Wikipedia:Village pump/December 2003 archive 1

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How to set up a disambiguation page[edit]

List of Australians lists a link to Daisy Bates, which the page describes as "self proclaimed psychologist" yet the link points to an article about an American civil rights activist. I want to set up a disambiguation page points to Daisy Bates (psychologist) for the Australian and Daisy Lee Gatson Bates for the American. I've never done such a thing before. Any tips on doing it well? Dmbaguley 22:16, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I'd like to hear from some Aussies on whether a "self-proclaimed psychologist" is ever going to have a page of her own. If not, then remove Daisy Bates from the List of Australians and there ios then no need for a disambiguation page (I would not assume there is such a need). If later, any "other" Daisy Bates does deserve a page then the disammbiguation page can be created at Daisy Bates and the Daisies separated by middle names or some such - Marshman 03:16, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The Australian Daisy Bates was a pioneer ethnographer (and a very controversial one} and is an important figure in the history of Aboriginal Australians. She certainly should have an article. Adam 03:20, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Copyright vio and reversion, Stub warnings, Search engine[edit]

I created a page from text on a web site I am a contributing member of

spent a lot of time setting up the links to other enteries and potential enteries

and someone decided that as on paragraph of the text was the same as the web site that I was breaching copyright and the whole text was deleted.

My points are

  1. Only one paragraph was taken from the web site so why was the whole page trashed? - I had to do the work over to recreate the links
  2. As a contributing member I was not breaking copyright - so would not it have been better for someone to email me first to ask IF I had copyright.
  3. I could not find out how to reinstate the original page.

Another point

I showed my 12 year old daughter the system and encouraged her to enter something - eventually we noticed her school was mentioned but had no entry so she typed in a short entry saying where it was a what type of school it was - just a couple of lines but factual.

Someone then put in a line saying 'THIS IS A STUB' etc. etc. and it just seemed to me to be insensitive and discouraging - given that the information did tell you the status of the school and where it was - may have been short but it was not valueless.

I'm sure many people have made this point - but the absence of an uptodate search engine seems to be a major major flaw in the credibility of the project.

Kevin Flude

As to your copyright issue - the page was not trashed and its content is all still visible. You merely need to make mention you own the copyright on the talk page and everything should be okay.
As to the stubnote thing - this is standard procedure to add a short note as an indication and an invitation for others to expand on an article. I trust the user who added the stubnote meant not to be insensitive or discouraging, but is merely a courtesy to other users. A stubnote is not a judgement of lack of value, but in my eyes an invitation for expansion.
The search engine issue is unfortunate, but I'm not sure how it impacts credibility - considered the Wikipedia runs on donations and support from Bomis, I believe. Dysprosia 09:01, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
To re-iterate and expand on Dysprosia's comments:
Sadly the number of people who simply take content off other people's websites and submit it as their own vastly exceeds the number of people who write their content, put it on the web, and then submit to Wikipedia as you did. To avoid legal problems we _HAVE_ to take down material as soon as its legality is questioned - happily in cases like yours when the fact that it is a false alarm is realized the material can be easily recovered. If this has not been done in your case yet, tell me the name of the article and I will do it. I hope this answers your questions 1&2. In response to 3, it is easiest if I point you to Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version.
Re the stub, I endorse Dysprosia's comments. The "THIS IS A STUB" notice is not a "THIS ARTICLE IS HOPELESS" euphemism. Actually it serves a technical purpose. If you go to the Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub page and click "What links here" you get a list of all the pages with a stub notice... i.e. a list of pages that, in an ideal encyclopedia, would be longer and more complete than they are. Without that notice, the technical trickery would not work.
Re the search engine, thanks to donations, we get a third server dedicated to Wikipedia turned on tonight. (This server alone cost around $6000.) Hopefully search facilities will be expanded as a result of this. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 14:38, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Perhaps that's not something to rush into.
What's the problem with using Google? I've found it works fine! It's not completely up-to-date, that's true, but that could even be an advantage. When someone is using a search engine in an encyclopedia, IMO they normally want stable content.
The other thing about using Google like this is it may promote our articles in Google when others use Google "native". I don't think Google actually reveals this either way, or even announces when their ranking algorithms change let alone how, rather they keep them a secret to hinder attempts to rig their rankings. But if our visitors from many different IPs use this feature, and then branch to a Wikipedia article, I'd expect Google to notice that. It's not rigging the ratings as such, just providing Google with some valid and accurate evidence which they will happily use IMO. Food for thought? Andrewa 19:57, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The new server has not been purchased for the search engine. It will help to solve the slowness problem that Wikipedia is experiencing since months (even if lately is quite better, but the increase in traffic will get us anyway). If, after this, there is enough spare capacity for the internal search engine, all the better. Alfio 20:37, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Why do you say all the better? That's what was originally suggested in this string, and I expect many agree, as it has generally been assumed that this is the case. But in reading this, it suddenly occurred to me that there are some good reasons for not having one. So, what are the reasons for wanting an in-house search? How does it assist readers? Is it just the vanity thing that other sites have them and we don't want people to think we're not able to?
Are there any problems with using Google apart from this 'credibility' issue? If not, is our credibility really increased by the in-house search engine? Or might it even be increased by being green hat enough to stay with Google?
As for stable content, not being up-to-date doesn't mean it will have the stable version. It would be possible for someone to search just as the page is changed, but it's also possible for Google to cache the page just as the page is changed too. Κσυπ Cyp   20:39, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
True. It certainly doesn't guarantee that the version will be stable. I'm not even sure whether it actually improves the probability of getting the content that the reader wants (I once studied such things, but that was more than 20 years ago), but my guess is that it doesn't make this probability any worse, that's all I was saying, probably not very clearly. If this is so, then it's not a valid reason for an in-house search engine.
This discussion has now been taken up on Wikitech-l. Andrewa 00:49, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
As for Special:Wantedpages, that's a different issue. If the capacity is there it could be turned back on. Perhaps, have a feature automatically disabling it and any similar processor-hungry frills on the fly whenever performance reaches an unacceptable level? Andrewa 18:21, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)


We should add a couple of FAQs based on this query: 1) "Why has my material been deleted" 2) "Why has my page been marked as a 'stub'?". -- Tarquin 13:23, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yes, good idea. Andrewa 08:56, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Uh, to find out what the stub thing is all about, one clicks on the link stub shown at that very article which is marked so. If the author doesn't want to click on that, he is not gonna go about to find an FAQ and discover where exactly his question would be answered. --Menchi 08:58, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Internet Connection[edit]

Just curious, what type of Internet connection does Wikipedia use? What is the bandwidth?
66.32.17.177 09:09, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)

