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Village pump archive 12

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During March 2007, originally posted to Wikiquote:Village pump.


Quotes in original language

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Sorry if I already mentioned this, but: I think it's good to provide the quote in its original language in addition to an English translation, as for example in Arabic proverbs. I would like to see the original Greek for quotes of Aristotle, etc. --Coppertwig 20:10, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I also think it is a good thing to do. In fact, I just reverted someone who removed them all from the Mao Zedong page. As long as there are English translations (or will be in the future), they are very helpful. Cbrown1023 talk 00:12, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't there a template for foreign quotes? Dev920 11:25, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not aware of a Wikimedia template, but our various Wikiquote:Templates pages, describing structures and overall formatting for different genres, include a specific format for citing original languages: the original quote comes first, the translation in a sub-bullet. (Calling our guidelines "Wikiquote:Templates" is an unfortunate name collision with Wikimedia "templates", which came long after we'd established the guideline pages.) We definitely want the originals where possible. I would also like to see sources for both the original and the translation, where they aren't from the same publication. (But I think our formatting doesn't easily incorporate that yet.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 18:03, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that was what I meant. I tend to use old articles I've edited as my template for new ones, but I remembered coming across something like that. Dev920 20:41, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's exatly what I was looking for. Funny how people ask my questions for me. I just want to point out that there are a lot of film quotes with no original source for foreign language films. See Category:Foreign_language_films --Steinninn 06:50, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category change

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Would it be a good idea to separate out the categories under Category:Wikiquote maintenance that actually require editor attention? Perhaps we could move things like Cleanup, Copyedit, Articles to be expanded, merged, translated etc. udner a new category of Category:Articles needing work? It's extremely difficult to see what needs to be done. Dev920 00:21, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I support the proposed category as subcategory of "Wikiquote maintenance". I agree on that the latter is better to be reorganized. --Aphaia 13:30, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I'll create it and we'll see what happens. Dev920 16:46, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's done. Look OK? Category:Articles needing work. Dev920 16:54, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your work, Dev920! Sorry for late reply. Can we include also stubs under this category? Or they are better to be kept away? --Aphaia 06:24, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, when I'm cleaning up I don't edit stubs. Do you? Dev920 00:49, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Request for bot flag

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There is an open discussion about bot flag request. Please give a look to Wikiquote:Bots, review the test-run contributions and give your opinion. Thanks. --Aphaia 13:29, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Share a Quote

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Some people think that friendliness is a sign of weakness, when in reality it is a sign of strength. -Wolfgang Singer. I just like this quote and think someday it should be qotm.O yes the link from Danny Williams in wikipedia for is page on wikiquote isnt working in wikipedia it says danny williams (boxer) I think its something to do with that, does anyone know how to fix this? --McNoddy 15:35, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hanging indents

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I think that's what they're called. I just added a quote from a character in a movie. I added the bullet, but I don't know how to indent the second line. Do I do it manually? I didn't see any style tags for other quotes. Thank you..

Allan —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Allanostermann (talk • contribs) 22:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Depending on the type of line one wants, the second line can be indented by adding one or more colons ":", two or more asterisks "**", a combination of colons followed by an asterisk "::*", or by making it a continuation of the first line with an html "break" sign in it : "<br>". ~ Kalki 22:32, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Allan, based on your contributions, I deduce you're talking about adding a quote or dialog segment to Repo Man. The quickest way to figure out which of the formats to use that Kalki mentions is to edit (but don't save!) Wikiquote:Templates/Films and observe the wiki markup (formatting characters) used in the examples shown. (Details on how these work may be found at Help:Editing.) Typically, one uses colons to indent dialog segments, double-asterisks to create a sub-bullet for source/context information for regular quotes, and HTML breaks for individual quotations that require multiple physical lines (like for poetry or lyrics). This odd collection is a consequence of the Mediawiki software and the various formatting needs of different kinds of quotes. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:40, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How Do You?

