Wikipedia:Village pump/Archive M

Village pump
- Policy
- Technical
- Proposals (persistent)
- Idea lab
- WMF
- Miscellaneous

Village pump archive

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump. Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU

getting logged off

Why do I keep finding myself involuntarily logged off when I am about to post my article? Is there a time limit? Or is there some bug that logs me off when I press "save page"? Dr Adam Carr 12:12, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Probably a cookie issue. See wikipedia:how to log in. Martin 12:22, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Well, I find it happening often enough: not that I don't get logged in properly, but that it times out much sooner than I'd like: often enough, during some long edit, so that when I check the stuff in, it's attributed to my IP address, not my name. Which was the complaint above.

When I'm doing postings regularly, I generally remember to check my login just before hitting Save Page. Other times, I forget. Is there a fix for this? Would anyone consider assigning the cookie a longer lifespan, if that's where the problem is? Dandrake 04:09, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Jump me if I'm wrong, but if (during long edits) you regularly do a "Show Preview" that should tell the server you are still alive and working (restart the time-out timer). nicht var? - Marshman 04:53, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The time limit is half an hour. Yes, clicking preview regularly will restart the timer, but I got frustrated with such things long ago and decided that the security problems with associated "remember password" weren't really that bad. Do you think it would help if it were, say, an hour? There's a trade-off between convenience and security -- perhaps half an hour is a bit too far to the security end for our case. -- Tim Starling 10:59, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)

[Hoping to write this fast enough to avoid a check-in conflict] Yes, I'd like the full hour, though it's hard to believe I'd go a half hour without doing a Preview, but time flies when you're at a keyboard. Time to enable auto-login anyway. Dandrake 20:24, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Hasn't this recently changed? I'm sure that until a couple of days ago I could stay logged in for days on end, and I can't see how that could be much of a security risk when I can do anonymously any editing I can do logged in. The hassle of trying to stay logged in now outweighs the convenience of getting a watchlist etc. -- pm67nz 00:21, 23 Sep, 2003 (UTC)

No, nothing's changed; the session timeout's always been relatively short, and the session cookie always expires at the end of your browser session (or before). If you logged in with 'remember my password' checked, it will store an additional cookie which silently logs you back in. This cookie expires after a month, so it may have simply run out. Click it again, you should be good to go for another month. --Brion 00:36, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yup, that's it, thanks. -- pm67nz 03:20, 23 Sep, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia/Wiktionary & the Anti-deletionism movement

Okay, I'm still confused: What exactly is the relationship between, and the policy regarding linking between the Wikipedia and the Wiktionary. I saw several red links edited into Wiktionary links, at which point...I became confused. My basic question is which is preferable, if there is a definition on Wiktionary, but no article on Wikipedia, should we leave a red link or link to Wiktionary (and perhaps add to the requested list)? Thanks in advance for any help/clarification/sympathetic nods, Paige 21:17, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Sounds like the deletionists have gained the temporary upper hand. Not to worry: plans for an inclusionist intifada are already underway...

(personally I dislike wiktionary links - do you see Britannica referring people to page 34 of the OED?) Martin 00:20, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I've just realised that the above could be completely misinterpreted. I don't like sand linking to wiktionary:sandstorm, because I think terms of jargon, etc, should be explained in the article itself. However, I do like sand linking to wiktionary:sand, and vica versa. Martin 14:11, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

To Martin:I join you any effort to thwart the deletionist agenda. It would appear that Brion is also inline with this philosophy: "Please don't delete when you can make a useful stub instead." -戴&#30505sv 00:43, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC) (ps. what does this have to do with Wiktionary links?)

Perhaps the relationship to Wiktionary links is that one way to get a page deleted with less controversy that the VfD route is to send it to Things to be moved to Wiktionary. --Angela, who's trying to be less of a deletionist.

Yes, and then people on Wiktionary list it as something to be moved to Wikipedia... and so on. Down with deletion! -- Jake 00:55, 2003 Sep 20 (UTC)

Thank you Angela and Jake-- Are there enough of us to put an end to the m:deletionism nonsense?

I only said I'm less of a deletionist, not an anti-deletionist. The deletionists still have my support at the moment, but I'm slowly coming round to the [[m:inclusionism idea. Angela

I think that there should be a good deal of overlap in personnel and material of both Wiktionary and Wikipedia, so I don't think that it is a serious concern that there will be an article that nobody will want. Presumably the people who want an article on Wiktionary would then follow it, and then provide support there even if no "native Wiktionarians" wanted it.

The main problem is that the style of writing for a dictionary entry and an encyclopedia are drastically different, which is why they are different projects in the first place. So even if an article is not quite on topic for an encyclopedia, it might not make a good dictionary entry either. In that case, I would suggest keeping the encyclopedia article, and putting a refactored version on Wiktionary, and linking to one or the other depending on your reasons for referring them to the article/entry.

For instance, if you are using it as more of an footnote/endnote, to be read only if the reader doesn't know what you're talking about, then link to the Wiktionary article. However, if you think the article should be a destination in itself, then link to the Wikipedia article. --Nelson 01:16, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I think it's a bad thing that there is no tighter integration between languages and projects. The software should show what projects have pages with the same title. Think about seeing encyclopedia | dictionary at the top of the page instead of all the language links we see currently. This would make it clear for the user that

yes, we have an article in Wiktionary but
no, we don't have one in Wikipedia (yet)

or vice versa. For example: the article on concrete is a combination of an encyclopedic article on the building material and a dictionary entry for the opposite of abstract. Aggregating the latter information into Wiktionary and pointing out to the user it is available provides more flexibility for the future. Ap 01:12, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Hear hear! I agree with Ap, I think that having links between Wikiprojects at the top of every page would be really cool. As I said, I think articles on the same topic for different purposes would be really useful, and this allows to preserve slightly off-topic material rather than simply deleting it. Integration in this case would be a really great thing. --Nelson 01:22, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Note that Wikipedia/Wiktionary integration also provides a place to put the interlanguage links we have today. These links currently make up a rudimentary multilingual dictionary. When these links are moved to Wiktionary, they can be properly annotated. -- Ap

I'm not quite sure what you're advocating, but the interlanguage links fulfill an entirely different purpose from a multilingual dictionary. They're there to encourage participation in the project(s), to make it easier to "cross-pollinate" the set of articles in each language by making it easier for polyglot contributors to move between them, and to ignite interest in visitors who might not have expected to find material in their own language. They will certainly not be removed from the Wikipedia interface.

WikiWikiWeb:SisterSites-style linking between projects within the same language would be useful too, of course, but a huge portion of Wikipedia articles will never appear in a dictionary. --Brion 05:12, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The interlinguage links with annotations would be pointing between dictionary entries, creating a multilingual dictionary. The dictionary entries would also contain a link for each distinct meaning to the most appropriate page in the Wikipedia for more in depth information. I believe all articles can have a dictionary entry if only to show the different ways of writing it in a different language. I actually believe there would be many more dictionary articles without a direct Wikipedia equivalent but these should point instead to a more general article on that topic. This way, Wiktionary also becomes a quick guide into Wikipedia. -- Ap 12:02, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

List of countries by area? John Conway? Ness County, Kansas? Sperry Corporation? --Brion 18:24, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

AOL proxies blocked

Hmm... we seem to have blocked 25 AOL proxies. I've just received a query from an AOL user, I wouldn't be surprised if Angela has received a few. I think a change to the "you are blocked" message is in order. See Wikipedia:You have been blocked for my proposal (soon to be implemented). -- Tim Starling 02:41, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)

No, I haven't had any irate AOL users e-mailing me luckily! The new message seems a good idea. Should I unblock the ones were autoblocked after the three Michael accounts were blocked? Angela 03:12, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)

That's what you get for putting your email address on your user page I guess. The new message is now operational. As for unblocking the proxies: I don't think that's necessary. -- Tim Starling 05:32, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)

girls gone wild

I would like to order the Girls Gone Wild live from spring break (2003). How do I go by getting it through your company wikpedia. How much would it cost and how and where do I send payment. Please inform me about this asap.

Do we look like a porn studio? Pizza Puzzle

girls gone wild live from spring break (2003) has not yet been released under the GFDL. You should check back four times daily to see if and when it will be released. -BuddhaInside

Hmm, maybe we should have an equivalent of wikipedia:ISBN for movies... Martin

No need for 'equivalent': Movies have ISBNs too. Look above the UPC barcode. -- Jake 14:36, 2003 Sep 20 (UTC)

You can purchase the work through the Girls Gone Wild web site. Wikipedia doesn't sell works, though you are welcome to donate to the Wikipedia project if you wish. You'll usually have better success searching for video and audio works you want to buy at Amazon.com.You may find useful reviews and other comments here.JamesDay 05:43, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Song comparison

Could anyone familiar with either or both of these two tunes: God Save the Queen and the Prussian hymn Heil Dir Im Siegerkranz take a moment to visit Hawai'i pono'i, go to the reference link at the bottom, listen to the Hawai'i anthem and see if my statement "The melody is reminiscent of God Save the Queen, but based upon the Prussian hymn,Heil Dir Im Siegerkranz" is correct or not?

God Save the Queen and Heil Dir im Siegerkranz have the same melody, so Hawai'i pono'i is equally reminiscent of both. --Wik 00:33, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)

Fantastic. I always thought Hawai'i Pono'i was God save the Queen. but not being a Brit, I was not real confident in that opinion. Then I read Hawai'i Pono'i comes from Heil Dir im Siegerkranz. It is much more likely that English influence would be felt in Hawaii when the song was written. - Marshman 04:37, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Actually the melody for God Save the Queen was used in several places as national anthems with different words added on. We Brits are nothing if not consistent. Graham :) 05:32, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

God Save the Queen and Heil Dir im Siegerkranz (and for that matter America (My Country ’Tis of Thee)) are identical melodies, but Hawai'i pono'i is certainly different. The question is what is meant by reminiscent. The meter is similar, the melody at times appearing almost intentionally inverted. Looking at the website, I think the implication is that the statement that it was based on the Prussian hymn is historical (that is, the guy said "I based this in Heil Dir im Sigerkranz") rather than implied by the tune's similarity. (Though my interpretation, or the site, could easily be wrong!) -- Someone else 05:38, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that is the input I need. I'm familiar with both My Country 'tis of Thee and Hawai'i pono'i. Similar, but certainly not identical. And while Bitish influence would have been strong, the tune came from a person more likely to know Heil Dir im Siegerkranz. I think I can rewrite now. - Marshman

Wikipedia/Wiktionary & the Anti-deletionism movement

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/Deletions, where to build pages and evolution of conventions

IP block malfunctioning

Moved to Wikipedia talk:IP block'

Getting logged off

moved to Wikipedia talk:How to log in

Plagiarism

Moved to: Wikipedia talk:Sites that use Wikipedia for content.

Spam?

I would like a second opinion on what counts as advertising/spam etc. I removed an external link (CARDSHARK Online) from a number of articles (Crimp, Three card monte, Card game, Confidence trick, Holdout, Gambling, Cardsharps etc) and have now had an e-mail from the poster of them who said the following: (permission to reprint this extract was given): "I included a link to my web site along with both of my contributions simply because it is a related link for anyone who wishes to find out more on the subject described on the page... I feel that my contributions should include links to my site whenever relevant. I feel so because it is good to provide visitors with reputable follow up links and also because it is a way to reward me for my efforts."

Any thoughts? Angela 03:37, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)

I agree with the webmaster for cardshark IF his website is non-commercial and NPOV and provides quality information on the subject (we should always be willing to delete external links to weak web sites). As to commercial/non-commercial - maybe we could define that better, but any site clearly supported by a single business entity would have to have a lot NPOV value to be regarded as not commercial in nature. - Marshman 04:44, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I looked at his web site (very well done) and it fits the criteria I would consider important as being acceptable for an external link. Sure, he is working on articles here and hopes to get more traffic through his site for his effort, but that fact is secondary; our goal should be to provide direction to offsite traffic that has quality - Marshman 04:49, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It's not non-commerical. You have to pay to view most of the site. I'm not sure how NPOV a site that teaches you how to cheat at cards can be. Angela 04:51, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)

The password is an obvious attempt to lure visitors to pay for his so called "non-commercial" product. The irony. --Menchi 04:58, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Sorry Angela. I guess I did not go that far. Password and collects money from users! Obviously commercial and cannot be condoned as a useful link for our users. I stand by my criteria; but sounds like this website does not pass - Marshman 05:24, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

My approach is generally to remove such links (not always immediately, but eventually, and boldly), and trust that if someone found them useful, I would be reverted (as I was on List of gay movies. This seems to work quite well. Martin 14:22, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Gazetteer time?

With the Israbot adding to the output of Rambot and others a lot of 'statty' settlement articles are being created.

IMO these articles are non-encyclopedic and are cluttering the main namespace (I'd also say they are valueless additions, but there you go ;). I think it is time for a gazatteer.wikipedia.org, or similar, to hold these articles. TwoOneTwo 21:16, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I like these articles. Without the one for my hometown I wouldn't be here. Ark30inf 21:28, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Hey, if you have enough extra time on your hands, why not take one or two of them and turn them into more than gazetteer entries. Improve them, don't bitch about them... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 21:44, Sep 21, 2003 (UTC)

I was thinking of taking some databases on French communes, but I think that sending in 36000 communes, most of which are unimportant little villages, is excessive. Indeed, a gazeteer would perhaps be better adapted. We should also agree on some easy-to-reprocess format. David.Monniaux 00:24, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

There are about equal # of Rambot-US place-articles too (30,000), so I say: "add the French ones away!" At least then we'd then have some US-world balance. Unless, of course, that we remove puny US entries, then we should not add French entries as well. But it looks Rambots are here to stay, so bring the French in! --Menchi 00:36, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

We might as well use a bot to add an article for each known star in the universe (coordinates, colour, estimated blow-up time, SETI scan results). That would boost our article count. Of course just as a starter, feel free to add all you know about any of those zillion stars :) Or add articles about every chemical compound known to mankind, or about every McDonalds restaurant in the world. But what is the point? I'd say let us be careful with converting the Wikipedia into a raw data container. Most of these data are covered well in some other place, where experts/afficionado's know to find them. Maybe use a bot only to add such data to exisiting handwritten articles. Erik Zachte 10:32, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

If you've got some comments on Rambot (to stay or to delete), drop a note @ User talk:Rambot/Delete. --Menchi 00:36, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I'm not arguing about Rambot. In effect I'm arguing from Erik Zachte's pov. The articles created are formatted demographic and economic data - nice if you want to do a comparison or create colourful maps but in no way encyclopedia articles. They have value but they do not belong in the main encyclopedia namespace - as evinced by the fact that so few of the machine-created articles have been edited.

They are distorting the value of Wikipedia content, especially article counts and size counts into giving an unwarranted impression of the depth of Wikipedia. I'm not saying delete I'm saying move, like the sep11 material they are specialised and not generally usable. With a separate namespace for the raw articles, as and when they are improved they can be moved back. TwoOneTwo 14:29, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I think that it would not be good to start limiting the types of content that appears on wikipedia. Rather, we should look at ways of adding meta-information to certain kinds of pages. It is possible that this can be done in a non-labor intensive manner. Then searches can be done with some of the meta-data attached. For instance, I like the random page feature. Yet, I do not kike getting back so many town/city entries. But I would rather be given a "random search with no town/city entries" than remove the town and city entries from wikipedia, which are useful for other reasons. Also, putting domain name qualifiers in front of wikipedi.org (eg gazetter.wikipedia.org) only gives us a single dimnsion of meta-data. The human mind is able to process much more complex types of meta-data and we should not deliberately dumb down wikipedia by imposing a rigid meta-data structure. We should put in a flexible meta-data structure and use that. RayKiddy 18:43, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

An encyclopedia is not an almanac! I think we should take a stand on this. An encyclopedia article is human-written and gives context, weighs relevance, etc. Bot-entries are not articles, they're data. If I want raw data on every county in the US for example, I go to an almanac; if I want context, filtered by a knowledgable human, I go to an encyclopedia. In an encyclopedia, I can rely on the fact that someone has taken the time to include the important facts and leave out the cruft. That's why I went there, and not to the almanac. I'd like to see Wikipedia is not an almanac added to the basic tenets of Wikipedia. Axlrosen 22:37, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Pronouns for Countries

What is Wikipedia style for pronouns used for countries? For instance on the French Fifth Republic page, the feminine pronouns are used (presumably because la France is feminine in French) but in United States, the neuter pronouns are used. I don't have a stylebook on me now, but I believe AP style says neuter. If we don't already have a style it seems that that's what it should be. Basil Fawlty 16:00, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

We don't have a specific style - just write how you feel comfortable. If you want to change a "she" to "it", that's fine, if someone wants to change an "it" to "she", that's also fine. Just don't get into an edit war over it, and all will be well. Martin 23:41, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

While "she" for countries is legal, it's very old-fashioned and carries - dare I say it - a whiff of sexism, the old-boy kind of thing you see in the 1911EB articles, where the "country" is like a female that has to be looked after by the male rulers. I also imagine it confuses readers for whom English is not the native language. Stan 00:30, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Agreed. - Tarquin 08:37, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Mirrored Content

[http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Elizabeth-II-of-the-United-Kingdom http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Elizabeth-II-of-the-United-Kingdom] Nationmaster is one of those websites which, for some reason, is mirroring the wikipedia. They do credit their source. It is odd that they were the "Yahoo! Pick of the Day" but we arent. Pizza Puzzle

They're not just mirroring us. They have their own articles on nations (focused on stats) and then use us to get pages on things like bios of heads of state, like in this case. I don't understand people's hostility to our being mirrored - this is the whole point of being a free encylopedia. They're good about linking to us - they even link to our copy of the article, not just our main page. CGS 16:10, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC).

