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There's a new bluebox at MediaWiki:US currency and coinage. It's my first one, so I'm probably missing a lot of style thing. If folks would like to fix it up and make it better, I'd appreciate it. Also, the pages it appears in---I didn't know whether to put it at the top or the bottom, so I generally picked the bottom. Is this policy? Grendelkhan 16:43, 2004 May 9 (UTC)
There is a wide gap between lay terms and doctors' jargon when it comes to the naming of diseases and medical procedures. Several doctors on Wikipedia (see WikiProject Clinical medicine) feel that articles should be named by their scientific names, rather than the lay terminology ( myocardial infarction instead of heart attack).
Arguments:
See also
Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions#Medicine, where I've raised this point and received a deafening silence.
JFW |
T@lk
15:50, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
Why not name it to the scientific name and have a redirect of the lay name? Rick K 22:40, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
RickK:
User:Ksheka tried moving
heart attack to
myocardial infarction but there was no consensus on the issue because "Wikipedia policy" was supposed to be that lay terminology is employed. My aim is to see if this should indeed be/remain policy, or that we can follow your suggestion and employ judicious redirecting. The
Wikiproject Clinical medicine policy is to keep pages aimed at the general readership, only escalating the difficulty to address technical issues (e.g. what
cellular molecules participate in the development of
atherosclerosis in patients who
smoke?)
JFW |
T@lk
09:10, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
It should work to have --using heart attack as an example-- an article in layman's terms in that location, and one in medical terms filed under myocardial infarction, each with reference to the other at the top of the article. (Is this discussion redundant?) I don't think redirecting is the answer here. ;Bear 01:01, 2004 May 11 (UTC)
See Loughall Martyrs
1. The name of this article may be POV; but what is a better one? 2. Although this is a sensitive subject, I think the article generally is pretty NPOV. 3. Where do we go for advice on POV disputes? Duncharris 10:56, May 9, 2004 (UTC)
Various Nexuscience issues: WikiSpam, GFDL compliance, and on-going issues over whether this project is in good faith or a scam. Please continue discussion at Wikipedia talk:Mirrors and forks#Nexuscience.
Maybe I'm just suffering a brain-freeze, but I can't figure out what to do with this IP [1] that's uploading a bunch of lyric articles to only moderately noted songs. I don't want to bite the newbie by simply listing them on VfD, but as far as I know, these articles aren't really appropriate. Niteowlneils 00:08, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
I am putting together a page for Marie-Louise von Franz and have found that some tangential topics do not exist. To this end, I would like to create them. As an example, there is an analytical psychology term amplification. There is an extant page for this term, however it is only a generalised definition. What is the protocol for adding a specific alternate definition?
2. Amplification: Expansion of dream content through personal associations and comparison of dream images with images from mythology, religion, and so on, which resemble the dream content. This concept can also be applied to myths and faerie tales.
Would something like this be appropriate?
There are a few out there, including Magnus Manske's C++ version and David Wheeler's version in C, but I decided to create my own HTML to wikitext converter anyway. It differs from others in that:
HTML::WikiConverter
When I get a chance, I'll upload the Perl module to CPAN, but for now I figured I'd share the tool with the WP community. Please comment on my talk page. -- Diberri | Talk
FWIW, I've uploaded the module to CPAN. It's available at my CPAN author page. -- Diberri | Talk 00:38, May 11, 2004 (UTC)
I think for greater community spirit we should hold certain theme days, or days where people concentrate on certain subjects that need attention, for example we could have 'fix stub day' or a day where we would all fix stubs, ( of course participation would be voluntary. There could be a page where people would nominate what days to hold and what subjects to consentrate on, it could be anything, like gathering information about a tricky subject or cleaning up some pages.
Sorry in advance if this has been brought up before. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 16:02, 2004 May 6 (UTC)
This is almost at the top of village pump now which means it will be chopped off soon, any ideas where this discussion could be continued? Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:55, 2004 May 13 (UTC)
When a site doesn't state copyright status explicitly, do we assume it's public domain, or do we assume it's copyrighted. Most of the articles created by this user [2] seem to be 90-100 percent copies from a couple web sites [www.healing-arts.org/tir/frank.htm][www.tir.org/metapsy/issues.htm] but neither seems to have any statement RE copyright status, so I don't know if they are a problem. (This posting is mostly for my education, and just happens to use these article I just found as examples.) Niteowlneils 21:57, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
Is it possible to move a page to a new location, even if there exists already a page there without deleting the target page first? I am asking because there is a controversy about the location of Kosovo, a.k.a. Kosovo and Metohia. Majority vote on the talk page (10 to zero) was for the location Kosovo, and it has been moved there three times in the last two days. It was always moved back unilaterally by user: Nikola Smolenski, most recently today at 15:02. I think this would require the deletion of the Kosovo and Metohia page first to make the move. However, there is no deletion log entry, and Nikola is not an administrator, so he could not delete it in the first place. What is going on? -- Chris 73 | Talk 06:36, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
Thanks Wikipedia. This is a letter I wrote to Brittanica:
When your online encyclopedia became a pay service, I was very disappointed. The internet and information should be free to everyone. There is now a new free encyclopedia called wikipedia that will lead to your eventual demise. May I be the first to say goodbye to you and your misplaced values.
If you didn't do it, I would have been forced to. Thanks.
Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk#Shifting to a new house
We have a Welcoming Committee to greet new users, but once they get greeted, they're rarely subject to much positive at the hands of other users, and many of them are subjected to a slew of insults from trolls, vandals, etc. Perhaps we should have a parallel committee, modeled after the WC, to compliment users when we see good edits, substantial work on pages, etc. Something less than a barnstar, but still a nice thing to do for the users. I suspect that, after a lengthy edit, it would be more than a little welcome to see a post on your talk page to let you know you did a good job, and that this would foster Wikilove Snowspinner 20:50, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
Looking at a specific astrology page issue regarding appearance at 800x600 (I usually run higher), I discovered that Wikipedia comes close enuf to fitting that it seems to be the target resolution, but in reality, is just enuf wider to be a pain. Anyone know if TPTB are aware of this? Niteowlneils 17:36, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Is it just me, or are we seeing a lot of overzealous documentation of the specifics of commercial products—the verbatim copying of ingredients lists, labels, the detailed listing of all the products in a specific product line, and so forth? My perception is that this material is not being contributed by people trying to promote the product, but just by people who, for whatever reason, just like to do it. Fans of the products, I think. I don't want to single out Sharpie other than as an example of the sort of thing I mean. Is it really valuable to note that it is available in Fine, Extra Fine, Ultra Fine, Super, Twin, Super Twin, Chisel, Metallic, Grip, Industrial, and Professional tips, and in Yellow, Black, Blue, Green, Orange, Red, Brown, Purple, Turquoise, Lime, Aqua, Berry, Olive, Marigold, Navy, Plum, Burgundy, and Silver ink? I won't remove valid information just because I personally happen to think it's silly, but... is this getting out of hand and, if so, do we need to draw a line, and if so, where? Dpbsmith 23:38, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
em dashes — dashes the width of an "m" character — are used in typesetting and "upscale" web page set off text, in a use similar to parentheses. where emdahses are unavailable, two "regular" dashes are often used: --
While em dashes look much nicer, on certain displays and devices -- such as my handheld -- they aren't in the character set at all, and are displayed using a placeholder character, often a question mark or unfilled square (a "box").
Should we use nice-looking em dashes, knowing they won't display properly on certain devices, or fall back on the less elegant but more portable double dash?
Thanks. orthogonal 04:22, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, I've been against them for some time now as they make editing difficult. Use "--" instead. Rick K 04:43, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
How should ofensive pictures be handled? Are there double standards? Should they be displayed inline or linked to? Are disclaimers needed?
Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Content disclaimer
See also Wikipedia talk:Profanity, Talk:Nick Berg, m:offensive content
Hello, I been looking for family feud game and wonder if it's available in the market on disc to play it on PC or Play Station/? please let me know it is available and where can I find it.
thanx Riyadh
shawan_riyadh@yahoo.com
I think there should be a link back to the parent page, in every page; Of course, we can use the back button in our explorers. But, after editing a page and saving it, if we click 'back' it goes to the editing page again. So 'The parent article link' feature would make life a lot easier. I havent scanned the whole page to see if such a feature already exists. So, even if such a feature already exists, please make it more eye-catching. : SudhirP 05:01, May 12, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks! I did not simulate all the possibilities! I think that a series of 'back' clicks is the only solution. Thanks 4 the response.
First things first: I learned of the village pump through Raul654. He said this would be a good place to find administrators and members who'd like to share details about the more interesting facets of Wikipedia. So here I am.
I write for The News Journal, a newspaper in Wilmington, Del. The story I'm writing is meant to inform readers about Wikipedia and how it works, but also to answer some of the questions they're most likely to have. What intrigues me about Wikipedia, beyond the vast collection of articles on obscure topics, is the culture that beats within the site. Here's where you come in.
Raul654 gave me a quick education on two of the more prolific Wiki-outlaws. That's what intrigues me most, and readers are likely to share that wonder. And through the sharing of such tales, readers will learn much about the evolution and self-policing of this unique site. (I'm loathe even to call it a mere "site.")
Please contact me at cyasiejko-at-delawareonline-dot-com. (Have I thwarted the spambots? I hope so.)
Take care, Christopher Yasiejko The News Journal
The Five Boroughs contains less information than City of New York#The Five Boroughs. Most of the info currently has to be maintained in both places. IMO, The Five Boroughs also tears the subject out of the valuable context of the City of New York article. But (as i learned by experimenting), overwriting The Five Boroughs with
has the same effect as
Sounds like a useful SMOP to me, to have the Wiki engine use the section info instead of ignoring it. Has there ever been discussion of doing so? -- Jerzy (t) 18:12, 2004 May 13 (UTC)
Is it possible to delete the whole history of one page forever? How?
I wrote this article ( Murray Haszard) a few hours ago, and when I saved it, it took several minutes for Wikipedia to respond. I then saw in Recent Changes that two New copies had been saved.
I just check "What links here" and nothing does, yet there are references to this article from Ghost, B32 Business Basic and Binary Research. These links work. Why doesn't "What links here" work? -- Gadfium 08:28, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
somewhere once on a wikipedia FAQ i saw instructions for reassigning an anonymous edit you have made to your account. now i cannot find this FAQ. can someone give me instructions? Lethe
Are articles involving race given equal treatment? Answers to this and various discussions about the definiton of racism moved to talk:reacism.
