Wikipedia:Village pump/June 2003 archive 6

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I've got a proposal for dealing with extended references, but don't want to clog the pump. So, I call your sattenton to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Thanks ..Lou I 18:07 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I notice that Pizza Puzzle has removed Seanos's vote in the current Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/vote. This looks a bit strange to me. Is there some history here that I don't know about? -- Arwel 19:50 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The reason Pizza Puzzle gave in his edit summary was that the user whose vote he removed had made only one other edit, and therefore probably wasn't deserving a vote. This seems reasonable to me: otherwise somebody could make a hundred accounts to support their own view. (Why is this question here rather than the talk page in question or on Pizza Puzzle's talk page, by the way?) --Camembert
Just checking if there's a general policy. If you argue that one edit isn't enough to deserve a vote, how do you decide how many edits are enough? Apart from this edit reducing the count for my favoured option :), I'm uneasy about just anybody going in and removing votes that they didn't cast. -- Arwel 20:07 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I think I agree - people removing votes (at least without some discussion) makes me a bit uneasy as well, and there probably does need to be some policy on this. As far as I know, there isn't one at the moment - you might perhaps take it up at Wikipedia talk:Vote or Wikipedia talk:Decision Making Process. --Camembert


There is probably some existing discussion that I don't know about, but I came across some articles which use the "bread crumbs" navigational links commonly seen in hierarchical webpages. Namely, Appendicitis, Coeliac disease, Lactose intolerance, etc., all of which have something like:

Medicine > Gastroenterology > Lactose intolerance

At the top. These are understandably useful for putting the article in some context, but seems out of place on Wikipedia (since articles could be categorized according to any number of criteria, in addition to Medicine or Gastroenterology; it imposes an artificial hierarchy). Should these be removed (and maybe incorporated into a "see also" at the bottom)? -- Wapcaplet 01:40 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

For anyone who is interested in having a Wikipedia T-shirt, and doesn't want to wait for official ones, I have made a simple design that anyone may use if they are so inclined. It's on my user page. -- Wapcaplet 02:23 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I've set up a shop at http://cafepress.com/wikipedia, please leave me a message to suggest more designs. --Eloquence 05:46 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)
That URL gives a "Document contains no data", http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia is the right one. andy 09:58 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)
You need a space after the opening parenthesis in "contact me (moeller@scireview.de", unless you intended it to be anti-spam. --Menchi 11:31 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Ah, thanks, even Wikipedia's URL parser is better than that ;-). --Eloquence 12:17 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Sweet! Okay, the next step in my plan for world domination is to make the Wikipedia T-shirt in many languages. Anyone who knows what the phrase "Edit this page" translates to in any language other than English, please visit my sandbox and fill in the translation for me. Thanks! -- Wapcaplet 12:32 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The old list is at m:22 languages. Not quite complete, and the phrase then was "edit the text of this page", so they're not quite the same. Of course, all you really need do is flip through the various Wikipedias with translated interfaces and copy-paste the edit link. :) --Brion 17:53 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I've nabbed all the ones I could from that list. The consensus at the m:Wikipedia T-shirts page seemed to be "Edit this page" rather than "...the text of...", so I decided to go with that. I got all the text I could from the interlanguage versions (most of them seem to have it written in English, since apparently they use older-phase Wiki software (?) so I couldn't get much from those). And of course, also it'd be good to verify them with people who know the language, to make sure I didn't grab the wrong text or something :) -- Wapcaplet 20:46 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I currently have 17 languages. More would be great, but this would probably be adequate for a T-shirt design. As far as I can tell, the big ones are represented (the top 10 wikipedias in terms of size are here). If nobody adds more in the next day or so, I will probably go ahead and make the T-shirt design. Of course, feel free to keep adding and/or revising the ones that are here! I can always add them to the design later. I'd welcome suggestions regarding other design elements; currently, I just plan to list these vertically, with a URL or some such at the bottom. -- Wapcaplet 23:49 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I have a doubt that I haven't been able to clear looking at the Help and FAQ pages. If I want to add a new entry about a book that has no title in English because it has never been translated in English, how should I call the page? According to naming conventions it would seem that I should use the original title, but since I haven't been able to find an example I'd rather ask than making a mistake... Lazarus Long 08:31 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

