User talk:Teratornis/2007

Index to Wikipedia

My index

Interesting post to my talk page. The reason you didn't find any indication of anyone else doing (or thinking) of doing indexing, when you looked at what I've compiled, is that I've found nothing myself. I've left notes at a couple of user pages where the user had done a lot of work on their own personal directory, asking if they knew of an index (so I wouldn't be reinventing the wheel); no success. I admit to not thinking about searching meta for capabilities of the wiki software, however.

As to what generated my interest in an index - I started writing a user manual (for editors), and realized that organizing information about Wikipedia pages into a "logical" sequence was essentially impossible - exactly where does one put pages about edits, or manual of style - beginner, intermediate, advanced user chapters? (I've found several attempts to write what appears to be a "logical" guide to Wikipedia, abandoned.)

I then realized that rather than a table of contents, which I'd tried, or a directory (a page gets listed in just one slot), that an index provided the flexibility I needed - and, to boot, it was useful while I built it.

Meta and automatic keyword generation

What you found at m:Help-style indexing (and I'd never known about) was a built-in index (of sorts) for meta help pages, using keywords. For example, for m:Help:DPL, if you look at the source, you'll find the following:

<meta name="keywords" content="Help:DPL,Administration,Advanced templates,Array,Calculation,Cascading style sheets,Category,Common words, searching for which is not possible,Contents,Deleting a page,Diff" />

Looking at Help:Edit summary, this is in the source:

<meta name="keywords" content="Help:Edit summary,Contents,A quick guide to templates,Calculation,Category,Diff,Dummy edit,Edit conflict,Edit toolbar,Editing,Editing shortcuts" />

And looking at a very recent policy, Wikipedia:Canvassing, which has no antecedent at meta, this is in the source:

<meta name="keywords" content="Wikipedia:Canvassing,Canvassing,WP:CANVAS,WP:CANVASS,Administrators' noticeboard,Consensus,Ignore all rules,Multiposting,Policies and guidelines,Requests for arbitration/Guanaco, MarkSweep, et al,Requests for arbitration/IZAK" />

Where do these keywords come from? From wikilinks; they are automatically created by stripping off "Wikipedia:". (The software is smart enough to also strip off a the front of a full URL when a URL is used rather than a wikilink, in the text.) In fact, keywords are generated for every page in this wiki, I believe, based on my looking at a regular article and at my user talk page, though the rules appear to be different for different types of pages.

So, what next?

But are keywords used for anything that a normal editor might encounter? I can't find any indication that they are. A search of Wikipedia namespace found only one thing vaguely related to keywords, this very unusual WikiProject, which survived two deletion attempts (in the first, no one voted; in the second, a couple of users said - essentially - "I have no idea what this is, but it could be useful.") (Related page: User:Tractor.) And while the founder and sole member of that WikiProject is aware that source pages include keywords, he apparently isn't aware of their potential power (or has a totally different focus).

So, to summarize, we have (a) automated keyword generation; (b) a existing feature in meta that I'm guessing was designed for programmers looking through "m:Help" files, which uses keywords found on a subset of meta pages, and (c) nothing else, apparently, that takes advantage of these (except, possibly, outside search engines?). Interesting. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 23:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Mountain Biking on Mount Tamalpais

Hello, An article that I created as a part of Wikiproject Cycling called Mountain Biking on Mount Tamalpais and linked to the Mount Tamalpais article, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mountain Biking on Mount Tamalpais. Thank you, Bob in Las Vegas -  uriel8  (talk) 10:34, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Editor's index - thanks

Thank you for moving the indexing discussion, and for suggesting better navigation. I'm thinking about using three-character links (that is, span id = "Con") (generally, for Wiki, it may be five letters) instead of full names, a modified approach, which has the advantages of (a) requiring fewer anchors; (b) requiring less typing in the piped links, and (c) degrading gracefully. The last is particularly important - if in the index I change "Articles" to (say) "Articles (general)", then I break every anchor in index that points to "Articles" (true, I could leave multiple anchors in place); if I anchor to "Art", it doesn't matter. And then perhaps (d) - if I get the index entry slightly wrong (say, it's "Stubs" but I think it's "Stub"), it doesn't matter (just as now it doesn't matter because the link goes to the top of the "S's.)

I'll take a pass, for the moment, on your offer of help; it's useful for me to inventory the trees, so to speak, every once in a while so that I'm current on what's in the forest; but I may come back on that. I want to play around a bit with the modified approach.

And, finally, apologies for missing your posting of the 13th. I'm starting to get in the habit of checking my talk page history to see if I've noticed everything, but that's recent - I've been used to just checking the bottom, but the volume is starting to pick up and that's no longer working well.

P.S. I've added navigation immediately below each letter, as you suggested - good idea. When I've been using the index, I've constantly had to go "top of page" to navigate; irritating. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:54, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, that is impressive. I'm going to be using your page even more now. --Teratornis 21:40, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, yes, yes, your post was brilliant

Your post regarding the nonsensical policy on IP editors was excellent, keep it up. I am coming to the view that the illogical a priori thinking on this issue must be visibly challenged when it come up. See this example of an exchange with admins as an example. The silent majority must speak up. Buddhipriya 20:23, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Here is yet another example of a public wiki which formerly allowed anonymous edits, and switched to requiring user registration in response to the inevitable deluge of vandalism and SPAM:

• DocBook Wiki

Supporters of the Wikipedia policy to allow anonymous edits claim that requiring user registrations will do nothing to reduce vandalism. And yet the experience of many other wikis disagrees with that claim. I find this peculiar. However, I would not go so far as to call the existing policy "nonsensical." Some of the problems it causes clearly are, but Wikipedia is the world's largest and most popular wiki, indeed Wikipedia is almost single-handedly responsible for driving the current explosion of interest in wikis, so the current array of policies here cannot be entirely nonsensical. I do, however, think the powers that be should continuously re-evaluate every policy, rather than mindlessly evoking the Appeal to tradition, to see if the reasons for the policy still apply. As I mentioned in my essay, Wikipedia is progressively requiring user registrations, by applying levels of protection to more articles over time. It seems inefficient to end up individually protecting a million articles from anonymous edits when we could just protect the whole site and be done with it. --Teratornis 21:37, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, of course. This is like living in a city that has prohibited the use of locks on doors. People are annoyed by burglars, so they urge putting more police on the streets. We should not be exchanging claims about things, we should be examining data together to see things like what percentage of edits that remain unreverted for more than 24 hours come from IP accounts. I am not aware that the Wiki software has the tools available to answer statistical questions of that sort, perhaps it is somewhere I have not seen. And I do not want to see data analysis from 2005, which is a long time ago. I want to see data from the current 30-day period. We must demand that these people cite reliable sources for their claims of how wonderful it is to let every adolescent on the planet participate in the authoring of an encyclopedia. Perhaps we could create a category for Articles where it does not matter if the content is correct and allow open IP editing of that class of material. Buddhipriya 21:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

You make some dangerously good points. I hope you do not get banned for being too persuasive.

Here's a link on the editor's index:

• Special:Contributions/newbies - edits by new editors

which is not exactly a statistical study of the type you mention, but is perhaps a vague first step in that direction. I've looked at the workings of the MediaWiki software a bit, while installing and running some corporate wikis; the information you want to collect is almost certainly available in the underlying Wikipedia database. Getting it out would require some database programming.

The editor's index links to other possibly useful pages, such as:

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia in academic studies

which links to some studies that attempt to quantify some aspects of Wikipedia. Perhaps you could find some researchers who would want to investigate the questions you mention. --Teratornis 22:09, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

And to comment on Articles where it does not matter if the content is correct, I think it would make sense to partition Wikipedia somehow into a zone where the newcomers can edit freely, and another zone where editors must have proven their competence in some way, even if just by having been around for a while and demonstrating a serious desire to contribute. It's interesting to see how few of the articles in WP:VITAL are featured or good. Having looked at that list, I see some obvious ways to improve Information technology, if only by adding links to articles that define the jargon terms and expand on the short summaries in what is essentially a survey article. --Teratornis 22:56, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Aerial Photos answer on Help desk

Great post. Just thought you should know that. Xiner (talk, email) 04:46, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. For the record, I added some more comments. --Teratornis 17:16, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Cincypedia

Personally, I'm partial to Cintipedia, like the postal abbreviation, but I'm too far upstream from y'all to have much of an opinion on the topic. Cheers. youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 14:14, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Another option might be "the 'nati pedia" but a phrase would be awkward, particularly one beginning with an Article (grammar). And speaking of upstream, I like to say Cincinnati will never experience a water shortage as long as Pittsburgh keeps flushing its toilets. --Teratornis 17:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm actually in-between the two (Pitt and Cincy). youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 17:37, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Detecting articles added to a category

Hi - I noticed your post at Wikipedia:Help_desk#Article_addition_to_a_Category. Related changes does a pretty good job of this, as described at Help:Category. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:56, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I thought of that, but when I looked at the Related changes for a category, I could not see an easy way to distinguish the articles newly added to the category from all the other changes to articles already in the category. Unless maybe editors typed an edit summary to that effect. --Teratornis 18:12, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki training videos

Very good find. I watched a couple - the guy knows what he's doing, though it's just a bit unpolished. It's also unfortunate that the breakpoints are (it seems) so arbitrary.

As for adding to the index - I'm happy to do that, but I'd prefer to link to Wikipedia namespace page rather than to a section of your user page, or, failing that, to a separate subpage of yours. For a Wikipedia namespace page, I'd suggest Wikipedia:Instructional material, as a more generalized name; that would cover, for example, a book about editing Wikipedia, and would be a good catch-all for a resource list (which I'd be happy to add - links to internal pages with coaching and classes, and to help/FAQ pages). If you're interested, just put the page up with what you have on your user page (which I thought was nicely done), and I'll edit the page to expand it. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the advice Coricus 16:29, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

If you refer to my edits here, you must be joking. --Teratornis 17:03, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

LOL! No, I meant the advice about the Michael Bloomberg article. I was begining to think I was violating DBAD because I wanted to talk about the fact that all criticism is being edited from it and no one else seems to think it matters. (For example, the critical section "2004 Republican National Convention" has 3 sources in 4 paragraphs and yet it's still got an NPOV notice on it, yet it's probably already the best sourced section in the article... sourcing being a relative thing. And this bit has been removed completely, despite having 3 sources too). Oh well, he's not my mayor - I'll let someone else go through the drama of an edit war. Coricus 04:31, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

It looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger needs a similar campaign of reputation-cleansing. I'm finding that Wikipedia is so huge, and so naturally inconsistent as a result of all the different people editing various parts, that any rule anyone cites to justify doing anything to any article is simultaneously being violated on any number of other articles. Lance Armstrong has never been proven guilty of doping, but the sheer number of allegations and Lance's history of litigating his accusers is clearly notable. Another way around the edit wars is to start (or add to) articles which are specifically about the controversial bits that have been cleansed. For example, there might be some list-type article about allegations of sexual harassment against politicians. Allegations against a particular politician may or may not belong in an article which is primarily about the politician, but it's harder to claim they don't belong in an article which is about allegations against politicians. A similar controversy erupted around whether it was "NPOV" or "notable" to mention that an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa was robbed and beaten by three black men. See: Talk:Nadine Gordimer#attack on Nadine Gordimer & attackers' race (cont'd) (or the link which will survive archival). --Teratornis 17:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Peacocks

If you think that was using peacock words, try the rest of it on[1]

I think I was perhaps a little easy on this. Notinasnaid 17:54, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Wow, that's a stampeding herd of peacocks. --Teratornis 18:07, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it's done

Thank you for your help.

