Wikipedia:General complaints

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This is a page for discussing problems you may have with the way Wikipedia is designed or suggestions on how to improve this Wikipedia. It is not intended for reporting errors regarding content.

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Contents

[edit]

Gobstoppers

PLEASE VIEW YOUR DEFINITION FOR GOBSTOPPERS. I am pretty sure that there are a few typing errors in there, seeing as it is not Willy Wanka Candy or Everlasting cunts. Thank you.

[edit]

Search buttons: Why no ALT-text?

The search field has two buttons, "Go" and "Search", but unlike most other navigation elements they lack an ALT-text explaining their function. Also, the buttons are identical, and thus do not show which one is the default button (that is, the one that is activated when you use the Enter key rather than clicking on the buttons). I suggest adding an ALT-text to each button, and making the default button stand out somehow. (10/13/04)

You can add requests for software changes to MediaZilla:. Angela. 18:20, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)


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Unseen images

All of a sudden i cant see images from wikipedia. None of them. can someone tell me how to fix it.

I see no images using Firefox 1.0, yet they do appear using IE. Is this a feature?

I can't see images. I'm with firefox 1.0.4 (running on slackware linux) and I have checked adblock and webdev whether it is them blocking images, but still can't see all images in wikipedia, but some I see. For example buttons above input, and small person icon near top user menu (the one with log in / log out.) As well as background image, but no others.

Solution: Firefox has a feature to disable the display of images originating from a server different than the one hosting the main page. Wiki works in a distributed environment, so I suggest disabling it under Edit --> Preferences --> Web Features. Gchriss 20:34, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

IMPORTANT EDIT: I've just tried firefox but with another profile, and there were images! So it is something in the settings, but I can't understand what. If anyone has any ideas please write answer here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=275354

[edit]

Getting pnm: RealAudio links to work in Wikipedia

Normally, if you put a URL: resource address in [brackets] the wiki server side process will properly format a buried link for the browser. However, there are many more URL: resource addresses than just those that begin with "http:". For example, the wiki server side process does not properly format the following [pnm://rm.content.loudeye.com/~a-600111/0676330_0104_07_0002.ra URL: resource], as you can see. If you paste the URL: resource address

pnm://rm.content.loudeye.com/~a-600111/0676330_0104_07_0002.ra

into your browser address window, you will see from the browser reaction how the wiki server side process should format that pnm: URL: resource address as a link in the above examples. Could you please add pnm: to the table of allowed external URL: resource prefixes, such as http:, https:, ftp:, etc.? Thank you. ---Rednblu 20:17, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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Wikipedia:Cleanup

I always love it when project pages fight each other. Remember that time Wikipedia:Votes for Deletion tried to kill us? Yeah. Well, I really have to point out that Cleanup is, infact, itself in serious need of help.

  1. . It's a mess. There really out to be some sort of organizing. over in Wikipedia:Requests they organize things by topic, not by date.
  2. . Too big. My second complaint is the same reason I can't fix this. In my opinion, it ought to be archived by months (and by topic); the page is huge, I have dial-up, and I just can't find my way around.

Best of luck. -Litefantastic 01:36, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit]

VRML Files for Polyhedra pages

I was browsing the pages on polyhedra, and noticed that the pages have links to animations of polyhedra, but not to manipulatable files such as VRML files, that those with the proper plugins can use. I find that such files help understand the polyhedra better, and plugins for your browser can be downloaded free of charge. If it is simply that no one has added the files, I've got a couple of files I could adapt (wireframe-ish only).

[edit]

Separation of Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese in Wikipedia

Since both traditional and simplified Chinese are located on the same subdomain, http://zh.wikipedia.org/, their menus and the corresponding links are exactly the same. For example, a user browsing the traditional Chinese version may want to return to the Main Page, click on the link on the menu, and arrive at the Main Page for the simplified Chinese version. In addition, since there is only one set of menu pages for the two languages, some of the menu pages end up containing both traditional and simplified Chinese. For readers unaccustomed to using both forms, reading these pages can be quite exhausting. In fact, I think this is one of the reasons there are so few Chinese-language articles. Many users who use either forms of Chinese are much more content with sources other than Wikipedia due to the extensive mixed use of these two forms. Many users are hesistant to contribute to Wikipedia because they do not know which language to start writing in. Is there any way traditional and simplified Chinese could be separated into two separate subdomains of wikipedia.org, so that users instructed in reading only simplified Chinese could read through pages written in only the simplified form, and the same for those trained only in traditional Chinese? (preceding unsigned comment by 140.112.1.98 (talk • contribs) 21:34 EST, 20 December 2004)

If this prevalance of mixed forms is true, it certainly represents a big barrier for some...can the Wikipowers look into this? --Dpr 02:14, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Some students prevented from creating accounts due to a "10 account" limit

While trying to get students set up with Wikipedia accounts yesterday, some of the students were unable to create accounts because of some sort of limit on the number of accounts that could be created. The error message (sorry, this isn't an exact quote) said that a given student was unable to create an account because s/he had already created 10 accounts. This was not at all the case; there's no way that any one student even had time to create that many accounts.

Is this some sort of security feature that monitors the domain from which accounts are created? I realize that the computer lab in which we worked might be using some sort of sub-domain that makes it look like one IP address, but that's not the case.

How can this be avoided in the future? It's usually best for me to supervise the students when they create their accounts, but I might be able to turn this into a homework assignment that's done from home or from different labs on campus.

Any help or suggestions on this matter would be greatly appreciated. (preceding unsigned comment by Raymond Meredith (talk • contribs) 09:00, 26 January 2005 )

[edit]

Main page status vs. level of "did you know" trivia

The Wikipedia Main Page is read by gazillions of people every week. This in itself should create a need for a "lower cutoff" on the "did you know" trivia section. As in, if less than 0.1 person per thousand might bother reading the particular piece of trivia, then something else should be there. Right?

While reading the Main Page, I stumbled on the following, under the heading "Did You Know":

...that in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology, Ness' son Conchobar mac Nessa was brought up as the son of the druid Cathbad, although the true father may have been her lover, Fachtna Fáthach, the High King of Ireland?

No offense against the Irish, the druids, the Wikipedia, but I just can't help feeling that this bit of trivia might be, er, just a bit too trivial. (Pun intended.)

We all know that J.R.R. Tolkien derived part of his vocabulary and ideas for the mythology from the Finnish National Heritage Epic Kalevala. Now, as a Finn, I'd be severely flattered to find a bit of trivia on Joukahainen's travails on Wikipedia Main Page. But, believe it or not, I'd still complain about the level of triviality.

(Nobody's fault! Of course the existing Trivia Engine has been appropriate for ages. But as things grow, parts have to be adjusted. And I just happened to be the one noticing this one.) (preceding unsigned comment by 80.186.128.225 (talk • contribs) 16:43, 26 January 2005)

[edit]

Special pages too long

Special pages such as Categories and Uncategorized pages are far, far too long. I had to page through 7,000 numeric Category entries simply to reach the first alphabetic one. They are desperately in need of some indexing mechanism, even if it's just a first-letter index. -- TonyP 17:51, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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Wikipedia symbol/link invisible

The wikipedia symbol in the upper left of all pages that links to the main page is invisible on several versions of ie in different OS versons (2k, xp, me...)

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Overzealous Keyboard Shortcuts

The keyboard shortcut overrides for editing features are neat, but it's a handicap to lose Ctrl-W for <close window>, etc. At the least, Alt-F for accessing the File menu should be open, which gives access to the menu systems. At the best, all wiki shortcuts except for Alt-E for editing the current page should be disabled until the user begins actually editing the page. It's quite intrusive to the web-browsing experience and makes mouse-less web browsing more difficult. There is a workaround in Windows, though it goes against what is probably considered "normal" practice: press and release ALT, then press the key.

Also, any keyboard shortcuts that are available should be instantly obvious to the user without having to find a lookup table -- the world standard for well over a decade has been to underline the character in the control's label. ("Find" is the closest I can get with the Wiki formatting I know -- how do you do underlining without a link?) I realize that not all buttons support HTML, but for those browsers that do, it would be a big help, and non-button controls should be able to do this in almost any browser. Ideally, it would be up to the user which shortcuts to keep and which to give back to the browser, but I haven't figured out how to do that in Firefox yet. (preceding unsigned comment by 24.129.118.21 (talk • contribs) 07:47 EST, 15 March 2005 )

See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Browser shortcuts DES (talk) 00:03, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Michael Jackson 2005 Trial

The discussion page is broken, and needs fixing. (preceding unsigned comment by Kelisi (talk • contribs) 22:37, 5 April 2005 )

[edit]

Camerlengo - Wikipedia License Violation?

I was doing some research for an article re: Papal Conclave and noticed that the page http://camerlengo.biography.ms/ is identical to the page on Wikipedia found by typing "Camerlengo" into the search box. On closer investigation, it appears that the entire site http://www.biography.ms/ is ripping off Wikipedia articles but displaying no copyright or licensing information. Isn't this against your rules? Sorry if this is the wrong place to mention it, but I'm a little pressed for time and couldn't immediately find anywhere better.

It seems you are correct MarSch 11:23, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
See our forks and mirrors page adn report any mirror sites you find there, if they aren't listed already. DES (talk) 22:47, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Towers

Does every tower need a page? Are these really encyclopedic? Most entries are one line with two external links? Vegaswikian 19:09, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit]

Benedict XVI

As of 20:38, Wednesday, April 20, a photo of Osama bin Laden was in the place where a photo of the new Pope, Benedict XVI, should be. Please, folks, stop hijacking this page and show some maturity!

[edit]

China's Second Artillery Corps

It appears that there is no article about China's strategic missle force. This seems extremely odd to me considering the effort that went into making the page on the People's Liberation Army. I can't remember if I have read this article before but I'm guessing that this was completely deleted by someone. --Hypo 19:32, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)



[edit]

The Teach the controversy page: Merely one train wreck that manifests the general and pervasive problem in Wikipedia

The Teach the controversy page is one of several spread throughout Wikipedia covering many subjects and reflecting many aspects of humanity all featuring ORIGINAL RESEARCH by a handful of polemical writers who insist that only their view remains. I suggest that there is a bug in the Wikipedia system, and I suggest that the bug in the Wikipedia system repeatedly sets off the train wreck that the Teach the controversy page is. I wouldn't even want to convince anybody of what the bug is at this stage--because I don't have a clear understanding of what the bug is myself. So let me give you the data that I see in the patterns of bug and train wrecks. Feel free to state what you see.

  1. Both sides assert that they understand the situation better than the published scholars, so both sides rip out the quotations, paraphrases, and citations to the analyses of published scholars to leave behind their own ORIGINAL RESEARCH.
  2. There are plenty of Wikilinks to people. But the Wikilinks to people are little more than ad hominem fallacies that attempt to discredit ideas by cataloguing the faults of the originators of the ideas. Why not paraphrase, quote, and cite to the published scholars that have analyzed the actual faults in the ideas? Forget the originators of the ideas. It is the ideas that are faulty here. Let's stop all of these ad hominem fallacies; they are all over Wikipedia.
  3. Beneath the tangle of the train wreck is the repeated attempt to blame the ills of society on the imaginary God and on the zealots' imagined relationship with the imaginary God! That is preposterous, my friends! There ain't no God, I say. Forget all of that religion and black magic stuff. Whatever is wrong has nothing to do with religion and God; the fault lies in the heart of man and arises from the very evil side of the very godless atoms that make up all of us. And both sides manifest the very same bigotry and closed-mindedness at which religion and God excel.
  4. What can you do about it? Please feel free to make your own statement of what you see as the "bug." None of us know what the bug is, I say. But we all have clues; so we have to work together and pool our information to get a good-enough picture--so that we can get a grip on the real problem that is underneath and sets off the train wreck. ---Rednblu | Talk 10:52, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • The bug is a peculiar assumption ingrained in the western secular mind -- the divorce of science and religion. In western secularism, as long as religion bears no link to science, then it's safely within the realm of conjecture -- it's harmless. "Believe whatever you want, it doesn't matter, because it's all just harmless imagining." But when a religion begins to make hard claims to historical fact that demand response, religion is no longer safely neutered, and secular civilization finds itself aghast at the arrogance of those religious individuals who make claims to hard reality. Such efforts to marry science and religion are subversive to western secularism. They are the cats that walks by twice in The Matrix. They draw out the irrational paranoia in otherwise intelligent, balanced people. The solution to this bug is not a change of religion. the solution to this bug is the recognition of one's assumptions, and the recognition that they are assumptions, rather than absolute truth. Once fundamentalists of the Christian, Muslim, or Atheistic variety understand and own their assumptions and the assumptions of others, ideological conflict vanishes, and mutual understanding begins. Ungtss 23:39, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • I think the bug is actually larger than just "God", but there is a serious lack on Wikipedia of a quick means to end disputes about content in relation to pseudoscience articles. Moderation, arbitration, and the other myriad of dispute resolution processes just doesn't seem to work in the face of the attempts by multiple editors to write different articles on identical subjects when the authors are simply entrenched in either science or in their own pseudoscientific viewpoint. It gets to the point where months are spent arguing on very minor details because of perceived biases by both sides that slip through. I think that the pseudoscience articles that exist on wikipedia from non-standard cosmologies to creation science are all very poor articles from a strict quality standpoint because they tend to have a haphazard writing style as the result of this consensus articulation. This is due to the fact that there really isn't consensus on how to view the topics themselves and there is no general policy of wikipedia on how to view pseudoscience other than to declare that it should be NPOV. But npov is way too vague to deal with this. The way to be NPOV with respect to pseudoscience isn't clear because science works in a very clear manner as opposed to, say, an article on John Kerry which looks to the neutrality of a moderator of a political debate on how to view a subject in NPOV. What could be very useful are authors (not just moderators) who are not related to the conflict brought in to rewrite the articles in less offensive ways. Too often, the "sides" are too used to reading the detail arguments of the other "side" and so any one editor on one side is likely to push the other sides' buttons. We don't have enough neutral editors for articles about pseudoscience, and frankly I don't know where we will find them. Joshuaschroeder 23:26, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • The npov guidelines are very clear and explicit on pseudoscience. treat it sympathetically, descibe the beliefs on their own terms, and then explain in attributed terms why these ideas are rejected by the mainstream scientific community. it is neither complex nor vague. it just requiresus to write for the enemy -- something that is very difficult to do when your entire worldview is on the line. Ungtss 00:30, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
See, it's backhanded comments like the one included above that have become par-for-the-course in editting these articles. The problem is, what is considered "sympathetic treatment" to Ungtss looks like propaganda to me and vice versa. Joshuaschroeder 00:53, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
"sympathetic treatment" has a very clear definition under npov. it means the text itself should neither state nor imply that any point of view is right or wrong, but maintain textual neutrality, accurately describing and attributing the "lies" to those who tell them, while describing and attributing the "truth" to those who speak it. Ungtss 02:10, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
However, in the realm of science there are facts that cannot be denied. It is a fact, not an opinion, that the Earth is billions of years old. To try to attribute this fact would be ridiculous, even though creationists object to it. Sympathetic treatment means we must describe the reasons given why creationists make claims they do, but it does not mean that we have to treat their claims with the same weight as those of science. Joshuaschroeder 15:13, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
the age of the earth is an absolutely unfalsifiable proposition. there is absolutely no way to demonstrate that the earth is not 10,000 years old, or that it is not 1,000,000,000 years old. we don't have the tools. we can make estimates based on assumptions, and come to conclusions that we think are reasonable. but your assertion that "it is a fact that the earth is billions of years old" is absolutely laughable. we weren't there. we don't know. Ungtss 22:07, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

(losing indents) "We weren't there. We don't know" would negate much (almost all?) accepted human knowledge. I think if we are to accept the concepts of "facts" and an "encyclopedia" at all, we have to also accept that scientific methods do tell us how old the earth really is, to a close approximation.

It is ridiculous to have to state "but many people are convinced the earth is actually billions of years old" just to be fair in a "creation science" article. We should not, IMO, favor irrelevant facts about what is believed over actual facts, such as the scientifically established age of the earth.

There is no answer. Do some people believe that Apollo carries the sun across the sky each day in a chariot? Yes. Do we have to include that in an article about the sun to make it NPOV? No, no, a thousand times no. But since this is a collaborative effort, and we can't just block those accounts, I stay out of editing articles about nonsense like "creation science." Does it mean we will wind up with an encyclopedia in which some articles are pure mysticism and fantasy, not facts? Yes. This is the way the whole of human society is heading, it seems.

The only solution, one that I actually see happening, is that at some point in the future, we fork the whole Wikipedia database, create a fact-checked encyclopedia controlled by a board of editors who have a common understanding of what knowledge, science, and factual information are and are not, and we will toss all the crap science and mysticism in the recycle bin. When that happens, I'll join the new Factipedia and leave this one behind.

No offense meant to those who believe otherwise. I respect your right to believe and practice what satisfies you. Freedom and respect are the most important qualities in any community. DavidH 22:41, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, come off it. You know that a centrally-controlled version edited only by people who agree with you will cease to possess the Wiki-magic. If you wind up arguing for one point against scads of zealots, alert the community over on RfC. You don't have to hold back the tides of zealotry all by your lonesome. Of course, you might end up on the losing side. We can't all be right all the time. grendel|khan 16:58, August 8, 2005 (UTC)


[edit]

Interlanguage links

Has there been any discussion here or on Meta to create a common repository of interlanguage links (like en:, de:, fr: and so on)? It seems that the English Wikipedia functions now as such. --Eleassar777 16:48, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

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Listing in Categories and things like that

I think that articles that start, for example, with an accent, such as Á or È or Õ (for example, Álvaro Cunhal, do you get it?) should be listed in categories, or other listings that take the first letter in account, under that same letter without the accent. For languages that use accents everywhere, such as mine, Portuguese, considering Á as another letter is a very strange thing to see.Afonso Silva 13:44, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

As a Swede my experience is the opposite. For me it is very strange to see the letters Å and Ä listed under A (and Ö under O). :-)
[edit]

Soundfile Problem

hi, sorry for bothering, i'm not really sure how to use this, but could u guys please fix the "Edison speech, 1920s.ogg" if possible, it doesn't play for some reason, might be broken. I'd appreciate that very much, thanx.

~Raksha

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Star Destroyers

I have recently made changes to the Star Destroyers article, which was promptly changed back. I know that this is allowed and that debate it good, but the information and facts being used to support the information which I changed is completely false. I have already written a section in the dissuasion area, May 25th 2005A.D., and would now like some kind of moderation to solve this dilemma.


[edit]

Dutch Low Saxon problem!

Hi, most Dutch people using the Low Saxon Wikipedia, can't understand/or almost not understand the current Low Saxon version because it is in German Low Saxon this is very annoying we can't even read what the main page is about, isn't it a good idea to make a "nds-nl.wikipedia.org" page? (Dutch Low Saxon) and keep the current nds.wikipedia.org for the German Low Saxon? I'm willing to start that translation, understandable for all people living in the Netherlands. - Servien [Dutch user]

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Glitch in word wrapping on screen and at printer

From time to time Wiki does not wrap text around pictures properly, either on the screen or at the printer. The page meta:Election candidates 2005/En had this problem on the printer when Athere's picture was on the left hand side. I changed the image command from "left" to "right" and it worked OK.

Sometimes, the box containing the list of Categories is printed on the screen so that it obscures a line or two of text. Hard to say why or when, but it is a little annoying.


[edit]

Change file name

I would really appreciate some new feature that allows us to rename uploaded files... I guess that's rather elementary...Qwertzy2 4 July 2005 15:35 (UTC)


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What to Do When Someone Is Determined to Be Biased

I hope I've got this in the right place. When recently on the wikipage for teenage pregnancy, I noticed the [Abstinence section] was extraordinarily biased and contained false information. I changed it to show both sides (you can see what I changed it from and to by visiting [my website page about the incident]; I show both the original version and my version.

The day after editing, it had been changed to a biased description again (this time perhaps worse than the first one). I changed it again to provide the unbiased and informative version that I had written. Today, it is changed a second time.

This is highly disturbing. People come here for information--unbiased information. I have my opinion about teenage pregnancy and abstinence, but I was more than willing to give both sides and make references to reports for and against it (again, as seen on my website). Instead, though, there repeatedly is the biased side that only "uptight Christians" are in support of such methods; be this true or not ultimately, it is completely subjective to target one group when there is no factual evidence to prove such a thing. It is also unfair to Christians who are not in support of abstinence, and it is unfair to non-Christians who do follow this method.

Please compare the following two versions for this page, and see which is more appropriate.

The Current Version To avoid unwanted pregnancy, there are many Christian religious groups in US that advacte for an abstaining approach, preferring and preaching a lifestyle of "sex only after marriage." These groups (and others) often push for the adoption of "adstinence programs". Studies vary in showing the effectiveness of abstinence programs and all such studies come under heavy critism from the opponents of the studies results.

My Version Some groups in the U.S. believe that sexual abstinence alone is the only safe way to reduce teenage pregnancies and the spread of life-altering and sometimes deadly diseases, such as AIDS and innumerable sexually transmitted diseases. Religious groups especially tend to lean more toward an abstaining approach, preferring and preaching a lifestyle of "sex only after marriage." In more secular groups, this priority tends to be of less importance; "safe sex" is often promoted more in these circles.

On the scientific front, studies vary in showing the effectiveness of abstinence programs. These programs and their tactics have varied through the decades, and so studies on them may have a wide range of results in a small amount of time; there are many variations of abstinence programs. It must also be taken into consideration that some studies only show statistical information for abstinence-only programs, while others focus on abstinence and comprehensive education programs, which teach abstinence as the preferred method but also teach the regular comprehensive sex health information. Oftentimes, studies will not make the differentiation between the programs, therefore leading one to believe that abstinence programs--as a whole, rather than specifically detailed--are either all effective or not effective at all. As with all scientific studies on controversial matters, it is easy for information to be tainted one way or another. Ultimately, decisions made about abstinence are personal ones.

Some positive studies: Abstinence Education Programs' Effectiveness, FAQ of the Title V Abstinence Education Program with statistics inside, Abstinence: Numbers Don't Lie, Condoms, Clinics, or Abstinence.

Some contrasting studies: Adolescence and Abstinence Fact Sheet, The Decline in Teen Pregnancy Rates: A Result of Abstinence and Contraception, Not Abstinence-Only Programs, Study: Abstinence pledges may trigger risky sexual behavior.

Perhaps also to be noted is that the president of the National Institute for Sexual Health, Joe S. McIlhaney, Jr., MD, supports abstinence and its educational programs in a recent testimony made to the United States House of Representatives.

Under the Bill Clinton administration, the Title V Abstinence Education Program was created. It is still in existence and still federally funded. As shown in some of the positive studies, Title V claims effective and positive results for their programs which promote abstinence.

The George W. Bush administration has largely supported and extensively funded abstinence programs, coming under some fire from the more liberal of American society who, on average, believe in comprehensive sex education, which focuses more on safe sex than any other approach. Typically, conservative individuals lean more toward promoting abstinence, and therefore support this newly aggressive funding approach with a more positive attitude.

I rest my case. But I can't make any difference considering someone keeps changing it back, be it an admin or not.

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User names

I'm just curious why wikipedia doesn't have user names for editing pages. It seems like it would add ligitmacy to the page or edit if you knew who did it. People who messed around could be banned. I know this has been thought of, I just don't understand why things are they way they are. Anyone know?

  • Wikipedia does have usernames, and edits are shown in the edit history for an article alongside the summary and the date of the edit. If people do mess around, then they are warned, and eventually banned. If you make an edit without a username, you are temporarily assigned a username that is your IP address, and this can be banned if people make malicious edits anonymously. Insomniacity 10:09, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • See Wikipedia:Username. --Gabriel Beecham/Kwekubo 18:23, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

but the problem is that the wikipedia policy of allowing non-loggedin "users" to edit articles is just plain dumb. us legitimate editors are wasting more and more time reverting vandalism. this must be changed. r b-j 18:40, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

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PDA Accessability

I'm surprised Wikipedia isn't more PDA-friendly. Sure, the FAQ menations the table-free version and the text-only version, but that's not the issue; every recent PDA browser I've used can handle tables and images. The problem is the screens being 4 inches wide, and until clothing makers start making bigger pockets, PDAs will be getting no wider. In a PDA version of Wikipedia, that sidebar on the left should go to either the top or bottom of the page. Otherwise the page can only be viewed by scrolling side to side on every line. Fun. Even the table-free text-free version approximates a table-like sidebar, so in IE for Pocket PC I get articles with two or three words per line in "fit to screen" mode, and lines that run off the edge of the screen otherwise.

There is a downloadable PDA version of Wikipedia available, in the TomeRaider format (see Wikipedia:TomeRaider database). Note that these downloads were last synchronised with the Wikipedia in December 2004. Gabriel Beecham/Kwekubo 18:22, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
I think that a theme/style for wikipedia that is PDA accessible wouldn't be too hard to CSS up. Not that I could do it :(. Also, some pocket pcs [come with/can be downloaded onto] a program that gives you true VGA with a larger resolution, thus allowing web browsing of non PDA friendly pages. I'm not sure about the text size you'd get though. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 16:36, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I too would like to see wikipedia PDA friendly, and not workarounds, especially, no downloads. If every website required some software or enhancement to be installed on my PDA to use their website, I wouln't get very far. This is not a desktop in my hand.

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Search box

Would it be possible to add another search box at the top of the page (perhaps underneath the pull down menu for the special pages)? I find that when I do edits of articles and want to open up another wiki to search for something I always have to go the bottom of the page to get to the box. If a search box is at the top and bottom of the page it would make it easier to search esp. if you went to a page you didn't want. Also, couldn't the go and search buttons be merged into one button? User:FeanorStar7

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Special pages

Sorry for my English; feel free to correct mistakes.

1. The Special:Specialpages page doesn't include:

  • User logout
  • several special pages which require a page as an argument: Movepage, Undelete, Search, Whatlinkshere, Contributions, Relatedchanges, Emailuser.
  • Special:Specialpages. This is a specialpage too! It should be not a link, but as a bold text, like here:



Protected pages are bad - only administrators may edit them. But special pages are even worse: only developers may edit them (of course, exceptions like using templates apply). So I think that the amount of special pages should be reduced to the neccessary minimum. I found a kind of inconsequence:

to edit a page X, I visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X&action=edit, not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Edit/X.

So editing is not a special page, but a fixed Wiki feature. The same applies to history, purging, deleting (admin only) and (un)watching.

However, to move a page, send an e-mail, search, see pages linking, related changes or user contributions, I have to visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Something/X where Something can be Movepage, Whatlinkshere etc. (I listed those pages above) I would change everything to X&action=something, where Something could be the one of these actions. So:

                                      move
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X&action=whatlinks
                                      contributions

instead of:

                                         move
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialpage:whatlinks    /X
                                         contributions

The toolbox panel (left area of the screen) contains: Specialpages, Upload, Whatlinks, Linkedchanges, Contributions, Emailuser (when displaying userpage) and printable version. I would put Specialpages and Upload into navigation panel and other things on the top of the page (where buttons like edit, history, move, (un)watch are displayed); this way the toolbox would be removed. It could look like this:

  • Main Page
  • Community Portal
  • Current events
  • Special pages

- recent changes - random page - random category - upload

  • Contact, Help, Donations etc.

Because I'm not an admin, I don't know whether blocking, reverting, (un)protecting, bureaucrat options (e.g. +bot flag) are special pages or fixed Wiki features. However, I think it would be better when everything would be the same: either Specialpage:Something/X or X&action=something. The second looks better for me.

Of course, it is impossible to make the change instantly because many pages link to the Special:Contributions/... page.

3. There could be a keyboard shortcut list: alt+. userpage, alt+p preview changes etc.

4. It would be even better if somebody made a special browser for Wikipedia (and other Wiki projects). This could allow to customize preferences even more: changing keyboard shortcuts, skins, configuring the navigation menu, option to download pages with history and work offline.

4. The category view could be expanded so that it would be possible to view what's common in two categories: Category:Football + Category:Stubs = [[:Category:Football stubs]. This way the additional stub categories wouldn't be needed.

I hope you'll find these thoughts useful. --Googlpl 21:01, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit]

CategoryTOC template

The CategoryTOC template doesn't seem to work, based on two big categories i tried it on.Gzuckier 16:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit]

Twit Factor

Wikipedia's advantage is also its flaw. Information comes streaming in from all over the world in a way never before possible, and that is its extraordinary advantage. But idiots are, by reason of their affliction, unaware of their affliction; when given the opportunity to express themselves for free, they will screw things up cluelessly and royally. Read some of the essays on towns which devolve into forums for ego, put-downs, huckstering and illiteracy. Yes, I know that the "revert" button exists, but monitoring it can be an imposition on a harried contributor. Perhaps pages should achieve a "locked" status when deemed worthy, with further changes only by petition. --Hugh Manatee 14:28, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I feel the best way to deal with the twit factor is a voting system where you can vote on a change that was made with a question like "Do you approve of this change" and you get "Yes", "No" and "No opinion". Saying no would be slightly different that undoing changes as this system would allow Wiki to realize that if many different people vote yes, the change is a good change but if many vote no, the change is possible not up to the Wiki standard (but it's not so outrageous that it was reverted). Ideally people that watch a list would get this UI to vote on changes (while they viewed a diff). --Travis Owens 11:35, 8 August 2005 (EST)

Problem with this approach - majority opinion is at least sometimes (and IMO 'quite frequently' if not 'usually') at oods with whatever may be available as established fact. I'm pretty new here, but it seems to be the goal of WP to be as factual as possible and avoid conflicts of opinion or popularity. What if a majority of Wiki users don't like being reminded that the US is the only country to use atomic weapons against another nation? This is true, established, incontrovertible fact, but your 'reversions-by-populism' approach would have that - and many other facts - quickly removed.John Henry My Talk Page 04:35, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Feature Request - Flickr 'semi-integration'

I think it would be great if we were able to semi-automate some process whereby links to photos tagged in Flickr could be added to the external links of matching articles. For example London Eye could have a link to Flickr's photos tagged 'londoneye'. Another example, our Westminster Abbey could make use of photos tagged 'westminsterabbey'.

Be assured, I'm not suggesting any embedding of media here, as that would violate copyrights. I'm suggesting a mass linking via some automated process: note that the Flickr URLs are very intuitive and that their tags and our articles both provide the necessary tagname/articlename in the URL itself.

Any thoughts?

I am not technical. Let's assume that automation is impractical. Where would be a good place to moot the idea of a wiki-project where those interested could help with a concerted effort to add such links manually (provided the community feels such links are valuable and not surplus)? The Village Pump?--bodnotbod 14:31, August 10, 2005 (UTC)


I've just tried this in the Template:Template sandbox and It can be done easily. For example, if a template was created with this content:

[http://flickr.com/photos/tags/{{{1}}}/ See photos tagged with "{{{1}}}" at Flickr.com],

the page would call the template in this form:

{{template-name|variable}}.

So in this example:

{{template-name|London}}

would show up in the article as See photos tagged with "London" at Flickr.com. The Flickr tags are resolved by url which does not seem to be case-sensitive. Spaces do not matter. A link to the tag "Westminster Abbey" would show tags "westminsterabbey"

This type of template (which modifies a url) is already used for linking a film to its page at the IMDb:

*{{imdb title|id=0091369|title=Labyrinth}}

shows up as

A closer look at Template:Imdb title shows us the content:

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt{{{id}}}/ ''{{{title}}}''] at the [[Internet Movie Database]]

On another note, it is possible to use images from http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ on Wikipedia (avoid those with "non-commercial" or "no-derivs") under the terms of the Creative Commons licence.

-=# Amos E Wolfe talk #=-

[edit]

Anchor's Away on Diff

I would like to suggest that on a "diff" page an link & anchor is placed from the "+" signs (indicating changes) on the diff summary to the actual location of the edit in the article. Kim Nevelsteen 09:01, 14 August 2005 (UTC)


[edit]

Deletionists

Th most famous people on Wiki is those who have no work other than cring "DELETE!" ...

They occupy pages on yahoo and google, while a single line about some poor guy is deleted.

They form the Wiki Mafia.

So what do you suggest we do about them? DES (talk) 22:58, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Mindless Self Indulgence "what links here" - broken?

Special:Whatlinkshere/Mindless_Self_Indulgence shows Wikipedia:9/11 victims as linking to Mindless Self Indulgence. But it DOESN'T! :P What's with that? Hosterweis (talk) (contribs) 22:28, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit]

Many links to the Hazardous Chemical Database are broken

Many links to the Hazardous Chemical Database is broken. For example, nitric oxide, carbon dioxide, methanol, acetone. I guess the database has been reorganized. I hope somebody will systematically fix this problem, possibly by referring to a different database. R6144 12:52, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit]

Why different accounts for different projects?

Why do I have to register for each language and each project separately? Why not use one account for all? I would like to use the same name everywhere, but on the German Wikipedia, my name was already taken, so I had to opt for Benne.de. Benne 09:54, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

See bugzilla:57. Bovlb 15:27:39, 2005-08-24 (UTC)
[edit]

Why is the search so brainless?

