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I've noticed lately that there seems to be gaggle of brand new users who's only real edits seem to be to vote to keep things on Vfd. Earlier it was User:Wartortle and the dozen some of the dozen other names apparently created by User:Tester (see WP:PU). Now there seems to be User:Princess Toadstool, User:Macarenaman and User:Peter Farrell. It seems to me that the last three were created by 1 person with aims of keeping the page Dork, apparently created by User:Mwbassguy. I don't now if all these events are related, but I'm suspicious. Is there any way to check to see if double (or more) voting is occuring on Vfd. Maximus Rex 02:28, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)"
Should articles have an editor? See m:Wikipedia needs editors
There's an alternative proposal that I think might achieve the desired aim while doing no damage at all to our current structure and culture at m:Referees. Of course this ground might have all been covered before, I can't find it yet but the Meta is a big place. Comments welcome. Andrewa 03:02, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Check Wikipedia:Wikipedia approval mechanism -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 03:26, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)
I know there is a list top 10 largest wikipedias somewhere but I cant find it. Can someone help me? BL 01:53, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I tried looking for a voting policy, but I did not find one, so I propose a draft: Wikipedia:Voting policy draft
I think voting should be standardized and formalized or else any vote should not be binding for anything. I hate that it has to be this formal, but I think it will be more democratic this way and it will lower complaints.
Please edit at will the draft, it was only the first thing that came to my mind. I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on the Wikipedia :)
The whole idea could also be scapped if enough people think it's crap.
Dori 15:09, Oct 27, 2003 (UTC)
See m:WikiTrivia.
Hi, I've called a vote on Talk:Mother Teresa to clarify once and for all what people think about the current article and what we should do about it. Please express your opinion. lol FearÉIREANN 23:05, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
After the screen asking if I want to change the " " in the filename to "_", I get this message:
A database query syntax error has occurred. The last attempted database query was: "INSERT INTO image (img_name,img_size,img_timestamp,img_description,img_user,img_user_text) VALUES ('Keyboard_Layout_German.png',,'20031026192319','Keyboard layout, German, upload attempt #120, made by me', '7586', 'Cyp')" from within function "wfRecordUpload". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 20031026192319,Keyboard layout, German, upload attempt #120,.
I don't know anything about SQL, but is the character sequence ',,' appropriate? Κσυπ Cyp 19:28, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
It seems that I just got logged out while working on a page. I edited a subpage in the user namespace as a logged-in user, but on saving it appeared under an IP number rather than my username. That looks potentially troublesome (after all, it makes a difference whether you edit your pages or someone with an IP number does). I should note that the problem has occurred before (rarely), and that I do not usually have similar problems on the particular computer I am working at. Kosebamse 19:17, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Done. I seem to remember that similar weirdnesses were discussed here earlier (to do with the en/en2/www thing??) Kosebamse 19:48, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't remember how long I had been logged in. Time between opening edit and saving could have been ten minutes or so. I don't use the remember passwords feature. And that particular problem has occurred before, but only in the past weeks, so I assume it could have been because of the hardware difficulties or server overload (and wasn't there a similar discussion recently?). Thanks, Kosebamse 05:13, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)
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 found General Government 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 General Government. 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 General Government, then list the two existing articles for deletion. Comments? Adam 07:22, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
A colon in a link in a definition list doesn't work. Can the software be changed to chnage the priority so that a : within [[ ]] doesn't start the second half of the definition entry. This is a problem with any of Wikipedia:... or User:...
Am I the only one who has trouble doing word and article searches? Often it seems I search a word or phrase, looking for an article, and I come up blank two or three times. But if I persist, sometimes I come up with an article. What's up with that? It's not so urgent when checking for existing articles on, say, Penis-melting Zionist robot combs. But on more common subjects it's a problem. Also, when are we going to have full search capabilities? Paul Klenk 01:45, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
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)
I have this problem too, IE5.0 on Win98. I first raised it when section edit was introduced and I think they may be related. I looked at SourceForge and couldn't find an open problem record there, but that might well be my not knowing how to look. I'm happy to raise it there myself, please don't delete this from the pump until we do get a SourceForge record raised or identified. Andrewa 23:30, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Please do raise it. Martin 21:25, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Argh, trying again with title and sig. I'm really sorry.
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 to Page History 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 Page History. 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 Page History 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.
O. Pen Sauce
--
O. Pen Sauce 06:49, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I just stumpified an entry (the one for " yogi"). But it deserved stumpification (the word is a mere variation of another word which IS fully fleshed out in its own entry). I made a case for my action on the "discuss the page" page. I did NOT add the boilerplate inviting others to fill out the stump. Did I handle this correctly? O. Pen Sauce 06:40, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The article Richard Neustadt has more linked text than plain text, and to me looks like a Las Vegas billboard. Too many dates are wikified. It looks very ugly! Does anyone else agree? -- Viajero 14:33, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)~
Brion was kind enough to prepare me with some listings of articles and broken links and I wrote a program to find broken links that appear to be related to an existing article. It's not 100% accurate and there are some conflicts, so humans are needed to figure out what's valid and what's not. I found some 1678 articles that could be linked from 2073 different broken links. When done with this list, I believe a good 1000-1500 broken links will be turned into valid and useful redirects. (Ha, everyone who said I was a rabid deletionist is proven wrong!)
Right now, the list is just based on middle names which I have noticed to be a frequent cause of broken links. However, I'll probably write some more complicated programs to find other near-matches if this turns out well.
Anyway, I could use some help. The list is located at User:Daniel Quinlan/redirects. Please follow the convention for noting when a broken link cannot be connected to an article (other than that, the page shouldn't really need to be edited aside from questions, notes, etc.) and have fun. Daniel Quinlan 06:46, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)
Bmills 12:14, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I just added a new section to Talk: Opera (browser). I did this by clicking the [edit] link for the last section and manually editing the URL in my address bar, replacing the section number (1 as it happens) with "new". When I saved the addition, the new section was there, but it had the same number as the previous section! The [edit] link has the correct section number hidden under it. I've tried refreshing but it doesn't seem to want to change. Is it appearing the same to everyone else or is it just me? If it is real, then is this a bug with my Browser or with Wikipedia? Waaaah! Phil 12:04, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)
deleted - resolved
Any informaion about en2.wikipedia.org? It is far faster than en or www though. -- Taku 02:39, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)
maybe i am out of the loop....is the Sarah Lane article for real? It looks like a joke to me, but then I looked at the page history. It has been around for a while, and names i recognize have edited it. what is the story of Sarah Lane? Kingturtle 07:45, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
is anyone else finding Wikipedia eben slower than usual at the moment? Adam
This is probably a very silly question. But is the ban limited to the English Wikipedia? There is someone with a quite similar IP:address doing quite active editing at meta... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 17:28, Oct 31, 2003 (UTC)
Now why does "in the hopes of attracting his attention." have a distinctly ominous ring to it? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 15:23, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)
wikipedia is sooooo slow tonight. i just had to vent for a moment. it is really frustrating. and can get demoralizing sometimes. alas. Kingturtle 11:51, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
When exactly will the new hardware be working? G-Man 19:37, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I tried moving Mysterious Play to Fushigi Yuugi (the term all Enlish speaking fans use), after moving Fushigi Yuugi to Fushigi Yuugi:temp (and then Fushigi Yuugi2) in order to make it a redirect page with no history, but it gives me an error, telling me that the page already exists, or the name is invalid. Please help. -- Khym Chanur 02:40, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)
Is there anyone who would know the name of a decent (understand something that I can understand -> easy) IRC soft for macintosh, OS 9 (very important, not X).
Thanks
This William Crowther page is all wonky. It seems like it might be a legit topic, if it lost the BBS tone, but I don't know enough about net history or spelunking to dare an edit. Not sure what do about it, so came here.
Wikipedia is now unbelievably fast, and it's all thanks to Brion. Some pages are served from pliny, some are served from larousse, and no-one should notice the difference, except for the blindingly fast response. -- Tim Starling 03:47, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)
Except that I'm having an odd problem where when I click on some links (not even most of them), I just get a blank page unless I Refresh. RickK 03:56, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'll let you know if it happens again. RickK 04:09, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)~
I can't seem to stay logged in. I know, I know, report it to Sourceforge. -- Cyan ( 65.92.245.155 04:41, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC))
I'm using Opera 6.0, settings are wide open, I think... doesn't work from IE v5.5 either. -- Cyan ( 65.92.245.155 04:55, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC))
I mean it works if i click the Remember password between sessions, but i don't like to do that. -- 218.19.141.3 05:27, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I cleared out my cookies. No dice. I can't get at my preferences, since I log out instantly. -- Cyan ( 65.92.240.192 05:38, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC))
I would like to suggest an augmentation of the TOC to allow sub-headings to be hidden whilst leaving higher-level headings visible (at the moment the only option is to have the TOC visible or not; some are very long with meny levels and it would be good to be able to reduce the number of choices visible without hiding it totally; Characters in the Wheel of Time series is a relatively brief example). Each TOC has a [hide] link next to the caption. I would suggest having further links ([1], [2], ... up to the maximum level visible) to hide all but the selected heading. Is this the proper forum to discuss my suggestion? Am I the first to suggest such a thing? Phil 09:34, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)
I just finished editing Islam and fixing some of the dozens of typos and nonsensical sentences that permeate that article. When I submitted my changes, I was informed that someone had made an edit in the meantime, forcing me to spend another five minutes laboriously scrolling up and down, adding in my changes again. I submitted the new changes and found that someone had wiped out an entire section of the original article in the meantime. I gave up and lost all my edits.
So what are my options here? Either I can submit my changes every thirty seconds, filling up the article history with inane trivia, or wonder why Wiki isn't smart enough to combine simple changes. It could at least have some feature to save the endless scrolling up and down while reinserting my changes. -- silsor 00:16, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
See MeatBall:MergingAutomatically. Martin 20:38, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'm sure this comes up regularly - but where to start looking for answers? I want to use extended character sets to display diacritics for Sanskrit and Pali terms. Things like 7747 = ṃ (an m with a dot underneath = anusvara). Trouble is that it degrades to a square gliph without specifying a unicode font. I can get vowels with macrons OK, but it's the retroflex consonants and the anusvara that are problematic. Is it possible/desirable to specify fonts in Wikipedia? I think it's important to have the diacritics, although some general works leave them out, but without them the words are different! Mahaabaala 12:40, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I find it somewhat inconsistent. E.g. Some insist that Danzig should be used instead of Polish Gdansk whenever majority of population was German or when city was part of German states. OTOH, trhoughout the encyclopedia only Vilnius is used instead of Wilno. The same is with L'viv and Lviv used almost consitently instead of Lwow or Lwów. Did that means that policy is to use German names whenever possible and local names in other cases????!? szopen
FWIW, this isn't only a Polish issue either. Ukrainians want to use Kyiv as the name of the city usually known in English as Kiev, considering the latter, as a transliteration from Russian, to be an offensive relic of Russian imperialism. However, Kiev is by far the more common English name, so there is disagreement over whether "common, but possibly offensive" or "official, but very uncommon" should take precedence. See also Talk:Kolkata for previous discussion of Calcutta vs. Kolkata and related. -- Delirium 23:57, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)
I can't seem to establish the article R.J. Rummel at that place and a redirect from Rudolph J. Rummel to R.J. Rummel. Edits I do at one of those seem to be duplicated at the other. As can be seen in the Recent Changes, I only edited one of them with the summary "what is going on here?". But that summary appears in the histories of both! -- Wik 06:19, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)
Now the history seems to be lost. Also, I have this double entry in my watchlist:
(diff) (hist) . . R.J. Rummel; 07:27 . . Wik (Talk) (diff) (hist) . . R.J. Rummel; 07:27 . . Wik (Talk)
Clicking on either of the (diff)s gives an error. -- Wik 06:35, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)
I just found a very similar bug, however not related to moving. According to the User contributions there were two edits on Aachtopf, however the history of the only shows one. And for admins the older one even shows the "rollback" button, so I guess there are two database entries for this article as well. andy 12:01, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
# 10:35, Nov 4, 2003 Lines (804 bytes) . . 212.72.200.242 # 10:33, Nov 4, 2003 Lines (808 bytes) . . 212.72.200.242
Protest of Zofia Kossak-Szczucka is a duplicate as well. And before the it was added the second time I could not see the first instance of that article, that polish text only showed up on when the second instance was created. Another side note - the above mentioned Achtopf also misses one article which links to it, probably because the database links that one to the first instance. And still more pages with this problem: Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, Cynthia Horner
Those articles which were not fully created at first and haven't been resubmitted then create the following error message:
The database did not find the text of a page that it should have found, named "Miguel Bosé". This is usually caused by following an outdated diff or history link to a page that has been deleted. If this is not the case, you may have found a bug in the software. Please report this to an administrator, making note of the URL.
andy 16:18, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Has anyone tried to delete the deletion log page? Does it just create itself again? Poor Yorick
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)
The reason why evolution creates better things is because advantageous mutations are retained, while disadvantageous mutations are removed. The wiki process that creates an article is somewhat analogous, so there is little danger that articles of true quality will disappear entirely, although they may undergo superficial alterations. It's not quite as bad as all that. -- Cyan 19:35, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
-- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 05:31, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)
We have been receiving more complaints than usual at Islam and I would to take the opportunity to request for detailed analysis and assessment of this article or possibly related ones as well. Besides neutrality in dispute, we have an exterior link also disputed. The website 'fruitofislam' was removed, reinstated and later removed again. The site URL is available through the history page and was introduced: 19:37, 31 Oct 2003 by 24.96.57.18 The contributor who implemented this peculiar site also made some questionable edits. Is the site NPOV and should it be an exterior link for the Wiki article Islam? Please discuss at Talk:Islam. Take care. Usedbook 11:55, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Why does this not make a bolded italic? Also, either break this page into smaller sections, or start adding new stuff to the top so people don't have to load the whole page in order to add something. Please respond on my talk page, this page is not something I can access easily. Lirath Q. Pynnor
Could some sysop delete Jim Bolger please. James Brendan Bolger needs to be moved there. Thanks. -- Wik 07:02, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)
Done. Dysprosia 07:05, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I have been debating for months whether to do this list or not. I decided to post my query here based on the limited encyclopedic value I think it would have: Any autograph collector could look up the list and find out if a celebrity who is in town likes signing autographs or not. I have vast experience in this field, I am an autograph collector myself.
