Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 8

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:Reference desk. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

→

Recent archival

Latest archive is number 7. Hope I haven't archived too many threads. --HappyCamper 18:07, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

categories too broad

We need more specific categories, the pages get bloated. I'd suggest dividing humanities into the arts and music, etc.--Urthogie 11:17, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps there should be a category JUST on computer questions. But you notice even with sub-categories, some stuff does get posted to the wrong ones. User:AlMac|^(talk) 11:43, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Word..and we can't add new categories cus page editing is locked thanks to vandals. If an admin could do this...--Urthogie 11:48, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

WP:RD is protected, but if you look very carefully, the template header is not :-)

I have one request though - let's elaborate more on your ideas before we make any attempt at splitting. At this point, I am weary of increasing the number of desks unless other people jump in and help with archival/date stamping. --HappyCamper 20:29, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, not that we shouldn't split the reference desk - but I think we have to think carefully about this one. Are we splitting because we really want a comprehensive reference desk service? Or are we doing this out of convenience that the pages look shorter? Or a little bit of both? Or something else entirely? Hm...--HappyCamper 20:35, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I think splitting the desk will help solve the problems above only transiently - by making the reference desk more accessible, it makes it grow quicker. Right after the previous splitting, the popularity of the reference desks soared. Interestingly enough, we are actually entering a cyclical period on the reference desk where the number of questions starts to decline for the 2 months or so, so it's quite interesting that the request for splitting has occurred now. I think what we should do is add at most 3 desks - if we do any splitting. I'd like to see the size of the humanities, science and miscellaneous desks cut in half. What's 3 new desks we can introduce that can do that? I haven't been following the content of these desks quite so closely anymore. --HappyCamper 15:11, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Humanities could be split into (Arts, Entertainment, Literature, Culture) and (Society, Philosophy, Religion, Law). Science could be divided into (Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Technology) and (Earth Science, Biology, Social Science, Environmental Science), and make Miscelanneous shorter by creating a section devoted to (History) --Urthogie 15:41, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Those are fairly arbitrary and nonintuitive divisions. Humanities should be split into culture (which, by definition, includes art, entertainment, literature, music, and so on) and society (philosophy, religion, law, ~~geography~~). Science could go into Technology (covering computing etc etc) and Science (physics, biology, environment, geography, etc). Chopping History out of Miscellaneous is a good idea.

And that would leave us with Culture, Society, Science, Technology, Mathematics, Language, History, and Miscellaneous. Proto t c 15:52, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

And that's almost Wikipedia's main categories. God damn it. Proto t c 15:53, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Support- let's make sure to have the sentance or so description of what is included. Anyone oppose this categorization scheme?--Urthogie 16:01, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

The categorization is good. I don't think we can do much better than that. To be honest, I'd prefer if we didn't do this splitting stuff at all. I mean, when will it end? But of course, I can only assume that Wikipedians in general love the reference desk, and I guess this splitting is just a healthy sign that it's a thriving part of Wikipedia.

Can we at least give this a week before any changes are made to the main WP:RD page? :-) Some Wikipedians only visit this page on a weekly basis.

In the meantime, please make the changes in this new template: Template:RD header new be WP:BOLD!

-- I'll merge the page histories afterwards. This way, we can guarantee our "normal" operation of the RD while these changes are being tested out. Sounds good? --HappyCamper 16:44, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

You're aware of how much work that entails? Figuring out which cat all those questions go in? Or am I wrong to assume you'll be moving them to the new cats?--Urthogie 17:33, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

On another note, the images on the template will be kept in the case of some categories. Currently those images are used as links to redirect to the specific ref desk pages. We'll need to eventually change them to redirect to the new ref desk categories(except for the ones we're keeping, like science).--Urthogie 18:32, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Hey ya'll, any changes need to be made to the appearence of the new template, or is it good as is? By the way, please answer the above questions/statements if you want to. Thanks, very much--Urthogie 21:33, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'd like to preserve the humanities desk in some way...the page history for that should fall in somewhere; perhaps the "culture" desk if that is more appropriate. --HappyCamper 23:57, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

This just came to mind. We'll also need to redo Wikipedia:Reference_desk/How_to_ask_and_answer.--Urthogie 18:32, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Opposition

Oppose. Lots of categories, and so, pages to check, actually makes it less convenient for question answerers, who have to open up lots of pages. Smaller, barely used categories will get ignored, and answer quality would drop as a result. (The reference desk is the one place where watchlists don't help.) It's also going to drastically increase the difficulty of maintenance.

