issues, in a vote, and by a sysop (no less)

I think the community needs to consider how acceptable is, and what to do, as User:Deb when making a RM regarding article Alexandra Fyodorovna of Hesse, represents the case in the page "Requests to Move" by alleging that the move would be "back" to Alix of Hesse. However it is very clear that Deb misrepresents the issue by such allegation: the article has never been at Alix of Hesse and such address does not yet exist (as everyone can check). Thus the proposed move cannot be "back" to that.
And, Deb claims as her reason for move, by the brief presentation space in general page RM that "The present article title is untenable. However, being "untenable" is an opinionated allegation and does not have any place in proper representation of renaming need. There Deb fails to present the proposal in neutral terms.
Moreover, in the Talk page (Talk:Alexandra Fyodorovna of Hesse) when giving her grounds for proposed move, Deb says "Arrigo, who carried out the move to the present name, evidently has no understanding of these standards". That is clearly a personal attack. And moreover, has no solid grounds. The answer, predictably, was "In my opinion, evidently Deb has no understanding of these standards".
Deb has done this as a user. IMO it is important to remember that she is also a sysop, from whom exemplary behavior should be required.
In that short space, Deb has apparently misrepresented a case in general RM page, also used only an opinionated opinion in general RM page as the only reason for move, and also made a personal attack.
As RfC-procedure is too heavy to go through, I am asking what are means of community to make the said Deb behave better / and could someone withdraw her powers. 217.140.193.123 16:03, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't know which name is correct, but from the mess of redirects and double redirects I beleive that at one time or another the article has been called:

• Alexandra Fedorovna of Hesse
• Alexandra of Hesse (this is where most inbound links point to)
• Alexandra Romanov
• Princess alix of hesse and by rhine
• Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine
• Princess Alix of Hesse (I presume this is the title Deb is referring to)
• Alix of Hesse and by Rhine

I have protected the page against moves, which will stop normal users moving the page again. Removing a users' admin power can only be done by a Steward or Developer I belive, and unless this is self-requested is always controversial. If the talk page and requested moves pages arent' enough then an RfC is the best way to go.

In the mean time though, somebody should correct all the links so they point to the current location. Thryduulf 16:23, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

It's not a Steward, it's a Bureaucrat, or at least according to WP:RFA (unless that's different again). But, regardless, a public dressing-down is done in very extreme circumstances. In this situation I'd say a Request for Comment would be sufficient. I've fixed the double redirects, but there's still a quagmire of "what links here" to attend to one day. Garrett^Talk 23:31, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm all in favour of an RfC. Bring it on. Deb 11:58, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

can I put the lyrics of Fuhua Secondary School on an article?Or will i violate copyright?

Tdxiang 07:24, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Song lyrics are generally copyright violations. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:30, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Regardless of copyright, we don't take primary sources (see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not p. 1.4). --Smack (talk) 02:02, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

The precedent set by other articles (like American Pie (song)) suggests it's possibly okay under fair use. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 22:19, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

Bear in mind, though, that in American Pie (song), the lyrics are as part of a discussion about the meaning of those lyrics; including the lyrics alongside a commentary on those lyrics has a better claim to being fair use than using the lyrics with no comments would have. IANAL -- AJR 15:53, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

I see that someone has put a lot of effort into that article. However, people have put considerably more effort into the series of articles on the United States Consitution, and the text of the document itself is notably missing. See Wikisource. --Smack (talk) 01:42, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject automation bot

Who wrote the wonderful widget which weeded through the wiki and generated "edit suggestions" for Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Syntax? I'd like to have a word with you on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. --Smack (talk) 03:18, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Er, Smack - did you read all the way down the Wiki Syntax page? ;-) JesseW 07:04, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

LOL (Internet slang)

I believe this article is getting a bit out of hand. The list of "variants" has grown to 55 (including "lolbow" and "lolasagna"), and now we have an animated "lollercoaster." Are all the variants really in wide use? Joyous (talk) 21:26, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

• Probably not. Google should be able to confirm that. For instance, lolasagna scores 54 googles so is clearly not a notable meme. Radiant_>|< 08:46, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
• I've further vetted the list. All variants with fewer than 300 Google hits were removed. Now down to 21. lots of issues | leave me a message 22:24, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

gmail invites

Anybody want a gmail invites? --Kiba 19:22, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I'll take yours if you take mine --Alterego 19:38, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

You mean we invites each other? --Kiba 19:47, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

We need to be careful not to turn this into a forum or chat room about computers, see WP:NOT. A lot of other web forums have people who offer GMail accounts, like 419eater.com or several blogs. — Stevey7788 (talk) 20:50, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Excessive info on americans

Hello all. I have been going through the dates list i.e July 16 etc. and find that nearly half the births an deaths are filled with americans who would not be known outside USA. For instance american football players are barely known unless they commit a crime like O.J. Simpson. It's alright to include hollywood heroes and other sports which are followed by the whole world, but including american football and baseball etc. smacks of a bias (systemic probably). So if there is any possibility to cut down the american heavy list and ensure there is equal representation I suggest anyone come up with ideas. With all due respect, this is an universal encyclopedia not Encyclopedia Americanna. Thanks.--Idleguy 16:46, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

I see no real problem with the tendency to overfocus on people from the US. That happens because the majority of the people who contribute to the en.wp are from that country, at least those contributing to that list. I have no official source for this, I'm assuming. You could say it's systemic bias, but the only realistic way to counter it would be to start referencing people from other places and whose entries would be equally valid in similar amounts. The problem would be if people started opposing said personalities because they are "unknown" (where they live). For instance: if people can list every tailback that has ever played in the NFL, I can list every professional cricket player in activity in India. If people think that souldn't be done, then we can discuss cutting back on the American Football players. That was just an example, but it's all about finding balance. Regards, Redux 17:46, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I think Redux has covered it fairly well. It's not that the information on the US is excessive, it's that coverage of stuff outside the US is lacking. So write more articles. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:43, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

The question is whether you want the date articles to be a way to categorise every biography article on Wikipedia, or if you want them to give a short list that readers will find interesting. The former avoids conflict over inclusion (or at least contains it to VFD). The latter clearly can't be acheived by addition alone. -- Tim Starling 06:28, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

What we need is to move some of the trivia to a separate years in U.S. series. Similar subpages already exist for Canada, Ireland, South Africa, and several other countries. - SimonP 14:32, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

I think what Simon says is just about what I envisaged. Everything that talks excessively about one nation can be hived off into a seperate section. My basis for such a seperation would be based on this simple question : "Would the said personality have the name/fame to be recognized by a reader from any other nation?" IF not then they should be removed since it could lead to a boring list of who's who from one and later on from many number of countries. tx. Idleguy 05:39, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

I would support moving people only known in the US to a US specific page. Be bold, and if you need support, let me know. JesseW 07:02, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Sockpuppets and impersonation

Hi. I thought I'd post here so this may get a broader consideration. It has been brought to my attention (meaning, a user who thought I was an admin informed me of this) that the accounts Arrigo (talk · contribs) and Bhinneka (talk · contribs) may be sockpuppets of an anon contributor under the IP address 217.140.193.123 (talk · contribs) — this is actually accurate, since the anon contributes anonymously regularly, almost exclusively in biographic articles about noblesmen and royals. I lack the means (or the expertise) to confirm this, all I can say is that the "style" of writing is awfully similar, whatever that might mean. What prompted me to post this here, however, is that something rather serious has started happening: the user Antares911 has just been informed in his talk page, by Aoi, that Bhinneka has posted at least twice impersonating him (evidence provided: here and here). For all I know, this could be happening to other unaware users too. What now? Regards, Redux 14:49, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

If there have been double votes at the VfD or if the sockpuppet account is created to purposely create arguments, then we have something to be concerned about. There are also legal sockpuppets, see Wikipedia:Suckpuppets, but only if they don't seem to care about each other, mind only articles, and don't vote illegally. — Stevey7788 (talk) 20:52, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

What makes you say that Bhinneka is being run by Arrigo/217.140.193.123? The writing style, topics, etc., suggest the account is being run by Antares911, not Arrigo. Choess 22:46, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

