Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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"Patrolling" of recent changes

There has been some discussion on IRC about whether the term "patrolling" of recent changes gives the right impression or not. In MediaWiki 1.4, there will be a feature that allows logged in users to click a link on a diff to say they have "patrolled" the edit. The edit can then be hidden from recent changes using "hide patrolled edits". The link on a diff will say "Mark as patrolled". After you click that, you will see "The selected revision has been marked as patrolled.". When it is disabled, it will say "The Recent Changes Patrol feature is currently disabled."

Are there any suggestions on what would be a better term for this, such as "checked", or do you feel "patrolled" is appropriate? Angela. 08:24, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

"reviewed" perhaps? Or should that be reserved for future fact reviews? I don't think there's anything wrong with patrolled, really. — David Remahl 08:30, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think there are better alternatives to "patrolled"; maybe "vetted", "checked", "reviewed", "inspected"... — Matt 11:54, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Patrolled" seems fine to me, and suggests a shallow examination for obvious signs of vandalism, misinformation or POV. "Reviewed" or "inspected" imply a much deeper level of fact checking. —AlanBarrett 18:35, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I like patrolled, but "checked" might be better. A question - will any user be able to use this bit, or just admins? Also, where can I find a full list of features for 1.4? --Golbez 18:49, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Who has access to it will be up to each wiki. See Wikipedia:User access levels. The default is that only sysops have it, but changes can be proposed at Wikipedia talk:User access levels. There's a partial list of new features at Test:Main Page. Angela. 22:53, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia should appear inclusive, not defensive. Patrolled has odd connotations, and its meaning in this context certainly isn't immediately obvious. Perhaps "this edit has been accepted by other users"? --[[User:Eequor|ηυωρ]] 23:14, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How about just viewed or read. Other alternatives, scanned (elements of virus checking but also 'scan your eye over that'), perused or visited. -- Solipsist 07:45, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Patrolled seems fine to me, as does visited. They both seem neutral to me, and have no implication that action will be taken, but leave that option open. As a fallback, I'd go for scanned, but in this case the word carries a more active message. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 13:05, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Will this just mean that a determined vandal will just make sure to patrol his own edit, or is there functionality to prevent this. Of course (!?) only logged in user should be able to patrol. But even if there is not any qualifications required it is a nice feature which work against the majority of less determined vandals, as well as well-intended people making undesirable edits.

When will this feature be available in wikipedia? Thue | talk 18:07, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"patrolled" seems wrong to me; it suggests conotations of marching, or territory, and unless you are familiar with the "RC patrol" it doesn't suggest "a quick reveiw", which(I assume) is what it means. I think "checked" or "scanned" would be better. The feature sounds great. I've wanted a way to know what pages have not been looked at on RC for a while. One posible addition would be making it allow more than one review; so there would be "checked once", "checked twice" and so on(up to, say 4 or something) That would allow more fine grained identification of non-"checked" edits. And, I assume, "checking" would be tagged with the person who did it, so people couldn't "check" their own changes, or "check" a change multiple times(with my suggested addition)? JesseW 12:55, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think vetted is the right term, since that is what happens when you apply for certain jobs. Likewise we vet the diffs. :ChrisG 18:32, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've never heard of that outside Wikipedia. What is "vetted" an abbreviation for? --[[User:Eequor|ᓛᖁᑐ]] 20:05, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't believe it is an abbreviation, although I don't know the etymology. More widely used in UK than US, but a perfectly good word. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:46, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

I think there's a connection to veterinarian --Phil | Talk 08:05, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

My personal preference, be it ever so slightly verbose, would be idiot-checked as in "this edit has been checked for idiocy and none was immediately apparent". HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 08:05, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

I think I like Accepted or Acknowledged. -- Stevietheman 19:10, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Patrolled" has a police connotation which comes across as negative to some people. -- Stevietheman 20:30, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Help with a troublemaker