I'm happy to see content I wrote used elsewhere... but few of the sites that do it give me (or more collectively, Wikipedia) the credit I/it deserve. Do ANY of the mirroring sites follow the terms of our licence correctly? Pete 17:56, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes! This one does!! CGS 19:16, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC).

Really? At the bottom of the page their copyright notice says that Wikipedia content is GFDL'd but they reserve all rights to their 'elements'. It is arguable whether their content is derived from ours (depends exactly what their 'elements' are), but if it is derived, then it has to be GDFL'd too... as it is they can use our content but we cannot use theirs back which is part of the idea. Pete 19:23, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Their elements aren't modifications to our pages, they're seperate articles with stats on countries and things. On these articles, the Wikipedia copyright notices rightly does not appear. CGS 20:21, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC).

IANAL, but Pete - I suggest that if you believe that a third party (or indeed Wikipedia) is using your content in a way contrary to the terms of your license under the GFDL, then you write to them stating the problem. You may also wish to take legal advice on the matter. Martin 09:00, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Where did the page go?

I remember a page, wich i belive was on the metawikipedia, which was a debate about whether a new system should be adapted relating to the deletion of certain content including copyright infringment. The debate specifically was about how just about anybody could become a sysop, and thus the content that was deleted was still widely available, and that perhaps there should be a system to delete a page so that not even a sysop can see what it used to contain. Does anybody remember this article? if so and it still exists could you post a link to it? Thanks. Tacvek 04:30, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Do you mean this: m:Deletion management redesign? Angela 04:36, Sep 21, 2003 (UTC)

Yes I did. Thanks. Tacvek 21:47, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Google hits for Wikipedia articles

Just as an experiment, I searched in Google for topics I was interested in/ contributed to/ created/ whatever in Wikipedia. In many a case, Wikipedia articles seem to feature within the first two pages! Has something changed so that the whole site has a better weightage, or is it something to do with individual articles? I had tried a month ago and did not get any hits.In any case, I think the responsibility of giving factual information has increased tremendously. KRS 03:03, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I'd noticed this. I suspect Google has given Wikipedia articles a built-in higher weighting ... since most Wikipedia articles won't be linked-to from outside, and thus wouldn't rate high with Google's default algorithms.

Definitely a responsibility, I agree --Morven 03:08, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It is very noticeable when you see a poor stub, go to Google to try to patch it up a bit and find the WP page is #1 (often because the page title is worded obscurely). The overall WP average is pushing these pages up above the good pages out there on the web on these subjects! :) Pete 11:21, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

There is definitely special consideration from Google. Oftentimes, even minutes after a new page is created, it registers in the Google search results, which I find fascinating. Fuzheado

A colleague of mine herared a talk from someone from Google, giving information on their page ranking. One thing that would probably do Wikipedia pages much good, is that if a page is linked to with a link text that corresponds to the search text, this is a high plus in ranking. Thus, Wikipedia-Wikipedia links might well give high rankings. Andre Engels 13:11, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Search is disabled?

So when is it coming back? Wikipedia is virtually unusable without some kind of search capability. Even a link to Google would be nice, like the last time. RickK 19:47, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It'd be useful. But until they link Google, try adding site:wikipedia.org to your Google search. --Menchi 19:53, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Google search form is back. --Brion 20:18, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Vote on new logos, ATTENTION

For those who already cast their votes on the meta, BEWARE:

Your vote would be invalid if you do not have an separate account on meta or if you homepage on meta does not redirect to your homepage on a wikipedia project of which you have more than 10 contributions.

My own vote was classified as invalid! I make my homepage a redirect now and hope it is fixed. But there are still wikipedians do not know that.

-wshun 19:12, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

To clarify: your user page on meta does not have to redirect to your user page on one of the language-Wikipedias, but it does have to point there in some way - just a link will do. This is to avoid people making lots of duplicate accounts and getting more than one vote. --Camembert

Don't you think it's clear enough on the ballot page? CGS 19:26, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC).

I first thought that a user page on meta is sufficient. Sure there are wikipedians fail to read it. :-( --wshun 19:33, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Spam?

Move to User talk:Cardshark

Any thoughts? Angela 03:37, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)

It's not non-commerical. You have to pay to view most of the site. I'm not sure how NPOV a site that teaches you how to cheat at cards can be. Angela 04:51, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)

The password is an obvious attempt to lure visitors to pay for his so called "non-commercial" product. The irony. --Menchi 04:58, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia unuseable

Wikipedia is currently unuseable because you can't get to any articles without a wait of upwards of five minutes. Is the Israel bot responsible, or just what is the problem? RickK 01:42, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

IsraBot is not currently running, see its contribs. It's just that time of the day, come back in 3-4 hours. Please donate -- we are getting a server upgrade soon (mostly out of Jimbo's own pocket), but that won't help for very long. We really need a third server. -- Tim Starling 01:49, Sep 22, 2003 (UTC)

Not all of us have the wherewithal to donate anything. RickK 01:52, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It's not going any more slowly than normal for me...it's not as quick as it sometimes is, but I'm not waiting five minutes. Adam Bishop 01:55, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

unwanted indents

Why do some pages (my homepage for example) appear with the first line of the first paragraph slightly indented? It is not very attractive. What would would be attractive (IMHO) would be a convention to have a three-line drop-capital (like this) at the start of each article. Perhaps the style committee could look into it. Dr Adam Carr 01:00, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

This is a problem with the [edit] link. If you put two blank lines at the beginning of the article or page, it goes away. RickK 01:24, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

SAMPA or IPA?

Are we supposed to give phonetics in SAMPA or IPA? IPA should work with all browsers correctly handling Unicode. The WikiPedia renderer could do on-the-fly translation to ASCII for the remaining browsers. David.Monniaux 23:40, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

For now, both. Martin 23:42, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

See this thread on the mailing list too. Angela

I believe that signatures should link to the talk page -- since, almost always when I click on a signature -- it is to write that person a message. LirQ

When I receive a talk page message, I am not notified. LirQ

Questions about ozone layer.

26 september 2003.

Subject: Questions about ozone and the ozonelayer.

My first visit to the villagepump. I am Frans, an old dutchman with a very inquisitive mind. Shortly I got access to internet and that was reason for me to visit several encyclopedia, looking for information about above mebtioned subjects. I am very astonished about the controversial statements i met and are now looking for someone who can and will explain things to me.

Now for the first problems. According to the Columbia, the Brittanica, the Encarta and also Wikipedia; Ozone is formed by the action of ultraviolet light (UV) on oxygen. Ultraviolet light is absorbed when it strikes an ozone molecule (see Columbia); the molecule is split into atomoc and diatomoc oxigen, Later in the presence of a catalyst, the atomic and diatomic oxygen reunite to form oxygen.

So, as long as there is oxygen ozone is formed. And, UV is absorbed by splitting ozone molecules. The ozone is recycled. The impossible conclusion is, that the amount of oxygen increases. So why bother about depletion af the ozonelaer bij certain chemical compounds?

I have more questions including the some marked 'energie'but enough for now.

Frans

How is a page de-NPOV'd?

I did some work on a page that I would hope is more neutral than it was, but it is still on the NPOV list: fluoride. Since I know one can't simply delete the NPOV disclaimer at the top by rule, and I don't know of a page that says 'Check this page because work was done on it', how is said designation retired from a page that (I hope) doesn't need it anymore? Thanks... Skybunny 01:38, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any official policy, so I imagine everyone has their own opinion. My personal policy is that you don't delete the other side's warning. Say if the article was too anti-fluoride so the pro-fluoride people put a warning on. Then if you changed the tone so that it was more pro-fluoride, under my policy you'd be allowed, as a member of the pro-fluoride camp, to delete the warning. Then if the anti-fluoride camp felt you made the article too pro-fluoride, they could put their own NPOV warning, which you wouldn't be allowed to delete. If one camp disappears, and are thus unavailable to remove their own warning, it would lapse after a while. -- Tim Starling 01:50, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

If you genuinely feel it is NPOV then I would say remove the notice but mention it on the talk page. That way if anyone is interested they can re-add it if they don't agree. Angela (who can't write anything in the edit summary box and is too tired to make a proper bug report). Angela 02:10, Sep 26, 2003 (UTC)

Will do. I removed the notice before Marshman saw the page, but I'll point this out in talk. Thanks! Skybunny 02:19, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Looks to my like it is approaching the "poster child" of accomodation. I did not see any NPOV or POV warnings? Both sides have opportunities to submit data from valid studies and the article nicely dances around coming to a single conclusion, as it should. Skybunny and other should continue to watch these page to root out truely POV (opinion) stuff. - Marshman 02:13, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

JOY ADAMSON

Phew! I can't believe I've ended up in this maze of tech-y stuff. All I want to know is if the persons who killed Joy Adamson (authoress of "Born Free") were ever caught? I have just finished reading her last book "Queen of Shaba" wherein she was doing research on a leopard named Penny - which was never fully completed because of her death. (OhGodhowinthehelldoImailthisnow)???

According to http://www.vayulila.com/TheCave/Voice-Adamsons.html, "a 23 year old former employee Paul Ekai was convicted of the murder, apparently committed after a dispute over money." RickK 01:27, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

For future reference, this type of question should be asked on the Wikipedia:reference desk. --136.186.1.116 02:52, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Relevance

(see also #Ad?)

I would like a second opinion on what counts as 'advertising.' I added external links in relevant places ('Babel', 'Tower of Babel', 'Languages' etc.) to my non-commercial website (towerofbabel.com) which is actually another multilingual project similar to Wikipedia named Babel (and if you are familiar with the myth of the tower of Babel you would understand its relevance, because the entire je nais se quoi is based on the paradigm of the myth.) I fail to see how these links would be construed as 'irrelevant' or as 'advertising.' I assume the person who deleted my external links didn't even bother to look at the site.

The link ( http://www.towerofbabel.com/ ) is far too generic to be either relevant or useful; it's kind of like adding a link to the front page of an map site on every single country, city, or geographical article. If you could make the links specific to the topics where you place them, they'd be much more likely to remain. --Brion 05:46, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

You added a link to your site from the Tower of Babel article. What information does your site provide about the Tower of Babel? None. That's why it was removed. CGS 13:06, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC).

Come again? You obviously know the site inside out. --Malcs64

Ad?

(see also #Relevance)

All this Anon did is linking to many articles to his website, like this:

Tower of Babel: The multilingual, multicultural online journal and community of arts and ideas.

And it's always bolded and placed 1st, before all other obviously more irrelvant-to-subject links.

Jeez. Does "Don't bite the newcomers" mean anything to any of you? I'm sorry, it's just the first thing I saw when I came in. "...obviously more irrelevant-to-subject links". Funny SIC comment. So you obviously know just how hard it is to find good voluntary translators these days.--Malcs64

And that's all he did. No actual contribution. His website seems to be of little relevance to most of our article, if not all. The Chinese version seems to be just of one page, and machine-translated (pietà is translated as piñata).

Oh my goodness. I didn't realize I was being graded. You must not be familiar with the myth of the tower of Babel nor the paradigm of the website itself. Before you start talking about machine-translated pages perhaps you should look at the Translators page. Babel is a multilingual project taken care of by human beings much like Wikipedia. Oh, and what you mean is 'piñata' is translated as 'pietà', not the other way around. Or perhaps you got it right and just assumed it was 'pietà' and not 'piñata.' Perhaps you or any other Chinese translators you might know would like to help with Babel, we obviously need them, it's a contributory community just like Wikipedia.--Malcs64

What do you think? Is that link valuable addition to Wikipedia? If not, they should be reverted. --Menchi 04:10, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I suggest reverting every single one of them. An online art community is hardly relevant to an article on babel or any of the other articles he's linked it to. Angela

Someone else who hasn't taken the time to actually note the site's relevance to the pages it was linked to. --Malcs64

He's now doing the same under the name Malcs64. Angela

Ad?

All this Anon did is linking to many articles to his website, like this:

Tower of Babel: The multilingual, multicultural online journal and community of arts and ideas.

And it's always bolded and placed 1st, before all other obviously more irrelvant-to-subject links.

Jeez. Does "Don't bite the newcomers" mean anything to any of you? I'm sorry, it's just the first thing I saw when I came in. "...obviously more irrelevant-to-subject links". Funny SIC comment. So you obviously know just how hard it is to find good voluntary translators these days.--Malcs64

Oh my goodness. I didn't realize I was being graded. You must not be familiar with the myth of the tower of Babel nor the paradigm of the website itself. Before you start talking about machine-translated pages perhaps you should look at the Translators page. Babel is a multilingual project taken care of by human beings much like Wikipedia. Oh, and what you mean is 'piñata' is translated as 'pietà', not the other way around. Or perhaps you got it right and just assumed it was 'pietà' and not 'piñata.' Perhaps you or any other Chinese translators you might know would like to help with Babel, we obviously need them, it's a contributory community just like Wikipedia.--Malcs64

What do you think? Is that link valuable addition to Wikipedia? If not, they should be reverted. --Menchi 04:10, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I suggest reverting every single one of them. An online art community is hardly relevant to an article on babel or any of the other articles he's linked it to. Angela

Someone else who hasn't taken the time to actually note the site's relevance to the pages it was linked to. --Malcs64

He's now doing the same under the name Malcs64. Angela

You added a link to your site from the Tower of Babel article. What information does your site provide about the Tower of Babel? None. That's why it was removed. CGS 13:06, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC).

Come again? You obviously know the site inside out. --Malcs64

Errors

1)Anyone have any idea when/if the Upload function is going to return? Wondering simply, --Infrogmation 20:06, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Upload is active on the alternate server: en2.wikipedia.org Newly uploaded images won't appear immediately on www.wikipedia.org, but will be periodically synchronized until a cleaner system is set up. --Brion 20:20, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to be working there either. -- Infrogmation 21:03, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Permissions error, fixed. --Brion 22:07, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

2)Errors occur when moving pages (talk pages left behind and error messages occur) - submitted to Sourceforge.

The searchindex table seems to have been slightly corrupted by a database hiccup last night; running a repair on it. This'll take some minutes, but it should work again after that. --Brion 21:56, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

User Cyan's Talk Page

Tried to go to Cyan's talk page but all I get is a blank white screen. Anyone else see this or is it unique to me? Thanks Ark30inf 01:26, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Me too. How strange! Although I can still edit it using this link. Angela 01:35, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yep, thats how I edited it a while ago, but can't see the results. Must be something freaky. It happens to me using MSIE 6.0.2800.1106 and also with MyIE2.Ark30inf 01:41, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I can't see it on the main server, but I can see it on the alt server. I don't have a clue what the problem might be. --Camembert 01:36, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

What browser are you using? Ark30inf 01:41, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I'm getting the same thing (ie, nothing on www., but something on en2.) on Mozilla 1.2.1, Opera 6 and IE 6. --Camembert

I'm having the same problem.Vancouverguy 01:51, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

IE6 and Mozilla 1.4, again only on the main server. Angela 01:52, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It still doesn't work on Internet Explorer.Vancouverguy 02:04, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It's not going to start working just by changing browser. The PHP script is getting an error, and it is configured to return the wonderfully descriptive error message "<html><body></body></html>". I'm looking into it. If Brion happens to read this: I think it's that Skin.php line 1046 error. -- Tim Starling 02:11, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Debugging a live server is tricky. Everyone, go away! ;) -- Tim Starling 02:20, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Boy, am I ever glad the Village pump is on my watchlist; otherwise I would never have found out about Camembert's handy link. I was starting to go into withdrawal. -- Cyan 02:37, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I've fixed it, it was all Angela's fault ;) Apparently writing "[[_|hello]]" used to just link to a weird protected page, but a change in the software made it cause a PHP error. It's kind of half fixed now -- if you put a link in like that, it should just disappear. -- Tim Starling 03:06, Sep 24, 2003 (UTC)

Oh no! *Angela runs away and hides*. Sorry! Thank you for all the time you spent on fixing it Tim. :)

Some background: there had been some serious bugs in "move page" which sometimes caused pages to get renamed to just a space, at which point there were inaccessible. Tracking that down, I discovered that the functions which parsed a title wouldn't actually return a useful error condition about some invalid titles: you'd just end up with a space (underscore), and this condition was sometimes not checked for. I made them return a null instead of a counterproductive object, so any more problems caused by that bad checking should be turned up quite visibly. :) The above problem was an example. I'd already fixed it in response to a bug report from the Japanese Wikipedia, but forgot to install the updates on larousse. (I started to install them, then forgot after the source checkout process got hung. That machine is way way way overloaded.) --Brion 03:39, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Keep quiet about this, or BuddhaInside will want to have a white talk page, too.—Eloquence

Animated GIFs

I have an animation program which takes images and creates an animated .gif. In some articles, there has been a great deal of argument about which images to include. Is there any objection to have an animated image which displays a different picture every X seconds? LirQ

What happens when someone goes to print the page? CGS 17:05, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC).

I think it will just show the first frame of the animation. Angela 17:10, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

That's right, the first frame of the animation. Why would we want this type of image, LirQ? Any examples of where this would actually be beneficial? - user:zanimum

Yeah... I know that. I mean what will happen to the article when it looses the animation. If the article talks about what happens in subsequent frames it won't work well when printed. I know Wikipedia is not paper, but it is sometimes vieiwed on paper, and that is a perfectly valid way of viewing the web, and we should support it. CGS 17:43, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC).

