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Village pump archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump.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

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Verification

Please help me to verify the following information contained in solar symbol (this info was not written by me):

The Circle with a point at its centre (⊙) is an ancient solar symbol featuring a circle with its center marked with a dot. It can symbolize:

City Center (European road-signs) <---

Make a wish (Reading tea-leaves)

Determined position (Navigation) <---

The eye of God (Early Christian)

End of trail. Gone home. (Scouting) (verified by Jmabel, now I need a reference to a book or website)

Spirit (Chippewa Indian)

Cup (Robert Shumaker's Orangutan symbol language) (verified by Zundark, reference: [1])

References to websites and books are welcome. For books please include ISBN if known. Especially Please check first the issues I marked with <--- .·. Optim 03:37, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC) .·.

I can verify "End of trail" as an ex-Boy Scout. I don't have a written reference, though I'm sure it's in the Boy Scout Fieldbook and probably in the Boy Scout Manual as well. -- Jmabel 04:47, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thank you so much; and I wish you Peace Profound, .'. Optim 05:30, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC) .'.

Shumaker's cup symbol for orangutans is mentioned on this page. --Zundark 09:20, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thank you!!! .'. Optim 13:56, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC) .'.

Proposal - What Wikipedia Wants proposal

A little while ago, I noticed that there wasn't any definitive page on what belongs in Wikipedia. I've been working with some others to develop a set of guidelines - Wikipedia:What Wikipedia Wants (proposal). Since this impacts pretty heavily on a lot of things (especially with regard to the VFD), I'd appreciate any feedback that members of the community have. →Raul654 02:04, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

There isn't? What Wikipedia is not. --Menchi (Talk)â 02:05, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It's a good page, but it's not definitive. Check the VFD candidates, and try excluding them based only on what is in What Wikipedia is Not. You won't get anywhere. You'll miss a lot of them. There's a lot that is not covered by What Wikipedia is not.

And more to the point, it misses half of the question. It doesn't talk about what wikipedia is or what it wants. →Raul654 02:11, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent proposal. Essentially it is a refactoring of what has become a cumbersome structure of pages. IMO there's nothing new except that it's accessible, which is an important plus.

I'd suggest that we incorporate some thresholds. How many books does an author need to have sold to be famous as an author? How many copies of a privately-distributed CD need to have been sold before it qualifies the band for inclusion? But even without these, I think it should be adopted asap. Andrewa 04:25, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think you are wrong on this. For example, a book published in Romanian or Catalan is never going to sell a number of copies that would qualify as significant for an English- or Spanish-language book. Similarly, a US-based musician might be very influential (e.g. Benjamin Smoke) without ever selling any significant number of recordings. (Patti Smith wrote a song about him, there's a documentary about him, but not much recorded material.) -- Jmabel 04:47, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

That's a good point. Similarly, 19th century authors didn't sell nearly as many copies as 21st century ones, simply because there were fewer buyers. But I think some guidelines could still help. The way they should work is just the way the rest of the page already does... passing a test can qualify something for inclusion, but failing a single test shouldn't ever disqualify an article. So your Catalan book would still be included. Andrewa 18:37, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Still, there are insignificant books out there with a lot of copies. Think campaign biographies. -- Jmabel 20:17, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

TeX and Math encyclopedia

Is it or will it be possible to use TeX directly in the articles? Is it possible in principle?

TeX is Standard in Math comunity and it would be much more usefull to have articles in this form.

Tosha

Yes - see Wikipedia:TeX markup. -- Finlay McWalter 20:50, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

And indeed, most of our math articles currently use (La)TeX. --Delirium 01:22, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

Though if you are going to write article instead of copying from somehere you could want to use MathML. ilya 15:17, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I wasn't aware Wikipedia supported MathML yet. Phil 16:36, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

It doesn't yet, but (theoretically) future versions of Wikipedia will automatically convert from the site's <math>...</math> notation to MathML. Since most current browsers don't properly support it, it's best to use HTML or TeX rendering for now anyway —Mulad 05:17, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Scan vs. Read

A notice for everyone who writes often on Wikipedia:

Users do not read the page; they just scan it!

You can read scan what Useit.com says.

Personally I agree completely with the article, which of course I haven't read but just scanned it and scrolled quickly from start to end picking interesting words to understand what it is all about! (this is humour) :-)

May you Have Peace Profound, .·. Optim 18:00, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC) .·.

Frankly, the Wikipedia isn't a webpage, but a collection of text that happens to be displayed on the web.

This is a subtle but very important distinction. The methods described in the alertbox are designed to grab the readers attention and drag him further into the page/site, regardless of the quality of the content. Wikipedia on the other hand relies on quality content to engage and hold the browser.

Elde 22:45, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

When I was working as a magazine article writer, I was using similar principles, although the text was published on paper. Of course our content must be of high quality, but we should take care of the fact that many people may not really read the full articles. For example, someday there was some discussion about whether a link included in the main text of an article should also be included under See also. My comment was that since many users may not really read whole articles but just scan them quickly, we should list all important links (excluding the unimportant ones of course) under See Also too, so that the user will not be forced to read or search the article for the links. Optim 00:30, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC) .'.

Very, very interesting point: "promotional language imposes a cognitive burden on users who have to spend resources on filtering out the hyperbole to get at the facts." On that score, anyway, Wikipedia should do pretty well. Dpbsmith 00:11, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

:) Optim 00:30, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC) .'.

I would say that this principle applies very heavily to the first few paragraphs of an article ("above the fold", meaning, in a web context, virtualy everyone will see this without scrolling). If someone isn't already a Wikipedia devotee, and if those first few paragraphs don't grab them, it's all over. They'll never read the article. However, once the person goes, "Hmm, could be an interesting article", he or she typically leaves scanning mode and starts reading. Not that I'm in favor of padding things out, but I'm also not in favor of everything having to be "zippy". Our links actually provide a lot of relevant highlighting, as does generally quite appropriate use of boldface. -- Jmabel 04:39, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Mediawiki ebuild

Im working on an ebuild ebuild for mediawiki. I have never made an ebuild before, so I really need help. Thanks in advance, Alexandros 17:57, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Recent Changes not reachable?

Am I the only one that can't view RC right now? Being able to edit but not being able to view RC is not a good thing. --mav 16:37, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)~

I don't think anyone else can. You can join #enrc.wikipedia though, it is working. --snoyes 16:38, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. For others who don't know what the hell #enrc.wikipedia means, please see Wikipedia:IRC channel. --mav

Seems to be working now. Angela. 17:01, Jan 11, 2004 (UTC)

en.wikipedia.org was down for a bit this morning; seems a partition got overfull and confused the poor dear until I cleared off some old temporary files I'd forgotten about. --Brion 17:07, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Re Académie Française

Can anyone explain the system used at Académie Française to list the members of the Academy? Surely they should be listed either chronologically or alphabetically. Unless someone can explain why they are presented like this, I will reorganise the list. Adam 08:11, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It would appear from the list itself (and I vaguely think I've read this elsewhere), that there are numbered seats for positions on the Académie. john 08:15, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but why do some seats have a list while some do not? Adam 08:45, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I would imagine that whoever worked on it did not get around to doing lists for all the seats. john 08:47, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

See Talk:Académie française for explanation and discussion. olivier 07:51, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

• 1724 - Events -->Wikipedia:Reference desk

Catholic Encyclopedia

Is the old edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia, found here in the public domain? john 07:55, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This question has come up a couple of times before. I seem to remember the answer is yes. The text of the encyclopedia is PD, although other parts of the website may be copyright. See for example [2] and the conversation between myself and Evercat here. -- Tim Starling 01:14, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

I recommend against using it as a basis for articles on NPOV grounds. It is highly biased in favor of an apologetic perspective. Also, many of the historical articles are very outdated.—Eloquence

But if you are writing about what Catholics believe then surely it makes sense to use this as a source. DJ Clayworth 18:57, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Images

Why can't I currently see any images, or even the placeholder? Is it just me or a general problem? jimfbleak 07:39, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

All images working normally for me, Jim.

Adrian Pingstone 09:57, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I can't even see the placeholder you get when an image link isn't working properly. Effectively, all images are invisible except for the captions (and in tables the space for the images is closed up too! HELP Jim

Jim, I'm guessing there is some ad-blocking software, webbug-blocking software, or (drastically eager) content-filtering going on at your end. Even if you've whitelisted wikipedia before, the english wikipedia's oscillation between en.wikipedia.org and en2.wikipedia.org might be getting your whitelist muddled. -- Finlay McWalter 22:01, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I turned off ad control on my newly installed Zone Alarm firewall, restarted, and all is well - many thanks, Jim

I have contacted the David McCallum official web site for photos of one of my favorite characters in action series. I got back two photo's to use, but they are marked "All rights reserved, 2003 Paramount Pictures". What do I need to do to get them into correct shape for use in Wikipedia? What magic words do I need seen sent back to me. By the way, I told them it was for the free encylcopedia. Any comments please post here. Kd4ttc 23:27, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Watchlists

When are watchlists going to come back online? Constantly having to look through "Recent Changes" gets annoying. john 05:36, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

About 15 minutes ago. --Brion 07:01, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Not sure if I can copy a website

Hello Villagers. I don't know where ask questions about copyright issues. I'd like to copy parts of http://www.chinaknowledge.de, a wonderfull encyclopedia about Chinese culture. In their "about" page, they say We are not commercial, all our sites are free visible and copyable because you have the technical possibilities to do it and We are content if you print our pages and load our pictures down (most of them are scanned from Chinese books who have no copyright). You can use them for your own studies and your own education as long as you do not have to pay for it... , plus more nice stuff. I've already done it, as a test, in the Doctrine of the Mean, see talk. I don't want to go on without more advices. May be, we could ask to the author itself (and possibly grab a very valuable contributor !). Thanks for your patience. gbog 05:33, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I would say you can't copy wholesale. You have to ask the operators if they want to license the specific material under the GFDL or if it is public domain. If they tell you the text and/or images are from public domain texts, then it's probably OK, but I would still mention the source. From the quote you posted, it is not clear whether this is the case. Dori | Talk 06:52, Jan 11, 2004 (UTC)

what criteria for banning users?

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Bans and blocks

Article series

I have created Wikipedia:Article series as a place to discuss the "series articles" which have sprouted lately. Go there if you have any thoughts on this (or if you know how to make the tables and the paragraphs match up to each other on the page better). Tuf-Kat 22:54, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)

• Great job! .'. Optim 01:12, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC) .'.

• Questions on killings moved to the Wikipedia:Reference desk

Wikipedia: Member of the Tabloid Press?

If Wikipedia has an uppity policy against NPOV, why then are there so many articles in Wikipedia of tabloid quality? Is this a place for writing about the latest Hollywood gossip or a place for stuffy articles without POV? -- Mr-Natural-Health 21:16, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

First off, you should provide example to an argument. It's a one-sided debate without such. And lose the tone, a person with your record shouldn't dare to mock Wikipedia's goals as "stuffy", or even "gossipy". -- user:zanimum

Taking a sample from browsing Recent changes: Sexual slang, The X-Files, List of science fiction television programs, Dream Team, E-8 Avenue Express, Show business, Roots reggae, ... illustrate tabloid quality articles

I did not say goals. I was referring to the garbage being cataloged in Wikipedia. -- Mr-Natural-Health 04:16, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It's garbage to have articles on popular culture? john 04:25, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You might find Adam Carr's quality survey informative -- and why are articles on popular culture "garbage"? Some of the articles you list, Mister Natty Aitch, are of excellent quality (The X-Files, for example). --MIRV (talk) 04:27, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Adam's survey suggests that pop culture article tend to be of lower quality - which is probably simply because of the fact that many more feel they can add something to such a topic then about History of Bhutan for example. And maybe those who want (and can) to contribute really good contents feel pop culture is too trivial for bothering with it. But then simply apply the wiki principle - be bold and fix the article which annoys you by being too much tabloid. andy 14:02, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm. Your contributions to date seem to be all on the Alternative medicine article, and to various disputes rising from it. I suggested in one of these that you could contribute to several related articles needing information that I think you have, but you have chosen not to.

Until you make more effort to contribute, I will regard your criticisms both here and on your user page ("Article naming conventions here seem to be fundamentally flawed by design") as of little value. You simply don't have any basis of experience for making them, nor any credibility to get them accepted. Those of us who are working hard to build Wikipedia are likely to remain unresponsive.

My avuncular advice is, try to write some less controversial articles. You're an obviously intelligent person and must have many interests. Find some good stubs in these fields and write some brilliant prose. This is the best way to build credibility.

If you feel this is beneath you, then take the excellent advice above and get involved in fixing some of the articles you feel are substandard. My only worry with this approach is the danger that you'll just find more controversy here. You seem to shoot from the hip at times, and bold provocative edits to articles that represent a great deal of work by other people aren't going to go down well. Andrewa 17:51, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

---

Discussion about a photograph moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk by .'. Optim 18:20, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC) .'.

Like to Kow moved to Wikipedia:Reference Desk by .'. Optim .'.

Suggested "Selected Articles" Reorganization

I propose that the selected articles section on the main page be reorganized thusly:

1. New Articles: Two lines! There are so many high-quality new articles produced every twenty-four hours and I believe that refreshing the main page frequently (and impressively) is the best way to grow traffic and encourge even more high-quality page productions. (Wikipedians angle to get up on New Articles by writing full-fledged superarticles. You know it, and I know it, and it's great, and we should encourage this behavior.) New articles is the sexiest thing we've got, and I say we work it.
2. In the News: One line.
3. Recent Deaths: One line
4. Anniversaries: One line

Thank you kindly for reading. jengod 00:33, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I fully support this suggestion. --snoyes 03:31, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Disagree. I posted earlier about having a "Featured articles" part of the main page. My objection was that non-timely or technical articles never make it to the front page unless they are brand new. I would like to see New Articles, In the News, Recent Deaths, and Anniversaries cut down to one line, and a new "Featured Articles" line added. Others have suggested that we feature the articles from the Brilliant prose page, a suggestion I agree with. --Raul654 04:03, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Raul654. The link to Brilliant prose from the main page is nice, but a line of selected articles from there would add to their recognition. Gentgeen 06:23, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I contend that the bar for "brilliant prose" is too high and the process for selection too slow to make it a viable idea. That's just my .02. jengod 20:37, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If "brilliant prose" articles are placed on the main page, it may encourage people to spend more time nominating, discussing and improving candidates. I support putting brilliant prose articles on the main page, at least for a trial period of a month or so to see how it goes. Tuf-Kat 22:54, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)

I am willing to give up a line on Anniversaries for a "Brilliant prose" line. But I think we should think of a better name than "Brilliant prose" - it just sounds cocky to me. Any ideas? --mav 03:51, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree. A good-great Wikipedia article isn't necessarily "brilliant prose"--it's a sophisticated, well-written organization of facts. Brainstorm results, not necessarily good ideas: "Honor Roll", "Reader's Choice," "Notable New Stuff", "Pages We Love", "Antistubs", "Ready Reference", "Sprung Fully Formed...", "Are We Good or What?", "Accelerating the Death of Britannica"  ;) To a certain extent I think the "nomination" process needs to be reconsidered, I mean, whom do I tell that the Martin Guerre article is great? Ditto The Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak and St. Francis Dam? I mean, maybe we need a Wikipedia:Reader's Choice page to start with? jengod 06:57, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

How would the brilliant prose be rotated onto the page? Randomly? How often? --Jiang

Take a look at my crazy set-up on Wikipedia:Reader's Choice. People can basically create a constantly refreshed list of top 5 "great articles" that illustrate the best of Wikipeia. I strongly believe that a "mediated" (i.e. Brilliant Prose) system wouldn't work--it's slow and it doesn't have the user-level (as opposed to admin-level) editorial control that makes wikipedia great. jengod 07:34, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I kinda like the name "readers choice". --mav

Regarding expanding New Articles to two lines: Having updated this section listing many times over the past few months, I respectfully disagree with your contention that many high-quality, new articles are produced every twenty-four hours. In my experience, frequently there are insufficient in number to completely replace just ONE line; one either leaves one or more of the current entries or goes back earlier than 24 hours.

This is by no means a slight to the excellent efforts of many hardworking contributors. It is just that the vast majority of the entries on Special:Newpages are very short (<1500 bytes), and for various reasons not all of those that are longer are suitable for listing. I have nothing against stubs, it just that most simply aren't complete articles and shouldn't be listed on the Main page. There are many excellent articles here, but we should look for other ways for listing them on the Main page -- like "Reader's Choice" -- than this one. -- Viajero 13:21, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• I think we're losing sight of the original idea, which was to add a line under Anniversaries to be called something like Selected Articles. This would then be a rotatiing selection from Wikipedia:Brilliant prose rather than good new articles which, I agree, would be difficult to expand to 2 lines. Bmills 13:39, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This idea of putting selected articles on the main page has been in "discussion mode" for *weeks* since I posted it here originally. Would it be bad etiquitte (sp?) just to "be bold" and do it? →Raul654 15:11, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

I've just been bold. Bmills 15:30, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• And made "featured articles" a link to the list new pages ;). Just kidding. Thanks for the good work. →Raul654 15:43, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

Announcement of vote

There is a vote going on at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Peerage that has just got underway on the above page as to whether biography pages about Peers should or should not have their title listed as part of their name, and if so, how it should be formatted.
James F. (talk) 21:36, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Spelling Vote

There was very little feedback on the spelling of Swiss cantons on Talk:Switzerland so far… I invite the community to take part: comment or vote. Kokiri 17:43, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

My guess is that a lot of users don't feel they can judge the issue. I've never visited Switzerland (closest I've been is about 100 miles...), but I am somewhat familiar with both French and German, and it's only by the barest of margins that I decided I even have an opinion about which names are best. Maybe I'm just apathetic, though. Onebyone 21:25, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The whole talk page (google tests; links to "official pages"; "principles") should/could help you to decide... but I don't want to force anyone. Kokiri 09:41, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It did help, it's just that since I needed so much help in the first place, it was a close-run thing. For a contrast, look at the Talk:Brussels stuff about French and Flemish names in Belgium - I'm staying well clear of that one no matter how good an explanation is on the talk page... Onebyone 14:21, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I called off the vote. It doesn't make sense like this. Kokiri 17:59, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Book of Praise

I suggest we start a new page Wikipedia:Book of Praise or something similar. I thought it would be nice to have a place where we can praise other people’s work in public. It’s a way to show that we appreciate each other’s contributions to Wikipedia. Kokiri 17:43, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I really like that idea! --Raul654 17:49, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Isn't it called Wikipedia:Brilliant Prose? And isn't there a danger that without a fairly well-understood definition of purpose it'll (at best) descend into cliquey mutual appreciation? MrJones 21:31, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This would appear to be duplicating the Barnstar idea. Angela. 22:57, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)

Just show appreciation for others either on your user page or their talk page, or both. --snoyes 23:05, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I didn't know about the Barnstar... (didn't get one so far ;-), but I like the idea better than what I suggested above. Maybe we can make the Barnstar more popular by having a mini Barnstar for smaller things? Kokiri 12:04, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia hardware

Could anyone make an announcement about what's going on with the new hardware (bought? being discussed? on its way?), and why Wikipedia seems to be so slow at this moment? Thanks! olivier 15:13, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

Here's an announcement: "There has been no official announcement at this time as to the state of the Wikipedia hardware situation, although some discussion is taking place on certain forums. The current server arrangement is exhibiting significant strain, especially during the peak times of Western Europe and America. Hopefully Wikipedia will be operating at more bearable speeds soon." - from your resident Wikipedia Press Secretary, Mark.