There is an entry for "El Mozote Massacre." Fine. However, inputting "El Mozote" or "Mozote" yields "No page exists." I don't mean to criticize, but is that a dumb search engine or is that a dumb search engine?

Try selecting "Search" instead of "Go". Or try using the search facilities on the "No page exists" page. I agree that things could be clearer and search better.Bovlb 15:34:05, 2005-08-24 (UTC)
[edit]

Pronunciation for words

This is more of a suggestion than a complaint. I feel that many entries that show up in Wikipedia should also contain the correct pronunciation for the term being discussed. Especially for proper nouns like names of drugs, or scientific names of organisms, names of people, countries, etc. or any other term that is outside the mainstream of the English Language, since for normal English words, Wiktionary already provides pronunciation. Also, instead of providing pronunciations using phonetic symbols, it might be more helpful to provide recorded utterings of the word.


I AGREE COMPLETELY. The only thing that would make this site more AWESOME than it already is (beside maybe a little speed) is supplied pronunciation of the words. Nowheregirl 18:00, 15 September 2005 (UTC)nowheregirl


[edit]

Demographics

I enjoy reading about the demographics of cities around the country and my state - Texas. As a severely disabled person of five decades, I note that you do not include Census Bureau data regarding disabled persons and their age groups in your city demographic summaries. I would like to see this information put in future offerings.

I'm glad you appreciate Wikipedia. Most of our U.S. census data comes automatically from the U.S. census. If the data you want is missing, then I would guess it isn't in the database we have access to. If you have access to it, then you could add it yourself. You might like to address your question to User talk:Rambot. Bovlb 03:38:05, 2005-08-26 (UTC)
[edit]

Transparent LaTeX output

I've noticed that LaTeX markup does not generate transparent images as output - they all have a white background instead. This, of course, is not much of a problem on the main (article) namespace because the page background is also white, but when for some reason equations need to be put in some other (for example: article talk) namespace, it looks ugly. Check for yourselves:

\mu\left(\bigsqcup_{n=0}^\infty A_n\right)=\sum_{n=0}^\infty \mu\left(A_n\right)

So I say that the output should have a transparent background. --Fibonacci 04:35, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit]

Too much reverts on Chen Yonglin

On this page, even minor edits regarding spelling and links get edited. The guy responsible said "If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, do not submit it." I'm not even frogging vandalising!

Wikipedia is not supposed to be a forum. It is an encyclopedia. Do you think Britannica or World Book would be at all successful if they had misspellings?Twilight Realm 21:26, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Transparent favicon

Could you make the favicon have a transparent background. I think it would look better that way.


[edit]

Turkmen interwiki links

Interwiki links to articles in Turkmen appear in both Arabic and Cyrillic letters. Since the Turkmen-language wikipedia is written in the Latin alphabet, which is the official way to write Turkmen in Turkmenistan, I think it should also be applied in presenting the interwiki links.

[edit]

Quagmire: Something fresh to complain about

First off, I founded this page. My very first comment, which is still available on the Talk page, reads:

Okay, I really didn't know where else to go with this, but I just have all these complaints (nothing REALLY serious, but important enough) that I decided to make this page.

My complaints are:

  1. The search engine has worked properly for about ONE week since I joined in November of '03. What's wrong with it?
  2. The site moves like a turtle at times. I'm using broadband and yet it still takes an almost unrealistic amount of time to save changes I've made to pages. Why is this, and can it be fixed?
  3. The capital letters issue. If it isn't already a pain to try and correctly type out exact punctuation and spelling in the Search (O Brother, Where Art Thou? haunts me), we must also get the captialization exactly right. I'm in college and this gives me trouble, I feel real pity for grade-schoolers who have to try and find things.

This is a list of complaints. I'm not saying I'm mad at Wikipedia or anything, it's just that I think we might be able to improve some things and I think we ought to have an open forum (this page) for doing it. Don't hate me. -Litefantastic 00:39, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

And, if you've been paying attention, you'll know that, while my third complain appears to have been resolved, the other two comprise the bulk of the problemss on this page. I think, in retrospect, General Complaints was a bad idea. I was working under an imcomplete theory that if enough people complained, something would happen to fix the problem. Now 16 months out, I am beginning to have doubts. -Litefantastic 11:42, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

This is a suprisingly under-watched page - I only found it a couple of weeks back (I've been here since Decmeber 2004). The Wikipedia:Village pump pages are much mor ehighly trafficed and you can expect more people to spot your queries there. However, if you want to know about site speed then the page meta:server status or the technical mailing list Wikitech-l (see Wikipedia:Mailing lists) are better places to go.
If you want developers to fix something then your best bet is to post on the Wikitech-l mailing list or submit a bug or feature request at Bugzilla:. Thryduulf 13:11, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Well if nobody who's anybody looks at this page then let's remove the link to it from the contacts page and point people somewhere else instead. If you follow the obvious trail for problem reporting from the main "Help" link then you end up here. I did anyway.


[edit]

A good point

This was on this article's talk page:

:As a relative newcomer, I am finding it almost impossible to find a place to make a request for an article on a given subject. A CLEAR, SIMPLE way (hotlink?) would be appreciated. For those of you wondering, I had in mind ASW aircraft of WW1.

::You want Wikipedia:Requested articles, or specifically, Military / Military History--Rogerd 10:44, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

This is a good point. It's also not obvious how to start a new page. If you search for something, and there's no article matching it, there should be a way to make one!!! Isn't that the main concept of Wikipedia?

I know that there are ways to do these things, but for newcomers, or one-time writers, this is definitely enough to discourage them. Most people don't have the time or motivation to edit much, probably just occasionaly. I had ideas of articles I wanted to request when I was new here, even a few articles I would have started, but I couldn't figure out how, and was too lazy to check the help. It may be years before those articles are requested and/or written (I've completely forgotten what they were).

I am seeing too many responses to these complaints with a "to do that, go here." Sure, you may be helping that one person, but what about the other people, the thousands who give up? If there's no way normal editors can change this, can someone tell me who should I talk to about it?Twilight Realm 22:33, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

If you enter an article title in the "search" box at the left and hit "Go" or press RETURN, then if there's no article matching it, you should see something like the following text:
You can create an article with this title or put up a request for it.
This line contains a link allowing you to create the new article, and a link to Wikipedia:Requested articles. This is the "No Go match" page. If you hit the "Search" button instead, or you use the search box on the "No Go match" page, then you get a search results page that does not have these links. Perhaps this should be changed. We're certainly keen to improve the site's usability. Do you have any specific suggestions for how we can improve things? Bovlb 00:19, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I have a suggestion. Go, for example, to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=this+page+does+not+exist . It doesn't give you that option. I am guessing that that's because there are a lot of search results, but there should still be a link to create a new one. And by the way, if I'm just being stupid, just tell me. It could just be that I'm skipping over something extremely obvious. However, I still think that there are too many people saying "to solve that, go here." I know that this entry isn't going to get many readers. I'd like to put something about that in the instructions. If someone's having trouble with something, other people most likely will. "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day..." Well, if you tell a single person the solution, you're feeding the group of newcomers for a day. Make the solution obvious, and you'll help them and you. You'll feed him for his life. NOTE: Please respond to both the topics I discussed, if you can. Don't punish me for including both in the same entry.Twilight Realm 22:31, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_complaints#Over_resoluted_pictures and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_complaints#An_Article_.22Faggot.22_that_I_found for two examples of what I'm talking about. They're actually just a few sections down this page. Twilight Realm 23:13, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Wikipédia française

What's with the French Wikipedia lately? It won't let me edit articles or even look at an article's history. You click on the tab, and a truncated page appears. In the case of the modifier function, you don't get an editing frame, making editing impossible. Is it this way for everyone, or have I done something to annoy the administrators at Wikipédia française? All other versions of Wikipedia seem to work just fine for me. Kelisi 18:41, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I'm guessing that the servers have a higher priority for the English Wikipedia or something. And even the English version has some problems lately. Though it's getting much better, so the French version may improve soon too.
[edit]

Wikipedia on systemic racism

I tried to include the term systemic racism and a Nazi here reffered it to racism, if you check the term racism there are many types which include individual definitions for each one, maybe the problem is that my definition included the gorvernment of Canada for letting it happening as one of the examples of my definition, my references are www.canadaimigrants.com and notcanada.com, sorry to the canucks that feel offended for the term but is part of the shameful history of canada and should be documented, Hitler is included in wikipedia and see no germans trying to delete it, if the position of wikipedia is to be biased please let me know for me to let it know to others.

I want to add to the record that the term Scientific Racism is a term of its own in wikipedia, I think the term Systemic Racism should have a definitiion too due the many unique characteristis it involves.

[edit]

Kate's counter

I can't access the tool since I get a 404 error... did it get moved? --Rschen7754 02:09, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes: the address evidently changed (again). You can now get it here: [1] Antandrus (talk) 03:01, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Okay, thanks... wondering if I need to respond for this to get archived. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 05:01, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit]

cancelling account

How can I cancel my account.

You can't. Your edits need to be attributed to someone. If you wish to change username, see Wikipedia:Changing username (although the feature is disabled temporarily). If you want nothing to do with your account ever again, just stop using it. gkhan 07:48, 1 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit]

Wiki Administrators: Systemic Left/Liberal Bias

I had a fine and mutually respectful discussion last night with a group of Wiki administrators. Having seen a disproportionate number of Wiki administrators act -- from my perception -- in a "squash non-liberal thinking" sort of way over time, I was moved to ask the group (respectfully) what their political inclinations were.

The result: only 3 of 24 administrators available at the time had voted or would consider voting Republican. (This was late on a Friday evening U.S. Central Time, and so there was no international presence to speak of; the point being that this demonstrates a hugely inappropriate skew towards the left, particularly given that most of the U.S. votes conservative).

Now, I'm sure that's music to the ears of those of the clearly left-leaning nature of Wiki world, but think about it: how is Wikipedia ever going to truly overcome its biases and reach balanced, NPOV conditions within its 750,000+ articles if it continues to be hounded administratively by one side of the political spectrum? If Wikipedia cannot achieve a balanced view, how will it ever contain unspun Truth?

I'll leave the solutions...if any...to the highest Wiki minds. But there is a profound problem within Wiki world, and not addressing it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

The Truth is Balanced.

Thank you.

--66.69.219.9 17:41, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm willing to bet less than one Wikipedia in a hundred is communist. Does this mean that communists should get equal time? Wikipedia is not Fox News. Ideologues are never going to be satisfied with reports that are not spun to their personal biases. Wikipedia is a reality based encyclopedia, that makes it POV to some. That is their problem. --Gorgonzilla 00:59, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Does this mean that communists should get equal time? Yes. NPOV is key, and the size of your support base should not matter. I think 66.69.219.9 has the beginnings of a valid point. However, the question to ask is not of the political inclinations of the admins, but whether or not this reflects on their actions. Personally, I think the answer to that last part is "no", most of the time.--inks 01:06, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
I would certainly like to think that the last part of what Inkypaws says is true, but again -- from my perspective -- POV admin bias is precisely what kicked off my inquiry in the first place. Let me be direct: I have seen Admins all but vandalize (some) balancing content that does not agree with left-leaning POV. Similarly, I have seen clearly left-POV edits survive, yet become deleted in their entirety when caught red-handed and have some balance added to them.
The stats I found (3 out of 24 as conservative) were just one measurement and so I do not want to overplay that...but at the same time it conveys a reality that is consistent with my own personal observations over time. There is an old saying that you can't argue with someone's experience, and mine has been the reinforced perception that there is an overall agenda within the collective body of Wiki work that comes across time and again.
This is a much bigger problem than Wiki realizes, though I sense that it is one of the serious problems that caused the original Wiki editor, Larry Sanger, to resign. With 750,000+ articles under development, just getting some real statistics on perceived admin POV-attacks would be a daunting task, much less fixing the problem. If NPOV and credibility are not truly objectives for Wiki, then, hey, fine...both sides have their blogs, and the Wiki world will just be one of the left ones. But if these are true objectives, there is some serious homework (serious data collection) and housecleaning (dealing with POV admins) to be done. I'm willing to help, but this is a huge issue and bears serious adult supervision within the world of Wiki. --66.69.219.9 05:23, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
P.S. This is an old problem in the world of journalism. Most journals/newspapers have well known biases. The best ones work to eliminate that by having a balanced staff. The worst ones try to disguise their true, hard-core biases by emulating an ostensible "NPOV", while spinning like mad all the while; I'm sure each side can name their own infamous offenders. In any case, it is absurd in the extreme to think that a counter-cultural ratio of 8-to-1 (24 to 3 in the measurement above) can somehow join hands and achieve NPOV just by claiming that they do. Truth doesn't happen that way...it gets assaulted that way. And it is just another form of anti-reality, falsifying spin to assert that it does.--66.69.219.9 19:06, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

You are basing this complaint based on a poll (presumably on IRC) of 24 wikipedia administrators, claiming that it doesn't represent US proportions because "most of the US votes conservative". There are so many things wrong with your line of thinking, it's frightening. (1) Your sample size is tiny. You are judging the 100,000+ registered users based on a very, very small convience sample. (2) Presumably you did your poll on IRC. Claiming that it was late night US central time and that therefore there is no international presense is just plain wrong. I can tell you firsthand that there are always non-Americans in the channel. (3) You might want to read hostile media effect - the republicans have been beating this to death for decades, claming that the media is hostile to them in order to make the media become more conservative. In sports, it's called "working the ref" - complaining that the ref is biased so he'll compensate in your favor. (4) The more someone understands about the world, the more hollow and incoherent conservative ideaology becomes (the voodoo supply side economics and tax cuts that pay for themselves, the mega-deficit spending, the holier-than-though bible thumping while taxing the poor to give to the rich, the play-the-races-against-each-other campaign strategies, the smash-mouth politics originated by Lee Atwater, the Orwellian destruction of our civil liberties, and the list goes on and on) That is why educators, doctors, journalists, 'etc all tend to be liberal (by american standards, at least). →Raul654 21:15, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but I beat you to the punch sample-size wise (only one sample re. 3 of 24 administrators as conservative). You are attempting to put words in my mouth or otherwise imply that I somehow said that it is statistically significant. It is not. It is, however, entirely consistent with my own perceptions...as stated time and again. The rest of your 'argument' I'll let speak for itself. Quite an emotional, illogical rant. Thanks for proving my point. But consider trying to keep the conversation more mutually respectful in the future. I think you'll find that both sides will benefit. --66.69.219.9 21:47, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Uh, its flawed because you're sampling people on IRC - and people on IRC are always predominately liberal anyways. They are the eViL LibEral IRC cAbAl! Ryan Norton T | @ | C 21:51, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I think that given Raul654's response, particularly given his position within the Wiki world (see [2]), that my "beginnings of a valid point" (as Inks collegially refers to my original post) is clearly of merit. The Wiki world can see some of the Truth for themselves in the above comments, but the real homework, statistics collection, cleanup, etc. remains to be done. I invoke Wiki management to pay attention. Whether it is realized or not, the true "NPOV" and credibility of Wiki are otherwise entirely at risk. --66.69.219.9 22:03, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, it would not be hard to create a bot (or even conduct a manual survey) that places an invite on the talk page of each active admin (I know there is a list somewhere but can't find it), inviting them to indicate (anonymously or otherwise) their political leanings. Given the relatively small numbers of admins, we can attempt a complete sample, instead of having to randomise. Perhaps a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being Ultra-Left, 5 centrist, and 10 Ultra-Right. Then we can run stats on those numbers. If nothing else, it would be an interesting bit of information to have. It will be at least 1.5 months before I'll have time to do something like that, but if you're still keen on doing it 66.69.219.9, leave me a note. We need also to ask what our findings can be used for. I think even if we do find that a majority of Admins are of X political orientation, we can only manage a general statement of bias...meaning that we can't single out individuals. It would however be a good basis for an article for submission to popular media maybe, or a press release? By the way, are you registered, but posting as an IP to avoid recognition? No judgement, just curious--inksT 22:22, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Inks: I'm not registered yet. Actually, I see an IP address as being much less anonymous than some of the totally anonymous/empty profiles out there. In all honesty, I'm still trying to gauge as to whether or not the Wiki work is worth my time. I live in the left-leaning world of Austin, Texas...so if it was political argument that was lacking in my day, the local Starbucks will do. The sheer numbers of left-POV admins is a force field, and, as in any organization, such an imbalance can only start at the top (are you listening, Raul654?). My passion is truth...pure and simple. Unlike Raul654, I see compassion in both the left and the right political worlds (one sees what one is), and in a Ken Wilber sort of way I think both sides need each other much more than they realize. I love the variety of inputs in the world of Wiki, but do not have time to keep re-editing what has already been said, and find the overabundance of left-POV admins quite annoying; it delays getting to the truth at a minimum, and sometimes avoids it altogether. I'll leave you a note re. suggestions for data collection, with the goal being...balance. Truth is content within context, and sniping at either component is falsehood. Thanks. --66.69.219.9 22:38, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
I gather from the last presidential election that only half the US electorate voted, and pretty much half of those who did voted Democrat. So that would give 6 out of 24 randomly selected Americans would have voted Republican in the last election. Did you bother to ask how many would vote Democrat? Average Earthman 22:14, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
My comments and graphics stand as stated above. I don't want to lose the baby of "the beginnings of a valid point" in the bathwater of political rhetoric. I trust that Wiki can do its own homework, which I would certainly hope will be much more rigorous than the finger in the air I've tested the Wiki winds with. --66.69.219.9 22:26, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
The graphic you cite is misleading. Almost all of the red areas have a population desnity of barely-more-than 0. If you were to weight the map by population, you get this, which debunks your claim that the US is mostly conservative. →Raul654 23:11, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Raul, I'm not hardly so easily convinced, and neither should you be. Nor am I so easily distracted from the core issue above. But, if you insist on trying to discern the U.S. political mix, take an Occum's Razor approach and simply look at the total numbers of voters for President Bush vs. the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts. Game...set...match.
Back on topic, I am appalled at your above statements and clear hatred of 51% of the country. In my humble opinion, you should be sacked tomorrow vis-a-vis your position at Wikinews. It is ludicrous that someone of such a high degree of imbalance is making such judgements. --66.69.219.9 23:56, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Your complaint is a mirror version of the same accusations that have been lobbed at the New York Times, CNN, 'etc for decades by conservates. And, much like those complaints, it is equally without merit. It's simply an attempt to "work the ref". Wikipedia is not going to change because conservatives complain it's not as friendly to them as Fox News. →Raul654 00:17, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
As a minor distraction from the core point above, but since you’ve brought it up, here are some examples of the alleged neutrality of:
New York Times: 4th correction of Krugman column [3]
CNN: “Bush pics labeled asshole, moron” [4]
Not to mention a fellow who used to work at CBS by the name of Dan Rather.--66.69.219.9 00:57, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Again, Raul, it is your arguments that have no merit, so you find yourself once again regressing to the tactic of putting words in people's mouths. I am not arguing for Fox-like POV...I am arguing for true balance, and in your heart of hearts you know that's the right thing to do. With regard to my sense/single-measurement/contention that the Wiki world is not NPOV but is in fact left-leaning, I once again need only refer to your own words to reach a final conclusion:
Q.E.D. -- quod erat demonstrandum
--66.69.219.9 00:27, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia *does* have a neutral point of view. Conservates think it's left leaning because what they consider "neutral" isn't what anyone else would. ["Fair and balanced" anyone?] →Raul654 00:29, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
In the words of W. Edwards Deming "if you don't measure it, you can't manage it." By what specific measurement do you lay claim to NPOV, Raul? Go do your homework, without bias, and then back up that statement. If your admins are as hateful and grossly left-POV as you are, then forget it...it is absurd to baselessly claim that Wiki is NPOV. --66.69.219.9 00:41, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I'll echo this complaint from my own experience. In fact, some of the very worst liberal point-of-view pushers on this site are administrators. Now, there are many good administrators here too so I don't mean to group them all into this category, but a handful of very liberal and very partisan administrators are among the most frequent participants in POV disputes on this entire site. In fact most revert warring I have observed, and virtually every revert war I've found myself in the middle of, has had at least one and often more than one administrator actively participating in it - almost always from the political left. An occassional revert war is probably unavoidable, but when all the major revert wars involve admins trying to push their POV's it's a big problem. It's also a dangerous situation to have our admins - who are supposed to be fostering a consensus-based environment - doing some of the worst damage to consensus by constantly getting themselves involved in politically motivated content disputes. This is another reason why I'm a proponent of requiring admins to practice absolute neutrality rather than letting them edit AND be the arbiters of non-admin editor disputes at the same time. Rangerdude 03:57, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I salute Rangerdude's solution-oriented (rather than denial-oriented) approach. To avoid "tag teams" of highly left-POV admins continuing the content wars in a proxy fashion, I would suggest that some sort of admin 'boards' be formed and made up of those whose views balance. If it doesn't add excessive complexity, age should also be taken into account; youth and wisdom have not historically been found to be common characteristics. That's not personal...that's reality...and we all go through it in the human experience.
BTW, any who would take some sort of personal or quasi-professional offense at the notion that NPOV is not a reality within Wiki today should take a deep breath and look at what happened within the U.S. Supreme Court during the resolution of the 2000 presidential election -- it is clearly near-impossible, psychologically, to merely 'will' one's own personal POV away and somehow invoke an NPOV, especially when under emotional stress. Moreover, this isn't about you...or me...it's about achieving true NPOV. --66.69.219.9 13:23, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

As a fresh example of Left-POV Admins creating/participating in content wars, Tempshill engaged in such activity today in the Harriet Miers article. What had been installed early in the day as solidly NPOV/balanced discussion of the background of abortion law which included a direct lift from Ruth Bader Ginsburg's article wherein she found Roe vs. Wade lacking from a legislative standpoint was repeatedly attacked by Tempshill for "POV" (again...the content in question was largely already-consensus from Ginsburg's article, and in fact survived the vast majority of the day until said Left-POV Admin arrived). This is but one small example of this very, very broad problem.

Alternately, one might consider that User:Tempshill removed a claim (that there was a broad consensus on the left and right that Roe v. Wade has no legitimate legislative basis) from the Harriet Miers article, where that content wouldn't belong even if it were true. Tempshill 22:24, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Herein emerges the previously seen pattern of putting words in one's mouth and, later, what Rangerdude describes as "Wiki-stalking" (via the Roe vs. Wade page). Tempshill is also making a knowingly false claim regarding my words on the Harriet Miers page, which I quote below:
The subject of Roe v. Wade is highly topical in this most recent nomination, due in large part to views from both the political left and right that this landmark Supreme Court decision lacks a strong legislative foundation.
Providing significant insight into this finding, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal justice, has consistently supported abortion rights and joined in the Supreme Court's opinion striking down Nebraska's partial-birth abortion law in Stenberg v. Carhart (2000). However, Ginsburg has also criticized the court's ruling in Roe v. Wade as terminating a nascent, democratic movement to liberalize abortion laws which she contends might have built a more durable consensus in support of abortion rights. Regardless of political persuasion, Roe v. Wade has been judged as a form of judicial activism that pre-empted the democratic process.
The tone & temperament of the above Left-POV Admin's attack is but one example of this profound non-NPOV problem with the Wiki world. Wiki management ignores this at the peril of true NPOV and its own credibility.--66.69.219.9 23:02, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Just by inserting that last quoted sentence in the Harriet Miers article and in the first paragraph of Roe v. Wade, you have made it pretty clear who here is pushing an agenda. Tempshill 15:55, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Again with the deliberate untruths from Tempshill. Is this something that left-POV types find helpful to their arguments...? We're certainly seeing a trend here. To set the record straight -- as I frankly detest deliberate untruths -- I inserted the following into the Roe v. Wade article...nothing more, nothing less...and the majority was a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg's article. The portion in parentheses was pre-existing:
(It remains one of the most controversial decisions in Supreme Court history,) as it is widely viewed by both conservatives and liberals alike as being a judicial finding with questionable legislative support. In 2000, left-leaning Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticized the court's ruling in Roe v. Wade as terminating a nascent, democratic movement to liberalize abortion laws which she contends might have built a more durable consensus in support of abortion rights.--66.69.219.9 02:11, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I think this argument is getting away from the point in contention. As I understand the argument is:

  • 66.69.219.9's claim: There is a liberal Point of View in the documenting of current events in Wikipedia.
  • 66.69.219.9's goal: Achieving NPOV on Wikipedia.
  • 66.69.219.9's suggestion: That the Point of View of Wikipedia should be balanced to achieve NPOV.

I think his claim stands. Most of the people writing for Wikipedia are liberal. This is a trend not only in online communities, but in most open-source projects. As a result, most of the people who write for and administrate Wikipedia are going to be liberal and thus, intentionally or not, will emphasize those facts that most strongly resonate with their beliefs. I agree with his goal. An authoritative source of information needs to be as unbiased as possible. As for his suggestion, I do not agree. I don't think that anything would be solved by 'balancing' the Wikipedia. 66.69.219.9 contends that 'Truth is Balance'. This is untrue. The truth of a matter will not evenly divide itself amongst the two political parties of a a particular nation. The truth just is. I don't think any change in the political climate of the administration would fix the problem. Furthermore, screening the admins and constantly adjusting articles to include both sides are not good solutions. Inserting snippets of 'balance' into an article will just provoke an arms race of biasing (as you can see with the RoevWade article). Removing contributors based on their views defies the idea of an open-source encyclopedia. Other than removing false statements and groundless generalizations, the rest is a matter of consensual opinion. While the Wikipedia is an excellent source of information (especially in the area of science and computing), I would recommend that you read any current event articles with a grain of salt, as you should with all other forms of media. Ian Hill 3:34, 4 October 2005

I appreciate the respectful tone and honesty from Ian Hill. I also agree that the truth (content in context) largely exists on one side of an argument or the other. That's not to say that one side of the political spectrum has all the truth, and the other side does not. They share it...they each have some of the truth. The truth is in *being* balanced. This is notably shown by the Ginsburg snippet. She's already on the Supreme Court, and has nothing to gain but credibility by pointing out that Roe v. Wade overrreached legislatively. And there's nothing stunning about that blatant truth to anyone who can read -- at least, reasonably without bias -- the Constitution.
However, I would take strong issue with the conclusion that (paraphrasing): "Yes, Wiki has a strong liberal bias, but claims NPOV as this is seen as an expedient argument for achieving ostensible credibility. Hold your nose, as we don't know how to fix this problem." I would also disagree that the scope of the non-NPOV problem is limited to current events; this is a Wiki-wide problem, such as Rangerdude has commented above.
Frankly, I don't have any better idea -- nor should I have to, I'm a mere 'anon' -- than for Wiki management to acknowledge the problem, apply its own intellect/judgement and deliberately make the effort to clean up its act. I've proposed one idea. From Wiki management, I've seen (so far) nothing but defensiveness, outright denial that there is a problem, and the utterly arrogant attitude from Raul654 that (paraphrasing again...but not much) "sure we're liberal because conservative is evil."
Where is the real Wiki leadership? This can't be it. --66.69.219.9 02:33, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree that the majority of editors here trend to the liberal side of things. I don't agree that in most cases the admins are liberal as it pertains to enforcing WP:NPOV. Perhaps the ones you have run into have a liberal agenda, but most of the ones I have met (I say most) do a decent job (unpaid) and enforce a NPOV stance on articles. It all depends on where you are editing...articles that are politically charged may experience some POV pushing and appear to be liberally dominated because they wish to distort things to fit an agenda, but that doesn't mean that ALL those watching that article and arguing with you are Admins. The best way to "fix" the problem with an article is to support your arguments with sources, and discredit those things you contend as being POV with proper rebuttal and citation.--MONGO 03:19, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
As a fundementally open society, I doubt there is much we could do beyond what we already have put in place. Certainly all administrators acknowledge that one of the foundations of the project to provide a neutral point of view, and their own participation should be tailored towards that goal. Most seem to try to embrace this goal, including a willingness to speak for "the other side" when they percieve that side as having something credible to say. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I can not recall any examples of an administrator knowingly trying to push a POV agenda into articles. However, the problem which you have already alluded to is that people, administrators included, can have broad disagreements about what NPOV means for any given situation. If I percieve that the other side's point of view is not credible then it is hard to offer them the equal time they may in fact disserve. This is the opposite of "the two talking heads" problem, wherein news reporters looking for balance find one person from each side and give them equal time, even if one of the views is nonsense that no one believes.
As I am suggesting that the problem is not being able to see where the balance of NPOV lies, the question is still what to do about it. Really there is little alternative to discussion, education and mutual understanding. Meaning that if someone is unconciously clinging to a biased point of view, the real solution is to show them through verifiable and credible sources and arguments that the other side has a meaningful point that also needs to be considered. The community as a whole has steadfastly resisted any attempt to introduce real editorial authorities in favor of our hap-hazard scheme of talking through every argument. For the most part it can and does work well, if one is patient and serious enough to allow it to work. And the community does have procedures for dealing with the patently disruptive. But in terms of doing any artificial or imposed balancing, I don't think there is a way to make it work. Such a scenarion would substitute the opinion of NPOV held by the balancer(s) for that of the community. Sometimes that would be an improvement, sometimes not, and as long as anyone is free to change it or argue a new opinion, I don't see how one could accomplish much. However, I do see value in your contributions 66.69.219.9, and hope you will stick around to help talk through NPOV issues with the rest of us. Dragons flight 04:18, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I do wish these American political extremists would try not to be so parochial. Many Americans may have extreme right wing views, but this hardly goes for the rest of us. Skewing Wikipedia so that it would give equal representation to the extreme right of the Republican Party and to the not-so-extreme right of the Democratic Party would absolutely not produce a balanced encyclopedia. --Tony SidawayTalk 05:36, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

It is substantially unwise to refer to the Republican Party as "extreme right wing." In the U.S., American voters have put the Republicans in control of the White House, the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, and most state Governorships. You ignore reality, and do not appear to have even read the above line of mainly mutually respectful discussion. The promotion of parochial thinking is coming from you...similarly, for the moment, as is being maintained by the Wiki management that has shown up at this critical discussion. --66.69.219.9 13:30, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not an "American" encyclopedia. We have readers, editors and administratiors from all over the world, and when we say that Wikipedia is not POV, one of the most important parts of that is avoiding a nationalist or nationally limited viewpoint. If Wikipedia truly attempted to 'balance' its coverage in the way you suggest, the views of individual American political parties would come out to around 1% of the total world opinion. Those parties are still notable for their influence on world politics, of course, or when things relevent to them are the subject at hand; but even then, they are not the great philosophical axes that you make them out to be. The bias that you see as weighted towards your country's political left is, in fact, more balanced and comprehensive when taken in an international context. --Aquillion 16:37, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Please don't take this as brusque, but this whole thread of the conversation is irrelevant. It is equally unacceptable for Wikipedia to be biased in favor of the political center as it is for it to be biased in favor of the left or right. Neutral Point of View is not some kind of Centrist Point of View. - Nat Krause 03:35, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

With an academically independent mind, please read the Barbara Boxer article in Wikipedia. Could her campaign staff have written a more flattering piece? --(unsigned)

Thank you for the (rare) honest input, unsigned. The answer to your question: "No." --66.69.219.9 17:08, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Who ever said the truth is balanced? If you're talking about political balance, I'm willing to bet that most facts and issues are truthfully not balanced. If there's one issue that is unfavorable to one political party, should we try to "balance" it out by giving apologists and liars equal time, by packing in talking-point arguments that don't exactly hold up to scrutiny? I think this is taking place, to a greater or lesser extent, in those media outlets seeking not to be known as partisan. I think the effect is corrosive to public discourse and perpetuates the false and culturally divisive dichotomy of left vs. right.

