Wikipedia:Suggestion box

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.

• For content errors click on "edit this page" or "discussion" at that particular article.
• See Wikipedia:Help desk for questions about editing on Wikipedia.
• See Wikipedia:Reference desk for factual questions not yet answered by Wikipedia.
• See Wikipedia:Village pump for policy and technical information.
• See Wikipedia:Resolving disputes to resolve issues between users.

After reading the above, click here to file a complaint or ask a question
Your question/complaint will be placed at the bottom of the page

Please place resolved articles on Wikipedia: General complaints (resolved)

Screen Names should not be automatically capitalized

When you register for an account on Wikipedia, the first letter of your screen name should not be automatically capitalized. There is no reason for this website to feel the need to capitalize a screen name. I know it is probably proper grammar in the world, but it's just not right on the internet. Can you please change it so this does not happen? Thanks.

- dposse.

Please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical_restrictions)#Lower case first letter, bugzilla:2118, and bugzilla:3362. Bovlb 21:06:49, 2005-09-06 (UTC)

i agree with dposse. this should be changed and there is no good reason for it. r b-j 18:05, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Harry Potter spoiler on Google

In the course of posting an article to my weblog about the new Harry Potter book, I Googled the phrase "half-blood prince" in order to find a link to another site that discussed the book. At the time I did this, I had not finished reading the book.

Halfway down the first page of results was the Wikipedia link. It looked like this:

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Wikipedia, the free ...

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth novel in JK ... Harry pursues -----, who identifies himself as the Half-Blood

Prince before escaping. ...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_ Potter_and_the_Half-Blood_Prince - 47k - Jul 27, 2005 -

I have replaced an important word with hyphens in the example above, but the link as it actually appeared on the Google page did not. Instead, it GIVES AWAY WHAT IS PROBABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT PLOT TWIST OF THE ENTIRE BOOK.

ARRRRRRRRGH.

Now, if one follows that link, it takes one to a Wikipedia page with a lot of general information about the book, and down near the bottom of the page there is a section titled "Plot overview" with a prominently placed "Spoiler Warning". All well and good -- if I'd seen the actual page before I finished the book, I wouldn't have read any further. I like being surprised, see.

But for someone innocently searching for a link in Google, the spoiler warning is invisible. All they see is the spoiler.

My point: I would like to urge all responsible parties, in the strongest possible terms (oh how my finger itches to hit caps lock) to reconsider the necessity and propriety of writing a plot overview that gives away a surprise ending. Why not change the offending sentence to "Harry discovers the true identity of the Half-Blood Prince" and leave it at that?

This is, I am sure you realize, about more than one particular book. It's bound to come up again.

• I see your point, but I think you would be better off directing your complaint toward Google rather than Wikipedia. I don't think there's any guaranteed way that an outside web site can prevent something like that from appearing on Google, given the wide variety of possible searches. Note that when I searched Google for "harry potter and the half-blood prince", the following comes up as the fifth entry:

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Wikipedia, the free ...

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth novel in JK Rowling's Harry Potter series. Set during Harry Potter's sixth year at Hogwarts, ...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_ Potter_and_the_Half-Blood_Prince - 50k - Aug 13, 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

... without any spoilers resulting from that search. --Metropolitan90 03:11, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

• The internet is riddled with spoilers for Harry Potter books. The best thing is not to do any Harry Potter related searches unless you've finished reading the book. - 131.211.210.12 13:12, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Cookie Complaints

10 October 2005 created the screen name JohnMac777 and the cookies are not coming through. My Netscape browser had plenty of cookies on it, so the problem looks like something between Wikipedia and AOL. I have seen this before where some people will play with domain names, but when it is from AOL it is anonymous where each logon you get a new IP address from a block of domain names.

I found a cookie bug in Netscape that kept me from logging on. What to do:

• 1. Go the preferences on the menu (on mine it is under Edit).
• 2. Select Privacy & Security menu item from the drop down menu.
• 3. Select “Cookies.”
• 4. From the Cookie Screen, select the “Cookie Manager” button.
• 5. One the Cookie Manager Screen selected the “Cookie Sites” tab.
• 6. Scan each cookie site listed.
• 7. For each cookie site you want enabled no matter what happens, then type in the cookie site exactly as listed in the text space, and select the “Allow” button. Delete all others and remove all cookie sites that start with "ad" or remove if it is a advertisement cookie site.
• 8. When done removing cookie sites or "Allow" cookie sites, then select the “Stored Cookie” tab.
• 9. Select the “Remove All Cookies” button to remove all the stored cookies. The cookie list should be blank afterward.
• 10. Close the “Cookie Manager” screen (top right button) and the “Cookie” display should still be there.
• 11. On the preferences menu go to the "Advanced" menu item and select it (the list is on the left on my Netscape).
• 12. Under the "Advanced" menu item select "Cache."
• 13. With the "Cache" screen being shown select the "Clear Cache" button. If your cache is full this can take a few minutes.
• 14. Close Netscape.
• 15. Reboot your computer.
• 16. Get back online.
• 17. Visit Wikipedia and attempt to log on. You should now be logged on after this.
• 18. Enjoy.
• Why? -- What happened is somehow the cookie sites were being set, but would not allow the cookies to update, and the cookie list seemed to regenerate (old cookies), so you could not get a fresh cookie. These actions fixed my problem. If you use AOL, then you should clear its cookie list and cache files from the AOL cookie controls.

Main page broken in Mozilla 1.7.3 on Windows XP

The main page doesn't work in Mozilla. It worked yesterday, but today when I went to it, words didn't wrap (so the page was extremely wide), and the whole main content area functioned as a link to the Chinese edition. Internet Exploder had no problems with it, though. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 16:20, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• • I've run it in IE and Firefox; it works fine in both of those. isn't Mozilla the same thing as FF? -Litefantastic 00:33, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • It works now. I'm not sure what was going on. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 21:23, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Images are not showing up in Mozilla Firefox, but are working using IE. I've tried this on three different computers now on the Columbia University campus, including my own. Any ideas? 160.39.232.221 19:38, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• I'm using using Firefox 1.0.2 on Windows XP. The images overlap the text at the bottom of the page depending upon the size of the text. 9:10am PST, Apr 4, 2005

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)

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

WikiSlow

Today it feels like Wikipedia has just eaten a tub of lard. Pages take ages to load, database errors abound. What's making Wikipedia sick today? Is it the Slashdotting (!)? --NightMonkey 04:28, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)

This sort of thing happens now and again, and is generally attrbuted to heavy load or problems with the servers. However, since the "To help support Wikipedia, please visit our fundraising page" message is back up, I'm guessing that we're being featured somewhere, which is why a) the servers are slow and b) that wretched message is back up, begging all new visitors to donate. -Litefantastic 16:41, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

We intend to order some new hardware as soon as Jimbo is back from his holiday next week. The fundraising notice is up at the moment because we are featured on Slashdot, which tends to bring in a lot of potential donors. Angela. 18:22, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)

WikiSlow: The Monster Returns

Yes, I know this is annoying, but there's been no long-term improvement in speed. This is apparent on several networks, done at several times of day (though it is better in the North American nighttime). Note that I'm NOT saying that it makes Wikipedia totally unusable, but it really makes editing a pain and is somewhat embarrasing to introduce Wikipedia to lots of folks with every one of them saying something like, "Wow, that sounds really cool! <45+ seconds pass to load the page text> Pretty slow, but I'll check it out more later." I love Wikipedia. I'll give it cash. But, I hate to view it through lard-colored glasses ;).

Isn't everyone experiencing this sluggish response? --NightMonkey 20:54, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

OK, I never knew I liked crow as an entre before, let alone a whole buffet of it. After looking here, I see that today and yesterday a hardware move is in progress, along with a network bandwidth megaboost. Apologies for the complaint. Keep up the great work! --NightMonkey 21:17, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

WikiSlow 3: With Apologies to NightMonkey

It's not as bad as before, but every twenty minutes or so the site just sort of seems to stall. I don't think we're on SlashDot again (how many times can we be featured, anyway?) but it just seems like the site is narcoleptic. -Litefantastic 14:47, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm new to Wiki and am enthusiastic about its potential however the server lag that I'm experiencing all too regularly here has me now doubting my ability to sustain participation (we're talking minutes here folks, and sometimes no load at all). As this, apparently, has not been commented on since 27 Oct, I thought I'd solicit some current observations on page loading problems. JakeInJoisey 20:01, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It gets better sometimes. Really. -Litefantastic 23:03, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The printing option

In the olden days there used to be a "Print this page" button on all articles. What ever happened to that? Though most times today I'm at a computer when searching for or using knowledge, but not all the time. I would like to take certain Wiki pages with me to read, but as the Wiki stands now, you have to reformat most of the site. AFAIK it would be a simple task to implement this again, and I hope to see this in the future. --Gruesome 09:29, Aug 9, 2004 (CET)

