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Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Ellmist (talk | contribs) at 01:28, 22 November 2002 (reply to 62.253.64.7). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
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Moved discussion

Wikipedia Evangelism

Hi, I've mentioned this before and thought I'd mention it again. As I'm browsing the pedia I find articles that might interest friends/coworkers. I pop them a link in a quick hello message and ask them if they confirm the accuracy of the content...the response so far has been first one of wonder, then awe, then enthusiasm! And it's been a nice way to relate to some folks I'm not often in contact with. Anyway, I searched for evangelism and came up with nada around the 'pedia. Is there a place for sharing an evangelical/ 'help us' message of wikipedia? --dgd

There's some stuff at Wikipedia:Building Wikipedia membership. (Hint which wouldn't help here but may in general: after searching, go to the "Power search" box at the bottom of the screen and check the box for the 'Wikipedia' namespace. You'll get various about, help, documentation, etc pages that aren't supposed to show up when you're searching for encyclopedia articles.) Also check the Meta-wikipedia where we keep general project discussion and misc stuff. --Brion 20:42 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)
How about doing what a lot of news web pages do? They have a box at the bottom, "Send this article to a friend" with some kind of java mailer to ship it off and a box for you to add a signed message. Ortolan88
I like that idea too. Especially, and I know this would require more overhead, but a way to keep my list of folks in memory so I don't have to open my email client (which may not be available esp, as I'm a student and working on diff. machines).

The recent flurry of editing on articles such as The Simpsons/Episode List, list of fictional cats, and felching has made me wonder: is there a "Most ridiculous articles" or similar page? Someplace that lists articles that have encyclopedic value, but at the same time make you wonder, "Why did someone make a page on this?" I looked briefly but didn't find one. I am very happy that we have articles like these; there should be a page celebrating their existence. -- Merphant 08:41 Oct 27, 2002 (UTC)

Just commenting the opnly reason I put The Simpsons/Episode List on a seprate page is that its a very long list. If it was shorter I would haev pt it on The Simpsons.

I understand completely; I recently did the same thing with List of musical instruments and the musical instrument article. It's still funny, though. -- Merphant


Copyrighted sound files

Another copyright question: is it definitely OK to use short (about 15 seconds) sound samples from copyrighted recordings in articles? I want to add illustrative noises to articles like string quartet, flute and Piano Phase. Looking at The Beatles (album) and A Hard Day's Night, it seems to be OK, and I know it was discussed on the White album talk page, but I want to be certain before I start uploading. If it is OK, should I fully credit the recordings on the image page (performers, conductor, etc) or not? --Camembert

Well, as nobody has said "No, don't do it," I'm going to do it. 19 seconds of a copyrighted recording of Borodin's best known piece will shortly be appearing at Alexander Borodin. And I will be giving full credits on the media page, because it says to include any information you know about the recording when you upload (and it's interesting info in any case). --Camembert 17:22 Nov 3, 2002 (UTC)

Does anybody have an explanation for:

They all have a population of zero. If nobody lives there, is there any reason to keep these articles? They seem kinda silly, all this talk about what is apparently a piece of wilderness arbitrarily designated a "community" (I'm referring to Oklahoma here). Thoughts? Tokerboy 07:44 Nov 1, 2002 (UTC)

They're harmless and not worth the effort for removal. One in fact was a census mistake; Belleair Shore, Florida was listed by the US census as having a population of 0 which was a shock to the local residents (51 households). A couple more are probably also census mistakes; Supai, Arizona went from 423 to 0 in 10 years and Sportsmen Acres Community, Oklahoma went from 181 to 0. If these are mistakes then we should find out and if they are true then it would be interesting to find out why these places lost their populations.
Also, whether or not somebody lives at a place shouldn't be a reason for deciding whether we should keep or delete an entry. In fact many central city/downtown areas in the US don't have anybody officially living in them and yet these areas are very important. I'm sure many of these places have interesting history associated with them. Most look like they actually have people and even industries working in them (just like the US downtowns). --mav
http://www.fryeisland.com/
Funny, for a town with no population, you wouldn't expect them to have a ___domain name, 2 ferries, a 9-hole golf course and I bet those town meetings are a REAL snore. Actually, Frye Island is not only a real town, but it is a world famous vacation hotspot drawing in tourists by the hundreds each year from all over the world. In my opinion, not only should Frye Island have an article, that article should be a whole lot better then the one which exists now. Maybe instead of complaining about it you should do some research and give these towns the credit they deserve! Just my $0.02. Robert Lee 09:48 Nov 1, 2002 (UTC)
I agree - these entries need to be improved not removed. --mav
Just for the information, all these entries had the population data (and other data) marked by the census bureau as "Not Applicable" for whatever reason. I don't know if the census bureau changed the way it counts population or if it is an error. The census bureau publishes a large "errata" so it might be in there (I have not looked). If they are wrong, alas, people who know about the places are going to have to update them. -- Ram-Man
Why is the information (which seems to be from tables) not in tabular form? --Juuitchan