As to the Wiki community and apparent bias, I think all this talk of "adult supervision" or keeping those admins in line is misplaced. Anyone can edit wikipedia, and anyone can become an admin. There are rules and guidelines that are, more often than not, followed and enforced. When you feel that they're not, you can make a fuss and get it resolved to some level of satisfaction. Perhaps 3 out of 24 admins (+/- a huge error) are Republican ... then wouldn't those three be sympathetic to instances of apparent anti-conservative bias? Moreover, I think the majority of Wikipedians value the enforcement of these structural safeguards above all opinions and particulars, especially admins. Perhaps the majority of admins are not Republican, but how many of those are idealogues intent on pushing their agenda to the detriment of wikipedia? The percentage shrinks considerably, in the least. TIMBO (T A L K) 15:37, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

  • I don't understand how one could determine the political leanings of 500+ admins solely based on their edits (I encourage you to determine mine, so I know what to vote in the next election). Besides, the number of administrators is just a small sample of Wikipedia editors and even if admins were liberal (are you talking about liberalism or American liberalism?), there's about 100,000 possible right-wing wikipedians on the other side (a lot of whom can't even be divided in a simple left-right system). Anything center would be left to right-wingers anyway and viceversa. What if there was more left-wing people in the world anyway? It be hard not to have more on Wikipedia too. Regardless, you can't expect people to fully abandon their POV at the doorstep. It's just not humanly possible. Your opinion comes through in everything you write. Finally, politics is just a small part of our coverage. Reading something less controversial may be refreshing to you. - Mgm|(talk) 22:58, 5 October 2005 (UTC)


OK, my arithmetic for the representational system of Wikipedia adminship as proposed by the admin: About 600 million people speak English effectively, half of them live in the US, half of them didn't vote. The votes are about evenly split dem/rep. So of our about 600 admins, 75 should be US/dem, 75 should be US/rep (or 73/77, please do the math). 150 should represent US non-voters and 300 should represent English speakers in the rest of the world. --Pjacobi

I'm new, so maybe I"m missing something, but it seems pretty simple to me...
1. Facts are facts, regardless of what you or I think of them
2. NPOV means "just the facts."
3. If it's not cited, it's not a fact - it's an opinion.
4. If the facts don't agree with you and you're a liberal, the facts are biased right. If the facts don't agree with you and you're conservative, the facts are biased left. (If the facts don't agree with you and you try to be neither liberal nor conservative, you're probably a scientist of some sort)
4a. Using US def's, 'liberals' tend to lean more toard science and empiricism, 'conservatives' tend to lean more toward religion and traditionalism. Note carefully that these are 'tendencies' and not 'absolute characteristics.' Anyone wishing to argue the point is welcoe to take it to my talk page and present evidence of any situation in which 'liberals' argued against scientific fact while 'conservatives' argued against religous dogma on the same issue.
5. NPOV on an issue that simply cannot be reduced to pure fact by reason of lack of empirical evidence must then present a genuinely balanced view of all sides of the issue at hand, striving to avoid semantically loaded words and phrases such as 'supposedly' or 'they say' or 'these people believe' or what have you - there is an exhaustive treatment of this very issue (semantics) in the new user section of WP.
5a. If you can't, for reasons of strong conviction, present a balanced view of a contentious issue, then you'd be best served to not attempt to edit WP.
5b. The very nature of WP, unfortunately, will tend toward ensuring that the exact opposite will happen - only people who have a sufficiently strong conviction to find it necessary to edit a given topic will do so, thus true NPOV is not likely achievable by everyday users. That is why there are administrators.
5c. These administrators are doomed to eternal universal hatred because no matter what they do it'll be too left for the righties and too right for the lefties, so maybe the lefties and the righties ought to (at the risk of cheesing off areligious/non-Christian lefties, which I happen to be one of) remove the beam from their own eye before they try removing the mote from Wiki's.
Okay, so what did I miss? It seems pretty simple to me.John Henry My Talk Page 05:18, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

The text in the Wikipedia logo graphic looks nasty in the Amethyst skin

Black-on-black text with antialiasing is not a happy thing. Seems like a buggish thing to me. - Technologeist

[edit]

more of a question really

I would love my watchlist to include a button (net to diff & hist) to unwatch a specific page. This shouldnt be too hard to do. Where would i voice such a desire to make it a reality? TIA! --The Minister of War 16:30, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

  • To unwatch any article, just open the article and click the unwatch tab at the top of the page (assuming you're using the monobook skin). --Kwekubo 20:43, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I realize that. My point is more of a suggestion to improve wiki, but i simply dont know where the "suggestion box" hangs around here :-)

--The Minister of War 21:34, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

It's at either Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) or http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/. --cesarb 03:27, 5 October 2005 (UTC)


If you use the Javascript popup tool the small popup which appears when you hover over a Wiki link offers the choice of watching or unwatching the target page. If you installed this script you could hover over the titles in your watchlist and simply click "unwatch" for those articles you want to remove.
-=# Amos E Wolfe talk #=- 16:18, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Truly random?

Does the Random Article link just redirect you to a uniform random page? Wouldn't it be better if some sort of a score is assigned to each user (ip?) and a weighted random page is generated? Prateek 14:43, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Why in the world would we do that? And wouldn't we give a weight to the articles instead of the users, if we wanted to deliver a non-uniform random page? And again, why? gkhan 12:32, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Ya, I meant a personalised score for articles for a user. And I brought it up due to an irritating 20 minutes of random article searching before I came up with something interesting (subjective, you say?). I was just wondering if there is a more sophisticated algorithm than just a uniform random number. If not for each user, I think at least a global weighting of articles (small weights for stubs/very specific article, and larger ones for the more fleshed out articles, say?) can be done. Should make the Random article link more clickable.Prateek 17:14, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Ohh, so you mean like by using statistical analysis of a users contributions, you assign different weights to articles in different categories? It's a neat idea, but it wont ever happen for two reasons 1) no one is going to program it and 2) even if they do, the server is strained enough as it is :P If you're looking for something interesting to read, why not try one of the portals? gkhan 20:56, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Well as to point 1, I for one am interested in coding up something. And about the server strain, I am sure a trade-off between usability and server load can be achieved (and so what I am saying is, the equilibrium should be a tad bit higher on the usability of the link :P). How do I go about knowing how the link works, and actually making a contribution towards it? I don't mind submitting my work to an admin also.Prateek 13:45, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
You are ofcourse welcome to code this for mediawiki, it is open source so just go right ahead and download it (it's written in PHP btw). See m:MediaWiki. However, because of the fact of server drainage and simply the reason that many users like Random Page the way it is (some use it to find crap pages and then fix them), I doubt that your change will be implemented. Sorry :P I would encourage you however to start tinkering with MediaWiki, because we could always use more developers :D gkhan 09:24, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
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Create Account/Log In Button

I have visited Wikipedia frequently for the past two months, and up to now have never noticed the Create Account/Log In button in the top right corner of the screen.

I think that it should be placed in the navigation section on the left side of the screen, as it is about as important as the other buttons in that menu. This would encourage more users to sign in (especially for editing articles; unsigned edits are often annoying). Cdcon 20:29, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit]

User harrasment

Complaints about immature harrasment attempts by wannabe "power editors":

While editing a page about one of the more interesting current norwegian bands, this babble showed up in my 'user talk':

"User talk:85.164.161.140 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Please stop adding nonsense--.::Imdaking::. Bow | DOWN 22:01, 5 October 2005 (UTC) Screw your self you queer! --.::Imdaking::. Bow | DOWN 04:16, 6 October 2005 (UTC)"

Enough said, it is sad to see in what ways some users like Imdaking fail in trying to bully through their agenda... :)

I'm not sure, but it may have had something to do with you editing his user page to add that they like heavy metal music. Of course this is not justification for the comments that were left on your talk page. Looking at Imdaking's talk page, it seems gkhan has talked to him about this. Evil Monkey∴Hello 22:35, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
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Please block

Over the past week or two me and 82.44.156.246 have been complaining over the fact that tupac is muslim or not. Today he replied with something very offensive, the following:HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, thas it? ur lot are just a joke! think that cos ur dumb fuck minds know English ur clever? there is NO way u could have checked 164,000 websites...then again, ur life is probably devoid of any intellectualism so it may be a distinct possibility...as for not writing a necklace that had spelt out allah in arabic....you must be blind as well as dumb...you deaf too by any chance? look at the paragraphs above in enough detail and u might just pick out the following sentence "I have heard that his mother was a convert to Islam and also that he had a gold chain shaped in large letters spelling "Allah" in Arabic"...which u ignorant fuck, isnt what i wrote! maybe ur english and ur intellect doesnt stretch far enough to understand that concept, eh, Little Girl? As for Tupac Resurrection, there is no concrete/hard evidence that says Pac is Muslim...i dont think ur small little mind has mastered the definition of evidence yet, has it Little Girl?...whats the matter, cant u afford a dictionary on the intellectualist scrap heap? as for you picking out small errors in grammar....you need a life...go outside of the cellar, or maybe widen ur diet away from the bread and water...

now stop wasting my time little girl and go back to ur playschool and demand a better teacher, cos the incumbent sure as hell isnt doing a good job. He bothered me alot with that and I would like a permenant block from him.

Dealing Rich Farmbrough 13:13, 10 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit]

Naming Conventions For Pro Wrestlers

A small note regarding what I see as an ongoing controversy on Wikipedia:

I contend that there should be an accepted standard for article names on individual professional wrestlers, basebusiness, and the rules that apply to other venues of entertainment don't always apply well to wrestling.

I am aware that standard Wikipedia policy tends to be that an individual should be entered under the name by which he/she is known best. However, in pro wrestling, the name one appears under for shows can be changed by the whim of a promoter or performer. Many ring names in wrestling are trademarked, and can not be used by a wrestler once they leave the promotion that owns the trademark.

The only wrestlers I see having a valid reason for being entered into Wikipedia under a ring name are wrestlers who have significant appearance credits or other notoriety outside of wrestling under that name - Hulk Hogan, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Andre The Giant, and even lesser names such as Roddy Piper or Randy Savage would fall under this category. The rest, IMO, are best served by being listed under their real names.

I have moved a few entries from character names to real names, but for whatever reason, a few rogue editors with axes to grind have moved them back, and complained bitterly about my article moves. This occurs in spite of the fact that for the most part, most of the individual wrestler entries here have been under real names.

Is there any chance of hammering out some sort of official policy or guideline regarding this subject? Chadbryant 07:03, 11 October 2005 (UTC)


There IS an official guidline, as Mel has pointed out to you SEVERAL times. Wrestlers are listed under the names of which they are best known. Promoters change the names of performers 'on a whim' only in backyard feds or very small regional independent promotions. No promoter with any brain would change the name 'on a whim' on even a c-list wrestler with regards to national exposure. You were told about the official Wiki policy, you ignored it in several instances, and Mel and others warned you about it. There is no axe to grind, policy must be followed. You are the only person who is pushing wrestlers to be listed under their real names, even within the Wiki pro Wrestling project, the consensus is to follow Wiki policy as per the naming conventions.

TruthCrusader

Input from other people who are relevant and not causing trouble would be appreciated. Chadbryant 23:39, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't know anything about wrestling, but I think if the stage name is going to change soon, list the real name; if the stage name won't change for sure in the forseeable future, use it. But either way, just have the other name redirect to the article. It's not a big deal. Twilight Realm 02:52, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Wrestling performers are essentially television stars. Under most circumstances, no television performer would be listed under the name of a character they portray(ed) on TV (i.e. we have entries for Barry Williams and Bob Denver, not "Greg Brady" and "Gilligan"). I concede that certain pro wrestlers who have gained a sizable amount of notoriety under a ring name (Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Andre The Giant, etc.) are better off being listed under those names, but the average pro wrestler goes through numerous identities, and can quite often gain his greatest exposure under a name that they will no longer be allowed to use once they leave a promotion. Professional wrestling is a unique industry, and conventional rules and policies don't often apply to it. Chadbryant 03:31, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
In pro wrestling, you have a combination of two situations, which could best be likened IMO to a cross between TV stars and musical stars. Obviously, a TV star isn't generally listed under the name of their role; on the other hand, you'd likely be hard-pressed to find a Wiki for 'Bill Bailey' or 'Saul Hudson' or 'Chaim Witz'/'Chaim Klein'/etc (Axl Rose, Slash, and Gene Simmons, respectively). I agree that attempting to apply a standard from any other genre of entertainment is at best a misguided, if well-intentioned effort; I think the best of all possible solutions - and one which would apply equally well to the 'knowns' and the 'unknowns' is the one suggested by Twilight Realm above; create entries for all of the varions stage and real names of the wrestler, and create redirects (or links for those entries which apply to multiple people, as the 'Bill Bailey' entry, for instance, could apply equally to the legendary/apocryphal target of the well-known children's song as well as to the rather neurotic lead singer of a popular late-80's/early 90's hard rock band) as necessary. Granted, this is more time-consuming, but it covers all the bases very nicely...
I tend to look at this as an issue of functionality - the simple fact is that the majority of people who bother are going to look for the wrestler's current stage name or a previous stage name that they were well-known under; it will be the rare customer who goes looking for 'Deborah (+ alt. spellings) Micelli' rather than 'Medusa'; or who runs a google or wiki search on 'Solafa Fatu' rather than 'Rikishi' - thus, the searching public is ill-served by keying all but a small select few to their birth names, regardless of the trademark status of their most popular stage identities. On the other hand, the xref should be there for those rare people. I think TR's solution addresses best the most important issue from a WIki standpoint, to wit: What is the best and most effective method of allowing Joe User to find what he's looking for? Truth Crusader's assertion is off-base; I can tell you (as can *any* wrestler, referee, announcer, manager, or valet who has worked multiple regions or transitioned from indy to 'major' work or crossed between major promotions) from personal experience that names will change for the widest possible variety of reasons, from whim to legal threats and one can only consider the truly legendary names such as those covered in Chad's original post can one be certain that a name will not change.
The bottom line (if you'll pardon a small pun) is, there's really no good way to establish a convention or 'rule' that covers all of the bases better than TR's suggestion. The goal should be to produce a catisfactory search result for the widest possible number of searchers, from the short-term fan to the devoted die-hard to the old high-school buddy who knows nothing more than that his old flame Amy disappeared into that goofy pro-wrestling thing years ago.John Henry My Talk Page 04:04, 13 October 2005 (UTC)


Mr.Bryant, you do NOT hold the say on WHO is relevant on Wikipedia. The policy for naming is already set: The entries are to be made via the most well known name. THIS is Wikipedia POLICY, it has been policy for a lot longer than any of us have been around. It has functioned well, until Mr.Bryant started, in defiance of admin warnings, to change the wrestlers entries. While I respect Mr.Dejong's opinion, he must realize that Wikipedia is supposed to be a place where the average person can come, look something up, and not be confused by 'insider' stylized entries. The whole purpose is to maintain a simple, well known, and unconfusing entry.

And one more thing. Mr.Bryant, it is your talk page to edit, but deleting the warnings you received from Wiki administrators will not help your situation with regards to the trolls who constantly deface your page. Nor will your continued personal insultive remarks. This is not Usenet, there is a code of behavior here, and we ALL must follow it, and that also means YOU.

TruthCrusader

In this case, the policy is lacking. Everybody who is a wrestling fan is not a CURRENT wrestling fan, for one thing - the best example at hand is what happens if someone who was a fan in the late 90's boom goes looking for Justin 'Hawk' Bradshaw? No possible way to find them.
It is my observation that the ultimate goal of Wiki is to get the best possible information to the widest possible number of people who may look for it. In that context, the best possible solution for the unquestionably unique problem of wrestler names is the one offered by Twilight Realm. This addresses all possible issues adequately and ensures the greatest possible access to information for searchers. Policies are dynamic, not static; let's not forget that it was the policy of the US government to count blacks as 3/5ths of a person at one time - that policy was found to be lacking and was abandoned. It was once my policy to refuse the use of killfiles on Usenet; I have changed that policy as a result of the changing face of that forum. In this case the policy is inadequate to the task at hand. While I'm not in agreement with the notion of listing all but the most prominent, best-known names only under their birth names (this would clearly make the information LESS accessible, not MORE), I am in agreement that the policy in question simply is not suitable to the question under debate. Frankly, I think if this approach had been taken in the first place, there would be no debate at all - it's clearly the best way to handle things.John Henry My Talk Page 00:16, 14 October 2005 (UTC)


If someone types in "Justin hawk bradshaw" they would NOT get an empty entry. if set up correctly, the entry would immediately re-direct to JBL's entry. This is how Wiki works. I type in "brutus Beefcake" a name not used in over 15 years, and it automatically goes to Ed Leslie. The naming convention is for the MAIN name listen on the primary entry. It has nothing to do with blank or missing information at all. Its a matter of re-directs. But to have Lex Lugers REAL name as the main name on the article, when 99.9% of anyone looking for him has no idea what Lugers REAL name is, well I'm sorry but thats ludicrous. The policy here at Wiki has been around for a long time. It has the support of the vast community of editors and all of the admins.

TruthCrusader

Mr. Signorelli, Brutus Beefcake redirects to Edward Leslie because I moved the article to that name, which was a move that you attempted to reverse with absolutely no justification (a check of the article history reflects this), while I clearly outlined why the move was appropriate (Leslie has not used the Beefcake ring name since he left the WWF in 1993, and was unable to use it during his WCW stint because of its status as a registered trademark). Leslie is a perfect example of why the "policy" that Mr. Signorelli is trying to strongarm for no good reason of using "most famous" stage names for all pro wrestling performers is flawed. In addition to Edward Leslie, Monty Sopp, Devon Hughes, and Mark Lamonica are prime examples of this phenomenon.
It would be much more efficent for the Wikipedia mission if wrestling-related contributions were left to those of us who have a working knowledge of the wrestling business, and who seek to cooperate rather than condemn. Chadbryant 11:57, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

As long as I can find the information I'm looking for, regardless of whether I type "Ed Leslie," "Brutus Beefcake," "Zodiac," or whichever of the thousand other names Leslie has used, I really don't see what difference it makes *where* the main article is located. Beating a dead horse is really boring; the solution seems simple to me. Personally, I don't think I'd bother moving articles from place to place to place just to make a point...although, especially for workers like Sopp and Leslie, I can see where Chad's coming from; OTOH moving the 'Lex Luger' entry to one called 'Larry Pfol' rather than just creating an entry under 'Larry Pfol that redirects to the existing 'Lex Luger' page seems to me an unnecessary overcorrection. There simply is no hard, fast rule that can be applied effectively to every wrestler - this is why the existing convention is inadequate to the task at hand.. All that said, this is obviously far less about 'finding the right thing to do' than 'proving my way is better than his,' and that is just a waste of time. I wouldn't bother moving articles around, and I certainly wouldn't bother getting involved in a revert war. The solution is simple and I've repeated it several times already. Finally, the situation is never going to occur where only 'experts in the field' controbute to a given WP article - the system just isn't designed for that. As far as this particular discussion goes, in my opinion it's already gone about 6 posts longer than it needed to. The solution is simple and effective. It's not necessary for TC to be CB's personal hall monitor; nor is it necessary for CB to move every existing entry from where it is to where he personally thinks it should be. Neither activity is doing searchers any favors or serves any purpose beyond distracting people from the primary task of WP, regardless of how many saccharine-polite "Misters" are thrown around. The solution is at hand. Move on.


Mr.Bryant, you have been told several times, by myself and admins, to stop using that individuals name in an attempt to erroneously link me to someone you have real life issues with. This is the last time I will ask nicely. From this point on, if you do it again, i will edit your comments so the name is deleted. TruthCrusader

Mr. Signorelli, you do not have my permission or the authority to edit any of my comments. Please refrain from doing so, Stephen. Chadbryant 02:30, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
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Link error: Nightshade

While reading infomationon Day of Vengeance, I clicked a link labeled "Nightshade"-however, this took me to information on the plant family Solanaciae rather than information on the character. Trying again, I was once again directed to the plants- it appears there is no disambiguation page nor indeed any page on the character. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about this character at all, so can be of no help. Please have a member who is knowledgable about this character set up info and disambiguation pages. [The Mysterious Interloper]

The only link I can see from Day of Vengeance to Nightshade goes correctly to the comic book character. I presume you are talking about the Black Alice article. I've now fixed the reference there. If you had mentioned which article you found the problem in, it would have been much quicker to have fixed it. Of course, this is a wiki, so you can fix such problems yourself.-gadfium 18:55, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
No, the mistake I was thinking of was on the Eclipso page. I've just fixed it.

[The Mysterious Interloper]

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Suggestion: Disputed Topic flag

IF a topic or its validity are in dispute,why not flag it disputed instead of removing or locking it? It's less volatile than the former alternatives and would give some warning that the information in the article might not be factually correct. [The Mysterious Interloper]

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Suggestion: Track Pages Read

I'd like to know how many pages I've read, and the ones that I've read most recently. This would be nice in case I want to go look something back up but forgot where I read it. It would also make people read more to "up their count." What about it? Jburt1 21:47, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit]

General complaints

Sorry I don't know how, but can someone please do one of those things on this page which invites one to ask a new question, same as what can be found at help desk and reference desk, it would make things easier. thanks/ --Ballchef 10:08, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Done. If you're curious, it's the same functionality as when you press the "+" tab at talkpages. gkhan 16:00, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. If you're up for it, can you also put one of those pretty boxes around it, to make it more noticable? --Ballchef 08:11, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Want all the bells and whistles, huh? Well fine :P gkhan 23:21, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
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Search Engine

OK, so everyone hates the wikipedia search engine. now that i think about it, yeh, it sucks. someone (above) mentioned that they use google search. I also noticed that when the wikipedia search engines are down wikipedia invites the user to search through google or yahoo. Many websites have boxes that say "powered by google", so why doesn't wikipedia get that too and solve the problem of poor searching ability? --Ballchef 10:08, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

As far as I am aware the advantages of the Mediawiki search is that it handles redirects better than google does and gets updated a bit more quickly. Robmods 20:02, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
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PLEASE READ

YOU NEED TO SET UP A PAGE THAT EASILY DIRECTS PEOPLE TO THE EMAILS THERE LOOKING FOR! LET ME EXPALIN WHAT I MEAN...FOR EXAMPLE...WHEN I CLICK THE "CONTACT US" LINK ON THE LEFT, IT SHOULD HAVE ONE PAGE THAT EASILY SHOWS ALL THE EMAILS AVAILABLE FOR THE CORRECT DEPARTMENTS. BUT INSTEAD IT HAS PAGE AFTER PAGE AFTER PAGE, OF LONG DETAILED INFORMATION THAT IS SO COMPLICATED AND DOESNT TELL YOU WHAT THE EMAILS ARE! NOW I REALIZE NOT EVERYONE MIGHT BE HAVING A PROBLEM LIKE ME..BUT I CONSIDER MYSELF COMPUTER SAVY, AND IT TOOK ME A HALF HOUR TO FINALLY FIND THIS PART WHERE IM WRITING NOW! I MEAN WHEN YOU CLICK ON "CONTACT US" THERE SHOULD BE A SIMPLE PAGE SHOWING ALL THE EMAILS AVAILABLE DONT YOU THINK THAT WOULD MORE SENSE? This unsigned comment was made by User:ARYAN818

Please, calm down. Most of the time, an e-mail is not necessary, as we have set up several methods of handling common situations. If you need to contact an administrator, see Wikipedia:Requests for administrator attention. —MESSEDROCKER (talk) 21:36, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
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HOW CAN I BLOCK SOMEONE

LISTEN, THERE IS A PAGE CALLED "KASHMIR" AND IT IS WAY TO LONG, AND THE PERSON WHO WROTE IT LEAVES OUT ALOT OF FACTS. THIS IS NOT JUST MY OPINION BECAUSE THERE ARE OTHERS WHO ARE SAYING THE SAME THING. NOW I HAVE EDITED IT WITH ALL THE INFO HE LEFT OUT, AND MADE IT SHORTER AND EASIER TO UNDERSTAND, BUT HE KEEPS CHAGNING IT BACK...AND NOW HE IS THREATING TO BLOCK ME...CAN U HELP SOLVE THIS PLEASE? This unsigned comment was made by User:ARYAN818

Once again, please calm down. Please bring up the issue on the article's talk page, where it should be discussed in a civilized matter. Wikipedia is about consensus, and the best way to reach it is through conversation on an article's talk page. —MESSEDROCKER (talk) 21:36, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

James Lovelock and "his" Gaia theory

Just read yet another article by this old con man. He claims to have discovered the Gaia theory in 1969. Well in fact this idea was first put about by a follower of Rudolf Steiner in 1923. Guenther Wachsmuth first came up with the idea of the earth as a self-regulating living organism and wrote a book about it. It is called.." The Etheric Forces in Cosmos, Earth and Man."

THE ETHERIC FORMATIVE FORCES IN COSMOS, EARTH & MAN Dr. Guenther Wachsmuth, 1932. Essential reading for understanding the nature and workings of energy and matter. Includes: New Theory of Motion; Organic and Inorganic World; Etheric Formative Forces; Breathing Process of the Earth Organism; Circulatory Process of the Earth Organism; Etheric Currents in the Earth Organism; Gravitation and Terrestrial Magnetism; The Sun; The Planets and their Spheres; The Interior of the Earth; Ontogenetic Origin and Disappearance of Substance; New Theory of Light & Color; Tone; The Dissolution of Radioactivity; Shape-Building Forces and Archetypal Forms in Nature; Etheric Formative Forces & the Art of Healing.

  1. B0118, 250pp, staples ... $20.95

Perhaps this is where Lovelock got his ideas from. It is time this loveable old phoney was exposed!

                            Des Brittain, London.
[edit]

Factual errors

There doesn't appear to be a specific Wikipedia bulletin board or e-mail address to report factual errors contained in the articles. This seems an unusual thing to have omitted. Hard to believe it was just oversight.

The place to report factual errors, or to discuss the wording of articles, is the talk page for each article. Alternatively, you could just edit the article directly to fix any errors. Make sure you explain why in the edit summary.-gadfium 04:20, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

I would like to contribute

Respected sir/madam I am sri charan vemuri , from the country INDIA. I am a webdesigner and i'd like to contribute by working with the design is it possible for me to do that please refer to the link below to see my work its just a page created to show my skill set...

[5]

copy the above link and paste it in your browser and you will be able to see the webpage...

my contact address : charanv@gmail.com

                                                    Thanking you
                                                    charan
[edit]

Modding

To whom it may concern,

Under your definition of "modding", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modding#See_also , the picture of the modded computer is actually considered as a "pre-modded" case, which do not require the user to modify it at all.

Modding is when someone modifies a case THEMSELVES, such as installing a case window using thier own tools and materials. NOT buying a pre-modded case.. please update your picture to help explain what a modded pc REALLY looks like.

Thankyou for your time and co-operation, if any,

William Clark

sorry guys the link to modding was To whom it may concern,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modding

sorry 'bout the inconvenience..

William

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. --cesarb 14:23, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Supreme Court Cases

I was doing a search on your site and determined that you don't have the Landmark Supreme Court Case, Cochran v. Louisiana State Board of Education (S.Ct.1930) list with your cases. Just thought you should have it there. shannon

You may want to place a request here for the article. Or create a short stub article yourself. Another good place to add it would be on List of United States Supreme Court cases. Evil Monkey∴Hello 03:26, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

"Relevancy" is horrible. What's wrong with simply "relevance"?

Hi, I really love the whole Wikipedia thing, but I have a tiny complaint about the search results. Why not use "relevance" instead of "relevancy"? "The percentage of relevance" makes more sense than "the percentage of 'relevancy'". "Relevancy" is such an ugly & pleonastic (non)word! There is no need for "relevancy" when we have the perfectly sufficient "relevance". Thanks!

[edit]

TENTATIVE IDEAS for making the site less crowded: PLEASE READ

When I came to the website recently I found that it loads s l o w l y.

I am on the robotics website Team Resistance. Go take a look and you will see that the website loads quickly, is eye-catching, and not disconcerting(though wikipedia should retain its white background and black text). Remember that some people still use dialup and old computers; it is best for them to have access to the site as well.

General ideas:

  1. Reduce the size of the wikipedia icon. it can be blurry... but not timecomsuming. Same for the curved lines across the top (the image); make it gray, for example.
  2. On the front page: Change the blue and pink articles to links with short descriptions of each. For the concept, take a look at a google search result; a link is followed by a few lines of description.
  3. On the front page: The search bar should be made more obvious, since it is the most important component of the website; consider removing some of the links in the middle (browse, a-z, culture, geography, history...)
  4. On the front page: Consider moving the list of different languages to a separate page and link to it with a small image of the world with blurbs on different sides. Most users will understand that the image means different languages.
  5. On the front page: Consider having a list of links across the top of the page rather than down the left (for the concept, go to www.teamresistance.org, which I think sets a wonderful example). The toolbox should be shrunk to a menu item, like file-edit-view... with a dropdown list. The search bar should go across the center of the page, just like the one on google, because it is the most important tool on the website.
  6. On the front page: Below the search bar, I think, should be the sister projects frame, and at the bottom should be the yellow frame with license and disclaimer.
  7. On the front page: Everything should fit in the screen all at once (remember that some people use computers with low resolution) so as to remove the need for scrolling.
  8. On the other pages: There is no need for the "in other languages" frame simply because users would have already chosen their language on the front page.
  9. Remember that these ideas are tentative changes, and so you may decide not to do these changes if they conflict with some grander goal.
  10. Also remember that changes should be made one step at a time so as not to confuse veteran users.

THANK YOU.

Interesting ideas. Some involve making the main page different to every other page in wikipedia (without the other language links etc), which gets debated now and then. There is discussion going on right now: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Usability/Main_Page. About your website, I use an old computer with dial-up and the site isn't optimsed for a 800x600 resolution, I only see half the robot on the right and need to use scroll :(.--Commander Keane 01:29, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Request for reminder message while editing anonymously

I have my browser set up so that my cookies are automatically get deleted on browser exit. However, I often find myself reading Wikipedia, and then seeing a minor thing that needs tweaked, such as putting double-bracket around a word to make it into a link to the proper page. I forget to tick in "this is a minor edit" box, and also forget to log in via my account to take proper responsibility, which I would like to in all cases. I get so involved in the "trying to make this page look good mindset" and hit preview and save a few times when it's too late, the modification isn't under my user id, but under my ip address. So, a reminder sentece on top as the very first lines, such as "reminder: you are editing anonymously" and "reminder: you haven't ticked the minor edit box but you only modified 5 words" in bold red, or maybe hidable if it's too obstrusive - give an option to the users. At least on the preview page it could be there.

I have also suffered these problems, but I think reminder notices can be restricive. When I was new (and anonymous) a reminder to login probably would have deterred me making the edit. Also, I don't think it's a big deal if you forget to hit the minor edit button occaisionally, the edit summary that you write should explain the edit adequately. --Commander Keane 07:21, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
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Suggestion: Wikipedia on CD or DVD?

I was wondering if Wikipedia is available on CD or some other archivable non-internet source (like DVD). I would love to have the whole of Wikipedia on CD or DVD since i live in a rural area with poor internet access. I understand that Wikipedia is a work in progress and maybe it could be published every year or five years or whatever. It could be another source of revenue for the project (if it doesn't already exist) in addition to all the hats, t-shirts, mugs etc. available at the merchandise center of the site.

Perhaps this is a silly question, but it seems like a good idea to me and its another way to get good information to more people who might not have regular internet access but who have a computer that could support CDs or data DVDs (if all the data on the servers is sufficiently huge). And like i said, it could be a source of revenue for the project, and if you can sell t-shirts i imagine you could sell the encyclopedia somehow.

Thank you for your time and consideration...

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk"

Wikipedia is edited far too often for it to be placed on some non-rewritable format like DVDs. Cds are of course out of the question due to Wikipedias huge size. Have you considered getting satellite or wireless internet access? --Arm 02:11, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
The German language Wikipedia has had a couple of editions produced on DVD, in quantities of several tens of thousands. They've sold out pretty quickly. It's always been the intention that Wikipedia would be available in offline versions, for the benefit of African schools and suchlike, but we've never been in a sufficiently stable state to produce "Wikipedia 1.0". -- Arwel 12:38, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
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Blocking ?

I'm a newcomer; and have made a couple of minor contributions during the last few days; then today, I suddenly find myself blocked because it seems that somebody else is blocked, and it seems that I'm temporarily using the same IP-address.

The instructions for asking Help in such a case are - to put it mildly - rather confusing; I can't even find my user name in the blocking list; so I ended up on this page; and I'm asking any of you guys who cares to answer, what I'm supposed to do? Thanks. Chingon86 06:36, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know much about blocks, but I think that if you can leave a message on this page, then you are not blocked. Maybe Wikipedia:Blocking policy has more info.--Commander Keane 07:34, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for answering. Well yes, I am blocked. I can put messages on a talk page like this one, but my attempt at extending a Wikipage proper (or whatever; it was an entry from the merge backlog) was blocked. Question is - do I have to wait until my IP-address changes again (courtesy of my provider) or what can I do about it? Chingon86 10:16, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Probably the best way to handle this is to email the user who blocked your IP. Was there a notice somewhere that told you about who did the block? Otherwise, leave a message at the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard (they don't bite newcomers) explaining the situation (I'm assuming you can post there too). --Commander Keane 11:33, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Oh yeah, Wikipedia:Blocking policy#Accidental blocks explains your situation (and has some instructions).--Commander Keane 11:34, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, Commander Keane! Meanwhile, I read the instructions you mentioned, thought a bit, logged off altogether (comp and all), and started afresh, and succeeded in inserting my entry into that merge backlog page. (P.S. I appreciate you don't bite newcomers!) Greetings. Chingon86 14:36, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
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offensive article

I am doing music research as a teacher for my school on your previously excellent website, and was ready to set my students up to use it for research during a lesson. It's lucky that I double checked the page first (minimalism-music)because someone has entered the page and added some very offensive swear words. I'ts a real shame because your site is so excellent, but I won't be able to recommend it to any of my students now as it's safety is unpredictable. I hope something can be done about this to stop it happening in the future.

Vandalism is a constant problem, but it usually gets cleared up quickly (check back at that article, and if it hasn't cleared yet we will do something about it). Also, it is understood that offensive material can be posted at any time and Wikipedia isn't censored for children anyway, see this. However, there is a way to send your students to the specific version that you see (and not a version that might be vandalised afterwards): it's the "Permanent link" button in the toolbox to the left of the article (under the search bar). After clicking "Permanent link" the URL refers to that specific version, so no changes to the article are visible from that link. Good luck! --Commander Keane 11:22, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Just edit out whatever vandalism a page may have and print out what Wikipedia page you want your class to see. And the petty cuss words in Wikipedia vandalism is hardly offensive. Are you teaching at a Mormon elementary school or what? --Arm 02:14, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
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Offensive article: Edited need to be done on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran

This is not a professional article made by Wikipedia . The encyclopedia is not a place for personal ideas. It is a place for facts extracted from professional and valid sources. This article makes Wikipedia to look as a week and unprofessional encyclopedia made by non-qualified people.

