Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 102

Puzzled by some Infobox images

If I look at for example the article source on Ringo Starr: http://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ringo_Starr&action=edit&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro

the Image is set to "Ringo.jpg"

However, when I'm reading the article and click on the image, it looks to be http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ringo_Starr_%282007%29.jpg

Can somebody explain why it is so?

Thanks --— This unsigned comment was added by Hermiti (talk • changes) on 15:55, 5 October 2012 (UTC).

That is so because File:Ringo.jpg is a redirect to File:Ringo Starr (2007).jpg - the former does not really exist as an image. Chenzw  Talk  16:00, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm still a bit confused as I found this digging through imagelinks table dump. I'm trying to understand where this happens at the database level. It doesn't seem to be a regular page redirect, because the target page File:Ringo.jpg lands to does not show the "(Redirected from Ringo.jpg)"

I'll continue my investigations. Hermiti (talk) 20:17, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Ok, got it. As the images are in the commons db, the redirect also happens there. Hermiti (talk) 21:33, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes all our images are based on how commons is. We don't have local images. Except for very rare cases. Commons redirects work for any wiki that doesn't have a local file with the same name. -DJSasso (talk) 22:02, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Connecticut

Is anyone interested in working on Connecticut? I simplified the article here and would like to work with anyone who can help with further simplification, creating articles from redlinks, finding sources and adding photos from Commons. Thanks in advance, Jona^{talk to me} 17:49, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

I'll help with a bit of simplification and do some redlinks. --Tbennert (talk) 00:24, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you and Creol for contributing to the project =) I will start creating some redlinks now. Jona^{talk to me} 23:25, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

New article note

I see "(one-case-only article)" after some new articles. I'm guessing it's from an Edit filter or something, since it's used fairly often. Also, I really don't know what "one-case-only" is supposed to mean. So ... where does it come from and what does it mean? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 07:34, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I think I've figured out what it means (just upper-case or just lower-case). But where does it come from? I think it could be phrased better. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 07:36, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

It comes from abuse filter 12. Currently the filter is configured to "tag" edits which match the filter rule, thus the appearance of that small text beside the edit in RC. Chenzw  Talk  09:09, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for finding that! --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 11:50, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Would anyone mind my changing it to say "(uppercase- or lowercase-only article)"? That would make more sense to me than saying "(one-case-only article)". --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 11:49, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Good idea --Peterdownunder (talk) 11:50, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Fine with that, but I don't think there is a hyphen after "uppercase" over there. (OCD) Chenzw  Talk  11:52, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

The combination of "uppercase-only or lowercase-only" is "uppercase- or lowercase-only". The hyphen persists to show that the "uppercase" is still attached to the "only". --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 12:03, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Ok then. Sounds/looks better than "one-case-only", in either case. Chenzw  Talk  12:41, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

 Done. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 13:35, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Better way to say ...

I've been working on the Baltimore article and finally got around to the sports teams. I was just working on the Baseball section and I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out a better way to say "inducted into the Hall of Fame." An example sentence would be: "Cal Ripken, Jr. was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame."

"Induction" is a funny verb, and it's not one I'd consider particularly simple. You don't get "inducted" into other places, or record books. Personally the verb's connotations from physics and chemistry are more familiar to me than this other use. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of any other way to phrase this. I wanted, at minimum, to set aside the meaning in parentheticals -- eg. "was inducted into (admitted to) the Hall of Fame" -- but I couldn't think of a good way of saying it. "Admitted to", which was the best I could come up with, seems to indicate that the Hall of Fame is a physical building that only the best ball players are allowed into.

Thoughts? –Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû _(blah?) 04:25, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

"Made a member of" or "added to the list of people honored in(/at)" would by my suggestions. --Creol(talk) 04:44, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Still too fancy! I'd say just "added to the Hall of Fame". Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:53, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Added, per MacDR, or "became a member" to avoid the passive voice. Yottie ^=talk= 13:13, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

AbuseFilter/1

I am thinking of changing the tag from (blanking) to (possible blanking), so users don't think it's complete blanking.Reception123 / Receptie123 (talk) 13:49, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

No. The tag is for blanking. I think you need to worry more about working on articles and less about administrative things which you don't seem to have a very good handle on. -DJSasso (talk) 21:39, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

The idea of the tag is that it is short, I could also have put A new user possibly removed a large part of the article - but blanking is clearer. --Eptalon (talk) 22:15, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Pages with missing images

I wonder how often does http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_with_broken_file_links update? I presume it is a result of some automatic script(s).

I'm compiling my own simplewiki database for offline use, and running my own scripts I see there are many more images missing. If there is demand, I can post the full list here.

As a sample of articles with missing images, I see:

Article	Missing image
Amerigo_Vespucci	AmerigoVespucci_Signature.png
Ani	Central_dome,_Monastery_of_the_Hripsimian_Virgins.jpg
Anita_Tsoy	Show_"Anita".jpg
Asia_Minor	Anatolia_composite_NASA.png
Berlin	Berliner_Dom_2005.jpg
Clifton_Oyster_Rocks	Oyster_Rock.jpg

but there are more. Let me know if you want to see the full list in above format, about 200 images.

Hermiti (talk) 15:23, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

It is updated automatically as soon as a someone creates a broken file link on a page. -DJSasso (talk) 15:25, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Ok, but it seems to miss more than half of such pages. Perhaps those pages were created before the automatic checks were in place. Perhaps I should just put the full list here, no harm in that, or? Hermiti (talk) 17:18, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

There isn't really much point. We will catch them eventually. There are people that go through the checkwiki lists and fix such things. You could make a user subpage with them I suppose if you wanted to. -DJSasso (talk) 17:29, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Blocks and bans

I've made this change to our blocks and bans policy, stating that a block/ban is for the person, not the account, after seeing this comment at Reception123's talk page. I don't think its controversial, but thought it should be mentioned here anyway. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 08:40, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Wow I can't believe he thought that would be a good idea to log on with that account. Well that just sealed his fate completely I guess. And yes your change is a good one. -DJSasso (talk) 11:34, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, good change :-) fr33kman 18:28, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

I also support that change. --Auntof6 (talk) 02:34, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

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Fundraising localization: volunteers from outside the USA needed

Please translate for your local community

Hello All,

The Wikimedia Foundation's Fundraising team have begun our 'User Experience' project, with the goal of understanding the donation experience in different countries outside the USA and enhancing the localization of our donation pages. I am searching for volunteers to spend 30 minutes on a Skype chat with me, reviewing their own country's donation pages. It will be done on a 'usability' format (I will ask you to read the text and go through the donation flow) and will be asking your feedback in the meanwhile.

The only pre-requisite is for the volunteer to actually live in the country and to have access to at least one donation method that we offer for that country (mainly credit/debit card, but also real-time banking like IDEAL, E-wallets, etc...) so we can do a live test and see if the donation goes through. All volunteers will be reimbursed of the donations that eventually succeed (and they will be low amounts, like 1-2 dollars)

By helping us you are actually helping thousands of people to support our mission of free knowledge across the world. Please sing up and help us with our 'User Experience' project! :) If you are interested (or know of anyone who could be) please email ppena@wikimedia.org. All countries needed (excepting USA)!

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Small school project

Dear Wikipedians,

I would like to announce that I will start a little school project, something very small and simple. I will assist an English teacher, MCPearson, to introduce students to the wonderful world of Wikipedia. I'm from the Ambassadors program, experienced editor, working on WP/Commons since 2003 and I have 50,000 edits overall.

It was brought to my attention that the community on Simple English is small, and past school projects were bad experiences for this community. I'd like to reassure you; they are a small group of students who will be supervised by the teacher and myself. We will keep an eye on every single edit from each student.

At first, students will be on "Read only" mode, doing some exercises. Then they will have to find sources about a subject they chose. And then only, they will have to add only couple of sourced phrases on their personnal userpages. It is nothing big, only to make them practice English, being able to find reliable sources, and eventually edit Wikipedia a little.

These young fellows are studying English at the Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe and the project page is Wikipedia:Schools/Projects/Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe.

If you have any advice for me or the teacher miss Pearson, please do so. We are very open to any suggestions. Best regards. Benoit Rochon (talk) 22:16, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Good luck to you and Miss Pearson. Actually, there have been several of these smaller, well-managed projects which have worked out just fine. Macdonald-ross (talk) 06:59, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Sounds well organised! The school project I oversaw in June went pretty well. I'm not sure how much of their work was retained, but I think it was a good portion. The one before that in April caused some problems with copyright violations and copying from the English Wikipedia, but their teacher/supervisor wasn't communicating with us so that was another scenario. Thank you for notifying us! Good luck! Osiris (talk) 07:37, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your support guys! I'm sure everything will be fine besides the little mistakes beginners usually do. But hey, were here to help! By the way, I know they are all a little scared, teacher and students, of breaking Wikipedia forever and be whipped by the community (remember your first edits how big deal this was)... therefore, may I ask you to leave a little welcome message on the project talk page? I'm sure they will all apreciate it... and so am I. Thanks again for your support. Best regards. Benoit Rochon (talk) 19:28, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

