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I too am unsure if this is the appropriate forum for this, but here goes. I have the intention to write an article on the Abortion-Breast Cancer debate. Not exactly an easy task by any means... and this is abundantly illustrated by my inability to figure out an appropriate Article title that is clear, and unbiased. Then should it be hyphenated or not? Here are the options, and why I like/dislike them... but choose I (we?) must.
Once a title is selected I'll get an introductory definition in quickly, and then add another section meta-analyzes of Abortion-Breast Cancer. Thereby allowing me to move the breast cancer reference in Abortion to the new article and replace it the introductory article reference of Abortion-Breast Cancer. (just like Abortion Law in the Abortion article)
Then go from there, adding entries on everything from rat studies and the discussion of their usefulness... to Dr. Daling and other enlightening material like recall bias studies. RoyBoy 14:05, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This book apparently was published in 1924
http://kuratrading.com/Islam/Caliphate/index.htm
Would it still have a copyright? Or is it public domain?
Can I cut/past sections from it in the relevant articles? OneGuy 11:01, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Can anyone resolve Lynmouth floods and deaths in 1952 (see discussion page for 1952). -- SGBailey 10:35, 2004 Oct 22 (UTC)
Hi, my name is Bsktcase and I'm a moron.
I was trying to move Blue Lodge to Masonic Lodge but accidentally moved Talk:Blue Lodge there instead. (See "moron", above.) I moved Talk back where it belongs, but now Masonic Lodge exists, so I can't move Blue Lodge to it.
I am reluctant to put Masonic Lodge on the speedy deletion page, because I'd like to recreate it properly immediately and I'd rather it didn't have a big bullseye painted on it when I do. (However, if that's the best solution just let me know.) The goal here is to have the content and edit history of Blue Lodge moved to it, with a redirect, in the usual manner.
(Blue Lodge is a regionally-specific colloquialism for the more general and accurate term Masonic Lodge, which is why I initiated the move and redirect in the first place.)
Please help! Thanks! — Bsktcase 21:28, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Robert's demands regarding the Bensley Boyle survey seem unreasonable. User_talk:Robert_the_Bruce and Talk:Medical_analysis_of_circumcision -- DanBlackham 16:57, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In my opinion Robert's behavior on Talk:Medical_analysis_of_circumcision has created an acrimonious and disrespectful atmosphere. What level of incivility is tolerated at Wikipedia? -- DanBlackham 09:19, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If contributors from either side of the issue are allowed to repeatedly violate the community standards of civility without consequences, in my opinion Wikipedia starts to resemble Usenet. Robert is also good an inserting his own pro-circumcision POV and attempting to pass off pro-circumcision nonsense as medicine or science. When someone questions his POV edits he responds with hostility and insults. From a medical perspective the bottom line regarding infant circumcision is that it is not medically necessary. That is not just my opinion; it is the official policy of professional medical organizations in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Medical_analysis_of_circumcision#References -- DanBlackham 08:53, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I have tried to move the page British Rail class 170 to British Rail Class 170 to standardise the naming of the pages, and also because the correct British Rail system uses "Class" not "class" ( Our Phellap 16:56, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC))
A special request: Saving Þeyr
I’m writing an article about Þeyr (an Icelandic band of the 1980s) and their discography. However I was told by one of the musicians that there are no images of the band nor the CD covers that I desperately need to finish the articles in Spanish (I’m working there). Even more: as the masters of Þeyr’s albums are believed to be lost or stolen there are no reissues and the only release in CD format was Mjötviður til Fóta in 2001. I have this one, so I don’t need its CD cover.
Here you have Þeyr’s full discography:
Albums:
Singles:
So, I thought there should be someone who knows about it or has the original records (in vinyl format). I need the records’ covers to illustrate my articles and then I will make a translation into English. Please, I hope there’s somebody there who could help me since there’s too little about them and I’m afraid if I don’t write about these topics all the information about their existence will disappear… Lmb 23:03, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
An invitation is hereby extended to all U.S. Northern Wikipedians and all Wikipedians interested in the U.S. North to the U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board board, also known as WP:ANSWER (A Northern States Wikipedia Effort and Resource). Bowl of chowdah for everybody! [[User:Neutrality| Neutrality ( hopefully!)]] 00:23, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)
It turns out there are two drummers named Roger Taylor, in the bands Duran Duran and Queen. The current disambiguation setup has them at Roger Taylor (Duran Duran) and Roger Taylor (Queen), which isn't ideal as first of all because the Queen Roger Taylor has a solo career which would warrant a Wikipedia article even had he not been in Queen (and so he is not just the drummer from Queen); Also Roger Taylor (Queen) looks kind of odd to users accustomed to there being an is-a relationship between the subject and parenthesised label (though this isn't always true). Does anyone have a better suggestion for naming? (I've taken this here as I think the issue deserves a slightly wider audience and people who don't know/care about either Roger Taylor can still give useful answers). -- fvw 20:36, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)
I recently added some data and moved Ken Ribet to Kenneth Alan Ribet, which it seems might have been a boo-boo. However, the man does not publish under the name "Ken"; it's what friends and collegues call him, but they are probably not the ones who need the article. I think it's wrong to carry this "most common name" business to the extent of making the primary article about "Ken" and not "Kenneth". Wikipedia is, I presume, supposed to be a serious reference work, and "Ken" simply strikes me as inappropriate. I note by the way that it's C. S. Lewis, not Jack Lewis, but everyone who knew him called him Jack. Should we go simply by what form of the name (in this case, it would be Kenneth A. Ribet) appears in print? user: Gene Ward Smith
By the way, how do I add the time stamp doo-dad? I forget.
Hello! Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but after wandering about for a while was the best place I found, so advanced aplologies...
This is just to say that a commercial site is using wiki content (straight, including formating) without any acknowledgment: http://www.wordiq.com/. They disguise themselves as some sort of meta-search engine, but I tried a few times and all results came from Wikipedia, again without any link or acknowledgment. Is there anything to be done about this? Cheers, and keep doing this amazing work!
Mario.
This sooo needs to go in the FAQ and at the top of the page. We get worried newbies posting messages like this every couple weeks, without fail. If ever there was a frequently asked question at Wikipdia, then "OMG xxx.com site copied all your content!" is one of them. Nohat 00:34, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
At Talk:1, there are a few Wikipedians who think that a better choice for articles 50 and less is for the number articles to be titled the number alone 20 and the year articles to be titled something like 20 A.D., as opposed to 20 (number) and 20. Does anyone have any comments?? (Please note that this is for 1 to 50 only, not 51 and above, which is where years should have no suffix and numbers should have the (number) suffix as agreed by everyone.) 66.245.114.60 20:28, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It wouldn't because of redirects, but so that people searching would be redirected, rather than getting the impression that the article does not exist. I think that 20AD is probably a more common way of saying year 20 than simply 20, it seems reasonable to redirect common ways of writing the dates. The Recycling Troll 17:25, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
There's already a redirect from AD 20. Remember that AD goes before the year. (Putting "AD" after the year is not only less correct, but less common: compare for example Google for "54 AD" Nero with Google for "AD 54" Nero.) Gdr 11:35, 2004 Oct 12 (UTC)
Before changing things, please read Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and the long debates on this subject in the multiple archives of the talk page in which the current convention for article names was agreed. Gdr 01:07, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)
AD is overtly religious - so those cannot be used as page titles. -- mav 17:58, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I suggest that in Wikipedia sub-categories of either of the two Georgias, we use the following terminology:
As an adjective meaning "having to do with Georgia", "Georgian" relates to the country whereas "Georgia" relates to the state. Example: "Georgia rivers" means the category for rivers of the state of Georgia, but "Georgian rivers" means the rivers of the country of Georgia. Any opinions?? 66.32.255.91 14:54, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This is proper American English. To Americans, "Georgian", "Californian", etc. are nouns, referring to the people who live in those states. Proper usage is "California wine", not "Californian wine", "Georgia peach", not "Georgian peach". "He is a Californian". But I don't know about usage for the European nationality. Rick K 19:03, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
Most European countries for the adjective form like this: "French franc" or "Spanish peso", not "France franc" or "Italy peso". 66.245.67.166 22:41, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
So far, no registered Wikipedia except RickK has responded. Anyone have any additional comments?? 66.32.255.51 01:12, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
But, how did this come into my mind, anyway?? The answer is I find it natural to think that this is a way to distinguish categories relating to the country from categories relating to the state; "in Georgia" or "of Georgia" can have either meaning. 66.245.21.160 22:32, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
(sections between the previous tag and this one were archived on 22:32, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC))'
In reference to Olbers' paradox my grasp of physics is fairly elementary, but surely the wave nature of light means that this paradox should state that the sky should be dark? Light behaves as a wave. For the uniitiated, Putting a source of light through two slits in a card shows this effect with bands of darkness "rippling" outward. This occurs with any waveform when two waves beocme perfectly inversely corrleated with each other (that is to say the pattern of peaks and troughs of one respectively match the torughs and peaks of the other) and they cancel each other out. If there were an inifinite number of light sources, there would be an infinite area of peaks and troughs in every direction resulting there being no visible light. Would a nice science person be kind enough to comment? Dainamo 12:32, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Thank you, but doesn't the amplitude determine what the output is? Dainamo 12:39, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If there are an infinite number of stars then every bit of light will have another in phase with it, this has to be so from the nature of an infinite number of them. The experiment uses a normal light source and the point of the slits is to narow this down. Dainamo 17:47, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
On that last point Theresa, the sun is truly massive (in our terms) but it is not inifnite so even if things did cancel out there would still be a huge net output. However, I have what I think is a satisfactory explantion from Calair which is on the Olbers' paradox discussion. Thank you Calair for a fascinating and enlightening answer. Dainamo 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias appears to have decided 1 to plaster templates 2 on any page which the small number of participants on that project feel come within their remit. Example 3. Which is, presumably, anything which might fall into the categories listed on the project page 4. I cannot say I'm teriffically thrilled about this for the following reasons:
I wonder if the community has thoughts about the matter. -- Tagishsimon
Tagishsimon's opposition to the idea of templates for the WP:Bias project can be understood in the context of these Mr Logic style arguments he made when it was first discussed on the VP:
I cannot help but feel that the premise of Xed's argument is a little shaky. A pejoritive accusation of systematic bias is at best a value judgement. What underpins it? Why is a war in the Congo worth more wiki-inches than Babylon 5? Who decides these things, and who is able to make apple versus orang-utan comparisons? Whereas I tend to share what I assume is Xed's opinion, that it would be more worthy to read about or even write about the Congolese civil war than Bablylon 5, I note that we already have a number of Wikipedia:Requested articles pages which go some way to address/answer Xed's call for action; and also have Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics. In what way do these differ from Xed's section on the Wikipedia:Community_Portal suggestion? Beyond that, his/her argument seems to be a good example of the best driving out the good. -- Tagishsimon
I have posted a proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Messages in the article namespace that all messages for editors, including the stub message, should go on talk pages. Filiocht 08:45, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
the Department of Fun is now open for all to enjoy!
(sections above this (and below the tag before this one) were archived on 04:44, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC))'
Should I check the "Mark all edits minor by default" box, given that 99% of the time I will forget to untick it when making an edit? The majority of my edits are, in fact, minor as I do a lot of grammatical tidying and minor prose improvement, but about 20% of my edits will not be minor. Does forgetting to mark these 20% as minor outweigh the alternative of not marking my minor edits as such? Appologies for being so absent-minded as to be unable to remember to untick the box. PhilHibbs 11:53, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
to Phil - I wouln't if I were you. Having to manually check the minor box, forces you to think, and decide if it really is minor or not. To Voilet/riga - nah it'd never work. machines are stupid. the sentance "Geroge Bush is a man" and "George Bush is a woman" differ by only two characters but have completely different meanings. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 14:25, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I hope I'm not the only one to have noticed. It appears that few people are updating the placement of the days on that page. [[User:Poccil| Peter O. ( Talk)]] 03:36, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)
User talk:64.12.117.7 will explain this better, but before logging on tonight, I got a "You have new messages" thing on my screen. Turns out, 64.12.117.7 is used by probably a dozen ISPs, in a dozen countries worldwide. What would do something like that? -- user:zanimum
hey there wikipedians, the Department of Fun is open for all to enjoy, if if you have a bout of edit exhaustion or just want some wikitainment try the link and enjoy.
On The Weavers page, I found the following sentence "The group had a big hit in 1949 with Leadbelly's Goodnight Irene, backed with the Jewish traditional folk song Tzena, Tzena, Ike and Tina Turner."
While my initial thought was that it was extremely doubtful that a Jewish traditional folk song would reference the 1960s soul duo, I thought I should perform a quick internet search first before deleting (as my mind began to throw up the theory that Annie Mae Bullock changed her name to Tina as part of some private joke). Of course, beyond the mild amusement of seeing all the Wikipedia mirrors also claim that Ike and Tina Turner are revered in Hebrew verse, there were only references to "Tzena, Tzena". But bravo to User: Viajero (if I've checked the page history properly) for his foresight on 8 June 2004 to give me the opportunity to recommend something to BJAODN. -- Roisterer 04:26, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Look at the articles for 3 (number), tri-, Greek numerical prefixes, and Latin numerical prefixes. According to them, tri- is the Greek numerical prefix and tre- is the Latin numerical prefix. However, I don't think there are many tre- words, and I think tri- words can in fact be either Greek or Latin. Any comments in improving these articles?? 66.32.243.1 21:41, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Hi
Apologies if I've missed the answer to this in one of the help files. But is there some simple way to use images from Wiki articles in other languages in EN: wiki pages? Or does one have to download the image and reupload it?
-- Sf 11:06, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Another interesting problem: on Talk:Sabra and Shatila Massacre we've had someone come forward -- he's even taken a Wikipedia account -- who (almost certainly accurately) identifies himself as John Harbo, who worked as a correspondent for a Norwegian paper in Beirut at the time, and who was present in the aftermath of the events, and who is quoted in some of the best-known documents about the events. He has additional material he'd like to add to Wikipedia, but it appears it wasn't in these documents. I've asked if he's ever published any of this anywhere (e.g. in his own journalism, which would certainly be citable), so we can quote it without violating our rules on auto-biography and original research.
Still, this all seems a bit weird to me: as Wikipedia gains in importance, things like this are going to happen more and more: people directly involved in historically significant events will approach us with attributable (but previously unpublished) information. It seems really weird if we can't cite them. Is there any way within our current rules to accommodate this? And if not, should we consider a way to change that? Maybe some wikipedia equivalent of an affidavit? -- Jmabel | Talk 23:04, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)
As it turns out, in this case he had already published in a reputable Norwegian newspaper, so we will simply cite that. But I really do believe that as we become more and more important as a source, this is going to happen more. John Harbo is a respected journalist. We put him through an insane amount of hassle to get one sentence into an article (actually, it's still not in there, because the article in question is now protected, but we seem to have consensus on adding it). We really do need a better way to handle this sort of thing, because it will happen more and more, and most won't have his patient perseverance: he happens to like our project. -- Jmabel | Talk 09:10, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)
Lately the articles relating (directly and indirectly) to Israel/Palestine have been the subject of the Wikipedia equivalent of war. This has spilled out into some articles that are only tangentially related to the Israel/Palestine conflict: see, for example, Talk:Jew.
