Wikipedia:Village pump/Pre-December 2002 archive

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[edit] Wikipedia:Village pump November 2002 archive

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[edit] "Watch links"

I can't find "Watch links" anymore: Go to list of philosophical topics and it will talk about "Watch links", but to no avail. It's nowhere to be found. What happened? DrRetard

It's been changed to the equally dubious name of "Related changes" to avoid confusion with the "Watchlist". --Brion 18:10 Dec 13, 2002 (UTC)

[edit] Attributed articles now ?

What's the story on the external links in PUCCAMP, please? The images and info are great, although I don't like having pictures before any text, and it needs to be put into complete sentences, but I'm a little dubious of having a foreign-language link without mentioning that it is on the article page, and I'm a lot dubious about the link to the contributor's résumé -- since when are our articles signed? -- isis 01:30 Nov 8, 2002 (UTC)

I've removed the signature to the talk page, and mentioned that the site is in Portugeuse. --Camembert

Why keep it on the talk page? It's already on that user's user page, and we can get there from the history. Do we all get to put our links on the talk pages of articles now? Is that only for the new ones we start, or is that for ones we edit, too? Only major edits, or minor ones, too, like the ones I only put an image in? And am I restricted to linking it to my résumé, or can I link it to my entry in Who's Who in America, too? -- isis 07:15 Nov 8, 2002 (UTC)

Well look, if you want to remove it from the talk page, then do so, it won't bother me. And if you want to try adding links to the talk page of everything you edit, then try it and see what happens (my guess is they'll be removed if it's done en masse rather than just on one ocassion by a newcomer who doesn't know better). --Camembert

I wasn't going by the newbie's putting it there: I was going by User:Chris mahan's ratifying it and your keeping it on the 'talk' page, and now we have mav saying it's okay to have attributions on the 'talk' page. I am surprised at that (as you must be, given your prediction such postings would be removed), because I thought the 'talk' page was for discussions about the subject of the article and 'user' pages were for claiming credit for articles, but the only way I'm going to learn is by asking. -- isis 15:01 Nov 8, 2002 (UTC)

No, you can also "observe a lot by watching" as Yogi Berra might say (see Yogiisms). --Ed Poor
Normally, I would just remove the credit altogether rather than put it on talk (in fact I have done this a couple of times just now) - what can I say, I'm fickle. Personally, I probably wouldn't move article credits from the talk page (there are better things to be doing), but others might. I think there are some cases where we have copyright clearance to use something, and that goes on the talk page - such credits shouldn't be removed, of course. Otherwise, I don't think it's a very big deal - I can't speak for others. --Camembert

[edit] ISBN links

Question/suggestion about http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Booksources

This page only comes up when you click on an ISBN and then it goes from this page directly to a link for the ISBN you clicked on. Mega-handy, but not explained on the page. It would also be mega-handy, to me, anyway, if going to the page directly allowed going to one of the book sources and searching directly. It works on everything but the Barnes and Noble link. Ortolan88

[edit] Explanatory text

What's the policy on articles containing explanatory text, e.g. "This article will detail how one goes about proving that all cows are green." Is it bad? Good? Uncertain? Graft

It's useful in certain articles, such as anarchism -- the explaination helps people find what they're looking for much quicker. -- Sam
I agree it's useful, but we don't always operate based on what's most useful... I am wondering more if people think (or have thought) that this violates some sort of encyclopedia etiquette, or if it munges with the "voice" of the encyclopedia in some taboo way... Graft

Weirdness--I just made a brand-new article for two kinda obscure 60s bands. First, I did the 13th Floor Elevators and everything worked fine except for interminable slowness. Then, I did ? & the Mysterians and once again, everything worked fine except for slowness. Then, since I knew I had seen a few references to the Mysterians that didn't show up on "what links here", I did a search and found two alternate methods of writing the band's name, and I redirected them. Going to recent changes, I saw the two redirects but not ? & the Mysterians. 13th Floor Elevators was listed, and then the redirects a few minutes later but not the article itself (which does exist; the redirects work perfectly). Did anybody see the actual article appear on recent changes?

