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Hey, I'm a newbie here. I just wanted to mention that there will probably a flood of newbies, as this site was just featured on the show The Screen Savers on Tech TV in the USA. I was really curious, and decided to check it out, and that's how I found out.  :) ManicGypsy

Three pages have been temporarily protected as a result of the influx: Martha Stewart, Monkeypox, and Gregory Peck. -- Notheruser 02:09 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Well, the Gregory Peck page was just too easy...
The pages are no longer protected. -- Notheruser 03:31 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)
And as a result, they are once again under attack. -- Zoe

I have re-protected Martha Stewart for now. Evercat 17:46 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Seems to be unprotected again. Luckily everyone seems to be keeping a close eye on it to keep it from being vandalized. ManicGypsy 03:24 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks to all of you who helped me in solving my problem, it's fixed now. The Warlock.-- June 13, 2003, 6:37 (GMT)

A friend of mine told me today that the Wikipedia "doesn't work" because he and a friend of his created a fake religion called Fieldism and it was still there. Needless to say, I deleted it, but this concerns me a bit. I think we should create a way for users to verify articles. To verify articles, you must have been around for a certain amount of time, or made at least x contributions, or something like that. And you shouldn't be able to verify articles you created. what do you guys think? Could someone post this to the mailing list? MB

Recently I have been thinking of how to ensure the quality of articles in wikipedia. I have no doubt about wikipedia will reach 1 million articles soon or later (aside from technical problems we might have), but the quality is questionable. It is true that as has the number grown, the quality of the majority of articles have improved too. Surely there are a lot of good articles (see Brilliant prose). Alas, there are significant number of articles that are written poorly, contain factual mistakes or even hoax mentioned above. We should not excuse them by saying we have far more good articles. People that are unfamiliar with wikipedia will reach such article, they might be disappointed or discard wikipedia as a pot of craps. However, we also should not get rid of articles that look fake, are written poorly now but can be expanded. That is the last thing we want. Fieldism might not show up in google but can turn out to be true. There are a lot of topics that never show up in google but trus thus should be covered by wikipedia thoroughtly. We need a better mechanism google-check.
Anyway, so what is the damn solution? Actually I am not sure about it yet. Nupedia has a good mechanism to ensure the quality of articles, however, it has been bogged out given its bureaucratic system. We don't want to bureaucratic approval system to wikipedia, which is why I have not had such yet despite debates and needs of some kind of peer-review. RecentChanges and My watchlist are our effective peer-review system, which is simple to handle but have worked most of the time thus far.
But we probably need more than them to improve the quality of articles further more. You can come up with other ideas, but what I am thinking now is to put a primary editor of an article to each article or somewhere else. This is not against the wiki-way which we believe in. Wikipedia is a collaborative documenting where anyone can edit any page. This is why any article has no author. We don't want that articles become territorirized by someone who cares about them, saying like this is my article, don't touch it, if you want to do something, go to your articles. This is written well already and your contribution only makes the article poor because your point view conflicts with that is now in the article.


My idea is not this but make explicit credits about who is responsible for articles. If you see a sentence like Dogs are considered a God during Edo Period in Japan, most of you probably wonder is it true and might go to remove that, doubting about accuracy. But if you see, the article with a credit of one who is specialized in Japanese history and culture, you can be sure. There is another problem with this that any article can be expanded later, not unlikely after the article is reviewed by professionals. This should be covered by a way like if some points are added after review, that portions should be noted as not reviewed yet in some ways, preferably by one who actually wrote them.
Reviews should be done by those who can claim their credibility in the similar way done in academic peer-review journals. They are like Ph.D or native people. If we don't want to clutter actual articles, we can use the space at the top of a talkpage. This is actually happening already in some ways. Many wikipedians already show their profession or degrees and put their primary articles to their user page, or sometimes people who doubt about ask those who probably know. This is a nice habit we already have. We do not have to discard this, but we can keep this kind of efforts in formal ways.

-- Taku 20:26 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Eh. I wouldn't worry about it too much. It seems to me that Wikipedia will always have a relatively high concentration of well-meaning and conscientious editors who generally will not let total nonsense articles stay around. The sorts of people who would post nonsense are probably quite likely to get bored and go away after a short time; the ones who stay are usually the ones most interested in improving Wikipedia.
As for determining what is nonsense, well, Google obviously can't answer all questions, but if some topic doesn't show up in a Google search at all (or is very poorly represented), that topic tends to be highly suspect. We've all seen the discussions (boy, that's the nice word for it) over articles like Neutrosophy. I would be very surprised if your friend's Fieldism article had remained for long; someone was bound to run across it sooner or later and find out it was garbage.
We probably could use a good system of at least getting reliable Wikipedians to look at all articles at least once. In practice, this seems to happen anyway, but a more systematic way of doing it wouldn't hurt. I don't think this will become much of a problem until the article-to-reliable-editor ratio gets much higher, though. The bigger Wikipedia gets, the more reliable editors we'll gain. I think if it's worked for this long, for 100K+ articles, it will continue to work for some time to come. -- Wapcaplet 22:49 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)