Most recent activity in this area has been by people with a very strong Zionist or anti-Zionist views (and some of us somewhere between but probably just as firm in our views: to lay my cards on the table, I support a two-state solution, and would have no objection -- other than the sheer improbability of it ever happening -- to a unified secular state). Many of the people have been well-behaved, but others are not, and lately a lot of the discourse on the talk pages has been uncivil, and there have been edit wars and even article-move wars. Some of the people seem to be willing to stoop to even the most questionable sources as long as those support their beliefs, and reject even the most authoritative when they disagree. Or they are putting in views that go way beyond their own, basically trolling, just to heat things up further. Frankly, I'm getting pretty sick of it.
Israel/Palestine is not one of my major areas of work, nor of expertise, but having even a few related articles on my watchlist I feel like I'm getting sucked down a black hole. I keep getting pulled into more articles as talk on one article relates to another, etc. I really would rather be writing articles about things I really know, doing translations, etc.
We need some some people working on these pages who don't feel a strong stake in the politics but do feel a strong stake in scholarship, citation of references, etc. (Understand, most of the "partisans" have respect for these things, but lately it's gotten so heated that I think even some people who usually care about standards are taking cheap shots.) I urgently request that some experienced Wikipedians with no axe to grind get involved in this area.
I won't try to list the articles involved; because I came to this from an interest in writing about the history of the Jews as a people in diaspora, not from a focus on this region, any list I made would be overly biased toward specifically Jewish topics, and I'm sure that a lot of the same is going on in articles that focus on Arab/Palestian matters and probably even Muslim matters. I will merely single out Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an obvious place to start, as I am sure that much of what is at one or two removes from that is involved. Have a look at the talk pages and the histories (and the NPOV and dispute notices) and it will be obvious which articles have issues.
Anyone who wants to discuss this should feel free to get hold of me. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:28, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)
Hi can everone please come to meta and continue the discussion there. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 18:12, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Sexton is a dis-ambiguation page with 3 choices, the first of which looks to me like a dictionary definition, the second is a good article, and the third is a person's last name for which anyone who wants to search for would simply type Anne Sexton. Any comments about moving the second of these choices to simply Sexton?? 66.32.250.110 23:32, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
User:Zulitz (and an anonymous IP which I suspect belongs to him) has been inserting quotes from a Pennsylvania state representative in a million places. I can't think of a specific policy that this violates, and I'm hesitant to go reverting him without some kind of formal justification. On the other hand, it's ridiculous for Wikipedia to be quoting an obscure state representative as an authority on everything from social stereotypes to the Iron law of oligarchy to Dave Winer to the United States Democratic Party to Three Mile Island. Any thoughts? RadicalSubversiv E 05:25, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I removed a bunch of these for reasons given above. I left some in where they seemed relevant -- Three Mile Island for example. —No-One Jones (m) 20:02, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I believe the quotes from Cohen are relevant to the subjects at hand and are factually accurate. A citizen built encyclopedia should be able to quote citizen sources, not just nationally recognized experts with PhD.s and a lot of books to their credit.
The Cohen quotes tend to raise new points and can be rebutted if there are other points of view or superseded by quotes from more famous people if such are available. The Wikipedia is a constantly in flux, ever-changing work in progress, and striking quotes with no claim that they are inaccurrate or irrelevant but merely in too many articles is counterproductive to the goal of building up the Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, as thoughts from one person tend to lead to thoughts from other people. Quotes from individuals ought to be evaluated on a case by case basis by people who are interested in the underlying subject, not in sweeping fashion by anyone offended that someone he or she does not think of as prominent has informed opinions on diverse subjects.
Further, to consider purging all my contributions, the vast majority of whose wordage does not mention Cohen, also seems counterproductive to the goal of building up the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia is rapidly growing, and the Cohen quotes are generally a small part of the articles that contain them, while the articles that contain them are an extremely small part of the Wikipedia. Zulitz
The issue here is basically whether the Wikipedia is limited in quotations to those who are nationally prominent, or whether it can quote people who know something about a given subject but who are not nationally prominent. Nationally prominent people often try to limit themselves to a relatively small number of topics: politicians call it controlling the message, or message discipline. What does Kerry think about the Iron Law of Oligarchy? What does Bush think about it? What does the President of the American Political Science Association think about it? Nothing stops any of them from having a public opinion on this, but they probably don't. The Iron Law of Oligarchy--promulgated in 1911 and generally obscure--deals with political organizations, and it reasonable that a guy like Cohen (21 years on the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committtee, 31 years as a member of the Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus, nearly half of which he has served as an elected leader) has something of value to say on this.
Purging his opinion of the Democratic Party, of which he has been a four decade participant, and leaving in the opinion of Nader Vice-Presidential candidate Peter Camejo, who has never been a Democrat, is just silly. I didn't quote Cohen as an authority on the Green Party or on the Nader 2004 campaign, but on the party whose members elected him a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Of course many other Democrats are far more prominent, and the extremely long article on the Democratic Party contains countless references to some of them, and more references to more Democrats will certainly be added with time.
Similar defenses can be made about the other objected-to quotes. Cohen knows Dave Winer from BloggerCon2, he was a leader in the Pennsylvania legislature for no-fault divorce, and he has fought the pernicious effects of social stereotypes in countless instances, three of which I listed in the article.He is one of many, many people who are worth quoting on subjects in which they are familiar, and the English-speaking Wikipedia--on track to have well over a million articles within a few years--is both more comprehensive and more valuable when it quotes knowledgeable people than when it merely limits itself to bland generalizations attributed to no one, or to academic authorities who have not directly participated in the things they have studied. Zulitz
Discussion moved to m:Talk:Wikijunior
Wikipedians should know what the anti-circumcision zealots have planned.
--- Ŭalabio <Walabio@MacOSX.COM> wrote: > To: intact-l@cirp.org > From: Ŭalabio <Walabio@MacOSX.COM> > Subject: ¡Circumcisiophiliacs attack Daivid Peter > Reimer > ! > Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 00:35:45 +0000 > > > ¡Hello! > > ¿How Fare You? > > The circumcisiosexuals desecrate the article about > David Peter Reimer. > Some of us share the fate of David Peter Reimer, > and the any one of > the rest of us could have shared his fate. I do not > care what those > perverts do among themselves, but I hate the way > those pædophiles go > after children, and I refuse to let them vandalize > David Peter Reimer. > If it were not for those perverts he and his brother > Brian might be > alive today and the family Reimer would be much more > happy. > > If the want total editwar, ¡we will give then > total editwar! > > The article is here: > > HTTP://WikiPedia.Org/wiki/David_Peter_Reimer > > This is its history: > > > HTTP://WikiPedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=David_Reimer&action=history > > This is the page for discussing changes to the > article: > > HTTP://WikiPedia.Org/wiki/Talk:David_Reimer > > ¡Hurry! ¡Create an account, login, and help! > > Intactivistically, > Ŭalabio > > -- > > ¡Dubya Shrub is a Saudi-Lover -- Saudi-Mite! > > ¡The Bin-Bushes bend over _"*FOR*"_ the > Bin-Ladens!
This isn't the first time that User:Walabio has sent out a "call to arms" to his activist group. The situation is distressing. There are alot of "zealots" on Wikipedia, POV pushing everything from astrology to biowar-decontaimination-cyborg theory (I'm not kidding about that), but the members of this cirp.org group have become truly problematic. They fully admit themselves that they are here on an "agenda" --they don't deny it-- Wikipedia accurancy and credebility doesn't mean anything to them, so long as they get to push their POV. func (talk) 17:36, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Well they are going to be a bit dissapointed when they come to win the war over this particular page because i've just protected it. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 21:57, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Take it easy Theresa. Until someone contested the truth of what had been and continued to be inserted in the related articles you were quite happy to lie back, close your eyes and think of England. Now it is clear the content has moved closer to NPOV than ever before and if only you would cease providing succour to the head bangers they would slowly start to drift away and seek another place to push their POV. If you believe I am pushing POV you are welcome to raise that issue on a case by case basis. But I am afraid I am less than convinced that everyone around here is really working towards a NPOV solution. As they say we are all human. If you are indeed commmitted to NPOV then join up and contribute rather stand off to one side and weild a stick like some Dickensian harridan. I guess your actions will indicate what your decision will have been. One can but live in hope. - Robert the Bruce 14:27, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Some of you are mad that I tried to call in help for protecting David Peter Reimer. I have my reasons:
Ever since 1966- 04-27, the circumcision-pushers, have tried to escape responsibility for their actions. The Version of David Peter Reimer up to a week ago was an unstable compromise:
It pointed out that phimosis (nonretractability) is not a disease in infancy. As a bone to those who insist that something must have been wrong with the intact genitals of Brian and Bruce because they were intact, it lists a plausible pathology.
I personally have doubts that anything other than benign ballooning occurred. Well anyhow, the compromise no longer holds. Starx rightfully points out that Encyclopædia WikiPedia.Org is no place for speculative compromises. I say we work this out once and for all:
Facts:
I integrated the facts into a paragraph:
"The parents Reimer worried about how Brian and Bruce urinated. The pædiatrician gave an impossible diagnosis of phimosis ( phimosis is a tight nonretractable præpuce, but infants have a tight nonretractable præpuce anyway). Non tried a less radical procedure before attempting circumcision. 1966- 04-27, the doctors Jean Huot and Max Cham tried to use a Bovie Cautery Machine for circumcising Bruce Reimer, which is not for use on extremities and genitals. Max Cham and Jean Huot burned the penis of Bruce off. After the accident of Bruce Reimer, the hospital canceled the circumcision of Brian Reimer. Brian Reimer continued to develop normally as an intact boy and man, thus proving that the circumcision of Bruce Reimer was totally medically unnecessary and nontherapeutic."
¿Any comments?
I wish to have a binding decision so that we can move on. The final version should include all of the facts listed above. I suggest that we get the input of Doctor Alteripse.
Ŭalabio 01:57, 2004 Oct 25 (UTC)
Ŭalabio, please see my response under the discussion page. I agree with other posters that it is not appropriate to make a 'call to arms' to an activist group over this or any other issue. An activist group, by definition, is essentially opposed to NPOV (preferring to push its own POV), and so such an action strikes at the heart of Wikipedia. - Jakew 11:16, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
And now User:DanP is trying to drag Breastfeeding into the long list of attacked articles that having nothing to do with circumcision. func (talk) 04:34, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
> To: intact-l@cirp.org > Subject: Need some help on Wikipedia > From: Dan P <mail2danp@yahoo.com> > Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 15:27:55 -0700 (PDT) > Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Reply-to: Dan P <mail2danp@yahoo.com> > Sender: owner-intact-l@cirp.org > > Dear group, > > I have been battling the pro-circumcision folks on > Wikipedia again, hoping to list "circumciser" as a > valid article entry. I have tried to keep the article > as factual as possible and related to world cultures. > > If you are active on Wikipedia, please go to that > article and give me a hand. So far, the pro-MGM side > has been voting to delete, and I could use some > assistance. > > Thanks, > > Dan
There are two pages for DIP(the electronic thingy), Dual-Inline Package and Dual in-line package, both with history. I think it shoud be Dual Inline Package myself, since the common usage is the acronym 'dip', but maybe someone who works with DIPs knows better. jericho4.0 19:32, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
There is an error in the article Theophilus II namely that he is not the "II" at all. I feel a little reluctant to make the change myself because it means changing all the links to the page, and I am not sure how to find them all. If someone could either do this or tell me how I would appreciate it. Barrett Pashak | Talk 15:55:51 , 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Okay, but how do I change the name of the article from Theophilus II to Theophilus (emperor)? Barrett Pashak 20:03, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
The links to it will be automatically redirected, and can be fixed at your (or someone elses) leisure. Mark Richards 21:46, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
That's pretty weird, lots of people have worked on the list of emperors, I'm surprised we never noticed that before. For what it's worth, the original article came from the 1911 EB, but the original anonymous author (or importer) must have followed the link from the list page itself, which was created (with the Theophilus II link) back in 2001 by a user who hasn't been around for three years. Anyway, Theophilus (emperor) would be a good place for this, there are other emperor articles like that already. Adam Bishop 04:50, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I've changed all the links (except here) to Theophilus II to Theophilus (emperor). Theophilus II should now be deleted unless we want to write an article on him. Perhaps what Rmhermen wrote above: "Theophilus II, grandson of Theophilus who claimed the throne in 867 after his father was assassinated." is enough for a stub? Also I started to change the links to Theophilus to Theophilus of Antioch but I was uncertain if they were all correct. Someone (who knows more than I do) should probably look through them. Paul August 21:40, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)
By the way Theophilus I of Alexandria should probably be "Theophilus of Alexandria", since I can find no reference to him with a "I" fllowing his name. Prehaps this "Theophilus I" and "Theophilus II" business was some (Wikipedia or otherwise) editor's attempt to disambiguate them. Aso I've removed the rediect from Theophilus II. Paul August 18:01, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
And now Mpolo has plugged the hole with a translation of the German article on Theophilus Presbyter a.k.a. Roger of Helmarshausen, so I think we are pretty much done for the moment. Well done to everyone. -- Solipsist 08:08, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
How do I delete the search topics I've entered in the search box? For example, once I've completed my search and want to start a new one, I start typing and every search I've ever done that started with the same letter is displayed.Can I clear this somehow??
Thanks, Cindy
http://scholar.google.com/scholar/about.html#search8
Should articles linked to on Slashdot be protected for a few hours? Clovis culture is about to get vandalised, I predict. PhilHibbs 10:08, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I don't feel like getting involved in what's happening in this article, but somebody ought to. Personally I think the whole article should be deleted, but I've nominated it for deletion twice myself and I won't do it again. In the meantime, someone who feels very strongly on the matter of Native American rights has been adding material to the page in a non-encyclopedic fashion. It's been tagged NPOV, but it needs some diplomatic enforcing of wikipolicy, IMHO. -- Woggly 13:27, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have a question as to whether a certain series of additions are within the spirit of wikipedia or not.
User:Monkeyleg has contributed to many individual firearms pages. His typical contribution is to add an external link to gunshopfinder.com, such as Photos and information about current production Beretta pistols.
This site is a commercial web page which has the primary purpose of helping people find a local gun dealer. While helping people to purchase arms may be a honorable cause, it seems odd to me to have this site so extensively linked to from our firearms pages.
Can anybody else share their opinion on these links? Should they stay or go? - CrucifiedChrist
To day the catalan wiki is over 10,000 articles.
Pérez 21:43, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Somebody has placed Gay Porn pictures on the front page and I have no idea how to report it.
Ziggy
Want to have some fun? The Wikipedia Trivia Contest, Round 3 is open... Lupo 16:08, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
One or more anonymous users have insistently removed the info on Jordanes and Procopius in the article on the Heruls. Now one of these users claims to be a Claudia (with a smiley) who accuses me of reverting an accurate and balanced version of the text, and of insisting about my views, whereas very little of the text is mine. I am giving up for now. Perhaps, a third person would like to take over, and maybe do a better job than I did.-- Wiglaf 15:51, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Do you know how to change the look and feel of the wiki (like the logo aand navigation?)
