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Attention all inclusionists!

I repeat, ATTENTION ALL INCLUSIONISTS!


Fellow inclusionists,

The situation has grown more dire since the last time I addressed you. The encroaching hordes of deletionists at Votes for deletion are growing more, not less, rabid by the day and the time has come to put a stop to it. We must do battle on this territory which heretofore has been assumed to be irrevocably held in the clutches of the enemy. Some cases in point:

  • Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Kefka's Revenge. Kefka's Revenge has numerous Altavista hits revealing that it is a title that has been reviewed in serious online game publications, and thus there is enough information out there for other contributors to flesh out this article and improve it. This is not just some fangame written by some loser in a basement, that nobody ever heard of. Although the game is still in development, is that any reason to delete the article pre-emptively? Should we also delete the article on the U.S. presidential election, 2008 because the full event has not yet come to fruition? Wikipedia is supposed to be on the cutting edge.
  • Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Barefoot and pregnant. A near-miss; a brave band of intrepid inclusionists arrived just in time to rescue this defenseless article from the jagged, filthy claws of the evil deletionists who had ganged up and brutally assaulted it. We must give the poor, meek stubs of our Wikipedia time to expand, my friends! Do not destroy the barely-germinated plant before it has had time to grow, and flourish, and mature into a beautiful article. Unfortunately, words will not sway these demonic foes. Force is the only language they will understand, and we must force our way with Keep votes.

Familiarize yourselves with the doctrine of inclusionism. Memorize the principles! Propagate them worldwide. Do not let your loved ones be lost to the deception of the enemy, who would taint our children with their fiendish ideology. Our foes will soon know that a spectre is haunting Wikipedia – the spectre of INCLUSIONISM!

Friends, now is the time to come forth to do battle against the enemy. We must marshal our forces at once. Now is no time to be cowardly in the face of those whose vicious ideology would lead them to pare down our encyclopedia to whatever is banal, mainstream, and popularly reported in the media. In an Orwellian turn, they would transform the word "notable" to mean whatever subjects they, in their piddly, limited experience, happen to have heard of. We must not stand for this any longer. As they say in Hotel Rwanda, "We must exterminate these cockroaches! CUT DOWN THE TALL TREES NOW!"

Your leader,

Colonel Gazpacho 14:21, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

The above posted by Quaalusionist (talk · contribs) - whose only edits are to their user page and here. This is a sockpuppet of somebody if ever I saw one. Thryduulf 15:31, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
Sockpuppets are not illegal. Did the founding fathers use their real names when they struck the first blows for freedom? No, they referred to themselves as Federalist #1, #2, etc. 205.217.105.2 15:43, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
Did you mean to write "As they said in Rwanda..." In any case, it is in pretty poor taste. Pcb21| Pete 15:46, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
No, I meant to write "As they say in Hotel Rwanda". It's a movie! Get a grip, deletionist! 205.217.105.2 15:49, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
What's the point in refering to the movie rather the actual event? Get a grip, troll! Pcb21| Pete 18:11, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, so I could go vote Delete for the future fantasy-ware "Kefka's Revenge", with less than 70 displayed hits and zero Alexa rank. Niteowlneils 17:47, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

And no, "Wikipedia is supposed to be on the cutting edge." is not correct--see Wikipedia:No original research. Niteowlneils 23:32, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
And, actually Seska's revenge would actually be more interesting to me. Niteowlneils 23:35, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
I am an inclusionist, but the deletionist is not an evil enemy (we simply seek different paths to the same goal), nor is every topic deserving of an article, nor is the Google Test 100% reliable. I think you'd do better to pick your battles instead of rallying your forces to raise the dead. Oh, and spare us the scary markup, for God's sake. Deco 09:03, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

I like Colonel Gazpacho's style. But halt! The enemy is not the so-called deletionists. They are but honest individuals who work for the greater good in their own way.... The real enemy is ignorance. Ignorance should be fought tooth and nail, with chainsaws of wisdom, bazookas of understanding, and Molotov cocktails of knowledge.

- Pioneer-12 09:50, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Wiki as an HTML editor

All I want is a very simple free WYSIWYG text editor that outputs HTML and will let me put things in bullets, underline, headings, strikeout, etc. I can't seem to find one, though. I don't want MS Word with it's incompatibility and filesize bloat. I don't want a plain text editor with no visual formatting, I just...

Hey, wait a second... Is there a way to use wikipedia's wiki markup rendering in a standalone fashion? With the preview button, it's almost WYSIWYG. (Or does anyone know of any software that fulfills my needs?) - Omegatron 04:13, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

I might be the wrong person to answer this, as I do most of my HTML editing in vi. I use Mozilla Composer (part of the Mozilla suite) if I want a WYSIWYG editor. For a stand-alone editor, Nvu is supposed to be reasonable. It is free, open source and cross platform. There are hundreds of HTML editors out there, just pick one from a Google search.
Using Wiki to generate HTML is probably not an optimal way to go, as Wiki doesn't support writing frames, fonts, javascript etc.-gadfium 04:46, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
Lack of frames, fonts, javascript etc is a bad thing? --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:16, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
Not to me (as you can probably tell for someone who uses vi by choice), but I know most people like that sort of thing.-gadfium 00:19, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
EditPlus is a great HTML editor. It has color syntax highlighting, built in preview, a spell-checker, and lets you making razor-sharp, non-bloated html code. And it's free. It's my favorite editor, at least. (And I've used Emacs.) ...It is "html based" rather then WYSIWYG-based though.... so it might not be your cup of tea. But I think it's worth trying.
- Pioneer-12 10:02, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
I'd agree, EditPlus is just about the best thing around. Filiocht | Blarneyman 11:30, May 6, 2005 (UTC)
No, I just want basic text formatting (although strikethrough isn't considered basic normally) and HTML output. I don't want to edit the source code. If I did, I'd just type the little tags.  :-) I thought maybe I could use the mediawiki software by itself somehow for formatting. - Omegatron 01:03, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

FineReader OCR XIX

I stumbled across an interesting product, ABBYY FineReader OCR XIX, an OCR tool by one of the leading OCR companies made specifically for recognizing older texts that are out of copyright. This seems like it could be a valuable tool for sucking in content from older works, particularly on areas where we're thin now. They even have a free trial version that will do 100 pages before expiring (and if each Wikipedian did 100 pages, we'd have a hell of a lot of content). The best part is that we don't even have to proofread the results too closely, because we can rely on the wiki effect to clean it up. Only catch is, where does one obtain these older texts? Ideally we can borrow them from libraries. Deco 18:56, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

This would be better for Wikisource, would it not? Nickptar 19:45, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
True, although I was thinking in particular of encyclopedic sources that would be useful for Wikipedia, but we can always add stuff to Wikisource and then import some of it. I guess I'm just less familiar with that project. I'll drop this note somewhere over there. Deco 20:12, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

For instance, many articles in Wikipedia are based on encyclopedias that are now in the public domain, such as [[1911_Encyclop%E6dia_Britannica]]. Therfore OCR would be helpful. --Munchkinguy 22:34, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Certainly it could be helpful for certain things, but I don't like the idea of just bulk uploading tons of content from old sources. - Omegatron 18:42, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

Why is wikipedia case sensitive?

I never understood how the search box regards capitalization. But it seems problems like this can easily be created: Cape York meteorite Cape York Meteorite (leaving up temp for illustration)

Lotsofissues 16:35, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I know, it's really annoying, and then whenever you make a new article, you have to create a lot of redirects. --Munchkinguy 18:54, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I'll point out a couple of things. In some cases sans a redirect it still goes to the right place (for example, when I typed in "ben affleck" in the search box and hit enter, it took me to the Ben Affleck page and didn't indicate there was a redirection). Also, in some cases having case sensitivity is useful. For example, crypto is an abbreviation for cryptography, but CRYPTO is a conference. CryptoDerk 19:00, May 4, 2005 (UTC)
I still don't know the formula for auto redirecting then? For those exceptional instances shouldn't we manually create a helpful notice? Lotsofissues 22:34, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm fairly sure I know what happened in this case. "M"eteorite was the first article created. The article steel links to "m"eteorite, though. So someone clicked on that link and made the article there. For example, if I were to link to ben affleck it would show up as a red link, but if you type it in the search box, you get to the right place. So, in cases where someone types a title into the search box, it'll match caps as appropriate, but wikilinking doesn't autoredirect. CryptoDerk 22:47, May 4, 2005 (UTC)
What happens is -
  • The search box searches for the capitalisation you entred first, but if it doesn't find anything it will try other capitalisations. i.e.
    • If you put "CRYPTO" into the search box it finds CRYPTO and gives you that article.
    • If you put "Crypto" into the search box it finds Crypto and gives you that article.
    • If you put "ben affleck" into the search box it can't find an article at ben affleck so it searches other capitalisations and finds Ben Affleck and gives you that article.
  • Wikipedia article titles are case sensitive apart from the first letter, which is always storred as a captial i.e.
  • Wiki links are are case sensitive, but because the first letter of the title is not case sensitive, the first letter of the wikilink effectively isn't either. i.e.
Thryduulf 23:15, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
Or Muse, MuSE, MusE, and MUSE. - Omegatron 04:15, May 5, 2005 (UTC)
None of this answers the question, which puzzles me, too. I am (very slightly) offended by the prevailing policy on capitalization; I learned the correct method of capitalizing titles and cannot see why we vary -- except that the correct method is more complex and, when case is sensitive, a game of chance for most. Thus case sensitivity forces the lowbrow "1st cap only" style -- which is immediately violated in a hundred instances: for proper names and, near as I can tell, occasional whimsy.
We already have disambiguation in instances where case plays no part; I do not see that case sensitivity aids us in any way. Surely the redirect guessing-game is senseless duplication of effort. — Xiong熊talk* 05:12, 2005 May 5 (UTC)
There isn't a correct way of capitalizing titles. Languages vary, and even different English-speaking societies have developed conflicting rules of capitalization. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:13, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
Nothing in English is perfectly standard; it is too rich for that. However, there is a generally-accepted way to capitalize titles, which I may summarize very briefly: Capitalize the first letter of the title; the first letter of each word, except for very minor words such as "the" and "of"; capitalize first letter of each part of a proper name (that is, even if "The" or "Of" is a part); capitalize every letter of an acronym. Too many references to cite; you will not find one that disagrees significantly. The only strong minority opinion is that every word should be capitalized, without exception. Wikipedia-style (capitalize the first letter of the title only, except for proper names) is without foundation. — Xiong熊talk* 03:18, 2005 May 13 (UTC)
Case-sensitivity has been inherited from the software we used in 2001 (and believe me, it was even more annoying -- it forced capitalization Of Every Word In The Title). Hacking in a proper case insensitive, case preserving system is possible but will require some database restructuring and various low-level work for relatively minor benefit. Other concerns have taken priority so far. (The updated schema in MediaWiki 1.5 will make a future transition somewhat less painful however, by reducing the number of redundant title keys in the database that will need to be reworked.) --Brion 09:11, May 5, 2005 (UTC)
Ah, I feel better already. I understand that this is a case of an engine bug, rather than deliberate policy. Wikipedia-style capitalization is just a workaround. — Xiong熊talk* 03:18, 2005 May 13 (UTC)

What's worse is the case sensitive linking. Cape York meteorite, cape york meteorite, and Cape York Meteorite all link to different articles.

That's just dumb. And we have to make numerous redirects to deal with this deficiency. Links should simply not be case sensitive. It the extremely few cases where capitalization is an actual naming distinction then the different articles should be distinguished by additional words in the title--which makes more sense anyway. The software needs to be fixed.

And spare me the "it's so hard" details of "Hacking in a proper case insensitive, case preserving system is possible but will require some database restructuring and various low-level work for relatively minor benefit."

Here's an easy solution: You just parse the links to upper case and parse the titles to upper case. It doesn't matter how they're stored.

You may be able to BS the non-programmers, but you can't BS me. Mr. Brion Vibber, if you want my respect, stop talking about how hard everything is and start thinking about ways to make things work.

And yes I'm familiar with database restructuring. Databases structures are mutable, if you know how to change them. I have a friend who redesigns databases for a living. That's a bit harder then a simple interface hack, but really nothing that isn't done all the time. The hardest part of changing a database is understanding everything and figuring out how to redesign it. Some queries may need to be rewritten, but once you understand RDBMs and know SQL, the process is usually fairly straightforward.

- Pioneer-12 10:48, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

If it's that easy, write a bug report and submit a patch here.
Also, we tend to cut our developers some slack because Wikipedia wouldn't exist without them. A less confrontational approach may be more productive. JRM · Talk 11:49, 2005 May 6 (UTC)
I for one await your implementation of this fairly straightforward process with great anticipation. Pcb21| Pete 11:07, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for your support. Problems are fixable. Think positive. So often in programming, a difficult or "impossible" problem becomes easy with just a slight change of perspective. Often, the solution to a problem might be one step away, but there are a thousand different directions to step in. The hardest part is often finding the right place to go--finding the one right step out of a thousand.
As Walt Disney said "It's kind of fun to do the impossible." - Pioneer-12 11:31, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
It's certainly not impossible or a highly difficult programming problem, nor did I claim it was -- it simply hasn't been gotten to yet. (Don't confuse an explanation of why something is the way it is so far with a proposal to never fix it.) Setting up support for proper case-preserving case-insensitive semantics is something I'd like to see for the next major release (after MediaWiki 1.5 coming this month), but as with most things that aren't performance or security-critical it depends on someone choosing to prioritize it and put in the work. This hasn't happened yet. --Brion 09:09, May 7, 2005 (UTC)
OK, makes sense. I'm sorry that I misinterpreted your earlier statements. - Pioneer-12 18:01, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
It's not a trivial problem; it eats up editorpower and makes the project a less-useful tool. — Xiong熊talk* 03:18, 2005 May 13 (UTC)

humor

where are the humoristic wikipedicians? why didnt they find camelopedia? blue 15:37, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps it's because they're too busy editing the Uncyclipedia. --Munchkinguy 22:20, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

HMS Bulwark (L15)

I know that this isn't the right place to put this comment, but I can't think where else it will get seen. The thing is, the above ship, although alledgedly operational, isn't on the official list of ships So...? Thanks,-->Energy (talk) 15:31, 4 May 2005 (UTC)


I have no answer for the inconsistency with the official list but the ship is indeed operational - take this for example:

"Evening Herald (Plymouth)

May 2, 2005

Bulwark is welcomed into service

The Royal Navy's newest vessel, HMS Bulwark, has been commissioned at a special ceremony in Devonport. The Plymouth-based amphibious assault ship was officially welcomed into the fleet in front of 1,200 invited guests."

OK, fair enough!-->Energy (talk) 07:24, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Star Wars and the pointless stuff in tables

Hi. As it was expected, the proximity of the world release of the latest Star Wars movie has triggered an editing frenzy in all articles related to the franchise. My point here concerns a specific category of such articles: those dedicated to the characters in the movies. At this point, most if not all articles on characters have been "equipped" with a "Star Wars character" table that contains some information on the character.
I have nothing against having those boards, and I certainly have no problem with it listing fictional data, but the stuff that goes in there should have some point, if it is to be encyclopedic. So it would be logical to list there the allegiance of the character (is he a good or a bad guy?), who plays him, when was the character introduced, his "lifespan" in the timeline and so on (as it is done). But in the name of all that is galactic, what is the point of listing eye color and hair color?? That's not even concerning the character, but rather the actor who plays him, and it's completely besides the point in the article. AFAIK, George Lucas doesn't even choose the actors based on eye and hair color — gender, age, and maybe even complexion if he wants to make some sort of point, but never eye color or hair color. Having that sort of thing listed in the tables looks somewhat puerile and unencyclopedic to me. Any thoughts? Regards, Redux 05:55, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree that sounds rather pointless.
If there really is such a rush to edit Star Wars articles, how come the EpIII article is no good? There is a long badly rewritten bit about the plot, a trivia section but all the real encyclpedic information (filming, tech specs, cast, crew, releases, costs) is crammed into a tiny part of the lead section. Pcb21| Pete 11:45, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
That's because enthusiasm doesn't necessarily translate into quality. A lot of people (I will not name names) just want to discuss Star Wars as if it was some sort of parallel reality, and not the work of fiction that it is (The Lord of the Rings comes to mind as well). How are you going to discuss the technical part of filmmaking if what you really want is to talk about Darth Vader as if he had actually existed once? As for Episode III, maybe once the movie comes out, more people will pitch in and the article will improve.
But I'd like to reiterate: that nonsense about eye color and hair color has to go! Regards, Redux 15:58, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
I agree, I saw this a few days ago and thought it 100% pointless. --Golbez 22:33, May 4, 2005 (UTC)
It sounds like content which would be better at Wikicities:c:StarWars then here, but does the extra information really do any harm if the articles are going to exist here anyway? Template:SW character does have the advantage of making those articles look more consistent with each other and less stub-like even if the information isn't especially helpful. Angela. 09:42, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

It's not that it's harmful. The content is not offensive or biased per se. But it's completely pointless, and more importantly, unencyclopedic. I cannot defend a serious encyclopedia that lists hair color and eye color for fictitious movie characters, which are in fact, again, more a reflexion of the actors who have played them in the movies than the characters themselves (Lucas could have just as easily chosen a blonde actor instead of a dark-haired one to play any given character, meaning that hair color or eye color are of no consequence for the understanding of the story line or the character). Plus, the template would not be deleted, just those two lines would be eliminated. There are other pieces of information in it that are useful and pertinent, and if one applies one's mind, it should indeed be possible to come up with new information, this time actually relevant, that could fill the "space" that would be left by the departure of that nonsense. Regards, Redux 19:04, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

BILL GATES IS COMING TO EAT YOU

Wherever there is profit, Microsoft is there. They may be slow on the draw, but they carry a cannon. Bill Gates, the Lord of Microsoft, is known for his obsessive desire to dominate everything computer related and to reap as much money as possible... by any means possible. It is a game to him. In field after field, Microsoft has sought to get a foothold and a competitive edge. If they can't develop a top notch product from scratch, then they buy one or steal one.

