Wikipedia:Village pump/May 2003 archive 5

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There isn't a page titled E=mc^2 (or some variant). shouldn't there be? Are = signs not allowed in titles or is there another reason why this isn't so? -- lommer 04:48 16 May 2003 (UTC) (moved by Cgs to the bottom of the page, it was at the top for some reason)

The policy of putting new text at the bottom does seem counterintuitive. Pizza Puzzle

Yes, because most texts read from bottom to top :) Cgs

"=" doesn't seem to be a legal character: the PHP script says the legal characters are "-,.()' &;%!?_0-9A-Za-z\\/:\\xA0-\\xFF". We do have a nice discussion of E=mc2 at special relativity. -- Tim Starling 01:52 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Is there some way to automatically insert your user name and a time stamp into an article? I see people with things like lommer 04:48 16 May 2003 (UTC), and it's always the same format, so I guess there is something, but I've had a good search and I can't see any reference to such a tool. Cgs

Three tildes in a row thus: ~~~ will give a link to your user page thus: Camembert. Four tildes in a row will add the date stamp as well (it's covered in Wikipedia:How to edit a page, by the way, though isn't easy to find among everything else). --Camembert 18:36 16 May 2003 (UTC)
Thanks CGS 21:13 16 May 2003 (UTC)

An oddity I've noticed... In the history of The Conservative Party (UK) [1] there are two edits from earlier today by User:Realpolitik; however, the link under the name "Realpolitik" is not to his/her (empty) user page, but to his/her contributions [2], as if "Realpolitik" were an anon IP address. Curiously, there are no contributions listed there, not even the edits to The Conservative Party (UK). I'm getting the "contributions" link in my watchlist as well, and saw it on Recent Changes earlier, and see it whether I'm logged in or not. Do other people see this behaviour? Can anybody explain it to me? --rbrwr

This is a known bug that seems to be related to some change in the server configuration. Haven't yet had a chance to figure out the exact cause, but it seems to be triggered when a user who was logged in but no longer is (logged out? timeout?) makes additional edits. The edit is incorrectly marked with the last-used username, but still not with the user ID, leading to the buggy contribs links. --Brion 22:22 16 May 2003 (UTC)
Thanks, Brion. --rbrwr

What is the policy on blocking vandals? Why should they be unblocked? MB 22:53 16 May 2003 (UTC)

We can't block vandals, only IP addresses or login names. Many IP addresses are dynamic, meaning they are reassigned frequently to different customers of some ISP, or belong to public terminals or proxy servers which may serve many different people over a long period of time. As such, long-term IP bans are in general not a useful solution: they often wouldn't catch the same person coming back later, and often will hit legitimate users who had nothing to do with the vandalism. IP bans are only a short-term tool, and should not be left in place over a long period of time. --Brion 22:59 16 May 2003 (UTC)

I was trying to get the alt text of an image on my user page to be the url where the original could be found, so I tried the following as the wiki link [[Image:Mbeckerhawaii1.jpg|<nowiki>http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~mdb29/images/hawaii1.jpg]]</nowiki> and this is the html that the pedia shot out: <a href="/wiki/Image:Mbeckerhawaii1.jpg" class='image' title="http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~mdb29/images/hawaii1.jpg"><img border=0 src="/upload/b/b0/Mbeckerhawaii1.jpg" alt="3iyZiyA7iMwg5rhxP0Dcc9oTnj8qD1jm1Sfv4"></a>.
How come the alt tag for the image is "3iyZiyA7iMwg5rhxP0Dcc9oTnj8qD1jm1Sfv4"? How come what I expected to be the alt tag " http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~mdb29/images/hawaii1.jpg" ended up being the title tag? Is this a bug? MB 23:23 16 May 2003 (UTC)

hmmm, there is is again. When I type http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~mdb29/images/hawaii1.jpg the wiki outputs "3iyZiyA7iMwg5rhxP0Dcc9oTnj8qD1jm1Sfv4". Please see the wiki source (i.e. edit this page) to see what I mean. MB 23:26 16 May 2003 (UTC)
WOW! When I typed "3iyZiyA7iMwg5rhxP0Dcc9oTnj8qD1jm1Sfv4"? look what it outputed! " http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~mdb29/images/hawaii1.jpg"? Hehe I can't display it with <wiki>" http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~mdb29/images/hawaii1.jpg"?</nowiki> I bet! This is really weird. I bet this is a parsing problem. What can I say, I am good at breaking things :) MB 23:32 16 May 2003 (UTC)
Known bug. Don't put 'nowiki' text inside a link. --Brion 23:35 16 May 2003 (UTC)
Alright, I found a sutable alternative User:Mbecker. MB 23:43 16 May 2003 (UTC)

Is there a page which details progress so far in this project? -- 195.137.39.195 04:20 17 May 2003 (UTC)

See:

Some articles are long enough but just plain bad, viz. French Revolution. It's short on facts, and stylistically worthy of a fifteen-year-old. There is a talk: entry calling for it to be rewritten, and detailing various and sundry problems. That entry was written no later than March, but apparently nothing substantial has been done.