Less convenient? I know a lot about music, but not about the other humanities. I stopped watching the humanities page for that reason. This will actually introduce more people such as myself to watch and ARCHIVE(hint hint, maintenance easier) these pages. There won't be any bare categories, these are huge subject matters. And by the way, a lot of people do watch the help desks.--Urthogie 20:14, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Nor do I really see any reason to split humanities when it doesn't have the same volume as science. Further, the more we split, the more likely we are to have questions miscatted or falling into an overlap (e.g. discussion of society inevitably requires reference to history. And what about questions on the development of the nuclear bomb, which are historical questions about scientists and mathematicians developing a technology that had a profound effect on society which is expressed in the culture and indeed modern language?), and other confusing things (Hell, I wouldn't be able to tell you the difference between 'culture' and 'society'), which will inevitably lead to new users dumping questions any old place.

There will be overlaps, but they will be the exception, not the rule. The categories are so huge right now that its actually more likely that there will be overlaps, because they aren't specific enough. Culture refers to what members of society do, and society refers to things having to do with the society as a whole. If you look at the (still in progress) new template page, you can see that it explains the scope of each category by giving example subjects.--Urthogie 20:14, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

What is actually the problem that this measure is trying to address?--Fangz 19:39, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

A couple of problems--question answerers not wanting to watch a page because it is too broad, archives piling up too fast, making it more hard for people to find answers to old questions, and confusion for people asking questions. These are the major issues.--Urthogie 20:14, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, I think a change of this nature will need alot more user consultation than just this relatively obscure talkpage. I mean, if you guys are planning to push ahead with this. --Fangz 19:40, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

We aren't doing it all at once, and we're trying to be Bold. Please help us with it, based on the reasons I have supplied. Thanks, --Urthogie 20:14, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. We definitely shouldn't split it up into the new categories cus that'd make it harder to find old humanities. Your choice which one to archive it in(Society might be more reasonable though cus I'm expecting it to get less posts overall in the future). Peace, --Urthogie 07:49, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm opposed to any further fragmenting of the WP:RD. I believe that we have struck a good balance and please note that the most recent breakout of WP:RD/Math receives only three or fewer (sometimes zero) questions per day. Any section with sparse traffic because of too narrow a definition (say, Music) will not be visited except by those with a narrow interest (in say the Humanities) and thus will be neglected and forfeit the rich perspective of the larger community. It is after all our collective wisdom that educates and provides perspective (sometimes in the form of humor) through our answers to the variety of questions that come up within the current categorizing scheme. I personally feel enriched by my scanning of the questions and answers in the categories even though my primary interests may lie within some narrower field within a given category. Oh, and don't get me started on the many young people who can't get things straight as they are now segmented! hydnjo talk 18:04, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be under the impression that music would have its own category...we aren't planning on doing that...it would be under culture. Here's the current template:

whatcha think?--Urthogie 18:08, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

No, I was just extrapolating to make more vivid the camel's nose under the tent argument. The WP:RD had no categories at all not too long ago, pretty much as the WP:HD now stands. After much discussion and controversy the proposal to make four categories was approved not so much from a need to have categories per se but to improve manageability, the page was just too darn long and smooth navigation required archiving at less than appropriate intervals. That resulted in a reasonable distribution of quetions (except for the usually heavy WP:RD/M). A recent suggestion and discussion resulted in splitting the WP:RD/Math category from WP:RD/S and I'm still not convinced that that decision was wise given the sparce (three or fewer) daily inquiries.

