Wikipedia:Village pump/Archive AD

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump.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

Sex pages

Erotism in film (which I originated) and Nudity film list shall be merged, and the photo in the penis page removed, because children access these pages..what do you think? Antonio Mr. Nightclub Martin

Disagree with removing the pic, but might be masked in the article; see clitoris for an example of this approach. As for the merging, it's up to you. Meelar 02:51, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

No comment about the merging. Question for Antonio - what's wrong with a child seeing a picture of a penis ? theresa knott 05:08, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Keep the picture. This is not a children's encyclopedia. RickK 05:11, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Keep. Exploding Boy 05:15, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Information: in UK schools, children first see full frontal male nudity in health and hygene lessons. These lessons occur in primary schools when the children are aged about 9 to 10 years old. At secondary school, they get the basics of sex in biology lessons, when they are around 12 years old. They see pictures of men and women naked, as well as cut away diagrams, and videos of people "doing it". By the time they get to 14 they will learn about STD's, prevention of pregnancy, emotional issues, in fact everything they are likely to want to know.They are exposed to pictures, films, diagrams and models. (Two models I like, are the model penis that's splits straight down the middle, If you peal the two halfs apart in fron of the male teachers they always cringe, and the condom model that has a syring attached that you fill up with wallpaper paste- what will they think of next!) Kids are fascinated by all this stuff. theresa knott 07:19, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

They also already know all about it (with perhaps one or two odd ideas) about two years before any of this. At least that was true when I was that age, more than 30 years ago - I'm sure it's even more true now. Graham 07:27, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I was thinking about this a while ago. Would it be a good idea for all of these articles to have a seperate wikipedia article for graphic images? For example, penis could have diagrams (of the internal goings on and the external appearance) which should be suitably clear to be informative, but not particularly taboo. Then there could be a seperate article for photographs or other more taboo images of the penis. This way if you end up at Photographs of the human penis you can't complain that you didn't know what the page was going to contain, and people who don't wish to see them can still access the article penis. This might also work for images not related to sex, for example photographs which might be distressing or make people squemish (like open heart surgery, etc). Just to make myself clear, I see this as a way of including more images than we have at present, not as a way of censoring our content, and as more useful than just linking to an image file (like on clitoris) which divorces the image from the encyclopedic commentary. fabiform | talk 08:01, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This would make sense, and would allow users of an external rating system to specify the actual URL containing the possibly offensive picture, thus allowing those of a nervous disposition to block it. It might also allow for later expansions of the Mediawiki software which might allow restriction of access to certain articles according to User Preferences, etc. In other words, you could specify that you wanted a warning if you inadvertently accessed an article of a certain type, or even have the system refuse to produce it. --Phil | Talk 09:35, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Wow, this is a good idea. There was a thread on this problem some months ago at one of the mailing lists and I gather no definitive agreement was reached. The problem is worth a deep thought. Not only for sex matters, but also for "violent" (whatever the word be) images. Compare: here in Spain we were bombarded by the press with (awful and distressing) photos of the (sorry for the example but...) burned corpses of American Citicens in Iraq some weeks ago, while I gather there were none in the USA. Would the WP have those photos? Where? In the main namespace? The software thing and "evaluation", "user preferences" looks almost-ideal for my taste. Pfortuny 09:46, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I object to that idea on the grounds that, first, it's unnecessary duplication, and second, it presumes that certain things (images of penises, for example) are inherently objectionable or obscene. Exploding Boy 10:13, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Well, it's not duplication since the photos will serve a different purpose (and the entire text of the article wont be duplicated). And perhaps using penis as an example isn't that helpful? Consider our article vulva - this currently has no images, and I gather from the talk page that it used to have a photograph, but it was removed. Now I'm not saying that I think vulvas (or penises) are shameful and shouldn't be shown in our encyclopedia, I'm saying that they absolutely should be shown, but that not everyone wants to see them. If I added photographs of vulvas to our article, I'm sure they'd be removed. So, what I'm suggesting is a pragmatic compromise so that they are just one click away from the article. Hopefully the pictures would be of a higher quality than are currently included within an article as well (for example the pictures on penis are black and white and small, I imagine that even thumbnailed large format colour photographs would be seen as less tasteful and some people would object). fabiform | talk 10:29, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

No, it is not inherently objectionable content, it is "categorized content", so that if I do not want to see maps in the articles (to put another example), I may in my preferences filter all pics to maps (for example, because I am using the wikipedia as a teacher and I want my students to place an article in a map I give to them).

Of course this is far from easy and you could say that the Wikimedia software does not need to do it. But if users want it, in the future it could well be done. It is not about "inherence" but "preference". Not "objective" but "subjective". One could filter "all images with the word blast in the description", or "corpse", or "attack", or "body", ... (some regexp thing). I think it could even be put in the javascript part of the software, if the "alt" label sends, for exmample, the description text of the image (and thus the server is not cluttered with perl sripts looking for filtering words). Pfortuny 10:56, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sorry (I just realized). In this case there is no need to have the separated pages thing... Only images ought to be clearly described. Pfortuny 11:05, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Nobody is putting sexually explicit images all over Wikipedia. They are added to the pages where they are on topic. The penis image is on topic on the penis article. If you don't want to see a penis, don't read an encyclopedia article about penises. Simple, no? If we start moving away images that are "objectionable" to some, then I'll move away the image on erotic spanking immediately. Because surely it is more objectionable for a 6-year-old to be indoctrinated with the kinky "sex" practices of their parents than to see a photo of genitals that 50% of them already have.--Eloquence * 11:59, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

