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Yeah, you're right. This use of the Wikipedia logo is a violation of trademark law, conveying the false impression that their site is affiliated with Wikipedia. I think there's some place where you can contact our legal department for follow-up. Deco19:20, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I left a message for Mr. Patrick. Incidentally, the site's not responding for me right now (doesn't bode well for impressing their future clients, eh?). — Knowledge Seekerদ03:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia and Metal Bands
Ok I have no idea where to bring this up so I thought I'd leave a note here. Increasingly as I browse the wiki I continually am running into references, and pages to metal bands. Perhaps this extends outwards to other generas, but to date I have only noticed with in metal. These articles tend to be short and reasonable, but the problem centers on the fact that there are TONS of them generally for bands that have released 0-1 albums. These articles tend to use technical terms which aren't clear (though admitly I suppose there could be a difference between the countless ways they string death, metal, and one or other two words into what they appear tto regard as some type of sub genera) and come off as the type entries you'd expect in a more more intrest specific encyclopedic source (such as a metal encyclopedia). The real problem with this though is the clutter, the metal pages have a number of huge list pages, and the bands themselves continually are cluttering the less policed sections of pages such as pop culture references (cthulhu mythos comes to mind), or creating unnecessary disamiguation pages. I've run into this metal clutter from a wide variety of places, lovecraft related topics, comic book pages, film pages, and most recently when looking for information about the bit torrent tracker demonoid.com. I don't know what can be done, but I'd certainly appreciate others looking at this phenomena and making any suggestions they can.--68.231.174.18314:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Give up and do something more useful on wikipedia, is my advice. Let them clutter away; nobody cares, nobody will see their work except other fanboys, so just ignore it. Concentrate on writing/editing/creating good articles, rather than raising your blood pressure over bad articles. This is advice, by the way, from somebody who spent his first three years on wikipedia diligently deleting piffle; I've decided it's not really accomplishing anything, so now I ignore the bad and only work on the good. - DavidWBrooks15:56, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
You're one of the folks who would benefit from the realization that Wikipedia is not actually an encyclopedia. It stopped being one about 9 months into its existence. It's actually a sort of MegaCompendium, and that is what its greatest value will be-- as a reference source in which you'll be able to find something about almost anything. Due to the demographics of early contributors, topics like Metal Bands, Comic Books, SciFi Movies, etc.,. have been the first topics to get the MegaCompendium treatment. But it will eventually fan out to all imaginable topics. So, there is no such thing as "piffle" and it's a shame Mr. Brooks spent so much time/effort chasing those ghosts. At some point users will be able to set something like a "Detail Level" in their preferences. A Level 1 will screen out eveything that's not strictly encyclopedic, and such a user will never see or get search hits for this metal clutter or clutter in thousands of others categories. A Level 20 will include everything, but only because that user chooses to see it all, no matter how trivial. JDG11:17, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Admin Stalking
I have been online for over 10 years 'playing' all through the ether. In that time I have never had my ip blocked once though I have come across all types in some programs. I have never been targeted online for anyhting apart from a couple of gentle 'boots' from one galah who wasnt viscious or kept it up night after night after night after night. In the last couple of weeks here my ip has been blocked several times when I objected to admin vandalism of stuff I had posted where meaning etc were changed making what I put up a heap of lies. I have made a lot of contributions to wik. I did make some errors as I had no idea what I was doing to start. They were not intentional. I cite most posts immediately, with references on the way in next couple of days re those I dont have the reference immediately to hand. (I have an arm injury so can't pull my cardboard box other filing cabinet off the top of the cupboard to get a couple of things out.) Since I have been on wik I have been continuously stalked by an admin who has been very rude, keeps vandalising stuff I put up, seems to be very fixated on following me around the ether and trying to control my every moove. Of course I told that admin to get lost. I am a former professional stalking/violence worker so have seen how it happens and where it ends up, and dont have regard for that sort of rot. I have never seen it to the extent that I have seen it happen on wik. I will tell any stalker to get lost. Its behaviour that isnt needed anywhere and if I am targeted to the point I am continuously being harassed and my health affected then it needs to stop. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? IS IT ALWAYS LIKE THIS? I was going to put a heap of valuable stuff up but given how here is then its best to steer clear of the palce for the sake of my personal wellbeing.
I would be delighted if somebody reviewed either my admin actions or my contributions to the wikipedia - with reference to articles this anon user has also edited. I will take the issues to WP:AN/I for review by other admins. In the mean time I have blocked the user again for ongoing personal attacks.--A Y Arktos\talk09:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Now for that admin to find I put the above there that admin had to stalk me again as I had to log off, then come back to be able to post. Fair enough if those admins watching some wik articles do keep an eye on them but this post here shows that where I go all over wik is beign minutely watched. There is no need for that. The admin knows I am not a hoon vandel as such so no need for 24/7 watching and stalking. To post the above post, I came here first after logging back on to the Internet, cut and pasted the already written note above, then I went to the site where the admin was vandalising stuff I had put up (this has now stopped after I sadly had to remove most of the post in dispute - it contained important content). It seems that from me going to that article after here, my new ip has been reg and picked up on then tracked back to here to see what else I had posted under that ip log on number. This is totally ridiculous. Its also stalking. Its that that is uncalled for and highly irregular. CUT IT OUT!
Symbol Name
We are in need of the name of the symbol that is over the e as in Crepe or over the u as in Ragout. Anybody know it?
I'm usually more involved in another language WP so I'm always amazed, how comparatively civil AfD debates are conducted here. Particularly, it appears as if hardly anyone comments on other people's delete or keep arguments directly (basically creating a little sub-discussion about a lot of things not related to the question at hand). Is there some guideline people follow automatically or are there others running around moderating the discussions? Any insight would be greatly appreciated. sebmol11:12, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
I think that AfD's reputation is much worse than the reality of what goes on there. Also, I think that it is better than it was last year. I don't know about before that since I wasn't here. I think one of the most common causes of uncivil discussions on AfD is when sockpuppets or meatpuppets are used by one or (rarely) both sides. This really gets people angry. Another problem is when someone accuses another editor of bad faith, like using sockpuppets, making a nomination or "vote" in revenge, stalking and such. However, I think that the vast majority of nominations are civil. If you want to see people get nasty, you could try Deletion Review. It's kind of depressing, though. Deletion Review participants tend to be veteran editors and I've seen many of them behaving very poorly there. -- Kjkolb18:50, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
If there is any difference in civility here it could be a size factor. One article in a million seems less of a big deal than one in ten thousand on a smaller Wiki. Grutness...wha?02:09, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
We have about 420,000 articles, which should be about one third. But there still might be some truth in that. It may also have to do with the fact that the attitude in the German WP is in general much more Deletionist. sebmol06:52, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Another related thing is that the more articles there are, the more likely that a new one will be on a less encyclopedic subject. By 400,000, though, I'd have expected that the german WP would be approaching the level of that that exists here. Grutness...wha?05:21, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh, we do. We get about 100 AfD per day, most of which with "Notability?" as the argument for deletion. sebmol06:43, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I start several AfDs a week, and have had few problems. Mostly they're from RC patrol, where the article creator removed a "prod" and we have to go to AfD to get rid of an article about their non-notable garage band or favorite minor character from some popular culture work. These usually go to deletion without much trouble. --John Nagle17:35, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
This is the golden age of Wikipedia; the age when school teachers (mine, at least) still think it's acceptable to cite Wikipedia as a direct source of information. :-P Torvik21:28, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Need word for grouping ancestry, ethnicity, and nationality
I need a word that would cover ancestry, ethnicity, and nationality to create a category name. Any help would be appreciated. I do not want to create three categories for these closely related and overlapping topics. — Lady Aleenatalk/contribs19:01, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
I am desperately trying to clean up Category:User templates, and there are separate userboxes for ancestry, ethnicity, and nationality. I would like to lump them together in one subcategory. - LA @ 05:58, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the Pokemon test
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, am I right? An encyclopedia not bound by physical limitations. So why are some articles considered "too long", such as the Karen Pokemon? Articles in an encyclopedia, as long as they're written properly and provide useful information on the subject, should never be called too long. The Karen Pokemon article is written very well (as far I know - I'm not into Pokemon) so why is it so bad to have so much detail in a seemingly relatively unimportant article? I bring this up because of my article Bombtrack "barely passing the Pokemon test". Sure, a bombtrack is not nearly as important as lots of things, that's obvious, but that doesn't automatically mean that its encyclopedia article shouldn't be detailed. Yes, of course, the article on Canada should be a hell of a lot longer than Bombtrack, but length does not go hand-in-hand with detail, and likewise, the levels of detail should never change between any article. And, again, this is an encyclopedia. There is no such thing as too much information. Torvik06:41, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
It's not so much the length or detail that's the issue. As I just noted at the Talk page for that article, the real problem is that your article borders on original research because that term is so obscure. Otherwise for all we know you could be trying to popularize a term you coined. You need to get a citation (preferably several) showing that the term "bombtrack" is actually being used by professional musicians to refer to that type of sound. For example, academic music journals or even Rolling Stone magazine would suffice. --Coolcaesar09:51, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Further evidence that Wikipedia is #1 in college plagiarism
"Katherine Tredwell, history of science professor, turned in 16 students for plagiarism on their final papers for her spring class, History of Science Since the 17th Century. She said nine of the cases, all of which are still being investigated, involved misuse of Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia. Tredwell said that, while Internet plagiarism is hardly new, the faculty as a whole should take notice of the incident." UWire, 6/21/06
I'm impressed that they'd turn to us first for their plagiarism. Seriously, Wikipedia's complete content is available for download and processing by standard plagiarism detection software systems. If they'd bothered to run these submissions through such a system then all Wikipedia-based plagiarisms would have been detected easily. Deco22:00, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
That could be Wikipedia's new slogan: "More college cheaters plagiarize from Wikipedia than from any other source!" *Dan T.*22:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
It's certainly the case - in the 101 course I was a T.A. for, we caught probly about 30 students cheating off wikipedia because they had all copied the same (fairly nonsensical) sentence. So when the same phrase showed up a bunch of times, but didn't really mean anything, we became suspicious and then found the same phrase in Wikipedia. WilyD16:58, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia logo
I wanted to bring to the attention of Wikipedia community an error in Wikipedia Logo. The leftmost jigsaw piece along the equator of the globe in the image has text written in Hindi. However the way it appears in the logo, it seems that it was created on a software that did not have Indic Language Support. Hence, what should be File:Correct hindi vi.JPG appears as File:Incorrect hindi vi.JPG. For technical details of such support, please refer to Wikipedia:Enabling complex text support for Indic scripts. I noticed it long back, and had tried to correct it by giving a petition to Angela (talk·contribs) and Anthere (talk·contribs). Because of technical issues and probable lack of drive to fix it, it remains unfixed. I bring it here so that if the community consensus is with the proposal, we should start pushing for the change. I know that it means a lot of work, but shouldn't we make a stitch in time? Also, it will create a bad impression if there are errors in the logo of an encyclopedia. I want to know what the community thinks. Thanks, — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 04:32, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
I would suggest you obtain a high-quality version of the logo and change it (or find someone to change it for you). Once the hard work is done it'll be relatively easy to change the site logo. As we are not centralised, producing just a petition doesn't do much - someone still needs to do the work. I would predict that few (if any) people would object to such a minute change. --OldakQuill12:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Fight vandalism with a smile
Mellowing out vandals since 1507.
I couldn't help but think of Wikipedia when I read this story on BBC News. Basically, it's a scientific study showing that people behaved strikingly more honestly when they were exposed to an image of human eyes. Perhaps it is this lack of the "human element" that makes us so susceptible as a target for random, pointless vandals. I have no specific ideas of how to implement such a thing, but perhaps if we had more images of friendly faces around, it would discourage this sort of behavior.--Pharos02:03, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Maybe all we need is a picture of some eyes staring down at the top of the edit screen to remind editors that other people will see what they have done. --MarkS (talk) 08:41, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
This is an interesting study, and one that can be clearly seen and supported by what we experience in face-to-face discussion and on Wikipedia. However, I don't see any logical way human eyes or a more human element can be used at Wikipedia. Any ideas? --Randy Johnston (‽) 18:20, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, Mark's suggestion of putting something on the edit screen is certainly technically possible; we could have a banner with eyes and something like "Please be careful in editing." Or maybe we could use some sort of cartoon mascot. Or maybe something else altogether: any more thoughts?--Pharos08:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Great idea, I think the mona-lisa would work well, or maybe we could create a wikimascot. Then we could put it at the top of every type of edit notice (including longpage, protected page etc.) then have a banner next to it saying "think before you click Save page". LC@RSDATA 07:00, 5 July2006 (UTC)
I would not at all want to discourage people from being bold. The point of this would just be to reduce blatant, pointless vandalism like "TRISHA IS GAY" by putting a human face on the editing process.--Pharos21:50, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
For the last month, myself and 1-2 other individuals have been jumpstarting a massive cleanup project as an attempt to bring order to Wikipedia. I think I have the methodology sorted out: now we need participants. There are more details on the project page. Thank you. Cwolfsheep12:29, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Did I see really see this template?
