When providing a list, think about a meaningful sort criteria. Time (of birth, creation) often has some relevance -- it is interesting to trace the life of a composer through the succession of her works, for example. Famousness is a less useful criteria for sorting, it is much too rough. Whatever be the criteria, make it explicit for readers, and people who later want to insert another bullet into your list, e.g. by putting (YEAR) in there.
Sorting by alphabet should only be used as a last resort, when no relevant criteria exists. This ordering is mainly useful for searching (and that only if one knows the beginning of the sort key), a function much more readily accomplished by your computer (e.g. via a browsers "Find" function). Another aspect how [Wikipedia differs from paper]?. --Robbe
I've been supplying articles for a while now, so i thought i'd throw in this and see what people say: A lot of articles are nothing but large listings, see city for example. How about relocating the listings of things to the plurals of the things, so in this case city could contain a definition of what a city is and cities? would be a listing of known (and lesser known) cities? The same would work for river...to transfer the listing to rivers? should work nicely. So, how about that one? --Anders Törlind
I am a bit doubtful whether these listings are good encyclopedia content. My mind is not made up, but for me it seems to hinge both on the size of the list, and the criteria for listing. Examples: a list of philosophers is probably useful, a list of philosophers who smoked probably not (too specialised); a list of cities is probably not that useful (full set too large); a list of cities with more than 1 million inhabitants probably is (managable set, clear criteria).
For the more specialised needs, searching is better (e.g. "philosopher AND (smok* OR tobacco OR cigar*)" [this syntax does not work on Wikipedia]). Working on better means to search is certainly worth the effort, for example searching just the pages linked (to a certain max depth) from a specific page (say, find "cigar" on any page directly linked from "Philosopher listing"). --Robbe
Whenever you change something on a page because of a request, report, or discussion on the associated /Talk page, be sure to refactor /Talk accordingly.
With software support, we can have our cake and eat it too--that is, it will be possible for the authors to include an IPA-based pronunciation guide, and have the software translate that into any display form, perhaps based on a user preference, and even create sound clips. -- Lee Daniel Crocker
Many further comments appear at Language/Talk
I searched on World War 2 and found no matches. So on the World War II page, I added World War 2, except in a white font that should be invisible in most people's browsers (because it is on a white background). We could add lists of keywords onto a page in this manner to improve the search engine results. This will work so long as we do not switch to a different method of indexing (which we may have to do).
Actually, for a different method, we could add something like keywords: world war two, Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchil, Pearl Harbor, etc., but make that invisible, and teach the search engine to look only at the keywords in that list. This would make it easy for anyone to add keywords without dealing with meta tags, xml, or other things the average user might not understand.
Strongly disagree. To start with, what happens if I have my window colors set up differently, or if I am working with a text-only program, or copy the contents to some such environment?
OK, but why not just add keywords, visible, to the bottom of every page? So the end of article scheme would be (approximately): "See also" then a line, then "Keywords" followed by a list of keywords (unlinked). Would be useful for a variety of purposes. I think it's worth considering. The only trouble I have with it is that it seems like too much trouble. We've already got thousands of articles that would need keywords, if we started adding them! Ambiguously yours, LMS
Never use the phrase 'of course' in an article. 'Of course' assumes the reader shares the author's context and perspetive and reaches the same obvious and intuitive conclusions. This is not always the case. Do not assume what the reader knows. Additionally, 'of course' is authoritarian and brooks no dissent, and is used when one wants to tell and assert rather than show and explain. This is not the attitude we should aim for in Wikipedia.
Of course, this can be overused.
The Nirvana page included two entries, one for the band Nirvana and one for the Buddhist concept of nirvana. I created two new pages, one for each entry, and on the Nirvana page linked to both with a brief description of the contents of each page. Because there are countless cases where we will have this problem (Alabama is a state and a band, [Paul Simon]? is a singer and a Senator from Illinois, et cetera ad infinitum) some solution will be necessary. WikiPedians can check out my solution and comment.
You were very right to do so. I am astonished that no one thought to do so before now. -- Larry Sanger
A. I can't answer the question definitively but I can say that you can easily link to images elsewhere. So, perhaps as a temporary solution, you can always upload, elsewhere, an image, then link to it from Wikipedia. The wiki programmers must know more, though...
