Encyclopedia > Wikipedia:Village pump March 2003 archive 3

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Wikipedia:Village pump/March 2003 archive 3

I've noticed that MeatballWiki gives no IPs for anon users, but (what I presume to be) reverse DNS lookups. Has this been proposed/discussed/rejected here? Martin

The old usemod wikipedias (http://af.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Recent_Changes) also show the hostname. I would be nice to have option to select between IP adres and hostname. Giskart 18:39 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

Except in rare cases (dynamic IPs), IPs and hostnames are equivalent, but hostnames are sometimes considered more privacy-invasive, as they often explicitly specify a person's university, workplace, or local ISP by name in text for all to see, which information would require a separate lookup with an IP. That, and we'd have to do reverse lookups on every visitor in order to obtain the information -- that'll slow things down a little. --Brion

This would be useful information, though, in helping to judge such a user's contribution. For example, if the BBCi article was modified by someone with a bbc.co.uk hostname, one might expect it to be accurate, but potentially biased. If the Java programming language was modified by someone with a university hostname, one might expect a certain, more theoretical, slant. If someone with an French-based hostname posted to US plan to invade Iraq, one might want to check for an anti-US slant - and also copyedit the spelling+grammar of someone who may not be a fluent English speaker. Martin

Sun in Pisces, Moon in Sagittarius

This astrological combination indicates a person who is in a perpetual state of motion. Your nature is excitable, sometimes irritable. You love change and will probably be involved in numerous occupations throughout life. You approach each new project and contract with new enthusiasm. At first, your interest is real enough, but it tends to be fitful. You appear to be a busy worker and have good abilities in a variety of areas. In society you are inclined to be talkative, sometimes enjoying gossip. However, your intentions are always sincere and you have a sympathetic nature. Your most conscious aim in life is to gain understanding and sympathy, but your chances for attaining these are diminished because of the diffuseness of your character.

The key to a harmonious existence lies in trying to concentrate your will in a single direction.

Why arent we allowed to use AP photos if we provide the source? Susan Mason

Because they are very likely to challenge our claim of fair use. --mav

So? If its a violation we can remove them, we are a non-profit educational/research website. Susan Mason

It is best for us not get into that situation to begin with. They say in big nasty words that the images may not be reproduced period. We should respect that even though legally we do probably have a valid fair use claim. --mav

Buy a camera: take your own photos. It's more fun than law. Two16

GNU FDL - new version available There's a new version of the GFDL in town: version 1.2. See the differences (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.2-wdiff.txt). Currently wikipedia is using "version 1.1 or later". I think we should change this to "version 1.2 or later". The changes are fairly minor, but it's always good to stay up to date... :) Martin

Do these pages have any encyclopaedic value?

These seem to have a little justification

  -- Chris Q 16:49 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

I'd move these two to the bottom list (sic):

List of songs which refer to other songs tells much about "how the web was woven", "passing the torch", "historical process"
List of songs whose title does not appear in the lyrics has some paradoxical/logical interest.

The rest are just self-indulgent fun, probably harmless. Ortolan88

Acapedia (http://acapedia.org/). What is this? What are its origins, purpose etc.

I don't know, but it's got 354,000 hits (http://www.google.com/search?q=acapedia). Plus, I suspect it has a higher page ranking than us: bulgaria free encyclopedia (http://www.google.com/search?q=bulgaria+free+encyclopedia) gives acapedia's redirect to our server a #1 hit, with wikipedia's URL down at #9.

whois details for acapedia (http://whois.melbourneit.com/index.php3?whois=acapedia&extension=org&mlcomlanguageid=&x=16&y=9) - with a Seattle-based address. Registered 30 January, this year (could be an extension. Still unclear on purpose.

