Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 17

Images

Images that qualify for use on wikipedia, do not always qualify on commons. The owner of the image I am talking about allows its use, but commons won't allow it. Is there any way I can include it on a simple english page?

The image in question: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Room-bab.jpg RuhiWarrior 00:14, 9 September 2007 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by RuhiWarrior (talk • contribs)

I think it would be better to find and use a free licensed image, than to introduce an exception to our rule about uploading images. - Huji ^reply 16:53, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Huji. If one of these days we feel the need to change the image rule, so be it, but much better to keep a strict rule in the meanwhile, especially since tons of images can be put on commons. It's only the exceptional ones that can't, and I'd say we don't need the exceptional ones here, either. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 23:23, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Where could I put in my two cents about the rule? There are groups of articles that literally cannot include a single image if "fair use" is not allowed. And especcially on this wikipedia, images are important. People who do not speak english well are going to get more out of images, and be more intimidated by very long unbroken lines of text. RuhiWarrior 00:32, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the best place to start the discussion is right here. The other option could be Wikipedia talk:Image use policy, for example.

Regarding the fair use issue, I guess the majority of pictures used by "fair use" on English Wikipedia are "logos", "screenshots" or "posters". A well written text can be informative enough, even without a picture of a poster or a logo. - Huji ^reply 23:04, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I know one example that I am sure has partners. Baha'i articles are crippled by this rule, as almost every image invloving the Baha'i Faith is owned by the Baha'i World Center. They are available for free use as long as credit is given. It seems silly to me not to allow pictures that are freely distributed.I think perhaps an image request area where people can explain justification, need, and exclusive availabilty fro batches of photos would be a good idea.RuhiWarrior 13:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Citation template change: multiple references to the same work.

Hello, when working on World History, I noticed that several citations come from the same book. Therefore only the page number is different. How much work would it be to change the underlying templates (I guess references, ref, and cite book) to do the following:

• For each citation (footnote) list Author, Year, pagenumber.
• At the end, add a full entry; possibly sorted alphabetically

Look at the References section of World History, specifically footnotes 17-19, and 22, to see what I mean --Eptalon 16:51, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

<ref> and <references/> are not templates; they are introduced to MediaWiki environment using an extension named Cite. It doesn't support what you said, as of its latest version. I don't think we have any chance to change it to work like that, too, because it works irrespective of the content you provide inside it, and cannot show part of the content (few paramteres of a template named cite book, in your case) on all but the last occasion. The extension is for general use, not only with Wikipedia-only citation templates. - Huji ^reply 16:57, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

BTW, the method I described below is used by some books, and needs only "one" link to the full citation: Don't add the page numbers inside the ref tags; instead, add them as superscripts like this:

Tommy won USA Open grandslam on 2001<ref>Some book</ref><sup>page 19</sup>

But, as you may guess, not everyone likes this method. - Huji ^reply 17:00, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, I'm one of those who don't :) I always encourage the use ot the {{Cite book}} template, which among many advantages, it allows you to customize the number of parameters you're using at a particular citation. This includes changing the title name to "op. cit." or "ibid", along with the author's name and the page number. Not only it tidies the references system, but I personally find it much easier to use. Phaedriel - 17:24, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

As you may know, Phaedrial, this difference of point of view is not limited to us. Even in the best scientific books, I've seen several methods to be used. Some prefer a short citation on every occasion and a full citation for the last/first one. Some prefer the full citations to be located in a separate section ("references") and the short citations to appear as "footnotes". Some prefer the method I just described: One citation of the reference, without specifying the page number there (in case the reference is a book, I mean) but as superscripts.

In English wikipedia, it is said no matter which method you use, you should keep using "one" method. Specially, it is important that "one" method is used in an article. - Huji ^reply 17:50, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Category:Proposed

I would like to move Category:Proposed to Category:Proposed policies and guidelines. I though we should discuss this before the category is actually moved. - Huji ^reply 18:12, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I think we should all use the terms "hard rule" (instead of "policy") and "soft rule" (instead of "guideline") because they are much simpler. We should change the templates to reflect that, etc. Therefore, IMO, we should call the cat "Category:Proposed rules" or "Category:Proposed hard and soft rules". You get the idea. This is all for the sake of simplicity and consistency, since the other SE wikis use these terms and after all, the policies and guidelines page is called Wikipedia:Rules. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 23:33, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Blocked indefinitely

I think we should make the blocked forever template a little more pretty. Afterall, Kimberly Ashton's User page will never disappear, so why not make it look better? (or maybe we should delete permanatley blocked users' pages !)

CLASSIFIED 18:52, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Liam, it would be a good idea to sign your posts with four tildes (~~~~) to make sure the exact date and time of the message is added to its end. I added that for you in the above, but not accurately. - Huji ^reply 18:54, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there's a need to change it. Oysterguitarist 19:26, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Whether or not the page will disappear, since it is a template, we can change it at any time and it will affect all those pages. I'd say this makes it less of an issue/priority. And yes, the four tildes signature is a good rule to follow. There's even a little button above the edit box to make it easy for you! --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 23:37, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Page background

