Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:33, 30 May 2003

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Welcome, newcomers and baffled oldtimers! If you have a question about Misplaced Pages and how it works, please place it at the bottom of the list, and someone will attempt to answer it for you. (If you have a question about life, the universe and everything, go to the reference desk instead.)

Before asking a question, check if it's answered by the Misplaced Pages:FAQ or other pages linked from Misplaced Pages:Help.

NOTE - questions and answers will not remain on this page indefinitely (otherwise it would very soon become too long to be editable). After a period of time with no further activity, information will be moved to other relevant sections of the wikipedia (such as the FAQ pages) or placed in the Misplaced Pages:Village pump archive if it is of general interest, or deleted. Please consider dating and titling your discussions so as to facilitate this.

Moved discussion

See the archive for older moved discussion links.

• "Turk" disamb -> Misplaced Pages talk:Disambiguation
• Zoe image mass edits discussion -> Misplaced Pages:Village pump/May 2003 archive
• 'Years in sport' talk moved to Talk:List of sports events
• List of artists talk moved to Talk:List of artists
• Titling of September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack moved to Talk:September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack
• Updating Ammunition and related pages moved to Talk:Ammunition
• "Smart" quotes, hearts and diamonds talk moved to Most wanted Iraqi playing cards
• Tomaz Pisanski titling problem moved to Talk:Tomaz Pisanski
• Kanji talk moved to Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Chinese characters
• Image size discussion moved to Misplaced Pages talk:How to keep image file sizes as small as possible
• Discussion on our Daniel's article moved to Talk:Daniel C. Boyer
• TeX caching error -> Misplaced Pages talk:TeX markup
• Other users' contributions -> Misplaced Pages:User contributions
• offensiveness/disclaimer discussion moved to Talk:Goatse.cx
• Discussion regarding a filter for anonymous contributions moved to User talk:Tim Starling

How many images are too many? I've only ever seen one image. I wanted to add the famous picture of the soldier shot in the head to the Spanish Civil War page, as well as a typical propaganda poster of the times. wji 0000 EDT 23 May 2002

IMO, a couple more legal images would be fine. The article only has 1 image after all. MB 04:17 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Invisible Hyphen

Following the link on Taiping Rebellion, I created a page on its leader, "Hong Xiuquan." But for some reason, while the title on the page says "Hong Xiuquan", the status bar says "Hong Xiu-qun", and the URL says ]. It apparently is neither Hong Xiuquan or Hong Xiu-quan.

But how can this be? In the editing field of Taiping Rebellion, it expliciyly spells the name without any weird hyphen.

I tried to move ] to Hong Xiuquan, its proper spelling, but it says that the title already exists. --Menchi 09:01 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Well, for what it's worth, that "%AD" in the URL means ASCII character #173, which looks like a hyphen on my calculator :p, and is described as a "soft hyphen" on Misplaced Pages:Special characters. I guess this means it only turns into a visible hyphen when the first half of the word would fit at the end of a line, but not the whole word. So it definitely doesn't need to be in there. Since there's essentially no edit history (just initial creation by Menchi), it wouldn't be a great loss to lose its edit history by deleting it, then copying & pasting it and making it again. That would probably be the easiest route, or we could get a developer to do Strange and Mighty Things with the Database. -- John Owens 09:18 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Oh, two extra notes: On my Mozilla-based browser, it won't break the word there. And to help you find it on "Special characters", it's in section 1.1, called, oddly enough, "Unsafe characters". -- John Owens 09:24 23 May 2003 (UTC)

• Succesfully made the move to Hong Xiuquan Andre Engels 09:23 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Goed! How did you do it? Was it some admin trick? --Menchi 10:09 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Something to be a bit concerned about: 66.13.172.18 has created a non-NPOV article titled Hacker community. It needs serious revision. While looking over her/his other contributions, I noticed other non-NPOV articles Richard Stallman, Hacker. We need to do something about these 3 articles. Should we delete Hacker community since it is just some guy ranting? MB 01:52 24 May 2003 (UTC)

I did some work on the hacker community article (rewrote most of it). See Talk:hacker community. The other articles seem to be fairly NPOV. -- Merphant 04:01 24 May 2003 (UTC)

Damn, looks like I missed all the fun/excitement last night/tonight, however you look at it. -- John Owens 11:07 24 May 2003 (UTC)