Hi I am makeing a website that will do some diffs of different modifications to documents. I relly like the way that the wikipedia shows the history with the diffs. Could any one please provide me with a tool or Source Code to implemente this on my own site.
you caan email me at: 'mr.computer.geek at gmail.com'
Thank you very much
I am rather fed up with the provincials who edit the Template:In_the_news and Current events pages, who constantly put up rather tedious headlines pulled from the average US "news" site/ TV channel that is full of either irrelevant crap or US-pertinent only "international" reporting. Can the admin or bureacrats or whoever changes policies and instructions on editing do something about it? More detail at this page: Template_talk:In_the_news#Ignoran-uh...Americentrism -- Simonides 22:20, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Please read very slowly and carefully:
Today, while I was studying RC in Wikipedia, I saw several edits of the Sandbox that were contributed by registered Wikipedians with their User Names looking like IP addresses. (Note that the way I differentiate between the 2 kinds of contributions is by what it will result in when clicking on the User Name while looking in RC.) Please try to do whatever you can to make sure nobody is doing this. Here are some that it is especially important for some Wikipedia admin to watch over:
Now, to answer the question "Who is the Georgia guy??" the answer is:
The Georgia guy has gone by various IP numbers sine February 2004 while editing Wikipedia, all of which are either 66.32.xxx.xxx or 66.245.xxx.xxx (but the reverse is not perfectly true; there have even been some times in Wikipedia history when there has been an IP that someone other than the Georgia guy has gone by that was later (usually several months) used by the Georgia guy.) Note that the Georgia guy is not a vandal. 66.245.108.212 20:10, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Also for developers, or admins, or whoever: could we come up with some policy for removing user accounts? When I go to
Special:Listusers, I am rather shocked by the hundreds of pages of red links. I did some spot checking... most of these accounts have never made a single edit. A number of users have commented on the fact that they wanted a particular account name but found that it was already taken... by someone with no edits whatsoever. Perhaps there could be some policy along these lines:
Any thoughts?
func
(talk) 21:03, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I thought the software blocked usernames which resemble IP addresses, but perhaps I was mistaken: User:152.163.100.199 seems to be a real user rather than an AOL IP address, since it's been marking edits minor and links in histories lead to the user page rather than the contributions. Something's up; maybe one of the developers can enlighten us? —No-One Jones (m) 00:00, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I agree on both counts: Block user accounts that look like IP's in software, and delete inactive and unused accounts after email notification. — David Remahl 02:30, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have a proposal in at MediaWiki feature requests for something I'm calling "external link sanitizing." I want a nice easy way to produce external links that look, feel, and serve the reader just as well as ordinary external links, but which contain text that is transformed in such a way that search engines will not credit them as a reference to an external website.
I want to reduce the incentive for external sites to place links in WIkipedia as a way of increasing their search engine ratings.
There may be much simpler technical solutions that I'm overlooking.
This can of course effectively be done now by using services such as tinyurl and others. For example, http://aidepikiw.notlong.com will take you to Wikipedia, but search engines will consider it to be a link to notlong; thus, it provides a functional link to Wikipedia that does not increase Wikipedia's pagerank.
I don't see any issues with using tinyurl and friends to sanitize links, when used very occasionally in special situations. But others do, and certainly it would be better to find a solution that only uses Wikipedia's own resources, and which keeps the "plain text" of the original link in a form that is recoverable by human visual inspection.
I don't believe that all links need to be sanitized, but I believe that as soon as any question about a page or a link arises, there should be an easy way to sanitize a link, or all the links on a particular page. [[User:Dpbsmith| Dpbsmith (talk)]] 14:24, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Can somebody fix the information listed on the Wikipedia site for the movie, " The Sting". Some fool wrote that the theme song, "The Entertainer", was written by Marvin Hamlish. Actually, it was written by Scott Joplin - a very talented African American who was the father of ragtime. Marvin Hamlish only adapted the song for the movie. I am a computer idiot and don't know what to do. But I hate to see someone thinking the credit should go to Marvin Hamlish!! Sob!
Hi. It's mid-november and Jimbo just uploaded his Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year greetings to the commons, and I thought I'd share it with you (It's Public domain, you known). -- Chris 73 Talk 02:03, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)
Just went over to eBay and wondered what would happen if I searched for "Wikipedia". No results for the UK but three international results, mainly regarding sales of the German Wikipedia CD. Should people be selling these CDs? violet/riga (t) 23:25, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Is anyone else bothered by this? While I love Wikipedia, when I search the web I don't want to have to wade through the same information on the first two pages of a Google search under different URIs like brainyencyclopedia, etc.
I tried a -Wikipedia with some improvement, but it bothers me to have to do this, at least partly because if other users have to do this, it's not a good thing for the image of Wikipedia.
Any ideas? Spalding 23:08, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)
Article Bluetooth sniping: is this a wind up? (Couldn't see where else to ask this) Shantavira 13:34, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Can someone create a photographer's barnstar? We need one. :) [[User:Neutrality| Neutrality ( hopefully!)]] 00:24, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)
I don't know where to put this, but I love it. If you use Windows and Internet Explorer, try this:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\w] @="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s"
You now have Wiki for Windows! Any article you want to look up, type "w" and the article name in as a web address (don't forget caps!), and it'll take you straight to it.
The same trick can be used to make an in-line command to add any text into a web address and open it. the 1st line stays the same, 2nd line just change the last letter to the one you want, 3rd line is the address with %s for the text you give it. Google example:
If theres a wiki tips page, add this to it :) FT2 01:18, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)
In my watchlist, I have noticed a regular pattern over the past couple of months of new anons (with no existing page) making one small, almost irrelevant edit to an article - like changing US to USA, or changing a verb to its synonym. Sometimes they're rollback-able, but often not - just pointless. It happens often enough to unrelated articles that I wonder if it's part of a Web-link scam or something like that, but I can't figure out what it would be. (I don't think they're done by the same anon, although I can't say I pay much attention to those numerical ID's.) Any ideas as to what, if anything, is going on? - DavidWBrooks 18:32, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Has anyone else noticed User:Merovingian?
-- Etaonish 16:02, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
Something's odd here. Merovingian has
edited since October 20, and the name and birthdate in that obituary don't match what was on
the previous version of his userpage. (oops, why didn't I get an edit conflict?). Anyway, the name and birthdate on his userpage might have been deliberate misdirection, and I suppose someone else might know the account's password—they'd have to, to make that last update. Spooky.
—No-One
Jones
(m) 19:08, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
His journal reveals that it's a friend of his. - 19:21, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
Hi. A have found this case of vanity. This user decided to insert himself in this category. I thought I'd just remove the category link from his page, but then again it's bad policy to meddle with other user's personal page. I've left a note on the person's user page, but what if he does not responds? Regards, Redux 13:41, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Look at this:
Something must be done about this. Bennett Chronister 10:44, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
OK I've done it. To redirect readers from one page to another you blank the text then put #REDIRECT[[Kalto]] there. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 10:53, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Now you just lost all the information about how it has 5,000 speakers, is spoken in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtria, has loans from the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages, etc. That didn't do any good at all. Bennett Chronister 11:37, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
As an upshot of some discussion in the recent Seattle Meetup, several of us have started Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia. The primary goal is to help librarians and other researchers understand both the strengths and limitations of Wikipedia as a reference tool; I suspect it could have the secondary value of drawing the attention of the Wikipedian community to some of our weaknesses and thus stimulating the community to consider some ways we might turn Wikipedia into a more valuable reference. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:16, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)
Has it every been discussed to make simplied versions of articles? For example many math and physics articles are very technical and I was thinking that it might be a good idea to make some simplified articles for some of the most important topics with a general introduction and a section requiring only highschool knowledge. Many articles like Maxwell's equations and schrödinger equation is pretty math heavy but it would be possible to write for example schrödinger equation (simplified) where the non-relativistic Schrödinger wave equation might be discussed together with a solution to one dimensional particle in a box, many important results is possible to discuss with only highschool level of math and physics. I think these kinds of articles should not be too light but more like introductory ,with the purpose of helping people understand the real article. Any thoughts? Passw0rd
Are you familiar with http://simple.wikipedia.org ? They need alot of help over there. func (talk) 23:29, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The suggestion is somewhat like have a ready reference Miccropedia and in deapth Macropedia like Britannai. I think the best solution for such articles to be edited in a way that summarizes the topic to a satisfactory level for browser and then offers more in depth explanation. User:Dainamo:Dainamo
The German Wikipedia seems to be down. I recived the message "Wiki does not exist" with the Wikimedia Foundation logo at the left corner. What happened here? -- Filzstift 22:27, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Please, please does anyone know of any image whatsoever that would be at all aplicable to this article even a picture of dna or a chromosome or something, i'd really like to get this article featured. i spent a lot of time on it and i would also like any comments and critisisms. -- Larsie 18:01, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers seems to have become a target of repeated anonymous vandalism. Unfortunately, some vandalised revisions have been online for hours. That page is a very important part of the project and should receive more attention. Please consider putting it on your watchlist to avoid persistence of any future vandalism. Thanks. Kosebamse 15:49, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Another wikipedian suggested I log in and introduce myself. I have already posted comments and an update in the areas of Derrida, Dijkstra and Kant.
I am a software developer and author of the Apress book Build Your Own .Net Language and Compiler. My interests encompass software development including compiler development, philosophy, art, etcetera.
My home page is http://members.screenz.com/edNilges.
I am very interested in the Wikipedian ethos and approach.
However, I view NPOV as sometimes misinterpreted to mean LCD.
210.21.221.178 01:56, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Oops. Trumpet roll. The way this came out really sucks because it reads like "big deal, and who is Edward (Gee?) Nilges?". My kid is probably dying of embarassment.
Anyway, the damage is done. I shall in future try to adhere to all customs and rules. Four tildes to "stamp" the document? Gee, we're not in Kansas anymore are we Toto. We are in a land of gnomic utterance.
But one can be equally gnomic. LCD doesn't mean liquid crystal diode. It means Least Common Denominator.
I miss the bbc radio broadcast of "MY WORD" are there any sites which still audio stream the program? Are there any radio re-plays in the U.S. (via NPR)? Were can I download or buy editions?
reverend_logan@yahoo.com
Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:My_Word%21"
If someone needs a pic of a place in downtown Chicago, I might be able to get one (if it's within walking distance of where I am staying), so let me know. Dori | Talk 02:01, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
I've been writting this article Lesch-Nyhan syndrome (in a word document) for a few days now. i've just copied it to wikipedia and when i submitted it the format was all wonky, please help. p.s. if anyone can find me a pic to add that would be great! -- Larsie 23:06, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I fixed a couple paragraphs. If you start a paragraph with a space, it goes all on the same line in a fixed-width format. See Wikipedia:How to edit a page. Hope this helps. pstudier 23:50, 2004 Nov 7 (UTC)
At a template called Template:Radio stations by state, I want to know if anyone can modify it so that the following does not happen:
When I went to List of radio stations in Georgia (U.S. state), I put the template on and it automatically added Category:Georgia, which is a dis-ambiguation category, to the template. I can't fix the category because it is automatically put in with the template. 66.245.3.195 17:35, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Sometimes, Whenever I visit Wikipedia's main page and click the link that says Create an account or log in, it suddenly jumps from the upper right corner of the webpage to the left. Why does it do that? Thanks, -- Chris 08:44, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I just made some changes to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._Presidential_religious_affiliations about Lincoln being called a Christian, and even a devout one. Considering this is probably an all kinds of controversial sort of change, I want to run this by whoever is in charge here before my IP gets banned and such. :(
I had done some Google searching about the religious beliefs about Lincoln earlier today, and found the general consenus is he believed in God, but likely in a Deist sense, and not a Christian. I then found this Wikipedia article calling him a devout Christian, yet linking at the bottom to a web page that he was a Deist. This is logically inconsistent. Thus I deleted the part about Lincoln being a devout Christian, and changed his religion to be uncertain, possibly Deist. When the historical facts are unclear, then calling Lincoln a "devout Christian" is not intellectually honest.
My intent was not to maliciously deface Wikipedia, but just to correct something that seemed inaccurate. Given this is a possible inflammatory change, I'd like whoever the Powers That Be are here to review it, and make a decision whether my change was reasonable. (unsigned)
We should be careful, however, as any statement on the matter might be seen as bordering on "original research", which Wikipedia isn't suppose to do. Someone recently tried to place Lincoln's name onto the List of famous gay, lesbian or bisexual people, citing a book... which hasn't even been published yet. (Of course, it doesn't really matter. 53% of Americans seem to think Bush is a moral leader rather than the purest form of evil the world has ever known, and I'll bet these same 53% of ignorant Americans are going to insist that Lincoln was of whatever religious persuasion they want to believe.) -- 68.163.12.14 02:27, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
A friend of mine who participates strongly in the "Figure Skating Universe" BBS site [4] sent me the following. She wishes to remain anonymous, but I thought my fellow Wikipedians would be at least amused.
Jmabel | Talk 18:36, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)
(sections above this (and below the previous tag) were archived on 08:10, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC))'
I have recently edited the entry on YouGov (of which I am chairman), to remove one inaccuracy and addd (I hope) useful information.
However, have been unable to alter the title, which should be "YouGov" rather than "Yougov".
Could someone arrange for the "G" to be in capitals?
Thanks
Peter Kellner
is there any media or project pages with just a bunch of pics that can be used to be entered into articles? let me know on my disc page -- Larsie 22:26, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Recently I found out Wikipedia has a list of burocrats. How do I become one? Is there a page where I can self-nominate? Are there any steps to be taken before going from administrator to burocrat?
Any help will be dearly appreciated.
Thanks and God bless you! " Antonio Burrocrat Martin"
How do you become an admin? does it require jedi mastery? Dainamo 20:14, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The pages relating to Television particularly the PAL page does not mention the phonemenon described below. Can anyone help for a name for it plus establish whether it occurs becasue of conversion from film to PAL or from NTSC to PAL or some completely diferent route or reason?: When a fast moving vehcle is shown, particularly a horse drawn wagon or chariot with distinctive spokes, a strobe effect sometimes occurs that makes the wheel appear to move slowly backwards due to the rate at which the film is capturing the picture. Dainamo 10:34, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
But the question is titled "film to tv frame rate". The phenomenon of temporal aliasing occurs in any picture-sequence medium and is not related to the various problems related to converting film, at 24 or 16 frames per second, to video, at 30 (North America) or 25 (elsewhere) f.p.s. For that, see Telecine. Sharkford 18:31, 2004 Nov 5 (UTC)
One sometimes notices people changing spelling and punctuation from US to UK-style, and vice versa, not in the course of a rewrite but just out of the blue. What's the consensus etiquette on that?