Question of unknown origin moved to Wikipedia:Reference Desk

The new server system (largely still to be bought with the raised money) is being actively discussed on the wikitech-l mailing list. Join it, or read the list archive. Alfio 20:07, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

State of Wikipedia

I'm worried about wikipedia. It seems to have become a hostile environment. There are still pockets of positive community left, but these are quickly becoming extinct as decline of civility mounts and AssumeGoodFaith is is being increasingly ignored. Trolls have been granted adminship, giving them the authority to delete pages, protect pages, and block users. Some wikipedians have no way of counterbalancing the trolls who have power, as the RFA page is a haven for these cancers to wikipedia, and they make false claims against some applicants. The general population is afraid to go against those who make the accusations and results in the trolls controlling the RFA appointees. Sysops have started to abuse their powers, protecting pages they are involved with, editing protected pages after an edit war has started, and threatening others with their powers. I can only hope that sysops are not abusing their power of deletion, as I cannot inspect deleted pages. I think that Wikipedians need to stop standing in the shadows afraid to speak against these trolls, and fight for what they believe is right. Only after :this happens, can wikipedia be truly restored to the peaceful environment it once was. This is an appeal to all those who are afraid of being labled as troublemakers, it is a call for threatened wikipedians to rise up and unite for the future of Wikipedia to ensure that our voice will be heard. We have strength in numbers that the trolls do not. Don't let Wikipedia be ruined by a minority of powerful(by virtue of fear they instill) individuals! Green Mountain 14:23, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Dear Green

Now that you have disturbed my peace, I must say I'd love to see a list of sysop trolls with evidence of their trolling activities. My own wxperience is, it seems, quite contrary to your own; I actually come here for the peace I experience as much as anything else. Bmills 14:28, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

In my experience Wikipedia is as hostile an environment as ever. Calling someone a troll without giving any evidence to support your claim is an ad hominem, and not acceptable. Also inacceptable is calling someone a "cancer". Which admin do you believe to be a troll? Contrary to the way you portray it, non-admins are able to vote and voice their opinions on RfA (as you have done numerous times). Any case of admins abusing their powers should be documented on RfA, and if grave enough result in them being made non-admins.

"..., can wikipedia be truly restored to the peaceful environment it once was.".

I thought you have only been here for one month. Either you believe that the situation has degraded considerably in one month and you refer to one month ago as "once", or you are (as many suspect) alexandros/aplank and are lying to and deceiving wikipedia by claiming that you are not. --snoyes 14:42, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

So what actions would you suggest? And why? What specific problems are you having? This reads rather like the first paragraph of a moral panic piece in a tabloid newspaper to me. I hope the sentiment is genuine. I'll have a look at your edit history when I have a little time. MrJones 14:46, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If you are angry that your Requests for adminship is deferred or denied because there are some hints that you may be another user who applied for adminship unsuccessfully before - why the heck do you insist on being an admin? You can do good work without the powers to delete articles, block users or protect articles - and if you ever use those powers the way you claim others you'd experience a more hostile environment for sure. andy 14:49, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I never called any person a cancer, and I never called any person a troll. In contrast, I was called a liar by many people on RfA, and users were basing their oppositions on a hunch that a user named Wik(and some others) had. I see no way of proving that I am a different person than my brother. As a result, it would be better if users gave me the benifit of the doubt, since I have caused no problems on wikipedia. It isn't fair to base your decision on the fact that my parents had more than one child, since I have no control over that and cannot change it. This is what a troll does, opposes things for no reason. I only made a request for adminship. I am not intent on becoming an admin. I am intent on being judged fairly by my peers, and this is not happening. My brother, (although he is sometimes beligerent), told me that he was taking a break from wikipedia for this very reason. I don't want to fight with people. I just want people to judge me based on who I am, not based on something as stupid as the possibility that I am my brother. If I were my brother, and I wanted to pretend to be someone else, I wouldn't make it obvious that I was related to myself, and I would probably use a proxy so there would be no thoughts that I were an "imposter". Green Mountain 15:28, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree about the admin part. Being an adminstrator doesn't give you superiority at all. And you'd probably find the extra powers boring and only rarely useful. I get by quite fine without being an administrator. - Mark 15:20, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Refreshing Brilliant Prose Voting Deadline and Proposal

It's time to put this to bed. I propose starting the work of removing articles from Wikipedia:Brilliant prose that have been voted off. But we need to agree a voting outcome, or set of outcomes. Here's what I propose for now:

• Articles with Keep votes and No remove votes remain
• Articles with a majority of Removes go.

Articles with one or more Removes but a majority of Keeps go to Wikipedia:Brilliant prose candidates under the heading Nominations after voting. Users who voted remove (or anyone else) will have one week to lodge specific objections. If no objections are forthcoming, articles will be restored to BP at the end of that week. If objections are raised, the article will go through due process.

I await a flood of better ideas. Bmills 13:06, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Downloading Wikipedia

I am an avid user of Wikipedia. I use it regularly on my laptop. The problem is I am not always connected to the internet. Therefore I would like to be able to download a local copy to my laptop for use when offline. Is this legal ? Is it possible by using apropriate software ? (I have used HT Track to do similar tasks before). I will of course keep on using the online version when possible :-)

        Frode, Norway

See Database download. A Website Sider/Grabber like HTTrack is too heavy on the servers,don't use it. There are some older static-html dumps,but only up to date database-dumps. Martijn 14:39, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

There are no official offline distribution. There are regular backup dumps, but to use them you need to setup lots of special software - basically, recreating an entire wikipedia on your laptop. On the Wikipedia:Database download page there are links to a couple of experiments to make html versions out of wikipedia. Alfio 19:49, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Reliable?

Is this site entirely reliable for research purposes? Meaning the content is reviewed and checked before accepted, or can any moron out there just write some BS about the topic and put it up?

Anyone can write anything, and anyone else can (and usually does) correct or remove the incorrect info. Dori | Talk 06:39, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

There is junk here, but there is junk in all textbooks, no matter how good. Wikipedia has the advantage that the disagreements are out in the open. If you want to do research, read the article and then the talk pages. And make corrections if you see something wrong. WormRunner 06:46, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

For each subject area, some authors are better than others. Like anything else on the Internet, YOU have to evaluate how reliable an author is...Pollinator 06:48, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Factual errors do get into articles. The articles are reviewed by non-experts, so subtle details (especially in the more technical articles) may be incorrect. That said, errors can creep into even "reliable" sources like Britannica (See Making fun of Britannica). Wikipedia has a quantity-oriented mentality - you'll find a vastly more information here than you would in a paper encyclopedia --Raul654 06:53, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Tamil Wiki - language issues

I could see that the Tamil Wiki found at http://ta.wikipedia.org used some hard/old Tamil words. Personally I think, only few Tamilians can follow the articles easily. It seems that they've tried to find some new words for non-existing Tamil words; and I think, for such words it is better to go for "transcription" than "translation". But, I could also see that English Wiki has also "simple" version. So... my question is: Is it Ok to use such hard/odd words especially in Tamil Wiki?--Rrjanbiah 05:37, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You might want to contact the person that did the translation: m:LanguageTa.php. Some messages may be fixed by editing these: ta:Wikipedia:All messages, but you have to be an admin, for that you might want to leave Brion a message here: m:User:Brion VIBBER/Todo list. hth, Dori | Talk 05:49, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

It is a matter best discussed by literate Tamilians. Such language/culture-specific policies, as opposed to the fundamentals of Wikipediaism, should be left to be devised by the native speakers. The English WP has no control over the Tamil language. Though it may be the case that the majority of the English speakers agrees to use "simple" version in some of its articles, by no mean should it be what the Tamilians obey as well without question.

The general idea is that our encyclopedias should be understood by most literate native speakers (sure, there are always some who cannot). I assume that the original author of those Tamil articles you spoke of is a native Tamilian as well? Perhaps such matter is better discussed with him, with opinions of other native Tamilian Wikipedians. Autonomy is a good thing, since our experience is uniquely English and cannot dictate yours, as it may not apply. Be Wiki, be free. --Menchi (Talk)â 05:51, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)‪

As I am the one who either translate or wrote fresh most of the articles found in the Tamil Wiki, I like to clarify certain issues relevant to languages like Tamil. Tamil is a very old Language with an impressive array of litterature to its credit. However, it is fairly weak in expressing modern knowledge, as it always have to create new words to cope up with the fast growing knowledge base. It is obvious that many of these words will take time to be accepted and go into wider circulation. This process is very slow due to the fact that for the vast majority of the world Tamil population who live in Tamilnadu, India, the medium of education is English not Tamil. However the situation in Srilanka where the native Tamil speakers are comparatively small in numbers, technical words related to modern knowledge are understood better as the medium of instruction for them in school is Tamil. The lack of co-ordination between Indian and Sri Lankan Tamil scholars in creating new technical words also affects the widespread understanding of tamil words.

I am a native Tamil speaker from Sri Lanka, who had my education in Tamil medium. I do not think this fact pause a serious problem in communicating to Indian Tamils in Tamil. I do not deny that my style of Language and translation too had caused concern to Rrjanbiah. It is a problem only because, at the moment I am the one who contributed or translated more than 80% of the 80+ articles in Tamil Wiki. I am sure More and more people, particularly from Tamilnadu will get involved as contributors and solve this problem. --Mayooranathan 07:28, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This is not about criticism or lack of coordination or rant. This is the concern about the useful nature of Wiki. My question was: Is it ok to use such hard words in Wiki according to Wiki ethics? As you said, we can improve it when many people join this venture. -- Rrjanbiah 08:18, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

In that case, I'd say that the answer is yes, you can use hard words. Someone else can always come along and explain what the hard word means if they think it is too difficult for too many readers. Onebyone 10:49, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think you answered the question when you wrote that most Tamil are in India and educated with the English words. If you follow the English (most common usage) guide, that means that the articles should be named by the most common (meaning English for difficult words) form and should use the created or difficult Tamil word in the first paragraph and have a redirect page from the difficult to the easy form. While the Wikipedia isn't about language evangelism, even if evangelism is desired, you can't evangelise if most people don't find the article which will tell them the Tamil word you want them to use.:) Jamesday 03:22, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Manned mission to Mars

Just saw this on slashdot - Bush to Announce New Missions to Moon, Mars. Think it deserves a place on the main page, but I wouldn't know what article to link to. But it's great news nonetheless --Raul654 05:27, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'd wait till you actually does that announcement. A lot of media already expected the same for the centennial of the Kitty Hawk flight, but he said nothing in his speech then. And I guess he will announce a return to moon, and more unmanned Mars exploration, with the long term goal of a manned Mars mission, not a manned Mars mission directly. But don't forget his father also announced a return to moon plan, and nothing happened. andy

HMS Illustrious

As I was going through wiki, I noticed that we have an article on HMS Illustrious, which is essentially an overinflated disambig page. However, some pages link to the different forms of the ship's name (Invincible_class_aircraft_carrier). Certainly, we have lots of pages for individual ships. So do we move the entry on the Illustrious page to the specific page, or do we leave it as-is? --Raul654 03:41, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'd say leave it. There are certainly individual pages for the current Invincible class, but the current Illustrious page is more than a glorified disambiguation page for the earlier ships. I note that it contains consolidated battle honours for all the ships. -- Arwel 13:49, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

That's not an overinflated disambiguation page. It's a history of the ships of the same name, a long-standing naval tradition being naming of ships after predecessors and using that history for morale and tradition purposes. Articles which want to refer to a specific ship should refer to the specific ship. If there isn't an article on the specific ship, the one from the history of the name article would be a fair start. Jamesday 02:52, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Wiki Interpreter Application for Windows?

Is there any? I have been having problems accesing the website ultimately (hint: announcements & server status), and lost a few articles because I forgot to save them up in a TXT file while trying to get a preview of them. C'mon, it shouldn't be that hard to develop! :p

- Maio 18:43, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If I understand well you want a software application that can translate Wiki-code to HTML (that is, '''Bold''' to Bold). After you get the HTML code in a file you will be able to preview it with any web browser. I could develop this software in VB.NET, Java or C, after my exams if I have time. Leave a comment on my talk page so that I will remember you when/if I build something and inform you. But dont expect something before I finish with my exams (25th January) Optim 18:55, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This is something frequently discussed on the mailing lists and once or twice here too. I think there are about half a dozen half finished interpreters in Java, Python, C et cetera. None of them usable. Of course if Wikipedia was XML everyone could have a copy of the stylesheets and offline translations would be a piece of cake... CGS 20:46, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC).

A failed browser connection should not cause you to lose the article. Just hit the "back" button, and your browser will show the text in the textbox again (at least, this is what happens in my Opera 6). Alfio 23:01, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

IE loses the text (unless you have done preview). Mozilla doesn't. Secretlondon 23:38, Jan 8, 2004 (UTC)

I used to use IE on a Mac, and it kept the text if I pressed "back", though I know IE on a Windows at my old school library lost it. Tuf-Kat 04:35, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

Magnus Manske has written one in C++, for Windows. It's called "Waikiki". It seems to basically work. Originally there was a binary distribution available, but I think that's offline now. The source code is in sourceforge cvs, see [3]. -- Tim Starling 02:25, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

Whenever I'm aware that I've typed into a browser's edit window for more than about five minutes, I do a "select all" and a "copy." Then when I press the action button ("save page" and "show preview" in the case of Wikipedia) and notice an ominous pause, I usually have the presence of mind to bring up a text editor and do a "paste." I don't say this is the best solution. I don't say this is a substitute for a powerful Wikipedia server, or a browser that works properly (Safari seems to), or an offline WIkitext renderer. I don't say it always works for me. I just say it's what I do. It's also an observation of mine that when I "lose" an hour's work due to a text editor crash or whatever, it really only takes about ten minutes to redo it—and, despite Ellen Feiss, the result is usually better (it basically enforces one more rewrite). Again, that doesn't mean that server or application crashes are actually a blessing in disguise; I'm just saying that the loss usually isn't as big as it seems in that first horrifying moment. Dpbsmith 02:40, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Tilde

Hi, this is User:Optim. I just discovered that I cannot sign my posts with the fou tildes when I am using my new laptop. It has an Italian keyboard, and AFAIK there is no way to type the tilde without using some software or ascii code. Yes, really the italian keyboard has no tilde key, and it is not the only key that is missing. is there any HTML code I can use to type the tilde? does MediaWiki support another way to sign, without using the tilde? if some Italian is reading this, I would appreciate it if you could tell me how I can type the tilde with italian keyboards. thanks, Optim

You could cut'n'paste this: ~~~~ -- Finlay McWalter 15:43, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

or (if you're running windows): hold down ALT and type 126 on the numeric keypad (not so easy on laptops) -- Finlay McWalter 15:47, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC) If that doesn't work ALT 007e might work (probably won't though) theresa knott 15:50, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I've just had another idea - If you have Word you can go to insert them symbol, find the tild and click on the shortcut key. Here you can customise the keyboardb to make say ALT t print a tilde. theresa knott 15:54, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

or you could just set the keymap your familiar with, and magic-marker the keyboard. -- Finlay McWalter 16:03, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thank you all for your useful replies! I decided to use Fn+Alt+126. BTW what's the code for ` ? Thank you very much and Best Wishes for Peace Profound .^..Optim 18:27, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You can use the numbers from This table -- Finlay McWalter 18:31, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

thank you Optim 19:01, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Change the keyboard layout from "Italian" to "Italian (142)". This only moves the €[]@#{} keys around (used with right-alt), and makes the ~` keys available. To get the keys at the new location, type Right-alt+3/5/7/8/9/0/q/e/+/ù for #/€/{/[/]/}/@/€/~/`, respectively. Κσυπ Cyp   00:53, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Reusing image of one language in other

I wanted to add image of Shirin Ebadi to the Tamil version சிரின் எபாடி. As the image is already in English version, I don't want to re-upload it for the Tamil version. Could anyone tell me the syntax for reusing the image of English verion in Tamil version --- Rrjanbiah 12:36, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

No, currently you have to upload it again. There is some discussion on Meta about the pros/cons of a (maybe additional) central image repository, as many images are language-independent. andy 13:11, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, but... I could see almost all other language versions are resusing the images without uploading it again. For example, you may visit தேசியக் கொடிகளின் பட்டியல் to see how they have reused the images of English version. Do you think, it's wrong?Rrjanbiah 04:24, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes I do think it is wrong. For what I understand, this is a page in Tamil in the English WikiPedia, isn't it?

