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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please try to post within news, policy, technical, proposals or assistance rather than here. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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4000metres = ?

On several different airport pages, 4000 metres mean several different things. It sometimes states 13120ft, 13123ft, yet i've gotten 13124 on my calulator using 1*3.281. Which is the most correct? It is very confusing...

The actual conversion from meters to feet is 1 foot = .3048 meters [1]. Multiplying meters by 3.281 is an approximation to this (1/.3048 is actually 3.280839895013, more or less). Using this as the conversion factor, I get 13123.359580052 (which rounds to 13123). However, if we're counting significant digits, 4000 only has 4, so using only 4 digits for the answer yields 13120. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:48, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well actually, 4000 only has one significant digit. It depends on the context, if someone is talking about a 4000m race, for example, then we know that it's 'exactly' 4000m and so an accurate conversion is more appropriate, whereas if 4000m means "nearer to 4000m than it is to 3000m or 5000m" then something more crude would be OK. On an airport page I would expect 4000m to meane "at least 4000m" as it's probably talking about runway length and you wouldn't want to be overestimating their length! You could always remove the imperial measurement. MikesPlant 13:05, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Beware - there is more than one definition for 'foot'. In the US, there is a "surveyors foot" which is still in common use - and a different definition of the foot prior to 1959(!). From the GNU 'units' program data file:

"The US Metric Law of 1866 gave the exact relation 1 meter = 39.37 inches. From 1893 until 1959, the foot was exactly 1200|3937 meters. In 1959 the definition was changed to bring the US into agreement with other countries. Since then, the foot has been exactly 0.3048 meters. At the same time it was decided that any data expressed in feet derived from geodetic surveys within the US would continue to use the old definition."

Notice that last bit...*MANY* existing US GIS data sources (maps and airport runway data) are still using the surveyor's foot - and lots of references pre-date the 1959 (or even the 1866) laws and have "non-metric" feet (isn't that an odd phrase!). Then of course in non-US countries, the laws changed at different times with differing intermediate definitions. Hence it should come as no surprise that everything is a horrible mess! SteveBaker 19:53, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But the difference is small - 1 200 / 3 937 = 0.30480061 So for a 4000 m runway, that is either 13,123.3333 ft for the old definition or 13,123.3596 for the new definition, ignoring sig. digits. For most applications this is within measurement uncertainty. --BenBurch 00:51, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

you can use google search to convert. but i just tried it. it didn't work this time. how strange. i used to be able to enter a number, then it will convert it to metric system. anyone knows the proper way to use google search to convert? SummerThunder 12:57, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Type your query in the search box so it looks like this: 4000 metres in feet. Tra (Talk) 13:12, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

oh, yes. that is good. i didn't know that. i don't know the standard way to do it. so once in a while, google will give me the result, other times, it won't. SummerThunder 21:41, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Angel Diaz Nieves

What do we do with this redirect?

—Nethac DIU, would never stop to talk here—
17:13, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any reason to do anything with it. Is there a problem with it? Does something need to be done with it? ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)} 17:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You could nominate it for deletion. I don't see any reason why someone would switch those two words. Then again, it doesn't really take up that much space. Xiner 18:17, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding of Iberian naming customs leads me to believe that it would be very likely someone might switch the words.~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)} 21:29, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Template windowHome

I created a new template based on an Italian Wikipedia template that I think it could be useful. You can see it in my own page User:Dejudicibus, whereas the tempalte itself is in Template:windowHome. Here is an example:

Template:WindowHome

Wikied world

We got alphabetical writing from India or the Middle East, then the Greek miracle, after that the Chinese empire where from most inventions came for 2000 years; somewhere in between we find Arabic math. Then the Renaissance, Enlightment and 3 industrial revolutions. And now we have WIKIPEDIA.

No male writers?

Why is there a category called: Women writers, but nothing called Male writers? :p —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.212.180.9 (talk • contribs).

So fix it. Just H 22:04, 1 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Surely going by precedent it should be Category:Men writers? :) GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 06:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Editor level recognition?