There's a statistics page for the Wikipedia (here), which say that for the last month, the peak throughput was 13650806 KiB/day ~= 1264 Kbps, or less than enough to saturate a T1.
The computers that host the Wikipedia (there are now three of them; huzzah) are all located in Bomis' data-centre, and Jimbo claims (semi-frequently, on the mailing lists) that the Wikipedia's traffic gets lost in the noise, though there is suspicion that he's just trying to be polite and modest about his expenditure on the project.
For this to be so (Wikipedia traffic < 10% of total), Bomis probably has a DS3 or better. Sorry I couldn't be more definite.
James F. (talk) 17:06, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)


Link to redirect?[edit]

Is there a way to make a wikilink that will go to a redirect page, without redirection? Or must I use a regular HTML link?
Thanks, Tualha 15:39, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)

AFAIK, you have to use a regular HTML link. Why do you want to do this, by the way? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:43, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
For a reference in Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion. It would save people having to go back. If there is a wiki way to do it, I'll note it in the page guidelines. If you have to use HTML, it's less trouble to go back. Tualha 15:47, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)


Unicode[edit]

Please see the history of David Hume. An anonymous user is attempting to insert Unicode special characters into the article, and has had a modicum of support in this purpose. There's no problem when viewing the article, but when you attempt to edit it, you have to delete several characters in order to remove the codes if it becomes necessary. I'd hate to see this become a de facto standard on Wikipedia. RickK 16:42, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I hate them too. It makes it harder to edit, especially when there is a long string in a row. Don't most modern browsers support just pasting in the characters. What is the actual problem with doing that? If there is anything wrong with that, maybe the characters could be parsed so that when editing they look like normal characters, but when the page appears for display they are in Unicode. Dori | Talk 16:52, Dec 3, 2003 (UTC)
I agree except for &mdash; (—) which I think is better than using two dashes (--). Here's the transform (perl code) I've been using to fix special characters. This (well, the guideline, not the code) should go into the manual of style if it's not there already.
   # smart quotes
   s/[\x93\x94]+/\"/gs;
   s/[\x92\xb2\xb9]+/\'/gs;
   s/[\xb3]+/\`/gs;
   s/[\x96]+/-/gs;
   # HTML escapes
   s/\&#8211;/-/gs;    # &ndash;
   s/\&#8212;/&mdash;/gs;
   s/\&#8216;/\`/gs;   # &lsquo;
   s/\&#8217;/\'/gs;   # &rsquo;
   s/\&#8220;/\"/gs;   # &ldquo;
   s/\&#8221;/\"/gs;   # &rdquo;
   # unwanted HTML escapes
   s/\&ndash;/-/gs;
   s/\&lsquo;/\`/gs;
   s/\&rsquo;/\'/gs;
   s/\&ldquo;/\"/gs;
   s/\&rdquo;/\"/gs;
Daniel Quinlan 17:40, Dec 3, 2003 (UTC)
&mdash; and &ndash; do not display on some older browsers. So I use Unicode for them. This may be why you are seeing others as well. Fernkes 21:30, Dec 3, 2003 (UTC)
&mdash; should be used in articles. If it's an issue for display in HTML, then the Wikipedia software could do a transform to the Unicode character when generating HTML from the Wiki source, but I doubt that Unicode characters actually work on a higher percentage of browsers and systems. For &ndash;, it is far easier (and well-accepted) to use a simple "-" character. Daniel Quinlan 22:29, Dec 3, 2003 (UTC)
Dashes are annoying, everyone seems to have their own idea. People use -, --, &mdash; and &#8212;. The latter apparently works in more browsers than &mdash;, but nonetheless people go through articles chaotically changing each of the four styles to any other of the four styles, the target style being determined by the phase of the moon and various other astrological indicators. Let's just implement render-time automatic conversion from -- to some decreed standard and save everyone the hassle. -- Tim Starling 04:06, Dec 4, 2003 (UTC)
I thought about requesting that some time ago, but I had a bad feeling that "--" is sometimes used in other ways where it doesn't want to be &mdash;. Using &mdash; in article source may be safer. Anything to avoid numeric codes in article source, though! (If &#8212; is really more reliable, we should at least convert &amp;mdash; to that when producing HTML.) Daniel Quinlan 04:17, Dec 4, 2003 (UTC)
What else is -- used for? I don't think it's used for anything where the meaning would be obscured by converting it to —. But if there is such a case, it can be escaped: &#45;-. -- Tim Starling 04:26, Dec 4, 2003 (UTC)
It is used in C sources, so any article that contains a C source would be displayed most incorrectly. Nikola 06:52, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
If I understand your regexps, you're adding the backtick, by the Wikipedia:Manual of Style is still not a Good Thing... Dysprosia 04:08, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I only replace a Unicode/HTML backtick with a plain-old backtick. I add nothing. Much more manual editing is required to fix backticks since you need to figure out what the original editor intended or what is most appropriate in that context, so this script does additionally warn that a backtick was found. Daniel Quinlan 04:17, Dec 4, 2003 (UTC)
I'm no good at explaining things :) I'll let the MoS do it for me - not curved (smart) ones or the "backtick": Dysprosia 04:22, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
You're replacing left quotes with backticks, aren't you? Not backticks with backticks. -- Tim Starling 04:26, Dec 4, 2003 (UTC)
Ah, gotcha. Thanks for the correction. Daniel Quinlan 04:42, Dec 4, 2003 (UTC)~
For reference I mean this character ` <-- backtick. Dysprosia 04:33, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Yeah, for some reason I thought &lsquo; was the same, but it's not. I'll default to converting &lsquo to ' now. Daniel Quinlan 04:42, Dec 4, 2003 (UTC)



Working in a language in which you are likely to make mistakes[edit]

