Wikipedia:Village pump (news)/Archive A

• Village pump
  • Policy
  • Technical
  • Proposals (persistent)
  • Idea lab
  • WMF
  • Miscellaneous

Village pump (news) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (news).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

---

< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F

Template:Industrial Revolution is open for business

It's still a bit bulky, and I may try and slim it down further. It is a companion to Category:Industrial Revolution. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 00:31, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category maintenance templates

I recently created these two new templates to aid in category maintenance:

1. Template:Categoryredirect — pretty self-explanatory; full rationale for its existence at Template talk:Categoryredirect.
2. Template:Reorganizing — like Template:Inuse, but for categories.

Happy wiki'ing, • Benc • 11:00, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Fundraising drive

To coincide with the international press release being made on Monday, Wikimedia will be holding a cross-project fundraising drive. The details of this are not yet decided. If you would like to contribute to the decision, there will be a discussion on the #wikimedia IRC channel. This will begin at 20:00 UTC on Friday 17 September, 2004.

If you have any points you would like to make before the meeting, or if you can not come to it, please write your ideas on meta:Fundraising meeting, September 2004. The chat will be logged to Meta for those unable to be there. Angela. 19:19, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

A log of the meeting is now available at m:Fundraising meeting, September 2004/Log. Angela. 23:44, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Disambiguation template

I've created Template:This article is about to standardize and centralize (using what links here) all those disambiguating messages that appear on top of articles. E.g., to render:

This article is about tides in the ocean. For the laundry detergent, see Tide (detergent).

you can use:

{{This article is about|tides in the ocean. For the laundry detergent, see [[Tide (detergent)]].}}

As always, comments and edits to the template are welcome. • Benc • 11:38, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Do you need the first sentence? What "this" article is about should be pretty obvious from the first sentence - compare Template:otheruses (which is about as stripped down as these kind of messages get: a plus, in my opinion, because they can be distracting). -- ALoan (Talk) 13:37, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. Ideally, no, we don't need the first sentence. In fact, it's better without, because it's avoiding Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. I just created this template to match what I saw on the majority of articles — I didn't even know about Template:otheruses, which is a cleaner solution. • Benc • 17:07, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[Removed bot-assisted mass change request, which I've withdrawn. • Benc • 05:33, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)]

Saying "this article is about [whatever]" doesn't really violate Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. Saying "this Wikipedia article is about [whatever]" or "click here for the disambiguation page" would. anthony (see warning) 15:04, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Personally, I favor a shorter version, similar to Template:otheruses. I'm not sure if the if it's already possible to use {{otheruse|tide (detergent)}} to link to an article. -- User:Docu

Happy one-millionth-article-day, Wikipedia!

Happy one-millionth-article-day to you...

Now, which article was it, precisely, that brought the tally to one million? --Ardonik.talk()^* 18:24, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Congrats, now I'm curious as well, I think we should honor that article by expanding it into a featured article, whatever the article is about. -- Solitude 20:33, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Is it wrong of me, Solitude, to harbor a mischievous wish that number 1 million was a Pokémon card? ;-) Jwrosenzweig 20:40, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hey! Shouldn't that cake have a million candles? Derrick Coetzee 22:46, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Aw man, at first glance I thought that was a cake that someone had baked and decorated specifically for this occasion. Instead it's a generic birthday cake with... peaches? Oh well... happy 1 millionth, Wikipedia. • Benc • 04:18, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"Important stub" template

I have created Template:Importantstub based on the above discussion regarding systemic bias. I think having this notice on significant articles which are underdeveloped will help in at least three ways:

• Acknowledging an obvious weakness gains the reader's trust
• A more prominent notice encourages development
• Having these articles in a separate category is useful both for expanding and analyzing our progress.

The difficult part is of course to decide what an "important subject" is. I have proposed a standard at Category:Important stub: If another general reference work has a detailed article, and we have just a stub, then it probably is in special need of expansion.

I have not slapped this on articles yet, except for Congo Civil War as an example. What do you think about the idea? We can discuss it here for a while and then move the discussion to Template talk:Importantstub.--Eloquence*

YES!! Let's all read "Systemic bias in Wikipedia", then this, (and maybe "Dealing with trolls" ;-) and start working on a good solution! Awolf002 02:28, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I STRONGLY oppose this. It's entirely POV, saying this stub is more important than some other stub. RickK 02:56, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

I understand your concerns. I agree that the value statement "important" is problematic. I hope you agree that Wikipedia aims to rival all existing general reference works in scope. For those who consider this goal very important, it would be extremely useful to specifically flag those articles we have that are much shorter in Wikipedia than they are in other reference works. Do you see a way the template could be phrased to avoid POV concerns and still fulfill that purpose?--Eloquence*

These sort of value judgments are unavoidable in putting together an encyclopedia. Let's not abuse the term "POV" here. If we're to abandon drawing lines between what is important and what is less important, we should do away with Wikipedia:What's in, what's out. And {{importantstub}} need not bring with it a whole new set of arguments over where to draw lines—it's just a tag, not anything as severe as deletion. Where is the line drawn between a stub and a fully developed article? "Very short"? A paragraph "or less"? Why are some one-paragraph articles not considered stubs? A stub is a stub because somebody says so, not because the stub-p algorithm returns T. Likewise, an importantstub is an importantstub because people generally feel that it is so.

{{importantstub}} is a practical start at a semi-organized means of grabbing visitors who might have something worthwhile to contribute but aren't necessarily geeky enough to be attracted by the idealistic vision of a copyleft encyclopedia on the web. Perhaps there could be a message on the main page like, "Some areas of knowledge are underrepresented in Wikipedia. Can you help?" with a link to a list of underdeveloped categories, each a link to a list of articles or subcategories, as in the main category list.

I can see the objection to the text of the template, though. Perhaps this could be done with just the categorization, and without the message in the articles themselves? --dreish 14:18, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)

Just pointing out that Wikipedia:What's in, what's out is nothing more than the opinions of a small number of self-selected editors and currently has no official relevance--so there is nothing "to do away with". [[User:Bkonrad|older≠wiser]] 14:44, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip (I thought it was related to policy), but that doesn't change my point that articles are routinely judged as unimportant and deleted. (Or judged as needing improvement, or judged as being a stub, etc.) Doing something less drastic on the other end—labeling them important and calling attention to the fact that the population of people who could contribute to them is disproportionately small on Wikipedia and therefore, if you're one of those people, please help—is not breaking some sort of POV taboo. There seems to be a view among some people that even though it is common sense to say that the gaps in coverage of the Congo Civil War are more detrimental to an encyclopedia than gaps in coverage of Babylon 5 (were there any), the fact that not everyone shares identical feelings about common sense issues means that they cannot be acted on, even if in a purely constructive project. I don't share this view. --dreish 19:06, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)

Isn't this what {{todo}} is for? [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 03:03, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

I think the goal is to provide some organized means of directing the attention of people who can contribute underrepresented areas of knowledge to the fact that there is a need for them. The to-do list doesn't really help with that on a large scale. If I'm not mistaken, it is only helpful once one actually visits the page, which is no real improvement on the situation we have now. --dreish 19:06, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)

Your comment son the Templates for deletion page that somehow I was refusing ot engage in discussion are, of course, false. I was offline until just now. But I don't know that there's really anything more to say. This category is inherently POV, and doesn't help the encyclopedia. RickK 19:31, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

Please do continue your whinging on the TfD page then, so that it can be easily separated from reasonable debate based on logical arguments.--Eloquence*

Congo Civil War is already long enough that the term "stub" doesn't seem to apply, although I agree that it could be expanded. I also suspect that it's not feasible to make an NPOV decision about which articles deserve to be called "important". So I suggest a different message, saying something more neutral, like "This page is the subject of a request for expansion." The template should be renamed to match the message. —AlanBarrett 21:04, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I looked through the templates, but I didn't notice that one. The word "stub" should probably be taken out of the message (since there are already enough {{xstub}} templates, and an article need not be stub-length to need expansion), but yeah, that looks about right. Is there any way to index those articles by category instead of chronologically (other than by hand)? Or should they be split out into {{history-expansion}}, {{art-expansion}}, etc.? Or should the definition of stub be loosened up a little so that {{hist-stub}} could be applied to Congo Civil War, for example?

I don't think the argument that any of this is somehow POV has legs, but now I agree with Snowspinner's comment on Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion that there are already ample templates related to this issue. --dreish 22:05, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)

Is this not the purpose of Wikipedia:Requests for expansion? —Stormie 06:08, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Alternative text

I think the following NPOV statement can be made:

This article is currently very short. Other general reference works include more information on this topic. We apologize for the brevity and seek to remedy it in the near future. If you know anything about Village pump (news)/Archive A, please consider editing the article and sharing your knowledge.

How does that sound?--Eloquence*

I don't think we need to apologise for anything... I mean, who is apologizing? Also, very short is POV. How about:

Village pump (news)/Archive A is underdeveloped as an article in comparison to its entry in other general reference works. Its expansion is a priority. You can help by editing the article to add what you know.

Other such articles can be found in Wikipedia:Important Stubs.

I don't mind this template, but I see no reason for it to be so prominent on the articles. Having it at the end like the normal stub notices is more than enough. Angela. 01:43, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

How about saying "add what you know or are willing to research". Good research is better than trying to get it all from memory. - Taxman 04:35, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

I like that last rewrite if it includes Taxman's suggestion. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 22:23, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

It could also simply say "You can help by editing the article." The rest goes without saying. —Mike 06:43, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately it doesn't go without saying. Way too much of wikipedia is from personal knowledge, and not enough sources are cited in general. Therefore encouraging research is important. So how about "you can help by researching and expanding it."? Added to the below. - Taxman 14:57, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)

This article is a stub and has been highlighted as an important topic that should be expanded. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

How's that? violet/riga (t) 11:28, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is much better. The original suggestion is too wordy. --Twinxor 23:02, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

How about This article has been designated as a high-priority stub. You can help us by expanding it.

[[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 17:57, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

I don't think we need this in the article space in the first place. Put this stuff on the talk page, or in the category system. Then any objections due to POVness are mooted. anthony (see warning) 15:13, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Unified Web search page

Just as we have a facility for ISBNs, I created a prototype template page to facilitate Web searching and to eliminate the bias of using Google.

The template is non-functional, but it uses two variables:

• ARTICLETEXT - name of the article; underscores are replaced by spaces
• ARTICLETEXTURL - URL-escaped name of the article; underscores and spaces are replaced by "%20"

Discuss. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 16:50, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Now you've mentioned ISBNs, I wonder whether that will still work after 1-1-2007, when the size of the ISBN is being increased to 13 digits. -- Arwel 18:27, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

One suspects that it will work just as well as the target sites: if they are willing to accept a 13-digit number in their search URL, we'll be laughing. (I just checked what ISBN 1234567891011 does: the "sanity checker" answers correctly that there are too many digits, while Amazon UK fails gracefully) --Phil | Talk 14:54, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

New Wikipedian listing!

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by birthday. Feel free to change the colors and embellish the page in any way that you see fit, but if you edit it, you must list your birthday on the page. --Ardonik.talk()^* 03:03, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Meta:Wikipedians by birthday already exists on the meta site and is populated..? -- Chuq 04:28, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

At the time I made this announcement, I didn't know that this page existed. I guess an interwiki redirect will be proper, though I'd rather see the meta page moved to here (where everyone at least has a login.) Here is a link that bypasses the redirect (just in case.) --Ardonik.talk()^* 04:43, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Well it was already moved from here to meta [1].

This sounds like an excellent idea for those who want a list of those in the en Wikipedia project and those who feel that this is their community. Jamesday 05:41, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

{{definition of|word}}

I've made a new template, {{definition of|word}} that will create the link [[wictionary:word|definition of word]] which will look like definition of word. It can be used in disamguation pages that have corresponding wiktionary pages (like Thing), or just as a standard link to wictionary that uses that phrasing. Figured it'd be a useful shortcut. —siroχo 09:04, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

This template violates Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. anthony (see warning) 15:21, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

But what about the {{wikiquote}} template that says that wikiquote has applicable quotes about a subject? That's considered allowable self-reference by Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. How is this different? Whosyourjudas (talk) 03:58, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Templates like this one can very easily be adapted by reusers, for example to be a no-op. I think it is fine. I remember someone suggesting we document the various Wikimedia-specific templates so that reusers can easily go through and customize them according to their particular needs. — David Remahl 14:11, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The wikiquote template violates Avoid self-references too. And yes, this can be made into a no-op, but considering the large number of such templates that would have to be edited, this becomes unreasonable. anthony (see warning) 20:23, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Requests for manual categorization and auto-categorization

FYI, Wikipedia:Auto-categorization now contains requests for categorization of specific articles. The lists are automatically generated, sorted by topic, and supplied with advice for newbies. The first collection of topics is the 50 states of the USA, since these were the most numerous among uncategorized articles. (The bulk of US State-related articles are actually being automatically categorized; only the leftovers are presented for manual categorization.) -- Beland 06:51, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

New UK Notice Board!

Of late, it seems fashionable to create notice boards relating to specific nations. User:Francs2000 (Graham) has been kind enough to create one Wikipedia:UK wikipedians' notice board. Whether British or not, the interested are welcome to join. -- Emsworth 23:39, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

...and a new Canada Notice Board!

Continuing with the trend, Denelson83 has created our very own Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board. If you have anything to contribute, please do so :) -- Grunt 🇪🇺 13:41, 2004 Oct 2 (UTC)

Three new notice boards just this week. You all must have followed the successful example of the Irish. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 16:30, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)

Regional wikipedian notice boards

Very much like the idea of Regional wikipedian notice boards but can we have a consistent capitalisation of Wikipedian? The UK is capitalised and the others are not – I would say that us Brits have it the right way, but it needs to be the same, surely? violet/riga (t) 20:30, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Technically speaking, yes, it should be capitalised as Wikipedia is a proper noun, and Wikipedian is derived from that. However, a) I think the lowercase looks better, b) insisting on precision is splitting hairs and c) it'd be much easier to just standardise by changing the UK one! (I had to do enough moves with the Irish one, sorting out the apostrophe!) zoney ♣ talk 00:37, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The UK one has a redirect, the others don't. The reason I found the problem was when I replaced UK with Canadian in the URL and it didn't find the page. It's not picky asking for consistency and it's not difficult to fix this – I'd do them all myself but that'd be rude and wrong without consensus of whether the W should be capitalised or not. violet/riga (t) 09:14, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The UK one started out with a lower-case w, and was then moved by Wetman without offering an explanation as to why. Fearing that I had done something wrong I spent half an hour moving all the other subpages and changing the respective links and I'm certainly not going to do that again. Either accept that us Brits are the only ones to get it right (as usual) or move it yourself.</tongue in cheek> -- Graham ☺ | Talk 13:19, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Upcoming meetups

I'm posting this in multiple places, since we don't have any central location where people can reliably hear about such things. There are two Wikipedia meetups scheduled in the US over the next couple months. One is in Chicago on Sunday, October 24, and the other is in Seattle on Saturday, November 6. The Chicago meetup coincides with Jimbo's trip to the area for the ACM conference. If you can make it for either one, sign up at User:Jimbo Wales/Chicago Meetup or Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle.

Maybe there should be some kind of bonus prize for anyone who attends both. Or at least an extra 50 points on the Are You a Wikipediholic Test. --Michael Snow 05:12, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Successful completion of Wikimedia's fundraising drive

I am pleased to report that Wikimedia has successfully reached its goal of $50000 in our latest fundraising drive. Over the past 14 days we raised $51,177 thanks to hundreds of different donors across the world.

The breakdown of the money raised includes links to the comments people gave when making their donations (if they chose to make these public). For an idea of how this might be spent, please see the proposed order and for longer term plans, growth planning.

Here's a sample of ten of the comments made by donors on the final day of fundraising:

• With Wikipedia, the Internet is finally starting to realize its potential!
• I hope that this will become the greatest repository of knowledge since the Library at Alexandria. There is a very real chance that it will become one of humanity's greatest achievements.
• A necessary resource for the world community.
• You are providing a phenomenal resource. Please keep it going!
• I'm happy to donate to Wikipedia because I feel it is the most valuable website on the internet. Keep up the great work!
• Thanks Wikimedia for the great sites that give me solutions to my school work and personal life.
• Thank you Wikipedia for making the world better connected and informed.
• This is an amazing resource that I use for teaching and my own benefit. Thanks for the great service.
• Thank you for everything you've done to help spread "the knowledge"!
• Many thanks to you all who gather the collective word--the collective will of man, to share between ourselves for the betterment of all. History will sing of this.

Thanks again to everyone who donated, and also to the thousands of editors who created a product worth donating to. Angela. 05:04, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

Systemic bias section opened

After much wrangling, the beta version of Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias has opened.--Xed 23:25, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Supreme Court Article Project

I have started a project to help improve the quality and uniformity of the articles on Wikipedia concerning United States Supreme Court cases. This project is open to every Wikipedian, whether you are knowledgable on the subject or not. The pertinent information can be found at the user sub-page devoted to the project.

I would like to emphasize that this is not my personal project. And, as stated on the Project page, the goals and setup of the Project are not set in stone. It is a living project and I hope to use it to improve quality, not to dictate in any way. Any wikipedians interested (especially those who regularly edit these pages) are encouraged to take a look at the Project page.

Wikipedia is knowledge. Knowledge is power.

Skyler 23:41, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Family and relationships wikiproject

"The Family and relationships wikiproject aims to develop the articles relating to families, the relationships between people and issues that have an impact upon them."

I've just created this project and, while quite basic at the moment, I think it has quite a bit of room for expansion. The impact on family and relationships is not examined by some important articles and this project aims to look at ways to add information on the psychological effects. violet/riga (t) 19:21, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Danny's contest

Just to note that Danny's "Best new article" contest has begun and is now in progress. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 17:59, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, on Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg has recently released its first slice of the 11th Edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica - published 1910-1911 - as EBook #13600. It is available at http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/3/6/0/13600/13600-h/13600-h.htm and is in the public domain. It contains Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1, which translates as articles from Andros to Anise. There should be plenty of pickings for Wikipedia, should anyone feel like mining it Oops, sorry - it's shorter than I thought :(. Remember to put a This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. {{1911}} tag into articles created. --Tagishsimon

Well I hope Project Gutenberg will create more of these real soon. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 00:04, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)

Newspaper reporter wants to speak to Wikipedia people

Hi everyone, I'm Curtis Krueger, a reporter with the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. I am writing an article about Wikipedia and would like to talk to some of the people who write and edit articles frequently. I would like hear from people who can tell me what motivates them to contribute to Wikipedia with their writing, editing, research and so on.

I will probably speak to 3-4 people on Thursday or Friday (Oct. 14 & 15 2004). If you are at all interested, please send an email to me at krueger@sptimes.com. Please put in your phone number, city and state and best time to reach you by phone in the next couple of days. If you have the time, you might also tell me a little about what kind of work you do on Wikipedia and why, plus anything about your background such as your profession, education, age, etc.

By the way you can find our newspaper at sptimes.com.

Thank You!!!
Curtis Krueger
St. Petersburg Times
krueger@sptimes.com

Can people who have responded leave a note here? I'm willing to chat with the reporter if there's any fear he won't have enough people to interview (I think an article based on why we all write here sounds fabulous), but I don't feel I have contributed as many articles (or very many truly great articles) as others here, so if they're replying, I'd rather have Curtis talk to them. If you don't feel like revealing yourself, that's fine, but it would help me out. :-) Jwrosenzweig 21:53, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

By the way, a helpful fact for your article: "Wikipedia people" are called "Wikipedians." :) [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 22:34, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)

Jimmy and I have spoken to Curtis, but he is still very keen to get more responses. Please let him know as soon as possible if you are interested. Angela. 17:52, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)

I dropped him an email. -- Jmabel|Talk 19:04, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)

I ended up talking to Curtis. I believe User:Jredmond did also. Very nice fellow, very interested in Wikipedia. I'm looking forward to seeing how we all came across. :-) Jwrosenzweig 21:08, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Mr. Krueger, make sure you find out about the real nature of The Wikipedia, the bis and abusing of people that don't support the views and aren't in with the clique that "run" it. Some suggested starting points below.

You need to go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Neutrality

and check out "oppose" and also look at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Rex071404

You might also try user Rex071404. I don't know if he's interested but I'll put a note on his Wikipedia talk page.WikiUser 20:45, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)WikiUser 20:55, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Researcher is doing a Wikipedia study

I found this from User:TheCustomOfLife's talk page :

Would you be interested in being interviewed about your work on the Wikipedia?

As part of a research project conducted by the Electronic Learning Communities group at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, we are conducting a study of the Wikipedia. The purpose of this study is to explore the online community of the Wikipedia by investigating who contributes to the Wikipedia and why.

