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Village pump (miscellaneous) archive

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous).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

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Photographs of dead bodies in articles

Take a look at this article. Majid Kavousifar and Hossein Kavousifar and tell me what you think. Aside from the copyvio concerns, is it OK to have such graphic photographs in an article? My first inclination was to remove. Bit I didn't because I recognised in me a knee jerk emotional response. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 14:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

All of those images are copyvios, "Copyright Iranfocus.com © 2005 All rights reserved." ... Oh, you knew that. Well, we've had worse. The problem with those particular images is that they didn't convey much information other than that two people were hanged — there's no indication of which one was Majid and which was Hossein. We have somewhat more graphic non-copyvio sepiatone images in hanging. ←Ben^B4 15:31, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I can only point to , which means you can't remove the pictures on the bases that they are too graphic. Copyright and that the images don't illustrate the subject of the article are the only valid reasons that these images can be removed. --Farix (Talk) 16:44, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

If WP policy says that then WP policy is an ass. (Apologies to Dickens or whoever said that first.) :-) Steve Dufour 17:40, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

So are you suggesting that some forms of censorship on Wikipedia is appropriate? And if so, when? --Farix (Talk) 18:14, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Well I would say, when we have consensus to do so. I think a key issue is one of audience expectation. In the hanging artice or the execution one it is reasonable to expect there may be graphic photographs. But in other articles, the title doesn't give you a clue and therefore the image comes as a shock. I don't think we should shock readers with something they really wouldn't expect to see. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 18:30, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Here's an example I thought of: What if in the article on Ronald McDonald someone put a picture of an anti-globalization protester with a sign that said: "#### Ronald McDonald" (because he is an agent of US economic imperialism, don't you see?), would that picture be protected by the no censorship policy so that it could never be removed? I'm not saying that information should be censored, but sometimes the way it is presented could be in the interest of good taste. (BTW I just checked out Ronald's article and there is not one word of criticism) :-) Steve Dufour 19:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that WP:NOTCENSORED is or was ever intended to prevent wikipedians from coming to a consensus on an article's talk page on whether a particular image is appropriate for that article. The policy is instead a cluestick to hit people with who are trying to go against consensus! Theresa Knott | The otter sank 19:17, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Steve Dufour 19:19, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

There is censorship and there is editorial discretion. "No censorship" doesn't mean "anything goes." That's one of the reasons we have WP:BLP, that's one of the reasons why we generally having drawings rather than photographs on many articles dealing with sex, and there are many other examples. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid. Whether the issue is including information about living people, using a non-free image, or one of the many other judgment calls we make, you have to weigh a number of factors. Just because the decision comes down in favor of excluding particular text or images does not mean that the exclusion constitutes censorship. -- DS1953 ^talk 02:56, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Eh it depends. Pol Pot has a pic but from what I recall thoses photos were talked about at the time. Che Guevara does not. Vladimir Lenin obviously has a pic. Rather ironicaly Tutankhamun does not (although Ramesses_II does). The question it would come down to would be how significant post death photos of the person are. Would a life nartive mention such pictures or at least the opertunity to take them. If yes then include them of copyright concerns are met. If not don't.Geni 23:32, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Article on WP in Christian Post

Check it out. Steve Dufour 12:20, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Guilty as charged... and proud of it. Bias against Fringedom is no sin. Reality wins again. Blueboar 13:18, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I am not a creationist and I feel that it would be much more effective if WP's coverage of the topic was a little more fair-minded in tone. The article mentions that anti-creationist editors misrepresented the results of a public opinion poll on the subject. Surely there is enough that could be said against creationism without making stuff up. Steve Dufour 14:27, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

It seems that poll is a subject of active discussion on Talk:Intelligent design. ←Ben^B4 15:17, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Nice one-source wonder of an article there. Could've used an interview with someone from here to explain the policies involved, didn't mention that the ID article is a FA - indicating that it's passed some stringent scrutiny to get there... I'd have sent that back to the reporter and said "try again," personally. If you're going to say that something's biased, at least try not to be in the piece in which you make the claim... Tony Fox (arf!) 15:38, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I have found that WP articles on Creationism, Intelligent Design, etc. are "owned" by people who seem (to me) to not trust readers to make up their own minds. Steve Dufour 15:44, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

The Christian Post claims that a site dedicated to truth and knowledge is bad and evil for not pushing their religious biases onto the world? Of course they do, duh. There's nothing we could do without violating key principles to have them not say that. DreamGuy 19:50, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think anyone has suggested that WP take the side of the Intelligent Design people, just abide by the standards of truth and fairness that you mentioned. Steve Dufour 19:58, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Several points here. First bear in mind the article was written on May 9th, before this was a featured article. Secondly, the article mentions that ID advocates consider it a theory in the lead. It then discusses how & why scientists don't regard it as a theory. The article also has a section where it discusses why it's not usually regarded as a scientific theory. This seems fair to me. Thirdly, polling issues are a subject of discussion in the talk page. It appears that there are several problems here. Firstly some polls are so poor that they effectively allow people to give 2 mutually exclusive answers. Secondly the various institutes involved in the promotion of ID commonly misrepresents the data in the poll. Note that with any popular fringe idea, the overall conception of the article is ultimately going to be negative to a neutral observer precisely because it's a fringe idea and therefore the criticisms of it will outweight the support for it. On the whole, I don't really see much legitimate criticism in the CP article you mentioned. I'm not saying that everything is perfect. All articles are flawed and I'm sure there have been times when editors who are opposed to ID have gone too far. However from my experience (not here specificially) the editors who support fringe ideas (e.g. the ones the CP article mentions) tend to be the far worse perpetrators of whatever they accuse their opponents of and also tend to be rather good at goading other editors and wasting their time. Unfortunately this means that editors tend to ignore them and immedietly get on the defense and their tend to miss it on the odd ocassion when they have a legitimate point which doesn't help matters. Nil Einne 07:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Please check out Wikipedia:WikiProject intelligent design. Don't you think this is a lot of coverage for this topic? Then check out Chimpanzee, which is surely an important topic in the subject of evolution. If people were really interested in evolution it would have 100 times the coverage of ID, rather than the other way around. Steve Dufour 14:15, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

If people were really interested in evolution [then the article on Chimpanzee ] would have 100 times the coverage of ID. Odd, I would have thought that topics where there are proponents actively pushing their point of view (such as the Discovery Institute) would get a lot more attention, and coverage, than topics where there are no such proponents involved in an ongoing argument; one doesn't have to look at what "people are really interested in" to understand what gets covered/discussed extensively. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:29, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that no one is interested in evolution itself. Of course many people are. I still think that the "controversy" of "evolution vs. creation" is way over covered here. You are right that the fault lies with both sides pushing their POV's. Here is another article to check out: A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism. This is a petition with 700 signatures. One time, between jobs, I collected people's signatures on a petition getting paid 50 cents for each one. I was able to get 200 or even 300 in a day's work. So in 3 or 4 days I could come up with 700. Steve Dufour 14:45, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm also missing your point here, but I note that you were collecting signatures in public - the signers of this petition are scientists. (For a somewhat similar petition, see Oregon Petition.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:25, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

You are right, my work was much easier since anyone over 18 could sign. But still I think that the petition could be covered in one paragraph in the Discovery Institute's article, rather than having its own -long- article. BTW I was unfair with the Chimpanzee issue. There is more than one article about them, of course, and there is also Wikipedia:WikiProject Primates. Steve Dufour 01:14, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

But still I think that the petition could be covered in one paragraph in the Discovery Institute's article, rather than having its own -long- article. That long -article- has 45 footnotes. That would seem to me to indicate enough material exists for a separate article. [On the larger matter - I think it's a mistake to try to force what one thinks is appropriate weight across articles - e.g., if the DI article has (say) 20 paragraphs, and a particular project is part of the DI work, then it's worth (say) 2 paragraphs. A reader interested in the project and not the DI is entitled to a full article about the project, if there is enough distinct information (e.g., sources) for a full article, in my opinion. It's one of the strengths of Wikipedia, I think, not a weakness, that if one or more editors wants to spend time creating a long article on what others might think a minor topic, the editors are free to do so, providing that they don't get into original research or citing blogs and other unacceptable sources in order to expand the article.] -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:46, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I wasn't saying it was a bad article. But still it is only a petition with 700 signatures. Steve Dufour 15:42, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Tsar Boris I

What is Boris I holding in his left hand?

Or is it just me?

I agree that the photo appears to have been doctored. The image is the same on the Bulgarian Wikipedia, and I have been able to find a couple of copies of the same image on the web, but none of an image which may have been the basis for this one.-gadfium 08:57, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I would be willing to bet that it is not doctored. If you pull your mind out of the gutter :-) you should see that Boris is holding a scroll (probably symbolizing that he wrote laws and such). Blueboar 13:16, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

The Bulgarian uploader has more than 250 image uploads, and a random sample of about a dozen show no evidence of alteration. Plus, those are crossed tie cords, not bulging veins. ←Ben^B4 06:49, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Save The Simpsons Articles

I have started a petition to save some articles within The Simpsons. I would like feedback and help with this campaign. Click Here to see the petition. JoeyLovesSports 01:45, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

This is highly inappropriate use of a user sub-page to garner support for only one side of a deletion debate. Deletion debates work by consensus, not by signing petitions. Would any admin care to look at this and determine if it's appropriate for deletion? Zun aid ©® 12:39, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

See WP:CANVAS. The attempt to influence discussions by gathering like-minded people in a transparent attempt to generate a false consensus is frowned upon. Wikipedia does not recognize majority rule or voting per se. Make arguements based on reason and on policy and guidelines and the like, but to claim victory because you happen to bring more people to the fight won't win this debate. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 16:40, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Quote "...doing a project on The Simpsons." Huh? Who does a project on the Simpsons? I could appreciate that rationale if the AFDs were aimed at some academic content, but a TV cartoon? I concur with the above comments as well. I recommend that you use the proper methods of arguing the case and be willing to accept the outcome whatever that may be. Adrian M. H. 22:18, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

StatusBot

I have created a bot, StatusBot, to automatically update a page depending on the time since users last edits, to show them as online or offline. As part of the trial, I am seeing how well it scales to handle more users, as it would eventually have.

If anyone is keen, you can sign up by either adding your userpage to Category:Wikipedians who use StatusBot or adding the template User:StatusBot/Template to your userpage. You can also add a parameter to show the status of a different user, but they must have either the category or template on their userpage as well.

Thanks, and if this is not appropriate here, I apologise in advance, but I am not aware of any more appropriate places. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 00:32, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Article size to be counted as an article?

Very short stub articles are not counted as an article (in Special:Statistics), but does anyone know what is the minimum size in bytes/kilobytes for an article to be counted as an article? ---Majestic- 20:21, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

What makes you think that very short articles are not counted? Based on this page, my reading (see column E) is that an article is "officially" counted when it has at least one internal link, regardless of length. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:44, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

JS for delete accounts on Wikipedia

I would like to develop a JS for deleting accounts from MediaWiki wikis and Wikipedia. This will show a message that the account is deleted but not deleted. I would need some developers to help me with this. Thank you. Jet (talk) 19:32, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Can you elaborate on just what you mean? We cannot delete accounts, and I see no point in a script that would hide a faux-deleted account from other users. --Golbez 19:53, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I said the user who has the account will think the account is deleted but it's not. Jet (talk) 20:02, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

How would this be useful? This would just confuse and hurt the person whose account was fakely deleted. •Malinaccier• ^T/C 20:41, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Greeting

Hi, this is Beth from the philippines and i am reaching to fellow singles in christ for possible discussion that would nourish my spirit when tired and not so good day.

Hoping that this board may uplift me. God bless you all.--Beth-asian 16:44, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Beth, this is not the proper forum for what you are looking for. If you want to edit an encyclopedia, you are more than welcome. If not, perhaps a Christian singles chat site would be more what you are looking for. I wish you luck.Blueboar 17:46, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

SVG graphics creator

Is there a freeware that can create SVG graphs and musical notes? I will be grateful if you answer this question on my talk page too. thanks. --JackLau 10:05, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

You might want to take a look at Wikipedia:How to create graphs for Wikipedia articles. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:47, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Category names

Not quite sure where to put this. How comes the moving of categories is limited to administrators and bots, but not standard users? Simply south 21:23, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there's any technical limitation to it, but since it's a timeconsuming effort, perhaps they want to cut down on the chance of an edit war and having to revert it? --Golbez 21:33, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject For the Record

I have begun the WikiProject For the Record to respond to the press coverage of Wikipedia. Andre (talk) 20:30, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

wikipedia survey

Hi, my name is Tom Griffiths, I am researching Ubuntu as part of a broader research project examining new volunteer organisations and I am asking for people to answer a short 19 question (most multiple choice, so about 10 mins) anonymous survey on their involvement with Wikipedia and the Wikipedia community. I am looking for anyone in the community, admins and users alike to respond.

A "plain language statement" explaining the project and who's involved in it and what I am going to do with the data is here: PLS

The survey is here: Survey

I am also looking for people to interview on a more in-depth basis for 30mins to 1hr if anyone is interested drop me a line on my university email: (E-Mail removed for security purposes)

cheers, Tom —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 121.45.95.48 (talk • contribs) 5 August 2007.

Answered the survey. Good luck on your research! Zouavman Le Zouave 09:46, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

"Vote On the Most Shameful Wikipedia Spin Jobs"

At Wired's Threat Level By Kevin Poulsen ←Ben^B4 14:13, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Zeitgeist

--What about the online move "Zeitgeist" that seems to meet all the aforementioned criteria, and being that Wikipedia does not acknowledge the existance of a film with said qualifications and millions of viewers as something of significance is a bit odd to say the least.-- Parasite Twin , 12:27 est. August 23, 2007 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Parasite Twin (talk • contribs) 04:27, August 23, 2007 (UTC).

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zeitgeist the Movie. Tony Fox (arf!) 04:34, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

The 999,999 article

I was wondering the the first article before the 1,000,000th was. Does anyone know this. Also the first article in the second million. Zginder 02:17, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

See [1].-gadfium 05:41, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Adding to a Sock puppet case.

How would i go about adding a new person to an old sockpuppet case? It is an different I.P., reason being they were on vacation in another country while the old sockpoppet case was filed. However, there is good proof and many diffs to support my case. The user is active (but was blocked for 3 days today). LaNicoya •TALK• 19:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Naruto

Reverence desk ain't helping so please just answer.

