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Help! I seem to have munged up the Crosswords page I just created; the page displays fine but (at least under Konqueror) when I try to edit it something messes things up before it finishes displaying the textarea. Can someone help? I think it may have happened when I added an HTML comment. (Is this a known problem?) Thanks. -- Bth
Juuitchan wants to convert some BMP images to PNG for an article. Anyone willing to help out here?
Are you guys aware that "village pump" is rural Quebec slang for the local loose woman? - montréalais
Mailto broken:How come my [mailto:tompar@world.std.com Tom Parmenter] that worked with the old software no longer does? It used to be "hot", now it just sits there. See bottom of my user page.Ortolan88
Editing talk pages: Is there an easier way to contribute to ths talk page than editing it directly? --User:jacobgreenbaum
Hell- how do I remove an entry after discovering that a very similar one aleardy exists? breatharian is very similar to breatharianism, which I just created, how do I get rid of the latter??
Thanks quercus robur
Gutenberg link looks awful: How do I link to the uncopyrighted ASCII text maintained by the Project Gutenberg? I copied a link and it just looks awful?
&ftpsite=ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/
The advantage of the last url is that if somebody prints out the wikipedia entry, they get a usable URL that they can type into their browser later, rather than just seeing the name of the link. KJ 21:08 Aug 5, 2002 (PDT)
Please note this on bug report 583234. A workaround until it gets fixed someday is to manually change the colon that appears in the compound link to %3A, like this:
Uhhh, okay that doesn't work either. Time for more bug reports. :) --Brion VIBBER
When I log in, and return to whatever page I was on, I'm not shown as having logged in. This happens no matter how many times I do it. Sort of defeats the point of joining, really. -Egoinos
Cookies shouldn't be required; if you have them turned off, your session will just go away quicker, requiring you to relogin. Cookie expiration is 30 days. --LDC
I added an HTML comment to a page I was working on (for a semi-good reason) and it munged up the editing process in Konqueror - the existence of the comment caused it give up before finishing the textarea. I assume it doesn't affect (at least some) other browsers, since someone else went in and removed the comment and it was fine after that. Is this a known bug? -- Bth
What's the convention for movie titles? See the Wikipedia:Manual of Style for answers to many questions like this.
Should we kill Oops I Did It Again? I mean, one of these is not bad, but we don't want to set a precedent!! --Juuitchan
You greatly misunderstand my point. I mean, if we start giving a discography of every pop artist with 15 minutes of fame, where are we going to stop?? THAT in itself could get its own wiki!! --Juuitchan
I think the general rule here is that an article for something should be created if and only if there's enough interesting to be said about it. For some musical group, the level of group is probably all that's interesting. For many others. clearly there's something to be said for individual albums. But I can't imagine many individual songs about which there is enough to say in an encyclopedia article, with a few exceptions like "Stairway to Heaven" or "Revolution 1". For Britney, I think the album level is quite sufficient. --LDC
I still am not sure about the conventions about images and copyrights. I had an interchange with user:isis in Talk:Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and I'm still not sure that a note shouldn't be posted in the talk of the page that the image is used under fair use doctrine. Isis thinks that a better explanation should be given, for people not to be "afraid" of using images. So do I. If this was already discussed and decided, please point me to the proper place AstroNomer 22:38 Sep 6, 2002 (UCT)
I think the best place for such a notice is the image description page. Just something simple, like "Cover of videotape of XXX, used under fair use." or something along those lines. But it should definitely be attached to the image, not the article, so that people who might want to use the image in ways that wouldn't qualify for fair use can see that we specifically aren't claiming that it is GFDL'd.
There's not a specific policy to do this, but I think you're right that there should be. --LDC
I'm going to make a few observations here, and then I have to concentrate on my paying work until 17 September, so I'm not going to be able to participate actively in any discussion in the meantime.
When you think about the issue of using pictures of created objects (including book and videotape covers) in the 'pedia, ask yourself why you think it's any different from making and using pictures of Campbell soup cans. Then ask yourself what the difference is between PathMark's using those pictures in its ads and Andy Warhol's using the cans in his paintings: Why can't Campbell's complain about either use? Why don't those users have to get Campbell's permission first? Are they making money out of their use of the pictures?
The reasons NetEsq is right that there's no reason to put a "fair use" disclaimer in the image descriptions (and my reasons for thinking it's inadvisable) are:
If it's fair use of the image, it's fair use whether we say so or not; if it were not fair use, saying it was wouldn't make it so. We can know only that it's fair use for us, not for anyone who takes it from us and uses it for something else down the line, and they may think our saying it's fair use makes it fair use for them, too, and they might be wrong.
Asking contributors to recite (in the image description) the legal opinion that it's fair use is like asking a kindergartner to sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury -- he'll do it, but he won't understand what it means, and it might make him uncomfortable about the situation, so he won't want to do it ever again. -- isis 7 Sep 2002
Multiple subjects - same name: A newcomers question - what's the convention for a page that refers to several subjects. I was looking for Blackberry and found the page has details of a radio wireless link called Blackberry. I have data for the fruit/plant Blackberry to link from Bramble fruit and Rubus and would like to know the convention (if there is one) on Wikipedia. TerrapinDundee
converting images
Juuitchan wants to convert some BMP images to PNG for an article. Anyone willing to help out here?
Most modern raster graphics tools understand PNG (those that don't aren't worth using), but some understand the format better than others. Also, people sometimes forget that PNG has got 8bpp and 16bpp modes, which are complete overkill for most maps and flags and such. PNG Tips for Cartoonists is an introduction to PNG for comics artists, but most of the article contains pretty useful information for Wikipedians too. The tool mentioned in the article, pngcrush, really does squeeze the last bits out of your PNG files and comes recommended.--user:Branko
If he can put them somewhere I can access them (like FTPing them to ftp.piclab.com:/incoming), I'll do the job. If he wants to do it himself, I recommend Paint Shop Pro from http://www.jasc.com . --LDC
What's the convention for movie titles?
What's the easiest way to communicate with other users- I've had a message from maverick and don't know how to re ply... quercusrobur
Is it possible to change ones username? I remistered as roybadami (my name), but Roy Badami (or at least RoyBadami) would have been better—I notice other people with spaces in their names. If not, perhaps I should just reregister; it's not like I've made many edits (and most of the ones I have made I wasn't logged in for anyway...)
My gut feeling is that a copyrighted image would be construed as an inherently discrete piece of work and that any significant change to an image would constitute a derivative work, but this is not a legal opinion.
Based upon my "gut feeling analysis," I think the relevant inquiry here would be whether the whole image is part of a larger work. In any event, I think that "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole" would remain a key ingredient in any determination of fair use.--NetEsq 2:34pm Sep 12, 2002 (PDT)
In OLD pictures and painting, is there any copyright restriction in favor of the one who digitalized it? It doesnt, right? Can I just get them? Yes, I am lame concerning copyright issues... :-/ Yves 01:55 Sep 12, 2002 (UTC)
You're right, it isn't very clear (Gee, an attempt to explain copyright law that isn't simple and lucid? Imagine!). I'm a little unclear myself on fair use issues with images (I'm on pretty firm ground with text I think). I understand the four-prong test, and that we generally pass all of them well, except, in the case of images, the "extent of the portion of the work" test. What qualifies as a "excerpt" of an image? Or could most images be themselves interpreted as excerpts of a larger work? Or could perhaps low-resolution images be seen as excerpts of the high-resolution original? Or, alternately, do you think we're on such a strong foundation on the other three prongs that using a whole image presents no problem?
Certainly there are a lot of cases where a whole image is likely to be no problem--your videotape covers, for example, or a small album cover. Even if movie promoters sell classic posters as artworks, their market shouldn't be threatened by a tiny low-res reproduction used to illustrate an article about the movie. But let's take some more iffy examples: drawings from an online tutorial, AP photos of celebrities, paintings from a recent art exhibit (post-Berne)? I'm not sure "fair use" would cover our using such materials, but maybe I'm wrong.
In Delaware UPL is not a crime but, rather, one of those sui generis offenses policed by a board of the state supreme court just like the Board on Professional Responsibility that polices lawyers. They've been on a witch hunt for several years now, ever since some citizens here starting banding together to help each other with proceedings in the family court, where there are serious problems (of constitutional magnitude) in many areas -- the first citizens' groups I am aware of were of persons who had been treated unfairly in the areas of orders for protection from domestic abuse and of property settlements in divorces. You would not believe how innocuous some of the statements were that the UPL Board successfully prosecuted.
The authorities' feeding frenzy didn't attract national attention until they went after Marilyn Arons, a special-ed advocate in New Jersey who represented a Delaware family in a proceeding here, because no one in Delaware would/does. The Del.Sup.Ct. opinion affirming the judgment against her in 2000 is at [ http://www.copaa.net/decisions/state/de_supct_arons.html ]. I won't try to describe to you the magnitude of the chilling effect that case has had here.
So, believe me, you are no more outraged about it than I am, but in Delaware these days LDC's statement, ?so those of us who follow the law more closely can give more specific advice", is actionable as UPL, and it scared me. I had hoped to slip my comment in where it could be taken as facetious but would alert him to an issue he had probably never realized existed, without making a big deal out of it. Obviously, I didn't do it right, and for that I sincerely apologize. -- isis 13 Sep 2002
I understand, and agree. Thank you very much for clarifying this! I would only like to note that I said "lazy" because it's very difficult for me to write things in english. I know I don't need to worry very much with mistakes, but it's not easy for me to copyedit pages and pages of text - that is, formulate new text. Anyway, I am decided to do it, whatever how many (much?) time it takes.
So, I hope you don't get me wrong. I just wanted to economize efforts, so I could work in something else.
Yves 00:20 Sep 12, 2002 (UTC)
When a site does not express any copyright notice, is it ok to use not edited content from its pages? In other words, is a resource considered public if there aren't anything stating the opposite? Please see http://www.fas.org/index.html . There are many definitions there I want to use, but i am quite lazy copyediting everything. Must I mail the webmaster? Or leaving the credits in the end of the term is ok? Thanks in advance. Yves 22:22 Sep 11, 2002 (UTC)
A discussion about copyright was moved to Wikipedia_talk:Copyrights
Various entries of German cities in City Listing show ü etc. Should these be corrected to use the appropriate character - example
-- Chris Q 11:25 Sep 17, 2002 (UTC)
Editing individual year entries I stumbled across Tarquin's style guide for the layout of contents of these pages, but I wondered whether there was any particular commonly agreed restriction on content for these. For example, can one just check on pages which link to a year article and slap the events in (with discretion over omitting particularly boring events!) Mazzy
Wrap text around pictures: How do I get text to wrap around a picture? (Copied from Talk:Dwight Eisenhower to promote the idea of this village pump page.)
Of course, the table works in older non-CSS browsers, too.