Like I said, the value would be limited, but that value makes me wonder. Antonio Megacrazy Martin
can you help me identify a NYC artists? His water color was given to my wife's grandfather, then to her by her grandmother. The signature seems to read Gaylwing , the picture is of a large pear shaped cop with a brace and bit at a ballpark fence. please help Larry Borkowski larrybhi@bellsouth.net
Is Sesame Street really more important than the end of World War I?
Is Sesame Street really more important than the end of World War I?
Can someone reduce the width of the United Kingdom and Niue tables to be like the rest of them? -- Jiang
Has anyone seen this? Aplank 17:59, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'd like to ask for broader comment on a discussion going on on the British House of Commons page. The debate hinges on whether the page about the House of Commons in London should be called British House of Commons or United Kingdom House of Commons. It seems that everyone agrees that the House of Commons in question is part of the government of the United Kingdom, but some assert that the page should nonetheless be called British because it is often (erroneously) called that. The convention of naming the article by its most common correct term, not necessarily the official one, is cited to justify that. My concern is that Britain is only part of the United Kingdom, and it is factually incorrect and misleading to title the article British. Comment would be appreciated on that page since there are implications for many other articles. 2toise 05:13, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
My concern with "UK" is that there is a Scottish one too, right? This is their web page: "The House of Commons is part of the United Kingdom Parliament." Speaking as an American, I think it's silly to call it anything other than plain old "House of Commons" in the article. They were first, it's quite unambigous, etc. There should be another article entitled United Kingdom Parliament, etc. For the article itself, I would recommend House of Commons (United Kingdom). Daniel Quinlan 06:46, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Both were established by acts of the House of Commons in Wesminster -> actually the were passed by the Queen-in-Parliament, ie passed by the House of Commons and Lords and given the Royal Assent by HM the Queen. The House of Commons cannot pass Acts, merely Bills, which cannot purely by being passed by the House of Commons become Acts. FearÉIREANN 00:04, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Then again, the U.S. articles are all named United States House of Representatives or Supreme Court of the United States or similar. (What I said about the references inside the article itself still stands.) Daniel Quinlan 06:57, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
My two cents is that the article should be listed under United Kingdom House of Commons as I think official names should be the default in situations like this. I'd list British House of Commons as a redirect. However, I'd generally use "British" rather than "United Kingdom" as the adjective form in articles; it's the common term in general usage and much less unwieldy.
That is a false argument based on a historical and linguistic misconception. Many states have adjective forms of their name. Some do not. In the case of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, British is universally used and has been continually throughout the variety of states that have existed in that geographic region. In modern geo-political terms, British was used initially from October 1604 to describe the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, which in the previous year had come to share the same sovereign, James VI/I. It owned its origins to James's unsuccessful attempt to create a single name for his separate kingdoms. That name he chose was Great Brittaine. Great Britain because the formal state name following the 1707 Act of Union of Scotland and England. In 1801 a new state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was formed. (James had used the perscriptive, not descriptive term united kingdom as early as 1604.) In 1922, most of Ireland left the kingdom, and the new truncated state was renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Through every state from 1604 to the present day, (ie. England and Scotland separate with a shared king, Great Britain, the UK of GB and I, then the UK of GB and NI) the term British has been used as the adjective form of the state, whatever its nomenclature, in 99% of cases. Queen Anne is recorded as a British Queen, as is Queen Elizabeth II. (Some commonwealth states used to refer to "His Brittanic Majesty") Every prime minister without exception has been known when defined by state mostly as British prime minister, with the alternative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom used largely only in formal legal documentation (eg, treaties). The monarchy since James VI/I has been regularly called the British monarchy, the House of Commons the British House of Commons. The media is referred to as the British media. Sports stars are referred to British athletes/footballers/ etc. David Beckham is called a British football player, except when seen in terms of international soccer when he described as English.
A linguistic distinction exists between British/Britain, which is used to refer to the entire kingdom, and Great British/Great Britain, which is used to refer to the island that contains England, Scotland and Wales, and is used as such in the name of he UK, ie, the United Kingdom of Great Britain (the island) and Northern Ireland (a territory off the island of GB). To use Great British PM would be wrong as there is no PM in the Island of GB, not is there a queen of GB. But using British as the adjective form of United Kingdom is standard, not least because it allows for a degree of continuity between the often changing names by which the British state was known since the separate states on Great Britain were first constitutionally linked ago. United Kingdom is also problematical given that there have in fact been 2 UKs, one from 1800 to 1922, one from 1927 to the present (and confusion between 1922 and 1927). Following the flawed logic of 2toise, one could not have a list of British Prime Ministers, for example, but three lists; GB (up to 1800), UK of GB+I (1801-1920s), UK of GB + NI (1920s - present), no list of British monarchs, but 3 lists, no lists of famous British people, but three lists, etc etc. And so one would have articles called
Oh and
Logically if one was to follow the policy of accurate absolutism 2toise seems to want, you would have to rewrite much of wikipedia - one could not talk about Australia before 1900 as there were six states, not one. Italy could not be used before Italian unification in the 1870s, Germany would be limited to after the creation of the German Empire. And of course, President of the United States would also have to go, as to use the correct state nomenclature, every link would have to be President of the United States of America.
Wikipedia police is clear - according to our naming conventions and Manual of Style,
According to google searches;
All the evidence shows that Britain is
United Kingdom is
One final point: Northern Ireland Unionists insist that they are British, not Great British, because as they openly admit they couldn't be the latter as they don't live in Great Britain (the island), but in Britain (the state), formally known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So clearly using British as the adjective form of UK is the solution that follows general usage, international usage and wikipedia's own rules. Using United Kingdom in adjective form involves ignoring general usage, accepted usage worldwide and breaking wikipedia's own rules on the matter. FearÉIREANN 22:35, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Morven is absolutely correct. As to British not being "universally used" in adjective form it is a fact that it is. As to the British House of Commons link, that should have been piped. As to the current correct name argument, OK, so you want to rename the British House of Commons article as United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland House of Commons? That is what your argument requires. United Kingdom is not the correct name but a generalised shortened version, as you will see if you look at treaties signed in the state's name. So if you want accuracy, it has to be that! As to the we need to temper common usage when the commonly used term is unreasonably misleading argument that is completely irrelevant. British is not "unreasonably misleading". It has been used as the adjective version of various British states for 399 years. Calling The Netherlands "Holland" is misleading. Calling France "the Kingdom of France" would be misleading. Calling Northern Ireland "Ulster" is misleading. Using the standard adjective form of a name, used worldwide by billions of people, including the British (BTW what do you suggest calling the British then? United Kingdomish?) is common sense and follows wikipedia's rules on name use to the letter and the spirit. Your suggestion does neither. As to the British Parliamentary website, that is completely irrelevant, and I'm surprised you use it. Of course they use the most formal title. All official sites do that. That is not evidence of anything. Why does Tony Blair have international press releases issued that call him the "British Prime Minister" if the "British" bit was so wrong. I simply cannot understand your determination to push an illogical, factually inaccurate agenda that breaks wikipedia's own rules to produce article titles that will be no more accurate, just less accessible and less likely to show up in google searches, given that most of the planet will use British in searches, whether you want them to or not. FearÉIREANN 23:20, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Clearly, the correct approach according to Wikipedia precedent with American which is similarly problematic for a few editors (although because it may be too inclusive, not because it may be too exclusive) is to clarify every single usage of "British" and replace with "UK citizen" or "of the UK" since it can be confusing. UKian would be the best option if only people would use that term instead of British. We should also create a new page named Alternate words for British and list any alternative words that have been constructed to raise awareness of the issue and it can be linked from various possibly offensively-titled articles where "British" has to be retained for some pathetic reason. Basically, a few people might find it offensive, so it doesn't matter what common usage dictates. Daniel Quinlan 23:35, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
But this would also be wrong. There is no such thing as United Kingdom Citizenship, there is British Citizenship - see the British Nationality Act 1981, or the article on British Nationality Law. 2toise is, quite simply, flogging a dead horse; he is just plain wrong in his arguments. -- Arwel 23:45, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
See Talk:Alternate words for British.
When searching for public domain images, I often find the note: "All images on this page are believed to be public domain." Would you consider such a note as sufficient to include the images in Wikipedia, or should I regard the word "believed" as a warning not to touch these images? Example: [1]. -- Baldhur 08:17, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
wikipedia:image use policy/copyright
When searching for public domain images, I often find the note: "All images on this page are believed to be public domain." Would you consider such a note as sufficient to include the images in Wikipedia, or should I regard the word "believed" as a warning not to touch these images? Example: [2]. -- Baldhur 08:17, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Whatever you decide to do, say what you did on the wikipedia:image description page. Personally, I would have no real qualms about using such images, provided I made the uncertainties explicit in the image description page, unless I had some reason to doubt that they were in fact public domain. Martin 18:20, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Without mentioning names, does anyone agree or disagree that these sentences are incorrect grammar and punctuation?
I contend all four are only made correct by removing each and every comma. Daniel Quinlan 02:03, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC) (Oops, I should add that the third sentence is missing a "than something", so it is doubly ungrammatical. Daniel Quinlan 02:08, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC))
I've (sigh) grown used to Wikipedia timing out just when I've reached the peak of boredom, but now I'm finding every page I try to go to is fine except
Recent changes. Is that sort of situation common? The text box here is also responding quite slowly; SimpleText isn't. I'm not demanding someone fix this, I'm just trying to see if there's an explanation. --
Calieber 20:29, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)
The sluggishness is probably just length -- now that I'm just editing in this section rather than the whole page it's fine. -- Calieber 20:31, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)
I must be stupid, but I can't seem to find the "Post a comment" feature on talk pages. All I see are the usual "Main Page|Recent changes|Edit this page|..." links in the header, as well as "Edit this page|View article|..." links in the footer, as well as the sidebar links. "Edit this page" never shows me a "Subject/headline" box, just the text area, Summary box, "Minor edit" and "Watch this page" checkboxes, and Save and Preview buttons. What am I doing wrong? Tjunier 12:48, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
In the Standard skin it's in the navagation page on the left of the screen just under Edit this page. Bmills 12:53, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- I had something like this the other day. I went playing with my preferences and eventually went back to set Standard as the skin, but found I had no navagation pane. I went back to Preferences and found that the skin had reverted. It took three or four attempts before it would stick with Standard, but when it did the pane was there alright. Bmills 13:42, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Well finally it was a matter of preferences (unfortunately I had some trouble just finding the prefs page, since the link wasn't there :-). Now everything seems to be working. Thanks for your time! Tjunier 13:40, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I just stumbled on the infinitely tedious collection of articles about Gundam, an anime series. Somebody is creating detailed, albeit not very coherent, plot synopses about every single series: It could swamp the server all by itself ... (Not that I think anything can be done about it, since editing them all into coherence would be an inhuman task. I just wanted to spout.) -- DavidWBrooks 01:27, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
See also: wikipedia:check your fiction and m:Kill the Stub Pages
Hi, how can I get in touch with the appropriate person for image rights and clearance. We're interested in featuring the wikipedia story in a book and international touring exhbition - in the section devoted to info/software. Please advise asap. Thank you!