Which naruto (including naruto Shippuden) episodes and mangas is gaara's student, Matsuda, in? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nikrocorp (talk • contribs)

Dude, Wikipedia isn't a replacement for real research. If reference desk didn't answer, it's probably because no one there knew. You might have a better chance of getting an answer by asking on the manga's talk pages. Do we even have any articles on the manga you're looking for? — Frecklefσσt | Talk 12:46, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I would say that such questions would be immediately removed form Naruto's talkpage, and for good reason. Article talkpages are not a chat forum. --Farix (Talk) 15:25, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Edits to Wikipedia by high-profile organizations

In case you missed it according to this article different high-profile organizations made edits to Wikipedia, e.g. a computer from the CIA added "Wahhhhhh!" in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's article, there are other, more COI oriented edits by other groups too. I wasn't sure if this was posted anywhere else on the site yet, so there it is, Jeffrey.Kleykamp 15:06, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

PS: I think this is the actual Wikiscanner Website (it's a bit slow though), Jeffrey.Kleykamp 15:11, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

PPS: "Vote On the Most Shameful Wikipedia Spin Jobs" (above) has a link that is a vote that uses the Wikiscanner, I didn't see that before... Jeffrey.Kleykamp 15:45, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I hate to be a contrarian (well, not really). However, does the fact that an edit was made from a computer prove that the organization owning the computer made the edit? Steve Dufour 16:14, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Nope, but this is a tool that can help lower the amount of edits we have to go through to find a company that really pays it's employees to make COI edits to Wikipedia. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 16:23, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, what's the cost/ benefit to actually do that? In order to KISS, isn't it reasonable to assume that employees of companies sometimes do things, either positive or negative, of their own volition? Or am I not signed up the right conspiracy theories.ALR 18:19, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Huh? I don't understand, I just posted this here as a "fun fact" or something like that, maybe this will answer your questions (the link is just the FAQ of the Wikiscanner website). Jeffrey.Kleykamp 20:59, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I've got no real issue with what it does, although it does provide some interesting opportunities.

It's more a mild cynicism over the conclusions being reached as a result of the information that it comes up with. I'll concede that WP is full of people who really think that organisations give much of a damn about what's said here, hence the conspiracy theory quip, but I'm more inclined to believe that people who work within an organisation make edits by themselves, rather than as some sort of corporate policy.

I suppose I'm just amused that elsewhere I'm now seeing the tinfoil hat liner brigade agonising over the implications. It's intruiging that an immediate reaction from many is to advocate blocking those IP ranges owned by the organisaitons in question.

ALR 08:04, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

(Tangentially related) The article cited above says:

A spokesperson for Wikipedia said the tool helped prevent conflicts of interest. "We really value transparency and the scanner really takes this to another level," they said. "Wikipedia Scanner may prevent an organisation or individuals from editing articles that they're really not supposed to."

What spokesperson would this be, exactly? Anybody know? --barneca (talk) 15:17, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Dawg

This seems a little silly maybe. However, there is someone watching over this article who doesn't want it to be mentioned that the word "dawg" can be used to refer to a dog. Steve Dufour 14:31, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

It also might be a racial issue. He doesn't want to admit that a white person would ever use the word "dawg." Steve Dufour 15:07, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Reference desk

I was wondering whether the Reference desk should have a new "biology" section. I've noticed numerous questions relating to animals, plants and human anatomy that don't fit into anything else. examples: [2][3][4][5][6][7] - Pheonix 18:59, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Cross-posted at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Please discuss there. BigNate37_(T) 19:15, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Are all articles linked together?

I think this is the place which fits best for the question ;) I was browsing Wikipedia, and thought that I might go from an article to any article I wanted just by clicking links. Indeed, I went from website to quantum mechanics in about 10 clicks. But they are subjects that are quite close, since both are technical and scientific. Now, my question is, are all articles linked together, that is, they form a sole net, so you could go to any article you want just following links, or are there several separated nets of articles? I guess the answer would be immediate with a proper looking at the database. And, of course, this is without taking into account orphan pages and category browsing. Keta 15:33, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Interesting question... I think you may have answered it yourself. Since there are orphan articles that don't link to anything... and stub articles that fall within some very narrow categories that only link to other articles in that category, I would say Wikipedia is not a complete net. MOST of it will link up eventually (4,253 degrees of separation?), but there are likely small pockets that are on their own. Blueboar 18:56, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Two links: six degrees of Wikipedia, which finds a path linking one article to another (through a series of articles), and Category:All_orphaned_articles, which is a list of articles with few or no links to them. --TeaDrinker 19:20, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Short answer: if we model Wikipedia as a random graph process based on the Erdős-Rényi model, then providing we're above the critical threshold, we would end up with one very large connected component (the so-called "giant component") with small diameter and a large number of very small components, with nothing in the middle. Compare with this diagram. I think this is in fact a good description of the structure we observe. Dcoetzee 22:33, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your answers guys. The six degrees of Wikipedia link is awesome! I couldn't find two articles which are more than five steps away. But if as Dcoetzee says the structure resembles the image he shows, then the six degrees wouldn't work with some articles. Though, I guess it's almost impossible to find which articles they are. Keta 09:40, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Don't orphan articles have links "out" to other articles? Wouldn't that count? (Couldn't you reach them by "what links here"?)Steve Dufour 14:29, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Vietnam

I would you answer this enquiry. Is changing the model of legitimation workable for Vietnam and how does it have impact on democracy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pros cambodia (talk • contribs) 04:53, August 25, 2007 (UTC)

The general response to questions that are not about editing, as is this one, is to suggest asking at the reference desk. However, given the nature of this question (what, exactly, does model of legitimation mean?) and the general sense I have that this question asks for speculation rather than specifics, I don't think it's appropriate AT ALL for Wikipedia. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:08, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Offline reader

Can someone show me an offline reader that I can use on a Mac? The Placebo Effect 18:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I assume you're referring to something like this, an off-line reader that uses a data-dump copy of Wikipedia. Have you considered using a newer Intel-based Mac and running a version of Windows on it? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:04, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, one option, regardless of your platform, is Webaroo, where you can download all of Wikipedia (mainspace only, I'm guessing) as a set of web pages. This requires at least 5 GB of free space and, of course, a fast Internet connection. (I've seen mention that the requirement is actually 10 GB, but that could refer to an earlier version. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:13, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Is this cheating?

Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith - I've used an old, out of copyright review that I was typing up for elsewhere as the synopsis and critical commentary. It must be admitted that it's one of the few really well-cited synopses, but it feels wrong, somehow. Adam Cuerden ^talk 23:37, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Its legal, but it'd be a lot better if the synopsis was an original one. Atropos 23:55, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Right. I'll replace it. Adam Cuerden ^talk 23:57, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

You don't have to, of course, but as you said, it just sorta feels wrong. Atropos 01:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Articles ( I hope this is the right place)

I think articles With limited info or whatever Need more attention or Work Such as vid game articles like the SF Rush series and Hydro thunder becaus they are Rarely updated and sound bland and boring... Especially since they were released years ago... Their length look more like The length of a new article... (If I didn't post in the right pace, then where?) 172.131.141.6 14:55, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

There are almost 2 million articles in Wikipedia; I think it's a fair statement to say that the vast majority of them need a lot of work. So, unfortunately, posting about this problem in general isn't that helpful.

As for video games, the best place to make specific suggestions (again, complaining in general isn't likely to spur on any editors; we all know about the problem) is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:29, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Zeitgeist

Could somebody please write an article on the documentary Zeitgeist released in 2007. I do not have the knowledge to create a page, or one of the calibre this movie/documentary deserves. This is an amazing film, which is free to watch at zeitgeistmovie.com, and is a mind blowing presentation of how governments use fear and panic to manipulate the populace. I believe it is essential viewing for any free thinking cultured human being and needs a page to further knowledge about it as well as create a base for discussion. I am using this area because i believe i may be able to contact like minded people who believe that truth should be taken as the authority, not authority taken as the truth Gerald121 12:09, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

See: Help:Starting a new page but I looked at your contributions and saw that you added this request on many pages, are you doing this because of a conflict of interest. Are you the creator of that movie, Gerald Massey. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 13:24, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zeitgeist the Movie. Short answer: We used to have an article, but it was deleted because of a lack of third-party reliable sources. Those will be needed for an article that meets Wikipedia's standards. — TKD::Talk 13:28, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

PNGOUT

Hi. I downloaded the PNGout and I dont know how to install it and how to use it. Thanks> --Jackl 12:52, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

The Computing Ref Desk might be of assistance. Adrian M. H. 22:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

outing people

I do not think anyone has the right to out anyone especially dead people when they can no longer defend themselves and especially outing them when you just have heresay or hearcrap. A person's sexuallity is their own business whether they are famous or not. I did not see Oprah Winfrey on your silly lists what are ya'll scared? Rosie "bigmouth" O'donnell wasn't(some friend she is). People look to ya'll for truthful information not the make believe others say and believe. No matter how many times you repeat it and no matter how much you want to believe it.. a lie will always be a lie! (j.a.p.2007)

It would be easier for us to understand your concern if you could tell us what you were specifically talking about. Atropos 20:58, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

And famous people, gay, straight or bi-, can pretty much expect to have their sexuality discussed. We don't approve of original research here, so anything in our articles should have appeared elsewhere first. We don't invent the content, just report it. — Frecklefσσt | Talk 13:36, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Save The Simpsons Articles

I have started a petition to save some articles within The Simpsons. I would like feedback and help with this campaign. Click Here to see the petition. JoeyLovesSports 01:45, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

This is highly inappropriate use of a user sub-page to garner support for only one side of a deletion debate. Deletion debates work by consensus, not by signing petitions. Would any admin care to look at this and determine if it's appropriate for deletion? Zun aid ©® 12:39, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

See WP:CANVAS. The attempt to influence discussions by gathering like-minded people in a transparent attempt to generate a false consensus is frowned upon. Wikipedia does not recognize majority rule or voting per se. Make arguements based on reason and on policy and guidelines and the like, but to claim victory because you happen to bring more people to the fight won't win this debate. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 16:40, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Quote "...doing a project on The Simpsons." Huh? Who does a project on the Simpsons? I could appreciate that rationale if the AFDs were aimed at some academic content, but a TV cartoon? I concur with the above comments as well. I recommend that you use the proper methods of arguing the case and be willing to accept the outcome whatever that may be. Adrian M. H. 22:18, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Trivia

Is the section currently labeled Additional info in the time zone article a trivia section or not? — The Storm Surfer 21:02, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

WP:TRIVIA defines it as a "disorganized and unselective list" - I think it is a trivia section, since all these items have in common is that they involve the topic. I think integration/organization is warranted. Dcoetzee 21:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Not so fast. :-) Some of the info is trivial. Some of it might be something someone is interested in, like the country with the most time zones. It would be much harder to find the fact a person was looking for if the list was intergrated into the text. (Time zones are much more complex than they seem.) Steve Dufour 21:52, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Currently, the only way to find the fact is to read all of them - they aren't organized in any way. It's not clear to me though how to better organize it, though. Dcoetzee 23:45, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Zeitgeist

--What about the online move "Zeitgeist" that seems to meet all the aforementioned criteria, and being that Wikipedia does not acknowledge the existance of a film with said qualifications and millions of viewers as something of significance is a bit odd to say the least.-- Parasite Twin , 12:27 est. August 23, 2007 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Parasite Twin (talk • contribs) 04:27, August 23, 2007 (UTC).

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zeitgeist the Movie. Tony Fox (arf!) 04:34, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

WIKIPROJECT TOTALITARIANISM

hi, i just wanted to announce the creation of Wikipedia:WikiProject Totalitarianism, we are definatly looking for new members who are interested in totalitarianism and it's related fields. Thanks! Paco8191 05:17, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Vietnam

I would you answer this enquiry. Is changing the model of legitimation workable for Vietnam and how does it have impact on democracy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pros cambodia (talk • contribs) 04:53, August 25, 2007 (UTC)

The general response to questions that are not about editing, as is this one, is to suggest asking at the reference desk. However, given the nature of this question (what, exactly, does model of legitimation mean?) and the general sense I have that this question asks for speculation rather than specifics, I don't think it's appropriate AT ALL for Wikipedia. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:08, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Offline reader

Can someone show me an offline reader that I can use on a Mac? The Placebo Effect 18:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I assume you're referring to something like this, an off-line reader that uses a data-dump copy of Wikipedia. Have you considered using a newer Intel-based Mac and running a version of Windows on it? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:04, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, one option, regardless of your platform, is Webaroo, where you can download all of Wikipedia (mainspace only, I'm guessing) as a set of web pages. This requires at least 5 GB of free space and, of course, a fast Internet connection. (I've seen mention that the requirement is actually 10 GB, but that could refer to an earlier version. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:13, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Orphan bot removed photo, how to reinstate

Hi everyone: thanks for helping me get Del Zamora on the map here. I posted a head shot he gave specifically for this purpose.. I also wrote to get permission to do this. Orphan Bot removed it.., how can I reinstate the photo? Thanks Jeni, Asst to Del Zamora —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dragonfly213 (talk • contribs) 19:03, August 26, 2007 (UTC)

NVM, the photo came back. Magic! Dragonfly213 22:13, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Zeitgeist

Could somebody please write an article on the documentary Zeitgeist released in 2007. I do not have the knowledge to create a page, or one of the calibre this movie/documentary deserves. This is an amazing film, which is free to watch at zeitgeistmovie.com, and is a mind blowing presentation of how governments use fear and panic to manipulate the populace. I believe it is essential viewing for any free thinking cultured human being and needs a page to further knowledge about it as well as create a base for discussion. I am using this area because i believe i may be able to contact like minded people who believe that truth should be taken as the authority, not authority taken as the truth Gerald121 12:09, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

See: Help:Starting a new page but I looked at your contributions and saw that you added this request on many pages, are you doing this because of a conflict of interest. Are you the creator of that movie, Gerald Massey. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 13:24, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zeitgeist the Movie. Short answer: We used to have an article, but it was deleted because of a lack of third-party reliable sources. Those will be needed for an article that meets Wikipedia's standards. — TKD::Talk 13:28, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

"Bad images" and MediaWiki:Bad image list

Some images are supposedly protected so that they cannot be used for vandalism. Most of these are either nudity, sex or grotesque things such as deformity or disease. However, I think pictures of certain other things, like certain animals, could be kind of shocking too for vandalism.

Image:Eel.JPG

If you see what I mean.--h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 18:22, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

It's kind of more shocking than a picture of a penis, isn't it? Also, I found such a case of this type of vandalism.--h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 18:24, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Shocking enough to be removed, I see. So, is there anything you'd like to suggest we do about this? Add more images to the bad images list? Get rid of the bad images list? — The Storm Surfer 22:29, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

A somewhat complicated question on PD, GFDL, WP, IDK, IANAL, etc!

