Jump to content

Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Angela (talk | contribs) at 22:13, 17 May 2004. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Village pump sections
post, watch, search
Discuss existing and proposed policies
post, watch, search
Discuss technical issues about Wikipedia
post, watch, search
Discuss new proposals that are not policy-related
post, watch, search
Incubate new ideas before formally proposing them
post, watch, search
Discuss issues involving the Wikimedia Foundation
post, watch, search
Post messages that do not fit into any other category
View all village pump sections at once
Other help and discussion locations
I want... Then go to...
...help using or editing Wikipedia Teahouse (for newer users) or Help desk (for experienced users)
...to find my way around Wikipedia Department directory
...specific facts (e.g. Who was the first pope?) Reference desk
...constructive criticism from others for a specific article Peer review
...help resolving a specific article edit dispute Requests for comment
...to comment on a specific article Article's talk page
...to view and discuss other Wikimedia projects Wikimedia Meta-Wiki
...to learn about citing Wikipedia in a bibliography Citing Wikipedia
...to report sites that copy Wikipedia content Mirrors and forks
...to ask questions or make comments Questions


For general problems with Wikipedia not pertaining to any single article, see Wikipedia:General complaints [[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]]

Summarised sections

This is a list of discussions that have been summarised and moved to an appropriate place. This list gets deleted occasionally to make room for newer entries.

Offices Held by politicians

Do any guidelines exist for the content of tables showing the offices held by politicians? (See the bottom of the Tony Blair entry for an example.) It appears that periods spent as members of bodies such as Parliament aren't included, but I think it would be a good idea to do so. Betelgeuse 15:33, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

My first instinct was to agree with you, but after thinking about it, at least in the US, congressional districts change often enough that it's difficult to ascribe a real continuity to all of them. Similarly, Senate seats are arranged as junior and senior, but which seat is which will change periodically. So at least in US politics, I'm not sure how the linear nature of these boxes would work. I don't know, in Britain, how variable districts and their representation are, so I don't know if this problem exports to other countries. Snowspinner 16:29, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
It'd be awkward to include such tables on all politicians, even without reapportionment or redistricting - very few politicians stay in the same office for very long, and including a table for each office held would make their articles bulky. - jredmond 16:44, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Tricky. UK parliamentary boundaries are reviewed about every 10 years, and if the changes are too drastic a sitting MP may jump ship and look for a more winnable seat elsewhere (I'm reminded of one Conservative MP who looked for a better seat in 1997 and failed to win it, while what was left of his original seat remained Conservative...). Also MPs may lose their seat at one election, and be elected somewhere totally different at a later election (see Gwyneth Dunwoody or Tony Benn for example). -- Arwel 16:45, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Sir George Young is an example of an MP who moved constituencies because of boundary adjustments. For his entry I would add 'MP for Ealing Acton 1974 - 1997' and 'MP for North West Hampshire 1997 - present'. I don't think the two extra rows would add to much bulk to the article (most politicians entries are little more than stubs anyway), and I think it's the type of information a reference work like wikipedia should include. Betelgeuse 16:56, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about UK politicians, but it would be a huge mess trying to figure it out for U.S. representatives except for perhaps the last few decades. For early politicians, documentation is not always readily available about which district a representative was from (and even if available, may be misleading because the district boundaries change frequently). So even if we could figure it out, I'm not sure it would be that helpful since the actual districts change dramatically over time. For example, when Michigan first became a state, the entire state was one congressional district. Now the state is divided into 16 districts. I believe it had more districts in the past. Further, there are MANY U.S. politicians who have held multiple offices: representative, senator, governor, Presidential cabinet (sometimes different positions in the cabinet). In short, it *might* be feasible to do this for U.S. Senate seats, but I don't see any point to attempting it for House seats. older≠wiser 17:47, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect warriors

From time to time here comes a guy and starts "fixing rediects". A recent example is massive change of Trans-Siberian railroad into Transsiberian railway.

It is one thing to fix redirects from, e.g., common misspellings. It is totally meaningless IMO thing to replace a perfectly valid and almost as common name, like in the example above. In some particular case I fixed some time ago, the article author intentionally used an archaic term, only to be "fixed" by some overzealous wikipeditor.

