Wikipedia:Village pump/January 2004 archive 8

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New features[edit]

A few new features will shortly be going live:

-- Tim Starling 08:43, Jan 29, 2004 (UTC)

What's RC? Graham 09:22, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Recent Changes -- Tim Starling 09:31, Jan 29, 2004 (UTC)

What's "shortly"? --Phil 11:46, Jan 29, 2004 (UTC)

Seems to be now :-) I just noticed the new links on the top of the diffs. andy 21:43, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Sorry, the conversion took a bit longer than I expected, I had to leave it until the next morning my time. -- Tim Starling 23:35, Jan 29, 2004 (UTC)
So what exactly do some of these do? :) Elde 00:04, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Pretty much what they say on the box:
  • Fractional time zones
  • Allows User Accounts to record their time-zone more accurately when their offset from UTC is not a whole number of hours
  • Page moves look nicer in RC
  • Shows the old name and the new name on one line
  • User, contribs (and admin only: rollback) links at the top of diffs
  • What he said
  • Is currently blank so won't make a noticeable difference
  • Allows you to see the most recent changes by anonymous users
  • Non-ASCII message names
  • (actually I have no idea either but I'll guess) allows messages to have Unicode names, probably helps with translating to other languages
  • Link table fixed for MSG
  • (guessing again) might have to do with updating pages containing {{msg:...}} messages
So now you know how little I know. HTH --Phil 12:17, Jan 30, 2004 (UTC)

Google Search[edit]

Does anyone know why pages disappear suddenly from Google searches for some time(a week or more) and then equally suddenly come back ? For example if we type the Page name + wikipedia in the search window, there is no link to the page. Ironically there are links to pages where the name of the page is mentioned elesewhere in Wikipedia. This was discussed earlier here without any clue/ solution. I am just bringing this up again because in recent months during the window(time) of disappearance, the parallel page from the Nationmaster site or encyclopedia4u( which use Wikipedia as source of information) comes up prominently( first/second,page etc.,) in the general search in Google.(I have the habit of trying this regularly with the very few pages that I had started/ contributed just to get a high!:-). KRS 09:01, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Part of it may be the mysterious Googledance over which we have no control. Part of it may also be because we have two webservers (en2.wikipedia.org and en.wikipedia.org) which may be confusing Google as to highly ranked our site should be (as compared to, say, Nationmaster). I believe there are technical plans afoot to avoid this latter problem in the near future. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:08, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Well, there no longer is a Google dance once a month. The Google spiders are crawling as we speak and continue to do so. Google isn't confused by the en and en2 difference, however. When you search google from the wikipedia link it searches en.wikipedia.org or en2.wikipedia.org depending on which server you were currently on. try doing george washington site:wikipedia.org and you will get both en and en2 results. Sennheiser 13:29, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Something to offer but technically incompetent.[edit]

There's a few articles I would like to help update. The page on scandium for example ( I am one of the few who actually deal with the product commercially ). There's a few other rare earth metals and so on that I can contribute information to. However, I am completely incompetent when it comes to formatting, html, anything that smacks of needing more computer knowledge than simply typing. So, is there some way to partner up with someone, I providing the information, and they putting it in the form that is required ?

Tim Worstall tcw@netcabo.pt

Tim, my experience is that if you type in useful content, lots of people will format it. Please go ahead and start adding to pages. You might even find that formatting is so simple that you can do it. Some tips are typing ' twice gives italic (you need to do it again to stop) a third ' gives bold and two [s (and to end two ]s) creates a link to an actual or desired wikipedia article other than the one you're working on.
Enjoy Bmills 11:05, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Hey Tim. Just add the info - others will format it. I happen to be the person who wrote most of scandium and would enjoy polishing your edits. Our rare earth article needs a good deal of help. See also WikiProject Elements. --mav
When I first joined I used to put comments like "Help I want the 2 in H20 to be a subscript but I don't know how" in the edit summary box. If you do this you'll find loads of people willing to help. Whenever someone formatted something that I wrote , i'd click on the edit link to see how they did it. I found that I was able to pick up the basics in a couple of days. It's all pretty easy. theresa knott 14:26, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Tim; check out Wikipedia:How to edit a page for information on formatting. (And be sure to create a user account) Welcome to Wikipedia! Elde 16:30, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
And something useful I didn't figure out for ages, three ~ will sign your name, four ~ will sign your name and add a datestamp. Useful for all talk pages/discussions. Welcome, Tim. Fabiform 17:39, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Uploading PDFs[edit]