Jennifer 416-260-5777 x234 leonard@brucemaudesign.com
Quite some time ago I stumbled upon images uploaded by User:Renato Caniatti, when I noticed that all of them are orphans here. Later I found that those images aren't real orphans, but are used in the italian wikipedia included with html, not the image links I know here. I asked Renato about it, and today he answered that it is not possible to upload images on the italian wikipedia, and thus he uses the english one for storage. As I had no interaction with the old software - is that true? I don't think that the way he includes images to it: is a good one as it will break when someone checks the orphan images here, or once the policy of not using external images in wikicode is enforced, but what is the better way? Wait with images till it: gets converted to MediaWiki? andy 21:49, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Bmills 12:14, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
We have lots of vandalism from Spanish nacionalists and others. We need ban them, but how? I have the password that let me to delete pages. ¿Is the same that let ban de people? Have I to request another password or I have to visit an other page with the same password? Thanks. Llull 10:12, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Brion was kind enough to prepare me some listings of articles and broken links and I wrote a program to find broken links that appear to be related to an already existing article. It's not 100% accurate and there are some conflicts, so humans are needed to figure out what's valid and what's not. I found some 1678 articles that could be linked from 2073 different broken links. When done with this list, I believe a good 500 broken links will be turned into valid and useful redirects. (Ha, everyone who said I was a rabid deletionist is proven wrong!)
Right now, the list is just based on middle names which I have noticed to be a frequent cause of broken links. However, I'll probably write some more complicated programs to find other near-matches if this turns out well.
Anyway, I could use some help. The lists (it's broken into two sub-pages now) is located at User:Daniel Quinlan/redirects. Please follow the convention for noting when a broken link cannot be connected to an article (other than that, the page shouldn't really need to be edited aside from questions, notes, etc.) and have fun. I've already done about 70 or so, but need to sleep now. Daniel Quinlan 06:46, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)
Update: there are even more lists of broken links now. Daniel Quinlan 07:50, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)
Could someone help me there? I feel really puzzled what is going on. Steps to reproduce:
What went wrong there? Przepla 23:34, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Having been contributing to Wikipedia:Cleanup for a bit more than a week, I have come to value it. Much to my amazement, I have seen a few miserable-looking stubs (which I would have voted to delete on VfD) blossom into real articles, and it has given me renewed appreciation of the way WP works. Listing pages on Cleanup gives newbies a chance to improve stubby articles they've submitted, without fear of the axe, as well as stimulating others to help out.
However, I am slightly disappointed to see that several articles are now listed in both Cleanup and VfD, meaning the two pages are working to some degree at cross-purposes. There also seems to be more activity at VfD, but that is not surprising since it has been around a lot longer, and, obviously, it is much easier to simply vote on an article than actually roll up one's sleeves and improve it.
Is there anyway we could improve the coordination between the two pages? I think it would be desirable if all questionable articles were first parked on Cleanup for a week or two, and if they don't improve only then moved to VfD for a potential coup de grâce. This would probably require some kind of date stamping on Cleanup, which it doesn't as yet have.
Anway, I hope more people lend a hand at Cleanup; there is lots to do. -- Viajero 14:43, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I have noticed that there are a lot of one-sentence stubs for mythological figures, especially non-Greek myths (but even then there are a lot). Shouldn't they be merged into the respective mythology articles? Limu, for example. Limu is listed on Polynesian mythology, but it seems to me that it would make more sense to write about him on the mythology page. Adam Bishop 07:20, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Michael Shields just made me aware of the fact there are two different styles advised for formatting the "See also:" section. In Wikipedia:Manual of Style, a simple, unitalicised version is 'declared' the standard. While Wikipedia:Boilerplate text advises to italicise "See also:". We should definately have one standard. What are your preferrences? Why? What about bullet lists? (I don't like them but quite a few people use them) -- snoyes 22:26, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Is there a way to get rid of the "you've new messages"? I've already visited my talk page, and it still persists. Poor Yorick
I want to make an article that lists songs that tribute other musicians by referencing those musicians. For example:
But what I need is a solid name for the article...something like List of songs that tribute other musicians by referencing those musicians....but something that will leave no doubt what it is about while not be overly complicated.
thanks Kingturtle 01:20, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I was wondering if there was a standard adult warning for article links? should editors just put in "Warning, contains adult material" after the link? and what about offensive content (which some may view adultcontent as)? any feed back would be appreciated .. reddi
There has been an excessive amount of discussion on this point at Wikipedia talk:Content disclaimer. Read and be damned. Martin 02:23, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hey folks, I just wanted to ask for the community's help on this. I'm intimately involved with the Diebold issue, as a co-plaintiff in the EFF's lawsuit, and a founding member of the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons which was one of the first student pages to host the memos. I'd like to expand the Diebold article to reflect the recent events that my friends and I have been involved in, and I'd like to fill out the "wishful thinking" link to an SCDC article that I found on that page. However, I want to be careful about stepping over the line of writing about myself and rehashing the Boyer controversy. Could people look at the sources and tell me whether either of these actions would be a good idea? I've read Wikipedia:Auto-biography, and I think the first case falls under the acceptable category of "writing on subjects close to your heart", and I think that filling in the empty link to an SCDC article may be borderline acceptable as I found the link already in existence, but I would like some feedback. -- Nelson 04:45, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
How should I deal with these two articles: Second Skin && Second skin, the content are different, but the titles are alike! :O -- FallingInLoveWithPitoc 03:01, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I have an ancient wiki history question. What does it mean when the Conversion script is listed as the first author of a page? Was the actual attribution to the original author lost forever? Maximus Rex 05:48, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I have been debating for months within myself whether to do this list or not. I decided to post my query here based on the limited encyclopedic value I think it would have: Any autograph collector could look up the list and find out if a celebrity who is in town likes signing autographs or not. I have vast experience in this field, I am an autograph collector myself.
Like I said, the value would be limited, but that value makes me wonder. Antonio Megacrazy Martin
OK- I didn't know where else to ask this question. I recently looked at my watchlist, and someone had made an edit at Saved by the Bell, where they had done almost nothing except to change "favorite" to "favourite". Is there a convention about this sort of thing? A quick search reveals a few articles that are particularly troubling, they feature both spellings: e.g. Chateau Chenonceaux - DropDeadGorgias 22:06, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I think that it all depends on the writer's accent. Favorite or Favourite, whatever. It means the same. -- Antonio Graphic sexaholic Martin
Could some kindly developer update Wikipedia:Most-edited talk pages, preferably removing Talk:Main Page from consideration? Tuf-Kat 19:32, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)
Hi,
I removed some text from Bar association that I found questionable, and that seems to be a rehashing on the urban myth that the word "testimony" was based on an ancient Roman practice of holding one's gonads and swearing on them.
I cannot confirm that the text is false, can anyone help?
Thanks! -- Pakaran 18:46, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I have noticed that some Wikipedians have added sub-pages underneath their main user page to hold a personal sand-box, to do list etc etc. But I couldn't find anything about this in any of the help pages or FAQs. So I have two questions ...
Gandalf61 12:05, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)
I noticed that people are getting seriously sloppy with the guidelines on protecting pages. We are all human (Ghu knows I have made my share of mistakes). Please remember that protecting a page should always be done by an uninvolved party (even if it is your own user page); I'll try to remember that too. Just ask someone else to do it for you. As you likely have a good case for the protection of the page, getting another sysop shouldn't be so hard. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 23:57, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)
I agree. User:Viajero's protection of the ever controversial Mother Teresa article to stop User:Aplank's edits (which others were reverting) is a case in point. Viajero had been a participant in the debate over weeks and so was not a neutral person to do the protecting. FearÉIREANN 00:04, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I protected my User page, and intend to keep it protected. It was the subject of far too much vandalism. I don't think anyone but the User should be able to edit their own User page anyway, but that's my opinion, YMMV. I agree in principle to not protecting pages you're involved with, but I believe doing it to your User page is different. RickK 23:38, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Edit history for Fungus says that User:Kingturtle made an edit on the 9th of November. I object to that edit, and I left a comment on his talk page requesting that he revert it. He has not replied to my message, but the most interesting thing is that the edit does not appear in his user contributions page. - Smack 21:42, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
What's 4Reference.net? It appears to be a dynamic copier of Wikipedia, which reformats the article (badly), and adds "This article courtesy of Wikipedia", a reference to the GFDL, and an advertisement. orthogonal 01:59, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
wow, I commend whomever was involved in the latest magic that gave us such great speed on Wikipedia. I've been around these parts for nearly 10 months and this is by far the greatest access-speed I've ever experienced. thanks again to all involved! Kingturtle 18:59, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
An aside: google notices. But worth it. Martin 19:39, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Is there a Wikipedia consesus on the use of first-letter-capitalized or first-letter-uncapitalized "black" when referring to persons of that race/ethnicity? Is it "noted Black author W. E. B. DuBois" or is it "noted black author W. E. B. DuBois", or is there no consesus?
Also, what about white/White when referring to race/ethnicity?
On a tangential note, spaces or not after initials in names: "W. E. B. DuBois" or "W.E.B. DuBois", "P. A. M. Dirac" or "P.A.M. Dirac"? orthogonal 20:05, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It's my (hopelessly uninformed) understanding that caps belong on proper nouns (and initials, sentence starts...). So I'd say:
I'm consistently reverted on all of these, so plainly plenty of folks don't agree with me. -- Finlay McWalter 23:18, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Re - black vs African-American. It reminds me of a story about a US TV presenter interviewing Nelson Mandela who worked for a company that threatened anyone who called someone black with immediate dismissal. She wanted to ask Mandella "so how does it feel to be South Africa's first black president?" but couldn't. So ended up asking the South African statesman "how does it feel to be South Africa's first . . . em . . . eh . . . . em . . . African American president?" Mandela's comment on such ridiculous Political Correctness after the show was finished, was apparently rather sharp. FearÉIREANN 23:41, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I think "black" can be used in most cases, but if the person has used another term that is generally accepted such as "African-American", we should use that instead. I'd be careful about how it's mentioned, though. Some black authors might rather be known first as authors. Mentioning race in the first sentence of only articles for people who are non-white is very POV. W.E.B. DuBois is known as a black author, so it would be okay in his case, but just be careful. Daniel Quinlan 23:27, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)
P.S. I believe it's "black" or "white" (lower case) and "African-American" (upper case since it's based on place/country names). Daniel Quinlan 23:28, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)
Nationalities are always capitalized, "british" is plain wrong. (That's an error often made by some Germans here - I can't count how often I have changed "german" to "German".) As to black, you could treat it in the same way (though the implications might be problematic, since there is no one "Black race" etc.), but it's more often used just like a colour, i.e. uncapitalized. -- Wik 00:09, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Strictly speaking, black and white are adjectives describing colour, while Black and White are ethnic/racial designations. But in practice both forms are used and I don't think WP should try to make either of them mandatory. But we certainly should ban Caucasian, which is based on a long-discredited racial theory. Caucasians are people from the Caucasus. Adam 01:14, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
We use 'Black' and 'White' (I work in the British public sector). Caucasian is bizarre (is this person from Armenia?). We subcategorise black into Black African and Black Caribbean (two different communities). You sometimes see Black British used. Secretlondon 12:27, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
From my experience in American English, Caucasian can be to describe someone of primarily European descent very clinically. But it really depends on context. When authors use the word 'black' as a adjective to describe a person, are they using it in the context of describing their ancestry, their physical or cultural characteristics, or place of origin? Thunderbolt16 05:25, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The American Anthropological Association (AAA)
recommends black instead of Black.
silsor 20:14, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
See Talk:British House of Commons. (I moved it the originating site). A much smaller list can be made here of official UK Government uses of the term British House of Commons. There are none. 2toise 00:38, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Darned thing doesn't remember my password, nor does it remember that I told it to remember my password. Why?????
Tualha 05:16, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Now it does. Who knows...
Tualha 05:52, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Ah. If I close all windows and come back, it keeps me logged in. If I close the browser (Opera 6), it doesn't.
Tualha 05:54, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Nope, it's still doing it. I tried clearing out the cookies, didn't help :( It's not clearing cookies between sessions; they were there, and LWN, for example, works fine.
FWIW, the cookies listed in my cookie manager seem to be empty...
Tualha 21:44, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Hmm, now there are cookies there. wikidbUserID and wikidbUserName. Still doesn't work, though.
Tualha 21:54, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Oh, good grief. I checked the "keep password" box in the login page and now everything works fine. I kept overlooking that one. It's the one in preferences that's broken. Sorry for the wild goose chase.
Tualha 22:24, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Just occurred to me, there's a bright side: my password is now firmly embedded in my memory :)
Tualha 14:48, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
I'm not sure to be pleased or worried that my Arborealoids has survived 24 hours without being deleted or even questioned. This little experiment does seem to confirm my suspicion that a great deal of nonsense sneaks its way into Wikipedia undetected. On the other hand, it's no sillier than Reptilian humanoid, from which it draws inspiration. Adam 11:11, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I moved the article to
Wikipedia:Arborealoids so people can take a look. Right after I did that, someone redeleted it (as I was planning to do, actually, since I don't think we need or want to leave invalid information in the main article space for this discussion).