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Does anyone know how you change the name of an aricle in wikiquote?--McNoddy 13:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can move an article to a new title using the "move" tab at the top of the page. If there is a problem (like an article already existing at that name), you can request assistance at Wikiquote:Administrators' noticeboard, or simply add {{move|NEW NAME}} to the top of the article to ask for someone to do the move. More information about doing this can be found at Help:Moving a page. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:48, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New post

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Thanks JeffQ McNoddy--McNoddy 16:24, 9 March 2007 (UTC) sorry about that[reply]

Living people category?

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moved to category talk:Living people

Vandal

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.16:24, 13 March 2007 168.169.135.37 Bill gates article, could some one block this guy or something seems to be mucking up articles --McNoddy 16:29, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted this user's edits, and added a warning to his/her Talk page. But since this is the first episode of vandalism, it's a bit early to block this user. ~ UDScott 16:32, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Add "WikiQuote" box to television show Titus

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I don't know how to add a "WikiQuote has more quotes for this show" box, but I want to add one on the Wikipedia page for the television show Titus. I have added a text link at the top of Wikipedia section area because that is the best I know how. Thanks.
As an aside, I think many of the quotes on the Wikipedia page should be moved to the WikiQuote page to cleanup the Wikipedia article. Any thoughts?
-- User:Guroadrunner on Wikipedia
If you plan to transfer quotes from Wikipedia articles to Wikiquote articles, please be sure to cite the specific Wikipedia article from which you are transferring the material, to be sure we stay within GFDL requirements. The easiest way to do this is to include an interwiki link in the edit summary, like so:
transferred quotes from [[w:Titus (TV series)]]
which will display like this in the Wikiquote article's edit history:
transferred quotes from w:Titus (TV series)
(Note the interwiki link format, which is much simpler and vastly preferred to the external-link format Guroadrunner uses above.) It's debatable whether we should really be using the formal transwiki process, even for partial transfers, but given the widespread failure of wiki editors to do transwiki properly, this should be a reasonable substitute. (And please avoid using any links in a section heading, especially when you can cite the links in the posted text. Embedded links cause problems with edit summaries.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 14:45, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For your information, English Wikisource stopped to transwiki, I heard. Now they import articles from Wikipedia instead (to activate import feature from/to other projects, we need to ask developers and need to watch their AFD). Imported articles retain their history it is a benefit. --Aphaia 06:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

John Mitchell article

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Hello again , I was looking at this article, seems to have been Vandalised, dont know how to get the orginal txt back so could someone look at it thanks --McNoddy 17:26, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's fixed. See Help:Reverting at Wikipedia for how to revert a page. Koweja 17:59, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

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I've had a go at pruning back this article, which currently quotes almost the whole film, to pick up on the more quoted lines. The pruned version is at Monty Python and the Holy Grail/temp. Fys. &#147;Ta fys aym&#148;. 00:05, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

what about a wiki lyrics/ wiki songs

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what about a wiki lyrics/ wiki songs that listed song names and stuff with there lyrics?

LyricWiki does this. Wikimedia projects like Wikiquote and Wikisource can't do this because the Wikimedia Foundation has a firm policy about avoiding copyright infringement, and such websites are pretty much guaranteed to be massive copyvios. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 06:44, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To expand on what Jeffq said, almost all lyrics are copyrighted. Therefore posting the lyrics in their entirety is a violation of copyright laws. Now, there are plenty of sites out there that have the full lyrics of thousands of bands, however they are taking a risk and hoping that the copyright owners don't care - the Wikimedia Foundation isn't willing to take that risk. In fact, a lot of sites have had to take down lyrics for various artists because the copyright owners have complained. Koweja 16:13, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
However, you may post small excerpts of the lyrics here at Wikiquote on the artists' pages. Cbrown1023 talk 18:05, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Slightly misleading to say that "almost all lyrics are copyrighted". Lyrics for 19th century songs will presumably be out of copyright by now. However, certainly all recent lyrics should be assumed to be copyright.--Poetlister 22:48, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Self-signing Welcome template

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I have just created template {{pwelcome}}. If you enter {{subst:pwelcome}} on a new user's talk page, it has the same effect as {{subst:welcome}}--~~~~. I hope that people will find this a convenience.--Poetlister 23:01, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your invention is really nice. Thank you! What does the top letter of P stand for? Just curious. --Aphaia 07:59, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Quotes in another language.