It feels strange to add a significant portion of text to an article using my US-style while the remainder of the article is in UKese--the inconsistency diminishes the appearance of quality. But it also feels provincial to alter others' spellings, etc. Does one rewrite in toto or adopt the existing style?-- NathanHawking 02:30, 2004 Oct 16 (UTC)
This whole AE/BE preference problem is something that has probably got up the nose of very many Wikipedians over there years. I'm certainly one of them. I have a proposal for a relatively simple software solution that may be useful in other areas too. Some time ago we managed to kill off the debate about whether to use [[DD Month]] [[YYYY] or [[Month DD]], YYYY by implementing a system whereby wikified dates appear in one or other format depending on what the user has selected in their preferences. This works great but it only works for wikified dates. My solution world also work for unwikified dates. If we had a BE/AE option in preferences we could then have the flag checked when an article is displayed. Problematic words or phrases could be tagged e.g. "... he came to her {[defense/defence]} as soon as he could and ..." - and the appropriate word could be chosen as required. Mintguy (T) 01:03, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Also Spelling reform:In such context the written form is sometimes called International English, since few other English-speaking countries have adopted the changes in spelling introduced by nineteenth century US lexicographers.
You may not like the usage, but it exists. It is ambiguous, as the term is also widely used to mean English of a kind likely to be understood by any English speaker and also for a particular kind of simplified spelling. Commonwealth English is less ambiguous. But as to it being "for the most part equivalent to British English", American English is also "for the most part equivalent to British English". You can sometimes go for pages and pages in a book with no indication in the spelling to indicate whether the author is using some form of British English spelling or some form of American English spelling or something else. As to your comments on the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, most dictionaries that I am familiar with (outside of the most abridged) also give special meanings and spellings that a reader is likely to encounter outside of the form of English for which the dictioary is intended.) But "OED-English" generally prefers spelling words like organize/organise with z rather than with s (and not because it is especially following American usage).) See [5]. This is a spelling convention used by the Encyclopaedia Britannica and by numerous publishing houses and journals, especially those publishing academic maerial. For example, check the English in most Penguin books written by British authors containing translations or non-fictional material. See, for example the recommendations of the South African Photogrammetry and Geo-Information Society at [6] which uses such z spellings though the s spellings are more generally used in South Africa. In Canadian English the z spellings are far, far more normal. This differences cuts across your "Commonwealth English" and suggestion of only two ways of spelling. Oxford style is the choice of many writers and publishing houses for "Commonwealth English", especially university publishing houses and such as: [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15]. There is no single Commonwealth English spelling. Canadian use is divided about equally on the use of color over colour and so with other words of that kind. Both spellings are accepted, just as both the '-ise' and '-ize' spellings are acceptable in British English. The Canadian Oxford English Dictionary gives colour as preferred and the Gage Dictionary of Canadian English gives color as preferred. (But both dictionaries prefer centre to center.) Both dictionaries are used as standard references by different publishing houses. Few make much of a fuss about it in Canada. Currently, under Wikipedia rules, all these methods of spellings are equally acceptable. Your proposal reduces this to a choice between some particular version of American English that you have not defined and — an unrevealed system of British English spellings you personally prefer. That is not much of a choice. It looks more like an attempt to promote one particular form of English. You probably do not realize the variations in spelling that occur. Most people don't, partly because most people don't notice them most of the time when reading for information. But any two-choice system of spelling between an imaginary standard American and an imaginary standard British cannot model the common divergence and freedom of choice that exists.cancelled became canceled (single-L common in American English; double-L common in International English).
I don’t know whether to vent, plea, preach or what.
I’ve been here less than two months, but it’s going downhill, perhaps much of the problem triggered by a comma.
My guess is that part of the reason Wikepedia is intended to be international is the hope of fostering fellowship, or at least something akin to it, and not rivalry or uniformity.
But controversies erupt over petty matters.
I’d like to urge that the motto “Be bold!” be tempered with patience and at least initial assumption of good faith. Etc.
I’ve raised a question at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, with the hope of avoiding or reducing alphabetic rivalry concerning countries.
Anyone who wants to discuss the possibility of improving international relations within Wikipedia is invited to my talk page. Or we could make Wikipedia page if you think that’s a better idea.
To those of you who work toward the community aspect of the Wikipedia, I thank you.
Tangentially, about controversies in general, perhaps something more can be done to prevent or reduce the bad driving out the good. I mean, maybe Wikipedia should do more to prevent or reduce volitality. Or maybe not. Maurreen 07:18, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
(sections above this (and below the previous tag) were archived on 10:33, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC))
There is a poll at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style about the abbreviation "U.S." and serial commas. But the poll was not preceded by any discussion. Maurreen 06:34, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Should the foreskin fetish article even exist on Wikipedia? Should there also be a circumcision fetish article? -- DanBlackham 18:20, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
"foreskin fetish" 7,850 hits "foreskin fetish" +restoration 101 hits "foreskin fetish" +stretching 292 hits "circumcision fetish" 2,270 hits
Additional information on the peculiar interest in the foreskin "foreskin fetish" -- 8,240 "circumcision fetish" -- 2,560 "foreskin worship" -- 453 "circumcision worship" -- 58 "foreskin love" -- 186 "circumcision love" -- 78 "foreskin lover" -- 823 "circumcision lover" -- 9 "foreskin lovers" -- 2,280 "circumcision lovers" -- 9 "foreskin fan" -- 131 "circumcision fan" -- 4 And the skins have it ... by about four to one. - Robert the Bruce 04:48, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
After removing that garbage, the article would read:
"Præputial Philia is sexual attraction to the præpuce"
Since the predicate contains no information not found in the subject, we might as well delete it.
Do what you will, I do not care either way about the article.
Ŭalabio 04:36, 2004 Nov 2 (UTC)
Of course Walabio would like to call it something like "præputial philia", he is extremely fond of using words that less than 1% of all people have ever heard before. func (talk) 04:46, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The foreskin fetish article seems to be little more than a platform for Robert's ad hominem attacks on people who do not agree with his pro-circumcision POV. Since most of the men in the world have not had a normal part of their penis cut off it does not surprise me that "foreskin fetish" has more Google hits than "circumcision fetish". However "clitoris fetish" has even more Google hits. It looks like Wikipedia needs a clitoris fetish article too.
"clitoris fetish" 14,000 hits
By the way both the foreskin fetish and circumcision fetish articles probably should be moved to foreskin fetishism and circumcision fetishism to be consistent with the other sexual fetishism articles. -- DanBlackham 09:24, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
(sections above this (and below the previous tag) were archived on 10:15, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC))
Imagine the trembling of my hands as I deliberately uploaded a new version of an image (with transparency) that was in use on the main page! I think it's a big improvement, although I'm still not 100% happy with the edge pixels. You might need to Shift-Refresh to reload the new image if it's already in your cache. PhilHibbs 16:15, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
While helping with WikiSyntax brackets fix i noticed that some articles copypasted from 1911 encyclopedia contains OCR-related typos like 'l'→']' (yep, it's just copy, they're in the original texts too). Should the 1911 articles be looked at by the typo department ? - JohnyDog 23:26, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'd just like to ask that people on wp:vfd please remember that civility means civility to all. Specifically, I'd like to ask one thing--can we remove "fancruft" from our collective vocabularies?
After thinking about it for a time, I've come to the conclusion that the word serves no purpose that is not pejorative. For example, compare these two articles. One is Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/John Boone; the other, found at User:Meelar/A nicer VfD, is the same text, but with "fancruft" replaced in all instances by "non-notable". Aside from a few easily fixable things, there is no meaning lost--but the whole thing, viewed from an observer's perspective, seems much less contemptous.
Is there any reason to maintain "fancruft" in favor of alternatives that are less offensive to the person whose prose is being considered? I don't think there is. I'd ask people to keep this in mind, and avoid using "fancruft", instead substituting non-pejorative alternatives.
Thank you, [[User:Meelar| Meelar (talk)]] 21:04, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, while we're at it, let's get rid of 'notability', which is just another term for 'I'm not interested'. We will not improve Wikipedia's coverage of more weighty subjects by deleting good coverage of factual material of interest to a minority. Intrigue 19:45, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps the relevant criterion here is not so much "notable" vs. "non-notable" but "public" vs. "private". An article describing well-established facts, with publicly available references, is appropriate ... even if it's about a fictional universe of interest only to a few people. An article about my left foot, on the other hand, would be deleted because the sources of information — presumably, only myself and my close friends — are neither public nor well-established as credible. —Steven G. Johnson 23:30, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)
I just split Google the company and Google the search engine into 2 separate articles (still working out some details) but I'm not sure about...
As for whether or not to split the article, I see no reason not to follow the guidelines at Wikipedia:Article size. The full article is 36K, so it should be split. As for where to split the article, I'd say Google, Google search engine, Google services, and Google tools. Keep a brief summary of each, and move the rest of the section over. anthony (see warning) 02:54, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'm not really opposed to this budding new collection of "Year in..." articles, but all the ones I looked at are simply a single image of one type of European/Western womenswear, with a caption, but no other content or context. I'm really getting concerned about the proliferation of micro-stubs. Random ones here and there by anons is OK, but when (mostly) newer Wikipedians create a series of dozens, or even hundreds, of one or two sentence articles, it really over-taxes New Pages and Recent Changes patrol. It's getting to the point I thinking of suggesting that a series of articles under 300 bytes be speedy candidates, even tho' many would probably consider that Wiki-heresy. A series of record albums that contained nothing but a 'see also' and a category tag were recently speedied for lack of content/context. Niteowlneils 03:18, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The stats also tells an interesting story. According to [16], now each article has an average of 15 edits--2 years ago that was 4.9. This is a concrete fact that each article is receiving much more edits. Also, the mean size of an article is 2351, two years ago, 1902. The claim we are proportionally having smaller and fewer-edited articles is just not true. I understand many people get such an impression but the numbers and the long term view tell a different story.
True, we must strive to do better. Indeed, I am myself an advocate of adding more quality-control measures. We have things like abtration committes now but they are not meant to maintain the quality. As you said, one major problem is that there are just too many articles that are created by one person and stay without any scrutiny by any single other person--meaning any rubbish can be a part of wikipedia. Not only does it take time to clean up them, but it makes wikipedia looks bad, producing bad publiclity.
Wikipedia 1.0, a print edition of wikipedia, is an imporant step for us, as wikipedia is an attempt to create a free encyclopedia not just a bunch of useful information on the Internet. And it is a good opportunity for us to review our editing process and create some new systems. I believe wiki is a great way to create new articles but not is doing adequate job to maintain the quality. Although Wikipedia is often cited as an successful example of open-source development, it differs considerably in some points. Many open source projects have maintaniers and rigorous mechanism to review submitted changes and patches. Linus doesn't just apply any single patch he receives.
Of course, one concern is any restriction makes contributors, especially newcomers feel unwelcomed. It is not groundless at all. The failure of Nupedia must not be forgotten. People like to write more rather than revert and delete and those who write a lot are more likened than those who revert or delete a lot. It is also quite unproductive check facts carefully by doing things like going to the library instead of just getting information via googling. People create what you and some other call microstubs because it is quick and it is not allowed to do, they just walk away from wikipedia. They do what they can do and for many, creating undecent, stuby stubs is all they can. Remember not everyone is a decent writer and has a great access to scholarstic resources.
One solution I have been thinking of is to adopt more conventional practices that have long been around in academia. Scholars do peer reviews, not because they love to find errors in someone else's works but because those works are noted and contribute to their evaluation. It is the same as that students work hard for better grades. In wikipedia, sadly, careful checking and deleting groundless claims earn almost no point and worse, more times than needed put you in trouble. You are, understandly required to justify why you are reverting others' works and it is not uncommon to find difficult to teach morons. Everyone can write means any opinion from clueless freshmen is counted equally as one from a PhD professor. In wikipedia, a game is to write more and more and edit more and more, instead of striving for the truth, because those are what counts.
Any work of peer reviews, however, is never noted. You check articles in the watch-list and if you agree with new addition or edits, you are required to do nothing. And so no one will know you have checked the birthdate of the person is correct by googling or visting to the library. The growth in wikipedia is measured by the number of articles and the number of edits--not in the quality in some concrete manner. In sum, there is little incensive for quality--far less than for quantity.
Perhaps, in termiology of open source, testers are not as respected as coders here, because we don't have a concrete measurement of number of bugs. In here, it is not so fun as in open source projects to kill bugs than writing about new topics.
It's time for bed. If you find I am not making any sense, I am sorry about it. If this gives you some idea, I'm glad.
-- 05:30, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)
I have noticed that GNAA Popeye has been blocked indefinitely. I would like to know what the reasons for his blocking were. According to the block log, the reasons were "changing around people's comments, not [being] a legit contributor, and [that] GNAA announced a victory over Wikipedia." On the other hand, on my talk page it has been stated that he was banned for vandalism on my page.
I didn't find a case of him "changing comments around" (unless he is responsible for the sockpuppet accounts sabotaging the VfD process), and the only his vandalism on my talk page consists of writing EOF at its end (again, unless he is responsible for the rest of the edits; I do not believe that they were so offensive to warrant a permanent ban.)
I'd like to know what were the reasons for his blocking; if he was blocked in violation of the policy, he may be unblocked.
Sincerely, Mike Rosoft 12:37, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I unblocked him for this reason. Mark Richards 19:06, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
According to the GNAA talk page, he was blocked for disrupting Wikipedia with http://www.gnaa.us/pr.phtml?troll=gnaa-wikipedia this article. — David Remahl 19:15, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Can someone be blocked for writing articles outside Wikipedia? Intrigue 21:02, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Oct 15 00:23:21 <Popeye> my weekend getaway is trolling wikipedia and browsing hentai on 4chan.
silsor 21:58, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
Wasn't there once a page listing IPs of known vandals? I tried to find a link to it, and turned up nothing. If there isn't, and I only dreamed of it, I think it would be quite useful. -- Smack 06:11, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress? Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 06:25, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The images which come from photography.mojado.com, have a wrong message of license information, it's not {{cc-by-2.0}} but {{Cc-by-nd}}. Maybe a bot could do this. The images could be find there. 83.156.30.9 12:54, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
the french Wikipedia and the german Wikipedia have Specialised portal one example http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A9gorie:Wikip%C3%A9dia:Portail http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie:Portal do you have something like this ? -- 212.195.110.2 13:36, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I'm not sure how to go about this, but I think we should have a press release for this article. The article was originally nominated to be COTW because Encyclopedia Britannica was critical its length. The Guardian quoted the editors of Encyclopedia Brittanica as saying: "People write on things they're interested in, and so many subjects don't get covered; and news events get covered in great detail. The entry on Hurricane Frances is five times the length of that on Chinese art, and the entry on Coronation Street is twice as long as the article on Tony Blair." [17] — J3ff 10:06, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
We should be extremely careful with the Blair article, since it is imo a highly POV hagiography. As I have no wish to get involved in a long and tedious edit war with a number of Labour party apparatchiks I have made only marginal revisions where the truth was being entirely stretched out of shape, but before we go shouting our mouths off about this article, it needs some serious work. And actually, from a point of view of relevance, I have this gut feeling that over time Corrie will prove to be ineffably more influential than the American puppet incumbent of 10 Downing Street. Sjc 06:54, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
We could use having some people weigh in at Talk:Shining_Path#Quick_poll as to whether it is appropriate for the lead of the article Shining Path to mention that the U.S. State Dep't considers them terrorists. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:52, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)
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I too am unsure if this is the appropriate forum for this, but here goes. I have the intention to write an article on the Abortion-Breast Cancer debate. Not exactly an easy task by any means... and this is abundantly illustrated by my inability to figure out an appropriate Article title that is clear, and unbiased. Then should it be hyphenated or not? Here are the options, and why I like/dislike them... but choose I (we?) must.
