Wikiquote:Village pump archive 4

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Originally posted to Wikiquote:Village pump, archived from January 2005 till June 2005.

Village pump archive 4

WQ:FAQ#Quotes_by_your_neighbour out of consensus

The answer in the FAQ ("no policy was formulated") seems to me to be out-of-line with the consensus that can be seen in WQ:VFDA which says "put these on your user page, unless your neighbour is notable. I propose the following answer:

"Unless your neighbour is notable, probably not. However, you are free to collect quotes of yourself, people you know and notable people on your user page, and organize them however you like."

This, to me, seems to reflect the wide consensus that is established here (as well as short and understandable). ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 5 July 2005 04:57 (UTC)

I think so. Now it becomes a part of our guideline, somehow policy. If necessary, we can make it sure it is a part of our policies in a proper wy of confirmation. --Aphaia 5 July 2005 05:03 (UTC)

I'm in favor of the policy of having personal quotes on userpages. It answers the concerns that are sometimes raised on VfD and elsewhere, such as Talk:Main_Page#The_ordinary_mortals_should_be_allowed_to_contribute. It seems to me that this policy is a very positive idea, without any negative side effects. iddo999 5 July 2005 05:26 (UTC)

With two supporters, I have made this modification. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 5 July 2005 05:53 (UTC)

I am a bit surprised what made you so haste. I think you could wait a day or so, because it concerns "policy". I don't think we need to wait on all matters (like correcting typos) but one hour is too short to change something related to policy. --Aphaia 5 July 2005 06:07 (UTC)

Reverted. I'll wait a while longer. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 5 July 2005 06:37 (UTC)

I, too, support making this practice (which has been in place since Kalki addressed it last year) a formal policy. I suggest we give this two weeks here on VP for folks to consider it before determining consensus. — Jeff Q (talk) 5 July 2005 07:35 (UTC)

Good idea. So we will say "it is our official policy anyone cannot create "neighbor's quotes", unless the person is notable from the view of Wikiquote criteria." I support two weeks listening. --Aphaia 5 July 2005 07:45 (UTC)

I would also like to add similar language to WQ:NOT. Something along the lines of "# A place for quotations by you and your friends. However, you can put such quotations on your user page." (Moshe)

Not bad. How about the next to the 6th "not a personal website"? --Aphaia 5 July 2005 14:25 (UTC)

While thinking about this and other things, I compared WQ:NOT to w:WP:NOT, and found out we do not have a Template:Policy, and of course, we did not use it anywhere. I think that there is sufficient collected wisdom about running wikiquote here that it is high time we got the template, and started using it (for example, for Wikiquote:Voting when it is finalized as well as for WQ:NOT). ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 5 July 2005 15:14 (UTC)

I urge everyone involved to check WQ:NOT and WQ:FAQ. I attempted to follow, as much as I understood here, the agreement here but if you feel I misinterpreted, please let me know. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 14:41, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Two proposal on WQ:VFDA

Moved to Wikiquote talk:Votes for deletion archive.

Palette of special characters

Any chance we can get the same palette of special characters on the edit page as Wikipedia does? Also, can we have the search page give the user the option of creating a new article if the name they're looking for doesn't exist (again like Wikipedia)? Both of these features would go a long way towards making WQ more friendly for editors. 18.26.0.18 22:17, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your proposals, (and would you like to register to Wikiquote? ;-)) My opinion is, if it is technically possible on Wikipedia, similar to Wikiquote. And as for palette, I like to have it, though the current table on English Wikipedia isn't so much user-friendly from my view. As for "search page" I can't figure what you mean - you might mean "Wikiquote has no article yet" message? If so, I proposed recently a similar idea - a message including "Wikiquote is not an encyclopedia". If anyone don't mind, I'll be so bold to create such a message ;-) --Aphaia 07:43, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

It's simple wiki markup in w:MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning. There should be no problem copying that. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 20:38, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Unless someone has an objection to this, I think we should import Wikipedia's version of MW:Copyrightwarning immediately to give us the character palette. (It may not be as user-friendly as it could be, but it beats the heck out of no palette at all.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:25, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks to iddo999 for making the update! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:54, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Having this palette seems like a nice feature to me. I think that it's better to just edit our MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning and test it, instead of discussing it on VP, therefore I did just that:) I also updated the copyrightwarning itself from wikipedia. Feel free to revert/improve/discuss it further. Notes: (1) I removed the word "quickly", sounded a little too arrogant to me, and also inaccurate perhaps. (2) Using the same "cite your sources" as in wikipedia, because we don't have one of our own yet, though it's arguably even more important for wq than wp - I suggest that we copy the entire "cite your sources" wp page to wq, both so that we could modify it, and so that it wouldn't be confusing for wq users who are redirected to wp as it is now, though there's a drawback that there'd be no auto sync with wp updates. (3) I removed the "you promise you wrote it yourself" comment, it seems much less appropriate for wq, not sure if we should have there instead a different comment that mentions w:public domain and perhaps w:fair use and other types of resources. (4) I changed "writing" to "contribution" in the last comment, and even though it still seems more relevant to wp than wq, it's also true that wq articles are being redistributed and are being edited (mercilessly...) - so overall I like this comment as it is, but I removed the wp bold text for it because it's somewhat less relevant for wq. iddo999 02:03, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone have any objections to moving this discussion to MediaWiki talk:Copyrightwarning? ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:59, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

That makes sense, except that 18.26.0.18's second question (about the search page) hasn't been resolved. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:47, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Election

Elections for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, 2005 has opened. Candidates will make their presentation from the next Tuesday, June 7. The vote will start on 27 June, 2005. Further information is available at the page. --Aphaia 01:14, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Improvement of Votes for deletion

Moved to Wikiquote talk:Votes for deletion#Improvement_of_Votes_for_deletion by me. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 5 July 2005 04:23 (UTC)

Voting eligibility

This thread has been moved to Wikiquote_talk:Voting#Proposals.--Aphaia 3 July 2005 05:12 (UTC)

Draft for "voting" is available now at Wikiquote:Voting.