I'm tired of the argument that children use Wikipedia. For one thing, how do we know that's true? For another, as has been pointed out repeatedly, even if that's true Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia designed for children. For another, it's up to every parent to monitor what their child is doing online; it's not up to Wikipedia to censor itself because children might access its articles. I simply can't imagine why anyone accessing an article entitled "Penis" would be offended by a non-erotic photographic representation of that organ. I realize that the penis image is not the only one we're talking about here, but doesn't Wikipedia policy say that if information is relevant to an article it's better to have it in that article, and that the fewer times a user has to "click" to find the information they're seeking the better? This whole thing mirrors the questions about censoring certain words. I'm against both. I would support an option for signed-in users to have a text-only version that displayed no images at all, but I'm against any sort of rating system. Exploding Boy 12:17, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Eloquence and EB. If parents don't want their children to see something, it's up to them to supervise. As a parent, I have no problem whatsoever with my children looking at an encyclopedia article on penises that contain photos, and I suspect that most parents have a similar attitude. There are things I don't want them to do on the net such as talking to strangers in chat rooms. I consider it my job to make sure my children don’t do it. theresa knott 12:29, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm not talking about children. Nor am I talking about censoring. I'm talking about adding content in a way people will accept. We have a problem when articles like vulva cannot be correctly illustrated. What about female circumcision, or genital mutilation - Eloquence do you really believe that people would click on those links expecting to find photographs clearly illustrating the results of those practices? Your argument that people shouldn't click on a link unless they're willing to see a photograph of the subject at hand is nonsense, many people would expect diagrams and no photographs on articles about anatomy, and there to be no illustration at all for many articles on sexual practices, birth, death, torture, and the like. I'm not suggesting that all photographs of anything remotely sensitive be ghettoised, but that in cases where most people find certain encyclopedic illustrations inappropriate to put directly into a article, they can still be presented. fabiform | talk 14:02, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Just to clarify my position, I never said "censoring" or "rating" (describing something is not rating afaik and rating the semantics of a photo is quite complicated). And I had in mind something different from the "penis" article when writing about this (although that was the starter of this thread). Theresa Knott is on the other hand absolutely right concerning children and parents (it is not the job of WP to look after them -the children, I mean :)).

Maybe the clitoris article option is a good compromise, although not necessarily. Pfortuny 13:53, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think that the solution on that page is less than adequate because it assumes that any photo of human genitalia is potentially offensive. The photo in question has a warning ("warning: This photograph may be considered offensive by some viewers"), and apparently it kept getting deleted from its original location ("It used to reside at Image:Clitoris.jpg, but it kept getting deleted from there... "). Exploding Boy 14:07, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

To play devils advocate - any picture of human genitalia is potentially offensive to at least some people. I don't know if we will ever find a solution to this problem. theresa knott 14:21, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Setting what is "offensive" to whom aside for a moment, perhaps we can agree that photos carry a different, more emotional content than facts, and that it can be difficult to get to the factual detail of the text with a strong photo (in any sense) sharing visual space. To put it another way: the argument that children might be using Wikipedia and must therefore be "protected" is perhaps spurious, but I think we should be trying for a result that can be used, say, in a public library. Mixing up content that is acceptable in such a context (factual text information, diagrams) with content that clearly isn't or is likely to cause problems for both the Wikipedia and the user (explicit photos) means that the former won't be used to its best advantage because of the latter. I favor the link-to-seperate-page-for-image solution; note that this approach is in no way censorship, but simply an editorial decision of the type made by everyone here all the time. Jgm 15:50, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't like that solution either, it seems more "ooh look a naughty picture" than a link to a wikipedia page simply called something like "photographs of the clitoris". Plus there's no commentary - where's the description of the image, the discussion of what's visible externally v. its real size, etc? There's not caption whatsoever to describe exactly what the picture shows. It feels divorced from the article to me, and not that useful unless you already know all about female anatomy. fabiform | talk 14:27, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Just a quick note, in case I don't get another chance to add to this debate, to say that I agree with the idea of making seperate images of... pages - I especially agree with Jgm's point about the text thereby becoming more useful. Now, as for when we use this approach, I suggest we don't go overboard, but just create a seperate page if we have a reasonable amount of images and related information that would otherwise greatly reduce the audience of the article in question (for any of the reasons people have already suggested). - IMSoP 16:47, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Not to sound like an asshole, but maybe the people who find a simple photograph of a penis so terribly offensive are better off staying away from Wikipedia. I'm sorry, but if someone is really going to be irrevocably damaged by looking at a pictorial representation of male genitalia, they have a WHOLE LOT of baggage and other issues that Wikipedia can (and should) do NOTHING about. So maybe we should just leave the photo there with the full knowledge that it may well drive some people away through their terrible offense and say good riddance. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 17:58, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Just to reiterate what many people have said already: We're not just talking about penises any more. (It's not often you get to say that!) Some of the things discussed are far more sensitive (Oh dear, bad choice of words :-/ Never mind, you know what I mean.) - IMSoP 18:16, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Here's the problem, just because we're not JUST talking about penises anymore doesn't mean that we're not still including them in the overall discussion. My point is that maybe the people who are "offended" by these images really ought to take their ball and go home. I'm sorry that some people take offense to these images, but there's nothing that can be done about that (except possibly those people taking their heads out of their asses). I'm fine with people being disturbed or upset by certain images. I'm even fine with them being embarrassed or ashamed of the fact that they find certain images tittilating. But you know what? I have zero patience for people who are OFFENDED by them. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 18:25, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