Daniel Quinlan 11:32, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Well I'm flattered that you all think my stuff is so wonderful that it doesn't need to be checked. I guess I've blown my gold-star rating. But Bmills is right - I actually started Arborealoids not to expose WP's procedures but to draw attention to Reptilian humanoid and all of Khranus's other garbage, which discredits WP more than a dozen joke articles. Adam 11:58, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Or perhaps that I am a reptoid. Adam 13:45, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I spotted Arborealoids on 11th Novemeber, but chose not to recommend for deletion because it was just so damn funny! Mind you, I'm also a regular watcher of Reptilian humanoids (which must give me about 8/10 for insanity). DJ Clayworth 20:54, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
See also the Protocols of the Elderberries of Zion (awaiting development). Adam
Has anyone seen this? Aplank 17:59, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It certainly seems to be the right place for Aplank to write his article Mother Teresa was a model of piety and virtue whom nobody may criticise. Adam 03:36, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
My first SPOV article: John Howard Adam 08:24, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
If you look at their "Recent Changes" page you will see that Fred Bauder is writing the entire encyclopaedia himself. I hope he doesn't forget Reptilian humanoids. Adam 09:49, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Do not revert the same page twice in the same day
Words to wiki by. See Wikipedia talk:How to revert a page to an earlier version. Martin 21:19, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Are we having image upload issues again? (See Betty Friedan). - Hephaestos 16:44, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Malcolm mentions a film from the '80's called Loose Shoes. I remember it well! Can you tell me where I can get a copy, either VT or DVD? I live in the UK. Thanks
I am trying to find out what Native Americans were around the Mill Creek area in Bulloch County. We have found numerous arrowheads and pottery peices nearby...
As far as I know, there is not yet an article describing the Israel security wall. I was going to add something to Wikipedia:Requested articles, but I don't know what to call the article...
Suggestions? Kingturtle 08:00, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
This is the kind of thing I love trying. I wrote a perl script to find most common 2 and 3 word combinations on news.google.com and google.com using the top 100 hits using the search terms Israel and wall OR fence OR barrier OR partition OR divider OR enclosure OR fortification OR palisade.
Based on that, I'd say "wall", "fence", or "barrier".
"Israel security fence" looks good. "Israel security wall" might be best by single word frequency. I guess "Israel-Palestine" wall might be okay for the first part, but I don't see that often. Palestine ain't building the wall, so tht would not be my inclination.
Daniel Quinlan 08:46, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)
My stats were of news sites via news.google.com, and that included a good number of (English web) Arabic news sites. I still think Israel security wall or Israel security fence are best, but I could live with Israel security barrier since barrier was also a relatively common word used to describe the structure. Daniel Quinlan 21:32, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)
Well I started an article at Israel security fence since it doesn't seem like anyone else has yet. -- Merphant 00:57, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
moved to Talk:Israeli security fence
Could someone point me out to the page of banned users ? I need the little text, with reference to Jimbo, and possibility for the banned user to fill an application of forgiveness from him. Anthère 01:33, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Its listed in "Special pages". See: Special:Ipblocklist WhisperToMe 01:36, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Daniel Quinlan is adding loads of "Accuracy disputes without explanation. I think he is using an automated script because of the speed - is this vandalism? -- 213.122.126.91 09:32, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
If Khranus has been banned for posting ridiculous articles, doesn't it follow that those articles should now be deleted? Does anyone really think that Reptilian humanoid can be turned into a useful article? Delete the lot, I say. Adam 10:05, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It's interesting...the article on the Dogon, at first glance, looks like blatant nonsense. People named the Dogon, whose religion involves Sirius the Dog Star? And their neighbors are the Bozo? Trash it!
But a little googling reveals that there is indeed such a tribe living in Mali, with that religion and those neighbors. Thousands of pages found.
Goes to show...
Tualha 02:46, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
Is it possible to link to a non http external link? I want to link to
rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/news/olmedia/n5ctrl/events03/uk_pol/cons/leadership/nb_newsnightiv.rm
(a video clip) but the Wiki parser doesn't like it...
Evercat 02:01, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
As a newbie, I'm not sure of the procedure for adding pages to votes for deletion, so I'm moving this here from there:
If anyone is interrested, I did an analysis of all the anonymous edits in half a day to see what proportion were vandalisms, and what proportion of those were not corrected. Have a look at my user page (under "Stats on anon editors"). -- snoyes 18:10, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
How can I stay logged in for longer than (whatever the default) is? I'm finding that I'm editing articles only to later notice I'm not logged in. I dislike this because it makes me less accountable. orthogonal 17:53, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Can I use posters of movies here? -- FallingInLoveWithPitoc 11:52, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
See Talk:Historical anniversaries/Example. -- mav 10:00, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)~
Hello,
I ran the RobBot on the french wikipedia for the last 4 days. It generated logs for a lot of interwiki missing on all wikipedia. I am wondering if someone on en: might please use the data to update the en: wikipedia ? Maybe you already know people able to take care of this on other wikipedia ?
The logs are available at:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LinksFR.20031109.zip
Hashar 23:37, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hi, all. I was just browsing the Mother Teresa talk page and noticed a bit somewhere in the middle about Cimon Avaro missing the 'protected page' blurb and accidentally editing the article page when it was protected and then being quite embarressed to have broken the 'don't edit a page when it's protected' guideline. This is something I can have sympathy with as I've made this mistake myself in the past. When you're in the cycle of rushing through articles clicking 'edit this page' and scrolling straight to where you think you want to edit it's easy to not concentrate on the text at the top.
I think one of the two following ideas may help avoid these errors, either put an extra page between the article and being able to eidt it, a 'are you sure you want to edit this protected page, if so click here' page (similar to when deleting a page), or I think my preferred option of changing the 'edit this page' link at the top to say 'Protected Page (edit)' (or something similar) in bold face.
Do others think this might be a good idea or should some of us just be a bit more leisurely with our edits!? -- Ams80 15:12, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
A simple thing that I think would be really effective would be to move the "Edit this page" link. If it's taken off the top/front of the list, and inserted, say, between "Unprotect this page" and "Discuss this page", then inadvertent editing of protected pages would be impossible... I think. If the idea appeals to all and sundry, I'll submit it to sourceforge. -- Cyan 03:04, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I read the intro by Stevertigo about Wikipedia:Cleanup and I'm still not quite sure how it exactly differ from Wikipedia:Pages needing attention and VfD. It seems to, judging from the items listed there, be a mixture of both. But leaning more toward Wikipedia:Pages needing attention (need-NPOV, need-Wikifcation), with also some new VfD-type items (delete-this-nonsense) and ancient VfD-items (no-concensus-reached). But it seems Cleanup is not redundant, because people do use it. Its use frequency is between Wikipedia:Pages needing attention and VfD, but seems to be used by least of amount of people (i.e., the same people repeatedly use Cleanup religiously). Please clarify, thanks. -- Menchi 04:05, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'm wondering what the policy is for adding corporate logos to pages is (ex. CN). I've seen a few and am wondering if they should be removed. Vancouverguy 18:08, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I've seen political party logos on a few pages - I could add them as I go - but won't until we get a decision. It could be useful to help people recognise logos - I don't imagine people would think that the page was sponsored. Secretlondon 00:00, Nov 17, 2003 (UTC)
Hmmm... I have no objection at all to the logo on the IBM page, for example, and I'm about to add one to the Uniting Church in Australia page. What's the problem? I think they add value to the articles. Andrewa 09:13, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I would imagine that most, if not all, logos are copyright and should not be included without the permission of the owner? Bmills 09:37, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Logos are a sensitive issue for many companies and are generally licensed to a single user publication at a time without any redistribution rights (other than normal viewing). I also want to use items like company logos (and Time magazine covers) and there's an agency which issues these licenses. In a phone call a couple of weeks ago they indicated that there would be no problem licensing the Wikipedia to use logos on an exclusive basis but that doing so allowing reuse by others was not something they could do. Other encyclopedias would need to request their own permission (which would also probably be granted if they were serious encyclopedias). Should I proceed with the applicaton process? JamesDay 12:01, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Ok, this all seems rational, but let's decide whether we want to have logos in the encyclopedia. My reasons against:
Wikipedia desperately needs more graphics. But are we this desperate???
First off, should any article that currently includes a logo have it removed until permission is sought (if that is what is decided)?
Second: Viajero raises some interesting points:
IMHO, Wikipedia would be better off without logos. Bmills 12:37, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
No need to immediately remove them because fair use applies to logos as well as other things. Logos are used to associate a visual symbol with a company to aid in recognition. So, yes, we should include almost all corporate logos. They also add to the visual appeal of he Wikipedia and are good for that reason. Requests for logos for use in encyclopedias are so common that there's a specific applicaton type "encyclopedia" in the service which handles the licensing. JamesDay 14:08, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
IANAL but the use of the logo in an article about the organisation which owns and is represented by the logo isn't likely to be a problem IMO so long as there is a caption on the logo which clearly identifies it as a sample of the logo, and the logo is accurately rendered. The image itself may be copyright, this is a different issue and needs to be resolved separately. This same caption IMO removes the problem of anyone mistakenly thinking that the organisation is somehow involved with the article, or with Wikipedia, other than in the obvious way that the article is about them. Without both this caption and accuracy, use of the logo is misleading and probably illegal, and I'd expect the owners to object.
There are three reasons the logo should be there. Firstly, it helps to identify the organisation concerned. Secondly, it's information that is encyclopedic, will be of interest to people reading the article, and which they can reasonably expect to find there. Thirdly, IMO it looks good.
So my suggestion for logo guidelines while the technicalities are being further investigated:
Is there anything along those lines in the license mentioned above? Does the license deal with all trademarks, or just those which are also corporate logos? It sounds worth having, provided signing up doesn't in any way compromise our existing commitments under the GFDL, which it may. Definitely investigate.
Alternatively, do we need a boilerplate text to ask permission of individual organisations? Andrewa 16:00, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I think we should move this discussion to a talk page. Vancouverguy 16:06, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
BTW, there's a very interesting quote and some links on this topic at Image:Canadian National Herald.png. Andrewa 00:53, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I ran a few queries on the database about the above notes and I found a few pages (at least with todo, fixme, because there is a lot with in progress that are probably legitimate text). Most of these were not links and the pages had not been worked on for a while. I think this sort of litter is not too productive so I removed them. I don't know if it's mentioned somewhere, but there should probably be a standard way to leave notes so that it can be tracked more easily. For example including something like ''This page is still [[Wikipedia:FIXME|in progress]].'' in the article with the rest of the note inside HTML comments. Or it could be left in the talk page, but the former might be better in my opinion. Of course, some people work on temp pages and don't create the article until they're somewhat done. Opinions?
FIXME and such are common conventions in computer programming but I don't think they work well in wikipedia. First and most importantly, they are distracting. Any article in wikipedia is in progress. You can add FIXME to any article. Some article lacks the birth and death date and some article about an artistic work lacks the social signifcance of the work. Talk pages or embedded HTML comments are a better solution. -- Taku 21:20, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)
Post a question now if you don't want to wait for the whole page to be loaded. But consider skimming to see if your question was already asked. Also, do not push the "save page" button multiple times when posting this way! The server is overloaded but it will usually respond eventually and add your question to the page multiple times!
Dune, revision of 14:52, 27 Oct 2003, seems to have added quite a bit of POV. Or is it just me? orthogonal 22:52, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hi, as Main page is protected, I can't add link on the occitan's wikipedia. Can somebody do it for me ? Thanks. Gnu_thomas
Can image artists sign names on their works when they agree to let WP use their images? -- Menchi 09:39, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hmm. I don't honestly know whether to laugh or lament...
Check out this example of a good thing gone horribly wrong. I'm almost tempted to reccomend it stay as is, so we can all point it and say: "Don't do this; they will only laugh at you." -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 08:43, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)
I am a little confused about the deletion policy of Wikipedia. I am not an admin or a sysop; can I list things on the Wikipedia:Votes for deletion page? If not, what can I do when I see a page that should be deleted (like BlogLines)?
(Err.. disregard that BlogLines example--that was deleted quickly! But my confusion about my deletion powers remains.)