Hi. I have a potential issue, maybe even a potential edit war, coming up on this article. An user has decided to create a new article, the object of which is a part of the history of the city about which the article at hand is. Upon doing that, he simply decided that the whole section that made any mention to the topic on this article had to be erased and replaced with a "see main article" notice. That was particularly ludicrous, since the article he had created was still a stub, and in fact the information he erased from the article in question was simply not on the new article. I reverted his edit, but he rereverted it, now claiming that the paragraph was "inaccurate" (or unnacurate, as he wrote...) historically wise, which is preposterous, since I obtained the information from offical sources. In order to make a better case, he also decided to claim that the article was "confusing", which I find really hard to believe, since the article has been complimented on more than one occasion and translated into more than 5 other languages. But even it was unclear, the due process is rewording, not bluntly erasing the data. I restored the paragraph again, but I have a strong feeling he's just going to go back and do it over and over. If you follow the link above, you'll see his user main page. By what he chose to write there I get the feeling that this guy is up to no good, and I really don't feel like engaging in an edit war with someone like that. I need help on this one! Regards, Redux 14:42, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I thank MacGyver and Jmabel for taking an interest in the issue. Following on some rather disturbing news from MacGyver (on his talk page), I decided to check Pinnecco's contributions, and there's a clear signal of trouble there. First, there's what appears to be a vanity article: notice the guy's name (the user's screen name is Pinnecco), I'm fairly sure that the person being discussed is either the user's father or grandfather (or maybe some other relative), who is a painter. I have never heard of him, and I'm not sure if he would qualify as worthy of an article in Wikipedia. Furthermore, Pinnecco's edit in this article is a copyright violation. It's particularly strange since Pinnecco appears to be a registered user since early April of this year, and thus is hardly a newbie. I'm hesitant to take action on these problems myself because Pinnecco has proven to be somewhat... "immature" in handling criticism (he bluntly erased MacGyver's request to discuss before editing articles from his talk page, without responding, then proceeded to leave an ironic note on the Niterói talk page addressed to me, clearly showing that he was crossed by the reactions to his edits). If I do it myself, I might start some "rivalry" with him, and that's never good for the Wikipedia community (and to me, of course). Any thoughts? Regards, Redux 01:01, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Have you considered Requests for Comment? Maurreen 01:26, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Is that your criteria for calling something a vanity article? That you have never heard of the subject? A google search shows some third-party web pages discussing him, and images of his work show a Picasso influenced cubism. Jordan Langelier 22:31, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes, Jmabel suggested that to me on my talk page, but as I told him, so far this has been one isolated incident (although his reaction to MacGyver's approach was a bit disturbing), so I was hoping to see how he would react to criticism from other users, besides myself, on issues concerning other articles, before I put him on the spotlight as a "rogue user". The Niterói issue may not be a good reference, since he admitted to being a native of the city in question, and we all know that some people do get somewhat "radical" when articles regarding their home (country, city, etc.) are involved. Since his last edit in the Niterói talk page indicates that he may not be liking me very much now, I preferred that others approach him on the other problems (and there might be others, besides those I listed); I don't want him to feel that I'm "out to get him", which is not the case. I hope I'm doing the right thing. Regards, Redux 02:20, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Humm, the Faccetta Nera article may not be a copyright violation. I'm not certain, are fascist songs from the mid 40's copyrighted? I do know that we don't normally post entire lyrics of any song (except national anthems), but then again most songs are copyrighted. If anything, however, the article appears to be content-free. Redux 02:57, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Shameless plug for nonsense

This seems like a perfect message to post here: if you're bored (how is that even possible on Wikipedia?!), you can always read User:JRM/Orange, a true hallmark of something. Oh, go on. I promise there is at least one thing in there that'll trigger at least a brief chuckle—or your money back. JRM 05:14, 2004 Dec 5 (UTC)

I noticed some orange work a wee while ago ... by now you almost certainly deserve a medal - a most excellent improvement in my understanding of the etymology. The only fact that seems not to be pinned down is "a major distribution point of oranges to northern regions", which is, btw, missing from the Orange, France article. --Tagishsimon (talk)

You are completely and utterly right. The sources that mentioned this fact all... mentioned it as fact, actually, and in supiciously comparative terms. Of course I am now paranoid as to whether they weren't just creatively assuming things (that's so easy to do, I should know). *sigh* I'll put this on my to-do list rightaway. I may need some more help from the French Wikipedia after all. Thanks for the pointer. JRM 02:06, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

Black Night

The film Black Night is misspelled it should read Black Knight (2001)

Twenty Questions

Discussion moved to User talk:TwentyQuestions.-gadfium 00:06, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Gender ratio

I just did some statistics on gender ratio on the Wikipedia community at orkut.com, and made a mailing list post about it. I thought some people might be interested: http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-December/036142.html -- Tim Starling 08:32, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

That comes from being “the encyclopedia that Slashdot built”. Given that only 5% of Slashdot readers are women, a 13% score here is still more balanced. There has been talk at the Countering systemic bias project about how to tackle this. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 17:53, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You're talking in circles, the fact that a lot of Wikipedia editors are also interested in Slashdot is not the cause of the gender inbalance, it is merely a result of a more deeply rooted issue. Hard as it is to pinpoint, I feel women on-line are in general more interested in communicating and socializing, and less in discussion. However there are possibly other reasons and there has been some research in the area I believe. -- [[User:Solitude|Solitude\^talk]] 21:05, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