I'd be surprised if people found the pictures on penis titilating. :) I'm not sure how helpful it is to throw your hands in the air and say you have no patience with other users in a given situation though. I don't find the pictures on penis to be offensive, and I don't suppose most users do, although the erect penis shot is one which couldn't be broadcast on television where I live (i.e. there is a taboo = some people would be offended by it). Frankly, I don't believe that there are no images we might wish to illustrate an article with which could never offend you. So perhaps you could better appreciate what I'm talking about if you think of pictures of death or torture or whatever your particular limit is, and imagine how we could include such images in wikipedia sensibly. fabiform | talk 18:40, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'd be surprised if there weren't at least a few people who find some of the pictures on Wikipedia titilating (for example, the picture on Bikini), even if not the penis images. I'm not throwing my hands up in the air, I'm taking a stand. I'm saying "no" to catering to the whims of nutzoids. As far as finding images which we might use to illustrate articles... I doubt you would find any which would OFFEND me. I might be disturbed by some of them. Some of them might make me uncomfortable and I might wish to avoid viewing them... but I'm not going to be offended by them. Here's the problem. I understand that some people don't want to see certain things. That's great, there are certain things that I don't want to see either. But I'm not about to say that my preferences should dictate how others are allowed to access information. If I don't want to see something, I won't look at it. If I accidently stumble across it, oh well, I'll survive. I am NOT going to blame Wikipedia if an article on torture has a picture of torture. That would be moronic... as in the action of a moron. What pisses me off to no end, and I think that this is reasonable, is people who get all in a huff and all pissy about these sorts of things. "Oh dear me! Oh, how could you have that image! Oh lordy lord, saints preserve us!" Forgive the hyperbole, but people who go around being OFFENDED by things need to lighten up. I'd be perfectly happy shipping most of the to Antartica or a moon colony, but hey, no one asks my opinion on these things when they're making policy. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 19:13, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Look, we've been through this a million times before. What we can all agree on, I think, is to put images which would be considered offensive by most Wikipedia readers on separate pages. That, to me, does not include a tasteful picture of a corpse (such as Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds exhibits), but it would include the kind of stuff you find on rotten.com. It certainly wouldn't include pictures of a penis or a vagina.

Furthermore, we are bound by United States law not to include in an unrestricted area certain images which would be considered pornographic/obscene under state jurisdictions, particularly the state of Florida where the Wikimedia Foundation resides.--Eloquence * 19:21, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Well, what we can all agree is that the above paragraph is not definitive, I hope. Discussing matters is a right in an open society, isn't it? And trying to find a solution which best fits everyone without assuming that past solutions are eternal.Pfortuny 20:03, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It should be eternal unless there is a reason to change it. Allowing all but the most offensive pictures in articles is the only compromise we have been able to agree on in the past, and having this discussion again is unlikely to lead to any better results. In fact, the only possible outcome that you can realistically hope for is that the anti-censorship side will get tired of arguing with you and your side will be able to push their way through. I doubt that this is what you want. You will not be able to change the minds of people on something that touches their deepest feelings and convictions.

So unless you have a suggestion for a new way to deal with this problem (such as the rating system idea, which was quickly rejected), or have some fantastic new argument for dealing with it in a method which has already been discussed, we are wasting our time. As much fun as it may be to talk about naughty pictures, especially for people who would normally find this difficult to justify, we are here to build an encyclopedia, and wasting our time on this issue every 3 months is not going to help us do that.--Eloquence * 20:25, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Mary McGrory's 1975 P.P. article

If anyone has a copy, please send to gil.garcia@ed.gov

Thanks

In case anyone was wondering, I think P.P. stands for Pulitzer Prize. This wasn't obvious to a non-American (me). Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 14:01, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It's not obvious to this American, either. Kevin Saff 15:46, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Not obvious to me either... although I am curious as to why Pete thought that Americans as a group WOULD find it obvious... ;) --Dante Alighieri | Talk 17:39, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry didn't mean to be confusing. McGrory's recent death was quite well reported in the States, but not elsewhere. Even so, I guess it's still quite a poser - I had to look at her article to make the leap. The article also appears to give the answer to the original inquiry actually - she was awarded one of Prizes for a whole series of commentary articles about Watergate so it is not right to think of a specific article. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 20:48, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Editing sections

Why can't anon users edit sections? RickK

Main Page: Where is it?

I tried to get into the Standard Main Page, but it wasn't there. What happened to it? JB82 04:03, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Broken external link

Can anybody tell me why the external link at List of rock and roll albums#references doesn't work? Doesn't appear to have any illegal characters... Tuf-Kat 19:22, Apr 23, 2004 (UTC)

It had two actually: the tilde and the apostrophe. Not only are they illegal in URLs, they also get eaten by the Wiki software. i've replaced them with the proper %7E (~) and %27 ('). Anárion 19:55, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Question for oldbies

Many people are aware of the Rambot era when 35,000 articles were added to the database in about a week (October 2002). This increased article count by about 60%. However there was another blip in late February 2002 when around 5k articles were added, again in about the space of a week, this was another 25% or so rise. My question: what were these articles? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:19, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Oh, that was when Tannin joined the project, Pete.

Ah thanks, I'll hazard a guess that was when our bird coverage suddenly got dramatically better, then :-) This graph illustrates the sudden leap. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:39, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Actually this graph demonstrates it even better. In excess of 17,500 edits a day... more prodigious than even Rambot.... can only have been the infamous Conversion Script (may he rest in peace)... which somehow created lots of new articles... Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:49, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, but User:Conversion script says the script only converted from Phase 2 to Phase 3 software... I assume those graphs use the "at least one link, not a redirect" definition of an article throughout - although the count used at the time was different (the comma count, and before that, the anything goes count). Maybe the conversion script introduced links, thus giving the impression of lots of new articles.... or it killed subpages, which weren't counted... or maybe it was something unrelated... come on put me out of my misery.. :)

Well, I'll bet my bottom dollar that it was the conversion script alright - this page of it's contribs, for instance, shows 500 edits within one minute on the afternoon of 25 Feb 2002 (a whole load of redirects, by the looks of it); there's another 500 on the next page, still with the same timestamp. Now, why this boosts the page count statistics I'm not sure - but presumably the pre-conversion stats are either from a different source (using different criteria) or have been reverse engineered somehow.