IP blocked from creating usernames

Hello,

As previously mentionned, I'm starting a school project. First course was this afternoon and we had a little problem. The Wiki software stopped accepting new inscription after 6... Yes the school is sharing the same IP address, but is there a way to prevent this? Tomorrow, there's another class and we'd like have all students subscribed. Thank you for your tips. Benoit Rochon (talk) 20:37, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately no, there's no way to disable that on our end, that I'm aware of. You can try releasing and renewing IPs, or get the students to create the accounts from home. The only other way is if an administrator creates the accounts for you, but we'll need email addresses for the software to send passwords to. Osiris (talk) 20:52, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Anyone with the Account Creator flag could do it (which here would, yes, only be the admins - they get the flag as part of the admin flag and we have no AC flags here.. but on other wiki's this bit would be useful to know). But, the email part can be bypasses slightly, I think. As far as I know, there is no check for multiple accounts using the same email for the account creator flag (it bypasses the black list, if a check existed, it should bypass that as well). That being the case, one email (the teacher) could be used for the entire batch and the teacher would then hand out the account names and passwords to the students (and then the students could change their passwords and email for their account for privacy/protection). --Creol(talk) 21:24, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I've done it this way before and it is possible. The only thing was that the teacher received 35 separate emails, but if Ms. Pearson is okay with that then I can send them all to her address. I just need the list of usernames you want registering. Osiris (talk) 22:03, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

please help

Hello I really don't understand what this really or how deep it goes but something is going on with my Mobil internet. I believe im being blocked or redirected maybe even cyber bullied I really hope someone can look into my issue and let me know ..thank you — This unsigned comment was added by 75.80.23.249 (talk • changes). 16:54, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Do you know the IP address you use when on your Mobil internet, so we can check whether it's blocked? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:52, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Hurricane is not working properly

As you can see here, the "location" parameter is not displaying any information. Anyone knows why? Best, Jona^{talk to me} 16:41, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Our infobox didn't work the same way en's does. Someone copied it over cut and paste without editing it to work with our version. I have fixed our version to use the same method as on en. -DJSasso (talk) 17:34, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Best, Jona^{talk to me} 18:26, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Proposal for French Simple Wikipedia

Hi! I posted a proposal for starting a French Simple Wikipedia at Meta:Babel#Simple_French_Wikipedia_proposal_based_on_fran.C3.A7ais_fondamental. It would be based off of the fr:français fondamental. WhisperToMe (talk) 13:04, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Good luck, you'll need it. We have a hard enough time half the time trying to keep this one from being closed. The likelihood of another being opened when a moratorium has been placed on simple wikis is next to none. -DJSasso (talk) 14:17, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Who placed a moratorium? There was a 2011 mailing list post that said that it's very likely a French Simple Wiki would be approved by the language committee - that's because there is a standard artificially simple version of French. The criteria for starting a "simple" language is that it is a major world language, and that there is a standardized artificially simple form; so far, for now, only English and French meet those standards. It seems to be at meta:Language_proposal_policy/New_policy#Languages Also the last Meta request to close simple English was in 2009: meta:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Simple English Wikipedia (2) WhisperToMe (talk) 22:40, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I would have to go and look. It was quite a long time ago, but basically the language committee announced they would not start any more simple languages. As for closing simple, there are official proposals and there are unofficial attempts. We fight off closure pretty much every few months. And over the last few years a number of simple projects have been closed down. It will be a tough road to convince anyone to start another one. Especially when we at simple english can barely get our scope figured out. Alot would say we still don't. And I would note if you look at that meta link to the Langauge proposal policy, its not actually a policy. It was someones proposal to have a policy that said that. -DJSasso (talk) 11:48, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I can understand it may be more difficult with non-encyclopedia simple projects, especially considering that with languages other than English and French, there aren't any known artificially simple versions of them. The advantage French has is, like English, there is an artificially simple version that can be used to start a simple encyclopedia. Anyway, please let me know if/when you find the statements. As for the mailing list, while it is/was a proposal, the text of the mailing list does say "Language committee has agreed about the next wording of the part of the new policy [1] related to the simple languages" - One I would really love to start is a "Simple Spanish" but I will not try to do that unless someone invents an artificially simple version of Spanish. WhisperToMe (talk) 11:09, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm told that sentiment towards simple projects within LangCom changed somewhat at their Berlin meeting in 2011. If you need some assurance on the likelihood of this passing through LangCom, I would recommend contacting User:Evertype. Osiris (talk) 11:36, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! I posted a discussion at en:User_talk:Evertype#Attitude_towards_a_simple_French_Wikipedia WhisperToMe (talk) 12:38, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I opened a discussion at meta:Requests for new languages/Wikipedia French Simple (2) - BTW the mail took place in June and referenced some kind of meeting, so it was probably from that meeting Osiris was referring to. WhisperToMe (talk) 02:14, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Policy on Countries

Most country articles have a list of all countries sharing the border with it in the lead paragraph, which makes everything somewhat confusing on the larger scale for the reader. I propose having a new section/ dropbox/infobox with just a list of 'countries sharing the border with Country X' in the country X article for clearer understanding Inamos (talk) 19:37, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good. I agree that first paras should contain whatever is judged to be primary information, and no more. Macdonald-ross (talk) 21:32, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Me too. I think that is a great idea. Gotanda (talk) 00:48, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Can anyone here create a template or something that can do the desired work? Sorry but I am not too good at making them. If someone can make them, I can try to implement them. 19:06, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

infobox linking to En wikipedia?

I think it will be best if we add an infobox or something at the top of the article linking it to the English wikipedia page [Sort of what uncyclopedia does to Wikipedia articles at the end].

It is very cumbersome to figure out how to go to the original Wiki page for further reading, if I am reading the simple version. Also, most of the times when I browse simple, I find it more than useful to go to the original wikipedia article for further reading on most not-so-gigantic articles. This ought to provide a quick and convenient way to travel through wikis.. Inamos (talk) 19:14, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

There is a link right on the left hand side to the english version for any article that has an english version or other language for that matter. -DJSasso (talk) 19:16, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I am aware of that. But for 'Chess', when I was trying to find the appropriate link, I find it quite a trouble to find it. And thats only for someone who knew where the links were. I believe it would be a lot more convenient if there was an infobox at the top with a link for the article on the English wiki. Inamos (talk) 18:52, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately that puts undue emphasis on a single language wiki. Since our wiki's target audience is people who don't know English well, we can't assume English is the one they would want to go to for more information. Likely they would go to their own language wiki if they wanted more information. And it really is quite obvious on the side of the page that says "Other languages". And its in alphabetical order for the most part so its not really that hard to find. -DJSasso (talk) 21:51, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Our wiki's target audience are users who read English and would want to read it in a simpler version. How many Italian or Spanish wiki readers have come to the simple wiki for reading articles that would have been present in their own language? I agree that it is obvious, but to only those who know where it is. My point is which will be more convenient. Scrolling down half a page to find an article that is directly connected to one on this wiki will be too cumbersome. Inamos (talk) 22:12, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

No actually that isn't the audience of this wiki. The audience of this wiki is English as a Second Langauge (ESL) readers and children. That is our primary audience. The point of this wiki is to help people who are for example Italian who are trying to learn English. Now of course its a happy side effect that those wanting to read simpler articles can, but that isn't our main goal here. Sorry but you are a brand new user so you might actually want to learn what this wiki's function is before you go trying to tell people what it is for. -DJSasso (talk) 22:16, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Umm.. Where is it mentioned who is the primary audience of this wiki? 23:02, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Well it briefly mentions it on the main page of the wiki. Besides that it has been discussed numerous times so would be found in our archives of this page. -DJSasso (talk) 23:04, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I dont seem to find anything of the sort written on the main page. Mind pointing out those lines?

And is every new editor expected to read through every single archive that is made before making a new suggestion? Sounds reasonable. Inamos (talk) 23:22, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Where did I say that you needed to read every archive before making a suggestion? What I said is you might want to learn about the wiki before telling people they are wrong when they point something about it out to you. I was pointing out why your suggestion was not necessarily as good as you thought it was. And you then told me that I was wrong about what this wiki is for even though I have been editing here for many years and you have been here two days. -DJSasso (talk) 23:34, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Umm.. I am kindof still waiting to see the lines of the mainpage that say that the primary audience of this wiki are those who are not primarily English speaking Inamos (talk) 23:39, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

"That includes children and adults who are learning English." We specifically point these two out because they are our primary targets. We also point it out here in the first sentence of the page. -DJSasso (talk) 23:44, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I cant see how I missed that point. Inamos (talk) 00:05, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Also of note would be the page for Simple English Wikipedia, both here and on the English Wikipedia. --Creol(talk) 19:53, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Question. Since this wiki is in English, and any reader who reads this wiki will be reading it in English, would it not imply that English is the one language they can actually expect to see as a link on the top of the page. Of course, if they want their own language, they will know where to find it, but to have English being highlighted because of being the language of this wiki does not seem too bad as a proposal. Inamos (talk) 07:25, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't see why it would imply that. The language of this Wiki is Simple English, not English. It is treated as a separate language, even though it is a subset of English. We try to keep everything simple here, not just the language. Adding more links at the top would make articles more cluttered, which we don't need. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:09, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

As Auntof6 mentions, I think maybe that is the problem you are encountering. You consider them the same language. But we treat them as two different languages because things here are quite different than regular English. We are no more attached to English than any other language. And yes there is the fact that we don't just keep the language simple here, everything we do here is simple and we attempt to keep it uncluttered. -DJSasso (talk) 11:35, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

If they want their own language and know where to find it, they know where to find the link to the English wikipedia also. It is redundant to tell them twice where the page is (if it exists - we do have some pages they don't have on the English wikipedia) --Creol(talk) 19:53, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Am I to infer that the Simple wiki contains a comprehensive coverage of nearly every article that exists on the English wiki? The only reason I suggest it is because of convenience and inconvenience. For an average wikisurfer, the best thing to do is to click on the links provided in the article. The sad part is that the Simple wiki is not as equipped to explain all those links. The best solution to that? [Except, of course, if you say to build more articles- A job which is not accomplishable at current levels] To provide the proper link for further reading on that article. I honestly see no reason why that is not considered for the only reason that 'Simple English is different from English and we shall not show favoritism for any language' Even Simple English written in English!!! Why should it not source a more advanced article on the topic in the same language?? Inamos (talk) 20:24, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

I do not see how you could possibly infer that from anything on this page (or site for that matter). As to "provide the proper link for further reading on that article" - we do. We provide the proper link on every page for articles in whatever languages the reader may feel more comfortable with (where available). "Even Simple English written in English!!!", which ironically is not written in English, is also not true. Simple English uses much of the basic grammar of English (with added rules and guidelines) and only a small part of its vocabulary. Simple English is based on Basic English. It is as separate a language as say Olde English to English or Highland Scots to Scottish. (or Spanglish to English for that matter, High German to German? ) As to Sourcing a more advances article.. I'm hoping that's just a bad choice of words since sourcing an article is a completely different topic to link to an article. --Creol(talk) 20:50, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

windmill

how does a windmill works?

