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This is mentioned elsewhere, but I think it's worth reminding the collectivity of it: remember to state the obvious -- or rather, remember that that is obvious to you is not so to the average reader. I had to add this to the start of the new article on the Ford Thunderbird: The Ford Thunderbird is a car manufactured in the USA by the Ford Motor Company. -- the authors did not stop to suppose that the reader does not necessarily know it's a car. This ties in with news style and the 5Ws. -- Tarquin 17:23, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think a better rule of thumb than imagining your audience is from Alpha Centauri may be to imagine that our civilization is destroyed utterly, and our descendants are fortunate enough to uncover an operational Wikipedia while digging through the ruins. We have so much trouble learning about the basic details of ancient civilizations because their writers generally failed to state the obvious... let us not make the same mistake. -- Nelson 13:28, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
On Wikipedia:Recentchanges the requested articles " Ruth Barcan Marcus - Panjshir - YWHA - wage rate - Ed Fagan - modal logic - Dingle" haven't changed in about four days. Can we get rid of them and put up something else? Mintguy 18:38, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I see no reason why not. Four days is enough and it's not like you're going to run out of choice. Angela 03:39, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Any particular reason someone savaged the VfD page?
Any particular reason someone savaged the VfD page?
Just testing that bug is fixed.
The user WhisperToMe is moving all videogame systems to their Japanese rather than English title. I checked on Google "Super Nintendo" returns 373,000 hits, while "Super Famicom" returns 32,700. I think they should stop and return the pages to where they were originally to avoid creating confusion. M123 16:50, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Super Famicom is only one example. A better example is moving Genesis to Megadrive because that is the name most people know it by. CGS 18:12, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC).
I think the Google counts are a good indicator of which name is more popular in the online English-speaking world. We are not interested in English speakers who are not online because they are not reading Wikipedia. Therefore, let us bow to the majority, and put everything back to their US names. -- Nelson 00:20, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Well, Google counts are a good indicator of which name is more popular among those who are involving "English web-site creation"! The first change is not necessary, but a revert maybe equally unnecessary. wshun 01:33, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I seriously think that English pages on the WWW are definitely skewed towards the United States. So it should be no surprise that most names would be the American version. I myself know MegaMan as RockMan. -- seav 05:00, Aug 19, 2003 (UTC)
moved to Talk:Current events
And thus we see our US bias. Nobody has bothered to write up anout any of this: Brazilian Space Agency? Alcantara space base? Do we even have these articles?. Current Events for that day starts with a HUGE paragraph about Alabama, knocking events in Brazil, Ecuador, and British Columbia into the minor details. You can bet if a rocket had exploded and killed 19 on US soil, an article would have been whipped up in a frenzy, with full biographies of all the dead, telling us everything down to their favourite flavour of jelly bean. -- Tarquin 08:50, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Help? I just protected Homelessness because User:JoeM continues to vandalize it. I know I'm supposed to list that the page was protected somewhere, but I can't find the page to do it. Can somebody point me there? RickK 23:52, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Getting too long for the Village pump so moved to Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation
Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Avoid weasel terms
moved to Talk:Super Nintendo Entertainment System
moved to Wikipedia talk:Skeptical solicitation
moved to Talk:Current events
For the last couple of days I have taken a break from writing articles and have concentrated on compiling lists of business articles. The following lists cover all the business articles that I have been able to find:
I have placed this at the end of about 20 articles as an experiment. My objective is to make every business article easy to find and available with only two mouse clicks.
My questions to the wiki-experts are “Will appending this list to articles conflict with the new category system being developed? If so, how should I modify it to prevent future problems?” mydogategodshat 06:06, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think could be a good idea but in a sligter shorter form like the links to other languages. Jensp 07:09, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC) Like this:
Lists of business topics: management, marketing, human resource, economics, finance, accounting, information technology, production, business law, ethics, political economy, and philosophy, theorists, economists, corporate leaders, companies
Is having "Show table of contents" OFF the default setting? I hope it is. Kingturtle 02:06, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Hello all. This is my first post here.
I'm thinking about developing a "Teaching with the WikiPedia" curriculum. It would be aimed at kids from about grades four through eight (US). The idea is for the kids to use the WikiPedia as the main reference source to complete their assignments, but also to understand the special issues associated with it. For example They might look up civil rights on the Wiki. What do they see? How to the entries in the Wikipedia differ from what they may see in a mainstream encyclopedia? Is it better or worse? Does the ability to edit other people's work improve the content, or is it a chance for personal opinions and political philosophies to creep into the entries?
I think this could be a great teaching tool because of the classroom discussions it would inspire. But this prompts two questions.
1) I don't want to re-invent the wheel. Is anyone else working on this?
2) I worry that kids, being kids, will quickly figure out they can add to the Wikipedia, and they will make a mess of it. (Swear words, spam, etc.) I know that’s the way I would have behavved if left unsupervised back in 7th grade. So I'm thinking of creating a read-only version of the Wikipedia just for use in this curriculum. That would solve potential vandalism, of course. But it would sort of also change the way The Wiki operates for them. (Though this might be a necessary compromise.)
Thoughts? --Shawn McCarthy
service@diagonalmediagroup.com
moved to Talk:Current events Please stop moving this guys -- this really is an important example of our US-POV. Some sniper in the US takes out three people and we have an article on it in hours. Whereas the Brazillian space programme isn't covered at all -- not even the recent events, it isn't covered at all. Shame on us. -- Tarquin 13:58, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Can someone post a link to a free, English English dictionary? I don't want to pay the $550 the OED wants. I usually will correct spelling mistakes i run across but I don't want to mistakenly use American English spelling for an acceptable British English spelling of the word. I'm aware of words like colour and programme, etc. Today it was "likelyhood" that I sorely wanted to change to likelihood but didn't want to start an across the pond dispute. Thanks, StinKerr 22:27, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
On the general topic of spellings, can I add an appeal for people to check for variant spellings with a dictionary, e.g. http://www.onelook.com/, and in general not change spellings if it's an acceptable one? Sure, if you see "Pearl Harbour", then it's probably OK to change that as i) it's a US topic, and ii) that's not the normal spelling. But some of those of us who use British spellings would rather the rest of you not implicitly accuse us of being illiterate morons by "correcting" our spellings. Thanks! Noel 18:50, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I seem to remember a discussion about using video media on wikipedia, but can't find it. Does anyone recall where it is? I have some .avi files that I think would be a welcome addition.. what (if anything) can I do with them? Pete
I noticed that in Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1, there are serious problems with the handling of <hr> in general, and in an especially obvious way on the Postal Service. Apparently this is due to a workaround for a bug older versions of Mozilla had in displaying <hr>, there's a temporary hack that reverts to quirks mode for Mozilla browsers. So the people on the Mozilla Forums ( http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=20420) told me to tell you guys that the bug is fixed. -- Nelson 00:02, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
...at Abstract interpretation; see talk. I want someone else's opinion before I delete the offending links. k.lee 00:27, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Moved to: Wikipedia:Writing resources
moved to Talk:Nikola Tesla
The discussion on removing dates that can not be verified can now be found at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Dates.
moved to Wikipedia:Village pump/August 2003 archive 4
move to ... ????
For the last couple of days I have taken a break from writing articles and have concentrated on compiling lists of business articles. The following lists cover all the business articles that I have been able to find:
I have placed this at the end of about 20 articles as an experiment. My objective is to make every business article easy to find and available with only two mouse clicks.
My questions to the wiki-experts are “Will appending this list to articles conflict with the new category system being developed? If so, how should I modify it to prevent future problems?” mydogategodshat 06:06, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think could be a good idea but in a sligter shorter form like the links to other languages. Jensp 07:09, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC) Like this:
Lists of business topics: management, marketing, human resource, economics, finance, accounting, information technology, production, business law, ethics, political economy, and philosophy, theorists, economists, corporate leaders, companies
Move to Wikipedia:Multimedia
I seem to remember a discussion about using video media on wikipedia, but can't find it. Does anyone recall where it is? I have some .avi files that I think would be a welcome addition.. what (if anything) can I do with them? Pete
Discussion moved to Talk:Akhenaton/rename
move to wikipedia:establish context
This is mentioned elsewhere, but I think it's worth reminding the collectivity of it: remember to state the obvious -- or rather, remember that that is obvious to you is not so to the average reader. I had to add this to the start of the new article on the Ford Thunderbird: The Ford Thunderbird is a car manufactured in the USA by the Ford Motor Company. -- the authors did not stop to suppose that the reader does not necessarily know it's a car. This ties in with news style and the 5Ws. -- Tarquin 17:23, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think a better rule of thumb than imagining your audience is from Alpha Centauri may be to imagine that our civilization is destroyed utterly, and our descendants are fortunate enough to uncover an operational Wikipedia while digging through the ruins. We have so much trouble learning about the basic details of ancient civilizations because their writers generally failed to state the obvious... let us not make the same mistake. -- Nelson 13:28, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I would like to start to develop a consistent style on marking up technical terms and defined terms in articles (especially technical or scientific articles) to be put somewhere in the Style Manual. I've looked and I see only a few pointers and how to's — no style definitions. Should I just go ahead and add where appropriate in the Manual(s), or has something like this been done before and 1) I missed it or 2) it proved too controversial ? I was thinking of an intro paragraph, a list of options (bold, obique, underline), then perhaps a bulleted list that others could alter or add to until the details are solidified. Any suggestions? - Marshman 18:09, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Yes, this all makes sense. Add it to wikipedia:manual of style or create a subpage. Martin 22:49, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I have created a Style Manual page for what I am proposing at Technical terms and definitions. The discussion can move to the talk page for that article - Marshman 18:09, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia:List?
For the last couple of days I have taken a break from writing articles and have concentrated on compiling lists of business articles. The following lists cover all the business articles that I have been able to find:
Finding related topics
I have placed this at the end of about 20 articles as an experiment. My objective is to make every business article easy to find and available with only two mouse clicks.
