Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

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[[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]]

Moved discussion

Questions and answers, after a period 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/January 2004 archive 7

Requests for help and comments

  1. Daniel's redirect project still needs your help with fixing thousands of broken links
  2. Muriel Victoria and Bmills urge you to vote at Wikipedia:Refreshing brilliant prose
  3. mav invites you to discuss expanding the focus of the Sep11Wiki at meta:Wikimorial
  4. Adam suggests every American Wikipedian visits List of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and contributes a short biography of their local Congress-person (see also public domain congressional biographical directory)
  5. Dysprosia requests comments on the new login text
  6. Viajero asks for your help in expanding the Guidelines for controversial articles
  7. moink wants help with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Fluid dynamics.
  8. Gentgeen has started Wikipedia:WikiProject Games.
  9. Use {{msg:inuse}} to avoid edit conflicts. See MediaWiki talk:Inuse
  10. Eloquence requests feedback and comments on the changes to the Wikipedia:NPOV tutorial
  11. Jmabel wants help with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups. Those of us actively working on this are getting close to consensus on a template, please weigh in soon if you might disagree.
  12. Alex756 asks for comments and criticisms regarding Wikipedia:Submission Standards and Wikipedia:Terms of use.
  13. ilya invites all math geeks to discuss what articles should be written as we move towards 1.0
  14. Feature plug: Tim Starling is running anIRC bot at #enrc.wikipedia that displays recent changes. (French and German bots at #derc.wikipedia and #frrc.wikipedia). See VP archive for more.
  15. Elde notes that many recent changes by anon users need people who enjoy editing

Stats page is empty

The "Usage Statistics" page displays an empty apache page (since Jan. 28th at least)... Maybe because of recent server problems? Why not insert some dummy page?

Moreover, the display of the empty directory is bad from a security point of view: directory listings should be disabled in Apache's httpd.conf.

Lapinou 20:35, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Reading level?

Has there been a discussion about the target reading level that we are aiming for? I see a wide range in the articles. I've watched many articles start out understandable by a layman but end up so qualified and academic that only a scholar already in the field can make sense of it. Rossami 21:51, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Continued at m:Reading level

Unable to access article: Transvaal

When I try to get to the article on Transvaal, it gives a blank page. Same thing happened yesterday...

The page is still in Google's archive though.

I can access Transvaal ("The Transvaal was one of the provinces of South Africa"). Earlier I had a problem where one page (and only one) kept appearing without the left hand menu and the bottom of the screen menu, so there was no "edit this" link (which is what I was trying to do). It sorted itself out after a while. I think the pedia might be a bit glitchy today. fabiform | talk 03:02, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Harry Potter Madness

Earlier I removed the synopsis of the Harry Potter series from Harry Potter to Harry Potter (plot) in order to remove the spoilers from the main article.

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Warn readers about spoilers

Village pump is overpopulated

See the Village pump is overpopulated section in Wikipedia talk:Village pump or click here: [1] for a discussion on how to keep VP small and usable. Optim 18:19, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Table markup

Could someone please check the table on my sandbox? I'm trying to switch from using HTML to the wiki code and am not sure I've got the hang of it yet. Thanks -- sannse 12:40, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

An easy way to check the table is to look at the HTML source of the page. You may even fix it there and place the result back into Wikipedia. -- User:Docu

Article count

For an article count updated rougly every 5-15 seconds, see #enrc.wikipedia on irc.freenode.net -- Tim Starling 14:49, Feb 1, 2004 (UTC)

Clarification: Freenode IRC. Optim 14:57, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Suggesting standard table for rocks/minerals

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Taxobox

IP address?

I was wondering [pardon if this isn't the right place] ... if I look up "wikipedia.org" IP @ DNSstuff ... I get 130.94.122.199 ... but when I navigate to 130.94.122.199 I get the followin msg "Note that the address for www.wikipedia.org should be 130.94.122.199. This server is 130.94.122.197" ... could anyone tell me what the problem is? Sincerely, JDR

You're not supposed to use IP to navigate here. .199 is where www.wikipedia.org as well as wikipedia.org are hosted, and that server redirects any requests for www.wikipedia.org or wikipedia.org to en.wikipedia.org at .197. You should only arrive at .199 when you request en2.wikipedia.org or are redirected there by the pedia itself. Thus, no problem. Jor 23:38, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Scarce information about small cities

Apologies if this isn't the correct place to ask, but I have a question about the entries for towns and cities. I have looked at dozens of small towns and cities and it seems that all have nothing more than the type of information that is available in an almanac. Is this intentional or simply because no one has added other things? As for example history of the area, current conditions, etc.