In fact, if it's the latter it could be to do with history conversion - if a page had only one edit (its creation) before conversion, it will appear to have been created by the Conversion Script, even after the old histories were recovered and merged in, because the last edit of each article got eaten by the import (see Wikipedia:Usemod article histories). So if the stats have been generated by looking for the beginning of the edit history, they'll erroneous conflate conversion with creation for anything with no imported history. - IMSoP 15:19, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ah yes thank you very much! The stats scripts will count any article edited only once prior to conversion as created on conversion day. That solves it, and the stats are undercounting article number upto Feb 2002. Thanks again. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 17:29, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

New article series - weapons of mass destruction

There's a new article series on weapons of mass destruction if anyone is interested. Any suggestions on improving the format with respect to logical layout or "prettiness" are welcome. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 20:43, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

I've clicked all over for this series, but can't seem to find it anywhere. GWB

Mediawiki:WMD is the mediawiki source, click on "What links here" from there. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 21:37, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Erm, I think it was a joke. GWB can't find them...? The link's useful anyway, though. - IMSoP 22:26, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

*sigh* .... I need to get more sleep... that was SO damn obvious... --Dante Alighieri | Talk 23:19, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Mary McGrory's 1975 P.P. article

Move this to reference desk

If anyone has a copy, please send to gil.garcia@ed.gov

Thanks

In case anyone was wondering, I think P.P. stands for Pulitzer Prize. This wasn't obvious to a non-American (me). Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 14:01, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It's not obvious to this American, either. Kevin Saff 15:46, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Not obvious to me either... although I am curious as to why Pete thought that Americans as a group WOULD find it obvious... ;) --Dante Alighieri | Talk 17:39, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry didn't mean to be confusing. McGrory's recent death was quite well reported in the States, but not elsewhere. Even so, I guess it's still quite a poser - I had to look at her article to make the leap. The article also appears to give the answer to the original inquiry actually - she was awarded one of Prizes for a whole series of commentary articles about Watergate so it is not right to think of a specific article. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 20:48, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

South African elections

If there are any South African Wikipedians who are interested in politics, could they get in touch with me? I have been searching in vain for detailed results of the South African elections and need some advice. Adam 04:27, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

IEC (Independant Electoral Commision). Also see this and possibly this.

Thanks, but I'm familiar with the very unsatisfactory IEC website. For some reason it gives only voting figures but no information about who got elected, which is what I want. Adam 11:29, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Page duplications

I've seen this happen several times today: someone will make a small edit to a page, and somehow the entire article will end up doubled or tripled. (Check the histories of, for example, RFA, Quickpolls, and Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.) Is there a software glitch somewhere, or is it just a world-wide outbreak of boneheadedness? —No-One Jones 02:19, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Obligatory - " "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein" →Raul654 02:48, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

This happened to me at Wikipedia:Requested articles/music, and I'm quite sure I didn't make a mistake. I was moving links around and thus editing several sections at once. It would have been quite difficult to accidentally cut and paste from several edit pages, in order, into a whole nother window. Tuf-Kat 03:54, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

It happened over at VfD recently. That was a mess to sort out, since it went uncorrected for a few days. -- Cyrius|&#9998 04:46, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

I doubled a page once, what happened was I clicked on submit twice in quick succession (jittery finger!), this took me to an edit conflict page (with myself). As far as I can remember, the "stored version" appeared not to include my edit, so I did some copy/pasting to merge the two versions and clicked submit. I didn't realise that's I'd actually doubled the page until someone else came after me and corrected it. I'm still not sure how exactly it happened because I wouldn't have copied the whole of "my version" into the top edit box at an edit conflict. fabiform | talk 19:17, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Will somebody please block the vandal at 129.93.211.55 ? --Juu

Redirecting Interwikied articles

I am unclear what the policy or common practice is. The case I ran into is corpo. I briefly considered putting it on VfD, since I don't see how it can become more than a dic def. Then I thot I'd just redir it to student corporations, but when I hit Edit, I saw it is linked from two other languages. If it can be cleaned up summarily, I think that would be better than putting on VfD, I'm just not sure how to do it. Niteowlneils 00:42, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Mediawiki codes in foreign languages

I was looking at the Zh wiki all messages page, and was wondering if it would make better sense to let them use pinyin (ie the common roman alphabet transcription) for msg:names - same for ar, he, etc. Sorry if this message is misplaced, but the meta link up there doesnt go to a specific page for comment. -Meerkat

Language names

There is a problem with language names at Wikipedia in other languages. "Slovenčina - Slovenščina" are two diferent languages with almost the same lokal name. So I suggest a change to "Slovenčina (Slovak) - Slovenščina (Slovene)". I'm a newcomer, can anybody help? duxborutguy 15:30, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Nomination for the Mediation Committee

Dannyhas been nominated for the Wikipedia:Mediation Committee. Please add your vote there. -- sannse (talk) 11:58, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hello from a musician in Lisboa

Hello

I am a Norwegian man from Karmoy a island on the west coast of norway,that is doing poetry and music. Now I live in Lisboa Portugal , maybe my work is something for the users of Wikipedia and the young ones !?

All the best from

Ove Jan Olsen

OJO Mobile Phone : 00 351 967439034

Poetry and Lyrics :

Stranded In The Danger Zone

Website : http://www.geocities.com/athens/ithaca/2636/

Music : OJO Elektronic 2004 27 Songs To Download

Website : http://www.freewebs.com/ojoelektronic/

If you can help with examples of already notable works of music, great, but keep in mind Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or self promotion. Thanks. Dysprosia 22:49, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yugoslav copyright law

Perhaps it is stupid to ask this question here, but I don't know any better place. If the answer to my question is positive, it would then have HUGE influence with material related to Serbia and Montenegro.

Article 6 of the Copyright law of Serbia and Montenegro states that:

It is not considered an authored work:

2) official material of state organs and organs which have public function

To me, this is similar to Title 17, Section 105 in the U.S. copyright law, which says that government has no copyright protection which is why we are able to use all those nice pictures from NASA etc.

Now, my question is: is an official web page "official material" in this context? For example, official site of Belgrade is at http://www.beograd.org.yu/english/index.htm. Now, the page says 'copyright: City of Belgrade' but it is unimportant if it cannot be copyrighted by law.

If noone could come up with an answer, I will surely try to research this further. Suppose that answer is positive. What would be accepted as authoritative enough confirmation by Wikimedia foundation?

(Full law in Serbian could be found at, for example, [1].)