Once upon a time I thought I saw an editor's user page which had a type of WP award/recognition, based on length of time connected with WP and number of edits made. There were a series of these awards/recognitions, depending on length of time and number of edits. It was not a barnstar, but a separate type of recognition. As I recall there were both "serious" names for each rank (editor, senior editor, etc.), and made-up, "silly" names for each rank. Now I can't find those editor level recognitions! Anybody able to steer me in the right direction? NorCalHistory 00:03, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You're after Wikipedia:Service awards. Not all of the silly names are actually made up though, I think some were from French or something. --tjstrf talk 00:05, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - Wikipedia:Service awards it is. I guess I didn't mean "silly" - "whimsical" would be a better word. The whimsical names are either made-up or translations of whimsical words from other languages - the creativity that went into these names is appreciated! NorCalHistory 00:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Encyclopedia Dramatica

What is this site and what's it about? I looked for an article but it's deleted-protected. Can someone tell me? --AAA! ^(AAAA) 05:21, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They're the top return on Google for Encyclopedia Dramatica. Why not look for yourself? I prefer Uncyclopedia. Durova^Charge! 07:09, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Um... I think a site filled with shock images would be the last thing I'd want to look at. At least that's what Uncyclopedia says, and I ain't risking it. --AAA! ^(AAAA) 06:39, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Name says it all, actually. A compendium of "knowledge" about internet drama, aka GIANT TROLLFEST. --tjstrf talk 06:46, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's kind of blacklisted here for their campaigns to troll wikipedia admins and post embarassing personal information. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:00, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not "embarrassing" information, just real-life information that was being used for real-life harrassment. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Its a really good resource for looking up internet memes (though I'd say Lurkmore's 4chan page is probably better, and Etherchan has a lot of good info also). Other than that, its pretty useless. I would strongly suggest you adblock their image server if you want to browse Dramatica. — Dark Shikari ^talk/_contribs 02:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How do you do that? --AAA! ^(AAAA) 08:07, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at this, a Wikipedian is trying to shut down the site. --AAA! ^(AAAA) 04:10, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How do you know it's a Wikipedian? User:Zoe|(talk) 17:23, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Anybody willing to slum it at Myspace?

Image:Barker famous.jpg is tagged as GFDL and says that it comes from Travis Barker's MySpace page. I really doubt Barker has heard of the GFDL to license anything under it, but I can't check his "photos" section to verify because I don't have a MySpace account. Anyone with an account care to verify that: 1) the image is there and 2) there's something close to a copyright release? – Anþony talk 18:42, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's there ([2]), but there's no caption with it or any text at all, much less a copyright release. --Masamage 05:16, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Class project?

I teach a seminar in American legal history, and am thinking of inviting the students (usually about 20) to prepare or edit a Wikipedia entry, observing Wikipedia standards for citation, etc., in lieu of writing one of the two required papers. The course centers on questions of citizenship and rights, and the students are asked to do research on a topic of their own choosing, within the outline of the course. I am new to Wikipedia myself but would try to help ensure adherence to standards and policies. Would this create any problems? I can imagine that such projects could become a tool in edit wars or spamming, but I encourage students to find their own perspective and do their own research, so they would be as diverse as any other editors. Thoughts? Sheldon Novick 20:46, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I recently read a Wikipedia Signpost article about this type of activity: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-12-26/Wikipedia and academia. Apparently, there is a also a Wikipedia page dealing with this, as mentioned in the article: Wikipedia:School and university projects.--GregRM 22:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's a very good article. Here's a direct link to the Wikipedia:School and university projects page. I'm a sysop with about 12,000 edits and I'd be glad to follow up on the idea. Post questions to my user talk page through the link in my signature. Welcome to Wikipedia. Durova^Charge! 22:53, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to wikipedia. Let me also volunteer to help out. My partner recently had her students research wikipedia pages, finding alternative sources which confirmed (or in one case, contradicted) the things said on wikipedia. They then added their sources to wikipedia for extra credit. This project is detailed here and the instructions for students are here. Let me know if you have any questions or need any help. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 00:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sandbox

(bought this up here as the Sandbox talk page gets blanked automatically)

Why is the Sandbox called the Sandbox? I assume it's a reference to a Sandpit, but the word Sandbox doesn't appear to be very common outside the US. Wouldn't something like 'Test Area', 'Test Page' or 'Practice Editing Here' make more sense? MrBeast 21:18, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know for sure, but I'd bet on Sandbox (software development) as the source of the name. BryanG^(talk) 01:08, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Which is itself derived from the American term for the child's play area. Sandbox actually gets more hits on Google than sandpit, incidentally. – Anþony talk 01:16, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd bet that both terms share a common source --⁪froth^{T C} 05:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bar on top

The bar at the top of Wikipedia has a green line that is getting longer. The money is almost $844,000 as of when I type this. What number will it stop at and what will Wikipedia be like when it is finished?? Georgia guy 01:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The goal is $1.5M. As for what Wikipedia will be like, you might be interested in http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_FAQ. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

GFDL Question

If I release my work under the GFDL for Wikipedia to publish and then the article is deleted from Wikipedia and people are restricted from viewing it (non-admins), wouldn't it be a clear violation of the terms of the GFDL? Here's the relevant text:

You may not use
technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further
copying of the copies you make or distribute.