More like annoyance heh -- Poor Yorick

proper nouns in disambiguation parenthesis

Do the proper nouns in disambiguation parenthesis have to be uncapitalized? (e.g. Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (chinese) Such ungrammaticality pokes people in the pupils until coconut-white stuff comes out. --Menchi 14:55 24 May 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, that should be capitalized. --Brion

I wonder if before a disambiguation page is created, it might not be best to think it out in terms of true need and potential effects. Someone today created a disambiguation page for PGA. This puts a huge onus on my 50 years of work ALREADY done on "years in sport" where, now, in order for a user to click on my PGA listing, they are forced to go through a disambiguation page. Is not the computer terminology something better identified to avoid disambiguation? It is an obscure term for all but those who have a lot of computer knowledge. I hate to complain, but I have done a ton of work and I really do not want to go back and open 50 pages just to fix the PGA links in sports. Jacques Delson 17:20 24 May 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps you could try discussing this with Heron first at user talk:Heron or Talk:PGA, since Heron created the disambiguation page. Come back here if you and Heron can't decide on a satisfactory solution. Martin 17:32 24 May 2003 (UTC)

It's a really, really good idea to disambiguate TLAs beforehand. Few, if any, of them are not taken multiple times and many are better known for one thing in one field and another thing in another field. --Brion 17:52 24 May 2003 (UTC) (grammar fixed)

There, I've fixed all the links to go directly to Professional Golfers Association of America. It would have been polite for Heron to do that when creating the disamb page in the first place. --Brion 18:28 24 May 2003 (UTC)

Martin? Who are you? I put the question here to be resolved. If you have a answer please give it. Either leave things as is and I will stop my work because I have no intention of wasting vast amounts of my time discussing something with someone who created the page without a great deal of thought. It makes no difference to me. If making a contributors work harder is the goal then so be it but I'm not up to that kind of task. Whoever has the authority, please get rid of a disambiguation page without much real use or find a resolution 64.228.30.130 18:02 24 May 2003 (UTC)

I'm Martin. We talked earlier, about the DMCA, if you recall? Martin

Two comments/suggestions/questions:

Though I know little about the subject, from what I've heard of XML/XHTML, if it could or has been combined with wiki, interactive databases (with sortable tables, etc.) should become an easy possibility for wiki users including at wikipedia. Are there any plans in the works (for wikipedia or in wiki projects in general)?

Two again, for medium sized pages--such as List of reference tables, I think anchors could be invaluable....It seems as pages get too large, people will move stuff to a new page. It is too inconvenient to have to click on new pages all the time, particularly for pages which benefit from a bird's eye view.

Thanks! - Brettz9 19:47 24 May 2003 (UTC)~

Wiki still generates HTML 4.01. We need to change this so the output is XHTML 1.0 before we can start to think about using other XMLs such as MathML and so on. CGS 22:18 24 May 2003 (UTC).

So then people could enter XML code which could be recognized by queries and manipulations (like doing special searches, choosing to view only certain columns of data, inverting a table to see rows as columns and vice versa, and even viewing items in a tree/list or even column format (as in the Mac OSX filebrowser) etc.)? If so, how could the XML code be accessed? Could some canned script be designed to allow users to have customizable options in viewing tabular data that they themselves have entered? A programmer friend has told me something briefly about XSLT and libraries which can operate on XML, but unless this is preinstalled, it sounds like it would not be easy for average users to work with the latter items. My apologies for my ignorance on this, but before I would like to know whether it could even achieve what I'm hoping will be possible in the future before I invest time in researching it further. It seems that XML is fairly straightforward and could be manipulated just as well by average

users as HTML or aliases on wikipages, but I'm curious how the structure XML seems to provide could be harnessed.

I realize we're not there yet, but I wonder whether it is worth my time to learn XML since my purpose of learning it would be to start converting documents into it in anticipation of being able to share them collaboratively and have them be customizably sorted. Thanks! - Brettz9 18:27 25 May 2003 (UTC)

If wikipedia is using a database to keep the pages here, does that mean it is conceivable that the anchor issue could be resolved by allowing users to choose--if they wish--to load multiple pages at once (i.e., by treating each page as a record and then requesting multiple records)? If this is possible, it would seem that pages could be kept short, but also combined by a user. It might be complicated for editing though, I imagine, if it is at all possible.