Hello, I am Aoi, the user who originally reported the "impersonations" to Antares911. I've been following a dispute between these users for a while now, and I read Choess's comment with great interest. There have been several accusations of sockpuppetting from both sides over the last couple of weeks and there is a huge amount of tension on both sides. I've looked at Bhinneka's contributions (which, interestingly enough, fall within the general 100-edit guideline mentioned on Wikipedia:Sockpuppets) and compared them to the writing styles, opinions, and subject areas of both the annonymous user and Antares. All three areas show a much greater similarity to Antares911 as opposed to the annonymous user, which now leads me to agree with Choess in believing that Bhinneka is a sockpuppet of Antares911. 青い(Aoi) 07:33, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I too am aware of the degree of continued tension between Antares and the anon. In fact, I had a run with the anon myself, but I was able to discontinue it when I realized I was beginning to loose my patience. Antares, however, has the same general interest as the anon: articles on noblesmen and royals, which has paved the way to many encounters. But I have had exchanges with Antares on talk pages, and it is my impression, and I can't stress this enough: it's my personal opinion, that Antares does not seem like a user who would resort to sockpuppets. The anon is a different story: he has a legitimate knowledge of the topic, and an overall genuine interest in contributing to the articles within this topic, but he is extremely aggressive in his remarks when opposed consistently. He has carried personal attacks to several users for no good reason (as if there even was a "good reason" for personal attacks), both in articles' talk pages and in some of the users' talk pages. When I mentioned the similarity in the writing of Bhinneka and the anon, I wasn't referring to the tone, but rather to the English language: Bhinneka's edits and the anon's show a very similar pattern of [small] mistakes in the use of the language. At least that was the "feeling" I got.
But why keep speculating, and arguably pointing fingers? Is there some way we can cross-ckeck the anon's IP (which is visible) and Antares911's with the IPs that are behind Arrigo and Bhinneka? If some of them are the same, or if some of them have the same origin, the mistery would be solved unequivocally. Regards, Redux 16:05, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree with your general summary. There is a way to check the IP addresses of users to determine sockpuppetry, however, I don't think this information is accessible unless you're a developer or have the CheckUser permission. In addition, I highly doubt if those people with access to such information would be willing to check the information for us due to privacy issues. The exception to this seems to be arbitration level interests. We could try to ask anyway as I'm really not too sure how the system works (perhaps they'll give us the information anyway?). 青い(Aoi) 20:56, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I think Arrigo/217.140.193.123 is correct in asserting that Antares911 has already used a sock puppet account at one time, ant33. The Bhinneka edits generally, IMO, resemble Antares (neither he nor the anon are native speakers, although Antares has a considerably better command of English), but there is one suspicious one: here. An IP check to see if Bhinneka is coming from .de or .fi would sort this out. Choess 17:11, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

As per Aoi's information, I wasn't aware that the information would be that difficult to come by. If there's privacy issues involved, I'd be willing to take a developer's word if (s)he were to tell us something like I have verified that "x" is a sockpuppet of "y" and "z" is a sockpuppet of "w". No need to actually divulge the ids. Without that information, there's no way to resolve this. We'd just keep running in circles, in a "he said, she said" kind of way. For instance, based on what I've seen from both Antares and the anon, the diff presented by Choess would, in my opinion, seem almost definately to be from the anon. If that's so, then obviously Bhinneka is a sockpuppet of the anon, as well as Arrigo.
In any case, it seems rather clear that Bhinneka and Arrigo are indeed sockpuppets, we just don't know who exactly is controlling them. It's bad form, especially since the puppets have been "enlisted" in the dispute between the anon and Antares — at least Arrigo, which has posted on pages where the anon had posted under the IP address, without any effort to identify the two as being the same person; essentially, in some of those pages it looks like Arrigo is providing peer support to the IP address. However, and again, this is my opinion, I believe that Antares911 can be reasoned out of it. The anon, I'm not so sure (at the very least, it will take a lot more convincing). Regards, Redux 22:50, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

A Poor Example

On this page in a section called "RFC on SlimVirgin", I find I happen to think you're an asshole who fucks up everything he touches, you foolish, time-wasting bully!! [...] go ahead and complain about me if you want. It Is A Poor Example By An Ed. A Laughably Poor Example. 4.250.201.29 01:56, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

(He's talking about this section). Seems you misunderstood. After that it says "This is inserted as an example of a forbidden comment ... but I was illustrating a point..." so you've kind of taken that out of context. Still, thanks for voicing your concerns. If that really was what was being said we'd be, um, glad to know. Yeah. You know what I mean. Thanks. :) Garrett^Talk 11:55, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

He/she didn't mention the context, but they didn't take it out of context. They do know it's an example. They just think it's a poor example—and I have to concur; it's so over-the-top that it doesn't prove anything. Worse, it's so convincingly presented as "just an example" that as a reader you start to wonder if Ed didn't secretly mean some part of it... and that's definitely not what he was aiming for, I should think. JRM · Talk 17:24, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sorry, I only just now got the pun on "Ed Poor". I'm tired. JRM · Talk 17:24, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

What Ed wrote can be taken at least two ways (an example of what not to do or a technique to get away with being insulting) as is what I wrote (a pun or a critisism of Ed). Is the ambiguity on purpose? Wikipedia likes to let the reader decide. 4.250.33.49 08:22, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Question

How can I propose a new article? - In Danish Wikipwdia I've written about krøs = crooze.

--Baskholm 14:25, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

This question would be better placed in the Help desk. If you need help with the contents of the article you want to create, you may try the Reference desk. For help translating from Danish into English, you can check Wikipedia:Requests for translation. I can tell you right now that we usually start new articles on our own, after verifying that there isn't an article on the subject already. Other than that, you may try to find users with a common interest in the topic you wish to develop and contact them in their talk pages. You may want to elaborate on the topic you want to write about, here or in an article with some connection with it — you can leave a message on said article's talk page, and maybe some of the people involved with it will take an interest and contact you about your proposal. Regards, Redux 19:36, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Constant improvement, or rot

The common concensus is that the Wikipedia process involves articles that start out short and coarse, and are gradually improved, until perfection is achieved; If there are disputes, after a few edits the article will settle on an agreed-upon wording that will please all the factions.

Unfortunately, after editing in Wikipedia for almost two years, I have reached a conclusion that this view might be a bit too optimistic. Instead of articles converging towards perfection, articles "drift" aimlessly, with numerous editors making changes that improve nothing and are nothing more than a "change for the sake of changing". Unless good editors come along once in a while to steer the article back into the "perfection" direction, the articles will drift into random crap.

My case study is Ariel Sharon, an article on the controversial Israeli prime minister. I have been following this article for over a year, and summarized my observations in Talk:Ariel Sharon (the first section, titled "First Paragraph"). I showed how a certain paragraph I added was randomly mutated for no real reason, and kept on mutating for a year, until someone simply came along and deleted it entirely. And I predict this cycle to continue.

Nyh 13:52, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

A way of identifying the current "high water mark" of an article would be of great benefit to Wikipedia. Unfortunately the article validation feature of MediaWiki 1.5 which might move us in this direction seems to be vapourware for the time being. Pcb21| Pete 12:15, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

This would be definitely way to increase quality of Wikipedia. Pavel Vozenilek 19:20, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

--edit conflict! Well, my comments address a high water mark as well. Not so much "great minds think alike" as "we are all drones of The Matrix" :) Garrett^Talk 12:26, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Well sometimes people see something and say "I wouldn't say it like that, I'd say it like this!" and so decide to alter it to fit the way they think perfection is. This is not necessarily a bad thing as some really impressive-sounding wordings can eventually surface when the previous editors just couldn't find right the words for it, but each person has a unique writing style, and, indeed (a frequent expression in my writing style), they will end up equalling each other out at times, as in your example.

Ideally there should be people out there who decide to become secret "guardians" of an article; at key changes in the flow they will assess the article based on the "penultimate" edition (for example, the revision that won Featured status) and revert or raise their concerns when it seems to have deviated from that.

This is why I like to see edit summaries used to the fullest; if I do decide to do a "useless" rewording of something I usually explain each and every little rewording, for example ""his hair loss" >> "his baldness" (more official term), "she was called after" >> "she was named after" (less awkward)". I put as much as the edit box allows, and sometimes I heavily abbreviate just to make it all fit!

But my wordiness is a good thing. If at all possible, the summary should "prove" the worth of your changes; if you've made fluffy changes (as it seems some have in this article), the summary won't be very "convincing", and so people could choose to say "r/v paragraph to agreed version; WhatsHerFace, your changes add nothing new to this section, see the talk page for rationale and clarification". Then they can explain to the editor that their change was pithy, and the editor can explain why they made it. This will help ensure the penultimate edition is maintained, and, eventually, bettered.

Hope that helps you. :) Garrett^Talk 12:26, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

This is one of the goals for Wikipedia article validation and the currently somewhat nebulous "Wikipedia 1.0". The idea is that when enough people validate an article version as good, it will be marked as a "milestone 1.0" version, and if desired we can recommend that people cite THAT version in papers, or use it to link to from external sites, etc. The milestone version will continue to recede into the page history as more edits are made to the live page, but when the page next gets a thorough validation/review, all changes will be compared against the milestone 1.0 version and any necessary edits made until it's agreed that it's improved enough to receive a "milestone 2.0" marker. There will never be a "finished" or "perfect" or "frozen" article, but each milestone should be better than the last, and each milestone will be guaranteed to be fact-checked, copyedited, image-tagged, checked for copyvios, etc. That way Wikimedia could safely use those milestone versions for print or DVD editions, and third-party users could choose to copy only the milestone versions for use on their sites (and avoid the pitfalls of using live WP data).

Who knows what the actual details of implementation will be, but this seems to me to be the most promising idea for improving our content, preventing dilution of brilliant prose with trivia, and giving outsiders the "authoritative" content they say they want want, without killing everything that makes Wikipedia a living and growing project. — Catherine\^talk 04:22, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

RSS feed of the Article of the day?