My questions to the wiki-experts are “Will appending this list to articles conflict with the new category system being developed? If so, how should I modify it to prevent future problems?” mydogategodshat 06:06, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think could be a good idea but in a sligter shorter form like the links to other languages. Jensp 07:09, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC) Like this:
Lists of business topics: management, marketing, human resource, economics, finance, accounting, information technology, production, business law, ethics, political economy, and philosophy, theorists, economists, corporate leaders, companies
Moved to Wikipedia_talk:Software_updates#Software_update_of_the_other_Wikipedias, Fantasy 20:45, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Multimedia
moved to wikipedia:List
move to Wikipedia:Table of Contents
Is having "Show table of contents" OFF the default setting? I hope it is. Kingturtle 02:06, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I am trying to post to the mailing list using the news gateway. It doesn't work. Shouldn't it? I do not have a suitable e-mail address to use for participation via e-mail. Kat
move to Talk:Current events
This is in the news right now. Does anyone know anything about this? could we get an article on the rocket itself & put it on the main page? -- Tarquin 12:12, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I've found this http://www.mrree.gub.uy/iiicea/PAISES/Brasil/Brazilian%20Space%20Program98.htm & http://www.agespacial.gov.br/
here is another link : http://www.wisconsinproject.org/countries/brazil/missile2000.htm
And thus we see our US bias. Nobody has bothered to write up anout any of this: Brazilian Space Agency? Alcantara space base? Do we even have these articles?. Current Events for that day starts with a HUGE paragraph about Alabama, knocking events in Brazil, Ecuador, and British Columbia into the minor details. You can bet if a rocket had exploded and killed 19 on US soil, an article would have been whipped up in a frenzy, with full biographies of all the dead, telling us everything down to their favourite flavour of jelly bean. -- Tarquin 08:50, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Please stop moving this guys -- this really is an important example of our US-POV. Some sniper in the US takes out three people and we have an article on it in hours. Whereas the Brazillian space programme isn't covered at all -- not even the recent events, it isn't covered at all. Shame on us. -- Tarquin 13:58, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Yes it is. This was on global news and no-one thought it worth covering. This would seem to suggest that US writers have an inflated view of the importance of US events -- or they assume they are writing for the US, not for the world. The fact that we have more USians who know more about the US should encourage us to actively neglect US topics in favour of worldwide ones -- Tarquin 22:11, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The term is frequently used, but that's not relevant here. I found plenty of references to it on Google news. It was on AOL's front page for a whole day. -- Tarquin 22:32, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I an UKian :-) only briefly heard abotu it on the news dont knwo mcuh about it, would be great t haev an article on it. <genralisation>Tthe reason alot of Americans don't knwo much about the outside world is because of the news in the USA, America is very big so news gernally covers just each state with the eception of the big newstsations like CCN etc. Once again the media is too balme.</genralisation> - fonzy
This is really easy, Tarquin. If you want an article about the Brazilian Space Agency, write it yourself. Don't blame the lack of participation by Brazilian Space enthusiasts on American bias. Daniel Quinlan 23:10, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)
Move to Wikipedia:State the obvious
This is mentioned elsewhere, but I think it's worth reminding the collectivity of it: remember to state the obvious -- or rather, remember that that is obvious to you is not so to the average reader. I had to add this to the start of the new article on the Ford Thunderbird: The Ford Thunderbird is a car manufactured in the USA by the Ford Motor Company. -- the authors did not stop to suppose that the reader does not necessarily know it's a car. This ties in with news style and the 5Ws. -- Tarquin 17:23, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think a better rule of thumb than imagining your audience is from Alpha Centauri may be to imagine that our civilization is destroyed utterly, and our descendants are fortunate enough to uncover an operational Wikipedia while digging through the ruins. We have so much trouble learning about the basic details of ancient civilizations because their writers generally failed to state the obvious... let us not make the same mistake. -- Nelson 13:28, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I'm uncertain where to obtain this help. I'm trying to move Composite family to Asteraceae to be consistent with other plant family pages and be more modern (Compositae is an old name for this family). But I guess I need the Asteraceae deleted because (partly due to my moving stuff around) it has a short page history which the system wants to keep. - Marshman 21:00, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC) Likewise need Fabaceae deleted for same reason - Marshman
I'm here now, so I can make my moves. If there is "Talk" pages to preserve in the deleted stuff, someone else must do that. And thanks ! - Marshman 22:33, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I know that A, B, C have Microsoft puny font sample. What's exactly is the copyright limitation on font size or how much "sample" (i.e., must be under 20% of the entire character database)? Is there any? Many fonts have to be bought, would the company be happy that we do whatever we want to GNU-ize the pictures of it once we bought it? (I'm thinking of doing an article on Eight Principles of Yong using the Chinese calligraphy fonts). -- Menchi 18:01, Aug 19, 2003 (UTC)
Hi, from the moved list above:
As everbody knows, wikipedia bug reports is a reference to the SourceForge, in other words: "if you don't get a SourceForge account and put your feature requests there, nobody will see them". It's not the first time. I really have a problem with that attitude -- Wikipedia is a community, and I really would like to see a place inside Wikipedia where the community and the developers can communicate. I'd like to know if I'm the only one who is frustrated by this attitude, or if there are others ... -- till we *) 23:33, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)
moved to Wikipedia talk:Community case RK
I am searching for the word defined by "punishment of an entire group for the misdeeds of one or a few of that group"
User:Seav posted a question on Wikipedia:Copyright issues about a month ago regarding copyright violations on history pages. I also have this question and could not find any other discussion of this issue so I started a new metapage: Wikipedia:Copyright violations on history pages. Sysops and other volunteers are very vigilant to remove copyright violations from the actual Wikipedia content, but that content may still remain on the history pages. I found one such example today at I have a dream. Queare: If copyright work can be found anywhere on Wikipedia isn't Wikipedia retaining a copy of that work and allowing further infringement? I understand that the history pages are a implicit requirement under the FSF GNU FDL as author attribution is still necessary as the only thing granted to Wikipedia is a non-exclusive license. Alex756 16:14, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
In a sequence control,what is better, a PLC or an industrial PC?
In a sequence control,what is better, a PLC or an industrial PC?
Move to Wikipedia talk:Establish context
This is mentioned elsewhere, but I think it's worth reminding the collectivity of it: remember to state the obvious -- or rather, remember that that is obvious to you is not so to the average reader. I had to add this to the start of the new article on the Ford Thunderbird: The Ford Thunderbird is a car manufactured in the USA by the Ford Motor Company. -- the authors did not stop to suppose that the reader does not necessarily know it's a car. This ties in with news style and the 5Ws. -- Tarquin 17:23, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think a better rule of thumb than imagining your audience is from Alpha Centauri may be to imagine that our civilization is destroyed utterly, and our descendants are fortunate enough to uncover an operational Wikipedia while digging through the ruins. We have so much trouble learning about the basic details of ancient civilizations because their writers generally failed to state the obvious... let us not make the same mistake. -- Nelson 13:28, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Hi, I find that the editor named SEWilco is problematic.
He modifies the articles concerning global warming/temp in a manner to cast doubt about the IPCC results and the scientific community in general. He systematically emphasizes the position of opposition voices like Pr Lindzen (see his article about Richard S. Lindzen and IPCC TAR Summary Conflict, which is pure speculation. One doesn't even know which are Dr Lindzen's original comments). His contributions are highly biased in general.
Help! Wikiquote, sister project to Wikipedia, needs a developer to come and help fix a bug that occurred today, not with the software per se, but with the configuration of the InterWiki setup. All links from Wikiquote to Wikipedia using en: rather than w: (which is most of them) no longer work, and in fact the whole link does not display at all. This has caused us to mostly cease working on the site, and has made many pages difficult to read. We would appreciate it if someone could come and fix it as soon as possible. Thanks. Nanobug 16:09, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Could an admin please temporarily protect ethics in any of its more recent, non-RK forms? He has decided it seems to use it as a forum to "trap" me, luring me into reverting his POV edits, and such. I would rather not deal with this. Failing that, someone else reverting his edits would be handy. It's important to keep that article neutral, for reasons I noted at Wikipedia:list of central issues. EofT
I've been trying to give the new article format the benefit of the doubt, but it's finally driven me over the edge. (In case this is a techie problem, I am reading and editing from Internet Explorer 5 using Windows 2000.) Since the new format has rolled out, the first line of each article consistently shows up right-justified. When the opening paragraph is fairly long, that's not a real problem but many articles have only very short first paragraphs. Stylistically, they should probably stay that way in many cases. Visually, you almost overlook them because the line doesn't start until the middle of the page. Do others agree? And if so, is there anyone out there with the technical skills to fix it? Rossami 06:54, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The [edit] option at the right of every paragraph is distracting and makes the articles harder to read. Is there a way to turn that off? (If I want to edit the article, I'd prefer to do it the old way - the whole article, not just one paragraph.) Rossami 06:54, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia talk:copyrights
I know that A, B, C have Microsoft puny font sample. What's exactly is the copyright limitation on font size or how much "sample" (i.e., must be under 20% of the entire character database)? Is there any? Many fonts have to be bought, would the company be happy that we do whatever we want to GNU-ize the pictures of it once we bought it? (I'm thinking of doing an article on Eight Principles of Yong using the Chinese calligraphy fonts). -- Menchi 18:01, Aug 19, 2003 (UTC)
Why were the interlang ln in preview removed? I'm sure most people don't feel its existence or non-existence, but I sometimes used them to make sure my inter-ln is correct when linking to and fro Chinese and English WPs. -- Menchi 00:29, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
Discussion moved to Talk:Akhenaton/rename
The discussion was getting too long for the villapge pump, so has been moved to Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view/News sources. Angela
Both accuse each other of being trolls and manipulating me (I protected ethics at the request of EofT, which seemed to be a genuine request). Which one is the troll? Both? Neither? CGS 22:26, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC).
Damnd if do, damnd if dont. While both Kat and Angela are right, the central issues are actually rather simple -- does anyone have a right to make /ban pages? The consensus now is no, because its problematic. Can people make accusations? Well, there is some doubt about whether those in charge are actually willing to enforce policy. If the judge or jury is likely just to acquit, why make any effort at all, until a solid case is built. Beyond that, its a case of the community taking care of itself, putting an end to irresponsible behaviour by -- traditionally the way has been to be ignorant (also called "tolerant" - as in "I tolerate you"). But how does one bring the issue to a head, when people want it to just "go away." How does one raise the issue, without themselves being accused of the crime of "raising the issue" -- to me the issue is equal treatment, and while EofT has acted like a moron, this does not mean RK gets to slide - or does it? Its really a governance issue after that, and the ability (or inability) of the Government to actually discern the crap from the custard and the shit from the shingle. - 戴眩sv 18:29, Aug 30, 2003 (UTC)
I was looking at swastika and it struck we that it describes the Nazi swastika (red background, white cricle, black swastika at an angle), but the File:CWswastika.png image next to this is plain grey. Is there a reason for this? It's illegal in Germany, but do we care about that (we ignored Nevada pornography laws when they were discussed)? How about France? CGS 01:19, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC).
Can an administrator help in moving San Jose Del Monte City to San Jose del Monte City? An anonymous user uploaded the same content to both pages and I would like one to redirect to the other, with the edit history in the correct page. Please include Wheel of Time series of novels --> The Wheel of Time. Thanks! (Is there a page for these types of request?) -- seav 03:21, Aug 29, 2003 (UTC)
When I type in "Sutcliffe" I get Stuart Sutcliffe but not Rick Sutcliffe. Why? (I can guess the answer.) -- KF 13:32, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Wondering if some helpful party could aid me in resolving a problem I have - I assume it's with Adobe Photoshop, which I use in making PNGs for use here on Wikipedia. They always turn out much, much darker than they appear in the program. Check the history of Image:mtl-metro-map.png - to create an acceptable image I finally had to bombastically lighten the original image in Photoshop. This happens whether I save it in RGB mode or indexed colour mode. Is there a way to ensure that the colours in the file are the same as the colours I see when using the program? - Montréalais 20:10, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
This discussion and the other recent discussion of fictional characters can now be found at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_inclusion_of_biographies/Fictional_characters#Village_pump_discussion_2:_WikiFiction
move to wikipedia talk:embassy??
Why were the interlang ln in preview removed? I'm sure most people don't feel its existence or non-existence, but I sometimes used them to make sure my inter-ln is correct when linking to and fro Chinese and English WPs. -- Menchi 00:29, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
moved to Wikipedia talk:Guide for Everything2 noders
Speaking of boredom, those of you interested in quality reading material may want to check ot Wikipedia:Requests for summaries, a new page for requesting summaries of reports, studies etc. freely available online to be integrated into Wikipedia. I think it's a cool idea, but it will only work if people actually adopt some of the listed documents, otherwise it will merely be a random link collection. So please choose something you find interesting, or add your own requests to the page. —Eloquence 14:28, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
moved to Wikipedia_talk:Mailing_lists#Moving_discussions_from_the_Mailing_lists_to_Wikipedia?, Fantasy 06:56, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Moved to Talk:The_Little_Mermaid Fantasy 20:20, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Discussion moved to Wikipedia_talk:Find_or_fix_a_stub#Stop_the_Stubs, Fantasy 20:28, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I've noticed a user who has, in the last 48 hours, focused on a couple of pages and made 20-30 edits on them, many of them minor. They don't seem factually inaccurate to me, but it does seem to me that this approach of seven minor edits in ten minutes takes up server space and bandwidth to store old copies of articles that could easily be prevented. Should I drop a note to this user? Is there a procedure? I'd appreciate advice. Jwrosenzweig 23:11, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I just created an account and found myself able to edit pages. With this ability for new users, how do we know that the information after edition is correct? I have this concern that valuable information could be deleted or altered intentionally or accidentally. Does Wikipedia have some sort of check in place?
