Wikipedia:Village pump/March 2003 archive 4

I was looking at 1944 and I noticed how frequently Nazi is used to describe German military forces. I find this offensive and inappropriate, this is comparable to referring to US forces in Iraq as "Republican Forces" or to US forces in Bosnia as "Democrat Forces". Likewise, referring to Iraqi forces as "Baath Forces" would be inappropriate. German troops of World War II should be referred to as Germans, not as Nazis. Many of them were not Nazis and many of them were killed for disagreeing with the Nazis. Dietary Fiber

Many Germans would rather not be associated with the genocidal Nazi Germany but if you don't like it then change it. This is a wiki if you haven't noticed. --mav

I thought you might want to form a consensus on the issue before I changed it. Dietary Fiber

This isn't that important - both terms are unambiguous. Besides if anybody didn't like your edit it is very easy to revert. --mav

Axis powers (linked as [[Axis powers|Axis]] would be a good solution, when talking about the Axis side as a whole. "German" is the best solution when talking about the specific German forces. "Italian" is the best solution when talking about the specific Italian forces. "Japanese" is the best solution when talking about the specific Japanese forces.

Similarly, when talking about the allied side, Allied powers (linked as [[Allied powers|Allied]] would be a good solution, but when referring to specifically British forces, use "British", etc. Martin

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I want to add an external link to Afghan Hound, but how do I link to this page (http://www.the-kennel-club.org.uk/discoverdogs/hound/h765.htm) without loosing the site frames? The URL I see in the address bar ( http://www.the-kennel-club.org.uk/ ) links to the home page. Is there a way round this? Thanks -- sannse 19:10 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

...and that's why frames are evil. E-mail their webmaster and ask if they have a way to link to their frameset such that it will show a particular file in the content frame. --Brion 20:40 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

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Is :Image:Tibetmap.png copyright violation? The user has altered the image by adding a thumbnail (is this image also violation?).

If you do think that the user has violated copyright, does it mean no matter how much or how little one has modified an image, so long as it is originally a copyrighted image, it is copyright violation? --142.103.108.105[?] 23:50 Mar 26, 2003 (UTC)

That's what we call "blatantly removing the copyright notice and making a couple of scribbles -- oh look it's all new!" That's roughly as acceptable from a copyright standpoint as ripping the "property of Joe Blow, please return if found" tag out of a pickpocketed wallet and calling it your own. I've deleted the image (a sad rip-off of [1] (http://www.lonelyplanet.com/mapshells/north_east_asia/tibet/tibet.htm)). At least trace over them yourselves, people... geez. --Brion 00:24 Mar 27, 2003 (UTC)

Actually, I found the image without any copyright information. Thus, the image will remain on wikipedia. If you wish to argue with me, email me, and we'll arrange a court date.user_talk:hfastedge 01:35 Mar 27, 2003 (UTC).

Ach, fuck. This pre-emptive, disrespectful behaviour of deleting the image, now see us without a Tibet map at all, as it is deleted from my own system.

Since you found the image without copyright information, you could have argued to a court that you didn't realise the image was copyright. Since you've now been told (by us) that it is copyright, that defence is no longer available to you. --- Tim Starling 01:43 Mar 27, 2003 (UTC)

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As a semi-professional chess player, I would like to expand the chess section. In particular, I would like to add instructive chess tactical problems. Each of my .jpgs has a size of about 130kb and I have quite a few. Although this is not necessarily encyclopedic, I don't see how it could hurt to have the wikipedia also contain the internet's best source of chess problems. Below is an example:

Clicking on the picture takes you to a screen which shows the answer.

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Dietary Fiber

I don't know whether putting chess problems in the Wikipedia is a good idea or not (if you can make an encyclopaedia article out of them, I suppose it's fair enough), but why are you adding them to the Village Pump? The VP is for questions about the Wikipedia. --Camembert

I wouldn't object to more chess stuff in the wiki (please link them somewhere appropriate from Chess), but 130k per image is a bit excessive. These boards could be reduced to just a few kilobytes each by using solid squares for the board and PNG instead of JPEG compression (which is inappropriate for what is essentially line-art, and thus has to use an absurdly poor compression ratio to achieve decent visual quality, hence the large size). --Brion 20:59 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

Camemberet, I suppose I must have been asking a question at the Village Pump? Brion, PNG is no problem, but Im not sure I have a means of making solid squares. PNG doubles the size of these .jpgs. Dietary Fiber

What are you using to create the images? Can you adjust its settings? --Brion

I am not sure what your question is, but I don't see why one should clutter up the pump with this stuff. I am moving the chess problems to -- surprise -- Chess problems Slrubenstein

If you weren't so rude you might take the time to reflect on what my question might possibly be. Dietary Fiber

