Wikiquote:Village pump archive 11


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Village pump archive 11 edit

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


Roberto Duran edit

Hello, am having trouble putting the wikiquote link on the Roberto Duran article in wikipedia,I think its because Duran is spell another way on wikipedia, could anyone help me out?--McNoddy 09:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You should always include a link to the article in question in your post (preferably in the text, not the heading). In this case, I don't quite see the problem with Roberto Duran. Yes, the WP article is spelled Roberto Durán, but I see that your initial version here included a properly working link to it. UDScott later changed the text to say "Roberto Durán" (with the accent), and I just completed this editing by moving the article to Roberto Durán, so that entering either spelling in the Search box will result in the correct article. Teamwork! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:46, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

thanks Jeffq (-: --McNoddy 10:47, 2 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Links edit

I'd appreciate some advice about links within an article. When should they be to wikipedia and when to wikiquote? They seem to be mixed, so the reader isn't sure whether they're going to end up with quotes or a biography. Also is there a different guideline for people and for things/institutions etc.? Thanks. Tyrenius 17:23, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As always, Tyrenius, you ask a good question, one for which there is no definitive answer. In general, we'd like to have our articles' links go to other Wikiquote articles. However, any subject that is unlikely to ever have a quote article should be directed to Wikipedia instead. For those that might have a quote article, there is no single convention that I'm aware of. Adding WQ links to these encourages readers to start quote articles on absent subjects, but leaves a lot of red (broken) links, especially given our relatively modest group of editors. (Anything we might link here will almost always have an existing article on Wikipedia.) Many editors, myself included, will often redirect red links to WP:
  • To have useful information on the subject available now; and/or
  • To discourage the creation of junk articles, like quoteless pages with a trivial statement, essays on the subject, some made-up nonense quotes, or a page of plausible but unsourced quotes vaguely recalled from memory. (All of these occur on a regular basis.)
In the end, it tends to be a judgment call on the part of the editors involved in each article that has these links. At least that's my observation. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 18:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is unfortunate that interwiki links are less featureful than internal links. I don't think it ever hurts to use the WP link, unless for some reason there is a WQ article and no corresponding WP article; in the case where only the WP article exists, that's clearly the right thing, and where both exist, the WP article should have a WQ linkbox at the bottom so a user can find her way back to WQ if that's what she wants. 121a0012 21:58, 2 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If a person has only links to WP and then ends up with a wikiquote page, then a search can bring the name up and the links can be changed to internal ones. Tyrenius 21:53, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New VfD nomination method, trial edit

Moved to Wikiquote talk:Votes for deletion#New VfD nomination method, trial Cbrown1023 talk 18:46, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Centered text edit

See bottom of Adrian Henri, where I've used a table. However, I can't get the bullet point to work, as it then displays the table as code. Solutions welcome. Tyrenius 21:55, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I should have asked above if this problem has come up before (I haven't seen it) and if this is the solution that has been adopted. If so, please let me know and I will follow it. If not, then it would be good to get some consensus on it for future use. The InvisibleSun solution has the advantage of simplicity, but places the body of the text somewhat conspicuously out of line with other quotes.[1] The use of a table puts the text in line and is to my eye more visually right.[2] However, I have not been able to employ the bullet point with the table, as mentioned above, so the longest line of the centered text begins nearer to the left than other quotes on the page. I suppose another way would be to employ lots of non-breaking spaces "nbsp;" (without double quotes) to center it by hand! Tyrenius 00:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You cannot expect spaces to have the same width on all systems, so please do not use non-breaking spaces for something they were not intended. Also, the <center> element is no longer part of HTML; it was replaced in HTML 4 by <p align="center"> and in XHTML with a CSS style attribute. The XHTML/CSS standard way of doing what InvisibleSun did is as follows:
* <div style="text-align: center"> foo bar baz quux<br />corge grault</div>
This produces:
  • foo bar baz quux
    corge grault
You are supposed to be able to do everything that standard HTML tables do with "div" elements and CSS, but I'm not sufficiently well-versed in CSS to figure it out. (If we used any of these methods here, they should be encapsulated in a template so that editors don't have to understand any of this.) 121a0012 02:40, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Erk. So is the bottom line (excuse pun) to use the div coding you've given above for the time being? Tyrenius 23:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but find a good name for a template to stick it in first. The advantage of using the div/style thing is that modern graphical browsers will almost certainly render it correctly, but older and text-only browsers will ignore it (whereas the other methods would screw up the display even worse on those). 121a0012 02:47, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Template for centered text in poems etc edit