To that end, we would like to interview people who write, edit, and comment on the articles that make up the Wikipedia. Study participants agree to be interviewed about their experiences with the Wikipedia. The interview can be face-to-face (if you are in the Atlanta area), on the telephone, or via email, whichever is most comfortable and convenient for you. Participation is voluntary and can be discontinued at any time with no reason given.

If you think you might be interested, more information about the study, including how to volunteer, is available at:

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~susanb/wikistudy.html

If you are not interested, there is no need to reply to this message, and we thank you for your time. Ikenindy 23:20, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Discuss. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 23:45, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)

Slightly weirdly, it is only possible to respond to their consent form if one has an email program integrated with one's browser. That is, if you've disabled mailto: links (which I have: I handle my email via telnet and pine, much safer from viruses) there is no way to sign up. -- Jmabel|Talk 00:56, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

I've volunteered to take part and to tell them about The Wikipedia. Funny how this section was deleted isn't it? Suppose some people want to impress a reporter but don't care to help a group of uni researchers? When I signed up to take part I got a pop-up for the pre-selected mail for this computer. I'll let you know-although this section willl probably be deleded before I can- if my form got through to the researchers.WikiUser 20:39, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Isn't there anyone else who took part in this study? [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 20:49, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

I've just recieved this e-mail from the researchers telling people how to sign-up if they have problems using the link above:

"Date: Sunday, October 17, 2004 10:39 pm Subject: Re: Re request for participants in your Study of Wikipedia Users.

Hi, Thank you so much for your response. Anyone who wants to participate but can't use the web-based consent can email me at this address (susanb@cc.gatech.edu). Just indicate that you read the web-based consent form and that you agree to participate. I'll contact you and we can make arrangements for the interview.

(I'll add a note to that effect on the web page as well.)

If you ... would like to participate, please let me know which method you would prefer. If you'd be willing to be interviewed on the phone, just let me know if there's a day and time when it would be convenient for you.

Thanks again for the heads-up on the consent form, and thanks for passing this information along to any other Wikipedians who might want to participate in the study.

Susan Bryant"WikiUser 20:28, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Announcing the creation of the U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board

An invitation is hereby extended to all U.S. Northern Wikipedians and all Wikipedians interested in the U.S. North to the U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board board, also known as WP:ANSWER (A Northern States Wikipedia Effort and Resource). Bowl of chowdah for everybody! [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 00:23, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)

Announce of Wikimonography - Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin

I am looking for people interested in Classical Music to make a Monography about the Opera Omnia. It should be under GFDL and consist of the scores of all Chopin's works (Mutopia Project), letters (Project Gutenberg) and a comprehensive encyclopedia. The details are on my user page. Comments will be well accepted. Chopinhauer 08:45, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Question.

First off, I believe this to be the greatest site of the internet. Secondly, my question, in the news section why don't you offer articles specifically about the topic, instead of random links to people involved or instances revolving around the subject?

This site is mainly an encyclopedia, so the links offered are intended to better understand a news, not to talk bout it; we leave this work to the newspapers or news agencies. There also independent, free style agencies, like Indymedia that try to give a NPOV vision of an evenment. Chopinhauer 10:15, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I would not call Indymedia anything like NPOV, they are mostly advocacy journalism. Nothing wrong with that, but it's a different mission. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:27, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, you are right, I don't know Indymedia too much so I shouldn't give opinions about the NPOV. Anyway I had just seen on meta a proposal for Wikinews. Maybe the person who asked the question could be interested by the project. Chopinhauer 23:12, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Announcing the creation of Japanese Wikipedian's Notice Board

Today Wikipedia:Japanese Wikipedians' notice board has launched. Not only Japanese in birth or nationality, but anyone who is interested in Japan and Japanese culture is welcome. Your consideration to participant to our notice board will be appliciated. --Aphaea 12:01, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Good luck with it. Filiocht 13:34, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)

US Wikipedian's notice board started

After some debate over the name and subdivision of the countryside, the U.S. Wikipedian's notice board has come into existence. Please contribute suggestions of U.S. topics which bear covering, or need particular attention, and propose topics for the coming fortnight's collaboration. +sj+ 23:17, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yeah I always thought Wikipedia needs to be more U.S. centric! ;-). — David Remahl 08:31, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

180mb Tomeraider file for pocket pc?

Hi everyone, did the wikipedia tomeraider files for the pocket pc get moved to another address? I can't download them from this site. I was able to about 2 weeks ago but unfortunately my computer needed to be completely formatted so I lost the 180mb file. Does anyone know of a place to get it? All they have now for download are sql files. Thanks everyone. Robert M.

In The Guardian today

File:The Guardian 26-10-04 Wikipedia front page.jpg

The front page

File:The Guardian 26-10-04 Wikipedia pages 2-3.jpg

Pages 2 and 3

(sorry, posted previously in the wrong bit). We made The Guardian today, online article here: [2]. Graham 02:21, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

An excellent article Apwoolrich 07:43, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I added it to Wikipedia:Press coverage. I particularly liked the description of Rambot: "30,000 articles were created by a bot [an automated program that goes round causing havoc] ... hyperlinks, bulletpoints and cut-and-paste press releases do not an encyclopedia entry make." — David Remahl 08:29, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've uploaded some photos (see right) for those who missed it. ed g2s • talk 16:50, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The editors of Encyclopedia Britannica were quoted as saying: People write on things they're interested in, and so many subjects don't get covered; and news events get covered in great detail. The entry on Hurricane Frances is five times the length of that on Chinese art, and the entry on Coronation Street is twice as long as the article on Tony Blair. To address this [the specific] criticism, and show the Encyclopedia Britannica exactly what Wikipedia is made of, Chinese art has been suggested as a Collaboration of the week. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:55, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, editing Chinese art will address all of those criticisms. That'll show 'em. Xed 13:08, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your fulsome praise and wholehearted support. While we deal with the specific criticism [see edit above], you can sort out the general, dare I say systemic, problem (I'd be fascinated to know how you are going to persuade people to write on subjects that they are not interested in). Rome was not built in a day; the longest journey begins with a single step; etc. I'm not going to let the best get in the way of the good. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:23, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

FYI: a follow-up letter in today's issue Filiocht 14:11, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

Hahah! That's mighty funny. — David Remahl 14:17, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

<g> I wonder if Mr Young is a Wikipedian... -- ALoan (Talk) 14:56, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

My own thoughts exactly. Filiocht 15:01, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

What the heck are the Britannica people talking about? Tony Blair is 36 KB and Coronation Street is 40 KB. The real question is;

• How long are those articles in EB?

Do we have an anti-FUD department here? The Guardian should have checked the EB statement for truthfullness before publishing the article. -- mav 20:19, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

EB's article on Tony Blair [3] appears to be 741 words long. Our article is some 5000 words long.

Doesn't that depend when they compared the size of CS and TB? Maybe they've been radically altered since the statement was originally drafted/conceived... - IMSoP 22:25, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

BTW, that's the front page of the "G2" tabloid supplement, not the main paper (obviously); the article was also flagged on the front cover of the paper, though (at top left). - IMSoP 22:25, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've drafted a reply to the EB FUD (comment away before I send)

In your October 26, 2004 article “Who Knows?” your paper quoted the editors of Encyclopedia Britannica as saying (about Wikipedia): “People write on things they're interested in, and so many subjects don't get covered; and news events get covered in great detail. The entry on Hurricane Frances is five times the length of that on Chinese art, and the entry on Coronation Street is twice as long as the article on Tony Blair.”

I would like to note that The Encyclopedia Britannica does not have an article on Coronation Street and their article on Tony Blair is 741 words long while the Wikipedia article on Tony Blair has been longer than that since August 2003. In addition, the current size of the Tony Blair article in Wikipedia is over 3,700 words (not counting lists, quotes, markup or HTML) while the current size of the Wikipedia article about Coronation Street is just over 5000 words (again not counting lists, quotes, markup or HTML). The statement quoted by Britannica is therefore false.

Please make note of this in your paper.

Thank you,

Daniel Mayer, Wikipedia contributor

Links

Guardian article “Who Knows?”

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1335892,00.html

Encyclopedia Britannica article on Tony Blair (note the word count line)

• http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9003134&query=Tony%20Blair&ct=

Wikipedia article on Tony Blair

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair

The first version of the above Wikipedia article I could find that was longer than EB’s

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Tony_Blair&oldid=1296956

A search for “Coronation Street” on Encyclopedia Britannica

• http://www.britannica.com/search?ct=&query=Coronation+Street&go_button.x=10&go_button.y=11

Wikipedia article on Coronation Street

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_Street

I'm sure Ian Mayes will be thrilled... - IMSoP 21:12, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sent. --mav 17:04, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"one of the administrators over seeing the political coverage"? I didn't know anybody oversaw anything on Wikipedia. RickK 08:26, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

400,000 articles

As I write this the counter on the main page is just ticking over to show 400,000 articles. I haven't seen any mention made of a press release being prepared to celebrate this, but it's probably a good idea to keep our powder dry for the half-million milestone.

By the way, on the current growth rate of 7% a month we should reach 1 million articles by the end of 2005. Astonishing. Oska 10:53, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

If 90% of those articles were nearly as good as the 5-10% that are noteworthy we really would have something to celebrate. The numbers don't say much by themselves except that the project generates enthusiasm, which is usually not a bad thing. -- Simonides 18:46, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Google Scholar

Google Scholar at http://scholar.google.com/ looks like an interesting new tool for research into scientific publications on the Internet. It is described as " Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research." At first glance, this seems to be far more helpful for finding relevant refences than other search engines. Please try out, and please give feed back. Should Scholar be recommended in our How-to pages? Kosebamse 15:21, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't we get someone to contact google and add us as a publisher? I see we're listed as some of the citations, but google doesn't (yet) know where the actual work is. anthony 警告 19:17, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The FAQ of Google Scholar has detailed instructions on how to go about this. How our getting our own link might conflict with out friends the Clones is very far from clear, though. Apwoolrich 08:25, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It might be not a good idea to have our content referenced. Firstly, most of our content does not meet academic standards at all. Secondly, we should try not to pollute the search engine, because that makes it more difficult to research into a topic when writing an article. For example, when expanding a stub about some little-known subject, you will sometimes find the clones of that very stub cluttering the results of Google (standard, not scholar) searches, thus making in unneccessarily difficult to find other information. (It usually helps to exclude the searchword "Wikipedia", though). Kosebamse 13:45, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Although the FAQ explains how to do it, I would suggest that it be done by someone appointed by Jimbo or the board, if we choose to do it in the first place. I would expect clones will not be accepted into Google Scholar (and we can't control whether or not they are anyway, the question is whether or not we should be in Google Scholar, we can't stop the clones from applying). anthony 警告 16:04, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As requested by Kosebamse I have spent time trying this out for a research project I am undertaking. I now have a useful pile of PDF printouts waiting evaluation. I would never have located these so readily by the usual Gooogle (or any other search engine for that matter. Google Scholar should certainly get a note on the How-to-pages. Its a Beta, and the only fault I have is that there are no advanced search features yet such as being able to search for a phrase. I was also surprised to see some of my publications cited as references!! I agree with anthony that if there is to be a link with Wikipedia it must be done at Jimbo level, and all the implications are gone into before we decide. Apwoolrich 19:23, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm inclined to think Wikipedia should not apply to be listed on Google Scholar; or if we must, we should only include our featured articles (which are relatively scholarly and peer-reviewed) on the listing. One of Wikipedia's critics' main complaints is the way Wikipedia tends to fill search engine results on obscure topics to the exclusion of other sources: being listed on Google Scholar would give them a lot of extra ammunition. We're already well-known among researchers, I think: if they want to look up articles on Wikipedia, they know where to find us. Leave Google Scholar for hard-to-find .PDFs of academic papers. --Redquark 19:53, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

New requirement

This is a modification to the current loose guidelines I would like a vote on, to prevent Anglo-Americentric news from dominating the Wikipedia "front pages". Since Anglo-Americentrism is inherent to most articles on Wikipedia and its general content-form, it could at least be mitigated on the most visible pages for the sake of appearances and what is bottled as NPOV.

Requirement

Please see: Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_real_time_update

---

Please only vote with a yes or no and save your explanations unless you have already read the following discussions and are responding with a fresh perspective.

(approximate chronological order)

• Wikipedia_talk:In_the_news_section_on_the_Main_Page#Insular_headlines
• Template_talk:In_the_news/"Americanism"_vs._"Internationalism"#Americocentrism
• Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive#Two_propositions
• Template_talk:In_the_news#Ignoran-uh...Americentrism
• Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#In_The_News_-_one_last_time
• Template_talk:In_the_news#How_to_edit_the_template
• Wikipedia_talk:In_the_news_section_on_the_Main_Page#addition_that_was_removed
• Template_talk:In_the_news#Iran
• User_talk:Simonides#Confused_chickens_cackling

The discussions can be summarised in the following manner: 1) The current editing style is almost always parochial (see above arguments). 2) There are no solid reasons against creating guidelines that will affirm Wikipedia's attempts at NPOV, and broaden the scope of Wikipedia News/ other real time sections. (see above arguments) 3) Few have taken an interest in the issue apart from expressing reactionary views. 4) Almost nobody has done anything to attempt to alter the parochialism. 5) Repeated attempts, if not requests, have been made to make editors acknowledge and correct the issue, but they were almost unanimously ignored. 6) I clearly stated that I would continue with a correction of policies if no action was to be taken, to which there was no reply. 7) The mild corrections were carried out a few days later (usually consisting of a single line requesting that no more than one headline should be relegated to any country, a reasonable request) but were reverted without attempts at discussion by admin who a) were extremely reactionary and hostile in their attitude and b) abused their privileges by threatening me with arbitrations, blocks and bans, without any attempt at either discussion or continued discussion, requested by me in edit remarks. They had the nerve to inform me that there was not enough consensus. 8) They have now protected some of the disputed pages and refuse to take any further steps to resolve the issue.

It should be clear that not only do frequent editors exhibit some sort of bias, but they refuse to acknowledge their own biases (even if they loudly decry others') and try to work against anyone who hasn't found Nirvana in the current Wikipedia, either claiming that no bias exists or that unnamed policies are being violated. Of course, this goes against the purpose of Wikipedia and reduces all encyclopaedic activity to the level of herding idle sheep. So, two questions for everyone - 1) does everyone agree that the template above is a step in the right direction, if not essential? 2) are new policies needed to make sure that frequent, long term editors do not regress into a whimsical, self-protective clique that prevents any genuine progress on Wikipedia? -- Simonides 01:29, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What do you think the point of ITN is? Just curious. You never give a positive image to what it is, only railing against the negative ones. What is your positive image of ITN? --Golbez 02:38, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

Is a positive image necessary? Why meander? If you want to scrap the template, go ahead; if you want to keep it, then there should be some attempt at using independent, encyclopaedic criteria for choosing articles rather than mimicking a local news source. -- Simonides 21:45, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"One from each continent": does Australia really merit an article every time? Whereas the far more populous China and India get lumped into Asia? I agree with your apparent intent, but I don't think this achieves it. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:07, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

1) The above are minimum requirements, and at worst a decent start. 2) Australia's not a continent, but Australasia is. -- Simonides 21:45, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

continent disagrees. --Golbez 22:20, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

The article clearly mentions Australasia (which is another name for Oceania). If it says Australia is independently a continent, the editor is clearly mistaken - we don't have to be awed by what is written here, we all know how it works. Do tell me where New Zealand fits into the scheme of continents - is it eighth? -- Simonides 05:31, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Still puts Asia as a tremendous disadvantage; it has a third of the world's population, but only deserves 1/6th of its news? --Golbez 06:33, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

How long will it take before you understand what "MINIMUM" means? -- Simonides 13:39, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've never had a problem with the Wikipedia's news items. But then again I don't go to an encyclopedia for the news. It does seem logical that an English encyclopedia would focus on primarily English speaking countries like the U.S. and U.K. If you can find some news items in other countries that are noteworthy then feel free to add them, but I don't think there should be any hard guidelines specifying an arbitrary number. —Mike 03:56, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

As I wrote, please don't reply if you have nothing new to say. Exactly the same reply has been made before and amply rebutted, ie 1) it is not all logical that the US and UK will have prominence on an English language wikipedia, it only works out that way because the majority of editors are from there (but that is not an excuse to stay insular) - look up some statistics on the total number of English speakers/ English speaking countries in the world; 2) I have been adding noteworthy items repeatedly but the efforts are lost in the general inclination towards parochialism, and it is the inclination that needs correction, not one or two stories. -- Simonides 21:45, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"please don't reply if you have nothing new to say. Exactly the same reply has been made before and amply rebutted..." and "save your explanations unless you have already read the following discussions and are responding with a fresh perspective." — harumph. I'd just point out that if you're trying to persuade people to follow a certain policy, then the onus is on you to, er, persuade people. You can't expect people to go and dig up every prior discussion. I'm sorry to break this to you, but you may have to explain the same point to several people several times in order to convince them. Treating people dismissively is only going to get people's backs up (like mine, for example). — Matt 08:00, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sorry if I offended you, but I'm trying to convey a very simple point and it seems I only get stupid and/or reactionary replies, and your argument seemed to be headed that way. Anyway, it should be clear that I prefer frankness to diplomacy, and if we're in agreement, I welcome any positive suggestions you have to make. -- Simonides 13:39, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You say, "your argument seemed to be heading that way" — I'm guessing you mean "Mike / User:Moverton"'s argument; I haven't made any argument about your proposal, only to point out that things would be easier if you approached things with a more gracious attitude. You say, "if we're in agreement, I welcome any positive suggestions you have to make"; to me, coming fresh across this discussion, it sounds like, "I welcome what you say if you agree with me, otherwise your argument is stupid and reactionary." I would also like to ask you to refrain from personal attacks (below). — Matt 15:05, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

So I confused you with Mike; pardon me. Re: Gracious attitudes, they can only be tried for so long - they wear thin after weeks or months, don't you think? As for what my statement sounds like, you're quite close, ie if the ITN template is to be kept at all there is no good reason to oppose making editors look for under-publicised but clearly important news; of course I welcome amendments and positive criticism about the suggestion, and I don't mind if ITN is scrapped all together, but I really can't think of any reason to continue piling on updates to the Iraqi invasion etc. when there is so much else in the world and on Wikipedia that requires at least half as much attention. But I haven't come across any criticism on those lines yet. We can of course quibble over numerical requirements and news sources etc., but that is not opposition; and since most of the opposition has been stupid and reactionary, hence extremely irritating, I am really just announcing I don't want to read the same material again, not that I don't want to read any criticism. Of course, I can see why some of the editors think their invaluable arguments encompass all possible criticism and deduce I am opposed to the latter, but a careful reader will see it's not true. -- Simonides 18:38, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Simonides apparently has an English-speaking bias anyway, since he wishes Australia to have the same clout as Asia. --Golbez 09:24, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

Clown. See the reply to Jmabel. -- Simonides 21:45, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The discussions in the links Simonides posted above show that a) people are against the idea and b) it has not got anything like a consensus from the community. This new policy (which incidentally should be prefixed with "wikipedia:" not "template:") should be ignored. If Simonides wishes to see this put into action it should be voted upon using the correct polling system. violet/riga (t) 09:32, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

a) What "people" are against the idea? A bunch of self-centred gits who don't like getting their toes stepped on? I prefer to count opinions that have been argued for and have some merit to them rather than the bickering of pious bureacrats who're worried people are out of line. b) It has enough consensus from the "community" that replied. Besides, "Wikipedia is not a democracy", and issues of bias are not best corrected by counting on the votes of the biased. By the way, if you are always so keen to apply Wikicivility and protocol, you should have entered the above in the correct polling system yourself. -- Simonides 21:45, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"self-centred gits" If you want any support whatsoever on this idea, the first step would be finding a way to communicate without using insults. --Golbez 22:20, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

That goes without saying, but as you can see in all the links, extensive communication has been tried. Patience usually does have limits. -- Simonides 05:31, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Then perhaps you need a Wikivacation in order to calm down. If you cannot communicate with civility, then you will accomplish nothing. --Golbez 06:33, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Which sort of proves my point about self-centredness doesn't it? Are people here to attempt a genuine encyclopedia or are they looking for self-esteem and self-confirmation? The whole point of NPOV is to go ahead with the former and ditch concern for the latter when it interferes, which it has. -- Simonides 13:39, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Let me put this simply for you: it is not a new policy, will continue to be ignored and any attempts to publicise it in the ITN or other current event articles will result in its removal. Until you (yes you, for you are the one trying to change things) create a poll and achieve community consensus you will be blocked at every step of the way. You are trying to change things in the wrong way and to the wrong thing. I would support you if you totally redrafted this guideline and stopped being so pathetic with your stock response of "I've discussed this enough" (when you haven't) and blatant disregard for anyone that disagrees with you. Stop trying to make a scene and try to work out a way of arguing for this cause without forcing your own rules onto others. violet/riga (t) 07:33, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Your schoolmarm potential would be better directed at the totally clueless. I'm not inclined to repeat myself all the time if people disagree out of stupidity and prejudice, and everyone - and Wikipedia most of all - stands to benefit from the above requirements; there is no "wrong way" of introducing something beneficial, but if it's a matter of transparency, admins themselves can take the initiative of seeing an issue through the necessary steps. If you prefer to keep whining over protocol (you haven't made a single valid criticism yet), and take pride in "blocking every step of the way" you should probably look into openings for wardens. -- Simonides 13:39, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As I see it you are one of the "totally clueless", particularly in regards to communication. Glad to see you've now stopped your vandalism so we can leave it like that. violet/riga (t) 18:17, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry you haven't started looking yet. You could make a career of it. -- Simonides 18:38, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As you only seem to be demanding that everybody fall in line behind you, and because you are not interested in hearing from anyone who disagrees with you, and because you are content at calling those who disagree with you names, please explain just why we should care about this? You have not evinced any consensus in this discussion, you are not interested in doing so, and you have no apparent desire to put this to a proper vote, therefore the proposed project is moot. Attempts to enforce it unilaterally will be reverted. Choice of the term "requirement" is also objectionable when it is only a proposal. RickK 07:16, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

It is not disagreement that I can't stand, it is disagreement out of stupidity or prejudice, and that is all I have seen so far (see my reply to Matt). I have no qualms about calling an idiotic argument just that, and if people are offended, too bad, they should try harder. As for why anyone should care, it is listed in black and white on several pages as it is right at the top of this section, in the 'template', namely NPOV, overall improvement of Wikipedia, and other reasons- did you perhaps stop to read it before you replied? As for concensus, it has been requested right above all this commentary. I suppose your eyes glazed over that too. Too much trouble to actually find out what someone is saying before you attack them, eh? As for your reversion - everybody with some Wiki experience knows you're a reactionary flag-bearer here - can you provide any logical reasons for it after you have actually read and tried to understand what the requirement is about? -- Simonides 18:38, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Now that we have Wikinews we should just get rid of these pages. Wikipedia is not a newspaper. anthony 警告 16:05, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have no objection to that. -- Simonides 18:38, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia as a generic name

On http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=609 wikipedia is used as a generic name for a wiki. Perhaps we should make more clear that wikipedia is not equal to wiki?