I have listed the image of the severed head of Nick Berg for deletion. Please vote at WP:IFD. Dori | Talk 21:00, May 12, 2004 (UTC)
Why is the English Wikipedia:Copyright locked? Please change the interwiki link to Swedish Wiki to "Wikipedia:Upphovsrätt". // Rogper 17:52, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
While Googling for " wikipedia and google", I came across a thread on the forum of an organisation called the "Stormfront White Nationalist Community" from the end of April, discussing Google and, tangentially, how to add (presumably) POV edits to Wikipedia: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=129083. Happily, it seems they quickly encountered "censorship" and IP bans, but the following post was a little worrying:
What are the current Wikipedia mechanisms for defending against subtle POV or vandalism, and what confidence do we have that they work? — Matt 13:25, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
Hello,
the chinese Wiki is experincing massiv vandalism with a bot and a proxy again. Please help.-- Philopp 18:13, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
This community seems very sensitive to the issues of copyright. But when it comes to credit and citation, we do quite poorly. I'm surprised at the number of articles that refer to authors' conclusions and interpretations without crediting the author or citing the source.
Some may disagree with me, but I think this is a serious weakness. It only takes discipline to cite source; hunting down original sources takes time, effort and uncommon selflessness — let's face it, unless you happen to know the source, you're unlikely to invest much effort in uncovering the implicit citations in somebody's articles.
Integrity, transparency, credibility, honesty: that's what's at stake here. What do you think?
Making references easier to add might lower the activation energy. If I'm not aware of a system that's already in place to simplify this, please let me know. — Johny 21:48, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
In research, you really do need to cite your sources, to prove you are enlarging on what others have created, you are developing what others have originated and not just copying what someone else has written.
Dieter Simon 01:08, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
I've noticed that many editors have taken to including external links which are strongly POV towards one particular view or item of the article, often without any warning that this represents the views of one particular side. Often, these links escape the normal Wikipedia NPOV process, because someone needs to take the time to check them out (not always easy). Does anyone have views on this? Lately I've been killing links that are not properly described as being POV or fringe interest. JFW | T@lk 08:55, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
Sure, Pete. I personally only kill links when I feel they don't enhance the article content but just confirm that someone has a POV. Random assasinations of links will just provoke "link insertion wars" anywayz. JFW | T@lk 11:27, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
I've noticed this as a serious problem in science articles: Standard and established science knowledge is usually found in textbooks and not so much on the web. But fringe theories, non-standard ideas and other strongly POV stuff is easily found on the web, often in a way carefully tailored to be easily accesible and quick too read. Hence such links often overpower the standard science in the link list, especially if its a stub.
Not as serious, but related, are external links to papers or articles dealing with definitly minor details. Especially if these are the only links, this looks highly misleading. Stubs with such links are worst. I usually at least consider deleting such links but then don't as I feel obliged to replace it by a better link. But maybe one shouldn't be so hesistating. Sanders muc 18:44, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
IMSoP: This is what is probably the best thing, but many POV pushers simply reinsert the links without engaging in a discussion :-(
Sanders muc: This phenomenon (of fringe theories overwhelming main science articles) attracted my attention at
cholesterol, where someone inserted a rant on the "dissidents of the lipid hypothesis", some noisy people who doubt the link between cholesterol and
cardiovascular disease. Yet >99% of all doctors will subscribe to the "lipid hypothesis" (which is not a hypothesis anymore). Disconcerting.
JFW |
T@lk
22:46, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
I'm trying to add the following external link to a page:
As you can see, it is not parsed into an html link. If there is something wrong with the URL, I don't know what it is (the dollar sign?) but it works when copied into my browser's address bar. Is there any way to force the parsing, or will I be unable to link this page?
Radagast 22:54, May 15, 2004 (UTC)
Should the text at the top of each page that says From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia include the trademark symbol? Please discuss at MediaWiki talk:Fromwikipedia. Angela . 00:31, May 15, 2004 (UTC)
A user e-mailed me this afternoon, asking if I could correct the article IMac to the proper spelling iMac. Both spellings bring me to the same article as it is (and not even as a redirect), so I was wondering if someone could clarify for me how Wikipedia handles casing in titles -- am I correct in assuming that the Wiki software doesn't actually distinguish between IMac and iMac? Bearcat 18:25, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:External links
Since reading the Xmen storylines her on Wikipedia, I would like to purchase the Xmen anmiation series that aired on the Foxnetwork from 1992 to 1998. I would like all the five seasons, every episode please. Who do I call?
Michael Frye 1414 Wilcox Ave Portsmouth, Va 23704 1-757-391-0207
On a completely unrelated note - I just found out that John Malkovich is playing Lord Voldemort in the next Harry Potter movie. Now, I've asked 5 people who they would prefer to play Lord Voldemort, and every single person said the same thing - Christopher Walken! Why, oh why, couldn't they get Walken to take the role? →Raul654 03:36, May 14, 2004 (UTC)
Not Malkovich. I read that the other day, then read a denial (can't remember where, now.) But Rowling has insisted all along that only British actors be cast. Rick K 03:41, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
There a link to Toki Pona language version of the town article but for some reason it does not display together with other languages but at the end of the article. The same seems to be the case on the Toki Pona language page itself. Why? Brona 20:48, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
This is the copyright notice for a site I want to use as a picture source,
[6]:
"All the pictures on this site were taken by Jo Mitchell (unless otherwise stated) and may be used for legitimate and legal purposes provided credit is given. It would be appreciated if you email Jo to request permission for use of images. Most images are available as high-resolution scans (up to 4000dpi) for use in print and screen media - please do not hesitate to ask for further details. Copyright is retained at all times by Jo Mitchell. Thanks"
Can I use these pics (if I check with Jo Mitchell first) and what would be the copyright notice I should use on the Image Description Page? Thanks for any help,
Adrian Pingstone
18:51, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
Although most Dianics do worship the goddess unto herself, not all Dianics believe that there is no equal god form. In fact, I personally know two ordained McFarlane Dianic Priests. Although rare it does happen. Purley feminist Wicca is a reactionary belief system. It is a sociological backlash against male dominated religions. However, it has the same fault in that it rejects balance in favor of the domination of one form of Deity; hence, it is a psycholoigcal reaction rather than a true belief system. It has served its purpose in showing the fallacy of a amle dominant god from. But, to not understand the sacrifice of the god and the joy and pain the goddess experiences from his arrival and departure from this plane, is to not understand the majesty, beauty and compassion of the goddess herself. Unfortunately, many Dianic Wiccans fail to understadn the true nature of the goddess by ignoring or downplaying her equal and opposite self.
Also, 1 more thing. I would just reccomend a link from an article to a contributions page, where you see the contributions for that article. I understand it is not all about 1 person doing the encyclopedia, and more about everyone creating it, but a contributions page would be awesome!
1 last thing. Are there any ranks in the Wikipedia? Like if you help out a lot, would you be recognized and be a VIP in the members room or something?
Whe you serach for your member name in the encyclopedia, you need to types in usr first. Why not ignore the fact whether the USR is there or not?
I promise this is my LAST suggestion. Why not a lounge chat area for members where you can talk about the articles, improve grammar, and other things?
Just a few suggestions by Kapil!
I'm sure this must have cropped up before, but I can't find it; can anyone point me to a relevant discussion? Anyway, I did a search on Google today for Lucifer cipher, and in the top 10 results were no less than 7 mirrored copies of the Lucifer (cipher) page, but not the Wikipedia article itself, which surfaces at position 70. This seems to happen a lot for various articles, and is somewhat annoying (especially since the mirrored pages are out of date and advert-laden). Anything Wikipedia can do? Feel free to point me to the previous discussions... — Matt 13:42, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
I think we should have a press release to announce our Webby Award success. I've started one at Wikipedia:Press releases/May 2004. Please add to it. Other sites such as Google and the BBC have made press releases when they have won in the past, so I feel it's important we do too. We haven't had one for over three months, and the last one received little attention in the outside world. Perhaps this one will have more of an effect. Angela . 17:03, May 12, 2004 (UTC)
This has been five days now. Should it be sent? Or is there not enough interest to bring it up to a sendable standard? Angela . 19:35, May 17, 2004 (UTC)
I've noticed in the past few days some things that were on Votes for Deletion simply getting speedily deleted. While I agree that many of these items should have been listed on speedy deletion instead of VfD, I feel that, once something is on VfD, it is poor form to terminate the debate. If it's truly a bad article, it'll go away within a week anyway - no need to hasten the process and leave a bad taste in people's mouths when a debate is effectively cut off. Snowspinner 19:09, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
The Wikipedia Guide to Layout recommends that "Related topics" be a heading for a collection of internal links to related topics. Custom and practice in the Wikipedia appears to be to use "See also". Should the recommendation be changed? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.
I'm looking for the page that directs the "Did You Know?" section on the front page. Who decides what we see there?
I also want to know if there's a New pages patrol, just like the RC patrol.
Anyone with info please contact me hear or at my talk page. MGM 10:20, May 15, 2004 (UTC)
This is kind of amusing: the URL that Wikipedia generated for Image:Us-pa.gif (the Pennsylvanian flag) is "/upload/7/76/Us-pa.gif". Marnanel 04:07, May 15, 2004 (UTC)
-->Continued at Image talk:Us-pa.gif
From time to time here comes a guy and starts "fixing rediects". A recent example is massive change of Trans-Siberian railroad into Transsiberian railway.
It is one thing to fix redirects from, e.g., common misspellings. It is totally meaningless IMO thing to replace a perfectly valid and almost as common name, like in the example above. In some particular case I fixed some time ago, the article author intentionally used an archaic term, only to be "fixed" by some overzealous wikipeditor.