I have real problems with the deletion policy. It is not democratic in the slightest! I would like to propose that instead new pages are put on 'Probation' for a month. There is an attached -VoteToKeep page linked to it and at the end of the month if there is a clear democratic majority then goodbye. But at present the time-period is too short, too unclear and hidden and opaque... ABC
Not undemocratic, hidden, nor opaque. Voting is just that -- democratic. Not hidden, since a blurb is put at the top of the page to indicate that it has been proposed for deletion and where to go to discuss it. And not opaque, since the Votes for Deletion page explains what is going on. RickK 16:37, 20 Nov 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've noticed lately that there seems to be gaggle of brand new users who's only real edits seem to be to vote to keep things on Vfd. Earlier it was User:Wartortle and the dozen some of the dozen other names apparently created by User:Tester (see WP:PU). Now there seems to be User:Princess Toadstool, User:Macarenaman and User:Peter Farrell. It seems to me that the last three were created by 1 person with aims of keeping the page Dork, apparently created by User:Mwbassguy. I don't now if all these events are related, but I'm suspicious. Is there any way to check to see if double (or more) voting is occuring on Vfd. Maximus Rex 02:28, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)"
Should articles have an editor? See m:Wikipedia needs editors
There's an alternative proposal that I think might achieve the desired aim while doing no damage at all to our current structure and culture at m:Referees. Of course this ground might have all been covered before, I can't find it yet but the Meta is a big place. Comments welcome. Andrewa 03:02, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Check Wikipedia:Wikipedia approval mechanism -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 03:26, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)
I know there is a list top 10 largest wikipedias somewhere but I cant find it. Can someone help me? BL 01:53, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I tried looking for a voting policy, but I did not find one, so I propose a draft: Wikipedia:Voting policy draft
I think voting should be standardized and formalized or else any vote should not be binding for anything. I hate that it has to be this formal, but I think it will be more democratic this way and it will lower complaints.
Please edit at will the draft, it was only the first thing that came to my mind. I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on the Wikipedia :)
The whole idea could also be scapped if enough people think it's crap.
Dori 15:09, Oct 27, 2003 (UTC)
See m:WikiTrivia.
Hi, I've called a vote on Talk:Mother Teresa to clarify once and for all what people think about the current article and what we should do about it. Please express your opinion. lol FearÉIREANN 23:05, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
After the screen asking if I want to change the " " in the filename to "_", I get this message:
A database query syntax error has occurred. The last attempted database query was: "INSERT INTO image (img_name,img_size,img_timestamp,img_description,img_user,img_user_text) VALUES ('Keyboard_Layout_German.png',,'20031026192319','Keyboard layout, German, upload attempt #120, made by me', '7586', 'Cyp')" from within function "wfRecordUpload". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 20031026192319,Keyboard layout, German, upload attempt #120,.
I don't know anything about SQL, but is the character sequence ',,' appropriate? Κσυπ Cyp 19:28, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
It seems that I just got logged out while working on a page. I edited a subpage in the user namespace as a logged-in user, but on saving it appeared under an IP number rather than my username. That looks potentially troublesome (after all, it makes a difference whether you edit your pages or someone with an IP number does). I should note that the problem has occurred before (rarely), and that I do not usually have similar problems on the particular computer I am working at. Kosebamse 19:17, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Done. I seem to remember that similar weirdnesses were discussed here earlier (to do with the en/en2/www thing??) Kosebamse 19:48, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't remember how long I had been logged in. Time between opening edit and saving could have been ten minutes or so. I don't use the remember passwords feature. And that particular problem has occurred before, but only in the past weeks, so I assume it could have been because of the hardware difficulties or server overload (and wasn't there a similar discussion recently?). Thanks, Kosebamse 05:13, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)
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 found General Government 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 General Government. 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 General Government, then list the two existing articles for deletion. Comments? Adam 07:22, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
A colon in a link in a definition list doesn't work. Can the software be changed to chnage the priority so that a : within [[ ]] doesn't start the second half of the definition entry. This is a problem with any of Wikipedia:... or User:...
Am I the only one who has trouble doing word and article searches? Often it seems I search a word or phrase, looking for an article, and I come up blank two or three times. But if I persist, sometimes I come up with an article. What's up with that? It's not so urgent when checking for existing articles on, say, Penis-melting Zionist robot combs. But on more common subjects it's a problem. Also, when are we going to have full search capabilities? Paul Klenk 01:45, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
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)
I have this problem too, IE5.0 on Win98. I first raised it when section edit was introduced and I think they may be related. I looked at SourceForge and couldn't find an open problem record there, but that might well be my not knowing how to look. I'm happy to raise it there myself, please don't delete this from the pump until we do get a SourceForge record raised or identified. Andrewa 23:30, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Please do raise it. Martin 21:25, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Argh, trying again with title and sig. I'm really sorry.
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 to Page History 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 Page History. 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 Page History 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.
O. Pen Sauce
--
O. Pen Sauce 06:49, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I just stumpified an entry (the one for " yogi"). But it deserved stumpification (the word is a mere variation of another word which IS fully fleshed out in its own entry). I made a case for my action on the "discuss the page" page. I did NOT add the boilerplate inviting others to fill out the stump. Did I handle this correctly? O. Pen Sauce 06:40, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The article Richard Neustadt has more linked text than plain text, and to me looks like a Las Vegas billboard. Too many dates are wikified. It looks very ugly! Does anyone else agree? -- Viajero 14:33, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)~
Brion was kind enough to prepare me with some listings of articles and broken links and I wrote a program to find broken links that appear to be related to an existing article. It's not 100% accurate and there are some conflicts, so humans are needed to figure out what's valid and what's not. I found some 1678 articles that could be linked from 2073 different broken links. When done with this list, I believe a good 1000-1500 broken links will be turned into valid and useful redirects. (Ha, everyone who said I was a rabid deletionist is proven wrong!)
Right now, the list is just based on middle names which I have noticed to be a frequent cause of broken links. However, I'll probably write some more complicated programs to find other near-matches if this turns out well.
Anyway, I could use some help. The list is located at User:Daniel Quinlan/redirects. Please follow the convention for noting when a broken link cannot be connected to an article (other than that, the page shouldn't really need to be edited aside from questions, notes, etc.) and have fun. Daniel Quinlan 06:46, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)
Bmills 12:14, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I just added a new section to Talk: Opera (browser). I did this by clicking the [edit] link for the last section and manually editing the URL in my address bar, replacing the section number (1 as it happens) with "new". When I saved the addition, the new section was there, but it had the same number as the previous section! The [edit] link has the correct section number hidden under it. I've tried refreshing but it doesn't seem to want to change. Is it appearing the same to everyone else or is it just me? If it is real, then is this a bug with my Browser or with Wikipedia? Waaaah! Phil 12:04, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)
deleted - resolved
Any informaion about en2.wikipedia.org? It is far faster than en or www though. -- Taku 02:39, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)
maybe i am out of the loop....is the Sarah Lane article for real? It looks like a joke to me, but then I looked at the page history. It has been around for a while, and names i recognize have edited it. what is the story of Sarah Lane? Kingturtle 07:45, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
is anyone else finding Wikipedia eben slower than usual at the moment? Adam
This is probably a very silly question. But is the ban limited to the English Wikipedia? There is someone with a quite similar IP:address doing quite active editing at meta... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 17:28, Oct 31, 2003 (UTC)
Now why does "in the hopes of attracting his attention." have a distinctly ominous ring to it? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 15:23, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)
wikipedia is sooooo slow tonight. i just had to vent for a moment. it is really frustrating. and can get demoralizing sometimes. alas. Kingturtle 11:51, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
When exactly will the new hardware be working? G-Man 19:37, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I tried moving Mysterious Play to Fushigi Yuugi (the term all Enlish speaking fans use), after moving Fushigi Yuugi to Fushigi Yuugi:temp (and then Fushigi Yuugi2) in order to make it a redirect page with no history, but it gives me an error, telling me that the page already exists, or the name is invalid. Please help. -- Khym Chanur 02:40, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)
Is there anyone who would know the name of a decent (understand something that I can understand -> easy) IRC soft for macintosh, OS 9 (very important, not X).
Thanks
This William Crowther page is all wonky. It seems like it might be a legit topic, if it lost the BBS tone, but I don't know enough about net history or spelunking to dare an edit. Not sure what do about it, so came here.
Wikipedia is now unbelievably fast, and it's all thanks to Brion. Some pages are served from pliny, some are served from larousse, and no-one should notice the difference, except for the blindingly fast response. -- Tim Starling 03:47, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)
Except that I'm having an odd problem where when I click on some links (not even most of them), I just get a blank page unless I Refresh. RickK 03:56, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'll let you know if it happens again. RickK 04:09, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)~
I can't seem to stay logged in. I know, I know, report it to Sourceforge. -- Cyan ( 65.92.245.155 04:41, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC))
I'm using Opera 6.0, settings are wide open, I think... doesn't work from IE v5.5 either. -- Cyan ( 65.92.245.155 04:55, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC))
I mean it works if i click the Remember password between sessions, but i don't like to do that. -- 218.19.141.3 05:27, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I cleared out my cookies. No dice. I can't get at my preferences, since I log out instantly. -- Cyan ( 65.92.240.192 05:38, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC))
I would like to suggest an augmentation of the TOC to allow sub-headings to be hidden whilst leaving higher-level headings visible (at the moment the only option is to have the TOC visible or not; some are very long with meny levels and it would be good to be able to reduce the number of choices visible without hiding it totally; Characters in the Wheel of Time series is a relatively brief example). Each TOC has a [hide] link next to the caption. I would suggest having further links ([1], [2], ... up to the maximum level visible) to hide all but the selected heading. Is this the proper forum to discuss my suggestion? Am I the first to suggest such a thing? Phil 09:34, Nov 5, 2003 (UTC)
I just finished editing Islam and fixing some of the dozens of typos and nonsensical sentences that permeate that article. When I submitted my changes, I was informed that someone had made an edit in the meantime, forcing me to spend another five minutes laboriously scrolling up and down, adding in my changes again. I submitted the new changes and found that someone had wiped out an entire section of the original article in the meantime. I gave up and lost all my edits.
So what are my options here? Either I can submit my changes every thirty seconds, filling up the article history with inane trivia, or wonder why Wiki isn't smart enough to combine simple changes. It could at least have some feature to save the endless scrolling up and down while reinserting my changes. -- silsor 00:16, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
See MeatBall:MergingAutomatically. Martin 20:38, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'm sure this comes up regularly - but where to start looking for answers? I want to use extended character sets to display diacritics for Sanskrit and Pali terms. Things like 7747 = ṃ (an m with a dot underneath = anusvara). Trouble is that it degrades to a square gliph without specifying a unicode font. I can get vowels with macrons OK, but it's the retroflex consonants and the anusvara that are problematic. Is it possible/desirable to specify fonts in Wikipedia? I think it's important to have the diacritics, although some general works leave them out, but without them the words are different! Mahaabaala 12:40, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I find it somewhat inconsistent. E.g. Some insist that Danzig should be used instead of Polish Gdansk whenever majority of population was German or when city was part of German states. OTOH, trhoughout the encyclopedia only Vilnius is used instead of Wilno. The same is with L'viv and Lviv used almost consitently instead of Lwow or Lwów. Did that means that policy is to use German names whenever possible and local names in other cases????!? szopen
FWIW, this isn't only a Polish issue either. Ukrainians want to use Kyiv as the name of the city usually known in English as Kiev, considering the latter, as a transliteration from Russian, to be an offensive relic of Russian imperialism. However, Kiev is by far the more common English name, so there is disagreement over whether "common, but possibly offensive" or "official, but very uncommon" should take precedence. See also Talk:Kolkata for previous discussion of Calcutta vs. Kolkata and related. -- Delirium 23:57, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)
I can't seem to establish the article R.J. Rummel at that place and a redirect from Rudolph J. Rummel to R.J. Rummel. Edits I do at one of those seem to be duplicated at the other. As can be seen in the Recent Changes, I only edited one of them with the summary "what is going on here?". But that summary appears in the histories of both! -- Wik 06:19, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)
Now the history seems to be lost. Also, I have this double entry in my watchlist:
(diff) (hist) . . R.J. Rummel; 07:27 . . Wik (Talk) (diff) (hist) . . R.J. Rummel; 07:27 . . Wik (Talk)
Clicking on either of the (diff)s gives an error. -- Wik 06:35, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)
I just found a very similar bug, however not related to moving. According to the User contributions there were two edits on Aachtopf, however the history of the only shows one. And for admins the older one even shows the "rollback" button, so I guess there are two database entries for this article as well. andy 12:01, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
# 10:35, Nov 4, 2003 Lines (804 bytes) . . 212.72.200.242 # 10:33, Nov 4, 2003 Lines (808 bytes) . . 212.72.200.242
Protest of Zofia Kossak-Szczucka is a duplicate as well. And before the it was added the second time I could not see the first instance of that article, that polish text only showed up on when the second instance was created. Another side note - the above mentioned Achtopf also misses one article which links to it, probably because the database links that one to the first instance. And still more pages with this problem: Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, Cynthia Horner
Those articles which were not fully created at first and haven't been resubmitted then create the following error message:
The database did not find the text of a page that it should have found, named "Miguel Bosé". This is usually caused by following an outdated diff or history link to a page that has been deleted. If this is not the case, you may have found a bug in the software. Please report this to an administrator, making note of the URL.
andy 16:18, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Has anyone tried to delete the deletion log page? Does it just create itself again? Poor Yorick
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)
The reason why evolution creates better things is because advantageous mutations are retained, while disadvantageous mutations are removed. The wiki process that creates an article is somewhat analogous, so there is little danger that articles of true quality will disappear entirely, although they may undergo superficial alterations. It's not quite as bad as all that. -- Cyan 19:35, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
-- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 05:31, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)
We have been receiving more complaints than usual at Islam and I would to take the opportunity to request for detailed analysis and assessment of this article or possibly related ones as well. Besides neutrality in dispute, we have an exterior link also disputed. The website 'fruitofislam' was removed, reinstated and later removed again. The site URL is available through the history page and was introduced: 19:37, 31 Oct 2003 by 24.96.57.18 The contributor who implemented this peculiar site also made some questionable edits. Is the site NPOV and should it be an exterior link for the Wiki article Islam? Please discuss at Talk:Islam. Take care. Usedbook 11:55, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Why does this not make a bolded italic? Also, either break this page into smaller sections, or start adding new stuff to the top so people don't have to load the whole page in order to add something. Please respond on my talk page, this page is not something I can access easily. Lirath Q. Pynnor
Could some sysop delete Jim Bolger please. James Brendan Bolger needs to be moved there. Thanks. -- Wik 07:02, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)
Done. Dysprosia 07:05, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I have been debating for months whether to do this list or not. I decided to post my query here based on the limited encyclopedic value I think it would have: Any autograph collector could look up the list and find out if a celebrity who is in town likes signing autographs or not. I have vast experience in this field, I am an autograph collector myself.