There is an example of this here: Animation. Personally, if it helps convey the information provided in the article, I think it should be added. If it is just for show (i.e. window dressing), it should be left out. Just my $.02. —Frecklefoot 17:53, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

That page is a perfect example of something I've been wondering about: Why don't those GIFs have alt text? With alt text, wouldn't printed pages be a little bit better? Paige 19:34, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Why not just show all the pictures separately, or is that too simple for you? Pete 19:08, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Such an animation would allow their to be more than one picture shown in the space where only one picture currently is. On an ever growing list of articles, pictures are being deleted because there "isnt room for them" -- although, I personally believe there is plenty of room. (im thinking primarily of photos of persons) LirQ

I would prefer to just have the images, rather than having a series of animated images, which I think would be distracting. You can also use media: links, as used on Rachel Corrie. Martin 19:52, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

If you just want to create a slideshow then definitely not. It's tacky, won't print, and not user friendly (they have to wait to see the images and can't save a single image (frame)). CGS 19:56, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC).

I still stick to my original opinion, but want to clarify. If you just want to create a slide show, say of different photos of an actor, then no, I don't think that is a good use of animated GIFs. On the other hand, if it actually aids in explaining a topic, I think it is definately worthwhile (once again, I point to Animation). This is one vital feature we have over print tomes, we can show animation. When it helps explain a subject, it should definately be used. If it is included soley as window dressing or to cycle through largely unrelated frames, I think they should be discouraged. Lets not make one ZT rule that inhibits the value of the pedia. —Frecklefoot 20:07, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Well, if we don't use an animated gif, and people complain that there are "too many pictures"; then, we wind up not showing the images at all -- and I think thats far more tacky. LirQ

As Martin said, just put media: links to extra pictures. And I don't think "there isn't room" is a good reason to delete photos. I hope people aren't doing that. If Wikipedia needs anything, it's more pictures. I can see the possible future benefit of having "gallery" pages that are collections of photos from a group of related pages, and then provide a javascript or similar interface for flipping through them. -- Nohat 20:49, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I've never heard of anyone complaining that the 'pedia has "too many pictures." If anything, Wikipedia has a dearth of images! I don't think creating a rotating slide show of pictures is a good use of animated GIFs. As Nohat says above, a link to extra pictures is a good solution for an overabundance of images: those interested can surf to them, those not interested need not bother. I still think there are good uses for animated GIFs, but a rotating slide show isn't one of them. (Just MHO). —Frecklefoot 20:57, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Can this conversation be deleted now please? It's pretty obvious that this is a troll on the part of the original questioner. The idea that anyone has been saying "there isn't enough room" is a joke. If needed we can add a short para somewhere... "Animated GIFs are acceptable where animation is integral to the article. See animation for an example. Otherwise such animations should be discouraged as they do not transfer to paper, a probable future medium for Wikipedia." Pete 21:19, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

All those who've contributed to this discussion might enjoy looking at an animated GIF I put on Wikipedia a few months ago: Spring (device)

Adrian Pingstone 21:25, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Anniversaries

On the Anniversaries part of the main page, for today (September 22), it lists Ferdinand Magellan and Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden. Glancing at their pages, I see -nothing- to connect either of them to this date. What's that about? -- Jake 10:27, 2003 Sep 22 (UTC)

"...on September 20, 1519 Magellan's armada put to sea." "He acceded to the throne as Swedish monarch, on September 19, 1973, ..." A little bit behind, perhaps. (Too, remember that the date will vary by a day in either direction depending on where on the earth you are, so these things tend to be extra flexible.) --Brion

Joy Adamson -> Talk:Joy Adamson

Ad? -> User talk:Malcs64

edit summaries

Please remember to write a brief summary when you do your edits. This makes life a lot easier for all of us when we look at page histories and recent changes. thanks! Kingturtle 19:02, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Ya

I accidentally moved Ya to whatever russian charecter it was to conform to A, B, C, etc., and messed up the "move page" button.

And I was just going to ask for moving it back ;) Nikola 21:18, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I was going to move it back, too.Vancouverguy 21:24, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I moved it back. Worked fine for me... --Brion 21:31, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Gun and firearm

redirection of firearm to gun is problematic. Although "gun" has a technical meaning, the page treats it colloquially, subsuming "firearm". These are by no means synonyms. A "gun" article properly would contain the technical artillery-related description, as well as a note regarding its popular colloquial usage, and containing links to the appropriate articles (including firearm, and indirectly, the latter's subcategories (pistol, rifle, etc.) which unfortunately are currently present as links under the gun article. Since the existing gun article is little more than a list of subtopics, the redirection should be removed, so as to ease the opportunity to edit both appropriately. I note that "gun",properly, is a proper subset of "firearm", whereas "firearm" is only a proper subset of "gun" when "gun" is used colloquially. This is a mess from a technical point of view, and the redirection should absolutely be removed. I will be more than happy to assist in the clean-up (which is fairly simple considering the lack of substance in the existing ```gun``` article), once this redirection is removed.
- It would easier if you got a login so you had a talk page for this, but what exactly are you saying? Do you want the gun article moved to firearm? You can do that using the move this page link. If you want to write a different article at firearm, you can, just go to the page and write over the redirect. Use this link to edit the firearm page. Or was it neither of those things? Angela 00:36, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Gun and firearm

moved from VfD by 140.190.66.4

redirection of firearm to gun is problematic. Although "gun" has a technical meaning, the page treats it colloquially, subsuming "firearm". These are by no means synonyms. A "gun" article properly would contain the technical artillery-related description, as well as a note regarding its popular colloquial usage, and containing links to the appropriate articles (including firearm, and indirectly, the latter's subcategories (pistol, rifle, etc.) which unfortunately are currently present as links under the gun article. Since the existing gun article is little more than a list of subtopics, the redirection should be removed, so as to ease the opportunity to edit both appropriately. I note that "gun",properly, is a proper subset of "firearm", whereas "firearm" is only a proper subset of "gun" when "gun" is used colloquially. This is a mess from a technical point of view, and the redirection should absolutely be removed. I will be more than happy to assist in the clean-up (which is fairly simple considering the lack of substance in the existing ```gun``` article), once this redirection is removed.
- It would easier if you got a login so you had a talk page for this, but what exactly are you saying? Do you want the gun article moved to firearm? You can do that using the move this page link. If you want to write a different article at firearm, you can, just go to the page and write over the redirect. Use this link to edit the firearm page. Or was it neither of those things? Angela 00:36, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Gun and firearm

moved from VfD by User:TakuyaMurata

redirection of firearm to gun is problematic. Although "gun" has a technical meaning, the page treats it colloquially, subsuming "firearm". These are by no means synonyms. A "gun" article properly would contain the technical artillery-related description, as well as a note regarding its popular colloquial usage, and containing links to the appropriate articles (including firearm, and indirectly, the latter's subcategories (pistol, rifle, etc.) which unfortunately are currently present as links under the gun article. Since the existing gun article is little more than a list of subtopics, the redirection should be removed, so as to ease the opportunity to edit both appropriately. I note that "gun",properly, is a proper subset of "firearm", whereas "firearm" is only a proper subset of "gun" when "gun" is used colloquially. This is a mess from a technical point of view, and the redirection should absolutely be removed. I will be more than happy to assist in the clean-up (which is fairly simple considering the lack of substance in the existing ```gun``` article), once this redirection is removed.
- It would easier if you got a login so you had a talk page for this, but what exactly are you saying? Do you want the gun article moved to firearm? You can do that using the move this page link. If you want to write a different article at firearm, you can, just go to the page and write over the redirect. Use this link to edit the firearm page. Or was it neither of those things? Angela 00:36, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I believe the page at Prime Minster of the United Kingdom is just wrong. My book disagrees, as does http://www.btinternet.com/~spansoft/data/tl_brpm.txt -- both of my sources agree with one another. In particular, take a look at the dates regarding Pitt the Elder and Lord Bute. (1757) LirQ

Moving protected pages

Excuse me! How long has everyone other than me known that ordinary users can move protected pages? User:BuddhaInside at least seems to be well-acquainted with the phenomenon.

I quickly hacked both webservers so that you can't move a protected page. Sysops can't move them either, that's why it qualifies as a "quick hack". A page must be unprotected before it can be moved. Also, the error message just says "invalid article" or something. -- Tim Starling 04:18, Sep 25, 2003 (UTC)

I've known since 3am (UTC) today when he moved the main page. It came as a bit of a shock. Thanks for fixing it so quickly. Perhaps tomorrow I will not do anything that causes you to need to fix anything. Angela 04:23, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Did moving of unprotected pages by ordinary users get broken in the process? Tells me "This action cannot be performed on this page." for marine sunfish, which is uncontroversial so far as I know. :-) Stan 04:24, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. Brion's working on it now. Don't do a cut-and-paste move, just wait until its working again. -- Tim Starling 04:33, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Should be fine now. --Brion 04:38, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Works good for me, thanks! Stan 05:08, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Was going to wait until logo revisions settle down a bit (foolish hope that we choose something other than the puzzle Death Star) but I guess it will have to be the puzzle for the icon. Will give it a shot. Fuzheado 16:27, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I believe the page at Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is just wrong. My book disagrees, as does http://www.btinternet.com/~spansoft/data/tl_brpm.txt -- both of my sources agree with one another. In particular, take a look at the dates regarding Pitt the Elder and Lord Bute. (1757) LirQ

David G. Monette

This is about as good a place as any to ask I guess; I was about to start looking up info to write a stub on David G. Monette (on the wanted articles list for over a year). Turns out he's head of a company that manufactures mouthpieces for musical instruments. He gets 300 Google hits with the initial. (There are 4000 without, but most seem to be about an unrelated artist). Is this really encyclopedia-worthy? It would be aggravating to do the looking-up for an article that's just going to be deleted anyway. - Hephaestos 19:13, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

IMHO, any person that gets more than 200 google hits is a definite inclusion. So yes. BL 20:33, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- In that case, I guess I need one quickly. Google gets about 2000 hits on "Andre Engels", an estimated 95% of which are indeed about me (guess made by finding that of the first 50, 48 are about me). Andre Engels 14:02, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

200 is way too low! BL, you get more than that and as Martin recently pointed out, he gets more than 500. 3.8 million Google hits Angela 20:51, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I want to delete articles

In the Catalan Wikipedia we have more than 60 wrong pages that we want to delete but nobody can do it. Where I have to request the permition? Llull 18:26, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

As the Catalan Wikipedia is running on the old software, you need a password to delete articles. I think you would probably have to contact Jimbo ([1]) for this unless the developers are able to give it out. Angela 18:33, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)

Down with fiction

We have an article on O.W.L.s but not on O levels. This is depressing. -- Tarquin 09:47, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Understandable, but possibly regrettable, consequence of people preferring to write about what they like rather than what they hated. Also, the vast majority of Wikipedia's UK contributors are probably too young to have taken O Levels. --Morven 18:28, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Well you know what you have to do, Tarquin. CGS 19:32, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC).

Despair not! There is one on GCSE (which tends to back up Morven's point) and a rather stubby one on GCE. Now lie down on the couch while I make O Level a redirect to to GCE.... DJ Clayworth 20:15, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I made O level a redirect too. That's the link as spelled in O.W.L.s. --FvdP

What are "other rights"

I took this statement from a photo description page at Wikipedia: Released under the GFDL; all other rights reserved. What other rights might exist to be reserved? - Marshman 02:52, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It might mean moral rights but I don't think those apply in the US. In the UK at least, even if you sign over the copyright to someone else, you still retain moral rights, but IANAL so I can't explain exactly what that means. Angela 02:58, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)
- Your above statement implies you might mistakenly believe that contributors to Wikipedia "sign over" the copyright to their works. This is not the case. As a trivial example, you remain the copyright holder of everything you submit to Wikipedia. -BuddhaInside
  - No, I didn't mean in relation to Wikipedia. I know you don't sign over copyright here. Angela 04:58, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)
    - Fair enough. Many make that mistake, but Angela is not among them. -BuddhaInside
It means you still have the right to, say, draw a mustache on the picture and sell it to the National Enquirer for big bux. You could even sell them the unmodified pic if they were gullible enough and didn't know about the GFDLed copy. :-) The practice is called dual licensing in the open source world, a number of projects do it. Stan 04:14, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- Well IANAL either, but it seems to me anuyone could now draw that moustache on "my" photo contribution and sell the picture to anyone else. I guess I need to read up more on it; just seems to me "copyrights" are more than a bit limited once the item enters GFDLand. - Marshman
  - As a more useful example: say you write some articles and release them to Wikipedia under the terms of the GFDL license. Other people can distribute and modify the articles under the terms of the GFDL, but they can't do what you can: rework them into a book (a derivitive work) that you sell under more 'traditional' copyright terms not compatible with the GFDL: no copies, no derivitive works, etc allowed without your permission (and perhaps paying you for it). Or, you can release your works also under other similar, but not compatible, licenses such as those promoted by the Creative Commons. As the copyright holder, you retain all the rights given to you by copyright law that you don't give away, and a license only gives away certain specific rights under certain specific conditions. (Note too that if your articles are extended by other people, they have copyright interest in their additions, as you do in yours.) IANAL blah blah. --Brion 07:20, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)
    - Aren't these other rights already implied in GFDL? Nikola 07:55, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- Implied? When one says that to lawyers and judges long legal briefs are no dobut then to be produced to argue either way! Just to make clear that the work is not being put in the public domain or that moral rights might be waived in certain jursdictions etc., an author usually reserves all rights. This is more useful and necessary in Universal Copyright Convention copyright notice states (like Russia). Yes in some jurisdictions one will have more or less rights than others (US only recognizes moral rights in visual artwork see, i.e., Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990. Otherwise I would basically agree with Brian above and IAAL though remember: Wikipedia does not give legal advice even at the Village Pump (this is the translation of Brian's "blah blah" above). Alex756 18:57, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Ad? -> User talk:Malcs64

Main Page discussion - deleted
Joy Adamson -> Talk:Joy Adamson

Need to Rename Image File

I uploaded a photo of a person awhile back. I named the file after the person's name, but spelled it incorrectly. I used the mispelled image name in the article about the person, so everything there looks okay. But I don't feel comfortable leaving the image spelled incorrectly. Is there a way to rename an image? What I would prefer to do is upload the image file again under the correct spelling and fix the link in the article. Then, delete the old image file. But to delete the image file, I believe I need to put it up for a vote for deletion. Does all of this sound oaky to you folks? Of course, I can't do any of this until uploads are reactivated. --Fernkes 00:43, Sep 25, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that's all exactly right. Upload a new one, fix the link, and list on WP:VFD. -- Tim Starling 00:47, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Radical revertism

Can someone please revert radical behaviorism ? It has had (unintentional ?) gibberish added. Thanks - Vaughan 20:48, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Read wikipedia:revert and DIY :) Martin

- User Cyan's Talk Page--> deleted - fixed.
- Errors--> deleted - fixed.

Average article size is still just a stub

"The mean article size was about 1997 bytes, or roughly 332 words: the median article size was smaller, at roughly 980 bytes, or roughly 163 words." From: Wikipedia:Size_comparisons.

Meaning, that this is the average size article, and that something like this article is about the halfway mark -- roughly half of all articles are smaller. It's a stub though-- which is my point. Those in the m:deletionist camp (sorry I been out for a few) -- who tend to want to get rid of articles on the basis of their stubbiness alone might try looking at this logically. Meaning like it or not, much of that 6,907,607 in Wikipedia, is made of stubs. -戴&#30505sv 19:16, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)

Little Gull and Write-through are not stubs. They're not an in-depth treatise on the species' migratory patterns or a paper on the most efficient use of write-through caches, but they're both informative encyclopedia entries. --Brion 19:41, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Exactly my point. Some would call write-through (as it was when I used it as an example) too small to be called an "article". -戴&#30505sv 19:51, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)

Who are these mysterious "some"? --Brion 19:52, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

They are the wikifaithless deletionists, and they are many- I stand corrected. GTR, BBL戴&#30505sv 19:55, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)

Are these real people, or your mental image of people whose actual opinions on these pages you don't know? --Brion 20:07, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I wouldn't call those stubs. It's "articles" like Josh Kalis that deletionists have a problem with. A deletionist.