This is not intentional. Any additional information is welcome. Andres 01:04, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The basic information has been automatically (and contraversially) added from another source, with the intention of being fleshed out by anyone who is able. See the rambot FAQ for details. - IMSoP 01:09, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC) [via edit conflict with Andres]

New Features

I DO love the new features in this vision of new wiki. it's fantastic! --Yacht (Talk)Q 01:30, Feb 2, 2004 (UTC)

What new features? Ilyanep 01:34, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Oh my, the toolbar above the edit box disappears! :O --Yacht (Talk)Q 01:43, Feb 2, 2004 (UTC)
You can turn it back on in your preferences, click "show edit toolbar". Whether it should be on by default is controversial. -- Tim Starling 04:02, Feb 2, 2004 (UTC)


Image position

There is now acres of white space next to the picture at the top of this page (at least on my not-excessively-high-res screen).

Oddly, it seems I have to hard refresh every time I come to this page to get the correct layout. i.e. I load the page, get whitespace, hard refresh, no whitespace. Something local to me? Something squidy? Something with the new image code? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:11, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Extended image syntax


Code for pics in a column

Help, please, with putting 5 pics in a column on the page.

Discussion (with answer) moved to Wikipedia talk:Extended image syntax

Renegade Table Tag on Maine

There's a renegade table tag on the main page. jengod 18:32, Feb 2, 2004 (UTC)


Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates

Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates is being ignored. Should it be merged with featured article candidates since this gets a reasonable number of people checking it? Example: Snoyes nominated someone else's image on 19 Nov 2003, there have been no comments/objections, but it's still sitting on Brilliant pictures candidates over two months later. By the way there are only 7 candidates in total at the moment (1 nomination, 6 self-nominations). fabiform | talk 20:47, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)


Slashdot

[2] ker-boom -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:42, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Album template and table help needed

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Taxobox

WikiProject Space

Sennheiser has created a WikiProject Space and he would like to invite Astronomy and Space Exploration enthusiasts to join his new project. His decision was mainly based on the lack of conformity between space missions (both manned and unmanned). That is all.

Current problems

Why do I have difficulty loading Recent changes and the page histories? I remember an announcement saying hardware problems would be over by the end of January? (I won't ask why it's me again and no one else who asks these questions.) <KF> 23:56, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There is definitely something strange going on this morning. I keep being told that pages don't exist and that edits can't be saved. There do seem to be a lot of bugs in the system recently. Adam 23:59, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The version that was put into production yesterday morning (Squid3) wasn't tested properly under high load and showed bugs. Now 2.5 is running without problems so far. In benchmarks the squid currently serves pages at up to 800 requests/second to anon visitors without hammering the DB or the Apache, so this helps a lot.
Edit/update: All wikipedias are currently running on 1 DB server, 1 Apache and 1 Squid. Geoffrin and some other server (don't recall which ;-) are broken. Without the Squid (running on old Larousse, a pentium3) wikipedia would be hardly reachable. The occasional 'Can't reach parent server' messages indicate that the Apache is overloaded and not reachable, so instead of a timeout you get a message now. Should make it a nicer and more explaining page though.
Yesterday evening Larousse ran out of disk space for the log which caused Squid to crash. Brion has set up log rotation and compression now, and there's a lot of space now on the drive. -- Gabriel Wicke 15:46, 3 Feb and 16:02, 4 Feb (UTC)
Some new hardware was put in, and there are some problems with the squid setup. Being on Slashdot didn't help things much. Dori | Talk 00:40, Feb 3, 2004 (UTC)

Can someone explain "squid" and "slashdot" to non-technopersons? Adam 00:52, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Squid is a proxy caching server. EDIT: See Squid cache Sennheiser
We've recently been slashdotted yet again. That's probably some of it. --Dante Alighieri 00:45, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The end of January date was when the new servers were being delivered. Well, they've been delivered, but they're still being tested, they're not doing anything useful yet. We are, however, being more creative in our use of the hardware we have. This creativity leads to improved speed especially for anonymous users, but lots of bugs and the occasional bit of downtime. A working squid server will be useful when the new hardware is ready for service. -- Tim Starling 04:22, Feb 3, 2004 (UTC)


An interesting reference tool perhaps

Here's a little gem that a friend found and tossed my way. Let's just not all use it on Wikipedia.org or else we'll be in even worse shape. :) Graphical Google Browser

--Dante Alighieri 00:45, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)


Or, alternatively, I could have spent a minute thinking about what the tool actually does and realize that it just queries google, and not the sites themselves. ;) Oops. --Dante Alighieri 01:05, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)


How to get anniversaries on the Main Page

Well, how do i do it? The Knights of Pythias was founded on February 19, 1864, so we gotta jump on this.

First, you'd have to write the article. Then, if it meets the guidelines on Wikipedia:Selected Articles on the Main Page, list it on Wikipedia talk:Selected Articles on the Main Page or Talk:Main Page and a sysop will add it to the main page on February 20th. Angela. 02:01, Feb 3, 2004 (UTC)

Traditional and Simplified Chinese reversed?