Hello, can someone help a newbie, please? 1) How can I get an uploaded picture onto a page? 2) What makes a page into an orphaned page? Thanks Renata
Hello, to get an uploaded picture onto a page you would put a link in like this: [[image:imagename.jpg]] (if it's a PNG, you'll obviously have .png there instead). If you want to show something and display ALT TEXT, you would put [[image:imagename.jpg|ALT TEXT]]. What makes a page an orphaned page is that no other pages link to it, which means that no one will find it except through "random page" or a search. To resolve that, just find a page that's relevant and work in a link to the orphan. --KQ
All I want to do is make a small user page! I go to User:DrRetard and edit the page like I've edited every page since I starting editing here, and it looks fine. And then I click on a link like this one, User:DrRetard, or the one at Talk:Free_will_and_the_problem_of_evil, and I get a page with no text. Waaagh! I want to die!
Thanks for your help! -- Dr. Retard
I'm not VikThor, but I have Konqueror 2.2.2 on Linux Mandrake 8.2 with cookies enabled for .org and I have "Remember my password across sessions" check. But I still am logged-out from time to time as if I do not have the "Remember my password across sessions" box checked. This used to be as bad as VikThor described but when Lee "fixed" the problem it was then as I describe above - just real annoying, but workable. --mav
I'm using moz 1.2a with no session problems and loving it :)
How do I stay logged in?? I have set up account ( VikThor ) and I can log in, but when I click a link when logged in, I get logged out. And even when I do nothing for about 30secs, the page refreshes, and I'm logged off. Thanks! VikThor 04:39 Sep 26, 2002 (UTC)
(I was thinking maybe the - in Vik-Thor was messing it up, so I am now Vik-thor and VikThor... any way to get rid of one of them?) Was using IE6. on WinXP Home. Had the Remember passwords set, cookies enabled, and there was something in the cookie. Decided to D/L and install Mozilla 1.1, and now able to stay logged in. :) There's been a few other sites IE has given me problems with, so I may be sticking w/ Mozilla... Vik-Thor 06:25 Sep 26, 2002 (UTC)
There are examples of a wiki draw tool that I believe you will find interesting... it's over at twiki.org and it's called TwikiDraw http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/TWikiDrawPlugin it's written in java and it's vector. the base code is a bit dated, not using any of the newer bells and whistles of xml handling in JRE 1.4x... BUT it is very cool and I believe it would be a very nice addition to the wikipedia suite... in fact it would be nice for a lot of the php wiki sites...
do you know of any wiki drawing tool? something for drawing maps or diagrams? similar to the twiki draw environment? thanks again--dennis daniels
It should let you upload a BMP and automatically convert it, or something. Maybe a drawing tool, like on any Japanese oekaki BBS, would be good. --Juuitchan
Another newbie topic! I was messing with the cichlid article and it's got a link to oscar - except, it's not the academy award but a rather massive fish... so, can someone guide me through (or point me to the tutorial) for setting up an article with that same name (the fish really is called oscar and it's very well known) and ... so on? I can create the new article, no problem there. TIA, -- OlofE
Hi. I am a new user and I was editing my User info and decided to turn my user info into an article. About 5 minutes later, a request for the deletion of my article was added and the info was returned to user status. Now, my personal opinion is that *everyone*, famous or not, is deserving of article status. However, I am willing to go with the majority here, but I would like some feedback. Please give reasons why "regular" people should or should not be given article status. Now my reasoning says that an encyclopedia should have as much information as possible. The Wikipedia says "An encyclopedia(alternatively "encyclopaedia") is a written compendium of human knowledge." Is my autobiography not "human knowledge"? Who would know more about Stephen Mills than me? What's wrong with the Wikipedia serving as a collection of articles, stories and biographies of "regular" people as well as "famous" ones? If I am willing to share my personal details and accomplishments with the rest of the world, what better place than an encyclopedia by the masses? --Stephen Mills
An answer is already on your user talk page. --mav
Is there a way to rename images? Just spotted Image:Parliament3.jpg in the uploads. I'm sure we'll have images of parliaments of than Canada, it would be nice to give it a less generic name. -- Tarquin
Well trying to move the image description page didn't work. I would call this an exexpected behavior of the software. There should be an easy way to rename images. --mav
Is there a gallery of style somewhere? I (a newbie) happened to check the entry for my home city Uppsala and ... well, it's there at least. Then I happened to see Cologne. Then I thought, maybe I should do something for my hometown, eh. So, is there - or could there be - a collection of well made articles of various types, serving as a convenient way to see how to do things? (and how not to?) There should be a lot of categories that could benefit? -- OlofE
EEEK! Cologne is an HTML disaster please do not copy that style. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style for some pointers. --mav
copy and paste from User talk:Maveric149
All of the old user pages that just redirect to new user pages should be deleted. Sure things link to them, but they are taking up space in the main namespace, rather than where they should be, which is in the User namespace. I tried to prepair some of them for deletion, however you (Maveric149) didn't seem to agree with my motives. What if one of those old user pages is the same name as something that could make a useful entry? Why should they take up space in the 'pedia so that they can just redirect to their user page? I find it quite annoying when I am looking for something relovant in the 'pedia, by using the Random page link, and I get some outdated user page redirect! -- Mbecker
The_Cunctator
Kpjas
Matt Stoker
Eob
Taw
PaulDrye
MMGB
SJK
Simon J Kissane
Mbecker what you are trying to fix is a bug. If you don't like the fact that the random page function brings you to redirects then file a bug report. If and when something else comes up that has the same name as an old user name then we can worry about fixing ancient talk links. I don't think we would ever have an encyclopedia article named The Cunctator or kpjas or maveric149 and I don't know of anybody of encyclopedia interest that shares the real names you list (except maybe Lee Daniel Crocker and Larry Sanger but those two are Wikipedians). As LDC says, at the very least each old user page link must be fixed before the pages are deleted. --mav
I think that the best solution to this problem would be to make a function that could be used by users to flag the culprit pages. Then another function could automatically fix all of the outdated links, and remove the flagged page. There are many ways to go about doing this. It could be made a request page that would require actions by the administrators to actually go through, or it could be a Special User function. I don't know what would be the best way to go about adding this functionality. -- Mbecker
FWIW, the random page function does not select redirects; however, it does for efficiency pre-select 1000 random pages at a time, and then refreshes that set every 1000 requests or so. So if it pre-selects a page with content that is then changed into a redirect, that redirect may be selected by the function until the next refresh. Also, MBecker, you might not be aware that the existence of these old user pages is not because of any mistake on the part of their creators--they exist because the first version of the software we used here made no distinction between user pages and content pages. So it isn't a matter of them "cleaning up their own mess" (Although I'm probably one of the bad cases too, and I can clean that up). Many of these users are no longer active, and so aren't around to clean up the mess even if they wanted to. If I or some other developer comes up with a way to clean up those with too many links to clean manually, that will be great; until then, clean up the ones that are reasonably easy to do, and leave the redirects to the others. --LDC
I honestly think that it would be easier to automate this process. I have submitted a few clean-up suggestions to sourceforge. I hope they will be considered for implementation. (btw, how can one participate in development of the wiki code?) -- Mbecker
Various entries of German cities in City Listing show ü etc. Should these be corrected to use the appropriate character - example
I would do it myself, but not knowing German I would probably make mistakes
-- Chris Q 11:25 Sep 17, 2002 (UTC)
Hello, I just fixed the problem. The characters are now correct.
Lengthy discussion on Image copyright and use of copyrighted materials moved to wikipedia:copyright issues KJ 01:05 Sep 16, 2002 (UTC)
Just a comment:
Of the 43,000 or so Wikipedia pages, about 27,500 are less than one KB in size.
The lost password e-mails are being sent with an invalid envelope sender, namely <apache@localhost.localdomain> (or at least they were last week). This means that any well configured mail system will not accept them. There doesn't appear to be any working webmaster or postmaster address that I can find (in fact wikipedia.org doesn't seem to accept e-mail). Can someone pass this on to the appropriate people, please, or point me at the appropriate mechanisms for contacting the administrators? Thanks Roy Badami
Thanks, I've e-mailed him. Roy Badami
Yep, that's fixed it, I tested reseting my password and I received the e-mail without problems.
You would appear to be right about incoming e-mail, you have no MX records (which isn't an error in itself), and you don't appear to be running an SMTP listener. (Though technically it's not a black hole, because the mail will eventually time out and generate a bounce message.) Roy Badami 22:26 Sep 16, 2002 (UTC)
Is it possible to change ones username? I registered as roybadami (my name), but Roy Badami (or at least RoyBadami) would have been better—I notice other people with spaces in their names. If not, perhaps I should just reregister; it's not like I've made many edits (and most of the ones I have made I wasn't logged in for anyway...)
---
I've asked this question a couple of times, but no one seems to be answering. Every time I look at an article containing an image - and that includes "Village pump" itself - the image, if it is right justified, overwrites the text of the article. If it is left justified, there is no problem. I still don't believe that I'm the only person experiencing this problem. -- Deb
I'm just using Internet Explorer, and I haven't had a problem with any other website. -- Deb
Looks OK to me using IE 5.5 SP2 under Windows 2000 SP2 Roy Badami
I've had this same problem on some computers at school - but nowhere else. I do beleive that the offending browsers were IE 5.5 SP1 or w/o service packs. So it is probably a broken browser and the only way to fix it is to upgrade. --mav
In any case, if you're running 5.5 (original) or 5.5 SP1, then you need to upgrade to 5.5 SP2 immediately to protect yourself from the Nimda virus. Roy Badami
--Deb
I'm thinking of adding some fairly lengthy articles about specific pieces of classical music (long enough that they'd unbalance an article about the composer in question). Does anybody have any ideas how I might name them? .... ....
Is it appropriate to put planned or anticipated events into future "year" articles? Khendon 10:40 Sep 12, 2002 (UTC)
Okay. I tried to fix some of the formatting on the Japanese language page but I can't! How do I do this??
I have also seen other pages with a similar problem. --Juuitchan
Abuse? How do you report abuse? The page September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Zionist conspiracy theories has had an abusive sentence added. I have deleted it but should we report the user who added it (64.229.129.155)?
However, most vandals leave after only one act, or are discouraged when their vandalism is removed by others, so that is usually sufficient action. Hope this is clear enough, Jeronimo
I notice many ppl, like AstroNomer in the last message, use a sort o automatic current date/time insertion. How do I do this? Yves
I added links to the two pieces of legislation mentioned in European Company Statute, which I assume is appropriate. I'm not sure if I've done it in the most appropriate way, though. I'm simply put the links at the end of the article, but I wasn't sure if there was a better way of doing this. Is there any standard approach to linking to external documents that are cited in an article? Perhaps in this case the formal citations to the documents (which appear in the main text) should be external links themselves? Then again, is it really appropriate for the citation to be in the body of the text to start with?
