Wikipedia:Village pump/May 2004 archive 2

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Summarised sections[edit]

This is a list of discussions that have been summarised and moved to an appropriate place. This list gets deleted occasionally to make room for newer entries.

. New hardware is coming soon. [1]

Removing Vandalism from Edit Summary[edit]

-->Wikipedia talk:Dealing with vandalism

Making small links of long links[edit]

http://www.tinyurl.com Very handy. Andries 09:49, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Also great for hiding pornolinks, shocksite links, and affiliate program links. Very handy indeed. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 11:07, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
But what happens if tinyurl go out of business or stop offering a free service, all the links stop working and there is no indication where the link is supposed to go to. -- Popsracer 11:59, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Full links should be provided here. -- Stevietheman 15:22, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
They claim on the webpage that the service will not stop. Andries 15:37, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
And we're soooo sure they won't go out of business - do they even have a revenue source? Not to be a pessimist here, but I don't see what's the point, since it's only a minor inconvenience to use the appropriate wiki markup. Johnleemk 16:42, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the Wikimarkup allows you to display the link in whatever guise you like anyway so I don't see any advantage there. TinyUrl comes into its own in emails and forums where clients routinely leave you cutting and pasting - but that's not a problem here. --bodnotbod 18:41, May 22, 2004 (UTC)
Once there was a similar service, IIRC it was http://shlk.com. They went out of business. Why add a vulnerability when it is totally unnecessary? pstudier 23:45, 2004 May 22 (UTC)

How Far Should the Extent of Writing Articles About Places Go?[edit]

Not sure where else to write this, so I'm asking here: How far should the extent of writing articles about places go? Let's use Malaysia as an example. There's district level (Petaling). Or you can go for subdivisions, or mukim in Malay, which would be, for example, Damansara. And some subdivisions have several townships in them, so you might have an article like Bandar Utama. How far should this go? I see some villages in the United States which have populations in three or four digits, and yet have articles, and as townships presumably have a comparable if not even larger population, I presume such articles are ok. Is this alright? Johnleemk 10:14, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

In short, yes, it is. Anything that's NPOV and verifiable is all right, particularly if it has some historical significance - and it's safe to assume that each and every settlement on this planet of ours has historical significance, if only in the date it was conquered by whoever conquered it last. Feel free to include every town you can think of. As for the US articles, in case you wondered, most of these were generated by a bot - an automated software - that imported US Census information (copyright-free, like most US publications) into Wikipedia. -- Itai 15:00, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
There have been some unremarkable parks and localities given their own articles. When these have been listed on VfD I believe the consensus has been that these should not be deleted. What seems to happen is that a newbie, or just an ethusiast thinks it would be fun to include details of their local park or area. Someone argues, not unfairly, that is unencyclopaedic. But the consensus (I think) has been that;
  • They do little harm
  • A new visitor who finds their local shopping centre listed will think "wow! Wikipedia is amazing!"
  • There are far worse edits being made to take up Admin time
That's just the way I've observed it - I'm sure there's an opposing view. --bodnotbod 18:49, May 22, 2004 (UTC)
When I click for a random page, it seems about half of the articles I get are content-free pages on insignificant American villages and small towns. The are the scourge of Wikipedia. Their pointless existence wouldn't matter so much if only they could be excluded from the random page link. — Chameleon 16:16, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

new version of the software does not work[edit]

The new version of the software used on meta does not work on IE5 (Mac). It is completely impossible to view the content of the page, or to edit. 83.109.133.44 12:35, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

We tested with 5.2 which seemed to work fine. More specific data about browser version and the exact problem would be helpful. If it's a layout glitch, a screenshot would be nice as well. -- Gabriel Wicke 02:56, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I am currently using Internet Explorer 5.0 on MacOS 8.5.1. Here is a screenshot. Wolfram 06:06, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, we didn't test 5.0. I'll try to disable styles for 5.0 (it's very buggy), the look is a bit like nostalgia then. I'd recommend an upgrade to Safari, , Opera, Camino or IE5.2 in any case. It might be possible to find a half-working style for 5.0, it would be necessary to coordinate the tweak/test session on irc if possible (irc://irc.freenode.net/mediawiki/). -- Gabriel Wicke 17:31, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I have upgraded to IE 5.1.7, which is actually working! (This is the highest version of IE for Macs not running OS X). Wolfram 18:31, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

10% of profit to Wikimedia[edit]

I'm a big fan of Linux and of its Tux mascot. Wanting a Tux sticker and not finding any on the internet, I manufactured some, selling them by myself (see Tux Sticker). I'm also a contributor of the french Wikipedia and wanting to share with the community, I decided to give 10% of all profits to the Wikimedia foundation. Dirac

Thank you, Wikimedia eats hardware for breakfast it seems :) Dori | Talk 20:49, May 22, 2004 (UTC)

Cyd Ho Sau-lan Cyd Ho[edit]

It seems like the article and re-dir should be reversed. I don't want to ruin the page histories by doing it via cut&paste, but I can't move it because I can't delete the redir. Can some admin do it? Niteowlneils 17:52, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect had no unique edit history to save, so I went ahead and deleted it and moved the page. For future reference: Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion. -- Cyrius|&#9998 18:17, May 22, 2004 (UTC)

Verdana bug revealed[edit]

This may be of interest to those who use Verdana as the default font in their browsers.  This bug has already caused some misunderstandings.  See Verdana#Combining characters bug — Monedula 20:48, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

And recently the default style of Wikisource has been changed — exactly to use Verdana!  This should be reversed ASAP, because there are some accentuated Russian texts there, and Verdana shows accents in the wrong places! — Monedula 21:20, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Is this only the case in one specific version of Verdana or in all of them? This would be a major bug in Windows- Verdana is one of the most common fonts on the net today because of it's good readability especially on screens and in small sizes. Arial might be an alternative (if it doesn't suffer the same bug). In any case, you can change the font in your user stylesheet like this:
#bodyContent { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; }
-- Gabriel Wicke 19:17, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
The font copyright says "Typeface and data © 1996 Microsoft Corporation", so perhaps the font didn't change since 1996 and most probably there are no other versions of Verdana around.  The normal (non-bold non-italic) font version is 2.43, and bold, italic and bold italic Verdanas have version 2.40. — Monedula 20:02, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Bitstream Vera Sans is actually the first font. [ alerante | “” 00:03, 24 May 2004 (UTC) ][reply]

"Washington Post", "The Washington Post", or "The Washington Post March?"[edit]

Believing that the correct title of the famous Sousa march was The Washington Post, I confidently tinkered, moving The Washington Post March to The Washington Post (march), and editing articles accordingly. (E. g. in The Washington Post I wrote, "The Washington Post is also the title of a march..."