Like I said, the value would be limited, but that value makes me wonder. Antonio Megacrazy Martin
can you help me identify a NYC artists? His water color was given to my wife's grandfather, then to her by her grandmother. The signature seems to read Gaylwing , the picture is of a large pear shaped cop with a brace and bit at a ballpark fence. please help Larry Borkowski larrybhi@bellsouth.net
Is Sesame Street really more important than the end of World War I?
Is Sesame Street really more important than the end of World War I?
Can someone reduce the width of the United Kingdom and Niue tables to be like the rest of them? -- Jiang
Has anyone seen this? Aplank 17:59, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'd like to ask for broader comment on a discussion going on on the British House of Commons page. The debate hinges on whether the page about the House of Commons in London should be called British House of Commons or United Kingdom House of Commons. It seems that everyone agrees that the House of Commons in question is part of the government of the United Kingdom, but some assert that the page should nonetheless be called British because it is often (erroneously) called that. The convention of naming the article by its most common correct term, not necessarily the official one, is cited to justify that. My concern is that Britain is only part of the United Kingdom, and it is factually incorrect and misleading to title the article British. Comment would be appreciated on that page since there are implications for many other articles. 2toise 05:13, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
My concern with "UK" is that there is a Scottish one too, right? This is their web page: "The House of Commons is part of the United Kingdom Parliament." Speaking as an American, I think it's silly to call it anything other than plain old "House of Commons" in the article. They were first, it's quite unambigous, etc. There should be another article entitled United Kingdom Parliament, etc. For the article itself, I would recommend House of Commons (United Kingdom). Daniel Quinlan 06:46, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Both were established by acts of the House of Commons in Wesminster -> actually the were passed by the Queen-in-Parliament, ie passed by the House of Commons and Lords and given the Royal Assent by HM the Queen. The House of Commons cannot pass Acts, merely Bills, which cannot purely by being passed by the House of Commons become Acts. FearÉIREANN 00:04, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Then again, the U.S. articles are all named United States House of Representatives or Supreme Court of the United States or similar. (What I said about the references inside the article itself still stands.) Daniel Quinlan 06:57, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
My two cents is that the article should be listed under United Kingdom House of Commons as I think official names should be the default in situations like this. I'd list British House of Commons as a redirect. However, I'd generally use "British" rather than "United Kingdom" as the adjective form in articles; it's the common term in general usage and much less unwieldy.
That is a false argument based on a historical and linguistic misconception. Many states have adjective forms of their name. Some do not. In the case of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, British is universally used and has been continually throughout the variety of states that have existed in that geographic region. In modern geo-political terms, British was used initially from October 1604 to describe the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, which in the previous year had come to share the same sovereign, James VI/I. It owned its origins to James's unsuccessful attempt to create a single name for his separate kingdoms. That name he chose was Great Brittaine. Great Britain because the formal state name following the 1707 Act of Union of Scotland and England. In 1801 a new state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was formed. (James had used the perscriptive, not descriptive term united kingdom as early as 1604.) In 1922, most of Ireland left the kingdom, and the new truncated state was renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Through every state from 1604 to the present day, (ie. England and Scotland separate with a shared king, Great Britain, the UK of GB and I, then the UK of GB and NI) the term British has been used as the adjective form of the state, whatever its nomenclature, in 99% of cases. Queen Anne is recorded as a British Queen, as is Queen Elizabeth II. (Some commonwealth states used to refer to "His Brittanic Majesty") Every prime minister without exception has been known when defined by state mostly as British prime minister, with the alternative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom used largely only in formal legal documentation (eg, treaties). The monarchy since James VI/I has been regularly called the British monarchy, the House of Commons the British House of Commons. The media is referred to as the British media. Sports stars are referred to British athletes/footballers/ etc. David Beckham is called a British football player, except when seen in terms of international soccer when he described as English.
A linguistic distinction exists between British/Britain, which is used to refer to the entire kingdom, and Great British/Great Britain, which is used to refer to the island that contains England, Scotland and Wales, and is used as such in the name of he UK, ie, the United Kingdom of Great Britain (the island) and Northern Ireland (a territory off the island of GB). To use Great British PM would be wrong as there is no PM in the Island of GB, not is there a queen of GB. But using British as the adjective form of United Kingdom is standard, not least because it allows for a degree of continuity between the often changing names by which the British state was known since the separate states on Great Britain were first constitutionally linked ago. United Kingdom is also problematical given that there have in fact been 2 UKs, one from 1800 to 1922, one from 1927 to the present (and confusion between 1922 and 1927). Following the flawed logic of 2toise, one could not have a list of British Prime Ministers, for example, but three lists; GB (up to 1800), UK of GB+I (1801-1920s), UK of GB + NI (1920s - present), no list of British monarchs, but 3 lists, no lists of famous British people, but three lists, etc etc. And so one would have articles called
Oh and
Logically if one was to follow the policy of accurate absolutism 2toise seems to want, you would have to rewrite much of wikipedia - one could not talk about Australia before 1900 as there were six states, not one. Italy could not be used before Italian unification in the 1870s, Germany would be limited to after the creation of the German Empire. And of course, President of the United States would also have to go, as to use the correct state nomenclature, every link would have to be President of the United States of America.
Wikipedia police is clear - according to our naming conventions and Manual of Style,
According to google searches;
All the evidence shows that Britain is
United Kingdom is
One final point: Northern Ireland Unionists insist that they are British, not Great British, because as they openly admit they couldn't be the latter as they don't live in Great Britain (the island), but in Britain (the state), formally known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So clearly using British as the adjective form of UK is the solution that follows general usage, international usage and wikipedia's own rules. Using United Kingdom in adjective form involves ignoring general usage, accepted usage worldwide and breaking wikipedia's own rules on the matter. FearÉIREANN 22:35, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Morven is absolutely correct. As to British not being "universally used" in adjective form it is a fact that it is. As to the British House of Commons link, that should have been piped. As to the current correct name argument, OK, so you want to rename the British House of Commons article as United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland House of Commons? That is what your argument requires. United Kingdom is not the correct name but a generalised shortened version, as you will see if you look at treaties signed in the state's name. So if you want accuracy, it has to be that! As to the we need to temper common usage when the commonly used term is unreasonably misleading argument that is completely irrelevant. British is not "unreasonably misleading". It has been used as the adjective version of various British states for 399 years. Calling The Netherlands "Holland" is misleading. Calling France "the Kingdom of France" would be misleading. Calling Northern Ireland "Ulster" is misleading. Using the standard adjective form of a name, used worldwide by billions of people, including the British (BTW what do you suggest calling the British then? United Kingdomish?) is common sense and follows wikipedia's rules on name use to the letter and the spirit. Your suggestion does neither. As to the British Parliamentary website, that is completely irrelevant, and I'm surprised you use it. Of course they use the most formal title. All official sites do that. That is not evidence of anything. Why does Tony Blair have international press releases issued that call him the "British Prime Minister" if the "British" bit was so wrong. I simply cannot understand your determination to push an illogical, factually inaccurate agenda that breaks wikipedia's own rules to produce article titles that will be no more accurate, just less accessible and less likely to show up in google searches, given that most of the planet will use British in searches, whether you want them to or not. FearÉIREANN 23:20, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Clearly, the correct approach according to Wikipedia precedent with American which is similarly problematic for a few editors (although because it may be too inclusive, not because it may be too exclusive) is to clarify every single usage of "British" and replace with "UK citizen" or "of the UK" since it can be confusing. UKian would be the best option if only people would use that term instead of British. We should also create a new page named Alternate words for British and list any alternative words that have been constructed to raise awareness of the issue and it can be linked from various possibly offensively-titled articles where "British" has to be retained for some pathetic reason. Basically, a few people might find it offensive, so it doesn't matter what common usage dictates. Daniel Quinlan 23:35, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
But this would also be wrong. There is no such thing as United Kingdom Citizenship, there is British Citizenship - see the British Nationality Act 1981, or the article on British Nationality Law. 2toise is, quite simply, flogging a dead horse; he is just plain wrong in his arguments. -- Arwel 23:45, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
See Talk:Alternate words for British.
When searching for public domain images, I often find the note: "All images on this page are believed to be public domain." Would you consider such a note as sufficient to include the images in Wikipedia, or should I regard the word "believed" as a warning not to touch these images? Example: [1]. -- Baldhur 08:17, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
wikipedia:image use policy/copyright
When searching for public domain images, I often find the note: "All images on this page are believed to be public domain." Would you consider such a note as sufficient to include the images in Wikipedia, or should I regard the word "believed" as a warning not to touch these images? Example: [2]. -- Baldhur 08:17, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Whatever you decide to do, say what you did on the wikipedia:image description page. Personally, I would have no real qualms about using such images, provided I made the uncertainties explicit in the image description page, unless I had some reason to doubt that they were in fact public domain. Martin 18:20, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Without mentioning names, does anyone agree or disagree that these sentences are incorrect grammar and punctuation?
I contend all four are only made correct by removing each and every comma. Daniel Quinlan 02:03, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC) (Oops, I should add that the third sentence is missing a "than something", so it is doubly ungrammatical. Daniel Quinlan 02:08, Nov 8, 2003 (UTC))
I've (sigh) grown used to Wikipedia timing out just when I've reached the peak of boredom, but now I'm finding every page I try to go to is fine except
Recent changes. Is that sort of situation common? The text box here is also responding quite slowly; SimpleText isn't. I'm not demanding someone fix this, I'm just trying to see if there's an explanation. --
Calieber 20:29, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)
The sluggishness is probably just length -- now that I'm just editing in this section rather than the whole page it's fine. -- Calieber 20:31, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)
I must be stupid, but I can't seem to find the "Post a comment" feature on talk pages. All I see are the usual "Main Page|Recent changes|Edit this page|..." links in the header, as well as "Edit this page|View article|..." links in the footer, as well as the sidebar links. "Edit this page" never shows me a "Subject/headline" box, just the text area, Summary box, "Minor edit" and "Watch this page" checkboxes, and Save and Preview buttons. What am I doing wrong? Tjunier 12:48, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
In the Standard skin it's in the navagation page on the left of the screen just under Edit this page. Bmills 12:53, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- I had something like this the other day. I went playing with my preferences and eventually went back to set Standard as the skin, but found I had no navagation pane. I went back to Preferences and found that the skin had reverted. It took three or four attempts before it would stick with Standard, but when it did the pane was there alright. Bmills 13:42, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Well finally it was a matter of preferences (unfortunately I had some trouble just finding the prefs page, since the link wasn't there :-). Now everything seems to be working. Thanks for your time! Tjunier 13:40, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I just stumbled on the infinitely tedious collection of articles about Gundam, an anime series. Somebody is creating detailed, albeit not very coherent, plot synopses about every single series: It could swamp the server all by itself ... (Not that I think anything can be done about it, since editing them all into coherence would be an inhuman task. I just wanted to spout.) -- DavidWBrooks 01:27, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
See also: wikipedia:check your fiction and m:Kill the Stub Pages
Hi, how can I get in touch with the appropriate person for image rights and clearance. We're interested in featuring the wikipedia story in a book and international touring exhbition - in the section devoted to info/software. Please advise asap. Thank you!