One of its major accomplishments is an extensive Wikipedia containing a wealth of P2P and file-sharing information. Members of the site maintain the Wikipedia.

Donar Reiskoffer 10:37, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Its possible that the name Wikipedia will become the popular name for any Wiki wiki system since its the one Wiki that most of the population will have come across. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It didn’t do the maker of Biros or Hoovers great harm in having their brands become generic names for the whole class of objects , in fact the opposite. The Google search engine has also benefited from people using the verb to Google meaning to do any internet search. Lumos3 13:44, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It dilutes our trademark though... Pakaran (ark a pan) 18:30, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Read genericized trademark and trademark dilution for pros and cons. We should be vigilant about protecting our trademark, and ask journalists to correct their terminology wherever possible. [[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\^talk]] 21:23, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Vandalism of Taiwan article

Someone has completely removed the contents of the Wikipedia article on Taiwan and inserted profanity using boldfaced, capital lettering. The topic of Taiwan is featured on Wikipedia's homepage. I thought that someone would like to know. inserted by anon user:67.36.24.247 at 10:10, Nov 16, 2004

Happily fixed 5 minutes later. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 16:48, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Such users can be listed on Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress. Paul August 04:29, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

Former Britannica editor gives his views on Wikipedia

A highly critical piece on Wikipedia from Robert McHenry ,Former Editor in Chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Do I hear vested interest being defended here?

"The user who visits Wikipedia [...] is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him."

See The Faith-Based Encyclopedia, Tech Central Station, 15 November,- Lumos3 09:41, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Now on Slashdot [4] Apwoolrich 14:48, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

He is also rather rude about our article on Alexander Hamilton which is currently on Wikipedia:Peer review as a result. Nice of these people to tell us which articles are particularly in need of some attention (e.g. recent complaint about Chinese art which is likely to be next week's Collaboration of the week). -- ALoan (Talk) 17:12, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The problems he mentions are real, but isn't that what projects like User:Jimbo Wales/Pushing To 1.0 and Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check are trying to solve. I fully expect that within five years, some form of wikipedia will be both more accurate and more informative than many small libraries (let alone Britannica). Jrincayc 01:42, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Whatever biases this writer might have, we would be well served to take seriously the problems expressed in this article. Issues like "writing by committee" and "regression to the mean" are important and we should think hard about how to address them. I think every Wikipedian should read this article. Paul August 04:24, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with this sentiment. The McHenry article isn't a mindless swipe but a closely critical view which managed to expose some key weaknesses of the Wikipedia approach. I don't expect it to achieve great prose style, but bad writing is easily found, and bad thinking isn't uncommon either such as missing the date discrepancies (which are common enough in the 18th century due to calendar changes). The deepest problem is authoritative citation, and that's never really going to change, unless a citation is required to accompany each and every edit. Now, ultimately, the Wikipedia will statistically rise above water with the overall quality of its articles as more contributors who have more accurate knowledge of topics write them up, but there can still be glaring omissions and baffling inconsistencies. Do these add up to a worse reference work than a peer-reviewed scholarly tome planned out with its own inevitable academic and cultural biases? Better and worse are in the eye of the beholder, but this guy isn't speaking from ignorance, and I think it's good to get this level of critique. It *is* a sign that Wikipedia is beginning to "matter". --Dhartung 17:14, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The citation problem should urgently be solved. We don't look at academic credentials, relying only on scrutiny of content. If you are a scholar of any reputation, fear of losing it is one of your main motives for remaining accurate in what you write. Anonymity may be one of the relevant reasons why Wikipedia content is often so inconsistent or outright wrong.

To make quoting relevant sources easier, it would help a lot if we had some software functionality in the style of a reference manager where a reference is once added (could also include online verification of bibliographic details vie Medline and such), then to be quoted in text by a simple command. This would also help achieve a consistent quotation style and orderly literature lists. Any ideas? Kosebamse 08:15, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This event has inspired me to produce an essay. I've called it "A rewrite a day keeps the critics at bay". --Smack 19:58, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Candidates may officially sign up for the Arbitration Committee elections

The December 2004 Arbitration Committee elections are officially open for anyone interested to declare their candidacy. The election will be held from 1–15 December. Candidates should declare themselves before November 30 on the candidate statement subpage. Anyone interested is encouraged to announce their candidacy as early as possible to help determine whether we have enough qualified candidates to fill all the openings. --Michael Snow 21:16, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Chinese COTW is open for business!

Please see Wikipedia:China-related topics notice board/ZHCOTW (WP:ZHCOTW) and take part in the Chinese Collaboration of the Week! Vote, comment, and propose other articles! [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 19:15, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

Interested in literature-related articles?

Then you might want to visit, edit and generally play with Wikipedia:Goings-on in Literature. Filiocht 14:39, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

The biggest and best writeup Wikipedia has ever had?

If you want to read some real in-depth coverage, check this out, especially Chapter 7 of the online book. Filiocht 09:49, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

And this helps to explain the previous link. Filiocht 09:50, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Next, here's a HTML version of Chapter 7: http://www.authorama.com/we-the-media-08.html JesseW 09:54, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

New York 2004 Meetup

• Event: Wikipedia Meetup
• Location: New York City
• Date: Sunday 12 December 2004

Please sign up at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC 2004!

Onion article features Wikipedia

Today's issue of The Onion, a satirical newsweekly, has an opinion piece in which a recurring character ("Larry Groznik"), who criticises geeks about trivial details, criticises trivial details in the English Wikipedia article Weird Al Yankovic. True to the nature of Wikipedia, all of Groznik's criticisms have already been answered, in less than about six hours, before most of the Onion readership will even read that criticism. -- Toby Bartels 08:11, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Should we add a link to the Britannica article on Yankovic? [5] -- Solipsist 08:27, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Here's a link to the article: [6] — Matt 09:38, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Template:newsec

Use it to make a link to a page that lets one make a new section. No more fooling around with URLs. --Sgeo | Talk 02:22, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Better version: Template:Newsec2 is a bit more intuitive. --Sgeo | Talk 02:24, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

In case you haven't noticed, I recently changed the link to post something here to use Template:Newsec2 --Sgeo | Talk 04:12, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

This is good; but I think you should rename Newsec2 to Newsec; it is better, and there's no reason to have the main used one be called Newsec2. Otherwise, it's a good and useful thing. Add it to the correct place on the list of Templates, and we're golden. JesseW 04:15, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Done. Template:Newsec2 is now a redirect to Template:Newsec, which now contains the old contents of Template:Newsec2.

Wikimedia Commons support enabled

Picture from the Commons

I have just finished implementing and enabling basic support for the Wikimedia Commons on all wikis. The Wikimedia Commons is a central repository of images, sounds, and other media files. Any file uploaded to it is now available on all wikis using Image: and Media: links. The picture to the right is an example of a file not uploaded to this wiki, but uploaded to the Commons.

To use a file from the Commons, just use it like would any other by specifying its name. The wiki first checks if the file exists locally, and if not, searches for it on the Commons. You can use all the options like thumbnailing, framing etc. Image pages from the Commons can be edited, but should only be to add information about the content, not the licensing. A backlink to the Commons is inserted automatically, using the MediaWiki:Sharedupload message.--Eloquence*

I'm sure this is answered on the Commons site, but perhaps we could have a little FAQ here...Why should the image pages not be used for licensing purposes? What language should be used on image description pages on Commons? Or, do you mean that Image: pages in the English Wikipedia namespace connected to media in Commons should only _reference_ the commons' image page, for licensing info? — David Remahl 13:25, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The latter - it doesn't make sense to duplicate the info, particularly since we will want to dynamically load it directly from the Commons in the future. As I said, the reference to the Commons page is inserted automatically.

The Commons image description pages will typically be sparse, so you should use the local one to describe the content of the image as best as you can and in the language of the wiki. There is currently no policy in place, as far as I know, for dealing with multiple languages directly on the Commons, but you should probably ask on Commons:Village pump for directions.---Eloquence*

Neat. The "Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this name" message seems a bit confusing in this context. Looks like I'm going to need a Commons account now. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:27, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Just to make sure I understand this:

• Descriptions go on the local image page (one for each language).
• Licensing information (and the file itself) goes on the commons image page (language to be determined).

Is this correct? [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 22:45, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This is my understanding. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:25, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That would make sense, since it is the original image which is being licensed, so the info should go there and stay constant. The various descriptions will necessarily change depending upon the client 'pedia and so should go there. Assuming the licensing info is being placed with various templates, it should be possible at a later date (is anyone watching the Test Wikipedia?) to have it display in the appropriate language as chosen by the reader. --Phil | Talk 09:54, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

I also think that if the image contains text (e.g. a sign or a page in a book), accurate transcription (though probably not translation) of that text belongs in the Commons. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:41, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia and HHGG!

On tonight's episode of Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, (BBC Radio 4) there is mention of a newspaper office where the public could walk in off the street and write the news. The news could not be guaranteed accurate. Sounds familiar? Apwoolrich 17:45, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Someone mentioned to me that Wikipedia vs Britannica sounds remarkably like the HHGG vs Encyclopaedia Galatica :-) (and differences just as Adams describes them even!) zoney ♣ talk 23:08, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Think we should add a big "don't panic" to the main page? -- Jmabel | Talk 00:11, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, or automatically add that to all new users' talk pages! zoney ♣ talk 10:35, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Or maybe an enigmatic 42? Filiocht 10:41, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

We'd have to be careful h2g2 didn't feel we were trespassing on their territory - they were founded by Douglas Adams, after all... - IMSoP 22:17, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Comparing the article about Earth in Wikipedia and HHGG ("Mostly harmless"), I think our project beats HHGG's stub (although it looks a very promising stub). --Farside 19:46, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ah but, their article on Towels beats our on Towel and has many follow-up articles (we have better pictures though). - Solipsist 23:09, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Every now and then someone (different people every time) adds "Mostly harmless" to the introduction of Earth. I've reverted it at least three times, that I can remember. :-) — David Remahl 23:33, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I the original HHGG idea might refer to the fact that some tabloids print celebrity rumors they have been received from the public as news - Skysmith 13:54, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

New Project: Project Holmes

(Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) Paul August ☎ 21:57, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC))

Wikipedia:WikiProject Holmes is now up and running...with only two members. The aim(s) of the project is to create articles related to Sherlock Holmes, the characters and the books, the places, the novels, and the short stories, to expand existing ones and to create templates and so on. Do join, please.--Gabriel Webber (babble were rig) 09:57, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Got Phish?

Wikipedia doesn't! I'm asking you guys here to help me with my new project, Phish songs! If you listen to or are a fan of Phish, please don't hesitate to create a page for your favorite song by following the links on List of Phish songs. If you don't see it, then add it. I'm not asking you to follow any specific template or anything, but there are three things to include: 1) Date song was first played, 2) Writer and Lyrics, 3) History or meaning of the song. If you have fun with that, then don't hesitate to expand the Phish category even more! Please help, MattSal 17:48, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

Please no! Phish albums may be important enough to have their own articles, but I really don't think the singles are. violet/riga (t) 22:30, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Never mind the in-house warden. Article merit is based primarily on informational value, among other things and your choice of topic is secondary (there are many long articles on repellent topics on Wikipedia) in most cases, if the article helps someone. If everyone were as reactionary as some of our fellow editors here, there would never be encyclopediae. -- Simonides 23:12, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've got to second this being a bad idea. Secondly, the massive posting of lyrics is a violation of copyright of the sort that got Lyrics.ch shut down and their hardware confiscated back in the day. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:15, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Please take some time to read Wikipedia:WikiProject Music and Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums. Articles for individual songs are not generally encouraged, except for those of some note or notoriety -- #1 singles, certain influential Beatles' songs, genre-launching songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and so on. Most of what can be said about other songs can and should easily be covered in an album article. (See the albums Ziggy Stardust and The White Album for some ideas on how this can be done.) As others have said, posting complete lyrics is a copyright violation which will be deleted -- at most, you can quote one or two lines of a song for the purpose of illustrating a point in the article. Please DO expand the articles on Phish and their albums (in line with our neutral point of view policy and the standards of the albums project) -- we can always use more enthusiasm around here! Best of luck.... [[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\^talk]] 02:49, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The list should be fine, no copyrighted lyrics of course, and the songs? Play it by ear, whether or not each song needs an article will depend on how much there is to say about it. Mark Richards 18:06, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Bad idea, really. Are we going to do this for every band now? Luckily most Phish fans are too stoned to actually write these proposed articles. Who wrote the song should be mentioned where the songs are listed on the "List..." and albums' pages. "Meaning" is too often too speculative to be included in an encyclopedia. Lyrics are copyright. If a good article can be written about a couple of the band's most notable songs (if there are any), that's one thing, but trying to turn all the redlinks on that list page into articles is just going to clog up an overburdened VfD page. I'm sure there are loads of Phish fan sites that would love this sort of input. -R. fiend 23:39, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

South African COTW created

Finally, after a series of often insufficient Wikis on South Africa, a Wikipedia:South African Collaboration of the Week was created! Please go, check it out, vote, comment, and help add content to the selected article of the week! PZFUN 07:50, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hello dear Jim, is the only way for me to get into "Wikepedia" some mention of 42nd Baltic Fraternities` Convention [ which Corps Concordia Rigensis/Hamburg will organize] to become a contributer/editor ? Greetings from Germany Jürgen Moeller-Nordhastedt@t-onlinde.de

Project Gutenberg template

I added a 'gutenberg' template to the Wikipedia:Template_messages/Links page to facilitate external links to Project Gutenberg bibliography pages. It just requires the 'EText-No.' and the 'Book name' from the gutenberg site. Thanks! -- RJH 06:06, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Million pool

The Wikipedia:Million pool is now open for guesses. Predict the date that the English Wikipedia reaches 1,000,000 articles and be the lucky winner (of nothing at all, really)!

The pool closes when we reach 500,000.

See also: Wikipedia:Half-million pool

— David Remahl 11:12, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I for some reason, recall us reaching that number, or maybe it was some different number? --Sgeo | Talk 19:55, Nov 21, 2004 (UTC)

We reached 1 million across all languages in September. Goplat 19:58, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It is true that we reached 1 million in September, but increased article deletion in October and November have brough the total back down to below 990,000. The pool is asking people to predict when (if ever) contributions will again exceed deletions sufficiently to take the total back over 1,000,000. Mark Richards 17:55, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Excluding blatant CSDs, new articles on EN outweigh deletions 50 to 1. -- Cyrius|✎

Of course for every deleted article 50 others aren't created due to the chilling effects. anthony 警告 00:08, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

And the source of that number is? The source of my ratio is a 24 hour sample of the Wikipedia logs. Statistically invalid, sure, but also not made up. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:29, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

And none of y'all actually read it :) He wrote English wikipedia, which at present has about 400,000 articles. --Golbez 18:16, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Vandalism

I don't know how to fix this, because I've never edited here, but somebody definitely messed with the page for the year 2000.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket

Announcing a new cricket WikiProject. If you're interested in improving the cricket related articles, please pop along and join Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket. Thanks. jguk 16:38, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Template:R for convenience

Should be obvious. --Sgeo | Talk 22:59, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

• But isn't. What the heck is "the main article"? What redirects do you feel this should be attached to? And why? -- Jmabel | Talk 01:29, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Hierarchical category overviews

I created category trees from the Dec 30 2004 dumps for the largest wikipedias (en/de/ja/fr/pl/nl)

You'll find them at http://eza.gemm.nl/index.html#Categories Beware. Some of the files are huge!

Each category is listed along its shortest path to the top of the hierarchy. Other branches that contain this category link back to there.

Circular references are detected and listed at the bottom of the page. E.g. 'Travel > Tourism > Travel'

Separate trees exist because some categories are not categorized themselves (or were not at Dec 30).

I might generate these trees for all wikipedias as part of the weekly stats job, after the database changes are over (Mediawiki 1.5), which will involve major maintenance on the stats scripts anyway. Erik Zachte 20:43, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Eric. Its really useful. :ChrisG 13:40, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Good job, thanks! Three ideas: ----a frequent update would be great (a live list from the database being too much load, I presume). ----Few people would disagree that the existing category system is in some places disorganised and could do with cleaning up. An editable version of these lists (ability to move categories around by manipulating a HTML form/Wikitext/whatever, without having to edit Wikipedia pages) would be extremely great, but probably even more database load, and some potential for abuse. Perhaps a sysop-only version of such a tool? ----And is there a central repository of all the useful tools? Like your things and Kate's Tools? Kosebamse 14:39, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It is not a separate tool. I started to add a category filter in my TomeRaider conversion script and this was a spin-off. Rather than isolating the code into a separate tool, I will migrate the code to the wikistats script so that reports can be refreshed every week. Yep, a live version would be even better, but I don't think you will get much support for that. Other queries, like longest and shortest articles, are already disabled every now and then due to performance constraints. For editing the hierarchy normal process seems good enough for me, you'll be at the proper page with one mouse click. Erik Zachte 02:33, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

EasyTimeline index for all wikipedias

There is now a global index of all EasyTimeline charts that have been produced so far. This overview is generated by the weekly stats job. All charts, images and code, are listed here.

If you haven't tried EasyTimeline yet: It does take a while to get used to the syntax, and creating a new chart from scratch may be a bit of a puzzle at first, but extending, correcting and translating existing charts is really simple, hence the name.

For most purposes you can now find a suitable example on the mentioned page as a starting point, just copy it and modify. Erik Zachte 20:34, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to be picking all of them up (my modest contributions at House of Alpin and House of Dunkeld don't appear for example). --Phil | Talk 08:11, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

Some timelines were missed at random. I reprocessed en: dump offline. The English Wikipedia contained 46, not 36, timelines on Dec 2004. Not sure when the online index will be refreshed again, as stats script may stumble over recent database reorganisation. Erik Zachte 22:59, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

New template: Template:Userpage

I created Template:Userpage as an, imho, better looking alternative to Template:Realurl. This can be used on userpages, to instruct possible mirror viewers that the page is a userpage, and may be outdated. Template is listed on Wikipedia:Template messages as well. Anárion (talk) 07:37, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Looks nice. I'll switch to this one for my User page. --Slowking Man 07:56, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

Forgot to mention, I based this on the banner I saw on User:Ilyanep — I just generalized it a bit, and made it a template. Anárion (talk) 08:06, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I stuck it in a centered div. --Alterego 08:49, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

And why should I want to instruct possible mirror viewers about this exactly? Paul August ☎ 06:32, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

Recent changes flags

The discussion here has been moved to Wikipedia_talk:Checked_edits_brainstorming so that it get's preserved. We will need checked edits to work eventually, so please contribute there! Pcb21| Pete 13:01, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Should there be a 2004 IOE donation box on the main page?