Well, considering that that anon user wasnt a wack-- he did actually edit a few other unrelated articles, we can assume that its not totally nonsense. What the heck I did a google search and came up with some info-- I added a link, made it a redirect to a more general category-- Whaddyaknow? Theres no skateboarder category. So I added one. I added Tony Hawk-- who I think is related to the subject, though I cant be sure, and the micro-granularity problem of a Josh Kalis article was solved in just as much time as it would have taken to add it to VFD --A typical salvationist

"When memes go bad"... Martin 20:56, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

A little sour from recent mailwacks, but not actually "bad". -戴&#30505sv 21:04, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)

Skateboarder and skateboarding would probably be better off discussed in one article. Pete 21:41, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Erik Zachte's great work on his statistics script (visible at http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm ) adds more detailed stats... one trend (see bottom of page) is that the proportional of articles less than 64b,128b,256b,512b,1024b,2048b are all heading down over time... yes there are bazillions of stubs, but they are slowly but surely being eroded away (proportionally speaking!). We are winning! Pete 21:41, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Where's the Find a random short article button so deletionists and others can find and expand random stubs when bored?:) Has to beat looking in recent changes, which by definition are something someone just worked on and is therefore more likely than average to continue working on and expand. JamesDay 22:18, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:shortpages. Random? Close your eyes and click randomly! Martin 22:27, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Sir T.B. Library

I just don't understand why my contribution on Sir T.B.'s library has been voted for deletion. Surely it is of interest to read a SHORT sample of the library contents of one of early modern Europe's encyclopaedists ? Perhaps no-one recognises the titles ?? But i discern exactly where this this grandiose project is coming from by the fact that of the 100000's of articles written as of yet not one upon the Working Class!! (see Proletariat perhaps) . What an indictment of the interests and sociology of Wiki Contributers!! I am rapidly becoming disillusioned with the elitism of wikipedia and shall broadcast these facts far and wide across the web should this page be removed,.The off-hand way by which decisions are made is a bit disturbing. Contact the poster, don't vote behind their back ! The Norwikian

Michael Lerner

I remember writing an article a while back on this dude-- I was looking for it--it's not there anymore, nor is it in "deleted pages"-- can a developer please take a look, whenever time permits? Im curious as to who deleted it and why.--戴&#30505sv 00:35, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

If you mean the Rabbi (not the actor), it's at Rabbi_Michael_Lerner Finlay McWalter 00:45, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Thanks. Strange-- Google searches picked up nada on "Lerner". Hm. 戴&#30505sv 00:46, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Unjustified ban

Am I the only person here who is bothered by the recent banning of EntmootsOfTrolls? The stated reason for the ban was that he supposedly made a death threat against RK. However, anybody who reads what he wrote, and examines the context in which he wrote it, and who chooses to understand the English language, can see that it was merely a rhetorical flourish, and by no stretch of the imagination any kind of a threat. I appreciate that EoT was not the easiest contributor to get along with, but the same is true of many others here, not least RK. EoT has clearly been treated unjustly. I can't be the only person who has noticed this. Why will nobody else stand up for him? Are you all afraid of RK's hectoring? Please go to User talk:EntmootsOfTrolls/ban and make a fuss. GrahamN 19:41, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Fuck off, GrahamN. EntmootOfTrolls had a long history of vandalizing pages with his bizarre ideas, getting into flame wars and revision-warns, and has made multiple death threats. To see you support such hateful action indicates that you yourself have no place in polite society. Perhaps you woudln't mind if someone made similar death threats to you? Fuck off, seriously. RK 00:31, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

<< Am I the only person here who is bothered by the recent banning of EntmootsOfTrolls? >>

In a word, no.

<< The stated reason for the ban was that he supposedly made a death threat against RK. >>

Clearly, a bum rap.

<< Why will nobody else stand up for him? >>

Ultimately, most Wikipedians defer to the decisions of Jimbo Wales, and EofT made a point of challenging Jimbo's authority. What can I say? You don't tug on Superman's cape; you don't spit into the wind; you don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger; and you don't mess around with Jim.

<< Are you all afraid of RK's hectoring? >>

I know that I'm not, but perhaps I should be in light of what happened to EofT. In fact, RK made a point of adding me to his "list of people risking a ban," for reasons that still leave me shaking my head. -- NetEsq 20:18, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

A bum rap? He makes repeated death threats, against more than one user, and you support him? It is sickening to see so many hateful people on this forum. RK

As far as I am concerned EOT's ban was perfectly justified and long overdue. FearÉIREANN 20:24, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

EofT admitted to Jimbo in private email that he was former(banned)users 24/142. Jim decided that it was serendipitious that the previous ban be 'reinforced' just in time to cool things down with RK. I objected to the disparity of treatment, but he was banned already, and acting like an ass, in excess of reason. --戴&#30505sv 20:57, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)p.s.:I should mention that this was all blown up when EofT got carried away with making /ban pages in RK's namespace-- something which he continued to do for a day or so after Jim asked him not to. Further issues with RK can be dealt with on the meta at 'community case RK.' or something like.戴&#30505sv 21:01, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I did not interpret what EofT (supposedly -- the edit on Talk:Militant Islam was made by an anonymous IP) wrote as a death threat, but I did interpret it as a clear and very substantial breach of Wikipedia:Wikiquette. I also believe that RK has committed severe breaches of Wikiquette in the past. The two users seem to have been in a permanent flamewar, and while I don't know if there was enough evidence to ban EofT, I certainly hope that he will re-examine his behavior and then write a letter to Jimbo, who is usually quick to unban people who promise to follow the rules. As for RK, he seems to have mellowed down somewhat, and I hope that he will understand that he is taken much more seriously that way. If you are in contact with EofT, please explain to him that he can participate again if he focuses on being a productive member of the community rather than engaging in personal vendettas.—Eloquence 21:15, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Am I the only person here who is bothered by the recent banning of EntmootsOfTrolls?

No you are not.

The stated reason for the ban was that he supposedly made a death threat against RK. However, anybody ... who chooses to understand the English language, can see that it was merely a rhetorical flourish

I choose to try to understand English language, and I did not see death threats.

And I deny that the sky is blue. But it doesn't change any facts. RK 00:31, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Why will nobody else stand up for him?

I did. Nobody cared.

Are you all afraid of RK's hectoring?

RK already called a ban on me. I am mostly tired. And no one seem to really care. I am very upset of disparity of treatments. But then... so what ? Anthère

Anthere, you did have a severe problem; for some time you kept pushing your religious and political views into science articles, and you refused to work with the rest of us, and you refused to even allow for the possbility of compromise. After a long time, you eventually stopped your bad behaviour, and I stopped calling for you to be banned. I reached out to you to make peace, you reached out to me...and then for reasons I still don;t understand, you started flooding the WikiEn list with personal attacks on me, and cries of persecution. Then, to top it off, you started defending a mentally ill person who makes death threats to push his views. Frankly, between your delusions of persecution, your pushing away of someone reaching out to you, and your support of a very sick person, you have lost all sympathy. RK 00:31, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

RK's POVing of text is a big problem, particularly when he almost alone thinks his edits NPOV. There were however two differences with EoT that didn't apply with RK. EoT's series of /anti-RK pages was distasteful in the extreme and so broke every tenet of wikilove as to be mindboggling. RK, for all his faults never sunk to that level. Secondly EoT was already a banned user on wiki under false pretences, ie., pretending not to be a banned user. RK has not been banned and has never hit his identity or used a false one. Had it been RK who created a series of anti-EoT pages and been a banned user pretending to be an unbanned user, then I would 100% support his banning. It isn't a case of EoT being singled out in a battle where both acted outrageously, but EoT going further than RK in his targeting of a user which a series of attack pages and using a false identity while being banned. That was the difference.

RK's serious misbehaviour is a problem wiki has to face up with, but in this instance he was the less guilty party who showed marginally (and I stress marginally) more restraint. RK walked along the line, EoT crossed it and so deserved to go. And RK will too if doesn't restrain his POV and continue personally attacking users. FearÉIREANN 00:11, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It is your serious misbehaviour that I am more concerned with. I reached out to you in openness and honestly, and tried my best to work with you. You wrote back claiming that you wanted to put any disputes behind us, and that you were happy to try to create a productive and polite relationship. And yet out of the blue you started making a new series of personal attacks on me on the WikiEn list. That is when I gave up on you. You say one thing, and do another. As for your claims about my "NPOV problems", the facts speak for themselves. My work on Ethics, [[Philosophy, Judaism, and a myriad of Israel-Palestinian articles is very well accepted. You can claim otherwise, but the indisputable fact is that the great majority of what I write eventually finds consensus an support among Wikipedians, and still remains in all those articles. And unlike others (including you) I have made serious concessions on controversial articles. Your holier than thou attitude is wearing thin, o pious one.RK 00:31, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I've proposed an alteration to our (rather sketchy and underdefined) banning procedures at Wikipedia:Bans and blocks, to mirror a similar, highly successful, h2g2 policy. I beg for feedback on the relevant talk page. Martin 23:35, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

beg??? Martin, a chara, since when do you beg? :-) FearÉIREANN 00:11, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Disambiguation bot

Rob Hooft has written a bot to simplify Disambiguations. Given the name of a disambiguation page, it gets the pages that link to that page, shows the disambiguators, and lets the user choose one of them or 'none', then changing that page.

It has been used with success on nl:, and I would like to ask whether it would be okay to use it here as well? Andre Engels 09:01, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

How does it change the page? I mean, if a link is to [[English]], does it change the text to [[English language]] or put it as a hidden link: [[English language|English]]? I would much prefer the second - that's what I tend to do when manually fixing links to disambiguation pages. The first option can lead to some very strange sentences. -- sannse 09:07, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It does the second. Andre Engels 09:19, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

As an example, I have used the robot on 11 (out of a larger number) from the pages linking to 'Java'. See http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=80.129.93.237 for the results. Andre Engels 09:51, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

This looks as though it could be really useful. If the technical types give the go-ahead I would be very interested in learning how to use this (I might take a bit of teaching - I don't know the first thing about bots). I do a lot of manual disambiguation fixing, so something that makes the work easier would be welcome. -- sannse 10:43, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Active

There having been no objections, I have decided to go ahead, and this morning started with disambiguating Japanese and about half of English. I will discuss with Rob about sending sannse a copy, I think that will be done in a few days. Andre Engels 11:39, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

How is a page de-NPOV'd?

move to wikipedia talk:NPOV dispute

Will do. I removed the notice before Marshman saw the page, but I'll point this out in talk. Thanks! Skybunny 02:19, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Sir T.B. Library

Moved to VfD

Ya

now solved, moved to Talk:Ya

Animated gifs

Discussion about animated gifs moved to Wikipedia_talk:Image use policy. Quick summary: we like animated gifs for animations, but we're not keen on slide shows

How is a page de-NPOV'd?

moved to wikipedia talk:NPOV dispute

Signatures link to ?

When I receive a talk page message, I am not notified. LirQ

I believe that signatures should link to the talk page -- since, almost always when I click on a signature -- it is to write that person a message. LirQ

Really? I'm usually just interested in "what kind of idiot would make such a statement" ;^). Anyway, easy enough to click on discuss this page after you get to the user page. - Marshman 02:21, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Lir on that one; I assumed it was in the development queue already though. - Hephaestos 02:24, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Good arguments for both, but I think bringing up the user page is 1) more logical and 2) more useful for newbies/passersby. For hardcore users, most likely we know who these people are, but we want to leave a message. But it's just one click away. Or you could develop a new sig (five tildes?) that put both in there... like this. Fuzheado (talk...)

Oooh. I like that one. Ark30inf 02:34, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Via edit conflict with two alike thinkers: I think there should be a link to both -- the name links to the user page, and a little speech bubble icon links to the talk page. Can someone draw a little speech bubble icon please? -- Tim Starling 02:35, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

How big? - Hephaestos 02:41, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I love the speech bubble idea. Angela 02:57, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

So that it looks nice when it's inline with text. I think that's about 16x16, but you can use some artistic license in picking the size. -- Tim Starling 02:53, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

How's this?

- Hephaestos 03:06, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

That should do the trick. -- Tim Starling 05:23, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Some alternatives: File:Talk-icon-words.png and File:Talk-icon-nowords.png and File:Talk-icon-words-light.png Fuzheado 06:23, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I like that first one the best of all of them. (I mean Fuzheado's first one, all three of 'em make mine look kind of sad <g>) - Hephaestos 06:27, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

You can't really use transparency with them, because they are greyscale. And I don't think IE does alpha channels. So here's a multiplied by ffffec version: File:Talk-icon-words-yellow.png. -- Tim Starling 07:50, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Maybe it should be transparent. It might look a mess with loads of white blobs all over the talk page. Angela 03:11, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Your wish is my command. *smirk* - Hephaestos 03:15, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I was not arguing that signatures should not link to a user page -- I was arguing that they should link to a talk page (as well). Two clicks can be a very long time for some users who experience ungodly amounts of lag. LirQ (talk)

The last time this topic came up user:hfastedge made some sort of alternate-signature-for-talk-page patch, I didn't like it and made a patch to add a direct edit-the-user's-talk-page on user page display (so click-to-user-page and click-to-edit-talk-page, same number of clicks as click-to-talk-page and click-to-edit-talk-page). There was no other feedback to either post, and nothing went into the main source. I don't remember when it was exactly, but it should be in the archives for wikitech-l sometime during the summer. --Brion 02:46, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Maybe these: [2] and [3]? Angela 02:57, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Bugger click-number conservation, I want pictures! :) MediaWiki's interface is far too textual. -- Tim Starling 03:14, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Okay, this is now operational in a rudimentary way, on my test directory: [4]. Thanks for the icon, Fuzheado. -- Tim Starling 16:20, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Oooo! I like the talk bubble! But shouldn't the bubble point the other direction? —Frecklefoot 16:30, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The image just comes straight from the upload directory on en2, so if you change it here, it will change there. -- Tim Starling 16:34, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Would it also replace the not-nearly-as-cool "(Talk)" next to names on the Recent changes page? -- Paige File:Talk-icon-words-yellow.png 19:20, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

That's probably a good idea. The only drawback I can see with this feature is that the image increases the line spacing slightly. -- Tim Starling 11:07, Sep 27, 2003 (UTC)

This one is a tad bit smaller. File:Testwords.PNG LirQ

I'd prefer the smaller one, just so as not to increase line spacing. Angela 14:55, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes after seeing how it spaces, we should probably go smaller. Here's a 16x14 pixel icon, just to try on for size. -- Fuzheado File:Talk-icon-words-16.png

That looks great! How are you on jigsaw pieces? The current icons for the new logo are not very clear (see here) -- sannse File:Talk-icon-words-16.png

Move page

Could someone who has the authority to do this change George Houston Reid to George Houstoun Reid? This is the correct spelling. Dr Adam Carr 11:22, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Done, but nobody has any special "authority" to do this. Anybody can "move" a page, you should see it when you are logged in as an option on the sidebar. --Lexor 11:28, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Read wikipedia:move :) Martin 13:09, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Questions about ozone layer -> wikipedia:reference desk

Signatures link to talk pages

Moved to TestWikipedia - Talk:Signatures

scientific opinion of global warming

The page scientific opinion of global warming was created by User:William M. Connolley. I merged it with global warming, but then he seperated it again. Should these be one article or two? LDan 00:24, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I'd say it belongs in the global warming article. Have you asked him why he's seperated it? --Robert Merkel 00:43, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Let us discuss it at Talk:Scientific opinion of global warming -- Cyan 01:15, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Instant deletion candidates

If those of us who are non-admin find a candidate for instant deletion, where should we list it? Presumably not VfD, and putting it on 'Vandalism' seems excessive if it is an isolated instance. DJ Clayworth 17:19, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Changing it to a link to Wikipedia:Deleted test is the second-easiest thing to do. (With the 'What links here', anyone can then see what links to the page.) Theoretically, admins will often (occasionally) check what links to the page, and delete it. The easiest thing to do is adding your name to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. Κσυπ Cyp 17:44, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

3 nonsense pages linked there, deleted just now. All three over a month old, but at least it worked. Suppose it would work faster, if more people used it... (The Wikipedia:Deleted test page was made before there were lots of admins.) Κσυπ Cyp 17:50, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Or just apply to be an admin. CGS 18:05, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC).

Moving protected pages

Deleted - fixed

Finding Subpages?

Anyone have suggestions on how I would find out if a User or Talk page has subpages if those subpages are not linked on the main User or Talk page? Is this possible? --Flockmeal 03:59, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Ask on Wikipedia:SQL query requests. -- Tim Starling 04:47, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

asdfjkl

Does "asdfjkl" mean anything? -SV

asdfjkl

Does "asdfjkl" mean anything? -SV

Don't even try you dumby! according to the Urban Dictionary. Angela 01:01, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

See http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=asdfjkl%3B

how to submit a article

I am want to know how to submit a new page.

favicon.ico

Having just switched to en2, I've noticed that the bookmark icon (also used in Mozilla et al. for tabs) differs between the servers; which one is intended - en2's or www's?
James F. 22:59, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

They look the same to me. Angela 23:02, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Really? www's is (or at least appears as on my machine) a globe with a black 'w'; en2's is a white square with a 'w' on it.

James F. 23:23, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Try clearing your cache. Angela 23:31, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Ah. Oops.

*feel embarassed*

When was the icon changed, then?

James F. 23:49, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I might have brought it into line with all the other Wiki*edia sites while rearranging files on September 9, but I have no memory of doing so. Hooray for the death of the old ugly icon! Now somebody'll probably make us replace it with some gaudy multicolored sphere-let or something. :P --Brion 00:19, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

wiki-L

I tried to post on wiki-L; but to to avail -- it is clogged with logo spam. When I go "offsite", perhaps by google search perhaps by viewing a mailing list -- I am then logged out. When I return to the login page I am autologged in...but first I have to return there -- why am I not continuously logged in? LirQ

It's another side-effect of the www/en2 dichotomy. Martin 13:37, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

When you want to return to the site type "en2.wikipedia.org" not "www.wikipedia.org" at the address bar and you should stay logged in all the time. Pete 17:12, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Uploads

All of a sudden, the upload file page is giving me this error message: "Sorry, uploads have been disabled on this server." Anyone know anything about this? Tannin 10:35, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It still seems to work on en2. -- Tim Starling 11:07, Sep 27, 2003 (UTC)

You'll want http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload . It's one of the consequences of the www/en2 dichotomy. Martin 11:21, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Thankyou, gentlemen. Obviously, I missed an anouncement somewhere. (Gahhh - this life thing: it's obviously not leaving me enough time to keep up with the 'pedia. Have to give it up if I'm going to get any quality editing time.) Would it not be a good idea to update the "upload file" links in the stylesheet, then? Tannin 12:30, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Should now redirect your automatically. Of course, if you're not logged in yet on en2 it'll complain at you. --Brion 19:08, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Could someone give us a little more detail on this disabled upload, please.