The other skins (you can change this in your preferences) still have a link to the printable version. The default "monobook" skin does not have one, but if you press print in your browser, the print stylesheet will be applied automatically. Angela. 21:30, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

Why not change the "monobook" skin so that it has a link to the printable version, otherwise people might believe that it's not there (as I did).--STM 16:57, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

What about an export to PDF function? That would certainly be very useful for archival purposes. --STM 08:27, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

See the wiki-to-pdf converter. Angela. 23:27, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)

PDFCreator[1] easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. It is a pseudo-printer driver; you use it just like a printer, but the output goes to a PDF file instead of paper. Kbh3rd 16:45, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

On my browser, Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040917 Firefox/0.9.3, the printing stylesheet screws up badly around any font style change, causing massive text elements' overlap. Am I the only one, and is it a Firefox bug, or a CSS problem with the Monobook printing style? BACbKA 10:38, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• It's not just you; every now and again this happens in IE, too. However, if it happens to you constantly, you may wish to consider either switching browsers or an official complaint to the people who write the WP software. -Litefantastic 14:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Actually, neither Firefox nor Konqueror are good for me for any page, even without any embedded floaters. Konqueror seems better than Firefox, but also is a bit screwed up (sometimes inter-character spacing, but also with the pagination issue – it has massive overlaps between adjacent pages! or is that intentional?). It's either a browser bug, or a CSS bug, or both. The fact that you say it happens sometimes to you with the IE points to the CSS. Konqueror and Firefox use different rendering engines, so this is another clue against the CSS. Amaya doesn't support cookies :-) all the other mainstream options available that I know of on Linux are using one of the same layout engines as the ones already mentioned before, so I don't know what other browser to switch to :-( Can somebody else with a know-how of WP printing from Linux please step up and share the experience of successful (or insuccessful) printing, before I submit bug reports? BACbKA 19:39, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• The printing stylesheet commonPrint.css contains a FONT-SIZE attribute which unfortunately defines a fixed font size of 11pt for the #content div. This means that whenever I select a very small font size in Internet Explorer and then print the document I always get the same number of pages. That's not really a good idea, especially for longer articles, is it?

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)

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)

Spelling Spelling

I believe the correct phrase is spelling check rather than the word-processor-shortened spell check. The use of check in this manner is usually (always?) [noun] check such as reality check, sanity check, price check, or correctness check. Given this, a spell check would be something Harry Potter does, so I suggest the use of the more correct phrase spelling check. The How-To index is one of many places where the wizarding version is used.

Peter (Cactus Pete) 18:04, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Okay... what would you like us to do about it? -Litefantastic 12:23, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, and they also have street signs that say "drive slow." We'd need Harry Potter to change popular breAches of the rules of grammar.

The &$*# Search Engine is Broken Again

• -.-; -Litefantastic 12:47, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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).

Hide edit section

As explained in the How-to page it is possible to hide all edit links with the code __NOEDITSECTION__ in a document. According to the same How-to page, it is also possible to hide a section from the Table of contents by using HTML-tags like <h2>sectionhead</h2> instead of ==sectionhead==.

Bug:
The edit link is hidden using HTML tags, but the next edit link links to the edit page of the first section marked by the HTML-tags, which was not editable. The second edit link to the second section marked by HTML, and so forth.

Ilse@ 12:51, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• Please don't. Last time I checked using HTML tags to hide sections from the TOC interfered with the edit links of other sections. - 131.211.210.13 10:08, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

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?

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)

Grey heading line extends too far

On pages like List of colonial governors in 1880, the grey line extends through the middle of the "See also:" box at the right. The same thing happens if you hide the table of contents on pages like List of state leaders in 2004. I don't know how to fix it.

The same thing seems to be true with any box on any page, though some boxes are not transparent. But even for opaque boxes like on Angola (and a million other pages), the grey line extends all the way to the edge of the box instead of stopping at the margin.

If the margin between the box and the right edge of the page is greater than zero, you can see the grey line sticking out the other end. For example, if you edit University of Notre Dame du Lac, changing "margin: 0 0" to "margin: 1em 1em", and view the preview (obviously, don't save the page).

For some reason, pages like Alabama seem to look ok. 68.225.20.115 20:26, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"pre" tags are badly rendered in Mozilla Firefox 1.0

Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul#Philosophical_views

The dotted border fits the screen, but the content of the tag goes far beyond the screen border.

The dotted border fits the size of the window/page, which is a measurement in pixels. The point of having preformatted text (PRE tags) is to let the text be as wide as it needs to be, even if this means being wider than the browser window.

For example, a family tree presented as ascii art that gets automatically wrapped will not make sense:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yngling#Family_Tree

In other words, this is a general web thing, not specific to just this site.

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.

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.)

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)

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...)

Language specific accounts

Why is an account for only one language? Okay it might prevent some name clashes, but is this really such a great benefit? For multilingual people to have to have several accounts is pretty annoying. MarSch 17:17, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't this be, for the Wikiworld, with its tremendous technology base, a relatively easy fix? I second this suggestion. --Dpr 02:17, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

I guess they are already working on it. Good job! --Dpr 02:24, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

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.

Michael Jackson 2005 Trial

The discussion page is broken, and needs fixing.

Portuguese Log in

I have no idea if I'm posting this problem in the right place since i'm quite new to Wikipedia. The thing is, though I have no problem logging into my account in the English area (where i originally created the acount), the Portuguese version of Wikipedia completly ignores my existance.

Is that just me or does everyone need to register on every language that they wish to contribute with? Is there any chance this could be merged into a single database of users? I have enough usernames and passwords as it is, and having another one for the same place seems pretty bizarre to me.

Fmafra 16:30, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, all the wikis are separate. See meta:Single sign-on. --cesarb 13:39, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

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)

Ragged text

The standard text uses ragged right edges (i.e. uneven line length). This affects the aesthetic layout of many pages such as this one (Taj Mahal). Instead the line length may be made constant to produce a more visually appealing effect.

This is a per user preference. Some people find ragged-right text easier to read, other prefer justified. In Special:Preferences, select Misc and check the "Justify paragraphs" box. -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 05:02, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

The way I heard it right-justified text is easier to read on paper but less easy to read on a computer screen. This has to do with paper reflecting light and a monitor emitting light (making the extra whitespace in the middle of the text too bright).

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)

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!

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)

Forced Reloading Problem

This site has one annoying feature for me so far, the forced reloading of pages. I use Opera browser, and usually going back and foward between pages (ie to check a previous page and then go forward to some other page that you accessed more recently) - usually pages do NOT reload when you move back and forth. First of all, not having to reload makes accessing pages much faster. But my major problem is that if you are editing a page, and you go back to check something, it will DELETE YOUR WORK when you return to the page on which you're working. I was just creating a page for the band called Treat (which doesn't exist in wikipedia yet), and I must have accidentally clicked a link, cause it went somewhere. When i went back, all my work was displayed for a milisecond - then the page reloaded and all my work was lost. Its late, and I'm tired, so i really don't feel like redoing it in a separate editor so my work doesn't get DESTROYED. This problem needs to be fixed. Thanks.

(edit:) Also, people have been complaining that wikipedia is getting slow - and i've noticed the site isn't a sprinter. I'm pretty sure that if the site forces reloading when not neccessary it will RUN SLOWER. Its a two-fold problem.

--User:Fresheneesz 2:32, 23 Apr 2005 (California)

For me in galeon-1.3.20, I don't lose work when I change pages by clicking a link and hitting the back button in the browser. I also don't get a "forced reload" when I do that. So it sounds like this might actually be a bug (or a feature, if you don't want potentially personal information lying around) in your browser. -- Beland 02:18, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

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)

Speedy deletion policy

I didn't realize this page existed. There's currently an issue in which some admins are speedying "recreations of deleted content" that the majority doesn't see as such. Most of the examples and associated crap are in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/RickK; there's also a bit at the end of Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. --SPUI (talk) 12:54, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

verison = version

I went to look up 'Verison' in the search menu, and got a whole bunch of hits -- for 'verison' as a mis-spelling of 'version'. I fixed a few, but there are over five pages of this to be fixed! Is there some way we can quickly correct a lot of these sorts of typos? - Kit Foxtrot 22:37, 8 May 2005 (EST)

I've copied your question to User:Humanbot, it should be completed soon. Thanks for pointing it out! — Catherine\^talk 05:51, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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)

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). :-)

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

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.

Invalid deletion of Hellenic Genocide page

The page on the Hellenic Genocide was deleted in violation of Wikipedia rules despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of users voted to KEEP it. After people companied that the deletion was invalid and resistated the page, the page was then locked in its deleted state so that it cannot be replaced.