-roy
Thanks. I just though it would seem more natural if there was some way of linking to the source inline -- but it doesn't seem to be the Wikipedia way...
When is it a good idea to mention or discuss an edit on the corresponding Talk page? Does size of edit matter? Potential controversy? Apparent other activity? -- Khendon
I had a possibly related question... If I believe that information on a page is suspect, but aren't (yet) in a position to confidently refute it, what is the appropriate way to flag the issue? Most articles I have looked at don't have anything at all on the talk page, so the chances of anyone seeing a comment I might put there seem remote... -roy
A discussion about copyright was moved to Wikipedia_talk:Copyrights
From: Talk:Connective
Anybody knows how to get the correct symbols for conjunction/disjunction? (</> only rotated 90 degrees) -- Anon
The chars that are okay in all (well behaved) browsers are on Wikipedia:How does one edit a page. Link to outlandish ones there too. It's ∧ and ∨ BTW -- Tarquin
Somewhere I saw a page listing all pages in the [[wikipedia:]] namespace. Does anyone know where to find that? --KQ 20:49 Sep 6, 2002 (UCT)
I find myself somewhat annoyed at the amateurish contributions of one particular Wikipedian who is ignoring valid criticism of his work. After an extended discussion and rewrite of one particular article, he simply restored portions of his own work, placing them at the front of the new article. Most of the information in the restored portions has been incorporated into the new article, but some of the information is just plain wrong. My solution to this quandary has been to state my objections (which have been casually dismissed by the Wikipedian in question) and abandon ship, working on other portions of Wikipedia while I wait for someone else to come along who has more patience than I do, but I am not happy about it. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions on how one might handle such petty confrontations without coming across as a control freak?--NetEsq 8:40am Sep 6, 2002 (PDT)
Hi- how do I remove an entry after discovering that a very similar one aleardy exists? breatharian is very similar to breatharianism, which I just created, how do I get rid of the latter??
Thanks quercus robur
I would like to make suggestions for eliminating some hassles in using one's Watch List. On what page should I do this? Also, why has my TOC comment on Wikipedia:Chat not been answered? David 09:02 Aug 27, 2002 (PDT)
What is a good format for writing large numbers? Should we use the American format? --Juuitchan
Is there any reason not to bypass redirects?
Every time I click on a link in an article and discover that I have been redirected, I am tempted to return to the original article and fix the link. Is there any reason not to do this? Do people refrain from doing this because it is purely mechanical and a waste of time? Come to think of it, if bypassing redirects is purely mechanical, couldn't we write a script to bypass all redirects everywhere, and leave the redirects in place only for the sake of future misspellings? ---Karl Juhnke 23:39 Aug 25, 2002 (PDT)
are Umlauts allowed in article titles?
It should not be :Ludwig Maximilians Universitat, Munchen, but Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München, may I change the link, or will occur any errors with "äöü" in titles? --chd
On a recent visit to Austria, I was quite surprized (probably shouldn't have been) that this is applied even to URLs. ÖBB, the Austrian Railway (presumably Österreichische Bundesbahn?) has the web site www.oebb.at (and www.obb.at most definitely doesn't work) -roy
Deleting articles
Can someone tell me how to delete an article? I wrote Sound Card and realized that Sound card exists (and is the correct spelling?). I moved the contents of Sound Card to Sound card and made Sound Card empty, but can't delete it. -- User:Volker
Hi, Volker. I'm here to help (hold on to yer wallet!):
--Ed Poor
Question: I love the Wikipedia! - Where can I find more projects like this? I'm familiar with one other - the group proofreading project To me, this is what the net is all about. JBrave
<<What's to clarify?>>
The original query was:
And your response was:
And using your opinion as carte blanche, an anonymous contributor deleted the official Web site of Aria Giovanni from the Aria Giovanni article.
<<If there isn't anything encyclopedic there then a non-clickable link would be appropriate.>>
And should we edit the link to Playboy from the Playboy article to make it non-clickable? In other words, exactly where are the boundaries of your "no linking to smut" criteria? Have you really thought this through? -- NetEsq 21:13 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)
I suppose it's all a matter of perspective, but it's very clear that you do like to argue; you just don't like to be proven wrong. To wit, you stated that you did not want to argue, then you went on to state your own contrary opinion. What did you hope to prove?
I consider censorship to be a very important issue, and I think that your patronizing dismissal of this issue (along with me and my opinions) speaks volumes to your lack of consideration and judgment. You offered an opinion; now it's time to defend it. Alternatively, you can admit that you are wrong. What will not pass for defending your opinion is dismissing me as a troll while offering your own opinion as though it were Biblical canon, which is *exactly* what you just did.
In other words, "I don't look at the pictures; I just read the articles." Well, you'll be saddened to know that the model whose Web site you seek to censor was hired by Wikipedia's sponsor Bomis for a fashion shoot that was used to promote the "Win a Ferrari" contest, and none other than Jimbo Wales himself uploaded a publicity photo of Aria Giovanni to Wikipedia. Should we now create a "no linking to smut except when it's used to promote Wikipedia" criteria? Or, alternatively, should we simply link to whatever Web sites are relevant to Wikipedia articles and lose the judgmental label of "smut" altogether? -- NetEsq 22:11 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)
I will let everybody else decide just who is patronizing here (which you stated as fact BTW). People are free to add or remove links as they see fit so long as those actions furhter our number one policy; that we are an encyclopedia. But, since you are obviously dancing around the central issue of relevance, I see no point in continuing this discussion. --mav
I wasn't trying to either state or make a policy in this regard and I don't think it would be a good idea to do so. Everybody should be able to link or delink based on their own ideas on what is of encyclopedic relevance. Perhaps this thread began because I oftentimes don't qualify my opinions and some people are not able to tell an opinion from a statement of fact unless there is an obvious qualification. If you would like to have a hand in policy, then please join the Wikipedia mailing list. This thread should be moved elsewhere. --mav
--
I appear to have sparked off something bigger than Ben Hur. I just reentered this area and read the above entries.
I'll just settle for one or two points. I agree that if a 'soft' webpage or website can illustrate a point involving some adult industry identity like Hugh Hefner then it is OK to include it. That is indeed the case with Hefner's page.
Nor do I have too much of a problem about such pages on the Wikipedia to begin with - Hefner has left a mark on periodical culture.
But there has to be line drawn somewhere on this. I must maintain that the idea of writing ad inifinitum about( or even worse, promoting) specific nudie models on the grounds that they are "an important part of popular culture" and giving them more attention than Walter Burley Griffin or Aage Niels Bohr is bizarre.
Arno
Look, mate, a few things.
1. Victorian England saw prostitution flourishing. It wasn't exactly smut-free. Get your facts right in future.
2. I have been contributing to Burley Griffin's article ; again, get your facts right. If you truly cannot contribute anything much to this site except besides nudie models, then I feel for you. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
3. Once again, this wikipedia is not meant to be a link for porno websites, regardless of whether or nor they come with a cover page and regardless of whether their subject is backed by a wikipedia sponsor. The Giovanni page, and in particular the webpage link that you have such an obsessive insistence on, is setting a precedent that this site needs the way you need another nose.
4. Finally, your tactic of highlighting words such as 'you' in an ill-advised attempt to dominate me is noted, and rejected with the contempt that it well deserves.
---
Hello debating Wikipedians. This Playboy debate is getting extremely long. Any ideas on where it can be relocated? --Stephen Gilbert 13:27 Sep 29, 2002 (UTC)
Guys,
Several issues.
A recent bit of expanding of Olivia Newton-John had me adding her date of birth at the start of her name in this style: (September 26, 1948- )
A certain astronomer then proceeded to change this to read (b September 26, 1948)
Which format is correct - and is there a correct format? I has a look in FAQ but found no help there.
Whilst we're at it, let's expand some more and ask : are there any standards as regards displaying peoples' dates of birth and death? There do not appear to be any. Some biographies start with just the years , often not in tag form (eg Fred VII (1654-1700) was a merry old soul); others do not start with a date of birth and/or death at all ( eg Luke VIII was a king of England who hated termites ...) ; others still use tags at the start ( Rodney II (June 15, 1936- October 31, 2001). Which format, if any, is standard? I prefer the lattermost myself.
One other thing. Whilst going through lists of the most popular pages, I was surprised to see one dedicated to someone called Aria Giovanni - some 4800 or so hits. When I investigated it, I was initially amused and then annoyed to discover that she is a Penthouse Pet.
I suspect that some of those 4800 hits were due to people looking for grubby pictures. Thanks to the tag at the bottom, that links to a site that, according to its own disclaimer, "contains explicit sexually oriented material" , they have access to them. (Oh, I should add, I did not look at this material...)
Seriously, though, is there any reason as to why the Asia Giovanni article should not be taken out? This website is not a referring service for porn, is it?
I should also point out that there is something patently ridiculous about a Penthouse Pet having a page that has a length compatible with, say Walter Burley Griffin, or is longer than , say, Aage Niels Bohr, two far more historically important individuals.
Arno
Yes, there are standards. They are outlined on the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, and yes, you guessed it, some are still being thrashed out, in typical wikipedia style ;) The correct style for dates, however, is decided on. YOu'll be pleased to know that your preffered style is the standard: ( Rodney II (June 15, 1936- October 31, 2001). For the not-dead-yet, we use (born June 15, 1936). -- Tarquin
To answer your other question; We are not a porn referral service and if you see another pointless link to a porn site in the future then feel free to delete it. However, there are soft porn sites that can add to the value of certain articles. For example, in our surprisingly good article nude celebrities on the Internet there is a link to "The Case Files of the Fake Detective" which is a website that analyzes more than 300 faked nude photos of celebrities. It has side-by-side images of the fake, the original of the clothed celebrity, and the original of the nude model. But at one time there was a link to the Lair of Lux Lucre which only has the fakes. I removed the pointless Lux link. --mav
Additional talk on this issue has been moved to Talk:Aria Giovanni.