If it is using a database, I also wonder whether people could collaboritively add new or edit existing categories for individual pages. This would prevent a lot of duplication of effort (as well as make connections people might otherwise miss), as I see it, as pages could simply be called up by their categories rather than being a jungle of links. It is nice to have the latter option perhaps also (i.e., to collaboritively make a page of reference links), but it seems a lot of this could be done more smoothly by a collaboritive and queriable database. Thank you... - Brettz9 18:27 25 May 2003 (UTC)

And one more question if anybody knows...Is there some way that people may be able to perform "find" operations on text inside an edit box (without cut-and-pasting it to another document). It seems it could save some time.

When looking at random pages in Wiki I've found many many pages on small towns and cities in the US. Where are all of these coming from? CGS 21:50 24 May 2003 (UTC).

See User talk:Rambot. -- John Owens 21:54 24 May 2003 (UTC)

It came to my attention today that all of the data in the Broomfield County, Colorado article was actually data for Boulder County, Colorado. This makes me question the accuracy of the bots that have been used to load location data. How many other articles about locations have misdirected data? Kingturtle 22:40 24 May 2003 (UTC)

See User:Rambot. --Brion 22:53 24 May 2003 (UTC)

What's the prefix for Project Sourceberg (ps.wikipedia.org, meta:Project Sourceberg)? Our own fulltext of The Raven would be better than a link to a non-Misplaced Pages site, but ] just disappears: "", and the actual URL for Sourceberg is not optimal. On a side note, I noticed that a link to any language code not set up disappears: I was earlier today trying to convert a wikipedia.org URL on the Internet-Encyclopedia (which uses Wikipedia3 software) to an en: link, but it simply displayed blank. So do we need the Pashto language configured to get minimal Sourceberg support? --Geoffrey 04:35 25 May 2003 (UTC)

Actually, it doesn't disappear: Check the top language bar of for this page. It is not interpreted as an InterWiki link but as an inter-language link. Sourceberg needs to be moved anyway (new software, new name), bug Brion or Lee to set it up. But please come up with a better name first .. Alternatively, you could upload the text as a file and refer to it using a media: link. --Eloquence 05:05 25 May 2003 (UTC)

I was about to ask why Pashto was treated differently from en:, fr:, es:, etc. links, by making an example. Then I realised it isn't. Whoa. Weird! And not the behavior I expected. Only inter-language links on the first line should be interpreted as translations. In my opinion, an inline en:, ps:, etc. inter-language link is the same as a w:, m:, etc. inter-sister (for lack of a better term) link - though possibly different from a UseMod:, MeatBall:, etc. InterWiki link. Otherwise, you can't make inter-language links within articles that work like intra-language links. It looked as good as disappeared to me...and The Raven is no Pashto Village Pump. This currrent behavior doesn't seem reasonable to me. --Geoffrey 02:43 28 May 2003 (UTC)

I think the name's kind of cute... it makes me think of a big hunk of frozen text. ;) It's not entirely clear to me that a wiki is the best medium for that kind of resource, however. (The text mustn't change, though we may want commentary attached.) And certainly the Pashto Misplaced Pages is not where it belongs, and indeed the fact that interlanguage links don't do what you'd want to for linking to something like Sourceberg should be a clue. :) --Brion 05:18 25 May 2003 (UTC)

Image Use
I'd like to use this picture for my old article Silkworm missile. http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/irfna/fig6.htm It's from a US military, therefore a government, site about gulf war sickn.. oops.. gulf war illness.

I was wondering if it was fair use or what? Tristanb 06:49 25 May 2003 (UTC)

It's on a US military site and there isn't a copyright notice. Therefore it is safe to assume that it is in the public domain. But please do give them credit and a link to the original. --mav 06:56 25 May 2003 (UTC)

It's quite large and slow to download on my dialup connection. Crop it and try converting it to .jpg Theresa knott 07:03 25 May 2003 (UTC)

Oops :-) too late, i'll crop convert it to JPG now. Pity they started with a gif eh! Thanks Tristanb 07:20 25 May 2003 (UTC)

Language links and FAQ

I've seen a few people adding language links when there is no corresponding page in that language. I imagine they see links like {{de:foo}} in the page source, and think we are simply tying to list the translations of the page name. It's obviously not malicious. But we need two things:

1. something on the FAQ about what language lists are for
2. a simple page name we can use as a redirect to point people to when they make this mistake; a link we can stick on their talk page quickly, like Template:Don't link to languages unless there is a page. (but that's a bit too long.) -- Tarquin 17:03 25 May 2003 (UTC)

If Misplaced Pages:Interlanguage links is insufficient for these needs, please improve it. --Brion 17:16 25 May 2003 (UTC)