The deletion of this page was out of order and carried out for political reasons alone in order to suppress the knowledge of a historical event equivalent to the NAZI holocaust. Wikipedia should be ashamed of itself that this was allowed to happen. The deletion of the Hellenic Genocide page is TOTALLY INVALID and is nothing short of HOLOCAUST DENIAL ! Overwhelming evidence and references was presented on the page to show that a premeditated genocide of 4 million Greeks from Asia-Minor was perpetrated by the Turks, including US congressional resolutions which recognised the mass murder of Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians.

I demand that the page be reinstated immediately and that action be take against the apologists who deleted it and who have systematicaly been abusing Wikipedia rules in order to have the pages related to this page deleted as well including biographies of authors such as Thea Halo, George Horton, and Leonidas Koumakis who have written about the Hellenic Genocide.--Argyrosargyrou 17:38, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The vote was 16:5 in favour of deletion, after removing invalid votes, and completely withing Wikipedia procedures. DJ Clayworth 21:07, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

NO IT WAS NOT

This is what the RFD page actually say about how votes should be counted.

"Your opinion will be given the most weight if you are logged in with an account that already existed when the nomination was made. Anonymous and new users are welcome to contribute to the discussion, but their votes may be discounted, especially if they seem to be made in bad faith. "

There is nothing forbidding anonymous and new users from voting and since their votes were ALL in GOOD FAITH and they gave genuine reasons for why they wanted the page kept, (that the Hellenic Genocide was a proven historical event and it should not be denied for political expediency etc.), there is NO REASON WHATSOEVER for them to have been discounted, and since the votes to KEEP were in the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of 2:1 the page should have been kept.

This page was deleted in violation of Wikipedia rules and should be reinstated immediately.--Argyrosargyrou 21:31, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

-Edit-= Argy, isn't there a vote for undeletion page? That sounds like a better place to place a complaint like this. Also, writing fuming accusations is not going to help your case. Keep a cool head.

[The Mysterious Interloper]

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]

Background of Pages, Skins

I do not think that I am alone in this feeling, but the stark contrast of a white background on most pages, along with blue links and black text, is VERY painful to me. All of the skins for Wikipedia simply change layout, not actual color, as most skins for sites and forums do. Is there any chance a "EasyEyes" skin, or somesuch, could be made with a dark background and lighter text choices? Even a dark shade of grey would be better then plain white. - Ariamaki Risenki Ariamaki

• Quite sorry, I just noticed that above there is a link to fix this very problem. Sorry for the space-waste, but I will leave this here to ask anotehr question... Can anyone aid me by making a CSS style sheet that makes the pages look better from a harsh-on-the-eyes POV?

- Still Ariamaki Risenki Ariamaki

European accented characters search

I think it would be good if articles titled using accented European characters could be searched for and retreived by entering unaccented characters. For example the article 'Spanische Küche' would be suggested by entering 'Spanische Kuche'. Wikipedia: General complaints (resolved) There are projects working on redirects to create this effect, but it is a very long process. - Robmods 19:48, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

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.

Watchlist update

I am not getting updates on my watchlist today. I put in edits, and see no activity on the watchlist page. What is up? Dan Watts 1 July 2005 19:13 (UTC)

I am also having that problem, and I am really angry! Why does the wiki hate me so? -- Earl Andrew - talk 1 July 2005 20:12 (UTC)

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)

Style Sheet Changes?

I love reading the wikipedia. I love that the links are so obvious, usually. When I'm on page 5 or page 45, black on white with blue links every other word get's old quick. I'd just like to be able to use a lower contrast version for more extended reading.

I'm not just whining. I know my way around a style sheet. If I can help make this happen, my time is wikipedia's time. I love this site. will at luktown dot org.

• Support - I agree, Blue coloring makes words jump out when they're not supposed to. Red coloring is worse. I've found that going to "Preferences" and forcing all links to NOT be underlined makes it a little better.--Muchosucko 6 July 2005 21:03 (UTC)

Automatically put the cursor in the search text box

Would it be possible to add some javascript to the main front pages so that when you bring them up the cursor is automatically put in the search text box ready to accept input in the same way most search engines do when you bring up their front page. I regularly use wikipedia to search for information and would appreciate this change.

• Suport - I second this request. I've been asking for it on the Talk:Main_Page--Muchosucko 6 July 2005 20:45 (UTC)
• Support. Instead of

<body class="ns-0">

the developers should generate the page with

<body class="ns-0" onLoad="document.getElementById('searchInput').focus();">

That will do exactly what is asked. Superm401 | Talk 12:07, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

• See bug #1864 Bovlb 13:40:34, 2005-07-11 (UTC)

Change Time Format from 24 Hour to 12 Hour

I'd like to request a setting to change "23:00" into "11:00p". The 24 hour clock is killing me. I wish there was a setting in Preferences to do this, like I can with the dates. i.e. From "April 23" to "23 April". 24Hr time is hard to read. For example: what is 20:00 hours? I have to subtract 12 to get to 8pm. Why bother when you can just say 8pm? Why? I think a VAST majority of people will say to thier loved ones, "Honey, let's go to dinner at 8pm." Rather than, "Honey, let's go to dinner at 20:00." I would do this myself, but I'm dumb.-thanks for reading----Muchosucko 6 July 2005 20:45 (UTC)Muchosucko 6 July 2005 03:19 (UTC)

It's probably doable and probably a good idea for those that don't use a 24 hour clock on a daily basis. Although, if I'm not mistaken, most of the world does use a 24 hour clock. I know quite of bit of Europe does. But as far as here in the states, all the military use it, pilots use it, some doctors use it, people who work where there's a night shift may in order to avoid confusion with the day shift, etc. So, you may be the minority on this. Dismas 10:37, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

There's also some places in the world that do not use am pm, that are strictly 24 hour clock, but I do recognize that there are some people who are strictly on a 12 hour clock. AlMac|^(talk) 06:48, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

i fully disagree with -User:Muchosucko. in any technical context, 24 hour time is the reference. there is no good reason to dumb it down for wikipedia. r b-j 18:29, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I can see the logic in supporting this feature in the user preferences, while keeping the general standard the same it is at the moment - AM/PM is almost fully exclusive to certain english-speaking countries (though a majority standard in those countries), and to most of us "others", easily misleading in contrast to the general 24-hour system. aeris 10:21, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I never manage to keep track of which one is "am" and which is "pm". 20:00 is much easier to remember, no risk of confusion, and yes I would say "honey lets meet at 20:00". (I'm from Sweden.)

---

I never manage to keep track of which one is "am" and which is "pm". 20:00 is much easier to remember, no risk of confusion, and yes I would say "honey lets meet at 20:00". (I'm from Sweden.)

LATITUDE/LONGITUDE LINKS INTO GOOGLE EARTH FROM WIKIPEDIA

I love Wikipedia...but one way I can think of to make it even better is to add lat/lon links straight into Google Earth for those of us who use it. How could this be done?

It's a nice idea and could be done by uploading the KML file and linking to it from the article. However at some point it would likely be shot down over the no-Proprietary software issue, in the same way all audio is now done in .ogg format. - Robmods 20:00, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Most articles which have latitude & longitude information (mountains, landmarks, most US cities, etc.) already have links under "External links" at the bottom to maps and satellite photos from Google Maps, as well as Topozone, TerraServer-USA, MapQuest, and more, depending on location. Google Earth is relatively new -- if there's a way to systematically coordinate with them, I don't doubt that someone will find it soon, and if so, you can expect to see it added to articles in a massive way soon after. However, Google Earth's terms of use clearly say "for personal use only", so directly uploading the KML files here (where they would be required to use the GFDL license) would be illegal for us. For now, use what we have and hang in there for more updates. — Catherine\^talk 21:29, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

try the coor template. E.g. 66°N 66°E -- links to assorted map services. dab (ᛏ) 19:13, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

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.

Removal of Links

Someone keeps removing information and links from a series of pages ! what can i do to stop it ?

• Which pages is this? Is it still happening? Insomniacity 10:11, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
• Hi, thanks a Discussion has been set up on the 'LBC' page - What do you think, can you add any comments to the discussion ?

CARX keeps removing links to http://www.marf.org on the mesothelioma page and the MARF page saying that it is an attorney spam site. MARF is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt charity nonprofit organization dedicated to eradicating mesothelioma as a life-ending disease and assist newly diagnosed patients with the the latest treatment alternatives. What can be done to clear up this situation. I am a mesothelioma victim and I know that MARF is there to HELP...

Hello, user 67.97.96.213 . Please discuss your problem on the Mesothelioma talk page. Thank you. Axl 07:01, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

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)

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.

