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Is the software clever enough to detect whether an edit conflict is confined to a single section of an article? I ask because Dysprosia and I just clashed heads on this page whilst editing what was at that point the final section. I was explicitly editing that section, but I have no idea what Dysprosia had selected. Whatever the odds, I was presented with the entire page to sort out, just for the sake of about 10 lines at the bottom. Phil 12:06, Nov 28, 2003 (UTC)
Is there any software around or under development to migrate pages from the old Usemod wiki to the new MediaWiki ? 5pectre Fri Nov 28 13:16:01 GMT 2003
Is there a conflict with this image: Image:Urchintest2.jpg. The description says: "Copyright ©2003 by Daniel P. B. Smith. Licensed under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright." It doesn't sound right to me. Dori 22:41, Nov 28, 2003 (UTC)
Why is Wikipedia's entry on Natacha Rambova filled with so many errors? -- Michael Morris
If we copy text from an article from another source released under the GDFL, into a wikipedia article, are we required to link to the other site and mention that the original text came from that site? Alexandros
Someone has written new policy, wikipedia:blank page idiomatic link, about adding interwiki links to pages that don't exist. I think this is a bad idea. Having a link to a page in another language at the top, only to click on it and find that there is actually no such page is annoying and a waste of time, I really wish they would stop adding such links. Maximus Rex 18:41, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Back in October, I wrote new entries for Carl Spaatz and Lyman Lemnitzer. Today I decided to do a search and see if there were any mentions of their names that were not linked back to the main entries. I did, in fact, find two such mentions. But I also found that a google search under "Spaatz" or "Lemnitzer" failed to provide a hit on either of the main entries for these men. Obviously both names were mentioned several times in the relevant entry. Other entries with links to these entries were listed (such as List of people associated with World War II). Google even had the links from my user page which post-dated the creation of these entries. So why doesn't google pick up on them? MK 15:34 (EST) 30 November 2003
How could I find out who wrote the original text on consensus decision-making or where it was taken from? I'm curious about the sources for certain assertions. Page history only seems to go back to January 2003. I was hoping to go back to the root article. Sunray
The Wikipedia:Brilliant prose has articles which were added before the Nomination system. Some of the articles rise some doubts and there was a discussion on Talk: BP candidates about what to do. A voting was decided. So now, everybody, please vote on:
Cheers, Muriel Victoria 14:28, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Well, after viewing a long article, and wanting to make a link into a certain section, which couldn't be defined in the table of contents with the double = sign without making the article all screwed up (Namely, I'm trying to link to the part in Modem about echo cancellation in the history section
So, rather than split it, I thought I would try changing 'Echo Cancellation' to '<a name=echo>Echo Cancellation</a> so I could link from Cancellation to Modem#echo
Any way to go about this other than to split the article -- Fizscy46 14:46, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Quick reference on server status
Why or why not? Has anyone worked on an automated tool to do an import?
The Whatlinkshere page for Baltimore Oriole shows Geography of Equatorial Guinea which links to Maryland, USA but certainly not to Baltimore Oriole. Is this a bug or a feature? Big Iron 20:13, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Actually, because of the reference above, the Village Pumps is now showing as a double redirect, but it doesn't appear in Wikipedia:Defective redirects so it isn't a true double redirect. Big Iron 21:28, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I believe this is a known bug that has already been recorded at SourceForge. By the way, Wikipedia:Defective redirects hasn't been updated in a long time. Believe me, there are plenty of double-redirects floating around right now. -- Minesweeper 09:22, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I can't guarantee it wasn't just a browser anomaly (especially since it's MS-IE), but at one point most pages seemed normal, but Computational_geometry wouldn't load, but it would load quickly, with [2]. (But still wouldn't load the normal way.) At the same time, there was a several minute hole in recent changes. Doubt whether any of this has any significance, but mentioning it in case. Κσυπ Cyp 03:02, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I've mentioned this before, but once the new server is online, I wonder if the watchlist default could be upped to 12 hours or maybe 1 day? I presume that the watchlist default was changed to one hour (some months ago now) for performance reasons, though I suspect that those who use the watchlist feature will generally immediately ask for a redisplay with a longer interval (I know I do) which negates completely the performance advantage - the server is having to generate two lots of watchlist instead of just one. The result is that the not very useful default actuallly increases server load, the opposite of what was intended. I know I can craete my oen link with whatever default I wish, but then it's only accessible from my user page, not in the sidebar as I would like. GRAHAMUK 04:24, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I am trying to disambiguate Hindu. There is an article referring to The Hindu (newspaper), and an article referring to Hinduism (religion). Hindu is the redirect clause presently for the latter page.
Converting the redirection page for Hindu to a disambiguation page seemed like a solution. But, the newspaper page has only three pages linking to it, whereas the religion page has hundreds. And every reference to Hindu redirect page presently, is to the religion and not to the newspaper. And hence, that seemed like an extreme step.
Nevertheless, considering the newspaper's popularity in India, sooner or later there will be more articles referring to it, and an early disambiguation seems necessary. So how do I proceed? chance 07:02, Dec 2, 2003 (UTC)
This article is about the Hindu religion; for other meanings, see Hindu (disambiguation).
When will the list of the first 125 orphaned pages Special:Lonelypages be updated again? I believe that virtuall all the pages on the current list are either disambiguation pages or no longer orphans. - Anthropos 07:38, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Whats the criteria for a page to be included in that list? - Antonio Fatal Attraction for Men and Women Martin
Often a square box appears in math formulas where I would expect a character. I guess this means my browser can't render the charachter. How can I fix this or get around the problem to find out what charachter should be in the place of the square box?
Thanks
Please pay attention to the posts of this user, related to a Colombia's dialect that he name Machaco, Bambuco songs and others topics. Even when those contributions will be [3]poorly translated, this guy is very obstinate and bad-mannered and brought [4]us many problems (vandalism, non NPOV, flamewars...). His intentions to promote a wikipedia for this creole dialect has gone [5]quite far, using another [6]nick, or IPs in 200.21.108.xxx. Actually, we were forced to run a bot to delete his 'contributions' because of his intolerance, misunderstanding (read non observance) of the publishing policy and crude attitude with the community. -- Best regards -- 200.45.101.236 18:29, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC) ( [7])
Is this the right place to post a "how do I?" question? I am slowly working my way through Buckinghamshire creating articles for all the places therein. However one of the places is the village of Penn, ancestral home of William Penn after whom Pennsylvania is named. However as you will see Penn automatically redirects to University of Pennsylvania. First of all how do I turn the Penn page from a redirect into something else? Secondly what is the protocol for sorting this out? Should there be a disambig page for Penn or a note at the top of the University of Pennsylvania article? I personally feel that automatically linking Penn to the univerity page is not the right thing to do... Graham :) 01:05, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Now that the old settings have been restored, my watchlist takes a very long time to load. Is it possible to change my preferecnes from the default number of displayed days? -- Jiang 21:43, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
User S1rkull somehow managed to wipe out the entire page history for the article on Truism. The page that's there resembles an old copy of the article. Can the most recent version of the article before the intervention be recovered? Peak 04:19, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I'm desperately looking for someone who can tell me how to block Flash demands for installation. This is clogging up our e-mail and Internet Explorer usages; also, since we are NEVER planning to develop our own web site, I can't see why we would possibly need Flash. I've heard also that Flash stuff uses a lot of virtual memory, and we've recently been running out of virtual. Does this have anything to do with Flash barging in? I'm tired of this kind of activity, and want it to stop. I already have AdAware and Spybot installed, and our system has run MUCH better since I did that. But, for whatever reasons, Flash is still driving us nuts. Thanks in advance. I'm looking for anyone who can tell me anything about this situation.
Will a sysop please revert Wikipedia:Edit conflicts to it's state on 31 July 2003, prior to the current edit war, and protect it so the warring parties can follow Wikipedia policy to resolve their differences and sort out what it should say? Jamesday 22:59, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Is this a joke, or is it in any way vaguely official?
Don't mean to offend anyone, but I can't help wondering. Thanks. -- Pakaran 23:04, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Rlandmann, ignore it, this constitution has to be a bad joke. mydogategodshat 06:37, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Alexandros, please explain why it is, or should be, official. I doubt it seriously. RickK 07:27, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I am the one who posted the Mare Island comment, my email address is KissTycal@aol.com should anyone need to contact me.
How could I cite Wikipedia as a source in a research paper? (MLA format!)
Since the database work done a few days ago, the information retrieved when doing a "What links here" is shown in alphabetical order, whereas it used to be shown in chronological order. As an editor and as one who is interested in recently internal link generation, I personally have more use for the information in chronological order. Is it possible to give users the option of choosing which format to retrieve in? Kingturtle 23:38, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I am using Mozilla Firebird 0.7.
I created a new account.I Wikipedia tells me that it created the new account successfully, but that it cannot log me in because my cookies are disabled. I looked at the address bar, and went in to the cookie settings and unblocked "en.wikipedia.org". Yet still it cannot log me in. I suppose there is some other site I need to unblock, but I don't know how to find out what it might be ? Any clues ? :)
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Now that some steps are being taken to clean up the pre-nomination brilliant prose articles, I'd suggest that something needs doing with the current candidates at Wikipedia:Brilliant prose candidates. Some of the disputed pages have been listed for months (see Richard Wagner for instance) and there are lots of nominated pages with no seconder.
I's suggest that a new limit of one month be set (maybe too generous) and that any page still disputed or not seconded at the end of that time be removed from the list of candidates.
Any ideas? And anyone like to go second or dispute a candidate today? Bmills 15:59, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
To clarify: one month limit is there already for disputed candidates, one week for undisputed. Only self-added articles currently need a seconder. I'd suggest that all articles should be seconded and that one week is not long enough to allow for objections. Bmills 16:13, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I think there should be mention of Mare Island....
I have an American Flag from 1916 that says "Mare Island 1916" and
has a rank on it. It is the size that is flown over Capital buildings , so I believe it was the Shipyards. Maybe, if you include Mare Island, you can research this Flag? I have done some looking here and there, but have not been able to find information about the flying or the retirement from the Shipyard of this Flag. I know in 1906 there was the San Francisco earthquake, and I know in 1917 the Shipyard was blown up by espionage. I "aquired" the Flag 14 years ago and a wild tale goes with it, that's another story. Hopefully we can put this Flag back on the map,I am curious if it was the first and only Flag flown over Mare Island? If you can help, I would appreciate, or, simply I have a suggestion of "Mare Island" be included in "Wikipedia."
Thank you, Bryan Cross
I am the one who posted the Mare Island comment, my email address is KissTycal@aol.com should anyone need to contact me.
When I was adding Cecil H. Green to the list of people born on August 6, I decided to read the whole birthday list. Second-to-bottom on the list, just above JonBenét Ramsey, was an entry for someone called Norberto Carlos Cagliotti, born in 1980, a surfer and "accenturian". The boy didn't have his own Wikipedia article, and I had never heard of him either, even thoughh he was supposed to be famous and I wanted to find out what in the world an "accenturian" was. The 1980 birthdate compounded my interest -- we could have a new Sunshine Generation celebrity, but my suspicions of vanity were raised. I did a Google search on the name, and there doesn't seem to be any Net presence of note -- mostly just sites that borrowed from Wikipedia. Norberto did show up at one page -- http://www.udesa.edu.ar/departamentos/economia/tba_listado.html. It appeared to be merely a display of college theses. Does anyone know anything about this guy, or is it simply vanity being poured onto a Wikipedia birthdate page? Wiwaxia 12:46, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The table at Australia has its margin on the right instead of the left. Can someone fix this? -- Jiang | Talk 08:40, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Hope this is the right page, if not please move it. QUESTION: Should we be posting External links to personal websites or any other kind of site that is not credible. It seems to me if the goal is to have Wikipedia be an "accurate" and relaible source, then any external link it references to has Wikipedia's "certificate of authenticity" equal to our own unless a clear disclaim notice is given as part of the External Link listing. It would seem that if you can refer to John Doe's personal website on the "History of apples", then it becomes legitimate to link to a personal KKK and the like website from numerous Wikipedia articles. Angelique 01:58, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The actual websites in question are (from New France):
For me, external links are supplemental information that goes beyond Wikipedia's level of detail, so I generally only include ones that seem at least as knowledgeable and current as the content of the article referring to them. From a practical point of view, you don't want to link to bad data, otherwise future editors can mess up the WP article by using the external pages as sources. Many web pages are ephemeral too, be sure the WP article still makes sense if all the links stop working tomorrow. Stan 05:49, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The point that we don't want to link to bad data made by User:Stan Shebs is why I raised the matter. (and not for one specific page but relative to all of Wikipedia) Linking to an outside source that is only someone's personal page raises unnecessary risks and instead of adding benefit to Wikipedia has the potential to be detrimental. As such, my view would be never to add any outside link except those pointing to an source whose credentials are undoubted. Why would an Encyclopedia like Wikipedia ever want to refer anyone to the writings of sites where both the qualifications of the writer and the validity of their information is unknown to Wikipedia? In books, authors quote their references so as to prove they are quoting reliable sources. Why would Wikipedia want to do the opposite? Angelique 16:31, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Dear Stan Shebs: Your insinuation is unfounded. REPEAT: " ---- I raised the matter. (and not for one specific page but relative to all of Wikipedia). my view would be never to add any outside link except those pointing to an source whose credentials are undoubted." Equally as often, a hardworking bigot etc. goes to great lengths to put their slant on "accurate" information. Want a list of "factual" right wing Religious Right sponsored sites? Should Wikipedia link to these? Or is someone going to start judging links? Angelique 22:26, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
can someone tell me how to link to an image that's in the French wikipedia space (or tell me if this is a silly thing to do)? thanks. seglea 20:56, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I was thinking that a page wikipedia really needs is a what's missing page, especially on the front page. So Searching For An Answer is now a page for it. Can we put it on the front page?