How do you know what sex wikipedians are? Women might be less likely to disclose their sex, or more likely to lie about it, or, in fact, the majority of wikipedians might be poodles for all we know. Intrigue 23:11, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As I said in the mailing list post, many people don't give their sex on Wikipedia, but 99.5% of them do on Orkut. It's a bit of a leap of faith to say that the demographics of the Wikipedia community on Orkut is the same as the editorship, but bad statistics are better than no statistics if you're able to look at them for what they are -- i.e. interesting not perfect. -- Tim Starling 03:36, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

As someone had mentioned above, it is possible that women may not wish to disclose their gender automatically. I was compelled to refer to my gender only because I was constantly referred to as 'he' or other users wanted to clarify. On the other hand, it does seem from my interaction with other regular Wikipedians of India that I might be an exception. On another note, if you see the MBTI types on meta, it seems that the INT (introvert, intuition, thinking) types frequent Wikipedia more. So, there must be a pattern somewhere. And the elections winners for Board or whatever ( Angela and Anthere) were females of the E type (extroverts) and maybe not NT. Is there is a correlation between gender and MBTI types? Maybe that will help in your analysisKRS 04:35, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I been looking at this issue for a while to try to better understand our systemic biases. I looked at Wikipedia's top contributors and found that 17% of them declared themselves to be female. (There were another 20% where I could find no declaration of gender).

I also did a very rough, and perhaps meaningless, search to try and see what effect this has had on our encyclopedia. In Wikipedia the word he occurs five times more than the word she, and the word man occurs three times as often as the word woman. I also compared this to other encyclopedias:

He:She	Man:Woman	Encyclopedia
5:1	3:1	Wikipedia
7:1	2:1	Columbia
4:1	2:1	Encarta
2:1	2:1	Britannica

-SimonP 19:25, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

• Not to be a prig, but how much of that is due to the article balance? For example, in historical articles up through perhaps the mid-20th century, articles are more likely to be about men, just because there were more notable men then women. The same is true today for many categories (e.g. professional sports). Is this only generic "he/him"s, or all instances?
  • That is an important point, but it doesn't explain why Wikipedia is worse than other encyclopedias. - SimonP 18:55, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Barnstar of Vigilance

What do you all think about a barnstar of vigilance for those that reliably and consistently fight the good fight against vandalism? Would somebody mind creating the image, because I'm pretty graphically inept... -- ClockworkSoul 16:29, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC

Search wikipedia from the command line (Mac OS X Hints)

Mac OS X Hints has an article on how to "Search wikipedia from the command line". Paul August 18:03, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

Should wikilinks to temporary versions be allowed?

Assume a page is protected, and a user creates their own version in a temp subpage. Is it allowed for that user to create wikilinks to the temporary article, effectively de-linking the "main" article from Wikipedia? For example, there was a version of La La (an Ashlee Simpson song) which linked to Autobiography (album)/Temp instead of the main article, Autobiography (album). The reason given was that the main article is protected at a sub-optimal version.

This strikes me as a no-brainer. Editors should not create wikilinks from articles into temp articles. Assuming the temporary article is eventually integrated into the main article, the merge will create double redirects and force people to go around changing a bunch of other articles. Linking to temp articles leaves wikipedia in an inconsistent state. It implies that the temp article is the "official" version, when it may not be. Most importantly, it allows groups to put forth their own POV versions of articles and integrate them into Wikipedia.

Thoughts? Rhobite 03:02, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Of course it's a no brainer. If the article is protected at The Wrong Version, too bad. The temp page is there purely as a work in progress, not as something to direct people to because you don't like the current version. To do so is an attempt to get around the page protection. I think it's very poor and quite anti-social behaviour. Shane King 03:44, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Thank you, I couldn't point to any real policy so I thought I'd ask. Common sense should be policy, too. Rhobite 04:05, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you and Shane King. This sort of notice should be on the talk page, and I was disappointed to see La La edited under protection to add such a trivial thing. Cool Hand Luke 04:35, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New WikiProject

Wikipedia:WikiProject Holmes is now up and running...with only two members. The aim(s) of the project is to create articles related to Sherlock Holmes, the characters and the books, the places, the novels, and the short stories, to expand existing ones and to create templates and so on. Do join, please.--[[User:Gabriel Webber|Gabriel Webber (babble were rig)]] 09:57, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Add lyric links to album articles

I run http://www.lyricshead.com, which offers people many lyrics without popups and other annoying advertisements. I think that it would improve the usefulness of wiki album articles if a link was provided to users that provided lyrics for the album. You can see a sample of such a link at the Get a Grip album page.