I'm sure that people have looked at this before but I don't know how that could possibly be explained away. This seems like a blatant violation on Wikipedia's part and we seriously need to implement some kind of function to archive deleted pages.

--⁪froth^{T C} 04:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Once deleted, the text is no longer being distributed to the persons who cannot read it. The persons who can read it have no technical measure obstructing them from reading or copying it. This provision of the GFDL was designed to counter a kind of software poorly called "Digital Rights Management" or DRM, and is to prevent someone from taking GFDL text and distributing it or a derivative work under a file format that can only be read by software that disallows copying or has time limits or iteration limits on reading. —Centrx→talk • 05:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah thank you for untangling that for me, it makes much more sense now. Thanks --⁪froth^{T C} 07:32, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Scotish Wikipedia

I came across this, the other day. Is it actually a genuine Scot's version of Wikipedia, or is it a parody? Not being a native speaker of the Scot's tongue, or laid, it's kind of hard to tell.

I trust that there will soon be versions of Wikipedia available in Pig Latin, Osakan, and Capitol Hill press release speak. I'd also be interested in contributing to the west-coast hip-hop version if one is made.

perfectblue 12:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's an actual language, you can read about it here. Tra (Talk) 13:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So, it's a real wiki, not a pet project?

perfectblue 18:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if you consider simple English and all those variants of Chinese to be dialects, then we do indeed support some dialects with their own Wikis. Personally I want a complicated English Wikipedia where only a specialist in the article field can even figure out what it's about. --tjstrf talk 17:59, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"all those variants of Chinese""

Sore spot alert. One day, I might sit down explain this calmly and rationally. But for now I'll settle for fuming about people not knowing things that they couldn't reasonably be expected to know.

perfectblue 18:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Umm..... you were the one who first compared Scots to Pig Latin and Capitol Hill press release speak. Scots:English :: Wu:Mandarin is a pretty apt analogy, especially compared to Scots:English :: Pig Latin:English. -- ran (talk) 20:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I know about the reasoning behind the Chinese divisions, actually. But I also know it is a subject of complaint, and it was the first example that sprung to mind. --tjstrf talk 20:00, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To be brief, some of this is a political tag, rather than an anthropological etc tag. In some cases it only really means that something is within reach of the currently Mainland Chinese government. For example, some Chinese dialects aren't descended from Chinese, and some ethnic Chinese people aren't actually ethnically Chinese save for a bit of cross breeding over the years. It's kind of like calling a Native American language a dialect of English, but here isn't really the correct place to debate the matter.

perfectblue 08:38, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ermm.... no. All Chinese "dialects" are members of the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. All Chinese "dialects" except Min have demonstrable regular sound changes going back to Middle Chinese in their core vocabulary, while all Chinese "dialects" including Min have demonstrable regular sound changes going back to Old Chinese in their core vocabulary. Your comparison of Chinese "dialects" to Native American languages isn't apt, since there are no Native American languages that are even part of the Indo-European language family, let alone ones that are close in any way to English.

A much better analogy to the Chinese "dialects" would be the Germanic languages, both Western Germanic (English, Dutch, German, Yiddish, Afrikaans, etc.) and Northern Germanic (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, etc.). If these languages shared a common written standard based on one of the Germanic languages (in some alternate universe), then the analogy to Chinese would be perfect.

You're right however in saying that the Han Chinese "race" has absorbed an enormous amount of southern, non-Han admixture. -- ran (talk) 08:10, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm notice that you use the grouping Sino-Tibetan language family. I'm afraid that I'm one of those people who does not support the validity of this family, and who supports an alternative breakdown (this isn't really the appropriate place to discuss it though). I wonder though, what is your opinion on the validity as "Chinese dialects" on the native tongues spoken in Taiwan; which are austronesian, Uyghur; which is Turkic, and the non-tonal Tibetan dialects.

perfectblue 08:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's perfectly valid to not support the Sino-Tibetan language family, and to split out Tibetan, Burmese, Qiang etc. in some other way. However, as far as I am aware, there is no serious academic opposition to the Sinitic language family, which encompasses all modern Chinese "dialects".

As for those other languages that you speak of, of course they are not Sinitic in any way, and no serious linguist would say that they are Sinitic languages, let alone "Chinese dialects". Tibetan, Yi etc are Tibeto-Burman languages. Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz etc are Turkic languages. Mongolian, etc are Mongolic languages. Manchu etc are Tungusic languages. Taiwanese aboriginal languages are Austronesian languages. Miao, etc are Hmong-Mien languages. Zhuang etc are Tai-Kadai languages. Of the above, only Tibeto-Burman is generally classified as Sino-Tibetan (and certainly not Sinitic); the others are not Sino-Tibetan at all.