I remember seeing a related discussion on the pump earlier today, but I can no longer see it. Is a user allowed to do anything on his user page or his user talk page which would normally be against wikipedia conventions if done on a regular article, e.g., blanking of the entire page.
There is a user who blanks out his talk page after each discussion, so we don't get to know what discussions he's been having. Are there any rules on what a user is allowed or disallowed on his user page ? Jay 17:30, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I have found a site, wordIQ, which appears to have copied most or all of Wikipedia and is passing it off as their own.
This seems to be a mass copy. Searching for wikipedia found hundreds of articles containing the word in boilerplate stub text, links to Wikipedia: pages, etc. Anyone who contributed before August 2003 (which unfortunately doesn't include me - Tualha) has probably had their copyright violated.
Analysis of the history of Cognitive science shows that this article was copied sometime between August 17 and September 1 of 2003. Compare the August 17 Wikipedia article with "their" page.
I found no explicit point of contact. Their " About wordIQ page gives an email address and the phone number 626-226-8279, which would be in the Los Angeles area. Their terms mention California law. Whois merely reveals that they're hiding behind Domains By Proxy.
I don't think this is an honest mistake. I think this is a massive intentional grab of Wikipedia content with no intent to abide by the terms of the GFDL. Let's nail these bastards. See Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter.
I have added this to Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content.
Tualha 17:27, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
It seems that user S1rkull somehow managed to wipe out the entire page history for the article on Truism. The page that's there resembles an old copy of the article. Can the most recent version of the article before the intervention be recovered? Peak 04:19, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Is it possible to do a 'CVS Blame' on an article? Jahs 17:39, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
What does that mean? RickK 19:59, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Perhaps everyone could look at the history of Wikipedia:Edit conflicts and vote on which version they prefer, by reverting to it. Then a professional superhero could be hired to look through the resulting history, and choose the most reverted-to version. Κσυπ Cyp 11:18, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I think it would be a good idea to replace the largely depreciated page link to " Bug reports" to Contact us in the sidebar. Please discuss the pros and cons at Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki namespace text. mav 09:47, 6 Dec 2003
I have noticed that other domains use Wikipedia's database. They always give wikipedia credit at the bottom. And that's cool....but, a page like http://www.4reference.net/encyclopedias/wikipedia/Dorothea_Dix.html has advertisements all over it. I don't like the idea of someone making money off of wikipedia text.
www.4reference.net doesn't give a link back to the actual Wikipedia page. Should they? --
Tarquin 10:16, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Under the terms of the GNU FDL that we have all written our articles under, anyone who wants to can take all our text and sell it. With numerous caveats of course. See the link for answers to all these questions. Tempshill 18:55, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
We are translating stuff at Chinese WP, and couldn't tell what "Meta" means in "Meta-Wikipedia". The dictionary's definitions all seem weird [8]. -- Menchi 08:41, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
From Meta: In epistemology the prefix meta- is used to mean about. Thus, any subject can be said to have a meta-theory, which is the theoretical consideration of its foundations and methods. So, Meta-Wikimedia is about Wikimedia. Angela . 08:51, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I notice a lot of people who post Votes for Deletion do so without putting a "delete" notice on the page, which is very unfair to the page's author.
Any suggestions how we can police this? Anjouli 02:39, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Take it up with The Cunctator. RickK 07:36, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
This is what I see on recent changes. Whats the deal? Alexandros
At the moment, I can't access en.wikipedia.org , and seem to be able to access most of en2.wikipedia.org .
I can't access en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges but I can access en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges . Κσυπ Cyp 19:34, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
test.wikipedia.org also seems to be down, most or all others up. Can't see the Wikipædia logo on en2, by the way. Κσυπ Cyp 19:54, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
P.S. Need en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title= before everything, not just for recent changes. Κσυπ Cyp 19:56, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Damn, still noone answered. I wonder why... Κσυπ Cyp 20:28, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Japanese wikipedia seems to have been under a similar but slightly different condition, now for about 10 hours. I have sent an email to developers regarding regarding en & ja pointing BerliOS' Wikipedia Status page and here, among others. Tomos 20:35, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Could someone who knows what's what take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Fictional Series#General Strategy and Discussion forum and hazard a guess at why the first sub-page link is permanently set to mode whereas the second, which is defined in exactly the same manner AFAICT, isn't?
Some clarification for the benefit of some of us confused participants (well, me, anyway) as to whether sub-pages are OK in the Wikipedia namespace would be appreciated: I'm sure that I've seen other Wikiproject pages use the same trick and get away with it.
Phil 17:20, Dec 5, 2003 (UTC)
Wikipedia:List of pages with capital first letters that should be lowercase describes the fact that a Wikipedia article's name cannot begin with a lowercase character. Can this constraint be lifted? Bevo 12:39, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Muggle gives:
May be temporary, but it's been doing it for a long time and everything else seesm fine. Anjouli 08:11, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
MySQL problems. -- mav 08:51, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Can anybody access 1958? I keep getting a MySQL error. -- mav 09:21, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Seems okay now. Guess the reboot fixed it. Anjouli 12:20, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
This cannot possibly be the first time this has been suggested, but I wonder if it might be better if anonymous IPs are only allowed to access WP read-only. Looking at the vandalism alerts, the vast majority are anonymous IPs. I suspect what happens is that a casual user browses in by chance, finds (to their surprise, probably) that they are able to change the content, and without much thought, does so. Usually this will be something facetious or silly, simply because this is what happens when people are presented with an unexpected opportunity. Those who are more considerate and understand what WP is about will be more than willing to register, it's not as if it takes much effort or costs anything. The ability to edit anonymously was probably very important when WP was first started, simply to get the ball rolling. It's rolling very nicely now, so this feature is no longer a blessing but a liability. I'd bet that implementing this would cut petty vandalism by 90% overnight, without having any significant effect on WPs growth. Thoughts? GRAHAMUK 07:03, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Day before yesterday, User:G-Man vandalised article on Kosovo and Metohia in 15 subsequent edits, which include reediting his former edits, marking major edits as minor [9] and thus making next to impossible to see what are his edits. He also edited on controversial issues currently being discussed on the page's Talk page while not participating in the discussion himself. I have therefore reverted the page, and ask that it is protected. Nikola 08:27, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Why is this on Village pump? RickK 07:29, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Is it acceptable to work in a Wikipedia whose language you have only studied academically, and may make grammatical errors in? I was thinking about working in the Spanish Wikipedia, but I have only taken Spanish through a second-year college level (probably 7 years of classes in and before college) and I'd be likely to make grammar errors. Given my experience trying to fix up the travel article, I don't want to put anyone else in the same boat, but I feel I could make significant contributions there. -- Pakaran 01:35, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Personally, I think that would great. The small Wikipedias ( Arabic for example) need all the help they can get and would probably welcome people with a less than perfect knowledge of the language. I don't know whether people at the Spanish Wikipedia would feel the as I do though. Maybe you could ask at es:Wikipedia:Café. Angela . 01:45, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
One way around this is to set up an editing partnership, as we have been doing at the History of Poland series. I write a draft section in (I hope) good English. Various Polish users who do not have good English then make comments and add more material. I then edit their material into good English. This seems to work quite well. Adam 03:32, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
See m:Talk:Meta-Wikimedia:Constitution of Wikimedia
The watchlist page says that text will be "bolded". From dictionary.com:
\Bold\, v. t. To make bold or daring. [Obs.] --Shak.
Could we have "emboldened" or "displayed in bold", please, instead of this revived archaism? -- Paul G 15:00, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
dictionary.com has for "embolden":
and, for "to bold":
"to bold" is the appropriate term among those of us involved in the text editing field. RickK 16:14, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The article Charles Xavier was just now renamed to Professor X. The edit history of Talk:Charles Xavier correctly shows this as occurring at 7:39, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC) - but the edit history for the article itself claims it occurred at 3:46, 22 Nov 2002! (Regressing back to the last time someone renamed the page, or something?) — Paul A 07:51, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Apologies, not sure if this is the right place to point this out but I could not find any pages related to it--I have come across two pages, Magellanic Clouds and Magellanic clouds which relate to the same thing. What is the usual practice for fixing something like this?
-- Chopchopwhitey 06:06, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
For future reference, see also Wikipedia:Duplicate articles. — Paul A 07:40, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
When I tried to block a user's address, I got the following error message: Database error From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an illegal search query (see Searching Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:
INSERT INTO ipblocks (ipb_address, ipb_user, ipb_by, ipb_reason, ipb_timestamp, ipb_auto ) VALUES ('64.208.58.117', 0, 13800, 'you were warned','20031204044847', 0) from within function "Block::insert". MySQL returned error "1062: Duplicate entry '2147483647' for key 1". RickK 04:52, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I've seen people refer to the act of "reverting" text as if this were easy. I don't find it so - I have to show up the diff of an article and select the text, which (maybe it's my browser) usually selects across the page and hence both copies at once. I then have to manually edit out the parts of the old article that I don't want. This strikes me as awkward and error-prone. Is there an easier way I haven't discovered? Couldn't there be a simple "revert" link next to each version in the history? Not sure what this implies from a technical standpoint but it would make the occasional necessary revert much easier. GRAHAMUK 23:32, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Just wondering, now the new box is online, will the internal search engine be switched back on any time soon?. It's been out of action for ages now G-Man 23:08, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Please see the history of David Hume. An anonymous user is attempting to insert Unicode special characters into the article, and has had a modicum of support in this purpose. There's no problem when viewing the article, but when you attempt to edit it, you have to delete several characters in order to remove the codes if it becomes necessary. I'd hate to see this become a de facto standard on Wikipedia. RickK 16:42, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
# smart quotes s/[\x93\x94]+/\"/gs; s/[\x92\xb2\xb9]+/\'/gs; s/[\xb3]+/\`/gs; s/[\x96]+/-/gs; # HTML escapes s/\–/-/gs; # – s/\—/—/gs; s/\‘/\`/gs; # ‘ s/\’/\'/gs; # ’ s/\“/\"/gs; # “ s/\”/\"/gs; # ” # unwanted HTML escapes s/\–/-/gs; s/\‘/\`/gs; s/\’/\'/gs; s/\“/\"/gs; s/\”/\"/gs;
Is there a way to make a wikilink that will go to a redirect page, without redirection? Or must I use a regular HTML link?
Thanks,
Tualha 15:39, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Just curious, what type of Internet connection does Wikipedia use? What is the bandwidth?
66.32.17.177 09:09, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I created a page from text on a web site I am a contributing member of
spent a lot of time setting up the links to other enteries and potential enteries
and someone decided that as on paragraph of the text was the same as the web site that I was breaching copyright and the whole text was deleted.
My points are
Another point
I showed my 12 year old daughter the system and encouraged her to enter something - eventually we noticed her school was mentioned but had no entry so she typed in a short entry saying where it was a what type of school it was - just a couple of lines but factual.
