This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump.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
I'd like to raise a point for discussion. In the English wikipedia, I often notice edits that have been made by people with, for whatever reason, a relatively poor command of English. Very often this is because they are not native speakers. Now obviously I have no wish to criticise these people simply because they don't speak English like a native, but in some cases the result is to the considerable detriment to the article. In extreme cases some of the entries end up reading like those amusingly mistranslated user manuals for hi-fis and whatnot. The point here is whether the encyclopedia should be expanded regardless of the quality of the written English, or should those who are adding these edits be reined in a little bit so that the quality is maintained, perhaps at the expense of quantity? My own view is the latter - I have edited a number of articles purely on this basis where the change did not in fact add anything to what went before in any case, but others may disagree. Thoughts? GRAHAMUK 06:59, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Ok. If you really want to discuss this, I personally am not a native speaker or writer of English (not American or British). Are you saying that I personally am harming the English-language wikipedia? Or are you saying that I should apply for a special dispensation to write here? Are you saying that a "native-born" brit or murrican who does not handle language too well should be treated differently from "foreigners"?
Or are you just blowing smoke out of an orifice I do not care to mention? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 07:14, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)
You've got to be careful attributing poor writing to a lack of fluency. I was convinced Reddi was a non-native speaker [1], but I was embarassingly wrong. And you'd never guess Cimon was a non-native speaker. Except when you hear how he pronounces his name ;) -- Tim Starling 08:29, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)
If a contributor's command of English isn't brilliant, then edit it so that it does make sense -- non-native language ability doesn't mean that the facts are wrong, just not arrayed too felicitously. Cimon, it's not a nationality thing -- when I first travelled to NL it was remarked "you know you're in Holland because the waiters speak better English than the English"! -- Arwel 10:50, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Normally I'm one of those people who is the first to criticise bad English, but in this case I have to disagree with you GRAHAM. Wikipedia is a collaborative effort. Someone contributes the information, someone else turns it into good English. If you only let people contribute to Wikipedia if their English is up to it, then you are cutting off a vital source of information. DJ Clayworth 13:51, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
"'Her English is too good', he said, 'That clearly indicates that she is foreign'" - Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.
Here's an idea: How about setting up a page for w:Pages that need an English native speaker copyedit? On this page we would provide a boilerplate text and suggest that authors who know their English is flaky, and editors who find translationese but don't know how to fix it, add this text at the bottom of the article to request some TLC from a confident speaker.
This might encourage those from non-English backgrounds to contribute, and provide another useful haunt for some of our gifted copyeditors as well.
A convenient link to "what links here" similar to the one on the stub page would be good too, not essential but no trouble to arrange. I'm not quite sure how to write the boilerplate text, we might even need two versions depending on whether it's the author of the changes requesting the copyedit or someone else. Just an idea. Andrewa 14:55, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Where things become a problem is when an article has perfectly good content and language, and a poor writer tries to "improve" the wording and just makes it worse. In those cases it may be useful to enlist a supporter or two; even stubborn contributors are usually smart enough to realize when they're outnumbered, plus it makes it less of a personal dispute and more of a consensus about what constitutes better use of the language. Stan 15:54, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I agree partly with the above viewpoint. One can easily fix bad English written by both non-native or native speakers/ writers where the writers themselves are more interested in the content. They might not mind the changes. But sometimes people- native/ non-native start correcting pages thinking that their input makes the page better when actually it may not be the case. I personally found the problem of the latter much larger than that of the former.
Incidentally, I feel that among non-English contributors, there is a lesser likelihood of casual participants contributing to topics of popular interest. They are more likely to contribute in specific areas. So if they contribute in the humanities stream - where language plays a vital role- they might have a fair amount of command over the language, so necessary to articulate complex concepts. Of course, there is likely to be some kind of long- winded, not commonly used phrasing, but technically this problem is one of readability rather than that of correct English. If they contribute in the scientific stream, the objectivity of information makes minor faults in language less of a problem and more amenable to easy correction. KRS 17:49, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
There has been quite a bit of controversy over the new logo. See: m:Final logo variants, m:Logo feedback and logo history (reasonably NPOV). If you wish to read the arguments for both sides see the above pages. The question I want to ask here is: Should there be a new widely announced formal vote for the Wikipedia Logo similar to the m:International logo vote? (The straw poll that is happening right below is over a limited sample, unless it is a landslide (say 80%) the results should not be considered conclusive.) Jrincayc 14:37, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
When is the deadline for voting in this poll about whether there should be another vote? Κσυπ Cyp 23:25, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I think the current logo is OK. But of the three images used recently on the English Wikipedia (the one by Cuncator used before we voted, the one by Paullusmagnus that was up when the ratification was conducted, and the one by Nohat that's up now) it's quite clearly the one I like the least, and it feels a bit strange to be told I voted (twice) for it! There have been a couple of comments to this effect from others too, in various places. My suggestion now would be to have another ratification process. In hindsight, maybe the ratification should have only happened after the tweaking. But hey, I'm here to help with articles, the three logos are all OK. Andrewa 02:43, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)
just wondering cause we can redo every thing and might mess it all up
and don't forget to go to mi spot.
Post a question now if you don't want to wait for the whole page to be loaded. On the other hand, please consider skimming through this page to see if your question might have already been asked (and even answered) by other people already. Also, please do not push the "save page" button multiple times when posting this way! The server is overloaded, but it usually will respond eventually, dutifully adding your question to the page several times in a row.
Help.... neutral parties!!
(Now I know exactly why people leave. If this (sort of edit war) continues,I will not be able to spend necessary time, money and effort on this page. Which leads to a sense of futility and self-introspection as to why one is here at all) KRS 18:11, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
just wondering cause we can redo every thing and might mess it all up
The history of pages is saved, so if someone accidentally messes something up, anyone can fix the mess easily. Apparently, when everyone can edit anything, people are good at cooperating, and are working together to fulfill the ancient dream of collecting all human knowledge in one spot. Maybe some time in the future, also even all alien knowledge as well. Κσυπ Cyp 16:54, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Today Wikipedia has started underlining Wiki links, where before it used to obey my preference not to do so. Is this a bug? -- Heron 12:40, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
How do I add a table of contents to an article? -- bmills 14:21, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I would like to propose that the HTML Title (i.e. that which appears in the title bar of the browser) be made more meaningful for some special pages. This enables a user to distinguish these pages in various lists,
such as Window lists on the desktop or History lists in the browser.
I would also like to propose that the "internal sub-title" of the page accords with the originating request. By this I mean the sub-title which appears under the name in parentheses.
The particular example I am thinking of is the "What links here" utility. The title produced is that of the source article without the "- Wikipedia" suffix. The internal sub-title is then "List of links". Similar is true of the "Page history" request which produces a page sub-titled "Revision history".
A worse offender is the "Related changes" utility, which produces a page entitled "Recent changes",
no matter which source article it comes from. This is therefore indistiguishable from any other, or indeed from the main "Recent changes" page.
I would like to propose that these pages are named for the source article with a meaningful suffix. My personal preference would be for something like
~Source Article~ [List of links] - Wikipedia
which would accord with the internal sub-title of the page. I would have preferred to use regular parentheses but many pages already have those. The square brackets would emphasise the special nature of the suffix.
Phil 13:41, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)
Chip's Challenge is broken (it gives a database error). Er... never mind... someone else just edited it, but it's not working for me. I dunno. ehh. sorry. Evil saltine 12:49, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)
When you click an ISBN link, it takes you to a page offering links to buy that book at all major book sellers. Why isn't the link set up so that Wikipedia gets 10% or whatever. In my experience, Amazon will willingly do this. This could prove very profitable.
What can be done about the appalling innaccuracies at the above address (which states that the information displayed is courtesy of Wikipedia)?
It is an article about the Lee Enfield rifle. The most glaring errors are:
"By D-Day (6.06.44) the lighter No. 4 SMLE was in use." The No 4 rifle is not an SMLE. The SMLE was renamed the No 1 rifle after which there were the No 2, No 3 and No 4 rifles.
"The main change was to expose 2" of barrel at the muzzle onto which fitted the new socket bayonet. This looked like a shiny 7" nail." The main change was to redesign the rifle to simplify manufacture, chnage from the v-sight to an aperture sight and increase the sight radius. The bayonet is not shiny - shiny is abhorent to the military - the bayonet is blued.
"Also post 1945, the No. 8 or "jungle carbine" was developed for use in Malaya and other similar campaigns" The name jungle carbine is a post-war marketing appelation designed to make the rifle attractive to americans. The correct name is the No 5 rifle (that is a number FIVE).
"the rifle was shortened by about 7" " The rifle was shortened by precisely 4.9"
"This rifle was probably designed at the Royal Enfield Small Arms Factory" This rifle was not designed - it was merely a lightened No 4 rifle. The trials lightened rifles were certainly prepared at the Royal Enfield Small Arms Factory and tested at Bisley but production of the No 5 rifle was carried out at ROF Fazakerly and BSA Shirley.
If such information is to be presented as reference material, it would be useful if some effort was made to ensure it is accurate.
This article uses DA FUCKIN' capitalized pronouns to refer to DA FUCKIN' founder of DA FUCKIN' Baha'i Faith. Is that intrinsically POV?
Just a note: It is nice to see DA FUCKIN' large number of small improvements made to DA FUCKIN' Concorde article since it showed up on DA FUCKIN' Wikipedia front page. Goes to show DA FUCKIN' importance of rotating a lot of article links to DA FUCKIN' front page.
Is that only my case but DA FUCKIN' wikipedia seems extremely fast today. Something happened? Is that only due to my Internet connection? -- Taku
Ah, where's that Mediator. Have a look at DA FUCKIN' article Millosh Gjergj Nikolla. Igor thinks DA FUCKIN're should be a Serbian spelling in both DA FUCKIN' Latin and Cyrillic, I think that one is enough and DA FUCKIN' cyrillic one should not be used because it scares English readers away. Seeing as this is an English Wikipedia article and a Serbian Wikipedia exists to make use of DA FUCKIN' cyrillic form, I think I am right. I want to avoid having to revert his changes over and over so I am asking what DA FUCKIN' consensus is here. One should notice that I brought DA FUCKIN' issue up with him before (see this and) he seemed to agree, but now apparently he has changed his mind. thank you Dori 03:10, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)
I have a question about DA FUCKIN'se "List of X topics" articles. I think DA FUCKIN'y are pretty handy, and I even created a Byzantine Empire one myself (and I'm considering creating a Crusades one), but is DA FUCKIN're any specific format for DA FUCKIN'm? Some seem to be a bunch of unorganized links, some are organized alphabetically, some are organized by DA FUCKIN'me...is DA FUCKIN're any standard for DA FUCKIN'se types of lists? If not, should DA FUCKIN're be? (I also imagine DA FUCKIN're must be people who really despise DA FUCKIN'm...) Adam Bishop 23:48, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)
For DA FUCKIN' record, DA FUCKIN' Ancient pages page has reached a landmark, in that it is no longer full of pages whose last edit was by DA FUCKIN' "Conversion script". I believe this means that every single article has been edited (or created) since DA FUCKIN' last time DA FUCKIN' software was rewritten (or something to that effect... in any case, DA FUCKIN're is nothing that has not been edited by a human since February 25, 2002, which seems pretty good). Also, all DA FUCKIN' CIA-imported articles have been edited, even Demographics of Vatican City. Hooray for Wikipedia! Tuf-Kat 07:21, Oct 22, 2003 (UTC)
My photo of a Porsche 912 -took by myself- on DA FUCKIN' Porsche article was replaced by ano DA FUCKIN'r wich is obviously not a Porsche 912. The new picture is IMO studio works and probably copyrighted. It seems impossible to recover DA FUCKIN' old photo. Why ? Even if DA FUCKIN' new image is uncopyrighted and better than mine, mine could be useful elsewhere (on a Porsche 912 article) for instance. Ericd 15:24, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)
According to [2]; wikipedia is now within DA FUCKIN' 800 most popular websites. The wiki's userbase has increased 119% (since July); and, DA FUCKIN' average user views 22% more pages. Lirath Q. Pynnor
When is DA FUCKIN' internal searching feature going to be switched on again. Also are DA FUCKIN' individual page counters ever going to be re-introduced. G-Man 18:32, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
When will DA FUCKIN' new server be turned on: for that matter how long will it be before DA FUCKIN' new server becomes overloaded and ano DA FUCKIN'r even bigger one is needed G-Man 19:06, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I need help adding a photo to an article. I've already uploaded it. I've read DA FUCKIN' related help sections, but cannot find a usable code to do DA FUCKIN' format I wish. What I want to do is add DA FUCKIN' picture to DA FUCKIN' top right corner of DA FUCKIN' page, with DA FUCKIN' article text flowing down and around it. Can someone help, please? Paul Klenk 03:26, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Thanks, Easter Bunny, <buck buck!> Paul Klenk 03:39, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Does DA FUCKIN' variable NUMBEROFARTICLES (used on DA FUCKIN' main page) include image description pages? I think it might, and it probably shouldn't. I don't know if this has been discussed elsewhere, so pardon DA FUCKIN' ignorace if that is DA FUCKIN' case. Dori 21:17, Oct 18, 2003 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics, DA FUCKIN' latest counting method (for en: anyway) is that an article = a page with at least one Wikification. But all redirects and some image description pages also have Wikifications too; DA FUCKIN'y're probably excluded. -- Menchi 21:33, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
test.wikipedia.org seems to be DA FUCKIN' same as (en.)wikipedia.org at DA FUCKIN' moment... I'm even still logged in... Just curious what happened to it... Κσυπ Cyp 18:37, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The entries at DA FUCKIN' top of this page regarding what is happening on DA FUCKIN' new server are very useful, but would have more meaning if a date was added to each entry. The phrase "real soon" means nothing without a reference date. -- Fernkes 12:46, Oct 16, 2003 (UTC)
How do I add a table of contents to an article? -- bmills 14:21, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Something's wrong with this function? When I used section edit and saved, only the section part left( whole article became only the section i edited), i've experienced that twice, i am wondering what's wrong? -- ILovEJPPitoC 11:08, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Please move this to m:Logo feedback when it is done. Thanks.
