Wikipedia:Village pump/May 2004 archive 1

foo Day

I think for greater community spirit we should hold certain theme days, or days where people concentrate on certain subjects that need attention, for example we could have 'fix stub day' or a day where we would all fix stubs, ( of course participation would be voluntary. There could be a page where people would nominate what days to hold and what subjects to consentrate on, it could be anything, like gathering information about a tricky subject or cleaning up some pages.

Sorry in advance if this has been brought up before. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 16:02, 2004 May 6 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea. Perhaps have a signup page such as Wikipedia:Flying squad or Wikipedia:Gala days which would list supporters and keep a calender of such days, past and future. Those interested could then watch the page, and discuss ideas for new Gala Days on its talk page.

One severe caution, we would want to make sure that there were clear guidelines as to exactly what was to be done, and have plenty of review of these by some old hands. Done in this way, newbies participating would learn a lot. But without this preparation, there's the prospect of many hands all at once creating the same sorts of problems for admins and developers to sort out... Aaaargh!!!! It's enough to make you want to bang your head against your monitor to see which breaks first. Andrewa 20:26, 6 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, there would have to be clear guidelines about what specifically would have to be done, --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 08:54, 2004 May 11 (UTC)

Probably worth mentioning Wikipedia:Article of the week here. --bodnotbod 12:05, May 7, 2004 (UTC)

This is almost at the top of village pump now which means it will be chopped off soon, any ideas where this discussion could be continued? Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:55, 2004 May 13 (UTC)

Overzealous brand documentation?

Is it just me, or are we seeing a lot of overzealous documentation of the specifics of commercial products—the verbatim copying of ingredients lists, labels, the detailed listing of all the products in a specific product line, and so forth? My perception is that this material is not being contributed by people trying to promote the product, but just by people who, for whatever reason, just like to do it. Fans of the products, I think. I don't want to single out Sharpie other than as an example of the sort of thing I mean. Is it really valuable to note that it is available in Fine, Extra Fine, Ultra Fine, Super, Twin, Super Twin, Chisel, Metallic, Grip, Industrial, and Professional tips, and in Yellow, Black, Blue, Green, Orange, Red, Brown, Purple, Turquoise, Lime, Aqua, Berry, Olive, Marigold, Navy, Plum, Burgundy, and Silver ink? I won't remove valid information just because I personally happen to think it's silly, but... is this getting out of hand and, if so, do we need to draw a line, and if so, where? Dpbsmith 23:38, 9 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I think people do this not only because they like the product but because they want to contribute an article with "encyclopedia-like" details, but can't think of something to write about. And I have cut out most of this ridiculous Sharpie details. DavidWBrooks 00:39, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I think David's hit it on the head there. Someone likes a product, or - even - just has it on their desk, and they feel virtuous, conscientious including every detail from the labelling. I suppose it's interesting to consider how difficult it might be to find the ingredients of a soft drink that stopped being produced ten years earlier without such people ;o) --bodnotbod 16:49, May 10, 2004 (UTC)

If these were products discovered on a dig in of an 1872 heritage site in Virginia, we'd be glad to have this historical documentation; would we not be creating a cultural record of our modern society for future archeologists, sociologists, paleontologists, et al? It may be rather odd to create the historical documentation for those historians of the future, but they'll thank us for it. -- user:zanimum

That's [http://www.archive.org]'s mission, not Wikipedia's. Dpbsmith 17:16, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not too sure about that, not to mention that, for a marker, tips are important. Furthermore, I do not entirely approve of DavidWBrook's edit, although this probably belongs in the article's discussion page. What I would have done is change the bulleted list (which takes up far too much space) into a comma-separated list, which would have fit nicely within a single paragraph, while preserving all information. -- Itai 02:54, 16 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Screen width