The format of the link that I would like to make would be "[artist]: [album] lyrics," (as opposed to the link on the get a grip album page, which is simply "lyrics") so that it is more descriptive, but I am open to whatever format you think would best serve the community.

I wrote a program to do the following:

1. get the list of wiki albums
2. compare wikipedia albums to my albums
3. everytime I have lyrics of a wikipedia album, then add a link to the appropriate page
4. record the wikipedia file name

The wikipedia file name is recorded so I can later go back and manually check each page to ensure no formatting issues happened. I will also check to make sure the album does not already point to an official site (some do, but most do not link to any lyrics provider), so I can remove my link if it does.

I ran the program a few days ago and was kindly informed that by Rhobite that this is considered to be spamming / self-promotion. As you can see, it provides a service to users that are looking for album information and would also like to see the lyrics of the songs. He proposed that I bring it up to the community.

So, what do you think about adding a link to wikipedia album articles that direct the user to the album lyrics?

Full disclosure: As an anon, parahost used an automated program to add links from many album articles to his own site. They were coming in quickly so I immediately blocked the bot. Since then, we've been having an e-mail dialogue and I suggested that parahost ask here and get a sense of what people thought of the proposal. I'm still against it because I don't believe editors should be allowed to add their own site to external links sections - even if their site is relevant. I believe this would be prohibited under the self-promotion policy. There's also a technical issue, where the bot was replacing ampersand characters with the & HTML entity, breaking other links and interwiki links.

I want to point out that parahost has been extremely polite, a rare quality in someone who's run into trouble here at Wikipedia. Please resist the urge to be rude to him, as I'm sure he'll respect whatever consensus we come to. Rhobite 00:13, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Isn't there a copyright issue here. If the lyrics are copyrighted should we be linking to them? Rmhermen 00:21, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know if we can get in trouble for it, but I'd rather not have a giant pile of links to a site that could disappear the moment the Harry Fox Agency turns its sights on it. I'm going to need convincing that this site won't turn into another Lyrics.ch fiasco. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:47, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm neutral on the idea, but if we do it we should do it with a template, so we could change how all of these are shown (or make them disappear!) by changing the template. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:16, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Rhobite: Yes, I will respect whatever the community decides. I want the community to be as excited about this as I am. My intentions are not to spam people, but to give people information that they are seeking. It is true that I am motivated to share more because it is my site, but I don't think it is strange for people to want to share their hard work with others. I am definetly guilty of feeling good when a new visitor e-mails me and tells me that they find my site useful or think the winamp plugin I just released is indispensible. It is because of this that wikipedia should link to my site; I take pride in it and I want to make it useful to people.

Also, I will definitetly look into the error in my program that breaks the code. Also, keep in mind, I will be manually reviewing every edited article page to correct any mishaps.

Rmhermen: The lyrics are provided for educational use only. They are user submitted and the site in no way endorses pirating (in fact, it encourages visitors to buy the album). The Web site provides a link to contact me in case of a legal issue. If I were to receive an e-mail to take down lyrics from a verifiable source, then I would promptly respond by removing the artist's lyrics. Since there is a method to get lyrics removed and damages would be very difficult to prove, there should not be a concern about a lawsuit against a site (not to mention, I have few assets). As far as I know, wikipedia would not be come liable for anything, even if the site gets sued. If there were problems with linking to potentially copyrighted material, then search engines would be sued out of existence.

Cyrius: This Web site is not going to just disappear. I am not doing this for profit, so the Web site will not be shut down because it is underperforming. I am a full time college student taking the load of two people (finishing my BS in two years) and working, so if there was a time for me to give up on this Web site, it is already behind me. Even with my expenses, I have no problem paying for this web site because I enjoy doing it and I enjoy that people find it useful. For proof of my long-term intentions, you will notice that I just released a winamp plugin. I would not release software for people to download if the Web site was potentially going to be closed in a year.

If, by some chance, I do shutdown my Web site. I will take responsibility and remove my links from wikipedia. This task would not be too difficult.

