Wikipedia:Village pump/May 2003 archive 4

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Logo/Image Protection

Having our logo Image:Wiki.png vandalized is a great insult to Wikipedia and all of us. Why isn't that image protected? The vandal must be banned. --Menchi 20:36 May 11, 2003 (UTC)


Brion's changes this so uploading a new wiki.png doesn't change the logo
The vandal has been blocked, but note that such blocks only have limited effectiveness in enforcing bans. Martin 16:21 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

We don't seem to be able to Protect Image pages. Can this be done? -- Zoe

You can protect image pages, but this only protects the page from edits, it does not protect the associated image from re-uploads, reversions, or deletions of old file versions. That's probably a bug; I'll add it to my list of little fixes to do. (Additionally many older images don't actually have description pages, which can lead to weirdness in behavior.) --Brion 06:12 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

Discussion has concluded. Ready to be moved.

There is a table somewhere of the people with most edits on Wiki, so presumably there is some software counting this for each user.

Whilst I would not aspire to such heights as that table, I would be interested to know my own figures, either for total edits, new articles or both. Is there any way of finding this data, or is it information restricted to administrators? (I don't want to count all the way back through My Contributions, even if it keeps all edits. jimfbleak 12:06 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Most active Wikipedians. It's about due for an update, by the way. Tannin
Thanks for the pointer, I knew I could depend on you for help. Unfortunately, since I don't make the top 200 list, I'm still no wiser about my own figures. jimfbleak


If, after your recent efforts, you don't make the top 200 next time one of the software gurus runs the counting script, I'll eat my cat. Tannin (PS: ~1000 to 1500 edits would be my guess. Does the Wikidollar concept extent to making small wagers? I'll put W$10 on it.)

FA Premier league, season review

Would it be worthwhile to have an article about a particular season in the English football Premier league. I'm planning to add the end of season league table, as well as a few miscellaneous highlights. For example, Arsenal F.C. losing their xx point lead, Sunderland A.F.C. having the worst season ever. etc.

Which naming format should this article use? I want to name it as a subpage of the main FA Premier league page: FA Premier league/2002-03.

Erzengel 13:09 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

you may wish to read Wikipedia:Naming conventions (years in titles) and participate in the related discussion. No convention has been set yet, though FA Premier league, 2002-3 and 2002-3 FA Premier league would probably both have some support. Try one of those? Martin 13:23 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

The page was helpful, but there are no mentions of events spanning years yet. Usually, soccer seasons are called 2002/03 or 2002-03 (two digits). I feel inclined to follow the convention set by the Football World Cup pages, so I'm tempted to go for FA Premier league 2002-03. Erzengel 13:50 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

  • At NBA.COM, on player pages, they write 00-01 to represent seasons (See: [1])
  • At NHL,COM, on player pages, they write 2000-2001 to represent seasons (see: [2])
  • At Yahoo.com, for both the NBA and NHL, 2001 is written to represent the 2000-2001 season (see [3] and [4])
  • for what its worth, Kingturtle 22:16 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

Is there any reason why you can't put a comment on a move page as you can on an edit page to explain briefly why you are doing it, or apologising for a move to a mispelt page title? jimfbleak 15:29 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

Good idea. You can always put something on the talk page, but I quite often want to add a comment when moving pages. Depend on how hard it is to implememt, I guess. Tannin
I think the big problem with that would be, you can only have one summary per edit, and it's crucial that it include the actual name of the page it was moved to, so it can be tracked down if it needs to be moved back. There might be an adequate solution involving some character which oughtn't appear in any article titles to separate an automated move summary and a user comment, and glomming them together, but no good punctuation to fit the need comes to mind offhand; the only things coming to mind that can't be in titles are the double quote '"', and at symbol '@'. -- John Owens 16:33 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

Talking of comments, it would also be nice to be able to embed a comment within an article page so that it showed up while editing but not while viewing. This would be useful for marking pieces of text or facts which are in fact correct even though they appear to be wrong to a casual reader. -- Derek Ross