Enter Wikipedia. Once a mere blip on the radar screen, but its profile is growing. How long until Bill "Dollar" Gates looks up some bit of information online and winds up at a Wikipedia page? How long till he says, "This is cool; this is profitable; I want to rule this."

Is there profit in a wiki? Other sites have already copied the GFDL content and used it for ad revenue. It's only a matter of time before M$crosoft realizes that it can do the same. What's worse, is that Microsoft could start a content fork... a content fork that could easily rival or surpass Wikipedia in popularity.

Look at all the stupid problems we have to deal with: unrestrained vandalism; idiotic votes for deletion; buggy, hard to use software. You think these problems are unsolvable? Microsoft doesn't think so.

If Wikipedia is unable to get it's act together--if Wikipedia is unable to get it's childlike tendencies under control... then Microsoft just might rise and show the world a better way to do an wiki encyclopedia. Microsoft just might take Wikipedia to school, and to the cleaners.

Microsoft already has a foothold in the encyclopedia business--remember, they bought Encarta. They can't buy Wikipedia, but they can steal it.

Bill Gates is coming to eat you.

- Pioneer-12 15:25, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

When I think about it, this seems quite likely. Microsoft has such power that if they titled it "Microsoft Wikipedia" and made it look all plasticky, plenty of people would probably not only use it who wouldn't use Wikipedia, but would think it was Microsoft's idea. And if they imported the contribution history, they wouldn't even need to credit Wikipedia, would they? Nickptar
Wikipedia is a trademark, pending registration. See M:Wikimedia trademarks. So if Bill wanted to fork, he'd have to come up with something other than Microsoft Wikipedia. All in all, if Microsoft were to eat Wikipedia, I think it'd find it pretty unappetizing. -Rholton 17:01, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
Is that before or after the the moon will turn dark like sack cloth and the sun will turn to blood red, and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse shall ride the Earth? "What's worse, is that Microsoft could start a content fork... a content fork that could easily rival or surpass Wikipedia in popularity." I'd love to see any fork of Wikipedia surpass it. You do know how popular Wikipedia is, exactly, don't you? It's incredibly hard to fork it successfully, even if your name is William Henry Gates III. Forget about forking the content, think about forking the contributors! A forked Wikipedia will be like a giant whale stranded on the beach—impressive enough, but it's going to start to smell pretty soon, and nobody will be around to clean it up.
But let's suppose for the sake of argument that Microsoft manages to make a fork of Wikipedia that surpasses it in popularity (and I find this about as likely as that new versions of Windows will use less memory than the old ones). So what? The content will still be GFDL'ed. You can't steal Wikipedia. Wikipedia gives itself away, that's the whole point. They couldn't actually shut down Wikipedia or prevent others from running with the idea—they could only try their best to get people to edit "their" encyclopedia. How successful do you think such an encyclopedia would remain if it tried to compromise NPOV, or restrict access to its content in any way? For that matter, how many people do you think are going to edit a "free encyclopedia" run by Microsoft? Would you feel like going there if you thought it had a good chance of becoming more popular?
Finally, playing the devil's advocate for a moment: if Microsoft can make a better Wikipedia, NPOV and all, I say great for them. Let's all copy it and spread it around the world. If they can't, well, we'll just have to stick with what we have, won't we?
There are quite a few things Wikipedia could do better. But having to do them better because megacorporations might try to compete with us is, quite frankly, the least of my concerns. Your mileage varies, apparently.
What next? Microsoft stealing Linux? They can't buy it, of course, but what if Microsoft made a fork that surpassed it in popularity? JRM · Talk 15:52, 2005 May 3 (UTC)

Your comment betrays a stunning lack of understanding of how things works. First, and most important, interia is VERY HARD to overcome. For example, google got where it was not because it was slightly better than yahoo or msn or dogpile, but because it was IMMESNLY better than the competition. To beat Google (or wikipedia), a competitor not only has to be better than us, but has to be an order of magnitude better than us. A simple fork is not going to cut it. Secondly, Raul's first law of wikipedia is that the most important part of wikipedia is the community. Wikipedia has an established community of hardcore, dedicated contributors. Microsoft might have a lot of money, but you can't buy contributors, fans or mindshare - you have to earn it. Microsoft has tried to fake it with astroturfing, and every time they have, they have been caught and look like idiots. Third, would someone spend hours on end fixing things at Encarta, like they do on wikipedia? At least on wikipedia, you know what you're doing is fundementally benefitting the public. The information you submit is safeguarded by a nonprofit company, and reusable by anyone -- altruism at its finest. Why would you edit Encarta? To boost microsoft's bottom line? Well, maybe small edits here and there, but there's no motivation to keep you hooked. No one is going to spend significant amounts of time lining Bill's pockets. →Raul654 16:19, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

You're right about incentive to edit, and JRM is right about the GFDL, but the scary prospect - defeating both objections - is that Microsoft takes the idea but not the GFDLed content. They start a wiki based on Encarta, make the licensing terms restrictive (but the interface to the average user just as nice as WP), and then integrate an interface into the next Windows update. Integrated into Windows, it would become popular at an alarming rate. Due to WP's amazing popularity even this wouldn't overcome the inertia very much; but there are probably further things they could do. (Bring on the FUD!) Nickptar 16:30, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
The trouble I have with this argument is that you can use it to argue for the impending doom of just about any software or content industry. "What if Microsoft integrated it into Windows?" While integrating wiki editing is not something they would be likely to get sued over (unlike other "value added services"), I don't think it would be greeted with enthusiasm, either. People have a lot of mistrust about how unreliable Wikipedia is, as it's edited by every Tom, Dick and Harry with an internet connection. Now imagine that Tom, Dick and Harry are clueless Windows users and that Microsoft is running the show. Do I need FUD to discredit that? :-) Wikipedia might have its flaws, but unlike Encarta, Britannica editors have gone through great trouble putting it down. Now why do they feel they need to do that? >:-) Such an "encyclopedia", even if it became popular, would never get out from under Microsoft's shadow. Wikipedia's flaws ("all the stupid problems we have to deal with") are issues Microsoft might not have to deal with, but only because they'd choke everything and everyone with an iron fist, with a healthy eye towards profit. Will such an encyclopedia get the contributor base necessary for producing over half a million articles any time soon? I doubt it. JRM · Talk 16:50, 2005 May 3 (UTC)
Well, you sound right, thankfully. Nickptar 17:24, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
Can't sleep, Bill Gates will eat me, can't sleep, Bill Gates will eat me. I like Raul's answer. Indeed, it's the community that (dynamically) produces the encyclopedia, and Microsoft does not have, nor is it like they ever will have, such a community; only (heh, only) capital. El_C 17:54, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Raul too. But I also agree that as long as Wikipedia stays unique in it own way, there will always be an audience for it. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 18:03, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Don't feed the trolls. RickK 21:46, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

In any case, if Microsoft was successful, then they deserve to succeed. If such a thing was effective, then it disproves the wikipedia assumption - that making information free is a good thing. I, for one, would welcome our new overlords. --Fangz 22:37, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Ssh! We shouldn't be letting them know we're suspicious. Nickptar 22:58, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I wish I had a dollar for every time some anti-MS activist on the Internet speculated about something Microsoft "might" do. Don't you people have something better to do with your time? Rhobite 23:05, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

Well... the thing is that... Wait, that's a rhetorical question! Can you feel the wikilove? El_C 11:31, 4 May 2005 (UTC)


Ignore the possibility if you wish, but it is a possibility. And I think that many people are exaggerating Wikipedia's "popularity" in terms of the general population. What percentage of the online population edits on Wikipedia, really (even as an occasional thing)? I'm sure it's much less then 1%. Furthermore, there are a LOT of people who have tried editing but are annoyed with various aspects of Wikipedia... you don't realize how many because they make a couple edits, encounter problems, and then leave. If some big name player offered an alternative that fixed those problems, then many of them would be more then happy to go there and leave this place behind.
You don't know just how many people there are who have tried Wikipedia and not liked it. Maybe their edits get reverted by some clueless idiot... maybe they post an honest article and it gets deleted before they have a chance to explain why they added it. These things PISS PEOPLE OFF. Not everyone is like me who sees a problem and looks for a way to fix it. Many people have tried Wikipedia, had a bad experience, said "this sucks", and left... and yet many of these people could be happy contributors if they didn't receive such harsh, unfair, and irritating treatment.
Also remember that most people who post on Wikipedia are college age (or younger). A rather startlingly high percentage. Do you think that everyone interested in contributing to an encyclopedia is of college age? Hell no! There are plenty of people in their late-20s, in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond who would love to contribute. Wikipedia needs to attract older people, or someone else will.
Inertia is significant, but it can be overcome. Netscape had a huge lead in the browser market, yet was reduced to just a minor player because of Microsoft Internet Explorer. What's interesting about that is... Netscape was actually better then Internet Explorer, but it wasn't better enough for the average person to make the extra effort to use it. In the wiki case, Microsoft could make a wiki environment better then this one. If they did that, what hope would Wikipedia have? Of course the die hards and the fanatics would stay, but the general population would switch over, just as they did with Netscape.
It seems that many of the responders are more interested in trying to brush this off instead of objectively considering it. Keep your heads in the sand if you want. If Bill Gates decides to eat Wikipedia, it will be a tasty feast.
- Pioneer-12 08:44, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
Sounds scarily possible. Some other reasons Microsoft Wiki(r)(tm)(sm)(c)(pat pend) might eat Wikipedia:
  • They could hire lots of smart people to ensure the information is correct. Though they might not be able to get more employees than Wikipedia could get as volunteers.
  • Wikipedia is not censored. Microsoft Wiki(r)(tm)(sm)(c)(pat pend) would be, so people wouldn't have to worry about their kids encountering "the porno" or "the violence".
  • Integration into Windows. This is the primary reason IE beat Netscape, right?
  • They could find a way to sue vandals. (Okay, that's half-joking.)
  • The Microsoft name and advertising power.
I'm not too worried, but I hope I'm wrong.
Nickptar 15:16, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
All I'm saying is that I love how Bill Gates is the example here. Might as well be Hitler or the Boogeyman. Rhobite 18:05, May 6, 2005 (UTC)
Well, Microsoft is known to be smart and predatory. But while I think they could displace Wikipedia if they wanted to, I don't see them having the motive in the near future. Nickptar 20:37, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
Re: Motive. The motive is profit. As Wikipedia isn't pulling in any G-bills right now (nor will it ever, being a nonprofit venture), it may be escaping Microsoft's radar.... they may simply be unaware of the profit potential.
Re: "the Boogeyman". It doesn't have to be Microsoft, but they have the most inherent advantages, as Nickptar demonstrated in the list above. Another company that is well positioned to give Wikipedia a good spanking, if they choose to administer it, is Yahoo. First, they've got the number #1 web directory--a perfect platform for wiki integration. Second, Yahoo has a habit of trying to expand it's little web kingdom in all directions. Witness Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Music, and Yahoo Messenger.
Another competitor, less likely to enter the fray, but the most skillful of them all, is Google. Google's programmers and designers are the best the online world has ever seen. They didn't become the #1 web search by accident. And with expansions like Google AdSense, Google News, Google Maps, Picasa, and Blogger.com, it looks like Google is ready and willing to show any part of the online world how REAL programmers do things. I think Google might feel a greater affinity with Wikipedia then other companies, though.... so they might be hesitant to upstage it. But they certainly could, if they wanted to.
- Pioneer-12 18:36, 7 May 2005 (UTC)


This is not a joke or a troll (though it might seem that way at first); it is not alarmism. Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google all have muscle and track records. The experience of Netscape is instructive to those willing to learn; MIE has always been an inferior product, and still is -- but Netscape once had 70% of the market; now MIE has 90%. What happened? And for how long do you suppose the guys at Netscape said, "Naw, can't happen. Isn't happenning. Didn't happen."

I think we probably should worry more about guys like Google; wiki is more their flavor. But it really doesn't matter who eats; eaten is eaten. Hitler is dead; the Bogeyman is fantasy; competition in business is very real. And if you don't think what you're doing is a business, your competitors will show you before they tell you.

You have to dig for the history behind some other little takeovers. Yahoo ate the mailing list server OneGroups, for example; now competitor Topica is almost out of the market. Of course it's a commonplace that Google nearly put Yahoo out of business; but what about all the other search engines? What about the AltaVista spider, or the Open Directory Project? People take comfort from the fact that Redmond hasn't eaten Linux -- yet. It can still happen. My personal theory is that it is not yet ripe.

Wikipedia need not fear Mr. Bill (or is it Mr. Sluggo) yet, either. We need to rise a few ranks before that's realistic. Microsoft does not want to do any work -- they want to take over something more or less full-grown; customizing it to serve their needs is enough of a job.

Don't underestimate just how abrasive this community has become, how hostile toward the newcomer. It's easy to say WikiLove, but she left the building long ago. There are over a quarter million users registered on the en: system, and (depending on your measure) only 8000 were "active" last month; only 23,000 have ever made 10 edits. Right: More than 9 out of 10 users quit before their 10th edit. Elitists crow, but I wonder who we are excluding. It's even worse when you consider that only 1200 editors made over a hundred edits last month; that's a tiny fraction of registered users and only 5% of the users who did stick around. How many made good contributions and were chased away? How many of the 1200 who remain are just nuisances?

I'm trying to do some statistics work, but it's not easy; we never thought to preserve the data properly. I'm hoping to have interesting charts for you all soon. So far, I've seen some very peculiar trends.

The brave say fear no fork -- indeed, welcome the idea. And we are certainly unthreatened by Wikinfo. The error is to assume that Bill or anyone else must play by our rules. They don't have to fork, then try to gather contributors. If they did that, we wouldn't mind, even if they somehow outpaced us. (They can do that, of course; easy enough to find a couple thousand editors when you can afford to spend millions. Besides, They can coast on existing content a long, long time.)

Weird things happen when you have billions of dollars. Ordinary concerns vanish. Overweening arrogance comes to the fore. Legal problems melt away. Yes, Microsoft was in a little trouble there, but nothing like what they had coming. They are certainly not bleeding from their wounds, and MIE -- and Windows -- is still right on top.

I'm sure most of us are confident that GFDL and FSF will protect us, no matter what. I'm not. Law serves money, especially with a Reagan-Bush Supreme Court. We have many legal weaknesses (none of which I am going to point out here), and any of them may be used to turn the tables. It won't be a question of WikiMedia Foundation suing Yahoo for GFDL infringement; it will be us on the defensive against the deep pockets of the aggressor looking to shut us out of his newly-stolen turf. Nor will he lack for allies; every user we chase out of our community is a potential enemy. We scorn threats made by whining vandals, but how long do those threats remain a joke when well bankrolled?

Neither do we have to lose, or even fight, a suit in order to be brought low. There is an entire range of techniques available to the hijacker. If such were ineffective, we'd have more art movie houses than multiplexes; more indie labels than pop trash; more neighborhood cafes than *$. Obviously, the 1/100th of 1% of visitors who stay to edit Wikipedia will not desert us for some Yahoo!Wiki or Woogle -- but the average clueless football-teevee-watching Windozer tire-store-manager with two teen girls will worship something that looks like Wikipedia, but without the "porno", rudeness, and edit wars over proper use of emdash (especially if it comes with a big American flag on each page and a bot that sweeps the database "fixing" British ushazge and references to "French" fries or Michael Moore).

Don't underestimate the points raised in this section. Wikipedia has existed for a long time in a kind of idyllic, Utopian state of orderly anarchy. It is wishful thinking to believe that state can continue indefinitely. There are a lot of players who are very well organized, and we are due to be taught a painful lesson. — Xiong熊talk* 19:04, 2005 May 8 (UTC)

I don't see how anyone could possibly sue us, except on some completely specious patent. But you're right - as I've said, THE MICROSOFT/GOOGLE/YAHOO NAME SELLS. If this actually does happen, I can only see two ways out of it:
  • A massive dedicated already-existing user base.
  • A Firefox-level evangelism campaign, including as many selling points of Firefox. (Heck, maybe we should start this now.)
The problem with both of these is: the rudeness, non-censorship, and general anarchic/"communist"/nerd ethos of Wikipedia probably scares a lot of people. And unlike Firefox, we're not vastly superior to the main alternatives.
To put it simply: Don't panic, but be very, very afraid. Also, let's find some way to do a Firefox.
Nickptar 01:57, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Comparison of edits by Wikipedia Founder Jimbo Wales and editor Snowspinner

(I'm posting portions of my study here, on Wikipedia, in hopes of getting feedback from as many actual Wikipedia users as possible. Please help me to improve this analysis by adding your thoughts here, or by emailing me in confidence.)