Yeah. "Fieldism" was spotted and thrown out. Vandals (who probably see themselves as "practical jokers" or "testing the system") are not really that useful as critics -- it is, in my opinion, like complaining that a city isn't clean after you have urinated in the street (as a test, you understand, as a test). Karada 23:02 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I've always been quite impressed with the security of Wikipedia. I was talking with someone last night about Wikipedia and he told me that the security was lapse, because he had been able to vandalise one of the pages, tea bag. I went to see what he had done, but it had already been reverted (less than 60 seconds). I told him that was our security. CGS 09:05 14 Jun 2003 (UTC).

Heh. What security? Did you tell him that's the whole point? It's very easy to paint graffiti on Wikipedia, but all the walls are made of teflon... -- Wapcaplet 15:43 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)


Would someone please rescue the poor former Prime Minister of Canada. John George Diefenbaker.

Done. The Anome 00:14 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Maybe it's just me, but the image on the Sylvia Saint page sure looks doctored. Can anyone confirm that the bomis.com logo really ought to be present in that image, or has it been Photoshopped in? --Dante Alighieri 00:25 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Doesn't look doctored to me, and this is Bomis' kind of thing. --Eloquence 00:30 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Not doctored, but probably copyrighted. -- Notheruser 00:32 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Can some kind soul show me how to put a sequence of four images down the right hand side of the page so that they form one unit and no text can sneak in between them. I'm referring to Sistine Chapel that I illustrated. I reckon the page would look nicer if I had all four pics together and there would be no problems with pics overlapping in different browsers. Thanks.
Adrian Pingstone 09:01 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

LittleDan told me something like this a few weeks ago:

<table align=right>
  <tr><td>
     <div style="float:right;">
         [[image:___Name___ | __Description_]] <br>
         <small>''More detailed explanation<br>
         [[media:___Name___ | Larger version]]''</small> 
         <br><br>
         [[image:___Name2___ | __Description_]] <br>
         <small>''More detailed explanation<br>
         [[media:___Name2___ | Larger version]]''</small>
         <br><br>
         [[image:___Name3___ | __Description_]] <br>
         <small>''More detailed explanation<br>
         [[media:___Name3___ | Larger version]]''</small> 
         <br><br>
         [[image:___Name4___ | __Description_]] <br>
         <small>''More detailed explanation<br>
         [[media:___Name4___ | Larger version]]''</small>  
     </div>
  </td></tr>
</table>

--Menchi 09:08 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It's easier than that, no need for tables. I've done the first two -- Tarquin
Thanks, Menchi for your info. I'm sorry you had to do so much typing but I'll use Tarquins method (Tarquin, thanks).
Adrian Pingstone 09:46 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Not much typing, just copy-and-paste. If Tarquin's method is simpler, the better. :-) --Menchi 09:57 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

This has probably been noticed before, but there are some words that apparently confuse the search engine of Wikipedia. For example, a search (using the "Search button") for the phrase "logical not" returns the following:

A database query syntax error has occurred. The last attempted database query was: "SELECT cur_id,cur_namespace,cur_title,cur_text FROM cur,searchindex WHERE cur_id=si_page AND ( (MATCH (si_title) AGAINST ('logical')) NOT ) AND cur_namespace IN (0) LIMIT 0, 20" from within function "SearchEngine::showResults". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ') AND cur_namespace IN (0) LIMIT 0, 20' at line 1".


Obviously the word "not" is the culprit here. Using the "Go" button solves this problem, and correctly goes to Logical not (which redirects to Negation). Similar problems with "and" and "or", as expected. -- Wapcaplet 15:39 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'm having trouble. I want to upload a picture for use on the wiki Team Rocket (I'm Not a pokemon fan, whatever you say), and it's copyright to nintendo (or whatever(, but i found the picture on another site, and I don't think there's a copyright notice. Should I play it safe and not upload it? Ilyanep