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

Incorrect spelling of main title

"Alexander Parris," architect, is incorrectly spelled as "Alexander Perris." Thank you.--Hugh Manatee 13:10, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Looks like someone's already fixed it. (That tends to happen around here.) Next time, if you wish, you can be bold and move the page to the correct title yourself -- any registered user can move a page. — mendel ☎ 01:32, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

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:

• Log in
• Special pages
• Preferences
• Watchlist

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)

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)

Untrue/Propagandistic material in Articles

I noticed that a few articles in Wikipedia are supporting untrue or even propagandistic theories. They have even opposite theories than related articles.
For example: Ancient Macedonian language
Read the talk page and u will understand.
If u want this web site to be called encyclopedia, u should fix the problem. ;)

Thank u for ur time,
MANOS

We are on our toes, doing our best reverting the "propagandistic" edits by MANOS and consorts, thank you :) dab (ᛏ) 19:10, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

If u think I am the propagandist, plz explain the following:
We already know that:

Hesiod said they were Greeks (Aeolian). That means they were Greeks and they spoke a Greek Dialect.
Hellanicus said they were Greeks (Aeolian). That means they were Greeks and they spoke an Greek Dialect.
Macedons said they were Greeks and they spoke Greek.
The rest Greeks said they were Greeks. That means they were Greeks and they spoke Greek.
They were participating in Olympic Games. That means they were Greeks and they spoke Greek.
They were members of the Council of Delphi. That means they were Greeks and they spoke Greek.
Persians said they were Greeks. That means they were Greeks and they spoke Greek.
Not a single evidence proving the opposite. That means that all the above are correct.

So why Macedons might not be Greeks?
Plz tell us.
Every time I post, I ask for the same thing. I ask from u to prove me why I'm wrong. Plz give me the ancient evidence, which can prove that I'm wrong. Please Please
MANOS

Adult Pages

I'm not sure where to put this complaint but this is on the general way Wikipeida is run. Why don't you try to stop children accessing articles related with sex/pornograpghy? The Oral Sex has an image definately suitable for any person under the age of eighteen. Even for teenagers trying to receive information for sexual education should not be exposed to that #!?@. Dagizza

Because Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors, by policy. If you desire that your children do not see illustrations like that, then you should supervise their Internet use. (Additionally there is no way to determine if a web browser is being operated by an adult, a child forbidden to view those images, or a child permitted to view those images.) — mendel ☎ 01:27, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

I've noticed blatant sexual content on Wikipedia too. We could at least have a protection page that asks the user to testify that he is above 18 years of age before viewing such a page, like it happens on other adult sites. True, this would not stop minors from accessing the page, much as we cannot stop minors from downloading porn from the internet. But at least it would make them aware that they are accessing material that is not suitable for them. And we could hope that self-regulation would do the job. Or that their parents can somehow monitor their access of such pages, and do the requisite policing.

I think an appropriate warning like "This page might be considered objectionable by many readers, and may be unsuitable for children" should be placed at the beginning of such articles, and offensive images should be placed down so that readers can see the warning without seeing the images. For 12-year-olds, graphic or indelicate treatments of subjects like oral sex may be as bad as shock sites are for some adults (i.e. they may wish they had never seen it). I personally find Wikipedia a good venue for education on sex, including some offensive topics, just because they stick to facts like medical books and try hard not to be unnecessarily graphic. Children are naturally curious, and I'd hate it if I can not trust Wikipedia to give them information in the most factual and unoffensive way even on the most exotic topics relevant to the real world.

Note that I'm not advocating that offensive topics be removed from Wikipedia. Quite the contrary, I want all such topics to be given proper treatment here, if only to avoid them having to resort to potentially more offensive sites. However, if an article does not present the facts in the most unoffensive way, it should give a proper warning until it gets improved on this aspect.

I do not particularly like protection pages, since this encourages children to lie about their age, and while warnings can be given on many levels, everyone would draw different lines on which pages should be "protected" like this, and I fear this would generate excessive controversy. Of course, if the laws require this (I really do not know), we would have to comply. R6144 04:51, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

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)

Columns

Is there a way to put more than one column on a page? If not, it could be a good thing to have Wikipedia allow a user to do. It could cut down on the lengths of same pages. Rentastrawberry 01:32, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

It wouldn't cut down on the size of the page, though, but it would make it more awkward to read on-screen, since the reader would have to scroll all the way down, then scroll all the way up, then scroll all the way back down again. — mendel ☎ 01:22, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

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

• Labyrinth at IMDb

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 #=-

Gloria Trevi

Hi1 Can someone defend me and explain to Ruiz that the article I originated about Gloria Trevi was not pasted and that the actual page he points out at, [2] says that the article is borrowed from Wikipedia?.

Also, we need to tell him that most of our articles are copyed by a number of websites, which we allow them to do so.

Thanks and God bless you! Sincerely yours, Antonio Morris Martin

• You can explain to him yourself - leave a message on his talk page. -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=-

Problem in the "Battle by Country" Category

Dear All,

I would like to point out a significant problem in the "Battle by Country" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Battles_by_country). There is no rule out there and no standardized way to categorize Battles.

As of now, it seems that there is no general rule (or at least people ignore it). There are three kind of referencing battles :

• "Battle of England"
• "English Battles"
• "Battle in France"

So, if I want to detail :

• "Battle in" is pretty clear : the Battle took place on the French Territory (and to be simpler, I think we should choose to set up to the current territory).
• Now it becomes a mess : there is a lot of confusion between "Battle of England" and "English Battles". In my opinion, the "Battle of" should be for the battles where England took place as a nation and "English Battles" should be renamed in "Battles in England" (to be coherent with the previous notations).

Instead of having two rule for naming which are pretty similar ("Battle in ###" and "### Battle"), we should standardized.

So, for example "Battles of Canada" could be split in "Battles of Canada" (for battles in which Canada fought on his own flag : WWII for example) and "Battles in Canada" (for battles which took place in Canada : between France and England for example).

"Battles of" could include Byzantine Empire, ...

Do you agree ?

Best

Pierre.maissa 09:42, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Dear Pierre:

Is Battle of England and English Battles about the same battle(s)? If so, we can merge the articles... Antonio Spotligh8t stealer Martin

• Wikipedia:Category titles is attempting to standardize this. I would recommend making a nomination on WP:CFD to have this fixed up. -- Beland 04:00, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Speeling Varyations

We need in the toolbox a tool for checking (/suggesting!) spelling variations of an article's title when creating, editing or searching for them. Conceptually, like the 'other languages'.

See also Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Spell Checker at Edit Pages. Bovlb 14:40:59, 2005-08-14 (UTC)

The Google Toolbar (1.0 for Firefox, anyway) does this. It's not seamless, but it checks spelling in forms (which includes the entire edit window), and makes suggestions (which sometimes even works). Flyers13 03:28, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

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)

RSS Feed for Featured Articles

I would like to suggest having RSS feeds available for the Featured Articles. My apologies if this feature already exists, in which case could it be made more prominent.

See Wikipedia:Syndication. Regarding prominence, as you can see from Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia:Syndication, it it mentioned on RSS and other places. It wouldn't really be appropriate to put the orange rectangle on the site, because we don't syndicate the whole site, nor on featured articles, because they come and go. It's arguably worth mentioning on Wikipedia:Today's featured article. Where did you expect to find it? Bovlb 14:34:46, 2005-08-14 (UTC)

I was expecting to see either the orange icons on the front page, each one located in its corresponding section. Alternatively, a link from the front page to the Syndication page would make it more discoverable. Also, putting it on the Wikipedia:Today's featured article page would definitely help.

I really don't understand RSS feeds after trying to get various readers etc., but what works for me is My.yahoo front page, from whence you can indeed see an RSS feed of Wikipedia new articles. Gzuckier 16:04, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Editing Wikipedia

Hi, I am a new user here! I found out about wikipedia, the last month and found it truly amazing, but cannot understand why it is soo open! My suggestion is, can't the whole "real" content be locked, and all the new/edited pages will still be available to edit on a "mirror server" then, someone such as an "administrator" checks its new content and replace/upload the actual page from the "mirror server". If i didnt explain myself well, please contact me email address removed for person's own good. Thanks. Keep it up!

See Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Require changes to be reviewed before going live and Wikipedia:Replies to common objections. Bovlb 14:43:37, 2005-08-14 (UTC)

Units of Measurement Options

As an Australian reader I find it very annoying when an article refers to everything in pounds, feet or other such unit of measurement. Is it possible to implement a means of allowing a user to select preferred units in which all articles will be displayed?

For example selecting:

• Kilograms over pounds for weight
• Metres over feet for distance.
• Celsius over Fahrenheit for temperature.

See Bugzilla:235. Bovlb 07:12:25, 2005-08-15 (UTC)

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.

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)

Disappearing Article - WATMM

I hadn't checked until recently, but an article I used to watch called WATMM has disappeared... it's gone from the history of my watchlist and all edits to the page don't show up on my 'user contributions' page. I can't find it in the history of VFD, and I see no reason for it to have been deleted, as the page for xltronic (a similar community) still exists. I suspect foul play, as the WATMM page was subject to frequent abuse (blank outs), but I have no idea what could have happened, as I don't know what happens to pages once they get deleted. A copy of the article is still at answers.com [3]

• It doesn't appear that there has ever been an article entitled WATMM. There was one called watmm, which has been deleted twice. According to the deletion log:
  • 2005-08-12 01:45:08 Academic Challenger deleted "Watmm" (copy and paste of the sex article, nominated for speedy)
  • 2005-08-11 21:04:05 Geogre deleted "Watmm" (Bullcrap duplicate, probably a test.)