As everyone knows, content released on Wikipedia must at least be freer than the GFDL. Now, if someone were to create a page and release it into the public domain, or base it off of a public domain source (such as 1911), wouldn't the following revisions of the page also be public domain? From what little I know (IANAL!) of US copyright law, new versions of public domain material can only be copyrighted if they are significantly different than the original source, which would basically require an article rewrite for it to be under GFDL instead of Public Domain (which could be considered a very good thing or a very bad thing depending on who you ask). This is basically three questions in one:

If a work based on something in the public domain must be significantly different in order to be copyrighted, wouldn't any page that was significantly based on a PD source when it was created remain PD afterwards until someone rewrote it under the GFDL?
If this is true, then what about users that release the rights to their work under the public domain? In some senses, I could see this as being invalid, since you technically can't release something to the PD, just give up all rights to it, but then would that then apply to the significantly different thing mentioned above? And if it is valid, has Wikimedia made any attempts to stop this or deal with it?
In addition to the above, this also goes back to the GFDL-- as all WP edits must be under GFDL, does the GFDL "absorb" any content used (barring copyvios, of course), even if it is in the public domain and not subject to copyright? I really don't see how that would work, especially given the can of worms it opens for people to start going through gutenburg and labeling things as GFDL and then using the legal system to get rid of (non copyleft) the public domain copies? And if not, how does Wikipedia treat edits that can't be GFDL (or copyrighted at all), but can be used freely-- Basically, what is WP's policy on the GFDL and PD sources? --lucid 10:45, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Since the GFDL license is more restrictive than public domain content (which is not bound by a license at all), using public domain content and imposing restrictions upon yourself as if the work was licensed under the GFDL is perfectly fine. You may wish to check Wikipedia:Multi-licensing, which talks to the issue of a work incorporating content from different licenses—I got that link from the multi-license template I'm displaying on my userpage. Back when I first started multi-licensing my contributions I educated myself about what that meant, but it's been a while. BigNate37_(T) 19:17, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Well the thing is, you shouldn't be able to GFDL a public domain source, which should mean that any edits afterwards will also be small modifications to public domain content, which is not copyright(GFDL)able. At the same time though, Wikipedia is resistant to having truly free (non-copyleft/restricted) materials, which would make such an article go against the project, somewhat --lucid 00:42, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Scientology update

I said that I would mention it when the project reached 365 articles about Scientology, one for each day of the year. There was a tremendous surge of activity by project members in the last few weeks and I missed that milestone. There are now 416 Scientology articles. Since there seem to be about 100,000 Scientologists in the world that's one article for every 240 Scientologists. Here is the project if you want to check it out: Wikipedia:WikiProject Scientology. Have a great day! - Steve Dufour 03:05, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Only 2000 more to go to match the number of lunar impact crater articles. ;-) — RJH (talk) 21:35, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Viquipèdia, the catalan Wikipedia, has 75,000

Catalan Viquipèdia has 75,000 articles. Coronellian 04:45, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Yoga Poll

Hi! There's some discussion on whether using "asana", "yogasana" or "yoga asana" as the article title. If you are acquainted with the subject, you are invited to drop your opinion at Talk:Yogasana#Opinion Poll on this article's name. Davin7 11:41, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Request for arbitration.

I am requesting for arbitration here because there are disputes about the popularity of The Powerpuff Girls and about what Marcus2 did on the article "The Powerpuff Girls" in Talk:The Powerpuff Girls.--JSH-alive 02:03, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, you would be better to make the request on the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration page since that is where they are dealt with. Make sure that you read the instructions carefully before you add your request. Cheers -- Derek Ross | Talk 04:52, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Grammar and Stuff

Hi, it's me Miss, I just wanted to ask if there is any particular standard you guys use as far as basic grammar, syntax and vocabulary on the site? I hate to bitch about it, but it really irks me when I come across an article that reads like it was written by my 9 year old brother, rather than an editor creating an encyclopeida article. It's like some people here have never written an essay or book report before. . . . just yesterday I pretty much rewrote the entire plot summary of the movie "Paid in Full" because what was already there made little to no sense. This is not to offend anyone, it's just that some of these articles are far from well-written, let alone encyclopedia quality. Missmissy 18:28, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the manual of style. Feel free to boldly rewrite anything that isn't up to snuff. Not everyone who contributes is a "good writer" per se, and copyediting help is always welcome.--Isotope23 ^talk 18:52, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes we get good information from people who can't write for toffee; sometimes we get beautifully written prose which contains nothing but false information. That's why we all need to remain vigilant. The worst vandalism is the well written, plausible stuff. -- Derek Ross | Talk 04:59, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

LOL, makes sense. . . .thanks for the feed. . . .Missmissy 18:21, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

First articles

What were the first 10 or fifteen articles (or pages) on wikipedia?

--Nick4404 19:48, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

We don't know. Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles and Wikipedia:UuU may be of interest.Geni 00:28, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Some of the first articles were imported from Nupedia, and articles on the countries of the world, drawn from the CIA World factbook, were also created very near the beginning.-gadfium 02:51, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Artur Balder, Ivan O. Godfroid

Hello, both of these writers have caused discussion on nl:wikipedia both for the same reason. Their articles were nominated for deletion, either for being a hoax or NE. In the case of Godfroid, it was established that similar articles in 15 languages were all posted by the same person, so labelled as self-promotion (see [8]).

In the case of Balder, it may be a similar case, but I can't prove it. This writer has published 4 books at Montena, de Random House Mondadori, a Random House imprint and his works received much welcome on Spanish sites. Yet, all wikipedia articles in some 15 languages make the same mistakes and seem to be written from one source. If you search google: Artur Balder, you will find some 50 wikipedia entries all mentioning his birth place as Munich, which is incorrect as he was born in Alicante. If you do the same google search with: Artur Balder -wikipedia , you will find the correct data, all Spanish.

My question is, if someone can check the wikipedia entries of Artur Balder in different languages and establish if they're all from the same user. I don't have the power to do this. Better respond to my nl:user page as I don't frequent this discussion. Thank you. - Art Unbound 19:32, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

The Community

I've noticed that the Community is being neglected more and more each day. All one needs to do is visit Miscellany for deletion to see that yet another community building page has been deleted. According to Veinor (see here)

"Wikipedia's main purpose is building an encyclopedia, not a community. The community's purpose is to build the encyclopedia"

How are we supposed to keep our community if we neglect it? I think we should not only stop deleting these pages, but activly promote them. Nothing on the scale of Ezperanza of course, but ones that indirectly help the encyclopedia. According to Hut 8.5 (see here)

"Having humour pages helps create a more light-hearted atmosphere in the community"

I'd like other opinions on this matter - Pheonix15 16:10, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

See WP:COMMUNITY. Hut 8.5 18:37, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

The Kindness Campaign and Dept. of Fun are good enough. Each one provides plenty of stuff. But the Dept. of Fun members don't do enough, according to you. Solution:join Dept. of Fun & reform it from within, as Martin Luther tried to do with the Catholic Church. If we/you are excommunicated, then we/you can begin a new Dept. of Fun. Laleena 19:29, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. A Protestant Dept of Fun... Presumably that'll be a Dept of Fun with the fun removed, <grin>. -- Derek Ross | Talk 19:59, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

No, no, no, I meant (literally) meant that we should stop deleting these pages, provide links to them and say that there great (I am a member of the dept by the way)--Pheonix15 20:07, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Sadly, I agree with those who want that page deleted. Giving out awards for 'best user page' is community building, but it's not building the sort of community that's needed. It's very insular and userspace based, concentrating on prettifying personal spaces and marking territory more than creating a better encyclopedia. If you were giving out awards for people expending effort on the encyclopedia, or being nice to each other, or helping others better contribute to the encyclopedia, that would be different. Any of these could be done in a light-hearted, humourous manner, as indeed many essays (such as WP:NAM) are. Skittle 16:24, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

We're not talking about just that page here. I sort of agree that the best user page contest had to go. Ther are other pages that also help the community--Pheonix15 16:54, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Count me as an anti-community vote. Those of us who do the wiki work should be as invisible as possible to readers and to each other. Otherwise, maintaining the community (and fighting about how to do it) becomes an end in itself, swamping the reason the community exists. That's the way all institutions evolve; we should resist it.- DavidWBrooks 17:06, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

2,000,000 Articles!

Great work everyone! It's been a pleasure working with you. A good effort all round! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dfrg.msc (talk • contribs) 09:04, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

2mil already? It seems like 1.5mil was just last week. Nice image, by the way, it made me smirk. (Though the greengrocer's apostrophe makes my inner grammarian cringe.) --tjstrf talk 09:12, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Does any one know what the 2mil article was? Or the 2mil+1 article? Zginder 12:25, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I would be interested to find out if this number comprises articles created or articles extant... does it account for all the bad articles that were created but subsequently deleted by AFD? Blueboar 12:45, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Deleted articles are deducted from that number. For the 1 and 1.5 millionth articles, the articles were officially named. 82.71.48.158 13:02, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

El Hormiguero has the honour. Wikinews has an article here. Harryboyles 13:44, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Party! *Cracks open bottle of Champagne* (Someone make a McDonald's joke. I can't get the phrasing right.)--Dark Green 20:17, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Another dugg site stealing Wikipedia content

This list of "25 of The World’s Most Interesting Animals" is nothing more than content stolen wholesale from Wikipedia without any sort of attribution. And it's been dugg up on Digg into a top-ranked-for-the-day slot. We have to have better ways of dealing with these infringements. Has anyone thought of an automated tool that could be used when infringement is discovered to notify all of the likely copyright holders on the article? As it is, I would love to send a DMCA request to this thieving asshole, but I haven't edited any of the articles in question. --Cyde Weys 21:24, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

appears to be posted by someone running the site therefor no DMCA safe habour. If you did want to send a DMCA notice it would have to be sent to the relivant ISP which in this case would appear to be DreamHost.Geni 00:34, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Seemingly odd illustration

The "Random article" function took me to Fadil Husayn Salih Hintif, where I was mystified by the illustration of a watch. Stepping through the article's history led to an explanation: note the caption in the original version of the article.

I have no opinion as to the truth of the claim; it seems ridiculous but so do other things that have really happened. For a while the article was categorized in a related way, but the categorization was deleted as discussed here. (In which discussion it is forcefully stated that the claim is true.) Around the same time the explanation of the watch image was removed from the article, leaving the image sitting there mysteriously as I found it.

This seems like something that needs cleanup, but frankly I don't care to get involved with editing articles on such a divisive subject. Also, if there are a bunch of others with mysterious links to the watch image, I don't care to read them all. Perhaps someone else would. 207.176.159.90 10:05, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

That is a really bizarre illustration for that article. I see there's a mention of the watch in the article, but the caption is really out of place and explains nothing. Not sure if the pic really needs to be in the article at all - anyone else have thoughts? Tony Fox (arf!) 15:50, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

The caption definately needs to more informative, although perhaps more succint than the original, just referring to the section that explains it. Reading that deletion discussion was rather sobering and sad; while having that many categories for individuals, on such a small level, is not appropriate, people were assuming a lot of bad faith and not really helping the creator of them who did explain that they had tried to summarise the information in another way, but it hadn't worked. I really wish people had instead responded with suggestions of better ways to include and use the information so that it was accessible. Skittle 16:11, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Relevant essay: Wikipedia:Do not write articles using categories. The best way to include the information is in the articles themselves, I think. Gracenotes^T § 00:22, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I have a watch like that (Casio), and sometimes I put the alarm to ring at 7,30 AM, perhaps if they catch me they send me directly to Guantanamo. Coronellian 17:48, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Even more concerning than the watch is the other image. It appears to be one of several templates which produce an image with a ridiculoulsy long caption. Not only is it difficult to navigate to the template as to fix the horrible captioning, but cookiecuttering images with the same caption across dozens of articles is definitely a bad idea. Atropos 16:39, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Preparation of Fundraiser 2007

Hi, this is just a first introduction message to tell you: there is more to come. I am dealing with the Project Management of the Fundraiser 2007 and therefore will search for contacts of wikimedians who can help us to do our tasks on all projects. I am actually also building the structure for the fundraiser on Meta. We will need people who help to design buttons, translate texts of buttons, documents, sitenotices etc. Should you feel you want to co-operate please let me know. You can reach me on my meta user page or by e-mail at scretella (at) wikimedia (dot) org. If you wish to notify us that you would like to co-operate on translations, it would be nice if you used e-mail and copied the e-mail to me and Aphaia (aphaia (at) gmail (dot) com). Thank you for your attention and I hope to meet you soon! Cheers :-) -- 4 September 2007 Sabine —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.180.151.172 (talk) 18:41, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

vandalized user pages

why is it some peoples' user pages are vandalized 10 15 or 20 times or more, and others' (like myself) never get touched? Is it becaue they do more RC patrolling or something? --MKnight9989 14:25, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

It happens to me because people like me use tools and warn them, and the IPs harass that. My page was vandalised by the same person who I warned earlier when he said "This band is a bitch, don't edit this or I will report you" so I bet that was why. Coaster geekperson 04 14:37, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Blatant advertising

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Mathematics Wikia. I think the Mathematics Wikia could be very useful for saving mathematical content that is either deleted or discouraged from inclusion at Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. - dcljr (talk) 08:17, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

TV Ratings

Hi. I hope this is the right place to ask... I'm doing a couple of articles about TV episodes and have two questions on the same subject: The first one I have is, What is the name of the company (and the website) who keep track of TV ratings in Canada, like Nielsen Ratings do for America, and BARB in the UK.

Second, I've been looking at the Nielson website for the ratings of specific TV episodes from a year ago, they don't seem to have it. Is there anywhere on the internet who archives this information, and for the Canadian rating people, too? Thanks -- Matthew Edwards 21:20, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about the other questions, but for the archived information, you might try the Internet Archive. Type in the URL, and it'll show you archived past versions of the website that you can browse through. --CrazyLegsKC 14:20, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Need suggestions

I am a researcher at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC, formerly known as Xerox PARC, http://www.parc.com ) and we just released a tool for Wikipedia. We'd like to reach out to Wikipedians and receive feedback on the tool. But I just don't want to be a spammer. What would be the best way to announce it to Wikipedia users? The idea is to provide Wikipedia readers with a set of cues about the type of edits going on in an entry. The tool, WikiDashboard acts as an overlay of Wikipedia, providing a series of graphs showing active editors, periods of intensity, and how those periods of intensity correlate to editing behavior. http://wikidashboard.parc.com Any suggestions? Parc wiki researcher 23:35, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, announcing it here is a pretty good start. :-) — Frecklefσσt | Talk 14:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I should think it will get its own 'Project page' when enough wikipedians have seen it. At the moment, my first impression is that it is a solution looking for a problem; but then they said that back in the 1960s about the laser. --Aspro 16:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. We hope Wikipedians use the tool to reveal some interesting patterns which may be hard to identify otherwise. For example, you can find your own editing trends at http://wikidashboard.parc.com/wiki/User:Frecklefoot and http://wikidashboard.parc.com/wiki/User:Aspro Parc wiki researcher 19:09, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, but that shows just my 'recreation' - the articles I participate in for fun. It totally doesn't show my efforts where I go into something different. I know when I write something, I find it difficult to see my own mistakes in wat i wrot but another editor can more easily spot and correct them. Therefore, I occasionally reciprocate and wonder into other articles -where- with fresh eyes, I can correct errors and omissions and other things – this is the Wisdom of crowds, or the benefits of cross pollination. My activities in this area can already by viewed (dam it!) by evoking: Special:Contributions/Aspro. Any idiot can write about things they know about, BUT the more useful work comes about (I my observations) when one helps to knock other articles into shape. ( and that does not mean putting on a tag to say: this article is rubbish -please improve it!). Not only do I already know, what articles I contribute to frequently but I also know which articles any other particular editor contributes to. This 'tool' only tells me (from what I can so far see) more detail of what I already know. This extra detail seems as helpful as one doctor saying: “Not good! you have only 6 months to live” and a second (and more expensive opinion) “ Wow! With luck you might survive a another 5 months 3 weeks and a couple of days.... and not an edit more, not an edit less!