[edit]

Remove insualt on Inca page

HI

while reading about the medicans of the Incas there was the note

'Kenin is a Loser'

I think this should be removed cause it has nothing to do with anything.

Please.

Thanks.

Some one who cares. :D

(Preceding unsigned comment by User:203.122.230.21)

Now removed. I also found another act of vandalism by the same user who is on a final warning for previous acts of vandalism to Wikipedia pages. It is likely that user will be blocked.
Of course you can always remove this kind of thing yourself. Each page has a tab at the top marked "edit this page". If you need to practice, you can use the Sandbox.
-=# Amos E Wolfe talk #=- 13:49, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
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Protect Featured Articles?

I just went to read the Featured Article of the Day (Seattle WA) and ended up spending about 20 minutes cleaning up a whole pile of vandalistic words and phrases that a clever person or persons had interspersed throughout the text. I assume that all this had been done in the past few days since nobody had caught it, or perhaps just in the last day since the article's summary had appeared on the Main Page. My question is this: If an article is good enough to have been voted a "Featured Article," and especially if it has been made a "Featured Article of the Day," doesn't it make sense to provide some level of protection for that article, so it remains at the high level of quality that cause it to be "featured" in the first place? Otherwise, by "advertising" that a particular article is of really high quality, and especially by putting it on the Main Page for a day, you are just inviting vandals to mess up the article. Would it make sense to protect the page and require that any changes be passed through an administrator before they can be made? I realize this would be cumbersome, and time-consuming for administrators, but the alternative is that Wikipedia promotes an article as "among the best we have to offer," and when you go and read it it is laced with profanity. That can't be good for Wikipedia's credibility. Has this suggestion ever been considered? 6SJ7 14:25, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I just want to add one thing. I do understand what some of the arguments might be against my suggestion. I guess the question is whether Wikipedia is going to achieve the status of a reliable reference work, or remain almost completely open to whatever editing anyone cares to do. I think some people believe it can be both, but my observations suggest that it cannot. I think a choice has to be made as to whether Wikipedia is primarily a place for people to edit things, or an encyclopedia that can be used for research and reference. I see at least one comment above by a teacher who would like to use Wikipedia for student research but cannot, due to the likelihood that a student looking at an article at any given moment may find it laced with obscenities. Wouldn't it be great if that teacher and others could use Wikipedia as a reliable research tool? I don't see how that can happen unless Wikipedia begins to "freeze" Featured Articles. Maybe there needs to be another "level" such as "Reference-Quality Articles," and once a Featured Article is deemed "good enough" it gets placed on the "Reference-Quality" list and can be edited only with an administrator's approval. Once a body of research-quality articles has begun to develop, Wikipedia could install a search feature that searches only those articles for people who wish to limit their search in that way. (By the way, having read the history of Wikipedia, I do realize that the original idea was for something like this to happen, though the "finished articles" would have been presented under a different "product name." Maybe it is time to resurrect that idea, but within Wikipedia.) 6SJ7 14:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

In the immortal words of Ben Stein: "Anyone? Anyone?" 6SJ7 17:51, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

You may want to have a look at User:Raul654/protection. Evil Monkey∴Hello 03:22, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Thank you. I figured it had probably been addressed somewhere, since I was sure I was not the first person to ever think of it. (Which I realize is unusual these days, many people think they are the first person to think of any given idea, and they almost never are, and many of them get offended when you tell them someone else, or many someone elses, though of it first.) I do not agree with the explanation, but I will address that on the Talk page connected with the explanation. The short version of my opinion is that most people look to an encyclopedia to READ it, not to WRITE it, and if an article is filled with trash, they aren't going to come back. As for the idea that vandalism is reverted quickly, the Seattle article that I referred to seems to be an example that this is not always true. Major, obvious vandalism such as replacing an entire page with an obscene word, will usually be reverted within minutes, but this is not necessarily the case when someone takes the time to go through an article and "hide" some words or short phrases here and there. It took me three edits and about 20 minutes to clean up the Seattle article and I had to stop about halfway through because I had work to do. 6SJ7 15:25, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm interested to know why the reversion of the vandalism took you so long. Had there been intervening edits that made it hard to revert using the history function? Evil Monkey∴Hello 00:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Number one, yes, in looking at the history I found that there had been some "good" edits after the vandalism, so that simply reverting would have wiped out someone's positive contributions. I tried to figure out how to revert but still keep the good stuff, but it appeared that the good edits and the vandalism had become so tangled up by that time, that I had to read every word and edit out all the vulgarities, obscenities, nonsense, etc. (If you go back into the history and see the collection of stuff that I removed during my 3 edits, it's actually pretty amusing.) Is there a technique for avoiding all this that I don't know about yet? As you are an experiencd user maybe you can look back at the history of that page (on the day it was featured on the main page) and see what you have done differently from the point that I started editing. Number two, since I had to read every word and edit, and since I did not have the ability to print out the article at that moment, I had to go into "edit mode" and therefore read not only the words in the article, but all the coding etc. which made it more cumbersome and time consuming. If I had tried to do it just by reading the article itself, I would have been able to remember the location of all the stuff that needed to be edited out. As it is, I ended up doing "find" on all of the most popular swear-words, vulgar names for body parts and functions, etc. (and got hits on most of them!) As I say, if there is an easier way to do it, please tell me. 6SJ7 16:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
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Reversion of Vandalism

I am also a newbie in many ways, including fixing vandalism, especially when it is scattered thruout an article, and there have been good edits since it happened.

It would be helpful if we could print one section at a time ... just the one we want to edit, for whatever reason ... what I do when one is particularly complicated, is to cut & paste from Wiki (not the edit box) to some other editor, such as an e-mail that I delete later instead of sending, then print that and use for mark-up reference. This approach has the added benefit that I can spell check the work, although I rarely do, since I have high confidence in my personal ability to avoid a lot of typos.
I find it helpful when fixing vandalism, to have two windows open.
  • one for the actual editing
  • one in a history comparison associated with the actions the vandal took, so I can see the specific text in need of repairs.

AlMac|(talk) 20:15, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

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Protection Thoughts

To accomplish what you imagine, a place where the content is appropriate for children, and veracity of content approved by teachers, you'd have to have:

  • A mirror site that copies from Wiki, in which each article before going to the mirror site has to go through a vetting process by the teachers and other people approved by the academic community.
    • The editors would not be anyone, but approved similar to a moderated discussion group.
  • Perhaps through the discussion pages approve who may edit, and the kids would be blocked from access to the discussion pages. So anyone, who is registered as an adult, could edit the discussion pages, then a higher level adult editor approved to change the content that has been censored by the teachers.
    • That is a very different kind of material presentation than Wiki, but it is one way of getting what you call for.

AlMac|(talk) 20:15, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

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The error (or worse) in the artcile about Harold Pinter

There is a claim that "Pinter is also an active delegate of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, an organization that defends Cuba's rights abused by Fidel Castro's regime and campaigns against the U.S. embargo on the country"

As a matter of fact as everyone can see on the Cuba Solidarity Campaign website (thanks to link provided) that the CSC does not "defend Cuba's rights abused by Fidel Castro's regime" in any way. Please, correct the very annoying mistake in your wonderful informative wikipedia. Thanks. Alla Nikonov

You see that link at the top of the page that says Edit this page? That means you, yes YOU, can edit any non-protected Wikipedia page you want. So YOU can fix these errors yourself. Just be sure to read Wikipedia writing guidelines for an idea of how we get stuff done at Wikipedia --Arm 02:17, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
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reference to obscene article on portal

Call me a prude, but I really appreciate that the reference to an obscene article was removed from the english portal. It seems that wikipedia can be a vital source of important information without referencing obscene material. I question the benefit of information that contributes to social degradation.

Thanks,

Tony Zamarro <email removed>

The definition obsecne is not one thats universal. Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors.
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Who is Stanislaw Lem?

In the article on Stanislaw Lem, he is in category Roman Catholics. But in project CelebAtheists (it looks like something from WikiCities), he is in category Atheists! Please correct it. http://www.celebatheists.com/w/index.php?title=Stanislaw_Lem

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Content

I keep adding relevant content to the page about my husband and his band since the pages are stubs and ask for more content but you guys keep deleting it. What gives?

In the history of the article, the name of the users who removed the information can be found, and I'm sure they'll happily discuss their actions with you. I'd hazard a guess that since you are in a unique position the information you provide is unverifiable.--Commander Keane 08:52, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
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Accident

I accidently put in an image on the Article about John Titor under the name Titor1.jpg. Please take off the image.

List the image in Wikipedia:Images for deletion--Arm 02:24, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
At the moment, the correct version of the image is still available at [6] so please upload it over the one you accidentally uploaded before.
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Recommendation

Hi,


I find Wikipedia a particularly useful tool whether for my graduate studies or just regular procrastination.

I have a suggestion, that you've probably already considered:

Why don't you make a toolbar a la Google's? So you can type in your wiki-query from any webpage...

Best, Rasmus, D.C.

You can set up search toolbar to search in Wikipedia if you choose. I know this can be easily done in Firefox--Arm 02:24, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
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Article on the LDS church has a large factual error

Overall I am impressed with your article on the LDS church. HOwever, at the very beginning of the article when you are listing the basic beliefs of the church, of the 'Largest sect' as you call it, headquartered in Salt Lake city, you are incorrect in including the practice of Plural Marriage.

The church no longer practices plural marriage, nor does the church endorse the practice of plural marriage today. Those members who engage in this practice are excommunicated from the LDS church. I refer you to the Church's official website www.lds.org

(below is an excerpt taken from the Official Church website) In 1998, President Gordon B. Hinckley made the following statement about the Church's position on plural marriage: "This Church has nothing whatever to do with those practicing polygamy. They are not members of this Church. . . . If any of our members are found to be practicing plural marriage, they are excommunicated, the most serious penalty the Church can impose. Not only are those so involved in direct violation of the civil law, they are in violation of the law of this Church."

At various times, the Lord has commanded His people to practice plural marriage. For example, He gave this command to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and Solomon (Doctrine and Covenants 132:1).

In this dispensation, the Lord commanded some of the early Saints to practice plural marriage. The Prophet Joseph Smith and those closest to him, including Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, were challenged by this command, but they obeyed it. Church leaders regulated the practice. Those entering into it had to be authorized to do so, and the marriages had to be performed through the sealing power of the priesthood. In 1890, President Wilford Woodruff received a revelation that the leaders of the Church should cease teaching the practice of plural marriage (Official Declaration 1).

This issue should be placed in the article's discussion tab or errors might be fixed (edited) yourself, with discussions or references where appropriate. This page does not concern content of articles. --moxon 18:00, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
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Hacked page?

Please check URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us for word "sex" in about 5th line from the top.

All pages (well, almost all, 99.9%) can be edited on wikipedia, so "hacked" is perhaps not the most appropriate word :P Anyone can do this. If you see this happening again, you can fix it yourself using reverts (ie. reverting to a previous version of the page), see Wikipedia:Revert. Anyway, it seems to be fixed now. But thanks for being alert! gkhan 12:58, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
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list scientific info. not only by subject but by formula.

I often find myself looking for some bizarre mathmatical or scientific formulas*. Like many other sites, Wikipedia often has the formula, but each formula is hidden in a five page article on how to use it. It would be extremely convienient if sombody were to create a page listing all the relavent formuals and conversions for a subject (algebra, chemestry, geometry, calculus, physics, etc.) all in one place. A sort of "cheat sheet" or "tool kit" that would allow for quick reference by those who just need the information, not the explination. This page could also be used as a menu by linking each formula to the previoulsy mentioned explanitory article. Basically what I'm looking for is a list with all the important applicable information all in one place. I don't know if this is the right place for it, but if You could make one or refer me to one that already exists it would be awesome.

Thank You.

--68.74.157.113 14:21, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

* by "formulas" I mean mathmatical or scientific, laws, theories, conversion ratios, measurement scales, etc.

We do have those kind of lists and tables, they are just a little hard to find sometimes. See for instance Table of derivatives, Table of integrals, List of equations in classical mechanics and List of laws in science. They can be a little difficult to find (you usually have to look in the "See also" sections or the "List of X topics" articles. See for instance List of calculus topics#Lists and tables). gkhan 16:31, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
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creative thinking vs critical thinking

(1) Your separate articles on CREATIVITY and CRITICAL THINKING neither complement nor distinguish one from the other nor are they constructed in a parallel manner: they should.

(2) I believe that both articles need drastic rewriting. For instance, what is listed as "methods of critical thinking" are not methods but "steps" and "overcoming bias" etc. And De Bono's Six Thinking Hats is creative thinking, not critical thinking. The article on creativity is not coherent either.

(3) I also happen to hold a strong belief that critical thinking and creative thinking are two sides of the same coin - a highly original (and creative) thought, I must say. I propose to write a different, long, combined, creative article on these two kinds of thinking - but that would mean that the separate articles on creativity and critical thinking will have to go.

Frank A Hilario frankahilario@gmail.com 2235 hours Manila time 2005 October 18

These issues should be placed in the articles's discussion tabs, or they might be fixed (edited) yourself, or rework might be suggested in the articles, with discussions or references where appropriate. See Template_messages/Maintenance. This page does not concern content of articles. --moxon 18:00, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
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Error in Van Til biography

Sirs: The article on Cornelius Van Til gives the wrong date of birth. He was born on May 3, not on May 4.

This issue should be placed in the article's discussion tab or errors might be fixed (edited) yourself, with discussions or references where appropriate. This page does not concern content of articles. --moxon 18:00, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
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Upload file problem

I tried to upload file a logo of GOLTV off of http://www.images.google.com which is a general purpose resource search engine under the Wikipedia:images topic section on the article GOLTV but failed. A notice was put up on the Upload file page that if the file was not completed, it would be deleted in a few days if the rules were not followed. The notice also says that users who upload content with false licenses may be blocked. This is not the case since I uploaded content from a free general purpose resource search engine under the Wikipidia:images topic section. Anyway, I deleted the file myself from the Upload file page and from the article itself when I revised it again. However, the notice of the deletion and block is still there. Please do not block or put any penalty on username Altersphere since the file has been deleted and please check Wikipedia:images for proof of http://images.google.com which is under the general purpose image search engines in the paragraph section called Finding images on the internet.

On the detail page for every result, images.google.com warns that the image may be subject to copyright. That's probably an understatement. Almost every image that it returns is subject to copyright. I imagine that they argue that fair use applies because they normally degrade the image, by reducing it, and becaue it is used for a purpose that benefits the images owner by directing people to their site (or to sites that have bought the rights to the image).
Logos tend to be a particularly sensitive area, as companies don't want their logo used to imply a false association, or in a critical context, and are also sensitive about the exact form in which the log appears. Many copanies have documents specifically about how their logo can be used. It's possible that the logo might be fair use in an article about GOLTV, but IANAL. Even then, the company might complain if the perceived the article as not sufficiently positive about them. They might also insist ton the inclusiion of links to their web site.
Such conditions would be GFDL incompatible.
I can't find any copyright licence on the GOLTV English language page, so the presumption is that they reserve all rights under copyright.
Google's results pages have a copyright notice and their help page states that the images may be copyright and Google don't give you any permission to use the images.
To get the image accepted as fair use, you need to tag it as fair use and explain why you think it is fair use. As I understand it, the resulting image may get excluded from some derivatives of wikipedia.

--David Woolley 22:01, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

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Scrolling navigation

It would be handy if the navigation links and tabs could stay put if scrolling down long articles. --moxon 18:00, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

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U.S. Supreme Court Nominees

Not a complaint, just a content suggestion. The article on possible Bush Supreme Court nominees is very good. I suggest adding another name to the "short list": United States Circuit Judge Richard Allen Griffin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Before his confirmation to the federal bench in June 2005, Judge Griffin served on the Michigan Court of Appeals for about 17 years.

This could be added to the article yourself (edit this page tab). This page does not concern content of articles. --moxon 18:00, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
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Display

It would be an improvement to have a toggle so that "link" words can be read as black text if so desired. The blue color (or red) of linked words adds an unnecessary "emphasis" to the word when you are simply reading the article, as if the word were underlined or in italics. Allow Wikipedia users to toggle the color feature on and off.

I enjoy Wikipedia, and enjoy contributing to it as well.

Thank you very much

Walter Murch

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viewing revisions

Hi,

I believe that, other than the author's comments, there is no way to view the actual changes that are made from one version to the next. Some way of automatically viewing this would be very useful.

Thanks,

Aldo

www.agcsystems.com

If you go to the history tab for the page, you can select any two radio buttons next to edits and then press the "Compare selected versions" button near the top of the page. I thought you needed javascript enabled for this to work, but I just tried disabling javascript (in Konqueror) and it still worked. Just tried it in Lynx (a text-mode browser) and it works there too.-gadfium 02:43, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
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OSHA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_Safety_and_Health_Administration

Spam external link to useless AdSense OSHA info site

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Suggestion for Article Author Accountability

Slashdot.org mentioned the unaccountability of the articles on Wikipedia, having read the concern, and being an avid fan of the Wikipedia project, I posted the following, but realizing it would do more good with you than Slashdot, I've copied it here for you.

My suggestion to clean up wikipedia would be some sort of 'adopt an article' method, where people who could prove their validity for a topic could claim it, and would hence and forever more (excepting in the chance they go inactive for over a few months, or someone better qualified/more involved opts to succeed them) be in charge of editting suggested updates to the article in question. This way we have a qualified, volunteer editor controlling what goes up onto the page for that topic and what does not. It definitely would not be a small thing to take on, being hooked into editting a wikipedia article for the long term, but that also may keep people who aren't as connected as taking something on themselves. Naturally, requiring such a commitment would mean a decrease in the growth of Wikipedia, but it would turn the index into a veritable fact, taking information from the minds of the best available people. An incentive to this would be name recognition, the person who is editor for a topic recieves their name on the page (making them more accountable and less likely to act like an idiot) and a link to their homesite/personal information/company of related employment. This is then good for them in that whenever someone looks up the topic of Plastic Ear Surgery, they see the name of the best Plastic Ear Surgeon, personal advertising, and definitely more accountable sources (plus they have an incentive for being honest and factually correct then) for Wikipedia. As it works now, any person with an internet connection can say anything means anything they want, and when they are wrong it simply gets changed to another idiots opinion, the good is washed away by the slightest of bad, and it takes a great deal of refining to get it back to the good it was previously.

I'm not currently a member, to respond to this please respond to <email removed>

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I could find no link for reporting data errors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_squash

All other web sites say to microwave the squash for 10 to 15 minutes. http://www.fabulousfoods.com/features/featuring/spagsquash.html http://www.wholehealthmd.com/refshelf/foods_view/1,1523,222,00.html http://www.kraftfoods.com/recipes/SaladsSideDishes/VegetablesSideDishes/CheesySpaghettiSquash.html

Yours says "When microwaving" "two hours and ten minutes."

If somebody microwaved for 2 hours 10 mintutes it would cause a fire.

I could find no link for reporting data errors.

Yours,

Bob

This could be fixed yourself (at the article tab on "edit this pag"), or check the articles "discussion / history" tabs for detail.

In your article on Antonio Inoki, you mention a Wilhelm Ruska.

Mr. Ruska's first name is WILLEM.

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Islam vandalised

I use Wikipedia as a general source for stuff and when I was looking up "Jahiliyya" today there was a very offensive statement about Muslims being Satan at the top of the article. I went to "edit this page" to get rid of it but I was unable to figure out how. If someone else knows could they possibly fix it b/c it's very unnessary and ugly.

This was vandalism to the template about Islamic topics. It was fixed five minutes after the vandalism occurred.-gadfium 02:37, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
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Pronounciation

It would be helpful if you could include pronounciation for scientific and other unfamilar terms.

But I'm not really complaining. Your site is much appreciated!

Thanks.

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Suggestion to Improve Wikipedia

I don't know if this has been suggested, but it would be useful if you could comment on articles and say what could be added to make the article better

  • You can! Click on the "discussion" tab at the top of the article, and then "edit this page", add your comments to the bottom, and click on "Save page" at the bottom of the page. Even better, you could add things to the article yourself by editing the article. You can leave a message on my talk page if you have any questions. Ground Zero | t 21:24, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
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Changes to New York & Ottawa Railway entry

Hi,

This isn't a complaint but rather a request. I just looked through the New York & Ottawa Railway entry and corrected what I could, but I screwed up the box that says when it started operating and their headquarters. I don't know what I did after I entered the proper information, but they all ended up in the same place. I hope you can fix it and I apologize for my screw up.

I also would like you to please change the reference link. I am the owner of the New York Central Ottawa Division web site and the link you have has not been in use by me in years. Could you please change it to the following link:

www.ontarioeastern.com/ottawadivision

Thanks and it is great to see an entry on such a railway.

Chris Granger

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vashti/otherkin

We came across an article on your site through Google about Otherkin... ... and it is titled Vashti/Otherkin. However, if you put a search for that article within Wikipedia it comes up as no such article.

    Also, how do you contribute an new article on a related subject?

kyela, the silver elves

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color of links

Perhaps users of wikipedia could vote on the possiblity of changing the color of links within the encycopedia to a color a little closer to that of the rest of the text? Could we vote on making them a darker color of blue? The difference between linking and non-linking text is a little disruptive for me. Also setting up a way for users to vote on the structure of the encyclopedia might be usefull in the future for other issues. -Thanks, Andrew Hodgson

If you want to change the color of Wikipedia links, you can do it yourself without having to affect anyone else's settings. If you don't already have a Wikipedia account, you'll need to get one and log in. Your account will automatically be assigned a user page, called something like: User:your username here. If you create a new subpage called User:your username here/monobook.css, you can add whatever customized CSS code you want. For example, to make links darker you could use:
a { color: #000044 }
a:visited { color: #440044 }
As for the overall structure of Wikipedia: please bear in mind that Wikipedia is already run almost entirely by volunteers just like yourself, and most decisions are made by ordinary users. For many issues, however, voting doesn't tend to give the best result; most Wikipedians prefer to debate the relative merits of different proposals until a consensus emerges that's acceptable to everyone. --David Wahler (talk) 13:49, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
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Different icons for Wikipedia and Wiktionary?

I'd like to keep shortcuts for the both Wikis in my Opera browser toolbar (for real fast access), but bumped into a problem: both sites have the exact same icon, capital W on a white background. Now I risk clicking on the wrong button (or a page on my tab for that matter, I constantly have 10+ pages open simultaneously and only see the icons in the cramped space) while powerbrowsing around.

Suggestion: as Wikipedia icon is widely known and the original one, couldn't it be possible to alter the Wiktionary page icon so, that you could tell the difference between it, and Wikipedia itself? Say, perhaps giving Wiktionary's icon a red background instead of white. This would not only help differentiate the two different Wikis from each other (while still staying within the same theme), but would also be a good conduct to follow, should any other Wiki sites needing icons rise some day.

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Hostile message waiting, first time I came to Wikipedia

Something isn't right here. I just accessed Wikipedia for the first time (ever), and two things immediately that were obviously wrong.

I saw a notice that said "You have new messages." Curious, I clicked on it and saw:

(1) A message that "This IP address, 207.200.116.200, is registered to America Online (AOL)." VERY CURIOUS, since I'm not on AOL -- I'm using Internet Explorer on Charter Cable (ISP), and found the Wikipedia article on a Google search for "Henry Hub."

(2) Another message to me that "You have recently vandalized a Wikipedia article...." How did I do that? I've never even viewed anything on Wikipedia before...!!

I'd heard a number of good things about Wikipedia. Apparently, what I've heard was wrong. What a freaking mess.

If anyone can provide an explanation why I received this hostile/idiotic reception on my first attempt to view a Wikipedia article, I'd appreciate your explanation.

Michael D. Jenkins, CPA mdjenk@aol.com

  • That IP address is registered to an AOL proxy server, which you might be going through to access the internet. Check the proxy server settings on your web browser. And don't take the vandalism message personally - it just means the previous person to use that IP address vandalised some articles, not you, but there is no other way to communicate with them. Please consider registering an account, and sticking around for just a bit longer :) --inksT 05:34, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
I do use AOL and I found this disconcerting the first few times it happened to me until I read the main page carefully and figured out why. You need to remember that if you are not signed in under a User Name, Wikipedia sees "you" as the IP address of either your computer, or the proxy server that you happen to be accessing the Internet through. If it is a proxy server, "you" inherit the sins of whoever has used that proxy server before you. As inks says, do not take it personally, because they are not talking to "you", and you can avoid the messages by getting and using an account name. 6SJ7 15:08, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
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Can we have an indicator for articles with photographs

Hi

Can we have an indicator for articles with photographs in the listing of articles

Regards Jainendra

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Confusion caused by the word "through"

I don't want to sound pedantic, or anti-american here, but there are millions of people outside america who speak english, and to whom the word "through" in place of the word "to", eg. numbers 16 through 25, is incredibly confusing. Just a thought in terms of article writing..

Why is it confusing? You mean "through" is not used that way in other countries? Or that it means something else? And how would anyone in the U.S. know that? I do not fully know or understand many of the ways that English words are used differently in countries outside the U.S., and I suspect most of the people outside the U.S. do not fully know or understand many of the usages we have here, either. 6SJ7 19:36, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree it's an odd and rarely used phrase (to my ears anyway)- and is probably especially difficult for people with English as a second language. Diversity is something you have to live with in Wikipedia. --Commander Keane 09:07, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Diversity is indeed something you have to live with, and it is a good thing, but I thought (from something I read on Wikipedia) that we are all supposed to write in the "flavor" (or flavour!?) of English that we are familiar with and that something should not be edited simply because "that is how we say things here." I can tell you that I have puzzled over several British-isms in Wikipedia, and even when the meaning is clear I often think "Gee, that's an odd way of saying this..." before realizing (realising!?) that for the person who wrote it, it's not odd at all, because that's how it's done where they are. As for "through," as I suggested before, I never know that was a confusing usage to people outside the U.S. The problem is that if you say "items seven to twelve" some people in the U.S. aren't always completely clear on whether you are including item twelve, though they should be. I think that is why this usage of "through" has developed as it has. In some circumstances, some people would instead say "up to and including item twelve," and to be really reduntant, some would say "up THROUGH and including item twelve." But not outside the U.S., I suppose. 6SJ7 16:01, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Well this is all fair enough I suppose. Maybe it would be easier if the word through or to was just replaced with the symbol " - "
As you and Keane say, we're all supposed to write in the flavor of English that we're comfortable with, and consequentially I guess we're all supposed to get used to reading different flavors of English. There's no fix for this, it's just an attribute of reading Wikipedia. Tempshill 21:17, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Timeline of Low Temperature technology.

Why is it that James Morrison and Thomas Mort are not included in the timeline? THeir use of technology was new,revolutionary and practical in this field and are included in other references in Wikipedia.

Be bold in updating pages and add them as appropriate, please. Tempshill 21:20, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Post-Colonial Featured Articles

I understand that the English wiki portal will naturally be more apt to feature articles from British and American history, but it seems that there have been so many featured articles as of late that cater to the hegemonic ideology of historicity and historical importance. Let's see some more featured articles from world culture!

"The hegemonic ideology of historicity and historical importance?" Wow. As a resident of one of those overbearing big-English-speaking countries you mention, I might take offense, if I understood what you were saying. :) 6SJ7 15:51, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Accusations of systemic bias are frequent here, for reasons you already understand. The way to feature more articles from "world culture" is to polish some of them into excellent articles. One ongoing effort to do this is at Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week, where in the weekly voting there is an effort to try and focus attention on areas of human knowledge that are poorly served on Wikipedia at present. Tempshill 21:23, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

2nd time this has happened:


Got TOTALLY blocked out - twice. Also heard that this site is experiencing some technical problems. Tried to access this site ALL DAY today. Thought my terminal had crashed, server had a glitch,etc. Had to go through a sister site to get back on this site. The first time this happened, was just after I was welcomed to be a Wikipedian. Had a "Borg"-like designation then, had it terminated to avoid its use by anyone trying to be, what someone told me, be a sockpuppet.

This is the 2nd time this has happened.

In both incidents, I went online to access this site, only it 'timed out', or will NOT come online, except when, as stated, went to it via a sister site.

Did this site get assaulted by a virus, Trojan horse ? Two nights ago, I had heard that there is a really nast bug that will turn a computer into a hi-tech paperweight, unless a NEW hard drive, etc. is installed to replace that destroyed by this bug. Can't confirm, nor deny this.Martial Law 08:00, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I hope I had not inconvienced anyone. If so, I apologise for this. I've never had this happen to me twice in so short a time period. Hope this was'nt caused by a bug.Martial Law

The thing with Wikipedia is that it is one of the most popular pages on the internet (it ranks around 30 I think) but it is also run as a non-profit. Where all the other companies have huge amounts of cash to purchase servers for, wikipedia has to do with donations. So that means, from time to time, it will be slow or even down. Hard fact of Wikipedia-life. gkhan 12:49, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
m:Wikimedia servers will be of interest to you. And here is a wiki called OpenFacts where, when Wikipedia is slow or down, people edit the page to mention this, so you can see whether it's just you or not. There aren't any computer viruses that destroy hard disks. Tempshill 21:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
There are however computer viruses that seriously mess up data on hard disks. I would trust that the powers that be in Wiki admindom have some serious malware protection kept continuously up-to-date. AlMac|(talk) 19:56, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Rajput

Although I understand that you are trying to mediate the situation on the Rajput article, but talking academically, it has gone to the flames.

I followed the discussion for some time, but I saw how one side was just arguing while one side was trying to cite evidence. Although, Shivraj was not the most elegant or articulate of debaters, however neither were the other boys, they never cited any references, not one.

In a South Asian Studies environment, the sentence “Rajputs are followers of all four major religions of the sub-continent Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and Sikhism.” This statement would never hold up since there is a lack of understanding what is a Jati, Caste and Varna system is.

I did my thesis on Rajputs for graduate studies at the University of Toronto, under the fmaous Harvard Professor for Indian and Hindu Studies, Dr. Joseph T. O’Connell, whom I am still in touch with today. However I als did my thesis on the Rajputs because I happen to be one. When I showed this discussion page to some of my colleagues who happen to be Paksitani and Muslim, they ridiculed it since even they clearly stated the Islam does not recognise Hindu castes. I don’t take offence to it, since it makes sense, these are two distint cultures.

It brings to mind the article : The Origins of Our Caste System in Vedic Times - Brahmins By Sudheer Birodkar:

“Caste is an institution which is truely Hindu (Indian) in character. So much so that even the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it as, Hindu hereditary class, with members socially equal, united in religion, and usually following same trades, having no social intercourse with persons of other castes. The word caste itself is derived from the Portuguese word 'Casta' which means pure or chaste. In the Indian lexion we refer to caste by the words 'Varna' meaning colour and 'Jati' which is derived from the root syllable 'Ja' which means 'to be born'. But why does the caste system that prevails mainly among the Hindus, also exists in a subconscious manner amongst Muslims in India (Pakistan and Bangla Desh) as also among the Christians and Sikhs in India?”…….. http://www.hindubooks.org/sudheer_birodkar/hindu_history/castevedic.html


Also: Islam And Caste Inequality Among Indian Muslims By Yoginder Sikand countercurrents.org 15 February, 200 http://www.countercurrents.org/sikand150204.htm


The claims and arguments presented in the discussion by the other side were not only weak, but at many times insulting. Also, never were references cited, no academic works etc. Honestly, this definition would not hold against any criticism in an academic environment or debate. I am simply being honest.

The Caste system was such that if a Rajput did something that was dishonourable, he could loose his status and become a Jat (Dhillon, B.S. (1994), `History and Study of the Jats', Beta Publishers Inc., Ottawa, Canada, I also happen to know this author while doing research at the University of Toronto for Indian studies). Thus Jats are defined into two terms, Asal Jats and non-Asal Jats. Non-asal Jats may be descended from Rajputs who lost their Jati. If a Rajput converted, he was considered an outcaste. References of Kings losing their Jati or Caste can even be seen in the Srimad Bhagvatam an example of this being during the story of Vishwamitra where Vishwamitra elevated himself to Brahm-Rishi from being a Raj-Rishi, also a certain king had become a Chandal due to a curse and therefore an outcaste, Vishwamitra preformed sacrifices to allow him to still enter heaven. Anyways, that is a bit off topic but a good example.

This group also made erroneous claims about Rajput history, even to the point that Wikipedia is the only source in the world that claims Jodhabai being a Janjua Rajput, when the rest of the world and history books all state that she was a princess of Jaipur, sister of Man Singh, and married to Akbar. The rulers of Jaipur trace their ancestry from Kush the son of Ram and are the head of the clan known as Kachawas. You can also see the references by the family themselves: http://www.royalfamilyjaipur.com/j_rul.htm or for a referemce to who Jodhabai was you can even see it here http://www.4to40.com/discoverindia/places/index.asp?article=discoverindia_places_jaipur


I find it incredible that the ones who yell the loudest get there way on Wikipedia. This article has only shown that and also that the claims for Encyclopedia standard and academic standard are not enforced and simply are lip service. I am honestly concerned. If this had been a site which was completely in control of the Pakistanis, then I could understand. However, if this site was in control of Arab or Iranian Muslims or a Secular Western Academic authors, then I would expect for some level of honesty and respect to another person’s culture.