Snowspinner has suggested that his pattern of contribution to Wikipedia is similar to that of Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales's contributions.[1]


In broad terms, Snowspinner is correct.

Total Edits, 1 January 2005 - 15 April 2005    Edits to the Encyclopedia    Discussion of Articles    Other    
Snowspinner1513 33222% 25817% 92361% 
Jimbo Wales90 78% 1112% 7280% 


But when a detailed breakdown of contributions is examined, there are large dissimmilarites:


Jimbo WalesSnowspinner
Edits to Encyclopedia: 7(8%)       334(22%)
Articles4(4.44%)320(21.05%)
Image: 1(1.11%)0(0%)
Template: 2(2.22%)7(0.46%)
Category: 0(0%)7(0.46%)
MediaWiki: 0(0%)0(0%)
Discussion of Articles: 11(12%)258(17%)
Talk: 10(11.11%)109(7.17%)
Image talk: 1(1.11%)0(0%)
Template talk: 0(0%)5(0.33%)
Category talk: 0(0%)3(0.2%)
MediaWiki talk: 0(0%)0(0%)
Votes for deletion: 0(0%)60(3.95%)
Votes for undeletion: 0(0%)32(2.11%)
Templates for deletion: 0(0%)49(3.22%)
Other: 72(80%)928(61%)
Wikipedia: 10(11.11%)426(28.03%)
Wikipedia talk:1(1.11%)232(15.26%)
User: 2(2.22%)69(4.54%)
User talk: 59(65.56%)201(13.22%)


While both Snowspinner and Jimbo Wales make most of their edits to non-article namespaces, it's readily apparent that Wales spends most of his time (a full 65%) in User_talk, talking to other users; Snowspinner spends most of his time in Wikipedia, and most of that on Arbitration pages.

Also of note is the time spent discussing articles: while Wales makes few edits, he spends about over ten percent of his time in Article Talk discussing with other users what should be in articles; Snowspinner spends more time in the more contentious arenas of Deletion voting than in (possibly) non-adversarial Talk.

While Wales spends only a little more than one percent of his time in Wikipedia_talk, much of which involves discussion of policy, Snowspinner devotes over fifteen percent of his time to this.

(While Snowspinner spends, proportionally, twice the time in the User namespace as Wales, the difference isn't actually as great as it first appears, as it's primarily the result of Snowspinner compiling evidence, within his own user-subpages, for future Arbitration cases; this should be appreciated when looking at these numbers.)

Much of the proportional differences noted can no doubt be accounted for rather simply: Jimbo Wales and Snowspinner have very different roles on Wikipedia. Wales directs the Foundation, and as such plays a role of mediator, cajoler, conciliator and consensus-builder: he works primarily to build up Wikipedia, to iron out differences and to bring users together.

Snowspinner's role on Wikipedia is more adversarial, given that he works closely with the Arbitration Committee, at that Committee's request [2] [3] [4] in his role as "Public Prosecutor". (Snowspinner established what he calls the "District Attorney's Office", but as Wikipedia doesn't have districts, the title "Public Prosecutor" or "Attorney General" is perhaps more accurate.) To do that job, Snowspinner must necessarily spend his time seeking out evidence of wrong-doing, compiling evidence against wrong-doers, and bringing them to justice.

Snowspinner additionally contributes to Wikipedia as an enforcer of policy (e.g., 72 edits to Administrators' Noticeboard) and as to a lesser degree as a formulator of policy (44 edits in Wikipedia, 23 in Wikipeda_talk).

When the details are taken in account, then, Snowspinner's pattern of edits is only in a very superficial way similar to Jimbo Wales's. This reflects their very different roles on Wikipedia: Wales nurtures the Encyclopedia and the Foundation as a whole; while Snowspinner polices and prosecutes individual editors who get out of line, and formulates policy to keep them in line.


Of course, this is only a preliminary analysis of statistics by an outsider, and I'm sure it can be improved by experienced Wikipedia users. Please contribute your thoughts here, or in confidence to: -- rrcaballo AY yahoo.com


Why are you going through so much trouble to analyze Snowspinner's edit percentages? Yeah, I know that there's arbitration and all, but it seems rather irrelevant. How do his edit percentages even matter? Does his "role" in Wikipedia make a difference? Obviously no one has the same role as Jimbo.
- Pioneer-12 15:01, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
p.s. The analysis is impressively detailed, though. If you like doing this, perhaps you might be interested in doing horse racing analysis. You could win big money at the track if you could analyze horses as well as you do edits. It could be a profitable use of your skills.
As much as I'd like to take this opportunity to take a dig at Snowspinner, I can't. The first few times I read this, I let it pass. But I dislike to see bad precedent set.
Statistical analysis may demonstrate something of value -- when applied to groups. I don't see it is revealing to compare any two users. For that matter, I would hesitate to draw any conclusion from the edit ratios of the entire membership at a single point in time. What is the proper ratio of Userspace edits to Mainspace, of WPspace to either?
The proper domain of statistics is the aggregate and in the comparison of like to like. Often the nearest similar dataset is that which applied to the same project in the past -- thus, historical trend analysis. This automatically normalizes a lot of possibly misleading values.
I am nearly at the point of downloading the entire database and doing some real analysis on it, and you may be sure I will be slow to draw conclusions. For what it's worth, the *first* thing I intend is to throw out all user names in favor of internal system ID numbers. — Xiong熊talk* 04:20, 2005 May 13 (UTC)

Extended warranty

I hope this is the correct place to discuss this. First off, I did bring this issue up on the article's talk page, but no one responded (I suspect very few people watch the article).

A while ago, I rewrote the stub for extended warranty. I actually got high praise for it. :-) In my research, I discovered that most consumer advocate groups discourage the purchasing of extended warranties, and I included that information in the article. About a week ago, an almost-anonymous user (El Grego--one of his two contributions to the 'pedia) came along and rewrote the entire article. What was, in my opinion, a balanced and NPOV article was turned into a long-winded rant on how extended warranties are a Good Thing, in direct opposition to what all the sources I could find stated. He then stated that "a few" consumer advaocate groups advise against purchasing extended warranties (when it is actually most). On the whole, it is a very POV rewrite. Compare this version to the current version. I think it should be reverted to my last version, just because the new rewrite is so POV, but I didn't want to do it without some feedback from other users. Any input? Thanks. — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:11, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

I'll give a general answer here, w/o even looking at the two versions. You are an experienced editor against a "very new" user. You believe your version was at or near NPOV and the rewrite was POV. Then, I say, be bold and revert it. But if you believe the new version had anything good in it, then copy it over to the article's talk for discussion. Don't fret over needing to revert highly POV rewrites. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 18:41, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. Actually, Niteowlneils already reverted it for me. :-D — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:13, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Template:Medical

Template:Medical is a disclaimer which states "Please Note：Wikipedia does not give medical advice. Wikipedia and Wikimedia will not be held responsible for the consequences resulting from any medical-related content." From a legal standpoint the disclaimer is probably unnecessary. Anyway, it's already part of the general disclaimer. I'm tempted to just TfD it but I wanted some opinions first. According to User:Yamato Kenichi, this disclaimer is on every medical page in the Chinese and Japanese Wikipedias. Rhobite 03:03, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

  • I would prefer to keep it. I imagine someone sick who is desperately looking for something on here for advice, not considering to look at the main disclaimer pages. Zzyzx11 | Talk 03:11, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Every time one of these disclaimer templates is proposed, it's removed. The reason is that if a template like that is used, the lack of the template could imply the opposite. Besides, there is already a link to the full disclaimer at the bottom of every page. See Wikipedia talk:Risk disclaimer for the discussion. --cesarb 14:15, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Well, now it's on WP:TFD. Interested parties should vote there. Rhobite 02:28, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)
    • Why don't we simply have a small general purpose disclaimer in the frame at the foot of every page, down near the GNU license and last update info is? it could link to the full risk disclaimer, too. Grutness|hello? 04:22, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • I also feel that there would be value in having some sort of expanded (but still simple and clear) disclaimer in the footer rather than just the link (which could easily be missed by someone). Even making "Disclaimers" read something like "All Wikipedia content is subject to a disclaimer" would be an improvement imho. --Vamp:Willow 19:15, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A good idea. Perhaps there is a better place to suggust this?--^~^Morgan^~^ 00:51, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm guessing that this will require an edit to the relevant Mediawiki: namespace page, and so a note on that talk page might be apropriate, however there are two snags - 1. I haven't managed to find the page in question. 2. The page isn't likely to be highly watched.
Maybe a note on teh village pump proposals page would attract the right attention? Thryduulf 01:22, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

A Pretty Main Page

Has anyone seen the Hebrew Wikipedia? Very pretty, isn't it? --Munchkinguy 18:47, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, the main things about it are the spiffy icons, but I don't think they're really necessary (they make the page weigh about 10kb more than EN's front page). Ambush Commander 21:01, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
Only 10kb! That's a pretty small increase for all those icons. Impressive optimization.
- Pioneer-12 11:43, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikitrivia website

A novel front-end for Wikipedia has been invented at: http://blog.outer-court.com/wikitrivia/ where they pick a random article, blank out the subject and challenge you to guess the subject. It's actually quite well done. Perhaps WikiMedia can host something similar as an alternate revenue generator. Samw 03:02, 28 May 2005 (UTC)


What is a succession box?

What is a succession box?

for example

{{succession box two to one}}

Spencer Karter big_bubba_1985@yahoo.com

It's a way to navigate through a series of articles. The above example allows you to navigate through the various heavyweight boxing champions in the order in which they held the championship. Other uses of the box may be to see the series of people that have held political office, such as the President of the United States, starting with George Washington. --Deathphoenix 20:25, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Is ViP working?

This has come up before, but I really don't feel WP:VIP's current alarts section is working. It's a hassle (relatively speaking) to add someone to it, and more often than not, admin intervention doesn't happen or happens much too late. The problem has been discussed on Wikipedia talk:Vandalism in progress, but I think we may need a separate, much simpler "flag this user for admin attention" system. The best I can come up with is having a page with just {{User|…}} entries, without any discussion. Anybody can add a user entry, and admins can come along and open the contribs, check if they agree the problem warrants adin intervention and do so, or decide to leave it (or just warn again). Whatever the result, the entry is then removed. This way, admins can always easily tell if there's work to be done and if a few around the globe put it on their watchlist, life on RC patrol will be made a lot easier for non-admins. (As I said, this would need to be kept simple to work: no discussions, if someone disagrees with the response there's always WP:VIP, WP:VP, and WP:AN)

Does that sound like a good idea to anyone? --W(t) 18:06, 2005 May 26 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds like a good idea. I agree in everything you said. Before I became an admin myself I found it to be too much hassle to add to the VIP-page, and when I did list something there, it often took too long to get an admin's attention. I promised myself to help on the latter problem when I became an admin myself, but I have to admit, the VIP-page is not something I follow closely anymore. I have it on my watchlist, but 90% of the stuff being listed there is either not vandalism, or is not current vandalism happening right now. So I find even loading that monsterous page in my browser usually being a waste of time, and I'm paying less and less attention to it. So, yes, something simpler is needed. Shanes 22:55, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
Right, one supporter is enough for me. I've created Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism (WP:AIV), let's see how that works. I'll write up some enticing blurb for WP:AN, with any luck some admins will add it to their watchlist and we can take it for a test drive. --W(t) 05:45, 2005 May 28 (UTC)
I had an idea about a function like "Watch this user" that would work for anonymous users so as soon they made an edit it would show up on a special section on your watchlist. This would be for anonymous users only so to avoid "stalking". What do you think of such a feature? gkhan 23:00, May 26, 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, I've thought about putting contributions pages (and therefore any Special: pages) on a watchlist too, but such a thing would require an upgrade to the MediaWiki software, I think. You could make a suggestions to the developers, if you wish. --Deathphoenix 03:17, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
CryptoDerk's Vandal Fighter software has an option to blacklist users, which is similar to putting them on a watchlist. Angela. 06:19, May 28, 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki Backlog

There are currently dozens, possibly hundreds of articles listed at Wikipedia:Transwiki_log that have been transwikied but not yet taken care here (deleted, redirected, merged, etc.) Please, I need your help getting this issue dealt with. As said before, there are an enormous number of articles that need to be dealt with. →Iñgōlemo← talk 04:37, 2005 May 26 (UTC)

Automatic logout problems

I seem to be logged out every time I try to edit a page. The "Remember me" box is checked, cookies are all properly enabled, firewall adjusted, etc. The browser remembers my username but not my login. This happens with IE, Opera, and even Lynx.. Even on others' computers. Very very annoying. Any ideas? Posted elsewhere too but no help. Signed, (you'll just have to take my word on this) -Mashford

Javascript vandal?

Who is the "Javascript vandal" referred to on Recent Changes? Willy-on-wheels? I haven't heard him/her referred to as that before. func(talk) 02:14, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm wondering that too. A quick browse on Vandalism in Progress seems to say there are these people who are pasting javascript onto their User Page and then repeatedly executing it or something... just a guess:

User:Vandal high school!

Technical Comment

The servers should escape all potentially dangerous executable code users enter before dissemination. Allowing this to happen in the first place is as stupid as MicroSoft.Com shipping an email-client which executes virii. ¡Wait a minute!  ;-) This is a security issue. Luckily, yours truly always surfs with JavaScript disabled, as all should do.

--

— Ŭalabio 23:28, 2005 May 25 (UTC)

We already do. You can add some custom JavaScript *for yourself* but this doesn't allow you to do anything you can't already do with bookmarklets in your browser. --Brion 21:15, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

Qur'an vs. Koran

The article is currently at Qur'an, and all of the article refers to it as such. But, under Wikipedia policy of using the version most commonly known by English speakers, shouldn't it be at Koran? RickK 23:43, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

I suppose that the best argument for Qur'an is that it is more accurate. Many (I can't say most I don't have figures) think Mao Zedong is called Mao Tse Tung, but the former version is more accurate. Gkhan 00:03, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
I would not be in favor of moving it. But before this gets out hand, perhaps we should follow protocol and list this on Wikipedia:Requested moves, go through those channels? –Hajor 00:11, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
Or atleast at Talk:Qur'an Gkhan 00:18, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

what about Quran? That's increasingly frequent in English. qur'an is the technical transliteration, and should indeed not be used in titles per our policy (otherwise, we should have Śiva instead of Shiva). dab (ᛏ) 12:28, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, the difference (in my puny opinion) is that very few recognize Śiva, but when you say Shiva most people know what dude you are talking about. And it has been so for such a long time that it is too late to do much about it. Spelling the Qur'an like Koran or Quran however is not "standard" the way spelling Śiva like Shiva is. So in this case, where there is no clear majority or standard, I think we should stick with whats accurate (I could just be talking out of my ass, but to me spelling it Koran or Quran is about as common). Gkhan 12:42, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Parallel case: Byzantine Empire is very far from being the "most accurate", but since it is the "most common" usage in English, the article is titled Byzantine Empire. And User:Adam Bishop will defend that title "over his dead body". Decius 13:41, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

The title should be Qur'an. Decius 13:45, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

At one time Koran was by far the most common spelling. But very steadily over the past decade or so, Quran (and its variant Qur'an) have become more and more popular. The difference is no longer that great. So due to that, along with objections many Muslims have over the Koran spelling, I think moving the article to that title would not be a good idea. In short, Quran is a widely-used and recognized alternate that is valid for us to use due to problems with the Koran spelling. This would fall under the 'don't overdue it' clause of our common names naming convention. --mav 23:43, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

MARRIAGE LICENCE

I WAS MARRIED IN LAS VEGAS AND NEED TO GET A COPY OF MY MARRIAGE LICENCE AND WHAT IS THE COST TO SEND FOR IT?

I WOULD START BY CALLING THE OFFICES OF CLARK COUNTY NEVADA AND THAT IS WHERE LAS VEGAS IS IN AND I WOULD TURN OFF MY CAPS LOCK GOOD LUCK.
Didn't Dave have a similar problem to this recently?
Copied to Wikipedia:Unusual requests, a much neglected page. -- Tim Starling 19:53, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

My Wikipedia ambition is to submit article #666666

What's the most frequently updated article meter?