Looking at a specific astrology page issue regarding appearance at 800x600 (I usually run higher), I discovered that Wikipedia comes close enuf to fitting that it seems to be the target resolution, but in reality, is just enuf wider to be a pain. Anyone know if TPTB are aware of this? Niteowlneils 17:36, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what TPTB means... but anyway I have a 800x600 resolution (pity me) and I have the left hand menu turned on.... wikipedia renders perfectly for me without horizontal scrolling. Unless, that is, there is an element on a specific page which is wider than my screen. Perhaps the problem is with the astrology page you were on, do you remember which it was? fabiform | talk 18:49, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

It was probably Taurus (constellation) (or possibly Gemini or Taurus (I've spent most of the day cleaning up move from Taurus--see above))--all are fine if I'm not editting them. Niteowlneils 19:55, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

(the powers that be). It may depend on which skin Niteowlneils is using. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:58, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

...and which browser (css not being quite as portable as one might hope). Niteowlneils - if you can tell us the page, skin, and browser combination, it may be possible to submit a bugfix request to have the stylesheet tweaked. It tries very hard to work everywhere, but suc transit... -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:01, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Initial report. Skin/left nav=default. browser=IE 5.5 and Mozilla 1.4. OS=Win2k. Page=at a minimum, edit pages. Niteowlneils 19:08, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

So far seems to be limited to Edit pages. Also occurs with Netscape6/7 and Opera 7. Niteowlneils 19:12, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Also happens currently on VP and VfD, but I believe it is due to the Darwin image and a long URL, respectively, so I don't think those need to be "fixed". Niteowlneils 19:19, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Screenshot of problem (using IE5.5--the severity is pretty consistent between all browsers tested) at Image:IEHorScroll75percent.jpg. Niteowlneils 19:35, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW (not too surprisingly) the Wiktionary Edit page has the same hor. scroll issue. I'm going to assume that A) the problem is limited to the Edit pages, and B) the issue has been sufficiently documented, so I am going to bump my resolution back up, unless someone has a specific request. Niteowlneils 19:42, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to happen only when the "Edit box has full width" is not checked (which I think it isn't when you're not logged in). This makes the edit box a fixed width, and one that does appear to be just a bit big for 800x600 (probably depending on your default font settings). You could file a bug on this, suggesting the default be a wee bit smaller. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:10, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'll go do that. Since I have changed few, if any, of my Prefs, and I see the problem logged in, I have to assume the fixed width box is the default. Nice diagnosis--I went back to 800x600, checked the box, went to an Edit page, and confirmed that there was no hor. scroll. Niteowlneils 20:26, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Done. #951517. Niteowlneils 21:08, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

In the monobook skin the edit area has a % width by default, the pref is only there to work around some bugs in the old skin/ in ancient browsers afaik. Could be dropped maybe, and shouldn't default to a fixed width in any case. Try http://test.wikipedia.org in doubt. -- Gabriel Wicke 22:51, 10 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Compliment Committee

We have a Welcoming Committee to greet new users, but once they get greeted, they're rarely subject to much positive at the hands of other users, and many of them are subjected to a slew of insults from trolls, vandals, etc. Perhaps we should have a parallel committee, modeled after the WC, to compliment users when we see good edits, substantial work on pages, etc. Something less than a barnstar, but still a nice thing to do for the users. I suspect that, after a lengthy edit, it would be more than a little welcome to see a post on your talk page to let you know you did a good job, and that this would foster Wikilove Snowspinner 20:50, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I think this could fit in well with the recent idea of Wikipedia:Great editing in progress; or, to be more accurate, I think some hybrid of the two ideas could be achieved that served this role well... IMSoP 21:45, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Hearing compliments from "Compliment Committee" is like you hearing "You look great!" from your grandma (as opposed to your girlfriend or partner). My point is that, the person who gets such a compliment won't feel particularly honoured, because those people saying so are comissioned ...to say such a "compliment"! Doesn't mean much. It sounds much better when coming from some random person. However, an Award Commission makes more sense. --Menchi 21:52, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I think that last sentence made more sense when attached to the thoughts in your head (unless it's just that the thoughts in my head are rather detached right now :-/). What do you envisage an "Award Commission" as being/doing? - IMSoP 22:37, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Just an organization that gives out Barnstar and Wikipedian of the Year Award and stuff like once a month. --Menchi 12:00, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the compliment commttee would be as problematic. It's not as though every comment will get complimented. At least as I'm picturing it, the CCwould not simply compliment everyone blindly. It would be a more or less completely informal list of people who are committed to recognizing good work when they see it. We already have plenty of people dedicated to recognizing bad work, but very few beyond featured articles for good. Snowspinner 16:20, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a good idea, and hearby appoint every single user to the Compliment Committee. Please remember to thank others when you see good things happening! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 07:59, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I'm new and I've already left a few comments on talk pages like "Great page - well done to all concerned." And when people have reverted vandalised pages that I'm particularly interested in I drop them a note to thank them - particularly when it's my User Page as was the case yesterday. Apparently I smell of cabbage. Some people who know me in real life might say that was NPOV. --bodnotbod 21:40, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