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I know this subject has been brought up before. But I'm stuck with the fact that there is not enough rules about how to use quotes that are not in english. Yea, you should first have the original quote in italic and then the translation. But I've never seen that the language of the original quote is identified. Shouldn't there be like a little "in german" or something before every quote that is not in english? Is there any moderator here that can look into this? --Steinninn 14:02, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your proposal. I agree this kind of information is helpful for some readers. I think however I would be bothered if every translated quotes are commented "original in XX" (for example, if we are giving a look to Confucius, do we really need to be said "original in Chinese" in every quote?
So I propose we have a remark about original language of quotes in the introduction part of the article. "All the quotations following are originally in XX language unless it is overriden by a further remark" ... like that. --Aphaia 19:18, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I completely agree. --Steinninn 11:53, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, too. Translated quotes should indicate origianl languages.--Jusjih 14:28, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Before starting to add such remarks, I would like to know how you guys think to create new categories for "original" like "Category:Chinese language quotes in original" (not a good name, but it could be improved). --Aphaia 10:03, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mnemonics

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I've posted a similar message under Talk:English music mnemonics. I know English music mnemonics (and all the other mnemonics pages) were preserved after a vfd nomination when there was no consensus, but the most recent addition to this page is just ridiculous: Under "Order of flats for flat key signatures" someone added "Big Elvis Ate During Golf Competitions Furiously." Is this really what we want here at wikiquote?? I'll argue the same point that was made in the vfd discussion: without standards of any kind, anyone can just make up a mnemonic and post it here. I for one do not see the value in these pages. ~ UDScott 20:18, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe we should properly re-address the overall question so soon after the last VfD. However, we do have a practice/draft policy about sourcing quotes, which is based on Wikipedia's formal policy to demand reliable sources for material. I would recommend simply deleting unsourced material with an edit summary like "rm unsourced mnenomic from likely unnotable" like we've been doing for many theme articles. As I've said elsewhere, technically pretty much everything in mnemonics and other theme articles is fair game for deletion unless sourced. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:23, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Search problems

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When preforming a search a list is shown of the quote pages that contain the searched string of text. It can become long and cumbersome to open each entry to find a quote that matches what the searcher was looking for. Therefore an easy remedy for this problem would be to show the quote (or part of quote) that contains the searched text. If the user then likes they are able to click the link. Just a suggestion. 

 Eric
   psyclicmotion@gmail.com

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.82.28.31 (talk • contribs) 03:08, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

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The sidebar has been updated to included wikquote links. Cbrown1023 talk 20:35, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent - it's much better over there than at the bottom of pages where people often forget to put it in. Though, wouldn't wikiquote topics be a better name, since everything on page is a wikiquote link? Koweja 20:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've used the term "genres". It's a less overloaded term within wikidom than "links", "topics", "categories", or "templates" (the ambiguity of which has caused us problems in other situations). Although it does have a more specific meaning among creative works, unless someone can think of a better but still relatively unambiguous term, I think this has the best chance of becoming a term that folks will understand without explanation or disambiguation. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:02, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, for general information, what we're talking about here is ending the requirement to add {{lynx}} to each article, between the "external links" and the category tags, so that a list of general article types is provided at the very bottom of the article. Instead, Cbrown1023 has kindly provided us a section in the left margin, or sidebar, currently labelled "wikiquote links", that lists these general categories or genres of quotes. Earlier discussions on this topic can be found at Template talk:Lynx and Mediawiki talk:Sidebar. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:24, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Audio quote

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Is there a way to upload a fair use audio clip to add with the quotes. I was thinking about having some audio quotes with movies. For example, can I upload it to wikipedia and use it here? Obviusly I can't upload it to the commons --Steinninn 05:21, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In a word, no. Wikiquote has been operating on a "freely licensed material only" basis for the past year or so. We disabled our upload and now refer uploaders to Commons for material. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:27, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Also, you can't use Wikipedia images here, the only images that are able to be displayed here (due to technical restrictions) are already uploaded Wikiquote images (upload is disabled) and Commons images. Cbrown1023 talk 21:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