Sorta depends on what the source of the photo is, I guess. I personally would play it safe, but you may be able to get away with it under Fair use doctrine. Just because copyright is not explicitly stated does not mean there is no copyright; if it's a commercial illustration, it's pretty likely there is a copyright. If you want to contribute to that article, maybe it'd be good to write a little bit more on the subject - the one-sentence description that is there was written by an anonymous user who apparently was not interested enough to come back and make a proper article out of it. -- Wapcaplet 21:37 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Can someone who knows how make the map on Kurds smaller? thanks Kingturtle 06:02 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I've cropped the original image and done a bit of image clean-up (Media:Kurdish lands 92 cropped.jpg), and also uploaded a shrunk version of this (Media:Kurdish lands 92 cropped small.jpg). Further, I've updated Kurds. Is this OK?
James F. 07:41 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Regarding the previous discussion on Fieldism, just an idea on how to prevent "invented" articles: Is it technically possible to create a "new articles" list with a number of Google hits for every new Article title? This could help to spot Articles that "test" Wikipedia's reaction to nonsense ;-) Fantasy 11:22 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It would seem that the greatest potential for unrecognized patent nonsense (UPN?) is with obscure topics that no one recognizes. Few among us is enough of a student of history to discard with confidence an article on a bogus lesser personality or social movement from centuries past. But then, it may not matter much. There is plenty of UPN on Google, in that it indexes web sites full of such material. That doesn't make Google less valuable.
A mechanism for users to note that they have reviewed a page and made no changes might help somewhat. Kat 19:03 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)
"Fieldism" was an oversight, it did not "survive", it was missed because of its virtual orphancy. Nobody serious searched for Fieldism, nobody active looked for it, so nobody Wikipedian had the opportunity to rectify the problem.
It was created when active maintainers were busy with something else, in the meatspace or composing new articles. "Fieldism" explicitly mentions a ridiculous ritual of "believers of Fieldism must sit naked in a field." This is blantant and extremely obvious sign, no, not sign, evidence of nonsensical crap.
By the time maintainers looked at the RecentChanges, it's gone already.
This is not the maintainers' fault. The RecentChanges system can be improved: New articles should've stayed on RecentChanges longer than copyedits (minor or not) by registered users of more than 3 months. And new articles made by Anons should stay even longer.
--Menchi 20:14 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

If you're interested in catching new pages of junk, there is Special:Newpages... Evercat 20:21 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Whenever I create a page which has a multiple word title, someone comes along behind and replaces the spaces with uderbars, like this should be written in VBA. I can't find this in the conventions (and where do those come from?). Can someone point me to the correct reference page? -- Rich J 22:18 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The wikipedia makes spaces into _ in the url b/c there shouldn't be spaces in filenames. This shouldn't affect the page title. MB 22:44 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)
url (ur real location) I understand. What is b/c? -- Rich J 23:05 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Actually URL is Uniform Resource Locator. b/c is because. Evercat 23:11 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)
That was a joke, son -- Rich J 01:23 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)
We tried not to abbreviate informally too much (and almost never in real articles). But MB has a colourful vocabulary. :-) They're fine as shorthands in Talks (Discussion pages).
The truth is that underscored Wikification links (Wikilinks) are actually quite hard to type (with shift keys and all that). Plus, it's kind to read, sort of LikeThisStickedTogether. Not that bad, but not very good either. We try to do it naturally. Make it appear simple. --Menchi 23:19 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

When I entered Graveyard I got a page with 1 REDIRECT Cemetary. When I went into the page to correct the spelling, I got #REDIRECT [[Cemetery]]. (ie, when I got to the page I get an unlinked wrong spelling. When I try to edit, I get a different correct spelling.) I did this four times just to make sure I had not made a mistake somewhere, but the same thing happens. Wrong spelling when I see the page, right spelling when I hit edit. BTW when I went to the recent changes page to add it in to the new server madness page, that page had gone. What is going on? (After Friday 13th was a few days ago!) FearÉIREANN 00:07 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

If you look at the PageHistory:Graveyard you'll see that it was created then edited 2 minutes later. You probably looked at it in that time period. Or you may have a browser cache issue... especially if you used the back button to go back - this doesn't always refresh the page to the latest version in all browsers... Try going to the page and hitting reload. Evercat 00:12 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Try Ctrl-F5 if reloading doesnt seem to resolve the issue. Pizza Puzzle

Thanks folks. Whatever it was everything is working fine now. :-) FearÉIREANN 00:55 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Gray's Anatomy illustrations

I have never seen the illustrations of Gray's Anatomy until User:Tristanb scanned some. They are actually very detailed and modern, except the font. :-) But Bartleby.com has also scanned many unaltered diagrams from Gray's, such as the cervical vertebra. We cannot use Bartleby's because those ancient diagrams was uploaded thru their modern scanner? --Menchi 04:56 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

IANAL but I do know that a photocopy of a public domain work does not create a new copyright for the photocopy. So if all they did was scan-in the public domain images then they cannot legally claim to have copyright over those images. But any changes they may have done to the photo may be considered to be under copyright.... I say we can use them as public domain and not worry about it. --mav 05:38 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

