Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive B

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous). 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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Abortion-Breast Cancer (Issue? Debate? Link?) Article

I too am unsure if this is the appropriate forum for this, but here goes. I have the intention to write an article on the Abortion-Breast Cancer debate. Not exactly an easy task by any means... and this is abundantly illustrated by my inability to figure out an appropriate Article title that is clear, and unbiased. Then should it be hyphenated or not? Here are the options, and why I like/dislike them... but choose I (we?) must.

• Abortion-Breast Cancer: Too ambiguous? But definitely neutral.

• Abortion-Breast Cancer Issue: Ambiguous again... actually that isn't much different from the first one. :')

• Abortion-Breast Cancer Debate: More to the point, indicating there is an ongoing discussion about the subject at hand, and it is neutral. Some people, particularly the very liberal among us, don't consider it a debate... and just a scare tactic. Well in the spirit of open dialogue; I urge you to reconsider that position.

• Abortion-Breast Cancer Link: To the point, but biased title.

Once a title is selected I'll get an introductory definition in quickly, and then add another section meta-analyzes of Abortion-Breast Cancer. Thereby allowing me to move the breast cancer reference in Abortion to the new article and replace it the introductory article reference of Abortion-Breast Cancer. (just like Abortion Law in the Abortion article)

Then go from there, adding entries on everything from rat studies and the discussion of their usefulness... to Dr. Daling and other enlightening material like recall bias studies. RoyBoy 14:05, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Public Domain

This book apparently was published in 1924

http://kuratrading.com/Islam/Caliphate/index.htm

Would it still have a copyright? Or is it public domain?

Can I cut/past sections from it in the relevant articles? OneGuy 11:01, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The complete book can also be downloaded in a zip file from

http://zipfiles.answering-islam.org/muir_caliphate.zip

The author William Muir died in 1905. I assume this is now public domain? OneGuy 11:25, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, in that case it would be public domain. But be careful about simply cutting and pasting from a source that is so old. Watch out for factual errors (more recent research may have changed things), POV and obsolete language. — David Remahl 11:33, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, the Abbasid caliph series from Al-Muntasir till the last Abbasid has nothing there. How about cutting and pasting relevant information in these sections (birth, how came to power, death, etc), then cleaning these up latter? OneGuy 11:53, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The web page says "A NEW AND REVISED EDITION BY T. H. WEIR ... 1924 " - would Mr Weir have any copyright? -- ALoan (Talk) 12:09, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Probably: why not do some rewording to be sure to be sure. Filiocht 12:20, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, in cleanup process it will have to be reworded because of the archaic language. The book is also on this site:

http://www.answering-islam.org/Books/Muir/Caliphate/

I doubt all these sites could have uploaded it on the web if the book had copyright? OneGuy 12:29, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In any case, I don't want to past the whole book anyway. Just small relevant parts that relate to each Caliph starting from Al-Muntasir ( a page or less for each Caliph or so) right now there is nothing there OneGuy 12:39, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

1952 Lynmouth

Can anyone resolve Lynmouth floods and deaths in 1952 (see discussion page for 1952). -- SGBailey 10:35, 2004 Oct 22 (UTC)

See Lynmouth and Talk:1952. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:43, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Help with botched redirect

Hi, my name is Bsktcase and I'm a moron.

I was trying to move Blue Lodge to Masonic Lodge but accidentally moved Talk:Blue Lodge there instead. (See "moron", above.) I moved Talk back where it belongs, but now Masonic Lodge exists, so I can't move Blue Lodge to it.

I am reluctant to put Masonic Lodge on the speedy deletion page, because I'd like to recreate it properly immediately and I'd rather it didn't have a big bullseye painted on it when I do. (However, if that's the best solution just let me know.) The goal here is to have the content and edit history of Blue Lodge moved to it, with a redirect, in the usual manner.

(Blue Lodge is a regionally-specific colloquialism for the more general and accurate term Masonic Lodge, which is why I initiated the move and redirect in the first place.)

Please help! Thanks! —Bsktcase 21:28, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think I fixed it. Take a look. Andre (talk) 22:13, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

Robert the Bruce's incivility (Bensley/Boyle survey)

Robert's demands regarding the Bensley Boyle survey seem unreasonable. User_talk:Robert_the_Bruce and Talk:Medical_analysis_of_circumcision -- DanBlackham 16:57, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In my opinion Robert's behavior on Talk:Medical_analysis_of_circumcision has created an acrimonious and disrespectful atmosphere. What level of incivility is tolerated at Wikipedia? -- DanBlackham 09:19, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, he's certainly abrasive and disrespectful. He calls a scientific paper "another pile of dog shit," and calling everything he disagrees with "trash" isn't conducive to developing consensus. If Robert the Bruce is the same user as Friends of Robert and Robert Brookes, I think his behavior is unacceptable due to his past personal attacks and his pattern of disregarding NPOV. If he is a different user, I don't know. He's been obnoxious but he hasn't really broken any rules, maybe 3 revert, but I didn't look through his history. I think you should try to build consensus on including the study but at this point I think MANY people are sick of the activists on both sides of this silly debate. Rhobite 14:19, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)

He is the same person, and he is abusive, often outrageously so. That said, he is good at challenging waffling, false conclusions, POV, and nonsense attempting to pass itself off as medicine or science. If he were able to interact with others in a mature way, his contributions would be much more valuable. As it is, there's not much that can be done, as Wikipedia almost never enforces its rules regarding civility. Jayjg 14:40, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If contributors from either side of the issue are allowed to repeatedly violate the community standards of civility without consequences, in my opinion Wikipedia starts to resemble Usenet. Robert is also good an inserting his own pro-circumcision POV and attempting to pass off pro-circumcision nonsense as medicine or science. When someone questions his POV edits he responds with hostility and insults. From a medical perspective the bottom line regarding infant circumcision is that it is not medically necessary. That is not just my opinion; it is the official policy of professional medical organizations in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Medical_analysis_of_circumcision#References -- DanBlackham 08:53, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• I understand your deep concern Dan. There are two surveys which you use as the cornerstone argument around your desire to promote the foreskin. First the O'Hara survey which is an absolute disgrace in that its participants were recruited directly through an anti-circumcision newsletter. The results are valueless other than to confirm what anti-circumcision true believers believe (or would like to believe is the truth). It is effectively trash and should be deleted from Wikipedia. The second is the Bensley/Boyle survey of all of 35 women (it is claimed). Now given the O'Hara deceit and Boyle's radical anti-circumcision activism one should insist that the full detail of the questions asked, the methodology of participant recruitment, and all the results etc etc. It appears to be available nowhere online yet some appear able to quote from it. (strange). The one certainty is that had they had nothing to hide they would have been rubbing the detail in everyone’s face on a daily basis. Quite simply then in the absence of the published detail all we have is carefully selected snippets of information (or rather just innuendo). This too should be deleted from Wikipedia until all the full detail is available to be scrutinised in detail. In fact it stinks like week old smegma. There should be no argument about this Dan. You (and the other anti-circumcision activists here) should either put up the detail to support the quotes or accept that it be deleted and that your wikicrime has been discovered. I do understand only too well that you have allies among certain of the admin types around here. It is sad that they seem willing to assist your ilk with POV pushing while in so doing compromising their own integrity. Your open anti-circumcision position and subsequent blatant POV pushing this welcomed as opposed to those admins who feign neutrality and support your POV from behind that mask. Wikipedia should be strict in dealing with this disgraceful dishonesty. So yes Dan you have friends here and when you can't (or rather won't) come up with the Bensley/Boyle survey detail and it gets deleted they will rally to your assistance. It all so predictable. - Robert the Bruce 17:31, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Can't move page

I have tried to move the page British Rail class 170 to British Rail Class 170 to standardise the naming of the pages, and also because the correct British Rail system uses "Class" not "class" (Our Phellap 16:56, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC))

Done. older≠wiser 17:20, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks (Our Phellap 14:43, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC))

Request for help:

A special request: Saving Þeyr
I’m writing an article about Þeyr (an Icelandic band of the 1980s) and their discography. However I was told by one of the musicians that there are no images of the band nor the CD covers that I desperately need to finish the articles in Spanish (I’m working there). Even more: as the masters of Þeyr’s albums are believed to be lost or stolen there are no reissues and the only release in CD format was Mjötviður til Fóta in 2001. I have this one, so I don’t need its CD cover.

Here you have Þeyr’s full discography:

Albums:

• 1980 - Þagað Í Hel (SG-hjómplötur)
• 1981 - Mjötviður Mær (Eskvimo)
• 1982 - As Above ... (SHOUT)

Singles:

• 1981 - Iður til Fóta (Eskvimo)
• 1981 - Life Transmission (Fálkinn/Eskvimo)
• 1982 - The Fourth Reich (MJÖT)
• 1983 - Lunaire (Gramm Records)

So, I thought there should be someone who knows about it or has the original records (in vinyl format). I need the records’ covers to illustrate my articles and then I will make a translation into English. Please, I hope there’s somebody there who could help me since there’s too little about them and I’m afraid if I don’t write about these topics all the information about their existence will disappear…Lmb 23:03, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Can't help, but I'm quite surprised that the band is that obscure. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 06:09, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

Announcing the creation of the U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board

An invitation is hereby extended to all U.S. Northern Wikipedians and all Wikipedians interested in the U.S. North to the U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board board, also known as WP:ANSWER (A Northern States Wikipedia Effort and Resource). Bowl of chowdah for everybody! [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 00:23, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)

Er, looking at the map on that page, shouldn't this be called the U.S. Northeastern Wikipedians board? Last I checked, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota were all northern U.S. states. older≠wiser 00:33, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)

Indeed. I live in Seattle, so I'm north of any of these guys. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:45, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)

Every Northern is invited. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 01:12, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)

Although according to U.S. Northern states, the Pacific Northwest is not normally included in "Northern" states. Makes sense, since I doubt California participates in the Southern collaboration either. But if there isn't sufficient demand, might as well make this for the entire North. Rhobite 04:18, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)

My put is to have a separate Northwestern states board for those of us up here near the Pacific NW. We probably have more in common. ;-) -- RJH 19:52, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Name disambiguation

It turns out there are two drummers named Roger Taylor, in the bands Duran Duran and Queen. The current disambiguation setup has them at Roger Taylor (Duran Duran) and Roger Taylor (Queen), which isn't ideal as first of all because the Queen Roger Taylor has a solo career which would warrant a Wikipedia article even had he not been in Queen (and so he is not just the drummer from Queen); Also Roger Taylor (Queen) looks kind of odd to users accustomed to there being an is-a relationship between the subject and parenthesised label (though this isn't always true). Does anyone have a better suggestion for naming? (I've taken this here as I think the issue deserves a slightly wider audience and people who don't know/care about either Roger Taylor can still give useful answers). --fvw 20:36, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)

Analogously to Roger Taylor (tennis player) I'd suggest Roger Taylor (Duran Duran drummer) and Roger Taylor (Queen drummer). Or perhaps Roger Taylor (Queen and solo drummer). Sharkford 21:08, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)

The easiest way to handle it would be simply to use their full names (Roger Meddows-Taylor and Roger Andrew Taylor) for the article titles. You could then add any type of redirect necessary to get to those pages. Also it is worthwhile to note that Roger Taylor points to a disambiguation page and would be unaffected. —Mike 01:39, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)

Ooh, they have fuller names. How utterly convenient, good idea. --fvw 15:43, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) says to use the most common name instead of full name. Discussion of this is happening at Redirects for deletion#October 13 if anyone is interested. --fvw 21:54, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)

What in the world is the most common name?

I recently added some data and moved Ken Ribet to Kenneth Alan Ribet, which it seems might have been a boo-boo. However, the man does not publish under the name "Ken"; it's what friends and collegues call him, but they are probably not the ones who need the article. I think it's wrong to carry this "most common name" business to the extent of making the primary article about "Ken" and not "Kenneth". Wikipedia is, I presume, supposed to be a serious reference work, and "Ken" simply strikes me as inappropriate. I note by the way that it's C. S. Lewis, not Jack Lewis, but everyone who knew him called him Jack. Should we go simply by what form of the name (in this case, it would be Kenneth A. Ribet) appears in print? user: Gene Ward Smith

By the way, how do I add the time stamp doo-dad? I forget.

You can sign your name with a timestamp by typing 4 tildes, like this: ~~~~. 5 tildes produce a timestamp alone. Paul August 15:42, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is being pirated!

Hello! Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but after wandering about for a while was the best place I found, so advanced aplologies...

This is just to say that a commercial site is using wiki content (straight, including formating) without any acknowledgment: http://www.wordiq.com/. They disguise themselves as some sort of meta-search engine, but I tried a few times and all results came from Wikipedia, again without any link or acknowledgment. Is there anything to be done about this? Cheers, and keep doing this amazing work!

Mario.

If you go into a Wikpedia article from this site, at the bottom of each page is the correct Wikipedia citation and licensing info. I would agree, though, it would have been polite for them to have had something about us on their opening page. Apwoolrich 10:59, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Curiously though, besides the, citation and license info they also include at the bottom: "The list of authors can be found here", but it turns out that "here" is a link to the edit history for the "Main page". Paul August 02:57, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks for the full list of websites like wordiq. Many credit Wikipedia as their source and also have the link to the original page, others "forget" about that or do it in so small letters noone will notice it. Note that it's perfectly legal to copy Wikipedia contents if the credits are given. andy 18:48, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sorry all, went there and saw the small text indicating the source. My fault. Even though, I agree with Apwoolrich: insofar a lot of their contenc came from Wikepedia it would be fairer to place a bigger/more visible link to Wikipedia. Mario.

This sooo needs to go in the FAQ and at the top of the page. We get worried newbies posting messages like this every couple weeks, without fail. If ever there was a frequently asked question at Wikipdia, then "OMG xxx.com site copied all your content!" is one of them. Nohat 00:34, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellaneous FAQ Dysprosia 23:37, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Year articles

At Talk:1, there are a few Wikipedians who think that a better choice for articles 50 and less is for the number articles to be titled the number alone 20 and the year articles to be titled something like 20 A.D., as opposed to 20 (number) and 20. Does anyone have any comments?? (Please note that this is for 1 to 50 only, not 51 and above, which is where years should have no suffix and numbers should have the (number) suffix as agreed by everyone.) 66.245.114.60 20:28, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think 20 A.D., etc. should redirect, but an awful lot of articles are already in existence and a lot of editors are already in the habit of doing it the way it is. If someone wants to change rather than just add, it's going to mean a commitment to go through existing articles (maybe bot-assisted) and make a lot of changes. -- Jmabel 22:05, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

20 A.D., 20 AD, 20 C.E. and 20 CE should all redirect. There was an idea to have cross references to other date systems - did anything ever happen there? The Recycling Troll 23:23, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't think redirects are needed, after all, there's not much links to the examples you provided. zoney ♣ talk 23:39, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It wouldn't because of redirects, but so that people searching would be redirected, rather than getting the impression that the article does not exist. I think that 20AD is probably a more common way of saying year 20 than simply 20, it seems reasonable to redirect common ways of writing the dates. The Recycling Troll 17:25, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There's already a redirect from AD 20. Remember that AD goes before the year. (Putting "AD" after the year is not only less correct, but less common: compare for example Google for "54 AD" Nero with Google for "AD 54" Nero.) Gdr 11:35, 2004 Oct 12 (UTC)

Before changing things, please read Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and the long debates on this subject in the multiple archives of the talk page in which the current convention for article names was agreed. Gdr 01:07, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)

AD is overtly religious - so those cannot be used as page titles. --mav 17:58, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

AD is the only internationally understood term and should therefore be the only term that's used. It's hardly overtly religious. If we replaced it with an English translation 'In the year of Our Lord' each time it appeared, that would be overtly religious!! Also, placing AD in front of the year appears to be universally acceptable, placing it after the year is considered incorrect by many. jguk 19:26, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Georgia Category Terminology

I suggest that in Wikipedia sub-categories of either of the two Georgias, we use the following terminology:

As an adjective meaning "having to do with Georgia", "Georgian" relates to the country whereas "Georgia" relates to the state. Example: "Georgia rivers" means the category for rivers of the state of Georgia, but "Georgian rivers" means the rivers of the country of Georgia. Any opinions?? 66.32.255.91 14:54, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This is proper American English. To Americans, "Georgian", "Californian", etc. are nouns, referring to the people who live in those states. Proper usage is "California wine", not "Californian wine", "Georgia peach", not "Georgian peach". "He is a Californian". But I don't know about usage for the European nationality. RickK 19:03, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Most European countries for the adjective form like this: "French franc" or "Spanish peso", not "France franc" or "Italy peso". 66.245.67.166 22:41, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

So far, no registered Wikipedia except RickK has responded. Anyone have any additional comments?? 66.32.255.51 01:12, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

But, how did this come into my mind, anyway?? The answer is I find it natural to think that this is a way to distinguish categories relating to the country from categories relating to the state; "in Georgia" or "of Georgia" can have either meaning. 66.245.21.160 22:32, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

(sections between the previous tag and this one were archived on 22:32, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC))'

Olbers' paradox - surely the skies would be dark?