( Whoops, almost forgot: It might be informative to include other info such as the the length of article and the number of viewers)--Aspro 22:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Essay on Wikipedia

Here is an essay [9] I've authored about Wikipedia. In it, I discuss a sworl of controversy that surrounded the Leaving Las Vegas page and that of John O'Brien (novelist). Erin O'Brien 18:12, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

www.harrykel.com

Bold text My persooal web site: www.harrykel.com consist of 1)Links to Holocaust related sites (e.g. My parents' were Holocaust Survivors) 2)Links to my illnesses (e.g. Parkinson's, Diabetes, Bipolar Disorder) 3)Gallery of Family Pics 4) Family Links (e.g. Our son Jason & the band he plays in: www.backbeatband.ca) Jeremy: "the best drummer in Toroto", etc. I would greaty apppeciate your registering on it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Harrry kel (talk • contribs) 18:21, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Wikipedia does not do reciprocal linking. Corvus cornix 16:54, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure he means to keep it from being taken off as spam. Am I right? -^Violask8₁₉₇₆ 21:36, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Please have a look to the article

I just wrote X (writing speed). I tried to provide as many relevant refrences from best available resoureces, as possible. However, I think the article needs a copyedit, and also may need to be expanded in some parts. Please comment on the article's talk page. Thanks in advance, huji—TALK 15:44, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Today's featured article ever forgotten?

Has the "Today's featured article" section (on the Main Page) ever been forgotten about and left blank for a time? 86.41.135.221 15:05, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

It's decided in advance - see Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests and Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 2007 (for this month). I guess it could be forgotten, but that would be rather strange. x42bn6 Talk Mess 16:07, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

user pages in categories

Are user pages allowed to be in categories like Category:1992 births? The Placebo Effect 15:20, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

No, but they are allowed to be in user categories, which can be found at Category:Wikipedians. There used to be birth-year categories specifically for user pages, but they were deleted a few weeks ago. --Crazy Legs KC 15:54, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Collaborative essay about Wikipedias in other languages.

Hi. I started this essay: Wikipedia:Wikipedias in other languages. For it to work, it would need people that speak other languages and participate in other Wikipedias to edit it. I have no WP:OWN problems, so feel free to edit it. A.Z. 18:19, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

2,000,000 Articles!

Great work everyone! It's been a pleasure working with you. A good effort all round! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dfrg.msc (talk • contribs) 09:04, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

2mil already? It seems like 1.5mil was just last week. Nice image, by the way, it made me smirk. (Though the greengrocer's apostrophe makes my inner grammarian cringe.) --tjstrf talk 09:12, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Does any one know what the 2mil article was? Or the 2mil+1 article? Zginder 12:25, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I would be interested to find out if this number comprises articles created or articles extant... does it account for all the bad articles that were created but subsequently deleted by AFD? Blueboar 12:45, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Deleted articles are deducted from that number. For the 1 and 1.5 millionth articles, the articles were officially named. 82.71.48.158 13:02, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

El Hormiguero has the honour. Wikinews has an article here. Harryboyles 13:44, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Party! *Cracks open bottle of Champagne* (Someone make a McDonald's joke. I can't get the phrasing right.)--Dark Green 20:17, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Someone who is famous on wikipedia editing their own page?

If a celebrity were to come on here and edit their own page would they have to cite a reference from somewhere else. Example Brad Pitt were to put in that he is a car enthusiast and he collects many cars because his dead took him to many cars shows when he was younger, or that his first role was in a movie nobody ever heard of? Would he himself have to cite this from somewhere else? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.91.136.187 (talk) 03:40, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, he would, because without cited sources there's no way of telling where things came from or whether they're true. (Otherwise, anyone could claim to be Brad Pitt and add whatever silly things they wanted to the Brad Pitt article.) And besides that, Brad Pitt shouldn't really be editing the article about himself anyway. See WP:AUTOBIO. --Crazy Legs KC 03:58, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Media Inspection Team

Media Inspection Team Wikiproject launched. Feel free to join and help. -- Cat ^chi? 16:21, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

For anyone who wonders why this is a redlink, see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Media Inspection Team. - dcljr (talk) 02:41, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

mfd I cannot participate in

someone has put a userbox of mine up for mfd for inane reasons, and the conversation has gotten to large for my phone to edit. I do not have access to a computer right now, and it is very frustrating. I cannot even respond to the comment on my own talk page. usually this is no problem, but i've never had my own user stuff in mfd. it's User:JohnnyMrNinja/Lame password. I never claimed it was funny, but it is a joke, just a play off those "this user has a strong password" boxes. if there is a policy or guideline it violates then delete it, but as it is these people are referencing essays that don't apply. besides, if things were deleted for being potentially harmful and not being funny then mind of mencia would have gone a long time ago. could someone please go there and be logical (either way)? I will abide by any outcome as long as it makes sense. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 19:34, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

How did you edit this page? you can edit by section, and please note that MFD stays open for 5 days. Eagle101^{Need help?} 19:42, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

i could actually edit it, but it would remove most of the discussion. my phone won't load all the text. like I can respond now, but if you left another comment I (probably) wouldn't be able to respond without losing the last portion of your comment. I edited this page with the + tab. and I do know how section edits work, but I don't think people would appreciate me deleting most of the discussion just to point out that wp:beans doesn't mean "spill the beans" ~ JohnnyMrNinja 20:22, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

How about you post the comment that you would like to add just here and someone else can copy and paste it into the MfD discussion. Tra (Talk) 20:32, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

~3% of wikipedia articles pass a simple test

I was wondering the overall quality of Wikipedia, so I did some work on a database dump. The criteria were at least 10 sentences, 3 references, and no cleanup or other maintenance tags. I considered this a very simple measure of how good an article is. The list can be viewed by sections.

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And numbers...

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Its a very interesting result here that only 3% of wikipedia can pass this test. I consider three (3) references to be a very easy requirement to get. In grade school, for my first paper of any kind I was asked to come up with 3 references, so I don't think this is a very difficult target to hit. (most Featured Articles get over 50 or so), and I think 10 sentences is a reasonable number, I might re-run with something like 7 sentences, but I don't expect this number to jump too much. So I guess if this test is taken at face value only 3% of wikipedia could be even considered to be put in something like wikipedia 1.0. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 19:59, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

It would be interesting if you were to test which of these articles have fair use images or dead external links. What would the numbers be like then? Danny 20:02, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Depressing.--P4k 20:04, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

With some simple math... this means we have, at MAX, 60,000 pages that anyone else would consider "articles". That 2 million mark doesn't really seem all that exciting now. -Amarkov moo! 20:24, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Really, most of the articles worth having were in the first few hundred thousand. The stuff coming in today is marginal. Apartment complexes in Florida, minor bands, obscure dead politicians, "State Route NNN" - spend some time reviewing new articles and you'll see maybe one in fifty that's really worth having. Disk space may be cheap, but editor time to clean up all this stuff is scarce. --John Nagle 20:43, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

True. People really like to be able to say "Look, I created a Wikipedia article!" more than "Look, I wrote some text in an already existing Wikipedia article!", so when all the important topics are gone, we get articles on apartment complexes, 5 mile long stretches of road in Kansas, and my uncle's cousin's pet cow. At least we're making some progress; the 500 Pokemon articles (most of which consisted of "X is a creature from the Pokemon series, who made an appearence for three frames in episode 297) are reduced to 25. The biggest problem, though, is the articles that nobody knows or cares about. Obviously, that's really hard to fix, because we don't even know that the articles are THERE, except for Special:randompage and the large number for mainspace pages. -Amarkov moo! 20:51, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I think describing these articles as not worth having misapprehends the way people actually use Wikipedia, but unfortunately we lack good statistics on the issue of what articles are actually in demand. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:54, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that they aren't worth having (although I'm sure at least half the pages we have aren't). But it's important to realize that when we say "2 million articles!", we don't have what any other encyclopedia would consider 2 million articles. -Amarkov moo! 20:57, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't say all the good subjects have been created, not by a long way, but there is almost certainly a much higher proportion of crap being created, mostly either vacuous promotion or directory entries. Guy (Help!) 16:26, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I doubt even 10% of featured articles have more than 50 references -- that is a very big number, and I assume you mean of inline citations. But detecting the number of inline citations mechanically is quite difficult due to the great variety of citation systems in use. In any case, an article 11 sentences long with 2 inline citations is probably just fine, despite being excluded here -- all in all I don't think this is a very meaningful test. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:50, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, keep in mind that the method used seems to count multiple citations to the same thing as multiple. So even after factoring in the articles which use citation methods the bot doesn't recognize, the number of articles is probably still small. And I'm not that counting sentences worked; some of the 10 sentence articles look rather big. -Amarkov moo! 20:53, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, glancing at the list the sentence counts appear to be off by quite a bit: well over 14 sentences here. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:57, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Correct, the methods used were very approximate due to the shear amount of text it had to process. I'm open to ideas on how to improve the test. This does show that "decent" articles don't number that high, and quite a few of these could be tagged as requiring a few {{fact}}'s, so I'm sure it balances out. I'm more then willing to take additional suggestions on how to improve this though. Also keep in mind that this test recognizes an article with 200 sentences and 3 references as "decent", when in fact it may not be. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 21:30, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I am now re-generating the list, this time looking for articles with more then 6 sentences, and none of them can be stubs. (as being a stub indicates that the article is not complete). The test will also indicate in the readout how many references it saw. I'll let you guys know when the test finishes. It will be at least 4 hours. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 21:55, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Probably too late to ask now, but could you run a test that doesn't count GAs and FAs? Noclip 04:16, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Why not? They're usually one of the better articles. MessedRocker (talk) 04:24, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Because such a list could be used as a starting point for getting the "decent" articles up to GA or FA quality. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that if this restriction applied, the percentage would drop to less than 1. Noclip 04:34, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

If you give me the templates (for GA and FA articles) I'm glad to run it for you. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 05:09, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

20% of articles pass test

I ran a random article search of 50 pages, excluding disambiguation pages and lists. Of course this is too small to be statistically significant - someone who likes to code may wish to run a similar test over a sample of a few thousand. Here are my results. Durova^Charge! 05:00, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Pass:

Fail:

Re-run test

Several notes, I have re-run the test, exempting stubs, and allowing articles with more then 6 sentences, which should increase the percentage. I'll post the results tomorrow when I have time, but the results are looking similar. Durova, what criteria did you use on your test? The test I did was over the entire wikipedia dump, and it was done by a machine, its about as impartial as it gets. :). Durova, if you will tell me your criteria, I'd be glad to run it over the whole database. As far as removing GA and FA articles, please tell me what the templates are and I can run that test for you. Other ideas are welcome. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 05:07, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I used your criteria, although maybe with a slightly more lenient interpretation. I allowed merge templates, for example, since they aren't really a criticism of the existing material. You might like to parse my results to see whether you'd organize them differently. Bear in mind that a bot would probably miss some of the pages that pass - for instance the ones that use Harvard referencing. Durova^Charge! 13:33, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

You are correct, and that is one thing in which this scan should look at. We do know at the very least that at least 60% of our content does not have references at all'. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 17:47, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know why you think that 60,000 decent articles would be a bad result. It seems great to me. And 1,500 featured articles in 6 years (one featured article per day) is a good number. A.Z. 05:45, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm saying that 3% of what we have total is considered "decent". I don't think thats all that great, but you are free to draw your own conclusions :) I will be doing some more tests, etc to try to help people get more articles into this "club". Look at it this way, how many contributors do we have (that are at all regular). Rather, how many contributors have more then 1,000 edits. Compare that number to 60,000. I'd suspect thats its about one good article per editor. This is just another way of viewing things other then viewing things vie say edit count, or by counting articles that got through a peer review process, these are simply articles that are "decent" and can probably go through peer review without much work. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 05:50, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm assuming the 2,000,000 number includes redirects, too, right? Does that affect the calculation? Also, are you excluding the extremely short articles that aren't listed as stubs, but by right should be? -- Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 05:53, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

We are excluding redirects, redirects are not articles. Also I'm counting the number of sentences, in the prior run (of over 1,900,000 or so) listed above (above durova's sampling of 50 articles), required there to be at least 10 sentences, this new run required 6 sentences. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 05:57, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

At the current rate of featured article creation, we'll have an encyclopedia with 60,000 featured articles in merely 200 years. I think those are great results. Britannica has been around since 1768 and they have only about 60,000 articles. A.Z. 07:10, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Please remember this test is not measuring featured articles, its measuring articles that meet some minimum standards, although they are arbitrary, I think they are reasonable. I may run some other tests with some other parameters, but we are at about 3% of our articles that we could consider for use in wikipedia 1.0. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 07:37, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I did understand the test. I was trying to respond to the comment about Wikipedia's results being "depressing" because it could only create 60,000 decent articles (among which 3,000 good articles and 1,500 featured articles). I'm pointing out the fact that it has only existed for six years, and that it's not depressing to have one featured article and thirty decent articles created every day. A.Z. 07:40, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

How are the number of references determined? I see that the list of articles that pass doesn't include, for example, Tom Neale, which contains 5 references, or Brasstown Bald, with 3 refs. (I wrote one of those, and found the other by pressing random article).-gadfium 07:22, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

The reason why some are missing is the dump seems to be incomplete. It contains about 1,600,000 articles... and is missing some random pages, but in any case 3% was found over 1,600,000 pages, and thus is a fairly strong statistical number. I have more results I will put out tomorrow, including lists of articles that don't have any references at all. Over 60% of wikipedia fits this category. (at least from intial results). —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 07:34, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Think this is really useful work. It gives me the impression that WP First Edition has now been written and is ready for some 'weeding out'. BUT first, it remains important to remember this is not a paper encyclopaedia and some of its small very short article on obtuse areas of human interest and local interest article can be extremely useful. AND these small gems are available globally. Several times I have been astounded at the broad breath of global detail provided by very short articles, so in themselves they can 'sometimes' be a good thing. However for the mass of pointless articles -that's it another matter. These database queries certainly suggest that some thought needs to be focussed on the insights they are providing. I am wondering if a bot would be useful that could Google the titles of short articles and see if it gets any hits (similar to a copyvio bot). A 'notability' checker as it were. Human editors (when suffering a bouts of insomnia perhaps) can then go through and weed out the truly pointless -maybe also place a tag to that affect on those that pass or fail to avoid duplication of effort. Maybe these database enquires it will help inspire more work on automatic categorisation bots and 'semantic linking' to help join up orphan articles but I cringed at the estimation that 60% of the articles have no references at all. Maybe that calls for a bot to visit the user page of each and every creator of every unreferenced article and politely point out this small but significant oversight. If the bot could ignore the 'disambiguation pages' all the better.--Aspro 11:05, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Uh, I'm not saying that all 60% of the articles are bad, but I think some effort should go into perhaps clearing out some of the worst offenders as I should say. You know, things that don't have any references at all, and are hard to tell if anything in them are true or not. Also from my list of "bad" articles, I was able to see some groups of articles that could stand being merged. (the whole batch of them were unreferenced, but some of them had only 1 sentence). Consider this a way to identify what needs working on. You are right, we are a work in progress, these programs only confirm that. As far as not being a paper encyclopedia, you are right, but its not a good sign when I can't tell if 60% of what we have is true or not. I'm not saying delete the lot, (My that would be dealing with 1,000,000 articles!), but merely focusing some attention on these and perhaps getting them some citations. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 17:45, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

One interesting thing to point out is how few of the articles listed above would be considered for a list of 1,000, 10,000, or even 50,000 most important articles for a comprehensive reference work (i.e., encyclopedia). Too many key articles are missing. Danny 12:22, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Silly. I just looked at three of the articles Durova "failed" - S-100_protein, Scatterplot and Stephen Baxter - and I think all three are a credit to Wikipedia. I dare say more material could be added. But all three of these articles are valuable just as they are; and I think they are also reasonably well referenced for what is there. So I think this is mostly fuss about nothing. Jheald 14:18, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

The reason why those failed is because they lacked 3 references, and or had cleanup tags. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 17:49, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not calling those articles bad. I simply applied Eagle's formula to a random article search to see whether a small sample gave results as poor as his initial run. What I found was pretty much in line with my intuitive expectations. A lot of the encyclopedia's content needs improvement. Bear in mind, though, that most general interest encyclopedias use no line citations at all. Durova^Charge! 03:35, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Durova, please realize that this run is over more then 1,600,000 articles, and of course, we are not a normal encyclopaedia. Again I'm going to do some more modifications to the test, to on purpose try to generate a higher number. A random sample of 50 articles is just that, a random number. I'll see if I can't get a number as high as you, but if you see the results below, I doubt that will be possible. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 05:07, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

More then 60% of articles don't have references

I don't think we are tagging enough of them. :) Here is the list:

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And numbers...