OK, I've created a template. Use this code:

{{subst:centertext}}

Tyrenius 03:19, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Monarch Mnemonic edit

Hey I know I fairly widely used mnemonic to remember the royal houses of Britain/England, and want somebody to make it into a page, provided of course that they have the time. The mnemonic is, "No Plan Like Yours To Study History Wisely," (Norman, Plantagenet, Lancaster, York, Tudor, Stuart, Hanover, Windsor). If somebody could create the page for such a handy mnemonic, I'd be much obliged.

Wikiquote articles collects sets of related quotes, not single quotes. What you want to do is add this to English mnemonics. It would also be highly desirable to have a published source for this. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 06:34, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The earliest cite that Google Book Search had was: Ashley, Leonard R. N. (1989). What's in a Name: Everything You Wanted to Know. Genealogical Publishing Co. pp. 223. ISBN 0806312610. . grendel|khan 15:22, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"She died" edit

I've been trying to trace a quotation for years, I think it's from a play or screenplay. The character says in response to someone who says "xxxx has passed away." The other character says "She didn't pass away, she didn't pass over, she didn't pass anywhere SHE DIED!"

Suspect the works of Bill Naughton or similar genre.

Geoff Hunt

paper citation template problems edit

Wiki experts,

I am having trouble with the 'paper' citation template. The Wikipedia citation page lists paper as a valid citation template. Have you all imported all of the wikipedia citation templates?

The citation I'm trying to make is on the Christopher Monckton page. Here is the citation code:

Template:Cite paper

When cited as a book:

Christopher Monckton (February 2007) (PDF). IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, 2007, Analysis and Summary. Center for Science and Public Policy. Retrieved on February 7, 2007. 

Any ideas? Thanks! Ekabo 03:03, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would use {{cite web}} for this. It's clearly a Web resource, and "paper" to me would indicate something published in a journal, not an independent work; I see no journal title here. You can also copy over the template you want to use from Wikipedia. 121a0012 03:55, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

poem extension edit

I note that our MediaWiki now includes the Poem extension (<poem> ... ... ...</poem>). It hasn't been mentioned here. It's just as well, though, as it is incompatible with our formatting. Perhaps if a developer could be persuaded to do whatever is necessary to make it work in a list context.... 121a0012 03:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I didn't noticed it now MediaWiki include it ...

John: Blah, blah. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah ........... blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Jane: Blah blah blah.

I couldn't find the incompatibility you mentioned. Could you enlighten me?
I expect we persuade developers whatever is necessary on Bugzilla, but I have no idea why you mentioned to a list ... --Aphaia 13:44, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A problem I found is when you try to use the extension when creating a bulleted list is that it creates a strange looking format. Either every line after the first is indented too much (first example below), or not at all (second example below).
Example 1

* blah blahblah
blah
blah

Example 2

* blah blah blah
blah
blah

I don't know if I like it. ~ UDScott 13:44, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How do we divide an theme article into subsections? edit

Eastern Orthodox Christianity is a huge article (over 32KB, of course) and hard to edit now. I would like to divide it into subsections and face a problem: what way is the best for such an article?

First I thought I could divide it into several themes, like "Love", "God", "Faith", "Prayer" etc. There may be NPOV problem; division by themes could be in NPOV but it would be hard. And it would bring another problem of overlapping themes. Some quote can be labelled in several themes, and it may be not only influenced with a certain POV but also not-userfriendly who seek a particular quote.

Another thought which came upon me is division by author. There could be two ways in my opinion. 1) by author sorted alphabetically (so "John Chrysostom" may be followed "John Climacus", next "John of Kronstadt" etc). And we can put some section like "A to Z"; the difficulties from my view is however it make a less sense we have mere a group of invididual authors' article there ... Another way I found is 2) by author (even roughly) sorted by period, like "From the Bible", "Ancient authors" (= it could mean "before the Great Schism" or earlier, "until the seventh Council"), "Medieval" "Modern" and so on.