This question came up many times, I just thought people may want to know this:
There is a first way to donate money to Wikipedia (e.g. for a new Server ;-) Just have a look at Wikipedia:Donations
Thanks a lot for your support, Fantasy 22:15, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
move to Wikipedia talk:School and university projects
Hello all. This is my first post here.
I'm thinking about developing a "Teaching with the WikiPedia" curriculum. It would be aimed at kids from about grades four through eight (US). The idea is for the kids to use the WikiPedia as the main reference source to complete their assignments, but also to understand the special issues associated with it. For example They might look up civil rights on the Wiki. What do they see? How to the entries in the Wikipedia differ from what they may see in a mainstream encyclopedia? Is it better or worse? Does the ability to edit other people's work improve the content, or is it a chance for personal opinions and political philosophies to creep into the entries?
I think this could be a great teaching tool because of the classroom discussions it would inspire. But this prompts two questions.
1) I don't want to re-invent the wheel. Is anyone else working on this?
2) I worry that kids, being kids, will quickly figure out they can add to the Wikipedia, and they will make a mess of it. (Swear words, spam, etc.) I know that's the way I would have behavved if left unsupervised back in 7th grade. So I'm thinking of creating a read-only version of the Wikipedia just for use in this curriculum. That would solve potential vandalism, of course. But it would sort of also change the way The Wiki operates for them. (Though this might be a necessary compromise.)
Thoughts? --Shawn McCarthy
service@diagonalmediagroup.com
An article has been made POV and I was wondering how to revert it to a NPOV article. Moros 20:39, Aug 22, 2003 (UTC)
moved to Wikipedia talk:Recentchanges
Moved to: Wikipedia:Copyright violations on history pages.
moved to Wikipedia talk:School and university projects
Do cooking recipes really belong in an encyclopedia? Has there ever been discussion of a separate wiki for them? It would seem a good idea to me. -- Viajero 07:58, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Is there a quick and easy way (i.e., not involving DDQs) to find broken redirects? I, for one, wouldn't mind going around making sure that any redirect that points to a red link either gets deleted or given a stub at the redirect site. Broken redirects are A Bad Thing because people won't realize that an article doesn't yet exist if they see the link in text, because it's blue, even if it doesn't go anywhere. This makes it that much harder for people who might be inclined to write an article if they new one was needed. -- Dante Alighieri 04:21, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The off-site URLs listed at the bottom of those pages which have them take users away from the site (unless one right-clicks "Open in new window"). Why not have all off-site links pop up into a new window, thereby allowing one to remain on Wikipedia while still clicking the off-site link? All that would be required is the (target="_blank") tag to be added in the link. IE: (a href="www. URL. com" target="_blank"), replacing the brackets "(" and ")" with "<" and ">". I assume an administrator could set this up easily for all off-site links to work this way. -- Kaijan 00:42, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
moved to User talk:Saddam Hussein
Has anyone read Logan's Run? If so, take a look and what I've done. It's ages since I read it, but I've been bold and put down what I could.
I would like to invite everybody to criticize my proposal for reorganization of Ancient Rome topics. I plan to create a Home Page for Rome following the links: Wiki Main Page – History – Ancient History – Ancient Rome. This directory – I think – will make life easier for people looking for Rome's topics. The proposal for the directory can be found in Ancient Rome Proposal. If there are no serious objections I'll make the substitutions during the weekend. Cheers all Muriel Gottrop 08:06, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
If I am moving stuff from here to the Simple English Wikipedia, are there any issues involved in the fact that I am not copying the history of the original? Is it ok just to state in the edit summary that this is from en: or wherever? Angela
Twice I've been scolded for using "sandbox" to create a link for which no present link exists. One said something about "creating a link on your page", but I can't find any instructions expaining what that means. Three days ago I tried to ask about this at the Village Pump and lost contact completely with Wikipedia and no subsequent answer. What can I do? HELP!!!!!
Is there any way to add new fields to the MySQL database schema used by Wikipedia? This way one would be able to perform a much more sophisticated search.
For instance, if I would like to find all artists born before 1955 or all butterflies of the UK, there currently is no way to do this, or is there? Jurriaan 27 Aug 2003
It's easy to add fields to the database schema, the hard thing is writing a decent user interface to go with them. The standard so far has been to include meta-information in the article itself, by using characteristic text of various kinds. The interlanguage links are an example of this. In some cases the characteristic text is extracted as the article is saved, and duplicated in another DB field, to make searching easier. This is the case with redirects, for example. -- Tim Starling 08:57, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Before I say very much, let me say that I believe that it should be possible to let users edit content in any manner they wish, and then we can derive meta-information from the documents that result. This is, in the short run, more difficult, but in the long run will make the choas that is wikipedia more interesting. RayKiddy
Second, could somone who knows how to do so go ahead and make this into its own disc page? Thanx.
I went to vote on the new international logo, but it said I needed to create an account. Can I vote without creating a new account? Can I vote anonymously? Is this extra hurdle going to skew the voting somehow? -- Fritzlein 19:38, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
It seems to me like the search engine needs to be updated. For instance, typing in "death of a salesman" gives you "Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act," "Blue Screen of Death," "Black Death," and "Dotcom Death" in that order, without brininging up a link to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at all. How can this be fixed?
-- Alex S 20:17, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Please read Wikipedia:Searching. -- Brion 21:18, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
It seems the automatic date conversion is not working anymore. The preference option has disappeared. What's going on? -- Wik 06:25, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I know that generally we don't want pages on songs with lyrics listed, but have a look at what I've done with Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire. It needs work (not all the links are right - perhaps an American might have more insight), but I think it's a great starting point for browsing. CGS 17:16, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC).
I am trying to post to the mailing list using the news gateway. It doesn't work. Shouldn't it? I do not have a suitable e-mail address to use for participation via e-mail. Kat
The above site has copied almost the entire content of the English Wikipedia and despite a friendly warning sometime ago, apparently still does nothing more than link to the main page and still does not mention the GFDL. I thought I'd mention this here as ignoring violations of our copyright could cause us problems in the future. Original talk is still at Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content. Pete 15:11, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)
OK, so I'm a new Wikipedian and I recently created a stub for a non-existent (red) link that I found. Later, I realized that the same info was on a page with a more appropriate name. I edited the original link (from which I made the stub) to point to the more approproate page and now I think that the stub I created would best be deleted. The page that I changed the link on is Game which used to point to massive multiplayer online game (my stub which I believe should be deleted), but now more appropriately points to MMORPG. I guess that we could also just turn the full spelling into a redirect page, but currently nothing links to it (although I guess it might in the future). Let me know what you think we should do. Thanks. PolymerTim 00:25, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I'd like to propose a new addition to the Wikipedia style, and I'm not sure where else to suggest it. What I would like to see is a guideline that in any article, if there is more then one point of view, descriptions of the article subject come first, and arguments against it come later. So when I went to an article on Global Warming, say, I got a description of Global Warming first and objections to it later. Likewise when I go to Creationism I should find out what creationists believe first, and only then any reasons why people might think they are wrong. DJ Clayworth 20:49, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Hi there! I have problems about famous Canadians or notable British Columbians. Who counts as a Canadian? I have added Leslie Cheung in the list of Canadians, but I am not quite comfortable with it. Leslie Cheung had lived in BC for just three years and then returned to Hong Kong after getting a passport, and he is not a rare example. Did I do the right thing? Or should this kind of "non-Canadian" Canadian be removed from the lists? Wshun
Help! At Shearwater, I've put in a link to Cory's Shearwater, which is written. The link stays red, but clicking on it goes to the edit page of the new article, not the article itself or a blank page. I'm sure it's something to do with the apostrophes, but I can't sort it out. jimfbleak 06:38, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I've noticed that there are pages on Wikipedia that are articles that include, sometimes at the top, but usually way down at the bottom, alternative "definitions" of the article name. These pages are not disambiguation pages because the common use of the word is overwhelmingly the one most people would be seeking. Nonetheless, the alternative word use, separated by a 4-dash line, is sometimes completely lost below the main article. Some Wikipedians solve this problem by putting a one line link to the alternative at the very top, but this is a distraction. I've set up a sidebar box under Elm as a proposed alternative for these situations. As long as the alternatives link out (do not expand on page into another article), this would seem to separate the links from the article text while affording them a bit more visibility. Any comments? - Marshman 18:42, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
<div style="float:right; padding:10px;"><table style="float:right" border="2" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3"> <tr> <td>'''Elm''' is also a text-based [[E-mail]] client. See [[Elm email client]]. </td> </tr> </table></div>
Move in discussion from my talk page on this subject. I can move it all back later; but better exposure/participation here I think
sorry but the floating sidebar on elm is no good -- most screens are simply not wide enough to support it. -- Tarquin 18:53, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
It is needless HTML clutter for no good reason. please remove it -- Tarquin 23:14, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I agree with Tarquin. Please avoid HTML whenever possible until we have a template system, it makes pages harder to edit for newbies. —Eloquence 00:10, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
In adjoining an item to the list in the article "Disability", the list-closure marker was not available in the EDIT window so that I could precede it by my item. Is this a CORRECTABLE GENERAL PROBLEM? -- Jonhays0
I was looking at swastika and it struck me that it describes the Nazi swastika (red background, white cricle, black swastika at an angle), but the Image:CWswastika.png image next to this is plain grey. Is there a reason for this? It's illegal in Germany, but do we care about that (we ignored Nevada pornography laws when they were discussed)? How about France? CGS 01:19, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC).
In the page for 1945 for November 29 I see People?s instead of People's. Why is this? Do I need to download some more font's? I'm using windows 98 with IE 6.0.2600.0000IC Thanks
Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comments
answered and moved to User talk:PolymerTim
deleted - request fulfilled
moved to User talk:SEWilco
deleted fixed bug. Brion is a God.
deleted - duplicated at wikipedia talk:software updates
moved to meta:talk:International logo vote
deleted - question answered at Wikipedia:Searching
answered at Wikipedia:Special characters
moved to User talk:Jonhays0
re: We Didn't Start the Fire - moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comments
Comments on the new format have been moved to ' Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion.
moved to Wikipedia talk:Technical terms and definitions
Can people please remember to update the list of moved discussions when they move a discussion off the page? It's hard work keeping the list up to date retrospectively. — Paul A 04:18, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I'd like to suggest that when we move pages which have associated Talk: pages, we ought to (in general) not keep a Redirect from the old Talk: page to the new Talk: page when there's no use for that link; i.e. if nothing links to the old Talk: page. I.e. when moving a page from Foo to Bar, if there is a Talk:Foo page it is moved to Talk:Bar, and a redirect to Talk:Bar would be left at Talk:Foo. If nothing actually links to Talk:Foo, that "tombstone" redirect will probably never be used (since clicking on the "Discuss this page" link on Bar will get you straight to Talk:Bar), and just clutters up the database. So is there any problem if we just delete them? (And perhaps someday, when we are knee deep in Developers and all bugs and really needed features have been seen to, the code will be changed to avoid automatically creating them when they are not needed. :-) Noel 23:54, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
This is probably a stupid question, but does it violate copyright to upload images from television shows if I capture them? - Evil saltine 08:34, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
move to the image copyright discussion - linked from wikipedia talk:image somewhere
This is probably a stupid question, but does it violate copyright to upload images from television shows if I capture them? - Evil saltine 08:34, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Just recently someone created a new article about Farmington, Maine, and when I wondered why the county seat does not even have the automated entry yet I discovered there are in fact two, but both orphans. But what is the difference between Farmington (CDP), Maine and Farmington (town), Maine - I can see the numbers are different, but I don't know the meaning of CDP. And there are many more of the CDP/Town entries, which are not linked in the county articles. andy 09:32, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia talk:bug reports?
