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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump.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

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Image Usage

I'm tired of people posting fotos using the <div> tag. This format is extremely hostile to older browsers, and results in people who use older systems to explore wikipedia finding it unpleasant and unusable and not coming back. The <img> tag is perfectly adequate for the wikipedia and is friendly to just about every browser out there. Myself, I usually use Netscape 4.7, but I can no longer use it on graphics-containing wikipedia pages, forcing me to open Mozilla 1.6, which badly bogs down my antiquated computer and forces me to spend about three times as much time on-line to do the same thing. BTW, the Bomis Browser version I have won't handle the <div> stuff very well, either. jaknouse 18:06, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Presumably the new wiki image up uses these tags "behind the scenes" making the situation even worse for Jaknouse and others with Netscape 4.x i.e. people are being made to use div whether they want to or not. Should wiki mark up translate to different HTML code for different browsers? Does it already? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 18:11, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

IMO we still need a simpler syntax for normal use than either the new or old ones we have. I've said this before. The issue of older browsers is another reason for this. Andrewa 20:01, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'd always been under the impression (partly from first-hand experience, at least with Netscape 4.x and older MSIE versions) that browsers not supporting the DIV element simply ignored it and rendered whatever was in it as though it were defined in-line. What happens when you try to view a DIV-enclosed image on your browser? Could you post a screenshot? Maybe I could come up with a workaround. No offense to you or anyone else using an older browser, but our general guideline has always been to try and make the majority of Wikipedia's viewers happy - using simple inline images without any formatting can look pretty awful, with lots of empty space to the right of the image. Most browsers nowadays either support the DIV element or degrade gracefully and ignore it completely. -- Wapcaplet 00:16, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The problem is not with browsers that don't support DIVs at all -- it's with browsers that think they support DIVs and basic CSS but in fact screw them up completely. I say good riddance to them, but in some cases it may be enough to add appropriate 'width' settings to the styles. If someone who cares about broken browsers could point to a specific case and a specific fix, we'd be happy to incorporate it. --Brion 00:54, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm trying to edit this and just get a blank window, so not sure how this will post. I just uploaded:

• image:divshot1.jpg
• image:divshot2.jpg
• image:divshot3.jpg

as examples of what happens when viewing div tags on Netscape 4.7 (the page shown is Oak). In fact, the pump grafik at the top of the Village Pump page floats ON TOP of much of the text! jaknouse 01:07, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Comment moved (from below) and reformatted by IMSoP 01:26, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

OK, I've installed Netscape 4.7 and now I see what you mean. Yuck! Brion - one easy fix that I know of, as far as the generated HTML code, is to use the @import statement for bringing in any CSS stuff that Netscape does not understand. NS 4.7 doesn't know about @import, so any CSS referenced in that manner will be ignored by that browser. I'm fairly sure it applies to other versions too - haven't tried it. I don't know how it'll deal with inline CSS such as we use in our floating-image-divs; it might also be necessary to simply use a CSS class for floating divs, and define the actual CSS attributes in the @imported stylesheet:

<div class="floatleft">(...image...)</div>

and in the stylesheet, something like:

.floatleft { float: left; margin: 0 1em 1em 0; }

I wish I could give you a more specific fix; I'll play around and see if I can come up with something. -- Wapcaplet 02:26, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

To Brion or any other developer that is following the discussion: I've come up with a relatively simple fix that works for at least some of the image pages. It doesn't look great in NS4.7, but it looks way better than it did before. See User:Wapcaplet/Sandbox#Helping_out_the_broken_browsers for implementation details. -- Wapcaplet 05:02, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Is wiki a good P2P application?

Discussion continues at Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki future directions

DNS problem

--> meta:Talk:Wikimedia servers

Dashes

--> Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (biographies)Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

Is pumpie a possible problem? Sennheiser ponders this perplexity

--> Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Pumpie

History of ALCO POWER

made the change --denny vrandečić 21:50, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is simply the best!

--> Wikipedia talk:WikiLove in time for Valentines day.  :)

Random Observations

Are stub messages useful?

--> Wikipedia talk:Perfect stub article

Not sure what to do

--> Talk:Oxford Revelation Rock-Gospel Choir

Messed up characters

--> User talk:Raul654

Have I been squidded?

(fixed)

-->m:Cache bugs

Need help on Dior (fixed)

--> Talk:Dior

The "deadly Wikipedia virus"

--> Wikipedia talk:Confessed Wikipediholics

Can't Get My Password Back (fixed)

There was an email backlog, now fixed. --> Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 1

Most Wanted Articles

--> Wikipedia talk:Most Wanted Articles

External links to subscription services

Do we have a policy on including eternal links which lead to paid subscription news services such as The Times? Fore example Current_events the Feb 16th story on the break-up of the BBC. Personally, I think that it's okay to link to news sites which require a free login, such as the New York Times, but that paid subscription links are best left out (or annotated as paid so that users don't waste time/bandwidth trying to acces them). dramatic 19:27, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Spend the extra 60 seconds and google for something free to link to. This should work 99.999% of the time. →Raul654 19:38, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

"the Feb 16th story on the break-up of the BBC" - Wow! Do you get to see future news? Is there an option somewhere in preferences for that? [Sorry, couldn't resist]

You're just jealous because some of us are on UTC+13 :-)

On a more sensible note, the Times link didn't require any kind of registration out of me, but in general you're probably right. Like with links to PDFs, links that require registration (whether paid or not) should probably have warnings. Slashdot conventionally puts "(free registration required)" or somesuch [although they sometimes parody themselves and put "(jumping through hoops required)", etc] but it's not obvious how that could be fitted in to the footnote-style auto-numbered links. - IMSoP 19:47, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC) [via edit conflict]

I use http://news.google.com/ to search for news articles to link to in the Current Events pages. All of their entries are non-subscription services, and so far I haven't had a problem finding a news article which covers the event I'm trying to include. RickK 21:24, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

We should also not give references to books or journal articles as they are cost money up front too. Let's just stick to sites supported by advertising (which we pay for in non-up-front ways) or the BBC (which I pay for out of taxes), cos they don't cost money up front. More seriously, the right thing to do from a scholastic perspective is to give the best references, wherever they may be. (Note that in theory our articles should be sufficently good that references are not needed by Joe Reader, only by more serious researchers) Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:12, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Except that in most cases, the references are fungible - no particular pay site is going to be significantly better than another. That is why I strongly object to linking to the NY times, because after 3 months, the links becoming pay-only. →Raul654 22:16, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

In the particular example cited, the Sunday Times is the best reference - it was the newspaper that got hold of the leaked report. All other reports are reporting the existence of the Sunday Times report, from what I've seen. Thus the it would be best to link directly to the Sunday Times. If identical information is available to all news sources (because the information has come from pa/reuters release or a press release) then sure link to the "best" (i.e. free/stable/readable) site - but wouldn't this lead to a bias to linking to the BBC - it has stable URLs and no ads, where as the other major news sources are almost unreadable due to ads and pop-ups.

I think the best policy is not to not use them, but to label them. To answer your point about other kinds of reference, it is fairly obvious that a book is a paid-for resource (except when you use a library, of course), and journal articles all have the same general access arrangements (as one another). Online resources, however, have all sorts of different access requirements, and it is nice to be warned before following a reference whether it is particularly restrictive. And, as Raul says, where several references are only differentiable by their accessibility, we might as well as cite the most accessible (e.g. the one with no subscription requirements) - IMSoP 22:29, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I'd agree with labelling whenever it is non-obvious. All other things being equal, accessibility should become a factor in chosing an ext. link, but other things aren't equal as often as the impression this thread gives. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:46, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't really see what's wrong with linking to a pay-only NY Times link. It'd be okay to link to "not even online at all" sources, like, say, the NY Times paper version, or a book, or a journal. I do agree that we should prefer online and free sources if they are just as good, and just as reputable. We shouldn't link to some random local paper nobody's ever heard of as our authoritative source just because it's free. Doubly so because our content may eventually be used in a non-internet setting, in which case being able to look up the NY Times article at your local library's archives is a lot better than having a useless reference to some obscure paper. --Delirium 12:00, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

Use of Citations

Over at Operation Downfall, I added a section on casualities. It draws very heavily from a couple passages in John Skates' Invasion of Japan. If this were an academic paper, I'd most definitely cite it. What is the wiki policy on citations? →Raul654 19:01, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

Cite it under a References section I would say. Dori | Talk 19:33, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

I concur. More people should cite their references, it would make this all much more useful. Jmabel 01:06, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

See "Cite your sources" in the style guide. Steven G. Johnson

Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates

Who is supposed to move approved candidates from Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates into Wikipedia:Featured pictures ? Bevo 17:12, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If you follow the instructions on that page, I believe the answer is "anyone". :-) Be bold! Jwrosenzweig 19:38, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Most edited articles?

Where do you find a list of the most edited articles in the wiki? Tried Specialpages and didn't see anything that yelled "most edited" at me.... :) alerante 23:01, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There's a Wikipedia:Most-edited talk pages. If that's possible, you could probably bug one of the developers into making an articlespace version. Tuf-Kat 03:29, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

That'll work for me. The developers don't need to be bugged. :) alerante 22:02, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ordinal vs Cardinal

Some of the number pages (like five hundred) have "ordinal" and "cardinal" confused. Please fix this. Ordinal means 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.; cardinal means one, two, three (how many), etc. --Juuitchan

You are allowed to fix it yourself, you know? --Phil 11:35, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

Wikimedia's first press release Fundraising paragraph

m:Wikimedia's first press release was written mostly in August of 2003, before $30,000 dollars were raised for new hardware. Suggestions for bringing iti up to date before it is released are solicited.

--> m:Talk:Wikimedia's first press release

Most unlikely edit war?

I'm curious: Has anybody else encountered a real, mean-spirited, you-revert-me-so-I-revert-you edit war over a less likely topic than Curse of the Bambino? DavidWBrooks 15:38, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Reminiscing continues at Wikipedia talk:Edit war

Math formulae question

Help needed with formatting math formulae.

Discussion continues at m:Talk:MediaWiki User's Guide: Editing mathematical formulae

Anthony and Wik

--> Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wik/

Geography sites question

- - I rememember seeing something when I first came on board about the geographical site names being first done by robot, using some(?) almanac.

Discussion continues at User talk:Ram-Man

Lumpenproletariat, lumpen proletariat or lumpen-proletariat?

Don't know if Lumpenproletariat should be moved to lumpen ploletariat Lumpen proletariat. Need help from whatever that language is (German?). Discuss at Talk:Lumpenproletariat please. --Maio 22:22, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

Lumpenproletariat has now been fixed, and yes it is correct (one Word) --Dieter Simon 23:37, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Translation

Multilingual? Or need a foreign-language wikipedia article translated into English? Check out the newly created Wikipedia:Translation

--> Wikipedia talk:Translation

Download entire section?

I was wondering is it possible to download the whole mathematics section?

See: Wikipedia:Database download. (you will download other sections but its all in a nice package) --Sennheiser! 17:27, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia and Google

I was checking how my article Sangharakshita rated on Google today and found something interesting. Most of the licenced users of Wikipedia's text rate better than Wikipedia itself.

--> Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 1

Viewing source of old article revisions

The article Abbey appears to have been cut off mid-sentence. I tracked this back to the 06:34, 31 Oct 2002 version (the previous version is all right). Ideally, I would have been able to view the source (including wiki formatting) of the 31.12.2002 version and copy it to the most recent revision. Is this possible? If not, I'll just copy the article as is, and reapply the formatting on my on. -Itai 01:13, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes there is. Click on the date/time of the revision you want to retrieve. Then at the bottom, click edit this. That'll give you the wikicode→Raul654 01:16, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

No, not really. Clicking Edit this page gives me the wikicode of the current (lacking) article, not of the historical (complete) article. Thanks anyway. -Itai 03:07, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What you have to do is first click on Page history, then click on one of the links with with the date (i.e. something like 21:07, Feb 13, 2004). After you click on one of those links, you'll see "(Revision as of 19:13, Feb 13, 2004)" at the top of the page. Then click on Edit this page and you'll see "WARNING: You are editing an out-of-date revision of this page. If you save it, any changes made since this revision will be lost." at the top and the text as on any normal edit. If you save this version, you are effectively reverting to that revision. Dori | Talk 03:13, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

Right you are. Thank you. I've been clicking on the last and cur buttons all along. I've now fixed the article. -Itai 10:37, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well done! Now have a think... how could the documentation have been more helpful to you? Is there a change that you can make to one of our various help pages that would make them more easily understood by people wanting to revert for the first time? You're now in a good position to do this, while old hands tend to just say hey, it's obvious. If this isn't your thing, no worries, but worth a thought IMO. Andrewa 19:29, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Actually, it is obvious, speaking with the wisdom of hindsight. I was merely pressing the wrong button. Repeatedly. Mercifully, it wasn't the little red one that makes the world blow up. Not much of trial and error with that one. Seriously, however, you're absolutely right and I'll be sure to give it a thought. -Itai 21:59, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

"Anatole of Paris" by Sylvia Fine

To Whom It May Concern:

I am trying to locate sheet music for "Anatole Of Paris", which was performed by Danny Kaye, written by Sylvia Fine.

I've attempted to locate this sheet music but have had no luck, so far. I'm hoping you can help me.

Thanks for your time.

All the best,

Clive Revill email: selsrev@earthlink.net

Try this link. RickK 02:15, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Clive Revill? The actor? RickK 02:16, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

stomach banding

I have a friend that about 25 years ago had a ring put around the lower part of her stomach to aid her in losing weight as she was very overweight. Now, many years later she is having so many health problems as now she can only drink and if she eats solid foods it will not pass and she is losing a lot of weight and also is throwing up every day. Do you have any information that might aid her as I thought at one time you had people on that had problems from this procedure. A doctor told her the ring is closing and she will have to have 99% of her stomach removed. Can you help her? She is on disability and medicare! Any information would be so greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Mari Howard

Em dashes

Sorry, but wasn't there just a discussion about standard formatting for dashes? I've spent 10 minutes searching for it and can't find the discussion or any text in style-guide-related topics about them. Where'd it goooooo? Elf 02:46, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yip, it was the "Dashes" section above that's now a pointer to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (biographies). A slightly obscure place for the move, really, since the conversation drifted onto far wider topics than just biographies. I can't be bothered with finding somewhere better at the mo, though - IMSoP 02:55, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I suggest up to the top level Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style since there is a section in that page (though incomplete) titled "Punctuation" and there's really only one paragraph in the whole discussion on bios. (I'd move it myself but I'm skeered to try.) Elf 03:27, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I put it there because it's the biography section of the manual of style which advocates using ascii dashes in between pairs of dates. But, move it by all means if you want, just remember to update the link/pointer on this page so it points to the correct place. fabiform | talk 08:16, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

OK, I moved it to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style although I left copy of parts dealing specifically with biographies there. Elf 21:19, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

---

Could someone delete Gujarat to move Gujarat State, India there. Also, Yellow Pig Day still needs to be deleted. --Wik 19:24, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

The consensus was to keep YPD. Anthony DiPierro 21:47, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Which part of "This was already deleted 21:41, Oct 30, 2003 Angela deleted "Yellow Pig Day" (listed on vfd for 5 days; all real votes to delete)" don't you understand? --Wik 21:48, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

That we now know that it is a verified day not confined to a single location. You appear to be ignoring the recent VfD vote, which was to keep it. Jamesday 03:31, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thai wikipedia

Is there something wrong with the Thai language wikipedia I cannot reach it. Somchai ;

http://th.wikipedia.org is working again, Brion fixed it after it was mentioned on the mailing list. andy 10:15, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You might want to tell that to Silsor. --Ed Senft! 03:37, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[Note: I suspect that the above comment was added to the wrong section due to rogue code further up the page breaking the section edit links. It was also added to the next section down. - IMSoP 18:10, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)]

Edit and Revert wars getting out of hand

I propose that a new policy be implemented to deal with the short-term impact of edit and revert wars. The protecting pages does not seem to work as the conflict soon spreads to other pages, and we can't be protecting all the pages. I am almost inclined to support a policy whereby sysops are allowed to temp-ban participants until the Mediation/Arbitration committees are done reviewing the issue....

Discussion continues at Wikipedia talk:Edit war

I'd love to vandalize a page

Ever felt like vandalising a page, adding joke content etc?

--> Wikipedia talk:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense

I added replies to the replies. See that page. Laudaka 07:12, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC) (Paul/laudaka)

A temptation I've given into once, hoping to make Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense. I didn't. Someone wisely blanked the page. I'm not saying what it was. --Charles A. L. 18:30, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)

"Located in..."

Not really sure whether this is the place to ask but: Would it possible to set the wikibot (or whatever it is) to change "located in" to "in" where that phrase this occurs in geographical articles? If something is "in" X county etc, it has to be located there and the "located" is completely redundant. Jacquerie27 22:18, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Having just "in" would be more concise, but I don't really think the extra word "located" hurts anything, especially since it would involve thousands of bot edits to remove them all. -- Wapcaplet 22:25, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

A question

I was just wondering, is there any way to make large black bolded text, like is seen on page sub-divisions without using the ==Bolded Text== thing. And I dont mean like This I mean really big G-Man 16:24, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Using wiki code? Don't think you can. That code creates a header-two, which carries actual semantic meaning. Large black bolded text on its own is meaningless. Why do you want to anyway? Jor 16:41, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm sure I've seen it used somewhere else, (might be wrong) and I was just wondering how it was done G-Man 16:54, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Try

using CSS

maybe… (<p style="font-size: 120%; font-weight: bold;">) Just don't use a <h2> just to get "big text". Jor 17:07, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Does using plain HTML, like this, (<font size=+1><b>this</b></font>) give what you want, or does that count as an H2? I'm not sure whether it's easier or harder than CSS, but it might be better for older browsers. I don't really know much about it. -- Vardion 02:15, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

<h1 align=center>It Cannot be Done</h1>

Apologies to whoever added the above, but it broke the section edit links for the rest of the page, so I've surrounded it in <pre> tags. Which just goes to show the dangers of using semantic markup just to create visual effects. - IMSoP 18:06, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

References not in english

Sorry the newbie question. I understand that i should cite my sources if i write long sections about complex topics. But what if these sources are in German, not English? Of course i tend to read books in my native language if i can get decent ones on a topic, and not all of them are availiable as english translations. Cite anyway? With a warning that it's not in english? Lady Tenar 00:32, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Cite 'em, Danno. And, yes, if the title doesn't make it obvious, it would be polite to indicate that it is not in English. And welcome. -- Jmabel 00:45, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Full-text search

Will the Wikipedia full-text search feature be re-enabled, now that the new servers are being installed? Google is amazing, but it's not as good as the full-text search feature was. Dpbsmith 23:15, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

• Seems to be working and it's great. Anthony DiPierro 15:44, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

• Please re-enable the Google option; I personally found it much more useful and accurate than the current search feature. For example, searching for "Courtney" does not even turn up pages like Courtney Love that have that word in the title, whereas Google turns up that and other promising links. Steven G. Johnson 17:25, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think it currently is enabled. The best of both worlds would be to have full text on and a link to google. Dori | Talk 17:28, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

Damage to Cleanup

I have reverted Cleanup about 5 hours worth, maybe a dozen edits. Those who can read the history will understand why. I have to go off-line for about 6 hours, starting now. Only one person should take over from me in restoring the lost edits; and no one with any doubt as to whether they understand the process should try. Sys-op status (even tho i lack it) would be a good criterion.