Just checking, is there a RSS feed for the article of the day? I like to read it, but a lot of stuff I get off a RSS feed to my PDA and read at work. I cannot find a RSS feed for anthing wiki but I do thing it might be a good Idea for at least the article of the day. --198.190.160.3 09:57, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

link. See also: Wikipedia:Syndication --Alterego 19:31, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

the apostrophe to abbreviate 'the seventies', etc., as in "1970's" instead of "1970s"

--220.235.42.134 15:30, 17 July 2005 (UTC)Is there a Wiki policy on the use of the apostrophe in, for instance, 1970s? I notice that there are articles that say "1970's" and, as an English speaking Australian, I would say that is an unnecessary use of the apostrophe, but realise it is a 'style' thing. Richard Clark

The Manual of Style says no aprostrophe - see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Thryduulf 15:40, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I believe the usual expectation is that in English, there is no apostrophe, except for possessive forms of the number, like "The year 1970's end was on December 31, 1970." as-opposed to the noun "The 1970s ended on December 31, 1979." --Mysidia 15:44, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

There is no apostrophe. But the reason is that the numerals are merely a placeholder for words. When written out in full you don't say nineteen-seventie's, so similarly you don't say 1970's unless (as above) it's possessive. And this applies to any other abbreviation (PDAs, BAs, MDs) as well. No possessive, no comma. Garrett^Talk 20:37, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Articles on random pieces of PC software?

Is a writeup on J. Random PC App considered encyclopedic? I just came across Scientific Letter which is hideously badly written, which I could clean up very easily, but which I am not sure is worth the effort, if it should't be on WP in the first place. Steve Summit 12:40, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I'd say nominate it for deletion (see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion) and let the community decide whether it's encyclopediac or not. Talrias (t | e | c) 12:59, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

• I agree. A random computer application is not by definition encyclopedic. Many of those are self-published by simply putting them on the web somewhere (and generally get less than one download per day). If the software is not widely in use, nor actually sold in stores, chances are it shouldn't have an article. Radiant_>|< 11:21, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
• For software which is now obsolete, and is not sold anywhere, we can be a little more generous than the above, since no one stands to gain from promoting it. For some applications, especially those which predate the web, the Wikipedia article may be one of the few remnants existing.-gadfium 09:30, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Nominate outstating WP work for WIKIMANIA

(not sure if this is news or misc. so posting in both)
CLICK HERE TO NOMINATE ARTICLES

In less than a month, the first WIKIMANIA wiki convention will be held. During the convention, they will award "best of" prizes for the different projects. Be sure to click the above link to nominate Wikipedia articles you think are worthy of consideration. Deadline is Aug 1, 2005 DAVODD 18:02, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

Looks like a great place to select the most brilliant of brilliant prose. We should nominate the best brilliant prose ever written. — Stevey7788 (talk) 20:57, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Comments being selectively deleted off of talk pages!

Take a look at this. Comments being selectively deleted off of talk pages!

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Snowspinner&action=history

See July 14th. Ardonik's sarcastic comment is kept while the response is deleted.

You are the banned user Pioneer-12, and I claim my, whatever the heck it is people claim when they do this. Stop whining, you did this to yourself. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:33, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Uh, ok....

Maybe you should do a little research before you open your mouth?

As Bob Dillon said "Don't criticise what you can't understand."

I love it... someone selectively deletes comments, a clear violation of Wikipedia's policies and principles, and someone that points this out is "whining".

Cmon, Cyrius, open your mouth again. Got any more ignorant things to say?

© 2005, Pioneer-12

Snowspinner can delete whatever he wants from his talk page. It's his page. Rhobite 02:09, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Really? I thought the page was hosted by Wikipedia and had to adhere to certain standards. Oh, never mind...

Here's a better question... Do you RESPECT a person who selectively deletes sensible comments off of his talk page?

And is it a civil thing to do?

© 2005, Pioneer-12

Thank you for helping us block open proxies. Rhobite 02:30, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Since I suppose I have your attention, I'd like to make a quick comment. Please stop. Every single user licenses their comments under the GFDL here. It is a condition of using the site. And on the scale of things to become upset about here, it's pretty much dead last. No idea why you chose to make this minor problem (out of all possible things to get mad about) into a major dispute. I don't think anyone will hold it against you if you decide to license your comments and come back to the site. And I don't think people will hold it against you if you simply leave. But what you're doing now isn't productive. If you don't like Wikipedia, start your own fork or just go. Posting snarky comments from open proxies will get you no closer to your goal. Rhobite 02:45, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

I have an idea

Why dont we add CSS templates to wikipedia for new looks? --Simple Man 15:11, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Are you volunteering? -- Cyrius|✎ 16:03, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

If i can learn CSS good enough, yeah. --Simple Man 20:10, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

The MySkin option in preferences will turn off the Monobook CSS styling, allowing you to build off the raw HTML structure in your user CSS. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:51, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

AGWIII is Alvan Grayson Walker is REXJUDICATA is VATRAY...

With a little research you will see that AGWIII is Alvan Grayson Walker is REXJUDICATA is VATRAY is Babbie is Barbara Diaz is Barbara Rodriguez and morphes into many other aliases. He is NO expert on Parents Without Rights..... research why he has no Parental Rights with his son... was his own behvior involved? Those poor people who follow Parents Without Rights.... if they knew the truth, would they still subscribe.....

• context? -- Jmabel | Talk 04:57, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Requests for comment/RexJudicata, SqueakBox 05:02, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

address

i need william rehnquists address o i can end a letter and card virginia jeffers

Send it to:

William Rehnquist United States Supreme Court Washington DC

It will find its way to the right pile. lots of issues | leave me a message 21:24, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

You can Google his name or check out some U.S. Judicial agnecy websites. — Stevey7788 (talk) 20:58, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

NY1 plagarizes off Wikipedia

""Paddy" is a common Irish name and was used in the past as a pejorative to insult Irish people." from [5]

compare to the sentence also appearing in paddy wagon -- generated long before the story.

lots of issues | leave me a message 22:25, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

• Wow, that's pretty obvious. Someone "congratulate" User:Zosodada, whose wording that was. I'll have to check if they're using that on-air too.--Pharos 22:44, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
• Who do we complain to? I mean, this is a pretty high-profile rip. Garrett^Talk 00:17, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

• NO DO NOT COMPLAIN Wait for their writer/researchers to borrow larger portions (maybe a lead story will be based around a Wikipedia in the news article) -- then we can shout our grievance, which will be interesting enough to ripple. That would be PRESTIGIOUS. It may never happen but complaining over one line is an unnoteworthy technicality and therefore not PRESTIGIOUS enough to be worth doing and may ruin the path to future 'PRESTIGIOUSNESS. lots of issues | leave me a message 00:38, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

• nonono... I didn't mean complain like that... gah, poor choice of words as always :) I mean it would be nice to send a brief note of thanks. Like, "hey, we were very proud to find you quoted us in (article)! Thank you so much!" and leave it at that. When they realise uncredited people are taking notice of their uncreditedness they might decide to mention us over even minor things like this. And certainly I agree we should stave off any serious complaints until serious breaches occur. Garrett^Talk 01:03, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

• Don't worry I didn't misinterpret your words -- I urged noone to complain or even bring note of this ommission because it would hamper the potential path to future PRESTIGIOUSNESS. We want the researchers at NY1 to believe it is fine to verbatim copy Wikipedia. Hopefully their ignorance will eventually create an enormous error! lots of issues | leave me a message 01:39, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

• Hmm... the wording isn't in the broadcast (which is accessible from a streaming link on the page). In fact, the broadcast didn't explain the idea very well at all, which is presumably why the web version included the unattributed bit. But I guess it wouldn't sound professional for them to say, "According to Wikipedia, the free internet encyclopedia..." as some other media outlets have. BTW, this is a pretty manufactured story... the "paddywagon" quote was actually in a NY1 interview and noone mentions anything about it on-camera; I think they only realized it was offensive to some people back at the studio.--Pharos 00:51, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
• Relax people, one sentence using common wording isn't plagiarism. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:17, July 13, 2005 (UTC)
  • Indeed, especially when it is simply stating a well-known fact. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:05, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/The Mushroom Kingdom

This is a call for anyone who wants to help stop a cabal attempting to subvert all notable and non-vanity topics in Wikipedia. Under a thin accusation of "vanity", a cabal has nominated an article about the famous site The Mushroom Kingdom. Not only has this "vanity" claim been discredited, it was also revealed that the "delete" participants nominated this for deletion because they hate that The Mushroom Kingdom's equivalence to IMDB. Most of the voters have discussed the issue and found out these factors were the main reason The Mushroom Kingdom is on vfd. Please vote "keep" on this particular listing as a blow against conspiracy that is not only openly hostile, but "vanity"-crying and anti-TMK as well. Wikipedia should be a place where notable topics can have articles without being deleted by a vast anti-TMK conspiracy. Youngblood 23:37, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Delete wtf -83.129.28.224 01:51, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Is anyone allowed to borrow content like this?

http://www.1-electric.com/articles/Richard_Rood

I ran across this on a search for the wrestler Rick Rude. Looks awfully familiar to me. Too familiar.