Discuss it here: Talk:Main page.

What Wikipedia is not - please discuss rewrite

A rewrite of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is proposed here and discussion is requested here. Please note that there are only minor changes in content (no new policies and no relevant changes to existing poliices) as this rewrite is about layout and structure of that page. Content is equivalent to the Dec. 21 version of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not; I would suggest to discuss and hopefully improve the rewrite first but update content only when it is ready to be moved. Thanks, Kosebamse 11:35, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As there seem to be no major objections, I'll replace Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not with the rewritten version. Further discussion here, please. Kosebamse 12:51, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

New notice for common sense Wikipedians.

I have created a new template for Wikipedians to display on their user pages to display they are content with the GFDL and don't feel the need to jump on the multi-licensing bandwagon:

I do not dual-license my work
I am against voluntary dual-licensing of Wikipedia contributions.

You can get to it by typing {{NoMultiLicense}}

—Trevor Caira 00:44, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If it's really licensing complexity you object to, you might prefer to donate all your contributions to the public domain, which is simple and compatible with everything. Gdr 14:27, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)

As the one who more than likely started this "mess", I should clarify that in order for me (and others) to use Wikipedia's geographic articles on WikiTravel, which uses CC-by-sa 1.0, I need special permission from those users who have edited those articles. I suppose the implication here is that "common sense" states that WikiTravel should NEVER be allowed to corraborate with us and to share information. I fully disagree with that. However, it is perfectly fine if users do not wish to multi-license, just don't treat multi-licensing as checking one's brain at the door. If you do, you'd be insulting a large group of users! By all means make an informed decision.

I don't understand why WikiTravel decided to use an incompatible license and now expects Wikipedia to change its policy to accomodate. WikiTravel should just use GFDL. I don't want to put that banner on my page to specify that my contributions were GFDL; I already agreed to/specified that when I made the contributions. Also, a lot of my edits were done without being logged in. There's no way I could find them all. That doesn't mean they are public domain. I was notified when I entered them that they would be GFDL, so they are GFDL. The same is true for everyone else's anonymous edits, unless the specific contributors claim them and dual license them. Wikipedia decided early on to use GFDL and attracted contributors based on that decision (me for one); it should stick with the decision and not look back. Phr 07:48, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)Phr

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide - Explains pros and cons
• Free the Rambot Articles Project - See the "bandwagon" itself

– Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)}[[]] 19:49, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

I note that the license being suggested for multi-licensing is, in fact, way simpler than the GFDL, which is actually a pretty poor fit for Wikipedia (being really designed for paper books). The Creative Commons license in question has a very similar intent to the GFDL and GPL, in terms of requiring attribution and requiring derived works to be shared similarly. It just avoids some of the more onerous requirements of the GFDL which make little difference in terms of real freedoms. In my opinion, Trevor Caira is greatly missing the point of this whole thing. —Morven 00:32, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

I don't understand how you can believe multi-licensing is simpler than licensing under only the GDFL. When you multilicense under the GDFL and a CC license, not only do you have the legal text of the GDFL to deal with, but you now have the CC license attatched to some of the contributions of a given work. Perhaps if almost every Wikipedia contributer used the CC license, than the GDFL would be unnecessary and could be shed from Wikipedia entirely. But the fact remains, most contributions are not multilicensed, and it will never be the case that most contributions are multicensed, due to the nature of WP.

The bigget reason not to multi-license however is that if you decide to multi-license under the GDFL and CC license, you open up the possibility of someone modifying and expanding your contribution only under the CC license and not under the GDFL, thus making his contributions incompatible with Wikipedia. Note that this would not be possible, if the original you didn't license your contribution under CC, because the CC license and GDFL are not compatible.

It's simply not fair the WP community to multi-license your contributions under other licenses than the GDFL (except perhaps releasing than in the public domain), because of these complications which are introduced and allowed for in multi-licensing. Energy should be focused in making the GDFL more compatible with CC—Trevor Caira 16:08, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, the point of Wikipedia is not to produce an encyclopedia. It's to produce a free encyclopedia. We want other people to use it and the GFDL, since it's not accepted by, for example, the Debian project, doesn't encourage this. Showing solidarity and a wish to cooperate with other copyleft groups buys us more than we gain by having a pure GFDL world. I still agree that the GFDL should be a minimum baseline. Mozzerati 18:40, 2005 Jan 15 (UTC)

Ram-man is only correct if WikiTravel is planning to copy-and-paste text. But I'd hope they would be a bit smarter than that as the articles in this Wikipedia (especially the Ram-bot info) are not travel guides. Travel guides and encyclopedias may present similar types of info, but they are in no way the same. I have no desire to fuss with licensing and will leave it at whatever the default is for Wikipedia—the only exception being the photos I contribute which are each explicitly contributed to the public domain. —Mike 02:53, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Sounds good for most contributed content, but I just don't feel this is good for images of myself that I upload, being a private citizen. I want to retain copyright on those, so I specify permission to use in the Wikipedia only. -- Stevietheman 18:06, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I thought all copyright with special permission material was "going away"? As a new contributer here, the whole mess has been very confusing. I just had a photographer turn down a request because the whole thing was too confusing, and he was unwilling to GNU FDL his images. --mh 20:04, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

If your photographer was unwilling to GFDL his images, he probably wouldn't CC-BY-DERIV them either, so multi-licensing can only make your situation worse, not better.

I don't think that permission "to use in the Wikipedia only" is appropriate for images, any more than for article text. As an open-content project, Wikipedia provides its content for free re-use under the terms of the GFDL. If content is not GFDL-compatible, it shouldn't be included. --Visviva 05:48, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Votes for Deletion - Shorter page

A Votes for Deletion page for only today's entries can now be found using this shortcut: WP:VFD/Today. Have fun. -- AllyUnion (talk) 23:04, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Category:Stub is listed on CFD

The Category:Stub has been listed on Wikipedia:Categories for Deletion. Please express your opinion on why it should or should not be removed. -- AllyUnion (talk) 19:01, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject Stub sorting

I don't remember placing an announcement here, but just to let you know, there is a stub sorting WikiProject for any interested individuals. Help out today: Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting -- AllyUnion (talk) 02:06, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New Project: WikiProject Grammar

I have created a new project, Wikipedia:WikiProject Grammar, for the purpose of people asking for grammar help on any article they are working on, or would like their article be checked for grammar readibility. Additionally, people can post passages or anything they wish to be checked for grammar. It should be noted that one sentence to a paragraph should be placed on the page, while anything longer should use a subpage.

The project also needs a bit of cleanup and organization as to how the project page should work.

-- AllyUnion (talk) 02:06, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New Templates: {{gcheck}} and {{grammar check}}

This is the corresponding templates for the new project. -- AllyUnion (talk) 02:06, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Are you proposing that these be put on articles or on talk pages? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:49, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)

I would like it on the talk pages, however, the {{cleanup}} is usually placed on the article... And the templates are styled after cleanup, so on the article. -- AllyUnion (talk) 19:11, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

User:Ludraman/gmail

Yes, the one stop shop for gmail invites. Nah, just anyone who has gmail invites can if they want add themselves to the list there. Now anyone who wants a gmail account can just visit User:Ludraman/gmail and get an invite off the users there. This is a new way of keeping the misc village pump from random gmail invite spamming! JOHN COLLISON (An Liúdramán) 11:52, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New main page introduction text

Today we got a new wording for the introduction text on the main page. While the admins are enjoying changing it to their hearts content without consulting anyone, you can discuss the changes here: Talk:Main Page#New Intro. Dan100 21:59, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

• There is now a vote on a text: Talk:Main_Page/intro#Vote_on_Tom.27s_version. Dan100 21:28, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

• As an admin who has edited the main page, I really don't appreciate your smartass attitude. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 21:36, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I wasn't aware, Dan, that we had to consult anyone. Be bold, yes? Well, we reserve the right to be bold with the main page. We didn't become admins for our personality. --Golbez 04:48, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

Well without expressing an opinion as to either the merits of the recent intro changes, or the process that should govern such changes, I will offer the opinion that the flurry of changes to the look of the main page has made Wikipedia seem a bit schizophrenic and unprofessional. Paul August ☎ 05:49, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

Ethics and law

(Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous). Paul August ☎ 03:58, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC))

I've created Wikipedia:Ethics and law. At the moment, the goals are to make libel information more prominent and to develop guidelines or principles for decideing ethical issues such as privacy for subjects of Wikipedia. I hope some of you will join me in developing this page. Maurreen 07:42, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New Template: Template:Wstress3d

A way to show your level of Wikistress.

See Template talk:Wstress3d for details. --Sgeo 01:33, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

I've added Template:Wstressl3d, which simply aligns the image on the left instead of the right. -- RM 16:46, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

News category

I've created a skeleton concept of a news category- please visit Category talk:News for discussion and give me some feedback. violet/riga (t) 11:52, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Template:Actionurl and template:actionurl-f

Template:Actionurl and Template:actionurl-f are designed to make it easier to make links to pages like an edit page, the history for an article, etc. See their talk pages for details. --Sgeo | Talk 01:55, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Public Watchlist

What do you think about a public watchlist? (Also, is it ok that I used User:Benc's footer?) --Sgeo | Talk 23:59, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused about what you are suggesting. I see a list with one item, which is not very illustrative of anything. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:25, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

I'm suggesting a watchlist that everyone can edit (or maybe for a WikiProject?). I added some more items. --Sgeo | Talk 00:53, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Sure, why not? People often use lists for this purpose; e.g. list of cryptography topics. — Matt Crypto 01:24, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Looks quite useful. Probably particularly useful for areas in which there tends to be a lot of vandalism. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:22, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages? -- ALoan (Talk) 09:18, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New template: Template:Public watchlist. Simply put it on a page (previewing the page and making a watchlist first, probably), and it will come out like User:Sgeo/Public Watchlist (without the footer though.) --Sgeo | Talk 00:26, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)

New Project: Project Holmes

(Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) Paul August ☎ 21:57, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC))

Wikipedia:WikiProject Holmes is now up and running...with only two members. The aim(s) of the project is to create articles related to Sherlock Holmes, the characters and the books, the places, the novels, and the short stories, to expand existing ones and to create templates and so on. Do join, please.--Gabriel Webber (babble were rig) 09:57, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New Project: Wikidemia

(Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) Paul August ☎ 20:50, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC))

To jumpstart and organize academic research on Wikipedia, I've just started a new project called Wikidemia. Please come and contribute ideas and feedback! This is a great and unusual community, and if we understand better how it works I think we can both contribute to psychology, sociology, and economics, and we can make the community work even more effectively. I'm especially keen to understand the sources and causes of Wikipedians' motivation... Tobacman 05:50, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject computers

Hi all,

I've started a new Wikiproject on one of our favourite items: computers! We have an absolute ton of computer experts and enthusiasts on Wikipedia, all willing to edit computer related articles. Now is the time for us to start on the structure as I've only made the initial shell of the project.

Please, all feel free to contribute!

Ta bu shi da yu 07:49, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Need Help with a 390FE

Moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk. Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 19:21, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Admins notice board

Ta bu shi da yu has created WP:AN, a useful resource for admins to communicate with each other without pasting messages to multiple user talk pages. Also a good place to go if you want an admin for something or to communicate something to admins as a body, I'd guess. Filiocht 13:00, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

(Note: I edited the above from "WP:AD" to "WP:AN" which is what Filiocht meant to say I presume ;-) Paul August 18:44, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC))

Featured Article

I clicked on the featured article of today titled Paragraph 175, and it came to a disambiguation page. What the heck happened to the Featured article that it disappeared as an article? Where did it go? WHEELER 16:51, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Seems to have had a lot of activity (and a lot of vandalism) during its period as a featured article. I plan to take a thorough look at the changes when the dust settles. Let me guess: did someone decide to "disambiguate" the thing itself and a movie about it? -- Jmabel | Talk 23:26, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

TV series about open source

According to /. [7] there is a TV series in South Africa devoted to Open Source. Are we involved in any way? Apwoolrich 10:05, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The full article referred to is here. The program is called go_open [sic] and has an official website here. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 12:10, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Set to air tommorrow!!! See here. -- user:zanimum

Report at Wikipedia:Press_coverage#December. — Jeandré, 2004-12-14t12:05z

Major page merge proposal

Hi,
There was a time when the Village Pump would have been the right place to post this. I've been rather out of the loop since then. If it is no longer the right place, feel free to move this comment elsewhere.

So. I've proposed that Radioactivity and Radioactive decay be merged somehow or other. In five days, I've only garnered one comment. At this rate, it will take weeks to build a consensus on what to do, and a topic of this importance shouldn't have to wait. Please head on over here to discuss this. --Smack 06:32, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Did you try Wikipedia:Cleanup ??? --AllyUnion (talk) 12:30, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A post to Cleanup would be an invitation for swarms of people to come in and start cleaning this page up. I can take care of that part myself, sequentially and methodically, as swarms of people cannot. I'm just looking for comments. --Smack 06:28, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:Duplicate_articles — J3ff 20:14, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Posted to Duplicate articles a week and a half ago, with little effect. I'm going to proceed with this merge. --Smack 06:01, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That is quite a large task IRude 08:55, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Indeed. --Smack 04:33, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Flag templates

This discussion moved to Template talk:Flag.
Topic: Templates for display of country flag icons.

International writing contest

Submit nominations of great content written this month to the March international writing contest. +sj + 00:39, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Cited in News Article

Article on highlights in Bobby Fischer's life cited the Wikipedia as a source. Hopefully this trend will continue and people will start to accept the Wikipedia as an authoritative as any other.

You might like to add this to Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a press source 2005 (assuming it's not there already). -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 01:48, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikifun Round 6

Wikifun Round 6 has started! Good luck to everyone who wishes to participate! Gkhan 23:25, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Opinion

Just in the intend to shake new people up, please, participate to feedback here : m:Board agenda/Open questions.

Even if you are rather newbie... :-)

Anthere

Ourmedia.org

So there's this new site called Ourmedia. It's an aspiring non-profit org that hosts as many multimedia files as you want to upload to it, forever, for free. [8] And it lists Wikimedia as one of its "sponsors and partners". I also note that Angela, a Wikimedia board member, is on Ourmedia's advisory board. So what's the story? Is there going to be an upcoming announcement? Is Wikimedia Commons going to be integrated in some way? Does this relate in any way to the Ooglegay ollaberationcay that we aren't supposed to talk about? – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 02:40, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

As far as I understand things, no official connection between the Ourmedia and us exists, but see Commons:Commons:Collaboration with ourmedia. You aren't supposed to talk about the Google thing because there isn't anything to talk about yet. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:57, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

autofellatio.jpg deletion poll

The infamous Image:Autofellatio.jpg is on IfD again. This time, I want the poll to be widely advertised to get a true reflection of the community's opinion. Please look at the image, see Image_talk:Autofellatio.jpg, Talk:Autofellatio and also WP:AN/I#Image_talk:Autofellatio.jpg, and cast your vote. dab (ᛏ) 09:08, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikimania soliciting presenters, posters and workshops

Wikimania 2005 (The First International Wikimedia Conference) is looking for speakers and presenters, and for tutorial/workshop ideas. See m:Wikimania_Call_for_Papers for the full call for papers. Submit suggestions and abstracts to: cfp--at--wikimedia.org +sj + 20:02, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Relaunch of UK COTW

I've recently taken over the running of the UK Collaboration of the Week and London was the first 'new' article on nomination (improvement comparison). During the last week, only three articles were nominated with 4 votes in total, so this is an invitation for more people to come and get involved in improving United Kingdom-related articles up to featured article status (UK citizenship not necessary!). Thanks! Talrias | talk 11:49, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Civil War Navy Jacks

(Question moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk.)

Last chance to guess on Wikipedia:Million pool

As Wikipedia will apparently exceed 500 000 articles today (see Wikipedia:Half-million pool for the lucky winner), that also means that Wikipedia:Million pool will be sealed at midnight. Hurry up and place a guess! Edit: As I wrote this message, Wikipedia went from 499 982 articles to 500 025 articles! Congratulations Wiki! The pool will close at midnight UTC.) — David Remahl 20:56, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Photography

Calling all Wikipedian Photographers, Photo Editors and Digital Artists!!! Announcing the new Wikipedia:WikiProject Photography, where it can be a place for photographers, photo editors and digital artists to hang out, chat, share photos and the like. It is also my hope that other Wikipedians would find it useful as a place to request for photos for locations and such. -- AllyUnion (talk) 13:46, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikifun - Round 5

20 new questions have been posted for Round 5. See: Wikipedia:Wikifun. Have fun, good luck. -- AllyUnion (talk) 11:12, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cumbey threats

These threats were received by email. User:Cumbey claims SqueakBox is hacking into the wiki database. She is going to demand the hard discs from Jimbo Wales so she can get me put down for a long time because of my alleged hacking. She accuses me of having a stash of janja (sic) she means ganja, in my possession, and that she is going to tell the Honduran police about it. She is going to write to Jimbo demanding he reinstate her version of this article. She is very unhappy with the new contributors. She thinks they work for me and I work for Solana.--SqueakBox 14:43, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Have you requested mediation or arbitration? That would probaly be more help than just posting here. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 18:09, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This issue is more serious than that. The policy is that: "Threats or actions which expose other Wikipedia editors to political, religious or other persecution by government, their employer or any others ... may result in a block for an extended period of time which may be applied immediately by any sysop upon discovery. Sysops applying such sanctions should confidentially notify the members of the Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee and Jimbo Wales of what they have done and why." I strongly suggest that you mention this issue on the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. If you provide the appropriate evidence, I am confident that you will see a swift and decisive response. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 04:25, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not acknowledging wikipedia source

At [9] Global elite wikipedias are using an outdated version of Javier Solana without acknowledging it is from wikipedia, and in spite of the fact that they themselves in the past admonished a user for doing this very thing bacause they said it was illegal. Are they breaking the law? --SqueakBox 22:49, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)

They have gone offline. I will see what happens when they get back up. --SqueakBox 04:04, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Language Domain Requests

Please see New vote on language subdomains, and add your request. Caton 21:29, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please note that you can discuss the rules here. Caton 20:51, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Star Wars Wiki

Thanks to Angela for setting up a Star Wars Wiki at WikiCities - http://starwars.wikicities.com http://starwars.wikicities.com . She has also arranged for interwiki links - [[Wikicities:c:StarWars:Article]]. This is intended to be a coordinated effort among Wikipedians to provide more detailed Star Wars content. While Wikipedia is for more general, encyclopedic knowledge, the Star Wars Wiki is for the Star Wars fan who wants to learn/provide more detail about the Star Wars universe.

This is just getting started, so it will take work to migrate articles over. Please feel free to help move articles that are appropriate.