Here's an idea that could force the rewriting of the article. Just delete the entire text, place a link to the article in its former state, and a note kindly asking history buffs to step forward and whip up a new article.

as poor as this article is, I believe it is more informative than a blank sheet of paper. Martin 13:13 17 May 2003 (UTC)
Yeah, but that's what the helpful link to the prior revision is for. Smack

This was brought up at Talk:Main Page. It seems the article counter on the Main Page and Special:Statistics is stuck at 120701 articles. Does this have something to do with the recent webserver/database reconfiguration? -- Minesweeper 11:10 17 May 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Nicknames

For some reason none of my emails to the list are getting through (you guys fed up with me or something? ;) So here's my ideas for the current nicknames debate:

In itself, the nickname function is fine. Lee can sign "LDC", Mav "Mav". Like many things, if it's used *responsibly* there isn't a problem.

Three options:

  1. remove the function (ie, exercise "dev power" and remove it for all the well-behaved people)
  2. allow sysops / devs to edit the nicknames of users who are abusing (sysop power)
  3. suggest that anyone feel free to edit an instance of a signature that obscures the real user name, just by editing the wiki text. (people power)

I'd say go with 3. -- Tarquin 14:45 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Yup: 3 is good. Tannin
I've been doing #3 already, as and when I run into old Kanji signatures and the like. Martin

When detailing Swedish subjects I have run into the problem that I don't know how or when to translate names. For example, say I want to write about Gyllene Tider which is a Swedish pop music band. Since there is AFAIK no official English translation to that name should I make up one on my own. Golden Times? Or Falukorv which is a trademark and the closest english translation I can think of is "Falu Wurst" which isnt that accurate.

Just use the Swedish name if there is no English translation. I'd say use Gyllene Tider for the pop band. -- Tarquin 23:06 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Regarding the news on the front page, users may click a link and ask themselves, "Why is this in the news?". IE: Why is EU in the news? I suggest that links have a "Purpose" clause. When you hover over a link, this text should be shown after the article name in the word bubble. And when you click the link the Purpose clause should also appear above the article text highlighted. Example: [ [ European_Union|EU|On April 16, 2003 the treaty of Accession was signed by the 10 new members and the 15 old ones in Athens. ] ] 24.198.144.163

How about a link to a news website too? CGS 12:03 18 May 2003 (UTC)

I'm just wondering if there is any convention regarding the use of dates in the Julian Calendar and how they should be mentioned along with the Gregorian Calendar dates. I just did an initial draft of Tikhon of Moscow and had both dates for his death, I put them both in the parenthetical date listing at the beginning and User:Eloquence took out the Gregorian Calendar date not knowing it was an alternate date (I've now tried to make it clear and put the mention to the Julian calendar date at the end). As the Russian Empire and the early Soviet Union used these Old Style calendar dates it is often not clear which date is being used, also the O.S. dates are still used in many eastern Orthodoxy churches such as January 7 for Christmas (december 25) and January 14 as the date for the Christian religious celebration of News Year's Day. Alex756 11:20 18 May 2003 (UTC)

While I have a similar problem, with years rather than dates, in some of my articles on British coinage, I just quote "Old Style" as necessary, e.g. British coin Guinea begins "The Guinea coin of 1663 was the first British machine-struck gold coin. The first one was produced on 6 February 1663 (1662 Old Style), and was made legal currency by a Proclamation of 27 March 1663." since 25th March was New Years' Day at the time. -- Arwel 12:07 18 May 2003 (UTC)


How are readers supposed to know what "old style" means? CGS 12:18 18 May 2003 (UTC)
By reading the linked article at old style, of course. :-) Stan 13:06 18 May 2003 (UTC)
Would be better to explicity write Julian Calendar -- old style could mean other things -- Tarquin 13:37 18 May 2003 (UTC)
Should it be Old Style, old style or both? I've redirected Old Style to Julian Calendar and am mentioning it in the first sentence there. I have not heard any other use of O.S. or Old Style. It only seems to like to my usage of it. Alex756 13:42 18 May 2003 (UTC)
I seems it is also used for the same meaning on Cocos Island. Alex756
"Old Style" is commonly used in the field of history (I'm not sure about the capitalisation of it, just the words) when discussing a period where both forms of calender were in use. Link it to the article. Someone will write it sooner or later. Tannin 13:55 18 May 2003 (UTC)

Nested redirect

Why is Calligrapher redirect nested... three times? --Menchi 12:21 18 May 2003 (UTC)

It disappeared! --Menchi 12:26 18 May 2003 (UTC)
Ams removed the redirect temporarily.... I thought it's the system self-fixes! :-D --Menchi 12:32 18 May 2003 (UTC)
It looks from the edit history that you created the page with #REDIRECT Calligrapher as its content. I'm not sure if you did this deliberately or that something has gone wrong with the software. The reason it's nested is that if a redirect points to a redirect then the software doesn't perfrom the second redirect. I assume this was done to avoid unending loops either from an article to itself or between two or more articles. So I think in the What links here page it shows up three times as it links to itself and then to itself again but then stops as the software doesn't look any further. I hope that made some sense. Regards -- Ams80 12:36 18 May 2003 (UTC)
I meant to do #REDIRECT [[Calligraphy]]! Don't know what I was thinking, getting myself into a loop.... --Menchi 13:58 18 May 2003 (UTC)

Does anybody know what is going on with inherently funny word? I consider myself to have decent sense of humour (I'm British after all), but this page just seems to be a list of words which someone is saying are funny. Is this just the POV of someone (someone who laughs each time he reads "sock"), or am I missing the big joke? CGS 12:27 18 May 2003 (UTC)

I agree Mintguy 12:28 18 May 2003 (UTC)
I've added it to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. CGS 13:03 18 May 2003 (UTC)
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