If there's no existing common name for it in English, the original title is exactly what people who did need to refer to it would refer to it as when speaking English. So, yes, use the original title. --Brion 09:17 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I agree with Brion. However, before starting the page, think whether this book really deserves one. If you don't have much to say about it, perhaps it would be better to talk about it on the writer's page instead. Andre Engels 09:26 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I got several nasty messages ending with something like; contact wikidown! Don't have a message thingy to do that. I'm just leaving this as a notice. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 21:58 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Proposal to somewhat simplify markup to float images: see Wikipedia talk:Image markup gallery and comment please -- Tarquin 09:46 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Could someone who looks after protected pages take a look at what happened to the special pages for Book Sources? Last time I used it (maybe a week), it clicked through to Amazon, etc. Now it just goes to the Wikipedia page describing Amazon. I certainly liked the old one better, but don't know if the change was intentional.

The page has an 'edit this list' option, but I'm not sure how the old one handled the ISBN variable. So I'm don't want to attempt to reset it. Thanks Lou I 15:49 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Did you try clicking the "run a search on" links? --Brion 18:25 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Brion, you're right as usual, maybe we should exlain that "search on" is a "go to book store" link.Rhanks again,, Lou I

Wikipedia stylesheet errors

The Wikipedia stylesheet "/style/wikistandard.css" contains two errors:

  • border-width: 1 (requires unit of measure)
  • padding: 2 (requires unit of measure)

as well as a number of warning conditions. Can this stylesheet be fixed (at least the two error conditions)? It's at least possible that this is related to an overlap problem that's occuring in Provinces of Thailand (see Talk:Provinces of Thailand for a further discussion Bill 16:18 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Done. --Brion 18:22 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Thanks, Brion. As it turns out, that wasn't the cause of the page overlap on Provinces of Thailand, but it's a good thing to get squared away in any case. Bill 15:35 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Another style-sheet related issue - The differences between heading sizes are quite small, and it's really hard to distinguish h2 from h3 or even lower-level ones on some browsers (Mozilla, especially). Checking out the stylesheet, I see that:

h2 { font-size: 125%; }
h3 { font-size: 112.5%; }
h4 { font-size: 106.25%; }
h5 { font-size: 103.125%; }
h6 { font-size: 100%; }


Only 25% difference in size between the lowest-level and second-highest-level headings! If h6 is, say, 20 pixels high, this means:

 h2: 25 pixels
 h3: 23 pixels
 h4: 21 pixels
 h5: 21 pixels
 h6: 20 pixels

Virtually indistinguishable, in any case. I would vote to widen the gap between font sizes (or, if it doesn't look too awful, leave them at the browser-default sizes by taking out these properties entirely). Could someone with knowledge and permission to modify the stylesheets please look into this? Side note: The cologneblue.css style looks good, and its heading sizes are not explicitly specified. -- Wapcaplet 21:38 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Some time ago I had written a short biography about Romano Scarpa for the IMDB. I'd like to use it here too, but I'm not sure whether what I wrote is still "mine" (and so I can do whatever I want with it) or not. On their site there's a note saying that "If you do post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant IMDb and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate..." so it being nonexclusive I think I can use it here too... or not? Lazarus Long 19:06 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yes, if it's a nonexclusive license (as opposed to signing over your copyright to them) that should be fine. (I am not a lawyer, nor to I play one on TV.) Keep in mind that you should always mention it when you reuse existing work, so people don't delete it after turning up the original on google. :) A note on the talk page and the edit summary comment should do it. --Brion 19:11 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)~

Well, Im obviously not getting along with the mathematicians here; but, I think the "professional" mathematicians are so intent on outdoing each other with their rigorous mathematics that they fail to understand that the non-mathematician is the one who most needs this site, and nearly ALL of the math pages (even on some of the most "simple" and elementary of topics) are nigh-impossible for anyone without the proper training to understand. Kinda a Catch-22 if you see what Im saying. PP

Rest of discussion moved to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics

Will someone please go to NASA and let me know if my method of putting a long description with a pic is acceptable or is there a better way. My method was to make a page specially for the large version of the pic, with its own title of View of Florida from Space (not sure why I put a capital on Space!).