In reference to Olbers' paradox my grasp of physics is fairly elementary, but surely the wave nature of light means that this paradox should state that the sky should be dark? Light behaves as a wave. For the uniitiated, Putting a source of light through two slits in a card shows this effect with bands of darkness "rippling" outward. This occurs with any waveform when two waves beocme perfectly inversely corrleated with each other (that is to say the pattern of peaks and troughs of one respectively match the torughs and peaks of the other) and they cancel each other out. If there were an inifinite number of light sources, there would be an infinite area of peaks and troughs in every direction resulting there being no visible light. Would a nice science person be kind enough to comment? Dainamo 12:32, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You're thinking in terms of amplitude; think instead in terms of energy, and it's a lot easier to reason about. -- The Anome 12:35, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thank you, but doesn't the amplitude determine what the output is? Dainamo 12:39, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The light of infinitely many stars are not necessarily in phase with each other, which explains why the two-slit analogy doesn't work; A lightbulb, or a sole star doesn't give rise to an interference pattern, because the phase constantly varies, also only a laser, not a lightbulb would create a pattern in the two-slit experiment. ✏ Sverdrup 16:01, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If there are an infinite number of stars then every bit of light will have another in phase with it, this has to be so from the nature of an infinite number of them. The experiment uses a normal light source and the point of the slits is to narow this down. Dainamo 17:47, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hmm you make a good point! I can't think of a thoeretical way to dispute your argument yet so I'm going to go the science route and point to experimental data. When we look at an extended light source such as the sun, the different bits of the suns light do not cancel one another out. This is true even though the sun is huge, with a very large number of photons emerging from it. So it's clear that photons that are not in phase simply do not cancel each other out, even though i can't explain why. Theresa Knott (The torn steak) 19:20, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

On that last point Theresa, the sun is truly massive (in our terms) but it is not inifnite so even if things did cancel out there would still be a huge net output. However, I have what I think is a satisfactory explantion from Calair which is on the Olbers' paradox discussion. Thank you Calair for a fascinating and enlightening answer. Dainamo 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject Countering systemic bias template SPAM

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias appears to have decided 1 to plaster templates 2 on any page which the small number of participants on that project feel come within their remit. Example 3. Which is, presumably, anything which might fall into the categories listed on the project page 4. I cannot say I'm teriffically thrilled about this for the following reasons:

• I deplore wholscale annexation of pages by single issue groups. I recall the Alternative Medicine project used to do this srt of thing.
• I supsect that these templates, once placed on a page, may well remain there forever, as a form of spam which serves more to advertise the project than to promote editing of the page.
• I'm unhappy that a single small goup has taken it upon itself to be the judge of pages.
• Where the community has decided that such notices are of use - e.g. Collaboration of the Week - the template used is discreet and temporary; in contrast the CSB template is relatively large and imo sinister looking.

I wonder if the community has thoughts about the matter. --Tagishsimon

There are two WP:COTW templates - the more common one for candidate articles (20-30 at a time) goes on the talk page (on the grounds that it is directed mainly at editors, not readers); the "current COTW" template appears at the top of the COTW article for one week only and is relatively discreet (if you like green boxes). The other COTWs (WP:UKCOTW, for example) use a similar style.

If the WP:CSB people want to tag pages to ask editors to have a go, I think it would be better for the template to go on the talk page. If the intention is to warn readers that there is bias, there is no need for a tag: they should look at the Wikipedia:General disclaimer. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:14, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I would suggest that if the purpose of this is for the CSB people to find it, a maintenance category would be a lot more discreet than a template. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:28, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

---

Tagishsimon's opposition to the idea of templates for the WP:Bias project can be understood in the context of these Mr Logic style arguments he made when it was first discussed on the VP:

I cannot help but feel that the premise of Xed's argument is a little shaky. A pejoritive accusation of systematic bias is at best a value judgement. What underpins it? Why is a war in the Congo worth more wiki-inches than Babylon 5? Who decides these things, and who is able to make apple versus orang-utan comparisons? Whereas I tend to share what I assume is Xed's opinion, that it would be more worthy to read about or even write about the Congolese civil war than Bablylon 5, I note that we already have a number of Wikipedia:Requested articles pages which go some way to address/answer Xed's call for action; and also have Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics. In what way do these differ from Xed's section on the Wikipedia:Community_Portal suggestion? Beyond that, his/her argument seems to be a good example of the best driving out the good. --Tagishsimon

'Why is a war in the Congo worth more wiki-inches than Babylon 5?' - because the Congo Civil War resulted in 3 million deaths and is possibly the largest war since WW2. Surely it can't be difficult to see why it needs more coverage. Look how much coverage 9/11 has on Wikipedia, and that was only 3 thousand deaths. The Wikipedia:Requested articles page does not deal specifically with the issue of systemic bias.--Xed 00:15, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You should also complain to EB then. Their article on it is even shorter than ours. -- Wapcaplet 02:08, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If it is "not difficult to see", then why are you unable to explain why it is more important? If you are unable to explain why, then perhaps it is just a value judgement on your part. Waving the magnitude of the death toll does not amount to an argument. --Tagishsimon

I have explained. Your arguments would only make sense coming from a robot or a lawyer--Xed 00:58, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There I must beg to differ: you have not explained. You have articulated a value judgement with no explanation whatsoever, and you do not eecognise your judgement for what it is. Your premise is indeed flawed, and I submit that any resolution based on a flawed premise will itself be flawed. Neither have you explained by what mechanism will be determined the actions that must be taken to correct the supposed systematic bias. All in all, much heat but not very much light. --Tagishsimon

It should be exceedingly obvious that a war affecting the lives of millions of real people and having a profound impact on the politics of several nations is far more important than a television program which cannot reasonably be said to have significantly affected the lives of anyone. See abstraction, problem of universals, phenomenology, abstract structure, and reification. --[[User:Eequor|ηυωρ]] 01:08, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Doubtless it should be but it isn't. It depends upon your frame of reference, and of necessity is a value judgement. That is the way of these things; all else is little more than hysteria. But you made a slightly better stab at it than did Xed. --Tagishsimon

01010110100100110111010100011 beep beep. Would you regard the Holocaust article more or less important than Babylon 5? Or would that be a value judgement?--Xed 01:24, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Obviously, importance can't be proven, but if the Wikipedia notion of notability does not mean that the Congo Civil War is more important than Babylon 5, then it means nothing at all. I have to hope that Tagishsimon is simply trolling. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:25, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

Indeed, Xed. but it would be helpful if you discussed the matter of the CSB project's intention to spam articles. Avoidance of the argument does not by default make your case. --Tagishsimon

I have posted a proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Messages in the article namespace that all messages for editors, including the stub message, should go on talk pages. Filiocht 08:45, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

Regarding "the matter of the CSB project's intention to spam articles" I've posted an explanation of the reasoning behind the inititiative at the same place. Although I absolutely understand some of Tagishsimon's concerns, I think there are good arguments for both views. I would welcome a constructive dialogue on this issue. Alarm 19:13, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hear ye, hear ye

the Department of Fun is now open for all to enjoy!

(sections above this (and below the tag before this one) were archived on 04:44, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC))'

Minor or not?

Should I check the "Mark all edits minor by default" box, given that 99% of the time I will forget to untick it when making an edit? The majority of my edits are, in fact, minor as I do a lot of grammatical tidying and minor prose improvement, but about 20% of my edits will not be minor. Does forgetting to mark these 20% as minor outweigh the alternative of not marking my minor edits as such? Appologies for being so absent-minded as to be unable to remember to untick the box. PhilHibbs 11:53, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You see? I forgot to mark that entire new subject as not being minor. PhilHibbs 11:54, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Surely it is worse to mark an edit as minor when it was major than failing to mark a minor edit as such, no? -- ALoan (Talk) 12:23, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Wonder if it's possible for the system to decide itself? Perhaps it could judge the size change or the number of changes against the previous version? violet/riga (t) 12:31, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've actually come to ignore the minor flag in others' histories because I've seen several cases of edits being reverted or meaningful words being changed—and marked as minor. Are these folks trying to evade review of their edits? Skulking around reverting others' work and hoping to pass beneath the radar? Or just suffering from massive misplaced modesty? Whichever...far better to leave it unchecked. Sharkford 13:39, 2004 Oct 29 (UTC)

Well, we are all human (most of us, anyway) and I admit that I may have occasionally have marked an edit as "minor" when others would judge that it was not, or even done so acciddentally when the edit was plainly not "minor". So sue me :) Some (indeed, most) editors I will trust to have marked only minor edits as such, particularly where they give some edit history (e.g. category change, typographical error, spelling, whatever). But yes, better to leave unchecked in cases of any doubt. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:51, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The sysop "revert" button automatically marks reverts as minor. The idea seems to be "nothing changed in total, nothing to see here". Thue | talk 14:30, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I tend to mark edits as minor if I don't think the folks watching Recent Changes ought to bother with them. (For example, correcting the spelling of a category—or, except in unusual cases, adding a non-controversial category—or voting on VfD.) I do admit that this occasionally leads to mistakes. [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 17:08, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

to Phil - I wouln't if I were you. Having to manually check the minor box, forces you to think, and decide if it really is minor or not. To Voilet/riga - nah it'd never work. machines are stupid. the sentance "Geroge Bush is a man" and "George Bush is a woman" differ by only two characters but have completely different meanings. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 14:25, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

(Out of curiosity, why does this feature exist in the first place? It seems to be asking for trouble. —Steven G. Johnson 01:19, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC))

It can be useful to turn on for a little while, when you are doing nothing but adding interwikis or making some systematic correction (such as the same disambiguation over and over). -- Jmabel | Talk 01:29, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Possibly_unfree_images is falling behind

I hope I'm not the only one to have noticed. It appears that few people are updating the placement of the days on that page. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 03:36, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

Generally speaking, when you notice something needs doing, you should just do it. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 08:19, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Weirdness with an IP

User talk:64.12.117.7 will explain this better, but before logging on tonight, I got a "You have new messages" thing on my screen. Turns out, 64.12.117.7 is used by probably a dozen ISPs, in a dozen countries worldwide. What would do something like that? -- user:zanimum

This is an AOL proxy. I think that some of those "speed up your web sufing" utilities use AOL proxies. So if you are an AOL customer, a user of the above type of utility, or if your ISP uses this oroxy for some reason (I dunno, maybe thay have an arrangement with AOL) Then you'll gonna see the message. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 08:15, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

But supposedly it's also Comcast. And I know my school (Humber College) has its own servers to act as ISP and host of its site, and I doubt Princeton would be on AOL. -- user:zanimum

Department of Fun

hey there wikipedians, the Department of Fun is open for all to enjoy, if if you have a bout of edit exhaustion or just want some wikitainment try the link and enjoy.

Great bit of vandalism

On The Weavers page, I found the following sentence "The group had a big hit in 1949 with Leadbelly's Goodnight Irene, backed with the Jewish traditional folk song Tzena, Tzena, Ike and Tina Turner."

While my initial thought was that it was extremely doubtful that a Jewish traditional folk song would reference the 1960s soul duo, I thought I should perform a quick internet search first before deleting (as my mind began to throw up the theory that Annie Mae Bullock changed her name to Tina as part of some private joke). Of course, beyond the mild amusement of seeing all the Wikipedia mirrors also claim that Ike and Tina Turner are revered in Hebrew verse, there were only references to "Tzena, Tzena". But bravo to User: Viajero (if I've checked the page history properly) for his foresight on 8 June 2004 to give me the opportunity to recommend something to BJAODN. --Roisterer 04:26, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Numerical prefixes

Look at the articles for 3 (number), tri-, Greek numerical prefixes, and Latin numerical prefixes. According to them, tri- is the Greek numerical prefix and tre- is the Latin numerical prefix. However, I don't think there are many tre- words, and I think tri- words can in fact be either Greek or Latin. Any comments in improving these articles?? 66.32.243.1 21:41, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Trefoil, off the top of my head, which curiously gives the Latin etymology as tri-. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 18:37, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Simply a response isn't enough. I want to see if anyone can come up with any improvements for the articles mentioned above to look at. 66.245.22.234 21:35, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

For someone who appears to know a bit of Latin, you should know that the plural of prefix is prefices. Dunc|☺ 21:47, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Except in English the plural of prefix is prefixes, not prefices. Nohat 00:29, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Also, according to Merriam-Webster, tri- can be Greek or Latin. I don't see why the mentioned articles can't say that too. Nohat 00:29, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Question: Using images from other Wiki sources

Hi

Apologies if I've missed the answer to this in one of the help files. But is there some simple way to use images from Wiki articles in other languages in EN: wiki pages? Or does one have to download the image and reupload it?

--Sf 11:06, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You have to download and upload again. There are, however, scripts that automate this process. Check out pywikipediabot. — David Remahl 13:03, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hopefully soon the Wikipedia Commons will be fully integrated - that is supposed to be the central point for non-language-dependend free graphics, and images from there will then be accessible in all wikipedias without the need to upload then individually. andy 16:04, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Eyewitness

Another interesting problem: on Talk:Sabra and Shatila Massacre we've had someone come forward -- he's even taken a Wikipedia account -- who (almost certainly accurately) identifies himself as John Harbo, who worked as a correspondent for a Norwegian paper in Beirut at the time, and who was present in the aftermath of the events, and who is quoted in some of the best-known documents about the events. He has additional material he'd like to add to Wikipedia, but it appears it wasn't in these documents. I've asked if he's ever published any of this anywhere (e.g. in his own journalism, which would certainly be citable), so we can quote it without violating our rules on auto-biography and original research.

Still, this all seems a bit weird to me: as Wikipedia gains in importance, things like this are going to happen more and more: people directly involved in historically significant events will approach us with attributable (but previously unpublished) information. It seems really weird if we can't cite them. Is there any way within our current rules to accommodate this? And if not, should we consider a way to change that? Maybe some wikipedia equivalent of an affidavit? -- Jmabel | Talk 23:04, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

I can see a need there. My initial reaction was that either Wikibooks or Wikisource could be expanded just a little to give this a place, but as I thought it through I decided these were both bad ideas.

There are of course many blog sites, web-archived newsgroups, Yahoo groups and so on where this material can be published, but Wikipedia will attract people with valuable historical material such as this who won't use these other websites. Perhaps there is a call for a new Wikimedia Wiki for such things? Andrewa 17:36, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

We could create a "WikiNews" wiki for original journalism, but until and unless that became a respected journalistic venue in its own right we'd basically just be citing ourselves through the back door. Better that people publish original research and original journalism through established venues. —Steven G. Johnson 23:13, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

Well, it's a real problem, and a thin line, and has been one for a while now. E.g. in editing various articles about Internet-related topics, I make use of the fact that I was there in the early days, and probably some stuff has snuck in that's not documented (a lot of the early days were poorly documented). Do I have to find a document I can cite for every fact I add? The same is true all over the 'Pedia - look at the articles on MIT-LCS and the MIT AI Lab. Etc, etc... Noel 17:43, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

References that people can use to look up more information on all your contributions are great. Failing that ideal, however, I would avoid adding information if you know no published descriptions exist anywhere. (Yes, Wikipedians have certainly done this regardless, but I would regard that as an inevitable flaw, not as a precedent to follow intentionally.) —Steven G. Johnson 23:16, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

I would say definitely no. An encyclopedia is for well-established knowledge, and adding original research that isn't supported by published material elsewhere works against this goal. The basic issue that you're wrestling with is, I think: just because we don't accept something doesn't mean it's not good. Wikipedia is not the repository of all "good stuff." There are many worthwhile things that would be out of place here — not only original research papers, but original journalistic reporting and thoughtful commentary and brilliant fiction and ... but all these things are best in their proper venues. So what do we tell these people? Simply this: your stuff is great, go publish it somewhere else, and we'd love to cite you when you do. —Steven G. Johnson 23:07, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

Exactly. The whole point is that these primary sources don't belong in an encyclopedia, any more than the contents of Wikibooks, Wikisource or the 9/11 Memorial Wiki do. The question is, do we have the resources and the motivation to provide a place where they do belong? Andrewa 03:20, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If we were to establish a site for journalism or original research or whatever, the paradox would be this — we could not cite it in Wikipedia, at least not initially. The reason is that an encyclopedia should (ideally) only use and cite sources whose credibility is well established, and any brand-new site set up by ourselves would not qualify, not until it had stood the test of time. (WikiSource is an exception, since it is just a repository for public-domain stuff initially published elsewhere.) Because of this, I'm not sure such an endeavor is worthwhile for us, and in any case it wouldn't serve the purpose hoped for by the original poster. —Steven G. Johnson 04:30, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

Agree about the original research and journalism, but the original example was neither of these, so I guess you're calling it whatever. It was an eyewitness account of historical interest. Why couldn't we cite this? Or, what I'd prefer to ask is, what would we need to do so that we can cite it? My guess is that we already cite lots of websites that are less reliable, and use many more without citing them.

I would say that eyewitness accounts are still essentially journalism (or original research), depending on the context. (As for people citing bad sources already, agreed — but people put lots of questionable content on Wikipedia, and we typically regard this as a problem to be fixed and not a standard to be followed.) —Steven G. Johnson 01:28, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

On another tack, is there any particular policy or guideline that leads you to claim we couldn't cite it? Cite your sources doesn't seem to raise any problems here. Perhaps it should?

Sources have to be credible and verifiable. The problem is that Wikipedia itself cannot establish such an account as credible, and moreover it's very difficult for someone else to verify that bogus info wasn't just added by some random netizen — that's why we can't cite "ourselves" or individual contributors who haven't otherwise published. Again, that doesn't mean the information is not good, but original information is not what an encyclopedia is for. —Steven G. Johnson 01:28, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm. Lots of angles here. Thanks for your thoughts. Andrewa 07:07, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

As it turns out, in this case he had already published in a reputable Norwegian newspaper, so we will simply cite that. But I really do believe that as we become more and more important as a source, this is going to happen more. John Harbo is a respected journalist. We put him through an insane amount of hassle to get one sentence into an article (actually, it's still not in there, because the article in question is now protected, but we seem to have consensus on adding it). We really do need a better way to handle this sort of thing, because it will happen more and more, and most won't have his patient perseverance: he happens to like our project. -- Jmabel | Talk 09:10, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

We have to be disciplined, and tell such people the same thing we would tell Stephen Hawking if he wanted to publish an original paper on our site first — you're great, we love you, and please publish somewhere well-established for original material so we can cite you. —Steven G. Johnson 01:34, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

Israel/Palestine

Lately the articles relating (directly and indirectly) to Israel/Palestine have been the subject of the Wikipedia equivalent of war. This has spilled out into some articles that are only tangentially related to the Israel/Palestine conflict: see, for example, Talk:Jew.