On English Wikipedia, pages in the main (article) namespace have a white background, but pages in other namespaces have a light blue background. This pattern is seen in many other Wikiepedias as well. In Simple English Wikipedia, all the pages have a white background. I want to change this to the style used in English (and other) Wikipedias. Please let me know if you have any obections. - Huji ^reply 18:14, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I tho I don't think this is a great priority, it doesn't hurt either. That's ok for me, if the rest of the community agrees. Phaedriel - 23:24, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Either that is a very recent change or I've never noticed it. I'm not sure I see the point, though. With skins at least other aspects of the appearance can be changed. If Huji wants to make a new skin that works that way, that might be the best solution. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 23:48, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, what I said means to make our Monobook skin look like that of most other Wikipedias. - Huji ^reply 13:17, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Urgh, I find the blue kinda depressing. I could deal with it though if people like it :) Archer7 - talk 13:28, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

This is not the blue which is my main concern here. Other wikis use other colors. What matters here is that main namespace pages outstand somehow. All other pages (in template, wikipedia, category, etc namespaces) are indeed regarding to tools or procedures of wikipedia, but Articles are the real white pages of Wikipedia.

Anyways, I assume we don't have enough support for the idea yet, and postpone it for some time in future. - Huji ^reply 10:21, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Video game

I've posted a message on the article's talk page. Panda Bear | Talk | Changes 01:09, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Posted another message. Panda Bear | Talk | Changes 01:37, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

LSD, cancer or mutations?

Hello, since I listed Lysergic acid diethylamide on the Requests vor Very good articles page, more work is being done to it. This is of course not a bad thing. There was however, a dispute yesterday regarding the fact that LSD could cause genetic mutations or increase the risk of getting cancer. All I can access is an article of Science that is like 30 years old; I am also not a doctor, so I have no idea what the state of research there is, today. It would therefore be good if someone, with the proper qualifications, could look at solving this dispute. Thank you. --Eptalon 15:12, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

To me it seems LSD has both effects: it causes genetic mutantion, and it is a carcinogen. I think this review article (dated 1998), the full text of which is freely available, can help you here more. You can also use it as a reference for your statements. - Huji ^reply 10:29, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

What's up with the shrunken heads?!

About five minutes ago all the article titles suddenly changed to normal font size, without even boldface to distinguish them from other text. The article headers are now bigger than the titles. I hope this is a fluke, and not a style change. Zephyrad 17:08, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Hokay, looks like things are back to normal. Was worried there for a bit. Zephyrad 17:20, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I have experienced a thing like that too (although not on Simple English Wikipedia). The fact is, even if the site CSS is changed by an admin, you want be affected untill you "hard refresh" the pages (clear the cache of your browser). So, such a change only is possible when the CSS data is incorrectly sent to your browser. It is not a regular bug, and I couldn't reproduce it. It has got fixed automatically (like with a page refresh) in all cases I know.

Hope it helps, - Huji ^reply 10:32, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually it was caused by the Developers testing a new version of mediawiki and it was not stable so it was reverted to an earlier version..hehe.. --Cometstyles 14:43, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Hahaha!That's hilarilous!(sigh)Anyway,back to business. - HBSORGK BT 03:21, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

We're doing good

I spent a few hours gathering some statistics about Simple English Wikipedia today. The most significant part is what I've saved here. I think this means we're doing good on this Wikipedia! - Huji ^reply 21:35, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, I'd be grateful if you suggest new ideas about which statistics to collect. You don't need to formulate your idea, just ask a question which you guess could be answered by mining into the logs and histories of activities on Simple English Wikipedia; leave the formulation of the question and data-mining tasks to me. - Huji ^reply 23:00, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Here are some ideas:

• Top 10/25/50 editors, by number of edits (per month); by number of articles edited (5 edits to the same article count as one)
• Top 10/25/50 articles, by the number of edits they got in the last month; by the number of total edits received; by the number of different editors
• Number of newly created articles. Here we should look to filter out those that are vandal edits; so I guess we could do something like: new articles last month, with at least 5 edits done to them.
• Number of newly created (editing) users; again impose a limit of 5-10 edits to filter out those that merely create accounts to get settings.

Those are of course just ideas... --Eptalon 08:10, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I would like to know what are the most actively edited articles, if you can figure this out from the logs. Perhaps if you used a formula like (edits per article)/30 days, you could figure out what are the most active articles and how many edits per day it gets.

Find this out would tell you two general things: what areas are getting a lot of attention, and perhaps (in a very inaccurate way) what broad area (if any) does not get enough attention, by its absence on the list. --Kyoko 14:44, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The search would have to be modified to limit the actions of a single editor making a slew of rapid edits to the same article in a short period of time and if possible finding some way to not count reverts would help make the data more accurate. Also, doing the reverse, which articles are getting reverted the most would help point out vandal targets a little easier. -- Creol(talk) 14:56, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Kyoko and Creol, there is a program to find the most actively edited articles (by number of individual editors within a given time frame) called "Wikirage", [1], but it only works for en., ja., de., and fr.wikipedias at the moment. There is also "Wikistats", which lists similar information for every wikipedia, broken down by month.[2]... Here are the articles, with the most different logged-in editors, for the most recent months available (unfortunately bots ARE included):

• June '07: Frieza & Zarbon (11 registered editors each that month)
• May '07 Islam (10 reg. editors)

Regards, Blockinblox - talk 15:41, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

answers

The ideas where brilliant. I will try to spend as much time as I can manage, to post the answers here, so please add it to your watchlist.

