Misplaced Pages

The answer is perfectly obvious: given that ninjas and pirates are both good, it surely follows that pirate ninjas (such as Chris) are better than either one. -- AJR | Talk 17:58, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Puh-lease. Just picture the Pirate/Ninja stealthily sneaking into the bedroom under cover of darkness - clinging to the ceiling with tiny bamboo-leaf sucker cups attached to fingertips and toes - and assasinating your enemy with a single drop of lethal poison by trickling it down a fine thread lowered into his mouth....with an eye patch, one wooden leg, a hook for a hand and a damn great red and blue parrot on his shoulder incessantly yelling "PIECES OF EIGHT!! PIECES OF EIGHT!!" ??? I didn't think so. SteveBaker 23:14, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Pirates, DUH!A7X 900 21:35, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Given that there are likely far more actual pirates than real ninjas in the world today, I'd say pirates are more popular, even though I personally find ninjas more interesting. But piracy a more popular occupation, judging by acquaintances I have who sail in tropical seas. I've met more people who have encountered real pirates than people who have encountered real ninjas. =Axlq 22:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

That's because nobody who meets a ninja lives to tell about it! Deco 09:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Ghost pirates!(i've posted too many times here >.<)--Kar_the_Everburning 14:59, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

• There is a need for more practice of Piracy. Ninjitsu is an overrated and loathesome past time that need not be afflicted upon the peoples of the world. Someday the pirates wil be up in arms and all the Ninja will do is a pretty backflip onto some roof in the horizon, then prance about with flashy stars and I will be in my house laughing and consuming the maids latest affrontary on the consumable medium. May Satan save us all.--R.A Huston 08:30, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• Dude! Ninjas all the way! Kyo cat 06:47, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• Ninjas Clearly way cooler than pirates --Fittysix 03:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• Ninjas...for obvious reasons... ;) --さくら木 11:11, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• 20 legit reasons that pirates are better (from a Facebook group; I'm not responsible for any contraversial points as I didn't make them):

1. Ninjas don’t choose to be sneaky, they have to be. The only way that they can kill anyone is if they sneak up and stab them in the back and then run away. Pirates basically announce that they are coming because they know that no one can stop them.
2. Ninjas have poor social skills. That is why they are such loners. Do you ever see a loner pirate? No.
3. Pirates get all the booty.
4. Famous pirate movie: Pirates of the Caribbean (Johnny Depp is a pimp)... Famous ninja movie: 3 Ninjas (enough said) (What? did you say "what about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?" Well see #10 below duh.)
5. Pirates get pet monkeys and parrots. Ninjas get nothing.
6. Pirates eat meat off the bone. Ninjas eat low fat yogurt (it’s the only thing that is transportable enough for them to carry in their black clothes or whatever the heck they wear).
7. Pirates get to use cool words such as “Yo Ho,” “wench,” and “argh.” Ninjas don’t talk (poor social skills, remember?).
8. 84% of ninjas are homosexual. Look it up. It’s a fact.
9. Pirates speak English. People who speak English are BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE. Plus, they have cool accents.
10. One might say, “Well, what about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?” Now, I will admit that the Ninja Turtles are awesome. Unfortunately, they are NOT ninjas. According to TheFreeDictionary.com, The definition of a ninja is “a person skilled in ninjitsu.” The definition of a person is “a living human.” Therefore, a ninja is “a living human skilled in ninjitsu.” Since they are turtles, they are not ninjas.
11. George Washington was a pirate.
12. Pirates have been known to eat up to 70 pancakes in one sitting. Can a ninja do that? No sir.
13. Pirates have a universal symbol: the Jolly Roger.
14. Ninjas have no famous Disney characters. Pirates have Captain Hook.
15. Pirates sing pirate songs. Ninjas just read Cosmo.
16. No one can make artificial limbs look cool like pirates can.
17. Pirates get to pillage. Pillage...what a freaking cool word.
18. Shakespeare prefers pirates. There are pirates in The Tempest. Are there ninjas in any of Shakespeare's works!? No!
19. In the song "That's Life", Frank Sinatra sings, "I've been a puppet, a pauper, A PIRATE, a poet, a pawn and a king." Frank Sinatra is a pirate, FRANK SINATRA. Beat that, ninjas.
20. Ninjas don't get to keep the stuff that they steal, they give it to their government. You know what that means?, Ninjas work for the man, that's right, THE MAN. Nobody likes the man.

--Vic226 03:41, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Vic226 make's a great point.A7X 900 19:19, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Dural: has everyone forgotten about pirate ninja mimes? they are the best thing imaginalbe! not only can they do everything pirates and ninjas can, they can also use invisible weapons, deflect anything with their glass boxes, and "fly" using invisible staircases! :poseted by Dural (who is currently NOT a member... but that will change within a week)

Kim Arhee: Now lets stay on task here- this is a popularity contest. The constant bickering over these two classic predatorial archetypes has emerged in recent years due to a combination of media campaigns. Notice how the two most popular Shonen Jump (tm) titles, One piece to piracy as Naruto is to Ninjitsu, and their relatively recent introduction to western popular culture. Admittedly One piece does conincide with the fanatical following of Pirates of the Carribean in a very timely fashion, but Ninja have been supremely popular with the youth of the past generation- Power Rangers, the 3 Ninjas franchise et al. Of course we could go into lots of petty disputes over the romanticizing of oriental assassination in various literary texts and how pirates dress not for practice,but how well the aparell catches the fellow sailors' amourous attention, however im sure we can come to an agreemnt on the "more important" facts like who Frank Sinatra referenced in an obscure song. Focus people, this is not a Johnny Depp character portrayal popularity contest, this is to decide which career is the best for toy companies to market as a fad for all 6 year old children in 1st world countries.

Hey everybody, please stick to my topic question because me and probably every one else are getting confused about what this discussion is really about. I would really appreciate it.Gogoboi662 19:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I am a Pirate, trained in Ninjutsu. Gilgamesh Rex 23:29, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Ninjas, arrrr. Samsara (talk • contribs) 19:10, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Anybody who has read Real Ultimate Power would know that Ninjas own everything. MadHistorian 00:47, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Its always pirates this, pirates that, heres one: pirates drunk! A ninja would basically need to walk up to any comatose pirate and throw the away with the rest of the trash! It not just that I dont like drinking, its that pirates suck -Charlie34

God gave ninjas the power of flipping out and of being totally sweet. Pirates are just clumsy swashbuckling imitations who wouldn't know a good assassination if it sliced open their jugular or poisoned them in their sleep. --Gwern (contribs) 04:12 22 December 2006 (GMT)

As amusing as pirates and ninjas are, the Village Pump is not for non-Misplaced Pages-related discussions. If you wish to converse on this matter, please discuss it on a forum website. --Gray Porpoise_{Your wish is my command!} 16:38, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Good point Porpoise. Is there a Misplaced Pages page dealing with the pirate/ninja controversy? We are obviously in need of some solid facts to help us make this decision. TimVickers 20:09, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Pirates versus Ninjas --Gray Porpoise_{Your wish is my command!} 02:43, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Let's all condemn the hell out of Chinese Misplaced Pages editors

What horrifying appeasers.

lots of issues | leave me a message 08:13, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The consensus of zhwiki seems to be "what a horrifyingly bad article", for what it's worth... Shimgray | talk | 17:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Lets just condem communism in general, as a load of bullshit

†he Bread 08:40, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The IHT was inaccurate and misleading. We've been discussing it on the Chinese Misplaced Pages, and frankly most people are disappointed at this complete misrepresentation of what the Chinese Misplaced Pages really stands for. After all, we've been blocked three times by the Chinese government, but have never made any concessions to them. zh:User:R.O.C has sent an email to the foundation-l mailing list: , listing the inaccuracies in the IHT report. -- ran (talk) 23:09, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The IHT did a poor job in research, which could have revealed more corrupted entries, more damning facts of zhwiki, and how it gets where it is. --Uponsnow 15:59, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

This can be partly due to zh.wiki's small number of active contributors. Not every wikipedia has the luck that en.wiki has enjoyed having so many contributor from all over the world (or, at least, most parts of the world) to make sure NPOV is achieved. On the contrary, zh.wiki does not enjoy such a luxury of a diverse backgrounds of contributors, especially since the PRC's been blocking zh.wiki for such a long time. In fact, only some very controversial articles (which IMO is very few) can receive adequate discussion/editing to achieve NPOV while the majority of articles are mainly done by one person. In that case, I think a certain degree of nonadherence to NPOV policy is expected since NO ONE can have absolute NPOV (IMHO, a person w/ NPOV does not exist), and no one can avoid that and thus are guilty of not adhering to NPOV to some degree. However, finding a non-NPOV point and not changing it is just as bad as writing something that's non-NPOV. In the end, a wikipedia won't be a wikipedia if its contributors which includes everyone, active members or just passers, stops caring about righting the wrong (or alleged non-NPOV, in this case).-- Nikopoley✪尼可波里 ✏Got Something on Ur Mind? 17:09, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

See also the blog entries by Chinese Misplaced Pages editor Roadrunner, who was interviewed and then found his remarks misrepresented: . -- ran (talk) 23:22, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I suppose a picture wouldn't hurt. brought to you by the Chinese Misplaced Pages. -- ran (talk) 23:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Ran, you can still entertain other fellow wikipedians with this misleading report. Admirable. China (that's the PRC in the "western" context) contributes much more to the world than a reminiscence of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. :) Ktsquare (talk) 19:28, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

You bet. Now they even have African's blood on their hand, through Janjaweed militia - a fact you won't see in zhwiki (because of their editorial policy). Meanwhile, they insist Slobodan Milosevic never died, but 'passed away', to show their respect, in NPOV style (Chinese context).--Uponsnow 06:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Heh, what do you know about zh.wp's editorial policy? Saying "they" don't follow the standard NPOV is a serious accusation, and you better to have plenty of evidence on your hands to back yourself up (FYI the link is http://zh.wikipedia.org).