The current suggestion of providing eight categories has also been met with the suggestion that the RD categories be aligned with the Main Page categories (now eight plus Misc to equal nine which is soon to be upped to ten plus Misc equaling eleven categories) which IMO seems like drastic overkill.

Having been a regular reader/contributor here for a while now, I have concluded that the existing sectioning is about right and that this attempt to further fragment the Reference Desk seems more like a solution in search of a problem. hydnjo talk 20:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps we should remerge science and math? If you suggested us doing that we could probably do that, and would be more constructive. thx, --Urthogie 20:47, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm not proposing that and doing so would not be more constructive (IMO). That you are suggesting that I propose that merger is either sarcasm or a complete misunderstanding of my position (or humor ;-)) That the WP:RD/Math section stands can in fact be instructive with regards to a boundary condition of specialization. hydnjo talk 21:22, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

You're correct in saing that I'm misunderstanding your position!--Urthogie 08:01, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

New Proposed Header (so as to squeeze in as many categories as possible)

(as a direct result of the following comment, this humorous proposal has been condemned to relocation to an undisclosed location for trying to be humorous about this serious topic. please contact this user for private showings) :-( hydnjo talk 16:28, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Is this supposed to be serious? If not please remove it as the talk pages are only for work on articles. thx :) --Urthogie 13:16, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

7 GB of Reference desk

I got this table from [1].

Edits           Unique users    Articles                                        Archived
Total	Reg.	Reg.    Unreg.
40240	97%	1496	607	Wikipedia:Votes for deletion archive May 2004   2368.2 MB  
32037	40%	2756	9658	Wikipedia:Sandbox/History                       237.7 MB  
29648	81%	1389	3196	Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous          4764.6 MB  
28578	97%	2266	480	Wikipedia:Copyright problems                    3563.8 MB  
27827	46%	2908	8390	Wikipedia:Sandbox                               140.1 MB  
25838	59%	2134	5920	George W. Bush                                  1679.6 MB
...
8890	79%	496	1009	Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science                1757.2 MB  
...
6018	69%	401	1180	Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities             850.6 MB

It seems the reference desk is a greater burden on the servers than I would have guessed. —Ruud 11:35, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps this recategorization will help prevent duplicate questions :)--Urthogie 13:01, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Urthogie: I refer you to Hanlon's Razor. Nothing can make idiots stop being idiots. Cernen Xanthine Katrena 23:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Reverse order

Wouldn't it be nice to put today's additions on top? Now I have to scroll to the bottom of at least the Table of Contents in order to read the most recent questions. ---Benne ['bɛnə] _(talk) 16:26, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

If your keyboard has an "End" key you could hit that to bring you to the bottom of the page instead of scrolling. Dismas|^(talk) 17:14, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that would be nice too, I think! Hmm...I'm not sure if this would be possible - like all Wikipedia talk pages, whenever you add a new "thread" to the page, it goes to the bottom. I guess there might be a way to do this if someone could code it. --HappyCamper 12:27, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh what a neat idea! Lets make this particular little corner of WP the opposite of the entire rest of WP. With every new brain around here comes a refreshing and brilliant perspective of how things should be. Personally HC, I don't think that would be nice at all. I love scrolling down through the old stuff as it refreshes my old brain and reminds me of what day it is and how much time flies.

Lets review:

Q)100...

A)100.1...

A)100.2...

A)100.3...

Q)99...

A)99.1...

OR would that be:

A)100.3...

A)100.2...

A)100.1...

Q)100...

A)99.3...

A)99.2...

A)99.1...

Q)99...

(Oh, never mind, we can figure it out as we go along, right?)

hydnjo talk 13:18, 12 January 2006 (UTC)... hmm, or would that be - eb taht dluow ro ,mmh ...(CTU) 6002 yraunaJ 21 ,81:31 klat ojndyh

LOL :-) Well, after some thought, it might be easier to just keep it the way it is until MediaWiki fundamentally alters its software! --HappyCamper 16:56, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Geesh, I quess that's it then - I'll give up all hope for a DR:PW in the immediate past. Hopefully, hydnjo talk 18:39, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the sarcasm. It was just a thought ... ---Benne ['bɛnə] _(talk) 14:19, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Who is going to help out?

