Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 2

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[edit] Squids / Caching

The new server configuration with caches doesn't seem to work well with my Netscape 7.x browser -- I get the actual version of pages like Village Pump only if I explicitly de-cache reload them (Shift-Reload), not with a normal clicking on a link or on the reload button. That's not nice behavior and can lead to misunderstandings (e.g. seemingly missing answers or edits). -- till we *) 23:53, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I've been sitting here wondering why the Pump was so quiet for the same reason (I [too] use Mozilla, so could be software specific). Is there a header being sent wrong or something? - IMSoP 01:55, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I'm using Netscape 7.02 and having no problems. Elf 02:01, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I dual-boot linux and XP. I noticed that entries on Village pump which I can see in linux (Konqueror or Galeon) do not always show up in either IE or mozilla on XP, though I can go to an edit screen and see them there. (IMSoP notes that this comment was added by WormRunner 02:08, 15 Feb 2004)
Hmm, is Galeon Mozilla-based? (Follows own link to check, but finds nought but an stub) I suppose it might have different caching code. Just thinking that it doesn't seem very likely this would vary by OS, rather than by browser, is all. Would probably vary based on whether you were logged in though. And I've just remembered I'm behind a local squid of some sort, too [remembers somebody pointing out recently how many proxies lie between the average website and the average surfer] Ah! Too many variables! - IMSoP 02:26, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Can people please check if this problem is still current? It would help a huge amount if people experiencing the problem are able to diagnose it more clearly, including checking whether their DNS points to the 130.x or 207.x addresses and what cache headers they receive in the HTTP responses. I haven't been able to reproduce such problems so far. --Brion 03:14, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Actually, I haven't noticed it lately - perhaps it was just a settling down issue with the new servers. I didn't get round to looking into what the headers were because I couldn't (be bothered to) find a way of checking the response details for a logged-in request (sending a dummy GET on the command line would prove nothing, as there would be no cookies). - IMSoP 03:22, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I'm getting the problem right now this moment. Had it continually for several days on 2 machines, but that doesn't count for much since they use the same ISP & essentially same browser (Mozilla versions, this being 1.2.1 and other a newer version). Sorry, can't run the requested diagnostic data just now. Dandrake 07:55, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

We're sending headers that tell both other caches and browsers to check back for updates on every request. Cache administrators of downstream caches can however configure their caches to ignore some of these headers (especially Vary and Cache-Control) in order to get a higher 'hit ratio'. This violates the http standard, so it should be a reason to complain to your cache administrator, if you know who it is. The other reason i could think of would be a browser that's explicitly configured to check for updates only once per session. With Mozilla, you can check this (iirc) at Edit - Preferences - Advanced - Cache settings. -- Gabriel Wicke 18:06, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)


Thanks for the info. What about the choice called "When the page is out of date"? I'd guess that that means it should request status for the page and compare against the date of what's in the cache; so it ought to work right in this context? Anyway, it's what my setting is and has been. Dandrake 18:24, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)
Your setting should be fine, so it's either some rude cache between you and wp or a hickup at wp. -- Gabriel Wicke 11:38, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Gradually rewriting an article

There's an article (namely Scheme (mathematics), but that's unimportant) that I'd like to rewrite from scratch because I think I can do a better job than the present version. However, producing the new version is likely to take me a number of days, perhaps weeks. Is there some way to keep both versions easily accessible, so that people can view the old version (or choose to view the new one) while the new one is still work in progress?

I was thinking of creating the new version under a different name (something like "Scheme (mathematics) (rewrite)"), linking the new version near the top of the old version during the transition period, and, when the new version is finished, renaming both the old and new versions. Is this an acceptable policy? If not, how should I proceed?

I think this question should be mentioned somewhere in the FAQs (even if it's not actually frequently asked...), because I'm sure I'm not the only one to think "I can do better than this article", but not dare to undertake a major rewrite because having to do it all in a single edit is too hard. Any thoughts?