And who's this "they" anyway? Attributing one single opinion to all of the zh Wikipedians is so convenient. --Lorenzarius 13:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Uponsnow: what zh.wiki editorial policies are you talking about? Currently the Chinese Misplaced Pages is the only Misplaced Pages to have begun a translation of the Nangpa La killings article that you've been working on; does that conform to what you believe are zh.wiki's editorial policies? As for Darfur, if you or anyone else wants to write something on the zh.wiki, conforming to the same standards of NPOV as the English Misplaced Pages, please go ahead, no one will mind. -- ran (talk) 16:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Meh, I merely want to bring a point across. It's one thing for the IHT to publish a misleading article, which Slashdot promptly spun out of proportion in its discussions. At least you can say that they don't know how Misplaced Pages works. It's another thing for fellow Wikipedians to misunderstand our community as well. We're already been blocked for over a year, and yet we didn't yield... it's horrible to be accused of doing exactly what we've refused to do all this time. -- ran (talk) 20:33, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I think you folks already did a good job to appease Chinese Communists. Look at the entry "Hu Jintao": "His modesty impressed 2 Chinese leaders. ... After assuming the post of Secretary-in-general of the Communist Party politburo, Hu visits economically challenged central and west provinces for quite a many times, showing a more open minded and equal-footing image and more concerned with those have-not in reform era." What a eulogy! Need to read further? --Uponsnow 06:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Uponsnow, I believe u have misunderstood my point. I meant China becomes or is becoming a nation of global influence, not a global bloodaxe, which IMO your interpretation was. Ktsquare (talk) 13:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I wished your way, but reality beats me, squarely. --Uponsnow 15:59, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Uponsnow: If you want to NPOVize those please go ahead. -- ran (talk) 16:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but no thanks. Leave it as is, as an epitome of Chinese Misplaced Pages under Shizhao and other fanatics in disguise of wikipedians. --Uponsnow 15:59, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

It's especially scary how Shizhao, being the crazy commie puppet that you think he is, would nominate a supporter of the Taiwanese Pan-Green Coalition for adminship. -- ran (talk) 00:27, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

To Uponsnow: Since you've translated and quoted the Hu JinTao article on zh.wiki so well, why didn't you just change the sentence where you consider it is not NPOV. Isn't it also one of wikipedia's basic function that EVERYONE CAN EDIT; therefore, if you didn't like it, you should've changed it or bring it up to its discussion page so that other people can change it. As of your comment on zh.wiki's NPOV policy, I can guarantee you that most people on zh.wiki adheres to this policy strictly. As a contributor to Chinese Misplaced Pages, I take this policy seriously whenever I'm editing an article. BTW, I have slightly changed those sentences in "Hu Jintao" article. Thank you for bringing it to my attention ALL THE WAY here at En.Wiki.-- Nikopoley✪尼可波里 ✏Got Something on Ur Mind? 15:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your attention. There are 2 reason: 1.Don't you think I have tried, not once, but twice? You just can't beat a determined oxymoron. 2. How many Chinese-speaking people would try to get to know who is Hu by reading Misplaced Pages? For readers it can result no harms. But it harms Misplaced Pages! In case you are really concerned. --Uponsnow 16:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

It's my pleasure to NPOVize it. First of all, I'm glad that you actually did try to change it , and it's unfortunate that you met a determined editor on zh.wiki. Nonetheless, it shouldn't have stopped you from NPOVize it. Changing it directly isn't the only way. There is always other routes, and you just need to give it a try. Second of all, I agree with you that non-NPOV can definitely harm Misplaced Pages, and that's why we need to change it. Misplaced Pages is about accumulating any knowledge that all people share. In this case, it does not matter the number of readers for Hu's article now, because, if not now, someday there will be someone who's unfamiliar with Hu JinTao and decided to find out some more about him. By then, that will be the true value of Misplaced Pages.-- Nikopoley✪尼可波里 ✏Got Something on Ur Mind? 17:09, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Nikopoley: Thanks for changing it.

Uponsnow: Please don't let one edit war mar your opinion of Misplaced Pages. Shizhao may come off as being confrontational sometimes, but he would never intentionally dig up the NPOV policy. Nor is zh.Misplaced Pages ruled by one person: out of 83 sysops, just 29 are from Mainland China, and a quick glance through their user pages reveal diverse political stances. As for the Hu Jintao article on the Chinese Misplaced Pages, I'll help keep an eye on it, if you prefer. -- ran (talk) 18:37, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

• Ran, I fear that you could be easily overloaded. For instance, Chinese Misplaced Pages claims that Tibet was peacefully liberated by Chinese in 50s. Yet the opinion of how peaceful it was from those on the receiving end of the liberation, is conspicuously missing, as a result of dodged edit war. Like in almost every time, the Russian-speaking Zhwiki Czar won the battle, by design. You can insist that Tibet was peacefully liberated, like your fellow Chinese do, but it's shame for silencing others who do not subscribe to your version of truth and still claim that Chinese Wiki adheres to high standard of NPOV. Shizhao cannot fool all the people all the time.
  --Uponsnow 18:00, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm surprised to see that you say:"Chinese Misplaced Pages claims that Tibet was peacefully liberated ". The only mentioning of word "peacefully liberated" 和平解放 in the article zh:西藏, is the title of the agreement signed by Chinese central government and Tibet Authority, which reads:"Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet ". About the military conflict prior to that agreement, comparing to the English version, Chinese version actually has lot more words to say :" 1950年10月7日，由军官王其美率领的解放军四万余人分八路向康区首府昌都发起进攻，很快就打败了只有八千余人的西藏军队。两天后攻克昌都。俘去多麦总管阿沛　阿旺晋美和其随行人员，打死四千余西藏军人。1950年10月7日，西藏政府呈交联合国秘书长的报告：“西藏人民已清楚无力阻当中国军队的前进，西藏人已应允与中国政府进行和谈。虽然长久热爱和平的西藏人民欲要战胜熟练于战争的中国军队的希望并不大，但是，我们相信在世界的任何地方，只要发生侵略行为，联合国是必定会帮助予以抗击的." Roughly translate as: Oct. 7, 1950, 40K PLA troops attacked Changdu, easily defeated 8000 Tibetan army, captured governor, killed 4000 Tibetan combatant. Oct 7 1950, Tibetan government submited a report to UN secretary general saying:"Tibetan people can no longer resist chinese troops' advance. Tibetan has agreed to hold peace negotiation with chinese goverment. although peace loving tibetan people is no rival with chinese army, we believe UN would step in to help once agression happens"." Other than this paragraph, there is no mentioning of peace/peaceful elsewhere in the article. I'm curious to understand how you came to you conclusion. - munford 19:38, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

• BTW, I never suggest that the bias came from sysops' national origin. The most senior sysop from Taiwan once claims that Taiwan has 'no legal ground to be independent from China'(sic). That ends the story. He played a key role to delete dissenting views to ensure his interpretation of NPOV. You need to imagine what it is? --Uponsnow 18:00, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I went and read this discussion. Anyone who reads Chinese can read the same discussion here at zh:Talk:西藏问题. For those who can't read Chinese, here's a rough summary:

Shizhao: A lot of Chinese people feel that Tibet is the way it is only because it depends on the central government for financial support.

Theodoranian: So are you saying that since Taiwan doesn't depend on China for financial support, therefore it has the right to independence?

Theodoranian (the Taiwanese sysop you speak of) was using Reductio ad absurdum. He took Shizhao's point, extended it logically and arrived at a conclusion that Shizhao may not agree with, thereby showing the inconsistency in Shizhao's original point. In other words, Theodoranian was not arguing that Taiwan has no right to independence, in fact Theodoranian just rebutted one of the main reasons why people say Tibet can't be independent. In addition, his edits and comments elsewhere on Misplaced Pages show a consistent loyalty to his country, the Republic of China on Taiwan.

So not only have you twisted Theodoranian's point around, not only did you push away someone who was supporting your point of view (Tibetan Independence), you also insulted his loyalty to Taiwan. -- ran (talk) 19:26, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

• You were so close to reveal the real mindset of Theodoranian! Yes, I was referring to the same quote of him. But you missed in how Reductio ad absurdum is employed in debate. The logic extention part is supposed to reach a conclusion which is obviously absurd to everyone! So Theodoranian, a Taiwanese, seems to think Taiwan's independence is absurd, and he thinks it's agreed by all. He is not alone (in Taiwan). He is certainly entitled to his belief, but he should not let this mindset unduely influence his edit decision. That's my concern. --Uponsnow 11:18, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

No, Theodoranian arrived at a conclusion that may be absurd to Shizhao. In other words, he presents Shizhao with a choice:

• Either continue to hold on to the link between independence and economic dependence, and admit that Taiwan can be independent;
• Or admit that there is no link between independence and economic dependence, and lose a major point in arguing against Tibetan Independence.

This does not mean that Theodoranian himself rejects Taiwanese independence, in fact his actions and words elsewhere speak strongly of his patriotism towards the Republic of China (Taiwan); all it means is that Theodoranian is showing Shizhao the contradiction in Shizhao's POV. After all, if Theodoranian were so hostile to independence movements, then why would he be arguing against Shizhao here? Why did Theodoranian begin his point by saying: "There is no link between independence and economic dependence?"

I also fail to see how pushing away Theodoranian, who is clearly arguing for Tibetan Independence here, helps you or the international Tibetan Independence movement. Not only did you deprive yourself of a potential ally in future debates, you're also depriving the Chinese Misplaced Pages of a potential advocate of Tibetan freedom.

Ever since you started insinuating on the Village Pump of the Chinese Misplaced Pages that Theodoranian is somehow a PRC lackey, Theodoranian has been asking for an apology from you, for publicly attacking his loyalty to his own country. I suggest that you apologize to him. -- ran (talk) 18:36, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Since this thread is still running, I'd just like to say how honored I felt the day I discovered that a Chinese language editor translated my work at Joan of Arc. Thank you. I'd love to see more Chinese biographies become featured articles in English. I'm an admirer of Chinese poetry (which must lose a great deal in the versions I'm able to read). I realize we're all volunteers, yet may I make a request for Li Bai? Regards, Durova 04:27, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they did this in zh.wikipedia

• A photo depicting Chinese soldiers' killing of defenseless Tibetan refugees has been promptly deleted, after it was voted down out of 'copyright concerns', though it's properly credited under 'fair use' clause. A similar one from the same source stays fine in en.wikipedia. --Uponsnow 13:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

According to an Admin on Zh.wiki, this photo was deleted because it was submitted under "fair use" licensing and someone submitted it to vfd. Because no one voted to oppose deletion of the photo during the 7 days period of voting, it was deleted by an admin after 7 days. Everything was done according to procedure. If you believe it was a mistake, it will be nice if you upload it again, and vote to oppose deletion in case it's submited for vfd again. Btw, is the similar photo on en.wiki fair use also? or is it under free license? If it's under free license, why don't you upload it to commons. It's always nice to put free licnese stuff in commons.. :) -- Nikopoley✪尼可波里 ✏Got Something on Ur Mind? 17:45, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

As I've already explained on the Chinese Misplaced Pages, the sysops deleted the picture because it did not meet the requirements for fair use. They did not remove any wording from the article Nangpa La killings, nor did they remove any of the numerous links at the bottom of the article to various news reports, photos, and videos. In other words, the picture was deleted according to Misplaced Pages's copyright policies, not what you perceive to be politically motivated censorship. -- ran (talk) 18:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

For that matter, why is that picture there in the English version of Nangpa La killings? It might be nice for someone to email the photographer and ask for permission to use his Nangpa La-related pictures on all Wikimedia projects. This way you'll be able to upload to both English and Chinese Misplaced Pages. -- ran (talk) 18:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

• Gentlemen, we all know what's happening in Chinese Wiki. These selective enforcement of 'policy' can take many forms, and we all know what those sysops are really targeting. Since when those Chinese suddenly start to respect other's copyright? Come on, give me a break! You must be joking to yourself if you believe they are not trying to appease the Chinese communists. --Uponsnow 23:07, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

If the Chinese Misplaced Pages is trying to "appease the communists", then why haven't they tried to remove the entire article about the Nangpa La killings altogether? Why haven't they tried to remove the numerous links to eyewitness accounts, photographs, and videos found at the bottom of the article? What is wrong with deleting an image that violates the copyright policy shared by all versions of Misplaced Pages, English or Chinese? And doesn't the fact that I suggested a way to ask for permission from the original author to use the photo on Misplaced Pages, mean anything to you? Honestly, why do you look for motives when there is none?