Is it acceptable to work in a Wikipedia whose language you have only studied academically, and may make grammatical errors in? I was thinking about working in the Spanish Wikipedia, but I have only taken Spanish through a second-year college level (probably 7 years of classes in and before college) and I'd be likely to make grammar errors. Given my experience trying to fix up the travel article, I don't want to put anyone else in the same boat, but I feel I could make significant contributions there. -- Pakaran 01:35, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Personally, I think that would great. The small Wikipedias (Arabic for example) need all the help they can get and would probably welcome people with a less than perfect knowledge of the language. I don't know whether people at the Spanish Wikipedia would feel the as I do though. Maybe you could ask at es:Wikipedia:Café. Angela. 01:45, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Ok thanks, I just made an account and posted there. -- Pakaran 01:59, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I occasionally write stuff in the French wikipedia...despite about 15 years of French classes, I can still only write something that is almost French-like, but the French-speakers there don't seem to mind fixing my mistakes. Likewise, I don't mind fixing non-English peoples' mistakes when they post here. I think the idea is that it is better to have an article with grammar mistakes than no article at all. Adam Bishop 01:59, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
That makes sense - and those of us who are multilingual are in a position to translate articles over, and they can then be fixed much faster than an article could be written from scratch, or so I'd like to think. -- Pakaran 02:07, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Yes, I can attest to French Wikipedians' willingness to patiently correct your...I mean, my, mistakes. My French knowledge is so "basic" (that reads "sucky") that sometimes things that came out make no sense except to myself. So we have to discuss those things in the Talk page, and once the native speaker got what I mean, he helps to make the French decent.
Chinese WP only rarely gets non-Chinese contributors. The only one we have currently is a Brittany linguist who happens to speak Chinese better than me. It's basically the same friendliness in all other Wikipedias I tried: Vietnamese and definitely English. So, get off your hesitating chair and just do it! --Menchi 04:54, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

One way around this is to set up an editing partnership, as we have been doing at the History of Poland series. I write a draft section in (I hope) good English. Various Polish users who do not have good English then make comments and add more material. I then edit their material into good English. This seems to work quite well. Adam 03:32, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

We have an extremely active contributor over on the Welsh Wikipedia, who is very keen. Unfortunately it's obvious that he's translating articles from the English Wikipedia word-for-word and hasn't twigged that Welsh is a Verb-Subject-Object language while English is Subject-Verb-Object so the word order is all wrong! However any article is better than none, and it's not much of a hassle to correct the articles afterwards once I have an idea what he meant. Hopefully the grammar will become clearer to him over time. Arwel 12:02, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Anonymous edits[edit]

This cannot possibly be the first time this has been suggested, but I wonder if it might be better if anonymous IPs are only allowed to access WP read-only. Looking at the vandalism alerts, the vast majority are anonymous IPs. I suspect what happens is that a casual user browses in by chance, finds (to their surprise, probably) that they are able to change the content, and without much thought, does so. Usually this will be something facetious or silly, simply because this is what happens when people are presented with an unexpected opportunity. Those who are more considerate and understand what WP is about will be more than willing to register, it's not as if it takes much effort or costs anything. The ability to edit anonymously was probably very important when WP was first started, simply to get the ball rolling. It's rolling very nicely now, so this feature is no longer a blessing but a liability. I'd bet that implementing this would cut petty vandalism by 90% overnight, without having any significant effect on WPs growth. Thoughts? GRAHAMUK 07:03, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

  • User:Snoyes did an informal survey and found about a third of edits by anons were vandalism. The usual counter-argument to your suggestion is that "vandals will then register, making them harder to remove". This argument probably overestimates the resolve of most vandals, who tend to quickly leave, even without being banned meaning many would be unlikely to register. I think that if registered-only editing is implemented, then anons should still be able to edit talk pages. User:Adam Carr has suggested even stricter restrictions. Maximus Rex 07:10, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
  • It might be useful to show the IP of even registered users when making edits. This would help to identify users with multiple IDs (used to support their own views in talk pages) as well as the ISPs of vandals with user accounts. Anjouli 08:03, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Showing the whole IP isn't a great idea. If nothing else, it enables internet-based attacks on specific users. For example (in my evil spammer persona, below) I might conduct by wicked spamming while simultaneously DoS-ing as many developers as I could. Showing all but the tail octet (e.g. 192.168.22.???) would be okay, however. Lots of sites do this. -- Finlay McWalter 02:09, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • I think it would be a violation of privacy. Just because other sites do it does not mean the wikipedia should do so too. One of the benefits of registering is that you're not showing your IP. If it were abtracted (or encrypted, hashed, whatever) I would be OK with it. In fact I would rather even the IP's of anons were not shown. People should also have a look at the Draft privacy policy and help improve it. Dori | Talk 04:02, Dec 6, 2003 (UTC)
  • (slightly offtopic) A while ago, after reading a rather scary article about spammers were starting to spam into blogs, I sat down and figured out how a spammer might successfully spam wikipedia. Among the conclusions I came to was that I (in my hypothetical evil spammer persona) would only use signed-in users, never anons. This is because any regular admin can block an anon, but it takes a developer (and generally some discussion) to block a signed in user. Armed with a few dozen IPs (trivial for a professional spammer) and a few hundred automatically-created accounts, a smart spammer could easily flood us with so much crap that it would be a full-time job blocking and reverting them. To date we've been lucky that 99% of our vandals only want to put "Zaphod is l33t" into a couple of pages and then go play Mariocart. So I'm not expressing an opinion as to whether anons should be blocked, but be aware that such a move affords no protection against the smart, determined vandal or spammer (from whom we have greatly more to fear). -- Finlay McWalter 01:58, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • My understanding is that "regular admins" can block users, though the interface does not make it obvious how to, but only developers (or rather only one specific developer) should make that decision. --Pakaran 02:04, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
      • Or at least it doesn't make it obvious enough for me to see at first glance :( --Pakaran 05:06, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Actually, the presence of anonymous IPs makes it easier to spot vandalism. When looking for vandalism, I usually just scan the IPs and ignore the user names. Kingturtle 09:12, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia article name cannot begin with a lowercase character[edit]

Wikipedia:List of pages with capital first letters that should be lowercase describes the fact that a Wikipedia article's name cannot begin with a lowercase character. Can this constraint be lifted? Bevo 12:39, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I would doubt it. But without the express word from the developers... Dysprosia 12:43, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I think it would be a good idea if something like "#lowercase" or "__LOWER__" made the first letter of the title lowercase... Κσυπ Cyp   15:12, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
It would be good to lift the restriction somehow. These articles are rare, but pH in particular is an embarrassment IMO. Similarly iBook and lots of technology names. These articles look really silly as they are. Andrewa 09:45, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)



VfD not being posted properly.[edit]

I notice a lot of people who post Votes for Deletion do so without putting a "delete" notice on the page, which is very unfair to the page's author.

