Wikinfo:Village pump/Archive 8

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Contents 1 Wikipedia 2 Help! 3 Mass import/export 4 Current events 5 Stalls 6 Please enable the <math> tag! 7 Reflist problem 8 Apocrypha &c 9 Logging in 9.1 Big Concern 10 Special pages error 11 Converting User page to Signed Article 12 Multilicensing 13 Transfers 14 Nassim Haramein 15 Ructions at Wikipedia 16 Creating a Disambiguation Page for "Map" Entry 17 Category for original Wikinfo articles 18 Redesign of the Main page? 19 Redesign of the German Main page 20 Fair use on Wikinfo 21 Template 22 Proposition

Wikipedia

Their No Original Research policy page used to have a link here at the end of the intro, which seems to have been deleted. Peter jackson 11:07, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean the header or the Wikipedia article? Try editing it to suit yourself. Fred Talk 13:19, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I've withdrawn from editing WP because it has no effective procedure for resolving content disputes & enforcing content policies. I've no interest in fighting never-ending wars. That's why I'm here. The policy here is simple enough that I hope it can actually be enforced. I merely mentioned this in case others might feel differently & want to get us a bit more advertising. Peter jackson 11:13, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Our policy is to encourage diverse viewpoints. Fred Talk 13:54, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I understand your question now. The No Original Research article on Wikipedia had a link to Wikinfo, but it has been removed. We have no control over that, and it would be futile for either you or I to try to put the link back in. Fred Talk 13:35, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Help!

I somehow managed to blank List of Popes. I've tried 3 times to restore it, without success. Peter jackson 11:19, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

You have to divide it into sections of less than 64k. See what I did with Teamsters. Fred Talk 13:07, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Are you saying any attempt to edit something too big is liable to end up blanking it? That I could restore 1 section at a time? If so, how do I deal with the intro? That was all I was originally trying to do, add a sentence to the intro. Peter jackson 11:22, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Look in the edit history and you will see that the earlier version is still there. Copy part of it and make it "part 1"; copy the second half and make it part 2. Either part can be modified. I need to fix this but have not been able to locate what is doing it. Fred Talk 14:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Seems like it, the limit is around 65 kilobytes. The best thing you could do is to look in the history page and see if the size is over 65,000. If it is, you should leave it alone for now. --Dark Lord 19:49, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

That might be easier. If I understand the problem correctly, I could follow this procedure:

1. delete the last few sections individually
2. edit what remains
3. restore the deleted sections to the last undeleted one

Peter jackson 12:20, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

That won't work because you will go over the limit. You need to split the article into two parts and put the second part on an other page. Fred Talk 14:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Only slightly good way to revert an article that worked for me is with the "rollback" button. However, it has some drawbacks, like:

• If you're the last one to accidentally blank it, someone else has to (available including for sysops)
• You get a static, old page that can't be edited to add even the smallest correction, or worse, interwiki to another article that can be edited.

Under these circumstances, I guess Fred's option is better than any, until a fix to the problem, or a better improvising way will be found. --Anime addict 15:11, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Peter, if you do what you said up there, you'll eventually sooner or later reach the over 65 kilo dead-block and it's going to result in the same blanking. --Anime addict 15:11, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I assumed the size limit was for whatever you were editing, so I could avoid the problem by editing sections separately. What you & Fred seem to be saying is that it's the article size. Presumably then the problem didn't exist before, otherwise it couldn't have got that big in the first place. Peter jackson 10:50, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure about section versus whole, but this problem showed up suddenly a while ago (probably due to upgrading of MySQL) and has not been solved at this point. There are a number of longer legacy articles in place which, if you try to edit them, will blank. Fred Talk 12:01, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what this means but look at http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php?title=Holy_Shroud&action=history for examples of successful edits as high as 95k. Fred Bauder 14:43, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Mass import/export

I've noticed a tool on both Wikipedia and Wikinfo that allow the mass exporting and importing of articles from one Wiki to another. The only problem is, when I hit submit on Wikipedia, it opens the characters in the browser and downloads informations of megabytes.

I'm wondering if this is a safe or prudent way of mass-importing articles, and what would happen if I'd just stop it in the middle and save it then (before my browser crashes XD). --Anime addict 15:05, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I've never been able to get that to work. I'd stick with manual importing. But feel free to experiment. Maybe you're figure it out. Fred Talk 15:24, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Seems might be from the server, might be from my net, a 52 kilobyte one uploaded it in no time, but a 7 mega one it couldn't handle. And there's the problem of manually adding the {{wiki}} tags, which kind of defeats the purpose of mass-importing... --Anime addict 17:04, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I see you made it work. Fred Talk 19:25, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm splitting the number of titles to under 30 and uploading in batches. Anything exceeding 30 pages or 500 kilo seems to time-out and upload incomplete or not at all. In any case it's a lot better than manually importing.