The argument began because Muslims were not being recognized as Rajputs. Everyone knows that there are Muslims that may be descended from Rajputs since it took place in History, however to claim to be one and be descended from one are two different things. Being a Rajput requires religious obligations and rites demanded by Hinduism.

The Phulkian states of the Sikh aristocracy also claim Rajput ancestry and in doing so have built numerous Hindu temples which can be seen today, not just in Punjab but extending all the way into Jahri Pani, Tehri Garhwal. However, even if the academic world recognizes who I am and my links with the Sikh families in question (since we are talking about blood ties and family) the other side simply would try to use the Sikhs as an example without any consideration in understanding the dynamics, history or culture of the Sikhs. They obviously never read the Pakistani publication,

"The Real Ranjit Singh" by a Pakistani historian, Syed Fakeer Waheeduddin, the great grandson of Fakeer Azizuddin, Maharaja's Foreign Minister.

Neither have they read “A matter of Honour; An Account of the [British] Indian Army, Its officer and Men” by Philip Mason isbn:0333-41837-9

“Armies of the Raj” by Byron Farwell ISBN 0-393-30802-2

Even during recruitment, the British looked at the Muslim Rajputs as an inferior breed since they were seen as not having the same stock or fighting spirit as the Hindu or Sikh Rajputs. These are not my words, its in “A Matter of Honour…”isbn:0333418369

Although I understand that Shivraj became a bit too passionate during the argument, he made more sense than the others who argued against him. They were simply playing a very political and dirty game, it is sad they could not have been brought into a formal debate at a University.

And yet, simply screaming and being insulting while making erroneous claims like a couple of teenagers, they got their way and the Rajput article has been brought to the depths of being nothing more than a politically geared article at the expense of Academic freedom, integrity and knowledge.

I write to you because I know you will understand, however, I don’t expect anything good will come out from this article.

Thank you for taking the time to read about my concern. Gorkhali 09:59, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Edit wars between experts and non-experts is a perennial topic on Wikipedia, as you can imagine; see Wikipedia:Replies to common objections, which notes the problem but offers no solution. Since this is a wiki, and we're all reasoning adults, what is supposed to happen is that all parties in dispute argue on the talk page and come to a solution that accurately portrays the subject of the article to the (general) satisfaction of all involved. This of course is trivially spoken but will be very hard won if it can be won. If people argue in bad faith, cite no references, etc., then one is supposed to apply for mediation, where disinterested admins can help resolve the dispute. In this way, editors who cite references are supposed to gain an upper hand over troublesome editors who cite no references and are merely persistent. Of course this whole process is tiring, and then once a new editor happens upon the article and starts an edit war again, the process must be repeated. This type of strife has burned out seasoned, valuable Wikipedia editors. There isn't a long-term solution, unfortunately, since this is a wiki; there is no mechanism for a hierarchy of experts, and as Larry Sanger has opined, this has produced an "anti-elitism, or lack of respect for expertise." (This statement is controversial, of course.) I'd advise you to be persistent and keep citing those references. Best of luck on the mediation process, and if the mediation process fails then feedback on it should be given as well. Tempshill 21:42, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

logo

My question regards your logo. What is the function of your logo, if you site is predominantly functional by nature? Your image suggests timelessness and neutrality, so how does this image fit in? Do you really need a logo at all?

People are encouraged to edit the text, so why not the graphics as well?

There was a contest about 2 years ago, and the logo you see now is the result. Hey, if you don't like it, you should have stumbled on the site earlier and voted. :-\ It's better than the old one. See Wikipedia:Logos and slogans for the history, or the short-list of the logos you could have voted on is here. Tempshill 21:50, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Sale stats

I am just curious at how you got to Garth Brooks sales. There is no way he sold 200,000 million cd's. He is certified at just over 100 million in the States but has sold not much at all outside the States. If you check the facts, Shania has sold twice as much as him outside the States. Shania is very known worldwide in mainstream and Garth is not. He had some tour success but didn't really sell that much outside the States. I would appreciate if you show Shania more respect, she should be way higher on your list of top selling artists. Spice girls? like come on, Shania has sold way more than them. I just don't see that much actual facts being shown on this site, just fabricated sales that don't exist.

YOu can email me at kwasy635@hotmail.com

  • I am not sure what you are talking about. The article does not claim anyway near 200,000 million (which is 200 BILLION). If it did when you saw it, and you disagree, press the "Edit this page" thing at the top of the page, and change it. Happy editting! Batmanand 21:46, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

violent, graphic, or pornographic images

while I appreciate the principle behind Wiki's business that the community is responsible for the information's accuracy, I object to the violent, graphic, or pornographic photographs that are being posted in the pages. I have searched the entire site and cannot find a concensus or rule about posting images that may disturb different people from different backgrounds. I urge Wiki to estblish internal rules so that this website remains credible to its' users. A regulatory board should be set up to act as a neutral dispute resolver, as in real life, a court system. The board should review pages that have the most controversial pages or topics to put an end to the disputes. If this continues, I don't see how a few radicals will cease displaying photographs that are offensive to others. If you want this business to stay afloat, you should learn a little from the people at Britanica or other encyclopedias. I wish you good luck!

  • You might be looking for WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_censored_for_the_protection_of_minors, which seems to be close to what you are objecting about. Also, some pages do warn about potentially offensive content.--inksT 03:31, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Also, Wikipedia is not a business. FreplySpang (talk) 16:07, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Wiki is international, and it would appear that among the cultures and people of the world there is a great spectrum of what is acceptable, objectionable, or no big deal. Look at religions for example. There is an interpretation that bans music and poetry. There are different views on the equality of genders. Is it legitimate to talk about problems in various computer products? May governments be criticized? AlMac|(talk) 19:49, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
  • We are faced with a certain fact. Some groups of Wikipedia users feel strongly that such images should be included, while others feel equally strongly that they should not. The views of many, or most, fall somewhere in the middle. Thus unless one (or both) of the groups of those with a strong opinion on this matter are to be kicked off Wikipedia—which is not probable—and either one side, the other, or neither, will be satisfied. A fact of life...--Dpr 02:24, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

printing

Do you have a printer friendly button or a way to print the pages with out having all the colors and such? I want to print one out for my dad.

We do, look for the "Printable version" link in the sidebar. That'll take you to a page with basically the bare bones of an article, in printable form. It does provide colours, but you can set your printer to print in greyscale. gkhan 01:21, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Taken information from our site.

Hi,

I am Sucharita and owner of www.clicksaltlake.info , I have seen that in your "Salt Lake City (Bidhan Nagar), Kolkata" the "History" text is just a copy paste from our site and you din't seek any permission for the same from us. We don't have any problem in that but we can expect after the text you should mention that ...source from clicksaltlake.info

You people have done a great job with the total concept of the site, for your help in this topic in Map section you can link "www.clicksaltlake.info/slmap.html . This is the first interactive map for Salt Lake City. Also you will find a detail doctors list in our site apart from all the catagories which will be very helpful for the people.

We want to help you to make this site more useful for the people. Let us know if you need any help from us.

Regards,

Sucharita

Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. We do need, however, some informatuion to confirm this. The exact page on wikipedia where the copyrighted information is used, adn the exact URL of the page it is taeken from, or clear instructions on hpw to get to that page. I looked at your site and could not find the copied infgo, but the site seems large and I may hve gone to the wrong page. You can leave a msg with the detailes on my talk page, or read our copyright problems page for a list of places to report copyuright problems. DES (talk) 16:55, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
The url is http://www.clicksaltlake.info/slhistory.html I'll put up a copyvio gkhan 17:00, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Criteria for speedy deletion

Sorry to complain here, but I'm totally new to Wilkipedia (found it today! Seems a brilliant idea!) and I can't see how to do this otherwise...

I'm a journalist and proof-reader among other things, so I tend to notice errors. Please could the singular of 'criteria' be used wherever it applies on the 'Criteria for speedy deletion' page? The word should read 'criterion' wherever it is not meant in the plural.

Thanks.

Fincham 12:25, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia! The best place to discuss that would be Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion, which is the talk page associated with the Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion page. --cesarb 18:57, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

We need the big man knicks rep

Wow we have it so tell the big a come the usa..

[edit]

Route info

Does Category:Regional_Routes_in_Western_Cape_Province and all of its relatec articles belong in here? Shouldn't it be taken to WikiTravel of just deleted? --moxon 16:55, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit]

don't subvert page layout


Not everyone has the eagle eyes of a twenty year old. When I try to enlarge the page to read more comfortably, the font doesn't enlarge, the columns just get narrower. This type of webpage design needs to go the way of the dodo. Refer to: Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html

It works fine for me, both in Internet Explorer and Firefox. The way I do it is that I press Ctrl and scroll the mousewheel to change text size. What browser are you using? gkhan 22:36, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Or, if you don't have a scroll wheel press Cntrl and +.--Commander Keane 06:03, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Search Returns Fatal Error (Tech Question)

When I ran this search: ("human+evolution+homo+sapiens") I got this: ("Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/extensions/LuceneSearch.php on line 402"). The search for just ("evolution") returns a normal result page. All this suggests to a problem handling empty recordsets from the search engine. The page I was looking for was: ("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Evolution"). Regards, R> (rxn/at/xs4all.nl)

Yeah, that can happen. Our servers are way overworked, so sometimes there will be errors. The best tip I can give you is to try again. Also, if search is down, try using google restricted to wikipedia. Run this google search for your query "human evolution homo sapiens site:en.wikipedia.org" and it will work. I don't think that wikipedias search engine makes any sort of distinction for "+"es, your search returns no results, which is clearly ridiculus :D gkhan 22:45, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I was wrong about the cause. See this mail to the wikitech mailinglist for details [7] gkhan 23:02, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Suggestion: related aricles boxes

I suggest adding a "related articles" box on the left, allowing authors and editors to generate concise lists of related entries.

For example, the interesting article I read on "Sea level rise" could have a related articles list including "Global Warming", "Climatology", etc.

-Michael

Many articles already have a "See also" section near the end of the article. Garrett Albright 10:46, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Stupid.

I find quite a few of the people on Wikipedia really cold and unhuman. This was written on my talk page.

Please don't put your opinion or original research into articles. This is regarding the comment about Mario's original colors and current colors. Saying that most people don't notice the difference is an opinion unless you provide some hard reference of a professional study on it. That aside, the point itself is relatively minor and is more trivia than encyclopedic content. CryptoDerk 23:44, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

%this is me% -raises an eyebrow- Is this what you do all day? Remonstrating people on what you yourself brand 'trivia'?

I advise you to look at WP:NPA. Continued violation of official Wikipedia policy will result in blocking. CryptoDerk 00:24, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

This stuff really hurts my feelings. I am 13, have Asperger Syndrome and ADHD. As far as I can tell I had done nothing wrong [8] Funny how all these little deals add up, isn't it?

I also noticed how a 'trivial' edit, by definition harmless, was picked up upon quicker than major vandalism. By me. Nice prioritising, guys [9]. That beauty lasted TWO FREAKING HOURS AND TWENTY-SIX MINUTES. Jesus. Ajsh 01:48, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi. Your contributions certainly look like they were intended well; however, CryptoDerk is correct that Wikipedia is not the place for your own personal opinions -- see Wikipedia:No original research. Although I think he may have overreacted a bit by threatening blocking, I also think that the act of leaving messages like "Er... do you have a life?" on his talk page is more than a little inflammatory. Also, regarding your edit to Shigeru Miyamoto: please don't disrupt Wikipedia to make a point.
I hope you understand that we hold you no ill will, and that we look forward to your continued participation in Wikipedia. I'm honestly sorry you seem to have a bad first day here. If everybody can just tone down the hostility, I'm sure we can all get along just fine. --David Wahler (talk) 01:30, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
The worst part of it is, this isn't my first day. I'm getting a really negative picture of the Wiki community as a whole here. Ajsh 01:48, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Also, why is my page link broken? Ajsh 01:51, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

If you're having other problems, feel free to discuss them. I just hope you aren't going to judge the whole of Wikipedia according to your personal disagreement with one user. I apologize for my mistaken assumption, but it's hard to reliably find out how long a user's been around if they haven't been signing in.
As for your user page: since you just created your account about 10 minutes ago, it looks like you haven't created one yet. You can go ahead and create it; feel free to put anything you want (within reason) about yourself, your interests, etc. --David Wahler (talk) 02:04, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
The page cannot be found, apparently. Ajsh 02:05, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Just to make sure we're on the same page, are you referring to the red Ajsh link? If so, that page doesn't exist until you create it. It's yours to use as you please -- for more information on the general guidelines for user pages and some examples of what other people use theirs for, see Wikipedia:User page. --David Wahler (talk) 02:12, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, but it literally has the white screen and the 'This page cannot be found' text. Ajsh 02:14, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Hmm. If you're not getting the text box to edit the page, that sounds like a bug. Would you like me to try creating the page for you, and you can see if that fixes the problem? --David Wahler (talk) 02:15, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Okay then, whatever. Ajsh 02:16, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm really impressed David; you must be either an angel, or a hardboiled complaint desk veteran. I don't think I could react to "I'm 13 and have Asperger, and you all suck" posts with a straight face :) 18:37, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

authors and such

It would help if wikipedia gave more information on how to cite its articles such as the authors name.

See Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia.-gadfium 05:04, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

I can't make a new page!

When I try, it says 'the page cannot be displayed'. To be honest, I was going to make a List of fictional moles. I can only think of three, and one I'm not really sure it counts. Maybe it better be List of fictional moles and other borrowing mammals. AAAAAADDDR 11:22, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

If you read your comments above, you will notice both titles are red (or have a red question mark). Click the title of the page you want to create, and you will see a message that "Wikipedia does not yet have a page called List of fictional moles". Any text you enter in the box below will form the new page when you click the Save button.
You could take a look at List of fictional rabbits to give you some ideas for page layouts, section headings, etc. Don't worry if you can only think of three fictional moles - others will soon add more if there are any.
-=# Amos E Wolfe talk #=- 15:50, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
I know all that, see your talk page. I would make the page if it didn't actually come up with a 404. And now when I try and click on 'my talk' at the top of the screen, it runs away and hides under the Wikipedia logo.
I keep forgetting to sign. Kid Apathy 19:03, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
I understand there is currently a bug so that some users with particular versions of Internet Exporer are gettign 404's (page does not exist errors) instead of the "Create a New Page" screeen. Other versions of IE don't seem to have this problem, nor do other browsers. i hope a fix will be made soon, but I have no info on when it will be made. if you have access to an alternate browser (neetscape, firefox, or whatever) try using that. You might also try upgrading your copy of IE if it is not the latest version. DES (talk) 19:06, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
I think it might be the newest version... But my personal link bar ups and hides under the Wikipedia logo when I try and click it... I would be able to click it then except the two most important links are hidden. Kid Apathy 19:09, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

David Hasselhoff


At the end of the first paragraph under heading "Singing Career" are some obscene words. Would appreciate if these could be removed immediately.

Thank you.

(preceding unsigned comment by 60.225.206.23 (talk • contribs) )

This was an act of "vandalism" and has already been removed. Don't forget that Wikipedia is the Encyclopedia that anyone can edit, including you. Just click the "edit this page" tab at the top of any page. Don't forget to sign your posts on talk pages - you can do this by typing three tildes, or four to include the date (~~~~).
-=# Amos E Wolfe talk #=- 15:45, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Missing Fetishes

You have not added these fetishes: "Strangulation", "Hiccups, "Necks". I have found sites and groups that have information and data on those. I actually came here to seek infromation on those topics, but couldnt find them. Any updates posted here about it would be apreciated. Thank you

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. If you have sources on these subjects, please create the articels, citing those soruces. No doubt soemone else will expand or correct your work if you do so. DES (talk) 14:38, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Spelling error in title

Dear technical guru

in the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Willemoe there is a spelling error. "Willemoes" has an "s" at the end, as it is correctly listed in the article.

For independent confirmation you could visit: http://www.navalhistory.dk/English/TheOfficers/VW/Willemoes_Peter.htm

Thanks for a great product

Claus

Unfortunately, it appears that this article is a copyright violation from the source you give. The violation has been reported.-gadfium 07:39, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Creating an Article

On the list of Scottish clans, I came to the one I am descended from, Clan MacNab. I have already changed it by translating its Latin motto to English. However, I'd like to create an article about the clan using some information I have on our clan's history. How do I create a whole new article for Wikipedia?

Take a look at Help:Starting a new page. Good luck, --Commander Keane 03:15, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

RSS improvement

The RSS feed works well but when selecting a headline the popup box just repeats the headline. In RSS feeds from other sources they use the popup box to give a paragraph giving a little more detail about the article. It helps me to decide whether to read it or not. I find this very helpful.

[edit]

David Horowitz

Why isn't David Horowitz on your list of Jews. Can't you find a catagory to stick him in?

He has been a positive influence in my political views.

R.T. Lyle

I don't think we have a general list of Jews. If we do, arguably we shouldn't. Could you give the exact name of the list article you refer to, or bette yet a link? Note that if you find a list which ommits an entry you think should be there, you may always simply edit the list and add the missing entry. DES (talk) 16:43, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Reply Category:Jewish Americans

Category:Jewish Americans From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Jump to: navigation, search Americans of ethnic Jewish descent.


Lists of Jewish Americans ####(THIS LOOKS LIKE A LIST TO ME)RTL A Jewish American actors B David Brin Articles in category "Jewish Americans"

You are correct, several of these are lists, I wasn't aware of them. Feel free to add David Horowitz or any other properly included person to the proper list. If you want help in editing a list article, drop me a not eon my talk page. Please sign comments on discussion pages like this with four tildas (like this ~~~~). Thank you. DES (talk) 18:12, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
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(As follows)

Unless I'm missing something, your site leaves much to be desired in "user friendliness".

My feeling is that, in what may be a "penny wise and pound foolish" attempt to cut costs, you rely too heavily on FAQ's that don't always coincide with other answers that inquirers may be seeking.

In their conscientious and well-meaning attempts to make your site easy to use, the designers obviously didn't realize that the difficulty of navigating such an highly structured and rigid format can, quite to the contrary, be a big turn-off.

Perry L. Hamburg p.hamburg@verizon.net

I isn't so much a question of "cutting costs" pretty much all content, including the FAQs and help pages, are written entirely by volunteeers. Sometimes they are not as well coordinated as they could or should be. If you care to point out specific examples, someone might fix them. Or you can edit such pages yourself, at any time. DES (talk) 18:06, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
You can always ask a question at Wikipedia:Ask a question and you will (hopefully) get a human response. You don't have to rely on the FAQ's.--Commander Keane 16:48, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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Article commit (save article) should fail if system has lost user's logged in status

The identity of the user editing an article is critical to GFDL compliance as it is the nearest that Wikipedia gets to complying with the requirement to add a copyright notice. However, especially at the moment, the system keeps forgetting that a user is logged in and accepts the commit under the IP address.

I think that an indication that the user was logged in should be sent back as a hidden form field and any attempt to preview or commit that has that indication set, but for which the server doesn't believe the user is logged in, should be rejected. More generally, a prominent warning should be generated any time that a form is submitted by a logged in user that the system doesn't believe is logged in.

Even if this is not possible, any attempt to set the minor flag or the add to watchlist flag by a user the system doesn't believe to be logged in should be rejected before committing. Currently the minor flag is ignored and the watchlist flag is rejected after the commit (incorrectly implying the commit failed).

--David Woolley17:57, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

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FORUM for WIKIPEDIA

I think it will be great if wikipedia adds a forum for discussion about different topics for users and call like something like wikiforum or something. Like a debating/discussion forum for news or technical science related stuff, history whatever.

Every article has a talk page, which can kind of fill that function to some degree. You might also want to check out the Wikipedia:Portals where you'll meet people interested in some of the broader subject areas. Beyond that, pages such as this act as forums about the Wikipedia itself. Have a look at Wikipedia:Community_Portal. --bodnotbod 11:52, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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Random Article Enhancement

I REALLY TAKE OFFENSE TO THE ROSA PARKS ARTICLE IN WHICH YOU LABEL HER A "NIGGER SEAMSTRESS". IF ANYTHING, YOU GUYS ARE THE NIGGERS - JUST IGNORANT FOR NO REASON. AS AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN, I TAKE OFFENSE TO THAT! IF YOU WHITE FOLKS WOULD JUST STOP BEING SOOOO JEALOUS OF US "NIGGERS", THIS WORLD WOULD BE A BETTER PLACE!!!

I enjoy using the "Random Article" feature as a means of stumbling over new interesting topics. However, many of the results are stubs, obscure terms, or obscure geographical places and it often takes 3 or 4 rehits to land a good article. I propose an enhanced "Random Article" search feature be added that attempts to increases the signal to noise ratio. Possibilities for selecting the results of this "Enhanced Random Article" search:

  • exclude stubs and pages less than 1000 characters
  • exclude the 10% least visited pages
  • allow readers to vote/label pages as "interesting" and randomly pick between the top 50%

I'm not proposing that the current "Random Article" feature be replaced, but rather that an enhanced "Random Article" feature be added. Improving this feature could grow the number of people who enjoy random knowledge-diving here at the wikipedia.

  • "Random article" is also used to find random articles that need fixing or expanding. Excluding stubs an less visited pages will stop that from happening. - 131.211.210.13 08:19, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
It never ceases to amaze me that people find it so irksome to click a link THREE TIMES that they feel driven to institute change to the system. Ooh! The effort! "Damn, I was going to do some serious editing today, but I was all tired out after the second mouse-click and that landed me on a stub. Shoot! No editing for me today! Dang! The Wikipedia software is its own worse enemy, deterring the likes of me by its insistence on multiple finger movements. I guess there's no telling some people. You can only help people so far." --bodnotbod 12:08, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
Bear in mind how slow the servers get at peak times. It's not uncommon for it to take several minutes to reach just one article, with numerous timeouts in between. Repeat three times, and you've wasted a quarter of an hour and got nowhere.
You are, of course, free to argue that the suggestion is pointless, if you happen not to have a problem with the status quo. But disparaging the person who proposed it is rude and inappropriate. — Haeleth Talk 19:39, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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works cited

hello. I'm a student that uses your free resources all the time, for many essays that i do. i was wanting to make a suggestion. I am required (and i understand why) that i need to show where i got my data from, since it isn't mine, and i don't want to be accused of plagiarism. I was wondering if you could provide a MLA format work cited for all your articles. It would help site the work easier, and encourage people to do so as well. It would also bring traffic to your site. thanks.

keith alpena, michigan

we do. See Wikipedia:Citing wikipedia for details. Or do you mean that works we cite should always be cited in MLA format? All wikipedia articles should cite their sources (see WP:CITE, but no one format is required, and many people in various fields use foramts other than MLA. DES (talk) 01:35, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Incorrect information about the Supreme Court of New York

The following excerpt is from a search on the New York court system:

"The Court of Appeals is New York's highest appellate court, created in 1847. It consists of seven judges—one chief judge and six associate judges—who are now appointed by the governor to 14-year terms, having formerly been elected.

In New York, unlike most other states of the U.S., the court designated as the "Supreme Court" is the trial court rather than the highest court of the state; this nomenclature sometimes leads to confusion."

The part that concerns me is:

"unlike most other states of the U.S., the court designated as the "Supreme Court" is the trial court rather than the highest court of the state;"

While it is true that the court designated as the "Supreme Court" is not the highest court in the State of New York, it is an appellate court NOT a trial court. Please update your information to correct this error so that it will not be misleading to people.

Thanks! (preceding unsigned comment by 24.73.182.86 (talk • contribs) )

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. Evil Monkey∴Hello 03:25, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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Layman's Terms, Please

I have a minor complaint in that the definition for grammatical particle is steeped in technical jargon and is difficult to understand without a background in linguistics. To further complicate the matter, while trying to understand it by context, almost all of the related words and their articles are also written at a higher level of understanding. While the technical prowess of the authors is certainly impressive, it does little to help me, a layman, understand it. Were I able to understand the definitions provided, I probably wouldn't have needed to look the term up in the first place. One last note, to know a complex subject thoroughly is admirable, but the ability to introduce a complex subject in a way that a simple person can understand it is, to many, the highest form of understanding. (Unsiged article by 12.202.7.249 04:20, 26 October 2005)

I wouldn't actually agree in this case, and the talk page actually has comments saying that it is not academic enough. That talk page is probably where you should have raised this issue.
The examples seem to make it reasonably clear and one can follow the links for the technical terms, although I could guess them.
If the article really were pitched at too techical a level, one could add a {{technical}} cleanup template to the article, which will add a message like:

This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please expand it to make it accessible to non-experts, without removing the technical details.

Note that this doesn't ask for the article to be dumbed down, only for it to be made usable by non-technical users. It may still be necessary to maintain the technical language in places, to be adequately precise wiithout being too verbose. The template will get removed if people disagree or when they think they have fixed it.
--David Woolley 19:08, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
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a good idea....

Whenever I read an article, which is not an altogether infrequent occurence, I find myself thinking "dang, I wish i could look at all of the interesting links there are, but I know that if i click on all of them I lose my train of thought from jumping around too much. How could i remedy this ever so heartbreaking situation". So i decide to write an email to you fine Wikipedians telling you this: wouldn't it be cool if there was some sort of way you could keep track of all the interesting links you wanted to visit at a later point, like if you could drag the blue underlined word to a special box over on the side by the search bar, and it would keep track of them all. Just an idea, but keep up the great work. To the people who run this thing, I commend you with all my heart, you're my heroes.

You might explore what options are in your browser. I find the HISTORY useful in mine, if I sign off then back on ... then I cannot use the back button.
I am watching a lot of pages of interest to me ... you can put the watch on, go exploring, then your watch list has connections to what you thought you might be interested in exploring more, and can always take stuff off the watch list. My watch list is now 150 places and counting. AlMac|(talk) 07:37, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

If you are using any modern browser, right click on each link of interest to you and "Open link in new tab". Internet Explorer is one of the few browsers which doesn't currently support such a feature, and it will support it in version 7.-gadfium 07:59, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

IE supports "Open this link in a new window" which has pretty much the same effect, and even has soem advantages, IMO. DES (talk) 00:21, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
I usually have a text editor open where I copy the URLs to interesting looking pages. The good thing about this is that it doesn't limit me to just one site, and I can make notes of context or mark if some link seems particularly interesting. It is also independent of the browser and not sensitive to browser crashes. It is a very plain and "low-tech" solution, but it works well.
[edit]

Your unfair accusation of "Vandalism"

I am at computer IP 66.9.172.95. I have received two separate messages from Wikipedia staffers, accusing me of "vandalism" for inserting random word spaces into Wikipedia articles.

I am not committing any malicious or vandalous act. There is some sort of glitch in the software, which is inserting word spaces into your files when I access them.

I suspect that the glitch is at **YOUR** end, NOT at my end. I frequently post text to IMDb.com, and to several blogs and message boards. Every week, thousands of words of ASCII text upload from my computer to various web sites with no problem, and with no "extra" space bands.

This problem is occurring ONLY in Wikipedia files.

Please investigate this as a tech problem, NOT as a wilful act of vandalism, and please be more careful before making accusations in future.

Thank you.

  • The same page also says: This is the discussion page for an anonymous user who has not created an account yet or is not signed in. We therefore have to use their numerical IP address to identify them. Such an IP address can be shared by several users. If you are an anonymous user and feel that irrelevant comments have been directed at you, please create an account or log in to avoid future confusion with other anonymous users. We also recommend creating an account if you do not want anyone to see your IP address. Is it possible you are sharing the computer or the machine with another indivudual who's vandalizing Wikipedia? As far as I remember you cannot suggest changes to IMDB unless you're logged in. - Mgm|(talk) 08:31, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
It is also possible that other computers are assigned the same IP address as yours from time to time. Depending on your setup, this is not uncommon. When users don't log in, we can only identify them by their IP addresses, but an IP does not always uniquely identify a computer, much less a person. DES (talk) 00:17, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
And by the way, there are effectively no "Wikipedia staffers". All editors, including the people who sent those messages, are volunteers just like yourself. DES (talk) 00:19, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
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Reading documents - no links thank you

I propose that links could be switched on/off with a button. First I might read the text as is and then show the links (blue) and jump anywhere. My sessions tend to be extensive and sometimes lost in Wikispace... :)

Erkki

You can view the "printable version" (in the toolbox at the left on the default skin). That does not show the links, for obvious reasons. DES (talk) 17:28, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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Web pages are editable

Hi, I dont know if you are aware, but the following page is fully editable. Im guessing this is not intentional:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_Beharry

Regards,

Andy Spark

The following page has some strange text. I'm not set up to edit, or I'd change it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimos

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. That is why the above page, and almost everyu page on wikipedia, including this page, is fully editable, quite intentionally. DES (talk) 15:35, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
If what you saw was repated irrelevant insertions of "I'm a Cop", that was vandalism. It was reverted within 10 minutes, but you may have seen it during that time. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. Feel free to simply revert any such vandalism in future yourself. Anyone can, even without logging in. DES (talk) 15:44, 26 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit]

Hitler Childhood heading offensively racist

I was a little taken aback, to say the least when, upon doing some reading on Adolf Hitler, and using Wikipedia (as I often do for information) I came upon this title heading for his childhood: Childhood, already a savior from the Jewbag scums of society. I think this needs to be removed and the title Childhood should suffice. It is rascist and obviously offensive to many of the Wikipedia readers. It is not possible to remove this title heading through EDIT..I tried. It does not appear there. I hope I do not run into this too often on this site. Thank-you.

What you were seeing was vandalism: a racist had decided to vandalise the page by adding offensive text. The reason it did not appear when you selected to edit the page was that a more responsible user had already deleted it by the time you clicked "edit".
Unfortunately, we have not found a way of preventing people from vandalising pages while preserving the important philosophy that everyone should be able to edit things; we try to combat this by ensuring that vandalism is removed quickly, as happened in this case. I'm sorry you happened to view the page in the brief period of time when it was visible, and I hope the unfortunate experience you've had won't put you off using our site. — Haeleth Talk 19:48, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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First Professional Doctorate Not Listed

The N.D. or N.M.D. (Doctorate of Naturaopthic Medicine) is not listed among your first-professional degrees. These are doctorates earned from four-year, regionally accredited medical schools by those who practice naturopathic medicine in the fourteen states that now license these physicians. (preceding unsigned comment by 71.110.204.171 (talk • contribs) )

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. Evil Monkey∴Hello 00:13, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
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inappropriate language at this url

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_service, under the topic: further reading. (preceding unsigned comment by 12.208.236.223 (talk • contribs) )

Thanks for pointing out the vandalism. I've reverted and removed it. Evil Monkey∴Hello 00:12, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
What you saw was vandalism -- another user has already fixed the problem. Thanks for calling attention to it. If you see such a thing again, you can simply edit the page to remove it, or revert the changes to the last clean version. DES (talk) 00:13, 27 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit]

foul language within articles

The article on Djembe contains foul language, obviously placed by some moronic, immature, teenage punk. You should check all entries and edits prior to posting.

Vandalism is always going to be apart of something that anyone can edit. Checking every edit would defeat the purpose of being a wiki. You can help remove it by reverting it to an earlier version. Evil Monkey∴Hello 01:33, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
I have reverted the vandalism. Evil Monkey∴Hello 01:35, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
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James Hutton

Under James Hutton, you have a link to a Britannica site that lists his history but instead you direct it to some creationist site. As a geology professor, not only am I offended by this, but I am sure James Hutton would also take umbrage. Why don't we pay respects to the founder of geology and change this. Other than that, I love your site. I use it all the time.

I've changed the link to 1911encyclopedia.org.-gadfium 02:17, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
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error

In the Youngstown Sheet and Tube article, there is without question some untrue information lower in the article. I am doing a project and wouldn't normally know, but it says the Supreme Court decision killed "350,00,0000,000.000,000 million people within hours" and that people had to feed off of "solid snake" to live. Clearly, this cannot possibly be accurate.

Thought you'd like to know

You have encountered some vandalism to the article. I've reverted the edit. Evil Monkey∴Hello 05:00, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
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PLEASE PUT SOMETHING ON THIS.....

Hi!!! ok, so i'm from ireland, im a forth year student in Mount Sackville secondary school makeing me 16...... i am doing an Irish project on Irish legends.... i usually use Wikipedia for any projects i have, so i came on to it to get some Info.... *BUT YOU HAVE NO INFORMATION ON IRISH LEGENDS* ok, im sorry to complain, but my teacher said i could if i wanted to because it is hard enough trying to find information out information, so when you don't have anything, it's really annoying!!!!! could you please put some info on Tír na nÓg The Salmon of Knowledge The Children of Lir and all the other cool irish legends cause they are great!!!!!

Sorry to complain, i never usually do, but *I NEED HELP WITH MY PROJECT* !!!!!!!