I suggest you contact one or both of those administrators for more information. Bovlb 15:04:40, 2005-08-19 (UTC)

I have done so, thanks for the suggestion. --Easterlingman 15:29, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

• See also We Are the Music Makers, which is about the album, not the forum. Bovlb 15:23:52, 2005-08-19 (UTC)

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)

Retrieving information from different languages

I would highly appreciate measures to make Wikipedia truly multilingual. If I'm looking for a certain subject, I don't want to be limited to just English-language articles, but also be presented information in languages I selected in my preferences. To this end, there must be a way to link concepts in different languages to one another. Perhaps this mechanism can be integrated with Wiktionary. Benne 09:54, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Interlanguage links, and note that they appear at the bottom of the left-hand column. See also Wikipedia:Sister projects#Wiktionary. Bovlb 14:42:05, 2005-08-24 (UTC)

Thanks. This helps, but not for related topics. For example, if there's an English-language article on Topic X (but not on Subtopic X.1), and a French-language article on Subtopic X.1 (but not in Topic X), you won't be able to find en:X from fr:X.1 or vice versa. A uniform classification system would help disclose the information provided by any Wikimedia project. Benne 08:45, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Using Translation memory to help keep translations up to date

Is it possible to introduce techniques such as Translation memory in order to make it easier and better controllable to apply changes made in, for instance, the English-language original, to translations in other languages. Benne 09:54, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles in different languages are not, in general, pure translations. They are often developed entirely independently. Notwithstanding, technology like this might be useful, but would be a lot of work to set up. Wikipedia relies on volunteer effort. Are you offering to implement this? Bovlb 14:46:13, 2005-08-24 (UTC)

True, but don't you agree that the contents of an article should be the same regardless the language in which it is written?

I don't have the skills to provide a technical solution, but I'm willing to discuss and think about the concept. Benne 16:28, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure I do agree. Every language-specific Wikipedia has its own take on issues of formatting and inclusion. I would expect that the it: page on an Italian film star would be longer than its en: counterpart. Bovlb 19:40:26, 2005-08-24 (UTC)

Good example, but that shouldn't be a problem. The version in English (or any other language) could be a summary of the Italian original. (In that case it would be helpful if there was one master summary.)

Especially for the small and not so active Wikipedias I think it would be useful if the user is notified somehow of valuable edits and additions to the English-language version.

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)

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)

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

Problem with incorrect material and site name

THIS SITE SUCKS, YOU SHOULD NOT CALL IT WICK"EPEDIA" WHEN ALL INFO IS NOT VERIFIED AS BEING CORRECT, I HAVE NOT BEEN TO ALL PAGES BUT THE ONE I DID GO TO HAD TO MANY ERRORS TO MENTION, ALMOST ALL OF THE INFO ON THE VW PASSAT PAGE IS INCORRECT- THE B4 PASSAT WAS NOT INTRODUCED IN THE US IN 89 BECAUSE THE b3 WAS INTRODUCED IN 1990 (I OWN ONE) THE B4 WAS INTRODUCED IN 95. AGAIN I SAY: UNTIL THIS SITE BETTER CHECKS ITS INFO IT SUCKS AND IS A WASTE OF TIME TO USE

I think you suck because you could have discussed all that with the guys who work on that page instead of comming over here and complain. BorisTM 11:38, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

It is unfortunate that many of the less popular articles are not very well fact-checked, probably because verifying facts is time-consuming and not nearly as rewarding as writing new articles. I have read many articles in this site, mostly scientific articles. I find the articles quite helpful when one needs to have an overview on a new topic, however some inaccuracies do exist, so for important stuff it is strongly recommended to cross-check the facts. With respect to scientific articles, I also think the lack of consistency in terminology and symbol use is a problem, and very often one article and the articles it links to discuss the subject matter with very different emphases, making it confusing for beginners. All these problems are eventually solvable when enough experts come to edit the problematic articles.

I'm sorry that the inaccuracies vexed you so much, but I hope you will still find Wikipedia a useful resource—even if it is not as accurate as books, it is probably very helpful for people who can otherwise only do random googling. And we'd appreciate very much if you can take some time to fix some inaccuracies, seeing that you are probably an expert in the topic. R6144 12:29, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

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)

Couple of things to fix

• Double redirects should be automatically changed by wikipedia to have them both be single directs to the final destination.
• The first time the title of an article is said in an article it should automatically be made bold, we shouldn't have to do it. (Also any other convention like this should be automatically done instead of requiring people to do it.)

Just my two cents, but from a developers standpoint what you are asking should be reconsidered.

• You should consider what endless redirect could do. Plus if you see a multiple redirection, it would be better to note where you came from and make a direct link.
• How is it possible to enforce such a demand when two sentences can start differently? (and yes there might be different forms of the word). Ex: A software developer or a software engineer. How is the system supposed to know these are both supposed to be bold?

I'll shutup now since I don't work here. --Kim Nevelsteen 18:11, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

• im not suggesting endless redirect. im saying if A directed to B and B went to C and C didnt redirect to anything, A should automatically be set to redirect to C.

And what if C redirects back to A? Or maybe A->B->C->D->E->F->... Someone should see this "problem" and fix it, not have the code solve it.--Kim Nevelsteen 18:23, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

• im not saying we cant bold other things. im just saying if the article is on software developer that should be bolded the first time, and if software engineer is to be bolded, the wikipedia code wouldnt know that, but it can be manually bolded too. basically this would just serve to make work easier, and wouldnt cause us to do any more work because of it. basically this wouldnt bold everything it needed to, but i would bold some of it every time that always was to be bolded. hope this made sense.

What if the article title is "memory (computer science)", but no where in the article is that title, nothing would be bolded? What happens if someone makes the first appearence of the word "memory" in that article bold and somewhere in the article "memory (computer science)" appears accidentally. There is no way to "shut it off". It is just too hard to control.--Kim Nevelsteen 18:23, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

• as far as parentheses it would ignore them. it would bold memory the first time. in fact, heres a way to avoid all these issues if you see necessary-- make it so if someone bolds something first that isnt the title, the script wouldnt attempt to automatically do it. theres a solution if you wanna take it.

Human Rights Servey on Wikipedia (The final post of I_sterbinski)

Dear all,

Wikipedia was recently a subject of intensive research of an huge international human right organization. A team of people from different nationalities and ages were acting on Wikipedia for 20 days, investigating previously noted anomalities of Wikipedia free editing and forming a final report, which (between the others similar reports) will later be a guide to all future moves of the organization concerning Wikipedia. Acting under an account of a real person, their privacy is to be held private. Therefore, very few private information will be revealed.

Also, this is a result of the lack of final possition of the organization concerning Wikipedia and human rights, which was still not formed.

The team's final post on Wikipedia, where they explain their actions can be found on the following addresses:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:I_sterbinski

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Macedonia#Human_Rights_Servey_on_Wikipedia_.28The_final_post_of_I_sterbinski.29

The team would like to thank to all the persons who took part in the correspondence with us.

We also want to appologise for keeping our identity secret for a longer period.

Best regards,

Aleksandar, Biljana, Asparuh, Christos, Valjon, Michael and Ana Luiza

I sterbinski 00:12, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

On the Page: Pope John XXIII there is a picture of a penis in various points throughout the article

Links' appearance

I happened to be on the German version of Wikipedia; their links are in blue, like the English version, but without underlining (unless the pointer is placed directly over them). I have long thought that with all of the links present (in blue and with underlines) the text in English articles is often not very readable. The text in the German version, with links simply in blue, is much easier to read, as well as having a much better look to it. Can the English-version links be made to look like those in the German one? S. Neuman 02:35, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I like the underlines. Underlines are everywhere on the Web; they are the international symbol for "this is a hyperlink". -- Beland 03:58, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, regardless of the merits of the links' looking one way or the other, I've since found out that I can go into Preferences and make it this way for myself. (I still think it might be preferable as the default setting, though.) S. Neuman 18:16, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out, S. I didn't know I could do that, but I have changed my prefs now and it looks much better! I agree that it would be preferable as the default, but it seems we are a couple of years too late on this: see Link style vote Ground Zero | t 18:28, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks to you also, Ground Zero, for directing me to the previous dabate on the matter. As mentioned in that discussion, most people don't go into their Preferences, and probably don't even know a change is possible. S. Neuman 18:09, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Though I'm used to the links now, when I was new to Wikipedia they were annoying. I support changing them.Twilight Realm 21:13, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

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)