I don't know enough Chinese to go to the Chinese pages and figure out how to correct this, but the main "Traditional Chinese" page contains Simplified Chinese text, and vice versa.

There is only one version for each page. In other words, chinese simp is usually links to the same page as chinese traditional (most people can read both so why make two pages?). Sennheiser 03:21, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wha? Specific example? --Jiang

Transient Article

I just noticed the article for transient. It seems strange and off topic. Did the author know more than I do, or does the article need a rewrite? - Pingveno 03:30, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There is no such thing as Houston's Paranelium! hahah (Paranelium isn't even a word) LMFAO! *Teddy Boy hairs are demoted to the 50s quadrant*!!! Before this gets deleted please add it to the bad jokes page!!! Sennheiser 03:33, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Uncle Ed has now converted it to a good stub, so the original will remain in the history. Andrewa 19:46, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Apparent new "bureaucrat" access

Discussion moved to Wikipedia:Bureaucrat

My Ancestors--Help, Please.--from Elizabeth L. Nice

--> taken to Wikipedia:Reference desk


ethnic group

Trying to determine my ethnic group -> Reference Desk

Wikipedia:What is an article

Wikipedia:What is an article states that there is no means at present of automatically determining disambiguation pages. Could this be done by detecting the presence of the {{msg:disambig}} metatag-thing? -- SGBailey 11:40, 2004 Feb 3 (UTC)


Upcoming change in section titles rendering

Hi folks. There's a fix going in for the problem with the empty space after ==Titles== being dependent on whether there's a empty line or not after the title. So, I need to know which you'd prefer as the standard behaviour for titles.

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:How to edit a page

In praise of Wikipedia editors

ChrisO praises wikipedia and its editors/members.  :)

Moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiLove

Google does Fractals: slashdot on steroids

Sennheiser notes that Google's logo today includes fractals and links to an image search of "julia fractals". Practically every site in the results has been slashdotted. (::evil grin::) Sennheiser suggests that we take this opportunity to improve our fractal articles. The AOTD has been set to Fractal. [3]

Bug in the image resize code

You can't use " in the new thumbnail captions, use ' instead.

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Extended image syntax


Taxoboxes and beyond

I created Wikipedia talk:Taxoboxes and beyond to centralize discussion regarding the taxobox-style tables present on articles.

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Taxobox

"See Also"

We don't seem to be in the habit of putting See Also links in our articles. Isn't it common practice in paper encyclopedias to have a See Also section right under the article title?

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Lists (embedded lists)

Viewing deleted articles

We need a category of non-sysop users who are allowed to view deleted articles. Anthony DiPierro 00:18, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy

translation

Hi, what is your opinion of the most accurate Greek to modern English translation of New Testament to date ? And where may I purchase it ? Thanks, RustY Haynes hayneshunting@bellsouth.net

The best advice I have is to go here and see what we have to say about translations. We don't give advice, but we try to be comprehensive. Good luck finding what you're seeking. Jwrosenzweig 01:01, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC) (Note: also emailed to address provided above)

Where has all the image gone?-- Senheiser ponders this enigma!

See FAQ at the top of page.

3rd person

Sennheiser will sign his posts at the end in future. (Sorry for cutting so soon, but the page is still too long).

Discussion moved to User talk:Sennheiser

Request for article

We have a user, Shaheen Lakhan (User:slakhan), who appears to be notable enough to warrant an article. Since doing an autobiography is discouraged, could someone please take up the task of creating such a page? (I would do it myself, but I am very pressed for time these days...). -Anthropos 05:15, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There was an article, but it was deleted. See [4]. --Jiang 09:52, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
It's back, this time as a redirect to User:slakhan. I just listed it on RfD. Bmills 16:43, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
As mentioned in Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion, I instituted the redirect because there was no article in place (it's best to at least have that). I agree that an article should be made by someone other than Shaheen (i.e. not an autobio). My hands are also full; can anyone take the task of creating an article? Accordingly, since an article will be created and Shaheen Lakhan not deleted, the listing should be deleted from the Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion page. --Willkins 17:01, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I agree that he should have an article. My solution: why not just move the current user page to the article at Shaheen Lakhan? Then, the user can write in the User:slakhan page in first hand and have an disserved article (where anyone can edit). The user, or perhaps others, have written in proper formatting and it is probably one of the better articles on individuals. --Kuhn3 17:35, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I have moved the page. The request has been fulfilled. It is much better there and he needed it. --SOmai 17:44, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

"Thumb" image function annoyingly buggy

At least in my prefered browser Opera, the "thumb" function for images seems not to be producing the desired results. The smaller version of the pic is in the article all right, but the little "enlarge" icon is seldom anywhere near the pic, sometimes paragraphs away, often over irrelevent text. Could we please stop converting images to this new system until it works better? Thanks, -- Infrogmation 05:47, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Replies to Wikipedia talk:Extended image syntax please.