Has the www.wikipedia.org Upload Page been permanently disabled or will it come back when an upgrade is done next week? Thanks,

Adrian Pingstone 12:38, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Uploaded files are stored as files on the disk, not in the database, and so far we don't have a networked filesystem set up between the two servers. So, each has a copy, and uploads are only enabled on one, and the other one is periodically refreshed. It wouldn't be safe to let them both try to deal with uploads when they have separate copies; they'd get very confused when it comes to moving around files when they are replaced, for instance. On top of this, en2 is where all logins are directed; if you're logged in on www it's only because you left a "remember my password" cookie there.

This is not intended as a permanent situation; it's a temporary way to let contributors access the site through the server that's less congested without flooding it with all the traffic from random visitors. The upgrades, hopefully, will bring larousse's (www.wikipedia.org) performance up to reasonable levels and en2 won't be needed. Once we get a separate database server (perhaps a bit further off) we can then use both pliny and larousse as front-end web servers for all languages which could split the traffic between each other randomly (a round-robin DNS entry, for instance, could send each request to one or the other server), but to make it transparent we'd have to get them to share the uploads and session data on a networked filesystem, which we'd have to make sure is not a security problem. --Brion 19:08, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Questions about ozone layer -> wikipedia:reference desk

Move page--> Read wikipedia:move

Instant deletion candidates --> See Wikipedia:Deleted test.

scientific opinion of global warming --> See Talk:Scientific opinion of global warming

Signatures link to talk pages --> Moved to TestWikipedia - Talk:Signatures

Images uploaded and now broken

I'm confused. I uploaded two images earlier this afternoon, for whom the pages still exist (and the pictures WORKED earlier today), but the links are broken now if I try to inline the image. They are: media:Dealey-plaza-annotated-thumbnail.png and media:Dealey-plaza-annotated.png. Am I missing something? Was something done to them?

(I don't know the proper way to actually put in a link to an image 'information' page rather than inserting the whole dang thing in - I used 'media' to do what I just did; but in any case, I'm sure this gets the idea across).

Skybunny 05:30, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Announcements. --Brion 05:34, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Ah, thanks - another page I wasn't familiar with. Till now. Does explain the speediness today though. :) Skybunny 05:38, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

en2.wikipedia.org

Oh, en2.wikipedia.org is so fast! Every article is loaded just like ordinary web pages. Amazing. This shows how much wikipedia is heavily loaded. Anyway, thank you for setting up this. I only hope this lasts for long time. -- Taku 04:39, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Please frogive my ignorance, but what is en2.wikipedia.org? Does it mirror www.wikipedia.org contents? Is it the additional server we've been hearing about? Do contributions there make it to the original 'pedia? WIll it eventually be merged with the main 'pedia? Do we need to create a new account for en2? Should we use it over the old 'pedia (to lighten its load)? Sorry for all the questions, but I just started hearing about it and have no idea what it actually is. But visiting it I've seen that it is substantially faster. —Frecklefoot 14:31, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Announcements - en2 is [pliny] is the database server is the server for all the non-english wikipedias. And it is fast :-) andy 15:06, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It's only fast because the vast, vast majority of hits are going to poor beleagered larousse on www.wikipedia.org and we've turned off a lot of features that hit the database. :( The big cpu upgrades should be coming next week... --Brion 15:14, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Since September 24th. Contributions make it to the original wiki. You will not need to create another account. But I'm thinking, unless you have a mild connection, you won't be able to truly appreciate en2. I'm on 37.2 kbps... finally my connection is worth something. :0} Usedbook 15:17, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It appears www.wikipedia.org is now fast while en2 is incrediblly slow. Taku 23:18, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The move to en2 is a minus when going between wiki's (for example when one is working on interwiki links) - when I come in on www I am not logged in; if I login, I do so on en2. The effect is that each time I follow an Interwiki link to en:, I am not logged in, and have to go to en2 by hand to see the page as a logged-in user. Andre Engels 22:40, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I've just realised what has been annoying me when I've been reading en2 -- the dates are in the wrong format for my liking, and on investigation I've discovered that the date preferences options have disappeared! Can someone put them back, please? Arwel 19:16, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

So-called the www/en2 dichotomy is really annoying everyone. I don't blame administraters of the sever gvien the heavy load of wikipedia.org, we don't have other choices. From what I heard, hoepfully the new sever to be intrdouced next week solves this problem. -- Taku

Lists of postal and zip codes of the world?

I just found the page Lists of postal and zip codes of the world. It links to many long or extremely incomplete zip code listings. I have nothing against lists, but this is just too much. LDan 22:16, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Just lists of zip codes hurt nothing. No? What's wrong with them? -- Taku

And looks like could be a pretty useful list to me. I cannot imagine why you would think it "too much" except it will be a lot of work by someone to make it useful. - Marshman

There is precedent. Someone posted an almost but not quite full listing of Finnish postal codes. It went through VFD and was duly deleted. I would just list the pages on votes for deletion and see what happens. I for one am against lists of numbers. We could have list of postal codes, area codes and memory addresses on the foobar-32 computer, but I don't think we should. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 23:01, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Qs

How about allowing a user who uses Watchlist to make use of the <diff> function seen in recent Changes? Also, my account has a habit of logging me out. LirQ

See wikipedia:bug reports to request new features

See wikipedia:how to log in for advice on login problems.

hth. hand. Martin 13:11, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

How are feature requests akin to bug reports? LirQ

Because both are done through Sourceforge, and the instructions for doing this are on the wikipedia:bug reports page. Angela 17:01, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Nupedia.com/Nupedia.org are gone, please bring it back

It appears that http://nupedia.org and http://nupedia.com are both gone, which is a great pity because I was trying to port across some of the articles in process, see Wikipedia:Nupedia and Wikipedia. There was no mention that this site was going to disappear, no announcement that it was about to go. Most unceremonius.

In discussion with Jimbo and Mav, see Wikipedia talk:Nupedia and Wikipedia it appears that I could port the old articles in progress under the GFDL, further, there were actually at least one officially posted article that hadn't been transferred at all. Not mention all the attribution links for the source material, history of Nupedia, etc. that are now gone and old contributors to Nupedia might be a little miffed about this. Can we get it back please (at very least the content of the database so I can continue the port)? I certainly hope something like this doesn't happen to wikipedia some day. --Lexor 11:24, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The server which hosted Nupedia died a couple of weeks ago. It's been restored to life, but not all hosted sites are back online yet. --Brion 18:12, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Google Search

Yes, I know. Im back to all my old trouble causing tricks. First talk bubbles, now this. When the wiki is using the google engine, why not have the search automatically go there -- rather than first making one confirm that they actually want to search? In fact, why not always use the google engine (at least until the server issues are resolved) -- my problems seem to usually go away as soon as the switch to google is made. (well, not really -- i still get lots of lag) LirQ

Contributions page when logged in/out

I am trying to develop a mini-application to keep track of my Wikipedia edit count. I noticed that the data I got from using the unix "curl" command was giving me a substantially higher count than the source that I copied out of my web browser. I finally realized that the issue at hand is that the Contributions page for some reason shows less contributions when I am logged in vs. when I am logged out! What is the reason for this and can I fix it? Ed Cormany 03:53, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

User name

How do I change my User name without losing continuity of my homepage etc? I am beginning to think that constantly citing myself as "Dr Adam Carr" looks rather formal and pretentious. Could someone who knows how to do this change me to just "Adam Carr"? Thanx. 210.10.32.12 08:36, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC) Oops that should be Dr Adam Carr 08:41, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC) (I am STILL getting logged out when I press "Save Page" and I know I am not alone in this problem).

If you want to change your actual user name, a developer needs to do it. Normally Tim does them but he is away until 5 October. If you leave the request here another developer may deal with it but there's no guarantee. You could also try Brion's to-do list on Meta. The alternative is just to change the name you sign with. You can set this in your preferences. This means that when you sign, whatever name you choose will show up, but Dr Adam Carr will still show up in the history of the page etc. Angela 08:43, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Angela thankyou, that is a good solution, I didn't realise I could do that.

Could you direct the bugs committee or whoever to the "getting logged out when pressing 'Save Page'" problem? Others have told me they have the same problem. Adam 08:55, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The bugs committee may be found at Sourceforge. Bug reports has instructions. Angela 08:58, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Do you check the box "Remember my password across sessions" when you log in? If not, you should. It solved my problem with that feature. BL 17:00, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Privatisation

Would somebody please protect privatization. There is an edit war. LirQ

Please could you try and discuss this with 172 and Punkche before it gets as far as needing protection? Angela 22:31, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

172 will not discuss with me. Punkche appears to agree with me, but 172 will doubtless revert it back, soon enough. LirQ

Have you tried discussing it with him? Angela

Yes. He will not discuss with me. LirQ

I'm not going to bother. Discussing anything with Adam is futile; and I simply don't care enough about the article to bother wasting hours, days, and weeks at war with Adam over a few sentences. Other users have engaged in edit wars with him many times a day, over periods as long as several weeks (usually stopping when his latest identity is banned), over a single word; so I have no reason to be optimistic about reasoning with him about something even as trivial as a few factual sentences. Look, this person is just downright anal. He will never get it through his head that a piece of information or two is important if he doesn't understand its importance prior to reading it the first time. The introduction that states that privitization has been catching on in the past couple of decades, a trend counter to the one of the preceeding era, which saw a wave of nationalization throughout all regions of the world, is better in that it offers more information. If other people don't realize this right away, I don't have the energy to bother with it. 172 00:42, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Lirq, please review Wikipedia:Staying cool when the editing gets hot. Kingturtle 08:47, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Personally I feel that if you can't be bothered to explain and discuss your edits, then you shouldn't be bothered to engage in edit war over them. Jaw-jaw is better than war war. Martin 17:09, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

favicon.ico

Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump/October 2003 archive 1

edit summaries

Uploads

Moved to www/en2_dichotomy

Ustashe

User known as Mir Harven warned on talk page of Ustashe that "This page will be completely changed in near future, say, two weeks". I ask that some of experienced users put the page on their watchlists, as it is excellent NPOV. You suceeded in making two Serbs and two Croats to agree on this topic :) and I would hate to see it completely changed, especially by someone like MH (and don't intend allowing that anyway). Nikola 07:28, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Unilaterally revamping an article completely without other writer's willing inputs is not how Wiki works. I hope that's not what he meant by "will be completely changed" (although I see no other interpreation). --Menchi 08:15, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Seems entirely wiki in spirit to me. be bold in completely rewriting entire articles, if you think it will result in a better article, and a better encyclopedia. If people didn't want their text edited mercilessly, they should have submitted it some place else.

Might be best to wait until Mir actually makes any changes (if sie does). When sie does, you can drop it on wikipedia:peer review to get more eyeballs - but only if you think that's necessary. In any case, often by carefully merging an original with a bold rewrite, one can acquire an article that is better than either alone. Martin 11:20, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Watchlist

How can I set my watchlist to always check over the past day, rather than the past hour? LirQ

I think the only way is to bookmark this link and use that instead of the normal Special:Watchlist link. Either that or trim your watchlist down to less than 250 pages. Angela 16:40, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yah, Ive got it bookmarked. But now Im wondering why I have to have it bookmarked. It didnt use to be that way. LirQ

Yeah, it used to show a day's worth of edits by default, but it was changed to be less of a strain on the server, I believe. --Camembert

Performance issues, unfortunately. Keep posting a link to Wikipedia:Donations whenever it seems appropiate and donate yourself if you can, and we'll get that third server. Pete 16:50, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Ending a neutrality dispute

Newbie question, but what's the best way to go about determining whether there is enough consensus to end a neutrality dispute?

I'm thinking in particular of Argument from Ignorance, where the dispute was over the examples used. I think that I've put things into a state which deals with the objections raised in the talk page.

Should I be posting directly to the user talk pages of everyone involved, or is it sufficient just to leave a comment on the talk page for the article and remove the NPOV marker if nobody has objected after a few days? Or is there some kind of defined process for this that I've missed?

-- Onebyone 20:13, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be general guidelines for this situation. I think a reasonable thing to do would be to remove the notice and leave a note on the Talk page saying something along the lines of, "If anyone disagrees, put the notice back." This question is also discussed at Wikipedia talk:NPOV dispute#How_is_a_page_de-NPOV'd? -- Cyan 21:21, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Image problem

I'm having trouble getting File:Grouse.JPG to display. Vancouverguy 00:57, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

How do I get a Go button with Cologne Blue

With the standard skin, there is always a Go button that will take me directly to an article. With the Cologne Blue skin, there is only a find entry with an OK button. This is annoying, especially when it says that searches can't be run due to high server load.

Is there a way to get a Go button to appear with Cologne Blue ? Olathe 4 Oct 2003

Only developer can add that function. (I personally use Nostalgia -- it's ugly like Standard, but it's wide!). --Menchi 07:21, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Personally I would prefer the look of Cologne Blue and use it even without a go button, but why oh why does the font have to be something you need a microscope to read? Even one point bigger would be a major improvement. (my 2 ¢) -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 08:27, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

See wikipedia:bug reports to report bugs and request features. Martin 13:15, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Page moves

Could some sysop delete the existing redirect pages Réunion and Supercentenarian so that La Réunion and Super-centenarian can be moved there? Thanks. --Wik 03:26, Oct 4, 2003 (UTC)

Should be done now. I merged the histories so you might need to revert to an earlier version. Angela 03:35, Oct 4, 2003 (UTC)

Image license on site using wikipedia content

www.4reference.net is using wikipedia contents. They also use wikipedia images, but they don't provide any link to the Image: page. IMO a serious issue as they don't provide any license information for picture.

Some pics are GFDL like on : http://www.4reference.net/encyclopedias/wikipedia/Nice_Observatory.html

but other aren't like on : http://www.4reference.net/encyclopedias/wikipedia/Tank_history.html

what's your advice ? Ericd 20:58, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The second example is bad since it actually lists a source and the photo is probably public domain since it was taken before 1923. Their site is also some kind of encyclopedia and therefore would have as much Fair use on the images as we do.BL 21:04, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Fair use isn't GFDL there's no warning about image, this is misleading the reader. Ericd 21:10, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Also, by not linking to the image page they are failing to provide author details - isn't that a requirement of the GFDL? Actually, as far as I can see they are not doing this for the text either - the link only goes to the main page. As I understand it they should give a link back to the original article. -- sannse 21:48, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

What to do about User:80:225 (if anything at all)?

As you may have noticed, I took it upon myself to get rid of gratuitous references to Horace Donisthorpe over the last couple of days from someone who was making a bunch of wacky and obnoxious edits (see Vandalism in progress). I (foolishly) thought I was "successful," but now User:80.255 (the same person who posted as User:80.225.79.69, User:80.225.73.197, and User:80.225.16.87) and is doing a more subtle (and admittedly less annoying) set of edits, and is still creating a few stubby pages that just seem to refer to each other for the most part...

So here's my question: I'm still pretty new, and am not sure how much I'm being helpful, just being a stubborn geek, if I'm alienating (more or less) a valuable member of the Wikipedia community or if I'm just encouraging someone's trolling. Should I just ignore this person (forever? for a week?) or should I allow my righteous indignation to lead me onward in the struggle against petty vandalism? Thanks in advance for your advice, -- Bcorr 03:24, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

P.S. Here's what I mean: User_talk:80.255 -- Bcorr 03:26, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I'm for easing up on 80.225, at least for a while. He/she seems to be improving, which is the goal after all. I've found I can revert about 50 edits per minute if necessary, by myself, so there's no danger of permanent damage even if the user regresses to original form. (Donisthorpe is a legit person, after all, albeit apparently very obscure; on the other hand we should remember the maxim "write about what you know.") - Hephaestos 03:31, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. I appreciate the advice and have let up and will try not to pay attention for a day or so, but I noticed that Someone else had deleted a new page in the interim and pointed them to this exchange. and I think that 80.225 is backsliding:

'What links here' for Horace Donisthorpe

User:80.225's contributions

-- Bcorr 04:45, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I wasn't watching 80.225 in particular, but I noticed that 82.34.176.94 had just repaired the Neo-Nazism page: (here's the edit), which was noted as "replaced sneakily removed *The British National Party" -- Bcorr 18:00, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Is e-mail this user broken?

I type my e-mail address in most times I have to login (for what ever reason). I have never typed an invalid address into the field or actively blanked it. Nor have I checked the box that says "do not contact me by email". And yet someone couldn't reach me by email. I also tried to e-mail him, going straight from a login where I added my e-mail address into the appropriate field, and then went to send him an e-mail...

It told me I hadn't specified a valid return address, so it wouldn't even allow me to start editing an e-mail. I went to preferences, typed my e-mail address again, and returned. This time I was allowed to start typing the letter. But after finishing it and clicking "send", I only got the same error message telling me I hadn't specified a valid return address. Is this one of the side-effects of the "server-dichotomy", is there a cookie-problem in my end, or is the E-mail a user function broken? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick

Putting in your e-mail address when you log in does nothing whatsoever. That's only used when creating a new account.

If you allow your browser to save form contents on the login form, it may damage the preferences form and cause your e-mail address to be deleted when you save preferences unless you add it manually to the preferences form every time or tell the browser to clear the saved login form. (Mozilla-based browsers are known to do this.)

It's also suspicious that your above note was submitted while not logged in. Are you having cookie/mysterious logout problems?