Jmabel: I do not know enough about wikipedia's backend to know if there is an easy solution to do this once the links are in place, but when I run the program to edit the articles, I will format the links however the community wants them to be formatted. Here are some examples:

• [Artist]: [Ablbum] Lyrics -> Aerosmith: Get a Grip Lyrics
• [Album] Lyrics -> Get a Grip lyrics
• Lyrics -> Lyrics
• [Album] lyrics @ lyricshead.com -> Get a Grip lyrics @ lyricshead.com

As you can see, it is very flexible. Personally, I think the first or second one are the best because they are the most descriptive and does not include unnecessary information like the last one. -- Parahost | Talk 06:16, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not worried about you shutting down your site. I'm worried about someone else shutting down your site. Has everyone forgotten the International Lyrics Server (apparently so, given that we don't have an article on it)? -- Cyrius|✎ 06:44, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If that happens, then the links can just be removed. Until then though, it will make it more convenient for users to find lyrics. Parahost 17:24, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Cyrius, can you explain what happened to International Lyrics Server. If these sites are regularly shut down, I don't think it is worth the effort to link to it. Rmhermen 02:23, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

For what it's worth, my suggestion is that if we do this — about which I am neutral — we design an appropriate {{lyricshead}} template that would let the titles be inserted into articles along the lines of

{{lyricshead|id=eminem/cleaning-out-my-closet/|artist=Eminem|title=Cleaning Out My Closet}}

The resulting links would necessarily be uniformly presented; we could make any changes to presentation of these links in a single place; if we ever needed to suppress them all, we could also do that with no difficulty. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:43, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

That looks good to me. What do I need to do to get that working so that it would create a link when that was outputted on a page? Parahost 17:24, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Since we don't have lyrics, it might be nice to provide links to them, although I have mixed feelings on the issue of the links, since the target site does have left side google ads (and most pop music lyrics don't seem to be very hard to find). What I did want to point out is that it seems like if this is done in an automated fashion, it should probably observe the guidelines given at Wikipedia:Bots, as discussed on Wikipedia talk:Bots. (BTW Yes, better link titles than just "Lyrics" would be a good thing, as would a template.) Niteowlneils 00:54, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree that linking to a lyric site would be beneficial because wikipedia does not have lyrics. I do not understand what the conflict is about the unobtrusive, left hand google ad, though. Lyricshead does not run off of donations like wikipedia, so it has to get money from somewhere to help cover hosting costs. Also, you will find, that few lyric sites don't run popups and I have never seen one that did not run ads of some sort.

Regarding the bot, it waits a minimum of 45 seconds to make an edit when it is ran. This number can be increased if the community wants it to be. Parahost 02:36, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How do we reach a decision on whether we want to do this? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:19, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

I am uncertain on how to do this too. It does not seem like anyone is vehemently against it. The main concerns are the longevity of the site, which is mitigated by the fact that few lyric sites are shutdown and the links could be removed easily (I already said I would take responsibility for this) and the sponsored links, which are found on every lyric site I have been too and help pay for the servers.

I suppose we could do a poll of some sort or just have everyone who is neutral or in favor of it say "Aye". Rhobite, do you have any suggestions on how this issue could come to a conclusion quicker? Parahost 00:26, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Good site Parahost, however I personally can't support these links from wikipedia because of the Google ads and Amazon associate program. — Jeandré, 2004-12-11t13:50

Should we add links to Parahost's lyrics site to album articles?

Yes:

1. 130.13.185.73 01:49, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC). I will start with Aye.

No:

1. jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 01:54, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC). Can of worms & can of ads.
2. Jeandré, 2004-12-13t13:54z. Nice site, but I don't think it's right for WP
3. iMeowbot 22:51, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC) I think it would be safest to stick with authorized lyrics sources, such as Warner-Chappel and EMI.

All right, that settles it. I will not add links to lyrics.

Sandbox Editing

I don't know if you know this, but people are now in the habit of editing the sandbox above the sandbox template. I suggest adding a message about saying that edits go below the template at all times to the {{sbox2}} template . 66.245.97.5 01:15, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It doesn't really matter what we write. People will muck up the sandbox. We just need to revert every now and then. Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 20:47, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hmm... could the server just treat the sandbox as a special page that automatically includes the sandbox template? func(talk) 22:12, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia needs special standards

I'd like to try to roughly consolidate a few general issues from multiple pages.

A couple catalysts for this are discussions are related to Wikipedia:No original research and a vote here about whether or not to delete Image:Nevada-Tan.jpg for ethical reasons.

Wikipedia's uniqueness means we don't have a pure direct model for the whole of Wikipedia. Some Wikipedia matters seem to at least verge on journalism, and most Wikipedians don't have a journalism background.

I think some examination or re-examination is warranted concerning the following matters, and how they relate to each other:

1. Verifiability.
2. What is "encyclopedic"?
3. Handling of firsthand knowledge.
4. Handling of current or recent events.
5. "Original research" (I put that in quotes mainly because it's undergoing review; the title might change).
6. Media law and ethics, including:
   1. Libel.
   2. Privacy.
   3. Copyright.