I think there is no possible answer for some of the requested items. Based on my research, "reverts" are not marked in the database, so we cannot count them, and find articles with most reverts. Blackinbox has correctly reminded us that some of these questions are already answered in the statistics gathered by Wikimedia people. I'm still open to new ideas. Thanks to you all, - Huji ^reply 20:27, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I have updated User:Huji/Stats/2007_other. You may find it interesting that among the top 20 articles of August (based on number of edits made to them in August only) there are seven items of our Very Good Articles group. - Huji ^reply 14:33, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki

I was wondering why this wiki doesn't have a MediaWiki:Edittools (such as the wiki markup and symbols) since its a bit hard to write down codes or shortcuts to use in articles ?..--Cometstyles 14:49, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean the edit toolbar that appears at the top of the edit window? In your "my settings" (preferences), under the "Editing" tab, there is a box that needs to be checked, called "Enable edit toolbar (javascript)". Also make sure that you have Javascript enabled for this website.

Haven't I seen you at English Wikipedia? Welcome! --Kyoko 14:59, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Nope.. this is what I meant..and yeah I'm that same troll from Wikipedia :P ..--Cometstyles 15:05, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, little changes to make it work. I added the tools pretty much verbetim from en:wp. (removed a redlink was the only change) I then disabled them by default on the monobook.css (other skins just hold on a sec). If you are not using Monobook, they should be there now. IF you are not, you just need to turn them on in your personal monobook.css file. Add the line #editpage-specialchars {display:block} to your monobook.css, hard refresh the page and you should be getting the extra tool section. If you are not using monobook and want to turn them off (I tried adding it to commons.css but that didnt want to work for me.. ) use the reverse of the command: #editpage-specialchars {display:none} in the css file for whatever skin you are using.

As most users use Monobook, and it is the default for new users, i made certain it was disabled there so it does not cause too many issues. We could of course reverse it and turn it on by default and have people turn it off if they do not want to see it. -- Creol(talk) 15:17, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Great..Just what the Doctor ordered :) ..--Cometstyles 15:21, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The talk page for the Edittools now has a list of commands to use to turn it on or off as needed as well as the default state. (also includes turning off the copyright/save/sign your post sections all in one table for easy access)-- Creol(talk) 15:30, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I thought it would be necessary to inform others that, if you are using Monobook, and you haven't hard refreshed your pages on this wiki, you will see the links down there. They will only disappear when you do a hard refresh. This is because your browser is still using an old version of site CSS, which didn't have the requried code to hide the toolbox. - Huji ^reply 19:58, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

tagging school IPs?

Hello, I was wondering if school IPs and other shared anonymous IP addresses should be tagged as they are on English Wikipedia. Over there, there are special templates that say that many individuals may use a specific IP address, and they also have templates to use when giving a long block for a school/other institution after long-term, repeated vandalism. Thanks. --Kyoko 15:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

We have {{Sharedip}} and {{schoolIP}} for use as needed. For the most part, we do not go out looking for either IP's but if one does starts to cause too much trouble and gets noticed as a school, adding the tag can help narrow down issues. With ranges of ip's for schools and such that are persistent, I tend to individually tag each talk page with the complete list of associated ips (using the {{ipvandal}} tag). As far as I know, only two such groupings currently are tagged (though can't for the life of me remember which.. I really should have templated and categorized those buggers...) Both the sharedip and schoolIP templates have built in categories under category:wikipedia. -- Creol(talk) 16:21, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:CLEANUP

I have a proposal for a project called Clean-Up. It would entail several mini-projects, including cleaning up articles, removing red-links, and lengthening articles with stub tags. I could take on most of the project myself, though may need a tad of support in the <HTML> department. ; - ) LIAM / LIAM 22:07, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Currently we do not have Wikiprojects, as we are too small for them. -- Spiderpig0001 Does whatever a spiderpig does! 22:02, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Esperanza isn't a project ? Anyways, I think we need this project. Our articles are sloppy, low quality, and stubs. Hiding behind a cloak of "we are too small" is ridiculous. As an anaology, the smallest town in the world probably has a catchy slogan and ++ a clean main street to attract tourists. LIAM / LIAM 23:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

You gave the best example, LIAM! Esperanza is a project (and there are some more wikiprojects indeed) but it is (all of them are) inactive. Why? Because it is soon for this community to run tasks as wikiprojects. Everything we could manage through a wikiproject, can still be simply managed through Simple Talk and user talk pages. Please try your best to use these two means, to let the cleanup tasks happen more fast and more effective. - Huji ^reply 11:13, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Mr.Children

I've posted a message on the article's talk page. Panda Bear | Talk | Changes 19:26, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Blocked user

Ionas, has been blocked but the template only appears on his user page. Wouldn't a better idea be to paste the blocked user templates on the relevant talk page too?---barliner--talk--contribs- 07:47, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Quality offensive

Hello all. No this is not about very good articles. This is about general quality of the articles in this Wikipedia. There are several articles, that have grown quite big, but still have many red links. If there are users that do not know what to do, there is a proposition:

• For all countries that are subdivided into states or provinces, we need a short stub for all of these provinces. For example, Mexico has 32 provinces (called states). Of these, we currently have stubs for 9 or 10. (Actually:31 provinces, and Federal District)
• Very often, red links are there because the do not link to the correct entry. A little research there can fix a few of these redlinks.
• Categories: Very often, the categories in an article are too broad, and can be tightened. Also remember an article can have more than one category. Remember however, when it does, that one category should not be the child of another category. A bird article in category:Brids, and category:Animals is pointless; in that case remove the broader (more general category), Animals.
• Categories should have a minimum of 3-5 entries in them, else they are pointless.