Thanks! Cbarbry 06:24, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The articles listed in Category:Star Wars Wiki candidates are not yours to "migrate" anywhere, nor are they Angela's or anyone elses. Y'all are welcome to do whatever you like on other wikis, but deleting content on wikipedia and remaking it elsewhere violates the GFDL rights of their many contributors at wikipedia. -- John Fader (talk · contribs) 00:31, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Only if the attribution terms of the GFDL are not followed. If they are, we can move as many things there and delete them here as are collectively agreed to. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:53, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Has there been some policy discussion regarding this that I've missed? -- John Fader (talk · contribs) 01:03, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Fancruft. All information on WikiCities is, in virtue of the rules of being hosted by WikiCities, licensed under the GFDL. If there are specialist fan wikis that are more suitable to certain collection of information that were compiled here initially, it is only reasonable and within our mission to put it there instead of here. This has the practical benefit of encouraging detailed expansion of specialist topics, only in the appropriate place. I myself don't really care about moisture farmers and I really don't think it's the sort of arcane topic we're supposed to be covering. Besides, it's all being fed out through the same pipe. No biggie. --Alterego 01:24, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with there being a separate wiki, with more liberal guidelines that wikipedia. I wouldn't mind at all if they were migrated to a wikibook or some other Wikimedia place (naturally with the attributions being transwikied too, as they are). But what seems to be in the offing here is moving a nontrivial section of the wikipedia wholesale to the servers of an entirely unrelated organisation, one over which the original submitters have no control. I'm not necessarily saying this shouldn't happen, but it looks like we've progressed pretty far along the lines of privatising a section of wikipedia without (at least as far as I can find, correct me if I'm wrong) a substantive discussion in an open forum on the subject. -- John Fader (talk · contribs) 01:38, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ah, the Force is strong in this one! Gareth Hughes 01:48, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What Alterego said is exactly what's trying to be addressed here. The issue was brought up to the board, and this is what they came back with as an offer. WikiCities is a site that, although separate, was started by Jimmy Wales so it is a related site. And with the Interwiki links being setup, it gives the relationship and ease of use that other Wikimedia projects have. It is my opinion that SWW should be run by the same guidelines as Wikipedia, and not be "proprietary." We are working on a Transwiki process for migrating articles over, keeping history, talk, etc. intact. Once articles are migrated over, they can go through the normal process - whether that be VfD or reduced to take the fancruft out. Cbarbry 21:16, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I was merely stating that such transfers do not violate the terms of the GFDL. They may still be undesirable for other reasons. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:27, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If content is being offloaded to another site because it's too specialized, I think it that the more general Wikipedia article should point to it with a BIG sign. The current Star Wars article doesn't even mention wikicities. Alfio 20:13, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually it does. It's in the "See also" section listed as Star Wars Wiki. Cbarbry 21:16, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with having a separate Star Wars wiki but be very conservative in what you move (copy there and delete here) since there is no problem with Wikipedia having a great deal of articles in this subject area as well. Wikipedia is not paper. --mav 21:28, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I suppose this is truly the issue. What I had in mind was that if we could get a closely-related site (with Interwiki links, etc.) then both sides would be satisfied. Fans could put all the detail they want into the Wiki without cluttering up the general encyclopedia of Wikipedia. Cbarbry 05:41, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The existence of a Star Wars Wikicity is not in itself a reason to delete any articles from Wikipedia. Anything being removed should be done according to existing policy, and via the usual process of VfD. Wikicities is one of many alternative outlets for content not wanted on Wikipedia. It certainly isn't aiming to take content away from here that ought to remain here. Wikicities:User:Angela. 03:12, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

I concur. I think having that outlet for the fan articles will make it easier to keep the Wikipedia articles clear, concise, and uncluttered. Cbarbry 05:41, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Sometimes I think all the other wikiproject exist just as an outlet of people who want to expand wikipedia beyond an encyclopedia :). Thue | talk 10:27, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't see the point of discouraging Fancruft articles on WP. They do no harm. What I'm objecting to are the obscure references under "popular culture" that are strewn across lots of perfectly academic articles, but I don't think that this will reduce them. dab (ᛏ) 11:05, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Because I have been voting on VfD and merging various SWW related articles I feel I should probably make a comment here. I'm happy that a Star Wars Wiki has opened and that we can combine many of the stub Star Wars articles here together however b/c there is a lot of info on Star Wars we have to be careful that the articles don't get too big... I think there has to be some kind of policy created. I suggest that things mentioned in the movies get long articles where possible and things from the Expanded Universe get dealt with in omnibus articles like Minor Jedi characters in Star Wars? Though extra canon info from the Expanded Universe should obviously be used in the articles for movie info here. -- Lochaber 13:37, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

de copied by Spiegel

Spiegel, a major German news outlet, was found to have copied large sections of a de. Wikipedia article on the Rwandan Genocide without attribution. Story here. - BanyanTree 06:03, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"Major" is putting it mildly. Der Spiegel has a stature in Germany solidly exceeding that of Time magazine in the U.S. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:59, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

at least they're not trying to hush it, but come up front and apologize to the German Wikipedians [10]. dab (ᛏ) 07:45, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Indeed. To err is human. To 'fess up is ... something else that is a good thing. --Tagishsimon (talk)

What's this dropdown list?

anyone speak Hebrew? i found there is a dropdown list above the "summary" textbox in Hebrew wiki, what's that? --User:Yacht (talk) 05:12, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

I don't speak hebrew, but it appears to be a hack for inserting some predefined text elements. It piggybacks on the code for the edit toolbar. --Brion 06:39, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

It adds common templates:Category, remark, external links, see also etc

The right text says: "Builders" (as in objects that build - I suppose theproper translation is "Templates") and "Summary" below. in the dropdown it says "Choose from the list to add" and the items are "Category", "Non-visible comment", "Deletion", "Small letters" (as in non-final forms), "External links", "See also", ??, "Redirect", "Definition/Explanation". r3m0t 08:38, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

does that mean not all the wikipedias are running in the same version, but each can be with its own characters? --User:Yacht (talk) 10:25, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

They are all running the same version, but I imagine the he community requested this feature there. Odd. r3m0t 21:40, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

This feature is built in MediaWiki:Summary and was added by User:MeirM. you can watch the code here.

Jimbo hits the big time - college radio

As he asked, I'm posting this:

Jimbo will be doing an hour-long interview in about 2 hours from now (16:00 GMT, I think). It should be available live from the radio channel's site, if we don't make it melt.

James F. (talk) 13:59, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wired on Wikipedia

This month's Wired has four pages on Wikipedia [11] --Tagishsimon (talk)

Project digests

Sometimes its quite hard to follow changes to Wikipedia. Of course, powerful tools like watchlists, the article history, "Related changes" and so on make it trivial to watch Wikipedia develop incrementally — it would be hard to get more information about how Wikipedia develops! However, it's often very difficult to get an overview of how a topic area is developing using these tools. For this reason, I've put together a summary of the major changes in cryptography articles during this last month of February:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Cryptography/February 2005. — Matt Crypto 11:45, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Spanish Translation of the Week

The new Spanish Translation of the Week is Hispania. Please help translate if you can. Also, you do not need to speak Spanish to help; you can help copyediting and proofreading. — J3ff 02:11, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Riposte to Robert McHenry’s anti-Wikipedia piece

Aaron Krowne has put together a compelling essay refuting and arguably demolishing the FUDesque criticisms made of Wikipedia by Robert McHenry, formerly editor in chief of Encyclopedia Brittanica. Well worth a read. --Tagishsimon (talk)

It may be a compelling essay, but it doesn't seem to be a functioning link. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:02, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

The link is correct, and worked earlier. They're slashdotted, I guess. -- John Fader 03:08, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wynn Quon has written a fiery McHenry critquein the National Post (Feb 26, 2005) with a different twist: Look out Britannica. "Let's do the math...2,000 hard-core Wikipedians could paraphrase Britannica's entire content in 80 days". Also "Comparing Wikipedia to Britannica is like comparing a forest to a rock garden". It talks about the key insight McHenry has missed "a sea change in their core market, the way people research and learn in the Internet Age is vastly different from what it was only a decade ago". --Anonymous, 27 Feb, 2005

I've seen several changes to the way that EnBrit appears online. They appeared to switch to displaying only a partial article, and then to hiding it completely except for subscribers. But I can see their point about Wikipedia being a somewhat suspect source (even though it contains plenty of very interesting content IMO). It'll be interesting to see what they do to survive. Perhaps they'll employ a lot more copyrighted multimedia? — RJH 18:35, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

.in domain

The Indian government has opened up the .in domain and the name wikipedia.in is currently available. Please register it before it is taken by over by cybersquatters. Nichalp 20:29, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

Eparanoids
Jitendra Jain
Shop No 6, Acharya Smriti
Mumbai, Maharastra 400074
India
Phone: +91.9324384265
Email: jitendrajain@gmail.com

Damn. r3m0t 01:00, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

Make that a double damn :( Nichalp 18:44, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

There are hundreds of top-level domains, thousands of relatively standard second-level domains, and an unbounded number of secondary/tertiary/etc domains. To buy them all up even just for the correct spelling of one name is impractical and a huge waste of resources and worry. It's actually a scam the registrar businesses push at the public: "Protect your name! Register in every domain imaginable!" --Brion 03:37, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. It is a scam. The .in domain was opened up a few weeks back. I was hoping that it could be linked to the hindi wikipedia. Nichalp 18:44, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

While it might well be impractical to buy up Wikipedia domain names for all the world's TLDs, that's not to say it should never be done for any of them. We have for example http://www.wikipedia.co.uk which at the moment just redirects to en:, but some have suggested should be made an English/Welsh/Scots Gaelic portal. Dutch, Belgian and Swiss Wikipedians have gone a step further and actually implemented this, and for all I know there are more portals that have been created in the same way for other multilingual countries. It would be great to have an Indian equivalent. While the Indian-language Wikipedias aren't among the biggest yet, one day we will have comprehensive encyclopedias in all the main languages of—lest we forget—a billion potential readers. I don't know what the foundation's policy on domain names is, and perhaps this would have to be done unilaterally by an enthusaistic Wikipedian who was willing to put up a portal themselves, but to dismiss out of hand anyone who dares to suggest that we do something about domain names likely to be used by squatters is a bit silly in my opinion. — Trilobite (Talk) 21:38, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wired

Anyone else see the report? I think it's fascinating. Though I do wish they had mentioned me...I'm a 16-year-old in New Brunswick, as opposed to South Brunswick. Hehe.--Etaonish 00:25, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

For the record, this is the article in Wired 13.03 called "The Book Stops Here" [12]

TheFreeDictionary.com

Does anybody know what's up with the site http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com? They honestly quote Wikipedia on each of their pages. But what's the use of that site? It looks like

TheFreeDictionary = Wikipedia - editing + advertizement

Who would want that?
Sebastian 19:24, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)

If you're asking about the motivations of their typical reader, you'd have to ask them. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:05, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

FYI, they're discussed a bit at Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/Def#TheFreeDictionary.com. -- John Fader

Thanks for the link. I thought this was a single case, but I'm shocked to see that there are hundreds of thieves, pickpockets and shoplifters out there! Sebastian 03:51, 2005 Feb 26 (UTC)

You do realize that a large part of the point of Wikipedia is that it is redistributable, right? -- Cyrius|✎ 05:38, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, most of them are no thieves, since we give the information away for free. As long as they also have it under the GFDL and credit us as the source, they can do what they want, including commercial advertising etc. -- Chris 73 Talk 08:45, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

And in answer to your specific question that would be: "people who want to make money out of our work", but that they are fully entitled to do. — Trilobite (Talk) 00:23, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

To All My Brothers and Sisters Regarding the "Anuzutica"

It has come to my attention that a wikipedia article written by our black brother has been nominated for deletion. It has come to my attention that the Anuzutica of Ethiopian culture is no welcome on this Wiki. It has come to my attention that racism is here in our very midst. This is nothing new. Two thousand years ago, Jesus was crucified because he was a black man. If Jesus went to the cross as a black man, how much more should we stand against this present darkness that engulfs Wikipedia? Brothers and sisters, I am here to implore you not to bow your heads before the idol of hatred. The Anuzutica is a legitimate part of our heritage, and we can not afford to let the man come in like a thief in the night and rip our culture away from us. Yes, the Anuzutica is just one article. But one is as good as all. You see, Moses didn't wait to see two or three or four black men killed by Pharaoh. He saw one killed and that was enough. It was time for action. Moses, my friends, knew what it was like to be a black man living under the fist of a white tyrant, and he gave us his example - seeing one hurt is as good as seeing all hurt. So when we see the Anuzutica derided as a "joke" and cast into outer darkness with much weeping and ganshing of teeth, we must stand up and say "not this time, not next time, not ever." We must keep firm in the liberties our fathers won for us and keep expanding outwards, till the Black Lion lays down with the White Lamb and the whole Earth is united in peace. So, no, my brothers and sisters, I will not watch the Anuzutica be deleted, for it is not just the article that will be deleted by the hand of the man, but our dignity. Let me say it again, folks; when the Anuzutica is deleted, our dignity is deleted. And no one has the right to press "backspace" on civil rights.

Sincerely, Anonymous Black Contributor

This is a troll and "Anuzutica" is a hoax. This person has also repeatedly vandalized Help:Contents and Wikipedia:Community Portal.

news about the server crash of Feb 21st?

I'm looking around if any of the community portals or news areas or signposts has any news about the server crash that happened yesterday, including an estimate of when we'll be back to normal. But I can find no mention of it. Is there a page somewhere? Thanks Lethe | Talk 03:03, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)

We've been too busy working on it to write about it. Here's a copy of the downtime message that was shown when we were offline, and this thread on the mailing list has some additional details. See also some notes on the wikitech livejournal and let's not forget the slashdot article about it. ;) --Brion 03:10, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)

I've made a draft report about the crash at Wikipedia:2005 server crash, so all of us who are not busy fixing things can have fun writing about what has happened. cesarb 03:24, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

NPR coverage

In the U.S. this morning, National Public Radio had a piece on Wikipedia. Not entirely positive or negative, but probably good visibility: "Wikipedia's Growth Comes with Concerns". -- Jmabel | Talk 19:39, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)

I found it interesting that the Brittanica representative said that Wp was "too much information" apparently they didn't think an old version of our Jehovah's Witnesses (BUSTED!) article was too much information! Their version was anemic and the version they took from Wp was not nearly as comprehensive or well worded as the current version! Double win for Wp! george 00:51, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Announcement of study

This is to announce that I am undertaking a study of the Wikipedia community (along with a few others it seems) as the major part of an M.Ed., the focus of which is interpersonal dynamics. I have already posted to the wikien-l and wikipedia-l lists, as well as on my user page, so I hope this should suffice in making people aware of my project. You can find out more about my project through my user page, as well as contacting me directly, details of which are also on my user page. Thank you. Cormaggio 14:06, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia: Quality Improvement Drive

This new feature is currently under discussion over the COTW talk page. It would cover articles that do not qualify under the "stub or inexistant" rule of COTW Circeus 13:09, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Academic Study - Call for Participants

Call for participants has ended. For the original text of my call, refer to (talk).

Thanks to everyone who responded to my call for participants. When results are available, they will be posted.

Thanks for your time! Andicat 23:59, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Million pool - last call

With the English Wikipedia rapidly approaching a half-million articles, the deadline is drawing near for entering the Million pool. Current estimates put the count over 500,000 on February 22 (UTC). Make your guess before then! -- Cyrius|✎ 04:42, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales Lecture @Stanford

Jimmy Wales gave a lecture at Stanford on cooperation and Wikipedia as part of a class called "Toward a Literacy of Cooperation". The BitTorrent of the lecture is available here: http://www.prodigem.com/torrents/download/lerhaupt/lerhaupt-wikipedia.torrent . (info here: http://www.prodigem.com/torrents/details.php?id=296) Salasks 13:34, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I typed up a transcript and put it on Wikipedia Commons and i'm working out a way to get the video up. In the meantime, a smaller version of the video is available on my website --Alterego 21:35, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

Basically what we say about a revert is that, a revert is slapping somebody in the face. Basically, sort of traditional in the old movies with the white gloves [...] it's not really hitting them, but it's an insult to revert something. And that's ok in some cases, because sometimes there really is a need to slap somebody in the face. Basically what a revert says is that, of all the edits that you made, I couldn't find a single thing worth keeping. There was nothing there, you may have written seventeen sentences, and I found every last word of it to be crap. That's pretty harsh. And you should only do it in extreme cases :) --Alterego 21:48, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

If the person wrote "seventeen sentences", sure. But if they changed a date from the right one to the wrong one? -- Jmabel | Talk 20:32, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)

"And that's ok in some cases, because sometimes there really is a need to slap somebody in the face." -- Cyrius|✎ 22:27, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

And wouldn't it be nice if we really could, just every once in a while, go-go-gadget arm through the cat 5 and give them a nice good slap in the face. --Alterego 01:18, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Wikiportal India created

A new Wikiportal, India has been created on 11 February 2005.

The portal intends to be the kaleidoscope of India content in wikipedia. Please visit, comment and contribute to this portal. Would greatly appreciate review, comments, suggestions and criticism.

Cheers Arunram 12:33, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

New "article" template

To go along with the "user" (formerly "vandal") template there is now an "article" template:

• {{user|Violetriga}} → Violetriga (talk · contribs)
• {{article|Carrot}} → Carrot (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

It can only work with articles in the main namespace (though others can be made for wikipedia: and template:Not sure if it'll be any use but there may be times when it comes in handy. violet/riga (t) 17:46, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately it only works for articles without spaces, though you can use _ instead of them. violet/riga (t) 18:01, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I modified Template:article, it now works with spaces. Removed "talk", since it doesn't work generally outside the main namespace and it's probably not that often you'd want to jump straight to the talk page. Added "watch", for convenient vandalism-in-progress requests: "this page is getting hit by vandals a lot, can some folks add it to their watchlists?" -- Curps 20:16, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I replaced the | separator with · (middot)... otherwise the template won't work within a table (eg, Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages) -- Curps 20:32, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

VFD Hourly List of Discussions

Rejoice! The VFD Hourly List of Discussions has returned. Please see User:AllyUnion/VFD List -- AllyUnion (talk) 23:07, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

New report on repeated words; make quick fixes!

At User:R3m0t/Reports these can be found. Over 1000 cases were found, but about 500 are "that that" which is, er, often correct. It is now on Template:Active Wiki Fixup Projects. I hope people will help. r3m0t 07:37, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Live Preview

I have been working on an "extension" to the edit page which allows editors to generate page previews on the fly, directly into the browser and with no need for page reloads. I've written a draft with instructions on how to install it which you can find here. I've been testing it openly on the Spanish Wikipedia and now decided to make it available to all other wikis. So far it's still in development and it has some limitations, some of which I plan to overcome soon, yet I believe it's mature enough to be useful to some. Please give it a try and tell me what you think. Best regards, Pilaf 04:20, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

impressive. --Alterego 07:43, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

just wanted to pass on that i've been using this for about 5 days now and it my perception is that it's doubly-impressive :) only real downsides ive noticed are a) templates b) it shows your sig instead of mine. thanks for the tool --Alterego 05:03, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

how to express that i already have permission to use website material?

I recently posted a couple of articles that were taken from a website that had alraady given me permission to post. How do i make that clear on the article page so that no one reverts it for fear of copyright abuse?

Post the details of the permission, and attribution to the original web site, on the articles talk pages.-gadfium 23:58, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You should always be overtly citing sources anyway. In this case, as part of the citation you can indicate how it is licensed. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:08, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

PlanetMath Exchange is now live

To expand and enhance our coverage of mathematical topics a subproject of the WikiProject in mathematics has been started to copy over and merge in content from PlanetMath, an online mathematics encyclopedia, which is also under the GFDL. The full details of this project can be found at PlanetMath Exchange (talk). Feel free to join up and help out! CryptoDerk 05:25, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Vote on proposed portal changes

• Please offer your vote as to whether this proposed new version should replace the current version of the Wikipedia portal. Voting ends February 11.

Proposed portal - screenshot

Current portal - screenshot

Please note that the current portal has been recently updated to add the Dutch Wikipedia (which just reached 50,000), but that the page is protected so that contributors have not yet been able to work out an ideal solution to the layout of seven 50+ languages -- if the current one is kept a better solution will obviously be found.

Also, the proposed portal does not currently work in the Konqueror 3.1 browser, but work is ongoing to find the CSS bugs responsible, and any possible workarounds -- if you have experience in this area, please comment on the proposal's talk page.

Thank you for your time! Catherine\^talk 11:13, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

BBC news: Boy brings Encyclopaedia Britannica to book

see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4209575.stm Dunc|☺ 16:51, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

So how does Wikipedia do?

• fail - on the location of Chochim - I can't find any reference. Perhaps its a spelling/transliteration issue, but it is spelt the same way in the the Guardian article (I know who would trust the Gruaniad for spelling), however I also can't locate the town via Google or Multimap with that spelling.
• pass - on the location of the Belovehskaya Forest (Belavezhskaya Pushcha or Bialowieza Forest), but could possibly use some more redirects for alternative transliterations
• pass - on the range of the reintroduced European Bison - in the Bialowieza Forest and neighbouring countries.

Not too bad. I wonder what the other two facts were. -- Solipsist 17:19, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have written to the editor of The Times (which first carried the story in today's edition) a letter inviting Lucian to become a Wikipedia editor. Knowing my luck it won't appear ;(. However one can but try. Maybe we might try a /. on the letters page of the Times. The email is: letters@thetimes.co.uk Apwoolrich 17:28, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The BBC article actually refers to "the town of Chotym" but that doesn't seem to work any better (not even over on the Polish Wikipedia) :-( --Phil | Talk 18:04, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

I just saw this article and thought "we should invite him to wikipedia!" - Omegatron 19:40, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

I searched for Chochim and Chotym on Academic Search Premier, PCI Full Text, Historical Abstracts, Expanded Academic ASAP Plus, MasterFILE Premier, Encyclopedia Britannica Online, History Resource Center - World; all to no avail

JSTOR gave one result:

Reviewed Work:"Die Reise des Kronprinzen Wladyslaw Wasa in die Lander Westeuro-pas in den Jahren 1624-1625"
-Bolko Schweinitz
Reviewer: Review author[s]: Sam Dunlap - University of California at Berkely
-Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 20, No. 4. (Winter, 1989), pp. 659-660.
-Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0361-0160%28198924%2920%3A4%3C659%3ADRDKWW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O

Project Muse:

sang, Isebong
Remaking Footprints: Palauan Migrants in Hawai'i
The Contemporary Pacific - Volume 12, Number 2, Fall 2000, pp. 371-384 - Article

 ..omes a ultil a chochim  (when you walk watch where your foot leaves a prin..