If you're interested, please join the discussion at Wikipedia needs special standards. Maurreen 08:11, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New version of MediaWiki

Firstly, please reply on my talk page. OK, I see further up this page, that MediaWiki 1.4 (I think) will have a feature enabling a user to say that s/he has checked an edit? Well, excellent idea. When will it be up and running?--[[User:Gabriel Webber|Gabriel Webber (babble were rig)]] 18:14, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You can already test it on http://commons.wikimedia.org - it was activated there a bit earlier because some image handling features were desperately needed (images in categories, a new gallery syntax). And also the first bugs which weren't spotted on the test server surfaced in that real life test. andy 23:09, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New To Village Pump!!!!!!

Moved user's math challenge to User talk:Wishbone332.-gadfium (talk) 02:29, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Tired of talk-page spam?

Template:NoSolicitors Tired of unsolicited bulk talk page messages? Someone else wants you to join a wikiproject or to vote for them on the Arbcom or to add cross-licensing tags to your user page? Try Template:NoSolicitors as a vaguely subtle hint! -Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 04:20, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Just so you know, solicitor can, in various forms of English, mean a type of lawyer (solicitor) ... or a pimp. :) --FOo 06:13, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New Admin noticeboard

I've created one because it's too hard to communicate to other admins via messages (I've already been blocked for doing this!) So I've come up with a Wikipedia:Administrator's noticeboard. All admins please feel free to use this! - Ta bu shi da yu 06:08, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ethics and law

I've created Wikipedia:Ethics and law. At the moment, the goals are to make libel information more prominent and to develop guidelines or principles for decideing ethical issues such as privacy for subjects of Wikipedia. I hope some of you will join me in developing this page. Maurreen 07:42, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Category policy

Should we rethink the guideline that an article shouldn't belong to a category as well as its parent? Many people either don't know this guideline, or don't choose to adhere to it. According to Wikipedia:Categorization, "An article should not be in both a category and its subcategory". For example Activity Based Costing belonged to Category:Management accounting, its parent Category:Accounting, and its grandparent Category:Business. Does this rule still apply? If people disagree with it we should get it out of policy.. if people do agree with it, we need to make the categorization style clearer, since many editors don't seem to follow it. Rhobite 19:56, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

• I think (1) the policy is fine, (2) violations are relatively harmless, but (3) clean 'em up when you find them. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:44, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

Just heard a radio interview with Andrew F. Smith, who edited this two volume set, the contents of which, he claimed, were severely limited by space. It would be wonderful if we could fill in the gaps left by his 770 articles on (the minutia of) food and drink in America, as well as the rest of the world. Just wanted to share. It might be interesting to look at the kind of articles these guys consider 'encyclopedic' here. Mark Richards 21:30, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Complicating VfD

I don't understand why someone is adding complexity to the VfD main page, with a bunch of HTML comments, redundant links that need to be manually updated, etc. We have enuf problems with people not following the basic steps that appear on the bottom of the page--why add further complexity with a bunch of confusing asides in the code? I assume it's well-intentioned, but it seems to have a net effect of making it harder to make VfD nominations, not easier. Niteowlneils 18:49, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• I just ignore the extra noise unless I see a good reason not to. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 01:55, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Absolutely. I noticed somebody added a bit of code supposedly to make it "easier" to add VfD, at the expense of requiring a section number update by every passing user who adds a VfD. I'm deliberately ignoring it until it becomes evident even to the creator that it isn't going to work. The VfD procedure we have already is complicated enough for ordinary users without making it more so. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway|Talk]] 14:04, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. That's basically what I've been doing. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't alone in my reaction. Niteowlneils 18:42, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• Jerzy appears to be the one adding this schtuff. Someone might want to tweak him a bit about it. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 02:04, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Creating a Wikipedia Bot

Hey all, I was thinking about making a bot to browse through Wikipedia and generally help out in any way possible. I've recently learned how to access the internet using Java (which I know well) and I wanted to make a little program for practice. My question is, what should this bot do? I've thought about it, and right now I'm leaning towards having it make links more efficient by changing them so they directly link to a page if they're currently linked to a redirect. I figure it can't hurt, right? Anyways, what other miscellaneous chores should this bot do? Any suggestions? --pie4all88 06:49, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Make sure you read Wikipedia:Bots before doing anything else. Repost your question on the talk page there to get the attention of the right people.gadfium (talk) 07:03, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes, and beyond that, don't assume that ALL redirects should be changed into direct links. Sometimes there are good reasons to keep a link to redirect. older≠wiser 13:42, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the help, guys. --pie4all88 21:20, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You might start it off doing only a few hundred such edits at a time and see what percentage of them are viewed favorably. It can be very subtle whether a an indirect link is good or bad. In any event, this should not be done without some element of human judgment. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:00, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Directing links away from redirect pages is not always a good idea. A redirect page is sometimes used when information about a specific topic exists in a more general article. Since it is conceivable that someone in the future might move the specific information to its own article, links to that specific topic should be kept specific. Fredrik | talk 10:20, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

