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Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive E

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This is really starting to bug me (abusive edits)

Hi. I just had to say this, and maybe get some second opinions on it. I'm sure it has already happened to any user who has been around long enough: you contribute with something to an article, especially biographies, usually it's a detail or curiosity related to the object of the article that you think would be worth mentioning in the article. It doesn't disturb the narration, and sometimes it's a little more than a footnote, but still someone comes and bluntly deletes it, saying something like "I don't think that's important". To that I'd answer: then just don't read it, but don't delete it! That is normally done by newbies and anon contributors, and here's something else they normally do that's starting to get me: they rewrite the entire article not because it was poorly written, or unclear, but only because they believe that it would be better if written in some other way (example: I write "this is very important for the solution of the issue", then someone rewrites: "this is quite important fo the outcome of the issue" &#150; that was just a sentence, but image this expanded to entire paragraphs at times). I know that nobody "owns" the articles, or the information in them for that matter, but if it's a question of style, why should my work be butchered to satisfy someone else's vanity? It's about precedence. But then again whoever does that never believes that that's what they are doing, they are always "improving the article". Well of course they'd say that, wouldn't they? But again, it's about vanity: someone always thinks that their way is the best way. I'm dealing with one such person right now (an anon user), he's bent on rewriting almost everything in the article (an exaggeration, but he rewrites big chunks at a time) and has bluntly erased a piece of information I had written (one of those small details) because he thought it didn't matter (and left an ironic remark in the Edit Summary asking how that [passage] relates to the subject). I've reverted it, but I have no doubts that he'll come back and rerevert it, certainly making some point about it in the article's talk page. My "wikistress" level is approaching level 3 (yellow alert!). I mean, democracy is great, but we are approaching chaos here, and it's really tiring having to deal with one of those situations every couple of days. Regards, Redux 14:51, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Simple solution, and I quote from the Edit screen: If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, do not submit it. Filiocht 15:00, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
it seems to me that the deletion you are talking are the fact of m:castle jumpers
about the edits changing slightly the signification of a sentence, then being replicated to the rest of the article, it's part of the reguler wikipedia building process, when such a change gets too far from the real meaning, the next contributor who wil notice will rewrite the entire section. You don't have to worry about the evolution of what you've done, specially in the case of an article meaningful to you or an article you care about, this is just a way to raise your wikistress. remember what you write stops belonging to you when you click to submit it. And If you really can't deal with not knowing what your work has become, you should go check this article once in a time (I m speaking over a matter of months, not days.)
Don't be afraid of chaos, chaos means change and only from change can come evolution and getting better of an article. As surprising as it sounds this is the way of life of an article, I dont have an example to give cause I m working on the fr:wiki right now, but if you look thgrough history of old articles and great articles, you should see its evolution.
The important thing to remeber here is that no article is finished yet, and that an article may need to step back to get some impulse. Izwalito 08:28, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That is no excuse for abuse, which is what I was talking about. The project cannot function if we start using that argument to justify people doing whatever they feel like, trampling on other people's work at will. As I said, nobody owns the articles and the information, that's one thing. Vanity editing and disregard for the work of others, that's something quite different. Regards, Redux 15:19, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's happened to me a couple of times, but probably not to your level. If someone reverts my edits, and I happen to disagree with it, I refrain from the temptation of reverting it back. Instead, I bring it up to the article's talk page and wait for a response. Sometimes, I just move on. In others, I will go back to the article eventually, and make the change if there are no objections.
I don't think I've ever done more than one revert on an article at a time unless it's vandalism. Another time I would do the revert is if the other person's revert is either false or grammatically incorrect (in the latter case, I prefer to do an edit rather than a revert). --Deathphoenix 15:26, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Let's suppose this is a case where almost every sensible/knowledgeable person agrees with you, and you just have one person trying to arbitrarily impose their will on the article. Such situations can usually be resolved, although the process is slow and somewhat Wikistressful.
Reinsert your material with an edit comment saying "Do not remove without discussing in Talk." On the Talk page, add a brief note explaining why you think the piece of information needs to be there. If other editors concur, they will help you in dealing with the problem. If there's no response at all, and If someone removes the item again WITHOUT having discussed in in talk, you can make a Request for Comment and that will invite other people to visit the talk page and perhaps enter expressions of support. If you can show that there's consensus on the Talk page, you will then be in a good position to get action from a widening circle of Wikipedians.
Also, if the person making the change gives some kind of cogent reason, even one that I think is bogus, instead of simply reverting I always try to change the material in some way that shows I'm at least acknowledging or trying to address the objection. If I think the reason is truly bogus I won't meet them halfway, but I'll at least try to meet them 10% of the way. For example, if I say "2 2 = 4" and someone changes it to "2 2 = 10" with an edit comment "NPOV decimal-centric bias. Down with decimalism!", I won't change it back to "2 2 = 4", but to "2 2 = 4 (in customary decimal notation)." Later on when the little edit war is forgotten, someone else may wonder what the heck that parenthetic phrase is about and remove it, but meanwhile it sometimes damps down what would otherwise be and edit war. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:46, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
This tactic works to an extent, except that on difficult issues for the whole article becomes a forest of parenthetical interjections, and little "balances for NPOV", weasel words etc etc. I think of this as Wikipedia's "Curse of articles written for the writers not readers". Pcb21| Pete 18:16, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I too have developed "tactics" to avert confrontations. Normally I try to be extra-polite in the talk page, even political, if you will (avoiding words such as "wrong", or saying things like "what were you thinking?"). But still the trouble remains that the project is extremely prone to those kinds of situation, and as I said, it gets a little tiring having to deal with one of those every couple of days (who knows, maybe I'm a jinx with those things). Sometimes I'm amazed at how it happens, as it is the case of this article where I'm currently facing this situation: the article already existed, but it was little more than a stub. Nobody would put any work into it, except for a few little changes every now and then. I had been meaning to go to work on it for months, but I didn't have the time. The article remained untouched for all that time. When I finally got around to it, when I've put a boatload of time into it, an anon user comes out of the blue and starts creating trouble, bluntly erasing information because he believes it shouldn't be there and leaving ironical remarks in the Edit Summary or the talk page, sometimes even insulting my inteligence. So now I have to focus on the controversy and contribute less to the article itself. Where was this guy when the article was a handful of poorly written lines all that time? His list of contributions shows that he has been around for a while (although we can't be sure that it's the same person), but usually contributes erasing/editing small parts of articles already well-developed by others, so as to enforce his particular view of things. It's an awful lot of coincidence that these people only show up when the article has finally been developed. It gives me the impression that they are just not willing to do any of the hard work, and instead just linger around, waiting for someone to do it for them, and then they start obsessing over sometimes ludicrous details. So, they don't want to do any of the work, but they want the article to be exactly how they picture it should be. That's another thing: people who don't really contribute (or contribute very little) to expand the website, but are actually concerned with raising hell over stuff that are already well-established (not to be confused with those who work tirelessly to fix problems and revert vandalism. I'm talking about some obsessed users, usually anons, that want to use the website as a means to express their "love" for someone or something). I know that I may be a litte bitter regarding this subject, but I'm just tired of this. In fact, it may be that this happens to me a lot exactly because I prefer to work on articles or subjects that are overlooked or underdeveloped by the rest of the community, so I do 98% of the work to expand the article, and suddenly I have to put everything on hold because an anon somehow realized that the theme was being expanded and wants to question how I'm conducting the work. I'm fully aware that part of this problem cannot be solved in view of the very nature of Wikipedia, but part of it could, if the community would finally acknowledge that the project has grown passed the point where it was manageable soly on the basis of good will and comaradery. Regards, Redux 17:42, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC) P.S.: Sorry for the (really) long post. :)

Only on a couple of occasions has someone rewritten something I have written. The solution is to ensure that your prose is such that no one dare touch it. Survival of the fittest! --Alterego 18:22, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

You can do that, but in the end it would be: no one with at least some common sense. There's always the chaotic factor though. It's a mathematical truth: "obsession complete freedom = insane editing". Somehow the obsessive people out there just keep finding me. Regards, Redux 19:51, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if this will make anyone feel any better, but I'd like to recall that the nature of our engine means that nothing is ever completely lost. Say you put a great deal of work into an article and some anon user comes around, deletes it all, and replaces it with a string of "zzzzzz"s. You revert it; he re-reverts it. War? I say, leave it be. Almost by definition, that sort of behavior cannot persist unless it is fed.
WP demands a great deal of effort in order to bring about permanent change. Anyone who finds amusement in pure vandalism will get bored quickly and move on -- if you don't encourage him. Wait a month, revert the article, and forget about it. Readers who use a WP feed may not have the ability to browse page history, but those reading WP directly can always check for versions that may make more sense, so even during the "bad" cooling-off month, all is not lost, or even totally obscured from the readership.
Relax; it'll all only zeros and ones. --Xiong 22:00, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)

Yes, that's all true. In fact, I've been trying to do just that. But the thing is, it's much easier when it's plain vandalism. It gets more complicated when you have to deal with anons and newbies that are just, for the lack of a better description, full of themselves. That's why vanity editing is much more common with them, and they get aggravated when you show them that they can't just do whatever they feel like around here. Many a time, they mean well, which still doesn't keep them from getting in your face. Just now, the anon I'm dealing with posted his answer on the talk page of the article in question, where I had called him on the vanity editing. Apparently, I can't speak English. "Me no speak Englis", since he believes that his idea of how things should be phrased is the better (if not the only) one. And this guy is actually a nice one (right after he said I couldn't speak English, he said that I had, "however", done a good job in gathering information for the article), I once had a newbie call me names gratuituosly because I wouldn't let him have his way in an article (you may think I provoked him, but I visited the guy's talk page, and there I saw that another user had called him on his arrogant attitude in some other article, and in reply, the newbie called the user a "whimp" &#150; and the guy had been here only a month or so when that happened! As I said, the crazy people just keep finding me!). But it was the typical behavior I talked about: he firmly believed he got to decide what should and shouldn't be in the article, so whatever he didn't like, he deleted. I was talking about obsession before: well this little situation I'm facing is a good example too. Anons usually edit an article and move on, especially since they don't have the watchlist resource. This anon I'm dealing with now has returned repeatedly to this article at hand, which he probably started doing when he came back for the first time to check if his changes had been touched, since they had, he started policing the article so as to be able to enforce his ideas, even though he has no watchlist to tell him when the article has been edited. The obsession here is not with the object of the article (in this case, a biography, so it would be a person), but rather with the objective that his idea of how things should be done prevail. He won't move on, as anons usually do, and in doing so he won't let me move on (as far as that article is concerned). I know I should be zen about all this, but frankly I'm starting to loose my patience. It's not this guy in particular, it's the sum of all the factors. Regards, Redux 02:49, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and did I mention that, even though I can't speak English, I do however speak "awkward English"? This coming from another article where I had posted a comment a while back. The same anon saw it and decided to post a reply (he also took the opportunity to teach me how to be a better Wikipedian). Better watch out, if you're not from the same wherever place this guy crawled out from, he's going to rewrite all your work, all the while making witty remarks in the talk page about how you can't speak English (you know, the language about which he knows everything). That's it, if this guy slanders me in another talk page, I'll go medieval on his... well, you know what. We have to be patient with anons and newbies, but there's a limit where I draw the line, and that's mockery. Sorry for the outburst. Regards, Redux 03:15, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
You are spending too much time and effort venting steam -- although that's better than slugging it out, you will not get the kind of release you need here in a little edit window. Take a deep breath, go see a movie, get drunk, shoot some hoops, get laid, whatever works for you. When you come back, just go ahead and go to work. The next time some newbie edits up your stuff in a manner that annoys you, try this: Just do nothing, absolutely nothing, for a minimum of 7 days. See if somebody else fixes it. If not, fix it then.
Just an idea. --Xiong 03:13, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

Humm, you're right. I guess I've inadvertedly reached level 4 in my "wikistress". This guy got to me like no one ever had, even the name-calling newbie. I guess it's more about me than him. No one likes being mocked though. I'll take Xiong's advice and take a break, also I'm appointing him my official guru for wikistress matters. This will avoid me going against everything I stand for by ambushing some clueless anon out of grievance. But the issue of abusive edits remains though. This needs to be addressed if we are to avoid silly clashes like this one I almost got into. Redux 03:27, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It does help to vent steam here. Not so much for the steam, but it helps you get perspective. When you think there's no other way of handling something, you can get a second opinion or feedback that will help in finding a better solution. I was wrong to want that guy's blood on account of him being... obtuse. But I started this discussion over abusive editing, only citing that guy as an example I was experiencing. I'd still like more feedback on this, I had not intended this to be just some steam hatch for me. My apologies for that. Redux 03:41, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have recently had a very similar experience. One user wanted to delete and restructure large chunks of a recently featured article. After a bit of a standoff, the situation appears to have de-escalated. The strategy?

  • Thank the user for their input, and for their attempts at discussion. Yes, really.
  • Show good faith by merging in any positive contributions they make, or even anything that doesn't significantly damage the article.
  • Seek support from other individuals who have edited or shown an interest in the article. One vs one is a very different situation from one vs several.
  • Attempt to discuss the issues. (It appears that you have done this already.)
  • Do not allow the article to be damaged.

I don't agree with Xiong's suggestion that you ignore the problem. It sounds like this individual could become a valuable contributor to Wikipedia. They certainly seem keen enough, so why not help them learn? They've got be bold down pat, but aren't so strong on wikilove and civility. So? Few people learn by RTFM: trial and error is much more common. Gently point out the error of their ways, and direct them to the appropriate resources. Who knows? We may end up with both a good article and a good contributor.

That said, even after all this some people just don't get it. I used to get quite upset by one person's behaviour, until I discovered that they were just 15 years old. Now I expect such behaviour from them, and don't get so stressed about it. GeorgeStepanek\talk 00:51, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good points too. And indeed, it had not occurred me that I just might be dealing with a kid (no offense to any of our younger contributors, there are many people here who are wise beyond their years). Yes, I did try to show him that his actions were misguided (I believe), and I looked the other way when he rewrote big chunks of the article solely because he believes his syntax is unparalled (or because he has decided that I don't know any English). But I screwed up in the sense that, when he started being ironic and dismissive of my work (to the point of implying that I couldn't understand how he was improving the article because I "didn't speak English" all that well), I started to show him the same courtesy that he had shown me. As I said before, no one likes being mocked, and that guy was even editing my comments on talk pages (reorganizing them so as to make it easier for him to reply), but I shouldn't have done that. I should have been the "bigger person", so to speak. Now I've made it that much more difficult for this standoff to be resolved. I've also observed that some people just go to amazing links to make a point. When I said to this guy that he shouldn't do certain things because we have policies about that, he accused me of trying to impose my opinion by quoting general policies (as if policies were an artifice set forth by the "evil registered user" to impose himself on others). I also don't have the luxury of seeking support from other users involved with the article because I pretty much did it all myself &#150; as I said, the article was little more than a stub that no one was interested in developing, so I stepped up. The big question here is how to deal with anon users (that as such don't have their own talk page and we cannot safely account for on the website, since IP addresses may be shared by a number of people) that show obsessive behavior. I will again cite this present experience of mine: I just realized this guy is most likely the same anon that had been contributing to another biographic article, and there, whenever someone would undo something he had done in the article because it was excessive, or just plain breach of policy, he "invited" that person for a discussion on the talk page, where he just kept making circular points about how he was right. So how do you resolve this endless discussion? Coincidentally enought, I had added a cleanup tag to that other article a while back, so as to bring attention from others to the problems of the article. He removed the tag, telling me to elaborate, on the talk page, what parts of the article needed cleanup and why. I didn't do that (I only even saw that he had reverted my edit a while later), but had I done it, I'd have been pulled into an endless discussion about whether the article was in need of cleanup or not. I can't be absolutely sure that it was the same person (since they are all anons), but that's not essential to the point, since either way you're dealing with obsessive behavior. In situations like this, it just feels like a revert war is unavoidable. It's a waste of my time as a contributor, but in a way I made my own bed when I decided to repond to his provocation. Still, I will not allow this person to dictate what pieces of information are "allowed" in the article (given that nothing there is off topic, inaccurate or copyrighted). Regards, Redux 05:13, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Liverpool Hope University College

This seems to have been zapped. It was in Copyvio so I put a small stub in, it seems to have been zapped completely now. I'd like to know by whom and why.--Jirate 08:54, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)

Has now been unzapped. Ta.--Jirate 14:52, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)

Anybody need simple vector art?

I'm interested in creating some simple vector art for Wikipedia articles. So far I've done Image:Aceofspades.png and Image:Pilcrow.png, does anybody know of articles that need images or need copyrighted images replaced with free ones? silsor 23:06, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

Fixed your link above.-gadfium 00:11, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Oops. silsor 12:32, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
I have a use for a very small sound indicator, if that's possible. The sort of thing like you see in the widows taskbar..something indicating "click me to hear audio"..that'd be swell --Alterego 06:34, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the effort, Those pages may help you:
--Alexandre Van de Sande 13:29, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

what laws are appliable to wikipedia

I'm wondering what laws apply to wikipedia, as it is a website with people from all over the world contributing from maybe other countries thant their native one. not to forget that the servers, which stores all potential copyright infringement, are mostly in USA, but part of cache, which can contain any of the previous infringement, is partly in france. Izwalito 03:10, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(IANAL) I am told by someone more knowledgable than I that servers that exist for the purposes of caching are more-or-less exempt from legal restrictions. As such, the only servers that matter (legally) are the database servers, and those are located exclusively in the colo in Florida. Thus, wikipedia is bound by US Federal and Florida state laws. Again, I am not a lawyer. →Raul654 03:22, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)
found this on meta: m:Wikipedia and copyright issues Izwalito 13:35, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

GFDL infrigement ?

