I've been getting "server broken or busy" messages from the site for the best
part of nine hours now, and still keep getting thrown out. the only time I
can normally get a good connection to the wikipedia is for an hour or so
first thing in the morning. Is any casual user going to keep trying for hours
on end?
I've no idea what the solution is: the permantly disabled search and special
pages has helped but not solved the problem. If the Wikipedia is to be of any
value to other than its inmates, this surely needs addressing by all you
computer buffs out there?
Jim
>From time to time, it is said that deliberately hiding substantive
changes to an entry is a bannable offence. Is this true? If so, where
is it written down? Is there a mechanisim in place to warn offenders
that their behaviour is unacceptable? Or, if it is not true, should a
policy change be instituted to make it true?
Tony Wilson
(Tannin)
Tannin wrote:
>Or, we can take a look at how the recognised authorities
>do thgings.
>....
Since we are a general reference and not a specialized publication then
ordinary English grammar and how similar publications do things are our
guides. And down style is the rule for this. BTW my biology textbooks also
use down style for species names.
>Why are we (according to the name-change people)
>supposed to use different rules for dogs, and aircraft
>on the one hand, and birds and mammals on the other?
Because aircraft are proper nouns, dog breeds are very close to being proper
nouns (as explained in my last email) while birds and mammals are common
nouns.
Our audience is the general public. As such we need to use general rules of
grammar and capitalization NOT specialized rules of grammar and
capitalization used in specialized publications. That is why other
encyclopedias use down style for almost all common nouns. But since we are a
wiki and page titles are also the way we link to pages, we need to be extra
careful not to overcapitalize.
I understand that there is a strong tendency for specialists to capitalize
their terms but Wikipedia is not a publication for specialists, it is a
publication for all of the world.
For example there are specialists for almost everything so the result would be
that Almost Everything In Wikipedia Would Be Capitalized:
Anyone know where the Clam Dip is?
Hip Hop is a form of Rap Music.
Some say that Global Warming and Ozone Depletion will kill us all.
What type of Map Projection is that Topographic Map in?
The Crystal Structure of lithium is Cubic Face-Centered.
John Doe is a Computer Science pioneer in Integrated Circuits.
At work I help to design Roundabout Intersections for Transit Villages.
In fact something close to this was the case when I started the project over a
year ago. Over time these Incorrectly Capitalized Articles were moved to
their proper down style names.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't have exceptions like dog breeds - that is why I
added "almost always" to the convention. I'm willing to entertain the
interesting proposition that theorems should also be counted as proper nouns.
They are very specific things that have been formulated by very specific
people (just like dog breeds). But species names are, by definition, common
nouns. Here are the definitions again:
Common noun (Gram.), the name of any one of a class of
objects, as distinguished from a proper noun (the name of
a particular person or thing).
n : a noun that denotes any or all members of a class
Proper noun (Gram.), a
name belonging to an individual, by which it is
distinguished from others of the same class; -- opposed to
common noun; as, John, Boston, America.
n : a noun that denotes a particular thing; usually capitalized
Cheers!
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Let's walk through the feelings of the people who are doing the actual
contributions, shall we? In the massive task of documenting the
9000-odd species of bird, the active contributors are:
* Jimfbleak. Jim has done an incredible amount of work on birds,
probably more than everyone else put together, and he's only been here
a few months. Take a look at his user contributions page, it's a huge
and ongoing effort. How does Jim feel about this? "The normal
convention is that English names of species begin with capitals, eg--
Magnificent Frigatebird, but groups are lower case". He thinks the wiki
practice of editing out correct species names is a right pain.
* I have done 50-odd myself, and not many itty-bitty stubs amongst
them. I work more slowly than Jim, but it's adding up to a fair slab
just the same.
* Steve Nova has only been here a very short while (though he was
contributing species accounts as an anon before that) and he's doing
quite a lot: working his way through the crows and ravens and now into
other families. He has had problems with the silly practice of not
using the correct names too.
* Kingturtle joined not so long ago, and like me has wide interests,
but has already made a good start on American birds. His feelings?
"Through my dozens of bird reference books dating from 1939 to 2000,
all but one use the Ruby-throated Hummingbird convention." Or, on the
ambiguity problem: "in order for this signal to the reader to succeed,
the species article ... needs to be called "Red-throated Diver." And so
on.
* The ONLY person who is regularly contributing anything of substance
to the bird entries that has NOT spoken out against the name-change
mania is Montrealis, who has started making a modest number of bird
edits lately. I don't know what his view is on this.
So there you have it: with the possible exception of Montrealis (who is
the least active of the active contributors in this field in any case)
EVERY ONE of the people who actually do the work in the bird entries
agrees.
Now, please, will the back seat drivers get out of our hair and let us
get on with the job?
Tony Wilson
(Tannin)
Over and over again, a small number of good, decent Wikipedia
contributors are causing difficulties for those of us who are actually
doing the hard yards in the fauna articles. All the major contributors
to the bird entries, for example, have complained about this on the
talk pages, but nothing is ever done. People keep claiming that, for
example, the Common Raven should be written as "common raven". One need
only reach to the bookshelf and pick up a reference work to discover
that this just ain't so. All we ask is that we follow our own naming
convention:
I quote: "Unless the term you wish to create a page for is a proper
noun OR IS OTHERWISE ALMOST ALWAYS CAPITALISED." Species names for the
higher orders (and possibly the lower ones too) are indeed "almost
always capitalised" and rightly so, as to do anything else is to court
ambiguity and lose clarity.
We, the people WHO ACTUALLY WRITE THE ENTRIES have had a gut full of
it. Please stop before the real contributors in this area get sick of
the whole damn thing and take their effort elswhere.
Tony Wilson
(Tannin)
list(a)redhill.net.au
Hi
Two bothersome vandals are
1. Or, who keeps making changes to History of Croatia, deleting any
discussion of the fascist government of that country. No other changes have
been made by him, except that I suspect he is the same anonymous vandal that
erased [[Jasenovac]] three times--using that number, he also deleted the same
material he is deleting in Croatia;
2. Zog, who has been adding some nasty anti-Semitic and racist materials in
the History of the Jews in the Soviet Union, History of the United States,
and Johnny Rebel. BTW, Zog stands for "Zionist Occupation Government", a
rightwing term for the supposed Jewish cabal that controls governments. In
fact, he even used it that way in History of the Jews in the Soviet Union.
Danny
I just checked. My preference is to word wrap at 55 characters. I don't know why my messages aren't wrapping, but I have no idea what to do about it. Zoe
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Does anyone know if there was an article at [[photodetector]] prior to
today? I came up as a bizarre on-line stub on random page with no edit
history. Could someone check a dump or backup to see if there have been
shennanigans?
--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
Some articles have many one-sentence paragraphs and it
is very annoying. Whenever I see this, I change it
into one or two larger paragraphs. What is the
convention, if any, on starting new paragraphs, and
should it be changed?
-LittleDan
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