We've always taken copyright just as seriously on the Chinese Misplaced Pages as the English Misplaced Pages. The Chinese Misplaced Pages is not a reflection of the government of the People's Republic of China, whether in copyright policy or political slant. -- ran (talk) 01:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

To Uponsnow:I don't think this photo has a correct license template. According to Explorersweb's policy, everything on its website should be All Rights Reserved. I don't konw who put the {{cc-by-2.0}} license there but it still does not make it OK to put it on wikipedia. Therefore, I think the Admins on zh.wiki did a legitimate deletion of the photo. Btw, I will submit this photo for deletion here, too, and this has nothing to do with the content. It's just because incorrectly licensed photo, especially unfree content, cannot be used on wikipedia. -- Nikopoley✪尼可波里 ✏Got Something on Ur Mind? 06:14, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I've asked for and received permission to use the photographs on the English and Chinese Wikipedias. The Chinese Misplaced Pages currently displays a photograph depicting the body of the Tibetan nun who was shot and killed by Chinese border guards. -- ran (talk) 17:29, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

A real article from the Chinese Misplaced Pages

This article alone is enough to get us blocked, forever, by the Chinese government. And it's merely one of many such articles. We have been blocked since October 2005. We have appealed to no effect. But we have not changed our policies in any way, unlike say Google or Yahoo.

From zh:囊帕拉槍殺事件

Intro

囊帕拉槍殺事件是指2006年9月30日中國邊防武警向企圖穿越西藏與尼泊爾邊境上的囊帕拉山口（海拔5700米，一譯朗喀巴山口）、出境前往尼泊爾的75名西藏逃亡者開槍射擊並至少打死兩人的流血事件。

The Nangpa La killings refer to a deadly incident on September 30, 2006, in which Chinese border military police fired on 75 Tibetan refugees attempting to cross Nangpa La Pass (altitude 5700m) between Tibet and Nepal and head to Nepal, killing at least two.

逃亡者中包括年幼的兒童和兩名帶路的嚮導。2006年9月30日，據目擊者和逃亡者稱，中國西藏邊防武警總隊日喀則大隊定日中隊在沒有預警的情況下，向這些試圖徒步穿越山口的藏人開槍射擊，17歲（有報導稱23歲）的Kelsang Namtso（女）被子彈當場擊中，在山口前死亡。另一名23歲藏人Kunsang Namgyal（男）被兩次擊中腿部後倒下，由武警帶走，事後中國當局承認Kunsang Namgyal死亡。

Among the refugees were young children and two guides. On Sept 30, 2006, the Tingri squadron of the Shigatse brigade of the Tibet border military police detachment, China, fired without any warning on these Tibetans who were attempting to cross the pass on foot, according to eyewitnesses and refugees. Kelsang Namtso, female, 17 (some reports say 23) was hit by gunfire, and died in front of the pass. Another 23-year-old Tibetan, Kunsang Namgyal (male) was hit on the leg twice and fell, and taken away by military police. The Chinese regime later admitted that Kunsang Namgyal had died.

中國當局聲稱，士兵開槍是出於「自衛」。這一聲稱與現場西方目擊者的陳詞有矛盾。事後，41名幸存者抵達位於尼泊爾首都加德滿都的「西藏難民中轉中心」。兩周以後，幸存者抵達目的地印度達蘭薩拉。

The Chinese regime claims that the soldiers fired out of "self-defense". This claim contradicts the testimony of Western witnesses at the scene. Afterwards, 41 survivors arrived at the "Tibetan Refugee Reception Center" in the Nepali capital Kathmandu. Two weeks later, the survivors arrived in Dharamsala, India.

Excerpts

一些外國登山者向外界發佈了照片和視頻，私下或者公開提供了目擊者證詞。這些圖像包括中國士兵押送未能逃脫的幸存者（包括未成年的藏人）列隊經過卓奧友峰先頭大本營的情形。視頻片段包括武警戰士對正在遠去的非武裝藏人平民進行長距離狙擊式射擊。

Some foreign mountaineers sent their photos and videos to the outside world, and gave witness testimony either publicly or privately. These images include Chinese soldiers escorting under custody survivors who could not escape (including Tibetan children) in file through the Cho Oyo forward base camp. Videos depict military police sniping, at a great distance, unarmed Tibetan civilians moving away from them.

我看到一隊西藏人向山口進發，這是司空見慣的，因為每一年的這段時間是通商時節。然後，毫無預警地，槍聲大作，一輪，一輪，又一輪。隊伍開始朝山上逃散，這裡海拔是19000英尺。看起來，中國軍隊得到密報說有人逃亡，於是帶槍出現了。目睹隊伍在雪地上蜿蜒奔命，槍聲四起，我們注意到兩個人形仆倒。望遠鏡下就清楚了：兩人倒下，沒有再起來。

The above is a direction translation from anonymous testimony in English:
I saw a line of Tibetans heading towards the start of the pass - a common sight. Then, without warning, shots rang out. Over, and over and over. Then the line of people started to run uphill. Watching the line snake off through the snow, as the shots rang out, we saw two shapes fall. The binoculars confirmed it: two people were down, and they weren’t getting up.

Sergiu Matei對媒體表示：「我把他（槍擊幸存者）帶進帳篷，給了他極地保暖毯和一雙襪子。我沒拍下來，我不想再回去，只希望他穿越山口，不要成為那些嗜血的中國人的活靶子。我給了他一些牛奶和爆米花。然後我告訴他得儘快離開，因為中國軍人在搜捕兩名失蹤的藏人，很可能會搜查帳篷。我給他指了穿越冰川的捷徑，他就上路了。他穿越槽口的時間大約是凌晨兩點。」

The above is a direct translation from the English original of Sergiu Matei's testimony:
"I took him into our mess tent and gave him one polar fleece and a pair of socks that Cosmina had bought for me. I don't know why I didn't film the scene – I just didn’t seem relevant for me back then; all I could think of was to see that guy crossing Nangpa La without becoming a practice-target for the blood-thirsty Chinese boys. I went again in the tent and gave him some milk and cornflakes. Then I told him to leave as soon as possible, since the militia was on the prowl after two missing Tibetans and they might search the camps looking for him. Thirty minutes later I showed him the shortest way across the glacier, and off he went towards what they call their spiritual father. He crossed the col at around 2 am."

To Uponsnow (zh:User:澍子, who wrote this article and made it even more detailed than the English version, I express my gratitude and respect, for making the Chinese Misplaced Pages an avenue for freedom of expression. I also ask Uponsnow to reflect on the fact that to date, no sysop on the Chinese Misplaced Pages has tried to delete this article or compromise its truth or neutrality in any way. I understand that you're angry towards the policies of the Chinese government, censorship or worse, but this article alone should elucidate the fact that the Chinese Misplaced Pages is NO PART OF IT.

-- ran (talk) 02:19, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Maybe this is why Misplaced Pages HAS been blocked by PRC government for a long long time. But who cares about what PRC gov't thinks, keep up the good work!!;) -- Nikopoley✪尼可波里 ✏Got Something on Ur Mind? 06:35, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Update: this article is now in the "Did you know" box in the main page of the Chinese Misplaced Pages. -- ran (talk) 04:12, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Ran, I believe what Chinese Wiki needs most to restore its credibility is NOT such a stunt show with limited PR value, but rudimentary change of altitute. Currently its editing policy is carried out in a way hostile to contributors who dare to differ from Beijing regime. This saddens me most. --Uponsnow 11:05, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

How is this "stunt show", so to speak, hostile to you? When you created the Nangpa La killings article on the Chinese Misplaced Pages, what hostility did you meet, other than the deletion of the image that you uploaded with no permission (and I should say that it is I who emailed the original author and obtained permission to use it on both the English and Chinese Wikipedias?) Why is it a user like 台灣少年, a declared Pan-Green supporter, can get nominated as sysop by none other than your scary commie bogeyman Shizhao (he would have been elected 9-0-0 had he not declined due to real life commitments)? The hostility you have met is the result of your own confrontational attitude, your own propensity for accusing people like Theodoranian of being PRC lackeys when nothing could be further from the truth, and not because of your political views. -- ran (talk) 18:54, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Let's take a typical, well-written Chinese Misplaced Pages article: History of Taiwan. Please tell me how this article, which claims the following things, panders to the Beijing Regime:

• As late as the Ming Dynasty, Taiwan was regarded as foreign territory;
• The Ming Dynasty did not object to the Dutch colonization of Taiwan, because it was foreign;
• The first time Taiwan became Chinese territory was in 1683, not the 3rd century as Chinese history books like to imply;
• The Qing Dynasty initially wanted to give up Taiwan after conquering it in 1683;
• Much of Taiwan's modernization can be attributed to Japanese colonization;
• The Republic of China continued to be the government of Taiwan after 1949 (and not the "Republic of China" with quotes, the "Kuomintang regime", the "Taiwan authority", or whatever other contrived name the People's Republic of China likes to use);
• That the Taiwanese population is generally hostile to the Anti-Secession Law passed by the PRC in 2005, and took to the streets to express their determination to protect Taiwanese sovereignty

-- ran (talk) 19:09, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

There are tons of entries written on the assumption that Taiwan is ALREADY a part of the People's Republic of China. Users advocating 'using force when necessary' to invade the island often receive nice treatment on zh.wiki. BTW, Ran, you blocked me for another week on Chinese Wiki so I cannot write about the Chinese-sanctioned genocide going on in Darfur region. My perception is that your action is highly politically motivated and arbitrary, which disappoints me very much. --Uponsnow 12:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I blocked you because you are using sockpuppets to circumvent an existing block placed on you. The existing block was for an extended campaign of bigoted personal attacks that you carried out on a user talk page. Also, if I have political motives, why did I email Mr. Pavle Kozjek for permission to upload the photos for the Nangpa La killings? Are you going to accuse me of a split personality next?

