On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 20:26:47 +0000, R E Broadley 20041111@stardate.freeserve.co.uk wrote:
I notice there seem to be lots of different wikipedias. (Sorry I'm new).
To be precise, there are multiple language versions of Wikipedia, and various other projects run by the same organisation (the Wikimedia Foundation), some of which are also split into multiple language variants. (Some, like 'meta' and 'Wikisource' combine multiple languages within one site). See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Complete_list_of_Wikimedia_projects for a (rather overwhelming) list.
I was surprised to see that I need to register a usercode on each one separately. Why is this please?
Each project is currently housed in a seperate database, and has a seperate copy of the software to run it. This makes some things easier (e.g. keeping things like software settings and translations, and indeed articles, seperate) but, obviously, has drawbacks.
There are currently plans underway to create a unified login system for all these projects, but there are problems still to be sorted out - not least, that the same name will currently be in use by different people on different projects. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_signon_transition for some more details; also, there is currently a discussion on the "foundation-l" mailing list, which you can read at http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2004-November/thread.html
Where do I go to access wikisource and wikiquote please?
http://en.wikisource.org (for the English version) and http://wikiquote.org
And would I be helping by relocating all quotes from all articles over to wikiquote? ...Or would some people object to this being done?
I'm not sure what exact decisions have been reached (you might want to look around and see what previous discussions you can find) but removing "all quotes from all articles" sounds like going a bit too far. I think the idea is that Wikiquote should form a Dictionary of Quotations, and Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia, should contain only those quotes relevant to encyclopedic articles.
So quotes included in Wikipedia articles *just for the sake of including them* should probably be relocated to Wikiquote, and replaced with a link to the relevant page there; but quotes that are included to illustrate a point in the article, or which are so noteworthy that you would expect to find them in an encyclopedia article, can be left where they are. Or, that would be my opinion, anyway.