Lotsofissues 00:42, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

The number on the front page, which is {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}. So, 6,908,175. --Golbez 00:51, May 22, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, it will be an article related to Satan for sure. Lotsofissues 01:19, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:666,666th pool. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:58, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
Of course, you know that the Satan-related number is actually 616, right? ;-) func(talk) 05:34, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Confusing articles

I see a tendency to have information about multiple companies in a single article. This seems to be very confusing because most of what is written about is not even for the company the page is about. I have been moving material into the real companies article, defunct or not, as I find this. It's not easy work. It also can leave the parent article with very little since in some cases it really contained nothing at all about the article title. If you also consider that redrects from the correctly named page go to wrong titles, it adds to the confusion. If you then try to clean up the redirects after a move, you find out how many other articles are missing and were wiki linked to the wrong article. It's frustrating at times and I wonder how many people are actually fixing problems like this when they find them. Vegaswikian

Your complaint would be infinitely more useful if you could supply an example or two. Thanks! --Golbez 20:26, May 20, 2005 (UTC)
One example was the Golden Nugget Companies which was the holding company for several casinos. All of the material was included in the Golden Nugget (resort) article making it imposible to figure out if the material was about the company or one of the three casinos. Those have since been split into an article about each casino and it's history and one for the comany which is now the MGM-Mirage. Another example is America West Airlines. It included data on America West Express and Mesa airlines. Everyone thought Mesa and AW Express were the same. In splitting it out, it became apparent that Mesa was a rather diverse company and not just AW Express. My problem today is trying to untangle AirTran which should be named AirTran Airways, but that page is redirected to AirTran, and AirTran Holdings. Most of the history in there was for ValuJet Airlines which I split out today. This was something that another editor suggested a while ago. The redirects include airtran, ValuJet, Air Tran Airways, Valujet, AirTran Airways, Valuejet and I think a few more all to AirTran. I'm still trying to clean up the redirects which takes a while since you need to read and see where they really should point. Oh, in this case there is also a page for the ValuJet Flight 592 incident which is where some of the AirTran redirected stuff should have pointed to. Vegaswikian 21:25, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Comment: since America West is about to merge with USAir, might want to delay working on their article until it shakes out.—Wahoofive (talk) 21:40, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Actually that one is finished, I think. If the merger happens, I hope they at least change the name of the holding company for the airline(s). While US Air is acquiring America West, the Board and top Manager will be mostly from America West Holdings with the company using the America West Corporate headquarters. Will make for some interesting changes in the history of these companies. Based on equity AW is 40% of the new company and US Air is 14% based on the reports I read. Vegaswikian 21:56, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Well, it's not finished until it's finished, which will probably take some months. I think the question you're asking is how to allocate information between a corporate owner (such as a holding company) and a wholly-owned subsidiary. I have two answers (others may have more): 1. it's okay if some information is duplicated; 2. WP's general principle is that articles should be where most people expect to find them, so in this case that means the brand name with the most prominence. —Wahoofive (talk) 01:10, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. So what I'm doing is OK and the essential duplicate information is OK. As to that merger, the first step will be closing the two holding companies and creating a new one, or so I hear. The airlines will say for a period of time. Vegaswikian 05:22, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
An example to look at may be Valujet and Airtran Airways, which merged with Valujet several years ago. The concept is to discuss information associated with each name at the right location (for example, Valujet is associated with things that happened to them before the merger.) Deco 02:41, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Italian American boxers listing

I note with interest the inclusion of Joey Archibald and Pete Latzo under the heading of Italian American boxers. I would indeed be grateful if anybody has source material to indicate that they have Italian ancestry. My own research informs me that Latzo is of slavic origin and Archibald is of Irish/English background. If anyone has further info about this subject it would be appreciated.

Go through the list's page history and - using the "Compare selected versions" function - find out who put those names on the list. Then ask them on their user page. Is that you Dave?

I note with interest the inclusion of Joey Archibald and Pete Latzo under the heading of Italian American boxers. I would indeed be grateful if anybody has source material to indicate that they have Italian ancestry. My own research informs me that Latzo is of slavic origin and Archibald is of Irish/English background. If anyone has further info about this subject it would be appreciated.

Wow... Dave-ja vu!

Press Fact sheet / Press Praise sheet

Is there a page that solely enumerates praiseful quotes by the media about Wikipedia? If not I might as well put my research to good use. Also I find the press coverage uneven in accuracy, so how about a summary fact sheet with supporting links containing the most commonly needed facts a reporter discussing Wikipedia would want? I can do this - I assume it doesn't presently exist?

Lotsofissues 11:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea - I'm not aware of anything here: perhaps something on meta:? Wikipedia:Replies to common objections, Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia is so great and Wikipedia:Press coverage are all likely to good places to start. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:41, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Wikilove from the press I've given the compilation a start. I'll add dozens more. Lotsofissues 01:17, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
Okay my list has expanded to 19 and it will still grow. I encourage everyone to read it. It's very uplifting to know your work is appreciated. lots of issues | leave me a message 12:20, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia demands caution

http://www.macon.com/mld/inquirer/business/11648267.htm Here's another of the many stories on the veracity of Wikipedia. They always have to have quotes from Britannica, Colliers, and other "legit" encyclopedias. Spalding 22:33, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I've informed badger. I have been very closely monitoring how the press renders Wikipedia. This is the first time Scholastic, the publisher of Grolier (Americana is defunct), has joined the fray. And you know what? We don't care! If those editors had decided to speak out two years ago, we might have been riled up. But the comparison between Wikipedia and that moribund electronic file cabinet is too stark to feel threatened over. Cheers for Wikiannihilation!

Lotsofissues 23:48, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Something pedantically amusing about Wikipedia mention in London Times

From a May 17th stubby article about Wikipedia in the Times:

"Critics suggest that without any sort of process in place to ensure the quality of contributions, 'any particular page might be rubbish at the moment you happen to look at it'."

The quote from a "critic" was actually spoken by Jimbo (THES, May 13)

Lotsofissues 10:31, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

It's a bit much when the principal critics of Wikipedia are the two founders of Wikipedia! Pcb21| Pete 10:38, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
As an assiduous reader of The Times. I must have missed that. Do you have a page, please. Or do you mean the article in the NY Times of the same date. Do the best of my knowledge neither The Times or The Sunday Times have ever mentioned Wikipedia. Can't image why, when so many of their opposition papers do Apwoolrich 12:46, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
The The Times and The Sunday Times have mentioned Wikipedia 19 times since October 2002. Most were merely further reading recommendations, but the occasional praise was offered, "Now Wikipedia holds more than one million articles in 75 languages, around 400,000 of them in English, all researched and entered by volunteers -and it's a brilliant resource." The collection includes one 400 article solely discussing Wikipedia, a blurb identifying a still-standing prankster's work on the Tony Blair page (Very strange mechanism, The Times catches an error, publishes it, and editors correct the entry as a result), and another blurb about the site ("It grows daily, and holds approximately 50,000 entries, available in 22 languages" - March 22, 2005 haha)
And now you know.
Lotsofissues 14:42, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
It was in Tuesday's Public Agenda supplement, as I recall - as is that section's style, it was an extremely brief distillation of the THES report from the previous week. In fact, see here for the online reprint. -- Michael Warren | Talk 12:55, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
There are two things going on here. 1) If this quote is recognizably from Jimbo, the article is claiming Jimbo is a critic of Wikipedia. I don't know if this is a true claim or not (personally, I don't really care very much, but if it's not true this seems like kind of sloppy reporting). 2) The quote itself is inarguably true, but deserves some context along the lines Wikipedia:Replies_to_common_objections. In my experience, most graffiti and vandalism is both easily recognizable and quickly reverted. It's harder to vandalize a page of a printed encyclopedia in such a way that a casual observer won't notice, but most vandalism of wikipedia is more like easily recognizable crayon markings (and unlike a printed encyclopedia, this is very easy to fix in wikipedia). -- Rick Block 14:27, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Rick, I brought this line to everyone's attention to poke fun at The Times reporting because it is sloopy writing exhibited in a comment about the potentially erroneous content found in Wikipedia.
Lotsofissues 14:42, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Hang on... Sloopy??? Grutness...wha? 14:49, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
A fuller quote of the THES article (including context for Jimbo's quote) and commentary/rebuttal here. Very sloopy.-- ALoan (Talk) 15:44, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
A wag just suggested to me that without any sort of process in place to ensure the quality of contributions, 'any particular page of The Times might be rubbish at the moment you happen to look at it'." --Tony Sidaway|Talk 17:02, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Holocaust denial, etc.

I've had an ongoing struggle at Armenian_people#Persecution_in_the_Ottoman_Empire with an editor or editors who keep claiming that the Armenian Genocide is only "alleged" and implying that only Armenians believe it occurred. It should be needless to say that nothing could be farther from the truth, and that only (some) Turks deny that it occurred. Other than historical accuracy, I don't have a horse in this race: I am neither Armenian nor Turkish, and don't have any strong feelings either way about either ethnicity. However, this has been a more-than-weekly issue, and I am about to be largely unavailable to Wikipedia for several weeks. I would greatly appreciate if someone else would keep an eye on the article; I'd also greatly appreciate that, in the unlikely event that anyone actually has citations against this generally accepted understanding of history, that they take it up in Talk:Armenian Genocide, rather than by dubious edits to a related article. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:04, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

"While Reason Sleeps"

Has anyone heard when the newest edition of "While Reason Sleeps" will be released? It's audiodrama, produced by Lion's Den Studio in Richmond, Va.

Thanks!

Sorry, no. Is that Dave?

Gasoline or Petrol?

Just trying to draw some attention to a little debate that's been going on because someone moved the article Gasoline to Petrol. See Talk:Petrol#Article_name.

I think gasoline is obviously more neutral, being the chemical name for the substance, but hey, maybe it's my cultural imperialistic american superiority nationalistic agenda getting in the way of my neutrality... *rolls eyes* - Omegatron 14:17, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

Please keep discussion on the talk page.

  • Important note: Again, please keep the discussion to the talk page. If this issue is still under dispute and you wish to get more opinions, please list that talk page on RFC. Thanks. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 19:30, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

I was bold and moved the discussion to the talk page - Omegatron 20:49, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedians Survey

Dear Wikipedians,

We cordially invite you to answer a short questionnaire which is a part of a non-commercial cross-cultural research project conducted at INFOSOC [5] (The Center for the Study of the Information Society), exploring Wikipedia community aspects.

The findings of this study will be published in Wikipedia to the benefit of everyone, personal copies will be also available via e-mail.

Click here for the questionnaire:[6]


Thank you in advance.

Research Team, INFOSOC


I'm interested to see the results. El_C 13:11, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
We will post the results here in Wikipedia. If you want a personal copy you can contact us via e-mail. Ariel, Research Team, INFOSOC

playwriting

hello,

This is my first hour as a user. So if I make any mistakes, please excuse me.

I will try to stay brief. I am a professional playwright who is beginning to do some research on scientific subjects. [I am not a scientist.] At the moment I'm exploring the life of Margret Cavendish, an English scientist/philosopher of science from the mid-17th century and probably the first female member of the Royal Academy of Science in England. A play obviously deals with a dramatic moment in someone's life or in society as a whole.

Would anyone familiar with Margret Cavendish, or the Royal Academy in the 17th century please suggest a starting point or an interesting perspective that I might explore? Any directions on further research would also be appreciated. Your help would be most satisfying.

As a courtesy, I should say that research gathered will be used to write a play, which I would intend to copyright. If I have transgressed here, I would appreciate being told so.

Most cordially, Bob

  • The article you are probably looking for is Margaret Cavendish. It is spelled "Margaret". For any other research questions, it is more appropriate to post them on Wikipedia:Reference desk. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 05:04, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I would also suggest looking at the page history of the article (using the "history" link at the top of the article's page). That might tell you who the main writers of the article were. Contact them on their user pages and they might be able to supply a little more information, or at least some clues as to where else to look. Grutness...wha? 10:04, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Big pictures

When I upload album covers, I upload biggest and highest quality covers I could find. Could uploading gigantic pictures {eg. Renegades) potentially go out of the fair use policy? Album covers will not damage them, rather it will advertise them, but it doesn't seem to fit the size policy. pmam21talkarticles 00:00, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that is possible but would require a really huge image size (your example is borderline, IMO). The use that is fair is illustrating an article about the album. An image that is so large that a poster could be printed from it would go beyond that fair use. An argument could also be made that if an image is large enough to act as computer wallpaper (1024x768+) that its size would not be considered fair. Of course, IANAL. --mav 15:05, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Can this please be added to the general disclaimer page? :-)

Wikipedia:General disclaimer

"We do not pretend that the Britnnica is immune to error" — Robert McHenry


  • from a letter to the editor, Jerusalem Post, May 14, 1993.

Lotsofissues 20:30, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't that be added to the Britannica disclaimer? :D Gkhan 20:51, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

page not updating

I updated Independent Schools Association of the Southwest with the school Episcopal School of Dallas and although the history says that I updated the page, the page itself is not updated. Why is this?--Howard547 02:16, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Seems like it must be a caching poblem of some sort (on the wikipedia side, not related to you). I'll copy this request to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), which is perhaps more likely to get a developer's attention. -- Rick Block 02:56, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
For whatever reason, this seems to be fixed now. -- Rick Block 15:37, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Help!

Help! Lately, while I am in Wikipedia, the first few pages I visit appear to behave correctly, but then after a while, the page I try to visit starts to misbehave. What is the problem with Wikipedia at this moment?? Georgia guy 22:47, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

What's the "misbehavior" like? Nickptar 23:41, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
To clarify what it is, first, after several minutes, the article still doesn't appear to behave. Then, I go to another Internet site, such as Google, and stay off Wikipedia for 30 seconds or so, but then after I'm finished, Wikipedia returns. This appears to happen as often as 1/3 of the time I try to open a Wikipedia page, believe it or not! Does this happen to any of you Wikipedians?? (Anyone who sees this is welcome to answer this question.) Georgia guy 23:48, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
You still aren't explaining what "behaving" means, but if you mean a blank page for 30 seconds or so, which finally loads, I get that too. Probably just server congestion. —Wahoofive (talk) 23:53, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
Screaming, yelling and throwing things seems to help with most computer problems. . . . . . .  ;-) Soundguy99 03:09, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Sacrificing a goat is necessary in some cases. *Dan* 03:16, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Try banging the computer. Hitting it hard on the side. This used to work with television in the good old days.--Jondel 09:12, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

How to sign user name faster

It takes me a long time to type out the code for entering the user name. Is there some way I can automatically sign my user name or make it faster? - Stancel 20:37, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Just type four tildes after your post to include your name and the date, like this: ~~~~. For more information, see Wikipedia:Signature-gadfium 01:52, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
Thank you so much! Stancel 22:49, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
Uh... This should be pretty obvious. If people don't know this, I think that's our fault and should be updated somewhere. Perhaps under "Your changes will be visible immediately."? - Omegatron 01:05, May 7, 2005 (UTC)
Toss {{tilde}} into the Welcome packet. — Xiong熊talk* 01:48, 2005 May 7 (UTC)
The message is already mentioned on {{welcome}}. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 14:59, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm seeing someone else who doesn't know. Talk:Harmonics_Theory#Pseudoscience.3F__Vanity.3F This should not happen. - Omegatron 14:59, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

Hypothetical Discussion (Just for fun) - If all males under 20 were exterminated from this site

Can you imagine how much better off we would be? Lotsofissues 23:29, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As a male under 20, I feel that I must express my heartiest agreement boffy_b 23:54, 2005 Apr 8 (UTC)
  • Why just the males? If you do something do it right immediately. On the other hand, some of our best editors fall in that category, I'd have to disagree, we'd probably be off worse with a major mutiny to get rid off. Luckily I'd be unaffected by such a thing myself. Where did you get the idea, even if it's hypothetical? Mgm|(talk) 08:15, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
  • MGM, after doing general custodial work for the last couple of days I have connected an undeniable empirical conclusion found in real life to wikipedia: Under 20 males are assholes with an additional unsuppressable urge to rampage like assholes. Who else goes on frenzied cockring.jpg paste binges? Girls? (haha) 23 year olds? (Well maybe contentious political entries) I just want to point out the cost of productivity in watching for vandalism - maybe start a informal calculus of the contributions of somewhat mature contributers from this group to the entire population of vandals who largely come from this group (all for fun). Lotsofissues 01:28, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm under 20 and male and don't consider myself an asshole. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 03:01, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • I don't consider you an asshole either: you are quite a good contributor; people need to be judged on their individual merits; still, it would astound me if the majority of the vandals and edit warriors are not young and male. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:37, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

I'm over 20 and consider myself an asshole Dan100 16:40, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

We're all males or otherwise honked on testosterone; we're all either over the hill or wet from our mama's teats; we're all bone wired nerds; and we're all opinionated assholes. The challenge is to pretend we are homo sapiens. — Xiong熊talk 01:33, 2005 Apr 23 (UTC)

I completely agree. We need to eliminate our competition for the few pre-pubescent girls that edit. --SPUI (talk) 01:55, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you ask me, age profiling is not all that necessary in the English language Wikipedia. Here, we have a large community, with a relatively effective system of checks and balances to avoid abuse and repair problems. But in other languages that would indeed come in handy. Recently, I withdrew from the Portuguese language Wikipedia because over there a clique of Admins made up of 17-year-olds who know squad about zilch (at least in terms of international laws) have decided to make it virtually impossible to work over there. Regards, Redux 17:23, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
If all under 20-year old males were exterminated, then we oldies would be sunk. I have just had a technical problem sorted out by a 15-year old! I might be able to research and write, and on a good day actually get it onto the server but I have not a clue on the finer points of programming Wikimedia. Apwoolrich 19:07, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To complete the sentence: "......then we would run into severe problems with the Geneva Convention ("Exterminate"), if not to say the Gender-Equality laws("Males"), if not Age-Equality laws("20").... and who the HELL would solve all the technical problems? Wikipedia'd all wither away on the "old generation" with no fresh blood at all to reincarnate the loss of oldies on pension all falling as flies, fer sure!"--OleMurder 19:56, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As a mature female, I endorse OleVampire's sentiment. Fresh young blood! Ke ke ke ke ke!--Bishonen | talk 23:29, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I propose a big cardboard sign in the front: "You must be This Tall to Ride the Wikipedia." (Yes, btw, adolescence is a disease, and those who are in its deepest throes abominate the site.) Geogre 18:08, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC) (carrier)

Let us consider the implications if all males under 20 year olds were exterminated from the site. Before we begin hypothesizing, we must first consider these corallories:

  • That the male under-20s were not killed or restrained from accessing Wikipedia, rather, their editing priviledges were removed.