--Gro-Tsen 01:05, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What will happen if when both versions are available is that each will get edits from all of us (not just from you on the new version). That may not be what you want to happen. I'd advise to finish the new one, and then perhaps "evolve" the existing article to the new one (or else risk a quick reversion if the new one somehow lacks the material content of the older version). Or, if someone reverts it, then consider a gradual conversion. But I really don't think you'd be happy with two articles coexisting. Good luck! Bevo 01:18, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The other problem will be that the renaming won't be as simple as you may think. My advice is to take a copy offline, noting exactly the timestamp on the version you have, and putting a comment into the talk page to say that a refactor is in progress to discourage major edits (which it will do, since most people are not interested in wasting their time... I said discourage, not prevent, and I said most, not all - bitter experience). Say what date you expect to complete it and update the comment if you're not finished by then. Then work on this copy offline. When you've finished, come back to the article, and check the history to see what has changed since you took your copy. See whether any of these changes need to be reflected in your new version, and make whatever changes to it are needed. Then paste your new version over the top of the old. It may be reverted, but it probably won't be if you've done a good job (I said probably). Cross that bridge when you come to it! This preserves the history and avoids renaming. Andrewa 02:01, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
One of the problems with writing everything offline is that I can't check, as I write it, how the article will appear when formatted (and since there could be a number of TeX formulae, this would be most useful). Also, it means that I can't conveniently ask some friends to help me with the refactoring. So how about using the associated talk page to write the new version while it is still work in progress and, when it seems completed (and after checking that it contains all the info of the latest version of the page), copy-paste it to the article page itself. Does that sound like an acceptable use of the talk page? --Gro-Tsen 02:49, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Re testing appearance: remember that when editing a page there is a "Preview" button and a "Cancel" link. So, even if you have no intention of actually posting your work, it's possible to write your edits "live" in an edit page, previewing appearance repeatedly, then Select All in the text box, Paste into a text editor where you're keeping your work in progress, and Cancel. If you accidentally press Save instead, revert the page. I don't know that this is a good approach, but it is an approach. Dpbsmith 03:07, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The following was originally written before the above appeared, so may seem a little oddly worded, but it actually answers your question:
One tip that hasn't been touched on yet is that you can create sub-pages under your user-page, such as User:Gro-Tsen/sandbox or User:Gro-Tsen/Scheme (in fact, you can do it with talk-pages, too, so something like Talk:Scheme (mathematics)/temp would be valid if you preferred). Even if you don't tell people where you're doing it (for the reasons suggested by others above), it will allow you to test out the formatting, links and so on, and give you somewhere to keep track of your work-in-progress. Oh, and have you come across Template:inuse, which is designed for shorter rewrites, but I imagine you could steal the formatting for a comment on the talk page. - IMSoP 02:55, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I thought what they did at baseball worked quite well. There was a comment on the article to say it was undergoing a major rewrite at Talk:Baseball/temp/article and to please edit that with anything you wanted to add to the article. When the rewriting got far enough along, it was encorparated into baseball. That way it was a communal rewrite (and you could see how all the wiki links worked etc), and also allowed random people (like me) to find the new article and add edits to the correct place. fabiform | talk 09:20, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The rewrite worked well, but I think it was not an optimal solution. One problem is that some users edited the original anyway (not a big problem, these changes were ported to the rewrite page). The other is that the history of that page is now split between the temp and the original page, as the rewrite was eventually moved by cut-and-paste. There is a way to merge the page histories, but I didn't do it for fear of totally messing up the page history. Kosebamse 10:10, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You may call it [Scheme (mathematics)/Yourname] and if you are really sure you have talent put notice about this on [Scheme (mathematics)], something like This article is being rewritten [here]. Then after you wrote the new version wait a bit and if nobody objects on Talk page rename it (so the history will be new). You may consider renaming before your article is finally done but then you should link to the old version.

There can be no automatic policy because there is no automatic way to decide whether you write better or not. As for me, I like your rewrite of 'Types of schemes' and I would appreciate your further work. There is still a lot of other articles to be written better: Coherent sheaf, Motive (mathematics); see more at Alexandre Grothendieck. ilya 20:31, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Safari Browser not allowed?

Why is Wikepedia not accessible from the Safari Browser? It's not a big deal, but am just curious.