Someone then put in a line saying 'THIS IS A STUB' etc. etc. and it just seemed to me to be insensitive and discouraging - given that the information did tell you the status of the school and where it was - may have been short but it was not valueless.
I'm sure many people have made this point - but the absence of an uptodate search engine seems to be a major major flaw in the credibility of the project.
Kevin Flude
We should add a couple of FAQs based on this query: 1) "Why has my material been deleted" 2) "Why has my page been marked as a 'stub'?". --
Tarquin 13:23, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Conflicts between users --> See Wikipedia:Conflicts between users
List of Australians lists a link to Daisy Bates, which the page describes as "self proclaimed psychologist" yet the link points to an article about an American civil rights activist. I want to set up a disambiguation page points to Daisy Bates (psychologist) for the Australian and Daisy Lee Gatson Bates for the American. I've never done such a thing before. Any tips on doing it well? Dmbaguley 22:16, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Is there general agreement on when one should use {{subst:...}} vs. {{mgsg:...}}? I notice that on Wikipedia:MediaWiki custom messages, it shows {{subst:stub}} but {{msg:disambig}}. Is this an intentional indication of preferred usage? -- Anthropos 14:00, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Take a look at Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki custom messages and List of science fiction authors. On both of these articles as they're appearing to me, the Compact TOCs are appearing in <nowiki> format. Does anyone have any idea what's going on? Phil 16:26, Dec 11, 2003 (UTC)
I have this memory of a show from when I was a child. I don't remember very much. All I remember is that there was a group of people on a very large spaceship. They spend their time moving from one large room to another. These were not rooms really but more like other worlds. In these other worlds, they would have adventures. I believe they were trapped on this ship and were trying to get off. I am not sure if this show really existed or is part of my imagination. If you know the name, please let me know at michaelmonge@msn.com. Thanks.
Hello ,
I'm Alex, I run website http://www.webcam-list.com This is a big and convenient directory containing lots of links to free live webcams from all around the world (currently it has 1300+ links and growing).
I would like to exchange links with you and I think our visitors would both benefit from this. Please let me know what you think.
Thank you.
-- Best regards,
Alex Baldwin mailto:webmaster@webcam-list.com http://www.webcam-list.com
Is there any chance of adding a backward link from a talk page to the page it is talking about? It's a little annoying to have to step back four or five pages to return to the page after an edit (or more if you've been browsing the talk history, for example!).
I would suggest making the second part of the heading (after Talk:) into a link back to the main page.
HappyDog 17:27, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
By 'main page' I of course meant the article the Talk page refers to. HappyDog 17:28, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I see it now - it's not very clear, and importantly there is no equivalent link at the top of the page. I feel it would be a little more intuitive to make the second part of the page header (after Talk:) into a link back as well. Seriously, I double checked before writing this that there wasn't anything I'd missed, and I still didn't spot it! HappyDog 17:39, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
What do people (that means you) prefer, this:
or how it already is?:
We're is this list? I can't find it?
HappyDog 20:56, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
OK - I've been playing around with my settings, and I now have the nav bar you describe. I'm not sure what caused it to appear, as I changed several settings at the same time.
The nav bar makes things a bit better, and easier to navigate. If the bar is there, my original request for a top-of-page link is no longer a necessity. However I still think it's desirable. It's the natural place for a backward link (it's the first place I looked), and given the wiki-philosophy of massively linking pages (e.g. every single date!) this does seem like a bit of an oversight, and an easy one to rectify. This is particularly true for people who haven't discovered how to turn on the menu (or don't even know that they can!). HappyDog 21:04, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Hi all, I just started meta-page Wikipedia:Guidelines for controversial articles to help resolve problems with Israeli-Palestinian topics and it might be useful for other areas as well. Please take a look and help expand it. -- Viajero 15:24, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I created this list yesterday and it already has over 60 names on it. About half of the listed poets do not have articles yet. I think that, in a modest way, this list and the associated articles could be a real ornament to Wikipedia, being particularly useful to people doing Women's studies and the like, so I'm inviting everyone to a) check it out and add your favourite female poet, if she's not there already and b) add an article! Bmills 10:57, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
That's precisely what I did do, and the section title appeared later, as if by magic. JackofOz 22:37, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I wonder why it is that the majority of times I use "Random page" I get a page about a locality, and an American locality at that. Is there some special programming designed to give such results, or is this just an amazing coincidence?
Cheers JackofOz 07:44, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
It's because Wikipedia is full of junk. See my The Wikipedia Quality Survey Adam 08:26, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Don't blame JackofOz for the terrible title of this section; mea culpa. JackofOz, you should see a link near the top of the page called "Post a question now" - it creates a new section header. Tualha 13:56, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
It's because a lot of stuff was robotically imported from US Census data. There are complaints about this from time to time, which are generally answered by people who note that their first introduction to Wikipedia was searching for their home town or birthplace on Google, which often turns up one of these very common Wikipedia articles. Tempshill 01:49, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with it myself. Yes, on average, pages are less edited, less "personal", than they were before Rambot did its stuff, and the article count can be considered inflated. But the other articles are no less useful or worthwhile. We just have a whole lot of other information, which is very useful itself, and as Tempshill pointed out, bring in plenty of new people. Tualha 04:40, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
So could there be a way to make "random page" produce more interesting results - e.g. maybe it would only select a page above a certain size, so the page is likely to be more "interesting" than a short page. But then I guess it would not be "random page" anymore ! Gandalf61 07:31, Dec 11, 2003 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Referrers is interesting but quite old - it hasn't been updated since September 2002. I think it would be worthwhile to have an updated version.
Tualha 06:44, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I was unable to login successfully until I allowed cookies from both en.wikipedia.org and en2.wikipedia.org (thank you for the information Dysprosia).
I propose to change the login text for here - I always thought the current login prompt was too unintuitive. Since this is rather a largish change, I'm sending out a request for comments at MediaWiki talk:Loginprompt. Do let me know what you think, suggest something new, if you're interested :) Dysprosia 23:49, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
What are good techniques that allow quick spell checking of a Wikipedia article? Bevo 19:19, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Not much to discuss, but this certainly is good news, search is up again! -- Sverdrup 15:41, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Did they re-enable it because of the new server? —Noldoaran (Talk) 18:43, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)
How could I cite Wikipedia as a source in a research paper? (MLA format!)
well unlike all other encyclopedia why wikipedia is not having sammm flash movies explaining any small topic like any bird or circuit woring etc. i would love to work on this.
This is a little idea of mine that I have written up. Please read and comment. Zocky 03:44, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I am trying to set up a special purpose wiki where only members of a special interest group can edit. I really like the MediaWiki that Wikipedia uses, and Wikipedia is an excellent example to show people how a Wiki works. Does anyone know of a Wiki farm that uses MediaWiki? I mean a host that runs MediaWiki that will allow me to set up my own Wiki, probably for a fee. pstudier 17:31, 2003 Dec 9 (UTC)
If every American Wikipedian visited List of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and contributed a short biography of their local Congress-person, we would have a complete set of Congressional articles in no time! Adam 01:30, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I might add that many of the Senators' biographies are mere stubs and could use some work as well. Adam 08:20, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Can some developer please set the watchlist default back to 1 hour? -- Wik 18:21, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)
Is there a quick n' easy way to add a signature with username, and possibly date/time, etc? I see other people do it... :*( leigh
User:Karukera has proposed to add "head of government" and "head of state" labels to the country template. Personally, I find this ugly, but does someone else want to comment? (Samples available) -- Jiang| (Talk) 22:35, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
What are messages (such as {{SUBST:vfd}})? What do they do? How do they work?
Noldoaran 21:56, Dec 6, 2003 (UTC)
In following some semi-conversations on Votes for Deletion, it appears that a de-facto policy is to move articles about individual (non-famous) 9-11 victims to http://sep11.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tributes_to_individuals. Perhaps we need a local page to collect links to articles that need to be so moved. Any comments? - Anthropos 23:34, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Related discussion about expanding the focus of the Sep11Wiki is at meta:Wikimorial. -- mav 09:40, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I think that that page should be deleted, and all of the articles that it links to should be integrated into Wikibooks. I got a vote of consent on talk:How-to, but I want a little more discussion before I undertake such a significant change.- Smack
Hey folks. Recently a new user showed up, created a "vanity page," and spent a while fussing over whether it was going to be deleted. I talked with him a bit, and got the impression that he was doing that because he didn't really know what else to do. He was willing to contribute but didn't know where.
After that experience, it occurred to me that it would useful to create a group of Wikipedians dedicated to guiding newcomers. I know that there are a number of people who make a point of posting welcome messages to new users' talk pages, but I'm talking about more than that. I mean making a project dedicated to discussion of how to better welcome newcomers and get them started working where they'll be the most help. This project would have a page somewhere (Maybe a WikiProject page or a page on meta) and a defined, if informal, membership. The ultimate goal would be to welcome newcomers, find out their interests, connect them to WikiProjects if appropriate, introduce them to veteran WikiPedians with similar interests, and maybe guide them in their early editing.
I believe this approach would be better than the current system of hoping newcomers will read guidelines, waiting for them to ask questions, and correcting their work when they screw up.
A more proactive approach would have several benefits:
Comments? Isomorphic 20:10, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
We could create a MediaWiki custom text (see Wikipedia:MediaWiki namespace) where people can fill in "tasks of the day" in newbiew-friendly language. Then all people who post welcome messages could add {{subst:totd}} to their boilerplace text to include the message. To avoid improper content, the page should be protected. —Eloquence
I like what I read about the H2G2 model. Anyway, I'd like to continue this discussion but suspect that Village Pump isn't the place. Is there a page somewhere on Meta? I really don't know anything much about Meta, as I'm still new here myself. Isomorphic 09:33, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Maybe we should write a welcome page ( Wikipedia:Welcome to Wikipedia?). It would merge some of the information from the top of the main page, Wikipedia:About, Wikipedia:Utilites, as well as other useful stuff - basics on etiquette, discussion, NPOV, everything needed for a newbie to find their way around. All written in newbie friendly language, style and formatting, and not longer than a screen of text, plus judiciously chosen and nicely formatted bunch of links to further reading. Make it nice and useful enough that people keep coming back to it.
Then post a link to this on the main page, on the anonymous edit page and on the login prompt pages (as well as under "You are now logged in...") Zocky 14:07, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
There seem to be at least two groups of people, those who think 'county' means the current, administrative entity, and those who think it means a traditional or historical entitiy.
In itself this isn't a problem, but Wikipedia needs to have a policy on which county a particular place is in. Maybe such a policy has already been debated and agreed; if so I'd be grateful if someone could point me to it. There's no discussion about the article Counties of England, though the article itself mentions that the different meanings exist.
It's a problem because someone has gone through the article on St Neots and moved it from the current, administrative county of Cambridgeshire to the historical county of Huntingdonshire, which will confuse the reader. For now I've returned the article to its original form. And this is happening on a wide scale, articles on towns and villages are being modified wholesale.
Is there any guidance on this sort of thing, other than to kick off the talk page, debate the topic and see if we can come to a consensus view? Advice anyone? Chris Jefferies 10th December 2003
OK guys, thanks for all your comments. I think there's a great deal of common sense in what you say, especially about the historical county relevant to the article being the correct one to use in each case.
So what are we going to do about User:80.255 who is throwing his weight around, agressively changing dozens of articles without consideration for either other editors or indeed (and more importantly) for the poor readers. He is damaging the Wikipedia and will also damage its reputation with readers if he's allowed to continue.
I don't mind having a dialogue with him, but if (as I suspect) he proves resistant to both reason and the majority view, what then? If that happens, maybe we should consider having his IP address blocked, though it would probably have only a temporary effect. Chris Jefferies 11th December 2003
My feeling is to use
Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(places) as there's quite a large discussion going on and the final description of the convention will probably be fairly lengthy.
I'm therefore copying this discussion to Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(places) - please continue there, not here! Chris Jefferies 11:14, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The maps also need some standardization.
The following map appears on Dorset:
While the following map appears on Northumberland:
Note that, in the second map, that peninsula at the tip of Scotland appears as all one county, while in the first, that peninsula appears as several counties. And that's just one of many differences between the maps.
Someone needs to figure out which map is correct, and fix the incorrect map. I'd do it if I knew more about British counties.