Why can't I upload a PDF? I am making PNG versions of the IPA chart, but having a PDF version available for download would be a good thing. Is there a good reason that I am forbidden from uploading PDF files? --Nohat 22:12, 2004 Jan 29 (UTC)

I may be wrong, but I think PDF may technically be a proprietry format - i.e. officially "owned" by one company, rather than defined as an open standard - and therefore not suitable for an open-content project such as this. Maybe someone should clarify that in the article... - IMSoP 00:53, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
We have pdf, e.g. Image:Davis recall petition.pdf.--Patrick 01:56, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
PDF used to be a proprietry format, but Adobe have published the specifications. There are now many utilities which write the format. David Newton 03:42, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Are you sure the file isn't too big? I think there's a 2MB limit on file sizes. --Minesweeper 03:47, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

making my own manga[edit]

moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk

New MediaWiki software update[edit]

A new MediaWiki software release has been installed. New features include

  • extended image syntax, allowing alignment of images without div-tags
  • Fractional time zones
  • Page moves look nicer in Recent Changes
  • User, contribs and rollback links at the top of diffs
  • MediaWiki:Loginend displayed at the bottom of Special:Userlogin
  • Hide logged in users from Recent Changes using Special:Recentchanges/hideliu
  • Non-ASCII message names
  • Link table fixed for MSG
  • edit toolbar can be enabled in prefs (works perfectly in IE, near perfect in Mozilla, not so great in most others); will be refined and possibly made default in the future


-- JeLuF et al. 23:38, Jan 29, 2004 (UTC)

(not complaining, just asking) Am I correct in saying that to have floating image with a caption one must still use a div (with the exception of thumbnails, which the new syntax seems to autocaption with the alt text) ? -- Finlay McWalter 23:58, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I've always used (table border=0 align="right") to put pictures and captions together on the right/left/center of the screen. Is there a better way? Fabiform 00:18, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I generally use a <div style="float:right"> instead, but it's not substancially different from what you suggest. If the wikipedia stylesheet had support for floaty things explicitly, then the div way would be better, as it would vanish for visitors with accessibility browsers (who'd be using a different stylesheet, or not one at all). But best of all would be for "floaty" to be in wikimarkup itself, as both the div and table ways are a bit too technical for lots of wikipedians. Anyway, I digress into feature-request land, so I'll quit now. -- Finlay McWalter 00:31, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
What is "MediaWiki:Loginend"? —Paul A 02:15, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Optim requested that the bulk of the text in Special:Userlogin be moved below the controls, so that people with small screens wouldn't have to scroll down in order to log in. Being pretty clueless at graphic design, I decided to the editors decide. If you think it's a good idea, you can move text from MediaWiki:Loginprompt to MediaWiki:Loginend. See MediaWiki talk:Loginprompt for discussion on this. -- Tim Starling 05:50, Jan 30, 2004 (UTC)

Just a technical note: it's not a new release, but a live rollout of the current development snapshot. We'll release the new version at http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/ after fixing bugs exposed by the rollout. --Brion 03:38, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Primary Sources[edit]

Howdy! Right now the four standard "footer" elements of an article are "See Also," "Related Links," "Further Reading" and "References." I would like to propose "Primary Sources" as a third. This is for links to etexts or online editions of things mentioned in an article. Federalist Papers' "Related Links" are really "Primary Sources" as are the Margaret Sanger etexts linked on her page. This would also smooth out the currently clunky formating some people use for stuff like *Project Gutenberg etext of A Tale of Two Citiesetc, etc. This would also be a good way to promote Wikisource texts. I propose a format like:

===Primary Sources=== * [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=18 Project Gutenberg Etext: ''The Federalist Papers'']

===Primary Sources===

or something like:

===Primary Sources=== * [http://digital.lib.msu.edu/onlinecolls/display.cfm?TitleNo=129&FT=gif&I=001 Michigan State University Library Etext: ''What Every Girl Should Know'']