Tone in Tibetan dialects is irrelevant to this discussion. Tibetan dialects come from Old Tibetan, itself a Tibeto-Burman language, and tone is a recent innovation in Tibetan, arising independently. -- ran (talk) 20:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly, the Mainland Chinese government believe all of them to be Chinese, even when they are not.

perfectblue 07:46, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Mainland Chinese government believes all of the above ethnicities to be Chinese from a nationalist point of view, but it does not believe their languages to be (Han) Chinese from a linguistic point of view. And even if they did make such an assertion, that's no reason to go for the other extreme and argue that languages that are generally accepted in linguistics to be Sinitic aren't actually Sinitic.

No serious linguist, in China or outside, would classify Tibetan, Uyghur, Zhuang etc. as Chinese dialects, just as no serious linguist, in China or outside, would classify Min, Yue, Hakka etc. as non-Sinitic languages. There is general agreement in linguistics that Min, Yue, Hakka, Mandarin, Wu, etc belong in a group that descends from Old Chinese and (for all except Min) Middle Chinese, and that this group differs sharply and should be classified separately from surrounding languages like Tibetan, Uyghur etc; the dispute, which is essentially semantic in nature, lies in what to call this group, a family of Sinitic languages, or dialects of a single Chinese language.

-- ran (talk) 00:56, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Linguists-sminguists, I'm talking about the self-centric world that half of the Chinese population, and all of the Chinese government, live in. The sad truth is that most Mainland Chinese don't know what is descended from what and just believe that all languages spoken by people classed as being 中国人 or 华人 are Chinese. The differentiations that you and I are talking about exist in textbooks, but not the national mentality.

perfectblue 08:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You mean the postmodern:Wikipedia? Argyriou (talk) 19:05, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we could move all the knowledge management articles over there. Or "initiate a differential locational shift of the knowledge management textual paradigms" if you prefer. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 19:53, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I think it's a little silly. Given that the differences between Scots and English are almost entirely in orthography and pronounciation, I think some kind of automatic machine translation (much like the Cyrillic/Latin transliteration that sr: does) would make all of en-wiki available in Scots.

There are quite a few Wikipedias in languages that are a bit questionable with few or no native speakers. We've got several languages that are minor variants like Scots, dead languages like Latin and Gothic (only about 500 pages of written Gothic text still exist), and at least three made up "international" languages. At some point there was even a Klingon Wikipedia, but someone thought better of it and locked the database. – Anþony talk 19:46, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Latin Wiki has 10,000 pages, and for a "dead language" I'd say it's pretty decently active[3]. Plus Latin is inherently cool. --tjstrf talk 20:11, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia's not about to revive Latin as a spoken language. Pick a random talk page on the Latin Wikipedia and it's almost all in English. It's an academic exercise that doesn't seem to have a real purpose beyond being able to say it's been done ("cool", as you say), no different than Klingon or pig-latin. – Anþony talk 21:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You're going to be lynched by Latin Honor Society members, you know. - DavidWBrooks 21:52, 4 January 2007 (UTC) (and, as long as we're indulging personal preferences, I'd say that anybody with one of those obnoxiously distracting color signatures can't complain too loudly about other folks' wiki-practices)[reply]

Latin at least helps you understand English and ancient literature better. I personally wish they'd focus more on the Latin Wiktionary, but that's just me. --tjstrf talk 08:44, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You think Latin is at all similar to Klingon or Pig Latin? —Centrx→talk • 10:04, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That wasn't my point at all. I'm saying the motives for creating a Wikipedia in such languages is pretty much the same: because we can. These projects aren't really serving anyone who isn't much better served by a Wikipedia in their native language. – Anþony talk 21:16, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To reply to the original post, the second introductory paragraph of Scots language explains this pretty well. It's actually an open question whether Scots is a dialect of English or a separate language. Perhaps if Elizabeth I of England had borne children we wouldn't even hold this conversation because Scotland and England would still be different countries and the distinction would seem as natural as the one we make for Norwegian and Swedish (which are also very similar). This makes me want to rent Trainspotting and see whether it carries subtitles. I certainly didn't understand half the dialog when I saw its theatrical release. Durova^Charge 01:44, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Scots as a language fails the Weinreich criterion, but if Wikipedia enforced that, we'd have to get rid of a lot of languages. Argyriou (talk) 18:02, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

At least here in the US, Trainspotting carries some subtitles. And a damn good thing, too. - DavidWBrooks 14:06, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is a Bokmål Wikipedia and a Nynorsk, and they're both variants of Norwegian. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:28, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Shame, really

Torchic: a featured article on such a useless subject. When did Wikipedia go wrong?

