Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Angela (talk | contribs) at 20:58, 14 October 2003 (reply to Scarequotes). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Post a question now if you don't want to wait for the whole page to be loaded. On the other hand, please consider skimming through this page to see if your question might have already been asked (and even answered) by other people already. Also, please do not push the "save page" button multiple times when posting this way! The server is overloaded, but it usually will respond eventually, dutifully adding your question to the page several times in a row.

Quick reference on server status

  • The database server / web server for the other wikis ("pliny") is online
    • But it crashes fairly frequently, this server has always been problematic
    • upgrades are planned to replace apparently faulty hardware
  • The regular webserver for the English-language Wikipedia ("larousse") is online.
    • recent upgrades may have introduced new faults
    • running on slower, older hardware temporarily
  • The new database monster is going to be ordered real soon.
    • fund raising resulted in enough money to buy a new bigger and faster database server
    • pliny and larousse will share the webserver load once the new box is online

Related pages: Mailing lists - IRC - IM a Wikipedian - Talk pages - Wikipedia talk:Software updates


File:Village pump yellow.png

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Moved discussion

Questions and answers, after a period of time of inactivity, will be moved to other relevant sections of the wikipedia (such as the FAQ pages), placed in the Wikipedia:Village pump archive (if it is of general interest), or deleted (if it has no long-term value).


See the archive for older moved discussion links. For the most recent moved discussion, see Wikipedia:Village pump archive#October 2003 moved discussion.

Don't Google hits/ links lead to the latest version of a Wikipedia article? I added a lot of info to a page yesterday since it was in the first page of Google hits. But today when I followed the Google link to the page it was in the same state as before my editing- though the address bar in IE is the same for both direct Wikipedia and link from Google.KRS 05:34, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Read Wikipedia:Searching#Google_search_of_Wikipedia. Martin 13:16, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)


actually, that's not answered your question. My apologies. Martin 13:45, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Did you try the "refresh" button? Can you see today the new content? Is the error reproducible with other pages on your computer? Maybe it has to do with our two servers: www.wikipedia.org and en2.wikipedia.org (see a little bit above) Fantasy 15:35, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The page is Indian writing in English( lower case 'w' in writing). When I created it I had named it as Indian Writing in English(uppercase 'W' in writing) and a veteran Wikipedian had done some redirection. Through some research I have come to this probable conclusion- the Google search gives the more popular usage capital "Writing" instead of small "writing". And this leads to a page that has a redirect. And this redirect page works on a cached version of the page concerned. I tried it a few times and everytime I got the same result. Does this happen with every redirect page? If so, then how much is the the time lag ? Is anyone aware of this problem. Please enlighten me/ or look into it.KRS 15:51, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Have you tried clearing your cache? Angela
I have tried it.Actually, as I mentioned it is not something to do within Wikipedia- here I get the correct version even in redirect (If it is to do with the cache I should get the same result even within Wikipedia). It is only when I type the words in Google and get a link through that do I get this problem. In fact when I tried to check page history after follwing through Google, the latest changes were recorded!!KRS 16:39, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)
KRS, my guess is this has nothing to do with Google, case-sensitivity or redirects, but something to do with browser sessions, wikipedia or wikipedia's handling of sessions. I tried out exactly what you suggested and came across the same result. I still get a very outdated page if I go to the link via google.
I had discovered a similar problem when I once went to the URL http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineage . It had some junk line "werfhjgu" and I put up the page at VfD. When I logged in and went to the same link, I found a neat page saying "(There is currently no text in this page)". When I logged out and went to the page, I found the junk again.
Are you opening a new browser window when you go to Google ? If so, you're not logged-in to Wikipedia thru' that browser. Solution to your problem would be to login to wikipedia using that very window, and u'll find all the recently added text magically re-appear. Open another Google window and go to the same link and you'll find its still got the outdated page ! (I assume you're using Internet Explorer. Opera users won't face this problem.)
Jay 18:19, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Whatever be the problem, the data should be somewhere in cyberspace.I don't think it has anything to do with browser sessions[ with my limited knowledge]. I think that there is some kind of permanent storage [I don't know computer terminology/ slangs for all this:-)]system in Wikipedia and this might be not uptodate. Somehow, maybe, the Google link goes here rather than to the latest versionKRS 10:21, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Lets narrow down and remove Google out of the picture. Step 1. open a fresh browser window and go to the URL "http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Writing_in_English" (W is in caps). You'll get a very old page. Step 2. Click on the "Log in" link and login to Wikipedia. You'll get the new page. Jay 17:18, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The problem seems to be that the server-side HTML cache got stuck when the page was moved on July 24. I'll put it on my to do list. -- Tim Starling 23:59, Oct 8, 2003 (UTC)
Correction: the HTML cache for Indian_Writing_in_English was left in place after the page move on July 24. It was not invalidated, and hence anonymous requests return the old version. I guess the HTML cache for all incoming redirects should be invalidated when the article itself changes. As a workaround, you could edit the redirect in some trivial way, which will force the cache to be invalidated. -- Tim Starling 00:13, Oct 9, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks a lot,Tim Starling. I followed your suggestions. It worked!!!Thanks to Jay too, for taking the trouble.KRS 05:03, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I spoke too soon!The same problems arise as soon as another edit is made in the main page. Does this mean that everytime an edit is made in the main page, some change has to be made in the Redirect page? KRS 09:45, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Yes, your diagnosis is correct. This is a bug, and will be fixed eventually. -- Tim Starling 00:35, Oct 12, 2003 (UTC)

Articles about songs

Whats the policy for writing the lirycs of a copyrighted song? --Antonio Who's that....boy????? Martin

I asked the same questions myself on Wikipedia:Copyright issues and the answer is that you do not have the right to reproduce the entire lyrics, but you can link to an external site or quote partial lyrics. --Dori 03:37, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Erik Zachte's stats

Erik Zachte's stats are gone [1]. Where did they go? --Menchi 02:50, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Um... larousse? -- Tim Starling 02:59, Oct 6, 2003 (UTC)
I rarely get to see those stats these days. :-( Tomos 20:04, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Donation header