Hi, from the moved list above:
As everbody knows, wikipedia bug reports is a reference to the SourceForge, in other words: "if you don't get a SourceForge account and put your feature requests there, nobody will see them". It's not the first time. I really have a problem with that attitude -- Wikipedia is a community, and I really would like to see a place inside Wikipedia where the community and the developers can communicate. I'd like to know if I'm the only one who is frustrated by this attitude, or if there are others ... -- till we *) 23:33, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)
delete - feature request - see wikipedia:bug reports
Is there any way to add new fields to the MySQL database schema used by Wikipedia? This way one would be able to perform a much more sophisticated search.
For instance, if I would like to find all artists born before 1955 or all butterflies of the UK, there currently is no way to do this, or is there? Jurriaan 27 Aug 2003
It's easy to add fields to the database schema, the hard thing is writing a decent user interface to go with them. The standard so far has been to include meta-information in the article itself, by using characteristic text of various kinds. The interlanguage links are an example of this. In some cases the characteristic text is extracted as the article is saved, and duplicated in another DB field, to make searching easier. This is the case with redirects, for example. -- Tim Starling 08:57, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Before I say very much, let me say that I believe that it should be possible to let users edit content in any manner they wish, and then we can derive meta-information from the documents that result. This is, in the short run, more difficult, but in the long run will make the choas that is wikipedia more interesting. RayKiddy
Second, could somone who knows how to do so go ahead and make this into its own disc page? Thanx.
delete - current status is at Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content
The above site has copied almost the entire content of the English Wikipedia and despite a friendly warning sometime ago, apparently still does nothing more than link to the main page and still does not mention the GFDL. I thought I'd mention this here as ignoring violations of our copyright could cause us problems in the future. Original talk is still at Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content. Pete 15:11, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)
delete - answered at wikipedia:searching
It seems to me like the search engine needs to be updated. For instance, typing in "death of a salesman" gives you "Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act," "Blue Screen of Death," "Black Death," and "Dotcom Death" in that order, without brininging up a link to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at all. How can this be fixed?
-- Alex S 20:17, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Please read Wikipedia:Searching. -- Brion 21:18, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
According to a recent Wikipedia:announcements:announcement Wikipedia is as popular as Slashdot. I was quite surprised! Is it really true? Anyone know how Alexa measures popularity? I see they offer a toolbar to download... do they extrapolate data from toolbar downloaders? Are Wikipedians more likely to have a toolbar than other users? [ Alexa Website Pete 12:05, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)
According to a recent Wikipedia:Announcement Wikipedia is as popular as Slashdot. I was quite surprised! Is it really true? Anyone know how Alexa measures popularity? I see they offer a toolbar to download... do they extrapolate data from toolbar downloaders? Are Wikipedians more likely to have a toolbar than other users? Alexa Website Pete 12:05, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia talk:redirect
Is there a quick and easy way (i.e., not involving DDQs) to find broken redirects? I, for one, wouldn't mind going around making sure that any redirect that points to a red link either gets deleted or given a stub at the redirect site. Broken redirects are A Bad Thing because people won't realize that an article doesn't yet exist if they see the link in text, because it's blue, even if it doesn't go anywhere. This makes it that much harder for people who might be inclined to write an article if they new one was needed. -- Dante Alighieri 04:21, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Hi, I just wrote an article about Rose O'Neal Greenhow. I saved the page, and I saw what it was supposed to look like after saving it. (Just like a Wikipedia page looks!) However, when I typed in Rose O'Neal Greenhow into the search box, nothing came up. Also, when I clicked on "My Contributions," nothing came up. Does it take awhile for articles to post? How long? When can I see my article as a part of Wikipedia and a part of "My Contributions"? Thanks
What's going on with this ISBN book link? ISBN 019824908X - I've only typed it once but 2 links are coming up... Evercat 14:15, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Could someone rever Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Japanese)? Thanks in advance. -- Taku 02:52, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia talk:redirect/delete
I'd like to suggest that when we move pages which have associated Talk: pages, we ought to (in general) not keep a Redirect from the old Talk: page to the new Talk: page when there's no use for that link; i.e. if nothing links to the old Talk: page. I.e. when moving a page from Foo to Bar, if there is a Talk:Foo page it is moved to Talk:Bar, and a redirect to Talk:Bar would be left at Talk:Foo. If nothing actually links to Talk:Foo, that "tombstone" redirect will probably never be used (since clicking on the "Discuss this page" link on Bar will get you straight to Talk:Bar), and just clutters up the database. So is there any problem if we just delete them? (And perhaps someday, when we are knee deep in Developers and all bugs and really needed features have been seen to, the code will be changed to avoid automatically creating them when they are not needed. :-) Noel 23:54, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Look, I understand, and sympathize with, the sensitivity to leaving dangling pointers out there in URL-space. I maintain more than one page of the form "this page isn't here any more, go <here>" because I reorganized some stuff; and I also really hate it when you follow a link and it 404's.
At the same time, delete logs show that Wikipedia clearly doesn't have a policy that "no Wikipedia URL that ever contained valid content (i.e. not just insults, rubbish, copyvio, or something like that) shall ever stop working". A small amount of trolling through deleted articles turned up "Beadwork patterns" and "Gold Faced Pumpkins", both of which contained real content at one point.
I understand why they were deleted, but that's not the issue: the point is that someone out there may have them bookmarked, and now they don't work anymore. In addition to them, I saw a whole series of "Emperor_<foo>_of_Japan" which are now gone too, moved somewhere else, with no redirects left behind (probably because the "What Links Here' page for them was empty, I would assume.) Again, someone might have saved URL's to them out there somewhere.
So, if what you're saying is that you want to have such a policy, that no Wiki URL that ever pointed to non-bogus content shall ever stop working, fine, but those aren't the ground rules that seem to be in place at the moment. Are you proposing such a change?
Noel 18:25, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia talk:copyrights
If I am moving stuff from here to the Simple English Wikipedia, are there any issues involved in the fact that I am not copying the history of the original? Is it ok just to state in the edit summary that this is from en: or wherever? Angela
moved to wikipedia talk:copyrights and repeated ibn part on the Simple Wikipedia
what's the deal with these category tags? All it seems to do is an an ugly "?" link at the top of the article, eg electrode. -- Tarquin 16:42, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia talk:mailing lists
I am trying to post to the mailing list using the news gateway. It doesn't work. Shouldn't it? I do not have a suitable e-mail address to use for participation via e-mail. Kat
move to wikipedia talk:bug reports? wikipedia talk:developers?
Hi, from the moved list above:
As everbody knows, wikipedia bug reports is a reference to the SourceForge, in other words: "if you don't get a SourceForge account and put your feature requests there, nobody will see them". It's not the first time. I really have a problem with that attitude -- Wikipedia is a community, and I really would like to see a place inside Wikipedia where the community and the developers can communicate. I'd like to know if I'm the only one who is frustrated by this attitude, or if there are others ... -- till we *) 23:33, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)
Can graphic representations of Flags and Coats of Arms be copyrighted? It seems a bit strange to me - but if the answer is yes, does someone know where one could find ones that are in the public domain? Sandman 08:38, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Wondering if some helpful party could aid me in resolving a problem I have - I assume it's with Adobe Photoshop, which I use in making PNGs for use here on Wikipedia. They always turn out much, much darker than they appear in the program. Check the history of Image:mtl-metro-map.png - to create an acceptable image I finally had to bombastically lighten the original image in Photoshop. This happens whether I save it in RGB mode or indexed colour mode. Is there a way to ensure that the colours in the file are the same as the colours I see when using the program? - Montréalais 20:10, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
When someone replaces an existing page with a disambiguation page, they should make sure to follow the directions in Wikipedia:Disambiguation:
Also (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong), the old page should be moved to the new name, instead of just moving the text - that way the edit history goes with it. If a duplicate page already exists at the destination (because someone created it not realizing that the other page already existed), you'll need to get an admin to help you, by using the procedure outlined here.
Now that I'm done saying that, can someone more expert than me help with sorting out the edit histories on ITS and Incompatible Timesharing System? Thanks... Noel 22:53, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
A 1.5k ohm resistor is found 2 have 22.5V across it,
a. what is the current in the resistor? I got 15A is this right? b. What is the power dissipated in the resistor?_____ & please tell me how u came 2 this answer so I can figure it out 4 myself next time? c. Could a 1/4W resistor be used in this application? Explain why?
What physical characteristic determines the power rating of a resistor?
What happens 2 electrical energy in a resistor?
Can you guys do something with http://swpat.ffii.org/group/demo/ or would it violate the neutrality of Wikipedia? -- 212.127.214.105 00:29, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
We can still make an individual statement by putting messages on our user pages. -- Tim Starling 03:43, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia talk:establish context
I'd like to propose a new addition to the Wikipedia style, and I'm not sure where else to suggest it. What I would like to see is a guideline that in any article, if there is more then one point of view, descriptions of the article subject come first, and arguments against it come later. So when I went to an article on Global Warming, say, I got a description of Global Warming first and objections to it later. Likewise when I go to Creationism I should find out what creationists believe first, and only then any reasons why people might think they are wrong. DJ Clayworth 20:49, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I asked the contributor of Death of a Salesman to modified the "Themes and Points of Interest" so that it's more encyclopedic. But when he asks how it can be so, I'm not sure! I mean, the questions are valid: "Why? Do the Loman men have a tragic flaw? What could it be?" -- But I don't think encyclopedia should asks its reader like an English-class teacher asks his/her students (although this may not be the contributor's intent). Those are general questions that can asked of most tragedies.
move to wikipedia talk:disambiguation
I've noticed that there are pages on Wikipedia that are articles that include, sometimes at the top, but usually way down at the bottom, alternative "definitions" of the article name. These pages are not disambiguation pages because the common use of the word is overwhelmingly the one most people would be seeking. Nonetheless, the alternative word use, separated by a 4-dash line, is sometimes completely lost below the main article. Some Wikipedians solve this problem by putting a one line link to the alternative at the very top, but this is a distraction. I've set up a sidebar box under Elm as a proposed alternative for these situations. As long as the alternatives link out (do not expand on page into another article), this would seem to separate the links from the article text while affording them a bit more visibility. Any comments? - Marshman 18:42, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
<div style="float:right; padding:10px;"><table style="float:right" border="2" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3"> <tr> <td>'''Elm''' is also a text-based [[E-mail]] client. See [[Elm email client]]. </td> </tr> </table></div>
Move in discussion from my talk page on this subject. I can move it all back later; but better exposure/participation here I think
sorry but the floating sidebar on elm is no good -- most screens are simply not wide enough to support it. -- Tarquin 18:53, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
It is needless HTML clutter for no good reason. please remove it -- Tarquin 23:14, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I agree with Tarquin. Please avoid HTML whenever possible until we have a template system, it makes pages harder to edit for newbies. —Eloquence 00:10, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
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
This is mentioned elsewhere, but I think it's worth reminding the collectivity of it: remember to state the obvious -- or rather, remember that that is obvious to you is not so to the average reader. I had to add this to the start of the new article on the Ford Thunderbird: The Ford Thunderbird is a car manufactured in the USA by the Ford Motor Company. -- the authors did not stop to suppose that the reader does not necessarily know it's a car. This ties in with news style and the 5Ws. -- Tarquin 17:23, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think a better rule of thumb than imagining your audience is from Alpha Centauri may be to imagine that our civilization is destroyed utterly, and our descendants are fortunate enough to uncover an operational Wikipedia while digging through the ruins. We have so much trouble learning about the basic details of ancient civilizations because their writers generally failed to state the obvious... let us not make the same mistake. -- Nelson 13:28, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
On Wikipedia:Recentchanges the requested articles " Ruth Barcan Marcus - Panjshir - YWHA - wage rate - Ed Fagan - modal logic - Dingle" haven't changed in about four days. Can we get rid of them and put up something else? Mintguy 18:38, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I see no reason why not. Four days is enough and it's not like you're going to run out of choice. Angela 03:39, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Any particular reason someone savaged the VfD page?