A2. The next release of the wiki software (usemod 0.92) will allow special characters to be used like ∞ for the infinity symbol, Δ for the Delta symbol (the triangle), etc. See the [list of standard characters] for more information. Most graphical browsers should implement these common symbols. For now, and for other symbols later, an image link to another site will be required. (I'm not sure if image uploading will make it into the next release, but it is a planned feature.) --CliffordAdams (working on the wiki code today)
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Does this restriction actually prevent us from putting the license in a Wikipedia article, since anyone has the power to edit it?
Nope. The GPL does not require us to prevent people from breaking the rules, merely to inform them what they are. If we could post the license as read only, that'd be ideal...
In the lost and found page, we should place any pages that are relevant to topic, but are too unimportant in the great scheme of things to be listed individually on the main topic page, but also can not currently be found from the main topic page in any reasonable number of logical hops.
Also, if you want to write a new article, which no-one has linked to yet, and aren't sure how to link it in yourself, put a link in the appropriate lost and found and let someone else figure it out. (This includes articles from the request page. Remember that the request link goes away soon after you write the article!)
The stuff put into lost and found would be a good target for people doing large scale refactoring, trying to make all of the pages here fit together.
Yes, there is the search feature, but even with the enhancements it is going to need as we get bigger, it is sometimes easier to find something from a well designed tree of links than from a search feature.
Ps, feel free to move this discussion somewhere more appropriate, comment, mutilate or delete, i don't feel i own this discussion, the discussion has no long term importance in itself, we just decide then do it or don't. Geronimo Jones
There is no single entity that can "discard" Wikipedia. Everybody that had a copy ([/tarballs get your own!]) would have to delete/lose it at the same time, an unlikely event. --Robbe
In my opinion, Wikipedia is a healthy standalone community. If Nupedia wants to use something here as a base for their work, that's great. But Wikipedia is different, with a different culture and, to some extent, different goals. --Jimbo Wales
I agree with Jimbo (of course, because both websites were my ideas :-) ). I do not want to reject entirely the idea of somehow allowing Wikipedia and Nupedia to work together more closely. Right now, there's definitely a problem motivating people to use the Chalkboard. If we were simply to redirect the traffic and contents of Wikipedia to the Chalkboard, I suspect people would leave in droves and/or fork--precisely because the Chalkboard's rules are more restrictive. Kpjas, I suggest (once again) that you simply start using the Chalkboard yourself. Again, I think your participation (even if it means simply porting stuff you wrote for Wikipedia to the Chalkboard) might be the little extra push we need to get the Chalkboard going really well. --LMS
Of course! I wasn't even thinking about that. --LMS
Sept 25, 2001: I've written a lengthy proposal on the subject of a WikiProject, which out of courtesy I have not posted here. Interested parties can read the proposal at ManningBartlett/WikiProject
I'm curious if it is permissible to include snippets of code that is licensed under the GPL in Wikipedia. I looked around on the FSF's webpages but I don't see any comments on how compatible the GPL and the GFDL are. I've put some of my own code (which I release to the public domain) in places like quicksort and bubble sort, but for more advanced stuff it would be good to know if I could borrow from, say, the Linux source. --BlckKnght
Does Wikipedia have any conventions on "inclusive"/"fair"/"nondiscriminatory" language?? I'm new here as of 28 September 2001 and I've already seen this issue several times.
Oh, dear. This is one which comes up from time to time. [Political Correctness]? is a prime area for this. But for what it's worth "inclusive"/"fair"/"nondiscriminatory" tends to be very much in the eye of the beholder. If you tell someone, for example, in Manchester, England that he's English you will probably get a non-reaction; try doing that to a someone who is Scots, Welsh or Cornish and see what kind of interesting reaction you get. Some will mildly rebuke you, others less articulate will probably introduce you to the joys of the British National Health system. The sensible approach is to use common sense otherwise we will end up with articles about personhole covers, waste disposal executives, etc, and similar patent nonsense.sjc
Is there any convention for where to put links on general pages like tree that point to more specific meanings like tree data structure? I don't want to put it at the top, and distract all the students of dendrology?. Nor does tree data structure make too much sense as a "see also" section as it doesn't realy have much to do with the subject of tree other than the name. Should I make a "you may be looking for" section? I'm sure this comes up a lot, and I wonder what the best solution is. --BlckKnght
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