When I uploaded the copyrighted Borodin sound sample I wrote about above (under "Copyrighted sound files") I had to check a box that said "I affirm that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license it under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright." Unless I'm wrong, and samples this size are not copyrightable (which I don't think is the case), then I was lying when I checked this box, and so was everybody else when they uploaded sound samples that are probably perfectly OK under fair use. Shouldn't the message on the checkbox be changed? --Camembert 17:37 Nov 3, 2002 (UTC)

I don't know what your talking about with the checkbox, but sound samples of any size are copywritable. [1] makes for good reading. And as for "Fair Use", [2] is also good reading. There is no easy way to calculate the amount of a work you can distribute without violating the law. By distributing any of the work, you open yourself up for a lawsuit. A judge then decides whether or not you were in violation. Robert Lee

One also needs to avoid copyright paranoia. Common sense goes a long way when dealing with fair use. There are also a lot of steps to be taken before it gets to a judge. Eclecticology 22:10 Nov 3, 2002 (UTC)

All day today, typing in wikipedia.org has brought me straight to the Dutch Wikipedia. English is the one and only language in my browser's (IE5.1Mac) preferences. It's really kinda jarring, though I'm starting to learn dutch (starting with hoofdpagina). Netscape 4.75 does the same thing, and google and yahoo both show me English. Is anybody else having this problem? Tokerboy 09:28 Nov 6, 2002 (UTC)

I messed up the apache configuration; that mod_rewrite's a canine female to confiure just so. Should be fixed now. --Brion 09:44 Nov 6, 2002 (UTC)
It does. Thanks, Brion Tokerboy 09:50 Nov 6, 2002 (UTC)

Could someone with a fast connection zip through the chains pages on Orders of magnitude/Temp, to check they each connect to their neighbours? These need checking before we replace the old OofM page. -- Tarquin 11:52 Nov 6, 2002 (UTC)

Attributed articles now ?

What's the story on the external links in PUCCAMP, please? The images and info are great, although I don't like having pictures before any text, and it needs to be put into complete sentences, but I'm a little dubious of having a foreign-language link without mentioning that it is on the article page, and I'm a lot dubious about the link to the contributor's résumé -- since when are our articles signed? -- isis 01:30 Nov 8, 2002 (UTC)

I've removed the signature to the talk page, and mentioned that the site is in Portugeuse. --Camembert

Why keep it on the talk page? It's already on that user's user page, and we can get there from the history. Do we all get to put our links on the talk pages of articles now? Is that only for the new ones we start, or is that for ones we edit, too? Only major edits, or minor ones, too, like the ones I only put an image in? And am I restricted to linking it to my résumé, or can I link it to my entry in Who's Who in America, too? -- isis 07:15 Nov 8, 2002 (UTC)

Well look, if you want to remove it from the talk page, then do so, it won't bother me. And if you want to try adding links to the talk page of everything you edit, then try it and see what happens (my guess is they'll be removed if it's done en masse rather than just on one ocassion by a newcomer who doesn't know better). --Camembert

I wasn't going by the newbie's putting it there: I was going by User:Chris mahan's ratifying it and your keeping it on the 'talk' page, and now we have mav saying it's okay to have attributions on the 'talk' page. I am surprised at that (as you must be, given your prediction such postings would be removed), because I thought the 'talk' page was for discussions about the subject of the article and 'user' pages were for claiming credit for articles, but the only way I'm going to learn is by asking. -- isis 15:01 Nov 8, 2002 (UTC)

No, you can also "observe a lot by watching" as Yogi Berra might say (see Yogiisms). --Ed Poor
Normally, I would just remove the credit altogether rather than put it on talk (in fact I have done this a couple of times just now) - what can I say, I'm fickle. Personally, I probably wouldn't move article credits from the talk page (there are better things to be doing), but others might. I think there are some cases where we have copyright clearance to use something, and that goes on the talk page - such credits shouldn't be removed, of course. Otherwise, I don't think it's a very big deal - I can't speak for others. --Camembert