If you weren't so rude you might have created the page and done the link yourself. But no need to thank me -- wikipedia now has one more article. Slrubenstein

Slr, DF was giving an example of some material and asking if it was appropriate to put in Wikipedia. That's entirely appropriate for discussion in the village pump. --Brion 22:16 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining -- and my apologies. Should I delete the article? Or should we leave it until someone can compress the ficures? Slrubenstein

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Hi! A question for everyone ..... does it look best, if an article has two pictures, to put them:
One on the right and one on the left - see Airbus A380
Both left - see Amber
Both right - see Avro Vulcan
I just can't decide.
Thanks -- Adrian Pingstone 09:41 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

IMO, one on the right and one on the left. The variation gives more interest to the layout -- sannse 09:45 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

I agree. But just make sure they are not too close to each other -- otherwise they will sqeeze the text between them at lower resolution screens. --mav

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Would someone please delete Image:4-A00- 27...Re7.gif Dietary Fiber

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I'm a little uncomfortable with what's happening at Robert Mugabe at the moment, I notice the page is protected, yet folks with sysop status are still making edits. this suggests a two tier level of editorship, from which non-sysops are excluded. i can understand that the page needed to be protected due to the edit war that was unfolding, but surely that should mean that EVERYBODY leave the page alone until things have cooled off or until a third party can intervene and adjudiacte fairly, not that the person with syssop status be in a position to continue to makes edits whilst the other person is excluded from having a write to reply as it were. This isn't meant as personal, if anything I actually agree with danny's edits, but if 172 isn't allowed to edit, dannny should also refrain. Just thoughts. quercus robur 16:35 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

As far as I can tell the page doesn't seem to be protected right now. -- JeLuF 16:37 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

That's true now, but it was happening for a while- i was flagging this up more as a general point (which is why I put my comments here rather than on the relevant talk page), that really protected pages (at least those that are protected due to an edit war) shouldn't be touched by either party until the problem is resolved. (That's my view anyway) quercus robur 16:50 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

For a sysop, the only difference between a protected and an unprotected page is that the toolbar button to the left doesn't read "protect this page" but "unprotect this page". So normaly a sysop won't recognize a protected page on first sight. -- JeLuF 17:15 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

Good point, I'll make the flag more prominent. (I'd also love comments on m:Protected pages considered harmful.) --Brion 20:17 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

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A date has been chosen for the Wikivention. It will be July 29-31, 2005, so mark your calendars!

Mega LOL!. :) --mav

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I'm using Mozilla 1.3B on a Mac with OS 10.2 and, for the last two weeks or so, Wikipedia has been sporadically forgetting my login. I've never had a problem before, and have always been automatically logged in as soon as I came to wikipedia, but maybe a dozen times in the last few weeks, I've had to re-log in. I can't detect any pattern to when (and clicking on the box to be automatically logged-in doesn't prevent) being logged-out. Am I alone? Tuf-Kat

Just so no one gives it as an answer, I've checked my cookies and Wikipedia is allowed to give them to me. I have four from Wikipedia; they are called "User Password", "User Name", "User ID" and "PHPSESSID". Tuf-Kat

I had a similar problem with Chimera, but it seems fine now I've upgraded to 0.7 (now Camino) :-) -- Tarquin 09:14 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

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Almost a third of the most-wanted article list has now been created. Could someone please reset it long enough to renew the list? jaknouse 03:00 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

Done. --Brion 03:16 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

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Where did several entries for March 29th of the Current Events page go? --66.47.86.47[?] 12:02 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

Well, the first page from March 30 shows this:

March 29, 2003

• 2003 invasion of Iraq
  • The Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf has accused the US forces of killing 140 civilians during the last 24 hours and denied allegations that Iraqi soldiers are disguising themselves as civilians.
  • An explosion damaged a shopping center in Kuwait City before dawn, apparently caused by a malfunctioning U.S. cruise missile. No injuries are reported. [2] (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/29/international/worldspecial/29KUWA?ex=1049518800&en=fabf7ac235fb74f3&ei=5062)
  • A Iraqi military suicide bomber, driving a taxi, killed four US soldiers in an attack. "We will use any means to kill our enemy in our land and we will follow the enemy into its land," Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said, "This is just the beginning. You'll hear more pleasant news later."
• SARS: Dr. Carlo Urbani, a WHO expert on communicable diseases and the physician who first identified the outbreak, dies of the disease in Thailand. He had been infected in Vietnam. [3] (http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030329.wurba0329/BNStory/International)

An aweful lot of edits to go through here. I suggest you just reinsert this material if it meaningful to you. Fred Bauder 13:40 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

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Please add Carlo Urbani to Recent Deaths. Dietary Fiber

It's not protected - do it yourself. If you're referring to the Main Page, try Wikipedia talk:Selected Articles on the Main Page. Martin