"click here" links are really bad style. Link text should be the description itself. I've change it to: Read a full description of this image -- Tarquin 13:39 25 Jun 2003 (UTC) PS -- is an article really necessary for this? Isn't the image description page suited to your (excellent) descriptive text?
I think it may be better to put the long description on the image page (which it looks like you've already done), along with the larger version if desired. Then you can link to it from the "long description" phrase like so:
Read a [[:Image:Nasa.florida.300pix.jpg|full description of this image]]
That way, they don't clutter up the article namespace. -- Wapcaplet 13:42 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I've arranged Image:Nasa.florida.750pix.jpg so that it can be linked to as a "larger version"... Evercat 13:48 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I don't think that photo fits in with the rest of the article; I would have thought NASA's logo would be more relevant there. -- Erzengel 13:53 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Erzengel, you are quite free to put on a logo (anyone can edit Wikipedia) but that isn't what I wanted to do! I just thought an example of NASA's work would be interesting. Thanks to the rest of you for your ideas.
Adrian Pingstone 14:06 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Complicated images with a lot of content should have their own articles; the image description page is a a meta-page, as suggested by its color, and focusses on copyright status, source, etc, none of which a regular user should be seeing. The image article interprets what one is looking at - that string of lights is the M5 motorway, the round blob in the center of Florida is Lake Okeechobee, etc. That kind of interpretive description makes the image useful, and not just a pastiche of color dressing up an article. Sometimes people try to do it in captions, but then we end up with comically long captions with their own collection of links. If an image caption of two long sentences is still leaving out important details, I would say that image is a candidate for its own article. Stan 16:28 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I want to know if page history is sometimes deleted. I remember having seen more edits in http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Carnatic&action=history and am also skeptical about whether the first contributor wrote so much & marked that as minor. Or is Wikipedia:Sanbox treated differently (there's a reference to it in http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Sandbox&diff=18729&oldid=7457 (long before the first edit according to http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&action=history) -- Paddu 15:50 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Long, long ago (2001) the previous wiki software would delete old revisions after a while (cf MeatBall:KeptPages); so very old articles often are missing their earliest edits. Also some article histories are be split because someone tried to 'rename' them by simply moving content to another page; the latter can be repaired if the page with the older revisions is still around. --Brion 18:17 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)
As far as Wikipedia:Sandbox is concerned, Brion seems to have chopped off the history at some point. (The page was created by me in February 2002 to replace the old SandBox page - we couldn't move pages in those days.) That page gets hundreds of edits a month, and there's no reason to keep very old versions, in contrast to normal articles. Another thing to note about old edits is that the dates for them are often wrong. For example, that old edit of mine that you've linked above was certainly not made at 15:43 25 Feb 2002 - that's a bogus timestamp occurring on all old history pages. --Zundark 19:39 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Not on all old pages, just on the most recent ones between the software conversion in late January 2002 and the great Oops, All Timestamp Fields Reset Themselves When The Table Is Altered calamity on February 25, 2002. :) On the other hand, many edits during 2002 may be listed 7 or 8 hours off, as for a while timestamps were stored in the server's local time. --Brion 20:52 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I've been here only for 15 days now, and already five of my contributions are showing dates between Apr 2002 and Feb 2003. There is some serious date-related bug in the software. -- Timwi 21:08 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)
The only such that I see are redirection pages created by the software when renaming pages. Did you rename these pages:
02:29 26 Feb 2003 L'Hopital's rule (moved to "L'Hôpital's_rule")
16:33 29 Aug 2002 PDS (moved to "Party_of_Democratic_Socialism")
08:17 9 Aug 2002 Duesseldorf (moved to "Düsseldorf")
15:04 16 May 2002 Squarefree (moved to "Square-free")
10:25 9 Apr 2002 Departement (moved to "Département")
? The rename code is a little funky, and there may be some cases where the redirect page gets the date of the article; or if renaming a page to a title at which a redirect is already present, it may retain the date of the prior redirect. Or something. A little more info would help. --Brion 21:28 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)
You guys make me feel so dumb! :) I didn't notice they were all page moves. Yes, I did perform those renames (albeit within the past 16 days). Notice there are other renames in my contributions list that appear to be dated correctly. -- Timwi 14:42 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Disney comics mess