I also think it's a great idea, and would like to hereby second Pete's nominations of all users. Andrewa 07:03, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Newspaper story about Wikipedia: Thoughts welcome.

First things first: I learned of the village pump through Raul654. He said this would be a good place to find administrators and members who'd like to share details about the more interesting facets of Wikipedia. So here I am.

I write for The News Journal, a newspaper in Wilmington, Del. The story I'm writing is meant to inform readers about Wikipedia and how it works, but also to answer some of the questions they're most likely to have. What intrigues me about Wikipedia, beyond the vast collection of articles on obscure topics, is the culture that beats within the site. Here's where you come in.

Raul654 gave me a quick education on two of the more prolific Wiki-outlaws. That's what intrigues me most, and readers are likely to share that wonder. And through the sharing of such tales, readers will learn much about the evolution and self-policing of this unique site. (I'm loathe even to call it a mere "site.")

Please contact me at cyasiejko-at-delawareonline-dot-com. (Have I thwarted the spambots? I hope so.)

Take care, Christopher Yasiejko The News Journal

While of course I wouldn't dream of telling you what should intrigue you, I do think "wiki-outlaws" shouldn't. They are footnotes to parenthetical remarks, distractions from the purpose of Wikipedia, which is to build a useful and reliable reference work. On Wikipedia there is a "giant conspiracy attempting to have articles agree with reality". That some refuse to participate in this conspiracy is, in the end, irrelevant to its success, as it is irrelevant to the generally progressive nature of human knowledge. -- Nunh-huh 22:40, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I agree entirely. A useful analogy (and a deeper one that might first appear) is to compare wikipedia with the wild west. It's easy to think there's a lot of lawlessness, gunfights, tough-but-kindhearted sheriffs, and bitter feuds in blanco canyon (as The Simpsons would have it "now with 50% more rootin-tootin"). It is like the wild west, but not like that - like the unreported wild west, the unreported wikipedia is mostly a bunch of farmers - each plowing their personal furrow on an unthinkably vast land. Many never see a stranger for weeks on end, many have no-one to turn to when their crops fail. Here and there there's an odd little clan, the faithful in neglected commune, a two-horse wikiproject, someone's grand scheme gone to seed. It's a little more populated each day, each day a new stranger in town. Most of your cattle go unrustled, most of your banks unrobbed, and one day the railroad may come this way. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:08, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Just so you guys know (so you can be specific in your responses), the 2 users I told Chris about (he spent about an hour interviewing me) are Michael and Plautus Satire. →Raul654 05:07, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

Does having a newspaper article about them count as feeding the trolls?! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:38, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

lol @ Pcb21 Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:24, 2004 May 13 (UTC) ;)

Offices Held by politicians

Do any guidelines exist for the content of tables showing the offices held by politicians? (See the bottom of the Tony Blair entry for an example.) It appears that periods spent as members of bodies such as Parliament aren't included, but I think it would be a good idea to do so. Betelgeuse 15:33, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