My watchlist

Hello, I have a suggestion for improving the "My Watchlist" page. When I view all of the pages on my watchlist, it merely lists ALL of them in alphabetical order. I would perfer being able to sort these using folders and being able to lable the folders. This would allow me to search out only whatever topic I am currently working on rather than having to hunt and peck for similar pages. Have a good day!--CrazyTalk 19:19, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

You can do something like this by creating sub-pages of your user page that link to the articles of interest, and then using the "Related changes" tool. Bovlb 07:13:56, 2005-08-31 (UTC)

Cursor on front page

Wikipedia rules. I was wondering if someone could make it so that when the front page, www.wikipedia.org, loads up, the cursor automatically goes to the search field. It's a picky point, I know, but with as many times in a day that I look something up on Wikipedia, I know it would save at least me a lot of time. 128.118.112.162 16:25, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, whaddayaknow? I wanted to ask this too, but you (just) beat me too it. Sounds like a great idea to me. I'm sick of tabbing my way through all the languages to get to the search box (with the mentality "I've started so I'll finish"). Can't this be done? Anyone? 144.213.253.14 06:54, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

That would probably have to be done by the developers; we don't have the technical abilities to do that. You may wish to file the suggestion at Bugzilla. Thanks! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 17:29, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

I've suggested this before, somewhere else, but I didn't get a response. I'll suggest it to them. Twilight Realm 21:17, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Hate trolling on Emo page

I'd like to report that the opening of the article on "Emo" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emo) is hateful not only to emos, but to Canadians as well and should be removed. I tried to edit it out, but that part of the page could not be edited.

It says: "Emo is an abreviation for loser. People follow the "emo" subculture are all gay people who won't admit that they are gay. Emo people like to cry and whine alot about "heart breaks" that they can't ever manage to get over and other things in the same nature that don't matter. Emo people all cut themselves, and they all have black hair, and they all they are totally hip and individul by wearing all black and red. Emo people like to pretend that they are so depressed that they are going to kill themselves, but they really never will because it is all just a trend and it is cool to live off of sulking over lame-ass break-ups and pretending like they are going to kill themselves so more people will pay attention to them. They also cut themselves for the same reason just stated, so they get attention from people around them. If you have a friend that cuts themself, please, tell them to end it all, it's just one less piece of shit in the world. Of course, they would never kill themselves because underneath their pseudo-facade's they wouldn't even consider it. If you would like to find a place that has a high population, please check: THE WHOLE ENTIRE FUCKING COUNTRY OF CANADA. Every single person there is emo, every one of them."

Shameful. Please do something about this.

This article was vandalised and reverted within 11 minutes. You must have been unfortunate enough to see it in that brief interval. If you see something similar in future, you can revert it for yourself. Bovlb 04:57:16, 2005-09-05 (UTC)

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)

Transparent favicon

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

Dang, I'm Flayed!

Excuse me, but not to sound like a whiner or something, but I really would like to let you know that I think the article on Flay Allster from Gundam Seed is not quite neutral. You see, whoever wrote that page seemed, to be, to be biased against her, as are many, and I mean MANY Gundam Seed fans. Honestly we've heard enough of "she's spoiled and manipulative" or "she hates coordinators". She was a very important character in the series, and I'm not afraid to admit that I'm one of her few fans. Can someone revise the article, including the bits of good she's done? She wasn't perfect, but she really helped with Kira's character. As mentioned in Phase 50, she "was in pain" and "was only frightened" and her final scene was really heartwarming, since she finally got over her hatred of coordinators.

Quite simply, I ask that you please not take sides here. Flay has far too many haters already. The last thing I want is for this excellent website to trash her too.

--82.38.56.54 19:47, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know. This is a Wiki. At the top of every page is an "Edit this page" link so you can make the corrections yourself. Wikipedia has a firm Neutral Point of View policy. Bovlb 15:27:59, 2005-09-06 (UTC)

Stop TJive

This fool, with no knowledge of politics, keeps reverting my edits over 3 thimes just because he does not agree with some of the facts. Once he reverted my article and stole everything I wrote to include in his edit. He should be blocked. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.30.205.254 (talk • contribs) 2005-09-05 21:06:20 PDT (UTC)

Edit-warring is a bad thing for Wikipedia, and repeated reversions are always discouraged. Please see Wikipedia:Resolving disputes. If you wish to report this user for excessive reversion, I suggest that you take this to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR and supply some details. Be sure to include links to where you discussed the disputed edits on the article talk page, and where you made a good faith effort to resolve this dispute directly with the user. Wikipedia also has a firm policy against personal attacks. This includes a prohibition on saying things like, "This fool, with no knowledge of politics". I hope you can see how remarks like that might make it difficult for the two of you to reach a compromise. Bovlb 15:40:27, 2005-09-06 (UTC)

ahem

The home page of wikipedia shows 'Espanol, la enciclopedia libre', where the word FREE has been translated wrong, it's supposed to say "La enciclopedia gratuita", HUGE MISTAKE. I can't edit the homepage, so whoever set it up was a moron who grabbed a cheap dictionary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.230.3.58 (talk • contribs) 2005-09-07 03:22:46 PDT (UTC)

• Please consult Wikipedia:No personal attacks. Also, Wikipedia is intended to be free in both senses (beer and speech). Different language-specific Wikipedias may emphasise this differently. Finally, please sign comments on talk and discussion pages with four tildes (~~~~). Thanks, Bovlb 14:38:14, 2005-09-07 (UTC)

I insist, an even more moronic answer that had nothing to with my suggestion.

You'll have more luck getting it changed if you go complain at the Spanish Wikipedia instead. We can't change it from here. I rather suspect they knew what they were doing, though. —Cryptic (talk) 20:45, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Anonymous it´s "la enciclopedia libre", not "la enciclopedia gatuita". Gratuita means free of charge, which is not what the message is trying to communicate. Maybe YOU should get a better dictionary to see that the translation of "free" is not only "gratis". E.g: "He is now a free man" does not mean "Ahora es un hombre gratuito" or something of the sort. Obviously. From Argentina, Wikiwert 18:18, 8 September 2005 (UTC).

• Guys, they're both right. "Free" can mean either of those. In fact, look at the first paragraph of the article Gratis versus Libre: "Gratis versus Libre is the distinction between no cost and freedom, a distinction not made by the word free in the English language." Look at the words gratis and libre. Familiar? Wikipedia is both gratis and libre. I personally think that it should say "libre," because most newcomers would care about that more, but it's for them to decide. Now stop being morons and stop arguing.
  • There actually is a policy about this. See m:How_to_start_a_new_Wikipedia#Translate_the_interface, which states:

Please note that for the translation of the free encyclopedia that free in this sense means as in "not restricted", because English does not have different words for free (price - "gratis") and free (freedom). This sometimes makes people confused. If your language has different words for free (as in price) and free (as in freedom), please use the one that refers to freedom.

So "la enciclopedia libre" is correct. --Metropolitan90 06:46, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

Cursor Focus

The cursor should start off in the search box, unless there's a good reason not to.

Google places its cursor in the search box immediately - Wikipedia can always learn from other successful websites.

• How about this: When Google has an edit this page facility, Wikipedia will move the cursor to the search box? :o)

-=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=-

Creating an article

I tried to create an article titled "Boga", referring to the Star Wars creature, but I got to a disambiguation page that wouldn't let me create my own page about it. As of yet, no such page exists. How can I create this article instead of ending up stuck in a disambiguation page?

• Edit the disambiguation page on the line about the lizard, changing the word "Boga" to [[Boga (Star Wars)]]. Then click on the resulting red link and create the new page. See also Wikipedia:Disambiguation. Bovlb 07:02:25, 2005-09-10 (UTC)

I agree! This would make wikipedia so much easier to use. Why don't they do this?

Slowness

I know this has been brought up before at various times, but Wikipedia is operating very, very slowly recently. Pictures are frequently replaced by their descriptions, and it can sometimes take at least 10-20 seconds to submit an edited article. Sometimes it just gives me an error message, and I have to resubmit. There have even been 2 times when I couldn't even view an article, and I got a "the Wikimedia servers are overloaded" error page. The fundraising drive just ended, right? Are some new servers on the way yet?

As a matter of fact, as part of the deal announced in June, Yahoo just develivered 23 servers for use in Asia. As to the current fund drive, it normally takes weeks (or months) between the time we order the servers and the time they are installed and operational. →Raul654 03:00, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

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.

Yes, it really IS slow. Almost all of the time.

I know this has come up again and again, and I imagine everyone knows it, and that the problem is being addressed as best it can. But I just thought I'd add my two cents' worth. Although I could write pages and pages of suggestions about how various annoyances and idiosyncracies could be improved, for me the speed - or lack of it - is the NUMBER ONE problem. I would say to the Wikipedists: forget everything else for the moment, and concentrate all efforts on speeding the damn thing up by a factor of at least ten.