I wonder if there are any copyright issues with doing this, I'm putting in the history description that they're from Wikipedia, is it enough? I'm not that technical savvy to meddle in the code or import/export with a bot. --Anime addict 20:46, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

We need a link back on each page. Fred Talk 21:20, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Current events

I see that the Current events link is gone, along with the few date links that were there. Any way to recover them? They weren't many, but I remember putting some original research into them. --Anime addict 22:18, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Not sure what happened. I added the portal namespace not long ago and we migrated the database to a different database server, so it was probably lost somewhere in there. You don't happen to remember the exact names of the articles you edited do you? Fred Bauder 00:27, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I've imported the Current events portal and supporting portals and templates. It has to be maintained daily. Fred Bauder 03:31, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't really remember them all, I think the biggest loss would have been August 8, 2008 because that's where I put most original search, but I see I was lucky for it not to be on a portal template, so all's well. About the daily import, I'll try, but I'm not sure how much I'll be able to keep up. --Anime addict 20:45, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Being unable to keep up (or actually too busy doing other things) is why I took Current Events off the sidebar. Fred Bauder 20:57, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Good point there. --Anime addict 21:13, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Stalls

Information from the ibiblio staff points to Googlebot as the source of the stalling we have suffered. I have modified http://www.wikinfo.org/robots.txt somewhat. Any additional suggestions are welcome. Fred Bauder 03:31, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I have temporarily locked out all spiders to see if the situation doesn't clear up. Any suggestions are welcome regarding refining http://www.wikinfo.org/robots.txt so that we show up on the search engines but don't suffer the deadlocks we have been experiencing. See http://www.robotstxt.org/ for some resources. Fred Bauder 02:58, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

From my experience, Yahoo bot does a lot more damage than Google, I heard it was banned on several sites because of that. --Anime addict 17:03, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Spiders have been enabled again and things have been going well enough. Fred Bauder 19:37, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Please enable the <math> tag!

G'day:

Can we get support from the users to press the need for enabling the <math> tag?

Without this it is no fun writing math oriented articles.

Please, heeeeeeeeeeeeeelp! Sniedo 08:38, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

We tried for about a week; brought in everyone from ibiblio and Mediawiki, but failed. Fred Bauder 13:52, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Reflist problem

I see the template {{Reflist}} no longer works, I think it's a bug, it requires the <references/> tag instead. --Anime addict 19:06, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Went back to the old version. Trouble was caused by importing the current Wikipedia version. Fred Bauder 19:35, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Apocrypha &c

Can I suggest a somewhat more rational arrangement?

1. As the term Apocrypha is mainly used by Anglicans & Lutherans, this article should be from their POV.
2. Similarly the term Deuterocanonical books is mainly used by Roman Catholics, so this article should be from their POV.
3. The Eastern Orthodox term is Anagignoskomena, so there should be an article with that title giving their POV.
4. Criticism of Apocrypha can give the strict Protestant POV.
5. Biblical Apocrypha seems to be mainly a descriptive article about the arrangement of contents of Bibles as physical objects.
6. I'm not sure what Apocrypha according to Wikipedia is supposed to be.

Peter jackson 15:25, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you do that. The main article should be from the viewpoint of those who value the subject. Apocrypha according to Wikipedia is just a copy of the Wikipedia article, and probably could use updating. Fred Bauder 15:32, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Logging in

Due to excessive churning of the database by anonymous users, possibly bots, logging in is required to view pages. Fred Bauder 19:38, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Fine by me. Got a question, now if someone is googling something and they hit a Wikinfo article---do they still have to log in to read it? How is this going to work with outside search engines?WHEELER 00:17, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

They will need to log in. It is prevents spidering by outside search engines. However, we were using up a substantial fraction of the capacity of the server hosting the database. An untenable situation. Fred Bauder 01:20, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. WHEELER 22:21, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Big Concern

Daily, I would come to Wikinfo and check the stats at the bottom of page for my signature article "The Classical Definition of Republic". The average daily would be Twenty hits. It now stands at 19,318. It hasn't changed in three days except the hits of my views. Asking to "Log in" to view an article is, I believe, turning many people away. We are losing readership, I fear. We need a firewall, but we also need our articles to be read by the general public. What can be done? or is Ibiblio fine with low readership?WHEELER 13:10, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I must strongly agree with Mr, WHEELER here, or else I need to read a manifesto on the pointo of Wikinfo. I like to think that the articles on Wikinfo are available for general viewing. Otherwise, why have them? I think the chance of other members of Wikinfo taking an interest in the articles, for edification purposes is slim indeed. Mostly Wikinfo contributors check other articles for editorial purposes. Most of the people who are actually interested in the topic, are not going to want to sign up for an account just to get information they can get on Wikipedia without signing up. I believe our current situation is also untenable. Is there any other way? AaronCarson 16:05, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Possibly there is another way, but we were taking up a major part of activity of the database server. ibiblio likes that a lot less than low usage. Fred Bauder 17:38, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I have just added a comment which "disappeared".