Any suggestions how we can police this? Anjouli 02:39, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree with you completely. That is why I asked that the boilerplate be added to the top of VfD....yet, I am absent-minded enough to forget to place the message atop articles I nominate. I always mean to do it, but sometimes I forget. I am a little forgetful. It is part of my charm and part of my trouble! Alas. Kingturtle 02:47, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Take it up with The Cunctator. RickK 07:36, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I suggest it is "policed" in the same way that any additions to an article are "policed". If you see an article without the notice, add it. You can't expect people to be perfect and always remember to add the notice. A huge number of people look at the articles listed on VfD so surely one of them is going to notice the lack of the message. I don't think it's something you need to start getting overly worried about. A few months ago there was no requirement to add such a notice anyway, so whilst it is an excellent idea to add it, it isn't the end of the world when someone forgets. Angela. 07:52, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Ditto Angela - just add the notice. If the fact that the submitter did not put the notice on the page annoys you (I know it annoys the hell out of me when I don't see it), just move the listed page to the section corresponding to the date you put the notice on the page. You could also leave a short reminder on the submitter's talk page that adding the notice is considered to be good manners. --mav 09:38, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
That is an excellent suggestion. Now watch me get flamed the first time I move a block to a different date :) Anjouli 13:52, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Agree it's an excellent suggestion. IMO it should be standard practice. I've seen it done several times, including by a sysop who was otherwise about to delete the article, and I haven't seen any flame wars result yet. It's a reasonable thing to do and avoids wasting time discussing undeletion later. Andrewa 09:33, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia used by other sites[edit]

I have noticed that other domains use Wikipedia's database. They always give wikipedia credit at the bottom. And that's cool....but, a page like http://www.4reference.net/encyclopedias/wikipedia/Dorothea_Dix.html has advertisements all over it. I don't like the idea of someone making money off of wikipedia text.

  1. Who authorizes what sites can use wikipedia data?
  2. What are the rules about how wikipedia data can be used?
  3. Shouldn't we be upset when a site that uses wikipedia data makes a profit off said data? Kingturtle 09:21, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I think if they acknowledge the source (namely, Wikipedia), then it's all legal.
To answer # 2, I think they can butch up our data if they cite "properly".
#3: Yes, I wish the $ goes back into Wiki-fund.
#1: I don't believe you need an authority to take Wiki-stuff.


I wish they have at least an "Edit" link that when people click on, brings them to our editable fun site.
--Menchi 09:25, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)


www.4reference.net doesn't give a link back to the actual Wikipedia page. Should they? -- Tarquin 10:16, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Don't they have a hyperlink to our main page at the bottom of their page? --Menchi 10:24, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
You're looking for Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content.
On the subject of $, they are in effect contributing. They are delivering Wiki content on their bandwidth and taking the load off ours. Anjouli 13:56, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Under the terms of the GNU FDL that we have all written our articles under, anyone who wants to can take all our text and sell it. With numerous caveats of course. See the link for answers to all these questions. Tempshill 18:55, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

My main concern is the money issue. I don't like the idea of someone taking wikipedia content, putting it on a page, and then making an easy financial profit. Kingturtle 20:14, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
There's nothing preventing someone from making a profit on Wikipedia articles. In fact, the GNU FDL is pretty consciously not a "for non-commercial use only" license. It's perfectly okay, by design, for someone to package up Wikipedia content and sell it in a book or on a CD-ROM, for example. --Delirium 21:20, Dec 6, 2003 (UTC)
How is this eazy money? Anyone can find the original Wikipedia and view it without ads. For them to make money, they have to add some value. pstudier 23:09, 2003 Dec 6 (UTC)


If we don't get around to it, eventually someone will provide a filtered version. If I had the money I might do it myself. The version I'd promote would be unedited, I'd just have a bunch of people choosing articles (which would then be fixed at that version) that were G-rated, seemed accurate, NPOV and well-written, and then automatically remove all broken links, talk etc from the result. I think the result would already be very saleable, both in online and DVD versions. I'd probably provide a year's ad-free online subscription bundled with the DVD, and a mechanism for getting the latest versions of articles when online if they differed from the DVD, automatically saving these updated articles on the hard drive or a CD-R or CD-RW for offline use (many new systems sold in Australia currently have separate CD-RW and DVD drives). Andrewa 09:23, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
If you plan to do this, do remember that such a version should fall under the GNU/FDL. In particular this means that others have the right to make copies of what you are selling, and sell them or give them away themselves. Andre Engels 11:41, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
True. I actually have no plans to fork Wikipedia at this stage, for profit or otherwise. I'm hoping we'll come up with our own sifter project soon. Andrewa 15:07, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Edit conflicts[edit]

Perhaps everyone could look at the history of Wikipedia:Edit conflicts and vote on which version they prefer, by reverting to it. Then a professional superhero could be hired to look through the resulting history, and choose the most reverted-to version. Κσυπ Cyp   11:18, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

But not more than 3 reverts a day :) Angela. 11:38, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
And carefully checking the IPs used for people with multiple IDs trying to "stuff the ballot box". Anjouli 13:59, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
And to be fair you would need to release all the protected page locks - which could be a recipe for chaos. I don't think this type of "vote" would be practical. But perhaps we need some alternative mechanism with the same effect. Anjouli 14:01, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I have been proposing two mechanisms to deal with this:
  • Allow specific users to be blocked from editing a page.
  • Allow alternate versions of very very contentious articles, then use Approval voting to select one.
Daniel Quinlan 21:00, Dec 6, 2003 (UTC)

CVS Blame[edit]

Is it possible to do a 'CVS Blame' on an article? Jahs 17:39, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

What does that mean? RickK 19:59, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

No, it's not possible. ("CVS blame" is really the "cvs annotate" command which shows who last modified each and every line, very useful tool, actually, and not just for blaming people for problems.) Daniel Quinlan 20:58, Dec 6, 2003 (UTC)
Sorry, should have explained for non-geeks. :) So it's not possible at the moment, but is there a technical reason against it? WikiPedia keeps the full history (AFAIK) so in theory it'd be doable.
Well, it's a somewhat expensive operation and non-trivial to implement. In addition, because Wikipedia is paragraph-based rather than line-based, I doubt it would be quite as useful. However, I agree it would be useful. It's open source, so you can always implement it and contribute the feature. Daniel Quinlan 00:52, Dec 7, 2003 (UTC)
Well, see: http://www.research.ibm.com/history/ --Brion 06:51, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Mind-blowing! Thanks for the pointer. So when do we get the open-source version?? Oh,well, anyway, there's another fine thing here, thanks to IBM's old pratcie of publishing research topics: some shmuck can't come along and patent the whole idea, now that it's published. Dandrake 19:12, Dec 7, 2003 (UTC)
To make feature requests, see wikipedia:bug reports. To contribute, start by reading wikitech-l. Martin 04:29, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Did non-existent user trash entire Page history as well as most recent version?[edit]