Every article should be of featured quality. That some editors like to edit article about what you and I both consider to be silly fictional cartoon characters is fine - they're not paid to work here. Hipocrite - «Talk» 22:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It goes wrong every time someone decides to complain about things like this rather than put some work into getting "useful" articles featured. We're a community, and we're only as good as we make ourselves. --Masamage

It decided to let anybody edit the pages rather than only a tight group of snobby intellectuals. Oh wait, that's a good thing. --tjstrf talk 01:51, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, the problem with this article is it does not have reliable sources. —Centrx→talk • 10:05, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see a reference to the Pokémon Ruby game; reliable source problem for all the major data solved. Simple fiction is not subjective, ergo canonical information from it regarding itself is by definition the most reliable source of data you could possibly acquire. --tjstrf talk 10:30, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Which is the major reason why articles about fictional subjects are so easy to write—which, in turn, is the major reason why Pokémon articles continue to get featured, and ancient wars don't. They're just so much easier to research. --Masamage 10:34, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. Where a war requires the careful balancing of sources, may be discoloured by legend, and you have to deal with the POVs of the war survivors who often write about them, Pokemon is a subject with no reliability problems what so ever. In fact, if we were to cite some sort of outside "Pokemon expert" for the basic data about the Pokemon, we would actually be reducing our reliability because we would have introduced a needless layer of human error. An outside "Pokemon expert" would be useful for information that is not readily available from the games themselves, but really, canon meets WP:RS. --tjstrf talk 10:40, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We could also make extremely accurate articles about vital records and the census, or about every single character that ever appeared even for a minute on every single television show, movie, etc. You cannot create an encyclopedia article on such a subject. An encyclopedia article must have commentary about how the character fits into the story arc, how it fits into the history of the genre, how it offsets or aligns thematically with other characters, etc. You need independent sources for that. An article that is so simple that it could be duplicated by only playing the game is not an encyclopedia article at all. —Centrx→talk • 10:54, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That would be an accurate source for "Torchic in the Pokemon Ruby game", but characteristics of fictional characters are often different depending on what show, game, etc. you look at. Also, without reliable sources independent of a game the article can have no reliable commentary. The article is simply a plodding account of things that have been mentioned passingly, sourced to unreviewed websites, and if a suddenly a new game comes out that changes its characteristics, all the vapid statements in the article like "Torchic is the only Fire-type Pokémon" and "There are seventeen different Pokémon types" (which is probably repeated verbatim in several dozen other Pokemon articles), "Most Torchic cards are typical, basic Pokémon cards", etc. —Centrx→talk • 10:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Although entries about fictional things are usually quite easy to write as their entire description and chronology is laid out for you in the words of its creator, I've seen some nasty arguments before when dealing with fictional characters or concepts. often one user demands that all potentially subjective material be removed under WP:OR unless it can be verified through an independent third party source (the equivalent somebody asking for a pier reviewed journal entry validating an urban myth as being accurate, when all you are trying to do is prove that the myth exists), and one editor says "I saw it in an episode, so it must be true", then another editor pops up and deletes any specialized language that wasn't specifically used in a particular episode on the grounds that it is a neologism. It can get very nasty.

perfectblue 11:30, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Polo Montañez

The past few days I have been working on the Polo Montañez article and I have expanded it considerably yet it is still considered a stub. Polo Montañez was only famous for about 2 years before he died so there is not much that can be written about him. How can I make this stub into an article?

Expand it! For instance, create a Biography section about his life. Expand on his works. Cite sources for why he is considered relevant. Treat it almost as if you were writing a paper about his life and influential works. -- Kesh 18:40, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your participation is invited in a Peer Review

At Wikipedia:Peer review/Controlled demolition hypothesis for the collapse of the World Trade Center the editors who have been refining the article have requested a Peer Review. This is a process open to any editor to contrinute. Please visit the review page and decide whether you wish to review the article and give feedback. Fiddle Faddle 16:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