As for those "tons of entries" that assume that Taiwan is a part of the PRC, go change them yourself if you see any. The main, well-watched articles about Taiwan, such as the Chinese Misplaced Pages versions of the Republic of China, Taiwan, History of Taiwan, Political status of Taiwan, etc., certainly do not assume such a thing.

I see that you haven't answered my question about the History of Taiwan article, nor explained how a pro-Green Taiwanese could be nominated as sysop, nor apologized to Theodoranian for the rumours that you have spread about him. Instead you've begun to make bizarre accusations against me... well, whatever, say what you want. Any English Wikipedian interested in the topic can wade through this long discussion and come to their own conclusion about what's going on at the Chinese Misplaced Pages. -- ran (talk) 16:22, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

As a friend of Theodoranian and having a bi-weekly regular meeting with him, I can say that Theodoranian is not a PRC lackey. The rumor about him is not true and someone should give Theodoranian an apology.

Please, stop the rumor. I will let Theodoranian know what's going on here.--H.T. Chien / 眼鏡虎 (Discuss|Contributions) 18:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Dear, he himself is the one who spreads that 'rumor'. Read the referenced quote (Taiwan does not rely on China economically, but how can this become the basis of legitimacy of independence?) and ask him to explain. I hope he was out of his mind when he said that. --Uponsnow 18:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Poor translation. The original is:

許多中國人，包括我都認為，現在西藏都是政府每年大筆的財政支持才能由現在這個樣子的，也就是說，其實是中國在養著西藏，主要還是他的戰略地位太重要了。--百無一用是書生 (Talk) 03:19 2004年7月28日 (UTC)

Dear Shizhao，中國為西藏帶來了一定程度的進步，我想很多人都不能否認。但是誰養誰不代表(前)誰可以統治(後)誰，或是說誰靠誰養(前)誰就不可以獨立於(後)誰。如果照以上的邏輯，不靠中華人民共和國養的台灣，獨立的正當性是否就有了？--虎兒 03:58 2004年7月28日 (UTC)

Many Chinese, myself included, believe that Tibet can sustain itself only because of large financial support by the central government. In other words, China is sustaining Tibet, mainly because its strategic location is just too important. -- Shizhao

Dear Shizhao, China brought a certain level of progress to Tibet, I think many people can't deny this. But A sustaining B doesn't mean A can rule B, or in other words, B depending on A for sustenance doesn't mean B cannot be independent from A. If we go by the above logic, is it true that Taiwan, which doesn't depend on the People's Republic of China for sustenance, has the legitimacy to become independent? -- Theodoranian

As far as I can see, Theodoranian, a Taiwanese and avowed patriot to the Republic of China (Taiwan), not only rebutted Shizhao's justification for Chinese rule over Tibet, he also pushed, in a tongue-in-cheek way, for Shizhao to admit that yes, Taiwan can independent (either that, or concede the point about Tibet). -- ran (talk) 20:12, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they did this. After a zh.wiki user added a few lines saying Zhao Ziyang was under house arrest, a well-known fact, he was not only permanently banned, but ALL his contributions deleted, by a majority vote of the Chinese sysops. You can imagine what kind of majority opinion will be. --Uponsnow 18:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The Chinese Misplaced Pages article on Zhao Ziyang states: 趙紫陽一直是中國國內官方報道中忌諱的話題，網上的搜索引擎、社區、聊天軟體亦以此為「關鍵字」處理；但趙近況始終是歐美等西方媒體關注的焦點。趙紫陽下臺後一直被軟禁在家，軟禁的其中一個標誌是有公安站崗俯視向小巷的牆上和門前，但在後期官方對其行動的管制明顯放鬆，如偶爾打高爾夫球，甚至被允許在中國內陸省份旅行，但是被禁止進入容易被國際媒體曝光的沿海地區。"Zhao Ziyang was always a taboo article in official media in China, with search engines, online communities and chats treating his name as sensitive; but recently Zhao has always been the focus of Western media. After losing power Zhao was held under house arrest, one symbol of which being a police post looking over the walls and gates of the alley ; but in later years official control over his movement loosened, and he was able to play golf occasionally, and even travel through interior provinces in China, though he was banned from going to the coastal regions where there was greater risk of international exposure."

Oh, and I must add that the aforementioned user was banned for repeatedly spamming all pages of the Village Pump on the Chinese Misplaced Pages with personal attacks. In one attack, he accused Taiwanese Wikipedian Jasonzhuocn of being a commie spy, because "cn" means China (as opposed to, say, his initials). -- ran (talk) 19:55, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they did this. Radio Free Asia is dismissed as a questionable source of news, before its affiliation with the state department. Xinhua News Agency, a Chinese government mouthpiece, however, is never questioned. In fact, on one day in this December, it was the sole source of wiki news. --Uponsnow 18:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The Chinese Misplaced Pages article on RFA states: 自由亞洲電臺(Radio Free Asia,RFA)是根據1994年通過的美國國際廣播法案而在1996年由美國國會出資創建的一家非盈利性私營廣播電臺,它歸美國廣播理事會管轄.廣播委員會的職責是"向海外聽眾提供準確客觀公正的美國和世界新聞及相關信息廣播,以促進和加強自由民主事業". Radio Free Asia is a nonprofit private broadcasting station created in 1996 by the US Congress according to the 1994 International Broadcast Act. It is managed by the US Broadcasting Committee and its role is to "provide accurate, objective, and balanced US and world news to listeners overseas, and facilitate the development of freedom and democracy". The second external link on the page is a guide to bypassing governmental jamming of the station. -- ran (talk) 19:33, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they can do this. BTW, if I had said any of the above in Chinese Misplaced Pages, I would have been banned for 3 days, for 7 days, for one week more, for 'violating wiki policy' and 'personal attack'. That's the ugly reality of Chinese Wiki. --Uponsnow 18:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Uponsnow was banned for making the following attacks on the user talk page of zh:User talk:真實事求是, a Chinese Malaysian. In these attacks, Uponsnow insulted 真實事求是's accent, intelligence, country of origin, and parents; made racist remarks about Malaysian Chinese, Malays, and Tamils; used traditional economic livelihoods of Malaysia as tools of personal attack; accused 真實事求是 of providing pornographic material online; and advised 真實事求是 to go into prostitution for a low price so that he "won't need to worry about lack of business":

華文學校的劣等品，中英文皆爛，講國語前後鼻韻不分翹不翹舌不懂，令人噁心，想投靠大陸找份工作根本不成。在大陸誰不知道最不講道德只講錢的華人就是這些天朝棄民？請不要再唧唧歪歪了（聽得懂嗎？） Inferior product of Chinese schools, you suck in both Chinese and English, your Mandarin doesn't distinguish final -n and -ng, or between alveolars and retroflexes; utterly disgusting, you want to find a job in Mainland China but you can't. But in Mainland China, who doesn't know that the most immoral, the most money-minded, are these abandoned people of the heavenly dynasty ? Please stop with your weird squeaking ( do you understand my words? )

你儘管意淫，你這種熱帶智商，給馬來人、泰米爾人做奴才人家看不上，又想投靠中共混點「中國崛起」的殘羹冷炙，老實說現在中共也不稀罕，找100條純種狗有難度，找1000個失業的「南洋華僑」，不難！ Although you twist meanings, your tropical IQ is not enough to satisfy Malays and Tamils when you want to be their servants; and so you want to join the Chinese Communists to get some table scraps of "China's Rise". Honestly, the Chinese Communists aren't going to treat you as hard to find; it's somewhat hard to find 100 purebred dogs, but it's easy to find 1000 unemployed "Southeast Asian Chinese"!

不要把我教訓教訓你跟我反共扯在一起，以為你自己儼然就是共了，你別做夢。你的IQ，給共產黨提鞋都不配！你要入黨，可能要 。。。算了，沒指望，遺傳太差勁。其實你困在馬來西亞出不去也不是死路一條了，可以和從大陸來賣的競爭啊！只要你出價低，不愁沒有生意，好歹強過你在網上幫共產黨打手槍那麼無聊。有些事你也不要強求了，基因不好，你爹媽給的，否則怎麼會流落南蠻之地做二、三等公民呢！你要有自知之明的話，還是做體力活吧，不要上維基了，對維基有害處，你也不配。Don't link my chastisement of you with my anti-communist sentiments, you think you're a commie, stop dreaming! With your IQ, you aren't fit to carry shoes for the commies! If you want to join the party, maybe you need to ... never mind, forget it, your genes are too inferior. Actually it's not a dead end for you to be trapped in Malaysia, you can compete with those from Mainland China coming to sell!! As long as your prices are low, you don't need to worry about lack of business, it's a lot less boring than you helping commies j*rk off online! Some things you can't ask for, your genes are bad, but that's coz your parents gave them to you, otherwise why would you be in the Southern Barbarian lands as a second-, third-class citizen? If you truly know yourself, go do physical work, don't come to Misplaced Pages, it's bad for Misplaced Pages, and you don't deserve it!

你連這都想不通，馬來人沒教你吧？不是印證了你的熱帶智商嗎？人不認命不行，再割兩代橡膠、伐兩代木頭，說不定能想明白，到那時再來維基不遲。 You can't even figure this out, I suppose the Malays didn't teach you? Doesn't it prove your tropical IQ? You have to recognize your fate, why don't you spend two generations tapping rubber trees, and two generations chopping wood, maybe then you'll understand, and it won't be too late to come to Misplaced Pages.

這麼大的人了，居然還到處娘娘腔地告狀，怎麼一點羞恥感也不懂？我這叫攻擊討論頁？這是免費教訓你！你不聽勸，算了，本來就不是我的職責。你這樣的人還真不少，管不過來。最後的忠告：以後別自稱中華民族了啊，中國人丟不起這個臉。You're so old already, and you actually go around telling on other people like a sissy , don't you understand shame? You call this attacking your talk page? I'm educating you for free! If you don't listen to my advince, forget it, it's not my job. People like you are numerous, it's hard to get them all. A final piece of advice: Don't call yourself Chinese in the future, ok, coz Chinese people can't afford to lose this kind of face.