There has been quite a bit of controversy over the new logo. See: m:Final logo variants, m:Logo feedback and logo history (reasonably NPOV). If you wish to read the arguments for both sides see the above pages. The question I want to ask here is: Should there be a new widely announced formal vote for the Wikipedia Logo similar to the m:International logo vote? (The straw poll that is happening right below is over a limited sample, unless it is a landslide (say 80%) the results should not be considered conclusive.) Jrincayc 14:37, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
When is the deadline for voting in this poll about whether there should be another vote? Κσυπ Cyp 23:25, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I think the current logo is OK. But of the three images used recently on the English Wikipedia (the one by Cuncator used before we voted, the one by Paullusmagnus that was up when the ratification was conducted, and the one by Nohat that's up now) it's quite clearly the one I like the least, and it feels a bit strange to be told I voted (twice) for it! There have been a couple of comments to this effect from others too, in various places. My suggestion now would be to have another ratification process. In hindsight, maybe the ratification should have only happened after the tweaking. But hey, I'm here to help with articles, the three logos are all OK. Andrewa 02:43, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Okay, the deadline for this straw poll has been reached. The results are 5 for a new vote and 10 against. I am guessing that the main result of another vote would be to ratify the nohat logo to the satisfaction of those of us that like it less than the Pallusmangus logo. I disagree with mav about the vote being fair. When the decision was made on Oct 12 to switch the logo to the nohat logo the only way to vote for the Pallusmangus logo was to vote against every other logo (about 15 or so). That says that the people who were in the final logo variants process were not thinking about possibly keeping the PM logo and I consider that unfair. I disagree with Eloquence that a consensus was reached to switch to the nohat logo, probably a majority, but not a consensus. I doubt I will try and get another vote. As I said above the only result that I expect would be to make some more people happy. I am unhappy with how switching to the nohat logo went. It was not as widely announced as the original logo contest, it was not made easy to vote to keep the PM logo and statements that the m:International logo vote was about voting on a concept are patently untrue (possibly the ratification was, but that was not made obvious and the concept voted on was implied, not stated). I would love to see evidence that any of those three statements are false, but I haven't. Jrincayc 14:38, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I know this isn't an earth-shattering question, but I can't be the only boy in Wikiland to wonder: What's with the slight indentation on the first paragraph of every article in Wikipedia? Can we get it fixed, please? It isn't a even full indentation, just a "stub" of an indent, if you will. If this annoys you, too, please do chime in. Paul Klenk 01:56, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I found Government General listed at Articles Needing Attention, so I rewrote it since it's a subject I know something about. Then I found History of Poland -- World War II 1939-1945, which is just a collection of dot-points and could well be deleted. But in fact this is a better heading for an article about Poland during WW2 than is Government General. On the other hand, Poland under German occupation would be better still. My inclination is to create Poland under German occuption, transfer and expand the text from Government General, then list the two existing articles for deletion. Comments? Adam 07:22, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
How do I put a French link to my English version and vice versa ?
In my "user page" : How do I mention the same page exists in both languages?
Papotine 12:52, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Muchas gracias, Viajero ! Papotine 14:36, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I have seen that in many articles there are two spaces after every period of a sentence. I personally can't stand the practice and I remove the extra space. However, I could see how this might not be a welcomed change by whomever put them there in the first place. Is there a policy about this specific issue? The manual of style page mentions this issue, but it does not say whether it should be used. I think we should be consistent, and most editors do not put the extra space, so it should probably be discouraged as a matter of policy. Dori 17:11, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
It doesn't matter. Cf US vs UK spelling. If you want to add extra spaces, do so. If you want to delete extra spaces, do so. Just please don't get into an edit war over the situaton, and consider if there are more useful things you could be doing! Martin 18:31, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
It might matter to unfocused typists, as me.
Some manoevres become automaized. A typical example might be the two spaces after a period-sign for US typewriters, or the space-before-{colon, exclamation mark, question mark} typical for French typists. Another example, relevant for me, is the process of inserting a carriage-return in a paragraph. Due to some reason, unknown to me, I've got used to making one jump forward from the period-sign before I hit the carriage-return buttom. If I write fast and don't concentrate on it, I won't discover that there is an extra space on the new line ...at least not until I've hit show-preview (if I'm lucky).
--
Ruhrjung 23:03, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I personally like it, because it makes for easier automated parsing of sentences if that's ever desirable. If there's only one space after periods, you cannot easily distinguish an internal period (as in "e.g. blah") from a sentence-ending period. In a mono-spaced environment, it also makes it easier to read, and is standard typographic practice (in a non-mono-spaced environment, like LaTeX or professional typesetting, generally one-and-one-half space are used after sentence-ending periods). But in general I'd say good practice is to leave them as they are---don't go through and convert them from one to the other. -- Delirium 23:16, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
I was taught to type two spaces after a period. It would be virtually impossible for me to stop doing it, it's a reflex now. I'd also take it as an insult if someone were to go along behind me and change my two spaces to one. It's the same as if I were to go around to change all English spellings to American. Don't do it. RickK 02:14, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here.
--
Ruhrjung 06:42, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Viajero is correct, it dates from the typewriter era (and maybe that article could explain a bit about the practice). It is not a US vs UK thing -- it was taught in the UK too. it was taught to me a mere 15 years ago. If it's still a habit, you're living in the past ;) RickK, if you can't unlearn it, get over the idea that people may remove them. -- Tarquin 09:50, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I, too, was taught to type two spaces after a period. That was in the late fifties, as a matter of fact. As soon as I learned to type, I hardly ever used handwriting again. I typed, using two spaces after every period, through high school, through college, through graduate school. I typed two spaces after every period on punch cards, on paper tape, in FØRTRAN comments, in SNOBOL comments, in C comments, in every computer context that wasn't going to be parsed by machine. I typed two spaces after every period in TECO, in RUNOFF, in Word-11, in AppleWriter, in WordStar. It was a fixed habit that I probably practiced an average of several hundred times a day, every day, for over thirty years.
Then I got my first Macintosh, and discovered that typing two spaces after the period is not appropriate in proportionally-spaced type.(Which I should have known anyway, because I belonged to the high-school printing club and learned how to set type by hand in a composing stick).
At about the same time, I learned to use italics for emphasis instead of underlining, and that an open quote is different from a close quote.
Usages do change with time, and while I am a crotchety middle-aged guy who is set in his ways and has the illusion that he is Upholding Standards, I try not to be too hidebound about it.
And I have stopped typing two spaces after every period.
Because... it is incorrect.
It would never occur to me that it's worth changing anyone else's usage, however. Foolish consistency, hobgoblin of little minds, etc.
But, by Jingo, I still put an apostrophe in Hallowe'en and I defy anyone to stop me!
Dpbsmith 21:33, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
to be deleted
The first line of an article is right-justified, which can look very strange if the line is short (e.g.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan). It can be fixed by putting a blank line above the first line of text, but is there any way the developers can fix it more effectively? --
sannse 10:50, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Report it at SourceForge (see wikipedia:bug reports), along with your browser, etc. Martin 18:33, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
dear friends i am not tech in linux but can you tell me future of linux? can linux become 100% graphical interface os like macintosh.and if not what are the problems?
According to [3]; wikipedia is now within the 800 most popular websites. The wiki's userbase has increased 119% (since July); and, the average user views 22% more pages. Lirath Q. Pynnor
Someone who is good at purty things should probably have a whack at new versions of banners as they look a bit aged. Just thought I would bring to attention, because I can't do much with the Gimp et al. Dori 21:13, Oct 20, 2003 (UTC)
Should watchlists be private?
m:Talk:Watchlist privacy
m:Talk:English Wikipedia Quality Survey
When is the internal searching feature going to be switched on again. Also are the individual page counters ever going to be re-introduced. G-Man 18:32, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
When will the new server be turned on: for that matter how long will it be before the new server becomes overloaded and another even bigger one is needed G-Man 19:06, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
--> Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion
(Firstly, thanks Dysprosia for directing me to this page, and for your welcome...) Being new here, it's quite possible that I've overlooked a simple answer to this question, but I haven't been able to find it. (Also, I perhaps shouldn't be thinking about this sort of thing until I learn my way around.) But I note that there seem to be standardized formats for pages on countries (eg Germany), some or all animals (eg the ostrich), and so forth. I was wondering if there was something similar planned for languages, showing things such as estimated number of speakers, language family, and so forth. I haven't noticed any, but I wouldn't know where to look. Is there somewhere where lists of such "standardized formats" can be found? Thanks. - Vardion 03:59, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I need help adding a photo to an article. I've already uploaded it. I've read the related help sections, but cannot find a usable code to do the format I wish. What I want to do is add the picture to the top right corner of the page, with the article text flowing down and around it. Can someone help, please? Paul Klenk 03:26, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Thanks, Easter Bunny, <buck buck!> Paul Klenk 03:39, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Do we have quick available stats on wikipedia contributors? I know most sign on with user-nics but it would be useful if we knew (1) where wikipedia users are from? (eg, are most in the US? What proportion are from Europe, Canada, Asia, Australia & New Zealand, Africa?) (2) given that there is a high turnover of wikipedians as people are dragged away with other commitments, what is the average length of stay of a wikipedian? It might be an idea if someone could create a program whereby new users (and existing users to wikipedia who had not yet done so) were asked to fill out a confidential questionnaire, not asking names or such but things like gender, ethnic background, educational qualification, physical location, etc. The results of each individual questionnaire would not be kept or anything, just the data included in an overall wikipedia profile of itself, giving wiki a knowledge of who it appeals to and why, who uses it, etc? It could appear when someone sets up a user-name, explaining why the questionnaire is there and stressing how the information data, once clicked by the user would simply update the overall numbers database and would not exist as an individual record. FearÉIREANN 00:00, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Does the variable NUMBEROFARTICLES (used on the main page) include image description pages? I think it might, and it probably shouldn't. I don't know if this has been discussed elsewhere, so pardon the ignorace if that is the case. Dori 21:17, Oct 18, 2003 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics, the latest counting method (for en: anyway) is that an article = a page with at least one Wikification. But all redirects and some image description pages also have Wikifications too; they're probably excluded. -- Menchi 21:33, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Why are people putting in those pronunciation guides? They are unworkable in the content of wikipedia. Such guides work where there is (i) recognition of what they mean, (ii) a broad experience of usage of them, (iii) relevant context. Most people writing international english for a non-academic audience run a mile from these things because they are not widely used in much of the world and so in many cultures completely incomprehensible, and because they pre-suppose a clear shared standard of english, which in Wikipedia's case cannot be guaranteed because while for some users it is a first language, for many it is a second or other language that they are not wholly fluent in. The sensible approach in a cultural context where there isn't the culture, comprehension or experience of these guides is to avoid unduly complex pronunciation formulae and explain the pronunciation in basic english of the sort all readers everywhere can follow.
On Taoiseach we are told the word is pronounced /"ty: S'Vx/. Even with a link attached, to many people worldwide it might as well be written in Aramaic for all the use it is to them. Previously, to recognise that many people don't have the practical experience of understanding complex pronunciation guides, they were simply told the office was pronounced tee-shoch (the och and is loch). That version could be followed easily by many people. /"ty: S'Vx/ to many would appear to be complete gobbledigook. FearÉIREANN 19:40, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
test.wikipedia.org seems to be the same as (en.)wikipedia.org at the moment... I'm even still logged in... Just curious what happened to it... Κσυπ Cyp 18:37, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Could anyone make a highlighted map for every country like that in article US? I think that would be helpful since I don't know the position of every country. -- FallingInLoveWithPitoc 02:31, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The entries at the top of this page regarding what is happening on the new server are very useful, but would have more meaning if a date was added to each entry. The phrase "real soon" means nothing without a reference date. -- Fernkes 12:46, Oct 16, 2003 (UTC)
I think this may have been discussed already but I can’t find where so I’ll check here .......
If I can’t find any source of a still picture to illustrate an article is it OK to photograph a part of a film off TV and use that (with a clean up in an image processor to get rid of the TV scan lines)? In other words, is a single frame from a film copyright?
A good example is
Diana, Princess of Wales where I’ve searched the internet for hours for a public domain image but all images are either copyright or nothing is said on the subject. To show the “quality” achievable, here’s an example I photographed today (off English TV).
image:princess.diana.offTV.350pix.jpg
Adrian Pingstone 21:30, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Whatever you do, say what you did on the image description page and if you're relying on fair use, add a fair use rationale. See wikipedia:image description page. Martin 19:20, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
My photo of a Porsche 912 -took by myself- on the Porsche article was replaced by another wich is obviously not a Porsche 912. The new picture is IMO studio works and probably copyrighted. It seems impossible to recover the old photo. Why ? Even if the new image is uncopyrighted and better than mine, mine could be useful elsewhere (on a Porsche 912 article) for instance. Ericd 15:24, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I have a proposal to make. I think it is time to have editors for articles. I have had enough with NPOV, naming, conventions, facts and other sort of dispute. Maybe because I am ignorant. Maybe because wikipedia does not have professionals who know well. Or maybe because a writer has no sense of writing whatsoever. Whatever the reason is, we have to remember that wikipedia is not a place to debate, prove you are right and your opponents are wrong. The debate by nature is endless. There are many disputes and debates that have not yet been settled in the real world. NPOV disputes often happen simply because people in the world disagree on a number of topics in the first place. The conflicts here are mere reflections. The conflict is a necessary process to reach another step. Innovative ideas are created from disputes, questioning accepted values and theories. But wikipedia is not a place for that. We gather human knowledge to one spot and that is all. If we don't know about something, it is unnecessary to keep debating what is actually true--of course, it should not be discouraged as long as it doesn't curb writing articles. Disputes should be controlled somehow to make articles simply more understandable, relevant and complete--or good quality articles.
Personal attacks happen largely because someone thinks someone else does not deserve to write and edit on certain topics. A handful of people think I don't deserve to edit on certain topics and I have a number of people who should not understand stuff they are contributing, though they think they do understand. I often piss some people not because of my personality but because of the way wikipedia works.
What we need is an editor who can has authority--someone who can settle the conventions, is sensitive what points to include and exclude and define what wikipedia is to be like.
A group of people may but unlikely have a coherent idea. Today in wikipedia NPOV is done with very ugly way. People including me are more concerted about if their points are included or not. The use of weasel terms is silly, damaging the quality of wikipedia as the whole. Editors listen to discussion and make a decision--the result should be uniformed discussion in the article. Besides, having editors can make the goal of wikipedia more clear and consistent and keep contributions more in line. Why do we wage an endless debate of deletion in VfD? That is a choice should be made by the editor not by the writer. The scope of coverage in wikipedia is debatable because it is subject to each individual wikipedian. And while it is not bad to discuss the scope of wikipedia as the whole, it is a topic in meta-wikipedia not places where contributions happen. Freedom is important to have but it is also necessary to see its drawbacks. Sometimes I am terrified not by what I have lost, but what I have wikipedia lost by what I have got. The winner of the dispute is not necessary someone who is sensitive, knowledgeable but sometimes may be someone stubborn--in the case of me.
So what do we do then? In a tentative scheme I am thinking now, each article is supervised by an editor. We can put the name of an editor responsible to an article in the bottom of the article. I think an editor for one article must be just one person--not two to avoid any conflict among editors. Editors have an authority to make a final decision about:
And some criteria I think reasonable include:
I know sometimes admits play a role of editors as I explained informally. But the trouble I think is that it is very invisible, so it is often not clear who is a big shot of an article. Formally, putting an editor should be beneficial. Sometimes it is just so hard to make a decision in certain topics. The editors might seem somehow biased from certain people, but without editors, any controversial articles can be seen biased by certain people either.
The question then is: is it more important that wikpedia is in chaos but more free or is coherent but conservative? The wikiway is not perfect but so is this proposal. But some more security, some more procedure can make things more organized, if it sounds anti-wiki.
You may say wikipedia is functioning very well. The problems are there are just some problem users like me who should be more silent. I don't think so. I think it is more of structural problem rather than an individual. We have lost many great contributers who tend to be engaged in controversial topics. Besides, I see the emerge of a tread among wikipedians to make a significant change only because they don't want to go to edit wars. The absence of dispute is not agreement, but maybe because they just give up convincing others--ok. this is your article if that makes you happy. That is not a way we want to go.
I don't say implement this proposal right away, but can we do some experiment at least?
-- Taku 03:26, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)
Help.... neutral parties!! See also Talk:Hinduism.