Sorry...The link should be http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/தேசியக்_கொடிகளின்_பட்டியல் -- R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah, Rrjanbiah 09:16, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

BTW, I second your question: I had the same concern with the French WikiPedia and e.g. the picture of David Hume. Marc Girod 08:52, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Do remember to add interwiki links to both versions, in case it is suspected/discovered to be a copyvio. --Jiang 00:59, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Jia, I couldn't get your point about "copyvio". Could you please elaborate why interwiki link is necessary? Rrjanbiah 04:24, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If another language wiki discovers that this image is a copyright violation, they'll be able to track down the image elsewhere on wikipedia and have those images deleted. If we suspect that image to be a copyright violation here, we'll have a link to where it came from, so we can ask the user from the other language wp where he d/l'd it. --Jiang 04:45, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

How to disambig people with the same name?

An article which I recently rewrote, Racak incident, includes a link (carried over from the previous version of the article) to William Walker. This turns out to be an article about a 19th century American rather than the present Ambassador William Walker. How do you disambig two separate people with the same name? -- ChrisO 11:35, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I had this problem with Robert Kelly (poet). My inelegant solution is kind of self-evident. Bmills 12:50, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Bmills is exactly right. In the case of people with the same name, you either seperate them based on middle name or occupation. --Raul654 13:13, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

And link on top of the more famous William Walter ''Alternate meaning: [[William Walker (diplomat)]]''. --Jiang 01:01, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Link Names

I really think the wikipedia page link system could be improved.

I have recently written an article which made reference to the peasants revolt

I have to try about 8 variations before I hit upon the correct version - or do I mean the way that was choosen by whoever set the page up first. most of the variations were caused by capitization.

i had similar difficulty with references to Henry VI part 1 and King Henry VI

and difficulties to describe a put name

is the pub the George or the George or The George

The point being most of these are tedious difficulties which should really be automatically dealt with

i.e. can't the engine be told to ignore (the's a's an's) etc. at the beginning of a link

can't it be told to ignore capitals (I know this is a unix thing but unix is wrong in human terms, in a search in a dictionary capitals are irrelevant.)

• I partly agree. Why are links case-sensitive? There should never actually be two articles at the same location differing only in case, so links should be case-insensitive. Articles themselves could continue to reside at case-sensitive locations. --Delirium 09:22, Jan 8, 2004 (UTC)
  • The situation where you might reasonably have articles differing only in case is where one is a word and the other an acronym. But disambiguation could always be used to deal with these cases if article names were case insensitive (as I think they should be - not just linking, but the names themselves). Onebyone 11:19, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)
  • Sorry, wrong. It is perfectly OK to have Quantum Leap and quantum leap as separate articles. Captialization tells the reader that one is a proper name and one is a common term. Newbie should see Wikipedia:Naming conventions. --mav 11:38, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)
    • It's perfectly OK, but it isn't necessary since if we didn't have case sensitivity, those two would just be disambiguated. The question, then, is whether the advantage of disambiguating by case alone is worth the problems caused by case-only errors. Onebyone 16:24, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)
      • I think it is. Redirects should be made to make linking in the above cases easier. True, there are problems with the current system, but I don't think case insensitivity will solve them. We follow normal English capitalization rules, so I don't see why there should be any more than minor problems resulting from case sensitivity. I also disagree with the suggestion that the software should ignore grammatical articles (e.g. the) at the beginning of titles -- this would then require moving The Animals to The Animals, a far less than ideal title because it is disambiguated and means that The Animals would redirect to animal, and no one would ever link to The Animals in an attempt to link to the article on animals. Tuf-Kat 18:40, Jan 8, 2004 (UTC)
  • I don't see how it's "wrong", mav. I do not think it's "perfectly okay" to have Quantum Leap and quantum leap. In fact, this is a terrible idea. People often search in lowercase in the search bar, in which case they get the wrong one; search-engines are case-insensitive; etc.; etc. It's a much better solution to have quantum leap and quantum leap (tv show) and have everything case-insensitive. --Delirium 01:16, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)
    • The information entries should be Quantum Leap and quantum leap. Don't confuse the information with metadata, the information which describes the information. The software should present the metadata in an appropriate manner, such as having case-insensitive searching, automatically inserting "see also" links, and showing such items reasonably in browsing screens. Indicating that Quantum Leap is a show by means of capitalization is actually overloading the character set for a non-text use. There should be different markers (keywords?) for the meanings of the phrase. Capitalization does not suggest thirtysomething was something. SEWilco 09:23, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)
    • I think that's a good approach. The aim of the standards for article names should simply be to give the best possible access to the information. See below. Andrewa 19:54, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

On the subject of capitalisation, I think article names should be mostly case-insensitive. This is because, as I said above, the aim of the article name is to give the best possible handle to the article, to enable it to be retrieved most easily.

I say mostly because I think there is a correct way to capitalise, and that we should follow it. So, I don't think the software should be case-insensitive. After many years of study of Formal Logic (note the caps) I know that there is a big difference between 'the university of Sydney' and 'the University of Sydney', but most of our readers don't know or care, and it's not our job to force them to find out in order to use Wikipedia.

And prescriptive linguistics is on the way out anyway, so it could be argued that the difference I've cited above does not even exist for most of the population. Usage is everything.

This is how I think it should work:

• All article names should be 'correctly' capitalised as at present.

• If there's only one article by a particular name, case-insensitive, then all searches and links should point to it, case-insensitive.

• If there's more than one, then there should be a software-generated disambiguation page that links and "go to" will find. Searches will simply find all the occurrences.

• There should be an additional link syntax that allows an editor to make a particular link case-sensitive. But if this link fails to point to anything simply because it is case-sensitive, then it behaves case-insensitive.

• In the case of two or more articles such as the Quantum Leap/quantum leap articles that are distinguished only by case, there should be software-generated links at the top of each pointing to the others.

Lots of details to work out here but I think it's doable. Andrewa 19:54, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

RMS Lusitania rewrite?

Apparently RMS Lusitania is an ancient copyright violation that's since been wikified and edited heavily, but still largely resembles the copyrighted text. See Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements#December 23 for more. Is someone knowledgeable willing to rewrite the article, salvaging any non-coypvio text if possible? At the very least the image ought to be out of copyright, and some of the text may be. --Delirium 23:20, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

Comparing the texts, this one needs a complete rewrite even if it includes the same facts. Way too much in common at the moment - I'd remove almost all but the first paragraph, image and vital statistics as infringing... Jamesday 09:04, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Socialism

Someone please revert the edit Ed Poor made to Socialism while protected. --Wik 17:49, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

Socialism was unprotected by Eloquence about three minutes ago. -- Cyan 18:11, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As soon as I read that, the words "And they're off" comes to mind :) --Raul654 21:41, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes, well put. (;-> Andrewa 09:49, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia guide to the See also lists

A question was posed in Talk:Microsoft_.NET concerning whether it is appropriate to have links in a "See also" list that are already in the body of an article. I did some searching in the Style Guides, but couldn't find a clear answer to the question there (it was mentioned in Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#See also and Related topics styles but was mixed with the topic of "When articles are short and don't have headers..." Is there a clear Wikipedia Style Guide entry to cover this? If not, what should it say? Bevo 17:15, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I don't know if there is a rule, but i'd imagine that if a link is already in the article, then it isn't a see also. Adding any link twice in one article is a bit like overkill, IMHO. Bmills 17:19, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

What about if a page is linked as part of a natural sentence, but also should go in 'see also'? E.g. "John Doe's father suffered from paranoia, which had a large influence on young Doe." and then later a link to 'See also: paranoia', if Doe had done some studies in that field? (Yes I suck at giving examples) — Jor 18:46, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

I would (and do) include a link in the text and in the see-also section, when it is a rather long text and when the link links to something really relevant for the page. -- till we *) 18:52, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

In order to provide an example, can you cite an existing Wikipedia article where this dual linkage is in effect? Bevo 19:30, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Take a look at Artificial script for a short example: conlang is linked both as linktext, and under 'see also'. Short example still (the article needs expanding), but proves the point. — Jor 20:17, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

One example could be The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the section is Related Articles), another Sociology. Probably not the best examples ... -- till we *) 20:26, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

Here's an example: fluid dynamics. Many links at the end, and a good number of them (e.g. Mach number, Reynolds number) are already linked in the text. I think it works; if someone insists on changing it I'll have to make a list of fluid dynamics topics. moink 20:36, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The answer is no and no. I think we're told not to link the same thing mutiple times. --Jiang 22:21, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I thought so too. I just can't find a definitive statement today saying so in the Wikipedia Style guides I've reread. Bevo 22:41, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Please tell us what to do in cases where what we're told is wrong. Specifically, people are making arguments here on a case-by-case basis, which I don't think can be entirely dismissed just by asserting a blanket ban. That said, "see also" does rather suggest a list of things which haven't been mentioned yet, and something which has been linked to has in particular been mentioned. "Related articles" might be better in such cases. Onebyone 22:55, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Not answering OneByone's question, but I'd say that there are some circumstances where it's perfectly appropriate to have duplicate links, even in the "body" of the article. For example:

• In a long article with multiple sections, someone may very likely skip an entire section to get to what they're interested in. Why make them search for a link?
• It's almost a necessity in "chronology of" or "year" artilces. Take 2003 as an example. Supreme Court of the United States is linked numerous times -- and it should be. It would be worse than pointless to force someone to search in January for a link related to something that happened in December.

That being said, it certainly is possible to put in too many links. However, I'd hate to see a blanket prohibition.

Perhaps what would help is an automatic list (similar to "what links here") that shows all the links away from a page, preferably using the text as it appears in the article. -Anthropos 23:38, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I like that idea. WormRunner 04:20, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It's not a blanket ban or prohibition. The manual of style states that its edicts are not in any way mandatory and that flexibility should be allowed. I personally add duplicate links within the text for long articles (provided these duplicates are spaced far apart). It's just a suggestion... --Jiang 00:06, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Right. The present discussion is just about the "See also" list of links, not links in general. To me, the word "also" strongly implies that the link has not already been used within the article. I see that Wikipedia:Manual of Style now has some unambiguous suggestion regarding the content of the "See also" lists. Bevo 04:07, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Inline links are good but I might duplicate some with See Also entries where a particular topic is worth highlighting as of particular interest. I can't think of a case where I've done this, though... Jamesday 08:50, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'd consider "See also" to be completely different from "Related articles". "Related articles" can have links that have already been mentioned in the article. "See also" should not duplicate the links. There need to be policy distinguishing these two terms and their usages. Or there should be a convention that the terms can be used inter-changeably. Jay 16:13, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I've noticed more articles lately that have the "Related articles" section, either in place of, or in addition to a "See also" list. Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#See also and Related topics styles doesn't give much advice on when to use one or both of these lists. That guide is especially vague about the "Related articles" list. It seems to imply that there is a special need for that list, but from looking at articles that employ it, I can't tell how it differs from "See also". Bevo 21:25, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Re your query about the artificial script article and the linked conlang, you really don't need two links to the same article. Especially, in this case where you have a redirect from conlang to constructed language anyway, why would you want two links to conlang?. If you feel the "see also" gives it more emphasis, then just use that one only. --Dieter Simon 00:10, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• I think that See Also can include important links found in the article text. Providing an important link in the main text andnot including in under See Also assumes that the readers do read the whole aticle. This is an incorrect assumption. For example, I rarely read the whole text of a long article, and I use See Also to find other articles I am interested in. If See Also does not provide all the important links, I am forced to read or search the article text (but Mozilla does great job listing all the links for me). I think the See Also should be broken into two lists, the firt with the links not included in the article and the second with the duplicate links. Optim 16:40, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but "important" shouldn't get out of hand. It should also be See also instead of See Also. Why capitalize? --Jiang 22:28, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Other extensions?

- Do we own and non .com, .org extensions? We should buy up any major ones, like ca, de, uk, all those, just so we don't have spammers buying them and gaining money from our name. -- user:zanimum

We have a few but they're expensive. A number of Wikipedians have bought the relevant domain in their own country and donated it (or provided it for use) to Wikimedia. -- Tim Starling 03:46, Jan 8, 2004 (UTC)

Vietnamese casualties, Vietnam War``

Can anyone tell me the number of Vietnamese dead and woundded from 1965-1973 (the Vietnam War) and cite source and page number?

Murray Polner [email protected]

• Vietnam War#Casualties - The lowest casualty estimates, based on North Vietnamese statements which are now discounted by Vietnam, are around 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. Vietnam released figures on April 3, 1995 that a total of one million Vietnamese combatants and four million civilians were killed in the war. The accuracy of these figures has generally not been challenged. It is unclear how many Vietnamese were wounded in the war. --Raul654 15:34, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

accuracy disputes

The mysterious Zv insists on placing a notice saying "The factual accuracy of this article is disputed" at the anti-Zionism article. This article was the product of a lot of work by me, Danny, Zero and even RK to achieve a balanced and NPOV outcome. So far as I know its accuracy is not disputed by anyone except Zv, and even he doesn't actually say what accuracy issues he has with the article. I don't want this tag on the article, but if I remove it he just puts it back. Suggestions? Adam 06:19, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Fleet Air Arm versus Luftwaffe

Hello,

I was attempting to find information about any battles between Fleet Air Arm (FAA) Corsairs and Hellcats versus German ME 109s and FW 190s? I know that the first German aircraft shot down over Britain was by a pair of FAA Martletts (AKA. Widcats); and I was curious to see how well the Royal Navy F4Us and F6Fs did against the German fighters?

Thanks,

Darwin [email protected]

question for Mr Maltin

Hope this isn't bothering busy people. I'm new to computers and want to ask Leonard Maltin a question: Is there such a thing as a movie book/listing which goes by subject rather than by title? There may be many movies on - or during - the Civil War, but who knows what their titles are? And how would one find out?

Thanks for any help!

Donald [email protected]

I don't know how often Leonard Maltin drops by here, but I can tell you that Haliwell's Filmgoers Companion lists and discusses films by topic area. Any good bookshop will carry it. Adam 07:42, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Happy Wikipedia Day

'May all of you have PEACE PROFOUND and Master Your Life! Optim 01:21, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Happy Wikipedia Day

May all of you have PEACE PROFOUND and Master Your Life! .·. .·. .·. ^{.·. .·. .·.} .·. .·. .·. Optim 01:21, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC) .·. .·. .·. ^{.·. .·. .·.} .·. .·. .·.

Removal of items from Votes for Deletion prematurely

Is there anything (save entering an edit war) that can be done if a user unilaterally removes a discussion from VfD without it going through the 5 day process? How should that be dealt with? Thanks, The Fellowship of the Troll 02:43, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Frivolous entries such as listing Wikipedia can be removed immediately. -- Tim Starling 03:40, Jan 14, 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry - pehaps you can explain - the article Wikipedia (not the main page or anything like that) is subject to all of the same criticisms as the other article for debate - I can't see how this is frivolous, or any more frivolous than listing other articles about wikipedia for deletion. The Fellowship of the Troll 04:06, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Fellowship, you're trolling. Trolling is a violation of Wikiquette. Violations of Wikiquette are a bannable offense. Please desist.—Eloquence

That may be your point of view, but there was active discussion on the article. accusing someone of trolling is not a good excuse of bypassing process with impunity. You can sling abuse, but it doesn't justify unilaterally deleting things without discussion or justification. For the record, I am not trolling, nor is there any mention, let alone definition, of trolling on the page you reference. The Fellowship of the Troll 04:13, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Well I think he has a (weak) point. Listing Wikipedia on VfD is pretty stupid and just wasting everybody's time. But technically he is right. Removing it was the right thing to do as no rules can cover everything and might need to be disregarded when common-sense prevails. Arguing about it is a further trolling. SpellBott 08:04, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Was the urgent necessity of removing the VfD listing and votes (without even noting that it was removed) while debate was in progress really greater than the possibility of letting the process take its course? The purpose of VfD is so that the whole Wikipedia, not just one person's judgement, is brought to bear. The person in question undermined the process by shortcutting it and then refusing to discuss why while making accusations of misbehaviour against me. You might think it obviously that it should have been removed, but the right thing to do would have been to let VfD run its course, and the community decide.The Fellowship of the Troll 08:26, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

One might ask why a new user thinks they can lecture the rest of us on our own process. —Morven 11:42, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Or why an established users feels they can display such blatant contempt for it. The Fellowship of the Troll 16:17, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As dirty as this makes me feel, I have to agree with Fellowship's logic on this one. Wikipedia (wikipedia's article on itself) is an article like any other, and subject to the same rules. I agree that the whole thing is frivilous - the article is obviously well written, on topic, etc. If Fellowship didn't like the article, he should have edited it, not listed it on the VFD. With that said, (as far as I can tell) there's no rule against frivilous posting to the VFD. He listing should have stayed, or a new rule against frivilous listing be made. →Raul654 16:38, Jan 14, 2004 (UTC)

• Just reread http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#What_to_list_on_VfD and I'm trying to work out which reason listed there would justify listing Wikipedia? Bmills 17:06, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)
  • Upon further reading, reasons 2 (Don't list articles that just need heavy editing) and 6 (Don't list POV articles) both apply in this case. I retract my previous statement - Tim was correct to delete the VFD listing, and Fellowship (officially) is trolling. →Raul654 17:10, Jan 14, 2004 (UTC)

There are two possibilities here, either 1. Wikipedia should have been removed from VfD, in which case Internet trolling phenomena on Wikipedia should also be removed from VfD, for the same reasons as Wikipedia OR 2. Wikipedia should not have been removed, in which case both articles should stay on VfD, and, if there is consistancy of logic, either both be kept or both deleted. Thanks, The Fellowship of the Troll 18:12, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Fellowship, I think it is perfectly acceptable to challenge people to explain the inconsistency in the treatment of these two articles, under the deletion nomination for ITPOW. My understanding is that neither you nor anyone else actually wants the Wikipedia article deleted; and that's the reason why, in my opinion, removing the listing is not a violation of our process. -- Cyan 18:16, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You're right, I don't want to delete either article, but I believe that the Wikipedia procedures should be applied fairly. This happens regular (for example discussion about recipies of numbers) where, because on article is listed for deletion, the larger issues of similar articles comes to the fore. The Fellowship of the Troll 18:21, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Watchlist proposal

I propose that we enable watchlists during off-peak hours. I mean, I never had a problem with responsiveness between 1 AM and 7 AM. →Raul654 01:11, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)

1AM and 7AM in which timezone? Optim 01:21, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Delete Request

Would someone please Gabriel García Márquez so that Gabriel Garcia Marquez can be redirected there? Thank you. jengod 02:18, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)

HELP ME

I have been dating a 26 year old female who has been suffering from a severe ED. She suffers form Anorexia and bulimia. She has been in treatment centres 2 times at a great cost to her parents. I met her 3 years ago and she was out of recovery and was at a healthy weight. She got better with ups and downs and she is now slowly declining quickly. She is become suicidal, her health is of concern (heart, blood pressure, everything). She is loosing weight and she is doing things that I would not expect. She recently cheated on me and told me as she felt guilty. I am an educated guy who knows I should run but I love her and have stuck behind her for the last 3 years with hospital, doctors and counselling visits. And all all the good times. I know it hard to offer advice but I don't know what to do. I am scared to death. DO I give up. I have my life together but feel I am taking on her problems. This is only because I love her. I feel she manipulates me and I fall into the trap. I ignore behaviours when I know she is vomiting or restricting. I am concerned about the severity of her illness and feel she might have a personality disorder. She is 5,10 and at one point 88 pound!!! This scares me but I have fallen in love with her. I work for the RCMP and I am aware of some shoplifting and reckless behaviour but I still stay. Am I an idiot. Should I cut my losses. Please offer me some suggestions. I long do I do what is recommended and is not working?????