In some cases, a reasonable assumption that a page exists in another language I happen to know turns out to be wrong. In those cases I figure I might as well leave the link I've added, trusting that the destination article will be created soon. All it would really take to prevent any disappointment, is for empty interlanguage links to be displayed red, just like other empty links. Mkweise 17:54 25 May 2003 (UTC)

That can't be done with the current database structure; eg the English wiki doesn't know what exists on German wiki and vice-versa, and if they did they wouldn't know how to invalidate cached pages on each other when the status changes. --Brion 18:07 25 May 2003 (UTC)

I know, but several moons ago you told me that a db unification was planned for after the separate db server was in place. Is it not still planned? We would be foolish to invest much work in accomodating limitations whose days are numbered. Mkweise 18:15 25 May 2003 (UTC)

It's planned for someday. Don't hold your breath; we don't even have all languages converted to the current software yet. --Brion 18:37 25 May 2003 (UTC)

I'll hold my breath someday ;-) Mkweise 18:55 25 May 2003 (UTC)

If anybody is wondering what I was doing vandalising solid, I'm afraid it was a girl friend. I assure you that she has been punished. CGS 17:20 25 May 2003 (UTC).

I assure you we don't want to know :). MB 18:29 25 May 2003 (UTC)

Some wikipedians have drawn up discussions on proper Misplaced Pages format of the Name of Emperors at Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (Chinese). Any comment, especially from points of view in English language, is welcomed before a generally agreed format is decided by poll. thanx kt2 22:08 25 May 2003

Here I am again with one of my great newbie ideas. This one concerns the short pages list, which I perceive is still down. I think there should be an option in the left-hand nav bar to add a page to the short pages list, interfacing to a little tiny program that edits said list. The list would be of a fixed length (the current 125 looks good), so that any time a new stub is listed, an old listing falls off the end of the list. -- Smack

Is there any way of ftp-ing to Misplaced Pages, so as to be able to save specific pages quicker? Thanks in advance... --thehumanchimp

Not really. If you have a large number of uploads, all you can do is ask a developer really nicely to do it for you, or write a bot. -- Tim Starling 02:28 27 May 2003 (UTC)

Oh rite, thanks

I have noticed two very strange out-of-character edits from User:Andre Engels on the general lines of "I HATE THIS ... WORLD, and I hate myself too" -- either someone has cracked Andre's password, or he's having a really bad time... does anyone know how Andre is doing? The Anome 14:37 26 May 2003 (UTC)

Another possibility that crossed my mind... not actually cracking his password (or guessing it), he might have left himself logged in somewhere where someone else could use the computer later? He was editing (in a much calmer way) about half an hour before that. But no hard data as such, just speculation. -- John Owens 14:41 26 May 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, I did that. I suggested a girl friend had a look around the wiki on my computer - caos resulted. CGS 16:04 26 May 2003 (UTC).

Apologies in advance if this has been asked and answered. I've had trouble creating an external link, and I think its due to the relatively new or uncommon practice of a dash included within the URL. See the lsat external link at the bottom of the Hamilton County, Ohio article. Any suggestions, or have I just done something stupid again? ;-). - Lou I 20:22 26 May 2003 (UTC)

It's because you've got to preface every URL with "http://" - so you have to type http://www.hamilton-co.org rather than just www.hamilton-co.org. I've fixed it, and it works now. Don't worry about it - takes everybody a bit of time to get used to how things work :-) --Camembert

Possible bug?

I have my preferences set to not underline links, but when looking at the following link media:Clitoris.jpg on the Clitoris page, it is underlined. Is this a bug or intentional? MB 14:03 27 May 2003

This is a bug which I have fixed a few days ago. Tell Brion to get us up to CVS status and it will be fixed on the live site as well. --Eloquence 14:15 27 May 2003 (UTC)

Quote marks in article title?

I have created an article for "Live free or die" - the delightfully quirky state motto of New Hampshire. The question is: Should the title have quotation marks in it?