Then I decided to see whether I could notate the melody of the opening strain. And found to my chagrin that one of my three recordings simply calls it Washington Post (no "The", although some of the other marches, like "The Thunderer," had their titles given with a "The"). Another calls it The Washington Post... and a third calls it The Washington Post March.

a) Anyone know which really is the correct title of the march?

b) Anyone know a convenient way to resolve this sort of question? Googling isn't it, both because of the difficulty of constructing proper searches to pick up only one of the three variants, but also because it is obvious that writers are not punctilious about the title of this work and "most frequent" would not necessarily be "correct." For example, I'm pretty darn sure the title of the famous Strauss waltz is "On the Beautiful Blue Danube", not "The Blue Danube waltz," but both give almost identical numbers of Google hits.

Zen answers, such as that it doesn't matter because nobody cares, or that the correctness of the title of marches is not altered by adding the word "march" to a title that lacks one or removing the word "march" from a title that has one, are not needed. (And no, don't bother to tell me that the actual title of the Strauss waltz is "An Der Schonen Blauen Danau...") Dpbsmith 00:21, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a big fan of Sousa, so I checked my CD from the US Marine Corps band. On that CD, it's labeled as The Washington Post March. I realize it's not definitive, but it's a pretty solid indication IMO. I figure the Marines know what they're doing. ;-) -- Dan Carlson 15:08, May 23, 2004 (UTC)
Indeed. Is that the same one I have, "Sousa Original?" from the Musical Heritage Society? On that one, about 2/3 of the titles are listed as ending with the word "march;" "Manhattan Beach March", "Saber and Spurs March","The Gridiron Club March", King Cotton March... But OTOH Frederick Fennell, who made his career recording Sousa marches with the Eastman Wind Ensemble for Mercury Records, also knows what he's doing (and is an academician), and "Hands Across the Sea" CD lists it as "Washington Post" (no "The", no "March"). Oh, and http://www.crystalrecords.com/Sousa.html is selling what they claim to be remastered versions of recordings made by the Sousa Band from 1897-1930, who should also know what they're doing, and if the Web listing is an accurate transcription of the record labels, it's "The Washington Post". The Britannica's article on Sousa refers to "The Washington Post." The Columbia Encyclopedia prefers "The Washington Post March" . Dpbsmith 16:31, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I think the most authoritative answer would be the manuscript or first published version. I don't live very near a good music library, but the next time I go through a city that has one, I would be interested in looking that up.
I wonder if there is a Sousa archive on the Internet that might have scans of this sort of thing? I'll scout around a little.
When I've heard it performed live, I only recall hearing it introduced as "The Washington Post." Glenn6502 22:40, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
(later) I checked the University of Illinois, which has the major collection of Sousa's manuscripts. Their on-line index does not include "The Washington Post" under any variant of the title. I'll put looking for published versions on my to-do list for my next visit to a university. Glenn6502 00:22, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I too have heard it call both "The Washington Post" and the "The Washington Post March". After Googling "Sousa, Washington, and Post, I find that internet sources are 2-1 in favor of "The Washington Post". Logically, if it were "The Washington Post March", wouldn't it also be "The Stars and Stripes Forever March"? Scout32 19:41, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

tokipona interwiki[edit]

Language links to tokipona: aren't working any more. (See, for example, Drug, which ends with the text "tokipona:ilo nasa" because the link isn't interpreted correctly. Can someone fix that, maybe? Marnanel 05:39, May 23, 2004 (UTC)

User:Chameleon's changing '-' to "—"[edit]

-->Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dashes

Wikipedia running really slow[edit]

Wikipedia is running so slow today that most of my attempts at posting are timing out. What's going on? RickK 21:51, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Just overload. — Monedula 22:11, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Hopefully not the MediaWiki 1.3 transition. -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 22:32, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

New Creative Commons migration plan[edit]

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Creative commons migration

Blank page?[edit]

Whenever I log into wikipedia ,I get a blank page.I am using aol version 8 plus and internet explorer version 6. 

       S. A. G.

Australian post code pages[edit]

Since people don't read the Talk:List of Australian post codes page ;) I'll copy what I wrote here:

Would the table I did a few months back at Australian States and Territories (with postcodes, area codes, etc) be better suited here? Or linked from here? Or merged with this page, or something like that? Perhaps all this would be better suited at Communications in Australia? (to follow the naming format of the CIA World Factbook, that many country pages on Wikipedia are developed from) --Chuq 04:33, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I also notice that additional postcode list articles Postcodes: Victoria, Postcodes: Tasmania, etc. Have been made - not even capitalised, wikified, etc. Some sort of standardisation of this articles would be good. --Chuq 03:22, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Geez Chuq, that's a curly one. dunno how I missed the chat at the post codes page! never knew about the 9nnn post codes. If in doubt it sounds like you're better off with the CIA than at odds with them... a page on Communications in Australia sounds reasonable. more power to your elbow! Erich 10:14, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I don't think it has a place anywhere in Wikipedia. No offence to its author, nor to Australians - hey, I live in 2350 myself! The thing is, WP is not a directory. If I need to look up this sort of info, my first thought isn't going to be to crank up the old laptop and come to wikipedia, its going to be to fetch the phone book, or call the post office, or maybe look it up online on a more appropriate site. The reason is that if everything that belongs in a directory somewhere ends up on wikipedia, it will swamp the rest of the content by a huge factor. I think this silliness should stop now and some sort of official policy should be evolved that dissuades entries of a directory-like nature. Or at least some sort of debate should be had. Graham 12:33, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
The Postcodes: Victoria, Postcodes: New South Wales, etc. pages ought to be deleted. All of those postcodes are available at List of localities (Victoria) etc. in a much better format, and are given as additional information after the place links, rather than being the focus, which they don't need to be. The List of Australian post codes page also is useless given that everything on it is posted at Australian States and Territories in a much cleaner and less verbose format. As all the information already exists, I say get rid of them. The List of localities pages serve the useful pupose of linking to places around the country, however I agree that there doesn't need to be anything more than that which would turn WP into a directory. Hypernovean 13:03, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I think you miss the point. These are not simply lists of post codes. They are indexes and category schemes to relate items by location. Categorising information is part of what encyclopedias do and that's why there are links to articles about places in there. And presumably will be links from objects to locations so you can find other objects in a given location at some point - everything in post code A linking to post code A somehow, perhaps via the category shceme. Jamesday 01:25, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
The only index and category scheme I see regarding Australian post codes, is that each state has its own separate page. The pages themselves have obviously just been copied from somewhere else, and are not arranged in any obvious order apart from alphabetically. If they were sorted by region, or city, category (are they an overnight express post region, etc) then they would be offering something that wasn't available elsewhere, but at the moment they aren't even linked/wiki'ed, and are in all caps. --Chuq 02:57, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

homework[edit]

hi , i have a school science fair thing and i need to know why nylon was named nylon. do you have any clue on htis and could u send me any information if you have it of about this question . thanks .