This has probably come up before, so if I'm repeating tired old arguments, or worse still inadvertently walking into a minefield, apologies, but I think it would be nice to have a simpler, more wiki-ish markup for subscripts and superscripts, rather than relying on raw HTML (it was really starting to piss me off while doing the notation example in electron configuration). Something a bit TeXy, perhaps, like ^ and _ (though that leads to ambiguity over exactly what wants sub/superscripting so it might be best to use paired symbols ^2^ and _2_, or perhaps even ^2_ _2^, so that ^ meant go up a level and _ meant go down a level) --Bth
It has come up before, but it's well worth mentioning again! Something like ^^2^^ might be safer. It's also been suggested that we could use TeX itself to generate PNG images, thus: [[math:some TeX expression in here]]. I like this idea a lot, even though I'm of the age of WYSIWYG and I fear TeX -- Tarquin 22:10 Sep 26, 2002 (UTC)
The problem with the suggested syntaxes is that (one way or another) they don't allow scripts within scripts. My suggestion in the past has been "^{...}" and "_{...}" (which follows TeX even more closely) on the assumption that "^{" and "_{" will rarely or never occur naturally together. We could still double the "^" and "_" if that assumption proves mistaken, but we'll still need some sort of asymmetric bracketing; unlike other wiki syntax, scripts don't simply toggle. — Toby 10:32 Sep 29, 2002 (UTC)
(But TeX is lovely ...) The thing is, nice though it would be to have some sort of swish automagic mathematics-generator, I think this is a slightly separate (though related) issue: sub/superscripts are possible within HTML and they occur frequently enough (and not always in mathematical contexts) that it'd be nice to be able to do them wiki-style. --Bth
Yes, TeX is quite lovely; I use it all the time, even for writing letters to friends. After discussing possibilities for implementing it ad nauseam on the Wikipedia:mailing list, I eventually decided that it would only make editing harder for the uninitiated and thus shouldn't be done. But y'all may have fresh ideas that we didn't have before, so feel free to bring it up there again. — Toby 10:32 Sep 29, 2002 (UTC)
I think we should bring it up again. TeX would only be used for fairly complex equations; so most people who will come face to face with it will be mathematicians of some sort. Those (like me) who don't know tex already can probably handle the learning curve. -- Tarquin 10:45 Sep 29, 2002 (UTC)
I just uploaded http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:6thchord.png - the first image I've had a go at. It's for the chord article once I've written the words to go with it - for the time being it's living on User:Camembert/Sandbox. In Internet Explorer it looks fine, but I cannot see it at all in Opera 6.05. Most .pngs both in the wikipedia and elsewhere look fine in either browser. I tried reuploading the file, and still things were the same. Am I missing something, or is it just some weird error? --Camembert
Is there an automated system that offers visitors to download backups of the entire encyclopedia? Backups or images... whatever you wish to call them. First, to ensure that data can always be recovered with someone's backup, and second, to allow us to keep local copies of information. -- Cluster
Does anyone have the source file / know who has the source file for ? I'd like to update it to reflect the countries that may be joining in 2004 -- Tarquin 22:00 Oct 13, 2002 (UTC)
Special:Randompage seems to be no longer working, I get:
Warning: open(/tmp/sess_e3b9b5e8f5afa9cce2aa0066fca4a143, O_RDWR) failed: Too many open files in system (23) in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 7
Warning: Failed opening 'Setup.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 12
Fatal error: Undefined class name 'outputpage' in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 14
Warning: open(/tmp/sess_e3b9b5e8f5afa9cce2aa0066fca4a143, O_RDWR) failed: Too many open files in system (23) in Unknown on line 0
Warning: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct (/tmp) in Unknown on line 0
Jeronimo 18:50 Sep 30, 2002 (UTC)
This has been happening on any page lately. Maybe a FAQ entry from one of the technically-minded wikipedians would help?
I've bumped the open files limit on the server from 8192 to 65536, so it oughtn't to be hitting this limit so often now. --Brion 22:55 Oct 2, 2002 (UTC)
Could someone please delete the page User:Throbbing Monster Cock? Freedom is fine, but we should realize that small children will increasingly use Wikipedia. Let's use some common sense. David 21:25 Oct 15, 2002 (UTC)
The "neutrality" of articles in Wikipedia is intellectually dishonest. For the proscription of overtly partisan content is itself a violation of neutrality. If Wikipedia were truly neutral such partisanship would be welcomed, rather than rabidly deleted. One user diffused an edit war by moving my article to "meta" and that cooled my ire. What is not acceptable is outright arbitrary deletion. Whether this encyclopedia is truly open not just to minority opinion, but minority races (in the United States) is open to question, inasmuch as the dominant culture, which is white, carries its inescapable baggage. An honest acknowledgement of that baggage through openness to interpretations and criticisms of its contents ought to be a vigorous challenge, not anathema.
"What we don't do is publish unattributed screed." Screed runneth over nonetheless, some attributed, much unconscious. As for the pump, it would operate much better without the haughtiness (we shall strive for the Holy Grail of Knowledge in Wikipedia, but the pump shall remain the same tired repository of flaming crap all opinion boards are). As I asked elsewhere in this page, do you have room for humor as you pick the fly feces from the pepper, or is this apparent state of misery a Village constant? mailto:f.g.wilson@sbcglobal.net
Who are the "we?" The Wikipedia has ingeniously solved the problem of attribution, and may ultimately contribute to the evolutionary demise of that questionably useful species of human need. However, the problems of distinguishing absolute truth, which is abstract, from knowable fact, and of ever trending toward truth as better evidence brings more solid facts, should be recognized. The problem of objectively determining what is neutral and what is not should also be recognized, for it is a deep one. If I have to edit the final product only second-hand, by influence, I like to know that the Uber Arbiters are subtle enough to make these recognitions. {8:52 P.M. -- preliminary addendum based on partial reading of NPOV: I admonish Montrealais that we the unelect would hold your feet to the fire by stating that Wikipedian rigor would say "One man's screed is another's truth, so be very careful what you characterize as screed."}
"No, one man's screed is another man's opinion." -- Strictly your opinion, of course. mailto:f.g.wilson@sbcglobal.net
btw, what's the Monopoly(TM)/Wikipedia:Village pump currency exchange rate these days? -- mailto:f.g.wilson@sbcglobal.net -- Frederick George Wilson -- attribution as worth...let me run that through the Computer of Truth, I'll let you know what it crunches out...btw2, is humor outlawed here?
One last rant --er-- opinion, before I pack it in for the night: the move of my "genocide denial" article from metapedia to redirect was a net entropic increase, i.e., stupid. mailto:f.g.wilson@sbcglobal.net -- Michel Foucault --
Something is deeply screwy. Whenever I browse to any article I get served a random page. I go to [2] and I get served the Main Page, and then when I hit reload I get the OpenStep page, and then when I hit reload again I get "Recent Changes", where I see that people are happily adding until at least twenty minutes ago. Is nobody else experiencing this? This is not a cache issue on my side, I'm getting pages I know I've never seen before. I can duplicate this bug on both Konqueror and Mozilla for Linux. --k.lee
I have recently been noticing a repeating error. Sometimes when I choose the back button on my web browser to go back to a previous wikipedia page I was at, instead of refreshing the page it loads a totally new one. I've gotten interesting pages such as the World Trade Center and others. They are totally unrelated. I hit the reload button and the correct page loads, but nevertheless the server is handing out "random" pages to me. -- Ram-Man
I find it rather amusing that when I clicked on Wikipedia:Bug Reports it loaded the History of Belgium page. -- Ram-Man
I just uploaded http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:6thchord.png...
hi, been playing over the new phpwiki site and found their sidebar very useful...http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/demo/en/RecentChanges?days=3 any one know where i could find thesame for moz 1.2a for wikipedia? thanks
oh, and for evangelistic purposes .ideas. I'm sending pages to friends that I know have an interest in the material and inviting them to edit/update the materials...If we 'all did that' I think we'd get a lot of page churning, especially if we target those academic types. --Denny
It may be the browser I'm using, but I don't see a sidebar on that page. Unless you call their logo at the side of the page a 'sidebar', but then Wikipedia has it too, just somewhat more extensive. Andre Engels
I'm not sure how the images are linked/stored but the Japanese flag is either mislabeled or just plain missing.... Japan Vik-Thor 05:04 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)
White rectangle with a big red circle in the middle? Looks fine to me, both in Mozilla 1.2a and IE 5.5 (Win2000). --Brion 05:13 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)
OK, I'm going to be quiet now... I swear, it was coming up with the Montana state flag, even after refreshing... Vik-Thor 05:31 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)
Umm.... sorry, erasing the past so my browser will let my type in here. See history for old questions.
is anyone else getting php errors? Is there a story on this? Graft
I'm starting to hear more reports of congestion problems lately. I suspect that some server settings need to be expanded to accommodate greater traffic on the foreign-language wikis. --LDC
I've been seeing PHP errors that don't immediately suggest congestion. It looked to me like somebody temporarily mislaid a PHP document used for config. - Khendon 15:59 Sep 26, 2002 (UTC)
The error reported to me most recently was "can't load include file" because the system limit on number of open files was maxed out. That happens specifically when people access many of the foreign wikis at once, even if total congestion on the server is otherwise low. --LDC
Ah, okay. I retract my naive comment then :-) - Khendon 16:18 Sep 26, 2002 (UTC)
BTW Lee, last night I noticed the German, etc wikis weren't having the php files cached (no *_apc files), as the directory permissions didn't allow apache to write to them. I've chowned the 'w' directories to apache, and they all seem to be caching now. That may help, or hinder. Who knows. :) --Brion 21:02 Sep 26, 2002 (UTC)
(entry now in FAQ. This section to be deleted shortly)
Guys,
Several issues.
A recent bit of expanding of Olivia Newton-John had me adding her date of birth at the start of her name in this style: (September 26, 1948- )
A certain astronomer then proceeded to change this to read (b September 26, 1948)
Which format is correct - and is there a correct format? I has a look in FAQ but found no help there.
Whilst we're at it, let's expand some more and ask : are there any standards as regards displaying peoples' dates of birth and death? There do not appear to be any. Some biographies start with just the years , often not in tag form (eg Fred VII (1654-1700) was a merry old soul); others do not start with a date of birth and/or death at all ( eg Luke VIII was a king of England who hated termites ...) ; others still use tags at the start ( Rodney II (June 15, 1936- October 31, 2001). Which format, if any, is standard? I prefer the lattermost myself.
One other thing. Whilst going through lists of the most popular pages, I was surprised to see one dedicated to someone called Aria Giovanni - some 4800 or so hits. When I investigated it, I was initially amused and then annoyed to discover that she is a Penthouse Pet.
I suspect that some of those 4800 hits were due to people looking for grubby pictures. Thanks to the tag at the bottom, that links to a site that, according to its own disclaimer, "contains explicit sexually oriented material" , they have access to them. (Oh, I should add, I did not look at this material...)
Seriously, though, is there any reason as to why the Asia Giovanni article should not be taken out? This website is not a referring service for porn, is it?
I should also point out that there is something patently ridiculous about a Penthouse Pet having a page that has a length compatible with, say Walter Burley Griffin, or is longer than , say, Aage Niels Bohr, two far more historically important individuals.