Most recent activity in this area has been by people with a very strong Zionist or anti-Zionist views (and some of us somewhere between but probably just as firm in our views: to lay my cards on the table, I support a two-state solution, and would have no objection -- other than the sheer improbability of it ever happening -- to a unified secular state). Many of the people have been well-behaved, but others are not, and lately a lot of the discourse on the talk pages has been uncivil, and there have been edit wars and even article-move wars. Some of the people seem to be willing to stoop to even the most questionable sources as long as those support their beliefs, and reject even the most authoritative when they disagree. Or they are putting in views that go way beyond their own, basically trolling, just to heat things up further. Frankly, I'm getting pretty sick of it.

Israel/Palestine is not one of my major areas of work, nor of expertise, but having even a few related articles on my watchlist I feel like I'm getting sucked down a black hole. I keep getting pulled into more articles as talk on one article relates to another, etc. I really would rather be writing articles about things I really know, doing translations, etc.

We need some some people working on these pages who don't feel a strong stake in the politics but do feel a strong stake in scholarship, citation of references, etc. (Understand, most of the "partisans" have respect for these things, but lately it's gotten so heated that I think even some people who usually care about standards are taking cheap shots.) I urgently request that some experienced Wikipedians with no axe to grind get involved in this area.

I won't try to list the articles involved; because I came to this from an interest in writing about the history of the Jews as a people in diaspora, not from a focus on this region, any list I made would be overly biased toward specifically Jewish topics, and I'm sure that a lot of the same is going on in articles that focus on Arab/Palestian matters and probably even Muslim matters. I will merely single out Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an obvious place to start, as I am sure that much of what is at one or two removes from that is involved. Have a look at the talk pages and the histories (and the NPOV and dispute notices) and it will be obvious which articles have issues.

Anyone who wants to discuss this should feel free to get hold of me. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:28, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

Parental rating system for Wikipedia? (PICS?)

Hi can everone please come to meta and continue the discussion there. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 18:12, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sexton

Sexton is a dis-ambiguation page with 3 choices, the first of which looks to me like a dictionary definition, the second is a good article, and the third is a person's last name for which anyone who wants to search for would simply type Anne Sexton. Any comments about moving the second of these choices to simply Sexton?? 66.32.250.110 23:32, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sounds like proper disambiguation policy to me. I could do this myself, but for your info, here's the steps:

1. Move Sexton to Sexton (disambiguation).

2. Place a request here or at the Help desk for an admin to delete the new redirect at Sexton, to make room for the other article to be moved. (Do NOT copy and paste text into this article -- the history will be lost.)

3. Move Sexton (artillery) to Sexton. Add a disambiguation block at the top that says This article is about the artillery vehicle. For the church office, see sexton (office); for other uses, see sextion (disambiguation).

4. Edit Sexton (disambiguation) to reflect the changes.

5. IMPORTANT: Click "What links here" (in the sidebar toolbox menu) for each article in the set to make sure that all links are pointing to the proper pages.

Good catch, and good luck, Catherine | talk 07:19, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• And why is it that you think the artillery vehicle is a more likely lookup than the church office? Just because right now it's the better article? -- Jmabel | Talk 07:50, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

• My question exactly. It's not obvious to me that either of the specific sextons is more worthy of the direct link. Ironically, if Sexton (office) were elaborated, for example to make it clear that the term is obsolete and obscure (neither of which is proven by my own ignorance of it), it might be more clear that the artillery piece deserves it. As it stands, I don't think I see a reason to spoil the symmetry of the status quo. Sharkford 21:10, 2004 Oct 25 (UTC)

• Step 2. is not necessary, new redirects with no history are automatically replaced if an article is moved on top of them. CMIIW. PhilHibbs 15:45, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Mark B. Cohen

User:Zulitz (and an anonymous IP which I suspect belongs to him) has been inserting quotes from a Pennsylvania state representative in a million places. I can't think of a specific policy that this violates, and I'm hesitant to go reverting him without some kind of formal justification. On the other hand, it's ridiculous for Wikipedia to be quoting an obscure state representative as an authority on everything from social stereotypes to the Iron law of oligarchy to Dave Winer to the United States Democratic Party to Three Mile Island. Any thoughts? RadicalSubversiv E 05:25, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It turns out that Cohen ran for Congress and keeps a blog, which is presumably the origin of all the quotes. Still doesn't make him an expert on no-fault divorce, though. RadicalSubversiv E 05:40, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Oh... no. I am a Philadelphian, and I happen to (more or less) support Cohen, but this is just plain wrong. It is political spam, and should be treated no differently than when someone inserts corporate or website spam. It should all be reverted, IMHO. Jeeze... I really hope this is just a "fan", rather than someone working for him. func(talk) 06:03, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

While Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not does say "But of course an article can report objectively on what advocates say, as long as an attempt is made to approach a neutral point of view.", most of the quotes don't seem designed to suit that use, but are merely random commentary, which doesn't seem encyclopedic, and I think violates WWIN's "Wikipedia is not a soapbox or discussion forum." Also, at least one paragraph containing a Cohen quote has been removed as "political spam". Contrib lists are here[1] and here[2]. Note that, since these have been added as far back as August, just because the contrib is no longer on "Top", does NOT mean it has been removed--of all that I have checked so far, only the one has been removed. Also, even if the contrib doesn't include a Cohen quote, it still probably needs wikification (EG Marcus Foster) and typo fixes. Niteowlneils 17:32, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I removed a bunch of these for reasons given above. I left some in where they seemed relevant -- Three Mile Island for example. —No-One Jones ^(m) 20:02, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I believe the quotes from Cohen are relevant to the subjects at hand and are factually accurate. A citizen built encyclopedia should be able to quote citizen sources, not just nationally recognized experts with PhD.s and a lot of books to their credit.

The Cohen quotes tend to raise new points and can be rebutted if there are other points of view or superseded by quotes from more famous people if such are available. The Wikipedia is a constantly in flux, ever-changing work in progress, and striking quotes with no claim that they are inaccurrate or irrelevant but merely in too many articles is counterproductive to the goal of building up the Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, as thoughts from one person tend to lead to thoughts from other people. Quotes from individuals ought to be evaluated on a case by case basis by people who are interested in the underlying subject, not in sweeping fashion by anyone offended that someone he or she does not think of as prominent has informed opinions on diverse subjects.

Further, to consider purging all my contributions, the vast majority of whose wordage does not mention Cohen, also seems counterproductive to the goal of building up the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia is rapidly growing, and the Cohen quotes are generally a small part of the articles that contain them, while the articles that contain them are an extremely small part of the Wikipedia. Zulitz

I have no idea who wrote this or what it's about. I believe you are presuming a context that most of us reading this page do not have. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:44, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

The issue here is basically whether the Wikipedia is limited in quotations to those who are nationally prominent, or whether it can quote people who know something about a given subject but who are not nationally prominent. Nationally prominent people often try to limit themselves to a relatively small number of topics: politicians call it controlling the message, or message discipline. What does Kerry think about the Iron Law of Oligarchy? What does Bush think about it? What does the President of the American Political Science Association think about it? Nothing stops any of them from having a public opinion on this, but they probably don't. The Iron Law of Oligarchy--promulgated in 1911 and generally obscure--deals with political organizations, and it reasonable that a guy like Cohen (21 years on the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committtee, 31 years as a member of the Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus, nearly half of which he has served as an elected leader) has something of value to say on this.

Purging his opinion of the Democratic Party, of which he has been a four decade participant, and leaving in the opinion of Nader Vice-Presidential candidate Peter Camejo, who has never been a Democrat, is just silly. I didn't quote Cohen as an authority on the Green Party or on the Nader 2004 campaign, but on the party whose members elected him a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Of course many other Democrats are far more prominent, and the extremely long article on the Democratic Party contains countless references to some of them, and more references to more Democrats will certainly be added with time.

Similar defenses can be made about the other objected-to quotes. Cohen knows Dave Winer from BloggerCon2, he was a leader in the Pennsylvania legislature for no-fault divorce, and he has fought the pernicious effects of social stereotypes in countless instances, three of which I listed in the article.He is one of many, many people who are worth quoting on subjects in which they are familiar, and the English-speaking Wikipedia--on track to have well over a million articles within a few years--is both more comprehensive and more valuable when it quotes knowledgeable people than when it merely limits itself to bland generalizations attributed to no one, or to academic authorities who have not directly participated in the things they have studied. Zulitz

Moved to under the previous discussion. func(talk) 13:06, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Kids Wikipedia?

Discussion moved to m:Talk:Wikijunior

Wikipedia - the target of anti-circumcision zealots

Wikipedians should know what the anti-circumcision zealots have planned.

--- Ŭalabio <Walabio@MacOSX.COM> wrote:

> To: intact-l@cirp.org
> From: Ŭalabio <Walabio@MacOSX.COM>
> Subject: ¡Circumcisiophiliacs attack Daivid Peter
> Reimer
>  !
> Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 00:35:45 +0000
> 
> 
> ¡Hello!
> 
> ¿How Fare You?
> 
> The circumcisiosexuals desecrate the article about
> David Peter Reimer. 
>   Some of us share the fate of David Peter Reimer,
> and the any one of 
> the rest of us could have shared his fate.  I do not
> care what those 
> perverts do among themselves, but I hate the way
> those pædophiles go 
> after children, and I refuse to let them vandalize
> David Peter Reimer.  
> If it were not for those perverts he and his brother
> Brian might be 
> alive today and the family Reimer would be much more
> happy.
> 
> If the want total editwar, ¡we will give then
> total editwar!
> 
> The article is here:
> 
> HTTP://WikiPedia.Org/wiki/David_Peter_Reimer
> 
> This is its history:
> 
> 
>
HTTP://WikiPedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=David_Reimer&action=history
> 
> This is the page for discussing changes to the
> article:
> 
> HTTP://WikiPedia.Org/wiki/Talk:David_Reimer
> 
> ¡Hurry!  ¡Create an account, login, and help!
> 
> Intactivistically,
> Ŭalabio
> 
> -- 
> 
> ¡Dubya Shrub is a Saudi-Lover  --  Saudi-Mite!
> 
> ¡The Bin-Bushes bend over _"*FOR*"_ the
> Bin-Ladens!

This isn't the first time that User:Walabio has sent out a "call to arms" to his activist group. The situation is distressing. There are alot of "zealots" on Wikipedia, POV pushing everything from astrology to biowar-decontaimination-cyborg theory (I'm not kidding about that), but the members of this cirp.org group have become truly problematic. They fully admit themselves that they are here on an "agenda" --they don't deny it-- Wikipedia accurancy and credebility doesn't mean anything to them, so long as they get to push their POV. func(talk) 17:36, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the POV pushers are here. According to User:Geogre's page:

Wikipedia, I think, is a prime target for the most motivated, and the most motivated are always the ones with a score to settle or a score to make.

[[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 20:53, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

Well they are going to be a bit dissapointed when they come to win the war over this particular page because i've just protected it. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 21:57, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• This is the second time you have moved to protect this individual from himself. Is there something you should share with wikipedians about this? - Robert the Bruce 03:34, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes. I consider the quality of wikipedia article, and the atmosphere of cooperation in wikipedia important. I think POV pushing zealots like you (in all you sockpuppet forms) and Walabio should fuck off back to your mailing lists, forums, Usenet of where you all came from, and leave us to write a NPOV encylopedia. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 13:23, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Take it easy Theresa. Until someone contested the truth of what had been and continued to be inserted in the related articles you were quite happy to lie back, close your eyes and think of England. Now it is clear the content has moved closer to NPOV than ever before and if only you would cease providing succour to the head bangers they would slowly start to drift away and seek another place to push their POV. If you believe I am pushing POV you are welcome to raise that issue on a case by case basis. But I am afraid I am less than convinced that everyone around here is really working towards a NPOV solution. As they say we are all human. If you are indeed commmitted to NPOV then join up and contribute rather stand off to one side and weild a stick like some Dickensian harridan. I guess your actions will indicate what your decision will have been. One can but live in hope. - Robert the Bruce 14:27, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

And protecting a page to stop an edit war provides succour how exactly? Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 15:21, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Oh I can think of at least two pssiblities. I am sure other can as well. I guess your game is up theresa. - 198.54.202.242 18:56, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Sure Robert what ever you say. When I act against your POV pushing it's proof according to you that i am an anticirc activist. When I act against the antitcirc mob's POV pushing, it's also proof according to you that I am an anticirc activist. And it's not just me. Any admin who get's in your way is also an anticirc activist. But you know what? We don't care what you say. Because Robert, you saying something doesn't make it true. Anyway, you haven't actually answered my question above. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 02:11, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I believe that people who send out such calls to arms (and the GNAA stuff comes to mind as well) should be blocked from editing. RickK 22:53, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know Rick but we do need to do something about this, that's for sure. Anyone here who is not attempting to write articles from a neutral POV shouldn't be made wellcome. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 13:23, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I agree that contributors who post a "call to arms" should be banned from editing the article in question. In my opinion the practice is not in harmony with Wikiquette. -- DanBlackham 04:55, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Instead of just playing good guy/bad guy why not take it up with him on that list where he made the appeal (as you are a member there). Then you can post what you guys of the foreskin list have decided about him, DanP, Glass and others who are more than a little off the wall (to say the least)and seem intent to haunt the articles of Wikipedia? - Robert the Bruce 06:35, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

---

Some of you are mad that I tried to call in help for protecting David Peter Reimer. I have my reasons:

Ever since 1966-04-27, the circumcision-pushers, have tried to escape responsibility for their actions. The Version of David Peter Reimer up to a week ago was an unstable compromise:

It pointed out that phimosis (nonretractability) is not a disease in infancy. As a bone to those who insist that something must have been wrong with the intact genitals of Brian and Bruce because they were intact, it lists a plausible pathology.

I personally have doubts that anything other than benign ballooning occurred. Well anyhow, the compromise no longer holds. Starx rightfully points out that Encyclopædia WikiPedia.Org is no place for speculative compromises. I say we work this out once and for all:

Facts:

1. The Parents Reimer reported that something happened when Bruce and Brian urinated
2. An unknown pædoprician (¿Does anyone know who this is?) diagnosed Bruce and Brian as developing phimosis (an inappropriate diagnosis in infancy because the glance and præpuce of infants are suppose to be fused)
3. No evidence exists that anyone tried a less radical treatment before circumcising
4. Max Cham and Jean Huot decided to use a Bovie Cautery Machine
5. One should not use a Bovie Cautery Machine on extremities and genitals
6. Jean Huot and Max Cham burned off the penis of Bruce Reimer
7. After the accident of Bruce Reimer, one cancelled the circumcision of Brian Reimer
8. Brian Reimer continued to develop normally as an intact boy and man, thus proving that the circumcision of Bruce Reimer was totally medically unnecessary and nontherapeutic.

I integrated the facts into a paragraph:

"The parents Reimer worried about how Brian and Bruce urinated. The pædiatrician gave an impossible diagnosis of phimosis (phimosis is a tight nonretractable præpuce, but infants have a tight nonretractable præpuce anyway). Non tried a less radical procedure before attempting circumcision. 1966-04-27, the doctors Jean Huot and Max Cham tried to use a Bovie Cautery Machine for circumcising Bruce Reimer, which is not for use on extremities and genitals. Max Cham and Jean Huot burned the penis of Bruce off. After the accident of Bruce Reimer, the hospital canceled the circumcision of Brian Reimer. Brian Reimer continued to develop normally as an intact boy and man, thus proving that the circumcision of Bruce Reimer was totally medically unnecessary and nontherapeutic."

¿Any comments?

I wish to have a binding decision so that we can move on. The final version should include all of the facts listed above. I suggest that we get the input of Doctor Alteripse.

Ŭalabio 01:57, 2004 Oct 25 (UTC)

Ŭalabio, please see my response under the discussion page. I agree with other posters that it is not appropriate to make a 'call to arms' to an activist group over this or any other issue. An activist group, by definition, is essentially opposed to NPOV (preferring to push its own POV), and so such an action strikes at the heart of Wikipedia. - Jakew 11:16, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have seen your changes changes, and I believe we can reconcile our differences. I shall respond on talk:David Reimer soon. You are much easier to work with than a certain other user. I believe that it is a good thing that we got rid of the compromise about listing a plausible pathology for satisfying others world view about something having to be wrong in some way to intact genitals. The truth is better. I shall have my counterproposal soon.