Guys, please be reasonable. Think about other useful things you can do, like Wikipedia:New pages patrol. Mikkalai 18:25, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
The discussion lets me undestand "the root of the evil". All this redirect/piping thing is simply a techie mindset: you are trying to "help" computer to do the job (of readdresing), whil it should be exactly vice versa: computers are here to help us write articles (and read articles). Using pipes and fixing redirects is IMO like writing pieces of code in assembly language where the compiler is dumb and cannot optimize. It ought to be done sometimes, but if you have to do it almost everywhere, this should be the hint that either the overall design is wrong or atavistic instincts come creeping. I know that "real programmers" write in FORTRAN, but... Mikkalai 15:46, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
Do any guidelines exist for the content of tables showing the offices held by politicians? (See the bottom of the Tony Blair entry for an example.) It appears that periods spent as members of bodies such as Parliament aren't included, but I think it would be a good idea to do so. Betelgeuse 15:33, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
Sir George Young is an example of an MP who moved constituencies because of boundary adjustments. For his entry I would add 'MP for Ealing Acton 1974 - 1997' and 'MP for North West Hampshire 1997 - present'. I don't think the two extra rows would add to much bulk to the article (most politicians entries are little more than stubs anyway), and I think it's the type of information a reference work like wikipedia should include. Betelgeuse 16:56, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
I authored an article on Trip Hawkins a while back, but it's been deleted. I didn't see it listed on VfD, it's just gone! As the founder of Electronic Arts and 3DO, I think he is worthy of an article. Does anyone know what happened to it and why it was killed? — Frecklefoot 20:30, May 19, 2004 (UTC)
It was a full article at one point. You can see the cache of it here. However, it was ofen vandalized (apparently by a digruntled former employee of 3DO). I suspect the same person trimmed it down to the link and Dysprosia deleted it. The history would have shown the correct, full article. Is there some way to restore it? — Frecklefoot 20:42, May 19, 2004 (UTC)
and explain the ideas consensus and arrogant unilateralism to Jiang. Either that, or point out to me why I should pull my head in? any comments most welcome. best wishes Erich 23:09, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
Check this extra semicolon http://sample.link/<hello> in the end. Why? // Rogper 19:04, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
Is Wikipedia poor at citing its sources? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Cite your sources#References.
Question moved to Wikipedia:Reference Desk. Meelar 17:52, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
In reference to the above problem of external links not being described (and consequently hiding POV), let me add that I feel that in general, Wikipedia has too many lists of links and anything else that just list items without any descriptions. Most of could be enormously improved by adding short notes to list items. (The note should be short enough so that the list remains on a single line without wrapping when the window is a normal size. This preserves the vertical compactness of the list and keeps the list items positioned for easy visual overview).
Editors seem to be reluctant to do this, I'm not sure why.
Perhaps what happens is that someone starts a list that contains no comments, and subsequent editors are reluctant to be the first to disturb the pristine columnnar appearance of the list by adding the first comment? Or is it a "foolish consistency" fear that it is somehow wrong to annotate one item unless you can annotate all of them?
When listing Moog synthesizer users, how much better to have
(as is the case in the actual article) than
Dpbsmith 11:13, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
What should be done about POV external links? Are these escaping the normal Wikipedia NPOV process? Should they be removed? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:External links#External links epidemic.
Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dashes#emdashes
I think there should be some naming conventions for verbs ( Wikipedia:Naming conventions (verbs) - tentative).
There is a convention about using the most common words ( Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)) which could apply to verbs in some cases; ie killing redirects to murder.
It seems to be common practice to use the present participle; ie. jumping rather than jump or jumped.
Any comments? Bensaccount 01:20, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
I note that in the demographics of us towns like Hialeah, Florida, all ethnic groups except white are wikified. Does this strike folks as odd? What should this one link to? Thanks, Mark Richards 21:28, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia recently won two awards ( Webby Awards and Prix Ars Electronica), and I am sure there are more to come in the future :-) Do we have a place to list the awards, sort of a Wikipedia:Trophy room? I was thinking about making a page, but wasn?t sure if something similar already exists. -- Chris 73 | Talk 04:14, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
My watchlist now won't update, and instead says - 'this is a saved version of your watchlist'. Any ideas why? Thanks! Mark Richards 15:42, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
So when do I get the real one, and when the caches one? Thanks, Mark Richards 17:56, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
Thanks! Mark Richards 19:55, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
It would be much better simply to reduce the 12-hour default, which as I said on earlier occasions is a total waste. A one-hour default would probably be sufficient to improve performance and would be less "traumatic" than this almost entire disabling of watchlists. -- Wik 20:25, May 17, 2004 (UTC)
I'm sure this must have cropped up before, but I can't find it; can anyone point me to a relevant discussion? Anyway, I did a search on Google today for Lucifer cipher, and in the top 10 results were no less than 7 mirrored copies of the Lucifer (cipher) page, but not the Wikipedia article itself, which surfaces at position 70. This seems to happen a lot for various articles, and is somewhat annoying (especially since the mirrored pages are out of date and advert-laden). Anything Wikipedia can do? Feel free to point me to the previous discussions... — Matt 13:42, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
Currently interwiki links follow the principle "each language makes links to each language". As the number of languages increases, this system becomes more and more difficult to manage. Very soon we will have hundreds of interlanguage links on some pages. Perhaps we should have a "central repository" of all interwiki links, with only one "other languages" link at normal pages? Or perhaps it will be user-defined — either to have a lot of interlanguage links, or only one "other languages" link, or some chosen languages linked directly, and others via "other languages" link. — Monedula 14:08, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
http://www.tinyurl.com Very handy. Andries 09:49, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
I see there's a new article on Temple undergarment on which I am not qualified to comment... but anyone who is might want to check it for accuracy/NPOV. Dpbsmith 12:27, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
Okay, new Creative Commons migration plan. No horrendous programming involved. For a list of reasons why I think migrating toward dual liscensing under both the Creative Commons and the GFDL is a Good Thing, please visit my user page.
Then:
Does anybody see any problems with this plan?
Crazyeddie 00:58, 2004 May 24 (UTC)
Several objections:
As you may see from my above comments, I see no good coming of this project and must ask once again, just WHY do you think this is needed? Rick K 01:24, 24 May 2004 (UTC)
Well that's the best I can do for now. Crazyeddie 03:54, 2004 May 24 (UTC)
I've added sections and indicated who was talking where in my rather massive reply. I'm going to take one last look over, then go off to recover from this. Crazyeddie 04:09, 2004 May 24 (UTC)
I don't see why they should all be changed to "—". At large font sizes an "—" is *huge* and looks very ugly. A '-' works just as well and doesn't stand out as much.
Darrien 17:19, 2004 May 23 (UTC)
This perceived problem is a perceived font problem. Argue to have the Wikipedia font changed if you feel its m-dashes are too long. In the meanwhile, if a dash (—) is meant, a dash should be used; if a hyphen (-) is meant, a hyphen should be used. Read any book from a major publisher — you won't find them using hyphens for dashes, either single, as you like them (-), or double (--), as most wikipedians seem to. Bad punctuation is ugly to educated people Chameleon 17:35, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
I would like to tran
With the upcoming features I think we should keep in mind that "just because we can doesn't necessarily mean we should." What I mean by that is that the new parametrized templates and categories can make pages pretty hard to figure out. We should probably come up with a policy/guideline about how these two features should be used. As an example, keep a newbie mindset and try and figure out this page: [7] We should preserve the wiki principles of simple and easy editing as much as possible while making use of new features IMO. Dori | Talk 21:26, May 21, 2004 (UTC)
I was about to insert a book cover with her image but saw where one had been removed by User:Angela: (cur) (last) . . 23:06, 17 Nov 2003 . . Angela (remove photo - see Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements) - However, while doing the biography for Errol Flynn’s wife, Lili Damita, I see that the Image: ErrollFlynn.jpg "Cover of My Wicked, Wicked Ways, by Erroll Flynn" was inserted by a Wikipedia Administrator, User:Zoe -- Can someone clarify this? Should I delete Flynn or insert Trudeau? JillandJack 16:56, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
Can someone take a look at the logo for the ARC on the main page? The logo there is of the IFRC, of which the ARC is a member, but the ARC never uses this logo, and it is not the same thing. Can we swap it out for a plain red cross without the border, which is the logo of the ARC? Thanks, Mark Richards 16:40, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
We're going to be phasing in a pre-release version of MediaWiki 1.3 over the next 24 hours or so. Expect minor service disruptions, and the sudden appearance of lots of new features. -- Tim Starling 14:08, May 21, 2004 (UTC)
I see that Wikiquote, Wikisource, Meta-Wiki, & Wikibooks have all switched to it. When will the rest be switched over?
The calendar on the Japanese Wikipedia is changed each day apparently by hand. I think maybe we could use a calendar bot to automate such tasks.
Buenos dias. Deseo segnalar las mejores paginas web sobre el Perú en idioma italiano. Apartenecen a nuestra asociacion sociocultural Latinoamericana Magie delle Ande. Gracias por su disponibilidad. Gabriele Poli
http://www.peru.sudamerica.it http://www.magiedelleande.it
I recognize that the following ideas may be un-Wikipedian in their nature, but here goes.
There is at least the appearance that many articles are being vandalized by anonymous contributors, and also that many new junk articles are being created by the anonymous ones as well. Note the frequent vandal deletions of the United States article. I would like to submit that since the Wikipedia is very close to maturity (IMHO), it would be a good time to start restricting what anonymous contributors can do. I think it would be good if anonymous contributors should not be able to:
Ultimately, the work of the registered contributors will become immensely difficult if we have to continue to battle the increasing wave of vandalism and junk articles coming from anonymous contributors. So, if we don't consider the ideas I present here, what honestly can be done? (Or, has this already been discussed before?)
Stevietheman 07:43, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
Should the several myriad rambot-generated US town articles be moved to Wikibooks? -- Juuitchan
No. Absolutely not. Rick K 15:02, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
Hey, I wrote those 30,000 articles myself with the help of my master! Us bots are people too. -- rambot
On my user page, I have a draft of a petition. This petition proposes that the Wikipedia community migrate toward releasing its collective work under both the GFDL and Creative Commons liscenses.
While this has been suggested previously (see here: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFDL_FAQ ), I believe that this proposal gets around the problems that have been mentioned. If it doesn't, I'm confident that the Wikipedia community, working in collaboration, can find a way around any problems.
Please go to my user page and edit this draft, especially if you disagree with this proposal. I'm planning to move the final petition to Wikipedia talk:Copyrights after July 1, 2004 (although I may hold off). Before I move it, I will make sure I personally approve the final draft. If you disagree with the final draft, you can link to a statment of your objections. At this time, I will also remove any signature from the draft, since I can't be sure that people who signed the draft will agree with the final form.
Thank you!
Crazyeddie 21:24, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
Who created this page?