Dear Sir / Ms., Hello!

We would be happy if you could give link of our website www.gandhi-manibhavan.org in your website.

Herewith, we are sending you the brief description of our Museum and Website for your information.

URL of the website : http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org

Description : Mani Bhavan is the place where Gandhi stayed from 1917 to 1934, whenever he was in Mumbai. It was from here that Gandhi initiated Civil Disobedience, Swadeshi, Khadi and Khilafat Movements. The house is now converted into a Museum. The website of Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya provides extensive information on Gandhi and his views, the books read by Gandhi, Gandhi's original voice, his personal documents, anecdotes, ashram prayers, photographs etc.....

To reciprocate, we will give link of your website in our related website on Gandhi. Please inform us when you add our link.

Thank you in advance.

With warm regards,

Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya 19 Laburnum Road, Gamdevi, Mumbai - 400 007, India Tel. No. +91-22-2380 5864 / 2380 8218 Fax No. +91-22-23806239 Email: info@gandhi-manibhavan.org

Kindly visit our most comprehensive and regularly updated website: www.gandhi-manibhavan.org and send us your comments and suggestions to make more user friendly

Done. See Mahatma Gandhi Sennheiser 14:16, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I wonder what made FUnaba (redirect page) apepars three times in "What links here" of Funabashi, Chiba. Is this need some fix? If so, how can it be fixed?

This is a known problem. Just ignore the duplicates for now; it's a bug that they're in the database at all, but filtering them from the list made the query much more expensive on the database server. --Brion 11:24, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I failed to find a description of this problem in FAQ.

An example is http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Tic-tac-toe, which is a transparent clone of Tic-tac-toe. What is going to be done about this?

Bottom of that page: The Wikipedia article included on this page is licensed under the GFDL. Jor 13:50, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Nationmaster is discussed here.
A full list of known users of our content is linked from Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:17, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Anyone know where Jtdirl has gone?

I'm not as much of a regular as I used to be around here so didn't notice he'd gone. Is he on holiday/gone cold turkey/coming back? If someone knows could they drop me a line on my talk page (to save space here) and delete this section if they think it won't be of interest to others? Cheers -- Ams80 19:54, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

family

Request for genealogical information for "MR CLARK"; moved to Wikipedia:Reference Desk


The Eagles

Question about what album they were writing; moved to Wikipedia:Reference Desk


How do I help

I live in the jungle of Belize, Central America. I am well educated but not knowledgeable about correct names of various plants and animals I take picutres of. I take pictures of what intrest me and have a large collection but no ideal of prper names. I know the pictures would enhance wikipedia but don't know how to post em properly. For example I have on of a multicolore lizard have no Ideal of it's scientific name so can't post it. General stuff I can do like pictures of goverment buildings, villages, and such and I have started doing so. I also will take pics by request if you explain what you want. Also what is the approriate size / resoultion for post? I use a 4 mega pixil digital camera at it's highest rez, and a 35mm SLR film camera. Belizian 07:32, 2004 Feb 5 (UTC)

  • Dimensions should be (at most) about 300 pixels square, but there are exceptions (usually for maps). If you want to upload them, just log in (only logged in users can upload), and click "Upload file" from the left. Pick the file, and it will be uploaded. I suggest you make a page (at User:Belizian/pictures, for instance), where you list all the pictures you have taken. Others could use it to identify them. →Raul654 07:35, Feb 5, 2004 (UTC)
  • Thanks ever so much for getting involved. Images of the kind you describe would be invaluable. Make a list of uploaded pictures as Raul describes then let the people at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life know about the wildlife pictures. The best expert we have in each area may be able to identify them and add to relevant articles. Full size colour images should be up to but less than 100KB - a smaller thumbnail is automatically created for use in articles and users can click to see the bigger picture - 100KB is much smaller than your digital camera will take so you will need to reduce them using one of many pieces of software available - shout again if you need a hand with this. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:43, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • Thanks for doing this. It will really help even if you don't know the names. Two things that I would suggest: 1) Upload them at around 640x480 pixel resolution (I would say up to 200KB). With the new image resizing options, it's not a problem to auto-generate thumbnails, but it is impossible to get higher quality from smaller pictures. 2) Make sure you write down where you took the picture (city, state, and if possible something about the specific place). Dori | Talk 13:35, Feb 5, 2004 (UTC)

wikipedia.org.uk

I have registered wikipedia.org.uk, and set it to forward to http://en.wikipedia.org. The forwarding only seems to be successful on the main page.