?Pacific1982

I got the same thing for a while, though Safari is not listed as a blocked browser. After a bit, the error cleared itself and I have normal access now. Safari normally works. I guess it was just a glitch. Graham 22:24, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Safari is not certainly not blocked; it's my primary browser and I'd know... ;)
Can you please say approximately when you had a problem, if using another browser on the same machine wasn't blocked, if being logged in / not logged in had any affect, whether reloading had any affect, whether clearing cookies or cache had any affect, and which pages you tried to visit that were blocked? --Brion 23:32, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)
For me, it was about an hour or so ago. I am set up to always be logged in (i.e. login cookie always enabled). Pages affected were the main page and my watchlist, which are my usual entry points. All I tried was quitting Safari and starting over, which didn't work. The fault cleared itself after a while. I didn't try resetting Safari or clearing cache, etc, since the fault didn't persist long. I don't have the debug menu set up, so presumably my Safari reports its user agent normally. Graham 23:43, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The problem seems to have gone away now. However, I got the message that I posted to wikitech-l for about 15 minutes at around 4:45 PM EST. The problem didn't happen in any other browser (at least not in IE 5.2, I didn't bother to check any Mozilla). The problem was definitely user-agent related, because when I activated (via the debug menu) a different user-agent, the problem immediately went away. Every page seemed to have the problem. I originally got the problem on my watchlist (usually the first page I load), but I tried loading the home page and I got the error. I tried quitting and restarting Safari and that didn't seem to have any effect. I was logged in at the time, but of course I couldn't try logging out because no pages were loading. I didn't try clearing cookies or cache, but based on the behavior I was experiencing, it seemed almost certainly to be a server problem. At the time, there were at least 2 other people in the IRC channel with the same problem.
--Nohat 23:42, 2004 Feb 18 (UTC)
I saw this float past in IRC (not sure what time it was). I think "gwicke" broke something briefly and then fixed it again.  :) fabiform | talk 23:51, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)
gwicke admitted on IRC that he'd "simplified" the list of blocked user agents in the Squid config - seems Safari's includes "WebKit", and triggered a false positive. Should be fixed now, I gather. - IMSoP 00:21, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm surprised by how many Safaris are around... Sorry for the trouble! -- Gabriel Wicke 02:03, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I am a Safari user too. It's the best browser I ever had. True there is a quite significant number of Mac users in wikipedia. It doesn't feel just 2% market share, is it? -- Taku 16:43, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)
Market share is irrelevant. Installed base less so, and particular sites may attract certain kinds of users that do not reflect the population at large. Maybe Wikipedia appeals to the same people that Macs appeal to for some reason? In a recent Ars Technica survey, Safari came in at 38% of the total visitors to that site, the largest single group, with Windows version of Explorer at 31%. Graham 04:33, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I use Safari 1.0 (the last version to be compatible with OS X 10.2... haven't upgraded yet), and have never had any problems.Garrett Albright 04:37, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Heads up on "Ethnic Groups"

For anyone who may care, because I know this was a controversial project when we first launched a month ago, we now have an attempted template for writing about ethnic groups, nations (in the sense of peoples, not states), tribes, etc. It's further discussed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups, which also points to 5 examples of applying the template. Some of the articles that we've tried reworking this way were not so great to begin with, and of course applying a template doesn't solve all of their problems, but I, for one, think it is an improvement in every case. Comments eagerly solicited; my current plan is to until 15 Feb 04 for comments, then (barring unforeseen serious objections) supersede the 5 articles currently in the wikipedia (nothing significant is dropped, just added), and take the notice off of the template that warns that it is "only a draft." -- Jmabel 02:27, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Advice and opinion needed on place naming conventions

I'd be grateful for advice on an issue regarding place naming conventions in Kosovo (i.e. whether we follow international practice or one or the other practices of the rival national communities, which present POV problems). I've posted an appeal for advice on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places)#Disputed place names - advice needed about a week ago but haven't had any responses yet. If anyone could offer some assistance, it would be much appreciated. -- ChrisO 10:49, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Fix required: Talk page moved to article page

I erroneously moved Talk:World War II atrocities to World War II atrocities in Poland. Sorry for screwing up.

The folloiwng should be undone by an admin: Talk:World War II atrocities must be restored, and World War II atrocities in Poland/Talk:World War II atrocities in Poland deleted.