--Alterego 18:39, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Probably related to Moldavian Magnate Wars, which ha a whole lot of battles between a polish alliance and the ottomans. this link refers two battles at that lcoation (with a whole lot of names) in 1621 and 1673. Searching for Khotyn OR Chocim OR Chotyn OR Hotin OR Khotin on Google&Wikipedia gives a whole lot of results with years matching above, especially if you search all wikis -- Chris 73 Talk 03:47, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Made a stub Khotyn -- Chris 73 Talk 04:13, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

And "baby look at you now!"…three days from stub to nice little article :-) --Phil | Talk 09:11, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

That's good wiki. -- Solipsist 20:07, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Million pool

Just a reminder, there's a million article pool going, and it will close to new entries when we hit 500,000 articles. As I write this, the number of articles on en: is 457828 and growing rapidly. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:50, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Toolbar for Firefox

This Firefox extension is a useful tool for navigating Wikipedia. Its home page is on SourceForge/wikitools and some documentation is available on User:Ilya/firefox. Send your feedback so that developers are able to include the features you need. ilya 11:10, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Save your Edits!

I hope this is the right place to put this.

Warning! As Wikipedia is running slow and sometimes not saving edits you should COPY THE CONTENTS of your edit box when you edit a page. or YOU COULD LOSE ALL YOUR EDIT! WikiUser 21:28, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

With browsers on the Windows operating system, Ctrl + A will Select All content in the textarea, Ctrl + C will copy it to the Clipboard, and Ctrl + V will paste it. –– Constafrequent ^{(talk page)} 21:41, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Vienna

Hello! I have started a WikiProject to help get the Vienna page off the ground. Currently, it's an only mediocre Wiki that needs a lot of help translating the previously written German articles into English. If you speak German, or feel like helping to edit, please go and take a look at the project page. Thank you! Páll 05:25, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Return of the B-Movie Bandit...but with a twist!

The twist is simple: The edits are now positive ones! I found an attempt at an article about a Cher album which was IMO better off as a redirect. Same IP range, same echo of the title in the edit summary. Enough to make my blood run cold. That is, until I looked at the IP's history. There were edits to existing soap opera articles. Not only did my blood run cold, it completely congealed. I dreaded checking. I really did. Now, I'm glad I checked. Every one of the edits was for the better, so help me. Made my day! - Lucky 6.9 01:57, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This is great!

The Wikipedia Signpost

I've started up a newspaper to try and collect the news that's happening here on the English Wikipedia. Read all about it in The Wikipedia Signpost!

Oh, and anyone who might be interested in helping out with future issues, please let me know. I'm planning to publish it weekly. --Michael Snow 08:36, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Larry Sanger article on Wikipedia at K5

Larry Sanger has an article in the voting queue at Kuro5hin entitled Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism. Wikipedians who are also K5'ers may want to take a look. I'll post the URL once the voting finishes (it looks likely to be voted up).-gadfium 21:00, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It's now on the K5 front page at [13]-gadfium 22:11, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Interesting. I agree with some of it, and not with other parts.

I would suggest that a good place to move detailed discussion of this might be Wikipedia talk:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards, or maybe we should set up a subpage of that for the purpose. Also, on the issue of usefulness, and how that might not simply be a matter of credibility as such, see Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:37, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)

Extraordinarily haughty response from Jimbo Wales here [14] saying that he's "very disappointed in you Larry" and "(stop) embarassing yourself". If this is Wikipedia's "benevolent dictator" then God help us. - XED.talk.stalk.mail.csb 10:34, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Your constant kneejerk sniping at Jimbo has become tiresome. Why do you even participate here, when your first edits were attacks on Jimbo and you continue doing so? RickK 00:00, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

Bah. I said the same damn thing and didn't get a reply back from Larry. I still can't for the life of me understand why Larry (a) doesn't contribute here, and (b) bitches about the site in public and gets so much attention for it. Has he had trouble finding something else to occupy him? grendel|khan 06:17, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

I happen to agree with Jimbo. Larrys commentary was rediculous. At best it shows a fundamental mis-understanding of why Wikipedia works (embarrasing for someone who claims to be an insider), and at worst it is a pejorative rant by a disgruntled ex-employee (disappointing coming from a founder). Wikipedia is not targeted to professional editors, it is for Pro-Ams which is a huge marketplace Wikipedia has tapped in to. Papers and articles have been written about this, on why Wikipedia works: Pro-Ams, Long Tail.. The only thing I can figure why Larry wrote this article is to bring attention to himself for some project he may be announcing, thus the hint at a "fork". Since he mentions he is looking for a job in the Academic world, one can only guess. --Stbalbach 00:30, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity --One Salient Oversight 22:23, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia mentioned in the Singapore Sunday Times May 22

The Singapore Sunday Times on May 22, 2005 mentions Wikipedia in their 'Hot Blog' feature. Faith Toh, their featured blogger, complains that other Places in Singapore get a better write up in Wikipedia than her Punggol (Though she does make it her mission to rectify this). Faith has posted a copy of the article at [15].

Damned Lies

I've been poking around in the statistics bin and come up with some interesting charts. The pool of data I have is woefully inadequate; my machine far too antique and I am too old a dog to suck down the entire project and query it directly -- so my analysis is all very inconclusive.

Don't set too much store by the charts; they're just what came together in my spare time. Think of it as light entertainment.

Well, a fellow user suggested I post the damned things, so I have. — Xiong熊talk* 06:02, 2005 May 20 (UTC)

Calling all List writers

You might like to check out the new featured list idea. Filiocht | Blarneyman 12:44, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

(corrected the shortcut). See also the discussion towards the end of Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:04, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mornington Crescent Championship

Following on from the success of the Wikipedia:Chess championship, I am starting up a Wikipedia:Mornington Crescent Championship. If you're interested, please sign up:) jguk 20:17, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Looking for Wikipediholics

Hello-

I'm a producer for a new Boston based public radio show called Open Source with Christopher Lydon, which you can check out <a href="http://www.radioopensource.org">here.</a> We're doing a show this week on Wikipedia, including an interview with Jim Wales. We're looking for some Wikipedia contributors to talk to for the show. We want to know: who are the most dedicated, obsessive, passionate, interesting Wikipediholics? Maybe it's you! Are you totally obsessed with wikipedia? Do you contribute articles or edits on a regular basis? Have you maybe tried to seed a new language?

If you want to recommend someone you think we should speak to or if you yourself are interested in being part of this conversation, please contact me at robinamer@riseup.net with your email address and phone number, and a link to your wikipedia page.

thanks so much!

Robin Amer Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Lindsay Ashford vfd

There is currently a VFD going on for an article about some outspoken pedophile named Lindsay Ashford. Googling the name does seem to show some notability, but it's borderline.. more than some people we have articles on, however. The person is also quoted in wikipedia elseware, but I'm unsure if he added himself. What concerns me is that a good number of the voters seem to be basing their vote, or at least erroring on the side of delete, due to the ick factor of an outspoken pedophile. I think this is the wrong way of handling this, and that wikipedia has a duty to cover icky subjects because there are few other outlets with as much of an interest in maintaining neutrality. --Gmaxwell 17:12, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikisource

The vote is closed. See New vote on language subdomains. Caton 08:18, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

List of political action committees

As a result of some discussions on the WP:VFD, I have decided to try to create a List of political action committees to collect all those stubby articles such as Doing Our Nation's Service PAC and US-Cuba Democracy PAC. As posted on that article's Talk page, I envision this page replacing most of the minor PACs and providing links to more notable ones such as Tom DeLay's ARMPAC (if that article ever happens). Please feel free to throw non-expandable stubs as well as links to fuller articles into this list. ESkog 22:50, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Chess championship

The first ever chess championship is about to start! Signup at Wikipedia:Chess championship. The rules are strictly knock-out, five rounds of play with the winners from each round meeting eachother (that's 32 players for those of you to lazy count). Limited numbers of players, so sign up now! Gkhan 20:59, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

Article comparing Wikipedia to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

In Slate, Paul Boutin has written an article comparing Wikipedia to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, semi-favorabely. His main complaint seems to be that a reader can never be sure how reliable an article is. http://www.slate.com/id/2117942/ JesseW 22:59, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Thinking about this, I wonder if a "blame" feature(like in ViewCVS), that parsed the histories to identify individual lines by the person who's edit added them, might be useful... JesseW 22:59, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Whenever the question of reliability comes up, I refer people to Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia. Interestingly, the fact that Wikipedia may not always be accurate does necessarily mean that it is not a perfectly useful tool. It is not a direct substitute for something like Britannica, but neither is Britannica a direct substitute for Wikipedia. For example, you can't really ask Britannica a question or challenge it to cite a source. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:33, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

New RC viewing/vandal fighting tool

I'm working on a program that makes RC viewing and vandal fighting, in my opinion, easier and more efficient. You can check it out at User:CryptoDerk/CDVF. I'd like to get some feedback and maybe you'll find it useful enough to use. CryptoDerk 19:32, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

Craigslist plans a publicly-edited news site

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050507/ap_on_hi_te/craigslist_6 I wonder if Craig Newmark has seen Wikinews? RickK 04:28, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

On point, and pardon my U.S.-centrism, but is Wikinews going to do anything to free us from the grips of corporatized news media, specifically in the local markets? I'm sick of the "murder, weather and sports." I'd like to see real community-generated reporting taking place, covering neighborhood and various civics issues much more in depth. However, I'm unsure that Wikinews is seeking to take this approach in the U.S. at this time. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 02:03, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top.
The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to).. RickK 05:26, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, like I have the power to influence Wikinews policy to that degree. I'm not even an admin here yet.  :) At any rate, it's no small undertaking, and legions of news-generating minions are key to the success of such a venture. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 19:40, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

Y'know, being an admin (1) doesn't make any difference either way in what you can do as an editor and (2) doesn't make it any easier to recruit people for a collective project. In fact, doing a good job of building a collective project greatly increases the chance that people will support your becoming an admin. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:24, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

• The same goes for Wikinews. Mgm|^(talk) 18:05, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

U.S. Copyright Office Orphan Works comment period ending

May 9 is the end of the U.S. Copyright Office's comment period on the problem of orphan works. http://www.orphanworks.org/ has provided an easy way to submit your comments. They explain, "Orphan works are -- broadly speaking -- any copyrighted works where the rights-holder is hard to find. Because the cost of finding the owner is so high, creators can't build on orphan works, even when they'd be willing to pay to use them. In many cases the works were abandoned because they no longer produced any income. In most cases, rights holders, once found, are delighted to have their work used."

I urge fellow Wikipedians (especially, but not exclusively, those in the U.S.) to submit comments. For what it's worth, here's what I wrote:

I am a major contributor of content to Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) and a lesser contributor to other associated projects. We make scrupulous efforts to track down copyright holders and get permissions before using any particular work, but often it is simply impossible to determine if their might be someone out there who still has the rights to, for example, an uncredited or poorly credited photo from the 1940s (especially from areas that have experienced war or ethnic strife), or an article from a long-defunct magazine. Please, the public interest is best served by a legal regime under which after a legitimate, good faith search for the copyright holder of long out-of-print material, one may make material available to the public, rather than leaving it tied up and unavailable on the theory that an owner might someday emerge.

Remember: Deadline is May 9, 2005. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:19, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

scn.wiki

Did you know that there has been a sicilian language wikipedia since October 2004? In less than 7 months it has grown to nearly 800 articles. We have now reached a stage in our development where we would really like to see more involvement from the sicilian speaking community across the world. Please visit us soon and check us out! If you know a bit of sicilian, we encourage you to participate and help us grow our wikipedia even more. Salutamu e a prestu! --pippudoz 07:20, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

• Besides (obviously) Sicily, there might be a great project here for someone in Southern New England. There are a lot of (mostly older) Sicilian speakers in the same areas that there are a lot of colleges and universities. Probably a lot of those people have never done a thing with computers. This might be just the project to break that digital divide, if someone feels like doing some outreach. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:06, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

• Yale University, Wesleyan University, Providence College, Brown University and Roger Williams College are a few of the major institutes of higher learning in Southern New England. Mediterreanean culture is as prevalent as Northern European culture in the area between New Jersey and Boston. --McDogm 01:42, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Babel

Babel is now here on en.Wikipedia, in addition to Commons:Babel and Meta:Babel templates. Please use the new templates on your user page. – ABCD 15:40, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikiproject proposal:Perl Guru/Ninja

Hi, I just had an idea and I would like to see what the community thinks about it. To start, I am a pretty good PERL programmer and I can get it to do lots of useful things around here. I know I am also not alone. Here is what I propose:

A project where all wikipedians who wish to donate their skills in PERL can collaborate to serve the needs of the community and use their tools to help cleanup the database as a whole. What exactly does this mean? My current cleanup project was made possible entirely with PERL. Another good example is an idea I saw on User:Duncan.france's userpage: This led me to realise the tables in the Conversion of units article all need substantial housekeeping, in that they would be much improved if the various units were in alphabetical order... BIG job... However this is something a good PERL programmer can solve with ease.

I've already offered to help that wikipedian but if there was a single spot where this kind of stuff goes on I think it would be more effective. If you start putting a bunch of PERL programmers together then things get really interesting. I think it could be good fun for all and good for the community. What do you think? Triddle 06:01, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Incorrectly stubbed articles

Hi,

I recently made a new tool that is good at finding articles labeled as stubs that should not be so. I have generated a report of the top 2,000 probably mislabeled as a stub articles and placed it at User:Triddle/stubsensor/20050421. I hope someone here can pass it along to people who can do some good with it. Triddle 00:47, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

I took the time to create a very nice page format too. This should make the job of any volunteer easier and I was able to complete an entire section of 20 links in less than 10 minutes. This will help put a really good polish on Wikipedia. Triddle 07:48, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Get your votes in now!

Final two days of the vote on Wikipedia:Template standardisation. Ends 23:59 on 01MAY05. Noisy | Talk 12:36, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales Speaking at Harvard Law School Today

Jimbo will be appearing at a cyberlaw talk at Harvard Law School today at 4:30pm ET.

My hope, with the help of several other students, is to stream his discussion. Shortly before 4:30, we will post a link to the stream and Q&A related to his talk at Wikipedia:Jimbo Wales discussion at Harvard Law School, April 25, 2005.

My apologies if this note wasn't posted in the correct forum. I'm just trying to get the word out.

Best, Scott

This is 20:30 UTC. Thryduulf 10:03, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Public speech tomorrow night

Jimbo is also speaking tonight (Tuesday) at 8:30 at Pound Hall 101, on "Wikipedia and the Digital Divide".

map

Before the talk (at 8 pm) there will be a display of some real-time visualizations and sound-representations of Recentchanges. +sj + 20:06, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Template standardisation vote begins

After nearly two weeks of the competition to make talk page templates more consistent the template standardisation vote has begun. Voting ends on 1 May 2005. violet/riga (t) 23:48, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Reminder for anyone wanting to meet up over the summer...

A friendly reminder to all that the ideal time for Wikipedians to meet up (summer) is approaching. Should anyone be interested then list yourself on Wikipedia:Meetup under the most ideal location(s).

There is some interest in a UK meeetup, but we could do with growing those numbers before we could consider a meetup feasible: Wikipedia:Meetup#UK Call for interested persons. Thanks. Greg Robson 21:53, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sandbot - cleaning out sandboxes

I would like to proudly introduce the Sandbot. It's function is to clean out the sandboxes and enforce the introduction headers on several pages. Should anyone would like to have this bot clean one of their own sandboxes on a regularly basis, please leave a message on my talk page. If the bot stops operating for any reason, I would also like to be notified... if I don't catch it first. A list of its tasks can be found on its user page. -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:15, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

WWII Information Helps Lead to Reunion

I found myself sorting through a pleathera of items donated to the Green Pond Library to be used at a fund-raising yard sale. I ran across a photo album filled with many priceless photographs of WWII. Stamped on the cover of this photo album was 143Rd Armored Signal Company, 3RD Armored Spearhead Division. The name Robert H. Killian was also stamped on the cover. The photos were of the men who served in the Radio Section and the many places they served. There were even photos of Ingrid Bergman, Jack Benny and Edward G. Robinson visiting the troops. I felt sure if I could find the family of Mr. Killian, or anyone whose photographs were in the album, this album was far too valuable to be discounted in a yard sale, even if it was for charity. My father, who is a WWII veteran himself, also wanted the photos returned to their rightful owner, as these many men were all heros. My father did find Mr. Killian's son, and learned Mr. Robert Killian had passed away. It was with great pride that we returned the photo album to him, which so honored his father's patriotic contributions.

It was with the help of Wikipedia that we found the most helpful article on the internet giving details about this communications unit so vital to WWII.

THANK YOU Wikipedia. This little bit of history so richly adds to Mr. Killian's legacy and gives more meaning to the album returned to his son.

It has been a blessed day.

J. P. Callahan Birmingham, Alabama

Hey that's a nice story and good on you and your father. So pleased that Wikipedia played a positive part too. Pcb21| Pete 11:52, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's a great story. Isn't there a Wikipedia Research Successes page this could be copied to? If not, someone ought to make one... 67.85.189.46 18:00, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC) (actually User:JesseW, but I'm on another computer than usual...)

Write this up for the Signpost? (Sheesh, I just noticed the date of the comment I'm responding to -- has the deadline passed?) -- llywrch 22:15, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

language icon templates

The French Wikipedia has several language icon templates that I copied here today. The icons are intended to preceed links websites in foreign languages. Thus, if you were linking to http://www.yahoo.fr , you would type:

* {{fr icon}} http://www.yahoo.fr

The result is this:

• (in French) http://www.yahoo.fr

Presently, these templates exist for the following languages:

• English: {{en icon}}
• French: {{fr icon}}
• Italian: {{it icon}}
• German: {{de icon}}
• Spanish: {{es icon}}

If anyone would like to create templates for other languages, it might be good to ask User:Nataraja on the French Wikipedia to discuss the process he used to create the first four. No need to reinvent the wheel. (If you want to ask him and don't speak French, send me the message that you'd like to send to him and I will translate it.) I see this as one of those many little things that, on their own aren't so important, but that when taken together make wikipedia professional and visually pleasing. I thank User:Nataraja for his work. --Zantastik 03:03, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure how useful this is. The average user (not editor) will likely not be familiar with the two-letter abbreviations for languages, such as "de". And these are not always the same as the two-letter abbreviations for countries, such as "ja" vs. "jp". If it's a link listed in the external links, it's better to just write out "(in German)" at the end, rather than rely on a cryptic icon. -- Curps 03:07, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

While I don't expect all users to know what the abbreviations are, many, many English speakers know what "es" and "fr" stand for. I envision this being used only for very widely spoken languages. And we could always have a little (in German), followed by the link, followed by (German). --Zantastik 03:15, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think these are more annoying than useful. They (1) draw disproportionate attention to themselves, and (2) are unfriendly to text-only browsers. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:11, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps I am out of date, but weren't lots of images were deleted from templates, etc, to reduce the load on the struggling image servers? Won't these add to the problem with little tangible benefit above adding "(in foo)" where appropriate? -- ALoan (Talk) 10:50, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You ought to remember that some food packaging has information in several languages and people quickly pick up what the symbols mean. Actually, the codes aren't language codes ("GB" instead of "en") so I'm not sure if that's relevant. Can't we put "French" into the mouseover, anyway? r3m0t ^talk 10:11, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Mouseover only works for those browsers that have mice and do mouseover popups. And why force people to learn the meanings of a couple hundred new symbols, when we can just as easily use words that they already know? --Carnildo 17:42, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Firstly, you're exaggerating the problem. People would only need to learn about 7 items. Secondly, almost all browsers currently in use support mouseover tips, whether through alt or longtitle attributes. I prefer the language codes because in a list each one will be the same width, unlike the full names~ of the languages. r3m0t ^talk 13:50, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

1. I am not aware of any browsers for hand-held systems such as PDAs that support mouseover tips -- or mice.
2. I am not aware of any text-only browsers that support mouseover tips.
3. There are 60 languages that have a Wikipedia of 1000 articles or more
4. ISO 639 defines over 180 two-character language codes, and at least three times that many three-character language codes.