I just sent you an e-mail through the form (on en2). Did you get it? --Brion 22:08, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes, and yes. But I didn't think the logging out was anything other than an epiphenomenon of the new server arrangements. Maybe I have to see to my mozilla settings... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 23:58, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

User:80:225 -> User talk:Bcorr

Unjustified ban

"Discussion" on the ban of EntmootofTrolls moved to User talk:EntmootsOfTrolls/ban

beg??? Martin, a chara, since when do you beg? :-) FearÉIREANN 00:11, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

problem with photo

Could someone look at Herschel Grynszpan and tell me why my photo is not appearing? Adam

OK it is working now. Thanx. Adam

At the moment there is a somewhat awkward split between access to the wiki via www.wikipedia.org and an alternate server en2.wikipedia.org. Logins and uploads are redirected to en2.wikipedia.org ("pliny"), which is the faster server and holds the database and serves all the other Wikimedia wikis, while www.wikipedia.org ("larousse") serves only web pages for the English-language Wikipedia -- but is sorely overloaded. Any new files uploaded to en2 are copied onto www on the hour, so if you were looking at the article from www.wikipedia.org during the half hour between uploading it and the next refresh, you wouldn't have seen the photo (but you would have seen it looking at the article on en2.wikipedia.org).

In the near future we hope to upgrade both servers (was to be done last week but parts are delayed) and set up some more transparent load balancing between the two. For now it's a bit annoying, I know. --Brion 05:24, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

logged out

I keep getting logged out, depsite checking the remember my password between sessions thing. Anyone having similar trouble? Mintguy 21:56, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It's probably the www/en2 thing: you'll be logged out every time you go to a www. URL. Martin 22:02, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I was having that problem after googling and occasionally at other times. I found that generally I'm on en2.wikipedia.org, but after using google get sent to www.wikipedia.org, and that one cookie wipes out the other -- so you can't be logged into both at the same time. Try changing the URL by hand back and forth and see if that's the problem. -- Bcorr 22:12, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Requested articles "week"

According to recent changes, it has been Requested articles week for quite some time... LirQ

There's been a suggestion that it should become permanent rather than rotating with "fix a stub week". See Wikipedia talk:Recentchanges for a bit of discussion on this. --Camembert

Formatting Source Code

How do I add add syntax/source highlighting into my edits? I have looked around but cannot seem to locate the correct reference.

Wikipedia:how do I edit a page

Requested articles "week" - see Wikipedia talk:Recentchanges

Banned users

I am familiar with the process of banning a user. What is the process to un-ban a user? And are un-banned users on in sort of probationary period? Kingturtle 23:24, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

[Note: I don't know everything, and I might be wrong about this] Well, just as Jimbo is the only person with authority to ban users (egregious vandalism excepted), so he is the only one with authority to unban them. Unbanning is rare indeed (I think it's only happened once), but the process as it stands is that the banned user writes to Jimbo and tries to convince him to let him back in. Jimbo's a reasonable bloke, so if other users were to flood him with requests that a banned user be unbanned or something like that, I'm sure he'd take heed of them, but that hasn't ever come up as far as I know. There's no general rule for what happens when somebody is unbanned, because as I say, it's only happened once - in that case, Jimbo said that the user was not back under any particular conditions, and would be treated like a normal, never-banned user. There's some discussion of alternatives to all this afoot at Wikipedia talk:Bans and blocks, though, so you might want to have a look in there. --Camembert 23:39, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Maybe Jimbo could post a statement. Or maybe someone could post a statement Jimbo may have made already. I was offline for about 6 weeks this summer, and I may have missed comments pertaining to this. Kingturtle 23:44, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

A statement about what exactly? If you mean on the process in general, about all that can be said in general is at Wikipedia:Bans and blocks. If you mean on the recent case of unbanning, see the mailing list posts at [5] and [6]. If you mean something else, you'll probably need to email Jimbo, because I don't think he keeps an eye on this page. --Camembert

Thanks. Those links answer my questions. I do have some questions for Jimbo, though. What is his email address? Kingturtle 00:33, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It is jwales at bomis dot com (it's on his user page for future reference). --Camembert

Ah, thanks. I did a quick eye-scan for an "@" on Jimbo's user page and didn't see one. So that explains that one. Again, thanks. Kingturtle 00:48, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC) P.S. Just out of curiosity, why can't emails be written out here in their regular format?

They can, of course, but many people have the habit of breaking up e-mail addresses to make it harder for spammers' webcrawlers to harvest addresses. --Brion 00:51, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

how to submit a article

I am want to know how to submit a new page.

Please read Wikipedia:How to start a page to find your question answered. You should also read Wikipedia:How to edit a page and Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers. -- Cordyph 14:58, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Maths functions

I note that the math markup does not seem to work in Alternating current and exponential growth. Is this a coincidence? Tiles 06:30, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Have a look above under the section "TeX niggles". Dysprosia 06:33, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Ah. That explains it. Tiles 06:45, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Google links to Wikipedia articles

to be deleted

Don't Google hits/ links lead to the latest version of a Wikipedia article? I added a lot of info to a page yesterday since it was in the first page of Google hits. But today when I followed the Google link to the page it was in the same state as before my editing- though the address bar in IE is the same for both direct Wikipedia and link from Google.KRS 05:34, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Read wikipedia:searching. Martin 13:16, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

File size

I'm sure this has a very simple answer. I'm deciding whether to split an article. How can I find the size of the article? (it's not a new page). jimfbleak 11:12, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Pending a better answer, you can copy and paste the source text to a simple txt file, save it, and then look at its properties to see how big the file is. Hth Pete 11:19, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

If you edit the article and it's over 32K, you get a warning about "some browsers", which states the size of the article. -- Onebyone 12:03, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

or count each letter one by one to see the approx byte size. ;-) -fonzy

Great idea, but do you count new-lines as one or two bytes? Κσυπ Cyp 15:04, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Disputed Accuracy

Plese forgive me if this is not the right place for this, but I'm going round in circles trying to find anywhere more appropriate (though I've visited Wikipedia on plenty of occasions, I'm still a bit of a newbie as far as contribs go).

I just stumbled across the subtle energy page in the Special:Newpages section. Having a background in physics, I am disturbed by its content, but am unsure about what action to take.

The article makes many claims that are difficult to address as the author uses terms like 'Etheric world', 'the worlds preceding [the Etheric world]' and 'proper world', etc., without explaining what these are supposed to mean.

Most concerning, however, are its claims regarding science:

Scientists refer to Subtle Energy as Dark Energy.

According to both ancient and modern sciences, the Subtle Energy of the Etheric world does not interact with physical matter directly.

...energetic processes in our world such as electric and magnetic vibrations and electromagnetic waves definitely initiate vibrations in the energy fields of the Etheric world and of all preceding worlds. [my emphasis]

(Sorry, I've pretty much quoted the whole article there!)

The article uses a reference by Yury Kronn that is questionable in itself. It seems confused over the distinction between the astrophysical concepts of 'dark energy' and 'dark matter'—this is not surprising given that the refernces relevant to such discussion are popular science or press accounts. I would be surprised if the paper has been peer reviewed—indeed, it has 'working draft' on it!

Since I can't follow much of the article, and object to the claims that I can decipher, I'm not sure what action I can take (as tempting as it is to get rid of the whole thing!). I don't wish to deny someone the right to propose a point of view, but this does article does not seem to live up to the NPOV standards of Wikipedia, and its claims pertaining to science are incorrect as I interpret them. Should I instead stick a disputed tag on it?

Perhaps I should have put this on the Talk:Subtle energy page, but I don't know how regularly such a place would be visited. Also, I wonder how similar articles should be approached. Thanks :) Ajr 13:38, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Add an accuracy dispute
Discuss the matter on Talk:Subtle energy
Assume good faith - it may well be genuinely in progress - see if you get a response on the talk page.0
If you still think it's patent nonsense, then list it on votes for deletion

HTH. Martin 13:39, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Chemical Structure Program

Can anyone recommend a decent free program that draws chemical structures. One that's not too hard and runs under Windows or Linux would be great. ThereIsNoSteve 05:29, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

One program is xymtex, that someone has used to do the steroid hormones. e.g. Image:Testosterone.png. I've never used it, so i can't tell you anything about it. I guess it's similar to Latex etc. (haven't used that either) Tristanb 06:04, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I searched around for a while and the best I could come up with was ChemSketch; it's freeware for Windows, but not open source. In the long run, we need (and will certainly get) something like our wikipedia:TeX markup feature which would allow you to specify a molecule structure in TeX and it's typeset automatically. AxelBoldt 16:47, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I agree about the TeX. There a whole lot of (La)Tex packages out there that support typesetting technical things like chemical structures, syntax trees, mathematical plots, Feynman diagrams, phonetic symbols, Karnaugh maps, etc, that would otherwise have to just be made by hand and uploaded as an images. The downside of this is that there is nothing ensuring consistency in style of the diagrams, and modifying the bitmaps is non-ideal. Being able to edit the TeX source, while not extraordinarily easy, would be more in keeping with wiki style. Plus, if we get really clever, we could generate higher-resolution versions for print pages. Before I got sucked in to the whole logo-debate and modifications, I was working in the background on modifying the TeX support in MediaWiki to support phonetic symbols, but it seems abstracting it to support a variety of packages would be the best solution. On the other hand, SVG images for a lot of this stuff would probably be better. -- Nohat 18:05, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

4reference have copyvios -> Wikipedia talk:Sites that use Wikipedia for content

deleted bug report - see wikipedia:bug reports
User:80:225 -> User talk:Bcorr

problem with photo -> Wikipedia talk:Www/en2 split

Chemical Structure Program -> wikipedia talk:Chemistry

"Unencyclopedic"

When describing material on VfD, is this term useful or useless? Express your opinion at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Unencyclopedic. -- Cyan 07:53, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

finding page size -> Wikipedia talk:Page size

Requested articles "week" - see Wikipedia talk:Recentchanges

How do I add add syntax/source highlighting into my edits? - see Wikipedia:how do I edit a page

Pictures side by side

Please can a Wikipedian who is good at picture code-writing go to EasyJet and put the two pics side by side, I don't know how to. If I just put the two sets of code one below the other I get the pics one below the other which looks clumsy. Thanks.

Adrian Pingstone 19:23, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I put the smaller photo in the upper right-hand corner of the article and the other one I left at the bottom of the article, on the left. This seems to be a pretty standard arrangement of photos on Wikipedia pages. -- Nohat 20:50, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Have a look at the Mandolin article, where I've attempted to put two pictures side by side. Does this work for your browser? It does on mine, but I'm interested, because if it doesn't work on others I'll need to try something else. Andrewa 22:15, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

"Discussion" on the ban of EntmootofTrolls moved to User talk:EntmootsOfTrolls/ban
keep getting logged out -> Wikipedia talk:Www/en2 split
Requested articles "week" - see Wikipedia talk:Recentchanges
How do I add add syntax/source highlighting into my edits? - see Wikipedia:how do I edit a page
"Unencyclopedic" - useful or useless on VfD? -> Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Unencyclopedic
finding page size -> Wikipedia talk:Page size

Special Characters

How can I make an a with a dash above it, or an n with a dot above it? Lirath Q. Pynnor

Well there is an ã and a ñ, but I don't see any a's with "dashes" over them or n's with "dots." Are they standard foreign language characters? See wikipedia:Special characters. —Frecklefoot 14:10, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I believe they are used in the anglicization of Sanskrit. Lirath Q. Pynnor

These characters are not part of the Latin-1 encoding, so if you want to use them on the English Wikipedia, you'll have to use the HTML numeric entities. The codes for letters with macrons (dashes above) are in the Unicode Latin Extended-A code table: Ā is Ā, ā is ā. The codes for letters with dots above them are in Unicode Latin Extended Additional: Ṅ is Ṅ, ṅ is ṅ. You can also "make" these characters using the Unicode Combining Diacritical Marks: ā is ā ṅ is ṅ

If you use these characters, be aware that some users, (maybe even you) won't have supported fonts installed and won't be able to view the characters. It is recommended if you use characters from outside Latin-1 that you include Latin-1 only versions as well (i.e. without the macrons and dots). See wikipedia:Special characters, especially the introduction and section 5, on Unicode, for more information. Also see Unicode and HTML and Unicode character charts -- Nohat 14:55, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Article over "Edit wars" needed?

Wouldn't it be a good idea to have an Wikipedia:Edit war article, of course redirected from Edit war and Edit wars, which could be used when warning newbies for engaging in such activities?
--Ruhrjung 16:04, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

In general edit wars tend to break out just as frequently between oldbies (*looks pointedly at mirror*) as newbies. I think our advice on wikipedia:staying cool when the editing gets hot is useful here, though it could be improved. Martin 18:51, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

unbanning process -> Wikipedia talk:Bans and blocks

Monster logo download

The English Wikipedia's new logo has got a problem: it's 33.75kb, which means it takes a lonngg time to load on slower connections. Crusadeonilliteracy 01:44, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It' only temporary until the new versions are finalised. Angela 01:51, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

asdfjkl

Does "asdfjkl" mean anything? -SV

See http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=asdfjkl%3B. Angela 01:06, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It's the output from the middle row of a standard typewriter (or computer if you must) keyboard with the G and H keys broken. Is this question some sort of linguistic Rorschach test? --Camembert

Or a better explanation -- it's just the keys underneath the "home position" of hands when typing. Probably the fastest "word" one can type. Fuzheado

Well, in the context of Wikipedia:Cleanup--see box of terms.--戴&#30505sv 01:28, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Lists of postal and zip codes of the world?

To VfD

Page moves

deleted - done

Could some sysop delete the existing redirect pages Réunion and Supercentenarian so that La Réunion and Super-centenarian can be moved there? Thanks. --Wik 03:26, Oct 4, 2003 (UTC)

Should be done now. I merged the histories so you might need to revert to an earlier version. Angela 03:35, Oct 4, 2003 (UTC)

sign up pages for mailing lists

The pages linked to from Wikipedia:Mailing lists for signing up for mailing lists return a 404. Eg http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l. Can someone who knows what's wrong correct this? Thanks, snoyes 16:25, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Announcements - that server is down at the moment. I believe Brion et al are working on it. Angela

OK, I've corrected the links. It turns out they should be pointing to http://mail.wikipedia.org/... and not http://www.wikipedia.org/... So I'll remove this section from the Village pump. snoyes 20:50, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Image problem

I'm having trouble getting Grouse.JPG, as well as a number of other pictures to display. Vancouverguy 00:57, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

See #problem with photo above and Images uploaded and now broken in the VP Archive.

I don't know what your problem is since you give no details, but note that the image upload situation is now reversed from where it was recently; uploads go to www.wikipedia.org. New uploads may not have yet been copied to en2.wikipedia.org, which will probably soon be taken out of service as unnecessary with the faster reborn larousse. --Brion 01:14, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It's probably the situation discribed earlier in the page.Vancouverguy 01:15, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Lists of postal and zip codes of the world?

To Talk:Lists of postal and zip codes of the world/Delete

OK well i don't really understand the explanations of why the image upload isn't working and why Wikipedia goes offline in the afternoon (my time) every day, but then I rarely understand explanations of this kind of thing - I guess that's why I'm a historian :) Does anyone know when the photo upload will be fixed? Adam 16:35, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

In the simplest terms, the answer is no :-). Some changes are being made to the computers that run Wikipedia. Once these are completed, the image upload *will* work as before. There have been teething problems with the new equipment and so it is taking longer than we all might hope, and a final resolution date/time is not yet known. We should be grateful that it is being done at all of course, people donating their time and money to give us our wikipedia :) Pete 06:37, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Unresolved problem

How do I have my nickname and the time/date appear after my messages, like other posers have?

Sign messages with ~~~~. -- Tim Starling 12:41, Oct 5, 2003 (UTC)

Unresolved problem

Unresolved image problem -> Wikipedia talk:Www/en2 split

How do I have my nickname and the time/date appear after my messages, like other posers have?

Sign messages with ~~~~. -- Tim Starling 12:41, Oct 5, 2003 (UTC)

Server crash

What was that long server crash all about G-Man 22:39, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

something about the "Table of contents"

I found this idea is great when the table is short, but quite annoying when there is a long alphabet list in some pages, which makes the whole page look .... My suggestion is, could we have more styles of that table, in some pages, like a list according to alphabet, we can use a style called 'ALPHABET_TABLE' instead of that style (automatically creat a table like that in List of Hong Kong-related topics). And a 'HORIZONTAL_TABLE' (good for List of colleges and universities by country). --Gboy 05:51, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

If you enjoy Wikipedia, please consider making a donation to keep the servers running. Thank you!

Hey now, I know that it takes money to run things, but annoying people isn't going to cut it. If there are no funds, let's just close up shop. I thought Wikipedia was supposed to be free. Having one link on the main page is enough. Those who have enough money and want to do so, will do so. So, save the last chunk of change for the bandwidth costs of downloading the data dumps, and don't resort to these sort of things. Every time I see this sort of badgering on other sites, it is a sign of things going downhill. Pretty soon, you have small adds, popups, big adds, subscriptions, etc. I don't like to feel like a useless bum, but I don't have any money. All I have is the time to donate, and I am not asking any donations for that, so why are you guys asking money from me on every page? It is very annoying, and it seems like a last ditch effort before the ship sinks.--Dori 03:27, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Word, I agree. Kind of scared myself.