BTW, could it be a good idea to forbid such kind of page move? Mikkalai 21:17, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalbot

We had a vandalbot attack today on meta. No big deal, just a couple of minutes worth of cleanup. But I wanted to make sure people know what to do when this happens. So I created a meta page on the subject, m:Vandalbot. -- Tim Starling 00:12, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Empty image links

Is there a reason why links to Media:Nosuchmedium don't appear red? See User:TUF-KAT/Samples of music from the United States -- not all of those clips have been uploaded yet, and I have no way of knowing whether or not the links are working. I've had to change a few in between when I made the list and the clips got uploaded (the program I used to convert from mp3 to ogg and select a clip couldn't handle accents in titles, for example), but I may have missed some and have no way to tell without clicking on each link. Tuf-Kat 05:23, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Map of Wikipedia?

Does anybody know of an attempt to "map" the Wikipedia similar to say:

http://research.lumeta.com/ches/map/

the Internet mapping project?

Hmmm, what I thought you meant was a map of Wikipedia as a navigational tool. Some libraries are doing this as a way to help people find information quickly and easily and as an alternative to the traditional catalogue search. As Wikipedia grows and expands, this could be a very useful tool. Anyone know anything about this? Exploding Boy 08:58, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] When will the images return?

As we all know:
"Images uploaded between January 24 and January 28 are currently not available due to a hardware problem with one of the web servers. We should have the files recovered sooner or later, but feel free to re-upload anything you uploaded in that period to restore it immediately."
When will this problem be over? -- user:zanimum

Afaik the server's hd is pretty broken, but should be physically accessible soon (Jason plans to get the old servers today). Attempts to recover the data should be much easier with physical access. -- Gabriel Wicke 23:58, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Questions

I wanted information about a pediatric nurse. I 'm going to a health career school but I'm not sure what a pediatric nurse does I want to do something that has to do with taking care of infants and toddlers in the hospitol's Could you please send me information on what type of nurse that it?

--> Wikipedia:Reference desk

[edit] Project Gutenberg vs. Wikibooks

What is the relation between PG & WB (and other e-text projects)? (mutual copying, referncing, cooperation, etc.) BTW, it would be useful for the latter list to mention something about "access rules" for each listed digital library: using, copying, licensing. Mikkalai 23:37, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wikisource:Wikisource and Project Gutenberg has some details on potential collaboration. Angela. 00:50, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)
A lot of PG generated material is already in Wikipedia, especially a lot of articles imported from the 1911 encyclopedia. Although it's not a formal policy it's become fairly common for articles about authors/books to link to the PG version if on exists. --Imran 23:55, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Banning Plautus satire

Since policy decisions are all amok right now, I'd like clarification - I'm not sure if this is the place to talk about this though. User:Plautus satire needs to be banned. In the ~10 hours he's been here, he's made 3 good edits (his first 3), lots of bad ones, lots of reverts, started 3 edit wars, and gotten 3 out of the 4 pages he's "contributed" to protected. I would do it myself, but I'm involved in the conflicts. →Raul654 23:46, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)

He has trolled with the same Columbia disaster subject on many other message boards, blanked his talk page rather than respond to concerns, removed other peoples' comments from Talk:Albert Einstein and is the same person as User:24.79.3.230 who contributed this little gem in January. I was going to block him myself but he stopped editing. If he starts up again I will consider blocking him. silsor 00:13, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)
He's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack. But confining himself to talk pages for now, it seems. -- ChrisO 01:56, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
He's got nowhere else to go. All the pages he trolls have been protected. →Raul654 01:57, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)
Hehe. That definately is something. --Ed Senft! 00:16, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
His edits on the Columbia article seem to be related to a fringe (can I say kooky?) theory doing the rounds that the shuttle was shot down by a lightning bolt or laser beam - the culprits are variously said to be the US Air Force, aliens or whoever might be using "scalar weapons", whatever those might be. I'd guess that he's either a troll or a kook. -- ChrisO 01:42, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Scaler weapons are weapons that have measurable magnitude but no direction. Velocity is a vector quantity because it has speed and direction. mass is a scaler quantity because it only has magnitude. --Ed Senft! 01:46, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
This sort of thing is why I gave up maths years ago. :-) -- ChrisO 01:56, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Blocked. silsor 03:36, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Viewing source of old article revisions