Nikola 02:45, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm a newbie, but it strikes me that if there is a doubt, it is better to be safe than sorry. In other words, better to ask for permission even if the permission is not strictly needed, than to use images without permission and get in trouble later. You might want to check out the following example of a letter that was sent by a Wikipedian to a British government authority as an extra security. --Woggly 05:47, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Problem is that there is a vast amount of material that could be used, and large possibility of getting negative answers even when they should be positive (even people working in aforementioned organs might not know about this). Nikola 07:23, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Kyiv vs. Kiev

We could use some more voices in the discussion currently at talk:Kiev. It's been argued that "Kiev" is appropriate because it returns more google hits, but that (Soviet-imposed) spelling is offensive to many Ukrainians. The Government of Ukraine has formally requested that their capitol be spelled "Kyiv" in English; a request that has been honored by the UN and the US State Department. While google hit counts are useful in many cases, I don't feel that we should allow them to enslave us when other important factors are involved. There is precedent for correctness overruling hit count, e.g. with Gdansk/Danzig and Mumbai/Bombay. Please chime in at talk:Kiev so we can reach a consensus one way or the other and get the article unprotected. Mkweise 17:28, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This issue seems to come up a lot. The "official" name is different than what everyone else calls it. Consider Mumbia vs Bombay , Kiev vs Kyiv, Makkah vs Mecca. I think we need to be consistent, and I think we need an official policy on this. →Raul654 17:36, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)

A general policy will be more complicated than you might at first think. Consider for example Burma versus Myanmar, where there is significant doubt that the government edict is supported by the people. Wikipedia currently sides with the military government and the UN, and against the US government, the more common English usage and (probably) the people of the country. I don't think that's too strong a statement, and while obviously this decision is POV either way we need to jump one way or the other. Andrewa 19:27, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

For the record (and in case this comes up again), we already have a rule on the books for this - "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." (Wikipedia:Naming conventions). →Raul654 19:31, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)

Well, that settles it, simply, clearly and unambiguously, in favor of Burma, Kiev, and Mecca. Danzig/Gdansk (keeping consistently to alphabetical order) is an interesting one: it's not so much figuring out what the average reader will recognize as making sure that the reader will realize that they're the same place. This is due, of course, to Lech Walesa and associates, who made Gdansk real to people all over the world who had neither known the history of the place nor very much cared. The moral: as Scoop Nisker used to say, if you don't like what's in the news, go make some of your own. Dandrake 00:37, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)

It certainly will come up again. For the present, I think 'Kiev' is overploweringly more recognizable, and I'd never even heard of 'Kyiv' until reading this section. But as long as we have redirects and have sufficient explanation in articles that use the names, we ought to be able to go by our own policy and not be too far afield. ;Bear 20:40, 2004 Apr 11 (UTC)

Agreed with keeping Kiev. Many, if not places are different in English to their local name (think Munich vs Munchen). However, Myanmar is the accepted name for Burma now in the same way that Sri Lanka replaced Ceylon, and most up to date English reference materials seem to refer to Myanmar rather than Burma. Dainamo 11:18, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"Myanmar" is most certainly not "the accepted name for Burma now in the same way that Sri Lanka replaced Ceylon." Ceylon was changed to Sri Lanka by a democratically elected government. Burma was renamed "Myanmar" by a gang of murderous thugs who have hijacked the country so they can loot it. The elected leader of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi, opposes the change, which is why the governments of the US and Australia don't recognise it. If gangsters kidnapped your children and renamed them, would you recognise the new names? Adam 03:19, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Of course, one thing that makes Burma/Myanmar different to the rest is that they are completely seperate names, not merely alternative renderings. Even Danzig/Gdansk and Cologne/Köln are clearly variations on the same basic name, and there is therefore more scope for arguing that one of them is the "English version". Not that this rule can be applied universally either - Deutschland/Germany, for example... - IMSoP 14:57, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I have created Wikipedia:Naming policy poll to settle this question once and for all. Please vote there. →Raul654 04:20, Apr 23, 2004 (UTC)

Proposed meetup in Minneapolis

See Wikipedia:Meetup if interested

Mug shot, Moral question

The Mug shot in James Bulger murder case is image is schocking for me ! In France it's a simply crime to publish the photo of a child convicted of crime. Ericd 20:08, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

In the UK (the country at issue) it's also generally illegal to name a minor suspect or criminal, or even publish information that would reasonably allow someone to identify them (never mind to show their photograph). In this case, however, the names of the two convicted children has been published innumerable times (as have these and other photographs). Our article isn't quite specific enough about why the reporting restrictions were lifted, but they were. Wikipedia's article is considerably less detailed than many media reports of the time. So I'm sure what we have is entirely legal. I can't answer moral questions for you, but wikipedia seems to have adopted an informal policy (such as in the Kobe Bryant rape case) of publishing information that's readily available in reliable mainstream media, but not publishing stuff that's only available via more "samizdat" channels). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:41, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I in my turn find it shocking that a free press can be prohibited from publishing the name of a child murderer, such as the current name of Mary Bell. I rather suspect it's a matter of thinking that what we're used to is correct. - Nunh-huh 02:58, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

By the way, those boys are now 21 and have been released with new identities. There's an injunction in England and Wales on publishing photos of them grown up, or their new identities and locations. I imagine it would be perfectly legal for wikipedia to publish all that (since its based in the USA), but that is where I think we should draw the line. As Finlay said, the images on our article (and more besides) were widely published in all our most reputable press outlets, broadcast on television, etc. fabiform | talk 03:16, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Fabiform, I think we need to establish exactly what the situation is re publishing. If I access the net in England and read Wikipedia, is the publishing not actually taking place in England? What is the situation if the person who posted suppressed informatiion did so from England where it was suppressed? Can based in the USA ever be a defence? Moriori 03:41, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Well, there's nothing in our article which would be illegal to publish in England or Wales, in fact, it's less explicit and contains less photographs than it might legally include. But as far as the law goes (IANAL) the servers are located in the US and we are obliged to follow US law - we don't have to try to follow the law in every state and country which has internet access (how on earth could we do that anyway?). fabiform | talk 04:08, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I didn't know that the the usage in UK was to give new identities. I don't remember of a similar cas in France that why we keep identities secret.