[edit] Does the "Conversion Script" have artificial intelligence?

I was browsing the "older versions" of Tragedy of the commons, when I discovered that a "Conversion script" inserted the following sentence into the article at 18:51 Feb 25, 2002:

Another commonly proposed solution is to convert the commons into private property, giving its owner an incentive to enforce its sustainability.

Is there some mundane explanation for this, or does the conversion script perhaps have AI of some kind? =)

--Ryguasu 02:34 Nov 25, 2002 (UTC)

The "conversion script" entries are the munged versions of the last edit of the article on the old UseMod wiki. Any earlier entries were from _before_ that version and were imported by another script months later; so a diff from the last pre-conversion revision to the conversion will show both actual conversion changes (subpage links etc) and the last human revision if any. --Brion 03:07 Nov 25, 2002 (UTC)
Does this mean that the credit to whoever did the last human revision has been dropped? Is it possible to put it back in? It seems a shame to lose the information on who made the last change. -- Oliver Pereira 20:33 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)
Yes, it could be done, but it's way's down on my list at the moment. If somebody else wants to give a try at munging the script, drop me a line. --Brion 21:03 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

I've been thinking of writing a "unblock all IPs banned more than 30 days ago" script. And running it once a week. Any takers? --Ed Poor

Well, I was just going to add an automatic timeout to the banning system; the length of ban would be set when banning (default 30 days, options to less?), and when the timeout came up, they fall off the list. Sound good? (Also, there should be a log page listing bans, manual unbans, and automatic unbans.) --Brion 21:03 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

Hey all --

It seems that my watchlist has been blanked. There's nothing there now. Has anyone else had this happen? Is it part of a general housecleaning effort? Thanks, Stormwriter

Mine is fine. I think the Watchlist only goes back a week now so if your watched pages haven't been edited in that time then a blank watch list would the the expected behavior. I'm pretty sure this limit on watchlists was done to reuduce server load. I, for example, am watching a couple thousand pages and it used to take 3-5 minutes to generate my watch list. --mav 20:01 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)
I find that I get logged out of Wikipedia if I don't make any edits for a while. (Not sure how long it takes, though.) Since users who aren't logged in can do most of the same stuff that logged-in users can, my watchlist going blank is usually the sign that alerts me to the fact that this has happened. Could this be it?
By the way, why does the watchlist now only go back a week? There were things further down mine that I had there because I was eventually going to get round to doing something about them, but now I can't remember what they were. :( -- Oliver Pereira 20:15 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

Hey guys -- thanks for the info. I figured it out. It seems I needed to click "Show changes for the last 7 days" in order for it to open the list. It defaults to 1 day now. Stormwriter

Oh, you can change it! That's all right, then. :) Mine seems to be set to "3 days" by default, though... -- Oliver Pereira 20:33 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

Note that I'm actively working on streamlining the watchlist function to balance performance and usability, so it may change frequently over the next few hours as I put the latest goodies online. --Brion 20:40 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

thanks very much for this, Brion :-) user:anthere
I'm grateful for any changes for the better, but is there a list of "latest goodies" anywhere or does everyone have to find out by chance, luck and intuition? KF 20:57 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

I have read many a comment posted particularly by newbies saying that Wikipedia is doomed because anyone can edit a page and create or add all kind of nonsense. I don't think this is a major problem. Rather, I believe this is one of Wikipedia's assets. KF 20:47 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

Technical moving help please !!

Somebody has been moving pages from the encyclopedic namespace to the wikipedia space, the talk page was not moved with the subject page. I tried to move the discussion page from the encyclo to the wikipedia space. It was moved, and the talk page appear linked to the subject page. But when I go to the subject page, it shows an empty discussion page, and does not link to the discussion page moved. Hope I am clear...