I've come up with a new plan to get around the problems you've all brought up. I'm submitting it as a new thread to avoid quadruple indentation. Crazyeddie 00:43, 2004 May 24 (UTC)
Check this extra semicolon http://sample.link/<hello> in the end. Should I make a case of it on the bugtracker? // Rogper 19:04, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
Every few minutes, I get a white screen saying "Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties" etc. Then, if I wait a few minutes, wikipedia works again. Wikipedia:Hardware status has nothing. What's up? Is this just me? Meelar 18:06, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
The Community Portal devotes a couple of lines to listing articles that need to be merged. Wouldn't it be better to have whole page for this? --Smack 17:45, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
My apologies if there's a better place to ask this, but I was curious if Wikipedia supports XML. I mainly ask for the possiblity of implementing a few databases. Oberiko 16:50, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
I saw some debate about using the As of 2004 etc feature to mitigate this - is there any concensus? Mark Richards 19:45, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
I'd like to post to or answer some of the discussions on the Reference Desk, but I don't see how to do that if the discussion in question is not the last one. Clicking Edit just makes part, but not all, of the massive Reference Desk bulk appear in the edit box.
The problem is that the user is not logged in. Anon editors don't have the option of section editing. Rick K 23:50, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
Undeleted. Discussion moved to Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion. Angela . 20:45, May 19, 2004 (UTC)
I've noticed some time ago, admittedly to my surprise, that even within Europe, nameing conventions vary considerably. For example, in German and English speaking countries, a wife adopts her husbands surname, while in France, this is not done. In Spain and Portugal, people even have two surnames, one from each parent.
Some people wrote articles about personal names in different countries, and a list of links to these articles can be found in the list of personal naming conventions. But this list is quite short.
I would like to ask the international Wikipedians to enlarge this list by explaining about the names in their home country. That might be interesting. TIA.
Sanders muc 17:51, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
who copied who?
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Utilitarianism.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism
Links on both point to identical articles and even identical graphics!
I've seen more and more of these around recently...the user sigs that link in one part to the User page and one part to the User Talk page. I know how to edit how my name is displayed in my sig via preferences, but whatever I put in that field is piped into a link of the form [[User:Ed Cormany|mysigtext]]. Therefore, when I try to put a link in the sigtext, it starts breaking things. What am I doing wrong? —Ed Cormany 14:52, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
Brilliant workaround, although this means of course that I can't put the link to my talk page first, as I had hoped. Oh well, thanks anyhow! — Ed Cormany 02:45, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
The title of this artitcle (I've seen List of New York Senators as well) seems confusing, to me. I would think that it would be a list of people who have represented Colorado in the US Senate. To make it less confusing, should it be moved to List of Colorado state Senators? Rick K 14:50, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
Recently, the article Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal was renamed Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse reports because some users found the word "scandal" in the title to be pov. But wikipedia has dozens of articles with the word "scandal" in the title, including Watergate Scandal, Lewinsky scandal, Whitewater Scandal, Harken Energy Scandal, Quiz show scandals, Olympic Games scandals, Mutual fund scandal (2003), Accounting scandals of 2002, Teapot Dome Scandal, Black Sox Scandal, and many others. So should the word "scandal" be removed from article titles? Or is the word "scandal" inherantly pov? (For more details, see the article's talk page.) Quadell 13:55, May 19, 2004 (UTC)
I would like to suggest a new feature for Wikipedia: display the start of the linked article as a tooltip when the mouse lingers over a link. Currently, only the title is displayed, using the TITLE property of the LINK tag.
Quite often I read an article about an unfamiliar subject that contains many unfamiliar terms. My main purpose is to understand the main article, but I need an idea of what those terms mean. For example, when reading the article Mycenae, it is helpful to know that Argos is a "city in Greece in Peloponnese", and that the Persian Wars "started about 500 BC and lasted until 448 BC".
It is inconvenient to have to follow each link to an article about each unfamiliar term, because the extra operations of clicking on the link and going back to the original page are required, and because of the delay of loading the pages. It interrupts the reading of the main article. It would be alleviated if the first 100 or so characters were shown as a tooltip.
For an implementation of this idea, see for example http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Mycenae. The page itself is a bit cluttered, but I'm just talking about the tooltips on the links. TheFreeDictionary has implemented them using Javascript, but a similar thing can be done using the LINK tag's TITLE property.
Pgan002 08:05, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
Just to give a technical slant on this issue: Firstly, the tag in question isn't <link>
, it's <a>
; a slightly pedantic point, but <link>
is for something else - it's how you link in
stylesheets and
favicons, for instance. Secondly, there is a major limitation with implementing this feature using title
attributes: not all browsers have multiline tooltips; for instance
Mozilla, and I guess any other
XUL-based systems, will only show a limited amount of the caption, as much as it can fit in a medium-sized one-line box. So to make the feature useful, we would probably have to do something crazy with JavaScript, like TheFreeDictionary do.
Now, the reason I say "something crazy", is that I'm not quite sure how this would have to interact with the database. Our mirrors have an advantage over us here, in that they don't have to deal with the information constantly changing - they can be really aggressive with their caching, whereas we have to make sure changes get reflected ASAP. Looking at the source, it seems that TheFreeDictionary actually merges in the text for the tooltips as part of the page that gets sent - so before being sent, each article has to be generated from not only itself, but all those it links to (and you will generally end up downloading a load of text that you never see). An alternative would be to have the JavaScript fetch the data somehow when you point at the word - saving on server costs and initial download, but meaning you get almost as much delay as opening the link anyway (esp. if you use a new window/tab/whatever, as people have suggested).
I'm not saying this is a bad idea per se, just that implementation-wise, there are a few things that would have to be worked out. It would certainly be useful, but it wouldn't be easy. - IMSoP 14:54, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
Understand it is a clause in disinvestment agrrement that decision of disinvestment made can be reverted within 2 yrs of takeover by the Government without assignning any reason. If it is so Congress Government may take initiative for the idisinvestment made for IPCL(Navratan Company) for reverting within 2 yrs.IPCL was disinvested on 4th June02 and hence now 16 days are left to government to revert the decision. This is mainly due to deal which was made at thraw away price by NDA Gov as against Worth of the company.
SUBJECT MATTER IS URGENTLY TO BE LOOKED INTO BEFORE EXPIRY OF PERIOD.
Subject to be forwarded to Congess Working Commotty at earliest. Regards.
Although many people might not have noticed, the Chinese (zh) Wikipedia suffered an astronomical scale vandalbot attack, spread over two days. Thousands of pages were created. The users there didn't quite know what to do about it. So as a result, I've updated m:Vandalbot. Everyone needs to read this so that they know what to do in the event of an attack. -- Tim Starling 04:02, May 19, 2004 (UTC)
I just left a note on a newbie's talk page explaining that Wikipedia articles don't have signatures or bylines, in order to emphasize the fact that nobody has ownership of an article. I'm really pretty sure I'm right about this, but... I wanted to cite a policy page, and I couldn't locate one. (And I tried googling on what I thought were all the obvious word combinations). Am I right, and, if so, what policy page should be referenced? Dpbsmith 22:26, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
Hey, I just found a new use for Wikipedia. I was wrestling with today's crossword puzzle. Usually the weekday ones are fine, but today--lots of facts that I just didn't know. I used it to find the following in just a couple of minutes:
But--I couldn't find "dashboard of an English car"!?
Elf |
Talk
18:56, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
Item: Intuition Discuss on: Talk:Intuition & User_talk:Heidimo#Intuition
Remark: I have a factual error dispute but the other person is unwilling to explain what she thinks is wrong with my way of reasoning. I guess what needs to be done is to sort out the philosophical meaning of the word from the informal meaning. I am studying this seemingly simple subject in another encyclopedia but it has not helped much until now. Thanks in advance Andries 18:31, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
Should we have a "central repository" of all interwiki links? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Interlanguage links#Interwiki: central repository feature suggestion.
Our mirrors sometimes have higher Google rankings than Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:External search engines#Google results: Mirrors vs Wikipedia.
I have trued to find out what the name Amanda or Mandy is in korean, i hope you can help me as this is to with the Martial art WTF Taetwondo that i study.
Thanks, Mandy.
...needs your help. We need photos of braided hair, felt, flyswatter, Palette knife, polyester, rayon, sickle, magnifying glass, Alquerque, Gomoku, Auditorium Building, Chicago, Benjamin Franklin Bridge, Chainsaw, roundabout, Baseball bat and glove, Blue Grotto, brassiere, panties, undergarment, all kinds of Cats, Hats, Instruments, and computers ( VAIO), and much more. If you have any of the above pictures, or if you have the item, please take a photo and go to Wikipedia:Requested pictures! (all clothing requests are person-optional) -- Chris 73 | Talk 04:42, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
(Moved by Starx from MediaWiki:VfD-Kapil_Yedidi)
Also, 1 more thing. I would just reccomend a link from an article to a contributions page, where you see the contributions for that article. I understand it is not all about 1 person doing the encyclopedia, and more about everyone creating it, but a contributions page would be awesome!
1 last thing. Are there any ranks in the Wikipedia? Like if you help out a lot, would you be recognized and be a VIP in the members room or something?
Whe you serach for your member name in the encyclopedia, you need to types in usr first. Why not ignore the fact whether the USR is there or not?
I promise this is my LAST suggestion. Why not a lounge chat area for members where you can talk about the articles, improve grammar, and other things?
Just a few suggestions by Kapil-Y!
I recently started adding to the Banjo-Kazooie article. I dont' have a copy of the game but thought it would be wise to ask here if anyone who does could fire it up and write down some of the funnier rhymes Grunthilda utters during gameplay. Also of course if anyone remembers something from the game which i forgot that would be great, thought it would be nice to ask this in village pump instead of pages needing attention since this is really a request very few are able to fill.. and the more eyes... -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 02:22, 2004 May 18 (UTC)
Well, I just opened my desk drawer and lo and behold there it was on top one of the piles of our N64 games. Hmmm. I might fire it up tomorrow becuase I'm busy right now. -- Saint-Paddy 23:19, 24 May 2004 (UTC)
Know someone who was, or still is, at Cannes? Are you surfing WP from an internet cafe in Cannes at this very moment? Help us get a good GFDL or public domain photo from the festival to use on Wikipedia! It would be nice to feature an image of this year's festival in the Cannes article, in the news on the main page, and on the Press Corps page. +sj + 22:01, 2004 May 17 (UTC)
Kennt jemand jemanden, der in Cannes war oder immernoch ist? Surfst du die Wikipedia in diesem Moment aus einem Internet Café in Cannes an? Hilf uns bitte, indem du ein gutes GFDL oder Public Domain Foto vom Festival machst, damit wir es für die Wikipedia benutzen können! Es wäre schön, dieses Jahr ein Foto im Artikel Cannes, in den News / Nachrichten der Hauptseite und auf der Press Corps Seite zu haben. Fire 22:12, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Press releases/May 2004. More help still needed to write the press release before it is ready to be sent.
Should candidates for speedy deletion that have been mistakenly listed on VfD not be speedily deleted?