Uponsnow was banned by Wing for one week for making the above attacks. According to Uponsnow, this was politically motivated. Uponsnow then began to, by his own admission, use a variety of anonymous IPs to circumvent the block. As a result, I extended the block for another week. Of course, according to Uponsnow this was again politically motivated.

-- ran (talk) 19:32, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they wrote this in zh.wikipedia

• Under zh:中国地质大学(China Geology University), zh.wikipedia goes: "In 1978 it restored its operation in Beijing on the approval of Comrade Deng Xiaoping... Its first president was Liu Xing, a Proletariat Revolutionary and Educator." --Uponsnow 13:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

That's why this article has a NPOV template on the top of it. Once again, Please edit it as you see anything that is incorrect, and suport it with reference. I believe you can find something like this happening on any wikipedia. Such a thing is part of wikipedia's nature while edit out wrong info as you see it is how we build wikipedia up.-- Nikopoley✪尼可波里 ✏Got Something on Ur Mind? 17:54, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

• Don't you think it's just the tip of the iceberg? Such unscrupulous propaganda inundates Chinese Wiki, though it's against stated policy even from language style point of view. That's why I call Howard French's poorly researched essay newsworthy - it at least raises a legitimate issue. --Uponsnow 22:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

This "tip of the iceberg" is currently tagged with an NPOV tag, which is an indication that the Chinese Misplaced Pages community in general finds that article to be of an unacceptable quality. There are plenty of such flawed articles on every version of Misplaced Pages. If you feel strongly about it, you should take the time to change it yourself. -- ran (talk) 01:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

To Uponsnow: It is the tip of the iceberg, there are more out there that needs our attention, and they grow more and more everyday. Good thing someone has already smelled the iceberg by putting NPOV template on it; otherwise the wikiTANIC will soon hit the iceberg and sink. It is unfortunate that if wikiTANIC ever should sink, so many good people on it would die, too, just like poor Jack Dawson. It's always sad to see good people die.-- Nikopoley✪尼可波里 ✏Got Something on Ur Mind? 06:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Persuasive Essay Outline for College

I have to do an outline, and I am not to sure what is meant by sub-details in reference to supporting details. Can someone please explain this to me. I would greatly appreciate it. Thankyou

You might try the Reference desk rather than the Village Pump (which is for discusion about Misplaced Pages). - Jmabel | Talk 21:47, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages ripoffs?

So I found my userpage on some online prescription website, and now I know why I've seen the "This is a Misplaced Pages userpage. If you're seeing this on some other website..." template on some userpages. What's the name of that template? Xaxafrad 05:31, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh look, I found it, {{Userpage}}. Xaxafrad 05:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Where? Patstuart 17:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

{{Userpage}}; just type what Xaxafrad wrote above on your page. Xiner 18:19, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

No, I meant, where's the rip off site? -Patstuart 21:23, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Brazilian states

Hi, My name is Raphael and I'm the co-founder of the project "Subdivisões do Brasil" (Brazilian subdivisions) in the Portuguese Misplaced Pages and the author of more than 5.000 Brazilian location maps (states, municipalities, mesoregions and also microregions). I would like to know why the Brazilian states aticles don't have a higher priority than their respective capitals. Sorry but my capacity to write in English is very limited. What I'm trying to say is: Rio de Janeiro concerns the City of Rio de Janeiro and Rio de Janeiro (state) the state. The same occours with São Paulo (city) and São Paulo (state). I really don't understand why this is the convention and why the states of the USA are different. e.g. New York for the state and New York City for the city / Washington for the state and Washington, D.C. for the city.

Can I move the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo related articles to names like the states of the USA?

Thank you all,

Raphael.lorenzeto 09:28, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

New York City technically has a different name than New York. As for why we have the article titles that way, I don't know. My guess is that the cities are the better known subjects in the English speaking world. (For Rio De Janeiro that's certainly true.) --tjstrf talk 17:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Those articles were probably created when wikipedia was young and very USA-centric - up here we know of the city of Rio much more than the state. Similar issues have cropped up before, the best example being Georgia, which was created for the US state rather than the central Asia country of the same name. I think the moves you propose make sense, but they should be mentioned on the Talk pages of the stories first, to get reaction. (Also, do you know how to do a proper move, rather than a cut-and-past? From all your experience, I'm sure you do.) - DavidWBrooks

I'm going to post this topic in articles to get "reaction" as you said and yes, I know how to do a proper move. Thank you all again. Raphael.lorenzeto 01:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I have listed my opposition. The state is not what you would expect to get if you type in Rio, it would violate the least surprise principle. Also a admin would be required to make the move, if it were supported. Rmhermen 15:13, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

This principle of least surprise doesn't apply to Washington and New York? When someone types "Washington" or "New York", they aren't expecting to get the U.S. capital and the big apple? I noticed that exists only two exceptions for naming conventions of brazilian settlements (check talk): "Rio de Janeiro" and "São Paulo". The principle of least surprise applies only to these two cities? ... and, I'm not familiar with the methods of this wiki. Is difficult to ask an admin to make the move?. Raphael.lorenzeto 15:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, in the U.S., the capital is most commonly called "Washington, D.C." even in speech. It's not unusual to hear that shortened to "D.C." rather than "Washington", especially when talking about the city itself rather than the government. That is, "popular in Washington" would more likely mean "well-liked by the government", "popular in D.C." would more likely mean "well-liked by the city's residents." - Jmabel | Talk 22:42, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Non-English Page

Okay. So, I was looking at the United States of America page and I looked it up in another language. The page in Inuktitut is an obvious WP:AFD. It was created for the sole purpose of demeaning America. The link is but you may not be able to read it. But, the point is, I can't delete it as I am not a user in that language.... nor do they have an AFD page! Any ideas? I doubt they even have an admin I could talk to. It isn't a high trafic page (let alone language, only 70 articles total), but I still don't believe that that should exist. Any suggestions.-Hairchrm 02:43, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

If you can read it, could you improve it? Durova 02:47, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

No. It just says " amialika

America, particularly the United States. Contains ᐊᓛᓯᑲ."

And anyone can guess what the last four characters are. Actually, the whole language is silly. It ought to be off the page, as most of the pages are in english, anyways.-Hairchrm 02:54, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

User:Thogo () appears to be the only active admin there - and he is off for Christmas. Rmhermen 03:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

The ᐊᓛᓯᑲ is Alaska. Follow the link, you'll see. --WikiSlasher 03:56, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

It appears you need a special font to read the characters; they come out as question marks for me too. They're actually in some Unicode range that's not in standard fonts. *Dan T.* 05:11, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, thats great and all, but I'm not able to download the font on school computers. So... anybody else know what it says? The whole language is lacking in many articles. There was a link to the equivilant of our WP:AFD page, but the page was empty. Many of the pages are in English, so I don't even know why they created this language. Any other suggestions?-Hairchrm 20:14, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I vaguely seem to remember seeing something on Meta about closing down several inactive language projects and for some odd reason think that might be one of them. I'll try to dig up a link. ~ ONUnicorn 21:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

, but that language isn't one of the proposed ones. Any rate, poking around Meta might be more helpful to you than poking around en's villiage pump. ~ ONUnicorn 21:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Angel Diaz Nieves

What do we do with this redirect?

—Nethac DIU, always would speak here—
17:13, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to do anything with it. Is there a problem with it? Does something need to be done with it? ~ ONUnicorn 17:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

You could nominate it for deletion. I don't see any reason why someone would switch those two words. Then again, it doesn't really take up that much space. Xiner 18:17, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

My understanding of Iberian naming customs leads me to believe that it would be very likely someone might switch the words.~ ONUnicorn 21:29, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages accused of lying

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/12/358569.html

Someone has already posted something under that article on indymedia to point out to its author that anyone can post to wikipedia, just as they can do in indymedia.

It is regrettable that the author of the article could not resolve his/her disputes within wikipedia, and had to accuse wikipedia of lying.

I think we need to at least keep a note of accusations of lying by wikipedia. I hope this is the correct place for this. Maybe further action needs to be taken against the author of the article. I am not a lawyer, but some of this could be taken as libel against wikipedia. --Publunch 19:43, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Libel — Omegatron 20:06, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I've added this to the Misplaced Pages Signpost Tip Line (Misplaced Pages:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#UK_Indymedia_accuses_Wikipedia_of_lying) --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 14:10, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Is this person notable?

I saw this brief notice in my local paper:

The world's only bald, Welsh-speaking Elvis impersonator has been receiving death threats.

After a short chuckle, I was compelled to see whether Misplaced Pages had an article about this guy. After finding his name (Geraint Benney, if you're curious), I only found 2 mentions about his unsuccessful Plaid Cymru candidacy for Parliament. There reasonable verification for the death threats, although one person commenting about this article claims that this is a publicity stunt. So is this guy notable enough to deserve an article on Misplaced Pages -- even if it turns out that he isn't the only Welsh-speaking Elvis impersonator & the death threats never happened? (I personally feel that if we have an article on Paris Hilton, this guy ought to be a shoo-in, but I won't create the article; I'm more inclined to use it as a convincing reason to AfD Paris Hilton.) -- llywrch 20:41, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead and make it! Make sure you cite the sources you've found.~ ONUnicorn 21:37, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Dunno... sounds kind of dubious. Only bald Welsh-speaking Elvis impersonator certainly doesn't cut the mustard, and from what I know of the guidelines for American politicians, failed candidacies don't establish notability either. --Gwern (contribs) 04:39 22 December 2006 (GMT)

eBay links

When I saw an eBay listing used as a reference in the Hollywood Sign article, I wondered how ofter eBay was being linked to from the Misplaced Pages. I found 851 links (see ). Many of them look like they might be legitimate (used as references in discussions on talk pages, etc.), but in the half-dozen that I looked at, I found one legitimate spam (a link to someone's now ended auction). I don't think that eBay should be added to the spam blacklist, but these links probably should be checked. I'm posting here because I couldn't find a better place to post my concerns. 20:56, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Numbers in RC

What do the numbers in RC mean?? (I'm not wishing for them to go away, I'm just curious.) Georgia guy 23:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I found out the answer; the number of new characters added or taken away. Georgia guy 23:16, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Lumpy the Cook's Page is Gone!