Try reading windmill for some answers.--Peterdownunder (talk) 10:41, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Translation of the week for visibility?

I think I have already pointed out that translations of the week can give us visibility, if someone actually takes the time to do a good translation. We do have the comfortable positrion that we provide "another view" of the English-languguage Wikipedia, which is hopefully easier to understand. That way, people with limited English skills might use our "page" as a reference for their translation. I have started a stub on the current Translation of the week, Cult suicide, but it still needs a category. The annex page Destructive cult needs simplification. I am also not sure to what extent discussion of groups that have used cult suicides in the past is helpful to our readers. Anyway, please simplify & extend, if you have the time, as such exercises might result in new editors in the future. --Eptalon (talk) 10:08, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Crime against foreigners in India

I've closed this deletion discussion, with the consensus being to merge the content to Crime in India. I know that a few people had concerns about the quality of the content – mostly about how generic some of the information is. I'm willing to do the heavy lifting, but any help would be appreciated. Osiris (talk) 11:54, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I have done a mostly-full-copy-paste-merge to Crime in India (a history merge is not required) and cut out sections in the introductory paragraph which I felt were too advisory in nature. Still needs some cleanup so that it doesn't seem to be a distinct part of the main article. Chenzw  Talk  02:31, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Ryan Seacrest

Could someone please look at Ryan Seacrest and not laugh. I just can't do it.. Entirely accurate and covers all the main points but just wrong. --Creol(talk) 00:44, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Haha. Yottie ^=talk= 00:49, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Article on undeciphered script

Out of boredom, I wrote a stub on Linear A, a currently undeciphered script used on Crete. Feel free to extend, we are lacking info, in such things as undeciphered scripts. --Eptalon (talk) 10:52, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Is Simple Wikipedia really simple?

Hello Simple Wikipedians, I'd like to attract your attention to our recently published research paper A Practical Approach to Language Complexity: A Wikipedia Case Study. In this paper we focus on linguistic features of Simple WP and compare it to the main English WP. We provide some conclusions and suggestions to the WP community. Comments and questions are very welcome. Adler.fa (talk) 16:23, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I feel like we recently discussed this study, or maybe it was a different study. We had found that most of the methods that were used were flawed such as reliance on readability calculators which often use things like sentence length to say that it is easier or harder to read. When in reality in a lot of situations longer sentences are actually easier to use if they user easier to understand words that the original. Most of the standard readability tests don't actually work properly when applied against Simple Wikipedia. Unfortunately people do like to try and have such "simple" ways to declare if something is simple or not. And really it just doesn't work that way. -DJSasso (talk) 16:59, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh just noticed this one was just published yesterday so it must have been a different study. But skimming through it, it is making a lot of the same types of calculations. -DJSasso (talk) 17:06, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I know the paper you talking about. Here we started by the same approach however, we tried to go deeper and understand how the simplification has happened in Simple. Namely, what are the exact similarities and differences to other English corpora. Despite to what you quoted above, we have find that Simple is indeed simple in the sense of structuring, but its vocabulary richness is still comparable to more advance English corpora. Adler.fa (talk) 17:25, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I will have a more indepth read later when I am not at work. As I said I only skimmed so I could have been off base. -DJSasso (talk) 17:27, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

That is highly appreciated, since the feedback from real editors and the community is very useful and inspiring, Thanks. Adler.fa (talk) 17:31, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

An interesting and very complex article (would that be difficult to write in simple English!). If I understand it, it says we are doing well in making sentences shorter, and less complex. But we need to make more effort to make the actual words simple. So let us look forward to valuable help from this study to make the Simple English Wikipedia really simple. (This reply written in simple English) -Peterdownunder (talk) 06:31, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Help

How can I edit the pages well? I am a student french who learns english. Also, I have placed a Template {{helpme}} on my discussion page.

Poopypoo (talk) 03:34, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

I've answered on your talk page. Osiris (talk) 03:53, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Pakistan POV editor: Range blocks

Hi all, some may still remember the Pakistan POV editor (which is not that accurate nowadays, because he/she edits some articles not exactly related to Pakistan). There have been many discussions both on this page and WP:AN in the past (a few here: [1], [2], [3], [4]). Administrators past and present, including User:Majorly, User:Pmlineditor, User:Osiris and myself have been adopting a block on sight approach.

Considering that there have been no improvements in the editor's disruptive editing and the fact that not many people seem to be willing to clear up after his edits, I am letting everyone know here that I have, over the last few days, gone one step further and applied several relatively major range blocks that are being used by the editor:

• 2.96.48.0/20 (3 months)
• 78.145.112.0/21 (1 month)
• 89.241.200.0/22 (1 month)

These blocks are all anon only, with account creation enabled. I ask that anyone who wishes to challenge this decision look at previous edits before going further. Chenzw  Talk  16:37, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Since I still think that we should talk to the editor in question (and that there may be a problem of comprehension), I have left a note to User:Hamneto, who seems to be able to communicate in the language of Pakistan. Given the user's edits, I think it is likely they understand this language, even though their understanding of English may be limited. --Eptalon (talk) 22:35, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

This person/these persons have consistently be a cause of trouble, for several years now (I think the first article about a Pakistani POV pusher dates from 2006 or 2008). While I honour the efforts made by some of the IP addresses involved, I think we should go a step further, and disallow editing by anonnymous users from the known addresses for six to nine months. We should block them, but only for anonymous contributors; account creation should be left open, and no editing restriction should apply to named users using these addresses/address ranges.This would allow the following:

• We should be able to find out if we deal with one user, or with several. Should there be several, actions taken against one user will not affect the others.
• Named users acting against any policy can be dealt with normally, as provided by our policies.
• Supposing these users are Pakistani, and really have problems communicating in English, we do have one editor who speaks their language.

While I am in general against forcing users to identify/use a named account, I think in this case it will be beneficial, as it allows us to better target the rather limited resources we have. What do you think? --Eptalon (talk) 22:36, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I think it would be helpful in inducing account creation. Considering that one of the IP ranges is used by an educational institution of some sort (which the anon editor presumably goes), the customised {{anonblock}} (at User:Chenzw/Pakistan/blockreason) will be noticed by staff, if not himself. Chenzw  Talk  01:33, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Succession boxes

A range of small related questions are suggested by Wikipedia:Requests for deletion/Requests/2012/Template:Sequence.

A discussion about format consistency is trivial, but it may have consequences in large classes or categories of articles, for example

• Category:Popes ... compare Template:WesternSchism?
• Category:Emperors of Japan ... compare Template:Timelines of nengo and reigns?

As explained at User talk:Clarkcj12#Succession box format, format consistency is relevant in many articles which each have a similar succession box format.

For example, see Category:Japanese eras. The succession box format which is used in this Japanese era class or category dates from May 2012. The genesis is made clear in serial edit summaries.

Genesis of current succession box format

:* diff 16:32, 7 May 2012 . . (-64)‎ . . Ninju ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 16:29, 7 May 2012 . . (-64)‎ . . Kashō (early Heian period) ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 16:25, 7 May 2012 . . (-63)‎ . . Jōwa (Heian period) ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 16:20, 7 May 2012 . . (-77)‎ . . Tenchō ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 03:15, 7 May 2012 . . (-64)‎ . . Kōnin (era) ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 03:10, 7 May 2012 . . (-74)‎ . . Daidō ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 03:08, 7 May 2012 . . (-98)‎ . . Enryaku ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 03:04, 7 May 2012 . . (-64)‎ . . Ten'ō ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 03:01, 7 May 2012 . . (-64)‎ . . Hōki ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 19:25, 4 May 2012 . . (-54)‎ . . Jingo-keiun ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 18:29, 4 May 2012 . . (-63)‎ . . Jinki (era) ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 18:27, 4 May 2012 . . (-63)‎ . . Yōrō ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 18:26, 4 May 2012 . . (-60)‎ . . Reiki (era) ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 18:23, 4 May 2012 . . (-63)‎ . . Wadō (era) ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 17:51, 4 May 2012 . . (-53)‎ . . Jōgen (Kamakura period) ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 17:41, 4 May 2012 . . (+57)‎ . . Eiso ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 17:38, 4 May 2012 . . (+19)‎ . . Eien ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 17:35, 4 May 2012 . . (-61)‎ . . Kanna (era) ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 17:33, 4 May 2012 . . (-59)‎ . . Tengen (era) ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 17:29, 4 May 2012 . . (+27)‎ . . Eikan ‎ (succession box format per Creol) diff 17:23, 4 May 2012 . . (-64)‎ . . Jōgen (Heian period) ‎ (succession box format per Creol)

Currently, the consistency of format across the range of Japanese era (nengō) articles is a common feature of this class or category .

The consistent navbox graphics at the bottom of the page are intended to draw a helpful visual connection among the related articles.

The repeating format is also mirrored in non-standard succession boxes which are necessary in articles about a few Japanese eras of the late-7th and early-8th centuries.