(Now I know exactly why people leave. If this (sort of edit war) continues,I will not be able to spend necessary time, money and effort on this page. Which leads to a sense of futility and self-introspection as to why one is here at all) KRS 18:11, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Ive been editing there, I didn't even see an edit war. Whats the war over? I hope Im not involved... Lirath Q. Pynnor
Should articles have an editor? See m:Wikipedia needs editors
Either is a fascinating article. But does it not belong in Wiktionary? -- Viajero 11:41, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I have included a Warning, Wikipedia contains spoilers in Scissors (game) and have included the spoiler itself in Rot13 since it really doesn't want to be read inadvertantly. Any objections? -- 195.232.51.17 23:10, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Tee, lbh whfg znqr zr jevgr n p cebtenz sbe ebg-guvegrra pbairefvba... Plc 09:11, 26 Bpg 2003 (HGP)
I'm too lazy to read the ROT-13 above so this suggestion may have been made already... Why don't you just move the spoilers to another page like Scissors (game spoiler)? Jimbreed 14:56, Oct 27, 2003 (UTC)
The page has now been editted (not by me) like this:
" The key to this game is here on a black background, to prevent accidental reading. In most browsers, you can read it by selecting it.
Spoiler text here |
"
which I think is a very neat solution for short spoilers like this, interested in other comments.
If nobody has any problems with this (or if any raised can be easily fixed) then I think we should put this suggestion into the spoiler warning page. Andrewa 16:08, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
This won't work on text-based browsers such as Lynx, which will not be able to render the text as unreadable. I'm not sure about accessibility, but some people may read with text in more higher contrast colors, which would show up immediately.
What is the lowest common denominator of browser the Wikipedia aims to support? Dysprosia 04:36, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
moved to Talk:Scissors (game)
The "Special:Whatlinkshere" feature is supposed to list every Wikipedia page, including redirects, that has a link to the page in question, right? So, I'm wondering why the Whatlinkshere page for President of the United States doesn't list the numerous redirects to that page. For example, United States/President, United States President, and President of the United States of America all redirect to President of the United States, but none of them show up on the links page. Is this some kind of glitch? How many other articles link there that aren't listed for some reason? Just curious, thanks. -- Minesweeper 22:03, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (spaces after a period)
To address the problems of personal attacks on talk pages, which have driven some users away and generally harm our climate and our reputation, I have proposed a new guideline here: Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks. I would appreciate it if you could take a look and then add your name in the poll on the discussion page. Note that the guideline addresses some concerns you may have, e.g. removal of factual content. —Eloquence 06:35, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
Sometimes I come across a page which is highly POV, but shouldn't be deleted. I have an urge to tell someone about these pages (when I don't know enough to correct the problem myself), and almost have an itch to vote for it's deletion, so I just end up doing nothing. Maybe there should be a page where you can link to POV articles, sort of like Votes for Deletion?
If it just needs some work, you can list in on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention. If it's fairly strongly POV, you can place boilerplate text at the top linking to Wikipedia:NPOV dispute (see that page for the boilerplate text). -- Delirium 03:27, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
You could also list it on Wikipedia:Cleanup. Angela 04:19, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
Wikipedia:NPOV dispute and explain your reasons on the talk page. Check the backlinks to that page for a list of disputed pages. Martin 13:12, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
This article uses the capitalized pronouns to refer to the founder of the Baha'i Faith. Is that intrinsically POV? -- Pakaran 00:29, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Just a note: It is nice to see the large number of small improvements made to the Concorde article since it showed up on the Wikipedia front page. Goes to show the importance of rotating a lot of article links to the front page.
Just a friendly reminder, if you need a break from your wikipedia-grind, take a gander at Wikipedia:Pages needing attention and help fix some articles that need improvement. Kingturtle 22:46, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
What can be done about the appalling innaccuracies at the above address (which states that the information displayed is courtesy of Wikipedia)? ([[list of errors moved to talk:Lee-Enfield)
Help.... neutral parties!! See Talk:Hinduism.
why did u do all this? just wondering cause we can redo every thing and might mess it all up
The history of pages is saved, so if someone accidentally messes something up, anyone can fix the mess easily. Apparently, when everyone can edit anything, people are good at cooperating, and are working together to fulfill the ancient dream of collecting all human knowledge in one spot. Maybe some time in the future, also even all alien knowledge as well. Κσυπ Cyp 16:54, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
How do I add a table of contents to an article? -- bmills 14:21, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Thanks.
bmills 16:01, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I just happened to notice this, but User:Ark30inf is leaving after just 2 months -- So long y'all. I have found that if you are not here to do battle then nobody will listen to you. Thats not what I am about. Hopefully, the project will mature at some point. Good luck to all. I know people often take a break and come back, but I don't know that this will happen with this user. Check out the user page for someone who has strong opinions, but seemed to be able to do well with NPOV and thoughful contributions and comments. It's worth checking out the observations they left at the bottom of their user page. -- BCorr ¤ Брайен 05:03, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I can identify with this situation clearly- which has risen for me today after three months of participation. There is no way of reaching NPOV if someone has a viewpoint they want to force others on and one can't persevere due to obvious reasons - (see my call for help below). I can safely state that as it stands right now, the intro to the page on Hinduism is totally POV. Religion seems to attract extreme reactions and those who persevere need strong motivations - which only comes through extreme faith or for reasons of the sense of power and triumph associated with prevailing. KRS 19:06, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
And another one... User:Smith03.
Hmmmm, I think as Wikipedia grows we are going to see more and more of this. I think we need a culture shift (or I suspect maybe to reverse a culture shift that is already happening) if we are to avoid having the number of active contributors level out.
Some time ago I raised an issue on the Pump which had it occurred a little earlier in my Wikipedia "career" would probably have resulted in my leaving. Now I don't want to criticise anyone involved in it. Rather I'd like to say that I think nobody was to blame, rather it indicates a culture that I think we need to work on. I've also acknowledged that I was at fault myself in several areas in this particular incident.
Just to set the background however, a stub I had created was (to my mind) vandalised by a widely respected old hand. I reverted the facetious comment they had left (in the article namespace, I stress), and they immediately reverted my reversion putting their facetious comment back. Now I don't want to dwell on the rights and wrongs of these actions, nor on mine, I admit the stub was substandard and that my summary when I reverted was rude and uncalled for.
What I do want to point out that the community reaction was heavily in support of the person who made thus facetious edit, twice. When I raised the issue on the pump, one person said "I don't see what you are making a fuss about". There was so far as I can see no censure for the facetious comment, nor has there ever been any apology, unless you count the perpetrator admitting that perhaps they were "too rude". I don't. I think any rudeness towards a newcomer making an honest mistake is totally unacceptable, and to immediately repeat the offence when challenged... words fail me. But again, I don't want to dwell on the adequacy or otherwise of the apology. What I'm more interested in is that this muted retraction drew no comment at all from anyone else.
I think this shows something about the Wikipedia culture.
At the time I made a few suggestions regarding established practices that IMO make it more difficult for newcomers to become established. As a relative newcomer I think I can contribute there, but again, there seemed little interest.
Food for thought? Andrewa 23:10, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
HTML Title be made more meaningful for some special pages..... Transferred to SourceForge ticket. Feature requests go to Sourceforge. See Wikipedia:Bug_reports.
Are poor language skills a problems? -> m:Poor language skills
The article Getty Images seems suspiciously commercial. Is this actually legitimate? Dori 05:06, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)
Is that only my case but the wikipedia seems extremely fast today. Something happened? Is that only due to my Internet connection? -- Taku
Ah, where's that Mediator. Have a look at the article Millosh Gjergj Nikolla. Igor thinks there should be a Serbian spelling in both the Latin and Cyrillic, I think that one is enough and the cyrillic one should not be used because it scares English readers away. Seeing as this is an English Wikipedia article and a Serbian Wikipedia exists to make use of the cyrillic form, I think I am right. I want to avoid having to revert his changes over and over so I am asking what the consensus is here. One should notice that I brought the issue up with him before (see this and) he seemed to agree, but now apparently he has changed his mind. thank you Dori 03:10, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)
I have a question about these "List of X topics" articles. I think they are pretty handy, and I even created a Byzantine Empire one myself (and I'm considering creating a Crusades one), but is there any specific format for them? Some seem to be a bunch of unorganized links, some are organized alphabetically, some are organized by theme...is there any standard for these types of lists? If not, should there be? (I also imagine there must be people who really despise them...) Adam Bishop 23:48, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)
There has been talk among various users asking for either automated lists of articles on X topic, or a Wikiproject on lists. Besides the time it would save, in some realms the question of which lists should be created or what they are named can be a POV issue. For example, see VfD for discussions of list of multiracial people and list of queer composers. What's other people's thoughts on this? -- zandperl 21:41, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I am working on a book and would like to use some pics from various Wikipedia articles as illustrations. The book is commercial, for-profit. Am I right in believing that the GNU/GDSL license policy applies to usage of pictures in addition to text? As in, if I put in that boilerplate notice, I'm cool? The various links didn't explicitly mention pictures and were rather confusing, not to mention that there doesn't seem to be any
specific person/thing to email my question to.
Please help!
For the record, the Ancient pages page has reached a landmark, in that it is no longer full of pages whose last edit was by the "Conversion script". I believe this means that every single article has been edited (or created) since the last time the software was rewritten (or something to that effect... in any case, there is nothing that has not been edited by a human since February 25, 2002, which seems pretty good). Also, all the CIA-imported articles have been edited, even Demographics of Vatican City. Hooray for Wikipedia! Tuf-Kat 07:21, Oct 22, 2003 (UTC)
Question. National Park Service was recently moved to United States Park Service. Since National Park Service is the official name and United States Park service is not really a name at all, shouldn't National Park Service be the name in the article title? I'm of the opinion that if it needs to be disambiged then it should be "National Park Service (United States)". Am I off base here? Thanks. Ark30inf 05:42, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I noticed that an important debate was raised due to the amount of Lists in the Wikipedia, namely list with curious classifications of people like List of multiracial people or List of queer composers. Other items like songs, for instance, were also subjected to furious listing. I would like, at this moment, to redraw from this discussion the lists concerning people by nationality, name or profession, as well as the various List of topics of…, because I think everybody agree with their value as an index. To summarize the discussion here:
As for myself, I admit that I'm for the absolute removal of all the funny categories. But I also see a usefulness in them, for trivia-curious people, for somebody looking for a strange topic in Google, for the ones who simply love compiling things. I agree with lists (I made List of Roman laws and worked in List of Roman legions with Stan, for instance), but some are hilarious and take credibility from the wikipedia. But what is a funny category? This is highly personal and POV. So, to free wikipedia from all the trivia-(not encyclopaedic)-like lists, I propose the creation of a WIKILISTS or LISTIPEDIA or WIKITRIVIA, in the same philosophy as the Wikiquote or the Wikctonary. This, I think, would value the wikiproject in a whole, because it would prevent the proliferation of trivia in the wikipedia, and, at the same time, provide a space to the list mania to grow freely. The Wikitrivia, with all of us working on it, as potential to become a reference for everybody preparing for a QuizShow or the likes.
As for practicalities, I can't contribute much. I'm not a sysop nor I know anything about programming or creating wikipedias. I only suggest here that the format can be similar so the lists could be copy-pasted to the Wikitrivia. And if a Bot could transform every link to a link to the wikipedia it would be great.
I fear that if the Wikitrivia is not created, the VfD will be perpetually flooded with Lists to delete. Therefore, I would like to debate this idea with other wikipedians. To host the discussion, I created
To finish I must say that I hate edit wars and getting involved in polemic issues. Those who know me here know that I'm not involved in disputes. If I'm suggesting this is not for creating attention about me, is because I really feel strongly that some lists should go. Somewhere. Wiki-greetings to all, Muriel Gottrop 07:26, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)
All comments on the proposal above should be made at m:WikiTrivia.
I hope this isn't the wrong place to ask and that I'm not just being a buffoon. I'm a newbie to Wikipedia (but not to wikis) and thought that I would do my civic duty and update an entry that I was using in some research but found slightly lacking and unclear. The entry is question is about the Platt Amendment. I reworded the description and added some text of the Amendment itself, but when I go to the page, my changes haven't shown up. The funny thing, however, is that when I click on the Page History link, my changes (and IP address) seem to show up as current. If I request a diff, I do indeed see the changes that I made. So why does the page still show the older version? Do I need to have an account and be logged in? For what it's worth, I skimmed the FAQ but did not see anything relevent. Thanks!
Hi, original poster here with some followup. The older version of the page was even showing up on a computer that had never accessed wikipedia before, so I'm reasonably sure it wasn't a caching problem. I created an account and found that when logged in, the correct version of the page is displayed. When logged out, the old version. To reproduce: use a web browser or computer that has never accessed wikipedia before and go to the main page. (You could possibly just log out, but this is how I reproduced it.) Search for "platt amendment" and briefly note the content of the page. There should be no text between the bold headings "Full Text" and "Article I." (This is the old version.) Now log with your account and do the same thing. You should see my changes (the new version) which include some text between the two headings mentioned above. Anyone else able to reproduce this? If this should be a bug, who do I report it to? (P.S. KRS added his comment as I was trying to add this... So, is this a feature or a bug?) Eil 17:32, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I've noticed cases where it makes sense to have nonexisting article names redirect to existing articles, e.g. the nonexistant article "Merconium" should redirect to the existing article "Meconium". What is the most elegant way to accomplish this? Also, am I asking this question in the right place?
You should now have what you want. -- Someone else 22:30, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
(You can also sign your comments with ~~~~ which will be converted to your signature and a timestamp when you save the page)
what you think wikipedia may contain every piece of informqation on this planet or not?i think it must be deeper and parental control must be included.
Already there. Lirath Q. Pynnor
Hi, Wikipedians
New arrival, totally infatuated with all this. It's an obsessive's dream come true.
Question:
I did a bunch of edits to 4-5 entries before I'd created my log-in name. I then tried to sneak in credit (once I signed up) by going back to those entries, marking a minor edit under my nametag, then trying to add a note saying something like "edits below (by XX-XX-XX-XX) were done by me".
So I made trivial edits (marked "minor"), and saw my name pop up on the recent changes page. Good. But while some editors had added comments here ("Removed the part about the exploding cat" or "corrected punctuation"), I couldn't figure out how to add my own comments. What am I doing wrong?
Also, is it too late at this point? I don't want to do another minor edit in order to insert the comment...feels abusive to really fill up the recent changes page just for my own vanity. Please advise. I'm willing to let it go, but I'd at least like to know how to add comments next time.
There's a fine line between obnoxiously restoring one's "golden prose" after it's been subequently edited...and honestly improving an article that's been degraded by reintroducing legitimately better commentary...which happens to be one's own previously posted material!
Where do Wikipedians stand on this call? Firmly against persistent "ping ponging" (i.e. post it once and let it go forever)? An anarchic "go ahead" shrug? Simply use one's judgement?
This is a facet of a larger issue which I perceive as Wikipedia biggest fault: past a certain point, articles don't get better, they just get different (or, just as easily, worse). As a given entry ages to a certain point where' it's been worked over by many participants, might it not be intelligent to introduce a "vote to seal" feature, where viewers who think the entry is at a really good point can temporarily freeze edits and call for a vote to permanently seal the entry (or at least a vote to impede subsequent editing, e.g. by requiring additions to be approved by vote)? Otherwise, absolutely terrific entries can and will be degraded and washed away like sand castles in the tide.