I've finished my main copy-edit of User:The Transhumanist/Virtual classroom/Yuser, on fighting link spam. Please take a look, and touch-up anything that needs it. It goes live on Wednesday (tomorrow). The Transhumanist   22:22, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Template:User WikiProject Open Source

I am trying to design a userbox for WikiProject Open Source. This is what I have so far -

Template:User WikiProject Open Source Wikipedia:UserboxTl

The following code is entirely inside the {{ }}:

Userbox | border-c = #999 | border-s = 1 | id-c = brown | id-s = 12 | id-fc = orange | info-c = olive | info-s = 10 | info-fc = evergreen | id = WikiProject Open Source | info = This is a Wikipedia:UserboxTl. | float = right

Is it OK to ask this here on your talk page and is this what you meant? Thanks. Marycontrary 13:13, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Your question would make more sense if you cited what you are replying to. I don't memorize everything I send to people. For information on userboxes, see Wikipedia:Userboxes. I'd expect a userbox to be smaller, like the ones in Wikipedia:Userboxes, and to say something like "This user is a member of WikiProject Open Source." --Teratornis 18:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Too bad for you since I memorize everything that I send to people. You typed the following in an email - "You could try to design a userbox for WikiProject Open Source. Call it: Template:User WikiProject Open Source with the code: {{User WikiProject Open Source}}."

If your instructions simply meant to create a userbox without that Tl code, then it could look like this:

ImageThis user is a member of WikiProject Open Source.

What could be a good image for this userbox? I am still trying to find the color codes. The WikiProject Open Source article infobox contains a lime green and a pale yellow, not the standard green, yellow or orange shown here. Marycontrary 19:41, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Open-source software shows a logo: Image:Opensource.svg. Unfortunately, it's copyrighted according to the image page, so we can't use it in a userbox. --Teratornis 20:15, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

E-mail

Your Barracuda Spam Firewall is blocking email from me and possibly others (?) today. Marycontrary 16:47, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm still getting my daily SPAM barrage, so perhaps you should just send me SPAM. --Teratornis 18:16, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

The Over-The-Hump Ride page

I made some edits on the OTH page. Marycontrary 00:29, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Over_The_Hump_Ride Marycontrary 00:31, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The Recent changes page on Bicycling Wiki indicates that I am editing actively there recently. Therefore, you'll get my attention just as effectively by leaving messages on my user talk page there. In general, it is better to communicate with someone on the same wiki you are editing on, assuming the person you want to communicate with is checking that wiki (and I am in this case). --Teratornis 01:18, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

A deserved acknowledgement

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		You deserve a barnstar for your often very detailed and well considered replies at the Help Desk, where you give complex matters your fullest attention. Good work! Adrian M. H. 18:36, 14 April 2007 (UTC) Wow, I second that, particularly for this. You're good, mate. PeaceNT 06:46, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Your comment on Help Desk

Excellent and informative comment on Wikipedia:Help desk#FA Stabilization -- Yellowdesk 23:13, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. (For future reference, this topic has moved to: Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 April 23#FA Stabilization; permanent link.) --Teratornis 03:13, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

A fun "To-do" list

Hello Teratornis. I discovered this "to-do" template on a fellow 'pedian's userpage and copied it to my userpage. I am posting it here for you to check it out and see if you enjoy it too. Even if you don't get to do much editing on the list items, it is still interesting to take a gander and see what's hot or rather, not-so-hot! {{todo}}

I also added "edit count | edit summary usage" on my userpage too as I discovered from your userpage. Thanks. Marycontrary 11:06, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I just discovered that the "to-do" list is more of a personal list after all. Evidently I have been watching someone else's "to-do" list lately and not just a general Wikipedia page for it.... duh Marycontrary.... LOL! So here is your chance to modify your Teratornis tasks to do, or not. Marycontrary 11:13, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, it can be either or all of the above - the to-do list can be just your personal tasks or also pointing to - Wikipedia:Community Portal/Opentask. Wikipedia is so awesome because when you learn something new here, it is like a delightful surprise that leads to even more surprises/discoveries. Marycontrary 11:22, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Barnstar

For your efforts in helping out users on Wikipedia:Help desk. Keep it up! ~Spebi 10:43, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Support

Hello, just a note of support to your essays on the Help Desk - especially on the topic of only allowing registered users to edit. I would prefer to work on content, but probably 90% of my 2000+ edits are vandal reverts. It is tiresome. Thanks. Cheers Geologyguy 15:24, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for expressing your opinion. I have to wonder about all these people fixing all that vandalism; are any of the constructive editors actually enjoying this? Real soon now I should collect all my blathering essays from the Help desk and elsewhere and edit them into some proper essay pages in my user space. Then I can just link to my essays instead of cluttering up the Help desk with all that content. --Teratornis 20:11, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your help in the help desk

