Wikipedia:Village pump/November 2003 archive 2

Editing One's Subsequent Editors (and a proposal for "locking in" mature entries)

There's a fine line between obnoxiously restoring one's "golden prose" after it's been subequently edited...and honestly improving an article that's been degraded by reintroducing legitimately better commentary...which happens to be one's own previously posted material!

Where do Wikipedians stand on this call? Firmly against persistent "ping ponging" (i.e. post it once and let it go forever)? An anarchic "go ahead" shrug? Simply use one's judgement?

This is a facet of a larger issue which I perceive as Wikipedia biggest fault: past a certain point, articles don't get better, they just get different (or, just as easily, worse). As a given entry ages to a certain point where' it's been worked over by many participants, might it not be intelligent to introduce a "vote to seal" feature, where viewers who think the entry is at a really good point can temporarily freeze edits and call for a vote to permanently seal the entry (or at least a vote to impede subsequent editing, e.g. by requiring additions to be approved by vote)? Otherwise, absolutely terrific entries can and will be degraded and washed away like sand castles in the tide.

I realize that many entries are temporal in various ways and therefore benefit from unended editing. Obviously, they should stay ever open.

I suspect my solution can/will be picked to death...but the problem I'm raising is a serious one, and there may be more intelligent/effective ways to address it. Or maybe I'm just being unwikipedian....? O. Pen Sauce 08:09, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that's the eternal debate, which has been (is being) discussed as the Sifter project, "1.0" or in many other forms. The discussion flares up regularly with no clear answer. So people keep chugging along. :) --Fuzheado

I'm very interested in previous discussion of this 'Sifter project', where would I find it? I've found Jimbo's 1.0 discussion page. Andrewa 13:42, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

O Pen is absolutely right, and Fuz is also right to say this issue has been raised before, even in the short time I have been contributing. And it will go on being raised, because it should be obvious that this is indeed WP's crucial weakness, much as I love it. At the moment WP's primary role is as a playpen for writers and editors and pedants and know-it-alls (like me), and not as a service to readers. At the moment if WP tells me that the capital of X is Y, and my Funk & Wagnalls tells me it is Z, I will believe F&W, and so will most other people.

My view is that once the groups of genuine contributors to an article (as opposed to vandals and propagandists) are satisfied that it is as good as it is going to get, then it should be declared complete, and after that it can only be edited with the approval of the original authors or some panel of editors or reviewers. For 90% of articles, this won't be a problem. Turtles of the Upper Orinoco will be declared complete without fuss. The remaining 5% (God and Zionism and George W Bush is Evil Incarnate can be fought over for a few months, and then some sort of arbitration process can take place. I know this is all very un-Wiki-ish, but at the moment process is being privilges over product, and in the long run this will not produce an encyclopaedia. Adam 09:54, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I suppose it comes down to a question of the ultimate goal of Wikipedia: creation or creating? To produce an encyclopedia, or to produce the production of an encyclopedia?

An idealist might say that since perfection is unattainable, there's no reason not to endlessly refine in more and more subtle strokes. However Wikipedia has no mechanism to ensure or even encourage increasing subtlety as an entry ripens and matures. The credo is "be bold!", period. So over the lifetime of Wikipedia, great encyclopedias may arise and disappear. This will be nothing more than an amazingly ambitious and intelligent grafitti wall.

And the revisions archive will be too huge and noisy for even a collaborative network to make use of.

Someone (or some group or some function) must watch the zillion typing monkeys, lest Hamlet, The Secret of Life, and The Grand Unifying Theory of Everything be discarded underfoot along with the mountain of randomness. --O. Pen Sauce 18:16, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The reason why evolution creates better things is because advantageous mutations are retained, while disadvantageous mutations are removed. The wiki process that creates an article is somewhat analogous, so there is little danger that articles of true quality will disappear entirely, although they may undergo superficial alterations. It's not quite as bad as all that. -- Cyan 19:35, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

An idealist speaks! :)

The monkey analogy is imprecise, and was added mostly to be amusing. The graffitti wall is a much more apt analogy. Human creativity always involves a destructive impulse, that is patently clear from any look at our history. Also, to preserve quality one must appreciate quality. Such appreciation is by NO means a given. I think you're wrong on this, Cyan. --O. Pen Sauce 20:23, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

No, appreciation of quality is not a given. It is however an observed fact. In my evaluation at least; and I personally would like to believe I appreciate quality. Who are those in the "majority" which in your opinion do not appreciate quality. I just don't see it. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 14:50, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

I'm with the idealist, Wikilover POV. From my point of view Wikipedia is an ecology of ideas. I sympathise with the desire of you Encylopediasts, but I think [Wikipedia 1.0] will serve your needs in the long run, so don't worry.