Legalities of article copying

Compare en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Norway to http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/History-of-Norway I have found the two articles to be identical, word for word. The only reference to Wikipedia on the nationmaster page is on the very bottom of the page in a font so small, I had to copy the text to another program to read it.

GnuFDL, Section 2: "...You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute...."

Is small text that is pixelated out of recognition on my monitor considered a technical measure of obstructment?

Fast Meter

I would like to know why my electric meter is going twice as fast as my niebours and when I just use my microwave or my stove it spins just as fast? My mother lives in a 4 bedroom house and her meter spins slower then mine and she uses the heater more. [email protected]

How do I get a page annouced??

Help! I want to have the Ralph Yarbarough page announced on Jan. 27th for the anniversary. Thanks!

Two things:

1. Make sure the article meets the criteria specified on Wikipedia:Selected Articles on the Main Page
2. Make sure the anniversary is listed on January 27 with a link to the article.

-- Viajero 21:01, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

ocean

Dear Sir/Madam,

Established in 1988, our company is producing high-quality swimwears and fitness suits. We are looking for new business partners (agents, distributors, retail chains, shopping malls, etc.) in the world. Our company has a registered trade-mark. For more information about our products and services, visit our website at www.ocean.hu or contact us by e-mail at [email protected].

Yours sincerely Mr Zoltan Varju

Mr Zoltan Varju Mr Ernő Halász Györgyi Hermann International Marketing Chief Executive Marketing manager Ocean Ltd Ocean Ltd Ocean Ltd Hungary Hungary Hungary

Sid McMath biography

Suggest inserting the following immediately after the word "century" in the the third paragraph from the bottom of your biography of Sid McMath.

Sidney Sanders McMath (June 14, 1912 - October 5, 2003) was a Democratic Governor of the State of Arkansas, United States.

Sidney 'Sid' McMath was born in Columbia County, Arkansas. McMath graduated from the University of Arkansas law school in 1936.

During World War II McMath served in the United States Marine Corps and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He took part in the battles of the Pacific Theater including the Battle of Bougainville. McMath won the Silver Star and the Legion of Merit.

When McMath returned from the war to Hot Springs, Arkansas he and other veterans became disenchanted with the political system and banded together to fight corruption in the city government.

McMath served as prosecuting attorney for Garland and Montgomery counties starting in 1947.

McMath was elected Governor of Arkansas in 1948 and entered office in early 1949. He was reelected in 1950.

McMath's administration focused on infrastructure improvement including new highways and roads and a medical center in the capital city. McMath supported anti-lynching statutes and appointed African-Americans to state boards. His administration improved the state's educational system. McMath also reformed the state's mental health system and increased the minimum wage.

McMath was defeated in the 1952 election. He ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate in 1954 and again for Governor in 1962.

He returned to the practice of law and was elected president of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers in 1976. He wrote a memoir entitled Promises Kept detailing both his years as governor and his military service. McMath remained active, speaking at Arkansas schools and events and supporting local organizations.

In a 1999 opinion poll of Arkansans McMath polled number four on the list of top Arkansas Governors of the 20th century. In a December 2003 forum of historians and journalists sponsered by the Old State House Museum, there was a consensus that McMath's early commitment to civil rights, particulalry his support of President Truman in the 1948 presidential election against Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, the abolitiion of the so called "white primary" in Arkansas (1949), the opening of the state's medical and law schools to African Americans (1949), McMath's relentless opposition to segregationist governor Orval Faubus, a former McMath ally, could eventually raise him to first place.

McMath's stature has been significantly increased in light of his highway department's paving of more hard surface roads than any previous administartion (and more than those paved by any other Southern state during his tenure) and his politically fatal war against Mid South Utilities, the dominant political force in state politics at the time, which operated in Arkansas as "AP&L", or Arkansas Power and Light Co. The corporation and its affiliates opposed exentsion of REA electrical power to rural areas, which they saw as a rich territory for their own eventual expansion. Fewer than half of Arkansas farm homes had electriciy in 1948. REA-affiliated cooperatives, however, were able to open service to those areas by 1956 as the result of Co-op enabling legislation enacted by Congress in large part at McMath's behest.

Mid South and its allies combined to defeat McMath in his 1952 re-elction bid and in his 1954 effort to unseat then-Senator John L. McClellan. McClellan, who maintained a lucrative law practice with Mid South's chairman and general counsel, referred to the REA coops as "communistic" during the campaign, which was conducted at the height of the "red-scare" attendant upon assertions by the late U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis)of communist influence in the Truman administation. McClellan, ranking member of the Army McCarthy subcommittee whose hearings were televised live during the lead up to the election, referred to the electric cooperatives as "communistic". McClellan narrowly defeated McMath in an election in which record numbers of black voters were trucked to the polls in Eastern Arkansas by planters who held their poll tax receiepts. In spite of McMath's consistent support for civil rights at great political risk, he lost heavily black Delta precicnts by beter than two to one margins.

Allegations of corruption in McMath's highway department, brought by a grand jury dominated by utility allies, were eventually proven unfounded in three separate proceedings. Two grand juries returned no indictments, but a third on which several Mid South managers served, returned three. All of the accused were acquitted. There was no allegation of personal wrongdoing by McMath. However, the allegations against his administration dogged McMath for the rest of his life and his biography includes a chapter refuting the charges and chastising his opponents for abusing the judicial system to fabricate them.

Sidney Sanders McMath died at his home in Little Rock, Arkansas. McMath had been released from the hospital the previous Wednesday after being treated for an irregular heartbeat.

Sid McMath Avenue in Little Rock is named for him.

Please e-mail me at [email protected] or call me toll free at 800-362-6284

You should edit the Sid McMath article yourself -- that's what a Wiki is for! Also the place to discuss the article is Talk:Sid McMath, not here. -- Arwel 16:08, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Watchlist timeframe

Trying again, as I didn't even get an answer from a developer last time. Can you please reduce the ridiculous 12-hour watchlist default? Those who want a long watchlist could still get it with one click. But why force it on everyone? It takes an eternity to come up. --Wik 03:43, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

I suggest making it an option in the preferences. I prefer having a 3 day watchlist so that I can track changes over the last couple days (for those rare days when I might be out). →Raul654 03:47, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I have always wanted a 1-day watchlist. Apparently everybody needs different length. Some want 1 hour, Raul wants 72, and some may want a week. --Menchi (Talk) 04:28, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

How often do I have to refute this nonsense? No one is harmed by a short default. If you want a long list, you click on My Watchlist, the short one will quickly come up, and then it's just another click to get whatever length you want. But as it is now, those who just need a short one have to wait pointlessly for the long one to come up, and repeating this waste dozens of times a day slows down the whole Wikipedia for everyone. --Wik 04:37, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

Previous discussions suggest the best way is to make a bookmark or shortcut to your preferred time period. Then it is irrelevant what the default is. Wik, please don't be rude. It is unnecessary and unhelpful. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 07:41, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I am not rude. This is not the best way. Few people want to use bookmarks so there will be no change in the overall speed. Set the default to one hour, and let those who want the longer ones use bookmarks (though they won't need bookmarks, they might just as well click on the (short and fast) watchlist and then on their desired timeframe - two clicks, just as many as they would need for the bookmark). Give me one good reason for the 12-hour default. --Wik 08:02, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

I always use the bookmark. I have use the link the sidebar less than 10 times in the past year. --Menchi ([[User talk:Menchi|Talk 08:16, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Pete! That tip is very handy. Now whenever I go to Watchlist, I get my desired 24 hr instead of 12. Wee! --Menchi (Talk) 08:16, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Not all users have such a long watchlist as you. The last time you asked for this change you got enough answers from users want to keep the default as it is, as it is more suitable for their usage of the watchlist. And you even got the suggestion of the bookmark. As long as there it is not possible to set it in your user preferences (I guess the developers have more pressing problems to solve than this one) I vote to keep as it is. And if you make a bookmark with the watchlist in your preferred timeout it will be one click for you and for those who like the current default. andy 10:22, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I also vote to keep it the way it is. And Wik, sentences like How often do I have to refute this nonsense? are rude. Bmills 10:28, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Not if it is nonsense. This is slowing everything down. Reducing it will be better for everyone. Those who prefer a 12-hour period typically also click on the watchlist only once in 12 hours. Someone who clicks on it 50 times a day typically doesn't need more than the last hour each time. So the vast majority of watchlists that have to be prepared by the server wouldn't have to be longer than 1 hour. Instead virtually all are 12 hours (the number of people who actually set up a bookmark is probably negligible). That is an incredible waste. Not all watchlists are as long as mine, true, but for me it takes minutes every time - that's time the server could better use to serve pages. --Wik 11:35, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

You have a serious problem accepting other people's viewpoints. Noone denied that for huge watchlists a long timeout is not useful, but declaring it nonsense to use a longer default timeout is not a good way to discuss the topic. With the same reasoning I can declare having long watchlists nonsense and ask for a watchlist limit of 100 entries. As only experienced users have long watchlists, these user should be able to create the bookmark to the timeout they prefer. andy 11:46, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Not the same reasoning at all. Long watchlists are not nonsense per se, since there would be no problem with a short default. And as a second best solution I wouldn't oppose a watchlist limit of 100 entries either. But that would have to apply to everyone; unilaterally cutting down my watchlist wouldn't help the overall situation, that's a typical tragedy of the commons situation. The problem is not just caused by the extremely long watchlists, but also the medium-length ones (and most of those users will not create bookmarks). Remember the default was reduced to 1 hour before, and not without reason, and it should be reduced again until the server situation is improved. Surely it's more important for anyone to improve the overall speed than having to do one extra click to get a longer watchlist when needed. --Wik 12:39, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

I currently see three days. That's about right for me. When it was less I always had to change it to a longer time to see enough to be useful. Most contributors are not as active as Wik and appear to use it somewhat differently. I tend to look at it once to see what I need to review and once more when I've done all I want during the day, leaving the first one open until I've finished with it. A week default for new users seems likely to be suitable and those of us who are more regular contributors get to deal with it, exploiting our better knowledge of how to do things. And yes,it looks as though a preference is the way to go, as developer time allows. Jamesday 12:09, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

When it comes to fast watchlist refreshes, I wonder whether checking 50 times a day is harmful, given the way slowing arguments down is one of the best ways to decrease tensions and let others intervene. There may be merit in caching the results and only generating a new report once an hour or two. Should help server load as well.:) Jamesday 12:18, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This should be a user preference setting. When it was 1 hour, it was useless (for me). 1 day is what I need. I have a bookmark to workaround it, but ideally it should "just work" as I want it. In fact what is slowing everything down here is the abysmal state of the server and associated hardware. I can't believe that this has been in this decrepit state for several weeks now with no resolution. Did the sys admins waste their (our?) money on a super new server only to have it die within a month? Very poor. I hope they are complaining bitterly to the supplier/manufacturer/whoever to GET IT SORTED. Personally I suggest they buy a rack of XServes and have done with it. Currently these seem to offer excellent price/performance as well as complete reliability and no stupid licensing fees. I'd be very willing to contribute to the funding if they decided to go this route. As it is, as I said, seems that the fund raising effort was wasted. This is not meant as a flame/troll to whoever is trying to get this thing up and running - it's just that from a contributor's/user's perspective, WP is just about unusable right now, and I would like that to change ASAP. Graham 03:01, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Check the wikitech mailing list - there's been intensive discussion of configurations, and so Jimbo only sent the order today. On top of that, the big database server is having still more hardware problems and won't go online again until they're resolved. Patience... Stan 03:45, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I have patience - just about ;-) I'm sure that nobody is standing idly by watching this whole thing go tits up, but it's a bit disappointing that a brand new server is having hardware problems just one month in. It doesn't bode well for its long term reliability, though I suppose it could be put down to "teething troubles". Let's hope so. Graham 03:55, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Wik on this one. Given that we have a serious issue with response time, especially at peak usage periods, an important question is, "How can we improve the response time with now with minimal expense and effort?" I'm not familiar with the implementation of the software, but it seems to me that a change in the default should require either very little or no developer time. I also don't know how large an impact chaning the default would have on response time, but it seems that we're at a point where we need to consider even marginal improvemenets.

So, even if the current default is the most popular compromise default, it may not be the best default in our current situation. This does seem to be a case where community benefit should prevail over any individual or sub-community benefit. Remember, using a bookmark works equally well for those who want a longer watchlist period.

We should also consider setting a maximum watch-list length. However, as I see it, this should rank below changing the watch-list period. First, the period will affect everyone who uses the watchlist feature, and thus will likely have a greater impact. Second, it could easily require more development effort to implement (though I don't know this for a fact).

The long-term solution is probably to have it be a user-preference. But this will certainly require more development time, and is unlikely to be available to us in the short term. Even then, there's still the question of what the default setting should be, and I'd argue that it should be set to a short period, as long as there are response-time issues.

If I recall, we recently had a period when the watchlist feature was entirely disabled in order to improve response time. I would be in favor of using this solution (until the hardware issues are resolved) if no other solution can be agreed upon.

-Anthropos 13:46, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Although I'd ideally want 3 days, frnkly I'll live with any temporary measure that improves response time. Tired of redoing lost work, etc. Bmills 15:20, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Talk:God controversy (sort of)

Could someone neutral could see a discussion between me -- Przepla and User:JackLynch on Talk:God. It is not a flame war, or something similar, but we seem unable to reach any conclusion. It looks to me, and to User:JackLynch -- as he indicated on my Talk Page like we are using different versions of English. Particularly, I solicit neutral opinions about my command of English and if I am asking so many strange questions and making so many misinterpretations of what User:JackLynch said. I would appreciate any advice pointing my mistakes in this discussion. Please move this requst to appropriate page if needed, (if you do so, please leave me a note on my talk). Przepla 10:11, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I tried clarifying some stuff on Talk:God, so maybe that will help? JackLynch 10:44, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Help needed

During the down fall( 1799) of Tippu Sultan , my ancestor migrated from ARABIA and came to the court of Tippu Sultan . He was appointed as Patel and was posted to Chickmagalore . Is it possible to obtain details about him from old records, if so what is the appropraite action I have to take . Thanks a lot Azeez

Português.

Pprque não tem versão em Português? Um abraço. Luis Teixeira. Belém-Pará-Amazônia-Brasil

Literal string

Are literal string enclosed within quotation marks?

Image irregularity

Anyone want to explain this one? Media:CDR-large doesn't work. But if you go to [[Image:CDR-large]] and click on it, it does. --Dante Alighieri 20:49, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Server downtime on January 13

Due to reorganization of the database servers (distribute load to several servers) there will be downtimes during the early hours of January 13 (UTC). During database downtime, access to wikipedia is restricted, and might become read-only. -- JeLuF 23:33, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

Is this why the upload page is currently returning a blank page? RedWolf 05:04, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

Is this likely to allow the end of the URL redirection to en2...org which screws up cookie management and seems to confuse the heck out of our Proxy Server? Phil 16:51, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

migration of the apaches

My daughter is currently working on a project for her school. She chose to do the project on the history of the Apaches. We have come upon many great sites with intensive information, but we have not found any information on why the Apaches migrated from Canada. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

"Apache" is a misnomer of sorts -- and describes a few groups of Athapaskan people -- who were, by culture, nomads -- following mountain ranges, rivers and game animal migration in North America from the Bering Strait, it is logical that the nomadic people who became known as Apache would eventually make it to Texas and Colorado. Try here: The Apache Indians: An Unknown Tribe- Davodd 20:26, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

Help I cant see international fonts.

Eg. arabic, tamil, hindi etc. I couldnt find any help regarding this. Using netscape 7.0

Picture copyright?

If I have a scanned picture that I give to wikipedia, what have I given to free domain then?

• The scanned copy and any derivate of it?
• The orgigrnal picture?