Once a title is selected I'll get an introductory definition in quickly, and then add another section meta-analyzes of Abortion-Breast Cancer. Thereby allowing me to move the breast cancer reference in Abortion to the new article and replace it the introductory article reference of Abortion-Breast Cancer. (just like Abortion Law in the Abortion article)
Then go from there, adding entries on everything from rat studies and the discussion of their usefulness... to Dr. Daling and other enlightening material like recall bias studies. RoyBoy 14:05, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This book apparently was published in 1924
http://kuratrading.com/Islam/Caliphate/index.htm
Would it still have a copyright? Or is it public domain?
Can I cut/past sections from it in the relevant articles? OneGuy 11:01, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Can anyone resolve Lynmouth floods and deaths in 1952 (see discussion page for 1952). -- SGBailey 10:35, 2004 Oct 22 (UTC)
Hi, my name is Bsktcase and I'm a moron.
I was trying to move Blue Lodge to Masonic Lodge but accidentally moved Talk:Blue Lodge there instead. (See "moron", above.) I moved Talk back where it belongs, but now Masonic Lodge exists, so I can't move Blue Lodge to it.
I am reluctant to put Masonic Lodge on the speedy deletion page, because I'd like to recreate it properly immediately and I'd rather it didn't have a big bullseye painted on it when I do. (However, if that's the best solution just let me know.) The goal here is to have the content and edit history of Blue Lodge moved to it, with a redirect, in the usual manner.
(Blue Lodge is a regionally-specific colloquialism for the more general and accurate term Masonic Lodge, which is why I initiated the move and redirect in the first place.)
Please help! Thanks! — Bsktcase 21:28, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Robert's demands regarding the Bensley Boyle survey seem unreasonable. User_talk:Robert_the_Bruce and Talk:Medical_analysis_of_circumcision -- DanBlackham 16:57, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In my opinion Robert's behavior on Talk:Medical_analysis_of_circumcision has created an acrimonious and disrespectful atmosphere. What level of incivility is tolerated at Wikipedia? -- DanBlackham 09:19, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If contributors from either side of the issue are allowed to repeatedly violate the community standards of civility without consequences, in my opinion Wikipedia starts to resemble Usenet. Robert is also good an inserting his own pro-circumcision POV and attempting to pass off pro-circumcision nonsense as medicine or science. When someone questions his POV edits he responds with hostility and insults. From a medical perspective the bottom line regarding infant circumcision is that it is not medically necessary. That is not just my opinion; it is the official policy of professional medical organizations in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Medical_analysis_of_circumcision#References -- DanBlackham 08:53, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I have tried to move the page British Rail class 170 to British Rail Class 170 to standardise the naming of the pages, and also because the correct British Rail system uses "Class" not "class" ( Our Phellap 16:56, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC))
A special request: Saving Þeyr
I’m writing an article about Þeyr (an Icelandic band of the 1980s) and their discography. However I was told by one of the musicians that there are no images of the band nor the CD covers that I desperately need to finish the articles in Spanish (I’m working there). Even more: as the masters of Þeyr’s albums are believed to be lost or stolen there are no reissues and the only release in CD format was Mjötviður til Fóta in 2001. I have this one, so I don’t need its CD cover.
Here you have Þeyr’s full discography:
Albums:
Singles:
So, I thought there should be someone who knows about it or has the original records (in vinyl format). I need the records’ covers to illustrate my articles and then I will make a translation into English. Please, I hope there’s somebody there who could help me since there’s too little about them and I’m afraid if I don’t write about these topics all the information about their existence will disappear… Lmb 23:03, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
An invitation is hereby extended to all U.S. Northern Wikipedians and all Wikipedians interested in the U.S. North to the U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board board, also known as WP:ANSWER (A Northern States Wikipedia Effort and Resource). Bowl of chowdah for everybody! [[User:Neutrality| Neutrality ( hopefully!)]] 00:23, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)
It turns out there are two drummers named Roger Taylor, in the bands Duran Duran and Queen. The current disambiguation setup has them at Roger Taylor (Duran Duran) and Roger Taylor (Queen), which isn't ideal as first of all because the Queen Roger Taylor has a solo career which would warrant a Wikipedia article even had he not been in Queen (and so he is not just the drummer from Queen); Also Roger Taylor (Queen) looks kind of odd to users accustomed to there being an is-a relationship between the subject and parenthesised label (though this isn't always true). Does anyone have a better suggestion for naming? (I've taken this here as I think the issue deserves a slightly wider audience and people who don't know/care about either Roger Taylor can still give useful answers). -- fvw 20:36, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)
I recently added some data and moved Ken Ribet to Kenneth Alan Ribet, which it seems might have been a boo-boo. However, the man does not publish under the name "Ken"; it's what friends and collegues call him, but they are probably not the ones who need the article. I think it's wrong to carry this "most common name" business to the extent of making the primary article about "Ken" and not "Kenneth". Wikipedia is, I presume, supposed to be a serious reference work, and "Ken" simply strikes me as inappropriate. I note by the way that it's C. S. Lewis, not Jack Lewis, but everyone who knew him called him Jack. Should we go simply by what form of the name (in this case, it would be Kenneth A. Ribet) appears in print? user: Gene Ward Smith
By the way, how do I add the time stamp doo-dad? I forget.
Hello! Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but after wandering about for a while was the best place I found, so advanced aplologies...
This is just to say that a commercial site is using wiki content (straight, including formating) without any acknowledgment: http://www.wordiq.com/. They disguise themselves as some sort of meta-search engine, but I tried a few times and all results came from Wikipedia, again without any link or acknowledgment. Is there anything to be done about this? Cheers, and keep doing this amazing work!
Mario.
This sooo needs to go in the FAQ and at the top of the page. We get worried newbies posting messages like this every couple weeks, without fail. If ever there was a frequently asked question at Wikipdia, then "OMG xxx.com site copied all your content!" is one of them. Nohat 00:34, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
At Talk:1, there are a few Wikipedians who think that a better choice for articles 50 and less is for the number articles to be titled the number alone 20 and the year articles to be titled something like 20 A.D., as opposed to 20 (number) and 20. Does anyone have any comments?? (Please note that this is for 1 to 50 only, not 51 and above, which is where years should have no suffix and numbers should have the (number) suffix as agreed by everyone.) 66.245.114.60 20:28, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It wouldn't because of redirects, but so that people searching would be redirected, rather than getting the impression that the article does not exist. I think that 20AD is probably a more common way of saying year 20 than simply 20, it seems reasonable to redirect common ways of writing the dates. The Recycling Troll 17:25, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
There's already a redirect from AD 20. Remember that AD goes before the year. (Putting "AD" after the year is not only less correct, but less common: compare for example Google for "54 AD" Nero with Google for "AD 54" Nero.) Gdr 11:35, 2004 Oct 12 (UTC)
Before changing things, please read Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and the long debates on this subject in the multiple archives of the talk page in which the current convention for article names was agreed. Gdr 01:07, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)
AD is overtly religious - so those cannot be used as page titles. -- mav 17:58, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I suggest that in Wikipedia sub-categories of either of the two Georgias, we use the following terminology:
As an adjective meaning "having to do with Georgia", "Georgian" relates to the country whereas "Georgia" relates to the state. Example: "Georgia rivers" means the category for rivers of the state of Georgia, but "Georgian rivers" means the rivers of the country of Georgia. Any opinions?? 66.32.255.91 14:54, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This is proper American English. To Americans, "Georgian", "Californian", etc. are nouns, referring to the people who live in those states. Proper usage is "California wine", not "Californian wine", "Georgia peach", not "Georgian peach". "He is a Californian". But I don't know about usage for the European nationality. Rick K 19:03, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
Most European countries for the adjective form like this: "French franc" or "Spanish peso", not "France franc" or "Italy peso". 66.245.67.166 22:41, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
So far, no registered Wikipedia except RickK has responded. Anyone have any additional comments?? 66.32.255.51 01:12, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
But, how did this come into my mind, anyway?? The answer is I find it natural to think that this is a way to distinguish categories relating to the country from categories relating to the state; "in Georgia" or "of Georgia" can have either meaning. 66.245.21.160 22:32, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
(sections between the previous tag and this one were archived on 22:32, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC))'
In reference to Olbers' paradox my grasp of physics is fairly elementary, but surely the wave nature of light means that this paradox should state that the sky should be dark? Light behaves as a wave. For the uniitiated, Putting a source of light through two slits in a card shows this effect with bands of darkness "rippling" outward. This occurs with any waveform when two waves beocme perfectly inversely corrleated with each other (that is to say the pattern of peaks and troughs of one respectively match the torughs and peaks of the other) and they cancel each other out. If there were an inifinite number of light sources, there would be an infinite area of peaks and troughs in every direction resulting there being no visible light. Would a nice science person be kind enough to comment? Dainamo 12:32, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Thank you, but doesn't the amplitude determine what the output is? Dainamo 12:39, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If there are an infinite number of stars then every bit of light will have another in phase with it, this has to be so from the nature of an infinite number of them. The experiment uses a normal light source and the point of the slits is to narow this down. Dainamo 17:47, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
On that last point Theresa, the sun is truly massive (in our terms) but it is not inifnite so even if things did cancel out there would still be a huge net output. However, I have what I think is a satisfactory explantion from Calair which is on the Olbers' paradox discussion. Thank you Calair for a fascinating and enlightening answer. Dainamo 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias appears to have decided 1 to plaster templates 2 on any page which the small number of participants on that project feel come within their remit. Example 3. Which is, presumably, anything which might fall into the categories listed on the project page 4. I cannot say I'm teriffically thrilled about this for the following reasons:
I wonder if the community has thoughts about the matter. -- Tagishsimon
Tagishsimon's opposition to the idea of templates for the WP:Bias project can be understood in the context of these Mr Logic style arguments he made when it was first discussed on the VP:
I cannot help but feel that the premise of Xed's argument is a little shaky. A pejoritive accusation of systematic bias is at best a value judgement. What underpins it? Why is a war in the Congo worth more wiki-inches than Babylon 5? Who decides these things, and who is able to make apple versus orang-utan comparisons? Whereas I tend to share what I assume is Xed's opinion, that it would be more worthy to read about or even write about the Congolese civil war than Bablylon 5, I note that we already have a number of Wikipedia:Requested articles pages which go some way to address/answer Xed's call for action; and also have Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics. In what way do these differ from Xed's section on the Wikipedia:Community_Portal suggestion? Beyond that, his/her argument seems to be a good example of the best driving out the good. -- Tagishsimon
I have posted a proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Messages in the article namespace that all messages for editors, including the stub message, should go on talk pages. Filiocht 08:45, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
the Department of Fun is now open for all to enjoy!
(sections above this (and below the tag before this one) were archived on 04:44, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC))'
Should I check the "Mark all edits minor by default" box, given that 99% of the time I will forget to untick it when making an edit? The majority of my edits are, in fact, minor as I do a lot of grammatical tidying and minor prose improvement, but about 20% of my edits will not be minor. Does forgetting to mark these 20% as minor outweigh the alternative of not marking my minor edits as such? Appologies for being so absent-minded as to be unable to remember to untick the box. PhilHibbs 11:53, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
to Phil - I wouln't if I were you. Having to manually check the minor box, forces you to think, and decide if it really is minor or not. To Voilet/riga - nah it'd never work. machines are stupid. the sentance "Geroge Bush is a man" and "George Bush is a woman" differ by only two characters but have completely different meanings. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 14:25, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I hope I'm not the only one to have noticed. It appears that few people are updating the placement of the days on that page. [[User:Poccil| Peter O. ( Talk)]] 03:36, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)
User talk:64.12.117.7 will explain this better, but before logging on tonight, I got a "You have new messages" thing on my screen. Turns out, 64.12.117.7 is used by probably a dozen ISPs, in a dozen countries worldwide. What would do something like that? -- user:zanimum
hey there wikipedians, the Department of Fun is open for all to enjoy, if if you have a bout of edit exhaustion or just want some wikitainment try the link and enjoy.
On The Weavers page, I found the following sentence "The group had a big hit in 1949 with Leadbelly's Goodnight Irene, backed with the Jewish traditional folk song Tzena, Tzena, Ike and Tina Turner."
While my initial thought was that it was extremely doubtful that a Jewish traditional folk song would reference the 1960s soul duo, I thought I should perform a quick internet search first before deleting (as my mind began to throw up the theory that Annie Mae Bullock changed her name to Tina as part of some private joke). Of course, beyond the mild amusement of seeing all the Wikipedia mirrors also claim that Ike and Tina Turner are revered in Hebrew verse, there were only references to "Tzena, Tzena". But bravo to User: Viajero (if I've checked the page history properly) for his foresight on 8 June 2004 to give me the opportunity to recommend something to BJAODN. -- Roisterer 04:26, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Look at the articles for 3 (number), tri-, Greek numerical prefixes, and Latin numerical prefixes. According to them, tri- is the Greek numerical prefix and tre- is the Latin numerical prefix. However, I don't think there are many tre- words, and I think tri- words can in fact be either Greek or Latin. Any comments in improving these articles?? 66.32.243.1 21:41, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Hi
Apologies if I've missed the answer to this in one of the help files. But is there some simple way to use images from Wiki articles in other languages in EN: wiki pages? Or does one have to download the image and reupload it?
-- Sf 11:06, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Another interesting problem: on Talk:Sabra and Shatila Massacre we've had someone come forward -- he's even taken a Wikipedia account -- who (almost certainly accurately) identifies himself as John Harbo, who worked as a correspondent for a Norwegian paper in Beirut at the time, and who was present in the aftermath of the events, and who is quoted in some of the best-known documents about the events. He has additional material he'd like to add to Wikipedia, but it appears it wasn't in these documents. I've asked if he's ever published any of this anywhere (e.g. in his own journalism, which would certainly be citable), so we can quote it without violating our rules on auto-biography and original research.
Still, this all seems a bit weird to me: as Wikipedia gains in importance, things like this are going to happen more and more: people directly involved in historically significant events will approach us with attributable (but previously unpublished) information. It seems really weird if we can't cite them. Is there any way within our current rules to accommodate this? And if not, should we consider a way to change that? Maybe some wikipedia equivalent of an affidavit? -- Jmabel | Talk 23:04, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)
As it turns out, in this case he had already published in a reputable Norwegian newspaper, so we will simply cite that. But I really do believe that as we become more and more important as a source, this is going to happen more. John Harbo is a respected journalist. We put him through an insane amount of hassle to get one sentence into an article (actually, it's still not in there, because the article in question is now protected, but we seem to have consensus on adding it). We really do need a better way to handle this sort of thing, because it will happen more and more, and most won't have his patient perseverance: he happens to like our project. -- Jmabel | Talk 09:10, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)
Lately the articles relating (directly and indirectly) to Israel/Palestine have been the subject of the Wikipedia equivalent of war. This has spilled out into some articles that are only tangentially related to the Israel/Palestine conflict: see, for example, Talk:Jew.