Guys, please be reasonable. Think about other useful things you can do, like Wikipedia:New pages patrol. Mikkalai 18:25, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be a 'redirects are evil' mindset among some people here. Not sure where exactly that came from ... possibly from the 'linking to disambiguation pages is evil' idea.
IMO, one should rarely change the linked-from text, that's what the pipe-link is for. But really, is there any reason why a pipe-link is BETTER than a redirect? It's just two ways of handling the same thing: linking from a string of text to a page whose title is not the same. One method keeps it all in the linked-from page, another uses a secondary redirect page, but I don't really see a reason why to change it.
It's possibly a squid/database load issue ... using the redirect takes two hits; piping the redirect at the point it is anchored takes a single hit. As others have said, though, there's never any reason to change the anchor text to deal with the reirect issue. --Tagishsimon
They are actually both one request (we don't use http redirects, instead the 'redirected' content is served at the requested url). But: Because we currently don't have a good way to find out which pages redirect to a certain page (for purging), so they aren't cached as a result. This will very likely change with 1.4 where the redirect will re-use the cached content of the 'real' page. -- Gabriel Wicke 08:13, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
As Mikkalai says, if the linked-from text is actually inaccurate and it's a context where that matters, then it should be changed ... —Morven 02:46, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
As the person who did the redirects to Trans-Siberian railway, let me explain my reasoning. It was based on what happens when you move a page, and you get the following warning: "Links to the old page title will not be changed; be sure to check for double-redirects (using "What links here") after the move. You are responsible for making sure that links continue to point where they are supposed to go." As far as I'm concerned, an article that points to "Trans-Siberian Railroad" when the actual article is at "Trans-Siberian railway" is not pointing where it is supposed to go. I understood that the point of redirects was to deal with people looking things up from outside Wikipedia, rather than badly-formatted wikilinks. However, I concede that in most if not all of those articles I should probably have piped the redirect rather than changing the text. Some articles are formatted in British English (railway); some are in American English (railroad); the important thing is consistency within the article. I will give myself a slap on the wrist and a task to check that all the pages linking to Trans-Siberian railway are still consistent. --ALargeElk 08:48, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion lets me undestand "the root of the evil". All this redirect/piping thing is simply a techie mindset: you are trying to "help" computer to do the job (of readdresing), whil it should be exactly vice versa: computers are here to help us write articles (and read articles). Using pipes and fixing redirects is IMO like writing pieces of code in assembly language where the compiler is dumb and cannot optimize. It ought to be done sometimes, but if you have to do it almost everywhere, this should be the hint that either the overall design is wrong or atavistic instincts come creeping. I know that "real programmers" write in FORTRAN, but... Mikkalai 15:46, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


Demographics of US towns

I note that in the demographics of us towns like Hialeah, Florida, all ethnic groups except white are wikified. Does this strike folks as odd? What should this one link to? Thanks, Mark Richards 21:28, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

It should link to Race (US Census). User:Rambot didn't finish his job and vanished for some reason. The link to Asia is inapproprate. We need to know about the ethnic group, not the continent from which their ancestors originated. --Jiang 22:50, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
There is a WikiProject on ethnic groups. It's been a bit quiet lately. If anyone is interested in investing some effort into it, that would be great. This does come with one warning though: this is an area that ineveitably must be handled with some sensitivity, a matter that is discussed in that project page and its related pages. -- Jmabel 23:55, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Appropriate URL

This is kind of amusing: the URL that Wikipedia generated for Image:Us-pa.gif (the Pennsylvanian flag) is "/upload/7/76/Us-pa.gif". Marnanel 04:07, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

-->Continued at Image talk:Us-pa.gif

Looking for Wikipedia pages

I'm looking for the page that directs the "Did You Know?" section on the front page. Who decides what we see there?

I also want to know if there's a New pages patrol, just like the RC patrol.

Anyone with info please contact me hear or at my talk page. MGM 10:20, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Did you know is shown in the main page, and Wikipedia:Recent additions is the history thereof. The rules are in the corresponding talk page MediaWiki talk:Did you know. Wikipedia:New pages patrol is for the new pages patrol, but it's rather quiet over there. -- Chris 73 | Talk 02:01, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


"See also" vs "Related topics", and Category Project

The Wikipedia Guide to Layout recommends that "Related topics" be a heading for a collection of internal links to related topics. Custom and practice in the Wikipedia appears to be to use "See also". Should the recommendation be changed? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.

Verbs

I think there should be some naming conventions for verbs (Wikipedia:Naming conventions (verbs) - tentative).

There is a convention about using the most common words (Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)) which could apply to verbs in some cases; ie killing redirects to murder.

It seems to be common practice to use the present participle; ie. jumping rather than jump or jumped.