My first instinct was to agree with you, but after thinking about it, at least in the US, congressional districts change often enough that it's difficult to ascribe a real continuity to all of them. Similarly, Senate seats are arranged as junior and senior, but which seat is which will change periodically. So at least in US politics, I'm not sure how the linear nature of these boxes would work. I don't know, in Britain, how variable districts and their representation are, so I don't know if this problem exports to other countries. Snowspinner 16:29, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

It'd be awkward to include such tables on all politicians, even without reapportionment or redistricting - very few politicians stay in the same office for very long, and including a table for each office held would make their articles bulky. - jredmond 16:44, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Tricky. UK parliamentary boundaries are reviewed about every 10 years, and if the changes are too drastic a sitting MP may jump ship and look for a more winnable seat elsewhere (I'm reminded of one Conservative MP who looked for a better seat in 1997 and failed to win it, while what was left of his original seat remained Conservative...). Also MPs may lose their seat at one election, and be elected somewhere totally different at a later election (see Gwyneth Dunwoody or Tony Benn for example). -- Arwel 16:45, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Sir George Young is an example of an MP who moved constituencies because of boundary adjustments. For his entry I would add 'MP for Ealing Acton 1974 - 1997' and 'MP for North West Hampshire 1997 - present'. I don't think the two extra rows would add to much bulk to the article (most politicians entries are little more than stubs anyway), and I think it's the type of information a reference work like wikipedia should include. Betelgeuse 16:56, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about UK politicians, but it would be a huge mess trying to figure it out for U.S. representatives except for perhaps the last few decades. For early politicians, documentation is not always readily available about which district a representative was from (and even if available, may be misleading because the district boundaries change frequently). So even if we could figure it out, I'm not sure it would be that helpful since the actual districts change dramatically over time. For example, when Michigan first became a state, the entire state was one congressional district. Now the state is divided into 16 districts. I believe it had more districts in the past. Further, there are MANY U.S. politicians who have held multiple offices: representative, senator, governor, Presidential cabinet (sometimes different positions in the cabinet). In short, it *might* be feasible to do this for U.S. Senate seats, but I don't see any point to attempting it for House seats. older≠wiser 17:47, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Besides, many (perhaps, sadly, most) people in the U.S. don't even know who their representative is let alone what district they are in. older≠wiser 17:52, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia for crosswords

Hey, I just found a new use for Wikipedia. I was wrestling with today's crossword puzzle. Usually the weekday ones are fine, but today--lots of facts that I just didn't know. I used it to find the following in just a couple of minutes:

Adlai Stevenson's middle name
Star of Camille (5 letters starting with G)
Another phrase for motley fool (this was a search)
Ingrid's role in Casablanca
"A" wearer's name (I had to already know that this referred to The Scarlet Letter)
AKA for Baby Face Nelson
Star of Barnaby Jones
Meaning of otological (also a search)
1936 presidential loser
Van Eyck's first name

But--I couldn't find "dashboard of an English car"!?
Elf | Talk 18:56, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

How many letters? Marnanel 19:02, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

Five, am I right? Did you get the one about the flute? (spooky coincidence) As a thoroughbred Englishman, I can tell you that the dashboard of an English car is called... a "dashboard". So I'm not surprised you didn't find the answer here! [What crossword is this, anyway?] - IMSoP 19:18, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Tribune Media Services puzzle; I'm seeing it in the San Jose Mercury News. Elf | Talk 20:12, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

A five letter synonym for Dashboard in an English car would be "Dials"... But from what I read elsewhere, that doesn't fit. Peet42 19:47, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

How about fascia? That the best english-german dictionary http://dict.leo.org showed as one of the translations of the german Armaturenbrett. andy 20:08, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Huh. I am 95% certain about all of the crossing words. This leaves me with a 5-letter word for "dashboard of an English car" as _ACIA, and "high-pitched flutes" of _IBES (first letter is same for both words). I played flute for many years & don't know what they're talking about. I thought of Fascia, but that's 6 letters, so unless they spelled it wrong-- and that also left me with "fibes", which I couldn't find a reference to anywhere. Elf | Talk 20:11, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