Then I found the possibility you may have more different and neat ideas. So I would like to hear you ... what kind of sorting way do you propose? --Aphaia 09:51, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we should be thinking of how our readers are most likely to search for them. Are they most likely to search by Author or by time? I think they'd most likely search by Author, but that is just my opinion. That also seems to be the best solution, because currently there are no dates by the quotes. Cbrown1023 talk 18:49, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For a theme article such as this, I would propose divisions based on historical periods, with authors arranged alphabetically within each subsection. It might be preferable to have a chronological order within each subsection; but it would be hard to imagine contributors following this pattern. It's hard to get people to source anything in theme articles, so alphabetically within each subsection might be simpler and better. - InvisibleSun 19:00, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Since all quoted authors are famous (most of them, perhaps all canonized, and have their own English Wikipedia articles) so it is not difficult for me to date each article. Sorting by date is a bit different since there are some contemporaries. I am inclined to the proposal of InvisibleSun, roughly sorted by date or century/period, and then sorted each quote alphabetically (by author or just the head letter of each quote). --Aphaia 06:23, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I also like his proposal. Cbrown1023 talk 21:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorted. If you have a time and interest, please review. I'll appreciate your feedback and mercilessly edits ;) --Aphaia 18:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Editing Wikiquote Nyaaya Box edit

I wanted to add something under the 'Nyaaya' or 'Na'.

So clicked on the 'edit-button' at the bottom of the Nyaaya Box.

But it displayed the 'Ja-Window'.

I tried twice,but with the same result.

I was unable to access the Nyaaya Window.

There seems error on the edit-button of the Nyaaya-Box. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.79.95.11 (talkcontribs) 22:28, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're trying to say here. I am unaware of any "Nyaaya Box" or "Ja-Window" in Wikiquote. Do you mean that you are trying to create a theme article about Nyaya — also spelled (misspelled?) "Nyaaya" — the Hindu school of logic? Or is there something else you are trying to do? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:39, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

m:user:CommonsDelinker is now working on Wikiquote too. Very different from our custom, but personally I think it much benefical for us to allow it to perform not following our bot policy strictly. For example, the bot operator has no userpage on this project etc. Since it will reduce our work greatly to watch commons resources we utilize, they we can avoid worring if they really exist or unfortunately were already deleted. Relevant discussion may be found at commons-l, m:user talk:CommonsDelinker. --Aphaia 07:14, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category for African Americans edit

Are there any plans to add the category "African Americans?" I'm surprised one hasn't been added already. lwalt 11:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There was a dispute if we really wanted to have ethnic categories. The community consensus at that time was not favorable. You may find the relevant discussions on our Village pump archives (sorry I am not sure where those talks happened). --Aphaia 07:06, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the discussion Aphaia is referring to was at what is now Wikiquote:Village pump archive 3#Categorization by Nationality/Geography, but was long ago moved to Wikiquote talk:Category schemes#Nationalities, an April-June 2005 discussion. Lwalt posted the question above on that same page, at "Request to add category", but hadn't received a response by the time the above post was made. I recently commented there, but I sense no one is anxious to tackle this issue again at this time. Besides reiterating a concern about how difficult categorizing by ethnicity would be, I've suggested that lwalt (or other interested editors) could be bold and start this, but should be prepared for controversy. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 12:33, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This sort of thing causes endless arguments on Wikipedia, and I'd strongly urge people not to duplicate such controversies here. Country is a different issue, as it is rarely controversial.--Poetlister 22:51, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One might think so, but check out the WQ:CAT discussion linked to above. Even nationality can be tricky. ☺ ~ Jeff Q (talk) 23:50, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A similar problem would be found at an existing (and very small) category category:Finn-Swedes. I put temporally it under category:europeans. It could have been placed under unexisting Finns category, since it is for the people Swedes by ethnic but Finns by nationality, and our categories are "people by nationality" but I was afraid it would cause another confusion... You may have a different idea and want to fix it. Please do, even now I am not sure which is the best way to treat this kind of categories. --Aphaia 08:41, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Proposal: Wikiquote:My favorite articles edit

One newcomer asked Jeffq if we have "featured articles" as well our sister project, Wikipedia. Currently we have no such, though some of us tried to launch it (like MosheZadka). And our community is not so big to let us start everything we would like to have. At least now.