If anyone from wikipedia admin would like me to assign the site to them, please let me know. -- Chris Q 07:36, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

With an Apache redirect directive either in an .htaccess file or in the httpd.conf it should work for the subpages as well. Example: 

   Redirect / http://en.wikipedia.org/

If this doesn't work http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue61/nielsen2.html should have a solution. Gabriel Wicke 12:23, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks,but I am using a cheap "domain parking" service from http://www.webconexion.net. All I can do (without paying extra) is set a "forwars to" page, -- Chris Q 07:31, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
If all you're trying to do is to make Wikipedia easier to find, then you've done a good job. If you're trying to make the ".org.uk" domain masquerade as Wikipedia, then there will likely be extra work & expenses involved, which can be left to the "Wikipedia Organisation". I wouldn't sweat it if I were you. HTH --Phil 09:29, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Favorite quotes

I'm starting a Wikipedia:Favorite quotes page, because, well... I think there ought be one. My justification is that we already have a "Brilliant prose" page, and that a favorite quotes page is a good way to link to internal debates that were memorable, and should be read by people, rather than buried so that the issues would flame up again. T'will be done. -戴&#30505sv 08:29, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Are these supposed to be funny quotes, or just useful? I've been putting a lot of funny ones at Wikipedia:Yet more bad jokes and other deleted nonsense lately. →Raul654 08:40, Feb 5, 2004 (UTC)
Have you seen Angela's quote collections at User:Angela/Deletion, User:Angela/Stubs and User:Angela/What Wikipedia is not? -- Tim Starling 23:28, Feb 5, 2004 (UTC)
I'd not seen these. They're just beautiful.  :) fabiform | talk 23:42, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Mailing lists

What gives? It has been nearly a day since the last post was archived on the mailing lists. [5] --mav 09:05, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Brion mentioned in one post that mail might be interrupted for a while as part of the new server move. Maybe this it? Unfortunately I can't point you to the exact mail as URLs with the word *mail* in them are dynamic blocked from where I am accessing the internet. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:36, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Front page cached?

Trivial thing... but when I go to the front page the "you have messages" link is shown. But I don't, I've visited my talk page, checked the page history, refreshed the front page etc, but the message remains. Is this something to so with the squid that has recently been employed at wiki-central? I remember someone saying that he was caching pages.  ;) fabiform | talk 09:48, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If you're logged in nothing is cached by the Squid, same headers as before. It's only caching anon requests and takes a lot of load off the main server this way. -- Gabriel Wicke 11:56, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Moved all cache-related bug reports to meta:Cache bugs. -- Gabriel Wicke 14:22, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Not sure what to fix next?

I have just re-written Wikipedia:Articles requested for over two years to give pointers to what the requested articles should be about. With a little vim from a user or two we could clear this list today! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:07, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Recent Changes

Is it just me, or is Recent Changes not updating? Mine is stuck at 14:10. Bmills 14:47, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It's just you. Try reload or <shift-reload>. Tannin
Thanks. Working now. Bmills 15:11, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Conflict of information - ballpoint pen

Zagreb states it was invented by Slavoljub Penkala which article states he invented an automatic pencil. Ballpoint pen states it was invented by Laszlo Biro -- SGBailey 2004-02-05

At least one person went a bit overboard a while ago concerning Slavoljub Penkala. It has been claimed that he invented the propelling pencil (which IIRC checks out), the fountain pen (which doesn't, although he had a patent on at least one specific design), and apparently now the ballpoint pen too. I think it was Biro. Onebyone 21:05, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
As explained under ballpoint pen, several people have 'invented' it at different times. However, I don't think Slavoljub Penkala is widely thought to be one of them; indeed, the Zagreb article in question is rather in need of checking in several ways, so is like very unreliable. - IMSoP 03:38, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Help with new image syntax

I've reformatted the Stratocaster article using the Wikipedia:Extended image syntax and the image captions have disappeared. Can someone please tell me what I've done wrong? They are quite important to the article. Andrewa 15:49, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Caption do not work without thumbnails in the new image syntax. On Wikipedia talk:New image syntax this has already been discussed, with a proposed syntax from your not-so-humbly. For now, you'll either have to make it a thumbnail (with the grey area and the microscope image), or not use the image syntax to get it to the right (but use table or div as before). Andre Engels 16:37, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Thanks! I'll continue this on the talk page, and meantime I've used the workaround suggested there. Andrewa 20:46, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
...and I've now gone back to the old standard. Of the three versions of this article, the one that uses the cumbersome old syntax is by far the best, and it's not obvious how to get the same result with the new syntax.
Pity. Andrewa 02:19, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

As of November 7th, 2003, Google references 60,300 back-links to us... now its "about 73,700". We're going up quickly, I must say. --- user:zanimum

This number is rather unreliable, and seems to go up and down without any connection to the real number. It serves well as an order-of-magnitude estimate of the real number, but is not reliable enough to use in comparisons between one time and the other. Andre Engels 16:35, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Potential Paleoanthropology Issue