These are of course just ideas. In my opinion fixing what is there should have a higher priority than getting new articles. --Eptalon 13:11, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Hello, I read this message and I tried to improve the article on Glen Campbell, by removing the music category and adding Country musicians, American singers, and 1936 births. I'm not very used to dealing with categories, so I left the Country music and Singers categories in place. Do you think those should be removed? Thanks, Kyoko 20:16, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I did a little more cleanup on Glen Campbell (my changes can be seen here). As you can see, I removed Cat:Country music and Cat:Singers because Cat:Country musicians and Cat:American singers are more specific and are "duplicates" (of sorts) of the removed cats. Also, you'll notice that I used the extremely helpful template {{BD}} instead of Cat:1936 births and DEFAULTSORT. Click on the template link for specific instructions on how to use the BD template. I'd be happy to help if you have any more category questions. Creol and I are probably the 2 users here who spend the most time working with categories, so I know quite a bit about finding the right categories for articles. You're thinking along the right path by removing Cat:Music and adding more specific categories. Keep it up and don't be afraid to remove the broader "duplicate" categories of the more specific categories you add! :-) · Tygrrr^·talk· 21:27, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the all the helpful tips! --Kyoko 23:51, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Looking for a bored Bot.

Does anyone happen to have a bot sitting around looking for something to do? The job is not terrible difficult, but as it involves some 11K articles, it is lengthy. I am trying to do it with AWB, but it is slow going and there are a lot of false positives slowing it even more. The job is this: Search all the articles in category:Stubs for text matching a small list of terms, if the text is not present, add a template to the article. The goal is to ensure all of them are categorized so the main text searched for is [[category: but there are a handful of others also can get the articles ignored. These are mainly templates with built in categories.

{{BD
{{disambig}}
{{seasons}}
{{States of Brazil}}
{{UKPrimeMinisters

The template that needs added would be {{uncat}}. As the list of terms is not complete, there will still be false positives that get tagged, but it would be easier to have a bot hit them all and then people can hand search the uncat category to clean up the situation fairly easily.

Searching Category: Cleanup needed and Category: Articles that need to be wikified for uncategorized articles could also help. -- Creol(talk) 18:08, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

One way to find stubs needing cats is go to Category stubs, roll over each entry with popups. If it says 0 cats, it needs a cat. Blockinblox - talk 18:16, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I can do that, I guess. I have a bot running from Toolserver (very fast indeed) and I think I can write the code myself too. Let's give it a try. - Huji ^reply 18:17, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I wrote the bot and started it. I try to closely monitor it, so it won't make a mistake! - Huji ^reply 19:16, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

(Update) After a bug fix, I'm going to run the bot again, now. Please report any page incorrectly marked as uncategorized, on my talk page. - Huji ^reply 19:47, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

To me, it seems we need to completely define which templates should be treated as stopwords (like {{BD}}, {{Seasons}}, etc). I let the bot do around 60 edits, and it forced me and FrancoGG to spend some time to fix the mistakes. Afterall, it is a bot, not that wise! I've stopped the bot (which worked soooooooo fast) but will restart it as soon as we can find a way to stop it making those mistakes. - Huji ^reply 21:00, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I used the false positives you two reverted to tag several of the templates in question to Category:templates with categories. Many of the templates in there are direct stopwords but a couple (BD, UKPrimeMinister) would only test positive if searching for the first part of the template ({{BD|) as their variables are.. well.. variable. Two of the false positives actually came out as viable as they needed their categories fixed due to trancluding the categories rather than linking them ({{Category:some cat}} rather than [[Category:some cat]])-- Creol(talk) 05:49, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Creol, my bot used to search the text of the page for the template (hence it had to search for {{BD| as you mentioned in the above). I've updated it, to get a list of tempaltes used on the page. It can then check them, one by one, against the list of stopwords. The only thing we need is a more complete list of templates which categorize an article. - Huji ^reply 11:49, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Category:templates with categories should have a fairly complete list of all templates which would cause false positives. The list does not have all the applicable templates as several ({{Cleanup}}, {{wikify}}, etc) while they do add a category, they do not categorize the page itself in the way we are looking at the problem. I hand searched the entire template name space searching for the templates. There may be some I missed (including some template redirects), but most should be in the category. -- Creol(talk) 16:47, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I'm going to run the bot in a few seconds again, with those templates in its stopword list. - Huji ^reply 18:20, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Done

All pages in Category:Stubs where searched and those which were not categorized are now listed on: Category:Category needed. - Huji ^reply 19:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much.-- Creol(talk) 02:33, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

CleanUP Clean1, Clean2, Clean3

Please do not nominate any Clean1 etc templates for deletion as I am working on them. It would be appreciated to have some help from other, more experienced members of the Simple community. LIAM / LIAM 21:20, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I requested it for deletion before you posted this here. I personally don't feel we need {{Clean1}} because we already have {{cleanup}} to serve this purpose. You are welcome to vote and express your thoughts at the Requests for deletion page. · Tygrrr^·talk· 21:35, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Quick deletion of English Wikipedia copy-pastes

This is a summary of the discussion we had up to here:

The idea is to delete articles created by copy-pasting from English Wikipedia, which are not simplified after a short time. Simplificaiton means changing the article in a way that it meets the standards of Simple English Wikipedia, and also it is no longer a derivated work (hence no licensing and attribution problems).