So, what do I do to link the subject page to the talk page properly ? I can't figure it, and the only option I currently see is to copy paste all, but then history will be lost... Can somebody help me here ???

user:anthere

The equivalent of "Wikipedia talk:" namespace on fr.wiki is "Discussion Wikipédia:" -- if you put it in exactly, the move will work properly. It's a known problem/feature/bug/mysterious behavior that talk pages aren't automatically carried over when a page from one namespace to another. But there's no good reason why not; it could be changed. --Brion 13:22 Nov 27, 2002 (UTC)
ahhhh Discussion pas Discuter...yes, got it. Thanks Brion --anthere

[edit] Copyright

Question (well, actually questions about Copyright violation . . .

Take a look at the article consul as it now stands. On 15:35 Nov 25, 2002, the user at 200.149.95.121 added a list of consuls with commentary. At first glance, my only thought was, "Well, this needs formatting, and eventually moving to its own article." And I would vote for an article with a list of consuls from the beginning to the end of this post. It would a useful resource -- & does not appear to exist elsewhere on the Web.

However, as I looked more closely at the commentary, I grew concerned: much of it appears to be scholarly commentary that would be found in a classical prospography or a scholarly article. In short, I suspect that we have a copyright violation based on someone scanning printed material & adding by cut-n-paste to the Wiki. I appreciate the effort, but a copyright violation is a copyright violation, nonetheless.

Someone may want to look at 200.149.95.121's other contributions. I took a quick look at his contributions to Ab urbe condita, & the text seems suspiciously too well-written. (Then again, maybe some of my submissions read too polished -- but I can attest that with certain, clearly-marked exceptions, they are all the work of my own ten fingers.)

That being said, can we consider the list of names alone also under copyright? IANAL, but I think the mere listing of words or names in itself does not fall under copyright. I'm more than sure that a list of consuls exists that was compiled before 1920, but it would be nice to take more accessible lists that have been compiled since then to create our master list. (And what 200.149.95.121 has added would make for a good start.)

I'm posting here because I couldn't easily find a "Talk:" page where I could discuss this issue. -- llywrch 19:47 Nov 28, 2002 (UTC)


Llywrch, you came to the right place. I know the author, his name is Zoltan Simon. He contacted wikiEN-l a couple of weeks ago about changes he wanted made to the Penelope article. I replied and explained how Wikipedia worked, and we engaged in a longer conversation. I convinced him to give Wikipedia a try. He says he has been editor and proofreader for the Encyclopaedia Hungarica (he wants to work on the Hungarian WP as well, which doesn't exist yet), and he has done a lot of historical research. He wants to add his own work to Wikipedia where appropriate, and I presume stuff like the list of consuls is his own.
I also explained to him that he should create a user account, but he doesn't seem to have managed to do so yet. I'm sure he will get to it eventually. I also hope he will provide citations to published articles when referencing his own research (Wikipedia is not intended for original research). --Eloquence
Well. The articles did have a definite scholarly feel to them, which truly stands out in Wikipedia: it's nice to know that it was because the articles were contributed by a scholar, and not borrowed from one. Heckuva welcome I'm providing Zoltan Simon, but maybe this will help convince him to create an account. (The articles I've seen from his IP number cover a valuable topic that is also very unappetizing to many people: how we determine dates & chronology.) -- llywrch 04:07 Nov 30, 2002 (UTC)
Thanks Eloquence for solving that one. Regarding the more general question: A list of consuls would, as far as I can see, not be possible to copyright. I remember having read about this type of case in a court case regarding a phonebook or some such. Basically, the information is not and cannot be copyrighted, only the way in which it is presented. And it is not work that is protected by copyright, but creativity. As such, the names of the senators and the information regarding them cannot be copyrighted. A certain selection or a certain order in which they appear, can, but only if this selection or order contains some creativity. A selection of all consuls by chronological order would certainly not fall under that criterion. Andre Engels 22:11 Nov 28, 2002 (UTC)