So, a proposal. Could we have more personal and casual recommendation pages? To avoid self-advertisements, we could invite only experienced editors (editcount could be a measure ). Or there would be other good ways to build this kind of pages. Or we could have a poll if an article is worthy to be listed or not at the talk page. Or more personally we could have only a list of recommendation lists which each of us can have our userpage.

The English Wikiquote is increasing; not later we'll reach the 10,000th articles. And more. We'll have more visitors and also editors. Not only for them, but also for our regulars, such "what are loved here" information might be useful to implove our website. --Aphaia 16:04, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I believe this is a good idea, but just don't name it My favorite articles. :) We could do what they did at Wikipedia and name it Wikiquote:Featured articles or Wikiquote:Featured content. Cbrown1023 talk 16:51, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I vote for "Featured articles".--Poetlister 17:58, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
After reading the link that Jeff posted below, I like "Featured entry" better. :) Cbrown1023 talk 20:51, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I recommend that we review the discussion at Wikiquote talk:Featured article (no plural) to see the kinds of complications (and therefore the large amount of work to be done) to implement and maintain any featured-article scheme. Do we have the bandwidth for another project on the scale of Quote of the day? Bear in mind that this would be harder, because QotD only deals with single quotes, whereas FA is about complete, well-structured, useful articles. (Besides, some of my favorite articles are terrible messes right now. ☺) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:19, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Good suggestion. I would clarify my original proposal didn't intend to feature the article on Main Page. Not at all. Moreover as daily featured article. Even on Wikipedia, many projects don't think "FA"s in the English Wikipedia sense, but just their list of recommendation as the calmination of their projects. I avoided intentionally "FA" as proposed name, lest English audience tend to expect the similar well-constructed scheme as the current FA on English Wikipedia. It is nice on the project with 800,000 reg. users and 1,500,000 articles, but would not totally fit a small community like ours. --Aphaia 23:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Okay so in the past week no major objection came, we can step forward a bit? Let us sum the above:
  • We are going to have a page focusing on good contents.
  • We have already a similar proposal and following discussions, Wikiquote talk:Featured article (not plural).
  • We agreed to have such a page, but we don't share how to name it yet.
    • Candidates: Featured articles, Featured entries. I'm glad to withdraw my first candidate, however proposed another, "good entries".
  • Currently no one seems to think we need to have a review system as rigid as our sister project, English Wikipedia.
I would like to wait for other name candidates in a week. Personally I would like not to use "featured" yet, since 1) it could remind strongly "featured articles" on English Wikipedia and 2) if we save the name "featured" here, we could reuse it for more systematic evaluation system expectingly ... so I push "good entries" as the most prominent candidate, though I am waiting for much better candidates.
Thought?—This unsigned comment is by [[User:Aphaia|Aphaia]] ([[User talk:Aphaia|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/Aphaia|contribs]]) .

I should point out that I'm not really a newcomer anymore. :) But I certainly think this is a good idea and will be putting forward Latter Days the day it goes live. Dev920 22:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So let us launch a new page: Wikiquote:Good entries.--Aphaia 10:08, 10 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Blood, sweat, and tears" is correct, though partial, and cannot be attributed edit

"Blood, sweat, and tears" can only be misattributed, not misquoted. It is originally an adage (as in piece of folk wisdom), that for work to be a labor of love it must contain blood, sweat, and tears. Given that my mother taught me that her grandmother had taught her this as a small child when she was learning to sew, it much pre-dates 1926, the earliest attribute cited on the page. It was old before the turn of the twentieth century in this form.—This unsigned comment is by Ondelette (talkcontribs) .

Well it is a misquotation as Churchill said something, people try to quote him and usually get it wrong missing out toil. Perhaps your grandmother was frightfully well read and knew John Donne's Anatomie of the World: MeltBanana 14:58, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And learnst thus much by our Anatomy,
That 'tis in vaine to dew, or mollifie
It with thy Teares, or Sweat, or Blood: no thing
Is worth our trauaile, griefe, or perishing,
But those rich ioyes, which did possesse her heart,
Of which shee's now partaker, and a part.