The short answer is definitely yes. Wikipedia's content is licensed under the GFDL, see Wikipedia:Copyrights. The page you reference includes the same license, and credits Wikipedia (with a link to the Wikipedia article), and so seems to be in full compliance with Wikipedia's licensing terms (I am not a lawyer and this should not be construed as a legal opinion). -- Rick Block (talk) July 9, 2005 18:33 (UTC)

I hate to point this out, but... Source: Original text from the article in Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia: Richard Rood. It's already on WP, indeed it CAME from us! :) Garrett^Talk 21:37, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

You may also want to check out this page: Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks — J3ff 23:44, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I wanna paste a Fei Ge photo from a newspaper site]].

Can I do that?Will I infringe copyright?Tdxiang 9 July 2005 03:51 (UTC)

• Yes, you would be infringing copyright. However, since he hosts a television show, a screenshot of him from that show would normally be considered fair use.--Pharos 9 July 2005 04:01 (UTC)
  • Does that mean that say, a photo of Alexis Arguello boxing during a fight would constitute fair use too?

Antonio The Explosive Fat Man...or is that woman? Martin

• You might want to look at Wikipedia:Fair use. Remember that we want to be fairly conservative in our use of "fair use", and that we have to avoid the trap of wishful thinking. Bovlb 2005-07-09 13:02:12 (UTC)

• If screenshots from film and television are so commonly accepted here, I should think a single frame extracted from a recording of a boxing match would be equally fair use. See Template:Screenshot. Of course, a copyrighted still photograph taken during a boxing match would not be eligible.--Pharos 20:27, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Article about Chile deaths during Pinochet's presidency

Hi! Seeing that I originated the article on the Deaths in Ciudad Juarez, and, as Puerto Rican, I worry about the wellfare of all fellow Latin Americans in general, I wonder if anyone has written an article about the deaths and dissapearances of people during the Pinochet p[residency. If not, Im interested in making an npov, very well researched article about it.

Thanks and God bless!

Sincerely yours, Antonio Latinos unidos por Siempre Martin

I need your help

I've started the Pornography Portal and I need your help in order to complete it. thanks. --Haham hanuka 8 July 2005 11:53 (UTC)

I've payed a visit to it (out of diligence, people!). Someone has already put a neutrality dispute tag there. Doesn't seem correct though, since the controversy that it may cause does not revolve around the neutrality of the portal, but rather its appropriateness. And anyways, I opened the talk page expecting to see a lengthy discussion, but found only two comments, so hardly a dispute going on. About the subject of the portal, I really don't know. On one hand, there's no ignoring that Pornography is the number one subject on the internet, so it is visible and relevant enough (from this perspective) to deserve a portal; On the other hand, this is bound to raise a lot of eyebrows, may be an unnecessary stretch... About the content, gotta be careful not to focus on just one topic. "Pornography" is far more comprehesive a topic than the movie porn industry. For instance, the extract from the Wikipedia article that opens the portal touches this complexity. It could be a nice touch of neutrality to illustrate it with something other than a picture of a pornographic actress. That's just my impression. Regards, Redux 8 July 2005 23:42 (UTC)

Impressive, considering the subject matter. I'm just concerned that people will come there expecting a free gallery of hotties and complain when there aren't any. Or constantly edit to put a GIANT topless girl in place of the portal. Or something. But those are just minor things. Master Thief Garrett^Talk 9 July 2005 00:53 (UTC)

Good point, this portal will be highly susceptible to vandalism and misinterpretation. It's likely to take a lot of patience and work to maintain. You've got to be reeally up for it. Regards, Redux 23:47, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm just waiting for the first time someone spams it with a child-friendly image. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:05, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

A substantial portion of Wikipedia's top few hundred most popular articles are sex and pornography related. These include List of sex positions, Sex, Penis, Sexual intercourse, Masturbation, Anal sex, Vagina, Playboy, Oral sex, Jenna Jameson, Clitoris, Orgasm, Goatse.cx, Cowgirl sex position, Pamela Anderson, Nudity, Cunt, Leapfrog sex position, Breast, Child pornography, Tubgirl, List of female porn stars, Homosexuality and many many more. Scour this list if you're bored. Anyway, I support the venture. We are attracting a lot of the Internet's sex traffic and it should be well organized. --Alterego 23:54, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

Blocked users can edit their own talk pages

In response to a discussion on wikien-l [6] [7], I've experimentally enabled a feature to allow blocked users to edit their own user talk page. I'm not expecting this to be controversial, I just wanted to let you know so that you wouldn't be confused when you see it happen. -- Tim Starling July 7, 2005 22:50 (UTC)

I noticed that. A very welcome feature I must say, seeing as up until a few hours ago I was blocked thanks to Xtra's crappy simul-sharing of IPs (time to write a nasty letter). And anyway, what can they do "bad" on their own space, other than write "WIKEPIDANS R ALL BASTIDS!1!!!!1!1!" and rewrite "stop your vandalism" comments to read "you are an OK guy!" or something like that to further illustrate their guilt? :) Master Thief Garrett^Talk 8 July 2005 09:23 (UTC)

Two questions (1) clarify is it only restricted to editing their talk page, and not to other things so they can't move their talk page onto the main namespace, and (2) is it mentioned that they can do this in the Wikipedia:Mediawiki namespace boilerplate text given to blocked users? Dunc|☺ 8 July 2005 12:01 (UTC)

Yes and yes. Only edits are allowed, not other operations such as moves. At least that's the theory, feel free to test it. I edited the relevant message myself. -- Tim Starling July 8, 2005 16:12 (UTC)

I found it problematic. See my comments at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Block behaviour changes. --cesarb 9 July 2005 11:14 (UTC)

Dis-ambiguation

I see several dis-ambiguation pages that people want moved in WP:RM that I disagree with for the following reason:

All dis-ambiguation pages that are large (specifially, too large to reach the {{disambig}} footer template without scrolling down should have the "(disambiguation)" suffix in their article title to clarify that it is a dis-ambiguation page, not a list. Georgia guy 5 July 2005 22:09 (UTC)

"Without scrolling down" is a vague criterion — on what size of screen with what size of font? Surely the opening sentence "Foo may refer to:" and the list format makes it quite clear what is going on. Gdr 7 July 2005 17:13 (UTC)

I don't really understand the problem. I was under the impression that {{disambig}} was meant to be a header, not a footer. Grutness...wha? 7 July 2005 23:57 (UTC)

I've seen it used as both. Personally I don't care where it goes, but if it can in any way be made "invisible" due to large amounts of dab content, then it should certainly be at the top. Master Thief Garrett^Talk 8 July 2005 09:25 (UTC)

Wait a minute! It says inside Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages) that the template goes at the bottom. Georgia guy 8 July 2005 18:32 (UTC)

Frankly, the disambiguation notice just isn't that important. It's a nice little explanation but has no functional purpose, and doesn't hurt anything if it's omitted at all. Therefore I think there's no reason to emphasize making it visible - bottom is fine and more consistent. Deco 9 July 2005 01:06 (UTC)

I think it's reasonably clear that a page is not a list if it gives lots of different meanings - for example, orange, which I just moved from orange (disambiguation) clearly opens with "the word orange can refer to ...". People are more likely to type in the word "orange" when looking for something to do with the colour, or the fruit, etc. than "orange (disambiguation)", so not only for clarity but for technical reasons, if there are many key meanings for a word, I think it should be at just the word rather than appending (disambiguation) to it. Talrias (t | e | c) 20:16, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Number of Edits

I tried to vote today but I was shown a message saying: "Sorry, you made only 128 edits before 00:00, May 30, 2005. You need at least 400 to be able to vote." My question is, how do I find out how many edits have I made until today ? Is manually counting the number of pages under 'my contributions' the only way ? Thanks. - sikander July 5, 2005 13:34 (UTC)

There's a tool you can use to count your edits: http://kohl.wikimedia.org/~kate/cgi-bin/count_edits_14_utf8. —Charles P. (Mirv) 5 July 2005 14:26 (UTC)

Kate's tool does not seem to be working since the latest upgrade. Apwoolrich 8 July 2005 07:44 (UTC)

Do you have articles on oncocytoma?