Arno
Yes, there are standards. They are outlined on the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, and yes, you guessed it, some are still being thrashed out, in typical wikipedia style ;) The correct style for dates, however, is decided on. YOu'll be pleased to know that your preffered style is the standard: ( Rodney II (June 15, 1936- October 31, 2001). For the not-dead-yet, we use (born June 15, 1936). -- Tarquin
To answer your other question; We are not a porn referral service and if you see another pointless link to a porn site in the future then feel free to delete it. However, there are soft porn sites that can add to the value of certain articles. For example, in our surprisingly good article nude celebrities on the Internet there is a link to "The Case Files of the Fake Detective" which is a website that analyzes more than 300 faked nude photos of celebrities. It has side-by-side images of the fake, the original of the clothed celebrity, and the original of the nude model. But at one time there was a link to the Lair of Lux Lucre which only has the fakes. I removed the pointless Lux link. --mav
Additional talk on this issue has been moved to Talk:Aria Giovanni.
I looked around a bit but didn't find any examples of linking book titles to the gutenberg project...I believe it could be a fine way to encourage readers to pursue and peruse the works of the people so oft cited i.e. descartes, plato, aristotle, which are readily available in full text on line.--dgd
What is the thing to do when all links to a previous disambiguation page has been resolved? Is the disambiguation page just left there for future links to the page, or removed?
The former. --Brion 00:43 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)
Great, thanks Brion. Carl
See m:Math Markup
(Please let me know on my talk page if there is a better forum for this question and/or move it yourself).
Is there any regular policy for translating entries from other language wikipedia, or for keeping track of what information is duplicated, etc.? I ask this because it occurred to me that a useful thing I could do would be to translate pages which exist in other languages I speak (in my case, Spanish) to our wikipedia. It might be interesting to be able to have some kind of diff-like page showing what pages existed in other language encyclopedias that hadn't been translated (perhaps organized in some useful manner -- the most visited or lengthiest foreign language entries that don't have equivalents in the English wikipedia?). Okay, perhaps this idea is something of a pipedream.
On a more realistic note: is translating pages from other wikipedias that have more information than ours a good way to add to the project in general? Let me know... --Tom
I have a feeling this has been asked and answered before, but I can't find it, so... If I want to scan and upload an out-of-copyright image (say a photo taken in 1913) reproduced in an in-copyright book (say one published in 1985), is that legal or illegal? Or, put it another way: should I do it, or not? I think I'll be OK with it, but I want to make sure. --Camembert
Thanks - I'll dust off my scanner and get uploading (well, my friend's scanner - I don't have one...) --Camembert
I'm off to merge this into Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ. (what's the etiquette for pump cleaning at this point? do I delete because I move, or does Cam delete once he sees this?) -- Tarquin
could someone look at grammar please? the source shows alpha but the output is not! (unless I'm going blind, though I've cked at least 3 times. thanks---dgd
Hmm, "alpha" what? I see neither the word nor the letter in the article, either displayed or in source. I notice another note in the history about "article", which is certainly in the source and displayed:
*[[expletive]] --> *[[grammatical article|article]] <-- *[[grammatical aspect|aspect]]
-- Brion 22:38 Oct 25, 2002 (UTC)
We passed the 50000 article barrier yesterday. Does anyone know which article was the 50000th? (Not that it really matters, just idle curiosity on my part.) --Bth
I wouldn't put too much stock in that headline figuew. There are more than 15,000 "articles" with less than 500 characters. --mav 01:21 Oct 1, 2002 (UTC)
I think I saw Ram-man putting a comment in the little update box that he was 50000th for some county or another. I have no idea how he'd know that, and I may have been hallucinating, but I think I saw it. Tokerboy 22:09 Oct 2, 2002 (UTC)
Yeah it was some county, but I don't remember which one. I knew it was coming up because I saw something like "49,950" and I was adding more than 50 new county entries to some state. So I just watched to see which one would be 50,000 and added a little message. No biggy. 50,000 is only a partial landmark. Just wait till we have 50,000 *full* articles. That will be something impressive. Of course I don't know of any way to tell how many full articles there are, at least not easily. -- Ram-Man
Special:Randompage seems to be no longer working, I get:
Warning: new Object failed: Too many open files in system (23) in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 7
Warning: Failed opening 'Setup.php' for inclusion
(include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in
/usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 12
Fatal error: Undefined class name 'outputpage' in
/usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 14
Warning: new Object failed:
Too many open files in system (23) in Unknown on line 0
Warning: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the
current setting of session.save_path is correct (/tmp) in Unknown on line
0
Jeronimo 18:50 Sep 30, 2002 (UTC)
This has been happening on any page lately. Maybe a FAQ entry from one of the technically-minded wikipedians would help?
I've bumped the open files limit on the server from 8192 to 65536, so it oughtn't to be hitting this limit so often now. --Brion 22:55 Oct 2, 2002 (UTC)
Today, if I choose 'show last 50' on Recent changes, it shows me 43 edits. Looking on the normal Recent Changes page, these are selected from the last 110 or so edits. I have 'show minor changes' turned off. Matthew Woodcraft
I tested that and came up with the same result. Sounds something for a Bug report. --KQ 21:21 Oct 3, 2002 (UTC)
I filed a bug report about it. --KQ 00:53 Oct 4, 2002 (UTC)
What is the Wikipedia policy on automated page creation? I notice that Ram-Man is currently entering statistics for every town in the US using some sort of script (unless he's a very fast typer.) I'm not sure that this is a particularly great idea. In the more general sense, I think that script-generation could get us into a lot of trouble (how do you revert vandalism when it's spread across five thousand pages?) Is there a page that would be more suitable for this discussion? Dachshund
up their town they will find an entry in Wikipedia (and hopefully they will add some historical info to the article after finding it). If an actual vandal uses a bot then we will block that bot's IP. --mav
which makes these entries an important reader/contributor recruitment tool. Many of the same people will then update the articles with historical and other information. Yes, the US Census has this info but it isn't very readable or accessible and it can't be added to or its presentation improved. Can you think of another resource like this on the net (with 2000 data)? With that said, I also agree that Recent Changes is useless while Ram-Man's bot is at work. I wish there were a back-end way to import the 20,000 remaining cities/towns/villages/places. --mav
Although I have been (and continue to be) a vocal opponent of automatic content creation and editing processes on Wikipedia, I think creating these articles is on balance a good thing. As Ram-Man suggests, they make good "seed" articles for people to add a sentence or two about their own town, and as long as they don't interfere with existing articles, that's good. However, I'd like to see the bot slowed down for two reasons: one, there is a strong presumption against bots here in general; the burden of proof is on the bot-maker to demonstrate that the bot is (1) useful, (2) harmless, and (3) not a server hog. If there's any doubt about any of these, the bot should be slow enough that humans have time to find problems, report them, and get them fixed. Secondly, the "Recent Changes" page is an important part of the Wikipedia user experience, and the fact that it is essentially useless while the bot is running is very annoying. Slowing down to, say, a page a minute would greatly improve the usability
of the system.
At any rate, I think it meets the "useful" test, and as far as I can tell from server logs, the bot isn't a major factor in server load, so that's good, but I think "harmless" should include not hogging the recent changes list, so let's keep it running, but at a leisurely pace. --LDC
It should be noted that I made a mistake of invalid data in some 2,000 articles. The bot repaired all of these. That is to say that if I make a stupid mistake, I will do my best to fix it. However going slowly has an important disadvantage, as pointed out by Maverick. The orphans page, which a lot of people apparently use, is full of lots of cities and townships. To fix these, I have to use the bot to update all the entries. At 1 modification per minute, this will mean that the orphan page is going to be unusable for possibly weeks or months. As I have suggested, I can make my changes minor and people can filter some of them out (partial solution). Going slow severly limits the progress I can make at fixing the various quirks that are introduced in all these entries because I simply wait for it to finish. This should be noted!
Let's say for instance that I use one modification every 30 seconds. That would be about 3,000 modifications per day. Essentially it would take me about 2 weeks for any change I decide to make to all the entries, such as adding latitude and longitude or fixing mistakes. -- Ram-Man
Anyway, it would seem that Wikipedia was never designed to handle bots.
And while you're at it, why limit it to the USA? Why not do England, Canada, Australia... why limit it to English-speaking countries? Why not do the wole world?? Clearly there is something absurd about this!
Besides, if you want to know about a town, do you really want just a bunch of numbers? Or do you want to know what is actually IN the town, such as malls, arcades, parks, etc.? Juuitchan
The "neutrality" of articles in Wikipedia is intellectually dishonest. For the proscription of overtly partisan content is itself a violation of neutrality. If Wikipedia were truly neutral such partisanship would be welcomed, rather than
rabidly deleted. One user diffused an edit war by moving my article to "meta"
and that cooled my ire. What is not acceptable is outright arbitrary deletion.
Whether this encyclopedia is truly open not just to minority opinion, but minority races (in the United States) is open to question, inasmuch as the dominant culture, which is white, carries its inescapable baggage. An honest acknowledgement of that baggage through openness to interpretations and criticisms of its contents ought to be a vigorous challenge, not anathema.
"What we don't do is publish unattributed screed." Screed runneth over nonetheless, some attributed, much unconscious. As for the pump, it would operate much better without the haughtiness (we shall strive for the Holy Grail of Knowledge in Wikipedia, but the pump shall remain the same tired repository of flaming crap all opinion boards are). As I asked elsewhere in this page, do you have room for humor as you pick the fly feces from the pepper, or is this apparent state of misery a Village constant? mailto:f.g.wilson@sbcglobal.net
Who are the "we?" The Wikipedia has ingeniously solved the problem of attribution, and may ultimately contribute to the evolutionary demise of that questionably useful species of human need. However, the problems of distinguishing absolute truth, which is abstract, from knowable fact, and of ever trending toward truth as better evidence brings more solid facts, should be recognized. The problem of objectively determining what is neutral and what is not should also be recognized, for it is a deep one. If I have to edit the final product only second-hand, by influence, I like to know that the Uber Arbiters are subtle enough to make these recognitions. {8:52 P.M. -- preliminary addendum based on partial reading of NPOV: I admonish Montrealais that we the unelect would hold your feet to the fire by stating that Wikipedian rigor would say "One man's screed is another's truth, so be very careful what you characterize as screed."}
"No, one man's screed is another man's opinion." -- Strictly your opinion, of course. mailto:f.g.wilson@sbcglobal.net
btw, what's the Monopoly(TM)/Wikipedia:Village pump currency exchange rate these days? -- mailto:f.g.wilson@sbcglobal.net -- Frederick George Wilson -- attribution as worth...let me run that through the Computer of Truth, I'll let you know what it crunches out...btw2, is humor outlawed here?