I would like to know who deleted the Lumpy the Cook article and why they did it. And I would also like to know if I can recreate the page.A7X 900 02:11, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Please see Misplaced Pages:Why was my page deleted?. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:53, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Alright, thank you very much...A7X 900 17:21, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Person of the Year 2006

I could not resist but to create an userbox celebrating ME being the {{User Person of the Year 2006}}. Although, I think I may have to share the award with some others ;) -- Chris 73 | Talk 14:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I love it! -sthomson 15:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't it be in userspace? ~ ONUnicorn 16:52, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

User templates are usually in the template space with user at the beginning. Should be Ok i think -- Chris 73 | Talk 10:23, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I love it to and have already stolen it!--Esprit15d (talk ¤ contribs) 19:21, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Arabic Misplaced Pages

Are you kidding me? After reading about zh being biased (and it not being true), I decided to check out Arabic Misplaced Pages. The first page I pulled up on google's translated version was terrorism: . I encourage you to read it, but for those of you who don't have the time, here is its contents:

• Constant and ridiculous anti-Jewish propaganda: e.g., "Prior to the eleventh century, the most prominent two terrorist attacks are carried out by the secret sect of the Jews..."
• Lots of mention of Al-Qaeda. OK. But always tempered by examples of "Zionist" terrorism.
• (Bad translation, tried to fix): Currently, though Osama bin Laden and the organization Al-Qaeda are described as terrorists, the significant number of us in the Arab and Islamic world refuse terrorism."
• "The definition of terrorism contained in the Holy Quran in clear language undisputable interpretations..." (keep in mind that about 10% of the Arab world is Christian, and doesn't think the Quran should be called "holy")
• Blunt statements that American raids in Iraq are terrorism ignored by the media, while acts by Hamas are unfairly treated as terrorism by the media (I guess blowing up school buses of kids isn't so).

I checked out some others, and Quran and Zionism didn't appear so bad, though the translation was sometimes poor, and it was hard to tell. Just thought I ought to bring this up here. -Patstuart 16:59, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

There's something about this approach that rubs me the wrong way. The Arabic Misplaced Pages has slightly over 20,000 articles. It's just getting off the ground and it's one of the world's most widely spoken languages. There's a fair chance that this article does reflect mainstream sources in that language. Take a look at the original terrorism article in English from 26 December 2001. To me that looks like the editor has attempted NPOV but the sources and presentation do reflect U.S. bias. Rather than calling out some of Misplaced Pages's smaller projects and berating them over specific articles, how about submitting translation requests for some of the best pages in other languages? Anne Frank is a featured article in English and Hebrew, but she doesn't have a page on the Arabic Misplaced Pages. Durova 20:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Just to be completely accurate: The above link does not represent the original En:Misplaced Pages article on terrorism (The edit summary is "(Revert vandalism)"). The older history was lost in an early software upgrade. I checked as I couldn't believe that we didn't have an article on terrorism until 3 months after 9/11. Rmhermen 20:21, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. Can you still accept it as a snapshot of the English language edition's early stages? Durova 20:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I was unaware that Arabic only had 20000 entries. I guess it doesn't have a lot of users. A certain user named Eagle was able to revert some "serious NPOV issues" at this point: , so I guess not all hope is lost. That being said, has the English Misplaced Pages ever allowed main articles to have off the wall statements like like "We Western Christian know better than this because the Holy Bible says so"? I won't complain too much, as I realize the Arabic society is very religious. But it was so flatly not NPOV that I was quite saddened. I don't think we ought to look down on any other wikipedia, but we oughn't patronize them and baby them either to assume they can't figure out NPOV on their own. -Patstuart 00:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm assuming good faith: mainstream sources in Arabic often relate a very different perspective on this sensitive topic than mainstream sources in English. Ideally the project will grow to the point where it presents this from what might be termed a more neutral global perspective. I think it would be more fruitful to approach this in the spirit of how can we help make this better? Translation will become increasingly important as the overall project grows. After I raised Joan of Arc to FA, other editors translated the article into Indonesian and Chinese. A few days ago I discovered Meta's Translation of the Week project and proposed the article there, specifically mentioning that the Arabic version is only one paragraph long. One of the things I hope happens is that the best articles about similarly important historic figures of Arab, Indonesian, and Chinese culture get their articles translated across languages too. Durova 05:25, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

"Edit Summary" capacity

I think the area for "Edit Summary" should have a larger capacity. I think it is unrealistic to expect people to say all they want to say about why they are making the changes they are making, especially as concerns the reverts of someone else's writing. The Talk page is a good thing, but it is too far away to allow for the immediate explanation that is called for. I think the "Edit Summary" should be further divided into a "brief" section and a slightly "extended" section. The "extended" section should still be very limited. But it should allow several times the length of writing that the present "Edit Summary" allows for. I think this would allow people to appear to be acting in a more humane way towards one another. Presently, it is very common for reverts to engender bad feelings. It is almost impossible to try to smooth over the almost inevitable bad feelings that tend to result from reverts. Bus stop 20:43, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I recently brought up a similar idea on the the proposal page. Why not comment there? ~ ONUnicorn 20:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

OK. I will check that out. Thank you. Bus stop 02:48, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

He He (:evil grin:), you can get it around it if you have the right tools. If you use the web developer toolbar on Firefox, it has an option for "remove form lengths". So far, I've only used it a few times, and only gone a little over the ragular maximum length, but it's worked every time for me 9the edit summary shows up and all). -Patstuart 00:51, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

That sounds super cool. I'll have to check that out. But it should be available to everyone, IMHO. Bus stop 02:48, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

There was already a feature request on the bugtracker for longer edit summaries a while ago. I don't think the devs were particularly interested, since their reasoning went that it was long enough for usual use, and if you really needed more space to explain yourself, you should probably be editing the talk page. --Gwern (contribs) 04:43 22 December 2006 (GMT)

Approval for deletion by bot

User_talk:Cyde#Misplaced Pages:Deletion_review.2FLog.2F2006_December_19

• Con
  • Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/TawkerbotTorA shows that there is not community consensus for unsupervised administration actions.
  • There's been no substantial discussion of this anywhere, including at Misplaced Pages talk:Bots/Requests for approval.
• Pro
  • It's uncontroversial work
  • The Misplaced Pages:Bots/Approvals group is unfussed per Cyde's talk.

My strong feeling is that this is a direction that the community is unwilling to go, that there is neither enough volume of work nor anything emergency-like enough to warrant short-cutting discussion, and that there is a gap between what's going on in bot-land and the zeitgeist.
brenneman 23:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the assertion that the community is unwilling to allow this is incorrect, you even say so yourself in the Pro section above when you say it's uncontroversial. It's work that needs to be done, doesn't hurt anything, quite provably makes Misplaced Pages better in every respect, and is A Good Thing. Objecting to this is the triumph of process over Doing The Right Thing. I urge the community to look at the LENGTHY history of this semi-automated operation and come out strongly in favor of the thankless, useful, positive work that Cyde is doing and stop this in its tracks. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 00:15, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

My main objection to the above statement is the suggestion that I'm trying to get a form filled out in triplicate. My objection is much more along the lines of decisions being made by fairly small groups without broader input or even any sort of accountability trail. But I'll be quiet now, and hear what the crowd has to say. - brenneman 00:31, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The bots that empty and feed categories to delete are ok, because no one really wants to do that kind of work anyways. I don't see the issue (as it is a secret as badly-kept as Curps' blockbot). TawkerbotTorA doesn't really apply as a precedent, as the premise is different: blocking Tor nodes from an external site is not the same as an admin feeding a category that has been deemed to be deleted by consensus into a script. It's no different than having a public script installable by admins. Titoxd 00:18, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, seeing as it has run without problem for months, I don't see much of a problem with it. Unlike the TawkerbotTorA plan to block open proxies, people will notice if the bot deletes something it isn't supposed to, won't they? The people who participated in the CFD in the first place are likely to notice if a cat with 2 deletes and 7 keeps goes missing, it seems. Furthermore, the bot is operating on Cyde's main account, so he'll be able to keep it under close watch. In conclusion, since it's run without problem for a while already, I say just let it run until it screws up (and if it doesn't screw up at all, then everything's fine and the worrying will all be for nothing.) Picaroon 00:24, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Endorse, given the BAG have given their approval. That's enough in other cases, so I see no reason why it shouldn't be here. Daniel.Bryant 00:38, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

First, let me give some context for uninitiated readers, as I had no idea what everyone was talking about until I dug a bit. Cyde's deletion log shows deletion of categories, with edit summaries "Robot: ..." Meanwhile, Special:Contributions/Cydebot show that it is removing or replacing those categories from pages.

I appreciate brenneman's concern about small groups making decisions about sysop bots. I also wish that the BAG would have made their approval more explicit. That said, I've occasionally, when doing category work, wondered what sad sack was slogging through CFD. I'm a little relieved to find out that it's bot work and support its continued use. - BanyanTree 01:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I confess to not understanding the process, and so I miss the point of half of the procedural objection. But the bot currently seems to be doing a good job in a thankless area, there have been no foul-ups or substantive objections. So, all kudos to Cyde, and endorse what he's doing.--Doc 01:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Since this is run by Cyde on his own account (which makes him and his account fully responsible for the bot's actions), it's probably alright, although I would prefer direct supervision. I would suggest that the edit summaries be upgraded with links to appropriate CFD discussions, so that the people unfamiliar with the bot can check that it's doing the right things. Zocky | picture popups 02:01, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I have no objection to this bot activity, which obviously has gone smoothly and should continue. I do, however, object to Cyde's dismissive response ("Nothing new to see here, move along now." "Please go back to writing articles or somesuch.") and I applaud Aaron's perseverance and eagerness to seek community input on this matter. —David Levy 03:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Just to be exactly clear, here's how CFD worked before Cydebot: The bot moves a bunch of pages from category A to category B, then an admin has to come in and delete the old category A. Here's how CFD works with Cydebot: The bot moves a bunch of pages from category A to category B, and then deletes category A. Note that at no point in time is the bot ever deciding what category A and B are; it's going strictly by what trusted users at the consensus-driven CFD process are determining. I simply made the task slightly more automated by having the bot handle the category deletions as well as moving the category text on the pages. --Cyde Weys 04:03, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Just a few things regarding that -

• It's opaque to most people who's doing what in this case, and the point of bot accounts is to resolve that ambiguity. So when refering to "Cydebot" most people are going to think "the account linked to User:Cydebot" not "the bit of python script that's running on Cyde's machine that is has the filename 'Cydebot'".
• While there are quite a few of these emptied categories, the number is hardly overwhelming, about 115 a day it looks like. Is there a reason that this cannot be done AWB style in a bot-assisted deletion rather than simply feeding it the list and letting it go?