Love Lou-Ali xx

Try looking at Category:Irish_mythology. There are 9 subcategories and 55 articles on Irish mythology. I did a quick search on Tir na nOg and the article came right up (you dont have to use special characters). Hope this helps. User:FeanorStar7
  • A quick trip to your local library might yield more detailed results. - Mgm|(talk) 23:23, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
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James May Entry

Hello

I have noticed that several members keep editing the entry for James May, and replacing Perodua Kelisa with Suzuki Swift.

There are press releases from Perodua with James's positive comments on the vehicle. The praise for the Suzuki Swift was merely a light hearted moment for entertainment on the 26th of December 2004 episode of Top Gear.

Is there any way of ensuring that the correct vehicle remains on James's entry?

Lynese Webmistress - www.james-may.co.uk

My goodness, I didn't even know James has his own website! I see the entry's currently referring the Kelisa, but as recent answers to other complaints have said, this is a wiki and anyone can edit it. The only thing to do is monitor the article and change it back when the vandal strikes - they do get fed up eventually when this keeps happening to them; the reference to the Perodua annual report and their website does look a little suspiciously like spamvertising, which may cause someone to delete that whole part of the article, though. -- Arwel (talk) 17:47, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
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web design suggestion: Favicons are useful, sometimes.

When I read this site I tend to open many "tabs" in Firefox. After a while I get so many that the titles disappear. If I read many different sites there will be different favicons and no problem keeping track of which is which, but Wikipedia pages only show up as a default "document" icon (i.e. no favicon at all).

Since there are so many links to other interesting pages (this site is much too addictive! :-) ) there tend to be many identical icons, so even if there was a favicon for the site it would still be confusing. My idea is to have a little "frame" in common for all of them (e.g. a puzzle piece, or just a coloured one-pixel frame), and to place the first letter of the title word in the icon.

Wikipedia actually does have a favicon; it's the letter W. For whatever reason, it doesn't work sometimes. I've noticed this too, but there's nothing you can do except wait for it to magically come back. ♥♥purplefeltangel♥♥ 21:45, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Internal IP Scheme

It would be best to not reveal your internal IP scheme during a database error. I was clicking through to another page when the MySQL connection timed out during the query. The error displayed your internal IP of the database resource.

[edit]

racist remark under "zionism"

reads "jewish Ba Stards" at the end of the first paragraph.

I am unable to edit page as this remRK does not appear on the edit page. (preceding unsigned comment by 71.57.48.64 (talk • contribs) )

Between you reading the vandalism and editing the page it was removed. Evil Monkey∴Hello 21:46, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
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David Bernardi, North Bay author.

Greetings, Wikipedia Folk. I noticed that the page on me is being considered for deletion, because Google does not bring up my name. So, if I put up a website that had my name in it with my info, would that make me worthy to be on the site? I also noticed that Matthew James Donnelly was taken down, an up and coming composer and musician, and friend of mine. I must say that I am disappointed with wikipedia, especially when individuals earnestly post information intended to further the knowledge on an encyclopedic website. Thank you. Dave (preceding unsigned comment by 24.235.185.65 (talk • contribs) 18:18 EDT, 27 October 2005)

In general, we desire some indication that a person really exists, and is in some way noteworthy or notable, to retain an article about that person on wikipedia. See WP:BIO for some often used rules of thumb on biographical articles. See WP:MUSIC for some often cited criteria on including bands and musicians. We can not include an article on every person on earth, and even if we could, that would eb "an indiscriminate collection of facts" rather than an encyclopedia. see What wikipedia is not. There is considerable dispute on where to draw the line between inclusion and exclusion. A person or topic does not need to be referenced on google to be included, but most modern topics and people that re both real and noteworthy are so refernced, so teh lack of any google hits is often taken as a read flag. When we do need are verifiable citations of information that establish a reasonm why a perosn (or a topic) is a proper subject of an encyclopedic article. There is also soemthing of a prejudice agaisnt articles that it is suspected that people ahve written about themselves, (often called "vanity articles" or that fans, freinds, or students may have writen about another person (often called "tribute articles") because often such articles do not adhere to the neutral point of view, and because often they exagerate the importance or signifgance of the subject. If an articel about you (or anyone else) has been nominatd for deletion, the best method is to add facts to teh articel that clearly show the person's importance or signifigance, along with citations of sources from which those facts can be verified, and to point out those facts in the deletion discussion. If you would like to discuss this further, feel free to put a msg on my talk page DES (talk) 15:53, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Paul W Klipsch article

This page has been flagged for possible copywrite violation a few weeks ago. Will the admins please delete this page!! (preceding unsigned comment by 24.57.130.116 (talk • contribs) 18:19 EDT, 27 October 2005)

This page is listed on Wikipedia:Copyright problems. As you will see if you visit that page, there is a large backlog to be dealt with. All this work is done by unpaid volunteers, and not everyone finds checking copyright infringment claims to be the most desireable chore. In the meantime, the article has been completely replaced by the notice of a possible copyright violation, and will not appear in google searches nor in data dunmps used by mirror sites. DES (talk) 16:01, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Wikipedia complement

Aside from running a little slow at times Wikipedia is by far the best place to find information on the Internet.

My only complaint is there does not seem to be a place here to show:

• praise
• acclaim
• acclamation
• accolade
• applause
• approbation
• commendation
• encomium
• homage
• kudos
• panegyric
• plaudit
• tribute

Thank You Wikipedia for everything that you do...

Maybe if you find a particularly pleasing edit (as it seems you have already) you could drop a note on the editor's talk page. Thanks for the comment here, it's a nice reminder of why we hang around.--Commander Keane 06:25, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

the logo...

Hi, I'm not sure if it's my browser or has anything to do with my computer,But everytime I look up a word the logo is in the way. What I mean by logo is the Wikipedia ball or globe is misplaced on the screen. It looks as if it should be more to the left of the screen instead of in the body of the text. If there is anyway you can fix that, please do because it's an interference.

  • It would help to know what OS and browser you are using. - Mgm|(talk) 23:27, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Comment Letter

                                                            oct.28,05
WIKEPIDIA
    GREETINGS
I read that Halloween is a holiday  observe
 every oct. 31
with children going to houses asking for
for apples,cake candies
        Trick or Treat
the time of spooky
when witches visits your house
 by the way my birthday falls on oct.30
 Happy Halloween
                  Rodrigo T. Vicente
 butuan city,phillipines
8600
Happy Birthday for tomorrow!--Commander Keane 06:17, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

famous people from Warwickshire

In the section "Famous people from Warwickshire" you should add Nicholas Rodney Drake (great musician). He was born in Burma but he grew up and spent most of his life in Tamwoth-in-Arden. Thanks Andrea Bernardi

  • Are you talking about Category:Natives of Warwickshire? Categories can only hold existing articles and we don't have one about him yet (at least not by the name you gave). Everyone is an article, so feel free to start an article about him. - Mgm|(talk) 23:31, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Some other site shows same info as yours

Hi,

Is the site "psychcentral.com" affiliated/associated to your site? I discovered that they have posted same articles on their page....in similar format, too! See this page: http://psychcentral.com/psypsych/Muscle

Thanks, Sayantani

Many sites copy wikipedia content. They don not need to be "affiliated" with us in any way. That is one of the effects of wikipedia being generally licensed under the GFDL. Such site are supposed to acknowledge wikipedia as their source, but many fial to do so, or do so only in non-obvious ways. See our "forks & Mirrors" page for a list of sites known to use wikipedia content, and discussion of which ones properly follow the reules about doing so. The page you mention includes the words It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Muscle". near the bottom of the page, so it looks like a reasoanbly compliant mirror. DES (talk) 15:39, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Editing

I truly think that the text on your website should not be that accessible for any stranger just to change or delete. It does not make your website seem official. I get a lot of information form you guys when ever I have a question but once I found out how anyone can just post up anything they want to I felt as though some of the facts are not true or as clear as they should be. Thank you dc

  • See Wikipedia:Replies to common objections. You'd have the same problem with the rest of the net. Any nutcase can make a official-looking webpage and spread misinformation (it happens). At least here the information is continually checked by dedicated people. Always double-check your info, even if the source appears reliable. - Mgm|(talk) 23:34, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby

When I did a search on I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby his male member came up as his photo. This can not be the right picture can it?

  • You probably came across a spot of vandalism the article I. Lewis Libby looks fine now. - Mgm|(talk) 23:37, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Featured article about bosnian leader has undesirable picture

The above featured article has a very undesirable picture when I clicked on the link.

I fixed it, and the vandal has been temporarily blocked. Antandrus (talk) 21:04, 28 October 2005 (UTC)


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Page parser error with multiple templates

Example:

Create a template like this:
{{iftrue|{{{chicken}}}|chicken|beef}} {{{3}}} {{iftrue|{{{corn}}}|corn|peas}}


Call it like:
{{example_template|chicken=true|corn=true|with}}

Expected output (because chicken and corn is false:

beef {{{3}}} peas

Actual output: beef

{{{3}}} peas


The system puts a closing marker (if the HTML "line" began with a < p > it puts a < / p >, < i > it puts a < / i >, etc...

Then the first space after the first template is interperted as a blank on the next line, which Wikipedia forces as preformatted text. Putting a ~(tilde) in the space causes the preformatting to go away, but not the tilde. --Mcmillen76 00:57, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Crushing_by_elephant

Words are not enought Elephants are killing and i would like to become one of their victims.

De : Gabriel Paul mailto:gpaul@vif.com Envoyé : 27 octobre 2005 00:36 Objet : Working Elephant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crushing_by_elephant

http://www.lakpura.com/articles/photos/70-working-elephant.html

With the appropriate authority:

I’m French Canadian obsessed about elephants since many years

Many years ago i saw a movie with a scene of execution by an elephant

Since fifty years I wish to be bury and crushed beneath an elephant’s foot

How could I meet a Mahout who would accept to negotiate the contract?

Yours sincerely!

G. P., Canada

As far as Wikipedia goes, probably the best places to ask this question are at Talk:Crushing by elephant or the Reference desk.--Commander Keane 16:25, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
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TRNC Invation or Intervention

As you are aware the main dispute on the said page is about the word "invasion" or "intervention". I admit that both words, when discussed to the point of faces turning blue, are relatively POV. However, the article is about the TRNC and therefore Turkish. It must tilt heavily towards that POV. Would it be advisable for me to enter the page on the Republic of Cyprus and make alterations there from a Turkish POV? A Greek constantly changing the word to invasion can only mean they are trying to provoke a response and must not be allowed to continue. Any one that would want a balanced view on the subject of Cyprus would surely read both articles and make up their own mind Please could you find a way to convey this to the persons responsible and maybe protect the page with the original authors permision.

Best regards Bornagain

I disagree. It is precisely the word intervention that is POV, in the sense of attempting to sugarcoat the events of 1974 so as to favour the Turkish side. If the word invasion is good enough for 2003 Invasion of Iraq, it is good enough here. Whether or not you agree with what happened, it was an invasion.--Theathenae 11:58, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
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Copyright violation - please confirm receipt

Dear Sir / Madam,

It has come to our attention that several images and some text appears to have been taken from some of our UK based tourist information websites and used on the Wikipedia project. In some cases there does not appear to be any acknowledgement of the material's original source, and/or copyright statements to deter further unauthorised copying.

Looking forward to receiving your response shortly,

Yours faithfully,

Roger W. Poultney B.Sc.(Hons) Ph.D. Internet Promotion Consultant

Eagle Intermedia Publishing Ltd. P.O. Box 583 Bradford West Yorkshire BD1 4YW United Kingdom

Mobile: (UK) 0775 1051586

e-mail: info@eagle.co.uk

website: http://www.eagle.co.uk

(preceding unsinged message was by 212.69.225.141 2005-10-29 13:19:07

Firstly I'm just another user and secondly I'm not a lawyer, but to make a reasonable copyright violation report you need to identify all the offending articles.
Also you should take steps to mitigate the violation by implementing the documented copyright violation procedures, at least by replacing the contents of the relevant articles by a copyright violation template, and preferably by appending the copyright violation claim to the appropriate list of current violations. I.E. you should replace each offending page by {{copyvio|url=http://example.org}}, replacing the example URL by the exact URL of the page that you claim has been infringed, then you should follow the instructions that the page will now display.
If you follow the full procedure, the violation report will be automatically acknowledged because you will have directly addied it to the list of outstanding violations.
It's not clear to me whether you qualify for the fast track process, described in the procedures.
--David Woolley 20:43, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
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Validity

I question the validity of the information that is provided on this website because anyone can change what is written. People can easily change dates and statistics (information that is hard to distinguish if it's right or wrong) by using the edit button below each section. That would be unfortunate for the reader, who is being misguided by this new information. I suggest that you should get rid of that feature or you should have some kind of authority (meaning a panel of people with knowledge) to review those changes before they are presented to the public. I strongly suggest this because i do not feel safe using your information.

Shazia Ghafur

The heart and sole of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit. I agree that the sneaky vandalism you speak of occurs, but generally it gets fixed and the articles are of good quality. Maybe take a look at Wikipedia:Replies to common objections for further discussion.--Commander Keane 16:16, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
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Lack of USA identifiers on over 10,000 articles

Most articles about places, persons and things from the USA do not have any identifiers in their titles, or first three lines of the articles, as to the fact that these things are in a specific country. It also occurs in categories and stubs.

There are a lot more countries and people on the planet.vcxlor 14:46, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

If you find some specific examples list them here and we will take care of them.--Commander Keane 16:03, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
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I think someone put a bad link into your White House page - swearing

I clicked on this link from your White House page: http://kvaleberg.com/extensions/mapsources/index.php?params=38.89734_N_-77.03742_E_type:landmark_region:US

. . .to get an aerial map of the WHite House, and what I get is a Wikipedia page that says F**K YOU. (I added the "*")

Just thought you should know.

Peter Sharkey

It appears the page was vandalised for just under three hours on the 29th. It has been fixed. Evil Monkey∴Hello 21:49, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
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Search technology used- too many false drops

I came to Wikipedia via a URL which listed Jewish Scientists and Philosophers by name, in various fields. Clicking on a specific name always resulted in etirely too many (10 pages plus) drops, which used surname or first name only.

If you used the GOOGLE approach, the search should focus only on the combination; eg. Ri=onald Breslow should never bring up Ronald Regan.

Pity. The site is quite good when one gets a GOOGLed URL. signed: beagun27@covad.net.

Google spent millions, if not billions, of dollars developing their search technology and receive large amounts of advertising revenue. The best thing is to let Google do what it is good at by simply adding site:en.wikipedia.org to your Google queries.
--David Woolley 22:07, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Further to this, the Wikipedia search function is so useless that I wonder if it would be better just to remove it and have Wikipedia search automatically use Google search.
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Dambusters Page

I came on line to find out the sites of the dams , where exactly are they in Germany and your site like all the others does not appear to believe in maps to associate the dams to surrounding towns. Needs sorting

The page does appear to identify the lakes involved, which ought to be enough to find them on a modern map.
However, the people who created the page are unlikely to be reading this page, but ought to be reading the talk page for the article, so that is where you would be best placing the request to add this information.
If you find out by other means, you should, of course, edit the page yourself.
As a start, I found a copy of the original planning map for the Eder dam on the RAF museum web site, which gives the latitude and longtitude. Unfortunately I had a browser crash whilst doing the previous reply, so I've lost the details of the links and the coordinates.
--David Woolley 23:29, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
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very, very inappropriate picture under "marmalade"!!!!!!

It appears that what happened is that someone vandalised the {{otheruses}} template that was used on the page. The vandalism was reverted within two minutes of it occurring and you were just unlucky to look at the page during this brief time. Evil Monkey∴Hello 21:39, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


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Slam Hog

After dutifully adding new highly important cultural slang phenomena, a beautiful phrase "slam hog", my entry was deleted without explanation. I believe slam hog will be at least as culturally relevant as "donkey punch", a phrase that is prominently a part of wikipedia currently.

  • Slam hog was deleted because firstly Wikipedia is not a dictionary and secondly all the content was "The new word for 'ho.". Wikipedia only includes things that have already been described by other reliable sources. It may well become culturally relevant at some point, but Wikipedia is not meant for promotion of words, so it's best to wait until it actually is significant. - Mgm|(talk) 23:44, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
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The Rosa Parks Story

As I understand it, Ms. Parks received the Medal of Freedom for her courageous act of refusing her seat to a white man on a bus. Let me just inform you for a moment on a couple of issues:

l. Somewhere across the nation are children who are bullied everyday for their lunch money. If they were brought up to stand up and defend their rights, some of them did so by telling that bully "no" the next time he wanted their lunch money. That little boy or girl might have been beaten profusely because of that courageous "no", but they stood their ground. No President was there to award these children the Medal of Freedom.

2. Somewhere out there, there are thousands of women and children living in domestic violence homes and environments. On one day, the Mother and Wife takes a beating because she stood up and said "no" to her husband on something she didn't want to do. She grabbed the kids and she went off on her own to start anew. Her husband found her and shot her dead. This was her award for having been brave and courageous and for standing up for what she believed in. She's dead because she said "no" for her and her kids...and there's no one in that family who accepted the Medal of Freedom for what she did.

3. A black bully and gang member hopped on a subway one day and approached a woman and said..."get outta my seat". She muttered quietly--"no, get your own". The gang member took a knife and stabbed her and she fell to the floor. He got his seat, didn't he? And she bled to death because of her extremely courageous efforts to stand up for herself and be brave. No President was around to award her family the Medal of Freedom for her bravery and courage.

4. Stories just like these occur all the time overseas in the military and here around the United States in everyday life. But there are never any awards waiting for people when they do something good and something right. We've all learned that when we have bad things happen to us, it's a matter of life and sooner or later, we have to move on.

The Rosa Parks award of the Medal of Freedom had no criteria like the above stories. Rosa Parks refused to give a white man her seat on a bus. And for this, she received a Presidential award. I think it's sad when we overlook the rest of our population and what they've endured in their lifetimes. I think it's obvious that the honor of lying in state would have been nice for every American soldier who died in Iraq or Vietnam. Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white man and for that she's lying in State in the Capitol Rotunda. That's very unfair to the rest of our population and very biased. (preceding unsigned comment by 152.163.100.203 (talk • contribs) )

Thanks you for your comments. However as it says at the top of the page:
"This is a page for discussing problems you may have with the way Wikipedia is designed or suggestions on how to improve this Wikipedia. It is not intended for reporting errors regarding content."
If you think the issues you have brough up should be discussed in the Wikipedia article on Rosa Parks, I suggest you post a comment on its talk page. Evil Monkey∴Hello 23:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
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Compliment

This is a simple comment, not a complaint. I just felt that I should let you know how much of a help this Encyclopedia has been for me. Throughout all my projects, this has been the greatest source for educated, unbiased material. I love you. >_<

  • Thanks! - Mgm|(talk) 23:45, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
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Icon for external links appearing in internal links

I'm using Opera 9 build 8031 running on Windows XP SP2; this has never occurred for previous versions of Opera. It does not happen with my other browsers (IE and Firefox) and it has nothing to do with my user CSS because it occurs even when I'm not signed in.

Basically, the icon for external links is appearing beside all links (even pictures) in an article. This gets irritating especially if there are many links side-by-side, as can be seen in the Compact-TOC template: Compact TOC

Thanks in advance for any help. ωhkoh [Т] 03:10, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Your not the only Opera user having bother (check here)- but there is a solution! Go to your monobook: User:Whkoh/monobook.css (assuming you use this skin) and add (literally cut and paste) this:
/* Nuke external link icon on internal links */ #bodyContent a[href^="http://en.wikipedia.org"] { background: none !important; padding-right: 0; }
If you want help with this I happy to help, but I can't edit your monobook - for security reasons.--Commander Keane 08:50, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
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Leo Tolstoy's basis for "Christian beliefs"

Please allow me to thank everyone who is involved in developing, expanding and maintaining Wikipedia; it allows me access to what one friend of mine calls "the Big Conversation". I admit that in this I am, at best, an unqualified listener who lacks the social attributes necessary to seek higher education in a formal setting. I am not flip in this regard; it is to my shame.

I have found it prudent, when I read or comment on any written work, to seek what some may call a considerate or contextual point of view with the understanding that this, or any method of reading texts, has its limitations. In doing so, I often clash with those who appear to be deconstructionist in their own perspective of reading and critical analysis. While some of the basic tenets of deconstruction are useful in transliterating texts from their original context to make them more accessible for an audience from another context, the failure of deconstructionists is that they seem to understand neither the limitations of their process nor the ramifications of taking it too far. (Would it matter to them if they did understand?) In fact, this is the basis, in my opinion, of the worse type of academic hackery that has become the staple of what is surely, by now, millions of master's theses and doctoral disertations. The greatest bastardization occurs in the pursuit of the worst kind of academic politics and, consequently, in politics at large, as well as pervading how people in general view and relate to the self, one another and, ultimately, God. The corruption of which I speak is the basis for what has become the institution of "spin"; it is not a new thing under the sun, and has been manifest among heathens, pagans and so called "churchmen" alike throughout history. In the past it was merely called "deceit".

One of the worst results of this practice occurs in the public political arena. There arise issues, the facts of which are spun so far askew by politicos that the consensus view which synthesizes among the public as a result is even further from the truth, or a prudent reaction to it, than either of the two opposing theses.

This only highlights the difficulty of the task you at Wikipedia have undertaken. Consensus tempered by restraint is one way of deciding a course of action, but outright democracy is a poor way of arriving at the truth. Should truth be subject to mob rule? The graceful manner in which you manage your task at Wikipedia is commendable considering the nature of it.

I have noticed that literal and historic commentaries on many significant persons of faith, faith to which the subjects have often confessed in their own published writings, are often interspersed with comments characterizations and theories dismissing that faith. (I am referring to commentaries in general and not to Wikipedia in specific.) Some such comments may often begin with a statement like, "Had he lived longer he would surely have..." or they are suffixed with something like, "...however later on he did some such thing that surely showed an abdication of his earlier convictions." One should be careful about asserting themselves into the faith of another; the subject should at least be approached with some semblance of reverence.

As to the statement made about the basis of Leo Tolstoy's faith in the article entitled "Leo Tolstoy" under the subheading "Religious and Political Beliefs", the author of the article carefully synopsizes his subject's faith by making accurate references to Tolstoy's own works, "The Kingdom of God is Within You" and "Father Sergius". This is commendable; however, the basis for faith is belief itself. Tolstoy documented how he realized faith in his own "Confession". I only submit this to you because I think that it may be important to note that Tolstoy was, by his own account, someone whose belief in God was characterized as absurd by some yet, by others it would be condemned as an abdication of true faith. Perhaps the first sentence under the sub-heading "Religious and Political Beliefs" could be amended to begin something like: "The basis for Tolstoy's belief in God is best described in his own 'Confession'; his basis practicing this faith, as can succinctly be seen in his work "The Gospel in Brief", was Jesus' Sermon on the Mount..."

In my estimation a truer depiction of Tolstoy's faith should refer to his own "Confession". Please be aware that I am merely submitting this to you with no demand. My style of writing is nowhere near that of the article's author. As it stands, the article is well written and edited. If anyone has actually read this long letter I apologize for being longwinded and commend your steadfastness.

Again, thank you for "Wikipedia" and the rest of the Wiki-library.

I recall reading an excellent exposition of Tolstoy's crisis and subsequent statement of faith in William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience. It was very moving. At any rate, thank you for taking the time to write to us! Antandrus (talk) 05:36, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
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New Labour

Whilst reading about the different changes in the labour government it says in capital letters that 'BLAIR IS A DICKHEAD' people have their own views on the man i take the same opinion that whoever wrote the article did but feel it is completely out of context and i will sue them in court . HAVE A NICE DAY !!



SMEE (preceding unsigned article by 84.67.68.59 2005-10-30 11:16:38 UTC)

This was vandalism by a user connected from 80.225.4.138. It was made at 11:45 UTC on 2005-10-27 and reverted at 04:14 UTC on 2005-10-28. If you have seen it today on the Labour Party (UK) article it is because you are seeing a cached copy.
That IP address resolves to 80-225-4-138.dynamic.dial.as9105.com, so it is probably shared by many users.
Even if it were still present, although I am not a lawyer, my understanding is that you should attempt other rememdies before suing, and the easiest remedy would have been to revert it yourself. This always assumes that you could sue anyway.
--David Woolley 11:01, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
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Transfer to wikicommons feature.

Why not making a 'transfer to wikicommons' feature for images and ogg files? :) Would make it a lot easier to transfer files... - Rythin, too lazy to register.

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Citing Wikipedia

Shouldn't we have information for citing Wikipedia as an entire internet site? This would be helpful for researchers who have many, many pages to cite. I just wanted to check to make sure this would be okay before adding this information to Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. --Think Fast 15:20, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

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Writing in American

I do not know where your company is located BUT, if you are going to offer your services in our Country, the United States of America, WE DO NOT speak ENGLISH here, WE SPEAK American-English and we or should I say I, do not like to have to TRANSLATE your articles or information into American from your FOREIGN language that you produce your information in.

Beyond foreign misinterpretation of OUR Weights and Measures Standards, WE DO NOT USE nor accept that horrible miserable Metrics system that you use in foreign countries, a lot of people like to think that they are using the proper system BUT, WE USE AMERICAN WEIGHTS AND MEASURES and we would like to see things written that way when they are presented in the U.S.A.

When in Germany, use German, When in England, use English, and so on and so forth. Please have the courtesy to present items in a language that WE UNDERSTAND.

Thank you for reading, William G. Mundy (preceding unsigned article by 205.134.200.25 2005-10-30 18:16:49 (UTC))

Thank you for bringing that circumstance to our attention. We had not, unfortunately, realised that such a situation pertained to your country, the "United States of America". In rectification thereof, our company shall henceforth cease providing its services there. The non-expired portions of pre-existing contacts shall, of course, be honoured in full, but please consider all outstanding invoices for encyclopaedia articles served to citizens of that country cancelled forthwith. Sincerely, Helmut von Wikipedia, proprietor. (preceding unsigned spoof reply by 201.137.84.108 2005-10-30 18:44:20 (UTC))
Company tends to imply a for profit organisation. The Wikipedia Foundation is a US based not-for-profit corporation.
Articles are contributed by people from all around the world and the general policy is to reflect the English language variations of the area to which the article is most relevant. However, I doubt that anyone will get many thanks for converting from British to American English, even though the article isn't specifically Britain related, if the article was consistent in usage before the change (I did notice one article where someone changed metre to meter, which has a different meaning in British English.
As to metric units, American science and engineering have been using them for many years, for example integrated circuit pins have been on 2.54mm grids for more than 30 years in US published datasheets.
--David Woolley 18:38, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
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Sindhi

Dear Sir/Madam,

I would like to appreciate the services provided by the Wikipedia. It is a rich source of information. It provides information is almost 40 languages. I would request you to introduce Sindhi language as well besides these many lmanguages. Sindhi is a widely spoken language, and currently there are more than 50 million people speaking it in PAKISTAN, INDIA, SINGAPORE, HONGKONG, SAUDI ARABIA, UAE and many other countries.

Regards,

Ahsan Ahmad URSANI Doctorant INSA Rennes, Rennes Cedex, France

Dear Mr. Ursani: Please see sd:Main Page for the incipient Sindhi language version of Wikipedia. –Hajor 18:54, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
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Vandalism on Sport coach page

This is what is written on the sport coach page.

Responsibilities In some professional sports operations the head coach also serves as general cock sucker, the team executive responsible for acquiring the rights to players and negotiating their penises,

I know you will want to correct it.

What you saw (on Coach (sport)) was vandalism. This unfortunately happens from time to time, but it is usually fixed promptly. This instance has already been fixed. also you can revert such changes yourself, as can anyone who sees them. DES (talk) 00:57, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
I've just fixed it. Cheers -- Svest 01:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC) Wiki me up™


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User UI editor

We all know how amazing wikipedia is. What makes it amazing, though, is the contributions recieved by everyone. Many people, (including myself), don't contribute for the sole reason of us not knowing how to edit these pages with all the different code and such. I know there are guides and such, but that is asking a lot out of people. You should be handing the opprutinity to help to them, not making them go fetch it, because that is very often a turnoff for people.

My solution to this is making a sort of javascript run editing environment using a very easy to use interface, not a text box with a load of confusing code in it. A project of this size really can afford somthing as vital as this.

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Article about Uzbekistan

Hello my Name is John. I just wanted to express my deep dissapointment with wikipedia for publishing false statements about the May 13 events in Uzbekistan. Why would the writer make such uneducated and more importantly unproved comments about the Tragedy that happened in Andijan. I was in that country, I was in Andijan, and I talked to local people. The Uzbek government didn't massacre hundreds of people, it was the terrorists who had gathered them there in the first place, and started shooting them as they started to run away. The death toll was 137, of which most were military servicemen or armed terrorists. This a enclypedia, not a western media that tries to denounce eastern or better yet muslim countries. It is a horrible thing of the arthor to write such lies, and I strongly urge you to try to find out the truth instead of reading some articles from CNN and writing it in Wikipedia for future generations to read. I'm sure that this complaint of mine will not even be considered, or better yet not even read. Of course, who cares about a country called uzbekistan or pakistan or whatever it is called. We are the Hegemon of the world, we don't need to know about worthless countries like Uzbekistan.

We certianly do not want inaccurate articles on wikipedia. If you have beeter sources for the facts than the ones the current artilce is based on, please help us improve the article. You should probably make the same statemetns on the talk page of the article involved. Please be prepared to cite specific, verifiabel, reputable sources, and to insist that others do the same. (Note that "I was there and i saw it" is not a source, unless you have published what you saw soemwhere else, because there is no way for anyone else to verify what you saw, and because of the no original research policy.) DES (talk) 16:35, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
The talk page of the article, or the article itself if you have third party material that you can cite, is the best place to followup, but taking a quick look at the article, it would appear that the passage you are objecting to is backed up by a citation, albeit that citation hasn't been done properly. It is the other link to Human Rights Watch report on the May 2005 Andijan massacre. Very few people properly markup citations!
Given that, what you need to do is to find third party published material that matches your understanding of events and then re-write the paragraph to say: according to first citation, account of events, but according to alternative citation, alternative summary of events, attempting not to indicate a preference between them, but relying on the credibility of the source organisation to make your point (don't, of course, choose a poorer source for the opposing view than the one already cited).
--David Woolley 17:07, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Looking a bit further, that citation doesn't support the 748 claim, although it comes up as a false positive for a search including 748. That and the other (news) references that I've looked a so far, do produce estimates rather more than the official figure, though.
You should probably go back to the cited report and read it carefully to identify what it does support - you might even be able to cite parts of it against the current interpretation.
You should also, at least consider, talking to the report writers, especially if you can provide eyewitness, rather than hearsay, information, that conflicts on matters of fact.
However, it is beginning to look like this may have been vandalism, as the earlier versions of the text said nine and the 748 only appeared in this edit, made on 2005-09-30. The change was made from IP address 206.224.83.150 which has only ever been used to edit that one article.
The figure of nine has also been changed since the original version, which said several hundred, which is consistent with the newspaper reports. I don't have time to search the history for the change to nine, although it is after 2005-06-27 and before 2005-08-18.
--David Woolley 19:49, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Looking more carefully at the actual page, the Human Rights Chronology sidebar does have supportable figures and includes the government claims. In my view, the chronology section is more or less valid, although maybe the use of conservative could be considered not to be a neutral point of view. The main history section doesn't agree with the fuller version that it references.
Also, what I think has happened is that someone added the reference to the hostages being a consequence of the killing, then someone replaced the original figure with the number killed before the hostage taking when they should have re-arranged the paragraph to get the correct timeline. Someone, probably with an axe to grind, inserted one of the higher figures, thinking that the nine was much to low, and again not re-arranging the figures.
I've re-arranged the paragraph, although I haven't filled in the missing steps in the time line, noted that the number of dead is disputed, quoted the range for which sources are given and referred to the sidebar that references those sources. You may not be happy with that, but the rules require that all sides of a dispute be reflected.
I do agree that much of the article is anti-government, although at least one anti-American sentence also seems to have been added.
I'd suggest that you add the article to your watchlist, so that you can see if anyone tries to make changes that you think are unsupportable. Uzbekistan history and politics aren't really my area of experise.
--David Woolley 00:02, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
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Vasyl Krychevsky

Dear Sirs,

This is not precisely a complaint.. I just filled the space for Vasyl Krychevsky. Really Vasyl H. Krychevsky. Then it appeared "possible copyright violation"

I am V.H. Krychevsky´s granddaughter. The only living child of him is my grandmother, who is terminally ill in this moment. I promess then when this very long stressful situation allows me to study to understand the technical aspects of Wikipedia, I will do things as they must be done.

I gave the information to the websites from which I transcribed the text. The websites listed are part of the most important.

I am sorry for not being able to study all the procedure to edit the information according to the rules. I included the websites precisely to give them the credits, although most of them received the information from me.

I am also worried because anyone can eventually give false information. Please tell me what to do, if it is asking all the people whom I gave the posted information their permission. I am sorry, but when I visited Wikipedia and saw the space for my grandfather without information, it was obvious to me to fill it.