I realize that many entries are temporal in various ways and therefore benefit from unended editing. Obviously, they should stay ever open.
I suspect my solution can/will be picked to death...but the problem I'm raising is a serious one, and there may be more intelligent/effective ways to address it. Or maybe I'm just being unwikipedian....? O. Pen Sauce 08:09, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hi,
I just created a new article for PiFast, a freeware program to compute digits of pi. As this is one of maybe five or six articles I've ever written from scratch, I'd be interested in advice - especially which words to make into wikilinks. Feel free to comment on the article's talk page, which I'm watchlisting, or my user talk page.
Thanks! -- Pakaran 21:52, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I can't get rid of the "You have new messages" message. When I go to my page, it goes away, but when I leave it for another page, it's still there, even if there are no new messages since the last time I went to my Talk page. I've tried Refresh, and that doesn't help. RickK 05:36, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Haven't quite figured it out yet, but it appears to be intermittent. Angela's ISP seems to have an oddity where some requests are proxied and some aren't, but I don't think this is directly related. -- Brion 08:57, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Try ctrl-f5 Lirath Q. Pynnor
what you think wikipedia may contain every piece of information on this planet or not? i think it must be deeper and parental control must be included.
Fisting may be a repulsive concept, but people in consensual adult relationships do it, so obviously wikipedia has to cover it. Personally I find anti-semitism, homophobia, child sex-abuse, rascism, fascism and many heterosexual sex acts repulsive, but however much they may repulse me, if they exist then an encyclopædia should chronicle them. You may fisting "valueness" and degrading; I may indeed agree with you. But that is expressing a POV, and wikipedia is all about providing an NPOV, even on things that turn our stomachs (in my case, George W. Bush's rape of the english language, like now announcing that his National Security Advisor's job is to be an 'unstickler', whatever the hell that means!). FearÉIREANN 22:00, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I've found some more discussion, see Wikipedia:Content disclaimer. Perhaps this thread can be moved to Wikipedia talk:Content disclaimer. -- Tim Starling 01:43, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with labeling (like RACS), giving a rating to each page, so existing parental controls could work with it (though it might be technically difficult to start adding meta-info to each page). We could also do like then Open Directory Project does: their "Adult" subtree isn't reachable from rest of the directory, unless you enter "Adult terms into a search. So there could be an "adult.en.wikipedia.org". If the database could identify some things as "Adult", it might encourage others to copy and use the database, since they could simply pluck out the parts they don't like (this is a large reason the ODP has an Adult subtree, so people won't be afraid to copy and use their database).
As for things like facism, we'd need to use a much more complex and flexible labeling system than RACS, since that only covers violence, nudity, sex, and language. ( SafeSurf also includes bigotry, and divides "sex" into heterosexual and homosexual) Also, Encyclopædia Britannica includes articles on facism, the Holocaust, and such, so I wasn't aware that these might be controversial articles to include in an encyclopedia, nor was I aware of the existence of "child friendly" encyclopedias that excluded disturbing subjects. -- Khym Chanur 09:21, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks, Adrian Pingstone 09:36, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
If I do a link to a photo on the internet site www.airliners.net (on which all photos are copyright the photographer) do I have to ask the photographers permission first or say here who took the pic?
Here’s how the link would look on Wikipedia. I declare the picture public domain so no problems if the answer is that I do have to ask.
Hello, I know that this question has probably been asked before. But I want to make sure that I have a good grasp on the copyright issues associated with using Wikipedia material. I am thinking of building a site with commercial interests ( in other words I want to sell things ). I would also probably right my own articles about various topics. If I set up links to Wikipedia articles throughout the site where appropriate, would I be violating the copyright? Can I have the Wikipedia material as part of a webpage on my site? And do I have to make all of the material on my website belong to the same licensing structure? I want to do the right thing and I apreciate your patience and help. RW
In the past little while, hard-banned user 142.177.xxx.xxx, aka 24, User:EntmootsOfTrolls has been rather active. Contribs: 142.177.10.33, 142.177.11.23, 142.177.81.243, 142.177.79.242. In particular, the following articles were created by him:
Now, being hard-banned doesn't mean anything unless someone enforces it, so I'm going to step up here. Here's what I'm going to do:
-- Cyan 01:51, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I have only kidnapped articles created since October 27. Also, there is a question of the attribution required by the GFDL. Since this user is nominally anonymous, I'm not too concerned about it. If necessary, attribution can be made in the edit summary or on the talk page of any reinstated article. -- Cyan 02:06, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I have reverted most of 142.177's other edits. I have also personally reinstated his article on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. On another topic, I just want to make clear what the big idea behind all of this brouhaha is:
The hardbanned user who edits out of the 142.177.xxx.xxx IP range must get permission from Jimbo before returning to Wikipedia.
Thanks, and good night. You've been a great audience. -- Cyan 03:01, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
[[ User:BoNoMoJo deleted discussion of LDS temple rites from Temples_of_the_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints, suggesting on the talk page that such discussion was not only immoral but illegal. Further input would be desirable. -- Someone else 18:49, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
A fair bit has already been said about this at Talk:Temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Why not carry on there? Smokey the Bear says, "Only you can stop forest fires." -- Cyan 01:11, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I can't find an article for Terri Schiavo - is it under another name? - Speaker of Your Mom
Either is a fascinating article. But does it not belong in the Wiktionary? -- Viajero 11:41, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
After a week of observing serious concerns on Village Pump -- "Wikipedia needs an editor", "We've lost another two", "protecting Wikipedia", NPOV disputes, epidemic personal attacks, and the like -- I wanted to find out how well perception stood up to the statistics. What I found was a real surprise. Searching through all articles for Wikipedia:NPOV_dispute warnings, care to guess how many articles came back? With 160,000+ articles in EN, I was thinking hundreds if not thousands were in dispute, but the actual number was 89. (September 20, 2003 database dump, with recent dumps about the same). That's 0.06% of pages being NPOV disputed. Of those 89 articles, 30 are related to Israel-Palestine or Jewish-Muslim issues. See User:Fuzheado/metrics for the actual list.
Granted, not all hotly debated articles have an "NPOV dispute" notice at the top, but with my guess being an order of magnitude (or two) WAY OFF is telling. Even if we are generous and say there are 10 times as many articles that are "hot button" and are not labeled "NPOV dispute" that's still only 0.6% of articles. A very small number of articles are creating headaches and bad blood. It seems to not be an 80-20 rule but a 99-1 rule. Just something to keep in perspective as we propose massive policy changes that may drastically change the face of Wikipedia. Fuzheado 10:09, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
This is a followup to three articles on this page:
The consequences of bias, brutishness, vandalism, and incompetence are detailed in these posts and elsewhere, and yet many of the respondents seem to ignore the costs and perils of the current policy.
Some of the people who may have the most valuable content to offer the project are likely to have little inclination or time to monitor the fate of their contributions let alone engage in interminable combat. Yes, there are some protections, but these all have their own costs.
In summary, I commend to you Adam's principle: anonymous users should not be allowed to edit pages.
We allow edits from anonymous contributors because we assume good faith, and we know that logins are evil. Martin 21:22, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'm wondering if there is any handy (or not so handy) source of information how IP and user ban works. Among the questions I have are:
Any pointer will be appreciated. And just to clarify, I am not planning to behave bad and be banned :-p , but I am just looking for info. on be half of Japanese wikipedians. Thanks for your help. Tomos 04:45, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The answers to these questions, as far as I know, are:
Also:
-- Cyan 05:46, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
One of you who understands this well should probably update Wikipedia:Bans and blocks, which is currently woefully out of date, and lacks all the information just posted here. -- Delirium 10:49, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)
Following Angela's advice (above), I created a new page History of Poland (1939-1945), and redirected the old page General Government to it. An anonymous user called 145.254.117.188 keeps un-redirecting the article, plus making edits to both articles which reflect a Polish nationalist POV and are in bad English. 145 has now taken to accusing me of being anti-Polish at my Talk page as well. I therefore request that General Government be deleted, and a new, empty, General Government be created and redirected to History of Poland (1939-1945), so that 145 can't restore the old text. Adam 03:48, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I am not the slightestly inclined to get involved in more warfares around matters of Poland's history. But many contributors, in particular them being cock-sure of their own NPOV-ishness, tend to neglect the involved emotions, it seems. Not the least the degree of disappointment, sadness and anger over how Poland, when formally on the victorious side of World War II, could be so harshly hit in the post-war decades.
Now, you say, the emotions have no place in the encyclopaedic articles, and nobody would argue against that, of course. But the emotions is a driving force which complicates the issue, as you don't have to be much of a nationalist patriot to see belittling of Poland's sufferings in edits which in the rest of the world rather would be seen as pedagogically motivated simplifications. If we don't recognize the emotions behind the edit-war, then we can be pretty sure of the defeated party going increasingly bitter against wikipedia. And that is exactly what wikipedia doesn't need.
On the issue at stake, the question of a separate article on the
General Government, or not, I think that would be as much appropriate as separate articles on
Vichy France and the
Free French.
But that's only my personal view, of course.
--
Ruhrjung 18:14, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Im thinking of writing an article about the important and historical rivalty these 5 boxers maintained among themselves dthrought the decade of the 1980s, with a timeline for each of their fights against each other. The problem is, since no official nickname was ever given by writers, critics, historians, etc to these fab five of boxing, I have no idea what to call the article..any ideas? Antonio Fab One Martin
Article on Truth is currently being kicked around a bit by a couple of users. My view is that one of the articles is of fairly good quality by someone with a philosophical education. The other one is illiterate. But who decides in such cases? User:dbuckner
I recently edited Privatization to conform to American spelling (not that I entirely agree with it) because the dominant form was American. Another editor reverted one of my edits because it deleted the alternative spelling. Should we be including phrases like Privatization (also known as Privatisation) when we introduce an article with alternative spelling? See also Nationalization. Tiles 06:33, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
It's common to use both. One way of saying it some articles use is along the lines of "Privatization ( British English: Privatisation) ...", but this (or the reverse) seems to prefer one usage over the other as canonical. I'd prefer "Privatization or privatisation ...", with whichever one the article is titled as coming first. As for which to title it as, I'd prefer just whichever the original author used; moving is just going to cause edit wars. An exception is articles clearly relating to a region, in which case the dominant usage of that region should be used. -- Delirium 06:53, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)
Just a friendly reminder: establish context!
I notice one of the bigger minor corrections I've been doing lately is contextualizing articles. Many people seem to write from the perspective of someone who is vaguely familiar with the field; but some people might not even know what what you're writing about is a piece of computer software, or a concept in mathematics. Example picked mostly at random: Yacc said "Yacc is the standard parser generator on Unix systems.", which to someone who is not aware of the existence of parser generators or Unix systems isn't very helpful in saying what exactly yacc is. Modified version (feel free to reword better): "Yacc is a piece of computer software that serves as the standard parser generator on Unix systems."
The mathematics examples can usually be fixed just by adding "In [[mathematics, ..." to the beginning, or sometimes "In mathematics, particularly group theory, ...". -- Delirium 04:37, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)
Summary of snipped text: redirect pages were being incorrectly cached such that if the destination page was updated, a visitor to the redirect page would see an older version of it.
Hi, original poster here with some followup. The older version of the page was even showing up on a computer that had never accessed wikipedia before, so I'm reasonably sure it wasn't a caching problem. I created an account and found that when logged in, the correct version of the page is displayed. When logged out, the old version. To reproduce: use a web browser or computer that has never accessed wikipedia before and go to the main page. (You could possibly just log out, but this is how I reproduced it.) Search for "platt amendment" and briefly note the content of the page. There should be no text between the bold headings "Full Text" and "Article I." (This is the old version.) Now log with your account and do the same thing. You should see my changes (the new version) which include some text between the two headings mentioned above. Anyone else able to reproduce this? If this should be a bug, who do I report it to? (P.S. KRS added his comment as I was trying to add this... So, is this a feature or a bug?) Eil 17:32, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
This page has been unexplicably blanked without discussion by [[User::Walklib|Walklib]]. I know that some of the Wikitrivia topics are controversial, but this is not the correct procedure. Can a sysop please revert the page to the last useful edit? Thanks. DropDeadGorgias 18:43, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I need a picture with a Roman feel for a project I'm working on. I just need some eye candy to brighten up the text, like one could find on the front of any Latin textbook, but Wikipedia seems to be very short of pictures in the classics articles. Does any body know of *any* pictures of Roman things in classics articles? CGS 09:40, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC).
In some ways, this is a follow-up to the thread on "Wikipedia Needs an Editor." In particular, security was mentioned in passing, but I would like to make that the focus of attention, and to suggest that the Wikicommunity should adopt some measures in an effort to protect what has already been accomplished, and to help ensure that frustrated Wikipedians do not give up in despair.
Some Wikipedians seem to believe that things aren't so bad, so nothing needs to be done. I am not in a position to quantify how bad things are, but there are several indicators that the costs associated with protecting Wikipedia are already quite high. More to the point, the growing size and reputation of Wikipedia will make it an increasingly attractive target for vandals. I don't know if an automated attack been launched yet, but wouldn't it be better to try to avoid it?
What can be done? I am not a security expert, but it seems to me that one of the first steps that could be taken would be in the direction of ensuring that only suitably registered individuals can MODIFY pages created by others.
Security of course is not an absolute, but the history of the Internet yields too many examples of "nice ideas" being overtaken by vandalism in one form or another. The survival of the U.S. system of government can plausibly be attributed to the *pessimism* of the authors of the Constitution.
A quick response:
The day is not yet done, but six cases of vandalism have already been dealt with today (Oct 28), and they all involve (anonymous) IP addresses. Whoever is spending time on this could be spending time more wiki-usefully.
There's a Wikipedia under that name but better yet there is Aristophanes. In his play, The Frogs [405BC], he wrote:
The course our city runs is the same towards men and money. She has true and worthy sons. She has fine new gold and ancient silver, coins untouched with alloys, gold or silver, each well minted, tested each and ringing clear. Yet we never use them! Others pass from hand to hand, sorry brass just struck last week and branded with a wretched brand. So with men we know for upright, blameless lives and noble names. These we spurn for men of brass....
See the thread "We've lost another two..." above.
-- 1635, Oct 28, 2003 (EST)
Surprising to people outside wikipedia and interesting, vandalism has been controlled very well so far. It seems the truth is that there are more wise, sensitive people than more those who are interested in damging things. The more we have vandalist, actually the more and more we have gained good eye-bolws. The trouble most came from well-intention from knowledgable people--those who care a lot of their topics so that they run into conflicts. -- Taku 22:14, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)
If Wikipedia became an attractive enough target, a vandal could acquire a bunch of zombie computers (through computer viruses or other means), and then perform a Distributed Vandalism Attack, where each infected IP address would vandalize a few random pages. With thousands and thousands of pages vandalized by thousands and thousands of different IPs, we'd have to roll back the database to before the vandalisms started, and then lock out edits long enough to change Wikimedia to be incompatible with the viruses. And then the vandal would make a new virus that would be compatible with the new Wikimedia, and it would start all over again. -- Khym Chanur 07:45, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)
I would like to contribute 500 Images to Wikipedia. I work in 3 Languages. That means, 1500 Uploads :-(
Could we not create a central images Database for all Wikipedias with just translated titles or so? Please comment on meta:WikiImages.org. Thanks :-) Fantasy 07:39, 28 Oct 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
I'd like to raise a point for discussion. In the English wikipedia, I often notice edits that have been made by people with, for whatever reason, a relatively poor command of English. Very often this is because they are not native speakers. Now obviously I have no wish to criticise these people simply because they don't speak English like a native, but in some cases the result is to the considerable detriment to the article. In extreme cases some of the entries end up reading like those amusingly mistranslated user manuals for hi-fis and whatnot. The point here is whether the encyclopedia should be expanded regardless of the quality of the written English, or should those who are adding these edits be reined in a little bit so that the quality is maintained, perhaps at the expense of quantity? My own view is the latter - I have edited a number of articles purely on this basis where the change did not in fact add anything to what went before in any case, but others may disagree. Thoughts? GRAHAMUK 06:59, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Ok. If you really want to discuss this, I personally am not a native speaker or writer of English (not American or British). Are you saying that I personally am harming the English-language wikipedia? Or are you saying that I should apply for a special dispensation to write here? Are you saying that a "native-born" brit or murrican who does not handle language too well should be treated differently from "foreigners"?