• None of us are paid here. Wikimedia is a not-for-profit project. We are all users like you who sometimes get a little frustrated about the speed. If you want to help, you can donate. The money will be used to buy more servers, which will directly improve speed. See m:Wikimedia servers. --Kwekubo 02:00, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Point taken, but it's on the verge of being unusable. A tiny typo correction can easily take me several minutes waiting for the pages to come up. And then I get "Sorry- we have a problem... The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to your request." It's getting so I just don't bother.

Comment about search

To test the search capability, I typed "highest mountain in Turkey". The search results were unimpressive. I forged ahead nonetheless, clicking on 'Turkey', then sub-topic 'Geography', and found that Mount Ararat was the highest point. On the 'Mount Ararat' page, the text "tallest peak in modern Turkey" appears, so I typed that exact text in the search field, and did a search. Still 'Mount Ararat' was not in the list (at least not anywhere near the top)! When I put double quotes around the phrase, the search was successful, but it is unlikely that anyone wanting this information would search in this manner.

I admit that I was able, with a few clicks and some reading, to find what I was looking for. But I've sat by young children and watched them surf, and they would not have been able to do what I did without it taking a lot of time (and they would have lost interest and given up).

Am I on the wrong track--is what I'm asking for not a requirement?

• Yep, the Wikipedia search is, as you put it, "unimpressive". I never bother using it. I just use Google, and if I want to encourage it to find Wikipedia articles I add the word "Wikipedia". This generally works much better.

• You can also use advanced search on Google to limit your search to a particular domain. AlMac|^(talk) 07:03, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

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.

Threats from the editors

When I first visited Wikipedia I didn't create an account and was allocated a temporary identifier based on the URL I was allocated at the time. 195.93.21.8 It seems that other people who have been allocated this URL have been behaving in a disgraceful way - deleting parts of articles, submitting articles on words which don't exist and using foul language. As a result, even though I now have a proper account and user name, I am receiving various threats and injunctions from the Wikipedia editors, including stopping me from editing any articles. Is it not possible:

1. for the editors to dissassociate me from this URL now that I have a proper account.
2. for people to behave in a responsible and sensible manner, for the good of us all, so that these problems don't arise in the first place?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by WPPlummer (talk • contribs) 2005-09-17 02:34:59 PDT (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia. If you have a account, I recommend that you log in whenever using Wikipedia. This will mean that your edits don't show up under the anonymous IP address, and that you don't get "new messages" notices for that address. Unfortunately, you can still be blocked from editing if that address, or someone using it, is blocked by an administrator. If this happens, you should contact the blocking administrator, who should be happy to help you out. By the way, it is commonly requested that this aspect of the blocking software be changed; see bugzilla:550. Regarding (2), it is apparently not possible. The world would be a very different place if it were. Finally, when posting to discussion pages, or certain Wikipedia pages like this one, you can sign your name using four tildes (~~~~). Bovlb 21:06, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

User:Igo4U

If you look at User:Igo4U most of this users edits are external links to commercial websites, some of the links that I checked don't seem to work either. Can we bot this users changes in the External links section of articles? WikiDon 06:45, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

• I suggest you take this to either Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism or Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress. Or you could, of course, try communicating directly with the user. Bovlb 07:50, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Forth Dimension

There are two pages titled 'Fourth dimension' and 'Fourth Dimension' please set up a disambiguation page. :) --Bdude 08:49, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

• Done, but next time you could do it yourself. See WP:DAB. Bovlb 06:59, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia must tighten up controls of who can edit and who cannot!

hello, i am User:Rbj and i love Wikipedia and have made quite a few edit contributions that have stuck, so i think i am a positive asset to Wikipedia. but i am spending too much time reverting vandalism.

why is it that Wikipedia allows anonymous (identified by mere IP addresses) editing of the articles? this is just dumb and we're literally begging for vandals to come and mess it up?

you should require every editor to Login and when they first create an account, they should have to verify by responding to an email generated from Wikipedia (so we know their email address is real). they should have to identify themselves fully in creating that account, at least viewable by the administrators. and whenever they login, there should be a record of IP addresses so that if vandalism is done from the same IP (but a different login name), administrators might have an idea of who to contact.

you guys have to fix this! you just do. r b-j 18:12, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

This has been proposed before and discussed at length. See Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Abolish anonymous users. Thryduulf 19:52, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

suggestion: navigation to Popular Articles

The Navigation box contains two options which are sort of useful for browsing thru the Wikipedia: Recent Changes and Random Article. Unfortunately, they call up a very large number of very esoteric items. I'd find it useful to have a Popular Articles option which would list the articles which were most often read in the past N days. (This would be comparable to the "25 Most eMailed Articles" on the New York Times website.) Is this feasible? advTHANKSance --Keeves 13:52, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

• This is actually a feature that is already supported in the MediaWiki software, but is not available in Wikipedia because page view counters are disabled for performance reasons. I hope you'd agree that we need to keep Wikipedia as speedy as possible. See meta:Help:Special page#Currently unavailable special pages for (not many) details. Bovlb 14:21, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
• I'm embarrased to admit that this makes more sense than I'd prefer to admit. (As a programmer, I should have realized that updating a counter uses a lot more resources than a simple sequential sort, such as used by the Recent Changes page.) Thanks again for helping to keep Wikipedia as fast as it can be.--Keeves 15:10, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
  • See also Wikipedia:Software status. Bovlb 16:37, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Wiki for Kids would be great

My 4th grader is learning geometry. However the Wiki articles are contextually oriented for higher level students. A Kid's Wiki that organizes content to an elementary level, for elementary age topics would be highly useful. And of course it can be written by students themselves.

• Have you tried the Simple English Wikipedia? Or wikibooks:Wikijunior? Bovlb 06:55, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

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)

I use Wikipedia as a resource and was not particularly interested in editing it but it seems that someone has done something to whatever was under Clarence Thomas, though I don't particularly like the Justice I think perhaps:

'This is one dumb nigger' was not what the foundation had in mind.

Wouldn't know what to put instead, so not sure what to do with it.

it is on this page:

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

hpspi@att.net

I don't know if you'll read this or even be able to find it, but a suggestion: put this in the discussion page for that article. Click "Discussion" at the top. And create a new category for it. Click the plus next to edit if there is one. If it isn't there... I guess just put what you want to say at the bottom. I don't know why the plus isn't always there. Has anyone fixed this yet? Twilight Realm 01:22, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

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.

Over resoluted pictures

Some pictures as for example Image:The Earth seen from Apollo 17.jpg have a high resolution version that is just too high and that can´t be properly seen (the picture appears blurred). A lower resolution high resolution version should replace the existing one.--Wikiwert 04:03, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

It is possible to change the way images are displayed in Special:Preferences - this is a per-user setting. You can choose a maximum size for the image as it appears on its image description page. The only time you would see the full image is if you clicked the large thumbnail on the description page. Of course, we also encourage Wikipedians to contribute their own work to improve Wikipedia, including images. If you see a photograph that is not as good as it could be - get out with your camera, take a better one and upload it although in this case it could be a little more difficult, or at least expensive :o) -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 15:32, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Im not sure it´s a per user problem. I mean, the high resolution verion is set to 3000*3002, when it should be say 2500*2500. Instead, other pictures of similar resolution are perfectly seen.--Wikiwert 18:53, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

It's all about the resampling algorithms. Wikipedia uses only one algorithm, I'm not sure what it is though (bicubic or something)? Any image viewer worth it's salt will give you multiple options when you resize. Try it, and if you get a good low size high resolution version upload it and link to it from the article. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 01:15, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Here's another example of what I'm talking about two sections up, right here. Don't just help this one person; if it's possible, change it so no more people will need help in the first place. Possibly a "This page works best in 1024x768 resolution?"Twilight Realm 22:46, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Requesting Article

I happen to enjoy spending countless hours searching through wikipedia and finding information on numerous subjects. I often recommend this site to any and most internet "nerds" that I encounter. Today, I was a bit disappointed. I had finished a very good book written by Anne Tyler and attempted to research more information on wikipedia. I like to find out what this site says about books that interest me. To my displeasure, there lacks an article on "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant." I realize that my complaint is probably being placed in the incorrect area of your site but I do wish to have it heard. I, in no way, am insulting such a wonderful site and hope to see an article soon! Thank you so much.

WHY IS WIKIPEDIA BIASED AGAINST MACEDONIANS?IF YOU DONT BELIEVE ME...I SUGGEST YOU READ THE HISTORY OF MACEDONIA AND THEN READ THE HISTORIES OF ITS NEIGHBOURS....YOU WILL CLEARLY SEE THE WIKIPEDIA HAS TAKEN SIDES...SOMETHING IT CLAIMS THAT IT TRY'S TO AVOID...IT REALLY DISHEARTENS ME TO SEE THIS...COULD YOU PLEASE MAKE YOUR ARTICLES A LITTLE LESS BIASED.