Full wikipedia mirror without credits IMO ? Ericd 22:47, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Where? -- Chris 73 Talk 23:12, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

wikipedia GFDL infringement

I was told, by admins of the french wiki here that moving big chunk of text from one place to another is a GFDL infringement, because it destroys history in the process. If that's true then deleting a page, and delete the linked history, is a GFDL infringement, in the example a deleted articles that is later recreated has lost the original history of the previous version of the article. fusioning articles can also be a case of GFDL infringement, as is deleting anything.

We preserve history so that authors can be credited with their contributions. If we delete an article, we are no longer keeping their contributions so we no longer have to credit them.-gadfium 23:19, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
An undeleted article also gets its edit history restored, so no information is lost in this case. -- Chris 73 Talk 23:50, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

Special Dates/Anniversaries

Today (March 7th) is Casimir Pulaski Day which is always the 1st Monday of March, what does wikipedia have (i.e. on this day) for days that, like Casimir Pulaski Day, that have floating dates. --Mobius 22:05, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, there are plenty of important observances that are not fixed to a date in the Gregorian calendar. That makes things difficult because Wikipedia runs on the Gregorian calendar. A major observance that we'll have in three weeks' time is Easter: should we reposition the link to Easter on a different date page every year (when should it move?), or leave a little trail of Easter (2004), Easter (2005) and Easter (2006)? This problem covers all observances that do not occur according to the Gregorian calendar, including Islamic and Jewish festivals. I know that there's software available that can predict the dates of these with reasonable accuracy: can anyone suggest a way in which Wikipedia can internationalise its calendar? Gareth Hughes 23:33, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This suggests a desired article, or at least a desired category of articles: holidays/days of remembrance, etc. that do not have fixed dates in the Gregorian calendar. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:20, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

Moveable feasts. Would Category:Moveable feasts be appropriate? -- ALoan (Talk) 08:52, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
That's a specifically Christian term, isn't it? That would be a subcategory. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:48, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
Moveable holiday / Category:Moveable holidays then? -- ALoan (Talk) 00:23, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Maybe. But it doesn't really capture the concept. Two examples:
  • A holiday might have a fixed date by the Jewish or Muslim calendar, which makes it movable by the Gregorian calendar.
  • Some of these days are really not holidays. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court starts its sessions on the first Monday in October. Not a holiday, but seems to belong in this category (or a super-category). -- Jmabel | Talk 07:24, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that might help. However, it is difficult to add these feasts to the date pages because they only occur on that given date that year, and a different date next year. I actually wondering whether there is a more complicated, progammers fix available that could add these dates where they are needed. Gareth Hughes 17:19, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

When I suggested a category, I wasn't suggesting that it would somehow get these tied to particular days, just that it would make a good way to look them up. We might want to follow a practice adopted by a lot of reference works, and in the articles on each of these individual days we would have a chart of the date they fell on in, say, the last 5 years and the date they will fall on in the next 10. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:48, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

I have to get this off my chest (again)

Isn't there a single day where accessing Wikipedia is easy and straightforward? This afternoon I first got a complete error message from my web browser, some time later it was the usual "Sorry -- we have a problem" line, and now it takes a page about four minutes to load, and the images do not show on the screen either. What do you/we DO with all that money people have donated? <KF> 16:07, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

You mean the last fundraiser that just finished a few days ago? You didn't think improvements were going to magically appear just because there's more money in the bank account, did you? It takes time to get things done, and cash can't eliminate that. As of this morning (EST), the purchase of a better power distribution system for the servers was being discussed to help prevent the kind of outage that just occurred. The outage during the fund drive was almost completely out of our hands (until we can afford a second full datacenter). It would have been possible to reduce the damage of that power failure, but we could not have eliminated it entirely.
As to the previous fund drives, improvements paid for by them have already been wiped out by continued growth. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:00, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. As I said, I had to get this off my chest—you never know what exactly the problem is, how long it's going to take, etc. And, erm, you don't seriously believe I am so stupid that I'm talking about "the last fundraiser that just finished a few days ago"?!? All the best, <KF> 18:11, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

In the past, people making comments about "how we spend all that money" have often shown such a disconnect from reality. I don't know you well enough to make judgements about your intelligence, so I'm just going to plead that I was also annoyed at this morning's failure, and said annoyance caused me to be even more grating than usual. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:39, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's interesting because usually I hardly see any such comments and tend to think it's only little old me who has those problems: I'm certainly no computer expert so I usually can't tell if my PC is going to pieces, or my ISP is about to pack up, or if it's really Wikipedia's fault. Anyway, thanks again. <KF> 20:36, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Such comments are usually made by spectators in other forums, not actually here. When Wikipedia is slow and nothing else is, it's almost always Wikipedia. Just so you know. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:55, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What is the proper naming convention for Arabic monarchs?

What is the proper naming convention for Arabic monarchs? I've been wracking my brain over the Sultans of Zanzibar. Take Sayyid Ali bin Said Al-Busaid, 4th Sultan of Zanzibar. Sayyid is an honorific, meaning he is a descendant of Mohammed, so perhaps it is included, perhaps not. Is it Ali of Zanzibar? But then there's Sayyid Ali bin Hamud Al-Busaid, 8th Sultan of Zanzibar, so is he Ali I of Zanzibar? Or is the 'I' too alien a concept to Arabic names and the bin X preferable? Existing names of Arabic monarchs don't seem to offer a clear consensus, with some later ones more in the established Europeanized convention, and more historic ones tending more toward bin X or more elaborate. Any help here would be appreciated.--Pharos 07:08, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Whatever you do, expect to use plenty of redirects and disambigs. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:03, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)
The personal name is the most important, followed by the patronym. There seems to be a policy of not using personal titles in article titles (titleless titles!). It should be enough to refer these rulers as Ali bin Said of Zanzibar, Ali bin Hamud of Zanzibar. Their full names and honorifics can be given in the lead section (in Arabic and transliteration). Gareth Hughes 13:20, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Thanks Gareth, I used your proposed format, which I think is a bit of a decent compromise between Wiki, Western and Arabic titles.--Pharos 19:44, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What date?

There seems to be some chaos whenever a date has to be listed, especially on boards. I've noticed it mainly in articles pertaining to sports. Here's an example of the trouble: when having to write, for instance, March 07, 2003, sometimes your see 2003-07-03; sometimes 07-03-2003; and sometimes 03-07-2003 (until someone finally goes and replaces it with "March 07 2003"). Although the year part is usually not a problem, this constant switch of the numbers can get somewhat confusing, especially about the day and month parts. It's more than clear that this happens because different countries have different standards for writing dates, but wouldn't it be better than to stipulate that dates always be written in the "March 03, 2003" format? This would avoid some troubles. Is there a policy/guideline to that regard already? Regards, Redux 06:01, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and before someone says it, I really don't think that this one falls under our policty about English dialects, according to which the dialect of any given English-speaking nation has preference in articles with topics pertaining to that given country. It does us no good that the reader has to pause and think about whether something happened on April 03 or March 04, regardless of the fact that the US, the UK or any other country abbreviates dates in any given fashion. Regards, Redux 06:07, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The policy is to wikify dates, so that user preferences take over. Hence:
The all-numeric form is never appropriate.
Jmabel | Talk 06:47, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I suspected as much. But I must say that the policy is being largely ignored. People either don't know or they don't care. Just check the biographic article of (almost) any tennis player where a career results board has been added. Maybe we could make some sort of "campaign" to let users know that we have a policy about that (although it would be ineffective with anon users, who contribute heavily for pages such as those I cited as examples). Regards, Redux 14:18, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If career result boards for tennis players are a particular issue, they may all have been added by the same person; it may be worthwhile finding out from the page histories who was responsible and pointing this out. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 09:59, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
For tennis, wouldn't 6-4 7-6 be the sets in the finals, rather than a date? Aliter 20:31, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, those are scores, but they are usually (maybe always) in the far righthand column, whereas dates are in the far lefthand column (first column from left to right). Regards, Redux 21:17, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I hadn't seen this version previously, but by checking the list of men's world #1-s, I found some. The four I checked were all added in the last half year, by NNs. They appear to make the majority of edits on this topic. Maybe some of the regulars ought to invite them to register (and read the guidelines). But I guess Jmabel is right: The boxes will have to be converted. Aliter 22:58, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Why is the all-numeric form never appropriate? It works just like the examples you give:
I have been using this syntax in articles. Foobaz·o< 09:25, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Foobaz. I moved your comment, which was the last one to have been made (so far), to the bottom of the discussion, in order to respect the chronological order. I almost didn't see your post, since it was inserted in the middle of older comments. The contents were not changed in any way. As for your question, I refer you to my first post, which started this subsection, for the practical reasons why the all-numeric format is not appropriate. Furthermore, Jmabel has brought to my (and our) attention that there's a policy to that effect, and that sort of leaves no room for speculation. Would you mind changing the entries you made in the all-numeric format to one of the more appropriate forms described by Jmabel above? Regards, Redux 14:32, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)


User:Hg-fix

Can someone who reads Chinese tell me what is up at pages User:Hg-fix and User talk:Hg-fix? It looks to me like it may be pure linkspam; the user's behavior tends to confirm this suspicion. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:55, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

wikipedia GFDL violation by nationmaster.com?

I may have found a wikipedia GFDL violation, I'm reporting it here so people in charge can take the necessary actions. I just ran into an online encyclopedia which content seems to come from wikipedia without any mention of wikipedia. see http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/SCUMM and SCUMM for example. nationmaster.com's encyclopedia not only duplicate wikipedia content but also the wikification. As the article Aric Wilmunder does not exist, the link on nationmaster's SCUMM article is: http://www.nationmaster.com/w/index .php?title=Aric_Wilmunder&action=edit which is the same as the wikipedia one: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aric_Wilmunder&action=edit , only the domain name changes. Izwalito 01:21, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There is some documentation of this site at wikipedia:mirrors and forks/Mno#Nationmaster. It seems that Nationmaster does say that it gets articles from Wikipedia, but it says it once and buries it on a sources and copyrights page. It is expected that each article links back to its original Wikipedia content. Gareth Hughes 01:43, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please http://www.nationmaster.com/contact_us.php contact them to complain. I already did but they just stated again that they were not violating my copyright. If enough people complain, maybe they will get it. --mav 16:53, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I am not very confident about doing that. I find it difficult to see clearly what a fork/mirror of WP content should look like, and what the process of challenging non-compliant sites should be. I think what there is needs updated, clarified and organised. Gareth Hughes 17:13, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Welcoming Anons

Is there a template to welcome new users that are making some great contributions but haven't signed up for an account yet? If so, could someone post it on the talk page for 69.140.179.61? And please leave a message at my talk page telling me that there is and what it is, or tell me that there is none, and I'll see what I can fix up. →mathx314(talk)(email) 16:23, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There is template:anon, which produces:

Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia! You don't have to log in to read or edit articles on Wikipedia, but creating an account is quick, free and non-intrusive, requires you to provide no personal information, and gives you many benefits, including:

  • The use of a username of your choice
  • The ability to view all your contributions via a "My contributions" link
  • Your own user page
  • Your own talk page which, if you choose, also allows users to send you messages without knowing your e-mail address
  • The use of your own personal watchlist to which you can add articles that interest you
  • The ability to rename pages
  • The ability to upload images
  • The ability to customize the appearance and behavior of the website
  • The eligibility to become an administrator
  • The right to be heard in formal votes and elections, and on pages like votes for deletion

Click here to create an account.

I hope that is what you're looking for. Gareth Hughes 16:40, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Firefox 1.0.1 rendering bugs?

I upgraded from Firefox 1.0 to 1.0.1, and it has had a deleterious effect on some of the rendering. The worst problem is in the "diff" presentations. They are missing the yellow and green boxes, and, much worse, the red-bolding of the actual changed text. This makes it hard to see the differences. Another machine still running 1.0 works fine, as does IE. Has anyone else seen this?

I did install in a nonstandard, but I bet not unique way. I didn't realize you were supposed to uninstall 1.0 first (most software these days doesn't make you do that). So I loaded 1.0.1, saw 1.0 was still there, uninstalled 1.0 and lo and behold 1.0.1 disappeared too, ugh. So I reinstalled 1.0.1 saw the bug, uninstalled and reinstalled it for the 3rd time. FF will probably count that as 3 downloads.

Someone who is good at stylesheets might like to try coding the HTML around the bug, whatever it is.

BTW I just posted the same issue at Wikipedia_talk:Browser_notes. David Brooks 04:44, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm using Firefox 1.0.1 on Windows 2000: no problems here. I also installed 1.0.1 without uninstalling 1.0, but the installation simply replaced the older version on my system. So, I can't duplicate the problem you're describing. --Plek 15:58, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
My installation worked the same ways as Plek. :ChrisG 19:43, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
D'oh - I cleared the browser cache and it works. Should have thought of that - the fact you have to sometimes weave black magic is a shortcoming of browser technology, not WP. David Brooks 20:51, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Information Error of Languages

Buglere (or Chokoba ad you have referred to it) is not a fictional language at all. My parents were missionaries in Panama and worked for twenty odd years with the Buglere tribe. They are distantly related to the Guaymi (Waimi). However, their language is very distinct. I do not know how the author of the DUNE trilogy came to know the language. The first missionaries out there had to learn the language and develop an alphabet. It was not easy work. I think that needs to be changed on the "How to say different phrases in different languages" section. However, what I did see as far as spelling and translation was accurate. There are other things that could be added. I'm trying to figure out how to fix some of that, but I'm so new at this, I don't know how.

Since you are undertaking a task that will probably involve people communicating with you, could you please open an account and sign your messages on talk pages (by writing ~~~~ after the message)? Thanks. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:04, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Help. Please.

An edit conflict with no end, with a user with no respect for community will. I do not know what to do. Please see Template talk:Sisterproject#Enough. — Itai (f&t) 17:09, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Spanish Kings

After I started the discussion above, I looked the articles about Spain, to investigate if I can help you. I has seen a mistake: you has several articles about sapnish kingdom called Alphonso x of Spain (x not like ten like any number). It´s mistaken, because Spain was founded in about 1500. The problem is before there was several kingdoms with several kings. Alphonso I of Spain didn´t exist but Alphonso I of Castilla and Alphonso I of Aragon did. Also, there was other kingdom (Navarra) with kings with the same name (Sancho) than other kings of Castilla. And there was times that Castilla was divided between the kingdoms of Castilla y León. It´s very confused.--FAR 16:16, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Could you be more specific on which are wrong? I think these are mostly correct, from what I've looked at, but I could believe that some of these are wrong. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:35, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
There is Alphonso I of Spain, but he didn´t exist because Spain didn´t exist. But the problem is in Spain there was two Alphonsos I, one in Castilla (Alphonso I of Castilla) and the other in Aragon (Alphonso I of Aragon). There was an article for Castilla´s Alphonso, but I have´n´t found one from Aragon´s Alphonso. I´m not sure with my simple English you can understand I´m saying. But I´ll try to explain it until you will understand me.--FAR 22:04, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Oh! Sorry, Alphonso I of Aragon exist. I was worried. Please, excuse me.--FAR 22:08, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
As far as I can see, there is Alphonso I of Spain which redirects to Alfonso I of Asturias, which as you say is incorrect as he long pre-dates the creation of Spain, but all the other Asturian monarchs are simply "...of Asturias". I think all that needs to be done is to delete the Alphonso I of Spain link -- I'll put a request on Votes for Deletion as, though I could simply delete it myself I prefer to have community consensus behind me! -- Arwel 00:14, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Following advice from Votes for Deletion, I have converted the page into a disambiguation page for Alfonso I of Asturias, Alfonso I of Aragon, and Alfons I, Count of Barcelona - if you know of other monarchs it would be appropriate to link to from there, please add them! -- Arwel 02:52, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Alfons I, Count of Barcelona? He is Alfonso II of Aragon, called with adiferent name. It is a good redirect but nobody call him so. --FAR 21:07, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Women

Firts of all, excuse my English. I´m from Spanish wikipedia. There, we are discussing about the list of articles that all wikipedia must to have. We think the categorie women is wrong. Also, we think the people that is written there must be moved to the rest of categories.

We have done that in our wikipedia, and I propose you do the same. Or at least discuus it.

