User:Who/VP

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Complete discussion from Village Pump

Currently not historically sorted. May split later.

Contents

[edit] New articles posted, blatanly copied word-for-word from a web site that comes up listed first in Google...options?

I was viewing the 500 newest articles, and I found that one anon user in particular, was posting new articles that were copied directly from a copyrighted web site, word-for-word, that was the first result in Google for the subject of the article.

I have watch-listed the ones that I could find, most of the articles have the notice of wikified and need of attention.

An example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Bakr_Muhammad_bin_al-Husain_al-Aajurree_al-Baghdaadee

and if you search the name "Abu Bakr Muhammad bin al-Husain al-Aajurree al-Baghdaadee" in Google, and click on the first result, you will get the same thing from the Web site that is in the Wiki article.

My question is what are our/my options? Can I VFD this, since it is a word-for-word copyright violation?

Thank you,
Srcrowl 09:02, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

  • Thank you...Srcrowl 09:15, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Is there any way to edit an edit summary after saving an edit?

Like comments in computer programs, edit summaries can often be out of date, a revision or two behind the actual edit. For instance, in my recent edit to Common sense, I wikified a book title, and needed a couple of iterations to get it right, but since I added the edit summary first, I forgot to update that, so it points to a red link. One thing I may do is get in the habit of leaving the edit summary until I am done previewing and I am satisfied with the edit. But is there any way to go back and edit a saved one?

Also, on edit summaries, good ones would save a lot of time by allowing the reader to avoid opening the article based on the descriptiveness of the edit summary, but all too often they are blank. Also, is including links in them a good thing to do? I like those as a reader. I'll look for a guideline. Thanks, Spalding July 8, 2005 16:41 (UTC)

  • Although not pratical, or recommended, an admistrative rollback would erase the entry, and the edit, I believe.

As far as the link in the summary, do you mean the section link? If so, it's just a shortcut to allow someone to get to that section to see that area and/or change. If it doesnt work, that happens all to often anyway, and I just scroll down to where I need to be, or hit diff to see what was modified. I have good faith that most registered users are making good edits, so shorter summaries do not catch my eye as much as a blank summary or an anon edit. <>Who?¿? 8 July 2005 17:28 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll just try to be more careful - oops! I should have checked the talk page for Wikipedia:edit summary first (Wikipedia_talk:Edit_summary). There is an extensive discussion on the subject there that includes how to make a dummy edit for the purpose of correcting an erroneous edit summmary. Spalding 21:19, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
Wow, I thought I was being of "some help", and you helped me. Didn't realize that was there. Thanks :) <>Who?¿? 09:54, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Album COvers

Are album covers and other pictures packaged with albums free to use here? Jaberwocky6669 June 28, 2005 03:51 (UTC)

Album covers are copyright to the producers or artists, but Wikipedia uses them to illustrate appropriate articles under the rationale of "fair use". Part of the justification of this is that we only upload relatively small images of the albums, making it impossible for someone to print a high quality duplicate cover. If you intend to upload album covers yourself, do so only to the individual language Wikipedias such as en: and not to the Wikipedia commons, and use existing images as a guide to acceptable resolution.-gadfium 28 June 2005 04:12 (UTC)

[edit] Help with a VfD decision

Physical space was nominated for deletion and survived as a redirect. Does that mean it has to remain a redirect? I don't want to get involved in an edit war, and I just want to find out what the policy is. Hiding 09:20, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • I would say no, it doesnt have to be a redirect permanently. If a topic arises that warrants its own article, than the page can have a disambig note at the top, or the page could even now be used as a disambig page w/o any content other than the articles that it may refer too. I am not sure on the policy either though. <>Who?¿? 09:32, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • That's frustrating. I thought the page couldn't be deleted because the content was merged and so the history needed to remain, and so I voted accordingly. I also then do not see the point in a redirect result in a VfD, if someone is going to ignore the decision and keep reverting it to the prior state. Hiding 09:41, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
If the consensus was to not have the page as it was when listed at VfD, but to have a redirect to some other article, and someone reverts the redirect to the page that was originally listed at VfD, it's considered vandalism. (Same as recreating a deleted page with the same content). However, unless I've missed something, it doesn't look like Physical space is a redirect; it looks like the VfD was closed (two days ago) but nothing was done. -- Essjay · Talk 09:49, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
That's because it has been reverted. Hiding 09:54, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The article has been reverted back to the redirect. If there is a revert war, it will be dealt with accordingly. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 09:52, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Ah, I see. I was thrown because the VfD template was still at the top; odd that they would revert but not remove the VfD template. Good to see it's been taken care of. -- Essjay · Talk 09:57, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Interwiki images

How do I display (not link) to images in other Wikipedia's; I'm trying to do it in the Reaction section of Anna Lindh. - RoyBoy 800 05:33, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • I havent tried that yet, as I do not know any images other language versions. But I would try
[[Image:de:imagename.jpg]]
as an example for a Wiki German image.
I know it works for regular wiki links, not sure if it will for images. Granted I'm probably way-off, but figured I would give a suggesiton. <>Who?¿? 06:33, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
If the image does not have a copyright problem you can upload it to commons [1]. Images from there can be tied into any article on any language wikipedia, using the same sytnax as for local images. Click on the image in the foreign language wikipedia and see if it isn't already on commons. There would be a template with a link to the description of the image on commons.--Fenice 06:49, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Username alterations?