===Primary Sources===

When i click edit section for " Mistake on sitewide redirect page" i am directed to edit "Primary SOurces" Section. is this a bug? Sennheiser 04:10, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes. See those examples just above here, with the sample code that includes the markup for section headings? The edit software is counting those as real section headings, so it thinks it's found the right section when it's really a couple of sections early. It's something to do with the <nowiki> tags not being on the same line as the sample markup. —Paul A 05:34, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
On a side note, according to the MoS, the second word is not capitalized (See also, not See Also). "Related Links" is not an option, while "Related topics" is.--Jiang 08:16, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Aagh! If the Primary Sources header isn't a subheading, there should be only two ='s - so ==Primary Sources==... Thanks :) Dysprosia 11:16, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

New England[edit]

I don't want to sound too Americo-centric here, but I'm wondering just how often the phrase "New England" is used to reference the region in Australia. I ask because it is very commonly used in the United States to refer to the northeastern region, and the vast majority of pages that link to the disambiguation page are for the U.S. region. Would it be fair to move New England (U.S.) to New England with a proper disambiguation block at the top linking to the article on the Australian region? If these two meanings are equally common, then things should stay as they are, and my ignorant inquiry disregarded (but the links still need to be fixed). --Minesweeper 05:05, Jan 29, 2004 (UTC)

I think you're right. New England should be moved to New England (disambiguation) (waste not, want not), and New England (U.S.) should be moved to New England. —Paul A 05:53, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
To answer the question "how often [is] the phrase "New England" is used to reference the region in Australia [?]" - the answer is - it depends on where you are! Round here, the Australian region is meant implicitly and understood as such by the several million people who live here - where? New England (Australia), of course! While most Aussies are easy going and not prone to getting too upset about it, there might be a few who'd prefer that the "default" didn't automatically mean the US. Why not just make New England the disambiguation page without explicitly naming it as such, and leaving the other two exactly as they are? People will both be easily able to find the right page if they just entered "New England", Aussies won't feel like second-class citizens, and those who never even heard of the Australian region will learn something ;-) In other words, it's fine as it is. Graham 05:59, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I did the following: (1) created New England (disambiguation), (2) Moved New England (U.S.) back to New England and added the "alternate meaning" thingie at the top (standard for stuff like Ottawa), (3) Moved New England (Australian region) to New England (Australia) per Wiki standards (if there's N.E. (U.S.) there should be N.E. (Aus.)--both are regions. This maybe should change in the future, but right now the large number of links to New England are overwhelmingly about the U.S. region. jengod 23:33, Jan 29, 2004 (UTC)
For the record, I agree with Graham, and think that you've probably been a bit hasty to make the change. My gut reaction was to revert, but I held back. I'm from England (not New England) by the way, so have no real interest in the specific example, but as a general case I think it only reinforces the US-centric feel of the pedia. (Mind you, I would object to a disambig page for England that pointed to New England (either one!). Is this hypocritical?) HappyDog 02:17, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I agree about the Amerocentrism of the 'pedia, and that's something that's going to need to be battled for some time to come, but before you lump that problem into this particular decision, I beg you to look at [1]--there about 350 links to New England that refer to the U.S. area. I hope as much as you do that New England (Australia) is eventually as linked, but right now it's just not, and it seems silly to break up what looks like a fairly tight web. jengod 07:22, Jan 30, 2004 (UTC)
Okay, I have an idea/suggestion/question. Is there a benchmark for what gets the "main page" of a link--like maybe if 85% of links to a page mean one thing, that page gets to keep the domain, but below that the domain should go to to a disambig page? Has this been covered anyway before? Is there a rule? Something similar came up on New Deal and I felt guilty about moving the UK stuff to another page without building a disambig page as a front for both. jengod 07:35, Jan 30, 2004 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether such a ruling exists, but I am kind of against the idea because I think there will be a lot of instances where the number of articles is irrelevant, or where there are too few articles to make this split. Also, because there are quite a few situations where one useage is obviously going to be much much more common, regardless of the number of articles.
For example, moderator, where the much more common sense (of someone who moderates e.g. a forum/mailing list/etc.) is sharing a disambig. page with neutron moderator, which is a very specific term in a very specific discipline.
However, I am with the idea that there should be a guideline, which should be used if a consensus can't be reached. The drawback of not having it as a rule is, of course, that if (like in this instance) people don't respond quickly enough the change will take place without discussion and therefor without concensus.
I'm not sure I've been very clear here, so in summary: A guideline would be good, but I'm ambiavalent about whether it should be a rule or not. HappyDog 20:47, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

(Note: this article was archived approx. 2 hrs after my last post. I have replaced it. PLEASE BE MORE CAREFUL WHEN ARCHIVING! HappyDog 00:11, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC))

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