If the reference desk is going to be split, are there any volunteers who will agree to patrol the pages and add the date headers? --HappyCamper 03:33, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm usually editing around early morning UTC, so I could make it part of my routine to check for the date. — Laura Scudder ☎ 05:18, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll watch the culture page all the time, what do you mean by add the date headers though?--Urthogie 12:11, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Every day someone needs to add =Date= to the bottom like this so that questions stay date sorted. Really could be automated, but it doesn't take much time. — Laura Scudder ☎ 16:01, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Recall required

-reversion or whatever, somebody erased almost everything!

Done. Wikipedia:Revert explains what to do if you see a similar problem in the future. —Charles P. (Mirv) 15:58, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Most-used math codes?

Will someone look over this list and list any TeX expressions that they would like to see in the special characters list on edit pages? I'm looking for the top 25-50 most-used characters/functions/etc. Thanks. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2006-01-14 01:07

User:Crypticbot

Has anyone asked User:Cryptic if User:Crypticbot could do the archiving of the reference desk? —Ruud 15:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I just did. That'd be pretty handy; it was getting fairly backed up for a while. I'm usually on around noon UMT; I can archive it for y'all if you like. It'd be like Hollywood Video's 5 1/2 days scheme. Cernen Xanthine Katrena 23:54, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Wonderful news! The last time I talked to someone, the archival was not possible because I wouldn't be around during noon or midnight UMT (whichever one is applicable). Speaking of which, let me archive the pages right now. It's getting rather long. --HappyCamper 15:50, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I've run this in read-only mode for the past few days, and it seems to be working correctly. I'm going to start running it on the live pages tonight. Please let me know on my talk page if it does anything wrong, instead of just quietly fixing it, or it'll keep doing it wrong; but do fix it, too, since I'm not at my computer around midnight and won't usually get the message until about 15:00 UTC. (I already know about the new day's header being misplaced if a new section sneaks in between midnight and the bot's update; it just appends it to the bottom.) One question: how many daily sections should I leave on the pages (not including the new, empty section for today)? Manual archival's been varying between six and seven. —Cryptic (talk) 08:27, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

When I archive, I don't really think too consciously about the number of sections I leave on the reference desk - but people seem to be happy with having 5 to 7 active sections. I leave only 5 sections active when the desk is extremely busy...this is usually during the late fall. The activity on the desk will also begin to really pick up by April. I guess for now, 7 sections at most would suffice, but do whatever is easiest with your code. Also, we don't have to be too concerned if the header is not added exactly after midnight. Hydnjo has been very kind to actually go into the page history and figure out the last question posted before midnight...but if the bot is off by one or two questions, I think it would be okay too. I hope this helps! --HappyCamper 18:13, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Blank questions caused by Bug 4273

I've noticed that there are a lot of "blank" questions, with a summary but no text. I suspect this may be caused largely by MediaZilla Bug 4273: when a user types a summary and hits "Enter", instead of the cursor moving to the next textbox, a blank question is submitted. This is a really poor interface, because hitting "Enter" seems like a very natural thing to do. If this bug is affecting you, you may wish to comment on it, or advocate that it be fixed. -- Creidieki 17:33, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Why new users ask here instead of searching

Black Carrot' made a good comment [2] which should probably be reposted here. We offer the "Ask a question" link much more prominently than the "Search" box - no wonder new readers use it! We need a "Search" (or "Look up") box right under the Welcome line before we can even think about blaming others. This is more important and helpful than most of the other links in that prime place. It would also help if we added a search box to the top of this (helpdesk) page. Common Man 02:34, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

That's a fair criticism. We can link to Special:Search, which is better than referring people to the search on the left. Superm401 - Talk 02:51, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it was better before. I also think the problem is elsewhere, and I've set things in motion to get it fixed. see Wikipedia_talk:Where_to_ask_a_question#virginity and Wikipedia_talk:Where_to_ask_a_question#From the Reference Desk Black Carrot 21:13, 21 January 2006 (UTC)