LuckyWizard 01:36, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
is it possible to cancel my account? i.e. i no longer wishes my handle (p0lyglut) to show up in wikipedia in articles i edited or anywhere. Thanks.
P0lyglut 04:27, 2003 Dec 2 (UTC)
Perhaps the very nature of semantics versus raw text makes this untenable, but has anybody thought about a system for auto-generation of inter-wiki linking? Many articles miss out of lots of meaningful links because the author's job is multiplied dramatically by having to track down terms that might or might not have pages on them. They could just add a link for everything they think should have a link, and lots of red links will appear. But it would be interesting if all existing pages automatically became active links. Of course, if that were feasible/desirable, the link style would have to change because otherwise too many words would be underlined and bright blue. What about using user-customizable CSS? I'll admit right away I'm a know-nothing, but I was sure that there was a way to allow the user to choose between styles with CSS.
Even if auto-linking as I've suggested it is too complex/absurd/would bring down the wiki, what about a link on every page for a database search for articles related to or words/phrases on the page? Too many results? A way to only return more likely hits? Categorization? Do pages currently have tags on them that associate them with wiki sub-sections or categories? Would this be workable? I would LOVE to be able to click a link on a page that would take me to a sort of local table of contents of related pages and/or a summary of the more general area of knowledge in which a page resides. And that one would link to the next level up, etcetera.
Brent Gulanowski 02:45, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Enciclopedia Libre has that option button. It may be abused. Maybe we should ask our Spanish ambassador how they're dealing w/ that. I bet it leads to a kinda vandalism as well. -- Menchi ( Talk) â 09:10, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Linking requires human intelligence, and there's no way around that. It's not just about finding words to highlight, it's also about determining whether further information on a subject is desired in context. Not every occurrence of the word bed needs to be highlighted, but if we go into some detail as to what kind of bed a person used, we may well want to put a link on that word. Overlinking makes articles hard to read, distracts from the content and makes us look silly. —Eloquence 09:23, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia talk:Make only links relevant to the context. -- Menchi ( Talk) â 09:39, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Rollback (see Wikipedia:Administrators#Revert) currently gives a edit summary that shows up in the history as: reverted to last edit by .... Unfortunantly, this gives no indicatation as to why a edit was removed and makes no indication that a edit was reverted by an automated program. I think that one of two things should be done:
This would make it clear to someone who is looking at the edit to try and figure out why on earth an edit has been reverted. It also gives a user some idea as to why their edits are being reverted (especially in cases of mistaken identity). Jrincayc 16:45, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The IP User:65.110.6.34 has a history of repeated vandalism. Apparently, it's the address of the free anonymous IP www.proxyweb.net. Can a developer permanantly ban this IP? See Vandalism_in_progress#65.110.6.34. Anyone using this IP would be doing so voluntarily. -- Jiang | Talk 21:36, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Deleted pages are archived. Are these archived pages ever removed from the database? If so, how often? -- Jiangan | Talk 10:05, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Hail Mary, full of grace, The Lord is with thee; Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen
The wikilink rendering seems to have been changed so wikilinks to (for example) #References sections has broken e.g. see Schizophrenia or delusional misidentification syndrome.
Is this a permanent feature and if so should I fix the referencing on such pages or should I wait until a wikicode fix does the job ?
Thanks - Vaughan 14:31, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Take a look at Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki custom messages and List of science fiction authors. On both of these articles as they're appearing to me, the Compact TOCs are appearing in <nowiki> format. Does anyone have any idea what's going on? Phil 16:26, Dec 11, 2003 (UTC)
Fixed. -- Brion 18:51, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Does anyone know if the bioguide.congress.gov Congressional Biographical Directory is copyright protected? If not, we could get lots and lots of stubby articles on various congresspersons, which'd be useful... john 08:26, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Would it be possible for a developer to change the edit conflict code to give the conflicter an option of overriding the previous user's edit without needing to use copy and paste? I use a text browser called links, and I cannot copy or paste, so I loose all my work if I get into an edit conflict. It would be better if I could override the other user and at least he would have his work in the history. Presently I have no way of getting the work back once I get into a conflict. Thank you very much, Greenmountainboy 21:27, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Can we have a "Watch this page"/"Stop watching" link in the sidebar when viewing a Revision History page, please? -- Zero 11:27, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Its not a proposal, only an idea of mine. Like I said its not a proposal, I dont neccesarily think the name SHOULD be changed , but Ive been thinking for a very long time that what we do at the current events page is essentially breaking the news.
What do you all think? Shall the page name be changed?
Disagree. The stuff stays for a month. It's hardly breaking news by the end of the month. RickK 04:27, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
All our stuff is second-handed! Some are so seconded that we're basically the last news-oid website to talk about. And many important stuff are not included. It is not breaking anybody. -- Menchi ( Talk) â 04:33, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
How? What's involved? Bmills 13:14, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Well, fool that I am, I've made an attempt to start this. Now I really need help. A one-person Wikiproject is not going to get very far. Bmills 14:16, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Is there any objection to this proposed WikiProject Poetry boilerplate text or to the suggested placing of it?
Please consider adding the following boilerplate text at the end of your articles and the top of their Talk page.
This article is part of WikiProject Poetry. Please read the guidelines set out there before editing the page.
In general, I'd prefer these notices to go on the talk page, not as boilerplate. They're a bit too "meta" to be inline info in the article text. -- Delirium 09:33, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)
Why is it that when you click Stop watching, you are offered a link to return to Main Page when you've almost certainly come from your watchlist and want to go back there? Bmills 16:30, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
What's going on with this edit [12]? There's nothing under the before-and-after boxes. But it was marked as an edit in the history (it was the last edit, by the anon). I've seen weird nothing-changed edits before, always by Anons. I'm always afraid it's vandalism. -- Menchi ( Talk) â 04:17, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The code seems to have changed sometime in the last day or so: when you look at an edit preview, your cursor is automatically moved into the edit box. I hate this! Especially when the page is long enough that it scrolls and you can't even see the beginning. Can we please make this an option in Preferences? Thanks, Tualha 04:47, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Okay, I'll bite. I am of course refering to the quiet appearance of a new function called "dead end pages" (disabled though) on Special pages.
Now, does this mean that:
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 08:58, Dec 11, 2003 (UTC)
[ [15]]: Another good illustration why m:Anonymous users should not be allowed to edit articles. Adam 14:38, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Umm, that's a broken link (to meta). I could point you to equally horrendous edit histories caused by logged in users - however, I'm not sure what I would prove by doing so.
Martin
Of course registered users make horrendous edits and behave badly in other ways. But at least you can argue with them. I find it really insulting when articles are anonymously messed around with, and I'm sure it terminally discourages contributors less thick-skinned than me. Of course if you ban anonymous edits some vandals will just acquire transient IDs to vandalise and leave, so I would also make it harder to register, by requiring an email address and imposing (say) a 12-hour waiting period. See my suggestions for improving WP in this respect at my user-page. Adam 00:20, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
As a relative WP newbie, I was a bit surprised to find that Wikipedia:Deletion_policy does not have a "Candidates for speedy deletion" category for "creative fiction", i.e. deliberate and demonstrable inaccuracy.
I'm refering to articles like Bonnie, which appears to be a deliberate attempt to misinform, by a known vandal.
Right now if I posted an article called "Paris, Capital of Germany", the policy requires it wait five days for a vote, while people confirm that Paris is not the capital of Germany. In practice, I'm sure someone would ignore the policy and delete it.
I can see that such a category may be open to abuse - particularly for esoteric subjects not easily researched online.
Any thoughts? Anjouli 14:50, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Why is there one article for cannabis and one for hemp? - it is about the same plant. Maybe the THC related things should go to THC and the rest be merged under cannabis or hemp?
In view of the increasing numbers of edit wars over increasingly irrelevant tweaks to articles, could someone write wikipedia:pedantry dispute? Martin 20:17, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Hardbanned user 142.177.xxx.xxx paid us a little visit recently ( contribs). I have scoured his contributions from our fair Wikipedia, but if anyone liked them, feel free to reinstate them. New articles he created can be found at User:Cyan/kidnapped. -- Cyan 21:16, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
In reaction to this post [17], Louis Kyu Won Ryu created an article about Craig Hubley, which was removed from the article namespace. It can be seen here.
It has recently come to my attention that the reason this article was created was to foster discussion about mav's outing of Craig Hubley. Instead, most of the discussion concerned the disposition of the article here in Wikipedia. The purpose of this post is to help Louis foster discussion on this topic at
m:Outing
User:Louis_Kyu_Won_Ryu/Outing. Thanks,
Cyan 16:45, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Special:Deadendpages is intended to find pages with no links in them. See [19].
Dear Tupac fans and historians, I have heard a long list of reasons supporting the claim that Tupac is still alive. I don't know enough about the history to know which claims have plausability, and which are simply made up. If you can help me learn more about the conspiracy theories, please visit User:Kingturtle/2Pac. I hope eventually to create a lecture for my History class on this topic...to help teach about checking facts and evidence. But I need to become more of an expert in the topic myself. Thanks in advance, Kingturtle 04:15, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
This is probably a simple data error, but I don't yet know how to fix it myself: When I enter "ct scan" in Wikipedia's mini-search bar I end up on "Ultrasound scan" (a related but different subject). There is a much more relevant page available, computed_axial_tomography. Searching for "CT scan" takes me there. Is it possible for a mere site-visitor to change where a search will take me? -- 195.22.85.154 14:43, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
There's something funny with the rubric: it seems to be repeating the hint on where to find help. Phil 12:26, Dec 10, 2003 (UTC)
well unlike all other encyclopedia why wikipedia is not having sammm flash movies explaining any small topic like any bird or circuit woring etc. i would love to work on this.
well idea of yours is definately great but everyone here should be agreed on putting flash content on wiki.
How many minutes/hours/days/weeks do the messages I leave to a talk-page of an anonymous IP-address, last? If someone leaves a talk-page message to that anon editor after me, does the counter start from scratch? Curious minds want to know. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 03:31, Dec 10, 2003 (UTC)
I love wikipedia, but I think that the body text of articles can get a little hard to read with all the links.
Wouldn't it be a good idea to change the stylesheet a little to make the links integrate better with the text.
Not to the point where the links can't be told from text, but just enough to not make the disturb the reading.
Once users grasp the idea of wikipedia they should assume that most terms are links and a small effect when you move the mouse over a link could confirm that.
/Lasse
body[onload='setup("quickbar")'] <element> { <styles> ... } ...
I don't even know where to put this. A well-meaning (I am assuming) newcomer anonymously posted a lot of new pages in the last hour that are copyrighted...somewhere over a dozen. This is taking me forever to track down and fix...will someone help me? Just go to Special:Newpages and check anything from 217.77.109.222. I've tried to communicate with them, and have hopes that they are about to stop. Any help is appreciated. Jwrosenzweig 23:54, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The stats function from Special pages still includes statistics about pages accessed. I suspect this is not functional. Most of the newly created Wikipedias have all the statistics related to accessed pages glued to zero, and even the english wikipedia has fallen from somewhere over 50 views per edit to around 30 views per edit. I question whether views of pages are relevant anyhow, now that there are numerous other sites offering Read-Only access to Wikipedia content, and we don't track how many folks access those. Could we edit the Statistics entry on MediaWiki to reflect the increasing irrelevance of the stat (that is remove it entirely)? -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 00:59, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)
I'm seeing a lot of pages where the Header hierarchy starts with a second-level Header (===).
MediaWiki apparently has no trouble with this and just ignores the "hidden" level for the purpose of numbering the Sections; they start at 1. and continue. However if someone appends a further Section (say External Links) at the top level (==), this appears as another 1. Section which is confusing. Assuming that this is not the ideal state of affairs, is this explicitly stated somewhere? I have searched but have been unable to locate anything appropriate. If this is incorrect, is there an easy way to seek & destroycorrect or do we just keep an eye out?