It seems that user S1rkull somehow managed to wipe out the entire page history for the article on Truism. The page that's there resembles an old copy of the article. Can the most recent version of the article before the intervention be recovered? Peak 04:19, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Sure? If so, they managed to wipe it off the google cache and internet archive as well... Martin 04:28, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Do you mean Truism? Hmmm... I see only the one stubby version, apparently created by S1rkull, who has no user page, on 7 December which is today. If there has previously been a proper article, it looks like corruption of some sort to me. If that's true I wouldn't necessarily blame the user, if they even exist.
On 08:53, 1 Dec 2003 Menchi wikified truism. At that time, there was definitely an article; I subsequently tweaked it a bit, and put a "watch" on it, which is how I came to notice that S1rkull had (seemingly) performed some dark wikimagic.Peak 06:59, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
It not being on Google doesn't mean anything, their spider can take months to reach a new article (in theory may never reach it). What's the 'internet archive'? Andrewa 06:43, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
There was no article Truism as of the database being moved to the new server on December 3. Looking further... There used to be one, with revisions on November 30 by Matty j and December 1 by Peak. It was deleted at 19:26, 2 Dec 2003 by Ed Poor with comment "Wikipedia is not a dictionary". --Brion 07:03, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The edit history/deleted edits thingy isn't showing up on it. A history-only reversion should probably be done. Dysprosia 07:08, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion. --Brion 07:11, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Thanks, sorry I didn't see that earlier. Dysprosia 07:13, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Thank you, Brion. Can its prior contents be restored or made available in some way? At the time that Ed Poor deleted the article, it did not resemble a dictionary entry at all.
Dug out of the old database and restored. --Brion 07:36, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Brion - Thanks very much. I thought your prior message on undeletion meant that I would have to write a note there, which I have already done. I guess I'll go back there to indicate that the problem has been resolved --- or has it? How can an article be deleted without "due process"? Peak 07:44, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
As one of the contributors to the article, I would like to suggest that recent contributors to an article should at least be notified when an article on which they have worked is about to be deleted. E.g. they might like to make a copy of it before it gets zapped. It might also save this cycle where an article is created, evolves, gets deleted, recreated, .... Peak 07:20, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
That's why we have Wikipedia:Votes for deletion, supposedly. --Brion 07:29, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)


Wholesale copyright violation by wordIQ[edit]

I have found a site, wordIQ, which appears to have copied most or all of Wikipedia and is passing it off as their own.

This seems to be a mass copy. Searching for wikipedia found hundreds of articles containing the word in boilerplate stub text, links to Wikipedia: pages, etc. Anyone who contributed before August 2003 (which unfortunately doesn't include me - Tualha) has probably had their copyright violated.

Analysis of the history of Cognitive science shows that this article was copied sometime between August 17 and September 1 of 2003. Compare the August 17 Wikipedia article with "their" page.

I found no explicit point of contact. Their "About wordIQ page gives an email address and the phone number 626-226-8279, which would be in the Los Angeles area. Their terms mention California law. Whois merely reveals that they're hiding behind Domains By Proxy.

I don't think this is an honest mistake. I think this is a massive intentional grab of Wikipedia content with no intent to abide by the terms of the GFDL. Let's nail these bastards. See Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter.

I have added this to Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content.

Tualha 17:27, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Folks, please be nice! We don't need to bring down on ourselves a bad name. If you decide to contact them, please be polite and factual. I would encourage allowing Jimbo or someone else who's been around for a while to handle this. A lot of sites are very confused about GNU licensing and how it works, so it could be an honest mistake. And even if it's not, we still don't want to earn ourselves a bad name. Daniel Quinlan 17:34, Dec 7, 2003 (UTC)
Sigh. I suppose you're right. But I just can't believe that it's an honest mistake. They mass-copied the Wikipedia and slapped a copyright notice on it. How can that be an honest mistake? Tualha 17:37, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Well, the odds are that they'll calmly claim it was an honest mistake whether or not it was. And who would the average person believe, the screaming net community or the calm business? Hence, my request for civility. ;-) Daniel Quinlan 17:43, Dec 7, 2003 (UTC)
Point taken :) Tualha 18:20, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Are User and User:Talk pages personal[edit]

I remember seeing a related discussion on the pump earlier today, but I can no longer see it. Is a user allowed to do anything on his user page or his user talk page which would normally be against wikipedia conventions if done on a regular article, e.g., blanking of the entire page.

There is a user who blanks out his talk page after each discussion, so we don't get to know what discussions he's been having. Are there any rules on what a user is allowed or disallowed on his user page ? Jay 17:30, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It's their talk page, so they have a great deal more latitude there than other places. Lots of people clear their talk pages occasionally, and a few do so at the conclusion of a given conversation. If they remain responsive to other wikipedians, then this isn't an issue. Previous discussions are available in the article's history, as always. -- Finlay McWalter 17:42, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
You can always look at the history. The convention is that the User page is the user's and the User talk page is where discussions go and the user can blank or archive it periodically. However, it is generally considered to be in bad taste to quickly blank discussions or ignore questions. In extreme cases where a user is ignoring pleas to stop misbehaving, it might add weight to a request that someone be banned or desysoped. Personally, I leave discussions on my talk page forever. (I might have to start archiving, but they'll still be there.) Daniel Quinlan 17:43, Dec 7, 2003 (UTC)
Some people get away with blanking their talk page. Some don't. There aren't any agreed-on rules for who can do what with either your user page or talk page. Some people even invite others to edit their user page whereas others are strongly against the idea. Wikipedia talk:User page might be a good place to discuss it. Angela. 18:22, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Thanks Angela for pointing out the Wikipedia:User page. I had tried looking for such a page in Wikipedia:Utilities but couldn't find it. (I've added it now). I should've looked up Wikipedia:List of articles in the Wikipedia namespace first thing, but its too long to type and I always get it wrong. Jay 18:53, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
That would be because it's only existed for a couple of days. :) Angela.

Searching for missing knowledge[edit]

I was thinking that a page wikipedia really needs is a what's missing page, especially on the front page. So Searching For An Answer is now a page for it. Can we put it on the front page?