---

And now User:DanP is trying to drag Breastfeeding into the long list of attacked articles that having nothing to do with circumcision. func(talk) 04:34, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Yes our DanP is one of them. Here is his earlier call to arms to the same list:

> To: intact-l@cirp.org
> Subject: Need some help on Wikipedia
> From: Dan P <mail2danp@yahoo.com>
> Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 15:27:55 -0700 (PDT)
> Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> Reply-to: Dan P <mail2danp@yahoo.com>
> Sender: owner-intact-l@cirp.org
> 
> Dear group,
> 
> I have been battling the pro-circumcision folks on
> Wikipedia again, hoping to list "circumciser" as a
> valid article entry.  I have tried to keep the article
> as factual as possible and related to world cultures.
> 
> If you are active on Wikipedia, please go to that
> article and give me a hand.  So far, the pro-MGM side
> has been voting to delete, and I could use some
> assistance.
> 
> Thanks,
>
> Dan

It is a known fact that painful medical procedures may be a contributing factor for breastfeeding failure. In the United States neonatal circumcision is probably the most common surgery preformed on infants. When it is done in the hospital circumcision is often performed before a successful pattern of breastfeeding has been established. Having said that, a consensus was reached to list "Discomfort, possibly due to recent surgery or medical procedures (for example, circumcision)" in the "Breast refusal" section of the Breastfeeding article. In my opinion that is the appropriate way to include the information that surgery, including neonatal circumcision, may be a factor in breastfeeding failure. -- DanBlackham 06:17, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Yea right Dan. Why not admit that you are also on that list that Walabio posted that call to arms to. - Robert the Bruce 17:22, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

DIP

There are two pages for DIP(the electronic thingy), Dual-Inline Package and Dual in-line package, both with history. I think it shoud be Dual Inline Package myself, since the common usage is the acronym 'dip', but maybe someone who works with DIPs knows better. jericho4.0 19:32, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"Dual in-line package" wins the goole test. Merge the articles and make redirects from all possible hyphenations. Gdr 23:01, 2004 Oct 22 (UTC)

Dual in-line package would be my vote too. Move this discussion to talk:dual in-line package. Andrewa 03:58, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Theophilus II article needs edit

There is an error in the article Theophilus II namely that he is not the "II" at all. I feel a little reluctant to make the change myself because it means changing all the links to the page, and I am not sure how to find them all. If someone could either do this or tell me how I would appreciate it. Barrett Pashak | Talk 15:55:51 , 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Use the "What links here" on the left side of the screen. It looks like there is a Theophilus II, grandson of Theophilus who claimed the throne in 867 after his father was assassinated. That one is not on our List of Byzantine Emperors. Theophilus II will need to be moved to Theophilus (emperor). Rmhermen 18:13, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

Indeed - there is also a Theophilus (aka Theophilus of Antioch, an early church patriarch), and Theophilus I of Alexandria (another patriarch, I think). Which is the most notable? Presumably a disambiguation page wouls be a good idea too. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:30, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Okay, but how do I change the name of the article from Theophilus II to Theophilus (emperor)? Barrett Pashak 20:03, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

On the left side of the page there is a link labelled "Move this page." Click it. Type in the new name of the article. If nothing else is at that namespace, it will move the article and all its history & it's Talk page. — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:06, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

The links to it will be automatically redirected, and can be fixed at your (or someone elses) leisure. Mark Richards 21:46, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Curious, I'd already got a note on trying to sort out the references to Theophilus (without and numeral), for which I've noted three different people:

• 1911 Britannica = East Roman emperor (829-842), the second of the " Phrygian " dynasty.
• Modern Britannica = 12th Century Benedictine Monk, metalurgist, and armourer
• Wikipedia/ A Dictionary of Christian Biography Patriarch of Antioch c.180

Which shows there are plenty of disambig problems associated with this name. -- Solipsist 22:11, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The 12th century monk was Theophilus Presbyter, "probable pseudonym of Roger Of Helmarshausen". We don't seem to have an article under any name for him. I moved Theophilus to Theophilus of Antioch but I didn't have time to change the links so we could use Theophilus as a disambig. page. Otherwise we could use Theophilus (disambiguation), I suppose. Rmhermen 22:43, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

That's pretty weird, lots of people have worked on the list of emperors, I'm surprised we never noticed that before. For what it's worth, the original article came from the 1911 EB, but the original anonymous author (or importer) must have followed the link from the list page itself, which was created (with the Theophilus II link) back in 2001 by a user who hasn't been around for three years. Anyway, Theophilus (emperor) would be a good place for this, there are other emperor articles like that already. Adam Bishop 04:50, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've changed all the links (except here) to Theophilus II to Theophilus (emperor). Theophilus II should now be deleted unless we want to write an article on him. Perhaps what Rmhermen wrote above: "Theophilus II, grandson of Theophilus who claimed the throne in 867 after his father was assassinated." is enough for a stub? Also I started to change the links to Theophilus to Theophilus of Antioch but I was uncertain if they were all correct. Someone (who knows more than I do) should probably look through them. Paul August 21:40, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)

OK I've made a start on the disambiguation page at Theophilus. It should help a little in sorting out the confusion and mopping up any unclear links that remain from Theophilus of Antioch. It looks like there is a German article on Theophilus Presbyter. -- Solipsist 08:47, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

By the way Theophilus I of Alexandria should probably be "Theophilus of Alexandria", since I can find no reference to him with a "I" fllowing his name. Prehaps this "Theophilus I" and "Theophilus II" business was some (Wikipedia or otherwise) editor's attempt to disambiguate them. Aso I've removed the rediect from Theophilus II. Paul August 18:01, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

Ok I've moved Theophilus I of Alexandria to Theophilus of Alexandria, and changed all the links. So now Theophilus I of Alexandria should be deleted. Paul August 20:21, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

A couple of editors want to keep Theophilus I of Alexandria as a redirect, but I don't know why. Paul August 21:55, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

Might as well keep it, redirects don't hurt anything, especially since that one in particular has recently been moved. And who knows, there may be a Theophilus II of Alexandria someday. Adam Bishop 22:29, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Fine. My concern is that having such a redirect fosters the notion that there is a Theophilus II ;-) Paul August 02:23, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Can we get one of our numerous micronation editors to simply declare himself Theophilus II of Alexandria? ;-) func(talk) 03:26, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

And now Mpolo has plugged the hole with a translation of the German article on Theophilus Presbyter a.k.a. Roger of Helmarshausen, so I think we are pretty much done for the moment. Well done to everyone. -- Solipsist 08:08, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Deleting searches

How do I delete the search topics I've entered in the search box? For example, once I've completed my search and want to start a new one, I start typing and every search I've ever done that started with the same letter is displayed.Can I clear this somehow??

Thanks, Cindy

Look in your browser's settings for something like "form autofill" or "saved form information"; you should be able to clear it there. --Brion 20:04, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You might also be able to delete individual entries. With Firefox on Windows, you highlight an item in the popup list (easiest using the arrow keys) then press '<shift>-<delete>'. With IE, you might only need to select and press '<delete>'. -- Solipsist 08:08, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Google Scholar

http://scholar.google.com/scholar/about.html#search8

Slashdot mentions

Should articles linked to on Slashdot be protected for a few hours? Clovis culture is about to get vandalised, I predict. PhilHibbs 10:08, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That would be completely antithetical to our ethos, and a distinct insult to slashdot readers, the majority of whom are sane positive people. What sort of welcome to wikipedia is it if the first article they visit is locked? How exactly will that encourage them to join us? Besides which, we seem to route around vandalism relatively well. Mass vandalism of a single page would not ruffle a single wikifeather. I don't think your suggestion has been though through and I would oppose it were it ever to be suggested as policy. And contrary to your preiction, the article seems to have been improved very slightly over the past few hours, with not a vandal in sight. --Tagishsimon (talk)

You're right, my prediction didn't come true, and my suggestion is withdrawn with appologies. As a Slashdot reader & contributor of some 7 years, though, I don't think that the average Slashdot reader would be offended to be told that there a lot of juvenile trolls on Slashdot. PhilHibbs 14:16, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

California 4th Grade Mission Project

I don't feel like getting involved in what's happening in this article, but somebody ought to. Personally I think the whole article should be deleted, but I've nominated it for deletion twice myself and I won't do it again. In the meantime, someone who feels very strongly on the matter of Native American rights has been adding material to the page in a non-encyclopedic fashion. It's been tagged NPOV, but it needs some diplomatic enforcing of wikipolicy, IMHO. --Woggly 13:27, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've taken a shot at a toned-down rewrite, more germane to the topic at hand. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:15, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

I think you've done a good job. Better than what I would have done (just erased those two paragraphs, didn't have the patience to try to rewrite them in balanced fashion). Thanks. --Woggly 06:50, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've rewritten some parts and trimmed it down somewhat as well.

Darrien 10:46, 2004 Nov 18 (UTC)

Links to gunshopfinder by Monkeyleg.

I have a question as to whether a certain series of additions are within the spirit of wikipedia or not.

User:Monkeyleg has contributed to many individual firearms pages. His typical contribution is to add an external link to gunshopfinder.com, such as Photos and information about current production Beretta pistols.

This site is a commercial web page which has the primary purpose of helping people find a local gun dealer. While helping people to purchase arms may be a honorable cause, it seems odd to me to have this site so extensively linked to from our firearms pages.

Can anybody else share their opinion on these links? Should they stay or go? - CrucifiedChrist

• Go. Wikipedia is not a web directory. And Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or promotion. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 03:21, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Stay. The site appears fairly neutral (it is not a vendor - it merely lists vendors) and it does provide a) comprehensive information and b) photos of guns. So there you go. Dpbsmith and I will be selecting our weapons of choice and fighting a duel over this some misty morning soon, at a location to be decided. --Tagishsimon (talk)
• Compromise: One link, from the main "gun" page, or whichever is the most appropriate. Maurreen 06:10, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Catalan Wiki Over 10,000

To day the catalan wiki is over 10,000 articles.

Pérez 21:43, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

¡Meravellós! -- Jmabel | Talk 00:21, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia Front Page Defaced

Somebody has placed Gay Porn pictures on the front page and I have no idea how to report it.

Ziggy

Trivia contest

Want to have some fun? The Wikipedia Trivia Contest, Round 3 is open... Lupo 16:08, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Heruls

One or more anonymous users have insistently removed the info on Jordanes and Procopius in the article on the Heruls. Now one of these users claims to be a Claudia (with a smiley) who accuses me of reverting an accurate and balanced version of the text, and of insisting about my views, whereas very little of the text is mine. I am giving up for now. Perhaps, a third person would like to take over, and maybe do a better job than I did.--Wiglaf 15:51, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia look & feel

Do you know how to change the look and feel of the wiki (like the logo aand navigation?)

wikipedia diff tool

Hi I am makeing a website that will do some diffs of different modifications to documents. I relly like the way that the wikipedia shows the history with the diffs. Could any one please provide me with a tool or Source Code to implemente this on my own site.

you caan email me at: 'mr.computer.geek at gmail.com'

Thank you very much

The source code for MediaWiki is available from its website. It is implemented in PHP. — David Remahl 22:41, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In The News - one last time

I am rather fed up with the provincials who edit the Template:In_the_news and Current events pages, who constantly put up rather tedious headlines pulled from the average US "news" site/ TV channel that is full of either irrelevant crap or US-pertinent only "international" reporting. Can the admin or bureacrats or whoever changes policies and instructions on editing do something about it? More detail at this page: Template_talk:In_the_news#Ignoran-uh...Americentrism -- Simonides 22:20, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• I never usually look at these, but looking at Template:In_the_news I see one story about Uganda, one about Iran, one about Spain, and one about India. There is no explicit mention of the US, although there is one mention of an American company, Union Carbide. There are no US-related items on today's Current events; yesterday's included possible illness of the US Vice President, a US cabinet shuffle, and two items on the War in Iraq, where "Coalition" is becoming a thinly veiled term for US. Offhand, none of these seem objectionable to me: if, say, the UK or Australia had a cabinet shuffle or were involved in a major battle, I'd expect that to be there, too. Can you give an example of what you find objectionable? And have you tried participating in this and found yourself thwarted, or are you just asking someone else to have different priorities? -- Jmabel | Talk 23:01, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

  But the lack of US-centric items is because Simonides edited the ITN template and added the items you listed. This is best discussed at Template talk:In_the_news. violet/riga (t) 23:12, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • Thank you, violet.
  • If you had followed the link I gave you Jmabel, you would have seen all your queries predicted and answered, including the possibility of reading a reply that took longer to write than it would have to check the background and obviate the same reply. -- Simonides 23:21, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Regstered User Names that resemble IP numbers

Please read very slowly and carefully:

Today, while I was studying RC in Wikipedia, I saw several edits of the Sandbox that were contributed by registered Wikipedians with their User Names looking like IP addresses. (Note that the way I differentiate between the 2 kinds of contributions is by what it will result in when clicking on the User Name while looking in RC.) Please try to do whatever you can to make sure nobody is doing this. Here are some that it is especially important for some Wikipedia admin to watch over:

• Those of the 2002-early 2004 vandal Michael
• Those of the late 2004 vandal Mr. Treason
• Those of the Georgia guy. (One just happened earlier today; 66.245.7.6; I even couldn't show the actual IP's contributions; while I was trying to do so, I saw the contributions of the Wikipedian who registered with this User Name instead.)

Now, to answer the question "Who is the Georgia guy??" the answer is:

The Georgia guy has gone by various IP numbers sine February 2004 while editing Wikipedia, all of which are either 66.32.xxx.xxx or 66.245.xxx.xxx (but the reverse is not perfectly true; there have even been some times in Wikipedia history when there has been an IP that someone other than the Georgia guy has gone by that was later (usually several months) used by the Georgia guy.) Note that the Georgia guy is not a vandal. 66.245.108.212 20:10, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Why is it a bad thing for users to register a user name that looks like an IP?

Also a question for developers - if i block say 212.56.73.2 and there is a user with that username will I block the user, the IP or both? Theresa Knott (Tart, knees hot) 20:44, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Also for developers, or admins, or whoever: could we come up with some policy for removing user accounts? When I go to Special:Listusers, I am rather shocked by the hundreds of pages of red links. I did some spot checking... most of these accounts have never made a single edit. A number of users have commented on the fact that they wanted a particular account name but found that it was already taken... by someone with no edits whatsoever. Perhaps there could be some policy along these lines:

A user account can be removed if:

• The account is a year old, and no edits were ever made using the account.
• The account has had no activity in over a year, and the only edits made were to a single VfD or other Wikipedia vote, (after a year of no other edits, I think it would be safe to assume the account was a sock puppet).
• The account has had no activity in over a year, and an admin is willing to certify that the only edits made were blatant and obvious vandalism.

Any thoughts? func(talk) 21:03, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

On the basis of confusion alone, I think ip address-like usernames should be banned. There is no reasonable need for a username like that, and they are confusing. Regarding removal of old usernames, that sounds reasonable. If it would be possible, it would be good to send an email to those accounts that were to be removed, a month or so before they would be, just to alert anyone who honestly forgot about Wikipedia and wants to come back. But other than that, it sounds like a good idea. JesseW 22:03, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I thought the software blocked usernames which resemble IP addresses, but perhaps I was mistaken: User:152.163.100.199 seems to be a real user rather than an AOL IP address, since it's been marking edits minor and links in histories lead to the user page rather than the contributions. Something's up; maybe one of the developers can enlighten us? —No-One Jones ^(m) 00:00, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree on both counts: Block user accounts that look like IP's in software, and delete inactive and unused accounts after email notification. — David Remahl 02:30, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This needs to be done ASAP (the IP username bit anyhow) Have a look at WP:VIP and you will see a user vandalising with an IP username. When you click on his contributions list it looks like he doesn't have any. This is clearly a way to get around people looking to spot vandalism. I suggest we manually block all usernames that resemble IP's (by putting User:123.456.789.001 rather than just 123.456.789.001 in the block field. We need to stamp this out now. Theresa Knott (Tart, knees hot) 16:28, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

WHOOPS!!! I'm sorry, and I hate to be such a waffler, but it occurs to me that my proposal was ill-considered. I hadn't taken into consideration the possiblity that many users of Wikipedia might sign up for an account so that they can take advantage of the watch list, viewing preferences, etc. The fact that an account has no editing activity is not an indication that the account is "inactive", it could simply be one of our faithful "readers" taking proper advantage of the software. (I need to think before I post....) func(talk) 16:38, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It wasn't such a bad idea, it just needs a little refinement. Think about it: the software has to know when you last read your talk page in order to post a message when someone drops you a note. This could be used to monitor how often a logged-in user actually uses their account, and after a lengthy period of inactivity—and several warning messages over a good many months—the account could be removed as a possible security risk or something. I'm pretty sure that if I didn't log in for a year, all my cookies would have been expunged and I would have no chance of recalling my password. --Phil | Talk 16:48, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Just to make sure everyone knows, user names that are IP addresses have been forbidden for a long time precisely because of the problems noted above. A recently introduced bug made it possible to register such names again, but it's been fixed and the accounts removed. --Brion 05:54, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sanitizing external links

I have a proposal in at MediaWiki feature requests for something I'm calling "external link sanitizing." I want a nice easy way to produce external links that look, feel, and serve the reader just as well as ordinary external links, but which contain text that is transformed in such a way that search engines will not credit them as a reference to an external website.

I want to reduce the incentive for external sites to place links in WIkipedia as a way of increasing their search engine ratings.

There may be much simpler technical solutions that I'm overlooking.

This can of course effectively be done now by using services such as tinyurl and others. For example, http://aidepikiw.notlong.com will take you to Wikipedia, but search engines will consider it to be a link to notlong; thus, it provides a functional link to Wikipedia that does not increase Wikipedia's pagerank.

I don't see any issues with using tinyurl and friends to sanitize links, when used very occasionally in special situations. But others do, and certainly it would be better to find a solution that only uses Wikipedia's own resources, and which keeps the "plain text" of the original link in a form that is recoverable by human visual inspection.

I don't believe that all links need to be sanitized, but I believe that as soon as any question about a page or a link arises, there should be an easy way to sanitize a link, or all the links on a particular page. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 14:24, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Just what links do you feel need to be sanitized? In general, I'm against us using tinyurl or equivalents: I want to be able to glance at a link and know what site it is from. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:41, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

The specific situations I am concerned about are articles like Traumatic masturbatory syndrome; I thought American World University fell in this category too but I was mistaken about the article history. The scenario is: an article is placed which is clearly a piece of POV promotion containing a link to a site, and it is decided that the article can be NPOV-ed and kept. Or, it is perceived that a link was placed as part of a link-spamming campaign but the link is nevertheless deemed useful. I want to preserve the link's functionality for the reader, I want to preserve the information in the link, I want the actual URL to be accessible to human inspection, yet constructed in such a way that search engines will not credit it as a link to the site. My specific suggestion is something like http://links.wikipedia.org/moc.sdrawkcab.www, where the link is transformed in some transparent way like being spelled backwards, and the links.wikipedia.org server decodes it and redirects to www.backwards.com. That may not be the best technical means. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 02:21, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ok, I understand the intent of this proposal...Spamming wiki's with links is a popular method of artificially increasing one's page rank. Just so we're sure I understand what you're proposing, an example: Instead of linking directly to URLs, the software links to a local script which redirects to the right page. For example, [http://apple.com apple] would produce a link to http://wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?redirect=http://apple.com.