Or are you just blowing smoke out of an orifice I do not care to mention? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 07:14, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)
You've got to be careful attributing poor writing to a lack of fluency. I was convinced Reddi was a non-native speaker [1], but I was embarassingly wrong. And you'd never guess Cimon was a non-native speaker. Except when you hear how he pronounces his name ;) -- Tim Starling 08:29, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)
If a contributor's command of English isn't brilliant, then edit it so that it does make sense -- non-native language ability doesn't mean that the facts are wrong, just not arrayed too felicitously. Cimon, it's not a nationality thing -- when I first travelled to NL it was remarked "you know you're in Holland because the waiters speak better English than the English"! -- Arwel 10:50, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Normally I'm one of those people who is the first to criticise bad English, but in this case I have to disagree with you GRAHAM. Wikipedia is a collaborative effort. Someone contributes the information, someone else turns it into good English. If you only let people contribute to Wikipedia if their English is up to it, then you are cutting off a vital source of information. DJ Clayworth 13:51, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
"'Her English is too good', he said, 'That clearly indicates that she is foreign'" - Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.
Here's an idea: How about setting up a page for w:Pages that need an English native speaker copyedit? On this page we would provide a boilerplate text and suggest that authors who know their English is flaky, and editors who find translationese but don't know how to fix it, add this text at the bottom of the article to request some TLC from a confident speaker.
This might encourage those from non-English backgrounds to contribute, and provide another useful haunt for some of our gifted copyeditors as well.
A convenient link to "what links here" similar to the one on the stub page would be good too, not essential but no trouble to arrange. I'm not quite sure how to write the boilerplate text, we might even need two versions depending on whether it's the author of the changes requesting the copyedit or someone else. Just an idea. Andrewa 14:55, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Where things become a problem is when an article has perfectly good content and language, and a poor writer tries to "improve" the wording and just makes it worse. In those cases it may be useful to enlist a supporter or two; even stubborn contributors are usually smart enough to realize when they're outnumbered, plus it makes it less of a personal dispute and more of a consensus about what constitutes better use of the language. Stan 15:54, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I agree partly with the above viewpoint. One can easily fix bad English written by both non-native or native speakers/ writers where the writers themselves are more interested in the content. They might not mind the changes. But sometimes people- native/ non-native start correcting pages thinking that their input makes the page better when actually it may not be the case. I personally found the problem of the latter much larger than that of the former.
Incidentally, I feel that among non-English contributors, there is a lesser likelihood of casual participants contributing to topics of popular interest. They are more likely to contribute in specific areas. So if they contribute in the humanities stream - where language plays a vital role- they might have a fair amount of command over the language, so necessary to articulate complex concepts. Of course, there is likely to be some kind of long- winded, not commonly used phrasing, but technically this problem is one of readability rather than that of correct English. If they contribute in the scientific stream, the objectivity of information makes minor faults in language less of a problem and more amenable to easy correction. KRS 17:49, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
There has been quite a bit of controversy over the new logo. See: m:Final logo variants, m:Logo feedback and logo history (reasonably NPOV). If you wish to read the arguments for both sides see the above pages. The question I want to ask here is: Should there be a new widely announced formal vote for the Wikipedia Logo similar to the m:International logo vote? (The straw poll that is happening right below is over a limited sample, unless it is a landslide (say 80%) the results should not be considered conclusive.) Jrincayc 14:37, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
When is the deadline for voting in this poll about whether there should be another vote? Κσυπ Cyp 23:25, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I think the current logo is OK. But of the three images used recently on the English Wikipedia (the one by Cuncator used before we voted, the one by Paullusmagnus that was up when the ratification was conducted, and the one by Nohat that's up now) it's quite clearly the one I like the least, and it feels a bit strange to be told I voted (twice) for it! There have been a couple of comments to this effect from others too, in various places. My suggestion now would be to have another ratification process. In hindsight, maybe the ratification should have only happened after the tweaking. But hey, I'm here to help with articles, the three logos are all OK. Andrewa 02:43, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)
just wondering cause we can redo every thing and might mess it all up
and don't forget to go to mi spot.
Post a question now if you don't want to wait for the whole page to be loaded. On the other hand, please consider skimming through this page to see if your question might have already been asked (and even answered) by other people already. Also, please do not push the "save page" button multiple times when posting this way! The server is overloaded, but it usually will respond eventually, dutifully adding your question to the page several times in a row.
Help.... neutral parties!!
(Now I know exactly why people leave. If this (sort of edit war) continues,I will not be able to spend necessary time, money and effort on this page. Which leads to a sense of futility and self-introspection as to why one is here at all) KRS 18:11, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
just wondering cause we can redo every thing and might mess it all up
The history of pages is saved, so if someone accidentally messes something up, anyone can fix the mess easily. Apparently, when everyone can edit anything, people are good at cooperating, and are working together to fulfill the ancient dream of collecting all human knowledge in one spot. Maybe some time in the future, also even all alien knowledge as well. Κσυπ Cyp 16:54, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Today Wikipedia has started underlining Wiki links, where before it used to obey my preference not to do so. Is this a bug? -- Heron 12:40, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
How do I add a table of contents to an article? -- bmills 14:21, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I would like to propose that the HTML Title (i.e. that which appears in the title bar of the browser) be made more meaningful for some special pages. This enables a user to distinguish these pages in various lists,
such as Window lists on the desktop or History lists in the browser.
I would also like to propose that the "internal sub-title" of the page accords with the originating request. By this I mean the sub-title which appears under the name in parentheses.
The particular example I am thinking of is the "What links here" utility. The title produced is that of the source article without the "- Wikipedia" suffix. The internal sub-title is then "List of links". Similar is true of the "Page history" request which produces a page sub-titled "Revision history".
A worse offender is the "Related changes" utility, which produces a page entitled "Recent changes",
no matter which source article it comes from. This is therefore indistiguishable from any other, or indeed from the main "Recent changes" page.
I would like to propose that these pages are named for the source article with a meaningful suffix. My personal preference would be for something like
~Source Article~ [List of links] - Wikipedia
which would accord with the internal sub-title of the page. I would have preferred to use regular parentheses but many pages already have those. The square brackets would emphasise the special nature of the suffix.
Phil 13:41, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)
Chip's Challenge is broken (it gives a database error). Er... never mind... someone else just edited it, but it's not working for me. I dunno. ehh. sorry. Evil saltine 12:49, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)
When you click an ISBN link, it takes you to a page offering links to buy that book at all major book sellers. Why isn't the link set up so that Wikipedia gets 10% or whatever. In my experience, Amazon will willingly do this. This could prove very profitable.
What can be done about the appalling innaccuracies at the above address (which states that the information displayed is courtesy of Wikipedia)?
It is an article about the Lee Enfield rifle. The most glaring errors are:
"By D-Day (6.06.44) the lighter No. 4 SMLE was in use." The No 4 rifle is not an SMLE. The SMLE was renamed the No 1 rifle after which there were the No 2, No 3 and No 4 rifles.
"The main change was to expose 2" of barrel at the muzzle onto which fitted the new socket bayonet. This looked like a shiny 7" nail." The main change was to redesign the rifle to simplify manufacture, chnage from the v-sight to an aperture sight and increase the sight radius. The bayonet is not shiny - shiny is abhorent to the military - the bayonet is blued.
"Also post 1945, the No. 8 or "jungle carbine" was developed for use in Malaya and other similar campaigns" The name jungle carbine is a post-war marketing appelation designed to make the rifle attractive to americans. The correct name is the No 5 rifle (that is a number FIVE).
"the rifle was shortened by about 7" " The rifle was shortened by precisely 4.9"
"This rifle was probably designed at the Royal Enfield Small Arms Factory" This rifle was not designed - it was merely a lightened No 4 rifle. The trials lightened rifles were certainly prepared at the Royal Enfield Small Arms Factory and tested at Bisley but production of the No 5 rifle was carried out at ROF Fazakerly and BSA Shirley.
If such information is to be presented as reference material, it would be useful if some effort was made to ensure it is accurate.
This article uses DA FUCKIN' capitalized pronouns to refer to DA FUCKIN' founder of DA FUCKIN' Baha'i Faith. Is that intrinsically POV?
Just a note: It is nice to see DA FUCKIN' large number of small improvements made to DA FUCKIN' Concorde article since it showed up on DA FUCKIN' Wikipedia front page. Goes to show DA FUCKIN' importance of rotating a lot of article links to DA FUCKIN' front page.
Is that only my case but DA FUCKIN' wikipedia seems extremely fast today. Something happened? Is that only due to my Internet connection? -- Taku
Ah, where's that Mediator. Have a look at DA FUCKIN' article Millosh Gjergj Nikolla. Igor thinks DA FUCKIN're should be a Serbian spelling in both DA FUCKIN' Latin and Cyrillic, I think that one is enough and DA FUCKIN' cyrillic one should not be used because it scares English readers away. Seeing as this is an English Wikipedia article and a Serbian Wikipedia exists to make use of DA FUCKIN' cyrillic form, I think I am right. I want to avoid having to revert his changes over and over so I am asking what DA FUCKIN' consensus is here. One should notice that I brought DA FUCKIN' issue up with him before (see this and) he seemed to agree, but now apparently he has changed his mind. thank you Dori 03:10, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)
I have a question about DA FUCKIN'se "List of X topics" articles. I think DA FUCKIN'y are pretty handy, and I even created a Byzantine Empire one myself (and I'm considering creating a Crusades one), but is DA FUCKIN're any specific format for DA FUCKIN'm? Some seem to be a bunch of unorganized links, some are organized alphabetically, some are organized by DA FUCKIN'me...is DA FUCKIN're any standard for DA FUCKIN'se types of lists? If not, should DA FUCKIN're be? (I also imagine DA FUCKIN're must be people who really despise DA FUCKIN'm...) Adam Bishop 23:48, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)
For DA FUCKIN' record, DA FUCKIN' Ancient pages page has reached a landmark, in that it is no longer full of pages whose last edit was by DA FUCKIN' "Conversion script". I believe this means that every single article has been edited (or created) since DA FUCKIN' last time DA FUCKIN' software was rewritten (or something to that effect... in any case, DA FUCKIN're is nothing that has not been edited by a human since February 25, 2002, which seems pretty good). Also, all DA FUCKIN' CIA-imported articles have been edited, even Demographics of Vatican City. Hooray for Wikipedia! Tuf-Kat 07:21, Oct 22, 2003 (UTC)
My photo of a Porsche 912 -took by myself- on DA FUCKIN' Porsche article was replaced by ano DA FUCKIN'r wich is obviously not a Porsche 912. The new picture is IMO studio works and probably copyrighted. It seems impossible to recover DA FUCKIN' old photo. Why ? Even if DA FUCKIN' new image is uncopyrighted and better than mine, mine could be useful elsewhere (on a Porsche 912 article) for instance. Ericd 15:24, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)
According to [2]; wikipedia is now within DA FUCKIN' 800 most popular websites. The wiki's userbase has increased 119% (since July); and, DA FUCKIN' average user views 22% more pages. Lirath Q. Pynnor
When is DA FUCKIN' internal searching feature going to be switched on again. Also are DA FUCKIN' individual page counters ever going to be re-introduced. G-Man 18:32, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
When will DA FUCKIN' new server be turned on: for that matter how long will it be before DA FUCKIN' new server becomes overloaded and ano DA FUCKIN'r even bigger one is needed G-Man 19:06, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I need help adding a photo to an article. I've already uploaded it. I've read DA FUCKIN' related help sections, but cannot find a usable code to do DA FUCKIN' format I wish. What I want to do is add DA FUCKIN' picture to DA FUCKIN' top right corner of DA FUCKIN' page, with DA FUCKIN' article text flowing down and around it. Can someone help, please? Paul Klenk 03:26, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Thanks, Easter Bunny, <buck buck!> Paul Klenk 03:39, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Does DA FUCKIN' variable NUMBEROFARTICLES (used on DA FUCKIN' main page) include image description pages? I think it might, and it probably shouldn't. I don't know if this has been discussed elsewhere, so pardon DA FUCKIN' ignorace if that is DA FUCKIN' case. Dori 21:17, Oct 18, 2003 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics, DA FUCKIN' latest counting method (for en: anyway) is that an article = a page with at least one Wikification. But all redirects and some image description pages also have Wikifications too; DA FUCKIN'y're probably excluded. -- Menchi 21:33, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
test.wikipedia.org seems to be DA FUCKIN' same as (en.)wikipedia.org at DA FUCKIN' moment... I'm even still logged in... Just curious what happened to it... Κσυπ Cyp 18:37, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The entries at DA FUCKIN' top of this page regarding what is happening on DA FUCKIN' new server are very useful, but would have more meaning if a date was added to each entry. The phrase "real soon" means nothing without a reference date. -- Fernkes 12:46, Oct 16, 2003 (UTC)
How do I add a table of contents to an article? -- bmills 14:21, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Something's wrong with this function? When I used section edit and saved, only the section part left( whole article became only the section i edited), i've experienced that twice, i am wondering what's wrong? -- ILovEJPPitoC 11:08, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Please move this to m:Logo feedback when it is done. Thanks.