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.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU
There's a new bluebox at MediaWiki:US currency and coinage. It's my first one, so I'm probably missing a lot of style thing. If folks would like to fix it up and make it better, I'd appreciate it. Also, the pages it appears in---I didn't know whether to put it at the top or the bottom, so I generally picked the bottom. Is this policy? Grendelkhan 16:43, 2004 May 9 (UTC)
There is a wide gap between lay terms and doctors' jargon when it comes to the naming of diseases and medical procedures. Several doctors on Wikipedia (see WikiProject Clinical medicine) feel that articles should be named by their scientific names, rather than the lay terminology ( myocardial infarction instead of heart attack).
Arguments:
See also
Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions#Medicine, where I've raised this point and received a deafening silence.
JFW |
T@lk
15:50, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
Why not name it to the scientific name and have a redirect of the lay name? Rick K 22:40, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
RickK:
User:Ksheka tried moving
heart attack to
myocardial infarction but there was no consensus on the issue because "Wikipedia policy" was supposed to be that lay terminology is employed. My aim is to see if this should indeed be/remain policy, or that we can follow your suggestion and employ judicious redirecting. The
Wikiproject Clinical medicine policy is to keep pages aimed at the general readership, only escalating the difficulty to address technical issues (e.g. what
cellular molecules participate in the development of
atherosclerosis in patients who
smoke?)
JFW |
T@lk
09:10, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
It should work to have --using heart attack as an example-- an article in layman's terms in that location, and one in medical terms filed under myocardial infarction, each with reference to the other at the top of the article. (Is this discussion redundant?) I don't think redirecting is the answer here. ;Bear 01:01, 2004 May 11 (UTC)
See Loughall Martyrs
1. The name of this article may be POV; but what is a better one? 2. Although this is a sensitive subject, I think the article generally is pretty NPOV. 3. Where do we go for advice on POV disputes? Duncharris 10:56, May 9, 2004 (UTC)
Various Nexuscience issues: WikiSpam, GFDL compliance, and on-going issues over whether this project is in good faith or a scam. Please continue discussion at Wikipedia talk:Mirrors and forks#Nexuscience.
Maybe I'm just suffering a brain-freeze, but I can't figure out what to do with this IP [1] that's uploading a bunch of lyric articles to only moderately noted songs. I don't want to bite the newbie by simply listing them on VfD, but as far as I know, these articles aren't really appropriate. Niteowlneils 00:08, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
I am putting together a page for Marie-Louise von Franz and have found that some tangential topics do not exist. To this end, I would like to create them. As an example, there is an analytical psychology term amplification. There is an extant page for this term, however it is only a generalised definition. What is the protocol for adding a specific alternate definition?
2. Amplification: Expansion of dream content through personal associations and comparison of dream images with images from mythology, religion, and so on, which resemble the dream content. This concept can also be applied to myths and faerie tales.
Would something like this be appropriate?
There are a few out there, including Magnus Manske's C++ version and David Wheeler's version in C, but I decided to create my own HTML to wikitext converter anyway. It differs from others in that:
HTML::WikiConverter
When I get a chance, I'll upload the Perl module to CPAN, but for now I figured I'd share the tool with the WP community. Please comment on my talk page. -- Diberri | Talk
FWIW, I've uploaded the module to CPAN. It's available at my CPAN author page. -- Diberri | Talk 00:38, May 11, 2004 (UTC)
I think for greater community spirit we should hold certain theme days, or days where people concentrate on certain subjects that need attention, for example we could have 'fix stub day' or a day where we would all fix stubs, ( of course participation would be voluntary. There could be a page where people would nominate what days to hold and what subjects to consentrate on, it could be anything, like gathering information about a tricky subject or cleaning up some pages.
Sorry in advance if this has been brought up before. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 16:02, 2004 May 6 (UTC)
This is almost at the top of village pump now which means it will be chopped off soon, any ideas where this discussion could be continued? Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:55, 2004 May 13 (UTC)
When a site doesn't state copyright status explicitly, do we assume it's public domain, or do we assume it's copyrighted. Most of the articles created by this user [2] seem to be 90-100 percent copies from a couple web sites [www.healing-arts.org/tir/frank.htm][www.tir.org/metapsy/issues.htm] but neither seems to have any statement RE copyright status, so I don't know if they are a problem. (This posting is mostly for my education, and just happens to use these article I just found as examples.) Niteowlneils 21:57, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
Is it possible to move a page to a new location, even if there exists already a page there without deleting the target page first? I am asking because there is a controversy about the location of Kosovo, a.k.a. Kosovo and Metohia. Majority vote on the talk page (10 to zero) was for the location Kosovo, and it has been moved there three times in the last two days. It was always moved back unilaterally by user: Nikola Smolenski, most recently today at 15:02. I think this would require the deletion of the Kosovo and Metohia page first to make the move. However, there is no deletion log entry, and Nikola is not an administrator, so he could not delete it in the first place. What is going on? -- Chris 73 | Talk 06:36, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
Thanks Wikipedia. This is a letter I wrote to Brittanica:
When your online encyclopedia became a pay service, I was very disappointed. The internet and information should be free to everyone. There is now a new free encyclopedia called wikipedia that will lead to your eventual demise. May I be the first to say goodbye to you and your misplaced values.
If you didn't do it, I would have been forced to. Thanks.
Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk#Shifting to a new house
We have a Welcoming Committee to greet new users, but once they get greeted, they're rarely subject to much positive at the hands of other users, and many of them are subjected to a slew of insults from trolls, vandals, etc. Perhaps we should have a parallel committee, modeled after the WC, to compliment users when we see good edits, substantial work on pages, etc. Something less than a barnstar, but still a nice thing to do for the users. I suspect that, after a lengthy edit, it would be more than a little welcome to see a post on your talk page to let you know you did a good job, and that this would foster Wikilove Snowspinner 20:50, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
Looking at a specific astrology page issue regarding appearance at 800x600 (I usually run higher), I discovered that Wikipedia comes close enuf to fitting that it seems to be the target resolution, but in reality, is just enuf wider to be a pain. Anyone know if TPTB are aware of this? Niteowlneils 17:36, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Is it just me, or are we seeing a lot of overzealous documentation of the specifics of commercial products—the verbatim copying of ingredients lists, labels, the detailed listing of all the products in a specific product line, and so forth? My perception is that this material is not being contributed by people trying to promote the product, but just by people who, for whatever reason, just like to do it. Fans of the products, I think. I don't want to single out Sharpie other than as an example of the sort of thing I mean. Is it really valuable to note that it is available in Fine, Extra Fine, Ultra Fine, Super, Twin, Super Twin, Chisel, Metallic, Grip, Industrial, and Professional tips, and in Yellow, Black, Blue, Green, Orange, Red, Brown, Purple, Turquoise, Lime, Aqua, Berry, Olive, Marigold, Navy, Plum, Burgundy, and Silver ink? I won't remove valid information just because I personally happen to think it's silly, but... is this getting out of hand and, if so, do we need to draw a line, and if so, where? Dpbsmith 23:38, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
em dashes — dashes the width of an "m" character — are used in typesetting and "upscale" web page set off text, in a use similar to parentheses. where emdahses are unavailable, two "regular" dashes are often used: --
While em dashes look much nicer, on certain displays and devices -- such as my handheld -- they aren't in the character set at all, and are displayed using a placeholder character, often a question mark or unfilled square (a "box").
Should we use nice-looking em dashes, knowing they won't display properly on certain devices, or fall back on the less elegant but more portable double dash?
Thanks. orthogonal 04:22, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, I've been against them for some time now as they make editing difficult. Use "--" instead. Rick K 04:43, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
How should ofensive pictures be handled? Are there double standards? Should they be displayed inline or linked to? Are disclaimers needed?
Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Content disclaimer
See also Wikipedia talk:Profanity, Talk:Nick Berg, m:offensive content
Hello, I been looking for family feud game and wonder if it's available in the market on disc to play it on PC or Play Station/? please let me know it is available and where can I find it.
thanx Riyadh
shawan_riyadh@yahoo.com
I think there should be a link back to the parent page, in every page; Of course, we can use the back button in our explorers. But, after editing a page and saving it, if we click 'back' it goes to the editing page again. So 'The parent article link' feature would make life a lot easier. I havent scanned the whole page to see if such a feature already exists. So, even if such a feature already exists, please make it more eye-catching. : SudhirP 05:01, May 12, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks! I did not simulate all the possibilities! I think that a series of 'back' clicks is the only solution. Thanks 4 the response.
First things first: I learned of the village pump through Raul654. He said this would be a good place to find administrators and members who'd like to share details about the more interesting facets of Wikipedia. So here I am.
I write for The News Journal, a newspaper in Wilmington, Del. The story I'm writing is meant to inform readers about Wikipedia and how it works, but also to answer some of the questions they're most likely to have. What intrigues me about Wikipedia, beyond the vast collection of articles on obscure topics, is the culture that beats within the site. Here's where you come in.
Raul654 gave me a quick education on two of the more prolific Wiki-outlaws. That's what intrigues me most, and readers are likely to share that wonder. And through the sharing of such tales, readers will learn much about the evolution and self-policing of this unique site. (I'm loathe even to call it a mere "site.")
Please contact me at cyasiejko-at-delawareonline-dot-com. (Have I thwarted the spambots? I hope so.)
Take care, Christopher Yasiejko The News Journal
The Five Boroughs contains less information than City of New York#The Five Boroughs. Most of the info currently has to be maintained in both places. IMO, The Five Boroughs also tears the subject out of the valuable context of the City of New York article. But (as i learned by experimenting), overwriting The Five Boroughs with
has the same effect as
Sounds like a useful SMOP to me, to have the Wiki engine use the section info instead of ignoring it. Has there ever been discussion of doing so? -- Jerzy (t) 18:12, 2004 May 13 (UTC)
Is it possible to delete the whole history of one page forever? How?
I wrote this article ( Murray Haszard) a few hours ago, and when I saved it, it took several minutes for Wikipedia to respond. I then saw in Recent Changes that two New copies had been saved.
I just check "What links here" and nothing does, yet there are references to this article from Ghost, B32 Business Basic and Binary Research. These links work. Why doesn't "What links here" work? -- Gadfium 08:28, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
somewhere once on a wikipedia FAQ i saw instructions for reassigning an anonymous edit you have made to your account. now i cannot find this FAQ. can someone give me instructions? Lethe
Are articles involving race given equal treatment? Answers to this and various discussions about the definiton of racism moved to talk:reacism.