This method has some disadvantages.

1. Privacy concerns. By indirecting URLs, Wikipedia could track the browsing habits of individual users (or at least see what external links from Wikipedia they visit)
2. Obfuscation. Becomes more difficult to mouse-over a link to see where it points.
3. Non-universability: Smart spiders will recognize the redirect and let the link count towards the site's page rank anyway. I don't know whether Google does this.

A really sneaky way, which would be very difficult for a search engine to detect, would be to use JavaScript to construct the URLs. This has a number of obvious disavdantages, so it is not even worth pursuing (mainly that not all browsers support JavaScript).

I do not support the proposal, but if it is ever implemented it should be universal, not selective. I.e. we should not boost _any_ external links' page ranks. We should discriminate against just a few "objectionable" sites. — David Remahl 02:39, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Replying to myself...Another thing to consider is the two-way nature of page rank. Authoritative pages that link out to other authoritative pages _gain_ even more page rank. It would be unwise to let go of this page rank source. — David Remahl 02:41, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Why should the sanitation system be universal? There are some genuinely usefull site which it would be good to promote/help by listing them here. If for example an article references a site heavily then that site desrves to have a higher page rank...it's only fair. Also remember that the page rank isn't some kind of freebie reward it's designed to give important/relevant sites an edge when searches are executed. Surely some of these sites should be given an increased relevance rating if an editor thinks people might go their for more information. Perhaps only sites with ads or for companies should be santized. Also I'm no expert but doesn't google let sites use robots.txt to limit what google indexes, could that be used in some way? [[User:BrokenSegue|BrokenSegue]] 03:20, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Discriminating against a certain type of sites (e.g. commercial sites, porn sites or shock sites) is POV and therefore I don't think Wikipedia should do it. — David Remahl 00:29, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• A different situation that may require a different approach is an article like David Pearce, now under discussion at Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/David_Pearce. It would be convenient to have a quick, easy way to "sanitize" a page perceived to be a likely link-spamming effort during discussion. And, if the page is kept, after. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 02:44, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • For that <nowiki>[http://spam.com/ spam link]</nowiki>'ing the links is sufficient (current policy). — David Remahl 02:49, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Top-level reply. I don't think Wikipedia should be in the business of solving Google's problems. Their Pagerank system is being gamed, they are the ones who should remove the incentive for SEO spam. That said, I think a more productive solution would be for Wikipedia to produce a coherent external link policy (and I also have healthystrokes.com in mind). It's very hard to find a policy here on Wikipedia that says "SPAM IS BANNED." There isn't really one. Rhobite 04:52, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

If a link isn't useful, we should remove it. If a link is useful, then its increased PageRank is deserved and there's no reason to obscure it. Moreover, obscuring external links is a disservice to users. —Steven G. Johnson 00:23, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

I agree. — David Remahl 00:29, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Help Scott Joplin!

Can somebody fix the information listed on the Wikipedia site for the movie, "The Sting". Some fool wrote that the theme song, "The Entertainer", was written by Marvin Hamlish. Actually, it was written by Scott Joplin - a very talented African American who was the father of ragtime. Marvin Hamlish only adapted the song for the movie. I am a computer idiot and don't know what to do. But I hate to see someone thinking the credit should go to Marvin Hamlish!! Sob!

This was fixed by User:A. J. A. DeWitt on 18:12, 3 May 2004. When did you last look at the article? :-) The magic of Wikipedia. JesseW 08:01, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I sympathize deeply, although as noted the article credits Joplin. And I just tweaked it a bit, because The Entertainer is a Joplin rag plain and simple (the previous language seems to suggest that Hamlisch created it out of Joplin rags.). I wish I had clipped the article in which some idiot film critic praised Scott Joplin's performance of Hamlisch's music. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 14:12, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales Christmas greetings

Hi. It's mid-november and Jimbo just uploaded his Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year greetings to the commons, and I thought I'd share it with you (It's Public domain, you known). -- Chris 73 Talk 02:03, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

Selling Wikipedia CDs on eBay

Just went over to eBay and wondered what would happen if I searched for "Wikipedia". No results for the UK but three international results, mainly regarding sales of the German Wikipedia CD. Should people be selling these CDs? violet/riga (t) 23:25, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sure, there is nothing to prevent you from doing that. You can even create duplicates and sell, as long as you follow the GFDL. — David Remahl 00:04, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There are details on this CD at meta:Wikipedia auf CD-en. Angela.

Maybe they shouldn't do it but it's legal. Jeltz 09:44, 2004 Nov 23 (UTC)

Wikipedia mirrors saturating page one of Google searches

Is anyone else bothered by this? While I love Wikipedia, when I search the web I don't want to have to wade through the same information on the first two pages of a Google search under different URIs like brainyencyclopedia, etc.

I tried a -Wikipedia with some improvement, but it bothers me to have to do this, at least partly because if other users have to do this, it's not a good thing for the image of Wikipedia.

Any ideas? Spalding 23:08, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Not much to do about it, I'm afraid...Enforcing the link back requirement, will ensure higher page rang for Wikipedia, meaning that wikipedia.org snags the top position among the mirrors of Wikipedia material. However, the other mirrors will still be there. I don't suppose there's much of a chance of convincing Google to filter the hits, and frankly I don't think it is a good idea at all. — David Remahl 23:16, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You might point out the search results to Google using their quality feedback form, or by emailing search-quality@google.com. Since Wikipedia is responsible for the content of its mirrors, it seems reasonable that Google could lower the page rank of every mirror. --[[User:Eequor|ηυωρ]] 23:27, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, from a legal point of view, Wikipedia has no more rights or responsibilities to the material on the site than any of the mirrors (that follow the GFDL, that is). But sure, Google can manipulate their search results in whatever way they see fit, and they'll probably listen to your feedback. — David Remahl 00:07, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If we pushed harder about requiring the word "Wikipedia" to appear on at least once on each page of Wikipedia content, then the mirrors(and Wikipedia) could be easily blocked(on a per-user basis) by using "-wikipedia". We should do this. JesseW 07:55, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps even asking nicely is worth a try. We already have a list of compliant mirrors. Why not have a list of recommended mirrors? To be recommended, the mirror would need to comply not just with the GFDL, but also with other conventions such as having the word "Wikipedia" in text on every article page, and a link to the original article in Wikipedia. Neither of these are in theory required by the GFDL, although some would argue that the second is in practice. The advantage of these requests or conventions is that we can change them easily. Andrewa 01:54, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That does sound like a worthy idea. Why don't you flesh out ideas about what should be required of "recommended"(or maybe "friendly") mirrors, where they would be listed, etc. on the Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks page... JesseW 02:08, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Just as long as we're clear on that mentioning Wikipedia is not a requirement, since the GFDL forbids us from placing additional restrictions on "our" material. — David Remahl 02:26, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Suspect article

Article Bluetooth sniping: is this a wind up? (Couldn't see where else to ask this) Shantavira 13:34, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Looks real, quite a few references on web. Just Google it. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:02, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Photographer's barnstar

Can someone create a photographer's barnstar? We need one. :) [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 00:24, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Wiki tweak for Windows

I don't know where to put this, but I love it. If you use Windows and Internet Explorer, try this:

• Open a new text file in "notepad"
• Copy and paste the following text into it exactly as written:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\w]
@="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s"

• Save the text file as "wiki.reg" (make sure it does get called .reg not .reg.txt)
• Double click on the file you just saved, and click yes when it asks if you want to merge it into the registry. All done!

You now have Wiki for Windows! Any article you want to look up, type "w" and the article name in as a web address (don't forget caps!), and it'll take you straight to it.

w Disney

w Donald Trump

w WP:RFC

The same trick can be used to make an in-line command to add any text into a web address and open it. the 1st line stays the same, 2nd line just change the last letter to the one you want, 3rd line is the address with %s for the text you give it. Google example:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\g]

@="http://www.google.com/search?as_q=%s&num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8"

If theres a wiki tips page, add this to it :) FT2 01:18, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia:Tools (that's the place for these things). We didn't have that before for IE, although we did for nearly all the other browsers out there... Thanks! JesseW 10:53, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

odd, minor edits from anons

In my watchlist, I have noticed a regular pattern over the past couple of months of new anons (with no existing page) making one small, almost irrelevant edit to an article - like changing US to USA, or changing a verb to its synonym. Sometimes they're rollback-able, but often not - just pointless. It happens often enough to unrelated articles that I wonder if it's part of a Web-link scam or something like that, but I can't figure out what it would be. (I don't think they're done by the same anon, although I can't say I pay much attention to those numerical ID's.) Any ideas as to what, if anything, is going on? - DavidWBrooks 18:32, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It sounds harmless to me. What's wrong with those edits? Maybe they just liked their wording better? — Frecklefoot | Talk 18:43, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

That's probably it, of course. I was just wondering whether anybody knew of a Deeper and More Sinister Motive. - DavidWBrooks

Such things when not destructive keep less edited Wikipedia articles alive. Just because it's a preferred wording by someone doesn't mean their preference is not preferable (does that make sense?). zoney ♣ talk 01:02, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

And making a tiny change to an article that doesn't change meaning or need reverting seems like a responsible way to try out the wiki if one doesn't know about the sandbox. — mendel ☎ 01:40, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

I really think this is just newbies trying out Wikipedia. (Did it myself for my first-ever edit, back whenever, a hundred million Wikiyears ago). Some vandalize, some do small useful things. Antandrus 22:51, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Merovingian

Has anyone else noticed User:Merovingian?

--Etaonish 16:02, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

No, why? Did they do something bad? — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:07, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

LOOK AT THE LINK. Apparently Merovingian died.--Etaonish 18:48, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

But looking at the picture there previously it doesn't look like the same person. violet/riga (t) 18:55, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Oops. Also checked, and mero's name was Ryan. However, the obit makes no mention of any Ryan, so...?--Etaonish 19:07, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Not to mention that Merovingian's name is Ryan, not Andrew, and his birthday is on 10 November, not 28 September. - 19:07, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

Bah, stupid edit non-conflict. - 19:09, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

What's the deal with these non-message producing edit-conflicts? It's happened to me a couple of times today. Paul August 19:35, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Something's odd here. Merovingian has edited since October 20, and the name and birthdate in that obituary don't match what was on the previous version of his userpage. (oops, why didn't I get an edit conflict?). Anyway, the name and birthdate on his userpage might have been deliberate misdirection, and I suppose someone else might know the account's password—they'd have to, to make that last update. Spooky. —No-One Jones ^(m) 19:08, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

His journal reveals that it's a friend of his. - 19:21, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

That is, the person who died was a friend of his. (Not, as I first thought, "a friend of his updated his wikipedia page with news of his death, and explained this on his journal". Sigh. My mind.) JesseW 10:48, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Vanity

Hi. A have found this case of vanity. This user decided to insert himself in this category. I thought I'd just remove the category link from his page, but then again it's bad policy to meddle with other user's personal page. I've left a note on the person's user page, but what if he does not responds? Regards, Redux 13:41, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

IMO, it is fine to edit a user page to fix a vanity cat linking. Categories lead to such messy situations like that. If you don't want to do it, I'll do it. JesseW 10:43, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Something must be done about this

Look at this:

Nahali language

Kalto

Something must be done about this. Bennett Chronister 10:44, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

OK I've done it. To redirect readers from one page to another you blank the text then put #REDIRECT[[Kalto]] there. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 10:53, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Now you just lost all the information about how it has 5,000 speakers, is spoken in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtria, has loans from the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages, etc. That didn't do any good at all.Bennett Chronister 11:37, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You can get that information from the Nahali language page history and add it to the Kalto article. Filiocht 13:46, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

We could merge the two pages, as Kalto history and Nahali language history do not overlap. Should I do this? Such a manoeuvre is not easily reversed - but other than that I can't see any reason not to merge the histories. zoney ♣ talk 14:19, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't see any reason that these histories need merging. There's no suggestion that either entry should be deleted. Histories should only be merged when otherwise the results will be incomplete or confusing. A note in the talk page of the merged article saying where any cut-and-pasted text came from is quite sufficient. If and when the redirect is proposed for deletion, that's when the merging of histories needs to be considered. Andrewa 21:51, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Researching with Wikipedia

As an upshot of some discussion in the recent Seattle Meetup, several of us have started Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia. The primary goal is to help librarians and other researchers understand both the strengths and limitations of Wikipedia as a reference tool; I suspect it could have the secondary value of drawing the attention of the Wikipedian community to some of our weaknesses and thus stimulating the community to consider some ways we might turn Wikipedia into a more valuable reference. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:16, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Simplified articles

Has it every been discussed to make simplied versions of articles? For example many math and physics articles are very technical and I was thinking that it might be a good idea to make some simplified articles for some of the most important topics with a general introduction and a section requiring only highschool knowledge. Many articles like Maxwell's equations and schrödinger equation is pretty math heavy but it would be possible to write for example schrödinger equation (simplified) where the non-relativistic Schrödinger wave equation might be discussed together with a solution to one dimensional particle in a box, many important results is possible to discuss with only highschool level of math and physics. I think these kinds of articles should not be too light but more like introductory ,with the purpose of helping people understand the real article. Any thoughts? Passw0rd

I would say that as a rule it would be better to add the "simplified" information to the main article. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:33, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

The problem with this is that I think it would get too big and way too messy. Better keep one article with correct and rigorous definitions and one that would have the hard parts removed, because else you would get one article with a mix of text with difficult equations around in the text and then simplified explanations and it would become an article that is hard to read. Someone who have a background of the required stuff would probably not want lots of simplified explanations that might even not be entirely correct around in the text while someone who doesn't have the same background would rather not have to read a lot of stuff where they may not even understand the notation and have to search through the article to find the parts they might understand and with this mix it's likely to just get confusing. Passw0rd

E.g. in Schrödinger equation, talk about hilbert spaces is necessary for a rigorous definition but it will only confuse those who doesn't know what it is, and much can be done without mentioning it. This applies to many articles, in many I think it would be good to have just one article but in some cases I think there might be room for two. Passw0rd

Are you familiar with http://simple.wikipedia.org ? They need alot of help over there. func(talk) 23:29, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Also Wikibooks is good for this type of thing -QM for non scientists, QM for undergraduates, QM for graduates - that sort of thing. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 10:56, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Incidentally, what are the requirements for articles on simple:? Are they meant to be written entirely in Basic English, or do they use a more general meaning? --[[User:Eequor|ηυωρ]] 23:31, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The suggestion is somewhat like have a ready reference Miccropedia and in deapth Macropedia like Britannai. I think the best solution for such articles to be edited in a way that summarizes the topic to a satisfactory level for browser and then offers more in depth explanation. User:Dainamo:Dainamo

In my opinion, if any encyclopedia article in any specialized field does not teach a reasonably well-educated person everything they need to know to understand the article, (either within the article or by following a few links no more than two steps back,) then it is just a form of back-patting or self-congratulation. The purpose of an encyclopedia is to empower others by teaching what you know to those who don't know; not to set yourself and others in your field apart from everyone else by maintaining a gap between the simple articles and the complex. GUllman 04:32, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

what GUllman said. but at the same time, expert-level knowledge should get wickified if someone's willing to do it. so i think we just have to reconcile the two levels of explanation in a single article. rmbh 16:38, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

What happened to the german Wikipedia?

The German Wikipedia seems to be down. I recived the message "Wiki does not exist" with the Wikimedia Foundation logo at the left corner. What happened here? --Filzstift 22:27, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It just worked for me. -- Arwel 00:39, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Lesch-Nyhan syndrome

Please, please does anyone know of any image whatsoever that would be at all aplicable to this article even a picture of dna or a chromosome or something, i'd really like to get this article featured. i spent a lot of time on it and i would also like any comments and critisisms. --Larsie 18:01, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Vandalism of Welcome, newcomers

Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers seems to have become a target of repeated anonymous vandalism. Unfortunately, some vandalised revisions have been online for hours. That page is a very important part of the project and should receive more attention. Please consider putting it on your watchlist to avoid persistence of any future vandalism. Thanks. Kosebamse 15:49, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Added to my watch list, I'll keep an eye on it when I'm online. This kind of slightly more subtle, non-blanking vandalism would be a lot easier to catch with some more advanced watchlist features though (direct link to last diff, link to diff of current to article at last time the article was viewed). --fvw 16:47, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)
  • It would also be useful if there was a sort of "super watchlist" of items on your watchlist which have been edited by anon users, since they generally are more likely to make suspicious edits. I've currently got 1700+ items on my watchlist and it takes me a while to check all the ones that come up.... -- Arwel 00:42, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You can make seperate psudo-watchlists, by making sub pages in your User space, and going to their Related changes pages. See my User page for examples. Oh, and I've added "Welcome, newcomers" to my watchlist too. JesseW 10:40, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• I also added it, it makes sense that this would be vandalized a lot since every vandal gets a friendly link to it in their talk page. Rhobite 00:55, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Edward G. Nilges joins Wikipedia

Another wikipedian suggested I log in and introduce myself. I have already posted comments and an update in the areas of Derrida, Dijkstra and Kant.

I am a software developer and author of the Apress book Build Your Own .Net Language and Compiler. My interests encompass software development including compiler development, philosophy, art, etcetera.

My home page is http://members.screenz.com/edNilges.

I am very interested in the Wikipedian ethos and approach.

However, I view NPOV as sometimes misinterpreted to mean LCD.

210.21.221.178 01:56, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Oops. Trumpet roll. The way this came out really sucks because it reads like "big deal, and who is Edward (Gee?) Nilges?". My kid is probably dying of embarassment.

Anyway, the damage is done. I shall in future try to adhere to all customs and rules. Four tildes to "stamp" the document? Gee, we're not in Kansas anymore are we Toto. We are in a land of gnomic utterance.

But one can be equally gnomic. LCD doesn't mean liquid crystal diode. It means Least Common Denominator.