(Leave a note here if you're going to undertake it. Also check with User:MyRedDice to be sure he hasn't started, or gotten someone else onto it. And probably modify my *two* copies of modified "in use" boiler plate, to mention your name and help ensure only one person working on the repair.)

It *can* be left until i can finish it if necessary, but the sooner the better, IMO. --Jerzy 23:43, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

I'll take over. Onebyone 00:09, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Finished, as far as I can see I've restored the lost changes. I'm about to remove the warnings from the page itself. Onebyone 00:20, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thumbnail size

This was posted on the talk page, but I think it was intended for here - IMSoP 17:36, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Timwi and I are having a discussion on the best thumbnail size for pictures. We cannot agree so please put your opinions here. The discussion so far is at User talk:Timwi. To help your thoughts I have put one pic on Wing to 180px wide and one to 250px wide.

My argument is that 250px is best, as a compromise, so that clicking on a larger version (if any) would be rarely necessary and page loading time would still be reasonable. (I used to say 300px but, for some reason I don?t understand, that does look too large with the new image code).

Timwi?s argument is for a roughly 180px thumb. He says that you can see just as much detail on that size as on a 250px one and that 250px looks bad on a 640 by 480 screen because it occupies half the screen width.
(Timwi, if I haven?t put your argument properly please add to it here).
Your opinions, please.
Adrian Pingstone 17:30, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What would be interesting is a page of statistics showing the breakdown of the different screen resolutions browsers use to access the site: are most people using 640x480 or 1600x1200? Is there a page like that anywhere? And what would resolve a lot of this thumbnail angst is a command in the image markup to allow pics to occupy a specified percentage of the screen width (eg, "width=33%"). Is that feasible? –Hajor 17:47, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The problem with having it as a percentage (even if that were possible, which I'm not sure of) is that everyone would have to download it at full size, and let their browser scale it down, because there'd be no way for the server to know what size thumbnail to generate. So we'd lose the advantage of thumbnails for slow connections and overworked wiki-servers. - IMSoP 17:58, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC) [who nearly added this to the wrong topic - what's with the section edit links?] [Edit: I've fixed them now.]

I've been putting a lot of images up lately, so I think I can speak with some authority on the situation. And the answer is - it depends. My advice is to use the preview button to see what looks best. I usually go between 200 and 300, but there are sometimes where you have to go with something different. University of Delaware, for instance, was a tricky one. →Raul654 18:00, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

I agree that it depends; try a few different sizes and see what works best (the extended image syntax lets you define a thumbnail size within the image markup, so it's trivial to try alternate sizes). As for statistics on what size screens people are using, that's tricky to measure; those with large screens (like me) may tend to browse in a small window that is effectively only 600-800 pixels wide or smaller. PDAs and cell phones are becoming a popular web-access method too, and their screens are often tiny, so I'd say when in doubt, use a smaller thumbnail. -- Wapcaplet 18:14, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm not so sure - you can very much make thumbnails that are too small. For instance, the latest incarnation of Mozilla Firefox has an absolutely tiny one, that just looks silly if you ask me. If the image becomes so small you can't really see any of the detail, what's the point of having the thumbnail there at all? And while cell phones do indeed have tiny screens, they are unlikely to deal with the page in anything like the same way anyway - for all I know, they'll completely miss out inline images - so I don't think we can really expect to cater for them at the same time as "traditional" browsers. - IMSoP 18:29, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Idealy the thumbnail should be just big enough to show the detail, so people on dial-up don't *have* to click on the thumbnail but still get the benefit of seeing whatever the picture is supposed to illustrate clearly. A "standard width" would not be useful because, for a start, it makes a big difference if the picture is landscape or portrait (longer width or length). fabiform | talk 18:33, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

250px seems a good compromise, but why not have a "text-only" button in the preferences for really slow users^wbrowsers? Yes, I know, browsers can do this at their own -- but a global switch that allows to see pages text-only withouth nasty "empty" pics would be helpful sometimes. -- till we *) 18:39, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The question of "what screen resolutions are used by Wikipedia users" is relevant. I can say from past personal experience that a person with a 640x480 pixel screen is going to experience enormous frustration and annoyance browsing most presumably-professionally-designed commercial websites, and 800x600 isn't much better. On the other hand, a 1024x768 screen works just fine; it's very rare that I have any urge to use a higher resolution. Also, most laptops manufactured in the past four years or so have 1024x768 or better. The Mac 6400 I bought circa 1994 had built-in video that went at least to 1024x768, I believe higher, and the CRT I bought, which was the bottom-of-the-line as of 1994, could display 1024x768 and maybe higher, but did not look good at anything about 800x600. Finally, most video cards for the past, um, decade go to 1024x768, so someone with a 640x480 screen need only substitute a new CRT.

In other words, I think it's reasonable to design and preview for 1024x768 for the following reasons: a) I isn't going to prevent many people from using Wikipedia; b) I think it is a very mainstream setting these days; c) people with smaller screens are going to experience minor annoyances everywhere, not just on Wikipedia.

A much more serious question is download time on dialup, and I think this, rather than visual appearance, should govern decisions on thumbnail size. I think the percentage of Wikipedia users on dialup is far, far higher than the percentage of Wikipedia users with screens of resolution lower than 1024x768.

I'm quite prepared to be told I'm utterly wrong about this. Dpbsmith 20:24, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Designing for 1024x768, with in-article illustrations of between ¼ and 1/3 of screen width, would give us thumbnails in the 250 to 350 px range. That's the kind of range I try to aim at. I don't know whether Dpbsmith is utterly wrong or not, but I hope he isn't. –Hajor 17:21, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Just to add another point of reference: I personally try to aim for the 200-250px range, though it depends on image orientation (a portrait aspect-ratio image can be narrower, while a landscape one should be wider). In my guesstimation that gives a good compromise between size and various screen resolutions (250px is around 25% of a 1024x768 monitor, but still only 39% of a 640x480 monitor). --Delirium 06:25, Feb 20, 2004 (UTC)

Squids / Caching

The new server configuration with caches doesn't seem to work well with my Netscape 7.x browser -- I get the actual version of pages like Village Pump only if I explicitly de-cache reload them (Shift-Reload), not with a normal clicking on a link or on the reload button. That's not nice behavior and can lead to misunderstandings (e.g. seemingly missing answers or edits). -- till we *) 23:53, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I've been sitting here wondering why the Pump was so quiet for the same reason (I [too] use Mozilla, so could be software specific). Is there a header being sent wrong or something? - IMSoP 01:55, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm using Netscape 7.02 and having no problems. Elf 02:01, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I dual-boot linux and XP. I noticed that entries on Village pump which I can see in linux (Konqueror or Galeon) do not always show up in either IE or mozilla on XP, though I can go to an edit screen and see them there. (IMSoP notes that this comment was added by WormRunner 02:08, 15 Feb 2004)

Hmm, is Galeon Mozilla-based? (Follows own link to check, but finds nought but an stub) I suppose it might have different caching code. Just thinking that it doesn't seem very likely this would vary by OS, rather than by browser, is all. Would probably vary based on whether you were logged in though. And I've just remembered I'm behind a local squid of some sort, too [remembers somebody pointing out recently how many proxies lie between the average website and the average surfer] Ah! Too many variables! - IMSoP 02:26, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Can people please check if this problem is still current? It would help a huge amount if people experiencing the problem are able to diagnose it more clearly, including checking whether their DNS points to the 130.x or 207.x addresses and what cache headers they receive in the HTTP responses. I haven't been able to reproduce such problems so far. --Brion 03:14, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I haven't noticed it lately - perhaps it was just a settling down issue with the new servers. I didn't get round to looking into what the headers were because I couldn't (be bothered to) find a way of checking the response details for a logged-in request (sending a dummy GET on the command line would prove nothing, as there would be no cookies). - IMSoP 03:22, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm getting the problem right now this moment. Had it continually for several days on 2 machines, but that doesn't count for much since they use the same ISP & essentially same browser (Mozilla versions, this being 1.2.1 and other a newer version). Sorry, can't run the requested diagnostic data just now. Dandrake 07:55, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

We're sending headers that tell both other caches and browsers to check back for updates on every request. Cache administrators of downstream caches can however configure their caches to ignore some of these headers (especially Vary and Cache-Control) in order to get a higher 'hit ratio'. This violates the http standard, so it should be a reason to complain to your cache administrator, if you know who it is. The other reason i could think of would be a browser that's explicitly configured to check for updates only once per session. With Mozilla, you can check this (iirc) at Edit - Preferences - Advanced - Cache settings. -- Gabriel Wicke 18:06, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. What about the choice called "When the page is out of date"? I'd guess that that means it should request status for the page and compare against the date of what's in the cache; so it ought to work right in this context? Anyway, it's what my setting is and has been. Dandrake 18:24, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

Your setting should be fine, so it's either some rude cache between you and wp or a hickup at wp. -- Gabriel Wicke 11:38, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Where do I find information on homelessness in Monroe County,NY?

Hi my name is Tonya my email address is atlmker2442@wmconnect.com

I was trying to find information on homelessness in Monroe County, NY I was thinking about doing a speech for college on this issue in my county. But I not sure where to look. If you could help me out that would be great or even if you could point me in the right direction.

Thank you Tonya

• Tonya, take a look at:
  • Homeless & Housing Services
  • Rochester Indymedia
  • D & C article
  • Data shows homeless up 30 percent

Good luck, Kingturtle 06:13, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Look at Monroe County, New York. --Jiang

With all due respect, Jiang, there is nothing in that article to answer Tonya's question. She's legitimately asking if anyone can help her with a research query. Why give her and obvious and useless reference? -- Jmabel 06:02, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It doesn't serve wikipedia's purpose to answer random question. Wikipedia is not a discussion forum. If it's relevant, then it has to do with our article on the subject. --Jiang 06:10, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well, the question should probably have been on the Reference Desk, not the Village Pump, but it's a perfectly reasonable question, and the distinction between that page and this is often unclear to people not involved in this project. -- Jmabel 23:26, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Safari Browser not allowed?

Why is Wikepedia not accessible from the Safari Browser? It's not a big deal, but am just curious.

?Pacific1982

I got the same thing for a while, though Safari is not listed as a blocked browser. After a bit, the error cleared itself and I have normal access now. Safari normally works. I guess it was just a glitch. Graham 22:24, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Safari is not certainly not blocked; it's my primary browser and I'd know... ;)

Can you please say approximately when you had a problem, if using another browser on the same machine wasn't blocked, if being logged in / not logged in had any affect, whether reloading had any affect, whether clearing cookies or cache had any affect, and which pages you tried to visit that were blocked? --Brion 23:32, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

For me, it was about an hour or so ago. I am set up to always be logged in (i.e. login cookie always enabled). Pages affected were the main page and my watchlist, which are my usual entry points. All I tried was quitting Safari and starting over, which didn't work. The fault cleared itself after a while. I didn't try resetting Safari or clearing cache, etc, since the fault didn't persist long. I don't have the debug menu set up, so presumably my Safari reports its user agent normally. Graham 23:43, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The problem seems to have gone away now. However, I got the message that I posted to wikitech-l for about 15 minutes at around 4:45 PM EST. The problem didn't happen in any other browser (at least not in IE 5.2, I didn't bother to check any Mozilla). The problem was definitely user-agent related, because when I activated (via the debug menu) a different user-agent, the problem immediately went away. Every page seemed to have the problem. I originally got the problem on my watchlist (usually the first page I load), but I tried loading the home page and I got the error. I tried quitting and restarting Safari and that didn't seem to have any effect. I was logged in at the time, but of course I couldn't try logging out because no pages were loading. I didn't try clearing cookies or cache, but based on the behavior I was experiencing, it seemed almost certainly to be a server problem. At the time, there were at least 2 other people in the IRC channel with the same problem.

--Nohat 23:42, 2004 Feb 18 (UTC)

I saw this float past in IRC (not sure what time it was). I think "gwicke" broke something briefly and then fixed it again.  :) fabiform | talk 23:51, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

gwicke admitted on IRC that he'd "simplified" the list of blocked user agents in the Squid config - seems Safari's includes "WebKit", and triggered a false positive. Should be fixed now, I gather. - IMSoP 00:21, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm surprised by how many Safaris are around... Sorry for the trouble! -- Gabriel Wicke 02:03, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I am a Safari user too. It's the best browser I ever had. True there is a quite significant number of Mac users in wikipedia. It doesn't feel just 2% market share, is it? -- Taku 16:43, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)

Market share is irrelevant. Installed base less so, and particular sites may attract certain kinds of users that do not reflect the population at large. Maybe Wikipedia appeals to the same people that Macs appeal to for some reason? In a recent Ars Technica survey, Safari came in at 38% of the total visitors to that site, the largest single group, with Windows version of Explorer at 31%. Graham 04:33, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I use Safari 1.0 (the last version to be compatible with OS X 10.2... haven't upgraded yet), and have never had any problems.Garrett Albright 04:37, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

My UserAgent Is Being Bounced

Sometime this afternoon, I was no longer able to access Wikipedia using Safari. It says that my User-Agent is being blocked, but I'm not using any of the UserAgents listed (which seem to mostly be e-mail harvesters, site harvesters and their ilk). I have the Debug menu turned on in Safari and it's emulating Mozilla right now as a temporary measure, but someone needs to fix this.

RadicalBender 21:54, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Gwicke admitted to over-simplifying the squid config, and has now fixed it (see below). - IMSoP 00:32, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Atlantium

The msg:NPOV tag needs to be added to Atlantium. "If a Wikipedia:administrator must protect a page for neutrality protection, this label should always be added." (Wikipedia:NPOV Dispute) Anthony DiPierro 19:15, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I see this has now happened. Andrewa 02:50, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Enquiry

Is there any Overseas Branch of African Development Bank at 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf London E14

Thank you

Saibal Chatterjee saibalda@yahoo.com

Main Page replacement

A discusssion to replace the Main Page with Main Page/Test and Wikipedia:Main Page is currently going on at those two pages' talk pages. The current concensus is to make the change. Gentgeen 17:43, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

• I like what is evolving. But I foresee an upcoming conflict. It looks as though both proposed pages are intending to "Go Live" soon. We need to put together a formal selection process that allows users to discuss and vote on: 1) Keep the current version, 2) Move to the Main Page/Test version, 3) Move to the Wikipedia:Main Page version. Kingturtle 19:40, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If I've understood your comment, I don't think you realise what's being planned. The current main page will be replaced by both of the two pages linked above. There's a "readers main page" which will be the default - the page that visitors see when they arrive, designed to help people use wikipedia as a resource, and also a "community main page" which will be used in parallel, designed to be useful to longterm contributors, but also to encourage people to contribute, and to help them make their first edits pain-free. Does that make sense?  :) fabiform | talk 19:59, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying. Still, shouldn't there be a user-wide discussion about this, and possibly a vote about this? This is a major change that will affect all users. Kingturtle 20:18, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I blanketly oppose any major change of the main page until it is taken to a proper vote. Also, I'd like to say that while Main Page/Test looks good, it also looks like it's very high maintence. And Wikipedia:Main Page is just plain ugly. →Raul654 20:23, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)

Raul, on Wikipedia we try to avoid voting unless it is absolutely necessary. We try to seek consensus first. Right now there appears to be a consensus for using Main Page/Test. You are the first person who has expressed that Wikipedia:Main Page is "just plain ugly", would you care to elaborate on the talk page?—Eloquence 00:35, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)

Well, these replacement pages do seem to have appeared out of nowhere without any publicity. I was completely unaware of the proposed changes until this item appeared on the pump, and it looks like the proposers are getting ready to impliment them. I do have a feeling of being railroaded here. It's very easy to achieve consensus if you don't tell people something is proposed! I'm in two minds about these designs, myself. -- Arwel 01:56, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

How do concerned wikipedians get to know about the discussion? Is it enough with this announcement on the Village pump? Personally, I think that's much more important issue than voting or the interpretation of a voting. The community front page is a great idea, though.--Ruhrjung 22:05, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a national encyclopedia

User:Optim introduced a rule in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not stating "Wikipedia is not a national encyclopedia focusing only on one specific culture or country. Therefore Wikipedia is neither an American, European, Asian or African encyclopedia. Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia written in the English language. Wikipedia does not focus on American English. Therefore the British English can be used everywhere and should not be limited for articles relevant to the British culture; the same applies to other popular kinds of English, too." Please post your comments on Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not and feel free to improve the wording. DO NOT REPLY HERE. If you do so, your comments will be moved to [[Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not page by User:Optim. - Optim 21:30, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

---

FWIW, I really really dislike interwiki redirects, and get rid of them whenever I have the chance. First of all, I dislike the idea of Wikipedia articles redirecting anywhere other than other Wikipedia articles, and secondly they're a pain because you can only edit them with manual URL editing. --Delirium 06:45, Feb 20, 2004 (UTC)

I agree. In fact, I think we should avoid redirecting between namespaces, too. Granted, it's unlikely that anyone will try to link the word welcome in an encyclopedia article, but I'm not so sure about edit conflict - which could end up rather confusing. Until I changed it the other day, user account redirected to Special:Userlogin - but somebody had happily linked to it from root (disambiguation). Special: pages are particularly confusing, because you don't get a Redirected from: message - for example New pages isn't a piped link, it's a redirect in the main namespace here.

What's more, even if people understand what's happened, it's not a very good idea, because it makes it look like meta-information has been shoved in with the main content, which is what we're avoiding by having namespaces in the first place. Useful though they are if you can't be bothered to type "Wikipedia:" or "Special:" each time, they're just a hostage to fortune. [And don't forget you can do [[Special:Newpages|]] to stop the namespace showing up.] Imagine if you were flicking through a paper encyclopedia and under E it said Errata, and listed all the errata in that edition... - IMSoP 20:03, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

---

So is there a way to do this? I'm assuming the case where someone wanted to write a proper article on Metanoia, with presumably a link to the Wiktionary definition at some point. --Phil 17:05, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)

you want http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Metanoia&redirect=no

---

Bad title
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
The requested page title was invalid, empty, or an incorrectly linked inter-language or inter-wiki title.