Any particular reason someone savaged the VfD page?
Just testing that bug is fixed.
The user WhisperToMe is moving all videogame systems to their Japanese rather than English title. I checked on Google "Super Nintendo" returns 373,000 hits, while "Super Famicom" returns 32,700. I think they should stop and return the pages to where they were originally to avoid creating confusion. M123 16:50, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Super Famicom is only one example. A better example is moving Genesis to Megadrive because that is the name most people know it by. CGS 18:12, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC).
I think the Google counts are a good indicator of which name is more popular in the online English-speaking world. We are not interested in English speakers who are not online because they are not reading Wikipedia. Therefore, let us bow to the majority, and put everything back to their US names. -- Nelson 00:20, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Well, Google counts are a good indicator of which name is more popular among those who are involving "English web-site creation"! The first change is not necessary, but a revert maybe equally unnecessary. wshun 01:33, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I seriously think that English pages on the WWW are definitely skewed towards the United States. So it should be no surprise that most names would be the American version. I myself know MegaMan as RockMan. -- seav 05:00, Aug 19, 2003 (UTC)
moved to Talk:Current events
And thus we see our US bias. Nobody has bothered to write up anout any of this: Brazilian Space Agency? Alcantara space base? Do we even have these articles?. Current Events for that day starts with a HUGE paragraph about Alabama, knocking events in Brazil, Ecuador, and British Columbia into the minor details. You can bet if a rocket had exploded and killed 19 on US soil, an article would have been whipped up in a frenzy, with full biographies of all the dead, telling us everything down to their favourite flavour of jelly bean. -- Tarquin 08:50, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Help? I just protected Homelessness because User:JoeM continues to vandalize it. I know I'm supposed to list that the page was protected somewhere, but I can't find the page to do it. Can somebody point me there? RickK 23:52, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Getting too long for the Village pump so moved to Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation
Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Avoid weasel terms
moved to Talk:Super Nintendo Entertainment System
moved to Wikipedia talk:Skeptical solicitation
moved to Talk:Current events
For the last couple of days I have taken a break from writing articles and have concentrated on compiling lists of business articles. The following lists cover all the business articles that I have been able to find:
I have placed this at the end of about 20 articles as an experiment. My objective is to make every business article easy to find and available with only two mouse clicks.
My questions to the wiki-experts are “Will appending this list to articles conflict with the new category system being developed? If so, how should I modify it to prevent future problems?” mydogategodshat 06:06, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think could be a good idea but in a sligter shorter form like the links to other languages. Jensp 07:09, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC) Like this:
Lists of business topics: management, marketing, human resource, economics, finance, accounting, information technology, production, business law, ethics, political economy, and philosophy, theorists, economists, corporate leaders, companies
Is having "Show table of contents" OFF the default setting? I hope it is. Kingturtle 02:06, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Hello all. This is my first post here.
I'm thinking about developing a "Teaching with the WikiPedia" curriculum. It would be aimed at kids from about grades four through eight (US). The idea is for the kids to use the WikiPedia as the main reference source to complete their assignments, but also to understand the special issues associated with it. For example They might look up civil rights on the Wiki. What do they see? How to the entries in the Wikipedia differ from what they may see in a mainstream encyclopedia? Is it better or worse? Does the ability to edit other people's work improve the content, or is it a chance for personal opinions and political philosophies to creep into the entries?
I think this could be a great teaching tool because of the classroom discussions it would inspire. But this prompts two questions.
1) I don't want to re-invent the wheel. Is anyone else working on this?
2) I worry that kids, being kids, will quickly figure out they can add to the Wikipedia, and they will make a mess of it. (Swear words, spam, etc.) I know that’s the way I would have behavved if left unsupervised back in 7th grade. So I'm thinking of creating a read-only version of the Wikipedia just for use in this curriculum. That would solve potential vandalism, of course. But it would sort of also change the way The Wiki operates for them. (Though this might be a necessary compromise.)
Thoughts? --Shawn McCarthy
service@diagonalmediagroup.com
moved to Talk:Current events Please stop moving this guys -- this really is an important example of our US-POV. Some sniper in the US takes out three people and we have an article on it in hours. Whereas the Brazillian space programme isn't covered at all -- not even the recent events, it isn't covered at all. Shame on us. -- Tarquin 13:58, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Can someone post a link to a free, English English dictionary? I don't want to pay the $550 the OED wants. I usually will correct spelling mistakes i run across but I don't want to mistakenly use American English spelling for an acceptable British English spelling of the word. I'm aware of words like colour and programme, etc. Today it was "likelyhood" that I sorely wanted to change to likelihood but didn't want to start an across the pond dispute. Thanks, StinKerr 22:27, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
On the general topic of spellings, can I add an appeal for people to check for variant spellings with a dictionary, e.g. http://www.onelook.com/, and in general not change spellings if it's an acceptable one? Sure, if you see "Pearl Harbour", then it's probably OK to change that as i) it's a US topic, and ii) that's not the normal spelling. But some of those of us who use British spellings would rather the rest of you not implicitly accuse us of being illiterate morons by "correcting" our spellings. Thanks! Noel 18:50, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I seem to remember a discussion about using video media on wikipedia, but can't find it. Does anyone recall where it is? I have some .avi files that I think would be a welcome addition.. what (if anything) can I do with them? Pete
I noticed that in Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1, there are serious problems with the handling of <hr> in general, and in an especially obvious way on the Postal Service. Apparently this is due to a workaround for a bug older versions of Mozilla had in displaying <hr>, there's a temporary hack that reverts to quirks mode for Mozilla browsers. So the people on the Mozilla Forums ( http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=20420) told me to tell you guys that the bug is fixed. -- Nelson 00:02, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
...at Abstract interpretation; see talk. I want someone else's opinion before I delete the offending links. k.lee 00:27, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Moved to: Wikipedia:Writing resources
moved to Talk:Nikola Tesla
The discussion on removing dates that can not be verified can now be found at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Dates.
moved to Wikipedia:Village pump/August 2003 archive 4
move to ... ????
For the last couple of days I have taken a break from writing articles and have concentrated on compiling lists of business articles. The following lists cover all the business articles that I have been able to find:
I have placed this at the end of about 20 articles as an experiment. My objective is to make every business article easy to find and available with only two mouse clicks.
My questions to the wiki-experts are “Will appending this list to articles conflict with the new category system being developed? If so, how should I modify it to prevent future problems?” mydogategodshat 06:06, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think could be a good idea but in a sligter shorter form like the links to other languages. Jensp 07:09, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC) Like this:
Lists of business topics: management, marketing, human resource, economics, finance, accounting, information technology, production, business law, ethics, political economy, and philosophy, theorists, economists, corporate leaders, companies
Move to Wikipedia:Multimedia
I seem to remember a discussion about using video media on wikipedia, but can't find it. Does anyone recall where it is? I have some .avi files that I think would be a welcome addition.. what (if anything) can I do with them? Pete
Discussion moved to Talk:Akhenaton/rename
move to wikipedia:establish context
This is mentioned elsewhere, but I think it's worth reminding the collectivity of it: remember to state the obvious -- or rather, remember that that is obvious to you is not so to the average reader. I had to add this to the start of the new article on the Ford Thunderbird: The Ford Thunderbird is a car manufactured in the USA by the Ford Motor Company. -- the authors did not stop to suppose that the reader does not necessarily know it's a car. This ties in with news style and the 5Ws. -- Tarquin 17:23, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think a better rule of thumb than imagining your audience is from Alpha Centauri may be to imagine that our civilization is destroyed utterly, and our descendants are fortunate enough to uncover an operational Wikipedia while digging through the ruins. We have so much trouble learning about the basic details of ancient civilizations because their writers generally failed to state the obvious... let us not make the same mistake. -- Nelson 13:28, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I would like to start to develop a consistent style on marking up technical terms and defined terms in articles (especially technical or scientific articles) to be put somewhere in the Style Manual. I've looked and I see only a few pointers and how to's — no style definitions. Should I just go ahead and add where appropriate in the Manual(s), or has something like this been done before and 1) I missed it or 2) it proved too controversial ? I was thinking of an intro paragraph, a list of options (bold, obique, underline), then perhaps a bulleted list that others could alter or add to until the details are solidified. Any suggestions? - Marshman 18:09, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Yes, this all makes sense. Add it to wikipedia:manual of style or create a subpage. Martin 22:49, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I have created a Style Manual page for what I am proposing at Technical terms and definitions. The discussion can move to the talk page for that article - Marshman 18:09, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia:List?
For the last couple of days I have taken a break from writing articles and have concentrated on compiling lists of business articles. The following lists cover all the business articles that I have been able to find:
Finding related topics
I have placed this at the end of about 20 articles as an experiment. My objective is to make every business article easy to find and available with only two mouse clicks.