Bug Report I could put this on source forge, but then we would not be able to comment without registering with a 3rd party. Anyways: Portland, Maine displays super-wide on Win2k/IE6 sometimes. I have to refresh a bunch of times to get the page to bounce back to normal width. There is nothing that should ever be wide on that page. And other articles do this (like some chess pages). Does anyone know why? Is this IE6 or Wikipedia? I assume its just IE6, but its quite annoying and most internet users use IE6 (appox 97% of netizens use Internet Explorer 6.0). Robert Lee

If it only does it sometimes, it sounds like an IE6 bug. I haven't seen such behavior on IE5.5, nor Mozilla. (However the obscenely large images need to be made smaller, or it's going to be always too wide for a lot of people.) Also note that articles with tables that are set to "width=100%" are guaranteed to be too wide in Internet Explorer. Workaround: don't do that. --Brion 02:13 Nov 10, 2002 (UTC)

This town ain't big enough for both of us

The user name "Throbbing Monster Cock" is overtly offensive, and I am ashamed to be part of Wikipedia whenever it crops up on 'recent changes.' I know only one remedy, so I'm taking it. If that user name ever goes away, I'd appreciate it if someone would e-mail me thru my user page and let me know, so I can come back. Thanks, y'all -- it's been fun. -- isis 02:03 Nov 10, 2002 (UTC)

Enjoy your newfound free time. :) --Brion 02:13 Nov 10, 2002 (UTC)
Great. Not only is TMC trolling about, he's driven a valued contributor away. -- Tarquin 09:18 Nov 10, 2002 (UTC)

I have many many questions about some nifty new images that I'm able to generate for every county in the state. Rather than ask those questions here, I'm asking them on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Counties page. Any input would be appreciated. -- Thanks, RobLa 02:26 Nov 10, 2002 (UTC)

Integrating Two Integrative Sites

Hi, I'm the webmaster and principal author of the Integration Website http://noosphere.cc. A fascinating thrill went through me when I discovered the Wikipedia Website and the Wiki Websites System in general.

The similarity in the purpose of this site and Wikipedia is striking: both sites aim at constructing, by open Internet cooperation, a thesaurus of integrative knowledge. Still, there are two differences: (1) the Wikipedia site uses an automated software, allowing visitors to edit existing pages online, while this site is manually edited, and (2) the Integration site features an advanced concept of integrative editing, while the Wiki system is described as "a collaborative project to produce a free and complete encyclopedia", and uses the "open content" paradigm. Although the Open Content approach is completely compatible with the Integration approach, the latter goes further because (1) it proposes a series of explicit editing rules (while the Wiki context is much more permissive, and its rules are more intuitive and inspired by common sense), and because (2) this Integration concept assumes that by respecting these rules, if adequately applied, a degree of plausibility probably comparable to scientific certitude can be reached.

As I describe in the Future of this Site page, integration with such an integrative site as Wikipedia will be sought. In a first stage I'll try to add progressively our contents to the Wikipedia site. If, for some reasons yet to discover, this kind of integration proves impossible, we'll try to start up a new Wiki-like site, or introduce the Wiki software into this site.

Any comments? Kris Roose 10 Nov 2002, 14.30 CET

Sounds interesting. This type of question should be put forwared to the Wikipedia mailing list. However I can tell you right now that some people will be concerned with your websites POV of "scientifically based spirituality". But if your text can be made to adhere our NPOV poilicy then it would be great to have it. --mav

How do I turn a .ram file into a .ogg file on a Mac? Tokerboy 06:50 Nov 11, 2002 (UTC)

You'll need a recorder that saves to the OGG format or to a format another program can convert to OGG. Then you'll need to buy an audio cable from a store like Radio Shack and plug one end into the audio out and the other into the audio in. Start playing the RealPlayer file. Then start recording. Alternatively, you can use Snapz Pro from Ambrosia Software to record without the extra digital to analog to digital step. Both have the disadvantage of quality loss and requiring you to play through the entire sound and stop at the end without playing any other sounds on your computer. If you had a different source format than RealPlayer, we could simplify the process considerably. Unfortunately, RealPlayer makes any conversion to a different format hard. Programs have existed for various platforms that have done this from time to time but I have heard the programs and the companies worked unreliably and cost money. --Ellmist Monday, November 11th, 2002

Question/suggestion about http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Booksources

This page only comes up when you click on an ISBN and then it goes from this page directly to a link for the ISBN you clicked on. Mega-handy, but not explained on the page. It would also be mega-handy, to me, anyway, if going to the page directly allowed going to one of the book sources and searching directly. It works on everything but the Barnes and Noble link. Ortolan88

Is there a page somewhere where we can list articles we think not neutral at all ? Does it happen that some people write comments directly on a page that they think is very oriented, so strongly deserve being refactored (sort of a warning for potential readers) or is the only option (when the original writer clearly doesn't want to give it a try) to do it ourselves ? user:anthere

You can link these pages to Wikipedia:NPOV dispute.