Hello Teratornis,

I just wanted to thank you for your help at the help desk (user manual for administrators question). Your assumption of me being an inexperienced user is very accurate. I am shocked by the difficulty of learning how to use this platform... makes me feel quite inadequate more than I would like. :) You made mention of expert help, are there individuals who would help get someone configured (i.e. consultants?) that you know of? I have skilled programmers, but without knowledge of how wiki works (which they don't) I not certain how much help they can be. Regardless of whether or not you can assist, I do appreciate your help and wish you the best. By the way, if you respond to this, I am not sure how I would know, I suppose I would have to come back to this page, or do you contact me...see how bad off I am! -Captainb360 13:23, 21 May 2007 (UTC)]

For the record, the question was:

• Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archives/2007 May 19#Users manual - (permanent link)

User talk pages are (in my opinion) a somewhat awkward method to converse with someone, since the only way to notify someone that you have replied is to type something on his or her user talk page. When two people alternate replies like that, the resulting discussion thread becomes incoherent. Therefore I prefer to keep the whole discussion on one talk page. For example, I can reply here, and merely note on User talk:Captainb360 that I replied, so you will know to come back here and look. However, if we need to discuss something at length, e-mail would be better. You can e-mail me at: Special:Emailuser/Teratornis.

Your shock at the complexity of MediaWiki is understandable, but most large open source software packages are similarly mind-numbing. For example, try figuring out Perl, DocBook, Apache HTTP Server, etc. If anything, MediaWiki is somewhat easier than some of these other packages because all the documentation is itself in wiki format, and every MediaWiki user can potentially improve it. The result is that MediaWiki has some of the best and most extensive documentation I have seen for any product, and we can make it better by correcting any errors, ambiguities, or omissions we notice as we use it.

As to whether your programmers could make headway with MediaWiki administration, they shouldn't have any trouble getting it installed. Anyone who can set up a Web site can set up a bare-bones wiki with MediaWiki. But as I mentioned in my Help desk reply, the kind of wiki you want to build may be a long way from a bare-bones wiki. A wiki is essentially a tool for writing prose, and in my experience, one does not find many programmers who make enthusiastic and skilled writers. A lot of wiki tasks require a mix of skills that isn't very common yet, although that will probably change as wikis become more popular.

As far as how to find MediaWiki consultants, one option is to search Wikipedia's user pages for "mediawiki consultant"; oddly, that finds only one hit. I suppose Wikipedia discourages users from advertising on their user pages.

MediaWiki consulting is a line of business I would like to start at one of the companies I work for, but we're still in the fairly early stages of getting our own people up to speed with wikis. It may be a bit early for us to take on outside clients for this kind of work, but it's never too soon to start discussing it. If you'd like to talk business, e-mail me at Special:Emailuser/Teratornis, as we should not use Wikipedia to discuss things not related to Wikipedia. --Teratornis 17:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Keep up the good work

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		is hereby awarded to Teratornis for continuous dedication to helping Wikipedians with their wikiproblems at Wikipedia's help desk. On behalf of the hundreds of users you have helped, and the thousands more to come, let me extend to you a big Thank you. The Transhumanist    18:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Wow, and that barnstar even rotates. The score is now: Teratornis, 3 barnstars; Bill Gates, 0. I guess Bill will have to glean what solace he can find in his billions. --Teratornis 20:25, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Make them four..

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		For your excellent and diligent efforts to help out users in the Wikipedia help desk, I am more than pleased to award you this condign Barnstar of Diligence. Thank you so much for your work and public-spiritedness. Keep it up! —Anas talk? 20:36, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Cut-and-paste pagemoves

I noticed that you suggested using cut-and-paste to move a page on the Help Desk. This is highly inadvisable and can take some time for administrators to sort out; the problem is that the page's history ends up in the wrong place, leading to what is technically a copyright violation (the GFDL has a provision requiring author information to be retained). The correct procedure is the use of {{db-move}} on the target page to request an administrator to do the move for you; to request the sorting out of a cut-and-paste move, {{db-histmerge}} on the page that doesn't contain the history is the correct request tag. See Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen for more information. Hope that helps! --ais523 15:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out my error. I struck my incorrect advice. --Teratornis 15:08, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Help Desk

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		Thanks for answering that question. You gave me an idea, and hopefully thats sorted it. Anyway, that must have been one of the more difficult questions! So, for that, and your other work on the help desk, have a barnstar, and congratulate yourself! Stwalkerster talk review 17:38, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. I'm starting to poke around with m:Using the python wikipediabot, so I would be interested in knowing what you come up with. (For the record, the question was Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 May 30#Category Lists. And now that I've amassed a whopping five (count them) barnstars, I'm wondering what the record for that is. Probably a long way off.) --Teratornis 17:44, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much!

You just made my day! Rockstar (^T/_C) 16:29, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Help desk

Thanks for your answer, I appreciate your help. I was actually asking for my adoptee, Cristixav, again, thank you! Neranei ^T/C 21:34, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for your hilarious message on the HelpDesk as to the editing of the Jesus-article. Made my day brigther. Very funny. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eivind (talk • contribs)

For the record, the question was: Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 July 22#Want to edit Jesus (permanent link). --Teratornis 14:27, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Help_desk#Technical_glossary

Replied there. —AldeBaer 18:30, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Help desk

I'm not sure that was an entirely useful/relevant/friendly message. Did you read the thread a bit higher up the page that the poster refers to? --Dweller 15:09, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

(1) Why? (2) Yes, if I am guessing correctly as to which of my several replies on the Help desk you allude to. --Teratornis 18:16, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Essay?