Comments and discussion are invited on the articles' talk pages,

• Talk:Taika (era)#Visual explanation = simplifying?
• Talk:Hakuchi (era)
• Talk:Shuchō
• Talk:Taihō (era)

It is not easy or obvious to guess how to work through these kinds of graphics issues.

For example, the current succession box at Taika (era) works well enough, but would a change be better across the cohort of 200+ articles?

A--Graphic layout which is currently in use
This graphic layout is currently in use at the bottom of the page at Taika (era). Taika 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th Gregorian 645 646 647 648 649 650 Preceded by: —— Era or nengō: Taika Succeeded by: Hakuchi Preceded by: Kōgyoku period 642—645 Imperial reign: Kōtoku period 645—654 Succeeded by: ——

B--Graphic layout which is different?
This is a possible revision using the {{succession box}} format. Taika 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th Gregorian 645 646 647 648 649 650 Preceded by —— Era or nengō: Taika Succeeded by Hakuchi Preceded by Kōgyoku period 642—645 Imperial reign: Kōtoku period 645—654 Succeeded by ——

Looking forward, I wonder what is better? best?

In our unique Wikipedia context, this thread begs a couple of other questions: "What is to be done next? What is to be learned from this?" --Ansei (talk) 18:34, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

• Well, it's rare that we have a discussion of graphic design issues! There is no absolute right and wrong, but I noticed two things:

1. The succession boxes below seem well-designed and readable.
2. The sequence boxes (Era years "Taiko" + numbers) look rather awkward. The text and numerals are range-right and without space between them and the rules (borders). (maybe try range centre, and fixed space (say, n-space) attached to each vertical rule). Well, I think the coding for this template is rather amateurish, and much prefer the succession boxes. We should not keep the "sequence" template as it is. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:36, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

@Macdonald-ross, thank you for sharing your opinion. --Ansei (talk) 19:34, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

• I have to say that I am not entirely certain what the question is here.. cohorts only seems to apply in the most archaic sense, other terms needed to be looked up to even get the jist of the post which is still kind of lost to me. But as my name popped up so many times as per Creol, I thought I should at least comment there. It took me a bit to realize exactly which band of edits I was being referenced to (I gots a couple edits here.. hard to remember them all) but I do remember a rash on Japanese eras. The main issue I was working on (see Keich) was shifting from html table format to wikitables. It was not style or formatting issue. It was a coding issue. (I did many of the color pages as that time too. shifting from li to wikitable) I personally am not entirely happy with the layout as is for multiple reasons (Gregarian is footnote, not a line descriptor) but was only focused on shifting to a more wiki-based format. (checkwiki said fix, I fixed)--Creol(talk) 19:55, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

@Creol, thank you for sharing your opinion. This helps sharpen my thinking about of some of the problems and issues having to do with succession boxes. --Ansei (talk) 19:34, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I replied to much of this on my talk page as my reply had little to do with the actual subject itself (and the section was removed as I was typing this anyway). As for the subject, a suggestion on the format:

Keichō
Ruler	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th	11th	12th	13th	14th	15th	16th	17th	18th	19th	20th
Year	1596	1597	1598	1599	1600	1601	1602	1603	1604	1605	1606	1607	1608	1609	1610	1611	1612	1613	1614	1615
Year the rule began in the Gregorian Calendar

This could be templated to ease its use. The table class could also be tweaked for changes in color or borders, but for the most part the basic wikitable class is often a good choice. --Creol(talk) 19:55, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, see variant of "sequence box" in use at Keichō? --Ansei (talk) 20:13, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I think its a cleaner design and easier to read. Unless the numbers in the top row are specific to the era name (ie. there is a 1st Keichō, 2nd Keichō) it would seem best define the entire box as the Keichō era by placing the era name as the title. As I stated in my reference above, I am not quite certain what exactly the numbers are and the terminology that would be best used for the particular subject matter so it is a bit hard to be more helpful in that area. It is quite possible the individual rulers are known by the era name is a succession but even so, for a general reader that concept could be bit hard to understand. --Creol(talk) 20:37, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, good -- the numbers in the top row are specific to the era name.

Yes, there is a 1st year of Keichō, a 2nd year of Keichō, etc. The success, utility and need for these sequence boxes is demonstrated by Creol's diff. Even without reading the article, Creol was able to grasp the fundamental relationship between the traditional Japanese system of marking time and the Western calendar dates. --Ansei (talk) 21:56, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Côte d'Ivoire requested move

Côte d'Ivoire is not the common name used in English sources. Sources like The New York Times The Washington Post, Bloomberg Reuters The International Business Times The Associated Press Businessweek ESPN Voice of America and The Guardian to name a few, prefer Ivory Coast by an order of magnitude. en:Ivory Coast is also the name chosen for the English Wikipedia article version. Côte d'Ivoire is only used by very minor news outlets like AllAfrica.com and in national sports news. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 09:11, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it's clear-cut. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:44, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

So clear cut it has failed multiple times over the last 7 years to get consensus one way to the other whether to use the countries official name or an outdated direct translation of it. That thing tries to move more than a belly dancer.. Let the country, the CIA and the US State Department chose the name, not the AP. --Creol(talk) 09:52, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Putting sole authority in a single source is never a good idea. Even the Voice of America official U.S. news agency uses Ivory Coast. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 10:11, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

It is probably a good thing I didn't put sole authority in a single source then. Côte d'Ivoire has nothing to do with the US State Department or the CIA. Can't say the same for the Times, Post, AP, and even the listed IBN article (reporting what the Times said). The fact is this is not a simple situation. The 7 year debate on en.wp which has a ton of issues finding any consensus on which name to use shows this. And the en article name is certainly not a mandate even if they could figure out what title to use. The country itself has stated what its name is and that it does not want its name to be translated (a direct translation). This was done in 1987. The fact that the AP and many of the outlets it sources still uses an antiquated name 25 years later is just odd. We don't use Burma, Zaire, Ceylon, Dahomey, Bourbon Island or Gold Coast any more, why should we still use Ivory Coast. --Creol(talk) 11:15, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, what English wiki does is up to them; there have been no edit wars on this page here, as far as I can see. And, what a country's government calls its country is its own business. Neither has jurisdiction over us. I'm pretty sure the country is best known to ordinary people in English-speaking countries as the Ivory Coast. We are Simple, and our remit at least gives us the right to propose simpler titles than those used on English wiki. Incidentally, of the names you listed, Burma and Ceylon are still in common spoken use, but Ghana is standard now at street level, at least in London. On this present case, I can live with either title, but I do think you are wrong in principle to suggest that we should always take the point of view of the political elite, who usually have axes to grind. Surely our bias should be towards ordinary day-to-day speech, and the simpler the better? Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:05, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────┘
I don't think we should always take the PoV of anyone. But, I do think what any entity chooses as its own name should have more weight than what a foreign media chooses to name it. This is more the case when the name chosen is seen as troublesome to the entity's identity such as a connection to illegal activity. In this case, the globally banned ivory trade. Other countries have chosen to change their name for various reasons and while there are some public holdouts to the old name, generally the new name is the one used. As time goes on, the holdouts grow smaller. In this case, (mainly American) media refuses to accept the change and forces their PoV on the world. I'm not choosing the PoV of the political elite, I'm shying away from the PoV of the media elite. As to every day speech, I'm willing to bet over 75% of the English speaking population has never used either name.. probably couldn't even tell you were the country was.. same with many of the names I listed above (and many others). I don't see either name choice having any real impact outside of people from that area. --Creol(talk) 13:23, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Ivory Coast was a French colony, until it became independent in 1960. French is the official language of the country, English isn't. The official name in English is Republic of Côte d'Ivoire. Even though Ivory Coast may be in common usage, its not an official name of the country. So, I propose to leave the article at Côte d'ivoire, and create redirects as needed. --Eptalon (talk) 19:16, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

I thought we usually went for the most common name, and it is quite clear that in English, Ivory coast is far more common. I'd also argue that the vast majority of people wouldn't even know what Côte d'Ivoire is. Yottie ^=talk= 19:32, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

The subject's official preference means nothing. Secondary reliable sources are always better gauges of common usage than primary sources. USA Today prefers to be called USA TODAY. Are we really going to oblige them when almost all non-Gannet sources use USA Today? Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 20:19, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

I see another problem: Western Sahara is currently split, most of it is occupied by Morocco, but there is also the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Spain left its colony in 1975. Since then, western Sahara has not existed as an independent, self-governed state. So why do we have the article under Western Sahara, given than when it was a Spanish colony, it was known as Sahara Occidental? - the same argument could probably be made for many similar cases. Let's take the practical approach, leave the article where it is now, and create the two or three redirects for the old names of the territory. Instead of disccusing things which probably don't bother many of our regular editors, spend time on making this Wikipedia better, by creating more peer-reviewed Good or Very Good articles, improving existing articles, or creating new ones that meet certain minimal standards?--Eptalon (talk) 20:38, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

It is very difficult to edit here without guidelines to back my arguments. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 20:48, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Actually, its real easy - Edit, don't start arguments. --Creol(talk) 07:00, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Guidelines are there to guide the user, in the context of a bigger Wikipedia, they probably reflect what most editors agree with. In the context of a small project like ours, we can still reach agreement/consensus "on our own", and writing guidelines will be unnecessary, for many cases (such as this one). It is probablly possible to defend either side of the argument. However, other than creating a link/redirect (if it doesn't exist already), I don't see a need to act. As to the Western Sahara example I gave, the full story is at en:Western Sahara conflict, for those interested.--Eptalon (talk) 20:55, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