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Make of it what you will, but I think at the very least someone ought to go through and tag the lot of them, or better yet, find some references (they may be in the external links section). Cheers! —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 18:25, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I am wondering if this topic ought to have its own Project Page. There appears to be too much here to consider on a general discussion page under the heading 'miscellaneous'. What do others think?--Aspro 20:15, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. It would be good to be able to cross off articles as they are fixed. Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 20:27, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

If someone would like to make a project, that might be a good start, I'd be glad to put the results on wikipedia if we had a project. (we could just use normal wikipedia pages). Anyone thats up to it and wants to lead a new project based on this, go ahead and make the project and tell me where it is, and I'll do my best to help out. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 21:08, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

It's a bit deceptive to say that 60% of references don't have references -- some of those articles genuinely lack references (a serious problem) and some simply don't use them in a way your bot can detect, whether it's embedded links, references in the external link section, textual references, reference sections with labels not recognized by the bot, etc. Some of the second group won't be inline with standard style but this is a minor problem. Perhaps out of the 60%, 20% have a minor problem and 40% a major one, or perhaps its the other way around. The numbers produced by the bot aren't much less vague than the qualitative feeling we all share that there are a lot of low-quality articles out there. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:09, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

If you point out specific errors I can fix them. (If for example a class of articles never uses references for whatever reason, example is the program ignores disambig pages), I'm glad to re-generate. The sections I"m looking for are Notes and References, along with Note and Reference. IF the references are in the external links, it might be a good idea for someone to move the references out of that section. This list is here to help folks find articles in need of improvement. Again if you find any systematic flaws, please let me know, I'm willing to re-generate the list. (please note that if an article has a references or notes section, regardless of reference style, it will detect it). Also please note, I"m not producing numbers, I'm giving everyone the ability to go and see the articles that have problems. Again I'm glad to modify the testing if someone can find a flaw. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 23:13, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Very interesting findings. Do you mind if I quote some of them? Crystallina 04:28, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

You are free to do so, but please keep the context of the whole report. This is more or less a starting point for improvement projects. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 04:52, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

That was my plan; I was going to put it into my Gnome Week description. Crystallina 03:31, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Short article clean-up

Further to the above discussions at /~3% of wikipedia articles pass a simple test, we've started this WikiProject (shortcut: WP:SACU) to encourage interested editors to help clean up short articles without references. While the idea is article improvement, there may also be some articles that are candidates for deletion. More info is at the project page. Feel free to improve the wording. Discuss any suggestions at the project talk page. More advertising to follow. -- Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 19:21, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

What happened??

Why did the header at the top of Wikipedia's articles revealing the title lose its emphasis?? Georgia guy 17:12, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

It's back now. Georgia guy 17:48, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedian photos of Wikipedians

Could people offer their opinions at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content#Exception to the rule?, please. My question there is essentially: Is it more acceptable to upload personal, non-encyclopedic pictures that are never intended to be used in the encyclopedia (eg. Wiki-meet-ups and personal portrait photos) under a free license, than it is to do so under a non-free tag, and if so, why? Carcharoth 10:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Local White List.

You might think that a page on Sundial would be a fairly safe and problem free place. In the main the editors cooperate etc- consensus rules. However at regular intervals an outsider driving a bot comes along and deletes one of our most import references- the latest time because it allegedly was crosswiki spam. The reference has been put on a crosswiki blacklist- with invitation to apply to the local whitelist. See My sundial and Links for part of the dialogue. The author of the blocked reference is as also a Wikipedian.

Having attempted to post to the Local White list-

the instructions were ambiguous, a system such as I am using now would be far better if someone with the necessary tickets would like to make a change
but more importantly there does not appear to be any movement on the whitelist, how does one encourage a bit of action. The contentious reference is (spaces added to defeat blacklist)
http //www.mysundial.ca / tsp/ tsp . html- The Sundial Primer Information about constructing many kinds of sundial, with paper sundial kits, sundial templates and "Computer Aided Dialling".

I would be grateful for suggestions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ClemRutter (talk • contribs) 10:10, 11 September 2007 (UTC) ClemRutter 10:12, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

What do you dislike about Wikipedia

What do you guys thing that should be seriously improved about Wikipedia? A.Z. 02:46, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia is not so great. --Ybbor ^Talk 03:03, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Easy targets for you editcount junkies !

I have generated a list of articles written by a single editor.
About 20% of such articles need to be wikified/reviewed/spell-checked. Go fix them, it is easy, fast and entertaining ! :-)
Nicolas1981 22:15, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Hidy Ho!

Is it OK to write trash here? 121.241.96.5 15:33, 12 September 2007 (UTC).

That, and how do you suggest an entry for DYK? 121.241.96.5 15:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

The only place where you can write trash is off Wikipedia or, I guess, test with the sandbox. And entries for Did you know? are suggested here. x42bn6 Talk Mess 15:36, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Um, thaks. But I am good all the time on regular articles ... there should be a place to be all silly. 121.241.96.5 15:38, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Understood, but this is a project to build an encyclopedia. If you want to relax, then there are various things you can do but not many are Wikipedia-related (some find it fun and relaxing to edit Wikipedia, even). The only relaxing thing I can think about Wikipedia would be to read the various links on WP:BJAODN - but first and foremost, this is a project to build an encyclopedia. x42bn6 Talk Mess 15:42, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Getting webmasters to switch CC licenses of images

I've been searching around Google, looking for webpages that are free to share, distribute and modify. Many have very nice images, but are either CC licensed with NoDerivs or NoCommercial. I've been emailing webmasters, asking them permission to release them without those parameters. How will most webmasters respond? If they distribute them with a CC license in the first place, would they be just as willing to let it be on Wikipedia?--Alasdair 06:19, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I think most people (or at least a lot of them) would be willing to re-license their photos if you just ask nicely. I've e-mailed a couple Flickr users asking them to do so, and they seemed more than happy to oblige. In fact, I asked one guy who had several photos of Rue McClanahan to re-license just one of his photos for us, and instead he did it for all of them. If they have their photos released under a Wikipedia-compatible license in the first place, they don't have to be willing to let Wikipedia use them--we can just use them without asking, since the license gives us all the freedoms we need to use it here. However, if we were to notify them about using their photos anyway, I'm thinking they would probably be very pleased that we were using them, since people who use free licenses often do so to share their photos with as many people as possible, and using the pictures on Wikipedia is a very good way to do that. --Crazy Legs KC 04:46, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I would be more than happy to attempt to persuade Webmasters to release photos under the correct license, what I would like to see is a page with a series of tools to help. I am particularly thinking of a snippet of HTML that could be included in webpage that places a button on the website- saying all photos on this site are licenced under a Wikipedia Commons compatible licence- there would be two links-one to a custom page on commons that explains the licence and one to a portal page on Wikipedia- a rollover would simply explain that is an invitation to freely use the images, the source, licence type, attribution ...etc. Webmasters would easily customise the links- but would have the tricky bit of explaining the license bit to their clients done for them. Further buttons could be used to tag individual photographs, or photos on individual pages. With ingenuity this could be written so tha alt field writes the image information in the format needed for a commons upload.

http://www.wunderground.com/geo/BannerPromo/global/stations/03784.html gives you the concept in the context of weather stations.ClemRutter 09:20, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Iraq War page note of conflict

I would like to note that the Iraq War Page has some grievious misrepresentations and other overtly biased errors.

I would like to argue that the opening picture of said page is strongly biased and gives a negative feel to the Iraq war and the U.S. Military. While it may be argued that the dead (probably) iraqi man in the photo is an accuarte represesntation of Iraqi civilian casualties, it would be as justafiable to place a picture in its stead that shows U.S. Marines handing out school supplies to girls who are now allowed to go to school, and do so without completly veiling themselves wether they wish it or not.

I would also like to argue that other governments, besides the Untied States of America, belived that they had intel linking Iraq, and Saddam Hussien, to both WMDs and Al-Queda. The use of the word "substantial" in the 2nd paragraph of this article in reference to links between Al-queda and iraq is both highly biased and opinionised. Who is to judge what evidence is substantial?

On a third and final note, i would like to argue against the case of the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame. First, it should be noted that this item should not be included in the Iraq War page at all. It is irelavent to the topic at hand. Secondly, I would like to acknowledge the "renegade" status of this case. The actually identity of the leaker, Robert Novak was found and seemingly filed away under a sort of "no report" zone by both the prosecutor and national news media. Then the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald went after Lewis Libby for purgury and obstruction of justice. Which name has been mentioned more, the actual leaker, or the unfortunate bystander "railroaded" by american press and and his prosecution? also, in reference to the Weapons of Mass Destruction? (in which I believe the question mark should be omitted)section of the Iraq War Article, it is base speculation to say "...the identity of Wilson's wife, undercover CIA analyst Valerie Plame, was revealed in a column by Robert Novak, in apparent retribution for Wilson going public with doubts about the yellowcake claims." and should be reported as such. Last of all I would make a request for evidence to be shown of Valerie Plame's actual Undercover status at the time of the leak in reply to my comment.

In finshing, I would like thank you for reading my comments, and to suggest that a committe of sorts be formed to go through and "house clean" the Iraq war article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.93.64.245 (talk) 05:14, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. However, it would be best if you took this discussion to Talk:Iraq war, because this is a content-related issue. However, it is unlikely that a committee would be formed because it would be overly bureaucratic. And not everyone here will have an idea on the Iraq war. x42bn6 Talk Mess 12:46, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

What do you love about Wikipedia

What do you guys love about Wikipedia? What do you think our strengths are, over other sources of information? I was thinking about these questions and though it may be good to get together a list of things - a bit of self-promotion on the one hand and on the other hand recognising our strengths so that we can choose the right methods and policies in the future to capitalise on these strengths. Is there anywhere where people currently record things like this? AndrewRT(Talk) 22:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:WWISG? Confusing Manifestation 00:13, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The thing I like the most is that everyone can edit. And I like that it doesn't matter your age, sexual orientation, country, language, etc: everyone is welcome to contribute. I like the list of cognitive biases. A.Z. 02:46, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Just what I was looking for! Cheers! AndrewRT(Talk) 12:24, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The way pages are seen

First off this is not about which browser is better. I am interested in how people see various pages in different browsers and attempting to make them (the pages) cleaner for viewing. I currently use Maxthon but also have Firefox and IE6. I've noticed that some pages will have a lot of whitespace at the top of the page. This is caused by having an infobox with a picture directly beneath followed by the article text (or the image followed by the infobox).

I came across Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), which has an image followed by the infobox. In Maxthon and IE6 I see the image and the start of the box (17 in monitor at 1280x1024). I see no text until I scroll down to the bottom of the box. However when I view it in Firefox the page is fine and the image and article text both start at the top of the page. A second but not as bad example is Leif Ericson where I see the heading "Early life in Iceland" but a large amount of whitespace above the contents box. Again in Firefox the page is fine.

Does anyone else see the pages the same way that I do? If so then it's perhaps something that needs addressing. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 07:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I can confirm that this issue occurs in the article Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom) viewed with IE7. Unfortunately, I don't (currently) know how to fix it. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 07:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have said that I have been fixing them but in this case I didn't because I wanted to check first. All you do is cut the image out and click preview. Look and see what the first line of text is after the infobox and restore the image after that. Again click preview and it should be fixed and if not then just keep moving the image down. Here's the permanent link just in case someone does fix it. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 07:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like I managed to fix two issues in one, via WP:BUNCH. The edit links were hidden and applying the fix for that seems to have fixed the IE6 display issue. Note that it may break up a bit in very wide viewports because of the number of images in relation to the small quantity of text. Adrian M. H. 10:43, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd not seen the WP:BUNCH issue before. In fact looking at the example given I still can't see the problem. However the MOD article is fixed because you moved the image down. I have got my answer though. I should keep moving the images as it's a viewing problem with IE which is annoying because there is still a large number of people using it. But at the same time I need to remember to check pages in Firefox as well. THanks all. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 20:08, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Groups of templates can either hide or bunch the section edit links; {{fixHTML}} cures that (in most cases). I previewed without first moving the image (which I opted to move for easier positioning) and your layout issue was OK by that point. You can use the fixHTML templates around images, but it does not always like it. Adrian M. H. 21:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Need suggestions

I am a researcher at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC, formerly known as Xerox PARC, http://www.parc.com ) and we just released a tool for Wikipedia. We'd like to reach out to Wikipedians and receive feedback on the tool. But I just don't want to be a spammer. What would be the best way to announce it to Wikipedia users? The idea is to provide Wikipedia readers with a set of cues about the type of edits going on in an entry. The tool, WikiDashboard acts as an overlay of Wikipedia, providing a series of graphs showing active editors, periods of intensity, and how those periods of intensity correlate to editing behavior. http://wikidashboard.parc.com Any suggestions? Parc wiki researcher 23:35, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, announcing it here is a pretty good start. :-) — Frecklefσσt | Talk 14:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I should think it will get its own 'Project page' when enough wikipedians have seen it. At the moment, my first impression is that it is a solution looking for a problem; but then they said that back in the 1960s about the laser. --Aspro 16:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. We hope Wikipedians use the tool to reveal some interesting patterns which may be hard to identify otherwise. For example, you can find your own editing trends at http://wikidashboard.parc.com/wiki/User:Frecklefoot and http://wikidashboard.parc.com/wiki/User:Aspro Parc wiki researcher 19:09, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, but that shows just my 'recreation' - the articles I participate in for fun. It totally doesn't show my efforts where I go into something different. I know when I write something, I find it difficult to see my own mistakes in wat i wrot but another editor can more easily spot and correct them. Therefore, I occasionally reciprocate and wonder into other articles -where- with fresh eyes, I can correct errors and omissions and other things – this is the Wisdom of crowds, or the benefits of cross pollination. My activities in this area can already by viewed (dam it!) by evoking: Special:Contributions/Aspro. Any idiot can write about things they know about, BUT the more useful work comes about (I my observations) when one helps to knock other articles into shape. ( and that does not mean putting on a tag to say: this article is rubbish -please improve it!). Not only do I already know, what articles I contribute to frequently but I also know which articles any other particular editor contributes to. This 'tool' only tells me (from what I can so far see) more detail of what I already know. This extra detail seems as helpful as one doctor saying: “Not good! you have only 6 months to live” and a second (and more expensive opinion) “ Wow! With luck you might survive a another 5 months 3 weeks and a couple of days.... and not an edit more, not an edit less!