Most recent activity in this area has been by people with a very strong Zionist or anti-Zionist views (and some of us somewhere between but probably just as firm in our views: to lay my cards on the table, I support a two-state solution, and would have no objection -- other than the sheer improbability of it ever happening -- to a unified secular state). Many of the people have been well-behaved, but others are not, and lately a lot of the discourse on the talk pages has been uncivil, and there have been edit wars and even article-move wars. Some of the people seem to be willing to stoop to even the most questionable sources as long as those support their beliefs, and reject even the most authoritative when they disagree. Or they are putting in views that go way beyond their own, basically trolling, just to heat things up further. Frankly, I'm getting pretty sick of it.
Israel/Palestine is not one of my major areas of work, nor of expertise, but having even a few related articles on my watchlist I feel like I'm getting sucked down a black hole. I keep getting pulled into more articles as talk on one article relates to another, etc. I really would rather be writing articles about things I really know, doing translations, etc.
We need some some people working on these pages who don't feel a strong stake in the politics but do feel a strong stake in scholarship, citation of references, etc. (Understand, most of the "partisans" have respect for these things, but lately it's gotten so heated that I think even some people who usually care about standards are taking cheap shots.) I urgently request that some experienced Wikipedians with no axe to grind get involved in this area.
I won't try to list the articles involved; because I came to this from an interest in writing about the history of the Jews as a people in diaspora, not from a focus on this region, any list I made would be overly biased toward specifically Jewish topics, and I'm sure that a lot of the same is going on in articles that focus on Arab/Palestian matters and probably even Muslim matters. I will merely single out Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an obvious place to start, as I am sure that much of what is at one or two removes from that is involved. Have a look at the talk pages and the histories (and the NPOV and dispute notices) and it will be obvious which articles have issues.
Anyone who wants to discuss this should feel free to get hold of me. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:28, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)
Hi can everone please come to meta and continue the discussion there. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 18:12, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Sexton is a dis-ambiguation page with 3 choices, the first of which looks to me like a dictionary definition, the second is a good article, and the third is a person's last name for which anyone who wants to search for would simply type Anne Sexton. Any comments about moving the second of these choices to simply Sexton?? 66.32.250.110 23:32, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
User:Zulitz (and an anonymous IP which I suspect belongs to him) has been inserting quotes from a Pennsylvania state representative in a million places. I can't think of a specific policy that this violates, and I'm hesitant to go reverting him without some kind of formal justification. On the other hand, it's ridiculous for Wikipedia to be quoting an obscure state representative as an authority on everything from social stereotypes to the Iron law of oligarchy to Dave Winer to the United States Democratic Party to Three Mile Island. Any thoughts? RadicalSubversiv E 05:25, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I removed a bunch of these for reasons given above. I left some in where they seemed relevant -- Three Mile Island for example. —No-One Jones (m) 20:02, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I believe the quotes from Cohen are relevant to the subjects at hand and are factually accurate. A citizen built encyclopedia should be able to quote citizen sources, not just nationally recognized experts with PhD.s and a lot of books to their credit.
The Cohen quotes tend to raise new points and can be rebutted if there are other points of view or superseded by quotes from more famous people if such are available. The Wikipedia is a constantly in flux, ever-changing work in progress, and striking quotes with no claim that they are inaccurrate or irrelevant but merely in too many articles is counterproductive to the goal of building up the Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, as thoughts from one person tend to lead to thoughts from other people. Quotes from individuals ought to be evaluated on a case by case basis by people who are interested in the underlying subject, not in sweeping fashion by anyone offended that someone he or she does not think of as prominent has informed opinions on diverse subjects.
Further, to consider purging all my contributions, the vast majority of whose wordage does not mention Cohen, also seems counterproductive to the goal of building up the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia is rapidly growing, and the Cohen quotes are generally a small part of the articles that contain them, while the articles that contain them are an extremely small part of the Wikipedia. Zulitz
The issue here is basically whether the Wikipedia is limited in quotations to those who are nationally prominent, or whether it can quote people who know something about a given subject but who are not nationally prominent. Nationally prominent people often try to limit themselves to a relatively small number of topics: politicians call it controlling the message, or message discipline. What does Kerry think about the Iron Law of Oligarchy? What does Bush think about it? What does the President of the American Political Science Association think about it? Nothing stops any of them from having a public opinion on this, but they probably don't. The Iron Law of Oligarchy--promulgated in 1911 and generally obscure--deals with political organizations, and it reasonable that a guy like Cohen (21 years on the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committtee, 31 years as a member of the Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus, nearly half of which he has served as an elected leader) has something of value to say on this.
Purging his opinion of the Democratic Party, of which he has been a four decade participant, and leaving in the opinion of Nader Vice-Presidential candidate Peter Camejo, who has never been a Democrat, is just silly. I didn't quote Cohen as an authority on the Green Party or on the Nader 2004 campaign, but on the party whose members elected him a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Of course many other Democrats are far more prominent, and the extremely long article on the Democratic Party contains countless references to some of them, and more references to more Democrats will certainly be added with time.
Similar defenses can be made about the other objected-to quotes. Cohen knows Dave Winer from BloggerCon2, he was a leader in the Pennsylvania legislature for no-fault divorce, and he has fought the pernicious effects of social stereotypes in countless instances, three of which I listed in the article.He is one of many, many people who are worth quoting on subjects in which they are familiar, and the English-speaking Wikipedia--on track to have well over a million articles within a few years--is both more comprehensive and more valuable when it quotes knowledgeable people than when it merely limits itself to bland generalizations attributed to no one, or to academic authorities who have not directly participated in the things they have studied. Zulitz
Discussion moved to m:Talk:Wikijunior
Wikipedians should know what the anti-circumcision zealots have planned.
--- Ŭalabio <Walabio@MacOSX.COM> wrote: > To: intact-l@cirp.org > From: Ŭalabio <Walabio@MacOSX.COM> > Subject: ¡Circumcisiophiliacs attack Daivid Peter > Reimer > ! > Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 00:35:45 +0000 > > > ¡Hello! > > ¿How Fare You? > > The circumcisiosexuals desecrate the article about > David Peter Reimer. > Some of us share the fate of David Peter Reimer, > and the any one of > the rest of us could have shared his fate. I do not > care what those > perverts do among themselves, but I hate the way > those pædophiles go > after children, and I refuse to let them vandalize > David Peter Reimer. > If it were not for those perverts he and his brother > Brian might be > alive today and the family Reimer would be much more > happy. > > If the want total editwar, ¡we will give then > total editwar! > > The article is here: > > HTTP://WikiPedia.Org/wiki/David_Peter_Reimer > > This is its history: > > > HTTP://WikiPedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=David_Reimer&action=history > > This is the page for discussing changes to the > article: > > HTTP://WikiPedia.Org/wiki/Talk:David_Reimer > > ¡Hurry! ¡Create an account, login, and help! > > Intactivistically, > Ŭalabio > > -- > > ¡Dubya Shrub is a Saudi-Lover -- Saudi-Mite! > > ¡The Bin-Bushes bend over _"*FOR*"_ the > Bin-Ladens!
This isn't the first time that User:Walabio has sent out a "call to arms" to his activist group. The situation is distressing. There are alot of "zealots" on Wikipedia, POV pushing everything from astrology to biowar-decontaimination-cyborg theory (I'm not kidding about that), but the members of this cirp.org group have become truly problematic. They fully admit themselves that they are here on an "agenda" --they don't deny it-- Wikipedia accurancy and credebility doesn't mean anything to them, so long as they get to push their POV. func (talk) 17:36, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Well they are going to be a bit dissapointed when they come to win the war over this particular page because i've just protected it. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 21:57, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Take it easy Theresa. Until someone contested the truth of what had been and continued to be inserted in the related articles you were quite happy to lie back, close your eyes and think of England. Now it is clear the content has moved closer to NPOV than ever before and if only you would cease providing succour to the head bangers they would slowly start to drift away and seek another place to push their POV. If you believe I am pushing POV you are welcome to raise that issue on a case by case basis. But I am afraid I am less than convinced that everyone around here is really working towards a NPOV solution. As they say we are all human. If you are indeed commmitted to NPOV then join up and contribute rather stand off to one side and weild a stick like some Dickensian harridan. I guess your actions will indicate what your decision will have been. One can but live in hope. - Robert the Bruce 14:27, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Some of you are mad that I tried to call in help for protecting David Peter Reimer. I have my reasons:
Ever since 1966- 04-27, the circumcision-pushers, have tried to escape responsibility for their actions. The Version of David Peter Reimer up to a week ago was an unstable compromise:
It pointed out that phimosis (nonretractability) is not a disease in infancy. As a bone to those who insist that something must have been wrong with the intact genitals of Brian and Bruce because they were intact, it lists a plausible pathology.
I personally have doubts that anything other than benign ballooning occurred. Well anyhow, the compromise no longer holds. Starx rightfully points out that Encyclopædia WikiPedia.Org is no place for speculative compromises. I say we work this out once and for all:
Facts:
I integrated the facts into a paragraph:
"The parents Reimer worried about how Brian and Bruce urinated. The pædiatrician gave an impossible diagnosis of phimosis ( phimosis is a tight nonretractable præpuce, but infants have a tight nonretractable præpuce anyway). Non tried a less radical procedure before attempting circumcision. 1966- 04-27, the doctors Jean Huot and Max Cham tried to use a Bovie Cautery Machine for circumcising Bruce Reimer, which is not for use on extremities and genitals. Max Cham and Jean Huot burned the penis of Bruce off. After the accident of Bruce Reimer, the hospital canceled the circumcision of Brian Reimer. Brian Reimer continued to develop normally as an intact boy and man, thus proving that the circumcision of Bruce Reimer was totally medically unnecessary and nontherapeutic."
¿Any comments?
I wish to have a binding decision so that we can move on. The final version should include all of the facts listed above. I suggest that we get the input of Doctor Alteripse.
Ŭalabio 01:57, 2004 Oct 25 (UTC)
Ŭalabio, please see my response under the discussion page. I agree with other posters that it is not appropriate to make a 'call to arms' to an activist group over this or any other issue. An activist group, by definition, is essentially opposed to NPOV (preferring to push its own POV), and so such an action strikes at the heart of Wikipedia. - Jakew 11:16, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
And now User:DanP is trying to drag Breastfeeding into the long list of attacked articles that having nothing to do with circumcision. func (talk) 04:34, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
> To: intact-l@cirp.org > Subject: Need some help on Wikipedia > From: Dan P <mail2danp@yahoo.com> > Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 15:27:55 -0700 (PDT) > Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Reply-to: Dan P <mail2danp@yahoo.com> > Sender: owner-intact-l@cirp.org > > Dear group, > > I have been battling the pro-circumcision folks on > Wikipedia again, hoping to list "circumciser" as a > valid article entry. I have tried to keep the article > as factual as possible and related to world cultures. > > If you are active on Wikipedia, please go to that > article and give me a hand. So far, the pro-MGM side > has been voting to delete, and I could use some > assistance. > > Thanks, > > Dan
There are two pages for DIP(the electronic thingy), Dual-Inline Package and Dual in-line package, both with history. I think it shoud be Dual Inline Package myself, since the common usage is the acronym 'dip', but maybe someone who works with DIPs knows better. jericho4.0 19:32, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
There is an error in the article Theophilus II namely that he is not the "II" at all. I feel a little reluctant to make the change myself because it means changing all the links to the page, and I am not sure how to find them all. If someone could either do this or tell me how I would appreciate it. Barrett Pashak | Talk 15:55:51 , 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Okay, but how do I change the name of the article from Theophilus II to Theophilus (emperor)? Barrett Pashak 20:03, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
The links to it will be automatically redirected, and can be fixed at your (or someone elses) leisure. Mark Richards 21:46, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
That's pretty weird, lots of people have worked on the list of emperors, I'm surprised we never noticed that before. For what it's worth, the original article came from the 1911 EB, but the original anonymous author (or importer) must have followed the link from the list page itself, which was created (with the Theophilus II link) back in 2001 by a user who hasn't been around for three years. Anyway, Theophilus (emperor) would be a good place for this, there are other emperor articles like that already. Adam Bishop 04:50, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I've changed all the links (except here) to Theophilus II to Theophilus (emperor). Theophilus II should now be deleted unless we want to write an article on him. Perhaps what Rmhermen wrote above: "Theophilus II, grandson of Theophilus who claimed the throne in 867 after his father was assassinated." is enough for a stub? Also I started to change the links to Theophilus to Theophilus of Antioch but I was uncertain if they were all correct. Someone (who knows more than I do) should probably look through them. Paul August 21:40, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)
By the way Theophilus I of Alexandria should probably be "Theophilus of Alexandria", since I can find no reference to him with a "I" fllowing his name. Prehaps this "Theophilus I" and "Theophilus II" business was some (Wikipedia or otherwise) editor's attempt to disambiguate them. Aso I've removed the rediect from Theophilus II. Paul August 18:01, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
And now Mpolo has plugged the hole with a translation of the German article on Theophilus Presbyter a.k.a. Roger of Helmarshausen, so I think we are pretty much done for the moment. Well done to everyone. -- Solipsist 08:08, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
How do I delete the search topics I've entered in the search box? For example, once I've completed my search and want to start a new one, I start typing and every search I've ever done that started with the same letter is displayed.Can I clear this somehow??
Thanks, Cindy
http://scholar.google.com/scholar/about.html#search8
Should articles linked to on Slashdot be protected for a few hours? Clovis culture is about to get vandalised, I predict. PhilHibbs 10:08, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I don't feel like getting involved in what's happening in this article, but somebody ought to. Personally I think the whole article should be deleted, but I've nominated it for deletion twice myself and I won't do it again. In the meantime, someone who feels very strongly on the matter of Native American rights has been adding material to the page in a non-encyclopedic fashion. It's been tagged NPOV, but it needs some diplomatic enforcing of wikipolicy, IMHO. -- Woggly 13:27, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have a question as to whether a certain series of additions are within the spirit of wikipedia or not.
User:Monkeyleg has contributed to many individual firearms pages. His typical contribution is to add an external link to gunshopfinder.com, such as Photos and information about current production Beretta pistols.
This site is a commercial web page which has the primary purpose of helping people find a local gun dealer. While helping people to purchase arms may be a honorable cause, it seems odd to me to have this site so extensively linked to from our firearms pages.
Can anybody else share their opinion on these links? Should they stay or go? - CrucifiedChrist
To day the catalan wiki is over 10,000 articles.
Pérez 21:43, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Somebody has placed Gay Porn pictures on the front page and I have no idea how to report it.
Ziggy
Want to have some fun? The Wikipedia Trivia Contest, Round 3 is open... Lupo 16:08, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
One or more anonymous users have insistently removed the info on Jordanes and Procopius in the article on the Heruls. Now one of these users claims to be a Claudia (with a smiley) who accuses me of reverting an accurate and balanced version of the text, and of insisting about my views, whereas very little of the text is mine. I am giving up for now. Perhaps, a third person would like to take over, and maybe do a better job than I did.-- Wiglaf 15:51, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Do you know how to change the look and feel of the wiki (like the logo aand navigation?)