REDIRECTing to Wikitionary?

Some one create an article on Metanoia, I moved the content to Wikitionary, tried to do a redirect with "wikitionary:" as the language, it didn't work... is there anyway to redirect to other Wikimedia projects? -- user:zanimum

Two issues there - firstly its Wiktionary, second you missed the #redirect. I have sorted it out. Morwen 15:37, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)

... which raises the question: if I were to want to write a Wikipedia article on Metanoia (which I don't BTW), what is the quickest way I could get to the article to edit it? Bearing in mind that it is a REDIRECT to outside Wikipedia, there is no back-link from Wiktionary as there would be on an intra-Wikipedia REDIRECT. So other than troll through Morwen's contributions list, what's the quickest way? Enquiring minds want to know :-) Oh, and directly munging the URL is cheating: I'm looking for a mechanism within Wikipedia. --Phil 16:06, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)

There is none, that's why interwiki redirects are BAD BAD BAD. Gentgeen 16:17, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

To continue on that line, the page should have been Transwikied over to wiktionary and then listed on VfD, otherwise someone will raise the point that the content was inappropiatly deleted from wikipedia. Gentgeen

Transwikied content is a Candidate for speedy deletion. Anthony DiPierro 16:34, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

That's what's on the policy page, but that category is disputed on the talk page, so I feel kinda underhanded if I list a transwikied article there. Gentgeen

In fact I don't think even looking at Morwen's contribs would help... unless you are a sysop and so can see the rollback button. Direct URL handling (i.e. writing &redirect=0 at the end) is the only way. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 16:34, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

... which gets the result:

Wikipedia article titles for specific literary works

Today, someone had initiated a series of articles with titles like Mother Earth (Asimov) for short stories by the author whose last name is Asimov. Isn't there a better way to title that sort of Wikipedia article? Bevo 22:03, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No. :-) I would probably do Mother Earth (Asimov short story) rather than just Mother Earth (short story) since the title is so generic there are probably lots of authors who've used the title. When title searching is back you can do a little exploring to see what other people have done. Stan 22:11, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Actually, that was done by User:Ausir. He and User:Lefty are both new here, and have both been doing great work over at the Foundation Series. As for the Mother Earth (Asimov), since it's such a generic name, I think he made the best choice possible. IMHO, Mother Earth (short story) is a *terrible* title and Mother Earth (Asimov) is a much better choice. →Raul654 22:19, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)

Has this been thought out completely? What if it had been written by someone like Robin Cook or Stephen King whose last names have generic meaning and could be confused with categorizations outside authorship? I'd like to encourage either the form Mother Earth (short story) or a variation on Stan's as Mother Earth (short story, Asimov). Isn't there a Wikipedia help page somewhere already that suggests some patterns to follow? Bevo 23:15, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I did a quick survey of existing titles and found these embellishments: (novel), (book) and (series). This (Asimov) qualifier is something new entirely. I suppose it will become an example of an alternative for us to study when it is completed, but is sure is irregular as it stands. It may actually turn out to be a "good thing", but I sure wish they had set the bar just a little bit higher when they wanted to do something better than current practice. Bevo 00:40, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think it's a good initiative. Probably these embellishments should only be used when there's a dismbiguation article of some sort, which there is in this case at Mother Earth. My only worry is that I'm not completely sure how this differs to the now-discouraged practice of using subpages, but it seems it does. If the author's name is such as to be misleading, such as (King), then just use a longer version, as in (Stephen King). Andrewa 02:41, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Maybe this needs to be moved to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions? Do we move the entire discussion when that happens? (maybe without this "meta"-comment) Bevo 02:52, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Agree discussion should continue somewhere else. Andrewa 08:42, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

PROPOSAL: Separate Databases/downloadable files

Summary: Proposal to have separate databases for userpages, talkpages and articles. See User:Optim/Userpages. DO NOT REPLY HERE. Failure to do this will result in your comments being moved to User:Optim/Userpages by User:Optim. Optim 03:53, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Problems in editing page sections

I was trying to edit Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration, and every time I clicked on the "edit" link, it gave me the wrong section to edit. I had to edit the entire page. RickK 02:06, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This behavior is due to a bug I reported a few weeks ago at [1]. It is caused by sections in the wikitext which have been commented out. None of the developers seems to have addressed it yet. --Nohat 02:12, 2004 Feb 20 (UTC)

Silly question, but what if we "<nowiki>" the text inside the comments....would that take away the section problem? I don't know much about these things. Jwrosenzweig 02:18, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Graphics-float question

I've moved this comment into the section it was replying to above - IMSoP 01:26, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Changing the case of existing entry names to capitals

Does the spelling of existing topic names can be changed? I.e. the title of the page [TCP] protocol is written in capital letters, but when I wanted to add an entry about the [SOCKS] protocol, there was already a page with only a redirect to [sock].

I'm confused. There seems to be nothing at all at SOCKS. Just create your page there. If there were, you could still edit via http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=SOCKS&redirect=none -- Jmabel 01:12, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Uqbar, and accuracy disputes

This may be one of those cases where I have failed ever to observe a mechanism that is well known to other wikipedians, so I am here for advice. Back on 1 Dec 2003 I added an accuracy dispute notice to Uqbar, and spelled out my concerns, as well as what I could ascertain, on its talk page. Knowing that this was an obscure article, and I might not get any responses, I looked at Wikipedia:Accuracy dispute, hoping to find advice on how to move this forward. I found nothing relevant in terms of how to proceed. I asked about this on Wikipedia talk:Accuracy dispute: no one responded. I suspect I am overdoing this by bringing this to the Village Pump, but I really don't know where else I should be turning. Can anyone advise? -- Jmabel 00:15, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a national encyclopedia

User:Optim introduced a new rule in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not seeking to protect and emphasise the international spirit of our project. See [[Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not. Optim 02:29, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Poets / songwriters needed!

Calling poets, songwriters or anyone with the ability to rhyme (that counts me out). A small request... I've translated the literal meaning of four lines of a lullaby into English, but would love to have a natural/idiomatic version for the article as well. You can see it, and suggest a loosely translated but nicer version here: Talk:P'ti quinquin. Thanks! fabiform | talk 21:20, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Bathyscaphe Triest

In your report you state that the Bathyscaphe Trieste reached the bottom of Challenger Deep. If this is indeed the case and all that was found where sole,shrimp and carp. Then what where the demensions at the bottom. Was there a shelf of any sort. Where there any tunnels or shafts? Was the entire bottom covered in a silt? Any rocks or other such matter?

I would appreciate if you or a representative would write back to me at b_m_hacking@hotmail.com

The article referring to the fish etc is actually Marianas Trench, and the information was provided by user:Timvasquez. Andrewa 22:53, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Edit wars

--> Wikipedia talk:Edit war

REDIRECTing to Wikitionary?

--> Talk:Wiktionary

Table of contents

How do I insert a table of contents similar to that on this page? There are a couple of articles that I am thinking of adding it onto. Arno 06:25, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Section. --No-One Jones 06:26, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Plautus satire

As per the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution, I have started Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Plautus satire in an (emergency) attempt to gauge community opinion on the problem. Comments there are very much appreciated. →Raul654 05:05, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)

This situation is now largely defused (at least for the moment.) Nothing to see here. Move along. Isomorphic 08:10, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If so, delete this thread then... --Menchi 10:22, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Given recent conversation at User talk:Plautus satire, I think comments would still be appreciated on both sides. I wouldn't describe things as fully defused. Jwrosenzweig 23:24, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

New user log

This is more of an announcement than a query, but there's a new page up at Wikipedia:New user log. It's a place where new users can introduce themselves. It seems to be in active use now, so if you're interested, check it out periodically. Also, encourage new people to sign in if they haven't yet. Oh, and I would welcome any further ideas on how to welcome and integrate new people. Isomorphic 04:54, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Excellent! Andrewa 08:38, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

submitting URL

Dear Sir:

I would like to suggest a website to submit to your denomination directory:

Canadian Evangelical Christian Churches

Website: www.cecconline.com

Email: cecc@rogers.com

Thank you for your consideration.

Yours truly,

Dr. David Lavigne, President

Wikipedia is not a directory. Angela. 23:37, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)

Safari Browser not allowed?

fixed --> Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 2

Wikipedia article titles for specific literary works

--> Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions

My UserAgent Is Being Bounced

fixed, see Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 2

How to get the attention of an admin/sysop

Apart from the current confusion over what to call them, there is something I've always wondered about sysops/admins - what if you aren't one, but want to use a facility that only they have access to? What I mean is, is there a page somewhere where I can say "Excuse me, can an admin do X for me please." - and if not, should there be?

I've come up against this twice lately: firstly I spotted a cut & paste move on Miguel Induráin - no big deal, but I understand admins can merge the Page Histories when this happens; and secondly, I spotted a nonsense edit of Talk:Simon_Grabowski in Recent Changes - again, no biggy, and it looks like someone else spotted and deleted it, anyway, but what if they hadn't? Hunting around, I came across the contraversial Wikipedia:Deleted test, which would probably have done for the second case, but what to do about the first?

I suggest making a page where reasonably experienced users who aren't admins could post comments, which admins would have on their watchlists and work their way through periodically. Most things could just be done and unlisted, anything non-trivial/contraversial could be sent somewhere else - either way, the admin could put a message on the requesters User_talk: page saying what they did. I hope I'm not opening a can of worms here, but I think this would be rather useful. - IMSoP 20:01, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Just do it on the article's talk page, or ask a sysop on his/her talk page. →Raul654 20:23, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I thought of both of those possibilities, but the first one assumes a magic ability on the part of admins/sysops to "hear" when they are being "called"; and given that there's no "who's (probably) online" list for this website, the second is rather a gamble, given that there's a whole list of admins, and some of them might be on holiday for 3 weeks for all I know. - IMSoP 20:29, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If you do it on the article's talk page, put "I need a favor from a sysop" as the summary. If you want to know whose on at any given moment, just check the recent changes. →Raul654 20:31, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)

I guess that would work (using the summary line, that is) - as long as a sysop/admin looks at RC at about the right time. I'm not going to go through and compare all the names on RC with all the names in the list of admins just to see who's online though - if their names were formatted differently (a concept I'm used to, as an h2g2 user), I might agree with you about picking someone to ask. I still think it would be more efficient to have a request page, but let's see if anyone else has an opinion. - IMSoP 20:42, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC) [via edit conflict with Anthony's below]]

I'd support a Wikipedia:Request for sysop attention page. Would make a good pointer page to all the other ones we have out there, like votes for deletion, redirects for deletion, etc. Anthony DiPierro 20:37, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm not fond of that idea. There's already a *LOT* of pages that have to be maintained around here. The last thing we need is another one. →Raul654 21:58, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)

Presumably entries would be short-lived, one edit to add, one edit to remove when handled, doesn't seem so onerous. My guess is it won't get much use, since users that know about sysops will generally know one to ask, but seems worthwhile anyway. Stan 22:11, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I created Wikipedia:Requests for sysop attention, but only as a pointer to the pages that already exist for such requests. Angela. 23:37, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)

One very quick note on sending them (or rather, us) here versus a specific page - this is always cluttered, and requires complicated maintenance procedures to try and make it less busy. A specific page could, as Stan says, have a "1 edit to add, 1 edit to remove" policy. But IANAA / IANAS, so for all I know, nobody wants to check such a page. - IMSoP 01:06, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

IANAS either, but I think the page might work. Suck it and see. If sysops find it useful and hang out there, and other bods use it to ask for help regularly, it will work. If not, try something else. Most good ideas don't work, but a few do, and the only way to tell is to try it. Andrewa 08:49, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Another technique- you can usually find a random sysop or three hanging out in the IRC chat (#wikipedia on irc.freenode.net).

Minor change flag

Spanish Wikipedia has just modified its "minor change" marker (in Recent Changes and elsewhere) from an uppercase M to a lowercase m. The consensus view is that it's easier on the eyes, less likely to get confused with the "new" marker N, etc. Would English Wikipedia benefit from such a change, or are we too set in our ways? – Hajor 18:16, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Good idea. --Patrick 22:56, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Good idea. Elf 23:40, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Good idea. Andrewa 02:43, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Dont really care, I've never mixed up the two... How about instead of changing M to m, we change N to ** or something a little more conspicuous? It'd make things look a bit clearer in RC and perhaps inspire some editing? Dysprosia 04:59, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Three in favour and one more general expression of interest in fiddling with the flags. (A more conspicuous option for N – how about N?) Does anyone with protected page access feel like playing about with MediaWiki:Minoreditletter or MediaWiki:Newpageletter? –Hajor 17:10, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to, but since this is a big change, I'd like to get more support for a change before trying something out. (I've got an italicised bold N in mind...) Dysprosia 08:40, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Where Can I Find A Transcript of Klingon from Star Trek?

Hi Trekkies and other folks enjoying Star Trek! I'm looking for a say 1 screen transcript of Klingon. From a series or movie of Star Trek. (A part of one of the books in Klingon seems less nice to me.)

It is for an article I'm editing about a special phenomenon that occurs only rarely in languages. Klingon has been made up using this phenomenon because it makes Klingon sound counterintuitive and weird. (Actually a sentence like "Ba'thar destroyed the ship with a photon torpedo" in Klingon becomes "The ship destroyed Ba'thar with a photon torpedo".)

To make the article (actually Object Verb Subject) more lively and to illustrate why this phenomenon is so rare it would be very nice to translate a fairly large piece of Klingon back to English but keeping the higly unusual word order of Klingon.

Where can I find such a transcript, preferably with extended translation annotations? I'm thinking of having a look at the Star Trek WikiWiki, but I really haven't a clue where to look else for this. BTW (by the way) if someone wants to make such a quasi-translation himself I'd really welcome that as I'm absolutely not familiar in Klingon and I have a hard time writing new text. Editing and copyediting text is much easier for me, so I can help extensively with such a translation.

I think it's nicest to use some Klingon text that people might have seen already on tv or could rent a video of (then the movies would be best). In this way I think it's also appealing for people that are not die-hard Trekkers but interested in language, or are just curious. (And reading Wikipedia for it's entertainment value, like I do File:Tongue.gif.) Paul/laudaka (add me to your Y!M/AIM/etc. list if you like!) | Talk 16:41, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

(This is so sad that I actually know the answer to this) You can get your answer from the Klingon language institute. Their a group based in Minnisota (or somewhere around there), founded by Mark Okrand. Okrand is the guy who was tapped to "invent" klingonese (T'ling Hol) for the Star Trek movies. The URL is www.kli.org. →Raul654 17:58, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)

PS: I'm just going to hide my face in shame for a little while.

trining in your company

sir i m third year student of B.Tech (chem. engg.)studing in LIT, Nagpur. i have got 76% in 5th sem & my overall avarage is 70%. i want to do industrial training in your company please give me a chance to get training in your company RAHUL P. GAWANDE rahul_elite2000@yahoo.com

Great work Rahul, but we're not a company, so we can't provide "training" exactly, and we all "work" here out of our own free will, and we aren't paid. If you do want to edit and contribute here however, feel free to drop by this page and pick up a user account. Thanks Dysprosia 10:06, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Mobile phone access to Wikipedia

Hi -- does anybody know if there is a way to access the Wikipedia from a mobile phone (cell phone)? This would entail a XHTML Mobile Profile or WML (WAP) version of the Wikipedia that could be accessed on pretty much any modern mobile phone. This would make a fantastic handheld access channel to the Wikipedia, with you at all times. -Ronan

A new xhtml skin that displays well on mobiles is underway, modeled after the Plone xhtml skin. A quick mockup is available at http://wp.aulinx.de/, more information at meta:Skins Have you tried the current skin btw? Shouldn't be too bad really as it's tableless as well. -- Gabriel Wicke 11:32, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I use the Google proxy to browse Wikipedia using a WAP phone, which works quite well, though is a bit impractical on pages as large as the village pump. See http://www.google.com/options/wireless.html. This only allows browsing, not editing. Angela. 23:37, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)

Angela, Gabriel -- good information and suggestions. From experience in the mobile field, however, I think more than just a new skin is required. With small screens and limited input methods, the use cases tend to change. Browsing becomes painful (slow page loads), targetted search works better. Also, most mobile browsers have a max page size limit that is quite small. I would suggest a minimal search interface and an article display that uses just plain text, and chunks longer articles into (say) 2Kb pages. I've downloaded the SQL dump and I will do a little work on an interface and let you know how I get on. -Ronan

Change in article count?

Has there recently been any change in the automatic article count algorithm? Andres 08:49, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No, but an error in the counter was corrected. --Brion 09:07, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject prototypes

Would anybody be interested in the various WikiProjects choosing something to be their representative article? The one that includes everything an ideal article should, and is written well, etc. Perhaps to be a running list at Wikipedia:Featured articles (i.e. every WikiProject that has reached such a stage has the article listed at the top, with more added as the newer projects develop). Please respond at Wikipedia talk:Featured articles. Tuf-Kat 07:00, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)

questions from a canadian

I am a Canadian and i am wondering if it is possible to join your countries army..I need the requirements and if it is possible adn what i ahve to do to get adn and does the srmy sponsor me through employment to get it the army

What country's army? We're not an army...and we're not from one country (for example, I am also Canadian...) Adam Bishop 22:47, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If you are referring to the US army (which I suspect you are), then yes - I know for a fact that foreign citizens are allowed to join. During operation Enduring freedom they did interviews with foriegn citizens serving in the US army. IIRC (and I could be wrong about this part) those serving in the army can be naturalized in 2 years instead of the normal 5. →Raul654 23:12, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)

Just a quick note, Raul: I don't think it's very polite to try and "tidy up" other people's comments - it's as though you are trying to change what they've already said, and rewrite history. Unless you're summarising, of course, but then you can make clear that it's not a direct quote. This is only my opinion, of course; feel free to disagree. [Plus, you didn't do a very thorough job]. - IMSoP 23:44, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think you're nitpicking here - while answering his question, I took the time to to correct obvious typos (ahve->have, adn->and, et al) to make it easier to read - honestly, I just did it out of habit without even giving it a second thought. I did not change his comment in any meaningful way other than to make it more readable. However, if the community agree with you, I'll stop. →Raul654 23:50, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)

Well, yes, I was rather - it was a very trivial change in this case, but it's kind of the thin end of the wedge. Had you corrected all the errors (including ones you missed, like "srmy"->"army", "adn and"->"and"), you would've changed quite a lot of the comment. And what if we were to extend it to grammatical errors as well? Then you are basically rewriting the comment... And you could "correct" "it the army" to "into the army", but then you're making an assumption about what the original message meant, and hiding the original version from other users who might have different interpretations... - IMSoP 23:58, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You're right - that's why I only went for the really obvious ones, even though there were other errors I saw and could have corrected. I didn't want to change the comment in any material way. It's a judgement call, and I think I did the right thing. →Raul654 00:03, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)

Fair enough, I guess I was just erring on the side of caution or whatever. The ability to do it is a rather disorienting side-effect of using Wiki-pages for discussion. - IMSoP 20:46, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Talk page states ...typing errors, grammar, etc are always fair game, and remove personal attacks where you can, but don't edit someone's words to have them say something they don't believe in...