I recall seeing a message on a user's talk page which said something like "This User does not respond to unsigned messages". Is there a template saying this? Moriori22:50, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I can't find one with google (no templates like what you recall with both "this user" and "respond" or "this user" and "unsigned"). Trawling through user pages, perhaps you're thinking of User:Giftexpert or User talk:Tawkerbot2. It would be trivial to create such a template if you want one. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:25, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
WP missing articles
I came across a WP page entitled "Orphaned Articles" (the G section). There was nothing on the page to give me more info on what this means, or to direct me to someplace where I can read up on it. So I decided to put in a request for it. But then I had trouble finding a page to put in the request; is it just me or is there a problem here :-). Oh, BTW, I also had trouble finding a better place to post this. So, I guess I would have 2 requests: a main page for "Orphaned Articles", and a section in the new article request page for a Wikipedia procedures page (or maybe there is such a page and I couldn't find it). Thanks. TheLostOne --Leon720:26, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
You're talking about Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles/G, right? At the very top, in a smallish sort of font there's a link to Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles. Is this what you were looking for? In general, most pages have an associated talk page, accessed from the "discussion" tab at the top. And help is available from the "help" link on the left (in the "navigation" frame). From the main help page, "where to ask questions" is a list of places for asking questions. The Help desk and the New contributors' help page are both meant exactly for questions like yours. Just out of curiousity, how did you end up at Wikipedia:Requested articles and here? -- Rick Block (talk) 21:21, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Well... thanks but none of your suggestions got me to a definition... until I thought of searching for "Orphan", which did explain what it was. To answer your question, I was looking at Gerber File, and clicked on "what links here" and found a page link to Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles/G, along with several other links (I think I would like to edit Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles to give the definition). From the definition in Wikipedia:Orphan, it's obvious that the "Gerber File" article is no longer an orphan... if I understand it correctly. So the Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles/G page should be edited to remove any articles that have links coming in to them, correct? Apparently the last audit was 2 years ago, which is internet ancient history. Funny thing about these orphans, I thought--once an orphan, always an orphan (à la Pirates of Penzance) :-). Well, at WK, apparently it's the other way around; when an new article gets started, it's usually an orphan, but as it grows, it no longer is. Thanks for your help. --Leon701:49, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Sorry if this is the wrong place, but I figured I should bring this up. I'm questioning the authenticity of this image. The soldier in it looks alot like actor Dylan McDermott from the movie Hamburger Hill. I haven't seen that movie in a while, but I do believe there was a scene that was similar (if not the exact same) as that picture. Does anybody concur?--KrossTalk15:59, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
U.S.-centrism
U.S.-centrism is complained about a lot in Wikipedia. Anywhere besides Wikipedia where U.S.-centrism is widely complained about?? Georgia guy21:38, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
The easist way around it is to just create a "______ in the United States" article (or some variation). I would suggest renaming the original article "______ in Miscellaneous", but I think that wouldn't fly --bah, philistines... --Bobak00:04, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't know how much the word "centrism" is used, but the arrogance, ignorance, self-centredness and pomposity of Americans are complained about millions of times every day all over the world, and complaining about it will only increase the heat. What you need to do it to become a little more modest and engaged. Chicheley04:56, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Alas, modesty is not one of our defining characteristics. We tend to take great pride in our positive accomplishments, while pretending that our "mistakes" happened to someone else. While I will cheerfully admit to being arrogant and self-centered, I really must take exception to "ignorance" (we've actually built several schools here in the Colonies, and one or two have good reputations). Regarding the idea that Americans are pompous, I'm forced to assume that you've never been to France :) (and now I duck quickly to avoid the flaming Frenchmen who will doubtless descend on me.) --Doc TropicsMessage in a bottle17:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
There is a considerable amount of US-centrism on Wikipedia, but that's par for the course. By that, I don't mean that there is a natural tendency for US-centrism to exist among Americans any more than Foo-centrism exists among Fooians, although there does seem to be somewhat of an excess of it. Part of the reason there is so much on Wikipedia, though, is simply that so much of Wikipedia is edited by Americans, and as such there is a natural systemic bias towards the US. There also seems to be a very insular approach among a proportion of Americans - reflected on Wikipedia - which tends to deal with items in the US as though this automatically means that the whole world has been dealt with - I've seen several items of the form of "Most important X which are really "Most important X in the United States" (My rcent edits to the article University press hopefully fixed the problems that article had in this regard). In my own work for Wikipedia, which involves a lot of sorting of geography stubs, I see Foo-centrism from several countries, though, notably the US, UK and - perhaps surprisingly - India. Many many stub articles about palces say things like "Nawaral is a small village 25 kilommetres west of Inkantimbi famous for its temple.", with no mention whatsoever of where Inkanthimbi is - everyone is expected to know where it is and place it alongside London, New York and Moscow in our list of best-known cities in the world. A similar but more subtle thing is (and this is more American than anything else) an automatic assumpton that a two-letter state abbreviation can only possible mean a US state, leading to articles with names like "Newport, WA", which could refer to Washington, Western Australia, or Wales. To the best of my knowledge, Nashville is not in Tunisia and Minneapolis is not in Mongolia. Um... I seem to have strayed from the point... Grutness...wha?05:14, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
heh - That example was made up on the spot. I had no idea there even was a Newport in Washington. It's something I see on articles about once a week or more, though. Grutness...wha?06:05, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Added a template on how-to articles
You can see it here. It just crossed my mind that not all instructional content needs to be edited out, but it might just require a proper introduction. Anyone willing to check the reasons, discussion and the layout of this newly created template and the relevant category? Santtus09:40, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Georgia (country) being moved to Georgia
For the past 2 years, the evidence that Georgia (country) will be moved to Georgia is increasing more and more. Somebody please explain why the evidence is not staying as little as it was 2 years ago. Georgia guy20:11, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand your question, but I'm going to try to answer what I think your question is. If you are asking about moving the page Georgia (country) to Georgia, it seems unlikely that the move would be possible. If you click on Georgia it leads to a disambiguation page. That page lists 19 different articles
about "Georgia"...many different Georgias. The Disambiguation page isn't really a ranking system, it's a way for people to find the specific article they want out of the many named "Georgia". Does that help? --Doc TropicsMessage in a bottle04:51, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't know if it is happening, but I think that it would be a bad idea. We have a lot of contributors from the U.S. and when they think of "Georgia" it is the state, not the country. Having the links go to a disambiguation page is much better than them going to the wrong article. Also, it would be a pain to change the links to the right page because everyone has to check all of the articles each time they go through "what links here" to correct the links. When it goes to a disambiguation page, you don't have to go through pages that have already been checked, resulting in less wasted effort. -- Kjkolb05:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I concur. Georgia the U.S. state is better known in North America, and Georgia the country is better known in Europe, especially the eastern half. Indeed, I suspect most American editors (myself included) would support having the U.S. state at Georgia because of the "common names" policy guideline. But many European editors would object. There is no easy solution. We have to keep Georgia as a disambig page. --Coolcaesar09:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I recently had a look at the Windows Vista article and what I noticed is that even if it's not out yet, the article is bigger than the ones of other operating systems that are lesser known or older. The same goes for many articles about persons. People that are popular and active in this internet age get a bigger article, even if what they do isn't that much relevant for humanity.
To me it seems now that you can copy & paste information off other websites and press releases (in the case of software), you can bloat an article. I'm not saying that the information by doing this would be irrelevant or false.
I'm aware that this is kind of inevitable, but a longer article about a thing that's currently trendy and in the news distorts the person or thing being written about making it seem more important.
Taking operating systems for example. I think BeOS is/was a very interesting OS, but the article is very short. Of couse I could add informations, but there's not much to copy and paste about it on the internet. On the other hand, Windows is being marketed aggressively and therefore you'll find more information about it that you can copy and paste (a list with the features, requirements...).
In the end, as Wikipedia gets older, some articles about not-so-famous, but interesting things will get forgotten, defaced or stay as stuble, while hyped things will make history because they are written by "fanboys" or even the people who were involved in that thing themselves/knew the famous person. Guest Account19:31, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
First of all, copying and pasting material from the web is in violation of copyright law and against our policy. The articles you mentioned don't do it (although sometimes they may perilously paraphrase such material). It is true that topics receiving more attention will generate more detailed articles; this is just another side to Wikipedia's inadvertant selective bias which also, for example, generates longer articles on operating systems than on modern dance. The bias exists, but unlike material within a single article it should not be construed as espousing the relative importance of the topics. A more real danger is that the articles may fall into disrepair for lack of interest - but really even a not-so-great article is better than none at all, and every article should be regularly reviewed for vandalism. Deco19:55, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Copyright status of 30+ year old found photos
A man finds a photo album laying around on the street. He looks in it for contact info, none is found, besides the name of the woman who created them. She appears to have been 70 or so in 1967, so is likely dead. What is the copyright status of these images? Can the finder release them as PD? -- Zanimum17:26, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Congratulations, we have a textbook case of the orphan work dilemma... They're unpublished in any real sense, so you can't go by expiry of copyright from publication, and have to go from date of death... which will be too recent. And you have no way of contacting the copyright holder - because it'll have passed to an unknown heir - so you're screwed whatever you do. Shimgray | talk | 17:30, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, you're pretty much screwed. You can look at the photos, or scan them into your computer, but you have no rights to publish, distribute copies of, or create and publish derivative works of the photos. This is precisely the reason why the U.S. Copyright Office has recently been soliciting opinions on issues related to orphan works, and Congress may consider related legislation in the near future. If you want to make your voice heard, now is the time. Deco17:46, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Of the nearly 200 countries in the world, which one do Wikipedians consider the least important country for Wikipedia to satisfy?? Georgia guy16:36, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
None, they should all be treated equally, otherwise we launch ourselves on the slippery slope of indifference. Perhaps a country with no internet users, if one exists, but otherwise, my previous answer remains firm. Why do you ask? -- Zanimum17:27, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Looking at your recent contributions, it appears you may well be asking about a specific situation. You'll get a much more useful response if you say so in future... Shimgray | talk | 17:34, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Oman. I mean, really, when was the last time OMAN was in the news? Sheesh. Might as well say "O man, nothing happens here!" And don't get me started on Paraguay. --Golbez21:26, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Where is wikipedia?
Where exactly is wikipedia? Where are the servers? But more importantly, where are the hard-drives?? I hope they are protected in an underground bunker surrounded by 17 feet of concrete! Not having wasted all this time (along with thousands of other people) only for the databases to be wiped by an earthquake or an attack or similar occurance. Please tell me our hard work is safe - Jak(talk)12:36, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Like any good business, I'm sure the Wikimedia Foundation makes regular offsite backups in remote locations. Natural disaster might destroy a few days of work, but not years. Deco15:00, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
There are hundreds of copies of Wikipedia's content on the internet, and probably thousands more in private hands. Because Wikipedia is licensed under the GFDL, people are free to copy and republish it under the license's terms. There are more instructions at Wikipedia:Database download for individuals interested in having a dump of the entire Wikipedia database. Even if the entire Wikimedia Foundation and the whole state of Florida were destroyed, there would still be copies of Wikipedia all over the world. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:45, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Vandalism
I know that you're not supposed to vandalise and all that, but us vandals want to and don't want to get blocked. Do you think that you could just post a page that us vandals could vandalise?(y'know, like you could paste the text from a serious article in it every day.)--Architect120:33, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
You already know about the Sandbox, and I see you have a personal sandbox too. You can put pretty much what you like in your personal sandbox, so long as it's within the law, and if you don't get ridiculous on use of our bandwidth. We would hope that you'll use the experience you gain from editing in such places to make useful contributions to articles too.-gadfium21:48, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi. I have written an ugly script that finds articles without images in our Wikipedia, but the quid is that script links to a Commons article with images for to illustrate. The list contains some errors, sorry. Does someone work? :) --Emijrp16:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Open content animal closeups needing to be classified
At http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcodede/sets/72057594099874712/, a Brazilian photographer is making available a great number of stunning animal closeup photographs under a Wikipedia-compatible Creative Commons Attribution licence. I'd add them to Wikimedia Commons, but he's not identified the animals. Maybe our resident taxonomists would be interested? These images would be great additions to our articles on animals.
I work for a charity called U Can Do IT (see www.ucandoit.org.uk) which provides computer tuition for disabled people in the UK. I am currently trying to start up a wiki at wiki.ucandoit.org.uk which will fulfill various functions for the charity. Perhaps the most important of these is the provision of a set of Instructions and Course Notes for U Can Do IT students to use while they are taking the course.
I have publicised the wiki amongst other U Can Do IT tutors, but I don't think many of them are particularly experienced in editing wikis. Would any experienced wikipedians be able to provide any help in building the UCanWIKI? Accounts are by invitation only, but there's a link on the main page of the wiki from which you can email me an account request. Even if you don't want to contribute, any general advice (e.g., already-extant sources of computer instructions, general design tips etc etc) would be great.
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/What Really Happened (2nd nomination) was flooded today with Anon IP comments after an announcement about the AfD was posted on an external website. An Admin suggested sorting through the Anons and posting notes about which ones represented first edits (people who came to WP strictly to influence an AfD). I began to place notes on the page but then realized there might be a problem. Aren't some IP adresses dynamic? Does that mean that some of those Anon IPs might actually be long-time contributors? I want to make sure this page gets a balanced review, not unduly weighted either way. And yes, I know this isn't a vote, but whoever closes this AfD is going to have to wade through tons of material and the idea was that this would help the closing Admin. Can someone shed some light on this? --Doc Tropics02:16, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I was going to suggest using {{AfdAnons}}, but I see that someone else beat me to it. As long as the anonymous contributors are aware that their opinions don't count for very much — especially given the context within which they got involved — I say let them be. Folajimi06:12, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I get the general impression that the need to avoid cutting and pasting between Wikipedia articles (it loses the attributions that are stored in the page history) is something that it is easy for people to not learn about until rather late in their Wikipedia experience. It there a way to make this clearer and to re-emphasise this point?