Please note that I have posted there so that we can finish all of our draft policies and turn them into official policies. I signed it Wikiquote:WikiProject Policy Revision instead of Cbrown1023 talk so that you can all edit it as you see fit. :) Thanks in advance. Cbrown1023 talk 21:38, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Surveying templates for Wikiproject template sharing I happened across this list of lists template for poets by country, and type of poetry which someone here may find useful. // FrankB 00:59, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a page named "list of categories" (historical note: when the project started in 2003, category isn't implemented on MediaWiki; it came the midst of 2004). And this page looks not so well maintained now ... for a year perhaps.

On the other hand we have relatively maintained page about categories Wikiquote:Browse and also category tree generator at special:Categorytree. So it seems not so much meaningful to keep all those resources.

My tentative set of proposals are

  • Move the list of categories to Wikiquote namespace. (now it is in the main namespace)
  • And put it "historical" tag: if we would like to know the early history of Wikiquote (specially before language division), it may be one of testemonies.
  • For navagition needs, we are going to maintain Wikiquote:Browse and categories mainly, and leave the list as well other lists extinct in the natural course unless some devout listmania is willing to maintain.

Thought, folks? --Aphaia 10:25, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's an automatically gernerated list that needs no maintenance: Special:Categories. It is of course important to keep track of hierarchies if some categories include others.--Poetlister 13:13, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, we have special:categories, but it is a list of all categories and not sorted under hierarchies. List of categories was intended however to provide a list of "core categories" so those two take different approaches. I think it is useful to keep track of herarchies and that is why I keep it as historical document (reviewing its history, we have an insight how our category hierarchy has been developed). On the other hand I found a little reason to maintain two kinds of "major categories' list", and Wikiquote:Browse seems today more convinient and well-maintained. --Aphaia 04:16, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ouch. There is one thing I missed. This page is linked from Main Page as "categories", though it is not well maintained. I propose it unlink and rewrite as "mischellanous" (sic). Any object? Aphaia 04:26, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As long as we spell "miscellaneous" correctly! :-) --Poetlister 17:58, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, thank you for spellchecking! If there isn't any objection in a week, I'll modify the page as the above. --Aphaia 12:58, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK by me - seems sensible.--Cato 19:50, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your comments. Done. --Aphaia 13:38, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

referencing edit

Is there a template for "small" references? Or, better yet, an equivalent for the reflist template at Wikipedia? From what I've read in a quick pass, referencing at Wikiquote seems to be all over the place. -- Shoejar

Nevermind, problem solved. -- Shoejar 16:09, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

British Jews and Jewish-British people edit

There was only one person in Category:Jewish-British people, Michael Levy, Baron Levy. I have changed that to Category:British Jews in line with WP policy. However, I doubt that we need such categories at all on WQ. Are there any other religious categories?--Cato 19:48, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We have category:saints, category:religious texts and category:religious leaders. As far as I know it hasn't been seriously thought to divide them by religious belief. --Aphaia 09:44, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The category Category:British Jews haven't been categorized. How would we handle it? It is okay only to put it under Category:Britons? Or we need Category:People by ethnicity > Category:Jews? (Note: I am not sure if "Jews" are okay for the majority of audience, while Moshez, who is an Israelite in birth, said to me once it was equal for him to be called either Jew or Jewish, "I am a Jew, or not?" --Aphaia 05:49, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Our two top categories are somehow parallel but I thought it not user-friendly; I forgot their distinction and put myself in a maze. It is a bit annoying it is necessary to check the Main Page to find a right direction in my opinion. So I created some new categories and put all top categories (expect Mnemonics whose validity is now in question) into the category:Fundamental or its subcategories. Now almost all categories can be reached from "fundamental", and I think it fits the meaning of this category. However this change occurred very abruptly, so you might be not happy so much. I don't mind if you revert them, but still hope you join the discussion how we can improve our category scheme. Regarding the recent VP and VFD discussions and many "recent creation of categories not fitting our scheme", our current scheme is not intuitive in every point and there may be many points we can improve. --Aphaia 09:44, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]