I saw the postings at Wikipedia showing bias in favour of scientific explanations. Have you thought about turning this into an essay? -- Jreferee ^(Talk) 06:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

For the record, the non-breaking link is:

• Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 August 8#Inequity

I suppose I could think about it. First I would need to research what other Wikipedians have written on the subject, so whatever I add would be in reference to what has gone before. From what I can understand about critical thinking and the scientific method, it seems to me that the "scientific point of view" is the neutral point of view, since scientists (at least collectively, if not always individually) remain perpetually open to new facts which could require them to abandon or modify their current theories. This is in sharp contrast to religions which generally claim divine revelation (or something similar) as their source of truth. Of course the scientific point of view tends to rigidify over time due to the historical effect - that is, the longer a given scientific theory has stood up to accumulating data, the less likely it seems to ever be overturned. That's because the facts that support the existing theory do not just magically go away, so any replacement theory which accounts for new facts would have to explain all the old facts just as well as the existing theory does. For example, by this point it's hard to imagine chemists will ever make discoveries that require them to throw out the periodic table of the elements. Thus it may seem to a naive user that chemists are very closed-minded to any new ideas about the nature of matter. And, in fact, chemists are closed-minded to mere ideas. One problem that cranks in general have is that they tend to be heavy on ideas and very short on data i.e. facts. --Teratornis 19:37, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Your addition to "About"

Thanks for adding the section. It isn't quite the way I'd word it, but (as you may know) it's easier to edit someone else's words than to turn a blank piece of paper (or text box) into something that reads fairly well. So I'm going to edit it (later), and probably will move it to near the top of the page. And one of these days (I'm predicting November or December at this point) I'm going to move the index to Wikipedia space and turn control of it over to the community (not that I think I own it, even in my own namespace, but it's just about done, so I'm getting to the point where I don't need the additional control).

And thanks again for all your help on this, including the encouragement and positive reviews. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:24, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I suspect all the good things I have said about your Editor's index amount to an understatement. The index is a huge part of why I seem to have become addicted to answering questions on the Help desk - I'm continually amazed at how many questions reduce to a simple lookup. Wikipedia and its underlying MediaWiki software are the most extensively documented system I have ever seen, and the Editor's index lays out the entire fantastic structure of internal documents and makes the whole agglomeration usable. As more people use the index, it can stay up to date and even get better - which is the opposite of an index in dead tree format. The Editor's index probably more than anything else shows how Wikipedia is better than almost everything else in the world of computers - or maybe almost everything else in the world, period. I hope more people get this, and collaborate on the important task of indexing everything else. --Teratornis 04:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Anchors in the index

Regarding your question, anchoring on "News" is fine. I also added an anchor for "New articles) ("NewA") and "New Editors" ("NewE"); the first is unnecessary in some sense because that is where the main "New" anchor is, but since these two, plus News, are so large, it makes sense to have separate anchors for all three (for consistency). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:50, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Question re: transclusion

Hi. I saw your response to User:PrimeHunter at Wikipedia:Help_desk#How_to_post_Article_about_a_nationally_acclaimed_singer. and wanted to ask, if you don't mind explaining, what you mean about substitution and transclusion. I followed the links and read them, but they're a good bit more technical than I can easily follow. I'm asking in case this is something that I myself should be doing differently with templates, for example, {{subst:W-graphical}}, which I sometimes use. If you haven't time or inclination, I can always ask at the help desk. :) --Moonriddengirl 17:29, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd be curious to know what you don't understand about Wikipedia:Substitution and Wikipedia:Transclusion. Even though those pages cover technical subjects, they should nonetheless be understandable to every Wikipedia editor who uses templates, at least in their introductory sections. I recommend that you read each page from the top, and the first bits you find confusing, ask about on the respective talk pages. Hopefully other editors can clean up the pages to make them understandable. It's possible the pages assume too much technical background, but they should be understandable to anyone who can use templates.

The difference between substitution and transclusion that matters with reference to my comment on the Help desk (permanent link, for when the current link breaks due to Help desk archiving) is that substitution leaves no hint of where the template text came from, whereas transclusion preserves a clue in the wikitext in the form of a template call, for example: {{W-graphical}}. Why does this matter? Because of the way many users learn MediaWiki editing, by clicking "edit" links, and looking at wikitext to see how other users did various things. Someone who sees a template call such as: {{W-graphical}} will immediately know that this is some sort of a tricky code that generates a whole bunch of code automatically. They might not know about templates yet, and they might not know they need to read Help:Templates, but they will know they need to look for some sort of help page. In contrast, if a large complex block of wikitext resulted from a template substitution, the new user who examines the resulting wikitext may assume some previous editor typed it all in.

In short, substitution is like the wikitext editing analog of failing to cite our sources.

Now, of course there are arguments in favor of substitution in certain circumstances, which you can read all about in the help pages. I'm just saying that in my opinion, one of the great strengths of Wikipedia is its learnability, and substitution degrades that. Wikipedia is not just "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit," but it is also the encyclopedia whose page coding language anyone can study by clicking edit links. Ideally, clicking an edit link should display exactly what the previous editors typed rather than a combination of what they typed plus a bunch of automatic changes done invisibly by the software.