Wikipedia:Donation header discussion moved. -- Taku 06:51, Oct 7, 2003 (UTC)

Afghanistan title

I request that the article U.S. Attack on Afghanistan be renamed US-led military operation in Afghanist or something similar. The current title is grossly POV and just plain inaccurate. There was some discussion of this at the relevant Talk page but nothing was eventually done. Adam 05:39, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I'd say go ahead and move it if no one comments. They probably will then. :-) Ark30inf 06:14, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Do I just create the new page, cut-n-paste the text, and leave a "moved to" notice at the old one? Or is there some other protocol I should know about? Adam
See Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page -- Tim Starling 06:22, Oct 6, 2003 (UTC)
Thank goodness you asked. N'ver cut-n-paste. --Menchi 06:24, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
OK I have followed Tim's advice. I have also done pretty major surgery on the article, now US-led military operations in Afghanistan, which was far too long and POVish. There will be tears I fear. Adam 06:51, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Looking at your surgery I would say that there are quite a bit of silliness that you cut out. But I probably would have done the most egregious examples first and make my changes slowly over time to give everyone time to comment on the changes separately. Its difficult for people to logically debate 5k of changes at a time. Ark30inf 06:59, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

What happened to Be Bold in Editing? :)

I have now created a new problem. The article U.S. Attack on Afghanistan was already redirected to US invasion of Afghanistan. I have now redirected US invasion of Afghanistan to US-led military operations in Afghanistan. Let us call these 1, 2 and 3. Now we have the position that 1 redirects to 2, and 2 redirects to 3, but 1 does not redirect to 3, which is where the new and improved text is. Solutions? Adam 07:34, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Edit 1, so that it goes straight to 3. Double redirects don't work. Use the "what links here" feature to find any additional double redirects, and fix them too. -- Tim Starling 07:47, Oct 6, 2003 (UTC)
I can't edit 1, because it redirects to 2 :/ Adam
When you go to 1, it will redirect you to a page saying:
2
(redirected from 1)
  1. REDIRECT 3


The 1 link in that page is a URL with redirects disabled, so clicking on it will take you to the actual 1 page, which you can then edit. -- Tim Starling 08:00, Oct 6, 2003 (UTC)
When I tried to redirect 1 to 3 by that method, I got a message saying: A page of that name already exists, or the name you have chosen is not valid. Please choose another name.
You're not meant to move 1 to 3, you just manually edit the text of the redirect. BTW, Mav has reverted your move, on the basis that you "carelessly left behind many broken redirects". You'll have to perform the move again, then fix the redirects. There's about 15 redirects to be fixed. -- Tim Starling 08:42, Oct 6, 2003 (UTC)

Mav has in fact undone everything I did, and since I am sick of arguing with leftoids about Afghanistan and Iraq, I won't bother with it further. This is one reason reason why Wikipedia has a looooong way to go before it is a real encyclopaedia. Adam 08:45, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Don't be discouraged if some Wikipedians lack graces. The title change looks ok and others can help scoop up the redirect links and check out the POV you complained about - Marshman 17:45, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I set up a vote Talk:U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. My hope is that people will agree quickly on a neutral title and we can be done with it. Daniel Quinlan 09:25, Oct 6, 2003 (UTC)

Adam, you've revived an old - and passionate - argument over what the title of this page should be. I share Daniel's hope that this gets settled quickly. Arno 09:04, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Problem uploading image

I tried to upload an image and got an error : "Sorry, uploads have been disabled on this server." Since I've never uploaded an image before and having no idea of how to make sense of this error message, I browsed all of wikipedia for a "correct" way of uploading an image. Finally I decided to post on the Wikipedia:Image talk pages. Luckily before that I came to village pump and got the answer.

I request that the error message be changed to a user-friendly one. Otherwise the user will firstly be confused with what "this server" means, and secondly he'll wonder if its a permission problem which is preventing him from uploading.


May the error message be changed to : "Sorry, you cannot upload files now as the Wikipedia server is under maintenance. Uploads can be resumed in xx minutes (or xx hours)"
Jay 16:39, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I've added a link to Wikipedia:Server status. Hope that helps.—Eloquence 23:12, Oct 6, 2003 (UTC)
Why are uploads disabled? I've asked on wikitech-l and I've made some comments here, but no-one has answered. How can there be "synchronisation issues" when there is only one server operational for days at a time? Why can't we just set $wgDisableUploads to 0, then rsync the files after larousse comes back on? -- Tim Starling 00:37, Oct 7, 2003 (UTC)
It'd muck up any attempt to upload new versions of files that had changed or were added since things were moved back to larousse. If someone wants to fix the upload handling code to check for mismatches and missing files and handle them gracefully, we could safely turn it back on here before larousse is brought back. --Brion 00:56, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Thanks. Okay, I've patched the live server so that any images which were touched after 20031003140000 cannot be overwritten. That is roughly the time when the backup of the files was made. Image deletions are disabled. Is that good enough? Say the word and I will turn off $wgDisableUploads. -- Tim Starling 01:42, Oct 7, 2003 (UTC)
That sounds like it should do fine, assuming you're using the timestamp from the image table for that determination. Go for it! --Brion 01:48, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Hang on... Everyone: don't try it out until I say it's okay. -- Tim Starling 01:53, Oct 7, 2003 (UTC)

Okay, image uploads are now working, in a manner of speaking. For the moment, you won't be able to alter any images with a timestamp later than 14:00, October 3. I know this is annoying, but I think it's better than nothing. -- Tim Starling 02:07, Oct 7, 2003 (UTC)

Yay it works: Frank Forde. Order of Lenin for Tim Adam 02:24, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)


Thank you Adam. Slight change: now you can update images as long as their most recent entry is not in the bracket from 14:00 Oct 3 to 00:00 October 7 -- that's the region where the image files are in the database but missing from pliny. -- Tim Starling 02:27, Oct 7, 2003 (UTC)

Um, I don't know what that means but so long as it is now working I don't think I need to :) Adam