--> Wikipedia talk:Page history

[edit] Bibliographic Citations

--> Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

[edit] The Sep 11 Terrorist pages

Misinformation and rumors about the September 11, 2001 attacks seems to be protected. Who did it and why? Arno 07:07, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Protection log: 15:02, 12 Feb 2004 Ed Poor protected Misinformation and rumors about the September 11, 2001 attacks →Raul654 07:14, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Turkeys and keels

I looked at Carinatae which still claims that the turkey has no carina. The last edit was on 8 Sep 2002 when I asked about it on the talk page. No one's answered. Does anyone know some examples of non-ratite birds which really have no carina? -phma 16:17, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Wik

I seem to be the subject of attacks by User:wik. He seems to be under the misconception that I am another Wikipedian and he vandalises my user page. I was under the impression that wik was under a ban, so I readded user:Jiang's link to the ban page of wik. I can usually stay away from these sort of detrimental activities on Wikipedia, but I seem to have been targetted. I think that this issue needs to be resolved immediately. user:Muriel Gottrop said two wrongs don't make a right in the edit summary on my userpage, but I wasn't aware that I did anything wrong. Thanks! --Ed Senft! 17:19, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi Alex. How's your brother? --Wik 17:21, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)
Wik is a vandal, clear and simple. While he may make some real contributions, most of his edits are reverts, and he loves starting editing wars. Jor 17:32, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The Wik Study
Just to test Darkelf's theory, I did a quick rundown of Wik's edit history. Starting on Feb 12 (prior to his 24 ban), I counted the changes he made to articles (not talk or wikipedia: pages) between Feb 11 and Feb 12. I put them into 3 catagories: vandalism, reverts, and "useful". I counted 0 vandalisms, 20 reverts, and 48 useful contributions. So I think it's unfair to say that the majority of his edits are reverts. →Raul654 17:55, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)
Several of his "contributions" are removing added info and adding back his own edit, in essence a cloaked revert. Note also that some of those are marked a Minor Edits, in an effort to hide his vandalism. This statement based on checking each of his last 50 edits by page history comparing. Jor 17:59, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
All(when I looked) of his article edits since he has gotten back have been reverts. Why is he allowed to continue editing? --Ed Senft! 17:56, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I have to disagree with Raul here. I spent a bit of time today looking at every article that appeared in Wik's then-current User Contributions page. Just 50 items and far fewer pages, but that meant I could look at all of them in enough detail to see what each change meant. What they meant: Edit wars and edit wars, sometimes Poland vs Germany—I admit to a bias here: this nonsense annoys the bejabbers out of me—sometimes utter trivialities. Never, it appears, does he use the Talk pages to discuss any changes except in response to someone who has properly used Talk to make a rebuttal to one of this changes. And his positive changes? Copy editing. Good copy editing, often enough; but where are any substantive contributions? I didn't see them. Certainly nothing to balance the nonsense; nothing that would make a difference if he softly and suddenly vanished away; and I haven't even mentioned his wasting our time by tracking everything Anthony does to revert it. Phaugh. Dandrake 02:01, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)
Another thing I just noticed is Wik seems to be removing other user's comments from various wikipedia utilities such as Wikipedia:RFPP. [1]. He is not only removing the comments, but getting into edit wars with the users whose comments he removes. --Ed Senft! 18:42, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Don't edit other people's user pages, simple as that. - snoyes 01:14, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
You might want to tell that to Silsor. --Ed Senft! 03:38, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I redirected the user page of a sock puppet to the person's best-known account. silsor 03:39, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Squids / Caching

--> Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 2

[edit] See also links

What's the policy regarding "see also" or "related topics" links in articles? Some of them have literally dozens of links, some that seem only marginally related. For example, the article Homosexuality includes no less than 84 links to "related articles," including to frottage, oral sex and mutual masturbation, and that's in addition to the external links. Exploding Boy 00:29, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

discussion at --> Wikipedia talk:Boilerplate text

[edit] GFDL requirements for a so-called "Title Page"?