ASAP

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68.160.100.226 Jesus article etc Vandal, could someone warn this guy to stop this--McNoddy 16:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Since this guy vandalized other articles too, I put a temporal blocking (one day) on him or her. --Aphaia 17:38, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Non-existing fr: interwiki on many pages

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Hi, i've found interwiki links to nonexisting pages on fr.quote here. What's reason for including them? --Milda@cs.wiki (talk) 23:57, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The page on the french wiki might have existed at some point. You can either change the link to the correct page if it exists or delete it. Koweja 00:20, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a side-effect of the closedown of the French Wikiquote, which only just restarted. Fys. &#147;Ta fys aym&#148;. 00:49, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is, we may wish to leave them. They are like "red links" and can encourage people to create those articles on the French Wikiquote and repopulate it. Cbrown1023 talk 01:09, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto. Unless they French folks would like to remove it once, I prefer to leave them. Since restart in the last December they reached already 100 articles milestone. Sooner or later, most of those interlang-redlinks would be filled. --Aphaia 02:39, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Policies and guidelines on Wikiquote

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taken from Wikiquote talk:Votes for deletion/GordonWattsDotCom

In that case the choir is being a little disingenuous. Wikiquote:Policies and guidelines states:

The policies of Wikiquote's sister project, Wikipedia, usually apply equally well to Wikiquote. In addition, most of them are more mature and hence more polished than Wikiquote's policies, which are still in the process of being developed. Where not specified in Wikiquote, use Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines and linked articles.
Also most of the stated policies on that WQ page are links to WP pages. Ironically NPOV is a policy that InvisibleSun rejects on Talk:John Betjeman:
Editors have the option of personal preference; it could even be said to be encouraged to a great extent and is part of what makes our project distinctive.
(And see other points he makes there.)
Tyrenius 01:52, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting remark, Thank you Tyrenius. As a part of "the choir" who claimed Wikipedia policy is not automatically our policy unless it is crystal-clear the policy in question should be applied Wikimedia project wide, I would love to fix this unconsistecy. I agree on the basic idea of recommendation to refer to the Wikipedia policies, but at the same time I think it is not our current practice to render those policies and guidelines as unquestionable norms to our project. In my impression, they remain as good references and guidelines, while people can argue its validity. Or is it only I that feel so? --Aphaia 10:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, you aren't the only one, Aphaia. en:Wikipedia's huge and incredibly complex set of policies and practices cannot possibly serve as a bible for any Wikimedia project except en:Wikipedia. No other project has a signficant fraction of its participants, nor can they invest anything approaching the likely thousands of person-years of work on those policies. From the beginning (or at least since I've been here, which at its 900-article count isn't too different), Wikiquote has used Wikipedia as a starting point for its own policies. But it has always had to be much looser in interpretation and execution, if for no other reason that it has only had a few regular editors and no more than a hundred or so occasional editors at one time. We have been gradually developing Wikiquote-specific policies, many of which are required because of the different nature of quote compendiums vs. encyclopedias. We have very many policy, draft, and other maintenance and operational pages that include historical WP links that ought to be updated, fixed, or replaced, but we have very few people who have the experience with Wikiquote and the time to do this work. We also suffer from an alarming burn-out rate for those few editors, no doubt because so much work must be done.
The inevitable result of all this is that our policy pages will always lag our practices. It is relatively easy to embarrass Wikiquotians trying to make a point based on practice and practicality with contradictory quotes from these pages. It is much more challenging to work with everyone to learn the reasons why we have the practices we do, how they can be improved, and actually perform the work that must be done to remove these inconsistencies.
Does this mean that frequent editors are always right? Of course not. I myself have been properly caught in contradictions, sometimes because of situational differences, but often enough because I forgot a policy or practice somewhere. Older Wikiquotians can always use the eyes of newer ones to find some places where work needs to be done, especially given the fluid nature of all pages in a wiki.
I haven't yet looked into the specific concerns cited above because (A) it came up during a VfD which I see as resolvable by other means; and (B) I'm much too tired right now to dig into these kinds of problems (I'm afraid I'm approaching my own burn-out). But I wanted to make clear that the overall problem is systemic of the level of community participation, the differences between the projects, and the need to get work accomplished whether or not we have formal, umambiguous doctrine on any particular topic. Just about the only policies on which you should expect to see intransigence from regular editors are mandatory Wikimedia Foundation policies. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 11:43, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well said. I think that WikiQuote should not feel obligated to follow Wikipedia policies if we want to do things differently. However, the Wikipedia policies should be accepted as a starting point if there isn't a current policy or guideline here. Basically, common sense should be a good guide. It seems we have been more productive at resolving disputes than Wikipedia -and with less resources and editors, and for this we should be glad and happy.--GordonWatts 02:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be helpful to tweak some of the text on the policy page etc so it is in line with what's come up as a result of this discussion. This would be particularly relevant to users here (such as myself) who are used to WP ways of doing things. Tyrenius 03:32, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edit toolbar