One last rant --er-- opinion, before I pack it in for the night: the move of my "genocide denial" article from metapedia to redirect was a net entropic increase, i.e., stupid. mailto:f.g.wilson@sbcglobal.net -- Michel Foucault --
Would it be possible to add a rating system to Wikipedia. It has been mentioned before that Wikipedia is used in schools etc. There are a number of pages that may not be suitable for school use. Maybe a checkbox on the edit form could be used to generate a SurfSafe header (http://www.safesurf.com/ssplan.htm) or other PICS header. I would suggest keeping it simple and having just "suitable for all" or "suitable for adults". Some schools can only see suitably rated pages. I know that some people would say that children should be able to see all facts, but in practice a school is likely to have complaints from a number of parents if it turns out that the kids are looking up Handballing, Autoeroticism etc. -- Chris Q 06:13 Oct 16, 2002 (UTC)
I am unable to access the following areas:
I get various errors, all php related. Some are missing files, others are too many files open, and the like. The Clermont County one has been like this for days. What is happening here? -- Ram-Man
This is probably due to general heavy traffic loads from readers and very heavy edit load from me and especially you. ;) --mav
Shouldn't this clear out? Why has it been hours or days (in the case of Ohio) like this? -- Ram-Man
Clear your browser cache, hit reload, try again. Especially if you're using Internet Explorer, which seems to jealously preserve failed page loads. --Brion 03:18 Sep 29, 2002 (UTC)
I concur. Although I am using a Netscape version rather than Explorer, I too find that the error messages comes back if I go to the same page again, but then disappears when I hit 'Reload'. Andre Engels
Clearing the cache fixed my problem. Thanks! -- Ram-Man
Incidentally, one way to force Infernal Exploder to refresh is to hold down the Ctrl key while clicking the refresh icon. Which reminds me of a joke: "Only women refresh; men reload." -- NetEsq 20:10 Sep 29, 2002 (UTC)
If 'reload' also doesn't work, try to manually change the URL from www.wikipedia.org to www.wikipedia.com; rest unchanged. That should get around any caches that just keep acting on reload.Andre Engels 23:25 Oct 2, 2002 (UTC)
Perhaps the problem here is that, although we normally send pages set to expire immediately, so that there will be no caching, perhaps no such expiration is set when we send errors.
Well, we generate the errors here on our server, so surely we can send such expiration commands then too?
Programmers: Am I right?
— Toby 05:26 Sep 30, 2002 (UTC)
If you're getting one of the errors described above, our script probably isn't even getting a chance to run; if it does, the error messages usually come up before we have a chance to output the custom headers, and you can't output headers after content has started. So, um, prolly not. --Brion 05:31 Sep 30, 2002 (UTC)
Weirdness is afoot. I can't save changes in Konqueror at all and Mozilla tries, seems to fail, displays an error message saying there is no data in the page but then I see the saved edit in RC. --mav
Better now? I was about to restart the web & database servers when it suddenly started working smoothly a few minutes ago. (Lee, did you do something?) --Brion 22:59 Oct 21, 2002 (UTC)
Brion, I just installed your patch and upgraded PHP to 4.2.3 while I was there. The process may have been a bit bumpy... --66.216.68.43
In the CIA country articles "/People" is being broken out into "Demographics of...". Is this correct? Would not "Demography of..." be more correct as in "Geography of..." not "Geographics of...". 62.253.64.7
Help! I'm having trouble logging onto many pages as quercus robur , including the main page, recent changes and my own watch list, pluys other random pages including some I've created- when I click the link I just get a load of gobbledegook- I thought maybe it was to do with IE on my PC, so tried logging on using my laptop, and another computer in the house, same problem, so guess I've either been blocked (surely somebody would have told me???) or theres a bug inthe wiki.... If anybody can advise please reply on my user talk page, which hopefully I'll be able to access... Cheers quercus robur 22:32 Oct 2, 2002 (UTC)
No, if you were blocked, it would tell you that you've been blocked, by whom, and why when you tried to edit (but wouldn't bug you on loading pages up). As far as "gobbledegook", that's the stuff that tells us what's wrong -- please cite it exactly in future. We've been having occasional "too many files open" kinds of errors lately; if you get one, just reload and you should be fine. (Some browsers may be a pain in the ass to reload properly, such as IE.) --Brion 22:38 Oct 2, 2002 (UTC)
Hi Brion- the messages (there are 2 I think) I get are;
"Warning: new Object failed: Too many open files in system (23) in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 7
Warning: Failed opening 'Setup.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 12
Fatal error: Undefined class name 'outputpage' in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 14
Warning: new Object failed: Too many open files in system (23) in Unknown on line 0
Warning: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct (/tmp) in Unknown on line 0"
The other message is;
"Warning: Host 'localhost.localdomain' is blocked because of many connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts' in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/DatabaseFunctions.php on line 17
Could not connect to DB on 127.0.0.1"
I've had to create a new user name to be able to get to this page as well!! Please can you reply on my (Quercus robur) user page as that seems to bew one of the few pages I can still access!!
Ta!
re above- as explained on my user talk page, I've solved the problem now, involved deleting all temporary files from my IE settings folder... bloody windoze.... quercus robur
Copyright query: On Encyclopedia Mythica (http://www.pantheon.org) , hieroglyphs for certain gods are given as image files. Are these okay to use? Obviously, they're not copyrighted by the people who etched them on the walls of the Pyramids or whatever, but the images appear to be computer-generated, not photos or anything. I know letters can't be copyrighted, and I'm assuming that, since they couldn't copyright Chinese characters for example, they can't do the same for hieroglyphics. Is that right?
For an example, go to http://www.pantheon.org/articles/s/saa .html
My first attempt at saving this question failed with an error box saying simply that the load failed. I'm using an iMac with IE 5.1 Tokerboy 22:09 Oct 2, 2002 (UTC)
I've been attempting to setup a copy of wikipedia on one of my servers for experimenting and testing. I want to use the real data to experiment with the wikipedia code and be able to more closely examine the data structure. I have in mind potentially altering the code to use in another project that is something of a "People Data Store" Example: "Quotes" are made by people, people have biography that relates them to other people, places, and events in time. This could also apply to many other works of people such as "Lyrics", "Books", "Articles", "Film", "Programming code". Lots of possibilities. In many ways it it much like an encyclopedia, just more (for lack of a better way of expressing it) factual and concrete. 8-)
My problem, For a couple of days now I've been attempting to download the datadump of the encyclopedia and history from the download page. Unfortunately all I get instead of a gzip, tar, or zip file is the text data dump to my browser. Is there some way that I can get the current data and history files some other way? I don't care about the size, but a file is much more useful than a text data list of many mb. Also is there some method of data replication that is used to keep other copies current? Any help with this would be much appreciated, Thanks (albrown AT chook DOT com or al AT thetinfoilhat DOT com)
Your browser appears to be helpfully un-gzipping the data for you. If this is a problem (ie, you don't want to take up that much hard disk space just for the dump), try a less intelligent program. ;) "wget" is a nice command-line web/ftp file fetcher; I think there's a version compiled for windows. (Google it.) Keep in mind that the SQL dump will be equally effective zipped or unzipped; you have to read it back into the database or write your own program to suck the data out of the SQL commands. --Brion 19:01 Oct 2, 2002 (UTC)
There are times when I actively hate the latest IE. Is ftp an option then? I tried to connect to ftp.wikipedia.com and didn't get very far as "anon".
Get Mozilla!
Try this instead: make a link to the file you want to download by putting it in brackets, e.g. The Internet Movie Database ([http://www.imdb.com The Internet Movie Database]), then right click on the link and "save target as."
IE for me has been particularly contrary and addlebrained; I can only assume that that's what you're using too. Best, --KQ 22:20 Oct 2, 2002 (UTC)
I was able to get the files by using wget. Thanks for all the help. I wil remember the trick about making a link in brackets. This is odd though as this is the first and only time that I have ever had IE (and netscape 4.7 even tried to download with that brain dead clunky ......) both were unzipping the file into the page, normally I can click on any download link and then get a message asking me if I want to save or not. Oh well, got the files and thanks much again for the help. Al Brown 23:21 CST Oct 2, 2002.
I've been struggling a bit with how to set off entries that can be very broad in application like [Education] but have many sub categories like [assessment] or [history] but I don't want the sub categories to get too wrapped up in the generalities... phpwiki 1.3 offers an interesting solution allowing users to create sub categories by adding a slash/ at the end like this Enlish / History . Has such a system been discussed before? ck out the demo version of |phpwiki_demo], make sure create a subject. save it. then add a slash to it at the end. it's pretty easy.- dgd
We have done this in the past, but it has been deprecated. It was felt that the disadvantages were probably greater than the advantages. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia_subpages_pros_and_cons. For cases such as you mention, you can either use sub-headings (Type ==History== on a line of itself), or create a page with a title like [[History of education]]. Andre Engels 15:22 Oct 1, 2002 (UTC)
I'm having trouble with the character encoding on my brower - it's mozilla 1.1 and the default encoding is iso8859-1. It makes any accents or unusual characters turn into rubb!sh and make a mess of the edit. Anyone know about this? User:andrewthorne
I never had problems with Mozilla 1.1a, and have no problems now with Mozilla 1.2a (on Windows 2000). Could you give examples of particular pages and particular actions which produce problems, and describe precisely what happens, and tell us which operating system you're running on? --Brion 04:15 Oct 1, 2002 (UTC)
Following my earlier query about how to name articles about pieces of classical music (the responses to which I'm very grateful for, and still chewing over), I've got another problem in that area: I want to write an article about the John Cage piece 4'33", but it looks like article titles cannot have quotes in them, so 4'33" doesn't work. Is there any way round this? There are alternative names for the piece (it could be spelled out in words, for example), but this form is by far the most common, and I'd like to use it if at all possible. --Camembert 18:22 Sep 30, 2002 (UTC)
How does 4'43" (coded as [[4 43|4'43"]]) strike you? Ortolan88 18:44 Sep 30, 2002 (UTC)
Yes, I know I can use a pipe, and if it comes to that, I will (though I'll probably point it to Four Minutes, Thirty-Three Seconds rather than 4 33). But what I was really trying to ask, in a round about way, was: is there any way to use a " in an article title? --Camembert 23:20 Sep 30, 2002 (UTC)
How about [[4'33'']] as a quick cheat, with two ' for a " -- Tarquin 23:29 Sep 30, 2002 (UTC)
It might just work that, it might just work. Rather amusingly, however, if you try to surround the link with two 's to italicize it (as those tyrants at the Manual of Style will say you should, hem hem), it breaks the link, and italicizes one set of brackets instead. And I would be a bit worried about people trying to link to the article but not being able to work out that it's two 's rather than one ". But I can use html tags to italicize, and I don't see anybody else round here writing about John Cage, so... --Camembert 00:23 Oct 1, 2002 (UTC)
I just made an article titled I'noGo tied but the link is from a lower-case "i" at the beginning, and I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be, at least according to my source (even at the beginning of a sentence, so I assume it's a pronunciation thing in Inuit). The system automatically switched it. Is there anyway around that? Not really a huge deal, I guess; it's still in lowercase in the article itself.--User: Tokerboy
You can link to it with leading lowercase, but you should talk to LDC about whether there's anyway to make it display the title with leading lowercase. --KQ
There isn't one, but you could talk with him about making one. --Brion
Is it considered detrimental to the Wikipedia for people to include links to WikiProjects at the bottom of article pages? I, for one, never would have considered the WikiProject U.S. States if I hadn't seen a link at the bottom of the State articles.