Grin. It's good to see someone with a sense of humor about themselves. You might look at the page: Wikipedia:New_user_log. ;-) Glad you've joined wikipedia. JesseW 10:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I want My Word back

I miss the bbc radio broadcast of "MY WORD" are there any sites which still audio stream the program? Are there any radio re-plays in the U.S. (via NPR)? Were can I download or buy editions?

reverend_logan@yahoo.com

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:My_Word%21"

Downtown Chicago

If someone needs a pic of a place in downtown Chicago, I might be able to get one (if it's within walking distance of where I am staying), so let me know. Dori | Talk 02:01, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I assume you're aware of Wikipedia:Requested images and related pages... JesseW 04:20, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes and ...? Dori | Talk 01:46, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Just, in case you wern't, it would be another good place to mention this. No offence meant. JesseW 10:36, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The VP is usually more high traffic. I also posted under Talk:Chicago, Illinois#Pictures. Oh, well, I'm back at home now, but I did take quite a few pictures, and I'll start uploading some soon. Dori | Talk 13:53, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

HELP PLEASE

I've been writting this article Lesch-Nyhan syndrome (in a word document) for a few days now. i've just copied it to wikipedia and when i submitted it the format was all wonky, please help. p.s. if anyone can find me a pic to add that would be great! --Larsie 23:06, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I fixed a couple paragraphs. If you start a paragraph with a space, it goes all on the same line in a fixed-width format. See Wikipedia:How to edit a page. Hope this helps. pstudier 23:50, 2004 Nov 7 (UTC)

Radio Station Template

At a template called Template:Radio stations by state, I want to know if anyone can modify it so that the following does not happen:

When I went to List of radio stations in Georgia (U.S. state), I put the template on and it automatically added Category:Georgia, which is a dis-ambiguation category, to the template. I can't fix the category because it is automatically put in with the template. 66.245.3.195 17:35, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You can edit the Template, but the problem is you might have to update all the pages with the template on them, that should be in Category:Georgia... JesseW 10:35, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Jumping

Sometimes, Whenever I visit Wikipedia's main page and click the link that says Create an account or log in, it suddenly jumps from the upper right corner of the webpage to the left. Why does it do that? Thanks, --Chris 08:44, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This is a known bug. See Mediazilla:25. It seems to only affect certain browsers, so if you have something other than Internet Explorer, such as firefox, you might find the problem goes away. Angela. 14:15, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

Possible controversy about the religion of Abraham Lincoln.

I just made some changes to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._Presidential_religious_affiliations about Lincoln being called a Christian, and even a devout one. Considering this is probably an all kinds of controversial sort of change, I want to run this by whoever is in charge here before my IP gets banned and such. :(

I had done some Google searching about the religious beliefs about Lincoln earlier today, and found the general consenus is he believed in God, but likely in a Deist sense, and not a Christian. I then found this Wikipedia article calling him a devout Christian, yet linking at the bottom to a web page that he was a Deist. This is logically inconsistent. Thus I deleted the part about Lincoln being a devout Christian, and changed his religion to be uncertain, possibly Deist. When the historical facts are unclear, then calling Lincoln a "devout Christian" is not intellectually honest.

My intent was not to maliciously deface Wikipedia, but just to correct something that seemed inaccurate. Given this is a possible inflammatory change, I'd like whoever the Powers That Be are here to review it, and make a decision whether my change was reasonable. (unsigned)

My understanding matches yours. I think cautious wordings like "those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to him" (Second Inaugural Address) indicate a man delicately balanced on the edge of belief. However, for a sane statement of the contrary case, made sanely if unconvincingly, see [3]. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:48, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)

I just created a user account here as "Rfgdxm" should any of the Powers That Be consider this so highly controversial a change they want to contact me directly. It just seems to me that where there is doubt about a Lincoln's religious beliefs, calling him a "devout Christian" just ain't right.

--Rfgdxm (talk) 22:03, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Reading that link to http://members.tripod.com/~greatamericanhistory/gr02004.htm posted above, I must concede that some of the quotes cited made by Lincoln late in his presidency are suggestive that near the end of his life Lincoln may have moved in the direction of Christianity. However, they could also be explained by Lincoln trying to appeal to a mostly Christian nation. In any case, I merely am proposing the change should just be to say that Lincoln's religious beliefs are uncertain, and that he just possibly was a Deist. This seems consistent with the notion Wikipedia articles should be written from a NPOV. For the record, I am an agnostic almost to the point of atheism. As such I have no bias to want to characterize Lincoln as a Deist instead of a Christian. Both firmly believe in god; they merely have a different notion of the nature of god.

--Rfgdxm | Talk 06:02, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

We should be careful, however, as any statement on the matter might be seen as bordering on "original research", which Wikipedia isn't suppose to do. Someone recently tried to place Lincoln's name onto the List of famous gay, lesbian or bisexual people, citing a book... which hasn't even been published yet. (Of course, it doesn't really matter. 53% of Americans seem to think Bush is a moral leader rather than the purest form of evil the world has ever known, and I'll bet these same 53% of ignorant Americans are going to insist that Lincoln was of whatever religious persuasion they want to believe.) --68.163.12.14 02:27, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

But what statement based on "original research" am I suggesting being added? The clear majority of credible historians are comfortable with the notion of Lincoln being a Deist. Easy to find this with a simple Google search. In fact, it is much later historians, many who appear revisionist, who are trying to pigeonhole Lincoln as being a "devout Christian." And besides, I merely argue for Wikipedia to state the religious beliefs of Lincoln are "uncertain". There are some quotes Lincoln made late in his life that make me wonder if he was drifting in the direction of Christianity. My best guess is that these were uttered by him to bolster support of the Christian majority of people in the US during a bloody civil war. However, in the interest of neutrality I consider it reasonable to just say his religious beliefs were uncertain, and let the reader make up their own mind.

And, Lincoln gay? A quick Google search shows that there has been recent speculation about this. However, the evidence looks mighty flimsy. In particular, there seems to have been no such suggestions when Lincoln was alive. And, his predecessor James Buchanan had lots of people at the time suggest that he was gay. It's gonna take some serious proof before I believe Lincoln was gay.

--Rfgdxm | Talk 04:45, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How they do it at "Figure Skating Universe"

A friend of mine who participates strongly in the "Figure Skating Universe" BBS site [4] sent me the following. She wishes to remain anonymous, but I thought my fellow Wikipedians would be at least amused.

Another Approach to Board Mediation

Someone asked for an Admin to step in at Figure Skating Universe, claiming that it was not okay to insult a skater for being "fat," but it was okay to rag on skaters for being too skinny. This is how one Admin chimed in:

All right, here it is, in black and white, as well as I can explain it.

It's okay to talk about a skater's weight. It is not okay to be insulting about the skater's appearance because of weight. So it's okay to say, "Gee, she's put on some weight over the off season. She'd better lose some of that if she wants to get those jumps back." But it's not okay to say, "Who let the Zamboni skate?" And it's okay to say, "That girl needs a cookie," but not "Who's that skeleton skating pairs over there?"

None of that means that people aren't going to argue with you that you shouldn't have said whatever you did. Words like "fat," "thin," "ugly" "fit" are all in the eye of the beholder and always will be, so there's always going to be an argument over who is what. But the admins aren't going to mess with you if you keep your comments to something reasonable and try to avoid nasty, needlessly hyperbolic statements.

And since someone is sure to ask how we admins define nasty and hyperbolic, the answer is whoever sees it first asks whoever else is around and if we all agree it's nasty and hyperbolic, it is.

That's as good as it gets.

Jmabel | Talk 18:36, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)

IMO "That girl needs a cookie", while not blatant, is not okay. It is patronizing. Thue | talk 23:04, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(sections above this (and below the previous tag) were archived on 08:10, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC))'

YouGov

I have recently edited the entry on YouGov (of which I am chairman), to remove one inaccuracy and addd (I hope) useful information.

However, have been unable to alter the title, which should be "YouGov" rather than "Yougov".

Could someone arrange for the "G" to be in capitals?

Thanks

Peter Kellner

Done -- Jmabel | Talk 18:49, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the additional information: please stay and add some more! I moved the page from yougov to YouGov for you, but you could have done it yourself using the link on the screen entitled "Move this page". -- ALoan (Talk) 18:51, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

media

is there any media or project pages with just a bunch of pics that can be used to be entered into articles? let me know on my disc page --Larsie 22:26, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How can I become a burocrat?

Recently I found out Wikipedia has a list of burocrats. How do I become one? Is there a page where I can self-nominate? Are there any steps to be taken before going from administrator to burocrat?

Any help will be dearly appreciated.

Thanks and God bless you! "Antonio Burrocrat Martin"

You could ask on WP:RFA, but why do you want to be a bureaucrat? Bureaucrats don't have much more "infinite cosmic power" than admins, other than the ability to create new admins. There are enough (arguably too many) bureaucrats at the moment. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:40, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How do you become an admin? does it require jedi mastery? Dainamo 20:14, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. --Ardonik.talk()^* 08:00, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)

Film to TV frame rate

The pages relating to Television particularly the PAL page does not mention the phonemenon described below. Can anyone help for a name for it plus establish whether it occurs becasue of conversion from film to PAL or from NTSC to PAL or some completely diferent route or reason?: When a fast moving vehcle is shown, particularly a horse drawn wagon or chariot with distinctive spokes, a strobe effect sometimes occurs that makes the wheel appear to move slowly backwards due to the rate at which the film is capturing the picture. Dainamo 10:34, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's not specifically a conversion issue, although frame-rate conversions sometimes produce more complicated versions of the same issue. It is sometimes called the "stroboscopic effect;" lately it has been called "aliasing;" and it not infrequently is called the "wagon-wheel effect." It has long been noticed in motion pictures. It probably deserves an article if it's not covered already, and stroboscope doesn't cover it, and stroboscopic effect doesn't exist.

It occurs because when a) the view of a moving object is represented by a series of short samples rather than a continuous view, and b) the moving object is engaging in repetitive or cyclic motion at rate that is close to the sampling rate.

For example, consider the stroboscope as used in mechanical analysis. This is a "strobe light" that is fired at an adjustable, variable rate. Let's say you are looking at a moving part that rotates at 60 revolutions per second. Now lets say that instead of illuminating it with a continuous flash, you illuminate it with a series of very short flashes of light 60 times per second. Each light catches the object at the same position in its rotation. Since at 60 flashes per second the persistence of vision smooths out the visual experience, it appears as if the object is standing still. If you illuminate it at 59 flashes per second, each flash will catch it at a slightly different part of its rotation and it will seem to be rotating slowly; it will take 59 flashes = one second before the flash catches it at the starting point again, and the object will look as if it is rotating once a second. If you illuminate it at 61 flashes per second, each flash catches it a little earlier in its rotation and the object look as if it is rotating backwards.

In the case of a television or movie camera, action is captured as a series of brief snapshots and stroboscope effects can occur.

The reason it is seen so often in motion pictures of spoked wheels is this. The wheel of a vehicle doesn't turn at 24 revolutions per second unless the vehicle is going awfully fast. But if you have twelve-spoked wheel, if built precisely, every spoke looks the same as every other spoke and they are all perfectly spaced. So, it turns at only TWO revolutions per second, which is very reasonable, and you film at 24 frames a second, each frame will catch the spokes in the "same" position and the wheel seems to be standing still. Really, the spoke that's at the 12-o-clock position in each frame is a different spoke each time, but they all look the same. If the wheels is turning a little slower than 2 revolutions per second, the position of each spoke is a little further behind in each frame and the wheel seems to be turning backwards.

The reason it's called "aliasing" is that in electrical engineering, when a continuous audio signal is replaced by series of samples--say, a 24.1 Hz signaled is sampled at 24 samples per second--the result looks the same as if an 0.1 Hz signal were sampled at 24 samples per second, so 0.1 Hz is said to be an "alias" for 24.1 Hz. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 15:54, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

P. S. I just noticed that we have a damned good article on aliasing, but it doesn't explicitly relate aliasing to stroboscopy or the "wagon-wheel" effect. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 15:56, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In the trade, it's called temporal aliasing. We probably need an article on that. -- Anon.

So I snitched a large part of the above discussion/description and dumped it into temporal aliasing. Would someone like to check out my cleanup? --Phil | Talk 16:03, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

But the question is titled "film to tv frame rate". The phenomenon of temporal aliasing occurs in any picture-sequence medium and is not related to the various problems related to converting film, at 24 or 16 frames per second, to video, at 30 (North America) or 25 (elsewhere) f.p.s. For that, see Telecine. Sharkford 18:31, 2004 Nov 5 (UTC)

How to handle alternate spellings and punctuation?

One sometimes notices people changing spelling and punctuation from US to UK-style, and vice versa, not in the course of a rewrite but just out of the blue. What's the consensus etiquette on that?

It feels strange to add a significant portion of text to an article using my US-style while the remainder of the article is in UKese--the inconsistency diminishes the appearance of quality. But it also feels provincial to alter others' spellings, etc. Does one rewrite in toto or adopt the existing style?--NathanHawking 02:30, 2004 Oct 16 (UTC)

To boil down the general guidance from the Manual of Style:

1. If the article is directly related to an english-speaking country, use spelling and vocabulary preferences of that country.
2. Otherwise, in most cases you should defer to the preferences as established by the original author of the article.

So to answer your specific question, you should probably adapt your writing to the existing style. Of course, there's lots more about this in the MOS. And for articles where inconsistencies have already crept in, some revision is needed--and at that point it is a bit of a toss-up. My thought is that if inconsistencies have been allowed to stay in the article for more than a few months or so, then one can assume that the original author has lost interest in the article and it can safely be edited to the preferences of whoever is willing to do the work cleaning up the inconsistencies. However, that's if the inconsistencies are relatively even--if there a marked imbalance, the revision should favor the majority style used in the article. older≠wiser 02:48, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Just to point out: not all of us are fully acquainted with the complete spelling and punctuation styles of every English speaking country in the world, (I'm not even fully acquainted with the complete spelling and punctuation rules of my own country). I think people should simply contribute what they know, and allow members of the Typo Team to take care of the details. For instance, it would be inappropriate to fault someone for using the word "defense" in a UK article if they had never before seen it spelled "defence". func(talk) 17:25, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Also, the supposed differences between versions of English are not altogether fixed. Variant spellings appear in dictionaries. There is no compulsion on anyone to use the particular preferred spelling in any particular dictionary, especially when sometimes a variant spelling is equally popular (perhaps even more popular). The -ize ending is favored by the Oxford English Dictionary over -ise. Some editors ignorantly fix this in British English, replacing -ize by -ise. Canadian dictionaries sometimes give a British form priority and sometimes not. Consistancy within an article on endings -re against -er, on -or against -our, on -l- against -ll- and so forth is a reasonable requirement. But in general spelling correction should be done with a very light hand. If it is a correct form in English of whatever standard variety, leave it alone. Jallan 20:13, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Whilst agreeing with the comments raised above, I personally suggest that, wherever possible, words and phrases should be chosen so they aren't particularly UK/US/another form of English. For instance - instead of 'organisation' or 'organization', you can use 'group', don't refer to a 'public' school, but use 'private' school instead. Sometimes this isn't possible, and the flow of the article is more important than thinking of a universally accepted alternative word/phrase. But wherever possible, use a linguistically neutral term. jguk 20:43, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In the United States, "public school" and "private school" are mutually exclusive. Maurreen 21:00, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to restrict usage of a word simply on the grounds that it has various spellings. That would impoverish our language. One of the great strengths of English is that there are such a large number words having similar but subtly distinct meanings and connotations, providing for a wonderfully rich texture of nuanced possibilities ;-) Paul August 17:54, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

I know. I meant to write that us Brits shouldn't use 'public' but 'private' instead, and some equivalent message for Americans, but I'm tired and forgot. In the UK they more or less mean the same thing. A school the parents have to pay fees to get their children in. What you Americans call a public school, we'd call a 'state school'. That's why the term 'public school' should be avoided: the UK version is the exact opposite in meaning to the US version. jguk 21:17, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This whole AE/BE preference problem is something that has probably got up the nose of very many Wikipedians over there years. I'm certainly one of them. I have a proposal for a relatively simple software solution that may be useful in other areas too. Some time ago we managed to kill off the debate about whether to use [[DD Month]] [[YYYY] or [[Month DD]], YYYY by implementing a system whereby wikified dates appear in one or other format depending on what the user has selected in their preferences. This works great but it only works for wikified dates. My solution world also work for unwikified dates. If we had a BE/AE option in preferences we could then have the flag checked when an article is displayed. Problematic words or phrases could be tagged e.g. "... he came to her {[defense/defence]} as soon as he could and ..." - and the appropriate word could be chosen as required. Mintguy (T) 01:03, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Are you kidding me? We can't even get them to turn two hyphens into an en/em/whatever dash. ;-) func(talk) 03:34, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm certainly not kidding. The implementation would be trivial. I'm going to suggest it to Tim. Mintguy (T) 14:12, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I made a similar suggestion on one of the mailing lists a few weeks ago, and it was rejected, even after forceful argument on my part. The objectors, which include Jimbo, feel that the variety of spellings and such enrich Wikipedia by teaching people about different spellings, that tagging the problematic words would be a waste of time/make the wikitext too hard to edit, and that the differences were too complicated/not great enough to implement a workable solution. In all, I didn't find any of these arguments to be particularly persuasive, but I was the only one arguing for this solution, so I ultimately gave up. To cope with my frustration, I went on to code a great solution to the problem of displaying pronunciations in different formats, but no one has really looked at it or committed it to CVS, and anyone who can is not likely to anytime in the near future. In sum, if your idea doesn't fit in with the developers' ideas of what's important to work on, whether it's just a proposal or a working code solution, it's not going to get implemented on Wikipedia. In all, a frustrating experience. Sorry for the rant, but I had to get it off my chest. Nohat 07:40, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I totally agree with the position here ascribed to Jimbo and others who opposed you, even though your exposition of their positions probably does not do them justice. I totally agree. In the global village people see various spellings of words every day. British authors sell in the U.S. and American authors sell in Britain. People mostly don't notice the spelling differences when reading for information. It is a non-problem. Leave it alone. And I'm not a developer. But I don't want a solution that is worse than the supposed problem. Variant spellings of words are not neatly divided into American spellings and British spellings. Many variant spellings are acceptable in both the U.S. and in Britain. Dictionaries are often very misleading. An American dictionary will list a variant spelling as British, but not indicate that it is less common in Britain than the American spelling. The reverse is true of British dictionaries. Esthetic is an acceptable spelling in American English, but most use aesthetic. Connexion is an acceptable spelling in British English, but connection is more common. In each case both versions are acceptable. Your software would also have to deal with spellings used in quotations and names where spelling should not be changed (except that some groups and organizations have official variant spellings of their names). And there are words which have variant spellings for some meanings but not for others. Will your software know when to change practise into practice, check into cheque, metre into meter and when to leave them alone? Of course, you could implement tagging. But who's supposed to do more tagging and more tagging and more tagging to solve what you believe is a problem but which many of the people you argued with see as a virtue. Jallan 04:23, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

At the moment the Wikipedia policy in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style says - "Each article should have uniform spelling and not a haphazard mix of different spellings (it can be jarring to the reader). In particular, for individual words and word-endings. For example, do not use center (American) in one place and centre (British) in another" - thus at the moment, most articles appear in only one variant of spelling and as there are more American editors than non-American editors most of the articles appear in American English. Many articles that are written in British English gradually get turned into American English and a lot of non-Americans resent this. See m:Guerilla UK spelling campaign for a humorous take on this. If the tagging that I've suggested above is implemented, everyone is happy. You can view all the articles in your own preference of AE or BE if you like or you if you don't care and wish to select "no preference" you can do so. Perhaps we could have an additional tag that could be placed on all articles that would indicate what the default should be for that particular article (i.e. British subjects with BE and American subjects with AE (as the MoS suggests) and we could leave other articles without tagging. Mintguy (T) 04:54, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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No. Everyone will not be happy with a bothersome tagging scheme. Why should they? Who will benefit from it? The most common users of Wikipedia are non-editors looking up material, people who will never edit here or will limit themselves to very occasional editing. Your tagging is of no use to them. But these are the people whom the encyclopedia is being created for. Efforts should go to making it better for the users, not for the spelling preferences of a few editors.