See also: Wikipedia:Votes for NPOVing, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. olivier 12:59 Nov 12, 2002 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Pages needing attention

thanks --ant

Hit Counters Disabled

What's with the hit counters? They seem to have frozen, ever since that database lock yesterday. Tim Starling 23:29 Nov 12, 2002 (UTC)

The hit counters have been temporarily disabled. --Brion 01:05 Nov 13, 2002 (UTC)
Brion forgot to mention why they were disabled. The reason is to improve site performance. Read his post to Wikitech-L here. --mav 02:47 Nov 13, 2002 (UTC)
Since that feature isn't working, might I suggest the text on the main page be changed to something like either "90679 articles as of 11 November 2002" or perhaps "Over 90700 articles"? And are there plans to get that feature working again? Wondering simply, -- Infrogmation 01:55 Nov 16, 2002 (UTC)

What's the policy on articles containing explanatory text, e.g. "This article will detail how one goes about proving that all cows are green." Is it bad? Good? Uncertain? Graft

It's useful in certain articles, such as anarchism -- the explaination helps people find what they're looking for much quicker. -- Sam
I agree it's useful, but we don't always operate based on what's most useful... I am wondering more if people think (or have thought) that this violates some sort of encyclopedia etiquette, or if it munges with the "voice" of the encyclopedia in some taboo way... Graft

Ok I can understand the change to Discuss this page as I guess it might prompt discussion, but why Older Versions?. History was better I think.

What's up with "Move Page"? It seems it is either broken or too hard to use for a simple soul like me. I moved Scholastic Achievement Test to SAT college entrance test using "Move page". The explanatory text stated "The talk page, if any, will not be moved." Just below that, however, was a box I checked saying "Move 'talk' page as well, if applicable." What happened? Nothing. The talk page Talk:Scholastic Achievement Test wasn't moved and when I tried to move it separately to Talk:SAT college entrance test I got an error saying the page already exists. So, I am dropping my quest and will simply put something on the new talk page so if anyone wants to know why I made the move they can find the old talk page. Awaiting your sarcasm, I remain, that cranky guy, Ortolan88 02:58 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

Since there was an existing talk page of that name, it can't move the talk page over it and, sensibly, refuses to do so when asked. Everything sounds in order. --Brion 03:03 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

You know, Brion, I almost wrote "Awaiting Brion Vibber's sarcastic answer", but I decided that would be too sarcastic. I guess not.


There is nothing sensible or in good order about the conflicting statements on the "Move Page" instructions. One says I can't move the talk page and one says I can.

Nor is there anything sensible or in good order about the behavior implied by your reply. If "Move Page" created the talk page along with the new page, just exactly when is it possible to move a talk page under any conditions? If I was supposed to move the talk page and then the article, where would I find that out? Awaiting a supportive and helpful reply, I remain, that optimistic guy, Ortolan88 03:11 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

I couldn't let you down. ;) Now the real reply: as far as I can tell, Talk:SAT college entrance test was an existing page at the time you moved Scholastic Achievement Test to SAT college entrance test. Perhaps this latter page did not exist, perhaps it was a redirect with no history; in either of these two cases, Move Page will happily replace nothingness with a page.
If there is a page, and it's not a redirect with no history, it will not ever under any circumstances replace that page with something you've asked it to move. If you ask it to do that, it will notify you.
Now, the notification is kinda lame. If the main page you've asked it to move over already exists, it gives you a big, rude, unmistakeable message. If just the talk page has a conflict, but the main page went through fine, it just tells you that "the associated talk page was not moved." I'm assuming your complaint is derived from the subtleness of the message; it doesn't tell you in giant letters why it didn't move it.
There are a couple possible ways to improve the situation:
  • Say in big ugly letters that can't be misread: "Page successfully moved! But talk page was not moved, because there's already a page there! Go fix it, human, for I am but a lowly computer and unable to read your mind and tell which of the pages you prefer."
  • Refuse to move either page, explain "I could move this page, but I won't be able to move the talk page because there's already a talk page under the destination title and I can't overwrite it without intervention from a sysop. If you still want to move the page and leave its talk page alone, click here."
Which would you prefer? --Brion 03:21 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)


An answer I can work with! The reason the page already existed, I think, is that the initial "Move Page" seemed to hang, so I cancelled it (I thought) and tried to resubmit the request. The second time, I got a message that the page already existed, so, obviously (to you but not to me), the talk page existed too.