My questions to the wiki-experts are “Will appending this list to articles conflict with the new category system being developed? If so, how should I modify it to prevent future problems?” mydogategodshat 06:06, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think could be a good idea but in a sligter shorter form like the links to other languages. Jensp 07:09, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC) Like this:
Lists of business topics: management, marketing, human resource, economics, finance, accounting, information technology, production, business law, ethics, political economy, and philosophy, theorists, economists, corporate leaders, companies
Moved to Wikipedia_talk:Software_updates#Software_update_of_the_other_Wikipedias, Fantasy 20:45, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Multimedia
moved to wikipedia:List
move to Wikipedia:Table of Contents
Is having "Show table of contents" OFF the default setting? I hope it is. Kingturtle 02:06, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I am trying to post to the mailing list using the news gateway. It doesn't work. Shouldn't it? I do not have a suitable e-mail address to use for participation via e-mail. Kat
move to Talk:Current events
This is in the news right now. Does anyone know anything about this? could we get an article on the rocket itself & put it on the main page? -- Tarquin 12:12, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I've found this http://www.mrree.gub.uy/iiicea/PAISES/Brasil/Brazilian%20Space%20Program98.htm & http://www.agespacial.gov.br/
here is another link : http://www.wisconsinproject.org/countries/brazil/missile2000.htm
And thus we see our US bias. Nobody has bothered to write up anout any of this: Brazilian Space Agency? Alcantara space base? Do we even have these articles?. Current Events for that day starts with a HUGE paragraph about Alabama, knocking events in Brazil, Ecuador, and British Columbia into the minor details. You can bet if a rocket had exploded and killed 19 on US soil, an article would have been whipped up in a frenzy, with full biographies of all the dead, telling us everything down to their favourite flavour of jelly bean. -- Tarquin 08:50, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Please stop moving this guys -- this really is an important example of our US-POV. Some sniper in the US takes out three people and we have an article on it in hours. Whereas the Brazillian space programme isn't covered at all -- not even the recent events, it isn't covered at all. Shame on us. -- Tarquin 13:58, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Yes it is. This was on global news and no-one thought it worth covering. This would seem to suggest that US writers have an inflated view of the importance of US events -- or they assume they are writing for the US, not for the world. The fact that we have more USians who know more about the US should encourage us to actively neglect US topics in favour of worldwide ones -- Tarquin 22:11, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The term is frequently used, but that's not relevant here. I found plenty of references to it on Google news. It was on AOL's front page for a whole day. -- Tarquin 22:32, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I an UKian :-) only briefly heard abotu it on the news dont knwo mcuh about it, would be great t haev an article on it. <genralisation>Tthe reason alot of Americans don't knwo much about the outside world is because of the news in the USA, America is very big so news gernally covers just each state with the eception of the big newstsations like CCN etc. Once again the media is too balme.</genralisation> - fonzy
This is really easy, Tarquin. If you want an article about the Brazilian Space Agency, write it yourself. Don't blame the lack of participation by Brazilian Space enthusiasts on American bias. Daniel Quinlan 23:10, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)
Move to Wikipedia:State the obvious
This is mentioned elsewhere, but I think it's worth reminding the collectivity of it: remember to state the obvious -- or rather, remember that that is obvious to you is not so to the average reader. I had to add this to the start of the new article on the Ford Thunderbird: The Ford Thunderbird is a car manufactured in the USA by the Ford Motor Company. -- the authors did not stop to suppose that the reader does not necessarily know it's a car. This ties in with news style and the 5Ws. -- Tarquin 17:23, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think a better rule of thumb than imagining your audience is from Alpha Centauri may be to imagine that our civilization is destroyed utterly, and our descendants are fortunate enough to uncover an operational Wikipedia while digging through the ruins. We have so much trouble learning about the basic details of ancient civilizations because their writers generally failed to state the obvious... let us not make the same mistake. -- Nelson 13:28, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I'm uncertain where to obtain this help. I'm trying to move Composite family to Asteraceae to be consistent with other plant family pages and be more modern (Compositae is an old name for this family). But I guess I need the Asteraceae deleted because (partly due to my moving stuff around) it has a short page history which the system wants to keep. - Marshman 21:00, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC) Likewise need Fabaceae deleted for same reason - Marshman
I'm here now, so I can make my moves. If there is "Talk" pages to preserve in the deleted stuff, someone else must do that. And thanks ! - Marshman 22:33, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I know that A, B, C have Microsoft puny font sample. What's exactly is the copyright limitation on font size or how much "sample" (i.e., must be under 20% of the entire character database)? Is there any? Many fonts have to be bought, would the company be happy that we do whatever we want to GNU-ize the pictures of it once we bought it? (I'm thinking of doing an article on Eight Principles of Yong using the Chinese calligraphy fonts). -- Menchi 18:01, Aug 19, 2003 (UTC)
Hi, from the moved list above:
As everbody knows, wikipedia bug reports is a reference to the SourceForge, in other words: "if you don't get a SourceForge account and put your feature requests there, nobody will see them". It's not the first time. I really have a problem with that attitude -- Wikipedia is a community, and I really would like to see a place inside Wikipedia where the community and the developers can communicate. I'd like to know if I'm the only one who is frustrated by this attitude, or if there are others ... -- till we *) 23:33, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)
moved to Wikipedia talk:Community case RK
I am searching for the word defined by "punishment of an entire group for the misdeeds of one or a few of that group"
User:Seav posted a question on Wikipedia:Copyright issues about a month ago regarding copyright violations on history pages. I also have this question and could not find any other discussion of this issue so I started a new metapage: Wikipedia:Copyright violations on history pages. Sysops and other volunteers are very vigilant to remove copyright violations from the actual Wikipedia content, but that content may still remain on the history pages. I found one such example today at I have a dream. Queare: If copyright work can be found anywhere on Wikipedia isn't Wikipedia retaining a copy of that work and allowing further infringement? I understand that the history pages are a implicit requirement under the FSF GNU FDL as author attribution is still necessary as the only thing granted to Wikipedia is a non-exclusive license. Alex756 16:14, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
In a sequence control,what is better, a PLC or an industrial PC?
In a sequence control,what is better, a PLC or an industrial PC?
Move to Wikipedia talk:Establish context
This is mentioned elsewhere, but I think it's worth reminding the collectivity of it: remember to state the obvious -- or rather, remember that that is obvious to you is not so to the average reader. I had to add this to the start of the new article on the Ford Thunderbird: The Ford Thunderbird is a car manufactured in the USA by the Ford Motor Company. -- the authors did not stop to suppose that the reader does not necessarily know it's a car. This ties in with news style and the 5Ws. -- Tarquin 17:23, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think a better rule of thumb than imagining your audience is from Alpha Centauri may be to imagine that our civilization is destroyed utterly, and our descendants are fortunate enough to uncover an operational Wikipedia while digging through the ruins. We have so much trouble learning about the basic details of ancient civilizations because their writers generally failed to state the obvious... let us not make the same mistake. -- Nelson 13:28, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Hi, I find that the editor named SEWilco is problematic.
He modifies the articles concerning global warming/temp in a manner to cast doubt about the IPCC results and the scientific community in general. He systematically emphasizes the position of opposition voices like Pr Lindzen (see his article about Richard S. Lindzen and IPCC TAR Summary Conflict, which is pure speculation. One doesn't even know which are Dr Lindzen's original comments). His contributions are highly biased in general.
Help! Wikiquote, sister project to Wikipedia, needs a developer to come and help fix a bug that occurred today, not with the software per se, but with the configuration of the InterWiki setup. All links from Wikiquote to Wikipedia using en: rather than w: (which is most of them) no longer work, and in fact the whole link does not display at all. This has caused us to mostly cease working on the site, and has made many pages difficult to read. We would appreciate it if someone could come and fix it as soon as possible. Thanks. Nanobug 16:09, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Could an admin please temporarily protect ethics in any of its more recent, non-RK forms? He has decided it seems to use it as a forum to "trap" me, luring me into reverting his POV edits, and such. I would rather not deal with this. Failing that, someone else reverting his edits would be handy. It's important to keep that article neutral, for reasons I noted at Wikipedia:list of central issues. EofT
I've been trying to give the new article format the benefit of the doubt, but it's finally driven me over the edge. (In case this is a techie problem, I am reading and editing from Internet Explorer 5 using Windows 2000.) Since the new format has rolled out, the first line of each article consistently shows up right-justified. When the opening paragraph is fairly long, that's not a real problem but many articles have only very short first paragraphs. Stylistically, they should probably stay that way in many cases. Visually, you almost overlook them because the line doesn't start until the middle of the page. Do others agree? And if so, is there anyone out there with the technical skills to fix it? Rossami 06:54, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The [edit] option at the right of every paragraph is distracting and makes the articles harder to read. Is there a way to turn that off? (If I want to edit the article, I'd prefer to do it the old way - the whole article, not just one paragraph.) Rossami 06:54, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia talk:copyrights
I know that A, B, C have Microsoft puny font sample. What's exactly is the copyright limitation on font size or how much "sample" (i.e., must be under 20% of the entire character database)? Is there any? Many fonts have to be bought, would the company be happy that we do whatever we want to GNU-ize the pictures of it once we bought it? (I'm thinking of doing an article on Eight Principles of Yong using the Chinese calligraphy fonts). -- Menchi 18:01, Aug 19, 2003 (UTC)
Why were the interlang ln in preview removed? I'm sure most people don't feel its existence or non-existence, but I sometimes used them to make sure my inter-ln is correct when linking to and fro Chinese and English WPs. -- Menchi 00:29, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
Discussion moved to Talk:Akhenaton/rename
The discussion was getting too long for the villapge pump, so has been moved to Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view/News sources. Angela
Both accuse each other of being trolls and manipulating me (I protected ethics at the request of EofT, which seemed to be a genuine request). Which one is the troll? Both? Neither? CGS 22:26, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC).
Damnd if do, damnd if dont. While both Kat and Angela are right, the central issues are actually rather simple -- does anyone have a right to make /ban pages? The consensus now is no, because its problematic. Can people make accusations? Well, there is some doubt about whether those in charge are actually willing to enforce policy. If the judge or jury is likely just to acquit, why make any effort at all, until a solid case is built. Beyond that, its a case of the community taking care of itself, putting an end to irresponsible behaviour by -- traditionally the way has been to be ignorant (also called "tolerant" - as in "I tolerate you"). But how does one bring the issue to a head, when people want it to just "go away." How does one raise the issue, without themselves being accused of the crime of "raising the issue" -- to me the issue is equal treatment, and while EofT has acted like a moron, this does not mean RK gets to slide - or does it? Its really a governance issue after that, and the ability (or inability) of the Government to actually discern the crap from the custard and the shit from the shingle. - 戴眩sv 18:29, Aug 30, 2003 (UTC)
I was looking at swastika and it struck we that it describes the Nazi swastika (red background, white cricle, black swastika at an angle), but the File:CWswastika.png image next to this is plain grey. Is there a reason for this? It's illegal in Germany, but do we care about that (we ignored Nevada pornography laws when they were discussed)? How about France? CGS 01:19, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC).
Can an administrator help in moving San Jose Del Monte City to San Jose del Monte City? An anonymous user uploaded the same content to both pages and I would like one to redirect to the other, with the edit history in the correct page. Please include Wheel of Time series of novels --> The Wheel of Time. Thanks! (Is there a page for these types of request?) -- seav 03:21, Aug 29, 2003 (UTC)
When I type in "Sutcliffe" I get Stuart Sutcliffe but not Rick Sutcliffe. Why? (I can guess the answer.) -- KF 13:32, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Wondering if some helpful party could aid me in resolving a problem I have - I assume it's with Adobe Photoshop, which I use in making PNGs for use here on Wikipedia. They always turn out much, much darker than they appear in the program. Check the history of Image:mtl-metro-map.png - to create an acceptable image I finally had to bombastically lighten the original image in Photoshop. This happens whether I save it in RGB mode or indexed colour mode. Is there a way to ensure that the colours in the file are the same as the colours I see when using the program? - Montréalais 20:10, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
This discussion and the other recent discussion of fictional characters can now be found at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_inclusion_of_biographies/Fictional_characters#Village_pump_discussion_2:_WikiFiction
move to wikipedia talk:embassy??
Why were the interlang ln in preview removed? I'm sure most people don't feel its existence or non-existence, but I sometimes used them to make sure my inter-ln is correct when linking to and fro Chinese and English WPs. -- Menchi 00:29, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
moved to Wikipedia talk:Guide for Everything2 noders
Speaking of boredom, those of you interested in quality reading material may want to check ot Wikipedia:Requests for summaries, a new page for requesting summaries of reports, studies etc. freely available online to be integrated into Wikipedia. I think it's a cool idea, but it will only work if people actually adopt some of the listed documents, otherwise it will merely be a random link collection. So please choose something you find interesting, or add your own requests to the page. —Eloquence 14:28, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
moved to Wikipedia_talk:Mailing_lists#Moving_discussions_from_the_Mailing_lists_to_Wikipedia?, Fantasy 06:56, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Moved to Talk:The_Little_Mermaid Fantasy 20:20, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Discussion moved to Wikipedia_talk:Find_or_fix_a_stub#Stop_the_Stubs, Fantasy 20:28, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I've noticed a user who has, in the last 48 hours, focused on a couple of pages and made 20-30 edits on them, many of them minor. They don't seem factually inaccurate to me, but it does seem to me that this approach of seven minor edits in ten minutes takes up server space and bandwidth to store old copies of articles that could easily be prevented. Should I drop a note to this user? Is there a procedure? I'd appreciate advice. Jwrosenzweig 23:11, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I just created an account and found myself able to edit pages. With this ability for new users, how do we know that the information after edition is correct? I have this concern that valuable information could be deleted or altered intentionally or accidentally. Does Wikipedia have some sort of check in place?