Editors who have logged in mostly use the defaults. In my opinion an editor should normally use the default settings and see Wikipedia just as the overwhelming majority of users see it. But there are a small group of editors who use customized settings, and a smaller group among those who would select for particular spellings. How many of these would there be? One hundred, fifty, ten? Why think of suggesting a complex system of tagging on every article in Wikipedia to create an environment to allow two for separate systems of spelling for the sole benefit of a few who can't stomach the real-world web environment and real-world book environment of acceptable variant spellings in the United States, Great Britain, and in other countries. Tagging all the necessary words in every article in Wikipedia would be an enormous amount of work only to allow a choice that most people would never see.

And a system with only two choices at most for each word would be a fraud. Learn something about the varieties of English spelling. Who is going to decide which precise spelling of a word with more than two variations is the correct one in American English or British English ... if only two choices are to be allowed in place of the multple choices currently allowed. (Should Australians, Canadians, New Zelanders, and South Africans be banned from such discussions?) For supposed British spellings, do you follow the preferred spellings of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, generally recommended world wide in academic style guides for "International English", or do you go with a dictionary from Collins or some other publisher?

Jallan 20:31, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You have no vision. The implementation of tagging would take place on an ad-hoc basis. I am not suggesting that this "monumental task" would be anything other than implmented by those editors who see a need for alternative spellings for individual words within in any particular individual article. I'm not proposing that we go about systematically tagging all disputable words or phrases in every single article. It would merely be an adjunct to the current system of allowing users to choose how they wish to have dates represented when they view pages. The current date formatting preference setting suffers from the problem that it only works with wikified dates. As for your comment about different forms of English there is no International_English. That's why we don't have an article on it. You say "Should Australians, Canadians, New Zelanders, and South Africans be banned from such discussions?" No because they use Commonwealth English, which for the most part is equivalent to British English. Do we folow Concise Oxford English Dictionary?- No because that is not a British English dictionary, it gives American English spellings and usage just as much space as BE spellings and usage. The point is my suggestion would just give users the option to view articles in a preferred style if they chose to do so. It's about choice. Mintguy (T) 10:37, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The current system of Wikifying all dates broke the policy of only flagging important dates for no benefit that I can see. Who had any trouble understanding dates regardless of how presented? As to International English, the term is widely used to mean non-American English. See British English:

In such context the written form is sometimes called International English, since few other English-speaking countries have adopted the changes in spelling introduced by nineteenth century US lexicographers.

Also Spelling reform:

cancelled became canceled (single-L common in American English; double-L common in International English).

You may not like the usage, but it exists. It is ambiguous, as the term is also widely used to mean English of a kind likely to be understood by any English speaker and also for a particular kind of simplified spelling. Commonwealth English is less ambiguous. But as to it being "for the most part equivalent to British English", American English is also "for the most part equivalent to British English". You can sometimes go for pages and pages in a book with no indication in the spelling to indicate whether the author is using some form of British English spelling or some form of American English spelling or something else. As to your comments on the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, most dictionaries that I am familiar with (outside of the most abridged) also give special meanings and spellings that a reader is likely to encounter outside of the form of English for which the dictioary is intended.) But "OED-English" generally prefers spelling words like organize/organise with z rather than with s (and not because it is especially following American usage).) See [5]. This is a spelling convention used by the Encyclopaedia Britannica and by numerous publishing houses and journals, especially those publishing academic maerial. For example, check the English in most Penguin books written by British authors containing translations or non-fictional material. See, for example the recommendations of the South African Photogrammetry and Geo-Information Society at [6] which uses such z spellings though the s spellings are more generally used in South Africa. In Canadian English the z spellings are far, far more normal. This differences cuts across your "Commonwealth English" and suggestion of only two ways of spelling. Oxford style is the choice of many writers and publishing houses for "Commonwealth English", especially university publishing houses and such as: [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15]. There is no single Commonwealth English spelling. Canadian use is divided about equally on the use of color over colour and so with other words of that kind. Both spellings are accepted, just as both the '-ise' and '-ize' spellings are acceptable in British English. The Canadian Oxford English Dictionary gives colour as preferred and the Gage Dictionary of Canadian English gives color as preferred. (But both dictionaries prefer centre to center.) Both dictionaries are used as standard references by different publishing houses. Few make much of a fuss about it in Canada. Currently, under Wikipedia rules, all these methods of spellings are equally acceptable. Your proposal reduces this to a choice between some particular version of American English that you have not defined and — an unrevealed system of British English spellings you personally prefer. That is not much of a choice. It looks more like an attempt to promote one particular form of English. You probably do not realize the variations in spelling that occur. Most people don't, partly because most people don't notice them most of the time when reading for information. But any two-choice system of spelling between an imaginary standard American and an imaginary standard British cannot model the common divergence and freedom of choice that exists.
Jallan 04:05, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

International relations on Wikipedia

I don’t know whether to vent, plea, preach or what.

I’ve been here less than two months, but it’s going downhill, perhaps much of the problem triggered by a comma.

My guess is that part of the reason Wikepedia is intended to be international is the hope of fostering fellowship, or at least something akin to it, and not rivalry or uniformity.

But controversies erupt over petty matters.

I’d like to urge that the motto “Be bold!” be tempered with patience and at least initial assumption of good faith. Etc.

I’ve raised a question at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, with the hope of avoiding or reducing alphabetic rivalry concerning countries.

Anyone who wants to discuss the possibility of improving international relations within Wikipedia is invited to my talk page. Or we could make Wikipedia page if you think that’s a better idea.

To those of you who work toward the community aspect of the Wikipedia, I thank you.

Tangentially, about controversies in general, perhaps something more can be done to prevent or reduce the bad driving out the good. I mean, maybe Wikipedia should do more to prevent or reduce volitality. Or maybe not. Maurreen 07:18, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(sections above this (and below the previous tag) were archived on 10:33, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC))

Poll without discussion

There is a poll at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style about the abbreviation "U.S." and serial commas. But the poll was not preceded by any discussion. Maurreen 06:34, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Foreskin fetish - Should this article even exist?

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Should the foreskin fetish article even exist on Wikipedia? Should there also be a circumcision fetish article? -- DanBlackham 18:20, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(I really need to stay out of these circ discussions...) I assume you are concerned about the first sentence of the second paragraph: "This fetish is often found among those who indulge in the body modification practices of foreskin stretching or foreskin restoration." I did some google searches:

"foreskin fetish"                     7,850 hits
"foreskin fetish" +restoration          101 hits
"foreskin fetish" +stretching           292 hits

"circumcision fetish"                 2,270 hits

Additional information on the peculiar interest in the foreskin

"foreskin fetish"  -- 8,240              "circumcision fetish"  -- 2,560
"foreskin worship" --   453              "circumcision worship" --    58
"foreskin love"    --   186              "circumcision love"    --    78
"foreskin lover"   --   823              "circumcision lover"   --     9
"foreskin lovers"  -- 2,280              "circumcision lovers"  --     9
"foreskin fan"     --   131              "circumcision fan"     --     4

And the skins have it ... by about four to one. - Robert the Bruce 04:48, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

After doing some spot-checking on the relevancy of the hits, (and no, I wasn't turned on by any of it ;-) ), I think there is more than enough evidence to support encyclopedic articles on both foreskin fetish and on circumcision fetish, while there is not enough evidence that the circumcision debate is a notable aspect of these fetishes. Like all fetishes, they are sexual obsessions, and not political choices. The problem, of course, is that any and every article on Wikipedia that has anything to do with the penis ultimetly comes under attack by this circ-debate nonsense. func(talk) 01:01, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• There is no doubt that both types of fetish exist and should be represented by articles on Wikipedia (even though foreskin variety has it by 3.5 times on the other). What is of interest here though is the resistance to an article on Foreskin fetish being included. One has to ask what have those who have tried to delete it/covert it to a stub of sorts got to hide. - Robert the Bruce 04:19, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have been aware of this article for months. I let Robert Brookes have his fun because I figured his fun would distract him so he would not cause so much trouble elsewhere. This is my analysis:

1. Its name should be præputial philia
2. Although I believe that all possible paraphilias exist, and I know that this paraphilia exists, I would say that <1% of restorer and intactivists have this paraphilia
3. Although I have no experience with people with this paraphilia I doubt that >1% are either intactivists or restorers

After removing that garbage, the article would read:

"Præputial Philia is sexual attraction to the præpuce"

Since the predicate contains no information not found in the subject, we might as well delete it.

Do what you will, I do not care either way about the article.

Ŭalabio 04:36, 2004 Nov 2 (UTC)

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Of course Walabio would like to call it something like "præputial philia", he is extremely fond of using words that less than 1% of all people have ever heard before. func(talk) 04:46, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

¡It is not true that <1% people ever heard of præputial philia! ¡None ever heard about præputial philia because I just coined the term today!  ;-) Ŭalabio 05:44, 2004 Nov 2 (UTC)

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The foreskin fetish article seems to be little more than a platform for Robert's ad hominem attacks on people who do not agree with his pro-circumcision POV. Since most of the men in the world have not had a normal part of their penis cut off it does not surprise me that "foreskin fetish" has more Google hits than "circumcision fetish". However "clitoris fetish" has even more Google hits. It looks like Wikipedia needs a clitoris fetish article too.

"clitoris fetish"  14,000 hits

By the way both the foreskin fetish and circumcision fetish articles probably should be moved to foreskin fetishism and circumcision fetishism to be consistent with the other sexual fetishism articles. -- DanBlackham 09:24, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(sections above this (and below the previous tag) were archived on 10:15, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC))

Improved Presidential Seal on Main_Page

Imagine the trembling of my hands as I deliberately uploaded a new version of an image (with transparency) that was in use on the main page! I think it's a big improvement, although I'm still not 100% happy with the edge pixels. You might need to Shift-Refresh to reload the new image if it's already in your cache. PhilHibbs 16:15, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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1911 typos

While helping with WikiSyntax brackets fix i noticed that some articles copypasted from 1911 encyclopedia contains OCR-related typos like 'l'→']' (yep, it's just copy, they're in the original texts too). Should the 1911 articles be looked at by the typo department ? - JohnyDog 23:26, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Might be worth a look, but many of these have been fixed in this respect. The worst problems usually come on foreign words and ligatures, which the OCR usually does not recognize. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:59, Oct 31, 2004 (UTC)

A plea against "fancruft"

I'd just like to ask that people on wp:vfd please remember that civility means civility to all. Specifically, I'd like to ask one thing--can we remove "fancruft" from our collective vocabularies?

After thinking about it for a time, I've come to the conclusion that the word serves no purpose that is not pejorative. For example, compare these two articles. One is Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/John Boone; the other, found at User:Meelar/A nicer VfD, is the same text, but with "fancruft" replaced in all instances by "non-notable". Aside from a few easily fixable things, there is no meaning lost--but the whole thing, viewed from an observer's perspective, seems much less contemptous.

Is there any reason to maintain "fancruft" in favor of alternatives that are less offensive to the person whose prose is being considered? I don't think there is. I'd ask people to keep this in mind, and avoid using "fancruft", instead substituting non-pejorative alternatives.

Thank you, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 21:04, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

I second that emotion. Catherine | talk 07:37, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've literally never used the word, but I disagree that it's useless. It tends to give me a clue that not only is there a claim that this is non-notable, but that it's not going to turn out to be (for example) an academic or a school that I may think merits an article. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:48, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I suppose there are usable replacements. Articles that could only be of interest to devotees of one particular game/book/band/OS and which are utterly useless to anyone else, and which make Wikipedia look like a everyone's worst stereotype of a Star Trek convention. Hm. A bit wordy, perhaps. I think a better approach to this would be a header on every f*ncr*ft (hey, that looks good) page, for example {{pokemon}}, that would expand to "This information is specific to Pokemon (game) and is not to be interpreted as factual in any other context." And then add the ability to filter out categories from Special:Randompage so that people can not be bothered by fanboy clutter. Signed, someone who can tell you every detail of every ST:TOS episode and every lyric to every pre-1976 Bob Dylan song. --jpgordon{gab} 15:40, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm trying to think of a way to say this while coming off as polite. The above comments are precisely why I don't like the term fancruft—it implies exactly the sort of comments you just made, which I, and many others, find deeply offensive. Personally, I think that it's bad articles we should be fighting, not articles on subject matters which some people find uninteresting and insignificant. Be that as it may, when you (and others) make comments such as "this is giving Wikipedia a bad reputation" and "this is only of interest to fanboys" (note that the latter term is considered extremely derogatory in some circles—even aside from the blatant gender stereotyping), my (and many people's) knee-jerk reaction is to arm for war, even though most of the time you are not referring to anything that I have done. It's just not conducive to intelligent, rational, conversation in the spirit of cooperation.

Most fans want to make the articles here better. Personally, I'm tired of being afraid to edit Middle-earth articles for fear that someone will notice them and plop them on VFD. I would much prefer for everyone to take us seriously, and I am diligently (but slowly—it has to be slow, because some people feel strongly about this) improving articles and merging and removing irrelevant information. Many fans would like to work with you on this, but throwing around terms like fancruft makes it difficult for us to work together. [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 21:46, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think that the attempts above to come up with alternatives above are revealing. Articles that could only be of interest to devotees... everyone's worst stereotype of a Star Trek convention... Well, I don't think I'm a devotee, as I haven't seen any of the movies or anything beyond the original series, but even I found the trilithium article interesting. What I think the writer means is simply that they aren't personally interested in these details. And fair enough, and that's probably what fancruft means too, in which case it's not a valid reason for deletion. I don't think votes that give no valid reasons should be completely ignored, but I'd give a little more weight to a vote that gave no reasons at all than to one that gave an invalid reason such as this. Food for thought? Andrewa 13:30, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

People deleting articles because they seemingly of interest to no-one or a small group of people should not be encouraged. It does happen currently - and is by no means limited to articles about fictional subjects. People seem to a) forget that Wikipedia is not paper and b) forget that we don't insist on deleting bad articles, rather improving them (irregardless of the dire state of Cleanup). Until we decide that a poorly written article should be deleted rather than improved, I would really like to see people leave VfD for the real cases for deletion. zoney ♣ talk 15:50, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, while we're at it, let's get rid of 'notability', which is just another term for 'I'm not interested'. We will not improve Wikipedia's coverage of more weighty subjects by deleting good coverage of factual material of interest to a minority. Intrigue 19:45, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• As I have tried to stress in my own VfDs, I believe non-notable articles of popular culture - hey, that works - deserve deletion, no matter what my personal thoughts are on their subject. I've pressed for the deletion of such articles based around Futurama, which I love with a passion, and I could probably write a dozen articles of such magnitude on it. However, I also love Wikipedia, and I still feel its credibility is hindered by such inconsequential articles. Not the "beyond fan knowledge/importance" stuff, mind you - Meelar will attest to you that I just did some extensive work on Kefka, the villain from Final Fantasy VI. But I don't feel minutiae has a place here. I will continue to VfD said articles, but this was an intelligent, civil request with a proper reason behind it, so I will try to heed it. At the same time I realize I haven't always been the nicest guy about my VfDs, but I'm also very passionate on this particular issue. I'll tone it down. Ian Pugh 00:43, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps the relevant criterion here is not so much "notable" vs. "non-notable" but "public" vs. "private". An article describing well-established facts, with publicly available references, is appropriate ... even if it's about a fictional universe of interest only to a few people. An article about my left foot, on the other hand, would be deleted because the sources of information — presumably, only myself and my close friends — are neither public nor well-established as credible. —Steven G. Johnson 23:30, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

If I may suggest that whilst not personally acquainted with your left foot I believe that the larger of the toes likes going to market often on behalf of him and his neghbour. The middle one is a glutton for roast beef. The one to the left may be vegetarian and the smallest behaves like a mental patient. Is this true? Dainamo 12:20, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Google Corp. or Inc.