Now we go ahead and begins to draft general rules on voting, not only voting eligibility. All editors are invited to review the draft, make edits and put their opinion on the talk page. Some editors including me put a high priority on this topic, and seem to think it will be one of our formal policy. Thank you for your consideration, if any. --Aphaia 5 July 2005 11:08 (UTC)

TV Tome

TV Tome is now TV.com, and none of the Tv Tome links link to the correct pages any more. There appears to be a generic type of link for tv tome (inside {}'s), so I'm reluctant to go through all the tv quotation pages and replace these with the usual external link type (link title). What would be the best way to approach this? Thanks, --Paddy whack 28 June 2005 05:10 (UTC)

The quick way to fix this is to change Template:Tvtome appropriately, which I'll see if I can do. (The reason to use templates is to make it easy to change every link instance when a site changes its practices.) Eventually, this should probably be changed to a "tvcom" template. A side note: I created this template because I found that TV Tome was an excellent source for basic show information (it's somewhat better with accurate quotes than IMDb), but in the two weeks or so that I've been trying to use TV.com in its place, I found the new site to be rather poorly designed, being mostly flash (literally) and apparently having much less information about the shows. For some reason, they haven't transferred over the recaps, and the quotes aren't nearly as well-presented as TV Tome. Such is "progress". — Jeff Q (talk) 28 June 2005 08:08 (UTC)

Quick update: the name-based links to TV Tome still appear to be working, but the ID# links might not be. I verified that Buffy and MST3K links worked, and I changed Veronica Mars, which incorrectly used an ID# link, to use the name version, and it now works as well. They are all redirected to the appropriate TV.com page. However, TV.com is still updating its site after the TV Tome assimilation, so there may be problems. If you have a show whose TV Tome link is not properly redirecting to TV.com, first check to see if its TV Tome template looks like this:

{{tvtome title|tome=ShowName|title=Show Name}}

Most TV shows' "ShowName" settings are just the capitalized show title without spaces, like "VeronicaMars" or "BuffyTheVampireSlayer". I've also got a query into CNet.com (which owns TV.com) to see if I can get a simplified Tv.com URL to make recording (and templating) TV.com URLs easier. — Jeff Q (talk) 28 June 2005 08:51 (UTC)

Ali Sina -- edit war brewing

There is a user who insists on removing quotes criticising Sina. I've reverted him once already, and he kept reverting. Since this is not "clear vandalism" (he has a rationale, twisted though it may be), I am asking for community involvement. If others feel that the quotes being on the wp page is reason enough for them not to be on wikiquote, so be it. If others do not feel so, I would hope someone else would feel the need to revert the deletion. [As an aside, it is amusing for me to see how a supposedly-pro-free-speech advocate's supporters try to silence criticisms from the opposition]. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 28 June 2005 07:39 (UTC)

I think it follows our axiom NPOV to list criticising quotes. It isn't good to remove such quotes. He or she can add others' quote(s) favorable to this person. --Aphaia 28 June 2005 08:43 (UTC)

This is yet another Wikipedia war whose battleground has spread to Wikiquote. The anon deleting these quotes says on WP that he or she has found "interesting quotes" by Sina opponents, but hasn't bothered to replace the more vituperous ones here with these supposedly useful quotes. That might help defuse this situation. Meanwhile, there is the question of whether Sina or his critics are sufficiently notable themselves, which Aphaia is addressing by nominating the article for deletion. I ask that interested parties try to assemble dispassionate arguments for and against this article there. — Jeff Q (talk) 28 June 2005 09:14 (UTC)

As for his critic, I found his name and writing (perhaps a paper or report titled "Religion and Politics") is refered in a paper on Arabic issue written in Japanese as one of English written references, so he might be notable among Arabic specialists. As for Ali Sina I haven't found no evidence at least in Japanese academics nor journalism. Though it could be a sign of notability a possibly notable person notices and writes something to the person in question, but I don't think it sufficient. Any input from interested parties will be welcome. --Aphaia 28 June 2005 09:22 (UTC)

Seems like lame attempts at censorship, as far as I can see. iddo999 28 June 2005 10:14 (UTC)

Hi. Once again, there's an anon insisting on deleting links of critics, and once again, I am asking for community support to not delete critical quotes. Note that this anon has done this after I asked him, in a talk message, to take care not to delete quotes (after giving him the benefit of the doubt that it was an accident) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 5 July 2005 07:40 (UTC)

Everyone is invited to join the discussion on Talk:Ali Sina. The anon mentioned on the above is now a registered user, White Knight. Just for your information. --Aphaia 5 July 2005 10:50 (UTC)

Question re: printing quotes

Hi, I am brand new to your site and have a question/request. I would like to be able to cut and paste a few of your arabic quotes for my ex... First, is that allowed? And, could you please tell be what I need to do in order for the characters to come out correct on my blank word document?

Sorry, I am not very computer literate...

Also, will I find the answer at the bottom of this page? Or, could you send it to my e-mail.

Thanks in advance,

Carol cbesch@sbcglobal.net

Yes, the content is free, so you're allowed - see GNU Free Documentation License for the exact details. We use the UTF-8 unicode character encoding, in case this answers your 2nd question. If these answers are too general, you could try to be more specific. iddo999 1 July 2005 19:40 (UTC)

Hello Carol, welcome to Wikiquote, for your first question, yes of course, that is one purpose of our project and we appreciate you to your cordial question ;-) Unless you use the whole page, you don't need to follow all the GFDL restriction (like adding history, full copy of GFDL etc.) but we strongly request you for including your source, that is, "English Wikiquote". Like Those quotes are from "Arabic proverbs" on English Wikiquote, http://en.wikiquote.org/. Thanks. --Aphaia 1 July 2005 19:53 (UTC)

SORBS DNSBL

Since April (or May) all Wikimedia project block open proxies using SORBS DNSBL, a list of open proxies. The full policy is now available at m:Proxy blocking.

Here some problems arise:

• Some editors who happened to be victimized by this blocking complained or pointed out the message they got have been offensive and it should be rewritten in more polite way. Current message might be available at MediaWiki:Sorbs.
• On meta, it is recommended us to do two things: 1) on User:SORBS DNSBL to provide information about this blocking to users who are blocked and 2) to lead the editors who are blocked by this reason to a mailinglist to allow them ask sysops an explanation and to list them on whitelist, if possible. Then registered users on a good faith wouldn't be suffered by blocking based on SORBS. On the other hand, now Wikiqutoe has no mailinglist. Where we should lead the potential victims?

Personally I think we have to establish a sort of contact way for mostly good people. It might happen a good editor uses an ISP run on a bad policy. And a mailing list might be one of solutions. Another possibility I can find is to lead people to a list of admins like on Wikiquote:Administrators. Providing a link to "Mailthisuser" with to them might be friendly. It isn't considerable to list an IP addresses itself to the whitelist, but only a certain user name should be listed, so we don't have to think if the user can use Wikimail which all registered users can utilize. I try to put a brief tentative note on the user page in question. Any opinions? --Aphaia 2 July 2005 07:33 (UTC)

Blocking an anon@Abortion

I put a blocking on an anon so-called 214. Background and further information is available on Talk:Abortion, specially Talk:Abortion#Unprotect. Though there was no obvious support for my proposal in that section, the core idea "if he or she (and inplicitly all other editors) behaves not him- or herself, then put a block on this editor temporary" was supported by some respectable editors. And from my view 214 chagned both the section names (that I mentioned explicitly as "not to change") and the structures of sections (with three large sections --> categorisation by occupation, which was at least one editor had opposed) without any consensus, so this series of editing has to be disturbed and reverted. Your consideration and comments to the talk will be appreciated. --Aphaia 2 July 2005 16:14 (UTC)

Linking to categories?