REPORTING VANDALISM

WHILST BROWSING YOUR SITE I FOUND THAT IN THE ARTICLE REGARDING NELSON MANDELA THERE IS A VERY RUDE PICTURE OF MALE GENITALS IN THE PLACE OF HIS PHOTO YOU DONT HAVE A FAULT REPORTING LINK SO I TRY TO REPORT IT VIA THIS LINK HOPE YOU CAN CHANGE IT YOURS THANKFULLY ARMAND JOUBERT (rm email and phone number) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 196.30.245.149 (talk) 04:06, 6 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

story thingie

Hi! Living at the nl wikipedia most of the time, this is my first post in your lovely village pump. I didn't know where else to go and maybe one of you can help me. I have this funny story over at nl (nl:Gebruiker:Venullian/Aanvulverhaal, though it will not make a lot of sense to you as it's in Dutch), where each person may post no more than 10 words and then have to wait for the next person to come along. I got the idea from someone who saw it at the en wikipedia, which would be here. Stupidly enough, I didn't interwiki link, and now we all forgot who that user was and where his story is. Is it still alive? Does anybody know about it? Venullian 16:19, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is this it? Tra (Talk) 17:08, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No I don't think so, it was in somebody's user namespace like mine is. it's more like one big story and everybody adds words to it. It ends up not making sence at all (but it's funny nevertheless)... Venullian 17:24, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, it would be a lot harder to find, since there are many user subpages to look through. Can you remember anything at all about the user, or about the way the page was named, or about some of the content of the stories there? Tra (Talk) 17:33, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No not really... that's why I thought I'd ask it here, in case it would ring a bell with anyone reading this :s Venullian 20:52, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It does ring a bell, and the bell is saying it was deleted a month or so ago. I'll look around and see if I can find the MFD discussion. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 17:22, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:AtionSong/World's Longest Poem and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:AtionSong/World's Longest Poem (second nomination) both no consensus. Page is currently located at Wikipedia:Sandbox/World's Longest Poem, not sure when it was moved. If that's not the one you're looking for try Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Once upon a time... and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Once upon a time.... That one was deleted. Seems kind of inconsistent, but whatever. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 17:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See also Wikipedia:Sandbox/Add a Word Story and Category:Wikipedia games. – Þ 17:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Linkspam up this week - keep watch

Link spam, the addition of links to external sites to increase search engine ranking, is up this week. See 64.74.62.136 (talk · contribs) and Blathering1 (talk · contribs) for examples. Watch for links to "www.fxwords.com", which is a phony glossary site full of ads. --John Nagle 18:19, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can get a list of links on Wikipedia to this website at Special:Linksearch. Tra (Talk) 18:35, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It just seems to be a bunch of links that don't go anywhere. Can someone reconfirm this and I'll go ahead and remove the whole lot. --Spartaz 20:21, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they're all links to a spam farm. Delete them. Related domains are "forextradingllc.com" and "gocurrency.com", all of which exist to get Yahoo and Google advertising clicks. See their ad rates and traffic statistics www.gocurrency.com/advertise-with-us.htm here. --John Nagle 21:12, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Put a note on "Administrator's Message Board" asking for a link block for those sites. --John Nagle 21:35, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The future of WP - your thoughts

Note: If there is a better place for this discussion can some editor please move it and leave a note here? Thanks.

IMHO Wikipedia is headed down a rocky road to irrelevance and is in danger of becoming nothing more than a glorified community blog. The model of "anyone can edit" has long since achieved its aim of populating as many topics as rapidly as possible, and it is past time that some sort of restriction be put on this ability. Vandalism is ever present, and having to RC Patrol takes up valuable time I could better spend improving articles. In addition, it is extremely discouraging and disheartening to know that no matter how many improvements I make, the value of my work is diminished by the presence and continual addition of other rubbish to the 'pedia (rubbish == pure vandalism/poorly written articles/unreferenced first-hand "blog type" info inserted into articles/cruft (see my very narrow definition of cruft below)/basically anything that reflects poorly on the academic quality of the 'pedia). The impression this leaves on the reader should not be underestimated. Although it is perceived as an "encyclopedia of everything" which is no doubt good, it is also perceived as a "social encyclopedia" of "cool things (Wow! It even has an article on The Stig! And it says he's Damon Hill! And his left nipple is the same shape as the Nürburgring!), and some boring science stuff" rather than a "research encyclopedia" that gives an academic treatment of all topics, including "cool things (I see Damon Hill was interviewed on Top Gear, and deliberately avoided the question when directly asked if he was The Stig. And the presenters often introduce The Stig with outlandish claims such as his left nipple being the same shape as the Nürburgring as part of the show's running gags.) AND boring science stuff" i.e. Wikipedia is not really taken seriously by the people we are meant to serve, the readers. Some points to ponder:

There is something fundamentally wrong with our mindset when WP:AfD is considered to be a "normal" process in the running of Wikipedia, and that >100 listings per day, every day, 365 days a year does not even cause comment. (This not to mention the vast number of articles that are speedied every day.)
There is something fundamentally wrong with the mindset that RC and NP Patrol are "normal" things for editors to be doing.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the way the 'pedia works if more than half (using a random page test) of the articles are either poorly written articles on good topics, or crufty (per my narrow definition)/spammy/rubbish topics themselves.