And while I understand the arguments of "it's working just fine, why complain?" I'd like some assurances from the bot approval group and/or Cyde that, whatever the outcome of these discussions, slightly more care is taken in the future? Either re-write the policy pages to reflect reality (which would require community consensus) or follow the policy pages as they are written.

brenneman 04:16, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The bot approval group has given you repeated assurances on this issue. It appears as if you're not getting the response you anticipated, but I encourage you to pause for a moment, see that consensus already exists, and accept it. You've expressed your concern, and it's clear that we support the thankless, necessary, and good work that Cyde's script is doing. Cyde remains accountable for all of his actions, this is no different. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 04:22, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, here are some responses. First of all, that magic sauce in Cydebot is actually written in Perl, not Python. And I don't have any files named Cydebot anywhere (Cydebot just happens to be the name of the user account I run the scripts on). You say is there a reason it can't be done in an AWB bot-assisted deletion ... I would counter with, is there a reason it cannot be done in an automated fashion? Why force people to unnecessarily perform 115 individual deletions when a bot can handle it perfectly on its own? I guess you weren't around before Cydebot but WP:CFDW would frequently get weeks of backup. There was an overwhelmingly large amount of work required to process it, and it was really sluggish. That's what happened when the only tools available to us were manual AWB runs that could only handle one category move at a time. Why would we want to return to those days? Now, with Cydebot, WP:CFDW is pretty much empty most of the time! --Cyde Weys 04:23, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

If the Approvals group doesn't care, I don't see why we should. --Gwern (contribs) 04:11 22 December 2006 (GMT)

If it's working, then leave it alone. I frankly don't see the problem with bot-run administration tasks in which there is a very specific task that they do. Definitely not enough of a problem to stop a bot that has been running with approval and without problems, and probably not enough to stop one that was running without approval and without problems. Sure, it's only a few hundred edits, but why waste a human's time with mechanical edits in general? --tjstrf talk 04:29, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a non issue; Bot Approval group members have repeatedly endorsed this, and the script has been handling Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Working for five months now, allowing the rest of us to focus on improving other areas of the wiki. No objections here either, please carry on and accept my thanks as well. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 05:27, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Has anyone volunteered to delete these thousands of category pages manually? If so, why should they spend time on that instead of work on the things in the huge Category:Administrative backlog? —Centrx→talk • 07:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• Could Cyde's pseudobot also handle IFD, AFD, TFD and MFD deletion backlog (close the discussion, delete any images that only appear in that article, remove any incoming wikilinks, delete the article with a link to the xFD in the edit summary) if restricted to only uncontroversial discussions? Say, 100% consensus to delete, no multiple article xFDs, more than 5 delete 'votes'. This would free up us dumb, slow humans to tackle the copyvio, image fair use and speedy backlogs. Proto::► 10:22, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Are you under the impression that the deletion of an article calls for a sysop to "delete any images that only appear in that article"? Have you been doing this? There is no such policy, and a recent discussion demonstrated no consensus for instituting one. —David Levy 14:03, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Deleting an article is not as simple as just hitting delete on the article. There can be other concomitant tasks as well, such as dealing with incoming redlinks and ensuring that any fair use images that become orphaned as a result of the deletion are marked for deletion under Misplaced Pages:Criteria for speedy deletion#I5. Uncle G 17:53, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm well aware of that, but Proto didn't mention "fair use images" in that context. Proto inquired as to whether Cyde's bot could "delete any images that only appear in that article." —David Levy 03:58, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

• Given the sheer amount of backlogs we get, I see no problem with this particular form of automation. If the bot starts making mistakes we can undo them and block the bot while we discuss it. >Radiant< 12:22, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I like it. If it means less dirty work for us that no one's willing to do anyway, I say go for it. —Pilotguy (ptt) 14:48, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

CFD closure has been handled by 'bots for a long time now — a lot longer than six months. From looking at the logs of Cydebot (talk · contribs) and Cyde (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA), it appears that the only difference now appears to be that rather than an administrator manually deleting the category page after the category has been depopulated by a 'bot, the 'bot is also performing the deletion, via an account with administrator privileges, as well. Having 'bots use administrator accounts is not something to be taken lightly. But there is a difference between a semi-automatic tool where one manually feeds a name to the tool and pulls its trigger, and it does the grunt work involving lots of edits, and a fully automatic tool that pulls its own trigger when it detects certain content or edits. The latter having administrator privileges is more of a concern than the former. Unless someone has come up with an artificial intelligence capable of reading and parsing CFD discussions and applying consensus and our policies and guidelines to make the decision (and simply forgotten to tell the world of this astounding advance in the state of the art in computer science), any CFD 'bot will, of necessity, be of the semi-automatic kind. Uncle G 17:53, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I support use of this automation in this way. Thank you, Brenneman for keeping us honest, and thank you Cyde, for shepherding this automation so we can concentrate on tasks that need human input far more than this one does. If there are issues, revisit but for now, carry on. ++Lar: t/c 21:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Per Lar. Thank you Brenneman, thank you Cyde; now, let's all get back to work. Ral315 (talk) 09:50, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Brigadoon

Hello,
Please, I want to read the tale of "Brigadoon" ( in English because in French there's is nothing ). Some people told that's a german tale ( about a Scottish village ? ) ?
Thanks for all your answers ( name of a book of tales... ) and will you forgive my «very strong accent» whem I'm trying to write in English. --Arcane17 13:14, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

You might want to try the reference desk for help with this. Tra (Talk) 13:16, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

A caution for people starting projects that will generate lots of edits.

When you notice something you consider a systemic problem, it is very tempting to immediately start a project to correct it. One common instance of this involved searching out all instances of this problem, listing them, and calling in people to make the edits or set up bots to make those edits.

It's important to act with caution when doing so. Wide spread editing across a lot of articles based on search results can cause disruption, upset and offence to the editors maintaining those articles. Especially when actioned by proceeding through a list by rote.

Advertise your intent somewhere that is appropriate, either here or in an appropriate talk page. You may be mistaken in your actions, and a timely warning from someone might save you embarrassment. Your actions might be achievable in a simpler way, which would save time and effort. There may be notable exceptions to your assumptions which need to be addressed. All of these may be brought up in discussion before you act.

It's important that your actions meet the consensus view on how something should be handled. --Barberio 20:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

see WP:OWN.Geni 21:35, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Would two threads in WP:AN and 3 conversations with highly respected admins/checkusers on IRC count as "Advertise your intent"? ---J.S 21:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

No. WP:AN is not a place for advertising or discussing non-administration tasks and projects. Conversations on IRC do not equate to or replace consensus discussion on the wiki, no matter how highly respected the individuals involved may be. --Barberio 23:26, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd have more sympathy for your point of view if a) you didn't come across as more concerned about process then you are about the problem and b) you actually did your research. Telling Dmcedvit to stop deleting links when he hasn't been deleting any only goes to show that you started complaining without actually researching what was actually going on. Secondly, AWB isn't a bot. All of my deletions have involved my making a personal decision in each case and the only automation is that AWB has been sorting the list and helping me find the links quickly. The deletions have been discussed on EL. There is screeds of the stuff there and WP:C is also relevant because its a policy and trumps a guideline. There is no perfect place to discuss this kind of undertaking and I would of thought asking 1000 admins to review activity was a damn fine way of checking that said activity was within the bounds of accepted activity. Remember that policy is what happens, not just what gets written down. You were aware of that weren't you? Finally, the RFC acknowledges that there are a lot of copyvios that need to be removed and also endorses the need to consider links in context. Well, I have been doing that and I know J.smith has as well because we have discussed borderline cases. So, where is the activity outside consensus? Spartaz 00:00, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

1. You should have gained consensus support before starting.
2. Asking others to delete links is deleting links.
3. The amount of people who have complained at Wikipedia_talk:External_links over this 'project' and remain unconvinced that it should proceed as-is does not indicate to me that there is consensus on the issue.

To reiterate, the most important part is that projects of this sort should have consensus discussion and support before being acted on. These kinds of project are among the exceptions to 'Be Bold' because of their potential to disrupt.--Barberio 00:24, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Your objections is very odd. I've repeatitdly asked for people to show me links I've removed in error and I have gotten only one example of such. 1 out of 500 seems to be a good trackrecord, if I don't say so myself. Feel free to dig though my contributions and see if you can find more.... but I assure you both spartaz and I have done an excelent job sorting out the "keeps" and "removes." I'll even reactive the project so you have something more recent to look though. ---J.S 17:19, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps then Cindery was right, and the real source of the problem is one particular editor who has been persistently re-deleting YouTube links even after being informed that the links are not copyvio. Should I drop the RfC and all else, and just file a user-conduct RfC against that one editor? Argyriou (talk) 04:07, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

External Links may not include links to copyright violations. This is policy. YouTube has lots of copyright violations. This is fact. Removal of YouTube links which link to copyright violations is not only allowable, but encouraged. User:Zoe|(talk) 03:38, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

What just happened???

I typed "pokemon red" in the search box and hit Enter. It took me to an article with a disgusting, perhaps pornographic, image, causing me to immediately click it off. I typed "pokemon red" again, and it was a nice, clean redirect to a nice, clean Pokémon Red and Blue article. I checked the revision histories of the redirect page and the article, but could not find evidence of such vandalism. --Gray Porpoise_{Your wish is my command!} 03:03, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I see that it was vandalism to Template:Pokémon games. --Gray Porpoise_{Your wish is my command!} 03:09, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Bombing of Gernika

In Bombing of Gernika and related articles (e.g. Guernica (painting)), we've been dealing with what I presume is one persistent anonyomous participant who keeps removing all but the lowest respectable estimates of fatalities (trimming the range from 250–1,600 to 250–300, and periodcally removing all citations except one rather vague citation that apparently supports his/her views). There is something of an exchange on this at Talk:Bombing of Gernika#It's a shame!!!. The current text is a reluctant compromise on my part.