( Whoops, almost forgot: It might be informative to include other info such as the the length of article and the number of viewers)--Aspro 22:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Server difficulties banner

Hey, I read up about it on some disscussions, but there are so many threads with a lot of people saying the same thing that everything is broken and not saying anything useful. I just wanted to hear the whole story of what happened instead of link jumping across all the wikimedia projects. I've seen 5 explainations already and I've only been to WP:VPT , here, and the commons VPT. No rush, I'm sure I could read about it soon in the signpost, but if you don't have anything to do, would you respond? Thanks, - Hairchrm 00:56, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Flags

Whats going on with country flags on wikipedia.

When ever you look on an article about a town, mountain, person etc were it says Location, Place of Birth etc I'm no longer seeing the image of the flag but instead words like "Flag of Nepal Nepal".

Whats going on? I preferred it when you could see the images. Surely it has nothing to do with image rights does it Samaster1991 16:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

That's been happening to a lot of people lately, me included. There's a notice on Commons that says they're working on fixing it. In the meantime, you could try purging the images to get them to show. --Crazy Legs KC 16:26, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

ThanksSamaster1991 18:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

user pages in categories

Are user pages allowed to be in categories like Category:1992 births? The Placebo Effect 15:20, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

No, but they are allowed to be in user categories, which can be found at Category:Wikipedians. There used to be birth-year categories specifically for user pages, but they were deleted a few weeks ago. --Crazy Legs KC 15:54, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Napulitano (language code "nap") shows wrong name in "in other languages" links

The Napulitano language (in English, Neapolitan), language code "nap", wrongly shows up as "Nnapulitano" in the "in other languages" links of Wikipedia articles. It should be changed, but I have found no way to change it myself.Mplsray 06:11, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

That could only be fixed by someone with the power to alter the MediaWiki software that Wikipedia runs on. I just left a message about it on the village pump on Meta, so hopefully someone will fix it. --Crazy Legs KC 17:18, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Khmer Wikipedia

Where can I get the fonts for it? Æe tlr Cre ejl 21:59, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

There are some links on Khmer script#External links. Also http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts_windows.html#khmer —Leo Laursen ( T | C ) 10:19, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Artur Balder

There's something strange happening at the Artur Balder page. It's been translated into about 50 other languages, seemingly for no reason at all? Was it recently World Artur Balder Day, or has he just got a massive internet fan base? Or is there (my favourite) a conspiracy. I did a bit of search, and of the 25 other language versions I checked, 24 of those articles were made by a newly-created user who only cotributes to that page, and linked ones. How strange. --Montchav 15:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like what happened with some of those pages, at least, was not that the page was translated, but that References, References (art), and External links, all in English, were added to a pre-existing article.

I checked out one of the external links, which, although given an English title in the link, was originally written in Spanish (and the site required that one subscribe to access it).

This is true of the French and Esperanto versions (I speak both languages): The start of each article appears to have been written by someone who knows the language well and who wrote an independent article, but the sections named above, still in English, were added on.

In the case of two languages which I do not read, Scots and Lojban, the same additions were made to what I expect were the original short articles. Mplsray 07:24, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Anyone else having trouble with Special:Watchlist?

~~Have been getting a DB error of some kind. Is there a health page for WP anywhere to get updates?~~ cross posted to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) Ronnotel 16:01, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Grand Theft Jimbo

I've made a humor article in my user page, about a Grad Theft Auto game featuring Jimmy Wales. Any suggestions? Blake Gripling 05:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Link? ←Ben^B4 07:04, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Blakegripling ph/Wikiproject Grand Theft Jimbo. x42bn6 Talk Mess 16:07, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I think there would be rather significant copyright and personality rights issues.Geni 17:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

500,000

Everyone seems hyped up about the 1000,000th article (a Scottish railway station) and the 2000,000th (a Spanish TV show). going back to the past, there must have been a record of say the 100,000th article or 500,000th. I am just curious. If there is a record of this or these, what was it\were they? Simply south 21:45, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I typed 100,000 article in Google and got this. A.Z. 04:24, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

That page says Wikipedia was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. A.Z. 04:25, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

And here are the other press releases. A.Z. 04:28, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Birthday wishes

Is there a template for wishing a Wikipedian a happy birthday? Amit@Talk 04:26, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

A brazillion of them ←Ben^B4 04:36, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Um, how do I use them, use subst: or something? Thanks Amit@Talk 05:02, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok I figured it out, thanksAmit@Talk 05:08, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

And a committee here. Now why on Earth should a birthday greeting be so difficult? ... x42bn6 Talk Mess 18:52, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Revocation of contributors' grant under the GFDL

The issue of people trying to revoke the grant of their contributions under the GFDL has come up three times in the last couple months, and there is widespread belief that people can't revoke their license grant. Actually they can, they just have to wait until the 2040s to do it.

Wikipedia's servers are governed by US law, which allows for license revocation:

"during a period of five years beginning at the end of thirty-five years from the date of execution of the grant"

— 17 U.S.C. § 203(a)(3)

This was originally intended to allow musicians to recover rights that they assigned under unfavorable terms when they were unknown and wanted the exposure. But it applies to all copyrighted works. I bet someone actually tries it eventually. ←Ben^B4 01:26, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

If it ever becomes an issue, then we could probably just get the FSF to change the GFDL to explicitly waive that right. But 35-year-old edits that the contributor wants to revoke could probably just be removed by oversight without any adverse effects. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 03:47, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, statues take precedence over agreements, and we would need to make sure that any text they added did not survive in the current 35-year-later version. But that wouldn't be hard and we could just paraphrase it. ←Ben^B4 04:16, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Greasemonkey Script

from my proposal at UserScripts:

I know nothing about Greasemonkey, but based on other scripts I know parts of the following should be possible:

One of the great drawbacks of MediaWiki is its complete lack of AJAXy features. To edit a page, you have to hunt down the edit link, edit the whole thing in a different tab, click preview, rinse, edit, repeat. I've actually stopped contributing because it is too cumbersome.

What I would like:

> A selection to edit is highlighted. > The edit link before that section is found, clicked, and opened in an embedded bubble. This bubble has two panes. On the top, the box (no other junk save for maybe the toolbar) where wiki-syntax is entered is displayed. On the bottom, a preview pane is displayed. > While you edit, the preview pane refreshes AJAX-style (ie no blank interim pages). You keep on editing. > Two buttons on top of bubble - Cancel and OK. OK clicks submit button. Bubble disappears. Page bubble is on refreshes AJAX-style.

Everything about this besides the AJAXy no-refresh-blanks requirement seems reasonable to me, and I hope it is. It would also be a killer script, and I could tolerate editing again.

Thanks. Arithmomaniac —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arithmomaniac38 (talk • contribs) 03:20, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

You might take a look at User talk:Alex Smotrov/qpreview.js, which is a quick AJAX preview. Also, two WYSIWYG editors - FCKeditor and Wikiwyg - seem to be under active discussion for implementation with MediaWiki software. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:13, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

AfD

Average newcomer, on learning that an article they started is up for deletion:

"Don't Delete! Don't delete!!" [10]

Jimbo Wales, on learning that an article he started is up for deletion:

"Some people should excuse themselves from the project and find a new hobby." [11]

Discuss. – 217.44.232.180 21:25, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Before trolling with this sort of question, you might wish to put the statement in the proper context, which requires reading the entire page. Wales' comment could have benefited from a breather before hitting "save", but your "summary" is out of line. --Ckatz^chat _spy 21:38, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes I also experienced the displeasure of seeing an early page I created subsequently get deleted. But since then I got involved with AfD and have experienced the distinct joy of helping save multitudes of worthy pages from extinction. — RJH (talk) 18:06, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

linking dates

I've noticed on a lot of pages that within dates, the year is often linked to the page for that year, like say 1975. I feel like this is a weird practice, as it is doesn't seem to be in context. I doubt if there is any formal policy on this kind of link, but I'm wondering what people think of it. It doesn't seem to happen so often with other ordinary words (unless there seems to be a need to help readers understand) so why dates. maxsch 04:12, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Have you looked at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and m:Dynamic dates? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:52, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Can someone tell me if this is spam?

Anonymous user 98.195.150.105 has been contributing to Wikipedia for all of about 1 hour as shown in Special:Contributions/98.195.150.105. In that time, he has added external links to 4 different articles. Each of those external links are to pages in the www.kolmetz.com website. As I read that website, it is merely publicising the services of KLM Technology Group.

Are the external links added by user 98.195.150.105 considered to be spam? - mbeychok 03:25, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks like spam to me. Unless it provides a reasonable resource of information valuable to the site, then it's generally spam, unless it's actually an article about kolmetz, but none of these is. They're all about cooling systems and such. --linca ^linca 03:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

It's spam of the spammiest sort, spammingly spammed in a spammy manner by the spam-maidens of Lower Spamfield. No question. Raymond Arritt 03:42, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's spammy enough for me to leave an "only warning" on their page. I'll keep an eye on 'em and if they continue I'll followup with a nice little enforced wiki-break for them. - Philippe | Talk 03:53, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

It's pretty spammy, but by the same token, they've not done a mass edit update, so it's kind of good, in a weird non-sort of way. --linca ^linca 05:29, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Template:POV-section

Hi everybody,
I'd like to know for certain whether the Template:POV-section or any similar one on English Wikipedia allow the user to enclose the whole disputed section into themselves, like on it.wiki, in this way.
Thank you very much in advance. --Erinaceus Italicus 12:39, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

No, here on en we don't do that in article space. ←Ben^B4 20:53, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you again, very kind. --Erinaceus Italicus 22:15, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

It's not a bad idea to have something like that, but for now, anything, just precede the section with the tag, and any specific lines, just tag with {{dubious}}. --linca ^linca 05:31, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

L.A.S.D name tag placement

Italic textHi,

I am the wife of a current deputy recruit, and my husband asked me to take his jacket to On duty uniform store and have a name tag put above the lower left pocket. So I dropped off the jacket, told them what station it was for, and when I came to pick it up they had sewn it above the lower right side pocket. I questioned them on it and they said they know what they are doing unless L.A.S.D is starting something new. So my question is, which side is the correct one for the name tag on the jacket? Your immediate response would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you. Tara —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.82.111.15 (talk) 20:59, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I know that it says "miscellaneous" in the title, but it still needs to relate to Wikipedia. I would suggest the Ref Desk, but I'm not sure that this is even a Ref Desk question. Why not just ask someone at the precinct? Adrian M. H. 22:59, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Grand Theft Jimbo

I've made a humor article in my user page, about a Grad Theft Auto game featuring Jimmy Wales. Any suggestions? Blake Gripling 05:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Link? ←Ben^B4 07:04, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Blakegripling ph/Wikiproject Grand Theft Jimbo. x42bn6 Talk Mess 16:07, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I think there would be rather significant copyright and personality rights issues.Geni 17:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist

When I go to my watchlist, it gives an error 500; while all other pages are okay. What's the problem?? Georgia guy 16:29, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Already being discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Special:Watchlist. Seems to be hitting pretty much everyone, and noone knows why. - TexasAndroid 17:05, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Anyone else having trouble with Special:Watchlist?

~~Have been getting a DB error of some kind. Is there a health page for WP anywhere to get updates?~~ cross posted to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) Ronnotel 16:01, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Can Anyone Help?

I am from Scotland and I am trying to trace my Dad,his name is Norman Grant and he is in his sixties,the last I heard from him he lived near Nahoon Beach in East London. I would be grateful if anyone could give me any information on how to trace him. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kaygrant (talk • contribs) 23:59, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

~~Please do your own homework.~~

Welcome to Wikipedia. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know.AndrewRT(Talk) 20:35, 23 September 2007 (UTC) Let me put this another way. This wiki is for discussing Wikipedia, its articles, policies etc, not for helping you with your lost persons problem. Sorry to sound insensitive, but you're in the wrong place! AndrewRT(Talk) 22:34, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Wtf, this response is totally irrelevant and insulting. Maybe you should dial back your use of templates a bit. I don't think anyone is going to be be able to help you Kaygrant.P4k 20:43, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

You should ask this question on WP:RDH. ←Ben^B4 20:53, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I have copied your question to the Humanities Reference Desk, where I hope someone will be better able to help you. DuncanHill 16:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Truth from an unexpected quarter

According to the appropriate category Corruption in Mumbai needs cleanup... Rich Farmbrough, 09:39 3 October 2007 (GMT).

Old MfD of Esperanza

So... everyone figures out about it eventually. I have known about it, but I never understood it exactly. I would research it by myself, but it is so long that it isn't worth it. The 2 MfD's and Deletion review are way to long to read. So instead I was wondering if someone would just explain it to me. Basically I was wondering the following:

Reasons for deletion (I see a million of them, just the real major ones)
What does everyone mean by it was actually hurting en.wiki?
Why are current organizations okay?
Can a new organization like Esperanza be made?
Why did the first MfD have maybe a 50:50 keep/delete ratio and the next a 99:1 delete/keep ratio?
Why weren't they all kept as historical?
Was it actually good at the beginning?

Thanks for the answers and your time!!! - ђαίгснгм ^таιќ 02:26, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Did you read the essay you will find if you go to Esperanza? I haven't looked lately, but it's supposed to answer all those questions - so it mustn't be doing a good job.

