Wikipedia:Village pump/October 2003 archive 2

Mirror Sites

Hi all. Not sure where to ask this question, so I am asking it here. How can one become a Wikipedia mirror site? If the information is Public Domain or GPL or the project is Open Source, how can interested parties get access to the articles for the purpose of setting up a mirror site or setting up their own local Wikipedia site for faster access, development, contributions, etc? -Keyvan 22:52, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Backup dumps of the databases every few days: http://download.wikipedia.org/ (GFDL)

The wiki software: http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/ (GPL)

There is not (yet) an organized system for whole-site mirrors. If you have suggestions for how to go about this, please join the developers' mailing list: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

If you'd just like to see announcements and get help with setting up a copy of the software, please join the MediaWiki mailing list: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

--Brion 23:51, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

linking wikipedia pages

I have now become a user at the Simple English Wikpedia. How do I put a link at my User page User:Adam Carr to this SE article http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki.cgi?History_Of_Australia ? Adam 05:04, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Exactly like you have above. Interlanguage links (which appear at the top and bottom of the page can be written like [[simple:History_Of_Australia]] but if you want the link to appear in the body of the page, you have to use the full url. You can write it like [http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki.cgi?History_Of_Australia History Of Australia] which will appear as History Of Australia. Angela 06:29, Oct 17, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks Angela. I wd value your opinion on the article itself some time. Adam 06:47, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)

See Peer review at Simple. Angela 07:00, Oct 17, 2003 (UTC)

There is a simpler way to do this, although not in the cases mentioned. [[w:fr:Histoire|History in French]] results in an inline link to fr:Histoire, like this: History in French. However, it seems that simple: is not recognized as a language prefix for this trick, and it will not work on simple: as long as it is still on phase I software (but then, neither do 'normal' interlanguage links). Andre Engels 07:31, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Archiving

I have seen that people archive their old messages (this is done for the pump too). Is there a reason for not using the history pages instead? Do the histories of pages get flushed after a while, do the URLs change, or is it simply a matter of preference? It seems a bit wasteful to do both. Dori 02:50, Oct 19, 2003 (UTC)

Text archived to another page will be searchable, while text archived only in the edit history isn't. (Though I'd be surprised if this directly motivates much of it.) Stuff from the pump tends to get archived to pages more immediate to the discussed subject, which may make it easier for people to find the relevant information later, though it's likely better to refactor and summarize the results of the discussion rather than moving a multi-page thread/flame around from place to place. --Brion 03:03, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedian statistics

Do we have quick available stats on wikipedia contributors? I know most sign on with user-nics but it would be useful if we knew (1) where wikipedia users are from? (eg, are most in the US? What proportion are from Europe, Canada, Asia, Australia & New Zealand, Africa?) (2) given that there is a high turnover of wikipedians as people are dragged away with other commitments, what is the average length of stay of a wikipedian? It might be an idea if someone could create a program whereby new users (and existing users to wikipedia who had not yet done so) were asked to fill out a confidential questionnaire, not asking names or such but things like gender, ethnic background, educational qualification, physical location, etc. The results of each individual questionnaire would not be kept or anything, just the data included in an overall wikipedia profile of itself, giving wiki a knowledge of who it appeals to and why, who uses it, etc? It could appear when someone sets up a user-name, explaining why the questionnaire is there and stressing how the information data, once clicked by the user would simply update the overall numbers database and would not exist as an individual record. FearÉIREANN 00:00, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I suppose some of it could be gleaned from Wikipedia:Wikipedians, although there must be many more people who haven't put their names there. Adam Bishop 00:08, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I wouldn't personally be prepared to quote statistics that were gathered in the way you describe. They'd be too unverifiable. (Hmmm, is that like being "too pregnant"? Well, I think you get the idea). Misleading figures can be worse than none. Andrewa 03:49, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Cyrillic script

Ah, where's that Mediator. Have a look at the article Millosh Gjergj Nikolla. Igor thinks there should be a Serbian spelling in both the Latin and Cyrillic, I think that one is enough and the cyrillic one should not be used because it scares English readers away. Seeing as this is an English Wikipedia article and a Serbian Wikipedia exists to make use of the cyrillic form, I think I am right. I want to avoid having to revert his changes over and over so I am asking what the consensus is here. One should notice that I brought the issue up with him before (see this and) he seemed to agree, but now apparently he has changed his mind. thank you Dori 03:10, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)