I have listed the image of the severed head of Nick Berg for deletion. Please vote at WP:IFD. Dori | Talk 21:00, May 12, 2004 (UTC)
Why is the English Wikipedia:Copyright locked? Please change the interwiki link to Swedish Wiki to "Wikipedia:Upphovsrätt". // Rogper 17:52, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
While Googling for " wikipedia and google", I came across a thread on the forum of an organisation called the "Stormfront White Nationalist Community" from the end of April, discussing Google and, tangentially, how to add (presumably) POV edits to Wikipedia: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=129083. Happily, it seems they quickly encountered "censorship" and IP bans, but the following post was a little worrying:
What are the current Wikipedia mechanisms for defending against subtle POV or vandalism, and what confidence do we have that they work? — Matt 13:25, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
Hello,
the chinese Wiki is experincing massiv vandalism with a bot and a proxy again. Please help.-- Philopp 18:13, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
This community seems very sensitive to the issues of copyright. But when it comes to credit and citation, we do quite poorly. I'm surprised at the number of articles that refer to authors' conclusions and interpretations without crediting the author or citing the source.
Some may disagree with me, but I think this is a serious weakness. It only takes discipline to cite source; hunting down original sources takes time, effort and uncommon selflessness — let's face it, unless you happen to know the source, you're unlikely to invest much effort in uncovering the implicit citations in somebody's articles.
Integrity, transparency, credibility, honesty: that's what's at stake here. What do you think?
Making references easier to add might lower the activation energy. If I'm not aware of a system that's already in place to simplify this, please let me know. — Johny 21:48, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
In research, you really do need to cite your sources, to prove you are enlarging on what others have created, you are developing what others have originated and not just copying what someone else has written.
Dieter Simon 01:08, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
I've noticed that many editors have taken to including external links which are strongly POV towards one particular view or item of the article, often without any warning that this represents the views of one particular side. Often, these links escape the normal Wikipedia NPOV process, because someone needs to take the time to check them out (not always easy). Does anyone have views on this? Lately I've been killing links that are not properly described as being POV or fringe interest. JFW | T@lk 08:55, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
Sure, Pete. I personally only kill links when I feel they don't enhance the article content but just confirm that someone has a POV. Random assasinations of links will just provoke "link insertion wars" anywayz. JFW | T@lk 11:27, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
I've noticed this as a serious problem in science articles: Standard and established science knowledge is usually found in textbooks and not so much on the web. But fringe theories, non-standard ideas and other strongly POV stuff is easily found on the web, often in a way carefully tailored to be easily accesible and quick too read. Hence such links often overpower the standard science in the link list, especially if its a stub.
Not as serious, but related, are external links to papers or articles dealing with definitly minor details. Especially if these are the only links, this looks highly misleading. Stubs with such links are worst. I usually at least consider deleting such links but then don't as I feel obliged to replace it by a better link. But maybe one shouldn't be so hesistating. Sanders muc 18:44, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
IMSoP: This is what is probably the best thing, but many POV pushers simply reinsert the links without engaging in a discussion :-(
Sanders muc: This phenomenon (of fringe theories overwhelming main science articles) attracted my attention at
cholesterol, where someone inserted a rant on the "dissidents of the lipid hypothesis", some noisy people who doubt the link between cholesterol and
cardiovascular disease. Yet >99% of all doctors will subscribe to the "lipid hypothesis" (which is not a hypothesis anymore). Disconcerting.
JFW |
T@lk
22:46, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
I'm trying to add the following external link to a page:
As you can see, it is not parsed into an html link. If there is something wrong with the URL, I don't know what it is (the dollar sign?) but it works when copied into my browser's address bar. Is there any way to force the parsing, or will I be unable to link this page?
Radagast 22:54, May 15, 2004 (UTC)
Should the text at the top of each page that says From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia include the trademark symbol? Please discuss at MediaWiki talk:Fromwikipedia. Angela . 00:31, May 15, 2004 (UTC)
A user e-mailed me this afternoon, asking if I could correct the article IMac to the proper spelling iMac. Both spellings bring me to the same article as it is (and not even as a redirect), so I was wondering if someone could clarify for me how Wikipedia handles casing in titles -- am I correct in assuming that the Wiki software doesn't actually distinguish between IMac and iMac? Bearcat 18:25, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:External links
Since reading the Xmen storylines her on Wikipedia, I would like to purchase the Xmen anmiation series that aired on the Foxnetwork from 1992 to 1998. I would like all the five seasons, every episode please. Who do I call?
Michael Frye 1414 Wilcox Ave Portsmouth, Va 23704 1-757-391-0207
On a completely unrelated note - I just found out that John Malkovich is playing Lord Voldemort in the next Harry Potter movie. Now, I've asked 5 people who they would prefer to play Lord Voldemort, and every single person said the same thing - Christopher Walken! Why, oh why, couldn't they get Walken to take the role? →Raul654 03:36, May 14, 2004 (UTC)
Not Malkovich. I read that the other day, then read a denial (can't remember where, now.) But Rowling has insisted all along that only British actors be cast. Rick K 03:41, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
There a link to Toki Pona language version of the town article but for some reason it does not display together with other languages but at the end of the article. The same seems to be the case on the Toki Pona language page itself. Why? Brona 20:48, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
This is the copyright notice for a site I want to use as a picture source,
[6]:
"All the pictures on this site were taken by Jo Mitchell (unless otherwise stated) and may be used for legitimate and legal purposes provided credit is given. It would be appreciated if you email Jo to request permission for use of images. Most images are available as high-resolution scans (up to 4000dpi) for use in print and screen media - please do not hesitate to ask for further details. Copyright is retained at all times by Jo Mitchell. Thanks"
Can I use these pics (if I check with Jo Mitchell first) and what would be the copyright notice I should use on the Image Description Page? Thanks for any help,
Adrian Pingstone
18:51, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
Although most Dianics do worship the goddess unto herself, not all Dianics believe that there is no equal god form. In fact, I personally know two ordained McFarlane Dianic Priests. Although rare it does happen. Purley feminist Wicca is a reactionary belief system. It is a sociological backlash against male dominated religions. However, it has the same fault in that it rejects balance in favor of the domination of one form of Deity; hence, it is a psycholoigcal reaction rather than a true belief system. It has served its purpose in showing the fallacy of a amle dominant god from. But, to not understand the sacrifice of the god and the joy and pain the goddess experiences from his arrival and departure from this plane, is to not understand the majesty, beauty and compassion of the goddess herself. Unfortunately, many Dianic Wiccans fail to understadn the true nature of the goddess by ignoring or downplaying her equal and opposite self.
Also, 1 more thing. I would just reccomend a link from an article to a contributions page, where you see the contributions for that article. I understand it is not all about 1 person doing the encyclopedia, and more about everyone creating it, but a contributions page would be awesome!
1 last thing. Are there any ranks in the Wikipedia? Like if you help out a lot, would you be recognized and be a VIP in the members room or something?
Whe you serach for your member name in the encyclopedia, you need to types in usr first. Why not ignore the fact whether the USR is there or not?
I promise this is my LAST suggestion. Why not a lounge chat area for members where you can talk about the articles, improve grammar, and other things?
Just a few suggestions by Kapil!
I'm sure this must have cropped up before, but I can't find it; can anyone point me to a relevant discussion? Anyway, I did a search on Google today for Lucifer cipher, and in the top 10 results were no less than 7 mirrored copies of the Lucifer (cipher) page, but not the Wikipedia article itself, which surfaces at position 70. This seems to happen a lot for various articles, and is somewhat annoying (especially since the mirrored pages are out of date and advert-laden). Anything Wikipedia can do? Feel free to point me to the previous discussions... — Matt 13:42, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
I think we should have a press release to announce our Webby Award success. I've started one at Wikipedia:Press releases/May 2004. Please add to it. Other sites such as Google and the BBC have made press releases when they have won in the past, so I feel it's important we do too. We haven't had one for over three months, and the last one received little attention in the outside world. Perhaps this one will have more of an effect. Angela . 17:03, May 12, 2004 (UTC)
This has been five days now. Should it be sent? Or is there not enough interest to bring it up to a sendable standard? Angela . 19:35, May 17, 2004 (UTC)
I've noticed in the past few days some things that were on Votes for Deletion simply getting speedily deleted. While I agree that many of these items should have been listed on speedy deletion instead of VfD, I feel that, once something is on VfD, it is poor form to terminate the debate. If it's truly a bad article, it'll go away within a week anyway - no need to hasten the process and leave a bad taste in people's mouths when a debate is effectively cut off. Snowspinner 19:09, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
The Wikipedia Guide to Layout recommends that "Related topics" be a heading for a collection of internal links to related topics. Custom and practice in the Wikipedia appears to be to use "See also". Should the recommendation be changed? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.
I'm looking for the page that directs the "Did You Know?" section on the front page. Who decides what we see there?
I also want to know if there's a New pages patrol, just like the RC patrol.
Anyone with info please contact me hear or at my talk page. MGM 10:20, May 15, 2004 (UTC)
This is kind of amusing: the URL that Wikipedia generated for Image:Us-pa.gif (the Pennsylvanian flag) is "/upload/7/76/Us-pa.gif". Marnanel 04:07, May 15, 2004 (UTC)
-->Continued at Image talk:Us-pa.gif
From time to time here comes a guy and starts "fixing rediects". A recent example is massive change of Trans-Siberian railroad into Transsiberian railway.
It is one thing to fix redirects from, e.g., common misspellings. It is totally meaningless IMO thing to replace a perfectly valid and almost as common name, like in the example above. In some particular case I fixed some time ago, the article author intentionally used an archaic term, only to be "fixed" by some overzealous wikipeditor.