354,000 hits turns out to be just 22 when google has filtered to remove near-identical content - phew! :) [1] (http://www.columbia-house-bmg-secrets.com/) gives "Todd T." as a Seattle-based person associated with acapedia. Martin

Looking at Chached pages Cached Acapedia Bulgaris (http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:YImx6v4qHPYC:acapedia.org/aca/Bulgaria+acapedia&hl=en&ie=UTF-8) it was a rather cheekey front end to Wikipedia, maiking it look as though Wikipedia supplied some of the info. At the moment it is just redirecting to Wikipedia though.

Could someone unprotect my user page? The vandal doesn't seem to frequent Wikipedia anymore... Thanks -- Notheruser 01:16 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

Done Enchanter 01:21 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! - Notheruser

Is there an "official" way of requesting feedback on an article (Nickel and Dimed)? Should I appeal to individual users, at the risk of annoying them, or is feedback subtly given through edits? Should I leave a message on the talk page and hope for a response or should I just leave a comment at the village pump :)? If feedback is rarely given (I would venture due to the ever-changing nature of articles), would someone mind making an exception and looking over the entry? I'm asking for two reasons, development in my writing (I'm a senior in high school) and for future reference as I would like to add similar entries on other books in my collection (after a quick reread of course :)). Thanks. -- Notheruser 03:16 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

There's no official way as far as I know. If you're aware of a specific problem with the article you can use Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, but that's not really appropriate in this case. My advice would be to ask your English teacher to review the article for you. Teachers are usually overjoyed when their students do extra work, and if you frame the question right, you'll probably get a lengthy response. Print out a hard copy. I guess your other option is one of the ones you suggested -- risk annoyance and suck up to a random contributor on their talk page. -- Tim Starling 05:08 Mar 20, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I think I'll try a teacher rather than risk annoying a user. I don't want to step on anybody's toes (not in my first month here, maybe later :) ) -- Notheruser 06:31 Mar 20, 2003 (UTC)

General feed back for any article from {{two16}}:

if you understand NPOV you won't go too far

Couple quick questions:

Should HTML entities for bgcolor (in tables) refer to the common name entity (i.e. "pink") or should they refer to the hex code (i.e. "#ffc0c0")?
I have been moving quite a few images into the style seen in Moon, Rabbit, and Squirrel. Is everybody okay with that style (the image in the table)?
Is there a good reason why Japanese is 日本語 (Nihongo) instead of just 日本語? I mean, anybody who wants to, and can read Japanese is likely to have both Japanese fonts installed, and knows what 日本語 means. As it is, it just makes that title bar longer...
Is there any plan to get caching working in Mozilla? IE 5.5 is lightning fast, but tabs make adding entries about a thousand times more convienent.
- I'd love to have it working, but it's a low priority for me since the caching was added mainly to reduce server load, and IE makes up by far the majority of visitors. Alas... If you can help debugging it, I'd be most grateful :) --Brion
Is there any way to log into the ja Wikipedia with my en Wikipedia login? Certainly would be nice to use the 4~ thing in the ja Wikipedia and have it link to my user page.
- At this time you need to set up user accounts separately on each wiki. You can use the same name, unless someone else ahs taken it which is rare. --Brion

Thanks! -- Marumari 20:58 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

Marumari. You ask a good question about "日本語 (Nihongo)", and indeed that represenation is redundant. I can think of two points to consider. First, a person who does not have the Unicode font installed will see something meaningless for ""日本語", so adding "(Nihongo)" at least lets them know what is behind that link. Second, an english speaker who is at the very beginning of learning Japanese might know no kanji, but only romanji. Perhaps a better solution would be to change it to "日本語 (Japanese)" -º¡º

I must admit is tempting to make the cynical comment that somebody who doesn't have a Unicode font probably doesn't care what is behind the link, but I won't. :) I think you make a good point, although it still doesn't ease up on the amount of space that it takes up. And, of course, an English speaker who only knows romanji won't be able to make it very far in the ja wikipedia anyways. Perhaps "日本語 (ja)" would work better? But that seems a bit redundant as the user already sees "ja:..." in the alt for the link. -- Marumari 21:33 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