Both of these questions can be solved the same way. Wikipedia is a free content encyclopedia that anyone can edit. You've already done it once by making these comments. I have made a couple of Wiki-links in your comments - click on the highlighted word to go to that page. You can add to and improve these articles by clicking the "edit this page" button. Happy editing! -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=-

An Article "Faggot" that I found

I'm not sure if I'm in the right place or not, but I went to the article "Faggot" and saw it had been vandilized

  'Faggot
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
  Revision as of 08:49, 26 September 2005; view current revision
  ← Older revision | Newer revision →
     Faggot derives through the Old French fagot and from the
     cock-sucking of W. Marsh and his band of flagellating homosexual pirates.
     This word also derives from the sweat that gathers on the underside of the pair of 
     testicle sacs we call a scrotom . Feel free to lick it anytime you see fit. Else, 
     go to a farm with horses and seduce one of the males to have anal sex with you until 
     your colon perforates and you die .'

This was taken from the link that led me to this page, with this as the text. I'm new to Wikipedia and therefore have no idea what to do when something like this happens. I bet the original author of the article doesn't know. I can't edit this article myself since I don't know anything about the topic. Please, do something about this article as it is very offensive to readers. --Willis835 12:30, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I've taken care of it. Kelisi 15:37, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't want to be seem to be advertising, but this is yet another example of what I'm talking about 4 sections above this one. Though slightly different, this is still similar. The instructions on editing are too long for most people to read. Laziness is, unfortunately, quite common in humans. And these days, people don't have much time. I haven't read it, I admit it. If there's any way to make an intro that's just the essential basics, it would be easier for everyone.Twilight Realm 23:13, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Automatic Signature

When editing a page, right above the "Save page" and "Show preview" buttons, there are two checkboxes, "This is a minor edit" and "Watch this page." I have the Watch button automatically checked.

So, my point. Why not have one for "include signature"? I'm somewhat new, and I often (half the time) forget to add the ~~~~ (for example, here). Since most of my edits are on the talk pages, I would love an automatic signature box. You could set it so it's automatically checked or not, just like the others. Or, it could be automatically checked when you're editing a Talk page, but not if you're editing an article.

I know that this would have to be suggested to the software writers. But I would like to know that I'm not alone before doing so. So, does anyone agree?Twilight Realm 00:21, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

• I think this is a great idea. As a programmer, though, I can predict that it will be workable only if the software can distinguish between when I'm on a Talk page (in which case this box should be checked, and when I'm not (in which case it should not be checked). But I think that would be pretty easy, because the page name begins with "Talk:". --Keeves 12:20, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

• Nice idea, but sometimes I'm on a talk page or AFD discussion when I include a comment indented somewhere in the existing text. I would want my sig to appear next to my comment and not at the end of the page. The software would have to recognize what your comment is. And what if I made to comments in different places in the same edit? Both would need to be signed. - Mgm|^(talk) 21:49, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, maybe it could detect if your edit is all in a single chunk and put the signature at the end of that, and if it's not, leave it up to you to do multiple ones.Twilight Realm 23:32, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

WIKIPEDIA IS NOT ALLOWING MEMBERS TO SIGN ON

I have signed on 11 straight times in the past 10 minutes and I am still not signed on. Is the software being upgarded? Is the short-term or long-term? When will I be able to sign onto Wikipedia using my account and username?--207.230.48.58 01:53, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

It's not a problem for me. Maybe your IP address was blocked? I don't really know what I'm talking about. Twilight Realm 02:20, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

• Did you repeat your password during the signup process? It needs to be put in two boxes. Also, do you get any error messages? Do you have cookies enabled? It would also help if you gave use the username you are trying to use. In the last few days hundreds, if not thousands, of people have signed up without problems, so we're certainly allowing new accounts. -- Mgm|^(talk) 21:55, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

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.

Why is explanation-guide.info's of the Largest Mobile companies web page biased? It states at the bottom of the page that your web site gives them the info, but all of the US carriers stats are a year and more out of date. They list all of the EU and Asian companies as being the largest, even thought Cingular, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint-Nextel have larger numbers then most of the other EU related carriers on their web site. And why will they NEVER replay back to my question about this? Can you please help me out?

Thanks, Russell

Cingular 51 Million users Verizon Wireless 47 Million users, and Sprint-Nextel 45 Million Users as of the last quarter in 2005.

How can these other carriers have higher numbers?! Why can't you and your partner web site give credit to the USA?!

Orange (GSM) - 40 million mmO2 (GSM) TIM (GSM)

• As wikipedia mirrors ( like explanation-guide.info) are not automatically updated in the same way as wikipedia itself articles may be outdated or inaccurate. And they are not our 'partner' as anyone can copy our articles.. Robmods 18:45, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

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: [4] Antandrus (talk) 03:01, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

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)

Don't the trivial links in text bother anyone else?

When you are reading about, say, how the RSA algorithm works, you probably don't need to know what a prime number is. I for one, find these links extrememly irritating, and they get in way of my flow of reading. Is there any way of regulating these (say a usefulness parameter of a link in a particular place, measured by the number of times it is clicked), or at the very least a shortcut to turn off the links in the page temporarily.

The policy is that if there is a word which isn't directly obvious (ie. techinical terms, such as prime) you link it the first time it is used (if it is a long page, you can link the first time it's used in a section. If the links bother you that much, you could always view the printable version of a page, link is in the sidebar under the searchbox gkhan 07:46, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I used to think so, but I'm used to it. However, I think that the links shouldn't have the underlines, it would make them less annoying. Twilight Realm 23:15, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

That's easily fixed. Open User:Twilight Realm/monobook.css and add the lines:

#BodyContent a { text-decoration: none; }
#BodyContent a:hover { text-decoration: none; }*/

a { text-decoration: none;}
a:hover { text-decoration: none;}

And purge the cache a few times, that should fix it. gkhan 05:43, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Wiki Clock

Would it be possible to either have a page to view the current time on wikipedia? Or have it included on the top of each page or something?

I know you can do it in preferences then time zone, but that is just a little tedious

Cheers

Reedy Boy 11:17, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Do you mean that you want to see what the current UTC time is? i.e. your computer clock tells you it is e.g. 12:40 in your local timezone (UTC+01:00 in my case) then it is e.g. 11:40 UTC? If this is the case, I'm pretty sure you can get external programs that can display this on your task bar. Thryduulf 11:43, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, i suppose thats it. Could do that, just having it on the page somewhere would be good... If someone knows of a simple program to do this that'd be good

Reedy Boy 13:33, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia already has variables to do this. In Wiki markup, you can type:

---

Today is [[{{CURRENTDAYNAME}}]], [[{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}]], [[{{CURRENTYEAR}}]] - {{CURRENTMONTH}}/{{CURRENTDAY}}/{{CURRENTYEAR}}. It is now {{CURRENTTIME}} (UTC)

---

and it becomes this:

Today is Wednesday, December 11, 2024 - 12/11/2024. It is now 15:32 (UTC)

→Raul654 01:31, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

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 [5]), 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--inks^T 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 [6]

CNN: “Bush pics labeled asshole, moron” [7]

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 Sidaway^Talk 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)

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

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)

"Sept" is not a recognized abbreviation for the month of September?

I am new member, and was just going through the Wikipedia Tutorial today. I came across the point of date formatting and figured I'd give it a try in the sandbox. So I wrote my birthday Sept 25, 1981, then changed my settings to test if the date formatting really changed. Wikipedia apparently didn't recognize this as a formatted date. When I changed it to Sep 25, 1981 it suddenly worked. I always thought "Sept" was an acceptable and commonly used abbreviation for September. Can this be fixed?

• Wikipedia uses 3-letter abbreviations for the months. I don't see how making an exception for september would be useful. Why not just type it out in full? - Mgm|^(talk) 23:01, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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]

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]

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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...

[8]

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

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)

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)

"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!

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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 remoeved cause it has nothing to do wiht 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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 tzamarro@yahoo.com

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

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

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)

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 [9] so please upload it over the one you accidentally uploaded before.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

OSHA

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

Spam external link to useless AdSense OSHA info site

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 Iniledarklight@hotmail.com

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.

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)

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.

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)

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

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

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)

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.

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 :) --inks^T 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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.--inks^T 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)

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)

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)

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)

We need the big man knicks rep

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

Route info

Does 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)

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)

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 [10] gkhan 23:02, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

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)

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 [11] 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 [12]. 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)

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)

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)

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 added 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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

(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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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 added 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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

Hitler Childhood heading offensively rascist

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)

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 added 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)

inappropriate language at this url

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_service, under the topic: further reading. — Preceding unsigned comment added 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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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.

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 added 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)

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 added by 24.235.185.65 (talk • contribs) 18:18 EDT, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

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)

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 added by 24.57.130.116 (talk • contribs) 18:19 EDT, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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

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)

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

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?

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)

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: Template:Iftrue {{{3}}} Template:Iftrue

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)

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 [13] 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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

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

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)

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.