I'll leave #1 alone for now.
As for #2, many people percieved that it had turned into a sort of a clique, where people thought they were better than everyone else, and were sort of over there, doing their own thing, and not associating with everyone else.
Current organizations are (supposedly) less cliquish and less holier-than-thou-ish; they aim to help people where Esperanza had lost sight of that mission.
#4, depends what you mean by "like Esperanza".
#5 after the first MfD it was decided to give Esperanza a chance to reform and find it's roots. The reform was percieved as unsuccessful, and lead to fighting among the Esperanza members. Many of them thought it would be less painful to see it go. Many who were not in Esperanza but supported them in the first MfD thought it was beyond hope.
#6, I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with the historical tag saying projects can be revived. No one wanted to see that painful stuff drug up again.
#7. Yes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ONUnicorn (talk • contribs) 01:48, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Myanmar to Burma

The proposal from Talk:Myanmar#Requested move

Myanmar → Burma — The fresh turmoil in this country has apparently reignited the discussion on whether should this article here be named Myanmar or Burma. I am requesting this to be moved to Burma, as that seems to be the most commonly used name among English speakers. Furthermore, the name Myanmar has never been recognized by the Burmese opposition nor has by many countries (including the United States). —Hús ö nd 23:44, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

--Philip Baird Shearer 10:41, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there is a standard policy on this, but IMHO, it should be called what the occupying and controlling forces call it. That's Myanmar. That seems like it would be a good rule. It removes the politics from the situation. I imagine this is an issue because President Bush called it Burma at the UN. He did that for political reasons. We shouldn't introduce the Presidents politics here. This sounds like an attempt for diplomacy through Wikipedia, which I think is a bad idea. And, calling the article, or the state, Burma, would give the idea that the opposition forces have taken control and changed the name again. —Slipgrid 14:53, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Article improvement

I'm just advertising this page. A.Z. 22:28, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Looking for opinions on an article

I wasn't too sure about this recent article, Aohack. I can understand the idea behind it, and I'm sure there would be a huge amount of information available (although would mostly be speculation I'm guessing), but the way the article is written seems more like a 'kudos' page to certain programmers. Just wanted to get some opinions on it. I was going to Afd it, but maybe it just needs a major re-write. A^RendedWinter 14:53, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

This appears to be User:GiddyPrik's first attempt at anything. Therefore, a bit of guidance (and a Wiki- welcome) is probable more in order. As to its encyclopaedic value -I just don't know about this area at all. --Aspro 15:42, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I may be simply paranoid here... but given the topic (hacking), perhaps someone with some knowlege of programing should check this article to make sure there is nothing nasty hidden in it, or being linked to in it. Blueboar 17:49, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I took a whack at wikifying it. I'm a programmer; I didn't see anything particularly nasty in it. — Frecklefσσt | Talk 18:26, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

The reference you cited appears to be a Wikipedia fork/mirror. I've removed it, and have instead made the former external link into a reference. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:20, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Ah, never mind, it's an almost verbatim recreation of AOHack programs, which was deleted last year. I've speedied it. It might be worth redirecting those titles to AOHell, which appears to be the most notable of the programs, and also a much more encyclopedic article. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:41, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Non credit

There is a link to a Times article in the J. P. R. Williams article used as a source but it is broken. Some of the material which was based on that article was removed in two edits on June 9 of this year. While looking new for sources to cover the deleted material I came across this article: "The last line of defence February 19, 2007. The section on JPR cearly a copies some of the J. P. R. Williams article on 15 February 2007 and does not credit Wikipedia or mention the GFDL. Is there a place were these things are logged? Do we have a policy on this? --Philip Baird Shearer 13:02, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately it seems to me much more likely we are the ones guilty of copyvio not The Times. If you look when the line was added [12], it credited The Times as a source. This suggests to me the original contributor plagarised it from The Times and in the 19th February article, they simply reused their original work. This article is in need of serious attention, check out Wikipedia:Copyright problems for what to do about the article. Note even if The Times did plagarise us, the fact that we originally plagarised The Times means the copyright situation is fairly murky. Clearly the copyright of most of what The Times may or may not have plagarised doesn't belong to us and while it may not clearly belong to The Times either, there's not much point making a fuss about it. Nil Einne 04:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

BTW Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks covers what to do with GFDL violations. While it's more directed to mirrors or forks, it's mostly appliciable to any violation Nil Einne 04:08, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Speedy upload of pre-created article

Yesterday, I wrote short offline entries for the 4 finalists in the Belgian pre-selections of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2007. This meant I was able to post one of those 4 as soon as the winner was announced - literally seconds later. It took me a little more time, but I also posted the results of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2005 to the relevant article within an hour after the show ended.

I wondered, is there anyone else as wikipediholic as me? What was the shortest time you ever had between the announcement of something new and you posting it to Wikipedia? - Mgm|^(talk) 08:56, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Major contests amd sporting events often are updated within seconds of their conclusion. But a whole new article is something else. Rmhermen 01:11, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I rememver this year's Daytona 500 I was sitting ther and had the name typed in already because he couldn't lose in those last few seconds and as soon as he crossed the line i hit enter and somebody still got it in before me. -^Violask8₁₉₇₆ 18:40, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I got one of Kelly Holmes results in really quickly a year or so back, more of a challenge now. Rich Farmbrough, 09:36 3 October 2007 (GMT).

A Welcome Bot, anywhere?

Hi there everybody,

I would like to know, if there is a welcome bot operated by anyone here? I would gladly appreciate any reply

PoinDexta1 10:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about any bots (they might end up welcoming vandals) but there is this: Wikipedia:Welcome,_newcomers --Aspro 10:21, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Multiple times, people have suggested bots that would add welcome template to articles. Each times, they have been denied because it would not be a personal message coming from a user. I think that there is no reason not have a welcome bot as the welcome template gives useful advice to newcomers. Captain panda 13:09, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, this is considered a perennial proposal and thus is unlikely to succeed. Captain panda 13:14, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

It might be more practical to have the bot simply compile a list of new active editors who haven't been welcomed yet and post it somewhere for the welcoming committee to watch and review. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:04, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your guys help. Greatly appreciated!

PoinDexta1 11:40, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I often find myself more than a little bemused to go to a User's Talk page to post a vandalism warning, only to find that somebody has already been there welcoming them to Wikipedia. It seems to be that there should be a little more discrimination among welcomers, in that they should look at the editor's edits before they welome them, to see if they actually are welcome here. Corvus cornix 22:05, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely. I welcome a lot of new editors, but I am selective; vandals and those who are clearly only here to further their own agenda do not get welcomed. I like Ilmari's suggestion. Adrian M. H. 12:24, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I often leave a welcome followed by a "warning". Rich Farmbrough, 09:34 3 October 2007 (GMT).

A bad rash of templates

Maybe it's because a lot of template are being redesigned that they are braking out all over the place. Can an effort be made to ensure that there are some instructions on the new template pages to make it clear when they should not be used without also raising the issue on the talk page. They are (in my experience of late) used most often by people who have not edited the article before and so are making instant 'gut feeling' judgements. It makes it very difficult to guess what they are taking objection too or worse, workout if they have not read the article properly but just skimmed over it and spotted something they feel they don't like. I have realised that I no longer take any notice of most of the templates now, as they are just wasting too much time in trying to guess just what bit they are referring to and why. If you have been following this, an other discussion pages you will read a lot of discontent about the poor use of these templates but nothing positive seems to be happening and the problem is getting worse. --Aspro 15:17, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

What - you don't think it's helpful to lard every article with a big box that shoves half the text off the screen in order to say something really insightful like "This article isn't as good as it could be - make it better"? I wish somebody would create a template-killing bot; leave the one that points to lack of references, but kill all the others. - DavidWBrooks 16:02, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

PoV/Neutrality templates are always a useful heads up for me when I go to read an article. But yes it's difficult to know at what point you've addressed the concern of the person inserting the template, especially when it's hundreds of edits deep in the history and you have to waste time tracking down the originator to find out why. At present I feel free to remove a template (after making some effort to address it) whenever there is no clarification on the talk page. — RJH (talk) 16:24, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

When In Doubt, Take It Out - that's my motto about the damn things. I have found that deleting a template almost never draws a complaint, which says to me that people too often slap them down and then move on. - DavidWBrooks 17:11, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I think the policy should clearly state: the big templates should only be used if an entire article is unacceptable/to be deleted/NPOV. For all the lesser inaccuracies use just {{fact}} and {{huh}}. Every template big or small, should have a clear doc/guide not only "add to page when ..." but, first of all, "remove template from a page when...". Lack of the latter is the root cause of a problem. --Kubanczyk 09:23, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

If an editor can't be bothered to tell people what the problem is on the article talk page after plopping down a POV tag or something similar, I can't be bothered to search for the reason before removing the tag. But the no references tag is useful; {{refimprove}} less so and more usefully replaced by targeted {{fact}} tags.- Banyan Tree

Yes, IMHO you are right, but most unexperienced editors fear to remove tags. So a guideline would help them. By the way, I've just found an interesting Wikipedia talk:Article message boxes‎, I think it is a better place for such discussions. --Kubanczyk 11:57, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

en-interwiki links

I've noticed on some articles, templates and categories etc that in the interwiki section, where the interwiki links are kept, the en-interwiki link can often be found inside a comment. Is this a recommended practise, to include a link to the page itself inside a comment?

Example for a page called "Some subject":

[[de:Some subject]]
<!--[[en:Some subject]]-->
[[es:Some subject]]
[[fr:Some subject]]
[[nl:Some subject]]

--Stefán Örvarr Sigmundsson 22:25, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I would imagine it helps people copying the list around wikis. They just need to ensure the local one is commented out. It might throw WP:AWB though. Rich Farmbrough, 09:39 3 October 2007 (GMT).

If I remember correctly the AutoWiki Browser puts the commented links ontop of the interwiki links like this:

<!--[[en:Some subject]]-->
[[de:Some subject]]
[[es:Some subject]]
[[fr:Some subject]]
[[nl:Some subject]]

I haven't found anything in the style manual about this yet. --Stefán Örvarr Sigmundsson 11:21, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

what's with the little text "ads" for unregistered users?

you know the little text on the top right... it looks kinda tacked on without a proper place, is very small, and completly irrelevant for most people. 166.165.143.72 22:42, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I just logged out to have a look at this. You're right, it does look pretty bad, and the content only marginally useful. I also think the donation solicitation is out of place. There's lots of space for this kind of junk, if it must be shown in the first place, in the sidebar under the "in other languages" box. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 20:32, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Above featured

Is there anything above featured status? Simply south 17:13, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

No.--Ybbor ^Talk 20:52, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Not really, although there are Featured topics, where all the articles making up a distinct topic are at least of good article quality, and at least a couple are featured. This could be considered a higher status than a featured article or list. However, while featured articles and pictures may appear on the main page, featured topics (and list and portals) are not eligible.-gadfium 21:58, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

My Take on "The 8 Most Needlessly Detailed Wikipedia Entries"

I was reading this article which is interesting, and funny, but at the same time I disagree with.

The idea is that some of these articles are needlessly detailed. But, I disagree, because Wikipedia is not like other encyclopedias; it's not limited by shelf space. Information is a wonderful thing, and we shouldn't limit the amount of it that is put into Wikipedia.

I write this, because I see lots of great content purged from the site, and lots of great articles cut down in size. It seems like it's an effort to make Wikipedia more like other encyclopedias. That shouldn't be the goal. You should try to make Wikipedia better, and more informative, than other encyclopedias. Do limit others by asking, "what would Britannica do?" Think of the possibilities, and don't try to force Wikipedia into a box.

So, what's your take, and why is so much great information purged from Wikipedia? —Slipgrid 14:42, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you. And information is purged because of deletionists who don't care what other people think. -^Violask8₁₉₇₆ 23:14, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Go to any AfD. I agree with you, but many don't. That's why Wikipedia is always changing. Many people don't care about the garage band in some little town in the middle of nowhere. Actually, I don't either, but I do believe that we should be more allowing of the detail of content here. - ђαίгснгм ^таιќ 02:28, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree also. The author of the article seems to be obsessed with a never-was female tennis player.

Some articles are too long. The same information is restated for no apparent reason. I don't bother to edit those articles as I am reading them to gain information not to criticize.

More articles are much too short as they lack information that could be useful even though they go on for screen after screen and have multiple, well-organized sections. Many of the articles about musical styles lack examples.

Were I to address the detail of content, Wikifying and encyclopedic more fully I would still by typing two days hence.

JimCubb 05:19, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Re: AfD's Wading through lot's of AfD's I get the impression: that now most Subjects (and lesser subjects etc.) have been created, a new cohort of Wikipedians have developed, who measure their usefulness by deleting 1st Bad articles; 2nd As this is easy, it then becomes a habit, where they just put up articles for AfD about things they do not have a clue about. Then, because some other editors congratulate them for clearing out some of the dross, go onto think that an AfD is where other editors have to awaken their interest in the subject matter for them, so that they can now see it as interesting to them too and therefore must be preserved.

Much of the time the 'less than perfect' article is the result of short coming in the main subject article. Therefore, editors that 'just delete content' ( as opposed to adding text) who wonder into areas well outside their domain (of knowledge and understanding) remain ignorant of the 'real needs' to improve the overall content and readability. How much useful content is being lost because some editors have nothing better to do? [I also agree with some of the other comments above ]--Aspro 07:12, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

ON Sept. 17, Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, the founding father of Wikipedia and the community's most celebrated member, created a one-sentence article that read as follows:
"Mzoli's Meats is a butcher shop and restuarant [sic] located in Guguletu township near Cape Town, South Africa."
Twenty-two minutes later, the article was deleted from the site. Nineteen-year-old administrator Chad Horohoe, who uses the moniker "^demon," removed the entry, citing Wikipedia guideline CSD A7 (Criteria for Speedy Deletion: Articles: No. 7), which says that an article can be summarily deleted -- with no discussion or notice to the author -- if it contains "no assertion of importance/significance."

Why shouldn't every business in the world have a Wiki entry? It seems useful to me. —Slipgrid 12:37, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that AfD has, on average, set the bar much too high on the notability criteria. My suspicion has always been that AfD tends to attracts those who like to delete pages, and therefore the opinions are weighted toward reductionism. (Perhaps deletionists gain a sense of empowerment by removing the work of others?) Clearly there are articles that deserve to be expunged, but many fine articles (on topics that certain special interests would find interesting) have been ruthlessly deleted, with no particular benefit to anybody. — RJH (talk) 15:50, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I personally feel you hit it right on the head right there: "Perhaps deletionists gain a sense of empowerment by removing the work of others" -^Violask8₁₉₇₆ 17:04, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps its time to restrict AfD's to editors who are members of a wiki-project. For example: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletionism. That will prevent the mavericks doing as they please without any supervision based on well thought out guidance. It still leaves people free to take part in deletions. It will also easier to keep an eye on the policy and its application and call for refinements if necessary. At the moment we have too many loose cannons firing off in all directions.--Aspro 19:00, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't have much to add to this discussion, but I really felt compelled to thank everyone for the interesting read. The LA Times article was particularly fascinating. I personally feel that, if the base subject is notable, then as much credible/citable information as possible is welcome since we don't have a space limit --all we need after that is simple organization. --Bobak 19:24, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Well. whilst WP may not be constrained by paper it does have a resource concern; server capacity, processor cycle time and bandwidth.

As I see it you're conflating two different issues; article content and the AfD process. AfD is as flawed as every other pseudo-democratic mechanism in WP. I tend towards the view that content should have a demonstrable value, so probably end up more deletionist than inclusionist, but I'd generally consider each case on it's merits.

OTOH excessive detail in articles does tend to reduce their real informaitonal value. Many articles in WP are badly written with poor structure, language aimed at early teens and a host of individual statements cobbled together under a single title. People rarely make any effort to consolidate articles and turn them into something meaningful. An excess of detail gets in the way of communication.

ALR 20:43, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Those are good and valid points ALR. Therefore I will attempt to answer them (not knock them down – we need to collectively bring WP up a peg or two).

1) J. Wales in some pod cast recently pointed out that access only cost some $28,ooo per month. The gist.... ”don't concern oneself with this and other related matters”.

2) Yes. Thank you for acknowledging AfD is flawed as of now. With realisation brings the opportunity of change.

3) It is academic to search for better term than 'pseudo-democratic' because we get the drift. It suffices.

4) Yes, excessive detail does make it harder to discriminate the nuggets of gold from the dross...This is why I say it is important to identify 'prime' material. Contrast is added by identifying the opposite -the trivia (err. have I said that before?).

5) Many articles 'are' badly 'ritin'. Answer: Have you ever read a draft of a pattern application written by a Polish person in English? Marks out of ten for grammar etc? What about the 'quality' of the proposal though... can not the information there in contained -not be brilliant? So 'what' has writing ability got to do with the ultimate 'information value of the article? Meander through an (academic) library and ye shall find plenty a' poor grammar! And what about Herman_Potočnik? Remember, he proposed geosynchronous communication satellites... or where you only trained to remember Arthur_C._Clarke??? THIS is why extra levels of detail are warranted.

6) I suggest that classifying it- will offer a way that 'excessive detail' can be avoided unless it is sort after.