I didn't put them in because it seemed weird, but since the title refers to the words as words rather than their meaning, maybe they should be there. I can't find other article titles that are phrases to act as guidelines, although that's probably just due to lack of imagination on my part. Any thoughts? - DavidWBrooks 15:04 27 May 2003 (UTC)

It won't be an issue like that. You can't have double quotes in article titles. You can have single quotes in a title, but I wouldn't recommend it for this case, just the bare words. Furthermore, I would suggest having the actual article at State motto of New Hampshire, New Hampshire (motto), State motto (New Hampshire), or something like that, and Live free or die as a redirect to that. -- John Owens 15:10 27 May 2003 (UTC)

P.S. Hmm, judging by the single blue link I now see above, it looks as though someone else has pre-emptively disagreed with me, though. ;) -- John Owens 15:12 27 May 2003 (UTC)

There is, it turns out, already a List of state mottos page. I linked to Live Free or die from there. I'm not enthusiastic about titling the article some variant of New Hampshire (motto), since nobody cares about state mottos as such - in this case people are vastly more likely to have heard the phrase and want to find out about it, and IMHO the article title should reflect that approach. But I'm not wedded to the idea, since a search on the phrase would find the article either way -- DavidWBrooks 15:25 27 May 2003 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (slogans), where some discussion/voting on the subject is under way. I recommend Live free or die, myself. Martin

Copyright on CIA World Factbook?

I was going to Bartleby.com. They have a ton of books online. While browsing their copy of the CIA World Factbook, they had this following info:

TITLE: The World Factbook.
PUBLISHED: Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 2002. ISBN: 1-58734-113-1.
CITATION: The World Factbook. Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 2002; Bartleby.com, 2002. www.bartleby.com/151/. .
ONLINE ED.: Published April 2003 by Bartleby.com; © Copyright Bartleby.com, Inc. (Terms of Use).

As you see below, it appears that Bartleby.com is claiming a copyright on the Factbook! Does this overide the CIA's declaration that the World Factbook is public domain?

-- hoshie

IANAL, but that's basically a collection copyright claimed on their particular published edition. It may or may not have any validity if you, say, copy text from their pages without keeping their unique and creative page formatting. It certainly is irrelevant for material copied straight off of the CIA's web site. --Brion 18:18 27 May 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. I just wish Bartleby.com would be clear on what they claim rights to... -- hoshie

I just want to say sorry for cluttering Recent changes page with a bunch of uploads. -- Taku 19:19 27 May 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, right. You were trying to DOS the server, weren't you? ;) -- John Owens 19:24 27 May 2003 (UTC)

Fortunately the server still seems working. Each file is actually really small, just a kilobyte. But unfortunately there is no way to hide uploads. -- Taku

I would like to create a bot that gets info from various U.S. Department of State websites, and makes articles. I have no experience making this type of program, could someone point me in the direction as to what I need to learn, or a where to start? MB 20:26 27 May 2003 (UTC)

If you have experience with Perl, it's easy. Even if you don't, it's easy as long as you're somewhat good with computer languages. For example, on page 708 of the first edition of the Perl Cookbook (Christiansen & Torkington) it shows how to grab a web page with two lines of code:

use LWP::Simple;

$content = get('http://www.wikipedia.org');

... at which point the variable '$content' contains the HTML of the requested page. More sophisticated robot work requires a little more code, but it's surprisingly easy. Jordan Langelier

If you have no experience writing bots please be careful that you don't unleash some kind of terminator onto the servers. Always test your work on a sandbox system (install an HTTP server locally with static copies of some example pages), and don't leave it going for hours and hours without checking what it's up to. CGS 22:40 27 May 2003 (UTC).

Automated content is generally disliked here: the value of Misplaced Pages comes from the fact that human beings interested in each subject have written and edited the articles. If you really feel that you must auto-create, you can test the bot on my server first; mail me and I'll give you all the info. LDC

What is the etiquette in adding to articles that are listed as originally published in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica ? Beans

Simple: rewrite them in modern English, and update the facts. No attribution or other mention of EB is necessary. Many, if not most, of the subjects are already covered here. LDC

There's a very odd edit war raging on Alice in Chains. 152.163.252.167 puts in a line "On April 19, 2002, lead singer Layne Staley was found dead in his home.", and then User:Dante Alighieri takes it out again, repeated about a million times. Can anyone shed any light? Dante Alighieri is an upstanding Wikipedian, right? CGS 22:47 28 May 2003 (UTC).