WireImage.com

I just came across WireImage.com and saw a fantastic selection of photos there that could massively benefit many of the articles we have. Obviously the licensing there is quite strict but perhaps with a little discussion we could get them to allow us to use them. I'd do it myself but really don't know very much about the various licenses. Anyone able to volunteer?

PS. I notice Will Sasso already has an image from there - is that allowed? violet/riga (t) 17:08, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't see how a professional press agency would let us just use their pricey celebrity images, some of them maybe be useable under the U.S. Fair use doctrine, which is not a license. Ideally each image used should be accompanied by a rationale explaining the grounds for its fair use. -- [[User:Solitude|Solitude\^talk]] 09:08, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

It's rather good advertising for them and worth a shot, I thought. Perhaps fair use would be applicable but some people might want to look into that. violet/riga (t) 09:32, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Google library

Just read this BBC news story about Google scanning pages from five academic institutions (libraries of Michigan and Stanford universities, and archives at Harvard, Oxford and the New York Public Library). Scans of works in the public domain will be made available for search and reading online. Presumably we will be able to 'borrow' bits? Does anyone know for sure?> -- ALoan (Talk) 20:51, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If the work in question is actually public domain, it can be 'borrowed'. Unless one of the involved parties does something nasty to qualify for a new copyright. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:07, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Google is doing this because it wants the metadata: Bibliographies and Footnotes, the original hyperlink. From that it can build a popularity index of searches. So for example a search on "Petrarch" turns up 2 million books, and then sorts them based on citation popularity.. it is the "wisdom of the crowds", Brilliant really. That they get public domain books online is a secondary bonus, the real money is a private database of all the metadata information linked in to full text searches of copyrighted work, no one else will have that.--Stbalbach 03:58, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This is absolutely amazing!

Just discovered Wikipedia and have been spending all day reading about math, statistics, spiritual concepts, my favorite authors. The articles I've come across are very clear and easy to understand and seemingly accurate. Has all of this writing really just come from random people editing pages and adding articles? This is absolutely Amazing! My faith in humanity has seriously just increased orders of magnitude.(User:198.62.10.11)

Thanks for the compliments. Yes, all of the stuff is written by random people, plus a few public domain source (e.g. 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica). Subsequently not everything is perfect, and some articles are discussed heavily, but overall I think Wikipedia is great! I am glad you like it. BTW, it is very easy to contribute, so if you're missing your most favourite "math, statistics, spiritual concepts, [...] authors" article, go ahead and add an article! -- Chris 73 Talk 00:02, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Personally, after reading all the rubbish about Sollog my faith in Wikipedia has gone up severalfold. I hope you become a contribuutor as we need as many helpers as we can to make Wikipedia a great resource. I personally believe Wikipedia will soon have millions of articles and billions of words. The true power of randomness. We may be random, but we have good filters to reduce the noise. [[User:Norm|Norman Rogers\^talk]] 00:32, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Google Scholar

Google has a new beta search engine called Google Scholar. This looks like a great reference to find scholarly articles about different topics. Check it out. This will be a great tool in addition to the upcoming Google library (see above). -- Chris 73 Talk 04:39, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Wikitition (Wiki - Competition)

My friend and I have recently created a game revolving around Wikipedia. We were wondering if any similar game exists. The goal is to get from any page on Wikipedia to any other page in as few clicks as possible. The rules are as follow:

1. Two windows are opened; in each window Wikipedia is opened and the "Random page" link is hit.

2. The first window opened is the starting point, the second the destination.

3. The player is allowed to use the destination's "What links here" page but nothing else in the navigation box nor the search box nor the toolbox may be used and no other links on the destination may be clicked on after the "What links here" page is reached. Categories (on the bottom) the page belongs to may be used but the link to "Categories" in general may not be used.

4. The player is given one "go back" which allows them to use the back button to replay a single click without adding the mistake to thier score.

5. No page may be edited or created while the game is in progress.

Other variations include a challange where one player gives another the starting point and destination or a timed version in which clicks do not matter and the lowest time from one page to another is the goal.