There has been quite a bit of controversy over the new logo. See: m:Final logo variants, m:Logo feedback and logo history (reasonably NPOV). If you wish to read the arguments for both sides see the above pages. The question I want to ask here is: Should there be a new widely announced formal vote for the Wikipedia Logo similar to the m:International logo vote? (The straw poll that is happening right below is over a limited sample, unless it is a landslide (say 80%) the results should not be considered conclusive.) Jrincayc 14:37, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
When is the deadline for voting in this poll about whether there should be another vote? Κσυπ Cyp 23:25, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I think the current logo is OK. But of the three images used recently on the English Wikipedia (the one by Cuncator used before we voted, the one by Paullusmagnus that was up when the ratification was conducted, and the one by Nohat that's up now) it's quite clearly the one I like the least, and it feels a bit strange to be told I voted (twice) for it! There have been a couple of comments to this effect from others too, in various places. My suggestion now would be to have another ratification process. In hindsight, maybe the ratification should have only happened after the tweaking. But hey, I'm here to help with articles, the three logos are all OK. Andrewa 02:43, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Okay, the deadline for this straw poll has been reached. The results are 5 for a new vote and 10 against. I am guessing that the main result of another vote would be to ratify the nohat logo to the satisfaction of those of us that like it less than the Pallusmangus logo. I disagree with mav about the vote being fair. When the decision was made on Oct 12 to switch the logo to the nohat logo the only way to vote for the Pallusmangus logo was to vote against every other logo (about 15 or so). That says that the people who were in the final logo variants process were not thinking about possibly keeping the PM logo and I consider that unfair. I disagree with Eloquence that a consensus was reached to switch to the nohat logo, probably a majority, but not a consensus. I doubt I will try and get another vote. As I said above the only result that I expect would be to make some more people happy. I am unhappy with how switching to the nohat logo went. It was not as widely announced as the original logo contest, it was not made easy to vote to keep the PM logo and statements that the m:International logo vote was about voting on a concept are patently untrue (possibly the ratification was, but that was not made obvious and the concept voted on was implied, not stated). I would love to see evidence that any of those three statements are false, but I haven't. Jrincayc 14:38, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I know this isn't an earth-shattering question, but I can't be the only boy in Wikiland to wonder: What's with the slight indentation on the first paragraph of every article in Wikipedia? Can we get it fixed, please? It isn't a even full indentation, just a "stub" of an indent, if you will. If this annoys you, too, please do chime in. Paul Klenk 01:56, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I found Government General listed at Articles Needing Attention, so I rewrote it since it's a subject I know something about. Then I found History of Poland -- World War II 1939-1945, which is just a collection of dot-points and could well be deleted. But in fact this is a better heading for an article about Poland during WW2 than is Government General. On the other hand, Poland under German occupation would be better still. My inclination is to create Poland under German occuption, transfer and expand the text from Government General, then list the two existing articles for deletion. Comments? Adam 07:22, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
How do I put a French link to my English version and vice versa ?
In my "user page" : How do I mention the same page exists in both languages?
Papotine 12:52, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Muchas gracias, Viajero ! Papotine 14:36, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I have seen that in many articles there are two spaces after every period of a sentence. I personally can't stand the practice and I remove the extra space. However, I could see how this might not be a welcomed change by whomever put them there in the first place. Is there a policy about this specific issue? The manual of style page mentions this issue, but it does not say whether it should be used. I think we should be consistent, and most editors do not put the extra space, so it should probably be discouraged as a matter of policy. Dori 17:11, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
It doesn't matter. Cf US vs UK spelling. If you want to add extra spaces, do so. If you want to delete extra spaces, do so. Just please don't get into an edit war over the situaton, and consider if there are more useful things you could be doing! Martin 18:31, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
It might matter to unfocused typists, as me.
Some manoevres become automaized. A typical example might be the two spaces after a period-sign for US typewriters, or the space-before-{colon, exclamation mark, question mark} typical for French typists. Another example, relevant for me, is the process of inserting a carriage-return in a paragraph. Due to some reason, unknown to me, I've got used to making one jump forward from the period-sign before I hit the carriage-return buttom. If I write fast and don't concentrate on it, I won't discover that there is an extra space on the new line ...at least not until I've hit show-preview (if I'm lucky).
--
Ruhrjung 23:03, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I personally like it, because it makes for easier automated parsing of sentences if that's ever desirable. If there's only one space after periods, you cannot easily distinguish an internal period (as in "e.g. blah") from a sentence-ending period. In a mono-spaced environment, it also makes it easier to read, and is standard typographic practice (in a non-mono-spaced environment, like LaTeX or professional typesetting, generally one-and-one-half space are used after sentence-ending periods). But in general I'd say good practice is to leave them as they are---don't go through and convert them from one to the other. -- Delirium 23:16, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
I was taught to type two spaces after a period. It would be virtually impossible for me to stop doing it, it's a reflex now. I'd also take it as an insult if someone were to go along behind me and change my two spaces to one. It's the same as if I were to go around to change all English spellings to American. Don't do it. RickK 02:14, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here.
--
Ruhrjung 06:42, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Viajero is correct, it dates from the typewriter era (and maybe that article could explain a bit about the practice). It is not a US vs UK thing -- it was taught in the UK too. it was taught to me a mere 15 years ago. If it's still a habit, you're living in the past ;) RickK, if you can't unlearn it, get over the idea that people may remove them. -- Tarquin 09:50, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I, too, was taught to type two spaces after a period. That was in the late fifties, as a matter of fact. As soon as I learned to type, I hardly ever used handwriting again. I typed, using two spaces after every period, through high school, through college, through graduate school. I typed two spaces after every period on punch cards, on paper tape, in FØRTRAN comments, in SNOBOL comments, in C comments, in every computer context that wasn't going to be parsed by machine. I typed two spaces after every period in TECO, in RUNOFF, in Word-11, in AppleWriter, in WordStar. It was a fixed habit that I probably practiced an average of several hundred times a day, every day, for over thirty years.
Then I got my first Macintosh, and discovered that typing two spaces after the period is not appropriate in proportionally-spaced type.(Which I should have known anyway, because I belonged to the high-school printing club and learned how to set type by hand in a composing stick).
At about the same time, I learned to use italics for emphasis instead of underlining, and that an open quote is different from a close quote.
Usages do change with time, and while I am a crotchety middle-aged guy who is set in his ways and has the illusion that he is Upholding Standards, I try not to be too hidebound about it.
And I have stopped typing two spaces after every period.
Because... it is incorrect.
It would never occur to me that it's worth changing anyone else's usage, however. Foolish consistency, hobgoblin of little minds, etc.
But, by Jingo, I still put an apostrophe in Hallowe'en and I defy anyone to stop me!
Dpbsmith 21:33, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
to be deleted
The first line of an article is right-justified, which can look very strange if the line is short (e.g.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan). It can be fixed by putting a blank line above the first line of text, but is there any way the developers can fix it more effectively? --
sannse 10:50, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Report it at SourceForge (see wikipedia:bug reports), along with your browser, etc. Martin 18:33, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
dear friends i am not tech in linux but can you tell me future of linux? can linux become 100% graphical interface os like macintosh.and if not what are the problems?
According to [3]; wikipedia is now within the 800 most popular websites. The wiki's userbase has increased 119% (since July); and, the average user views 22% more pages. Lirath Q. Pynnor
Someone who is good at purty things should probably have a whack at new versions of banners as they look a bit aged. Just thought I would bring to attention, because I can't do much with the Gimp et al. Dori 21:13, Oct 20, 2003 (UTC)
Should watchlists be private?
m:Talk:Watchlist privacy
m:Talk:English Wikipedia Quality Survey
When is the internal searching feature going to be switched on again. Also are the individual page counters ever going to be re-introduced. G-Man 18:32, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
When will the new server be turned on: for that matter how long will it be before the new server becomes overloaded and another even bigger one is needed G-Man 19:06, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
--> Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion
(Firstly, thanks Dysprosia for directing me to this page, and for your welcome...) Being new here, it's quite possible that I've overlooked a simple answer to this question, but I haven't been able to find it. (Also, I perhaps shouldn't be thinking about this sort of thing until I learn my way around.) But I note that there seem to be standardized formats for pages on countries (eg Germany), some or all animals (eg the ostrich), and so forth. I was wondering if there was something similar planned for languages, showing things such as estimated number of speakers, language family, and so forth. I haven't noticed any, but I wouldn't know where to look. Is there somewhere where lists of such "standardized formats" can be found? Thanks. - Vardion 03:59, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I need help adding a photo to an article. I've already uploaded it. I've read the related help sections, but cannot find a usable code to do the format I wish. What I want to do is add the picture to the top right corner of the page, with the article text flowing down and around it. Can someone help, please? Paul Klenk 03:26, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Thanks, Easter Bunny, <buck buck!> Paul Klenk 03:39, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Do we have quick available stats on wikipedia contributors? I know most sign on with user-nics but it would be useful if we knew (1) where wikipedia users are from? (eg, are most in the US? What proportion are from Europe, Canada, Asia, Australia & New Zealand, Africa?) (2) given that there is a high turnover of wikipedians as people are dragged away with other commitments, what is the average length of stay of a wikipedian? It might be an idea if someone could create a program whereby new users (and existing users to wikipedia who had not yet done so) were asked to fill out a confidential questionnaire, not asking names or such but things like gender, ethnic background, educational qualification, physical location, etc. The results of each individual questionnaire would not be kept or anything, just the data included in an overall wikipedia profile of itself, giving wiki a knowledge of who it appeals to and why, who uses it, etc? It could appear when someone sets up a user-name, explaining why the questionnaire is there and stressing how the information data, once clicked by the user would simply update the overall numbers database and would not exist as an individual record. FearÉIREANN 00:00, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Does the variable NUMBEROFARTICLES (used on the main page) include image description pages? I think it might, and it probably shouldn't. I don't know if this has been discussed elsewhere, so pardon the ignorace if that is the case. Dori 21:17, Oct 18, 2003 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics, the latest counting method (for en: anyway) is that an article = a page with at least one Wikification. But all redirects and some image description pages also have Wikifications too; they're probably excluded. -- Menchi 21:33, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Why are people putting in those pronunciation guides? They are unworkable in the content of wikipedia. Such guides work where there is (i) recognition of what they mean, (ii) a broad experience of usage of them, (iii) relevant context. Most people writing international english for a non-academic audience run a mile from these things because they are not widely used in much of the world and so in many cultures completely incomprehensible, and because they pre-suppose a clear shared standard of english, which in Wikipedia's case cannot be guaranteed because while for some users it is a first language, for many it is a second or other language that they are not wholly fluent in. The sensible approach in a cultural context where there isn't the culture, comprehension or experience of these guides is to avoid unduly complex pronunciation formulae and explain the pronunciation in basic english of the sort all readers everywhere can follow.
On Taoiseach we are told the word is pronounced /"ty: S'Vx/. Even with a link attached, to many people worldwide it might as well be written in Aramaic for all the use it is to them. Previously, to recognise that many people don't have the practical experience of understanding complex pronunciation guides, they were simply told the office was pronounced tee-shoch (the och and is loch). That version could be followed easily by many people. /"ty: S'Vx/ to many would appear to be complete gobbledigook. FearÉIREANN 19:40, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
test.wikipedia.org seems to be the same as (en.)wikipedia.org at the moment... I'm even still logged in... Just curious what happened to it... Κσυπ Cyp 18:37, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Could anyone make a highlighted map for every country like that in article US? I think that would be helpful since I don't know the position of every country. -- FallingInLoveWithPitoc 02:31, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The entries at the top of this page regarding what is happening on the new server are very useful, but would have more meaning if a date was added to each entry. The phrase "real soon" means nothing without a reference date. -- Fernkes 12:46, Oct 16, 2003 (UTC)
I think this may have been discussed already but I can’t find where so I’ll check here .......
If I can’t find any source of a still picture to illustrate an article is it OK to photograph a part of a film off TV and use that (with a clean up in an image processor to get rid of the TV scan lines)? In other words, is a single frame from a film copyright?
A good example is
Diana, Princess of Wales where I’ve searched the internet for hours for a public domain image but all images are either copyright or nothing is said on the subject. To show the “quality” achievable, here’s an example I photographed today (off English TV).
image:princess.diana.offTV.350pix.jpg
Adrian Pingstone 21:30, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Whatever you do, say what you did on the image description page and if you're relying on fair use, add a fair use rationale. See wikipedia:image description page. Martin 19:20, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
My photo of a Porsche 912 -took by myself- on the Porsche article was replaced by another wich is obviously not a Porsche 912. The new picture is IMO studio works and probably copyrighted. It seems impossible to recover the old photo. Why ? Even if the new image is uncopyrighted and better than mine, mine could be useful elsewhere (on a Porsche 912 article) for instance. Ericd 15:24, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I have a proposal to make. I think it is time to have editors for articles. I have had enough with NPOV, naming, conventions, facts and other sort of dispute. Maybe because I am ignorant. Maybe because wikipedia does not have professionals who know well. Or maybe because a writer has no sense of writing whatsoever. Whatever the reason is, we have to remember that wikipedia is not a place to debate, prove you are right and your opponents are wrong. The debate by nature is endless. There are many disputes and debates that have not yet been settled in the real world. NPOV disputes often happen simply because people in the world disagree on a number of topics in the first place. The conflicts here are mere reflections. The conflict is a necessary process to reach another step. Innovative ideas are created from disputes, questioning accepted values and theories. But wikipedia is not a place for that. We gather human knowledge to one spot and that is all. If we don't know about something, it is unnecessary to keep debating what is actually true--of course, it should not be discouraged as long as it doesn't curb writing articles. Disputes should be controlled somehow to make articles simply more understandable, relevant and complete--or good quality articles.
Personal attacks happen largely because someone thinks someone else does not deserve to write and edit on certain topics. A handful of people think I don't deserve to edit on certain topics and I have a number of people who should not understand stuff they are contributing, though they think they do understand. I often piss some people not because of my personality but because of the way wikipedia works.
What we need is an editor who can has authority--someone who can settle the conventions, is sensitive what points to include and exclude and define what wikipedia is to be like.
A group of people may but unlikely have a coherent idea. Today in wikipedia NPOV is done with very ugly way. People including me are more concerted about if their points are included or not. The use of weasel terms is silly, damaging the quality of wikipedia as the whole. Editors listen to discussion and make a decision--the result should be uniformed discussion in the article. Besides, having editors can make the goal of wikipedia more clear and consistent and keep contributions more in line. Why do we wage an endless debate of deletion in VfD? That is a choice should be made by the editor not by the writer. The scope of coverage in wikipedia is debatable because it is subject to each individual wikipedian. And while it is not bad to discuss the scope of wikipedia as the whole, it is a topic in meta-wikipedia not places where contributions happen. Freedom is important to have but it is also necessary to see its drawbacks. Sometimes I am terrified not by what I have lost, but what I have wikipedia lost by what I have got. The winner of the dispute is not necessary someone who is sensitive, knowledgeable but sometimes may be someone stubborn--in the case of me.
So what do we do then? In a tentative scheme I am thinking now, each article is supervised by an editor. We can put the name of an editor responsible to an article in the bottom of the article. I think an editor for one article must be just one person--not two to avoid any conflict among editors. Editors have an authority to make a final decision about:
And some criteria I think reasonable include:
I know sometimes admits play a role of editors as I explained informally. But the trouble I think is that it is very invisible, so it is often not clear who is a big shot of an article. Formally, putting an editor should be beneficial. Sometimes it is just so hard to make a decision in certain topics. The editors might seem somehow biased from certain people, but without editors, any controversial articles can be seen biased by certain people either.
The question then is: is it more important that wikpedia is in chaos but more free or is coherent but conservative? The wikiway is not perfect but so is this proposal. But some more security, some more procedure can make things more organized, if it sounds anti-wiki.
You may say wikipedia is functioning very well. The problems are there are just some problem users like me who should be more silent. I don't think so. I think it is more of structural problem rather than an individual. We have lost many great contributers who tend to be engaged in controversial topics. Besides, I see the emerge of a tread among wikipedians to make a significant change only because they don't want to go to edit wars. The absence of dispute is not agreement, but maybe because they just give up convincing others--ok. this is your article if that makes you happy. That is not a way we want to go.
I don't say implement this proposal right away, but can we do some experiment at least?
-- Taku 03:26, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)
Help.... neutral parties!! See also Talk:Hinduism.