Can anyone direct me to a major article that people have cared about which has detioriorated over the long term? Say three months. I would be interested :ChrisG 14:08, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Despite what I wrote just above your message, I think some rare examples of such articles might be found (see Wikipedia:Dark side of Wikipedia). Some subjects just inhabit a Lorentz-attractor type of existence within Library-space.

-- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 05:31, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

A plain and simple question

Has anyone tried to delete the deletion log page? Does it just create itself again? Poor Yorick

It should recreate itself, although without the header text. IIRC I tried this recently with the block log, which shares the same code. -- Tim Starling 11:26, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)

Diacritics

I'm sure this comes up regularly - but where to start looking for answers? I want to use extended character sets to display diacritics for Sanskrit and Pali terms. Things like 7747 = ṃ (an m with a dot underneath = anusvara). Trouble is that it degrades to a square gliph without specifying a unicode font. I can get vowels with macrons OK, but it's the retroflex consonants and the anusvara that are problematic. Is it possible/desirable to specify fonts in Wikipedia? I think it's important to have the diacritics, although some general works leave them out, but without them the words are different! Mahaabaala 12:40, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think it just depends on individual people's browsers. I can see the m with a dot thing in Mozilla, but it is a square in IE. Angela 12:57, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

fyi, it works okay in Opera 7 and konqueror, but (naturally) shows up as m- in links(cygwin) and lynx(cygwin), and I imagine visitors with screenreaders will hear a rude noise. So one shouldn't rely on it. -- Finlay McWalter 13:45, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Formatting question

Why does this not make a bolded italic? Also, either break this page into smaller sections, or start adding new stuff to the top so people don't have to load the whole page in order to add something. Please respond on my talk page, this page is not something I can access easily. Lirath Q. Pynnor

''''' does seem to produce bold italics to me. Where have you had problems with it? If you find this page too large to edit, you can use this edit link, which allows you to post a new section. This means you don't have to load the whole page. In fact, you don't even need to come to the page. Angela 02:08, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)

The this you placed there certainly is in bolded italics on my screen? - Marshman 02:35, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Mine too. I'm IE5 on Win98SE. Andrewa 08:40, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Apparently this was solved by changing the font type. Angela

Mythology Stubs

I have noticed that there are a lot of one-sentence stubs for mythological figures, especially non-Greek myths (but even then there are a lot). Shouldn't they be merged into the respective mythology articles? Limu, for example. Limu is listed on Polynesian mythology, but it seems to me that it would make more sense to write about him on the mythology page. Adam Bishop 07:20, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't think so because, eventually, these will be expanded. Nikola 07:51, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

And if you merged them people would be less likely to think to expand them. Stubs are a Good Thing. CGS 09:41, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC).

What if there is just nothing more to add to them? I tried to find more for Limu before posting it here, but all I can find is that he is a god of the dead. I guess that is probably because every other website has copied from Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Mythica, which both only have the one line. I know stubs are good, but what if they don't have the possibility of being expanded? Adam Bishop 16:56, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I ran into a similar problem with characters in the Bible, especially but not only from the Old Testament. Many of them will never be more than stubs IMO, we just don't know any more than two or three sentences about them. So, I'm now thinking seriously of creating some articles along the lines of Minor characters in the book of Judges (and another for Samuel, probably put Kings and Chronicles together as there's so much overlap, similarly Ezra and Nehemiah). I'd then make the names themselves redirects to these, or disambiguation pages where necessary. This is a similar approach to what is already recommended for fictional characters (I'm not suggesting that these are or are not fictional characters, that would be POV either way, just that the same format seems likely to work). Other opinions very welcome, it's very early days in my thinking on this.

If we do find more material on any of these later, then nothing is lost, they can and should become an article then.

Anyway, a similar approach would be a Minor characters in Greek mythology article. Andrewa 20:08, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

There surely is much more to say about a god of any culture, it's just that the information isn't online. Nikola 08:32, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

BTW there are more than 1100 of those stubs. -- User:Docu

Strange behaviour of link -- bug?