Guys, please be reasonable. Think about other useful things you can do, like Wikipedia:New pages patrol. Mikkalai 18:25, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
The discussion lets me undestand "the root of the evil". All this redirect/piping thing is simply a techie mindset: you are trying to "help" computer to do the job (of readdresing), whil it should be exactly vice versa: computers are here to help us write articles (and read articles). Using pipes and fixing redirects is IMO like writing pieces of code in assembly language where the compiler is dumb and cannot optimize. It ought to be done sometimes, but if you have to do it almost everywhere, this should be the hint that either the overall design is wrong or atavistic instincts come creeping. I know that "real programmers" write in FORTRAN, but... Mikkalai 15:46, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
Do any guidelines exist for the content of tables showing the offices held by politicians? (See the bottom of the Tony Blair entry for an example.) It appears that periods spent as members of bodies such as Parliament aren't included, but I think it would be a good idea to do so. Betelgeuse 15:33, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
Sir George Young is an example of an MP who moved constituencies because of boundary adjustments. For his entry I would add 'MP for Ealing Acton 1974 - 1997' and 'MP for North West Hampshire 1997 - present'. I don't think the two extra rows would add to much bulk to the article (most politicians entries are little more than stubs anyway), and I think it's the type of information a reference work like wikipedia should include. Betelgeuse 16:56, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
I authored an article on Trip Hawkins a while back, but it's been deleted. I didn't see it listed on VfD, it's just gone! As the founder of Electronic Arts and 3DO, I think he is worthy of an article. Does anyone know what happened to it and why it was killed? — Frecklefoot 20:30, May 19, 2004 (UTC)
It was a full article at one point. You can see the cache of it here. However, it was ofen vandalized (apparently by a digruntled former employee of 3DO). I suspect the same person trimmed it down to the link and Dysprosia deleted it. The history would have shown the correct, full article. Is there some way to restore it? — Frecklefoot 20:42, May 19, 2004 (UTC)
and explain the ideas consensus and arrogant unilateralism to Jiang. Either that, or point out to me why I should pull my head in? any comments most welcome. best wishes Erich 23:09, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
Check this extra semicolon http://sample.link/<hello> in the end. Why? // Rogper 19:04, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
Is Wikipedia poor at citing its sources? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Cite your sources#References.
Question moved to Wikipedia:Reference Desk. Meelar 17:52, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
In reference to the above problem of external links not being described (and consequently hiding POV), let me add that I feel that in general, Wikipedia has too many lists of links and anything else that just list items without any descriptions. Most of could be enormously improved by adding short notes to list items. (The note should be short enough so that the list remains on a single line without wrapping when the window is a normal size. This preserves the vertical compactness of the list and keeps the list items positioned for easy visual overview).
Editors seem to be reluctant to do this, I'm not sure why.
Perhaps what happens is that someone starts a list that contains no comments, and subsequent editors are reluctant to be the first to disturb the pristine columnnar appearance of the list by adding the first comment? Or is it a "foolish consistency" fear that it is somehow wrong to annotate one item unless you can annotate all of them?
When listing Moog synthesizer users, how much better to have
(as is the case in the actual article) than
Dpbsmith 11:13, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
What should be done about POV external links? Are these escaping the normal Wikipedia NPOV process? Should they be removed? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:External links#External links epidemic.
Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dashes#emdashes
I think there should be some naming conventions for verbs ( Wikipedia:Naming conventions (verbs) - tentative).
There is a convention about using the most common words ( Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)) which could apply to verbs in some cases; ie killing redirects to murder.
It seems to be common practice to use the present participle; ie. jumping rather than jump or jumped.
Any comments? Bensaccount 01:20, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
I note that in the demographics of us towns like Hialeah, Florida, all ethnic groups except white are wikified. Does this strike folks as odd? What should this one link to? Thanks, Mark Richards 21:28, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia recently won two awards ( Webby Awards and Prix Ars Electronica), and I am sure there are more to come in the future :-) Do we have a place to list the awards, sort of a Wikipedia:Trophy room? I was thinking about making a page, but wasn?t sure if something similar already exists. -- Chris 73 | Talk 04:14, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
My watchlist now won't update, and instead says - 'this is a saved version of your watchlist'. Any ideas why? Thanks! Mark Richards 15:42, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
So when do I get the real one, and when the caches one? Thanks, Mark Richards 17:56, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
Thanks! Mark Richards 19:55, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
It would be much better simply to reduce the 12-hour default, which as I said on earlier occasions is a total waste. A one-hour default would probably be sufficient to improve performance and would be less "traumatic" than this almost entire disabling of watchlists. -- Wik 20:25, May 17, 2004 (UTC)
I'm sure this must have cropped up before, but I can't find it; can anyone point me to a relevant discussion? Anyway, I did a search on Google today for Lucifer cipher, and in the top 10 results were no less than 7 mirrored copies of the Lucifer (cipher) page, but not the Wikipedia article itself, which surfaces at position 70. This seems to happen a lot for various articles, and is somewhat annoying (especially since the mirrored pages are out of date and advert-laden). Anything Wikipedia can do? Feel free to point me to the previous discussions... — Matt 13:42, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
Currently interwiki links follow the principle "each language makes links to each language". As the number of languages increases, this system becomes more and more difficult to manage. Very soon we will have hundreds of interlanguage links on some pages. Perhaps we should have a "central repository" of all interwiki links, with only one "other languages" link at normal pages? Or perhaps it will be user-defined — either to have a lot of interlanguage links, or only one "other languages" link, or some chosen languages linked directly, and others via "other languages" link. — Monedula 14:08, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
http://www.tinyurl.com Very handy. Andries 09:49, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
I see there's a new article on Temple undergarment on which I am not qualified to comment... but anyone who is might want to check it for accuracy/NPOV. Dpbsmith 12:27, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
Okay, new Creative Commons migration plan. No horrendous programming involved. For a list of reasons why I think migrating toward dual liscensing under both the Creative Commons and the GFDL is a Good Thing, please visit my user page.
Then:
Does anybody see any problems with this plan?
Crazyeddie 00:58, 2004 May 24 (UTC)
Several objections:
As you may see from my above comments, I see no good coming of this project and must ask once again, just WHY do you think this is needed? Rick K 01:24, 24 May 2004 (UTC)
Well that's the best I can do for now. Crazyeddie 03:54, 2004 May 24 (UTC)
I've added sections and indicated who was talking where in my rather massive reply. I'm going to take one last look over, then go off to recover from this. Crazyeddie 04:09, 2004 May 24 (UTC)
I don't see why they should all be changed to "—". At large font sizes an "—" is *huge* and looks very ugly. A '-' works just as well and doesn't stand out as much.
Darrien 17:19, 2004 May 23 (UTC)
This perceived problem is a perceived font problem. Argue to have the Wikipedia font changed if you feel its m-dashes are too long. In the meanwhile, if a dash (—) is meant, a dash should be used; if a hyphen (-) is meant, a hyphen should be used. Read any book from a major publisher — you won't find them using hyphens for dashes, either single, as you like them (-), or double (--), as most wikipedians seem to. Bad punctuation is ugly to educated people Chameleon 17:35, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
I would like to tran
With the upcoming features I think we should keep in mind that "just because we can doesn't necessarily mean we should." What I mean by that is that the new parametrized templates and categories can make pages pretty hard to figure out. We should probably come up with a policy/guideline about how these two features should be used. As an example, keep a newbie mindset and try and figure out this page: [7] We should preserve the wiki principles of simple and easy editing as much as possible while making use of new features IMO. Dori | Talk 21:26, May 21, 2004 (UTC)
I was about to insert a book cover with her image but saw where one had been removed by User:Angela: (cur) (last) . . 23:06, 17 Nov 2003 . . Angela (remove photo - see Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements) - However, while doing the biography for Errol Flynn’s wife, Lili Damita, I see that the Image: ErrollFlynn.jpg "Cover of My Wicked, Wicked Ways, by Erroll Flynn" was inserted by a Wikipedia Administrator, User:Zoe -- Can someone clarify this? Should I delete Flynn or insert Trudeau? JillandJack 16:56, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
Can someone take a look at the logo for the ARC on the main page? The logo there is of the IFRC, of which the ARC is a member, but the ARC never uses this logo, and it is not the same thing. Can we swap it out for a plain red cross without the border, which is the logo of the ARC? Thanks, Mark Richards 16:40, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
We're going to be phasing in a pre-release version of MediaWiki 1.3 over the next 24 hours or so. Expect minor service disruptions, and the sudden appearance of lots of new features. -- Tim Starling 14:08, May 21, 2004 (UTC)
I see that Wikiquote, Wikisource, Meta-Wiki, & Wikibooks have all switched to it. When will the rest be switched over?
The calendar on the Japanese Wikipedia is changed each day apparently by hand. I think maybe we could use a calendar bot to automate such tasks.
Buenos dias. Deseo segnalar las mejores paginas web sobre el Perú en idioma italiano. Apartenecen a nuestra asociacion sociocultural Latinoamericana Magie delle Ande. Gracias por su disponibilidad. Gabriele Poli
http://www.peru.sudamerica.it http://www.magiedelleande.it
I recognize that the following ideas may be un-Wikipedian in their nature, but here goes.
There is at least the appearance that many articles are being vandalized by anonymous contributors, and also that many new junk articles are being created by the anonymous ones as well. Note the frequent vandal deletions of the United States article. I would like to submit that since the Wikipedia is very close to maturity (IMHO), it would be a good time to start restricting what anonymous contributors can do. I think it would be good if anonymous contributors should not be able to:
Ultimately, the work of the registered contributors will become immensely difficult if we have to continue to battle the increasing wave of vandalism and junk articles coming from anonymous contributors. So, if we don't consider the ideas I present here, what honestly can be done? (Or, has this already been discussed before?)
Stevietheman 07:43, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
Should the several myriad rambot-generated US town articles be moved to Wikibooks? -- Juuitchan
No. Absolutely not. Rick K 15:02, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
Hey, I wrote those 30,000 articles myself with the help of my master! Us bots are people too. -- rambot
On my user page, I have a draft of a petition. This petition proposes that the Wikipedia community migrate toward releasing its collective work under both the GFDL and Creative Commons liscenses.
While this has been suggested previously (see here: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFDL_FAQ ), I believe that this proposal gets around the problems that have been mentioned. If it doesn't, I'm confident that the Wikipedia community, working in collaboration, can find a way around any problems.
Please go to my user page and edit this draft, especially if you disagree with this proposal. I'm planning to move the final petition to Wikipedia talk:Copyrights after July 1, 2004 (although I may hold off). Before I move it, I will make sure I personally approve the final draft. If you disagree with the final draft, you can link to a statment of your objections. At this time, I will also remove any signature from the draft, since I can't be sure that people who signed the draft will agree with the final form.
Thank you!
Crazyeddie 21:24, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
Who created this page?