Having to sign up/sign in to look at anything - especially with there being no comment on the Main Page as to the change - is going to deter many users/casual passers by. My impression is that most other public access wikis do not impose such a requirement - even those which impose restrictions on who can edit (eg Ganfyd).

Basically as said above- "Why should I bother signing in/signing up to look at anything?" Jackiespeel 23:43, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Because Wikinfo is a excellent place to both find out information and to easily link to other information. Fred Bauder 01:30, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikinfo contains information that is censored on Wikipedia and will never appear there. Fred Bauder 11:39, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Two major problems/issues - the perception that 'sign in to view' equals 'pay to view' - and the set up is likely to fall foul of a number of computer systems with blocking policies.

Having to sign in to view seems to be intermittent now: perhaps a 'to avoid exessive database problems caused by reason above, please enter the following pseudo-obscured alphanumeric code in box' type message would resolve the issue. Jackiespeel 21:15, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Trying a few other things. No feedback from ibiblio yet. Fred Bauder 21:45, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

To use an analogy - a "sleeping policeman" approach is preferrable to a gate to be opened. Jackiespeel 21:14, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Special pages error

I see most of the Special Pages (if not all) do not display information anymore. Instead, all that I checked give:

“

The following data is cached and may not be up to date. There are no results for this report.

”

I used to use them for tracking pages or files, so it could use fixing. Thanks. --Anime addict 23:53, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

The denial of service attacks we suffered consisted of multiple bots repeatedly requesting special pages. Fred Bauder 00:19, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

But now, being "log-in only", there's no problem in that, right? --Anime addict 14:18, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Log-in only applies only to editing, not to reading. When I removed access to the special pages, I changed log in to allow reading of articles without logging in. (That was not a viable solution, just a stopgap). So pages can be read, but onerous robotic demands on the data base cannot be. Fred Bauder 15:28, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Converting User page to Signed Article

How do I convert my work on User Page 'Troy at Bergama' at 'my talk' into a signed article without typing it all out again? How do I achieve registration? TroyAtBergama 02:55, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Multilicensing

Something seems to be happening at Wikipedia. They themselves seem very confused about what & when. As far as I can make out, all future contributions are to be licensed under CC as well as GFDL. According to several announcements I've seen, this was supposed to start today, but some comments have suggested it might not make it. Total shambles by the look of it. Anyway, I haven't tried to explore all the legal complexities, so my remarks below are subject to correction by anyone who has.

1. Any WP article created in future, if imported here, must display a notice saying it's licensed this way.
2. Any WP article not updated since D-Day, or any pre-D-day version of a WP article, if imported here, must not display such a notice.
3. Any WP article containing contributions both before & after D-Day, if imported here, must display a notice saying some of it's licensed 1 way & some the other, & telling the reader how to sort out which is what.
4. Any article here that doesn't display a CC licence notice cannot be copied to Wikipedia after D-Day. I don't know whether anyone ever does copy our material to WP. Those who want their material to reach the widest audience would include such a notice. Those who want to help WI compete against WP might want to prevent their taking our best stuff.

Peter jackson 10:44, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I've been pretty much on top of this and have exercised the option provided under the latest version of the GFDL to dual license, see Wikinfo:Copyrights#Dual_licensing. There are to tag ends to pick up though. I note the footer to the edit page has not been changed yet. Fred Bauder 12:16, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Please see http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-March/050953.html regarding reuse on Wikipedia. Fred Bauder 20:17, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

And http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use Fred Bauder 02:37, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Transfers

I've moved some material out of the Apocrypha article to form a new one, New Testament Apocrypha. I don't know whether this particular material ultimately derives from Wikipedia, or how the template should be dealt with. I've left it for now. Peter jackson 10:23, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Nassim Haramein

How would I go about importing an article on Nassim Haramein from Wikipedia? It was deleted in october last year, it says. I want to work on it, but I would prefer it with its basis from there. Thank you. --Kyb3lion 02:05, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

You would ask me, or some other editor here who is an administrator on Wikipedia. Done. We cannot import all deleted material from Wikipedia, occasionally such material is libelous or a copyright violation. This matter, however, regarded notability, and original research, just our thing, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nassim Haramein (2nd nomination). Fred Bauder 15:52, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I read that, that's why I asked, I knew it won't be any trouble if it was brought here. Thanks again. --Kyb3lion 16:57, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd also need this and this. --Kyb3lion 11:49, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Ructions at Wikipedia

There is currently a contretemps between Wikipedia and the National Portrait Gallery (see WP Community Portal pages).