Cyrillic is OK; lots of Japanese and Chinese articles include the squiggly-char versions of names. :-) It's useful to see what the names look like as they're written by the locals, plus there are at least a few English readers who can puzzle out Cyrillic letters... Stan 05:15, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I agree it is fine to add the cyrillic spelling - I do the same with the cosmonauts, and also add the thai spelling of the Provinces of Thailand I edit. Especially as it have different transcription/transliteration schemes for the cyrillic letters, it is good to have the source name to eventually verify the transcription. But of course it only makes sense if the local name is actually spelled in that different character set - not to add the spelling of an english name in all possible characters. andy 09:29, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)

In which cases do you actually do it though? The above writer was probably of Serbian descent (I'll take Igor's word for it as I don't know) and I could see how you might want to put a Serbian spelling along his most frequently used Albanian name, but why do it in two Serbian scripts. Also, do you start writing the names in every script imaginable as long as the article is remotely tied to an area that uses that script? For example, Igor has done this also for Isa Boletini and Hasan Bej Prishtina who were Albanian (thus their local name would be in the Albanian form) for whom made some pretty non-NPOV statements. How are editors of the english wikipedia to understand and correct any mistakes in another script. For all I know, he might have called them some pretty nasty things. The best solution would be to put up an interwiki link to the article in the Serbian language, which theoretically could monitor them better. I am not saying the different scripts should not be used when the most used spelling is in that script. However, if most people see it differently than I do, I will relent on this issue. Dori 13:17, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)

Additionally, he keeps using the Serbian spelling in other places in the article instead of continuing to use the more common one (and the one on the title of the article), making it very confusing and non-encyclopedic. Applying the google test: sites using Migjeni: 2,280, sites using Miđoni: 2 (one is the wikipedia article, the other is from the project rastko which is far from a NPOV source).

Personally I'd say that the primary reference point for a person (their biography page, or the "best" list they appear on if they don't have a page of their own) is a reasonable place to put the native form of their name, in as many scripts as are remotely applicable, along with pseudonyms and nicknames if appropriate. Everywhere else in English Wiki should use standard anglicised versions of the name. The article itself I'd say can use any form provided that it is consistent within the article, and clearly explains what is going on - for example you could even use an abbreviation in some cases and still be "encyclopedic".

The same goes for language variants within one alphabet, and names other than people. So cities such as Köln should be referred to as Cologne, and I'd imagine that in the French Wikipedia London should normally be referred to as Londres and the United States as les États-Unis. The concern about sneaky insults is a valid one, but should probably be solved by finding other readers of the language in question rather than removing all funny-looking squiggles. It doesn't take mastery of a language to judge whether what is written is plausibly the right name - in fact all you really need to know is the alphabet. Onebyone 01:00, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

List of POV pages?

Sometimes I come across a page which is highly POV, but shouldn't be deleted. I have an urge to tell someone about these pages (when I don't know enough to correct the problem myself), and almost have an itch to vote for it's deletion, so I just end up doing nothing. Maybe there should be a page where you can link to POV articles, sort of like Votes for Deletion?

If it just needs some work, you can list in on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention. If it's fairly strongly POV, you can place boilerplate text at the top linking to Wikipedia:NPOV dispute (see that page for the boilerplate text). --Delirium 03:27, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

You could also list it on Wikipedia:Cleanup. Angela 04:19, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:NPOV dispute and explain your reasons on the talk page. Check the backlinks to that page for a list of disputed pages. Martin 13:12, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Special:Whatlinkshere

The "Special:Whatlinkshere" feature is supposed to list every Wikipedia page, including redirects, that has a link to the page in question, right? So, I'm wondering why the Whatlinkshere page for President of the United States doesn't list the numerous redirects to that page. For example, United States/President, United States President, and President of the United States of America all redirect to President of the United States, but none of them show up on the links page. Is this some kind of glitch? How many other articles link there that aren't listed for some reason? Just curious, thanks. -- Minesweeper 22:03, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

It cuts off at the 500 link limit. Newer pages are not listed. It used to list all (even if there are 2000 links) or there used to be "See the next 500" function I believe. --Menchi 22:08, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

OK, thanks, that explains it. Was it changed as a stopgap measure to ease server load? I hope it's only temporary. Can a developer clarify this? -- Minesweeper 22:45, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

That was casually tossed in after the rambot city entries added circa 30,000 links to a number of pages. An unsorted list of titles isn't exactly the ideal display method for several hundred or thousand backlinks, and ties up a lot of resources trying to produce the list, invariably timing out before sending the page to the user in any case. --Brion 07:38, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)