Also, can someone point me to a single guideline that covers: splitting and merging articles, the need to preserve page histories, and how this is difficult when splitting and merging articles, the need to preserve redirects as a link to page histories (and not to just delete them), and to not cut and paste large chunks of text between Wikipedia articles? At the moment, this all seems spread around several different pages, which maybe why people don't always realise that this "cut and paste" method contravenes the GFDL for moving pages, and so it also contravenes it for splitting pages. The specific example here is the discussion here. I would really appreciate it if others could confirm and support what I have said there, or, if I am wrong, to correct what I've said. Thanks. Carcharoth10:04, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
There is nothing wrong with cutting and pasting large chunks of text where this is necessary for good presentation. However, you should always provide a link back to the place where it was copied from in your edit summary. This way a person who wishes to discover the original authors can still do so. If that page is going to be deleted, the edit history should be pasted on an appropriate talk page. These are just the ad hoc rules that I use, but I think they're adequate. Deco00:13, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
something else i do if im merging one person's new stub into an existing long article and making the stub into a redirect is add a link to the former stub in the edit summary. BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard00:31, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
How would you paste the edit history onto a talk page? Is it just the edit summaries that you are talking about, or all past versions of the page?--GregRM01:48, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
This is all well and good, but my point is that I sometimes see people not putting these links in the edit summaries. This completely breaks the attribution system. As an example, please see User:Carcharoth#How I did a merge. What I think would be even better than just providing a link to the article, is to provide a link to the specific break point in the history of the article you have copied the text from. In other words, the edit summary should go something like:
The alternative is something like this edit. How on Earth can someone five years from now know where that block of text was cut and pasted from?
I mean, I know it was from this edit, but that is only because I was aware of the names and histories of the articles. It would be much more difficult for anyone else to trace the history of the large chunk of text that parachuted into Ptolemaic Egypt with what is, quite frankly, an inadequate edit summary.
What made it worse was that there were serious proposals to delete History of Greek and Roman Egypt along with all the page history! Though your proposal to paste the edit history onto a talk page seems OK, I don't think that is ideal. Is there any guideline that says pasting a page history onto a talk page is an adequate addressing of the problems involved in such cut and paste operations?
The other thing is, once an unlinked edit summary appears, how can it be corrected? Currently, the only way to do it is to revert, and then redo the cut and paste and remember to put the link in the edit summary.
It is all very messy, and I wish more people were aware of how to do such cutting and pasting properly, or to avoid it if they are not sure what to do. How about adding something to the boilerplate warning along the lines of:
"Content must not violate any copyright and must be based on verifiable sources. If you are moving text between articles, please state this and link to both articles in your edit summary. You agree to license all contributions under the GFDL."
Though, of course, no-one reads that bit anyway.
I think my basic point is that there is the possibility that the GFDL is broken because there are large chunks of Wikipedia where the attribution is no longer possible because a significant minority of Wikipedia editors have been editing without being aware of these issues. Carcharoth01:27, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I guess the question is really, what can you do about it? It seems technically infeasible to distinguish these edits from legitimate mass removals or additions of content that aren't copy-paste-without-attribution. Deco07:07, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I guess you are right, there isn't a lot that can be done about it if you arrive several major edits later. If only a few minor edits have taken place, it might still be feasible to do an edit that correctly attributes the cut-and-paste. Otherwise, I think a note on the talk page is the best solution - maybe a big colourful template box at the top of the talk page saying "This article's edit <history> includes a <copy-paste-without-attribution>. This took place on <date> and can be seen <here>. This text originally came from <here>, and the edit history for that text can be seen at that page's <edit history>. Please see <here> for details of when such copying and pasting is acceptable and when it is not, and the correct format for the edit summaries." (The bracketed stuff would be links to the relevant pages and diffs). Once a few of those templates appeared on talk pages, people might start to get the message.
Also, could those patrolling RC be made more aware that unintentional damage like this needs to be caught as well as just simple vandalism? I want to make more editors aware of the damaging nature of such well-intentioned efforts. Is there a way to do this? Is there a place where I can get approval for a template like I propose above, and even get someone to design it (I know very little about putting parameters in templates) and also to check something similar doesn't already exist?
And I second GregRM's question - how exactly does this "putting the edit history on a talk page" work? And I'll repeat my question: is there a Wikipedia guideline that approves of this method of putting the edit history of such copy-pasted text on a talk page? It seems very unorthodox. Carcharoth10:38, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
One more point: above you say "a person who wishes to discover the original authors can still do so" - but it is not a case of doing this to be helpful to someone who might just happen to want to find the original authors - this attribution is a requirement under the GFDL. See WP:GFDL:
5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS [...] In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled "History" in the various original documents, forming one section Entitled "History"
And it is on that page that I found an answer to both my question and Greg's question: "you can archive the duplicate page to Talk: space (i.e. by moving it to some suitable title, such as Talk:RandomArticle/OldVersion)." So in this case, I think the idea is that if a page needs to be deleted (for whatever reason) the article page and its edit history (and also the talk page and its history, if a talk page exists) can be moved, using the "move" tab, to a subpage of the talk page of the place where the text was moved to. Since the edit history has been preserved, the article can be safely deleted - usually because the name is needed for something else. Carcharoth12:11, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
English articles
The English Wikipedia obviously has more than double the number of articles than the language in second place, German. Are there any articles written in any other language that are not written in English as well? I've always been curious. Torvik08:00, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
At one time, wasn't the colour red associated with communism?
If so, why is it associated with the conservative states of the USA? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Debber (talk • contribs) .
Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions, and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that's what this Help Desk is for). For your convenience, here's the link: Reference Desk (when you get there, just select the relevant section, and ask away). I hope this helps. Garion96(talk)02:22, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
What is the policy about writing an article about someone you know? Is there a policy about asking them questions in person for information? How would you cite that? Thanks. Wikibout-Talk to me!16:46, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
It is also possible to run afoul of Wikipedia:No original research when interviewing someone for an article. The rules can be summarized as "verifiable facts and well-accepted conjectures are OK; most conclusions, analyses, opinions etc. are not" (but read the actual policy!). RossPatterson23:40, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Ok thanks. I think I can write an article completely NPOV, but many vital facts are missing, like his parents names and date of birth. Wikibout-Talk to me!00:01, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Do we have any developped "thank you"s? I'd like to have something that I can quickly paste into a forum post or email to someone when I see them cite or refer to Wikipedia. Replies here & on my talk please. - UtherSRG(talk)15:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Not as far as I know, no. Arguably, this might even discourage further citations, as people think we're making a big deal out of it - I think the best strategy is to follow up with some other relevant Wikipedia links of your own. Oh, and please keep discussions in one place only. Deco22:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia Youth Foundation
Me and lcarsdata where thinking about creating the Wikipedia Youth Foundation. Youth (everyone younger then 17) are a minority among active wikipedians and we are thinking of making a "group", this group will have it's own catagories and userboxes (maybe guidelines). It will also serve to encourage them as wikipedia would benefit from some younger members.
So what do you think? Do you support or oppose the idea?
I like the idea. It would give younger people a chance to work with other younger people and could increase their participation. My only worry would be whether we want to have a clearly identifiable group of young people. I might result in older users dismissing their ideas and it might attract undesirable users who can hide their identity. If we are confident we can get round these issues I'm all for it. --MarkS (talk) 19:46, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
If I am not mistaken, you have the right of assembly. A variety of voluntary organizations currently exist (see esperanza, deletionists, and inclusionists).
From what I gather, Wikipedia neither endorses nor opposses any of these causes. If you want to start another one, I doubt they can deny you that right (perhaps even for hate speech?) --Folajimi19:52, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Why do the newest discussions on a talk page for any article go to the bottom of that page. Wouldn't you want the newest discussion at the top? The way wikipedia is set up, old discussions which are sometimes irrelevant to the article now that it has changed often get seen first. I think it'd make more sense to put the newer discussions at the top of the page. Of course, that would probably take a lot of work, so maybe it's not worth it.
--Kormerant16:26, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I want to see if anyone has opinions on good rules for whether lists should be allowed on Wikipedia. I think it is a popular quote that categories make lists redundant. Anyone have any opinions?? Georgia guy02:15, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the general comment of This list is made redundant by a category, there is one possible objection someone might make depending on what the list is, which is that categories sort pages alphabetically while the list sorts the items in a special order, such as the Presidents of the United States in the order they served. A thing you could do theoretically is to make the category sort the items in the special order. Note that if a random list is sorted in an order like this and you want to look an item up by name, you could simply use the Control+F option. Georgia guy02:42, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Generally, I think a list is more appropriate where it can provide context, ordering, and details about each list item that can't be expressed in a category. It might also be appropriate if adding each article to a category for that purpose would be really strange. Deco04:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
There are a number of lists which probably are made redundant by categories, and perhaps these should go. However, as well as the reasons listed above there is the issue that lists can include items which do not have articles. --MarkS (talk) 08:24, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Lists should only go if they contain no information which is not in the category (which means only the dregs of the lists) and they are no longer being updated. Otherwise, leave people free to choose which to use. Just because they might not make the same choice about how to access information as you would, that doesn't mean their preference is misguided. Chicheley22:20, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
It's perhaps worth noting that many Wikipedia mirrors do not implement categories. IMO, this leads to a fairly compelling argument in the other direction. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:07, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
lists are also very useful if there are lots of red links showing articles that need to be created in cases where there are people actively expanding a topic (like a wikiproject). BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 23:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC) oop. just realised MarkS already said that. BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard23:55, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Dutch language typo
I don't know in which category this fits, so I'm bringing it up here. I've set my preference language to Dutch. This means that the user contributions also show up in Dutch. There's a typo there. It says "niewere 50" (newer 50), whereas it should say "nieuwere 50" (with a u). Is there a way to fix the typo? AecisAppleknocker Flophouse21:30, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
so... um... i'm sitting here and i party all by myself...
and i wonder... is wikipedia a place where partyesque peeps hang out?! being a swede and stuff i'm celebrating "midsommar" today and well, to be honest: i'm bored to tears!
Vital categories which I have created were deleted!
Recently, most categories which play a vital role in Wikipedia in terms of the number of edits made by users were deleted. Please view this page here under sub-section 1.8. Moerover, please view the comments which I made about this here. I hope to receive positive feedback about this as I strongly believe that these types of categories should make a return to Wikipedia. There is absolutely no harm in including these into the project. --Siva1979Talk to me05:15, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Actually, most people seem to think that those categories didn't play a vital role in Wikipedia. They don't seem to have helped build an encyclopedia at all.-gadfium05:37, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree. They were quite unnecessary. If users want to say how many edits they've made on their user pages, which many - including me - do, they certainly don't need categories to do so. As to them playing a vital role in Wikipedia, well... that word, I do not think it means what you think it means. The deletion of these categories will not harm Wikipedia. Grutness...wha?09:08, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I personally don't think that edit counting is a productive activity and it is quite misleading. Quality of edits is not related in any meaningful way to quantity of edits. How much you contribute is not important but rather whether contributions can be built on by others and have a lasting nature as encyclopedic content. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 10:46, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Again, I agree. It might be interesting for the individual to know "hey, I've just made my 5,000th edit!" - which is why so many do ike to keep track - but it can misleadingly lead to the assumption that more = better, i.e., "editcountitis". If number of edits alone was indicative, I'd be one of the best editors on WP, but there are editors with fewer than 1000 edits whom I'll readily admit are far, far better. Unfortunately, there's no way to quantify quality. Grutness...wha?00:56, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Personally I don't mind the categories, and if you don't want to use them, don't use them. CFD, by nature, gets the least exposure while under debate, as people don't often look at the actuall category page once they've categorized something; so it's possible further consensus building could be helpful. The CFD was properly closed, and a drv would not be useful at this time, btw. — xaosfluxTalk13:51, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikimania information: self-reference?
My apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere, but I have issues with how the Wikimania announcement is displayed. First of all, I think it's unattractive, imposing quite a bit of white space. Second, since it appears on the article page itself, I think it might be a violation, in principle, of WP:ASR. Even though it's only a temporary posting, is there a better way to announce it?--Monocrat02:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
I found this cartoon on Wiki Commons. 3 members of the KKK under a wiki logo... is this funny? Mike-T20:58, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
While I can't speak for the creator, I believe that it may instead be a depiction of a Nazareno [1]; the other symbols are clearly based on the Illuminati, so the allusion is probably to the Wikipedia 'cabal' as a conspiracy theory. Ziggurat00:47, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
The captions are in French. Translated, they read:
Frankly, I find this a little sad. Hell, used to be that people could discern between perfectly acceptable complex secret societies with mysterious, yet undeniably sinister intentions, and a bunch of barely literate loudmouth rednecks with bad teeth, decked up in crumpled bedsheets sheets stained with specks of tobacco juice and moonshine. What's the world coming to? -- Captain Disdain19:08, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia and "Information Drift"
A friend of mine who was considerably older would remark on how the dictionary had changed. He had me go to a 1920s edition of a dictionary and look up several words and then to a current version and look up certain words. The definitions had changed, sometimes to a meaning almost opposite the older one. When looking at the John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy Talk page, there was a comment made about relying on information from someone you talked to on a bus vs a roomful of experts. It occurred to me that Wikipedia, with its roomful of experts, can be a force to slow societal information drift. There is some drift that has to occur, such as in technical and scientific areas... who would trust the 1920s encylopedia on that kind of information? However, prior to this democritization of knowledge, a single, concerted, player could mold definitions and meanings to turn them around, as in the novel Nineteen Eighty-four. It appears to me that Wikipedia, with its "roomful of experts" could slow that process and make it more difficult for disinformation merchants to peddle their wares. Of course, without the diligent editing and tracking that is being done by the community at this time, it could be a force for quite the opposite.
Dear Wikipedians:
I, like you, am an editor; I create articles and make edits.