I,tdxiang,would like to know if there are any articles on this kidney tumour?Tdxiang 4 July 2005 03:32 (UTC)

There's a very nice button on the toolbar, it's called "Search". But you'd have known that already, I suppose. James Bell 4 July 2005 13:21 (UTC)

You can also go to a more general article and make a link like this: oncocytoma. And see if it goes to an existing page or not. If not, write one. -SV|t 5 July 2005 02:27 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't seem to have much on this subject. Google[8] seems to have a few useful articles. You might like to ask on the Reference Desk. Bovlb 2005-07-09 12:45:49 (UTC)

Wiki put-down

A friend, who I have been trying to introduce to Wikepedia, has just emailed the following: Logged in as suggested. First reaction: unnecessarily complicated compared with Google. Tony, please tell me again, briefly please, why you think its better than Google. Bless you. Thanks, Peter I am stumped for a snappy answer, apart from saying they are not the same and WP does allow the reader to contribute. Apwoolrich 2 July 2005 08:56 (UTC)

Um, well, Google is a search engine, they have no content of their own. But we're an encyclopedia, we're meant to have lots of articles and clicky things and... um... such. We're not a replacement for Google, but many times a quick search here will net a great article quicker than with Google. And, heck, if it's not here you flippin' well add it yourself! That's what got me hooked in the first place... :) Master Thief Garrett^Talk 2 July 2005 09:59 (UTC)

Wait, is your friend saying that it is easier to find reliable information on google then the great Wiki? That is....ehmm....I.....ahh.....i just don't know what to say.... gkhan July 2, 2005 13:07 (UTC)

My proposed response: "Google is an index of everything on the web. Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia in history, written by volunteers. You can use Google to find resources - including articles in Wikipedia. If you know exactly what you want to read about, it is often quickest to go to Wikipedia directly, as it will likely have a well-written, detailed article on the topic, and you don't have to wade through pages of Google hits to find one which is actually useful. And if something you know is missing from an article, you can directly add it yourself: just click the 'edit this page' link at the top of an article."--Eloquence* July 2, 2005 13:57 (UTC)

Hi friend,

You should appreciate it because the media tells you to do so

Regards,

lots of issues | leave me a message 2 July 2005 18:28 (UTC)

Err, that likelyhood of Wikipedia having a well-written, detailed article has become somewhat diluted. It's actually not that often. Here's a story of my own: a while back, a friend of mine was doing research for a paper (for University) on the general topic of business administration. When he researched online, he told me that he was having difficulties finding interesting, free sources. I immediately recommended Wikipedia, and since he was new to it, I helped him research here. We found the articles, but he told me that it was way too superficial and would add nothing to the basics that he already had. Since I had been boasting about Wikipedia for a while before we actually researched it, which led him to take a closer look at the project, he ended up hitting me with the following sentence: too many people writing about tv shows, not nearly enough writing about the relevant topics. Oh, the infamy! Redux 4 July 2005 04:15 (UTC)

I emailed my friend the responses above (before Redux's)and had this back in reply!

Wow ! That was quick and thorough! However, I think I'll stick to Google. Tony, its OK for you youngsters, but we 1920's people are horrified......

1.If something you know is missing from an article, you can directly add it yourself: just click the 'edit this page' link at the top of an article."

You think one should be able to "edit" the Encyclopaedia Brittanica? Ouch!

2.Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia in history, written by volunteers.

The ultimate DIY? I prefer the work of the experts, even though they were paid! You'd rather trust a bunch of volunteers?

3.And, heck, if it's not here, you flippin' well add it yourself! Good grief !

Tony, the way I interpret the Internet data (Yes, I could be wrong: you're the expert), Wikipedia gets about 700 hits per minute. Google gets 85 000 hpm.Are so may people wrong? Would you buy a car which sells less than 1% of what Ford sells?

Clearly I have a LONG way to go in raising awareness with my friend, who is, I might add, very computer and internet savvy. Just shows how some people regard us! Apwoolrich 4 July 2005 20:26 (UTC)

If he's focusing on relative popularity, he may want to take a look at this. As of today, #52 with a bullet. --Arcadian 4 July 2005 20:47 (UTC)

If he's comparing Wikipedia with Google, then I would point out that, whenever he uses Google, he ends up getting the information from an arbitrary third party site. The quality of those can vary considerably, from the professional educator, through the DIY effort, to the professional misleader and POV-pusher. Of course, there are many things I find Google better for than Wikipedia (especially given the War Against Useful External Links), but to say that he prefers Google because he prefers the work of experts doesn't really make sense on the whole. Now, if he's talking about Google Scholar, maybe. Bovlb 2005-07-05 00:43:10 (UTC)

With a website, you can publish whatever (mis)information you choose and it's there "forever", but with a wiki anyone can click an edit link to amend it as they see fit.

Professionals have been bemoaning our inevitable downfall due to our open editability, and yet all the vandals and POV pushers the world can throw at us haven't stopped us from rising to new heights.

You could also point him to some of our Featured Articles, especially if there are ones that are of his topic(s) of interest. Then challenge him to compare it to its equivalent in any up-to-date professional encyclopedia. See which one comes out more thorough! :)

Also we've got audio versions of many of them, furthering our goal of comprehensive information being accessible to all, not just sighted and English-fluent visitors. Now where's a Japanese or spoken Britannica when you need one? :) Master Thief Garrett^Talk 9 July 2005 04:57 (UTC)

I knew there was something that bothered me about the idea of comparing Wikipedia with Google, and I've realized a good way of putting it: Comparing Wikipedia with Google is like comparing a card catalog with an almanac. Of course more people use a card catalog than an almanac, some of them are using it to find the almanac, but others are using it for lots of other things. He's got his levels mixed up. JesseW 22:00, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

See "Wikification of Knowledge" by John C. Dvorak of PC Magazine, excerpt: "Ward Cunningham invented the current iteration of wikis in 1995, naming them WikiWikis after the Hawaiian word for fast. Anyone who has ever been to Honolulu knows this term, since it's the name of the bus line that runs from the airport. By now, the term has been shortened by the community to wiki. To understand some of the basics of the wiki concept you have to read the entry in the Wikipedia on the consensus theory of truth—a very odd idea." -- Dvorak

A very odd idea indeed. -- 172.191.164.201 14:30, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

TOCright

An article on my watch list had an edit recently. When I looked at it I found it was insertion of {{TOCright}}. Fine.

A glance at the user contributions page of the editor Special:Contributions/Ian_Pitchford though showed 90% (or lots anyway) of their edits were solely addition of {{TOCright}} to articles??

I wasn't sure where to flag this editor inserting {{TOCright}} "everywhere" (one article at a time?) for other wikipedians to cast an appraising eye. Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts are supposedly for mild-to-moderate conflict. Likewise, RFC is to complain about users/articles. I really just wish to raise his contributions for discussion for others to see if they think they're problematic or not. I don't wish to create conflict where none exists. Hence, making an RFC which'd imply a 'complaint' about him is unsuitable. It seems harmless albeit odd? He does make occasional valid contributions too. He just seems to have a a mission 90% of time involving Table of Contents - {{TOCright}}. My reaction was "huh??" Thoughts? Whitehorse1 | 28 June 2005 14:03 (UTC)

If you think this is a potential issue, step 1 would be to politely ask this user about it (I suggest you do this, right now!). If, after discussing this with the user, you think there is a conflict (for example, you think it's not a good idea but he won't stop), then you might consider other steps suggested at Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution. Anytme you have a dispute with a user, always talk to the user first. -- Rick Block (talk) June 28, 2005 14:32 (UTC)

More sheer curiosity and bewilderment rather than a dispute! I found the user's actions odd but saw nothing to suggest they were a troll or similar. The situation has changed somewhat now, as text on the article notes the TOCright template is now proposed for deletion. I'll comment there & possibly on the user's talk page. Thanks.

I just looked at Special:Contributions/Ian_Pitchford, Around the time you write the above (28 June 2005) I found a few edits which inserted {{TOCright}} on various articles. I found far more edits, both before and after, of articles that don't use TOCright. I didn't look at every edit in his history, there are fgar too many. But I don't think the evidence supports a suggestion that this user effectively wishes to transform every article to the TOCright style, nor that he is doing little or nothing but insertign that template widely and without makign other contrabutions. Perhaps i am misreading the evidence. Perhaps you would care to supply a list of articles on which you feel that TOC right has been oddly or wantonly inserted? In any case the behavior of one editor does not have much to do with the merits of the template, IMO. DES 6 July 2005 06:42 (UTC)

Appying for adminship

Hi,i am applying for adminship but i don't know how.How can we?I clicked on to edit but i don't know how.How can we nominate ourselves,then? tdxiang 203.124.2.14 28 June 2005 09:16 (UTC)

WP:RfA (yours would be a self-nomination, at the bottom); but let me warn you that a good deal of experience is expected and if you don't even know how to apply I can pretty much guarantee you won't get it. Everyking 28 June 2005 09:19 (UTC)

I think that's a pretty good absolute bare minimum bar right there :) -- Cyrius|✎ 29 June 2005 16:49 (UTC)

More than experience in the raw, admins need experience in the nooks and crannies of the Wikipedia, what goes on behind the scenes, what is and isn't acceptable, and how things are done, how to do things right, how to bring two or three different viewpoints together to make one viewpoint that works for everyone, where to go to get help and things like that. It's a good thing that you ask your question here instead of some horribly inappropriate place, but not so good that you don't know where to apply for adminship. Also, it seems like self-nominations are less likely to be approved than editors who are nominated by others. I think that if you really are a good admin candidate, there will come a time when someone will nominate you like this: "I nominate tdxiang, he's such a pillar of the community that I thought he already was an admin a long time ago." and almost everyone will say something like "tdxiang isn't an admin? how did that happen? Of course I support him", and somebody will surely say oh, look at this [9] he doesn't even know where to find RfA" and another will say "oh, so what, look at all the valuable contributions he's made, he's come a long way since then" and somebody will mention 2 or 3 of your big deal contributions, someone else will point out where you were instrumental in solving a POV conflict, and generally everyone or most everyone will support your candidacy. If you get to the point where you think it would happen like that, post a note to my talk page and I'll be glad to nominate you (assuming I agree that you are a top-notch candidate. I'm not an admin, but the folk I've nominated for adminship all passed, I think. The bottom line is, first, become a good admin, in the ways you can, without the 'special powers', and you will likely be well qualified when the time comes to vote on it. Pedant 2005 July 4 07:31 (UTC)

That's the best description of the process I've ever read! humblefool®Have you voted in the CSD poll yet? 5 July 2005 21:23 (UTC)

You forgot the 1 or 2 vandals/trolls you angered in the exact week of your RfA and who will oppose you for completely bogus reasons. --cesarb 5 July 2005 21:39 (UTC)

broad interest notes- i.e. applicable to many articles

As a relative newcomer to Wikipedia I'm putting this here pending your telling me of betters ways.