Same for a digital picture. I give a cropped and resized version, do I still have copyright of the original or not? Stefan 02:49, Jan 22, 2004 (UTC)

Steven Spielberg birthdate

Even Mr. Speilberg can't claim birthdays one year apart (although I'm sure he'd be glad to) so, was he born, as listed, in December of 1946 or 1947?

That's odd. I would claim my birthdays are always one year apart--plus or minus a day for leap years. But then I've always felt especially in tune with nature. More in tune than Speilberg, at least, or so it seems.168... 22:35, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Troll test

I would like somebody to make a page called Troll test, where we can follow a procedure to see if somebody is a troll. I was reading the Wikipedia:Internet trolling phenomenon article (I know its controversial) and contrasting it with what is put on internet troll, and trying to compare it to my own experiences of people being unfriendly, unreasonable, etc... Anyways, I would like a test made, or a set of criteria (if they meet 4 out of five of these specifications, they are a troll). This touches on a broader issue on the wiki, of what to do when somebody makes you upset, calls a name, etc..., without necessarily being a troll, but rather just any of us when were being wrong. On top of it, what can you do if there IS a troll? And how can you tell? All this stuff needs solving, but all I'm expecting (and only half-way, maybe I'll have to make it ;) is for somebody to make an article called "Troll Test (or something very similar, that tells you how to test a user to see if they are a troll, with some certainty (oh and if this is a bad place to be doing this, can you tell me where to go?) User:JackLynch 07:27, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Interesting idea. If implemented, I suggest instead we call it Trolling Test, which resonates better with "Turing Test" (or is that Turing test?)168... 07:32, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

hmm... I thought Troll Test had a better ring, but who cares, they could both link there. Glad to hear you like my idea! JackLynch 07:36, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Appeal

Can we please keep the display of usernames we sign our comments with as simple as possible. We're starting to see things like tex formulas and annoying colours (even light-grey - which is horrible to read on a white background). The next step in this arms race is obviously embedding images. I know we all yearn for attention, but perhaps writing a couple of "brilliant prose" articles is the most wiki-way of getting that attention. Thanks, snoyes 07:15, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think the user you're referring to pipes their signature, which I think is unhelpful in itself even if it's kept simple, and which a number of other users do too. I don't want to discourage creativity, but I do want to encourage focus on the goal of providing articles. I don't see how this sort of individualism furthers that goal. Andrewa 08:53, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

"You have new messages"

Two people have left messages for me tonight, but I got no message and only noticed because I saw Mav's edit on Recentchanges. Has this been disabled for performance reasons? Tuf-Kat 05:20, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)

It seems to be working for me... --mav 08:59, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I have the reverse problem: I check my messages, but the "Y.H.N.M." message doesn't go away. Vacuum 02:14, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

MLK

I am quite surprized that Martin Luther King's birthday was not included on the anniversaries for today.

Birthdays don't go there. Only event-oriented anniversaries do. See Wikipedia:Selected Articles on the Main Page. --mav 07:32, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Isn't Martin Luther King Day an event? Adam 10:20, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes. But that is on Monday. That article is also a bit stuby and may not be listed due to that fact. --mav

The two Georgias

Is it not an astonishing coincidence that both the Republic of Georgia and the State of Georgia have recently adopted new flags? Adam 03:14, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Synchronicity ? :) Optim 02:21, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Cardinals

Could I clarify whether it is WP policy that the word "Cardinal" should appear in the titles of biographical articles about Cardinals of the Catholic Church, and if so, whether they should come before or after the Christian name. Thus, is it George Pell, Cardinal George Pell, or George Cardinal Pell? Adam 01:04, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

So far as the article title is concerned, it should be George Pell according to Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(biographies)#Honorific_prefixes. So far as inclusion in the text is concerned, I've seen a detailed discussion of the treatment of Cardinals somewhere but I can't find it now. Andrewa 02:10, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, it was decided, by someone or other (anyone have a link?) to use e.g. George Cardinal Pell, as this is said to be "more correct" according to consultations with the Vatican. Apparently Firstname Cardinal Lastname was used prior to Vatican II, while now often Cardinal Firstname Lastname is used, but it was decided to use the older format for consistency. I personally would prefer George Pell, as I consider Cardinal more of a title than a name, with exceptions for historical cardinals such as Cardinal Richelieu who were known by Cardinal Only-one-name. But after a somewhat lengthy argument with User:Jtdirl (FearÉIREANN) over the issue, I eventually dropped the matter. I still consider Firstname Cardinal Lastname in running text to be somewhat awkward though. --Delirium 02:49, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know the WP use in this case but used in the middle of a paragraph I would write Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger or Cardinal Ratzinger and NEVER Joseph Card. Ratzinger which is just their way of signing. In any case, if the problem is with the title of the article, I'd rather write one "Joseph Raztinger" and redirects from "Cardinal ..." and "Joseph Cardinal....". My 2c. Pfortuny 20:22, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As a former New Yorker, "Francis Cardinal Spellman" rolls off of my tongue a lot more easily than any other form of his name. I think Francis Spellman is the most appropriate article name, with "Francis Cardinal Spellman" next. In his lifetime no one called him Cardinal Francis Spellman. (No wikipedia article on him exists, but a search shows that we do, indeed, always call him "Francis Cardinal Spellman".) -- Jmabel 01:43, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

IMO this sort of thing is already covered well in the style guide referred to above. Andrewa 16:31, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

WikiCookies

I started a new wiki-"game": WikiCookies. It's still in "beta testing" so the rules may change soon. So if you want to learn how to win WikiCookies, just read the "Secret Links" paragraph at my userpage :) .Optim 00:20, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC).

Admin help needed

Help! I got out of sequence, and hope to preserve appropriate edit histories. If someone would delete the redirects at Samuel Huntington and its talk page, I can finish sorting out the three needed articles. I plan to move the signer of the Decclaration of Independence here, with a reference to disambig. I've already created an S.H. (disambig} page and I'll sort out the other links, people named, etc. afterwards. Thanks, and apologies,, Lou I 22:43, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Samuel Huntington and Talk:Samuel Huntington are now deleted. Angela. 23:30, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)

How do I get a page annouced??

Help! I want to have the Ralph Yarborough page announced on Jan. 27th for the anniversary. Thanks!

Two things:

1. Make sure the article meets the criteria specified on Wikipedia:Selected Articles on the Main Page
2. Make sure the anniversary is listed on January 27 with a link to the article.

-- Viajero 21:01, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

New pages

If you're missing Special:newpages, there is a list of the new pages created between 02:39 and 17:38 (UTC) today at User:Angela/New pages. Angela. 18:23, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)

There is also an automatically generated list of recent new page creations at http://cryosphere.net/new.html, but this only works when I am on IRC. Morwen 18:50, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)

And JeLuf's http://mormo.org/newen.html which is updated every minute. Angela. 22:59, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)

Fast Meter? -->> Wikipedia:Reference Desk

Legalities of article copying

Look at http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/History-of-Norway It is a verbatim copy of History of Norway. The only reference to Wikipedia on the nationmaster page is on the very bottom of the page in a font so small, I had to copy the text to another program to read it.

GnuFDL, Section 2: "...You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute...."

Is small text that is pixelated out of recognition on my monitor considered a technical measure of obstructment?

You can find it all discussed at Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content. andy 16:35, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

User Ban

What are the policies on user bans? I have NO tolerence for Nazi's, and less for people like ZW et al.

Unless they are vandalizing pages or trolling, we don't ban people. →Raul654 15:14, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)

From what I've seen in those 2 user's "contributions" I feel that it not only qualifies as vandalizing AND trolling, but also racisim to the point of illigality in most countries. who is the admin here? who do I contact that has the power to make a final decision? Pellaken 15:25, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I have NO tolerance for people who can't use the apostrophe properly. That doesn't mean that I can have you banned. CGS 15:27, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC).

This is a serious situation, and I would like to take it to the top. If you want to discuss my english skills, then do so, but do so elsewhere. Pellaken 15:30, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, your English skills are irrelevant. I was pointing out that we can't ban people because we have "NO tolerence" for them, as was your original complaint of ZW. Legality is a different issue, but your personal opinion of someone's politics (nor their grasp of punctuation) is never a reason to have them banned, and censorship based on politics and other similar things is not something that Wikipedia takes kindly to. CGS 15:39, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC).

So, anti-racism is now "racism"? War is peace etc.? Well, you get used to all this ridiculous doublespeak Zw

I do not like Nazi's and I wont lie about that, but my opinion is not the law here. There must be some procedure to judge these things, and I would still like to either know what that procedure is. I am assuming there is an admin, or a council of moderators that decides these things, and I am wondering who they are. Pellaken 15:43, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I have replied to Pellaken's question here. I believe I have stated our usual policy correctly, but anyone is of course encouraged to add to what I have said. Hopefully this can be resolved peacefully. Jwrosenzweig 15:48, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I am satisfied with the responce, thank you very much. Pellaken 15:53, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Zw is not a Nazi and it is a stupid and offensive accusation to make. He is however a dogmatic and unco-operative inserter of grossly POV material (anti-Israeli in his case, but the topic doesn't really matter) into articles that other people have put a lot of work into. Both Zionism and anti-Zionism have had to be protected from his depredations. I don't think he should be banned but I do think he should be warned off in some way. Adam 02:25, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I never said he was a Nazi. I said I dont like Nazi's and that I think what he's doing is wrong, but I've never called him a Nazi. Pellaken 03:21, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Better way to manage lists of people?

Not knowing anything about how the code works, but looking at a lot of people articles appearing on multiple lists, sometimes the same list, indexed different ways on different articles, I wondered whether anyone has looked into more efficient ways to manage the data. I guess I'm thinking of some way to automatically generate the list based on tags on an (ordinarily) hidden subpage or something. e.g. Tony Blair would have a sub-page Tony Blair/lists which would contain tags like {List of UK Prime Ministers}, {List of Members of the UK Labour Party}, {List of Members of the UK Parliament} etc. I'm sure that isn't the way to do it, but you get the idea? Any dice, or has this come up already? The Fellowship of the Troll 07:41, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The much-awaited Category system should help with this, when it finally gets switched on. Apparently it's working over on the Test Wikipedia, although since this was wiped clean a short while back there's no longer any test material. Phil 10:24, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)

Take a look at http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Scot to see what I mean. Phil 10:32, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)

Ha - who knew? Great! The Fellowship of the Troll 18:48, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Preferences - Date format

In the Special:Preferences, there are currently four date formats. The fourth at first looked like the default ISO date type string YYYY-MM-DD, but in actuality it is the weird YYYY-DD-MM. Since the example date January 12 is used, this isn't immediately clear. Therefore I've two suggestions: 1) Change the example date to January 13 (no month can have #13), and 2) Change the fourth option to the correct ISO date string, or at least add this option. — Jor 02:54, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)

No it isn't, it really is ISO YYYY-MM-DD. What does this look like to you: January 20, 2040? And the example date is January 15, otherwise known as Wikipedia Day. Happy Wikipedia day everyone. -- Tim Starling 03:35, 2004 Jan 15 (UTC)

Odd. What was I looking at then? *confused* — Jor 15:12, 2004 Jan 15 (UTC)

I'm not 100% certain, but I think the date that is displayed is the current date. Today it happens to be January 15, but tomorrow it will be January 16. -Anthropos 22:57, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

No, it's always January 15. At least, it was when I wrote the feature. I don't think anyone's changed it since. -- Tim Starling 23:23, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)

Watchlist proposal

As some people pointed out, having the watchlists down for weeks is going to create a major backlog. I propose that we enable them during the off peak hours of (GMT -5) 1 AM to 7 AM. That would let us get to the articles that need it without making the latency situation worse. →Raul654 02:07, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)

That sounds good. WormRunner 05:40, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Particularly to us antipodeans. Adam 08:17, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Would it be possible, during the times that the watchlist mechanism is disabled, to have the link display the list of pages on one's watchlist, so that one can at least have access to them? Phil 08:22, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)

You can achieve a similar result using My Contributions, which gives you a list of articles where you have been having recent dogfights. Adam 08:50, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Which works for pages with 'dogfights', but less well for talk pages etc. Elde 20:41, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

But it has to be said that the performance improvement is remarkable. Bmills 13:29, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Ah! Think of the possibilities! I bet Wikipedia would really fly if we turned off "recent changes". >:-) only. -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 15:51, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)

And then restricted editing of articles to an approved subset of the list of sysops. Bmills 16:45, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If I've done my coding correctly, watchlists and various other features will now be enabled between 04:00 and 14:00 UTC, which is off-peak according to [4]. If I haven't done my coding correctly, the site will crash in 2.5 hours time ;) -- Tim Starling 01:37, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)

LOL - very funny. Thanks a lot Tim. We all appreciate it. I've been going through withdraw without my watchlist :) →Raul654 01:44, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)

Nice to have it back, but it has really slowed down response time for me. Anyone else? Bmills 09:42, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Does this have something to do with the "saved watchlist" message that I'm seeing when I view Special:Watchlist? Where on earth can I find a complete list of files that I'm watching? The watchlist sure isn't showing them. --Cryptographite 14:09, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Maybe I should come back in 6 months or so and find out if WP has become usable. Mbstone 22:26, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Can we turn watchlist off now? I can't work today at all. Bmills 10:14, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• Me neither. It's taken hours to get back here to say this, but it prompted me to make a donation to wikimedia, and my solitare game is improving while I wait for pages to load, so some good has come of this. Fabiform 23:34, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Happy Wikipedia Day

May all of you have PEACE PROFOUND and Master Your Life! .·. .·. .·. ^{.·. .·. .·.} .·. .·. .·. Optim 01:21, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC) .·. .·. .·. ^{.·. .·. .·.} .·. .·. .·.

Watchlist down

As seen on my watchlist:

• This feature is disabled for performance reasons. New servers have been ordered and should be installed within the next 14 days.

I suspect in about 14 days we all shall have the fun of cleaning out numerous vandalisms. Jrincayc 21:19, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

We'll also get to stress-test the new servers since we'll all be loading 14 days' worth of watchlists. -mhr 22:32, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Happy Wikipedia Day! What more can I say? <KF> 23:33, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

(See current message) Is it good advertising to have a message asking for donations replace the watchlist, considering that there have been donations already, and the current problem is that some servers haven't arrived yet while others are being fixed, not a current lack of money? (This isn't in any way a complaint, just a comment.) $\ _{\ _{\mathrm {K} \sigma \upsilon \pi -{\sqrt {C^{2}+y^{2}+p^{2}}}}}$   01:44, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree, and I'll go ahead and complain: I find the current watchlist message distinctly irritating. It almost reads like a protection-racket extortion note -- "youse could always make, ya know, a donation to keep this kind of ting from happenin' again. . ." In any event, it's self-defeating: the time to ask people for money is exactly not when you tell them they can't have what they want. Jgm 02:15, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I heartily agree. But don't fret, it's a software message editable with the MediaWiki namespace. Just put something in MediaWiki:Disabled. That article is currently non-existent and unprotected, it might be a good idea to change both. -- Tim Starling 02:20, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Tim. I just created it and made it a bit less "threatening", while leaving the donation link. What do you guys think? If someone who is not a sysop wishes to make changes, say something on the talk page, and mention it here or to one of the Administrators. Dori | Talk 02:41, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)

I mentioned it to Tim when he changed the off peak hours and he unprotected it so I could add the latest hours. Hopefully someone will update it if the hours need to be changed again. It is in a pretty obscure place for a vandal to find, so hopefully it'll be safe enough unprotected. Jamesday 15:43, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Need some help linking to an image

Over at Operation Downfall (the proposed 1945 Allied invasion of Japan), I added a map I scanned out of a book. The map is great, but way too big for the page (can't be shrunk, either, or details would be lost). So I uploaded it twice, a smaller version and a larger version (I know I could have uploaded one and used html to resize it, but that would make page loads extremely slow. I figure bandwidth is more precious than server storage). In the caption, I added a "Larger version" link to the bigger picture. But I can't figure out how to do it with internal wiki links - it's an exteral links right now. I'd be grateful is someone could lend a hand. →Raul654 13:14, Jan 14, 2004 (UTC)

Quite simple. Instead of [[Image:LargeImage.jpg]] just use [[Media:LargeImage.jpg|Larger Imager]]. However are you sure the image is copyright-free? Because a scan of something copyrighted is still copyrighted - and the book is probably too recent to be in public domain already. andy 19:52, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It is still copyrighted (copyright date - 2003), but copying a small amount of it (one map out of 600+) is covered by fair use, is it not? I put all the details here. →Raul654 20:15, Jan 14, 2004 (UTC)

IANAL, but I think that the maps could each be considered a copyrightable work. So copying one of the 600 wouldn't necessarily be fair use just because there are 599 others. Andrewa 23:32, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Macrons

There are Unicode points for standard letters with macrons, ā, for example, but where are the points for letters with both an accent and a macron? They must be in there somewhere. I can't believe they would leave them out when they have a million or so points. I can generate a macron over an accented letter using the modifier: á̄ (á&#772;), but depending on your browser this will be rendered in one of several shit ways. What can I do? CGS 09:50, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC).

I believe the Unicode standard only have real codepoints (as opposed to using modifiers) for accent-combinations, which are actually used in some language. Does any language use the á̄? I believe all latin letters with multiple diacritical marks are in the table Latin extended additional. It does have eg. the ṓ (note, even worse rendering in some browsers). Rasmus Faber 10:20, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes they're used in a real language: Latin. "habé̄mus", "we have", for example. That's how I came to notice that it wasn't there in Unicode. CGS 10:44, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC).