See nylon and this page: [2]. It's basically an alteration of "no run", (a claim that wouldn't have withstood scrutiny) and not a contraction of "New York" and "London" as is often claimed. - Nunh-huh 07:15, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


Translating articles[edit]

I would like to start translating English-language articles into languages that are currently not available or not as exhaustive as their English counterpart. The problem is, I do not know how to get into the servers for the other languages to start. I'm probably overlooking it, but I can't find it. Please help.

Kylefr635 18:59, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome aboard. In the English Wikipedia, see Main Page (at the bottom) for the Wikipedias in other languages, Wikipedia:Embassy and Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination. --Zigger 19:16, 2004 May 24 (UTC)
Maybe you should be little bit more specific about what your problems are. Did you fail to login into the other languages with your user account from the english wikipedia? You have to create a new account for every language, of course easiest to chose the same name in all you want to use regularily. andy 20:11, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

This is a two part Business Development Proposal[edit]

This is a two part Business Development Proposal

PART ONE:

Attention: Website Administrator/Marketing Director My name is Terry Schembari and I'm the Marketing Director for Mentura Inc. I was just looking at your website and was impressed with the design and content. My company Mentura, is the largest Educational/Family Friendly DVD rental company in the world.... [a lot of commercial deleted, see the article history if you're really interested]

Man: Well, what've you got?
Waitress: Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam;
Vikings: Spam spam spam spam...
Waitress: ...spam spam spam egg and spam; spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam...
Vikings: Spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam!
Dpbsmith 20:31, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah! Nerd pride! Meelar 20:33, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I was going to try to find some policy page that explained why we aren't going to sign up for such a thing. Then I was going to compose a calm, rational, and nice response. Then I reloaded and saw Dpbsmith's response, which was much more satisfying. Bloody Vikings! -- Cyrius|&#9998 21:41, May 24, 2004 (UTC)
Um, what Cyrius said. Although Dpbsmith's response did make me notice that we're missing an article on lobster thermidor... - jredmond 21:52, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Bah..... It's all just crazy Jevoah's Wittnesses stuff, someday I'd know they start spamming the Internet!!!! This seems like this infomerical about how you can get this machine that allows other people to rent and reload the machine and stuff like that... whatever... It seems that this Mr. or Mrs. Schembari didn't look before he wrote.

To point out a possible copyright infringement.[edit]

http://www.informationblast.com/

This site seems to have taken the content of wikipedia and rearranged it into rather useless terms. The point is that they seem to have blatently stolen content from wikipedia. Can anything be done about this?

Scroll to bottom of screen on the link. see "© 2004 Information Blast. All content provided by Wikipedia is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. " Cheers, Sam [Spade] 03:02, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't seem to be listed on any of the subpages of Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks yet, but sites are allowed to use Wikipedia under the terms of the GFDL. Angela. 03:05, May 25, 2004 (UTC)
Of course they shouldn't be claiming copyright like that, but oh well, at least they mention Wikipedia and the GFDL. Dori | Talk 03:10, May 25, 2004 (UTC)
If you think about what GFDL says at the ending part, copyright notice is completely appropriate. See the part after the section 10 in Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License. If the reuser is just making verbatim copies in quantity, then it is possible that they do should not claim their copyright, because they have not made any creative contributions. But if I were to defend their practice, I would argue that they at least changed the layout. Tomos 22:39, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Pronouncing Wikipedia[edit]

So apropos of a discusion on Talk:Wiki it turns out that not everybody pronounces "Wiki" the same way. I think it's "weekee" but to some it seems to be "wicky". Possbily there are even stranger variants out their. Shall we have a poll?

The obviously correct way to pronounce "Wiki" is:

  • "Weekee:"
    1. --DrBob 03:09, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
    2. --Nat Krause 04:53, 26 May 2004 (UTC). This is just like pop vs. soda. I'm surprised so many say "wicky." I say "weekee" when it's by itself or else "wick-uh-pedia".[reply]
  • "Wicky:"
    1. --Wyllium 17:51, 2004 May 27 (UTC)
    2. --Sam [Spade] 03:30, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
    3. --Phil | Talk 17:20, May 25, 2004 (UTC)
    4. --Exploding Boy 01:25, May 26, 2004 (UTC)
    5. --pstudier 02:52, 2004 May 27 (UTC), Not strictly correct but much easier to say.
    6. --bodnotbod 18:21, May 27, 2004 (UTC)
  • "Wikə:"
    1. --SimonP 03:48, May 25, 2004 (UTC)
    2. --Dpbsmith 20:28, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
    3. --Zoney 16:25, 26 May 2004 (UTC) pronounced this way as a prefix in wikipedia. On its own, or in other prefixes, 'wicky'. (I'm tempted to say, on its own, 'wiki').[reply]
  • Other (please state):
    • However you want to pronounce it. RickK 03:12, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ditto. "Weekee" is closer to the word's Hawaiian origins, but "wicky" seems more natural in English, so I'd consider both to be equally valid. -- Vardion 03:28, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Wicky" when using the word by itself. When pronouncing Wikipedia, I say "Wik-uh-pedia" →Raul654 03:57, May 25, 2004 (UTC)
    • Hmm. See, I would say that the "correct" way to pronounce it is "wiki" (wee-kee), but I never, ever say that; I say wɪki (wikee). (Just as I can believe in the who/whom distinction while only observing it part of the time.) So, make of that what you will. Also, I think I say wɪkɨpidiyə or possibly wɪkɪpidiyə. Certainly I don't say wɪkəpidiyə. Of course, I probably just botched that IPA in several places... -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 04:18, May 25, 2004 (UTC)
      • I think the important question is how the heck to pronounce कुक्कुरोवाच. :-). Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:08, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
        • Just occured to me that that could possibly interpreted in a negative way. I sincerely didn't mean that - just genuinely interested in how to prounce it and how the characters translate into sounds. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:18, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
          • No, that's cool. You shouldn't feel bad, as "kukkurovaca" isn't a name or word in any real language, though it's in a perfectly real script (Devanagari). The roman transliteration is kukkurovāca, and it would be pronounced kookkoorowvaachuh, more or less.
            • No, no, you've got it all wrong. I just say "square-square-square-square-square-square-square", so that's obviously right. Hmmm, maybe I would be better off if I actually had the Devanagari font. - Nat Krause 04:53, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
    • Combination of above. I understand the "correct" pronounciation is "wee kee", but never use it. For the word by itself, I use "wicky", and for this site's name, I've probably used every variation between "wick eh pedia" (or "wick a pedia" [short "a"]) to "wick uh pedia". Niteowlneils 14:40, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
    • The first wiki says wee-kee, see http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiWebFaq. So this is "correct", but I have a terrible time not saying wicky. Perhaps we should list both. pstudier 01:23, 2004 May 26 (UTC)
    • Combination of the above. It always comes out "wicky-pedia" when I say the whole thing, but when I'm telling people about it & the origin of the name (which I find myself doing a lot when photographing their dogs), I carefully say "wee kee pedia as in the Hawaiian weekee weekee", and almost always the person lights up and says, "Oh, as in quickly!" Amazing how so many people (Californians at least) seem to be familiar with the Hawaiian term. Elf | Talk 05:15, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Asian/Pacific theatre of WWII[edit]