I would argue that in this case you should add text to explain to the casual reader why the fact is right even though it appears wrong. If you don't, then casual readers are less likely to trust the article, because they wil believe that it is "clearly inaccurate". Martin
That isn't always practical. The case that made me think of this form of commenting was the capitalisation of E. E. Cummings. That is explained in the article but not everywhere that a link appears, and it would be inappropriate to add a visible explanation to every article which contained a link to his article. In principle, you could use the talk page but in practice, people don't check the talk page before fixing what they think are typoes. Check the 1894 article for a demonstration of appropriate use of this type of comment. It's intended for an editor, not a reader and thus it makes sense that it will only be visible to an editor. -- Derek Ross


I thought you could do that with HTML comments? Tannin

Excellent! Can you give an example ? -- Derek Ross

Let me test a bit with previews... <!-- comment here --> OK, that works, that's how it's done (but without the <nowiki>, if you're looking at the page source here). -- John Owens 16:33 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
Is this documented somewhere obvious? If not, it should be. MB 17:41 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
Now it is, just added to Wikipedia:How to edit a page. -- John Owens 17:47 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. That's a neat feature. -- Derek Ross

Discussion has concluded. Ready to be moved.

You've heard of pages so big they can't be edited? I've found one so big it can't even be displayed, as far as I can tell. List of rock and roll albums, 156K. I don't know what's to be done with this... but paradoxically, I can edit it - I assume the HTML markup that the page generates is really big though, causing my problems viewing it. Evercat 21:49 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

I can view it. It is awful big, though; the obvious thing to do would be to try breaking it into sections by decade, since it's chronological to begin with. --Brion 22:39 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
What format's good for the names? How does List of rock and roll albums (1960s) etc sound? Hmm, that runs into the problem of what the page starting at 2000 is called... suggestions? Evercat
or List of rock and roll albums, 1960s; 1960s list of rock and roll albums; list of rock and roll albums of the 1960s - see the vote below... :) The decade starting at 2000 would be the 2000s - in Wikipedia that should always refer to the decade rather than the century or the millenium... Martin
But that doesn't sound right. I mean, how do I actually speak the word "2000s"? Evercat
/'tu"θaUzndz/ --Brion


A little typo: þ -> θ --Menchi 06:44 May 14, 2003 (UTC)
Oops! Thanks. --Brion

Discussion has concluded. Ready to be moved.

Announcing a naming conventions vote

Since it's topical... There's a vote on in Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (years in titles) to decide how to put years in titles. We don't have a particular standard at the moment - different articles use different options. Voting closes in one month's time: June 13 (aka 13 June). If you don't vote, you forfeit the right to bitch if you don't like the outcome! *grin* Martin

Surely that should be "If you vote, you forfeit the right to bitch if you don't like the outcome!" ? Derek Ross

Discussion has concluded. Ready to be moved.

Is it maybe time to update Wikipedia:Most_active_Wikipedians again? jaknouse 07:04 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

should B.E.A.M be BEAM? Kingturtle 07:21 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

Yes. It should be whatever is most commonly used, and judging by the external link, that means BEAM. -- Tim Starling 15:10 14 May 2003 (UTC)
Changed it. Kingturtle 22:59 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

I believe that Ativan is a trademark used for the drug lorazepam...but i may be wrong. If so...shouldn't the article be called Lorazepam rather than Ativan...with Ativan redirecting to Lorazepam? Kingturtle 07:32 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

That might be a good idea, but please don't forget that also the generic names of drugs often exist in a bunch of similar versions. When doing a search for Lorazepam in any online directory I would believe it would be good to search for Lorazepame and N05B A06 at the same time. (The latter being the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System-code (i.e. the ATC-code). -- Ruhrjung 07:44 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

What do you do when you find entries like "kdd is french rap very good the first singer of this crew is Dadoo or dadppda and he made a new album solo very good" (KDD) ? This is POV, and stubbish but it gives information (ok... at least now I know it's french rap). Muriel Gottrop

That's a matter of opinion, but I would say rewrite it and add the stub warning from Wikipedia:Boilerplate text. Some contributors may argue for deletion. -- Tim Starling 15:10 14 May 2003 (UTC)
For slightly larger POV entries, slap on a NPOV dispute header, and come back to fix it at your leisure. Martin


Discussion has concluded. Ready to be moved.