See my response on my talk page. 152.163.xx.xx is Michael. See User talk:Michael/ban and User talk:Weezer/ban. --Dante Alighieri 22:49 28 May 2003 (UTC)

(extra link added by John Owens 23:24 28 May 2003 (UTC))

Yeah, but you should still know better than to get into a simple edit war loop. I cleaned up those articles and put the info in the right place (after verifying it). If a piece of text entered by a banned user seems appropriate, but you don't have the time or ability to verify it easily, then reverting is fine. But if it is easily verified and useful, the article comes first. If that means an idiot like like Michael gets to "win" an edit war, sobeit. LDC

Well I'm not sure how insulting him helps.... Martin 23:42 29 May 2003 (UTC)

Simple? You DO realize that John and I had to revert nearly 100 pages... I'm not about to check the facts on every single page. Any one of those facts, individually, might have been easily verifiable, but not the hundreds of things that were added. --Dante Alighieri 02:18 29 May 2003 (UTC)

See bans and blocks - in a "soft ban" situation, anyone can reinstate an edit if they can vouch for it, while in a "hard ban" situation, we all agree not to reinstate any edit, even if we know it's good. Unfortunately, it's unclear which of these two states Michael is in, which is probably why we keep having these discussions.

See also Talk:Right Back for a similar discussion. Martin 08:37 29 May 2003 (UTC)

I was not aware of any confusion. My understanding is that it is quite definitive that Michael has been hard banned, see User talk:No-Fx. Also, it may be worth noting that the most recent spate of vandalism from the following IP ranges: 205.188.xx.xx and 152.163.xx.xx come from the same individual, who just happens to freely admit/claim to be both Michael and No-Fx. --Dante Alighieri 20:20 29 May 2003 (UTC)

It is quite definitive that Jimbo has banned Michael. What is less clear is whether Jimbo is forbidding us to do what LDC has done with Alice in Chains.

Incidentally, I fully support people reverting Michael out of hand, deleting articles he creates, etc. Just please don't revert me if I see an edit I want to reinstate :) Martin

You mean breaking lines after 80 characters? Yeah, I hate that.

More seriously, I generally don't mind people putting info back in, as long as they aren't just taking Michael's word for it. Of course, lacking telepathy, I don't have much way of knowing that, so I'll generally be pretty tolerant there. -- John Owens 23:48 29 May 2003 (UTC)

Image use

I applied to the Turnbull Library for permission to use images from their collection and gave them details of wikipedia. This was the reply:

Requirements Please note that the Library has the following special requirements for the reproduction of its images on websites.

Required text As well as including the caption details (provided on Timeframes), you must use the following text alongside the image: "Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, must be obtained before any re-use of this image".

No Alteration of Images In order to maintain the integrity of the Library's images, no manipulation of the image is allowed, for example, outlining, clear cutting, overlapping, distortion (alteration of the proportions of an image), cropping, or, duatone washes and other colouring. Sepia toning may be allowed (specific permission must be requested). Other writing, such as titles or underlying text, should not intrude on the images.

Best wishes with your website and thank you for your interest in the Alexander Turnbull Library Collection

Are these requirements acceptable? Tiles 00:54 29 May 2003 (UTC)

Those terms are clearly at odds with the GNU Free Documentation License, which requires that people who receive a work be able to redistribute both unmodified and modified versions. Feel free to provide hyperlinks to the pages with the images if they are publicly visible on the web, though. (IANAL) --Brion 02:00 29 May 2003 (UTC)

I thought so but wanted confirmation. I will advise them and ask for a waiver. Tiles 02:24 29 May 2003 (UTC)

Deletion of talkpages

I am wondering if I should delete an article's talk page when I delete an article. Or should I rather delete just the article and keep the talk page intact? How things are handled in English wikipedia? (I'm an admin for Japanese wikipedia)Tomos 09:13 29 May 2003 (UTC)

You should delete the talk page, but make sure you record the reason for deleation (may be on the talk page) in the list of deleted pages. CGS 23:45 29 May 2003 (UTC).

I'm writing articles for all of the major poems of John Keats (this way I can revise for my A levels, and wiki at the same time!) If a poem is short, and out of copyright, could I put the whole text into the article? Or should I leave that for an external link? CGS 10:16 29 May 2003 (UTC).

Quotes and small passages are good in order to serve as examples but since we are a wiki and are an encyclopedia it is not appropriate, in general, to have entire source texts. --mav

Help! Please go to Panavia Tornado and click where it says "Click HERE for a picture of a Tornado GR-4". The picture comes up OK but there is then no way the reader can get to the copyright information except by noting its file name, going to the Image List and clicking on Descr. Clumsy! Should I therefore make the pic a proper Misplaced Pages page so that the pic can then be clicked on and the description will come up as normal? Thanks Adrian Pingstone 17:37 29 May 2003 (UTC)

Replace "foobar" in Image:foobar with image name, i.e., Image:Tornado.gr4.750pix.jpg.