According to Dictionary.com, "Facia" is an archaic form of "Fascia". I'd assume a problem with the "b", making the other answer "Fifes"... :) Peet42 20:35, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe they think it's an Anglicism. (It isn't, to the best of my knowledge.) -- the English Marnanel 20:39, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

OK, fifes works. (For some reason the first time I looked at the B vs F for the first letter it didn't make any sense. Another case of brain needing cache cleared & reloaded.) 66.122.214.230 21:28, 18 May 2004 (UTC) (oops, that was me. Elf | Talk 16:13, 20 May 2004 (UTC))[reply]

Collins English Dictionary definitely gives fascia or facia as Brit.. a less common name for "dashboard". Dieter Simon 01:18, 19 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (2000) says that facia (pl. facias) is 'the instrument panel of a motor vehicle' (among other things), and that fascia (pl. fasciae) is 'a long flat surface between mouldings on the architrave' etc. IME this dictionary is more conservative than those on the Web, and is of course Britannocentric. -- Heron 18:43, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I love seeing Wikipedia being used for a wide variety of purposes like this. I found Wikipedia when I was running "online pub quizes" and in desperate need of trivia. Our list of lists was perfect for my purposes, and in a few weeks I'd got interested in the project and began contributing. Elf, perhaps soon the compilers of your crosswords will use Wikipedia as a source, just as you use it to crack the hard clues. ;) fabiform | talk 07:25, 19 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I've used the Wikipedia for this myself. It helped about 75% of the time. Crazyeddie 00:30, 2004 May 24 (UTC)

XML usage

My apologies if there's a better place to ask this, but I was curious if Wikipedia supports XML. I mainly ask for the possiblity of implementing a few databases. Oberiko 16:50, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that a forthcoming version of mediawiki supports exporting articles in an XML format. Is that what you had in mind? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:57, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what you mean by support, but try out Special:Export. In the upcoming version 1.3 there will be more features that involve XML (look for them in http://test.wikipedia.org ). Dori | Talk 17:00, May 20, 2004 (UTC)

Clarification

An example of what I mean by supporting XML would be to keep data, stored on Wikipedia, in an XML format for the purpose of table generation etc. I think it would make it easier to read, edit, use and upload/download by users. It would also allow data to be kept centrally for seperate articles that might rely on it (thus preventing redudancy). Oberiko 17:05, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Optimally, of course, would be if Wikipedia had an actual database and allowed JSP. It would certainly help in terms of large articles, especially long lists so that we could dynamically generate sub-lists. Oberiko 17:43, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

To date, a trade-off has been made. We've favoured ease of editing, with wikimarkup accesible to almost anyone who can run a web browser, trading this against the increased amount of manual work this entails. You're quite right to identify this need - the next time there's a major election in a country for which we have good constituency coverage (particularly the US and UK) there will be a lot of work to get the wiki back to being correct, and a nontrivial period during which it will be wrong. Worse, when the next US census data comes along, thousands of articles will be outdated. We've used bots in the past, but they have limited use in making updates (as opposed to mere substitutions or additions). The addition of transclusion to mediawiki makes some tasks simpler (such as centralising some kinds of tables). The real problem is that very very few of wikipedia's contributors are web developers - so the software project is short of developers. Also, we need to keep our barrier-to-entry for new contributors very low (that's how we've grown so big) and making a database-inclusion mechanism that's accessible not just to sad technogeeks like you and I, but to our moms and dads, is durn hard. But your idea is good (although exposing the ordinary contributor to XML is about as welcome as exposing them to ebola)) and the need exists (it's not a major problem yet, but it will slowly increase as the wikipedia expands and the bot-authored data ages). The mediawiki article has links to the sourceforge page - perhaps you'd consider helping adding these features to mediawiki. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:58, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Your comment re: US and UK elections and the next census, while quite correct, are nevertheless also quite depressing. →Raul654 18:08, May 20, 2004 (UTC)