But, many, I am sure many other people out there, are tired, frustrated and angry with the behavior of many Administrators. I am certain that it is appallingly easy to revert and article, that someone has undoubtedly spent a lot of time and effort writing. I have, in the past spent hours, researching, planning, writing, checking and revising an addition to an article only to have the whole lot deleted forever three minutes afterwards.
I know that deletion of material is essential in a free-to-edit encyclopedia, but if you see an article that someone has anonymously devoted their time to writing, why could you not revise it, change it or give a reason for you action? They deserve one.
I know all Administrators are not all Drunk-With-Power-Trigger-Happy-Nazis, many of you do an excellent job and you know who you are.
In closing: Create, don’t Destroy. Make a distinction between “what is right, and what is easy”. Be enriched and enrich others with the knowledge of other people.
And keep that finger off the trigger.
(If I don't cop flack for this one, I will climb the Reichtag Bulding in a Spiderman outfit).
See Wikipedia:Forks and mirrors, which lists innumerable GFDL violations. Due to the nature of Wikipedia copyright, only the authors of that article have legal standing to bring suit, so they should probably write them. Deco03:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Onomastic pages created by Sheynhertz-Unbayg
I came across the one of the onomastics pages created by banned user Sheynhertz-Unbayg. At the time, I had no reason to think it was more than a single page, but tens, if not hundreds, of similar pages have been created (my estimate is 75 to 250, as I only have the most recent 1,000 edits to base it on and I do not know if the rest of his or her edits are of the same consistency). The pages themselves are not the problem, as they could simply be deleted. Unfortunately, to make the pages, he or she moved the contents of disambiguation pages to the onomastic pages and redirected them there or, when disambiguation pages did not already exist, simply created and redirected them. Instead of a short, neat disambiguation page of a single name, or a couple of very similar names that could be confused with one another, they get pages like this, which onomastic fans may love, but are not very conducive to efficient navigation. Below is a list that I compiled from the first 1,000 or so of his 20,000 edits. Some will take only seconds to fix, while others will take considerably longer. Just identifying them all is a moderately big task, since not all of them are helpfully labeled "(onomastics)". We might want to start a page where they could be listed rather than clogging the village pump. -- Kjkolb11:20, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I suggest that only names that could easily be confused with one another be grouped together on the same disambiguation page. For names less likely to be confused, you can make separate disamabiguation pages and then put each on the other as a "see also" link. Also, there are going to be many cases in which a last name redirects to the onomastics name, but it does not have anything but redlinks. I suggest making it into a disambiguation page for now, as long as there is a decent chance of one of the people having an article in the near future, or is at notable enough for an article. The same thing goes for names with only one blue link and the rest redlinks. This is all just my opinion, though. -- Kjkolb11:35, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm getting the feeling that no one is going to respond to this, or at least no one who will help do the work (ideally there would be a half dozen), which is too bad because I do not plan on doing the work by myself. I did some of it and it is probably the worst work that I have ever done here, including dealing with all of the copyright violations in the Wikify category. It's just mind-numbing. You have to split up a disordered page into a dozen or more articles, making decisions about what should go where and what should not be put in the new article, and then fix all of the redirects, but it often leads to even more work, like moving articles and creating disambiguation pages from scratch. I wish this user had been stopped before he did all of this damage. If he knew that what he was doing was against policy, it is inexcusable. -- Kjkolb19:04, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps you could create a page listing identified onomastics pages, current progress, what to do and possibly link it from these pages (or create a "cleanup needed - go here for details" template). These pages are so scary that it may take time. Pavel Vozenilek23:36, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry I (Sheynhartz' blocking admin) am late - I only came across this thread by accident - it is good to see that others are helping in the cleanup. I recently tried to clean up some of his pages, usually those most recently edited by his sockpuppets. As I have recently blocked his ISP (see User:Kusma/Sheynhertz for the extensive list of rangeblocks) I guess there will be no further edits from him. If somebody creates a list of all of Sheynhertz' contributions (with a bot?) that can be checked and cleaned up items removed, it would be great. I don't know how to do that, but I'll help with the cleanup if you drop me a line on my talk page. Kusma(討論)12:15, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
When I come across any that aren't already in Category:Onomastics I've been adding them to that category, thinking in the end it could serve as such a list. Maybe we could get a bot to do that? Then we could use the category talk page to track progress. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 16:49, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
This is a possible way to deal with these pages, especially since we don't really have all that many pages that will stay in the cat once it has been cleaned up. However, many of the bios created by S-U do not belong there, and also need cleanup. I think a list of all pages ever touched by Sheynhertz should be created by a bot and depopulated after cleanup. Kusma(討論)21:00, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't like that, I would like to make sure all pages touched by S-U get fixed, not just the onomastics pages. He has edited and messed up pages that should not be in that category, and so I don't think it is the right place to do the work. If one of the bot people answers to my request and creates a list (or a specific Sheynhertz-Unbayg cleanup category) then we can move all discussions to the appropriate talk page. Once we have a central list, we should announce it here and get people to help. There must be hundreds of pages worth at least half an hour of work each (for the onomastics pages) and possibly another couple hundred bio pages poorly translated from foreign Wikipedias and with silly "See also" headers pointing to onomastics pages. We can use all the help we can get. Kusma(討論)09:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry I took so long to respond. I got discouraged after a couple of days and then I forgot about it. At Pavel's suggestion, I created Wikipedia:SU, which has a list of the articles that I have found so far. So as not to further embarrass the editor, I have not referred to him by name on the page. -- Kjkolb12:40, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Great! While I still hope we can get a complete list, this should be a good start. We can discuss at the talk page there (and invite as many people as possible to join us). Kusma(討論)13:23, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Me a troll
My dear friends, I have come here with a heavy heart: one of the administrators have accused me of being a troll. Before I decide to accept this description of me, I would request for your comments. In case, my behaviour proves to be like a troll, I would like to improve myself. Regards. --Bhadani18:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
my son spends all time in playing online game. i am so worry about him. Can u suggest me how to blocked him from access the game and can't let him notices the reality.
No problem. Walk to your nearest emporium and purchase this inexpensive and versatile tool. Apply this to your son's machine and I guarantee at least temporary improvement. Follow up by making future rewards contingent upon your son's demonstrated performance at meaningful tasks, such as serving trays at the local nursing home. Then, there's always military school. Ironically, if your son does pursue a career in the military, he may find all that first-person shooter and flight simulator experience was time well invested.
I'm so fed up with this wikimedia message on top of every ****** page. How is it possible that an encyclopedia puts a message like that on every ******* page? Can you imagine that on a print encyclopedia? Don't tell me how I can remove it, I don't want it to be there by default. I know it probably won't be there for long anymore, but soon they will find something else to put there. Apart MAYBE from fund-raising, I see no reason at all to ever put messages on every page. There are enough other mechanisms to spread the word. Was this ever discussed anywhere? Can it be discussed anywhere? Is there a guideline about it? Piet | Talk10:32, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Surely a little notice like can't be that much of a nuisance. Maybe you should just learn to ignore it? :-) — RJH (talk) 21:54, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
What does the size have to do with? Do you say the same when you see a little spelling error in an article? Because you can learn to ignore those as well. The notice does not belong there. And a message which is on every ****** page that I visit here can hardly be ignored. Piet | Talk07:02, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh hell, I'll forget about it, no one seems to care anyway. People went on for ages whether the article count had to be on the front page, but the enormous message on top of every ******* page (I may be repeating myself :-) ) doesn't seem to bother anyone. It amazes me. Thanks for your irony, but silence would have done the trick as well. Piet | Talk21:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Pi-Unrolled
This image, oddly enough, was nominated for FP. I'm not astonished that it failed but I'm moved to solicit suggestions for improvement.
The nature of animated GIF format and animations in general means that a major revision -- even a minor one -- is a quite a bit of work. So, I really need to see consensus emerge on changes in order to make what will be the 5th such revision. This is not a good time for brainstorming, throwing out new what-if ideas. This is a good time for refining the work by specifying exactly which colors and features you want to see.
The only change I could suggest is a greater color contrast between the wheel and the red diameter bar. The difference might be difficult do detect under glare or for colorblind people. Maybe use yellow instead of brown? It's a fine animation, by the way. Durova18:06, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I rather like the animation. I'm not a graphics designer, but my main complaints would be: The use of a stylized "wheel with spokes" and heart-shaped drop weight are "too cute". It would be better to be more diagrammatic, as long as you can still tell the shape is spinning. Also, rather than label the area of the rectangle as pi, which is correct but not the usual definition, it would be simpler to indicate that the length of the red line at the end is pi, by using a large curly brace. Deco21:21, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm nonplussed. I can't do anything at all with one verbose comment after another. I need one consensus specification in order to satisfy the community. Okay?
My user account keeps randomly logging itself out! It's happened twice today already, and it's very annoying, and if it persists I might have to stop editing Wikipedia. Can someone provide an explanation for this, and how it can be fixed? Eilicea15:10, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Are you selecting the "remember me" box when you login? Is there something on your system clearing out your cookies? I haven't experienced any problems of this nature. — RJH (talk) 21:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
They all load correctly for me. Either that was temporary vandalism or a bug on your end. Try the page again? Durova22:35, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Monarchs of England
Just a quick note to say how disappointed I am with the articles relating to the monarchs of England. The worst aspect of them is their referencing, with many of them lacking any form of citation. This is something that I really feel should be sorted out. violet/riga(t)19:41, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Not sure if this has been brought up before, but the Spanish translation of "The Free Encyclopedia" into Spanish might be wrong. It depends on how the word "free" is defined.
Free as in "no charge" = La enciclopedia gratis
Free as in "not constrained" = La enciclopedia libre
Which is "free" intended to translate to?
This would also apply to the Italian, Portuguese, and French translations, as they all descend from the same Latin root.
The intended and correct translation is libre - the point is not that we don't charge for content but that the content is available under a free license for many types of reuse. See also Gratis versus Libre. Deco22:56, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Not to quibble, but if you say it means that content is not charged for, then the usage is "gratis". To quote the Wiki link:
Gratis
Gratis is an adjective in Latin and various Romance and Germanic languages meaning "free," in the sense that one does not have to pay for some good or service (free of charge).
Libre
Libre is a word in various Romance languages, e.g. Spanish and French (descended from the Latin word līber) that denotes the state of being free, as in "having freedom". GNU programmers often talk about free as in free speech (libre) and free as in free beer (gratis), as the word free in English does not distinguish between these meanings. Free software (with a capital F) usually means the former.
Ok, I relent :) Thanks for the education, and in the future, I will be sure to research questions like this more fully before I submit them. Coolhaus19:52, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I have been racking my brain for a couple of years now. I just watched a portion of the movie 'Platoon'. I was just channel surfing and came into a part of the film that I had remembered being terribly hurtful. If you have seen the film, it is the part were Charlie Sheen losses it and makes a retarded boy with one leg dance while shouting and shooting bullets at his foot. The elderly mother is begging for his wellfare when suddenly another soldier uses the butt of his rifle to knock the boy down and crush his skull.
I was going to change channels because I remembered the final conclusion were the mother was crying over her dead bloody son. The same soldier yells and shoots her to death. Before I could change channels the scene changed and I realized that they had edited the mothers sorrowful death out. This was on Pay cable. I was glad they did that because it was the most emotional disturbing scene I recollect.
Long story short I believe a very common word used to describe the thatch huts as villages has also been edited from these same movies.
I spoke with a friend of mine and he seemed to remember the slang term for a peasant village was 'Hootch, Hutch?
This has really bothered me for years because I grew up during the war as a young teen and my memory cannot remember it.
Could anybody help me out?
Sincerely,
The Nazarine@aol.com
I am a Seeker of Truth,
I'm open to positive or negative feedback.
Thank You.
I believe he's asking for the word used to describe the thatch huts, which apparently was used in the original unedited cut of this movie. I have no idea. Deco03:12, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Balancing Dopaminotrophic Neurotransmitter Levels - help
I have Early Onset Parkinson's Disease.
I have a Hypothesis for curing/treating Parkinson's Disease that I would beseech you to query:
For more background on me; if you want to read my personal Testimonial;
Living with Parkinson's Disease;
go to:
www.jellyjongs.blogspot.com/
Click on Archive(s); then Click on my article :
My Testimonial; Living with Parkinson's Disease
None of my neurologists have ever tested for and/or measured ANY of my nervous system neurotransmitter levels; dopamine included, as doctors seem to do routinely for other ailments like depression or for psychiatric / hyperactive patients.
Both sides of my family history (going back several generations), revels no one with PD, but it's been documented that both my maternal grandmother Ethel, and her husband Bert were both hospitalized with nervous breakdowns; specifically severe depression.
Around 1944, my maternal grandfather, officially "disappeared" early. My Mom reveals the story that the only clue as to what happened to him is a tiny news clipping from an undisclosed newspaper stating that around six months prior to his 'permanent disappearance'; he was found in a nearby hospital after having been missing for a while and that it appeared that he had been suffering from a nervous breakdown.
My maternal grandmother(at the age of 45-ish) about 15 years later, eventually killed herself by jumping off of a five-story tenement building in Southeast Queens, New York City. She had been hospitalized a number of times for severe depression in Creed More State Mental Hospital, in Queens, New York prior to her suicide.
Her daughter, my mother also suffers from depression and has been under a psychiatrists care her whole life and is always medicated to prevent severe depression. When I was small I swore I’d never be like them. So I got PD instead, which I truly believe is the depression problem coming out in another form.
I’ve always thought my PD was a form of the very same imbalances in neurotransmitters; IE. serotonin, dopamine levels, etc. as in my mother and both of my maternal grandparents' psychiatric problems.