Wikipedia talk:Remove personal attacks also has some relevant discussion about refactoring other people's words. My personal view is that it should be encouraged. I wish people would fix my typos on talk pages. :) Angela. 23:37, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)

Sir,

Sir,

We are students from a local high school working on the creation of a website.

We are in need of information on HTML entities.

• First, two notes: 1, you're not really 'local'- based off of your IP, you're in Brazil, which is local to very few of us here. 2, the place to ask specific questions is at Wikipedia:Reference desk. But I suggest you look at http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/sgml/entities.html - that's the official list. -- Jake 23:04, 2004 Feb 17 (UTC)

Atlantium

The msg:NPOV tag needs to be added to Atlantium. --> done

Summary line

This is probably not a useful place to do this, but I would like to urge, encourage, and beg people to use the summary line when you edit articles. Just a brief indication of the changes made, or "see talk page" if the changes can't be described briefly. Even -- especially -- if you're just fixing spelling or punctuation or wikifying something. --Charles A. L. 18:16, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)

Here, here! I'd like to add that even discussion page comments should be summarised - if there's more than one heading, it makes it so much easier to guess from your watchlist whether it's worth loading. - IMSoP 18:24, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

People might want to bear in mind that it's only the top edit that shows in people's watchlists too. So if you follow (complete rewrite) with (typo) it might be a good idea to say something like (spotted typo in complete rewrite) instead. But yes, please fill the summary field for every edit, whether major or minor, so many sysops (who should know better?) don't do this. /pet peeve. fabiform | talk 22:12, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Agree. Agree. It makes my Wikipedia time so much more pleasant and productive when people use the summary line! Andrewa 02:02, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

How about chaing the software so that a default summary (fixed typos,wikified) can be selected for minor edits. I know it seems lazy but it might encourage more people to fill out this field, when making very minor changes. I admit to being an occasional offender. Also it often seems a bit redundant to fill in summaries for talk pages. An automatic default (see comment, or some such) would be useful here. Washington irving 11:56, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure under what circumstances a default would be meaningful - unless it was a set of "commonly used choices" that could be selected by radio buttons. Section editing might be worthy of this approach, though, especially for discussion and meta (as in Wikipedia:) pages - something like "Change in section ==Summary line==" I was going to say "Comment in section..." but that would only work for Talk: pages, which this, for instance, isn't - but maybe that's not such a big deal. - IMSoP 14:03, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well I would make it a set of commonly used choices to be selected from a drop down list, but that's the basic idea. Some default text could also be generated from the first few words of the "diff" output, or something similar (just so that its not completely empty). Washington irving 15:06, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The reason I was thinking of radio buttons is that I don't think HTML has an editable dropdown list element - either it's a text box, or it's a list, not both. You could probably make a JavaScript gadget that filled in the text box with items from the commonly-used list, and they would then be editable; but I'm not overly keen on features that rely on JavaScript unless absolutely necessary. I've mocked up what it might look like in pure HTML [2] (beware, extremely dodgy HTML, but it shows some possible layouts) - IMSoP 15:47, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

They look cool. Just what I had in mind! Note that it would be fairly easy to automatically use the "commonly used list" only when 1. an item had been selected and 2. the text field was empty (i.e., no need for the radio buttons/tick boxes in versions 1 and 2). The fall back position (if neither of these was done) would be to automatically generate a summary based on the "diff" output. Guess this suggestion should go to the MediaWiki Feature Request pages at sourceforge (is that the right place to put the suggestion?) Washington irving 16:08, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

My only initial concern was that it would be non-obvious which out of the manual and preset summaries would be used, but I guess if it defaults to a non-entry as in "Version 0" on my test, it's pretty clear. Note that on clicking "preview", a selected preset summary could be copied into the text box for custom tweaking - which I think we want to encourage. [And some people advocate forcing preview, at least for some users] Sure, go ahead and submit to sourceforge - if I wasn't supposed to be doing coursework, I'd play about and try and implement it myself... - IMSoP 16:51, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC) (Oh, and you forgot to put an edit summary when you made your last comment! :-p)

Our of IMSoP's mockups [[extlink], Version 2 would be clearest for a newer user. If Version 2 automatically selected the correct radio button when someone types or selects a summary, it might be a go. Version 0 is certainly the simplest/cleanest (also a benefit)--but not as clear. Someone might try to both type and select. That could maybe be fixed by changing default to something like "Or: Select a common editing summary".

BTW, even if nothing else changes, "Summary of edit:" shd be displayed instead of just "Summary:"; might get more people to type something once they know what it's a summary OF, which confused me at first. :-)

Final thought--need to be very careful in choosing summary list; e.g., if "comment" is a choice, expect to see thousands of "comment"s. Elf 17:00, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Auto-highlighting of self links

I stumbled on to this new (?) feature by accident. Since when did self-links become highlighted non-links? This would certainly make the job of creating lateral links (e.g. to other countries on a country's page) easier. --seav 15:38, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)

Trust

Following a discussion on the mailing list, I knocked up Wikipedia:Trust network to see if the "web of trust" concept has a chance of working. Comments welcome. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 14:55, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Playground project

On the light side, I've started a playground equipment project--small project probably but photos would be good and existing entries (not enough of them) need excavating, reorganizing, expanding--see discussion at the project. Everyone's welcome to play. Elf 14:10, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Vote: space between periods in initials?

Some style guides dictate that initials in people's names, or companies named after them, should be written with spaces after the periods and a space between the initials and the name, ie W. E. B. Du Bois. Others dictate against putting spaces between the initials, only a space between the initials and the name, ie W.E.B. Du Bois. Modern typographical practice in book and newspaper publishing leans towards the latter. (Currently, Wikipedia has a mixture of both.)

Please cast your vote: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions

-- Viajero 09:26, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

discussion continues at --> Wikipedia_talk:Naming conventions

Is it just me?

My auto-log in no longer works, not a serious problem; but when I do log in and then return to the Main Page I find I am logged out again. ping 07:27, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Clean up Requested Pictures

Wikipedia:Requested pictures: Looks like there are tons of fulfilled requests still hangin'. If you made requests, please check 'em to be sure you got what you want & remove request. (Snoyes, there's still no photo for Crushing by elephant ;-) ) Elf 05:11, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Crushing by elephant, eh? There's an engraving depicting just that in An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon by Robert Knox (London, 1681). As it happens, I have access to both the original 1681 book and more modern facsimiles, so I'll see if I can get a copy/scan of the picture. There are a handful of copies on the web already but not very good quality ones, alas. -- ChrisO 11:12, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Damn! :) I'll have a look at clear out some of the cruft. - snoyes 15:16, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

General philosophy/Not Invented Here?

Having just used the argument on VfD that, if a film exists in IMDB [1], it's legit and therefore subject to Wiki having an article about it (specifically in reference to porn entries but I see that someon else used the same argument in reference to an obscure individual), I do wonder, philosophically, whether Wiki really intends to reinvent every encyclopedic database that already exists--such as IMDB, which has been around for quite a long time and is quite exhaustive in its film-related data. Thoughts? Has this already been discussed somewhere? Elf 02:53, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well, my immediate reaction is that "everything" has already been done - there are, after all, already encyclopedias, and even internet-accessible ones. But different sources of information will have different "slants" on that information - in other words, we should cover things covered by, say, IMDb, because they'll be covering them in an IMDb-y way, and we'll be covering them in a Wikipedian way. All just my opinion, of course... - IMSoP 03:05, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It's all been done (a-woo-hoo-hoo). Information about nearly every article in wikipedia can be found on the web. The value in wikipedia is surely not the content per se, but the organisation and collation of that content into a single, searchable, easily navigatable collection. ShaneKing 03:22, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I used to think that too. However Wikipedia contains a lot of material taken from "dead-tree" published works by the authors, which was not previously on the web (although once it's there via Wikipedia it tends to quickly propagate). - Hephæstos|§ 03:25, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

IMO Wikipedia would be pointless if we merely distilled what was on the web. But, many Wikipedians do seem to see it as this, and I respect their opinions. We see this attitude reflected in the VfD arguments to delete something merely because it doesn't get Google hits. Google is not God. Lots of independent Google hits are a good sign, but the fact that something isn't (yet) on the WWW shouldn't bar it from Wikipedia, surely! Andrewa 16:40, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

IMDb is only as good as what its users put on it. Although that may be said about Wikipedia, there really isn't any reason why our information isn't different from theirs. RickK 03:08, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ouch! "...really isn't...reason why...isn't different..." Too many negatives! It may be because it's late, but I have no idea what that actually means. - IMSoP 03:14, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

LOL. I think what I meant was that even though we may have information on the same movies, etc., our work could and probably would be different from theirs.  :) RickK 03:27, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

IMDb is not a free project. I think it is the case that Amazon is now the owner of a whole load of work submitted back when the db appeared to be free like WP is actually free. 217.159.40.50 10:08, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

New barnst*****age

I replaced File:Barnstar.gif with , an updated and better-looking one. If it's not transparent it's because your web browser is broken and not standards compliant. silsor 00:39, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)

Looks A LOT better. Not sure "broken" is the right word, but I catch your drift. Why not just replace the ugly one with this one, bad browsers beware. Given the purpose, the lack of transparency is not really a problem - Marshman 01:01, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It is not transparent on MSIE. So here we go again. 90%-95% of internet users use MSIE. Can we postpone standards fetishism till at least half of these people have changed their habits, in other words indefinitely? Erik Zachte 04:28, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Works fine on MSIE for Mac. ;)

8-bit transparent PNGs work fine in MSIE for Windows, though you don't get the smooth edges. It's a simple matter to fix in the Gimp if anyone cares to do it. --Brion 05:03, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Rollback failure

I tried to rollback American Federation of Labor to a previous version, but no matter how many times I clicked the rollback link, the change never showed up on the history. I then went to the version in the history prior to the vandalism and tried to save that, and even put a comment saying what I was doing. It LOOKED as if my edit took, but the history still showed that nothing happened, and my comment and change never showed up on Recent Changes. I had to go into the version prior to the vandalism, actually make an edit to the page (not just save it without an edit), then save THAT, before I finally got the page back in place. RickK 00:08, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This might because after that anon was done there was no net change to the article. silsor 00:41, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)

Wikimedia IPs

Why I cannot directly access Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects by IP? Ric 23:54, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Why do you want/need to? (In other words, I've no idea, but somebody has asked about this before, I believe.) - IMSoP 00:05, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi. My ISP's DNS Server has difficulty proccessing requests and is usually down. All my bookmarks store IP addresses and not domain names for this reason, but in Wikipedia I get some strange white pages when I attempt to access the server directly (i.e. bypassing the DNS service). Ric 00:12, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

We've got about 150 distinct wikis, identified by hostname. We don't have 150 distinct IP addresses in our subnet, so can't assign 150 separate IP addresses. You'll find this with a lot of sites, so it's not just us!

You really should switch ISPs if they can't keep DNS running; every internet service depends on it. If that's not an option for you, you might try editing your hosts file to hardcode lookups for sites you like and hoping they don't change. (This will vary by platform, so google up appropriate directions for your system.) --Brion 03:21, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Admin participates in Edit war and protects page

The page History of Palestine has been subjected to an edit war. I added material from Benny Morris's book Israel's Border Wars 1949-1956. Zero0000 deleted the material. An edit war ensued. I called upon Zero000 to join us in discussion at the [3] rather than continue the edit war. Instead, Zero0000, contacted Viajero. Viajero, editted the page, deleted, Benny Morris's statements and then protected the page. SO, the question is is it wikipedia policy to participates in Edit war and protects page

Please note that Zero0000 and Viajero have been tag-team deleting/reverting material as one can see from this quote from Zero0000 user page

your turn to revert OneVoice! -- Viajero 20:18, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Stevertigo cautioned both of these two wikipedians: Zero0000 and Viajero regarding the tag-team deletions/reversions.

So what is the policy regarding these issues? OneVoice 23:42, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Editing a page and then protecting it is an abuse of admin powers, as is editing a page that is already protected. →Raul654 23:46, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

Dashes redux

I have added a section to Wikipedia:Manual of Style on when to use em and en dashes and what markup to use. I believe that this reflects correct typography. Previous discussion didn't appear to completely resolve the discussion, so I attempted to wrap it up with this entry. Please comment on its talk page rather than here.

Likewise I left only the discussion on dashes in bio dates in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (biographies) and I'm almost certain that that didn't end up with resolution because it diverged into talk about ems and ens in general. Would be nice to continue relevant (bio) discussion there and then adjust its meta page to reflect what we want people to do. Elf 21:57, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Very good Elf. Correct typography is what should be the goal here. It is amazing to me that there are those who would edit without such knowledge, but would then be abhored at the sight of a mispelled word. The two errors are the same - Marshman 00:56, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Did you mean abhorred? :-) And I'm pretty sure to "be abhorred" means to be detested; I would hope that a misspelled word would not cause me to be detested (unless of course I whined about it). Oh wait... -- Wapcaplet 17:57, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Remove all sysops

Debate on whether to deprecate the term "sysop" in favor of "administrator" moved to Wikipedia_talk:Administrators#Remove_all_sysops... Fuzheado 02:48, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Opinions are encouraged in a "straw poll" on that page - IMSoP 16:38, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Edit Window Size

Since I've started using Wikipedia, I've had a problem with my edit window in that it changes its dimensions so that I can't see the right-hand edge with the scroll bar. If I only make an erasure, this doesn't happen, and the entire window remains visible onscreen. There are about 16 characters off the screen that I can't see, editting is a little tricky. I've adjusted my browser font size but that didn't have any effect. I use both Win2K and WinXP, and it occurs in both. Is this normal? --TimothyPilgrim 17:52, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

Seems to be normal in IE. Check your Wiki user preferences and turn off "Edit box has full width." That fixed it for me. (So does using Netscape on a Mac, WITH full width turned on ;-) .) Elf 17:56, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

That did it! Although, now it's like 20 characters short of the right edge of the screen, but it makes it much easier to edit. Thanks for the quick tip! --TimothyPilgrim 18:01, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

I just changed the box width in the preferences from 80 to 95. That widened it up some. --TimothyPilgrim 18:04, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

I think I had a similar problem when I tried using the edit toolbar on mozilla. If you are using that, try disabling it, and see if that makes a difference. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:58, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, I've got it now (see above). --TimothyPilgrim 18:01, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

IP blocking also blocks logged in users?

IIRC it was once said that when an IP is blocked a registered user using the same IP can still log in. However this weekend I got an email that someone was locked out due to a previous IP block of a vandal - sadly I didn't check my email then so I could not unblock him quickly. Anonymous IP blocking shouldn't affect logged in users - as if a vandal uses a username that one can be blocked as well. So, do I remember that function wrongly, or did it change its working in the meantime? If my memory fails, then take this as a feature request :-) andy

It does. I have the personal experience of being blocked as logged in Menchi because some Anon-vandals (or my split personalities) share the same IP as I do. Three times today. --Menchi 10:21, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

IMO, there really should be a way for established users like yourself to edit while logged-in even though the IP address you are editing from is blocked. That would prevent vandals from circumventing a block just be creating a log-in... --mav 10:58, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

That's exactly what I meant - a login to an already existing user account should be possible from a blocked IP, however creating a new account shouldn't be possible, as that'd be a way to avoid the block. andy 11:15, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I actually think all user accounts, including newly-created ones, should work. A ban of an anon. user should only ban that IP as an anon. user, not any accounts from the same IP. Now if one of the accounts is banned, then an IP-ban that auto-bans accounts sharing the same IP is okay, as currently implemented (subject perhaps to some exceptions for known-good accounts). --Delirium 12:04, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

Experimental Main Page

I'm playing with a new Main Page layout at Main Page/Test. I would like to invite feedback on the talk page. Please do not make any major changes to this experimental layout without prior discussion.

The idea is to split away the community stuff from the encyclopedia content (to a separate Wikipedia:Main Page, to be created), and to have more information about the dynamically changed links (to make the Main Page more exciting and fun to read).

Note that I have only tested this in Moz so far so if anything looks broken in another browser, it probably is.—Eloquence 05:51, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

conflicting statements of fact

The article Aegyptus says: "In Greek mythology, Aegyptus, or Aigýptos ("supine goat") was the king of Egypt (which took its name from him)"

But the article List of country name etymologies says: "Egypt: "temple of the soul of Ptah"

Encyclopaedias should not give flatly contradictory statements about matters of fact. Does anyone care to arbitrate this question? Adam 01:44, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't see it as contradictory. The once source says that that's the case according to Greek mythology, that doesn't mean it's necessarily true. RickK 04:47, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. What's contradictory about it? -- Wapcaplet 22:38, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've already risen this question at the talk page: Talk:List of country name etymologies#Coherence with the main articles. No reaction so far. The article gave me an impression of low credibility: kind of "housewife etymology". Mikkalai 23:22, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Gradually rewriting an article

There's an article (namely Scheme (mathematics), but that's unimportant) that I'd like to rewrite from scratch because I think I can do a better job than the present version. However, producing the new version is likely to take me a number of days, perhaps weeks. Is there some way to keep both versions easily accessible, so that people can view the old version (or choose to view the new one) while the new one is still work in progress?

I was thinking of creating the new version under a different name (something like "Scheme (mathematics) (rewrite)"), linking the new version near the top of the old version during the transition period, and, when the new version is finished, renaming both the old and new versions. Is this an acceptable policy? If not, how should I proceed?

I think this question should be mentioned somewhere in the FAQs (even if it's not actually frequently asked...), because I'm sure I'm not the only one to think "I can do better than this article", but not dare to undertake a major rewrite because having to do it all in a single edit is too hard. Any thoughts?