It currently isn't working for me; it gives: A database query syntax error has occurred. The last attempted database query was: "SELECT img_timestamp FROM image WHERE img_name='Napier's_bones_(board_and_rods).png'" from within function "isImageProtected". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 's_bones_(board_and_rods).png at line 1". I think the apostrophe in the name is messing it up, because when I change it it works fine. Evil saltine 08:46, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Missing wfStrencode. Fixed, I think. -- Tim Starling 00:47, Oct 13, 2003 (UTC)

Link to Wikisource on the main page

Any reason there's no link to Wikisource under the "Sister Projects" section of the main page? Axlrosen 17:56, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Because Wikisource is not a Wikimedia project yet (and may never be due to the fact that Wikibooks does pretty much the same thing already - although I did reserve the http://wikisource.org domain name just in case). All "Wikisource" is right now is a collection of text files squating on the Pashtu Wikipedia. --mav 06:10, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Japanese Ship Names

The list of Japanese ship names contain some links to Japanese provinces and cities since some of the ships are named after those places. I am wondering if it is appropriate to make all of the links for all of the ships into ex. Akagi (aircraft carrier) since I do not know which ships are named after provinces or cities. In this way there would never be a clash. Similarly, some of the battleships are named in the form Japanese battleship Yamato to avoid this. I would like to rename them to Yamato (battleship). Is this the correct path to take or is there another suggestion? Thanks. Ark30inf 22:57, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Don't count on me much but it seems battle ships are named after old provinces such as yamato or musashi while small ships are named after month names such as yutsuki (notice tsuki means moon and month in Japanese). -- Taku
I am intending on putting in some more ships and would like to see a common format for all the titles. P.S. My intention was to put in the translated names of the ships at some point so English readers can understand what the names actually mean. "Red Castle" is a neat name but most English speakers know it only as Akagi without knowing the meaning.Ark30inf 23:09, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I don't see any established convention yet. As long as consistent, your proposal should work. Please check if there is a wiki project working on this issue to coordinate with others. Also it would be nice to have a mutual links between places and ships. Good luck! -- Taku
I found a convention. It looks like there is some dispute about what the prefix for Japanese ships is. It is listed as IJNS/IJSDFS some places but this does not follow the convention that the prefix should be the same that the crew used when the ship was in service. So, since there is no settled prefix, the correct titles would have (nationality) (ship type) (name). I wish we had a firmly settled prefix, but will go with the recommended version at this time.Ark30inf 23:35, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Have you taken a look at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships) and Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships? I must admit that in the only articles I've written, I've named the articles Nachi, Haguro, and Ikazuchi but been inconsistent and named them IJN... within the articles, which really ought to be removed. Arwel 23:57, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think I got the title names straight. Now I want to have a list of the names of the ships translated into English (example: Akagi means "Red Castle"). Would it be best to have a new article like maybe Translations of Japanese ship names or would it be best to just put the translations on the current index page next to the ships? Thanks.Ark30inf 00:53, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I like literal translations belong to each corresponding article because it seems norm here. See other Japanese-related articles. But certainly there is no objection to make such an article Translations of Japanese ship names. -- Taku
I normally agree, but having the real meaning of these names in one place in addition to the article seems useful to me. I am thinking that the ones named after provinces, etc. will get grouped together. The names are particularly beautiful and interesting as far as ship names go. I think I will give it a try, if it doesn't work then it can go to the deletion pile, no harm done.Ark30inf 03:37, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)


Wikipedia:Cleanup is open for business

The Wikipedia:Cleanup page is a buffer designed by Cimon Avaro, Stevertigo and others to take the load off of Wikipedia:Votes for deletion, which gets overused (up to 90k this week!). Descriptions and each listing's "life" on WP:CU are to be kept very short, allowing for rapid 'first handling' of a large number of articles, like Special:Recentchanges but with a solicitation for immediate community assistance in determinig/validating the article's path.

Needs to replace or coexist with VfD link on the top of the recent changes page.Ark30inf
I would just replace "Pages needing attention". That one is pretty much deadweight anyway. (IMO) -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 08:22, Oct 7, 2003 (UTC)
Apparently the problem is that there are too much editorial discussions. We should discuss if there is any reason to delete an article, not the article is if worth, useful or well-written. -- Taku
Yes, theres a lot of stuff that needs taking care of--sysops will just go ahead and delete or otherwise do. Newbies need a place to start action, though they may be unsure of the action - ie copyvio, deletion, etc. etc. We sysops tend to think of simply deleting nonsense, or making a fast change, we forget we need to harness newbie power.戴&#30505sv
Exactly, there are too much nonsenses listed on VfD, which sysop just go ahead deleting. And there are a number of articles whose existence is controversial, which VfD is not suitable to discuss. -- Taku
Awesome-- thats one convert to the Cleanup buffer idea-- its in use now, Taku san. -Ohayho gozaimasu- me sleep now.戴&#30505sv
  • What exactly is the process of deleting a page through Cleanup? And how is Cleanup different from Wikipedia:Pages needing attention? And what formal process occured to remove Wikipedia:Pages needing attention from the utilities listed on Recent Changes? I feel Wikipedia:Pages needing attention should be re-added to the utilities list. Kingturtle 22:49, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Media files

I just uploaded a sound file, but it seems that the pages relating to the uploading of files were designed for images, so the file is now named: Image:Albanian alphabet.ogg, and that page also is tailored for images. Is there a plan to make that page and the naming more generic? --Dori 03:15, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

If anyone gets around to patching it up yes, but it's not a high priority, as there's no real functional difference to renaming the description pages. Use [[media:Albanian alphabet.ogg]] to create an inline link direct to an uploaded file (of any type). --Brion 03:18, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

photo overwriting

I notice that when I upload a photo I can upload another photo with the same name and overwrite the old one, without any kind of "are you sure?" warning. This is fine when it is my photo I am replacing, but how do I know I am not overwriting someone else's photo with the same name in another article, without realising it? Adam 05:43, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