Hi there, I was wondering if it is possible to have an admin alter my username to improve my privacy by deleting my surname? --Naresh 16:25, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

  • No, admins don't have the database access necessary to do that. You'd have to contact a developer. But those are generally backlogged with such tasks. I suggest, you simple set up a new account and make sure the two accounts can't be linked until a developer has the time to reassign your edits. - Mgm|(talk) 21:20, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • In the meantime, I see you already masked your signature, not sure if you did it manually or not, but that can be setup in preferences so it only shows "Naresh" with the ~~~~. If you do setup a new account, you may be able to move your current userpage to it, not sure how that works with userpages though. <>Who?¿? 00:57, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Need Help on Templates

Is there a template for articles that tells editors to please view the talk page before making edits? We're currently trying to make a collaboration on FOX News (as I have crossposted in a lot of places) and I would like to get anons to see what we're doing on the talk page and perhaps help out before making possibly controversial edits in the article. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 17:24, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Please see Talk:FOX News for current discussion.

Hope that helps. <>Who?¿? 17:35, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think I'll do that one, because none of the other templates really fit, and the neutrality one is already up there and isn't helping. Thanks for your help. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 17:49, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
You could use {{comment}}. smoddy 18:06, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Help!

I created a page recently and I believe someone blanked it out and somehow destroyed the page history! I have no clue about how to get it back =( Please help me! Sincerely, Crying in WP Jaberwocky6669 19:56, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

  • What was the page title? Also, if there is no page history, it may have been deleted. <>Who?¿? 19:58, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Checkers The talk page is still intact and the sub-pages are still there too... Jaberwocky6669 20:00, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)
    • It was deleted.. see log by User:Danny. You may want to direct your question to his user page for more info. <>Who?¿? 20:03, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

***I thought the page was a redirect to Draughts. Hiding 20:05, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC) Ah, no, it was the page where you could play checkers, wasn't it. Sorry. Hiding 20:07, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

      • I thought there were other Wikipedia games though, dont remember the link, but remember seeing it. Wonder if this would fall under the same area. <>Who?¿? 20:09, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Citing Sources

According to Wikipedia guidlines, its a good idea to cite sources. However, the majority of Wikipedia articles don't cite sources at all, or at most, leave a brief "further reading" list at the end of the article.

I'm a bit unclear about what citations in Wikipedia should ideally look like. Here is a link to what I would consider to be a scholarly review article with proper citations. However, is this the kind of detailed citation style really called for in a general encyclopedia? The number of citations in such an article greatly lengthen the amount of text and the resulting bibliography takes up about 25% of the article's text (almost 2 pages out of a total of 7). I'm used to writing research papers and I could easily write an article using this kind of citation style, but I'm unsure whether this would be too lengthy for an "encyclopedia" type article.

Could someone point me to a well-written Wikipedia article that you would consider as having adequate citations and makes good use of citation and bibliographic style? It would really help if I had an example to work from.

--Peter G Werner 00:27, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • The common practice is generally "External links" and/or "References". See Cite resources as an example of wikilinks for reference.

Usually if there is no easily verifable data, or some obscure topic, I use the html tag sup; [2] to reference items. Or if you don't want an external link in the middle just use 1 and then list them under References:

References
1 Cite resources.

Hope thats some help, as far as style, I'm not very much help there. <>Who?¿? 05:17, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category name changes

This may not be the right place to post this, but there are problems with some category and article name changes that are going through at the moment. Someone has recently changed the lead article Cinema to Film. The naming issue had been discussed on the talk page, but there was never any consensus for a change. However, someone made the change themselves, and has now argued that Film is now the default term and has listed all categories that use the word Cinema in the title for renaming. This has been presented as a simple change based on the lead article being called Film and so people are generally voting for the changes. However, Cinema articles are being forced into a change to Film when it is not appropriate. An attempt to change Category:Cinema by country to Category:Film by country was resisted, but other categories are being changed en masse on the grounds that Film is the default term, when this has never been agreed. I'm not sure how to deal with this, I could always change the lead article back to Cinema but there must be some mechanism for resolving an issue like this. JW 08:40, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Why the heck isn't CAMERA film at Film?!? I mean, cinema may be a term on the decline but at least it wasn't ambiguous as to what the page would be about. "Film" could mean any of a dozen things. Hm. Well I think it was a good idea to bring it here as there's bound to be a solution--maybe even call a Wikipedia-wide vote or something? GarrettTalk 09:48, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I am not sure about the articles, I proposed the Category:Cinema by country → Category:Film by country, only as a category standardization. I think there was another one after this, but would have to go check. You may want to take a look at WP:ANI, I think this might be the same user on Talk:Film. Actually, I just went through the history of cinema, and it was merged with film by Grunt on 18:36, 17 August 2004. Still need to discuss the further changes and happenings on all of this, concerning the direction of the articles and categories, if that users persists (User:12.73.198.28). <>Who?¿? 10:07, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Commenting on numbered lists

Is there a way to make a comment in a numbered list, and keep the numbering consistent?

Example 1:

  1. fred
  2. bob
    1. comment to bob
  1. sara
  2. sally

Wiki markup
# fred
# bob
*# comment to bob
# sara
# sally


Example 2:

  1. fred
  2. bob
comment to bob
  1. sara
  2. sally

Wiki markup
# fred
# bob
; comment to bob
# sara
# sally


Example 3:

  1. fred
  2. bob
comment to bob
  1. sara
  2. sally

Wiki markup
# fred
# bob
:comment to bob
# sara
# sally


The numbering starts over after any type of break. I have tried several different ways, and there is nothing listed on wiki markup. Any suggestions? ∞Who?¿? 09:53, 18 July 2005 (UTC)