I was just browsing the 'pedia and I came across the following articles, Homo erectus soloensis and Homo erectus meganthropus. I know a bit about the Homo genus and hadn't heard of these guys before. Can anyone with more expertise than myself help determine if these articles reflect consensus views on the subject or are, rather, fringe science? Thanks. --Dante Alighieri 18:33, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think this might be catagorized as fringe science (i might be wrong). I did a google search for homo erectus soloensis site:.gov which yielded no results. I did a normal google search for the same homo, and one of the top results was an article from a Christ-Focused Creation Ministry. ON the other hand, there was a reference to it in www.thefreedictionary.com, but that might be a bogus source, and i haven't time to check. Sennheiser! 23:47, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
This article at archeology.org [6] mentions soloensis in passing, and it seems the name is derived from the Solo River in Java. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:51, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Hmmmm. Interesting. I think this might actually be valid. Further investigation led me to this university article which included a photogrpah of a Homo Soloensis skull. I also found another university article with an even better explanation. very exciting stuff. Sennheiser! 00:19, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

MPAA screeners

I've added a bit to the current events page and beefed up the article on screeners, but I think we should have a page on Carmine Caridi. Any takers? --Dante Alighieri 18:39, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Pakistan Nuclear Scandal

Given how big a deal this seems when I read the news articles about it, maybe we should have an article on it? See current events. --Dante Alighieri 18:39, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

We already have an article on Nuclear proliferation with a section about Pakistan that needs to be updated. See also Abdul Qadeer Khan for a related article. -- ChrisO 11:58, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)


Well then, someone should update the nuclear proliferation article. ;) As for the article on AQK, it seemed a bit sparse on current information regarding the issue. Anyone know a good source for more data? I was browsing google news but didn't really come up with that much useful info. --Dante Alighieri 16:31, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hello, I'm looking to exchange links with your site I will place a link to your site from ours [7]. Please let me know if this is possible Regards, Matt

This site is editable by anyone. Theoretically, you could add the link, but I reccomend that you dont. Wikipedia doesn't advertise. If you add the link it will probably be deleted, and if you continue to add the link, you might be blocked from editing. Sennheiser!

Wesley Clark

Question about whether he spoke in Tennessee in the 70s: already at Wikipedia:Reference desk.

SWF picture format

Hello fellow Wikipedians, I am a newcommer and am very impressed with this fantastic collective Free Encyclopedia. I would be honnored to make contributions to it, graphics wise, but first I need to now if the format I use and specialize in is suitable for your programm scince I have not seen it in the list of requested formats.

I work with SWF format, wich is a open format. My original technical illustrations and animations uses vectors wich produces very light weight files for fast downloads.

Here is an example showing the innerworkings of a Manual Transmission. It is fully interactive and make only 37K. A single picture (still) would be at around only 2K. http://www3.lino.sympatico.ca/geebee/custom/transmis.htm

I also produce JPGs and PNGs , but mostly I do in SWF because of vectors been so light.

If you find the format acceptable, then I would be happy to contribute as much as I can. I have many already done and some of the requests I see here I can produce quite easily and to top quality.

Best regards, and bravo for this wonderfull project that is, in my opinion, totally in tune with the real nature and purpose of the Internet.

geebee@lino.sympatico.ca

Have you looked at Wikipedia:Image use policy, especially the section on "Format"? I think that's our policy for now. If you have questions, please post them at Wikipedia talk:Image use policy. Thanks, Jwrosenzweig 21:10, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I can't speak for others, but I would not be averse to including flash animations as links. I'd prefer they not be in-line in the articles, and normal still images be there instead. This may need to wait a bit for some technical issues, as currently the Media: links do not set a proper content-type header, so linking to SWF files that way won't work correctly in most browsers. --Delirium 23:49, Feb 5, 2004 (UTC)


Until there's a high-quality non-proprietary player/viewer/plugin, forget it. Steven G. Johnson

Uploading images

Fabiform panics when a cached copy of an image is briefly shown. fabiform | talk 22:59, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You get some weird cache-related effects sometimes, Fabiform. Your image does have two shades of purple now. Somewhere in your chain of caches, one has not updated. Don't worry about it, it will sort itself out over time. Consider just how many caches there are in the chain between the 'pedia server and you. You may have (a) a browser cache, (b) a firewall cache (if you use an intelligent firewall), (c) other software caches such as download "accellerators", (d) your ISP's cache (they all say they don't use proxies, but they do), (e), your ISP's provider's cache (i.e., the company that does the trans-oceanic cable or satellite link - they cache stuff too, to save bandwidth). Plus I probably forgot some. Tannin 23:06, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I hadn't quite realised there were that many caches between me and wikipedia, thanks for elucidating! fabiform | talk 23:25, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I'm experiencing something similiar to Fabiform. I'm trying to overwrite Media:Cnimitz.jpg (black and white) with a slightly modified (cropped and brightened) picture - http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/k06000/k06651.jpg (color). But no matter what I do, the old one keeps popping up. I know for a fact it isn't a cache issue - I ssh'd into a server on a totally different ISP, downloaded the image, and got the old one. What am I doing wrong? →Raul654 11:12, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)
Screw it. I uploaded to a different name and deleted the old one. →Raul654 11:25, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)