You check: look at the image description page, it'll list all uploads under that name. If you notice the mistake after the fact, revert to the previous version and upload your file with a more descriptive name. --Brion 06:12, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Making your image filenames personal will help, for example white.horses.dac.jpg. This is most unlikely to be repeated by another person.
Adrian Pingstone
Adrian's solution seems to be the best one. But would it not be useful to have a message which says "warning: there is already an image of that name in our server. Do you wish to replace it? If not, please rename your image."? Adam
Of course it would be useful, but it's very low on the priority list, which is topped with making the Wikipedia usable by humans as well as beings with much less hurried senses of time perception such as trees and geologic formations. :) So, it's left until someone with the itch scratches it and writes in the appropriate checks and interface. --Brion 08:59, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I'm not sure if Brion is directing his sarcasm at me there, and if so why, but never mind. :) If someone would like to visit Vergina and fix my photo positioning and captioning, I would be grateful. Adam 09:03, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Don't think it was meant to be sarcasm... just an admission that our heroic but undermanned developer effort has to be directed at speeding up the pedia at the moment, and other things sadly have to wait. Pete 09:23, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It'll be helpful if the following line is included in Special:Upload page, beginning of the 2nd para. "If a file with the name you are specifying already exists on Wikipedia it'll get replaced without warning. So unless you deliberately wish to overwrite a file, it'll be a good idea to first check if such a file exists."

Above warning line has not yet been added in the Special:Upload page. Can someone with permissions to edit Special pages add it. Jay 19:49, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Agree that some extra overwrite protection in software is a good idea, and also agree that it's not a high priority.


The protection isn't too bad as it is, IMO. After uploading a new image, you should always update the image description page to add some details: Who created the image and when, and a copyright release notice, at the very least.
So if you've accidentally overwritten a previous image, there should already be details there, and so you immediately know you've blundered and can fix it.
If this image was already used by any page, there will be unexpected entries in the 'what links here' section of the image description page. If there aren't then at least you know that you haven't damaged any existing articles. The overwritten image was an orphan. Of course it could be one that someone is about to use, but when they do they'll see the problem. So you haven't actually damaged the content of Wikipedia, which is the articles it contains.
How's this for a suggestion: Immediately before uploading a new image, update the article in which you intend to use it, adding the image as you intend. This has three main benefits. Firstly, it allows you to see how your alternate text works. Secondly, it verifies for you that the image name you have in mind is free. Use 'show preview' to check this, and choose a new name at this stage if it's not.
After uploading the image you may still want to tweak the format, but it's far better if you can avoid this. Not everyone has the same screen parameters as you have. So it's far better for your layout to be designed to be logical rather than tuned to your own particular display settings. That's the third benefit, and may even be the most important of the three. Andrewa 06:36, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Feature request submitted to SourceForge - see wikipedia:bug reports for information. The advice on avoiding overwriting images should be added to wikipedia:image use policy, wikipedia:image description page and/or wikipedia:image markup gallery. Martin 11:01, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yes. Perhaps I'm not being bold enough here. The image use policy page seems the obvious place for it IMO, but this page is already getting a bit long and messy, possibly needs a refactor in any case. And, I'm fairly new at using images, which is why I called my suggestion a suggestion rather than a recommendation. Andrewa 20:35, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)


Technical Help

Dear Sir,We are a group of 3 students currently pursuing our B.E - IT (Bachelor of Engg. Information Technology)from the Mumbai University,India. As of now we are working on a project titled " AUTO EXTRACTION OF CONTENTS FROM THE WORLD WIDE WEB" as a part of our BE project, in the renowned institute os HBCSE-TIFR (Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education - Tata Institute of Fundamental Research)under the guidance of Scientist Dr.Nagarjuna.G. --Rameez Don , Jaymin Darbari, Ulhas Dhuri Note:Full text moved to User:Rameez-戴&#30505sv

I moved the full text to the userpage because it was too long for the pump. 戴&#30505sv

This Statistics link is broken on Wikipedia:Statistics.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm
Kpjas 23:08, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Those stats were on the server that's dead at the moment. I'll go ahead and upload the last set I've got (from September 27) for now. --Brion 23:14, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

it's all Greek to me

any thoughts on why my Greek letters aren't working? Pnyx Adam 11:58, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think you missed the semicolons. --Wik 12:01, Oct 8, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for that. It didn't occur to me that the semicolons were part of the character code Adam

Donation progress bar

Why not make a status bar for the Wikimedia donations (like the one for the Brian Vibber fund)? Being able to see the donation progress would certainly motivate more people to donate. Thomas

I agree. Sort of the like that Amazon.com September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks victims fund meter. :-) —Frecklefoot
That sounds good to me. I don't know the particular bars and meters mentioned above, but one format that might work well would be to set some costed objective, and show what was in hand and what was still needed to buy it. Then update to a new objective as each is met. This introduces an accountability that many people like. But it also does have an overhead in doing the costing, and in deciding in advance how the money is to be spent. One Australian charity recently had a very negative PR experience when they launched a very successful appeal for money for victims of the Bali bombing, and then directed some of this money into other related projects. Still unresolved as I write, but it's done them a lot of no good. Andrewa 01:33, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)
This was mentioned at the start (Wikipedia:Donation#Others topics to develop).
Mav said he'd do this [2]. --Menchi 01:46, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I think this is a great idea. I'd be more inclined to donate if I had some notion of progress/goals. -- Minesweeper 20:05, Oct 9, 2003 (UTC)

Broken image?