This question came up many times, I just thought people may want to know this:
There is a first way to donate money to Wikipedia (e.g. for a new Server ;-) Just have a look at Wikipedia:Donations
Thanks a lot for your support, Fantasy 22:15, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
move to Wikipedia talk:School and university projects
Hello all. This is my first post here.
I'm thinking about developing a "Teaching with the WikiPedia" curriculum. It would be aimed at kids from about grades four through eight (US). The idea is for the kids to use the WikiPedia as the main reference source to complete their assignments, but also to understand the special issues associated with it. For example They might look up civil rights on the Wiki. What do they see? How to the entries in the Wikipedia differ from what they may see in a mainstream encyclopedia? Is it better or worse? Does the ability to edit other people's work improve the content, or is it a chance for personal opinions and political philosophies to creep into the entries?
I think this could be a great teaching tool because of the classroom discussions it would inspire. But this prompts two questions.
1) I don't want to re-invent the wheel. Is anyone else working on this?
2) I worry that kids, being kids, will quickly figure out they can add to the Wikipedia, and they will make a mess of it. (Swear words, spam, etc.) I know that's the way I would have behavved if left unsupervised back in 7th grade. So I'm thinking of creating a read-only version of the Wikipedia just for use in this curriculum. That would solve potential vandalism, of course. But it would sort of also change the way The Wiki operates for them. (Though this might be a necessary compromise.)
Thoughts? --Shawn McCarthy
service@diagonalmediagroup.com
An article has been made POV and I was wondering how to revert it to a NPOV article. Moros 20:39, Aug 22, 2003 (UTC)
moved to Wikipedia talk:Recentchanges
Moved to: Wikipedia:Copyright violations on history pages.
moved to Wikipedia talk:School and university projects
Do cooking recipes really belong in an encyclopedia? Has there ever been discussion of a separate wiki for them? It would seem a good idea to me. -- Viajero 07:58, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Is there a quick and easy way (i.e., not involving DDQs) to find broken redirects? I, for one, wouldn't mind going around making sure that any redirect that points to a red link either gets deleted or given a stub at the redirect site. Broken redirects are A Bad Thing because people won't realize that an article doesn't yet exist if they see the link in text, because it's blue, even if it doesn't go anywhere. This makes it that much harder for people who might be inclined to write an article if they new one was needed. -- Dante Alighieri 04:21, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The off-site URLs listed at the bottom of those pages which have them take users away from the site (unless one right-clicks "Open in new window"). Why not have all off-site links pop up into a new window, thereby allowing one to remain on Wikipedia while still clicking the off-site link? All that would be required is the (target="_blank") tag to be added in the link. IE: (a href="www. URL. com" target="_blank"), replacing the brackets "(" and ")" with "<" and ">". I assume an administrator could set this up easily for all off-site links to work this way. -- Kaijan 00:42, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
moved to User talk:Saddam Hussein
Has anyone read Logan's Run? If so, take a look and what I've done. It's ages since I read it, but I've been bold and put down what I could.
I would like to invite everybody to criticize my proposal for reorganization of Ancient Rome topics. I plan to create a Home Page for Rome following the links: Wiki Main Page – History – Ancient History – Ancient Rome. This directory – I think – will make life easier for people looking for Rome's topics. The proposal for the directory can be found in Ancient Rome Proposal. If there are no serious objections I'll make the substitutions during the weekend. Cheers all Muriel Gottrop 08:06, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
If I am moving stuff from here to the Simple English Wikipedia, are there any issues involved in the fact that I am not copying the history of the original? Is it ok just to state in the edit summary that this is from en: or wherever? Angela
Twice I've been scolded for using "sandbox" to create a link for which no present link exists. One said something about "creating a link on your page", but I can't find any instructions expaining what that means. Three days ago I tried to ask about this at the Village Pump and lost contact completely with Wikipedia and no subsequent answer. What can I do? HELP!!!!!
Is there any way to add new fields to the MySQL database schema used by Wikipedia? This way one would be able to perform a much more sophisticated search.
For instance, if I would like to find all artists born before 1955 or all butterflies of the UK, there currently is no way to do this, or is there? Jurriaan 27 Aug 2003
It's easy to add fields to the database schema, the hard thing is writing a decent user interface to go with them. The standard so far has been to include meta-information in the article itself, by using characteristic text of various kinds. The interlanguage links are an example of this. In some cases the characteristic text is extracted as the article is saved, and duplicated in another DB field, to make searching easier. This is the case with redirects, for example. -- Tim Starling 08:57, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Before I say very much, let me say that I believe that it should be possible to let users edit content in any manner they wish, and then we can derive meta-information from the documents that result. This is, in the short run, more difficult, but in the long run will make the choas that is wikipedia more interesting. RayKiddy
Second, could somone who knows how to do so go ahead and make this into its own disc page? Thanx.
I went to vote on the new international logo, but it said I needed to create an account. Can I vote without creating a new account? Can I vote anonymously? Is this extra hurdle going to skew the voting somehow? -- Fritzlein 19:38, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
It seems to me like the search engine needs to be updated. For instance, typing in "death of a salesman" gives you "Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act," "Blue Screen of Death," "Black Death," and "Dotcom Death" in that order, without brininging up a link to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at all. How can this be fixed?
-- Alex S 20:17, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Please read Wikipedia:Searching. -- Brion 21:18, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
It seems the automatic date conversion is not working anymore. The preference option has disappeared. What's going on? -- Wik 06:25, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I know that generally we don't want pages on songs with lyrics listed, but have a look at what I've done with Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire. It needs work (not all the links are right - perhaps an American might have more insight), but I think it's a great starting point for browsing. CGS 17:16, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC).
I am trying to post to the mailing list using the news gateway. It doesn't work. Shouldn't it? I do not have a suitable e-mail address to use for participation via e-mail. Kat
The above site has copied almost the entire content of the English Wikipedia and despite a friendly warning sometime ago, apparently still does nothing more than link to the main page and still does not mention the GFDL. I thought I'd mention this here as ignoring violations of our copyright could cause us problems in the future. Original talk is still at Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content. Pete 15:11, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)
OK, so I'm a new Wikipedian and I recently created a stub for a non-existent (red) link that I found. Later, I realized that the same info was on a page with a more appropriate name. I edited the original link (from which I made the stub) to point to the more approproate page and now I think that the stub I created would best be deleted. The page that I changed the link on is Game which used to point to massive multiplayer online game (my stub which I believe should be deleted), but now more appropriately points to MMORPG. I guess that we could also just turn the full spelling into a redirect page, but currently nothing links to it (although I guess it might in the future). Let me know what you think we should do. Thanks. PolymerTim 00:25, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I'd like to propose a new addition to the Wikipedia style, and I'm not sure where else to suggest it. What I would like to see is a guideline that in any article, if there is more then one point of view, descriptions of the article subject come first, and arguments against it come later. So when I went to an article on Global Warming, say, I got a description of Global Warming first and objections to it later. Likewise when I go to Creationism I should find out what creationists believe first, and only then any reasons why people might think they are wrong. DJ Clayworth 20:49, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Hi there! I have problems about famous Canadians or notable British Columbians. Who counts as a Canadian? I have added Leslie Cheung in the list of Canadians, but I am not quite comfortable with it. Leslie Cheung had lived in BC for just three years and then returned to Hong Kong after getting a passport, and he is not a rare example. Did I do the right thing? Or should this kind of "non-Canadian" Canadian be removed from the lists? Wshun
Help! At Shearwater, I've put in a link to Cory's Shearwater, which is written. The link stays red, but clicking on it goes to the edit page of the new article, not the article itself or a blank page. I'm sure it's something to do with the apostrophes, but I can't sort it out. jimfbleak 06:38, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I've noticed that there are pages on Wikipedia that are articles that include, sometimes at the top, but usually way down at the bottom, alternative "definitions" of the article name. These pages are not disambiguation pages because the common use of the word is overwhelmingly the one most people would be seeking. Nonetheless, the alternative word use, separated by a 4-dash line, is sometimes completely lost below the main article. Some Wikipedians solve this problem by putting a one line link to the alternative at the very top, but this is a distraction. I've set up a sidebar box under Elm as a proposed alternative for these situations. As long as the alternatives link out (do not expand on page into another article), this would seem to separate the links from the article text while affording them a bit more visibility. Any comments? - Marshman 18:42, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
<div style="float:right; padding:10px;"><table style="float:right" border="2" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3"> <tr> <td>'''Elm''' is also a text-based [[E-mail]] client. See [[Elm email client]]. </td> </tr> </table></div>
Move in discussion from my talk page on this subject. I can move it all back later; but better exposure/participation here I think
sorry but the floating sidebar on elm is no good -- most screens are simply not wide enough to support it. -- Tarquin 18:53, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
It is needless HTML clutter for no good reason. please remove it -- Tarquin 23:14, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I agree with Tarquin. Please avoid HTML whenever possible until we have a template system, it makes pages harder to edit for newbies. —Eloquence 00:10, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
In adjoining an item to the list in the article "Disability", the list-closure marker was not available in the EDIT window so that I could precede it by my item. Is this a CORRECTABLE GENERAL PROBLEM? -- Jonhays0
I was looking at swastika and it struck me that it describes the Nazi swastika (red background, white cricle, black swastika at an angle), but the Image:CWswastika.png image next to this is plain grey. Is there a reason for this? It's illegal in Germany, but do we care about that (we ignored Nevada pornography laws when they were discussed)? How about France? CGS 01:19, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC).
In the page for 1945 for November 29 I see People?s instead of People's. Why is this? Do I need to download some more font's? I'm using windows 98 with IE 6.0.2600.0000IC Thanks
Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comments
answered and moved to User talk:PolymerTim
deleted - request fulfilled
moved to User talk:SEWilco
deleted fixed bug. Brion is a God.
deleted - duplicated at wikipedia talk:software updates
moved to meta:talk:International logo vote
deleted - question answered at Wikipedia:Searching
answered at Wikipedia:Special characters
moved to User talk:Jonhays0
re: We Didn't Start the Fire - moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comments
Comments on the new format have been moved to ' Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion.
moved to Wikipedia talk:Technical terms and definitions
Can people please remember to update the list of moved discussions when they move a discussion off the page? It's hard work keeping the list up to date retrospectively. — Paul A 04:18, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I'd like to suggest that when we move pages which have associated Talk: pages, we ought to (in general) not keep a Redirect from the old Talk: page to the new Talk: page when there's no use for that link; i.e. if nothing links to the old Talk: page. I.e. when moving a page from Foo to Bar, if there is a Talk:Foo page it is moved to Talk:Bar, and a redirect to Talk:Bar would be left at Talk:Foo. If nothing actually links to Talk:Foo, that "tombstone" redirect will probably never be used (since clicking on the "Discuss this page" link on Bar will get you straight to Talk:Bar), and just clutters up the database. So is there any problem if we just delete them? (And perhaps someday, when we are knee deep in Developers and all bugs and really needed features have been seen to, the code will be changed to avoid automatically creating them when they are not needed. :-) Noel 23:54, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
This is probably a stupid question, but does it violate copyright to upload images from television shows if I capture them? - Evil saltine 08:34, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
move to the image copyright discussion - linked from wikipedia talk:image somewhere
This is probably a stupid question, but does it violate copyright to upload images from television shows if I capture them? - Evil saltine 08:34, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Just recently someone created a new article about Farmington, Maine, and when I wondered why the county seat does not even have the automated entry yet I discovered there are in fact two, but both orphans. But what is the difference between Farmington (CDP), Maine and Farmington (town), Maine - I can see the numbers are different, but I don't know the meaning of CDP. And there are many more of the CDP/Town entries, which are not linked in the county articles. andy 09:32, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia talk:bug reports?