I'd written about this in the relevant talk pages, but I think nobody's watching them :-) I find the article Disney Comic Book a bit out of place. Besides the contents of the article, definitely improvable, the term "Disney Comic Book" itself doesn't mean much here. We already have Comic book explaining what a comic book is, and lots of Disney pages explaining what Disney means. What we'd need there is a Disney comics, with a short history of Disney comics all over the world.
But there already is a Disney Comics article, still it is not about Disney comics, it is about a branch of Walt Disney Company that used to publish comics at the begininning of the 1990s. This is not very accurate IMHO, because when someone thinks "Disney comics" he's not thinking about the publisher, he's thinking about comics starring Disney Characters in general.

I think a Disney Comics (publisher) should be created (similar to Gladstone Publishing, and the current contents and references to Disney Comics moved to that article. So Disney Comic Book could redirect to a new Disney comics page that would contain a better version of this page.

Should I go ahead and do it, or are there any technical reasons not to? Conceptually I think it would really clear things up. Lazarus Long 17:50 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages -- Timwi 21:10 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)
If you want to rename Disney Comic Book to Disney comics, go ahead. But you shouldn't have to rename Disney Comics to do it—Wikipedia automatically disambiguates on capitalisation (see, for instance, red dwarf and Red Dwarf). — Paul A 01:18 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Easy one for all you smart people. I have been updating the Military Operations list and having a grad old time doing it. But when I smack on the Recent Changes page, I note my annotations are credited to some obscure series of numbers; not my PaulinSaudi name. I feel like I am not getting full credit.

How can I fix this?

Now, with three tildies ? PaulinSaudi

Stop the presses! My entry above has PaulinSaudi on the change page. Is that because I used the Three TIldies technique? If so how can I get credit for my content updates which have not signature line?

I am so confused?

Sign with four tildes to include date.
Are you talking about those Contributions? Just click on "My Contri" on the left.
Or perhaps you forgot to log in. You can tell when you aren't logged when the top-right says "Not logged in" instead of your name. And when below the edit box, there's no "Minor edit" checkbox. --Menchi 05:28 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)
The other thing to note is that if you stop editing long enough (eg while writing in your WP, you will be timed out and unlogged, but you won' see that until you change a page. As Menchi said, minor edit is the best guide.
I seem to recall that you need to have cookies turned on (in your browser) in order to stay logged in while having multiple windows/tabs open. Perhaps that had something to do with it? Usually the best way to tell if you're logged in is to check the upper-right corner of your screen. If it says "PaulinSaudi", you're logged in. -- Wapcaplet 14:51 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

For anyone interested, copyright in the US has changed [1], [2]. Basically, an author now has to pay $1 to keep their copyrights 50 years after publication. -- Jim Regan 07:33 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That's good news. When do they have to pay up by? -- Tim Starling 07:44 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, phrased that badly. They have to pay 50 years after publication, if they don't, it becomes public domain. It's the Public Domain Enhancement Act, btw. -- Jim Regan 08:12 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

But it's just $1. I'm pretty sure their or their descendant's sense of possession or greed will drive them to pay that puny amount. Just $20, then a millennium is paid for. Mmm... that sounds too easy. >_> --Menchi 08:27 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The purpose of the act is to allow abandoned works to enter the public domain, not to make it harder to maintain copyright. The reason it's after 50 years is because that's the minimum term required by the Berne Convention -- Jim Regan 08:35 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Ahem. According to the links provided the bill was introduced by two Congressmen. To become law it has to be voted on (assuming it isn't killed in committee), passed in both houses of Congress, go through a compromise committee and then be signed into law. But it would be cool if it did become law. --mav