I've come up with a new plan to get around the problems you've all brought up. I'm submitting it as a new thread to avoid quadruple indentation. Crazyeddie 00:43, 2004 May 24 (UTC)
Check this extra semicolon http://sample.link/<hello> in the end. Should I make a case of it on the bugtracker? // Rogper 19:04, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
Every few minutes, I get a white screen saying "Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties" etc. Then, if I wait a few minutes, wikipedia works again. Wikipedia:Hardware status has nothing. What's up? Is this just me? Meelar 18:06, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
The Community Portal devotes a couple of lines to listing articles that need to be merged. Wouldn't it be better to have whole page for this? --Smack 17:45, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
My apologies if there's a better place to ask this, but I was curious if Wikipedia supports XML. I mainly ask for the possiblity of implementing a few databases. Oberiko 16:50, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
I saw some debate about using the As of 2004 etc feature to mitigate this - is there any concensus? Mark Richards 19:45, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
I'd like to post to or answer some of the discussions on the Reference Desk, but I don't see how to do that if the discussion in question is not the last one. Clicking Edit just makes part, but not all, of the massive Reference Desk bulk appear in the edit box.
The problem is that the user is not logged in. Anon editors don't have the option of section editing. Rick K 23:50, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
Undeleted. Discussion moved to Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion. Angela . 20:45, May 19, 2004 (UTC)
I've noticed some time ago, admittedly to my surprise, that even within Europe, nameing conventions vary considerably. For example, in German and English speaking countries, a wife adopts her husbands surname, while in France, this is not done. In Spain and Portugal, people even have two surnames, one from each parent.
Some people wrote articles about personal names in different countries, and a list of links to these articles can be found in the list of personal naming conventions. But this list is quite short.
I would like to ask the international Wikipedians to enlarge this list by explaining about the names in their home country. That might be interesting. TIA.
Sanders muc 17:51, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
who copied who?
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Utilitarianism.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism
Links on both point to identical articles and even identical graphics!
I've seen more and more of these around recently...the user sigs that link in one part to the User page and one part to the User Talk page. I know how to edit how my name is displayed in my sig via preferences, but whatever I put in that field is piped into a link of the form [[User:Ed Cormany|mysigtext]]. Therefore, when I try to put a link in the sigtext, it starts breaking things. What am I doing wrong? —Ed Cormany 14:52, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
Brilliant workaround, although this means of course that I can't put the link to my talk page first, as I had hoped. Oh well, thanks anyhow! — Ed Cormany 02:45, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
The title of this artitcle (I've seen List of New York Senators as well) seems confusing, to me. I would think that it would be a list of people who have represented Colorado in the US Senate. To make it less confusing, should it be moved to List of Colorado state Senators? Rick K 14:50, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
Recently, the article Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal was renamed Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse reports because some users found the word "scandal" in the title to be pov. But wikipedia has dozens of articles with the word "scandal" in the title, including Watergate Scandal, Lewinsky scandal, Whitewater Scandal, Harken Energy Scandal, Quiz show scandals, Olympic Games scandals, Mutual fund scandal (2003), Accounting scandals of 2002, Teapot Dome Scandal, Black Sox Scandal, and many others. So should the word "scandal" be removed from article titles? Or is the word "scandal" inherantly pov? (For more details, see the article's talk page.) Quadell 13:55, May 19, 2004 (UTC)
I would like to suggest a new feature for Wikipedia: display the start of the linked article as a tooltip when the mouse lingers over a link. Currently, only the title is displayed, using the TITLE property of the LINK tag.
Quite often I read an article about an unfamiliar subject that contains many unfamiliar terms. My main purpose is to understand the main article, but I need an idea of what those terms mean. For example, when reading the article Mycenae, it is helpful to know that Argos is a "city in Greece in Peloponnese", and that the Persian Wars "started about 500 BC and lasted until 448 BC".
It is inconvenient to have to follow each link to an article about each unfamiliar term, because the extra operations of clicking on the link and going back to the original page are required, and because of the delay of loading the pages. It interrupts the reading of the main article. It would be alleviated if the first 100 or so characters were shown as a tooltip.
For an implementation of this idea, see for example http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Mycenae. The page itself is a bit cluttered, but I'm just talking about the tooltips on the links. TheFreeDictionary has implemented them using Javascript, but a similar thing can be done using the LINK tag's TITLE property.
Pgan002 08:05, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
Just to give a technical slant on this issue: Firstly, the tag in question isn't <link>
, it's <a>
; a slightly pedantic point, but <link>
is for something else - it's how you link in
stylesheets and
favicons, for instance. Secondly, there is a major limitation with implementing this feature using title
attributes: not all browsers have multiline tooltips; for instance
Mozilla, and I guess any other
XUL-based systems, will only show a limited amount of the caption, as much as it can fit in a medium-sized one-line box. So to make the feature useful, we would probably have to do something crazy with JavaScript, like TheFreeDictionary do.
Now, the reason I say "something crazy", is that I'm not quite sure how this would have to interact with the database. Our mirrors have an advantage over us here, in that they don't have to deal with the information constantly changing - they can be really aggressive with their caching, whereas we have to make sure changes get reflected ASAP. Looking at the source, it seems that TheFreeDictionary actually merges in the text for the tooltips as part of the page that gets sent - so before being sent, each article has to be generated from not only itself, but all those it links to (and you will generally end up downloading a load of text that you never see). An alternative would be to have the JavaScript fetch the data somehow when you point at the word - saving on server costs and initial download, but meaning you get almost as much delay as opening the link anyway (esp. if you use a new window/tab/whatever, as people have suggested).
I'm not saying this is a bad idea per se, just that implementation-wise, there are a few things that would have to be worked out. It would certainly be useful, but it wouldn't be easy. - IMSoP 14:54, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
Understand it is a clause in disinvestment agrrement that decision of disinvestment made can be reverted within 2 yrs of takeover by the Government without assignning any reason. If it is so Congress Government may take initiative for the idisinvestment made for IPCL(Navratan Company) for reverting within 2 yrs.IPCL was disinvested on 4th June02 and hence now 16 days are left to government to revert the decision. This is mainly due to deal which was made at thraw away price by NDA Gov as against Worth of the company.
SUBJECT MATTER IS URGENTLY TO BE LOOKED INTO BEFORE EXPIRY OF PERIOD.
Subject to be forwarded to Congess Working Commotty at earliest. Regards.
Although many people might not have noticed, the Chinese (zh) Wikipedia suffered an astronomical scale vandalbot attack, spread over two days. Thousands of pages were created. The users there didn't quite know what to do about it. So as a result, I've updated m:Vandalbot. Everyone needs to read this so that they know what to do in the event of an attack. -- Tim Starling 04:02, May 19, 2004 (UTC)
I just left a note on a newbie's talk page explaining that Wikipedia articles don't have signatures or bylines, in order to emphasize the fact that nobody has ownership of an article. I'm really pretty sure I'm right about this, but... I wanted to cite a policy page, and I couldn't locate one. (And I tried googling on what I thought were all the obvious word combinations). Am I right, and, if so, what policy page should be referenced? Dpbsmith 22:26, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
Hey, I just found a new use for Wikipedia. I was wrestling with today's crossword puzzle. Usually the weekday ones are fine, but today--lots of facts that I just didn't know. I used it to find the following in just a couple of minutes:
But--I couldn't find "dashboard of an English car"!?
Elf |
Talk
18:56, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
Item: Intuition Discuss on: Talk:Intuition & User_talk:Heidimo#Intuition
Remark: I have a factual error dispute but the other person is unwilling to explain what she thinks is wrong with my way of reasoning. I guess what needs to be done is to sort out the philosophical meaning of the word from the informal meaning. I am studying this seemingly simple subject in another encyclopedia but it has not helped much until now. Thanks in advance Andries 18:31, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
Should we have a "central repository" of all interwiki links? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Interlanguage links#Interwiki: central repository feature suggestion.
Our mirrors sometimes have higher Google rankings than Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:External search engines#Google results: Mirrors vs Wikipedia.
I have trued to find out what the name Amanda or Mandy is in korean, i hope you can help me as this is to with the Martial art WTF Taetwondo that i study.
Thanks, Mandy.
...needs your help. We need photos of braided hair, felt, flyswatter, Palette knife, polyester, rayon, sickle, magnifying glass, Alquerque, Gomoku, Auditorium Building, Chicago, Benjamin Franklin Bridge, Chainsaw, roundabout, Baseball bat and glove, Blue Grotto, brassiere, panties, undergarment, all kinds of Cats, Hats, Instruments, and computers ( VAIO), and much more. If you have any of the above pictures, or if you have the item, please take a photo and go to Wikipedia:Requested pictures! (all clothing requests are person-optional) -- Chris 73 | Talk 04:42, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
(Moved by Starx from MediaWiki:VfD-Kapil_Yedidi)
Also, 1 more thing. I would just reccomend a link from an article to a contributions page, where you see the contributions for that article. I understand it is not all about 1 person doing the encyclopedia, and more about everyone creating it, but a contributions page would be awesome!
1 last thing. Are there any ranks in the Wikipedia? Like if you help out a lot, would you be recognized and be a VIP in the members room or something?
Whe you serach for your member name in the encyclopedia, you need to types in usr first. Why not ignore the fact whether the USR is there or not?
I promise this is my LAST suggestion. Why not a lounge chat area for members where you can talk about the articles, improve grammar, and other things?
Just a few suggestions by Kapil-Y!
I recently started adding to the Banjo-Kazooie article. I dont' have a copy of the game but thought it would be wise to ask here if anyone who does could fire it up and write down some of the funnier rhymes Grunthilda utters during gameplay. Also of course if anyone remembers something from the game which i forgot that would be great, thought it would be nice to ask this in village pump instead of pages needing attention since this is really a request very few are able to fill.. and the more eyes... -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 02:22, 2004 May 18 (UTC)
Well, I just opened my desk drawer and lo and behold there it was on top one of the piles of our N64 games. Hmmm. I might fire it up tomorrow becuase I'm busy right now. -- Saint-Paddy 23:19, 24 May 2004 (UTC)
Know someone who was, or still is, at Cannes? Are you surfing WP from an internet cafe in Cannes at this very moment? Help us get a good GFDL or public domain photo from the festival to use on Wikipedia! It would be nice to feature an image of this year's festival in the Cannes article, in the news on the main page, and on the Press Corps page. +sj + 22:01, 2004 May 17 (UTC)
Kennt jemand jemanden, der in Cannes war oder immernoch ist? Surfst du die Wikipedia in diesem Moment aus einem Internet Café in Cannes an? Hilf uns bitte, indem du ein gutes GFDL oder Public Domain Foto vom Festival machst, damit wir es für die Wikipedia benutzen können! Es wäre schön, dieses Jahr ein Foto im Artikel Cannes, in den News / Nachrichten der Hauptseite und auf der Press Corps Seite zu haben. Fire 22:12, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Press releases/May 2004. More help still needed to write the press release before it is ready to be sent.
Should candidates for speedy deletion that have been mistakenly listed on VfD not be speedily deleted?