Ericd 03:25, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it's standard practice in the UK, because children's identities are usually protected at trial (so it wouldn't normally be necessary). Various elements of the original trial were criticised by the European Court of Human Rights, including the fact that they were tried as adults (you'll find more about this in the article). fabiform | talk 04:08, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Who is the author of an articles

See Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia (link also e-mailed to fortspoon@aol.com IMSoP 14:42, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC))

Upload file page design

What with the loooong purple box; is it just to discourage vandals from uploading, by making it look like more legal text than it is? -- user:zanimum

"Summary" -> "Edit summary"

I've noticed at least one person admit that they were put off entering an Edit Summary at first, because they weren't sure what it was a "Summary: " of. The obvious solution to this is to change the text to read "Edit Summary", and I think this may require no more than an edit of MediaWiki:Summary (although I'm not sure, see below). See (and reply at) MediaWiki talk:Summary - IMSoP 21:06, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

KKK

is there a way to get the interwikilinks of http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Kluks_Klano to work? the 'ux' becomes automatically some sort of special 'u'. -Listener 13:05, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

PS: as workaround i made a redirect from Ku Kl.

Ŭ, U with breve. In Esperanto, there are 6 letters with special accent marks over them. Since few people can type these letters and they're hard for printers to get and the letter X is not used in the language, they are often represented as cx, gx, ux, sx, hx, and jx. If you had looked over eo:Kiel redakti paĝon, the solution would have become apparent. - Woodrow the 23², Emperor of the United States 23:32, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

For all curious: that is, writting xx instead of x, so the link would be "ku kluxx klan". -- till we *) 00:55, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ah, thank you for that. I didn't know quite how to word it, so I just assumed that even those not familiar with the tongue (Eye for written?) could figure out what it meant. - Woodrow the 23², Emperor of the United States 01:27, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

columning

Is there any way of making a page split into two columns? LUDRAMAN | T 03:19, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

If you want two columns of text, then you could just use a one-row two-cell table. If you need elements to match horizontally, then you'd need a many-row table of course. fabiform | talk 06:12, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Letting people know how to cite

Looking at the ref desk, I see that 2 people within the last 3 weeks have asked basically the same question on that page alone: How do I cite Wikipedia? Now, every time someone asks, we can happily point them at Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia, but given the frequency of these questions, perhaps it would be useful to tell them before they ask.

Now, I know there's already quite a lot in there, but one option is the footer at the bottom of every article - where the Copyrights and Disclaimers links live. If we tidied up the page on citations a bit, perhaps we could link to it there - after all, we want to be cited as a resource, because it will boost both our visibility and our reputation! Any other suggestions for boosting the visibility of this information are of course welcome. - IMSoP 21:06, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't think the footer will work. We tell users that they must own the copyrights to everything they submit, yet the number of copyvios is still quite high. (however, with the new edit box header for new pages asking that users test in the sandbox, the number of tests has decreased from what I remember it used to be...) Dysprosia 05:41, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, we need to do something, because it's beginning to get silly how often we're asked. I'm guessing that anyone who is trying to cite us will have looked pretty hard for the information they're expecting, so all we have to do is put a link wherever they're likely to look. This is different from copyright information, which people aren't looking for - we have to grab their attention with that one. I think the footer would be the perfect place, were it not so cluttered already. - IMSoP 14:49, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It's in the Readers' FAQ, and is the first thing to turn up on a word-search for "citing" (as well as the first result on a Google search for "citing wikipedia.") My guess is that those who ask it haven't looked very hard, or aren't search-savvy enough to know where to start. I don't think it's too much of a problem to answer this relatively frequent question on an individual basis, though. Who knows? The personal interaction might even get the questioners more interested in the WP community. -- Wapcaplet 22:10, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"The Free Dictionary"

This site: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/ seems to be picking up all Wikipedia non-stub articles and offering the material without attribution as a free online encyclopedia. Obviously, this is not a copyvio, but I'm curious about the relationship (if any) with Wikipedia. Is Farlex, the site proprietor, just opportunistically using Wikipedians' work to pump up a site and sell banner ads? JamesMLane 04:10, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Not a copyvio my eye - they are *not* allowed to copy our material unless they are granted permission to. The GFDL provides them that permission, provided they abide by the terms. If they don't provide attribution, then they are not abiding by the terms, they have no license, and they are violating our copyright. →Raul654 04:12, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

On further searching, at the bottom of every page: This article was derived fully or in part from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.. They are abiding by the terms, so somone please add it to our list of mirrors. →Raul654 04:14, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

That site is a cool presentation of Wikipedia content. If you hover on a link, then a small window of text opens up and exposes the first part of the linked article for preview (you click the link to get at the rest of the linked article). - Bevo 04:40, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

And if you double-click on a word, it looks it up in a dictionary. -- Cyrius|&#9998 05:07, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

They've done this properly including attribution and a full link back from each article to its Wikipedia counterpart. I don't see any problem with their implementation. It's nicely done.-- Derek Ross 04:56, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

As usual with the forks and mirrors though, they make the GFDL text as inconspicious and small as possible but make their own (c) much more prominent... even though they have no copyright over the actual text, just the layout. I don't think there has been one fork who has entered into the spirit of a free encyclopedia... merely just tried to make some profit by dumping our database and paying as little lip service to the licence as they can get away with. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 06:23, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

OK, sorry, I missed the attribution on first glance, for the reason Pete points out. The Farlex people certainly don't go out of their way to make it clear that they didn't do the work. Under each article they put a table with some "What links here" links, although they don't call it that; then comes the "Encyclopedia Browser" chart, which has the ten preceding and ten following topics in alphabetical order (admittedly a useful feature); then a "Full Dictionary Browser" that repeats those twenty links and supplements them with twenty more links to dictionary definitions in that alphabetical range. All of this takes up about half my screen. Then, under these tables, all the way down at the bottom, in what looks to be about 7-point type, they put the attribution notice that →Raul654 found.

Even if you find that notice, you'll read only that the article was "derived fully or in part from Wikipedia." Their copyright notice says that they "use multiple sources of data." All this is pretty disingenuous, given that the few articles I've checked were essentially copied verbatim. The only change I've noticed was the deletion of links to nonexistent articles. The proprietors (or, I suppose, their bots) even pick up stuff that's on VfD (e.g., Christopher Zarba). Interestingly, however, they omitted at least one non-stub -- namely, the article on the subject "Wikipedia."