--Gro-Tsen 01:05, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

discussion at --> Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 2

Damage to Cleanup

--> Wikipedia talk:Cleanup

Layout of page footers

There's a dispute going on about how to format the footers that we are currently adding to pages such as those of countries. The dispute is between these two formats:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=MediaWiki:East_Asia&oldid=2406134

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=MediaWiki:East_Asia&oldid=2406149

Where would a vote on a matter like this preferably take place? Thanks -- Timwi 22:49, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You could create a Wikiproject for geographic entries. (BTW, I much prefer the first: (a)it stands out so much better from all the rest of the standard generic wiki links (b)it looks more professional (c) takes up less spage but (d)like all tables it adds a level of complexity for accessibility, so be sure it has a SUMMARY attribute, like summary="Navigation to other countries" ) Elf 17:05, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

distracting Han character on logo

The Han character on the logo means 'ancestor'. It is very distracting. We should change it to something more appropriate. -- Kaihsu 20:37, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

This needs to be directed to Nohat, who has the keys to unraveling the 3D mystery. What would you suggest as the replacement? -戴&#30505sv 21:05, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

For example, 知, for 'knowledge' -- Kaihsu 22:41, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

At the time, Nohat admitted that he couldn't read Chinese character, so he chose one randomly, hoping it wouldn't be something unpleasant. --Menchi 01:04, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm just being curious here but why is "ancestor" bad to have? Dysprosia

I'm pretty sure every chracter on the logo represents the Wikipedia in some way. To pick an obvious example (to English speakers) the Roman Character is W, the first letter in Wikipedia -- UserGoogol 02:19, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

That's only partially true. As I'm not an omniglot, only the Japanese, Latin, and Cyrillic were selected to represent "Wikipedia". The rest were picked more for an eye of what would fit and look nice, with total obliviousness to the possible interpretation. If the Chinese character I selected had meant something really bad like "death" or "poison" then I'm sure someone would have complained during the logo creation process. I'm mildly pleased to learn that the character I selected means "ancestor"; I think it has a certain charm to it.

If you really want to see it changed, I would suggest creating a page on meta to collect ideas of which characters should be included, and if there is consensus I will make a new version of the logo. However, I'm willing to bet that most Wikipedians are not yet fully recovered from the Great Logo Affair of 2003, so I wouldn't recommend embarking on a major logo-modification campaign. You'd likely stir up much more trouble than you thought you were bargaining for. I'm hesitant to make small changes to the logo, as there are lots of variations that I'd rather not keep re-making for each minor change. The current batch took two whole days. --Nohat 03:47, 2004 Feb 17 (UTC)

Thumbnail size

--> Wikipedia talk:Extended image syntax

New pages and the watchlist

Is it possible to add New pages to a watchlist? Bevo 16:51, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't think so. You can't watch special pages. Even if you could - newpages gets updated 2-10 times a minute. It would always be at the top of your list. →Raul654 16:59, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

How convenient that would be! <grin> Bevo 17:02, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well, you could put New pages on your watchlist, but it doesn't get changed very often! ;-) In fact, it's a very well-hidden redirect, since Special: pages don't seem to get the "Redirected from..." text. Is that a bug or a feature? - IMSoP 17:27, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Why not just link to it from your user page? Or, if you prefer, create a user subpage of it and similar links. Andrewa 22:56, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

http://newshound.de.siu.edu/pulse/discuss/msgReader$19

I am trying to add this link to Hank Williams III and it doesn't want to work right. It makes my tooth hurt when it links to a Ja Rule article ;( Sam Spade 12:59, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Try escaping out the dollar sign, thus: http://newshound.de.siu.edu/pulse/discuss/msgReader%2419 --No-One Jones 13:12, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for your brilliance :D Sam Spade 13:21, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, isn't that a bit worrying? It would seem like the escaping code in mediaWiki isn't working inside URLs, and thus the PHP engine is trying to interpret "19" as a variable. No harm in this case, but potentially... -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:33, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No, it's treating the dollar sign in the same way it treats space or comma. It's not a security risk. -- Tim Starling 13:41, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

Pfew. Thanks Tim. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:17, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

FOLDOC license

spawned from above thread: The FOLDOC articles are more of a challenge [with regards GFDL], though. Martin 21:42, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yikes, I hadn't realised that the FOLDOC import is technically under the FDL. Maybe we could contact Denis Howe again, and ask for an even more relaxed licence? - IMSoP 22:19, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

We'd probably just need to explain the situation to him - if he's fine with what we're doing (and I guess he is), then that's great. Martin 22:32, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

GFDL requirements for a so-called "Title Page"?

Martin has pointed out that material licenced under the GNU FDL requires a statement on the "Title Page", raising issues on how to present content imported from Nupedia.

continued at Wikipedia talk:Nupedia and Wikipedia

See also links

What's the policy regarding "see also" or "related topics" links in articles? Some of them have literally dozens of links, some that seem only marginally related. For example, the article Homosexuality includes no less than 84 links to "related articles," including to frottage, oral sex and mutual masturbation, and that's in addition to the external links. Exploding Boy 00:29, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

discussion at --> Wikipedia talk:Boilerplate text

Squids / Caching

--> Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 2

Wik

I seem to be the subject of attacks by User:wik. He seems to be under the misconception that I am another Wikipedian and he vandalises my user page. I was under the impression that wik was under a ban, so I readded user:Jiang's link to the ban page of wik. I can usually stay away from these sort of detrimental activities on Wikipedia, but I seem to have been targetted. I think that this issue needs to be resolved immediately. user:Muriel Gottrop said two wrongs don't make a right in the edit summary on my userpage, but I wasn't aware that I did anything wrong. Thanks! --Ed Senft! 17:19, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi Alex. How's your brother? --Wik 17:21, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

Wik is a vandal, clear and simple. While he may make some real contributions, most of his edits are reverts, and he loves starting editing wars. Jor 17:32, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The Wik Study

Just to test Darkelf's theory, I did a quick rundown of Wik's edit history. Starting on Feb 12 (prior to his 24 ban), I counted the changes he made to articles (not talk or wikipedia: pages) between Feb 11 and Feb 12. I put them into 3 catagories: vandalism, reverts, and "useful". I counted 0 vandalisms, 20 reverts, and 48 useful contributions. So I think it's unfair to say that the majority of his edits are reverts. →Raul654 17:55, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

Several of his "contributions" are removing added info and adding back his own edit, in essence a cloaked revert. Note also that some of those are marked a Minor Edits, in an effort to hide his vandalism. This statement based on checking each of his last 50 edits by page history comparing. Jor 17:59, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

All(when I looked) of his article edits since he has gotten back have been reverts. Why is he allowed to continue editing? --Ed Senft! 17:56, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I have to disagree with Raul here. I spent a bit of time today looking at every article that appeared in Wik's then-current User Contributions page. Just 50 items and far fewer pages, but that meant I could look at all of them in enough detail to see what each change meant. What they meant: Edit wars and edit wars, sometimes Poland vs Germany—I admit to a bias here: this nonsense annoys the bejabbers out of me—sometimes utter trivialities. Never, it appears, does he use the Talk pages to discuss any changes except in response to someone who has properly used Talk to make a rebuttal to one of this changes. And his positive changes? Copy editing. Good copy editing, often enough; but where are any substantive contributions? I didn't see them. Certainly nothing to balance the nonsense; nothing that would make a difference if he softly and suddenly vanished away; and I haven't even mentioned his wasting our time by tracking everything Anthony does to revert it. Phaugh. Dandrake 02:01, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)

Another thing I just noticed is Wik seems to be removing other user's comments from various wikipedia utilities such as Wikipedia:RFPP. [4]. He is not only removing the comments, but getting into edit wars with the users whose comments he removes. --Ed Senft! 18:42, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Don't edit other people's user pages, simple as that. - snoyes 01:14, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You might want to tell that to Silsor. --Ed Senft! 03:38, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I redirected the user page of a sock puppet to the person's best-known account. silsor 03:39, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

Turkeys and keels

I looked at Carinatae which still claims that the turkey has no carina. The last edit was on 8 Sep 2002 when I asked about it on the talk page. No one's answered. Does anyone know some examples of non-ratite birds which really have no carina? -phma 16:17, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The Sep 11 Terrorist pages

Misinformation and rumors about the September 11, 2001 attacks seems to be protected. Who did it and why? Arno 07:07, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Protection log: 15:02, 12 Feb 2004 Ed Poor protected Misinformation and rumors about the September 11, 2001 attacks →Raul654 07:14, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

Viewing source of old article revisions

--> Wikipedia talk:Page history

Banning Plautus satire

Since policy decisions are all amok right now, I'd like clarification - I'm not sure if this is the place to talk about this though. User:Plautus satire needs to be banned. In the ~10 hours he's been here, he's made 3 good edits (his first 3), lots of bad ones, lots of reverts, started 3 edit wars, and gotten 3 out of the 4 pages he's "contributed" to protected. I would do it myself, but I'm involved in the conflicts. →Raul654 23:46, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)

He has trolled with the same Columbia disaster subject on many other message boards, blanked his talk page rather than respond to concerns, removed other peoples' comments from Talk:Albert Einstein and is the same person as User:24.79.3.230 who contributed this little gem in January. I was going to block him myself but he stopped editing. If he starts up again I will consider blocking him. silsor 00:13, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

He's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack. But confining himself to talk pages for now, it seems. -- ChrisO 01:56, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

He's got nowhere else to go. All the pages he trolls have been protected. →Raul654 01:57, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

Hehe. That definately is something. --Ed Senft! 00:16, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

His edits on the Columbia article seem to be related to a fringe (can I say kooky?) theory doing the rounds that the shuttle was shot down by a lightning bolt or laser beam - the culprits are variously said to be the US Air Force, aliens or whoever might be using "scalar weapons", whatever those might be. I'd guess that he's either a troll or a kook. -- ChrisO 01:42, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Scaler weapons are weapons that have measurable magnitude but no direction. Velocity is a vector quantity because it has speed and direction. mass is a scaler quantity because it only has magnitude. --Ed Senft! 01:46, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This sort of thing is why I gave up maths years ago. :-) -- ChrisO 01:56, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Blocked. silsor 03:36, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

Project Gutenberg vs. Wikibooks

What is the relation between PG & WB (and other e-text projects)? (mutual copying, referncing, cooperation, etc.) BTW, it would be useful for the latter list to mention something about "access rules" for each listed digital library: using, copying, licensing. Mikkalai 23:37, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wikisource:Wikisource and Project Gutenberg has some details on potential collaboration. Angela. 00:50, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

A lot of PG generated material is already in Wikipedia, especially a lot of articles imported from the 1911 encyclopedia. Although it's not a formal policy it's become fairly common for articles about authors/books to link to the PG version if on exists. --Imran 23:55, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Questions

I wanted information about a pediatric nurse. I 'm going to a health career school but I'm not sure what a pediatric nurse does I want to do something that has to do with taking care of infants and toddlers in the hospitol's Could you please send me information on what type of nurse that it?

--> Wikipedia:Reference desk

When will the images return?

As we all know:
"Images uploaded between January 24 and January 28 are currently not available due to a hardware problem with one of the web servers. We should have the files recovered sooner or later, but feel free to re-upload anything you uploaded in that period to restore it immediately."
When will this problem be over? -- user:zanimum

Afaik the server's hd is pretty broken, but should be physically accessible soon (Jason plans to get the old servers today). Attempts to recover the data should be much easier with physical access. -- Gabriel Wicke 23:58, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Map of Wikipedia?

Does anybody know of an attempt to "map" the Wikipedia similar to say:

http://research.lumeta.com/ches/map/

the Internet mapping project?

Hmmm, what I thought you meant was a map of Wikipedia as a navigational tool. Some libraries are doing this as a way to help people find information quickly and easily and as an alternative to the traditional catalogue search. As Wikipedia grows and expands, this could be a very useful tool. Anyone know anything about this? Exploding Boy 08:58, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

Empty image links

Is there a reason why links to Media:Nosuchmedium don't appear red? See User:TUF-KAT/Samples of music from the United States -- not all of those clips have been uploaded yet, and I have no way of knowing whether or not the links are working. I've had to change a few in between when I made the list and the clips got uploaded (the program I used to convert from mp3 to ogg and select a clip couldn't handle accents in titles, for example), but I may have missed some and have no way to tell without clicking on each link. Tuf-Kat 05:23, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

Vandalbot

We had a vandalbot attack today on meta. No big deal, just a couple of minutes worth of cleanup. But I wanted to make sure people know what to do when this happens. So I created a meta page on the subject, m:Vandalbot. -- Tim Starling 00:12, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

Fix required: Talk page moved to article page

I erroneously moved Talk:World War II atrocities to World War II atrocities in Poland. Sorry for screwing up.

The folloiwng should be undone by an admin: Talk:World War II atrocities must be restored, and World War II atrocities in Poland/Talk:World War II atrocities in Poland deleted.

BTW, could it be a good idea to forbid such kind of page move? Mikkalai 21:17, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Advice and opinion needed on place naming conventions

I'd be grateful for advice on an issue regarding place naming conventions in Kosovo (i.e. whether we follow international practice or one or the other practices of the rival national communities, which present POV problems). I've posted an appeal for advice on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places)#Disputed place names - advice needed about a week ago but haven't had any responses yet. If anyone could offer some assistance, it would be much appreciated. -- ChrisO 10:49, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Heads up on "Ethnic Groups"

For anyone who may care, because I know this was a controversial project when we first launched a month ago, we now have an attempted template for writing about ethnic groups, nations (in the sense of peoples, not states), tribes, etc. It's further discussed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups, which also points to 5 examples of applying the template. Some of the articles that we've tried reworking this way were not so great to begin with, and of course applying a template doesn't solve all of their problems, but I, for one, think it is an improvement in every case. Comments eagerly solicited; my current plan is to until 15 Feb 04 for comments, then (barring unforeseen serious objections) supersede the 5 articles currently in the wikipedia (nothing significant is dropped, just added), and take the notice off of the template that warns that it is "only a draft." -- Jmabel 02:27, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

WIKIPEDIA USER PAGES ON WIKINFO

I am a contributor on Wikinfo. Some Wikipedia users have been coming over to Wikinfo and inadvertantly creating user pages.

It seems that there is a misunderstanding and that some Wikipedia users think that Wikinfo has "stolen" all of the Wikipedia user pages for some nefarious reason.

This is not true. Wikinfo has an automatic import feature. If you go look for your Wikipedia user page and that user page does not exist on Wikinfo then Wikinfo takes advantage of Wikipedia's XML export feature and presents that page to you and asks you if you want to save it to the Wikinfo database. You can say no.

Wikinfo ONLY IMPORTS WHAT WIKIPEDIA WILLINGLY EXPORTS UNDER GFDL. Wikipedia exports user pages under GFDL via XML. Normally nobody at Wikinfo really has a need to steal any user pages.

I am only a contributor, and don't speak for Wikinfo. But it is somewhat irritating to see people suddenly appear, import their Wikipedia user page, and then call us thieves for stealing them. LOL. Thank you for listening.24.144.15.243 04:12, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

P.S. Some Wikipedia users have suggested that Wikinfo filter out user pages from Wikipedia. I would respond by saying that users of Wikipedia's XML export feature should not be expected to read minds and know which pages that Wikipedia exports it REEEEEAALLLY wanted to export and which ones Wikipedia exports contrary to its will. This applies to anyone who uses Wikipedia's export feature and not just Wikinfo. Thanks.24.144.15.243 04:46, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Special:Export should not have to read minds. It's not called Special:Fork, it's used for lots of other purposes. Some people may have a perfectly good reason for obtaining the source of a user page. It would be inappropriate to restrict access to the database just because some forks don't have programmers capable of selecting what they wish to import.

The issue here is not whether you are legally allowed to import people's user pages, the issue is whether or not you will annoy Wikipedians by doing so. If your aim is to annoy or offend people, then by all means go ahead. -- Tim Starling 05:45, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedian users don't read minds either. How are we supposed to know that you've been leeching content for every single page. The reason I went and (tried to) blanked my page was because it was showing up on google and it seemed like I was editing there. Dori | Talk 05:59, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)

Because userpages and talkpages are released under GFDL and because many sites copy userpages and talkpages and are non-editable, I choose to have the most minimal possible userpage and talkpage to protect myself. Optim 06:05, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Layout change for Votes for deletion?

See Wikipedia_talk:Votes for deletion#VOTE:_NEW_LAYOUT_FOR_VFD!

Who decide what is encyclopedic and what is not ?

Though I am sure I will speak in a deep void, I will just state that it is utterly ridiculous to remove recipees from encyclopedia; And it is not because there is a book somewhere to hold these recipees, that they should disappear from here. You people probably only eat plastic steaks and aspartam coca cola if you are able to realise that food in part of culture in some countries, and that understanding how people eat, how they prepare food, what they eat is cultural, not just a plain stupid recipee to hide in a book. Do not expect to ever understand some cultures, such as the french one in doing so.

Anthère0 11:38, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The wikipedian with the most aggressive appearance decides.
--Ruhrjung 11:48, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't think we're advocating removing articles on food, just recipes. For example, turkey (food) used to be a recipe for cooking turkey, but it has now been turned into a very encyclopedic non-recipe article. Explaining food, its uses, its cultural connotations, etc., is encyclopedic, but things like "2 cups sugar; bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 18-22 minutes" aren't. --Delirium 12:25, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)

A recipee is

1. interesting and might bring us women and mothers
2. often those recipee reported are typical of a certain way of life or culture. Removing them on the motive there is not enough information on the cultural background is like advocating removal of stubs.
3. Often, those recipees are examples of cooking technics or style. These are relevant examples
4. People will look for them, and won't find anything. Worse, they will write again the same recipee
5. the fact food is encyclopedic while typical recipees are not are ONE POV
6. You break all the international links in doing so.