Any comments? Bensaccount 01:20, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I advocate really useless and counter-intutive verb forms as the standard. i.e. Will have been jumping. Though if people insist on a reasonable standard, present participle. Snowspinner 04:30, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

emdashes

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dashes#emdashes

Linking to family trees

As an example, the article Julio-Claudian family tree has a single image with the entire family tree. I'm wondering if it's possible to create a family tree that appears similar but has a feature linking the individual names in the tree to the articles about those people. Does the software exist to do this? MK 06:22, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

What should be done about POV external links? Are these escaping the normal Wikipedia NPOV process? Should they be removed? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:External links#External links epidemic.

In praise of annotating lists of links—and anything else

In reference to the above problem of external links not being described (and consequently hiding POV), let me add that I feel that in general, Wikipedia has too many lists of links and anything else that just list items without any descriptions. Most of could be enormously improved by adding short notes to list items. (The note should be short enough so that the list remains on a single line without wrapping when the window is a normal size. This preserves the vertical compactness of the list and keeps the list items positioned for easy visual overview).

Editors seem to be reluctant to do this, I'm not sure why.

Perhaps what happens is that someone starts a list that contains no comments, and subsequent editors are reluctant to be the first to disturb the pristine columnnar appearance of the list by adding the first comment? Or is it a "foolish consistency" fear that it is somehow wrong to annotate one item unless you can annotate all of them?

When listing Moog synthesizer users, how much better to have

(as is the case in the actual article) than

Dpbsmith 11:13, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

That's better, certainly, but good old fashioned sentences would be better yet. Strawman:
I've taken to doing this on disambigs, e.g. Stirling (disambiguation) -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:41, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know. There's a case to be made for conciseness as well. I think we should seek a happy medium. I agree that "Mike Farrell" or "Doug Fieger" is too little, but I think information about particular albums, songs, or collaborators should be found in the linked article not the link itself. MK 04:47, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

gold sovereign

Question moved to Wikipedia:Reference Desk. Meelar 17:52, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Quantum optics

Quantum optics is a very lively field of current physics research. But so far we only have articles on its more application-related neighbouring field, laser science. I've done a start by writing the article quantum optics, but there's much to do: MOTs, optical tweezers, PDC, and the like should be covered as well. Any fellow physicists out there willing to help? Or other people knowing about it? (Sanders muc)

References

Is Wikipedia poor at citing its sources? Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Cite your sources#References.

Wikipedia trophy room

Wikipedia recently won two awards (Webby Awards and Prix Ars Electronica), and I am sure there are more to come in the future :-) Do we have a place to list the awards, sort of a Wikipedia:Trophy room? I was thinking about making a page, but wasn’t sure if something similar already exists. -- Chris 73 | Talk 04:14, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

A formal one can be found at Wikipedia#Awards_and_nominations.
Perhaps the current silly awards for longest article title etc at m:awards could be overwritten with a page about our awards. See m:Talk:Awards Angela. 20:09, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

Watchlist trauma

My watchlist now won't update, and instead says - 'this is a saved version of your watchlist'. Any ideas why? Thanks! Mark Richards 15:42, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, a developer has enabled cached watchlists to improve performance (which had crawled to a halt pretty much). Dori | Talk 16:27, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

So when do I get the real one, and when the caches one? Thanks, Mark Richards 17:56, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Normally when this is the case, you get one update per hour. -- Jao 18:15, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Mark Richards 19:55, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

It would be much better simply to reduce the 12-hour default, which as I said on earlier occasions is a total waste. A one-hour default would probably be sufficient to improve performance and would be less "traumatic" than this almost entire disabling of watchlists. --Wik 20:25, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

An extra option "since I last checked my watchlist" alongside 1,2,6,12 hours could possibly maybe reduce more overhead than it creates... depending how things are implemented. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 21:26, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Can You Give us the E-mail address of National Congress.

Dear Sir, Can you give use the E-mail address or the Contact address of National Congress, actualy we want to give congratulation to Congress President Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, Please sir, help us in this matter, please give reply us on accesspuri@sancharnet.in, pointaccess@eth.net, dilu_mishra@yahoo.com.