Their own copyright notice also states: "The site contains copyrighted material, trademarks, and other proprietary information. You may use the content of up to 10 articles from the site without an express permission from the publisher provided a clear reference to the source of information is given. If the information is placed on a web site, a link to the source or home page is required." Only then does it mention that "[s]ome articles" are GNUFDL. I suspect a more accurate statement would be that the "Dictionary" portion of the site is copyrighted but the content of the "Encyclopedia" portion is entirely GNUFDL.

Their whole process of grabbing our database is probably automated. If I turn these comments into a Wikipedia article about Farlex, emphasizing the facts that show what a bunch of sleazeballs they are, do you think it will appear verbatim on their site? :) JamesMLane 06:43, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

If the TheFreeDictionary link comes up before the Wikipedia link in a Google search, tell Google via thei search-quality@google.com address. I reported that a spammy version of Kolmogorov's zero-one law appeared above the real Wikipedia version in the results, explaining that the Wikipedia version of any such article is the authoritative one. About two weeks later, I got a mail back from them, stating that it had been fixed. Sure enough, the search I'd done ("kolmogorov zero-one") now showed the Wikipedia link above the TheFreeDictionary link. Of course, now it's gone back the other way; I suppose TFD has some kind of attempt going on to exploit Google's algorithm or somesuch.

If you plan on doing this, make sure you include the exact text of your search, so the Google folks can do their job more easily. If enough folks do this, we'll take eyeballs away from TFD and bring them here, where they might even contribute. Grendelkhan 08:30, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC)

I can't imagine that Farlex and these are other sites are making much money if any off repackainge Wikipedia content. Running banner ads for "Classmates.com" is pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel. As someone who has been through the wars of e-commerce and seen the worst of it, I can affirm that if you ain't offering your own product for sale, or if you're not a highvolume site selling proprietary ads (like Drudge or Fark.com), or you're not really good at affiliate programs, then you better have a day job if you want to peddle free content. Perhaps I'm wrong: if so, I'd love to know how they are making it work. -- Decumanus | Talk 06:07, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Moreover, a legal agreement can't do much to enforce things like "spirit of usage" which seems to be what disturbs people about this. If somebody wants to do things just like Wikipedia does, they'll probably do it here. Jgm 11:13, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think TFD.com are one of the better mirrors of wikipedia content. They've got other features (dictionary, classic lit. search) using public domain text, as well: so they've at least done some programming and thinking, rather than just a straight dump. Features such as article text in mouse-over are quite original too. Even though it's tiny, they do mention the GFDL; i'd be tempted to make a long legal string like that small size too.

My favourite mirrors though, are the ones that have a link to edit the article, which goes to the wikipedia.org article with &action=edit. I think that's a nice compliment to the wiki concept. T 12:24, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it's too bad a provision to require just that wasn't integrated into the Wikipedia usage license. Jgm 11:13, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Question for T: Is their dictionary stuff from a public domain source? I checked a couple entries to see if they were just grabbing the Wiktionary content, and they weren't. I concluded that perhaps they were doing their own (copyrightable) work on the dictionary, then supplementing it with Wikipedia content to make their site more useful. As for linking, I'd consider it dishonorable to run a site like theirs and not link in the way you describe, regardless of what my lawyer told me about copyright law. JamesMLane 17:20, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yep, they have to link back to the original article. Which they do. Some mirrors also have a specific edit link, that takes them to wikipedia to edit the article (as opposed to just viewing the original).

I'm pretty sure it's one of those expired PD dictionaries that they use. At least for many/most of the entries. I looked up a random word: Fyrd, then googled for their result [2], they show up as well as www.thesaurus-dictionary.com, www.brainydictionary.com, www.webster-dictionary.net, hyperdictionary.com, monsterdictionary.com, hipwords.com, okay, enough examples, you get the picture :-)

I think the only copyright they have is over their 'site content', whatever that is. But it's fair enough for them to claim it. T 22:53, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Referencing Disinfopedia

THe article at Michael Johns is copied from the Disinfopedia article at http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Michael_Johns. If they are GFDL, how do we reference that fact? RickK 03:41, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Just like we do with Wikinfo articles, see Jay Lovestone as an example.--Eloquence * 04:00, Apr 15, 2004 (UTC)

Active MediaWiki bug?

I am presently experiencing what i take to be a bug in the interaction between the MediaWiki msg facility and the database. I'd be glad to either work around it, or assist a developer in collecting evidence. --Jerzy (t) 19:28, 2004 Apr 14 (UTC)

Specifically, the preview of my edit of penology, to which i am adding

seems to reflect the initial version (1st edit) of MediaWiki:Crime rather than the changes that others (and i today) have made to MediaWiki:Crime. Could the Preview-rendering code have an error in its use of the DB for MediaWiki references?

(On reflection, my obvious workaround is to go ahead and save the edit (and let someone else worry about it, or not). Instead, i am keeping the edit window open. --Jerzy (t) 19:43, 2004 Apr 14 (UTC)

When I try the same it works fine, it might just a case of Wikipedia:Clear your cache. andy 19:55, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

FWIW, it is not fully repeatable for me either: opening a 2nd edit of the same article and making the same change as the same user, it works as i would have hoped. Keeping this window open as well.