Is it possible to give link to categories such that they will become wikilinks? If one just writes [[Category:Foo]], it makes the article belong in the category, rather than create a link to it. That means it's impossible, in a related article, to put something like See also [[Category:Foo|foo]]. Anyone aware of a work-around? ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 4 July 2005 13:48 (UTC)

Try [[:Category:Bar]]. Thanks. --Aphaia 4 July 2005 14:30 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! It worked. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 4 July 2005 16:16 (UTC)

If you would like, please take a look at the Abortion page; there is minor debate there

I am a new user to Wikiquote, but I have, for about two months, edited at Wikipedia (since May 02, according to the log). When I attempted to post a quote on Wikiquote on one occasion, I had to wait because the page was locked, and then decided to become involved in a dispute revolving around a new user who made some edits, waited four days on one occasion, and became impatient and got into an edit war.

In any case, Jeff Q suggested here that I might present my concerns here at the Village Pump.

My thoughts are that the Abortion Quotes page is pretty good as it is, but, because some anonymous person asked for my intervention, I felt sorry for them and created a section (patterned after something I saw w:User:Ed_Poor do once, when he was mediating on a Terri Schiavo dispute). (He created sections which identified problems and allowed input from others, a good idea that I emulated here: Talk:Abortion#Analysis and proposed solutions.)

I do not have the authority to officially speak on the topic (I'm not an admin, not a sysop, etc.), but, as a Wikiquote user acting in good faith, I invite you on over to check out the disputes, which involve both "behavior" questions of users and also questions of how to structure the page. Don't worry: There is not anything offensive or inflammatory; I have tried to act as a peacemaker, and I ask nothing in return about which way to vote: I already case my votes in the Abortion talk section that I created. I give credit to Aphaia for helping me structure this section. We may not all agree on the details, and it is a tad long (as in lengthy), but it covers probably ALL conceivable problems (I looked down the talk page for ideas), and it is meant in good faith, not to offend. Thank you, --GordonWattsDotCom 6 July 2005 00:23 (UTC)

Just clarification: no admin has the authority to officially speak on the topic. It is up to the community matter, in general, unless the Board intervenes. Admins enforce the policy and guideline using their sysop previleges, but as editors they have no difference nor authority from other "ordinary" editors. --Aphaia 6 July 2005 01:18 (UTC)

214 has once again decided to revert again and again, doing unclear changes. I am sick of it. I am going to let the admin team take care of it from now on. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 7 July 2005 16:45 (UTC)

I reverted it. With such major structual change, it is difficult to leave her or htotally aie new addition. And this neglect to on-going discussion about strucutre is very selfish in my opinion and very discouraged. Specially, she made the similar edit once before and was complained by another person (I meant Kalki), it is a surprise she did it again. In my opinion under the curernt situation it is unacceptable to mix the structural change and new quote addition and therefore perform an unclear edit. It seems to show the fact she is, as already pointed out by some editors, problematic and uncooperative. --Aphaia 7 July 2005 17:11 (UTC)

I have attempted to follow the (lengthy, difficult) debate over 214's behavior, and I identify several areas in dispute:

• Whether or not she changes the structure of the page

I looked at every single edit she made, and she made only a few minor changes to the structure, like this one here, which did not appear harmful, and I don't think this was malicious vandalism, but I would agree that is it best to make absolutely no structure changes. (That is, she was wrong, but parties over-reacted, I think; 214's request to other editors for them to fix her edits instead of reverting them was reasonable, but no one acted upon it; I understand that many people have a busy work schedule, and I place no blame, but her suggestions have merit.)

• Whether or not she does several things in one edit (like change structure and add edits)

See above; I also add that she makes a large number of edit changes in a short period of time, and even if the edits are good, it is overwhelming; Little by little is sometimes more acceptable, even if all edits are good.

• Whether or not she makes proper comments in the edit summaries about each edit

She sometimes neglects to place a comment in the edit summary, and this makes things more confusing.

• Violations of the 3RR

My reading of the logs indicates that both 214 and Moshe violated the 3RR, but this rule is not official, and I would hope the parties make edits more slowly and discuss.

• Whether she has waited for community consensus

One time, 214 waited four (4) days for feedback, but recently she is more impatient. We must all be patient and wait.

• Her reactions and attitude

She has over-reacted, somewhat, and spoken negatively of other editors, I think, but others should grant her request following, because it is reasonable: She claims in the 15:53, 7 July 2005 edit summery: "ALL, repeat ALL, edits comport with wiki rules and with discussed consensus," and then asks other editors that "If you find any that do not, edit them - don't revert.."

• Removing good quotations that should not be removed

I saw one of 214's edits, in which she claimed a Tori Amos quote was not found anywhere except on Wiki, but I think this claim is incorrect: I looked in google and found much.

• Adding good quotes that improve the page

She has added many good quotes that were removed (by Dr. LeRoy Carhart, Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Dick Gephardt, Al gore, and maybe others, I don't know); I think this is bad.

• Placing quotations in the wrong section

She was guilty of this on several occasions once here, and we counseled her about it; however, in her 15:18, 7 July 2005 edit, it appears she placed the quotes in the right place. (She moved Ted Kennedy's, Jesse Jackson's etc. quotations that are pro-life quotes to the pro-life section, even though she had put them in the pro-choice area, probably because of a misunderstanding about the speakers' current pro-choice views.) She might have made a small error of this type a second time.--GordonWattsDotCom 8 July 2005 05:15 (UTC)

CONCLUSIONS: I think it is bad that anybody would be blocked, because in this case, 214 appears to have made some positive contributions. It would have been good to try to change her edits and fix them instead of reverting them, but I understand how this may be hard/difficult: One main problem I have found in dealing with 214 is that she makes so many edits within a short period of time, and this is too fast. I admire her dedication to improvement, but sometimes changes, even good ones, should not be too fast; I reluctantly approve the block on her for one week, but I lament the fact that I think this dispute could have been handled differently, by fixing her edits. That might have worked. Nonetheless, I would approve the block because it has three (3) major positive side-effects:

1:It makes some members of the community happy;

2:There is still the potential by other editors to make improvements/edits -most especially by studying the edit history and looking for good ideas from edits made by 214 and others.