With warm regards,

M/s. Access Point, Puri, Orissa India

The party's website appears to be http://www.indiannationalcongress.org/ -- it has a "contact" option on the front page which opens a form to email aicc@congress.org.in though of course we don't know if these would get forwarded to Mrs Gandhi.
Alternatively you can write to the INC at 24, Akbar Road, New Delhi 110011, or telephone 91-11-23019080 or fax to 91-11-23017047. -- Arwel 19:20, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


Vandalism in Chinese Wikipedia

Chinese WP is suffering mass attack from several IPs, continuously creating nonsense pages like "Shizhao再麻煩你砍一下吧44daf22d99161b01a4148a8c3cffedc4". Can the developers ban the feature of creating new pages in Chinese WP for a while? --Samuel 18:11, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,

the chinese Wiki is experincing massiv vandalism with a bot and a proxy again. Please help.--Philopp 18:13, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Please ban the IP addresses rang from 210.139.252.1 to 210.139.252.255. --Samuel 18:17, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Any sysop on zh can ban a range. See m:range blocks. Is the problem that you need more sysops temporarily? Angela. 19:48, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

Speedy Deleting things on VfD

I've noticed in the past few days some things that were on Votes for Deletion simply getting speedily deleted. While I agree that many of these items should have been listed on speedy deletion instead of VfD, I feel that, once something is on VfD, it is poor form to terminate the debate. If it's truly a bad article, it'll go away within a week anyway - no need to hasten the process and leave a bad taste in people's mouths when a debate is effectively cut off. Snowspinner 19:09, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

This has come up before. See Deletion before all votes are complete. Angela. 19:38, May 17, 2004 (UTC)
I think you misunderstand what I'm taking issue with - my issue is that articles that were listed on VfD are getting deleted before five days of debate has elapsed - not the VfD discussions themselves. Once something is listed, the decision should wait five days. Snowspinner 20:14, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's the same issue. Just because someone wrongly lists something on VfD does not mean it has to stay there five days. Newcomers can not be expected to understand the full deletion policy or the CSD, so will often list things that have no chance of being deleted, or things that should have gone to wikipedia:speedy deletions. Removing them from VfD because they are candidates from speedy deletion is no more an issue than clearing up any other mistake a newcomer makes. Angela. 22:13, May 17, 2004 (UTC)
Are you saying I should have waited 5 days to delete the bad copy/paste move at The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences? What would that have accomplished? -- Cyrius|&#9998 20:26, May 17, 2004 (UTC)
It would have allowed the full five days of debate? That said, there's been a rash of this in the past few days, so don't take it as any comment on you - I'd just rather have doing this be against the rules so we don't start having cases that are questionable. Snowspinner 20:37, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
My $.02 -- if something qualifies for speedy deletion, then out it should go, no matter if it was mistakenly listed on VfD. older≠wiser 21:45, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Let's not pretend that all of these cases would have generated meaningful discussions. That said, I won't argue against a simple, consistent, and easy to enforce rule against it, in order to avoid questionable cases. -- Cyrius|&#9998 21:59, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

Press release: Wikipedia wins 8th Annual Webby Award for Best Community

I think we should have a press release to announce our Webby Award success. I've started one at Wikipedia:Press releases/May 2004. Please add to it. Other sites such as Google and the BBC have made press releases when they have won in the past, so I feel it's important we do too. We haven't had one for over three months, and the last one received little attention in the outside world. Perhaps this one will have more of an effect. Angela. 17:03, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

Good idea. I don't feel in the mood to write PR copy right now (I actually have in the past), but I left some things I could see adding on the talk page. Niteowlneils 01:46, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

This has been five days now. Should it be sent? Or is there not enough interest to bring it up to a sendable standard? Angela. 19:35, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

I look at it and find myself at a loss -- how to describe community practices? And I think all the work we went to last time sending out PRs only to get virtually zero response makes it harder to get pepped up. :-) What work needs to be done to get it in shape -- does it need all the expansion it currently indicates, or will it be fine with simply some quotes from Jimmy and a little expansion in key areas? Jwrosenzweig 19:42, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Cannes Festival!

Know someone who was, or still is, at Cannes? Are you surfing WP from an internet cafe in Cannes at this very moment? Help us get a good GFDL or public domain photo from the festival to use on Wikipedia! It would be nice to feature an image of this year's festival in the Cannes article, in the news on the main page, and on the Press Corps page. +sj+ 22:01, 2004 May 17 (UTC)

Kennt jemand jemanden, der in Cannes war oder immernoch ist? Surfst du die Wikipedia gerade aus einem Internet Café an? Hilf uns bitte, indem du ein gutes GFDL oder Public Domain Foto vom Festival machst, damit wir es für die Wikipedia benutzen können! Es wäre schön, dieses Jahr ein Foto im Artikel Cannes, in den News / Nachrichten der Hauptseite und auf der Press Corps Seite zu haben. Fire 22:12, 17 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_archive_2004-09-26&oldid=3622919"