Someone has mucked up the article on the Asian theatre of World War II. As a result, there are now Asian theatre of World War II and Asian Theatre of World War II, neither of which contains the page history (it's at Pacific War). Can a sysop with some time on his/her hands sort this out and move/delete/merge these things back together and fix all the redirects? --Minesweeper 13:22, May 25, 2004 (UTC)

Done. Tannin 13:33, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling question: Cypher vs cipher[edit]

I'd like to invite discussion on how to treat the "cypher" spelling, a variant of "cipher", in cryptography articles: See Wikipedia:WikiProject Cryptography/Cipher vs Cypher for arguments. — Matt 15:44, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

According to American and British English differences#Miscellaneous, "cypher" is a UK spelling, and "cipher" a US spelling. As such, I think it falls under the guidelines in Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Usage and spelling. - jredmond 16:02, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, it's more complex than that. "cipher" is the most popular form in the UK as well as the US (e.g. UK security researcher Ross Anderson uses it). I favour "cipher" (I'm from the UK), and another editor who advocates "cypher" is (I believe) from the US. — Matt 16:17, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe I've been corrupted by too many things american, but I spelt it cipher. If there is a need to standardize, then the "i" version is the best bet. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 16:10, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
You haven't been too corrupted. I can tell, since you spelled spelled as spelt. ;-) -Rholton 18:43, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
GCHQ's predecessor was "the Government Code and Cipher School" [3]. I'd always thought cypher was another aspect of American English's long term scheme to inflate scrabble scores. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:06, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I've generally seen it as GC&Cypher School, however. That fits with common British use of the period as in, for instance, the Royal Navy Cypher series (eg, nr 3). Even though at least nr 3 was a superencyphered code. ww 20:58, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I guess the point is, ww, even GCHQ, the British government's cryptography agency, now spells it "cipher" (the link is to their website). The "cypher" spelling seems to be deprecated in usage by those in the field of cryptography itself; Wikipedia should follow this trend. — Matt 15:25, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
The OED, at least, lists "cipher" first and "cypher" as the varient. It has cites back to 1528 for cipher. -- DrBob 17:31, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
The New Oxford American Dictionary likewise lists cipher first and cypher as the variant. It also has an entry for cypher punk, which it defines as "a person who uses encryption when accessing a computer network in order to ensure privacy, esp. from government authorities." It places the origin of the phrase as "1990s: on the pattern of cyberpunk." -Rholton 18:43, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like I've seen "cipher" most used regarding cryptography, and "cypher" often used to mean "zero". ;Bear 18:06, 2004 May 25 (UTC)
Cypher is an anti-etymological variant of cipher used across the English-speaking world because it's prettier than the correct form. Chameleon 16:11, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Official Wikipedia song?[edit]

A bit of fun: what do people think should be Wikipedia's official song? -- ChrisO 17:25, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Crystal Method - Busy Child. Bensaccount 18:13, 25 May 2004 (UTC) (Esp. for the "Did you know" section.)[reply]

I actually thought about this before! The best one I've found so far is 'The Hope Within Us' by Paul Spaeth. (See - the title fits too :) →Raul654 20:42, May 25, 2004 (UTC)
Elvis Presley / Junkie XL - A Little Less Conversation, a little more action. Mark Richards 21:12, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Hotel Wikipedia. But that's the Wikipediholic version. Elf | Talk 05:27, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Seem to me all the above songs have got nothing to do with Wikipedia, except maybe A Little Less Conversation. We need something with the words information, encyclopedia, text, community, etc, in the title. For starters, Freedom by George Michael is better than anything suggested up to now. --Wyllium 18:04, 2004 May 27 (UTC)
I like With a Little Help from My Friends, but it doesn't meet Wyllium's criteria. Johnleemk 12:13, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, that's a great one. I love it, let's make it the Wiki song. (title suggests community and working together, so it does pretty much fall into my criteria) Wyllium 23:01, 29 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever we choose needs to be free of restrictive copyrights. That really narrows our choices. Guanaco 19:29, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
None of you will have heard of it, probably, but it fits--"Information Travels Faster", by Death Cab for Cutie". Meelar 19:30, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
"Encyclopedia Brown" - Guttermouth (Lyrics). Maybe not... - Lee (talk) 20:16, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Edit conflicts in discussions[edit]

About edit conflicts in lively discussions: At a glance it looks like the most common place they occur. There are two kinds of edits -- make that three. Creating, modifying, and appending. Typically, and almost always, entries to discussions are appended to a particular point, perhaps most often at the end of a section. It seems like a simple matter to make another kind of edit page to append, just append, and a whole bunch of people can do that all at once. Their parts get put in right in the order they are submitted. That way it becomes feasible to compose online (which I am not doing now since I had an edit conflict already this morning when I thought I was whipping out my piece pretty quickly; so now I'll generally compose offline for my discussion stuff). ;Bear 18:10, 2004 May 25 (UTC)

The upgrade to MediaWiki 1.3 will greatly reduce edit conflicts, without the need for special talk page code. -- Cyrius|&#9998 18:15, May 25, 2004 (UTC)

I have an idea....[edit]

I have a feeling I may not be the first person to suggest this, but... Would it be completely unacceptable for Wikipedia to serve advertisements to raise funds? I have donated money to support Wikipedia, and will probably do so again, but in the meantime I wouldn't have a problem with occasional banner ads, or Google AdWords, if it was raising money supporting Wiki. My idea was to implement such a thing, turned off by default, such that people intentionally TURN ON ads as a way to send money towards the project. If this is an idea that has been suggested and shot down already, please forgive me, as I'm still relatively new here. Cheers!