Phil 12:16, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)
(i posted this question on Wikipedia talk:How to rename (move) a page, but I don't know if anyone really frequents there)
Question: When a users renames (moves) an article, that change is not listed under the article's page history. How then are we to know who renamed (moved) the article and when it occurred? Is there a log (something akin to Wikipedia:Deletion log) that I don't know about? Kingturtle 05:14, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia talk:Make only links relevant to the context
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump. Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
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Is the software clever enough to detect whether an edit conflict is confined to a single section of an article? I ask because Dysprosia and I just clashed heads on this page whilst editing what was at that point the final section. I was explicitly editing that section, but I have no idea what Dysprosia had selected. Whatever the odds, I was presented with the entire page to sort out, just for the sake of about 10 lines at the bottom. Phil 12:06, Nov 28, 2003 (UTC)
Is there any software around or under development to migrate pages from the old Usemod wiki to the new MediaWiki ? 5pectre Fri Nov 28 13:16:01 GMT 2003
Is there a conflict with this image: Image:Urchintest2.jpg. The description says: "Copyright ©2003 by Daniel P. B. Smith. Licensed under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright." It doesn't sound right to me. Dori 22:41, Nov 28, 2003 (UTC)
Why is Wikipedia's entry on Natacha Rambova filled with so many errors? -- Michael Morris
If we copy text from an article from another source released under the GDFL, into a wikipedia article, are we required to link to the other site and mention that the original text came from that site? Alexandros
Someone has written new policy, wikipedia:blank page idiomatic link, about adding interwiki links to pages that don't exist. I think this is a bad idea. Having a link to a page in another language at the top, only to click on it and find that there is actually no such page is annoying and a waste of time, I really wish they would stop adding such links. Maximus Rex 18:41, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Back in October, I wrote new entries for Carl Spaatz and Lyman Lemnitzer. Today I decided to do a search and see if there were any mentions of their names that were not linked back to the main entries. I did, in fact, find two such mentions. But I also found that a google search under "Spaatz" or "Lemnitzer" failed to provide a hit on either of the main entries for these men. Obviously both names were mentioned several times in the relevant entry. Other entries with links to these entries were listed (such as List of people associated with World War II). Google even had the links from my user page which post-dated the creation of these entries. So why doesn't google pick up on them? MK 15:34 (EST) 30 November 2003
How could I find out who wrote the original text on consensus decision-making or where it was taken from? I'm curious about the sources for certain assertions. Page history only seems to go back to January 2003. I was hoping to go back to the root article. Sunray
The Wikipedia:Brilliant prose has articles which were added before the Nomination system. Some of the articles rise some doubts and there was a discussion on Talk: BP candidates about what to do. A voting was decided. So now, everybody, please vote on:
Cheers, Muriel Victoria 14:28, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Well, after viewing a long article, and wanting to make a link into a certain section, which couldn't be defined in the table of contents with the double = sign without making the article all screwed up (Namely, I'm trying to link to the part in Modem about echo cancellation in the history section
So, rather than split it, I thought I would try changing 'Echo Cancellation' to '<a name=echo>Echo Cancellation</a> so I could link from Cancellation to Modem#echo
Any way to go about this other than to split the article -- Fizscy46 14:46, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Quick reference on server status
Why or why not? Has anyone worked on an automated tool to do an import?
The Whatlinkshere page for Baltimore Oriole shows Geography of Equatorial Guinea which links to Maryland, USA but certainly not to Baltimore Oriole. Is this a bug or a feature? Big Iron 20:13, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Actually, because of the reference above, the Village Pumps is now showing as a double redirect, but it doesn't appear in Wikipedia:Defective redirects so it isn't a true double redirect. Big Iron 21:28, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I believe this is a known bug that has already been recorded at SourceForge. By the way, Wikipedia:Defective redirects hasn't been updated in a long time. Believe me, there are plenty of double-redirects floating around right now. -- Minesweeper 09:22, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I can't guarantee it wasn't just a browser anomaly (especially since it's MS-IE), but at one point most pages seemed normal, but Computational_geometry wouldn't load, but it would load quickly, with [2]. (But still wouldn't load the normal way.) At the same time, there was a several minute hole in recent changes. Doubt whether any of this has any significance, but mentioning it in case. Κσυπ Cyp 03:02, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I've mentioned this before, but once the new server is online, I wonder if the watchlist default could be upped to 12 hours or maybe 1 day? I presume that the watchlist default was changed to one hour (some months ago now) for performance reasons, though I suspect that those who use the watchlist feature will generally immediately ask for a redisplay with a longer interval (I know I do) which negates completely the performance advantage - the server is having to generate two lots of watchlist instead of just one. The result is that the not very useful default actuallly increases server load, the opposite of what was intended. I know I can craete my oen link with whatever default I wish, but then it's only accessible from my user page, not in the sidebar as I would like. GRAHAMUK 04:24, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I am trying to disambiguate Hindu. There is an article referring to The Hindu (newspaper), and an article referring to Hinduism (religion). Hindu is the redirect clause presently for the latter page.
Converting the redirection page for Hindu to a disambiguation page seemed like a solution. But, the newspaper page has only three pages linking to it, whereas the religion page has hundreds. And every reference to Hindu redirect page presently, is to the religion and not to the newspaper. And hence, that seemed like an extreme step.
Nevertheless, considering the newspaper's popularity in India, sooner or later there will be more articles referring to it, and an early disambiguation seems necessary. So how do I proceed? chance 07:02, Dec 2, 2003 (UTC)
This article is about the Hindu religion; for other meanings, see Hindu (disambiguation).
When will the list of the first 125 orphaned pages Special:Lonelypages be updated again? I believe that virtuall all the pages on the current list are either disambiguation pages or no longer orphans. - Anthropos 07:38, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Whats the criteria for a page to be included in that list? - Antonio Fatal Attraction for Men and Women Martin
Often a square box appears in math formulas where I would expect a character. I guess this means my browser can't render the charachter. How can I fix this or get around the problem to find out what charachter should be in the place of the square box?
Thanks
Please pay attention to the posts of this user, related to a Colombia's dialect that he name Machaco, Bambuco songs and others topics. Even when those contributions will be [3]poorly translated, this guy is very obstinate and bad-mannered and brought [4]us many problems (vandalism, non NPOV, flamewars...). His intentions to promote a wikipedia for this creole dialect has gone [5]quite far, using another [6]nick, or IPs in 200.21.108.xxx. Actually, we were forced to run a bot to delete his 'contributions' because of his intolerance, misunderstanding (read non observance) of the publishing policy and crude attitude with the community. -- Best regards -- 200.45.101.236 18:29, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC) ( [7])
Is this the right place to post a "how do I?" question? I am slowly working my way through Buckinghamshire creating articles for all the places therein. However one of the places is the village of Penn, ancestral home of William Penn after whom Pennsylvania is named. However as you will see Penn automatically redirects to University of Pennsylvania. First of all how do I turn the Penn page from a redirect into something else? Secondly what is the protocol for sorting this out? Should there be a disambig page for Penn or a note at the top of the University of Pennsylvania article? I personally feel that automatically linking Penn to the univerity page is not the right thing to do... Graham :) 01:05, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Now that the old settings have been restored, my watchlist takes a very long time to load. Is it possible to change my preferecnes from the default number of displayed days? -- Jiang 21:43, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
User S1rkull somehow managed to wipe out the entire page history for the article on Truism. The page that's there resembles an old copy of the article. Can the most recent version of the article before the intervention be recovered? Peak 04:19, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I'm desperately looking for someone who can tell me how to block Flash demands for installation. This is clogging up our e-mail and Internet Explorer usages; also, since we are NEVER planning to develop our own web site, I can't see why we would possibly need Flash. I've heard also that Flash stuff uses a lot of virtual memory, and we've recently been running out of virtual. Does this have anything to do with Flash barging in? I'm tired of this kind of activity, and want it to stop. I already have AdAware and Spybot installed, and our system has run MUCH better since I did that. But, for whatever reasons, Flash is still driving us nuts. Thanks in advance. I'm looking for anyone who can tell me anything about this situation.
Will a sysop please revert Wikipedia:Edit conflicts to it's state on 31 July 2003, prior to the current edit war, and protect it so the warring parties can follow Wikipedia policy to resolve their differences and sort out what it should say? Jamesday 22:59, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Is this a joke, or is it in any way vaguely official?
Don't mean to offend anyone, but I can't help wondering. Thanks. -- Pakaran 23:04, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Rlandmann, ignore it, this constitution has to be a bad joke. mydogategodshat 06:37, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Alexandros, please explain why it is, or should be, official. I doubt it seriously. RickK 07:27, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I am the one who posted the Mare Island comment, my email address is KissTycal@aol.com should anyone need to contact me.
How could I cite Wikipedia as a source in a research paper? (MLA format!)
Since the database work done a few days ago, the information retrieved when doing a "What links here" is shown in alphabetical order, whereas it used to be shown in chronological order. As an editor and as one who is interested in recently internal link generation, I personally have more use for the information in chronological order. Is it possible to give users the option of choosing which format to retrieve in? Kingturtle 23:38, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I am using Mozilla Firebird 0.7.
I created a new account.I Wikipedia tells me that it created the new account successfully, but that it cannot log me in because my cookies are disabled. I looked at the address bar, and went in to the cookie settings and unblocked "en.wikipedia.org". Yet still it cannot log me in. I suppose there is some other site I need to unblock, but I don't know how to find out what it might be ? Any clues ? :)
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Now that some steps are being taken to clean up the pre-nomination brilliant prose articles, I'd suggest that something needs doing with the current candidates at Wikipedia:Brilliant prose candidates. Some of the disputed pages have been listed for months (see Richard Wagner for instance) and there are lots of nominated pages with no seconder.
I's suggest that a new limit of one month be set (maybe too generous) and that any page still disputed or not seconded at the end of that time be removed from the list of candidates.
Any ideas? And anyone like to go second or dispute a candidate today? Bmills 15:59, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
To clarify: one month limit is there already for disputed candidates, one week for undisputed. Only self-added articles currently need a seconder. I'd suggest that all articles should be seconded and that one week is not long enough to allow for objections. Bmills 16:13, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I think there should be mention of Mare Island....
I have an American Flag from 1916 that says "Mare Island 1916" and
has a rank on it. It is the size that is flown over Capital buildings , so I believe it was the Shipyards. Maybe, if you include Mare Island, you can research this Flag? I have done some looking here and there, but have not been able to find information about the flying or the retirement from the Shipyard of this Flag. I know in 1906 there was the San Francisco earthquake, and I know in 1917 the Shipyard was blown up by espionage. I "aquired" the Flag 14 years ago and a wild tale goes with it, that's another story. Hopefully we can put this Flag back on the map,I am curious if it was the first and only Flag flown over Mare Island? If you can help, I would appreciate, or, simply I have a suggestion of "Mare Island" be included in "Wikipedia."
Thank you, Bryan Cross
I am the one who posted the Mare Island comment, my email address is KissTycal@aol.com should anyone need to contact me.
When I was adding Cecil H. Green to the list of people born on August 6, I decided to read the whole birthday list. Second-to-bottom on the list, just above JonBenét Ramsey, was an entry for someone called Norberto Carlos Cagliotti, born in 1980, a surfer and "accenturian". The boy didn't have his own Wikipedia article, and I had never heard of him either, even thoughh he was supposed to be famous and I wanted to find out what in the world an "accenturian" was. The 1980 birthdate compounded my interest -- we could have a new Sunshine Generation celebrity, but my suspicions of vanity were raised. I did a Google search on the name, and there doesn't seem to be any Net presence of note -- mostly just sites that borrowed from Wikipedia. Norberto did show up at one page -- http://www.udesa.edu.ar/departamentos/economia/tba_listado.html. It appeared to be merely a display of college theses. Does anyone know anything about this guy, or is it simply vanity being poured onto a Wikipedia birthdate page? Wiwaxia 12:46, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The table at Australia has its margin on the right instead of the left. Can someone fix this? -- Jiang | Talk 08:40, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Hope this is the right page, if not please move it. QUESTION: Should we be posting External links to personal websites or any other kind of site that is not credible. It seems to me if the goal is to have Wikipedia be an "accurate" and relaible source, then any external link it references to has Wikipedia's "certificate of authenticity" equal to our own unless a clear disclaim notice is given as part of the External Link listing. It would seem that if you can refer to John Doe's personal website on the "History of apples", then it becomes legitimate to link to a personal KKK and the like website from numerous Wikipedia articles. Angelique 01:58, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The actual websites in question are (from New France):
For me, external links are supplemental information that goes beyond Wikipedia's level of detail, so I generally only include ones that seem at least as knowledgeable and current as the content of the article referring to them. From a practical point of view, you don't want to link to bad data, otherwise future editors can mess up the WP article by using the external pages as sources. Many web pages are ephemeral too, be sure the WP article still makes sense if all the links stop working tomorrow. Stan 05:49, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The point that we don't want to link to bad data made by User:Stan Shebs is why I raised the matter. (and not for one specific page but relative to all of Wikipedia) Linking to an outside source that is only someone's personal page raises unnecessary risks and instead of adding benefit to Wikipedia has the potential to be detrimental. As such, my view would be never to add any outside link except those pointing to an source whose credentials are undoubted. Why would an Encyclopedia like Wikipedia ever want to refer anyone to the writings of sites where both the qualifications of the writer and the validity of their information is unknown to Wikipedia? In books, authors quote their references so as to prove they are quoting reliable sources. Why would Wikipedia want to do the opposite? Angelique 16:31, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Dear Stan Shebs: Your insinuation is unfounded. REPEAT: " ---- I raised the matter. (and not for one specific page but relative to all of Wikipedia). my view would be never to add any outside link except those pointing to an source whose credentials are undoubted." Equally as often, a hardworking bigot etc. goes to great lengths to put their slant on "accurate" information. Want a list of "factual" right wing Religious Right sponsored sites? Should Wikipedia link to these? Or is someone going to start judging links? Angelique 22:26, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
can someone tell me how to link to an image that's in the French wikipedia space (or tell me if this is a silly thing to do)? thanks. seglea 20:56, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I was thinking that a page wikipedia really needs is a what's missing page, especially on the front page. So Searching For An Answer is now a page for it. Can we put it on the front page?