Also, come to think of it, template substitution may be questionable from a GFDL standpoint, because when a user substitutes a template, the page history credits the resulting template text to the user who substituted it in, not to the user(s) who actually edited the template text. That is, there is no difference in the history between text you type and text you substitute. --Teratornis 21:02, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain it, and your position certainly makes sense. If it were somehow indicated in the text that a template had been used on the help page, I would have been able to see that in the edit window and have either repeated the template there (instead of referring to the previous answer) or at least more readily adopted it for future use. To answer your curiosity, I am probably more technologically clueless than your typical Wikipedian. I could follow the pages more or less, but could not make sense of them in context of the comment. I wonder if it would be possible to encourage template makers to <!--note the name of the template--> within the template text itself, so that the substitution tag could be used but the template still be obvious to other users? I guess that's a village pump kind of proposal. --Moonriddengirl 21:27, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, just about anyone could add HTML comments to a template, to document it after substitution. One would only have to know enough template syntax to know where to stick such a comment. Some templates do have such comments, I think. But really, the MediaWiki software should automatically generate such a comment as part of the act of substituting the template text. --Teratornis 01:40, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		For manning the WP:HELPDESK. Nothing harder than that. --Sharkface217 09:42, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! But honesty compels me to admit it's not really hard to answer Help desk questions, because I leave the really hard ones for others to answer. And also because Wikipedians have put together such great tools for answering questions. As Richard Dawkins put it, I'm just a midget standing atop a gigantic pile of midgets. --Teratornis 13:28, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Yet another barnstar (and a question)

		What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
		For the profound insight in essays such as Teratornis/Outplacement and Teratornis/Help desk notes. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 13:07, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of which, what is your policy regarding editing of your userspace essays by others? -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 13:07, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment, and according to the Dunning-Kruger effect your ability to recognize competence in others (assuming your impression of my essay raving is correct) reflects well on your own competence. Therefore, I can't see the harm in letting you edit my essays. I would only ask that if you change them extensively, you explain what you are doing in edit summaries (of course) and on the respective talk pages (which would be good, to make it more likely for other readers to realize "my" essays are no longer reflecting only my thoughts). Since they are "my" essays, I reserve the right to revert anything I don't like, or to fork off my own "personal" versions if I think the collectively edited version is drifting in its own new direction, but generally I try to approach online interaction with the requisite sangfroid, so it takes a lot to get me to climb the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man. Until now, I hadn't actually thought about a "policy" regarding editing of my userspace essays by others, because I wasn't even aware anyone was reading them yet. It's a pity the English Wikipedia disabled MediaWiki's hit counters, particularly in userspace where they would be usefully informative. --Teratornis 17:26, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

For the time being, I only have one tiny technial thing in mind (I have not yet reached the level where I can actually improve the essay itself), but seeing that only you have edited those pages so far, I decided to be extra careful. Thanks, and keep up the good work. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 08:56, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Attempted Retention Process/Policy

Thankyou for your help on the Helpdesk, could I get you to add your thoughts to Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Attempted_Retention_Process.2FPolicy as this appears to be the "offical" policy place? Fosnez 02:58, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Sort of a diversion

The problem with becoming (somewhat of) an expert on everything important in Wikipedia is that I come across glaring (well, at least to me) holes that I think need fixing. If you have time, would you take a look at:

User:John Broughton/Cite.php version 2.

Thanks. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the current situation with footnotes is untidily diverse. However, there seems to be an ongoing dispute at Wikipedia talk:Footnotes, so there may be political as well as technical factors in the way of cleaning up the mess. I can't say I have examined all the issues carefully enough to have understood what people are arguing about, and to pick a side I might be on. Usually when I add a footnote to an article (which isn't often, but I've done it here and there), I just follow whatever style the article already uses. I agree that the inconsistency is glaring, but this may be one of those difficult-to-resolve issues like the national varieties of English. I probably won't find the time to look at your proposal in enough depth to comment intelligently on it. I could suggest, however, that in its current form the proposal is hard to understand without inline examples to illustrate the various footnote style alternatives. Some screen shots might help make the material less abstract. A basic principle of persuasion is to try not to impose too much work on the people one is trying to convince of something. --Teratornis 18:47, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki administration

I think this was of interest to you (I'd put it in the wrong place in the index; have moved):

MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide (a book).

-- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:32, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Too bad it's not as informative as a Google Books entry, which seems to be missing for this particular book. --Teratornis 18:51, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Original Barnstar
		For your thoughtful and informative contributions at the help desk. Even though I'm not the questioner, I learn a lot from your responses about technology, policy and interpretation. Moonriddengirl 12:45, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, and wow, to think that an administrator learns from little old me. I'm not worthy! I learn a lot from reading the Help desk too. And from searching it. --Teratornis 21:19, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Pshaw. Your wikipedia-fu is most impressive. Plus, you seem to look at things differently than many of the other help desk volunteers, so I often see you answering a dimension of a question I hadn't considered or answering it more thoroughly. :) Take your User:Teratornis/Tips for teachers, for example. That's a perfect example of looking globally at the help desk and attempting to address the situation that prompts the question rather than simply responding to the question. Most admirable, sir. :) --Moonriddengirl 21:41, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, if you are going to reward my transparently false modesty like that, I'll have to persist in it. How about: "Thou hast caused me to rend my garments." The interesting thing is that just two years ago, I barely had a concept of Wikipedia. I'm not sure I could even spell it. Wikipedia sits alone in an enviable position on the graph of design complexity vs. ease of learning. --Teratornis 23:21, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Tips for teachers

Discussion that was here moved to: User talk:Teratornis/Tips for teachers. --Teratornis 17:03, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Help!

My article, Moeko Matsushita, is up for deletion when I only just created it. I need your help. Please respond on my talk page.Kitty53 02:54, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I replied at: User talk:Kitty53#Moeko Matsushita. --Teratornis 03:24, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Drop-down list

Thank you for the example but I what I was actually asking for was the code or script of the drop-down category list that I can use on wikipedia pages. That's what I don't know how to do.