Third (3rd) and lastly, 214 might be able to suggest ideas or quotes through alternative means, such as email or by other means about which I have not thought.--GordonWattsDotCom 8 July 2005 05:35 (UTC)

I need to say on her last series of edits, she removed one quote first, and then made some (perhaps legitimate) edits. To save the quote she removed, I reverted all her edits. I don't oppose anyone would add those quotes, even she, but her edits were unclear and reversion was the surest way to retrieve what she had removed. And she had been warned not such disruptive and selfish editing, like structrual change or removal, so on my part I think her blocking is quite fair. And I think you misunderstand the situation. 3RR has no relevance to her latest blocking, but negligence to the on-going discussion is the reason. When we unprotected the page, I proposed that anyone who would ignore the discussion and consensus making may be blocked, and cumlatively. So I don't oppose any other sysop would reduce her blocking term properly according to his idea, but blocking isn't a bad treatment in my opinion. --Aphaia 8 July 2005 06:51 (UTC)

(quoting Aphaia) "I need to say on her last series of edits, she removed one quote first, and then made some (perhaps legitimate) edits...I don't oppose anyone would add those quotes, even she..." That is very noble and polite of you. Thank you, Aphaia. I would have handled her edits differently, but I think your attitude is good, and much better than she thinks of you. "And I think you misunderstand the situation. 3RR has no relevance to her latest blocking, but negligence to the on-going discussion..." I did understand that the 3RR was less important than her impatience, but thank you for clarifying. I would have handled this situation differently, Aphaia, but I understand that you are very busy, and the "right" solution, as I see it, would require you to spend too much time looking at her massive edits and pulling out the good contributions. If we got paid a salary for this work, we could spend more time and detail. ;-) --GordonWattsDotCom 8 July 2005 08:10 (UTC)

Categories needing some work

Moved to Wikiquote talk:Category schemes by me ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 6 July 2005 07:41 (UTC)

Thoughts by the community

As an on-and-off wp editor, I have stumbled on w:Wikipedia:Refactoring talk pages. When I saw a need for it, on Talk:Abortion, I went ahead and refactored the discussion. Knowing that it is easier to get forgiveness than permission (Grace Hopper), I am wondering what is the general feeling about this procedure? Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 6 July 2005 11:35 (UTC)

As the WP article suggests, there are different degrees of refactoring. I support archiving talk pages when they get long, and brief summaries with links to the archived material, but not deleting the original text, even with links to page histories. I have found that when discussions get long, it's because the topic is controversial, and editors often refer to elements of earlier discussions that may no longer exist without a complete archive. (I ran into this problem frequently with Wikipedia:Manual of Style, so I did as was suggested and actually read the archives relevant to various issues. It was tedious but extremely useful.) We aren't so short on database space that we need to delete old discussions, so I highly recommend (1) moving old but intact discussions to one or more archive pages, and (2) optionally adding summarized discussions as needed or desired. A quick glance at Talk:Abortion/Old suggests MosheZadka did (1) with a link at the top of the main talk page, which is my typical approach, so I'm happy. The summaries were more or less provided by the analysis of past discussions that GordonWattsDotCom provided on the current Talk:Abortion page. Jeff Q (talk) 7 July 2005 10:54 (UTC)

m:Changing username

From meta. Bureaucrats are now granted a new previledge to change user names. It was former possible only for developers. Offensive user names can therefore be somehow handled within the community, in case the account holder would like to change it, or the community decides to change it forcely. Just for your information. --Aphaia 02:44, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

The policies developed for Wikipedia seem entirely suitable here. If a name change is desired, and none of the less drastic options are adequate, the Username can be changed, the old user pages moved to those for the new Username, and then the old username should be recreated and blocked to prevent any future impersonations or confusions. (The first occasion of using this option resulted in me having to unblock myself after an autoblock of my IP, when I recreated the Sams account to block it permanently. Will now know the procedures better for any future incidents. I never had to unblock anyone before— let alone myself.) ~ Kalki 12:39, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Ahh, so you needed to recreate the account after all... I didn't understand you the first time. In this case it was probably a good idea in order to prevent confusion, because my name appeared in many talk pages - though even without doing that it's still technically possible to get the correct account, e.g. by history+diff of a given edit of a page. For comparison, on he.wikiquote we didn't need to block, because I only worked on one page there. In general I think that there cannot be any real harm without a block, i.e. it'd be fine not to block, though in case of a username with many edits it's still a nice idea pehaps, in order to prevent confusions. An action that's needed after username change is to move the user and usertalk pages - not sure why it's not done automatically - perhaps the developers don't want to have 2 possibly redundant redirect pages created for every username chnage, so they prefer the manual judgement of a bureaucrat. iddo999 07:53, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Seconded. We need to set up a request page with a link to WP guideline? Or just okay to put a link to WQ:AN and Wikiquote:Administrators? --Aphaia 02:28, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Links to quote sites?

There have been several incidents of users who run quote sites mass-putting in links in articles to their specific pages (e.g., see here. The problem here is that if they all did that then it could overshadow the actual content, but WQ cannot play favourites. I know Aphaia removed links to quote sites for that reason. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 14:34, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I think we have no reason to include those sites in our "external links" section. Because

1. such links seem to violate our policy WQ:NOT - Wikiquote is a collection of quotations, not a web directory of quotation sites.
2. most of them are shallow and not helpful as further reading. Links to original texts are helpful in most cases, but it cannot be said to those "quote sites".
3. now we are the 2nd popular quote site on the Internet according to the Alexa. As we have been growing, such "links to quote site(s)" are growing too. In my humble opinion those links are "bombs" to google search or just advertisement. In the worse case, just spamming.

If those links are huge (over 30) and submitted by anons mostly, and if we agree not to list those sites, we could consider it spamming. Then it would be helpful for us to list them on m:Spam blacklist. Any opinion? --Aphaia 09:17, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't think we should be that extreme. Just reverting the edits and explaining to the users that this is against policy (and having a clear statement of the policy!) should be enough, at first. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 10:28, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

The same person or his (or her) collegue seems to come again as 59.167.87.171 (talk · contributions). We need to word a clear statement as policy or at least guideline. --Aphaia 05:31, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

I reverted those additions and put a mesasge. See talk of 59.167.87.171. If you find anything wrong in my message and reverting, please correct it. Thank you. --Aphaia 05:47, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Multiple attempts by different IPs in the same Australian network to add the same non-authoritative, non-notable Australian quote source (quote-fox.com) seems to be spamming for personal gain (even if there is no money involved). Such activity should earn these IP users a 24-hour block at least. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:22, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

So, if they come again, how about blocking them for 24 hours and reverting all their addition (to existing page)? Most of those submissions are "one quote, no description, one link to this site". I feel we can make them speedy deletion candidates unless some editor willingly clean them up. --Aphaia 10:14, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

I also consider quote-fox.com to be spam. It is an extreme example of the issue of external links in general: dumping external links carelessly should be discouraged I think, and we should try to maintain in the external links sections only those links that actually seem useful (and also not dupes of the corresponding wikipedia article perhaps, i.e. only links that are related to quotations). There are many people who try to increase the popularity of their website by dumping its link in other websites, e.g. as a comment in blogs. iddo999 09:37, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Another anon struck with the "new article with one quote and link to quote-fox" pattern.