It was first proposed by User:Huji that every such article which is not simplified after four days can be quick deleted. These users have shown their agreement with the idea (or only disagree with the four day period): User:Eptalon, User:Rimshot, User:Blockinblox, User:Browne34, User:Tygrrr, User:Phaedriel (and User:Ionas68224 who proposed a "one month" period).

User:Browne34 proposed a period of "one hour" to be used for copy-pasted articles created by anonymous users. Some comments in agreement and opposition of this were posted, but consensus was not reached.

User:Eptalon proposed a period of "one week"; the idea was supported by User:Blockinblox and User:Rimshot. In contrast, User:Browne34 prposed a "three day" period for copy-pastes made by named users, and User:Tygrrr commented in its support. User:Phaedriel said either three or four days are appropriate.

It was also discussed whether a criterion can be added to "quick" deletion criteria, which sets a four/seven day period before deletion; I think the discussion shows people have agreed that this is possible.

According to all the above, I propose this to be added as a criterion to WP:CSD:

Articles created by directly copying (or copy-pasting) all or almost all of an article from the English Wikipedia may be speedily deleted after seven days of their creation, unless they are changed within this time, to make them different enough from the original (not word for word).

Please notice that this only applies to articles; templates and other pages may still be copy-pasted, as long as GFDL requirements are met.

Copy-pasted articles can be tagged using {{encopypaste}}; as a result they will be also added to Category:En copy-pastes automatically.

Please comment. - Huji ^reply 14:08, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Here is my proposal for wording:

(For deleting any articles that should not be deleted quickly, use Wikipedia:Requests for deletion. Any article can be quickly deleted if it:...)

5. Has been directly copied (or copy-pasted) from English Wikipedia and has not been changed significantly within four days of creation. An article may be deleted without discussion unless it is changed within this time, to make it different enough from the original (not word for word).

I did a quick test on WP:DP so that I could show how it looks:

• • The raw change
  • A preview of how it looks (#5)

I placed the deadline at 4 days because that is what I personally prefer, but I feel we should come to a consensus as a community on the time-frame we would like to set. · Tygrrr^·talk· 15:07, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone have a problem with the wording I suggested? If not, I think we should move forward with determining how many days we allow them to sit before deleting. · Tygrrr^·talk· 20:21, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm okay with it - Huji ^reply 20:29, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

(being the user who restarted this whole thing)I agree with the one hour for anoms, and proboly the week for logged-in if they are straight, and a month if the article has been simplifyed, and needs 'un-derativlying' (E.G, articles tagged with that GDFL info thing, which include Flinders Street Station, and most other Melbourne railway articles (that Tygartt did not zap about a month ago). -- Spiderpig0001 Does whatever a spiderpig does! 20:56, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with the one-month part. If an article is created and is yet a derivative work after a month or so, one should either attribute the source correctly, or mark it as copyvio (seriously). - Huji ^reply 21:13, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Cleaning up

Hello, community. We currently have a tag called cleanup, that can be added to pages that need cleaning up. Recently, the idea has crept up, to further classify cleanup needed, into levels of cleanup. At the moment, I do however not see any criteria to determine the level of cleanup needed. Therefore I see two choices:

1. Work out a (and vote for) a guideline that allows to classify pages for the different levels of cleanup. Until this is done, use the cleanup template. The guideline will then replace the cleanup template, adding a level of severity.
2. Get rid of the idea that there is a degree in needing cleanup. Also get rid of the templates that suggest there is. Rather than working out and spending time on voting, get to work, and clean up those pages that need it.

Personally, I am for the second option (no levels of cleanup). If there are people here that prefer the first option, work on the guideline should be started. Always open to suggestions, though. --Eptalon 21:13, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the idea of the levels of clean up is complicated and I do not agree with making them. --Yegoyan 21:16, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it'd be a lot of work, but realistically not a lot of use. Archer7 - talk 07:17, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

For a community as small as Simple Wikipedia, I'm concerned that assessing articles for their level of cleanup will only be counterproductive. I think someone said that there are perhaps 30 or 40 active editors here. It seems to me that the time spent to assess and reassess articles for choosing the right cleanup level tag would be better used by actually changing and improving the article. If an article has problems that can't be quickly and easily fixed, one can always leave comments on its talk page. --Kyoko 12:20, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I have some experience in cleaning pages up (I reduced the "cleanup needed" page from over 100 articles to three), and I don't think that different levels of cleanup are necessary. A page is either clean or it isn't. Gwib^-(talk)- 16:26, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I think at our current state, having several levels for cleanup is sort of a bureaucracy, and doesn't help much. - Huji ^reply 17:10, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I think that we don't need levels of cleanup because we have them already. We have {{wikify}} for pages that don't follow basic layout and formatting rules, {{unreferenced}} for missing sources, {{complex}} for articles that are not simple enough and others. {{cleanup}} can be left to those pages that do not lack in any of the more specific points. For that purpose, I think, one level should be enough. --rimshot^talk 20:16, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

That's a good point about the different available templates. --Kyoko 20:29, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