As far as updating tables goes.. where a table appears in a page, a link saying "Edit Table of Australian States" (or whatever) appears in the edit page. Clicking this link goes to a grid of edit boxes where names, stats, figures, and other fields, can be updated. Layout can be varied as needed. You don't need to be a programmer to update databases, look at the number of office admin staff who perform data entry as part of their job. --Chuq 06:19, 24 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I saw some debate about using the As of 2004 etc feature to mitigate this - is there any concensus? Mark Richards 19:45, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I was about to mention that, too - the explanation lies at Wikipedia:As of, to which is attached much discussion. It doesn't remove the need for manual updating, of course, but it allows one to find where it is needed most. I rather like the idea, personally.

My main concerns with having some kind of database/XML "backend" built into the wiki are a)who would design the schema, and how (given that if you ever changed it, it would break everything using it); and b)how would the information be incorporated grammatically into free text (which I'd guess the majority of places this would be used would require). I guess you could have something like {{current president of the USA}}, but it would be hard work making sure it made sense properly.

I think SQL is simple enough that it could be incorporated (it's not like EVERY user would have to use it... just those who know), so long as it's limited to SELECT statements. Something like {{SQL: Field, Field, FROM Table WHERE...}}.

An example of census data it would just be {{SQL: US_Population FROM Census WHERE Current = 'True'}}. Still quite readable IMHO Oberiko 23:37, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I think elections are fine - not all that much changes each time; most MPs stay in the same seat for years [how lazy! ;-)] - but the census data is going to be a pain. Will we run Rambot (and other similar bots for other countries) every time a new census comes out? But if we did it a more database-y way, how encouraging would it be for users to edit the page (one of the main arguments put forward for inclusion of Rambot-style data) if it was covered in some weird syntax they didn't understand? Hmm... - IMSoP 21:20, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

The election data is indeed an manageable change (it'd be worse of lots more countries' electoral constituencies were added). The census data is problematic - lots of Rambot's additions have now been manually changed to make the article as a whole read better (e.g. East Palo Alto). With hindsight (and more software) inclusion of such external info might better have been (or in future be) handled by transclusion (e.g. {{uscensus:East_Palo_Alto}}), which would make a discrete box on the page. Such a large, and rich, source of raw data would justify writing specific code to support. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:36, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

this isn’t the forum – but, m2cw, couldn’t conventional div or span tags address some of these problems more simply? ie giving the robots hints about what to target?

eg "Brisbane has a population of <div class=’population’ id=’Brisbane, Australia'>1.5 million</div>"

just a thought… Erich 00:28, 21 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Eek! That's kind of a half-way house - much of the XML ugliness, but less of its power. Really, what we're collectively asking for is something with the expressive power of a query language and presentation layer, but the simplicity of free text - something I don't think can be done. Not to worry - wikipedia is a testament to the power of thousands of people botching stuff together. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:04, 21 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Magie delle Ande: Portale Perù

Buenos dias. Deseo segnalar las mejores paginas web sobre el Perú en idioma italiano. Apartenecen a nuestra asociacion sociocultural Latinoamericana Magie delle Ande. Gracias por su disponibilidad. Gabriele Poli

http://www.peru.sudamerica.it http://www.magiedelleande.it

Babelfish translation (FWIW): "Good day. Desire to segnalar the best paginas Web on Peru in Italian language. Apartenecen to our sociocultural association Latin American Magie delle Ande. Thanks for its availability."