Think about it this way: if Wikipedia were forked (Citizendium anyone?) into a version that employed some sort of discussion/peer review/fact checking mechanism before allowing changes or additions to articles, which one would you trust more as a source of information, and which one would you go to for "fun facts"? Wikipedia needs to do something along these lines in order to be taken seriously as an authoritative source of reliable information. Zunaid©^{Review me!} 09:54, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If I wanted to research something on a wiki, I'd read the version that wasn't written by elitist pricks. Actually, if I really wanted to research something I'd read a book. And then come here and add information from it. If among our more serious claims to fame we have "Wikipedia:The encyclopedia with Featured Articles on all 493 Pokemon species", then so be it. It does not hurt any other area of the Wiki to have those articles, and people do read them and do learn from them. --tjstrf talk 10:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You've unfortunately read my argument wrongly and have focussed your reply more on the "cruft" and less on the things I actually wanted feedback on (viz. how Wikipedia works, and outside perception of Wikipedia). Perhaps I should have been more clear. My definition of cruft is "an inappropriately high level of detail beyond which an encyclopedia should not cover". Let's use the Pokemon example: Wikipedia should OF COURSE have good "academic" articles on all 493 Pokemon, and should RIGHTLY be considered incomplete without them. Such articles would be written in an out-of-universe style and would be well-referenced, presenting the info in a "real-world" context and alluding the their impact on the real world. It is when such articles become deluged with trivia, "in popular culture", or lengthy in-universe info that the quality of the article and the outside perception of Wikipedia suffers. There is an old version of The Stig article that has exactly these types of issues. The problem is that there are many editors adding these (and creating entirely new articles about popular things without knowing about our notability guidelines etc.), and it is a waste of others' effort to have to police changes. To me it is crazy that AfD runs to >100 nominations every day and people think its normal. Zunaid©^{Review me!} 13:27, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Strangely, and particularly when looking up fiction, I often find that this extra trivial detail is extremely useful and it is one of the reasons why I use Wikipedia. If I wanted a standard encyclopedia written by people who know that Dallas is a city in Texas, but not a character in Alien, I'd read Britannica.

perfectblue 13:45, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WP does well the thing it does. It provides a ready reference to a load of stuff under one big umbrella. It never said it was accurate. Provided one checks references it's a great and quick place to start. It is gloriously adequate. Fiddle Faddle 11:39, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

About 80% of the things that I look up are not controversial enough for there to be POV etc, are too hidden among the rest of the entries to be vandalized, and might be considered irrelevant to you, but are relevant to me. I wouldn't use it as a primary source for something important, but it is an excellent reference guide that, if nothing else, provides users with the sources (citations) that you can use for important work.

To be honest, and not in reference to any particular person I might add, I can't help but believe that that most of people who complain that wikipedia is irrelevant and inaccurate are really complaining that wikipedia contains opinions that differ from their own, and ideas that they eithr can't stomach or aren't interested in.

perfectblue 12:53, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree 100% that there is lots of silly stuff on WP. I was reading a long, well-writen biography about a character on a TV show that's been off the air for years. One argument for silliness is that because we have so much freedom and so much is tolerated people are drawn in and while they are here they have the chance to learn some real stuff. Steve Dufour 13:51, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that for every person who uses Wikipedia, there is a different definition of 'irrelevent junk'. The fine arts expert is going to revel in the fact that we have biographies of an amazing number of obscure artists - and be horrified at the alarming number of Pokemon articles we have. The Pokemon enthusiast may be dismayed at the large number of impossible-to-understand articles on particle physics. The physics geek may be dismayed that there is an article for every Japanese railway station...it goes on. However, disk space is cheap - and so long as the articles are well researched - what do we care? A typical article is maybe 10kbytes plus maybe another 20 or 30kbytes of photos. If we guess 50kbytes - then with disk drives currently running $100 for 300Gbytes, the cost of storing that article is about 0.0017 cents. It's truly, quite utterly negliable. Look at the contributions bar up at the top of your screen right now - it says that we've gotten $900,000 in contributions. The cost of storing ten million articles of a megabyte each would only be a tiny fraction of our annual donations. So we shouldn't be concerned with storing things that we don't personally find relevent - providing they are correct, nicely presented, etc.