If you want to contact me go to my wikipedia and ask for FAR.

category:women, women have been and still are oppressed by society. I don't know the figures, but it might be worth seeing what the ratio of articles on men to articles of women is around here (my guess is about 4:1), and this in large part is a result of society. Wikipedia must be careful not to condone the oppression of women. Women consist of over half the population, and are therefore significant. Perhaps to balance we should have a category:men which should list things like lad's mags, football and beer. Dunc|☺ 10:08, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Also, it terms of readers (remember those?) women's studies/women's issues etc are significant areas of study and anyone reading up on a particular woman painter/writer/scientist/politician/whatever may well be very glad of a direct link to a group of other similar. Filiocht 12:19, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
One must be careful not to introduce one's own cultural sterotypes into such examinations. I would question the assumption that football (or many other commercial sports) and beer are specifically men's topics. I, for one, am a male who has little interest in beer and none in football, international or American, although my mother is a major fan of the latter, and many of my women friends enjoy the former. It is very easy to find bias when you start with unexamined assumptions. I don't argue that there isn't a great deal of social inequity; I just point out that you need to start from an objective view in order to determine just where and how much it exists. — Jeff Q 12:47, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I am the person who started this. I´ve read it again and I want to explain why we have decide this. We think the woman haven´t be apart, and they must be in the other list because women (at least the women who talked suggested so that) think that it is a second class list. I´d like to explain better but my English don´t let me do that. If anyone speaks Spanish, please help me and traslate this:
la discriminación positiva, es al fin y al cabo discriminación. De la misma manera que creo que no se debe excluir a las mujeres por el hecho de serlo, tampoco el serlo es un motivo de inclusión (que complicado me ha salido). Las mujeres de esa lista deberían estar en las demás y no como un gesto superfluo.
Positive discrimination is, first and last, discrimination. In the same way that I believe that women should not be excluded for being women, neither should being a woman be a reason for their inclusion (how complicated this has come out). The women in this list (category?) should be others and not in this one as a hollow gesture. Trans Filiocht 14:35, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
No podemos hacer una lista con mujeres para quedarnos con la conciencia tranquila, y escribir sobre hombres. La solución, en mi modesta opinión, es tratar de incluir más mujeres en las otras listas y no darles una propia como gesto. Todas las mujeres ahí nombradas deberían estar en otra categoría o no estar. Porque si han dicho algo digno de mención, es eso en lo que debemos fijarnos, y no en su sexo. Klein debería estar en pensadores, y Marie Curie en la de científicos y Maria Luisa Bombal como escritora, ... no creo que estén allí por ser mujeres sino por haber logrado algo. Es cierto que no hay muchas mujeres conocidas en varios campos, pero lo que debemos hacer es añadirlas, reconocer los méritos de aquellas que no son conocidas y deberían serlo.
We cannot make a list of women to keem our consciences clear and then write (articles?) about men. The solution, IMHO, is to include women in other lists and then give them their own list as a gesture. All women in this latter must be in other (mixed sex?) lists or not be here at all. Because if there is reason to mention them, we should focus on this and not on their sex. Klien should be included in thinkers and Marie Curie in scientists and Maria Luisa Bombal as a writer...I don't believe they are there for being women but for having achieved something. It is clear that there are not many well-known women is some fields. but what we need to do is add them (those that exist?), recognising their merits of theose that are not well-known but should be. Trans Filiocht 14:35, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
Aunque tal vez lo mejor sea que las mujeres que colaboran aquí eligan ellas mismas que prefieren, pero ¿cómo sabemos el sexo de los que colaboran?--
Although perhaps the best solution may be for women who contribute here to select themselves what they would prefer, but How can you know which contributors are women? Trans Filiocht 14:38, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
Now, that's sexism. Filiocht 14:38, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
It is an extract of a I said en Spanish wiki. If you want to know more, go to the interwiki link I´ve added. es:Wikipedia:Café--FAR 14:14, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have added a rough-and-ready translation. I agree completely and would like to feel that this is our practice already. Certainly, when I created List of women poets, I ensured that all the poets on it were on other lists, and added articles on a number of them (see today's Main page featured article for an example. Filiocht 14:35, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

FAR, If I can make adequate sense of the Babelfish translation of your text above, you are suggesting that having categories like Women in science and not Men in science shows bias, and that it would make more sense just to have Scientists and not worry about their sex. I agree that this shows a bias, but it's one that comes from a long cultural history of relegating women to secondary status, and modern attempts to destroy this bias by introducing (hopefully temporary) reverse biases. (I am an avid reader of history books, and virtually no work I read is without examples of people being dismissive of or surprised at some woman's abilities because of assumptions about female characteristics — even when the book's topic is not about a prominent woman.) But that may be irrelevant, because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of topics which people want to include, since anybody can add articles (and categories). Clearly, there is interest among Wikipedians in highlighting women who have contributed to fields that may have been male-dominated in the past (and may be still today). I would suggest two things for those who want to balance such biases:
  1. Make sure that any article that is categorized as "women in something" also is categorized as "something" (i.e., Category:Women in science articles should also be in Category:Scientists), so as not to exclude these articles from the main topic.
  2. Create corresponding "men in something" categories (e.g., Category:Men in science) and add relevant articles to that category. Some people may think this would be exclusionary to women, but that's their problem, as long as the overall category includes both men and women.
— Jeff Q (talk) 14:55, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
What does bias mean? I´m not sure what have you understood. I wanted to say that some women may considerate offensive a list apart. They can understand that those women aren´t really important to have an article for their job. Again, excuse my English
I know why does the list exist. But some women think it´s worse. In spanish a women started the discussion and other finally decided what to do with the list. It was only a comentary. I thought the better way taht female wikipedians decide what they prefer. --FAR 15:25, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)ç

New York Public Library makes 275,000 images available; most are public domain

The New York Public Library just made 275,000 images available online at the NYPL Digital Gallery with the goal of raising that total to 500,000. Their FAQ states, "Most materials are in the public domain, freely available for personal use. For any other use, including but not limited to any type of publication or commercial use, contact The Library’s Photographic Services & Permissions office regarding required permissions."

Let's get this stuff onto the wiki. Here's the collection's advanced search engine, and I created template {{PD-NYPL}}: --Alterego 03:55, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Ugh, why must sites use contradictory terminology? The site makes it pretty clear that this stuff is not public domain, but then it uses that term. Stuff from there should be evaluated on its own - if it's from before 1923 of from before 1964 and not renewed ([1]), it's PD. Otherwise, if they claim copyright, it's not free. Posted by SPUI at 21:49, Mar 3, 2005
It appears to me that it the large majority of the works are in the public domain as stated and that their FAQ is mistakenly blending the procedure for the few works in the collection which are "post 1950". I have already e-mailed them for clarification and will post updates. At any rate, if we use the template we can keep track of them all. Here's my e-mail:
When a work is in the public domain it can be used freely without permission in any medium, including commercially and in publications. Can you please clarify the copyright of these works?
--Alterego 05:02, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

It also looks like the majority of the works are not yet uploaded. A lot of placeholders so far: my assay says upwards of 80%. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:32, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

The images are there but their servers are getting hammered --Alterego 08:04, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Alarm pointed out to me that the Conditions of Use [2] seem rather restrictive. I quote from there: "The contents of this website are made available for individual private study, scholarship and research only. Any other use, including but not limited to any type of publication or commercial use, is prohibited without the payment of usage fees and the prior written permission of The New York Public Library as well as any owners of rights in the materials, if applicable. Regarding such permission, please contact the NYPL Photographic Services & Permissions office for additional information." So I guess it's best to wait until there is more clarity. — mark ✎ 13:28, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is going to be very interesting. I don't remember the details but I vaguely remember Michael Hart fulminating about this. It apparently is possible for an organization to say "this is in the public domain but we will charge you a fee to provide it to you." On the other hand, it is possible and common for organizations to assert that they have various rights that they do not in fact have... Dpbsmith (talk) 16:03, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, but at least in the U.S. they have to force you to sign a contract, or you can treat it as PD. --SPUI (talk) 15:24, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

My e-mail

The FAQ for the NYPL Digital Gallery states, "Most materials are in the public domain, freely available for personal use. For any other use, including but not limited to any type of publication or commercial use, contact The Library's Photographic Services & Permissions office regarding required permissions" When a work is in the public domain it can be used freely without permission in any medium, including commercially and in publications. Can you please clarify your copyright policy?

Their email

As the physical rights holder, the Library charges a usage fee to use any images from its collections for any type of publication, broadcast, exhibition, web site, etc. The library does not claim copyright on these images.
Please remember as it is stated on the Library's web site it is strictly prohibited to download images for any use other than personal or research purposes without obtaining written permission from the Library and payment of use fees. Sincerely,Tom Lisanti, Manager, Photographic Services & Permissions, The New York Public Library

Let me get this right - They don't claim copyright on the images, they have made the images available for download on their website, they claim the images are in the public domain, yet they want to put restrictions on the way we use the material, presumably so they can make money. Is this wrong to anyone else? --Alterego 17:07, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

I certainly don't know. Let me indulge in analogizing strictly for the fun of it.
Suppose I own beachfront property. There is a public beach a mile away. There is a path along the edge of my property that leads to a beach. I put up a sign that says that I give permission for you to walk on my path to get to the beach, but you may not carry back any seashells without my permission, and I have an established fee schedule ($0.05 for kids, $1.00 for adults for their own use, $10.00 for collectors). You are, of course, perfectly free to park at the public beach, walk along the beach until you are in front of my beach house, collect shells, and carry them back by way of the public beach. Is that OK?
(For purposes of illustration I'm positing that this is in a state where the beach itself is public property--up to mean high water at neap tide... or whatever...)
Personally, I've always thought "the beach is public but 99.99% of all access to it is private," a common situation in many places, is a scam. But that just might be because I don't own any beachfront property. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:46, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
P. S. The email you cite is just a paragraph of boilerplate from another part of their website. I imagine it will be a while before things settle down and anyone representing Wikipedia actually gets a direct, specific answer from a human being at NYPL as to what conditions they might want to put on Wikipedia's use of their material. Notice that most of their boilerplate and established fees pertain to their provision of a high-quality, high-resolution copy of the image. They don't really address the question of a nonprofit using images at the same resolution as the images published free-as-in-beer on their website. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:51, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
They seem to be taking the position that you are violating their Terms of Service by downloading image n if your intent is to use it for anything not considered "private use". This doesn't sound legal to me. Suppose I browse the images on their website, and I keep a cache of every website I ever visit on my computer (which is true). I now have in my possesion an image which is in the public domain on my computer, which I acquired in a legal manner. As this image is in the public domain I am free to distribute it, sell it, and publish it as I will because it is not encumbered by copyright. This is my understanding of it, at least. --Alterego 19:44, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
While I am not a lawyer, I doubt that they are on good legal ground. As I understand it, there is no way in the U.S. to gain rights over a two-dimensional reproduction of a two-dimensional work that is, itself in the public domain. Can anyone elaborate on this? -- Jmabel | Talk 20:32, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
I e-mailed them asking for yet further clarification and received more boilerplate text, with a not-so-nice introduction:
Below is the Library's stated policy. You may honor it or not as you see fit.
NYPL provides free and open access to its Digital Gallery and images may be freely downloaded for personal, research and study purposes only. However, as the physical rights holder of this material most of which is in the public domain for copyright purposes, the Library charges a usage fee if images are to be used in any nonprofit or commercial publication, broadcast, web site, exhibition, promotional material, etc. The usage fee is not a copyright fee. You are free to obtain a copy of these images from a source other than NYPL. Usage fees help ensure that the Library is able to continue to acquire, preserve and provide access to the accumulated knowledge of the world.
As far as I can tell making this demand is illegal --Alterego 21:49, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
Wow, they are being ridiculous here. From the tone of their responses I get the impression they realise they're on shaky ground legally, and would just like to obfuscate the situation and make out that we have no right to reproduce public domain works. Imagine we use one of their images in an article, and they tell us to take it down because we got it from their website. How would they go about making sure we did? If it's in the public domain they are surely not in a position to enforce any rights over it whatsoever. Very strange behaviour. — Trilobite (Talk) 00:05, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC) (IANAL)

After doing a days worth of reading and asking questions here is the issue as I understand it: The NYPL is not claiming copyright status over these images. They make that very clear - if they are old enough they are in the public domain as expected. They are, however, claiming that by even viewing the image in your web browser you are entering a legally binding contract with them which states that you will only use it for private purposes. Until someone takes them to court, they can do this. This is shaky ground at best. If you open your hand and someone sets a photo from 1820 in it along with a contract, all you know is that you have a public domain photo. You never agreed to the contract! If you take a picture of said photo, post it on the Internet, I somehow browse to it and then publish it in my up-and-coming best-seller, the law was never broken.

So the issue is not about the sort of copyright intended to protect creative expression - they are not claiming that. They are claiming that you cannot make a further copy of their physical copy of the image because they have ownership of it and can therefore make the rules about what you can and cannot do with their physical property, which, at first glance, sounds legitimate.

It becomes shaky ground when you ask the question, "When did I explicitly agree to grant them these rights?" The situation would be vastly different in any other copyright status - but this is the public domain and in order to claim copy rights over an image which, by law, explicitly has none, it would make sense that you should have at the very least an electronic signature showing that a person gave you those rights. --Alterego 17:47, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

(IANAL) Basic contract law is that both parties must agree to the terms of the contract before it comes into force. Signing your name to a piece of paper is undeniable consent; clicking 'OK' to a EULA is a hotly debated legal question. If you never so much as clicked OK to a EULA, then IMHO, there is no contract. But you are right - it would take a court case to prove that. →Raul654 17:57, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
Hey Raul, are you familiar enough to be able to cite the contract law for our perusal? I know one court case relevant to this issue is Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. --Alterego 18:39, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
Right. The Bridgeman case says they cannot protect it via copyright (although, for the record, several museums have taken up the legally indefensible position of pretending that it never happened. We had an email in the mailing list to this effect several months ago). So instead, it sounds to me like the NYPL is restricting access, so that only those people who agree to their "contract" can view it, and that their contract prohibits redistribution. Unfortunately, as I said previously, they are neglecting that minor technicality that you have to agree to a contract in order for it to be legally binding upon you. In other words, it's my opinion (again, I am not a lawyer) that if you can get to the pictures without clicking agree to any forms or contracts, then the pictures are in the public domain and usable on wikipedia. But proving this would take a lawsuit, and I don't have a million dollars lying around. →Raul654 18:47, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
Followup - A quick bit of googling turned up this gem - http://www.duhaime.org/contract/ca-con2.aspx . Hypothetically, if the NYPL were to sue someone and claim a contract exists, the court would apply the 'reasonable man test' to see if such a contract exists. →Raul654 18:52, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
NYPL claims to hold the "physical rights" to the pictures. I am having trouble finding what if anything this phrase means. Most of what comes up on Google refers to electrical power transmission. Rmhermen 19:32, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
I think when they say they have "Physical rights", it means they physically own the pictures ;) →Raul654 19:42, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
But what sort of legal rights are involved in the mere possession of a copy of a public domain image? Especially for non-unique images like most of these seem to be. Rmhermen 20:37, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
So, someone will have to make a call eventually, because it won't be too long before someone sees "public domain" and puts one of their images on Wikipedia. Do we use the images and stand firm when they start trying to have them removed, or is it more trouble than it's worth? — Trilobite (Talk) 20:16, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

14. Why do I have to pay the Library a fee for use of public domain images? [3]

NYPL provides free and open access to its Digital Gallery and images may be freely downloaded for personal, research and study purposes only. However, as the physical rights holder of this material most of which is in the public domain for copyright purposes, the Library charges a usage fee if images are to be used in any nonprofit or commercial publication, broadcast, web site, exhibition, promotional material, etc. The usage fee is not a copyright fee. You are free to obtain a copy of these images from a source other than NYPL. Usage fees help ensure that the Library is able to continue to acquire, preserve and provide access to the accumulated knowledge of the world.
While I am not a lawyer, this sounds like pseudo-legal bullshit. If you can access the pictures on their site without signing a contract giving up your right to reproduce their public domain pictures, then they have no legal basis for requiring payment. →Raul654 19:46, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
From what I gather from all this is the following:
  1. The images are in the public domain.
  2. Since by viewing them you don't agree to any contract, they can't charge you fees or limit your use of these images.
Hence they're PD any you can use them any way you want. I'd say, get these images, and do it fast, before they set up a scheme where you do have to agree to some funny restrictive contract before you get to view the images :-) Lupo 11:39, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Many of the images are PD, but not all are. For example, a photograph from the 1950s would almost certainly have outstanding copyright. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:44, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
Depends; anything published before 1964 in the U.S. had to be renewed. [4] searches this databse, but I'm not sure how it works with photos. --SPUI (talk) 09:59, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Is this scenario a possible work around?
Download some of the images you are interested in on the NYPL site, and use them on your own personal, non public, wiki server - ie. personal, non-profit use. Invite a fellow Wikipedian to browse your Wiki. They download the images from your Wiki and upload them to Wikipedia. Fortunately you don't charge a usage fee, and the images are PD, so no problem. -- Solipsist 20:03, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In any event, it is entirely legal to link to this useful resource. Their links are arcane, so I've created Template:NYPL Digital Gallery image, which lets you provide two arguments—title and id—to create an appropriate external link. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:14, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