Hi, from the moved list above:
As everbody knows, wikipedia bug reports is a reference to the SourceForge, in other words: "if you don't get a SourceForge account and put your feature requests there, nobody will see them". It's not the first time. I really have a problem with that attitude -- Wikipedia is a community, and I really would like to see a place inside Wikipedia where the community and the developers can communicate. I'd like to know if I'm the only one who is frustrated by this attitude, or if there are others ... -- till we *) 23:33, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)
delete - feature request - see wikipedia:bug reports
Is there any way to add new fields to the MySQL database schema used by Wikipedia? This way one would be able to perform a much more sophisticated search.
For instance, if I would like to find all artists born before 1955 or all butterflies of the UK, there currently is no way to do this, or is there? Jurriaan 27 Aug 2003
It's easy to add fields to the database schema, the hard thing is writing a decent user interface to go with them. The standard so far has been to include meta-information in the article itself, by using characteristic text of various kinds. The interlanguage links are an example of this. In some cases the characteristic text is extracted as the article is saved, and duplicated in another DB field, to make searching easier. This is the case with redirects, for example. -- Tim Starling 08:57, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Before I say very much, let me say that I believe that it should be possible to let users edit content in any manner they wish, and then we can derive meta-information from the documents that result. This is, in the short run, more difficult, but in the long run will make the choas that is wikipedia more interesting. RayKiddy
Second, could somone who knows how to do so go ahead and make this into its own disc page? Thanx.
delete - current status is at Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content
The above site has copied almost the entire content of the English Wikipedia and despite a friendly warning sometime ago, apparently still does nothing more than link to the main page and still does not mention the GFDL. I thought I'd mention this here as ignoring violations of our copyright could cause us problems in the future. Original talk is still at Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content. Pete 15:11, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)
delete - answered at wikipedia:searching
It seems to me like the search engine needs to be updated. For instance, typing in "death of a salesman" gives you "Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act," "Blue Screen of Death," "Black Death," and "Dotcom Death" in that order, without brininging up a link to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at all. How can this be fixed?
-- Alex S 20:17, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Please read Wikipedia:Searching. -- Brion 21:18, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
According to a recent Wikipedia:announcements:announcement Wikipedia is as popular as Slashdot. I was quite surprised! Is it really true? Anyone know how Alexa measures popularity? I see they offer a toolbar to download... do they extrapolate data from toolbar downloaders? Are Wikipedians more likely to have a toolbar than other users? [ Alexa Website Pete 12:05, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)
According to a recent Wikipedia:Announcement Wikipedia is as popular as Slashdot. I was quite surprised! Is it really true? Anyone know how Alexa measures popularity? I see they offer a toolbar to download... do they extrapolate data from toolbar downloaders? Are Wikipedians more likely to have a toolbar than other users? Alexa Website Pete 12:05, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia talk:redirect
Is there a quick and easy way (i.e., not involving DDQs) to find broken redirects? I, for one, wouldn't mind going around making sure that any redirect that points to a red link either gets deleted or given a stub at the redirect site. Broken redirects are A Bad Thing because people won't realize that an article doesn't yet exist if they see the link in text, because it's blue, even if it doesn't go anywhere. This makes it that much harder for people who might be inclined to write an article if they new one was needed. -- Dante Alighieri 04:21, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Hi, I just wrote an article about Rose O'Neal Greenhow. I saved the page, and I saw what it was supposed to look like after saving it. (Just like a Wikipedia page looks!) However, when I typed in Rose O'Neal Greenhow into the search box, nothing came up. Also, when I clicked on "My Contributions," nothing came up. Does it take awhile for articles to post? How long? When can I see my article as a part of Wikipedia and a part of "My Contributions"? Thanks
What's going on with this ISBN book link? ISBN 019824908X - I've only typed it once but 2 links are coming up... Evercat 14:15, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Could someone rever Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Japanese)? Thanks in advance. -- Taku 02:52, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia talk:redirect/delete
I'd like to suggest that when we move pages which have associated Talk: pages, we ought to (in general) not keep a Redirect from the old Talk: page to the new Talk: page when there's no use for that link; i.e. if nothing links to the old Talk: page. I.e. when moving a page from Foo to Bar, if there is a Talk:Foo page it is moved to Talk:Bar, and a redirect to Talk:Bar would be left at Talk:Foo. If nothing actually links to Talk:Foo, that "tombstone" redirect will probably never be used (since clicking on the "Discuss this page" link on Bar will get you straight to Talk:Bar), and just clutters up the database. So is there any problem if we just delete them? (And perhaps someday, when we are knee deep in Developers and all bugs and really needed features have been seen to, the code will be changed to avoid automatically creating them when they are not needed. :-) Noel 23:54, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Look, I understand, and sympathize with, the sensitivity to leaving dangling pointers out there in URL-space. I maintain more than one page of the form "this page isn't here any more, go <here>" because I reorganized some stuff; and I also really hate it when you follow a link and it 404's.
At the same time, delete logs show that Wikipedia clearly doesn't have a policy that "no Wikipedia URL that ever contained valid content (i.e. not just insults, rubbish, copyvio, or something like that) shall ever stop working". A small amount of trolling through deleted articles turned up "Beadwork patterns" and "Gold Faced Pumpkins", both of which contained real content at one point.
I understand why they were deleted, but that's not the issue: the point is that someone out there may have them bookmarked, and now they don't work anymore. In addition to them, I saw a whole series of "Emperor_<foo>_of_Japan" which are now gone too, moved somewhere else, with no redirects left behind (probably because the "What Links Here' page for them was empty, I would assume.) Again, someone might have saved URL's to them out there somewhere.
So, if what you're saying is that you want to have such a policy, that no Wiki URL that ever pointed to non-bogus content shall ever stop working, fine, but those aren't the ground rules that seem to be in place at the moment. Are you proposing such a change?
Noel 18:25, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia talk:copyrights
If I am moving stuff from here to the Simple English Wikipedia, are there any issues involved in the fact that I am not copying the history of the original? Is it ok just to state in the edit summary that this is from en: or wherever? Angela
moved to wikipedia talk:copyrights and repeated ibn part on the Simple Wikipedia
what's the deal with these category tags? All it seems to do is an an ugly "?" link at the top of the article, eg electrode. -- Tarquin 16:42, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia talk:mailing lists
I am trying to post to the mailing list using the news gateway. It doesn't work. Shouldn't it? I do not have a suitable e-mail address to use for participation via e-mail. Kat
move to wikipedia talk:bug reports? wikipedia talk:developers?
Hi, from the moved list above:
As everbody knows, wikipedia bug reports is a reference to the SourceForge, in other words: "if you don't get a SourceForge account and put your feature requests there, nobody will see them". It's not the first time. I really have a problem with that attitude -- Wikipedia is a community, and I really would like to see a place inside Wikipedia where the community and the developers can communicate. I'd like to know if I'm the only one who is frustrated by this attitude, or if there are others ... -- till we *) 23:33, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)
Can graphic representations of Flags and Coats of Arms be copyrighted? It seems a bit strange to me - but if the answer is yes, does someone know where one could find ones that are in the public domain? Sandman 08:38, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Wondering if some helpful party could aid me in resolving a problem I have - I assume it's with Adobe Photoshop, which I use in making PNGs for use here on Wikipedia. They always turn out much, much darker than they appear in the program. Check the history of Image:mtl-metro-map.png - to create an acceptable image I finally had to bombastically lighten the original image in Photoshop. This happens whether I save it in RGB mode or indexed colour mode. Is there a way to ensure that the colours in the file are the same as the colours I see when using the program? - Montréalais 20:10, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
When someone replaces an existing page with a disambiguation page, they should make sure to follow the directions in Wikipedia:Disambiguation:
Also (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong), the old page should be moved to the new name, instead of just moving the text - that way the edit history goes with it. If a duplicate page already exists at the destination (because someone created it not realizing that the other page already existed), you'll need to get an admin to help you, by using the procedure outlined here.
Now that I'm done saying that, can someone more expert than me help with sorting out the edit histories on ITS and Incompatible Timesharing System? Thanks... Noel 22:53, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
A 1.5k ohm resistor is found 2 have 22.5V across it,
a. what is the current in the resistor? I got 15A is this right? b. What is the power dissipated in the resistor?_____ & please tell me how u came 2 this answer so I can figure it out 4 myself next time? c. Could a 1/4W resistor be used in this application? Explain why?
What physical characteristic determines the power rating of a resistor?
What happens 2 electrical energy in a resistor?
Can you guys do something with http://swpat.ffii.org/group/demo/ or would it violate the neutrality of Wikipedia? -- 212.127.214.105 00:29, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
We can still make an individual statement by putting messages on our user pages. -- Tim Starling 03:43, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
move to wikipedia talk:establish context
I'd like to propose a new addition to the Wikipedia style, and I'm not sure where else to suggest it. What I would like to see is a guideline that in any article, if there is more then one point of view, descriptions of the article subject come first, and arguments against it come later. So when I went to an article on Global Warming, say, I got a description of Global Warming first and objections to it later. Likewise when I go to Creationism I should find out what creationists believe first, and only then any reasons why people might think they are wrong. DJ Clayworth 20:49, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I asked the contributor of Death of a Salesman to modified the "Themes and Points of Interest" so that it's more encyclopedic. But when he asks how it can be so, I'm not sure! I mean, the questions are valid: "Why? Do the Loman men have a tragic flaw? What could it be?" -- But I don't think encyclopedia should asks its reader like an English-class teacher asks his/her students (although this may not be the contributor's intent). Those are general questions that can asked of most tragedies.
move to wikipedia talk:disambiguation
I've noticed that there are pages on Wikipedia that are articles that include, sometimes at the top, but usually way down at the bottom, alternative "definitions" of the article name. These pages are not disambiguation pages because the common use of the word is overwhelmingly the one most people would be seeking. Nonetheless, the alternative word use, separated by a 4-dash line, is sometimes completely lost below the main article. Some Wikipedians solve this problem by putting a one line link to the alternative at the very top, but this is a distraction. I've set up a sidebar box under Elm as a proposed alternative for these situations. As long as the alternatives link out (do not expand on page into another article), this would seem to separate the links from the article text while affording them a bit more visibility. Any comments? - Marshman 18:42, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
<div style="float:right; padding:10px;"><table style="float:right" border="2" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3"> <tr> <td>'''Elm''' is also a text-based [[E-mail]] client. See [[Elm email client]]. </td> </tr> </table></div>
Move in discussion from my talk page on this subject. I can move it all back later; but better exposure/participation here I think
sorry but the floating sidebar on elm is no good -- most screens are simply not wide enough to support it. -- Tarquin 18:53, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
It is needless HTML clutter for no good reason. please remove it -- Tarquin 23:14, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I agree with Tarquin. Please avoid HTML whenever possible until we have a template system, it makes pages harder to edit for newbies. —Eloquence 00:10, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)