• SNIP*

Those terms are clearly at odds with the GNU Free Documentation License, which requires that people who receive a work be able to redistribute both unmodified and modified versions. Feel free to provide hyperlinks to the pages with the images if they are publicly visible on the web, though. (IANAL) --Brion 02:00 29 May 2003 (UTC)

• SNIP*

So, why are we using this image at all? I request it be deleted. MB 20:49 29 May 2003 (UTC)

We allow fair use (see Misplaced Pages:Image use policy), and this is very similar. It does not impede distribution of Misplaced Pages or its forks substantially (fair use style laws exist in most countries), but deviates from the FDL. This is OK, but suboptimal. If a public domain or FDL image can be found, it should be used. What we cannot allow are conditions like "Permission granted to Misplaced Pages, any further use requires a separate request", because this would make forking impossible.

Brion may disagree with me here, but as long as we allow fair use at all, semi-restrictive licenses like that seem acceptable to me. See also the image in Carl Sagan. Given how hard it is to find free images, and how important they are, we have to make compromises. --Eloquence 21:31 29 May 2003 (UTC)

We very firmly disagree; I'm strongly of the opinion that so-called "fair use" images and even more so these explicit restrictions are inherently incompatible with our license and must be kept out if "Misplaced Pages: the 💕" is to be anything but a sham, a lie, and a fraud. But, that's just my opinion. :)

I very strongly recommend replacing "fair use" images with actual free ones whereever the opportunity arises, and I very strongly recommend not uploading non-free images to our server at all. Simply provide external links to the websites that show them if they are not explicitly GFDL-compatible, or go out and take some pictures yourself! Or make a nice artist's rendition if the subject is no longer available. Please don't take shortcuts that undercut the project's honesty and reputation and place additional burdens on the reusers and redistributors that a "💕" is intended to provide material for, and which may or may not render our license void. (Lawyers, please...) --Brion 23:53 29 May 2003 (UTC)

My point stands -- if we allow fair use, which we do, it would be logically inconsistent not to allow equivalent licensing conditions. We all agree that non-free should be replaced with free whenever possible. --Eloquence 00:00 30 May 2003 (UTC)

While our license appears to forbid both releasing material with ambiguous or unknown additional license requirements (assumable to be "all rights reserved"), and taking material explicitly encumbered with additional license restrictions, I find that the second seems ethically much more reprehensible. It's a willful act, in which one deceives both the copyright holder (by the implication of intent to follow the license requirements they spelled out upon inquiry) and the receiver of the supposedly GFDL'd work one is incorporating it into (by the implication that the work is redistributable, reusable, and modifiable under the GFDL, which it is not unless the infringing portions are removed). IANAL, grains of salt, all that. --Brion 04:17 30 May 2003 (UTC)

We have never stated that all our images are under the FDL or in the PD, and they are clearly not. Not even on eo:, where I've seen many images simply taken from en: with no further copyright explanation. --Eloquence 13:19 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Yet we do claim that of our articles. Yet some of us insist on modifying our articles by embedding material that is not redistributable under the terms of the GFDL license, making our articles not redistributable under the terms of the GFDL license. (Please let me know which images on eo: are in question and I'll remove them.) --Brion 16:57 30 May 2003 (UTC)

OK, Ill revert the following articles I've illustrated, all from the BAe source talked about above. I'll leave doing so for a few days in case anyone decides I shouldn't. The articles affected are:

Eurofighter Typhoon

Saab Gripen

Hawker Siddeley Harrier

Panavia Tornado

HMS Ocean

Invincible class aircraft carrier

I sure won't make that mistake again!

Adrian Pingstone 08:19 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Except for Image:Euro.typhoon.250pix.jpg, where it is unclear what "permission" means, I see no reason to delete these images. ".. are made available for publishing and personal use" clearly implies that distribution, commercial and non-comercial, is acceptable, so they can be used here, more so than the images which we have uploaded as "fair use". --Eloquence 13:19 30 May 2003 (UTC)

>snip<Feel free to provide hyperlinks to the pages with the images if they are publicly visible on the web, though. (IANAL) --Brion 02:00 29 May 2003 (UTC) >snip< - Whereas I am a copyright lawyer - you guys know that there are copyright problems with hyperlinking too, right? For more info do a Google search on the Shetland News/Shetland Times fiasco. I'll do an article on legal problems with hyperlinking (if its not already addressed in the Wiki) - David Stewart 11:48 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Hyperlink copyright? So many forms of copyright lawas! Sounds interesting. Can't wait to read it. --Menchi 12:00 30 May 2003 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of uploading images that I can't edit how I see fit (Like I would be able to under the GPL). So I think linking to images we are legally allowed to use under the GPL is far better. Since these (and other non-GPL images) can't be edited, there is no real point in including them in the wiki. MB 17:53 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Why don't the ''emphasis quotes'' work in the LOOM article? CGS 20:14 29 May 2003 (UTC).