Carnildo 19:30, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikifun Round 8

Round 8 of the Wikifun hunt has begun. Fabulous prizes to be won! (well... maybe no prizes. but give the questions a try anyway!) Eugene van der Pijll 21:16, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

GlobalWPSearch

See this link. This is a tool that enables editors to link together articles with the same heading from different language editions of Wikipedia. --Eleassar777 15:28, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Be aware that the search is case sensitive: searching for "alyson hannigan" will simply get a list of "not found results", whereas searching for "Alyson Hannigan" nets you 7 articles (as of 08:15, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)). HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 08:15, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

Project Gutenberg linking to Wikipedia

I was nosing around Project Gutenberg just now (the site, not our article), whilst helping out in the development of {{gut-author}}, and discovered that PJ has lots of lovely links back to Wikipedia (take a look at this page and search the text for "wiki"…). When did this happen, how "official" is it, and is there any work needs doing to make sure PJ keeps up-to-date? --Phil | Talk 10:51, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

• PJ probably just links here. He's not linking back as far as I know, neither are the links remotely official. I doubt Wikipedia staff or editors have anything to do with the links. The only thing they need to do over there to stay up-to-date is make sure they add new entries whenever they become available. Mgm|^(talk) 09:27, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Template competition

A competition is announced for the standardisation of talk page templates: see Wikipedia:Template standardisation – submit your entries before voting commences at the end of 24 April 2005. violet/riga (t) 19:50, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

CheckUser

Discussion about a new sockpuppet checking feature is open on m:CheckUser. All are invited. —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 23:42, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikisource

New vote on language subdomains : the vote will be opened at April 12th, 2005, 0h00 UTC. Caton 20:38, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ten million pages indexed

As of today, Google has indexed more than ten million pages of Wikipedia's content. Yahoo follows with six million, followed by Gigablast with 450 thousand, and finally MSN with 180 thousand. The rise is quite significant, as only one month ago Google had spidered only two million pages. You can view the steady progression here. --Alterego 17:19, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, what does this actually mean? Given that we have a million or so articles (all languages) what are the other nine million? Histories? -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 17:44, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Google isn't just indexing the article namespace. Just looking through the top 200 results or so, it's got pages from the article, Wikipedia, Category, and MediaWiki namespaces in all languages, and there may be more namespaces that I just haven't found examples of. It may also be counting redirects as pages. --Carnildo 19:35, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

They follow robots.txt so they aren't getting to the histories as we block /w/, the random page and the search page. Everything else seems up for grabs and it looks like they are taking it. I.e., indexing everything in every namespace. As far as what it means, it would be helpful if we could process the referral logs for the last six months =). I've got a list on meta for articles with a top-ten search engine ranking which I am sure doesn't even begin to scrape what we really rank for. The large majority of search queries are made up by queries that only occur once or twice a month (or so they have said), so it would seem that if they index every single one of our pages we would be in the top for many of these more arcane terms, as we cover many arcane topics. Our traffic (according to Alexa and our bandwidth usage) is increasing quickly...it would be intriguing to see exactly how much of that is from search engines. Anyway...I find it all highly interesting =)--Alterego 20:50, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Why do we block histories? Should we block User:..., Wikipedia:... or Talk:... too? -- ALoan (Talk) 10:48, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Because article histories contain incorrect information, vandalism, copyvios, and libel in large quantities. Disallowing indexing of histories is a bit of butt-covering on that front. We'd generally rather people found the most recent versions of articles anyway.

There's also the technical issue that allowing spiders to go nuts on article histories would cause a significant increase in load with little benefit. -- Cyrius|✎ 14:23, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

New Google/Wikipedia feature

Oh my word.

• http://www.google.com/search?q=When+did+John+Muir+die%3F
• http://www.google.com/search?q=When+was+Isaac+Hayes+born%3F
• http://www.google.com/search?q=What+is+the+chemical+number+of+Strontium%3F
• http://www.google.com/search?q=How+long+is+the+tour+de+france%3F

That is something. – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 20:58, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

See Google Blog's entry on the matter. Wikipedia itself is not mentioned; note that this does not link to Wikipedia, but to a mirror, Serabella. Odd. r3m0t ^talk 21:36, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

It isn't very polished: who is bono? "Property: Paul David Hewson (born 10 May 1960, Dublin, Ireland), nicknamed Bono Vox, is the lead singer of the ..." strange place to cut it off. And that's an example linked to from their official blog. r3m0t ^talk 21:38, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

• Result for Harry Houdini has weird cut-offs too. Mgm|^(talk) 20:53, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

I wonder how they do this for the links that do work, though. I can see a way to automatize the celebrities and elements search results. But fishing the length out of the Tour de France article? — Sebastian 01:09, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

What a nice feature! Thanks for the heads up. This is precisely the kind of thing that search engines should have done a long time ago for very simple facts that can be easily parsed out of Web pages, rather than serving up a bunch of links and forcing users to parse the entire Web page themselves just to get the right answer. --Coolcaesar 08:12, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Public watchlist system

Violetriga has started a public watchlist system. This provides transcluded watchlists to which people can subscribe if they're interested in certain subjects. Anybody can edit a public watchlist (to add a new link, say) and watchlists stay for as long as they're needed.

• Wikipedia:Watch

--Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:43, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Legal

A new mailing list was open today. It is dedicated to legal issues. For more information, please read m:Juriwiki mailing list and m:legal. Anthere 18:24, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

legal means cool in brazilian ant, legal! :s (c t juste pour ta culture) --Vev 10:50, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikimania!

Registration for Wikimania, the first international Wikimedia conference, is now open. It will be brilliant fun. Everone is invited to join the event this summer.

Wikimania will take place from August 4-8, 2005 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The event will combine Wikimedia community discussions and software hacking with academic research, presentations of current implementations, and user/community panels. Wiki fans, community members, and developers are all invited to attend.

Feel free to submit presentations and other content for the conference; for more information, see the call for papers.

Please pass this message along to all Wikimedia projects, in English or in translation. For coordination, see our internal announcement. To let the rest of the world know, use our public press release.

If you want to help or have great ideas for the conference, please write us via the meta-feedback page, or just ask on the foundation mailing list. Attendees can coordinate travel plans and other informal events on the Wikimania community pages.

Wikimania is an event from the community and for the community - it will be brought to life through your participation and suggestions!

Looking forward to seeing some of you this summer,

+sj + 23:08, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC), on behalf of the Wikimania organization team.

Wikifun Round 7

Round 7 of Wikipedia:Wikifun has started. Demonstrate your extreme Wikipedia skills and answer 20 mind-boggling questions. Good luck! Grue 13:07, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

W00t! +sj + 23:08, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Savoir-faire

Wikipedia:Savoir-faire is looking for help in differents domains. thanks to help us to find people that can help us. --Vev 15:14, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC) allo? we are looking for support --Vev 11:06, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Template:Spanish-name and Template:Chinese-name

These are one-line templates that can be added at the top of a biographical article of persons with Spanish or Chinese names, to clarify what their surname is. For instance to clarify that the basketball player Yao Ming is Mr. Yao, not Mr. Ming; or to clarify that president Vicente Fox Quesada is Mr. Fox, not Mr. Quesada.

{{chinese-name|Yao}} →

This person has a Chinese name. Note: family name is Yao

Note: Chinese name, surname is Yao

{{spanish-name|Fox}} →

This person has a Spanish name. Note: family name is Fox

Note: Spanish name, surname is Fox

This could be extended to other languages. There are a number of longstanding existing pages at Category:Names by culture that only need a one-line template similar to the above to link to them. Thus Template:Russian-name could be created to link to Russian name, Template:Japanese-name could be created to link to Japanese name, and so forth, if these are considered necessary (but in these cases there will probably not be any confusion over which is the surname).

-- Curps 05:16, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As discussed at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)#Names_order, I am very strongly opposed to adding a note on every single Chinese or Spanish biographical article telling readers that the surname goes first. This will get very bothersome after the fifth article I come across and I think implementing something so self-referential and redundant is overkill. Readers should only be told things once. I don't think it's necessary to underestimate (ie insult) the intellegence of the reader. Can't we assume that most readers (NOT the general population) will know about Chinese name order or at least smell something when we keep referring to the person using his/her surname?

Please gain some consensus before implementing this on a mass scale. --Jiang 05:49, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Concur with Jiang. This is usually apparent even to those who do not already know this, simply from how the person is referred to in the article on second and subsequent mention. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:20, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

I've changed my mind about this. Now that I've seen them in place, I think they make a good clarification. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:01, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

I am not implementing it on a mass scale. As discussed at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)#Names_order, I'm OK with the status quo. I actually proposed this as an alternative to Jiang's proposal to use all-caps to indicate surnames, as in the Esperanto Wikipedia:

• YAO Ming
• Vicente FOX Quesada
• Jimbo WALES ?

Apparently this all-caps surname convention is used in certain other languages such as Esperanto, but certainly not in English.

This issue came up in a discussion of whether it was necessary to indicate surnames more clearly to readers unfamiliar with the surname-first usage of Chinese. Jiang seems to think it is necessary, and an all-caps surname is his proposed solution, although he seems to be saying the opposite in the comment above: "Can't we assume that most readers (NOT the general population) will know about Chinese name order or at least smell something when we keep referring to the person using his/her surname?"

Jiang argues that "all-caps surname" is an international standard, but this is a very unfamiliar usage to most English speakers and is not used by the overwhelming majority of English-language encyclopedias and reference works (Britannica, Encarta, etc. etc. etc.)

-- Curps 07:24, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I prefer the status quo over what you have proposed. The status quo is acceptable, but I believe using all caps will be an improvement. Of course, it isn't necessary, but I don't see how using caps only once per article - in the bolded name - will confuse people. i believe there aren't really costs of using caps. this seems to have been already done in some Hong Konger articles. if people don't get it, what else could they infer? --Jiang 07:35, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There would need to be consensus before implementing all-caps. It would also be inconsistent to use it only in Chinese, but not Spanish... actually, it would be inconsistent not to use it everywhere, and I think there would be very little support for such a drastic change. Use of all-caps surnames is simply too unfamiliar in English, just like the German convention of using * and † to indicate dates of birth and death is completely unknown in English.

If we did disturb the status quo, the advantage of using a template is that it allows a link to Chinese name or Spanish name, where everything is properly explained. All-caps doesn't allow that, it really provides no information at all... if a user doesn't already know Chinese naming and is not capable of inferring from repeated used of "Yao" within the article text that it's a surname, then merely seeing all caps "YAO" will not give any extra clue to such a user. They will think that it's a typo or a first name written in caps. -- Curps 10:19, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think slapping this template over everything would be a bad idea. Readers should hopefully realise that if an article keeps referring to someone by an unexpected name then this is not a mistake but a result of different naming conventions. I think it does insult the intelligence of the reader to put such a message at the top of the page. I'll give you another example of where this sort of thing crops up. A couple of days ago I checked through as many Icelandic biographical articles as I could find to correct errors that had been introduced, namely people changing first name to patronym throughout the article. Example: Davíð Oddsson should properly be referred to as Davíð, because Oddsson is not his surname. Some people who are unaware of the naming conventions think this is overfamiliarity on Wikipedia's part, and change the article. What I did was to put a comment in the wikitext next to the category links to remind people that Icelanders have no surname and should not be sorted under e.g. Oddsson, Davíð. Why not do something like this? Put a comment in the article so that anyone who tries to change it will be set straight, and leave the reader to work it out for themselves. I don't like the idea of using a template. — Trilobite (Talk) 22:26, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually the above sounds like a very good argument for the use of Template:Icelandic name. -- Curps 07:43, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There are already templates for explaining the format of various German names—{{German title Freiherr}} for example—would it hurt to have a similar one for Iclandic names? --Phil | Talk 15:58, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Just an idea: How about if we linked (only in the introduction of a page about a certain person) to a page Yao (姚 - family name) or so? This would automatically highlight the surname – but the primary purpose would be What Links Here on the family page. That page could also explain some general facts about the name or the family. In case of Chinese names it could also link to benevolent family organizations or such. — Sebastian 09:19, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC)

That would only be applicable to Chinese or Korean, where there is a small enough list of different surnames that we can list all of them. Other languages have a potentially infinite number of surnames, possibly borrowed from other cultures, such as "Fox" for Spanish. But for Chinese, if we really wanted to do it, it could be incorporated into {{Chinese name}}:

Note: Chinese name, surname is Yao

Probably, each of the surnames used in Chinese is encyclopedic.

Back to the original idea, though... are people really implacably opposed to a simple six-word notice at the top of biographical pages? It's really fairly unobtrusive, it could even be in <small> font if necessary, and it provides a link to an informative page about Chinese names (Spanish names, etc). -- Curps 19:59, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Manual of Style suggests that we leave links out of the bolded titles so I dont think that will work. I am opposed to the six-word notice, but we could perhaps hide a link the [Chinese name] or the surname article somewhere in the parenthesis where we provide chinese characters. --Jiang 20:41, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I suspect that either a majority, or a very significant minority, of readers do not understand Arabic, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Icelandic, Pakistani, Roman, Russian and Spanish name usage, all of which differ from the English. I do not think it is normally appropriate to spend biographical article space explaining the particular naming system, unless it is of special significance to the article in question. Capitalisation of the family name is not (unfortunately: I wish it were) standard practice in English. Something that unobtrusively (a) tells me what the family name is and (b) gives me a link to the national naming convention would be very welcome as far as I am concerned. I don't think that a hidden link would do that. I could work out from the references in the article that something "unusual" (at least for a Brit!) was going on with a person's name, but it would read a little strangely if I wasn't used to the particular naming convention, and it wouldn't provide a link to the explanatory page on that convention (so I wouldn't be sure how to duplicate it if writing about another person of the same nationality). I like the idea of the template and believe that people would soon get used to them (even if they dislike them now), but I think it is better to make the text as small and unobtrusive as possible. I don't like the wording "Note: Chinese name, surname is Yao" - it sounds blunt and lecturing, and to a person who is very used to the convention I can understand that this would grind! I think it may be better to avoid the imperative "Note" with something like "Chinese naming: Yao is the surname" (are you sure it shouldn't be "family name"? Brevity is good, but I just wondered whether "surname" is appropriate in the Chinese context!) Anyhow, I just thought I'd give my broad but not unreserved support to Curps here. --VivaEmilyDavies 00:02, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It is Urdu, not Pakistani. 150.203.2.60 22:42, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I like Curps's template idea a lot. I think there are a lot of things that grate the first time you see them, but which you come to appreciate over time. The rewording suggestion above is good. Noisy | Talk 12:02, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with VivaEmilyDavies -- a template is useful, but the proposed one sounds too blunt. Maybe something like "Yao Ming (Chinese name, Yao is the family name) ..." at first mention? As for the other ideas mentioned:

• All-caps: if this were standard convention I would advoctate it, but it's not. Also, it would be inconsistent unless all biographical articles used it (even English-style names), and that would be difficult from a logistics standpoint.
• Status quo: there are many styles of naming, like the Icelandic one above. Even if readers were familiar with one standard of naming (Chinese), they might not immediately grasp another (Russian, for example). Having the note allows us to link to a page explaining the name in detail.
• Comment in wikitext: This solves the problem of editors "helpfully" fixing "inconsistent" usage, but it does nothing for the reader.

However, I also believe the original Note: is too imperative. I think something more conversational, as in VivaEmilyDavies' comment, would work better. Josh 23:22, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

• Ditto VivaEmilyDavies and Josh. I would suggest that there is a very significant minority if not a majority of Wikipedia viewers that could pick at least one language where they don't understand the surnaming rules and how those rules would map to their own language. Curps has offered a solution that is 6 words, unobtrusive and is as simple as it is clean to look at. While it doesn't conform to the status quo, I would note that it is superior to the bolding system and the capitalization system as it is more informative and easier to implement as a standard across multiple languages. Thus, I fully support his system and promote expanding it to apply to other nationalities and languages. Vengeful Cynic 19:54, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Further thought on capitalisation - that will not work well on naming systems where the family name comes first, because it is fairly common in some works to capitalise the first word or first few words of an article. Hence people may well think that it is just inconsistent style, not an attempt to communicate the surname! VivaEmilyDavies 20:30, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikimedia Quarto

Hello,

The third Wikimedia Quarto is fully available in english (though not yet moved to Foundation website :-)). You may find it at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/WQ/3/En/1. Please do not hesitate to fix typos you might meet :-)

You will find the usual essays, Jimbo's letter, reports of the Foundation, conference summaries, and updates from the developing projects. As always, we are open to your suggestions and submissions; please send letters to newsletter-at-wikimedia.org, or leave comments on the meta-wiki.

Special thanks to the translators who continue to make this effort such a far-reaching success, and to the designers who have helped produce the current clean look.

Anthere

L.A. Area Wiki Meetup

It's official! The first-ever L.A. Wiki Meetup will be occuring on July 25th, 2005. Are you coming? Would you like to help host? More details on the Meetup page. Be sure to check back regularly for updates! - Eric 30 June 2005 23:40 (UTC)

Very interesting Alexa statistics

I've been doing quite a bit of work on the Wikipedia:Awareness statistics page and I was looking at Alexa when I saw this graph.

What the graph seems to show is that Wikipedia's popularity soars quickly for a short time, and then plateaus for about three months at that high level. Then there is another surge in popularity, followed by another three month plateau at that even higher level. This pattern seems to typify Wikipedia in the last twelve months, with four surges and four plateaus. We are currently in another surge.

October 2004 Surge - US Presidential election
January 2005 Surge - Indian Ocean Tsunami
April 2005 Surge - Pope dies, new one chosen
July 2005 - ?

If the Alexa Reach figures are correct, there are five times the amount of people reading Wikipedia than there were this time last year.

--One Salient Oversight 30 June 2005 06:03 (UTC)

The answer to the latest spike could be there has been a burst of interest in blogs and the press. Apwoolrich 30 June 2005 07:33 (UTC)

Reminder about Mind Benders

Just a reminder that Wikipedia:Mind Benders is open right now! The pre-round is an artistic competition open to everyone, and round one, consisting of ten or more mind-bending questions, will open on July 16. Why not check it out? For more information, see WP:MIND or the old announcement (listed above). Thanks, and hope to see you all there! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 28 June 2005 23:34 (UTC)

P.S. After July 16 there will be an open vote to determine the winner of the competition. We have three great entries so far, and we're looking for more. So be sure to contribute, vote, or both!

Overhaul of WP:VIP complete

Hello everyone,

I would like to inform you that WP:VIP has been overhauled and is ready for use. Check it out! Linuxbeak | Talk | Desk June 28, 2005 21:24 (UTC)

Looks good, thanks! I presume the old backlog has been cleared? Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 28 June 2005 23:31 (UTC)

birth of exprmntl.net (mediawiki website)

Just this post to announce the birth of Exprmntl.net (mediawiki website), general encyclopaedia of audio-visual art.

You will find a data base on practical the audio-visual alternatives: experimental cinema, do it yourself cinema, video art, web art, avant-gardes, activisms, super 8…

Exprmntl.net exists now in 4 languages: French, English, Spanish, German.

The French version is the most advanced (it takes again the site cineastes.net)

The English version is now experimental version.
It awaits nothing any more but you for agrandire.
Write in English, one will translate into French, and reciprocally.

84.100.40.26 22:24, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Why is this news? There's zillions of Mediawiki-based sites out there. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:35, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The news is that its licencend under cc-by-nc-nd. Good luck with that. -83.129.62.123 02:49, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Can you even make a no-derivatives wiki? How would that work? -- Cyrius|✎ 08:52, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This looks like a potentially interesting project, but: I know it's new and I know someone is going to say "sofixit", but the standard of English on the main page is so bad that I could not understand enough to be able to even begin fixing it. Filiocht | Talk 09:04, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Discussion on Sea of Japan/East Sea

Dear fellow editors,

Yet another attempt is being made to reach a consensus on naming conventions for the body of water variously known as the Sea of Japan, East Sea, or East Sea of Korea. Please note that the current discussion is restricted to naming conventions in Korea-related articles. The name to be used in international or Japanese contexts is not, at present, under discussion (current usage favors "Sea of Japan").

Please contribute to the discussion here: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean)/Disputed names. -- Visviva 06:55, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

bernie is a bum

I will do my research to make sure that I never contribute one penny to any organization that is associated with Bernie and his archaic thoughts. I feel sorry for his wife and daughters.