The current schooling system does not bother with education anymore. It just trains students in how to please the examiner. WP however, can be the ( or 'a' ) font from which further elucidation can spring forth and make some amends for this unhappy situation.--Aspro 22:52, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

There's a difference between (a) an article so overloaded with excess detail and other crud that it's impossible to make out the useful parts, and (b) an article about a topic so minor that even if it's well-crafted, it offends some people. Situation (a) rarely gets deleted, just larded with "nag tags"; situation (b) is what brings out the deletionists (of which, I admit, I am a reformed member). Situation (a) is a problem, situation (b) is not. - DavidWBrooks 22:56, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

You say, "situation (a) is a problem, situation (b) is not," and I agree. The articles overloaded with detail and crud could be cleaned up, but I think the facts should remain, or at least, some of they could be moved to another sub. For instance, the list of ancient Jedi seems useful to me, and I wouldn't purge the facts, though it seems like it is being considered for deletion. I'd make a separate page for each Jedi, and then link to them from one main article. The only problem with that is the separate pages would get deleted much more quickly than the main article. I think Wikipedia makes a fine archive of facts, and these are interesting, and they should be kept.

Also, on the talk of bandwidth or diskspace being a problem, and that's the reason that stuff like this should be purged. That's is very simply BS. I'm sure the founder, the staff, and the majority of the users that truly believe in the potential for Wikipedia want to see the site grow. The way I said it before is Wikipedia is not limited by shelf space. And it's true. Don't pretend that it is. Britannica was limited by shelf space, and that's the reason they would not include some of this stuff, but I think everyone can agree that we are trying to do more than create an up to date version of Britannica. —Slipgrid 18:18, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

With respect to point 1, cost is only one part of the consideration. The whole cycle time, bandwidth, capacity, responsiveness debate impacts on user experience, and that is increasingly poor. WP Outages appear to be more frequent, search engine performance is p!ss poor and assessed response times are decreasing. the user experience is an important consideration. The volume of crap in the database is only part of that, but it is a contributor.

Wikipedia governance in general is a mess. The capability needs to mature beyond anarchy and towards a more sensibly managed approach to content retention, maintenance and quality standards. Given the poor quality of existing leadership that isn't going to happen any time soon, at the very least there needs to be a recognition that King Jimbo needs to step back and stop interfering. The recent content related temper tantrum doesn't bode well.

It is important to identify valuable material, and given the poor nature of the search engine that challenge is increased given the levels of crap, both subjects and detail, in the database at present. Regrettably the direction of technology development hasn't kept up with the problem. That is potentially symptomatic of the leadership issue identified previously, although that's not exclusive.

Given the nature of contribution there needs to be a leadership drive either towards increased content, or increased quality. Personally I would prefer that drive to be towards increased quality. A very large database of mediocre to poor content has no attraction to the average reader, whereas a smaller database of high quality material is more likely to retain market interest. I'd argue that a very large database of mediocre to poor content suits contributors more than consumers, and that's fine if WP is intended to be a large social networking experiment biased towards those who contribute content, rather than those who consume it. I'm not convinced that's the vision, but again that vision isn't well articulated. King Jimbo tends to talk to the contributors, but without a market, what's the point?

I think your last point is an argument for quality, not quantity. You may not have meant it that way, but it could be interpreted either way.

ALR 20:46, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

"King Jimbo" ... careful, you're halfway to calling him Hitler, and we know where that leads. - DavidWBrooks 21:56, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I already call him Dear Leader, what law does that break? --Golbez 09:28, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment. ;)

ALR 05:58, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

You say, "the volume of crap in the database is only part of that, but it is a contributor." Wikipedia isn't that big. They could have one server with 20+ gb of ram. The Wikimedia software is slow by it nature, and that isn't going to change anytime soon. As a editor or contributor, you should not worry about the platform. If you are deleting articles to save disk space, I think you are making a mistake. You also say the search is poor, but who uses the Wikimedia search? The search here is functional, and works really well, but search is always going to be slow, unless you have an index. Use Google or something else. If Wikipedia got into a crunch where it needed more money for technology, or it needed some support, there would be large technology companies that would help out. It happened in the past. Wikipedia is a "large social networking experiment," and by needlessly removing verifiable content from the site, you are adding your bias. If you are interested in the intent of Wikipedia, then go back in history. Be bold, "and relegate the deletions to bad jokes and other deleted nonsense." Note the bad jokes and other deleted nonsense page was deleted in July. In general, I don't believe anyones idea of notability is really notable. If anything needs to be removed from Wikipedia, it's the "but don't be reckless" part of the Be Bold page. People in general are not reckless. They believe their contributions matter or they are spamming you. There is not much room between the two. —Slipgrid 14:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I think you rather missed my point.

Wikipedia serves both producers of information, editors, and consumers of information who come to Wikipedia to find out about a subject. Many are both producers and consumers, but I think that the vast majority of users are consumers, rather than producers.

With that in mind it's not a question of conserving disk space. I note that you work in the industry so I'm unsurprised by your apparent focus on infrastructure, rather than the overarching system. The consumer experience is impacted by a number of different factors, and a surplus of superfluous detail in articles leads that to be a reasonably poor experience.

I'd hesitate to describe the simple search as good and would also suggest that complicating the consumers life by recommending a second party to exploit the capability isn't particularly user friendly.

When writing for consumers one needs to structure the information. I made the point about badly written articles, loading them further with excessive detail, frequently without context and lacking nuance. I tend towards article portolios, rather than one huge and unreadable article cascade a number of daughter articles, structured appropriately and cross referenced. Make life easy for the consumer, if they don't want to get into the weeds then don't force them to do that.

Getting there needs some effective leadership though, and there is no need to re-iterate my point made above about the complete absence.

ALR 20:51, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the articles could and should be cleaned up and reorganized. For instance, the Jedi article, could be split into a separate article for each character, and there could be a portal article. That would be ideal. As to the search problem, an alphabetized index was sufficient for all but the last five years. The search works fine, and it's going to be slow. If you want speed, a third part search company could be contracted to provide the results, or the site could link our search query to their site. But, I don't believe purging articles is correct. Anyway, I think this is a really interesting discussion, and I appreciate your input and views. —Slipgrid 13:53, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

"Why shouldn't every business in the world have a Wiki entry? It seems useful to me. —Slipgrid 12:37, 29 September 2007 (UTC)" I think this is explained in WP:NOT. The goal of Wikipedia is to be encyclopedic, but not exhaustive. Another way: Wikipedia wants to contain the sum of all human knowledge. We don't want to contain all human knowledge. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:22, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be an exhaustive encyclopedia. I don't see anything on the NOT page saying that it shouldn't be an exhaustive encyclopedia. And, if I did see it, I'd try to change it; that's the neat thing about a wiki. But, I see a lock on that page, as I see on many others. Seems like the wiki project has failed. Seems like the NOT page along with the Wikipedia:Instruction_creep which is linked to from the section that says Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy is a bit ironic. It amazes me that Wikipedia has pages that are perpetually locked; and, I am not talking about the NOT page. It seems that the idea of a wiki was given up on, to the belief that a few admins can do better than a world of editors. —Slipgrid 17:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

If all you can find on Wikipedia is locked pages, you need to spend a little more time looking around. I'd guess that far less than 1% of articles are locked. I do agree with CBM that more (but definitely not "all") businesses should be listed. The notability guidelines for corporations prevent many companies (with hundreds of employees and millions of dollars in revenue) from having an entry, simply because they haven't been written about extensively in the news. At the same time, we have, for example, dozens of articles on text editors that haven't been cut due to Wikipedia's contributor demographic. Seems a bit silly to me. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 20:17, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

It may be that less than one percent of the articles are locked, but that seems a failure once you notice that it's only the popular and controversial topics that are locked. It seems like the wiki was created to handle the controversy, but, perhaps the results are too accurate, so we abandoned it in favor of Britannica style articles that are permanently locked. Sure, not many are permanently locked; only the important ones are. —Slipgrid 13:53, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment: One thing seems clear from all the above and that is: many of us are passionate about producing a 'quality' 'encyclopaedia'. It is just that we have different ideas about what constitutes a 'quality' e-encyclopaedia. Some of the comments above, take me back over 25 years when people would quote chapter and verse from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at each other -(verbatim and all from memory). It was a book in which the author explores what is meant by quality and what is knowledge, how many different forms are there and where does it all spring from. It became a hugely read philosophical book, and recommendations to read it was spread by word of mouth alone. It helped many who read it, to see beyond their pre-conceived notions thus broadening their awareness. I recommend it for anyone who wants to look more clearly at the bigger picture and of grasping other possibilities. (warning: the book contains a lot of what some people call 'trivia') --Aspro 16:07, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Edit counters...

Does anybody know if there's an edit counter out there that will tell you the number or the names of articles started by a person? I'm curious to know how many I've started and have lost count over time (I'm sure it's over 100, but am not really certain of how much over that it is). Is there an edit counter outthere that can check how many "first edits" on a page a person might have, or something like it? --linca ^linca 03:29, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

You used to be able to contact User:Interiot and ask nicely, and that user would run a script and post a page on the tools server (see this for an example). However, Interiot hasn't been seen for over 2 months, so I don't know of any other way to get the pages you created. Hopefully, someone else can get interiot's script, or maybe even write a new one. -Andrew c ^[talk] 16:50, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Bummer. Unfortunately, I'm no specialist when it comes to writing scripts of that kind of detail. Maybe I'll ask around to the people who are savvy. Thanks! --linca ^linca 07:33, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I just found this script from that page, but have no idea how to implement it. Sorry, but can anybody help me out with doing this?--linca ^linca 07:01, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Non credit

There is a link to a Times article in the J. P. R. Williams article used as a source but it is broken. Some of the material which was based on that article was removed in two edits on June 9 of this year. While looking new for sources to cover the deleted material I came across this article: "The last line of defence February 19, 2007. The section on JPR cearly a copies some of the J. P. R. Williams article on 15 February 2007 and does not credit Wikipedia or mention the GFDL. Is there a place were these things are logged? Do we have a policy on this? --Philip Baird Shearer 13:02, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately it seems to me much more likely we are the ones guilty of copyvio not The Times. If you look when the line was added [13], it credited The Times as a source. This suggests to me the original contributor plagarised it from The Times and in the 19th February article, they simply reused their original work. This article is in need of serious attention, check out Wikipedia:Copyright problems for what to do about the article. Note even if The Times did plagarise us, the fact that we originally plagarised The Times means the copyright situation is fairly murky. Clearly the copyright of most of what The Times may or may not have plagarised doesn't belong to us and while it may not clearly belong to The Times either, there's not much point making a fuss about it. Nil Einne 04:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

BTW Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks covers what to do with GFDL violations. While it's more directed to mirrors or forks, it's mostly appliciable to any violation Nil Einne 04:08, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Werewolves

proof on werewolves extinentes —Preceding unsigned comment added by Winwinwe (talk • contribs) 15:03, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

You need to post your evidence of the existence of werewolves on the Talk:Werewolf page.--Eriastrum 19:51, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Just need experienced editor to do a tiny favor

Can an experienced editor finish up the last entry for an articles for creation archive? It can be located here. Any help is appreciated! --əˈnon gahy ♫Look What I've Done!♫ 01:43, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Done (and failed). --linca linca 02:17, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Double infoboxes

Is there any guideline or common/best practice about double infoboxes? I'm thinking of articles like New York Times Co. v. United States (not the greatest example because one is a topic box) where two infoboxes for broad topics could be put at the top right of the page, but obviously one has to be above the other. I've seen lots of them stacked, and other cases where a topic box is in a lower section (instead of the lead). Guidelines? Thoughts?--chaser - t 22:49, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I waws about to reply and state that one's a nav box and the other is an infobox, but you already summarised it. There's not many cases where two infoboxes are required at the top of a page and when they are, if there's a consolidated infobox, it is advisable to use that if able. --linca linca 23:57, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

OOH yeah

Could somebody write me an essay on the dalai lama. It should be about his contributions to buddhism and NOT about his life okay! Make sure its in my words and 1000-1500 words in length. Just put it here i guess. Before tuesday. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.217.248.21 (talk) 07:34, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

We're not going to do your homework for you, but if you need to do some research, you could start by reading the article on Dalai Lama. Make sure you don't put in any information from Wikipedia unless you can also back it up with a reliable source. If you need more help on where to go for information, try asking at the Reference desk. Tra (Talk) 18:17, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

sigh* This is not a site for other people do do your work, but adding to the above, try Buddhism, and if you are looking for more information, Google will probabally help you out. Good luck with that essay ^_^

Javascap 20:39, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Most blocked/deleted/protected ever

I don't know if this statistics exists before, User:Emijrp/Statistics. Regards --Emijrp 19:07, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

AFD Voting system

This might be a silly question but I couldn't find the answer anywhere. How does the voting system work? I'm asking this because the stoner music article was nominated for deletion (see here), most votes were delete but the final result was redirect. How can this be? Thank you. Kameejl ^(Talk) 09:59, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

It is not a vote. It is a discussion. Example scenario: Two experienced editors make the right call based on applicable guidelines and state why article X should be deleted, but ten fanboys and meatpuppets drop by and say "Whaaah! Don't delete this cool page. You're all mean!" It has been established that it should be deleted, so what is the result going to be? Adrian M. H. 10:24, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Kameejl ^(Talk) 10:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Photographs of dead bodies in articles

Article on WP in Christian Post

Tsar Boris I

Save The Simpsons Articles

StatusBot

Article size to be counted as an article?

JS for delete accounts on Wikipedia

Greeting

SVG graphics creator

Category names

WikiProject For the Record

wikipedia survey

"Vote On the Most Shameful Wikipedia Spin Jobs"

Zeitgeist

The 999,999 article

Adding to a Sock puppet case.

Naruto

Edits to Wikipedia by high-profile organizations

Dawg

Reference desk

Are all articles linked together?

Vietnam

Offline reader

Is this cheating?

Articles ( I hope this is the right place)

Zeitgeist

PNGOUT

outing people

Save The Simpsons Articles

Trivia

Zeitgeist

WIKIPROJECT TOTALITARIANISM

Vietnam

Offline reader

Orphan bot removed photo, how to reinstate

Zeitgeist

"Bad images" and MediaWiki:Bad image list

A somewhat complicated question on PD, GFDL, WP, IDK, IANAL, etc!

WikiProject Scientology update

Viquipèdia, the catalan Wikipedia, has 75,000

Yoga Poll

Request for arbitration.

Grammar and Stuff

First articles

Artur Balder, Ivan O. Godfroid

The Community

2,000,000 Articles!

Another dugg site stealing Wikipedia content

Seemingly odd illustration

Preparation of Fundraiser 2007

vandalized user pages

Blatant advertising

TV Ratings

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Essay on Wikipedia

www.harrykel.com

Please have a look to the article

Today's featured article ever forgotten?

user pages in categories

Collaborative essay about Wikipedias in other languages.

2,000,000 Articles!

Popular Articles

Someone who is famous on wikipedia editing their own page?

Wikipedia:WikiProject Media Inspection Team

mfd I cannot participate in

~3% of wikipedia articles pass a simple test

20% of articles pass test

Re-run test

More then 60% of articles don't have references

Wikipedia:WikiProject Short article clean-up

What happened??

Wikipedian photos of Wikipedians

Local White List.

What do you dislike about Wikipedia

Easy targets for you editcount junkies !

Hidy Ho!

Getting webmasters to switch CC licenses of images

Iraq War page note of conflict

What do you love about Wikipedia

The way pages are seen