Is the letter a used with accent and macron, too? Both ḕ and ḗ are in Unicode (but probably render badly with most browsers). These are equivalent to combining ē with the combining character for an acute accent, ie ḗ (&#275;&#769;), which actually renders OK. Rasmus Faber Rasmus Faber 12:49, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

In my browser both render, but the pre-combined character looks very different from e-macron with acute (Font problem, not user agent). For test reasons, compare e+acute+macron all seperately encoded below (as the Unicode guys want it done). — Jor 13:20, 2004 Jan 14 (UTC)

Since when does Latin have either accents or macrons? This would have been news to Cicero. Adam 12:40, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• Latin doesn't, but modern-day students sometimes use them to indicate long and short vowels for their own convenience. Bmills 12:53, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Not only modern-day: the macron has long been used to indicate stress in vowels. Compare also languages like Māori. (If I write that Māori, the macron isn't rendered at all. Probably some font issue…) — Jor 13:20, 2004 Jan 14 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I can see the macron on both of those. (I'm using IE6/Win; I tried a couple of different fonts and I could see it in all of them.) —Paul A 01:03, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I was mistaken: it is rendered for me as well in the second case, but the macron overlaps with the top curl of the 'a'. I had to enlarge text size a whole lot before I noticed. :) — Jor 22:49, 2004 Jan 15 (UTC)

Unicode philosophy is to only encode the base glyph, and let all diacritical marks be made through combining modifiers. E with acute accent and macron: é̄ (e + &#x0301; (combining acute accent above) + &#x0304; (combining macron above). In theory this allows infinite combinations, such as o with acute accent, and ogonek: ǫ́ — in practice many fonts will only display those characters for which pre-rendered glyphs exist. This is one of the reasons Unicode includes glyphs for most combined characters which actually are used. (Another reason is the ISO 8859 tables were remapped in Unicode, and as such many pre-combined glyphs were encoded). — Jor 13:10, 2004 Jan 14 (UTC)

Fleet -->> Wikipedia:Reference Desk

accuracy disputes

The mysterious User:Zw insists on placing a notice saying "The factual accuracy of this article is disputed" at the anti-Zionism article. This article was the product of a lot of work by me, Danny, Zero and even RK to achieve a balanced and NPOV outcome. So far as I know its accuracy is not disputed by anyone except Zw, and even he doesn't actually say what accuracy issues he has with the article. I don't want this tag on the article, but if I remove it he just puts it back. Suggestions? Adam 06:19, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'd say that this is equivalent to the SCO case (for those of you who follow the linux news). If you accuse someone of some wrongdoing you have to provide evidence and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accusation is correct. You can't say "I dispute the factual accuracy of this article, but I won't tell you exactly which facts I dispute." Someone making a claim like that gets their case thrown out of court. --snoyes 06:31, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

User:Adam Carr is not telling the truth. I made an attempt to make the introduction neutral, instead of only presenting zionist's POV on anti-zionism. This article is, indeed, about anti-zionism, and I think also anti-zionist's point of view is highly relevant. User:Adam Carr, however, simply removed all attempts to present other views than his own right-wing. Please see the history. Zw 07:08, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Firstly, it isn't "my" article, but a cooperative effort by a number of people of differing views. Secondly, the article gives a very full account of the views of opponents of Zionism of all kinds. Thirdly, I think anyone who is interested enough to view the edit history of the article will see that Zw is not seeking to add to the factual content of the article, nor has he challenged the accuracy of any statement in the article. All he has sought to do is to insert propagandistic, rhetorical (and poorly written) material into the opening paragraph - the usual behaviour of those whose interest is making political points rather than writing encyclopaedia articles. Adam 07:35, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The article does not give a very full account of the views of opponents of Zionism of all kinds. For instance, the word 'racism' is not mentioned in your version at all, although anti-zionists widely consider zionism "racism", and anti-zionism "anti-racism". In an article dealing with anti-zionism, their point of views are relevant too, and in my opinion more relevant than zionist propaganda. That is exactly what the whole introduction of your version is.

We all should remember that the subject of the article is not "Zionist's POV on anti-zionism". The article about anti-racism is not written from a racist point of view, huh? Zw 07:54, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The word racism appears twice in the unvandalised version of the article, at the appropriate place. I doubt you have actually read beyond the opening paragraphs. Calling me an "Israeli revisionist" shows that you know nothing about me or my views (which is as it should be, of course). It also shows that you are not interested in co-operative editing, only on forcing your illiterate propaganda into this article. If you persist in this course I will ask to have the article protected. Adam 08:19, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Adam, calling other users illiterate is not nice. Please don't do that. How is Zw supposed to become cooperative if we do not treat him in an open and cooperative fashion?—Eloquence

Have you read the edit history? He has shown no interest in cooperation, he's only interested in forcing his political views into the opening paragraph of an article on a controversial topic. And I never claimed to be nice. Adam 08:52, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Adam Carr says above "so far as I know its accuracy is not disputed by anyone except Zw". Well you can add my name to the list as well. The definition of Zionism at the top of the page is ridiculous and POV. In 1975, over two thirds of the world's nations agreed to a resolution in the UN General Assembly that said "Zionism is a form of racism". If the fact that two thirds of the world's nations stood up and equated Zionism with racism doesn't merit being discussed as a counter-view to the Panglossian definition of Zionism at the top of the anti-Zionism page, I don't know what does. -- Lancemurdoch 17:25, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Do Zw and Lancemurdoch hold that Zionism is neither "a political movement among Jews which holds that the Jews are a nation, and as such are entitled to a national homeland", nor "a movement to support the development and defence of the State of Israel, and to encourage Jews to settle there"? Merriam-Webster defines racism as " a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race" or "racial prejudice or discrimination." Zionism does not obviously fit this definition. If Zw and Lancemurdoch are to claim that Zionism is racism, they should substantiate their claims.

Furthermore, I think the claim made in Resolution 3379 attempts to be a description of Zionism, not a definition of it. It does quite poorly as a definition. Lastly (granting for the sake of argument that it is a definition), the fact that a majority of the UN General Assembly (it's only a two-thirds majority if one ignores the abstentions) decided that Zionism is racist does not mean that the competing definition should be expunged. It should be given a more or less equal hearing. --Smack 22:16, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I don't claim anything. Please see my version of the page in the page history. Opposite Carr, I mention different views on zionism in the introduction, including "a political movement among Jews which holds that the Jews are a nation, and as such are entitled to a national homeland" and "a movement to support the development and defence of the State of Israel, and to encourage Jews to settle there".

Could someone please add a dispute notice to Anti-zionism? Zw

Excuse me for not accepting either the relevance or the moral validity of a vote cast 28 years ago by a majority consisting mostly of Communist states and third-world dictatorships, a vote taken mainly as a means of annoying the US, and which most of the same countries, in the meantime having become democracies, had the decency to repeal almost unanimously some years later. In any case the UN resolution is discussed fully at anti-Zionism. Zionism is (surprise, surprise) an article about Zionism. The ideological axes that people like Zw and Lancemurdoch are trying to grind over this article should be obvious to all. Adam 23:41, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Mr Maltin -->> Wikipedia:Reference Desk

Removal of items from Votes for Deletion prematurely

Moved to User talk:The Fellowship of the Troll

Structure Templates

I was for the lookaround for a summary of special page templates/boilerplates. The ones i could find were on Wikipedia:WikiProject and Wikipedia:Boilerplate_text .. it took some time to get there, possibly i didn't know at first what i was looking for .. so are these two the main entry points .. shall we straighten the search path (i interlinked the two) ?

problem with the polish version

Only a small one.

On the main page, it says W encykolpedii 'wolnej' (in the free encyclopedia) This is incorrect, if you mean free as in no cost.

It should say w encyklopedii 'darmowej' which means gratis.

It is actually meant to say free as in freedom, not free as in no cost. (Even though it is no cost as well.) There's probably an article that explains why, somewhere... $\ _{\ _{\mathrm {K} \sigma \upsilon \pi -{\sqrt {C^{2}+y^{2}+p^{2}}}}}$   21:58, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Please see Free Software. --Brion 03:35, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Steven Spielberg birthdate --> Wikipedia:Reference desk

Guess what day it is on thursday?

So are there any special plans for January 15? -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 20:33, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

We had better get writing... we are 300 000 articles behind expectations ;) Stewart Adcock 21:24, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

automated footnotes

We need an automated way to add Footnotes to an article. The manual way is annoying and difficult to maintain. Anthony DiPierro 20:24, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This is an excellent suggestion, and I second it. Something simple akin to the current # (pound) syntax would be great. --snoyes 20:37, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Agree. Dpbsmith 01:12, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You might want to go to Wikipedia:Feature requests to make the request. RickK 04:45, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Good point, I probably put this is the wrong place. But while it's here, maybe we should talk about if this is something we want, and how it should be implemented. Doesn't seem that hard to code up. In fact, I'd probably even be willing to code it up myself. Anthony DiPierro 08:31, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure footnotes are suitable for screen media -- Tarquin 12:14, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think there is good replacement for footnotes (which are indeed archaic): expanding thing, such as

.footnote {color:grey; font-weight:bold; }
<script language="javascript">
  document.styleSheets[0].insertRule(" @media screen { .footnoteBody { display:none; } }",0);
 function expandOrCollapse(what) { ... }
</script>

<a class=footnote> 
   [opinions] </a>
<div class=footnoteBody id=stuff > 
   Not everybody shares this opinion. Traditionalists and 
   Additionalists completely disag... </div>

This expands would be great for disclaimers, stubs, etc. too (short description and when you click long description inline). ilya 04:27, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Footnotes may be archaic for the standard user, but whatever the solution is should carry over to the "Printable version" page. Does Wikipedia use javascript for any other markup? Seems this would be a bad thing to start if not. Anthony DiPierro 08:31, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I changed the code so that

• without JavaScript all footnotes will be displayed
• with JavaScript won't and you can click to expand
• with browsers not compliant with CSS2/DOM probably initially they will be visible, but this is not a critical point
• for printing they all are displayed in any case
  • as for printing: W3C standart for this stuff — there should be no link 'Printable version', instead browser must automatically change style when printing page, exactly what I've made.

Wikipedia uses Javascript for example in Contents show/hide. ilya 21:17, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

OK, if footnotes are obsolete, exactly where and how does one cite the source for a specific statement that requires a citation? URLs are nice, but not every datum is available on the Web, and it can even happen that a book or journal might carry more weight as a source than some Website. (No! Can't happen.) Put the name of the book in the References section? Mention it somewhere in the Talk page among all the flame wars? Such things as these don't work if any reader really wants to know the specific basis for a specific statement. Does anybody care? Dandrake 06:06, Jan 18, 2004 (UTC)

It probably would be nice to come up with a standard for this (if there is one, I haven't found it & would someone please tell us? If not, sounds like a good WikiProject for someone with an editing orientation). Barring that there is a real standard that I'm unaware of, the following is what I believe to be a reasonable suggestion. If you are drawing content from a book, especially controversial content (given your reference to "flame wars"), mention of that book belongs in the article as a reference. Square brackets with a brief but unambiguous (given the reference section) citation after the relevant quotation or paraphrase seem to me like a decent solution. For example, given that there is exactly on book by a "Hyde" in your references, then "[Hyde, p.123]" in the article is clear and brief. If there are two or three referenced works by the same author, you might need something like "[Hyde, The Gift, p.123]", but only in your references would you write out "Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, ISBN 0394715185." At least this should be unambiguous, not too cluttered, and provide enough information for someone who needs to sort it out later if we adopt a standard. -- Jmabel 07:29, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

When to link

Is there "official" policy on when to link and when not to? I assume when a word should be linked, it should only be linked at the first occurence. What about years, though? Should they be linked more than once if they refer to completely separate events in the article? Is there a page with such information and more? --Spikey 17:21, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context (there are others)

• Wikipedia:Build the web

Don't link everything ! --snoyes 18:19, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• Info for scholarship --> Wikipedia:Reference Desk, Optim 21:00, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Time Zone

In the User preferences page, there is an option to offset the UTC time to your own time-zone by specifying the offset hours. This field does'nt seem to take decimal values. My time is ahead of UTC by 5.5 hrs. How do I set myself to this time? Or indeed if this is a new software request, can somebody move this to the appropriate area please? I guess it should permit offsetting by a difference in multiples of 15 minutes if one goes by the listing here.(Chancemill 11:13, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

The best place is to go to SourceForge to submit feature requests. There are instruction at Wikipedia:Feature requests. I've submitted this for you. You can find it here. Angela. 11:56, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)~

Thanks very much. Chancemill 13:19, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

This has already been requested. -- Tim Starling 13:28, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

• English Channel --> Wikipedia:Reference Desk, Optim 21:00, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

How to redirect to Wiktionary (et al) within Wikipedia

How to redirect to http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Condemned

Thank you, 169.207.112.223 09:33, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Interwiki redirects are generally considered a bad thing. See m:Redirected user pages considered harmful for a related discussion. You can link to Wiktionary using Wiktionary:Page name. Angela. 11:56, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. Testing 123: Wikiquote:Main Page[5], Wikisource:Main Page[6], Wikibooks:Main Page[7], Wiktionary:Main Page[8]... Might be nice for certain areas (Linux, Star Trek) to be able to link to OpenFacts:en:Main Page[9], MemoryAlpha:Main Page[10], etc. Would be nice for these InterWikis to have something along the top/bottom of page, like interlanguage links (maybe call them “Related Wikimedia”, “External Wikis”), but that's just IMHO. I'm sure people have mentioned this elsewhere, though.. —Mulad 21:07, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Watchlist timeframe

• -> meta:MediaWiki feature request and bug report discussion

Horizontal line divisor on articles

I have noticed that apparently using HRs on articles is against the MoS guidelines. My question is, what about external links and references? should they include an HR if the article and the links or references are too long? --Maio 02:21, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

No. The only place to use an HR (IIRC) is if there is an alternate meaning, see for example London. --snoyes 03:20, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

For the article London, the HR isn't really needed either (see California [11]). Independence [12] may be a more useful sample. BTW some of the templates include HRs that aren't really for disambiguation, e.g. WikiProject Countries. User:Docu

Wikipedia and Reading Software

Considering that we usually don't put some punctuation (; . , :) after headings (section titles), List items, See also listings where a list is utilised, etc etc... I am afraid to say that the current Wikipedia style seems to be unfair to Reading Software (software which converts text into voice, Example: Adobe 6). Reading Software uses the punctuation to make pauses, and cannot get into account the document's markup and format (headings etc). Lately I started putting : after headings and ; or . after list items, but I found the visual result disgusting and hard-to-read. If I don't use the punctuation, the problem is that Reading Software cannot recognize the necessary pauses and as a result the listener has trouble understanding the meaning. I would like to find some way to incorporate some hidden punctuation into the articles, which will be used only by reading software but will be invisible to the user who reads the text on the screen or paper. Do you have any idea on this? If impossible, I propose to think about the issue of reading software and decide on whether punctuation should be used and what kind of punctuation, as an effort to optimise our writing style for Reading Software. Thank you and may you have Peace Profound, Optim 01:25, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Headings in Wikipedia are marked as headings using the relevant standard HTML markup. List items in Wikipedia are marked as list items using the relevant standard HTML markup. (Assuming the contributors use the correct wiki-markup, of course.) If the screen-reading software can't correctly interpret standard HTML markup, I don't see that it's our problem. —Paul A 01:56, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I too would say this is the job of the reading software, but you can do this with the CSS, hiding the offending items for visual formating and showing in the @aural[13] ~ Mlk 03:16, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)~

• I need a record deal-->Wikipedia:Reference desk

Academie francaise

Could I solicit some opinions on whether Academie francaise ought to be moved to French Academy? Other editors argue that it is usually known in English by its French name, and therefore should be exempt from the English-headings convention. Adam 23:54, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think that as a proper noun, it's usually known in English by its French name, and that its French name is sufficiently close to English not to be confusing. Obviously, appropriate redirect from French Academy is in order, though. -- Jmabel 00:18, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If it is known in English under its French name, then leave it there. Our "use common names" policy prevails. --Jiang 04:41, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think it's commonly known in English by its English name. I've typically seen news articles refer to the French Academy making pronouncements rather than the Academie francaise. Google shows ~4300 hits for "Academie francaise" when limited to English results, and ~11500 hits for "French Academy" -science -sciences (to avoid getting the French Academy of Sciences results mixed in). So I'd say go ahead and move to French Academy. As an additional data point, the English title is where the current articles in the Columbia and Britannica encyclopedias (and the 1912 article in the Catholic Encyclopedia) are located. --Delirium 04:58, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

Normally, I like the Google test, but one look at the Google results and the problem with the logic in this case becomes apparent. Among the first ten supposed "hits" in googling "French Academy" -science -sciences are references to the "French Academy in Rome", the "Mary W. French Academy Elementary School" (twice), and the "Arden O. French Academy for Leadership Studies" none of which are the "Academie francaise". It is possible that the pattern is different farther down, but I've only got so much patience. All this particular test case proves is the unsurprising fact that the English word "French" is often followed by the word "academy", not that it's the more common name for the Academie francaise. -- Jmabel 06:16, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

In UK usage I've never seen anything other than Academie francaise used, so I would urge leaving it where it is. -- Arwel 10:11, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I"ve also never seen French Academy except in the context of schools for teaching the French language, which may be where the Google majority comes from. I'd leave it. Maybe add a French Academy redirect. Is Academie francaise a proper name which should be Academie Francaise? Jamesday 12:02, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This should stay as Academie francaise. The Academie itself prefers the lowercase "f" and to English it makes no real sense. Bmills 13:01, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It may be useful to point out that the web site also uses French diacritical markings on its name: Académie française, not simply Academie francaise (which is a redirect). --Robertb-dc 19:13, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

List of United States Highways

I'm a map nut, so I love sites like this one -- it lists every US highway, past and present. I've updated the List of United States Highways article with the information, and I am considering creating an article for each highway -- at least the current endpoints, and adding more information as I have time.

However, I came across a discussion of problems caused by the Rambot-generated list of all US cities and towns. Personally, I like these articles, and I'm happy to do what I can to add more information to towns I know something about (see Hazard, Kentucky). But adding a Wikipedia article for each US highway may cause some of the same problems -- such as filling up the "Random Page" option with special-interest topics.