Because they are "double quotes" not two single quotes. Theresa knott 21:12 29 May 2003 (UTC)

No, that's not it. This is very odd: it's currently fine, but the emphasis quotes were not working in this revision, and if you do a diff against the current, working revision, you will see that the quotes used are exactly the same (and they are two single quotes). CGS 22:42 29 May 2003 (UTC).

Oh, that was because the quotes were on different lines back then, that doesn't work. -- John Owens 22:45 29 May 2003 (UTC)

Why can't the parsing software report errors like that, instead of just ignoring them? We don't want the Wiki markup to become soup like HTML. CGS 22:52 29 May 2003 (UTC).

I advice in the article when use the Chinese characters for specifying, use simplified Chinese characters instead of traditional Chinese, since the simplified Chinese has become the international standard. Samuel 04:31 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Hi, could someone have a look at Solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it's basically a list of possible solutions and something of an analysis (from one user's opinions) of which are the best. They're currently adding links to it from lots of Israel/Palastine articles. In my opinion, this article will never cause anything but trouble, it's guaranteed to be hijacked at different times by people who are convinced that their particular 'solution' is best. I don't think we should be in the business of saying 'these ideas wouldn't work but these others would', it doesn't strike me as particularly encyclopaedic. I have to return to my much hated revision now but I couldn't bear to let this article slip by un-noticed. Happy editing -- Ams80 09:11 30 May 2003 (UTC)

The above-mentioned page looks as though it would make a great "Meta" article, but I agree that it is probably not for Misplaced Pages. Maybe one of the admins should consider moving it. -- Chris Q 10:20 30 May 2003 (UTC)

I think it is good for Misplaced Pages, because it clears up the several attempts to solve the problem and creates a good basis for discussions (outside the Misplaced Pages of course). To be a good basis for any debates is IMHO one major goal of Misplaced Pages. Therefore this article should remain. 212.137.33.208 11:28 30 May 2003 (UTC)

At the least, the title of this article needs to be changed! The title is misleading, sounds as though it is THE solution. We should add, proposed, or attempted to the title. In addition, it is not NPOV for anyone to mark which solutions are better. MB 12:48 30 May 2003 (UTC)

If the title is misleading - no problem, change it. But IMO it is still NPOV to point out which solutions are impossible or unwanted. -- 212.137.33.208 13:37 30 May 2003 (UTC)

"IMO it is still NPOV to point out which solutions are impossible or unwanted." Well, this is your opinion, and you are allowed to have one, but any attempt to determine which solutions are wanted or unwanted requires the use of opinion. Therefore, and such additions to articles would not be NPOV. It's alright though, b/c it has been moved to meta. MB 18:12 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarg. I've just had an absolute nightmare connecting all the Zygote articles together across en, nl, pl, da and es. Please could one of the devs implement this quick hack. It surely can't be more than a line of code or so, and it would be a GODSEND to people trying to further multilingual integration of articles. -- Tarquin 12:41 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Temp Page Problem

What exactly are Temp pages? It just has a newer and more standardized outlook. It is confusing to have two pages on the same topic. And the notice on top of the page is often overlooked, as a result, many pages with temp pages have extensive history on both the Temp and the main pages. Unpleasant mergings are therefore necessary at some point in time. Why aren't the content of Temp simply on the main page? That'd eliminate all these problems. --Menchi 14:44 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Sometimes, for really long articles that need lots of work, it's easier to start over and do the article right, using a temporary page so as not to mess up the original article in the meantime. For example, right now I'm working on Bjork/Temp to replace the long and nearly incomprehensible Björk article. If someone overlooks the notice at the top of the original article, and edits it anyway, those changes can always be included in the new (temp) article. Most people will probably see the notice at the top and not edit the original, though, so mergings shouldn't be all that unpleasant :) -- Wapcaplet 15:39 30 May 2003 (UTC)

I have set up voting for naming convention of Emperors of Japan. If you care, come to Talk:Emperor_of_Japan for voting. Cheers! -- Taku 18:41 30 May 2003 (UTC)