Could someone help me there? I feel really puzzled what is going on. Steps to reproduce:

• Go to List of political parties in Poland
• Find string Unia Wolności (in section alphabetical list of parties)
• Click this link
• Observe that edit page is opening, even though this page contains properly done redirect. <-- Strange behaviour

What went wrong there? Przepla 23:34, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's not a legal link; use a plain "s" in links on this wiki. This wiki, and most of the western european language ones too, are encoded in ISO 8859-1. Characters not in that range won't work in titles here. --Brion 03:09, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Images on UseModWikipedias

Quite some time ago I stumbled upon images uploaded by User:Renato Caniatti, when I noticed that all of them are orphans here. Later I found that those images aren't real orphans, but are used in the italian wikipedia included with html, not the image links I know here. I asked Renato about it, and today he answered that it is not possible to upload images on the italian wikipedia, and thus he uses the english one for storage. As I had no interaction with the old software - is that true? I don't think that the way he includes images to it: is a good one as it will break when someone checks the orphan images here, or once the policy of not using external images in wikicode is enforced, but what is the better way? Wait with images till it: gets converted to MediaWiki? andy 21:49, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes it is true. I do the same with Simple - just link to photos that exist here. I'm aware they might break but I don't think it's a huge issue as they will be replaced once we get the new software and a broken image link is hardly the end of the world. Angela 21:53, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

calling all sysops, brush up on the limitations of your powers.

I noticed that people are getting seriously sloppy with the guidelines on protecting pages. We are all human (Ghu knows I have made my share of mistakes). Please remember that protecting a page should always be done by an uninvolved party (even if it is your own user page); I'll try to remember that too. Just ask someone else to do it for you. As you likely have a good case for the protection of the page, getting another sysop shouldn't be so hard. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 23:57, Nov 9, 2003 (UTC)

I agree. User:Viajero's protection of the ever controversial Mother Teresa article to stop User:Aplank's edits (which others were reverting) is a case in point. Viajero had been a participant in the debate over weeks and so was not a neutral person to do the protecting. FearÉIREANN 00:04, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree. Sysops have be desysoped for doing as much. The only time when I've protected a page I was actively involved in editing was when it was being repeatedly blanked (vandalism) and I wasn't one of the main parties involved in the edit war. Use your common sense, people. Daniel Quinlan 05:34, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)

On this I have to disagree most strongly. No sysop has ever been desysoped for making an honest mistake. And I would thank it if no-one suggested it was a policy to do so. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 21:26, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)

I wasn't actually talking about honest mistakes, but repeated bad behavior. (I was replying to Viajero's comment, perhaps that helps.) Daniel Quinlan 23:32, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

I protected my User page, and intend to keep it protected. It was the subject of far too much vandalism. I don't think anyone but the User should be able to edit their own User page anyway, but that's my opinion, YMMV. I agree in principle to not protecting pages you're involved with, but I believe doing it to your User page is different. RickK 23:38, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

ancient wiki history question

I have an ancient wiki history question. What does it mean when the Conversion script is listed as the first author of a page? Was the actual attribution to the original author lost forever? Maximus Rex 05:48, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The "conversion script" was the script which converted Wikipedia from usemod format to the current phase III format. This conversion occurred in Februrary 2002. Originally, no history could be seen from before the conversion occurred -- every article which existed before phase III appeared to have been started by the conversion script. Brion has now managed to extract most history from usemod and has added it to the database. However, the conversion script entries in history remained, in most cases appearing to perform whatever was the last edit prior to the conversion. See also Wikipedia:Usemod article histories. -- Tim Starling 06:09, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia at lightspeed!

wow, I commend whomever was involved in the latest magic that gave us such great speed on Wikipedia. I've been around these parts for nearly 10 months and this is by far the greatest access-speed I've ever experienced. thanks again to all involved! Kingturtle 18:59, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is now unbelievably fast, and it's all thanks to Brion. Some pages are served from pliny, some are served from larousse, and no-one should notice the difference, except for the blindingly fast response. -- Tim Starling 03:47, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Great, great magic. Shall we vote on a title to bestow upon Brion? Kosebamse 19:37, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

