Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 9

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

External Links

Just wondering, I've noticed people creating articles with a section named "External Link" while this is true when there is only one, should we not have "External Links" so a link to that section will always remain valid (even when extra links are added), I'm willing to create a semi automated pywikipedia bot to change these if it is deemed needed. --NigelJ ^{talk EN} 21:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As per the enWP guidelines, the section should always be called External Links, independent of the actual number of links. There is no reason to handle that differently here, as it makes sense also for the reason you mention. I think the renaming could best be done by someone with AWB access. It will take quite little effort that way. --rimshot^talk 09:24, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it should be External links. J Di 09:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Um, yes, of course. --rimshot^talk 11:28, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be willing to create a pywikipediabot for this task, just to be safe, I'd apply for Bot status and do other batch jobs for Simple wikipedia when needed. Not sure if AWB would be that fast, but open to suggestions etc. --NigelJ ^{talk EN} 10:14, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I could create a new account for a bot and run AWB with it if nobody else has an AWB bot account already, it looks as though it should run without any problems. I don't know what would be faster out of AWB and pywikipediabot though. J Di 11:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User:w7bot has a bot flag already, and I'll run it if you want, but I think we will need to make Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage so I can run it in bot mode. Seems pretty straight forward.--Werdan7^{T @} 00:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Test run edits [1] [2] [3] [4] Ignore previous ones; those had different settings (Especially ignore this :) )--Werdan7^{T @} 01:13, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Test edit #4 (Digg) shifted it the wrong way - it deleted the s

You not setting it to change other headings that might be used for external links sections to "External links" too? J Di 01:39, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Digg was probably still on the old settings, and it only changes "==External (L|l)inks?==" to "==External links==".--Werdan7^{T @} 02:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Should probably check for "Web links" and variations as well. -- Creol(talk) 05:46, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Now an old discussion from last year has been found (link), and the decision to use "Other websites" was made. I'm only bringing this up here because as far as I can tell without checking, only one person that was involved in the original discussion is still active here, and because the decision was made a year ago when this wiki was probably a lot smaller than it is now. Before any of us start making more edits to pages that may have to be corrected (again) later, I think we should make the decision here and now what should be used on articles (and maybe make "that page" that we all so badly need). J Di 17:50, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think "Other websites" is a good choice. I just want to make sure that the bots that are changing from "External links" to "Other websites" are not also changing the alphabetical order of the interwiki. Being bold and making the changes is great. That being said, it's also important to make sure the bots and AWBs are only making the agreed-upon changes. Please see the section "Interwiki organization" for the converation on what is happening. · Tygartl1^·talk· 18:14, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Making Categories Simple

I've noticed in Category:Actors by country that there seems to be a difference in style, we have "Nationality Actors" and "Actors from Country", we even have a double up, Category:Actors from Scotland and Category:Scottish actors personally I perfer the "Actors from Country" as it is more simple an alternative would be "Actors born in Country" as "Actors from Country" could be thought of as "Actors living in Country". Another one is "Living people" although more tedious to change, "People still alive" might be classed more simple, but rejected due to New changes spam as a result of performing the change. --NigelJ ^{talk EN} 21:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Actors born in Country" would not work either given that it is not always a defining fact. Both Mel Gibson and Nicole Kidman are Australian actors but neither was born in Australia. Both are American born. Many American actors were born in other countries and became American citizens (either naturalized or born of US parents). You also have to take into account people born of immigrants (John Belushi is Albanian and American - US born, Jamie Farr is Lebanese/American - US born). It would need a category for "born in county", "from country" and "Of nationality descent" instead of just one "Nationality actors".

Actor	Born in Country	From County	Of descent
Nicole Kidman	USA	Australia	Australia
Mel Gibson	USA	Australia/USA	USA
Jamie Farr	USA	USA	Lebanon
Eva Gabor	Hungary	USA/Hungary	Hungary

That is 3 categories for each person for one occupation. Also each would end up being a subcat in the category "nationality Actors" under "Nationality people" anyway.