Hi I am makeing a website that will do some diffs of different modifications to documents. I relly like the way that the wikipedia shows the history with the diffs. Could any one please provide me with a tool or Source Code to implemente this on my own site.
you caan email me at: 'mr.computer.geek at gmail.com'
Thank you very much
I am rather fed up with the provincials who edit the Template:In_the_news and Current events pages, who constantly put up rather tedious headlines pulled from the average US "news" site/ TV channel that is full of either irrelevant crap or US-pertinent only "international" reporting. Can the admin or bureacrats or whoever changes policies and instructions on editing do something about it? More detail at this page: Template_talk:In_the_news#Ignoran-uh...Americentrism -- Simonides 22:20, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Please read very slowly and carefully:
Today, while I was studying RC in Wikipedia, I saw several edits of the Sandbox that were contributed by registered Wikipedians with their User Names looking like IP addresses. (Note that the way I differentiate between the 2 kinds of contributions is by what it will result in when clicking on the User Name while looking in RC.) Please try to do whatever you can to make sure nobody is doing this. Here are some that it is especially important for some Wikipedia admin to watch over:
Now, to answer the question "Who is the Georgia guy??" the answer is:
The Georgia guy has gone by various IP numbers sine February 2004 while editing Wikipedia, all of which are either 66.32.xxx.xxx or 66.245.xxx.xxx (but the reverse is not perfectly true; there have even been some times in Wikipedia history when there has been an IP that someone other than the Georgia guy has gone by that was later (usually several months) used by the Georgia guy.) Note that the Georgia guy is not a vandal. 66.245.108.212 20:10, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Also for developers, or admins, or whoever: could we come up with some policy for removing user accounts? When I go to
Special:Listusers, I am rather shocked by the hundreds of pages of red links. I did some spot checking... most of these accounts have never made a single edit. A number of users have commented on the fact that they wanted a particular account name but found that it was already taken... by someone with no edits whatsoever. Perhaps there could be some policy along these lines:
Any thoughts?
func
(talk) 21:03, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I thought the software blocked usernames which resemble IP addresses, but perhaps I was mistaken: User:152.163.100.199 seems to be a real user rather than an AOL IP address, since it's been marking edits minor and links in histories lead to the user page rather than the contributions. Something's up; maybe one of the developers can enlighten us? —No-One Jones (m) 00:00, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I agree on both counts: Block user accounts that look like IP's in software, and delete inactive and unused accounts after email notification. — David Remahl 02:30, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have a proposal in at MediaWiki feature requests for something I'm calling "external link sanitizing." I want a nice easy way to produce external links that look, feel, and serve the reader just as well as ordinary external links, but which contain text that is transformed in such a way that search engines will not credit them as a reference to an external website.
I want to reduce the incentive for external sites to place links in WIkipedia as a way of increasing their search engine ratings.
There may be much simpler technical solutions that I'm overlooking.
This can of course effectively be done now by using services such as tinyurl and others. For example, http://aidepikiw.notlong.com will take you to Wikipedia, but search engines will consider it to be a link to notlong; thus, it provides a functional link to Wikipedia that does not increase Wikipedia's pagerank.
I don't see any issues with using tinyurl and friends to sanitize links, when used very occasionally in special situations. But others do, and certainly it would be better to find a solution that only uses Wikipedia's own resources, and which keeps the "plain text" of the original link in a form that is recoverable by human visual inspection.
I don't believe that all links need to be sanitized, but I believe that as soon as any question about a page or a link arises, there should be an easy way to sanitize a link, or all the links on a particular page. [[User:Dpbsmith| Dpbsmith (talk)]] 14:24, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Can somebody fix the information listed on the Wikipedia site for the movie, " The Sting". Some fool wrote that the theme song, "The Entertainer", was written by Marvin Hamlish. Actually, it was written by Scott Joplin - a very talented African American who was the father of ragtime. Marvin Hamlish only adapted the song for the movie. I am a computer idiot and don't know what to do. But I hate to see someone thinking the credit should go to Marvin Hamlish!! Sob!
Hi. It's mid-november and Jimbo just uploaded his Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year greetings to the commons, and I thought I'd share it with you (It's Public domain, you known). -- Chris 73 Talk 02:03, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)
Just went over to eBay and wondered what would happen if I searched for "Wikipedia". No results for the UK but three international results, mainly regarding sales of the German Wikipedia CD. Should people be selling these CDs? violet/riga (t) 23:25, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Is anyone else bothered by this? While I love Wikipedia, when I search the web I don't want to have to wade through the same information on the first two pages of a Google search under different URIs like brainyencyclopedia, etc.
I tried a -Wikipedia with some improvement, but it bothers me to have to do this, at least partly because if other users have to do this, it's not a good thing for the image of Wikipedia.
Any ideas? Spalding 23:08, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)
Article Bluetooth sniping: is this a wind up? (Couldn't see where else to ask this) Shantavira 13:34, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Can someone create a photographer's barnstar? We need one. :) [[User:Neutrality| Neutrality ( hopefully!)]] 00:24, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)
I don't know where to put this, but I love it. If you use Windows and Internet Explorer, try this:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\w] @="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s"
You now have Wiki for Windows! Any article you want to look up, type "w" and the article name in as a web address (don't forget caps!), and it'll take you straight to it.
The same trick can be used to make an in-line command to add any text into a web address and open it. the 1st line stays the same, 2nd line just change the last letter to the one you want, 3rd line is the address with %s for the text you give it. Google example:
If theres a wiki tips page, add this to it :) FT2 01:18, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)
In my watchlist, I have noticed a regular pattern over the past couple of months of new anons (with no existing page) making one small, almost irrelevant edit to an article - like changing US to USA, or changing a verb to its synonym. Sometimes they're rollback-able, but often not - just pointless. It happens often enough to unrelated articles that I wonder if it's part of a Web-link scam or something like that, but I can't figure out what it would be. (I don't think they're done by the same anon, although I can't say I pay much attention to those numerical ID's.) Any ideas as to what, if anything, is going on? - DavidWBrooks 18:32, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Has anyone else noticed User:Merovingian?
-- Etaonish 16:02, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
Something's odd here. Merovingian has
edited since October 20, and the name and birthdate in that obituary don't match what was on
the previous version of his userpage. (oops, why didn't I get an edit conflict?). Anyway, the name and birthdate on his userpage might have been deliberate misdirection, and I suppose someone else might know the account's password—they'd have to, to make that last update. Spooky.
—No-One
Jones
(m) 19:08, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
His journal reveals that it's a friend of his. - 19:21, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
Hi. A have found this case of vanity. This user decided to insert himself in this category. I thought I'd just remove the category link from his page, but then again it's bad policy to meddle with other user's personal page. I've left a note on the person's user page, but what if he does not responds? Regards, Redux 13:41, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Look at this:
Something must be done about this. Bennett Chronister 10:44, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
OK I've done it. To redirect readers from one page to another you blank the text then put #REDIRECT[[Kalto]] there. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 10:53, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Now you just lost all the information about how it has 5,000 speakers, is spoken in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtria, has loans from the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages, etc. That didn't do any good at all. Bennett Chronister 11:37, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
As an upshot of some discussion in the recent Seattle Meetup, several of us have started Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia. The primary goal is to help librarians and other researchers understand both the strengths and limitations of Wikipedia as a reference tool; I suspect it could have the secondary value of drawing the attention of the Wikipedian community to some of our weaknesses and thus stimulating the community to consider some ways we might turn Wikipedia into a more valuable reference. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:16, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)
Has it every been discussed to make simplied versions of articles? For example many math and physics articles are very technical and I was thinking that it might be a good idea to make some simplified articles for some of the most important topics with a general introduction and a section requiring only highschool knowledge. Many articles like Maxwell's equations and schrödinger equation is pretty math heavy but it would be possible to write for example schrödinger equation (simplified) where the non-relativistic Schrödinger wave equation might be discussed together with a solution to one dimensional particle in a box, many important results is possible to discuss with only highschool level of math and physics. I think these kinds of articles should not be too light but more like introductory ,with the purpose of helping people understand the real article. Any thoughts? Passw0rd
Are you familiar with http://simple.wikipedia.org ? They need alot of help over there. func (talk) 23:29, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The suggestion is somewhat like have a ready reference Miccropedia and in deapth Macropedia like Britannai. I think the best solution for such articles to be edited in a way that summarizes the topic to a satisfactory level for browser and then offers more in depth explanation. User:Dainamo:Dainamo
The German Wikipedia seems to be down. I recived the message "Wiki does not exist" with the Wikimedia Foundation logo at the left corner. What happened here? -- Filzstift 22:27, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Please, please does anyone know of any image whatsoever that would be at all aplicable to this article even a picture of dna or a chromosome or something, i'd really like to get this article featured. i spent a lot of time on it and i would also like any comments and critisisms. -- Larsie 18:01, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers seems to have become a target of repeated anonymous vandalism. Unfortunately, some vandalised revisions have been online for hours. That page is a very important part of the project and should receive more attention. Please consider putting it on your watchlist to avoid persistence of any future vandalism. Thanks. Kosebamse 15:49, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Another wikipedian suggested I log in and introduce myself. I have already posted comments and an update in the areas of Derrida, Dijkstra and Kant.
I am a software developer and author of the Apress book Build Your Own .Net Language and Compiler. My interests encompass software development including compiler development, philosophy, art, etcetera.
My home page is http://members.screenz.com/edNilges.
I am very interested in the Wikipedian ethos and approach.
However, I view NPOV as sometimes misinterpreted to mean LCD.
210.21.221.178 01:56, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Oops. Trumpet roll. The way this came out really sucks because it reads like "big deal, and who is Edward (Gee?) Nilges?". My kid is probably dying of embarassment.
Anyway, the damage is done. I shall in future try to adhere to all customs and rules. Four tildes to "stamp" the document? Gee, we're not in Kansas anymore are we Toto. We are in a land of gnomic utterance.
But one can be equally gnomic. LCD doesn't mean liquid crystal diode. It means Least Common Denominator.
I miss the bbc radio broadcast of "MY WORD" are there any sites which still audio stream the program? Are there any radio re-plays in the U.S. (via NPR)? Were can I download or buy editions?
reverend_logan@yahoo.com
Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:My_Word%21"
If someone needs a pic of a place in downtown Chicago, I might be able to get one (if it's within walking distance of where I am staying), so let me know. Dori | Talk 02:01, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
I've been writting this article Lesch-Nyhan syndrome (in a word document) for a few days now. i've just copied it to wikipedia and when i submitted it the format was all wonky, please help. p.s. if anyone can find me a pic to add that would be great! -- Larsie 23:06, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I fixed a couple paragraphs. If you start a paragraph with a space, it goes all on the same line in a fixed-width format. See Wikipedia:How to edit a page. Hope this helps. pstudier 23:50, 2004 Nov 7 (UTC)
At a template called Template:Radio stations by state, I want to know if anyone can modify it so that the following does not happen:
When I went to List of radio stations in Georgia (U.S. state), I put the template on and it automatically added Category:Georgia, which is a dis-ambiguation category, to the template. I can't fix the category because it is automatically put in with the template. 66.245.3.195 17:35, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Sometimes, Whenever I visit Wikipedia's main page and click the link that says Create an account or log in, it suddenly jumps from the upper right corner of the webpage to the left. Why does it do that? Thanks, -- Chris 08:44, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I just made some changes to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._Presidential_religious_affiliations about Lincoln being called a Christian, and even a devout one. Considering this is probably an all kinds of controversial sort of change, I want to run this by whoever is in charge here before my IP gets banned and such. :(
I had done some Google searching about the religious beliefs about Lincoln earlier today, and found the general consenus is he believed in God, but likely in a Deist sense, and not a Christian. I then found this Wikipedia article calling him a devout Christian, yet linking at the bottom to a web page that he was a Deist. This is logically inconsistent. Thus I deleted the part about Lincoln being a devout Christian, and changed his religion to be uncertain, possibly Deist. When the historical facts are unclear, then calling Lincoln a "devout Christian" is not intellectually honest.
My intent was not to maliciously deface Wikipedia, but just to correct something that seemed inaccurate. Given this is a possible inflammatory change, I'd like whoever the Powers That Be are here to review it, and make a decision whether my change was reasonable. (unsigned)
We should be careful, however, as any statement on the matter might be seen as bordering on "original research", which Wikipedia isn't suppose to do. Someone recently tried to place Lincoln's name onto the List of famous gay, lesbian or bisexual people, citing a book... which hasn't even been published yet. (Of course, it doesn't really matter. 53% of Americans seem to think Bush is a moral leader rather than the purest form of evil the world has ever known, and I'll bet these same 53% of ignorant Americans are going to insist that Lincoln was of whatever religious persuasion they want to believe.) -- 68.163.12.14 02:27, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
A friend of mine who participates strongly in the "Figure Skating Universe" BBS site [4] sent me the following. She wishes to remain anonymous, but I thought my fellow Wikipedians would be at least amused.
Jmabel | Talk 18:36, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)
(sections above this (and below the previous tag) were archived on 08:10, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC))'
I have recently edited the entry on YouGov (of which I am chairman), to remove one inaccuracy and addd (I hope) useful information.
However, have been unable to alter the title, which should be "YouGov" rather than "Yougov".
Could someone arrange for the "G" to be in capitals?
Thanks
Peter Kellner
is there any media or project pages with just a bunch of pics that can be used to be entered into articles? let me know on my disc page -- Larsie 22:26, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Recently I found out Wikipedia has a list of burocrats. How do I become one? Is there a page where I can self-nominate? Are there any steps to be taken before going from administrator to burocrat?
Any help will be dearly appreciated.
Thanks and God bless you! " Antonio Burrocrat Martin"
How do you become an admin? does it require jedi mastery? Dainamo 20:14, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The pages relating to Television particularly the PAL page does not mention the phonemenon described below. Can anyone help for a name for it plus establish whether it occurs becasue of conversion from film to PAL or from NTSC to PAL or some completely diferent route or reason?: When a fast moving vehcle is shown, particularly a horse drawn wagon or chariot with distinctive spokes, a strobe effect sometimes occurs that makes the wheel appear to move slowly backwards due to the rate at which the film is capturing the picture. Dainamo 10:34, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
But the question is titled "film to tv frame rate". The phenomenon of temporal aliasing occurs in any picture-sequence medium and is not related to the various problems related to converting film, at 24 or 16 frames per second, to video, at 30 (North America) or 25 (elsewhere) f.p.s. For that, see Telecine. Sharkford 18:31, 2004 Nov 5 (UTC)
One sometimes notices people changing spelling and punctuation from US to UK-style, and vice versa, not in the course of a rewrite but just out of the blue. What's the consensus etiquette on that?