The problem with local consensus is that you have to have to get consensus every single time you have a disagreement instead of pointing to the relevant policy. That isn't an efficient use of my time and that's why I have 39,000 edits on en.wikipedia and less than 200 here. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 21:04, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I have over 38.000 here, and probably less than 1000 on enwp. Even though they don't admit, some people do have "home wikis". I do however think that pointing to edit counts is not relevant here...--Eptalon (talk) 21:14, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

That move request on enwiki could have gone either way in my opinion, and then it was barely held up at Move review (it didn't look like a consensus to me, but then I didn't read the whole discussion). I do note from a few quick searches on Google that, yes, the vast majority of Western media seems to prefer the historical English name. African and local media in English appear to use the official name (which sees Cote d'Ivoire with more than double the amount of hits as Ivory Coast, but from a smaller number of news sources). A ngram of books on Google shows that usage of Ivory Coast is more common, but has been declining, steadily, since they changed the name. Governments of major English-speaking countries appear to use the official name (Australia, Canada, South Africa, UK, U.S.). Osiris (talk) 03:20, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

The redirect from Ivory Coast to Côte d'Ivoire was created in 2006...So, what was the discussion again? --Eptalon (talk) 13:51, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. I was referring to the move discussion on the English Wikipedia (that Marcus was referencing). It was in July (before that, en:Ivory Coast was at en:Côte d'Ivoire). Osiris (talk) 14:32, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

I think here in Simple it would be better to refer to this as Ivory Coast rather than Côte d'Ivoire with a redirect for Côte d'Ivoire and a mention of it in the article. As I learn how this project works it seems to me that we would prefer the simpler English version here rather than the hard to read, pronounce alternative. Regardless of what EN does or what a few references call it I think it would be easier and clearer for our readers. Kumioko (talk) 09:32, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Why isn't this situation treated the same as spelling of peoples' names? That is, if someone comes along and says, "please spell my name John MacDonald" and he spells his name in that same fashion, and if he merits an article on Wikipedia, then we wouldn't create the article at John Macdonald or John McDonald. We'd use the man's preferred spelling. If there is a definitive reference for this statement I would say this is a similar situation: "The country itself has stated what its name is and that it does not want its name to be translated (a direct translation). This was done in 1987." (Creol) –Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû _(blah?) 05:57, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

This issue is a dead duck, let's forget about it. However, Mukkakukaku is wrong. In biographies we, and En wiki, have often used the best-known name for the title, and put any other versions in the text or in a footnote. What would be the sense of using full Roman names, for example? There are notable exceptions to any rule you care to name. Some names change three or four times during life, some are stage names, and so on. It helps the reader to have the title he/she can recognise. But as to Ivory Coast/Côte d'Ivoire, let's forget it. We've better things to do. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:47, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Help requested on a new article

I have recently migrated Xerochrysum bracteatum, a featured article in the English Wikipedia, to Simple. It needs a bit of work though to meet the standards for VGA here. It needs a lot of new articles created to fill in the red links and it needs quite a bit of simplification to replace the technical wording. Any help that can be provided would be greatly appreciated. Kumioko (talk) 15:24, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

In my opinion, you've brought over far too much. Even apart from the language, the detail is excessive. It doesn't matter what its status is on English wiki, the amount of work needed to turn this round would be far too much for any benefit to readers. To be useful, an objective should be realisable within the limits of time and manpower. We've been over this ground again and again: it's not right to do this, and then expect others to do the work. How to proceed? Cut most of it out, right down to the barest details. Then you can add some more back, after it is simplified. Macdonald-ross (talk) 16:44, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

A: The background competes for the viewer’s attention in this image -- which is a bit like too many words in an ENWP article

B: The flowers are isolated from the background in this image -- which is like what happens with fewer words in an SEWP article

The advice which Macdonald-ross offers is crisp, clear, practical.

"How to proceed? Cut most of it out, right down to the barest details. Then you can add some more back ...."

Intuitively, I already do this kind of thing; but I didn't know how to put what I knew into words. It was a little bit unexpected and surprising when I read this. My reaction was something like "yes, of course" and "we can do that" .... --Ansei (talk) 17:08, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Sorry to say so, but EnWP is in love with its language. This means that in their view it is a good thing to pack everything into a sentence, which then becomes long and tiring to read. Another way to proceed would therefore be to scan through the article, and anytime there is a comma, try to start a new sentence. Sentences with many more than about 10-15 words are definitely difficult to understand. Think about the reader: This is a flower that can be grown in a flowerpot, or in the garden. Very likely the "most important" pieces of information for our "average reader" will be those that help him determine where to place the plant, to show the different "kinds" (as in "cultivars") that exist, perhaps pointing out that many bugs and butterflies like these plants. The average reader probably does not care much about the plant being renamed several times (other than to know that it is "also known as"), or that biologists try to name/place the plants in groups that fulfill certain criteria. Given that info, we can probably shorten the sections about taxonomy,the description, and merge distribution & habitat and ecology into one section. The section where we have a list of cultivars with 3 sentences per cultivar probably needs a different "layout", the "listing style" does not quite fit..--Eptalon (talk) 17:44, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you all for the comments. I have already started to do some of the things needed but I also am new to Simple so I am still getting used to the differences. I also agree that the article is a bit to long and wordy and I can cut it down quite a bit fairly easily I think. I also want to be clear that I don't expect anyone to do anything. I am perfectly happy chiseling away at it but someone suggested I bring the matter up here and see if anyone else was willing to help out so that's what I did. I also don't think we need to gut the article just to build it back up, that seems pretty pointless. Thank you for all the comments though and I will work on incorporating them into (or out of) the article. Kumioko (talk) 18:48, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

TMDU school project: new semester and a new group of students

During spring 2012 I introduced a group of students from Tokyo Medical and Dental University to SEWP. The project went reasonably well, I think. I was at least relieved that we did not have copyright problems. I will be introducing a new group of students this week and next week. They will join more gradually this time--not all at once. I will list them on my userpage. Their names will begin TMD for easy identification. Please contact me if there are any problems at all. Thanks, ELTted (talk) 00:47, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Cool! Yes, your last project went very smoothly I thought, but—as always—should you need any help on anything, just let me know and I'll be happy to oblige. Osiris (talk) 01:16, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, Osiris. I see you already greeted a few of the students. Great! Just to let everyone know, we'll have a round of in-class editing in about two to three hours. Still early on, so it may seem a bit chaotic at first. Sorry if their changes (all usernames begin TMD) flood New Changes. I'll go back through later to make sure nothing else sneaks through in the minor flood. Thanks, ELTted (talk) 21:46, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Just to let everyone know. One more round of in-class editing coming up in about 2.5 hours. Thanks for your patience and support. Much appreciated. ELTted (talk) 21:38, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Help needed please

Resolved. Osiris (talk) 21:25, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Hello, wonder if someone will help me please? I seem to have done something wrong in the 'See also' section of Gheba tribe and the link is all messed up. I dont know what to do to fix it. Please help me fix this thanks, Hamneto (talk) 09:25, 30 November 2012 (UTC)Hamneto

Refusing augscend citation

Why are you refusing my augscend page?

It doesn't conflict with anyone else's usage and it is just intended to explain an idea.

Neither Wikipedia or Google can find 'augscend' so why can't I use it to name an idea?

Also, why is it so hard to insert images - it makes it impossible to illustrate a concept.

How can one talk about an new idea if it is so hard to cite the idea? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kind2afault (talk • contribs)

From Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not

“

10. Primary research. If you have discovered something or found something out, put your ideas in a book for a learning school, not on Wikipedia. Wikipedia will talk about your ideas once it is known to a lot of people.

”

Free images are easy to use. They just have to be uploaded to Commons to be linked here. --Creol(talk) 20:55, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Suspected error in Graham's Number simple English page

After reading the page that I had mention in the title, I suspect that the sentence "...largest possible number..." should be alter to "...smallest possible number...". no reply please.

Rubbish. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:34, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

How article differs page?

Wikiman897 (talk) 12:42, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Are you asking how to see the diff page of an article? If so then click on 'View history' then 'compare selected revisions'. You can use the little option boxes to choose what versions you want to compare. Kennedy ^(talk) 13:07, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Possible change to AWB

I would like to ask the AWB developers to add some logic to AWB that will perform the following changes here on Simple per the instructions we use here.

1. Change See also to Related pages
2. Change External links to Other websites.

Does anyone have any problem with this or additional suggestions for changes? Kumioko (talk) 00:30, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me, as long as we think we won't change those again. (I seem to remember them being changed not too long ago.) In the meantime, I have AWB set up with regular expressions to change those strings and others. Let me know if you'd like me to post them here for you to copy. --Auntof6 (talk) 04:34, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I created some regex for those 2 but if you have any others I would be happy to share. I am going through right now cleaning up typos and replacing the 2 examples above. I am finished with A and U-Z, working on B now. We could probably also just add them to the AWB typo list rather than submit a formal change. I wouldn't worry about it changing though. If it does we can always ask them to update the logic. It happens rather often in EN. Kumioko (talk) 04:40, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

While we're on the subject of the "See also" heading, we should probably come to an agreement on whether "Related pages" is preferred over "Other pages". I personally feel that "Related pages" is better, but currently we have a mixture of both. Consistency makes sense, so in my opinion we should agree on one heading and use that for all articles. -Mh7kJ (talk) 16:05, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I prefer Related pages as well. In fact I never really liked See also in teh English WP and would like to see it changed there as well. Kumioko (talk) 19:54, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah consensus changed it from Other pages to Related pages awhile back. But I believe it was agreed at the time not to run AWB through the entire wiki to change them and to only change them as you run into them. At least I think I remember that. Would have to look through the Simple Talk archives.-DJSasso (talk) 14:25, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Wow apparently its been 2 years already. Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 88#.22See also.22 vs .22Other pages.22 -DJSasso (talk) 14:28, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I just finished going through the full list and there are about 1119 articles that need See also or External links changed give or take a few false positives. I have been turning of the Auto tagger because I saw that and also noticed that some of the other templates don't exist here at all. I think AWB can be modified to make this useful for us as well though. I did not look for Other pages though but that would only take me a couple days to do if you want me to do that as well. Kumioko (talk) 01:21, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

7 more changes to AWB

As I use the AWB app more here I notice that some of the logic is a little buggy for how things are done in Simple and I think in addition to the See also and External links suggestions above there are a few additional things that we may want to look at:

1. Update the logic in AWB to not change to diacratics in Simple Wikipedia? Such as changing Honshu to Honshū.

   Currently AWB changes these and I am not sure if it is in the spirit of keeping things simple.