Yes, it has not yet become law (come on, Congress doesn't move that fast!). It would be great if it does, though! Check out the FAQ for details. And yes, $1 might be enough to make it happen. Consider a large corporation which has a few million properties that it wants to maintain after their normal 50-year lifespan. Right now, they can extend the copyrights indefinitely, for free, and prevent anything (even stuff of zero commercial value) from ever entering the public domain. If they had to pay a few million bucks a year to keep those unprofitable properties within their control, they might think twice about holding onto them. But yeah, as Jim Regan says, it's mostly designed for the works that are still under copyright, but nobody knows by whom. It's abandoned, and sitting around deteriorating, and nobody's legally allowed to copy them because they're still, supposedly, someone's intellectual property. -- Wapcaplet 14:59 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi, folks! I have found several articles concerning the goddess Aradia (Herodias) and relating her with Roman and Greek mythologies. Aradia is related to the Wiccan belief but not to those other religions. As I am not the adequate guy to write about Wiccan traditions, I would suggest finding another person with knowledge on the subject to correct it. Thanks.-- The Warlock 08:48 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Well, the original contributor'd be of no help. The mysterious s/he suddenly stopped last year in Sept. --Menchi 08:58 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I don't have enough experience looking at the work of Michael, so I can't make a diagnosis...Is IMX the work of Michael, and is User:Mlthomas Michael? Kingturtle 11:41 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Doesn't look like his style to me... Evercat 13:37 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I would like to seperate watch lists, so that I can differentiate between articles of great interest to me, and articles of more general interest. Pizza Puzzle

This sounds like a feature request. You have to make a feature request on a separate website, SourceForge, where the programmers hang out and manage the development of the software. While you're at it, please tell them to come back here and let us make feature requests on Wikipedia or at least the Meta-Wiki... -- Timwi 23:34 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I cut and pasted something from the wiki-list and put it on the talk page of User:Joe Canuck. However it is running lengthways across the page. How can I fix it to run normally? FearÉIREANN 21:14 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

This is probably the cause. Pizza Puzzle

I think I've sorted it. It was the spaces at the beginning of the paragraphs causing the problem -- sannse 21:38 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I used to be able to use [[[necklace]]] and I would get a link to necklace surrounded by two brackets (useful in quotes) but now I just get 3 brackets on either side. Has the code been changed? Is there an easier way to get the result I desire without using nowiki? Pizza Puzzle


Well this works [ necklace ], and so does this [necklace] :). MB 21:30 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)
The easiest way I can think of is [necklace]. Another possibility would be [‌necklace]. -- Timwi 23:38 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Don't use the second of those; the character, whatever it is, does show up on my browser a a square-with-numbers between the bracket and the link. The [ is safer. -- John Owens 23:49 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

User:Evercat posted this to my page:

Please note: This user is repeatedly requesting confirmation of the copyright status of assorted images uploaded to Wikipedia. This is being done maliciously, in protest of the banning of User:Joe Canuck, who was banned after repeatedly uploading images of dubious copyright status, as well as assorted threats aimed at Wikipedians who objected to this.
For the most part, this user's questions can be ignored.

Is this Wikipedia policy to say this and Protect the page when someone legitimately questions obvious copyright problems with images uploaded without copyright documentation. I am following the words of User:Jimbo Wales and the statements by [[User:Brion VIBBER] at http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-June/004943.html ChuckM 04:02 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Please note: ChuckM is according to the evidence a user who as User:DW, User:Black Widow and User:Joe Canuck has been banned three times for his conduct on wikipedia. He is also believed to have operated under a range of names, including Ron Davis, Elliot, Olga Bityerkokoff and Jacques Delson, among others. For details on his identity, see the Joe Canuck talk page. ChuckM has now been proposed for banning by Evercat. FearÉIREANN 04:32 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

And I would note that I proposed that before Chuck's comments here... Evercat 12:10 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)
See User:ChuckM/ban, by the way. Evercat 14:58 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)
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