Mav is of the opinion that these notes aren't appropriate for Wiki pages, and he may be right. This is the comment he posted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject French departements, along with some responses I've inserted:
Reaction: I have the feeling that these will give a way backward rather than forward. Imagining myself as a beginning Wikipedia-user, I don't see what's intimidating about having a page with some subheadings already put in that I would not contribute to it. However, if a page says "This page is part of Wiki-project so-and-so", I assume that there are some people working on these things, who will probably rather not be disturbed by my changes as they do a lot of more work on all these cities. And I (still as a new Wikipedian) don't have the courage or don't have the knowledge to really do a lot on this project, so I just leave this page to those WikipediaProject people too for the time being. Besides, I'd have to go through those project-rules first too. If that is not enough to intimidate someone, then a bit of text and some subheaders should also cause no problems. Andre Engels 16:33 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)
While I was originally of the idea to put these boilerplates in the articles themselves (In fact I put hundreds and maybe thousands of them in), I changed my view when confronted about it. In essence, they do not belong in an encyclopedia article. Nevertheless, I am still somewhat split. I am all about articles having a similar look so that they are consistant. That is always a good thing. Those users who are new will come in and add a line here or there. If someone wants to write a whole article, let them do so. Someone else can later bring it into a format consistant with the wikiproject. If someone is that motivated, there is a good chance that they already know about the wikiprojects anyway. And we can always *tell* them. Leave them in the talk pages. They can still be found. Oh, having the boilerplates artificially increases the byte count of articles (For what its worth). -- Ram-Man
Wikipedia Evangelism
Hi, I've mentioned this before and thought I'd mention it again. As I'm browsing the pedia I find articles that might interest friends/coworkers. I pop them a link in a quick hello message and ask them if they confirm the accuracy of the content...the response so far has been first one of wonder, then awe, then enthusiasm! And it's been a nice way to relate to some folks I'm not often in contact with. Anyway, I searched for evangelism and came up with nada around the 'pedia. Is there a place for sharing an evangelical/ 'help us' message of wikipedia? --dgd
Moved discussion to Wikipedia talk:Boilerplate text
When I look at Microsoft ( http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft ), I get these error messages:
Warning: Failed opening 'Setup.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 12
Fatal error: Undefined class name 'outputpage' in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 14
I don't get these errors for other pages. David 00:42 Oct 17, 2002 (UTC)
I am making this visible again because I found out how to fix it, and others may benefit from this knowledge. If you encounter such a problem, view the folder containing your temporary Internet files (in IE this can be found by selecting Tools->Internet Options...->General->Settings->View Files...). Near the end of this list of files will be one named for the page that has the problem. In my case it was called "Microsoft". Then, just delete that file. Poof! The problem disappears. David 21:17 Oct 18, 2002 (UTC)
Where is the appropriate place to address "technical support" questions? I'm having a few problems (can't log in under my user name, chas_zzz_brown; as well as some other details) that are probably system dependent, but I don't see a "tech" FAQ for this kind of issue. TIA - Chas
user:Lee_Daniel_Crocker is a good person to talk to about that. --KQ
see also Wikipedia:Technical FAQ. Do we have a technical help page? -- Tarquin 22:04 Oct 3, 2002 (UTC)
I don't know. There are far too many pages in the wikipedia: namespace for me to keep track of. :-/ Please let me know if you find one. :-) --KQ
The Wikipedia:Technical FAQ seems like more of a FAQ about technical aspects of Wikipedia, rather than a place to solve techincal questions. I haven't run across a "troubleshooting page" yet; an it seems like one wuld be a good idea; since I'm a newbie, I haven't a clue how one would make one in the Wikipedia: namespace, so for now I'll put it under Troubleshooting Wikipedia. Perhaps someone could move it to a better location? Cheers - User:chas_zzz_brown 4 Oct 02 20:12 PST
Just a note for Mozilla early adopters: the 1.2 beta contains a bug that causes image description pages for uploaded .png images to display as error messages. This is fixed in the latest nightly builds.
Moved discussion to Wikipedia talk:Bots.
Moved to Wikipedia:Troubleshooting
I looked around a bit but didn't find any examples of linking book titles to the gutenberg project...I believe it could be a fine way to encourage readers to pursue and peruse the works of the people so oft cited i.e. descartes, plato, aristotle, which are readily available in full text on line.--dgd
It has been done - see for instance Wilfred Owen. I agree, a link to Gutenburg under "external links" is a good thing. --Camembert
I sometimes find myself requesting that people re-license their documents under the GFDL and giving a description of the Wikipedia and the consequences of releasing under the GFDL. Is there any boilerplate text for this request? DanKeshet
I'd like to suggest a large change to the markup used for the 'pedia. Currently, markup codes are used to format the text in an article and add wiki-text. My suggestion is that the markup language should instead be used to format the layout of the article itself. For example, to create a section, instead of using the equal-sign codes to create a header, perhaps use a Begin Section code followed by an identifier for the section, the section's text and finally an End Section code. I won't suggest a syntax formally but as an example:
And the wikipedia can interpret this to mean any number of things. The most obvious interpretation would be to insert the header Markup Language into the article. A not-so-obvious interpretation would be to insert an A html tag into the document with a NAME attribute set to Markup_Language. This way, the section itself can be the target of a wiki-link. If sections are nested within one-another, the wikipedia can create the headings for subsections one size smaller then for the headings of its parents. IE: 2 equal-signs for main sections and 3 equal-signs for sub-sections. I'd suggest that the codes for bold and italics also be removed and replaced with codes which suggest the meaning of the text itself (which can then be interpretted for formatting by current appearance standards).
Preferences can then be given to the user regarding how to deal with things like images, sections and code. For example, a user can opt to have the 'pedia add Header Link to the top of an article which point to that articles main sections. The user might also be given the option to expand/collapse sections by clicking a +/- symbol next to each heading. The user could perhaps be able to turn on or off horizonal rules between sections. If given the preference, a user might opt to have code snippets longer then 5 lines be truncated and a link be inserted to view the rest of the code in a seperate window.
It would give articles a more unified appearance, especially if applied to tables and other rich content which currently have to be written in HTML. And it opens up new preferences for readers of the 'pedia. New scripts can be made available for users of bots as well. For example, instead of just being able to "edit" an article, an "add section" page could be created which takes an Identifier, Parent Section and section text as arguments. This would make it easier to (for example) add the demographics data to cities via bot by simply creating a new section.
Also, non-content data like links to non-english version of articles and article type should be set via a seperate form (also for auto-manipulation by bots). If the pedia knew that a given article were an entry for a City, for example, it would know that properties such as "population", "Area", "State/Country" and so on should be included. Now, the author only need supply a value for this property in a seperate form to update the article. Within the article text, the variable %Population% could be inserted to tell the 'pedia to insert the articles Population variable. Now future contributors or bots can update the population property without directly editing the file (practically impossible for bots and hard for humans). I'd suggest that articles for years, dates, people, places, languages, chemical elements and musical instruments (to name a few) be formal "Article Types" with associated format "Property Lists". In fact, I'm suggesting that contributors be able to create thier own article types by creating an article under (for example) a 'Classes' namespace and setting the content of that article equal to an XML document (or something).
Just some ideas. But I'm ranting now. Rlee0001 05:54 Oct 28, 2002 (UTC)
I do not know if this is a case of vandalism, or an edit that went wrong -- but a considerable amount of the Karl Marx article has been deleted without explanation. Can someone revert to the previous version (I do not know how to do this easily). Thanks, Slrubenstein
Thanks!
Is there anyplace designated to list duplicative articles? If not, shouldn't there be?
I'm talking about ones like Abgar and Abgarus of Edessa that I have no doubt need to be combined (with the other title becoming a redirect), but I don't have enough knowledge of the subject to do it (and am not willing to learn enough about it).
I'm also talking about ones like Acid and Strong acid, where I do have expertise, and my expertise tells me they should be combined, but I'm not sure the majority of the community would agree.
What I'm suggesting (if it doesn't exist) is a page of "Votes for combination" like "Votes for deletion" is. -- isis 18:38 Oct 26, 2002 (UTC)
A list of duplicate articles already exists: Wikipedia:Duplicate articles -olivier 18:40 Oct 26, 2002 (UTC)
This is a two-parter for anyone who's willing to field either or both:
1) How do I archive most of what's on my user talk page, please? I'd like for the old material to be where it can still be read, but the page is getting too long for comfortable editing in current discussions.
2) How/Where was I supposed to find the answer to this question in the existing "how to" materials, please? As is true of many of the articles themselves, I have found the instructional pages consistently useless for explaining anything I didn't already know, and frequently confusing about the stuff I did know, and so fragmented that it's hard to track thru enough pages to find what I'm looking for if it does turn out to be there at all. (And I mean that in the nicest possible way.) -- isis 05:35 Oct 6, 2002 (UTC)
Here goes:
--Brion
Thanks for your reply, but I don't understand enough of it to implement it, so let me try again, please: I'm ignoring the sentence that starts with "Alternately" (because it's so far beyond my understanding that it scared me) and focusing on the one before it that I could follow much of: I'm good with the cut and paste part and "main talk page," but "new page" and "link" raised more questions for me -- would you (or someone) please elaborate on that? (I'm not stupid, but I haven't taken a computer science course in 30+ years, and they didn't teach me any of this stuff, so I'm incredibly ignorant.) -- isis 06:11 Oct 6, 2002 (UTC)
Look at the top of user talk:maveric149 and user talk:Brion VIBBER, for instance. You will notice links to pages which contain archived old talk. These pages at one point did not exist, so they were new pages when they were first created by making and following a link to them, putting text into them, and saving them. If need be, Wikipedia:How to start a page may help. --Brion 06:18 Oct 6, 2002 (UTC)
Hi, any way of creating TOCs for wikipedia? is there a tag set that allows for relative anchors in a page? That way we could have longer articles and less fragmentation and fluidity of the prose...--dgd
Does the Metapedia site have talk pages as well? I'm thinking maybe at that purported discussion site one might actually have something vaguely resembling free speech at, say, the Metapedia genocide:talk:talk:talk level?--Anon
Okay, dumb question time. Either I can't find the answer, or (& I hope this is not the case), no one has addressed this problem.