I don't take the cache explanation seriously, as i don't believe i have seen the msg before, and that version is a month old; i've cleared my cache, i believe more than once since then. --Jerzy (t) 19:59, 2004 Apr 14 (UTC)

In fact, would a cache problem not have to be the result of my having done the same edit before? I am not talking about looking at a page representing the MediaWiki page, but looking at the Preview the server sent me when i added the msg to the page i am editing. I surely have never edited it before! The server thinks the obsolete version of the MediaWiki msg applies to my eidt! --Jerzy (t) 20:04, 2004 Apr 14 (UTC)

(Full disclosure: on one hand, i've never checked the "all files" box described at the cache-clearing meta-article, and on the other, i think would make a difference only if my "Items to synchronize" window said something other than "There are no offline items to synchronize". But in any case, IMO this has to be a server-side problem, for the reason already stated.) --Jerzy (t) 20:20, 2004 Apr 14 (UTC)

If you're logged in nothing is cached on the server side. A memcached problem is my (vague) guess. -- Gabriel Wicke 22:01, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Reread. Caching on the client side cannot explain the phenomenon, for multiple reasons. I did not suggest caching problem at all. I suggested a bug (timing window?) in the way the Preview-rendering code interrogates the data base re msg calls, or in the database itself. --Jerzy (t) 23:51, 2004 Apr 14 (UTC)

Per new info, there are known MW bugs (slated for correction) that are similar enough to be likely explantations. --Jerzy (t) 06:56, 2004 Apr 15 (UTC)

Abagnale move

This is not exactly vandalism so I am bit at the loss where to include this: inexperienced anon user: 213.170.47.89 transferred text from Frank Abagnale to Frank William Abagnale Jr. with a cut-and-paste method, meaning that the edit history was severed and exist now only in the former page, which he turned to redirect. Since I cannot delete pages or anything, maybe somebody could do something to it. Sorry for intruding on the Pump. - Skysmith 12:23, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

As Frank William Abagnale Jr. had no edit history aside from the cut-and-paste, I just reverted the changes on Frank Abagnale and made Jr. a redirect to the original. If it's ever decided to do a proper move, then the Jr. page will need to be deleted. -- Cyrius|&#9998 12:48, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)

Working through Special:Ancientpages

Special:Ancientpages is a list of the oldest articles on Wikipedia, that is, the ones which have been edited the longest time ago. In my experience almost all of these articles could use some loving attention. To approach this more systematically, I have added a box to the Wikipedia:Community Portal where the oldest article at any given time can be featured until it has been touched up at least a little bit. This can happen within days or within minutes - it's up to you. Hopefully this will also give people an incentive to visit the CP more often.--Eloquence * 12:33, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

Redirects from Article to Wikipedia namespace

Is it appropriate to create redirects from the article namespace to the Wikipedia namespace? For example, I was looking for Wikipedia:Article series just now, so I typed "Article series" into the go/search box, and found an empty page. Since one of the purposes of redirects is to make it easier to find thing, I was about to create a redirect to the Wikipedia namespace page, but then realized that this might be good practice. What should I do? — Adam Conover † 04:53, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

There are many, many, many existing redirects to the Wikipedia namespace. Case in point, Village pump redirects to Wikipedia:Village pump. Hell, Redirect redirects to Wikipedia:Redirect. Just don't create redirects to another wiki. -- Cyrius|&#9998 06:08, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! Done and done. — Adam Conover † 06:11, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

There are many such redirects for historical reasons (originally we didn't have namespaces). But we shouldn't create more without good reason. Everytime we make explicit reference to Wikipedia within the article namespace we make things more difficult for re-users of our content. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:30, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The order of interlanguage links

I would like to have a policy on how to sort interlanguage links. It's obviously a good idea to sort them alphabetically, but on some pages they are sorted by the language code and on some by the language name. This is very notable in the case of Finnish language ("suomi"), which is placed somewhere before French language ("français") by the code but right before Swedish language ("svenska") by the name. I think sorting by the language name is more logical to the reader as the language name is the only thing shown, but there is no written policy. -- Lakefall 18:51, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There is no fixed policy yet - but a poll is running for some time already at Wikipedia:Language order poll. Currently the sorting by local language name is leading the poll. andy 19:14, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

plagiarism

hi my name is mandy and i'm doing a project on kenya, just to let you know, http://www.mapzones.com/world/africa/kenya/historyindex.php - has almost the exact information you do, i know that this is plagarising and i don't know whose plagarising who, but i thought i let you know.

Kenya: Fossils found in East Africa suggest that protohumans roamed the area more than 20 million years ago. Recent finds near Kenya's Lake Turkana indicate that hominids like Homo habilis and Homo erectus lived in Kenya 2.6 million years ago
Kenya: Fossils found in East Africa suggest that protohumans roamed the area more than 20 million years ago. Recent finds near Kenya's Lake Turkana indicate that hominids lived in the area 2.6 million years ago.

Looks pretty similiar →Raul654 17:50, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

I did a little more tracing. That info was copied into our kenya article from the History of Kenya article. Those sentences were added during this edit by a bot. →Raul654 17:54, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

I suspect that both are derived from some sort of public domain source like the CIA factbook or such. Bkonrad | Talk 18:04, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Such as this from the U.S. State department Bkonrad | Talk 18:10, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I just realized the question was about plagiarism. Although the information from the U.S. State Department is public domain, that is not copyrighted and can be freely copied, it really should be acknowledged as the source. Copying the information without attribution is plagiarism. Wikipedia (and the other sites that use it) should acknowledge the source of the information. Bkonrad | Talk 18:14, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I added the correspondin note at History of Kenya The bot itself should've been doing this, to avoid suspicions of this kind. Mikkalai 18:17, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Actually the bot in question is the Conversion script which imported data from the old usemod database into the new one. According to its "user page", the usemod histories were imported only later, and

...the conversion script entries in history remained, in most cases appearing to perform whatever was the last edit prior to the conversion.

So the script itself didn't acquire that information from anywhere other than Wikipedia - somebody added it, but their identity is lost in the mists of time. - IMSoP 19:05, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Where's Wikisophia?

What happened to WikiSophia? I was using it to generate PNG versions of PPCHTeX diagrams, and now the site's down and doesn't want to come back up. Does anybody know where I can at least get a copy of Wikitex so that I don't have to do these by hand? Grendelkhan 16:47, 2004 Apr 17 (UTC)

Seems to have been dead for a while... I miss it also. Dysprosia 09:47, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I asked on meta; the response by Eloquence [3] says that the developer disappeared. The punk. Grendelkhan 23:58, 2004 Apr 18 (UTC)

I too would like to see it (I only found out about it after it went down)... in the mean time I hacked together a way to do it on my linux machine, see my user page. Rkundalini 09:14, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sex pages

Archive to wikipedia talk:profanity?