But no one ever discusses these similarities. Has any research been done linking these various neurotransmitter levels?
I recently heard on a WBAI radio program hosted by a Dr. Kamau Kokayi, M.D.
Medical Director, Olive Leaf Wholeness Center , NYC, who's guest was a Dr. Godfrey Kellerman . They were discussing neurotransmitter status & hormones and how Dr. Kellerman has developed a urine test to determine serotonin, dopamine, and histamine levels and how the findings of this urine test helps to administer positive results to their psychiatric / hyperactive patients by adjusting their diet and meds accordingly.. . . this fascinated me.
Why does it seem that neurologists assume that PD is only caused by the lack of dopamine production by certain nerve cells and not an imbalance of the serotonin, dopamine, histamine and hormonal levels resulting in a dopaminotrophic malfunction?
As I listened to the two doctors discussing how vital these levels are to the normal functioning of a healthy being; deep in my gut, I couldn’t help wondering about my theory that my PD is directly related to ALL of these dopaminotrophic neurotransmitter levels.
Another clue that dopaminotrophic neurotransmitter levels must be properly balanced in regards to my controlling my PD became evident when the two doctors discussed diet, and how important protein is as a precursor to serotonin production in the human body.
I’ve always craved protein, especially when I was pregnant, both times with my two daughters. In my cursory research I've learned that the building blocks for almost all hormones is protein.
I can’t seem to find any research investigating or disproving any of my hunches/hypothisis which states:
The balancing of human [dopaminotrophic] neurotransmitter levels (serotonin, dopamine, Adrenalin, histamine, gamma aminobutryic acid, acetylcholine, noradrenaline, glycine, neuromodulators, and the various other hormone levels) that"mix in the blood stream" to regulate/sustain human life is a key factor in finding a 'cure" as it pertains to PD.
I wrote to the radio host Doctor. Here is/was his response:
> Doctor, MD wrote:
> Greetings Ms Dejongh,
>
> I wish I had time to thoroughly respond to your E-mail.
> For research articles I would suggest you call the
> Neuroscience people. I am sure they can give you
> some leads on the articles. Dopamine is a
> neurotransmitter.
> The question is whether the part of the brain that
> produces dopamine, the substantia nigra, is still
> intact. If its not you have true Parkinson's
> disease. If it is, meaning an MRI is negative for lesions in
> this area of your brain, then you just have a
> Parkinson's like illness. Dopamine, noradrenaline, and adrenaline constitute a
> class of compounds called catecholamines. They are
> usually made in this order. L phenylalanine and L
> tyrosine are amino acids that are precursors to the
> production of dopamine with other chemical reactions
> leading to the production of noradrenaline and
> adrenaline. Depression can involve any of these
> neurotransmitters as well as serotonin and any
> number of vitamin and other nutrient deficiencies. To
> really see if there is a relationship between your
> Parkinson's disease and the depression experienced
> in your family it might be interesting to see what
> shows up on the urine neurotransmitter test.
>
> All the best,
> Doctor, MD
I was unable to follow up on this and regretfully I must admit my neurotransmitter levels were never tested.
I'd be very interested in your opinion about PD and my hypothesis of adjusting my neurotransmitters' levels? I'd love to talk to you about this. How could I find a Biology student who might be interested in making this the core subject of their Ph.D study and/or some research laboratory/company interested in the same?
Peace & Blessings,
Monnique deJongh
There should be a PORTAL about COMMERCE and Fast access to Wikipedia throught desktop icone
There should be a PORTAL about COMMERCE like ARTS and others & at user side, be a icone of WIKIPEDIA which give rapid access to Wikipedia
Hi, Open Clipart Library need help for translating few pages of explanation. Wikipedia use SVG cliparts from Open Clipart because it's totally free (like flags). Could you help us on the wiki of Open Clipart in your language ? Thank you. I'm registrered in french wikipedia as patricia.fidi.
FireFox 2.0 beta
For those who don't know, Mozilla Firefox 2.0 is currently in beta. One of the new features is a built in spell checker. I have found myself fixing so many more typo's in articles simply because they are pointed out to me and are extremely easy to fix. FF2, even the beta, also appears to be much more stable than 1.5.x as well. Even though it is a beta, I highly recommend the download :) [3] -- Chuq10:46, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Sharks project
There are 2 wikiprojects on Sharks, one at Wikipedia:WikiProject Sharks which started on Oct. 14, 2005 and a fork of that project started on Aug. 6, 2006 and is called Wikipedia:WikiProject Shark and is a blatant rip-off of the first one. I think it is unnecessary to have 2 projects that have the same goals (which is creating Sharks articles, talking about sharks and assessing sharks articles). Would somebody please have a look into what can be done about the forking of the project since it doesn't really look too serious if WP has competing projects on the same subject. Lincher15:24, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Macaw 54 appears to want the T article 75KB. It is a really big article with what he wants. I keep putting a large section into Pronunciation of English T, and Macaw 54 just keeps reverting me. (Even without that section, the article still is large; 56KB.) Any opinions?? (Please, I suggest someone other than Macaw 54 responds with whatever opinions are available.) Georgia guy23:08, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I reported Macaw 54 on 3RR violation, but in response, he said he didn't violate the 3RR, but that I did. Yet, only the last 3 of what Macaw 54 is calling my reverts are actually reverts. Georgia guy23:50, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
You reported me for a 3RR even though I didn't revert more than three times. You also placed dead links for the reversions. This is pretty serious stuff. Can someone please block this guy?--Macaw 5423:52, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I have found the above mentioned. It does have 1861 on it. However I read that the first 5c coin was minted in 1966???? So how can I have a 5c piece that was minted in 1861? Is it an error in the minting? Is it worth anything? Would like some help on this please.
This site is about human knowledge, right? well Steve Irwin made great strides in zoology and herpatology, and conservation. Wikipedia should do something special to remember him, Like turn the Main Page black, Or put up his picture, Or make a memorial userbox. This could be done for other great intellectuals too.
This is an encyclopedia, not a memorial site. And I would question Steve Irwin being a great intellectual. Especially after dangling his infant son from his arm while feeding a crocodile. Not that I won't miss him. User:Zoe|(talk)23:35, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Lots of people die. We should just turn it permanently black. Then make it a blacker black when someone people care about dies. --Golbez23:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
The well acts like a symbol of drawing out information about recent discussions and notices. It also symbolizes the frequent and impermanent discussions which are being held here. For these reasons, the well is quite a fitting image (or I think) here. --Siva1979Talk to me19:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Um, hysterical raisins. Originally, it was a picture of a water pump. The name "village pump" refers to the place where people would congregate and have a chat in Ages Past, hence its application in Wikipedia as where the community would congregate and chat. However, the image was removed (I think for copyright reasons) so we now only have a well. Sam Korn(smoddy)19:58, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
This is my idea for a new template, it should be used when someone has died, or might be dying now, here it is:
It has become apparant that this user may be dead, or in the process of death at this moment, if,USERNAME, you arn't dead, delete this and recreate your userpage, however, it is advised that you dont post messages, or respond to messages on this users Talk Page.
No, I don't think so. This happens so rarely anyway, and asking someone if they are "in the process of death at this moment" is quite strange. —Mets501 (talk)16:19, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
It might take some doing, but I think a template that generates an abbreviated list of only a few places either geographically or alphabetically "nearby" would be lots better. For example, something that at the bottom of Lower Stondon displays as
with the idea being you can traverse to any place in the county with only a few clicks (note the "<<" and ">>" links). If you're interested in pursuing this sort of approach, please let me know. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:39, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
As appropriate as an article on Brian Peppers would be, none of us has the power to override the judgement of Jimbo or the Wikimedia legal department. Deco14:36, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I've started a page User:Dbuckner/Expert rebellion listing user pages or blogs or sites of expert editors who are leaving Wikipedia. If you know of any editors who are leaving for the reason (a) fed up with poor quality control, vandalism &c (b) feel WP policy is expert-unfriendly, then please add a link. Thanks. Dbuckner19:58, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
How would a Wikipedian know the difference between someone leaving due to Wikipedia issues as opposed to rest-of-one's-life concerns? Durova22:10, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm collecting information at the moment. Obviously there's an idea I am trying to confirm, but trying to be neutral as one can. For example, I'm screening out people who clearly left for reasons not related to the two I mentioned. Dbuckner08:59, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
People who have competence in and grasp of the subject matter, people who can put together well-balanced articles. See Chris Hillman's articles (linked to on the page in question) for a much better example. Here: User:Hillman/Wikipedia_quality_control. Or anything Hillman writes. Superlative. Dbuckner09:03, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Please don't as it would be highly divisive. Editors should not be divided up into status groups as it creates tension and alienation. Sumahoy00:15, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Getting paid?
As Wikipedia gains in popularity and attracts more users, this would lead to a rise in vandals. One of the main reasons why some users vandalize articles is because they get a sense of thrill or have no motivation whatsoever in improving this wonderful project. I feel that one of the ways in which to address this common problem is to reward and pay users who contribute extensively to this project. This, IMHO would lead to a dramatic fall in vandalism. The quality of this project would increase greatly too. The reward could be in terms of small monetary gifts or formal acknowledgements to the user in question. Any comments and concerns about this would be much appreciated. --Siva1979Talk to me14:49, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd love to get paid for this, but where's the money gonna come from? Right now, contributions made to the foundation go to buying new hardware & maintaining the site(s). — Frecklefoot | Talk15:53, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, the amount which is being paid would be small, maybe $5 for any outsatnding contributions. Or maybe, only a select few would be paid, for example, the top 10 or 20 contributors for the month. This would indeed motivate users to contribute more to Wikipedia and the competition would indeed benefit the project. The money could come from donations or even from some governments who value knowledge and education. --Siva1979Talk to me18:18, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, I don't see how it could work:
Some contributors would just push up trash in hopes of becoming a top contributor.
I wouldn't work as hard as I do on articles for a measley $5.00—the personal satisfaction I get is worth a lot more to me.
I haven't seen any governments contributing to Wikipedia so far (though I'm not exactly in the loop on this sort of thing), but I don't think a competition would encourage them to start contributing. Most governments are more concerned with fighting wars and feeding their citizens, and other assorted minor issues.
Sorry to sound like such a pessimist, but I don't know how something like Wikipedia could reward contributions without it corrupting the whole process. — Frecklefoot | Talk18:27, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
As a volunteer, I've found that people who do work for money and those who do it out of the goodness (or, in our cases, obsessiveness) of their hearts are quite different. First of all, volunteers tend to get more quality done faster, while paid employees tend to do more things, but of less quality. I think that'd be the situation here. Some editors would make hasty, low-quality edits, just trying to get to the top. If Wikipedia were to judge who gets paid based on "major" contributions, there would be huge feuds - people would claim bias and that hard work is impossible to measure (which is very true - it took me longer to gather information for my Lilli Promet stub than it took me to find translations for the enormous article I recently wrote, Constitution of Estonia). Besides, who would decide who made the most edits or the most useful edits? I don't know that there are any neutral parties here - a lot of people have Wikifriends. I think that through the act of paying the "best" editors, we would lose a lot of extremely good editors, and since the "best" editors only make up about 1% of our community and "good" editors make up probably at least 80% (with the rest being vandals, spammers, etc), all of the miffed and excluded "good" editors would leave or become disgruntled, and the "best" editors could never manage to make up for all of their hard work. Just look at how some RFA candidates leave after they fail - their image of Wikipedia is tarnished and despite Esperanza's best efforts, they feel unwanted or that they've been told that they're "not good enough". Overall, I don't think this type of system would be good for Wikipedia. Srose(talk)20:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, that is a very good point you raised up here. This shows that the mentality of most human beings (especially those who view money as the most important thing in life) needs to be drastically improved before this idea becomes truly feasible. --Siva1979Talk to me21:36, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
I think a much better idea than rewarding Wikipedia users per contribution is to hire a small number of full time editors from among the most vociferous contributors. These people would then be able to dedicate all their time to Wikipedia and contribute substantially more. Additionally, it would help to eradicate the negative effects of Wikiaddiction on their lives, like decreased productivity at their real jobs. They wouldn't have to be paid any more than a typical information worker. Deco21:54, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
That would be devisive and would create a class structure and hand too much power to a few people. It would also likely put a lot of people off, me for one. A volunteer project works best if it is all volunteer. Sumahoy00:23, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Is there any evidence that vandalism is getting worse? I've never seen any and it isn't my personal experience as a user that it is. I think Wikipedia is scaling fine. There have always been problems with vandalism and there always will be, but I don't think there is any reason to suppose they are increasing or will begin to increase at any time in the future. Sumahoy00:22, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Whatever happened to Wikipedia:Join in? It seems to be inactive, unless I'm mistaken. It seems a little redundant, what with WP:ARCAID, so should it just be deleted/merged or is someone willing to bring it back to life? If there's a good reason to get it active again I'm happy to help, I'm just not sure if there's any point. --Draicone(talk)23:27, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Question
Here is a question:
Based on what I've been hearing what country appears to be the least important country for Wikipedia to satisfy?? The answer is the United States. Any evidence this is wrong?? Georgia guy19:28, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I've no clue. Georgia guy asked this a few weeks ago, possibly because he was pissed because the COUNTRY Georgia is treated with equal or higher precedence here than the STATE Georgia. But this comment is simple trolling, and frankly, had it not been responded to, I would have removed it. --Golbez19:34, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, I want to make sure I know whether this is getting truer an truer. Any evidence that this is false?? An example of something the other way around is that the NINTENDO CHARACTER Bowser (which is the primary meaning to Americans) is less important than the TANKER TRUCK (the primary meaning to Australians.) Georgia guy19:36, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
So because you didn't get your way, you decide to troll again on how Wikipedia apparently hates the U.S.? Jeez. There are better ways to handle a dispute than whining. --Golbez19:43, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Please don't feel obliged to keep this on my account. I assumed good faith and hoped this was a serious question, but if the poster has a history of sour grapes then feel welcome to delete. Durova23:58, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
This is an open letter to the wikipedia community. I recently quit wikipedia in protest at the whole User:Publicgirluk affair. Jimbo himself has said that she was probably a troll, and should've been blocked and her images deleted. Given that, I'm willing to admit I may have been wrong in my judgement on the issue.