My name is Oksana Linde de Ochoa, I live in Venezuela, where Vasyl H. Krychevsky died in 1952.

Again, I am concerned about other people possibility to change facts and give non-real information.


Thank you very much, Oksana

Many people copy text from websites that they did not write and that they do not have permission to post to wikipedia. For that reason, whenever a text seems to be a copy from a website, we suspect a copyright violation. If You have the permission of the authors, or if you in fact were the original author of the text, put a note saying so on the talk page of the article in question. If the facts came from you, and/or are public knowledge, but the exact wording was that of the people who put up the web sites you "transcribed the text" from, then you shoule rewrite the facts into your own words before posting them, and cite the websites as sources. (Please also cite any published books or articles or other proper sources). Facts aren't protected by copyright, but the words in which those facts are expressed are.
It is possible that pople will put up false information, but if they fail to cite sources for it, they can and probably will be challanged and the information taken down again. if the real information has good sources cited, this will make any false information more obvious by contrast. Of course, if there is a true dispute over the facts of the interpretation of the facts, wikipedia cannot take one side or the others, but should report neutrally on the various views invoilved, and what support they have.
If you have any questions about this, or want help, feel free to leave a messag on my talk page and i will do what I can. DES (talk) 16:24, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
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Judge Samuel Alito openly gay or not?

I was referencing Wiki's article about Alito earlier this morning and read a paragraph describing the Judge as having "come out while at Princeton". I later referenced the article again to find this paragraph having been omitted. What gives?

Michael Marra

Those two paragraphs were removed by user:BrokenSegue with the comment "remove gay joke". See this edit made at 13:08 UTC.
The information was added in one edit by an anonymous user without comment in this edit at 13:06 - just two minutes earlier. It seems that this was vandalism and that you were unfortunate enough to read the article in the two minutes it was visible. Thryduulf 14:48, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


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Like Google!

It would be cool if you didn't have to press on the text line when the page is loaded and you want to search for something fast.

Yes, but that might get in the way when you want to use one of the other ways to get to soemthign from the main page. on google, almost everyone is there to use the serch bar. That is not nearly as true here. DES (talk) 17:58, 1 November 2005 (UTC)


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Body Worls (section) The Archer content vandalized?

Can someone with expertise please check out that spot?

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wiki-france

I would like to put forth a complaint about the wikipedia page on "France". The main page is one line of racism! The discussion is filled with a load of racist statements.

I always come to this site for my projects and reports, this time I procrastinated a little too far, and it is due in 15 minutes. But when I come to my most trusted source, the page I want is fileld with Racism. I love france, which is why my report on immigration is on france, but how am I supposed to trust Wikipedia when this page is in such a state.

I suggest something be done about this, You seriously can't leave a page of racism up on such a trusted site! I demand that something be done to those that vandalised the page! ~Ash~

There does seem to have been vandalism on the France article, but it was quickly reverted. You can revert vandalism when you see it, too -- the link describes how. The vandalism on France seems to me to have been largely giberish, not racism, so is there some other artilce you were referring to? or was it the main page of the french wikipedia? DES (talk) 18:34, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
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"beaufort scale"

the Beaufort Scale table is too large to print on a single 8x11 page... needs to be reduced or manually bisected.

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Hebrew "baloons"

To Whome it may concern,

When I checked "Halloween" in Hebrew in your Wikipedia, I found that the "baloons" although they show Hebrew characters, they are mirror like and can not be read properly. So, I thought I will let you know so that you can fix it if you like.

Best,

Merav in Los Angeles

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More stringent prevention of profanities

Because of vandalism (which, i know, can not currently be prevented) people have been able to place profane words on wikipedia articles. Sometimes, these curses are unchecked, and proceed to be posted for long periods of time (before a responsible user notices and removes it). I think that there should be some kind of safeguard for this: If someone edits or creates a page with any profanities in it (d*ck, sh**, bast***, etc.) a link would recognize the word and pop up, asking him/her to provide an explanation for the word's use before the page is posted. I am not a computer-genius or javascript whiz, but it seems like this would be an easy addition to wikipedia, and it would certainly clean up many aspects of the site.

(Of course, profanities WILL sometimes be justified. For instance, "Cr*p = Cr*p is an American-English slang term used to define fecal matter. It is also a word that..." The profanity-checking-program would send this justification to a wikipedia staff member, who would then verify it.)

Does this seem like a good idea to anyone other than me?

-Justin

There really aren't any "staff members" other than volunteer editors dealing with any content issues. Virtually everything on wikipedia is doen by volunteers. I suppsoe such a function could write to a log that people could watch, as a tool for finding vandalism more quickly, but I am dubious if it would have a sufficint effct to be worth the trouble of coding it. The coders are also unpaid volunteers, you know. DES (talk) 18:26, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Ok, it was just a possible idea. Thanks!

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default encyclopedia

Is there a way to allow Wikipedia to be the default encyclopedia in Word and Internet Explorer? --Jstroud08 04:49, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

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login accounts

I need to create a different account in Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikispecies, and all the other Wikimedia sites, it would make sense to consodilate them and allow one account to login on all of them--Jstroud08 05:03, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

See Bug:57 - Single login for all Wikimedia projects. Thryduulf 12:12, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
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Too open and way far from facts


While Wikipedia is an excellent conpcent its way too open and the data loses its integrity. Case in point. Israel and Middle East, India and Pakistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

For instance some set of morans have taken it upon themselves to post that "1 to 5 million Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus lost their lives . . ." no where in the recorded histroy of Pakistan, India, or Britain the death toll is as high as 5 million. As matter of back no where in the world the death toll is that high for anything.

I corrected it - but it gets changed back again. Hence it shows that if you leave everything up for changing than it gets misquoted and mistated. For Wikipedia to be of significant importance to the academics.

Similar things can be spotted of check them frequently on issues as:

Palestine Iraq Halucasut Homosexuality OPEC Gulf War 1 and 2

How about having Editor appointed for pages. Editors who have some level of knowledge on the subject matter or atleast have soom roots tied to the subject matter.

Sometimes articles with significant information appears and then gets removed or re-written by someone else with poor content. That is going one step forward and then two steps backwards.

How about a lock option that once the article is published and finalized its locked and all changes are done to beta which at certain date or maybe after n number of changes gets posted.

Just some suggestions.

The heart and soul of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit. Please take a look at Wikipedia:Replies to common objections for further discussion of this principle. DES (talk) 18:21, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

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you'd best have a look at this

quite funny though


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Mulroney

I don't see any obvious prblem with that page, what iss the issue, please. DES (talk) 18:18, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
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Samuel Alito

To Whom It May Concern,

I just did a search on Samuel Alito. The last sentence of the first paragraph in the "personal life" section reads "Alito's sister, Rosemary, is regarded as one of New Jersey's top employment lawyers and is married to a Negro."

Is this Wikipedia's idea of accurate information? Not only does it not list this "Negro"'s name or any other pertinent information, but the term Negro is clearly outdated.

I will be forwarding this on to others who, I am sure, will take issue with such a description. Shame on you Wikipedia.

RESPONDS

I'm afraid you don't quite understand the concept of wikiedia, it can be edited by ANYONE That unfortunately includes vandals, clowns, or just plain idiots, with that said the majority of the users will correct such disturbance as soon as possible, if not remember that you can always do it yourself :)

[edit]

Swastika on Samuel Alito page

Why is there a sawtika posted with Alito's name underneath? This is an OUTRAGE!!

Gene Grider Huntington Beach, Ca

That appers to have been vandalism, quickly reverted. This is a very active article at present, with over 250 edits in the last 24 hours. Some of the are celarly by vandals, but particualrly on so actively edited an article, the vandalism is typically reverted quite promptly. if you see vanadalism on any wikipedia articel in future, Wikipedia:revert explains how to revert it. DES (talk) 20:19, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
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Wiki not sensitive to timezones


On the lead page was a blurb on Selected anniversaries November 1:

Unfortunately we are already in Nov 2nd due to the dateline.

So we only ever get anniversaries for yesterday ...... useful

There is a timezone prefernce for display of some (but not all) timestamps, in particualr those on watchlists and user contribution lists. But there is no easy way to have a different main page for people in different timezones. For such purposes wikipedia operates on UTC time. DES (talk) 22:01, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
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want to report vandalism

hi, the process outlined on your website for reporting vandals is much too complicated. I don't want to spend time figuring out how to do it; I just want to bring it to someone's attention.

here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague

end of the "infection/transportation" section near beginning of page. reads: "FUCK YOU MR. HILL!" (preceding unsigned comment by 71.195.169.59 (talk • contribs) )

The quickest method of dealing with vandalism is to revert it yourself. Wikipedia:Revert offers instructions. Evil Monkey∴Hello 04:51, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
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incorrect and slanderous information

I just did a search on my name Brian Volmer

According to you I am a stock swindler. That is slander. In addition you have my ex wife Lisa Newman as a co stock swindler. Double slander. She has never purchased nor knows anything about Stocks.

The Fact is a got sued by the SEC for Violation 10B. If you read what Violation 10B is has nothing to do with stock swindling.

It would be benificial for both parties Myself and who ever holds the liablity for this Wikipedia Encyclopedia.

Sincerely

Brian Volmer bvolmer483@aol.com (preceding unsigned comment by 70.95.29.206 (talk • contribs) )

The article at Brian Volmer was deleted after on 6 September after an articles for deletion debate (see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Brian Volmer). The version (which I'm guessing is found here) of the article you are reading was created by an anonymous contributor on 25 June. On 28 August, it was modified to read that you were:
"sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and, in the District Court for the Central District of California in 2000, were found liable for touting the stock of Cetacean Industries and Juina Mining Company without disclosing compensation they received from the issuer for doing so".
You may wish to contact sites that are mirroring Wikipedia's content and still have the erroneous versions of the article available. Evil Monkey∴Hello 04:47, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
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GREAT JOB!!!

hello to the makers, i'm a high school student in australia, and i found this site exeptionally good for assignments, i used to always stress myself because i could not find any information on the internet. But then, i found wikipedia; which has so far helped me imensely with both of my last two assignments. THANKYOU on behalf of every person, especially me, for providing this BRILLIANT online encyclopedia.

[edit]

percent of lead on galvanizing coating!!

These sorts of questions belong at the Wikipedia:Reference desk. However, the answer you are most likely to get there is - look at the Galvanization article. Thryduulf 09:58, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
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article content

i was browsing through the listed vegetable blurbs/articles you have posted. i was irritated that you did not have information about vegetables that are not grown in the US, but there is too many to list. if you anticipate that readers will help you fill the blank spaces with information, i would highly recommend that you at least, post a picture or pictures of that item, event, person, etc. thank you for your consideration (preceding unsigned article by 69.113.156.173 2005-11-02 11:08:40 (UTC))

Us and them thinking doesn't work with Wikipedia. Everything is added by readers and the choice of what should be included is made by readers (administrators - I'm not one - are just volunteers as well).
Also, posting pictures is generally more work than writing a textual stub article, because one has to find a picture that is copyright compatible, which in many cases means taking the picture yourself.
You don't need to do much to start an article, e.g. you could have started the Carrot article with something like this (although one would hope that you could do better):
The '''carrot''' is a [[root vegetable]], typically orange or white in colour with a woody texture. The edible part of a carrot is a [[taproot]].
{{vegetable-stub}}
[[Category:Root vegetables]]
--David Woolley 13:11, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
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Punjab

Hello, this article appears to have been tampered with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjab_region

I don't think this is the right place to report it, but I've already wasted ten minutes looking.

[edit]

Wikipedia in print

I read the CNN.com article Wikipedia May Go To Print" (CNN.com 11/2/05), which briefly describes the hopes and goals of the Wikipedia administrators to provide written and multimedia versions of this resource for use beyond the broadband connection. Both as a student and after graduating, I use Wikipedia as a resource and springboard for discussion, as well as a place to find links between different threads of knowledge and thinking. I find, however, that I need to verify information and facts against other references. The site, as I understand it, is not designed to be pure fact-based resource, but rather a collection of what people know - centralizing the knowledge and making it accessible. The site's disclaimer clearly states that there is no peer review of material or guarantee of validity, which I read to mean, no verification that any information posted on the site is absolutely correct. I am curious how Wikipedia can be printed as a scholarly resource without assurance that the infomation is true. Is there a plan to verify any information put into print, or is everything on the entire site regardless of validity going to be printed?

All articles will go through a verification process--IF this print edition is ever produced.

lots of issues | leave me a message 02:40, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

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Pearl Harbor Debate ...

I voted to delete this topic completely because it does not fulfill the spirit of Wikipedia. Errors of fact were pointed to, with multiple citations to correct material.

These have all be redrawn from the discussion - as things "Pearl Harbor" only do.

This tarnishes the free and open flow of information and inhibits the sharing of perspectives and insights - pro and con. On this topic there are no totally accepted and objective experts.

This is not goodness for the Wikipedia community overall.

Regards,

jamaksin

[edit]

Regional Spelling Variations

If Wikipedia as a whole can accept both American English and British English spelling, why do we have to suffer revision wars for individual articles that have to be all one way or the other? Why not just accept both variants in the same article? Gzuckier 17:39, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

That would look unprofessional. Can you imagine (the admittedly contrived) a sentence that read "The colour of a carrot is orange, while the color of lettuce is green". Evil Monkey∴Hello 20:17, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
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Profanity showing on Sandbox page footer

it's not a big deal to me. just wanted to alert staff. click on the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox under the project tab there is a short phrase "Eat _ _ _ _ Snape" on the form footer.

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Editing the article.

Why there is Edit option for the articles(or sections)? I found this site is good compared to others. But providing edit feature to public is not a good practice. Please remove this option as this site contains valuable informaion. (preceding unsigned comment by 192.147.56.6 (talk • contribs) )

The whole objective of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit. You may want to have a read of our welcome page. And vandalising this page (as you did with this edit) is not acceptable behaviour. Evil Monkey∴Hello 21:56, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Respond to Google Answers

I am just curious if you might look into a service similar to Google Answers. You have a volunteer-drive reference section or Reference Desk, but speaking as a Reference Librarian, you could/would get skilled/expert researchers/professionals interested in earing extra coin and get people interested in paying to get assured quality answers; and you could compete head-on with Google. And God knows, you've already got a head start on the content generation portion...

We have a similar "service" going on at the Wikipedia:Reference desk. And it's free to boot! -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 22:26, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
The person above referd to the reference desk. The actual answer is that wikipedi is not a platform for organizing people to provide commercial services, for reference or anything else. Taht is why why do not have a for-pay version of the reference desk as suggested. DES (talk) 23:01, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
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Biased page

Live in Chicago (Jeff Buckley)

The Article is extremely biased. (preceding unsigned comment by 82.136.233.230 2005-11-02 22:25:07 (UTC))

In that case:
  1. Write an explanation of why you think it is biassed, on its talk page; then
  2. Insert {{NPOV}} on the first line of the article itself.
Or, simply rewrite it in a neutral tone, quoting both sides of any disputes and quoting sources for all facts.
--David Woolley 22:59, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
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Intact Dilation and Extraction (ID&E)

My complaint is your obvious liberal bias towards abortion particularly ID&E. First of all, you don't even explain in clear terms what it is - a partial birth abortion. You're afraid to. You know full well the child is literally inches from being born with only the head inside the mother. Then the skull is pierced, the brains sucked out, and the full-term child thrown away like so much garbage. You haven't got the guts to say that - the truth - do you? Instead you refer to it as a "small subsection of IDX cases...used as an illustration and point of protest" and "the procedure has an extremely low rate of usage"

You're not a source of information - you're a source of liberal bilge!! (preceding unsigned article by [[User:65.32.133.153 |]] 2005-11-02 23:49:09 (UTC))

Please see the preceding answer, although, if you follow the edit it yourself option in your current mood, you can expect an edit war.
However, if you mean the Intact dilation and extraction article, in my view that article is quite balanced. If there is another article on the subject (there isn't one under your title), then there will be a need to merge them or remove the duplicate entirely.
Incidentally, if you consider the basic non-commercial nature of Wikipedia, it is maybe not too surprising that it attracts a certain political viewpoint.
Also note that the instructions at the top of this, complaints page, indicate that you should not use it to complain about individual articles.
--User:David Woolley 21:48, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
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should check out

I was reading about globalization and under the history part the is a paragraph and at the end it says "yohan is gay". you just might want to take it out...yohan might be offended, or others might be offended, i don't know. Just thought you should know.

The term "liberalization" came to mean the combination of laissez-faire economic theory with the removal of barriers to the movement of goods. This led to the increasing specialization of nations in exports, and the pressure to end protective tariffs and other barriers to trade. The period of the gold standard and liberalization of the 19th century is often called "The First Era of Globalization". Based on the Pax Britannica and the exchange of goods in currencies pegged to specie, this era grew along with industrialization. The theoretical basis was Ricardo's work on Comparative advantage and Say's Law of General equilibrium. In essence, it was argued that nations would trade effectively, and that any temporary disruptions in supply or demand would correct themselves automatically. The institution of the gold standard came in steps in major industrialized nations between approximately 1850 and 1880, though exactly when various nations were truly on the gold standard is a matter of a great deal of contentious debate.Yohan is gay.

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One day ahead

Wikipedia is one day ahead of the calendar day. Something should be done to fix the problem. That way users wouldn't get confused. I hope this touches a chord with the people at Wikipedia. (preceding unsigned comment by 72.225.222.45 (talk • contribs) )

Wikipedia operates on UTC, which for means for me that it is actually half a day behind (New Zealand is UTC+12). Wikipedia is an international project with users all over the world. Evil Monkey∴Hello 05:03, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Vandalism

I have never encountered this on Wikipedia before and I am quite offended by it. I was looking at the article on the American Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution) and under 'America after the war' I found this comment...Hoes wanna front with me on my johnson. Would you please look into fixing this. Thank you. (preceding unsigned comment by 67.1.140.191 (talk • contribs) )

You have encountered some vandalism. This is an unfortunate side effect of having something that anyone can edit. Subsequent to you reading the article it has been removed. Evil Monkey∴Hello 05:03, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
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What the hell? I want to know about Adolf Hitler, not a guy having sex with his mother!

Everybody can have their own say; i believe in freedom of speech, but if you're going to talk about having sex with your own mother, could you at least post it under a heading that is related to that? I typed in Adolf Hitler because i wanted to read about Adolf Hitler, NOT your sick mind. Thankyou. (preceding unsigned comment by 60.230.248.19 (talk • contribs) )

It appears what you encountered was vandalism to the article. Vandalism is an unfortunate side effect of having a site that anyone can edit. For high-profile articles such instances are usually reverted very quickly. Evil Monkey∴Hello 08:11, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
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Comment

Sorry, I didn't know where else to write this to you folks. I just really wanted to thank you very much for the info that you provide. I am currently in paramedic school in Southern California and your user-friendly website has provide me an ample amt of clarification of several topics that the instructors attempt to discuss in class. I greatly appreciate the service & additional info (it really compliments & clarifies much of the pathophysiological processes, drugs & their interactions within the body, & some diseases covered in class). I'm not very proficient in using the computer either & this website is very easy to understand & info is very easily accessible, even to folks like me!

Thank you. lots of issues | leave me a message 02:44, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

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Freedom with articles

Hello,

I like the way that Wikipedia is designed, the fact that people can post their articles for all to see. A good deal of information in your databases are accurate and useful. However, I have a big problem with idiots abusing this right to post information. They modify legitimate articles to ruin them, and delete important content. Most importantly, they post idiotic articles: check your database for the recently added article: Islam.

I suggest that you have a delay between when a change has been made and when they are posted, so that the changes can be reviewed. More importantly, articles should only be allowed to changed and created by registered people. If you do not agree with this, the best thing you could do is not allow changes to the original article to be made. Hence, when people compain about stupid changes to good article, the original article can be restored.

Thank you.

The History tab gives access to all back versions and the correct way for a non-admin to revert vandalism is to find the last clean back version and do a null edit (adding a suitable edit summary).
--David Woolley 17:18, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


[edit]

Report of Vandalism

TWIMC,

I understand the information on your site is open to editing and that it's nearly impossible to police each entry effectively however, when I sought information on the, "Twins Paradox" recently, I was soreley dissappointed in the lack of security provided on your site...

Rife with profanity and inanity the page regarding the "Twins Paradox" was essentially unreadable. Request your administrator "clean" the page and return it to the legitimate users in a format suitable for learning and discussion. Thanks and keep up the great work.

Cheers HJ (preceding unsigned comment by 134.205.60.86 (talk • contribs) )

As you say, Wikipedia allowed anyone to edit. And although we do have administrators, they actually have no authority over other editors beyond enforcing community decided policy. If you encountered vandalism, you could always have a go at reverting it yourself. Evil Monkey∴Hello 18:54, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
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I am a portuguese muslim

but why is it that you refer to india and pakistan having muslims but why is it you never mention bangladesh, were they not in fact regarded as east pakistan before their independence in 1971? i have very close friends from all 3 countries and more, india, pakistan and bangladesh but why is bangladesh never recognised? why is it that now that pakistan are in this terrible tragedy yet you all forget the famine, flood and poverty that bangladesh was once ridden with, did any of us give to bangladesh then? its terrible what's happened in pakistan and wouldn't wish this on anyone, but it seems that SOME of us forget that although we all are trying to help pakistan in whatever way we can, next time another nation is in need of help, we should be less critical and prejudiced against other countries that clearly have suffered time and time again. pakistan isn't the only country that has muslims!

82.133.125.73 19:07, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. --cesarb 21:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
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Are articles being deleted as fast as they're being created?

I just took a look at the "recent changes" page and found some newly-created articles that are very weirdly-written, esoteric, and useless to the average reader. Is this what Wikipedia prides itself in, to create more than 1,500 new articles a day, most of which are one-paragraph, rambling sentences about esoteric subjects? Do your administrators actively dump as many articles as are created? Respectfully yours, Yoninah 19:29, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, yes, a large amount of these are dumped. You can see the other side of the activity in the deletion log. See also the Criteria for speedy deletion for more information. --cesarb 21:09, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
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Joseph Allen Wood Deletion

I am new to Wikipedia, and I am awestruck by it's scope and breadth. There is nothing new under the sun, but I found a way to deceive myself for a long while. Wikipedia is a great and noble effort, to document all facets of worldly knowledge, and ambitious as it is--it does not deserve free passes from mistakes.

I am 27 years old, and a struggling student of history, art, and writing. I attempted to create a page that I believe is a worthy and accurate reflection of the truth, with no bias one way or the other.

In the process of trying to properly edit and improve upon my work, several others became what I call nasty--in their intent and execution of first trying to merely help in the editing process, and then--downright abusive of their priveledges over a newcomer.

This concerns a page entitled "Joseph Allen Wood."

I did not see what content was inaccurate, offensive, speculative, non-factual, or not neutral within the article.

I was on the road to trying to solve this when I got "tag-teamed by a few of your community who were rude in their slight comments and in their attempt to simply revert my positive changes and edits, and to ultimately delete my material.

Please read the article, the discussion of deletion record, and the talk of the members and myself.

I made the rookie mistake of taking the bait for vandalism and sockpuppetry, before understanding your poicies here concerning editing others work.

I hope that it is understood that I simply wanted to make an article worthy of wiki's level, and I feel that a few of your elder members treated me unfairly and violated the laws of common decency and aid to a younger, more green newbie.

I am thankful to one member who shines brightly though, and the name I believe is ulayiti. That member I found to be attentive, understanding, and extremely courteous.

Thank you for your time.

Joe Allen Wood

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Pennacook Natives

Aquaney
My name is Kunnaway. I'm a pennacook Native American and live in New Hampshire. I have just read what you had on here about the Pennacook indians of the Merrimack Valley. You only had certain things in here right. First of all the Pennacook people were once a Nation of all of New Hampshire, and we are not Abenaki's. We were a big part of New Hampshire history. After the Wassie Major Waldon wiped out our village of woman, children, and old people. Then when our Chief came back from a hunting trip and seen what had happened he went to Cocheko which is now Dover, NH. and wiped out the whole Garrision. Then the Mass. Bay Colonies set more of there armys to wipe us out that is when we were chased into Canada where we joined the Cowassuck Band of Abenaki's on the St.Francis called Odanaka. Now this is just a little of what I know but I don't know where you got your informatin but you need to check it out before putting it down on paper. I also have a Map showing that the Pennacook held all of New Hampshire so you need to put the Pennacook's down as part of the Eastern Woodland Natives.
Kunnaway (Youngbear)
Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. --cesarb 13:11, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
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Search box keyboard shortcut: Infuriating!

Wikipedia's usurpation of the ALT-F keyboard shortcut is incredibly irritating.

Some of us actually use the standard interface conventions to navigate, and it is simply terrible form for a web page -- a web page! -- to abscond with standard UI objects. Given that the File menu is one of the near-universal UI objects, taking over its keyboard shortcut is nothing short of arrogance.

ALT-F is particularly useful when using a tabbed browser to close the current tab. (i.e. ALT-F,C) This is far easier to do with the left hand than CTRL-W. My usual practice is to have the mouse in the right hand, using CTRL-click to open new tabs to links of interest, and use ALT-F,C to close any tab on demand. But no, not with Wikipedia!

I beg you ... have some humility, and leave the standard UI alone!

  • I entirely and absolutely agree. Wikipedia's hijacking of standard shortcut key combinations is a total pain and should be removed immediately - Matt.
[edit]

foul language in an article

My class has been researching Marco Polo and printed out your article only to find several added sentences with repeated use of the "F" word. I was appalled. Please look into this.

[edit]

vandalism of Medal of Honor

The word HONOR has been renamed PANTYHOSE all over the article. Please fix this

[edit]

Editing and more information

If anyone else can edit the 'Come Together Now' article, that's fine. Perhaps someone can expand the 'When the Saints Go Marching In' article. It would be great if anyone can tell me and other users what the song "One" from 'A Chorus Line' is about. If anything can be done in response, that would be great.

      Thanks for expanding the 'When the Saints Go Marching In' article. Now
      if someone were to explain what the song "One" from 'A Chorus Line' is
      about, I, like many other Wikipedia users, would really appreciate it.
      Plus, anyone can feel free to do some editing to the 'Come Together Now'
      article.
[edit]

Vandalism in "Cheese" article in featured section

Please note that your featured article on cheese contained a wholly inappropriate bit of juvenile defacement which was neither amusing nor becoming an group that prides itself on encyclopedia writing. Look at the last line in this paragraph.


From the Middle East, basic cheesemaking found its way into Europe, where cooler climates meant less aggressive salting was needed for preservation. With moderate salt and acidity, the cheese became a suitable environment for a variety of beneficial microbes and molds, which are what give aged cheeses their pronounced and interesting flavors. Although cheese is very good tasting, cheese in America actually comes from George Bush's butt.


A cursory look around the article pages did not reveal to me how I could go about editing that out of the story.

This sort of thing, especially in a featured peer-reviewed article, looks very bad for you.

Please don't just try editing it out; you are likely to miss part of the vandalism, which makes it more difficult to correct later. For a feature article, the vandalism is likely to be spotted and fixed quickly, but in general, you should go to the History tab, find the version before the vandalism, making sure that there were no legitimate changes after it, select it, select the edit tab, ignore the warning about an old version, add a suitable edit summary and save it without changing the text.
If there were legitimate changes, you need to use compare versions to either find out what the vandalism was, and remove that, or to find out what the legitimate changes were, and then re-apply them to the un-vandalised version.
See also: Wikipedia:Revert
--David Woolley 13:21, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

PAN AM 103 LOCKERBIE

Your article on the Lockerbie airliner bombing references the fact that there was possibly a fifth intelligence officer scheduled to be on the flight. I was the fifth intelligence officer scheduled for the flight. At the time I was serving as the Chief of Intelligence Production for the 1st Armored Division which was based in Germany. I changed my flight for reasons I will not go into in this particular forum. Needless to say it was a traumatic event for everyone associated with that flight and I wish the families that lost members on it my best. Edward Anthony Chesky Jr., former Major United States Army Military Intelligence Corps.

[edit]

Canada flag

article---> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada I just looked at this article and I saw what you called the .jpg file for canadas flag... "the flag of assholes" I was disgusted with this please change the file name or atleast make the picture load so you dont look like prejudiced jerks

I just removed some random obscenities from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Gatling added the 1st Nov.

I know that it is a inherent problem in a freely editable resource, but adding a simple filter on obscene words would stop this kind of silly jokes.

Cheers, Michal Korzycki

[edit]

Proper English

I am wild about your site and think it is every educational for me. I am little puzzled by toady's article about cheese. "cheeses" is not a grammitcally correct word. Cheese is an exception in the English Language and should not take on an "s" in order to be plural. This is also true for other words such as moose and luggage.

Thank you for your time.

  • "Cheese" often functions as a non-countable noun (or "mass noun") which doesn't take a plural. However "cheeses" is perfectly good English when you are talking about varieties of cheese (e.g. "English cheeses") or a number of separate blocks of cheese (e.g. "a pile of big round cheeses").
[edit]

Entry Authorship

As Wikipedia's entries are updated fairly often, I suggest to follow the tradition of many book encoclaepedia, which is to mention the original date of publication of the entry and those of their updates. In case, the text is not authored by Wikipedia themselves, the name and function of the author would also be appropriate.

With best regards Herward Hencke info@certuspersonality.com

All this is required by the GFDL. Wikipedia achieves this by means of the History tab, but in my view it isn't fully GFDL compliant, and full compliance would make pages unwieldy.
--David Woolley 10:09, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Picture on the front page

Some one has hijacked you and placed a picture of a penis - the mouse over of which calls it the Israeli Prime Minister - please attend to right away!

please take down the offensive graphic in the front page article about rabin!

thanks much

[edit]

WASP


Our group, Resisting Defamation, just reviewed your definition of "WASP" and we were appalled at the approval you show toward this long-time instrumentality of insult and denigration. In fact, almost the entire article reeks of hatred toward Americans of English ancestry.

We have published our own listing of words calculated to disparage and slap Americans of European origins, and you can find it at:

www.ResistingDefamation.org

Click on link for "Slurs."

Bo Sears for Resisting Defamation. (preceding unsigned comment by 71.131.232.49 (talk • contribs) )

If you have problems with the content of a specific article you should leave a message on the talk page for that article, in this case Talk:WASP. Wikipedia:General complaints is "not intended for reporting errors regarding content" as it says at the top. Evil Monkey∴Hello 21:13, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

misspell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buccaneers

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. DES (talk) 17:16, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Icon in the History of Buffalo New York


Hello - this is not so much a complaint but I just think an oversite. I have just discovered this site and someone may or may not have mentioned this to you before. The History of Buffalo, New York in the Entertainment section makes no mention of the musical genius of Rick James - Buffalo native. Can you update your site to include him?

He put the Buffalo on the map with "SuperFreak, Fire & Desire" with Tina Marie and countless other hits.

Thanks!!

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. DES (talk) 19:59, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Burlington Zephyr

Please go tio your Burlington Zephyr article and correct the spelling of Zephyr!

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. DES (talk) 19:57, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Boil type acne

I am have huge boil sized zits/bumps/pimples? under my neck area under my chin that never come to a head. They are under the skin and I get them when I eat avacados I think. Could I be getting them from avacados or my boyfriend's steroid usage? I don't do steroids, but he does a lot and we are intimate.

for factual questions go to the reference desk. But for medical advise it is better to see a doctor. Relying on the advice given on a web site by soemone who has never seen you and may have no medical knowledge at all is not IMO wise. DES (talk) 19:56, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Content on John F Kramer, the first prohibition officer in 1920

Wikipedia,

I was using your site for research on a coursework paper for GCSE History and i was unable to find any information on John F Kramer, the first prohibition officer in 1920 during the Prohibition, from beginning and until it ended. I knew who he was and what he did but i wanted more information about him and, unfortunately, i couldn't find anything. I'm not sure where you could find information on him as i need it within the next day or so, please could you get back to me when you have added him to your databases at tommi2k@hotmail.com, i'm not sure if i should have put this on this page but i musttell you in some way, sorry if it isn't the place i should have put it.

Thank you for your time, Thomas (preceding unsigned article by 80.44.153.229 2005-11-04 20:43:40 (UTC))

You seem to assume that there is some permanent staff that creates articles. There isn't. Everything is written by volunteers. To some extent what get written will depend on personal interests, but there will be people who try to get completeness in particular subject areas.
I did a Google search[10] and there isn't really much on Commissioner Kramer, although there is enough from quality sources, e.g. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/ALLEN/ch10.html to make it likely that an article would pass the notability test, but probably not enough to write more than a stub article.
I think any article is going to have to rely on records that are not online, which will make it expensive to gather the information from verfiable sources, which I suspect you've already discovered.
Rather than use Wikipedia for your research, in this case, could I suggest that you put your research into Wikipedia. Don't be confused about the "no original research" rule. That means that you mustn't make your own deductions, it doesn't stop you from searching for source material.
If you hope to have input from Wikipedia, you could add him to the requested articles list, or you could write your own stub article, as long as you have enough material to write 4 or 5 lines which make it clear why the person is historically important. If others are interested, they will expand the article, and if you create yourself a proper user account, changes will be reported on your watchlist.
--David Woolley 22:11, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

mother

if you look up the webpage for "mother" it has the comment at the begining that, "mothers like having sex"

i do not think it should be there.