After seeing color in parts of other user's signatures, Sennheiser attempted to make the exclamation mark talk page link(see User:Sennheiser#Sennheiser's Decision to use ! instead of . for the link to his talk page) in his signature black. Obviously he failed in implementing this feature. Any suggestions? Sennheiser! 01:31, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You probably saw a purple section, right? That is the "visited link" colour - you'd been to their talk page recently, so it shows up a different colour to their user page, which you'd not been to recently. Several people bold the part of their signature that links to their talk page. Or you can spell it out like this: fabiform | talk 01:40, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Dysprosia thinks that the stylesheet or wiki formatter is overriding your choice of font color for link. Dysprosia 01:45, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)


Well, Sennheiser saw Green in green's sig on Talk:Mars Exploration Rover Mission. BTW, Sennheiser has his visited link color set to light blue as Sennheiser finds purple ugly. Sennheiser! 01:52, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Sennheiser has now found a nice way to do his signature and is happy with it. (I realized the bold was better than a different color as it prevents confusion) Sennheiser!
Looks like User:Greenmountainboy gets round it by putting the font tag inside the link text - I suppose that makes it <a><font></font></a> rather than <font><a></a></font>. [[foo|<font color="magenta">bar</font>]]->bar. But I agree that it's better to use bold, especially since you could potentially break someone's custom colourscheme if you specify absolute colours. - IMSoP 02:14, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

(Yerzoplazistonian) Civil War Civil War

Looking at the list of contributions for User:SuperBee, I discovered an article called (Yerzoplazistonian) Civil War Civil War. When I click on it, it takes me to an empty article. The article is not nonexistant, it doesn't come up as an article to be created, it's there, though empty. I can click on the "Discuss this page" and get into an edit to create a Talk page. But there's no "Delete this page" link. How can we get rid of this? RickK 02:18, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Rick, it means the page doesn't exist :) SuperBee's MO is to put empty pages on his contribution list on his page. Don't worry about it, unless something's linked to the nonsense page. Thanks Dysprosia 02:29, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I think you mean User:SmartBee. His actual list of contributions shows up the (Yerzoplazistonian) Civil War Civil War page, not just the list he's written on his user page. I've tried to delete it before, but it won't go. Angela. 07:08, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)
Maybe it's a database thing, due to the previous upgrades &/c (I can't remember, I'm a goldfish or something). Dysprosia 07:11, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

an idea for preferential balloting

→ Talk:Instant-runoff voting

File not found

I've been getting intermittent "file not found" messages. For example, I went to VfD, clicked on a link from there and then pressed "back", only to get an error message saying the file could not be found -- this was not a 404 or any such thing, it was a popup box like any other in Mac OSX (Mozilla). Is this part of the recent Wiki-madness due to servers and new features and slashdotting being flung about willy-nilly? Tuf-Kat 04:58, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)

Iraq updates needed

While some pages on Iraq will need some time to be fully updated, I think we can safely gut Military of Iraq as the chance of it being accurate ever again are just about nil. --Dante Alighieri 07:26, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't it be shifted into the past tense, or moved to some kind of "history" article rather than bombed until the rocks bounce chopped down? Onebyone 10:45, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I agree, but I can already see the edit war over what it should be called. The Military of Iraq before .... (fill the gap at user's own risk). Bmills 10:48, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I suggest The Military of Iraq before 2003 as a neutral title. :) Jwrosenzweig

Wikistats unavailable

I've been sitting on this for a few days, thinking it might resolve itself, but to no avail. I want to see Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits, but it's ancient (an update would be appreciated), with a redirect to http://download.wikimedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm#Wikipedians. The link is broken, however. →Raul654 09:18, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)

It's been moved to http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm#wikipedians. Link updated. --Delirium 09:45, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)
Ah, thank you. That was generated on Sept 26 - Is that the most recent? →Raul654 09:54, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)
PS - I'm astounded that in less than 2 years, Maverick racked up 31,000 edits!