Jotsko 19:02, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I replied on User talk:Jotsko. --Teratornis 19:21, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I understand that the scripting is {{#categorytree:Cycling}} but that is the category tree for Cycling. I would like to make my own tree rather than displaying a category tree of a particular category page.

Jotsko 19:26, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I failed to understand your question because you did not specify what you want to make a list of. Are you saying you want to make a list of something which is not a category? It looks like mw:Extension:Tree view does that, but that extension does not appear on Special:Version so evidently it is not available on Wikipedia. You might describe what you want to do on mw:Extension talk:Tree view and see if anybody knows anything. --Teratornis 19:46, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Another set of eyes

Hi. I'm wondering if you can tell me if there is some reason that this edit or this edit are useful. The IP that added them has made questionable edits otherwise (see this blanking, for instance), but for all I know I'm seeing a bunch of ???s because I don't have the proper language script. I don't want to remove the edits if they have function. :) If you have a moment and can offer any insight, I'd appreciate it. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:35, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

I only see question marks also. According to Help:Interlanguage_links and List of ISO 639-1 codes, the editor appears to be adding interlanguage links to the corresponding articles in the Sinhala Wikipedia. The editor should have explained this in his or her edit summaries, but does not appear to have done so. You could leave a suggestion to do that on the editor's Talk page. The Sinhala Wikipedia must be very new, because it does not appear in List of Wikipedias yet, and there is no [[Sinhala Wikipedia]] article yet. But there is a wiki at the URL his/her interlanguage links are pointing to. --Teratornis 16:56, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into that. I'll leave a note suggesting edit summaries for future use and just leave them be. Evidently, they don't actively harm anything. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:08, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

User:Teratornis/Outplacement

Are you aware of the existence of Wikipedia:Alternative outlets? Also, your idea is a good one in theory, but you should make sure the destination wiki has a compatible copyright policy to Wikipedia. Otherwise transwiki-ing info would be in violation of policy on its own. - Mgm|^(talk) 16:25, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

You raised a question and a point; I respond to them separately:

• Yes, I am aware of Wikipedia:Alternative outlets. If you compare it to User:Teratornis/Outplacement, you will see that I disagree with some statements it contains:
  • The section: WP:OUTLET#Inclusion criteria says we are to deliberately limit the list of alternative outlets. Since the list of alternative outlets is insufficient to take all the articles Wikipedia rejects, this is equivalent to saying we should want to completely screw some fraction of new users who got suckered by Wikipedia's overly-encouraging interface. I don't see how that is acting like a charity (Wikipedia gets a tax break, after all), nor is it consistent with WP:BITE. Did anyone analyze a representative sample of articles that new users created in good faith, which Wikipedia rejected, and determine that the list of alternative outlets is sufficient to give all those article attempts a home? I know from my Help desk experience that the list of alternative outlets is not enough to handle all the articles Wikipedia deletes. The most important feature for a list of alternative outlets is comprehensiveness. That is, if Wikipedia intends to follow its own policy of do not bite the newcomers, then Wikipedia owes everyone it suckers with its overly-encouraging interface a result comparable to what the interface implies you will get: your article somewhere on the Web. If Wikipedia really does want to prevent some articles from appearing anywhere, then let's behave charitably and fix the broken interface, so it properly informs new users of the large probability that their hard work will be summarily destroyed. Or better yet, let's require new users to demonstrate some knowledge of Wikipedia's content policies before we let them create new articles.
    • The important principle to bear in mind is the enormous cognitive overload and knowledge disadvantage new users face. Many have never used any other wiki. They have no clue that Wikipedia deletes around 2,000 articles per day. They have no idea that Wikipedia has fantastically complicated policies and guidelines. All they see is a bunch of articles, and an interface that encourages them to make articles about whatever they have in mind. We the experienced users know that if what they have in mind is not already here, odds are we don't want it, but they have no clue about that yet. Making it so easy for them to waste hours of their time and then get shocked by a deletion policy they had no clue about, when we know full well this happens over and over and over, is in my opinion insensitive to the point of meanness. It's much like the Vogon Constructor Fleet in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which came to demolition Earth to make way for an interstellar bypass, and shrugged off the last-second protests of Earthlings by noting the plans had been duly on file in a field office in a "nearby" star system. Never mind that earthlings at the time had no idea that other star systems were even inhabited. Good faith requires not only dreaming up policies, but making a good-faith effort to inform the people our policies affect soon enough so they can include them in their decision-making.
  • In any case, we are talking about Wikipedia's garbage. These are articles Wikipedia deletes. The fate for many of them is that they don't go anywhere. Sane people do not place many restrictions on where their garbage goes, as long as it goes away, and doesn't cause problems. When I set my garbage out on the curb, if someone finds a use for something I'm throwing away, as far as I'm concerned that's better than tossing it in a landfill. I don't care whether the person who uses my garbage agrees with my political views, my mission statement, or whatever. As long as he isn't actively harming me or someone else with my garbage, what do I care? Let's get over ourselves.
• I don't see why I need to care about the copyright policy on the destination wiki. It's not my article. The user who typed the article submitted it to Wikipedia under the GFDL. If that user wants to copy the article somewhere else, that user bears the burden of complying with any restrictions stemming from the submission to Wikipedia. For example, if the alternative outlet wants to copyright the material, then the user will have to rewrite the article to work around the GFDL. That's the user's problem, not my problem, and not Wikipedia's problem (although I'm not an attorney, so I can't be sure). In practice, it is hard to see how this could matter, since Wikipedia deleted the article anyway. Wikipedia keeps a copy in its database, but only administrators can see it, so if common sense remotely applies, no one outside Wikipedia would hit us with a copyright violation over content they can't even tell we have buried in our database. I'm not saying there is zero risk, but the risk seems negligible in comparison to other risks Wikipedia takes, such as posting the Muhammed cartoons.