Martin has pointed out that material licenced under the GNU FDL requires a statement on the "Title Page", raising issues on how to present content imported from Nupedia.

continued at Wikipedia talk:Nupedia and Wikipedia

[edit] FOLDOC license

spawned from above thread: The FOLDOC articles are more of a challenge [with regards GFDL], though. Martin 21:42, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yikes, I hadn't realised that the FOLDOC import is technically under the FDL. Maybe we could contact Denis Howe again, and ask for an even more relaxed licence? - IMSoP 22:19, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
We'd probably just need to explain the situation to him - if he's fine with what we're doing (and I guess he is), then that's great. Martin 22:32, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] http://newshound.de.siu.edu/pulse/discuss/msgReader$19

I am trying to add this link to Hank Williams III and it doesn't want to work right. It makes my tooth hurt when it links to a Ja Rule article ;( Sam Spade 12:59, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Try escaping out the dollar sign, thus: http://newshound.de.siu.edu/pulse/discuss/msgReader%2419 --No-One Jones 13:12, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Thank you for your brilliance :D Sam Spade 13:21, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Hmm, isn't that a bit worrying? It would seem like the escaping code in mediaWiki isn't working inside URLs, and thus the PHP engine is trying to interpret "19" as a variable. No harm in this case, but potentially... -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:33, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
No, it's treating the dollar sign in the same way it treats space or comma. It's not a security risk. -- Tim Starling 13:41, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)
Pfew. Thanks Tim. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:17, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] New pages and the watchlist

Is it possible to add New pages to a watchlist? Bevo 16:51, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't think so. You can't watch special pages. Even if you could - newpages gets updated 2-10 times a minute. It would always be at the top of your list. →Raul654 16:59, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)
How convenient that would be! <grin> Bevo 17:02, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Well, you could put New pages on your watchlist, but it doesn't get changed very often! ;-) In fact, it's a very well-hidden redirect, since Special: pages don't seem to get the "Redirected from..." text. Is that a bug or a feature? - IMSoP 17:27, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Why not just link to it from your user page? Or, if you prefer, create a user subpage of it and similar links. Andrewa 22:56, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Thumbnail size

--> Wikipedia talk:Extended image syntax

[edit] External links to subscription services

--> Wikipedia talk:External links

[edit] distracting Han character on logo

The Han character on the logo means 'ancestor'. It is very distracting. We should change it to something more appropriate. -- Kaihsu 20:37, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

This needs to be directed to Nohat, who has the keys to unraveling the 3D mystery. What would you suggest as the replacement? -戴&#30505sv 21:05, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
For example, 知, for 'knowledge' -- Kaihsu 22:41, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

At the time, Nohat admitted that he couldn't read Chinese character, so he chose one randomly, hoping it wouldn't be something unpleasant. --Menchi 01:04, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm just being curious here but why is "ancestor" bad to have? Dysprosia
I'm pretty sure every chracter on the logo represents the Wikipedia in some way. To pick an obvious example (to English speakers) the Roman Character is W, the first letter in Wikipedia -- UserGoogol 02:19, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)
That's only partially true. As I'm not an omniglot, only the Japanese, Latin, and Cyrillic were selected to represent "Wikipedia". The rest were picked more for an eye of what would fit and look nice, with total obliviousness to the possible interpretation. If the Chinese character I selected had meant something really bad like "death" or "poison" then I'm sure someone would have complained during the logo creation process. I'm mildly pleased to learn that the character I selected means "ancestor"; I think it has a certain charm to it.
If you really want to see it changed, I would suggest creating a page on meta to collect ideas of which characters should be included, and if there is consensus I will make a new version of the logo. However, I'm willing to bet that most Wikipedians are not yet fully recovered from the Great Logo Affair of 2003, so I wouldn't recommend embarking on a major logo-modification campaign. You'd likely stir up much more trouble than you thought you were bargaining for. I'm hesitant to make small changes to the logo, as there are lots of variations that I'd rather not keep re-making for each minor change. The current batch took two whole days. --Nohat 03:47, 2004 Feb 17 (UTC)

[edit] Layout of page footers

There's a dispute going on about how to format the footers that we are currently adding to pages such as those of countries. The dispute is between these two formats:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=MediaWiki:East_Asia&oldid=2406134
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=MediaWiki:East_Asia&oldid=2406149

Where would a vote on a matter like this preferably take place? Thanks -- Timwi 22:49, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)


You could create a Wikiproject for geographic entries. (BTW, I much prefer the first: (a)it stands out so much better from all the rest of the standard generic wiki links (b)it looks more professional (c) takes up less spage but (d)like all tables it adds a level of complexity for accessibility, so be sure it has a SUMMARY attribute, like summary="Navigation to other countries" ) Elf 17:05, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Damage to Cleanup

--> Wikipedia talk:Cleanup

[edit] Gradually rewriting an article

There's an article (namely Scheme (mathematics), but that's unimportant) that I'd like to rewrite from scratch because I think I can do a better job than the present version. However, producing the new version is likely to take me a number of days, perhaps weeks. Is there some way to keep both versions easily accessible, so that people can view the old version (or choose to view the new one) while the new one is still work in progress?