I added a note to the article on Torsional Vibration which I include below.

{NOTE: the terms "dampener" for "damper" and "dampening" for "damping" began to gain acceptance among students of engineering as early as the middle 1970's. The meaning attached to the verb "damp" is stripped off and attached to "dampen", because of their similarity of sound and the fact that "dampen" is more familiar. Reduction of vocabulary can lead to confusion of thought as precise forms are eliminated. In later years thinking minds may well ponder how fireplace "dampeners" came to be constructed with no supply of liquid. The expanded use of "dampen" now regularly appears in engineering journals and even in NASA press releases (July, 2005 Shuttle Discovery mission)}

Wikipedia now redirects a search for "dampening" to the article on "damping" [good for you and for all users!]. However, a number of articles such as "Acoustic Dampening" could all use access to the above NOTE.

Would a general article about the misuse of terms be the best way to proceed? This could then be linked to all articles containing such terms as have been identified. Conversely, offending words could simply be changed to the correct one wherever they occur, but this would tend to leave people unaware of the change (the eye so often sees what it expects).

It may seem trivial, but I strongly believe that precision of terms is a valuable resource that we should not relinquish lightly.

Direct responses to <david_r_king at hotmail dot com> are most welcome. --66.72.90.149 04:25, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

If you believe a term has multiple meanings that span across articles then I suggest creating a disambugation page (a link junction) to all the articles that would fit those terms. (emailing response) lots of issues | leave me a message 23:29, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Essential Magic

I've trimmed several (for want of a better term) crufty paragraphs from this article that didn't add much. I started to cut the last section, on Notable Essential Magic Traditions, but then realized I'd like a second or third or fourth opinion before I slice it. The "traditions" don't seem "notable" to me, unless someone is already a member of the forum. Joyous (talk) 03:21, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Readers Digest praises Wikipedia

I just read the article on Wikipedia in the July issue of Canada's Readers Digest. Your fonders, if not aware of the article, should read it. It says a lot for you guys & gals, whoever you may be. I was impressed and after visiting your website, will use it a lot more. So will my kids. And I will refer it to others as it sure beats Britannica & Encarta all to hell!!! D.B. Reid

Thank you, and I hope to see you around Wikipedia. Joyous (talk) 01:21, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Page names after disambiguation

What do you do when the pages you are making a dab for should have the same page name? e.g. Personology is both a New Age idea and the name Henry Murray gave to his type of personality psychology. However, they have nothing to do with each other. So I make a dab and since there can't be two pages with the exact name (correct), then what? Have each page be Personology (New Age) and Personology (Personality Psychology)? or some such? Thanks. Rsugden 19:36, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, yes. The "technique" for disambiguating article titles is usually that: write between parenthesis the specific characteristic of each entry. That's very common when people create articles whose ideal titles would be the same, regardless of whether they have something to do with each other (as in articles for a book and a movie based on that book - and with the same title) or nothing to do with each other, as in the case you named. However, as part of the disambiguation "method", we prefer to have an entry with the plain name (in this case, "Personology") be a disambiguation page. If someone else already wrote one of the articles under the title "Personology", move it to the disambiguated title and turn that address into the disambiguation page (notice that, when you move the previous page, the system will automatically turn it into a redirect to the new name you created, so you'll have to undo that). Furthermore, it is also common to add a disambiguation note at the top of each article. It's basically a sentence, usually in italics, saying something like: This article is about Henry Murray's personality psychology. For the [[New age]] idea, see [[Personology (New Age)]].. If there's more than two articles named "Personology", than just have the disambiguation note read: This article is about Henry Murray's personality psychology. For other meanings, see [[Personology (disambiguation]].. Regards, Redux 19:57, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Neutral Wikipedia?

Dear all

I am writting about the issue of Macedonia, Republic of Macedonia, Macedonian Slavs (like Wikipedia calls the Macedonians) and the problem between Macedonia and Greece about the term Macedonia.

giant rant snipped

Yeah, um, it was really nice and all when you posted this elsewhere on the Pump, but now you're just spamming and ranting. Once was enough. Thanks. --Golbez 16:05, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

We appreciate that you feel strongly about this issue, and we certainly appreciate your reporting any kind of bias you may have perceived in the project. But this really, really long post is unsuited for the Village Pump, and, more importantly, not many people, if any, will actually read all of this here. You might want to write a [considerably] shorter entry, linking to the forums where the topic is being or was discussed, and where interested readers might be able to find more detailed information. As it stands, however, I anticipate you will be getting little to no feedback on the topic itself. Thanks for helping us improve Wikipedia! Regards, Redux 18:32, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

He's posting it all over. I don't think he cares if anyone actually reads it. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:10, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I see. The message was posted by I sterbinski. His welcome message is from today, so in the WP:FAITH spirit, I'm assuming that this was a common newbie mistake. The user has already been contacted on his talk page about spamming in Wikipedia, but let me be Village Pump-specific: Sterbinski, posts in the Village Pump are not permanent. They get temporarily archived after seven days from the last comment, and after another seven days, they get permanently deleted. So, if you write giant messages that no one is going to read, you're really just wasting time. If you want to get feedback from your posts on the Village Pump, please consider taking my advice in my previous comment. Please refrain from posting giant, confrontational messages on this forum, since this will hardly amount to anything. Thanks, Redux 19:42, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

---

Yes, you are right, I am a newbie. Don't know how Wikipedia works and don't know what is best to do. And, I am sure I am not the first one thatreacts on this issue. Obviously, it didn't change much. I noticed that many people reacted on this, including a famous USA historian (Aleksandar Donski). I even found several non-Macedonian forums characterising Wikipedia as pro-Bulgarian and pro-Greek, concerning the Macedonian issue. I have to be honest that Wikipedia helped me several times before, mostly about my IT studies. But, this was a great dissapointment. And I could see that I am not the only one. With all the respect, 62.162.196.48 15:14, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Don't worry about it, you'll get the hang of it. Again, if you perceive a problem in Wikipedia, we welcome any help you can provide to assist us in fixing it (just remember the five pillars);

That is the point. All this is to the respect of the five pillars. If Wikipedia respected then and was neutral, I wouldn't be writting this.

Wikipedia is being updated constantly, and all help is welcome in our struggle to be as complete, accurate and impartial as we hope to be. A tip: now that you have created an account, please prefer editing logged in. This way, all your work will be credited to your user account, which ensures that you alone get the credit (or take the heat) for your work in Wikipedia (this is important, since IP addresses may be shared by a number of people). This will also make it much easier for people to contact you on the issues you want to discuss in the encyclopedia. Welcome to Wikipedia! Regards, Redux 18:20, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

---

Thank you for the Welcome message. I already tryed to change some things in the texts, in a very neutral way. Actually, I never erased anything, just added little text and made it more neutral. The next day EVERYTHING was deleted and the previous version was taken back. And even if I fix some things (neutrally), how will I know that some pro-Bulgarian or pro-Greek user won't change it and leave only his "side of the story"? And what about the things that I am not allowed to change? Wikipedia still calls us "Macedonian Slavs". We are partly Slavs, that is truth and noone denies that. But, we are mixure between Slavs and the Antique Macedonians that lived here before the Slavs settled (6th century). Even the CIA's factbook (which is very often used as reference in Wikipedia) doesn't deny our name: Macedonians. Why Wikipedia does? As far as I could see, there was even a voting on this issue. IT was draw: 29:29. According to the nicknames, 2/3 of the votes agains use of the name Macedonia were from Greeks or Bulgarians. On the other side, just 4 votes were by Macedonian nicknames. How can we outnumber the Greeks and Bulgarians, which together are more than 20 million people around the world, when there are just 2,5 million Macedonians all over the world? Just a Note: I am not claiming that we are the only ancestors of the Antique Macedonians. They were living in the area and they got mixed with the Greeks and with the Slavs. I beleive we both (Greeks and nowdays Macedonians) have an origin from those people (more or less) and we both should share that history. Only a fool can deny that there were great mixings between the nations on a such a little teritory, like the Balcany is. Especially when they all were of the same religion (Cristian Ortodox).

