Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Xiong (talk | contribs) at 14:23, 29 March 2005 (→The problem of NPOV: templates fixed). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

I am way past "tired" of the debate about what to call Chinese things, or what is China, or who is boss. Discuss all that here. Please do not discuss it on my Talk page, and please do not debate the debate or my dislike for it on my Talk page, either. If you want to talk about that with me, then talk about it here. Debate and criticism of this nature on my Talk page will be moved swiftly away to where it belongs.

Fan Mail

Chinese Speakers

Ok there are way more Chinese Speakers than I ever imagined in this country. Amazing.

Uli 22:37, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Xiong's User Page

I'm new here, and read your user page. I came to this page to tell you how much I like this line of yours:

"Otherwise, my experience is embarassingly diverse; I don't know how to do anything very well."

and to tell you that it applies equally well to me.

Jez 19:55, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Comment on the Village Pump

Do a little research, find out the name of somebody midway in the pile -- somebody high up enough that his diktat overrides the random shouts of the mob, low enough to deign to speak to long-hair-hippie-freaks with their dern wacko scheme to flood the world with uncontrold infomation.

Mmm, mmm. I like your style. Are you sure most of it isn't wasted on the carefully worded neutrality of our encyclopedia? ;-) JRM 14:28, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)

Spankings

Cut-and-paste moves

You used a cut-and-paste move to move Chinese and English Compared to Chinese and English compared. Please don't do cut-and-paste moves, as it separates the article from its history, which we need to keep for Misplaced Pages:Copyright reasons. I will fix this one - have you done any others? Noel (talk) 22:04, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

PS: I don't usually check other User_talk: pages (so that I don't have to monitor a whole long list of User_Talk: pages - one for each person with whom I am having a "conversation"), so please leave any messages for me on my talk page (above); if you leave a message for me here I probably will not see it. I know not everyone uses this style (they would rather keep all the text of a thread in one place), but I simply can't monitor all the User_talk: pages I leave messages on. Thanks!

Oooh, sorry about that - I forgot to sign my comment (now rectified). I normally do - I was just a bit rushed this time, and forgot. About the page, I didn't look at the history closely, just saw that each page had some, by more than one editor. Anyway, it's all done now, but still, a good lesson for the future (and if you see someone else do one, please let us know). Alas, there's no way you (as an ordinary editor) can fix cut-n-paste moves; you need to be able to delete and undelete pages to do it, so you have to get an admin to help. I dunno that the article's a bad idea - I added some content myself, since I know a little about the area. Anyway, whatever, no big deal. Noel (talk) 23:59, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Info

Chinese and English compared

Well, it's certainly hard to find two languages that are more dissimilar than English (well, all European languages, really - but it's appropriate to select out English, as this is the English Misplaced Pages) and Chinese. Also, Chinese is one of the most-used languages in the world, and English is becoming the de-facto universal language, so it's a useful pair to compare for that, too. Noel (talk) 13:13, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

WP engine issues

Well, the general place to report bugs is here. Do note that unless you provide a fair amount of detail in your bug report, it's unlikely to be something they can act on. There may also be some Misplaced Pages-based forum for discussing problems specifically related to the display stuff, but I don't know much about that. Noel (talk) 13:09, 11 Mar 2005

Protected source templates

I saw your request at WP:TfD#Template:GDFL. The answer is that the developers have to edit the source to create a new namespace, and it would take code changes to have things in it auto-protected (like the way things in MediaWiki: are protected so only admins can edit them). Noel (talk) 23:41, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I don't really care too much. But it's my opinion that WP has a legal obligation to do this. — Xiong (talk) 02:46, 2005 Mar 18 (UTC)

Requests for Money

Oops, no room left here. :)

Oh wait, here's a dollar -- no, it's gone. Sorry.

Mouse pad

I have no experience in designing, and I've gone to where I still am - that is, swamped with schoolwork. If you want to have a crack with it, we can talk. Most likely it'll be a very brief talk, since while giving up an opportunity like this is somewhat sad, doing so would likely result in a higher-quality product and sooner. -- Kizor 23:23, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Merging Graph theory and Graph (mathematics)

Hi Xiong. I noticed your comment about merging Graph theory and Graph (mathematics) at Misplaced Pages:Duplicate articles. This was discussed at some length here: Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Graph_.28mathematics.29_vs_Graph_theory. The majority view was to keep them seperate. Paul August ☎ 21:38, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. Please see my detailed comment there, at the bottom of the discussion. You are first in line to be tapped as my buddy expert. — Xiong (talk) 02:55, 2005 Mar 21 (UTC)

I'd be glad to help any way I can. But I'm not particularly knowledgeable in this field. You might want to look here Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Mathematics/Participants, for people more qualified (besides the other editors of those pages of course). Paul August ☎ 13:41, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

As you suggest, the editors of those pages probably know more about the field than anyone else. Don't worry; they'll be all over the refactored content, looking for things to pick at. They're certainly the wrong ones to midwife the refactoring itself, wouldn't you say?