Is the second image on the Jämthund page broken to anyone else? (Image:Jamth.PNG) All I see is a black box, but it looks fine to Michael Reiter (who uploaded it). How about everyone else? -- sannse 21:13, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It looks fine to me, using Mozilla 1.4 ¬ Dori 21:15, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Okay here too, Mozilla 1.0. Daniel Quinlan
I also see the black box - Browser is IE6 Sandman 22:26, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)
But shows up in Netscape 7.0 - Sandman 22:29, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The image is no longer Image:Jamth.PNG that Sannse mentioned. Its been changed to jamthund.PNG and then to JAMTHUND.PNG and then to jamthund.png. So you might want to wait until Michael Reiter is done with it ;) Jay 22:37, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)
It doesn't matter, the one he says shows up in Mozilla fine but is b0rked under IE which does not fully support PNGs. ¬ Dori 22:44, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Thanks all - I've switched the image over to Dori's version - that should solve the problem nicely -- sannse 20:15, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Someone complained

Someone complained about the oversize logo-- at 37k -- I resized it to 11K and uploaded it over wiki.png -- a developer needs to install it. It doesnt count as a change since its just a bit-depth adjustment for size purposes.戴眩sv 02:38, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

As I pointed out on the image description page shortly after you uploaded it, that image looked very poor due to the removal of the alpha channel. This was especially evident around the lettering. I uploaded a set of 4 non-transparent logo images, each with a different background colour, and in indexed mode so they are also around 11K. They are displayed on Image talk:Wiki partial background.png (Brion moved your logo to Image:Wiki partial background.png). -- Tim Starling 02:54, Oct 9, 2003 (UTC)
I've replaced it with an 8k version with transparency that will work against light-colored backgrounds, and with the colors cut down to 64. --Brion 03:15, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Mail notification with dummy mail ID

I receieved a mail notification from apache@www.wikipedia.org . I replied to it and my reply went to webmaster@www.wikipedia.org . 4 days later I received a mail delivery failure notification. Is this a dummy mail ID or I just need to try sending once again ? I've never seen www in a mail ID before. Jay

If this was a new-password e-mail, it's just a dummy address, don't respond to it. If it was something else, um, what was this e-mail? --Brion 18:19, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Ya it was a change password notification. Henceforth, for such notifications we can have a line saying "Please do not reply to this mail."
ok here was the content of the mail : "Someone (probably you, from IP address 205.188.209.136) requested that we send you a new Wikipedia login password."
I replied saying that I have never requested for change of password, nor is the IP address mine, and listed a couple of users who have used the said IP address. Jay 18:46, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

A bug or something?

Goto The Golden Gate, click on Gates in Jerusalem's Old City Walls and you come to an edit box with a lot of text. But you are supposed to come to a written article! BL 22:11, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

  • Weird. I tried editing both the pages to see if that would help but it didn't. Angela 22:24, Oct 9, 2003 (UTC)
  • It's working now (for me anyway). Angela 22:35, Oct 9, 2003 (UTC)
    • For me too.. weird. BL 22:41, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)
      • I had a similar case some shortly ago, when a link stayed red even though the article referenced existed, and thus the article was always called in edit mode. After the referenced article was edited once the database seemed to have updated the links. andy 07:25, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)
It happened to me, and one of our resident bird-ologists (forgot which) as well. --Menchi 07:37, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The link table looks fine, could memcached be the problem? Is there any easy way to find out? -- Tim Starling 07:55, Oct 10, 2003 (UTC)


Blocked user?

I blocked 137.142.177.139, thinking they contributing to the vandalism of Oscar the Grouch. I was wrong, and now the site isn't list List of blocked IP addresses and usernames, so I don't know how to unblock them. - user:zanimum

I'd guess that if Special:Ipblocklist doesn't say they are blocked then they are not. Are you sure you did? Perhaps someone else unblocked them and didn't tell you. Or did you do it more than a day ago? Blocks only last 24 hours in usual circumstances. Anyway, thankyou for reminding me of some copyvios this user made about a month ago that I never got round to following up. :) Angela 17:12, Oct 10, 2003 (UTC)
24 hours? That's it? Oh. Learn something new every day. Thanks, and your welcome. - user:zanimum

User:Mediator

... has been creating a considerable number of pages with regard to a mediation process. So far these seem well-meaning. But a question arises: Does this mediator, who has elected to remained anonymous, have the community's support for these activities? Can someone come forward and vouch for the integrity and commitment of this user? Indeed, can anyone vouch for user:Mediator being a Wikipedian in good standing? Louis Kyu Won Ryu 22:26, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Rather than cluttering up the pump with responses, use these handy links:

-- Cyan 22:39, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I've just blocked him from editing Wikipedia. Please see user:mediator for details. Debate -> user talk:mediator/ban. Martin 22:53, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Getting offensive articles rewritten

So where do I go to get an article like Homophobic hate speech rewritten? It doesn't belong on Votes for Deletion, because the article itself doesn't need to be deleted. It doesn't need to go on the page listing POV articles, because it isn't the POV that I'm objecting to. It's the use of a single term which takes up 1/3 of the entire article, in graphic detail. There are tons of other offensive terms that could be listed here, let's not be minimalists, let's go with all of them, okay? And then we can have Offensive terms for Jews and Offensive terms for Italians and Offensive terms for African Americans, etc. I seem to recall List of offensive terms for Germans having gotten deleted at some point. So why does this one term, on this page, keep getting re-added, when other offensive terms for gays are not included, and why are we not coming up with exhaustive pages of offensive terms for every other group in the world? RickK 03:10, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I re-added this to the page, since it seems to have been deleted for no acceptable reason. RickK 06:47, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Actually, moved to Talk:Homophobic hate speech. See the move note reading Getting offensive articles rewritten -> talk:Homophobic hate speech a little way above.
My apologies for any confusion this may have caused. Martin 14:49, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Neutral text

I don't think this quite rises to the level of problem of an NPOV dispute or an edit war, but I'd like someone (or multiple someones) to look at the following two paragraphs from Rush Limbaugh (initially, without looking at the edit history and discussion) and take a gander at which is more successful at being neutral.

In September 2001, Limbaugh denied suggestions that his voice and diction had changed. However, on October 8, 2001, he admitted that the changes in his voice were due to complete deafness in his left ear and substantial hearing loss in his right ear. Rush also revealed that his radio staff was aiding him in concealing his rapidly progressing hearing loss and subsequent deafness by setting up a system where Rush could maintain a conversation with callers. Some listeners could discern the change, especially after Rush was unable to hear callers, sometimes a longer delay between a caller ending his point and Limbaugh responding, and sometimes he would seem to accidentally talk over a caller. Some critics of Rush contend that this episode and his month-long concealment of his deafness constitutes a lie. Most listeners of Rush do not feel that way.
By September 2001, Limbaugh's listeners had noted changes in his voice and diction, changes that Limbaugh initially denied. However, on October 8, 2001, he reversed himself, admitting that the changes in his voice were due to complete deafness in his left ear and substantial hearing loss in his right ear. Rush also revealed that his radio staff was aiding him in concealing his rapidly progressing hearing loss by setting up a system where Rush could appear to hear his callers. The system worked remarkably well, but did not deceive all listeners, some of whom noted a long delay between a caller ending his point and Limbaugh responding, and Rush occasionally speaking over a caller. Some critics of Rush contend that this episode and his month-long concealment of his deafness constitutes a lie. Most listeners of Rush do not feel that way.