2. Update the logic for See also.

   Currently changes something to See also but see also isn’t used in Simple, its Related pages.

3. Update the logic for External links.

   Current logic changes some things like Weblinks to External links but Simple calls the External links section Other websites.

4. Change [[Wiktionary: to [[wikt:
5. Simple doesn’t use the Underlinked template or some of the others used in the Autotagger. This template and possibly others should be ignored for Simple.

   Should we disable the autotagger entirely for Simple? Does it even apply?

6. The links of CAT:DE and CAT:UL used in the automatic edit summary for AWB when the Autotagger is on are red links because these don’t exist in Simple.

   Should we create the Dead end one for the existing template or modify AWB to not do this for Simple?

7. Remove portals. Portals aren’t used on Simple.

   There only seems to be a couple hundred and I think it would be a rather easy thing to maintain so I'm not sure if its worth an AWB change.

I'm sure there are more and if I write these up I would submit them as individual changes to make it easier to comment and discuss them each on their own merits rather than as a group.Kumioko (talk) 18:50, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

We use diacritics here. So the first one shouldn't be changed. Most of the others aren't really a big deal to have changed. The Wiktionary one is a bit tricky as someone might have linked it on purpose to English. (though the preferred option is to link it to Simple English). So I am not sure I would build that into AWB to be done automatically. That being said a lot of this has probably never been changed because we don't generally use AWB for general cleanup, only for specific tasks. But that isn't a reason not to fix it. :) Oh and I should mention you should shut off auto tagging in AWB as it adds a lot of tags that we generally don't put on much because of the size of our wiki. For example AWB just loves to put on the orphan tag, but because of our wikis size we have lots and lots of articles that aren't linked. So it ends up putting in on far to many articles which makes our wiki look horrible. -DJSasso (talk) 14:21, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, So for this, it could be wikt or Wiktionary depending on where you are linking too? Is that documented somewhere?

Also, as I mentioned elsewhere here I can ask that this wiki be excluded from the Orphan tag logic. After looking at the code I think they can restrict that to not work here (as well as a couple of others we don't have the templates for). Kumioko (talk) 01:21, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

For See Also and External Links, depending on the order things are checked in, just calling them a typo and adding them here may take care of a lot of the problem. --Creol(talk) 15:28, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

That's a great idea Creol, since AWB also has some built in logic to fix some possibilities to External links or See also (like Weblinks) I wonder which would come first.Kumioko (talk) 01:22, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Submitted some as bugs or Feature requests

Since it seems that most folks are agreeable to making some of these changes to AWB so the app is a little more useful here, I went ahead and submitted some here for a feature request and here for some bugs in the logic for this site. If you have any comments or think we should pull back on this please let me know or comment there. Kumioko (talk) 00:50, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Update on submission

The AWB developers shot down a lot of the suggestion for changes to the Autotagger.

1. Because we have and apparently use {{Orphan}} they do not want to modify the logic to not use it here. If we do not want to use that template at all and submit it for deletion, then they would consider it.
2. Since we do not use {{Underlinked}} here they created redirects to {{Wikify}} in order to not have to modify the logic.

As I see it at this point we have essentially 2 options:

1. Continue to allow Autotagger's use as has been done and take our chances with some additional tags and things being added from time to time. (Since there are only a handful of us using the app it may not be that big of a problem)
2. Request that Autotagger be completely disabled.

Other changes are still under review but I will post here if anything comes out of them. Kumioko (talk) 01:00, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I am against disabling the autotagger for all edits on Simple. The autotagger can be turned off via a checkbox option by any individual editor who doesn't want it used. Each editor is responsible for all changes made with AWB, so each article should be checked anyway. AWB isn't going to do everything for us. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:00, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I was going to say: Considering there are indeed only a handful of us using the app – isn't the obvious third option to just make sure that the orphan tag isn't added before hitting the save button? I realise that's a bit annoying, but if the maintainers aren't willing to disable that one template then I'd prefer the the minor annoyance to not having the feature available at all. Osiris (talk) 05:31, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

There are alternatives to deletion also. Off the top of my head, one would be turning it into a stealth template, so that it still categorises but doesn't show anything (although that might result in some other technical issues). It is far too much distraction for such a small issue, but it does serve purposes in many situations, and for editors (like me) who routinely go through the maintenance backlog, its placement helps identify pages that have had issues for far too long. Osiris (talk) 05:31, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you all for the input and I completely understand and agree. I just wanted to give the options. Since this is a smaller wiki and a lot of pages would fall under the Orphan templates applicability I wasn't sure even how much it was wanted or needed. Just a note too that its manually removed from the edit, it still leaves the message in the AWB edit summary. So the edit summary would say it was added when it really wasn't (another problem that I have brought up in the past that they chose not to fix). Kumioko (talk) 11:52, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

read my user page

YellowPegasus (talk) 00:31, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I took the bait. I'm sure that's meant to be funny, but impersonating a banned user and using your first five edits to state an intention to disrupt the project may not be taken well by some. Surely you have something a bit more useful to contribute? Osiris (talk) 04:32, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

My Image has been stolen by User:Katimawan2005

I added an image of peetambar flower senna alataFile:Peetambar heavenly flower.jpg and it has been removed by wiki administration, after few days later my image is emerged again on wikipedia in same file name. please stop this type off activities. Its a violation of copyright. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Krishna Kumar Mishra (talk • contribs) 06:29, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I take it you're talking about this file on the Pampangan Wikipedia? It took me a while to find that. Please approach the Katimawan2005 on their talk page there. We cannot do anything to help you here. Osiris (talk) 07:24, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Oddly, File:Peetambar Flower.JPG, uploaded by this user, was not deleted and is still available on Commons. Also, The upload log on pam.wiki shows no other uploads with "peetambar" in them since at least july 2007 (last 500 uploads) and the only one deleted on that list is a ferris wheel. This users Commons upload log has no reference to an image matching the name and their only deleted contribution is listed as a copyvio (screencap). The subject matter is the same so the images are certainly similar, but different backgrounds (and the ants are different). --Creol(talk) 16:01, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Software error

Would someone please remind me where we should report software errors? I'm getting an error when I try to display new templates. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 12:02, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

It's error 367571be, if that helps. --Auntof6 (talk) 12:03, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

What do you mean by "display new templates"? -Mh7kJ (talk) 12:58, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T45159

Template namespace on NewPages. It happened a few days ago, and I believe it's to do with something that Clarkcj12 created the other day (you won't be able to view his contributions either - check). The error code is different each time you try to view it. The error has a few bug reports already here. I might suggest we open another so they have more information on it. Osiris (talk) 13:20, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

To clarify: there's nothing actually wrong with anything that was created, it just obviously triggered an unexpected error in the system is all. Osiris (talk) 13:27, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Should be fine now, thanks to the folks at Bugzilla. Don't know whether it will happen again at this stage... Osiris (talk) 14:46, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Populating Template:Persondata With AWB

I have noticed that this template appears to be used here and that some folks have been actively updating it. Would anyone have a problem with me requesting the AWB logic for this be turned on. It currently only works at EN. Of course it won't be 100% foolproof and will need to be monitored just like any other edit we do here but I think it would be beneficial if it populated what it can. Any thoughts? Kumioko (talk) 16:05, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Wouldn't the Persondata values be exactly the same as on the English Wikipedia? If you do duplicate them, they won't be updated or fixed when they are on the English Wikipedia. And I thought Persondata was going to be replaced by Wikidata in the next phases... πr² 13:52, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

It isn't that it is used here so much as it gets copied over from en and it's just easier for us to leave it be than to have to continually scan for it and remove it since it is meta data and not seen by the user. -DJSasso (talk) 13:55, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really familiar with Wikidata but I didn't think that was the purpose of it.

To be honest its really not used that much on ENWP either. Part of the reason I started this was because I wasn't even sure if it was needed here at all but I saw several folks updating data. I also don't necessarily think that the data here needs to match EN. Since the 2 Wiki's are separate, if we do maintain Persondata here, I feel like the data should be separate as well. We have articles they don't have so it makes sense we would maintain it separate. Kumioko (talk) 14:03, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} vs. {{changeprotected}}

In my opinion, {{changeprotected}} is simpler. Does anyone think we should move {{editprotected}} to {{changeprotected}} over the current redirect, and leaving a redirect to the new name?  Hazard-SJ  ✈  00:53, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I think that makes sense. It would be more consistent than the current naming and would be inline with the use of change instead of edit here. Kumioko (talk) 11:56, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah it was probably just missed when we changed everything to changes from edits awhile back. I made the move. Will reverse if anyone has a major concern but I don't think its controversial. -DJSasso (talk) 14:07, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I also did the same for {{editsemiprotected}}.  Hazard-SJ  ✈  22:18, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Template:WPMILHIST Infobox style

I think we need to rename Template:WPMILHIST Infobox style to something more meaningful. The title reflects WikiProject Military history from EN but we do not have WikiProjects here. I also think the abbreviation should be clarified to be simpler to identify. I recommend renaming this to something like Template:Military history infobox style. Kumioko (talk) 01:02, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Help on Mars

could some teckie please take a look at the Mars talk page? You will see that we are baffled by the link to the Wik/en page. I have tried playing around to fix it, but to no avail. Kdammers (talk) 09:24, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Simple Talk

I suppose it is too late to change things, but I found the title of this project misleading. I was looking for help, so I went to "Help," but that did not solve my problem. I only came here, to a page that I thought was about the language of the Simple English Wikipedia out of frustration and blind searching. Am I the only one who doesn't think the title indicates the content? Kdammers (talk) 09:28, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Unapproved stub types

I have made this edit to Wikipedia:Simple Stub Project to bring attention to the fact that unapproved stub templates will be deleted. However, the page explicitly states that it is not a guideline nor policy, and I think it is important that we make this clear lest editors in the future run into issues with such grey areas in policy.