---

An encouragement: Wikipedia:Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia

Or simply Wikipedia:Britannica mistakes If we can get this list over 100, it will be presentable as a media retort aide. I've found 2 myself. Mistakes are more common than you think. Signup for a free trial at Britannica and start fact checking our content and their content. lots of issues | leave me a message 22:38, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

maps

hi I was reading about the Balfour Declaration, the white paper of 1939 and the many consequences of them in the creation of Israel and the instable situation over there. I thought it would be very helpfull to be able to see historical maps (in this case, of the Palestinian region in 1917, 1939, 1949 for example..) along with the articles.

Regards, Loic Ledernez loic.ledernez@gmail.com

No arguments there: maps are always important in such articles. But we have a severe limitation in our ability to illustrate articles with historical maps: copyrights restrictions. We can only put up images (of maps too) that are copyrights-free or whose copyrights owners have given us permission to use their property in our articles — unless we can establish that using a copyrighted image would be allowed as fair use. Sometimes, this makes it somewhat difficult to find a usable map for any given article. Regards, Redux 17:50, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

25th anniversary of Bologna bombing

Tomorrow 2 August will mark the 25th anniversary of the bombing at Bologna, Italy railway station. I have just translated the article from the Italian Wikipedia, using the title Strage di Bologna (Italian for Bologna massacre) as mentioned in both Bologna and Bologna Central Station. However I assume a title in English - rather in Italian - would be more meaningful. Please rename it to any appropriate title you can think of. Ary29 18:06, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

date of last search index rebuild

Why doesn't search show my latest updates seems to come up fairly frequently (both here and at Wikipedia:Help desk). Is the date when the search index last rebuilt available anywhere? Can we show it fairly prominently, perhaps with a link to a page that answers Why doesn't my change show up in search, on the search results page? -- Rick Block (talk) 04:04, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

I'm experimenting with the search index build system off and on. Once the current run is done, it will be continuously updated. There is no such thing as a date when it was last rebuilt. --Brion 08:30, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Very cool, thank you. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:33, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Wikigame

Recently my friends and I have been filling alot of time (or misusing alot of time if you prefer) with a "wikigame." What one does is choose a random article (we've been doing of our own design, but using the "random article" feature should work just as well) and connecting it to another article through links in the wikipedia articles. For example, Zucchini to John Lennon turned out: " Zucchini->Britain (United Kingdom)->The Beatles->John Lennon." Hawaii to Leviticus became: "hawaii->father damien statue->catholicism->old testament->old testament books->leviticus." It's much fun, and I just thought I'd spread the love.

Thanks, but... this is a well known game. "Six degrees of Wikipedia" is already linked from WP:FUN, which contains lots of Wikipedia-based entertainments - and (if you want to cheat), you can find the shortest link using "Kate's tools" via [10]. (Alpha Centauri to Angkor Wat in four leaps!) Grutness...wha? 04:04, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Rock and Roll

Top 200+ Classic Rock Songs I'm on a mission to find out what the worlds top 200 (or more) favorite Classic Rock songs are. What I want you to do is to tell me on my talk page (click here) what your favorite Classic Rock songs are. They should be numbered 1 - 20. Your favorite song gets twenty points, second favorite 19 etc. Participation is needed and a report of the twenty top songs at the time will be on my user page. When the number of songs on the list gets past 200, I will post all of them on my user page. If you have any questions or you want to submit your favorites post it on my talk page. Long live ROCK N' ROLL. Rentastrawberry

Long lists

I have a question, I don't know where to post it, so I'm putting it here. A List of drugs was compiled and since it was a very long list (thousands of entries) was broken down into sections of a couple hundred entries each (with dividing points being at a reasonable alphabetical point) and put on wikipedia. It was a fairly simple setup and I didn't think it needed restructuring. Though someone else came along and restructured it, and now (to me) it seems to be a bit of a mess. There are many "navigation only" pages which I feel are unneccissary, and when I tried to edit the indexes (to put back in some pages that were lost in the reorganization) I found that the index pages were made of templates of templates (which made it a bit annoying to edit). So my question is, what is the best way to structure long lists such as this? I'm wary to revert the changes because some work has been done since the change and it would be an awful bother to fix up. Plus the histories of the pages would be quite a job to glue back together (the histories are already a bit of a mess now due to the changes). Thanks for any opinions. Matt 22:01, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

The big red scaring warning

The big red scaring is /very/ annoying when one reverts a vandal. Every User interface design guide stresses to use such tools only in situations when something awful had happened. Overuse it and it will get ignored as nuisance. Pavel Vozenilek 19:54, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Questions on Wiki Administration

Hi,

I was just curious how many volunteers/admins monitor this site? We're considering setting up a much smaller wiki and are just curious on the amount of involvement and maintenance it will entail.

Also, is there a list of Wiki developers we could contact to assist us in setting up our Wiki and helping us with, "Best practices"?

Thanks

Well, there are around 525 administrators on the site. There are 358,928 registered users (more every minute). I seem to recall the statistic that 2% of these contribute 35% of edits. The list of Wikimedia developers (those that develop the MediaWiki software and run the servers) is at m:Developer. You can often get help in the IRC channel #mediawiki. If you are planning to license the site under the GFDL, like Wikipedia, you can copy across our documentation, as long as credit and a link back is given. On the other hand, you may find it easier to go to WikiCities, slightly related to WikiMedia, where you can set up a wiki for free, with certain parameters. Hope this helps, [[smoddy]] 17:13, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and those statistics are from Special:Statistics. [[smoddy]] 17:14, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Why would you have to license the whole site under GFDL to copy the documentation? And if you can't copy it, is there anything wrong with linking to here? Nickptar 19:14, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

You wouldn't, but it would make it easier. Nevertheless, if you don't want to, you certainly could license certain pages under GFDL but not others. As to the link, that would, naturally, be perfectly fine. [[smoddy]] 22:11, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Suggestions

Get rid of this phrase "Sorry, there were no exact matches to your query," to me is too CORNY.

Spencer Karter

stalinist voting

The stalinist manner of voting regarding the deleting of entries needs to be improved, but how?

First of all, what makes it so "stalinist" and second of all, if you think a better method is possible, it is incumbent upon you to suggest one. Simply saying it's bad doesn't mean a better idea exists. --Golbez 07:57, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

And second of all, off to the gulag with you for asking. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:47, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Filtering mirrors from Google search results

• Mirrors of Wikimedia content can be filtered from Google search result pages in Firefox using the CustomizeGoogle extension. See meta:Mirror filter for instructions and a filter list. -- Jeronim 21:40, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Handmade cotton mats

I was fortunate enough to visit a Hutterite Colony in Manatoba last year with a group of Australian Farmers, several of us are sorry that we did not buy some of your wonderful cotton mats (woven or crochet I think. Could you email some information to me regarding size, colour and the possability of sending our to Australia. I did buy MukLuks slippers for my grandaughter, they are a big hit. A list of other craft for sale and suitable to post would be appreciated. I wish you well and hope to have a reply from you soon.

Um... I'm at a loss. If this one doesn't make the "Unusual requests" page, nothing will. Grutness...wha? 13:04, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Removal of metric units. Please watch user 129.173.105.28

I am not sure where to post this but I would like people to watch User:129.173.105.28. This user has removed metric units and left no comment. See Marblehead Lighthouse and Shasta Lake. There are a few users hostile to metric units that remove them. Some users claim support from the current version Manual of Style and/or have revised it to be consistent with such action.

Ironically, a revised wording was proposed to deal with this problem. In order to get agreement, the proposal is now in the 10th version. Feel free to join in. Bobblewik 09:15, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

New Images?

How can I take a look at new Images is some kind of gallery? --84.154.133.130 22:10, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Special:Newimages and also Commons:Special:Newimages Dunc|☺ 22:39, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Thank You!! --84.154.150.15 08:45, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Logo Joke?

Emoticon?

Concerning the image on the right:

Is that smiley supposed to be here? I'm thinking this is some sort of joke and I'm not sure if this is the way it's supposed to be or not, but if you could help me figure this out, that'd be great. Nameneko 07:06, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes that is very wierd indeed. I looked at the image page and it wasn't there, but in this page it was. So I hard-updated (Ctrl-F5) and it was fine. Whatever it was it's gone now :P gkhan 08:26, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

Someone uploaded the smiley on top of the red page pointing to the Commons file. I was the one who deleted it just now; a little sorry to see it go, it was the highest class of vandalism I've ever seen :)--Pharos 08:33, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

WILL SUICIDE BOMBERS OBTAIN HEAVEN?