It feels strange to add a significant portion of text to an article using my US-style while the remainder of the article is in UKese--the inconsistency diminishes the appearance of quality. But it also feels provincial to alter others' spellings, etc. Does one rewrite in toto or adopt the existing style?-- NathanHawking 02:30, 2004 Oct 16 (UTC)
This whole AE/BE preference problem is something that has probably got up the nose of very many Wikipedians over there years. I'm certainly one of them. I have a proposal for a relatively simple software solution that may be useful in other areas too. Some time ago we managed to kill off the debate about whether to use [[DD Month]] [[YYYY] or [[Month DD]], YYYY by implementing a system whereby wikified dates appear in one or other format depending on what the user has selected in their preferences. This works great but it only works for wikified dates. My solution world also work for unwikified dates. If we had a BE/AE option in preferences we could then have the flag checked when an article is displayed. Problematic words or phrases could be tagged e.g. "... he came to her {[defense/defence]} as soon as he could and ..." - and the appropriate word could be chosen as required. Mintguy (T) 01:03, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Also Spelling reform:In such context the written form is sometimes called International English, since few other English-speaking countries have adopted the changes in spelling introduced by nineteenth century US lexicographers.
You may not like the usage, but it exists. It is ambiguous, as the term is also widely used to mean English of a kind likely to be understood by any English speaker and also for a particular kind of simplified spelling. Commonwealth English is less ambiguous. But as to it being "for the most part equivalent to British English", American English is also "for the most part equivalent to British English". You can sometimes go for pages and pages in a book with no indication in the spelling to indicate whether the author is using some form of British English spelling or some form of American English spelling or something else. As to your comments on the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, most dictionaries that I am familiar with (outside of the most abridged) also give special meanings and spellings that a reader is likely to encounter outside of the form of English for which the dictioary is intended.) But "OED-English" generally prefers spelling words like organize/organise with z rather than with s (and not because it is especially following American usage).) See [5]. This is a spelling convention used by the Encyclopaedia Britannica and by numerous publishing houses and journals, especially those publishing academic maerial. For example, check the English in most Penguin books written by British authors containing translations or non-fictional material. See, for example the recommendations of the South African Photogrammetry and Geo-Information Society at [6] which uses such z spellings though the s spellings are more generally used in South Africa. In Canadian English the z spellings are far, far more normal. This differences cuts across your "Commonwealth English" and suggestion of only two ways of spelling. Oxford style is the choice of many writers and publishing houses for "Commonwealth English", especially university publishing houses and such as: [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15]. There is no single Commonwealth English spelling. Canadian use is divided about equally on the use of color over colour and so with other words of that kind. Both spellings are accepted, just as both the '-ise' and '-ize' spellings are acceptable in British English. The Canadian Oxford English Dictionary gives colour as preferred and the Gage Dictionary of Canadian English gives color as preferred. (But both dictionaries prefer centre to center.) Both dictionaries are used as standard references by different publishing houses. Few make much of a fuss about it in Canada. Currently, under Wikipedia rules, all these methods of spellings are equally acceptable. Your proposal reduces this to a choice between some particular version of American English that you have not defined and — an unrevealed system of British English spellings you personally prefer. That is not much of a choice. It looks more like an attempt to promote one particular form of English. You probably do not realize the variations in spelling that occur. Most people don't, partly because most people don't notice them most of the time when reading for information. But any two-choice system of spelling between an imaginary standard American and an imaginary standard British cannot model the common divergence and freedom of choice that exists.cancelled became canceled (single-L common in American English; double-L common in International English).
I don’t know whether to vent, plea, preach or what.
I’ve been here less than two months, but it’s going downhill, perhaps much of the problem triggered by a comma.
My guess is that part of the reason Wikepedia is intended to be international is the hope of fostering fellowship, or at least something akin to it, and not rivalry or uniformity.
But controversies erupt over petty matters.
I’d like to urge that the motto “Be bold!” be tempered with patience and at least initial assumption of good faith. Etc.
I’ve raised a question at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, with the hope of avoiding or reducing alphabetic rivalry concerning countries.
Anyone who wants to discuss the possibility of improving international relations within Wikipedia is invited to my talk page. Or we could make Wikipedia page if you think that’s a better idea.
To those of you who work toward the community aspect of the Wikipedia, I thank you.
Tangentially, about controversies in general, perhaps something more can be done to prevent or reduce the bad driving out the good. I mean, maybe Wikipedia should do more to prevent or reduce volitality. Or maybe not. Maurreen 07:18, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
(sections above this (and below the previous tag) were archived on 10:33, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC))
There is a poll at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style about the abbreviation "U.S." and serial commas. But the poll was not preceded by any discussion. Maurreen 06:34, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Should the foreskin fetish article even exist on Wikipedia? Should there also be a circumcision fetish article? -- DanBlackham 18:20, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
"foreskin fetish" 7,850 hits "foreskin fetish" +restoration 101 hits "foreskin fetish" +stretching 292 hits "circumcision fetish" 2,270 hits
Additional information on the peculiar interest in the foreskin "foreskin fetish" -- 8,240 "circumcision fetish" -- 2,560 "foreskin worship" -- 453 "circumcision worship" -- 58 "foreskin love" -- 186 "circumcision love" -- 78 "foreskin lover" -- 823 "circumcision lover" -- 9 "foreskin lovers" -- 2,280 "circumcision lovers" -- 9 "foreskin fan" -- 131 "circumcision fan" -- 4 And the skins have it ... by about four to one. - Robert the Bruce 04:48, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
After removing that garbage, the article would read:
"Præputial Philia is sexual attraction to the præpuce"
Since the predicate contains no information not found in the subject, we might as well delete it.
Do what you will, I do not care either way about the article.
Ŭalabio 04:36, 2004 Nov 2 (UTC)
Of course Walabio would like to call it something like "præputial philia", he is extremely fond of using words that less than 1% of all people have ever heard before. func (talk) 04:46, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The foreskin fetish article seems to be little more than a platform for Robert's ad hominem attacks on people who do not agree with his pro-circumcision POV. Since most of the men in the world have not had a normal part of their penis cut off it does not surprise me that "foreskin fetish" has more Google hits than "circumcision fetish". However "clitoris fetish" has even more Google hits. It looks like Wikipedia needs a clitoris fetish article too.
"clitoris fetish" 14,000 hits
By the way both the foreskin fetish and circumcision fetish articles probably should be moved to foreskin fetishism and circumcision fetishism to be consistent with the other sexual fetishism articles. -- DanBlackham 09:24, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
(sections above this (and below the previous tag) were archived on 10:15, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC))
Imagine the trembling of my hands as I deliberately uploaded a new version of an image (with transparency) that was in use on the main page! I think it's a big improvement, although I'm still not 100% happy with the edge pixels. You might need to Shift-Refresh to reload the new image if it's already in your cache. PhilHibbs 16:15, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
While helping with WikiSyntax brackets fix i noticed that some articles copypasted from 1911 encyclopedia contains OCR-related typos like 'l'→']' (yep, it's just copy, they're in the original texts too). Should the 1911 articles be looked at by the typo department ? - JohnyDog 23:26, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'd just like to ask that people on wp:vfd please remember that civility means civility to all. Specifically, I'd like to ask one thing--can we remove "fancruft" from our collective vocabularies?
After thinking about it for a time, I've come to the conclusion that the word serves no purpose that is not pejorative. For example, compare these two articles. One is Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/John Boone; the other, found at User:Meelar/A nicer VfD, is the same text, but with "fancruft" replaced in all instances by "non-notable". Aside from a few easily fixable things, there is no meaning lost--but the whole thing, viewed from an observer's perspective, seems much less contemptous.
Is there any reason to maintain "fancruft" in favor of alternatives that are less offensive to the person whose prose is being considered? I don't think there is. I'd ask people to keep this in mind, and avoid using "fancruft", instead substituting non-pejorative alternatives.
Thank you, [[User:Meelar| Meelar (talk)]] 21:04, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, while we're at it, let's get rid of 'notability', which is just another term for 'I'm not interested'. We will not improve Wikipedia's coverage of more weighty subjects by deleting good coverage of factual material of interest to a minority. Intrigue 19:45, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps the relevant criterion here is not so much "notable" vs. "non-notable" but "public" vs. "private". An article describing well-established facts, with publicly available references, is appropriate ... even if it's about a fictional universe of interest only to a few people. An article about my left foot, on the other hand, would be deleted because the sources of information — presumably, only myself and my close friends — are neither public nor well-established as credible. —Steven G. Johnson 23:30, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)
I just split Google the company and Google the search engine into 2 separate articles (still working out some details) but I'm not sure about...
As for whether or not to split the article, I see no reason not to follow the guidelines at Wikipedia:Article size. The full article is 36K, so it should be split. As for where to split the article, I'd say Google, Google search engine, Google services, and Google tools. Keep a brief summary of each, and move the rest of the section over. anthony (see warning) 02:54, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'm not really opposed to this budding new collection of "Year in..." articles, but all the ones I looked at are simply a single image of one type of European/Western womenswear, with a caption, but no other content or context. I'm really getting concerned about the proliferation of micro-stubs. Random ones here and there by anons is OK, but when (mostly) newer Wikipedians create a series of dozens, or even hundreds, of one or two sentence articles, it really over-taxes New Pages and Recent Changes patrol. It's getting to the point I thinking of suggesting that a series of articles under 300 bytes be speedy candidates, even tho' many would probably consider that Wiki-heresy. A series of record albums that contained nothing but a 'see also' and a category tag were recently speedied for lack of content/context. Niteowlneils 03:18, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The stats also tells an interesting story. According to [16], now each article has an average of 15 edits--2 years ago that was 4.9. This is a concrete fact that each article is receiving much more edits. Also, the mean size of an article is 2351, two years ago, 1902. The claim we are proportionally having smaller and fewer-edited articles is just not true. I understand many people get such an impression but the numbers and the long term view tell a different story.
True, we must strive to do better. Indeed, I am myself an advocate of adding more quality-control measures. We have things like abtration committes now but they are not meant to maintain the quality. As you said, one major problem is that there are just too many articles that are created by one person and stay without any scrutiny by any single other person--meaning any rubbish can be a part of wikipedia. Not only does it take time to clean up them, but it makes wikipedia looks bad, producing bad publiclity.
Wikipedia 1.0, a print edition of wikipedia, is an imporant step for us, as wikipedia is an attempt to create a free encyclopedia not just a bunch of useful information on the Internet. And it is a good opportunity for us to review our editing process and create some new systems. I believe wiki is a great way to create new articles but not is doing adequate job to maintain the quality. Although Wikipedia is often cited as an successful example of open-source development, it differs considerably in some points. Many open source projects have maintaniers and rigorous mechanism to review submitted changes and patches. Linus doesn't just apply any single patch he receives.
Of course, one concern is any restriction makes contributors, especially newcomers feel unwelcomed. It is not groundless at all. The failure of Nupedia must not be forgotten. People like to write more rather than revert and delete and those who write a lot are more likened than those who revert or delete a lot. It is also quite unproductive check facts carefully by doing things like going to the library instead of just getting information via googling. People create what you and some other call microstubs because it is quick and it is not allowed to do, they just walk away from wikipedia. They do what they can do and for many, creating undecent, stuby stubs is all they can. Remember not everyone is a decent writer and has a great access to scholarstic resources.
One solution I have been thinking of is to adopt more conventional practices that have long been around in academia. Scholars do peer reviews, not because they love to find errors in someone else's works but because those works are noted and contribute to their evaluation. It is the same as that students work hard for better grades. In wikipedia, sadly, careful checking and deleting groundless claims earn almost no point and worse, more times than needed put you in trouble. You are, understandly required to justify why you are reverting others' works and it is not uncommon to find difficult to teach morons. Everyone can write means any opinion from clueless freshmen is counted equally as one from a PhD professor. In wikipedia, a game is to write more and more and edit more and more, instead of striving for the truth, because those are what counts.
Any work of peer reviews, however, is never noted. You check articles in the watch-list and if you agree with new addition or edits, you are required to do nothing. And so no one will know you have checked the birthdate of the person is correct by googling or visting to the library. The growth in wikipedia is measured by the number of articles and the number of edits--not in the quality in some concrete manner. In sum, there is little incensive for quality--far less than for quantity.
Perhaps, in termiology of open source, testers are not as respected as coders here, because we don't have a concrete measurement of number of bugs. In here, it is not so fun as in open source projects to kill bugs than writing about new topics.
It's time for bed. If you find I am not making any sense, I am sorry about it. If this gives you some idea, I'm glad.
-- 05:30, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)
I have noticed that GNAA Popeye has been blocked indefinitely. I would like to know what the reasons for his blocking were. According to the block log, the reasons were "changing around people's comments, not [being] a legit contributor, and [that] GNAA announced a victory over Wikipedia." On the other hand, on my talk page it has been stated that he was banned for vandalism on my page.
I didn't find a case of him "changing comments around" (unless he is responsible for the sockpuppet accounts sabotaging the VfD process), and the only his vandalism on my talk page consists of writing EOF at its end (again, unless he is responsible for the rest of the edits; I do not believe that they were so offensive to warrant a permanent ban.)
I'd like to know what were the reasons for his blocking; if he was blocked in violation of the policy, he may be unblocked.
Sincerely, Mike Rosoft 12:37, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I unblocked him for this reason. Mark Richards 19:06, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
According to the GNAA talk page, he was blocked for disrupting Wikipedia with http://www.gnaa.us/pr.phtml?troll=gnaa-wikipedia this article. — David Remahl 19:15, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Can someone be blocked for writing articles outside Wikipedia? Intrigue 21:02, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Oct 15 00:23:21 <Popeye> my weekend getaway is trolling wikipedia and browsing hentai on 4chan.
silsor 21:58, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
Wasn't there once a page listing IPs of known vandals? I tried to find a link to it, and turned up nothing. If there isn't, and I only dreamed of it, I think it would be quite useful. -- Smack 06:11, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress? Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 06:25, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The images which come from photography.mojado.com, have a wrong message of license information, it's not {{cc-by-2.0}} but {{Cc-by-nd}}. Maybe a bot could do this. The images could be find there. 83.156.30.9 12:54, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
the french Wikipedia and the german Wikipedia have Specialised portal one example http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A9gorie:Wikip%C3%A9dia:Portail http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie:Portal do you have something like this ? -- 212.195.110.2 13:36, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I'm not sure how to go about this, but I think we should have a press release for this article. The article was originally nominated to be COTW because Encyclopedia Britannica was critical its length. The Guardian quoted the editors of Encyclopedia Brittanica as saying: "People write on things they're interested in, and so many subjects don't get covered; and news events get covered in great detail. The entry on Hurricane Frances is five times the length of that on Chinese art, and the entry on Coronation Street is twice as long as the article on Tony Blair." [17] — J3ff 10:06, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
We should be extremely careful with the Blair article, since it is imo a highly POV hagiography. As I have no wish to get involved in a long and tedious edit war with a number of Labour party apparatchiks I have made only marginal revisions where the truth was being entirely stretched out of shape, but before we go shouting our mouths off about this article, it needs some serious work. And actually, from a point of view of relevance, I have this gut feeling that over time Corrie will prove to be ineffably more influential than the American puppet incumbent of 10 Downing Street. Sjc 06:54, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
We could use having some people weigh in at Talk:Shining_Path#Quick_poll as to whether it is appropriate for the lead of the article Shining Path to mention that the U.S. State Dep't considers them terrorists. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:52, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)