That would be a duplicate of Wikipedia:Reference desk, so I've made your page a redirect to there. Morwen 18:39, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

linking to a French Wiki image[edit]

can someone tell me how to link to an image that's in the French wikipedia space (or tell me if this is a silly thing to do)? thanks. seglea 20:56, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It would be best if you re-uploaded it on the english wikipedia. The image may change afterwards, it could be deleted, etc. Anyway, currently the only way to do an inter-wiki image link is to use a full html link, like this: flag of the United States. Alfio 21:14, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)


External Links[edit]

Hope this is the right page, if not please move it. QUESTION: Should we be posting External links to personal websites or any other kind of site that is not credible. It seems to me if the goal is to have Wikipedia be an "accurate" and relaible source, then any external link it references to has Wikipedia's "certificate of authenticity" equal to our own unless a clear disclaim notice is given as part of the External Link listing. It would seem that if you can refer to John Doe's personal website on the "History of apples", then it becomes legitimate to link to a personal KKK and the like website from numerous Wikipedia articles. Angelique 01:58, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think that's a bit of a jump - adding a couple of useful and interesting articles is different from linking to the KKK or whatever. As long as the external links aren't inaccurate or biased in some way, there shouldn't be a problem. In many cases it may be more useful to link to them, rather than put all the possible information in the article. Adam Bishop 02:03, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
IMHO you will run into the problem of agreeing what is "credible". I do not believe an editor needs to agree with a website to link to it. For instance a NPOV article might legitimately link to both Creationism and Evolutionist websites. I would see no problem with an article on racism linking to a KKK website, as long as it was a "mainstream" KKK site, not a here-today-gone-tomorrow personal hate rant. Would judging by Google rank be a yardstick for linking?Anjouli 05:39, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The actual websites in question are (from New France):

For me, external links are supplemental information that goes beyond Wikipedia's level of detail, so I generally only include ones that seem at least as knowledgeable and current as the content of the article referring to them. From a practical point of view, you don't want to link to bad data, otherwise future editors can mess up the WP article by using the external pages as sources. Many web pages are ephemeral too, be sure the WP article still makes sense if all the links stop working tomorrow. Stan 05:49, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The point that we don't want to link to bad data made by User:Stan Shebs is why I raised the matter. (and not for one specific page but relative to all of Wikipedia) Linking to an outside source that is only someone's personal page raises unnecessary risks and instead of adding benefit to Wikipedia has the potential to be detrimental. As such, my view would be never to add any outside link except those pointing to an source whose credentials are undoubted. Why would an Encyclopedia like Wikipedia ever want to refer anyone to the writings of sites where both the qualifications of the writer and the validity of their information is unknown to Wikipedia? In books, authors quote their references so as to prove they are quoting reliable sources. Why would Wikipedia want to do the opposite? Angelique 16:31, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Having now seen the discussion on Talk:New France, I think your reasons for deprecating the external links are not valid. The personal page of a world authority is unimpeachable, and oftentimes a hardworking person goes to a great deal of trouble to put accurate information on a website. The only way to be sure is to evaluate website content on a case-by-case basis. For example, hazegray.org has a project to enter the content of DANFS as close to verbatim, and from experience I can say that they are very accurate, with fewer mistakes and typos than the average WP article. Stan 17:17, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)~

Dear Stan Shebs: Your insinuation is unfounded. REPEAT: " ---- I raised the matter. (and not for one specific page but relative to all of Wikipedia). my view would be never to add any outside link except those pointing to an source whose credentials are undoubted." Equally as often, a hardworking bigot etc. goes to great lengths to put their slant on "accurate" information. Want a list of "factual" right wing Religious Right sponsored sites? Should Wikipedia link to these? Or is someone going to start judging links? Angelique 22:26, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

If an external link has some value and some bad points, just add a note ("the pictures are good but the dates on the site are inaccurate"). This is all a normal part of scholarly work; we don't try to pretend that things don't exist, we mention them and describe their good/bad points. If you insist on sites with "undoubted" credentials, you don't make the problem go away, you just turn it into a debate on whose credentials are doubtful and whose are not. Stan 07:04, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
There are two main reasons for linking to an external website. One is to link to useful and accurate information contained on that website, and the other is because the website itself is the object of interest. In the second case the website does not need to be accurate, fair or anything else. An article on (for instance) an Arabic newspaper would be negligent if it did not show the address of that newspaper's website - whether or not the information contained on that site was accurate, NPOV or not. People seem to be defending the first type of link and objecting to the second. Anjouli 18:55, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The links are valid information sources. The first one is a list of all governors, intendants and bishops of New France, which in fact could be used to create a List of New France governors and intendants type page. The other, which is the one Angelique is clearly opposed to, is the personal Website of linguist and teacher Patrick Cousture from Montreal, Quebec. This Website features a rich chronology of the history of Quebec from New France until now and the sources that he used for this work are listed at the bottom of this page: http://www.republiquelibre.org/cousture/HIST1.HTM. There are over 30 different books he's read covering some 500 years of history. Because Patrick Cousture is a Quebecer, he writes in the way an American would write of America, an Australian of Australia, a Scot of Scotland etc. This is what Angelique doesn't like about the site. -- Mathieugp 19:15, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I think I did in fact use that site to make a list of Governors of New France, which at the moment is on List of Governors General of Canada (but it has been discussed on that page that governors and Intendants of New France should be split off). Adam Bishop 19:22, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Formatting help[edit]

The table at Australia has its margin on the right instead of the left. Can someone fix this? --Jiang | Talk 08:40, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

No, I don't see it. Must be a broswer thing. Try Mozilla IE. --Menchi (Talk)â 10:01, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I see it in Mozilla Firebird. Compare Australia and some other country page; Japan for example. Japan's table is flush with the right side of the page, while Australia's has a margin on the right of the table. --Delirium 10:30, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)
I was using IE at the time, and assumed Mozilla would work too. Apparently not! --Menchi (Talk)â 10:36, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Fixed. --Menchi (Talk)â 10:36, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I'm afraid it's still deeply broken on Opera. I'll see if I can figure out why later on (and I'll try it in Konqueror too). -- Finlay McWalter 12:16, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Works OK in Opera 6.03 - Alfio 12:34, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Opera 7 breaks on lots of the tables used in the standard country template. The "area" and "population" rows get smushed together in a very unpleasant way. The cause seems to the "E 12 m square" link, which looks like this: [[1 E12 m²|7,686,850 km²]]. I suspect Opera 7 (a different rendering and parsing engine to opera 6) doesn't think that superscript-2 in the URL is legal, and so misparses the page horribly. This is an issue for (at least) Austria, Australia, Argentina. Peru is even more broken (it's almost funny), I think for the same reason. (Note: Australia has unclosed td and tr tags after "ranked 6th", but this isn't the cause of the problem. -- Finlay McWalter


I use Opera 7.1, and I don't see any such problems. Which Opera build do you use? -- Baldhur 12:49, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
"v7.20 Build 3144 Platform Win32 System Windows XP" -- Finlay McWalter 12:55, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Apparently there is a major rendering difference between 7.1 and 7.2. I had 7.2 installed myself, but returned to 7.1 due to several problems. One of these problems was, that the RecentChanges were not displayed in a proper way (and that is my most frequently used site in the web) - perhaps you should leave a note on Wikipedia:Browser notes. -- Baldhur 13:07, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Good idea - thanks. (Australia, etc., are generlly okay on Konqueror, btw). -- Finlay McWalter 13:19, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Norberto Carlos Cagliotti[edit]