Anthère0

And the recipe portion shouldn't have been deleted because it was a single example of a recipe for that food dish, not a cookbook full of them. The encyclopedia should have comprehensive coverage of food styles around the world, including a selection of recipes to illustrate them. That's in part because they vary depending on the local climate and agriculture, as well as the general culture. Those examples and styles should should link to the cookbook for a more comprehensive selection of recipes and the cookbook itself should have the exhausitve selection of recipes. At the moment, those creating the new cookbook have been too enthusiastic in deleting recipe examples, without due regard to what the encyclopedia needs for it's coverage. Jamesday

Food articles should have something like "please see wikibook link here for a list or recipes involving this food" That way we keep it in the family and keep the article traditionally enclopedic theresa knott 12:41, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I remember being taught in English lessons that any piece of writing can hove one of 4 primary purposes: to entertain, to persuade, to inform or to instruct. Unlike, say, everything2 or to some extent h2g2, Wikipedia has not set out to be a complete compendium of knowledge - it aims to create an encyclopedia. As such, its primary purpose (arguably) is to inform. Recipes - and other how-tos - are instead intended to instruct. So while we should seek to have information on foods and ways of eating, we should not (by that reasoning) include instructions on how to make them. You are by no means the only one who feels the project would benefit from a wider goal, but if information is our aim, instruction isn't. - IMSoP 13:00, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I agree with all that IMSoP has said above. There is an opportunity here, though. Wikicuisine - a wiki of recipes - Gaz 13:20, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

"As [an encyclopedia], its primary purpose (arguably) is to inform." --IMSoP Oh? The very word encyclopedia derived from "cyclo," encompassing, and "paideia," to instruct. An encyclopedia is something that is intended to comprise the elements of a general course of education. I don't know what the past history of Wikipedia's self-assumed mission is, but an encyclopedia is instructional. That's what the word means: something that will teach you about anything. Dpbsmith P. S. I'm not sure of the source of the apparent consensus that recipes should be moved to wikibooks, but I do not see anything in What_wikipedia_is_not that excludes a) recipes, b) instructional material, or c) how-to articles. The original Encyclopaedia Britannica's mission was supposed to be utility, and the increasing scholarliness of the revisions up to the 11th did not change that. 14:23, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think wikipedia should have articles about specific dishes when there's something cultural to say about them - so all the "cuisine of France" articles should be kept if they describe the food and place it in context (not (1) preheat the oven, sort of thing - a link to a recipe book/wikibook should be included if we have one though). As another example, (the stubby) Shortbread isn't a recipe, but it tells you the main ingredients and how it is cooked which is necessary in order to describe something closely linked to the cultural identity of Scotland to people who have never heard of it. fabiform | talk 14:56, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I completly agree with fabiform, but this discussion is taking place/should take place at Talk:List of recipes/Delete. Gentgeen 16:24, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Any UK or Euopean Wikipedians here for organising Meetings with Jombo

Hi all,

Jimbo is coming June-July to Europe. We are already organising Meetings in Berlin, Munich, Genoa and Paris.

But no one stood up yet for London or somewhere in the UK. I think it would be nice to meet there as well.

Please add your Ideas at Wikipedia:Meetup

Thanks :-) Fantasy 19:15, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Who decide what is encyclopedic and what is not ?

Discussion about whether recipes belong in Wikipedia. (Moved to List_of_recipes/delete as per Gentgeen's suggestion)

or...how to ensure a discussion be buried really deep. I'll come back to it if necessary :-) Anthère0

There is no beginning of an evidence of consensus on the topic. While moved, whole articles are sometimes deleted, international links broken, information lost (because links are not always left between both projects), cultural background lost, examples of techniques lost, and to end it...since many articles are just deleted, it is very likely that someone will recreate them. This is very bad. Anthère0

phonetics, request for feature

phonetic transcription

It would be really nice to have a better way of inputing and editing phonetic notation. I've worked out a little example, whose conventions are loosely based on Tipa, a phonetics package for LaTeX:

Example sentence: "Dubbs asked his brother what it was like in the other world, and his brother said it was not unlike Cleveland."

Editing form of phonetic transcription: <ipa> [d2bz #askt hIz br2Dr#& w2t It w2z layk In Di 2Dr#& wr#&ld n#&d Iz br2Dr#& sEd It w2z nat @nlayk klivln#&d]</ipa>

Display form: [dʌbz æskt hɪz brʌðr̩ wʌt ɪt wʌz layk ɪn ði ʌðr̩ wr̩ld n̩d ɪz brʌðr̩ sɛd ɪt wʌz nat ənlayk klivln̩d]

(Character 809 is supposed to be a non-spacing diacritic, but my browser gets it wrong.)

GregLee 13:03, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Buddhist symbolisms

I wonder if anyone can tell me the significance of the toucan as sybolism, as well as the baby Buddha, rear-end raised in the air wearing glasses.

Thank you for your help.

Sincerely,

Eleanor Mason

You may contact me at

  nornorny123@aol.com

Coming clean about bisexuality

May I draw your attention to my website, http://www.onetel.net.uk/~jnjones You will find there a full length book about bisexuality, COMING CLEAN ABOUT BISEXUALITY: A MALE PERSPECTIVE which I believe to be important. This can be downloaded without charge. Also you will find a brief document (also freely downloadable) relating to things needing to be done if the planet is to be sustainable. Sincerely, John Garrett Jones

Baggage

Baggage Handling Systems for

cruise Terminal

trees, request for feature

Trees would be nice, too. Here's an example, using an indentation convention that I find very convenient:

Editing form

<tree>

S
  NP
   Det - the
   N
    N
        N - science
        N
          N - book
          -s
    PP
      P - on
      NP
        Det - the
        N - table
  VP
    V
      V - fell
      Adv
        A - sudden
        -ly
    PP
      P - to
      NP
        Det - the
        N - floor

</tree>

Display form (ascii)

                                  S
                    ______________|_______________
                    |                            |
                    NP                           VP
               _____|______                ______|______
               |          |                |           |
              Det         N                V           PP
               |    ______|______       ___|____    ___|____
              the   |           |       |      |    |      |
                    N           PP      V     Adv   P      NP
                 ___|____    ___|____   |    __|__  |   ___|___
                 |      |    |      |  fell  |   |  to  |     |
                 N      N    P      NP       A  -ly    Det    N
                 |     _|__  |   ___|___     |          |     |
              science  |  |  on  |     |   sudden      the  floor
                       N  -s    Det    N
                       |         |     |
                      book      the  table

Display form (Unicode box drawing characters)

                                  S
                    ┌─────────────┴──────────────┐
                    │                            │
                    NP                           VP
               ┌────┴─────┐                ┌─────┴─────┐
               │          │                │           │
              Det         N                V           PP
               │    ┌─────┴─────┐       ┌──┴───┐    ┌──┴───┐
              the   │           │       │      │    │      │
                    N           PP      V     Adv   P      NP
                 ┌──┴───┐    ┌──┴───┐   │    ┌─┴─┐  │   ┌──┴──┐
                 │      │    │      │  fell  │   │  to  │     │
                 N      N    P      NP       A  -ly    Det    N
                 │     ┌┴─┐  │   ┌──┴──┐     │          │     │
              science  │  │  on  │     │   sudden      the  floor
                       N  -s    Det    N
                       │         │     │
                      book      the  table

GregLee 13:56, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Whoops. I should have put this in the feature request area. Sorry. GregLee 15:03, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Take a look at the Wikisophia Sandbox. --Phil 17:06, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

Wow! Trees like that would be very useful in Wikimorial. --mav

pls help

i want you to send the names of god fathers of philosophy and six defination of philosophy with the author of them.send reply to this mail address :-innocential2002@yahoo.com.

Try this: philosophy. No, I am not going to email you. Next time, post a question of this sort at the Reference desk. —Frecklefoot 15:30, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

For the record, those of us who try to handle things at the RD (I think I can speak for all of us) are not in the habit of doing someone's homework for them. We try to answer limited questions when we can, but the above is way beyond what any of us are reasonably willing to do. Jwrosenzweig 17:05, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I stand corrected. :D —Frecklefoot 17:42, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hope I didn't sound too gruff. :-) I imagine I'd respond to a question like "Who are the 'godfathers of philosophy'?" (Answer: I don't know. ;) Once it begins to look like I'm writing several paragraphs of someone's high school/college assignment, I draw the line. I think most of the folks who try and field things at RD take reasonably similar stances. :) Ask questions there, definitely! Just don't rely on us to do research for you. Jwrosenzweig 19:15, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No, you didn't sound gruff. It just sounded like you didn't want to do someone's research for them! Who would? I think the OP was pretty audacious in his original post. —Frecklefoot 19:32, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

NES vs. Famicom

does the famicom games play on an american super NES?

NES vs. Famicom

does the famicom games play on an american super NES?

Yes, but the Famicom cartridges have a differant form factor, so it requires a adapter, I believe Honeywell made one. Thunderbolt16

Michael Landon

Q. Michael Landon............ TV star When he was dying he had a particular sound track or music album that he had playing all the time until he actually passed away. Do you know what that music was? I would appreciate an answer please. - Gordon Screen from Australia

Please take this to Wikipedia:Reference Desk

Requests for help and comments

1. Sennheiser has created a WikiProject Space and he would like to invite Astronomy and Space Exploration enthusiasts to join his new project.
2. TUF-KAT has created Wikipedia talk:Infobox for all taxobox/infobox discussion to be centralized
3. Belizian is willing to take photos of plants and animals in the jungle for wikipedia, he requests your help in identifying species at Plants and animals of Belize
4. For those who enjoy writing and editing: Wikipedia:Articles requested for over a year, Wikipedia:RC patrol
5. The Wikipedia:Association of Members' Advocates is an intra-Wikipedia voluntary association looking for new members who are interested in assisting users with the dispute resolution process.
6. If you voted to remove an article to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates but have not raised a formal objection to it, please do so now. Bmills
7. Wikipedians are encouraged to make use of this public domain site, see Wikipedia talk:Porting Vectorsite articles
8. Multilingual? Or need a foreign-language wikipedia article translated into English? Check out the newly created Wikipedia:Translation
9. Rholton (aka Anthropos) suggests that every Wikipedian take the time each day to find a home for one of the many orphaned articles.
10. Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups has gone live, seeks more participants.

Where do How-to articles belong?

"Procedural knowledge or know-how is the knowledge of how to perform some task. Know-how is different from other kinds of knowledge such as propositional knowledge in that it can be directly applied to a task.".

According to Wikipedia:How-to:

"A HowTo is a simple set of instructions needed to complete a task or build something. Ideally, Wikipedia articles should not be mere sets of instructions, but additionally provide historical context and further information."

Both were written before Wikibooks: was created for "developing and disseminating free, open content textbooks and other classroom texts". Not a few of the how-to previously included in Wikipedia have been moved there.

The current situation is less than satisfactory, teachers look at our main page and Wikipedia:How-to and suggest to their students to write how-tos for a task, deletionists use a "how-to" argument for anything that has "How-to" in the title.

Should we continue to have how-tos in Wikipedia or not? Should any type of procedural description be excluded? Is it just classroom-projects and IKEA-how-tos that shouldn't be included? -- User:Docu

I was a strong supporter of having How to knowledge in wikipedia before wikibooks was started. Now I feel that wikibooks is the best place for this stuff. I propose we move all the how to pages over, we put a notice on VfD saying how to's are not to be listed there, we keep the page how to but tell people not to start new how to pages on wikipedia. The how to page should be used to list existing procedural knowledge that needs to be transwikied. theresa knott 00:42, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

• Theresa, I agree with your proposal. Kingturtle 00:44, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
• Yes - Wikibooks is the best place for How-tos. That type of content is very welcome there. --mav 04:43, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

• Appropriate how-to's should have a place in Wikipedia. I am beginning to feel this more and more. I agree that "Wikipedia articles should not be mere sets of instructions, but additionally provide historical context and further information." However, I am somewhat bemused by the apparent consensus that instructional articles are not encyclopedic. Given

a) the derivation of the word (-paideia, teaching or instruction),

b) the historical origins of the Britannica, where "utility" was a chief feature of the mission,

c) The lack of any deprecation on the What Wikipedia is Not page,

d) The apparent endorsement on the Wikipedia:How-to page,

I don't think articles should not be excluded merely on the basis of being how-tos.

An ideal encyclopedia should contain the elements of a full course of general education. Just because something could go in a textbook doesn't mean it should be excluded from an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is a textbook--a comprehensive textbook, and "instruction" belongs in it as well as "information."

Soapbox off. Dpbsmith 16:15, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Dpbsmith, I agree with you up to a point. However, distinguishing the two types of knowledge does seem useful. Perhaps wikipedia and wikibooks should be renamed, both being wikipedia, but each part being "wikipedia information" and "wikipedia instruction" (or whatever). Or perhaps the names should be accepted as idiom as they are de facto now.

Mr. Jones 14:20, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

A solution for recipes appears to be that they are to be included (see also Talk:List_of_recipes/Delete, not necessarily with all steps, quantities and variations though). If we leave out the procedural part, they might as well end up in Wiktionary.

In another field, Algorithms on Wikipedia are described in pseudocode to allow to understand how they work. The Meta:reading level of most of us seems to need that "instructional part". -- User:Docu

Requests for removal of controversial content by its Subjects

Question: What happens when a page which is actively discussed as potentially inappropriate for Wikipedia, regularly on VfD or argued heatedly about on its talk page, and so on -- what happens when such a page is about a particular person or group, and that person or group contacts WP to ask that the page be removed? Does this carry weight in the VfD and similar discussions? Is there a procedure for formally and politely getting a page about one's own life or affairs removed? Of course nothing can be done about mirrors or copies of the 'pedia elsewhere, but is there a way of asking (and receiving permission for) future versions of WP to leave out such a targetted page? I would imagine that often the reason for wanting a controversial page to be actively left out is, the desire NOT to have the primary content associated with one's name/group to be ANGRY TALK-PAGE RANTS about the content, or reversion thereof, on the page...

Case I: Brianism. Lots of people wanted the page to go away, accused the page authors of trying to promote a small sect; the sect itself found out about the whole mess and wrote a public letter asking that its page be removed. Upshot: Brianism is still here; many W'pedians want the page to go away, while others want it to stay; the open letter is still up on the official Brianist website.

The Brianist open letter was written when the page was in many ways an attack on that religion. That's no longer the case. It's a shame that there are people who lack religious tolerance but that's hardly a reason for us to stop covering religions which some people dislike. Jamesday 19:46, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Csae II: Richard Genovese. Modern-day artist has resume-like bio pasted-in and wikified by a sequence of both anon users and old-timers; it is put on VfD multiple times without reaching consensus; emotions run high due to connections with older related 'is this important enough to be here' issues [cf. DCB]; W'pedians variously claim it is self-promotion or non-encyclopedic. An anonymous user claiming to be RG himself tries to blank out the page, replacing it with a LONG ALL-CAPS NOTE ABOUT HOW HE DOESN'T WANT A PAGE ABOUT HIS LIFE OR WORK ON WIKIPEDIA and would W'pedia kindly stop trying to maintain such a page. Currently: RG is still here, and still on VfD; Morwen recently protected it to keep the recent user from engaging in a reversion-war; no verification that the angry user is the subject of the article; no verification that the subject of the article is important or famous enough to be included in W'pedia. +sj+ 08:16, 2004 Feb 25 (UTC)

See also Robert Taylor, Hank Eskin and Patrick Jennings. Angela. 17:20, Feb 26, 2004 (UTC)

Sandbox header replacement text

For convenience, Sandbox maintainers can now replace headers with one "sandbox " message, instead of having to type "sandbox" and the comment manually. HTH Dysprosia 07:57, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Bug in What links here?

Special:Whatlinkshere/National_capital_territory and Special:Whatlinkshere/Talk:National_capital_territory give scores of Village pump links. What's up? -- Paddu 10:21, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I noticed the same thing on Special:Whatlinkshere/Delaware, which gives tons of hits to Current events. →Raul654 10:23, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

Stats updated

The stats pages are now build from the logs between 5 Feb - now. They are at http://wikimedia.org/stats/{DOMAIN}/, for example http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org/. -- Gabriel Wicke 20:38, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

"It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)"

I'm doing a project about R.E.M., and I would like to know how did the social- economic circumstances, influenced the band's music in general, and how did it affect the writing of "It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)".

Thank You.

terrorism

i wish to donate you information on terrorism topic. can i have your email address please at savinderd5@aol.com

---

Forwarded Message: Subj: (no subject) Date: 28/02/2004 23:15:38 GMT Standard Time From: Savinderd5 To: president@whitehouse.gov CC: vice.president@whitehouse.gov

FOR THE ATTENTION OF FBI. 28-2-2004

Dear Sir,

I have got great problems. I am a resident of uk and unfortunatley i have found out that a hell lot of crime is done on your country by an organsied criminal gang and that is done on orders by an English demonic,satanic and most evil man i had ever met or saw on the television or in any horror films from the Hollywood or Bollywood from India.

I must meet your agents and discuss the whole subject with you, unless you can ask your USA embassy personal to record what i have to say.

There should be about three such responsible personals to record what i have to say.

Nasty things had started to happen to me when an English man came into our office in 1974.

He had some demonic side to him.

I just could not lay my finger to his dirty and demonic side in the beginning.

I had put down to his hobby of tapping my phone and bugging my house.

His obsession then increased from that to have me followed me about to the shops and so on.

The dirty side of that man is seen when he started escorting men on me.

When i had reported of his illicit activity to the police, i then found out that he has got very many corrupt police friends.

However his police friends caused me a shock on 5-7-84.

The story did not end there.

Prior to that in 1978, my home conversation had leaked out but there were no bugs in our house.

In 1983, a programe came on BBC Tv on " telepathy" when a USA woman called as Mrs william was shown to have some para-normal powers and she can see things at 5000 miles away.

In other words it means that she can read thoughts of people at any time.

I strongly believe that, although on the front it was shown that Mrs William was telepathic but I strongly believe that but underneath, it is that man who had worked under the same roof as me from 1974 to 1978.

I have to inform you about the dangerous side of that man. He had been bugging my home and taking drastic action and things had happened when i had spoken of someone or had discussed something.

I do not know how to inform you that i strongly believe that this man has got a gang in Uk that also have a branch in Iraq.

I had recently said in my house saying " hellow,telepath, instead of reading and bugging my thoughts or conversation, why don't you go and help your UK and USA forces and smell the presence of sons of Saddam Hussain and win that reward."

Next day,the sons were dead.

{ That can only be happening if this telepath man had known where the sons were and to know that,he must have a gang in Iraq who had hidden the sons. }

After many days i said the same thing again , saying " now ,you should sniff out Saddam Hussain and win that reward"

next day Saddam Hussain was sniffed out.

{ That can only happen if saddam Hussain was housed by a man who ids known to Uk gang }

OTHER EXAMPLES FROM THE PAST

In the past, i was shopping in Marks and Spenser and i said " what a beautiful USA Navy woman "

a message came and said"" what a beautiful Bay ""

{ Please note that I will not at the moment inform you how i got that message }

Next day or two later after that message ,i had recieved , a terrorist attack took place on your USA Navy ship in OMAN BAY.

Same way , prior to the terrorism in New York and in Washington, i had messages in the form of coded words and those words related to New York and Washington in many ways.

example=

In New York I have a friend whose husband has got a surname called as " BAJWA"

AND IN WASHINGTON I KNOW A WOMAN WHOSE NAME IS CALLED AS "DEESH""

The coded message i had recieved prior to the terrorism in those two cities was as listed below and then i will give you an explanation of each coded wording too.

coded message =============

bajwa, deesh,sava lakh se ek laraoon,turn around,bin badal bersat,hell broke out.

interpretation of above message ============================

Bajwa====it meant that something nasty will happen in New York where Bajwa is living.