You have encountered some vandalism. It has been removed. Evil Monkey∴Hello 05:38, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

cochise

your picture of cochise is wrong. there is no known photo of cochise. your picture is of eskiminzin, chief of the aravaipa apaches.that is a very well known fact. (preceding unsigned article by 136.242.189.105 2005-11-05 10:42:27 (UTC))

The correct place to make such comments is on the article's talk page, and on the Images's.
However I note that there was a previous, similar, dispute about such an image and the previous image[11] was removed pending resolution. There has been no resolution and the current, different, image was added without comment, by Asarelah on [2005-10-05].
The image description page for the previous image did identify the subject as Chatto, and gave proper copyright and partial provenance information. The new image gives no copyright or provenance, therefore should be rejected, although it might reasonably be assumed that it out of copyright. The earlier image is now orphaned, and therefore ought to be removed or re-submitted to Commons. At the very least it ought to be renamed.
There is no Wikipedia entry for Eskiminzin and only two articles reference him, so, from a Wikipedia point of view he is not well known. However, if the fact is well known, you should be able to cite a reference source that confirms that. There is no citation for the current picture, so it is a very low quality source.
You might also want to consider starting the article on Eskiminzin.
If I get time, today, I will tag the new image's lack of copyright status. It's probably better if you tag it as of disputed accuracy. Someone can fix the tag if you get it wrong, but you need to write the talk page entry, as I have no knowledge of who is correct.
--David Woolley 11:41, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

kammerlader

on the featured article today on 'kammerlader' a norwegian rifle, there appears to be a picture of a tumescent penis. just thought you ought to know.

[edit]

ISLAM PAGE

I AM A HUGE FAN OF YOUR SITE.

please visit the Islam page and address the problem there thank you. Lawrence M. Archer

lawmarch12480@yahoo.com

We fix the vandalism almost as fast as it happens; you probably loaded the page right after it was vandalised. Islam is both frequently vandalised, and closely watched, so if this happens again, just wait a couple minutes and load it again. Best wishes, Antandrus (talk) 03:58, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Mary Shelley

Could someone with better expertise determine whether this is fair use of Wikipedia content? [12] Click the link to the Mary Shelley Bio and compare to the Wikipedia article. This appears to be a direct uncredited copying of the Wikipedia article from about six months ago, with the other site claiming copyright for the material. The Wikipedia articles for Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont, and Dr. John Polydori also appear on that site with no Wikipedia credit and that site's copyright. Durova 05:43, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

As violations go, it is quite mild. It does have a GFDL licence notice (in the wrong place for the GFDL, but in the same place as used by Wikipedia). However it is written in Wikipedia style, so almost certainly comes from there, but doesn't cite Wikipedia, which, to me, is fairly clearly required by the de facto Wikipedia licence.
In my view, Wikipedia is far from GFDL compliant (discussed further on a Wikipedia:Help_desk archive); making WIkipedia compliant, would, amongst other things, require having full lists of copyright owners before the text of the article, and including the full History and GFDL sections every time.
The other article is also missing the History and GNU Free Documentation Licence sections (which are at least available via links on Wikipedia). Because it doesn't have the History, it doesn't have all the other copyright notices (which are only implicit and in the wrong place in Wikipedia, but in default of cut and paste between articles, or importing GFDL from other sources, are there).
I've provided a link that undoes the abuse of an invalid frameset for hiding the fact that the true web site is an AOL member site and allows the domain name providing company to sell a vanity domain without providing any web space. As you have discovered, it makes linking to individual web resources rather difficult for non-technical users.
--David Woolley 09:22, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Please stop using very rare unicode characters in text when there is a more common equivalent

I often see little squares instead of characters in the text in Wikipedia - and it is very very irritating as it means the text cannot be read.

The reason appears to be that people are using very rare unicode characters that my browser (IE6 in WInMe) does not support, despite my downloading and installing a 14MB unicode font.

People may perhaps be doing this unwittingly by using Word to compose the text.

There is a long discussion about this at this MSVP site-http://www.aumha.net/viewtopic.php?t=9903&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

The example I mentioned in that thread was that some very obscure unicode character had been used instead of just using "-".

This morning for example on the home page of Wikipedia I saw the name of the polish composer as Witold Lutos"little square"awski. When I copied that text into Wordpad it seems that "%C5%82" had been used instead of just a plain and simple "l". Why????

Please could Wikipedia set style guidlines that ban these very obscure unicode characters where a more common character will do the job just as well? Perhaps some computer program that goes through the text and that replaces these obscure characters with their more common eqivalents is needed.

While this might not be a problem for people using WinXP, for those of us using older computers (and mine is only 2-3 years old) then it is a great problem.

It would also make things difficult for people in the 3rd. world who may be trying to access the internet on old computers.

Thanks.

IE is known to have broken font handling. Basically, it should search all the available fonts if the current preferred font doesn't have the character, but it doesn't do so. The Mozilla family generally do do so.
In the case of maths, properly marked up wiki text should adapt to your user preferences, using, for example, GIF images or giving the, in GFDL terms, transparent form of the equation, if you select the right options in your preferences. The page mentioned on your forum certainly is using images for the formulae in its present version, with the right preferences set.
For Polish names, the correct thing to do is to use the correct spelling. As you haven't copied and linked the original text, it is going to be awkward to be sure which character was used, but it is almost certain that you do have the character and it is IE's poor font handling that is causing you problems.....It's Witold Lutosławski which uses Unicode character U+0142, LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH STROKE, the only near alternative for which is U+019A, LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH BAR. U+006C, LATIN SMALL LETTER L, is not an acceptable alternative, according to the Unicode standard.
Note, with a browser that has proper font handling, you shouldn't need a full Unicode font for that.
I'd normally be sympathetic with the broad sense accessibility argument, but if someone had a very low spec system they would be using the text mode browser, Lynx, which understands the character perfectly, and in ASCII approximation mode, displays:
Witold Lutosl/awski
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from [2]Witold Lutoslavski)
Jump to: [3]navigation, [4]search
[5]Witold Lutosl/awski at his home. Courtesy of W. Pniewski
and L. Kowalski [1].
[6]Enlarge
Witold Lutosl/awski at his home. Courtesy of W. Pniewski and
L. Kowalski [7][1].
Witold Lutosl/awski ([8]January 25, [9]1913 - [10]February
If they could afford to run a GUI, then they way to cut costs is to use Linux, where the browsers will handle the fonts properly.
-- David Woolley 14:20, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

To clarify, the letter you are not seeing is not a plain l (L) but "l with a stroke" ł (Ł), which is "a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka (Latin Belarusian), and Navajo alphabets." Thryduulf 14:31, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit]

Info> new domain name for ANGE (french band)

Hello,

the official Web site of the Ange group changes his domain name and becomes www.angemusic.com.

Thanks for agreeing to update your site consequently...

Dominique webmaster@angemusic.com

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. --cesarb 21:30, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Proximity Search

Hi, I think it would be a great thing to have a 'proximity search' option in WP's engine, as in Google. (Or do we have to content with the "site:en.wikipedia.com" expedient?) Is that possible?

Nivaca 19:20, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

How many thousands of dollars are you going to donate to add the hardware and develop the software needed? Remember that Google is a multibillion dollar company that specialises in search engines. --David Woolley 22:49, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

disrespect

that fact that any one cxan edit is good but it can get out of hand that wikipedia search of SAINT is clearly dispected and changed due to the anyone can edit policy i am asking that edited pages may not have incorrect, false,disrecpectful and offensive entries. plz change it

thanks

[edit]

wrong interpretation of the Chinese translation of Jewish people

In your webpage below, there is a huge mistake regarding your interpretation of the Chinese term for Jewish people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_in_China

"Name The contemporary term for Jews in use among Chinese today is Youtai (Chinese: 犹太人; pinyin: Yóutài Rén) in Mandarin Chinese. This is sometimes thought to be derogatory because of the use of a character containing the animal (dog) radical. "

MY COMMENTS: the Chinese character for DOG is 犬 (pinyin: Quan), not 太(which is the "tai" in the Chinese term for 犹太人(pinyin: Yóutài Rén. 太means peace, gradeur, immense, and absolutely having NOTHING to do with the animal dog). Please verify this with any staff of yours that has basic Chinese character knowledge.

This is not a small typo, as this is may have left readers the wrong impression of Chinese people, which, ironically, are the few people in the world that place high regards on the Jews, for their extraordinary intellectual capacity, their shrewdness in business, and the amount of artists they produced for the world.

So, please make sure you correct this asap.

Thanks,

Hannah Zhang Los Angeles (preceding unsigned comment by Clare9643 (talk • contribs) )

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome.
However, in this case the context of the quote made it clear that the DOG association was due to the presence of the animal radical, and the only character with an animal radical is 犹, which actually doesn't have an animal type meaning.
Unfortunately the article lacks proper citations, a common problem, so it's not possible for me to quickly verify this. If you do correct it, please take the trouble to add a proper citation for the fact. Please note though, that the electronic version of the Concise Oxford Chinese dictionary gives Judaism as the definition of 犹太 and it is also a known word to the Windows input method editor.
--David Woolley 13:49, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
On further examination, there is a citation, it just isn't attached to the point of reference. On a quick scan, that citation doesn't give the specific interpretation of the problem, but it might be worth checking the other references for the article. It is also seems to be a secondary source which has incorrectly assumed that the simplified version is a different word from the traditional form, but I suspect that error isn't in the primary source.
--David Woolley 14:15, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Links to people with the same name

There are some pages where, if you click on a link which is a person's name, you are taken to the entry of a different person with the same name, eg I was looking at the entry "Lancing College", clicked on the name of the headmaster "Richard Biggs" but was taken to an entry for an American comedian called Richard Biggs instead. The same thing has happened for other names as well. (preceding unsigned comment by 220.111.61.226 (talk • contribs) 02:22, November 7, 2005 (UTC))

Be bold. Fix it. Start a article called Richard Biggs (educator). Then put the following text at the top of the existing Richard Biggs article:

:''This article is about an American actor. For the educator of the same name, see [[Richard Biggs (educator)]]''
That is what wikipedia is all about. --Rogerd 07:45, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit]

Isnt it about time this huge page was split up into smaller sections?

I have several times tried to view this page to see if there is any reply to my complaint 317, but despite trying several times and using a download manager I've only been able to view up to complaint 159 and no futher.

Perhaps this page should be split into batches of 100. I do not have the know-how to do this myself.

Thanks.

I am working on archiving the older sections. DES (talk) 20:15, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Mariana Trench...which is in error?

On your site you say that the Trench has a maximum depth of 35,795 ft. But later in the article, "In an unprecedented dive, the U.S. Navy bathyscaphe Trieste reached the bottom at 1:06 pm on January 23, 1960 with U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard. Iron shot was used for ballast, with gasoline for buoyancy. The onboard systems indicated a depth of 37,800 ft (11,521 m), but this was later revised to 35,813 ft (10,916 m)" I wasn't a math major..but if the Trieste went to 35,813...that would seem to be deeper than 35,795. So which figure is in error?

This would be better mentioned at Talk:Mariana trench. That is the best way to handle any posible error or problem in a specific article: mention it on that article's talk page. DES (talk) 18:03, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

psychiatry

In defining psychiatry care, Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners were listed as the only nurses to provide psychiatric care & prescribe medication. This is an error. Another type of APN that can also provide psychiatric care (including prescribing medication) is the psychiatric & mental health Clinical Nurse Specialist.

Lori Lewis, APN Psychiatric Clinical Nurse Specialist <email removed> (preceding unsigned comment by 216.112.144.190 (talk • contribs) )

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. If for some reason you don't feel comfortable editing an article directly, then makre a commetn or suggestion on the talk page of the articel invvolved. Get to this by clicking the "Discussion" tab at the top of the page where the artilce is displayed. Every articel has its own talk page. DES (talk) 20:08, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Please also bear in mind that Wikipedia is not an American Encyclopedia, it is a world encyclopedia. The various classes and responsiblities of staff will vary from country to country. If you are referring to the Psychiatry article, the original introduction does seem to have been written with a US bias. -- David Woolley 22:39, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Need font advice, plus where has complaint 317 gone?

I see that my complaint number 317 about people using very rare unicode fonts where more common equivalents exist has disapeared without explaination, plus many other peoples complaints also as if the very long list had just been truncated.

Although I have now seen this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_complaints_%28resolved%29#Undefined_Math_symbols about maths symbol fonts, I would like to ask:

Can Wikipedia please give advice about what unicode fonts to install and where to get them from?

I cannot be the only person who is sick of seeing Wikipedia pages peppered with little squares instead of readable characters.

An MVP has said that he does not know of any font that covers all the unicode character set, yet Wikipedia seems to expect viwers to have one.

So, please can Wikipedia take steps to resolve the problem by either recommending a public-domain unicode font that covers all the unicode characters, or making style guildlines that restrict the range of unicode characters that writers can use.

I have recently downloaded and installed the 14MB Arial Unicode MS font, but I still get the little squares.

Thanks. (preceding unsigned comment by 82.7.160.238 (talk • contribs) )

The Arial Unicode MS font doesnt work real well, try installing the open source Code 2000 and Code 2001 fonts available at http://home.att.net/~jameskass/ ALKIVAR™ 22:47, 7 November 2005 (UTC)


The article is still there, but has been renumbered as a result of archiving older articles to reduce the size.
Your main problem is using IE. A secondary problem may be the use of Windows 98 (WinME is really Win98). The Polish l with stroke character is in all the core fonts on Windows XP. I haven't bothered rebooting into my Windows 98 to see whether it is in the latest core font versions, but I suspect that it is and it is only that IE isn't prepared to use characters not on your current Latin code page. For more exotic languages you will generally need fonts specifically for them. It is possihble that Win98 will never handle Indic languages properly.
Note that a four year old version of Mozilla running on an equally old version of Linux gets the character right and so does a five year old version of the text only browser, Lynx. The latter approximates the character with l/ if told to use ASCII output.
Also, please get yourself an account. You are using a dynamic IP address. I tried to copy the thread to the user page for that address after your earlier posting today, but you have obviously moved again.
--David Woolley 22:29, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
I am working on archiving many of the older sections of this page. the section numbers are dynamic -- If section 1 is deleted or archived, section 2 becomes section 1, etc. DES (talk) 22:37, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd suggest User:David Woolley to be a bit less patronizing when answering a complaint. Also remember that no one is required to get wikipedia account if they don't want to.
That said, I remind the anon user, who I assume uses Internet Explorer, to manually select the Unicode character encoding. Unfortunately you'll have to do this every time you visit a new page since, to the best of my knowledge, Internet Explorer does not recognize automatically Unicode-encoded webpages very well. Also, don't forget to move the Unicode font you downloaded to the "Font" directory in Windows in order to get it installed.
Now, if you get tired of manual switching you could install a browser with proper Unicode handling, such as Firefox or Opera. User:Alkivar's suggestion is also worth a try.
Hope this helps. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 23:21, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
IE doesn't have any problem identifying it as Unicode as the Wikipedia pages are standards conforming in this respect and explicitly specify the character set (as UTF-8). It gets this right even on Windows 98. I very much doubt that there will be anything to change in the character set selection.
It does not, however, obey the CSS rules for selecting characters properly, as I explained in the original reply. The exact rules are unclear and involve a mixture of the explicit selections from the document and the fonts specified for various classes of charactors in the fonts configuration dialogue. On Windows 98, which is not natively Unicode, I think it may also take account of the 8 bit code page.
I'm sorry for getting a bit annoyed, but I spent a lot of time on the original reply and in trying to contact the user using their IP address user page, when they said that their browser wouldn't display the whole of this page. From the original question, they are using IE6 on Windows ME.
--David Woolley 00:24, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit]

Senator Robert Byrd biography

Was just wondering, was there a particular reason his complete quote was seemingly sanitized. On Fox News Sunday with Tony Snow, he said, "There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time; I'm going to use that word...We just need to work together to make our country a better country, and I'd just as soon quit talking about it so much."

The page with the entire quote is cached http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:UB3ExCUdVssJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Byrd+robert+byrd+white+niggers&hl=en but a casual browser to his bio doesn't reflect his words in their entirety.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to your response, Bob Parks <email removed>

You might do better to mention this on Talk:Robert Byrd that is the page to discuss what should and should not be in the Robert Byrd article, and how it should be formatted. DES (talk) 23:33, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
also, questions on this page are normally responded to on this page, so three is no reason to leave your email (no one will esmail you in response anyway) and leeavign it on this very public page can invite lots of spam. DES (talk) 23:35, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
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Raymond Leo Burke Archbishop of St. Louis,Missouri


The Diocese of La Crosse website should be added as an link to the article about Archbishop Burke.In fact it could be part of an article about the Diocese of La Crosse.Aquinas High School, La Crosse,Wisconsin has a website under Aquinas Schools and that should be linked to the Archbishop Burke article since Archbishop Burke taught religion at Aquinas High School and the new addition was named after him. Finally to provide some balance,an alternative newspaper of St Louis Missouri THE RIVERFRONT TIMES had some not very favorable articles about Archbishop Burke;this should be included in the article also. Thank you-Richard Dungar-La Crosse,Wisconsin- (preceding unsigned comment by 207.230.211.67 (talk • contribs) 06:57 EST, 5 October 2005 )

You should raise this kind of issue on the talk page of the article involved, in this case on Talk:Raymond Leo Burke. DES (talk) 00:33, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
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NPOV tags

Hi, I see that some administrators and/or editors put up NPOV tags, merely because some claims have been made in the article. It must be noted that not all claims are false. May I suggest therefore that anyone who wants to put up these tags MUST:

  • state which statements are not neutral; and
  • substantiate why they think these statements are not neutral.

As it is, it is too easy to put up an NPOV tag, merely because it sounds not neutral. I certainly hope that administrators and editors will be more responsible in tagging. Seems to me like they enjoy tagging so much, because each tag counts as one edit (seems like a lot of guys out there are playing the number game), while the poor guy who takes the trouble to write (unless he merely cuts and pastes from another website) suffers discouragements.

While I do agree that writers must provide their sources to substantiate the statements that have been made.... when this is not done, the correct tag should be the "unreferenced" tag. By insisting that anyone who puts up an NPOV tag has to substantiate his action, this will indirectly forced him to use the more correct tag, which is the "unreferenced" tag, except only when the sources quoted by the writers are themselves not neutral. — PM Poon 16:46, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I believe it is already policy that an explanation must be added on the article's talk page. However, NPOV isn't about the truth (whether the objective truth or that from verifiable citations). It's about how the article is presented, e.g.: making statements rather than reporting sources; emotive language; disparaging sources; omitting opposing sources; other sorts of economy with the truth.
There is some good explanation on Wikipedia:Help desk at the moment.
I will add more when I have time, if it is not covered by others.
Note that, it is my impression that many more articles than are tagged NPOV are in whole or in part POV.
--David Woolley 10:32, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
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nuclear envelope

when i click-on "nuclear envelope" wikipedia sends me a media-file, instead of opening the "nuclear envelope" page. (preceding unsigned comment by 68.8.237.48 (talk • contribs) 18:10 EDT, 15 September 2005 )

Nuclear envelope seems to work just fine. Where where you when this happened? DES (talk) 00:37, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
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TCU notable alumni

Texas Christian University notable alumnus Sammy Baugh is listed as Heisman Trophy final canadite. Does this mean he is the last member of a religious sect that worships Canada, or just that you need a proofreader?

64.216.46.165 06:24, 8 November 2005 (UTC)Marvin Mauldin

Pretty obviously a spelling error. Wikipedia content is all supplied by volunteers. Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. DES (talk) 13:31, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

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To Wikipedia Administration - OFFICIAL COMPLAINT

I am very shocked that your user by the name "PANINI" acts so recklessely and intentionally engages in public abuse. Yesterday, I had a courtesy not to edit the article written about Republika Srpska ( History and many facts were just plain lies, one sided and terrible false ) but instead I have written a post that came up for some reason as several posts in your disscusion page. I have noticed immediately that Panini altered all my posts and inserted uncalled insults towards me, accusations about my identity, an arguments that are irrelevant to the topic of disscusion, not to mention making my post looking totally different by including his hate material.

I went back to read other posts and I have noticed that "Panini" insults people who disagree with him throughout this page calling them names and assuming their nationalities with no facts, then dismissing their disscusion points based on his assumption and creating chaos here. I have thought this is the free encyclopedia where public abuse by registered users is prohibited.

I have signed my post with time stamp and my IP address, and I see no reason or any use of having these type of attacks on me. Mainly because I have no idea who people here who do post on regular bases are, and I see no reason for PANINI to attack me personally on any bases not to mention on the basis of my identity or my signature.

QUOTE:( And yes World know the truth, so mister "anonymous user", I do not see what you want to achieve with this since it is quite obvious that you are nlt so anonymous, but you are actually Dado or Emir or their friend, so stop these games. And I really do not know who is desperate here. Only desperate man could play a role of anonymous user, while we all know who he really is. PANONIAN 10:46, 7 November 2005 (UTC))

Therefore, I ask the Administration of Wikipedia respectfully, to remove PANINI from Wikipedia for promoting hate and prejudices against anyone who post for the common good and reputation of this site. I do wonder how do you allow someone who intentionally attack people so fanatically, to remain on the Wikipedia, and I truly hope that will change.

I do not want to have any discussions with "Panini" on this matter, therefore I am asking respectfully no to alter, delete, add, insert or change this letter because it is officially addresed to Administration of Wikipedia. If my previous post was a burden I do not mind to delete it completely until this issue is resolved. Thanks! --209.86.99.80 17:22, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

There is a wikipedia policy No Personal Attacks against making personal attacks on other wikipedia users. However, violation of it does not generally warrent a complete blockage from wikipedia under our Blocking policy. I will look into the matter furhter -- this page is not really the place to discuss such issues. You might want to look into request for comment and other forms of dispute resolution. You can leave further messages about this on my user page, if you like. You might also look into contacting the Mediation Cabal. DES (talk) 13:36, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

To anonymous user: Would you like to show where I insulted you and included hate material? I only made assumtion about your identity and I still believe that your are not anonymous user, but one of the registered users involved in the discussion on the RS talk page: Talk:Republika Srpska. I have right to make assumption about your true identity because it is a very strange coincidence that you appeared exactly now when I tried to clean Bosniak nationalistic POV from the Republika Srpska article. Also, why you call me PANINI? What or who is a PANINI? My nickname is PANONIAN, which derive from the name of the Pannonian plain where I live. Also, since you accuse me that I insult people personally or that I insulting people because of their nationality, can you show where I done this? No, you cant, do you? But I can show that you deleted my posts from the RS talk page:

As you can see, one of the administrators also warned you not to do this. PANONIAN 16:18, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

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chlorpromazine

I have just spent all night reading reports online, regarding, in general, psychiatry. Upon reading about the horrors of Nazi Germany and similar practices in the U. S. and Canada in the decades following the end of WWII, I am a little surprised when I decided to follow up my findings on researching the drug Chlorpromazine, to find on this site (Wikipedia), where I have come for information for some time, that there is no mention at all of Heinz Lehmann, who used it to torture living human beings, and at times children, forced to remain prisoners in mental institutions. On one site, he is .."credited with transforming Canadian and American psychiatric care, particularly in hospitals and mental institutions. " Which is ABSURD, and on other sites, he is painted as a villian who had no consciousness at all, no idea of humanity or ethics to perform experiments on human beings, and no medical license - ! And his drug of choice for experiments was Chlorpromazine. I'm a little surprised to see no mention at all about how horrifying this particular drug was in it's earliest, experimental days, how it destroyed lives. To be neutral, I'm sure, is the hard part for a large website such as this. However, it is a scientific fact that there is no "treatment" or cure for so-called mental illnesses; drugs such as Chlorpromazine are very harmful to the human brain, and they only supress "undesired" behavior - yes, you can do a little research and find this to be true. It would be advised, if not to please myself and others against psychiatry, to perhaps...alter your input/information on Chlorpromazine, and other psychiatric "medications", from labeling them as "treatments" to something a little more appropraite. I would guess that most of the U. S. is not too aware on the adverse affects of psychiatric drugs, the addictive and harmful properties, and the absolute fact that NO psychiatric drug - NONE - actually TREAT and/or CURE *ANY* mental / emotional disorder. I believe that as a site such as this! People use for information, the information you display should be factual and informative. That...goes without saying.

Thank you so much for your time! ~Chrissi Burk <email removed>

Information on this site certianly should be factual. If you have relaible sources for facts that one of our articles ommits, please feel free to edit that article to correct the errors or add the missing information. Please cite your sources when making such changes -- "everybody knows" or "it is easy to verify" really are not good enough. I am no ewxpert on the subject, but i belive that the value of drugs in the treatment of mntal illness, and the effectiveness of other treatmets is a matter of dispute among experts in the field, and among other people with opnions on the subject. If that is so, wikipedi ahould not present one side of a dispute as unquestioned fact, but rather should indicate that there are differnign opnions, who holds them, and what evidence each side cites in support of its view. These matters are better discussed on the talk page of the articel or articels involved. DES (talk) 13:47, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
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High School Kids Screwing Up Your Site

Sirs,

As a general rule your collection of information is getting edited by 15 - 18 year olds who think it is funny to add things like "cheese comes from George Bush's butt" and changing the population of a city to include a racial slam against another person. You may soon have to deal with liable and slander accusations and other problems. This WILL get out of hand.

I understand the idea of an open source resource - but you MUST filter the incoming information in a timely manner. Unfortunately I would have to suggest a delay on all edits, and have a HUMAN editor review the entries and green flag them.

Wikipedia WAS a good resource, but as a school technology director I am afraid I am going to have to put it on my block list for fear of the content it might bring into my school.


The problem of vandalism is always with us. When you see it, you can revert to an unvandalized version. Most vandalism seems to be reverted or otherwise corrected fairly promptly.
The solution you suggest has been proposed before, in several forms. See Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Abolish anonymous users for considerable discussion. You might also want to read Wikipedia:Replies to common objections. The current consensus here is that the value of open editing is greater than the costs. This policy, like all policies here, is subject to discussion and change, but it is the considered result of signicant past discussion, and is not likely to be changed any time soon, in my view. I am sorry if your school choses not to use wikipedia, but students must eventually learn to deal with information from various sources, to asses its reliability and not simply accept anything "in print" as gospel, and to deal with the occasional offensive comments that many people make, I think you do your students no favor in trying to shelter them over-much from the reral world. DES (talk) 14:01, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
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complaint about a historic issue

complaint about a historic issue i have to say that when i read about my country Republic of Macedonia on this site i feel awful and disgusting. You with your pro -Greek creation of our history tell only lies to the world.READ MORE (preceding unsigned comment by Dimo snaga (talk • contribs) 08:53, 8 November 2005)

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Have you looked at the entry for Take That recently?

Somehow I doubt it. you appear to have a vandal.

Best wishes

al

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define kyriarchal please

I am looking for a definition to the word : "kyriarchal" I think I have a general idea what it means but I having trouble finding a dictionary that includes this word. I find it slightly appaling that it is so hard to find a definition to this word. This word signifies, to me, an advancement in thinking and a higher lever of evolution, and i would really like to know what it means precisely. Therefore, I sincerely hope that you will help me and find a definition that's intelligent and correct. Thanks peace lisa grant <email removed>

I suggest asking this question at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language which is our page for all questions about language usage and word meanings. DES (talk) 16:24, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
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GEOGRAPHY

YOU MAY WANT TO CHECK OUT THE GEOGRAPHY PAGE. I WAS RESEARCHING SOMETHING FOR MY SON AND LUCKILY HE WAS NOT HERE WHEN I ENTERED YOUR WEBSITE. IF YOU CLICK ON GEOGRAPHY THE PICTURE THAT APPEARS IS DEFINATELY NOT A PICTURE OF THE MAP THAT IS SUPPOSE TO BE THERE

You probably encountered a case of vandalism. It seems to have been fixed promptly. You can fix such problems yourself by reverting to the last good version, as expalained on the revert page. DES (talk) 22:29, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
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Dagorhir

To whom it may concern:

My name is Sean Richey. I am a member of a group called the Dagorhir Battle Game Association. This group was established over 26 years ago, and and our membership has exploded internationally to include some 65 Chapters worldwide.

In 2001, we had to take legal action to prevent a hostile takeover. This included hiring legal counsel, trademarking our name, and passing out cease and desist orders to the offending parties. Having frustrated their attempt, these people instead created a competing organization, Belegarth.

The last paragraph of the Wikipedia Dagorhir listing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagorhir) was obviously written by one of these people:

In 2001, due to serious disagreements between the leaders of the Aratari and many of the other chapters, Dagorhir suffered a serious split. Many realms, fed up with the arrogance and disrespect shown towards them by the leaders of the Aratari, split from Dagorhir and founded a very similar group, known as Belegarth.

It's offensive and misleading. This is trolling. Worse, it's an abuse of Wikipedia's open forum intended specifically to damage our organization's reputation and success, while boosting their own at Dagorhir's expense.

I know that Wikipedia is a respectable and reputable organization. What must we do to prevent this from happening?

Please advise.

Sincerest regards, Sean Richey

I suggest that you discuss this matter on Talk:Dagorhir, keeping in mind our neutral point of view policy and the personal attack policy, and well as our policy that all content must be verifible. You could simply edit the article directly, but it would probably be better to discuss the amtter on the talk page first. DES (talk) 22:33, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
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Add a "Send to" or "Email to" option

Congratulations for your great project/wonderfull Encyclopedia.

One thing that I think is missed could be helpfull 4 all users is to include an option to "print" (printer friendly)or/and even e-mail the results (content) after the search to someone with a simple "email to" option.

Once again GREAT JOB! Thx U

J.Martin Canary Islands,Spain

If you print the article is automaticaly switched over to a print version.Geni 00:52, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
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Incorrect information in an article

I'd like to begin by saying I'm very impressed with this site. It is usually accurate to the letter. However, while browsing one time for nothing in particular, I stumbled across your "mothman" article. At the bottom of this article, you stated that an episode of X-Files entitled "Detour" was said to contain references to mothmen. Being and avid fan, I tracked the episode and watched it, failing to recall such an event. I would just like to inform you that, while the quote placed at the bottom of your article rings a bell to me, it is certainly not found in that particular episode. I just wanted to let you know that so that you may continue to build upon and retain the credibility and accuracy so many respect this site for. If you are interested in visiting the article, it can be found at this URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothman It is the last paragraph under the section entitled "game." Thank you.

Syzygy193 21:50, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. However, if you are not comfy actually editign the article, or aren't sure exactly what change to make, that please place a note on the articel's talk page, in this case Talk:Mothman. DES (talk) 22:21, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
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Is there a standard way to report/ask to merge duplicate pages?

I've just found:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Modeling_Language

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uml


These pages are duplicated, but I don't know what to do about it. Should I add a link at the bottom of each referring people to the other one?

It would be better to have the pages merged, but I don't know if it is possible for me to do that?


Rachel

They are not duplicates. Uml redirects to Unified Modeling Language. (UML is a disambiguation page, and arguably Uml should redirect to that, but no merge is needed as the two are just alternative names for the same page. For real merges, see Wikipedia:Merging and moving pages. -- David Woolley 22:18, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
The usual way to handle this is to place a merge template on each article. The basic one is {{merge}}. There is a compelte list and usage instructions at Template talk:Merge. You can also report duplicates at Wikipedia:Duplicate articles. DES (talk) 22:11, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
You can also jsut do the merge yourself, by changing one article into a redirect to the other, after copyuing any content that is unique to teh article you are merging from. Full isntructions are at Wikipedia:Duplicate articles. DES (talk) 22:16, 8 November 2005 (UTC)


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PUBLIC EDITING PROBLEM

This happens to be one of the best sites on the web in terms of information. Almost any information that I need can be found here and in detail. However, I have noticed several people deleting or changing reliable information in an article to something random, wrong, or even racial. The result is that this site is becoming more and more unrealiable. This is becoming a problem and something should be done about it. One idea is that the people who sign up for this site should have an uneditable and reliable source to study from, while the public version remains changable. Another idea is that a human could personally read the edits on the pages and stop misleading or vandalistic information from being put on pages. Whatever the change is, something needs to be fixed so that this site can become the reliable reference it deserves to be.

The solution you suggest has been proposed before, in several forms. See Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Abolish anonymous users for considerable discussion. You might also want to read Wikipedia:Replies to common objections. The current consensus here is that the value of open editing is greater than the costs. This policy, like all policies here, is subject to discussion and change, but it is the considered result of signicant past discussion, and is not likely to be changed any time soon, in my view. DES (talk) 22:19, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
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Topeka West High School

I think you should add a page for Topeka West High school, since there is one for Topeka High.

Thanks.

Dear Sir,

I was looking at the Wisden criketer of the year listed in alphabetical order. I suggest following improvement for the page:

1. First a short history of Wisden awards and requrim of Wisden cricketer.

2. The alphabetical list should also indicate yera of the award.

3. A supplementry list year wise starting from the latest.

The above changes will add domani knowledge to your portal

Thanks

V.K.Agarwal

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