Thanks. Daniel Quinlan 07:21, Oct 11, 2003 (UTC)

Please respond at talk:Rush Limbaugh

That instruction rather conflicts with giving an opinion uncoloured by the article's history. Would responding at User_talk:Daniel Quinlam/Rush Limbaugh be better? user:Pcb21


Bug/User:Sex/User:Zoe

Not sure if this is a software issue or something more sinster so thought I'd ask here first. The number one article on Wikipedia:Most Wanted Articles is User:Sex. Now I've never seen this user editing and editors who've signed comments on 1000+ pages normal have a user page and I've normally seen them editting.... thus I thought some prankster had editted the MWA page to put a non-existent User:Sex on top. But no, if you click http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/User:Sex there are indeed 1400+ pages listed. So I thought I'd check a few pages out, get to meet this User:Sex but there was no such user making comments. To add a little more to the mystery all the pages that I checked out had the common feature that User:Zoe had signed a comment on them. However clicking http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/User:Zoe gives a different set of pages. Any detectives in the house? Pete 14:34, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It looks like Zoe's page was moved to User:Sex at some point (I would guess by the banned user Michael), and then moved back again. Beyond that, I don't know what's going on. --Camembert
Ok, thanks for your help. I created a User:Sex page as a stop-gap solution so that it will be removed from MWA whenever it is next generated. 147.114.226.175 15:41, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)


That's a rather unfortunate case of link table corruption. Moving pages with lots of links to them can cause this sometimes. I'm fixing it... -- Tim Starling 00:19, Oct 12, 2003 (UTC)
Okay, I changed all the entries in the link table that were pointing to User:Sex so that they point to User:Zoe. It's possible some legitimate entries got moved as well, so now Special:Whatlinkshere/User:Sex doesn't really tell you anything useful. -- Tim Starling 00:30, Oct 12, 2003 (UTC)
I think we should be ok, don't there has been a User:Sex (or at least if there has, they never had a user page) so your change should be 100% accurate. Thanks very much for sorting that one out, Tim. Pete 00:55, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Plagiarism or POV?

Just by chance, I found a Web page ( http://www.geocities.com/neue_strassenbahn/chosunhan.html ) that is remarkably similar in wording to the Wikipedia page Korean names for Korea, which was created and has been mostly edited by Nanshu. I am concerned because the non-Wiki Web site (main page: http://www.geocities.com/neue_strassenbahn/index.html ) is definitely POV (pro-Japan, anti-Korea), and either the creator of that Web site plagiarized Wikipedia, or Nanshu is the creator of that Web site.

Nanshu is intelligent and knowledgeable about northeast Asian history, but he consistently makes subtly anti-Korean edits to Korea-related pages, which he claims are in the name of NPOVing. Some of the edits he makes are accurate, but not everything he has changed falls into that category. Not every edit he makes is an attempt at NPOVing--sometimes he simply changes the POV. In other words, changing "X" to "Y" is not the solution; "some people say X and some people say Y" would be much better.

Can someone look at the Wiki and non-Wiki page, and let me know what they think? --Sewing 22:41, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

That nonWiki site is obviously anti-Korean. Just look at its title: "Korea, the Preposterous World". But that's none of our business. Outside of Wikipedia, it's a wild world!
  • Did he plagiarize Korean names for Korea? The author did paraphrase a lot, so not entirely.
  • Is Nanshu the alter ego of that webmaster? I cannot tell, and we probably will never know. In any case, but so long as a person doesn't bring his POV into the door of Wikipedia and writes good stuff, we treat them as good contributors. (Note that it's probably very hard for most inherently POV people to lose their POV just to enter WP, but that's not the point.)
I haven't been following Nanshu's work that closely, could you point out some examples of his anti-Korean words?
If you encounter a POV passage (his or anobody else's), NPOV it and point it out the Talk page of the article. If discussion does not go well and it becomes an edit war, add it to Wikipedia:Current disputes over articles.
--Menchi 02:45, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Thanks. It's a fine line between accuracy and inaccuracy in his edits. On the Korean names for Korea page, he writes that Korea became independent from China in the 1890s, which is a traditional Japanese interpretation of what happened, since it helped to legitimate Japan's annexation of the country in 1910. Two more examples are Dangun and Taekwondo. Dangun is almost certainly mythical anyhow, so he's probably correct; and on the Taekwondo page, he posted a link to a long paper which convincingly argues that Taekwondo is derived from Karate; nevertheless, sometimes I think he adds material in this format:
"Some Koreans claim X, which is wrong." Why not just not add it in the first place?
--Sewing 16:27, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Login password

Wikipedia no longer remebers my login password, although I always click the "Remember my password" checkbox. Is this problem universal now or is it me? Tempshill

I have this problem too. — Alex756 22:31, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)
You may have cookies blocked. -Smack 02:00, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I had this problem for a while but it's now come good, no deliberate changes to cookie management at my end (with Win98 it's hard to be definitive on this, and XP is worse, hey that's POV but true). I assumed it was just part of the server problems, and my personal decision was not to even raise issues of this sort until the server situation improves.
I could be wrong, and in any case I haven't even asked our wonderful overworked underthanked server administrators if this is a good thing or whether they'd still like to know about every little glitch. They do need to know about any important problem, to me this is just a minor annoyance but sometimes knowing about a little glitch helps solve a big one.
(And in any case, people you are doing so much so well with so little, hang in there, and thank you.) Andrewa 05:59, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Another thing to check is exactly what domain name you're coming in on. The cookies are linked to the domain name, but for a while there've been several ways you could get to the site: www.wikipedia.org, wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org, en2.wikipedia.org, even www.wikipedia.com... If you logged in on one and then visited another, the second "site" couldn't read the first's cookie.
I've just tweaked up the config to standardize on en.wikipedia.org and send you there from whichever name variant you came in on, so from here out things should be easier. --Brion 08:00, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Scoring articles

I have some proposal to address. It seems that the mess in VfD and cleanup is due to the disparities among wikipedians about the quality of aritlces in wikipedia. Those called inclusionists including me tend to defend keeping articles that are even less than stubs while deletionists are inclined to maintain the quality of wikipedia at whole even it takes to get rid of articles that are adequate stubs but contribute to making wikipedia look chessy. It seems to me that the problem is rather that every single article is treated equaly. Some articles are brilliant prose while some are crap or bot's generated.