This seems to be a content dispute—at worst, editing against consensus—rather than outright vandalism, so I don't think protection would be in order. But, to raise the issue to something slightly more general: how can we possibly resolve a matter where one party to a dispute has no identity, cites sources only vaguely, etc.? Its like wrestling something made of gelatin. - Jmabel | Talk 08:24, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

This person seems to use a variety of IP addresses so I've semi-protected both pages. Notify me when you think they're ready to unprotect. Durova 14:34, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. So you feel article protection is the best way to deal with this? I guess it's not the worst, but what's to stop someone just opening throwaway accounts? - Jmabel | Talk 08:42, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Most vandals don't have the patience to wait four days. Open up a request at WP:RFI if this one does. Durova 13:11, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

This one's been doing this on and off for three months. We are dealing with a POV-pusher, not a common vandal. - Jmabel | Talk 03:46, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

New feature

What are these negative and positive red/green numbers that now appear next to edits on my watch page?--Deglr6328 06:33, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing it is a feature that shows how many characters were either removed (in red) or added (in green) to the article difference. I've just noticed this too, I'm sure there will be a detailed post on the notice board on the CP or some such. JoeSmack 06:36, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Close, it's bytes, not characters. See Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(technical)#Colored_numbers_in_Watchlist. (There's a big notice at the top of my watchlist telling me to go read that, I'm not sure why not everyone's seeing it.) --Sam Blanning 13:16, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Help

Could someone please help with Template:Baywatch Nav and make it look a bit better please. I have seen such things where they look nice and are a lot smaller and fit the page better. Thank You Samaster1991 17:19, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I've had a go with it. Does it look any better? Tra (Talk) 19:23, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Looks a lot better thanks Samaster1991 20:25, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Infinity hurts so much

If an infinite amount of monkeys are tapping on keyboards, will an infinite amount produce the works of Shakespeare be produced? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gesiwuj (talk • contribs) 21:58, 24 December 2006 (UTC).

Yes, theoretically, see Infinite monkey theorem. If you have any further questions, please ask at the reference desk. Tra (Talk) 22:27, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

No, probably not. The keyboards would wear out first. Philip J. Rayment 00:11, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Infinity is a theoretical concept. We employ it; we don't know that it exists. If it exists, then it is improbable that those cute little devils would not produce Shakespeare's Hamlet. Bus stop 00:53, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Can someone tell me how this is not vandalism?

This user altered the deletion result tag in Talk:Lolicon from this:

to this:

He then put a hidden comment that says "dude I put this here myself, it's not vandalism". Can someone make sense out of this? Because I can't =S AQu01rius (User &#149; Talk) 01:24, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

It's an old story and edit war. It's even mentioned on WP:LAME. --Wildnox(talk) 01:28, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

How Did the Wik Admins Get Away With Their Bullying and Lies over Gretaw Supposedly being a Sockpuppet?

How Did the Wik admins get away with their bullying and lies over Gretaw supposedly being a sockpuppet? If this is the standard wik runs at and on, then it isnt doing real flash - is it. Is wik a place where total bullies hang out to pounce on new editors, give them total grief, then form a larger bully gang when they cannot immediately bend new editors to their perverted dynamics,and tell lies and go on with a heap of other stuff (importing admins from the US for heavans sake, then pushing new people out. Wik is totally sick if this is how it continues to run. The little bully boy admin process is totally sick also. Poor show wik. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.54.9.138 (talk) 01:39, 25 December 2006 (UTC).

This Anon is banned from Misplaced Pages. "Gundagai editor" -- Bidgee 03:22, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Christmas Card

Thanks! --AAA! 13:33, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

What if an article needs to be rewritten from the beginning?

What do you do if you find an article which has been in time for some place and which is so completely off skew that the information in it needs to be renamed in a new article and the old article rewritten from scratch? The article Plant perception is obviously in need of being renamed Plant perception (paranormal). Plant perception is entirely unrelated to the article content as it is recognized, very mundane and very normal (even dull) science related to plant physiology. Trilobitealive 00:59, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

You can just use the "move" button at the top of the page. However, you should probably leave a note on the current talk page to see if there are any objections and give people a few days to respond. - BanyanTree 14:56, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm amazed that so many of my newby questions have such obvious answers. I've been posting in the talk page, have just put up a statement of intent and will give it a few more days before moving.Trilobitealive 15:46, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Watch users?

As you may know, it's possible to watch certain pages. But is it possible to watch certain user's contributions? --AAA! 13:33, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Not by any automated process. You could keep a link to their contributions page and observe that from time to time, but beware of being considered a stalker. User:Zoe|(talk) 16:53, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I've written a javascript tool to do this; you can see details at User:Tra#User watchlist. Tra (Talk) 17:07, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not using it to stalk people. It's for a vandal I'm trying to take care of. --AAA! 23:39, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Santa Claus Article

The article on Santa Claus is terrible! It's full of errors both grammatical and informational. There are so many, "Some say"s it's nauseating.

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Misplaced Pages is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). The Misplaced Pages community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:29, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedian's being notable

Here's a simple question that might lead to an interesting idle chat: How big does Misplaced Pages need to become for "high ranking" Wikipedians (stewards, crats, ArbCom, for example) to be notable enough for a Misplaced Pages article based on their position in Misplaced Pages alone? My personal opinion is that news coverage will be the main limiting factor - once Misplaced Pages is big enough for ArbCom cases to become newsworthy (occasionally, anyway - I doubt we'll ever be at a point where all cases are reported in external news sources), members of ArbCom can start being considered for articles. Similar conditions would apply to other Wikipedians. --Tango 20:00, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages will never be big enough for "high ranking" Wikipedians to be notable enough for a Misplaced Pages article based on their position in Misplaced Pages alone. The criteria from Misplaced Pages:Notability (people) apply, specifically subject of multiple non-trivial published works. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:14, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

User:Goyston/WikiQuiz

I have just put up Round One of WikiQuiz. Those who enjoy Wikifun may be interested, or anyone who likes puzzles. And Misplaced Pages. And riddles. And finding things. And userboxes for prizes. Whoo! Enjoy. And I apologize for posting similar messages to a few places. --Goyston (talk) (contribs) 23:28, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Eid al adha

I am a frequent user of wikipedia. I do not mean to cause problems, but I read an error that may be offensive to other Muslims. Eid al Adha is the commeration of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, but that son was Ismail. The misprint on your site is a highly offensive comment that is used against Muslims to degrade their history. I do not think this was your intention, but I wanted to give you the oppurtunity to fix it before other Muslims read it.

It looks like the wording is already changed. I made a small change.Steve Dufour 03:50, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

"Scientology-sponsored"

In the article on Scientology critic Tilman Hausherr it mentions a website that is "Scientology-sponsored". That sounds a little odd to me. You wouldn't say a site was "Christianity-sponsored" or "liberalism-sponsored". I tried to change it to "sponsored by Scientologists" but it was changed back right away.Steve Dufour 03:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The issue may be that you are using too broad an analogy. While one would likely not use the examples you supply, one can easily come up with appropriate usages for, for example, "Presbyterian-sponsored", "Whig-sponsored", or "Kiwanis-sponsored". In response to the potential argument that there are Scientologists who are not part of the Church of Scientology -- and therefore not sponsors, even indirectly of the website in question, I would say that, equally, there are those who identify as Knox-descended Protestants, anti-Tories, and even lunchtime social/networking afficionados who do not identify with their respective representative institutions -- but that the overwhelming practice is still to refer generally to those institutions in terms parallel to using "Scientology" to refer to the church. Robertissimo 04:54, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

In that case I think it would be more clear if the article said "sponsored by the Church of Scientology", if that is the case. Steve Dufour 06:07, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The chinese wikipedia problem - the Chinese communist spies

It is a known fact that China blocked its people's access to wikipedia. however, i checked the chinese page, they have total of 29 moderators that are in China! 6 from beijing, 6 from guangzhou, 6 from shanghai, etc. There are more moderators from China than from any other parts of the world. however, if the chinese are blocked from getting on here, how can those Chinese moderators still have time and resources to moderate the chinese wikipedia? isn't that odd?

you may have heard about shi tao, the chinese government put him in jail for 10 years because the government was able to find his location thru a single IP address which was reported by yahoo. those 29 moderators' are listed publicly on the chinese page. So it is quite obvious that the chinese government must have those 29 mainland chinese moderators' personal informaiton. I highly suspect that most of the chinese mainland moderators are spies sent by the Chinese communists. It is a banned web site, what kind of people are willing to edit a web site that is banned by his or her own government especially in china?!

I can probably safely say that there are more people using the chinese version from Hong Kong and Taiwan than people from mainland China. however, hong kong only has 13, taiwan has 17. isn't that odd? i am not insance or crazy. It is also a known fact that china has spies in taiwan. it seems to me that the moderator from taiwan jasonzhoucn is also very "communistly" suspicious. one time, i added to only two extra links to an article of the chinese golden shield project, he immediatly deleted them without a reason. he also deleted the extra information that i have added for some of the articles.

i am not crazy, or delusional. however, think about it, the chinese have to use special programs, proxy servers in order to get on this page. and even if they have high speed, the speed won't be fast enough. who would have the patience even to edit those pages if the internet connection is not fast enough? there are 13 billion chinese, how many of them can actually get on here easily? so how is that possible that there are so many mainland chinese moderators?!

The reason that i am suspecting is because of what happened to me recently. i tried to edit the page for the "peopel's republic of china". even today, that article does not have a single word about human rights and falun gong. i added those two items, immediatly a mainland chinese moderator deleted my contribution, then put that article into protection. i have added many similar contents in other articles. most of them have been deleted by those mainland chinese moderators.

when i tried to voice my suspision and my comments on those community forums, those moderators immediatly deleted them. then they banned me , accused me doing "vandalism?!"

with 29 chinese mainlander moderators, that site is basically controlled by the chinese spies sent by the communist party. they do not allow people to add anything that are bad about the chinese communist party. so here i am, I don't know if this is the proper place to voice my opinion. i seriously think that someone should take a look into this matter.

"But on sensitive questions of China's modern history or on hot-button issues, the Chinese version diverges so dramatically from its English counterpart that it sometimes reads as if it were approved by the censors themselves." This indeed confirmed my suspition. someone should do something about those moderators.

SummerThunder 09:41, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

the Chinese moderators are incapable.

Chinese in different parts of the world use some different chinese words, such as different translations for the same English words. It is similar to the differences between the American and British English. So currently, those moderators have three different pages for mainland chinese, for people from taiwan, for people from hong kong and macau, even though the contents are basically the same! and they ask people to vote to decide which pages they should add!!! how big is hongkong and macau?! and those moderators made a special page just for them? And when I posted a message about their incapability of leading that site, they immediatly deleted my comment.

I suggested that if the English page only has one page for all people who speak English. how come the chinese site needs to have so many different pages? And if people from hongkong and macau can have a page of their own, then maybe it is time to add more pages for the Chinese people from Sigapore, from thailand, vietnam, south america, etc, etc.

It is time for the wikipedia governing body to take control of the chinese page, ask them to stop making all those nonsense extra pages for different Chinese readers. There are plenty of softwares that can change all those necessary chinese fonts, etc. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SummerThunder (talk • contribs) 10:00, 27 December 2006 (UTC).