I took a quick look thru my email archives, & I never received a welcoming email from wikipedia, so I don't have it recorded there. And I forgot to write it down when I registered.
Many forums (e.g. Slashdot), have a process for emailling your password to your own email address, which provides for a secure way of recovering it. I don't know if Wikipedia has anything like this ... or if I have to email someone to get this information. -- llywrch 18:13 Nov 10, 2002 (UTC)
There is such a process on the log-in page at the bottom Fredbauder 18:34 Nov 10, 2002 (UTC)
I just wrote an answer to your question on the Wikipedia:Technical FAQ. llywrch, when you see this message, please archive the comments related to this and delete them from this page. (See the recent addition to Wikipedia:Talk page). --Ellmist Sunday, November 10th, 2002.
Periodic table is protected for no obvious reason, and it needs to be edited. I would unprotect it myself, but it appears that my request for sysop status has still not been fullfilled. Someone unprotect it? --TMC
Should medical articles carry some form of boilerplate disclaimer? 62.253.64.7
What happens when two users edit a page at the same time? Is there a diff/merge procedure or does the latest change overwrite the previous ones? Arvindn
is it just me or is wikipedia 'down' alot lately? I'm having lots of trouble logging onto wiki pages, and often after just doing an edit I'm getting 404 error messages when I click 'save page'- when I then refresh all of the text on the page is accidentally deleted... Are others having these problems as well? quercus robur 19:03 Nov 22, 2002 (UTC)
I've been getting tons of error messages today, saying that there was a connection error. It only just now started working again, and since Recent Changes looks much the same as last time I saw it, I'm guessing I'm not the only one with problems today. Does anybody know what is causing this? Tokerboy 23:11 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)
Should medical articles carry some form of boilerplate disclaimer? 62.253.64.7
We have a disclaimer on Wikipedia:Medicine standards. Though I doubt it represents consensus since most people don't know about it. --Ellmist Thursday, November 21st, 2002
Could we take all the "list of topics" pages like List of Conservation topics and list of mathematical topics, etc. and move them into the wikipedia namespace? They are not articles; they are tools in helping us build an encylopedia, no? DanKeshet 21:56 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)
cut and paste works very well for moving pages...Lir 03:13 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)
There's reams of research on this very topic. For versioning it's very important to preserve who did what when, but on the other hand you do hit conflicts like this where what you want to do fails because it deletes other versioning information.
In this case you need to merge the two, most systems, seemingly like wikipedia will preserve one set while expecting you to hand merge the other changes in.
In a perfect world there would be a seperate merge option that would preserve the history of both entities when you merge two pages but this doesn't seem to be the case here, and without it there's no easy way around your problem.
If someone will point me at the development information for wikipedia I can tell you how feasible it would be to have that kind of feature.
We're fairly lucky here. Most versioning systems are very heavy weight and arcane. Wikipedia does very well in comparison without missing too many features. For example, wikipedia just caught a conflict between my edit and Brions just then and I had to merge the changes I made into his updated article.
--v
Is there a page somewhere where we can list articles we think not neutral at all ? Does it happen that some people write comments directly on a page that they think is very oriented, so strongly deserve being refactored (sort of a warning for potential readers) or is the only option (when the original writer clearly doesn't want to give it a try) to do it ourselves ? user:anthere
You can link these pages to Wikipedia:NPOV dispute.
See also: Wikipedia:Votes for NPOVing, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. olivier 12:59 Nov 12, 2002 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Pages needing attention
thanks --ant
How do I turn a .ram file into a .ogg file on a Mac? Tokerboy 06:50 Nov 11, 2002 (UTC)
You'll need a recorder that saves to the OGG format or to a format another program can convert to OGG. Then you'll need to buy an audio cable from a store like Radio Shack and plug one end into the audio out and the other into the audio in. Start playing the RealPlayer file. Then start recording. Alternatively, you can use Snapz Pro from Ambrosia Software to record without the extra digital to analog to digital step. Both have the disadvantage of quality loss and requiring you to play through the entire sound and stop at the end without playing any other sounds on your computer. If you had a different source format than RealPlayer, we could simplify the process considerably. Unfortunately, RealPlayer makes any conversion to a different format hard. Programs have existed for various platforms that have done this from time to time but I have heard the programs and the companies worked unreliably and cost money. --Ellmist Monday, November 11th, 2002
dumb question: how does one unban an IP? -- Tarquin
dumb question: how does one unban an IP? -- Tarquin
dumb question: how does one unban an IP? -- Tarquin
The similarity in the purpose of this site and Wikipedia is striking: both sites aim at constructing, by open Internet cooperation, a thesaurus of integrative knowledge. Still, there are two differences: (1) the Wikipedia site uses an automated software, allowing visitors to edit existing pages online, while this site is manually edited, and (2) the Integration site features an advanced concept of integrative editing, while the Wiki system is described as "a collaborative project to produce a free and complete encyclopedia", and uses the "open content" paradigm. Although the Open Content approach is completely compatible with the Integration approach, the latter goes further because (1) it proposes a series of explicit editing rules (while the Wiki context is much more permissive, and its rules are more intuitive and inspired by common sense), and because (2) this Integration concept assumes that by respecting these rules, if adequately applied, a degree of plausibility probably comparable to scientific certitude can be reached.
As I describe in the Future of this Site page, integration with such an integrative site as Wikipedia will be sought. In a first stage I'll try to add progressively our contents to the Wikipedia site. If, for some reasons yet to discover, this kind of integration proves impossible, we'll try to start up a new Wiki-like site, or introduce the Wiki software into this site.
Any comments? Kris Roose 10 Nov 2002, 14.30 CET
//noosphere.cc]. A fascinating thrill went through me when I discovered the Wikipedia Website and the Wiki Websites System in general.
The similarity in the purpose of this site and Wikipedia is striking: both sites aim at constructing, by open Internet cooperation, a thesaurus of integrative knowledge. Still, there are two differences: (1) the Wikipedia site uses an automated software, allowing visitors to edit existing pages online, while this site is manually edited, and (2) the Integration site features an advanced concept of integrative editing, while the Wiki system is described as "a collaborative project to produce a free and complete encyclopedia", and uses the "open content" paradigm. Although the Open Content approach is completely compatible with the Integration approach, the latter goes further because (1) it proposes a series of explicit editing rules (while the Wiki context is much more permissive, and its rules are more intuitive and inspired by common sense), and because (2) this Integration concept assumes that by respecting these rules, if adequately applied, a degree of plausibility probably comparable to scientific certitude can be reached.
As I describe in the Future of this Site page, integration with such an integrative site as Wikipedia will be sought. In a first stage I'll try to add progressively our contents to the Wikipedia site. If, for some reasons yet to discover, this kind of integration proves impossible, we'll try to start up a new Wiki-like site, or introduce the Wiki software into this site.
Any comments? Kris Roose 10 Nov 2002, 14.30 CET
What's with the hit counters? They seem to have frozen, ever since that database lock yesterday. Tim Starling 23:29 Nov 12, 2002 (UTC)
Bug Report I could put this on source forge, but then we would not be able to comment without registering with a 3rd party. Anyways: Portland, Maine displays super-wide on Win2k/IE6 sometimes. I have to refresh a bunch of times to get the page to bounce back to normal width. There is nothing that should ever be wide on that page. And other articles do this (like some chess pages). Does anyone know why? Is this IE6 or Wikipedia? I assume its just IE6, but its quite annoying and most internet users use IE6 (appox 97% of netizens use Internet Explorer 6.0). Robert Lee
This town ain't big enough for both of us
The user name "Throbbing Monster Cock" is overtly offensive, and I am ashamed to be part of Wikipedia whenever it crops up on 'recent changes.' I know only one remedy, so I'm taking it. If that user name ever goes away, I'd appreciate it if someone would e-mail me thru my user page and let me know, so I can come back. Thanks, y'all -- it's been fun. -- isis 02:03 Nov 10, 2002 (UTC)
Who was that masked man ?
It has been brought to my attention that the username "Throbbing Monster Cock" has been converted to "TMC" and that my name has been bandied about in the discussions about how that came about. I'm posting the following to set the record straight and not for the purpose of starting a discussion:
I am back, and if I am not participating as actively as I did before, please attribute it to the computer problems: I simply don't have the time (or the patience) to work on the 'pedia when navigation takes 3 to 5 minutes per link and it can't find the server at all 1 time out of 4, which is the situation nearly all the time now.
NetEsq made some comments about me on http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:TMC on 22 November that are so far from true that they make me wonder whether he could honestly have been so mistaken:
And while I do not pretend to speak for User:Isis, I know her to be a strong advocate of free speech. I sincerely doubt that she would approve of the decision which Jimbo has apparently taken on her behalf.
we know that Isis chose to leave because she was offended by TMC's username
I am, indeed, a strong advocate of 1st Amendment freedom of speech, but that has nothing to do with this situation. Wikipedia is not a public forum, and there is no "right" of free speech (or anything else) here. This is Jimbo's private website, and he has invited us all to use it with very few (too few, as far as I'm concerned) guidelines for what is acceptable conduct here. If you were a guest in his home, would you think it was okay to shit in the middle of the floor or to burn the house down or to steal his stereo equipment? When you trash this website, you insult him (and the rest of us guests) but, more importantly, you show the world you have no respect for yourself, so you deserve no respect from anyone else (and don't worry about getting any from me -- you won't, and I'm not too shy to tell you so).
So (1) I am enthusiastically in favor of Jimbo's getting rid of anyone whose behavior he doesn't like, although I can't claim the credit for getting him to do it, and (2) I did not leave because I was offended by TMC's username but, rather, because I was offended by the Wikipedians who pretend to see some social importance in TMC's misconduct. I say "pretend" because if you really believed all that shit you were shoveling about his right to free speech, you would have upheld my right to put animated gifs in the articles. That you won't tolerate a waving American flag in an article on American history but get your knickers in a knot over removing an obscene username shows you for what you are, and that's what I was ashamed to be associated with. And that's why I resent NetEsq's using my name to bolster credibility for his pro-TMC ravings about "censorship," although I am flattered that he would think my credibility in this community could be enough to outweigh his notions' obvious lack of merit. -- isis 21:01 Nov 22, 2002 (UTC)
I have many many questions about some nifty new images that I'm able to generate for every county in the state. Rather than ask those questions here, I'm asking them on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Counties page. Any input would be appreciated. -- Thanks, RobLa 02:26 Nov 10, 2002 (UTC)
All day today, typing in wikipedia.org has brought me straight to the Dutch Wikipedia. English is the one and only language in my browser's (IE5.1Mac) preferences. It's really kinda jarring, though I'm starting to learn dutch (starting with hoofdpagina). Netscape 4.75 does the same thing, and google and yahoo both show me English. Is anybody else having this problem? Tokerboy 09:28 Nov 6, 2002 (UTC)