Anyway, my proposal is to evaluate all articles with the range of 1-5 scores. 5 means brilliant prose, 4 peer-reviewed copyedited article, 3 draft, 2 stub and 1 less than stub or non-sense. This put a lot more burden to wikipedians but we really need some kind of approval system. The growth in the number does not consist with that in the quality. I am afraid that the vast number of the nonsense and bot-generated articles make wikipedia look like a trash. It is important to remember that readers might make a quick guess about the quality of wikipedia only by seeing stubs or less than stubs. -- Taku 23:04, Oct 11, 2003 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Wikipedia approval mechanism for prior discussion of this point. See wikipedia:bug reports to submit a feature request. See wikitech-l to volunteer to help develop MediaWiki and code your request yourself. Please don't submit feature requests to the village pump. Martin 00:48, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

This is not a feature request and I have already read Wikipedia approval mechanism. -- Taku

The argument isn't usually about the quality of the text, it's usually about the appropriateness of the topic. These kinds of debates will go on until we formally decide whether or not Wikipedia is the appropriate place for every postal code in the world, or any random elementary school, or any professor who has written a paper, or any subway station in any town, or anyone who gets 20 hits on Google, etc. I'd try to organize some sort of formal decisions on these topics but I'm not sure I have the energy... Axlrosen 14:49, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

We have had this debate on the mailing list several times (This username is just an pseudonym for another username). Most people don't want an approval mechanism. That would ruin the wiki-ness of it. ++Liberal 16:26, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Deleted images

Why does the "Great thinking, New thought" logo stolen from the People's Daily by User:Paektu still appear on his page even though it has been preumably deleted? --Jiang 01:50, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Okay, I deleted it. It's probably still on larousse though. -- Tim Starling 02:05, Oct 12, 2003 (UTC)

Does anyone know anything about solid-fuel stoves?

A request for help with the portable stove article can be found at Wikipedia:Peer review.


Poorly written page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Fairfield. SD6-Agent 02:24, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Only content was "According to a letter in my possession, the Captain, in March 1835, was P.(?) A. Vallette. That is all I know." followed by an e-mail address. Please list requests for deletion at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. Angela 10:37, Oct 12, 2003 (UTC)

Death of Jim Cairns

The former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, Jim Cairns, died yesterday. I have posted a much-expanded article on him. Whoever edits the Main Page might like to consider this for the Recent Deaths section. Adam 05:47, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

What did he die of? -- Anon
Old age Adam
User:Poor Yorick added it. --Menchi 06:03, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Thanks, o fellow of infinite jest Adam

Bali bombing

Also, why has 2002 Bali terrorist bombing disappeared from the Anniversaries section of the Main Page? It was there yesterday (Oct 11), but it has gone today (Oct 12), which is the actuall anniversary. Adam

Because generally events get listed a day after their corresponding day page drops off the Main Page. The other events act as a kind of "best of" summary at that point. --mav 08:50, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I checked about 5 versions of history and couldn't see why it's removed. Re-added. --Menchi 06:38, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Many thanks Adam

2003_invasion_of_Iraq

For some reasons I can't explain, I can't save my edit at 2003_invasion_of_Iraq. I want to revert, I go to history, choose an older version, edit, and save. It says it is saved, but it doesnot. Can someone check to tell me what is going on ? Thanks Anthère 15:50, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

the other reverted back his edit. Perhaps to the previous edit in history. Me reverting to the same history could perhaps explain that no change is taken into consideration.
I still do not understand well, but do not take into consideration then
Wikipedia:Clear your cache - it's always worth a shot. CGS 23:33, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC).

PLoS License

Does anyone know whether the Public Library of Science license is compatible with the use of their materials in Wikipedia? It should be similar to the BioMedCentral license.

This is a tricky issue. It's the Creative Commons Attribution license [3], which, as with almost all other attribution-but-otherwise-free licenses, is "almost GFDL compatible". The GFDL has no problem with requiring authorship attribution in most cases (and in fact does so itself), but when a work has more than 5 authors, only requires you to attribute 5 of them. Thus, the following scenario would lead to a license conflict: you take a CC-licensed work, and 5 users substantially edit and add to it. Now under the GFDL, you are permitted to attribute it to these 5 users, and not attribute the sixth author, while under the CC license you are required to attribute the original author still. This is a relatively minor conflict in my mind, but it may still be a technical one. --Delirium 09:28, Oct 13, 2003 (UTC)

Wikis in Current events

Maybe a dumb question from a newcomer, but why add wiki links to entries on the Current events pages when the articles that are linked to are so often not relevant to the news item in question?