What I would prefer, and what I think makes most sense, is to automatically move the talk page at the same time as the article. I don't know why the talk page should ever be left behind.

I can't draw a flow chart, but if I were specing "Move Page" anew, I would have the following behavior:

  1. By default Move page creates both new page and talk page.
  2. If article page already exists, move only if it contains no text (or only "edit this page".
  3. If talk page already exists, ask if user wants to overwrite it or append to it.

Obviously I haven't thought this completely through, but I do think the present system is counter-intuitive. Ortolan88 03:34 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

Ahh, that's a horse of a different color! Saying "the initial "Move Page" seemed to hang, so I cancelled it (I thought) and tried to resubmit the request" in the first place would have saved a lot of time dealing with sarcastic responses. It may have, indeed, somehow crapped out halfway through, moving only the article and failing to get to the talk page. If you didn't try the second move until an hour later, when the new talk page was created, then it would indeed have failed due to the existence of that page.
Transaction rollback would help prevent that kind of glitch, but that's not something we can easily do with the version of MySQL we're using. Better explanatory text on the move page, however, I can do. --Brion 05:07 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

I didn't say so because I was lost in a maze of confusing directions and confusing behavior and came here seeking aid.

The text on the "Move Page" instructions should not say you can't and can move the talk page. Yours for more subtle sarcasm, Ortolan88 14:44 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

You didn't describe what you did because the text on screen was confusing? I'll chalk it up to mental anguish. I replaced the instructions last night, let me know if they suit you. --Brion 19:46 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

cut and paste works very well for moving pages...Lir 03:13 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

There's reams of research on this very topic. For versioning it's very important to preserve who did what when, but on the other hand you do hit conflicts like this where what you want to do fails because it deletes other versioning information.

In this case you need to merge the two, most systems, seemingly like wikipedia will preserve one set while expecting you to hand merge the other changes in.


In a perfect world there would be a seperate merge option that would preserve the history of both entities when you merge two pages but this doesn't seem to be the case here, and without it there's no easy way around your problem.

If someone will point me at the development information for wikipedia I can tell you how feasible it would be to have that kind of feature.

We're fairly lucky here. Most versioning systems are very heavy weight and arcane. Wikipedia does very well in comparison without missing too many features. For example, wikipedia just caught a conflict between my edit and Brions just then and I had to merge the changes I made into his updated article.

--v

That is, cut and paste doesn't preserve history or page count. Ortolan88

Could we take all the "list of topics" pages like List of Conservation topics and list of mathematical topics, etc. and move them into the wikipedia namespace? They are not articles; they are tools in helping us build an encylopedia, no? DanKeshet 21:56 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)

As boring as lots of the lists are, they are an aid to navigation as well as an aid to authorship. I never think it's a good idea to remove information from the Wikipedia. Besides, no one would understand and there would be a new list outside that namespace tomorrow. When people take the trouble to annotate the lists with something that indicates why the person or event is on the list, they're even more useful. Ortolan88

Should medical articles carry some form of boilerplate disclaimer? 62.253.64.7

Probably. I've already mentioned the idea for havin a disclaimer boilerplate linked from each page on the Wikipedia mailing list. There was some support for the idea but not a great deal (nobody came out against it, which seems like a good sign). Chim in if you think it is needed.See my post on this here --mav
I don't know if you call it an objection, but I don't like the idea of having boilerplate disclaimers *in* the articles. I don't mind a separate page on Wikipedia which lists the various disclaimers, but that is hardly a good reason to fill perfectly good articles with non-encyclopedic material. People should know that this is a general knowledge encyclopedia that is not necessarily authored by a professional source. But we should not have to fill articles with boilerplates because people don't know that. Put it on a disclaimer page like every other web site has. -- Ram-Man
Yup. That is why my idea calls for just one disclaimer page linked from the uneditable part of each page's footer area. --mav
I guess I should have read the idea first ;-) -- Ram-Man

We have a disclaimer on Wikipedia:Medicine standards. Though I doubt it represents consensus since most people don't know about it. --Ellmist Thursday, November 21st, 2002

I've been getting tons of error messages today, saying that there was a connection error. It only just now started working again, and since Recent Changes looks much the same as last time I saw it, I'm guessing I'm not the only one with problems today. Does anybody know what is causing this? Tokerboy 23:11 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)

Something on the server was leaking memory fierce; a lot of swapping, and the whole system ran like molasses for a while. I restarted mysql & apache and they seem to be playing nicely again. --Brion 23:30 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)
Yes, thanks. It's actually running fast as all geddup now, better than it has for weeks. Tokerboy 00:12 Nov 22, 2002 (UTC)
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