Thanks for sharing! --Golbez 04:27, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

Google Maps go global

It happened, folks - Google maps, and more importantly/fun, Google Satellite Maps (maps.google.com) has gone global. Here are just a few sights I've found while browsing:

• the Nazca Lines [16]
• Panmunjom [17]
• Tiananmen Square [18]
• Christ the Redeemer [19]
• the Eiffel Tower [20]
• the Baghdad parade grounds [21]

The shots are a few years old, as evidenced by this shot of Kansai International Airport; compare with our article [22]

We really need to start adding these links to articles of all sorts of neat stuff around the world :) I'm still looking for Chernobyl. --Golbez 19:51, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

Chernobyl is here I think (it looks the same as the picture on Chernobyl) MyNameIsClare talk 09:37, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's Chubu Centrair International Airport, not Kansai. If it was Kansai, the images would have be circa-1990. As it is, they're from around 2001. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:17, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually 2003, it appears. Here we can see that construction on Kansai's second runway has begun. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:23, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mind Benders

I have recently taken over the responsibilities of Wikipedia:Mind Benders, and wanted to mention to all of you that Mind Benders pre-round is now open! The pre-round is an artistic competition seeking for a logo/trophy that will be placed on the page of all winners. After the pre-round concludes, one round a month will be held. It will be a competition similar to WP:WF (WikiFun), but will consist of 10 or more questions that stimulate the mind and require logic, deduction, and acuteness. Most of all, it'll be fun! Round one will open soon, check this board for updates. The pre-round is open right now- we're all looking forward to seeing your entries! Also, there are some practice questions on Wikipedia:Mind Benders (shortcut: WP:MIND) that you can try! Have fun, and hope to see you all on the page! Thanks, Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 22:11, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Note: The deadline for entries is July 16, 2005. An open vote, where everyone registered is welcome, will be held after that. The vote will select the official Mind Benders logo/trophy. We've already received some wonderful entries, so be sure to vote after July 16! Thanks. Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 23:21, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

University Challenge

I debated putting this on announcements, but not sure if it is 'newsworthy' enough. I was taking a rest from the keyboard in this heat and watched "University Challenge: The professionals" (UK, BBC2) this evening, between teams representing "The Today Programme" and "Masters of Wine" a starter question was asked for which the answer was "Wikipedia". Neither team knew "What internet service [had been] started by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger" but in telling them Paxman recommended that they should use the site! --Vamp:Willow 22:04, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That is awesome and should be on every announcement page you can find :-). Pcb21| Pete 07:44, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I was also going to post this observation on the morning of Tuesday 21st June - but too late ! The Wikipedia community is too fast and too observant. --Nimrod86 08:54, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have already added to the Signpost newsroom so may be more widely publicised next week. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:51, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:U.S. Southern wikipedians' notice board

I have reopened the board after some months of inactivity. Please contribute if you are interested! Mike H 02:34, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

Monalisa

Trying to find Monalisa- contact old friend Jeremiah at jeremiah@elmsteel.com.

What !!!!!!!! I don't believe it!

What a joke - this site has the nerve to provide facilities to report other sites that use its content! WHAT A JOKE! What about my content that is on this site! Geoff Richardson www.thewhyfiles.net

If you could tell us what you are unhappy about (specifically), we can discuss this matter more rationally. Cheers, smoddy 19:39, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Presumably he's talking about Black triangles and images like Image:BoomerangUFO.jpg, Image:Blacktriangle2.jpg, and Image:Blacktriangle3.jpg which are labelled as fair use. Various IP addresses have been inserting reports of copyright problems into this article for a couple of days; some editors have replied on the anon talk pages. I recommend that Geoff starts with Wikipedia:Request for immediate removal of copyright violation. Bovlb 21:01, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)

I have emailed the webmaster of the site. smoddy 21:04, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm the one he's mad at, but I'm currently working on a compromise about it. I have contacted him and we talked. He says he'll get back to me on it. Until then the images were taken down. If he gives me permission I'll put them back up. SkeezerPumba 08:56, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Permission isn't good enough. We can claim fair use or they can be GFDL or similarly copyleft. But permission-only will result in the image being taken down. smoddy 11:15, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Those images are very doublfully fair use. We should replace them as soon as possible. — Sverdrup 14:12, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I quite agree. Wikipedia has a massive problem with people slapping fair use tags on copyvios, and this is an example of what happens. — Trilobite (Talk) 20:18, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

UPDATE: Although he spent some time to consider it, Mr. Richardson hasn't given permission to use the images so I have place IFD tags on the them. They need to be deleted off the server. He also says the text in the Black triangles article is in copyright violation of what is on his website. I argued this with him since none of what I put in the article is in any way word-for-word from his site. He instead agreed to let it stay as is, as long as I add a link back to his website which is now at the External Links section of the page. SkeezerPumba 20:43, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Can we come to a conclusion about whether the text is a copyvio or not, because the situation you've outlined is not acceptable. What if someone else comes along and decides his website is not particularly relevant and takes it out? Would this mean we no longer have permission to use the text? Either it isn't a copyvio, in which case he has no right to tell us to link to his site, or it is his text and he's allowing us to use it according to these non-standard conditions. If it's his text we need a statement from him that he is licensing it under the GFDL. — Trilobite (Talk) 20:18, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Anyone in doubt then go to the TheWhyFiles and look for yourself. About 2/3rd of the text on Black triangles was edited by me. If you go to the WhyFiles you can look up topics like the "Phoenix Lights" and the "Ans Belgium Sightings" for instance, and read the article there. Compair it to the summary informtaion that I wrote under Black Triangles article here on Wikipedia, and see if any of it is in violation. First off, I didn't use the WhyFiles site for whet I typed here on Wikipedia. Just because we have discussed similar topics doesn't mean it was taken from WhyFiles and the subject of "Black Triangles" isn't the sole creative property of one one website or sole author. Black Triangle phenomina is a worldwide X-File subject with numerous websites and television documantaries about the phenomina. I think Mr. Richardson of the WhyFiles assumed that because I used images from his website without permission I must have stolen his writings as well. I don't want to stir up any more problems with Mr. Richardson so I'm refraining from arguing who is right and who is wrong, so I challenge anyone here to read what I have typed (proven by article history so some jerk can't change what I have written around to prove copyright violations) and compair with what is on the WhyFiles. It's getting to the point where no one can type anything here without getting bit in the ass for it and I'm getting sick of it. And to answer your question Trilobite, his site has extensive research papers on the subject and many others. I think his work is relavent to the subject. Why it wasn't listed ealier I have no idea, but if you Google Black Triangles his site comes up. SkeezerPumba 20:46, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. My concern was not so much with you but with him. If he's under the illusion that he can complain to us about his copyright being violated unless we link to his site then we have a situation where text in our articles can only exist in accordance with various conditions laid down by other people. If there's no danger of his link being taken out and him complaining about copyvio it's probably best to just leave things as they are. — Trilobite (Talk) 21:21, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Subject: cartoonist

Moved to Talk:Cartoonist

Only have of the entry for Ninja is visible ?? It stops loading at History.

WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles

The goal of this new project is to ensure that Wikipedia has a corresponding article for every article in every other encyclopedia available. This is made easy because we have lists of articles that need to be made or even just redirected.

This project really really needs help! thanks in advance Bluemoose 09:49, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Political figures

I know there's a lot of us out here who do a fair bit of writing on political figures. This WikiProject never really got off the ground, despite a couple of short-lived attempts at doing so, and I think it'd be quite useful to have, in terms of being able to focus attention on areas that particularly need it - we've seen how much WikiProjects have been able to achieve in the past. So I'm quite keen at really trying to get this going once and for all - is anyone else interested? If so, please drop me a note on my talk page, or add yourself to the member list there - many hands make light work. Ambi 13:32, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wikifun Round 9

Is now open to play. See WP:WF. -- AllyUnion (talk) 11:04, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

OpenFacts layout changed

I was always a bit frustrated that openfacts never gave comprehensive info about edits, and it also the Assessibility section was a bit... useless. So I revamped it, retweaked the colors, converted FONTS -> DIVS, that sort of stuff. Be aware! http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Wikipedia_Status Ambush Commander 03:30, Jun 11, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Microsoft notice board created

I'm starting this notice board so that we can coordinate better articles. Hopefully a Wikiproject can be created. Our knowledge of Microsoft technologies is pretty bad, currently! I should know: I just got Windows 2000 article to FA status, and I've also been a part of getting Windows XP to FA status. Internet Explorer is a lot better than it once was too... however, in the process of making and editing those pages I've discovered that many technologies are either missing from Wikipedia, or they are pretty piss poor (see MDAC). So, I'd like to encourage everyone to start posting here so that we can get our articles up to scratch! - Ta bu shi da yu 08:11, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia to save the world?

There's a very interesting article at http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/000736.html about a project to use Wikipedia to disseminate public health information on the probable forthcoming influenza pandemic: "Citing the impact that Wikipedia had post-Tsunami, Dr. Lucas Gonzalez of the Canary Islands in Spain is attempting to use the publically authored and edited site to help prevent, slow and survive an outbreak." Dr. Gonzalez is editing as User:Lugon (talk). This is a great idea, IMO, and I'm sure he'd appreciate any assistance you could give to improve the article on Avian influenza. -- ChrisO 22:46, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Widget

For those of you who use Mac OSX Tiger, there's a Dashboard Widget which seaches and displays Wikipedia articles (in any language). Probably no good for serious editors, but good for looking something up quickly. http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/reference/wikipedia.html —Wahoofive (talk) 15:45, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It is currently listed on Apple.com as the third most downloaded widget. Paul August ☎ 16:23, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

I'm told (although I haven't watched it), that Steve Jobs used the Wikipedia widget during his WWDC keynote yesterday. I don't know if it was before or after the Intel announcement. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:43, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It was before (though he later revealed that the widget was actually running on an Intel Mac prototype). He said it was one of his "favorites" and used some superlative to refer to Wikipedia — I think he said it was one of the "most accurate" references on the Internet. --TreyHarris 03:01, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The bit has been quoted on Wikipedia-l:

This is a favorite of mine: Wikipedia. For those of you who don't know: This is an Open Source encyclopedia where everybody contributes to it. It has now become one of the most robust and certainly accurate encyclopedias in the world because you got experts from all over the world contributing to it. And we just look up "tiger" in here, and you get the low-down on all kinds of tigers. So that's Wikipedia and it's great.

Okay, so we're not insanely great, but plain-old "great" is pretty good. -- Cyrius|✎ 09:54, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ooops, the Wikipedia Widget has now dropped a place to number 4: Apple.com.

• Windows

Procedure for a FA demotion tightened

After proposing a tighter procedure for the nomination of a Featured article for delisting, the new proposal found agreement with AllyUnion and Filiocht. and is currently put into use. (There were no objections). The old procedure for nomination of a FA for removal was far too lax. Anyone with a malicious or whimsical intent could nominate an article for the removal, without giving a fair trial to those involved in the article's rise to FA status. The current rules have been made more stringent, compulsorily requiring the user to put his critique on the article's talk page, and allowing it to remain for seven days so that objections could be taken care of. This would also prevent unnecessary articles from being posted, which would otherwise waste other reviewers' time and energy. The new rules can be seen at WP:FARC and a summary of the comments by AllyUnion and Filiocht is on the FARC talk page. [Proposal was put forward by me]  =Nichalp (Talk)= 17:53, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

New template for wrong titles

{{title}} has been created, and seems to work better than {{wrongtitle}}. In pre-CSS browsers, it's not particularly broken - it simply puts the "correct" title below "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.", keeping the "real" title above. See w00t for an example. This could also be used for disambiguated titles - not sure if that's a good idea. --SPUI (talk) 17:42, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Bad idea. When the vandal used this trick, someone said it looked dumb in skins other than Monobook. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#New page move technique!. --cesarb 17:54, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Would that be something to change in the skins? For the time being, we can just change {{title}} to {{wrongtitle|title={{{1}}}}}. --SPUI (talk) 18:01, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps. I don't know much about the other skins, as I only use Monobook. And I hope passing a parameter as a parameter to another template works... You are getting too near the parser's twilight zone when you do something like that. --cesarb 18:07, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Passing a parameter should work - I believe I've done it before. --SPUI (talk) 18:18, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

File:Title template bug.png

Yuck

Here's the result in the classic skin. Pretty nasty if you ask me. Lupin 18:31, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No, it didn't work. After looking at the screenshot, I decided that going back to the version without tricks would be better; I had to copy the code from {{wrongtitle}} since it treated the first two }} as the end of the template call. --cesarb 18:38, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Nah, it works; it just looks weird on the template's page. See w00t. --SPUI (talk) 19:08, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This seems great (if it looks good in other skins). My only worry is that people linking to an article will probably not realize that the title they see at the top isn't the article's name, and so will try to link to, for instance, Visual C++ (which I just added {{title}} to). Obviously they should realize pretty fast, but it will still probably be a little messy. — Asbestos | Talk 18:12, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Another problem: I like to copy the page's title from that area when making a link (to avoid linking to redirects or with annoying underscores). This template overwrites that (not a problem if the only difference is a lowercase initial, but could be a problem in other situations). --cesarb 18:17, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, that is a good point. Maybe it could have the "real" title after it, smaller? --SPUI (talk) 18:20, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think that this is part of a philosophical idea of whether titles and article names should be the same. For instance, looking through the {{wrongtitle}} links, I noticed EDonkey2000 (program), and headed over to change the template. But should it read {{title|eDonkey2000 (program)}} or just {{title|eDonkey2000}}? The disambig in brackets is not actually part of the title, but is part of the article name. Once the title is no longer the article name, is there any point in the bracketed disambig? But, at that point, why shouldn't all "xxx (xxx)" articles get re-named to the title without the brackets (I'm not saying that this is a good idea). — Asbestos | Talk 18:24, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

While I think the proof of concept was nice, now that it's been changed to just call {{wrongtitle}}, we now have mass edits going on changing uses of {{wrongtitle}} to call the new template... that just calls the old template. {{wrongtitle}} is used in many hundreds of pages; wouldn't it make more sense to hold off until the kinks are worked out and then change {{wrongtitle}} itself, rather than introducing an entirely new template and churning all those hundreds of pages? (Full disclosure: I'm the one who created {{wrongtitle}}.) --TreyHarris 22:36, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I added a nice colored box to that effect to Template talk:title; if someone didn't see that and is still happily adding the tags, ask the user on his talk page to stop (and point to this discussion so he will know why). --cesarb 22:49, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If the bugs can be worked out this looks like a major improvement over the previous system. Should we consider using this on all disambiged pages? This might be very helpful. For instance having both Georgia (country) and Georgia (state) simply titled Georgia could help alleviate the long running conflict over those pages. - SimonP 17:20, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

Very neat trick for other purposes, like playing with one's User pages. — Sverdrup 13:56, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Google's new "meaning of" search that shows wikipedia definition first

Check this out that shows wikipedia's popularity and google trying to promote it. Try any search for some relatively less known subjects with the words "meaning of" in the prefix. for eg. try searching for "meaning of hyperspace" and u get wikipedia's definition as the first hit with a special green font that puts it even more visible. "meaning of masturbation" shows wikipedia in the special slot that google has created. other examples are "meaning of ayurveda" (which was my initial querry that i stumbled upon this inbuilt feature) and "meaning of botail"

google is not only giving top listing but also a special place that few other sites can get even with a zillion hits. it's on the same idea as the inbuilt calculator of google (that displays the results in bold). only the results of wikipedia is displayed in green (normal font not bold). --Idleguy 07:14, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

• I'm sorry Idleguy. But it's already been reported on Wikipedia:Announcements a while back. Mgm|^(talk) 15:52, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

OH, ok, guess i'm late then, lol :-) Idleguy 20:12, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

Wikijunior name vote

m:Wikijunior project name Voting will end June 6, 2005 at 11:30 am EST. -- user:Zanimum

See m:Wikijunior to see what this vote is trying to name. FreplySpang (talk) 13:35, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Namela

There is big news about a page savoir named Namela out there.rumor has it that he saves anykind of pages from being deleted.nobody knows namelas real name.his user page says for reasons,only a few Namela siteings have been reported.

What? How can some one "save" pages from being deleted? -- user:zanimum

Pleas vote for de.wikipedia!!!!

the german wikipedia is nominated for the Grimme Online Award and we go win with your help. vote here (last entry) it's very simple to vote: click on the circle left to Wikipedia - Die freie Enzyklopädie, then the button vote >>> and then Ja!. the rest isn't necessary, cause it's just a competition. so please help the german 'pedia Schaengel89 @me 12:05, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

When you see "Deine Stimme ging an: Wikipedia - Die freie Enzyklopädie" you have voted and you can close the popup window. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 13:02, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm not going to vote for something I can't read. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:42, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Same. r3m0t ^talk 19:02, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

I voted and I can't read it either. NeoJustin 00:22, June 9, 2005 (UTC)

Article validation survey being finalized, suggestions needed

The article validation feature will go live with MediaWiki version 1.5, due out in a few weeks. An exciting new "validation" tab will appear up there with "edit" and "history". Clicking on it will reveal a short survey, through which we will gather ratings on articles. These may eventually be used for nefarious purposes like identifying things to fix, detecting systematic strengths and weaknesses, and picking articles for inclusion in offline versions.

But what questions should we ask? Please visit m:En validation topics and let us know. "Hurry, developers are standing by! While supplies last!" -- Beland 03:13, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Proposed Wikimedia sites

Are these purposes important enough to spawn new Wikimedia Foundation projects or implement new MediaWiki software features? Weigh in on m:Proposals for new projects!

• Almanac
• Political, religious, and philosophical discussion/debate site
• Geographic information and maps
• Collaborative translation
• Sharing useful ideas which might translate into inventions or business models
• Facility for storing structured data
• Creative writing site
• Storage facility for musical scores

The most popular proposals have working demo sites. Whether you think these projects are brilliant, redundant, in need of improvement, or you want to start contributing to them right now, please visit and drop a line.

Of particular interest, the "Wikibate" proposal (the discussion/debate site) needs your ideas and votes for a new more permanent name. Please visit the demo site at: http://forum.for-pgh.org/wiki/index.php?title=PghForum:Name

-- Beland 02:16, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

New fixup project - spelling - with a new extension

There's a new project to fix common spelling mistakes in articles. To participate, you need Firefox. You can't participate otherwise. Sorry!

The extension (technically a Greasemonkey script) makes typo fixing very, very easy. That's good, because there are plenty of typos!

Please help! r3m0t ^talk 12:38, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

PS The same stuff can be used for other projects. If anybody has ideas, please contact me. r3m0t ^talk 12:38, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry -- I feel so stupid -- I forgot the link! It's User:Humanbot. r3m0t ^talk 12:53, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Summary of some older announcements

• Two responses to Robert McHenry’s anti-Wikipedia piece: Aaron Krowne and Wynn Quon. (summarized 20:09, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC))
• A summary of the major changes in cryptography articles during February 2005. (summarized 20:09, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC))
• Der Spiegel was found to have copied large sections of a de. Wikipedia article on the Rwandan Genocide without attribution. Story here. (summarized 20:09, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC))
• Announcing Wikipedia:WikiProject Photography (summarized 20:09, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC))
• Relaunch of UK COTW (summarized 20:09, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC))
• Wikimania soliciting presenters, posters and workshops. (summarized 20:09, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC))
• Legal issues mailing list started; see m:Juriwiki mailing list (summarized 08:03, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC))
• Public watchlists: Wikipedia:Watch (summarized 08:03, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC))
• A project to deal with Incorrectly stubbed articles is started: User:Triddle/stubsensor (summarized 08:03, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC))
• Sandbot - cleaning out sandboxes (summarized 08:03, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC))
• A way to find multi-lingual users: Wikipedia:Babel (summarized 08:03, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC))

Wikimania media comp

{{WikimaniaMediaCompetition}}

If you have any questions, please contact Sj or Bdk, the Compmetition organizers. You could advertise Media Comp using {{WikimaniaMediaCompetition}} and help Wikimania. Cheers, --Aphaea* 15:14, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mind Benders

Round one of Mind Benders has just concluded. Congratulations to ROYGBIV for winning the first round! Round two will open at approximately 2 PM, EST, Sunday, July 24. In addition, the voting for artistic entries in the pre-round has been extended until the end of round two. So why not give your mind some wikifun? Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 16:57, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Round two is now open! So why not give it a try? Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 18:38, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Baseball players

Wikipedia:WikiProject Baseball players seems to be dormant, but I'm interested in starting it up again. I've worked on a new infobox template (see it in action here) and have many ideas for increasing Wikipedia's coverage of MLB players. If you're interested, please leave a note at the project's talk page. Thanks! AиDя01DTALKEMAIL 22:54, July 22, 2005 (UTC)