There are two possibilities that I can think of:

• Make WP:SSP at least a guideline which governs the use of stub templates. This makes QD G6 legitimate.
• Add a T3 to our quick deletion criteria to handle similar cases.

Chenzw  Talk  14:48, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd support this. I might also add a new QD criterion for unapproved stub categories. --Auntof6 (talk) 15:14, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Wouldn't add a QD for it. We already have too many QDs happening when they should be discussed. If you come upon one that shouldn't exist just redirect it to the most appropriate existing stub. It really is the easiest quickest and drama free way to solve it usually. But a guideline is a good idea. -DJSasso (talk) 12:35, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

New to all this, spent all weekend learning terminology and faq's

Hello all! My name is Elvis Chirinos Jr, I'm a film major and wanted to contribute wiki's for films and incoming projects. The first one I saught out was a project called boiling pot. It has an interesting cast (which is what caught my attention) and premise. However, reading all the guidelines, im not sure im "allowed" to write an article on this (I've already written it on word, and its sitting in my computer). Anyways, if anyone could throw any tips my way.... such as how to start an article ( i think i have most of the formatting down) but i still need help, as learning all this stuff from the ground up is fairly difficult. Anyways, let me know what you guys think!

-E

Hi, Elvis, and welcome to Simple English Wikipedia. I suggest you read Wikipedia:Notability to see information about how notable the subjects of articles should be. You could also put a copy of what you've written on your user page and ask for comments. We could give you specific comments on it, and point you to relevant guidelines or policies you might not have found yet. Is there something specific you think might be an issue? --Auntof6 (talk) 03:40, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Discussions at English WP

I just wanted to let everyone know that there is a discussion at the English WP to add a more pronounced link here for articles that are common between the 2. This is primarily due to input from the Article feedback tool, where many users have voiced their frustrations at the complicated articles there. The links to those discussions are (here) and at the English Wikipedia Village pump (idea lab) (here).

As a side note, I think it would be good to do something here that could load the readers to the corresponding English WP article if they want more details about the article they read here. Kumioko (talk) 22:57, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. I commented. Osiris (talk) 01:13, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes. I've also commented in both places. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:20, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
How would you feel about putting the English Interwiki link non the top here also if applicable? It seems this would be a useful thing to do here as well. That way if the reader wanted to learn more about the subject they could clikc that and jump over to EN. Kumioko (talk) 14:55, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

This was just discussed and rejected a couple of weeks ago in this discussion. The reasoning being that our primary link isn't necessarily to English Wikipedia since many/most of our readers come from languages other than English. It has been discussed prior to that as well at least one other time I can remember. (not to say we shouldn't discuss it again) -DJSasso (talk) 15:23, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually the discussion on en is a direct result of the discussion here if I remember correctly they were not impressed with our response and went to en to propose the same idea there. Or it may be that it was in the opposite order. Either way its kind of ironic its back here again. :) -DJSasso (talk) 16:01, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree it is rather ironic. I am still pretty new here so I don't know all the history of things yet and didn't realize there had already been some discussions. It makes sense though. On one hand the argument makes sense but on the other, Simple is rather hidden and unknown so most editors from EN or anywhere else wouldn't know its here unless they went their first and got referred. Its just my opinion but it makes sense to me to keep Simple, well simple and then if the reader wants to get more details and see the bigger words they can go to EN. So having a prominently displayed link makes sense. Of course there are going to be occasions where the 2 don't line up but thats ok too.

I also think that it will draw more traffic here, which again is a good and bad thing. We could hope that the positive contributors outnumber the vandals it would attract but its hard to tell at this point. Certainly we would get some of both I would think. There was a suggestion on my ENWP talk page about putting a promo to Simple in the ENWP newsletter to maybe attract some more users and interest here. Again it seems like a net positive to me but what do you all think? Is that something that would be of benefit to the project? Kumioko (talk) 19:49, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the proposal on en to put simple on top because its an obvious destination from English for those wanting a simpler version. But not with the opposite direction because people wanting more information/detail are likely to go to their own language wiki for such. That being said your other ideas about promoting the wiki are all good with me. I think it has been done a time or two in the past but we can always use more promotion because our perpetual situation here is that of needing more editors. :) -DJSasso (talk) 01:52, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, for us a link at the top of the En wiki list is the most useful thing to have. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:52, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Promotion of the project on EnWP

Since it seems that there is a general agreement that some additional promotion of the project on En is good, does anyone have any suggestions for what to say? I can draft something up and post it for discussion and review but I thought someone may already have something we could use. Kumioko (talk) 00:28, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I had started this before, an attempt at creating a joint 'advertising' between WP:SN and their Signpost. Time really got a hold of me, amongst other things... Would be good to see an article in the Signpost highlighting that we're here... *waves* Kennedy ^(talk) 12:08, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Cool, I'll draft something up over the weekend and drop it here so everyone has the opportunity to comment on it. Kumioko (talk) 19:55, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

When looking an English Wikipedia article that is is too complicated we could add a link to the simple article as a stop-gap, as if a flag. I suppose it would be good practice to add a flag template for jargon. A link on the talk page between simple English articles and English Wikipedia might be good. Kathybramley (talk) 15:59, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Focus on Simple English Wikipedia

Below is a blurb I wrote up to add to the Sign post at English Wikipedia to promote this site.

Are you interested in expanding your role in other MediaWiki projects outside the English Wikipedia? Do you find that the the English Wikipedia is too hard to read, use or edit? Try the Simple English Wikipedia version of Wikipedia. It uses fewer words and easier grammar. At the start, it was designed for people learning English. Its style may help readers understand difficult concepts. With less that 90, 000 articles, less rules and easier to read articles it offers possibilities to editors who may feel limited in what they can do in the English Wikipedia.

I anyone has any suggestions please feel free. Kumioko (talk) 18:33, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Altough..as well -> At the start, it was designed for people learning English. Its style can help understand difficult concepts, without the language posing a problem.? --Eptalon (talk) 15:24, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I updated the message above based on Eptalon's suggestion. Would anyone have a problem going forward with this message? Kumioko (talk) 01:23, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

The sentence "Its style can help understand difficult concepts, without the language posing a problem." is awkward (a subject is lacking, and the second half is repeating a point already made). Better and simpler is "Its style may help readers understand difficult concepts". Macdonald-ross (talk) 14:01, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Good idea I reworded the above based on your suggestion. If there are no more comments by Friday I would like to submit it for the next applicable version of the Signpost.Kumioko (talk) 19:57, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Topic posted

I just wanted to let everyone know I posted a topic to the Suggestions page of the Signpost over at EN. I'll post back here if there are any comments. Kumioko (talk) 14:41, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

The suggestion you've posted still needs some fine tuning. "With less that 90, 000 articles," should be "less than" and no space between 90,000. Its also rather short... Kennedy ^(talk) 16:00, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Good point and we just crossed the 90, 000 article threshhold yesterday. We can probably make it longer. I left it out here for a while and only a few folks commented. If you have some suggestions for expanding it let me know. Kumioko (talk) 17:17, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry I haven't posted sooner. Was going back and forth with some folks via Email. So, the Signpost pretty much shot down our request because we haven't done anything "notable". With that said once we hit 100, 000 articles they said that should be a sufficient achievment to have a note.

We also might be able to get a notice in the WikiProject section, since its not really a WikiProject though, not sure that will work or if its the appropriate place for it.

In general, and why I never really get into reading it myself, it seems the Signpost is mostly tailored for EN.Wikipedia and only adds external things if they are important in relation to them. Sorry. It was still worth a try though. I'm sure there are a lot of folks who would edit over here if they knew about us, they just don't know. Kumioko (talk) 16:05, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Would someone look at template {{Infobox rail line}}?

I can't see where it's getting the redlinked category Category:Port Authority Trans-Hudson‏‎. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 10:47, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

It's in {{PATH HOB-33}}. I have removed the reference to the category, but it may take a while for the system to catch up with that change. Chenzw  Talk  10:52, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! --Auntof6 (talk) 11:04, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Links to Wikimedia commons

I would like to thank all the editors who include links to Wikimedia Commons in articles. At the same time, I would like to ask that these links be included only if Commons actually has something on the topic. I've seen several new pages recently with Commons links where the link doesn't go anywhere. It's good to include the Commons link when Commons has something related, but not all articles need Commons links. Thank you! --Auntof6 (talk) 07:55, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

attribution to authors of wikipedia articles

Hi, I just found my way here upon noticing an edit summary in main wikipedia article Elks Temple (Boise, Idaho), an article I had created. The version of that article here in simple Wikipedia doesn't show any much attribution of the Wikipedia article's authors is edit history, seeming to show a brand new article creation. A bot adding a link to the Wikipedia article does not convey authorship credit, any more than the corresponding bot adding to the Wikipedia article conveys authorship to the new simple one.