Basically, if we don't include the romanized version people complain that there's a bunch of weird question marks on the page. ;) And for the occasional person who might be able to read the language but doesn't have the font support, it's an indication that the material is there, they just need to upgrade. So I don't think it's useless... --Brion 03:47 Mar 20, 2003 (UTC)

It seems to me that 日本語 (Japanese) would be the ideal way to go (unless you want to make everything at the top into "French", "Spanish", etc.) "Nihongo" is only used by English speakers who can't read Japanese text (those people will understand "Japanese"). I can see many cases where somebody wouldn't understand what 日本語 (Nihongo) means, but I can't see any cases where somebody wouldn't understand what 日本語 (Japanese) means. 日本語 (Japanese) just seems all-around clearer to me. -- Marumari 16:54 Mar 20, 2003 (UTC)

This is for language links right? Well if you don't understand what Nihongo, Deutsch, or Español means then you'll have a hell of a time reading the articles behind those links. The whole purpose of inter-language links is to inform those people who can read those languages that a version of the article they are currently reading is in another language they can read. Thus we use native forms. --mav

All I'm trying to say is that a Japanese speaker is much more likely to recognize "Japanese" than they are to recognize "Nihongo". The Japanese don't really use or learn romanji in school; they learn Japanese and English. As such, (Japanese) would be a lot more recognizable than (Nihongo).

So Epopt organizes Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships, and we start applying it to keep the growing number of ship articles in order, then poor Zoe comes along to fix an apparent lameness in German battleship Bismarck, unaware of the obscure WikiProject that might have answered her puzzlement. What's a good way (other than posting here :-) ) to inform would-be energetic editors that a WikiProject exists, and that an article is being edited to conform to the pattern recommended by a particular WikiProject? Stan 06:28 Mar 20, 2003 (UTC)

How about a bold type link to WikiProject Ships inserted as the top line of the talk page? Tannin

See talk:Lithium for an example. --mav

--- How do I display an image in multiple language versions of Wikipedia without having to upload it more than once? Mkweise 18:42 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

You don't, so far. Or, if you want to cheat, you can upload it to the English wiki and then use the direct URL for the picture on the others, where I think we haven't got around to disabling external image links. But these won't link to image description pages, and there's no way to track usage from within the wiki (ie, if an image is no longer used by a page on the english wiki, the page won't show that it's still being used on the German or Japanese wikis). --Brion 19:03 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

Somebody mentioned that this could be one possible use of wikimedia.org. --mav

As 9 out of 10 images are language-independant, it would certainly make sense to have just one image repository used by all language wikis. Why burden the server with storing, serving, caching and backing up a dozen or more copies of the same image? Mkweise 17:23 Mar 25, 2003 (UTC)

Does anyone think it is good idea that we have an aritcle for each Chinese character? While each western alphabet has own article like C, I think it is not bad to have an article for a Chinese character. Each Chinese character has ethnology, the relationship with other characters. Wikitionary is not suitable for this because it is about a word not a character. We can also put a character code of each encoding. See [2] (http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=5E55&useutf8=false) In fact, there are many dictionaries in Japanese and Chinese that have each entry is one Chinese character. If no one seems to show objection, I will start to add some. -- Taku 03:56 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

Besides, we can use a bot to have a good coverage of each Character at first with presumably Unicode code and each native code with rendered character. -- Taku 03:57 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a dictionary and you mention that Japanese and Chinese dictionaries have entries for each character. I fail to see how Wiktionary isn't the most appropriate place for these entries. For one thing, you will be able to have the native Chinese as the title of the page - in en.wiki you are limited to extended ASCII (and for good reason). The reason we do have encyclopedia articles for each English letter is because this is the English language wiki encyclopedia and for some reason this is a tradtion for English language encyclopedias (I have no idea why since this is the stuff for dictionaries). At the very least I would like to see how substantial an example article on a single character would be. I'm very skeptical though (aren't there over well 10,000 Chinese characters BTW? I see some major article bloat if we were to include every character in every language). ---mav