--Randyoo 23:07, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Jimbo has said on the mailing list that Wikipedia will never accept ads--I don't know how your idea about turning ads off by default would change that, but don't hold your breath. Good thought, though, and thanks very much for your time and your money. Yours, Meelar 23:09, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
The only ad I'd be willing to see is one on the main page advertising a hard copy or cd/dvd release of Wikipedia. Community portal could get away with a small ad for Wikipedia merchandise ("Wikipedia the flamethrower. Kids love it."). No ads on article pages, it'd probably violate NPOV anyway. -- Cyrius|&#9998 00:00, May 26, 2004 (UTC)
(only partially kidding here) It only violates NPOV if the ad in question is in any way relevant to the article. We'd need the very opposite of Google's targeted ads - so if you're browsing Zionism you get ads for Snorlax toys, if you're edit-warring in Mark Rothko you see ads for diodes, you're checking for the melting point of manganese and you're getting ads for holidays in Rakhigarhi. We call them "surrealverisments" and charge more for the stranger the juxtaposition. We'll make meeellions of (or perhaps several) dollars. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk
I don't see why it would be a problem to have POV ads in Wikipedia. It's clear by now to everyone that Google provides said ads, that they are generated automatically based on the context, and that they are not in any way part of the article. As long as the article itself is NPOV, what's the problem? If you're stupid enough not to recognise Google Adwords, you probably do not understand Wikipedia either. And maybe, just maybe, it would raise enough money to get the search function working again. Wyllium 17:47, 2004 May 27 (UTC)
Bizarre. You seem to show a touching naivety with regard to the effectiveness and evil of advertising whilst assuming a high level of awareness amongst Wikipedia users. Remember, not all Wikipedia visitors are editors. There will be many who arrive here because of a high Google ranking on their subject of interest. In such an instance a related ad on the page could be seen as an endorsement. --bodnotbod 18:29, May 27, 2004 (UTC)
I don't remember seeing a killer argument against ads for those who choose to have them on (but remember they have to be clicked for WP to benefit). Mailing list archives is probably best to look for this dicusssion. Minimal history: Jimbo once seemed somewhat open to the idea of ads, but this caused the Spanish WP to fork. More recently he has seemed much less keen. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 00:50, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
We'd have to change from the free encyclopedia to the sponsored encyclopedia and throw NPOV out the door. Dori | Talk 00:58, May 26, 2004 (UTC)

I encountered yet another mirror today, which is complete lookalike of Wikipedia, though images are missing. See [4] I quote Eloquence "There's plenty of these mirrors, most of them end up serving Wikipedia content with ads". Since we don't seem to care too much about those that do not follow our rules, and let them make a lot of money over our backs (it must be a lot given the huge number of pages they have on offer and the fact they often rank higher than the real thing in Google), this made me think: maybe we should start an unoffical mirror ourselves that serves ads, with proper attribution etc, which might channel some money to WikiMedia. I'm not sure how much money it would bring in, but it might take some load of our servers. It would be a read-only copy, refreshed say every week after dump have been made (some mirrors show content which is 6 months old), and which channels all edits to the real Wikipedia. Being unoffical it would not cause any forks, I'm sure. Just brainstorming. Anyway Wikipedia needs some drastic measures to improve and sustain performance. Erik Zachte 01:13, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like a great idea to me. Of course I'm new here and may not quite understand how things work, but this seems like something that will give us the money we need and still work with our rules. --IYY 02:41, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Seems worth considering, the WP will constantly need new hardware etc to cope with increasing demand. The wikipedis keeps having annual (and very frustrating) slowdowns when the present set of servers etc cant cope with demand and new ones have to be bought and added. If it was properly funded we wouldent keep having these problems. Although it would have to be done in a way which didn't affect editorial independence G-Man 12:20, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
This made me think, and I realised that one of the reasons I keep coming back to Wikipedia everyday - is this notion that somehow it is sacred and outside the big, bad world of commercial merchandise. Here is a true university of sorts, which truly represents the free world. Allowing ads would be a huge step backwards from where we stand today. Hardware requirements/Monetary pressures ? - Yes, but there are some notions which absolutely do not deserve mind-space and this suggestion ranks right on top. I am so fanatic about this point, that I would not like Wikimedia to even consider charging through a mirror-site. As an aside, I thought when we appealed for help in January (that's when we got yanked out for 2-3 days), the requirements were met in no time. As we keep being as good as we are - infact surpassing ourselves with every passing month, funding through voluntary contributions is going to get easier, is my two pence. Of course, I am only vaguely aware of our current financial situation and I am not very sure about the hardware status (though I know that 4 new servers are being tested today at MediaWiki). Chancemill 15:53, May 27, 2004 (UTC)
At the moment it seems to be accepted that donations can pay for the Wikipedia. Worth following that route to the extent it's practical. If ads do seem necessary sometime, one relatively unobtrusive option is to serve Google AdWords at the bottom of the left column but with a check box just below the ad which drops a cookie saying "don't show the ads". Let anyone who wants to click on that and stop seeing them. That would end up showing them to new people once and never again to anyone who dislikes them. New people are the ones who are both most likely to click on an ad link and least likely to be bothered by one they can easily turn off. But this probably isn't the route to take right now, until we know that donations aren't sufficient. Jamesday 01:31, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Wik and Quagga feud[edit]

  • I am away from English wikipedia for a while. Can someone inform me what happens to these two folks? Looking at the editing game at Recent Changes is certainly NOT a pleasure for me. Ktsquare (talk) 05:59, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
User:Wik was trolling after the Arbitration Committee banned him for a week. Wik now claims he left. Anárion 08:36, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
More accurately, Wik immediately announced he'd left Wikipedia after he was banned for a week. He then got upset with some comments/changes made on his talk page, and started reverting it. He was reverted back by various people because he was banned. Then he started trolling. I'm not sure what's going on at this point anymore. I'm also not sure where Quagga comes into it - he seems to be trolling to try to provoke a reaction from Wik, among other things, although Wik may have provoked it. john k 09:04, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

suspicious users[edit]

just curious... anybody been banned recently? user:Paulbmann is new and seem to have hit the ground running with one or two dodgy contributions to some health topics... just curious... (very sorry Paul if you are a legitamte newbie rather an old hack in lamb's clothing) best wishes to all Erich 11:46, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Loaded (articles)[edit]

Usually when perusing Wikipedia and reading articles for the first time, I'm pleasantly surprised by the quality of writing and information. I've learned all kinds of things on all kinds of subjects — I'm sure everyone else here has had the same experience — and this has given me high expectations for the quality of the Wikipedia’s content. Unfortunately, I've lately been stumbling upon pages in very bad shape. My first reaction of course is to try to fix them. But, in another departure from the normal Wikipedia, these articles are practically impossible to edit.

The articles I'm talking about have one thing in common: their titles themselves are loaded. Take a look at Political Correctness, Anti-American sentiment, and Terrorism. The articles read as though they were written by a committee whose members despise each other. Some people say this, others assert that, etc. Over time, these articles don't improve; they just get longer, less structured, and less coherent.

It's not every controversial subject that suffers so. I thought that Noam Chomsky might be a battleground, but instead it's a nicely written and informative article. The same goes for Hiroshima, Hiroshima and Adolf Hitler. The Wiki system works its usual magic there.

The problem with the other articles is that their titles overshadow everything. Half the people reading (and writing) at Political Correctness can't stop thinking about how the name itself is unfairly applied. The other half can't stop laughing — and adding dumb jokes to the article text — about how great they think the name is, especially with its communist overtones.