# 15:34, 28 July 2005 Drew Barrymore (116 bytes) . . 59.167.64.61
# 15:33, 28 July 2005 Cameron Diaz (113 bytes) . . 59.167.64.61
# 15:31, 28 July 2005 Princess Diana (138 bytes) . . 59.167.64.61
# 15:26, 28 July 2005 Alicia Silverstone (158 bytes) . . 59.167.64.61
# 15:22, 28 July 2005 Salma Hayek (84 bytes) . . 59.167.64.61
# 15:20, 28 July 2005 Demi Moore (116 bytes) . . 59.167.64.61
# 15:17, 28 July 2005 Walter Lippmann (225 bytes) . . 59.167.64.61

In all of them, I removed the quote-fox link, added a wikipedia link and added a category. If anyone feels like I have done something wrong, please let me know -- as far as I could see, Jeff, Iddo and Aphaia agreed with such a course of action, and nobody objected. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 15:09, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

I've gone over several pages and removed quote-fox links. I suggest not blocking the IP: after all, they are contributing quotes as well, and if we have a policy of removing the quote-fox links, they'll either give up (not contribute any articles because it doesn't help them) or become a useful contributor -- either way, we win :) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 06:31, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Seconded. Thanks for your cleanup. Also I support "remove fox-quote.com" policy. By the way it is a surprise we had no quote of Princess Diana Princess of Windsor... --Aphaia 08:47, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Hey, I was horrified we had no quote page for Amber Benson until today...we each have our priorities.

[Contemplates "Actors from Buffy and Angel" page]

~ MosheZadka (Talk) 09:03, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Oppenheimer More quote-fox bizness. Sveden 12:43, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

French Proverb?

Is there a French proverb which would translate to "Strike while the iron is hot?" Thanks!

Following French proverbs, what you seek is "Il faut battre le fer pendant qu'il est chaud .". For general questions about quotes, we recommend you to use Wikiquote:Reference desk. Cheers, --Aphaia 09:09, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Wordings

Well I am not sure here is the best place, but I would like you to comment on that. One editor left me a message including the following:

I hope you will consider this before doing a knee-jerk reaction to pretend the comments were not made in defense of abortion.

In my opinion and understanding

1. We respect w:Wikipedia:WikiLove and w:Wikipedia:Wikiquette. And they are parts of our policies and guideline here on Wikiquote too.
2. Such wording on the above isn't polite and should be discouraged. At least I am not greatly pleased with that.

Personally I don't understand why she (or he) left it on my talk particularly, but it doesn't matter. My point is, how we should deal with people make such wordings as their habit. In my personal and first glance, it is not near to the productive and cooperative. Any opinion? --Aphaia 21:48, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Much like on wikipedia, personal attacks have no place here, and implying that people have knee-jerk reaction is an attack. In most cases the correct thing to do is to leave a polite note asking them to behave. However, this person was already asked, by me, to behave civilly towards fellow editors. I did not get any answer, but a few edits later she let me know I am a "sick, sick person". To sum up:

1. I am biased, since I do not enjoy being called a "sick" person.

2. This is not just a case of impoliteness, but of a repeat offender.

I have no constructive suggestions to make, being the newest admin here. But I am quite certain something has to be done. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 01:24, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Reading program

Many conventional compendia of quotations (and dictionaries as well) maintain their citation databases by means of a reading program, wherein volunteer editors read books and other printed sources and take note of relevant material. A second group of editors then checks the material for accuracy against other copies of the same source, sometimes looking for older or altered versions of the quotation (or different translations when that is relevant).

We certainly have a good number of volunteer editors at this point. However, there's not a lot of obvious coordination between editors, and only a few people seem to be going to the effort of checking other editors' work for accuracy (as opposed to simply transcription errors or wikilinking).

One of the arenas in which WQ could add substantial value over traditional compendia is in coverage of modern literature and essay writing. For a reasonably-prolific non-fiction writer, it seems to me that there should be no difficulty in finding 100 or more quotations that are more or less representative of that author's work. No difficulty, that is, beyond the time and effort required to read a dozen or two volumes with an eye toward exemplary quotations (both in the sense of demonstrating excellence, as in an example of good writing, and in the sense of demonstrating the author's particular style and concerns, as in an example of his/her work).

Would there be much interest in a WikiProject Reading program? I would see it as having three principal purposes: Helping editors to identify worthwhile sources to peruse; helping editors to coordinate their efforts by learning what others are working on; and helping editors to find other editors to help with review of existing citations.

Note that there is no particular reason that a reading program necessarily needs to be confined to modern literature (even in the broadest sense of the word); however, since older works in the public domain are becoming available in full text (through Project Gutenberg, Wikisource, and other projects), there is less need for this sort of project—after all, you can just search the text. Where the need is greatest is among recent works, still covered by copyright, since the full text is rarely free (in either sense).

121a0012 June 27, 2005 03:25 (UTC)

In my humble opinion it's best to just try to focus on ways to get as broad an audience as possible to edit wikiquote, so that when someone would visit an article of a person that he cares about, he could fix inaccurate quotes in there. iddo999 27 June 2005 04:19 (UTC)

121a0012's reading project sounds like a good idea. (iddo999 is also right that we should try to expand the general Wikiquote editing audience as well.) I don't know that we have a lot of folks who would want to spend time working on this project, but I'd love to be proven wrong. C'mon, folks — any takers? — Jeff Q (talk) 28 June 2005 05:26 (UTC)

The reading project is interesting but I doubt whether we could get enough folk active & co-ordinated in it to be effective. It would probably be easier just to rely on a large number of quotitians correcting the quotes they are familiar with from the people they are interested in. However this has problems with more obscure writers & quotes as it'd be doubtful it there would be enough people interested in them to recognise erroneous quotes. On the whole it'd be worth giving the reading program a try, but it should be focused on less mainstream writers. Unfortunately I don't have time to take part in it but I will be keeping an eye out for good quotes in what I read already. AllanHainey June 28, 2005 09:29 (UTC)

I'd say that the advantage is that we improve wikiquote, and the disadvantage is that we reduce the probability that people who come across wikiquote would become editors (the assumption here is that it's more likely for someone to edit a bad article than a good article, not sure if everyone would agree with this assumption). This reasoning would work for obscure quotes too, just that the probability is lower to begin with. iddo999 28 June 2005 10:39 (UTC)

Featured article?