We can then conclude that:

  • Wikipedia has developed a method to conclusively determine the gender and the age of a person.

This would have stunning effects on the entire world, but the pornography industry would ignore the method, even though it would conclusively solve the problem of minors accessing their content.

As Wikipedia progresses on without these male under twenty year olds, two long debated theories are proven:

Outcries against this bias will result in all females under twenty years old from being banned, so that the second statement can be amended to:

The world does not change. If the world does not change, Wikipedia cannot change. If Wikipedia cannot change, Wikipedia will die. QED: Banning under twenty year old males will prove disastrous for Wikipedia. :) (PS, I am under twenty years old and male and just wasted fifteen minutes typing this) Ambush Commander 21:17, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

How sexist and ageist of you. Hedley 16:09, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I do not concur with this. Mga 17:06, 15 May 2005 (UTC) (15)

Let us ban all males under 20 from Wikipedia and welcome the return of Hitler. Kaschner 11:23, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I just did a serious statistical investigation regarding wikipedia, wherein I realised all (all) trolls are, infact, human! Wikipedia should only be editable by canines! Gkhan 12:28, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Sockpuppets

I want to know if there are any comments any Wikipedian has about including a message about sockpuppet user names at Template talk:Anon. Within the past few days, I have wrote welcome messages on several anonymous Wikipedians, adding to them the warning not to use a sockpuppet. Any comments anyone has?? Georgia guy 01:38, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Sockpuppets rule!--OleMurder 21:52, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Worrying discrepancies between English and German articles

I compare often the English and German articles and I notice quite often discrepancies between them. I will from now on give every German and English article with a discrepancy factual accuracy warnings. I would appreciate help in this project and may be we could do this systematically. Until now I do this at random. Help in other languages (e.g with the "big" Wikipedia's French and Japanese) is also welcome. Andries 19:26, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Usually, when I encounter this, I just put notes on both talk pages. For English, German, French, and Romanian, it usually gets resolved pretty quickly; I've been less fortunate with Spanish, Italian, or Catalan. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:55, May 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • When two articles don't agree, it isn't necessarily true that both are wrong. A notice disputing factual accuracy belongs on the wrong one, only. (Or better yet, fix the one that's wrong.). Wikipedia can't root out errors by using only itself as a reference: the correct answer has to be found in another source. Nunh-huh 02:14, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Regarding Cipher

START
SHIFT:W1AL
BEGIN TRANSMISSION
>>
(1BL)J úómíäp ßffrf (1RBR)ßu Qxjtíx pëE A EäjQ ltçZS (AS)ëp btçüYjOZí. (CS)qï'Y (12OL)YZç ëAfrjçQ QE AHmO äQcjíçí óS (CC)the
sheet of paper.
Surely, we can do it?
<<
END TRANSMISSION

Dobermann (woof)]] 12:53, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

jS oTp1w TcN mZV89 EVh7N 2sl9 F0Om 3Awcsv5j qrX8JJ. Alphax τεχ 14:17, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
Yes, of course it's possible. You have to make it yourself, though. 84.154.125.117 19:38, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
START
SHIFT:W1AR
BEGIN TRANSMISSION
>>
qpéQkßg, pn'n çD(RV)ig pQgc gY ípúYYëbxú H mjHH çminW (1O12R) níüuVAVäíï YíbjúÁÁ ëägßgpcÁi. vYgiïß nc jbëSQZYr ptEjx ßfu nüum?
vjybWÁ, Sü OrDO DcgkZZ gui çinQcp ïb zßtrt'p ZWrx; rç AQ cüE nxf çj äQmA, äZÁäöjs:
>>>
LAUNCH
[7]
<<<
(CC) Please reply soon. Thank you.
<<
END TRANSMISSION

Dobermann (woof) 10:54, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Ok, anyone know what's going on here? I don't. Alphax τεχ 13:38, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
Good job. Yes, I'd highly recommend that you do. I'm making a program that will make it a lot easier to use it, and I've made one of those things you mentioned. It's not so hard, really. Good job again. Try to give the material to the others so we can organize something as soon as possible. Don't you have e-mail? It would be a lot more convenient. The Sandbox is too unstable and this is too open. Talk pages fragment, as you can see. Tell me about any developments. My e-mail is:
START
SHIFT:W1AL
BEGIN TRANSMISSION
>>
äptWOHnVKA@(RS)b-ßOüxV.(RS)ró
<<
END TRANSMISSION
Keep up the good work. 84.154.125.117 15:18, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
Aphax: I have no idea what's going on here, but I think these folks should really post these sorts of messages on alt.anonymous.messages instead of cluttering up the village pump. --Deathphoenix 19:59, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
We should retry Pyrite. Failed by the looks of it. I guess Aquarius isnt too keen on teh job. Go check. Kaschner 20:38, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
I see. Inform Aquarius and spread to 4. We can find another way, I'm sure. Do you have IT already? 84.154.125.117 21:42, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I suspect that they're using the village pump to send encrypted/garbled submissions. Multiple benefits of not being easily deletable (they'd just reference the history). Okay, please stop. Ambush Commander 23:02, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

I see that we're being evicted. Get some e-mail adds and then send them to me at the address above. We will now correspond solely by e-mail. At the rate we're going, perhaps Aquarius or Beagle will have the program ready by Saturday, and then we can launch the operation here. Forget Pyrite. Focus on the present. Remember, only one user at a time, or else the system will crash and we won't be able to monitor you. Good luck. 84.154.125.117 13:11, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

IMPORTANT!!! Begin assault tomorrow, May 28, I have the programs and will send them to you immediately. First, stun users, then carry out second stage. It should be easy, provided you have the new (modified) Javascript programs courtesy of User:Lupo and yours truly. ;) Wikipedia, prepare for a devastating attack while you have the time! Remember, guys, code names should be used. Monitoring through the live RC feed. Comm link through Yahoo Messenger. There, Wikipedians, I've given you enough leads. Let's get down to business! 84.154.125.117 21:13, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Mornington Crescent. Perhaps you didn't realize that your move from Pyrite to Lupo (or, as the traditionalists would have us write out in longhand, Piccadilly Circus to Waterloo/Porte de la Chapelle, enabled this transition via the ruling handed down in the Thurstonberry (ANZAC) - Weber game at the '04 Derby Co-conference. FreplySpang (talk) 01:11, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Uh? --cesarb 01:49, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Yes, what CesarB said. Never mind the rulings (if they can be called that), Porte de la Chapelle is off-limits outside of IFMCP beginners league matches. --W(t) 01:55, 2005 May 28 (UTC)
      • This is an international, not a beginners match. But I think you will find that we are playing with the revised ruling handed down after the Thurstonberry (ANZAC) - Weber game (the post-mortem was rather ugly); unfortunately, I have to say "Damn the torpoedoes, full steam ahead" (or, in longhand, Gare du Nord to Ashworth and thence to Brixton) which allows you to attempt the simple "shunt" under the 1904 "Olympic" rule (as intepreted in that obscure publication, the title of which I need not mention)†. -- ALoan (Talk) 02:03, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

† If this still leaves you totally mystified, see I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue†† and Mornington Crescent.

†† which leaves everybody totally mystified.

Both Beagle and Praetor are down. Complaining about code malfunctions. Postpone assault for 7 days. Kaschner 15:07, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Please tell me which will come first, this attack or Duke Nukem Forever? I was actually looking forward to seeing you lot carry this out as I expect you to be all talk and no damage. As it is, I think I'm right... so far... *marks June 4 on calendar* ...how disappointed I am... oh and see me shake in my boots at your empty threats and broken promises... oh woe is us... me... they? Something like that. Master Thief GarrettTalk 16:31, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
  • You will pay for your impertinence, Master Thief Garrett, in time, you will. In the menatime, you should prepare, prepare for what surely will be the end of wikipedia! If our code doesnt backfire, like what id did today. Laugh if you like, but in 7 days, our super code will overload your servers with loads of information! Haha, glorious day! Kaschner 18:45, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
  • "Complaining about code malfunction"? Yeah, that sounds plausible. If you really are planning something, and you think a shoestring DoS by, most likely, a couple script kiddies (what serious black-hat would go after Wikipedia anyway?) is going to permanently destroy Wikipedia, I suggest, in addition to a technical clue, that you go to a psychologist about your delusions of grandeur. I'll pay for that in time? Oh yeah, take down Wikipedia for a few days and I'll be crushed. Nickptar 23:27, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
I suggest we alert some of the cryptographically inclined Wikipedians and get whoever is planning this blocked. Wikipedia is not an attempt at anarchy. Alphax τεχ 01:15, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
Gasp of gasps, their evil hath failed us again! Where is the main page cluttered with pictures of autofellatio and gigantic YOU BEEN HOMEROWED! Flash effects? Where are the bots destroying our beloved pages? Wherefore art thou script kiddies? I was looking forward to this attack almost as much as I'm looking forward to the end of the semester... oh how depressing... I suggest we move this to BJAODN or something. Since obviously they're not doing anything--no, wait, I'm a day ahead of the US so it's still the 4th over there, they still have a few hours to PWN our sorry asses. Until then, adieu... Master Thief GarrettTalk 02:21, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'm still curious what the cipher they used was... Alphax τεχ 02:23, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)


Wondering if it's worth it

I wrote a little tome here about some recent raw experiences in the weblog article. I don't declare myself an angel in the recent fray there (or even in some other disagreements), but it is disheartening when the other players, as a large degree of their arguments, use terms of personal destruction, while I strived to not do that. Does anyone have any ideas of what can be done when such personal attacks like this occur in the place of argumentation? — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 03:47, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

You can start with the advice at Wikipedia:Truce, which in turn suggests stronger methods. Sounds like you're doing the first step, which is not responding in kind. I've sometimes found highly argumentative people simply like to argue, and if you refuse to argue back (tricky, without rolling over) they don't know how to respond. Go out of your way to find points of agreement. Make absolutely certain what you claim is factual (with references). Ignore personal attacks, respond with facts. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:18, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)
Good advice. Unfortunately his account of the situation downplays his tenacious contributions to the dispute, so it's a bit late for that. Tverbeek 12:03, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The talk and history clearly shows that I sought compromise in the article content, while you and User:RobotWisdom sought to fully exclude the "other side of the equation" in that weblogs are also web applications. You both used personal attacks in defending a biased approach to the article, and also sought unending argumentation, and attacked me for not wanting to argue with you in circles. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 16:43, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)
What I've decided to do is to basically allow these two personalities to go ahead and take over the article, and I'm going to stop watching it, for say, several months. I'll just let them do themselves in. It's a "passive aggressive" response and I like it.  :) It's not like a super-important article in the grand scheme of things anyway. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 05:24, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

The LA Times is a follower, not a leader

This week, the newspaper, will introduce an online feature called "wikitorials," as a way for readers to engage in an online dialogue with the paper. The model is based on "Wikipedia," the Web's free-content encyclopedia that is edited by online contributors.

http://scratchpad.wikicities.com/wiki/London:Home London Wikicity scratchpad

Wikicities is not a WikiMedia project. It's an external project based on Wikipedia, run by Wikia.

To explore the possibility of building a Wikicity for London, I've started a miniwiki. Please feel free to play around if you're interested. Use it as a sandbox.

  • http://scratchpad.wikicities.com/wiki/London:Home --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway]]|Talk 23:04, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
So why is this here? The village pump is not the place to announce your non-wikipedia-related projects. --W(t) 23:07, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

Pump page headings

After the village pump image was added to each subsection, the header didn't work very well and had the right-hand border missing. I've revamped the template and any comments, criticism or changes would be appreciated. violet/riga (t) 19:23, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Request for help, A hall of fame vandal has been discovered

Last night I looked into a user whom coolcaesar RVed, and discovered a long string of self aggrandizing POV. Kmccoy took the task further, and has so far discovered 16 IPs associated with Delfino. There are more likely to be found, and the total number of nonsense edits will likely rise into the hundreds. Most of these edits have remained for weeks. This is a serious junk/spam/vanity problem that needs to be squashed immediately. Please join us at the hub of activity at Kmccoy's subpage: User:Kmccoy/Delfino

lots of issues | leave me a message 10:41, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I must commend Kmccoy for a fine job. His patience and methodism is more astounding than the scope of vandalism.

lots of issues | leave me a message 08:07, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. --cesarb 00:06, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Daniel L. Lurker

Does this type of article count as vanity? 24.54.208.177 03:13, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[8] This page links to the Wikipedia article on the UK! Great, eh?--212.100.250.217 16:24, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cool! — Knowledge Seeker দ 16:31, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Admin run amok?

I wanted to write about this here so that as many people as possible would know about this absurd. Another user and myself (mainly) have been involved for quite a while in containing daily vandalism in this article. The article itself was never being improved, and all we did was revert attacks from IP addresses that we believe belong to the same person. After some time at it, we finally requested that the article be blocked at the proper forum (request for protection). BrokenSegue, an Admin (obviously), quickly did it (it was a flagrant case of constant vandalism), and, quite diligently I might add, added the article to his Watchlist, taking an active interest in solving the problem.

With the article blocked, we had finally contained the daily attacks. The anon, however, is likely to be a kid and a diehard fan of the subjects of the article — given who said subjects are — and so, instead of moving on, the anon started talking in the talk page, and even though he was giving ultimatums and so on, we thought that we were making some progress, maybe even starting to "convert an active vandal", something very rare. We had even set up a Temp page copying the article for him to express his views. He had shown no interest in it though, but we still had hopes.

Then, out of the blue, this other Admin simply came and unblocked the page. No comments on the talk page, no specific edit summary. Nothing. He simply unblocked the page because he felt like it (and that's the best explanation I could come up with). Result: in less than 24 hours, already three different users (myself included) have had to revert attacks from that same anon. I've asked BrokenSegue to block the page again, but he appears to be offline for the time being, and so in the meantime we just have to keep reverting vandalism every couple of hours again, all because of someone's inconsequence.

I have to say that my faith in the diligence of the Admins has been shaken. I mean, in order to become an Admin, one must be approved by the Admin community. And how does someone like that become an Admin? And what this kind of attitude says about the Admins in general? I'm not saying that all Admins are like this guy, but I used to think that Admins were all well balanced people, who are supposed to help in harder-than-usual issues. Not any more. I still have high praises for the Admins I've worked with (BrokenSegue, Jmabel, and others), but I now believe that there are rotten apples in the Admin basket. Regretable... Regards, Redux 02:51, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Pages are not intended to remain protected indefinitely, and the edit history shows that Snow unprotected it almost five days after the initial protection. Admins are not chosen by the "admin community", any reasonably established user can say their part in whether someone becomes an admin. And just for my own information, why are you using </br> to try to create paragraphs? -- Cyrius|✎ 03:29, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The question as to when to unblock a page that needed to be blocked has to be decided on a case-by-case basis. When the request was made to block the page, we already knew that a few days would not have sufficed to get this person to either start talking seriously or move on. And there it is now, in the article's history, the cabal proof: the anon immediately started vandalising the page again. As I have also said before in regards to this particular issue, blocking the page for a few days is effective to resolve a revert war between registered users or any users that have shown any disposition to discuss, but have somehow lost patience or their temper. It's quite different when you're dealing with an anon that has regularly ignored requests to talk and discontinue his line of action. He started talking when the page was blocked, but only to say: "this is that is wrong and I expect to see it changed immediately". It was obvious that a couple of days would not get this person to move on. If Snow had taken the time to see what it was that he was walking into, I believe (I have to) he would not have done it, or else there's no hope of resolving this. There is proof: as soon as Snow unblocked the page "almost five days after the initial protection" the anon immediately resumed his edits, and already three different users have reverted him. And it will go on and on, until the page is protected again, and we can either get him to start talking and work with the community, maybe compromise, or move on. Did you check Snow's talk page, to see how someone had already complained about his unprotecting pages that should not have been unprotected yet? I'm sorry, but Snow messed up in this case. I've been spending sometime to try and keep that article from becoming everything but encyclopedic. For most of the time, it was basically keeping gossip, fandom stuff and immaginary "data" from being added, but since this anon came along, it's become something else: he vandalises the article several times a day, and it's becoming unworkable. If I unwatch the article, the obssessed fan gets his way and starts shaping the article as he sees fit. Others will soon follow suit. How encyclopedic you think that's going to be in a while?
And I've been using the </br> simply because I do it faster with it. Regards, Redux 04:17, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Did you consider asking Michael Snow about why he did this, or asking him to restore the protection? Michael is a highly respected member of this community; even were this to be a poor choice, this is a wiki—it's not that big of a deal; it can be reversed. And one error does not make an "administrator run amok". I don't see what you were trying to accomplish by posting this here, when you didn't even ask Michael about it. If you wanted to point out a poor decision of his or that he should read the discussion first, you should let him know on his talk page. If you wanted to get the page protected, the proper course would be to list it on Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. I ask that you try to be more understanding of contributions people make in good faith: we're all volunteers here. Thanks for your help in keeping Wikipedia clean. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:23, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

And if you want to avoid admins unprotecting too soon a note on WP:AN/I might stop it from happening too. Mgm|(talk) 12:09, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