I remember seeing a related discussion on the pump earlier today, but I can no longer see it. Is a user allowed to do anything on his user page or his user talk page which would normally be against wikipedia conventions if done on a regular article, e.g., blanking of the entire page.
There is a user who blanks out his talk page after each discussion, so we don't get to know what discussions he's been having. Are there any rules on what a user is allowed or disallowed on his user page ? Jay 17:30, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I have found a site, wordIQ, which appears to have copied most or all of Wikipedia and is passing it off as their own.
This seems to be a mass copy. Searching for wikipedia found hundreds of articles containing the word in boilerplate stub text, links to Wikipedia: pages, etc. Anyone who contributed before August 2003 (which unfortunately doesn't include me - Tualha) has probably had their copyright violated.
Analysis of the history of Cognitive science shows that this article was copied sometime between August 17 and September 1 of 2003. Compare the August 17 Wikipedia article with "their" page.
I found no explicit point of contact. Their " About wordIQ page gives an email address and the phone number 626-226-8279, which would be in the Los Angeles area. Their terms mention California law. Whois merely reveals that they're hiding behind Domains By Proxy.
I don't think this is an honest mistake. I think this is a massive intentional grab of Wikipedia content with no intent to abide by the terms of the GFDL. Let's nail these bastards. See Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter.
I have added this to Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content.
Tualha 17:27, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
It seems that user S1rkull somehow managed to wipe out the entire page history for the article on Truism. The page that's there resembles an old copy of the article. Can the most recent version of the article before the intervention be recovered? Peak 04:19, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Is it possible to do a 'CVS Blame' on an article? Jahs 17:39, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
What does that mean? RickK 19:59, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Perhaps everyone could look at the history of Wikipedia:Edit conflicts and vote on which version they prefer, by reverting to it. Then a professional superhero could be hired to look through the resulting history, and choose the most reverted-to version. Κσυπ Cyp 11:18, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I think it would be a good idea to replace the largely depreciated page link to " Bug reports" to Contact us in the sidebar. Please discuss the pros and cons at Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki namespace text. mav 09:47, 6 Dec 2003
I have noticed that other domains use Wikipedia's database. They always give wikipedia credit at the bottom. And that's cool....but, a page like http://www.4reference.net/encyclopedias/wikipedia/Dorothea_Dix.html has advertisements all over it. I don't like the idea of someone making money off of wikipedia text.
www.4reference.net doesn't give a link back to the actual Wikipedia page. Should they? --
Tarquin 10:16, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Under the terms of the GNU FDL that we have all written our articles under, anyone who wants to can take all our text and sell it. With numerous caveats of course. See the link for answers to all these questions. Tempshill 18:55, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
We are translating stuff at Chinese WP, and couldn't tell what "Meta" means in "Meta-Wikipedia". The dictionary's definitions all seem weird [8]. -- Menchi 08:41, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
From Meta: In epistemology the prefix meta- is used to mean about. Thus, any subject can be said to have a meta-theory, which is the theoretical consideration of its foundations and methods. So, Meta-Wikimedia is about Wikimedia. Angela . 08:51, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I notice a lot of people who post Votes for Deletion do so without putting a "delete" notice on the page, which is very unfair to the page's author.
Any suggestions how we can police this? Anjouli 02:39, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Take it up with The Cunctator. RickK 07:36, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
This is what I see on recent changes. Whats the deal? Alexandros
At the moment, I can't access en.wikipedia.org , and seem to be able to access most of en2.wikipedia.org .
I can't access en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges but I can access en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges . Κσυπ Cyp 19:34, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
test.wikipedia.org also seems to be down, most or all others up. Can't see the Wikipædia logo on en2, by the way. Κσυπ Cyp 19:54, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
P.S. Need en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title= before everything, not just for recent changes. Κσυπ Cyp 19:56, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Damn, still noone answered. I wonder why... Κσυπ Cyp 20:28, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Japanese wikipedia seems to have been under a similar but slightly different condition, now for about 10 hours. I have sent an email to developers regarding regarding en & ja pointing BerliOS' Wikipedia Status page and here, among others. Tomos 20:35, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Could someone who knows what's what take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Fictional Series#General Strategy and Discussion forum and hazard a guess at why the first sub-page link is permanently set to mode whereas the second, which is defined in exactly the same manner AFAICT, isn't?
Some clarification for the benefit of some of us confused participants (well, me, anyway) as to whether sub-pages are OK in the Wikipedia namespace would be appreciated: I'm sure that I've seen other Wikiproject pages use the same trick and get away with it.
Phil 17:20, Dec 5, 2003 (UTC)
Wikipedia:List of pages with capital first letters that should be lowercase describes the fact that a Wikipedia article's name cannot begin with a lowercase character. Can this constraint be lifted? Bevo 12:39, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Muggle gives:
May be temporary, but it's been doing it for a long time and everything else seesm fine. Anjouli 08:11, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
MySQL problems. -- mav 08:51, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Can anybody access 1958? I keep getting a MySQL error. -- mav 09:21, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Seems okay now. Guess the reboot fixed it. Anjouli 12:20, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
This cannot possibly be the first time this has been suggested, but I wonder if it might be better if anonymous IPs are only allowed to access WP read-only. Looking at the vandalism alerts, the vast majority are anonymous IPs. I suspect what happens is that a casual user browses in by chance, finds (to their surprise, probably) that they are able to change the content, and without much thought, does so. Usually this will be something facetious or silly, simply because this is what happens when people are presented with an unexpected opportunity. Those who are more considerate and understand what WP is about will be more than willing to register, it's not as if it takes much effort or costs anything. The ability to edit anonymously was probably very important when WP was first started, simply to get the ball rolling. It's rolling very nicely now, so this feature is no longer a blessing but a liability. I'd bet that implementing this would cut petty vandalism by 90% overnight, without having any significant effect on WPs growth. Thoughts? GRAHAMUK 07:03, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Day before yesterday, User:G-Man vandalised article on Kosovo and Metohia in 15 subsequent edits, which include reediting his former edits, marking major edits as minor [9] and thus making next to impossible to see what are his edits. He also edited on controversial issues currently being discussed on the page's Talk page while not participating in the discussion himself. I have therefore reverted the page, and ask that it is protected. Nikola 08:27, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Why is this on Village pump? RickK 07:29, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Is it acceptable to work in a Wikipedia whose language you have only studied academically, and may make grammatical errors in? I was thinking about working in the Spanish Wikipedia, but I have only taken Spanish through a second-year college level (probably 7 years of classes in and before college) and I'd be likely to make grammar errors. Given my experience trying to fix up the travel article, I don't want to put anyone else in the same boat, but I feel I could make significant contributions there. -- Pakaran 01:35, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Personally, I think that would great. The small Wikipedias ( Arabic for example) need all the help they can get and would probably welcome people with a less than perfect knowledge of the language. I don't know whether people at the Spanish Wikipedia would feel the as I do though. Maybe you could ask at es:Wikipedia:Café. Angela . 01:45, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
One way around this is to set up an editing partnership, as we have been doing at the History of Poland series. I write a draft section in (I hope) good English. Various Polish users who do not have good English then make comments and add more material. I then edit their material into good English. This seems to work quite well. Adam 03:32, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
See m:Talk:Meta-Wikimedia:Constitution of Wikimedia
The watchlist page says that text will be "bolded". From dictionary.com:
\Bold\, v. t. To make bold or daring. [Obs.] --Shak.
Could we have "emboldened" or "displayed in bold", please, instead of this revived archaism? -- Paul G 15:00, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
dictionary.com has for "embolden":
and, for "to bold":
"to bold" is the appropriate term among those of us involved in the text editing field. RickK 16:14, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The article Charles Xavier was just now renamed to Professor X. The edit history of Talk:Charles Xavier correctly shows this as occurring at 7:39, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC) - but the edit history for the article itself claims it occurred at 3:46, 22 Nov 2002! (Regressing back to the last time someone renamed the page, or something?) — Paul A 07:51, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Apologies, not sure if this is the right place to point this out but I could not find any pages related to it--I have come across two pages, Magellanic Clouds and Magellanic clouds which relate to the same thing. What is the usual practice for fixing something like this?
-- Chopchopwhitey 06:06, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
For future reference, see also Wikipedia:Duplicate articles. — Paul A 07:40, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
When I tried to block a user's address, I got the following error message: Database error From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an illegal search query (see Searching Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:
INSERT INTO ipblocks (ipb_address, ipb_user, ipb_by, ipb_reason, ipb_timestamp, ipb_auto ) VALUES ('64.208.58.117', 0, 13800, 'you were warned','20031204044847', 0) from within function "Block::insert". MySQL returned error "1062: Duplicate entry '2147483647' for key 1". RickK 04:52, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I've seen people refer to the act of "reverting" text as if this were easy. I don't find it so - I have to show up the diff of an article and select the text, which (maybe it's my browser) usually selects across the page and hence both copies at once. I then have to manually edit out the parts of the old article that I don't want. This strikes me as awkward and error-prone. Is there an easier way I haven't discovered? Couldn't there be a simple "revert" link next to each version in the history? Not sure what this implies from a technical standpoint but it would make the occasional necessary revert much easier. GRAHAMUK 23:32, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Just wondering, now the new box is online, will the internal search engine be switched back on any time soon?. It's been out of action for ages now G-Man 23:08, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Please see the history of David Hume. An anonymous user is attempting to insert Unicode special characters into the article, and has had a modicum of support in this purpose. There's no problem when viewing the article, but when you attempt to edit it, you have to delete several characters in order to remove the codes if it becomes necessary. I'd hate to see this become a de facto standard on Wikipedia. RickK 16:42, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
# smart quotes s/[\x93\x94]+/\"/gs; s/[\x92\xb2\xb9]+/\'/gs; s/[\xb3]+/\`/gs; s/[\x96]+/-/gs; # HTML escapes s/\–/-/gs; # – s/\—/—/gs; s/\‘/\`/gs; # ‘ s/\’/\'/gs; # ’ s/\“/\"/gs; # “ s/\”/\"/gs; # ” # unwanted HTML escapes s/\–/-/gs; s/\‘/\`/gs; s/\’/\'/gs; s/\“/\"/gs; s/\”/\"/gs;
Is there a way to make a wikilink that will go to a redirect page, without redirection? Or must I use a regular HTML link?
Thanks,
Tualha 15:39, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Just curious, what type of Internet connection does Wikipedia use? What is the bandwidth?
66.32.17.177 09:09, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I created a page from text on a web site I am a contributing member of
spent a lot of time setting up the links to other enteries and potential enteries
and someone decided that as on paragraph of the text was the same as the web site that I was breaching copyright and the whole text was deleted.
My points are
Another point
I showed my 12 year old daughter the system and encouraged her to enter something - eventually we noticed her school was mentioned but had no entry so she typed in a short entry saying where it was a what type of school it was - just a couple of lines but factual.