This section was moved to Wikiquote talk:Featured article.

Lists

Once we decided to delete "List of mnemonics" and replace it with Category:Mnemonics totally. Now editing a list one question came to my mind - we need really those lists? I mean "List of people by occupation", "by name" and so on.

Well, those lists have their advantages:

• People, specially newbies can utilize them as their start point - but we have now a feature to start an article on MediaWiki1.5 (however I am not familiar with its usage yet).
• listing articles, we can avoid orphaned pages. There are many articles, perhaps around 1,000 or more, there is no path leading to them (see the link).

On the other hand, lists edited manually have disadvantages too:

• Someday those lists could become infeasible. Already we have around 1,000 articles which aren't listed on the list and it is almost one third of our whole articles. We have already categories and not time enough do all what we want. Is the category (and its automatically generated lists) enough browsing Wikiquote?
• Redundancy and overwork: if we have both category and list, we need to care for both pages. Putting one or more categories on the article and then list it to the list. And if the topic is a person, the article should be listed at least on two pages (by name and by occupation) but I am afraid both of those lists aren't managed well today.

As for "orphaned pages", if we try to make links to the article (e.g. from a theme article to a person vise versa), we needn't mind this problem. We have not to delete the lists perhaps and let folks add their favorites topics on those lists but each section could be replaced with categories ... and then, there would be no substantial differences between Wikiquote:Browse and list pages.

Just a random thought... or a rant perhaps. Any your suggestion, comment and opinion will be welcome. --Aphaia 5 July 2005 15:08 (UTC)

I am fully for phasing out lists and phasing in categories. However, lists have their advantages (specifically, better control). I still feel that this control demands too much time of editors.

For "lists of non-existing pages", we can use the category text to place a list of non-existing entries to list. These lists are significantly easier to maintain: any blue link there should just be removed, not placed somewhere else.

The concern about orphans seems, to me, a red-herring. I do not consider, though mediawiki software does, a page orphaned if it is in a lot of categories: those categories are effectively links to it. I would like a decent organization of categories such that we can list all non-categorized categories on one page. (I think "Themes", "Art" (which would include "Films", "TV" and "Literature") and "People" would cover it well enough -- any page we currently have fits into one of these, and so there is a path to such a page -- it just passes through Category: links. I do not feel such links are not useful, and they are likely to get even more useful as mediawiki adds features to categories (already there are nice features, like decent navigation of large categories). ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 5 July 2005 15:23 (UTC)

Phasing out lists sounds great to me. The advantages mentioned aren't all that convincing, I'd say. I assume that in wikipedia they'd be much harder to phase out, because there're so many of them - so perhaps the sooner we do it here, the better. Anyone has a link to wikipedia discussion (or mailing list) on whether lists should be phased out? iddo999 5 July 2005 16:48 (UTC)

As for creating new article, MediaWiki1.5 has a new feature called "infobox". It needs to be defined, like which templates are automatically included, and because of diversity of formatting on our projects (peoples, themes, literature or film works and proverbs ...), it would be a big deal but if we find a proper way, it would be helpful. One of usage examples is found on English Wikinews Main page. --Aphaia 5 July 2005 17:37 (UTC)

Additional note: now we can generate a list of articles automatically from category, if we use an MediaWiki extention m:DynamicPageList. English Wikinews utilize it elsewhere (see n:Middle_East and its source). If we utilize this extention too, lists can phase out without problem, or in other words we can create a set of lists on a page (but then for "list by name" we need to put "Category:People" for all people pages as German Wikiquote does so) from bunch of categiries. --Aphaia 5 July 2005 23:52 (UTC)

Who do we need to ask to install this? ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 6 July 2005 17:18 (UTC)

Developers. We can ask them to do something on Bugzilla or IRC channel #wikimedia-tech. --Aphaia 7 July 2005 03:48 (UTC)

Do I need to request Delete for an empty page?

If I create a new article, then decide it's wrongly named, what do I do. I can create the new article OK, and I can edit the old entry to have no contents. Does that get rid of it, or should I request Delete?

Please sign on your comment. (See your talk). As for wrong named article, please move it to the right name. Thank you. --Aphaia 00:25, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

… which you can do by clicking on the Move tab at the top of any article, then filling in the new name and a brief explanation of why you are moving it. If there is a problem with the move, just let mention it here and a sysop can fix it. — Jeff Q (talk) 04:02, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

We are better to set up some technical helps like Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page? Aphaia

TV template

Here is a draft template for TV show articles. I would dearly love getting comments on it. Note: this template specifically excludes show pages like The Simpsons. We may want to go with another template for such shows, if people feel it is a valid alternative -- my personal feeling is that the TV nuts around here, me included, instinctively fix every new show page to approximate the template above :) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:53, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Clean up?

I tried to start cleanup as I had said as above. I got rid of all law links from Abortion#Pro-Choice. If you think I have excessed on that cleaning up, feel free to adjust it in a more modest way. If no one objects, I'll be back to that artice in a few days. --Aphaia 20:05, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

RSS feed for QOTD

Datasage has set up an Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed for the quote of the day at http://theworldisgrey.com/wikiquote/qotd.xml. I am not familiar with all the technical issues, but it would probably be a useful option for incorporating here. It seems to work fine on my Safari 2.0 browser, and I assume it would with other RSS readers. ~ Kalki 01:49, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Idealy it would be generated by Wikiquote itself, but I don't know what capabilites MediaWiki has to that reguard. Wether or not a Wiki generated feed is set up, you are free to link mine as an official or unofficial feed. Bandwidth shouldn't be an issue, if it is, I should be able to remedy that pretty quickly. --Datasage 02:20, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

There are already some RSS capabilities set up on the Wiki, because the Recent changes page uses it. I personally don't know how to set up a new page here with it though, but I am assuming it can be done without too much of a problem. ~ Kalki 03:59, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I doubt anything truly automatic is possible with current mediawiki software. If Special:Recentchangeslinked supported RSS, it's possible we could do something with that. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:57, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Amazing proposal! Thank you, Datasage.