What a waste of everyone's time! I don't want to fight with other people over the content of these articles, but I also don't want the encyclopedia as a whole devalued by their juvenile content. I recommend that we adopt a policy for articles whose titles fit the loaded (language) definition. First, if there is an uncontroversial name for the subject, use it. Problem solved. (This is generally not the case; slanted language is the fundamental problem.) Otherwise, do one two things:

  1. Point to Wiktionary, where a short definition describes the term and notes that its use is controversial.
  2. Provide and require the use of a “Debated:” namespace, where people and argue over anti-Americanism until they run out of energy. Unlike the disputed point of view warning, this quarantine would be permanent.

This problem spans languages, by the way. Stay away from fr:Terrorisme unless you want to see Allied bombing of Germany in WWII equated with the 9/11 attacks.

Nathan 11:46, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

It's not immediately apparent to me why the allied bombing of Germany and Japan in WWII is not at least in the same class of action. Mark Richards 17:17, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Mark, that's exactly why the Wikipedia should not even be in the business of making these distinctions. No one can agree on these things. Nathan 18:11, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
True. Mark Richards 21:34, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

april 8, 2004[edit]

There was an article about color consulation where I read it from Laurel Gazette. I would like to get in contact with the color consultant, Ms. Lopez from Hyattsville, Maryland. Will you be willing to give me her phone number or e-mail address where I can get in contact with Ms. Lopez. If not, you can give this message to Ms. Lopez to get in contact with me as: shodge913@aol.com I have been looking for a color consultant lately. Hopefully, I will be hearing from you soon. Thank you. Sherry Hodge shodge913@aol.com

Ms. Hodge, can you tell us what web site you think you're posting to? RickK 01:43, 27 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

The Wiki-Link Game[edit]

Maybe this has been invented already, and maybe this isn't the best place to mention it, but...

If you are currently visiting Wikipedia as an excuse to waste time, you might be dissatisfied with the Random page link due to the high likelihood of arriving at some obscure little town in Arkansas (hopefully fixed in next version of Wikipedia which looks like it might have article categories).

As an alternative why not try The Wiki-Link Game. For the moment I've but the rules on my user page. -- Solipsist 13:12, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

It's a nice enough game. I played for the first time, picked N=5 and started at James Lick, went to Piano, then harpsichord, then back to Piano, and got the loop ending. However, I think you missed a loosing condition, you click a link and get the All Wikipedia servers are down page, which should be called the Wikipedia can't support waisting time right now ending. Gentgeen 13:33, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Edit war ongoing[edit]

Nick Berg conspiracy theories has been paralyzed by conflict for about a day now--would people please check it out? I've used up my 3 reverts for the day, and would appreciate someone stepping in to help mediate and hopefully bring this to a good resolution. See Talk:Nick Berg conspiracy theories for the full details. Yours, Meelar 17:11, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Removing page history entries[edit]

A user asked me to roll back a page that had undergone several vandalism-reversion cycles, because the vandal had included rude remarks in the edit summaries. That is, he wanted the offensive edit summaries removed. I couldn't figure out how to do it. For the time being, I moved the page to an inconspicuous place, deleted the original page, then re-created it with the same contents. Advice welcome. Sorry if I missed something obvious. (The "rollback" function simply appears to be a convenient way to revert, and preserves all previous page history). Dpbsmith 22:28, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Right now there is no way to remove the history. If the user was the only one to have edited the page (besides any vandalisms), that's fine, but if someone else had edited it, then the history should have been preserved instead of creating a new page with the old content. Dori | Talk 23:48, May 26, 2004 (UTC)
Only developers can remove edit summaries and the rollback does exactly the same as manually reverting a page, only with less clicks. Bot rollback will additionally hide the edits from recent changes, but not from the page history or from watchlists. Angela. 01:41, May 27, 2004 (UTC)

Elements of fictional universes[edit]