It seems that some organisations are willing to co-operate with WP {and possibly other Wikis) - but not in this case.

What would be the best way to avoid problems occurring on Wikinfo? One route would be - the suggested low pixel image on WI, with due link to high pixel/better quality images 'at the owner's site with all due mention.' (I am refraining from any comment on who actually owns the objects - the museums/galleries in question, or the general public on whose behalf the things are looked after.) 21:27, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan. I have found a 200k image is almost always satisfactory for our needs. Occasionally there are exceptions such as panoramas or satellite images. I have followed this dispute closely, but don't think it actually affects us. However, it does affect the larger community, as the museum and other archives are restricting access to material this is in the public domain. Fred Bauder 17:12, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps suitable riders 'Permission gained from organisation'/'Non commercial image by photographer in question'/'a high quality image can be obtained at (website)' could be used - with further comment on the talk page if need be.

We never hear from organisations who are satisfied with Wiki-marketing of what they have - and those that do complain are likely to complain just as much at the comment 'Permission to use an image of object X, currently being held at Y, has been refused.' Jackiespeel 13:50, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Creating a Disambiguation Page for "Map" Entry

I'd like to create a disambiguation page for the map entry. I wanted to write an article on "geographic maps". However, I know that "map" is also a very distinct term in computer science, and possibly in other fields. Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_(disambiguation)

I am new to wikinfo, so I thought I should check here before making the change. Sunburned Surveyor 20:05, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, if it'll be mostly your research, you could just put it under Geographic maps, there doesn't seem to be any article on Wikipedia on it either. Or you could name it Maps (geography) or any other fork. See Wikinfo:Fork for more information. --Anime addict 21:00, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I have imported Map (disambiguation). Map could be updated or rewritten. An updated version would be about geographical maps as that is where the disambiguation page points. Fred Bauder 00:06, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Category for original Wikinfo articles

Hello. Does there already exist a category for articles that aren't copied from Wikipedia?--Borilex 15:30, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Probably, but I'm not sure I could find it. Let's make a new one: Category:Not from Wikipedia. Fred Bauder 15:44, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I think we have Category:Original research. That implies most of the time that they're not copied from Wikipedia. And there was the one about original or unique content on Wikinfo that's not found (anymore) on Wikipedia. Forgot the link though. --Anime addict 15:26, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, right, Category:Unique Wikinfo material. --Anime addict 15:28, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Redesign of the Main page?

Please see Talk:Main_Page#Redesign of the Main page? Reddi 04:57, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Redesign of the German Main page

Good evening. I just wanted to let everybody know that I’ve started to redesign the German main page. It’s still far from finished but I hope you like the new design. Borilex 21:59, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Wow, I just got to see it, it's really nice work, congrats! --Anime addict 17:36, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanx a lot! :) Borilex 11:03, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Fair use on Wikinfo

The English Wikipedia accepts Fair use, the German Wikipedia doesn't. What's the official guideline for Wikinfo, especially for German Wikinfo articles? Borilex 10:34, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikinfo follows a liberal interpretation of fair use. Wikipedia is based in the United States and has a non-profit educational purpose; in determining whether material can properly be used under the fair use provisions of United States copyright law that can be taken into account. However, there are many instances where images of popular culture are of negligible educational value. In short, if you are well acquainted with fair use, you may use it relatively aggressively, but if you are not, you should apply it only to obvious cases. Wikipedia's interpretation of fair use is fairly conservative as possible commercial use is contemplated. That is not the case with Wikinfo. Fred Bauder 15:24, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Template

We really need this Template:Non-free screenshot, Template:Non-free webshot or any variation of them, and it's been deleted on Wikipedia, I didn't find anything remotely close to it, thanks. --Anime addict 17:16, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Is there a big difference between Template:Non-free screenshot and Template:Non-free_game_screenshot? Borilex 17:52, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Hm, probably not, thanks for the advice. I'll just wait for Fred to answer for now, but you have a point, a related template could probably be cropped up from that. --Anime addict 18:15, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Proposition

I propose we have a special section for importing red-link articles from Wikipedia which have been deleted there. I've seen already quite a few requests, including, but not limited to me. Something like Wikinfo:Requests, Wikinfo:Red links or under any other useful link. It'd be put in Category:Wikinfo help so it can be found relatively fast.

What do you think? --Anime addict 17:03, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm willing to do a few, but not as a chore. Fred Bauder 23:37, 28 August 2009 (UTC)