I was thinking of creating the new version under a different name (something like "Scheme (mathematics) (rewrite)"), linking the new version near the top of the old version during the transition period, and, when the new version is finished, renaming both the old and new versions. Is this an acceptable policy? If not, how should I proceed?

I think this question should be mentioned somewhere in the FAQs (even if it's not actually frequently asked...), because I'm sure I'm not the only one to think "I can do better than this article", but not dare to undertake a major rewrite because having to do it all in a single edit is too hard. Any thoughts?

--Gro-Tsen 01:05, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

discussion at --> Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2004 archive 2

[edit] conflicting statements of fact

The article Aegyptus says: "In Greek mythology, Aegyptus, or Aigýptos ("supine goat") was the king of Egypt (which took its name from him)"

But the article List of country name etymologies says: "Egypt: "temple of the soul of Ptah"

Encyclopaedias should not give flatly contradictory statements about matters of fact. Does anyone care to arbitrate this question? Adam 01:44, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't see it as contradictory. The once source says that that's the case according to Greek mythology, that doesn't mean it's necessarily true. RickK 04:47, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. What's contradictory about it? -- Wapcaplet 22:38, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've already risen this question at the talk page: Talk:List of country name etymologies#Coherence with the main articles. No reaction so far. The article gave me an impression of low credibility: kind of "housewife etymology". Mikkalai 23:22, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] where to find a book

-->Wikipedia:Reference desk

[edit] Experimental Main Page

I'm playing with a new Main Page layout at Main Page/Test. I would like to invite feedback on the talk page. Please do not make any major changes to this experimental layout without prior discussion.

The idea is to split away the community stuff from the encyclopedia content (to a separate Wikipedia:Main Page, to be created), and to have more information about the dynamically changed links (to make the Main Page more exciting and fun to read).

Note that I have only tested this in Moz so far so if anything looks broken in another browser, it probably is.—Eloquence 05:51, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] IP blocking also blocks logged in users?

IIRC it was once said that when an IP is blocked a registered user using the same IP can still log in. However this weekend I got an email that someone was locked out due to a previous IP block of a vandal - sadly I didn't check my email then so I could not unblock him quickly. Anonymous IP blocking shouldn't affect logged in users - as if a vandal uses a username that one can be blocked as well. So, do I remember that function wrongly, or did it change its working in the meantime? If my memory fails, then take this as a feature request :-) andy

It does. I have the personal experience of being blocked as logged in Menchi because some Anon-vandals (or my split personalities) share the same IP as I do. Three times today. --Menchi 10:21, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
IMO, there really should be a way for established users like yourself to edit while logged-in even though the IP address you are editing from is blocked. That would prevent vandals from circumventing a block just be creating a log-in... --mav 10:58, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
That's exactly what I meant - a login to an already existing user account should be possible from a blocked IP, however creating a new account shouldn't be possible, as that'd be a way to avoid the block. andy 11:15, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I actually think all user accounts, including newly-created ones, should work. A ban of an anon. user should only ban that IP as an anon. user, not any accounts from the same IP. Now if one of the accounts is banned, then an IP-ban that auto-bans accounts sharing the same IP is okay, as currently implemented (subject perhaps to some exceptions for known-good accounts). --Delirium 12:04, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Edit Window Size

Since I've started using Wikipedia, I've had a problem with my edit window in that it changes its dimensions so that I can't see the right-hand edge with the scroll bar. If I only make an erasure, this doesn't happen, and the entire window remains visible onscreen. There are about 16 characters off the screen that I can't see, editting is a little tricky. I've adjusted my browser font size but that didn't have any effect. I use both Win2K and WinXP, and it occurs in both. Is this normal? --TimothyPilgrim 17:52, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