First of all, While most of Japanese dictionaries contain one character entries, there are independent dictionaries dedicated only to Chinese characters, called "Kanwa-jiten" (loosely translated as Chinese-Japanese character dictionary[?]. I have same concern with you. I am not sure we really can have decent articles. Adding an each character individually might be an option but in that case the drawback is much -- definitely we want to put graphic-rendered character and encoding to each character, which is a really tedious jobs and the number of articles might be numerous.

Wikitionary is in turn a bad place to do this kind of project. Chinese characters are called ideography because each character represents certain idea. Wikitionary is a dictionary about basically words. I don't see the reason why we want to mix up characters and words, both are different concepts.

So maybe an independent project does make more sense? I don't know how much people are interested in such although I bet there are so many people having trouble handling Chinese characters love such a project. -- Taku 22:54 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Both Wikipedia and Wiktionary are not a good place to do it. Wikipedia is not good as Wikipedia is not a dictionary; Wiktionary is not good because we do not want to talk only its meaning, but its history as well. I recommend a new project outside Wiktionary, maybe called WikiKanji? ---Wshun

WikiKanji? No, maybe we should name it wikiunicode since we want to cover all characters out there in the world, possibly including Hierography[?] in Egypt. -- Taku 23:07 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia could be a great place for it. Chinese characters have complex meanings and ancient histories; they're not used simply for spelling words like Roman characters, and yet we can easily write encyclopedic articles about A (which needs some work, I see...). However, I'd like to see a sample article before I give my support. -- Stephen Gilbert

I (or anyone) will write an sample article. One article for discussion should not hurt anything. -- Taku 23:07 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Among the smallest set of chenese characters in Japan is approx. 2000 (Joyo Kanji), for daily use. Mass media use mostly these ones, except for proper nouns. But many criticize it to be too limited. Japanese Industrial Standards offer a basic set of approx. 7,000 and expansion/supplementary set of 6,000 characters. Unicode is not complete but quite good, offering, well, 34,000 or so? I guess it takes a lot of time to develop good 34,000 articles...

Do we really cover every single character in wikipedia? Many of Chinese characters are actually simply combining simple parts. We don't need thousands articles at all. That is not my intent. I guess at least one hundered is needed to explain decent history of the characters. If we go to a new project, the story is different of course. -- Taku 23:07 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Besides, I have seen Taku proposing a use of bot twice in the past (once for Japanese writers, the other for cities) it seems he never gets permission or definitive answer and the discussion just fades away. Why is that?

Regarding making encyclopedia articles on characters, I am not sure. We can talk about the meaning, and the origin and history of the shape (why this character's shape is as it is, how it has been changing over time and across different places), how it is used, what are the characters with similar or opposite manings, etc. I guess it's good for Wiktionary. Tomos 21:58 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

Those proposal are not dead yet actually. I will organize my plans atWikipedia:Bots page. -- Taku 23:07 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Taku's previous bot proposals haven't gone anywhere mainly because the created articles have been so very very minimalist. It's okay to input an individual microstub -- it will get expanded -- but a lot of people will balk at dumping hundreds or thousands of microstubs with a bot. The name and birthdate of an author by themselves aren't much of an article; something more like name, birthdate, nationality/languages written in, genre/medium, and a list of major works would be the minimal acceptable stub for a mass dump. For the cities: name, prefecture, and URL to web site is too little; I could have gotten that link from google, I want actual information! The present state of Funabashi as an example is much improved, though still somewhat light. --Brion 22:35 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

It looks like thousands of bot-generated short entries would be welcome in Wiktionary but not here. --mav

I still believe it is better to start a new project, maybe an even more ambitious one, a project about all characters in the Unicode. -- Wshun

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