Annek

(In response to Dori) Wow. Actually, annoying people _is_ going to cut it. Are you being honest, you would rather close wikipedia than have a simple message asking for donations? One link on the main page is _not_ enough. What about people who search for a topic on say google and go to a specific page. How are they to know? You obviously haven't followed the donations link, because it states quite unequivocally that there will _never_ be ads. Frankly, I find your post to be a bit of an insult to the founder of wikipedia who has been financing it out of his own pocket. --snoyes 03:45, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

We oldies notice it because we've been used to that part of the webpage being empty for a while. For newbie? They'll just think it's what comes with the package. :-) I'm fine with that message being there. Just don't make it bold or any larger. ;o) --Menchi 03:51, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

No it is not going to cut. There are plenty of other sites that went through this, and they either went down, or they became subscription only in the end. I could deal with one link (I will just mutter under my breath, cuss a bit, and that's all), but that is only the beginning. Yes, it says that there will never be ads, but what if this one line is not enough. Then it's either ads or close up shop. So I say if there isn't enough money now, there won't be enough money later as Wikipedia's followship will only grow (unless people grow to hate it because it basically calls everyone an opportunistic, selfish thief at every page right at the top). Either keep it free, or lacking that give up. That's what I say. Of course many will disagree. Some will continue to live out their addiction despite all the upcoming nuisances until the end, and some will go into a clinic and check out. Regarding your comment about people coming here from google, it is a fair one, so how about a single, permanent "Donate" link on the left? What's with the long message at the top of each article??? --Dori 03:55, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I fail to see how the tiny bit of text at the top is going to annoy users more than "NOT BEING ABLE TO SEE ARTICLES". Wikipedia is becoming almost unusable and that is extremely annoying. More annoying than the tiny fonted link to the donation page by an order of magnitude (or more). Most users have no idea that there is a foundation or that donations are accepted. Lets tell them. Put it back.Ark30inf 04:12, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

One possible solution would be to only display the banner if someone is not logged in. I honestly doubt there is much benefit in nagging people who are well aware of the lack of resources and who are already volunteering time and effort, editing articles and whatnot. As far as the banner itself goes, I'd prefer if it was just one of the links on the left (say "Donate" under "Bug reports"). Vertical real-estate is at a premium. Daniel Quinlan 04:29, Oct 6, 2003 (UTC)

Remember folks this is all very experimental! For the moment I've switched the note at the top for a simple 'Donate' link in the sidebar. Comments? (All this won't appear on most pages viewed by users who aren't logged in until the page cache is cleared.) --Brion 04:57, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I personally like it at the top in the small font. It gets lost on the sidebar. But I have a feeling it'll end up over there and its better than nothing.Ark30inf 04:59, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

If there aren't funds, let's close up shop? Are you kidding me? Servers cost money. Servers eat electricity. Servers need repairs. Bandwidth costs money. We're talking $1,000s a year. Where do you think that money comes from? Are you expecting a handful of people to cover the growing costs? If you can't pay, then continue giving your time. Your time here is invaluable. You are not expected to pay money. There are many ways to give to this community that are not financial. With that said, however, I just donated a modest sum, $30. If 100 users can donate that much a year, that'd really be something.

The tiny text requesting money is necessary to remind casual and regular users. Because of it, the issue of wikipedia costs became apparent to me, and I quickly made a small donation. I wouldn't have thought to make a donation without the prompt.

Could you please educate me on the "other sites" you've seen "this sort of badgering?" I'd like to know what sites you're referring to specifically. Sincerely, Kingturtle 04:52, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I am new to this, and had wondered how it was funded. I wanted to make a donation, but could not find anything on how to before I became distracted and did something else. It isn't too intrusive in my opinion.212.112.96.46 05:03, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I'm in 100% agreement with Kingturtle here and think that the original donate message should be re-instated so that the cache will be updated by the time our month-long fundraising drive begins. Then when the drive is over the message and link should be removed. This is similar to how public radio works in the US, except the content is not put aside for the donate message - both coexist very nicely. The "Donate" link in the sidebar should be there permanently though. --mav 05:14, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Here's a couple: http://www.salon.com, http://www.byte.com, http://www.netaddress.com, http://www.slashdot.org, and many other discussion boards, webmail, news sites, etc. Some of these had a progressive ride to the bottom as advertising and donation pleas were not enough. I am not against asking for donations, I just didn't appreciate the heavy handed manner. It was among the first things you saw as soon as you loaded any article. I also don't believe that donations alone will be enough to maintain the project, and I would hate to leave with a bitter taste in my mouth. Sure someone has to pay the bills, and I would if I could because I think this project is more important than most other sites on the internet. But keep in mind that without the collective, donated effort, this project would be pretty useless. So regarding Snoyes' last comment, I find his comment insulting to all the users that have contributed to the project (not for myself, as I am still fairly new to this). --Dori 05:21, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I'm a user has contributed both monetarily and with time and I am not offended by Snoyes comments. So you don't speak for me. You make it sound like we will soon be offering porn if we slide down the proverbial slippery slope towards doom. I think you are severely overreacting.Ark30inf 05:27, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Things are supposed to be a bit annoying during donation drives. When the drive is over the prominant donation solicitation will be removed from article headers. --mav

Slashdot is not subscription-only, see their meager list of subscriber perks. (Some will argue that there's no value in /. anyway, but that's been the case since long before they offered paid subscriptions and were supported only by ad revenue.) I can't speak to the others, but will note that BYTE was a dead-tree magazine long before it had a web site. Was Salon ever non-commercial? --Brion 05:39, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Dori: I shall refer only to salon and slashdot, as those are the only sites in your list that I am familiar with. For both of them donations have made them survive. Which is a success. It might not be in your book, judging by your comments that you would rather see wikipedia die than have advertising. Funny enough, slashdot has actually become better since memberships began, because of the curbing of the 'first post' phenomenon because members could post before others. I can't follow your line of argument about how having this innocuous message soliciting donations would infringe upon the 'freedom' of the project. What do you base your belief that donations alone won't be enough to maintain the project on? Do you have any better suggestion for raising money? The "collective, donated effort" you are referring to has practically nothing to do with the financing of the hardware purchases, bandwidth, technical support, etc. Please keep the issues seperate. --snoyes 05:49, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Donating my time to Wikipedia is a bit like donating my time to watch a favourite football team play. I don't do it because I have to, I do it because I find it enjoyable. In this commercial world doing things we enjoy generally costs money. We should count ourselves lucky that one man has been willing and able to take the financial burden off our hands for so long. The 'Donate' link is not unbearably intrusive IMO. Pete 06:27, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Note that Dori wasn't referring to the donate link in the sidebar, she was referring to a small-type message underneath "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia", which read "If you enjoy Wikipedia, please consider making a donation to keep the servers running. Thank you!" Personally I thought that message was a good idea. There is a trade-off between begging for money (or advertising) and the level of service we can provide. For the most part, it is community consensus which determines where we sit on that spectrum, rather than being dictated from on high. Dori is afraid of a slippery slope, but in the end it is the editors who are in control -- remember the Spanish language fork Enciclopedia Libre. The right to fork prevents any slide towards subscription-only service and popups. -- Tim Starling 07:04, Oct 6, 2003 (UTC)

Now that the line is back I can understand the complaint a little more. Obviously the 'Donate' link is less intrusive but if needs must, and I think in this case everyone upto Jimbo should decide if needs must, then I for one can put up with the more noticeable line at the article heading.

Tweaking: This line might replace the first line of the article in the Google snippet of a page when displaying search results. Can we avoid this, as I am think we need to advertise our articles not lack of funds!

Tweaking: Could we put the plea on the same lines as the "From Wikipedia..." line. Then those with higher screen res only need have one line of space gobbled up by non-article stuff rather than two. Obviously lower-res screen users will have two lines in any case.155.198.17.120 10:58, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Whether you like it or not, Wikipedia/Wikimedia will be funded by donations in the coming years -- that's the whole point of the non-profit foundation. The fundraising slogan will only remain below the subtitle until we have the money to buy our new server. I have asked Jimbo Wales to provide regular updates on our donation progress. If I'm not mistaken, Tim has recently made updates to the software which would allow the subtitle to be collaboratively edited.—Eloquence 10:48, Oct 6, 2003 (UTC)

Minor layout issue, on my screen, http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising has a few pages of blank space, before the actual text. (I don't have a credit card, anyway, but those that actually will donate probably aren't supposed to see a few pages of nothing.) Κσυπ Cyp 11:49, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It would be easier to track down the problem if we knew what version of what browser on what operating system you're looking at the page in. --Brion 00:59, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Well, I can see that I am the only one that feels this way so I will just shut up and hope that Wikipedia doesn't go down the drain. I never said I had a problem with donations, but only that it shouldn't be done so that it bothers users, the primary focus should be on the information. Above, I also mentioned that I could deal with just the one line, but that in my opinion it would not be enough, and I could see further intrusions coming in the same spirit of that one line. Anyway, I didn't mean for this to become a flamefest, and I apologize if I offended anyone. By the way Tim, I am a guy :) --Dori 12:39, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Oops, sorry. Never trust a google search to tell you a person's gender. :) -- Tim Starling 00:16, Oct 7, 2003 (UTC)

I don't mind the blurb, just don't like its position on article pages. Can it be place above the horizontal line? -- Viajero 16:07, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

For reference, when h2g2 was taken over by the BBC it ensured that we'd never have adverts... and also signified the death of h2g2 as a serious attempt to gather and impart knowledge (if it ever was). TANSTAAFL. Martin 16:56, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

What I don't like with this fuss is the decision process. Do the developers have a right to introduce such text? No wonder wikipedia has a reputation of aristocracy. -- Taku

Suez Crisis

The most recent edit to the Suez Crisis as I write looks very dubious. Diff here. Could a knowledgable person set my mind at rest and revert this if necessary? Pete 09:23, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Taken care of. -- Viajero 10:28, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Larousse dead again

If you're here, you've probably already noticed that www.wikipedia.org is down while en2.wikipedia.org is up. Larousse is down, don't know why. Jason's trying to reboot it now. --Brion 04:52, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, can't get to links at www.wikipedia.org/wiki/XXX. --Samuel 05:19, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Page moves

deleted - done

Problem with the w-list

Has something happened to the wiki-list? I have received no email on it since 1 October. If anyone knows what is happening could they please tell me, and put me back on the list? Please. (I need my wiki-list fix badly!!!) :-) FearÉIREANN 01:48, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The subscription list says your account is disabled, probably because it's getting too many bounced-backs. Maybe your mailbox is too full.

An alternative: Try newsgroup-like format if you have an email client. --Menchi 02:07, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Thanks Menchi. I did a clearout of some old messages but I double checked back in the trash to see if I had inadvertently deleted an important page, and nothing came up. I was away for some days and got spammed with piles of junk. That may have been the problem. I have applied under a new email account that is almost empty (and so far spamless!) lol . FearÉIREANN 02:17, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yep. Just get a new account! The beauty of free e-mail accounts! They spam us, we spoil them.

Try the archive for old Wikilist messages you missed. --Menchi 02:27, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Hi JT-- I was wondering where you were - you can do some catching up here (or here sorted by date) (good luck-- there have been 107K of messages in four days--there were 240K in all of September, just to give you an idea! ) -戴&#30505sv 03:09, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Here is a topic

Wikipedia:Cleanup buffer - Discuss at Cleanup.--戴&#30505sv 01:18, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Lists of postal and zip codes of the world?

To Talk:Lists of postal and zip codes of the world/Delete

Image problem -> Wikipedia talk:Www/en2 split

Service Temporarily Unavailable

The new message attached with the Service Temporarily Unavailable message:

Due to heavy load on the server, connections may be temporarily blocked from locations that fetch an unusually high number of pages. If you've just been heavily browsing, go get a cup of coffee and come back and reload in a minute. :)

Is much better than the previous message used. I had thought that the Unavailability was because of something wrong with wikipedia; turns out, it was because of something *I* was doing. When I am in the mood to do proofreading, I use the "Random Page" feature. Sometimes, while scanning words, I will click on "Random Page" 3 or 4 times in the span of 10 or 15 seconds. Now I know that I have to slow my "Random Page" rate down. My question is...What is the fastest rate I can use the "Random Page" feature without losing service temporarily? Or is this information held secret because a spider-author might read this? In any case, props to whomever wrote the new message. It is much more informative to users. Kingturtle 15:32, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The limit was originally 20 hits in 60 seconds, but I pointed out to Brion that that much coffee was not good me and he raised it to 50 hits in 100 seconds. But then, due to high server load, it was reduced again. I'm not sure what to, but probably the original 20 hits per minute. Remember that editing counts as two hits. Brion's advice on the mailing list yesterday was to "read the pages between clicks". :) See also: Original message introducing the limit. Angela 15:52, Oct 3, 2003 (UTC)

Okay, should be back to 50 in 100. Special:Randompage also counts as two, since it works by redirect. --Brion 19:20, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I presume it must be all related to the server problems, but I find I can no longer be logged on to pages I worked on just earlier today (although I remain logged on to other pages), whuich tells me it is not my cookie problem - Marshman 22:48, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

photos again

Could someone look at Parliament House, Canberra and tell me what I am doing wrong with my photos? Thanx Adam 13:33, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

You had "width:188px" in there for all the photos which is why they were looking squashed. I moved the old parliament one up a bit so it didn't overlap the bottom one, and added in "margin:0 0 1em 1em" to the bottom one to stop it touching the text. Hope that helps. Angela 13:43, Oct 3, 2003 (UTC)

Yes it does thanx. Obviously I need to learn what all those codes mean rather than just cut-n-pasting them from one article to the next :) Adam 13:48, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Have a look at Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#Markup and Wikipedia:Image_markup_gallery (similar stuff), if you haven't already. Andrewa 20:31, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Google problems

Anyone know what's up with Google? It seems to have been down for ages (for me anyway). Not having it available is certainly showing how much I rely upon it. Mintguy 11:06, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Works for me. Try using a different one, like co.uk instead of .com if you're still having problems. Angela 12:11, Oct 3, 2003 (UTC)

i have no probelms either (with ".com" or ".co.uk"). -fonzy

Hm.. seems to be a DNS problem. My PC is trying to find gooogle on 207.44.220.31, which times out before I ping it and an IP lookup show it to be ns1.sitething.net. Looking up www.google.com on http://www.dns-tools.com/ gives me 216.239.51.99

Turns out I had a virus, a trojan called QHost-1 to be precise, which created a host file redirecting google and some other heavily used pages. Mintguy 19:32, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I just wanted to writhe the same - see [7] for a description of this troyan. andy 19:37, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Quotes and foreign language words

I remember having seen guidelines and/or discussions relative to:

Quotes should be avoided as the opening pararaph(s) of an article, but rather be placed below in the article body or at the end.
Foreign language words should be italicized. What about places' and people's names? What about titles? What about the translation/transliteration/original wording of the title in a foreign language within the definition paragraph?

With the multiplication of guideline and talk pages, I cannot find these references. Could anyone help me spotting them? If no such discussion/guideline really exist, where should they be started? Thanks. olivier 13:36, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

So far as I know from the books, loan words in English should be printed in italicized while underlined when handwriting. Since we can do nothing about the titles ( can we change the style of titles? ) I think it's alright for titles not to be italicized. But inside the articals, all foreign words should be in italicized, be they definition or anything ( it maybe troublesome, but makes them look more standard ). Like the people's names or places' names from foreign languages ( like from Chinese or other ) should be in italicized. --Gboy 14:37, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The trouble is some foreign words are so adapted that they are treated like English words like kamikaze, tyhoon, samurai and so on. -- Taku

For titles: ==Titles <i>can be italicized</i>== or in text:'''''Italicized'''''. Alex756 15:27, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think Olivier means the title of the page. --Gboy 16:00, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think you might be looking for the Wikipedia:Manual of style. --Camembert

TeX niggles?

Any reason why TeX has been stuffing up recently? Some probably valid TeX isn't rendering properly; only the alt text is showing up (the TeX code)...

The TeX code makes rather naive assumptions about its image cache and breaks horribly when you try to use separate web servers with one database. They'll get cleaned up later. --Brion

Should be back in shape now. Some temporary fix code put in to check that the images actually exist, and fixed the directory path to point to the right place. --Brion 23:48, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Seems to me that it "stuffs up" on anything with curly braces. Other than those that are already cached, like pretty much anything on Wikipedia:TeX markup, so far. Good example at divergence. -- John Owens 10:30, 2003 Oct 3 (UTC)

Special consultants

This idea came to my mind: We should have special consultants for specific topics. For example, if an administrator is a lawyer or a law connseur, every article that has to do with law should be sent to that person for revision..what do you guys think? -- Antonio Who's that girl? Quien es esa nina, senorita presumida? Martin

Interesting idea, not least because a special consultant would have a good idea of what other articles and lists need a link to the new article. It's also trivial to implement, the simplest I can think being a discussion page per topic on which the self-declared consultants list new articles as they appear along with comments ranging from "looks fine to me" through "we should lobby to have this user banned" ;-). The danger is if consultants start to feel possessive about their topics, or if they feel they are the definitive Wikipedia authority on the subject. It's not much more of a danger than there is already, since anyone who chooses can already decide to police a particular topic. Pick one topic and do it, see if it flies. -- Onebyone 13:50, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps this could be done through the wikiprojects. For example, there could be a WikiProject Law where such articles could be listed. Angela 13:58, Oct 2, 2003 (UTC)

Never met a law "connseur" (or connoisseur?) but I thought the list of legal topics was the way to get a handle on topics in this area. I am not sure what a Wikipedia:WikiProject regarding law could accomplish because there are so many areas of law and no general way to discuss any particular topic or even deal with fundamental differences between legal cultures. What I do is try to add articles to that list as found (I am still finding them though the list is much more comprehensive [approx. 500 articles] that in was when I got here about 6 months ago [150 articles])or just add the names of proposed articles to the list. Still that is just the tip of the iceberg of legal topics that could have detailed general interest articles. (And let's not talk about legal encyclopedias for example NY Jurisprudence 2nd ed. shows how much can be written in this area. It is an introduction to NY State law and it is over 120 bound volumes! When I get a chance I check the related changes and try and add something to every stub I come across. I try to add and edit stuff when others add stuff (I don't just want to write articles myself, that is why I am volunteering here) but there is still a lot of work to do and a lot of the focus just depends on what other legal beagles (there are a few of us here) are interested in and have time to achieve. regarding other subjects I was assuming that the same approach is done by regular editors in their area(s) of expertise and that is why there is a list of lists. I for one am against giving volunteers lots of offices or titles, sysop and developer are already too many categories. Alex756 15:02, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Agreed. We don't need landed wiki-baronets and wiki-duchies. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 22:59, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Internet-Encyclopedia

I just discovered another online encyclopedia, http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/ that looks a lot like Wikipedia. They must have even copied the source code. But it also looks inferior. My concern is that if everyone starts their own encyclopedia, will that somehow cast a dark shadow on these sites that could spill over to Wikipedia? I know that eBay had a lot of copycats but survived and is still the number one auction site. But they are a for-profit company and have the resources to excel. How can Wikipedia protect itself from these clones? - Fernkes 01:30, Oct 2, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is free as in GFDL, meaning anyone has the right to fork. See Internet-Encyclopedia. -- Cyan 01:49, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Well you certainly set me straight with that Fork article. - Fernkes 02:19, Oct 2, 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps we need an article that explains that the reason Wikipedia is free, and that we are happy with clones, people using our content, that sort of thing. This seems to pop up quite a lot from newbs (no offense, Fernkes), who don't understand the license. CGS 11:03, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC).