The question I'm asking is - Does the community think I should return to editing on wikipedia? Check my contribs and interactions. See if YOU think I'm an asset or a liability to wikipedia. I could rescind my decision to quit, but I will only do so if the community feels it is in the best interest of wikipedia. exolon16:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
You're unlikely to get as much individual attention as you are soliciting. Whether you find your editing satisfying is much more important than others' opinions of you -- unless you are being accused of misbehavior. --Jerzy•t20:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, though that doesn't show this place in a good light - only misbehaviour is noted, not good stuff. exolon14:47, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I'd take a vacation and come back when you're certain. It's too easy to get worked up by some of the inappropriate behavior from a few users, and I always find spending time doing something else helps with the perspective. If you're completely sick of WP but still want to help with a web-based project that's a positive contribution, have a look at Distributed Proofreaders some time.[4] — RJH (talk) 22:41, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
What does this mean in the context of "a farc'd article" for example.
Obviously not referring to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia!!
Some kind soul enlighten me, please!Kanadajin04:24, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm looking for examples of private wikis that sell information to users for a monthly or yearly fee.
They would have multi-user level access i.e. 1) readers (read only, does not add or edit pages) 2) contributors (edits and add pages) and 3) administrator.
We have a hosted wiki that we use internally and want to share the information with clients. It, however, doesn't have built-in features designed for readers only. I will appreciate suggestions how we can go about making this work and any wiki examples that does this sort of thing.
lol, yes I had noticed that, what I meant was I gather there was some sort of major editing dispute about the article. I was just wondering if someone could give me the basic summary of the events. 86.41.132.15421:05, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I'm almost positive that this is a personal attack, particularly as the current version was created at the time of your argument. I'm not sure if you can do anything about it, though, as users are entitled to put whatever they want on their userpages. I would advise talking to an administrator to see what can be done (I'm not an administrator :( ).
I'd say it's a parody. It doesn't mention you by name, or link to your page. I suggest you ignore it.-gadfium21:08, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
WIkipedia skeptics
Many of the people I know think that Wikipedia isn't worth the time because of the fact that articles can be changed.I try to explain to them that Wikipedia is constantly maintained by AI and a huge amount of dedicated administratorsto the point that any fraudulent change, no matter how inaccurate, is typically changed within minutes, and that it's been proven by studies to be extremely accurate,often even more so than most paper encyclopedias, but they simply blink at me and say, "Sean, ANYBODY can edit it." Also, a teacher of someone I know looked poorly on their report simply because some of their statements were based upon Wikipedia articles.
What's a good way to try to explain to them that wikis are actually very reliable places to find information on virually any topic? 207.232.162.14722:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)Sean
I wouldn't recommend citing any encyclopedia on a term paper. Encyclopedias are starting points for research, not final destinations. Head to an article's references section and chase down those sources. Durova22:14, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Help!
How do I find out how many edits I have, apart from manually counting them? Also, how do I put boxes around text? (Please answer on my talk page). Ellie04150515:08, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Also, I'm trying to change my username from Ellie041505 to Eilicea. When a bureaucrat does this, will they send me a message telling me what they did? Will people clicking on my old username be redirected to my new user page? Sorry for bothering everyone with my endless questions. :) Ellie04150513:54, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Newgrounds BBS Finale Decision
There has been a lot of talk about the Newgrounds BBS article or mention of it in general.
Now I beleive that the Newgrounds BBS (forums) disserves it's own article just as 4chan or something awful have. As it houses a massive community of newgrounds fans. Many dissagred which lead to the article's deletion.
So later on I asked for the article's opion on the deletion review many people agreed the best Decision was to merge it with Newgrounds after I did so editors denied any right to so much mention the BBS in newgrounds. So I ask here and now what is the best decion for newgrounds BBS?
CartoonDiablo01:07, 29 August 2006 (UTC)cartoondiablo
Translations
I would like to get a page that is in Hungarian translated into English. The article is titled, Pesti Srac.
Also, I would like to know about how English articles are generally translated into other languages - I would guess its voluntary like most of WIki.
Thanks
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cgage2 (talk • contribs) 26 August 2006.
I'm just wondering... I can't find where to ask to rename myself. I went there once, and now can't find it. Can somebody please point me that way? Thanks. FinalHeaventalk04:46, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Hello!
I was just wondering if someone from this site would call people who logged on to ask for donations?
Could someone let me know?--Reezer6715:21, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Actually, this is a very reputed site, and I do not think that the officials of this site would ever call anyone for donation even if they have numbers. There are 1000s and 1000s of people who donote of their free will to make this Project a success. Likewise, there are 10000s and 10000s of editors like you and me who work here to give the Project an improved shape on an ongoing basis. Let us combine our talents to make this Project still better. --Bhadani16:54, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
More to the point... we have five or six employees. Even with huge numbers of volunteers, we still can't handle the email we get sent, much less have the manpower to start randomly calling people for donations. Shimgray | talk | 18:02, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Trapped is a adventure/puzzle series on various websites, but originated on www.Newgrounds.com. The creator, Matt Ruggia, currently has 5 levels out for free play.
I know that games. Unfornately I don't have background info, but I can write characteristics of the games (and if he's Ruggia, I think he also can :), but he didn't). Text would result in:
Trapped is a Flash-made free adventure/puzzle game series on various websites, originated on Newgrounds.com. The history for all of them is: you become trapped in a maze with many secrets. You must uncover them in order to get out. The creator, Matt Ruggia, currently (August 2006) has 5 levels out for free play, and a sixth under development.
Every level is more complex than previous and adds a new characteristic:
Trapped 1 is practically a prototype, where you need to go to many rooms to get three keys. You die at first touch of X marked in floor. In last room, you get trapped and after crossing a red line, you win. It was apparently intended to have many levels in the same game, accesible by passwords.
Trapped 2 adds the action button (Intro) and is more complex than previous. Death occurs at first touch of water and fire blade.
Trapped 3 includes Health Points, which a few are lost when in previous games you died. It's also a real-time based and you can get money to buy and earn skills. Action button is normally "a", though Intro is sometimes used.
Trapped 4 is more complex than previous, but loses all RPG-like characteristics from third edition (except life bar, though it is not called "health points"). It also includes 3 reserve lifes, coins (but not for buying), bosses, and a friend also trapped.
Trapped 5 is timed and protagonist is immortal, but lifes used affect the rank that player will receive after beating the game.
Trapped is a adventure/puzzle series on various websites, but originated on www.Newgrounds.com. The creator, Matt Ruggia, currently has 5 levels out for free play.
I know that games. Unfornately I don't have background info, but I can write characteristics of the games (and if he's Ruggia, I think he also can :), but he didn't). Text would result in:
Wikipedia For Dummies
I am a semi-regular user and I just wanted to say that their should be
a special section for explaining the information in laymen's terms. Several times I have tried to understand what the article is actually trying to say but had to sift through a bunch of wordy jargon. Just food for thought.
While following up on this, I discovered that "Wikipedia in" articles are sometimes spread across two namespaces. I realise that there are good reasons for this in some cases, but it is confusing, especially as the category system doesn't pull them all together. Category:Wikipedia as a media topic and Wikipedia in popular culture seem to overlap a fair bit, especally when looking at Wikipedia:Wikipedia in webcomics. Someone should really try and pull these articles closer together (ie. set up some links between them) so they can benefit from each other, and people can find one from the other. Other article space examples with references to discussions of Wikipedia are Reliability of Wikipedia and Criticism of Wikipedia. Can anyone think of a suitable over-arching category title to pull together all "real-world" Wikipedia references, from discussions to criticism to press mentions, to trivial instances of popular culture? Carcharoth20:21, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
There should generally not be links from articles into the project namespace (Wikipedia:Avoid self-references). Instead, redundant entries should be removed from the project namespace article and replaced with either a link to or a transclusion of the main namespace article. Deco21:09, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Not quite sure I understand this. Are you saying that eventually all the "Wikipedia:Wikipedia in..." project articles will be moved over to article namespace? Carcharoth01:34, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
No, rather only that the particularly notable references should be noted in articles, and the remainder should be kept in the project namespace. This is just my opinion though. Deco04:16, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
nacho libre
does anybody know where i can safely get a copy of the song i am, i am by a band called mr. loco
- thanks
"...that during the Fremantle prison riot in 1988, seventy prisoners took fifteen guards hostage and started a diversionary fire to enable twelve prisoners to escape and that ironically, the fire's intensity prevented the escape? "
Maybe I'm a moron but surely there should be a comma after "that" and before "ironically."
I think the sentence is also too long. How about:
"... that during the Fremantle prison riot in 1988, the seventy prisoners who started a diversionary fire to enable a further twelve to escape actually prevented the breakout due to the intensity of their fire?"
The bit about them holding guards hostage could be found out about in the article.
The RAKEOP fraternity was founded at Luther College in 1953 by a group of students to "promote School spirit. Ron Barabu, Aldon Rogstead, Keath Ellison, E.., Omar Earsland, and Paul Subie were the original founding members. The group held weekly meetings out at a steel bridge on the Upper Iowa river knowen on the map as bridge #9 in the fall and spring. In the cold of winter meetings were held at a more covered location knowen as Cascades. A fire builder would gather wood for the meeting and was responsible for tending the fire throughout the meeting. The members could be seen on campus wearing blue and white letter jackets. A Hamme's beer bear was also woren at events by members. A 1931 Ford milk truck painted blue and white was also knowen to cruse the roads and valleys of Decorah. In 2003 the fraternity celabrated it's 50th anniversary and at the time was the oldest fraternity of Luther College. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 162.96.105.78 (talk • contribs) .
I am not sure what you're getting at. If you are trying to create an article, you will need to create an account. See WP:REG for more information on creating an account. You may also want to check out the welcome page, WP:WELCOME, for more information about writing for Wikipedia. Thanks, --TeaDrinker17:19, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
My cousin discovered a very dangerous form of vandalism
My cousin has discovered a very dangerous new way to vandalize Wikipedia. He has tried it out once or twice to check whether his idea works, and it works. It is very different from conventional vandalism in the following ways that make it dangerous:
1. Some say it takes more effort to vandalize than revert. This new form of vandalism takes very little effort. It takes less than 10-30 seconds to prepare the vandalism per page. The vandalism is partially automated, but is not completely automated, so captchas won't help.
2. With his patented method, by the time the vandalism is spotted and he is blocked, my cousin can vandalise over 20 pages in less than a minute. His vandalism is not difficult to spot or revert, but it happens on a large scale, and you cannot prevent the vandalism in advance (you never know when and where he will strike). You can only wait for it to happen, then spot, revert and block.
3. The vandalism is done from IPs which are shared by thousands of people. Therefore, it is difficult to trace him. Blocking will cause immense collateral damage, and therefore an admin will lift the block, and he can vandalise another 20 pages before he's blocked again. My cousin says that if he subscribes to 5-10 ISPs which will offer him an IP shared by thousands, he has the potential to carry out an extensive vandalism attack on Wikipedia, and it will be very difficult to stop him.
The good news is that my cousin does not plan to carry out the extensive vandalism attack mentioned in factor 3, although he has tried his patented vandalism several times to ensure it works. According to him, if someone else uses his patented method to carry out an extensive vandalism attack using many shared IPs, the only way to stop it will be to prohibit anonymous editing on Wikipedia, as other methods would cause serious problems for legimate editors and bots. He has an account with a few hundred edits and wants anonymous editing prohibited because anonymous editors have caused him, a registered user, numerous problems when editing Wikipedia.
I just thought I should let you know. I hope no one discovers his patented method. When he asked me to drop you this message, he means well for Wikipedia. Please don't try and find out who he is. If you want to contact him, e-mail lameteen@gmail.com
Does your cousin realize that all we have to do to revert is hold our mouse over the "diff" link? We can revert it in about thirty seconds in one window. --Wafulz12:13, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it was disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point. He was just testing to make sure his method works (if it didn't work, he wouldn't want me to raise a false alarm). He's very smart with computers, and he didn't explain everything, so I don't understand exactly how he does it. And I don't know if anyone has used his method before, but perhaps you could check the history of Wikipedia vandals and see if any of them manage to vandalize 20 pages in a minute without using a bot.
But I can offer you two hints for spotting his vandalism: firstly, he shares my IP (everyone in this country does), and secondly, he hates Microsoft to the core. Maybe if you spot his vandalism the next time he does it, you could figure out how he does it. And what I do know about his method is that it involves using a tabbed browser ("any browser except Buggy Insecure Microsuck Internet Exploder", as he says) to open 10-20 tabs and using these tabs to open and vandalise 10-20 pages in rapid succession. That's how he manages to vandalise 10-20 pages in less than a minute ("speed is the key", according to him). He also runs OpenOffice.org when vandalising, and he says "OpenOffice.org does the vandalism for me".
Don't ask me how a word proccessor can vandalize. If you need to get the full details from him, e-mail him at lameteen@gmail.com. I'm sure you know why he doesn't want to use his account to tell you about this, and why he sent me - who doesn't know much about Wikipedia - to tell you about this.