Just a reminder that the four-week period for raising objections to articles that were not clear keeps in the original voting is at its exact mid point. If you voted to remove an article but have not raised a formal objection to it, please do so now at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. Bmills 10:37, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

List of blocked users

20:00, Dec 31, 2004, Tim Starling blocked 65.110.6.34 (contribs) (unblock) (Sorry, Wikipedia has been vandalised many times by www.proxyweb.net users)
21:38, Feb 29, 2004, Hephaestos blocked 204.96.197.145 (contribs) (unblock) (michael)

Has Wikipedia been the victim of inter-temporal vandalism? →Raul654 14:24, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)

There isn't support in the software to block an anon IP for more than a day, and we had lots of vandalism from that address. So I think Tim manually inserted a block entry into the database for the end of the year. Quite clever, that. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:38, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Page History Checkboxes

What are the checkboxes that have suddenly started appearing beside items in the Page History lists for? Or am I seeing things? Bmills 14:31, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

(Copied from Talk: Main page)
Don't feel so bad - it took me a good 3-5 minutes to figure it out. I was even thinking about posting to the pump. Anyway, check any two boxes, and it'll show you the difference beteween the 2 versions you select. →Raul654 14:32, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)
However it seems it doesn't work that way, as it always gave me the difference between the last two versions. Or I might be too stupid to understand it? andy 14:43, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
No, it works, but it seems it is only working when selection the checkboxes from bottom to top - when doing from top to bottom it only shows the difference between the latest two version. Maybe a negative sign which needs to be stripped? andy 15:01, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I think this was fixed just a second ago (was chatting on IRC about it) :-)
There's a debate about two columns for the selection vs. the current one. Snok is preparing different variants, there might be a vote on it soon. -- Gabriel Wicke 14:42, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. It seems to work for me. I guess I was afraid to try it in case it was the sellotape that held the house together. Bmills 14:49, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Yea, I had the same fears at first. So I did my first test run on the Hanson article. That way, if I screwed up, we wouldn't lose anything valuable. →Raul654 14:52, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)

Awesome public domain site found

I, Sennheiser, have found an amazingly complete and detailed public domain site which has (long) articles about everything from SETI to the American Civil War. These articles are written by Greg Goebel, and many include diagrams created by Goebel (public domain). Sennheiser!

Someone needs to write him, explain the Wikipedia project, and ask if he minds having his work released under the GNU-FDL. --Dante Alighieri 16:28, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I did. He seems pretty cool and wants to help, but doesn't seem to want to do so directly. Apparently, he has had contact with some other Wikipedians, whom he calls "hacks". Here's the e-mail response I got from him:

Hi Dori:

Forgive me if I chuckling a little bit, but
Wikipedia hacks have ported about a
dozen of my works to the Wiki and I've
been corresponding with them for some
time.

However, I'm not unhappy to get in touch
with you because I've been a little 
frustrated in my dealings with Wiki
hacks -- not because they've been unkind
to me (quite the opposite!) but because 
they haven't taken as much advantage of
me as I am willing to give them.

I don't want to monkey with the 
Wiki myself directly, since working on
my site is enough of a job, but I would 
like to extend a standing invitation to
Wiki hacks that I am willing to:

% Consider requests, particularly if they
are something close to what I am already
doing.

% Abridge or provide outlines of my
documents, this being much easier for me
to do than somebody else since I have my
brain wrapped around them already.

% Extract elements from larger documents
and convert them into stand-along 
documents -- for example, say, yanking 
the story of the Battle of Gettysburg from
my oversized Civil War history and 
turning it into a stand-alone item.

I must say I am impressed that the Wiki
seems to maintain surprisingly high 
standards of quality for a contribution
based system.  I suspect that a good review
system is the key.

PS:  As a kindly-meant and minor suggestion,
you might try more specific titles than simply
"Hi".  I opened up the email expecting it to be
pornographic spam ...

Nice chatting ... 
Greg Goebel


I think some of the editors interested in the subjects covered in the site should contact Greg and cooperate to bring some of that information into Wikipedia. Perhaps we should create a cooperation page to track this. Dori | Talk 17:03, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)

He seems very nice.  I have created a Short Sunderland, mostly from his article, but I did add pictures of each mark(it took a while to find an image of each different version, and they were hard to tell apart).  Since he releases his work in the public domain, he gives away his work without any expectation that he will get credit. (i did, however, give him credit in the article I created) Sennheiser! 17:11, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)




Yes, I think it's important to give credit where credit is due (I usually do so in a References section at the bottom). We can make a MediaWiki message just for these artiles (like for 1911) so that they are the same. More importantly I think we should try to coordinate efforts so that there is no duplication and also so we can take advantage of the help Greg is offering. Apparently we have a page on Greg at Greg Goebel. I think this should be moved to the Wikipedia namespace. I propose: Wikipedia:Vectorsite import station. Dori | Talk 17:22, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)


Yes (vectorsite import station sounds good to me). He only is frustrated because he is willing to do more for wikipedia? Thats kind of weird, but very nice. BTW, can someone add Short Sunderland to the main page? Sennheiser!








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