Cat:Australian people
- Cat:Australian actors
  - Cat:Actors from Australia
  - Cat:Actors born in Australia
  - Cat:Actors of Australian descent

There is still work going on with "Actors from country" and "nationality actors" leaning more towards "Nationality actors" as it is shorter and in most cases not an issue to translate. As most peoples groups use the nationality rather than the "from country", shifting consistancy to that format is easiest. The US and Philippines are the rare users of "from country". I would bet it is due to the somewhat abiguous term American. (Both from The Americas and from the US could use it - but primary use is "from the US" with North American or South American being used for the Americas). Another issue is that "of country" and "from County" are both used in the second format. "Nationality Occupations" keeps it short and simple (simple in terms of categorizing)-- Creol(talk) 23:21, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interwiki organization

I've noticed in the last couple of days that some bots and some people using AWB are organizing interwiki by alphabetizing the two-letter abbreviation. This confuses me because on both English and Simple English the alpabetizing has always been done according to the word it produces on the "in other languages" section in the margin on the left side of the page. Personally, I agree with the way it's always been done. It's much easier to find the language you are looking for when the listing is alphabetized. In addition to my personal preference, I was made aware of a page that says what the policy is: Interwiki sorting order. Notice that both English and Simple English are listed under "By order of alphabet, based on local language". So my question is, why are these bots and people using AWB changing the agreed-upon consensus? Also, is it okay to change them back or should we have a bot go back and fix changes that were incorrectly made? (If you would like an example of what I am talking about, you can find it here) · Tygartl1^·talk· 14:27, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is certainly odd. I AWB'd this page and it did not re-sort the iw links, but when I tried it in the sandbox (after clearing the built in iw's from the template), it re-sorted by 2 letter code rather than what should be Simple:default- alpha by language. All pages here should be sorted Alpha by local language - easier for the readers and since we pretty much just copy paste the iw links from en:wp (also alpha by language) the only issue for editors is where to put en: iw links in the list. -- Creol(talk) 15:14, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I did some asking, and found out that AWB uses the pywikibot framework, which sorts by language code. Apparently, this debate has been going on for a while. English WP had a vote a while ago, where they decided to sort by the full name, but the people who write the pywikibot "refused to accept the poll" for some reason, which is why AWB still goes by language code. Sounds like some WikiDrama...--Werdan7^{T @} 00:28, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've just been working on a fix, please check out [5] [6] [7] and let me know if that looks right to you. --NigelJ ^{talk EN} 01:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The alphabetization certainly looks good now. Although it is moving {{stub}} 3 lines down below the categories (2 blank lines in between). Shouldn't it either be directly above or 2 lines above the categories (with one blank line in between)? That would be my only suggestion for further improvement. Great work! · Tygartl1^·talk· 01:55, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thanks, it was a one line fix to AWB, not sure about the stub, I'll look in a second, just thought I'd also mention, that I've made another account (NigelJBot (talk · contribs), and applied for a bot flag, I'll try to do fixes on a regular basis (it's also because I feel a little bit guilty in been a contributor to creating the mess that exists at the moment) --NigelJ ^{talk EN} 02:26, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently it's generally accepted 'standard' that stubs are placed 2 lines below Categories, I guess it doesn't make much difference, but it's 'the way it's been done for so many years' --NigelJ ^{talk EN} 23:43, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, that seems to be the 'standard' for En:WP. On Simple, it is normal to put the {{stub}} between the end of the article body and the start of categories. -- Creol(talk) 00:13, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like I'll be making another fix to my copy of AWB ;) --NigelJ ^{talk EN} 03:32, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have updated my local copy, here are a couple of extra diffs, [8] [9] [10] thoughts? --NigelJ ^{talk EN} 03:43, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Situation Update

I've talked to one of the AWB devs (en:User:Martinp23), and my changes have been incorporated into SVN, so you can either build it your self, or wait until the release (apparently it should be within a few days). --NigelJ ^{talk EN} 23:02, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Very good articles?

This Wikipedia has recently reached 15.000 articles. I think as an effort to put quality first, we should choose articles that we consider very good. There is a template for that, it is called {{vgood}}. For an article to be very good, it should, in my opinion, meet the following criteria:

It should be longer than 3-4 sentences. Ideally it should be one screen or longer (ie. over 5k-10k article size)
It should be belong to Wikipedia (ie. be encyclopedic), not to wiktionary.
Illustrations, if any, should be pertinent.
There should have been a few revisions, possibly by different editors.
No simplify, unsimple, 'hard to understand tags'.
No redlinks.
The last few revisions should only be minor changes (like spellchecking, link fixing). Other than that it should be pretty stable.