My watch list is growing and growing (as is yours, probably ;-). I just thought, it could sometimes be of help, if the links on a page that are already on my watch list, would show up in a different color. Would this make sense / be helpful / did someone already think of something like that? Thanks, Fantasy 06:44 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

But isn't old-new distinction relative and not absolute? How do you draw the line? --Menchi 09:51 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I did not mean old or new, I meant watched links and not watched links on any article. Would be nice to differentiate. Is that possible? Fantasy
So this has nothing to do with watchlist really. Just about Wikilinks which you have watched. And when you look at the RecentChanges, those that you watched will be a different colour? They already are, in a twisted sense. They appear bold on RecentChanges. Is that what you were getting at? If not, give it another shot if you're not tired. :-) --Menchi 11:10 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)
p.s. I'm not a developer, so I cannot tell if it's possible or not. Just trying to clarify the suggestion here.

Sorry, seems that I had not used the right words. Maybe an example helps: Take the article Patent. This article contains links to government and inventor. I have just inventor on my watchlist, but not government. But how will I find that out? I have to go to both of them, to be sure, that I am watching both. There is no other way to find out, if I watch an article, as far as I know. If they would be of different colors (watched/not watched), I could just go to the article that is missing on my watchlist and add that one. Does this example help to understand my question? Thanks for your patience, Fantasy

"As of 2003"

Why is As of 2003 a Wikilink of its own, instead "As of 2003"? --Menchi 09:51 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Have you considered checking its talk page? ;) -- John Owens 09:59 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for the directions. --Menchi 11:13 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hey guys, I've done a little something with Wikipedia:As of... please visit its talk page and discuss whether that was a good idea or not. --Nelson 20:44 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Citing content in an editable website

Hey there. I run The Athenaeum (www.the-athenaeum.org), which is a user-editable humanities site. I have read the text of the license, but I'm still a little foggy on it. How should I cite articles when I use them on my site? Furthermore, what are the restrictions that places on my users when they are editing the articles (on my site)? If they change the articles "enough," does that remove the attribution requirement(s)? If so, what constitues "enough"? I'd like to be able to use some of the articles, and to point users here for source material, but not if the licensing/attribution issues are complex enough to be a barrier to entry. Any pointers or FAQ's I can use as a guide?"

IANAL, but it's all in wikipedia:copyrights and indeed in the GNU Free Documentation License. The key section for you will be "4. MODIFICATIONS", since you want to allow users to edit the article. Have a read through - come back if you have any questions. It's simpler than it looks! Martin 23:32 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I have a cunning idea! There seem to be no public domain pics available for personalities such as Princess Diana or Picasso. However, many famous people are portrayed on postage stamps. If stamps can be freely used in Wikipedia as illustrations, is this a source of such pics? In short, are stamps public domain?
Adrian Pingstone 17:48 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Not in the United States at least. In the US the copyright for stamp designs is held by the US Post Office which hasn't been a US Department since the mid-1970s IIRC. And illustrating an article on a person only with their postage stamp is not a good idea - but allowable under fair use me thinks (IANAL). --mav 18:01 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Go to List of people on stamps of the United Kingdom. The stamp I put there has an excellent pic of Princess Diana. Do I have to remove it? Does anyone know the copyright situation for UK stamps?
Adrian Pingstone 18:12 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)
In the UK they would be copyright the Royal Mail, who issue the stamps and comission the images. I think the profile of Her Majesty (which is used on both stamps and coins) is Crown copyright. CGS 18:17 16 Jun 2003 (UTC).

Where can I find a list of all the 'variables' such as the "CURRENTTIME" or "NUMBEROFARTICLES" Variables? Ilyanep

Hey folks, I was wondering, is it possible to download the software that the Wikipedia uses anywhere? I'd like to put up a Wiki, but I despise CamelCase, I much prefer Wikipedia's [[links]]. --Nelson 20:47 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net

You may also want to try out UseMod, which is much smaller and easier to install (Wikipedia originally used UseMod, but UseMod's search and scalability are limited because it doesn't require a database). It can be configured not to use CamelCase. The infoAnarchy wiki is based on it. --Eloquence

Hello! I try to color the statement of math theorems or conjectures in order to improve readability. However, I have discovered that the image generated by <math>-tag is not transparent and so the effect turns out to be ugly: see Riemann hypothesis. Could anyone give me a helping hand? -- Wshun

colour does not improve readability. -- Tarquin 21:41 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Then why are links shown in a different colour to other text in all web browsers? :) CGS 21:44 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)
yes, it does. It helps when we want to emphasis something but Bold and italics are already used heavily on a page; and it helps if someone just wants to get the theorem without really reading the article. -- Wshun
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