Seems to be normal in IE. Check your Wiki user preferences and turn off "Edit box has full width." That fixed it for me. (So does using Netscape on a Mac, WITH full width turned on ;-) .) Elf 17:56, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
That did it! Although, now it's like 20 characters short of the right edge of the screen, but it makes it much easier to edit. Thanks for the quick tip! --TimothyPilgrim 18:01, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)
I just changed the box width in the preferences from 80 to 95. That widened it up some. --TimothyPilgrim 18:04, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)
I think I had a similar problem when I tried using the edit toolbar on mozilla. If you are using that, try disabling it, and see if that makes a difference. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:58, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, I've got it now (see above). --TimothyPilgrim 18:01, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Remove all sysops

Debate on whether to deprecate the term "sysop" in favor of "administrator" moved to Wikipedia_talk:Administrators#Remove_all_sysops... Fuzheado 02:48, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Opinions are encouraged in a "straw poll" on that page - IMSoP 16:38, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Dashes redux

I have added a section to Wikipedia:Manual of Style on when to use em and en dashes and what markup to use. I believe that this reflects correct typography. Previous discussion didn't appear to completely resolve the discussion, so I attempted to wrap it up with this entry. Please comment on its talk page rather than here.

Likewise I left only the discussion on dashes in bio dates in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (biographies) and I'm almost certain that that didn't end up with resolution because it diverged into talk about ems and ens in general. Would be nice to continue relevant (bio) discussion there and then adjust its meta page to reflect what we want people to do. Elf 21:57, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Very good Elf. Correct typography is what should be the goal here. It is amazing to me that there are those who would edit without such knowledge, but would then be abhored at the sight of a mispelled word. The two errors are the same - Marshman 00:56, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Did you mean abhorred? :-) And I'm pretty sure to "be abhorred" means to be detested; I would hope that a misspelled word would not cause me to be detested (unless of course I whined about it). Oh wait... -- Wapcaplet 17:57, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Admin participates in Edit war and protects page

The page History of Palestine has been subjected to an edit war. I added material from Benny Morris's book Israel's Border Wars 1949-1956. Zero0000 deleted the material. An edit war ensued. I called upon Zero000 to join us in discussion at the [2] rather than continue the edit war. Instead, Zero0000, contacted Viajero. Viajero, editted the page, deleted, Benny Morris's statements and then protected the page. SO, the question is is it wikipedia policy to participates in Edit war and protects page

Please note that Zero0000 and Viajero have been tag-team deleting/reverting material as one can see from this quote from Zero0000 user page

your turn to revert OneVoice! -- Viajero 20:18, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Stevertigo cautioned both of these two wikipedians: Zero0000 and Viajero regarding the tag-team deletions/reversions.

So what is the policy regarding these issues? OneVoice 23:42, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Editing a page and then protecting it is an abuse of admin powers, as is editing a page that is already protected. →Raul654 23:46, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimedia IPs

Why I cannot directly access Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects by IP? Ric 23:54, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Why do you want/need to? (In other words, I've no idea, but somebody has asked about this before, I believe.) - IMSoP 00:05, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)


Hi. My ISP's DNS Server has difficulty proccessing requests and is usually down. All my bookmarks store IP addresses and not domain names for this reason, but in Wikipedia I get some strange white pages when I attempt to access the server directly (i.e. bypassing the DNS service). Ric 00:12, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)
We've got about 150 distinct wikis, identified by hostname. We don't have 150 distinct IP addresses in our subnet, so can't assign 150 separate IP addresses. You'll find this with a lot of sites, so it's not just us!
You really should switch ISPs if they can't keep DNS running; every internet service depends on it. If that's not an option for you, you might try editing your hosts file to hardcode lookups for sites you like and hoping they don't change. (This will vary by platform, so google up appropriate directions for your system.) --Brion 03:21, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Rollback failure

I tried to rollback American Federation of Labor to a previous version, but no matter how many times I clicked the rollback link, the change never showed up on the history. I then went to the version in the history prior to the vandalism and tried to save that, and even put a comment saying what I was doing. It LOOKED as if my edit took, but the history still showed that nothing happened, and my comment and change never showed up on Recent Changes. I had to go into the version prior to the vandalism, actually make an edit to the page (not just save it without an edit), then save THAT, before I finally got the page back in place. RickK 00:08, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This might because after that anon was done there was no net change to the article. silsor 00:41, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)
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