It may be legal, but it may or may not annoy them (NYPL). There's a history of websites in general objecting to other sites which link to the first in some way, e.g., "We want you to link to our home page only", "Don't show our site in a frame", "Don't link directly to images on our site".
NYPL is on pretty shaky ground indeed, and they know it. Their position is more easily understood not from the POV of US copyright law, but from that of the old common law principle of "right of capture": "The wild pig has wandered onto my land; therefore, it is my pig." Naturally, the (inedible but impressive) pig does them no good just standing there grubbing roots. People have always come to see the pig, of course; and as a public trust, they have permitted people to do so for no charge. Caught up in the evil trend sweeping the world in these dark days, of forcing everything into the profitable corporation model, they are scrambling for ways to make more money. They can't quite see their way clear to charging people to come look at the pig (primarily because they know dern tooting that while many stare for free, few would pay for it); but they'd hate to see somebody else figure out a way to make money, when they cannot. Right of capture, dog in the manger, and it really has nothing to do with whether the work is in the public domain; whoever is speaking policy for NYPL right now has no feeling for the concept, but is only vaguely aware of it as something looking over his/her shoulder.
I don't know, they may actually have a point. I like the analogy about charging visitors for access to the public beach in front of your house. The beach is free beer; so are the seashells; but why shouldn't I charge you a dollar for every seashell you carry off the beach through my private property? Of course that very point has been the subject of many a battle up and down the California coast.
NYPL can claim that although the substantive works are in the public domain, the digital form of one is a deriviative work, and off we go again. Or, they can claim the substantive work is free beer, but you have to come to the library and make your own copy of it; they can charge a fee for making the copy themselves and serving it to you. They can try to support their shrink-wrap contract. Or, they can just throw lawyers at WP and see if any of them stick.
My final position, adjusted for waffle: NYPL is bigger than us. If we start to use "their" stuff and they sue, what can we do? I suggest that Someone with far more patience than I for (insert descriptor here I have omitted in the interests of tact)s wait a few months until NYPL's 15 minutes are over. Then, try again to contact a responsible party.
You (O young Jedi) will be dealing with a real tough talker: municipal government bureaucrat ivory tower academic noo yawker. You will have to talk sense to a guy/gal who is the veteran of taxpayer-supported wars over the width of the stripes in the parking lot. He/she will have a pretty good idea of the value of what he's selling and you will need to give up something in return. I suggest that we offer NYPL a free-speech WP feed or mirror, something they can dress up in NYPL livery and show on their own site. (I know, I know, they can do that anyway, without our help or permission, but they don't know that.) Trade something free for something free; bargain hard; and may the Farce be with you. --Xiong 15:20, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)
There is no indication on their web site that they object to deep links. -- Jmabel | Talk 16:52, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)
I doubt they'll object until they see somebody having fun doing it. Keep in mind who we're talking about. Dozens of individuals slumber peacefully, or run around in circles, or bite the the others, until there is a Disturbance in their World. Then the runners hide, the biters talk about biting the Disturbing Thing, the sleepers awake, all on different schedules. Within the pack are a few who are awake and aware all the time, and these are the most dangerous and potentially most useful to Our Cause.
There's no hurry. NYPL will be here next week. Do a little research, find out the name of somebody midway in the pile -- somebody high up enough that his diktat overrides the random shouts of the mob, low enough to deign to speak to long-hair-hippie-freaks with their dern wacko scheme to flood the world with uncontrold infomation. Find out if he plays golf or she lifts weights and waste a couple minutes in irrelevant shmoozing bonding. Then offer the WP feed (if NYPL wants to do all the work to dress it in their livery and serve it) and, as an afterthought, ask if we can suck out their image database. Best if we store it all on our own server; then when they change their mind, we've already got the stuff (and the permission on record). --Xiong 04:55, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)
I don't think there exists any need to try and shmooze anyone at the NYPL, and I don't think anyone feels good about a lack of clarity in copyright policy. They either need to fix their copyright status or they need to be sued. --Alterego 01:22, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia article

I have created a Wikipedia article on the NYPL Digital Gallery and have updated the direct links in the two associated templates (Template:PD-NYPL and Template:NYPL Digital Gallery image) to refer to this article. I included a section on the usage concerns addressed above, so please contribute to the discussion there if you see fit. --Bungopolis 21:09, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Having trouble

I am having trouble with a simonP. I edit Arete (virtue) and he immediately reverts the edits. I have put a dictionary entry in there a long time ago. They have edited it so now you can't read it. I make it readabe and SimonP just deletes. Him and his friends have deleted [Classical definition of republic] and after the many facts and the quoting of material they will not acknowledge they won't even let an external link and the talk is ongoing at Talk:Republic. This man doesn't know what he is doing. I ask that someone step in and stop this please. This man has no expertise in the classical field. He is an anonymous user. I am also having trouble is that they have now misnamed Arete (paideia) to Arete virtue. please see Talk:Arete (virtue). SimonP also goes around and deletes any external link I put anywhere. This user is anonymous.WHEELER 17:03, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Have you tried the usual methods of WIkipedia:Dispute resolution?
User:Simonp has made a total of 38265 edits, 29993 of them in the main namespace, which puts him among the most experienced Wikipedians there are. He makes more edits in a month than I make in a year. He is a administrator or "sysop," an elected position "granted to known and trusted members of the community who are familiar with Wikipedia policies."
His most recent edit to Arete (virtue) was the removal of a number of unsourced statements such as "Arete was the central ideal of all Greek culture," "It is the core for understanding ancient Greek culture," and "It was what spurred their creative genius." His edit comments say "remove POV." As presented, these do give at least the appearance of being personal observations presented on your own authority. Normally, this would be the start of some collaborative give-and-take. Perhaps you can find a classical Greek source which says in effect "Arete is the core of our culture," and insert that instead.
SimonP does not appear to have been making wholescale reverts or engaging in a revert war or anything like that.
Perhaps you are trying too hard to exert control over the content of this article? Dpbsmith (talk) 18:22, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

When editing any page on Wikipedia, you are warned that your content will be edited mercilessly. If that's not okay with you, then you should establish authorship elsewhere to develop your ideas. Demi 10:19, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)

Ads on Wikipedia

The fundraising message newly includes a line that reads:

Show your pride in Wikipedia by purchasing merchandise through our Cafe Press shop (http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia).

That is, quite clearly, an advertisement. Did I just miss the discussion where it was decided Wikipedia is no longer ad-free? What is the proper place to discuss the fundraising message (maybe it would be a good idea to add an "about this message" link - as things are now, it is not obvious who wrote the message, and where to register disapproval with it)?

Sorry if I just missed the appropriate link. I honestly can't find it.

Prumpf 17:43, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The actual message is at MediaWiki:Sitenotice and has talk page MediaWiki_talk:Sitenotice. I am guessing you thought the fundraising message was ok, but this new "fundraising message" is not, because presumably CafePress will profit too? Pcb21| Pete 18:00, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Thanks! Indeed. It's an advertisement, plain and simple. If there is consensus now that ads on WP are okay, I'd like to find out when it happened, how things are going to look like in the future, and whether this is still a project I want to contribute to. If it isn't, I'd like to see the message removed. My current theory is that the link was included without proper consideration, and that it should just be removed for now.
Prumpf 19:05, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hello. This is not really an ads. The benefits of the sales get to the Wikimedia Foundation itself, and in exchange editors get nice tee-shirts, mugs etc... with the wikipedia logo on it.

The decision to put this comment was made by the CFO of the board, Ma verick, and as part of the board, I approve it. You may consider it as part of the fundraising.

Eloquence gets no benefit of the sales, but his name is mentionned because he nicely set that shop for the Foundation possibly a year ago.

Cheers. Anthere 19:16, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC) Vice-chair Wikimedia Foundation Inc.

Additional information on WHY we might need a bit of cash : m:Wikimedia budget/2005/Q1. Anthere 19:26, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is not an ad (certainly not for CafePress). But I changed the wording to make that fact more obvious. Specifically there is no more any mention of 'CafePress'. Saying it is an ad because CafePress profits by it is as absurd as saying that the whole fundrasing was an advertisement because PayPal and MoneyBookers profited from it and whoever we buy the servers from will also profit from it. This message will be blanked at midnight UTC on Thursday. --mav

I think it would make more sense to discuss this at MediaWiki talk:Sitenotice. It seems absurd to me to say that a public message telling people to buy a company's products, as the current message does, is not an advertisement. Prumpf 01:44, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
There is nothing more to say. --mav 02:04, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Armenian Genocide

This article has the following order at the top of the page:

PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS PAGE, BOTH PARTIES WILL BE ASKING FOR MEDIATION. BE ADVISED THAT IF YOU DO EDIT, IT WILL BE REVERTED BACK.

Unless this page is protected, this editorial comment needs to come down. RickK 06:37, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, of course. I've taken it down, and it appears to have been an empty threat anyway: several people have edited the page since the notice was added on Feb. 19. —Charles P. (Mirv) 07:19, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

New users?

First, a note: Wikipedia is becoming harder and harder to use. Now even participating in the Village Pump requires reading a manual.

I have welcomed an awful lot of new users to the project in the last week or two. I would guess about six a day. I have never noticed this many new users. What's up? Have I added so many things to my watchlist that this is inevitable? Has there been a large increase in new contributors? Has everyone who used to welcome these people quit? Hyacinth 02:11, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ah, hibernation over? Gareth Hughes 13:02, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
It might be the new Google hosting collaboration that's been in the news, that's what brought it to my attention anyway.Rx StrangeLove 17:18, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've been welcoming when I get the chance, and I occasionally notice Meelar and some others doing the same, but I share your observation that the number of new users has grown dramatically. I'm also finding that more and more of these new users are "transient": they log in once to make one or two edits, and then dissapear forever. – ClockworkSoul 15:06, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I've only gotten one response so far. Hyacinth 03:47, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Would it be technically possible to have a special page that listed the latest batch of new users like recent changes? Then it would be way easier to welcome newcomers, but, I suppose, it would also be far easier to squish them too! Gareth Hughes 11:18, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Obsessed anon user disrupts procedure

Hi. I came around recently to read our article on swiss tennis player Roger Federer. The article was not conforming to encyclopedic/Wikipedia standards. The text was exaggerated (narrating quite extensively passages of Federer's early career) and, what's worse, was suffering from a clear case of POV. Its text falls just short of calling Federer "divine", using some quite opinionated adjectives, such as "fantastic", "perfect" and so on. Looking at the article's history, I noticed that there's an anon user (not the only one there, others like him are involved) who contributes heavily to the article, and was one of the principal contributors of the exaggerated text. I visited the discussion page and saw that a discussion was (or had) already happened regarding the article's POV and fan-like exaggeration, and the Federer fans kept defending the article on the grounds that "the press" refers to him in those terms (meaning: "it's ok to call Federer a genius on the article because ESPN and Sports Illustrated have called him that on bradcasts/websites").

Since I was not involved with the article and didn't have time for it, I added a cleanup template tag to it, in the hopes that others would see it and take a look at it. Less than 24 hours later, that same Federer-obsessed user removed the tag, telling me to "elaborate what passages needed cleanup and why". That's a vicious circle, if I start that, I'll just be dragged into an endless discussion with a diehard Federer fan about what should be obvious, and I can't bring attention to the article's problems because this anon user (who's been contributing for a while almost exclusively for Federer's article) won't let the tag stay. He has also reverted edits from other users that had attempted to tone down the praising of Federer in the article. And I can say that that article looks like it should be in a Federer fandom website, not an encyclopedia. Unfortunately, "reporting" this here is all I'll be doing for now, since I'm short on time and the website keeps crashing, to the point that it's almost impossible to keep contributing to the forums with which I'm more involved. Regards, Redux 19:39, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I am one of the anon. users who contributed to the Federer article and defended the inclusion of seemingly "exaggerated" text. User Redux above has represented his case in a very biased manner. Firstly, the word "fantastic" is not used anywhere on the article. And the word "perfect" is not used to describe Federer's allround game, but SOME components (e.g., his volleys) of his game that are objectively "text-book perfect" to anyone who follows tennis. Secondly, When Redux says, "Federer fans kept defending the article on the grounds that "the press" refers to him in those terms (meaning: "it's ok to call Federer a genius on the article because ESPN and Sports Illustrated have called him that on bradcasts/websites)", he is engaging in pure fabrication. ESPN's commentary was never used to defend the description. A Sports Illustrated "statistic" was used to defend an observation about Federer's service returing skill. Furthermore, Federer was not blatantly called "a genius" but rather it was written that certain aspects of his game shows "his genius". There is a clear distinction here. Furthermore, in the talk page, the uniqueness of Federer's style was not defended on the grounds of random commentaries heard on mass media like TV or news websites, but with actual quotes by former tennis greats like Laver, McEnroe, Becker, Lendl, etc. Anyone can look at the talk page and see for him/herself.
I am not sure if Redux understands certain nuances of the English language. But even so, he is not really following the right procedure regarding this. If he feels that certain words/phrases are not NPOV, he should "be bold" and go ahead to "improve" on it readily. Instead, he at first complained on the talk page and never really bothered to reply. It may be "obvious" to him what is NPOV on "his" mind, but he hasn't really made an effort to engage in any discussion. He is a self professed "Sampras" and "Kuerten" fan himself (look at his user page). What's more, in order to defend HIS viewpoint, he has deliberately misrepresented the entire situation, as I have shown above. I don't think that is right.