Jennifer 416-260-5777 x234 leonard@brucemaudesign.com
Quite some time ago I stumbled upon images uploaded by User:Renato Caniatti, when I noticed that all of them are orphans here. Later I found that those images aren't real orphans, but are used in the italian wikipedia included with html, not the image links I know here. I asked Renato about it, and today he answered that it is not possible to upload images on the italian wikipedia, and thus he uses the english one for storage. As I had no interaction with the old software - is that true? I don't think that the way he includes images to it: is a good one as it will break when someone checks the orphan images here, or once the policy of not using external images in wikicode is enforced, but what is the better way? Wait with images till it: gets converted to MediaWiki? andy 21:49, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Bmills 12:14, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
We have lots of vandalism from Spanish nacionalists and others. We need ban them, but how? I have the password that let me to delete pages. ¿Is the same that let ban de people? Have I to request another password or I have to visit an other page with the same password? Thanks. Llull 10:12, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Brion was kind enough to prepare me some listings of articles and broken links and I wrote a program to find broken links that appear to be related to an already existing article. It's not 100% accurate and there are some conflicts, so humans are needed to figure out what's valid and what's not. I found some 1678 articles that could be linked from 2073 different broken links. When done with this list, I believe a good 500 broken links will be turned into valid and useful redirects. (Ha, everyone who said I was a rabid deletionist is proven wrong!)
Right now, the list is just based on middle names which I have noticed to be a frequent cause of broken links. However, I'll probably write some more complicated programs to find other near-matches if this turns out well.
Anyway, I could use some help. The lists (it's broken into two sub-pages now) is located at User:Daniel Quinlan/redirects. Please follow the convention for noting when a broken link cannot be connected to an article (other than that, the page shouldn't really need to be edited aside from questions, notes, etc.) and have fun. I've already done about 70 or so, but need to sleep now. Daniel Quinlan 06:46, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)
Update: there are even more lists of broken links now. Daniel Quinlan 07:50, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)
Could someone help me there? I feel really puzzled what is going on. Steps to reproduce:
What went wrong there? Przepla 23:34, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Having been contributing to Wikipedia:Cleanup for a bit more than a week, I have come to value it. Much to my amazement, I have seen a few miserable-looking stubs (which I would have voted to delete on VfD) blossom into real articles, and it has given me renewed appreciation of the way WP works. Listing pages on Cleanup gives newbies a chance to improve stubby articles they've submitted, without fear of the axe, as well as stimulating others to help out.
However, I am slightly disappointed to see that several articles are now listed in both Cleanup and VfD, meaning the two pages are working to some degree at cross-purposes. There also seems to be more activity at VfD, but that is not surprising since it has been around a lot longer, and, obviously, it is much easier to simply vote on an article than actually roll up one's sleeves and improve it.
Is there anyway we could improve the coordination between the two pages? I think it would be desirable if all questionable articles were first parked on Cleanup for a week or two, and if they don't improve only then moved to VfD for a potential coup de grâce. This would probably require some kind of date stamping on Cleanup, which it doesn't as yet have.
Anway, I hope more people lend a hand at Cleanup; there is lots to do. -- Viajero 14:43, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I have noticed that there are a lot of one-sentence stubs for mythological figures, especially non-Greek myths (but even then there are a lot). Shouldn't they be merged into the respective mythology articles? Limu, for example. Limu is listed on Polynesian mythology, but it seems to me that it would make more sense to write about him on the mythology page. Adam Bishop 07:20, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Michael Shields just made me aware of the fact there are two different styles advised for formatting the "See also:" section. In Wikipedia:Manual of Style, a simple, unitalicised version is 'declared' the standard. While Wikipedia:Boilerplate text advises to italicise "See also:". We should definately have one standard. What are your preferrences? Why? What about bullet lists? (I don't like them but quite a few people use them) -- snoyes 22:26, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Is there a way to get rid of the "you've new messages"? I've already visited my talk page, and it still persists. Poor Yorick
I want to make an article that lists songs that tribute other musicians by referencing those musicians. For example:
But what I need is a solid name for the article...something like List of songs that tribute other musicians by referencing those musicians....but something that will leave no doubt what it is about while not be overly complicated.
thanks Kingturtle 01:20, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I was wondering if there was a standard adult warning for article links? should editors just put in "Warning, contains adult material" after the link? and what about offensive content (which some may view adultcontent as)? any feed back would be appreciated .. reddi
There has been an excessive amount of discussion on this point at Wikipedia talk:Content disclaimer. Read and be damned. Martin 02:23, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hey folks, I just wanted to ask for the community's help on this. I'm intimately involved with the Diebold issue, as a co-plaintiff in the EFF's lawsuit, and a founding member of the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons which was one of the first student pages to host the memos. I'd like to expand the Diebold article to reflect the recent events that my friends and I have been involved in, and I'd like to fill out the "wishful thinking" link to an SCDC article that I found on that page. However, I want to be careful about stepping over the line of writing about myself and rehashing the Boyer controversy. Could people look at the sources and tell me whether either of these actions would be a good idea? I've read Wikipedia:Auto-biography, and I think the first case falls under the acceptable category of "writing on subjects close to your heart", and I think that filling in the empty link to an SCDC article may be borderline acceptable as I found the link already in existence, but I would like some feedback. -- Nelson 04:45, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
How should I deal with these two articles: Second Skin && Second skin, the content are different, but the titles are alike! :O -- FallingInLoveWithPitoc 03:01, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I have an ancient wiki history question. What does it mean when the Conversion script is listed as the first author of a page? Was the actual attribution to the original author lost forever? Maximus Rex 05:48, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I have been debating for months within myself whether to do this list or not. I decided to post my query here based on the limited encyclopedic value I think it would have: Any autograph collector could look up the list and find out if a celebrity who is in town likes signing autographs or not. I have vast experience in this field, I am an autograph collector myself.
Like I said, the value would be limited, but that value makes me wonder. Antonio Megacrazy Martin
OK- I didn't know where else to ask this question. I recently looked at my watchlist, and someone had made an edit at Saved by the Bell, where they had done almost nothing except to change "favorite" to "favourite". Is there a convention about this sort of thing? A quick search reveals a few articles that are particularly troubling, they feature both spellings: e.g. Chateau Chenonceaux - DropDeadGorgias 22:06, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I think that it all depends on the writer's accent. Favorite or Favourite, whatever. It means the same. -- Antonio Graphic sexaholic Martin
Could some kindly developer update Wikipedia:Most-edited talk pages, preferably removing Talk:Main Page from consideration? Tuf-Kat 19:32, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)
Hi,
I removed some text from Bar association that I found questionable, and that seems to be a rehashing on the urban myth that the word "testimony" was based on an ancient Roman practice of holding one's gonads and swearing on them.
I cannot confirm that the text is false, can anyone help?
Thanks! -- Pakaran 18:46, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I have noticed that some Wikipedians have added sub-pages underneath their main user page to hold a personal sand-box, to do list etc etc. But I couldn't find anything about this in any of the help pages or FAQs. So I have two questions ...
Gandalf61 12:05, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)
I noticed that people are getting seriously sloppy with the guidelines on protecting pages. We are all human (Ghu knows I have made my share of mistakes). Please remember that protecting a page should always be done by an uninvolved party (even if it is your own user page); I'll try to remember that too. Just ask someone else to do it for you. As you likely have a good case for the protection of the page, getting another sysop shouldn't be so hard. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 23:57, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)
I agree. User:Viajero's protection of the ever controversial Mother Teresa article to stop User:Aplank's edits (which others were reverting) is a case in point. Viajero had been a participant in the debate over weeks and so was not a neutral person to do the protecting. FearÉIREANN 00:04, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I protected my User page, and intend to keep it protected. It was the subject of far too much vandalism. I don't think anyone but the User should be able to edit their own User page anyway, but that's my opinion, YMMV. I agree in principle to not protecting pages you're involved with, but I believe doing it to your User page is different. RickK 23:38, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Edit history for Fungus says that User:Kingturtle made an edit on the 9th of November. I object to that edit, and I left a comment on his talk page requesting that he revert it. He has not replied to my message, but the most interesting thing is that the edit does not appear in his user contributions page. - Smack 21:42, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
What's 4Reference.net? It appears to be a dynamic copier of Wikipedia, which reformats the article (badly), and adds "This article courtesy of Wikipedia", a reference to the GFDL, and an advertisement. orthogonal 01:59, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
wow, I commend whomever was involved in the latest magic that gave us such great speed on Wikipedia. I've been around these parts for nearly 10 months and this is by far the greatest access-speed I've ever experienced. thanks again to all involved! Kingturtle 18:59, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
An aside: google notices. But worth it. Martin 19:39, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Is there a Wikipedia consesus on the use of first-letter-capitalized or first-letter-uncapitalized "black" when referring to persons of that race/ethnicity? Is it "noted Black author W. E. B. DuBois" or is it "noted black author W. E. B. DuBois", or is there no consesus?
Also, what about white/White when referring to race/ethnicity?
On a tangential note, spaces or not after initials in names: "W. E. B. DuBois" or "W.E.B. DuBois", "P. A. M. Dirac" or "P.A.M. Dirac"? orthogonal 20:05, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It's my (hopelessly uninformed) understanding that caps belong on proper nouns (and initials, sentence starts...). So I'd say:
I'm consistently reverted on all of these, so plainly plenty of folks don't agree with me. -- Finlay McWalter 23:18, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Re - black vs African-American. It reminds me of a story about a US TV presenter interviewing Nelson Mandela who worked for a company that threatened anyone who called someone black with immediate dismissal. She wanted to ask Mandella "so how does it feel to be South Africa's first black president?" but couldn't. So ended up asking the South African statesman "how does it feel to be South Africa's first . . . em . . . eh . . . . em . . . African American president?" Mandela's comment on such ridiculous Political Correctness after the show was finished, was apparently rather sharp. FearÉIREANN 23:41, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I think "black" can be used in most cases, but if the person has used another term that is generally accepted such as "African-American", we should use that instead. I'd be careful about how it's mentioned, though. Some black authors might rather be known first as authors. Mentioning race in the first sentence of only articles for people who are non-white is very POV. W.E.B. DuBois is known as a black author, so it would be okay in his case, but just be careful. Daniel Quinlan 23:27, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)
P.S. I believe it's "black" or "white" (lower case) and "African-American" (upper case since it's based on place/country names). Daniel Quinlan 23:28, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)
Nationalities are always capitalized, "british" is plain wrong. (That's an error often made by some Germans here - I can't count how often I have changed "german" to "German".) As to black, you could treat it in the same way (though the implications might be problematic, since there is no one "Black race" etc.), but it's more often used just like a colour, i.e. uncapitalized. -- Wik 00:09, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Strictly speaking, black and white are adjectives describing colour, while Black and White are ethnic/racial designations. But in practice both forms are used and I don't think WP should try to make either of them mandatory. But we certainly should ban Caucasian, which is based on a long-discredited racial theory. Caucasians are people from the Caucasus. Adam 01:14, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
We use 'Black' and 'White' (I work in the British public sector). Caucasian is bizarre (is this person from Armenia?). We subcategorise black into Black African and Black Caribbean (two different communities). You sometimes see Black British used. Secretlondon 12:27, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
From my experience in American English, Caucasian can be to describe someone of primarily European descent very clinically. But it really depends on context. When authors use the word 'black' as a adjective to describe a person, are they using it in the context of describing their ancestry, their physical or cultural characteristics, or place of origin? Thunderbolt16 05:25, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The American Anthropological Association (AAA)
recommends black instead of Black.
silsor 20:14, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
See Talk:British House of Commons. (I moved it the originating site). A much smaller list can be made here of official UK Government uses of the term British House of Commons. There are none. 2toise 00:38, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Darned thing doesn't remember my password, nor does it remember that I told it to remember my password. Why?????
Tualha 05:16, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Now it does. Who knows...
Tualha 05:52, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Ah. If I close all windows and come back, it keeps me logged in. If I close the browser (Opera 6), it doesn't.
Tualha 05:54, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Nope, it's still doing it. I tried clearing out the cookies, didn't help :( It's not clearing cookies between sessions; they were there, and LWN, for example, works fine.
FWIW, the cookies listed in my cookie manager seem to be empty...
Tualha 21:44, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Hmm, now there are cookies there. wikidbUserID and wikidbUserName. Still doesn't work, though.
Tualha 21:54, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Oh, good grief. I checked the "keep password" box in the login page and now everything works fine. I kept overlooking that one. It's the one in preferences that's broken. Sorry for the wild goose chase.
Tualha 22:24, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Just occurred to me, there's a bright side: my password is now firmly embedded in my memory :)
Tualha 14:48, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
I'm not sure to be pleased or worried that my Arborealoids has survived 24 hours without being deleted or even questioned. This little experiment does seem to confirm my suspicion that a great deal of nonsense sneaks its way into Wikipedia undetected. On the other hand, it's no sillier than Reptilian humanoid, from which it draws inspiration. Adam 11:11, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I moved the article to
Wikipedia:Arborealoids so people can take a look. Right after I did that, someone redeleted it (as I was planning to do, actually, since I don't think we need or want to leave invalid information in the main article space for this discussion).