Someone then put in a line saying 'THIS IS A STUB' etc. etc. and it just seemed to me to be insensitive and discouraging - given that the information did tell you the status of the school and where it was - may have been short but it was not valueless.
I'm sure many people have made this point - but the absence of an uptodate search engine seems to be a major major flaw in the credibility of the project.
Kevin Flude
We should add a couple of FAQs based on this query: 1) "Why has my material been deleted" 2) "Why has my page been marked as a 'stub'?". --
Tarquin 13:23, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Conflicts between users --> See Wikipedia:Conflicts between users
List of Australians lists a link to Daisy Bates, which the page describes as "self proclaimed psychologist" yet the link points to an article about an American civil rights activist. I want to set up a disambiguation page points to Daisy Bates (psychologist) for the Australian and Daisy Lee Gatson Bates for the American. I've never done such a thing before. Any tips on doing it well? Dmbaguley 22:16, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Is there general agreement on when one should use {{subst:...}} vs. {{mgsg:...}}? I notice that on Wikipedia:MediaWiki custom messages, it shows {{subst:stub}} but {{msg:disambig}}. Is this an intentional indication of preferred usage? -- Anthropos 14:00, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Take a look at Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki custom messages and List of science fiction authors. On both of these articles as they're appearing to me, the Compact TOCs are appearing in <nowiki> format. Does anyone have any idea what's going on? Phil 16:26, Dec 11, 2003 (UTC)
I have this memory of a show from when I was a child. I don't remember very much. All I remember is that there was a group of people on a very large spaceship. They spend their time moving from one large room to another. These were not rooms really but more like other worlds. In these other worlds, they would have adventures. I believe they were trapped on this ship and were trying to get off. I am not sure if this show really existed or is part of my imagination. If you know the name, please let me know at michaelmonge@msn.com. Thanks.
Hello ,
I'm Alex, I run website http://www.webcam-list.com This is a big and convenient directory containing lots of links to free live webcams from all around the world (currently it has 1300+ links and growing).
I would like to exchange links with you and I think our visitors would both benefit from this. Please let me know what you think.
Thank you.
-- Best regards,
Alex Baldwin mailto:webmaster@webcam-list.com http://www.webcam-list.com
Is there any chance of adding a backward link from a talk page to the page it is talking about? It's a little annoying to have to step back four or five pages to return to the page after an edit (or more if you've been browsing the talk history, for example!).
I would suggest making the second part of the heading (after Talk:) into a link back to the main page.
HappyDog 17:27, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
By 'main page' I of course meant the article the Talk page refers to. HappyDog 17:28, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I see it now - it's not very clear, and importantly there is no equivalent link at the top of the page. I feel it would be a little more intuitive to make the second part of the page header (after Talk:) into a link back as well. Seriously, I double checked before writing this that there wasn't anything I'd missed, and I still didn't spot it! HappyDog 17:39, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
What do people (that means you) prefer, this:
or how it already is?:
We're is this list? I can't find it?
HappyDog 20:56, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
OK - I've been playing around with my settings, and I now have the nav bar you describe. I'm not sure what caused it to appear, as I changed several settings at the same time.
The nav bar makes things a bit better, and easier to navigate. If the bar is there, my original request for a top-of-page link is no longer a necessity. However I still think it's desirable. It's the natural place for a backward link (it's the first place I looked), and given the wiki-philosophy of massively linking pages (e.g. every single date!) this does seem like a bit of an oversight, and an easy one to rectify. This is particularly true for people who haven't discovered how to turn on the menu (or don't even know that they can!). HappyDog 21:04, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Hi all, I just started meta-page Wikipedia:Guidelines for controversial articles to help resolve problems with Israeli-Palestinian topics and it might be useful for other areas as well. Please take a look and help expand it. -- Viajero 15:24, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I created this list yesterday and it already has over 60 names on it. About half of the listed poets do not have articles yet. I think that, in a modest way, this list and the associated articles could be a real ornament to Wikipedia, being particularly useful to people doing Women's studies and the like, so I'm inviting everyone to a) check it out and add your favourite female poet, if she's not there already and b) add an article! Bmills 10:57, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
That's precisely what I did do, and the section title appeared later, as if by magic. JackofOz 22:37, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I wonder why it is that the majority of times I use "Random page" I get a page about a locality, and an American locality at that. Is there some special programming designed to give such results, or is this just an amazing coincidence?
Cheers JackofOz 07:44, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
It's because Wikipedia is full of junk. See my The Wikipedia Quality Survey Adam 08:26, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Don't blame JackofOz for the terrible title of this section; mea culpa. JackofOz, you should see a link near the top of the page called "Post a question now" - it creates a new section header. Tualha 13:56, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
It's because a lot of stuff was robotically imported from US Census data. There are complaints about this from time to time, which are generally answered by people who note that their first introduction to Wikipedia was searching for their home town or birthplace on Google, which often turns up one of these very common Wikipedia articles. Tempshill 01:49, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with it myself. Yes, on average, pages are less edited, less "personal", than they were before Rambot did its stuff, and the article count can be considered inflated. But the other articles are no less useful or worthwhile. We just have a whole lot of other information, which is very useful itself, and as Tempshill pointed out, bring in plenty of new people. Tualha 04:40, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
So could there be a way to make "random page" produce more interesting results - e.g. maybe it would only select a page above a certain size, so the page is likely to be more "interesting" than a short page. But then I guess it would not be "random page" anymore ! Gandalf61 07:31, Dec 11, 2003 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Referrers is interesting but quite old - it hasn't been updated since September 2002. I think it would be worthwhile to have an updated version.
Tualha 06:44, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I was unable to login successfully until I allowed cookies from both en.wikipedia.org and en2.wikipedia.org (thank you for the information Dysprosia).
I propose to change the login text for here - I always thought the current login prompt was too unintuitive. Since this is rather a largish change, I'm sending out a request for comments at MediaWiki talk:Loginprompt. Do let me know what you think, suggest something new, if you're interested :) Dysprosia 23:49, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
What are good techniques that allow quick spell checking of a Wikipedia article? Bevo 19:19, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Not much to discuss, but this certainly is good news, search is up again! -- Sverdrup 15:41, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Did they re-enable it because of the new server? —Noldoaran (Talk) 18:43, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)
How could I cite Wikipedia as a source in a research paper? (MLA format!)
well unlike all other encyclopedia why wikipedia is not having sammm flash movies explaining any small topic like any bird or circuit woring etc. i would love to work on this.
This is a little idea of mine that I have written up. Please read and comment. Zocky 03:44, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I am trying to set up a special purpose wiki where only members of a special interest group can edit. I really like the MediaWiki that Wikipedia uses, and Wikipedia is an excellent example to show people how a Wiki works. Does anyone know of a Wiki farm that uses MediaWiki? I mean a host that runs MediaWiki that will allow me to set up my own Wiki, probably for a fee. pstudier 17:31, 2003 Dec 9 (UTC)
If every American Wikipedian visited List of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and contributed a short biography of their local Congress-person, we would have a complete set of Congressional articles in no time! Adam 01:30, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I might add that many of the Senators' biographies are mere stubs and could use some work as well. Adam 08:20, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Can some developer please set the watchlist default back to 1 hour? -- Wik 18:21, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)
Is there a quick n' easy way to add a signature with username, and possibly date/time, etc? I see other people do it... :*( leigh
User:Karukera has proposed to add "head of government" and "head of state" labels to the country template. Personally, I find this ugly, but does someone else want to comment? (Samples available) -- Jiang| (Talk) 22:35, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
What are messages (such as {{SUBST:vfd}})? What do they do? How do they work?
Noldoaran 21:56, Dec 6, 2003 (UTC)
In following some semi-conversations on Votes for Deletion, it appears that a de-facto policy is to move articles about individual (non-famous) 9-11 victims to http://sep11.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tributes_to_individuals. Perhaps we need a local page to collect links to articles that need to be so moved. Any comments? - Anthropos 23:34, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Related discussion about expanding the focus of the Sep11Wiki is at meta:Wikimorial. -- mav 09:40, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I think that that page should be deleted, and all of the articles that it links to should be integrated into Wikibooks. I got a vote of consent on talk:How-to, but I want a little more discussion before I undertake such a significant change.- Smack
Hey folks. Recently a new user showed up, created a "vanity page," and spent a while fussing over whether it was going to be deleted. I talked with him a bit, and got the impression that he was doing that because he didn't really know what else to do. He was willing to contribute but didn't know where.
After that experience, it occurred to me that it would useful to create a group of Wikipedians dedicated to guiding newcomers. I know that there are a number of people who make a point of posting welcome messages to new users' talk pages, but I'm talking about more than that. I mean making a project dedicated to discussion of how to better welcome newcomers and get them started working where they'll be the most help. This project would have a page somewhere (Maybe a WikiProject page or a page on meta) and a defined, if informal, membership. The ultimate goal would be to welcome newcomers, find out their interests, connect them to WikiProjects if appropriate, introduce them to veteran WikiPedians with similar interests, and maybe guide them in their early editing.
I believe this approach would be better than the current system of hoping newcomers will read guidelines, waiting for them to ask questions, and correcting their work when they screw up.
A more proactive approach would have several benefits:
Comments? Isomorphic 20:10, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
We could create a MediaWiki custom text (see Wikipedia:MediaWiki namespace) where people can fill in "tasks of the day" in newbiew-friendly language. Then all people who post welcome messages could add {{subst:totd}} to their boilerplace text to include the message. To avoid improper content, the page should be protected. —Eloquence
I like what I read about the H2G2 model. Anyway, I'd like to continue this discussion but suspect that Village Pump isn't the place. Is there a page somewhere on Meta? I really don't know anything much about Meta, as I'm still new here myself. Isomorphic 09:33, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Maybe we should write a welcome page ( Wikipedia:Welcome to Wikipedia?). It would merge some of the information from the top of the main page, Wikipedia:About, Wikipedia:Utilites, as well as other useful stuff - basics on etiquette, discussion, NPOV, everything needed for a newbie to find their way around. All written in newbie friendly language, style and formatting, and not longer than a screen of text, plus judiciously chosen and nicely formatted bunch of links to further reading. Make it nice and useful enough that people keep coming back to it.
Then post a link to this on the main page, on the anonymous edit page and on the login prompt pages (as well as under "You are now logged in...") Zocky 14:07, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
There seem to be at least two groups of people, those who think 'county' means the current, administrative entity, and those who think it means a traditional or historical entitiy.
In itself this isn't a problem, but Wikipedia needs to have a policy on which county a particular place is in. Maybe such a policy has already been debated and agreed; if so I'd be grateful if someone could point me to it. There's no discussion about the article Counties of England, though the article itself mentions that the different meanings exist.
It's a problem because someone has gone through the article on St Neots and moved it from the current, administrative county of Cambridgeshire to the historical county of Huntingdonshire, which will confuse the reader. For now I've returned the article to its original form. And this is happening on a wide scale, articles on towns and villages are being modified wholesale.
Is there any guidance on this sort of thing, other than to kick off the talk page, debate the topic and see if we can come to a consensus view? Advice anyone? Chris Jefferies 10th December 2003
OK guys, thanks for all your comments. I think there's a great deal of common sense in what you say, especially about the historical county relevant to the article being the correct one to use in each case.
So what are we going to do about User:80.255 who is throwing his weight around, agressively changing dozens of articles without consideration for either other editors or indeed (and more importantly) for the poor readers. He is damaging the Wikipedia and will also damage its reputation with readers if he's allowed to continue.
I don't mind having a dialogue with him, but if (as I suspect) he proves resistant to both reason and the majority view, what then? If that happens, maybe we should consider having his IP address blocked, though it would probably have only a temporary effect. Chris Jefferies 11th December 2003
My feeling is to use
Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(places) as there's quite a large discussion going on and the final description of the convention will probably be fairly lengthy.
I'm therefore copying this discussion to Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(places) - please continue there, not here! Chris Jefferies 11:14, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The maps also need some standardization.
The following map appears on Dorset:
While the following map appears on Northumberland:
Note that, in the second map, that peninsula at the tip of Scotland appears as all one county, while in the first, that peninsula appears as several counties. And that's just one of many differences between the maps.
Someone needs to figure out which map is correct, and fix the incorrect map. I'd do it if I knew more about British counties.