Was this one article started correctly here, or not? What are guidelines/policy for showing attribution here?

In general, this seems like a great project. Cheers, --Doncram (talk) 17:50, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Articles can be attributed either by edit summary or by a template on the article's talk page. In this case, a template was used (Talk:Elks Temple (Boise, Idaho)). For more information on attribution, see WP:TA. Kind regards, -Mh7kJ (talk) 17:59, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Hey Doncram I'm glad to see you made your way. I'm still learning the ropes here but I think generally the idea is to give attribution to the Article on the corresponding project where the content came from and by extension that gives attribution to all those editors, bots and IP's participated in the articles development there. I could be wrong but that is how I perceive it. Kumioko (talk) 21:15, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I think the most standard way is to use the template on the talk page. Used correctly, this should reference a specific revision of a page at the other wikipedia project. There is no other meaningful way to attribute, short of importing the page (and hopefully, simplifying it). --Eptalon (talk) 23:31, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, simpleWP! Enjoy 2013. CRRaysHead90 | ^{Get Some!} 12:33, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Vote on English wiki

The proposal for listing Simple at the top of the language links on English Wikipedia is now being voted on. [5] It is not going well. I'm surprised at some of the things that have been said. Anyway, even if you joined in with the earlier discussion, you will need to plunge in again. Nothing you said before will count, only what is on the voting page. Macdonald-ross (talk) 23:03, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Automatic archival of low-volume project talk pages

Hello,

I added a configuration to Wikipedia talk:How to write Simple English pages, for Miszabot to archive the page. Most of the discussions are over 6 months old. Archival settings are to leave 4 threads on the page, no matter what, and to create a new archive once 125k content is reached. Currently, the whole page is about 50-60k, but discussions go back a few years. Does anyone have an opinion on automatically archiving (low traffic) project talk pages? --Eptalon (talk) 15:29, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Generally I see no point on it if talk pages get so little traffic like that. It isn't hard if the page does hit 100k to archive it manually. That being said there is no harm in it either. -DJSasso (talk) 00:09, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Its easily automated, and given that the posts on the page in question are not "linear", letting the bot decide is easier than spending time figuring out which post was done on what date, and if that date was six month ago, or earlier. Use a computer for repetitive, boring tasks.... - If we can reach general agreement, I think the system could be extended to other Wikipedia-space low-traffic talk pages. --Eptalon (talk) 11:51, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Personally I don't like archiving on low volume pages as it makes it harder to find old conversations without much benefit (ie I have to go search through archives when they could easily just be on the talk page). The only reason to ever archive is that the page size is too big so it causes slow page load times. This isn't the case on low volume pages. I won't oppose it if people think it would actually help, but I don't think it provides a net benefit and is potentially an annoyance. -DJSasso (talk) 13:59, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I think this would be helpful, especially after looking at the page given as an example. I don't imagine there's much need to read threads years old, and if there is a need theres an archive. Go with the bot imo. Kennedy ^(talk) 12:30, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Minor changes

It came up to me while I was adding some links to articles. Why do we call minor changes like that? Minor can be quite a difficult word: it is not here for example. Can't we change it into "Small changes" instead? --Mark91it's my world 11:45, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Interesting thought. I think though minor also means trivial, or not important, but a small edit could be quite important and therefore not minor. Is there another word?--Peterdownunder (talk) 12:04, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I believe this has been discussed in the past. You might want to look through the Simple Talk archives. There were no words that accurately matched what minor means if I remember correctly. For example a minor edit can be a very large edit. And a small edit can be a very big change which wouldn't be a minor edit. -DJSasso (talk) 14:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Mmhh I see what you both mean. I found this related discussion. What about calling it a "simple" change? Or do you think that would be even more confusing? --Mark91it's my world 16:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Probably because technically all changes here are simple...(or supposed to be) -DJSasso (talk) 16:54, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Be a Wikimedia fundraising "User Experience" volunteer!

Thank you to everyone who volunteered last year on the Wikimedia fundraising 'User Experience' project. We have talked to many different people in different countries and their feedback has helped us immensely in restructuring our pages. If you haven't heard of it yet, the 'User Experience' project has the goal of understanding the donation experience in different countries (outside the USA) and enhancing the localization of our donation pages.

I am (still) searching for volunteers to spend some time on a Skype chat with me, reviewing their own country's donation pages. It will be done on a 'usability' format (I will ask you to read the text and go through the donation flow) and will be asking your feedback in the meanwhile.

The only pre-requisite is for the volunteer to actually live in the country and to have access to at least one donation method that we offer for that country (mainly credit/debit card, but also real time banking like IDEAL, E-wallets, etc...) so we can do a live test and see if the donation goes through. **All volunteers will be reimbursed of the donations that eventually succeed (and they will be very low amounts, like 1-2 dollars)**

By helping us you are actually helping thousands of people to support our mission of free knowledge across the world. If you are interested (or know of anyone who could be) please email ppena@wikimedia.org. All countries needed (excepting USA)!!

Thanks!

Pats Pena
Global Fundraising Operations Manager, Wikimedia Foundation

Sent using Global message delivery, 21:16, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Italic title

Hello! I've written an article (Supertramp (album)) on this wiki for the first time. It's about a music album, so I added the template {{italictitle}}, but it doesn't seem to work: "Supertramp" isn't italicized. I noticed the same problem occurs on Selena (album). How can this be fixed? Greetings, Mathonius (talk) 10:01, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

 Fixed Osiris (talk) 10:11, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Wonderful! Thank you very much! Mathonius (talk) 16:27, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:Further

I noticed there's a problem with the template {{Further}}. Please see Template talk:Further#Brackets. Mathonius (talk) 01:11, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Resolved there. Rich Farmbrough, 14:48, 15 January 2013 (UTC).

1910 Cuba hurricane

1910 Cuba hurricane is on our front page at the moment. The template at the bottom is defective, and needs to be fixed or removed. VGAs should not be allowed out in public improperly dressed... Macdonald-ross (talk) 16:37, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Fixed --Creol(talk) 18:09, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

A proposal for improving semantic research

Hello everybody, I hope I'm writing on the right page, otherwise I apologize. I'm an italian student and I'm working in the field of computational semantics (for a university project, no money around it :D). In particular, I tried to collect some statistics about Simple English Wikipedia pages, and particularly about terms that belong to the list shown in this page:

Wikipedia:Basic_English_combined_wordlist

As you can see, a lot of these words do not own a content page in the encyclopedia. Others have instead a link to a wiktionary page. My simple request is as follows: could anyone of you, writers of simple wikipedia articles, fill this gap? The main target should be to cover all the terms that are names or adjectives (i.e. not conjunctions), for example: accessory, trouble, seat,comfort...all the words that are very important in the english language should have a content page with at least a simple description and 2-3 links to other articles.

My research will go further anyway, but even 10 more page for terms in this list could be a great gain in precision. I know you are volunteers and I thank you for the great work you are doing on this project. And a special thanks to those who will find some minutes to perform this task.

Best regards. Giorgio

I'm not sure they should all have articles, if that's what you mean. I wouldn't want to see a lot of dicdef entries. Not all the terms would make appropriate encyclopedia articles. --Auntof6 (talk) 16:55, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Giorgio. Your research sounds very interesting. I'm not sure what the data you are collecting is to analyse - would you be able to say? Personally, I would agree with Auntof6, many pages do not have a place on Simple English Wikipedia, that's why they can be found at Simple English Wiktionary. Although there may be some terms which can be created I would be cautious in using these new articles to collect data as they would be created by a single user and probably influence your findings - whereas other articles which may have been there 3 to 6 years have evolved over the years and would make for a more accurate representation of whatever you are analysing. Depending on what you are analysing, this may be more or less of a problem. If youd don't think it will affect the findings too much, then I would be happy to assist you with this, by creating some extra articles. Good luck with the project! Yottie ^=talk= 17:23, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. I agree with Auntof6, some terms cannot have an article in an encyclopedia. Yottie, thanks for your advices, I've already thought to the problem you mentioned, but I considered it practically insignificant, because I'm studying the overall structure of the encyclopedia. I'm only interested to know which articles are linked to and from a particular page of this list (for example Accessory). I can't tell you more details for two reasons: 1) The act of writing an article should be "natural", not thinking about the experiment I'm performing (this is one of the reasons why I can't do it by myself). 2) Research is very competitive. So, I won't earn money from this, but I'd like to get some "glory" :D Anyway, you know surely better than me the rules for writing a good article. If there is someone who thinks that a new article can be associated to a term of this list, well, I thank him/her in advance. Giorgio, 18 January 2013

Hi again Giorgio. I understand fully why you may not want to reveal more, and if you don't think that forced changes/additions to the Wiki will affect that, then I don't see a problem. As for finding which pages are linked to which, the answer will probably be none or very few for new articles. But I don't see a problem, our goal here is to get bigger and write more articles. Your research is something different, so I'd be happy to make some articles to assist you. Do you have a time frame in which this needs to be done? Best regards, Yottie ^=talk= 22:02, 18 January 2013 (UTC) (P.S. You can sign with ~~~~, alhtough this would currently show your ip address. I would suggest you create an account, especially if you wish to participate in discussion like this. Of course, it is not compulsory, but just a suggestion!)

I don't have a precise time frame. The project has already be performed with actual parameters, it just needs to be improved from different points of view (in this case, by increasing the number of these articles). As I previously said, please write the articles the more "naturally" you can. No matter if they are short, the only important thing is that there should be at least one link to another content page. If you and other users are able to add 15-20 articles in the next 3-4 weeks, I definitely couldn't ask for more. Thanks again. Giorgio 87.7.211.39 (talk) 15:09, 19 January 2013 (UTC)