When I was adding Cecil H. Green to the list of people born on August 6, I decided to read the whole birthday list. Second-to-bottom on the list, just above JonBenét Ramsey, was an entry for someone called Norberto Carlos Cagliotti, born in 1980, a surfer and "accenturian". The boy didn't have his own Wikipedia article, and I had never heard of him either, even thoughh he was supposed to be famous and I wanted to find out what in the world an "accenturian" was. The 1980 birthdate compounded my interest -- we could have a new Sunshine Generation celebrity, but my suspicions of vanity were raised. I did a Google search on the name, and there doesn't seem to be any Net presence of note -- mostly just sites that borrowed from Wikipedia. Norberto did show up at one page -- http://www.udesa.edu.ar/departamentos/economia/tba_listado.html. It appeared to be merely a display of college theses. Does anyone know anything about this guy, or is it simply vanity being poured onto a Wikipedia birthdate page? Wiwaxia 12:46, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I removed him. Accenturian = works for Accenture? This is a case when you could have got away with being bold. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:54, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I was also born in 1980, so I suppose I'm somewhat sensitive to the issue, and regardless of whether he belongs on the page in question, referring to a 23-year-old as a "boy" seems needlessly agist. I hope I simply misinterpreted Wiwaxia's intended meaning. --Nohat 22:37, 2003 Dec 9 (UTC)
Hey! I was born in 1979! I take offense at your offense. And no, I do not believe he is too young to accomplish great things! Frankly, if Norberto had been born in 1970 or 1960 (or even 1930), I wouldn't have considered the same accomplishments (and number of Google hits) to be worthy of an inclusion in a Wikipedia celebrity birthday list either. It's not hard to say, from the response so far, that no one thinks Norberto belongs on the August 6 page. Of course, if people like Shawn Fanning (b. 1980), Alex Koroknay-Palicz (b. 1981), Michelle Branch (b. 1983), Cole Bartiromo (b. 1984), Ilya Andropolsky (b. 1987) or Miranda Rosenberg (b. 1987) want to add themselves to date pages, I or anyone else is not going to be against it, because their accomplishments and name recognition are full worthy of it, regardless of age. Wiwaxia 12:19, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Mare Island[edit]

I think there should be mention of Mare Island.... 

I have an American Flag from 1916 that says "Mare Island 1916" and

has a rank on it. It is the size that is flown over Capital buildings , so I believe it was the Shipyards. Maybe, if you include Mare Island, you can research this Flag? I have done some looking here and there, but have not been able to find information about the flying or the retirement from the Shipyard of this Flag. I know in 1906 there was the San Francisco earthquake, and I know in 1917 the Shipyard was blown up by espionage. I "aquired" the Flag 14 years ago and a wild tale goes with it, that's another story. Hopefully we can put this Flag back on the map,I am curious if it was the first and only Flag flown over Mare Island? If you can help, I would appreciate, or, simply I have a suggestion of "Mare Island" be included in "Wikipedia." 

                                       Thank you,
                                                  Bryan Cross


Wikipedia:Requested articles, Wikipedia:Reference desk --Menchi (Talk)â 12:54, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Perhaps you were looking for Mare Island Naval Shipyard? --Minesweeper 12:57, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I am the one who posted the Mare Island comment, my email address is KissTycal@aol.com should anyone need to contact me.

Wikipedia:Brilliant prose candidates[edit]

Now that some steps are being taken to clean up the pre-nomination brilliant prose articles, I'd suggest that something needs doing with the current candidates at Wikipedia:Brilliant prose candidates. Some of the disputed pages have been listed for months (see Richard Wagner for instance) and there are lots of nominated pages with no seconder.


I's suggest that a new limit of one month be set (maybe too generous) and that any page still disputed or not seconded at the end of that time be removed from the list of candidates.

Any ideas? And anyone like to go second or dispute a candidate today? Bmills 15:59, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

To clarify: one month limit is there already for disputed candidates, one week for undisputed. Only self-added articles currently need a seconder. I'd suggest that all articles should be seconded and that one week is not long enough to allow for objections. Bmills 16:13, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

How-to to Wikibooks?[edit]

I think that that page should be deleted, and all of the articles that it links to should be integrated into Wikibooks. I got a vote of consent on talk:How-to, but I want a little more discussion before I undertake such a significant change.-Smack

Are you proposing one or more "How-to" books for Wikibooks using as starters these articles at Wikipedia? If so, sounds like a good idea. How-to articles consolidated into one or more texts would probably be more suitable as a Wikibooks project IMHO - 24.94.82.245 02:59, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)- Marshman 03:18, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I have no doubt that that is a good idea. What I meant (sorry I wasn't clear the first time) is that the Wikipedia articles (or sections of articles, as the case may be) should be deleted. -Smack 07:15, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Would it be possible to leave the how-to pages but replace the contents of each one with a link (maybe even a redirect ?) to the relevant part of Wikibooks ? Articles that link to the how-to pages would then not be left with broken links. -- Gandalf61 10:10, Dec 2, 2003 (UTC)
That's a sensible idea. Is it possible to create redirects like this ? Smack might I suggest you start with the cookery pages, as It is clear where you could put them in wikibooks. Drop me a line on my talk page when you are ready to start and I'll give you a hand. theresa knott 11:07, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Yes, it is possible to make interwiki redirects. Unfortunately, such a redirect seems to omit the familar Redirected from line. User:Smack/interwiki redirect test -Smack 02:18, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
It is possible, but a lot of people see it as a bad thing, because of the difficulty in editing the redirect and the confusion that being at another site may cause. See m:Redirected user pages considered harmful. Angela 02:23, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Point taken. So would it be wise to delete the how-to content altogether? -Smack 04:00, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
If you just delete, you lose the edit history. Therfore, before deleteing you need to work out a list of authors for each article, and post their names in the edit summary of the page when you move it to wikibooks. ie {moved from wikipedia -authors are , name, name , name .....} So that we comply with the copyleft licence. Does this make sense ? theresa knott 11:13, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The most sensible thing would be to transfer the page with the complete editing history intact, wouldn't it? Note that Special:Export was specifically designed for this sort of thing, though the requisite import facility isn't done just yet. --Brion 12:01, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Wiki Farm for mediaWiki[edit]