I am removing text that appears to be website spam and or POV rant. Here is the original posting: [11]. Func( t, c ) 16:22, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

WP:NOT a soapbox, and although that primarily refers to articles in the main namespace, I'm sure we'd all appreciate it if you kept your prosethlyizing to yourself. This is for discussion about Wikipedia, not suicide bombers or theology. Clearly it's been posted before, and was probably removed. If it'll put your mind at rest though, no suicide bomber is going to Heaven because it doesn't exist. Dunc|☺ 16:17, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Oh no I see, sorry. From Your contribs, you wrote Iraqi Women's Organization. Thankyou for bringing your POV rant to my attention, it has now been speedy deleted. It was nominated for deletion originally at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Iraqi Women's Organization. Dunc|☺ 16:20, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

1754 relative from Hamburg, Germany

My first relative to America came from Hamburg, on a ship named Neptune, December 12, 1754 at age 18. I am a seeker of truth and want to know if my last name David is of jewish orgin. Is there any lists of names anywhere those entering Germany at that century and form where? So much religious uphevel at this time in history and changes for unknown reasons. Can anyone help in my quest? Sincerly, Ronald David

There might be someone able to help in the german equivalent of this section. English should be quite ok, German would be nicer, though ;-). Good luck --InterwikiLinksRule 19:28, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

And because I couldn't do *very shamed grin* the correct link from en: click here, find: 7. Wie stelle ich hier denn nun eine Frage? and click on "Einfach hier klicken."

Account hijack

What can i do when my account is hijacked?Someone hijacked it to vandalise articles.What can i do?Tdxiang 06:50, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Go to [[12]] and change your password. Then make a note on your user page in case anyone comes looking. Sasquatch′↔T↔C 07:33, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

How's This?

I was playing around with a few things, and created this User Infobox.

Kriston Lewis

Born	November 10th, 1990
Current Age	14.5
Locale	Brooklyn, New York
Country	United States
Date Joined Wikipedia	April 2005
Education (Current/Former)	Benjamin Banneker Academy; 10th Grade as of Fall

Could this be expanded? Pacific Coast Highway; Temporarily 165.155.128.134 17:14, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Antisemites

Is it just me, or has there been a large influx recently of anonymous editors with an antisemitic agenda? I've noticed quite a few nasty edit wars going on. JFW | T@lk 14:11, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

These things may just be the usual anomalies one finds in more or less random events. Jayjg ^(talk) 15:20, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Could someone help me link, please?

I've just created the article Bad wolf mentions in Doctor Who, but obviously nothing links to it yet. It needs to be linked to from all of the 2005 episodes of Doctor Who, from Fictional websites in Doctor Who, The Doctor (Doctor Who), Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler, Mickey Smith, Ninth Doctor and possibly Dalek. I will do some myself, of course.--84.51.149.80 07:05, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

IMHO, an article on such an out-of-the-way topic doesn't need to be linked to from a hundred places. The handful of pages you listed should be enough. --Smack (talk) 15:09, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Er - it's not out of the way. One of the sites it linked too says that all its bandwidth got used up on a discussion about it. There has been intense speculation about it. It is an important part of the series, affecting all the characters etc mentioned.--84.51.149.80 06:14, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

It's being dealt with by the Doctor Who Wikiproject. --khaosworks 06:17, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

Right to move articles ?

I have noticed that as an user I've lost the right to move an article. What was the reason ? Ericd 21:57, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

I won't claim to know (I didn't do it after all), but a glance over your talk page shows that you've done some contentious page moves in the past. Maybe an admin got a buerecrat to remove that permission? I agree, someone should have notified you. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 22:12, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

It's possible that the article has been protected from page moves, not just from you but from any user. Do you see the move button on your user page? Talrias (t | e | c) 22:46, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

No I don't see the move button on any page. If someone made the decision to remove that permision I consider this decision as abusive. Ericd 20:49, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

I've noticed that I can not move some articles even though I can edit them. Is this a possible bug? pstudier 08:35, 2005 July 28 (UTC)

No, it is possible for an administrator to protect an article against page moves only. Thryduulf 08:56, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

thanks

thanks so much for the link to the farsi wikipedia :)

~*~ ApPrEcIaTe It ~*~

WIKIPEDIA!

gosh i think that Wikipedia is definitely the BEST resource on the internet! i love it soo much! you have the best most interesting most detailed information on EVERYTHING!!! everything i searched for: oprah winfrey, norooz (persian new year), bandari, persian music, LOL (internet slang), EVERYTHING! and for that i just LOVE this site. i would like to make a tiny request: could you PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEE have Farsi (persian) as one of your languages to view this site in? you have almost every other language so i was hoping you would put Farsi as a way to view the site too. Not only would i be grateful, Iranians all around the world would be very happy to know that the coolest site on the internet is in Farsi too! Thanks soooooo much!

We already have a Wikipedia in Persian (Farsi), and it is available as a user interface language on all the others. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:00, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

thanks so much  :)

~*~ ApPrEcIaTe It ~*~

Redirect valid?

Can someone tell me if this redirect was needed? The page already existed, yet the user created a new page of the same topic, and redirected the older page. [13] --69.204.190.91 17:01, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Normally, I would revert it as a cut/paste, but the new page does seem to have new/different info from the old one. I honestly don't know which is the proper name, which version should live, or if they should be merged, etc. --Golbez 17:04, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

The new page contained unsourced information (release date), the boxart seems to violate copyright policy, and it also has reference to "Freeloader" which I believe should be linked to, not on the actual page. --69.204.190.91 17:13, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Links to freenet in wikipedia

Please take a look at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:Beta m and his freenet spamming. mikka (t) 19:52, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

A tale of two wikis

I thought this up while reading a recent RfC. I think it expresses a difference of attitude well. It may also be a simple small/large dichotomy. I'm not a sociologist or a psychologist, and maybe someone else has said it better before. I still wanted to share it with the rest of you. The exposition is intended to be neutral; I'm not trying to imply one is right and the other is wrong—as presented I'm pretty sure they're both wrong when consistently applied, for different reasons.

This

• Administrators are those users who have been voluntarily assigned greater responsibility for keeping Wikipedia productive. Everyone should act like an administrator. Those things administrators can do that others can't are restricted only because the damage that could be done by those acting in bad faith or ignorance would not outweigh the good done by everyone else.

• Blocks are technical measures to limit the time Wikipedia is in an unproductive state. They work by removing those people perpetuating the unproductiveness from the equation. Since it will simultaneously prevent any productive behaviour from those blocked as well, it is the last resort.

• Policy is codified community consensus. It centralizes discussion, and obviates the need for having to repeatedly explain a practical but not necessarily obvious approach to the uninformed.

That

• Administrators are those users who are in charge of keeping Wikipedia in proper order. They are the ones primarily responsible for detecting and removing unproductive elements. They are assigned privileges because there is agreement that their judgment is sound. Administrative privileges are restricted because those of unsound judgment could do massive damage with them.

• A block is the most effective way of stopping unproductive behaviour. Getting blocked is unpleasant, so it is a good deterrent to those who perpetuate unproductive behaviour. A block can be seen as punishment, so it should be applied justly; administrators are expected to be just.

• Policy is the law. Breaking the law is a crime; crime should be punished to discourage further crime. People are free to amend the law, so there is no excuse for disobeying it.

JRM · Talk 11:29, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I would like to point out that the difference between the two viewpoints is very small, point 1 and 2 is essentially the same in both "this" and "that". It's point 3 that differs. The policy that is described in "this" is more describing a guideline or semi-policy isn't it? It's such things as WP:POINT or WP:NOT for instance. But that is not what WP:3RR or WP:NPA is (by the way, hooray for shortcuts). Those two are law, not just a way to "centralizes discussion, and obviates the need for having to repeatedly explain" stuff. You revert 4 times in 24h, you're blocked. Call someone an asshole you are warned and if you continue you will be blocked. No two ways about it.

Ofcourse, there will be differences in how people understand how wikipedia policies should be interpreted. The obvious recent example is the deletion of VfD (was it that RfC you were reading perhaps?) by Ed Poor. Half the community (including me) wanted to impeach him, while half of the community hailed him as a hero for, well, being WP:BOLD. My 2 cents, anyway. gkhan 12:53, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

I never said they were exclusive. I also never said they necessarily talked about the same things. :-) You're right, though; "policy" has become overloaded in a way "administrator" or "block" haven't been. We're now talking about different kinds of policies rather than different ways to view them; this is a deficiency in my presentation. I should fix it if I ever return to it!

I don't feel like revealing what RfC was the motivation, in fact I'm now sorry I mentioned it at all. This isn't intended to be a comment on an RfC; if it were I would have placed it there. Ignore the RfC! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it...

In any case, between us we've got 4 cents already... JRM · Talk 13:08, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

JRM: I think you meant: "People are free to repeal the law"? Paul August ☎ 14:30, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, no. Though I see "appeal" isn't quite right; you use that for decisions of the court, not laws. Meh, this should be put up somewhere so the rest of you could {{sofixit}}! JRM · Talk 15:37, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Selective removal of vote from a poll

Will someone please comment on the selective removal of my vote from a poll? I have summarized it on the relevant discussion page. Maurreen (talk) 06:47, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Look, first of all that page is a policy/guideline proposal page, not an RfC. Secondly, it is just a straw a poll. There is nothing to panic about. If you really want to request comments, you should use WP:RfC, or, better, the user's talk page. But starting off at the Village Pump seems unnecessary, imo. -Splash 06:53, 8 August 2005 (UTC)