I posted it here because what happened was absurd. Sorry if some didn't like to hear criticism of an Admin. Snow's reasons were already known to me when I posted it: he unblocked the page because it had been bockled "for almost five days". And the page had been protected through the appropriate means: I posted a request in the Wikipedia:Requests for page protection forum, as I said in one of my previous comments here, and there I wrote that the page would have to remain protected for a longer period in order to accomplish the desired result: stop the daily vandalism.
None of it would have happened if Snow had taken a couple of minutes to understand why the article had been protected, what was going on there. What hadn't really occured to me prior to this incident was that an Admin would act this hastily. If I happen to be in a similar situation again, I'll know better to take appropriate measures to prevent things like that from happening again.
This here is the forum to get feedback from the community on issues that would otherwise go unnoticed except for those directly involved. That was exactly what I wanted to accomplish. But it appears that the answer has been "there was no need to bring this to this [public] place". I strongly disagree. This incident shows that Admins, even if "highly respected" and, I'm sure, usually diligent, can sometimes, pardon the analogy, "sign a document without reading it first". That's what Snow did, but reading before editing is Wikipedia procedure 101. I was rather surprised to see it come from an Admin. Perhaps another thing that this post could accomplish is stimulating the Admin community to revaluate the consistency of its procedures so as to improve efficiency. In this particular case I brought here, it was not "poor choice", it was a completely uninformed choice. And if it could happen to an Admin... this should absolutely be brought in for community discussion.
I'm only thinking about what I believe to be best for the community. In fact, I will say that I regret having been overly incisive in my original comment. It was a little over the top, but only in my remarks about Snow, not the issue at hand. What happened should not have happened. Regards, Redux 13:56, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Personally, I think some of the admins are too quick to protect pages at the slightest problem; page protection is contrary to the wiki spirit, and should be used only as an absolute last resort, and ended as soon as feasible. And, by the way, there's no such HTML tag as </br>; the br tag is an empty tag that has no end tag, and anyway, your writing had no opening <br> tag for the ending tag to end. You may be making a botched attempt to use XHTML syntax, where <br /> is the proper syntax to signify an empty tag that opens and closes in one tag; there, the slash is at the end of the tag, not the beginning. *Dan* 14:35, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)
Though, Wikipedia actually turns those tags into proper XHTML <br /> tags in the version of the page sent to users' browsers; the Wikimedia software is amazingly good at making valid, standards-compliant code (which actually passes the W3C validator) out of the dog's-breakfast of malformed stuff users may input. *Dan* 14:38, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)


This is clearly a content dispute, not vandalism. I am changing the template accordingly and caution redux against his prolix use of the word prolix. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:12, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

A content dispute? Hardly. But at this point I really don't care what you label it. All that's important is getting the situation resolved. And Tony, I really don't see where this is coming from. Certainly not from this topic, since I did not call anyone here prolix. When I revert/edit articles and say that it's "prolix", it's because I really do believe that what was there was prolix, something that there's no shortage of on Wikipedia — sometimes I review my own writing because I come to see that I've been prolix. You see, unlike the vandal — that's right, vandal — at the article that's at the source of this discussion, I always explain my reasons for editing, if someone disagrees, I'm always open for discussion in the talk page of whatever article may be concerned. If I'm wrong, I admit it and move on, provided someone can demonstrate to me that I was wrong, if I realize it myself, I go right out and say it. You are "cautioning" the wrong person here. Try doing it with someone that actually needs cautioning, such as the vandal at that article, except he won't bother to answer you, unless he feels he should give you an ultimatum for some reason.
Dann, I appreciate your tips about HTML code, but all of this is not exactly the point of this discussion, the same as Tony's comments. I started this to point out a flawed Admin procedure, but the Admins have so far refused to approach the subject, except to say that I shouldn't have posted this comment here, a point with which, as I have said, I strongly disagree. Regards, Redux 22:00, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
All right, let's start over. I'm sorry if you felt I was evading the subject. That was not my intention: I thought the subject was the heading you used: an administrator who had "run amok" ("I have to say that my faith in the diligence of the Admins has been shaken...how does someone like that become an Admin? ...I used to think that Admins were all well balanced people...Not any more...I now believe that there are rotten apples in the Admin basket.") I didn't think that this characterization was warranted, nor did I feel this was the appropriate place to complain about an administrator who had run amok. However, given your statement above about it being over the top, perhaps I am misunderstanding your intent. Maybe if you could mention what you'd like resolved or what type of outcome you are looking for, I could better address your concerns. Thanks! — Knowledge Seeker দ 03:36, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

By the way, I think Redux and I have mostly cleared this up on our talk pages (with an assist from Rick Block). Although if anyone would still like to add to the discussion regarding better ways to handle protection/unprotection of pages, they're welcome to. --Michael Snow 04:32, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Michael and I have already straighten out this misunderstanding. And that's exactly why I believe this procedure should be reviewed, to avoid misunderstandings. Of course no one wants to have articles blocked for too long a time, it's a drag and it goes against the wiki spirit. But we can't ignore how the project has grown, and the degree of unpredictability that the ever growing number of users, both registered and anons, bring to it (just as an example: as I was beginning to write this comment, my talk page was vandalized by an anon). As it had been said, protecting the page for just a few days usually suffices to solve revert wars or usual vandalism, since people may talk things out during this time, and most vandals don't keep returning to the pages they've just vandalized. But I'm seeing ever more commonly another type of vandal: that type that just keeps coming back and attacking the same article over and over and over. Sometimes it's not even a "classic vandal", but rather just someone who has discovered Wikipedia recently but doesn't want to take the time to learn to work with others in the project. Articles pertaining to Tennis are prolific in that — if one happens to contradict the anons that regularly contribute to certain articles, it's hell to actually get things done, they won't communicate, or if they do, they show no disposition to conforming to the basic rules we have here.
That being said, I believe that pages that have been blocked cannot be unblocked based solely on the time that has elapsed since protection. Most of the times it may be plain to see what was going on and whether or not the situation has been resolved (maybe an endless discussion on the talk page with some sort of compromise being reached, etc.), but in the scenario I've described, it gets far more tricky, and a longer period of protection might be required to get an intransigent anon to start talking or move on, and this situation is not always plain to see, since the anon is not talking in the talk page, as regular users would, he's just lurking around, waiting for the article to be unprotected so that he can get at it again.
So I would suggest that it becomes standard procedure in the cases of protected articles where there's no obvious signs of discussion in the talk page, that any Admin, before unprotecting the page, writes some sort of message in the talk page and waits at least a day, or, if there was a request for protection, that the user who requested protection be contacted direcly. Maybe some people already do that, but this is left to their discretion, and, as I said, it should be procedure. In those cases, talking to someone who is involved is the only way to understand what is going on in a seemingly "quiet" article. Alternatively, we could come up with some sort of tag that would provide a general explanation about a "longer period of protection" due to "insistent vandalism". All of this is, of course, a first draft. The bottom line would be: not unprotecting articles without ascertaining the situation, even if it looks like the situation, whatever it may be, has already been resolved. Regards, Redux 05:28, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I think you're misusing the term "vandalism" when you apply it to possibly good-intentioned, though clueless, edits, coming from newbies who don't understand how to do things properly and unfortunately don't seem capable of catching a clue about it. (And, incidentally, you're continuing to misuse HTML, too, with your bogus </br> tags. Since you don't seem capable of catching a clue on that when it's handed you, you perhaps share an attribute with your so-called vandal.) *Dan* 13:22, Jun 11, 2005 (UTC)
What is up with you and the HTML code thing? You've identified me with "vandals" because of this, what about personal attacks? Gratuitous aggressiveness? I really can't grasp why you're so bothered about my using the </br> tag, which I only do in my comments on talk pages, so it's really not hurting the project in any way, but you are out of line. Now, I don't label anyone "vandal" just because they might have performed a couple of misguided edits, only when I (or someone else) has repeatedly tried to reason with the person and have been consistently ignored or attacked. My comments were broad, I was not about to rewrite the manual on vandal identification in a comment on the Village Pump, certainly some generalization might have occurred, but since this is not actually about banning anyone, just reviewing procedures, it was well within acceptable parameters. And again, all of this is besides the point. I did not propose new parameters for identifying vandals and banning them, all I proposed was a new protocol for unprotecting pages. There's quite a difference between those two. Redux 16:53, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The </br> thing is a good "bogosity indicator"; anybody who actually thinks that it in any way resembles valid HTML, and especially if they persist in this misconception even after being corrected, is probably not the sort of person who ought to be taken seriously on any subject. *Dan* 17:01, Jun 11, 2005 (UTC)

Don't you think you are exaggerating a little? Well, actually a lot. I will not entertain this pointless discussion which is not the point of all of this. No offense, but you need to get over yourself a little. Does anyone care to contribute to the actual topic of discussion? Redux 18:03, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

1) Where and 2) how to develop a sketch for a draft for a wikipedia entry.

1) Where and 2) how to develop a sketch for a draft for a wikipedia entry.

Please let me know of any hints, tips or pointers that would apply to developing a sketch for a draft for an entry about a phenomenon going on at doctors' offices and clinics.

If you would, please consider and contribute to a sketch for a draft for an entry about a strategy for reducing sexually transmitted infections cases. The phenomenon of potential sex partners coming in to clinics or visit their doctors saying we haven't had sex yet and want to know our sexually transmitted disease status. A strategy of let's get tested together before we have sex... for sexually transmitted infections. On any given day two people can meet and want to have sex. You can get tested together for a number of sexually transmitted infections before you have sex.

one draft for the strategy

blogs, links
http://NotB4WeKnow.EditThisPage.com
http://NotB4WeKnow.blog-city.com

a.
For example, where around this wiki or any wiki or anywhere would be the best place to develop a sketch for a draft for an wikipedia entry with other collaborators?...

b.
How do you attempt to get more support from the inclusionists?... and deal more effectively with the deletists activities?

oo-- dWs dsaklad@zurich.csail.mit.edu 06:44, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You could discuss it on a similar or related topic's talk page. That way you can find other knowledgeable people to both agree with and add to your page. Alternately, you could just go boldly ahead and place the article here now. If other people don't think it's important enough they'll vote for its merger with the related topic. But if they think it's worthwhile it can stay, even if it's just a stub. You can start a page by typing any old name you wish as a search, and if that page doesn't exist you can jump right in and make it!
Also it's best if you do the drafts and revising here. That's the whole point; we don't care how short and "crappy" an article is, because anyone can add to it at any time! While you're off looking around for more content to add, someone else can spot it and add other details you hadn't thought to cover yet!
Just be sure the article doesn't become too much like baseless original research, nor a POV fork of an existing topic (i.e., writing on "ethics in abortion" when that's already covered nicely in the general abortion article), you shouldn't have much trouble with deletionists, they usually stay clear of technical and medical things anyway.
But, anyway, welcome to Wikipedia! I hope that answers all your queries. If not just write back and someone will answer! Master Thief GarrettTalk 07:53, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Your first saved revision/draft should be more than just a title or framework. Include a bit of comment in a couple of places (it doesn't matter how good the content is, as long as it isn't gibberish). If you don't do this it might get speedy deleted as one of the many many useless contributions that get weeded out by those watching the recent changes. Thryduulf 09:28, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thank you !

c.
Would the responses conflict?... at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_undeletion#History_only_undeletion
or at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_undeletion#Not_b4_we_know_2

I began at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Not_b4_we_know&action=edit Then with no remark no reason got tagged for the speedy delete. Then with no remark no reason deleted offering no opportunity to recompose a sketch for a draft for a wikipedia entry. With no remark no reason got deleted after trying http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requested_articles/Applied_arts_and_sciences&diff=14890440&oldid=14879386 With no remark no reason got deleted after trying http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template_talk:Not_before_we_know-stub&action=edit

d.
Suggestion.
Outline the protocol ever more clearly including better opportunities to recompose, to backtrack. A hint, tip or pointer offered before tagging the speedy delete. A hint, tip or pointer offered before the deletion.

e.
How would we make the process ever more clear for the next contributors?... oo-- dWs dsaklad@zurich.csail.mit.edu 11:55, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This "article" sounds like original research and/or self-promotion anyway. You attempt to move it into the template namespace is utterly incomprehensible. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:21, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Let's not put a limit to imagination! A protocol known to a regular might not be completely clear to a neophyte. oo-- dWs dsaklad@zurich.csail.mit.edu 07:09, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

And some advice, posting your email address all over the place is probably going to attract spam to your inbox. -- Cyrius|✎ 09:54, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Page move

Hello--Sorry if this is in the wrong place. I tried to make an edit in the Katherine [sic] Drexel article, correcting the spelling to Katharine, but couldn't figure out how to correct it in the title. I'm not terribly interested in adding things or changing things in general, and am just grateful to have Wikipedia available for quick reference on-line, but I did want to correct the name. Sharon 206.224.83.155 02:31, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks so much, Sharon, for dropping a note. I've moved the page to the correct spelling. I'm glad to hear you like the site. Joyous 02:45, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

Sandbox

I want to know if any Wikipedian has any opinions about whether it is okay to have the sandbox heading mentioned twice in the sandbox. I remember a few times when this happened. Georgia guy 23:49, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • Sure, as long as it isn't copied to spamming quantities or completely deleted. Mgm|(talk) 12:03, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

Missing image on www.wikimedia.org

Not sure where to report this. The main www.wikimedia.org page uses http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/wiki.png as the link to wikipedia, which does not exist. — PhilHibbs | talk 09:12, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It's using http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bc/Wiki.png for me, which does exist. Perhaps it has already been fixed. -- Cyrius|✎ 09:56, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I guessed the webmaster email address just after posting that. — PhilHibbs | talk 10:25, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia gives FALSE information!

I shouldn't put the entire blame on Wikipedia, but because of its policy of letting anyone edit the information, readers are being mislead. I had to write an essay for one of my courses, and after reading some of the disgusting things that people wrote, I know that one site that can not be trusted for true information is this one. Just to let you know, people are taking wrong advantage of Wikipedia's policies, and filling it with garbage, by cutting out important facts in history. DO NOT USE WIKIPEDIA.

Or, if you see something wrong, you could just fix it. That's kind of the idea of this whole project... --Dmcdevit 23:57, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
That isn't really a helpful reply - how am I supposed to know whether or not information on, say, Frank Lloyd Wright is inaccurate? I'd never heard of him before today. — PhilHibbs | talk 10:27, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
What's the entry? We'll fix it if you don't wish to. lots of issues | leave me a message 00:23, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
One shouldn't accept everything they read on Wikipedia (or anywhere else) in a totally uncritical manner; if you're writing a research paper on something you should find multiple sources instead of relying on a single source which might prove inaccurate. Nevertheless, on the whole, Wikipedia is surprisingly informative for a site that allows "random" editing from the general public. *Dan* 00:52, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)
I shouldn't put the entire blame on the internet, but because of its policy of letting anyone publish information, readers are being mislead. Sound familiar? Ambush Commander 01:06, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Replies_to_common_objections#Wikipedia can never be high quality. Rather than do not use Wikipedia, better advice might be do not rely exclusively on Wikipedia. But, as others have already pointed out, you should never rely on only one source. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:04, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)
Eventually, one would be able to employ specific diffs (if not the dynamic article itself) as citations in scholarly publications. El_C 04:29, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This is a silly argument. The internet doesn't claim to be a reputable source for anything. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 06:19, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The intarnet makes claims? Well, we'll have none of that as soon as I reboot. The internet, that is! El_C 06:22, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Praise

I praise you for Wikipedia. Tho I do not know what wikipedia stands for. Excellent encyclopedia. My passions are Philosophy&Psychology. I love the hyperlinks to other related information in the general area.Well done. I am sold. It is now my only reference to dictionary,encyclopedia and all knowledge concerneing the English language. Thank you. Sincerely Yours,

P.L. James.

  • I've removed this user's email adress to shield him from spam. Hope I'm not too late. Mgm|(talk) 21:58, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)
  • Dear James, we are certainly glad you have found Wikipedia useful. The name is a portmanteau of encyclopedia and wiki, a category of software. You can read more about wikis by following the link. For many of us it is more fun to build this growing encyclopedia too.  :Signup for an account here and start editing
Regards,
lots of issues | leave me a message 04:14, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Edit War with another user

I have been in a perpetual edit war with User:Rspeer. We need some mediation or there is no end in sight for this trouble. He has repeatedly falsely accused me of a number of things. Is there some help for this?--Fahrenheit451 21:12, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • You could head over to the Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal or ask for mediation at WP:RFM. However, make sure Rspeer, is notified. Mediation takes three (you both and the mediatior). Mgm|(talk) 21:55, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

I'd be happy to accept mediation; in fact, I requested it before, but withdrew it when the situation seemed to improve and I hadn't gotten a response from a mediator. I get the idea that mediation is fairly defunct right now, which is sad.

As for the particular conflict that likely provoked this comment (on Talk:Strategic nomination), it seems to have settled. If there is something like mediation still in existence, though, it may help us coexist in the future.

F451 didn't notify me of this request, by the way.