IG NO RE THEM! it is part of a project. as I have said before, I NEED HELP. AND WHAT IS WITH ADMINS NOT WANTING TO ADVANCE ? JUST STAY THE SAME ? JUST LET IT STAY. I AM DISApPOINTED IN THE COMMUNITY FOR NOT TRYING TO HELP ME. LIAM / LIAM 22:09, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Well you should make a subpage and test it, usually if your going to add it to a Wikipedia:Name <--- (example) it should be ready. --Yegoyan 22:13, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Also Rimshot has a good point. --Yegoyan 22:14, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Liam! You say admins don't want to "advance". I think it is wrong. First, advancement is possible in other things too. Second, I personally think (and maybe others agree with me here) that what you are after doesn't necessarily result in advancement. It has advantages and disadvantages, and in my humble point of view, the second exceeds the first. - Huji ^reply 20:41, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I am tired. LIAM / LIAM 21:11, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Liam, I know you mean well, but please understand that several other editors disagree with your idea. Several editors, including myself, feel that your suggested templates would divert Simple Wikipedia's already scarce pool of editors away from other work. Perhaps when Simple Wikipedia has a larger community of regular editors, your idea can be revisited. It seems to be something very much in line with the WikiProjects of English Wikipedia. When our community is large enough to support something similar, maybe you can bring up your idea. Please don't be discouraged by this, and please keep editing. Simple English Wikipedia is a small project with a lot of work ahead of it, and it needs your help. --Kyoko 00:53, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Simple English

On a scale of 1 to 4, how well do you think I can write in Simple English? Panda Bear | Talk | Changes 03:09, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

3. --§ Snake311 _{(T + C)} 06:03, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

3. --Gwib^-(talk)- 10:10, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

2. LIAM / LIAM 17:16, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Main Page ' WELCOME '

really sucks. no offense Huji. Because it is all white with the lightest gray you could find (dark white). and so, it is hard to see and appears as if it is not a table.

HTML all-stars should take this challenge. LIAM / LIAM 14:07, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

P.S. why was Wikipedia:Long Term Abuse/Kimberly Ashton deleted? I forgot what "she" looked like, already. I was going to see if "she" was photoshopped into the photos. (is there a way I can find out the filenames of them?) LIAM / LIAM 15:50, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Liam, see here to see why it was deleted. Panda Bear | Talk | Changes 20:14, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

"Nickname"

I am new here. I understand wikipedia has something called a "raw signature", sort of like a forum sig block, where you can add html and colors and typefaces etc. I have to copy+paste this raw signature. When I copy the code into the box, though, the code just stops. There is no more room for code. How do I fix this? If it is necessary, here is the code:

[[User:Stalker1|'''<big><font color="#289DC0" face="comic sans ms">S</font></big>]][[User talk:Stalker1|'''<big><font color="#399DD1" face="comic sans ms">talk</font></big>]][[Special:Contributions/Stalker1|<big><font color="#59EDE2" face="comic sans ms">er<sup><font color="#224CCA">1</font></sup></font></big>''']]

I just want my sig back. Stalker¹ 21:46, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Help:Get Help

I have just created Help:Get Help. This is a place where users who can not find help from Help:Contents can get help. Theres a bit there on how to help others who need help. What do you think. Should it be changed a bit? -- Spiderpig0001 Does whatever a spiderpig does! 21:54, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Delete. LIAM / LIAM 01:01, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer these: [3] --Yegoyan 01:04, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Why do you want to delete it? (To the above user called LIAM/LIAM) smalltalker ^{C} 02:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Well I think Simple Talk can serve that for now; I find the idea innecessary. - Huji ^reply 17:50, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Utter oddness

A completely new user, HaloSilver (talk · contribs · logs · block log), has made accusations that I am a user named Ionas68224 (talk · contribs · logs · block log). Whether I am or not is aside the point. It seems that she is a sockpuppet of somebody, because the whole incident leading up to his block happened mostly before HaloSilver was registered. It is very suspicious in that HaloSilver has refuseed to respond to my question about how long she stayed here. I am struck in disbelief as to if this user is truly new. Pretty odd how a user shows up, makes some dedicated contributions to the project about 1984, and then a user who is two days old accuses that user of sockpuppetry. The plaintiff, Halosilver, says that the user's behaviour is similar to that of another banned user, citing only two things: the fact that both the banned user and the new one both wrote essays about Wikipedia (really, is that odd? two anarchists with similar visions about wikipedia, HaloSilver, you've probably heard of a handie-dandy thing called a coincidence, haven't you), and they both know Lorem ipsum. Lorem ipsum is just a placeholder text for formating. I find these accusations to not be ridiculous, but quite odd in that HaloSilver might be a sockpuppet of someone, too. smalltalker ^{C} 06:30, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

You wrote: "Whether I am or not is aside the point." No, it isn't beside the point at all. If you are, you are defying a ban, so it makes a difference. This is exactly the reason why we need checkusers. Blockinblox - talk 11:41, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

You got on the defensive pretty fast by making a cross-accusation, most likely in a feeble attempt to shift the attention away from yourself. Be advised that being a rabble-rouser, such as your current RfD request, will only bring increased scrutiny upon yourself. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  13:17, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I think HaloSilver is a certain -banned user. I really don't think Blockinbox is a sock puppet. The first thing I thought was 'Why would you say that'? 68.43.91.73 22:59, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Updating the Selected Article section of the main page

There are now 20 Very good articles, but only 10 are ever being displayed on the main page. Shouldn't we update this? Adam Cuerden 23:53, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Well that kind of decision usually goes up to the admins. --§ Snake311 _{(T + C)} 01:09, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I was told to ask it here when I asked about it on Talk:Main Page. Don't the admins read this? Adam Cuerden 04:08, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