I have a fair background myself, but I'll feel better knowing there is another hot body signed onto this project, willing to look it over as I go and cover my blind spot. Your demonstrated interest outweighs your self-declared shortcomings; besides, you openly state on your user page that you are a topologist. If the article goes over your head, it's too advanced for a general-interest encyclopedia.

May I consider you on board? — Xiong (talk) 15:19, 2005 Mar 21 (UTC)

I'm not so inclined, as you, to discount the possible help you might get from the past editors of those articles, as well as others on Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Mathematics/Participants (did you look there?) I'm familiar with many of them and have alot of respect for their opinions. Also I would encourage you to discuss your changes on the various talk pages. As for my help, all I can promise is that I will put all of the related articles on my watchlist, and respond as seems appropriate. Please feel free to ask for my input, whenever you like, and I will try to give it, as time, interest and expertise allow. Also I will be away for the next three weeks, on vacation. Happy editing. Paul August ☎ 15:38, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

By the way, as for saying on my user page that I am a topologist (actually it says "Alleged Categorical Topologist"), that's true, however notice it also says that I was "Once Considered Talented", the operative word being once. Paul August ☎ 16:17, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

Major UI overhaul

(Regarding Misplaced Pages:Proposal for intuitive table editor and namespace)

MediaWiki needs a major UI overhaul. The problem is not limited to tables, but spans many constructs that relate articles to one another. I had not thought of tables as a similar area needing work, but it is really part of the same problem, similar to navigational templates: how to relate chunks of text to one another in a consistent fashion.

WP (and other MW projects) should be, if not unbreakable, at least usable without special training; a novice editor should not be more likely to break something than not. I believe relational database management tools need to be brought in. MW is based in part on MySQL (because it is open-source); I believe SQL in general is a dinosaur and insufficiently flexible. I don't expect to convert MW to Filemaker, but that is the kind of functional tool I want to see here.

Your concept of a table editor that is more complex than One Big Huge Edit Box is in line with my thoughts, and I'd like to invite you to collaborate on a MW proposal for major UI overhaul. — Xiong (talk) 13:55, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

Excellent! I am certainly willing to collaborate. Is this overhaul actually likely to happen though? How far in the future is it? - Omegatron 15:35, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Great; glad to have you aboard. No one person can do it alone.

I expect Misplaced Pages to become the central repository of all human knowledge over the next 100-200 years. I expect all sister projects to be reabsorbed into WP, although conceptually they may have their own identities -- like rooms in a house. By "human knowledge", I don't mean everything ever said, thought, or done. Literature and opinion, news and commerce -- those sorts of things should not make it into a knowledge base. Users who want this sort of content will always search the net; it has no rules at all controlling what may be found. Users who wish to know facts of any kind will go to Misplaced Pages.

WP has hit on the right model of open collaboration; but the implementation is shoddy at best. Not to take anything away from the no-doubt hardworking souls who wrote and tested the code (without pay!), but it barely works on a good day, and that is after years of polishing. Obviously, it will be rewritten, and written again, many times. I have no idea how long it would have taken for a major rewrite, but now that I'm aboard, I'm going to push for it. I do not want to push until I can point out where we want to go.

Content will grow and improve; the engine will be improved and made more powerful; these are certainties. My concern is that hooks -- relationships of all kinds, including links, groups, templates and a dozen other structures -- need to be separated from the engine and the content, made as editable and portable as content and as robust as a good RDBM tool. Hooks are just as important as the content they hook together; even a sand castle is nothing without a little seawater to keep it from being a mere pile of sand.

Up to now, the MediaWiki engine has been built around content maintenance, and it does this fairly well. Hooks have been maintained on an ad-hoc basis, often amid raucous contention, inconsistently, inefficiently. The current model is much too fragile, demands far too much manual work, and incites pointless debate. Worst of all, when a new engine is built, it will be so hard to migrate hooks that the content will wind up "unhooked" in places. Unfortunate, but guaranteed.

Our mission is to develop a broad model of user-friendly hook editing and maintenance, refine it over time, and gather consensus behind it. When work begins on a new engine -- be it next year, next decade, or next century -- we must ensure that developers have a well-defined goal.

You have done nice work with the table editor, and I want you to apply those same skills to the material I'll be putting up. We need mockups -- working if possible -- to demonstrate to the community what it is we need, and to serve as a reference for further development. It would be ideal if the mockups ran under the current engine, no matter what filthy code gets pasted into the Edit box to do it -- but we can develop offsite, too, if we must. The important thing is to show what must be done. — Xiong (talk) 02:33, 2005 Mar 24 (UTC)

Hmmm... Sounds like you want to completely redefine the entire... well... everything. I don't think that's really what I'm looking for. (How long have you been here?)