(Now I know exactly why people leave. If this (sort of edit war) continues,I will not be able to spend necessary time, money and effort on this page. Which leads to a sense of futility and self-introspection as to why one is here at all) KRS 18:11, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Ive been editing there, I didn't even see an edit war. Whats the war over? I hope Im not involved... Lirath Q. Pynnor
Should articles have an editor? See m:Wikipedia needs editors
Either is a fascinating article. But does it not belong in Wiktionary? -- Viajero 11:41, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I have included a Warning, Wikipedia contains spoilers in Scissors (game) and have included the spoiler itself in Rot13 since it really doesn't want to be read inadvertantly. Any objections? -- 195.232.51.17 23:10, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Tee, lbh whfg znqr zr jevgr n p cebtenz sbe ebg-guvegrra pbairefvba... Plc 09:11, 26 Bpg 2003 (HGP)
I'm too lazy to read the ROT-13 above so this suggestion may have been made already... Why don't you just move the spoilers to another page like Scissors (game spoiler)? Jimbreed 14:56, Oct 27, 2003 (UTC)
The page has now been editted (not by me) like this:
" The key to this game is here on a black background, to prevent accidental reading. In most browsers, you can read it by selecting it.
Spoiler text here |
"
which I think is a very neat solution for short spoilers like this, interested in other comments.
If nobody has any problems with this (or if any raised can be easily fixed) then I think we should put this suggestion into the spoiler warning page. Andrewa 16:08, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
This won't work on text-based browsers such as Lynx, which will not be able to render the text as unreadable. I'm not sure about accessibility, but some people may read with text in more higher contrast colors, which would show up immediately.
What is the lowest common denominator of browser the Wikipedia aims to support? Dysprosia 04:36, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
moved to Talk:Scissors (game)
The "Special:Whatlinkshere" feature is supposed to list every Wikipedia page, including redirects, that has a link to the page in question, right? So, I'm wondering why the Whatlinkshere page for President of the United States doesn't list the numerous redirects to that page. For example, United States/President, United States President, and President of the United States of America all redirect to President of the United States, but none of them show up on the links page. Is this some kind of glitch? How many other articles link there that aren't listed for some reason? Just curious, thanks. -- Minesweeper 22:03, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (spaces after a period)
To address the problems of personal attacks on talk pages, which have driven some users away and generally harm our climate and our reputation, I have proposed a new guideline here: Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks. I would appreciate it if you could take a look and then add your name in the poll on the discussion page. Note that the guideline addresses some concerns you may have, e.g. removal of factual content. —Eloquence 06:35, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
Sometimes I come across a page which is highly POV, but shouldn't be deleted. I have an urge to tell someone about these pages (when I don't know enough to correct the problem myself), and almost have an itch to vote for it's deletion, so I just end up doing nothing. Maybe there should be a page where you can link to POV articles, sort of like Votes for Deletion?
If it just needs some work, you can list in on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention. If it's fairly strongly POV, you can place boilerplate text at the top linking to Wikipedia:NPOV dispute (see that page for the boilerplate text). -- Delirium 03:27, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
You could also list it on Wikipedia:Cleanup. Angela 04:19, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
Wikipedia:NPOV dispute and explain your reasons on the talk page. Check the backlinks to that page for a list of disputed pages. Martin 13:12, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
This article uses the capitalized pronouns to refer to the founder of the Baha'i Faith. Is that intrinsically POV? -- Pakaran 00:29, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Just a note: It is nice to see the large number of small improvements made to the Concorde article since it showed up on the Wikipedia front page. Goes to show the importance of rotating a lot of article links to the front page.
Just a friendly reminder, if you need a break from your wikipedia-grind, take a gander at Wikipedia:Pages needing attention and help fix some articles that need improvement. Kingturtle 22:46, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
What can be done about the appalling innaccuracies at the above address (which states that the information displayed is courtesy of Wikipedia)? ([[list of errors moved to talk:Lee-Enfield)
Help.... neutral parties!! See Talk:Hinduism.
why did u do all this? just wondering cause we can redo every thing and might mess it all up
The history of pages is saved, so if someone accidentally messes something up, anyone can fix the mess easily. Apparently, when everyone can edit anything, people are good at cooperating, and are working together to fulfill the ancient dream of collecting all human knowledge in one spot. Maybe some time in the future, also even all alien knowledge as well. Κσυπ Cyp 16:54, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
How do I add a table of contents to an article? -- bmills 14:21, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Thanks.
bmills 16:01, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I just happened to notice this, but User:Ark30inf is leaving after just 2 months -- So long y'all. I have found that if you are not here to do battle then nobody will listen to you. Thats not what I am about. Hopefully, the project will mature at some point. Good luck to all. I know people often take a break and come back, but I don't know that this will happen with this user. Check out the user page for someone who has strong opinions, but seemed to be able to do well with NPOV and thoughful contributions and comments. It's worth checking out the observations they left at the bottom of their user page. -- BCorr ¤ Брайен 05:03, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I can identify with this situation clearly- which has risen for me today after three months of participation. There is no way of reaching NPOV if someone has a viewpoint they want to force others on and one can't persevere due to obvious reasons - (see my call for help below). I can safely state that as it stands right now, the intro to the page on Hinduism is totally POV. Religion seems to attract extreme reactions and those who persevere need strong motivations - which only comes through extreme faith or for reasons of the sense of power and triumph associated with prevailing. KRS 19:06, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
And another one... User:Smith03.
Hmmmm, I think as Wikipedia grows we are going to see more and more of this. I think we need a culture shift (or I suspect maybe to reverse a culture shift that is already happening) if we are to avoid having the number of active contributors level out.
Some time ago I raised an issue on the Pump which had it occurred a little earlier in my Wikipedia "career" would probably have resulted in my leaving. Now I don't want to criticise anyone involved in it. Rather I'd like to say that I think nobody was to blame, rather it indicates a culture that I think we need to work on. I've also acknowledged that I was at fault myself in several areas in this particular incident.
Just to set the background however, a stub I had created was (to my mind) vandalised by a widely respected old hand. I reverted the facetious comment they had left (in the article namespace, I stress), and they immediately reverted my reversion putting their facetious comment back. Now I don't want to dwell on the rights and wrongs of these actions, nor on mine, I admit the stub was substandard and that my summary when I reverted was rude and uncalled for.
What I do want to point out that the community reaction was heavily in support of the person who made thus facetious edit, twice. When I raised the issue on the pump, one person said "I don't see what you are making a fuss about". There was so far as I can see no censure for the facetious comment, nor has there ever been any apology, unless you count the perpetrator admitting that perhaps they were "too rude". I don't. I think any rudeness towards a newcomer making an honest mistake is totally unacceptable, and to immediately repeat the offence when challenged... words fail me. But again, I don't want to dwell on the adequacy or otherwise of the apology. What I'm more interested in is that this muted retraction drew no comment at all from anyone else.
I think this shows something about the Wikipedia culture.
At the time I made a few suggestions regarding established practices that IMO make it more difficult for newcomers to become established. As a relative newcomer I think I can contribute there, but again, there seemed little interest.
Food for thought? Andrewa 23:10, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
HTML Title be made more meaningful for some special pages..... Transferred to SourceForge ticket. Feature requests go to Sourceforge. See Wikipedia:Bug_reports.
Are poor language skills a problems? -> m:Poor language skills
The article Getty Images seems suspiciously commercial. Is this actually legitimate? Dori 05:06, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)
Is that only my case but the wikipedia seems extremely fast today. Something happened? Is that only due to my Internet connection? -- Taku
Ah, where's that Mediator. Have a look at the article Millosh Gjergj Nikolla. Igor thinks there should be a Serbian spelling in both the Latin and Cyrillic, I think that one is enough and the cyrillic one should not be used because it scares English readers away. Seeing as this is an English Wikipedia article and a Serbian Wikipedia exists to make use of the cyrillic form, I think I am right. I want to avoid having to revert his changes over and over so I am asking what the consensus is here. One should notice that I brought the issue up with him before (see this and) he seemed to agree, but now apparently he has changed his mind. thank you Dori 03:10, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)
I have a question about these "List of X topics" articles. I think they are pretty handy, and I even created a Byzantine Empire one myself (and I'm considering creating a Crusades one), but is there any specific format for them? Some seem to be a bunch of unorganized links, some are organized alphabetically, some are organized by theme...is there any standard for these types of lists? If not, should there be? (I also imagine there must be people who really despise them...) Adam Bishop 23:48, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)
There has been talk among various users asking for either automated lists of articles on X topic, or a Wikiproject on lists. Besides the time it would save, in some realms the question of which lists should be created or what they are named can be a POV issue. For example, see VfD for discussions of list of multiracial people and list of queer composers. What's other people's thoughts on this? -- zandperl 21:41, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I am working on a book and would like to use some pics from various Wikipedia articles as illustrations. The book is commercial, for-profit. Am I right in believing that the GNU/GDSL license policy applies to usage of pictures in addition to text? As in, if I put in that boilerplate notice, I'm cool? The various links didn't explicitly mention pictures and were rather confusing, not to mention that there doesn't seem to be any
specific person/thing to email my question to.
Please help!
For the record, the Ancient pages page has reached a landmark, in that it is no longer full of pages whose last edit was by the "Conversion script". I believe this means that every single article has been edited (or created) since the last time the software was rewritten (or something to that effect... in any case, there is nothing that has not been edited by a human since February 25, 2002, which seems pretty good). Also, all the CIA-imported articles have been edited, even Demographics of Vatican City. Hooray for Wikipedia! Tuf-Kat 07:21, Oct 22, 2003 (UTC)
Question. National Park Service was recently moved to United States Park Service. Since National Park Service is the official name and United States Park service is not really a name at all, shouldn't National Park Service be the name in the article title? I'm of the opinion that if it needs to be disambiged then it should be "National Park Service (United States)". Am I off base here? Thanks. Ark30inf 05:42, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I noticed that an important debate was raised due to the amount of Lists in the Wikipedia, namely list with curious classifications of people like List of multiracial people or List of queer composers. Other items like songs, for instance, were also subjected to furious listing. I would like, at this moment, to redraw from this discussion the lists concerning people by nationality, name or profession, as well as the various List of topics of…, because I think everybody agree with their value as an index. To summarize the discussion here:
As for myself, I admit that I'm for the absolute removal of all the funny categories. But I also see a usefulness in them, for trivia-curious people, for somebody looking for a strange topic in Google, for the ones who simply love compiling things. I agree with lists (I made List of Roman laws and worked in List of Roman legions with Stan, for instance), but some are hilarious and take credibility from the wikipedia. But what is a funny category? This is highly personal and POV. So, to free wikipedia from all the trivia-(not encyclopaedic)-like lists, I propose the creation of a WIKILISTS or LISTIPEDIA or WIKITRIVIA, in the same philosophy as the Wikiquote or the Wikctonary. This, I think, would value the wikiproject in a whole, because it would prevent the proliferation of trivia in the wikipedia, and, at the same time, provide a space to the list mania to grow freely. The Wikitrivia, with all of us working on it, as potential to become a reference for everybody preparing for a QuizShow or the likes.
As for practicalities, I can't contribute much. I'm not a sysop nor I know anything about programming or creating wikipedias. I only suggest here that the format can be similar so the lists could be copy-pasted to the Wikitrivia. And if a Bot could transform every link to a link to the wikipedia it would be great.
I fear that if the Wikitrivia is not created, the VfD will be perpetually flooded with Lists to delete. Therefore, I would like to debate this idea with other wikipedians. To host the discussion, I created
To finish I must say that I hate edit wars and getting involved in polemic issues. Those who know me here know that I'm not involved in disputes. If I'm suggesting this is not for creating attention about me, is because I really feel strongly that some lists should go. Somewhere. Wiki-greetings to all, Muriel Gottrop 07:26, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)
All comments on the proposal above should be made at m:WikiTrivia.
I hope this isn't the wrong place to ask and that I'm not just being a buffoon. I'm a newbie to Wikipedia (but not to wikis) and thought that I would do my civic duty and update an entry that I was using in some research but found slightly lacking and unclear. The entry is question is about the Platt Amendment. I reworded the description and added some text of the Amendment itself, but when I go to the page, my changes haven't shown up. The funny thing, however, is that when I click on the Page History link, my changes (and IP address) seem to show up as current. If I request a diff, I do indeed see the changes that I made. So why does the page still show the older version? Do I need to have an account and be logged in? For what it's worth, I skimmed the FAQ but did not see anything relevent. Thanks!
Hi, original poster here with some followup. The older version of the page was even showing up on a computer that had never accessed wikipedia before, so I'm reasonably sure it wasn't a caching problem. I created an account and found that when logged in, the correct version of the page is displayed. When logged out, the old version. To reproduce: use a web browser or computer that has never accessed wikipedia before and go to the main page. (You could possibly just log out, but this is how I reproduced it.) Search for "platt amendment" and briefly note the content of the page. There should be no text between the bold headings "Full Text" and "Article I." (This is the old version.) Now log with your account and do the same thing. You should see my changes (the new version) which include some text between the two headings mentioned above. Anyone else able to reproduce this? If this should be a bug, who do I report it to? (P.S. KRS added his comment as I was trying to add this... So, is this a feature or a bug?) Eil 17:32, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I've noticed cases where it makes sense to have nonexisting article names redirect to existing articles, e.g. the nonexistant article "Merconium" should redirect to the existing article "Meconium". What is the most elegant way to accomplish this? Also, am I asking this question in the right place?
You should now have what you want. -- Someone else 22:30, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
(You can also sign your comments with ~~~~ which will be converted to your signature and a timestamp when you save the page)
what you think wikipedia may contain every piece of informqation on this planet or not?i think it must be deeper and parental control must be included.
Already there. Lirath Q. Pynnor
Hi, Wikipedians
New arrival, totally infatuated with all this. It's an obsessive's dream come true.
Question:
I did a bunch of edits to 4-5 entries before I'd created my log-in name. I then tried to sneak in credit (once I signed up) by going back to those entries, marking a minor edit under my nametag, then trying to add a note saying something like "edits below (by XX-XX-XX-XX) were done by me".
So I made trivial edits (marked "minor"), and saw my name pop up on the recent changes page. Good. But while some editors had added comments here ("Removed the part about the exploding cat" or "corrected punctuation"), I couldn't figure out how to add my own comments. What am I doing wrong?
Also, is it too late at this point? I don't want to do another minor edit in order to insert the comment...feels abusive to really fill up the recent changes page just for my own vanity. Please advise. I'm willing to let it go, but I'd at least like to know how to add comments next time.
There's a fine line between obnoxiously restoring one's "golden prose" after it's been subequently edited...and honestly improving an article that's been degraded by reintroducing legitimately better commentary...which happens to be one's own previously posted material!
Where do Wikipedians stand on this call? Firmly against persistent "ping ponging" (i.e. post it once and let it go forever)? An anarchic "go ahead" shrug? Simply use one's judgement?
This is a facet of a larger issue which I perceive as Wikipedia biggest fault: past a certain point, articles don't get better, they just get different (or, just as easily, worse). As a given entry ages to a certain point where' it's been worked over by many participants, might it not be intelligent to introduce a "vote to seal" feature, where viewers who think the entry is at a really good point can temporarily freeze edits and call for a vote to permanently seal the entry (or at least a vote to impede subsequent editing, e.g. by requiring additions to be approved by vote)? Otherwise, absolutely terrific entries can and will be degraded and washed away like sand castles in the tide.