They sometimes do, unless all of them are too busy debating about with their "administrator" discussions. --§ Snake311 _{(T + C)} ^RFA 04:24, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Right. Eh, well. I'm sure one of 'em'll see this eventually, either here or there, and it's not that major. Adam Cuerden 04:30, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

There was extensive discussion over this a few weeks ago, and as far as I can recall, we informally agreed on having a weekly rotation of the selected VG article. At the time, we had just implemented the new Main Page layout, and we had just hit the 10 VGAs mark, which is the reason why only those are currently being displayed, if they haven't been updated in the meantime. More on this can be seen here. Phaedriel - 04:53, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

We have discussed (as Phaedriel as noted) the overall timing of the rotation (1 vga per week), but one important (and this discussion brings that importance up) point was never clearly resolved. The matter of updating the rotation is still up in the air.

Options:

1. Replace older VGA's with new ones as they are shown(older) and created (voted as vga). This option has no effect on the coding at all and is the simplest for any user to take part in the procedure. We keep a rotation of 10 articles (good for a 70 day period - 2 1/2 months or so) and as one article completes it week as featured, a new article is used to replace it and will be shown 63 days from the time the replaced article was used.
2. Add the new articles to the Queue. As new articles are created, we just add them into rotation and increase the number used in the code to determine which article is shown.
3. Some other option I have not seen and can not comment on at this time. Feel free for include suggestions and or comments on this one.

• My personal opinion is in favor of option 1. While option 1 does include more time dependant work which means we have to be more on top of things (the articles need to be inserted into rotation prior to their date to be shown as featured), it saves us from three drawbacks of option 2: expanded knowledge of the coding, end of year repetition and omitting early articles. Option 1's time dependency is based on a 70 day clock though. With 10 articles, an article will not be repeated for another 70 days after it first showed up. This gives us 70 days to make certain it's replacement is ready and if no replacement has been voted on, an older VGA can replace it or we could just move one with the one already there. It has been 10 weeks since it last appeared after all, most people would not even notice.

• 1. (omitting: )We are on article 10 right now. As the coding is set, next week we go to article 1. By adding the 10 new articles, we in effect postpone the use of article 1. Articles 1 - 4 are our oldest VGA, but they have never been featured. The coding is based on what week of the year it is and was put in place at a time where article 5 was our first article. By adding new articles at the end (article 11, 12, etc) we postpone when the first articles will ever get shown even though they were the first ones accepted.
  2. (End of Year) While not as big of an issue, with the current coding, the last article shown during any year will be articles 2 or 3 (week 52 or week 53) and the next week will revert to article 1 (week 1). This is not so much an issue of one option over the other as any number of articles that is not divisible by 13 will cause us to have to adjust for this issue, but it needs to be included in issues with the system so we can anticipate things that will come up. Option one does slightly show better in this situation though as it will be easier to deal with it when dealing with 10 articles and a rotating base group rather than 20-40 articles as a complete list (at worst we are moving 10 pages where as with 40... oy..).
  3. (extended knowledge). While the coding actually isn't that hard, a basic understanding is needed and attention to detail is helpful when having to change it. Option 1 included no changes to the coding in any way. No knowledge of it is ever needed, anyone can replace page "Article 5" with a writeup for a new article to place in the rotation several weeks from now. Using option 2 requires that the coding of the main page itself be changed in addition to creating a new page for the article. As the other article pages are semi protected to prevent vandalism that would affect the main page itself, option 2 also requires admin action to also protect the new pages each time one is added to the list. With option 1, any non-new registered user can replace the older pages without having to worry about contacting an admin to help them out since the page is still protected. I personally prefer that any user, for instance Snake311, be as qualified to make the needed changes and not require someone with extra buttons to have to come along and finish the job. Each of our responsible users should be able to give a hand to making the VGA system work well, not just admins just as each user should have an equal say in how we implement the system. -- Creol(talk) 07:06, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your extended and very informative message. I think, we should increase the number of our "abstract" pages to 13 (fixes the end of the year issue). I believe every "shown" abstract should then be "replaced" (i.e. option 1) and unless we agree on a different method, the replacement should be based on the date of addition of the article to the VGA group (see Wikipedia:Very good articles/by date. - Huji ^reply 19:36, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I would also choose option 1. I think that Simple, among other things, would benefit from having to be "on top of things". This also does not make us change a code each time. LIAM / LIAM

Com'on everybody! Our Main Page is sort of the "vitrine" of our wiki. Changes to it needs to be supported by other users too! Do you have a comment about what I mentioned above? - Huji ^reply 13:59, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

IRC

I have tried 3 or 4 times to get IRC chat to work for me at home. I've downloaded several programs to get it to work, and it's either flat out not worked or been too confusing for me to figure out. Can anyone recommend a program that might help me out? I'm fairly frustrated. I only have Internet Explorer on my home computer (I use Mozilla Firefox at work but probably shouldn't try to use IRC here). I have XP as my operating system. My computer is 4 years old. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  13:42, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

mIRC should work fine and should install itself as your default IRC client so any links to irc://some address.com should automatically activate it and go there. There was a problem with the linking on the page that screwed up the channel name on mIRC, but I fixed that now. -- Creol(talk) 14:01, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