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I have made some changes to the edit toolbar (the thing right above the text box when you try to edit a page). I have included buttons that were previously missing and have been requested here. I do not think they all need to be there, so I would like your feedback on which we should remove. (To use them or see what they do, just click on them and the changes will appear in the text box.) Thanks, Cbrown1023 talk 15:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The way to change is only accessible to admins and is found at MediaWiki:Common.js. Cbrown1023 talk 15:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I can't think of anything to be removed. I'd suggest adding one found on Wikipedia if possible, which is for creating redirect pages.--Poetlister 15:57, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Huh? I've already made the change, there are too many and I would like to know which to remove. There is a redirect button (#R). Cbrown1023 talk 16:28, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for bringing those edit toolbar updates over, Cbrown1023. I've thought about adding some Wikiquote-specific formatting buttons for a while now. (It's item #41 on my never-ending to-do list.) In particular, it would be great to have the following for the complex dialog formatting:
  • Format a dialog speaker, e.g. :'''Mr. Spock''':
  • Format a context line, e.g. :''[In the diner, the friends discuss the explosion.]'':
  • Format a stage direction, e.g. ''[grimacing]''
    • I'm somewhat ambivalent about a button for this one. It's a battle between the utility of avoiding numerous inconsistencies versus the tendency to misuse and overuse stage directions.
  • Half-width horizontal rule, i.e. <hr width="50%"/>\n
I'm sure there are others. I would also suggest removing some (like "picture gallery") and tweaking others (like "block of quoted text") for WQ use. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:10, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It would be pretty easy to add those, it's just I'm not sure what images we should use for them. Cbrown1023 talk 19:52, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure that this will work. We just need to find images. Cbrown1023 talk 20:15, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I found an image for the dialogue one ([1]), but I'm still looking for the others. Cbrown1023 talk 21:37, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Update After a lot of trying and some help from friends, I finally got all the code worked out and most of the images. We just have three images left and then we are done! :) Cbrown1023 talk 22:48, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Cbrown1023, how are you searching for icons? It's not obvious to me from the URL where specifically those button icons are coming from, and it's taking me some time to wander through all the categories of icons on Commons. I'd especially like to see the image description pages, because I'd like to know if we can use some of these images to create new or modified versions without violating GFDL or CCL. Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:17, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The url is obtained from clicking on the image (or something of the sort) when you are on the image descriptor page. The pagename from the image can be found using the url, if it has commons in its name (close to the end probably) then it is on commons and the final name (after the last /) is the page name. Cbrown1023 talk 12:43, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The category name is commons:Category:ButtonToolbar and the button template is commons:Image:Button_template.png (which is cc-by-sa-1.0, so we should be able to modify). Cbrown1023 talk 12:49, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I had thought it was something like that, but apparently I made the mistake of using the "horizontal rule" (http://en.wikiquote.org/skins-1.5/common/images/button_hr.png) button to decode the mapping. There is no commons:Image:Button hr.png, nor did I find one in the category you cite. Could it be that not every button image in use by Wikimedia has a proper image description page? Since I created a half-width button by carefully "erasing" some of the pixels of the HR button, technically I can't upload my own derivative creation. ☹ ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:53, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The thing about the horizontal rule button is that it is include by default in all Wikimedia sites. You may be able to upload it as Copyrighted by the WMF (because I doubt that that image has a descriptor page and it is owned by the Foundation). Cbrown1023 talk 21:07, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I wanted to snark about why the missing HR button would be "include[d] by default" when Image:Bold icon.png is in the above category, with a proper license page. I also wanted to point out the arguments we've had about the apparent paradox of Wikimedia having restricted copyrights for some of its standard images to prevent trademark and look-and-feel infringments, and how that would prevent us from adapting them without explicit Foundation permission. But then I noticed that the bold icon is also in commons:Category:Mediawiki edit toolbar, which is where, sure enough, one can find Image:H-line icon.png (which inconveniently doesn't match its URL for toolbar use). If I wanted to be nit-picky, I could point out that many of these critical icons don't have proper source claims, just GFDL assertions, presumably implying that the uploaders assume that it's understood that they created the icons. (Even though Wikimedia doesn't allow these assumptions for other images.) I could say that, but I don't want to cause a fuss, eh? ☺ ~ Jeff Q (talk), Devil's Advocate, 23:05, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
:) I'm glad you found it, and I doubt that it would be good to make a fuss. :-P Now that it is GFDL, you can upload it. I am eager to see what you have created. :) Cbrown1023 talk 23:57, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Don't be that eager. ☺ All I've done so far is upload the half-width button to Commons:Image:Button hr halfwidth.png and replaced the blank template in MediaWiki:Common.js with its URL. It's not currently being rendered, so I'm not sure if it's a problem with my browser, a delay while the image is cached, or something I haven't done yet (or done right). My drawing skills are unimpressive, so it may take a while for me to come up with test icons along the lines I've suggested at MediaWiki talk:Common.js#Dialog icon images. As you said there, I hadn't yet noticed the current "button talk" for dialog speaker, which is what I was looking for for that, at least. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:29, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bad translations