Is there a formulated policy on items in books, films, television, etc.? For example, I am dealing with Stargate (film) and the TV show Stargate SG-1 and have encount ered many articles on items of the fictional universe, such as Jaffa (Stargate SG-1), George Hammond, and Goa'uld. I think these should be merged with one of the main articles or put in an article like "Stargate (universe)". The advantage of the second option is that many universes have multiple books, films, and shows, like Star Trek or Star Wars. This present on has a film and two TV shows. Another option would be to create a new namespace for fiction and use the same unique names for every item, with the parenthesis of the context, as it is done now. It would also allow for the fiction to be separated for certain releases or archives of the encyclopedia. Comments? Have I missed something obvious? - Centrx 23:48, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there's anything to worry about, and we have a countable infinity of Star Trek and Tolkien stuff. I do think that all such articles should begin "In the fictional Stargate SG-1 universe..." just so everyone falling randomly upon the article (ex google) isn't misled into believing that this stuff exists. (I also worry about the "future archaeologist" problem, for much the same reason). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:54, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify my marginally off-topic answer, I don't think merging is necessary or desirable, an amespaces are a rather complicated, overkilly solution, IMHO. It's not a bad idea for all SG-1 articles to have a common msg: (like the Alien universe things have - see Weyland-Yutani for example), which (among other things) serves to tag all the articles you might later want to export/deport. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:00, 27 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
It may not be much of a problem now, but the situation will become untenable and not befitting an encyclopedia. As the encyclopedia becomes more comprehensive, every topic will require a disambiguation page. If separate articles are appropriate for each element of some fiction, then in the interest of completeness and balance it would be appropriate to create articles of all sorts of things which most people aren't looking for. This is a general problem of the encyclopedia, as there are many non-fiction items that should be merged into a single article, but with fiction these elements can be separated with relative ease. When someone is searching for information on a specific topic, they know very well whether it is matter of fiction or not, and adding all manner of elements of fiction will make it more difficult and time-consuming to find a particular piece of information. It's also almost completely self-referential; very few articles of an element of one fiction are going to refer to the elements of another fiction, and non-fiction articles are not going to refer to the elements of a fictional universe, aside from articles on actors and such. - Centrx 01:28, 27 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
The correct solution is catagories, a feature that's "coming soon". With catagories something can be in as many catagories as you want (it can be in "Stargate", "Science Fiction", "American TV shows", and "things that will never get you laid"). Once the software (and the nasty task of figuring out the catagories) one should be able to define a search within a given catagory. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:40, 27 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Centrx: When someone is searching for information on a specific topic, they know very well whether it is matter of fiction or not, and adding all manner of elements of fiction will make it more difficult and time-consuming to find a particular piece of information
But not all information is Searched for a lot of it might be found serendipitously. So, especially given that a lot of links are put in articles without checking - just assuming - they will lead to where we expect I think fiction should be flagged.
I remember having my eyebrows hoisted aloft when I was looking at my usual slew of serious subjects and finding myself reading an account of a computer game world all of a sudden with no definite indication that I was doing so (other than the inclusion of many "facts" that would give us cause for concern if they pertained to the real world) until I got half way through the article.
It would be great if I could point you at the specific instance I'm thinking of, but I forget it now. --bodnotbod 21:07, May 27, 2004 (UTC)
I had some trouble parsing your second paragraph but I think a clarification of what I meant obviates your concern. I was not arguing that the context of articles should not be clearly indicated at the introduction to the article. By asserting that many are looking for specific information with full knowledge of its context, I was pointing out that the many disambiguation pages that will result from having fiction in the same space as non-fiction will impede or elongate that person's direct search for information: he does not need a disambiguation between the thing of fiction and the thing of non-fiction. Thus, it would be beneficial to have fiction in a different space, yet not problematic because someone looking for that information would know that it is fiction. - Centrx 23:50, 27 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
"fictional" should be one of the catagories, for sure. But centrx' idea of using namespaces means things can only be in at most one catagory, which really isn't sufficient. And all entries should clearly state the domain of knowledge they inhabit (regardless of technical stuff like catagories). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:14, 27 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Having a separate namespace for fiction (opposed to non-fiction) or for each universe of fiction would not be problematic by this reason. A thing in fiction has no reason to be in the non-fiction namespace, and a thing in one universe has no reason to be in another universe's namespace. If the thing has the same name as something in another namespace, by virtue of it being fiction it requires a different article than the same thing would in non-fiction. If a thing is common in fiction in multiple universes: a) it wouldn't be a problem with a simple dichotomy of fiction and non-fiction; b) with multiple universes, it might still be appropriate in an article like "vampires in literature". None of this namespace business would mean that we couldn't also use categories for all things. For the record, I am not arguing for namespaces for each universe in literature; I think that would be problematic to say the least. Simply, a thing in fiction is wholly different from a thing in the real world and in an encyclopedia it does not belong in the same space. My idea for a separate namespace for fiction is a recognition of that fact, and a compromise for people who want to write articles on everything. Personally, I think major items of a fiction belong in the article about the piece of work and minor items do not belong in an encyclopedia at all. We can create articles covering all things, but doing so becomes redundant and impossibly exhaustive. In an ENCYCLOPEDIA, do we really want there to be dozens of articles for each book in the world? One for the information on the publishing and the book and paper itself, one for the history, one for each part of the story, one for each character, one for each item in the book? Accepting that this should be a comprehensive encyclopedia beyond what is normally considered an encyclopedia, that it should be a cyclopedia, the circle or compass of human knowledge, of the arts and sciences, that does not include the unreal, indeed false, narratives of fiction. - Centrx 23:50, 27 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I think I understand where you're coming from now. I suppose what (quite rightly, don't get me wrong) concerns you might more generally be called "unencyclopedic minutiae", and while fiction has the lion's share thereof, I don't think it has the monopoly. One could say just the same thing about every character mentioned in the bible - certainly there's hundreds of important ones, but there's also lots who don't really have any spiritual, narrative, or allegorical function, and are mostly there just to be someone important's great-great-grandfather (at this point our contingent of bible-scholars bristled some, as the contention that anything in the bible is unimportant will find disfavour with some). Equally it's quite reasonable to have biographies of, say, chess players, but should we have one for every international grand master? Every regular grand master? It's clear that Capablanca is encyclopedic, and it's clear that little Tommy who won his highschool's chess trophy isn't, but where to draw the line? Ditto for, say, molecules - we have H2O, we have MDMA, we have DNA, and I think they're all clearly encylopedic. There's billions of molecules, and most are as dull as ditchwater, but where to draw the line? A case in point is high schools. It's clear that Columbine Highschool is encyclopedic. It's clear (to me) that my own high school isn't encyclopedic. We've included Fettes College, but not the high school in Sunnyvale, California where Teri Hatcher was a cheerleader. But where to draw the line? There's a considerable contingent of people who think highschools, regardless of fame or alumni, are acceptable. College professors, linux kernel contributors, paintings by Tintoretto, bridges over the Po, verb declensions in Inuktitut, uninhabited islands in the Inner Hebrides, paraguian swimming coaches, the scope for factual minutiae (one might say trivia) is endless, but the line between the in and the out is blurry and sometimes astonishingly subjective. It's at this point someone will inevitable cite m:Wiki is not paper, which many take to mean "let's err on the side of keeping stuff that might be useful". Your concerns about the appropriateness of each individual fictional item are, I fear, but a salient in the great western front of inclusion vs exclusion. I see no end in sight to that conflict. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:47, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but the matter isn't so much what should be included, but where it should be included and under what subordination. I don't think it's quite so clear with fiction though. With items of non-fiction, one can make a fairly good case that if there is sufficient information about something in the public domain to make an article about it, then it's appropriate. The same is not necessarily true of fiction.
First of all, proper names don't have quite the same problem as many generically named items of fiction, especially when listed as full names. I'm not going to go into the Bible example so much because if an item in the Bible does not have significant cultural or popular influence, I think it does properly fall under fiction, but if it is just there to be someone's great-grandparent and not much else, then it would properly fit in one of the many Lists we have here. For other things though, I think a good case can be made about uniqueness and length of article. If something isn't unique and a long, non-template article cannot be made of it, then it doesn't belong. If something is not unique, then it can fall under a superordinate article. If not much unique can be said about Tommy the chess player, then he should instead be in a list. Generic phenol molecules without much to say about them would fit under a large article about phenols.
Anyway, I'm not concerned about inclusion so much as proper placement. This is especially true with elements of fiction where the only way you can effectively define such an element is by relation to other elements of that fiction. It's all self-referential because it's a confined fiction. Everything in the real world is truly connected to other things in the real world, whether scientifically or historically. Interpretively also, but interpretations of fiction are not the same problem, because the articles I'm talking about are, in fact, confined to a particular fiction with parentheses after the name, and are actual definitions in the context of the fiction, not literary interpretations and syntheses. Once it becomes such an interpretation, it becomes "real world" and an analysis across fictional universes.
The fact is, fiction is peculiar. It is wholly different, and the matter of inclusion vs. exclusion merely illustrates the problem that results from articles on all things fiction. - Centrx 02:51, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Centrix that there is a bubbling under problem here. If there gets to be too many articles on fictional items, Wikipedia could get unbalanced and its value degraded. To some extent its a question of where you draw the line as to what should be in and what should be out, but Wikipedia is likely to become much more inclusive than any prior encyclopedia. That leads to the problem of needing more and more disambiguation against real/fictional items. A (imperfect) concrete example here is Frodo. Arguably the only Frodo that is encyclopedic is the King of Denmark, except we don't have an article on him yet and I'm guessing it would be quite a while before anyone would actually want it. In fifty years time, I can't see anyone caring much about the C64 emulator even though it is a real item. And of course anyone searching for Frodo, was probably looking for Frodo Baggins. Perhaps a better example could be Speed of light (discworld). The unusually slow speed of light in the Discworld novels could get an article of its own, which would then suggest the need for an inappropriate disambig link on the real Speed of light page (the Big Bang page does actually have a see-also link to the Discworld page). An example of a problem article which doesn't make it clear that it is fictional, is Yig. I knew that the Cthulu mythos was fiction, but in reading the Yig article I started to wonder whether it was based also based on a 'real' American mythology. One solution might be to move the fictional milieu articles to a separate but related Wiki project (or perhaps category tagging gives the same effect). However there would still be fictional characters that are so significant that they are encyclopedic and should be in the main Wiki, for example Mickey Mouse and Peter Pan - and they you are back to drawing in/out boundaries. -- Solipsist 07:41, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Reverts[edit]