An aside: google notices. But worth it. Martin 19:39, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Actually, I think I do notice. Sometimes I need to refresh to see new information in an article. For example, after I wrote Wikipedia at lightspeed!, I changed computers, and came back to this metapage, Wikipedia at lightspeed! was not on the metapage. But then I refreshed and it was there. I am guessing that this is because of the dual server action? It is a small price to pay for these incredible speeds, though. Kingturtle 19:57, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This notoriously unreliable popularity index seems to notice, too. Kosebamse 20:45, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Doesn't remember password

Darned thing doesn't remember my password, nor does it remember that I told it to remember my password. Why?????
Tualha 05:16, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Now it does. Who knows...
Tualha 05:52, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Ah. If I close all windows and come back, it keeps me logged in. If I close the browser (Opera 6), it doesn't.
Tualha 05:54, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

I've been tweaking the login cookie system for the last few days trying to get things to not interfere with each other due to the en/en2 thing... It should work at this point. It may or may not help to clear out any old cookies from *.wikipedia.org first and try again. --Brion 08:55, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That would explain why I had to login again at the beginning of the session the last few days, much more often then before. But of course this little drawback is more then countered by the massive speed gain that come with it (thanks Brion). andy 09:01, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Incidentally, IE and Mozilla remember the password across even reboots. But once in a while (maybe in 2 or 3 months), it loses the password too. Nothing is perfect. --Menchi 06:56, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The saved password cookie expires after 1 month. --Brion 08:55, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Nope, it's still doing it. I tried clearing out the cookies, didn't help :( It's not clearing cookies between sessions; they were there, and LWN, for example, works fine.

FWIW, the cookies listed in my cookie manager seem to be empty...
Tualha 21:44, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, now there are cookies there. wikidbUserID and wikidbUserName. Still doesn't work, though.
Tualha 21:54, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Oh, good grief. I checked the "keep password" box in the login page and now everything works fine. I kept overlooking that one. It's the one in preferences that's broken. Sorry for the wild goose chase.
Tualha 22:24, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

My system (IE5.0, Win98SE, dialup PPP line) seems to forget my password whenever I view a cached page while not connected. For example, say I'm logged on to both the Meta and the English Wikipedia, with "remember my password" checked on both. I disconnect the line, but later absentmindedly click on my local home page link to English Wikipedia main, or on any link to an English Wikipedia page that I may have left open when I disconnected. IE gives me the option of staying offline and viewing the locally cached page. But if I do this, when I later reconnect to the Internet, I'll now find I'm no longer logged on to the English Wikipedia. Assuming I've viewed no Meta pages while offline, I'll still be logged on to the Meta. At least that's how I think it happens. Is that consistent to anyone else's experience? Andrewa 00:13, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Just occurred to me, there's a bright side: my password is now firmly embedded in my memory :)
Tualha 14:48, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Log In

How can I stay logged in for longer than (whatever the default) is? I'm finding that I'm editing articles only to later notice I'm not logged in. I dislike this because it makes me less accountable. orthogonal 17:53, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If you aren't already, and you are using a private computer, ask it to remember your password. Κσυπ Cyp 18:02, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but won't that just make logging in a bit easier? That's not what I want, exactly; I want not to be logged out in the first place. orthogonal 18:11, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It'll make login automatic, not just easier. It will appear as if you never get logged out. (Under the covers, you'll get logged out, but then when you visit any WP page, it'll automatically log you back in.) It should work just like you want it to. Axlrosen 19:51, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm oblivious to the actual way this all works, but it seems plausible that if you do relatively frequently "Show Preview" clicks, your login "timer" will be refreshed on the server. A server sysop can probably confirm or correct this assumption. - Marshman 18:29, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's vaguely possible that the old cookie is somehow interfering with the new cookie (but it shouldn't be). Clear out any cookies you may have set on 'en.wikipedia.org' or 'en2.wikipedia.org' and try again. Check your cookies for one named "enwikiSession" set for the domain ".wikipedia.org". Have you got one, and what's the expiration date look like? It should be ~an hour in the future. Could anyone with cookie problems check the date & timezone settings on your computer? If it's off (for instance a daylight saving time glitch) that could expire the cookie early. If that's totally off base, I'd like to be able to strike it off my list of things to check. --Brion 05:47, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Where is that? I am using Windows XP, and only found 3 files in my \cookie, one is called "administrator@wikipedia[2].txt" which is modified 3 mins ago. :? --218.19.141.3 05:56, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If you open that file in wordpad (not notepad! notepad gets confused) you'll see some gobbledegook inside; looks like the expiry times aren't in human-readable format though, unless you understand seconds since January 1, 1970... I've changed the cookie to expire at the end of the browser session instead of at a time offset. Does this help? --Brion 05:57, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It works now!! Thanks! --Samuel 05:59, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Awesome! (By any chance, can you check that your computer's clock and timezone are set correctly?) --Brion 06:03, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Right then. Any chance the cookie expiration could be set to, say +12 rather than +1 hours? orthogonal 19:45, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Don't know why are having this problem. WP never logs me out, even after I reboot. -- Viajero 20:16, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Also be aware that some internet privacy programs, browsers' privacy options, or privacy and ad-blocking software (such as Zonealarm) have options that either block wikipedia's cookie altogether or expire it prematurely. It should be possible to configure whatever it is you might be using to cut wikipedia.org more slack than you would doubleclick.net, for example. -- Finlay McWalter 23:04, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That was routinely done: all three cookie blockers in my chain admit Wikipedia's cookies. (although javscript cookies are still blocked.) orthogonal 11:26, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Link to video?