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A newly created article, Mikhail Leontyev, raises a question which I don't believe we have dealt with so far. How do we deal with an article in which the translations are so bad as to make the article problematic? Should it be nominated for deletion? Should it be given a tag saying something along the line of "This article contains questionable translations," etc., with a view to improvement by subsequent editors? To keep the article simply as it is would reflect poorly on us, I would argue. How to deal with such articles depends on the degree of badness in question:

1) If an article contains just a few easily corrected errors (e.g., "indepted" for "indebted"), it can be edited by treating the errors as if they were typos.

2) If better translations can be found for bad ones, then substitutions can be made. For example, at one point we were sent some transwikied Wikipedia quotes of Voltaire. The translated quotes, supplied without the original French, were mediocre at best and were at times quite absurdly bad. Better translations were found along with the original French and were used as replacements.

3) If an article has links to the original language sources, another editor who knows the language can make better translations. This, however, raises another question. Our current practice is to accept only existent translations on the grounds that they are verifiable and therefore credible. It's a practice which, while understandable enough, makes the translation abilities of our editors entirely moot. Wikipedia, being a much larger operation than ours, has an entire system of translation requests, translators, proofreaders and so on. But even if we had such means, we evidently could not make use of them according to our practice, which declines to accept what editors translate on their own initiative. Should we reconsider this stance? In my own view, our practice is insufficiently flexible. - InvisibleSun 01:53, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My brain hurts! There are too many good questions being raised by everyone lately. I'll just toss out some quick thoughts here:
  • If the article contains lots of basic typos, how confident can we be that the actual meanings are accurate? Not only must we be concerned about the translator's command of English, we must also worry about the vast number of English words in which one letter can completely change the meaning or connotation. This is why one needs professional translators, not amateurs or translation programs.
  • We can always hope for better translations, but that raises the issue of how likely we'll get them. If the subject is barely known in the English-speaking world, we're not likely to get them at all. This also goes to the question of whether they achieve sufficient notability. One thing I've noticed is that not every person whom Wikipedians can find sufficient info on to create a decent WP article necessarily has enough pithy quotes to justify a Wikiquote article.
  • Because of the above, I still favor reliably-sourced quotes. But let's face it, any practice we have is only a position, and there will always be articles that don't follow these practices. Our policies are, de facto, loosely enforced and implicitly flexible.
If someone is sufficiently concerned about the quality of an article's translations that they bring it up at WQ:VFD, I don't have a problem with this. On the other hand, I can understand it if folks might be concerned it would be quickly voted for deletion, the fate of most articles we nominate. But I think that's because we still have plenty of wretched material to get rid of. As long as we commit to careful consideration of how to preserve an article (which is common enough for existing WP subjects who aren't obviously unquotable), perhaps VfD isn't too bad a forum. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:48, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Username guideline