Maybe he's using OpenOffice macros to automate Mozilla/Firefox. Not sure if that's possible. In any case there are far more efficient means of high-speed vandalism. Deco21:57, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
You won't believe. Enough of telling. Time to show. The attacks have started. Hopefully it will open your eyes to the massive problems on Wikipedia - such as anonymous editing.
He sounds like the guy who's trying to vandalize microsoft pages. In fact, he probably is. I hope he realises there are also users who are running program dedicated to reverting vandalism. They're entirely capable of undoing it as fast as he can commit it. Also admins are capable of reverting him using rollback quite quickly without any added software. When I'm watching the vandalism, by the time he gets off 10 edits, I've already got edits pending that are undoing the first 8. Don't worry too much about your cousin. Kevin_b_er07:25, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, he's the one vandalising Microsoft pages. He hates Microsoft and wants to tell the world how evil they are to stop people from getting cheated by them. Have you figured out his MO yet?
Thanks for telling me about rollback and the programs, and your other means of fighting vandalism. I guessed you'd have ways to stop his vandalism. After all, if there really was such a dangerous form of vandalism, someone would already have tried it. Or has anyone tried it yet? I'll tell him to stop wasting his time.
He said it's not difficult to spot and revert his vandalism. Although it still takes more effort to vandalise than to revert, his form of vandalism still takes much less effort than other forms of vandalism. The speed at which he commits his vandalism makes it difficult to quickly block him. He seems to have a talent of wasting others' time. He told me that he once managed to violate 3RR on all the articles he vandalised, and was blocked only after commiting his 6th round of reverting. And because he vandalises from IPs shared by thousands of people, after he's blocked, he'll be quickly unblocked because of collateral damage.
He's quite a nice guy, and I don't think he'd actually carry out his threat of an extensive vandalism attack. But if he really did sign up at 5 ISPs which offered dynamic IPs, and another 5 ISPs offering static IPs shared by thousands of people, and used them to carry out an extensive vandalism attack on many articles - what would you do to stop the vandalism? It'd be almost impossible to block him if he vandalises so quickly using so many IPs. Even if he doesn't do it, he may tell his MO to a friend who'd be willing to help - or a determined vandal may pick up his MO and carry out the extensive vandalism attack. So what would you do?
I've seen incidents like that before on wikipedia. Presumably it's due to some gay hacker exploring their inner child. :-) — RJH (talk) 17:49, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Not to mention some people that still labor under the delusion that being gay and being perverted or exhibitionistic are somehow related. They're not. I'd bet dimes to dollars that your vandal is a straight 14-year old boy. --Grahamtalk/mail/e05:48, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
What to do with a page on a man formerly suspected of terrorism...
Hi there
The page Magdy Mahmoud Mustafa el-Nashar is about someone living in the UK who has been detained in Egypt because of alleged connections with terrorists. He's been cleared of suspicions since then. I think he was reported to have already lost a job on which he was due to start because of the suspicion.
I don't manage to make up my mind on whether it is better to delete any reference to him, or on the contrary to have a page making clear that police inquiries cleared any suspicion on him. In any case, the present page is inappropriate, as the balance is very much against him.
--Josce09:41, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
I think it should be edited to show that he was cleared of being involved with terrorism activity. Many of the news organizations will never update their stories in such a way and anyone doing a google is more than likely to think "hey that guy is a dirty no-good A-RAB terrorist!". In that way, Wikipedia will act as it should - it provides a fuller picture.
If his only historical significance is in the context of the incident he was arrested for and later cleared of involvment in, he ought to be merged into that incident - it's not difficult. "On x.y.z police announced the arrest of Mustafa el-Nashar, an Egyptian chemist, on suspicion of involvement in [whatever]. He was cleared completely n months later [cite]." We can always resurrect the article later if he gets arrested again, or enters politics, or whatever. Shimgray | talk | 10:10, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree. This is a very short article that should be merged into the appropriate place. Also agree that we should provide the full story. Deco20:49, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
The article is currently too technical for a non-expert mathematician to understand. It could use help from someone who knows about the subject. Also, I didn't put this in the Talk Page because it would take a long time for anyone to respond to it. Hope you can help. --Acid Ammo20:22, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I've been a spanish member of (spanish) wikipedia. Had some trouble with spanish wikipedia administrators and decided to go. My english is not good, I'm trying to improve it. I'd like to be in english wikipedia, and I'd really thank you accepted my ingress. My current web url is http://faustino.metropoliglobal.com/index3.htm . I've got things written on this site, I'd like to translate them to english as long as circumstances make it possible. Greets.
Hi. Your English isn't too bad. We'd welcome your contributions. I'm sorry things aren't working out on Es. Deco20:49, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
If you'd like to keep working in Spanish but on a smaller project, you might like to try Enciclopedia Libre, which is a fork of the Spanish wikipedia but with different editors (it exists for Historical Reasons). Shimgray | talk | 20:37, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I've been running across a lot of Holocaust denial on talk pages recently, usually on topics related to Jews or Israel. Normally in the past I've just ignored this, on the basis of not feeding trolls, but lately there seems to be more of this. Our usual policy of leaving comments alone on talk pages seems to me to be turning Wikipedia into a (presumably involuntary) host for this sort of thing. I am becoming very inclined to remove it, though that smacks uncomfortably of censorship. Still, it's being scattered around to basically unrelated topics (the latest I spotted was this edit on Talk:Palestinian territories. Perhaps we can create an equivalent of WP:BJAODN, Wikipedia: Holocaust denial inserted into tangentially related talk pages. - Jmabel | Talk05:19, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I do agree with you - a number of editors perhaps misuse the facility provided by Wikimedia Foundation. Perhaps many editors forget that editing wikipedia is a privilege and not a right! Now, someone may jump and say: Bhadani Assume Good Faith!!! --Bhadani11:03, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Frankly, I've seen people insert reams of bullshit into talk pages. I might ask them to move it to a subpage, but if it keeps the trolls happy and not putting things in the article, it might be useful as a mechanism for conflict resolution. Deco22:13, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I've also seen talk page sections used for posting advertisements. Perhaps we need some appropriate warning templates for use on talk pages? That way at least other readers would get a heads-up before they delve to far. — RJH (talk) 19:48, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I know I should know, but...
what is the image on the Wikipedia wallpaper? Hot air balloon? Chef's hat?
Hey .. anybody knows if Blu Aarklksdlja whatever is the same person as Aa.. speaks: Why wikipedia sucks big time? --85.70.5.6601:05, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
In the process of randomly drifting through Wikipedia, as I often do, I noticed a strange redirect. In fact, it is one of the strangest I have ever seen. To get to the point, Day of the Beast redirects to the current events portal. I can imagine why some people might feel that there was a link between the two pages, but does a redirect make sense? In my opinion, a redirect to Christian eschatology or something or other might be more in order. NigelQuinineBlather• Toil01:22, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
The only thing that makes any sense to me is to take their shortform names in English and use alphabetical order. "African-Chinese relations," "Sino-Russian relations" (from "Chinese," of course), but I'm not sure what to do with America. I guess we would use the shortform name "United States" rather than "America," making "Iranian-American relations" and "American-Vanuatan relations."
There is not a dispute per se about the names, but I suppose I'm not clear on them and there is no obvious standard (although the alphabetical seems obvious to me.) Anyway, can anyone help me out here? -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M20:27, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
FINDing within edit boxes in Firefox
I just stumbled across this capability in Firefox and thought I would describe it here for other numbskulls who may have been editing for years without knowing about it... When I switched from IE to Firefox back in early `04 I had only one regret: when editing in Wikipedia I could no longer use the FIND function (ctrl-G in FF, ctrl-F in IE) inside edit boxes. FIND and FIND NEXT in Firefox turned blind for text inside edit boxes while IE treated edit box text the same as any other web page text-- quite annoying when you're doing a whole page edit and you need to jump to, say, the word "needle" about halfway through. In FF this forces you to eyeball-scroll the entire wikisource until you get to "needle", often requiring 2 or 3 tries. Meanwhile in IE it was place-cursor-in-text-box/ctrl-f/n-e-e-d-l-e/enter/boom.
It turns out, though, that if you have "Highlight All" switched on in the Firefox "Find bar" you can do place-cursor-in-text-box/ctrl-g/n-e-e-d-l-e/scroll-rapidly-looking-for-yellow-highlighted-word. Still not as quick n' easy as IE, but a damn sight better than scrolling without any visual cue.
Something tells me many, many editors are still doing the FF eyeball-scroll-without-highlighting thing, which sounds pretty trivial, but if you're doing a long WP session it can really get to you. The Highlight All workaround isn't perfect but it cuts away a lot of strain. Maybe somebody knows of a "How to Edit" page or tutorial that should mention this tidbit? If so, please add it.
BTW I'm sure there are all kinds of FF extensions and/or homegrown macros that allow for text-find-within-input-boxes á lá IE, but until FF matures just a bit more and can update itself with installed extensions smoothly, I favor regular-featureset trix n' tips, like. I know some folks got around html input box limitations by turning on an activex control, but I never used that for other reasons and now it appears to have been dropped as an available feature anyway. JDG10:16, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I sometimes make meticulously minor edits over the whole article (is this practice frowned upon? rather than editing this section, then that section, I try to save as few edits as possible, minding the database size and such) and I think this will cut down on the time I spend homing in on what I what (sometimes flipping between tabs to remember where I wanted to go) unhighlighted. Thanks! Xaxafrad02:19, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
The retrofind extension lets you search for text within edit boxes. Angela.
I realize I'm a bit wordy, so I understand when people skim my posts. But notice I wrote I'm sure there are all kinds of FF extensions and/or homegrown macros that allow for text-find-within-input-boxes á lá IE, but until FF matures just a bit more and can update itself with installed extensions smoothly, I favor regular-featureset trix n' tips. Have you not heard nor read of all the problems people have had bringing extensions forward in new FF releases. Sometimes the browsing problems caused by these extensions/main-browser version complications are very subtle and take hours to find. Typically, when they are found, the only cure is to stop using the extension. No-- the whole FF extension thing must become far more robust before I use anything beyond the 2 or 3 essentials O already have. JDG02:53, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
I think I should state a little more clearly how to do the Firefox Find-within-editboxes (these instructions are for the Windows OS). Click "edit this page" or, if a section, "edit" in Wikipedia. Press ctrl-f to bring up Firefox's FIND toolbar along the bottom of the browser. Click "Highlight all" on this toolbar. Type the word or word fragment you're searching for into the FIND textarea. Left click once in the Wikipedia editbox to place the active text cursor there. Press ctrl-a to select all the text in the Wikipedia edit box. On the Firefox FIND toolbar, click "Highlight all" again to turn it off. Then click "Highlight all" again to turn it back on. Now any occurrences of the word or word fragment will be highlighted in yellow. Scroll to see them. JDG03:15, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I don't think Wikipedia tracks that statistic (at least to the best of my knowledge). We try to keep articles fairly short, between 6,000-10,000 words, according to the style guide Wikipedia:Article size. While there are undoubtedly articles which are much longer than that, they are somewhat abberrant, and very likely are in need of some editing down. --TeaDrinker08:17, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
My dear fellow wikipedians, I share with you certain issues from my talk page - by pasting the same here:
QUOTE
Suggestion
Hi Mr.Bhadani
I have been with the wiki for nearly 6 months now and apart from a few irritants-being blocked because of someone having the same ISP address-found it most informative.
An idea just occured to me and I should value your opinion as a senior here at the Wiki.I have made enquiries and it appears that in order to make a valid nomination for Nobel Peace Prize,one has to be either a professor of history or a professor of literature or a previous laureate.I believe that Wikipedia has brought the world together like no other project-knowledge based pooling of ideas to bring the world closer.After the Nobels for this year are announced,they would be soliciting nominations for next year-and I belive we should try and get Jim Wales nominated.I have already spoken to a Fellow of Royal Historical Society and he would be ready to nominate but I should appreciate your view.I also noticed that Wikipedia came for high praise from two Nobel Laureates on the BBC programme Nobel Minds-viz.Barry Marshall and Roy Glauber.You may write to me on my email address if you wish-venkatradhakrishnan2000@yahoo.com.au
It is really nice to listen from you, after a long long gap. I do appreciate your views. I shall be sending you an e-mail. I also regret that I could not do anything as regards creation of the stubs as suggested by you. Still, I do hope to create few stubs based on your feedback. Regards abd all the best. --Bhadani06:23, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Let us set the ball rolling for Noble Peace Prize for the President of Wikimedia Foundation.
I already have got the assnt of a qualified nominator-a Fellow of teh Royal Historical Society.You would note that active legislators can nominate as well but given my deep rooted antipathy for the tribe of politicians,I would prefer to keep them away from the process.The nominations would not be accepted unttil this years prize is announced-late Se.So we still have time.But I would appreciate comments and suggestions and only then would I ask my qualified nominator.Cheers(Vr05:57, 25 July 2006 (UTC))
Hello Mr.Bhadani
Thanks for your note.I look forward to hearing from you.It may also be interesting to have some othe Wikipedians comment on the subject.I also think it may be intersting to get a transcript of the Nobel minds programme on the BBC where Marshall and Glauber were fulsome in their praise of the Wikipedia.But shall await guidace from all of you.Regards(Vr05:32, 29 July 2006 (UTC))
I would request you to kindly give your comments and suggestions, before further action is initiated in this direction. Thanks and regards. --Bhadani14:20, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia's response to criticisms
I have seen many users criticise and complain about admins. The usual complaint is that admins form cabals and abuse their powers to push POV into articles. Now I know this is controversial, and I do not wish to take sides, or say who is right or wrong, as I do not have sufficient knowledge to make such a judgement.