When using the random page link my friend and I have never needed to click more than 6 clicks. It's actually pretty fun. So... back to my question. Does any similar game exist?

- Thanks - Brett

Posting from school but my name is User:nrbelex

209.11.48.2 20:09, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes. In fact someone has a tool that does it with software. Unfortunately i cant remember who it is. I' try to find out. Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 20:24, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think it's User:Kate. AShe has a link to Kate's tools on her userpage. I think it's there but the site ias down at the moment so i can't check. Theresa Knott (The snott rake) 20:30, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Kate appears to have up-and-left, removing the tools in the process. For (hardly any) more info, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Kate.27s_Tools &#0xfeff;--fvw* 18:52, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC)

This game sounds a bit like Wikipedia:Six_degrees_of_Wikipedia (which, I believe, is what the particular Kate's tool helped to solve). In any case, if you feel it is sufficiently different, you might like to add this game to the Wikipedia:Department_of_Fun. -- Solipsist 19:29, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wow - the human six-degree theory is loosely what we based our game on. So... I guess it's essentially the same. Too bad that Kate left, sounds like she had some fun stuff. Nrbelex 20:12, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Baha'i entry is being held hostage

The entry on the Baha'i faith is being held hostage by members of the Baha'i faith who will brook no criticism of the religion, regardless of its accuracy.

I am a former Baha'i and my entries were deleted wholesale, even though they are facts about the religion. I am posting IP only to avoid repercussions against members of my family who are still members of the Baha'i faith.

If this kind of violation of NPOV by deleting all factual criticism of the Baha'i faith continues, I am going to request that the Baha'i article be subject to protection. 65.184.35.245 21:09, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

see the talk section on this... - --Cyprus2k1 10:25, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Non-free images and old archive

I'm having trouble locating the statement by Jimbo Wales deprecating the upload of 'non-commercial use only' images. I'm pretty sure it was on the mailing list and was posted on the Village Pump sometime before the the split into sections last September - but I also can't locate the pre-split archives.

Shouldn't a link to the earlier Village Pump archives be more obvious. And shouldn't the image upload pages make the policy against non-commercial use image clearer (its briefly mention on someway down on Wikipedia:Image copyright tags, but doesn't explain why). -- Solipsist 22:12, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Is this what you were looking for? - SimonP 05:27, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

School tables

I've done four tables (Rockingham County Public Schools, Washington, DC schools, and Rhode Island schools/Providence County, Rhode Island schools with public domain/US Gov data from here, but want some feedback on a number of issues before I do any more: besides establishing a naming convention (I want to avoid the word "list", as it usually means just a bunch of links, with the data at individual articles, which this isn't, I just wonder if it would be better as "Schools in Washington, DC", etc.), should the school names be hilited (IE italic or bold), should alternating schools have a different background color (like Rockingham County Public Schools) to make it more clear what's going on and if so what color (I picked a supposedly "safe" gray--how important is it to use "safe" colors?), whether anybody has strong objections to leaving them as HTML tables instead of Wiki table markup (HTML seems much better for expansion and maintanence, as it allows a line-per-row correspondence that makes it more clear what data will be placed where), whether anybody thinks there might be enuf interest to make a formal 'US schools' WikiProject (once all the state and state/county or /district articles are created, it's probably possible to create stubs for the school district articles, from the same data (I'm thinking of creating Rambot-style article starters)), and any other thots people might have about what to include. Two things I'm looking to automate are: conversion to mixed case (most of the data is ALL CAPS)--I'm using a trial version of software that I don't like enuf to pay for at the end of the trial period, and hiding the redundant mentions of the state names, EG converting [[Bristol County, Rhode Island]] to [[Bristol County, Rhode Island|Bristol County]] and [[Barrington, Rhode Island]] to [[Barrington, Rhode Island|Barrington]]. Niteowlneils 20:09, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Dictionary of National Biography

Okay, so I've just become aware that I can get the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography through my university library. Of course, this is under copyright. But one can also get access to the articles from the old Dictionary of National Biography published starting in the 1890s. So my question, then, is whether the old dictionary is in the public domain, and available for use like the 1911 Britannica. The legal notice on the ODNB site talks about how they reserve all rights on the ODNB, but doesn't say anything about the older work. Anyone know about this? john k 20:32, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Inherently, if it is that old, it is not under copyright. They can copyright any substantive enhancement of content (e.g. new footnotes) just like we can, but the material itself is public domain. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:39, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

That's what I'd have figured, but I wasn't sure about British copyright law. Also, new volumes continued to be put out up to 1980 or so with the newly dead, or missing people. At what point would copyright come into play? john k 20:55, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)