Personal attacks. Circular arguments to defend the article (although I do admit that it has been improved to a great extent from its original version). I should probably thank this anon for proving my point. I'm not the only one to have said something about the troubles with Federer's article. I'm really not sure why whoever-this-is took it personally to the point of (attempting) to insult me on this forum, especially since I did not name names. Could it be that the shoe fits? Making suggestions on talk pages before making major changes in articles (especially those as heavily edited as the one on Federer) is a simple procedure that helps the community to function better, not to mention that hardly anyone has the time to do all the work that needs doing. This person is yet to grasp what Wikipedia stands for and how it works. Redux 20:08, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Btw, the cleanup tag that I had added and that had been removed by an anon (which is the event that inspired the original post here) was reinserted by G-Man a short while after its deletion by the anon (G-Man claimed that one of the reasons for the need for cleanup is that the article needs "attention to the language". Humm, apparently some "nuances of the English language" are problematic there &#150; furthermore, as of this edit, the anon user who was quite quick to remove the same tag when I added it, had nothing to say about it when G-Man reinstated it, even though this person has edited the article after the tag returned. That makes it look like it's the anon who seems to be bearing a personal grudge, and carrying it out to the detriment of the article and the quality of its text). It's hardly my viewpoint alone, especially since, as I said before, I'm not involved with that article and I do not have the time to get involved with it (let alone "impose" my opinions on the Federer fans that dwell there &#150; no offense to Federer fans, I'm one myself). Redux 20:26, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, website was crashing on me. Had to stop editing. One last point: what was that absurd stuff about me "complaining on the talk page and never bothering to reply?" Did this guy actually read the article's talk page?? Since my only post there is from 6 months ago, he must be referring to it (save for a post of mine from a whole other forum that Infrogmation, not me, moved there, and it was about a possible copyvio &#150; back then &#150; in which I admited that I could not be certain of it, and so I did not edit the article on that account &#150; Matthewmayer said it didn't look like copyvio, but the article needed... what do you know... cleanup!). Except it was my post that went unanswered, and it remains so. A completely unrelated discussion started underneath it, but it never was a reply to my comment. And as a matter of fact, replying to it now would be a complete waste of time. Why? Let me spell out the obvious: in all articles, but especially in those that are heavily edited, the older a post it, the less likely it is that what is written in it still apply to the article as it currently exists. You see, comments on talk pages remain (unless they be moved to archive pages, which would still be associated with the article at hand though), but the article changes. When I wrote that comment, the article had just been created. It was only a few sentences long and most of them were more on the side of a news page. Back then I had already made the decision that I would not become a main contributor to the Federer article, which doesn't preclude my "duty" as a Wikipedian to point out in the talk page what could be done, in my opinion, to improve the article. No one cared about it then, and I didn't follow up (imposing my view? HARDLY). And now, when the article has been completely changed (it's 6 months later!) someones has the nerve to tell me that I "complained and then never bothered to reply" and tried to "impose my viewpoints" (by adding a cleanup tag)? How ironic that this anon has brought up such words as "misrepresentation" and "not understand". Get your facts straight before slandering people. You are out of line yet again. And I'll repeat: when we say that Wikipedia is open, it does not mean "just go ahead and do whatever you feel like". There's a good explanation about this right here on this forum. I would suggest to this person that he finds it and read it. Redux 22:00, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Newsflash: the problems with Federer's article were not actually fixed, they were just moved to another article, when the main article was broken in two. A few examples (highlights done by me): "Federer is also exceptional at reading fast serves (...)" / Federer has technically flawless forehand and backhand shots that he can unleash with great power (...)" / " (...) is exceptionally good at returning deep, close-to-the-baseline shots from his opponents with effortless, Andre Agassi-like but even better, instinctive half-volleys and John McEnroe-like behind-the-body backhand flick returns." / "(...) technically perfect volleys (...)" / "Federer also demonsrates uncanny disguise in his ability to hold the point (...)". That should suffice. The praising of Federer continues. It has just changed address. Redux 04:00, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Exactly where do you find personal attacks and circular arguments in the above reply? You made this complaint on 27 Feb, after reading the almost entirely modified, and in your terms, "vastly improved" Federer article. The "vast improbvement" was made BEFORE 27 Febm and nothing big has changed since then. Moreover, you have provided no reply to my answers to the actual editing issues that you raise in your initial complaint, except throwing in weasel words like "personal attack" and "circular argument". Nobody has taken anything pesionally here other than you and you are being self-righteous when you say "this person has yet to grasp blah blah". If you think you are as good as you think you are, you need to be more explanatory (and make sense logically) and less emotional.
As for the commment "This person is yet to grasp what Wikipedia stands for and how it works", I could take it as a personal attack an respond in kind. But I won't. I am ready to act on good faith and resolve this on the concerned article's talk page. That I am willing to do this is evident from a note I left on the talk page a LONG time ago. I clearly stated and I quote myself "I think we need to do the revisions, if such revisions are required to maintain a NPOV, on a case by case basis." Since I haven't read anyone reply in kind, I was bold, went ahead and made the edits I thought was necessary. Redux, on the other hand, did nothing but put up a cleanup tag without the slightest explanation on the talk page. As for the comment "what the wikipedia stands for" let me remind all of us here that "The Wikipedia community exhorts users to be bold in updating articles. Wikis develop faster when people fix problems, correct grammar, add facts, make sure the language is precise', and so on. It's okay. It's what everyone expects." But I am not sure whether Redux's expectations and grasp of the procedres are in tune with the original philosophy. A perfect case in point is the Federer page we are talking about. It grew from a few sentences to a full blown article within a few months precisely because some knowledgable users were bold and went ahead to add new info. Redux not only contributed very little to the article itself, but also was more interested in lecturing from the sideline, and showing reluctance in participating in the talk page. I'd be remiss if I don't note that this combination of non-participatory behavior, and a penchant for throwing in bureaucratic-sounding commnets about "policies and procedures" is more against the original philosphy and growth of this encyclopedia than anything else.
There has been no "slander" here. But a mistake about what Redux did, a topic that doesn't concern the article itself, which is our main topic. Instead of "he [Redux] at first complained on the talk page and never bothered to reply", I should have mentioned "he did spurious edits leaving small footnotes on the history page (which is actually perfectly fine) but never bothered to clarify his views in the talk page". For example, he included the clean up tag AFTER 27 Feb on the Federer article that he says, in his personal view, has been vastly improved since his first visit a long time ago, but simultaneously says he added the cleanup based on MatthewMayer's comment left on the talkpage left a long time BEFORE 27 Feb, when the article was in the process of being heavily edited. MOreover, he included the cleanup tag, but contributed NOTHING to the talk page about why he thinks it is necessary. His reasoning here doesn't match chronological order. Add to that all the flawed projections of what was really discussed in the talk page (as desribed above) and his OWN biased representation of how the article developed, and one might be tempted to view this as something fishy, but let's not go there and focus on the article itself.
Dude, you don't even know how to insert new comments on talk pages. You cannot insert parts of replies in the middle of other comments that preceed yours (meaning, they were already here) only because it suits your needs to reply. I've rearranged that, I'm sure you won't mind, and if you do, sorry, but it was necessary.
Are you for real? Are you actually claiming that you made no personal attacks? That's an insult to anyone's inteligence, I will not repeat everything again (not to mention state the obvious). In fact, you continue to do so ("spurious edits"?), especially when you're mentioning edits done in the previous, now pretty much gone, version of the article. It is not uncommon for older edits to conflict with articles that have been heavily altered, that's why "patch works" on articles usually turn out illogical, confusing and sometimes even misleading texts. And if you didn't like some of the stuff I wrote about you, well, it was you who opened that window: you cannot expect to say whatever comes to mind about others and just leave it at that, that's not how things work here.
As for your arguments, well, you continue to quote the same stuff to justify the exaggerations on the article. The article is perceived as exaggerated (now more the article on the game style) by pretty much every user who reads it and cares enough to make a comment, except for you and another anon who is also contributing there. And every time someone says something, you come back with sports stats and what is really an opinionated description of Federer's game (flawless? uncanny? superior? That's just reflecting the typical over-the-top reaction of the media to the "player of the moment", not being objective). You just keep repeating it with different words every now and then. It will never justify our article saying that Federer's game is "perfect", in any aspect. None of that is to say that Federer isn't talented, but talented is a long way from saying he's perfect in any way. See the difference: saying that Federer dominated the tour in 2004 is a mere observation of facts, but saying that he did it because his game (or any aspect of it) is "superior" or "flawless", as if those characteristics were intrinsic to his game, rather than a moment in his career (also possible due to other aspects of the tour that have nothing to do with Federer directly), that's something quite different. You can say he played superior tennis in this and that tournament, or even in 2004, but you can't state that he plays superior tennis period.
And are you claiming I made comments or "complaints" about Federer's article on the article's talk page on February 27 (which would be a flat out lie), or are you referring to when I added the cleanup tag, which, as the history page states, was on the 26th of February? I did it based on what looked like a popular feeling that the article needed clean up, not to mention that I did read the first couple of paragraphs and I felt that it did need some clean up (but I did not notice immediately that the more blatant stuff, which was concentrated on the "Style" subsection, had been moved to another article, and when I did notice that, I thought the problems had been dealt with in the process. Only today did I see that they persist, due to all of this polemics here). And it actually doesn't make any sense, since the point about Federer's article needing cleanup (the reason for this discussion) still stands (G-Man, not me, immediately reinserted the tag), and the praising of Federer, another problem, as I said before (had to repost now due to an edit confict), was never fixed, but only moved to another article.
And you continue not to get things straight: I did not post the cleanup tag "based on Matthewmayer's comment" (which was not even originally made on that talk page), I mentioned that sequence because there was a comment from me there that I had not made on that article originally. It was on another issue (copyvio, as opposed to over-the-top praising of Federer and the need for cleanup), and Matthewmayer disagreed with me on that, but coincidentally enough wrote that the article needed cleanup. Your alleged "emotional contradiction" appears to be based on your own misunderstanding of my post above. See the paragraph above for the actual reason for posting the tag.
Furthermore, you seem to be under the impression that every single thing someone does in an article needs to be explained in the talk page. That is not the case. Especially if it's minor changes, that don't really alter the article. When I added the cleanup tag, I did no cleaning up myself, so there was nothing to be justified anyways. Had I intended to do extensive editing (possibly deleting entire paragraphs) on the article, I would have made a comment on the talk page, waited a few days, gotten feedback from those more actively involved with the article, and only after all that would I actually have done the editing (which is the right thing to do, not "go ahead and see if it stays on", as you once put). If you wrote the text and you remove the tag yourself, that will almost certainly look biased (which is probably why G-Man reinserted the tag there). There's also no need for anyone to be contributing actively to an article in order to point out any possible problems in it. Your argument in that regard holds no water. The cleanup tag is inserted with the intent to attract peer review to articles with NPOV issues (mainly), which seemed to be the opinion of quite a few people who had read the article. Redux 04:00, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Humm, also, you do realise that you closed the second-before-last paragraph of your last entry by pretty much saying "to hell with policies, let's just edit stuff up". You think I'm attempting to hamper the growth of articles and/or your contribution rate by "making bureaucratic-sounding comments about policies and guidelines"? You realize that this sort of behavior warrants banishment from the website, right? Policies will be respected. Guidelines are made to make our lives here easier. Contradicting them for the sake of your own agenda, at the very least, denotes a negative behavior that is usually not accepted here. You would be wise to rethink your approach to this. Everybody can screw up every now and then, that's normal. But from what you said it looks like you are bent on ignoring any kind of advice, notice or warning that you may be in breach of policy because you belive that this behavior is aimed at hampering the growth of articles or "the original spirit of Wikipedia". I hope I'm wrong about this, because if I'm right, you're the one who's saddly mistaken. In any case, letting people know, and especially in the case of newcomers, that there are certain things that have to be done in a certain way, and others that just cannot be done at all, is my duty as a Wikipedian, not part of some "evil plot" to disrupt the work that needs to be done. Redux 04:21, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Missing images

Help!

Lately, while I enter a Wikipedia article, I often get missing images. Can anyone see the problem?? Georgia guy 02:10, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

See above.

Accusations of being a sockpuppet

OK, I'm not sure where to put this since I'm used to the Swedish Wikipedia, which is smaller, and more "liberal" with where to place topics, feel free to move this to where it fits better. User:CheeseDreams has again claimed that I'd be a sock puppet of User:Rienzo (check the history of Rienzos user page), which I'm clearly not. This is something every Swedish Wikipedian know, and I'm a sysop over there. I could even just tell you my ip number, which I do on my Swedish user page (sv:Användare:Grillo). I don't know why she keeps making these accusations, but it's becoming uncomfortable. What am I to do to stop these accusations? I don't want any trouble, and as far as I'm concerned, CheeseDreams is already blocked from editing on Wikipedia? /Grillo 02:07, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC) Addition: To save you the trouble of looking up the ip, it belongs to Lund University and is permanent. /Grillo 03:37, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Are you sure it's CheeseDreams? She gave her password to Rienzo, who I believe to be a bit of a problem, and anyone who wanted to could easily impersonate her. Whoever it was did the same to the English userpages of several sysops from sv:, but nobody fell for it. I wouldn't worry about it; if it happens again we'll just revert the edits and block the account for vandalism. —Charles P. (Mirv) 15:40, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I assume it was CheeseDreams since it was that account who made the edits, check the history, or just this revision, [5], needless to say, I have never made any homofobic personal attacks to anyone... I believe I was put on the list, because I reverted sv:Användare:LouiseR when an anonymous user claimed she was a sockpuppet of Rienzo. We can't have anonymous users claiming stuff on our Wikipedia, so I reverted the edit. Then CheeseDreams apparently thought it natural that I too was a sockpuppet of LouiseR/Rienzo/whoever. /Grillo 16:02, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Visual arts and categories

I'm working on starting on Wikipedia:WikiProject Visual arts. Even if you're not interested in editing Visual arts articles any comments, additions input or proofreading would help to get things started! Be bold!

Also, I'm looking for input on the categorization of these articles. We currently have Category:Visual arts, Category:Art and Category:Arts. The talk pages of the three categories have some comments on this, but it can all be sorted out better. Again, even if you're not interested in the subject or articles it may really help if you look over things and give input.

If anyone is really really interested, maybe someone starting a WikiProject Categorization would be a good idea. We have stub sorting, but as many full articles need sorting too.--Sketchee 23:47, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

Picture Problem

On page Image:Corgicars.jpg, image is not showing, but can be used on other pages. Could anyone possibly fix this? --Electricmoose 14:23, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think it's a temporary problem with the servers, just ignore it, it'll fix itself (or someone else will for us!). If you know a file name exists, just put it into a page regardless. Dunc|☺ 19:36, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
One of the proxy servers was sending image requests to the wrong server. It should have been corrected now. --Brion 03:40, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

Server performance

The server stats look rather strange. Why has the traffic decreasd that much? Or are the stats themselves only invalied. Also, different Wikipedias had very different availability the last 12 hours. At some point, I wasn't able to get anything from the main servers (being in Germany on T-online), but everything worked fine after forcing to go through the French squids. Any ideas, what's going on? --Pjacobi 11:18, 2005 Feb 26 (UTC)

Two of our old proxy servers are down and we've put three new ones into service. The graphs at that page are reflecting only two of the old ones, so don't show all traffic. Hopefully we'll have a better traffic graph page up soon. --Brion 03:19, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

Is there a place I can download all the fonts used in the various Wikipedia articles?

I'mjust looking for a place I can d/l the fonts used in wikipedia...

Wikipedia doesn't particularly dictate fonts. I'm not sure exactly what you have in mind, but I'm guessing that there are characters used in Wikipedia for which you simply don't have any font. You might have a look at http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts.html. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:37, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

Is there a cabal on Wikipedia

Last year, I was told by several people, "That we already ran off one anti-semite, we have the power to run people off this website".

Now, an administrator left a threatening message on my talk page:

Look at the message that AndyL wrote me:

There is no such hint. Creating another article under a different name for deleted material would be an attempt to cirumvent the VfD and would result in the new article being deleted and possibly in you being banned. Also, I'm certain that editors would start examining your other articles and start putting them up for deletion. AndyL 15:38, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

See, here is your cabal. They are going to gang up on me and start deleting my articles. Do you see these threats from editors. What Have I done to deserve this?

They have ganged up and deleted my article called [Classical definition of republic]. I moved it to Wikinfo and now they won't let me put an external link at Republic or any other site requiring the definition of a "Classical Republic". Wikinfo:Classical definition of republic

They are now threatening me by going around and deleting my other articles on this site. I don't see any rules in Wikipedia about who can submit articles. Homosexuals have a free rein in Wikipedia but anybody they percieve that is anti-democracy or anti semetic, which I am not, they are going to "run me out of town". There is a dispute at Talk:Republic. I have all sorts of information but there is censorship going on at Wikipedia.WHEELER 15:55, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like perfectly valid enforcement of the VfD to me. You should not be attempting to recreate articles that have been VfD'd. It is just common sense to begin closely monotoring anyone who attempts to break the rules. Follow policy, abide by community consensus and work with your fellow editors, and you will encounter no such problems. GeorgeStepanek\talk 21:40, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Do you need an umbrella when you smoke white cheroots?
Yes, but when the sky is a bright canary yellow I prefer cubebs.
All sysops can communicate with each other using a back channel consisting of an unrelated web page and encrypted, predefined signals. [6]
Without the cheatsheet you can not break our one-time pad cypher, unless you search through the archives of the email list and the page histories of Wikipedia. You can, however, make reasonable inferences from your own case, which, combined with the cases of others, might provide an accurate approximation of the cheatsheet. [7] —A signal-happy clown 03:19, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Note: this is a joke. Or an attempt at one. GeorgeStepanek\talk 21:52, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
This is. Plautus satire's original e-mails weren't. —Charles Arthur Beauregard Andrew Lockridge

Wikipedia advertises itself as "Free and Open Content". It doesn't look like that to me.

A quick interjection: this simply means that anyone can read the information free of charge…it emphatically does not mean that anyone can simply dump anything they like into Wikipedia without reasonable proof that it is trustworthy information. Wikipedia should be an exercise in disproving the old saw

"it's only worth what you paid for it"

There have to be rules as to what can and cannot be added, and until those rules change they should be administered. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 16:42, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

As you can tell from AndyL's response. This is not about intellectual honesty, There is a cabal running Wikipedia. Whether the material rates or not, it has already been decided to delete things. Nothing I say or do, or anybody else matters.

As to SimonP he is making the rules up as he goes. He will control information. Plain and simple. This cabal will use censorship to prevent information that they will not consider. Plain and simple. The merits and scholarship of the Classical definition will not be considered; the only consideration is that WHEELER authored it and so it must be deleted. That is the only criteria. Who is SimonP? There is nothing on his User Page. He could be just some 18 year old kid or a raving socialist. But his anynimity hides his bias. What decision can be made by a man that hides his identity and his worth and his merit. How can anybody rate his value of his voice. None can. Then why does HE get to decide things. Is he a patsy pushed forward by others in a Byzantine game of power and prestige and control?? I have numerous scholary works that use the term "Classical Republic" and yet Wikipedia deletes the article.

Democracy is no way to run anything. About a jury of my peers. If you look at the Users that delete, most of them have no expertize of any thing classical, most have edited things about sports and cricket. In all the people that voted for deletion, only two had a political degree. One is a British guy with degrees in philosophy and history and politics, yet denied that Britain had mixed government and yet I have scholary works that outlines this history of "mixed government". I made several new pages and added to the content of the History of the British constitution that more educated men can't do...or won't do. I want a jury of my peers not a bunch of ideological driven ignorant savants. That know nothing of the material in question. WHEELER 14:45, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

WHEELER, you have put your finger on a significant issue here, one that Larry Sanger has also taken a stand on. To what extent does being an "expert" entitle one to respect and special consideration? Note that by the standards of Nupedia (for example), you would not have been allowed to contribute, for you do not have a college degree. You have benefitted from the same enti-elitism that you are now arguing against.
You shouldn't be blaming AndyL or SimonP for your predicament, in just the same way that you shouldn't blame the police for enforcing laws that you (and perhaps they) disagree with. The admins have been enforcing community consensus, which is their job. If they did not do so, then perhaps there would be grounds for suspicion, but this is not the case. Your article was voted off by a clear majority according to the relevant Wikipedia policies. If you wish to change these policies, then by all means create your own proposal and try to get it voted in. But until then, these are the rules that we all have to live by.
Regarding your points about anti-elitism, yes, this is a feature of Wikipedia, and a controversial one at that. I can't justify it, except to say that Wikipedia works. The expert-only approach has been tried, and failed miserably, whereas Wikipedia is tremendous success. I believe that its open, egalitarian and meritocratic philosophy is the reason for this. Why risk losing whatever it is that makes Wikipedia so effective? GeorgeStepanek\talk 21:52, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The question is what weight does Simon P have? I don't now. Nobody knows--Thats the question.
As for your ""Clear majority", A clear majority killed Socrates; A clear majority killed Jesus; A clear majority started the French revolution; A major majority got Hitler elected. I can not believe my ears when an educated man says that "majority" is the rule of right and wrong. For it says in Scripture, "Wisdom is not manifest to many" and it says: "Thou shalt not join thyself with a multitude to turn aside with the majority so as to shut out judgement(righteousness)" Exodus 23.2.
Are you implying that any majority should be ignored? That current rulers of every democratic nation on this planet are in the wrong simply because the majority voted them in? Is it the minority that we should follow and take as the simgle most important opinion? But then you have the problem of which minority is the correct one.
And besides, what direct course of action do you suggest should be undertaken against this supposed cabal? A banning of everyone that has used Wikipedia for over a year? The only way that you would be able to change a system, is to work by its rules, and see if any policy change that you want can be democratically voted in. - Estel (talk) 19:22, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)
See minoritarianism... hint: it's historically far worse than majoritarianism. People who complain about majorities making decisions are not really thinking about the worse alternatives. And besides, Hitler didn't win with a majority... read your history books, kids. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Contrib 02:46, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I have left many new references on "Classical republicanism" from modern Scholarly works; yet no one is going to pay any attention to them. Wikipedia:Votes_for_undeletion#Classical_definition_of_republic and at Talk:Republic. There is censorship and a cabal is running Wikipedia. Because the actions of these people are illogical in the face of physical evidence. They will deny proofs and continue to vote delete. This is proof of a cabal.WHEELER 14:47, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Hmm... I should probably fill out that "Cabal Application" they sent me then. I just need two more references. Any takers? – ClockworkSoul 17:04, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
You'd also need at least two current members of the cabal to sponsor you. I'd tell you who to ask, but if I told you I'd have to kill you. m:cabal might be a good place to start, though :) →Raul654 20:38, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC) (PS - this comment is a joke)
There be questions ye must answer. Of the ones bearing asterisks of crimson, these indeed ye must answer without fail or forfeit thy application. But, verily, the ones without asterisks ye need not, and yet, should ye answer them, they will assist us to guide thee with superior service. 1) From whence did the traveller journey, by what way, and how purposed? 2) Is there balm in Gilead? If not, why not? 3a) Explain the meaning of AOUM. 3b) For verification purposes, explain it again. 4) What is the highest degree thou hast yet achieved: apprentice, journeyman, master, grand master, exalted master? 5) Where heardst thou about the Cabal? a) The mailing list b) The Village Pump c) Google d) an advertisement?
Oh, okay. Here goes:
  1. By moped. I took the L.I.E. because I thought it would be fastest.
  2. No. The Cabal wielded its limitless influence and ran it off Wikipedia. (Praise be the Cabal)
  3. AOUM is that which the small minds cannot know. wonk tonnac sdnim llams eht hcihw taht si MUOA.
  4. Exalted master. Ask me at what.
  5. It was the only signal that pierced my tin foil hat. The mailing list was a close second.
How was that? Can you teach me the secret handshake now? (This may be a joke, or it may not be. Seriously. Or not.) – ClockworkSoul 05:01, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
At what?-gadfium 05:15, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Exactly. – ClockworkSoul 05:23, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You know what my problem is. Noone argues with the Doctor, or the mechanic, or the computer expert, They are the experts and they ought to and should know what they are doing. Except in my case, everybody thinks they are a philosopher without any training. And a Software engineer and cricket and sports editors are just as qualified to edit Classical definitions without having read any classics whatsoever. Don't need to. I'm totally ignorant yet, I can be an expert in politics. WHEELER 15:48, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's best to keep reminding people about your sources. Accusing someone of being part of some cabal (regardless of how it was meant) is only going to make people argue back and forth and ignore the real problem. It's the article that needs the attention. Mgm|(talk) 22:07, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)
"As you can tell from AndyL's response. This is not about intellectual honesty, There is a cabal running Wikipedia" WHEELER, enough of the paranoid ranting, ok? As anyone can tell from my comments, I was trying to point out that it is not acceptable for you to try to circument the decision made by a VfD (a democratic decision of the wiki community) by moving the deleted contents to another article. As for your other articles, it's common sense that if you develop a reputation for violating wikipedia rules on NPOV, original research etc then editors will begin examining all of your work for possible violations. This isn't the act of a "cabal", its the predictable response to anti-social behaviour. If you act up, people will put you under closer scrutiny. It's that simple. Please stop trying to read statements that are not there into my or other people's comments and please stop crying persecution particularly in light of the comments I was replying to, comments which show a contempt for wikipedia rules by expressing a desire to violate them through subterfuge. AndyL 05:14, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)