Would you let me make a redundant chat? Currently I am involved into Wikinews, there most of projects use RSS feed newly released articles. One example I know is as following: a script crawls one template periodically, picks up all links on that template, generates a diff and release the result as "new release articles". And our QotD is already has its own template. It would work well ... if you have questions, perhaps English Wikinewsies can help you. --Aphaia 17:22, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

It looks like that RSS is generated automatically from the recent changes page. But none of the other pages generate RSS. I looked at wikinews, and as far as I can tell, the other RSS (except recent changes) is hosted offsite. My guess would be that it works like mine, scrapes certain pages, then updates an RSS file. --Datasage 18:24, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

To summarize the disucssion, Mediawiki doesn't automatically generate RSS for pages other then certain special pages. So to do a RSS for quote of the day, it would have to be generated and hosted offsite. Feedback has been fairly postive for the feed I have set up. Should it me be made official with a link from the QOTD page and QOTD box on the main page?--Datasage 22:56, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

It should be offsite, yes perhaps. Your idea seems to work well, and as for Japanese Wikinews, it works as you guessed. Checking certain page(s) and all links, generate a diff and distribute it. --Aphaia 17:39, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

QOTD from Main Page

Just to make sure nobody thinks I'm being sneaky: Talk:Main Page a (naturally) busy page had several long discussions related to QOTD. I've moved them to Wikiquote talk:Quote of the day, and noted the move. I hope this makes Talk:Main Page nicer. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 17:15, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Seems to me that talk:mainpage should only be about what's on the main page itself, and that general inquiries about wikiquote should go to the village pump here. Therefore I propose to archive the topics on talk:main, and put there a message with what's talk:main is about and a link (in Big letters perhaps) to village pump. The wikipedia:Talk:Main Page has a such banner, with VP and other useful links next to it. iddo999 17:46, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Agreed with one reservation: QotD appears on the main page, so people might believe it's related. I suggest pointing to VP for general issues, and to Wikiquote talk:Quote of the day for QOTD issues. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 05:44, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree with MZ that readers are likely to think of QotD as part of the main page. That it isn't is a technical organization issue, akin to expecting browser users to understand that a web page has components often coming from many different servers. Even if we post a BIG message at the top of Talk:Main Page (a good idea nevertheless), we should expect folks to post QotD comments and questions to it on occasion. But we ought to be able to handle that as we're doing. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 06:23, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Input box

Many people are having problems creating a new page. There has been some progress in this area (some FAQs posted with various tricks, help page failure allows starting a page with one click, etc.), but virtually no documentation regarding it. Input box is a new mediawiki feature intended to make article creation more streamlined, as well as helping create correctly boiler-plated articles. I have started a discussion, and a vote, at Help talk:Starting a new page, and I urge everyone interested to join it. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 19:45, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Old discussion that was her was moved to Help talk:Starting a new page (there is a vote there: check it out if you are interested) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 16:26, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Vote was closed, but I still suggest to any interested parties to check out Help:Starting a new page and check the usability -- and comment on it in Help talk:Starting a new page (and possibly editing the Help: page if you feel it could be made better). ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:39, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Lists vs. Categories -- vote on requesting a new feature installed

I have moved this discussion to Wikiquote talk:Dynamic page list ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 07:34, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Images

Moved to Wikiquote talk:Image use policy by ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:49, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I listed there the reasons why it's supposed to be a good idea imho. If you agree, then please add a confirmation, so we could proceed to ask the developers to disable the local images uploads, and see how it goes. Thanks. iddo999 05:24, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

See below, the discussion is concluded in favour of no image uploads. If there are free images, we will use commons, and if there are none, we will not have images. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 06:58, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Bot policy

User:LeonardoRob0t is a bot (as stated in its name) but its owner seems not to have his own user page on English Wikiqutoe. I guess so becuase its owner edited from this account, not from his own. We need to consider our bot policy again probably.

I propose some points:

• The bot should distinguished from humans. It should be named clearly bot-line names. [operator]Bot type names are highly recomended.
• The bot should have its user page which informs 1) operator 2) purpose 3) it has bot flag or not.
• Subsidiary - the bot operator should be communicatable in English.
• The bot flag is only granted by consensus. Some projects allow sysops to determine - others not. And if I recall correctly, we have no general policy on this point. English Wikipedia has a strict rule on this matter, and we will be able to borrow some points from them.
• The bot operators are recommanded to to have their own account and user page on the project. It is okay for them to leave a message like "please vitis my page" though. But since this bot is running on this project, the discussion itself belongs to this project and visible for all of its contributors. So the operators should be contactbale on this project.
• Every bot should be listed on a particular page - perhaps on Wikiquote:Bots.

--Aphaia 16:50, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree with every one of Aphaia's points, except I would not worry about separate user and user-bot pages if the contact mechanism for the user were as straightforward and responded to like a user page (i.e., posting to the bot's Wikiquote user talk page and getting a reasonably quick reply from the user there as well). But I also don't know all the pros and cons of bot users. I think we can at least require points 1, 2, 3, and 6 immediately, with a quick effort to make policy on 4 and 5. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 16:59, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment, separating a bot and its operator is useful when we need edit counts for a certain eligibility like voting ...

And we need to modify our Blocking policy too, "if a sysop finds a bot is wrongly operated, it may be placed blocking to prevent further troubles." though I haven't seldom seen such horrible accident. Most of bot operators run their bots carefully. --Aphaia 19:35, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

---

I modified the rule #6 as below:

• Every bot should be listed on Category:Bots before it begins to be run.

Because it is easy to manage those accounts. If we can use DynamicPageLink, it is easy to generate a list from that category. --Aphaia 02:55, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Writing contest

FA reminds me another project: writing contest on Wikimania 2005. All articles submitted after Aug. 1, 2004 can be applied. Submission pages is m:Wikimania writing contest nominations. If we have featured articles, would we like also to nominate those articles to this competition? --Aphaia 18:05, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Searching with CTRL + F in Fx

Wondering if there is a good way to use the CTRL + F to search while editing a page while using Firefox. Is there an extension that would allow me to search the editing window as opposed to the main window? Sveden 16:57, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Personally, what I do when the page gets long/complicated enough is copy'n'paste it into an editor window (vi, in my case), where I have powerful text searching and replacing at my fingers. Just a thought! :) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 17:01, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I've been thinking about that myself. Opera doesn't have this problem (it searches everything on the page, including the edit box contents), but the MediaWiki 1.5 upgrade destroyed Monobook and a few other skins' page formatting for Opera, rendering it virtually useless for default-skin wiki work. I've been too lazy to bring up the global Find problem with either MediaWiki or Firefox developers. Usually, I either pop open an Opera window (for non-wiki stuff) or, for large edit-box text, copy & paste it into a text editor, especially if I'm doing a Replace on large amounts of text. All very kludgy, I know. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:07, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