RSpeer 20:51, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

If dedicated editors had access to LexisNexis and other sub. databases our content quality would thrust upwards

I would be willing to write appeals for charity. Anyone think the effort is worth it?

lots of issues | leave me a message 20:26, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree that Wikipedia would certainly improve in terms of quality, especially if more people had access to the giant ALLNEWS file on LexisNexis or the OneFile database on Gale Group's Infotrac service (each of which has tens of millions of articles from the past 25 years). The problem is that LexisNexis, Gale Group, ProQuest and the other big database providers are for-profit businesses. They charge libraries thousands of dollars each month for access, which covers their costs of licensing content, keying, scanning, or uploading content into their databases, maintaining their huge server farms, and improving their software. There is no way they would give out access to anyone who claimed to be a Wikipedian. Even if Wikipedia limited access to super-dedicated editors with, say, at least 10,000 edits and an account that has been in existence for more than a year, that would only open up Wikipedia to hacking by hackers eager for free LexisNexis or ProQuest access.
Anyway, as I have recently noted on the Wikipedia:How to write a great article page, one can often get access to many of the big subscription databases through one's local library. Of course, that depends on whether one's library can actually afford to subscribe! --Coolcaesar 12:28, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
As stated on my user page, i've got access to over 400 sub databases. If you need something factual looked up just leave me a message on my talk page. Otherwise, No original research. --Alterego 21:22, Jun 11, 2005 (UTC)
I too have access to a plethora of stuff, but it's of a different nature to these databases. Massey University has subscriptions to HTML and PDF editions of virtually every popular magazine and academic journal you can think of, and in fact I've only found one very obscure magazine it doesn't have. It's all absolutely free for me as a paying student, so if you're dying to know what was said in the Y2K Bugs sidebar of the TIME magazine Special Millenium Edition or read that closing paragraph on page 25 of the June 1999 American Psychological Association journal, I merely have to download the PDF and copy-'n'-paste that section to give to you. So just ask away! If I can in any way help with researching and referencing an article here, believe me, that'll make my day. The only delay will be how much spare time I have to get the info to you. Master Thief GarrettTalk 00:07, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
A few libraries will even let you get into InfoTrac from anywhere on the Internet; My library does this, and you just have to have your library card handy. Something to keep in mind if your library supports it, and you can't get to the local branch. -lee 23:37, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Is there...

I think it is important to have a page for just plain discussion. I mean, most of us don't know each other off of this site! At least I don't. Their should be a page for just plain communication. And (don't kill me you guys, I know this isn't exactlly supposed to be a fan page), you should be able to talk about more than just adding [to] and subtracting [from] the artical. Please take it into consitteration make two talk pages: an "artical quality" talk page and a "fan base" talk page. Thank you. --Wack'd About Wiki 20:18, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

PS: I won't leave this site or anything if you say no, don't worry about scaring me away or anything.
Wikipedia has already been blocked by my company's content filter under the category "chat" (I appealed and got it un-blocked), so I for one would not welcome this feature. — PhilHibbs | talk
m:IRC. Alphax τεχ 04:45, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia has already been blocked by my company's content filter under the category "chat" Do you know whether this was a decision made originally by your company, or is it the default on some filtering software? If the latter, we ought to know about it and take some action. Bovlb 06:17, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)
The people who I work for aren't particularly fond of anyone using their computers for anything that isn't directly government related.--Quid 17:23, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Undo this??

Please read very slowly and carefully:

About 1/50 of the time, there is something I accidentally do when I type a Wikipedia page in the URL that makes it so that when I visit the page in the future, a W from Wikipedia instead of an e from Internet Explorer appears before the URL in the Address box. Any way to undo that so that when I visit it again, the e that I should see instead is seen?? Georgia guy 19:34, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I use firefox on linux and this is normal behaviour. Where sites have specified an icon, this is displayed at the start of the URL bar and on eatch of the tabs you have open. I find the latter particularly usful as an easy way to see which tab a site is open on. e.g. at the moment I have 5 Wikipedia tabs open, 1 storiesonline.net tab open, 1 Channel 4 tab open, 1 channel 4 forums tab open, and three Amy Studt forum tabs open (this hasn't set an icon). When I want to go to the BBC site, I know exactly which of the 11 tabs I have open is the one I want. Thryduulf 20:10, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I believe MSIE only reads the site icon when you bookmark a page; check if this isn't what you are doing by accident (Mozilla Firefox, as said above, reads the site icon every time). The way to make it go would be to clear the cache, AFAIK. --cesarb 20:16, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
If I were ever to see a MSIE icon in conjunction with Wikipedia, this would be a rather unexpected (and traumatic) experience, as I've never used IE as my primary browser (I went directly from Netscape 4.x to the Mozilla Suite a few years ago). *Dan* 20:19, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
  • What you are seeing is called a favicon. And, unfortuately, it seems that IE still primarily only uses it on bookmarks. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 06:14, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
To actually answer Georgia guy's question: if you want to get rid of the favicon, go into Tools, Internet Options, Settings (under Temporary Internet Files), View Files, look for a file with internet address http://en.wikipedia.org/favicon.ico, and delete it. Or (as cesarb said) just clear the whole cache. --rbrwr± 12:33, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Is it true?

I like the idea of a place where people can share their expertise & knowledge but I fear that some people may use it to propogate their version of truth.

I say that I have delusions of literacy in that, so far, I am an unpublished author though i have hopes that one day I will be published and be able to retire and concentrate on my keyboard.

My stories tend to be in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre but are based on various folk legends. In writing these I would like my underlying source material to be accurate so try to use the netto find information.

In a current project I wished to use Nanabozho as one of my characters but ran up against problems. Longfellow portrays him,(AKA Hiawatha)as messaniaic figure as do some other web sources, others give a different picture of him, in one case as one of the sons of Mudjekeewis, (the West Wind), he is mostly harmful, in other places he becomes a Creator God. Once you balance all these things out and treat him as a trickster,(perhaps equitable with Brer Rabbit), a balance is possible. However there are people who prefer one aspect and may offer that as definative.

Then you have the New Agers of various ilks and while I would not question their right to hold certain beliefs, (perhaps they really have been granted a revelation), they could move their concepts into the mainstream. The concepts of modern pagans may be suspect as the early church ensured that no record of the original Norse practices remained so they are fabricating their own. A similar thing seems to be happening based on Native American spirituality.

--212.32.113.130 15:51, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What is true?

Truth. --W(t) 10:59, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

"What is truth?" Pilate asked. (John 18:38, NIV). Master Thief GarrettTalk 13:14, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, but he didn't stick around waiting for a reply. Grutness...wha? 13:40, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hello I'm new to wikipedia

So far I've started a couple of stubs. What is the etiquette around here. I guess I'm just saying... hey! and... that this places is very interesting especially as far as navigation goes. 67.190.102.28 did not sign off)

Hello, and welcome! I hope you enjoy your stay with us. The first thing that I can say etiquette-wise is that it's nice if you can sign your posts. Simply type four tildes (~~~~) after your post to sign your name. You can also click on the button above the edit box that looks like handwriting. If you do this it will automatically convert the tildes into your username or IP; that way we can see who says what in a discussion. And have a little look through the Help pages, they'll tell you anything and everything you need to know. If anything's still unclear please don't hesitate to ask. Once again, enjoy your stay! Master Thief GarrettTalk 02:17, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hi there. Welcome to the project. Be friendly. Discuss contentious changes in the talk pages. And of course sign every single comment by inserting the following (4 tildas): ~~~~ lots of issues | leave me a message 02:19, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm writing an article dealing with UN peacekeepers. I am just wondering: what is the copyright status of images from the UN website (that are taken by UN workers). Are they PD, or how do we go about using UN images? Thanks. --Dmcdevit 05:41, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The UN has a copyright statement linked right off the bottom of the entry pages. UN material is essentially "all rights reserved". They do provide contact information, but good luck getting acceptable licensing out of a UN bureaucrat. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:35, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Oh well... I guess I could find better sources then. Thanks for the help. --Dmcdevit 22:26, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

How do you figure out how many edits you've made?

I've been looking for this info for a while and I haven't figured a way to get it. Is there any easy way? --Barfooz (talk) 05:59, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Here. It's called Kate's tool, and it's linked to from near the top of Requests for adminship.-gadfium 06:15, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
You shouldn't worry about it. -- Cyrius|✎ 06:43, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Try the new Template:editcount template, which makes it easier to count someone's edits.
E.g. Edit count for NSR
It's designed for putting on people's user pages so they can easily link to their count. NSR 09:41, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

A related question - I've noticed several times on Rfa that someone has posted a detailed break-down of edits by talk page, article page, wiki-space, etc... how do you get that info? Grutness...wha? 10:38, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I read on the user talk page of someone (I can't remember who unfortunately) a couple of days ago that these counts are generated by a script. It isn't run often as it puts a strain on the servers apparently. Thryduulf 11:55, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
It doesn't seem to work for me; I put in my userid and it said it didn't exist. *Dan* 12:15, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
You have 998 edits. El_C 12:19, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, El_C beat me to it. Dan, maybe you entered *Dan* or dtobias instead of Dtobias? --Deathphoenix 12:23, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

To expand on Cyrius's point - it's fine to determine your edit count out of idle curiousity, or to figure out where you might be in relation to whatever you might consider significant milestones (have I made my 1024th edit?), but editing for the sake of making the edit counter go up is not. It's not a contest. There is no prize. This is not to say minor corrections are not welcome. If you enjoy fixing other people's typos please do so. However, please don't make a single change with 5 edits just to increase your edit count. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:53, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Mathdaily

I'm not sure if there is an established proceedure for this. I thought I would check to see if folks are aware of http://www.mathdaily.com They have copied a substantial section of the wikipedia for their own site (I noticed this because their entry on the Ultimatum game is identical). However, there is no reference to wikipedia and the pages contain a copyright notice (attributing the page to mathdaily.com). I assume there is some standard way to deal with this, but I thought that since it is so extensive it might warrent an organized response. Also, if people are already handling this, I didn't want to step on anyone's toes. Thanks! -Kzollman 23:15, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

In http://www.mathdaily.com/copyright.html they mention that that is Wikipedia stuff. But they should have said that on the main page I guess. Oleg Alexandrov 23:26, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The standard way to deal with it begins at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. --cesarb 23:30, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Thanks! I'll pursue the matter there... best, Kzollman 23:33, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

Szkieletor

The translation de:Szkieletor is proposed for the deletion - the article is short and bad, the building that has never been build not importand enough. What do you think - should Szkieletor be proposed for deletion here (in the en:WP) or not? AN 16:23, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Don't see why. Then again, I'm inclusionist on these things. gkhan 20:10, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
Don't see why. And I tend to vote to delete a lot of stuff. Not being finished afer 4 years of construction seems notable to me. Vegaswikian 02:20, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thank you

Some anon was really happy with the wiki, so created the following message at Thanks,

Thanks for checking this Wiki Guys! I've made this page so that you would actually read it. I don't want to make your jobs harder, so just go on and delete this, but I want to say wow. Wow to all the work that you've done with this. Wow for cheching all of the international articles you get and filtering out the bad ones. Very cool! keep up the good work!

Don't you love this community? Radiant_* 14:36, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedida rules :D This makes me happy gkhan 15:54, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

Pleas vote for de.wikipedia!!!!

the german wikipedia is nominated for the Grimme Online Award and we go win with your help. vote here (last entry) it's very simple to vote: click on the circle left to Wikipedia - Die freie Enzyklopädie, then the button vote >>> and then Ja!. the rest isn't necessary, cause it's just a competition so please help the german 'pedia Schaengel89 @me 12:06, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Copyediting on Zanskar

I would like to inform all wikipedians concerning the proposed changes on Zanskar after encountering vandalism from User:Mel Etitis, who had always reverted my edits by stating that they are mostly bad (usually at the expense of the good ones, study the history carefully[9].) My edits on this article include resectioning, content restructuring and minor grammatical amendments which I feel that this article greatly needed it.

  • Shift all the images of Zanskar to Wikimedia commons. To me, I feel that too many images will clog up the article, and by shifting it to commons would be more appropriate.
  • Image description. I don’t see why Mel Etitis and his associate User:JMBell has reverted my edits many a times, at the expense of finding reasons to block me for a period of time. [10],[11] as examples.
  • Gramatical errors. See Talk:Zanskar for more information

There is no need to put such a windy description on the thumbed images. Such windy descriptions, however, should be shifted to the image article itself.

  • Content restructuring. This phrase, which was placed in the climate subsection of the geography section, does not seem appropriately categorised:

Zanskari houses, though otherwise well built, are not adapted to the recently increasing rainfall, as their roofs leak, catching their surprised inhabitants unprepared. Most of the precipitation occurs as snowfall during the harsh and extremely long winter period. These winter snowfalls are of vital importance, since they feed the glaciers which melt in the summer and provide most of the irrigation water.


I would suggest that passage is more suitable to create another new section or subsection, placing the entire section into the new section or subsection.

No shortcuts. The passage uses shortcuts, such as Rain- and snowfall, which can be preety confusing. I would recommend newer phrases to be used.

If there are no objections in three days, I hope that I can go ahead smoothly with my copyediting plans. Thanks.

Tan 15:27, 1 June 2005 (UTC)

Your hope is misplaced. First, this isn't the place for your comments. Secondly, it has been explained to you on many occasions that your changes to Zanskar are not acceptable to any of the other editors involved on it, and that you are simply changing it from good to bad (especially in terms of its English). Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Mr Tan indicates a similarly unanimous rejection of your editing style and approach to other editors. You won't be allowed to mess up the Zanskar article, so give it up. If you have genuinely new ideas which haven't already been discussed and rejected, bring them to Talk:Zanskar. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:03, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm not making comments. In fact, you still do not get my point clear, so I want to let people know whether your edits are justificable. Rejected ideas doesn't mean they are wrong.
  • I do not tolerate insults. I do not understand why you say that I'm messing up the article. In the first place, it needs copyediting. If you are still so contradicting, why don't we go on a vote? (Copyediting does not strcitly pertains to the grammar of the article, but also the styling of the article) And that is what my main objective is--restructuring. If I have made a mistake, I would have apologised and gave up the matter. But I didn't.
  • Neither you have explained clearly on why this is acceptable to you. If you do not make your point on why the current state of the article is acceptable to you, then I would suggest that it would be a pleasure that you stay out of your edits on this article.
  • It is because that you do not make your points clear enough that I have to bring out this matter onto the village pump. Anyway, explanations are welcome.

Tan 19:13, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I hate to pull rank, but in this case I can do no other; my written American English skills are broadly recognized. This editor's writing is not so bad as many I've read, but still suffers from a number of weaknesses common to those for whom this is not a native language. I suggest that this editor may make useful substantial contributions, leaving them to others for copyediting and improvement; but that this editor may wish to refrain from copyediting others. — Xiong熊talk* 16:50, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)

From User talk:Xiong:

Thanks Xiong. Although I cannot make out clearly on what you are trying to say, but I feel that you may be the most appropriate person to act as a judge between User:Mel Etitis and me--both of us were unable to come to a concensus about the state of Zanskar.

I do agree that my english may not be the best. However, just see the state of Zanskar--it needs content restructuring. If you see the history of Zanskar [12], an annoyomous user has tried to copyedit Zanskar--but it seems strange that Mel reverted my edits, and it has occured to me before.

What I want you to do is to watch out on Mel's action. I have told him to wait patiently and let me complete the entire copyediting process, I do not want interruptions from him, and I had already had more than enough. After I have completed the whole process, then do allow him to counter-copyedit. (His poor foresight maybe the reason to this dispute).

For your information, do look into Zanskar and Talk:Zanskar.

Thanks.

Tan 10:49, 2 June 2005 (UTC)


Anymore comments concerning this issue? If there is none in three days' time, then I assume that this dispute is settled, and hopefully I can go ahead with my plans. Please be patient once I start copyediting, but go ahead make ammendments on my grammar. All reverts without appropriate explanation or intentions should be considered as vandalism (or subvandalism).

Tan 19:13, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)


I would also like to add one more point from here (my opinion)--Zanskar is an article that looks more like a personal ancedote than a proper encyclopedia article. This is evidenced in the usage of Wikipedia:No peacock terms such as Even though Padum, the administrative capital of Zanskar, is not of great interest...

All are welcome to copyedit.