I am trying to set up a special purpose wiki where only members of a special interest group can edit. I really like the MediaWiki that Wikipedia uses, and Wikipedia is an excellent example to show people how a Wiki works. Does anyone know of a Wiki farm that uses MediaWiki? I mean a host that runs MediaWiki that will allow me to set up my own Wiki, probably for a fee. pstudier 17:31, 2003 Dec 9 (UTC)

I don't know what a wiki farm is, but have a look at these sites Wikipedia:Sites using MediaWiki and see if you find what you're looking for. Also check out meta:MediaWiki. Dori | Talk 17:51, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any wiki farms using MediaWiki. Maybe you should try asking Jimbo Wales to set one up on our servers. -- Tim Starling 23:54, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

A proposal on categorization[edit]

This is a little idea of mine that I have written up. Please read and comment. Zocky 03:44, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

That's a very good idea. The only problem with it is that it has already been suggested, discussed, developed and implemented, and now only awaits some sort of decision on whether or not it should be released on the general public. Except it uses [[Category:xxx]], not [[cat:xxx]]. -- Tim Starling 03:47, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)
Really? Well, it being the sensible solution, it's no wonder. I tried looking for it, but couldn't find anything of worth (and I did try suggesting something like this on meta quite some time ago). Please provide links. Zocky
It was mainly discussed on the mailing lists wikipedia-l and wikitech-l. See Eloquence's proposal from wikitech-l in February 2003 and Magnus Manske's completion note in July. -- Tim Starling 04:05, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)
Heh, the same thing :) Is there anything in my text that's new, or should I just trash the whole thing? Zocky 04:13, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I finally found where I tried proposing it first! It was on sourceforge: [[1]], back in January, but it didn't get any comments until last week :) Turns out many people suggested it. Must mean it's a good idea. Zocky 04:29, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
So what's holding up a trial? That's the only way we'll see whether it works, ie (a) sits comfortably on existing culture and (b) achieves something. Andrewa 06:39, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Spell checking a Wikipedia article[edit]

What are good techniques that allow quick spell checking of a Wikipedia article? Bevo 19:19, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Unfortunately, for now, the only way that I know of is to use an external spell-checker. You can do this by pasting the displayed text into a word processor such as Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org and using their spell-checking capabilities, or using some command line program such as aspell or ispell. Dori | Talk 19:44, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)
Using a Mac, with Safari. The spell checker is available to any editable text, including the text box for editing WP articles. Even as you type. I do wish they would make this panel support Undo though - maybe next version ;-) GRAHAMUK 23:27, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I hadn't actually noticed that before; that's kind of neat! Unfortunately it doesn't automatically detect the language, so I have to manually switch dictionaries on en/fr/etc. And it doesn't have an Esperanto dictionary built-in, I'll have to try and track one down... :D --Brion 00:34, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Dec 2003 (UTC)

Referrers[edit]

Wikipedia:Referrers is interesting but quite old - it hasn't been updated since September 2002. I think it would be worthwhile to have an updated version.

Tualha 06:44, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Prevalence of pages about places[edit]

I wonder why it is that the majority of times I use "Random page" I get a page about a locality, and an American locality at that. Is there some special programming designed to give such results, or is this just an amazing coincidence?

Cheers JackofOz 07:44, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

We just have a lot of them. See User:Rambot. --Brion 07:51, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It's because Wikipedia is full of junk. See my The Wikipedia Quality Survey Adam 08:26, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Don't blame JackofOz for the terrible title of this section; mea culpa. JackofOz, you should see a link near the top of the page called "Post a question now" - it creates a new section header. Tualha 13:56, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It's because a lot of stuff was robotically imported from US Census data. There are complaints about this from time to time, which are generally answered by people who note that their first introduction to Wikipedia was searching for their home town or birthplace on Google, which often turns up one of these very common Wikipedia articles. Tempshill 01:49, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with it myself. Yes, on average, pages are less edited, less "personal", than they were before Rambot did its stuff, and the article count can be considered inflated. But the other articles are no less useful or worthwhile. We just have a whole lot of other information, which is very useful itself, and as Tempshill pointed out, bring in plenty of new people. Tualha 04:40, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

So could there be a way to make "random page" produce more interesting results - e.g. maybe it would only select a page above a certain size, so the page is likely to be more "interesting" than a short page. But then I guess it would not be "random page" anymore ! Gandalf61 07:31, Dec 11, 2003 (UTC)

Slooooow[edit]

So, what was the technical problem last night, and presumably now too, since things are working but very slow? Tualha 14:44, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Last night we had the database server fall over, choke, and die with a fishbone stuck in its throat. (Or the equivalent; it really shouldn't have died under the test load it was given.) It's been rebooted and the DB's memory usage adjusted in the hope that this will help.
I can't speak to the specific slowdown you're referring to, but we have had intermittent problems with the web servers which we haven't yet gotten to the bottom of. --Brion 03:53, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Thanks. Tualha 05:35, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Adding an email/Changing a password[edit]

How does one go about adding an email to an account without one? My old account doesn't have an email address, and I forgot the password years ago.

Help!

You probably need to convince one of the developers that you are the same person. I would imagine that that would be a difficult thing, so the only solution is to probably open a new account. Someone correct me if I am wrong on this. Dori | Talk 17:20, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)


Can you link to a subheading?[edit]

Does the software allow links to a subheading (or other specific part) of a wiki page? I know this is possible with HTML, but haven't found any instructions for how to do it here.

Thalia/Karen 05:38, Dec 13, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Karen, yes you can do this using the standard HTML method. Use the URL for the page as normal, add a hash (#), and then the full name of the section replacing any spaces with underscores. For example Wikipedia:Village_pump#Can_you_link_to_a_subheading? Chris Jefferies 08:25, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Note that it's generally considered a bad idea to jump from a different article into the middle of another. Within the same article, it's generally considered okay. Daniel Quinlan 08:30, Dec 13, 2003 (UTC)
Daniel, I do want to jump from one article into the middle of another, but I think it makes sense in this case. There's already a link to the top of the second article a bit earlier in the one I'm working on; I want to add a second link to a specific subheading that doesn't appear on the first screen of the (linked-to) article. When I'm finished working on it, I'm going to ask for reviews, since this my first substantial writing job here. So if someone thinks it's a bad idea.. :-) Thalia/Karen 19:14, Dec 13, 2003 (UTC)
You don't need to replace spaces with underscores. Wikipedia:Village pump#Can you link to a subheading? works just as well.—Eloquence 13:12, Dec 13, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for your help, folks. Thalia/Karen 19:14, Dec 13, 2003 (UTC)
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