WOW! SALT II is terrible! It appears to be nothing but the text of the treaty. I think a brief description of the treaty, and maybe some history would be more approriate with an extern link to the actual treaty. MB 15:12 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

try wikipedia:pages needing attention - but be bold in making terrible entries into brilliant prose.

Discussion has concluded. Ready to be moved.

Just an announcement, I've added a Wikipedia:Standard user greeting for those who are interested. I assume this is the appropriate place for this? Are there any pages that should link to this? MB 18:50 14 May 2003 (UTC)

Does anyone know of any pages that talk about greating new users? MB 18:51 14 May 2003 (UTC)
link it from the Boilerplate text page -- Tarquin

Discussion has concluded. Ready to be moved.

Discussion has concluded. Ready to be moved.

I believe the Image Upload page has been disabled on the old and the new servers for about 36 hours now. Can anyone tell me when it might come back?
Thanks Adrian Pingstone 14:59 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

support for info on this, and for updating Wikipedia:Most_active_Wikipedians jimfbleak 15:27 May 15, 2003 (UTC)
Uploads are now enabled on the new server. (But note that newly uploaded files won't appear on the old server.) Jason's just made the DNS change, so at some point in the near future it should be taking over; in the meantime you can visit it directly at http://larousse.wikipedia.org/ --Brion 17:39 May 15, 2003 (UTC)
What is up with the new server? What is better? Will we still be using the old server for some things? I want deatails! :) MB 18:03 15 May 2003 (UTC)
Load sharing of web and database on two servers; will increase performance, and the second server will act as a backup in case one goes down. --Eloquence 18:05 15 May 2003 (UTC)
Very cool! Maybe we will be able to get some features back up and running here soon! MB 18:34 15 May 2003 (UTC)

What do we do when an article is so poorly written it might as well not be there? I'm refering to BEAM written by Workisfun. No capital letters, little punctuation, crap spelling, sentences that are all inside out and upside down. English may not be his first language, but honestly - I send mobile phone text messages that are better thought out and more formal than this. Some examples: "aestetics-obviously it has to look like something. like an ant", "anyways another way to approach this is that by using random patterns that use motor feedback", "Biology-meaning inspired by particularly bugs which uses their gates". It's too bad to just apply a few copy edits. What should we do? Cgs

Assuming you don't already know everything about the subject, copyedit it and learn something new. You benefit from knowledge, Wikipedia benefits from a better article. Failing that, list it on pages needing attention and offer some WikiMoney to fix it. :) Martin 19:40 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

I can't get <math> to work right. Pizza Puzzle

Example? --Menchi 23:04 15 May 2003 (UTC)
  • 2 + 3 / 7 + 4 = 3
  • 2 + 3 / 7 + 4 = 3
  • 2 + 3 / 7 + 4 = 3
If you want a fraction you would use "2 + 3 + \frac{3}{7} = 3". See Wikipedia:TeX markup and associated external links. -- Tim Starling 03:41 16 May 2003 (UTC)
2 + 3 + \frac{3}{7} = 3

I don't want a fraction, I want to display the above equations as <math> is supposed to display stuff; rather than as normal text. Pizza Puzzle

You mean something like (with a correct answer)
{2+3 \over 7+4}={5 \over 11}
 ? {2+3 \over 7+4}={5 \over 11}, then, if that's what you mean. If not, could you be a bit clearer what you want? If, on the gripping hand, you mean it displaying as an image instead of text, that's set in your Special:Preferences page. -- John Owens 05:29 16 May 2003 (UTC)
PP, please see the first paragraph of Wikipedia:TeX markup for an explanation. --Brion 06:14 16 May 2003 (UTC)

Discussion has concluded. Ready to be moved.

Why isn't the default set to render png? Pizza Puzzle

Because the purpose is not to render pngs. It's to layout math. The rasterization is an ugly ugly hack which is necessary to render many relatively complex equations in a satisfactory manner until MathML support is widespread enough that we can produce that as output (which will scale with your font size, print nice, can be selected and copied, etc). --Brion 11:32 16 May 2003 (UTC)
Why do you think the default should be to render pngs? Cgs