In my opinion, we should be able to mark 150 articles (1% of the total number) as very good. I propose this as a project over the next few months; for those that are sick of porting over new content from their favorite wikipedia. Open for flamings, comments, etc. --Eptalon 23:13, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No article immediately springs to mind that could be called very good, but I think this a good idea. Maybe it would make sense to try to have a good article in every big category, say Geography, People, Biology and so on. Wikipedia:Peer review exists, and could be used to nominate articles. It would make it a lot easier for reviewers if some criteria (like the ones you noted) were written down, for example in the documentation of the {{vgood}} template. That way, the reviewer could refer the nominator to the criteria to tell why it is not (yet) a very good article. This doesn't need to have a full-blown procedure like the enWP good article process, but at least the basic criteria should be written down, in my opinion. --rimshot^talk 23:42, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. Little red riding hood is slightly perfect. It needs one more link. Also, the size of the picture should shrink. Coffsneeze 23:56, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a section to the Peer review page. --Eptalon 15:53, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Should the articles in the category very good articles have that tag removed? I like this idea but I was thinking we should start from scratch. Some of those articles have quite a few red links, etc. BrownE34 talk contribs

Not necesarily. As a start, they could be listed as proposals. I'll list them. --Eptalon 19:52, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The current very good articles have been listed here. I encourage anyone who wants to voice their opinion to make comments about whether each page should be kept as a very good article. Or to suggest ways to improve the article if they think it isn't very good. · Tygartl1^·talk· 20:14, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Little Red Riding Hood meets all of User: Eptalon's requirements for a good article. The story may be on the "good article" list. :) Coffsneeze 20:04, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have added the nomination to the respective page (see above). According to creol, there are still a few minor things to fix; If the article now gets 3 support votes, it can be put on the list.--Eptalon 00:14, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Template changes

Just thought I'd make a note of a couple of changes that I've made to templates.

1. (T·E·H·L·R) Template:Infobox actor

Infobox actor has gained an extra variable 'imdbid', this will place a link to the actor's IMDb profile at the end of the infobox, syntax is just "imdbid = 0000000", and can be used to remove the imdb template at the bottom of external links.

I'll note that it can't be used for singers etc, and the imdb template should still be used in those cases.

2. (T·E·H·L·R) Template:Infobox Officeholder

Those watching New changes may have noticed that I've made a couple of template edits with the message "Template now covered by Template:Infobox Officeholder", I copied the template from en, and have since fixed redirects to point to the new template, it contains all the variables (plus more) as the previous ones did.

Thats all for now --NigelJ ^{talk EN} 23:37, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Writing Simple English: Monosyllablism?

I wondered whether contributors on these pages have any particular criteria in mind when writing Simple English. The Simple English page is, as I understand, addressed to those whose command of English is limited, usually because they are either 1)children or because 2)English is not their Mother Tongue. These two categories of people may have different needs. Let me give an example: some years ago a colleague of mine took some students on a Geography field trip. They were looking at a housing area and, as several of the students were from overseas, she explained in words of mostly one syllable: "These houses were very run down, so they did them up". Blank looks appeared on the overseas student's faces until she reworded it - I think - as follows: "These houses were very dilapidated, so they renovated them". Then they understood! I'm not suggesting writing like that in the Simple Wiki pages, but you can see the problem. Phrases such as "to make do with.." use very simple words, but the combination of them is actually quite difficult. I don't know whether I've asked a question or not, but any thoughts might be interesting. Hikitsurisan 21:11, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have learnt English as a foreign language myself. What I can say is that for people whoes mother tongue is a latin-based (romance?) language, it is much easier to understand 'dilapidated', than to understand 'run down'; While with people learning the language as their first language, 'run down' would probably be easier to understand. In my opinion, it is best to avoid such 'phrasal verbs'. Not olny are they hard to understand for most learners, they have several meanings. Phrasal verbs tend to have a life of their own. This is something which precludes them to be the tool of the foreign language learner. (Another pitfall I won't mention here is 'to have something done', which very often becomes a false friend for people with a Germanic mother tongue. My personal opinion is to tell things as clearly as possible. Perhaps add another sentence or two explaining difficult passages where they can not be avoided. And avoid the situation that the reader feels belittled. The readers might be very bright people, whose only problem is that they can not speak or understand English well. --Eptalon 00:10, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One thing that I have found people try to do is using informal English. In traditional language courses however (certainly when I learnt English), informal expressions come rather late in the curriculum. For example, I have never even heard the expression "do sth. up", even though I speak English pretty well. I am not so sure that renovate is a good choice either, as it can only be easily understood by speakers of romance languages; repair might be better, if not as precise. While renovated may be okay, something like dilapidated is certainly not simple. Why not use falling apart or in a bad state? Secondly, even if informal English might be more easily understood, this is about simple English not bad English. Informal phrases should be avoided for that reason alone. If you want to know whether something you wrote is simple, the wordlists and WriteIdea are a big help. Both of them, however, break apart when using phrasal verbs, and I second Eptalon in that those should be avoided. --rimshot^talk 12:21, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Doppelganger