BTW WHEELER, a decision taken by a transparent and democratic vote of the community is the exact opposite of an action made by a cabal. All that you have shown is that for a self styled "expert" on politics you seem to lack a basic grasp of basic concepts. To argue that a "cabal" is censoring your articles is like saying a "cabal" of 100 million people voted in the recent presidential election.What you are being faced with is community democratic action, the very opposite of a "Cabal". AndyL 05:19, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No, this is singly out Wheeler for special duty. So now, we cover our ass and say We are now going to examine all of Wheeler's work and vote for deletion. Stop crying persecution. Now, vanavsos, Family/State paradigm are now on the chopping block for deletion. You don't call this persecution. This is a cabal. I cite sources all the time. It is you Andy and SimonP that don't cite any sources. I cite sources for vanavsos and it still goes for deletion. What gives? I have worked hard for Wikipedia and put up many good articles, all with sources and references and done great stuff. Now, all my work is for nought. This is the thanks I get? Anonymous users that don't prove their expertize can delete anything they want.WHEELER 01:16, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ohh, and by the way, You want editors at wikipedia? You want people to work for free building this site? I just spent six hours arguing with simonP. Instead of working on making more articles and building up Wikipedia. I am arguing all the day. Six hours of arguing. What got accomplished----just taking up more software bites thats all. and you want more editors? Not with this.WHEELER 01:42, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

AndyL you and your pals are no more qualified to write on anything than morons have to be college professors. You sit behind your anonymity, you and simonP and the rest, you hide while going around pontificating like you know something. You know jack shit.WHEELER 01:42, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

My "pals"? I don't know these people and have never communicated with them. Why do you insist there must be a conspiracy, a "cabal" if you must use a word with anti-Semitic insinuations? Can you not take some responsiblity for your actions? Editors are acting individually and without co-ordination, the reason some editors are examining your work is because you've shown yourself to be an unreliable editor and because your work has struck different editors who have more familiarity with specific areas than you do (such as ancient Greek) as deeply flawed and problematic. But no... it can't be that there's anything wrong in the articles written or edited by WHEELER, the great autodidact who can never be wrong about anything, it must be a conspiracy. It's not that people are conspiring to get you, it's that you've offended a number of people individually with your behaviour or that people who aren't even familiar with you or your charms come across your editing and find it flawed and are taking action. Sorry WHEELER, you have no right to edit or write on Wikipedia without having your work reviewed and if your work is found wanting you have no proprietorial right against it being altered or deleted. If you can't deal with that than start up your own website.AndyL 13:59, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, there is a cabal on Wikipedia. It is very large. Given the nature of Wikipedia, it is an uncommonly open cabal, including many people who disagree on most matters, and collectively it has no political agenda, just a process-oriented one. If you are a Wikipedia contributor who complies with Wikipedia:Don't be a dick you are, perhaps unbeknownst even to yourself, a member of the cabal. As for those who are certain that they are outside the cabal and are convinced that the cabal is opposed to them, you may draw your own conclusions. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:55, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

The problem I have Jmabel is that there is a cabal out to get me. I do research. I don't put up my opinion. For instance, Golden Mean, I read two books given to me by my Greek father, I also did research on the 32 VOLUME Dictionary of Art here in the Library and then I did the article. Milneau Trudenea comes in and deletes material that is in the Dictionary of Art and the two books. What am I to do. 2nd instance, I quote and read from a book on vanavsos, it still goes up for deletion. What am I supposed to think. 3rd instance, I quote from a MODERN SCHOLOARY Book, "A republic is a mixed constitutional government". That is a direct quote. SimonP comes in and says no. Andyl, SimonP, and the rest don't want to listen to FACTs.

I quote from a modern scholary books
"The truth lies somewhere in between. That is, in the late eighteenth century, American political thought was in transition, moving from classical republicanism to modern liberalism. Yet the transition was inconclusive, neither clear nor complete, and the result was a hybrid mixture that combined republican and liberal themes in a creative but uneasy collaboration. While Gordon Wood continues to emphasize the emergence of liberalism in post-Revolutionary American society in The Radicalism of the American revolution (1992), he also demonstrates the persistence of classical republican values, particularly among the founders' generation and aristocratic class." Founders and the Classics, Carl J. Richard, pg 7.
  • "In a piece of high presbyterian cant that long was remembered, Cartwright wrote that the civil constitution ought to match the ecclesiastical, "even as the hangings to the house"...the architect had cribbed his plans from the decorator: he had built according to the classical-republican theory of mixed government." Dangerous Positions, Mendle, pg 67.

Mr. Jmabel, notice I quote from two modern scholary works that have the term "classical republic" in them and the second one alludes to the definition of classical republicanism: I.E., Classical republican theory of mixed government. That is the meaning of classical republicanism. SimonP, Andyl, Snowspinner, Mel, etc etc etc, all want to disallow facts and talk circles around me. I didn't start this mess. They refuse to understand plain english and then refuse to have an external link to another online encyclopaedia. This is persecution. Plain and simple. WHEELER 16:11, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

WHEELER, the fact that you have systematically offended numerous editors with your atitude, editing habits, original research etc does not make those editors, who have nothing in common except for the fact that they disagree with you, a cabal. AndyL 13:34, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
So this is the reason: Wikipedia is a popularity contest won by being popular. As Napoleon once said, "The Truth offends". Yes, it mightly offends. Jesus offended people all the time that numerous plots were hatched to kill him. St. John the Baptist offended King Herod. And Socrates offended his jurymen. TRUTH OFFENDS. But my supposed "offensiveness" is now an excuse to start deleting my work. Where is that in the rules of Wikipedia? WHEELER 19:07, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

So then WHEELER, do you see yourself as being more like Napoleon or Jesus?AndyL 19:15, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC) Problem solved

  • Delete. According to WHEELER, "The question is 'Should people be voting on something they have not a clue on?'." On Wikipedia, the answer is "Yes, that's our policy." You've been around long enough to know this. You talk about the commercial ethos and the warrior ethos. Well, the Wiki ethos is that of open source. The theory is that, if we let a bunch of people without professional qualifications write and edit and delete pretty much as they please, a good encyclopedia will somehow emerge. I know you disagree with the theory and with the policy. That's certainly your privilege, and you have good company, such as the Encyclopedia Britannica pooh-bahs. As long as you stay here, though, you have to recognize that that's the way it works here. The MediaWiki software is available under the GFDL for anyone who wants to start a similar project but with stricter quality controls. By the way, to save you the trouble of clicking through to my user page, I'll admit right now that I'm not qualified as a classicist. JamesMLane 08:46, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I see your point. And it is very clear to me. This is in a sense "stricter quality control". Yes. But the "quality control" on wikipedia is Marxist and Fabian, Humanist and Modern. You have laid out very clearly to me that "who is in control here". The standards being that people who are ignorant of any subject but with a bias to protect can delete stuff off of Wikipedia. And that is not professional, academic, righteous (justice) or truthful. I understand perfectly what you are saying. I will not start another page nor work for Wikipedia (though I will transfer stuff here). I see clearly where this is going. I can do better and stop wasting my time here because surely I am. Thanks Mr. James MLane. You have certainly opened my eyes to the fundamental core of Wikipedia. And that yes, then Wikipedia is run by a cabal. And it is a fundamental lie that Mr. James MLane has exposed the fallacy "of free and open content". Wikipedia is not "an encylcopaedia" it's a "controlled information platform".
On the contrary. As nearly as I can tell, your objection to Wikipedia is that you cannot control the content. You believe that as an expert, you should be able to control the content within the subject areas of your expertise. In Wikipedia, you can only influence article content, and, yes, the degree of influence you have rests on your ability to convince others, who are outside your subject area, that what you say is correct. Many contributors who have unorthodox opinions have been able to do so successfully. A common pattern among people who get seriously angry at Wikipedia is that they are people who are not satisfied with influence, but demand control.
Surrendering control of contributions is absolutely fundamental to Wikipedia. It is expressed on every editing page in the simple words "If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, do not submit it." If you cannot accept the loss of control over your work when you submit it to Wikipedia, you will not like Wikipedia. However, it is very unlikely that complaining about this will change our policy. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:58, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

To AndyL. There is "no" professional standard here except a standards on "form" and writing but not on content. WHEELER 14:47, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Given your "contempt for academia" as expressed on your page, would you really prefer the previous incarnation of wikipedia where a group of professionals, academics, vetted everything? It seems that you actually do want a cabal to run wikipedia as long as you are part of it. The problem, of course, with your Socratic preference is that you would have been excluded from that project because of your lack of academic qualifications and your inability to meet scholarly standards.AndyL 17:04, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

AndyL and Dpbsmith, I know from whence I write my articles. I do research and read before I do anything. Others, write things and you can tell, have no such education. The deletion notice on Family as model for the state and vanavsos are good examples of this. These two articles are and were up for deletion because a crowd of Wikipedians decided to back up User:SimonP who has no clue on what he is talking about. They deleted one thing and so now, they are going through the book and deleting the rest of my articles. I am not complaining about everbody editiing. I am talking about the "deletion" processs and who can vote for that. "Deletion" is much more than just editing. It is also akin to "censorship". Humanists have been trying to destroy "Aristotelity", as one writer put in in the early modern era. They hate Aristotle and the scholastics. I am an Aristotelian. This "deletion" process is about ganging up on me and destroying information needful for other classicists, aristotelians and Catholics. The Deletion process should be up to "experts" in that particular subject area otherwise you have ignorant people voting on something they have no clue on, but hate the subject material. Is this "valid" grounds for deleting an article, no it isn't. It's not professional. Let the editing be free and open source. Good. But the deletion process is different, much different than editing--roving gangs of ideological purists then can delete material unfavorable to the majority consensus!WHEELER 16:49, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cabal: Me Too

I know it takes 100 edits for me to stop being a sock puppet. How many edits do I need before I can join the cabal?

Seriously, though, why humor this guy? I can't even figure out his objection, aside from "you hurt me you bad mens".

Does he object to democracy? If so, I'm right there with him; it's the worst possible form of government, excepting all others. As soon as the mob realizes it can vote emoluments from the public treasury, democracy is doomed. Look at America.

Does he object to oligarchy? If so, I support him 100%. Why should a few tyrannical despots decide for us all? We do the work, they say who lives or dies. Burn them all. "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality!" Roll out the chopper. What do they know, just because they've been here awhile.

Does he object to homoarchy? Homosexuals have a free rein in Wikipedia... Oh no! Let's hound the queers right out; we'll coat them in K-Y and chicken feathers and run them out of town straddling a rail (ooooh!). The last thing we need here is closet homos editing articles on Family values.

Does he object to adhocracy? ...he is making the rules up as he goes. Well, that's obviously wrong. Collaborative-editing projects have been around for years; we should know by now how WP should be run; all the rules should be graven on stone tablets (and protected) and applied inflexibly and impartially until the End of Time.

I want a jury of my peers... Let's hope he cannot find 12 such in our community. --Xiong 16:02, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

I was replying to a comment I heard a year ago, the comment was, "If your an Antisemite, we will run you off of wikipedia", my comment here, is that if homosexuals have a free rein on Wikipedia, Why can't anti-semites, white supremacists, racists and the such have free rein? That is whay I am trying to say. There is a double standard on Wikipedia because if you allow one, you must allow the other.WHEELER 16:49, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Let me see if I understand that: you are equating sexual orientation to being involved in a hate group, and wondering why we would have different policies about each? -- Jmabel | Talk 19:26, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

I think you mean "free reign".

No, no, you don't understand my buddy Wheelies. If two grown men go into a room, shut the door, touch each other, and take a shower after, that is a pernicious threat to our American Way of Life, especially considering the primary role of the Nukular Family. Isn't it a proven fact that mutual masturbation leads to glue-sniffing? Isn't the secret homosexual agenda taking shape in front of our eyes? Don't queers actively recruit impressionable young men into their cabal, substituting degenerate subtitled foreign films for wholesome, All-American activities like playground fistfights? And doesn't this lead also to granola-eating, tree-hugging, flag-burning, and violent assaults on God-fearing witnesses to the sanctity of life exercising their Constututional right to block the public way near human slaughterhouses and throw blood and lead at evil (faggot) murderers on their way to wallow in the public pork barrel?
The only good thing you can say about homosexuals is that at least the white ones (even the unspeakably vile white ones who copulate with negro fags) is that they don't dilute our pure Aryan blood. Did you get all that? As Da Mare Little Richie (of Chicago) said, we don't need the libraries to be open on Sundays; Sundays are for church and studying the religion.
I love it, Wheels, when you vaccuum in pearls. — Xiong (talk) 03:03, 2005 Mar 16 (UTC)
I am just pointing out the double standard at Wikipedia. Which is hypocrisy. And we all know that "racism", "White-supremacy" are evils and sins according to Marxism, Humanism and Modernism. So we do have a "moral system" here at Wikipedia. Let us be clear on this issue. That behind the scenes, certain groups of people have already decided who can contribute to Wikipedia and who can not. See, I don't 0rganize a group of Wikipedians to run off homosexuals nor do I want to NOR PERSECUTE THEM IN ANY WAY. But my counterparts have Organized a group of Wikipedians to run off people they don't like. And they do organize to run people off. I just point out the double standard which exists, which moves in the shadows of Wikipedia. Using subtle harrassment to drive people away who are "politically incorrect". We have only to look at the President of Harvard, Summers, to see how the leftist controlled academia force their "political correctness". Summers' sin was that he crossed and questioned leftist orthodoxy. He is to be punished.WHEELER 14:27, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Don't feed the troll. (Sorry!) — Xiong (talk) 07:38, 2005 Mar 17 (UTC)

What on earth is this

I've just come across this page - [8]. What on earth is it doing on Wikipedia? 250,000 people were killed by the Asian tsunami, and yet people had to vociferously argue to have a tiny banner on the front page, after Jimbo objected to it's presence. Not a memorial page - a tiny banner. Insane - XED.talk 02:57, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's a sister project, run by the Wikimedia Foundation. As far as I can see, it isn't linked to on the front page, but most of the other sister projects are. Were you suggesting a sister project for the Asian tsunami victims (and are you suggesting that any event with a similar or greater death toll than September 11 deserves to have a sister project set up for it), or do you think that a sister project and a donations appeal are somehow comparable?-gadfium 03:46, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
While I agree that the memorial wiki should definitely exist, somewhere, I do not agree with it being hosted by the foundation. I said as much several months ago: "the sep11 wiki is a contradiction in terms" --Alterego 05:14, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)
I have long supported a more general Memorial Wiki, for example the many victims of the Spanish bombing. To single out 9/11 seems US-centric to me (and yes, I am a US citizen and life-long resident). I do NOT believe memorials to otherwise non-notable people belong in the main Wiki, but either we [at the memorial, not Wikipedia itself] (the bigger project, not just Wikipedia) should include ALL cases of major loss of life, or none. As for the genesis of the project you initially raise, I wasn't around at the time, but I believe it was a response to many people trying to add 9/11 victims while it was still fresh, and that was a compromise solution. But, as I say, limiting the memorial site to one disaster is POV. Niteowlneils 16:36, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Those pages were originally right here on this Wikipedia, and were moved to a separate site to maintain NPOV and encyclopedic standards in the encyclopedia. --Brion 00:56, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
Is there any advantage to keeping the Sep11 wiki editable? If it was just meant to be a store for articles moved away from Wikipedia, why can it not just be archived somewhere, like nostalgia.wikipedia.org is? If it can't just be archived, then I don't think it should continue to exist in its current form. It should either be converted to a general memorial wiki, or a general people wiki, but I wouldn't support either being Wikimedia projects, due partly to the lack of interest in editing these. Wikipeople projects have already been trialed at http://genealogy.wikicities.com Wikicities and at BioJack, and have not proven successful. Angela.
Is there any reason why they can't now be moved on to Wikicities? GeorgeStepanek\talk 04:22, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
It could be merged with http://genealogy.wikicities.com Genealogy, but I'd rather it were archived so the community at Wikicities could choose to use the content under the GFDL if they thought it was any use. A dump of this stuff into an existing Wikicity isn't likely to appeal to the community there. Angela. 15:30, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
I was thinking more of creating a new wikicity for this content e.g. memorial.wikicities.com or something like that. As I understand it, wikicities is intended for such specialised wikis which would not be appropriate as wikimedia projects. GeorgeStepanek\talk 21:19, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