What's VI? A text editor? I like notepad. (ha) Sveden 17:18, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Hell, what I'd like is an extension for "open external editor" button on edit boxes, so I could click it, it'd pop up vi in a terminal, and when I'd save-and-exit, the contents would get replaced. Veering a bit off-topic, I know -- but if anyone knows who I have to kill for such a FF extension, I'd appreciate it. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 17:20, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I use Opera (8.01) and haven't found the formatting to be "destroyed" in Monobook. What I have found is that sometimes images don't load properly, and the fancy recent-changes/page-history stuff is broken (again). I have, however, managed several times to type a magic keystroke that causes Opera to delete everything in a textbox, unrecoverably. (No, I don't know what particular key that is.) 'Course, I'd rather just use emacs. 121a0012 04:48, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know using Mozilla, qhich is very simila to Firefox, if you use CTRL+F while editing a page, the search is done also in the editing area (and also to the text that you will need to scrool to see it) 82.54.128.217 13:01, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Random category

Now most of our articles are categegorized. I guess it would be better to have "random category" feature now at navigation box (just below "Random page"). It will help readers to browse the site. We only need to edit MediaWiki:Sidebar and create two files for making Special:Random/Category visible to readers. --Aphaia 16:27, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

How does it avoid categories like wikiquote cleanup? ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 11:17, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it shouldn't. Every reader is a potential editor. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 14:08, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I can't figure what you asked, Moshe. Random category is a sort of toy which gives you a category randomly as well as "random pages". In every click, you get a category. It might be useful for readers to explore Wikiquote --- not so much for cleanup, I guess, sometimes I would like to begin my work from a randomly chosen category however. --Aphaia 20:38, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

This is what I was trying to get at...is this meant to be a tool for regular editors (in which case, possibly the navbar isn't the ideal place for it, or for readers wishing entertainment (in which case, cleanup is probably not an appropriate target). What I am trying to understand is, in a sense, who do we think will use this, and whether it suits these purposes. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 07:12, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion it would be most suitable for having a fun - it will work like a fortune cookie. --Aphaia 21:48, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Linking to Images from Wiki

The things I've read don't seem to say how or if it's possible to link from an image in either wiki commons or wikipedia. Could someone give me an example of how to link to images from wikipedia or wikicommons? Or point me to a good article on the subject. Thanks in Advance Sveden 01:37, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Just use [[Image:name-of-commons-image.jpg]] ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 05:47, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

It is not possible however to link to an image in Wikipedia, only those in the Commons. Rmhermen 14:23, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

How to link FROM an image (icon) to an external or internal page ?

"no-intro" template

We have quite a few pages without any introduction. That not only violates our manual of style, it also means it is hard to know who is referenced — the Robert Lynd article was a good example (I eventually managed to disambig, but it took quite a bit of research). While this isn't grounds for deletion, it seems to me more serious than the "cleanup" template implies (I've used that template just to indicate formatting was off, certainly a better state of affair). Because of this, I am proposing a template, tentatively called {{no-intro}} with a related Wikiquote cleanup subcategory, tentatively called "Wikiquote introduction needed". The text should run something like: "This article has no introduction or a link to wikipedia. Without such information, it is hard to distinguish this topic from similarly-named topics or to research quotations. You can help wikiquote by adding an introduction." with a similar look'n'feel to the cleanup or stub notices. Then, at least, we'll have a single place to look for such articles and to see how serious the problem is. Any thoughts? ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 07:10, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Here is a prototype:

~ MosheZadka (Talk) 10:24, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Good idea, but I think wording it something like "This page either has no introduction or lacks links to.." or perhaps "This page lacks a sufficient introduction or links to..." might be better. ~ Kalki 14:54, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. I used something like that now. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 15:45, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Another excellent idea, MosheZadka! Such a tag should help encourage both casual readers and serious editors to add at least a one-line description. However, I still plan to be ruthless about deleting articles. The majority of intro-less articles we've been getting lately are vanity pages, so I still expect to nominate and/or vote to delete these things. But with this tag, the articles that seem to have potential (e.g., "Ekaangi") may get a bit more visibility. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 16:12, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

This isn't meant to stop VfDing — it's meant to provide a replacement for VfD in seriously borderline cases like Methuselah Jones, when VfD feels too harsh. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 16:21, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

OK, {{no-intro}} is ready now. Another advantage is that slapping no-intro is easy and automatic, and it allows a good place to look for candidates to VfD when one has time. (Otherwise, things might fall through the cracks). ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 06:58, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Category:Wikiquote no intro now has 27 articles. Many of them should probably be in VfD, but VfD is kinda swamped right now, so I prefer to wait a little for a lull. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 10:35, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Image uploads

hello. based on discussion at Wikiquote_talk:Image_use_policy i have disabled uploads on this wiki. —kate.

Hello Kate, thanks. So folks, which do you think better to keep it with a message "Sorry, uploading is disabled." or turn into a redirect to commons uploader (on Wikinews, it could, so it could be applied to our project assumedly) --Aphaia 21:52, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Proposed changes to Wikiquote templates

Because of problems mentioned above in Input box and "no-intro" template, we're working on a major change to Wikiquote:Templates: moving each template into a standalone page that can be used by the new MediaWiki Inputbox feature to make creating new articles much easier. Specific changes and reasons are summarized in Restructuring Wikiquote:Templates, where I invite the community to discuss the overall issue. Links to other related pages and discussions are provided there as well. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:33, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Team Rocket Redirect

I spent a wee while cleaning up the Team Rocket page. I checked out my watchlist today to find that an anon user had deleted the page and combined it with the Pokemon page. Here what it looked like before[[1]] and here's what it looks like after[[2]](a load of crap). After I and user Sinistro spent so much time cleaning up this page it's a little annoying to find it destroyed. Plus the Pokemon page could be a lot bigger and we should leave room for expansion. Should it be reverted and if so how is it done. I figure the cut and paste is easy but it seems like there is an easier way. I've never reverted changes before and I don't know how to do it. User:Sveden

I think the Team Rocket page was nice. I suggest de-coupling the pages, and leaving a note on the talk that they may wish to discuss it. In general, the policy was "a character with enough quotes gets their own page", and this is similar. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 17:45, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Problem pages

We have several pages which are seen in such lists as Special:Allpages but which can't be reached, and so not deleted. I have no idea what to do about them. Can anyone help? ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 12:33, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

1. Wikipedia:All pages by title
2. Wikipedia:Bug reports
3. Wikipedia:Copyrights
4. Wikipedia:Deletion log
5. Wikipedia:How to start a page
6. Wikipedia:Long articles
7. Wikipedia:Most wanted articles
8. Wikipedia:Orphaned articles
9. Wikipedia:Recentchanges
10. Wikipedia:Short articles
11. Wikipedia:Upload log
12. Wikipedia:User preferences help
13. Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress

On IRC, Brion suggested me to file a bug on bugzilla.wikimedia.org; it can be added to their namespace fix script. So they will have us to manage those files. --Aphaia 21:23, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Some developer renamed them to Broken/..., and there's now a vote to delete them. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 03:00, 30 September 2005 (UTC)