Is it possible to link to a non http external link? I want to link to
rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/news/olmedia/n5ctrl/events03/uk_pol/cons/leadership/nb_newsnightiv.rm
(a video clip) but the Wiki parser doesn't like it... Evercat 02:01, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

• My two cents: linking directly to a video will perturb people who click on the link, thinking it's a page, and immediately find they're downloading a video. (As in my case, wheree I intentionally got rid of all software able to play RealMedia files). It's also likely to perturb whomever hosts that link, and many sites use the "referer" (sic) HTTP header to refuse to serve linked files except from requests via their own pages. It's probably better all areound to link to the page that links to the video. orthogonal 17:13, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Legitimate page that looks like nonsense

It's interesting...the article on the Dogon, at first glance, looks like blatant nonsense. People named the Dogon, whose religion involves Sirius the Dog Star? And their neighbors are the Bozo? Trash it!

But a little googling reveals that there is indeed such a tribe living in Mali, with that religion and those neighbors. Thousands of pages found.

Goes to show...

Tualha 02:46, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Yes this is common as there are so many cultures in the world and so many interests represented by different editors. That's why I usually ask here at the pump if an article looks suspicious to me. The talk page of an article is also a good place but it may not get as much attention. Dori 04:43, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Accuracy dispute banners

Daniel Quinlan is adding loads of "Accuracy disputes without explanation. I think he is using an automated script because of the speed - is this vandalism? -- 213.122.126.91 09:32, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

He's noting that those are the works of this person, who is now banned: User:Khranus. --Menchi 09:36, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Oh, I've been found out! Seriously, though, I'm adding accuracy disputes to selected articles edited by Khranus (see User:Khranus/ban for more information which should explain why I felt the need to add the banners). Some of them may be okay, but I am not an expert in all areas so when I was not sure whether a Khranus addition was okay, I added the banner. I felt it was better to err on the side of caution. Perhaps I should add something to the talk pages as promised. Daniel Quinlan 09:42, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

If Khranus has been banned for posting ridiculous articles, doesn't it follow that those articles should now be deleted? Does anyone really think that Reptilian humanoid can be turned into a useful article? Delete the lot, I say. Adam 10:05, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The Dogon is a valid concept, take a look at the above header. Khranus contributed a lot of material to the page. It should not be thus blindly deleted. If there is issues with the content, it should be discussed and offending material removed. That is the process here Dysprosia 10:08, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think something interesting could come of it - perhaps an examination of the role that reptilians play in some peoples belief systems. I'm personally interested in the 'reptilians as jews' idea - there are large similarities between the two sets of conspiracies. Secretlondon 10:13, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Er. I don't want to appear to be defending kookery, but I note that pages such as Reptilian humanoid are at least somewhat self-coherent (as oppossed to a completely unintelligible ranmblings, and as opposed to any coherence with any objectice reality). As such, they usefully document these unlikely conspiracy theories. Perhaps they could be carefully marked as examples of, and moved to subpages of/links from, a Conspiracy Theories page? orthogonal 10:16, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think the reptilian article can be NPOVed (it's being tried right now) and it may offer some insight, perhaps into the phenomenology of mental illness (or whatever one likes to categorize these beliefs). And once it's NPOV it might help in debunking some particularly nutty ideas when they come up again. Kosebamse 10:23, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)