Tan 17:30, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Something that could possibly help out in this dispute:
(message template)
Just so you'll all know, in my absence (which will go on, I assure you), I've thought up a new commitee which will serve as an unofficial mediation group. This is in response to Tan's and possibly others' disputes that have gotten out of hand because of the words "RfC" and "ArbCom." This unofficial commitee is supposed to help out in disputes but should be less intimidating to disputing users. To prevent messy situations, the standards of entering this commitee are very high, but there should be no doubt that these arbiters will be the best ever (if everything goes well, that is).
I have decided to call this new commitee the Diplomats' Guild and its members diplomats. More info on User:JMBell/Diplomats' Guild.
This is still a prototype and I need some opinions on whether or not it will function or if it is truly necessary (which I think it is) et al. Post them on my talk page; answers will come a bit late since I'm on Wikibreak and will not be in front of my computer very often, if at all. After the prototype is accepted and necessary changes are made, I guess we should open a test-guild for experimentation. JM*Bell° 12:42, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

BitTorrent

It has been suggested we should not put a BitTorrent search engine external link in the article because of the legal ambiguity of BitTorrent. Ideas? SqueakBox 23:30, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

There is no legal ambiguity about BitTorrent. It would be like making FTP illegal. If the site itself is subject to a CRIMINAL case then definitly no, but since all these things are civil suits, I don't think it's a problem. IANAL, ofcours, just my two cents gkhan 23:40, May 31, 2005 (UTC)
After the "linking case" (which IIRC it was about 2600 and DeCSS, but I can't find anything about it in both articles), I would not be so sure. --cesarb 23:54, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
I do not know what case you are reffering too, could anyone please provide a link? I would like to point out though that there is NOTHING illegal about bittorrent itself. gkhan 00:01, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
A quick Google found [13] and [14] and [15] and others. --cesarb 00:45, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
While in some countries there have been rulings against linking sites that link to copyrighted material, in the US it should be fine I think. However, that's not the issue. Wikipedia is not a web directory. If this was an article about that specific Torrent search engine the link would be appropriate, per Wikipedia:External links. However here's it not the official link to a web entity, neither is it an information source. That's what the external links section is for. --W(t) 01:16, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)
The problem is that every single BitTorrent search engine has some amount of illegal content and, technically, can eventually be caught and sued. What I suggest is linking to http://www.legaltorrents.com. As the name implies everything's legal and free (via the Creative Commons) thus negating any legality aspects of us linking to it, AND it's the only legal-content one of its kind (to my knowlege) thus making it noteworhy in and of itself as an example of a legal use of BitTorrent. This is not however a search engine, so it cannot be an example of that. Master Thief GarrettTalk 03:01, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
My problem isn't with legality, but with what the external links section is supposed to be. Wikipedia is not a web directory, so we shouldn't be including links to the interesting-web-service-du-jour. External links is for a link to the official site of the article subject (if there's such a thing) and extra documentation of the article subject to augment the article. --W(t) 03:06, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)

One of my favorite books is Life: A User's Manual which is about an apartment building. The thing is, to explain many aspects of the book you need an exact diagram of the building (see article for details). Can I scan the one from the book and claim Fair Use? gkhan 22:56, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Well put it this way, how many illustrations does the book have? In other words, what percentage of the work are you reproducing? I mean if the book has 100 diagrams and you reproduce one that's probably fine as a minor example of its vast content. But if it's only got 10 or less and you take one from it, you're reproducing a large amount of the diagram content. And remember that the rules of "fair use" are tentative at best. Master Thief GarrettTalk 02:51, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
There are a few illustrations in it, like small logos and a family tree and such, but it is basically just text. But to appriciate many subtle aspects of it you have to know EXCATLY where everyone lives (for instance, the apartment building is bascially a 10x10 grid, and each chapter is about one room. the order in which the chapters appear follow a Knights tour around the house. this is the most obvious thing about the placement of the appartments, but far from teh only one). Because of this the author provides a diagram of the building in an appendix. The thing is, the book is over 500 pages long, so I really don't see how showing one diagram can be reproducing large amount of the content. gkhan 16:02, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

babel

I know this sounds extremely odd, but I would like the green colour of the babel (which is on many user pages) modified. There are three/four colours which make me sick (slightly nauseous infact, and I have no clue why...) Would anyone have any objections if the HTML colour code is modified slightly?  =Nichalp (Talk)= 19:42, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

I suggest you mention it on the template talk page, as that is where people concerned with the template are most likely to see it. Thryduulf 21:00, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
I can't remember who brought this over from the commons, but you could take it up with whoever started these templates too. Mgm|(talk) 21:08, May 31, 2005 (UTC)
And I would suggest bringing it up on Wikipedia talk:Babel, which is where it's more likely that people interested on these templates will see it. --cesarb 22:40, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
Don't view my user page then. Alphax τεχ 02:16, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Dollarama head office email and/or phone number

I'm looking for a phone # or email address for the head office or distribution centre for the Dollarama stores. I've been informed by staff at the Dollarama store in my area (Guelph) that they are not allowed to give out a phone # or email. They suggested I check the web for a phone # or email for the office in Toronto or Montreal Quebec. This I did but came up with zilch!

I was informed by a friend that the Dollarama stores were taken over by Bain so I checked for Bain on the web & again came up with zilch!

All I want to do is put in a request for a certain item to be shipped to the Guelph store for an upcoming birthday party. What's the big deal?

I've wasted over 3 hours of my time on this & will try to avoid shopping at Dollarama stores since the head office appears to be in hiding!!

Can anyone help me?

Cathy Chapman

Dave probably could, but he logged out ten minutes ago - sorry.

PRICE TO CROSS THE BERING STRAIT

GREETINGS=

MY COMPANY, A.D. MARBLE & COMPANY, INC., WOULD LIKE TOO BUIil a BRIGE ACROSS THE BAIRING STRAIGHT. DO WEE NEED SOME TYPE OF PERMITION FOR THIS?? I DON’TT THINK WE SHUOLD SENSE THE OCEAN IS PUBLIC PROPERTY. THIS BRIDGE WOULD PROBLY LOWER THE GAS PRICE FOR THE WHOLE WORLD SENSE WE WONT’ HAVEN’T BUY FROM SAUDI ARABIA ANYMORE. PLEASE SIGN BELOW IF YOU ARE FOR OR AGIANST IT SO THAT WE CAN BILD THE BRIGE AS SOOON AS POSIBLE:

AT FAVOR:

I am in favor of the brige; I hope you bild it sooon. --Spewey 17:48, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

AGIANTS:

Added to Wikipedia:Unusual requests. This is probably a new record in oddness. Nickptar 16:29, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
The company seems to be real: [16]. Thue | talk 16:45, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
Clearly a joke because the writer can't even spell Bering! - Adrian Pingstone 09:21, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
Or "bridge", "cross", "the", "to", "build", "strait", "we", "permission", "don't", "should", "since", "probably", "won't", "against", "soon", or "possible". -- Cyrius|✎ 00:20, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This is either pure vandalism/hoax, or A.D. Marble & Company needs a better hiring policy, (these aren't the sort of people you want building bridges). Hmm...I wonder if I can sell them a bridge in Brooklyn? func(talk) 16:06, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Someone stole a bridge in Darwin, Australia - perhaps they could sell it to them... Alphax τεχ 04:26, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
No, it's true - my pal Dave's on the board of the company.
That's just redunculous. Esp. for someone who can't spell. Hey at least the title's right now. --Mazin07 23:21, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Teaching Resource

Good Day I teach all sexes at two organisations The first is at an apprentice school and the second is at a Surf Life Saving Radio Base. At the apprentice school my audience is made up of both boys and girls who range in age from 14 to 22 years of age. The audience at the Surf Life Saving Radio Base ranges from 22 to 84 with the vast majority being over 55 years of age. The Lifesavers come equally from all sexes. Both my audiences are curious people who wish to learn. They have heard of some of the terms used in both Electricity and Radio but have no idea where those therms fit into the big picture. And both groups want to know how things work. Questions abound as to why things work? This is where I use Wikipedia as I can refer them to your site and they can look it up. However I have gone further than qouting Wikipedia's URL and have drawnup what I call the "top down diagrams" which start with a topic eg Batteries and drill down using your resource to fill in terms and formulas. I used to use sheets of plastic film but now I use Hyperlinks in HTML as it is easier to change information. And it works on most equipment as these blokes are students with limited funds. The benefit of this approach is in the students eyes - once they see how a topic works their eyes light up like neon lights, their marks improve and they want to learn more. Once you capture this interest the other topics become much easier to teach and learn. The students arrive early, they concentrate more and they are far more productive. The thing that surprises me is that if they miss a class they chase you till you give them the handouts - then they sit down and read it. Then comes the questions- why, how, what etc, and they volunteer to do more work in their own time!!!!!!!!!! The employers tell us that they have no problems with our appprentices because they arrive on site having a knowledge of the job and they offer information such as the formula for that is "so and so", "would you like me to work it out for you?" Or "that piece of equipment does "so and so" and is connect in this way so that efficiency is improved". Or "did you know in "so and sos" theory he /she expressed interest in "such and such" and experiemented with other ways of connection but found that efficiency decreased from this method" To quote one of my students "Do you mean all those dudes did that and some of them where GIRLS!!" -His sexist attitude changed immediately. As such can I have details re copyright as I would like to buid an Intranet so that my audience can view the topics on line. We use two networks one connected to the Internet and one that cannot be connected to the internet. The students use the non connected network and no they cannot connect to the internet as the server sits on my desk- it is an old Laptop running Debian Linux. When the hack it they have to fix it and then we teach computer networking -till they fix it- as all teachers will tell you you have to grab their attention some how. Both groups are taught the same way. The Lifesavers like the diagrams because the can see how the equipment works without going to deep or if they want to they can explore the topic and see where one piece of equipment fits in with other equipment. regards Clem Klausen

You are welcome, no, encouraged to use our content... as long as it is done under the conditions of the GNU Free Documentation Licence, or GFDL. As long as you conform to that, you can use our content in whatever way you wish, there are no restrictions on Wikipedia content other than the GFDL itself. If I understand it correctly, your proposal will be perfectly acceptable.
You might also like to know that at some undefined point in time (or maybe this has happened already? I'm not sure) we will be selling CD/DVD editions of Wikipedia, which would no doubt be easier to manage and update than your current solution.
Anyway, hope that helps you! Master Thief GarrettTalk 05:05, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Britannica Online and another fancy feature

Hopefully by 1.5 we can add auto generated MLA/APA references to the toolbox - matching Britannica Online's feature. But now they've premiered (or perhaps provided for a while) a quick dictionary programmed into the page! Double click and word and a Merriam-Webster popup box appears. MW is owned by Britannica Holdings (clever way of integrating the network). If our arch-rival offers this feature then how can we not match them?

lots of issues | leave me a message 01:57, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, they've had that for quite a while, since at least last year I think. I seem to remember the Javascript code for it looked pathetically easy to implement. I do wonder about the resource drag though, as those little word popups are just one more thing to eat bandwidth.
I wonder about the linking issues though; Britannica's engine allows for double-clicking of any word, but they have a rather stale cross-referencing system with a list of stuff almost always at the very end of the article; but here we use wikilinks wherever possible to explain complex or vague terms, either linking to the Wikipedia entry (monogamy) or dutifully remote-linking to the Wiktionary one (Wiktionary:monogamy). But the problem is that these remote links to Wiktionary are then deprecated; ideally all Wiktionary links would be blanked to allow popup-clicking instead.
The advantage of removing Wiktionary linking is that the hyperlinks don't interrupt the flow of the article; if you know what a term means, you don't need to investigate it, so there's no link to it to bother you.
The downside is that mass removal would require the writing of an engine to search for that code, much like the ones for finding improper formatting etc.
On a more positive but more complicated note, I'd also like to see the engine being able to find Wikipedia articles as well. So if someone mentions Diablo but neglects to [[]] it, double-clicking will give you both its dictionary meanings as well as "the English Wikipedia has an article about Diablo". If it could be coded in, that would be a VERY useful feature. Fairly often I've found myself typing in or copy-n-pasting something found in an article here just to find a related page (if any). But this way, only phrases would require such a technique, and even then it could give a substitute that would allow you to find it. "The English Wikipedia does not have a matching entry for this term; would you like to do a search there instead?
As for the MLA/APA, well that's another matter. Master Thief GarrettTalk 04:02, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the discussion. I've felt the wikimedia network is poorly linked together. Aside from bottom boxes, the related projects do not collaborate in presentation - there isn't even a central search engine. This would be an awesome way to properly bring Wiktionary into prominence. I don't think text popups will create a worriesome strain for the server - in any case it would be a worthy addition so any cost could be forgiven.
Why would there need to be a mass removal of links to prepare for this feature?

lots of issues | leave me a message 21:30, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

They would be removed so that, rather than the dictionary term being a same-window link, it would instead open a new popup with the explanation. That would be preferable I'd say, and it would keep a flow of style. Plus the popup would be virtually plain-text; it wouldn't need the sidebar formatting and whatnot that each Wiki has a slightly different flavour of, so would load in a flash for the casual reader. Master Thief GarrettTalk 22:37, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Inquiry

how do you extract the inner cell mass? what is the involved process? email me kal4life2002@yahoo.com

Hello! The proper place to ask that question would be the reference desk. Unfortunately, I can't help you any more than that, as I have no idea. Nickptar 20:32, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
I'd think you might be interested in reading up on sonification and centrifugation. Mgm|(talk) 09:24, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

Reducing VfD load

There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Reducing VfD load about ways that the size of VfD might be reduced. While there is still much discussion about possible new procedures and policies, there is a general consensus that one way to reduce the size would be to encourage editors to use other processes before or instead of nominating a page for deletion. Some of these other processes are:

  1. Research the subject. A lot of articles are placed on VfD because of very little/poor content, but then kept because the subject is determined to be encyclopedic, even if the article in its current state is not. Nominators should put more effort into finding out if the subject of the article is keepable, and make sure it is correctly categorized/stub-tagged/cleanup-tagged.
  2. Patience. Two applications of this -
    1. Give an article at least a little time to develop; It is understood that some RC patrollers feel they need to take action before an article disappears off the RC page, but nominating an article for VfD within minutes of its creation is often inappropriate. Use the "Watch" button - it won't kill us if a questionable stub is created and sits around for at least a couple of days until the author gets a chance to work on it.
    2. "A month" isn't exactly a long time either; many VfD's seem to be based on "this article's been around for a month (or 2 or 3) and nobody's worked on it!!!!!" Nobody knowledgeable about the subject may have found it (especially if it hasn't been categorized/tagged/listed) or had time to work on it. Not all editors are Wikipedaholics.
  3. Categorize/Stub-tag/Listing on the appropriate "needs attention" page. In conjunction with the two points above, an article may not have been "placed" or linked to a place where an editor with knowledge of the subject can find it and fix it.
  4. Merge and Redirect. Any editor can do this. See Wikipedia:Merge, Wikipedia:Redirect and Wikipedia:Duplicate articles. This would help with sending "cruft" articles/info to a place where the info will get attention from informed sources, and unnecessary/inappropriate stuff can get deleted without clogging VfD and requring admin attention. Also Move can be used by any logged-in user, when appropriate.
  5. Use the article's Discussion page to raise questions about an article's appropriateness. Also, discussions on the talk pages of articles related to the subject can be especially useful in determining if an article should be merged with a larger article.
  6. So fix it. While "write about what you know about" is certainly useful, it's definitely not a rule or requirement or anything. No reason that editors couldn't or shouldn't do some research (even if it's just online research) and make some improvements themselves rather than VFDing it.

Please note that this is not a suggestion about changing policy or procedure. This is simply "spreading the word" about some possible ways that we can reduce the size of VfD, and so this will be posted in several places around Wikipedia. Thanks for listening. Soundguy99 16:05, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Well organised POV-pushers taking over a smaller Wikipedia

Has it ever ever happened before, that a well-organized team of POV-pushers, (or disruptive users) in addition to their sock-puppets could take over a smaller wikipedia (even temporarily)?

Thanks, nyenyec ☎ 22:44, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Wasn't some English Wikipedia fork driven to lock down user registration because of this? I know that some of the smaller language Wikipedias have had problems with vandals and spammers rendering them temporarily unusable. Also, you seem to be confusing the terms Wikipedia and Wiki. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:28, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm asking because in our relatively small Hungarian Wikipedia there is talk about such possibility. nyenyec ☎ 04:38, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
In January, Wikichristian was attacked by the GNAA over a period of several days, and it was a pretty major disruption for them. The GNAA was difficult to block because more than one person was doing the attacking, they used a lot of open proxies, and this wiki hadn't experienced vandalism before. Fortunately for them the GNAA eventually got bored and moved on. For more information see Wikichristian's response to the vandalism, http://www.gnaa.us/pr.phtml?troll=gnaa-christian The GNAA's version of what happened, and the vandalism itself 63.201.89.66 19:47, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
I think that disaster has already happened here. — Xiong熊talk* 01:35, 2005 May 29 (UTC)
Are you kidding? Wikichristian is small enough that the GNAA was able to hit a majority of their pages, multiple times, and they stayed vandalized for more than a few minutes. Over here, they've wasted a lot of editors' time on VfD and RC partrol, but people simply looking something up on Wikipedia have always had only a minuscule chance of running across any GNAA related material. 63.201.89.66 03:55, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
I don't think Xiong is talking about GNAA, but rather the current wikipedia administrators, who seem to mutually annoy each other. - Rick Block (talk) 04:42, May 29, 2005 (UTC)
Ah, Mr. Block, you have discovered the secret of how sanity is maintained on the 'pedia. The secret ruling clique mutually annoy each other. Now we'll have to kill you - or else do nothing. We could have a poll... (Note for the humor impaired: Joke. Too late at night.) JesseW 10:48, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Literature / computer games

Can it be that there is an article on Slouching Towards Bedlam, an apparently obscure computer game, but not one on Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a classic poem by W.B. Yeats? Am I looking in the wrong place?

Take a look now.
What about Slouching Towards Gomorrah, the book by Robert Bork? ;-) —Wahoofive (talk) 16:17, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
It certainly could be. We acknowledge that because of the nature of Wikipedia and in particular its self-selected contributors, its depth in some areas is much greater than in others. That said, the coverage in our "weak" areas is often good, and importantly it is visibly getting better month-by-month. Thus we think that at the moment we are only better than, say, Britannica in some areas, but within the medium term will be better in all areas. Pcb21| Pete 21:49, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
Note also that Yeats never wrote a poem called Slouching Towards Bethlehem. He did write The Second Coming, a poem containing that phrase which has a fairly substantial article devoted to it. . Filiocht | Blarneyman 09:55, May 30, 2005 (UTC)
Dan Savage wrote Skipping Toward Gomorrah, in direct response to Slouching Towards Gomorrah. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:46, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)
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