I realize that many entries are temporal in various ways and therefore benefit from unended editing. Obviously, they should stay ever open.
I suspect my solution can/will be picked to death...but the problem I'm raising is a serious one, and there may be more intelligent/effective ways to address it. Or maybe I'm just being unwikipedian....? O. Pen Sauce 08:09, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hi,
I just created a new article for PiFast, a freeware program to compute digits of pi. As this is one of maybe five or six articles I've ever written from scratch, I'd be interested in advice - especially which words to make into wikilinks. Feel free to comment on the article's talk page, which I'm watchlisting, or my user talk page.
Thanks! -- Pakaran 21:52, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I can't get rid of the "You have new messages" message. When I go to my page, it goes away, but when I leave it for another page, it's still there, even if there are no new messages since the last time I went to my Talk page. I've tried Refresh, and that doesn't help. RickK 05:36, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Haven't quite figured it out yet, but it appears to be intermittent. Angela's ISP seems to have an oddity where some requests are proxied and some aren't, but I don't think this is directly related. -- Brion 08:57, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Try ctrl-f5 Lirath Q. Pynnor
what you think wikipedia may contain every piece of information on this planet or not? i think it must be deeper and parental control must be included.
Fisting may be a repulsive concept, but people in consensual adult relationships do it, so obviously wikipedia has to cover it. Personally I find anti-semitism, homophobia, child sex-abuse, rascism, fascism and many heterosexual sex acts repulsive, but however much they may repulse me, if they exist then an encyclopædia should chronicle them. You may fisting "valueness" and degrading; I may indeed agree with you. But that is expressing a POV, and wikipedia is all about providing an NPOV, even on things that turn our stomachs (in my case, George W. Bush's rape of the english language, like now announcing that his National Security Advisor's job is to be an 'unstickler', whatever the hell that means!). FearÉIREANN 22:00, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I've found some more discussion, see Wikipedia:Content disclaimer. Perhaps this thread can be moved to Wikipedia talk:Content disclaimer. -- Tim Starling 01:43, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with labeling (like RACS), giving a rating to each page, so existing parental controls could work with it (though it might be technically difficult to start adding meta-info to each page). We could also do like then Open Directory Project does: their "Adult" subtree isn't reachable from rest of the directory, unless you enter "Adult terms into a search. So there could be an "adult.en.wikipedia.org". If the database could identify some things as "Adult", it might encourage others to copy and use the database, since they could simply pluck out the parts they don't like (this is a large reason the ODP has an Adult subtree, so people won't be afraid to copy and use their database).
As for things like facism, we'd need to use a much more complex and flexible labeling system than RACS, since that only covers violence, nudity, sex, and language. ( SafeSurf also includes bigotry, and divides "sex" into heterosexual and homosexual) Also, Encyclopædia Britannica includes articles on facism, the Holocaust, and such, so I wasn't aware that these might be controversial articles to include in an encyclopedia, nor was I aware of the existence of "child friendly" encyclopedias that excluded disturbing subjects. -- Khym Chanur 09:21, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks, Adrian Pingstone 09:36, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
If I do a link to a photo on the internet site www.airliners.net (on which all photos are copyright the photographer) do I have to ask the photographers permission first or say here who took the pic?
Here’s how the link would look on Wikipedia. I declare the picture public domain so no problems if the answer is that I do have to ask.
Hello, I know that this question has probably been asked before. But I want to make sure that I have a good grasp on the copyright issues associated with using Wikipedia material. I am thinking of building a site with commercial interests ( in other words I want to sell things ). I would also probably right my own articles about various topics. If I set up links to Wikipedia articles throughout the site where appropriate, would I be violating the copyright? Can I have the Wikipedia material as part of a webpage on my site? And do I have to make all of the material on my website belong to the same licensing structure? I want to do the right thing and I apreciate your patience and help. RW
In the past little while, hard-banned user 142.177.xxx.xxx, aka 24, User:EntmootsOfTrolls has been rather active. Contribs: 142.177.10.33, 142.177.11.23, 142.177.81.243, 142.177.79.242. In particular, the following articles were created by him:
Now, being hard-banned doesn't mean anything unless someone enforces it, so I'm going to step up here. Here's what I'm going to do:
-- Cyan 01:51, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I have only kidnapped articles created since October 27. Also, there is a question of the attribution required by the GFDL. Since this user is nominally anonymous, I'm not too concerned about it. If necessary, attribution can be made in the edit summary or on the talk page of any reinstated article. -- Cyan 02:06, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I have reverted most of 142.177's other edits. I have also personally reinstated his article on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. On another topic, I just want to make clear what the big idea behind all of this brouhaha is:
The hardbanned user who edits out of the 142.177.xxx.xxx IP range must get permission from Jimbo before returning to Wikipedia.
Thanks, and good night. You've been a great audience. -- Cyan 03:01, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
[[ User:BoNoMoJo deleted discussion of LDS temple rites from Temples_of_the_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints, suggesting on the talk page that such discussion was not only immoral but illegal. Further input would be desirable. -- Someone else 18:49, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
A fair bit has already been said about this at Talk:Temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Why not carry on there? Smokey the Bear says, "Only you can stop forest fires." -- Cyan 01:11, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I can't find an article for Terri Schiavo - is it under another name? - Speaker of Your Mom
Either is a fascinating article. But does it not belong in the Wiktionary? -- Viajero 11:41, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
After a week of observing serious concerns on Village Pump -- "Wikipedia needs an editor", "We've lost another two", "protecting Wikipedia", NPOV disputes, epidemic personal attacks, and the like -- I wanted to find out how well perception stood up to the statistics. What I found was a real surprise. Searching through all articles for Wikipedia:NPOV_dispute warnings, care to guess how many articles came back? With 160,000+ articles in EN, I was thinking hundreds if not thousands were in dispute, but the actual number was 89. (September 20, 2003 database dump, with recent dumps about the same). That's 0.06% of pages being NPOV disputed. Of those 89 articles, 30 are related to Israel-Palestine or Jewish-Muslim issues. See User:Fuzheado/metrics for the actual list.
Granted, not all hotly debated articles have an "NPOV dispute" notice at the top, but with my guess being an order of magnitude (or two) WAY OFF is telling. Even if we are generous and say there are 10 times as many articles that are "hot button" and are not labeled "NPOV dispute" that's still only 0.6% of articles. A very small number of articles are creating headaches and bad blood. It seems to not be an 80-20 rule but a 99-1 rule. Just something to keep in perspective as we propose massive policy changes that may drastically change the face of Wikipedia. Fuzheado 10:09, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
This is a followup to three articles on this page:
The consequences of bias, brutishness, vandalism, and incompetence are detailed in these posts and elsewhere, and yet many of the respondents seem to ignore the costs and perils of the current policy.
Some of the people who may have the most valuable content to offer the project are likely to have little inclination or time to monitor the fate of their contributions let alone engage in interminable combat. Yes, there are some protections, but these all have their own costs.
In summary, I commend to you Adam's principle: anonymous users should not be allowed to edit pages.
We allow edits from anonymous contributors because we assume good faith, and we know that logins are evil. Martin 21:22, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'm wondering if there is any handy (or not so handy) source of information how IP and user ban works. Among the questions I have are:
Any pointer will be appreciated. And just to clarify, I am not planning to behave bad and be banned :-p , but I am just looking for info. on be half of Japanese wikipedians. Thanks for your help. Tomos 04:45, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The answers to these questions, as far as I know, are:
Also:
-- Cyan 05:46, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
One of you who understands this well should probably update Wikipedia:Bans and blocks, which is currently woefully out of date, and lacks all the information just posted here. -- Delirium 10:49, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)
Following Angela's advice (above), I created a new page History of Poland (1939-1945), and redirected the old page General Government to it. An anonymous user called 145.254.117.188 keeps un-redirecting the article, plus making edits to both articles which reflect a Polish nationalist POV and are in bad English. 145 has now taken to accusing me of being anti-Polish at my Talk page as well. I therefore request that General Government be deleted, and a new, empty, General Government be created and redirected to History of Poland (1939-1945), so that 145 can't restore the old text. Adam 03:48, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I am not the slightestly inclined to get involved in more warfares around matters of Poland's history. But many contributors, in particular them being cock-sure of their own NPOV-ishness, tend to neglect the involved emotions, it seems. Not the least the degree of disappointment, sadness and anger over how Poland, when formally on the victorious side of World War II, could be so harshly hit in the post-war decades.
Now, you say, the emotions have no place in the encyclopaedic articles, and nobody would argue against that, of course. But the emotions is a driving force which complicates the issue, as you don't have to be much of a nationalist patriot to see belittling of Poland's sufferings in edits which in the rest of the world rather would be seen as pedagogically motivated simplifications. If we don't recognize the emotions behind the edit-war, then we can be pretty sure of the defeated party going increasingly bitter against wikipedia. And that is exactly what wikipedia doesn't need.
On the issue at stake, the question of a separate article on the
General Government, or not, I think that would be as much appropriate as separate articles on
Vichy France and the
Free French.
But that's only my personal view, of course.
--
Ruhrjung 18:14, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Im thinking of writing an article about the important and historical rivalty these 5 boxers maintained among themselves dthrought the decade of the 1980s, with a timeline for each of their fights against each other. The problem is, since no official nickname was ever given by writers, critics, historians, etc to these fab five of boxing, I have no idea what to call the article..any ideas? Antonio Fab One Martin
Article on Truth is currently being kicked around a bit by a couple of users. My view is that one of the articles is of fairly good quality by someone with a philosophical education. The other one is illiterate. But who decides in such cases? User:dbuckner
I recently edited Privatization to conform to American spelling (not that I entirely agree with it) because the dominant form was American. Another editor reverted one of my edits because it deleted the alternative spelling. Should we be including phrases like Privatization (also known as Privatisation) when we introduce an article with alternative spelling? See also Nationalization. Tiles 06:33, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
It's common to use both. One way of saying it some articles use is along the lines of "Privatization ( British English: Privatisation) ...", but this (or the reverse) seems to prefer one usage over the other as canonical. I'd prefer "Privatization or privatisation ...", with whichever one the article is titled as coming first. As for which to title it as, I'd prefer just whichever the original author used; moving is just going to cause edit wars. An exception is articles clearly relating to a region, in which case the dominant usage of that region should be used. -- Delirium 06:53, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)
Just a friendly reminder: establish context!
I notice one of the bigger minor corrections I've been doing lately is contextualizing articles. Many people seem to write from the perspective of someone who is vaguely familiar with the field; but some people might not even know what what you're writing about is a piece of computer software, or a concept in mathematics. Example picked mostly at random: Yacc said "Yacc is the standard parser generator on Unix systems.", which to someone who is not aware of the existence of parser generators or Unix systems isn't very helpful in saying what exactly yacc is. Modified version (feel free to reword better): "Yacc is a piece of computer software that serves as the standard parser generator on Unix systems."
The mathematics examples can usually be fixed just by adding "In [[mathematics, ..." to the beginning, or sometimes "In mathematics, particularly group theory, ...". -- Delirium 04:37, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)
Summary of snipped text: redirect pages were being incorrectly cached such that if the destination page was updated, a visitor to the redirect page would see an older version of it.
Hi, original poster here with some followup. The older version of the page was even showing up on a computer that had never accessed wikipedia before, so I'm reasonably sure it wasn't a caching problem. I created an account and found that when logged in, the correct version of the page is displayed. When logged out, the old version. To reproduce: use a web browser or computer that has never accessed wikipedia before and go to the main page. (You could possibly just log out, but this is how I reproduced it.) Search for "platt amendment" and briefly note the content of the page. There should be no text between the bold headings "Full Text" and "Article I." (This is the old version.) Now log with your account and do the same thing. You should see my changes (the new version) which include some text between the two headings mentioned above. Anyone else able to reproduce this? If this should be a bug, who do I report it to? (P.S. KRS added his comment as I was trying to add this... So, is this a feature or a bug?) Eil 17:32, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
This page has been unexplicably blanked without discussion by [[User::Walklib|Walklib]]. I know that some of the Wikitrivia topics are controversial, but this is not the correct procedure. Can a sysop please revert the page to the last useful edit? Thanks. DropDeadGorgias 18:43, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I need a picture with a Roman feel for a project I'm working on. I just need some eye candy to brighten up the text, like one could find on the front of any Latin textbook, but Wikipedia seems to be very short of pictures in the classics articles. Does any body know of *any* pictures of Roman things in classics articles? CGS 09:40, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC).
In some ways, this is a follow-up to the thread on "Wikipedia Needs an Editor." In particular, security was mentioned in passing, but I would like to make that the focus of attention, and to suggest that the Wikicommunity should adopt some measures in an effort to protect what has already been accomplished, and to help ensure that frustrated Wikipedians do not give up in despair.
Some Wikipedians seem to believe that things aren't so bad, so nothing needs to be done. I am not in a position to quantify how bad things are, but there are several indicators that the costs associated with protecting Wikipedia are already quite high. More to the point, the growing size and reputation of Wikipedia will make it an increasingly attractive target for vandals. I don't know if an automated attack been launched yet, but wouldn't it be better to try to avoid it?
What can be done? I am not a security expert, but it seems to me that one of the first steps that could be taken would be in the direction of ensuring that only suitably registered individuals can MODIFY pages created by others.
Security of course is not an absolute, but the history of the Internet yields too many examples of "nice ideas" being overtaken by vandalism in one form or another. The survival of the U.S. system of government can plausibly be attributed to the *pessimism* of the authors of the Constitution.
A quick response:
The day is not yet done, but six cases of vandalism have already been dealt with today (Oct 28), and they all involve (anonymous) IP addresses. Whoever is spending time on this could be spending time more wiki-usefully.
There's a Wikipedia under that name but better yet there is Aristophanes. In his play, The Frogs [405BC], he wrote:
The course our city runs is the same towards men and money. She has true and worthy sons. She has fine new gold and ancient silver, coins untouched with alloys, gold or silver, each well minted, tested each and ringing clear. Yet we never use them! Others pass from hand to hand, sorry brass just struck last week and branded with a wretched brand. So with men we know for upright, blameless lives and noble names. These we spurn for men of brass....
See the thread "We've lost another two..." above.
-- 1635, Oct 28, 2003 (EST)
Surprising to people outside wikipedia and interesting, vandalism has been controlled very well so far. It seems the truth is that there are more wise, sensitive people than more those who are interested in damging things. The more we have vandalist, actually the more and more we have gained good eye-bolws. The trouble most came from well-intention from knowledgable people--those who care a lot of their topics so that they run into conflicts. -- Taku 22:14, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)
If Wikipedia became an attractive enough target, a vandal could acquire a bunch of zombie computers (through computer viruses or other means), and then perform a Distributed Vandalism Attack, where each infected IP address would vandalize a few random pages. With thousands and thousands of pages vandalized by thousands and thousands of different IPs, we'd have to roll back the database to before the vandalisms started, and then lock out edits long enough to change Wikimedia to be incompatible with the viruses. And then the vandal would make a new virus that would be compatible with the new Wikimedia, and it would start all over again. -- Khym Chanur 07:45, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)
I would like to contribute 500 Images to Wikipedia. I work in 3 Languages. That means, 1500 Uploads :-(
Could we not create a central images Database for all Wikipedias with just translated titles or so? Please comment on meta:WikiImages.org. Thanks :-) Fantasy 07:39, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)