I just split Google the company and Google the search engine into 2 separate articles (still working out some details) but I'm not sure about...

• What the best article name or how to refer to Google the company it it...Google Corporation, Google (company) (the current one), Google Inc.. To tell you the truth I don't really know the difference between Inc. and Corp. The wikipedia article on Inc. redirects to Corp. The stock ticker for GOOG lists it as Google Inc.

I have fixed the company article so it uses the correct "Inc.". I don't know if/how the terms are used in other countries, but in the US, Corporation/Corp. and Incorporated/Inc. are entirely synonymous--the correct one being whichever the company chose as part of it's formal name, which in Google's case is the latter, and I have editted the article to reflect that (along with a bunch of typos). Having Google disambiguate to two separate articles doesn't make much sense, and I have a slight preference for Google (company) over Google, Inc., if for no other reason than that gets into whether to include the period, and I think Wikipedia articles are more likely to be without, but I'm pretty sure its appearance is inconsistent, so I think the names currently in use are fine. Niteowlneils 02:23, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• I'm having some problems deciding where the boundary between the two articles is drawn (Ex. is Froogle separate from Google search). Should there be duplicate information on the two pages to make the site easier to navigate or should the boundary be firmly defined? Much of the Google (company) text was cut from the Google article. BrokenSegue 20:24, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"Google Inc." sounds reasonable. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 21:00, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

If they're going to be divided, I would suggest Google (company) and Google (search engine). Maurreen 21:42, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Bad idea. More people will want the search engine than the company. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 22:27, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

I would make the boundary between their websites, and the company that makes the websites. Niteowlneils 02:23, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

As for whether or not to split the article, I see no reason not to follow the guidelines at Wikipedia:Article size. The full article is 36K, so it should be split. As for where to split the article, I'd say Google, Google search engine, Google services, and Google tools. Keep a brief summary of each, and move the rest of the section over. anthony (see warning) 02:54, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The article was already split. My boundary line was things go one the corporate site if it is not a search technology or it is not easily found on Google.com BrokenSegue 15:26, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You'll recall that 32k limit was around for archaic browsers and when we didn't have section-editing. Nowadays that limit is routinely broken (I imagine a big chunk of featured articles breach the limit for example). The decision is all about how long an article feels, whether it is cohesive and on a well-defined topic. I would certainly suggest a single well sectioned article on Google would be the way to go. The split into "Google the search engine" and "Google the company" at the moment is a mess (lots of duplication) though I suppose the demerger is still in progress. Pcb21| Pete 16:48, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The 32k limit may be arbitrary and out-dated, but I think there should be some limit--ever tried to read or edit the 128k List of craters on the Moon, or the 91k List of asteroids (18001-19000). Niteowlneils 21:18, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There is an on-going discussion about the "limit" in Wikipedia talk: Featured article candidates, since a number of recent candidates have fallen in the range 32-50k. The debate is whether these articles should be accepted as they are, or broken up to meet the "32k maximum" policy set out in Wikipedia:Article size. -- ALoan (Talk) 21:22, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Category:Years in fashion

I'm not really opposed to this budding new collection of "Year in..." articles, but all the ones I looked at are simply a single image of one type of European/Western womenswear, with a caption, but no other content or context. I'm really getting concerned about the proliferation of micro-stubs. Random ones here and there by anons is OK, but when (mostly) newer Wikipedians create a series of dozens, or even hundreds, of one or two sentence articles, it really over-taxes New Pages and Recent Changes patrol. It's getting to the point I thinking of suggesting that a series of articles under 300 bytes be speedy candidates, even tho' many would probably consider that Wiki-heresy. A series of record albums that contained nothing but a 'see also' and a category tag were recently speedied for lack of content/context. Niteowlneils 03:18, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Indeed I do consider it wiki-heresy to suggest deleting all articles under 300 bytes. Wikipedia is not tidy, and won't be. I mean, if one piece of info other than the title is imparted, then one can't blanket delete. Certainly in many cases it's untidy, because usually the information should be merged or expanded, as it's not much better than a red link. But there's no way one can just delete them all and insist on red links rather than solitary facts. It's not clear to me how we can avoid Wikipedia being full of "untidiness". zoney ♣ talk 16:03, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Maybe 300 bytes is too extreme, but my issue is that 6-word articles like "so and so is a venetian sculptor" (yes, real example from page I recently found on New Pages--don't want to say the name, because my beef is not with that contributor, so much as for a system that accepts, and in some ways even encourages, such submissions) repeated for 100 different people doesn't really add much to Wikipedia, but seriously overloads new pages and recent changes patrol (they probably would get speedied from an IP, but reg'd users are submitting them). The quality of Wikipedia has dropped quite a bit since I started hanging around 7-8 months ago, and I firmly believe it is because the number of microstub contributors has increased at a much faster rate than the number of people willing to do housekeeping. Far fewer new submissions and changes are being reviewed, meaning we are collecting more junk and vandalism than we used to (and I believe this problem will continue to increase unless steps are taken to head it off). I guess, at a minimum, we could come up with a policy saying microstubs aren't appreciated, and we could point repeat offenders to it, and make a friendly suggestion that they go for quality instead of quantity. Niteowlneils 02:50, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Of course, the sheer volume of wikipedia increases rapidly so does stubs or articles needing cleanup. But the question, I think, is does it mean the quality of wikipedia has been deteriated. I've been here since Dec 31, 2002. At that time, there were certainly far fewer claps than now but at the same time, there were very few good articles. At least, the improvement in Japan-related articles, which I contribute a lot, is amazingly speechless. While there are quite a few stuby stubs, most of which I am responsible, now we have quite good coverage of topics and decent articles--dozens of articles about major cities, political figures, culture, historical events and figures to name but a few, or and that loads of subcultural topics, the situation in which I cannot completely comprehend. As a comparatively longtime contributor, we are making a progress undoubtedly in terms of both quality and breadth.

The stats also tells an interesting story. According to [16], now each article has an average of 15 edits--2 years ago that was 4.9. This is a concrete fact that each article is receiving much more edits. Also, the mean size of an article is 2351, two years ago, 1902. The claim we are proportionally having smaller and fewer-edited articles is just not true. I understand many people get such an impression but the numbers and the long term view tell a different story.

True, we must strive to do better. Indeed, I am myself an advocate of adding more quality-control measures. We have things like abtration committes now but they are not meant to maintain the quality. As you said, one major problem is that there are just too many articles that are created by one person and stay without any scrutiny by any single other person--meaning any rubbish can be a part of wikipedia. Not only does it take time to clean up them, but it makes wikipedia looks bad, producing bad publiclity.

Wikipedia 1.0, a print edition of wikipedia, is an imporant step for us, as wikipedia is an attempt to create a free encyclopedia not just a bunch of useful information on the Internet. And it is a good opportunity for us to review our editing process and create some new systems. I believe wiki is a great way to create new articles but not is doing adequate job to maintain the quality. Although Wikipedia is often cited as an successful example of open-source development, it differs considerably in some points. Many open source projects have maintaniers and rigorous mechanism to review submitted changes and patches. Linus doesn't just apply any single patch he receives.

Of course, one concern is any restriction makes contributors, especially newcomers feel unwelcomed. It is not groundless at all. The failure of Nupedia must not be forgotten. People like to write more rather than revert and delete and those who write a lot are more likened than those who revert or delete a lot. It is also quite unproductive check facts carefully by doing things like going to the library instead of just getting information via googling. People create what you and some other call microstubs because it is quick and it is not allowed to do, they just walk away from wikipedia. They do what they can do and for many, creating undecent, stuby stubs is all they can. Remember not everyone is a decent writer and has a great access to scholarstic resources.

One solution I have been thinking of is to adopt more conventional practices that have long been around in academia. Scholars do peer reviews, not because they love to find errors in someone else's works but because those works are noted and contribute to their evaluation. It is the same as that students work hard for better grades. In wikipedia, sadly, careful checking and deleting groundless claims earn almost no point and worse, more times than needed put you in trouble. You are, understandly required to justify why you are reverting others' works and it is not uncommon to find difficult to teach morons. Everyone can write means any opinion from clueless freshmen is counted equally as one from a PhD professor. In wikipedia, a game is to write more and more and edit more and more, instead of striving for the truth, because those are what counts.

Any work of peer reviews, however, is never noted. You check articles in the watch-list and if you agree with new addition or edits, you are required to do nothing. And so no one will know you have checked the birthdate of the person is correct by googling or visting to the library. The growth in wikipedia is measured by the number of articles and the number of edits--not in the quality in some concrete manner. In sum, there is little incensive for quality--far less than for quantity.

Perhaps, in termiology of open source, testers are not as respected as coders here, because we don't have a concrete measurement of number of bugs. In here, it is not so fun as in open source projects to kill bugs than writing about new topics.

It's time for bed. If you find I am not making any sense, I am sorry about it. If this gives you some idea, I'm glad.

-- 05:30, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, many articles have improved greatly, and coverage has expanded. However, I spend 99% of my time on Wikipedia on 'housekeeping'--I've been doing New Pages patrol for 4-5 months, with 2-3 months of Recent Changes patrol before that, and, where I used to edit few articles, I now find myself editting something like 3/4s of them (or sending to VfD, needy, cleanup, etc.). I remain convinced that the proportion of unwikified, unformatted, unreviewed, etc. articles/edits has greatly increased in the past 6 months or so.

This is a bit off topic, but a recent project led me to discover that Wikipedia remains surprisingly and disappointingly US-centric. Of the first 50 disamb pages I made based on the list at User:SirJective/tmp_b, I doubt even 5 had any non-US related entries.

Well, considering that User:SirJective/tmp_b was specifically intended to identify U.S. places that might need a disambiguation page, the US-centrism of the list really shouldn't be a surprise. older≠wiser 21:02, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

True to a point, but given how many US towns are named after places in other countries, adjectives in other languages, and things like geological formations, I still think there should have been more matches. For example, it is difficult for me to believe there is no place outside the US with "Natural Bridge" as part of the name. Niteowlneils 00:40, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, we don't want to scare off newcomers. That is why I have never suggested any sanctions/policies against one-off microstubs. My focus is on the people who continue to contribute dozens of 6-20 word articles that they never return to expand. Even language challenged authors, writing about obscure topics, should be able to find more than 6 words to write about an encyclopedic topic.

Yes, I agree part of the problem is great recognition of quantity of articles/edits, and little recognition of 'testing'/peer review/cleanup, etc.

Also note that I am not comparing the current state to two years ago--that may well show an overall improvement. I am comparing it to just 6 months ago, over which time I think the proportion of undetected problematic articles/edits has increased. Niteowlneils 19:58, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

GNAA Popeye

I have noticed that GNAA Popeye has been blocked indefinitely. I would like to know what the reasons for his blocking were. According to the block log, the reasons were "changing around people's comments, not [being] a legit contributor, and [that] GNAA announced a victory over Wikipedia." On the other hand, on my talk page it has been stated that he was banned for vandalism on my page.

I didn't find a case of him "changing comments around" (unless he is responsible for the sockpuppet accounts sabotaging the VfD process), and the only his vandalism on my talk page consists of writing EOF at its end (again, unless he is responsible for the rest of the edits; I do not believe that they were so offensive to warrant a permanent ban.)

I'd like to know what were the reasons for his blocking; if he was blocked in violation of the policy, he may be unblocked.

Sincerely, Mike Rosoft 12:37, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'll second this. As far as I can tell, his conduct within Wikipedia has been fine. And some Wikipedians' conduct toward him -- e.g. reworking a VfD page to make it look like he had proposed deleting Wikipedia:Wikipedians, when in fact he had proposed deleting Wikipedian -- has not been. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:10, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

User:GNAA Popeye has probably not done much wrong (besides being annoying, juvenile, and sometimes outright insulting, apparently inviting hordes of friends to ballot-stuff this VfD page, and generally behaving rather troll-like (though superficially exhibiting an exquisite courteousness) in his relentless efforts to defend this self-promotional "article"). In a word, he's a major pain in the arse, but that is not suffient for blocking. Kosebamse 18:39, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I unblocked him for this reason. Mark Richards 19:06, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Reblocked. silsor 22:02, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

According to the GNAA talk page, he was blocked for disrupting Wikipedia with http://www.gnaa.us/pr.phtml?troll=gnaa-wikipedia this article. — David Remahl 19:15, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Can someone be blocked for writing articles outside Wikipedia? Intrigue 21:02, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No, but they can be blocked for trolling Wikipedia. silsor 22:08, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

Oct 15 00:23:21 <Popeye>        my weekend getaway is trolling wikipedia and browsing hentai on 4chan.

silsor 21:58, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

So someone can be blocked for saying they troll Wikipedia? Paul August 18:09, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

And apparently also for having a sense of humor, since it's pretty obvious that almost nothing he says on his user page is true. -- 18:37, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

No, for actually trolling Wikipedia. silsor 08:21, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be helpful if you cited the exact pages which are the evidence for this. Paul August 19:34, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

See his "contribs." [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 19:38, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

Can someone explain exactly why he was blocked? As we all know, 'trolling' is not a sufficient reason. Mark Richards 19:44, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

On the contrary, I believe deliberately trolling the Wikipedia community is sufficient grounds for blocking. silsor 03:06, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

Does anyone else share this interpretation of the blocking policy? This blocking seems a blatant abuse of administrator rights to me. I strongly oppose the idea that deliberately trolling the Wikipedia community outside Wikipedia should be sufficient grounds for blocking. If it is outside Wikipedia, what is blocking the user from Wikipedia supposed to solve? And according to the policy, "disruption is to be objectively defined by specific policies". Where is your objective definitiion? --Sam Hocevar 19:46, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If you feel strongly enough about this, consider a RFC against Silsor. Susvolans 10:47, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I consider RFCs hostile moves. I really hope Silsor can either be reasoned or provide objective justification. This kind of "preemptive strike" sets a very bad precedent, if people can be banned at will for what may (or may not) happen outside Wikipedia. --Sam Hocevar 18:37, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I would like some clarification on our blocking policy. Specifically I'd like to know:

1. Can you be blocked for "trolling" and if so what is the definition for "trolling"?
2. What were the specific reasons for the block of this user? As I said above I think it would be helpful to know the specific edits which were the reasons for the block and reblock.

Paul August 15:37, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

Vandals

Wasn't there once a page listing IPs of known vandals? I tried to find a link to it, and turned up nothing. If there isn't, and I only dreamed of it, I think it would be quite useful. --Smack 06:11, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress? Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 06:25, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Image from photography.mojado.com

The images which come from photography.mojado.com, have a wrong message of license information, it's not {{cc-by-2.0}} but {{Cc-by-nd}}. Maybe a bot could do this. The images could be find there. 83.156.30.9 12:54, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

portal

the french Wikipedia and the german Wikipedia have Specialised portal one example http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A9gorie:Wikip%C3%A9dia:Portail http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie:Portal do you have something like this ? --212.195.110.2 13:36, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Press Release for Chinese art

I'm not sure how to go about this, but I think we should have a press release for this article. The article was originally nominated to be COTW because Encyclopedia Britannica was critical its length. The Guardian quoted the editors of Encyclopedia Brittanica as saying: "People write on things they're interested in, and so many subjects don't get covered; and news events get covered in great detail. The entry on Hurricane Frances is five times the length of that on Chinese art, and the entry on Coronation Street is twice as long as the article on Tony Blair." [17] — J3ff 10:06, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's clearly not done yet, as you can see from the {{merge}} header. Wait until it has passed WP:FAC before making a press release about it. (In any case, I doubt the wisdom of responding to this kind of criticism as (1) Britannica can always come up with another pair of articles to shame Wikipedia with; and (2) the criticism that Wikipedia is bad because one article is longer than another is just plain dumb: it may be that Tony Blair is inadequate in some way, but finding another article that's longer is not evidence of that. Wikipedia is not paper where coverage ought to be proportional to importance in order to fairly allocate a limited number of pages.) Gdr 19:50, 2004 Nov 28 (UTC)

First, I agree with Gdr that a press release is not called for at this time. The COTW has certainly made the article longer, but the complaint about the relative length of the Chinese Art page as compared to the Hurricane Frances article was merely drawing attention to one of many symptoms of an immature article. I don't mean to devalue the many contributions, especially during the past week, but the article is clearly not in a presentable shape yet, IMHO: the treatment of the many topics covered in the article is quite uneven and the prose is lacking in overall coherence. A press release at this point in time might simply result in another round of criticism, which, while welcome, would be handled better internally.

Second, I'm not sure if it's wise to respond to every instance of criticism (legitimate, in this case) with a press release saying, essentially, "look, we fixed it!" That's an uphill battle, since the nature and sheer size of WP make it easy to find large quantities of articles that would never make it into a "respectable" printed encyclopedia. Also, a press release would have to be crafted rather carefully to avoid sounding like WP is on the defensive. Perhaps it's best to acknowledge privately that the EB people put forth some valid criticism that is being addressed right now and leave it at that. --MarkSweep 22:55, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

We should be extremely careful with the Blair article, since it is imo a highly POV hagiography. As I have no wish to get involved in a long and tedious edit war with a number of Labour party apparatchiks I have made only marginal revisions where the truth was being entirely stretched out of shape, but before we go shouting our mouths off about this article, it needs some serious work. And actually, from a point of view of relevance, I have this gut feeling that over time Corrie will prove to be ineffably more influential than the American puppet incumbent of 10 Downing Street. Sjc 06:54, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Terrorist group"

We could use having some people weigh in at Talk:Shining_Path#Quick_poll as to whether it is appropriate for the lead of the article Shining Path to mention that the U.S. State Dep't considers them terrorists. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:52, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)