Deesh= It meant that something nasty will happen in Washington where Deesh is living.

sava lakh se ek laroon===it means that i will kill many people using just one person { a quotation from our Sikh religion .I am a SIKH FROM INDIA . OUR GURU NUMBER 10 HAD SAID THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO THAT HIS SIKH ARMY MEN WILL BE SO BRAVE THAT ONE MAN WILL KILL ONE MILLION MOSLEMS . I think in the case of terrorism, the mesage had meant that i will kill many Americans with just a few men on the aeroplin. }

Turn round == It had meant to convey me the message that the third aeroplain will turn around and will not reach its destination and that is exactly what had happened in reality.

BIN BADAL BERSAT===== It means that there will be a rainfall without a cloud.

In your case,it meant that there will be a rainfall of debris when the aeroplain will collide the trade centre building.

Hell broke out==== it means that hell will break out and there will be deaths.

i had also recieved a coded mesage a day or two prior to the blowing up of the statue of LORD BUDHA IN AFGANISTAN.

I was talking at my home about if Buddism was ever popular in India.

Then next day, i got that coded message that said" THE STATUE GONE ""

Next day i heard the news or read in the paper that TELEBAN HAD BLOWEN UP THE STATUE OF BUDHA IN AFGANSITAN.

THE ABOVE ARE ONLY SOME EXAMPLES THAT INTEREST YOU AND ARE APPLICABLE TO YOUR COUNTRY.

i CAN INFORM YOU THAT SOME CRIMINAL GANG MAY HAVE GOT INTO THE MI5 AND MI6 AS THE ENGLISH ARE A VERY CORRUPTIBLE RACE AND WHOEVER WINE THEM AND DINE THEM, THEY START SMEELING THEIR HORMONES ALIKE THE DOGS DO.

I have established from the above coded messages and things that happen to me that there are groups in the Uk and in Iraq and in Afhganistan that are related to each other and run by the underworld criminal gang.

Their main aim was to make money from the reward.

I can say that they had lead USA to take a fight against Saddam Hussain,issue a reward option and then once the reward was offered, the criminal gang then claimed that reward after giving a tip off.

The gang had won the confidence of Saddam Sussain and hid him but only to hand him over to the army after the reward was confirmed or announced.

THAT MAKES YOUR COUNTRY VERY UNSTABLE AS THEN THE HEADQUARTERS OF TERRORISM MUST BE IN UK WHERE THERE IS NO DEATH PENALITY.

UK WILL THUS BE A SAFE HAVEN IN THE FUTURE.

I have to give you this information as this demonic man can also kill people with his telepathy powers, causing sickness such as berybertry, multiple sclorosis or alikes of acerebeller ataxia that makes the muscular system very weak so much so that one can not even swallow food, sit,stand or walk or lift any limb.

He is thus a Dracula WHO PRETENDS TO BE NOW A TELEBAN AND ALIKE A TELEBAN HE THINKS HE CAN PUNISH THE INDIAN WOMAN AND HAVE A CONTROLE ON HER.

{ If I am the target, then I have never met anyone in my entire life who will do me any wrong other than that English man who had worked under the same roof as me in a civil service office from 1974 -1978 but he had never left me alone for a second ever since then. }

i had suffred a hell from this demonic man .

But the police of UK did nothing for me.

Why should they ?

Why should they when they are going to benefit from the Iraq war as the UK USA SUPPORT AND and made use of president Bush to fight a war against Iraq under false pretences.

PLEASE BELIEVE ME, THERE WAS NEVER ANY TERRRISM FROM SADDAM HUSSAIN SIDE AS I HAD BEEN READING THE PAPERS AND CO RELATING THE CODED MESSAGES AND HAD COME TO KNOW THAT THE WAR WAS INVENTED BY AN UNDERWORLD CRIMINAL GANG.

BUT SOMEONE HAD WANTED TO GET RID OF SADDAM HUSSAIN.

TO GET RID OF SADDAM HUSSAIN, UK HAD HAD NEEDED USA ARMY.

TO GET USA ARMY IS NOT AN EASY TASK.

WHAT MUST THEN UK DO TO GET USA ARMY ?

UK MUST DO SOME TERRORISM AGAINST USA AND PUT THE BLAME ON SADDAM HUSSAIN AND THAT WAY GET PRESIDENT BUSH TO WORK FOR UK.

Thus Uk criminal gang got hold of some mentally sick Moslems and brainwashed them or drugged them to damage their brains so that they have nothing better to do then to kill themselves and make themselves martyres.

PLEEASE BELIEVE ME, IT IS POSSIBLE FOR THIS TELEPATHY GANG TO SEND YOU SUCH BRAINWASHING MESSAGES EVERY EACH SECOND OF THE DAY , UNTIL THE VICTIM DOES WHAT HE OR SHE IS TOLD TO DO.

Thus Uk had used USA.

Once the terrorism was done, USA was ready to fight and get rid of Saddam Hussain.

BUT WHAT WILL THE UNDERWORL CRIMNAL GANG GET FROM THIS WAR ?

FOR THAT THE CRIMNAL GANG GOT USA PRESIDENT TO ISSUE A REWAD OPTION.

ONCE THAT WAS DONE, THEN INFORM THE USA ARMY OF THE WHERE ABOUT OF THE SONS AND KILL THE SONS FIRST AND SEE IF THE REWARD WAS PAID.

AFTER THAT GET SADDAM HUSSAIN TOO.

I HAD THUS TOLD YOU THAT THE WAR WAS ALL PLANNED BY UNDERWORLD CRIMINAL GANG AND I ALWAYS GET THE MESSAGES.

AS I HAD SAID ABOVE, { If I am the target, then I have never met anyone in my entire life who will do me any wrong other than that English man who had worked under the same roof as me in a civil service office from 1974 -1978 but he had never left me alone for a second ever since then. I KLNOW THE NAME OF THAT MAN AND HIS PAST ADDRESS AND ALL ABOUT HIS OBSESSION OF ME. THAT SHIT OF ENGLISH ORIGIN CAN LICK MY ARCEHOLE ON A DAILY BASIS UNDER CAMERS AS I HAVE NONE INTEREST IN HIM. MY GOOD MORNING HAD COST ME A LOSS OF THREE OF MY UNBORN CHILDREN AND ALL MY TEETH WENT LOOSE JUST ALIKE A FLASH OF LIGHT INSTTANTLY. I fear if he gets people to even poison me in birthday cakes .}

THE AIM OF THIS MAN IS TO KILL ME BY STRESS AND BY DEATH MESSAGES.

I ALSO THINK THAT THIS GANG GETS FUNDS VIA THE TELEPATHY AND BY EXTORTION RACKET.

E,G TO GET FUNDS FROM A RICH MOSLEM, THIS GANG WILL SEND A TELEPATHY MESSAGE ASKING FOR FUNDS each second of the day and night until the victim pays .

The threat may be pay or we make you mentally so sick so much so that you will kill yourself as a punishment to you., OR ELSE LOOSE YOUR BRAIN.

INOTHERWORDS, THE GANG CAN DAMAGE THE BRAIN.

I THINK THAT THE VICTIM WHO HAS GOT A WEAKER BRAIN OR WHO DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT IS HAPPENING TO HIM OR HER WILL END UP PAYING SO THAT HE SAVES HIS BRAIN FROM GETTING TELEPATHY MESSAGES.

TELEPATHY MESSAGES COME IN THE FORM OF SICKNESS.

IF YOU TELL SOME ONE ,THEN OTHER PEOPLE WILL THINK THAT YOU ARE A NUT.

IT MAY BE POSSIBLE THAT SOME PEOPLE MAY NOT BE ALSO BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THEM.

IDEAS TO DONATE MONEY CAN BE INDUCED TOO.

IDEAS TO CHANGE YOUR WILLS CAN BE INDUCED TOO.

IDEAS FOR YOU TO THINK OF ANOTHER MAN OR WOMAN CAN BE INDUCED INTO YOU TOO.

SOMEONE CAN BE PLANTED ON YOU WHERE YOU DO NOT EXPECT THAT PERSON TO MEET YOU AS SOME ONE ALREADY KNOWS WHERE YOU ARE AT ANY GIVEN TIME OF THE DAY.

SAME WAY IDEAS TO DO TERRRISM CAN BE INDUCED TOO.

I THINK THAT THIS GANG HAD INDUCED THE IDEAS TO DO SUICIDE TERRORSM.

FOR TO GET A PERSON TO BE A SUICIDE TERRRIST,THEIR BRAINS ARE DRUGGED WITH CHEMICALS SUCH AS LEAD. ONCE DAMAGED,THEY CAN BE BRABWASHED INTO KILLING THEMSELVES AND MAKING USE OF THEIR LIFE FOR THE SAKE OF ISLAM.

HAVING SAID ABOVE, I THINK THAT INSTEAD OF WASTING TIME, YOUR USA EMBASSY CAN INVITE ME, AND JUST PAY FOR MY TAXY TO AND FROM MY HOME.

OR JUST INTERVIEW ME IN MY NEAREST POLICE STATION AT WEMBLEY.

I CAN INFROM YOU THAT POLICE IN THE UK IS CORRUPT.

THAT MAN HAS GOT VERY MANY CORRUPT POLICE FRIENDS.

Please trust me, this man hates me and your country too due to the fact that i like the USA and USA as i had been seeing so many hollywood films.

You may think that this English man is a genious, but he is an evil man whose will suck all your blood and still not be guilty.

To rob things belonging to others is his old hobby.

He had done a crime on me for the last 30 years and had taken a toll out of my health.

I am also ready to go on television if you want to expose all what i had said in this email as each and everything i had written is correct.

WHAT I ADVISE IS THAT IF YOU HAD NOT AS YET PAID ANY BOUNTY REWARD TO ANYONE, PLEASE DO NOT PAY AS THEY ARE AN UNDERWORLD CRIMNAL GANG CLOSELY RESEMBLING KIDNAPPERS STYLE.

THUS THE IRAQ WAR WAS INVENTED,PLANNED AND PROVOKED BY UNDERWORLD CRIMNAL GANG AND WAS NOT A PRODUCT OF POLITICS.

ALSO KEEP A GOOD TRACK OF THOSE WHO GOT BOUNTY.

BUT NEVER HANDOVER SADDAM HUSSAIN TO THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ AS THAT WILL DO YOUR COUNTRY A LOT HARM IN THE FUTURE .

KEEPING HIM ALIVE WILL BENEFIT YOU,UNFOLD THE CONSPIRACY AND SADDAM HUSSAIN WILL MAY BE SHED LIGHT ON HIS DECEPTICE RELATIONS WHO HAD CAUSED HIS ARREST.

SEND ME YOUR FAX NUMBER PLEASE

faithfully,

savinder Dhadli

Subj: Fwd: (no subject) Date: 29/02/2004 05:30:37 GMT Standard Time From: Savinderd5 To: president@whitehouse.gov CC: vice.president@whitehouse.gov

please pass it on to the president of USA

Subj: Fwd: (no subject) Date: 29/02/2004 05:30:37 GMT Standard Time From: Savinderd5 To: president@whitehouse.gov CC: vice.president@whitehouse.gov

Merging Accounts

If it is at least frowned upon to have multiple accounts, is it possible to have them merged somewhere (given that such thing already exists for IP addresses)? -- Dissident 19:10, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What's wrong with the images?

I uploaded this image, but something seems to be wrong with it. Check the file size of the current version. Now, click on the image, and check the size of the file. Aha, you got it - they don't agree. What's wrong here? Can somebody help me?

Fibonacci 23:42, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Question for the interlanguage wiki users

I have a question here for people who contribute to Wikis in other languages. On the english wikipedia, I very, very rarely run across articles translated from other languages. In all the time I've been here, I've run across *maybe* 2. My question is - how common are translated articles on the Wikis? Do they tend to be one area (like science), or are they well distributed? What is the quality of a translated article? →Raul654 08:51, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

So far as i know, a lot of articles in Chinese WP are translated from English WP, rarely reverse. Like all the homosexual related topics are from English even though there are no such expressions in Chinese(I translate that literarily). The quality of the translated articles depends on the ability of the translator. I am not a good translator, so i need help all the time. ;) --Yacht 08:58, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

The only straight translation I have done, is the NPOV statement by Jimbo. Since it was signed, I didn't feel comfortable in putting it in my own words. Otherwise, even when importing text and doing a paragraph by paragraph transcriptiion, I tend to be very loose, and even deliberately discriminative in what of the original text I incorporate. In my view, proceeding in this manner there is an additional level of protection against copyvios propagating from one wiki to another.

Most typically my M.O. is to write a stub on the Finnish Wiki, check what facts I have missed from the one in EN, and incorporate the most salient, and maybe come back later for more. In at least one case (William Safire my original stub in Finnish contained IMO salient information not yet in the EN article, which I then added. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 09:47, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

A lot of the articles on Welsh Wikipedia started out from English. On the other hand, when the Welsh footballer John Charles died last week I wrote an article on him in en: which was translated word-for-word in the Italian and Polish Wikis within 36 hours (the Italian I can understand since he played there, but I was surprised he was picked up in pl: !). However the version on Welsh Wiki is considerably different because I included more local info. Arwel 13:37, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've translated 6 or 7 articles from French and German, and translated more than that into French, German, and Latin. If I'm translating into another language I'll almost always leave something out (like really minor details from English that I don't know how to translate anyway), but when translating into English I tend to keep everything, and possibly add more info if I know any. I think all the articles I have translated have been history articles of some sort. Adam Bishop 18:28, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've probably done about two dozen translated articles (into English) myself, mostly on cultural topics; usually when I do this, I find that I need to add a little more, because there are often cultural references that cannot be presumed clear to English-speakers. I've also done at least one on a scientific topic, adipose tissue, and I've often brought in material from other languages for an existing article, including expanding a stub to a full article. Some of the wikis (e.g. Romanian, Catalan) probably contain more translated content than not, at least on topics that don't specifically relate to the region where that language is spoken. Also, in this context, can I plug Wikipedia:Translation into English where you can request a translation of a foreign-language article into English (or sign up to help with that sort of work). -- Jmabel 23:27, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Recent changes

I can't access the Recent changes page. It keeps killing my browser. Anybody else having this problem? RickK 04:39, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Aha, my turn to say WFM (works for me :). Dori | Talk 04:41, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

Well, it seems to have come back. Wish I knew what happened. RickK 05:07, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What browser? — Timwi 06:22, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

IE 6.0. RickK 22:55, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Imagine there's no MSIE... it's easy if you try... -- Wapcaplet 04:46, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Imagine all the hackers, living life in peace... →Raul654 04:49, Mar 1, 2004 (UTC)

Oo-oo, oooooh' ... Dysprosia

Well, I used to use Netscape till they did a major revision (was it 5.0?) which I absolutely hated, so I switched to IE. RickK 03:17, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Get Mozilla Firebird, you may like it more than IE. Many do :) Dysprosia 03:52, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You mean Mozilla Firefox, they did another name change due to trademark issues. But yes, it's a great browser, I use it, it's a lot faster and less bloated than Netscape. And it's purty :-D -- Skyfaller 04:03, 2004 Mar 2 (UTC)

I know, gr, this'll be like when they say you end up writing "2003" on your cheques and things on January 2 or whatever! ;) Dysprosia 08:22, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Towns and villages articles in Japan

As you may notice, I am adding dozens of towns and villages articles. Given its number of articles added at a time, you may have some opinion about the format, naming or anything. Please come to Wikipedia:Wikiproject Japanese districts and municipalites to discuss this matter. Thanks. -- Taku 04:10, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

The only comment I had on these was that there should be a stub notice added to them. See for example: Shingu, Ehime. Dori | Talk 04:14, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

From my talkpage

Hi Taku, would you mind adding {{msg:stub}} at the end of those small articles you're adding? thanks, Dori | Talk 03:43, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

Are they really stub? They are short but I think they have adequate information. -- Taku 03:43, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

If there is no more encyclopedic information about those towns, then maybe they should not be separate articles. I think some of them could always (theoretically) be expanded. As they are, they look like stubs to me. You might want to ask on the Village pump too, to see what others think. Dori | Talk 03:47, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

They are very similar to articles of tonws or cities in the US. Is't encyclopedic to tell what it is, a town or city located in somewhere and how many people live in there and such? If not sounds a prose. I don't think a village pump is a best place to discuss this kind of matters. There is a wiki project for this, and I think it's much better. -- Taku 03:53, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm not saying that the info shouldn't be there. I'm just saying that unless there is more info, it's considered a stub. And if you think there is way they could ever be expanded any more, then maybe they should be grouped into one larger article. That would be a matter of discussion as this is just my opinion. That's why I suggested the pump (it can be later moved to the appropriate place, but it gets more attention). Dori | Talk 03:57, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

You mean more raw data like demography or economical data by more info? I think this is a difference in perception of what article should be labeled as a stub. Many articles that can be expanded have no stub notice, not by accident but they are not stub articles. Stub articles are, in my opinion, articles that are not incomplete, lacking of essential data like essential movies articles without a plot summary. Those towns and cities I am adding are not stub in this definition.

Well, of course, the problem is perhaps the absence of strict definition of stubbness. Because of this, I tend to regard a stub notice as an explicit mark of articles that writers think they didn't put enough information yet and can be helped by others.

Also, I don't think having one article about dozens of towns or cities makes sense. It is not a common practice like combing short biography articles into one.

By the way, I am sorry about deletion of Funaba redirects above. I couldn't respond. It is fine for me to delete them. -- Taku 04:06, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Dori that the articles like Shingu, Ehime are stubs. Besides, I feel that the transcriptions of Japanese forms should be full: not -mura but Shingu-mura. Andres 09:53, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Shingu, Ehime is a stub, but IMHO it's not imperative to add the stub msg, afterall all the US ones don't have one either and the article size allows to identify them as stubs (see: "Threshold for stub display" on Special:Preferences). -- User:Docu

Image formatting

Has image formatting been changed recently? I have seen a few pages that look messed up now where previously they didn't. See for example: Vlorë (although you obviously can't see what it looked like previously). Dori | Talk 03:49, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

It looks fine to me. RickK 04:13, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

In my case (Mozilla 1.6, Win XP), there is a bunch of extra white space, see image:Vlore_img_fmt_dori.jpg. I should mention that it looks fine under Firefox 0.8 and IE 6. Dori | Talk 04:45, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

Main Pages Gallery

I have collected screenshots of all Main Pages of 53 Wikipedias at [5]. Complete pages are shown (I used a virtual screen of 1000*3000 pixels, some really fill all that space). Images were reduced to 40% size, so texts are barely readable, but the overall layout can be easily compared this way. Erik Zachte 00:28, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Interesting. Question: What is Elzassian? I can't find any info on it on Wikipedia or elsewhere. Does it go by another name in English? A conlang, perhaps?Garrett Albright 01:13, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It's Alsatian. See Alsatian language. -- Jake 01:31, 2004 Feb 29 (UTC)

Is this for real? An Alsatian-dialect Wiki? --Dieter Simon 00:34, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Why not? If people are willing to run it, who are we to say their language isn't good enough? - IMSoP 00:47, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree with IMSoP. If there can be Interlingua, Latin and Esperanto versions, I don't see what's wrong with one in a language people actually speak. :P Garrett Albright 02:23, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Boilerplate text for current event/often-updated articles?