BTW, my comments below are based on "merge", not "dump"; meaning the content would have to be migrated and converted to entries for the G-Wiki.—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 00:23, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

Several levels of reply are appropriate here:

  • Personally, I think there should be Wikis on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, 3/11, the migration during the creation of India and Pakistan, and so on. Isn't that the same as Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the Holocaust museums in DC, Berlin and elsehwere? Those are projects--the Holocaust included--that are just crying out for a wikitreatment, if you ask me. Call me a sentimental populist wikiphile, but I think a wiki would do even more justice to these than a building or a curated museum.
  • And no, I don't agree that these should be closed to editing. The book is by no means closed on the Holocaust 60 years later, and it is way too early for 9/11. And some of the other incidents (like the South Asian--Indian/Pakistani--thing) we haven't even started to scratch the surface of.
  • As a contributor to http://genealogy.wikicities.com The Genealogy Wiki, the way I understand it, folks are free to add entries that fall within the mission/vision of the Wiki. Specifically:
    • Personally, I feel 9/11 and the other phenomena mentioned above deserve full Wikis (most probably on Wikicities) that would capture information that might fall outside the mission of the Genealogy Wiki. Or not; the G-Wiki is still in its infancy and maybe this kind of documentation is exactly the kind of need it will fill.
    • As a place for documenting people, incidents, and places that are outside what would usually be considered "of encyclopedic interest", documenting the people and even companies and planes, etc. that were lost or were otherwise connected to that incident is definitely part of what the G-Wiki is and should be doing.
    • The entries would have to conform to the template we're trying to follow there; and definitely they'd inform how that template evolves.
    • We definitely also plan to create Categories for people that are connected to incidents like that. Just like categories for "Apostles", "Sahaba" (for Muhammad's circle), WWII Vet, and so on.
    • Yes, a page describing the incident itself would also fit into the mission of that Wiki as I see it.
    • As is policy on that Wiki, I would like to reiterate not reinventing the wheel and linking liberally to Wikipedia entries and the 9/11 wiki itself, if it continues to exist, at nostalgia.wikipedia or elsewhere.
  • As founder of http://genealogy.wikicities.com The Genealogy Wiki it would be an amazing honor and an incomparably humbling experience for the 9/11 Wiki to migrate there.
—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 00:09, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

Make your own nice-looking table

Memorize the templates {{prettytable}} and {{highlight1-3}}, and you won't have to memorize HTML attributes and color codes to make a nice-looking table ;) - Fredrik | talk 16:54, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The wikicode 

{| {{prettytable}}
!Foo
!Bar
!Baz
!Quux
|-
|100
|{{subst:highlight1}}|Cake
|Monster in the closet
|NO!
|-
|Wikipedia
|{{subst:highlight2}}|^______^ kekeke
|Darth Vader
|{{subst:highlight3}}|42
|-
|Moo
|1.618033989
|{{subst:highlight3}}|Pay your bills
|{{subst:highlight2}}|Bach
|}

produces:

Foo Bar Baz Quux
100 Cake Monster in the closet NO!
Wikipedia ^______^ Darth Vader 42
Moo 1.618033989 Pay your bills Bach
Thanks for the tip. No doubt many will find it helpful.JesseHogan 07:02, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Oh no, now I'm going to be up all night trying to understand the underlying meaning of the table above... CDC (talk) 04:43, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"Pay your bills, Bach!" should be a pretty obvious hint - If you're a norwegian, that is. (Ole Christian Bach just happens to be a financial "acrobate" i.e. white-collar crimer on the run from 'Ecocrime' In Norway, I 'spose this was the "underlying meaning" of that, atleast?) ;) --OleMurder 18:10, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What is an "acrobate"? I've heard of a "reprobate" (someone who is condemned for their actions) and I know "approbate" means to approve, but I've never heard of an acrobate. Does this describe a very flexible criminal ☺, or is it perhaps a Norwegian term assimilated by the Borg-like English language? — Jeff Q (talk) 19:57, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The number 1.618033989 is the Golden Ratio

Slight correction to the above posting: 1.618033989 is an approximation of the the Golden ratio, which is an irrational number. — Jeff Q (talk) 20:05, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Thanks for the great Table Creation! I used it on my wiki home page. I'm really enjoying being here!

--Noisecontrol 13:46, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

INSEE

Sorry! I made a mess of INSEE thinking I was working on the Italian wiki. I made by mistake a circular REDIRECT. Could you restore the page on the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (redirect from INSEE). Otherwise, pleae notify me on my italian talk page it:Untente:GiorgioPro of anything I can do about it. Sorry for the inconvenience. Giorgio. (Drop a note) I'm here 16:51, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

OK, I managed to recover it myself. Sorry for the mess! Can anyone check? Giorgio. (Drop a note) I'm here 16:54, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Seem fine. Don't worry, mistakes happen. — Itai (f&t) 17:00, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Deletion policy and practice

Recently Views of Creationists and mainstream scientists compared was put up for deletion. The votes just exceeded the required two-thirds majority for deletion.

It is always difficult to categorise views, but to the best I can, here is a summary.

  • 10 people voted to delete because the content was not up to standard and, in some cases at least, they couldn't see that it could be brought up to standard. (David Gerard, Megan, G Rutter, Potatojunkie, Kaal*, Edeans, Calton, Anon, ral315, Mlm42*)
  • 4 because the title or contents did not agree with their own POV. (Martg76, Dunc*, Viriditas, Mlm42*)
  • 4 because the information was or should be covered elsewhere. (Kaal*, Sean Curtin, Mattley*, Dunc*)
  • 5 for unspecified reasons. (Caarp, Epe, Pjacobi, Cheesedreams, FeloniousMonk, Bensaccount)
  • 2 because the inherent format of the article was not Wikipedian. (Fastfission, Mattley*, Gamaliel, BM)

*—voter gave more than one reason, so the total of figures above exceed the actual vote to delete.

One of my concerns is that ten people voted to delete on the grounds that the article was not satisfactory as it stood, yet it was under very active development, so such reason seems premature. Surely it should have been given the chance to be turned into a good article.

Another of my concerns is that four voted to delete simply because they are anti-creationists and they didn't like the fact that the article was attempting to describe creationists' views (alongside contrary views) in a neutral way. Now I realise that we can't discount people's votes simply because they give invalid reasons (after all, they were entitled to vote without giving a reason, as some did), but it does raise the question of whether—to the extent that their votes affected the result—the deletion was effectively a censorship of views that they didn't agree with.

My remaining concern is not apparent from the votes. It is that the article being voted on was heavily edited by an anti-creationist who insisted on representing the majority viewpoint as fact and deleting documented views of creationists because, according to him, the creationists with those views were wrong. That is, he was imposing a POV on the article.

(It is of course impossible to tell how much that editing might have influenced the vote, although it can be seen from the votes above that the largest single group voted according to the then-current state of the article (even though that "state" wasn't actually static), so there is a quite real possibility that it did influence the vote.)

Compounding this situation is that before the second vote, I put in a request for mediation with regard to this editor. This request is still waiting for a mediator, yet in the meantime the article at the centre of dispute had been voted for deletion and the deletion carried out. I consider that there is a very real possibility that if the mediation had been dealt with first, the vote for deletion result may have been different. It's even possible that it may never have been put up for vote the second time, as it was the same editor that restarted the vote.

I would like to propose the article for undeletion, but unless some of these systemic problems are addressed, I don't really see the point.

One solution may be that when articles are proposed for deletion, people should not vote for or against deletion, but for or against the stated reason for deletion. For example, an article gets proposed for deletion on the grounds that it is an inappropriate topic for a Wikipedia article, and they have to vote on whether they agree that it is an inappropriate topic, not on whether they think the article should be deleted. This would (in theory at least), prevent them from voting for deletion on other grounds.

Philip J. Rayment 09:14, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • This article has spurred an enormous edit war about content that could easily be incorporated into Creation vs. evolution debate. I would suggest you try to edit that first. Also, you may want to try to get the people who are edit-warring to talk to eachother and solve their difference before asking for undeletion. Otherwise it's likely to turn ugly the moment it's undeleted.

If you still want such an article, try to write up a new version of the article in your userspace first, so you can perfect it before it's moved to the main namespace. This way you're sure it won't be deleted for not being of a high enough standard. Mgm|(talk) 13:52, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

I don't agree that it could be easily incorporated into another article. It was removed from another article because the other article was getting too big.
We already tried talking, but the other editor simply claimed that his (majority) POV was correct, and that representing his POV as fact was therefore NPOV! It needed (at least) a mediator to get involved.
I couldn't write such an article by myself. It would need someone else to write the mainstream side, as I couldn't do justice that.
And this doesn't address the problem of the editor who I was asking for mediation on. On past practice, as soon as it was moved to the main namespace (if not sooner), he would presumably mangle it to make it to represent his POV, then put it up for deletion again.
Philip J. Rayment 22:56, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It should logically be incorporated into the Creation vs. evolution debate as it is clearly part of it. At the moment, the latter article is not exceptionally long and IN FACT needs some beefing out as it is too much of a list giving references to other sources rather than being a well written arlticle. My Suggestion is that you integrate your information (remembering NPOV policy) and give it some decent prose! Dainamo 03:22, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

But this still ignores the problems with the deletion process, and the moderation non-process, which were the main points of me putting this here. The article in question was, if you like, a case study of the problem, not the problem itself. Philip J. Rayment 14:38, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Multi-User IPs

Perhaps people telling multi-user IPS off for vandalism cpuld mention an article title? I've been editing for an hour or son, and keep getting these 'new messages'. I know I'm sharing a proxy, and it may not be me, but I'd like to know for sure. 205.188.116.138 21:46, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

where can I download Cologne Blue skin CSS file?

because monobook is universal mediawiki cliche. :) --Alexandre Van de Sande 02:40, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cologne Blue isn't just a stylesheet, it's a skin. You can switch it to be the default for new users and anons by setting $wgDefaultSkin = 'cologneblue'; in your LocalSettings.php. If you want the stylesheet by itself for some reason, you can find it in skins/common/cologneblue.css in any recent MediaWiki installation, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/skins/common/cologneblue.css -- Tim Starling 04:59, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Online UK English dictionary?

Can anyone recommend a good online (or downloadable) UK English dictionary? I keep running into words that I suspect are misspelled, but can't be sure because they follow patterns that this Yank recognizes as potential UK variants. I have Merriam Webster Online to verify U.S. spellings, and Dictionary.com sometimes includes Oxford English Dictionary entries, but I have nothing robust and reliable. (I recall that OED offers online lookup, but for a substantial price. I need something free, or nearly so.) — Jeff Q (talk) 03:17, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You could try the Microsoft Word spell checker with the language set to English (UK). In the Wikipedia article, click on 'edit this page' and use Ctrl-A and Ctrl-X to get the text. Then go to MS Word and use Ctrl-V to paste the text into MS Word. Do Ctrl-A to select all the text again. In MS Word, select 'Tools', 'Language' and choose 'English (UK)'. You will then see the red squiggly underlines highlighting things it does not recognise with the English (UK) language set.
Right click on the red squiggly underline to get the new spelling option in that language. You can also use 'Tools', 'Spelling and grammar' to run the spell checker and grammar checker using the chosen language set.
If you do this frequently, then you could save a document with the language set to English (UK). If it is just an occasional word, then you can just type it into MS Word. Hope that helps. Bobblewik  (talk) 18:43, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I used Cambridge Dictionary at http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ Samw 00:43, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Wow! That Cambridge Dictionary is impressive! It handles UK and U.S. English, includes idioms, verb phrases, and translations to French and Spanish! And it doesn't take 10 seconds to load its overhead applets like Merriam-Webster. I'm tossing my other references and going with this one! Thanks, Samw! I also appreciate the Microsoft Word tip, Bobblewik. That'll certainly help when I'm working offline. — Jeff Q (talk) 01:37, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Erm - shouldn't we be recommending Wiktionary?
In any case, I usually use a meta-dictionary at OneLook.com which links into most of the dictionaries mentioned so far, and several more. -- Solipsist 07:46, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Spurious underscores

I've been noticing a lot of links in articles that use underscores instead of spaces, such as:

Main_Page

instead of

Main Page.

What's up with this? Do we need to tell new editors that they can use spaces?

Nickptar 02:38, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think they're copying the article name out of the URL. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:54, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
This habit is common enough that has been a bot proposed to automatically fix these (barring the handful of articles that should actually have underscores in their names for whatever reason); see Wikipedia_talk:Bots#Underscore_correction_bot (underscores kept for effect!). — Matt Crypto 16:05, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I use the underscore to keep multi-word articles titles on the same line within templates and tables. Noisy | Talk 16:51, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

You could just simply use no-break spaces instead ( ). Denelson83 03:53, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm. Here's the main page link using space, underscore, and non-breaking space (respectively):

Main Page
Main_Page
Main Page

Space and underscore render differently (at least, under Firefox) and non-breaking space doesn't seem to work. Noisy | Talk 16:43, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Here's how you render with non-breaking space: [[Main Page|Main&nbsp;Page]], displays as Main Page -- Jmabel | Talk 21:01, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia name used in email spam subjects

Nothing really important, but it might be of interest to some: the "Fast Extender" penile enlargement product is being spamvertised with the subject "Wikipedia knows the shit". Was the word "Wikipedia" just randomly chosen, or do the spammers have some reason to mention Wikipedia in particluar? -- Khym Chanur 02:35, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Eleventy-billion pool

Where did the silly eleventy-billion pool come from?? I think we should wait until Wikipedia gets 1,000,000 articles before any pool beyond the five-million pool (e.g. ten-million pool) can be open. What do you think?? Georgia guy 22:21, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See the first revision. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:02, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
If it continues growing exponentially, it might not take that long. Do note that this pool will be closing for new entries when Wikipedia reaches the half-eleventy-billonth article. Rad Racer | Talk | Contributions 14:27, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please

User:SPUI has practce vandalism in Spanish wikipedia. He has redirected pages to the image "autofellatio". Please block him. User:FAR

es:Usuario:Comae already did block es:Usuario:SPUI. --iMb~Meow 21:52, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yes he did. I´m form there, and he and I have reverted SPUI´s editions but perhaps you know more about him. Anyway, be ready if he do anything. User:FAR
OK. I don't think they are the same person. --iMb~Meow 22:12, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Right. I only though you must know it. Please, if you know anything more, tell us. We think the vandal is from here (the image was here).--80.58.48.42 22:35, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Other SPUI has done the same vandalism in NL. Be care.--FAR 22:52, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK. I´ve investigate mire and It seem somebody is doing vandalism to disacredit SPUI. He looks inocents. Sorry!--FAR 23:10, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi there, you have been trolled. Unfortunately not by me. My condolences. --SPUI (talk) 22:41, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Today's 'Cat' featured picture writes that rat babies are called kittens. In the U.S. (west coast) I've only heard rat babies be called 'pups'. Perhaps this is a dialectic discrepancy?--Nectarflowed (talk) 03:33, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • I've only heard them called "pups" also, but there is no shortage of Google hits that support the "kitten" name as well. Could they both be correct? – ClockworkSoul 03:51, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Need some help.....

Does anyone know what the first american telivision show was that aired in Russia?????