We like links. :-) Just look around to confirm that. Excessive linking does make the text hard to read so anything more than a link every three words is bad. So we all should prioritize what we link in that respect. --mav 08:48, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)



Votes for Deletion

I've already posted this to VfD's talk page, but something has been screwed up on that page, with the result that October 5 ad 6 are duplicated. The resulting mess is too much for me to figure out how to sort out. Am I the only one seeing this (if so, I promise to take a wiki-break for the rest of the evening)? If not, how can we get this repaired? Please help. :) Jwrosenzweig 23:20, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I see it too.. odd. I'm betting there's a section edit/edit conflict thing going on. (goes to check...) -- Jake 23:24, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)
It appeared in Wartortle's edit an hour or so ago diff, looks like it just got fixed. -- Jake 23:29, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Hrmm, we seem to be going through logos rather quickly. The current one needs transparency. Evercat 23:27, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Who decides on these logo changes? I guess that the big contest and vote that we had a while ago was completely meaningless, since the results were discarded a few days later? Steven G. Johnson 00:10, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It's been discussed on meta. I've not been paying much attention to it myself, but it's there. --Camembert
These are just variants of Paullusmagnus' winning concept. We are trying to optimize it in a way that pleases (almost) everyone. The latest version has the advantage that it is already internationalized, although I think it could use a touch of color. Nohat is working on it.—Eloquence 00:19, Oct 14, 2003 (UTC)~
There should probably be a page (if there isn't one already) displaying all the different versions and their names of the logos used. At this time, I don't know how to refer to them. I made a comment on one version, and up comes a new version and changes the meaning of my comment. ¬ Dori 01:14, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Edits

Just a reminder:

  1. Please use the Minor edit selection ONLY for spelling corrections, formatting, and minor rearranging of text. Many people have the Hide minor edits in recent changes feature ON in their settings.
  2. Please use the Summary function when posting non-minor edits. This makes all of our lives easier when we look at Recent changes and Page histories. Thanks Kingturtle 00:28, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

This is kind of interesting

User:Stevertigo recently created [[Talk:User:Eloquence]], which I'm pretty sure was a mistake. What's interesting is that the "View article" link (not "View user page", mind you) does actually link to User:Eloquence. This means everybody has two talk pages (sort of), a real talk page, and a talk page in the main Talk namespace. (I, of course, have a third talk page, at Talk:Cyan ;-). -- Cyan 02:11, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yeesh.-戴&#30505sv 02:35, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Would actually making use of this unintended (?) feature be deprecated? I could think of several possible ways to make use of it. And I don't mean me personally, but there might be a more general consensus for what the Talk:User:Foobar page could signify, if we really put our minds to it. BTW. does it give Eloquence the You have new messages indicator, when it has text that he has not read yet? -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 11:07, Oct 14, 2003 (UTC)

Similarly pages like [[Talk:Wikipedia:Namespace]]. - Patrick 12:29, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I did not get notification of messages left at Talk:User:Angela when someone was writing there by mistake. What possible uses do you see for it Jussi? Angela 17:39, Oct 14, 2003 (UTC)

Logo

Its too small (bitwise)-- it looks too choppy. Can we find a happy compromise (bettween the too big 50k and the too small (what it is now) maybe 25k?? Hint--try different background colors to test it for jaggies.戴&#30505sv

Can we find a happy compromise? I very much doubt it. CGS 14:33, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC).

Was GrahamN blocked on Saturday?

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question, but a few seconds after making this edit on Saturday I found I could not access Wikipedia, nor any of the other Wikimedia sites. So I gave up and went down the pub. It's only a web site, after all. But, just out of curiosity, was that a coincidence, or did someone block me deliberately? GrahamN 14:46, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Graham, if you had been blocked, you would still have had access to read the site, you just wouldn't have been able to edit. On attempting to edit, you would get a screen explaining the reason for the ban and the name of the person who had banned you (I banned myself once just to find this out). Secondly, blocks made on Wikipedia apply only to Wikipedia, not to the other Wikimedia sites. The log of server problems that day [4] shows that Wikipedia was not completely down at that time, but that 90 per cent of pages were timing out, so it is likely this is what you were experiencing on Saturday. And I don't think anyone is likely to block you just for criticising the cleanup page. At least I hope not! :) --Angela
Not a time to get paranoid. The instability of the servers right now makes it impossible to get on about 60% of the time; or stop having access in the middle of an edit a daily experience - Marshman 17:43, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)


Shortpages should be deleted

I recently created a one-line article, and then posted it on VfD. Everyone who replied said "Keep"? What gives? If I create a one-line article, can't I just as easily delete it? Maybe I originally intended to write a longer article but then realized I wouldn't have time to turn the article into a decent stub or long article....so shouldn't I be able to just delete it? It's just common sense to me. Wikipedia needs a stronger policy on deletion. Whenever a stub gets put on VfD, some person just adds one line and tada! it's no longer a stub. Pretty soon people are going to figure this out and every time they need some articles created they'll just post them on the VfD page! This is not the point of VfD. The point of VfD is not to expand on stubs/shortpages, it is to delete articles which should be deleted, and shortpages CAN be deleted under rule #4 on the deletion policy. Sub-stubs/shortpages should be instantly deleted IMHO, because as all people can agree, they can be re-created in a second. Sub-stubs are a waste of time, you click on a link, wait for it to come up, and are extremely disapointed when it does come up, as it is only one line of information you already knew. I'd rather it be a red hyperlink, meaning the article was not written yet, so that I don't have to waste my time clicking on it. That's my rant. dave 15:20, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Rule 4 of the deletion policy states that you may delete sub-stubs. Angela 17:39, Oct 14, 2003 (UTC)
In as much as Wikipedia is a "work in progress" I think it is to be expected that any article (long, short, or stub) may or may not yet have information useful to the reader. I think stubs serve to remind editors (everyone) that there are articles in need of work. They should not be listed at VfD (and seldom are, actually) unless there is a sense by the lister that the "proposed" article will have problems (POV, troll bait, etc.). In general, a valid term used as a stub article is best just edited to a redirect if, IYHO it has no present hope to become anything. You can do that without listing or eliciting peer review. This practice can become very useful if later a disambiguation is required. - Marshman 17:43, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Dgrant, if you look at the timing of the votes, you'll see that people were voting on Delerium's update of your stub. I believe that if your original stub had remained unimproved, people would have voted to delete. -- Cyan 18:07, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Change User ID in credit for new article?

I just created the Norton Juster page, but didn't realize that I'd been switched to en2.wikipedia.org from en.wikipedia.org and therefore logged out. Credit for the page is given to my IP address, rather than me -- which is okay, but I'd rather get the appropriate blame and credit if possible. Can the originating page author be switched? -- Scarequotes 18:20, Oct 14, 2003 (UTC)

See my previous reply at

Backdating attribution. Angela 20:58, Oct 14, 2003 (UTC)

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