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moved to Wikiquote talk:Username policy

Wikimania 2007

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The Third International Wikimedia Conference, Wikimania 2007 will be held in Taipei, ROC. Further information is found at the official website.

As for Scholarship, announced as follows: The Wikimedia Foundation is pleased to announce the availability of a limited number of scholarships for travel expenses to Wikimania 2007, the annual conference of the Wikimedia Foundation. The conference will be held in Taipei, Taiwan from August 3-5, 2007. For more information, or to apply, visit [2]. The deadline for applications is April 1, 2007.

Please don't hesitate to take a chance to join! --Aphaia 17:15, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]


1 Year Blocks & CheckUser

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Recently, I have blocked two w:IP addresses for one year based on m:CheckUser evidence provided by a m:steward (the blocking time was also suggested by that steward). Aphaia and I were worried about the length of the block (1 year) because it goes against our blocking policy for IPs. Cbrown1023 talk 18:30, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As follow-up. The steward who dealt with the request was m:user:MaxSem (Thank you!). According to Cbrown1023, on #wikimedia-steward MaxSem told him the recent serial creation of inappropriate username accounts have come from two IP addresses. I think one year blocking with prohibition to create a new account from those addresses is not excessive and would help reducing our workload. --Aphaia 18:39, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Wikiquote-l

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We have a mailing list! I just got a mailing list created for our project (Wikiquote-l). You can sign up for it and read the list information at this link. If you would like be a moderator or administrator for the list, contact me (the list owner, I am linked from the bottom of the listinfo page). Unfortunately, I am only willing to make current sysops mods or admins for the list, but everyone else is welcome to subscribe (and please do)! Hopefully, this will be a mailing list for all the Wikiquote projects where we can talk about issues related to us all and ask for help on discussions. Cbrown1023 talk 00:29, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yay! You mean the newly created list is intended to serve the whole/global Wikiquote community rather than English Wikiquote? Just for clarification.
Yes. :) Cbrown1023 talk 02:06, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think we are better to advertise the list ... including foundatio-l, m:Metapub or elsewhere we think appropriate :) Thanks, anyway! --Aphaia 01:52, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I will get around to that tomorrow, it is bed time for me now. :) I will definitely be posting it on a few other language Wikiquote Village pump's as well. :) Cbrown1023 talk 02:06, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

pride

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i posted this at the front discussion page, but wouldn't pride be a good catagory? —This unsigned comment is by 165.91.166.94 (talk • contribs) . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride

Hmm, what kind of articles do you think would go to that category? Just curious. --Aphaia 08:03, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]