I don't think a separate article is needed but something more could be added to the existing Wikipedia article. Angela 13:58, Oct 2, 2003 (UTC)

Warning when whole text is being deleted?

Hi. All text in Francis Drake was deleted today by User:212.81.200.14 (I reverted that change). It might have been an accident; can there be (or is there already?) some warning when you are about to do this? Also, maybe some special mark for such edits could be placed in the "Recent changes" list, so that people can notice and check easily.Colin Marquardt 13:16, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

If nobody catches it right away, blanked pages will show up approximately weekly when Wikipedia:List of blank pages is updated, so someone will catch them then. --Delirium 05:51, Oct 4, 2003 (UTC)

how to submit a new page - read Wikipedia:How to start a page. Also Wikipedia:How to edit a page and Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers.

Red links to existing article

While working through the Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles I found the article St. Patrick's Day Parade with a wrong title which made it an orphan. After moving it to the right place it still was an orphan, even though History of New York City links there. Some minutes later that article showed up on the What links here list - but the link in History of New York stays red. But when I press it I get to the right article, in edit mode of course. I had a similar case yesterday with the Rambot article O'Hara Township, Pennsylvania, where the link in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania is red as well - the only similarity I can find is that both have a ' in the title. And yes, I cleared my cache several times already. Any idea what this bug can be. Will it fix itself with a database integrity run? andy 12:14, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

OK, I found how to fix it. A single edit of the article fixes the links. User:Patrick edited something in St. Patrick's Day Parade, and after I removed one space in O'Hara Township, Pennsylvania that has no more red links anymore as well. But it's still a strange bug. andy 12:42, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Also, Wikipedia:Clear your cache. CGS, not logged in.

I know, but I definitely did clear it (even changed browser), and I could prove it disappeared seconds after I applied the workaround. andy 14:12, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Server overloads?

Why do I get so many 'server overloads' when I try searching for any article? It would seem to me that the problem may be lack of bandwidth. If that is the problem then why is it not being dealt with?

The 'go' function will take you to a page if it finds an exact match, but text search is disabled entirely pending server upgrades. --Brion 11:24, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

"If that is the problem then why is it not being dealt with?" People can't pull new servers out of thin air. If you want to contribute got to [8]. CGS 14:14, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC).

Compass construct?

An IP user User:64.230.131.102 has put a four-way compass navigation at the bottom of various Canadian city articles, such as Montreal, Quebec and Toronto, Ontario. While I actually find it kind of interesting to find out about other geographically close cities, is there a precedent for doing it this way? Pros/cons? Fuzheado 05:59, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think that table is very pleasing to the eye, but I do think it is a very good idea! Perhaps it would be nice for someone to figure out a pretty/functional way to do it and create a new guidline. (Would this quiet the anti-Rambot debate as many articles would now be useful simply based on these tables? Hmmm.) -- Paige 06:14, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It's a good idea, but it should be implemented on map rather than the Wikipedia pages .. isn't there are project to do this somewhere on Meta? -- User:Docu

m:Maps and m:Map generator. Angela

I have been doing something very similar for towns in Hawai'i. I have simply placed links in the text under subheading Geography (see for example Kaneohe, Hawaii). These links go to the surrounding nearest towns. I think this practice provides a very interesting way to explore places and, as pointed out, make use of the thousands of town "stubs". I'm not thrilled about the looks of the "compass" as presented at Toronto, Ontario, but I very much agree with the intent. - Marshman 22:23, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I did something similar for Gornji Milanovac, but with some explanations and links about roads. Each of the roads would, when finished, list all the cities/villages it passes through. Nikola 12:16, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Just finished road Gornji Milanovac-Donji Banjani Nikola 08:49, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The ideal is a map that one can click on. But it maybe too complicated for most editors to use. -wshun 04:44, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I don't really like the table-based map. I think real maps (probably at the state or province level for large countries like Canada) are the way to go. Daniel Quinlan 04:15, Oct 6, 2003 (UTC)

---

removed ALPHABET_TABLE suggestion - please sumbit it via wikipedia:bug reports

English Syntax

Should the encyclopedia be consistent in noun-pronoun relationships, and if so, what should be the accepted practice? For example: In "A musician plays his instrument" or "A musician plays her instrument" the noun and pronoun agree, but people might be offended by the perceived exclusion of one sex (assuming of course that we don't know who the musician is.) "A musician plays their instrument" is a construct often seen today, but one which grates on some people. "Musicians play their instruments" meets both objections, but isn't always a possible formation.

Any ideas or guidance on this? --User:Dolbier October 1, 2003.

I think that the use of gender-neutral pronouns and the singular they are generally preferred. There was some stuff about it on the mailing list a few months ago [9] butI don't know of any actual Wikipedia policies on the issue. See also [10]. Angela 04:38, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Singular they is fine, but everytime so-called gender-neutral pronouns are mentioned on wiki, most people (and it includes me) feel like throwing up. They have all the linguistic beauty and attractiveness of a large fart and make many on wiki want to throw up. Please, please don't use those appalling linguistic bastardisations. FearÉIREANN 01:42, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

BTW - so-called gender-neutral pronouns are also largely un-used by most english speakers worldwide and so even from the point of view of comprehendability should never be used on wiki.

meta:Wikipedia is not Wiki.

I really strongly object to both "her" (it completely escapes me how if you're trying to be non-sexist, using the other gender pronoun is any improvement) and the various neologisms. If the historical "he" doesn't do it for you, use "they". Sometimes that means you have to use "their", but as singular they points out, you can often reword to avoid it. Noel 23:01, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

edit wars article? -> Wikipedia talk:Edit war
unbanning process -> Wikipedia talk:Bans and blocks

asdfjkl -> Wikipedia talk:Cleanup

Getting offensive articles rewritten

move to talk:Homophobic hate speech

So where do I go to get an article like Homophobic hate speech rewritten? It doesn't belong on Votes for Deletion, because the article itself doesn't need to be deleted. It doesn't need to go on the page listing POV articles, because it isn't the POV that I'm objecting to. It's the use of a single term which takes up 1/3 of the entire article, in graphic detail. There are tons of other offensive terms that could be listed here, let's not be minimalists, let's go with all of them, okay? And then we can have Offensive terms for Jews and Offensive terms for Italians and Offensive terms for African Americans, etc. I seem to recall List of offensive terms for Germans having gotten deleted at some point. So why does this one term, on this page, keep getting re-added, when other offensive terms for gays are not included, and why are we not coming up with exhaustive pages of offensive terms for every other group in the world? RickK 03:10, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I worked it over a bit. Maybe its better.Ark30inf 03:30, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Actually Offensive terms for Germans and Offensive terms for the French were kept. InanimateCarbonRod 11:29, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

In my experience, the best place to go is to the "edit this page" button. If someone reverts you, then you discuss the matter with them, and try to reach a consensus. If they refuse to discuss, then you can either wait to see if another reader comes to the same conclusion as you, or (if you are feeling very confident) go back to the "edit this page" button. Martin 11:39, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Anon "updating cache"

What is this Anon 64.174 doing: "Update cache"? Later on, Anon 165.196 started doing the same thing too [11]. --Menchi 04:45, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

From User talk:64.174.7.191

Why are you doing that? It is really annoying. Angela 23:32, Oct 9, 2003 (UTC)

Updating the page cache so that the 'support' message can be seen by anons.

Is there not a way for a developer to do this automatically? The problem I have with it is it may be wasting people's time as he is doing it with often-bookmarked pages, meaning people need to check the whole history of each page to see if any actual changes have been made. Also, it is being done mostly with pages that anons are not likely to see - ie those in the Wikipedia namespace. As most people come to main article pages via Google, I don't think it is worthwhile. I don't know who the anon is, but it is an IP that mav has used in the past. Is it mav? Why is it being done anonymously? Angela 06:05, Oct 10, 2003 (UTC)

Angela is right. Is it really that important to have the message updated right now and in return, obscuring real human-oriented changes to these pages? Fuzheado 07:20, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It can easily be done automatically by a developer. Whoever is doing it should stop. -- Tim Starling 07:34, Oct 10, 2003 (UTC)

I've informed Anon 64.174 this. --Menchi 07:43, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

They're making an actual useful change, moving the huge piles of language links out of the way to the bottom to make the pages easier to edit. There's nothing wrong with this, and if they happen to be instigated by the desire to update cached pages, so what? --Brion 17:55, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

What Brion said. I guess I should have mentioned that I was also fixing some formatting. I was bored, so sue me. ;-) And most of the pages I edited were in fact regular articles (everything linked on the Main Page). I was going to do the same to all listed top 10 Google hit articles next, but if a developer can update all pages, then that would be better - but that would seem to be a low priority until both our severs are at 100% and successfully upgraded (I don't think we could spare the CPU time until then). Oh, and it was being done anonymously so that I could see, or not see, exactly what an Anon would. --mav

Rampant use ＝ No copyright?

If a particular image is found displayed on multiple websites does that qualify it as public domain as opposed to copyrighted? SD6-Agent 07:02, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Short answer - no.

Long answer - (to be written...)

So I can't just grab an image from another website which has no copyright notice? SD6-Agent 15:50, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

In general, no. There are a lot of obscure websites hoping their blatant copyright violations won't be noticed, but if Wikipedia is successful in its goal of being the leading online reference work, our copyvios are going to be very visible; so you should establish a pre-1923 date, or find the copyright holder and get permission, or make your own picture, etc. Stan 17:48, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Right. Anything that anyone creates is automatically copyrighted (in the U.S.), whether or not it has a copyright notice attached. So unless they give permission to use it, you can't use it. Axlrosen 18:47, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

This is not true historically in the United States, though in recent years (1978 on, my fallible memory tells me) it is true. Formerly, one needed to register copyright and renew that registration.

Thus, there is a substantial body of work post-1923 that has fallen into the public domain. However, determining whether the copyright has so lapsed is complicated. --Morven 19:27, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Copyright laws vary by country. Check what country that website belongs to. Some countries, at least Japan, require no copyright notice for works to be copyrighted; no notice means that is copyrighted. Besides, not every country adapts the concept of public domain. In Japan, for instance, there is no public domain. -- Taku

www.wikipedia.org goes off into space?

Aside from the mind-numbing server slowdowns of the last few weeks, it now appears that typing www.wikipedia.org doesn't go to wikipedia, but to some generic and content-free wikimedia page. Good luck trying to navigate your way back to wikipedia... and even better luck trying to follow a pre-existing link (e.g. from google). Newcomers will probably just give up. Mbstone 01:29, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Let www.wikipedia.org go to en.wikipedia.org...I don't like having to click 10 links to get back.

It doesn't do that for me. Have you tried clearing your cache? The server situation is very volatile at the moment, there are people working on it all the time. You should expect problems like this to come and go. -- Tim Starling 01:40, Oct 6, 2003 (UTC)

It was like that for perhaps a minute while I was trying to resurrect http://wikimedia.org/ , which had been mistakenly showing the English Wikipedia. Clear your cache if you've got it stuck. --Brion 01:52, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Server crash

What was that long server crash all about G-Man 22:39, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I don't know why it crashed but see a comment from Brion about why the reboot took a while at the external Wikipedia Status page. Pete 22:52, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

File upload is still down for english wikipedia (both www/en2). --Dori 23:01, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Unresolved problem

I asked earlier why image uploading was not working but I didn't seem to get a streightforward answer. Could anyone englighten me? Also, how do I have my nickname and the time/date appear after my messages, like other posers have?

Uploads are disabled because the server which usually holds uploads is offline. We don't yet have a decent method of synchronising uploads between the two servers. Hopefully the problem will be fixed soon. Wikipedia is currently running on one server -- big thanks to Brion for managing to restore some semblance of normality in this extraordinary situation. Sign messages with ~~~~. -- Tim Starling 12:41, Oct 5, 2003 (UTC)

Note that this doesn't really have anything to do with the en2/www split. For a brief time you could access Wikipedia through either en2.wikipedia.org (pliny) or www.wikipedia.org (larousse). Then larousse was upgraded and given back full web serving duties -- the split officially ended and is not likely to come back any time soon. Then larousse crashed, so the entire load was moved to pliny. It's possible uploads are disabled simply because pliny's webserving component hasn't been reconfigured since the split. I'll ask Brion about it. -- Tim Starling 13:01, Oct 5, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks.. hmm it does post my nickname but not the date/time stamp

SD6-Agent

4 tildes for a time stamp, 3 for no time stamp. -- Tim Starling 13:01, Oct 5, 2003 (UTC)

Minor edit

I don't know whether this really matters, but I mistakenly marked an edit minor. I was multitasking while working on Earendil, and forgot that I'd made some substantive changes. If it's possible, and if a developer thinks it necessary, please remove the minor flag and delete the edit summary. -Smack 06:45, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It's not necessary, but your striving for openness and accountable is commendable! Pete 06:49, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Some ideas:

You can say so in the Talk if that change is really major and may be controversial.
Or you can just make another edit, mark it major, and say "the previous edit was major" in the summary.

--Menchi 06:51, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

External links

What is the policy of linking to eg newspaper articles which are not easily available. 'Easily available' meaning: A) needing to register with the website before being able to view the content; B) needing to pay to view the content. There is nothing stated in Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. An example of A would be articles at the New York Times generally. An example of A & B would be articles in the NYT archives. For example National Palace Museum links to an article in the NYT archives. Should this link be deleted? Should all NYT links be deleted (and to other websites requiring registration)? Thanks, snoyes 02:28, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I don't think a formal policy exists. However if you think the NYT source is a good one then go ahead and use it... I for example sometimes quote sources from journals that only a fraction of Wikipedia readers (those at a university that take the jornal) will be able to read because that journal article is the best source I know of for a particular subject. In scientific writing this is ok - the article itself should be self-contained so the source only need be consulted in cases of doubt. Of course if there is a similar article from some other newspaper that does not require registration, then we may as well use the more user-friendly one. Pete 06:37, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Policy exists. check Wikipedia:Describe external links, 2nd-last para. Instead of deleting the links, you can mention that the site is paid or requires registration. Jay 17:58, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)

On a related topic, is there someway to scan for broken external links? I've fixed a few myself, but it would be nice if there's a list of broken external links we can fix. Samw 02:40, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Preferences

Perhaps this is not the correct place to bring this up, but I noticed some strange things on my personal preferences page. Firstly, the "Your e-mail" has a star (*) after it, but there is no 'key' to this. There is another field that has a star after it ("Offset", under time settings), but this has a key adding more information. Either the star for the email option should be removed, or a different symbol used and an explanatory key inserted. Secondly, the email address is not displayed in the relevant box. Is this meant to be so, or a bug? Cheers, snoyes 16:15, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It is a presentational bug, yes. My guess is that * was supposed to mean optional at one time, but then a comment got added about the Offset. Look at wikipedia:bug reports to find out where to put a bug report that is likely to be acted upon (answer: Sourceforge). Pete 07:09, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

when will images be fixed -> Wikipedia talk:Www/en2 split

Uploading images disabled?

When I click an 'Upload image' link it tells me the feature is disabled. Will it be enabled any time soon?

Why is the photo upload not working?

Wikipedia talk:Www/en2 split

Why does Wikipedia go offline every afternoon?

Wikipedia:Announcements & Wikipedia:Donations

Adam 12:19, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Disputed Accuracy -> Talk:Subtle energy

math markup problems - see "TeX niggles" above

How do I get a Go button with Cologne Blue

to be deleted

Is there a way to get a Go button to appear with Cologne Blue ? Olathe 4 Oct 2003

Only developer can add that function. (I personally use Nostalgia -- it's ugly like Standard, but it's wide!). --Menchi 07:21, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

See wikipedia:bug reports to report bugs and request features. Martin 13:15, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Does anyone know anything about solid-fuel stoves?

I just finished a massive edit on portable stove. In the process, I carved up some pre-existing content about solid-fuel stoves. That content had been added by a single user. My intent was to message that user and get him/her to correct my work, but that user (Kat) has since left the wiki. So consider this a cry for help. The article's coverage of solid-fuel stoves is in very bad shape. It had been interspersed throughout the article until my restructuring effort, and it looked fine in that capacity, but now that I brought it together, it's rather subpar. -Smack 01:57, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Poorly written page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Fairfield

SD6-Agent 02:24, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)