Daniel Quinlan 11:32, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)
Well I'm flattered that you all think my stuff is so wonderful that it doesn't need to be checked. I guess I've blown my gold-star rating. But Bmills is right - I actually started Arborealoids not to expose WP's procedures but to draw attention to Reptilian humanoid and all of Khranus's other garbage, which discredits WP more than a dozen joke articles. Adam 11:58, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Or perhaps that I am a reptoid. Adam 13:45, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I spotted Arborealoids on 11th Novemeber, but chose not to recommend for deletion because it was just so damn funny! Mind you, I'm also a regular watcher of Reptilian humanoids (which must give me about 8/10 for insanity). DJ Clayworth 20:54, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
See also the Protocols of the Elderberries of Zion (awaiting development). Adam
Has anyone seen this? Aplank 17:59, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It certainly seems to be the right place for Aplank to write his article Mother Teresa was a model of piety and virtue whom nobody may criticise. Adam 03:36, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
My first SPOV article: John Howard Adam 08:24, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
If you look at their "Recent Changes" page you will see that Fred Bauder is writing the entire encyclopaedia himself. I hope he doesn't forget Reptilian humanoids. Adam 09:49, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Do not revert the same page twice in the same day
Words to wiki by. See Wikipedia talk:How to revert a page to an earlier version. Martin 21:19, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Are we having image upload issues again? (See Betty Friedan). - Hephaestos 16:44, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Malcolm mentions a film from the '80's called Loose Shoes. I remember it well! Can you tell me where I can get a copy, either VT or DVD? I live in the UK. Thanks
I am trying to find out what Native Americans were around the Mill Creek area in Bulloch County. We have found numerous arrowheads and pottery peices nearby...
As far as I know, there is not yet an article describing the Israel security wall. I was going to add something to Wikipedia:Requested articles, but I don't know what to call the article...
Suggestions? Kingturtle 08:00, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
This is the kind of thing I love trying. I wrote a perl script to find most common 2 and 3 word combinations on news.google.com and google.com using the top 100 hits using the search terms Israel and wall OR fence OR barrier OR partition OR divider OR enclosure OR fortification OR palisade.
Based on that, I'd say "wall", "fence", or "barrier".
"Israel security fence" looks good. "Israel security wall" might be best by single word frequency. I guess "Israel-Palestine" wall might be okay for the first part, but I don't see that often. Palestine ain't building the wall, so tht would not be my inclination.
Daniel Quinlan 08:46, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)
My stats were of news sites via news.google.com, and that included a good number of (English web) Arabic news sites. I still think Israel security wall or Israel security fence are best, but I could live with Israel security barrier since barrier was also a relatively common word used to describe the structure. Daniel Quinlan 21:32, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)
Well I started an article at Israel security fence since it doesn't seem like anyone else has yet. -- Merphant 00:57, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
moved to Talk:Israeli security fence
Could someone point me out to the page of banned users ? I need the little text, with reference to Jimbo, and possibility for the banned user to fill an application of forgiveness from him. Anthère 01:33, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Its listed in "Special pages". See: Special:Ipblocklist WhisperToMe 01:36, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Daniel Quinlan is adding loads of "Accuracy disputes without explanation. I think he is using an automated script because of the speed - is this vandalism? -- 213.122.126.91 09:32, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
If Khranus has been banned for posting ridiculous articles, doesn't it follow that those articles should now be deleted? Does anyone really think that Reptilian humanoid can be turned into a useful article? Delete the lot, I say. Adam 10:05, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
It's interesting...the article on the Dogon, at first glance, looks like blatant nonsense. People named the Dogon, whose religion involves Sirius the Dog Star? And their neighbors are the Bozo? Trash it!
But a little googling reveals that there is indeed such a tribe living in Mali, with that religion and those neighbors. Thousands of pages found.
Goes to show...
Tualha 02:46, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
Is it possible to link to a non http external link? I want to link to
rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/news/olmedia/n5ctrl/events03/uk_pol/cons/leadership/nb_newsnightiv.rm
(a video clip) but the Wiki parser doesn't like it...
Evercat 02:01, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
As a newbie, I'm not sure of the procedure for adding pages to votes for deletion, so I'm moving this here from there:
If anyone is interrested, I did an analysis of all the anonymous edits in half a day to see what proportion were vandalisms, and what proportion of those were not corrected. Have a look at my user page (under "Stats on anon editors"). -- snoyes 18:10, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
How can I stay logged in for longer than (whatever the default) is? I'm finding that I'm editing articles only to later notice I'm not logged in. I dislike this because it makes me less accountable. orthogonal 17:53, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Can I use posters of movies here? -- FallingInLoveWithPitoc 11:52, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
See Talk:Historical anniversaries/Example. -- mav 10:00, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)~
Hello,
I ran the RobBot on the french wikipedia for the last 4 days. It generated logs for a lot of interwiki missing on all wikipedia. I am wondering if someone on en: might please use the data to update the en: wikipedia ? Maybe you already know people able to take care of this on other wikipedia ?
The logs are available at:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LinksFR.20031109.zip
Hashar 23:37, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hi, all. I was just browsing the Mother Teresa talk page and noticed a bit somewhere in the middle about Cimon Avaro missing the 'protected page' blurb and accidentally editing the article page when it was protected and then being quite embarressed to have broken the 'don't edit a page when it's protected' guideline. This is something I can have sympathy with as I've made this mistake myself in the past. When you're in the cycle of rushing through articles clicking 'edit this page' and scrolling straight to where you think you want to edit it's easy to not concentrate on the text at the top.
I think one of the two following ideas may help avoid these errors, either put an extra page between the article and being able to eidt it, a 'are you sure you want to edit this protected page, if so click here' page (similar to when deleting a page), or I think my preferred option of changing the 'edit this page' link at the top to say 'Protected Page (edit)' (or something similar) in bold face.
Do others think this might be a good idea or should some of us just be a bit more leisurely with our edits!? -- Ams80 15:12, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
A simple thing that I think would be really effective would be to move the "Edit this page" link. If it's taken off the top/front of the list, and inserted, say, between "Unprotect this page" and "Discuss this page", then inadvertent editing of protected pages would be impossible... I think. If the idea appeals to all and sundry, I'll submit it to sourceforge. -- Cyan 03:04, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I read the intro by Stevertigo about Wikipedia:Cleanup and I'm still not quite sure how it exactly differ from Wikipedia:Pages needing attention and VfD. It seems to, judging from the items listed there, be a mixture of both. But leaning more toward Wikipedia:Pages needing attention (need-NPOV, need-Wikifcation), with also some new VfD-type items (delete-this-nonsense) and ancient VfD-items (no-concensus-reached). But it seems Cleanup is not redundant, because people do use it. Its use frequency is between Wikipedia:Pages needing attention and VfD, but seems to be used by least of amount of people (i.e., the same people repeatedly use Cleanup religiously). Please clarify, thanks. -- Menchi 04:05, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I'm wondering what the policy is for adding corporate logos to pages is (ex. CN). I've seen a few and am wondering if they should be removed. Vancouverguy 18:08, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I've seen political party logos on a few pages - I could add them as I go - but won't until we get a decision. It could be useful to help people recognise logos - I don't imagine people would think that the page was sponsored. Secretlondon 00:00, Nov 17, 2003 (UTC)
Hmmm... I have no objection at all to the logo on the IBM page, for example, and I'm about to add one to the Uniting Church in Australia page. What's the problem? I think they add value to the articles. Andrewa 09:13, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I would imagine that most, if not all, logos are copyright and should not be included without the permission of the owner? Bmills 09:37, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Logos are a sensitive issue for many companies and are generally licensed to a single user publication at a time without any redistribution rights (other than normal viewing). I also want to use items like company logos (and Time magazine covers) and there's an agency which issues these licenses. In a phone call a couple of weeks ago they indicated that there would be no problem licensing the Wikipedia to use logos on an exclusive basis but that doing so allowing reuse by others was not something they could do. Other encyclopedias would need to request their own permission (which would also probably be granted if they were serious encyclopedias). Should I proceed with the applicaton process? JamesDay 12:01, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Ok, this all seems rational, but let's decide whether we want to have logos in the encyclopedia. My reasons against:
Wikipedia desperately needs more graphics. But are we this desperate???
First off, should any article that currently includes a logo have it removed until permission is sought (if that is what is decided)?
Second: Viajero raises some interesting points:
IMHO, Wikipedia would be better off without logos. Bmills 12:37, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
No need to immediately remove them because fair use applies to logos as well as other things. Logos are used to associate a visual symbol with a company to aid in recognition. So, yes, we should include almost all corporate logos. They also add to the visual appeal of he Wikipedia and are good for that reason. Requests for logos for use in encyclopedias are so common that there's a specific applicaton type "encyclopedia" in the service which handles the licensing. JamesDay 14:08, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
IANAL but the use of the logo in an article about the organisation which owns and is represented by the logo isn't likely to be a problem IMO so long as there is a caption on the logo which clearly identifies it as a sample of the logo, and the logo is accurately rendered. The image itself may be copyright, this is a different issue and needs to be resolved separately. This same caption IMO removes the problem of anyone mistakenly thinking that the organisation is somehow involved with the article, or with Wikipedia, other than in the obvious way that the article is about them. Without both this caption and accuracy, use of the logo is misleading and probably illegal, and I'd expect the owners to object.
There are three reasons the logo should be there. Firstly, it helps to identify the organisation concerned. Secondly, it's information that is encyclopedic, will be of interest to people reading the article, and which they can reasonably expect to find there. Thirdly, IMO it looks good.
So my suggestion for logo guidelines while the technicalities are being further investigated:
Is there anything along those lines in the license mentioned above? Does the license deal with all trademarks, or just those which are also corporate logos? It sounds worth having, provided signing up doesn't in any way compromise our existing commitments under the GFDL, which it may. Definitely investigate.
Alternatively, do we need a boilerplate text to ask permission of individual organisations? Andrewa 16:00, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I think we should move this discussion to a talk page. Vancouverguy 16:06, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
BTW, there's a very interesting quote and some links on this topic at Image:Canadian National Herald.png. Andrewa 00:53, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I ran a few queries on the database about the above notes and I found a few pages (at least with todo, fixme, because there is a lot with in progress that are probably legitimate text). Most of these were not links and the pages had not been worked on for a while. I think this sort of litter is not too productive so I removed them. I don't know if it's mentioned somewhere, but there should probably be a standard way to leave notes so that it can be tracked more easily. For example including something like ''This page is still [[Wikipedia:FIXME|in progress]].'' in the article with the rest of the note inside HTML comments. Or it could be left in the talk page, but the former might be better in my opinion. Of course, some people work on temp pages and don't create the article until they're somewhat done. Opinions?
FIXME and such are common conventions in computer programming but I don't think they work well in wikipedia. First and most importantly, they are distracting. Any article in wikipedia is in progress. You can add FIXME to any article. Some article lacks the birth and death date and some article about an artistic work lacks the social signifcance of the work. Talk pages or embedded HTML comments are a better solution. -- Taku 21:20, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)
Post a question now if you don't want to wait for the whole page to be loaded. But consider skimming to see if your question was already asked. Also, do not push the "save page" button multiple times when posting this way! The server is overloaded but it will usually respond eventually and add your question to the page multiple times!
Dune, revision of 14:52, 27 Oct 2003, seems to have added quite a bit of POV. Or is it just me? orthogonal 22:52, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hi, as Main page is protected, I can't add link on the occitan's wikipedia. Can somebody do it for me ? Thanks. Gnu_thomas
Can image artists sign names on their works when they agree to let WP use their images? -- Menchi 09:39, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hmm. I don't honestly know whether to laugh or lament...
Check out this example of a good thing gone horribly wrong. I'm almost tempted to reccomend it stay as is, so we can all point it and say: "Don't do this; they will only laugh at you." -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 08:43, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)
I am a little confused about the deletion policy of Wikipedia. I am not an admin or a sysop; can I list things on the Wikipedia:Votes for deletion page? If not, what can I do when I see a page that should be deleted (like BlogLines)?
(Err.. disregard that BlogLines example--that was deleted quickly! But my confusion about my deletion powers remains.)
I have real problems with the deletion policy. It is not democratic in the slightest! I would like to propose that instead new pages are put on 'Probation' for a month. There is an attached -VoteToKeep page linked to it and at the end of the month if there is a clear democratic majority then goodbye. But at present the time-period is too short, too unclear and hidden and opaque... ABC
Not undemocratic, hidden, nor opaque. Voting is just that -- democratic. Not hidden, since a blurb is put at the top of the page to indicate that it has been proposed for deletion and where to go to discuss it. And not opaque, since the Votes for Deletion page explains what is going on. RickK 16:37, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)