2001: A Space Odyssey

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Does anyone have any thoughts on the recent addition of section headings within the dialogue section on this page? As enumerated on the Talk page, this was done so that a user could link to specific sections of the dialogue from other wikis. While I think the purpose is fine, I'm not sure I like the look of it on the page, and it certainly does not now conform to our templates. First, what do people think of this, and second is there another way to accomplish this without this change to the look of the page? ~ UDScott 11:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am the culprit responsible for these changes. As I mentioned on the Talk page, I would like to be able to link to specific chunks of dialogue from elsewhere. As I later mentioned on the Talk page, another option is to replace the extra sub-section headings with invisible <div id="anchor_name"/> <span id="anchor_name"/> name anchors. Reference: w:Help:Link#Section linking (anchors). Visible headings are nice because it's easy to get a link from the page TOC, but I can live with looking at the page source to get the invisible name anchor. I'm not trying to rock any boats here, I'd just like to be able to link to specific bits of dialogue from elsewhere. If the now-larger TOC is the aesthetic problem, perhaps we could try a {{TOCright}}. Thanks for not just silently reverting my edits. I've edited on Wikipedia for a year, but I'm new to Wikiquote, and liable to blunder around violating every sort of rule. If a particular style guide governs a given article, it would be nice to link to it from the article's talk page, as is common on Wikipedia where many articles' talk pages display banners for the applicable WikiProject(s). --Teratornis 19:44, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't necessarily dislike your additions - they just are a different look than I am used to here, and represent a departure from the templates. I wanted to offer it up for discussion. I tend to like smaller TOCs and am not really in favor of the TOC on the right. But we'll see what others think. Should it be felt that the changes are intrusive, the invisible tags might be a better way to go. ~ UDScott 20:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree the intention is helpful ... but on a wiki anything can be changed including those subsection titles. It means external links would not work in the future. The use of div element and tag might be more flexible and not contradict with our manual of style, I suppose. --Aphaia 13:17, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just a few thoughts:
  • An empty span element (e.g., <span id="HAL-chess"/>) prefacing the quoted text works as well as a div element, but is less likely to interfere with the other wiki markup. (Go to Latin proverbs#Kill_them_all and edit it to see an example.)
  • Dividing films into scene sections may provide a useful means to refine our current dialog-sourcing practice of sorting chronologically and including a leading scene description to pinpoint the scene for source checkers. In particular, films with clear act divisions (like 2001's "The Dawn of Man", the untitled Moon segment, "Jupiter Mission: Eighteen Months Later", and "Jupiter, and Beyond the Infinite") have logical sections.
  • I'm leery about using subheadings to separate dialog segments themselves, but it may not ultimately be a bad idea once we start getting serious about avoid copyright violation of film dialog. (Currently, many of our film articles have 20 or more dialog segments — never mind the plethora of character quotes — and so may be reasonably considered as copyvios by their copyright holders.)
I have no specific recommendation now, just these observations. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(Smacking self on forehead in anguish) Yes, I meant span rather than div, and I placed a <strike> through my original error above, to reduce the chance of misguiding someone who might apply it. (Note to anguished self: try actually reading the style guidelines one links to, instead of re-confirming the unreliability of personal memory.) --Teratornis 15:23, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, don't beat yourself up about it. I've seen div suggested and used safely with Mediawiki as well. Span is just a little more flexible, that's all. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 16:26, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Phyllis Schlafly

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I was wondering if anyone could review Phyllis Schlafly; I just created it by taking a batch of quotes from other sites and trying to verify them as best I could. I'm looking for advice on style (I just ordered the sourced ones by date, and the unsourced alphabetically), on how I did my cites, and on whether my cites are considered reliable sources here (especially the New York Times one). Also, if someone with administrator powers could drop it in the front-page rotation of 'new articles', that would be extra sweet. grendel|khan 06:33, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nicely and thoroughly done, Grendelkhan. I've made two changes, one for readers and one for editors.
  • I moved the full citation for multiple quotes to the first occurrence and added distinct but abbreviated citations for the subsequent quotes from the same source. This is because Wikiquote articles are normally full of unsourced quotes, many editors don't notice that we try to keep these in separate sections, and there is no single standard sort order imposed across all articles. The consequence is that it is very hard to tell if a quote that does not have an explicit source is grouped with others from the same source or simply one added by someone at a later date.
  • I also added a lot of non-printing whitespace to make it easier for editors to notice the separate elements in the article. Wikipedians have an unfortunate habit, reinforced by illogical default settings in automated tools, to squeeze all possible whitespace out of articles, rendering the result nearly impossible for non-geek editors to read, as if wiki editing were some kind of obfuscation contest. This problem is even worse for the highly formatted text of Wikiquote. It's always a good idea to use some minimal whitespace to separate segments of information from each other, wherever it can be done without affecting the displayed text.
I haven't checked the sources, tried to work on any of your comments in the text, or considered any potential balance issue for this controversial person, but overall, it's an excellent start to a substantial article. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:43, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I changed it over to <ref> formatting; it separates the citations from what they go to, but it makes it easier to keep the references uniform, while still dealing with the problem you explain above, of people adding unsourced quotes in blocks. (Also, good point about whitespace. I'll try to remember that.) grendel|khan 15:11, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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