BrownE34, you can install Firefox at home, and then install an extension on it named "ChatZilla". It is easy to use, and lightweight (arround 700KBs I reckon). I personally use a German tool named NetTalk, because it makes multilingual chats easier for me, and keeps the logs better. - Huji ^reply 19:38, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Also check that your router isn't blocking the port for IRC if you've got one. Archer7 - talk 11:32, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Template BD

I have added a note to discuss on Template_talk:BD

Also should we encourage using {{BD}} rather than {{DEFAULTSORT}}, Category:year of birth, and Category:year of death when the exact year is known ---barliner--talk--contribs- 10:13, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

"Living People"; "Dead People"; "Red People"; "Blue People"

I think that Category:Living People is ridiculous. Over 6 billion people are "living people". On this wiki, most articles are on "living people". I do not disagree with having "1983 Births" "1947 Deaths" etc. but having such a general category as mentioned above is ludacris. LIAM / LIAM 03:04, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Over 7 billion people are "living people" but not all of them are notable enough to have an article on Wikipedia. I name myself as an example! I'm living now, I assume, yet I don't have (and shouldn't have) an article on none of the Wikipedias I know.

By the way, if we start thinking that way, millions of people are born on 1983! Then why is "1983 Births" acceptable?! Only because millions < billions?!- Huji ^reply 15:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I think that category was actually made so that we could provide better protection over the articles of living people to make sure there was nothing horrible in there that could lead to legal issues. Archer7 - talk 15:22, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Esperanza

I've noticed thaqt after the depature of User:Tdxiang, the Esperanza committee have disbanded while most of its members no longer edit here. Tdxiang was Esperanza's last admin general before the group became abandoned and was even able to elect a new admin general. I decided to bring this into of all simple wikipediams to discuss on what to do with Esperanza. --§ Snake311 _{(T + C)} ^RFA 04:56, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know that anything has to be done with Esperanza here, given its inactivity. It was strongly felt on English Wikipedia that Esperanza as an entity had become irrelevant to the further development of the encyclopedia, and worse, that it had actually become a hinderance to the project due to the distractions that it offered (coffee lounge, userpage design contests, etc.).

Given the very small community of active editors at Simple Wikipedia, I think a reinvigorated Esperanza here, along the lines of the the English Wikipedia one, would be even more of a distraction, and I say that as a former member of Esperanza and one who ultimately was convinced that it had done more to divide the community than bring it together. --Kyoko 16:08, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Stub article limits

The majority of simplewiki's articles are tagged as a stub article. While the basic definition of a stub articlr means it its too short, several articles are knwon to have been labeled as a stub, when technically they weren't. So I was wondering if we could set a limit of what a stub article is, I'd say 3000 bytes to be the maximum limit. --§ Snake311 _{(T + C)} ^RFA 19:32, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that stubs should be defined by how many kb they have, but by how much information they have. If there is still a lot of information to be added to the article, then it is a stub.--Werdan7^{T @} 00:03, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Werdan7 here. Also, if the majority of articles are marked as stubs, the solution is not to change the definition of stubs, but to expand the articles. - Huji ^reply 09:41, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Problem with re-edited article

The article http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholicism consistently is edited by some or other individual to display their own, unverifyable, not-backed-up views.

Every time it is edited, they simply edit it back.

thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.207.32.37 (talk • contribs) 11:44, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Or may be it is the other way? You edit it and add your views, and people make edits which help the article back to a "neutral" state? I'm not an expert in the area, so I cannot say which view is more "backed-up"; if you think what you claim is "correct" and "neutral", it is a good idea to give references for your statements. - Huji ^reply 12:39, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

PROTECT THE ARTICLE (semi-protect) LIAM / LIAM ^{hit it!} 10:45, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, please don't type in uppercase, Liam. In the internet world, typing in upper case means to shout something loudly, and I expect you not to do so in such a situation. Secondly, if the article is going to be protected, it should be "full" protected, not semi protected. When there is an edit war (not vandalism) and one side is an IP, semi-protection gives an opportunity for the logged-in users to edit, while stopping the logged-out users from changing the article, which is unfair. Thirdly, it is with these edits that an article evolves and gets better. Protection is not a solution here now, I think. - Huji ^reply 16:30, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

A question. . .

Hello all. I come to you from en.wiki. I transwiki'd an article I recently wrote for en.wiki today, and would like to do more. I poked around help, tried IRC (I'm using Chatzilla, but try as I might, I couldn't get it to let me "have a voice")... Are there any published guidelines or anything I should be aware of when bringing articles from en.wiki here? Thank you! Into The Fray ^T/C 02:21, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello, Into the Fray, and welcome. According to this discussion, several people felt that straight copies of articles from English Wikipedia should show significant changes from the original text, anywhere from a week to one month from first being transferred here, i.e. there was no consensus on the grace period. You should also try to give some attribution to enwiki in the article history. The way I do it is by saying "copied from [[:en:Article name]] revision (whatever number it is)" I get the revision number from the enwiki page history. You don't have to be as precise as how I do it. I hope this helps. --Kyoko 02:38, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Perfect, thank you. And, for the record, I meant using en.wiki articles as the basis for translated pages here. I'm not very up on the trans-wiki lingo just yet. Thanks for your help! Into The Fray ^T/C 03:07, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

BTW, if any of the "OP"s of the IRC channel are around (I'm one of them), they can give you "voice" on the channel. - Huji ^reply 16:32, 1 October 2007 (UTC)