LuckyWizard 01:36, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
is it possible to cancel my account? i.e. i no longer wishes my handle (p0lyglut) to show up in wikipedia in articles i edited or anywhere. Thanks.
P0lyglut 04:27, 2003 Dec 2 (UTC)
Perhaps the very nature of semantics versus raw text makes this untenable, but has anybody thought about a system for auto-generation of inter-wiki linking? Many articles miss out of lots of meaningful links because the author's job is multiplied dramatically by having to track down terms that might or might not have pages on them. They could just add a link for everything they think should have a link, and lots of red links will appear. But it would be interesting if all existing pages automatically became active links. Of course, if that were feasible/desirable, the link style would have to change because otherwise too many words would be underlined and bright blue. What about using user-customizable CSS? I'll admit right away I'm a know-nothing, but I was sure that there was a way to allow the user to choose between styles with CSS.
Even if auto-linking as I've suggested it is too complex/absurd/would bring down the wiki, what about a link on every page for a database search for articles related to or words/phrases on the page? Too many results? A way to only return more likely hits? Categorization? Do pages currently have tags on them that associate them with wiki sub-sections or categories? Would this be workable? I would LOVE to be able to click a link on a page that would take me to a sort of local table of contents of related pages and/or a summary of the more general area of knowledge in which a page resides. And that one would link to the next level up, etcetera.
Brent Gulanowski 02:45, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Enciclopedia Libre has that option button. It may be abused. Maybe we should ask our Spanish ambassador how they're dealing w/ that. I bet it leads to a kinda vandalism as well. -- Menchi ( Talk) â 09:10, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Linking requires human intelligence, and there's no way around that. It's not just about finding words to highlight, it's also about determining whether further information on a subject is desired in context. Not every occurrence of the word bed needs to be highlighted, but if we go into some detail as to what kind of bed a person used, we may well want to put a link on that word. Overlinking makes articles hard to read, distracts from the content and makes us look silly. —Eloquence 09:23, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia talk:Make only links relevant to the context. -- Menchi ( Talk) â 09:39, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Rollback (see Wikipedia:Administrators#Revert) currently gives a edit summary that shows up in the history as: reverted to last edit by .... Unfortunantly, this gives no indicatation as to why a edit was removed and makes no indication that a edit was reverted by an automated program. I think that one of two things should be done:
This would make it clear to someone who is looking at the edit to try and figure out why on earth an edit has been reverted. It also gives a user some idea as to why their edits are being reverted (especially in cases of mistaken identity). Jrincayc 16:45, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The IP User:65.110.6.34 has a history of repeated vandalism. Apparently, it's the address of the free anonymous IP www.proxyweb.net. Can a developer permanantly ban this IP? See Vandalism_in_progress#65.110.6.34. Anyone using this IP would be doing so voluntarily. -- Jiang | Talk 21:36, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Deleted pages are archived. Are these archived pages ever removed from the database? If so, how often? -- Jiangan | Talk 10:05, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Hail Mary, full of grace, The Lord is with thee; Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen
The wikilink rendering seems to have been changed so wikilinks to (for example) #References sections has broken e.g. see Schizophrenia or delusional misidentification syndrome.
Is this a permanent feature and if so should I fix the referencing on such pages or should I wait until a wikicode fix does the job ?
Thanks - Vaughan 14:31, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Take a look at Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki custom messages and List of science fiction authors. On both of these articles as they're appearing to me, the Compact TOCs are appearing in <nowiki> format. Does anyone have any idea what's going on? Phil 16:26, Dec 11, 2003 (UTC)
Fixed. -- Brion 18:51, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Does anyone know if the bioguide.congress.gov Congressional Biographical Directory is copyright protected? If not, we could get lots and lots of stubby articles on various congresspersons, which'd be useful... john 08:26, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Would it be possible for a developer to change the edit conflict code to give the conflicter an option of overriding the previous user's edit without needing to use copy and paste? I use a text browser called links, and I cannot copy or paste, so I loose all my work if I get into an edit conflict. It would be better if I could override the other user and at least he would have his work in the history. Presently I have no way of getting the work back once I get into a conflict. Thank you very much, Greenmountainboy 21:27, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Can we have a "Watch this page"/"Stop watching" link in the sidebar when viewing a Revision History page, please? -- Zero 11:27, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Its not a proposal, only an idea of mine. Like I said its not a proposal, I dont neccesarily think the name SHOULD be changed , but Ive been thinking for a very long time that what we do at the current events page is essentially breaking the news.
What do you all think? Shall the page name be changed?
Disagree. The stuff stays for a month. It's hardly breaking news by the end of the month. RickK 04:27, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
All our stuff is second-handed! Some are so seconded that we're basically the last news-oid website to talk about. And many important stuff are not included. It is not breaking anybody. -- Menchi ( Talk) â 04:33, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
How? What's involved? Bmills 13:14, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Well, fool that I am, I've made an attempt to start this. Now I really need help. A one-person Wikiproject is not going to get very far. Bmills 14:16, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Is there any objection to this proposed WikiProject Poetry boilerplate text or to the suggested placing of it?
Please consider adding the following boilerplate text at the end of your articles and the top of their Talk page.
This article is part of WikiProject Poetry. Please read the guidelines set out there before editing the page.
In general, I'd prefer these notices to go on the talk page, not as boilerplate. They're a bit too "meta" to be inline info in the article text. -- Delirium 09:33, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)
Why is it that when you click Stop watching, you are offered a link to return to Main Page when you've almost certainly come from your watchlist and want to go back there? Bmills 16:30, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
What's going on with this edit [12]? There's nothing under the before-and-after boxes. But it was marked as an edit in the history (it was the last edit, by the anon). I've seen weird nothing-changed edits before, always by Anons. I'm always afraid it's vandalism. -- Menchi ( Talk) â 04:17, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The code seems to have changed sometime in the last day or so: when you look at an edit preview, your cursor is automatically moved into the edit box. I hate this! Especially when the page is long enough that it scrolls and you can't even see the beginning. Can we please make this an option in Preferences? Thanks, Tualha 04:47, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Okay, I'll bite. I am of course refering to the quiet appearance of a new function called "dead end pages" (disabled though) on Special pages.
Now, does this mean that:
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 08:58, Dec 11, 2003 (UTC)
[ [15]]: Another good illustration why m:Anonymous users should not be allowed to edit articles. Adam 14:38, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Umm, that's a broken link (to meta). I could point you to equally horrendous edit histories caused by logged in users - however, I'm not sure what I would prove by doing so.
Martin
Of course registered users make horrendous edits and behave badly in other ways. But at least you can argue with them. I find it really insulting when articles are anonymously messed around with, and I'm sure it terminally discourages contributors less thick-skinned than me. Of course if you ban anonymous edits some vandals will just acquire transient IDs to vandalise and leave, so I would also make it harder to register, by requiring an email address and imposing (say) a 12-hour waiting period. See my suggestions for improving WP in this respect at my user-page. Adam 00:20, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
As a relative WP newbie, I was a bit surprised to find that Wikipedia:Deletion_policy does not have a "Candidates for speedy deletion" category for "creative fiction", i.e. deliberate and demonstrable inaccuracy.
I'm refering to articles like Bonnie, which appears to be a deliberate attempt to misinform, by a known vandal.
Right now if I posted an article called "Paris, Capital of Germany", the policy requires it wait five days for a vote, while people confirm that Paris is not the capital of Germany. In practice, I'm sure someone would ignore the policy and delete it.
I can see that such a category may be open to abuse - particularly for esoteric subjects not easily researched online.
Any thoughts? Anjouli 14:50, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Why is there one article for cannabis and one for hemp? - it is about the same plant. Maybe the THC related things should go to THC and the rest be merged under cannabis or hemp?
In view of the increasing numbers of edit wars over increasingly irrelevant tweaks to articles, could someone write wikipedia:pedantry dispute? Martin 20:17, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Hardbanned user 142.177.xxx.xxx paid us a little visit recently ( contribs). I have scoured his contributions from our fair Wikipedia, but if anyone liked them, feel free to reinstate them. New articles he created can be found at User:Cyan/kidnapped. -- Cyan 21:16, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
In reaction to this post [17], Louis Kyu Won Ryu created an article about Craig Hubley, which was removed from the article namespace. It can be seen here.
It has recently come to my attention that the reason this article was created was to foster discussion about mav's outing of Craig Hubley. Instead, most of the discussion concerned the disposition of the article here in Wikipedia. The purpose of this post is to help Louis foster discussion on this topic at
m:Outing
User:Louis_Kyu_Won_Ryu/Outing. Thanks,
Cyan 16:45, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Special:Deadendpages is intended to find pages with no links in them. See [19].
Dear Tupac fans and historians, I have heard a long list of reasons supporting the claim that Tupac is still alive. I don't know enough about the history to know which claims have plausability, and which are simply made up. If you can help me learn more about the conspiracy theories, please visit User:Kingturtle/2Pac. I hope eventually to create a lecture for my History class on this topic...to help teach about checking facts and evidence. But I need to become more of an expert in the topic myself. Thanks in advance, Kingturtle 04:15, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
This is probably a simple data error, but I don't yet know how to fix it myself: When I enter "ct scan" in Wikipedia's mini-search bar I end up on "Ultrasound scan" (a related but different subject). There is a much more relevant page available, computed_axial_tomography. Searching for "CT scan" takes me there. Is it possible for a mere site-visitor to change where a search will take me? -- 195.22.85.154 14:43, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
There's something funny with the rubric: it seems to be repeating the hint on where to find help. Phil 12:26, Dec 10, 2003 (UTC)
well unlike all other encyclopedia why wikipedia is not having sammm flash movies explaining any small topic like any bird or circuit woring etc. i would love to work on this.
well idea of yours is definately great but everyone here should be agreed on putting flash content on wiki.
How many minutes/hours/days/weeks do the messages I leave to a talk-page of an anonymous IP-address, last? If someone leaves a talk-page message to that anon editor after me, does the counter start from scratch? Curious minds want to know. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 03:31, Dec 10, 2003 (UTC)
I love wikipedia, but I think that the body text of articles can get a little hard to read with all the links.
Wouldn't it be a good idea to change the stylesheet a little to make the links integrate better with the text.
Not to the point where the links can't be told from text, but just enough to not make the disturb the reading.
Once users grasp the idea of wikipedia they should assume that most terms are links and a small effect when you move the mouse over a link could confirm that.
/Lasse
body[onload='setup("quickbar")'] <element> { <styles> ... } ...
I don't even know where to put this. A well-meaning (I am assuming) newcomer anonymously posted a lot of new pages in the last hour that are copyrighted...somewhere over a dozen. This is taking me forever to track down and fix...will someone help me? Just go to Special:Newpages and check anything from 217.77.109.222. I've tried to communicate with them, and have hopes that they are about to stop. Any help is appreciated. Jwrosenzweig 23:54, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The stats function from Special pages still includes statistics about pages accessed. I suspect this is not functional. Most of the newly created Wikipedias have all the statistics related to accessed pages glued to zero, and even the english wikipedia has fallen from somewhere over 50 views per edit to around 30 views per edit. I question whether views of pages are relevant anyhow, now that there are numerous other sites offering Read-Only access to Wikipedia content, and we don't track how many folks access those. Could we edit the Statistics entry on MediaWiki to reflect the increasing irrelevance of the stat (that is remove it entirely)? -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 00:59, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)
I'm seeing a lot of pages where the Header hierarchy starts with a second-level Header (===).
MediaWiki apparently has no trouble with this and just ignores the "hidden" level for the purpose of numbering the Sections; they start at 1. and continue. However if someone appends a further Section (say External Links) at the top level (==), this appears as another 1. Section which is confusing. Assuming that this is not the ideal state of affairs, is this explicitly stated somewhere? I have searched but have been unable to locate anything appropriate. If this is incorrect, is there an easy way to seek & destroycorrect or do we just keep an eye out?
Phil 12:16, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)
(i posted this question on Wikipedia talk:How to rename (move) a page, but I don't know if anyone really frequents there)
Question: When a users renames (moves) an article, that change is not listed under the article's page history. How then are we to know who renamed (moved) the article and when it occurred? Is there a log (something akin to Wikipedia:Deletion log) that I don't know about? Kingturtle 05:14, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia talk:Make only links relevant to the context