What I am most concerned about is the ratio of time spent by our best editors on actual article creation/improvement to time spent on the following things:

'Office politics' - pages like this one where things are argued and argued and rarely does anything useful come out that actually improves the encyclopedia. Arguments about appropriateness of fair use images being an example of this. Somehow we seem unable to trim this cost. I believe (without evidence) that the amount of time spent on politics is growing faster than we are adding good editors. That could easily kill the encyclopedia.
Vandalism. On some articles, the ratio of vandalism and vandalism reversion to actual edits is 50:1 or more. This could also cause problems. If the growth in the number of vandals exceeds the growth of people willing to spend time reverting their mess, we will eventually die from unreverted vandalism. It's hard to be sure whether this is truly happening - as the number of people who know about Wikipedia grows, do the proportion of vandals to editors also grow? I suspect the answer is again "Yes" because the people who love encyclopedias (and are therefore likely to be editors) would probably have found Wikipedia sooner than people who don't care about them (who may therefore become vandals). If the number of editors we have now is as a result of early adopters - and the number of untapped vandalism sources is still very large - then this could eventually kill the encyclopedia.
AfC/AfD/whatever. This is like vandalism - but more subtle. People who create inappropriate article (or ask to do so - which is nearly as bad) - are not always vandals. They are often well meaning people who deserve a reasonable level of attention from us. Whilst you can spot vandalism in an article you are patrolling in seconds - and revert it almost as quickly, AfD and AfC requests tie up lots of people - who have to read the article, check for duplication, make sure that there is an applicable policy...argue with other editors. It's much more time consuming than ordinary vandalism. Observe the L-O-N-G backlogs in all of these kinds of committees.

The amount of time we collectively spend on these things is far, far too big - and what's worst, the most experienced and most capable editors are the people doing that. The fixes are all of a form where we have to curtail the freedom of newbies - I'm a big fan of semi-protection - it works - but it's horribly controversial.

SteveBaker 17:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pedantic geographers needed!

Actually any sort of geographer, or anyone interested in a major UK memorial to that late King George V who is commemorated by 471 individual playing fields located in the UK and a few in "foreign climes". WikiProject King George's Fields needs your help. We have all the data in a spreadsheet, but transferring it to WP takes diligence, patience, and a bit of plain hard work. Please come and have a look, and come and join in. Fiddle Faddle 11:37, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Judgement Call

I'm debating whether or not I should create a Doppelganger account. Technically, my username is "Wdflake", but I prefer to go my "W. Flake", as evidenced by my signature. Would having an account named "W. Flake" be inappropriate under this policy? Thanks in advance. —W. Flake ( talk | contribs ) 00:07, 9 January 2007 (UTC) fixed typo at 00:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Meaning of copyright

Discussing the article on journalist John Gorenfeld the question came up if it is a violation of copyright laws, or WP policy, to use information from his personal website without his permission. As I understand it copyright laws protect, well, "copy" but not "information". Steve Dufour 13:44, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Information is not copyrightable, but phrasing is. If you just use data from the site, it's all right, but if you use the words he uses to lay out the data, then it's a copyvio. User:Zoe|(talk) 16:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 245: / Line 245: @@
 :::::It does ring a bell, and the bell is saying it was deleted a month or so ago.  I'll look around and see if I can find the MFD discussion. ~ ''[[User:ONUnicorn|<span style="color:#0cc">ONUnicorn</span>]]''<sup>([[User talk:ONUnicorn|Talk]]|[[Special:Contributions/ONUnicorn|Contribs]])</sup><small>[[WP:P&amp;S|problem solving]]</small> 17:22, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 [[Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:AtionSong/World's Longest Poem]] and [[Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:AtionSong/World's Longest Poem (second nomination)]] both no consensus.  Page is currently located at [[Wikipedia:Sandbox/World's Longest Poem]], not sure when it was moved.  If that's not the one you're looking for try [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Once upon a time...]] and [[Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Once upon a time...]].  That one was deleted.  Seems kind of inconsistent, but whatever. ~ ''[[User:ONUnicorn|<span style="color:#0cc">ONUnicorn</span>]]''<sup>([[User talk:ONUnicorn|Talk]]|[[Special:Contributions/ONUnicorn|Contribs]])</sup><small>[[WP:P&amp;S|problem solving]]</small> 17:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
+:See also [[Wikipedia:Sandbox/Add a Word Story]] and [[:Category:Wikipedia games]]. <font color="#F06A0F">–</font>[[User:Anþony|<span style="border:1px solid #F06A0F;background:white;color:#F06A0F">&#160;Þ&#160;</span>]] 17:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 == Linkspam up this week - keep watch ==