I'm just going to keep pushing this as a small change, and not part of a huge overhaul. However, this could still fit into your plan. You could produce a page that shows how you would like the wiki to operate in a utopian perfect world, and small changes like this will aim towards that ultimate goal, depending on whether people like them or not.

On the other hand, I'm not sure creating One Huge Change is such a good idea, since people will definitely dislike and resist many of the pieces of it, causing chaos if you try to put it all together first and then present it to the public. I would recommend creating lots of small proposals and seeing which ones people like before spending all your time developing them. - Omegatron 20:39, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Relational database

1. While I would be welcome to this article getting a lot more work, I don't really think it needs it. Noe that there are plenty of links on this page, which point to more important places. Saying that A Relational Database is a database based on the relational model should be enough, becuase those articles go into a lot more detail. Second, while it may deserve a stub (I personally don't think so, but it's fine by me if you have it there), it isn't software. A relational database is merely a concept, that persisted as data (not software) using a piece of software (an RDBMS, which is also another article linked with more information). Am I misunderstanding something? McKay 22:31, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

1. Yes, all of the articles I sited could be updated, what articles can't. Yes, some of them could use a lot of work. Feel free to take on that task. I'll probably even help you along the way. Software, iffy. stub, yes. But the information there is basically correct (in the talk page, you hint that it isn't), and is along the correct line (the article is clearly not DBMS, not DBS, or DB). Basically While the article needs work, it isn't a horrid article like it appears you are claiming in the talk page.McKay 06:49, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

1. Yeah, I'd be willing to give a hand. But just remember that I'm a relational database bigot. I'm Truly Relationist. So I'll keep ya straight ;) Feel free to assign me to do something along the lines you're working on McKay 01:08, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

1. on my talk page you said "a good RDBM tool -- FileMaker Pro". FM isn't Relational. Am I missing something? I looked over flat file database, and it looks fine. I'ven't really used any strictly flat file databases. I'm a big Relationist, so while the article looks fine, I can't think of any ways of improving it (except that nasty blue orange border that doesnt' line up around the first data table. I don't know how to fix that one though. McKay 20:47, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

1. ODBC doesn't make something relational. (ODBC was designed to work with all kinds of databases.) Security, scriptable, layouts, calculations, All these things mean nothing in regards to being Relational. Don't get me wrong. Something doesn't have to be Relational to be good, and I'll bet FM is a great product with cool features (that may or may not be implemented in RDBMSs). I'm also going to go out on a limb here, and I'm going to say Implementing relationships doesn't make something Relational. and I believe that most people in the database industry would agree with me. Now remember that I'm a Relational Database Bigot. The RDBMS page sums up my feelings nicely. "Truly Relational" and "Pseudo Relational" are in common usage in my vocabulary. I don't like saying that any SQL database is Relational. I'd like to say that all of Codd's 12 rules are required. I think that even the SQLists would say that FM is, at best, Peseudo-Relational, and shouldn't be considered Relational.

Mao

I meant standard as in wikipedia standard. The words you used before were enigmatic and somewhat poetic. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopaedia. Dmn / Դմն 02:04, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Add template

It should be fixed now, I added {{NAMESPACE}} to the Xiongxiongadd template. -- Curps 11:44, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The problem of NPOV

Please do not discuss anything related to China on my Talk page. Discussion has been moved to: User talk:Xiong/Chinatalk. — Xiong (talk)

The above code shows a different date each time the page is opened by someone. You should be signing with 4 tildes (for only the date use 5 tildes like this: 07:54, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)). Please replace the above code since it gives a misleading time of when you did the move. Thanks! -- Paddu 07:54, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not anymore. Problem solved. Usage is now to follow the template instance with four tildes. — Xiong (talk) 14:23, 2005 Mar 29 (UTC)

Deletion of images without proven copyvio

Probably we should be revising the policy of WP:PUI. I mean, at least Wikipedians should discuss about the policy so some consensus can come out of it. Apart from you and me User:Sj seems to be against deleting UOs (from his comments at Misplaced Pages talk:Images and media for deletion/Unverified orphans. I'm at least against deleting many of the UOs that get deleted without the faintest indication of a copyvio especially those uploaded in 2002-2004. Do you have any idea where should I complain about this so enough people express their opinion? An RFC or a mail to wikitech or what? WP:VP never seems to get enough respondents. I experienced that in Wikibooks which is a smaller project, and had to take a vacation from Wikibooks. I hope that doesn't happen with Misplaced Pages as well. Thanks! -- Paddu 08:00, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)