--Teratornis 05:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Change of licensing

Thanks for the pointer. I can't think of any place that a change of licensing would impact the book, but - since I'm scheduled to do a complete author review this week - I'll keep my eyes open. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 12:54, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Paid illustrators

Thanks; already in the index. I actually read the Foundation discussion on this, including the Board vote. (Doesn't affect the book - not really very much money involved, and they're going to hire professional illustrators.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:11, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Help Desk

Hello Teratornis, although I understand you have around 2000 edits to the Help Desk, could I ask you to refrain from giving extended answers to questions (as you did with Gas Prices in 1958) that shouldn't be asked or should be directed to the reference desk. I understand you're only trying to help them, as me and other do, but making the page unnecessarily longer when the header of the page specifically says for questions relating to the use of Wikipedia, isn't what the help desk is for. I apologise if this causes any sort of offence, but please recognise this is in the interests of all parties. Regards, — Rudget _{Contributions} 19:20, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Taking offense is something I have never found useful for remote collaboration, so I generally avoid it. I appreciate your input and share your concern for the usability of the Help desk - clearly the Help desk can improve, and there are ways we can improve it using the available wiki tools. However, the Help desk uses wiki technology that clearly was never designed for threaded discussion. Perhaps someday, mw:Extension:LiquidThreads may help with that, and the massive (and growing) size of the Help desk will no longer be such an issue. The Help desk also suffers from some Usability problems. Most Help desk question come from users with little to no experience at editing on Wikipedia; the steady stream of inappropriate questions demonstrates that our instructions at the top of the page do not by themselves constitute adequate user engineering for the users we intend to help. As a perusal of my Help desk contributions shows, I currently lean toward not punishing the users we are currently confusing; I attempt to answer inappropriate questions anyway, and I have been doing this consistently for some time. (My personal view is that if we are concerned about inappropriate questions, we should fix the broken software that promotes them.) As far as I can determine, answering inappropriate questions represents the consensus of the Help desk volunteer community:

• Wikipedia:Help desk/How to answer#Questions belonging on the Reference desk says: If you feel a question belongs on the Reference desk, try to answer it anyway, if you can.

Wikipedia guidelines are constantly evolving, so if you feel that guideline needs changing, please start a discussion on Wikipedia talk:Help desk/How to answer or Wikipedia talk:Help desk. --Teratornis (talk) 22:00, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Will do, thanks for replying. Must go to sleep now though. All the best, — Rudget _{Contributions} 23:25, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Of course, the content of any of my Help desk replies is open to challenge, as is everything anybody writes. If you notice that I made factual errors anywhere, feel free to throw down the gauntlet. --Teratornis (talk) 01:29, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Help Desk New Template Template:Hits

Hi,

I have created this new template for the Wikipedia Help Desk, for Hit Counters, can you please check that it is ok?

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! The Helpful One ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 20:20, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

It looks good enough to use. I might refine it later a bit (I'm leaving my computer now), using links and content from previous answers on the Help desk to this question. I'm thinking about making an alternate set of standard response templates, to reduce unnecessary bloat on the Help desk page (see the talk page topic just above this one). There is no need to substitute N copies of the same standard response text on the help desk. Instead, we could make compact standard response templates that look like templates (messageboxes), summarize the answer briefly, and link to a Help desk FAQ for the gory details. (The existing Wikipedia FAQs do not cover all the semi-frequently asked questions on the Help desk, so we should expand the FAQ collection to cover any question that comes up more than, say, twice in a year.) In general I like standard response templates to look like templates, i.e., they should display as message boxes, with links to back to their template pages, and from there to the list of standard response templates. This would provide several advantages:

• Users would know they are getting a standard response. This would be:
  • Honest, and therefore in keeping with Wikipedia's policy of transparency (everything we do should be visible and understandable to everybody, so if we are giving people a canned response, we should make that clear).
  • Self-documenting. The Help desk volunteer community constantly turns over, with new volunteers joining the effort all the time. New volunteers learn to answer questions in large part by studying other users' answers on the Help desk. When an answer contains a substituted standard response template, this makes it harder for new volunteers to learn that we have standard response templates (and we need more).

Rather than (disruptively) change all the existing templates, I might create an alternate set, since there is no limit to how many templates we can make, to illustrate what I have in mind. And just a friendly side suggestion: I advise against including irrelevant religious greetings in a signature. Wikipedia reaches a fantastically diverse worldwide audience, and religion is one of the most divisive topics known to humankind. Unless the topic of discussion is religion, best not to bring it up. --Teratornis (talk) 21:09, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Self-policed semi-protection

Hi. I was recently reading with interest arguments that you'd previously made in support of the policy of only allowing logged in users to edit Wikipedia articles. I'm currently venturing an idea that I see as something of a compromise, namely that, subject to the establishment of some rules of thumb, all logged in editors should be allowed semi-protect articles as they see fit. You can read about it here and contribute to the discussion if you like. Thanks. --SallyScot (talk) 20:08, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Kardashev Scale

Hi, recently the Kardashev scale entry has gone through some major reverts, I'd like to talk about the reinstatement of the material. I've looked around and have seen that you've made some major contributions to the article and are interested in it's progress. I feel we need to talk about the reverts and reinstatement and talk about whether either are justified. Talk:Kardashev scale If you could help or add your two cents I'd really appreciate it. Thanks--Sparkygravity (talk) 01:48, 31 December 2007 (UTC)