Would appreciate the advice of seasoned Wikipedians! Thanks. --Robertb-dc 17:34, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I don't know if I'm seasoned. I say go for it. Yes, the cities and towns of the U.S. are somewhat cluttery, but it's also nice to be able to have a completed link where possible. Anyway, I say "Yay!" to the highways, but the only thing maybe worth noting is how many different ways the names of highways can be phrased. There will probably be a lot of redirects too, but anyway: Go for it. jengod 20:37, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! I've created a few sample articles for folks to check out, if they're curious. The main features I'm trying to include at this point are:

• An introductory paragraph with at least one sentence of interest to road geeks like me.
• Termini, with links to the endpoint city and highway. If the town doesn't show up in Wikipedia, I'll use MapQuest to find a nearby town to reference. This happened with US 380 -- it ends in San Antonio, New Mexico, which seems to be a small junction south of Socorro.
• List of states traversed by the route.
• Links to "parent/child" and "sibling" routes.
• Link to the matching Endpoints of US highways page. Each route has its own page on his site, and he goes into much more detail than I'm attempting!
• Stub boilerplate: {{msg:stub}}

Here are the samples:

• United States Highway 80 -- two-digit "parent" route
• United States Highway 380 -- three-digit "child" route.
• United States Highway 400 -- three-digit violation of the numbering convention!

Not surprisingly, I'm already wishing I didn't have to type United States Highway xx over and over! I wonder what would be the effect of changing to a shorter convention, perhaps US Highway xx -- or even US xx (not likely)?

Suggestions and comments welcome. Thanks! --Robertb-dc 00:29, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If you want it short, it should be U.S. Highway xx (with the full stops), since this is an American topic. --Jiang 00:35, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It looks like it's pretty easy to "Move this page". If there aren't any objections, I may go ahead and move the United States Highway xx pages that currently exist to U.S. Highway xx. By the way, does the capitalization still appear correct? Or should it be U.S. highway xx? Are any other countries' highway systems documented in Wikipedia? --Robertb-dc 17:35, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

There might already be some such articles about. I know I stumbled on Interstate H-3 located in my neighborhood, and was able to expand on it. Whoever set up the original Interstate articles had a layout format developed - Marshman 02:37, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Comparing my page with the Interstate pages, I think I'll incorporate some of their design concepts -- especially breaking up the page into sections. I can't quite use the same section headings, because some information (mileage in particular) isn't as readily available or reliable for US routes. But thanks for reminding me to look at existing examples! --Robertb-dc 17:35, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean by "used with permission?" Anthony DiPierro 03:09, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I asked the owner of the Endpoints of US Highways page for permission to use his information in Wikipedia, and he said it was fine. Would there be a better way to express this concept? --Robertb-dc 17:35, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Since there's no objection, I will begin moving the United States Highway xx pages to U.S. Highway xx. I'm using this capitalization because it distinguishes "a specific route" from "a route in the United States"

Meanwhile, I've been refining the template. Here are some examples:

• United States Highway 75, a typical 2-digit route
• United States Highway 175, a typical 3-digit route
• United States Highway 49, showing how I handle "US 49E"
• United States Highway 77, which has an "Alternate US 77"

Comments welcome! --Robertb-dc 16:56, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I've moved all existing US Highway pages to the new naming convention, and modified all the links on the List of United States Highways to match. Please feel free to leave any further suggestions on my Talk page. --Robertb-dc 01:08, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Simplifying a large research task

I noticed that wikipedia had almost no information on billiards and I have been adding some articles. Even if I only add a bio on each BCA hall of fame player, that is an incredible amout of work.

Is it a reasonable thing to look for shortcuts, such as asking BCA for permission to use the small bios they have for each hall of fame inductee?

Or is that bad form, or against the ruleson of wikipedia?

I plan on doing many of the bios myself, as I am sort of an amateur pool historian, and have a background information on many, but not on all of them.

You can ask, but note that BCA has to allow their content to be licensed under GFDL, not just allow it to be used in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is free in the sense that anyone can reuse our content for any purpose, as long as they follow the license. Historically, such permission has been fairly rare. -- Tim Starling 06:02, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

However, you can use the BCA bios as reference to write your own in your own words. Facts are not copyrighted, only the creative expression of them can be. —Morven 17:13, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If you haven't found it already, Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission may be a useful resource. It's worth a try, anyway. -- Cyan 20:06, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Can't access the Vandalism in progress article

I was editing the Vandalism in progress page and received an error message:

Database error From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an illegal search query (see Searching Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:

SELECT HIGH_PRIORITY length(cur_text) AS x, cur_namespace, cur_is_redirect FROM cur WHERE cur_id='286398' from within function "". MySQL returned error "2013: Lost connection to MySQL server during query".

From that point, I can't get back to it. I can see it when I look at the Diff, but not when I go direct to the page. RickK 04:29, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You need to clear your cache. We were having database problems for a few minutes. You can see this alright, can't you? -- Tim Starling 04:38, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

I was able to see it once Hadal edited the page. RickK 05:21, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Wiki is not paper?

One question that's been bugging me lately is, Where do we draw the distinction between content that belongs on the wiki and content that is too trivial to be here? Some things are definitely trivial, for example the so-called "vanity pages" created by users about themselves (with exceptions for genuinely noteworthy people like Daniel C. Boyer). I remember reading something about a "1000-people rule," according to which a topic deserves to be here if and only if one thousand people, anywhere in the world, would want to know about it. I'm sure that there is at least one meta page about this, but I've been unable to find it. --Smack 01:01, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• Believe it or not, there isn't a single comprehensive page on what does or does not belong in wikipedia. About a week ago, I submitted a proposal for one: Wikipedia:What Wikipedia Wants (proposal) (we're still looking for input!). Also, there is Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. →Raul654 02:31, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Verifiability, which says all content should be verifiable - this cuts out quite a bit of trivial stuff. But there's no widely agreed upon set of criteria necessary for an article to be OK. --Camembert

Slashdotting

Our page on Lagrangian point is in the top story on http://slashdot.org right now, so expect some extra traffic and some anonyvandals. Still, an anon (almost certainly from that source) just fixed my dodgy orbital arithmetic on JWST, so long live the anons, I say. -- Finlay McWalter 16:25, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but that would require people to read the article. I think we're safe :) →Raul654 02:35, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

Literal string

Are literal string enclosed within quotation marks?

Err, I'm not sure what you mean. In wikipedia's markup, all strings are literal (I suppose) - only links'n'stuff are enclosed in special markup. -- Finlay McWalter 16:25, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Moving phonetic transcriptions from SAMPA to IPA?

The current de facto standard for phonetic transcriptions on Wikipedia is SAMPA. With the transition to UTF-8, it is now possible to use IPA symbols directly in the text. Is it a good idea to start doing this? If you have any comments or opinions, please go to [14]. arj 12:45, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

en: and fr: are still on iso-8859-1 and will probably be for some time due to problems with old browsers. But it is generally agreed that we will eventually switch to IPA. -- Tarquin 22:47, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Portugues

Porque não tem versão em português? Um abraço. Luís Teixeira. Belém-Pará-Amazônia-Brasil

If babelfish translated you correctly you search for a portugese wikipedia - take a look at http://pt.wikipedia.org andy 08:58, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Brilliant prose addition

Hi, I need a sysop to add Geyser to the Philosophy, Mathematics and Natural Sciences section of Brilliant prose. It has gone through the nomination process, and all objections have been withdrawn. Thanks, Gentgeen 06:56, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Done. →Raul654 08:17, Jan 20, 2004 (UTC)

Nursery (horticulture)

I created a stub for this use of the term nursery. It needs a disambig page for other meanings, but I know little of children's nurseries for example, and would not even know what to title such a page (if such a page does not already exist - I could not find one...) Anyone want to tackle this? Pollinator 03:29, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Header sizes

It strikes me as daft that withe the standard skin (the only one I am familiar with) that an =header= is bigger than the article title at the top of the page. May I suggest that we reduce the =header= to the same size as the article title and make ==90%==, ===80%===, ====70%====. -- SGBailey 10:07, 2004 Jan 18 (UTC)

We are supposed to start with ==Header 2== and not =Header 1= I think. Optim 22:21, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes, use the 2nd-level header for sections, then 3rd-level for subsections, and so on. Perhaps the 1st-level header should be disabled entirely, as I can't think of anywhere it should actually be used. --Delirium 06:39, Jan 19, 2004 (UTC)

No, the 1st-level headings should not be disabled. Only discouraged. Optim 07:29, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

See M1 (motorway) and M2 (motorway) where I used =header= rather than ==sub-header== since it could be argued that the sections could have their own articles but it didn't seem worth splitting them into two each. Should these be change to ==sub-header== ? -- 217.24.129.50 11:58, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

M1 motorway seems to have been renamed, but you're right, it's a very good example of an article that benefits from having section headings larger than the article heading. As most articles should start with section headings about the same size as the article heading, the practice of normally starting with the second-level header does make sense to me now. It didn't before. Andrewa 22:41, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The reason we start with second-level and not first-level headings is that the article title is itself a first-level heading, so another first-level heading would imply the beginning of a new article. What's not to understand? —Paul A 02:32, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I also thought that the article title was a first-level heading, but when I look at M1 motorway I find that not to be the case. I'm still not certain that the M1 motorway format is one to follow. -Anthropos 04:49, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Then you weren't looking closely enough, because the article title is a first-level heading. It looks a bit different because the wikipedia stylesheet contains formatting rules that apply specifically to first-level headings that are article titles (and not to first-level headings that aren't article titles), but it is a first-level heading. —Paul A 06:05, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, Paul. I must be missing something. My assumption is/was that the distinguishing factor of a first level header is its appearance. There must be some other distinguishing factor that I'm not aware of. -Anthropos 17:23, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Delirium; I don't think there are any good reasons to use level-1 headings in any article, and think they should be disabled or at the very least strongly discouraged. How does this usage improve the M1 Motorway article? If an article includes topic names thought to be more important than the article title itself, then they shouldn't be under that article title; An article entitled "M1 Motorway" should be about the M1 Motorway; it is clearly the most important topic in the article, and hence should be the largest (and the only one marked up with h1). Using a level-1 heading puts that topic on the same hierarchical level as the article itself; it's like having an "outline" of the article that looks like this:

• M1 Motorway
• Great Britain
• Northern Ireland
• Republic of Ireland

Which, of course, is silly. -- Wapcaplet 21:32, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Request for adminship

I am working on newly started Tamil Wikipedia, and have either created or translated most of the articles currently available there. I feel getting an adminship is useful to develop the Tamil Wikipedia in a more efficient way. Tamil WK does not have a Request page for this purpose, and does not have many registered users to have active discussion. can someone advise me on this issue? Mayooranathan 09:36, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Mayooranathan, the only thing is that you have to get the consensus of the other tamil wikipedians, not ours. Based on your work, I don't see why they would oppose you. Basically, you have to create a page similar to our WP:RFA in tamil and ask what contributors are there to give an opinion. If there is no opposition, then ask one of the developers to give you sysop status. Dori | Talk 00:13, Jan 19, 2004 (UTC)

Mayooranathan is basically the only active Tamil Wikipedian. So there's not really much point in him making a request there. I've made him a sysop. -- Tim Starling 02:38, Jan 19, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Tim. Mayooranathan 04:08, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Page links explained?

I can't seem to find any explanation to how the "What links here" page works. I checked the FAQ, but I have missed it. If you put a [[ ]] link in an article, is that how thing show up in "What links here"?

-werbwerb 1/18/04

• "What links here" tells you which articles refer to the article you clicked its "What link here" linky. So if you go to Harvey Spencer Lewis and click "what linjks here" you will see that the articles AMORC, FUDOSI, FUDOFSI and others contain links to Harvey Spencer Lewis. So when you type [[Harvey Spencer Lewis]] in the AMORC article, AMORC will be listed in "what links here" of the Lewis article. Optim 08:58, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Edit toolbar

Eloquence has written a new feature: a JavaScript edit toolbar capable of formatting wikitext by clicking buttons. You can see a demonstration of it at test.wikipedia.org. It's a great idea but it seems to have a few minor issues at the moment:

• Unless something is selected, the text will be inserted at the bottom, not at the cursor position
  • Fixed in Mozilla and IE, other browsers don't support the necessary JavaScript.—Eloquence
• In Mozilla, the edit window scrolls to the top every time a button is clicked
  • This seems to be a Mozilla bug.—Eloquence
• Some browsers display excess space around the toolbar
  • Should be fixed now, please report if it still occurs (clear cache if you've seen the toolbar already)—Eloquence

Eloquence thinks it's good enough as it is, and it should be enabled by default. However some people think some more work should be done on it first. Does anyone else have an opinion? -- Tim Starling 04:08, Jan 18, 2004 (UTC)

I haven't seen example of the "excess space" problem yet. Can anyone reproduce that? That certainly should be fixed. The other I consider minor/unfixable (JavaScript implementation reasons), it works the same way as the phpBB edit toolbar, which is enabled by default as well. I should explain that the primary use of the edit toolbar is on selected text -- clicking the button without selecting text first inserts sample text, which is mostly intended for learning purposes.—Eloquence 04:15, Jan 18, 2004 (UTC)

It misbehaves rather badly on Opera 7.23, I'm afraid. DOM issue, I guess... -- Finlay McWalter 04:19, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

And NS4.8. As with opera, it seems unable to figure out what the selection is, and just stuffs things at the end. -- Finlay McWalter 04:29, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It can be disabled in the prefs. This discussion is about whether it should be on by default, which should be based on popular browser behavior (IE, Mozilla). What do you mean with "misbehaves rather badly"? Does it produce any errors?—Eloquence

Even if it is enabled by default, it should be possible to disable it for user agents on which we either don't know it works, or know it doesn't. nb: I've also checked it with Konqueror 3.1-12 and again it can't recognise the select (I'd hazard a guess that this means it will probably also not work with Safari). (Sorry, "rather badly" means "always thinks the select is empty"). I'll look for error printfs tomorrow (it's sooo past my bedtime) -- Finlay McWalter 04:38, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Pretty nifty, but I think it needs work in order to be included by default, and it it can't be fixed it shouldn't be included by default. The selecting text thing is major in my opinion. Those that are most likely to use the toolbar are also those that will be most likely to be confused by the glitches. What text are you supposed to select when inserting a signature or HR anyway? Good work though! Dori | Talk 05:52, Jan 18, 2004 (UTC)

Great work. I use Mozilla. The bug regarding the window scrolling up is serious. Needs work. Where is the source code? Can I check it? Optim 06:16, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Everyone, please clear your caches before trying again (Shift+Reload may not work with IE). I've changed the JS so that the tags are inserted at the cursor position, but the scroll-up problem might be a Mozilla bug. At least now when you press a cursor key you're in the right place again, as the cursor is now in the right position. Everything should be perfect in IE now.—Eloquence 06:44, Jan 18, 2004 (UTC)

In NS7.0 it adds only at the end of the article. Anyways: I'd rather have wikimarkup simple enough so that a human being can learn it easily than having a fancy edit script. If we need such an edit script, it should be set to off in the preferences for default. -- till we *) 18:01, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

That's the default behavior in all browsers which don't support the necessary JS and still better than nothing for learning the tags. It should work in NS 7.1. In JavaScript-disabled browsers, nothing is shown at all. It will be enabled by default.—Eloquence 18:17, Jan 18, 2004 (UTC)

I mostly use konqueror, so it doesn't help me. WormRunner 02:41, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Personally, don't like the look of it, but nice work. I reckon the WP markup is easy enough without the toolbar. If it's made default (I don't care), maybe you want to add buttons for lists and bullets? Kokiri 11:15, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Nice work (IMO) ... could I ask, can these be made into bookmarklets? thanks ... [mumbels about source code =-] ... JDR

If any major feature of this doesn't work in any browser, then end users using those browsers shouldn't even see any part of it. The behavior in Konqueror is very confusing; when I select text and click the B I expect that text to be bolded (or at least the markup needed to make it bolded should be imputed). If this confused and frustrated me (a person with a great deal of computer literacy), it most certainly will confuse and frustrate rank newbies (especially ones only familiar with highly sanitized GUIs). So it should not be shown to any browser that does not fully support its functionality! Erik wants to make things easier for newbies ? that's a great goal. But any newbie not using IE on Windows (maybe a few other configs) will be more confused and frustrated with this feature than without it. They will think that Wikipedia is broken, not their browser and then go away. So if it don't work in certain browsers, then run browser detection and don't serve broken bits to newbies. They will trip over them. --mav 09:26, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I don't buy it. The input box gives the user a quick example text for each major markup function which they can copy and paste. Your reaction is simply the result of having seen previous versions of the toolbar. I fully intend to activate this inputbox for users of browsers which are not capable of handling text selections via JavaScript, as I consider it a useful feature for learning the syntax. This is important especially when following red links, where there is no example markup whatsoever.

If you do think the text "Click a button to get an example text" is not sufficiently self-explanatory, feel free to suggest a better one.—Eloquence 01:04, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm not too keen on this whole thing, for a number of reasons:

1. A key attribute of a wiki is that the syntax is incredibly simple, and this will just make it more tempting to complicate it ("Well, we can always have a toolbar button for it").
2. The toolbar as it currently is has serious bugs with several browsers. Users of these browsers visiting for the first time will be confused by this. Browser sniffing is in itself a Bad Thing, because you have to arbitrarily include or disclude browsers/versions that you haven't heard of yet (or don't exist yet).
3. As a learning aid, it suffers from a lack of explanation, and does little to show users how to use and read the actual syntax. (Eloquence, exactly where are you claiming the text "Click a button to get an example text" should appear? I don't see it anywhere...)