Mostly close enough; "segnalar" ==> "Señalar ==> "point to"; I believe "Apartenecen" is an un-word; the last sentence is basically "Thanks for helping (more literally "putting yourself at my disposal"). Anyway, he wants Italian-language pages about Peru, presumably either from Wikipedia or elsewhere. -- Jmabel 05:44, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me like you've got the intent backwards. The poster has pages on Peru in Italian, and wants us to point at them. But then, I don't speak Italian. -- Cyrius|&#9998 17:21, May 22, 2004 (UTC)

You could be right. It's a little hard to decipher an Italian-speaker's slightly broken Spanish. (Wonder why he thought it was better to address English-speakers in Spanish than in Italian...) -- Jmabel 18:00, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Which also shows how rusty my Spanish is. -- Cyrius|&#9998 19:18, May 22, 2004 (UTC)

A little OT, but... Does anybody know of a open-source translator project? There has got to be something better than babelfish. Crazyeddie 01:10, 2004 May 24 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.3

We're going to be phasing in a pre-release version of MediaWiki 1.3 over the next 24 hours or so. Expect minor service disruptions, and the sudden appearance of lots of new features. -- Tim Starling 14:08, May 21, 2004 (UTC)

I've created a new page to serve as a collection of comments and bugs about the new release: m:MediaWiki 1.3 comments and bug reports. Please use only that page to focus the efforts. Dori | Talk 14:42, May 21, 2004 (UTC)

Sweet. I think everyone needs to give props to our very hard-working developers. →Raul654 15:20, May 21, 2004 (UTC)

this feature will only trigger an edit conflict if users attempt to edit the same few lines. Oh. My. God. Who do I buy a beer for??!! Fantastic! Mark Richards 16:03, 21 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Dibs on the second round, for that and for Links in summaries allowed! - jredmond 16:11, 21 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

*frown* Still no Wikisophia features like chessboards, music and chemistry diagrams, and they put in this timeline thingy, which seems to have just flown out of nowhere? Pfeh. It's a lot easier to write a text timeline than it is to write a text chemical diagram, or to make one with xfig or PPCHTeX Though I definitely appreciate the ability to include wikitext in image captions, and the ability to caption images without thumnailing them. This is the way image markup should be, definitely. Grendelkhan 20:28, 2004 May 22 (UTC)

If I understood previous responses correctly, that whole version of Wikitex was more-or-less a one-man project, and that one man has since disappeared, so I wouldn't hold your breath for it - it's all got to be rewritten from scratch if at all. (I may have the wrong end of the stick there, though). - IMSoP 20:46, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I'm putzing around with the developers now. Pain in the butt. Might be easier to track down the guy who wrote wikitex. grendelkhan|(blather) 07:35, 2004 May 23 (UTC)

I see that Wikiquote, Wikisource, Meta-Wiki, & Wikibooks have all switched to it. When will the rest be switched over?

New features

With the upcoming features I think we should keep in mind that "just because we can doesn't necessarily mean we should." What I mean by that is that the new parametrized templates and categories can make pages pretty hard to figure out. We should probably come up with a policy/guideline about how these two features should be used. As an example, keep a newbie mindset and try and figure out this page: [1] We should preserve the wiki principles of simple and easy editing as much as possible while making use of new features IMO. Dori | Talk 21:26, May 21, 2004 (UTC)

While I agree we could need a policy on new features (we still need one on the navigation bar inflation on the country pages, many now having four of them already), I think the templated version of the infobox is easier to grasp for a newbie, as content and display is separated. I consider the HTML table currently in Belgium much more scary than the template useage one on [test:Belgium]. And for shorter infoboxes, for example a taxobox, the difference will be much more striking. andy 21:37, 21 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest I'll be glad if that example is as bad as it gets. Apart from writing the template parameters in thisstyle instead of this_style it looks quite readable. I think a newbie would be able to "get it", even if creating new templates would be an advanced user thing. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 21:54, 21 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I am sure it can get a lot worse than that. Perhaps we will need an obfuscation contest to see just how bad it can get. Dori | Talk 03:47, May 22, 2004 (UTC)

I added to Dori's example comments above & below the infobox of the style that we've been using in the dog breeds tables. Comments like this will help newbies a bunch. ... Oh, BTW, the little help box that pops up when the mouse hovers over that demo page's Save button says "Save you page". Is this a bug? Elf | Talk 05:03, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]