Unbelievable error in judgement

I just had to post this here. As of this entry, the Pope still lives, but someone had the tactlessness to start an article about the "papal succession of 2005". Are we an encyclopedia or some sort of clairvoyant society that actually writes about things that are yet to happen, instead of consumated facts (or, with some latitude, ongoing events, but those are at least in process)? I have no words to describe how embarassing this is for us. The Pope is alive and we are working on an article about the papal succession of 2005? I'm sure glad that no one from the Catholic Church is likely to visit Wikipedia around now, or we'd never hear the end of it. What about some tact? Diplomacy? Or just some common sense?? You'd think people would wait until the Pope actually dies before we start an article about his succession (and this is very specific, since the article names the year 2005, meaning that it's about the succession of John Paul II). Even though the Pope is not expected to make it through this night, I've suggested in the talk page that the article be deleted for the time being, and restored only when the process begins (which is not even immediatelly after the Pope dies, since the funerals are to last 9 days, during which time the cardinals will be mourning the Pope, not discussing who will succeed him), with our apologies to the Catholic Church and the over-1-billion Catholics of the world for our unbelievable error in judgement. We may have to do the work all over again, but we'd at least save some shread of dignity and respectibility for the project. Regards, Redux 23:35, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I can understand the new article having been started, but I may have left it out of the main Wikipedia space (left it on a user sub-page) until it was prudent to bring it out. Remember that newspapers do not wait until a person dies before writing 90% of their obituary - they keep it on file and hold it back until it is needed. Having said that, there is bound to be speculation about the succession, and many facts are already known. It does make sense to have an article talking about the papal succession to John Paul II (although the title stipulating the year was a bit tactless), in exactly the same way as there is probably an article on the order of succession to the US Presidency or British crown, should something happen to these heads of state. The problem is largely in tone and the automatic assumption by the article that an election is close. Grutness|hello?   23:54, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As you said, having some sort of "information reservoir" to start organizing data that could be useful in the future is not a problem. The trouble here is that people actually started the article with the Pope still alive. In connection, there's also no problem in having an article about the Papal Election in general (as I'm sure we already do). The problem is that this article is specifically about the succession of John Paul II, as the titles indicates by including the year and the text itself expresses. Furthermore, if the article had been started when the Conclave was in process (or at least after the passing of the Pope), it would have been fine. As I said over there, diplomacy, tact and some other basic attributes that we cherish strongly involve timing. Having started this article when it was started was a very, very, very bad move. I believe that this is a huge deal. We screwed up royal this time. I don't care if it was the fault of some misguided, hasty user, it reflects poorly on all of us. I maintain that the article should be deleted for now, with apologies to those concerned. And we might think about re-evaluating what it means to be an encyclopedia. First we started having articles about ongoing events, which is not the point of an encyclopedia, but it's acceptable. Now we have people who are writing about future events? And in the process, managing to offend hundreds of millions of people, not to mention the memory of the Pope and the Catholic Church. This is as regretable as it was unnecessary. Regards, Redux 00:29, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

See Talk:Papal election, 2005. I've deleted or commented out all links to this article for now. If and when it's no longer speculation, we can reinstate them. We owe our readers better than this. JRM 02:04, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)

I've moved the article to Papal election of 2005 speculations, which seems a more apt name for me. Feel free to move again if I forgot some minor nit on the article naming conventions. HTH. --cesarb 02:54, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that the urge to create new articles is becoming a serious problem for Wikipedia. I think people feel that all the good topics are already taken, and rather than work on an existing article, ego prompts them to find some topic that has not already been done. One form that this takes is a race to be the first to create an article on anything in the news... and, the logical extension of this is that people are writing articles about events that have not happened yet. An article on a movie or video that has not been released is just annoying. And unencyclopedic. An article on the "Papal election, 2005" is tasteless and offensive. And unencylopedic. We all know that newspapers write obituaries before people have died, but they do not publish them before their subject has died. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:51, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and by the way, a lot of people are saying the article should be deleted, but not one of them did step forward and list it for deletion... --cesarb 03:00, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This is a problem that could do with a more constructive approach than running every speculative article through VfD. In cases where creation of such articles is nearly unavoidable (this one clearly qualifies, I should say) we should have a better outlet. Some sub-page in the Wikipedia namespace where articles on speculative but highly likely events can be pre-emptively edited, so we don't lose collaborative editing, but don't compromise our verifiability either. Instead of wasting time on VfD or annoying our readers with rumors, we could write articles as if the thing in question was already ongoing, and write only on facts we already have. It's time for me to go to bed now, but I think some discussion on this may be in order. Wikipedia:Prototype articles? Wikipedia:Articles on likely events? If nothing else we should talk on ways to quickly and painfully prevent/defuse these situations. Something tells me speedy deletion isn't the way to go. :-) JRM 03:07, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)

Quoting from Wikipedia:No original research:
Wikipedia is not the place for original research… [i.e.], untested theories; data, statements, concepts and ideas that have not been published in a reputable publication; or any new interpretation, analysis, or synthesis of published data, statements, concepts or ideas that, in the words of Wikipedia's founder Jimbo Wales, would amount to a "novel narrative or historical interpretation".
I can understand collecting information, but if it's speculative, it's got to be original (unless someone has printed stories with the speculations). Even if there are works in progress, they shouldn't be in the article namespace. — Jeff Q (talk) 03:40, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I wholly agree. What I'm saying is that people are going to do this anyway, and it will be (is already?) a waste of time and effort on our part to try and fix things after the fact. VfD is both too slow and inappropriate: these are clearly strong deletes, because they violate our basic policies. Yes, they shouldn't be in the main article namespace. So let them be somewhere else, and make it clear to people that that is where they'll stay until such time as they're no longer speculation (which obviously only pays off for articles that are likely to become reality, not just any pet theory or crank speculation you can come up with). The alternative of aggressively educating people and hunting for these articles to get them deleted (which would take at least five days) doesn't look very attractive to me. Summarized:
  • These articles do not belong as articles in an encyclopedia;
  • It is wishful thinking to expect everyone to have the restraint and common sense to not create such articles;
  • They can potentially be very harmful to our image;
  • Therefore we should have a way of dealing with them quickly.
The current way would be to tell the contributor that such articles are "not done" and list it on VfD. This works, but I'd like something more constructive, hence my proposal.
I also want to point out we're dealing with two separate things here:
  1. Articles that report on speculations on future events that others have made. If properly cited, this could be a Wikipedia article, but its value would be very limited. It offers no basis for a future article on the actual event, we are not a digest for news services, and if the speculations all turn out to be false, we're left with an article that is at best an accident of history. Those speculations should be left to be reported on by Wikinews. Furthermore, the requirement for proper references is absolute, otherwise you run afoul of the policy on original research.
  2. Prospective articles on events that are very likely to come to pass, written as if the event was happening or has happened already. This is the "obituary" analogy. Such articles may have a place in Wikipedia, but as works in progress somewhere, not in the article namespace.
In that vein, I see renaming the article to include the word "speculation" as a mixed bag, because this implies moving towards #1. JRM 12:39, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)

I completely agree with what Dpbsmith said. In fact, without reading his post here, I have just made a very similar comment on the article's talk page about this comparison with the newspapers technique of having obituaries ready before the subject dies (but not actually publishing them). JRM's actions served to mitigate the consequences of this mistake, but it doesn't make it right. Removing all links so that the occasional visitor won't actually find the article only makes it possible for us to get away with it without taking what would be well-deserved criticism. But the fact remains that we have this completely inadequate article, which should not be there (in the main space), but people seem to be leaning toward a position of "well, now that it's there, let's just keep it, even if it is a mistake to have it. Let's keep it out of sight for the time being though, so nobody will know and criticize us for it". It just seems to me that we are covering our mistakes instead of fixing them. I said it on the talk page of the article: we can remove it for now, and restore the information later, when it's appropriate (because a Conclave will actually be happening). We were wrong to create this article, we are wrong to keep it under the present circumstances. We may get away with it, but we are still at fault as far as principles are concerned. And we are really stretching the meaning of the word "encyclopedia". Regards, Redux 04:31, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I must add that JRM made a very good description of what it is that caused this particular problem (and surely others). Imho, it is completely unacceptable for us to start having articles about future events, no matter how likely they may be. I mean, I already raise my eyebrown for the articles about current events, since I do not believe that this is the scope of an encyclopedia. I absolutely agree that there should be some sort of subpage system where information gathering and organizing can be done in advance, in preparation for some imminent development. Maybe that should be made available only to registered users, so as to maintain a certain appearence before the general public. In cases like this one, when the damage has been done, I do believe that we should be emphatic. It's not about "setting examples", but if we let stuff like this go, then we can abandon any hope of ever seeing (some of) our own registered users show some common sense. I've been saying that the article should be "deleted" for now. Let me rephrase that: it should be "suspended". Meaning that it should be deleted from the main space, but it can be restored (or not, since the "information" contained in it may not pan out) at a later time. The objective of such action would be two fold: One, making it clear to our contributors that this sort of thing cannot be done. If we just say "please don't do that" but don't actually do something about it, some people just won't care. Just now, I've seen a recent post on this article's talk page where a user says he's "not worried about offending anyone, so 'inappropriate' doesn't carry much weight [with him]". With this kind of attitude, the only way we're going to prevent this stuff from happening over and over is if people realize that if they go overboard the work will be suspended or even removed, depending on the case. The second part of the objective would be that it would be a gesture aimed at fixing our faux pas on this particular issue. When other media screw up, either technically or ethically, they can either apologize, retract or rectify the situation in some other manner. For us, it would be removing this article (at least for now) and doing all that we can so that this doesn't happen again. Regards, Redux 13:11, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm with you, Redux, it's got to go. In addition to your excellent points, there's also the fact that there's a sister project on current events, WikiNews. Plus, such pages attract a lot of vandalism, revert wars, and the like (look what's happened to Terri Schiavo page). —Wahoofive | Talk 22:11, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
So, among other things you'll be proposing 2008 Summer Olympics, 2012 Summer Olympics, 2016 Summer Olympics, 2006 Winter Olympics, 2010 Winter Olympics, 2014 Winter Olympics, 2018 Winter Olympics, Football World Cup 2006, Football World Cup 2010, Football World Cup 2014, FIFA Women's World Cup 2007, and 2007 Rugby Union World Cup on VFD then? I think I can confidently predict an interesting time if you try! -- Arwel 22:31, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Why yes, probably some of those should be deleted. I seem to recall the U.S. Presidential election, 2008 is on VFD already, although unfortunately it was voted to keep. However, some of those topics have actual history, for example the decision-making process on where future Olympics are to be held. —Wahoofive | Talk 23:06, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The Olympic argument is somewhat disingenous. As Wahoofive points out, any activity that has already taken place and been reported on is fair game for an article on an event that itself hasn't occurred yet. Likewise, had the papal selection process been set in motion and reported on in the press during John Paul II's illness, recording these reports would have been legitimate, however insensitive. — Jeff Q (talk) 23:17, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

With the Pope's passing, the faux pas that had been committed in the article that originated this discussion became undetectable, but not inexistent, and we allowed a precipitated, insensitive and hasty form of contributing to go without any reproach. I regret this, since the people who edited without thinking first about what they were doing got out of it the "lesson" that they can do as they please, since the "bureaucrats" might complain a lot on certain forums, but won't actually do a thing about it. That is a dangerous precedent.
Neutralizing the faux pas element, however, only solves half of the problems concerning that article. The other half is still very much problematic: people are still writing about a future event. The election of a successor to John Paul II has not yet begun. The Pope has died, but the election is still a future event. In fact, it will be only on Monday 4 (tomorrow, as of this edit) that the very first event in connection with the election will actually take place: the cardinals will have a pre-Conclave meeting, to establish some ground rules. This relates to the article as it exists now because, as of this edit, 85, maybe 90 percent of the text in it is simply off topic. The article goes on and on about previous Conclaves and some personal stories about other Popes. There's very little that actually concerns the proposed subject, which is the election, by the first Conclave in half a century, of the successor to John Paul II. The material posted there would be suited either for our general article about Papal election or for the various articles about each Pope.
But all of this is happening because people are trying to write about what has not yet happened. They are getting ahead of themselves. I was talking about appropriate moment, timing before. Well, the appropriate moment to have created and start expanding the article (as the events unfold) would have been tomorrow (Monday, April 4, 2005), after reports of the pre-Conclave meeting of the cardinals come in. Things are being done with such lack of direction that one of the few passages that are on topic, a list of "candidates" for the succession (the so-called "papabile"), has been questioned on the article's talk page for being expanded without any criteria or serious verification of the information (meaning, is that cardinal actually being seriously considered for Office, or was he just randomly cited by some newspaper in a nationalistic outburst?). And it's not like we can blame one or two misguided users, for the history page shows that a lot of people have been contributing for the article in the last day or so. We must stick to the established facts people. Regards, Redux 23:55, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Experiences of a newbie

So I don't have much to contribute, but I went to the Pope John Paul II article and saw it has been vandalised. So, after a long hunt through the help, I found out how to revert articles. Someone had already done it when I got back, but I didn't have to wait long before it was re-vandalised.

Someone from the same IP address was repeatedly vandalising the article, so I reverted each time. I also went to look up how to report such behaviour, and found the page to do it, but the format I was supposed to use looked complicated and wasn't adequately explained, so I gave up.

I also discovered that the vandal had also decided to deface my user page. I didn't even have anything there before, but removed his "comments" just by erasing the contents of the page. Was this the right thing to do?

Bad experiences for a newbie.

--Mwongozi 23:07, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)Mwongozi

I am sorry that you had this experience: not everyone has such a tough time of it. I admit that reporting vandalism is a bit of a chore, and there's very little that can be done about it except for a temporary or outright ban of an IP address. This is the sacrifice we make for openness, and I hope that for every spot of vandalism we clear up, three others are making a tremendous addition to other articles. In general, blanking is not a good idea, but in this case it was the appropriate thing to do. It is best not to argue with vandals: it never gets anywhere: when they're blocked, they'll feel the bump! --Gareth Hughes 23:16, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

April Fools Day

Thank you :D
For proving that Wikipedia does have a sense of humour after all, even if next year it could do with more control.

Thank you - Estel (talk) 21:40, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

viewing MPG files in wikipedia

First, I would like to appologize for my poor English (I am from Israel, and writing in the Hebrew version of wikipedia). I would like to embed some short MPG movies (around 150KB) in some articles, but the server does not allow this operation. I was forced to change the format of the movie from MPG to OGG and advised the viewers, who want to watch this clip, to change its format into MPG, after download. An example of such an OGG clip is available in: [birds movie. My question is: how can I embed movies using a more easy way ? My nick name in the Hebrew wikipedia is [Hotguy].

"Simple" English Wikipedia

I would like to request that the "Simple English" Wikipedia be closed. I have spent some time sampling the articles and reading the discussion and from what I can gather the "Simple English" Wikipedia lacks both a focus (i.e. after 2 or 3 (?) years of existence there is not even semi-standard for what Simple English is or what its purpose/goal is) and it seems that most of the content is either very short articles written in a patronising tone that would irritate both children and learners of English as a second language alike or articles simply copied and pasted from the "normal" English Wikipedia without any "simplifications". While I realise that people are free to choose how they spend their time with Wikipedia, I wonder if the "Simple English" Wikipedia serves any purpose other than to underscore the strong English-bias of Wikipedias; I note that there is no "Simple German", "Simple French", etc. Wikipedias. If anyone could point me towards the proper channels to I can have a Wikipedia projects closedm I would be very grateful. I note that the Toki Pona Wikipedia has been closed and I wonder only how to do the same with the Simple English Wikipedia. Thanks, Pjetier 07:01, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • My guess would be that the Toki Pona Wikipedia was closed due to a lack of active contributors as it's a constructed language. Closing down Simple English Wikipedia isn't the solution here. You could help in getting them more focus by suggesting helpful policies and ideas and if you think Simple German, French or perhaps Dutch should exist, you can simply ask about the possibilities at http://meta.wikimedia.org
Anyway, I doubt it's going to be closed just because one person is critical about it. - Mgm|(talk) 07:48, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the fast response. While your suggestion of creating "Simple" versions of other languages is one possible solution, I am afraid that they will be failures, similar to the direction-less Simple English Wikipedia. You are correct that Simple English should not be closed simply because I believe it should be, but rather because the Wikipedia community believes it should be closed. Perhaps a poll on the English Wikipedia or an all-language Wikipedia poll could be conducted to show a "consensus" for closing the "Simple" English Wikipedia? Pjetier 08:10, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Come to think of it, a "Simple English" Wikipedia does kind of feel condescending on many levels. Hmmmm... — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 21:56, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Question about article

When an article refers to acoustic, as in, this song is acoustic to what exactly does it refer? Not necessarily to guitars but to any instrument that does not use electricity to transmit sound. So, should a page be created that explains this particular aspect of "acoustic"? Jaberwocky6669 03:40, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

An article on acoustic instruments? Sure, go for it. I would like to know just how many instruments have acoustic and electric variants. You might want to check out Electronic musical instrument and Category:Musical_instruments if you haven't already. - Pioneer-12 23:13, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"vandalise this page"

Anyone know what's up with the "vandalise this page" instead of "edit this page" in the tabs above the articles?--BaronLarf 02:28, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

It was someone going a touch too far. [9] —Korath (Talk) 03:10, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

Official Wikipedia motto

Post your suggestions for an official Wikipedia motto here: Wikipedia:Official Wikipedia motto!

- Pioneer-12 01:36, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • "It all works out in the end." -- Jmabel | Talk 04:24, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)
  • "It'll work itself out, somehow. Probably! Well..., let's hope!" El_C
    "E pluribus unum."
    Oops, that's U.S.-centric.
    "Have faith in factuality."
    Oops, that's Britannica/religion-centric.
    "Thousands of contributors can't be more wrong than you."
    No, that's not quite it either...
  • Ah, I give up. JRM 13:38, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)
  • I offer this, a quote from User:Matt Crypto Just because we're amateur encyclopedia editors, doesn't mean we have to be humourless drones. Filiocht | Serious fun 13:51, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)
  • "A million monkeys, a million typewriters." George Stepanek 17:35, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Seconded.--Fangz 17:47, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Great one. — mark ✎ 22:40, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • "...and still no Shakespeare." - BanyanTree 19:44, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • "What do you mean: 'There's no "you" in encyclopaedia'?" - Noisy | Talk 21:49, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)


Wikipedia: Every day better. Gubbubu
Wikipedia is the dream of ants, who believe that from musical notes they can build a three-dimensional skyscraper-emulator. Ant

I.D. Chernyakhovsky

I thought his first name Was Israel Danielovich, think John Ericksson names him in his book The Road to Stalingrad.

Thanks

Gene Fleisher

Project Gutenberg referencing Wikipedia

I don't think this has been posted before, but I see that the online Project Gutenberg catalogue now has a link to the Wikipedia articles for authors - Samuel Smiles and Adam Smith,for example. Apwoolrich 12:44, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How to cite Wikipedia?

Hello there. I have a question: I am doing a school paper on Joseph Stalin and I must cite sources. So my question is: how to cite Wikipedia's article on Stalin as a source? I regard Wikipedia as very good source of information. --Belgrader 09:21, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia-gadfium 09:33, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Simple English Wikipedia

Please don't underrate the Simple English Wikipedia. This is useful for young people, speedy translations to other languages as well as for non-native speakers.--Jondel 02:26, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

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