Maybe some people would find this useful to switch on in the prefs, but with the conciseness of wikitax even this seems unlikely. But for new users, I think it creates far more problems than solutions. Better, IMHO, would just be to change the message on every edit page to include a direct link to a quick summary of syntax - a kind of compact reference version of that in Editing help But that's just my view... [Oh, one more thing - '' and ''' aren't technically italic and bold, they are emphasize and emphasize strongly. Not that it matters very much, but...] - IMSoP 13:55, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

1) is a very weak slippery slope argument - hardly worth responding to. There are more than enough developers who believe strongly in a simplified syntax. 2) Which "serious bugs" are you talking about? The toolbar has no bugs, to my knowledge. The only bug I know about is a Mozilla bug. 3) I think you just don't understand it. The behavior of the toolbar depends on the browser - in Mozilla and IE you get a select+click formatting, and if you click without a selection, it inserts sample text at the cursor. In other browsers, clicking on the button presents an explanation for each feature in an infobox.—Eloquence 21:21, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

OK, I agree that (1) is very much a matter of opinion, and put badly at that - it just seems like a step backwards to develop a concise syntax, and then imply that a tool is needed to author it. As for "the only bug I know about is a Mozilla bug", that's all very well - but that doesn't make it any less of a bug; even once this bug has been fixed, there will continue to be users of previous builds on into the indefinite future who suffer from this rather disorienting behaviour. As for (3), you are partly right: I didn't realise your earlier message was about a different mode of operation to the one I could see. However, I'm still worried about how it is you're checking for compatibility: if you're testing the functions you want to use directly, fine; but if you're checking the User Agent string or similar, you're just asking for trouble...

I'm sorry to be so negative about this - I appreciate you've worked hard trying to make it work, but I think that the current Wikipedia interface is very clean and consistent, and adding a colourful toolbar which in some cases will simply display information that could be given in an article anyway seems an unnecessary dilution of this.

- IMSoP 22:06, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Vote on title of "September 11 attacks"

A user decided that the word "terrorist" is POV and had to be removed from the title of the article previously titled September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; he went and changed the title accordingly. Some users agree with this and some disagree. The vote is underway at Talk:September 11, 2001 attacks. Tempshill 19:52, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Necrotizing fasciitis

Originally this was a redirect to Group A streptococcal infection#Necrotizing fasciitis, then it was changed to a copy of that information without the original text deleted from the main article. It has had a few changes since. The redirect should be restored or the main article updated to remove the copied text. RedWolf 03:59, Jan 17, 2004 (UTC)

• If there's a reason not to have the information in both places (is there?), the information should be removed from the Group A streptococcal infection article and stay in the Necrotizing fasciitis] article, because necrotizing fasciitis is not always caused by Group A streptococcus. -- Binky 08:11, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think it would be best to have a very short summary of it at Group A streptococcal infection with a link to the necrotizing fasciitis article. Angela. 08:16, Jan 17, 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Jamesday 13:15, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The reason for not duplicating the information in both places, by the way, is the general principle that if you copy text around, it will get modified in different ways in the two different places (that is, it will "branch"). Neither of the resulting articles is likely to be as good as a single one would have been. Onebyone 12:51, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Sept. 11 attacks link table corruption

As of the posting of this comment, the September 11, 2001 attacks article shows 10 inbound links, despite the fact that there are hundreds, so I assume the various moving around has managed to corrupt the link table. Is it possible to fix this somehow? There's a bunch of dangling double-redirects that should be tracked down and fixed, but that's difficult to do without the "what links here" feature. --Delirium 23:42, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)

The other day I was wandering through the Casualties of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks: City of New York and discovered a large number of names that link incorrectly to famous people of the same name. I pass this along in a note on the appropriate talk pages. How should we handle this? --Paul, in Saudi

The entire 9/11 casualties list should be de-wikified (Cept for victims w/ articles) since consensus seems to be to restrict non-famous victims to the 9/11 wiki. --Jiang

That's certainly not the consensus, but most of us have given up the fight. Anthony DiPierro 13:22, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Most Wanted Articles REFRESH

Is there anyone out there with the power to update Wikipedia:Most Wanted Articles to about 200 articles? A whole bunch have been made and so we need fresh meat. jengod 22:23, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I am not able to do that, but I do have an idea. What about including, on that most wanted page, a list of the most viewed broken links. Currently it shows the broken links that exist in the most places. However, this results in lots of them being from those generated pages like all the cities in the US. I don't know enough to know how hard this is, but perhaps a reasonable approximation of this would be to have the broken links that exist on the most viewed pages. Nroose 16:05, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I updated it (kind of) with the data that was on Special:Wantedpages of December 22, 2003. -- User:Docu

The problem with the "most viewed broken links" idea is that it requires some way of finding out how often each broken link is viewed - the Wiki software does have that functionality, but it was disabled months ago for performance reasons and isn't likely to be back any time soon. —Paul A 02:28, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

External links to offensive content

The article on cosmotheism currently has some <nowiki>ed links to necessary background material which is racist Neo-Nazi garbage. The anonymous user who's been working on this article insists that the links be active. What is Wikipedia policy on linking to obviously offensive content, i.e. the speeches and writings of William Pierce? — No One Jones (talk) 19:56, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I don't know of any wikipedia policy, although it has been recently discussed on the mailing lists. I would suggest a good dose of common sense. If you feel offended by Nazi writings, then don't read it. I don't see why the links should be treated differently to other links. (eg. there are people who are offended by blasphemy, but we don't de-link those links). --snoyes 19:58, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Although I must add (as an asside) that I don't like the fact that nazis have sullied the term by misappropriating it. --snoyes 20:04, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'd think active links are fine as long as they are descriptively labeled so that people know what they're going to get when they click on them. --Delirium 20:10, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is hardly G-rated at present. It's almost as raw and uncensored as the Internet itself. This has pros and cons. Hopefully the long-discussed filter project will eventually address the cons without affecting the pros.

But these links aren't the only current problem with this article I see. Andrewa 20:25, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Let's make the links to possibly offensive sites as Preference, off by default. ilya 21:49, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

What is the point of making it a preference if you can choose not to visit that page? Even if we could tell the developers what to do (;-)), I'd rather they not waste their time with useless stuff like this. --snoyes 22:51, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The point is we can claim then that our encyclopedia is somehow safe for children, at least when they surf under supervision of parents. If we solve vandal problem (for example, if we speak about CD-version), then we can claim that by doing simple steps you won't get to the contents that is clearly destructive. And what do you mean by 'if we could tell the developers?' There are plenty of them to implement a lot of things. Technically it's simple.

If this option wouldn't be implemented, I prefer unlinking some content. I'm not sure about those from cosmotheism, but goatse.cx in my opinion should be unlinked. In my browser going to link from text is selecting text and pressing one button, so there is no inconvenience. ilya 01:11, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

So if it is so easy then it is also not safe enough for the children.

What?? If your 10 years old child knows hot to do this then I appreciate you as the teacher, but I don't think it's a common ability

I propose deleting all material from wikipedia that will lead to the moral decay of the poor children and turn them all into raving Nazis/masturbators/infidels/etc.

I haven't suggested it, but a possible alternative variant too :)

LOL

me too

I'm not sure whether you have seen the volume of *useful* feature requests, and we do not actually have many developers. --snoyes 01:17, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As it could be understood from my text the present situation — when people by themselves nowiki possibly offensive links — is fine for me. If it were relaxed we'd talk about it.

As for whether it's important or not: forget about public schools, libraries and most other children if it's not declared to be unoffensive. ilya 06:36, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You can make a censored version of wikipedia and hawk it to the puritans, if you so desire. I object against such censorship being integrated into wikipedia. What you obviously didn't understand from my example above is that there are many different groups of narrow-minded people. Some don't like pictures of human anatomy, some don't like the word "god" spelled out, some don't like to see women showing their skin in public, some don't like blasphemy. Wikipedia has no obligation to cater to these people. Anyway, this has been discussed on the mailing lists before, and the conclusion was that we will not exclude encyclopedic material unless it is almost universally offensive. Personally I don't fully agree with that, but I'm willing to compromise. --snoyes 07:15, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

By no means I suggest some censorship of Wikipedia. What we are talking about has nothing to do with it. Still pesonally I appreciate the fact that many link are unlinked and that no explicit images, text etc appear without notice.

To summarize, I say it's pretty nice to have article on porno star with pictures, but inappropriate to put it on the Main Page. ilya 07:29, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I have to go with Snoyes on this one. An encyclopedia is supposed to report on the world as-is, not bowdlerize or sugar coat it. "Child safe" encyclopedia is a contradiction in terms. If you don't like it, move to Utah ;) →Raul654 05:15, Jan 17, 2004 (UTC)

Once again, I can't find another thing that would be better in efficiency/cost. But if you don't like it, that's fine. ilya

Sid McMath biography

• moved to Talk:Sid McMath

Happy Birthday!

..so it's a day late.

This is such a trememdous undertaking, and a blessedly welcome respite from commercial 'pedias. I was dismayed when Britannica when to a subscription format. I was even more dismayed when they refused to correct a factual error. I've not gone back since.

Long may Wiki prosper!

Icon for PDF linkage

Is there a preset icon or something when linking references that are in PDF? I have been editing a lot of articles lately where the references used are in PDF so I have to put a note like [15] (PDF document) on the article's references. --Maio 11:02, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)

I think that it's good to note that they are PDFs, and the way you are using is as good a way as any.

I think it's also good to at least say how big the files are. This will influence the decisions of some as to whether they view the files with their browser, download them, or avoid them altogether.

Assuming that these files are stored locally on Wikipedia, you might also consider making the link a download link, rather than a simple link which defaults to view. This is particularly helpful for the larger files; Many users won't otherwise realise they can download them. How big the file should be before we do this, and what the best syntax is to achieve it, I don't think has ever been discussed, and probably should be.

If the files aren't local to Wikipedia, it's generally better to link to the web page that points to them as an external link, rather than direct to the file. This has been discussed before but I can't remember where.

Some other sites give two links, one to view and one to download, which is the best of both worlds IMO. Again, I haven't seen this discussed here that I can remember. Andrewa 20:00, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is not an easy way to "make something a download" vs a link (if there is, please, someone tell me). It is possible in IE to make a file type give you that open vs save popup, but that is not simple and is done by the end user. I also was under the impression that large pdf files at least sometimes only download pages as needed, but size would be nice to know anyway, especially for dial up users. On Google, they preced the title of a search result with [pdf] - perhaps we could use that as a standard since Google is so widely used. Nroose 18:02, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I concur, I do not believe there is anything a website author can do to specify whether a file will be downloaded or opened; this is usually something the user has to determine. There may be some nonstandard MSIE extensions or the like that could be used to accomplish a forced download, but we should definitely stay away from such things. (Andrewa, if you can provide an example of a site that provides both view and download options, please let me know, as I'm wicked curious to know how it's possible! :-) I'd also like to weigh in on the side of linking to the external site that has the PDF available, rather than directly linking to the PDF itself, whenever possible. -- Wapcaplet 01:24, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hmmmm, good point. I've seen it done but can't remember where, and didn't check how it was done at the time. It worked for me, but that just shows it works on one version of MSIE. Agree we should stay vanilla. If I stumble across it again I'll let you know how it works. Andrewa 23:54, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Try compressing the PDF. --Ellmist 03:20, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia Email - show actual sender

Apparently a vandal I just blocked thinks it's funny to send me a little mail bomb (5000 lines of garbage) and some insults as a thank you. However as he sent it via the wikipedia email it gives no hint on who actually sent it, the only IP in the email headers is the one of pliny. It would be quite helpful if the actual sending IP (or maybe even the username if it's a logged in user) would be present in the headers - not only in the case of tracing such childish revenge mails, but also in case a legitimate user gets blocked and it gets difficult to find which blocked IP needs to be unblocked. It is quite similar with what Hotmail does, they add a X-Originating-IP header line. andy 10:42, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I may be wrong, but it might be that in genuinely legitimate cases such as what you describe above, the powers that be would be only too willing to expend the effort to trace the source and request cessal of action with regards you. IMAO the broader question of privacy of sending e-mails to users may have merit in itself, but not based on a single case. -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 12:30, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)

Showing current user (ID if logged in, IP if not) seems like a good idea. Not IP for logged in because someone may have a privacy reason for not wanting their IP shown and may be logging in to preserve that privacy (details of employer or school, say). Jamesday 12:20, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Tell a developer (e.g. me) exactly what time the message was sent and we'll be able to find the IP address in the server logs. -- Tim Starling 13:03, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

Brilliant Prose refresh voting

Just a reminder that voting closes today. I hope to start implementing the changes on Monday. Bmills 09:56, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Note that a load of candidates after voting are now waiting seconding/objecting on Wikipedia:Brilliant prose candidates. Sorry for not posting this yesterday, but I just could not load this page. Bmills 09:30, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Votes for Merge

• Some people vote pages to delete, when a merge is the solution. If there was a Votes for merge page, we could avoid unnecessary VfD entries. VfD also tends to be very big and people with slow connections have a hard time downloading all the entries. A VfM (votes for merge) may help to keep VfD clean from unrelated entries. Please have a look at User:Optim/Wikipedia:Votes for merge and tell me your opinion on User talk:Optim/Wikipedia:Votes for merge (not here). Optim 06:40, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Comment by Paul A moved to User talk:Optim/Wikipedia:Votes for merge. Optim 11:00, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Comment by TimStarling moved to User talk:Optim/Wikipedia:Votes for merge. Optim 14:06, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

hide page?

Is there a way i can hide a page while i edit it, then show when finished? -KevinJr42

Click the minimise button of your browser. -- Tim Starling 23:37, Jan 22, 2004 (UTC)

lol. I mean, from other users.

You mean to lock others out from editing the page at the same time? No, but take a look at Wikipedia:edit conflicts for some suggestions on how to minimize the problem. Ortonmc 23:43, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Okay... and how do i add that timestamp? "Ortonmc 23:43, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)"

Question - language dictionary

Can I create one?

Question - language dictionary

Can I create one? I'm linking it to Japanese_language

Votes for Merge

Moved to User:Optim/Wikipedia:Votes for merge

Case sensitivity of page names

Is there any justification for case sensitive page names?

Is there any reason to want "climate change", "Climate change", "climate Change" or indeed "ClImAte ChangE" to be different pages? In this case, obviously no, but are there in others?

If not, could wiki perhaps internalise names based on capitalising the first letter and little-ing the others (ie "Climate Change" is canonical), and (if desired) undo this in the displayed page. Ie, if you search for "ClimATE CHange" wiki would search for "Climate Change" but could (if this is desirable; it would be, say, if you had searched on IPCC or ASEAN) reconvert to whatever you had searched on, and display a page headed "ClimATE CHange". This would I think be very little extra load. (William M. Connolley 17:39, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC))

The only time it could possibly make a difference (that I've noticed) is when it comes to acronyms →Raul654 17:42, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

True. But acronyms are all uppercase, so UC'ing the first letter wouldn't affect them [WMC].

Not all acronyms are uppercase. Think of Dfs or Basic, for instance. Bmills 10:42, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'm sure this came up before and an example was swiftly located where a two-word entry had different meaning depending upon whether the second word was capitalised or not. The answer will probably waken me sometime later tonight at which point I will have no clue as to why I thought it :-) Phil 18:18, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

A trivial example is Meat loaf vs. Meat Loaf. Despite this example, I heartily agree that things in general would be easier if entry titles were case-insensitive, with the odd exceptions like this handled through disambiguation. Jgm 18:53, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Of course, those rare cases could be treated like any other disambiguation. Anthony DiPierro 18:37, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

OK, so, can anyone either point to the earlier discussion, or, give an example where the different meanings occur? (William M. Connolley 22:36, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC))

This did come up in the Pump recently, and I'd be interested in continuing the discussion. But I don't know offhand where or even whether it was archived.

Mind you, I have found Wikipedians to generally be very conservative about such changes even if trivial. And this is not a trivial change. Andrewa 00:18, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

There are many good reasons to keep titles case-sensitive. For example, GNU and gnu are quite different things, as is OVA and ova. With a little time, it is not difficult to compile a long list of words where case matters. Furthermore, an addition good reason to keep page titles case-sensitive is the fact that it helps to standardize the way users write pages, so we don't have people writing pages like "comMUNity" just to be funny. --Lowellian 00:46, Jan 22, 2004 (UTC)

A long list perhaps, but are they all acronyms-vs-words? OVA and ova are different, but Ova and ova are the same thing. And indeed (I wasn't ware of this - is it new?) "ova" is actually "Ova" so my suggestion is half-done already, but only for the initial letter of the first word. GNU and Gnu/gnu are different so perhaps I have to modify my idea to just uppercase-ing the initial letter of each word, which is only a minor extension of what seems to be done already.

As to your second point, at the moment you CAN write a page called comMUNity, and it does something. (William M. Connolley 10:21, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)).

There are certainly reasons for not completely removing case-sensitivity. But there are schemes that would do this far better than we do at present. At present a link to Oyster bay is broken even if Oyster Bay exists, while a link to oyster Bay would find the article. All this has been discussed before, I wonder where it went? Andrewa 18:44, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It looks like gnu and ova should be treated as disambiguisations. Why not gnu (acronym)? ilya 23:50, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Year in X

I noted some of the year (example 1988) have a box on the right to select other categories such as 1988 in sports, 1988 in film and the like. However, in 1954 (and others), this box does not appear. It is quite useful so if somebody knows how to add this, then I think it would be a good idea. Thank you. JackandJill 17:04, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You could add this yourself, looking at the 1988 page, the code is as follows:

<div style="float:right; border:1px; border-style:solid; padding:2px"> '''See also:''' * [[1988 in aviation]] * [[1988 in film]] * [[1988 in literature]] * [[1988 in music]] * [[1988 in sports]] * [[1988 in television]] </div>

There may not be any info on those years yet though, so the links will appear in red. Dori | Talk 17:11, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

However for 1954 I did just add it :-) andy 17:13, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The current version of the see also box is at WikiProject Years. The box is a newish idea, and hasn't been added to all year pages, yet. Gentgeen 07:05, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)