I think it would be cool if we had a standard statement to go at the top of articles (along the lines of the Featured Article statement, Nominated for Deletion statement, etc) that, due to their presence in current events, will be often updated as new developments occur. Examples for the present would be 2004 Haiti Rebellion, U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, 76th Academy Awards (which, BTW, is very stubbish right now), Same-sex marriage in the United States, etc. Something maybe like This is an article for a currently-occuring event and will be updated as new developments occur, or something more eloquently-phrased. Garrett Albright 01:03, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Anyone else see the irony in this?

I visited Lemon meringue pie after noting that someone edited it. It's a basic stub (and how) but clearly deserves its place in wikipedia. BUT. If someone embellishes it with a little history and adds informative content about how it's made, it will be removed from wikipedia. Moriori 22:15, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

Ironic it is. Although I cannot see why adding history — or some informative content &mdash. will cause its deletion. If an actual recipe is included, it will be, I gather, moved to an appropriate wikibook. Possibly it will also be used by various people answering to the term ?hungry?, to which all answer sooner or later. -Itai 22:47, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Take it to Talk:List of recipes/Delete. Martin

Where is the removal of recipes, how-to's, and "instructional" articles set forth as policy? I've asked this question a number of times and am frustrated by the lack of an answer. I'm a relative newcomer, and I see that the removal of such articles is constantly discussed as a given, as if a consensus had been arrived at, but nobody can point me to a relevant policy page and nobody can be bothered to set forth a good rationale. Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not is silent on this point, and Wikipedia:How_to appears to positively encourage contributions of instructional articles. Traditionally, encyclopedias have been repositories of instructional material; in fact from the derivation of the word it literally means something like "comprehensive course of study." Wikipedia is not paper. Why shouldn't it contain recipes? Dpbsmith 01:24, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What Wikipedia entries are not #10, Primary research. Either a recipe is published somewhere else, and covered by copyright, or else a wikipedia contributer developed it, and it's primary research. Either way, it should go. However, wikibooks has no qualms about primary research, so origional recipes by our contributers can go to the Wikimedia Cookbook. Gentgeen

Traditional recipes have a cultural importance and can often be found in old books which are way past copyright date. WormRunner 08:42, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

On How-tos, see also Wikipedia:Village pump#How-to above and on the mailing list. -- User:Docu

Where you will see that I posted a similar question and it was not answered. The existence of a policy seems to be taken for granted, but nobody can be bothered to point me to the statement of the policy or its rationale. Dpbsmith 15:47, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not primary research. Also, in regards to old traditional recipes no longer under copyright, Wikipedia:Don't include copies of primary sources. For traditional dishes, write ABOUT them, why they are significant. Assume I know nothing about the culture the dish is important to and tell me why it's so. Just giving the recipe does nothing to tell me why I should know this recipe. Gentgeen 00:24, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Stats updated

The stats pages are now built from the logs between 5 Feb - now. They are at http://wikimedia.org/stats/{DOMAIN}/, for example http://wikimedia.org/stats/en.wikipedia.org/. -- Gabriel Wicke 20:38, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Great to have them back. I noticed something I cannot explain: I checked the day by day figures for February. en: fr: de: nl: even zh: have a large peak at February 7, as large as the peak around Feb 25. The latter of course is the result of the press release. What was so special on Feb 7 ? Erik Zachte 00:19, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I have grepped the logs- there's nothing suspicious apart from a lot of requests. We don't have referrer logs for that day so it's not that easy to figure out where the traffic came from.

The stats are now also available at their old address- it doesn't matter which one you use. -- Gabriel Wicke 11:55, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've got a hunch. Possibly this is the Google indexing bot. I checked previous months, but they don't have a significant peak around the 7th, but they do have some peaks that like Feb 7 show many extra page requests but no extra visitors. Erik Zachte 12:12, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

On Avoiding a Wikipedia Catastrophic Event (population)

(Note: I have no scientific basis for the hypothesis I am about to put forth. All numbers are invented with the intention of striking your imagination.)

In light of the recent press release and Jimbo's conversations with "The Economist" and Yahoo, some concerns come to my mind. Are we really ready for the next spurt of growth? I mean, REALLY READY for a MAJOR, UNPRECEDENTED spurt?

Let's say Yahoo begins to use our content. After a month's time, the number of hits on our servers increases 12-fold. The number of editors increases 9-fold. The number of vandals triples. A growth spurt unparalleled in Wikipedia history. One of such size, it could collapse or paralyze Wikipedia.

I don't think such a scenario is far-fetched. We need to examine our experiences with previous growth spurts and the experiences of other websites (Friendster, Craigslist, Slashdot, etc.) and put together a plan of action to protect Wikipedia from such a population explosion.

Issues to consider:

1. Servers. Rather than add new servers only when we outgrow the current ones, we should stay one step ahead, and have enough servers to protect ourselves from known or unknown population advances. Of course this means money.
2. Help information. New user help pages need to be checked and re-checked for easy-of-use, user-friendliness, etc.
3. Volunteer Fire Department. Organization and planning.
4. Population. What do we imagine the population peak to be? What population should we hope to maintain?

Food for thought, Kingturtle 20:07, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Very interesting thoughts. I do have one true fear - after recent experiences with Plautus (see User:Raul654/Plautus for a timeline) I really, sincerely fear what would happen if a large number of persistent trolls were to attack wikipedia. They would have to be just smart enough so as not to look like a vandal - all they would really have to do is make a few trivial contributions. They wouldn't deface pages, but just go around POVing them or adding disputeable facts.

In Plautus' case, the system broke down after Ed unblocked him following his third ban (Feb 18). Nobody wanted to block him a fourth time, for fear of being accused of vigilantism, so the community had very little protection. Getting to arbitration took a LONG time (over a week), during which he was free to run amock. He very nearly cost us Evercat, Finlay, and a third (to-be-unnamed) contributor who emailed me in exhasperation.

Even after he was temp-banned pending the arbitration committee's decision, yet more time had to be wasted compiling the above timeline to make sure he is kept banned. In short, I think: O(repelling trolls) >>> O (creating trolls) →Raul654 20:20, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

I hope wikipedia doesn't turn into slashdot. Perl 20:35, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If it becomes a problem, we can block the googlebot. That'll slow down our growth. Martin 22:21, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What are Wikipedia's (nascent?) connections with Yahoo! and The Economist? Can I read about on the website somewhere? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 00:14, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If I have heard correctly, Jimbo recently did an interview with the economist. As far as yahoo, I think they're considering about using Wikipedia in their news section to define keywords. (Posting hyperlinks to either of these would be most welcome ;) →Raul654 00:16, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

• PCB21, i am referring to this email. Kingturtle 00:24, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It would be nice to have some channel for transferring Jimbo's interesting/important announcements from the mailing lists to meta or the Wikipedia: namespace. It is my belief that his preference for using the mailing list is what keeps them going! (I know the standard response is that I should subscribe... but the noise to signal ratio there is too high)

(cutting in) That's a good idea. I'll mirror them to user:Jimbo Wales if I remember. Martin 02:25, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I have a subscription to the Economist and would be delighted to hear what they have to say about a bunch of commies like us Wikipedians :)

I did some reverse engineering of the Alexa stats recently. I think a 12-fold increase in traffic would make us something like 60-70th most popular website in the world... and given what server-side demands we make - because outside users have write access (unlike most websites which just allow read access) to the underlying database - Wikipedia would probably require one of the largest/sophisticated (replication etc) set up out there.. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 00:31, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This is a very good point. Recently I really hope that the growth were a bit slower than now. It is really hard for me to keeping up with debates. There are so (too) many articles I want to fix, conflicts about point of views with other people, tiny problems like factual errors made by anonymous users. The sudden increase on traffic and, more significantly, contributors might case a devastating effect. And Jimbo, as a dictator, has no obligation to discuss this matter but is free to make any publicity. Sigh. Need revolution? -- Taku 02:55, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

Design competition for Thumbnail Boxes

JeLuF has launched a design competition at meta:Image Box for people interested in changing the way thumbnails are displayed using the extended image syntax.

Note, this is for people who want to change the CSS which creates the (currently grey) boarder around the image, and what icon to use, if any – not for dicussing the ins and outs of how the images are resized and compressed on the fly. Voting is expected to begin on March 15, so all suggestions should be made by then.  :) fabiform | talk 19:12, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Steinbeck Short Story Interview

I thought the following article/interview might interest you.

               Sincerely,
               Byron Merritt
               Grandson of Frank Herbert

http://www.fwomp.com/Int_steinbeck.htm

• I've added the link to the bottom of John Steinbeck. Kingturtle 22:16, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Displaying recently uploaded image

Probably a newbie question, but I've just uploaded an image and am having trouble displaying it in an article. I think the code I'm using is OK, because if I change the image name in the code to another one that exists in the image list, it displays that image just fine. Any suggestions? --Gary Jones 08:08, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

Gary, welcome to Wikipedia. I live near Bristol as well (in Yate). It's difficult to comment without knowing the filename and perhaps the code itself (and the name of the article would be interesting). To stop code being interpreted, if you want to put it into text like this, surround it by <wiki> and </nowiki>.

Adrian Pingstone 10:29, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hello Gary. Adrian is correct, an article name or some code would help a great deal in solving your problem. If it helps, you can look at User:Raul654/favpics for examples of how to display images using thumbnail or non-thumbnail styles. →Raul654 10:39, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick replies. I'd originally included the code, but it was being interpreted by this page and looked out-of-place. Now I know about the and tags, I can show you what I'm doing. (Still can't see what's wrong with it.)

<div style="float:right;width:350px;margin:0 0 1em 1em;text-align:center"> [[Image:PetraMonastery.jpg|The "Monastery" at Petra]]<br> <small>'''The "Monastery" at Petra.'''</small> </div>

Any ideas? Gary Jones 11:17, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

You got the name wrong - Wikipedia is case sensitive. Try this: [[Image:PetraMonastery.JPG|thumbnail|350px|right|The "Monastery" at Petra]]

→Raul654 11:22, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the astonishingly quick reply. I thought I'd tried fixing the case, but hadn't thought of fixing the "JPG" part of the filename. Sheesh.

Gary Jones 11:38, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

Sandbox header replacement text

For convenience, Sandbox maintainers can now replace headers with one "{{subst:sandboxpaste}}" message, instead of having to type "{{msg:sandbox}}" and the comment manually. HTH Dysprosia 07:57, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Cleanup and edit doubling

Today, I received the following note on my talk page.

Each of the following two edit-history lines on page history of cleanup appears twice in a row with the same time:

. . 18:30, 2004 Feb 15 . . Meelar (added "Editorial Televisa")

. . 23:00, 2004 Feb 27 . . Meelar (removed "Poster Child")

Each was associated with doubling the content of the page, by embedding a second copy within a copy. (I.e., the head appeared twice, then the tail appeared twice.) As i know really nothing else about you, i consider it good sense and not just WP practice, to assume good intent on your part; i conjecture that there is something about your browser (and probably how that browswer interacts w/ the WP server at present), or, less likely, something about the way you edit, that makes this likely. It may or not have anything to do with edit conflicts or saving twice when the server seems balky,or editing using "Edit this page" instead of the "[edit]" section-edit link.

I'm using IE 6.0, if that helps any. What should I do, and how can I fix this? Thanks very much, Meelar 06:31, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Transliterations from Russian

Ladies and gentlemen, it came to my attention that transliterations in articles about Russia became ridiculously fat (I don't know a better word). The most recent example:

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), also called Soviet Union (Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик (СССР)

note the accents! ilya

or Сове́тский Сою́з, transliteration: Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (SSSR) or Sovetsky Soyuz, ISO transliteration: Soûz Sovetskih Socialističeskih Respublik (SSSR) or Sovetskij Soûz), a state in northern Eurasia that existed from 1922 until 1991.

I understand that all of them are of certain use, but the first sentence of the article becomes unreadable, not to say about a series of microedit wars. I am urging to find a better solution. Mikkalai 02:26, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Привет! (Privyet transliteration, Privet ISO transliteration) I completely agree -- it's gotten out of control! I must admit my part in this fiasco -- in part I've been frustrated with Cantus for starting this mini-campaign that I occasional reinsert things like that above example (and for others reading this, his/her version was only marginally shorter [6]. Also, there is clearly no standard in English for transliterating Cyrillic. However, I think there should be a standard -- and that a number of us can work on that and come to agreement -- we can even post a poll if necessary. I propose that we do so at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(places) -- I have created a new section for transliteration of Russian place names here: Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(places)#Transliteration_of_Russian_place_names. And we should invite User:Monedula, User:Cantus, and User:Morwen as well as any other interested parties. How does that sound? BCorr ¤ Брайен 02:47, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Complaint against the edit box toolbar

Would the edit box toolbar please stop inserting a space under headings? First, the MoS states that there should be no heading. Second, if I were to defy the MoS like everyone else, I would be adding the space myself. --Jiang 01:21, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Painting of the black Madonna

Does anybody know the whereabout of the artist Wanda Zagorska who painted the Black Madonna in approximately 1954? This painting was accepted by the Vatican in Rome.

This is an urgent matter

Please contact her sister's husband in Canada at e-mail address: morfw@shaw,ca

Can images alone be licensed under GNU Free Documentation License?

From the license:

"The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other

functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom"

As I read it an image is not a document so it can be licensed.

Under which license should you release your pictures if not GNU Free Documentation License so they can be used under GNU Free Documentation License?

Chbs 00:25, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

RMS thinks the FDL can be used for images without problems, see [7].—Eloquence 06:35, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

EoT

Does anyone know EoT's full username? I'm trying to remember and block the last few PHP/SQL/Proclamation only blocks, and I don't want to have to do a DB search for them. Thanks. Pakaran. 22:47, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It was User:EntmootsOfTrolls. --Delirium 22:57, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC)

Ok thanks. I think I should leave at least one for other sysops, out of fairness, and I wonder if moving away from PHP blocks is something we really want to do (even though it could be done now, and is being done for ranges) Pakaran. 23:50, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Sea of Japan/East Sea

Dispute over the name Sea of Japan needs urgent attention! The article is far from NPOV and there needs to be Wikipedia Naming Convention on this the name (to stop further unilateral changes). I suggest we use East Sea/Sea of Japan at least in the Korean context. Maybe someone neutral can look into this (please!). Kokiri 22:19, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Meeting other Wikipedians

Hi all,

I just wanted to let you know, that we have Wikipedians-meetings in Berlin and Munich every one or two months and it is really interresting/helpful/nice/... it's worth it.

So I just started the page Wikipedia:meetup, mybe some english speakers also want to meet or join one of the other meetings that are already happening.

See you :-) Fantasy 18:17, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

As a side note to the above, is there a list of Wikipedians by location somewhere? →Raul654 22:52, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC)

Yep, there's by country and by U.S. state... don't know if it gets as specific as city, though. -- Wapcaplet 22:56, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

And don't forget there's the Wikipedia group at Meetup.com... +sj+ 08:24, 2004 Feb 28 (UTC)

We made really good experiences with Wikipedia as the Meetup-tool, we (at least in Germany) don't use external tools. You can contact all the Wikipedians in Wikipedia, you put the "meetup" on your watchlist, you don't have to register again somewhere... I think there are many advantages.

In short: Wikipedia is better then meetup.com :-) Fantasy 09:18, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Messages/Templates: Quick link to them needed

A convenient link to a) the set of messages and templates, or b) a place to discuss them, should be included with each message, like the section-edit links that are included with each section for long pages... These shortcuts are becoming more and more common, as the need for modular/scalable messaging grows and the elegance of article types increases through the creation of lovely mesg-based templates [cf, say, "calendar for February 2003"]. The annoyance factor in having to look at the "edit this page" source to find the mesg name, and then to remember to type in Mediawiki:{msg name} by hand to get the proper page, is significant.

For example, just now, I noticed that the month calendars should include links to the other months of the year, perhaps something like

J F March 23 A M J J A S O N D
<calendar body, w/ the 23d selected>.

Well, the [edit] links are ugly enough as it is, and I say that as the person who created them. (I'm looking at ways to integrate them more smoothly into the layout. In the meantime I suggest enabling right-click editing in the prefs.) This would also be much more difficult with MediaWiki pages as these can contain all kinds of layout elements, so you don't know where an [edit] link would wind up. What might work here is a dropdown box added at the bottom of a page.—Eloquence 15:53, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC)

Well, A drop-down/list sounds like a great idea. "Elements used in this page"; selecting one would take you to its description/page, whatever form *that* takes (some of these elements might be very non-textual). and the list elements could perhaps be identified by their color as editable or non-editable, and as static or dynamic... +sj+ 08:23, 2004 Feb 28 (UTC)

Personally, I think the [edit] links are reasonably discrete and helpful as they are, but that's just my opinion. A way of listing "MediaWiki messages used in this page" (or "...section") when editing a page is probably the best idea though - the fact that text has been transcluded has no visible effect until you look in the source, so it would be very confusing to have them accessible from the page itself.

On a not entirely unrelated note, I was wondering whether it might be a good idea to have a "description" associated with MediaWiki messages - a space to explain where it is used, and how. Of course, the attached Talk pages could be used for this - in which case there should be a set policy to do so, and software messages (such as MediaWiki:Watchdetails, discussed above) should also be labelled in this way. - IMSoP 18:37, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Imperial units convention

Could someone up to speed with Imperial (English) units please take a look at the conversation on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Aircraft/Table#Table_Size? Specifically, if the weight of an aircraft is being provided in a data table, should it conventionally be written "8,000-lbs" or "8,000 lbs"? --Rlandmann 06:22, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The latter is certainly more common in the US. We'd also more often write "lbs." than just "lbs" (unlike with "kg" for "kilograms"). --Jmabel 08:33, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Vandalism

Do we still have a page to report vandalism? If so, where is it? If not, do we report it here? If so, User 198.7.225.35 has been persistently vandalising Winged Victory of Samothrace. Can someone do something about this? Adam 01:33, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress -- The Anome 01:38, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)