However, I wish to ask how Wikipedia responds to such complaints. I think Wikipedia should openly investigate some complains, and if any admins are found guilty of the allegations, they should be desysopped. And if such allegations are found to be false, Wikipedia can openly prove to others that such allegations are false.
As I keep reading such complaints, I am curious as to their validity. In addition, I think that if others - such as new users - read such complaints, their opinions of Wikipedia may be influenced. If the allegations are false, then we must prove it to them; if they are true, then we must fix our problems.
What do you guys think of a small additional images section/gallery at the bottom of a given article, as the last section. I saw Padme_Amidala#Costumes do this for her costumes and thought of it--perhaps 3-4 screen shots, in very small form visibly, that can be clicked on. It should fall under the banner of "fair use" but I've never seen something like this on a movie article. Thoughts? It would seem to be very appropriate given the visual medium the article is reporting on. rootology (T) 16:23, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
Just as a supplemental, could someone take a look at the Superman Returns article? The image under the Box Office Results stopped displaying in article pages--but displays fine if you click on it. I'm stumped... rootology (T) 17:19, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether this should go to the Proposals or Assistance section, so I'm posting here.
Several months ago, I created Requests for feedback. It's a new initiative where Wikipedians (particularly newcomers) can request for feedback on articles they have just written. This is an editor development process, as the feedback will help the editor understand their strengths and weaknesses and improve their editing skills, and it is an article development process, as we can point out problems (e.g. NPOV, copyright) with the article and work with the writer to fix these problems.
RFF is growing, and we are currently receiving 2-3 requests for feedback from newcomers daily. However, there are only a few Wikipedians who give feedback in response to the requests. We need more experienced Wikipedians who are familiar with policy and friendly to newcomers, to watch RFF and regularly respond to requests posted by newcomers. I intend to develop RFF into an established Wikipedia process, and this requires experienced Wikipedians to respond to requests to prevent massive backlog.
My question is: how do I find such Wikipedians (familiar with policy, friendly to newcomers), and ask them whether they'd be interested in regularly responding to requests posted on RFF? I don't want to spam hundreds of user talk pages. Any tips for advertising RFF and developing it into an established Wikipedia process would also be welcome.
Can anybody help me? How do i reach and send messages to other wikipedians?
I am User : Camilo Sanchez
Thanks
You can reach individual Wikipedians via their user talk pages, which can be found at User talk:Username. For example mine is User talk:Samuel Blanning, yours is User talk:Camilo Sanchez. You can type that directly into the search box or your browser's URL bar, or follow the links at the end of every Wikipedian's signature. To reach lots of other Wikipedians with one post, it depends on what exactly you're after. For general queries, you're at the right place; for help with using Wikipedia, try the Wikipedia:Help desk; to reach Wikipedians interested in a particular subject (e.g. mathematics), try the List of WikiProjects. Also, please sign your posts by writing ~~~~, which produces your name and the date. --Sam Blanning(talk)23:25, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
For me, I created a new Wikipedia process, Requests for feedback, where new editors can seek feedback on new articles they write. We need experienced Wikipedians who are familiar with process and friendly to newcomers, to watch RFF and regularly respond to requests for feedback posted there. What is the best way to find and contact such Wikipedians? I don't feel like spamming hundreds of talk pages. --J.L.W.S. The Special One12:20, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
Hola a todos mi inglés es muy malo, así que le escribo en mi idioma materno y traduzco. Vengo a denunciar que en el articulo de Danilo Anderson un usuario está poniendo información tendenciosa y no neutral basandose en el pretexto de una fuente del periódico venezolano "el Nacional" que en cualquier caso es irrelevante para el artículo. Así que le solicito al algún administrador echarle un vistazo y borrar el sesgo. Saludos.
English Translation: I come to denounce in the articles of Danilo Anderson a user is putting non-neutral information being based on the pretext of a source the Venezuelan newspaper “the National” who in any case is irrelevant for the article. So I ask for the administrator to him to throw a look to him and to erase noneutrality. Bye --K4zem20:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
That's not a page on Wikipedia. It's an interwiki link, because it starts with the special name "Shakti:". See m:Interwiki_map for a list of all such interwiki links.-gadfium00:44, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
What's with all the band and album pages?
I notice often when on new page patrol that nearly half of the new articles are about bands, members of bands, albums, and songs. I've actually just given up looking at them, as I'm nowhere near hip enough to know what's notable and what's not. Do we really need an article about every song and every album written and every songwriter and every concert tour?
No, we don't. Read up on WP:BAND, and if you see an article that doesn't meet the standard, feel free to consider nominating it for CSD, AfD, or Prod, depending on how contestable you suspect the deletion might be. Confusing Manifestation12:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Keep in mind that CSD A7 applies only to an article "that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject," not deletions that aren't contestable (snowballs aside). Deco18:06, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
When on RC patrol and you see a new band article, try looking them up in GraceNote, the CD database. If they don't have two CDs in Gracenote, {{db-band}} is usually appropriate. That's a low standard; Gracenote has over 5 million different CDs listed, and if a band isn't in there, it probably isn't very notable. Still, you'll hear screams - "Our band is notable because we toured in both Iowa and Kansas, so we had a national tour". Send them to AfD. --John Nagle18:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
No, it is not appropriate. A7 requires that they make no assertion of importance or significance, whatsoever. If one is present, regardless of how many albums they have or where they've performed, they are not a CSD candidate. We have PROD for such cases. Deco18:30, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Technically, dud band articles should get a "prod", then, when the fan or band member deletes the "prod", you start the AfD, after which the band member screams on the AfD that their band is notable, nobody else agrees, and after wasting the time of a dozen or so people, the article gets deleted. Because this is a time sink, it's become common to put {{db-band}} on obvious garage band articles. Policy probably should be modified to match reality here. --John Nagle18:55, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, I went and got boldly frustrated and created Category:Uncategorised albums, but I think I'll undo that. The problem (for me) is that I haven't the faintest idea whether they're notable or not, and am not interested enough to bother with GraceNote, etc. I was more just venting my frustration with the sheer volume of these articles being created... by the time I've looked over a new article (and if necessary tagged it), there are 1 or 2 more articles of this sort created. Just seems a bit much to me. --SB_Johnny | talk19:57, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry about that
I participated in the "The Colbert report" and "elephants" debacle earlier and humbly appologize.
The Wikipedia is one of the greatest applications of the internet thus far, and I vow never to vandalize again.
signed
michael corley
aka ogami1972
Wikipedia itself is on UTC, yes, but when time is mentioned in an encyclopedia article (as the questioner is apparently asking), we usually use the local time at the site of the event.--Pharos23:24, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Invitation
WikiProject Biography has been completely overhauled and reenergized and we are organizing task forces like the military history project. We invite anyone who works on biographies to cast your vote for task forces. Task forces would get a parameter to our Project banner (politicians-task-force=yes) and a note would appear that says the article is a part of that task force (see example on military history article), plus having peer reviews and collaborations, and being able to grade articles by class and importance so that the articles can be part of the WP:1.0 project and much more... Come join us! plange16:23, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
discussion pages for images on commons on wikipedia
Click this image - notice the image tab is red, but the discussion tab is blue - there is discussion for an image which isnt there
ok this is impossible to explain but just bear with me - would it be possible for the discussion tab for image pages on wikipedia where the image is actually on commons, to link to the commons discussion page if there is no discussion page already on wikipedia for the image. What I mean is here is an image on commons: commons:Image:Multinational force in iraq countries.PNG. Because the image is on commons, that means it also appears on wikipedia without having to be loaded on wikipedia - see here: Image:Multinational force in iraq countries.PNG - notice the "image" tab at the top is red which means that there isnt a page there even though you can see the image. This page where the image isnt there is the page where everyone goes to when you click on an image on wikipedia that is on commons. - i.e. on the page Multinational force in Iraq when you click on the image you get taken to the wikipedia page. Then when you click on the discussion tab on that page you get taken to a discussion page on wikipedia - even though there is no image on wikipedia! - notice on the image Image:Multinational force in iraq countries.PNG the "image" link is red and the "discussion" tab is blue at the top. Several times I have seen admins delete these talk pages for being "orphaned talk pages" even though this is the talk page which you immediately get taken to if you click on the disccusion tab on an image after seeing it in an article when the image is on commons not on wikipedia. At the moment when you click on the "edit" tab to the right of the "Summary" heading on the wikipedia page, you get taken to commons so that you can edit that section. Is it possible for this also to happen with the "discussion" tab at the top - so that you get taken straight to commons without going to wikipedia talk page for an image that is not on wikipedia. Another problem with these talk pages on wikipedia is its hard to get back to the image - from Image talk:Multinational force in iraq countries.PNG the only way to get back to the image I have found is to click "image" which brings you to a page that says "Wikipedia does not have an image with this exact name." (despite the fact that if you had clicked on Image:Multinational force in iraq countries.PNG you would be able to see the image. Notice also the discussion on the page by Siva1979 who thought the image didnt exist.) Then I have to copy the text "Image:Multinational force in iraq countries.PNG" and type it into the search bar on the left and a page appears which says that "No page with that title exists." - however if you had done this the links for the page name and for "create this article" would have appeared blue, not red, and when you click them you can go to the image. I hope to god this made some sense because this problem occurs with every image on commons when you view it from wikipedia --Astrokey4405:15, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
another solution would be to create a template that says something like "this is an image talk page on wikipedia for an image on Wikimedia Commons. The commons image is located at [[commons:{{PAGENAME}}]]." --Astrokey4422:56, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Watch this section
I've heard they're giving the talk pages a facelift, in the form of Operation LiquidThreads. In addition to whatever changes are planned, I think I'd like it if, when I post to anything not in the main namespace, that one section could be watched. I'm not going to add the whole village pump page to my watchlist, but you'd think I'd be interested in replies to comments such as this. However, I sometimes make (maybe too many) random comments across various areas of the wikipedia, talk, and probably other namespaces; I find myself watching my contributions. Hrm. Maybe I'm just making too many comments? Xaxafrad02:20, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Has Wiki become a platform for anti-Iranian propagandas?
Guys, Wiki says that Parisian Gulf is not Persian Gulf any more, it is “Basra Gulf” but Basra is not even on the Persian Gulf! It is “Britain Sea” but it is nowhere even close to Britannia! And as far as Wiki knows our ancestors did not even exit (although if it was not for our ancestors many of the posters would not even exist today!). According to CIA and Wiki, Azraris are not Iranian despite the fact they have been living in Iran for several thousand years (but someone who moved to the USA last year is an American!).
Did you also notice how “Misconceptions about Iran” article was conveniently deleted in the middle of America’s propaganda against Iran and accusing Iran of many of those subjects that were answered in the page? Was that a coincident?
How can we stop Wiki being high jacked by some for their vested political interests? If we cannot do this isn’t it better to warn the readers with large bold fonts on each page that the articles are not reliable? Kiumars16:20, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
We can stop propoganda by being vigilant about patrolling our watchlists and trying to settle disputes about the factual accuracy of articles on the pertinent article's Talk pages. — Frecklefoot | Talk16:30, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Admittedly, there is a systemic bias on wikipedia considering that it is in the english language and also other factors such as the availability of Internet being more in one place than another. Some people have formed a Wikiproject to counter this bias. You may consider joining and discussing there -- Lost16:37, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Guys, I am going to prove to you that I am not wrong, just follow the the discussions on the following pages:
As a very Americanized Persian who has only briefly visited some of the articles mentioned, I got to say that there is some messy politics afoot in many of the areas mentioned above. I'm not picking a side of who's right (okay, I do think Persians exist as an ethnicity, but duh on that one), but those articles are a mess of POV pushing and some far-out views. --Bobak02:21, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi Wiki guys,
My dad sent me this email (I have pics of the hole and the melted aluminum but am technically challenged about how to post them here). Does anyone have an explanation for this explosion?
The explosion happened at least 24 hours after burning the birdhouses. The stove was cold when Dad picked up the pitchfork. (Probable cause for the pitchfork falling was the way my 14 year-old son hung it up after using it...last person to touch it, anyway...but I don't think that's connected; just trying to provide all info given to me...).
I asked if the stove was air-tight; allowing gases to build up. Dad said it definitely was not air-tight.
Thanks for any explanation,
-Blair
The day before yesterday I burned up two derelict wooden birdhouses in the Shop stove along with about a galloon of pine cones.
Yesterday I noticed that the pitchfork had fallen from its rack and was leaning against the stove. I returned it to its rack. After a few seconds as I contemplated the reason why the pitchfork had fallen, when...
BANG! A blue electrical type arc blew a hole in the top of the stove.
The hole in the stove (the pic shows approx. 1-inch diameter hole in the top of the stove. The stove is at least 25 years old - cast iron, w/rust spots...It shows approx. 2inch raised bubble around the hole, indicating that considerable impact had occurred...)
There was a small amount of aluminum as part of the birdhouses. The aluminum was pretty well melted from the fire.
Remains of 0.050" aluminum roofing. (This pic shows remains of melted aluminum, on a very clean, creosote-free, ash-free iron floor of the stove.)
Any ideas as to why the electrical arc?
John
One suggestion from a neighbor below:
Sure is John, Was there any indication of fire in the chimney?
Bill
----- Original Message -----
From: John
To: William
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 2:54 AM
Subject: Re: Spontaneous something (again)
Bill,
Thinking more about the pine cones, I probably have burned at least 15 gallons of pine cones during the last couple of weeks. That's lots of turpentine.
John
Hi John,
Interesting problem and result. My thought would be turpentine buildup from the pine cones in the top of the stove that exploded. The pitchfork may have been cooling the local area that allowed the turpentine buildup. Only a wild guess!
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