The way I understand things now, sysops can quickly rollback a page by clicking a link on the page history, whereas anyone—even anons—can achieve the same effect by editing an old version of the page. Is there any reason for this difference? It seems to me that if anyone can revert a page, there's no point in making non-sysops go through an extra couple of clicks and pageloads (which can be a real pain on a slow server day). Does the rollback link do something sysop-only that I'm not aware of? If not, can the rest of us have the link? Thanks for reading. -Etaoin 05:49, 27 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Simply put, because we don't want to make it easy for non-sysops to rollback the work of others. For anti-vandalism purposes, ordinary users should have it, but if it were too easy, "certain users" might abuse the feature. →Raul654 05:52, May 27, 2004 (UTC)
Makes sense, but isn't that possible anyway? The lack of a rollback link isn't going to stop someone from reverting other people's work. Tangling the user interface doesn't seem like the right way to solve the problem. Additionally, I like to believe that there are many more good Wikipedians out there than bad; is it not written, "Assume Good Faith"? -Etaoin 06:01, 27 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
The "tangled user interface" is supposed to force the reverting parties into talking - at least by forcing each user to look at edit summary box. The rollback button bypasses that and thus discourages talk. That's probably as much as a reason as there is. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 07:11, 27 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I think the idea of not making features like this too easy is a kind of soft security. Looking at MeatBall's article (MeatBall:SoftSecurity) I see this as an example of a PricklyHedge - although the name Speed Bumps has also been suggested. Basically, it being a fairly slow process (and yes, sometimes "a real pain") is likely to make people think before doing it, but admins/sysops have the power to bypass this if they have to do a whole bunch (i.e. for reverting a vandalism rampage). - IMSoP 18:58, 27 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Red links for images[edit]

I noticed to my surprise today that links to nonexistent image pages (of the form [[:image:this_is_not_an_image.png]]) do not show up in red: image:this_is_not_an_image.png. --Smack 00:25, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like a bug. Have you tried on the servers running Mediawiki 1.3? -- Cyrius|&#9998 02:26, May 28, 2004 (UTC)

Press Release[edit]

The May 2004 press release, about the Webby Award given the Wikipedia, at Wikipedia:Press_releases/May_2004 looks to be about finished and, as it is nearing the end of May, should be finalized. Aside from quotes which may be added, it looks to be production quality. Anyone who has edits or comments should make them soon.

As for the proposed quotes, the first would be from Jimmy Wales the founder, which we don't have yet. The second is the five word acceptance speech that was delivered or will be delivered at the awards ceremony, which of course is dependant on a fact or decision about that. Also, it would be nice to be able to include the date and location of the ceremony, so anyone who has that information should step up to the plate.

- Centrx 01:33, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism in Progress page[edit]

All of Wik's machinations have cause the history of the Vandalism in Progress page to be lost. It appears to be at Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress (other than Quagga's). Can somebody figure out how to get the history back and at the same time keep the current version of things on the ViP page? RickK 02:07, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't this what those delete/move/delete/restore merges are for? Never actually tried one myself, but I've seen it described. -- Cyrius|&#9998 02:25, May 28, 2004 (UTC)
I've been trying to pull this off for a good 20 minutes, and mediawiki refuses to delete the page. The query just times out. The process is described on Wikipedia:How to fix cut and paste moves. -- Cyrius|&#9998 02:47, May 28, 2004 (UTC)
It's been an hour and I still can't get it to go through. I'm giving up for the time being. -- Cyrius|&#9998 03:35, May 28, 2004 (UTC)
I tried merging it with the new software. It seems that the entire page history somehow vanished. I deleted the current WP:VIP and moved over the old WP:VIP/History. I checked the history and found that there was only one edit listed and no deleted edits. Guanaco 20:06, 29 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedian personalities[edit]

I'd like to encourage everyone here to go take a myers briggs personality test (like this one) and then add yourself to Meta:Wikipedians by MBTI type. I'm curious to see how wikipedia's users compare to the general public. →Raul654 05:17, May 28, 2004 (UTC)

Not content with knowing what we look like, you want to know how socially awkward we all are, eh? ;). I imagine a self-selecting sample will be biased to a particular corner of the matrix. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:09, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
ROFL. I already took a test from http://selectsmart.com which judged me as INTP, and unsurprisingly I turned up as INTP again. It describes me quite well. Especially second-guessing. I'm constantly doing that. I love my personality. Proud to be INTP! Especially because this means I'm in the same league as Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. Johnleemk 12:05, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I'm quite a character. I turned out to be an ISTJ. I don't trust tests like that. Where can I see the background?- Sigg3.net 12:13, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Well I appear to be INFP, but I don't trust the test at all. It looks like a bunch of gobbledygook to me. theresa knott 13:57, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
A solid INTP. And can it be coincidence that Descartes is rated INTP too? -- Solipsist 19:36, 28 May 2004 (UTC) -- If you want a more gobbledygook test, try the Death Test[reply]
A load of rubbish — Chameleon 01:05, 29 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding redirect pages[edit]

Just wondering, how many is too many? I can't remember if I've asked this before, but someone is creating literally dozens of redirect pages for Japanese topics employing every combination of correct, incorrect and mixed romanization systems and misspellings he can think of, the vast overwhelming majority of which are not used at all or are exceedingly rarely used in Japanese or English. Some articles have 9 different redirect pages. So where do we draw the line? Exploding Boy 09:25, May 28, 2004 (UTC)

As with most things Wikipedian, opinions differ. I would say that if there's a chance a term might be searched for or linked to then it is worth having a redirect for that term (whether it's a legitimate alternative term or just a typo or misspelling), and I'd rather we have too many redirects than too few. Redirects don't, on the whole, do any harm, but you might want to take a look at Wikipedia:Redirect#When should we delete a redirect? if you've not already done so. --Camembert
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