Just created a template which can come in handy. Here it is.-- Tdxi a n g 09:54, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Doppelganger is pretty complex, I think something like Impostor would be better. Also, it's probably just easier to add your name and a few permutations to MediaWiki:Usernameblacklist, instead of preemptively creating possible accounts. --Werdan7^{T @} 23:34, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Been using Wikipedia for a long time, but I have no idea what a doppelganger is (is it anything like a sockpuppet on the regular English Wikipedia)? iguana_nirvana14 (talk · contribs)

No, not a sockpuppet, but an account to prevent impersonation.-- Tdxi a n g 10:48, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Got Cake?

Is pancake and cupcakes and waffles and muffins also cakes? The cakes in the picture are round and plump. A pancake is flat. A cupcake is small. A waffle has small valleys and hills on it. A muffin looks likes a cupcake. Can those types of food count as cake? Coffsneeze 19:40, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://simple.wiki.x.io/wiki/Talk:Cake"

Very good articles, take two

Hello, so far the response to my request above (concerning very good articles) has not been overwhelming. The proposed criteria (what makes a such an article are here, and the discussion is on the talk page to that template. What is still needed is:

Tygartl1 has proposed citing sources in articles. We still need to decide how this should be done, and what sources need citing.
There is still some (mostly settled) discussion on what templates mark an article that is not fit for the very good articles.

Since this is a community effort, I feel the community should basically agree. I therefore invite all (named users) to comment, if they feel they agree or disagree. Before this has been done, going further in chosing articles that are very good is pointless. --Eptalon 18:28, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can't see Interwiki options

Hi, I can't see the Interwiki options for the different language versions on the Simple English wikipedia or the Main Wikipedia. I can see them if I go "Edit this page", but not on the screen. I have a P4 computer with an up-to-date Internet Explorer browser. Has anyone heard of problems with seeing the Interwiki codes? ThanksNazamo 20:20, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

would have to be....

would have to be crenamed the "change this page" tag, to "edit" as in the other wikipeidas and wikiproject, and that.--Me | Talk me! or See my talk 21:13, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's supposed to be simpler. Majorly (hot!) 21:18, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Soft redirects

Since interwiki redirects do not work, I went through all the broken (but sort of working) redirects caused by userpages trying to link directly to other wikis and replaced the redirects with {{Soft redirect}} links instead to clean out the pages being constantly listed as broken. This should reduce the clutter on the Broken redirects page with no impact on the users for now. If and when the software is changed to accept automatic interwiki redirect it would be a short process to undo the edits. They can be easily found with a whatlinkshere on the template or its built in category for ease in changing them over should the update ever happen. Most of the pages changed were for users who only created an account, redirected the pages, and then never came back. Very few (Nishkid64) have done more than 10 edits here. -- Creol(talk) 05:23, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Requisting Job

i would like to inform you that i wrote many application to your company and still no repllying , i am bechalar of IT i have expreince 7years i work whith internet service provider

Now, while I do not have anything to do with applications, I would think that one qualification needed for an application would be a basic understanding of a spell checker and the proper use of the shift key as well as punctuation. - Requesting, I, reply, have a bachelor degree in IT, experience.. 31 words and 11 errors, that might hint at at least one reason you have not received a reply. 12 errors if you count that this message has no reason to be posted here. -- Creol(talk) 08:46, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Names

Hello community. It is nice that we have a Category:Names, even with subcategories. I do however think that in the medium term we should get rid of it; names are non-encyclopedic. --Eptalon 14:29, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

External Links

Instead of writing "external links", "Non-wiki-links" and "not wiki-links" can be written. It is simpler because "not" is a simple word. "External" is not a simple word. Coffsneeze 23:26, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, this topic has already been explored. Coffsneeze 23:27, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Robots

How are bots made? Coffsneeze 00:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See the page on the English Wikipedia about it. Majorly (hot!) 01:22, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 9

Contents

External Links

Making Categories Simple

Interwiki organization

Situation Update

Very good articles?

Template changes

Writing Simple English: Monosyllablism?

Doppelganger

More than one Interwiki link per language?

Got Cake?

Very good articles, take two

Can't see Interwiki options

would have to be....

Soft redirects

Requisting Job

Category:Names

External Links

Wikipedia Robots